Photography A - Z the Easy Way: I - ISO Setting

Do you know what ISO is? Perhaps not. And, in fact, you don’t need to know what it is – just how to use it. In very simple terms, the ISO setting is a measure of how sensitive your camera sensor is to light. A low ISO (e.g. 100) will not be very sensitive to light whereas a high setting (e.g. 1600) will be very sensitive.

How does this affect you?

It’s simple, and don’t let others tell you otherwise. If you have plenty of light around – say on a sunny day or if it is bright but overcast, use ISO setting 100 or 200. In fact, keep it at that setting for most of your shots. Then just take your pictures as normal.

If however, you are in low light levels, you may wish to use flash (keep the same ISO setting) OR use a higher ISO without flash.

Here is an example of practical use:

You want to take a picture of your friend. Normally, on a normal bright day, you would use programme mode or a semi-automatic mode which will select an aperture of 5.6 and shutter speed of 1/250. No problem.

But if the light is fading and you don’t want to use flash, then the shutter speed for the same aperture might reduce to 1/30 or 1/15. At slow speeds like this you will find your shots are not as sharp due to camera shake. Here, you can switch to a higher ISO setting – for every doubling of the ISO you can halve the shutter speed. Therefore you will be able to use a faster shutter speed in low light conditions with a higher ISO.

That’s it really.

There are two drawbacks. First, you will get a “noisier” image at a higher ISO setting (more grainy – but this can often create a nice effect) and secondly you must remember to switch back to your usual ISO after the shots have been taken (so that your usual images have the optimum ISO setting).

Eric Hartwell runs the photography resource site http://www.theshutter.co.uk and the associated discussion forums as well as the regular weblog at http://thephotographysite.blogspot.com.

The ISO Network Management Model

The rumor on how Disney uses Network Management. When the temperature rises on the park grounds at Disneyland all the prices of the beverage vending machines automatically goes up by 10% to fully capitalize on consumer demand. I believe that is an old Information Technology rumor to explain how network management works... at least I hope it is a rumor.

Why Network Management is important.
More and more organizations depend on their networks. Business’ the depend heavily on the status of their networks must have network management tools as they grow. If a network dependent business such as ebay, Google, Yahoo and many others go down for even a few minutes, they can loose literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales and even a small piece of their customer’s confidence which could in turn affect the value of their stock. When every second of network time counts the system must be monitored continuously. The most cost effective way to do this is to use an automated network management tool.

Network Management Standards
The International Organization for Standards (ISO) addresses the five major functional area of the Network Management Model as performance management, accounting management, configuration management, fault management and security management.

Performance Management
Performance management is monitoring, assessing, and adjusting the available bandwidth and network resource usage in order make a network run more efficiently. Performance management is a very important part of the network management model particularly to the business and/or organization that wants to streamline their network's performance. SolarWinds is a great tool for performance management.

Accounting Management
Accounting management monitors and assesses the usage of data and/or resources for the purpose of billing. This aspect of the network management is by Internet Service Providers to bill customers for the resources they use.

Configuration Management
The configuration side of network management is for tracking the hardware and software versions on the network to identify their effects on the network's operation. An example of this is Microsoft’s System Management Server (SMS) which has the capability to monitor, manage and track every piece of software and hardware on a given network.

Fault Management
Fault Management is what most people think of when they think of network management. The purpose of this area of network management is to detect, log and alert the system administrators of problems that might effect the systems operations.

Security Management
Security Management deals with controlling access to resources and even alerting the proper authorities when certain resources are accessed. In the same way that a network manager can be paged or emailed when a resource goes down, network management systems can be used to send messages when certain files, servers or routers is accesses. Intrusion detection systems such as Symantec’s Intruder Alert have this security management capability.

There are many products that support some or even all of these areas of network management. What most network management systems have in common is their use of protocols such as Simple Network Management Protocols (SNMP), SNMPv3, and Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP). There are a variety of Network Management tools ranging from Intuit's Network Management Software to IBM's Tivoli, Fidelia's Helix to AdventNet. Maybe your network management solution does not include a system that increases vending machine prices as the heat rises, but you can definitely find what you need among these and other excellent tools on the market.

References:

Cisco. Network Management Basics. Cisco.com. Feb 2002
http://www.cisco.com/

RFC 1157. Simple Network Management Protocol.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1157.html

Wikipedia. Network Management. Wikipedia.org.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_management

ITPRC. Network Management. Itprc.com
http://www.itprc.com/nms.htm

Robert Elam is a System Security Engineer who works for the U.S. government.

You can find a more detailed version of this and other articles at his blog, http://elamb.org.

Is ISO 9001 2000 Right For My Business?

 

Firstly you should decide your own reasoning behind considering ISO 9001 2000 registration for your business.

Is the number of registrations in your market sector increasing?

Are your competitors seeking registration?

Are your customers asking about registration?

Are registrations increasing in your industry?

Are your customers asking you to become registered?

Have your group HQ asked you to gain registration?

Do you want to reap the financial benefits of registration?

Have the number of customer or consumer complaints increased?

Preventable errors reoccur again and again?

It is not possible to state exactly what benefits your organization will gain by having a formal quality system, primarily because each organisation is different. However, I think it is fair to say that most organisations will benefit from having a formalised Quality Management system where:

Work proceeds in an orderly and predictable way.

The same old preventable errors stop occurring.

Customer and consumer complaints fall dramatically.

Your Management System improves.

Internal communication within your organisation improves.

Returned product from customers reduces week on week.

The quality of your product and or service improves.

The level of customer and employee satisfaction improves.

Your organisation produces quality data to improve your business.

By now you should have a reasonable idea of whether or not ISO 9001 2000 registration is right for your organisation and whether or not you will gain financially from adopting the ISO 9001 2000 standard as a method of running your business effectively and efficiently.

If you are now seriously considering seeking registration to the ISO 9001 2000 standard you must begin to understand what the standard requires of an organization. There are many books and resources available which discuss implementing the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard into an organisation including the articles on this web site.

You may like to begin your ISO 9001 2000 education by reading the various articles on this web site. You will find they cover a broad spectrum of businesses, There is also an excellent Q&A sectionthat will answer the majority of commonly asked questions about ISO 9001 2000 registration and related topics.

Alternatively you could take an ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management training course, there are many available and they cater for beginners right through to ISO 9001 2000 experts.

To determine the amount of input required by your organisation to comply with the requirements of the ISO 9001 2000 standard will require that you assess your existing management system. You could to fetch in a consultant at this stage, a consultant will be able to identify exactly what your organisation needs to do in order to achieve the requirements of the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard.

Many organisations opt to carry out a gap analysis audit using a member of staff. However, the initial gap analysis audit is arguably the most important stage in the ISO 9001 2000 registration process. If the initial gap analysis is incorrect then both financial and human resources will be wasted. For this reason alone it is well worth seeking professional help from a consultant to carry out the gap analysis for you.

Many organisations who opt to jump straight into the Gap Analysis process themselves can often waste time, money and resources by not fully understanding the intent of the ISO 9001 2000 standard. Whereas seeking professional advice from a consultant will set your organisation on the right path with clear instructions on who, what, where, why, when and how things should be done.

If on the other hand your organization already has a very good understanding of the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard and has:

A documented Quality policy.

Been setting and using documented Quality objectives.

Customer and consumer complaints fall dramatically.

Documented Top management reviews of your Quality Management System.

A documented top level Quality Management System Manual.

Documented effective and efficient process procedures and or work instructions.

Documented employee skills and training records which are regularly reviewed.

Documented and compliant Quality Management System Audits.

Formal Customer complaint process with effective corrective and preventive action methods.

If you are doing all the above then you may be well on your way toward gaining ISO 9001 2000 registration. However, if your Quality Management System is incomplete or immature it will require much more effort to become compliant. You can continue to adjust your system, audit for compliance, train employees etc. until you reach a position where you feel you have done as much as you are able to do yourself.

If however, you have reached this stage and are concerned if you have missed something important you can hire a consultant to carry out a [Pre-Assessment]. A pre-assessment is a gap-analysis survey carried out by a professional who compares what processes your organisation has in place compared to those required by the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard.

The consultant will report any deficiencies in your organisations processes, it is then up to you to decide if you want to tackle these deficiencies by yourself or to engage the professional services of the consultant.

Driso provide ISO 9001 2000 consultancy, auditing, software, and training Services. They also supply Easy ISO 9001 2000® software for initially setting up an ISO 9001 2000 compliant Quality Management System or improving upon an existing one.

To contact Driso Consultancy Services visit the web site below and see what they can do for you and your business. Contact: http://www.driso.co.uk for more details.