Zip ties – so many uses, so easy to carry

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In this part two of what I am now categorizing as “What’s in my camera bag that isn’t necessarily made by a photographic company” allow me to introduce zip ties.

Ziptie assortment

They come in all sorts of widths, lengths, colors and materials. They are typically plastic but also come in stainless steel, and ones with a place to write a label on.  They weigh next to nothing, and cost just pennies, so why not carry a small assortment with you. When gaffer’s tape might not work, they can save many broken things, bottom line, they are just for cleaning up cable messes. Read more of this post

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Gaffer’s Tape to the rescue

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I know many folks think of duct tape at the king of tapes, but when doing things photographic, I always carry some quantity of gaffer’s tape.  If you aren’t familiar with its properties, think of the painter’s tape, with its low residue leaving properties, but on a whole other level of stickiness, and with the cloth like durability of duct tape.  I’m not sure where or how long ago I read the tip, but I highly recommend taking a small amount of the gaffer’s tape off the big roll and wrapping it around an empty pill bottle so you can toss it in your bag without having an entire sort of heavy,  roll with you.

Pill bottle with gaffer's tape and Gitzo center column Read more of this post

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Bug reporting – picking on Adobe but it could be you too

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No, not that kind of bug!Working in the IT industry, I all to well aware of internal and external bug tracking/issue management systems. I’ve seen a number of home grown solutions, including the one I co-designed and use in Lotus Notes, as well as commercial ones, some big, like Saleforce’s and small, like Fog Creek’s. Each has their merits, but some systems, just don’t make it easy and friendly to report bugs, and I can’t imagine what it is like to be on the receiving end of a bug report generated from these capture mechanisms. Sure there is the issue of a user reporting something as a bug, when it is really a feature 😉 or just a RTFM situation, but for capturing potential bug information, regardless of the accuracy of it, a solid system makes it much easier to assign, delegate, prioritize and resolve bugs.

I am going to pick on Adobe here, because just recently I had the need to report a bug in Photoshop Lightroom, but I’ve seen a number of software companies and service providers that are sorely lacking in this arena.

Make it easy to locate the link/place where you go to report bugs

I didn’t start out on the official Photoshop Lightroom page, but I did a quick search in Google and found their “Adobe Public Bug Database and Issue Reporting System” but that only had a few products listed on it, none were Photoshop related.  A further Google search found this Go Media Zine article, which lead me to the correct Adobe page for “Feature Request/Bug Report Form“. This will be the focus of the rest of the post.

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