Archive for September, 2013
And, Sometimes, It Just Blows Up!
Wednesday, September 11th, 2013
In the past, a professional, commercial photographer needed a camera and film, to put it simply, to put an image into media. A commercial lab or a photographer’s darkroom was needed to process that image and turn it into something a client could use. Those labs largely have just about disappeared. And so, now digital is king.
In the present, a professional, commercial photographer’s computer is as important to him or her as a camera. The computer takes the place of the lab and/or darkroom.
When that computer goes on the fritz, it can be a bumpy ride. Take my old Intel-based i7 workstation computer as an example. Although very powerful when I bought it (it is still serviceable and still considered powerful today), it was getting a bit long in the tooth at 3.5 years old. Several months ago, I started to notice things happening for which I had no explanation. After leaving my computer idle for a time, I would come back to it, and programs I had left open would be gone and off the task bar. Passwords I had earlier put in on some web pages had to be reloaded again. I thought maybe I had only imagined I had put in the passwords or opened programs. Then one day something happened to illuminate that I was having computer malfunctions when I was working on an image, and the screen went black, stayed black for a number of seconds and then the computer rebooted. Now I realized something really bad was afoot. The reason my websites had to be reopened with a password again, and programs that had been open had closed, was that the computer had an intermittent failure for some reason, and had rebooted while I was away from it. What could be causing this?
The first problem I noticed was that the image file I had just spent two hours working on in Photoshop, although saved at intervals, was now corrupted. I still had the original file, but all the work I had done had vanished into thin air. The reason is the file was open, hadn’t been closed properly, Photoshop hadn’t been exited properly, and Windows hadn’t also been shut down properly. When a computer crashes like that, it can’t close out anything on the hard drive, and so a corruption occurs. The second thing that dawned on me was that this could definitely happen again. This was totally unacceptable. This either means repairs or replacement of this computer. Either way, it is going to be expensive, and very time-consuming.
I used to fix cars for a living a long time ago at a new car dealership, and one of the things the boss used to stick me with was fixing odd intermittent problems. These were more numerous than one would think. I did learn one thing about intermittent problems. They invariably would show as “no fault found” (NFF) when the car was working OK. All testing devices said that things were working to specification and, because the problem was intermittent, it was my job to drive the car until it happened again. I would take these cars home with me and drive them like they were mine until I experienced the problem. I would sometimes drive the car for weeks! My experience would lead me to note everything about why the car had failed: Was the car warmed up, was it a cool day, was it uphill or downhill, etc., all clues that would lead me to some conclusion. Sometimes I experienced the failure once in maybe a week, sometimes several times an hour. But I knew the problem the customer had, and I had seen it first-hand. Since cars have electricity, and in the later years, electronics, most of the time the culprit would be there. Sometimes I would find the problem: a wire that had touched a hot surface and the insulation had burned off and allowed the wire to ground when movement of the car caused the wire to touch ground, or a plug that didn’t lock into place properly from the factory and lost contact with movement of the car. But, electronics added a whole new dimension to the intermittent problem – that of the failed sensor or computer. These units were sealed, and when you tested them, and the car was running, there was NFF, but failure could happen for almost any reason. The fix for this was to start replacing parts with known good parts, and an educated guess. At the dealership, that meant taking a part off the shelf, putting it in the car and letting the customer drive away with it to see if it still had the problem. It was not a problem while the car was in warranty as the old part was kept and returned to the car should that not be the problem. By process of elimination, even very knotty problems could be fixed. The problem became more complicated on customer pay, as I had to charge the customer for labor, but I could still refund the money on the part, as long as I returned it to the parts shelf. When working with an independent shop, however, the customer and the independent repair garage can’t return used electrical parts to their suppliers, and that is where this gets back to my computer.
The computer was past the warranty, so anybody I took it to could test it and find something wrong, or, nothing wrong. It could crash twice in an hour or go as long as ten days without crashing. You had to be watching it to see it happen. An unlikely scenario at a computer repair facility. The computer can’t record why it crashed as the crash wipes out that capability.
I consulted the Internet, and got several ideas of what it could be: anything and everything. It could be the video card. In my case, it has to be more than just a video card. It has to be an Adobe-certified video card. For some of my work, 3D capability is something that may be needed in Photoshop or some of my video programs. This also means this card is relatively expensive. It could be the motherboard. It could be the processor. It could be the memory, etc. I ran the manufacturer’s diagnostic for five hours, and it tested just about everything in the computer. NFF. I had an expert steer me to a free downloadable diagnostic program on the ‘Net called memtest 86 that ran from a disk in the CD drive. He said he uses it and it really wrings out the processor, motherboard, and the memory, and usually finds failures within 10 minutes. I ran it for five hours, and it found absolutely nothing wrong.
My local computer boutique wanted $39.00 to diagnose the problem. There was just one problem, however. It was Monday, and they were backed up until Thursday. For an extra $89.00, they would move me up in the queue to next.
So, for $138.00 I could get a diagnosis. Not fixed, mind you, just diagnosed. My mechanical sense about intermittent problems started tingling, and I knew that I could get the dreaded NFF from them. Or they could surmise what was wrong and we would start sticking new parts in my old computer until it was either fixed, or I could watch someone scratch his head and say, “Gee, I’ve never seen that before!´ All after lightening my wallet for greenbacks I would need in order to replace my aging box.
Not wanting to take out my wallet and throw parts at this problem until it was fixed, I had to take action. The one item it could be was a bad C:drive. If it was that, I would have to spend $100 to $200 and go through the two weeks or so it would take to reload and configure all my programs, desktop, network, and so on, and I still wouldn’t be sure it was fixed until it could run for months without failure. Other components in this computer were as old as any part I would be replacing.
So, I opted to the one approach that should work – replace the car, er – computer. Sorry, I have cars on the brain.
I can’t buy just any computer, either. Considering the fact that I work with large image files with multiple layers, and video programs that suck up processor speed and memory, I need something powerful. I need another i7 box, with lots of memory, a big hard-drive, an Adobe-certified video card. It needs to have several USB 3.0 ports as I back up my work on high-speed USB 3.0 drives that can transfer multi-gigabyte files in seconds rather than minutes.
Another thing I would look for is getting the computer with Windows 7 Professional. It was what I worked with in my old box, and I didn’t know if some of my old programs would be compatible with Windows 8.
Fortunately, I found almost what I was looking for in a Dell from Office Depot. A fourth-generation i7 processor, an Adobe-certified video card, eight GB of ram (expandable to 32 GB), a one-TB hard drive, and Win 7 Pro. Expansion slots. Etc. For less than my last computer, but still more than one would pay for just an everyday computer. It would need more memory, of course, available from third party suppliers. It would need an additional third-party expansion card to run another of my drives (an eSATA) as there is no native port built in for that connection.
I purchased this hot rod and it actually came in two days with free shipping. I then began the arduous task of getting it to where I could work with it through configuration, calling Adobe and Microsoft to move licenses to my new computer.
I never got that far. Two hours after firing up this turbo computer, it crashed. Not quite the same as my old one. This time it was software-related. This one had the “Blue Screen of Death” or BSoD. I didn’t think much of it until it happened a couple more times. After much wrangling, I shipped the computer back through Office Depot and got a refund, and since the deal on this same model computer was still going on, I ordered another and kept my fingers crossed. It also came in two days with free shipping.
After several weeks of installing and configuring hell, upgrading the memory, and adding the eSATA expansion card, I am typing this blog post on my second new computer. Hopefully this one will last as long or longer than my 3.5 year-old computer.
BTW, I still don’t know what is wrong with the old computer. Fortunately, I don’t have to find out.
My clients may sometimes wonder why pro commercial photography costs what it does. Part of the reason is that I – and my computer – really are the lab, and my computer has to be up to the task. The end result is great images that help my clients make money.
– Gary Silverstein
