The Whole Gory Story With a _ _ _ _ _ Ending

Wanted to Buy

If you have a Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM with Extender 1.4x lens in excellent or better condition sitting on a shelf gathering dust and would like to unload it for a fair price, please contact me via e-mail. I have a reliable buyer.

What’s Up?

Well, after being in data recovery mode for more than a week, and in FedEx hell since last Friday, the second package finally arrived yesterday. You can read the whole (and somewhat continuing) story below.

I was glad to learn that Ellen Mack’s 7D Mark II sold instantly.

Today is Tuesday 8 February 2022. The forecast for this morning does not matter because I am far too busy (as below) to even think about heading down to the lake. This blog post took a week and a half to live out and several hours to write. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day. This blog post took about an hour to prepare and makes 87 days in a row with a new one.

Selling Your Used Photo Gear Through BIRDS AS ART

Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission on items priced at $1,000 or more. With items less than $1000, there is a $50 flat-fee. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charged a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. They went out of business. And e-Bay fees are now up to 13%. If you are interested, please click here, read everything carefully, and do what it says. To avoid any misunderstandings, please read the whole thing very carefully. If you agree to the terms, please state so clearly via e-mail and include the template or templates, one for each item you wish to sell. Then we can work together to get your stuff priced and listed.

Stuff that is priced fairly — I offer pricing advice only to those who agree to the terms — usually sells in no time flat. Over the past years, we have sold many hundreds of items. Do know that prices for used gear only go in one direction. Down. You can always see the current listings by clicking here or on the Used Photo Gear tab on the orange-yellow menu bar near the top of each blog post page.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

IPT veteran Sandra Calderbank is offering a Canon EOS 7D Mark II in like-new condition with only 4250 shutter actuations for a very low $599.00. The sale includes one battery and the charger, the strap, the original product box and everything that came in it, a Really Right Stuff Modular Sliding L-Plate (RTS B702-L Set — about a $150.00 value), and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower-48 US addresses only. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Please contact Sandra via e-mail or by phone at 1-828-412-1047 Eastern time zone.

Both Patrick Sparkman and I used and loved the 7D Mark II until about two years ago when we both committed to using full-frame Canon bodies. We both made some truly great images with it. Two of my three 2016 Nature’s Best honored entries were created with the 7D II, one still, and one video. One thing is for sure: the 7D Mark II is one of the greatest-ever values in a digital camera body. artie

Canon 70-200mm IS L II Lens

BIRDS AS ART Record Low Price

IPT veteran Sandra Calderbank is offering a Canon 70-200 IS L II lens in like-new condition for a BAA record low $746.00. The sale includes the original product box and everything that came in it, a Really Right Stuff Quick Release plate (about a $75 value), and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower-48 US addresses only. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Please contact Sandra via e-mail or by phone at 1-828-412-1047 Eastern time zone.

The versatile 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses have long been big favorites of many nature photographers. They are great for landscapes especially with fall color peaking in many areas. I have used this lens with Canon and Nikon and SONY. I used my Canon version to photograph granddaughter Maya’s dance recitals and to create bird-scapes and pre-dawn blast-off blurs at Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico. They are fast and sharp and have 1000 uses. The 70-200 f/2.8 lenses are a specialty lens for bird photographers. Like the bad little child, when they are good, they are really, really good! I’ve used mine mostly for flight photography at point blank range where their performance is unmatched, especially in low light. I’ve killed with these lenses on the gannet boat in the UK, in Homer for eagles, for pre-dawn and blizzard blast-offs at Bosque, and at Merritt Island on feeding sprees right next to the road. Lenses in this class are easily hand holdable by just about everyone. artie

ps: To see what the 70-200 zoom lenses can do, see the blog post here.

Canon 100-400mm IS L II Lens

BIRDS AS ART Record Low Price
Currently Back-ordered at B&H

IPT veteran Sandra Calderbank is offering a Canon 100-400L IS II lens in like new condition for a BAA record-low $1296.00. The sale includes the original product box and everything that came in it, a Really Right Stuff Quick Release plate (about a $75 value), and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower-48 US addresses only.

Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Please contact Sandra via e-mail or by phone at 1-828-412-1047 Eastern time zone.

This incredibly versatile zoom lens — with its amazing .98 meter close focus — was my favorite Canon telephoto zoom lens ever. By far. It is easy to hand hold, great for tight portraits, for birds in flight, for quasi-macro stuff, and lots more. For flight, it is fabulous with an R5! The lens sells new for $2399.00 so you can save a very nice $1103.00 by grabbing Sandy’s copy right now. artie

The Whole Gory Story With a _ _ _ _ _ Ending

The evening before I left San Diego in mid-January, I ran a Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) back-up. Though that was my only backup, I felt safe and secure (as I had been feeling for several years). That turned out to be a big mistake in thinking.

Here is how things developed beginning last Saturday, January 29th. I was working on my MacBook Pro consolidating folders in Photo Mechanic. Things were going a bit slow, so I decided to reboot, something I rarely do. I try to avoid rebooting (and updating), always figuring, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Anyhoo, when the machine rebooted, my Digital Photographs folder, my Downloaded Images sub-folder, and many, many dozens of additional sub-folders had disappeared, seemingly into thin air. I rebooted again hoping that the images would come back, but they did not. Next, I checked Finder and got the really bad news: the folders were gone. The strangest thing is that Storage was showing 2.11TB used, 1.89TB free. That seemed to indicate that the photos were still on the drive. Somewhere.

Next I spent two hours on the phone with Apple. I got connected to a senior advisor and he could not find the images either. During that phone call, I got sort of frantic and plugged in my very recent and only Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) back-up. That turned out to be the kiss of death because CCC was programmed to “run when attached.” So it quickly copied the seemingly wrecked drive (with the 1.7 TB of “missing” photos) and wrote over my backup. Nice. It took me a while to realize the impact of what I had done. And as I got more and more frantic, I force ejected the backup drive several times. I would learn later that I wrecked all the files on that 4-TB Solid State Drive. This is what I got from Apple: We are never ever responsible for lost data. Period. It is your responsibility to create current multiple backups.

Apple recommended two data recovery services. For no particular reason, I called DriveSavers Data Recovery. After speaking to two nice and seemingly competent folks, I received a pre-paid Fed-Ex overnight label, prepared the package (with both the laptop and the backup drive), and headed into town to tender the package at the Lake Wales Fed Ex depot only to find out that it is closed on Saturday. The package was picked up on Monday and delivered to Novato, CA the next day. I called them at 5pm on Tuesday and learned that there was a chance for data recovery. They were pretty sure they would be able to save the approximately 136,478 or so images, but that there was a chance that I would get a backup drive with only images arranged by date (rather than in the original folders …) That would be OK, but would have been a nightmare that required several months of work to rearrange them as well as I could. When I spoke to them again on Wednesday, I learned that it seemed that the folders (and images) disappeared because of a “logic board error.” I gave them approval for expedited service.

Realizing that Apple would never have my laptop “fixed” any time soon, and certainly not before I leave for Homer on 15 February, I decided to order the new computer that I had been looking at for months.

With 11 minutes to spare so that I could get overnight Fed Ex shipping to arrive on Friday, I ordered a totally souped up 16.2″ MacBook Pro with M1 Max Chip (Late 2021, Space Gray): Apple M1 Max 10-Core Chip (Processor), 64GB Unified RAM (Memory), 8TB SSD (Storage), and the 32-Core GPU (Graphics configuration).

(Note: “souped up” is correct. From Rob Bignell’s website here:

Souped up is the correct spelling (and gets more search engine hits than suped up, at that). The term souped up predates the invention of superchargers (for cars) and initially referred to any horse that had been injected with something to increase its speed. In fact, any concoction that packed a lot of power – including nitroglycerine – was called a “soup.”

Anyhoo, that turned out to be a nightmare on its own. With lots of bad weather in the northeast, I did not get the computer on Friday. But I did get an e-mail from B&H stating that the parcel was now slated for “Saturday delivery.” Great. I checked the tracking number all day on Saturday and it kept saying, “Out for Delivery.” Fantastic. If both packages arrived as they were supposed to, on Saturday, I would at least have Sunday to start setting up the new laptop. I sat by the door all day, even skipping my swim. That parcel did not arrive on Saturday.

Back to the Data Recovery

I spoke to DriveSavers on Thursday and got what turned out to be great news. They were able to recover all of my images “In Structure.” That meant that all of my file folders and image names were recovered exactly as I had last seen them. Intact. Whew. And all of that for only $4490.00! In any case, I was thrilled but was still anxious to actually see the images on a hard drive, and then to see them in Photo Mechanic on the new machine.

I hope that you did not think at this point that it would be smooth sailing from here. I paid extra for Priority FedEx “Hold at FedEx Ship Center for pickup” (on Friday morning). Tracking showed that this package too was seriously delayed; but it showed, “will arrive today.” So at 5pm I confidently drove to town to pick up the package only to learn that it was still in Greensboro, NC.

So I called DriveSavers and had them call FedEx to do a trace (re-routing) of the package and make it for Saturday Delivery to my home. They did. The tracking for that package showed “Delayed until Monday 7 February.” At 6:30pm on Saturday, a very nice lady FedEx driver rang my doorbell and handed me a large parcel that I assumed was the new computer. Imagine my surprise when I opened the package and found my old laptop with the recovery disk. The parcel that was “delayed until Monday” arrived on Saturday, but the package that was “on the truck for Saturday delivery” did not arrive that day …

DriveSavers had told me in no uncertain terms that I should not plug the drive with the data recovery on it into the (possibly corrupt) old MacBook Pro. So I would not be able to plug in the drive to see if the photos were really there until I got the new machine set up.

The FedEx Nightmare Continues

The lady at the FedEx Ship Center had told me on Friday afternoon that if the parcels from DriveSavers did not show up on Saturday “I could come back to the FedEx place at 8:55am and grab it off the truck.” Well, they could, not me. So I sent Jim with a note and my driver’s license to finally grab the new laptop. He called me at 9:08am and told me that the truck had left and that we would get the delivery that morning “before noon.” Then I saw an e-mail notice from FedEx stating that delivery had been attempted at 7:36am that morning and that we could have it delivered on Wednesday or drive to town again that afternoon to get it. There was no call tag on my front door, and, the e-mail also said “Will be delivered between 9am and noon. Whoever heard of Fed-Ex coming at 7:36am. I had been in the back office and did not hear the doorbell, and Jim had been in the shower.

So I called FedEx and got to talk to a human (a near-impossibility, BTW), got to speak to the Case Manager, and told him that he needed to call the Ship Center and tell them to call the driver and tell him to deliver the package. I waited while he made that contact — sorry Mr. Morris, they hung up on me six times. Finally, he came back on the line and said, It will be delivered before noon.” Jim called me while I was at the eye doctor (“Your eyes look like the eyes of a 40-year old non-diabetic” thank you very much) and told me that the new computer had been delivered at 11:30am. Hooray.

When I finally got home at about 1:30pm, I plugged in the new machine and began to set it up. I always have problem with technology, often feeling that I am somehow electronically jinxed. I got to about the fifth set-up screen where it said, “Sign In with Apple ID.” I typed in my Apple ID, turned to the Keychain on the old machine that was running right beside it, and then carefully typed in my password. Your password is incorrect. So I typed it again and again and again and again. After about 36 tries, I called Apple Care for help. After thirty minutes he was baffled — “I’ve never seen anything like this.” So we gave up and decided to update the operating system. With our super-slow internet, that took several hours. At one point it looked as if the download had failed, stuck at “10 minutes remaining.” Then a screen popped up that said “Restart.” The took 15 minutes. Amazingly, when the machine restarted, it showed that macOS Monterey V12.2 had been successfully installed.

Overnight, using the new machine, as suggested by DriveSavers, I made a back up copy of the recovery drive. Today I will try to straighten out the Apple ID problem and get at least PhotoShop and Photo Mechanic up and running. And try to get e-mail up on the new machine. There is a catch-22 situation in that I want to AirDrop my Keychain from the old machine to the new machine so that I can log into my Adobe and Camera Bits (Photo Mechanic) accounts but I cannot do that because I need to be signed in to Apple ID /i-cloud. For me, setting up a new laptop is always a huge challenge … Heck, I just tried to log into my Adobe account, carefully and correctly typed my password (as viewed in Keychain on the old machine), but again it came up as “That’s an incorrect password. Try again.” As I said, I get the feeling that I am technologically and electronically jinxed …

Resetting the Passwords

Many may be wondering why I do not simply reset the passwords. Remember, I do not have e-mail set up on the new machine because I cannot sign in to I-cloud. In addition, I am worried that if I change the password on the new machine I may be locked out of a given App on the old machine …

The Story With a Happy Ending

Though it cost me nearly $12,000.00, I now have all of my folders and images intact and backed up. I am thrilled. First off, almost $7,000.00 of that was for the new computer that I was probably gonna get anyway. Soon, hopefully today, I will be able to view the recovered images in Photo Mechanic on the new laptop.

Fortunately, for me, the money does not bother me one bit. I really could care less. Ironically, it did not make any financial sense at all to go to the expense of recovering the images. Why? My raw files are basically worthless; we rarely sell an image anymore (though we did make a nice sale at the end of last year to National Geographic Books). The blog, which you are reading right now, drives the business. All I need for that is JPEGs. And nearly all of my best images would have been available as large JPEGs as they are stored online in Word Press.

So why was I so anxious to get the images back? The main reason was personal satisfaction. If I did not recover the images, there would be many great photos and many great trips that I would miss re-living and enjoying. I have dozens of really special images that I can now look forward to sharing with you on the blog. And I will be able to create slide-show sized images of the last year or two of new photos for use in future Keynote presentations.

All I need to do in the next few days is get the new machine up and running with all of my Apps functioning.

This Just In

9:24am

I had the pleasure of spending 45 minutes with an Apple Care Senior Advisor Andrew. The guys was incredibly knowledgeable and amazingly helpful. He helped me change my iCloud password on the new machine, the old machine, and my iPhone. My samandmayas e-mail is up and running on the new machine and I am importing mailboxes as we speak. And Photoshop is being installed right now!

Other MacBook Pros with M1 Chip & Retina Display Options

You do not need to spend $7K to enjoy the new super-fast M1 chip technology. There are 13.3, 14.2, and 16.2 sizes. There are two colors: Space Gray and Silver. And each can be configured as you wish as far as RAM (Memory), Storage, and Graphics configuration. To explore the many less expensive options, please start by clicking here, and then do a search for “MacBook Pro M1.”

As always, using my affiliate links will not cost you one penny and is a great way to thank BAA for the information and stories that you read here on the blog every day.

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.