Over the years we all end up gathering gear that may seem pointless to others but ends up being completely essential to us.  I have quite a bit of gear like that and I’m sure you do as well – stuff that may have little use for other people but has proven very useful to us.  Beyond the moleskin, extra batteries, or extra memory cards – these are items that have won a place in our packs and proven very useful.  This Tech Tuesday is dedicated to such items.

Main computer HD backup
I’m a backup freak.  I’m constantly backing up my hard drives.  Lose all your data once and you will understand.  This backup drive is not my photo library – it’s a backup of my main computers hard drive – I carry it with me everywhere.  Why?  I’ve had to replace my hard drive on my MBP twice in two years already.  When my drive goes down I take out my backup drive and simply stick it in my computer.  The whole process takes less than 10 minutes.  Lose your hard drive while you’re on the field or on assignment and that can spell disaster – being able to replace it and be back up and running in no time is just smart.

Small box
I apologize for the nondescript title, but it is was it is – a small boxish…thing.  I often times carry a small box/tin with me that contains things that I don’t want to get smashed.  For example I have a few gels in this one that I’d rather they not get folded and ripped to pieces, though it really doesn’t matter.  A button that came off my pants that I didn’t want to lose and a tripod reducer bushing made it into the ’small box’ as well.  The uses are many. I’ve found carrying a small box is helpful for storing small things that need that extra bit of protection that stuffing it in a pocket might not provide.

Extra Phone
There’s nothing like being in the middle of nowhere and realizing your power-hungry iPhone is out of juice.  I always carry a simple phone backup just in case.  It’s preferable to bring a phone that does doesn’t do much other than make calls and holds a battery for a long time.  This phone holds a charge for an extremely long time.  In fact, when I took this picture I estimated that I hadn’t turned it off in over 40 days.  A phone backup is smart to have when the ability to charge mobile devices isn’t always a guaranteed.

Lighter + Tea light
This one won’t ring as true for many of you as it does for me, but I always carry a lighter.  It’s probably a carry over from my younger days of hiking and camping – and my secret chain smoking addiction.  Not only is it good for starting fires but it’s always good for building relationships with locals when you’re the first person to pull out a ligher and help someone light their cigarette.  Call me crazy but it’s opened doors for me and those open doors have occasionally led to a better shot.  Why the tea light though?  Where I live it’s extremely cold nine months out of the year.  I’ve stayed in places where building a fire in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night has been made easier by a tea light.  Every time I don’t bring it I always end up in situation where I wish I had.  Maybe not necessary unless you are a photographer working in the third-world where being warm can be the difference between life and death and electricity is all but guaranteed.

Small Bungee
I travel with these small bungee cords everywhere I go – even on business trips.  I use them for everything.  In fact one of these same cords (bought here) is holding my shower together right now.  I use them for tons of things on the field:  Mount radio receivers to flashes.  Hold a light stand together. Lash a tripod onto a pack.  Mount a hot shoe flash to something weird.  I’ve even used them to hold my clothes together.  These things are absolutely indispensable.  I heard about the idea from another photographer who used them the same way I do now.  You never know what you will use them for and packing them is no problem.

Battery Backup
If I were going to write this list in some particular order of importance, I think this would be high on the list.  Lighter than an iPhone and thinner than a hard drive, this small battery pack can recharge my iPhone completely up to 3 times.  In fact, it charges just about anything that has a USB port.  I even throw this battery pack into my bag when just around town.  The benefit is obvious.  It’s extremely light and extremely useful.  In fact, I’m thinking about buying more…

Blank cards
This one might just be me, but small blank cards have proven to be a great thing to throw in my pack.  While travelling I run across people all the time that want one bit of information and not the entire business card.  In fact, you probably run into people all the time that you dont want to give an entire business card to.  Many people only care about my phone number, email address, where I live, my name, etc – Honestly I don’t want them to have a whole business card.  Furthermore we all run into people all the time that don’t have a business card and this allows them to give you whatever information they want to give you.  Small blank index cards provide that flexibility in these kinds of situations.  Furthermore, it’s a simple white card – you can write anything you want to on it and give it to people (or just make notes).  Furthermore it saves you from ripping out pages in your notebook.

Velcro
Why not take velcro with me? I have clothes that are held together with velcro.  It’s completely unoticable to pack and has a billion different uses.  I carry a small strip with me always.  Most of my gear has velcro already on it, so an extra strip incase I need it only makes sense.

Zip Ties
If it’s good enough for MacGyver, it’s good enough for me.  I’ve held broken equipment together on the field with these – equipment I wouldn’t be able to use otherwise.  Much like the velcro, these are tiny and the upside is absolutely obvious.  I threw a dozen in with me every time I travel.

Extra Lens base and body cap
Dust is our enemy and losing one of these bad boys with out a replacement on the field is bad.  Having extras can save your equipment while you are on the field in the rare case that you lose one.  Furthermore, since I’m often shooting out of my backpack, I find it extremely helpful to have a few extra of these laying around to grab when Im quickly changing a lens.  A worse case scenario idea with lots of extra convenience – I’ve personally found that I use the extra base and cap almost every time I’m out.

Add to the conversation.  What do you take with you when shooting that may not be an obvious addition?

Now that people are pouring into the world of Google+ there are very few things left to really say that haven’t been covered in the last few weeks.  With the hundreds of tutorials floating around, Scott Bourne trying scare the crap out of everyone, and millions of parents everywhere asking “What’s a circle and how do I put you in it?!” Google+ has burst onto the main stage and left many photographers and bloggers asking how it fits into their online presence.

As new technology enters the “market” we are constantly facing new questions:  What’s the benefit? What amount of time should we pull away from old technology (Facebook, flickr, Myspace) and dedicate to the new?  Is it worth it?  Do we have time?  Another dangling carrot?  Often how fast we determine how to leverage technology, and specifically social media based produces, can determine it’s success for us.

Since Tech Tuesday is about “Technology for Photographers” and well… since Google+ is decidedly technology, provided below is a list of quality articles, tools, and tutorials for your consideration.

Hope this gets you well on your way!

ToS Conversation/ Licensing

• How I Evaluate Terms of Service for Social Media Web Sites – Google+ (PetaPixel)
• FUD Over Google+’s Terms of Service (excellent article) (Jim Goldstein)

Photographers & Google+

• Photographers, Get on Google Plus (Craig Ferguson)
• Getting Started in Google Plus: A Photographer’s Guide (Pixiq)
• Google+:  The photographers business card (Primal Lens)
• Google+: A photographer’s first impression ( Zoner Photo Studio)

Utilities & Extensions for Google+

• Get your Twitter & Facebook Stream inside Google+ (Nirmaltv)
• Sync Google+ Posts to Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook (Nirmaltv)
• Automatically Post to Twitter/Facebook from Google+ (Nirmaltv)
• Custom Google Plus URL names & shortener - (gplus.to)
• How to Import your Facebook Friends to Google+ (LifeHacker.com)
• Google+/Gtools+ : Customization for Google+ (Nirmaltv)

Useful Google+ information & Tutorials

• Privacy settings for your Circles (GooglePlusTricks.com)
• The Google+ Cheatsheet: Quick Reference to Google+ (LifeHacker)
• How to hide your friends in Google+
• How to use Google Plus (Read Write Web)
• Google: Using Google+ Circles (Google)
• Google: Using Hangouts (Google)
• Connecting with people on Google+ (GooglePlusTricks.com)
• Add a Google +1 button on your blog (Ericasays.com)

Google+ Humor:

• 21 Google Plus circles you can actually use. (HappyPlace.com)
• Google+ comedy trends (HappyPlace.com)

Also, if you are the last person on earth yet to receive a Google+ invite, feel free to comment below w/ your email address and Ill make sure I get one passed your way.

You can find me on Google+ at:  gplus.to/BHIRSCHYPHOTO

*quick edit: I’ve gone ahead and included some of the anonymous answers on the survey in long form and completely unedited.  If you are interested in reading these responses, please click here. If you have yet to read this entire article, I strongly suggest you do that first – unless, of course, you enjoy being confused…

THE QUESTION

About three weeks ago I openly asked the following question on Twitter:

Why?  Well, for whatever reason I struggle with Flash implementations because I always feel like I’m waiting.  Loading bars are no longer cool to me, but rather a reminder that I’m actually waiting.  Also, I don’t like that a simple website can take up 90% of my system resources.  Mostly I don’t like having to “re-learn” how to navigate what I feel like should be a simple site.  Some Flash portfolios make me feel dumb.  How the @#$%! do I control this thing?!  They seem to vary wildly in how they are controlled – not all of them, but enough to annoy me.  If I have to wait too long, can’t figure out how to control your site, stare at a loading bar… I’m gone 80% of the time.  I’m not necessarily proud of it.  These are just my opinions so please don’t read too much into it – opinions people.  Not a sword I’d fall heavily on and I’m not tell you to feel this way

nonetheless…

The question elicited quite a few responses from people who shared much of the same sentiment.  The amount of responses I received, within minutes, was surprising.  People shared things like “I can’t stand the loading times!” or “Lack of iDevice support ruins the experience for me!”  Other people complained about the ability to control the platform.  Let’s get one thing straight – I don’t hate Flash and I’m certainly not against using it for the most part.  It’s a great and often quick way for photographers to get an immediate web-presence and is an absolute lifesaver for those who don’t have the time or skill to throw something else up.  It’s a tool, just like everything else – tools have limitations.

What is it exactly that bothers some people about Flash-based portfolios?

I decided to send out just a few emails asking friends what they thought.  The responses were interesting:

“When I’m on the desktop and come across a Flash website, I get frustrated at the loading time, and then when it does load, if it’s a slideshow I often get frustrated that it is too slow, or too fast. I would prefer to click on images I want to see at my own pace.” – Zoë Ambler (@phozographer)

“Often the flash animations seem to take more importance than the work in the profile.” – Joel Kooistra (@JoelKooistra)

“Flash sites don’t allow the user/customer/viewer to control his/her interaction with the site.  I can’t pick the images I want to open and I have to wait for an image to load once I select it.”  Lane Davis (@lanedavis)

“Flash solves a lot of [problems] – except for mobile. However, like most things, once they are overused, or used as a crutch, [they]fall out of favor. I think Flash portfolio’s solve the problems of everyone but the user or viewer.” – Eric Dacus (@edacus)

“Speed is a big issue. I’m not on communist China’s broadband, but I am impatient and,at times, time-limited. Watching a line crawl, a spoke spin, numbers slowly increase, etc. is extremely annoying”. – Matthew Connors (@MatthewJConnors)

“The clincher with Flash is that it doesn’t work on an ipad. It doesn’t matter if you hate apple for not implementing Flash. There are x billion ipads sold and it is the perfect way to look at images so if you use Flash you are out of the loop.” – Robert van Koesveld (@photokoesveld)

“Flash does not easily allow you to make hyperlinks to [other] specific parts of your site.” – Jared Erickson (@alliswell)

“Basically, unless you’re building your brand around more of an “idea” and an “experience” and don’t really care about good branding or what’s best for you or your clientele, Flash is always a lose.” - Zach McNair (@zachmcnair)

THE RESEARCH

I decided to dig a bit deeper and go ahead and send out a mass survey to a sizable group of people and see what kind of results came back.  The survey covered the following subjects.

• How user friendly do you find most Flash-based websites?  Do you generally enjoy the experience?
• Do you feel in control of your experience on Flash-based websites?
• Have you ever just simply left a Flash-based website because it was Flash?
• Is speed ever an issue?
• How much time do you spend on a mobile/iDevies daily?

The results are as follows:

SOME RESULTS… BUT REALLY MORE QUESTIONS:

The results were interesting and probably raised more questions than they answer for me.  Most of these topics were asked in comparison to other portfolio platforms that are not Flash based.  Some of these numbers are staggering to me:

• Only 23% of the people I surveyed said they had generally, at best, a “non-hindered” experience with Flash based portfolios
• Only freaking 4% said they “almost always” enjoy their Flash experience while 43% say it’s a pain?!?
• 4% said they feel more in control of a Flash-based portfolio versus other non-Flash-based portfolios.
• 55% of surveyed people are online more than 3 hours per day with a mobile device; 74% more than 2 hours per day.
• Only 9% of people surveyed say they never have the urge to simply leave a Flash website.
• More than 50% of people surveyed say they describe the experience as “Boxy and confined”

There is unarguably value to knowing what your user base thinks – but these results raise more than a few questions:

• What should we do as users become less and less patient & more and more mobile?
• Are we limiting our audience by the platform we use – specifically with iDevices?
• More and more web dev’s are moving away from Flash for more versatile platforms.  Of the 5 developers I surveyed, none of them have designed a flash website post 2004.
• What should this say about the prevalence of Flash among photographers?  Behind the times or not?
• Not all Flash implementations are the same, but do the majority of bad implementations influence user’s feelings about the good ones?

FINAL THOUGHTS

A person’s body of work SHOULD speak for itself.  By all means we should be worrying more about our body of work than our website.  At the same time we should be asking ourselves these questions.  What do you think?

What do you think about the reputation, strengths, and weaknesses of Flash based portfolios?

*notes:  I’m not a polling genius (or smart) and probably did all sorts of things wrong – if you are freaking out about that, don’t miss the point here.  It’s a discusion and these are some starting points for that discussion.  The questions present are honest questions and any bias read into them is totally my dumb fault.

Todays Tech Tuesday is all about lighting.

Let me start by saying that there are some travel photographers that won’t go near artificial lighting – I am not one of those.  I’m not discriminating between those who use artificial light and those who don’t.  I don’t really draw a strong distinction between the two, other than to say I love natural light just as much as I love lighting setups in many ways – it just happens to be the lighting setups that get my blood rushing and make me excited about being a photographer.  If you are one of the strictly natural light guys, no worries – unfortunately you might not get much out of this post other than maybe some information you can store away for when you do pick up a strobe,.

Moving on…

Over the last month I’ve been asked several times about what lighting setups I use while I’m on the field.

Here is my typical field setup.

Just a quick list of what you see above

1. 2x Westcott 43″ convertible umbrellas (here)
2. 2x multiclamps w/ shoe mounts (here)
3. 2x Nikon sb-24’s (here)
4. 2x Manfrotto Nano Portable light stands (here)
5. 1x Paul C. Buff CyberSync Trigger Controller (here)
6. 2x Paul C. Buff CyberSync Trigger Receiver (here)
7. 1/8th gridspot (here)
8. Lightsphere, rechargeable batteries, red bungie things, tape

The real beauty of this setup is in the fact that it takes up very little space in my bag and it was super cheap compared to most setups.  I’ve taken this exact setup all over SE Asia without thinking twice.  If you’re setup is too big or you have the mental conversation about “should I take it or not” , you probably wont take it, and in my opinion, the setup is too big for you to easily get out, set up, and capture a killer shot if the situation arises.  Food for thought:  It took me less than 3 minutes to get this shot from having nothing setup – here’s what I got. The setup can be seen here.

A closer look after the break…

1. 2x Westcott 43″ convertible umbrellas

First, this is no octabank, softbox, or even a large light modifier.  You aren’t going to get that super super soft and flattering light from these little guys, but hey, we are going for transportability and the 43″ seems to be the middle road between quality and size – and honestly, the qualities really not that bad.  These pack down very small and will fit in any decent sized camera bag and will even fit into some satchels.  One thing about the convertibles – you will noticed I’ve gotten rid of the cover that makes it into a bounce umbrella.  Why?  I lost them on the field.  I prefer the shoot through because it’s one less thing to put on, forget, or break – remember, the ability to get this thing setup asap is going to play a lot into being able to pull of these kinds of shots on the field.

2.  2x multiclamps w/ shoe mounts

You just have to have these.  This is actually maybe the most awkward part of the setup as far as packing goes.  The reason for that lies in the fact that these material used on these is small but because of the levers it actually ends up taking a bit of space and being just bulky.  Nonetheless, you have to have these unless you plan on taping the light to the stand – which is not advised.

3. 2x Nikon sb-24’s – The actual flashes

I already know what a few of you are thinking – “Why is he using those old flashes?!”  Lot’s of reasons.  Firstly, I paid $80 USD for these killer flashes just over a year ago.  They get awesome reviews.  They are cheap, strong as a rock, easy to rebuild, have easily accessible pc sync port(s) and are incredibly easy to use.  Plus, they have been around forever  The full manual controls force someone who is just starting off to learn their flash rules rather than just relying on iTTL right out of the gate – which is important.  Plus my buddy Zack would kill me.  Most of all, if I break both of them in one day, I’m out $200 USD rather than breaking one sb0-900 that would cost me over twice as much.  Simplicity is key here. **the sb-24’s are actually difficult to find now, thanks to The Strobist blog review – your best bet is second hand through Adorama or B&H

4. 2x Manfrotto Nano Portable light stands

I can’t give these stands enough praise.  They are light and tough as nails.  I’ve had these stepped on, trampled by yaks, and consistently thrown around and they have taken the beating w/o any problems at all.  A drawback is that these will definitely have to be held up in any sort of wind and their max height is about 1.9 meters.  I can get it to around 2.2 meters, but it’s pretty unstable at that point.  Nonetheless, these things are amazing for what they do and how easy they are to transport and setup.  Manfrotto knows what’s going on and they made an incredible light stand for travelling photographers.

5.  Paul C. Buff CyberSync Triggers and Controllers

I’m going to cover the Paul C. Buff products together.  Let me start on this one by saying that there are just about a billion triggers and controller systems out there – I’m not saying these are the best by any stretch of the imagination.  However, I knowingly chose the CyberSyncs for a few reasons.  Anyone familiar with Paul C. Buff products can vouch for their exceptional customer service.  In short, I needed a company that wouldn’t give me fits about replacing something (most of the time for free) and shipping it overseas.  In addition, these things are cheap, small, and incredibly reliable.  For the price of one Pocket Wizard item (receiver or transmitter) you could buy an entire remote setup from good ol’ Paul C.  Granted Pocket Wizards are truly awesome, it would be hard to justify taking them where I go and replacing them would put a serious dent in my budget.

6.  1/8th gridspot

This product is a nice little gridspot with velcro that you can attach to the head of your strobe.  Small, light, made of plastic so it won’t break.  Great to have in the bag and one that goes with me just about everywhere.  If you aren’t familiar with why you should have a gridspot, check out these links:

• Strobist on gridspots
• How to use a gridspot

7.  Fong Dong, tape, rechargeable batteries, bungies, etc

• Gary Fong Light Sphere – Everyone is probably familiar with the Fong Dong – creates beautiful soft light from an on camera flash (here)
• Tape – Always gotta have it.  That’s all.
• Batteries – I take tons of Chinese batteries along with me, but these seem to actually last longer.  Pretty generic.
• Bungee cords – These rock.  I use them to attach just about everything to just about everything else (here)

I hope that helps answer some of the questions that have been coming in lately.  I took just a few reference shots for you guys – they are all listed below.  Basically all my lit work is with a similar setup, so you can see the versatility that comes with it – not all of these are “travel photog” shots – but you get the point.  The great thing about this is that it’s light, fast, and cheap.

]]> http://www.brianhirschy.com/mobile-lighting-for-travel-photography/feed/ 8 http://www.brianhirschy.com/8-useful-plugins-for-photog-bloggers/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=8-useful-plugins-for-photog-bloggers http://www.brianhirschy.com/8-useful-plugins-for-photog-bloggers/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 11:36:25 +0000 bhirschy http://www.brianhirschy.com/?p=806

Wordpress plugins for photobloggers – that’s what today’s Tech Tuesday is all about.

We are talking about some nuts-and-bolts type plugins that are helpful for photographers using Wordpress and are geared towards making your life easier – and hopefully allow you to spend less time updating your blog and more time behind the camera.

If you are not familiar with WordPress, you maybe literally been living under a rock -not much I can do about that other than to say give it a try, you won’t regret it.  I’ve made my living the last 4 years off of Wordpress customization and custom plugins – not to get too “preachy” but its an amazing platform and it’s ability to use plugins has made it all the better.  We as photographers should utilize such things, right?!

Here we go.  More after the jump…

1.  Akismet - (get it here)

You can tell I’m not going in any sort of order when Akismet shows up first on the list.

Akismet is an amazing API that, if used correctly, pretty much eliminates spam on your site.  As far as I know, Akismet was designed by angels, or at least some higher-power that knows how much I hate deleting spam comments.  Akismet kicks spam in the face…repeatedly.  If you think you don’t need this plugin, just wait two weeks.  A blog without Akismet is close to the textbook definition of a tragedy.

2.  Contact Form 7 – (get it here)

Another Contact form plugin for Wordpress – simple and flexible.

Here’s the deal, in the last 5 years I’ve gone through about 20+ contact form plugins, heck, I even wrote my own once.  This one is the best one that I have found so far – and it works.  This is a great plugin for those of you who want to quickly add functionality to your contact page.  I’ve always found that the less steps I require my users to take to get in touch with me, the more likely they are to do just that.  Do everyone a favor, and make it easy as possible.

3. SEO Friendly Images – (get it here)

SEO Friendly Images is a Wordpress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already set, this plugin will add them according the options you set. Additionally this makes the post W3C/xHTML valid as well.  Can’t get much better than that, right?

Now, this plugin isn’t going to rocket you to the top of your already competitive keywords on Google.  It just won’t do that and no plugin will single-handedly “do” SEO for you.  You have to continue to post good stuff regularly and work your butt off with your actual photography ( go figure?!?). The best SEO is to do what you do, rinse, and repeat.  However, once all that work is done, you won’t have Google mad at your blog.

4. Faster Image Insert – (get it here)

This plugin is  extremely valuable to photobloggers.  We are always posting tons of pictures and if you are familiar with how WordPress handles inserting images, you know it can be a pain in the butt to have to insert one at a time (WordPress has the ability to multi-upload as well).  This plugin completely does away with that and allows you to insert as many images as you want into a single post at the same time.  When I found this plugin, it almost brought tears to my eyes with the time it saved me.

5. Flickr Photo Album -(get it here)

Yet another beautiful plugin for creating killer photo albums.  This one is for all of you who user your Flickr account regularly and really don’t want to duplicate that process.  I use this plugin for pieces of my portfolio in the About section of this website.

“This Flickr plugin for WordPress will allow you to pull in your Flickr photosets and display them as albums on your WordPress site. There is a pretty simple template provided, but you can customize the templates 100% to match the look and feel of your own site. And if you want, you could also hook it up with Lightbox or any other number of display libraries.”

6. WP Super cache -(get it here)

WP Super Cache’s value can be measured in actual money.  The point of this plugin is to make your site as fast as possible by caching as much of your blog as it can.  Because photographers throw 5x as many images on their blogs as other people, this comes in extremely handy.

How do you measure it’s value in money?  Simple.  Most photobloggers are on shared hosting (BlueHost, Godaddy, etc) and these companies don’t like one website taking up all of their bandwidth and server processing power.  If you don’t want your website to be shut off (literally) and you don’t want to drop some serious coin on a more robust hosting package, this is an excellent little plugin to have in the toolbox.  Money saved.

Another added benefit of WP Super Cache is it’s ability to significantly speed up the load time on your site.  The best way to lose viewership is to make your viewers wait – this plugin solves this problem.  I can’t recommend this plugin enough.

7. Twitter Tools- (get it here)

It almost feels patronizing to have this plugin in this list since most people know about it and use it.  This being said, this plugin has some powerful tools for the photoblogger.  Twitter tools effectively links your blog with your Twitter account.  You can have your WordPress blog updated via Twitter or you can have Twitter updated when you post a blog.  This is an incredibly effective way to save yourself some time and jump headfirst into the social media game.  This is honestly the go-to plugin for anything that has to do with Twitter.

8.  Advanced Category Excluder – (get it here)

ACE is a plugin that allows you to effectively categorize your WordPress blog.  I know, I know – WordPress already has a categories functionality out of the box, however, Advanced Category Excluder adds significantly to your ability to break up content the way you want it, exclude content from a certain page, and much more effectively organize your content on your blog – important for photobloggers who might be using their blog as a portfolio or for those people trying not to confuse their readers.

A word on plugins: Plugins are amazing and can make your photoblogging life so much easier, however, don’t get carried away.  Plugins have the capacity to objectively ruin your blog by making it slower, breaking core functionality, and annoying your visitors.  A good rule of thumb is generally to use as few plugins as possible and only the ones that are useful to your core functionality.  I know, I know, that dancing banana plugin that you just love so much is worth it, right?  The point being, some plugins are so pervasive that the photoblogger has to ask themselves what they are trying to accomplish with said plugin.  Just because you can use cool plugins doesn’t give you a great reason to do so.  Be picky.

Honorable Mention: I stuck to plugins that are directly useful for photobloggers, nonetheless, here is a full list of plugins that I find useful:

What plugins do you find helpful/useful?