Metadataring and photo processing

This morning I vacuumed my bedroom, then finished processing the photos of Priory Church in Leominster.

When I'd finished processing the photos, I started to upload the Leominster photos to my photo website. While I was waiting for the photos to upload I read a bit of John Shaw's Closeups in Nature.

What I've read so far of Closeups in Nature, it's very film photography orientated. I wondered if John Shaw was still photographing today, and if he was, if was using digital cameras, and if he had written any updated versions of his books more tailored towards digital photography.

Using Google, I found that John Shaw is still photographing today, and has his own website - www.johnshawphoto.com. Looking on his website, I saw that he is using digital now - two Nikon D3 bodies. But looking at the books page on his website, it seems the only books he has available are his old ones written about photography shooting with film. He has two ebooks available, but these are both about post processing rather than the actual photography.

After lunch I carried on uploading Leominster photos to my photo website.

While uploading the photos, I noticed that on one of them, it was inserting a value of 0 for the rating into the database (I've been checking this on every upload I make since I discovered a number of images in the database with a rating of 0 a week or so ago). Luckily I print out lots of debug info on my upload page, so it's relatively easy to check what rating is being inserted into the database.

Looking at the debug info on the page for the upload, I could see that exiftool had extracted the rating as 0. I started up my Ubuntu Virtual Machine, then when it was loaded, logged into the Web Server via SSH. When into the webserver, I ran exiftool on the image again to check what it extracted the rating as, and it now extracted the rating with the correct value. So it seems that the problem is with exiftool, and it is just random and not dependant on the image.

I checked the version of exiftool I was using, and it was something like 7.77 pre release, so I downloaded the latest version (8.something) and will keep checking the rating to see if the problem still exists. Also, while getting the latest version of exiftool, I noticed in the changelog that exiftool now could extract the magnification for the MP-E65 lens on the 40d and 5D Mk II. I didn't have time to check if it can extract this info with the 450D (which is what I have), but that's quite useful info to have.

Normally I just have to guess (try to remember) the magnification, and being able to get the exact magnification from the exif would allow you to work out the exact size of insects etc. that you have photographed with the lens.

When I was done uploading the Leominster photos to my photo website, I started to add metadata to my photos of Callow Hill and Flounders' Folly, which we visited on the evening of the 5th day of our Shropshire trip.

After dinner I watched a couple of episodes of Power Rangers with L, then finished adding metadata to the Callow Hill / Flounders' Folly photos.

When I'd finished doing that, I did a backup and went on Civ IV in Mauser's room for a bit, while Mauser watched a bit of Andrei Rublev.

The weather started off overcast, then later in the morning it started snowing. It snowed most of the day, sometimes there would be a bit of a flurry, but most of the time it was quite light.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Maple & Pecan Crunch Oat Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Bowl of vegetable flavour fake Cup a Soup; Slice of Toast; ½ Bavarian Smoked Ham with Dijon Mustard Sandwich; Banana; Grapes; Slice of Home-made Bakewell Tart; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Baked Beans; Bacon; Mushrooms; Ground Black Pepper; Eggy Bread with Bovril. Pudding was Raspberry Crumble with Custard. Coffee; Piece of Fairtrade Fudge.