Even though the sensor cleaning integrated into my Canon 5D Mark II does a good job I sometimes get sticky dust on the sensor. As you probably know it's mostly visible when using small apertures (like f/18). As a test I photograph the clear sky or a white paper sheet. I then import the image into Lightroom and increase contrast.

To get rid of it I make sure that my camera battery is full and activate the manual sensor cleaning mode. You have to be very careful not to damage the sensitive hardware.
Use the info provided here at your own risk! If you don't feel comfortable self-servicing your camera get professional help (e.g. Calumet)!

At first I use a small manual air blower (like the Visible Dust Hurricane Blower). Don't touch anything on the inside of the camera with it! Sometimes that's all what is needed.

For my first attempts at sensor cleaning I used a SpeckGrabber but beside getting rid of dust it often left some residue. I still come back to it sometimes for very sticky dust but very carefully and only before wet cleaning the sensor.

Nowadays I mainly use the VisibleDust V Swabs (get the right size for your sensor) together with a few drops of Eclipse Optic Cleaning System solution. (A FEW drops will do. More will be counterproductive!)

In most cases that should do the trick. For very dirty sensors several passes may be required. If you get tired of reassembling your lens, shooting test photos, transferring them to your computer ... you can use a product like the LensPen SensorKlear Loupe to watch the result of your cleaning immediately. (Note: The LensPen SensorKlear CCD Sensor Cleaner did NOT work well for me as it left a lot of carbon dust on my sensor. Actually I had to go to Calumet to clear my sensor afterwards – that's when I learned about the VisibleDust V Swabs and the Eclipse solution ...).

What are your sensor cleaning experiences? I'd love to hear from you!

Since Windows Vista I've been using what was "Complete Backup" and is now called "Create a system image" ("Systemabbild erstellen" for my German readers) as my primary backup method not only for system but for file backup and restore.

This system image can be used to restore the computer from scratch after a failure. Using it to restore individual files is trickier - maybe this is the reason why it isn't propagated by Microsoft as a general backup solution. So use the information provided here with care and on your own risk!

In the WindowsImageBackup folder hierarchy created by Windows "Create a system image" is a folder called "Backup <Date> <Time>" that contains a couple of vhd files. These "virtual harddisk" files contain the sectors in use of your backed up volumes – one vhd file per volume. The filenames are cryptic guids like bfeec3bd-cf04-11de-8b32-00241dca0682.vhd but the filesizes correspond with the amount of data on your volumes. If this doesn't help you can look into the BackupSpecs.xml file in the same directory to see which vhd file belongs to the volume you are looking for. Since the backup files are protected you will have to give your own windows user the right to access the BackupSpecs.xml file (even if you already have administrative rights).

<Volume Name="\\?\Volume{bfeec3bd-cf04-11de-8b32-00241dca0682}\" AccessPath="U:" OriginalAccessPath="U:" Label="" OriginalLabel="" ><FileSpec FilePath="U:\" FileName="*" IsRecursive="true" IsInclude="true" /></Volume>

So file data from drive u: was stored in the vhd-file mentioned above.

To access the files on the vhd volumes you have to mount them. This has become much easier in Windows 7 compared to Vista. You can now use the standard Disk Manager (Datenträgerverwaltung) to mount vhd files as normal volumes. Use "Attach VHD" from the Action menu and select the vhd file found in the Backup... folder. Don't select "Write Protected" since for some reason unknown to me the attachment won't work – at least for NTFS volumes. Be very careful not to change any data on the backup vhd!

Now a new drive will be visible in your system and you can access your saved files using the explorer as if they were on any of your normal volumes. This morning I restored about 13 GB in about 3 minutes. Try this using tapes ... ;)

Afterwards you should detach the vhd volume to make sure no backup data is overridden by accident. Once again use the Disk Manager, right click on the disk #<n> for your vhd and click on "Detach VHD".

Make sure the "Delete the virtual hard disk file after removing the disk" box is unchecked!

I use an internal 1.5 TB hdd for my "daily" backups, two external hdd's in turn and an additional hdd with an encrypted system image (I'm using TrueCrypt) that I store at a friend's home.

Appendix: vhd files are also used by Virtual PC. So you can mount the backup vhd's in your virtual computers. But make sure that the operating system matches the OS used to create the vhd's! Otherwise there might be problems accessing larger files (including cryptic error messages) ... as I had to find out the hard way!

I'm doing my image editing using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6 and Adobe Photoshop CS4. For the most part I'm very happy with this combo. Here is just a warning for you so that you don't lose the work of several hours like it happend to me ...

After you choose "Edit in Photoshop CS4" in Lightroom NEVER save the file in Photoshop CS4 under a different name than the one determined by Lightroom (always use SAVE, not Save As!). Even if you first save the file under the name given by Lightroom and afterwards save the file under a different name the first file will be overwritten!
I did some complex image editing in Photoshop, saved the file and then resized it for the web, saved it under a DIFFERENT name but in the end the original multilayer psd file was overwritten. Since I first thought it was user error it didn't just happen once till I found out that it was a "feature" ...

If you want different versions of your file save your work in CS4 and then create a copy using the Lightroom functions.

If you're serious about digital image editing, color management is an important prerequisite to make sure your work will be displayed and printed correctly (on calibrated systems).

1. Hardware-calibrate your system using a colorimeter like the Spyder 3 from Datacolor.
   A series of test-images will be shown and the colorimeter will read the color values to produce curves that – after being loaded into your graphic card at system startup – will correct any nonlinearities.
   Note: Make sure that you reset your monitor and graphiccard settings to their defaults BEFORE you calibrate your monitor and NOT to change them later on without recalibration!
2. Use an application that supports color management to display and edit your images, e.g. programs like Adobe Photoshop CS4 or Lightroom.
   When viewing images on the internet use a browser like Firefox 3.5 or higher that supports color management (for Firefox versions before 3.5 color management has to be manually enabled). Microsoft Internet Explorer, even 8.0, DOESN'T yet support it!
3. When printing images at home make sure that you have a matching color profile for the paper / ink / printer combination you use. The factory supplied profiles – at least for my Canon Pixma – didn't yield good skin tones.
   Since I didn't have a hardware-calibration tool to create printer color profiles by myself I used one of the services available on the web (www.fotodesign-winkler.de (in German only)). I printed two test sheets according to the guidelines given and sent them in. As a result I got a color profile via e-mail that I installed on my computer.

If you have any questions relating to color management feel free to comment and I will expand this post accordingly!

After two more or less futile and time-consuming attempts to micro-adjust the autofocus of my Canon EOS 5D Mark II together with my three lenses I luckily came across a post on www.openphotographyforums.com. Especially my Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM is finally usable with autofocus at f1.4! Highly recommended!

Remember to perform the tests

• with test-image displayed at 100%
• with wide-open aperture
• at the long-end of zoom lenses (verify at other zoom settings)
• from a distance that causes moiré to be shown (a few meters for teles)
• using a tripod (of course)
• looking at the camera monitor (not viewfinder) for moiré
• don't use autofocus in live view because micro-adjust won't affect it!
  (contrast based autofocus in live view can be used to check your calibration)
• you may have to switch from autofocus to manual focus to be able to zoom in
  live view mode

And finally test in some real world situation! I managed to mistake a visual effect for moiré that wasn't ...

I have to admit that I'm a little perfectionistic when it comes to digital image processing. So I use 16 Bit, Adobe ProPhoto color space, keep all my changes in layers ... Normally I stay within the 2 GB limit for PSD files but recently composings got even bigger. And even though I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit, an Intel i7 processor, 6 GB of triple channel memory, two 1.5 TB harddisks ... saving an image took about an hour (I don't have the exact numbers because I did other things while waiting)! The PSB format is new to Photoshop CS4 so it might still need some tuning ...

Adobe recommends having a multiple of the image size in RAM but I didn't yet want to rip out my newly bought memory chips. So I went for another performance tuning tip - using RAID 0 (or Striping). So I added two 1 TB SATA II disks and configured a stripeset (300 GB) and a mirror (RAID 1) using the disk manager. In the past I've had really bad experiences (= losing data ) with Intel Matrix RAID and also a Adaptec RAID controller driver so I thought I give it a try (Being a software developer myself I understand that it's impossible to test all hardware / software combinations but still the loss of data using systems like RAID 5 that exist to protect data is very dissatisfying). It's software RAID but my Intel i7 has plenty of horsepower. I use the stripeset volume exclusively as a workvolume for Photoshop CS4 (and the Camera Raw Cache). Finally I also optimized the write cache settings for my harddrives in Device Manager (I have a UPS so power outages are "no" problem) and configured an NTFS formatted memory stick for ReadyBoost ...

Saving large PSB images still takes quite some time - but at least I can use it to get a coffee and get back to work!

If you are interested in further details or have a tip for me - just write a comment!

Appendix: After the initial "success" my RAID 0 hdd's suddenly started to stall for several seconds at a time while I was working in Photoshop. I did low level harddisk tests but to no avail. As a last resort I updated my Gigabyte EX58-UD3R BIOS to the newest version (to get an improved AHCI BIOS). So far my hdd's didn't "hang" and performance has improved even more.

Here it is! My first blog - thanks to BlogEngine.NET!

Even though I'm German I'm writing in English to polish it up a little ... hopefully my German readers don't mind! The blog itself is shown in your system language.

Ich bitte meine deutschsprachigen Leser um Entschuldigung, dass meine Blogeinträge primär auf Englisch sein werden. Mein Englisch soll schließlich nicht einrosten. Immerhin sind die Blog-Steuerelemente übersetzt.

I downloaded the latest source from http://blogengine.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets and it worked immediately from within Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2008 (the last "final" release was from April, 2009).
I decided to use a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database instead of XML storage and everything went smoothly again. The design - based on a preset - is still very basic but anyway was easy enough to create.

Best regards,
Harald

PS: Of course BlogEngine.NET is written in C# - my favorite language!