Archive forSpecial Deals

Terrell Lloyd and Photo Editing Part II

The May meeting for the Camera Owners of the Bay Area (COBA) user group will be held on Wednesday, May 9, 2007, in Cordura Hall 100 at Stanford University from 7:30-10:00 pm.

Drobo Storage Robot Promotion Extended To May 4

The Drobo storage robot promotion has been extended to May 4 for COBA members. Purchase a Drobo at $200 off retail price by using the special discount code “COBA” during checkout. For more details, visit the Drobo web site at:

http://www.drobo.com/

Sports Photography – Terrell Lloyd

Terrell Lloyd is the Staff Photographer for 49ers and a Canon Explorer of Light. He will take us through a tour of his career and run us through a typical Sunday NFL afternoon. Covering equipment, techniques, and photography philosophy, this presentation is not to be missed!

Since 1992, Terrell Lloyd has provided professional photography services to individuals and organizations throughout the United States. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, near the high-tech capital of the world, Silicon Valley, Terrell Lloyd is most known for his special combination of artistic vision and cutting-edge technology.

Terrell Lloyd got his start by shooting weddings and portraits, and was routinely engaged for corporate events by some of the largest companies in the Silicon Valley. His high profile corporate clients included companies such as Yahoo, Merrill Lynch, Ritz Carlton Hotel, Hewlett Packard, Nortel Networks, Sony, Sun Microsystems, 3Com, Intuit, Levi Straus, BMW, and many others.

Terrell Lloyd is now being highly noted for his experience shooting sporting events. He has always been an avid football fan. In 1994 Terrell was granted the opportunity to shoot on the sidelines at a 49er game and his passion for sports photography exploded. According to one of his clients, Terrell’s sports photos really capture the essence of the game. According to Terrell, When it is a sport you love, the essence of the game is not difficult to capture.

http://www.terrelllloyd.com/

Photo Selection Part 2 – Norbert von der Groeben

Last month, we discussed the initial culling and selection process from a photoshoot. This month, we will look at answering several questions, including:

  1. How do I go from 500 photos to the dozen I’ll post on my web site?
  2. What makes this photo better from that photo?
  3. How can I decide the one photo that best represents the event?

The Chief Photographer for the Palo Alto Weekly, Norbert von der Groeben, will lead the discussion. Norbert joined the staff of the Palo Alto Weekly as chief photographer in July 2003. Prior to working at the Weekly, Norbert spent 17 years as a staff photographer at a daily newspaper, the Contra Costa Times.

In the last two decades, Norbert’s photos have been published by the Palo Alto Weekly and the Contra Costa Times. His pictures also have appeared in such magazines as People, Business Week and Vanity Fair. Norbert has published a children’s book, “Fire Station Number 4.” Author Mary T. Fortney wrote the text and Norbert provided the photos for the book.

Norbert feels the best part of being a photojournalist is the access a camera grants him. People let you into their lives and trust you to be honest with your work. It’s not only a great honor but also a privilege to be trusted like that.

http://www.norbertphoto.com/

Monthly Assignment: COLD

Each month, COBA will feature an optional monthly assignment and contest. Members are highly encouraged to participate as the point of the monthly assignment is to motivate you to take photos, try new techniques, and learn.

COLD is the topic for this month’s assignment. It’s getting warmer in the Bay Area. Say goodbye to Old Man Winter with one final blast of cold!

Only new photographs taken from the previous meeting date to the next meeting date will be accepted. Please print a print of your photo!

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ReadyNAS Deal Update

The ReadyNAS 600 deal from COBA and Infrant is quickly coming to an end on June 30th.

We have already qualified for the deal, so if you were on the fence, now is the time to jump in!

  • $100 off driveless configuration (retail price $695)
  • $200 off 4x250GB = 1TB (retail price $1395)
  • $1895 – 4x400GB = 1.6TB

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ReadyNAS Deal Details

As we mentioned in last month’s presentation, we have a great deal for COBA members. We have secured special pricing for the Infrant ReadyNAS 600 — the world’s smallest RAID 5 Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliance — in the following configurations:

  • $200 off the 1TB ReadyNAS with 4x250GB drives. You can specify WD, Hitachi, or Seagate brand drives
  • $100 off the ReadyNAS without any drives. You supply your own SATA drives for the box
  • $1895 for 1.6 TB ReadyNAS with 4x400GB drives.

If you are looking for a storage solution for your gigabytes of photos, videos, or files, you may want to consider the ReadyNAS. There’s a new review of the system on ExtremeTech. Check it out!

The 1TB drive configuration normally retails for $1395 and the driveless ReadyNAS 600 is $695 (if you can find it). We need at least 10 people to sign up to take advantage of this promotional pricing. If you are looking for a storage solution for your gigabytes of photos, videos, or files, look no further!

Infrant Advantages

The ReadyNAS has been compared to the $999 BuffaloTech Terastation on sale at local Fry’s. Here are some points of differentiation between the two products.

Performance – By incorporating a 4 Channel SATA Controller and a Hardware RAID accelerator directly on the CPU, the ReadyNAS is up to 59% faster on writes and 102% faster on Reads. In comparison, the Terastation relies on IDE drives and Software RAID.

Serviceability – Not only do the Serial ATA drives offer better performance, but the availability of such drives in the next 5 years should facilitate replacement. IDE is an older technology, and many computer manufacturers have already started to migrate away from them. The ReadyNAS Chassis was designed to ease HDD installation and replacement; the Terastation was not (requires removal of 46 screws to replace one drive). Also, by storing the OS Image on compact flash, we enable replacement of the entire drive array at once. The Terastation OS resides on the HDD and does not allow all four drives to be replaced at once.

Interoperability – ReadyNAS offers NFS support for Linux and UNIX. HTTP support is also included allowing for easy and safe file sharing over the Internet as well as allowing you to easily set up an Intranet site out of a share.

Data Integrity – Infrant’s engineers come from an Enterprise NAS background and emphasize data integrity in all situations. User selectable options such as disabiling the HDD write cache, employing a FULL Data Journaling file system, and requiring hardware RAID, are all designed to eliminate potential RAID stripe issues and keep your data safe.

More information can be found here:

Signing Up

If you are interested in participating, please send me an email or come to the next meeting. We’ll take your name and let you know when we have gotten enough people to qualify for the deal. Ten people need to sign up, and we can mix and match configurations (i.e. 2 1TB and 8 barebones configuration or 5 1TB and 5 barebones) to qualify. The promotion ends on June 30.

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