A while ago my daughter’s Canon A60 would not turn on: the dreaded E18 error struck and the barrel was not extending. So with nothing to lose, I took it apart, carefully labelled each of the 33 tiny screws I removed, and killed it. I wasn’t trying to kill it, but I managed to break one of the thin, flat cables in trying to get to the mechanical problem of the jamming barrel.

The root cause, I figured out, was a lack of lubrication between two plastic parts. As the barrel retracted the parts slid over each other and operated a spring-loaded mechanism that kept the shutters apart that cover the lens. Too much friction and the motor couldn’t make it work before the CPU recognized there was a problem and stopped trying. So far so good with all the other Canon equipment in the house.

The photo above isn’t from that particular incident. That’s Sam taking apart a Canon 17-85 that stopped working. I also found some interesting photos of the IS unit of a 70-200 that Ken Phillips took apart to fix.

Flickr has a whole pile of people taking cameras of all sorts apart: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Tags: Photography, Lenses, Cameras, Canon, Bugs

I’m spending more and more time with my MacBook and less and less with my iMac these days. Since RapidWeaver lives on my iMac, that means less blogging (it’s been almost a month!). I have a lot of data external to RapidWeaver in my blog and that makes it tricky to move to the laptop without breaking things.

Another reason for the lack of blogging is that I have been using Twitter more and more, as, it seems, many of the people who have blogs that I follow. Lost your favorite blogger? Look on Twitter. They are all there. Some, like Wil Shipley, take it to extremes. And do check out the many fake people, such as Fake Sarah Palin.

And suddenly my MacBook has developed a crack:

It started on the right and went leftwards until the sliver of plastic stuck up in the air and I had to remove it. A couple of calls to Apple, and they agree that it is covered by warranty, so I’ll get that fixed soon.

Tags: MacBook, Twitter, Apple, Blogging, iMac, Bugs

An odd change was included in Aperture 2.1.1. No longer does the Return key take you into Compare mode. Now it's Option O (that's letter O).

The Edit menu still says that it's Return. And once you're in Compare mode, Return does make the currently selected comparison the compared image. So I think this is a bug.

You can get the old behavior back by changing the mapping of the keys with Aperture > Commands > Customize...

Tags: Aperture, Bugs, Updates

Home For Some: 1/1000s f/4.5 ISO200 200mm, -0.3ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200L IS f2.8

Apple has a long and comprehensive guide for reporting bugs. It strikes me that this information should be built in to the bug reporter page. If I have a Mail bug and I state that in the drop-down menu, then the Mail-specific information should appear so I know what to provide. Similarly the template format should appear as just that: a template.

But I know exactly what to do: file a bug. See rdar://problem/5815223. (That link won't work for anyone outside Apple).

Tags: Apple, Cocoa, Bugs

Apple has updated Aperture to 2.0.1. You can get the download via the 2.0.1 update page. It includes lots of fixes:

• Upgrading libraries from earlier versions of Aperture
• Publishing .Mac Web Gallery albums
• Preview generation and deletion
• Creating and ordering books
• AppleScript support
• Keyboard shortcut customization
• Appearance of metadata overlays in the Browser, Filmstrip, and on light tables
• Watermarking of emailed photos
• Highlight Hot and Cold Areas

It also fixes a number of other minor issues, some involving the following areas:

• Loupe
• Smart Albums
• All Projects View
• Straighten Tool
• Filmstrip
• Drag and drop import
• Thumbnail generation
• Import window
• Export plug-in reliability

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Bugs

For anyone who is trying to make an export plug-in for Aperture: make sure you keep a copy of your Tiger development environment backed up somewhere. I installed Leopard and the dev tools and found that my Random Wok plug-in would not compile.

It failed at this line:

#import <PluginManager/PROAPIAccessing.h>

in ApertureExportPlugIn.h. The PROAPIAccessing.h file is missing because it and PROPlugInBundleRegistration.h are not included in either Leopard or the ApertureSDK 1.5.5.

To fix it , I copied across the Headers folder that contains those two from a Tiger back up. The full path is /Library/Frameworks/PluginManager.framework/Versions/B/Headers. There is already a soft link for Headers that is correct. It should look like this:

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Bugs, Cocoa, Leopard, Random Wok

If you use one of the popular Canon DSLRs, there's a good chance that there is no tethering for you! There is a tally of which cameras work with the tethering feature and which ones don't at 20SEVEN. Mine, a Canon 30D, does not. It stays busy. It is still possible to use Automator and a hot folder with the Canon software, so all is not lost. Nikon is much better supported than Canon.

The tethering feature is accessed via the File > Tether... menu. From there you can define import settings and start the session.

Tags: Aperture, Tethering, DSLR, Bugs, Automation, Canon, 30D, Nikon

Aperture started hanging on me today. I launched Aperture and it just hung at the splash screen. Renaming preferences and the Application Support folders did nothing. In the console I get this message:

2/18/08 1:54:59 PM Aperture[501] *** NSRunLoop ignoring exception 'Exception in Aperture: *** -[NSURL initFileURLWithPath:]: nil string parameter
Backtrace:
0x0006ffdc (in Aperture)
0x93c77eb7: +[NSException exceptionWithName:reason:userInfo:] (in CoreFoundation)
0x93c78023: +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] (in CoreFoundation)
0x93c7806a: +[NSException raise:format:] (in CoreFoundation)
0x92ef5039: -[NSURL initFileURLWithPath:] (in Foundation)
0x92ef4d28: +[NSURL fileURLWithPath:] (in Foundation)
0x002cfc00 (in Aperture)
0x002cfd3a (in Aperture)
0x002cdc64 (in Aperture)
0x00351982 (in Aperture)
0x00359b79 (in Aperture)
0x92ee602d: __NSFireDelayedPerform (in Foundation)
0x93bfeb5e: CFRunLoopRunSpecific (in CoreFoundation)
0x93bfed18: CFRunLoopRunInMode (in CoreFoundation)
0x92a7f6a0: RunCurrentEventLoopInMode (in HIToolbox)
0x92a7f3f2: ReceiveNextEventCommon (in HIToolbox)
0x92a7f32d: BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode (in HIToolbox)
0x963227d9: _DPSNextEvent (in AppKit)
0x9632208e: -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] (in AppKit)
0x0035e62a (in Aperture)
0x9631b0c5: -[NSApplication run] (in AppKit)
0x00954e5a (in ProKit)
0x00003652 (in Aperture)
' that raised during posting of delayed perform with target 0x13b7230 and selector '_delayedFinishLaunching'

And a sample of the process just gives me a bunch of threads all waiting.

I did get Aperture back. First I reinstalled Aperture and renamed my Aperture Library file. Then I launched Aperture with the option key held down and selected to make a new library. That brought Aperture up. Then I could quit and relaunch and open other libraries with option launch. Finally I renamed my library back to Aperture Library. Somewhere in there I did remove the option to share previews with iLife and iWork, but I don't know if that had any effect.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs

A reader pointed out to me that the workflow described in Use Albums and Stacks To Manage Adjusted Images no longer works. Aperture 2.0 has changed the behavior of album picks so that creating a new album from non-pick images no longer automatically makes those images the album picks in the new album. Send feedback to Apple if you want the old behavior back.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs, Stacks, Album Picks, Workflow

Juza has a very practical guide to macro and nature photography at Juza Nature Photography.

Tags: Photography, Macro, Bugs, DSLR

This thread on Apple's Aperture discussion forum includes a fix for a bug that prevents Automator actions from working correctly under Leopard. It manifests itself with the error:

-NSNull length: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0xa063f020

Berend posts this explanation and fix:

What has happened is that the Aperture Automator actions have been removed from /System/Library/Automator on installing Leopard (probably with Archive and Install).

I've been having this same issue and couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong.
The hint provided by the previous poster put me on the right track.

The Aperture Automator actions are located in the the Aperture application.

Steps to take for repairing the situation:

1. Open a Finder window and navigate to /System/Library/Automator
2. Open a second Finder window and navigate to /Applications/Aperture
3. Execute a Show package Contents of Aperture (you should get a third Finder window).
4. Now navigate to Contents/Library/Automator
5. Select everything (.definition and .action) in that folder
6. Copy with option drag to the folder in the window created in step 1.
You will be asked for the administrator password.
7. Close superfluous windows.
8. Start Automator and enjoy.

In short: copy the contents of /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/Library/Automator to
/System/Library/Automator

I've done this and no longer get the NS Null error messages. I can now access the actions and will see if they actually work some time in the next few days.

Cause: Apple Leopard Installer.
Remedy: Apple should have warned beforehand that something like this would happen and should have provided the solution.

Hopefully the expected updated to Mac OS X and Aperture will fix this.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs, Leopard, Automation

I have a website where I post my photos and with every photo a "saying". When I manage my photos in Aperture I add the "Saying title" in the metadate "Byline Title" field and the saying in the metadata "Byline" field. So far so good. Now I want to make a book but when I add a "Metadata Box" I´m not able to pick the Byline Title or Byline in the "Set Metadata Format" option. Can this easily be fixed or what?

In a word, no. The choices given are the only ones available. Your only practical option at this point is to move or copy the metadata to one of the available choices before you import into Aperture. There are no capabilities inside Aperture for moving or copying metadata between fields automatically.

When laying out a book, metadata boxes can be added and linked to images. Having selected the Edit Layout mode and clicked on an image, the Add Metadata button (center) creates the box:

The metadata box is linked to the selected image and includes the data shown by the tag:

There is a drop-down menu that allows the contents to be changed:

Only this small selection of possible metadata can be displayed. The only way to get more data is to move it into the available fields.

But I have never been able to get anything to appear for the Title, Author, or Copyright selections. It's as though Apple has simply missed something out here.

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Metadata, Books, Bugs

I tried to move some large files from one place on my hard drive to another today and found what looks to me like a bug in the 10.4.8 Finder. A move like that should be quick: all it does is move pointers around in the filing system. None of the file data is copied.

But I got a dialog that showed it was copying. So I cancelled that, and tried again, this time making sure that I really didn't hold Option down to turn a move into a copy. But even without Option I got the green + showing that a copy was going to take place. Huh?

Here is the bug: if you try to move a bunch of files and at least one of them is locked, the whole list of files is copied to the new destination, not just the locked ones that cannot be deleted after the copy. I find it hard to believe that this is the intended behavior.

Tags: Mac OS X, Bugs, Interesting Stuff

I have been bitten by a bug in Aperture 1.1.2. It sometimes exports images with parts missing. I've had halves and quarters missed out so far, just a few in hundreds of images. I suspect that Aperture renders using multiple threads or multiple parts of the GPU and somehow fails to reconstitute the image at the end. The worst part about this bug is that the file icon is complete, so unless you actually open up the image file an look at it you don't realize that the gaps are there. I spotted it because my thumbnail pages in the galleries were affected.

I'm running under 10.4.7 on an iMac G5. It has only done this since I started adjusting images.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs