Downsampling

I have received an unexpectedly large amount of traffic based around the iPad retina wallpaper post. Unexpected because in the past I have not experienced such a huge rush when posting like minded articles such as those for the original iPad and iPhone 4. It seems in this time demand for device specific wallpapers has exploded and I have seen countless content farming “retina wallpaper” websites and the like pop up all over the place.  I am humbled that so many people have found their way over here and have been enjoying what I have made available.

With this boost comes a few problems though, the wider the scope of readers the more likely it will be that little issues will come up. I shouldn’t say problems, they aren’t problems, lets call it helpful or constructive feedback. Being the open minded person I am I figured I could answer a few questions and concerns and wanted to do it here rather than trying to cram them into Twitter.

Most questions that have come in over the last day or two have had to do with the retina images themselves. One was addressing the slightly off center nature of one of the photos, one was asking about JPG compression, and a few were about problems with the resolution.

The most alarming of these was a problem with the resolution of the images. I have heard varying reports that the images I made available were not at the new iPads full resolution but were actually downloading at 1024×1024. This is a strange issue and is both true and completely untrue at the same time. Oddly enough, Safari puts a limit on the maximum resolution of images it allows to be displayed in an apparent effort to increase the overall speed of web browsing. This limit falls in right at 1024, the resolution of the old iPad screen.

I can’t help but imagine that this is something that will be addressed in the future with a simple update and was somehow overlooked as they moved into the higher resolution screens. This and with ultra high resolution screens such as this, the web suddenly just got a lot more expensive. At any rate, it has been a confusing experience for myself and readers as when you click to download a high resolution wallpaper thats exactly what you expect to see. The trick here is that as soon as you tap and hold to save the image internally it will save at its full, original resolution. This is based on user reports because I do not have a new iPad on hand for testing so if anyone has any further questions, comments, or concerns on the matter please, let me know in the comments below or through email. More information on this issue or at least other places I have read about the problem are here, here, and also via podcast here on 5by5.

Now, for the other questions. There was an image, Going Home, that I missed the cropping a bit and was off center. I have re-cropped the image and simple replaced the file so if anyone else noticed this, please, delete the old version and update to the newer image.

The last thing that came up was someone who was adjusting an image a bit in photoshop and/or iPhoto and said the result was increased compression artifacts showing in the image. This is not some kind of sneaky way of keeping people from messing with my images (though thats a clever idea!) it is simply a symptom of me using the desktop versions of images as my source material rather than the originals. I do regret not having them with me here while I am traveling. I will be away from home until April 23rd and until then I am most likely unable to access those files. While I always save my wallpapers at the highest possible jpg compression rates there is still room for them to loose a bit of information in the process so while they look OK for their intended purpose, further editing may result with increased attention to the limitations of the JPG format.

Thats all for now, just a quick update to answer a few frequently asked questions on the new images. See you guys again soon!

Update: Further speculation (read here, and here) has lead me to believe that mobile safari may have an issue with JPG’s that are not progressive scan versions. I will go back through and save them again with this method and see if it clears up the bug. So frustrating. I am really hoping that this will not result in more artifacts in the images. I can’t spare another afternoon cropping images for quite some time. This would also indicate that even when saving images to the library they very well may also be the small size from what I am hearing…

Straight from apples Safari developer recourses there appears to be limits due to the amount or RAM in the devices. “The maximum decoded image size for JPEG is 32 megapixels using subsampling. JPEG images can be up to 32 megapixels due to subsampling, which allows JPEG images to decode to a size that has one sixteenth the number of pixels. JPEG images larger than 2 megapixels are subsampled—that is, decoded to a reduced size. JPEG subsampling allows the user to view images from the latest digital cameras.” Interesting indeed.

If anyone is having this issue, could you let me know in the comments if you are using Wi-Fi or if you are on a 3g/4g network. Just part of my troubleshooting.

Update two: To recap whats been going on, the issue has proved maddening and I have heard different reports from different readers about success or failure in downloading certain images versus others yet all were saves in exactly the same manner. Not to mention some reporting success in using the save to disk trick while others have no luck at all. Even more discussion on the issue of image size limitations on iOS here and according to this discussion it may be a bug within ios5, well, a “feature” that backfired and caused these issues.. It is still a bit maddening to deal with and most workarounds have failed so far for me so I am taking a break from it until someone can possible offer more information on what may be a god solution. At the moment I have read from readers that they have been successful in using their mac to download the full images and then emailing them to their iPads in order to get the larger size to save to the device. Meanwhile, I will continue to poke around and read whatever information comes my way about the subject. If anything changes I will let everyone know and make alterations to the files accordingly. Thanks for your patience.

And The Winners Are…

I say it all the time but it never gets old, I really love my readers. They are such great people and have always had my back through the years and helped push me to grow as a photographer, as a writer, and as a person. This site has been such a source of happiness for me and I am grateful every time I hear from someone who writes to let me know they enjoyed something I wrote or shared. This is why I always love to do giveaways like this. I can’t do it all the time, obviously, but when I can it feels wonderful to give back.

At any rate, I have emailed the winners to let them know they have won so if you did not receive an email I am sorry that I could not share something great with you this time around. I will try to do something similar in the future. Maybe not always with fancy things like cameras and headphones but at least the occasional print giveaway.

Now that this is out of the way I would like to peak into the future and mention that I have all the intentions in the world of opening a little shop here on 50ft. Somewhere to sell prints, shirts, and other fun things I find. I can not say when this will come into existance but I am doing what I can in the time I have between my responsibilities in life to make it happen. Hopefully I can get something up and going in the first quarter of next year but don’t hold me to that, I do my best around here but have to put other responsibilities first sometimes.

So again, thank you all for your continued support! Heres to making 2012 the best year yet for fiftyfootshadows! I will be back up and running with regular posting in the new year and as usual I have some great stuff lined up to share so stick around and I will see what I can rustle up. First thing will be a new 50ft Radio mix which I hope to post this week as well as a great new guest desktop.

Gift Giving

I love giving things away to readers, not for any sort of promotional gain really, just for the sake of putting cool things into the hands of those who have supported me. I had intended to give away a couple of things on the launch of the new design but because it happened so close to the holidays I chose to wait until now. I bought a new Holga 120N (plus a roll of Kodak Ektar to get you started) and pair of my current favorite pair of headphones, the AiAiAi Tracks, with the sole intention of giving them away. They were not given to me from any company as a promotional giveaway so this is not one of those advertised giveaways you see all over the place. Just me wanting to do something nice for my readers. In addition to these two gifts I also have four 5×7 darkroom prints which I made recently that I would also like to giveaway, you can see scans of them below. (or on flickr as well)

I have thought a long while about how to go about giving this stuff away. I don’t really want to do one of those silly retweet to win campaigns because they kind of annoy me, and I don’t want to make it difficult so I think I will simply do what I have done in the past and use the comments below as a means to collect entries and draw from that list to pick the winners. I do have one curve to add to the process which I will describe below.

To enter to win one of these great items simply enter your name and email (which is kept private and will never ever be used for anything other than this drawing) into the normal comment fields below. Then, in the main comment entry field, write in either Holga or Tracks as the item you would like to have the opportunity to win. I will split these two into separate drawings and select those winners first then I will enter the remaining entries into the giveaway for one of the four prints. If you would like to only enter for a print then simply mention this in the comment field. I will let the winners of the prints choose which they want in order of which they were picked to win.

I decided to split the two because I know not all of my readers will be interested in owning a Holga and I ask that you only enter to win it if you are interested in trying a fun film camera. I would be happy to give advice on using it and even help you find a place to develop the film if you would like!

It should be ok to offer this to anyone outside of the US as well which is a slippery customs slope so if you know of any obvious regulation in your country that would make it hard for me to send the camera or the headphones then please, consider putting your name in for a print only.

I plan on closing the doors to new entries December 23rd and announcing the winner shortly thereafter. I will do my best to mail them off before the start of the new year.

While I don’t require this of you at all I would love it if you could mention to your friends or followers about fiftyfootshadows.net and let them know about this giveaway or the site in general. I thrive on your support which gives the site life and am always motivated push the site further when I read mail and comments from those who enjoy the site. As you know I devote more and more time to it as it grows and becomes more self sustaining so I can use all the help I can get, even in these little ways. Thanks so much and good luck in the drawing!

The Beginning

Here we have it, the long rumored and discussed design refresh! In the same way a musician slowly fine tunes an album of new songs for a new record I have been slowly picking away at details and preparing things to build a solid future here on fiftyfootshadows.net. The process started over a year ago when I felt a fresh new design would help push things into an exiting new space for the site. My original mockup, while good, just didn’t quite feel right. This lead me to scratch what I originally designed and start fresh with simply a pencil and some graph paper.

All at once the new design came to me like the sharp glare of sunlight after coming out of a dark room and I sketched out what would become the design that you see today. This design is actually a year old which is hard to believe for me personally because I still enjoy it as much as the day it was created nearly a year ago now. I wanted something that would help give my photographs and content a fresh, easy to digest space to live. Something bold and minimal but still functional and unique.

During the process of tweaking things over the last year pixels were nudged around and ideas were refined to the point where I felt things were just right. So now, at last, here we are with version 2 of fiftyfootshadows.

The design features easier access to wallpaper downloads and the terms of use. Below any post with a wallpaper image you will find easy to use download links and a link to the terms of use. I have only had time to go back and tweak about one years worth of older posts to fit the new format of the design but as I have time I will be migrating all older posts to the new format as well. The one drawback to the design that some readers may have to get used to is the simple fact that if you are following along with an RSS reader you will need to simply click through to the site to access these download links. I will look into alternatives to this in the future but for now this is a compromise I needed to make.

Another key feature of the new design is the simple ability to switch between two themes, day and night. I know many readers prefer a darker viewing environment while others, like myself these days, prefer the more open, uplifting spirit that a lighter design can bring which is the default theme for new visitors. Unlike most sites that use a crude background color switcher, I have taken time and effort to create theme specific styles to match both the day and the night versions of the design so either one you choose to use you can rest assured that you are still getting a finely tuned reading experience.

As you see, comments are still in place here on 50ft. I know the current trend in smaller web logs is to leave off comments and rely only on social networking or email for communication with readers I greatly prefer giving you guys a voice here on the site to either let me know how I am doing or share your opinion on an article. I realize the net is full of sarcastic egos that abuse the anonymous nature of comment systems but I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with my readers in the comments both on the positive and negative side of the fence. I have a lot of respect for all of you out there who have shown me support over the years and so I feel its important to let you have your space here as well.

With the dawn of a new design here on 50ft I plan on taking advantage of the fresh mental space and start devoting more time to writing. Over the past few months I have not only been tweaking the design slowly but I have also been stock piling articles and potential wallpaper images to share in order to help me successfully break into a new routine within posting to the site. My goal is to post a new article, review, mix, or feature once a week on Monday or Tuesday. There will be additional posts on off days when I can afford time and discover fun things to post and will also lay into place a public Q&A type category for those with questions about photography so with my answer others can benefit from the advice as well.  I also plan on posting at least one new wallpaper each week as well as something new to the site, guest wallpapers.

I have thought long and hard about the possibility of sharing others work here on the site and have come to the conclusion that it could be fun and be an encouraging way to get readers involved. I have spoken to a couple of readers already about sharing an image to help things get started off right and will be sharing them in the coming week. These images will be invite only for a while until I get settled into the idea but you can rest assured that I will continue to maintain the high standards I set for the site within these images. Guest wallpapers will most likely show up a couple of times each month so as not to dilute the overall experience here on the site and give each post space to breathe. If you do know of someone or think that you have an image that would fit in here on 50ft, feel free to send me a mail. I will do my best to reply to submissions.

This is just the beginning, I have plenty more yet to come and I will introduce new additions as they make their way into reality. These changes are a long time coming and I am overjoyed to see things start to more forward. Next up on my to do list is a photography portfolio site as well as the launch of a store here on 50ft where I will be selling prints, the wallpaper book mentioned a few months back, and other fun things. This and an FAQ page to handle often asked questions.

A million thanks to all of my fantastic readers without which inspire me day in and day out to continue pushing myself as a photographer and as a writer to places I never thought I would reach 10+ years ago when I started sharing like this online.I also must thank my dear friend Dave Jansen who was the mastermind behind the beautiful coding of my design. I will be writing more about his generosity and brilliance in the near future.

Heres to tomorrow.

Win Win

A few days ago I Started up a simple contest to give away a tiny contact sheet print. I chose a number at random based on the number of individual comments left on that post and I am happy to announce that reader m_s is the lucky winner this time around. Over the weekend I decided to sweeten the deal a bit and make a full 8×10 darkroom print of the image on the center of the little contact sheet print which you can see above. I have ben experimenting with rough edges on my prints and while I think there is still room for improvement it has been a lot of fun to mess about and try new things. No need for photoshop here, just a metal file.

This is just the beginning though as I will soon be announcing a launch date for the new site design design which will also kick off plenty of other great things to come here on the site including free prints like this one and more. Thanks for everyone who jumped in for the giveaway and rest assured you will have other chances in the future so stick around.