Foreword

Anytime an article on security is published it raises the question on whether the author should highlight weaknesses. My personal stance on this is absolutely firm: the people who want to bypass your security already know everything I’m writing below. Literally an intelligent 10-year old could find the information in under 10 minutes using google, and much of the information is posted publicly in Apple’s own help documents. This article is to help honest people understand what is needed to guard themselves against dishonest people.

OSX Password

All Mac user accounts must have a password associated with them. This password is required to make any low-level changes to the system like installing applications or changing important system preferences. If you’ve disabled “Auto-Login” in the system [System Preferences > Security] panel then the password is required to log into the computer. In addition [System Preferences > Security] can be set so that the computer automatically logs you out after X minutes of inactivity and requires a password to log back in. This is a pretty good level of security right?

Breaking the OSX Password

How long does it take to break past the OSX password? Using a good password makes it next to impossible for someone else to guess or “crack” your OSX Password. But they don’t have to. Anyone can change your OSX password by inserting an OSX install DVD and booting from the DVD. They even have a step-by-step guide to do this on Apple.com. Bottom line: if someone has physical access to your computer and more than 5 minutes then your OSX password is useless.

But I use a Firmware Password!

OSX allows you to set a “firmware password” which is required before a user can boot from a DVD. Since the procedure above requires the user to boot from the OSX DVD the idea is that the Firmware Password will prevent someone from subverting your OSX Password. Unfortunately it’s really easy to subvert the firmware password.

Breaking a Firmware Password

The Firmware Password can be reset by opening the computer and physically removing one of the sticks of ram, then booting the computer holding command-option-P-R (the shortcut to reset the PRAM). That’s it – the firmware password has been reset and you can boot from an OSX DVD to reset the OSX Password. If the bad-guy has physical access to the computer this entire process requires a OSX DVD, a screwdriver, and less than 10 minutes and your system is completely unlocked.

So what Can I Do?

So far as I can find, the only way to truly secure your system is FileVault. It may be possible for the NSA or CIA to crack a FileVault password, but as far as I can find, it’s impossible for any average bad guy. So unless you’re carrying state-secrets you’re probably more than safe using a FileVault with a good, hard to guess password. FileVault encrypts the entire contents of your home folder where the vast majority of programs store their data. Your Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Music, and Settings files are are located within your Home folder.

The Damage Possible

Nearly everyone I know stores sensitive information on their computer, even if they don’t know it. Here are some of the things a thief might do after unlocking your computer:

• Open and view all the passwords you’ve stored on the computer by selecting “Remember this password” in any application
• Read your email (if you use Mail)
• Send email in your name to your contacts (“e.g. Hey Mom, I can’t remember my ATM PIN – do you remember it??”)
• Check popular websites to see if you are auto-logged in (e.g. your gmail/hotmail/AOL email)
• Go to banking websites and use the “forgot my password” to email your secure passwords to your email address or initiate a password reset

Overall Recommendations

• Use a reasonably secure OSX password, set up a firmware password, and set up File Vault.
• Only store confidential documents in your user folder where File Vault will protect it.
• Turn your [System Preferences > Security] to disable automatic OSX login, and to require a password when coming back from a screen saver, set your screen saver to come on after only a few minutes of inactivity.
• Tier your passwords. Anything really important like bank accounts, tax information, etc., should be very secure passwords which are not directly related to your less important passwords. When creating throw-away accounts (e.g.  you have to create a username/password for a stupid giveaway) use a dedicated low-security and unrelated password like “nothing123″ so that anyone able to view such passwords cannot use them to access your important accounts.
• Do not use “auto logins” on any website or program which should be secure.
• Remember that many websites, even some financial websites, will email you your password with only a few (easy to guess/find) questions like date-of-birth. So whichever email address you use with secure accounts needs to be, itself, a high security password and should not be set to auto-login. For example a “hacker” (read: smart alec kid) gained access to one of Sarah Palin’s secure email address by using the “reset password” function which emailed the secure password to a much less secure email address.
• NEVER write your password down or type it into any document (only password entry fields). If needed write yourself clues on what the password is that are obscure/personal enough that they won’t be decipherable by anyone else. For instance if your password is “John4Galt2 you might remind yourself “Rand Also Can’t Remember” which easily jogs the memory of the originator but would be impossible to reverse engineer.
• If you ever suspect your computer or smart phone has been stolen immediately reset every password you have. If you have a smart phone which can be remotely wiped do so immediately as anyone who is stealing a phone in order to mine data off of it will know they only have a limited time to take advantage of it.
• If you have so many passwords you can’t keep track then consider creating an encrypted disk image file where you can type your passwords and other ultra-confidential information. Doing so in OSX takes only a few minutes.

Today I had a customer ask why digital backs used firewire and dSLRs use USB. It’s an explanation I give frequently but I thought I’d take this chance to blog about it to all you loyal readers. The below represents my personal unabashed view of why USB sucks and FireWire rocks (in high-end applications such as tethering high-res cameras).

USB and FW are both great specs on paper, but there are some very technical differences between them. Without getting too deep in technical jargon here are some differences:

• FireWire can provide more electrical power than USB over-the-cable
• Firewire 400 connectors are make a very tight physical connection* mini-USB as used on most dSLRs fall out very easily on their own and are therefore often accompanied by a screw-in holder of some kind, making it much harder to “unplug and go”
• Even in ideal situations the maximum sped of FW400 is higher than USB, the speed of FW800 is far higher (ignore the specs which say USB is slightly faster – this is the theoretical max speed and no USB device, not even high performance ones, come anywhere close to this speed).
• FireWire supports Daisy Chaining which is a fancy way of saying you can connect a FireWire device to a computer by connecting it to another FireWire device already connected to that computer. This has a lot of cool applications that most people don’t need or use.
• Finally the greatest difference of all may be the way the connection is managed. With USB the computer is asked to manage the transfers of data which means the CPU has to be monitoring/managing the connection anytime data will be transferred. With FireWire there is a chip on board the device which can communicate directly with the FW board so that no system resources are needed. As long as the computer has available system resources (meaning it’s not working very hard) the difference between these methods is minor. However when the computer is taxed (e.g. by heavy continuous shooting of a high-resolution camera and the processing/rendering required to show previews of those images) the difference can be huge because USB requires the CPU to “pay attention” to it to transfer new data, and if the CPU is swamped it cannot pay full attention to the USB. Whereas with Firewire the device and Firewire hub can continue to manage the transfer of new data by themselves. The practical result? Plug in a digital back like a P40+ and hold down the trigger and it will continue shooting the same speed for many dozens, or even hundreds of images in a row without changing speeds. Plug in a dSLR and hold down the trigger – you’ll have to wait until the camera has hit its buffer limit so that you’re watching the speed of transfer from the camera to computer rather than the speed of the camera to the camera-buffer. If your computer is fast enough to manage the connection to the camera and do the calculations of proxies (and anything else which is open and running) and still have headroom to manage the USB connection than the rate will not change. If however you have a slower computer or you start pushing the computer hard (checking focus at 100%, processing images, making adjustments to a batch of images, opening files in the background in photoshop etc) then the downloading of new images will crawl to a stand still making the camera feel lethargic and non-responsive.

So all of the above points make it sound like FireWire should be everywhere and USB nowhere. What’s up?

There is price to the last point. Since FireWire devices must manage themselves they must include the size/weight and most importantly cost of an onboard chip. These chips aren’t very expensive, but for many consumer electronics there are only cents worth of profit per item and the money spent on the FW chip just doesn’t make sense. Likewise adding FW ports to a computer is more expensive than USB ports and since most of the PC world is extremely price conscious many PCs did not include a FW port.

When Canon changed from the firewire port on the 1Ds II to the USB port on the 1Ds III it was a sad day for me. I understand why; Canon makes general purpose cameras used by a huge variety of users and many 1Ds III will never take a single tethered shot, and in the general market place many computers do not have a FW port. Cheaper and more readily available connectors won out over the better (but ever so slightly more expensive) technical solution.

*The older SCSI and Parallel/Printer port connectors were even better but were designed to be plugged in once rather than plugged and unplugged and were designed before hardly any “mobile” devices were available.

See more: http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

We watched this video and decided to order several to put in stock. If you’d like to reserve one or would like more information please call us at 877-217-9870.

One of Capture One’s most powerful features is the styles menu. However, it often gets overlooked because the variety and usefulness of the included styles is somewhat limited, and the method of creating your own style is easy, but not very intuitive or discoverable.

We hate to see our users missing out on powerful features we think they would benefit from, so we are working on a set of styles under our own Capture Integration brand. They will be free and offered without limitations / watermarking etc, though you do need to enter your email address to receive the download link.

Consider this our first pass at an ongoing process. We would love feedback (send to doug@captureintegration.com) about these styles and what sorts of styles you would find useful in a future version of our styles package.

Mac Install Instructions

1. Ensure you have Capture One 5.1 or 5.1.1 installed.
2. Close any programs that are open (other than this browser!). Most especially close Capture One.
3. Fill out the simple form at the end of this blog entry to receive the link to download the ZIP file containing the styles.
4. Navigate to the following location [User Folder* > Library > Application Support > Capture One > Styles]
5. Place the individual styles from the Capture Integration Zip file into the Styles folder so that the Styles folder contains 27 style files.

*your user folder is the one with the house icon. Usually it is your name or the name of your company. If you don’t know what your user folder is the easiest way to find it is to click on the desktop and then go to the pull down menu [Go > Home]

Usage

Naming and Examples

There are four types of styles in this release.

• FX - meaning Effects. These are strong, sometimes radical, changes to the image meant to create a very distinct look. With the wrong image these will be over-the-top and corny looking. With the right image they will be dramatic and emotion evoking.
• Color - meaning different color responses. Similar in concept to the differences between various color films
• BW - meaning different black and white responses. Similar in concept to the differences between various black and white films
• Toolkit - meaning specific changes to a color for a specific purpose. If that color is not in your image there may be no visible change to the image.

They are named with relative ambiguity to avoid consigning them to a specific usage. After all any given style may look great for a type of image (landscape, portrait, product) and look comical/corny/ugly for another. So play around with a couple types of images before you make too many judgements.

Photo above by Doug Peterson, Model is Rebecca Gillispi

Reminder: We Sell Capture One

As a reminder, as the leading Phase One Dealer in the US we sell Capture One across the globe via the internet. If you don’t own Capture One or have not upgraded to Capture One Pro 5 please visit our How to Buy C1 from Capture Integration blog entry – which includes a 10% discount!

Receive Download Link

Click below to download

Custom function quick list.

For further information on custom functions (or larger type) download the user manual above and look through pages 88 through 92.

One major application of this image enhancement tool is for portraits. The best way to see the effect is, of course, by applying it to your own work. However, below is a basic primer that demonstrates what positive and negative clarity does for a portrait, along with how you might adjust an image after a large clarity change. You can view the small summary below or Download this as a layered Photoshop Document for a closer examination.

Apple released Aperture 3 today. Under the Raw File Support List is the Canon 1Ds IV.

Granted this doesn’t really say anything about release dates, specifications, or usability. But it’s interesting to see a company obsessed with secrecy about unreleased products slip up on a partner’s unreleased product.

Also supported is most of the Leaf line of digital backs. With Leaf raw files now supported in Capture One, Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop (ACR), Raw Developer, Silky Pix, as well as Leaf Capture the openness of Leaf’s platform under Phase One’s ownership is a clear benefit to it’s users.

On the eve of GetDPI’s upcoming workshop in Salton Sea I thought I’d revisit the images that I took on GetDPI’s last workshop in Oregon.

One of the nicest parts of working with high resolution systems like the backs/bodies/lenses in the Phase One ecosystem is that it is so versatile if your intended output is panoramic. The shots below were taken with a range of bodies and techniques to accomplish a 2:1 or 3:1 aspect ratio with enough resolution to print many feet wide.

Panoramic images, by their nature, need a larger width when printed in order to maintain the visual impact of the image. While a 20″ x 24″ image may feel immersive a 8″x24″ does not (my opinion only of course). To get a 4 foot wide print of a panoramic evens the game again, providing an immersive and engaging viewing experience, but this requires a lot of resolution.

For a dSLR a single 22 megapixel frame may end up being 10-12 megapixels by the time you make a substantial crop. With the large starting resolution of a P45+, P40+, or P65+ however large crops still leave loads of pixels to print. Moreover on a technical camera you can stitch a higher resolution panoramic out of one continuous image circle (a much nicer process than panning-and-stitching as used with a dSLR).

I hope you enjoy these images. They are nothing too special, and the others on the GetDPI trip captured far finer imagery. But I hope they do give you a bit of inspiration to go out and capture the world in a panoramic format if it’s been a while since you’ve done so. There is something magic about the 3:1 aspect ratio.

A huge thank you to Dave Gallagher the owner of this highly specialized motley company to whom everything I do on the job is owed. These images were captured with equipment he bought, maintains, and pays for me learn. It’s a great job and I am lucky to have it.

Click images below for technical details and a larger view.

Bonus picture. The below Leaf image was shot by our owner Dave Gallagher. This was right when Phase One bought leaf. Coincidence? Probably.

Captured with a Canon 5D Mark II as still raw images. Shot tethered into Capture One Pro 5.0.1 using a custom Apple Script. Processed in Capture One, assembled in Quicktime.

Showing the view the balcony of our new location in Miami.

Music by ThomasDaneWagener.com

Well, I wrote an article, mostly for fun, over at getdpi.com (read the article) about why you would need two.

Big thanks to Charles Brown, one of our very talented customers, and a forum member of getdpi.com for the photo of the setup below.