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Home >> Old News Items What's New Archives 2008 - July to December December 31, 2008 - Readers' comments and tips:
Before I connected the 30-inch Dell 3007 LCD monitor, I checked out the adapter on Apple’s website to see if there’s any mention of the absolute need to connect the USB dongle. I didn’t see any, but since I was at the Apple website, I read some of the user comments already posted about the adapter. There’s only a handful of comments, maybe seven or eight and except for one, all are negative about the quality of the adapter. Problems range from flickering to lack of recognition of the external LCD. Not good and I wondered if I just blew $110 on a kludge of a product. However, after connecting and then waking up the MacBook, the MacBook immediately began outputting to the big Dell. I adjusted the resolution to the Dell’s native specs and now have a glorious 30 inches of working space. So far, in this early going, no flickers, no loss of connection or other signs of a bad connection; the kludge actually works as expected, but I’m going to be metaphorically walking on eggshells for a little while to see how the adapter works out. Maybe, the early commentators got a bad batch of adapters, who knows. Watching the Luminous Landscape Lightroom 2 tutorial, which is in HD, works just fine at its default size when opening up Quicktime. Enlarging to nearly the full size of the Dell LCD gets a bit dodgy for viewing quality and there’s a sweet spot for optimal viewing quality and syncing with the audio (computers with slower processors are unable to playback the high quality video properly and in sync with the audio). Why is working with a 30-inch LCD such a big deal? Well consider the screen shot below, which shows the Luminous Landscape tutorial at its default size of 1280x827 pixels (a bit taller than the MacBook’s 1280x800 pixel screen and the reason why I can't resize this window when viewing on the MacBook's screen). Notice how much more space is available to have open windows for other apps running at the same time. In photographic terms, it’s like going from a 6 MP camera to a 24 MP camera.
Print order number one is of two dye transfer prints produced by Ctein and offered a while back through the TOP website. The dye transfer printing process is considered one of the best for color fidelity and is now very much a dying breed. Kodak stopped making dye transfer materials a few years ago and according to the Luminous Landscape and the TOP, Ctein literally mortgaged the house to stockpile as much of the materials as he could get his hands on.
Since making dye transfer prints is probably a big component of Ctein’s income, you can imagine that his regular sized prints are priced at a point that regular Joes like me cannot afford. Thus, when the TOP offered two of Ctein’s prints for less than USD $200, I jumped at the opportunity to purchase a piece of photographic history. There will soon be a time when no new dye transfer prints will be available, period! Each is signed and dated by Ctein, and the prints themselves have a wonderful look to them, with rich, bold colors. However, truth be told, I really cannot offer an opinion on the dye transfer printing process. It’s only if we have prints of the same photograph made via other processes that we can do meaningful comparisons, and since I do not, I cannot.
Print order number two is a set of B&W landscapes by Mitch Dobrowner, who had a portfolio published in Lenswork issue 79. Rather than repeat what Lenswork has already posted at its website, go there to read up on the new special edition folios being offered. My folio is number 65, which indicates that a fair number of people like what Lenswork has to offer with these folios. It’s a pretty cost effective way to collect some fine photographs. The Dobrowner folio has that classic Lenswork look to it, which is a warm, duotone process for the magazine. The print quality on Harmon Glossy FB AL paper is exquisite and the photos have a quality to them that seem to belie the two dimensional aspects of viewing a photograph. Oh yes, the landscape images are wonderful, which is why I bought the folio in the first place. Print order number three is a set of color landscapes by Michael Reichmann. Reichmann needs no introduction, being the owner, publisher and primary content producer for the Luminous Landscape website. I’ve been following Reichmann’s journey on the LL website from almost from day one and I’ve been green with envy with how he can buy the best equipment on a whim and then travel to anywhere in the world to use that equipment. It’s been my opinion for a while now that the buying of so much excellent equipment is part of Reichmann’s business model to attract a large number of readers to the LL site.
Reichmann has become a bit of a polarizing figure in the online photographic community. Many respect and like what he does (me included), as he provides gearheads with a vicarious way of becoming aware of the latest photographic tools used in a real world way. However, there are plenty that find Reichmann pompous, arrogant and aloof. The guy’s got money and he’s not afraid to use it, which is why his recent comments about not buying the Nikon D3X, because he considers it poor value struck me as odd. The lack of purchase doesn’t fit with the modus operandi of his business and is hypocritical given the probably hundreds of thousands he’s blown in the decade that the LL website has been running. But, then maybe that’s just the Nikon fanboy in me being bitter, despite my agreement with him that given what the D3X offers, it is indeed overpriced ☺ His other and older comments have also been controversial, such as when he compared the 3 MP Canon D30 favorably with 35mm film and the 11 MP Canon 1Ds with medium format film. However, I’m of the opinion that his comments get taken out of context and as is often the case, get exaggerated by others regurgitating the comments on online forums. Then there was that odd feud with Ken Rockwell, who is even more controversial and polarizing than Reichmann and…well, best that I stop here and keep these specific opinions to myself ☺ Anyway, all the money, gear and commentary do not detract from Reichmann being a good photographer. Even here there are juvenile comments about Reichmann’s photographic eye by some in the virtual community, but credit should be given where due; the man can take a fine photograph. I received edition number 33 and I placed the order pretty much as soon as I read about the offer on the LL website. Evidently, a fair number of people also think enough of Reichmann’s photographs to buy them too. And, they are indeed fine photographs, enough said.
The prints have the title of the image at the bottom, as well as the folio’s and photographer’s name. The images are smaller than the 8x10 paper they are printed on, which is in keeping with Brooks Jensen’s (Lenswork’s editor and publisher) philosophy of eschewing large prints. The folios themselves are, in a way, a response to Jensen’s chagrin with the way some photographers print huge and charge astronomical prices. There are times that Jensen reveals his opinion that many such huge prints lack artistic merit. I wonder if Jensen is a socialist, because he wants to bring fine art photography to the masses. Not that this is bad at all, for how else would I be able to afford to buy some landscape photos from Reichmann ☺ If you’re interested in fine art photography at real world prices, the Lenswork special edition folios are worthy of consideration. The folios are comprised of the prints and the colophon protected in a folded cover. Each comes sealed in a plastic sleeve, with additional protection via thick bubble wrap before being placed in a box for shipping. December 29, 2008 - Edwin's Forrest Gump-like saying: Shoveling snow is a lot like photography. We have some five shovels suitable for shoveling snow, which will probably strike some Vancouver readers as being odd (and tropical readers as completely nuts), given that we normally only get a dusting a few times a year. However, a few of the shovels are from my days gone by in my hometown in the BC interior, wherein a foot of snow falling in one evening is the norm and not considered a bizarre anomaly harkening to some climate Armageddon.
Anyway, we have several shovels of varying sizes and capabilities and during the past week, I've used every one of them to dig ourselves out of the mess that is the result of almost two feet of snow falling within that week. My sore and aching back can attest to snow not being light and fluffy as small kids might conjecture. Snow, especially the wet, west coast variety, weighs a significant amount, especially when you have to throw it up the ever increasing snow banks reaching five feet in my back drive way.
We have a short, plastic shovel with a square blade that my son uses to help me out - voluntarily, I might add. I use it on occasion to remove the snow from the back stairs and dig around the second car parked in the driveway. Consider it the digicam of snow shovels, because it's pretty much useless for doing any hard grunt work. The plastic build does not inspire much confidence when it starts to flex from a load of snow. We have a taller and traditional looking snow shovel with a plastic blade and wood handle. It's lightweight and is the type people would find in most stores. Consider it the consumer SLR of snow shovels. The plastic blade is fine for general shoveling of snow, but it’s nearly useless for getting at the bottom layer of ice that sticks to pavement.
We have another traditional looking snow shovel, but this one is old school with a metal blade that’s oxidized over the many years (decades) that we’ve had it – oxidize is just a polite way of saying rust. However, oxidized or not, it’s still a solid sonofabitch and is like the Kalashnikov of snow shovels. While it’s more appropriate to compare it to an SLR of old like a Nikon F series, if I were to compare it to a current digital SLR, it would be a professional Nikon D or Canon 1 series SLR. The metal blade allows it to dig away at the bottom layer of ice, so it’s more functional than the plastic-blade shovel, but this functionality comes at a cost of a much heavier shovel and it won’t take long before your arms, shoulders and back begin to feel the weight – sound familiar? There is another old school snow shovel with a metal blade, but it’s wider, which means it can move more snow, but in actual use, it’s not as handy as the narrower, metal-bladed shovel. I consider this like a medium format or large format camera, because it only works well under certain conditions and despite having a metal blade, it is not as good at picking away ice as the smaller shovel.
Finally, we have another metal-bladed shovel that is a larger version of the small, all-plastic digicam-like shovel. It’s not meant to do the everyday kind of shoveling like the traditional snow shovels, but it’s great at digging out densely packed snow in a small area. Consider this to be like a custom modified SLR, kinda like a D-SLR that’s been converted to IR sensitivity. As with photography, shovels are just tools and to minimize physical abuse of your body, you need proper technique, meaning lift a load with your legs and not your back.
Using the MacBook
You can flit back and forth between the two operating systems seamlessly, but it can get a bit schizophrenic with having to remember to use the Control key for PC and Command for Mac when you copy and paste between the two platforms. I’ve set VMware to allocate 2 GB of RAM to Windows, so that both OS’ share the 4 GB available, but even so, Windows still lags compared to doing a native boot from the get-go. However, for quick and dirty updates, it beats having to reboot back and forth. I stopped doing web updates on the Mac side, as I found the process inefficient compared to Windows, and this is using the same Dreamweaver CS3 on both platforms. The uploading of my web files is also a helluva lot more straightforward on the PC side using my longtime application, Terrapin FTP. On the Mac side, I bought Vicomsoft FTP Client and while it seems straightforward enough to use it is not as elegant as Terrapin FTP. With Terrapin FTP I know exactly where my files end up, whereas I was never quite sure with Vicomsoft until I actually browse my websites to see if the new pages did get uploaded to the correct folder. Vicomsoft also has one of the more silly validation processes after you go ahead and purchase a license - it took several tries for the app to finally recognize the keycode file that has to be saved in the Applications folder to unlock the program. As I mentioned in a previous post, you can set the virtual machine Windows to take over the entire screen of the Mac desktop so that OS X is not even seen. Works a treat when using a dual-monitor setup and while the MacBook’s hardware is not up to the task of juicing both OS’ to their potential, I’d expect a Mac Pro tower with 16 GB or more of RAM would do so with aplomb and make rebooting specifically into Windows an archaic and unnecessary chore. For a short time, I wondered if I could actually get by with just an iMac to replace my PC desktop, especially if the rumours of a quad core upgrade expected in early 2009 hold true. However, the idea of being able to run OS X and Windows at the same time with no drag on performance keeps the desire for a full blown Mac Pro tower alive (my opinion might change about the iMac if Apple finally allows more than 4 GB of RAM to be installed). To get around the limitations of only having two USB ports (with no Firewire or ExpressCard either) I bought a 7-port powered hub to connect additional devices and peripherals. At the moment, I have connected to the hub:
Correcting some misconceptions
Life with OS X When I want to copy over files from an external drive, after I select the files and drag them to my destination folder, it just does so right away. No pregnant pauses before the job happens and no ridiculous time estimates about how long the job will take. When I was moving many GB worth of files (around 25 GB plus) on the PC, the time estimate would fluctuate and sometimes tell me that I would have to wait several days for the job to finish. Then it would settle down some and tell me that I would have to wait 12 or more hours. Windows would keep this time estimate even though I could see the files being transferred at a much faster rate and right up the bitter end, I would see the stupid and supremely wrong time estimate. The Mac also shows me a time estimate of how long the job will take to copy files over, but it’s actually accurate and when it tells me that it will take 20 minutes to move two dozen GB of files, it really does. The MacBook is also a heckuva lot more speedy than my PC, but that’s a specific hardware issue I have with my PC rather than an OS feature. Other small things: when I plug in a device whether direct or through the hub, the Mac finds it immediately and I can begin using it. On the PC side, most of the time it finds it too, but not always and not always immediately. Same with finding wireless networks, the Mac is more efficient and less finicky than the PC. Choosing the sound output option is also easier with the Mac. Sometimes, due to not having the Blue Circle USB Thingee connected all the time the MacBook reverts back to its internal speakers. I don’t discover or remember this until I actually want to playback some music through iTunes. If I did this with the PC, I would have to shut down iTunes and restart it again in order to get the USB device recognized and operational by the app. Not so with the Mac, as I can just go into the System Preferences and switch to the USB device without closing iTunes. As soon as I finish with the System Preferences and close it, iTunes will output the music through my external speakers. This is how an OS should operate and while these are not big things, add them all up and you do come to appreciate the Mac way of doing things. Other things are not superior, but just different from Windows, such as exploring the contents of a folder. I like the horizontal nesting view of sub folders, but really wished I could adjust the panel sizes so that I could see long file names. Thus far, I’ve not discussed how well the MacBook does for editing photos and that’s primarily because I’ve not done anything significant with it. All of my images have been catalogued in Lightroom on the PC and I don’t see a need to duplicate that over to the Mac, especially since there’s no Firewire 800 port to provide superior speed of access with my Firewire 800 capable Drobo storage unit. However, I do have a project coming up on new year's day that will provide me with a good test of how speedy the MacBook will be compared to my desktop PC. Comments will be posted once I finish off that project (the annual family portrait sessions for my wife’s extended family). A while ago I mentioned buying some prints to start a small collection of photographs. I had planned to comment on them, but as I did another print purchase, I've decided to wait for this latest order to arrive before I post comments on all three orders. One order is of custom dye transfer prints made by Ctein and offered by the TOP website. The other two are from Lenswork, one a set of B&W landscapes and the other, a set of color landscapes. The color landscapes are out of the norm for Lenswork since it is dedicated to fine art B&W images, but these are from a Canadian photographer that everyone knows about and has an opinion on, but let me stop here and continue once I have the third set of prints in-house. After accumulating a few hockey games worth of files taken with the Canon 5D2, I finally got down to doing a review and basic edit via Lightroom 2.2 (64-bit version for the PC via my Vista-based desktop). I shot the games with the 70-200 IS lens and the 5D2 set to ISO 3200. To be honest, I had some assumptions about what I would see once I got to doing some pixel peeping. I really did not expect a high resolution SLR to offer great high ISO noise quality. And, you know what they say about assumptions making an ass of you… I did some comparisons with shots taken with my D300 with the 70-200 VR, also at ISO 3200. Now, let me state right away that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. The two cameras were used on different days and the exposure settings are not exact, etc., etc. In other words, the kind of comparison that many in the virtual world like to find anal-retentive faults with and rake the person offering the comparison, over the coals. However, I’ve got my ceramic tiled underwear on, so flame on (ceramic tiles are used on the underside of the space shuttle, to protect the vessel from the intense heat when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere). I photographed the last three or four games with the 5D2 and started editing those files first before I got to the earliest games shot with the D300. I guess I was conditioned to what the 5D2’s quality offered, because once I started working on the D300 files, I was shocked…shocked at how crummy the D300’s files looked like. In the same way that I found the Canon 40D files to be superior to the D200 (at ISO 1600) earlier this year, I see a similar difference in quality between the 5D2 and the D300 at ISO 3200. The 5D2 files are cooler in terms of color than the D300, but whereas the 5D2 files maintain pretty good integrity at ISO 3200, the D300 files look like mush. And, to think that the D700 is considered a bit better than the 5D2. Gawd dang, I gotta get me some of that FX action for myself.
Now do keep in mind that I’m showing the files via mostly default settings in Lightroom (I only adjusted the exposure for both files to move the histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing out the highlights) and you can certainly do some additional editing to try and improve the images. However, editing is another one of those things that the armchair quarterbacks like to pick you apart on. Well, why didn’t you use Nikon Capture NX2? Why didn't you use Canon’s RAW utility? What about Silkypix or Aperture, or any number of other RAW converters available, etc., etc. Actually, some of the criticisms might actually be on the mark especially when Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw are involved. Both share the same basic RAW conversion engine and while I cannot offer any objective evidence, subjectively, I always felt that Adobe’s RAW conversion is kinder to Canon than to Nikon files – many of the Adobe engineers use Canon after all (not that really means anything, as many Nikon users favour ACR and Lightroom for their RAW processing). Having 21 MP of resolution available is also very nice for cropping, especially as I lost the 1.6x crop factor and 200mm is “only” 200mm and not 320mm. I can crop down and still have enough resolution to produce a nice sized print, whereas the 10 and 12 MP Nikons I’ve used got a bit dicey when I cropped down. I need to do more formal evaluations using a more consistent methodology, so consider this as just an introduction. Christmas excesses – no sign of financial crisis this Christmas with my extended family, as the kids received plenty to keep them happy. On Christmas eve, as my son and I were shoveling the driveway, I asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him and the first thing he mentioned was the NHL 2K9 game for the Nintendo Wii console. Well, good thing I had ordered the game from Amazon Canada several weeks back. I seemed to have done well this particular Christmas, what with my penchant for tech gadgets and toys. There is of course my gift to myself in the form of the MacBook, which is what I used to type up this update. My wife made up for several years of lame gifts by buying me a Sony Blu-Ray player, which now “forces” me to start buying some Blu-Ray movies. She also used some money given to the kids from both sets of grandparents to buy them a Sony portable DVD player, which I promptly took custody of for “testing.” This will be a very handy device to have for longer road trips and keeping the kids occupied. I tested it out with one of the DVDs from my M*A*S*H box set, also purchased by my wife. Thoughtful woman that she is, she noticed that during suppertime, whenever TSN Sportsdesk is preempted for some lame sporting event that I don’t care to watch (say this with your best Scottish accent – if it’s not hockey or football, it’s crap!), I would turn to Bellingham’s KVOS channel and watch a rerun of M*A*S*H. She bought me the entire 11-season set that includes the original movie that inspired the TV series. M*A*S*H was a staple of my childhood, so it’s quite a delight to now have the entire collection on hand, but man, oh man, it’s going to take me a long while to get through it all. I received a 2 TB Western Digital MyBook World Edition II external drive from one of the extended family members. This version of the MyBook is meant for use with a network, as it can only be connected to a router or switch via network cable. I thought I could use it as the MacBook's Time Machine drive, but the World Edition drives are formatted to a proprietary format that won't work for Time Machine, as Time Machine needs a Mac formatted drive. I'll have to use another alternative for Time Machine backups. The new MyBook will still be put to use, but likely as another redundant backup drive, as despite its gigabit ability, the MyBook will likely be too slow to be used as an everyday storage drive. I also don’t have a gigabit capable router anyway. Lastly, I finally bought the replacement to the Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 headphone amp, which I sold this past summer. I bought a HeadRoom Micro Amp. It’s not the HeadRoom Desktop amp that I desired, but with the way the Canadian dollar has tanked vis a vis the greenback, the cost of getting a USD $1000 amp would have been around CDN $1500, which is just a bit too rich for me at this time. We won't even discuss the headphone amp I really wanted, the Grace M902, which would have cost some CDN $2000. The HeadRoom Micro amp is exactly the same size as the HeadRoom Portable Micro amp purchased almost a year ago, but differs in that the Micro amp is AC powered, whereas the Portable Micro amp is battery powered. I had originally envisioned the Micro amp being a pre amp to drive my larger powered Behringer speakers, but the big Behringers are just too sensitive to everything happening upstream. I touch the Micro amp and I’ll hear some electrical thumps from the speakers. Every time the MacBook wakes up from hibernation, the Behringers relays the thump of the Blue Circle Thingee powering up. Given the realities of my computer-based music system being mostly for background music, I dispensed with the larger Behringers for a pair of smaller Behringer speakers, which are actually more functional with multiple analog and digital inputs. No more electrical thumps and farts to deal with anymore and my serious music listening is now done with headphones. While the iPod is pretty much unmatched for on-the-road music listening, the iPod blows when at home as you can use iTunes to access all your music. Better searching and superior ability to just let your musical desires direct you to the next song, plus the ability to have full resolution AIFF files instead of compromising with MP3 files due to the lack of storage space. As you might expect, the Micro amp sounds like the Portable Micro amp and it drives my Sennheiser HD650 cans effortlessly. Having a solid-state amp also means being able to leave it on all the time without worrying about the tubes wearing out, as with the X-Can v3. I can still get my tube fix though by incorporating the Musical Fidelity X-10 tube buffer, which I still have. I have the Blue Circle Thingee outputting a digital signal via Toslink optical to the Behringer speakers, as well as an analog output to the Micro amp. The Behringers also have two analog inputs, so I have an iPod directly connected to it to provide music during the times when I’m not using the computer as a music source. December 24, 2008 - To everyone out there that's been kind enough to come by and take a read of my journey in photography, I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Seasons Greetings to those of other faiths. Have a safe and Happy New Year! I leave you for a few days with some photos of my kids enjoying the winter wonderland that is Vancouver, which normally gets a wet Christmas instead of a white one, but with another snow storm expected today, we're guaranteed a white Christmas this year.
December 22, 2008 - I'm finally off on a break for the holidays and won't have to be back at work until after the New Year. It's been a busy time with work and on the home front as we prepare for Christmas. Vancouver will have a white Christmas, which has normally been an historical anomoly, but we've been hit by an Arctic front that combined with moist weather coming from the Pacific Ocean, has resulted in a dumping of snow. Driving in the snow in Vancouver is always an adventure. Most people probably have all-season tires, but these just are not suitable for the compacted snow that we've had the past week. Most drivers have little experience driving in the snow and combined with unsuitable tires, results in a number of cars ending up in ditches. People with SUVs have an easier time for sure, but even an SUV with winter tires won't save you if you foolishly drive fast and don't give enough time to brake gently (pumping when slippage occurs). I borrowed my brother-in-law's SUV and it certainly felt more sure-footed, but I could still feel the brakes slip a couple of times during a drive to and from the ice rink, as my son had a hockey tournament these last few days. Having an SUV makes one forget about high gas prices during the lousy weather we've been having so far and I'm thinking I gotta get me one sooner rather than later (wink, wink, knudge, knudge ;^) Anyway, onto more important stuff than my local weather and future vehicle purchases. You know, I hate to admit this, but I think Steve Jobs had it right when he suggested that something as small and as brilliant as the iPod would ultimately lead consumers to become Mac users. Exposure to the elegant simplicity of the iPod would show the masses that maybe Apple knows a thing or two about computing. And, perhaps more importantly, how to make it user friendly and simple to use. Consider me one of those affected by that Trojan Horse of an iPod, because ever since buying my first iPod, I’ve been wondering what the Mac experience would be like. Along the way, Apple ditched the Power PC chips for Intel processors, which made the hardware suitable for use with Windows, if desired. Right on cue, the Apple marketing trumpeted how the Mac could be triple platform for OSX, Windows, and Linux. No longer would you have to choose on the hardware side, because now one brand could do it all. Coinciding with the switch to Intel processors was a lowering of the cost, such that Macs no longer required a huge cost premium over PCs. Now PCs still have a significant edge for cost, because there are so many parts available at all price ranges that you can build a PC for next to nothing (and you will get exactly what you pay for). Conversely, you can build a PC that makes even the most expensive, but sensibly equipped Mac seem like a bargain, although if you really wanted to, you could build a MacPro Tower that will cost you around $25,000. So, I suppose this is what you call the drip method, where you slowly feed a person with information and get them to come around to your side over time instead of trying to obtain a response or reaction immediately. However, there was one aspect of the Mac propaganda that made me cringe and almost made me resist, because it is so asinine: the TV commercials. You know them well by now where a slightly portly guy dressed like a business nerd stands beside a slightly built, slightly dishevelled, but oh so cool twenty-something dude. The nerd represents PC and the dude represents Mac. I admit that they are on occasion, funny, but are usually an insult to my intelligence that PC users could be considered such dorks and sorry, but Windows is not bad as those commercials make it out to be. Ah well…so, some people wondered about the desire to switch and when I tell them that while there is some curiosity involved, the decision had more to do with the hardware, they seem surprised. I suppose I was expected to say something like OSX is an amazing operating system and is so elegant that I start puking when I see Windows. Hardly, and truly when it finally came time to part with my hard earned money, my decision was based on the fine hardware produced by Apple. It first started with wanting a notebook that could drive a 30-inch LCD monitor, which requires a dual-link DVI connection. The only readily available notebook I could find that could do this is the MacBook Pro. There may be PC notebooks that can also drive a 30-inch LCD (perhaps from Sager), but are as rare as hen’s teeth. Regular readers know that I like running two computers, one reserved for heavy-duty photo editing work and another for doing everyday tasks, such as email, internet, and updating my websites. While one computer can certainly do everything, I like the idea of one computer kept as clean, pure, and as basic as possible to maximize performance. I also don’t see the need to have a noisy and power hungry box on all day long just so I can see if some emails have come in or do some impulse, drive-by surfing of something that hits my mind at that moment. A notebook computer is handy for the everyday tasks, because hibernation is quick and so is resuming operation from hibernation. Notebooks, for the most part, are also very quiet and won’t drive me nuts like a big, noisy tower box can once the box starts to warm up (no longer an issue with my big tower). So far, so good. Big box for big edit jobs and notebook for small edits and everyday tasks. Running PC systems does the job and for the most part, meets my needs (but, we could always use more couldn’t we?) Where things took a twist is with me realizing that with the notebook system being used so often and the big tower less so, my big 30-inch Dell LCD monitor was not seeing much use. Why spend good money on a tool that’s being underutilized. Thus, my twisted logic in that since I spent good money on an item not being used often enough, I’ll spend more money and throw my whole computing system out of whack by getting a MacBook Pro. Loopy for sure, but that is the genesis of my transition to the dark side and again, it had more to do with hardware, not software. Now, if you’ve followed my Mac travels, you know that I did indeed have a MacBook Pro (MBP) on order way back at the end of August, but things seem to conspire against me getting the MBP and I waited…and waited…and waited until I could wait no more for my source to get me the MBP. As it turned out the MBP I was supposed to have gotten was grabbed by someone my source works with and in frustration, I ordered a current generation MacBook (not a Pro version). Cost was the ultimate determinant in getting the regular MB instead of the MBP and I did lose some functionality in doing so, namely no FW800 or ExpressCard port. However, I did get the ability to drive a 30-inch LCD. Unfortunately, getting this feature requires a $110 adapter, because Apple chose to go with the MiniPort standard for the new MBs and MBPs (as of this writing, the adapter is still backordered). As you’ve already read, I’ve have some minor issues with the MB and getting used to the Mac OS X way of doing things. Despite wanting to give OS X a fair trial, there are just some things that are more efficient and easier to do in Windows. These are things I do almost everyday, such as writing and updating the websites.
Sacrilege - running Windows on a Mac >> Even though Apple does not support 64-bit versions of Vista on the plain old MacBook, I was still able to install it using some tips offered by some kind soul on the net. Using some DOS commands, you can work around Apple’s dumbass and arbitrary limitations and still install all the Boot Camp drivers needed to make 64-bit versions of Vista fully functional with the MacBook. When running Vista through a clean boot, it’s clear that the superior hardware of the MacBook wipes the floor with my old Sony notebook. With a dual-boot configuration, the old Sony is starting to look a little tired now and I suspect that it won’t be too long before it gets retired to my kids or maybe to my wife. Oh yes, speaking of my better half, she recently discovered the MacBook sitting on my desk and asked about it. Oh, that’s just my new Mac; speaking as if I had always had it. She just shook her head knowing that I’ve long been a lost cause. While having Windows and OS X available on the same computer is just dandy, it’s a pain in the ass having to shut down one OS and then reboot into the other OS. No doubt many others have a similar attitude, which is why some options are available to try and make life easier with using two operating systems at the same time. I mean, if you can have your cake, why not eat it too? Thanks to some comments and tips from a reader who is big on the qualities of VMware, I looked into it and found that VMware is considered a bit more efficient than Parallels, a competing product. The cost is the same, so it came down to which one would offer the better virtual OS experience. I’m sure most of you already know the concept of having Windows available at the same time as you are using OS X. Since I decided to go with VMware, I cannot speak to what Parallels offers, but the two seem pretty similar. With VMware, I can use Vista either in its own self-contained Window on the OS X desktop, or I can run it full screen, such that you’d never know that OS X is running in the background. That is until you run the mouse cursor along the very top edge of the screen, which will bring up the OS X header bar to allow you to access the VMware tools and options. A third way, which I find intriguing, is to run a dual-screen Mac system and using one screen dedicated to OS X and the other to Windows. Think of an iMac with an external monitor hooked up, or a Mac Pro tower with dual LCDs. Or, as I’ve taken to doing, connecting a 24-inch LCD to the MB and running OS X on the larger screen while the MB’s actual screen contains Windows, full screen, as seen below.
My first trial with VMware did not leave me impressed, as the speed was absolutely brutal. The mouse dragged and everything was sluggish, like I had downgraded two or more generations of CPUs. If this was what VMware or Parallels offered, I was going to have to live with the inconvenience of dual-booting, because I would not have been able to have lived with such poor performance. However, the sluggishness was only seen the first few times I ran VMware and things improved further when I installed VMware Tools – why doesn’t this just get installed automatically? While performance is still sluggish to a degree (remember, with VMware or Parallels, the MB has to juice two demanding operating systems at the same time), there is less concern with having to always boot into Windows cleanly and now I would only have to do so when I absolutely need the superior performance of a clean boot. The nice aspect of running Vista with VMware is that I get the full speed of the mouse cursor instead of the intentional slow down when in OS X. Yes, this aspect of the Mac experience still annoys me, but after getting over the repetitive stress in the first week, my right thumb joint is no longer hurting as much. With Vista available on demand, I don’t have to live with Microsoft’s antics in not allowing simple copy and pasting from Mac Word into Mac Dreamweaver; I can just use Word in Vista and copy and paste just as I’ve always done. I can even copy and paste content from one OS to the other (including Mac Word to PC Dreamweaver) and I can access the OS X folders from Vista when VMware’s folder sharing is enabled (seen as a network folder in Vista). On a day-to-day basis, while I'm certainly no expert in any sense, I do feel comfortable with OS X and how it works and where it stores my files and apps. Do I think it's better than Windows on an overall basis? I don't think I'd go that far at this time; I would just say that the two are different with their own strengths and weaknesses. Next posting, I'll list out some of the specific apps and peripherals I'm using with the MacBook.
Canon 5D2 – Some more comments - I’ve used the 5D2 a couple more times since my last post, but again, this project has become a victim of my inability to find much time to seriously have a go with what the 5D2 can do. Using it photograph my son’s hockey games, I previously mentioned how the first frame feels sluggish compared to my memory of how fast the 40D is and my ongoing experience with the D300. Five frames per second is pretty decent performance and for most people, is probably as fast as they need, but for shooting sports and action, 5 fps is often not fast enough. I haven’t looked too much into the 5D2’s AF module to see which AF points are cross hair and which are not, but suffice to say that the AF system is not as good as the D300’s and I find myself using the centre focus point in order to ensure best AF lock-on with my moving subjects. This should come as no surprise since the D300 uses the DX version of Nikon’s best AF module, whereas the 5D2 gets a prosumer quality module – good for most people, but not so good for those wanting to do action shots all the time. Now that I’m off for a couple of weeks, I’ll have time to spend with the 5D2 and do some of the promised pixel peeping comparisons, as well as printing to see what the camera can really do. I cannot recall if I mentioned this story, but during the spring, when I was in the middle of my garage sale, I was in my regular store fairly often and met with a young fellow who worked for a local photography company. The company specializes in sports tournament photography and I was quite interested to hear him talk about how he and his fellow photographers would cover a hockey tournament, since I had recently finished off photographing my son’s team. He mentioned that the D3’s high ISO quality was not good enough for the kind of photography he would have to do. The photographers have to shoot at moderate apertures, f5.6 for example, in order to get appropriate depth of field to cover up minor focus errors that f2.8 would not be able to hide. At f5.6, even ISO 3200 would not offer enough sensitivity and while you could boost the ISO, the quality would not be appropriate for trying to sell images and prints to parents at the tournaments. I think he mentioned having to use ISO 400 in order to maintain quality, which obviously means artificial lighting. The fellow mentioned having to do a lot of preparation to string up high-powered strobes in the rafters of arenas in order to get enough light. Last year, I remember seeing two approaches to lighting during a spring break tournament that my son’s team played in. One photographer tried firing a White Lightening mono light into a large umbrella, which seemed really hokey to me. Another one just used an on-camera SB800 with his Nikon SLR. For this current Christmas time tournament that my son’s team is playing in, the photography company has clamped four or five White Lightening mono lights along the top of the protective glass. No cheesy umbrellas though, as the lights are firing upwards to bounce of the light coloured ceiling of the arena. The glass places the strobes about eight or so feet above the ice, but this is only about 1/3 of the way towards the ceiling, meaning a fair distance for the light to travel for bouncing. Whenever they popped, the burst did not seem full powered, so I was quite interested to see what kind of quality could be had with this setup. When I saw the samples, I was less than impressed. Not so much with the photography, as it seemed good, with a nice mix of close-ups of the coaches, kids and action shots. What I was not impressed with is the use of plain paper to print the 3x3 contact sheets. I could glean that the shots were sharp (he used Nikon gear after all 8^), but little else in terms of white balance and colour fidelity due to the paper used. In last year’s tournament, the photographers used photo paper printed via an Epson R2400 on location. While I was not keen on the white balance, I could at least get a sense of what the image would look like enlarged. However, I should acknowledge that photographing something as busy as a hockey tournament is a lot of hard work and requires good logistics to sort and edit the photos for presentation to the players and parents. The way I would do such coverage would likely result in me losing money ;^) December 12, 2008 - Canon 5D Mk II first impressions - After receiving the 5D2 and then charging its battery, I went into the menu system to set the parameters to suit my style of shooting, which is generally oriented towards capturing action. Having used the 40D for a little while, there were no surprises, which can be good in that it’s at least consistent, but also bad in that there have not been many improvements to what I think is a somewhat clumsy menu system. Thom Hogan complains much about Nikon’s menu system, because it has become overloaded with features and settings with successive generation of camera. Hogan wants Nikon to hire a consultant, expert in user interfaces, to wholly redesign the menu system. I feel the same about Canon’s menu system, but I probably should not harp too much on it since I’m a Nikon user familiar with the Nikon way of doing things. Generally, my typical settings for any camera, no matter the brand, are:
First use of the 5D2 was at an early morning practice for my son’s hockey team. No pixel peeping types of shots, as these were all handheld at ISO 3200. This was more an opportunity to get a feel for the camera for how fast it would respond. As might be expected of a camera offering 21 MP of resolution, it did not have the hair trigger feel of the 40D or D300. The first frame felt sluggish in the same way that my former D200 felt sluggish compared to the 40D and D300 (with its MB-D10 grip and larger EN-EL4 battery juicing it for 8 fps capability). After the first frame, the 5D2 ripped off several more frames before slowing down. I used an 8 GB Sandisk Extreme III flash card, which offers 259 shots with the 5D2 set to capture full sized RAW files. In comparison, the 12 MP D300 set for full sized RAW capture, allows 398 files on the same card. While I did not count the number of frames fired off by the 5D2 before it hit its buffer capacity, I have to say I was very impressed that the camera could move so much data. For the kinds of photography I would use a 5D2 for, I have little fear that its buffer size would be a limitation. While the 5D2 with its 5 fps would not be my first choice for shooting sports, it’s perfectly fine for most everything else. Handling The original 5D had a plastic exterior shell, which gave it a cheap feel. The lack of weather sealing only added to the impression that the original 5D was lacking its ability to survive rough handling. However, the 5D has been a favourite of countless wedding photographers and many more consumers, so impression does not equate to reality for the apparent durability of the original 5D. Nevertheless, I’m still happy to see Canon improving on the build and sealing with the 5D2. I don’t have the vertical grip for the 5D2, although my source plans to get one for sure. I’ve not looked into the specs for the 5D2’s vertical grip, but I don’t hold out much hope that Canon will have added an AF-On button. Still, it will be a welcome addition to help the grip and hold when using the 70-200 f2.8 IS lens. Lens-wise, I only have one lens to use with the 5D2 now, the aforementioned 70-200 IS lens. The wide-angle zoom I have sitting in my cabinet is EF-S and only works with the 1.6x sensor size SLRs like the 50D and Rebel series. I’ve advised my source to get the 17-40 f4 and 24-105 f4 lenses to complete his basic kit. As much as I’m one to get fast f2.8 pro zoom lenses for myself, I have to be a bit more cost-conscious when telling others what to buy J More to come after I squeeze in some pixel-peeping moments... December 10, 2008 - As some may recall, some time ago, a reader asked about official declarations from someone at Nikon or Sony admitting that Nikon sourced some (most) of its sensors from Sony. It's been no big secret that Nikon along with some other major brands have been sourcing sensors from Sony for many years, but this reader demanded "official" proof. Rob Galbraith now has an official response from Nikon that the sensor in the D3X is indeed from Sony, although, the Nikon source insists that the D3X's sensor is special to the D3X and is not the same as used in the much cheaper Sony A900. Honestly, this is about as news worthy as declaring that there's global warming (yes, it's happening, but...no, I'd better stop, before I get carried away ;^) A reader's comment about my Mac defrag question:
Another reader's comment about my Mac post:
I will likely have a few more minor nitpicks to post later on, even though I said I wouldn't bother anymore. I'm also looking into my options for installing Windows now...
December 8, 2008 - Making its way around the net blogs is a sarcastic piece of humour taking snips from a movie about Hitler and then adding in custom subtitles, resulting in a delicious rant against Nikon and the D3X pricing. As tasteless as it will seem to some, because of the use of Hitler, I have to say, the comments are bang-on for what many people think about Nikon. It encapsulates several beefs Nikon users have had against Nikon that go back further than the D3X. Does it mean that the comments are accurate? Not necessarily, because while we can speculate about how Nikon engineered the D3X, we just don't know and Nikon, like most other Japanese companies, is quite secretive about its R&D. However, I think the other beefs, such as the lack of new or upgraded lenses is legit. Do I really have to mention the 80-400 VR lens that desperately seeks an AF-S motor and improvements to its optical formula so that 400mm performance doesn't go soft like a man that just ran out of Viagra? Do we really have to discuss the fast 24 and 35 prime lenses - yes, still relevant even in this day of ISO 25,000. And, perhaps the crown jewel and Holy Grail, because it's so much like a myth, the 85mm f1.4 AF-S (with VR, PLEASE!) Okay, enough ranting about Nikon. Some small but meaningful (and at times very irksome) differences between Mac and PC, or OS X (and its apps) and Windows (and its apps): Resizing windows Maximizing windows, or not, as the case may be For apps like iTunes, it’s not a big deal, but for apps like Photoshop or Dreamweaver, I find it annoying when using the MacBook on the road, to not have the app take up the entire desktop when I click on the green button. There’s apparently a history with the Mac OS to have this way of zooming in and out of a window and it’s possible that it came about to condition users about the benefits of multitasking and being able to see multiple windows on the desktop when in a specific application. And, you know, I think I can understand the benefits of this way of handling multiple windows in a desktop environment where you can have plenty of screen real estate available, but I find that it really blows in a laptop environment were you “need” the app to be full sized. The MacBook only offers 1280x800 resolution and with my webpages being 1000 pixels wide, I cannot see the whole page within Dreamweaver, because Dreamweaver needs a minimum amount of space for the right side palette that provides access to all the pages in your website. I couldn’t see the whole page when using my same resolution Sony laptop either, but it was more efficient using the maximized application in Windows than OSX, because if I happen to click on a part of the background not taken over by Dreamweaver, the app minimizes itself, wasting time having to bring it back up again. Having the window maximized on a smallish screen also means less distraction and being able to concentrate on the task at hand. It would be nice to be able to set how the green button actually maximizes and minimizes, as there’s no consistency with apps behaving differently. Some apps maximize the way you expect while others don’t. Mouse acceleration I find it annoying to have the mouse slow down as I slow my hand/wrist movement to hit a small or fine point to click on. Mouse acceleration on the PC is more constant and I suppose after two decades of use, I’m quite used to it and able to be as precise as I need to be without needing the OS to be so “helpful.” I find myself suffering from a bit of repetitive stress syndrome now, because of the Mac mouse acceleration. I try and use the Wacom Bamboo tablet as much as I can, because it does not seem to suffer from the Mac de-acceleration. I have no doubt that a great many Mac users would have the opposite experience and find the PC mouse acceleration to be bothersome, but why can’t we choose how the mouse accelerates? Under Windows, I can adjust the speed and sensitivity, as well as choose to make the mouse pointer more accurate in tracking. This slows down the mouse, but not so bad like the Mac. Keyboard I have to train myself to stop hitting Control and to hit the Start key for doing simple and very common keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl-A, Ctrl C, Ctrl X, Ctrl V and for Dreamweaver users Ctrl M to add a new table row, which I do a lot of for NikonLinks. There's also no Delete key on the Mac keyboard, not that this matters too much to me right now, as I'm using the external PC kyeboard most of the time. Firefox If you have more bookmarks than can fit in the visible toolbar, a little double arrow “>>” button indicates to click for the overflow list that will appear on the right side of the Firefox window. On a PC, you can show this overflow list and continue to scroll down the current page you’re viewing. It’s a very small thing for sure, but it’s an efficient way of checking out a page for new content and then be able to click on the next page in the overflow list. With the Mac Firefox, the overflow list disappears as soon as you start scrolling down the current page. The Mac Fire fox also does not show the little website graphic icons like the Windows Firefox does. Seeing those little icons makes it visually easy to see which site is which, especially since I truncate the website’s titles to fit as many websites as I can in the bookmarks toolbar. Photoshop name truncation The truncated names happen when the file name, including the extension (the “.jpg” at the end of a file name) is over 31 characters long. This is a legacy issue with Mac OS 9 (remember when PCs had an eight character long file name limitation) and while there is an option in Photoshop’s Save for Web to turn off the legacy compatibility, this did not work for me. First off, I found that Photoshop CS3 is already defaulted to turning off OS 9 compatibility and trying various combinations of checking and un-checking Unix and Windows compatibility did not resolve the file name truncation. Obviously, I never had this issue with Photoshop on the PC and it’s a bummer, because it means less flexibility with naming the images that people send to me for posting on my websites. I find it very odd that on the surface, Photoshop has been set correctly, but still gives me truncated file names. While I did find reference to administrator account issues, there’s only one account on the MacBook, which is obviously me. Microsoft Outlook to Entourage There are third party scripts and workarounds to this transferring business (for example, install Mozilla Thunderbird email and then export Outlook files to Thunderbird, then export the Thunderbird files to Mac MBOX format, which is compatible with Entourage, then finally import to Entourage), but it seems awfully lame to me that two apps from the same damn company, that look and act so much alike, cannot communicate with each other. I suppose I could just email myself my most critical messages from the PC to the Mac, but this just seems too dumbass. Microsoft Word for Mac and Dreamweaver CS3 I have to save the Word doc as an HTM file then open in Dreamweaver and the copy and paste. Just one problem, whenever you save a Word doc as an HTM, Word injects a ton of useless code into the file that requires cleaning up before they're of any use in a clean Dreamweaver-edited webpage. For that matter, Dreamweaver performance blows on the MacBook. I find that when I’m working with certain Dreamweaver files, the older and slower PC actually runs much smoother and quicker than the MacBook. The web galleries I create and update regularly seem to hit the MacBook in such a way as to make it seem like the processors are dealing with some huge files. The mouse cursor drags brutally and the pages scroll glacially. Overall performance on regular pages is sluggish, as it takes too long for the cursor to appear on a point on the page and simple bolding of a text takes too long. Not good! Handbrake – not a Mac irk, but a PC one
actually Don’t bother me with the legalities of decrypting and copying copyright material, because I’m ripping my DVDs for the purpose of being able to watch them on my iPod Touch. These are all small little things that can add up to a bigger issue, depending on how you use the computer. Those are some of the small negatives, but what about the pluses? My only point of comparison is to a cheap Sony notebook with a 1.5 GHz Core2Duo processor, 3 GB of RAM and a 160 GB drive running at 5400 RPM. It runs 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium. It’s loaded for bear with just about all the same apps as I have loaded on my big desktop rig plus a few more that I don’t have installed on the desktop. As you might imagine, it’s not a powerhouse and it wheezes and whines when I ask it to do some chores, but it plugs away when I have various apps running at the same time, such as a few from Adobe CS3, as well as Outlook, Word and Firefox. Despite the specific Dreamweaver example, as expected, the MacBook with a 2.4 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM and a 320 GB 5400 RPM hard drive runs more spritely and smoothly doing most of the same tasks. The difficulty here is in trying to figure out how much of the difference is the hardware and how much is the OS. I suppose I could find out by partitioning the hard drive and installing a copy of Windows using BootCamp. I may do so ultimately, but I wanted a clean break from Windows and to give Mac and OS X their proper due consideration. There is indeed a sense that the OS X runs more efficiently with less bloat in general usage. For example, copying files from an external hard drive definitely feels quicker and more immediate compared to Windows sometimes having to think about the task first before actually doing it. As soon as you highlight and drag the folders or files to the destination, OS X just does it, whereas Vista seems to count up the files to see how big the job is and then proceeds to copy the files. As mentioned in a previous post, the speed in which OS X goes to sleep and wakes up is excellent. OS X is considered to be more stable than Windows, but too early for me to tell since other than speed, the Sony did the job too. There are going to be a host of other subtle differences here and there with the way OS X does things compared to Windows, but I’m not going to continue listing or commenting about them. Globally, as in moving from PC to Mac, it has been pretty straightforward. Much as it may chagrin some Mac users, there’s a lot more commonality than there are differences. The underlying aspects of using a computer, such as creating and copying new files, organizing those files into specific folders, connecting and using peripheral devices – these are the same for either platform. The Finder in Mac is more or less the same as My Computer in Windows. Mac Word is cosmetically different, but I can swap the docs back and forth between PC Word without worrying about compatibility. I can also copy over non-platform specific files from a hard drive formatted via Windows NTSF. Where the differences have popped up, have been with small, specific things that are not deal breakers. However, keep in mind that these are just first thoughts from a couple of weeks of using the MacBook. It will be several months of daily use before I can determine if the transition to Mac can be considered a success and whether I can eventually say goodbye to the PC and Windows for personal use. I suppose it does seem a bit silly to go through all this just to try out the Mac platform. It’s not as if there was any specific business reason to do it, as I was just in the market for a laptop upgrade and decided to satisfy my curiosity about what Mac is about. Every time there is a major overhaul of Windows to a new version, I still have to go through a similar process. Moving from XP to Vista was almost as much of a transition and adjustment as going from Windows to OS X. I did a big upgrade with the software, I trawled the net for the latest drivers, I spent a lot of time installing my most used apps, etc. However, Windows has been consistent for a decade, so many of the little things you learned way back from Windows 95 are still applicable today. I do like the MacBook hardware wise (except for the lack of useful ports) and software wise, I do find OS X to be a nice operating system with some advantages over Windows. Although I do have to say that I’m disappointed that my getting a Mac did not bring about world peace or resolve the global warming issue (Al Gore sits on the Apple board, after all). I don’t think I’ve instantly become a better photographer or writer, so needless to say, it did not meet the expectations that I was led to believe would occur (yes, I’m being sarcastic). I’ll see how things go, but one thing I wonder about is the need for tools to defrag the hard drive and keep the Mac in tip top shape. The way PCs seem to deteriorate over time, necessitating a complete reinstall of the OS and apps after a few years is one potentially big benefit of being a Mac user. I do use some utility apps to do what I can to keep my PCs in some semblance of shape, but I’m not sure if I should be looking for similar apps for the Mac. Related to this is virus protection. Virus protection is one of those things that you just cannot ignore with PCs, although, it seems to be less of a concern right now if you run 64-bit versions of Vista. While there is almost nothing affecting the Mac world, that does not mean that one shouldn’t practice some safe computing for the benefit of all the PC users out there. Installing an anti-virus app on a Mac has less to do with any actual threat to the Mac then it is about ensuring that you do not send infected files to a PC user that may not have as robust an anti-virus system as he or she should. For this reason, I installed Intego’s VirusBarrier X5, which while not universally acclaimed for previous versions, has gotten very good reviews for the current X5 version. The key thing about anti-virus software is one, protection (well, duh!), and two, performance, which is where the big names such as Norton and McAfee are widely regarded as pig-like apps that slow down a system’s performance. On the PC side, I use Kaspersky, which is highly regarded for protection and performance. On my big PC, which is not often connected to the net, I can turn Kaspersky off completely. That’s about it for now. Perhaps another report will come with more experiences using photo editing applications. December 5, 2008 - Sorry for the lack of posts, just so darn busy these days with family and work. The D3X pricing is a pretty hot topic these days in the photographic world with most (yours truly guilty) blasting Nikon for the high price in these lousy, recessionary times, while a few, fairly well known Nikon users have tried to take a step back and inject some gravitas on the debate. The comments are along the lines of, if you need it and you can make money with it, the price is no longer an issue; Nikon's gotta recoup its R&D cost; it's a free market economy and Nikon can set whatever price it wants. I completely agree with the business argument: if you or your clients have a need for what the D3X can offer then the cost is less an issue, because you should be able to recover the costs with your billings. I also agree with the free market economy argument; as much as I abhor the price, Nikon is free to price the D3X at whatever price it feels is appropriate bearing in mind all the competitive and other economic factors at play. I'm not so sure about the recovery of costs though, as the D3X seems, as others have pointed out, is a D3 with the 12 MP sensor and support circuits and boards swapped out for a 24 MP sensor and associated support circuits and boards. If we accept that a $5,000 D3 represents fair value for a state of the art, high performance SLR, then what we have is a $3,000 premium for that extra 12 MP of resolution. While we do not know that Nikon is using the same Sony sensor as in the Sony A900, it seems like a pretty logical leap of faith that if not exactly the same, the sensor could be closely related. Whatever customization that Nikon has done to the sensor, is it worth $3,000 more? For me, this is the key question because the Sony A900 is around $3,000 for a similar 24 MP sensor that also happens to come with a well built SLR wrapped around it. For slightly less resolution, there is also the Canon 5D2. The other reason why I don't buy the recouping of costs is that the other components that make up the D3X have already been developed and amortized to a degree with the D3. Heck, the AF module cost is spread out even more with its use in the D300 and D700. As Thom Hogan has pointed out, the D3X is going to have to deliver the moon to justify the stratospheric price, which could lead to some disappointment if the D3X does not - not that I've even looked at any samples thus far. There's not a lot of interest in looking at the output of something that I have no hope of affording. Slowly getting myself immersed in the Mac way of doing things. I'm now using it to update the websites, but email is still being read and responded to on the PC. Tried the email app that comes with OS X, but not my cup of tea for functionality (too little). Will wait until I get my Office 2008 for Mac and try Entourage as my email app. More comments to come about some advantages, as well as some irks. December 1, 2008 - Reader's comment:
We'll see how long I can hold out for... The D3X is upon us, finally! No real surprise with it offering 24 MP and a realistic upper limit to ISO 1600, even though higher settings are available. It just points to the reality that you need large pixels to sustain superb high ISO quality, although at this time, the Canon 5D2 does seem to be offering decent high ISO while also offering high resolution (just going by what's hinted at, not based on any images I've taken a gander at). As I've mentioned previously, a high resolution SLR like the D3X is going to be one where you'll want that tripod handy in order to maximize the quality provided by the sensor at the lowest ISO settings. I mean, why bother spending all that money (USD $8,000!!!)for a D3X only to handhold the camera for situations that really call for a D3 or D700. It's obviously no stretch to think of the D3X being right at home in a studio. Not much more to say from me, because as also mentioned before, I'm not in the market for the D3X and will be doing nightly prayers to the photographic gods that Nikon has a D700-like version in the works. I will say/ask this though, what the f@#$ is Nikon thinking to price it at USD $8,000? Come on now, we understand that the D3X is a true pro SLR and that it should command a premium over the Sony A900 and Canon 5D2, but a $5,000 premium? Jeepers-creepers, didn't anyone tell Nikon that we're in a world-wide recession and that pricing a D3X at $8,000 is, how do I put it, dumbass and bone-headed! The earlier rumours of USD $6,500 was what I figured would be an appropriate price point. Enough to distinguish it from the other high resolution cameras and yet still come in significantly under the flagship Canon 1Ds3. This is not to say that a D3X is not unwelcome, but it's anticlimatic now tha it's merely the number three high resolution SLR introduced in 2008. $8k can buy a basic, but still decent Canon kit based on the 5D2... So, what has life been like thus far with the new MacBook? It took me a while before I could finally start configuring it, but here are some first thoughts and impressions: Ergonomics The keys are backlit, which is nice when working in dimly lit settings. I’ve not had much time using the keyboard for typing, but it certainly is superior to the keyboard on my cheap Sony notebook. When I posted my comments about the Sony last year, I mentioned that it had a passing resemblance to the keys of the then MacBooks, but actual usage of the Sony keyboard annoys me for the lack of tactile quality. When you tend to type as much as I do, the feel and quality of a keyboard is important so that you can type as efficiently and accurately as possible. Ultimately, an ergonomic keyboard is the best, but that ain’t gonna happen on a notebook anytime soon. Next best thing is to connect an external, ergonomic keyboard, which is what I've done, marrying a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse with the MacBook. I'm running the MacBook in "clamshell" mode, which is closing the LCD lid and letting the MacBook drive an external LCD monitor. At the moment, I'm using a 24-inch Acer LCD, as the Dual-Link DVI adapter is backordered, so I cannot drive the Dell 30-inch LCD yet. I/O Ports Maybe it’s all about style and aesthetics and Jobs’ fanatical devotion to keeping things clean and elegant, which the MacBook is, but really, two lousy USB ports? Sorry, but this is one where functionality trumps style and elegance and it would be really nice to not have to get an outboard hub just so I can use a mouse, printer, and external hard drive at the same time. However, if Apple really insists that I should only live with two USB ports, they could have at least thrown in a Firewire port, even if it’s only the older and slower FW400 port. This is just grating that PC notebooks costing hundreds less, come with all manner of ports for great flexibility. Sleep and Wakeup If the minimal offering of ports is dumbass, the speed at which the MacBook goes to sleep and then wakes up is brilliant. The speed just destroys the Sony, which is glacial and takes a few minutes to count sheep before finally nodding off. However, all is not quite peaches and cream with the sleep mode when using an external monitor. After waking up, I sometimes get the hashies reminiscent of 1970s TV when you switched to a dead channel. Seems the MacBook can't figure out whether it should be outputting to the external LCD or not and it requires disconnecting the MiniPort cable and then inserting back in before it finally settles down. Not sure if this is merely a quirk with the Acer LCD or if it's the MacBook. Silence is "almost" golden The only exception to this golden silence is the Super Drive. When the MacBook wakes up or whenever the Super Drive is used, you will very definitely hear that clunker check itself. Usage Some aspects are Vista-like, or perhaps it might be more accurate for me to say that some parts of Vista are like OS X. I did have a minor irritation with using a mouse with the MacBook. During initial use, I found the mouse to lose responsiveness from time to time and it seemed that every time I moved the mouse’s cursor to an icon, the cursor slowed considerably compared to being run over the blank desktop. After I did the first set of software updates, I noticed one of them was for the track pad and once the MacBook rebooted, the mouse problems largely disappeared. I still detect a slight slowing down near the icons, but it’s not as bad as it first was. As for the new, much larger trackpad sans physical button, well, it seems okay, but since I much prefer using a real mouse, my knickers aren't in a knot, as some other Mac users have declared them to be due to the way the new trackpad operates compared to the old one. Speaking of software updates, I have to chuckle at the idea that Macs can do things continuously and hardly ever need a reboot. I’ve done two software updates for OS X and both times required a reboot. Also, on both occasions, the update seemed to take over the computer and I couldn’t do anything until the reboot occurred. With Windows, software updates are also the norm, but for most of them, the updates occur in the background, allowing you to continue working on other things. Many of the updates also require a reboot, but Vista gives you the option to postpone the reboot and continue working if necessary, whereas OS X does not. Now, I don’t know if this is a regular thing with OS X, or only for certain types of updates, but the short of it is that the lack of need to reboot a Mac seems more mythical than reality. I generally don’t reboot my Sony unless I have to for a software update, otherwise, I hibernate it when I’m not using it. I think, in the year that I’ve had it, it may have locked up twice, which required removing the battery and AC power to force a reboot. And, unlike others, I'm more of the mind that instability, lockups and BSDs are more the result of poorly written drivers or apps than the OS. Installing software and detection of peripherals has been smooth and problem-free with the MacBook. I'm still getting used to where OS X stores my files and how to access them. It really does not look or feel that much different than Vista, but there are little subtle things to get used to - after two decades of using PCs, you might forgive me for being a bit slow on the Mac uptake 8^) This gets to the heart of the matter, after using Windows as an OS since the heady days of the "Start Me Up" Windows 95, I'm familiar with how the folders and files are stored. I can make my way around Windows quite efficiently and can tailor it for my relatively simple needs. It will take some time before I feel comfortable with OS X to have it feel second nature. However, I've already dispensed with some of the fluff items in the Dock, such as Garage Band, iPhoto, iMovie, iChat, and iCal. I suppose there's some irony in me getting rid of some of the vaunted features of OS X that Apple has been pushing as making the computing experience more user friendly, but while I am groping my way in the dark in this early going with the Mac OS, I don't think I'm the kind of consumer-oriented computer user that Apple would expect to use its fluff apps 8^) November 28, 2008 - Some have suggested that I’m being a bit deluded with my suggestion that I could soon be near the exit ramp after some years of travelling that circular road called the Upgrade Route. My comments came as the rumour mill heats up once more about an imminent Nikon release scheduled for December 1. Based on some intrepid searches on the Nikon USA website, the release is the 24 MP D3X – images of the D3X were found and then promptly removed from the Nikon USA website after the news spread over the internet. My thought is that if the D3X begats a D800 or D900 (I’d bet on D800, as D900 would seem a little too close to the Sony A900 designation), just as the D3 begat the D700, I’d be mightily happy with a D700, D800, and the D300 in tow. It’s no stretch now to see that serious photography will now be FX and that DX (which no one expects to go away anytime soon) will be the entry to mid level cameras offered by the brands that decide to offer FX (so far only Canon, Nikon and Sony with no signs that Pentax, Olympus and Panasonic will follow suit). However, at this stage, I see don’t see any need to dump off a perfectly good DX SLR like the D300 just because the FX train is blowing off steam as it gathers momentum. Why do I think I will get off that evil Upgrade Route 666, seeing as I’ve been as greedy and jealous as the next guy in coveting my neighbour’s high resolution Canons, Sonys and medium format systems (for some reason, I seem to be on some religious kick with this post)? The medium format systems are the stuff of dreams given their astronomical prices. In today’s economic climate, one could probably use what a good digital Hasselblad system costs, towards a down payment on a decent house. Although the Canon 1Ds Mk III is significantly cheaper than digital medium format, at $8,000, it’s also not within reason for me. The Sony A900 and Canon 5D2 changed the game, by offering high resolution at prices that are actually within reason. For what high-end 35mm film SLRs used to cost, we can now purchase digital SLRs that encroach upon the quality once reserved for medium format film. Remember about 10 years ago, the F5 and Canon 1V HS retailed for over $3,000. Why does 24 MP seem like the end game? At 4000x6000 pixels and using the traditional default printing resolution of 300 dpi, a 13x20 inch print can be produced without interpolation. If we lower the printing resolution down to 240 dpi (a popular Epson compatible resolution), we can produce a 16x25 inch print without interpolation. For me, with my Epson 4800 printer, 24 MP is very nearly the ideal resolution to maximize the 16x20 inch print size that I can output. And, if I had to settle for the 5D2’s slightly lower 21 MP, there would be no complaints from me. Thus, from a practical standpoint, the D3X, 5D2 or A900 would satisfy me for the largest prints that I would feel a need to produce. Maybe if I owned a 24-inch capable printer, I’d quibble for more native resolution, but my experience with modest interpolation with digital files would suggest that it will be a walk in the park for any of the high resolution SLRs to output a 24-inch wide print. Remember that back in the day of 6 MP SLRs, it was not too hard to push the file size up to produce a 12x18 inch print and today, it’s easy enough to push 12 MP to 16x20, as I’ve done a few times. However, large print size is not the end all, be all. There’s only so much wall space available and for most people, a 24-inch wide print is “big” let alone a 40-inch wide monster. Also, these days, I seem to be more interested in albums than printing big, and for such needs, the big 4800 is already overkill with a 2880 being quite fine – I’d still go for a 3800 though, because you never know when you want that 16x20 and the cheaper ink cartridges (on a per ml basis) seals the deal. With a D800 expected to be of the same design as the D700, why bother with additional cameras? With just idle speculation about what Canon has done with the 5D2 to achieve super high ISO capabilities, we only have test files from the A900 to review and while it may be stellar at low ISO, it’s clear that the A900 is not a high ISO champ. But, then I would not be buying a D800 (or 5D2 or A900) to be an everyday handheld, low light camera. I’d be buying them for the intention of using on a tripod for subjects that I have every intention of printing larger than normal. The low light, family snapshot, action and all around everyday camera would be the D700 where pushing to ISO 6400 would not require digital editing contortions or voodoo conversions to B&W just make them passable for printing. Hey, I love my family, but unless it’s for a formal group portrait, there’s no need to be blowing 24 MP of resolution for snapshots that will end up in an 8x10 sized album. The D300 still serves a purpose when mated to the 18-200 lens for travel duty and shooting sports with the 70-200. While a D700 offers more high ISO capabilities, it comes at the cost of the 1.5x crop factor, which means buying a longer lens to compensate. I’d love a D700 and 200-400 combo, but that’s a $10,000 combo that’s not going to happen without serious harm to my health from a spiteful wife:
The expectation that the D800 will share the same battery pack and accessories as the D700/D300 makes it a seamless addition. However, a D800 is speculation, not a wild one, but still a dream and likely at least another year away from reality. Remember those comments about my camera still takes a fine a picture today as it did yesterday, when it was the latest and greatest. Well, there seems to be a maturation of attitude and understanding that while it may be true that yesterday’s camera still takes as good a picture as it did yesterday, there’s no doubt that today’s camera are superior and tomorrow’s will be better yet. I certainly recognize that if Nikon did produce a D800 in say 2010, that the D700 would be about half way through its life cycle and that the D300 would likely already be replaced. While it’s trite enough to say that my D300 still produces just as good an image today as it did yesterday, who knows what will come from Nikon in the form of a D400. However, given what Canon did with the 50D, it does seem like the limits of current technology is being reached. FX still has leeway to offer more resolution, but I don’t think that leeway is all that great either. My thinking is that something revolutionary has to happen to spur the next great cycle of photographic innovation and I don’t mean video either. And, returning to that cliché of my old camera takes as good a picture today as it did when it was new, well; I think practical experience will quickly toss those comments down the toilet, just like I use to do after a night of drinking...oops, a bit too much information about my university days. My D100 may still take as good a picture today as it did in 2002 when I bought it new, but it just does not compare at all to the experience of using a far more capable camera like the D300, never mind the improvements in image quality. It just staggers me that the D100 used to cost as much as a D700. Granted that the D100 to D300 encompasses five years of progress and two generations, but even the D2X to the D3 was a huge improvement in only one generational upgrade. I still love holding my D2X, as it is the finest built camera I’ve ever had the pleasure of using and at its lowest ISO, it produced some fine photos, but ask me which camera gets called on for just about everything I photograph today and I would only be able to respond that it’s the D300. If I had a D700, it would be the default choice, but only because I’d be able to slap on a prime lens and be able to shoot almost in the dark with it. Nothing that I write here is set in stone. Digital, while maturing, is still progressing, but for those of us without professional aspirations and/or obligations, the regular 2 year upgrade cycle eventually wears thin and the journey just has to stop, even if it’s just a temporary respite. Famous last words for sure, because I seem to recall that I said as much when I bought the D2X and D200 J However, what has changed from 2006 to now is that I’ve stopped pretending to be a wedding photographer wannabe. It changes the equipment buying bias that was heavily oriented towards weddings. With no pretence anymore, I can freely admit that anything I buy these days is strictly to gratify myself, but then, I don’t think that was ever not the case ;^) November 25, 2008 - Christmas has arrived early, as I returned home to find two boxes waiting for me outside my home office. One box contained my new MacBook and I also received my two dye transfer prints made by noted dye transfer printing expect, Ctein. This was a print sale via the TOP blog site and true to his word, Ctein delivered before Christmas. I will of course post comments later on with the MacBook experience to be a running, long-term commentary of my foray to the dark side with Darth Jobs. As of this writing, I've not even opened up the box containing my new prints due to four little and not so little rugrats consuming all my time these days. Those of you with a multitude of kids like me know what I'm talking about. Those of that don't, consider yourselves blissfully ignorant and run screaming from the prospects of having rugrats of your own...just kidding. Kids are great...when they don't make me feel like selling them on eBay. How did I end up with four kids? Let's just say my wife seems to have inherited genes that made her as fertile as the Saskatchewan prairies. I'm afraid to even touch her, lest another baby pop out (remember the Catholic family from Monty Python's the Meaning of Life) and I'm getting too old to be dealing with messy diapers. Anyway, some very quick comments on the new aluminum MacBook - slick, very nicely and solidly built, and thinner than I expected it to be. While a fairly compact notebook, the MacBook is a bit heftier than I thought it would feel, which on the one hand makes it heavier to tote, but on the other hand, makes me feel good about toting it around without any ill effects inside a shoulder bag. Not enough time with OS X to post any comments at this time. November 24, 2008 - Some more signs of the financial hard times afflicting the camera makers:
Some good news, or rather, the possible silver lining in these dark financial clouds (sourced from PMA):
Thus, if a camera maker can hang in there and survive these tumultuous times, then there is light at the end of the tunnel for a few more years of growth in the SLR market. But, then, what do you to continue to sustain growth and generate sales after you hit the peak? Is the SLR market doomed for contraction like the digicam market, once it hits market saturation? Thinking hypothetically, let's say Nikon does produce that 24 MP D3X and let's disregard, for the time being, all the rumours of that mythical, modular MX system. After the D3X comes out and if Nikon follows on the D3/D700 success and produces a D800 or D900 that puts that expected 24 MP chip in a D700 body, how much more will photographers really need? Looking at my own desires, I cannot afford a D3X, but I sure as hell would try to afford a D900, just as I'd like to try and afford a D700. Having three SLRs offering different features and benefits would satisfy me to the point where I would likely stop worrying or wondering what's going to come next. A D300 with the 18-200 lens offers a very capable travel kit. A D700 offers the high ISO quality for low light shooting, while a D900 offers the high resolution camera for handling landscapes and group photos. Horses for courses, as the Brits like to say. Sooner or later (probably sooner) I'm going to hit my own, personal market saturation wherein I just will not desire to continue wanting to own the latest and greatest every two or three years. There will be a point where the cameras offer all that I desire and it would take a revolutionary jump in technology to warrant another major purchase. Are we going to be in store for a major technological change within the next few years? Now, I'm not saying that all that major purchases would end, just that the focus would be on other things besides SLRs, like a 300mm f2.8 VR lens. Hmm...a D700 and MB-D10, or a 300mm f2.8...hmm... November 21, 2008 - If you've been reading this website for a few years, you recall the image below that I used in some printer and paper tests/articles/reviews:
It's a photo, by my friend Rob Greer, of the iconic Yosemite National Park, made famous oh so many years ago by Ansel Adams. I'm sure that I have previously mentioned that Rob's photo was selected to be in a Nikon calendar, but that was a coon's age ago. Well, finally, Rob received the good news that indeed, his photo will be used in the 2009 Nikon Photo Contest International calendar for the month of April. Well done Rob, as I wallow in my own self-pity that my photos entered into the contest did not merit such honors (I just wanted all the expensive gear that gets awarded the to the winners ;^)
If you look at the stable of publications offered by the publisher, you will see a number of titles that would be nowhere near the usual photography magazines, such as Pop Photo, Shutterbug, or Amateur Photographer. In a typical magazine stand, photography magazines tend to be lumped together with “male” subjects like computers, technology, and audio. Arts and crafts tend to be lumped in with the “female” subjects like fashion, glamour, and weddings. However, Life Images is not an arts and crafts magazine, despite the publisher’s history and in reviewing the two issues, my thought is that it belongs on the same shelf as the highly regarded fine art magazine, Lenswork. It’s not say that the two magazines are the same, as Lenswork has a very particular niche, which is fine art, B&W photography presented in a small portfolio of images. Lenswork does not publish one offs and each issue only presents three or four portfolios. In looking at the portfolios published in Lenswork, while there certainly stronger images mixed in with some weaker ones, the idea is that the portfolio is a body of work that is greater than any one photo, no matter how brilliant that one photo may be. Life Images is more freewheeling in that most of the photos are indeed one offs, but there are also some small portfolios presented too. The images can be color or B&W, film or digital, straight or manipulated, as Life Images does not define itself by any particular genre or philosophy, but it does have its own theme, just as Lenswork has a theme about portfolio-based presentation. Life Images is about presenting a photograph with writings from the photographer. The writings can be brief or lengthy, poetic or freestyle, first person or third person, etc. The editors believe that marrying images with text presents a more powerful and personal message than just the images alone. I agree. In reviewing the images, I may come across some that I think are weak, or ones that I don’t quite understand what the message is, but then the little snippet of writing helps to clarify. The very personal messages leave bare the photographer. In the best examples, you can sense the nakedness and vulnerability of the photographers and the trust given to the viewer to understand and emphasize with them. The Life Images magazines are standard sized publications, but thicker than normal due in part to the large number of images in each issue, as well as the thick paper used in production. It’s not a glossy magazine in the vein of Vogue or Cosmopolitan…er…let me try that again…it’s not a glossy magazine in the vein of PC Magazine or Shutterbug 8^) The paper used is matte, which takes the sheen and shine out of the photos compared to the glossy mags. It’s like comparing a matte print made from Kodak Portra NC film versus a glossy print from Fuji Superia. The single-issue cost is $15 in both the US and Canada. The magazine is published quarterly and the subscription price is USD $60 for the USA and USD $67 for Canada, with both prices including the S&H. Essentially, there’s no discount in subscribing for a year from the newsstand price, but a subscription does guarantee that you’ll get an issue. I suspect that if you wanted to buy an issue from a store, it would have to be from a very well stocked, major bookstore chain. While the cost is more per issue than mass-market magazines, I do think the cost is actually reasonable given the significantly high content to ad ratio. There is minimal advertising in Life Images and what little there is comes from the publisher and not from third parties. In this regard, Life Images is like Lenswork, which also has no third party advertising, but plenty of its own for prints, extended DVD issues, and books written by the Lenswork editor. I recommend that you check Life Images out the next time you’re at the local Chapters or Barnes and Noble; however, do set aside a good amount of time, because each issue is packed and it’s best enjoyed in quiet moments so that you drink in the photographs and their accompanying text. Speaking of Lenswork magazine, I just started reading and reviewing the latest issue #79. This issue had a significant announcement by the editors in that the magazine will once again offer Special Editions of portfolios from the ranks of its published photographers. Ten years ago, Lenswork started to offer Special Editions of gelatine silver prints produced in the dark room for very reasonable prices. Four years ago, the materials that allowed Lenswork to produce those darkroom based prints essentially disappeared, which ended the Special Editions offerings. Today, printer and paper technology have allowed Lenswork to produce the same, if not better, quality as those old Special Editions for even better prices. The introductory essay in issue #79 describes how Brooks Jensen, the editor, tested several of the newest Baryta-based papers with Epson K3 printers and found a Harmon paper (Harmon Glossy FB AL) that blew him away with the quality of the printed image. Two Special Edition folios are offered in issue #79, one of which I have placed an order for. Folios are a collection of loose prints instead of a book format and while they can be matted and framed for display, the intention of the loose prints to handle them and look at the photograph directly, kinda like a contact print. The Special Edition I ordered is of landscapes from the US Southwest by Mitch Dobrowner. This folio is comprised of 10 prints for USD $95, which is imminently affordable for most photographers and allows one to build a nice collection of photographs. Hey, I’d like to collect and display fine art photos as much as the next person, but I ain’t got the kind of scratch needed to buy a few Ansel Adams or Edward Westons to hang on my wall. And, if I did, I’m not so sure I’d want to display them so much as lock them away in a bank vault, which defeats the purpose of photography – now, I sound like one of those Japanese Leica collectors who bubble wrap collectible Leicas and never dare use them for their intended purpose.
Slowly, but surely, I’m getting my hands on some fine photographs for my own nearly non-existent collection. I have a Brooks Jensen print I bought a few years ago and I have two Ctein dye transfer prints coming, hopefully by the end of the year. I really appreciate the philosophy of Brooks Jensen to “democratize” photography and eschewing the notion that fine art photography has to be printed huge and priced huge, so that only the rich can afford them. November 18, 2008 - In Vancouver, we have a business writer, David Baines, who writes for the local daily, the Vancouver Sun. In his twice-weekly columns, Baines likes to rake the subjects of his articles over the hot coals. With his direct and acerbic writing style, he takes no prisoners should you be unlucky enough to be within his crosshairs. Most of the time, his subjects are from within the business community, be they accountants, lawyers, stockbrokers and promoters amongst others. He's always an entertaining read, but his column from last weekend picqued my curiosity, as it had something to do with photography, especially when the word giclee (ghee-clay) is mentioned several times in the article. As far as I know, giclee is just a fancy French-based word (not an actual French word) that brings about artsy-fartsy connotations to describe the now standard and normal output of a photo-quality inkjet printer. Traditionally associated with fine art prints, but nowadays, I don't think anyone who wants to be taken seriously uses the word to describe their inkjet prints; just too pretentious. In the article, giclee is used to reference a particular way of prining with an inkjet printer and here there is a hint of fraud on the part of a local artist. Intriguing! I was pretty excited last week when I received my new 13x12 inch, 40-page photo book created and printed using the online Blurb service. As regular readers may recall, this is the first time I’ve used an outside service to print any of my photos since I abandoned film a few years back.
Taking a gander at the overall book first before delving inside, I noticed that the cover’s binding can accommodate a much larger book than 40 pages. I’d say that the cover could easily handle a book with double the number of pages or same number of pages, but using thicker and better quality paper. The larger size made for a binding that did not fit very well with the number of pages I chose, as seen below:
I specifically chose 40 pages to keep costs down for this first attempt at creating a book externally instead of doing it myself with a Unibind kit. Now that I know better, if I decide to order another book from Blurb, I’ll make sure to go with more pages (that’s a big if though). However, with that criticism aside, I have to say I’m a lot more confident about the long-term durability of the Blurb binding than I am about the Unibind process, especially when I use heavier papers in the Unibind covers. Unlike the Unibind process, which is to glue your photo sheets directly in the spine of the cover, the Blurb process uses a traditional book binding process, which includes internal wraparound binding sheets that are glued to the insides of the covers. The image above shows you what I’m trying to describe better than my words. I ordered the photo cover option, which allows me to show off two of my photos on the front and back covers. In a nice touch that will make it easy to find on a bookshelf, the spine is also printed with the book’s title and my name. I do have a quibble with the covers though, as the way Blurb prints the cover photos is not the way I would have preferred.
Below is the back cover of the Blurb book, which you can compare to the full image further down:
Going inside the book, I was surprised at the seemingly small size of the images for a 13x12 inch sized book. Now, it’s not as if I did not know that the printed image would be small, since the Blurb design process clearly shows you the size of the image on a sheet of paper, but seeing the real book was still kinda disappointing. Again, my preference would have been to maximize the size of the image for the sheet of paper, or at the least, give the designer the option for varying the sizes. In looking at the actual quality of the printed image, it’s not bad at all. Looking closely with the naked eye, I can see what appears to be a dot pattern typical of images in most mass reproduced books. Most people will likely not notice it, but since this is a book of my own images, I noticed it immediately and without having to compare to any of my original prints, which are obviously more continuous tone than the HP Indigo printer used by Blurb. Actually, Blurb is just the online service that coordinates the production of the book; the book itself will be printed and bound by any number of printers collaborating with Blurb.
You won't get the full measure of the blue color difference in this small image >> My base of reference is prints using Ilford Gold Silk Fibre paper, printed via the Epson 4800 with a custom profile created with the X-Rite Eye One Photo kit – these prints were used to create a Unibind book, which is somewhat delicate to handle due to the large number of pages I tried to bind in the cover. The pages used are a tad thin for my taste, but thinner pages do make it easier to lay the book open and flat on a table. Overall, I’m happy with the quality of the Blurb book, but I do think that it's a bit pricey at CDN $80 when everything is said and done – this is the total cost to me for ordering a single 40-page, 13x12 inch book with wraparound front and back covers, and includes S&H and currency conversion.
The smaller image in the Blurb book above versus the 8x10 size of the image from my Unibind book >> If I were still into photographing weddings though, I would seriously consider outsourcing the production of albums to Blurb, using the premium photo paper option instead of the regular paper. There’s a lot less work and sweat involved in just designing a wedding album and letting someone else print and bind for you then doing it yourself, and of course, your fee should cover whatever it costs from Blurb. Plus, there are more design options available, such as double-truck image spreads and the wraparound covers. Lastly, Blurb offers sizes that just are not possible or economical to do yourself, such as 7x7 inch books that can be sold as parent and/or guest albums. November 17, 2008 - Well, finally, I know what's happened to the MacBook Pro I ordered back in August. Discussing the reasons why are not worth getting into since it would just raise my blood pressure, but the short of it is I won't be getting the MBP. While I would have still been pissed, a call or email telling me sooner would have been nice instead of being strung along for so long. It does not mean that I won't be getting any Mac though, as I just placed an order online at the Apple Store for a new 2.4 GHz MacBook (not the Pro model). Getting a regular MacBook involves compromises, ones that really irk me, but I'm under some budget constraints, so blowing $3k on a Pro model was not palatable - one of the reasons why I wanted to get the original MBP through my source was to enjoy the discount he would have passed onto me. What I just blew on the MacBook today is about what I would have spent on the older MBP. Although I could have placed the order through the same source for either the MacBook or MBP, given the three month ride to nowhere, you might forgive me for not wanting to play the game anymore. I have no desire to become Einstein's definition of lunacy, which is to repeat the same actions while expecting the results to change. Ordering straight from Apple should mean delivery by the end of November and not three or months later. Some of the compromises in getting a MacBook instead of a MBP are:
I also had to order the expensive Mini Port to Dual-Link DVI adapter in order to use the MacBook with my 30-inch LCD, something I would not have needed with the original MBP I ordered. Making it easier to swallow by going with the MacBook is the new aluminum construction, the thin profile and light weight, the discrete graphics card, and being able to order the 320 GB hard drive. While I would have preferred the 1440x900 resolution of the 15-inch MBP, the smaller size of the MacBook does make it easier to haul around in my various shoulder bags. With "my" MBP being given away to someone else, it did leave wide open all choices from the PC world too and it was tough to turn away from some very well specified ASUS notebooks that come in significantly cheaper than the MacBook and MBP. However, the build quality of the MacBooks are superior and I couldn't get away from the desire to finally use a Mac. This purchase might also seem hypocritical given my recent thoughts about toning down my consumer spending, but in a weak and limp defense, I had already allocated the funds for the MBP, so it's not "new" spending per se, as I had already treated it as spent back in August. November 15, 2008 - I don’t know about you, but all this talk of recession in the global economy has me rethinking my consumer purchases. Although I’m fortunate enough to still be employed with no significant impact on my family, it’s a psychological thing, where if you see many others having to tighten their belts, you feel the need to do the same; that spending on frivolous, discretionary consumer items would be in bad taste. Now, it’s not like we’re in the 1930s again where the Great Depression caused widespread financial turmoil and it’s not to say that we’re going to be in for a protracted recession, but suddenly, the idea of buying a D700 and other big ticket items is no longer pressing. I just read a report from CIBC (a major Canadian bank) and it opines that the real cause of the current recession is not the credit crisis brought on by the collapse of the US housing market, but by the recent triple-digit cost of oil. While there is some correlation between the housing crash leading to the credit crunch leading to diminished consumer spending, the report notes that the rise in oil prices leading to a collapse of the car-buying market (which preceded the credit crunch) has a greater impact on the economy than the crash of the housing market. The report also notes that if the current crisis were all about credit then Japan and Europe would not have been hit as hard as they have been, but because both economic zones need to import almost all of their oil (Russia and a few others excepted in Europe), the cost of oil is much more critical to their economies. Both economies were aleady in decline before the credit crisis. The report highlights that a spike in oil prices precipitated four of the five major recessions since the Great Depression, and that recovery only came about when oil prices crashed. In short, the report’s opinion is that we need oil to drop to the USD $60 level to lead us onto the road to recovery. Anyway, tightening up on the consumer spending habits is not what the multinationals producing our goods want to see happen, and really, I "should" be doing my part to help out by buying that D700, some more lenses, that second 30-inch LCD monitor, and maybe a faster and snazzier PC notebook... November 14, 2008 - There’s a lot of buzz about the new RED video and stills cameras that have recently been announced. The number of cameras and their ability to share accessories and change configurations based on a fully modular system is staggering. However, so are the prices for building a RED kit. Even the cheapest option is still beyond most of us that can only drool at the prospects of using a mind-boggling 6x17 format digital RAW capture video AND stills camera. But, my God, the cost of building a fully configured 6x17 format kit must be well into the six figures. For all the talk about video and stills convergence and how RED is going to change the industry, this well into the high-end, much as only the wealthiest photographers (or busy commercial pros) can afford to use the Phase and Leaf backs with pricey medium format cameras and lenses. For me, a guy with a D90 budget (maybe a 5D2 budget if I starve myself for a bit), the RED products, even if delivered on time and available for purchase, still represents so much pie-in-the-sky, as to be forever unobtanium. The RED website talks about how the current trend of having to buy new D-SLRs is planned obsolescence, whereas the RED system allows you to simply upgrade the sensor module when new ones come out. You can also mix and match accessories and work your way up to higher-end models as your budget allows. It’s a fantastic concept having such a modular system available and I’ve often thought of something like this coming from Nikon – albeit much less dramatic than the RED system. My modular thoughts and designs are more variations of medium format systems such as from Hasselblad, Bronica, and the Mamiya RZ system. But...but, when you look at the FF35 starting at $12,000 just for the “Brain” to start without any accessories, I’m inclined to go with the current “obsolescent” route. For $12,000 you can build a decent Nikon or Canon full frame kit based on the D700 or 5D2. For what a fully outfitted RED FF35 would cost, you’d have a damn nice Nikon or Canon kit. And, I betcha RED sensor upgrades will cost a pretty penny, as much as what a nice higher end D-SLR would cost. Now, granted, I speak from the perspective of a poor enthusiast photographer (okay, slightly middle class) and the RED system is not for me, but for working pros that can and will use the convergence tools offered. And, while I agree that the RED system has the potential to shake things up in the high-end photography and video markets, I don’t think this has any impact at all in the neighbourhood where all the enthusiasts live - these days, I live in the ghetto. As for hitting Nikon and Canon, well maybe, but do you really think either is going to sit still and let an upstart steal market share from them? I don’t think so, but what I do hope for is for them to get spooked and become less complacent about innovation. Nikon bucked the trend to higher and higher megapixels in the short term by sticking with 12 MP for the most recent SLRs and while everyone appreciates what Nikon has done with the super high sensitivities in the D3 and D700, is this all that its got to offer us? What about the new sensor designs, what about dynamic range (built-in HDR capabilities), what about that Coolpix with an APS-sized sensor, what about a line of no-compromise lenses that don’t have to go hiding when Zeiss and Leica come out to play? In this time of economic upheaval and recession, talking about taking chances by innovating is not going to sit well with the bean counters and MBA types running most corporations, but, then again, didn’t the bean counters and MBA types get us into this mess in the first place... Most companies will be conservative and just try and hold market share and ride out the recession. But, for me, why stand pat? Throw out some products that the market has clamoured for and try and generate sales by showing the consumers that you’re not just another brand making plastic, wunder cameras. However, this is easy for me to say since I’m not some big-money executive sweating out how he’s going to ride out the economic crisis with whatever cash is on hand now that the credit markets have shrivelled up worse than the frozen family jewels of a man that just jumped into the ocean for a polar bear swim. Anyway, with the RED system fleshed out, it will be interesting to see if Nikon finally moves on its own much and long rumoured modular system (something to compete against the new Leica S2). The rumour mill is heating up again with an expected announcement from Nikon for next week – probably (and finally) the 24 MP D3X. October 31, 2008 - Happy Halloween to everyone! November 11, 2008 - It's Remembrance Day in Canada and Veteran's Day in the USA; both are a day to remember our men and women who fought in the past wars and those who currently serve in conflicts today. Thom Hogan has a timely article about how he thinks the photographic industry is going to shake down with his 2009 predictions. Some of his comments are no surprise, because I've wondered the same. For example, whether Hoya has any real commitment to keeping Pentax a going concern as a camera and lens maker. The same can be asked of Sony too, despite the success of the current SLR lineup. Scott Kelby had an interesting time when he posted some negative comments about his new MacBook Pro. Despite being an avowed Mac user, he received some pretty nasty comments from some Mac users (typical). He also received some brutal comments from PC users, which is just uncalled for (also typical, unfortunately). I'm also thinking some nasty and brutal thoughts about my MacBook Pro too, but for different reasons...namely, I still don't have the f'ing thing yet :^((( I just received my photo book from Blurb. I need to review the book and overall quality with a bit of time before I post my comments. November 10, 2008 - I’m back from my week-long stay in Toronto, Canada’s centre of the universe. Being there for work meant little to no photographic opportunities available, especially with the change to standard time resulting in night coming on earlier. Downtown Toronto, where I spent the week, is much larger than Vancouver, which is expected given the doubling of the population. The hustle and bustle gives Toronto an energy that is not quite there in Vancouver. There are a lot more skyscrapers and lot more men suited up compared to the relaxed west coast. There are some things though, that I don’t get as a left coast Vancouverite:
The weather was great, not warm, but not cold and I was comfortable walking around in my suit without an overcoat. Conversely, I left Vancouver while raining and I came back to Vancouver that was in the midst of a brief break from the rain, but it started up again the next day. I noticed many Torontonians walking around with fall and winter coats and jackets on in the mild temperatures (15 or so degrees Celsius) and then go into buildings where the heat seems to be up high and I wonder how they can manage. Especially, when I’m just wearing a suit and found it to be unbearable after walking a few steps inside. The worse seem to be the rat’s maze of basement tunnels that connect much of downtown Toronto. These tunnels are populated with shops and are probably a Godsend during the long, cold winter months, but I found them hot and humid the few times I went through them. With work occupying my time, there were no moments to steal away to visit some of the landmarks again, such as the CN Tower or the Hockey Hall of Fame, let alone any of the other sights that would be of interest. I did not even bother packing the basic D300 kit and just took along my Sony digicam. I only managed a few snaps of the Eaton’s Centre shopping mall, which I have to say is architecturally impressive – it makes Vancouver’s Pacific Centre Mall look like a cheap, suburban strip mall.
At the recommendation and urging of another person working with me during our week-long project, six of us attended the musical, the Sound of Music, at the Princess of Wales Theatre. We went after a hard day’s work, of course, and it’s only the second musical I’ve seen, the first being Phantom of the Opera in Vancouver many years ago. The stage design was impressive with the way the scenes changed smoothly and quickly and the acting and singing was excellent. Interestingly, Maria was played by a Vancouverite who won the role through a reality TV show, How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria. The producer, the famous Andrew Lloyd Webber, did the same reality show to cast Maria for the London staging and recreated the process for the Canadian casting. I thought our Maria was uncanny with the way she sounded like and mimicked Julie Andrews, who played Maria in the movie version of the show. Seeing the musical was about the only significant thing I did outside of work. We thought about attending a Leaf’s game, but it’s outrageous to pay so much money to watch a team in rebuild mode, and that’s if you can even get tickets to a hockey game. We thought about the Raptors too, but another in our group nixed the plans when he had other plans and nobody else was pressing to see some pro basketball. Now, time to catch up so I can resume my normal programming. Interesting news item from the folks that produce the annual PMA show:
I find the above interesting in that it's a bit dated now and I wonder what the results would be post October financial crash that has sent shivers around the globe, as many companies revise their earnings outlook. Toyota, Japan's largest company, has been hit hard, as has been Canon and Sony. Panasonic and Sanyo are talking merger and Samsung is spinning off its camera division. It's shaping up to be a subdued Christmas shopping season. Canon Canada has also announced an increase in the cost of the new 5D2 by $300. New cost will be $3100, which hurts for those lining up to be the first on the block to get one. The flagging fortunes of our Canadian loonie against the Yen forced Canon Canada's hand. I'd expect other brands to raise their prices too in the coming months if the CDN $ continues to sag. Well, installed the Unibrain FW800 driver to see if it would help out the Drobo, but alas, for my particular computer, no such luck and if anything, the speed is even slightly worse than before. Ah well, such is life and while I'm cheesed, I'm not that cheesed, because I intend to use the FW Drobo with the MacBook (if it ever arrives) with its native FW800 port. The FW Drobo will become the primary storage unit for the Mac, while the older Drobo will continue to be the PC's backup unit. Since much of the data will be the same, the two Drobos will largely back themselves up. However, I will also have another set of backups kept offsite using the old 500 GB drives that were displaced when I upgraded the older Drobo's capacity. DPReview has posted the Canon 50D review. The results are surprising, as I expected Canon to continue with the success of the 40D, but while the review is overall positive, it's not a homerun hit that one usually thinks of with the better Canon SLRs. Noise is apparently worse than the 40D at ISO 1600 and above, which is not the right direction to be taking, but as DPReview indicates, Canon may have found the limits of trying to increase resolution on a DX format chip (with current technology). Seems like Nikon hit the sweet spot for resolution with its better DX format SLRs at 12 MP. This helps so as not to push the resolution beyond what the lenses can handle, as well as to keep noise under control. It also puts the more expensive D300 in somewhat better perspective with the 50D not being quite as stellar as expected. That said, I'm still looking forward to what the 5D2 will have to offer as the full frame chip will have much more leeway to handle the pixel density and resolution increase - so long as you have lenses that can handle the resolution. With the worsening economic conditions, many companies are now posting or revising their earnings outlook. Canon expects the first decrease in profits in nine years and Nikon is revising its earnings forecast. Sony is taking a big hit as consumer spending decreases. While few expect prices to increase in the lead-up to the holiday season, this could be a much subdued shopping period. Adding insult to economic injury, there is talk of prices rising in the new year as companies, such as Nikon and Canon, have to cope with the rising Yen relative to other major currencies. Whether this is just an idle threat to get consumers to spend now instead of later, who knows...until next year. As bad as it is for many, my wife and I have been looking forward to Vancouver's real estate bubble to crash, so that we can finally and realistically look for an upgrade. With four kids and two parental units (mine) along for the ride, it makes for a crowded house and we need a bigger house in a bad way. It's a buyers market now with prices falling by 20 percent within the last few months with expectations of at least another 10 percent drop next year. Sure would make for a nice Christmas to celebrate in bigger house. Very early Sunday morning, I will be off to Toronto for the full week and will not likely be posting much due to work and social committments. Have a good week and I'll catch up with everyone when I come back on November 8. October 30, 2008 - Thanks to everyone that wrote in about a possible solution to the slow speed of the Firewire 800 Drobo. All the tips led to me downloading a Firewire driver from Unibrain, but I'll need to wait for some backup processes to finish before I try the new driver. Hopefully, I'll be able to post an update tomorrow about how the driver works. The other night, I copied the first batch of files to the original Drobo upgraded with four 1 TB drives. I got a sustained copy speed of 15.5 MB/second, which is 2 MB faster than the Firewire Drobo using the original Vista Firewire driver. From links and tips I got from you fantastic readers, I discovered other Drobo users having the exact same issue with using the FW Drobo with a PCI-E expansion card running Vista. One forum thread even had a response from a Drobo representative, who offered the tip about the Unibrain driver. One user ran a new set of tests and found the driver to improve the time quite nicely under Vista. Even faster speeds are expected with Macs and their native FW 800 ports. Passing along a tip from CameraTown about their PhotoPlus Expo 2008 show coverage with 12 videos of new product highlights. October 29, 2008 - So, I started copying files over to the new FW800 Drobo and I'm thinking, you know, the speed really seems to suck. I mean, I wasn't expecting 40 MB/second or anything, but a respectable 25 MB/second would seem like a walk in the park for a Firewire 800 connection, but I'm averaging a sustained 13.5 MB/second, which is USB 2 speed. This is pathetic!
At around 6:30 am on October 28, I started the transfer of about 500 GB of data from an internal drive to the new Drobo. When I got back home from work at around 4:45 pm, the transfer was still going with about 15 minutes left to complete the job. That's 10 and a half hours, which I don't think is any better than the old Drobo using USB 2. Maybe it's my non-native FW800 port, which is on an expansion card that's the bottleneck, but the speed does not please me at all. I may as well have saved a few hundred bucks and bought the older USB 2 Drobo on closeout sale. I certainly hope I'll get better speed once I have that blasted MIA MacBook in the house.
I also swapped out one of the drives from the old Drobo to start the upgrade process of replacing four 500 GB drives for four 1 TB drives. I didn't figure that swapping out a drive would be a fast process, but after over 20 hours, I was still waiting for the Drobo to incorporate the new drive into its data protection scheme. The progress bar showed maybe 20 percent for completion by the time I tossed in the towel on doing it the way I'm supposed to.
The Drobo Dashboard, which shows me the progress has fluctuated from the still pathetic, but barely acceptable 29 hours left to completion, to the ludicrous over 300 hrs to completion. So, here we have a device that tells me that it may take between 2 days and two weeks to finish the swapping out of a single 500 GB drive for a single 1 TB drive...and I have three more drives to replace. Ridiculous! This is astonishingly and somewhat terrifyingly bad for a device to take so long to backup data, given that one of the huge selling points of the Drobo is the easy upgradability of drives for higher capacity. My experience indicates that instead of replacing the drives piecemeal, I'm much better off just stopping the process, remove the old drives, replace with the new ones and start from scratch, which is exactly what I did. I can afford to do this, because of having multiple backups, so it's not a risk for me to nuke the old drives, but I pity the poor soul that has a Drobo as the only means of backng up. Needless to say, my enthusiasm for the Drobo has waned from my experience the last couple of days. October 27, 2008 - Picked up my new Firewire 800 Drobo the other day, along with eight 1 TB drives. Four to feed the new Drobo and four to upgrade the capacity of the old Drobo. Also picked up another Western Digital MyPassport portable drive. Always good to have another 320 GB of storage for travelling purposes. Great day for my backup systems, but a bad day for the wallet having to pay for the new stuff. Plans of getting another 30-inch LCD are now on the backburner until the wallet recovers. Still have my eye on the HP LCD that offers three Dual-Link DVI connections to allow for some great flexibility with multiple computers hooked up at once. The new Drobo is identical to the old Drobo save for the addition of two Firewire 800 connections at the rear. Now to figure out if I really want it Windows only with NTFS formatting or Mac and PC compatible with FAT32 formatting... October 24, 2008 - I finally figured out why I could not submit my book to Blurb for processing and ordering. My anti virus and firewall application was preventing Blurb’s BookSmart software from connecting with the Blurb server. With that finally resolved, my book was uploaded and I ordered one copy to see what the quality would be like. There was about 40 MB of files to upload, which took a few minutes to finish, but it was quite reasonable for speed. I ordered a large format 13x11 inch book with 40 pages and a hardcover image wrap for $57. Add in another $15 for S&H and the book will cost me USD $72 without factoring in the taxes I will have to pay when the book is delivered. However, I’m really curious and even excited by the prospect of having my own photos printed in a professional manner. This will mark the first time I’ve used an external printer since going digital and buying my own photo quality printer. I can’t wait to see it. Speaking of photo books… This an old news item that I’ve left on the backburner for too long, but according to PMA, 29 percent of households that started photo book projects did not complete them. Various reasons are cited, but PMA twigged onto one important one, the software offered may not be the most user-friendly. Other reasons include the amount of time needed to complete a photo book and the cost to produce one. These are all familiar reasons to me, either directly or indirectly. When I created a couple of Disneyland photo books of the family trip in 2007, I created the pages from scratch in Photoshop. It was mostly cropping, resizing, and arranging the photos to fit the 12x12 inch space I had. Some photos were cropped to look like a panorama and others were cropped in tightly to isolate the main subject. While it took me some time, it was not a major project per se and having to manually design the pages gave me the freedom to place the images the way I wanted, or in many cases, the way I needed for best fit. Today, I’d probably be more inclined to use the Epson Photo Book Creator software that comes with the Epson Photo Book kit. The software is actually from ArcSoft, so you’d expect a slick and easy to use interface. It’s easy to drag and drop images into the template pages without worrying about resizing and cropping, but the easiness also has a downside, which is lack of freedom to place or size the images for best fit. Also, templates don’t always offer the “right” mix of portrait and landscape photos. It’s a compromise: do you spend the time doing it yourself or do you save some time, but lose some freedom by using some software. Hmm, shades of capitalism versus socialism J I’ve shown my photo books at work and later heard that a few people went out looking for their own source for photo books. What they found from the likes of FutureShop and London Drugs is a lack of options to create the photo book that they wanted. Some wanted more options with text being incorporated on the pages, others deplored the need to sit down with an attendant to design the book, which took up a significant amount of time. These days, I’d likely send people over to Blurb.com and tell them to design their own books within the Blurb options and then let the Blurb printing partners sweat the details and hard work of producing the book. Once I receive my book, we’ll see if that recommendation is warranted. When I bought my first iPod, I used the white Apple ear buds that came with it for a couple of months. At the time I didn’t think they were too bad as far as throwaway ear buds are concerned. I compared them to a set of $100 Sony ear buds and did not find much difference, hence my thinking that the Apple ear buds were halfway decent. I mean come on, if they can hold their own against $100 buds... However, those Sony ear buds were from the 1990s and technology does not stand still. Today, I consider both the Sony and Apple buds to be so much junk. I have Shure to thank for that attitude.
I did have some issue with the fit inside my ear. The best way to remedy ill fitting buds is to pony up for the high-end IEMs that require a trip to an audiologist to get a custom mould created, but that’s getting a bit rich as such IEMs cost from $500 to over $1,000. The next best thing is to get the right sized foam or rubber insert to create a proper seal for good sound isolation and bass impact. No seal, no bass. With regular ear buds, I always had a problem with my left ear. Ear buds, no matter what the brand, never stayed in properly. I’d be walking down a street and would have to insert the left ear bud back in every so often. The only time I could actually listen properly was when I was stationary and did not move my head around too much. Getting the Shure E2c fixed the problem and made me realize what the issue was. While my right ear seems normal enough as ear buds never fall out of it, my left ear seems to be smaller, which is why ear buds always fall out of it. With the three sizes of foam and rubber inserts that come with the E2c, I found that while my ears could accommodate the largest inserts, that led to some discomfort and the medium and especially the small inserts were the right ones to use. I also found that I don’t like rubber inserts. There’s a feel and texture to them that just isn’t right and foam is my preferred insert material. The foam can be squished down and rolled between the fingers prior to insertion and once in; the foam expands to create a seal. After a few years with the E2c IEMs, I decided to upgrade to a mid-level IEM. Since I knew Shure was just fine, I stuck with the brand and ordered from the same place I ordered the E2c, from Axe Music in Alberta. I also did a smart thing to order packages of replacement foam inserts for both sets of IEMs. Part of the reason for wanting to upgrade was with buying the HeadRoom Portable Micro Amp (PMA). The HeadRoom PMA is certainly not the smallest portable amp around, but it’s got the HeadRoom quality and a built-in USB DAC. It also has a line out jack, which allows the PMA to act as a tiny preamp. It’s just dandy, but for one niggling issue, the PMA is only battery powered. Being battery powered means not being able to leave it on all the time, which is what I prefer to do with my audio gear, especially the powered speakers. It killed my hope that the PMA could be a cost effective, all-in-one solution for my computer-based audio system. When the Shure SCL4 IEMS arrived, I was pleasantly surprised at how svelte they are compared to the E2c. The E2c are rather plump in the main body and are about twice the diameter of the SL4s.
Orange and yellow foam inserts comingling - notice the much larger inner diameter of the orange inserts compared to the yellow ones >> Once squished and rolled, the SL4 IEMs went inside the ears smoothly with no resistance (using the smallest size foam included with the SCL4). The fit was so good that I hardly noticed them, which is unlike the E2c, which even with the smallest foam inserts, I always knew I had them inside my ears. Looking more closely at the two IEMs, I could see that the insert tube for the E2c is larger in diameter than the SCL4s, which allows the foam and rubber inserts to be smaller. The difference in foam also makes a difference too, as the orange foam for the E2c is harder to squish down. The result is somewhat akin to using Grado headphones compared to Sennheiser headphones. With Grados, the fit is generally tight around the head and the ear cups fit on top of the ear instead of around the ear. Add in the lean tonality (or detailed presentation, take your pick) of Grado headphones and listening fatigue sets in much more quickly than with the smoother sounding Sennheiser cans. Comparing the SCL4 to the E2c offered the typical differences between lower cost components versus their higher priced cousins. I found the SL4 to be more polite compared to the E2c, which seemed more exciting at first, but that only indicates that the E2c have a bit more energy in the high frequencies. This gives the E2c a more forward presentation and the illusion that one hears more detail. However, the SL4 is more refined, better balanced and ultimately superior. Coupled with the superior comfort (inside my ears) and I could listen with the SL4s all day long. Professional audio reviewers typically describe the component and then offer a laundry list of musical selections to support the description of what they heard. It generally adds a lot more text to the review and I’m not sure it really helps in any way, because about 99 percent of the time, the music the pro reviewers listen to is not what I listen to. It’s all fine and dandy that noted audio reviewer, Joe Golden Ears could hear the shimmering glistening of the cymbals in Musica Obscura’s rendition of noted dead composer’s magnum opus, but of little relevance when the music is not to my taste and is otherwise unobtanium, because the CD or worse yet, the record, was a special release only given to noted audio reviewers. Anyway, there really is not much more to say about the SCL4 compared to the entry-level E2c. Superior tonal balance, superior refinement in presentation, and superior fit and comfort. End of story. Well, maybe not quite...
I generally use the SCL4 with my original iPod for the commute to and from work. I use the SCL4 plugged in directly to the iPod instead of through a portable headphone amp. I know I should use my HeadRoom Micro amp, or the HeadSave portable amp I bought back in 2005, but I don’t because it complicates things and would create a wired mess that won’t fit in my jacket pocket anymore. Sometimes you suffer quality for the benefit of convenience and yes, I did go through a stretch of time wherein I did use a portable amp with the iPod. If you’re one of those uncompromising types and refuse to listen to music via the iPod’s cheap headphone jack then you’ll be rewarded with even better fidelity, as the SCL4 will perform quite nicely when fed a nicely juiced signal. As an aside, I was listening to some Dire Straits the other night through my other iPod connected via the dock to the Rotel amp feeding the powered speakers. I had the volume up and I could hear some hardness and coarseness with a bit of a zippy presentation (a little extra energy in the highs). The iPod had MP3 files ripped at 320 kbps. Knowing the Blue Circle Thingee is more laidback; I switched the source to my notebook and fired up iTunes with my AIFF files. Better DAC and better source files should obviously make a difference and so it was with the zippy presentation and coarseness gone. While not quite at the same level of difference, there is a similar difference between the presentation of Shure E2c and SCL4. Treat your ears and get yourself a good set of IEMs for those long commutes and especially if flying. I found the SCL4 very effective in blocking out the noise of an airplane and it made for a much more comfortable flight. October 23, 2008 - Ontario-based Henry's Camera and the Toronto Police have setup a program to trade guns for Nikon Coolpix cameras. Additional details available at Henry's Cameras: Pixels for Pistols: Cameras for Guns Amnesty Program. October 22, 2008 - Further to yesterday's post, which was prompted by a reader's question/request, I was thinking, I appreciate that someone out there actually wants my advice and will seriously consider what I have to offer. Many ask, but I think few actually heed my advice when offered and I was trying to think why that is. It does not matter what the advice might be about, whether it be for photographic or audio gear, or whatever else I might have some knowledge and experience about (computers), but not many will actually go ahead with what I suggest. Someone might ask me about a camera and tell me all that they want from it. I listen, I consider and then tell them which one I think best suits their desires. Almost all the time, I get a look of shock on their face when they next ask how much it will cost. Then it struck me, people don't follow my advice, because it will cost them actual money to follow ;^) Well, you know, I'd love a SLR that offered D300 quality, capabilities and functionality for less than $500, but it ain't gonna happen and that's just the way it is. I'd love 70-200 f2.8 AF-S VR speed and quality in a small, lightweight lens that also cost less than $500, but that ain't gonna happen either. I guess when you develop a passion for something and get to know the insides of all that revolves around that passion, it's easier to understand why something can cost a fair bit of money. I totally get why a D3 has to cost $5,000 and what it means to have such a fine tool available, even if I won't spend that kind of money for one. However, tell a non-enthusiast that a camera offering a mere 12 MP can cost so much when a D90 and a Rebel sells for $1,000 or less, well, it might be easier to bleed a stone instead. However, I also need to acknowledge that when I discuss something I know little about (or little interest in), I might get sticker shock (rare, given my exposure to the crazy world of audiophilia and the astronomical prices involved at the top end). Usually though, when someone waxes poetic about how good their BMW (insert any other high-priced item here) is, I get MEGO (my eyes glaze over ;^) October 21, 2008 - Reader's request/question:
Short answer From those backed up files, select the most important and critical files and backup to two Western Digital MyPassport external hard drives. The 320 GB version is cheap at CDN $160, so two will only cost $320. Important and critical files are the ones that you would need to rebuild from a catastrophe, such as fire or theft. Important and critical includes a single copy of the edited and final version of the annual family portrait, but not all 20 RAW files you took to get that one good shot. In other words, save your final edits, but not all the junk that you didn't have the heart to move to the trash bin. Rotate the two portable drives on a weekly basis (change as needed depending on how prolific of a shooter you are). Take one to work with you on Monday. On the following Sunday, copy over any new files then take the second one with you to work next Monday and bring the other one back home and copy over the same files so that it mirrors the one you left at work. If 320 GB is not large enough, wait for the 500 GB version of the MyPassport to become available. If even this is not enough, get two 1 TB MyBook Studio Edition drives and do the same rotation thing. Long, verbose answer Well, how about we recount what I have now as a baseline of reference. It’s also good to update the readers, as my own backup systems can change from time to time. In the early days when I did not have a large number of files, I backed up by burning CDs and then DVDs. I still have two or three sets of those DVD backups in CD wallets; one or two at home and one kept at my workplace for offsite security. Believe it or not, I have turned to those backup DVDs even in 2008, as I discovered that I had actually not copied over all of my files from those DVDs to my hard drives. A person enquired about licensing a photo that I had taken on film and scanned, but did not copy to my hard drives when I upgraded the desktop system last winter. I had to pull out the DVDs and start digging into the archives to find the image. As the files grew, burning DVDs became tedious and like many others, I turned to external hard drives to provide more capacity and convenience. However, hard drives pose risks because they are mechanical devices that will eventually fail (at this time, solid-state drives are far too expensive for the capacity offered). This means not only do you need one to backup the files; you need another one or two to duplicate or even triplicate for secure redundancy. Eventually, even using multiple external hard drives became tedious to keep all the data and their versions sorted with the second and third backup disks. During this time some years ago, 300 GB hard drives were the norm and while larger capacities were available, these were at a very high cost. At one point, I had five or six external hard drives offering 250 to 300 GB of capacity floating around.
To supplement the Buffalo RAID, I bought a Drobo Robot last year and installed four 500 GB hard drives inside for 2 TB of capacity. While not a formal RAID, the Drobo is raid-like with using existing capacity to provide redundant security in case one of the drives fails. This meant that my 2 TB of capacity was more like 1.3 TB. I used the Drobo to backup the Buffalo’s contents, as well as more files from my desktop’s hard drives. While not fully used up, it’s getting close and I didn’t like the idea of only having one full redundant copy of all my files. Time to add more capacity, which will be in the form of another Drobo, but this time, the new Firewire 800 version with four 1 TB drives installed. This will give me something like 2.7 TB of capacity, which will back up everything I have and still have some needed capacity leftover. The FW800 Drobo should also provide decent access speed, so that it could act as a primary storage system. As of this writing, I have just been informed that the new Drobo and the four 1 TB hard drives have arrived and I should have it in another day or two. At this time, I’m not sure what I will be doing with the old Buffalo TeraStation, as nobody else in the family needs so much storage.
While I’ve gone over my backup system fairly quickly, all of it has been done over a period of five or more years. What I haven’t discussed to this point is an updated offsite backup solution, something that I’ve never had to use, but like insurance, still a good idea to have to protect you. My current idea is to get a 2 TB Western Digital MyBook external hard drive to provide the offsite backup. However, I will likely use another option, which will be explained near the end of this post. The mention of the Western Digital MyBook external hard drive transitions nicely into what I would recommend for those looking for something less serious and ambitious than the Drobo Robot or a RAID 5 box. Do consider that what I suggest is only of products that I have some experience with and that there are plenty of other options available. I’m sure there are many other solutions available and that what I use will not necessarily work for others. I like the Western Digital MyBook external hard drives, because they come with backup software preloaded on the drive, some of the models offer all the popular connections (USB 2, FW400, FW800, eSATA), and best of all, they have an auto on and off feature. When you turn on the computer or wake it up from hibernation, the WD MyBook turns on by itself and when you turn off the computer or hibernate it, the WD MyBook turns itself off. The auto on/off feature makes it ideal for use as a continuous, incremental backup drive. The version I like the most is the Studio Edition II, which is preformatted for Mac, but can be formatted for PC. The Studio Edition offers all four of the popular connections, whereas the other MyBook models offer combinations of one to three of the connections. There is no fan unit in the Studio Edition versions, as they uses less energy, which is good, because it means quiet, low heat operation. I have another, generic external drive for backing up my music files and it uses a fan for cooling. The noise from the fan contaminates the music signal when the data is carried over the USB cable. Not good and the fan noise is annoying when I want to listen to music. The WD MyBook Studio Edition II offers up to 2 TB of capacity in a dual-drive configuration. The default configuration is RAID 0, which means the two drives are regarded as one huge drive and data is striped between the two drives as it is sent to the MyBook. RAID 0 is fine if you want to use the MyBook as a primary storage device and already have another redundant backup system. However, I would not use a RAID 0 as my only backup device, because if one drive goes down, all data is lost due to the halving of the data to two drives. What I would suggest is that you be conservative and configure the dual-drive MyBook as a RAID 1. RAID 1 will treat the two drives as separate units and data copied to the MyBook will be copied to both drives for redundancy. The dual-drive MyBooks are user serviceable so you can access the drives and replace them if the need arises and you don’t need a screwdriver to do so. The final nice feature is a gauge to show you how much capacity is left. Overall, the Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II is a well thought out external hard drive and would be a great choice to use with the Mac’s Time Machine to do continuous, incremental backups of my day-to-day files. However, because I already have an older, 500 GB MyBook, I plan to use that as my Time Machine backup drive. While 1 and 2 TB sounds like a lot of capacity, it may not be at all. What I would do is consider how large the computer’s hard drive is and then double it for the external drive. For example, let’s say you have a 500 GB hard drive inside the computer. For backup purposes, I would double it with a dual-drive 1 TB MyBook external drive. Configure the MyBook as a RAID 1, so that you have two copies of your computer’s data. If you have a 1 TB drive inside the computer, then go with the 2 TB dual-drive MyBook. For backup software, I would try what comes with the Western Digital drive first and see how it works out. If you want to try something else, consider NTI Shadow, which I’ve used previously when I had the Acer notebook computer. I had NTI setup to do a nightly, incremental backup to an external drive at 10 pm every evening. The big thing about the backup software is the ability to do incremental backups instead of having to do full backups every time you want to backup the files. With the way my files change every night, the incremental option is ideal. Some software will allow for backups on a near-continuous basis, but for most people, that would be overkill. How frequently you backup is up to you, but software that can do it seamlessly in the background is ideal. For Mac users, it’s easy as pie with Time Machine included with the OS. The last thing to note is that many backup software save the data using a proprietary file format, which means you need a copy of that backup software that can be installed again to access the backed up files. If you’re already near capacity for the computer’s internal hard drive, the easiest thing would be to add in a new hard drive inside the box and get yourself an appropriately sized external drive for backup. As you get into multiple TB of storage needs, you could get yourself more MyBooks, but really, you probably need to get yourself a RAID 5 box or a Drobo Robot. The nice thing about the MyBooks and Drobos is the use of common interfaces, such as USB and Firewire, which makes for easy plug and play compatibility. With eSATA and FW800 connections, the speed can be good enough to act as primary storage. With RAID 5 boxes, most of them are network attached, meaning the need for a router and extra network cables if you keep the box with your main system. However, one advantage of the network option is the ability to have all the computers on the network able to access the storage box. You can be in the home office with your main system while your significant other can be elsewhere with a notebook and both of you could wirelessly access the network attached storage (NAS). With some NAS units, you can even access the NAS over the internet and copy new files to it. If you like the NAS option, Western Digital also makes an NAS version of the MyBook called the World Edition. Capacity is up to 2 TB in a dual-drive configuration. One caveat, NAS are generally slow and the ones that offer decent speed can be pricey. My old Buffalo is horrible for speed with something like 7 MB per second over a 100-megabit connection. While it would be faster with a gigabit router, I doubt that it would be much better than USB 2 when moving huge amounts of data. To fill up the Buffalo’s 700 GB of capacity in one go took over 48 hours whereas the Drobo Robot using USB 2 was able to copy over 900 GB of data in about 18 hours. Personally, the network access feature is no big deal with the ease of which Windows Vista provides access to Public folders for networked computers. I use the Public folder access to share printers and files between my notebook and desktop computers. However, access speed will be limited to whatever your network hardware is capable of offering. Other RAID options available without the potential NAS bottleneck are FW800 and eSATA RAID boxes, specifically the ones offered by Lacie with their Biggest Disk and Quadra units. Big $ though, but not out of line with what top end NAS RAIDs go for. The last few comments about RAID and NAS devices is likely more than what most people would need, which is why I’m sweet on the Western Digital MyBook series of external drives. Small and compact with a good range of capacities and connections available at reasonable prices make them highly recommended in, ahem, my book J My own approach to backups differs based on the system used. My desktop system is backed up to the Drobo Robot (soon to be two Drobos). Once I have the new Drobo in place, it will take over as the primary backup unit while the older Drobo will be upgraded with 1 TB drives of its own, so that both Drobo units will match each other for capacity. The existing 500 GB drives from the older Drobo will be used as my offsite backup solution using my spare external cases. The desktop files do not include my daily files and I suspect that I will do the offsite backups on a once-a-month basis, but more frequently, as needed for any project that generate a large number of files.
Once the MacBook arrives and has been configured, I will be doing nightly, incremental backups using Time Machine. In keeping with my belt and suspenders mentality, I will likely continue mirroring my most important files on separate portable hard drives and will rotate those offsite on a weekly basis. All of this is subject to change as my whims dictate and new devices and technology becomes available. What I don’t have an interest in are the online storage services. Maybe when Internet 2 goes commercial and we all can enjoy fibre optic quality speed, the online storage option will be viable, but there’s not a hope in hell that I’m going to babysit uploading over a TB of data over today’s broadband connections. And, I don’t even want to think about how much it would cost. Incidentally, if the Western Digital MyBook drives catch your fancy, B&H Photo sells them, wink, wink, knudge, knudge... October 20, 2008 - The Blue Circle Thingee has got to be one of the ugliest pieces of audio gear I've ever come across. You know, a lot of high-end audio companies started off in the founders' garages, being a labour of love that many hope will eventually lead to commercial success. The prototypes are rough and at times are little more than just the raw parts. A case, if any, may be nothing more than folded aluminum to conveniently house the parts without any regard to industrial design. When success comes, professional designers can takeover and hiring of dedicated staff can assemble the parts to the standard demanded of audiophiles. The BC Thingee has all the hallmarks of a garage-built prototype. The parts look equal mix from electronics and plumbing shops. There's no attempt to even make the, er, thing look nice with even a modicum of profession build.
All the input and output jacks and ports are held in place with a copious amount of a gummy-rubbery compound that looked awfully familiar to me when I first got the Thingee, but could not quite recall what it was. Then a few days later I realized what the compound is, caulking, as in the stuff you seal your bathtub with from the wall tiles. And, yes there is a whiff of that vinegary smell from all that caulking. Now, before I get into the sound of the Thingee itself let me digress into a story of how I came to find myself wanting to buy the, er, thing. As most regular readers know, I love music and I love audio gear as much as I love photo gear. As with photo gear, there's a lot of audio gear that I cannot afford - audio is one pursuit that makes even the most expensive photo gear look cheap. Think that $30,000 Phase digital back is expensive, it ain't nothing compared to some Krell amps and Wilson speakers, never mind some super exotic tube amps from Japan that cost like they're made from solid gold (actually, silver is a big thing in some Japanese components). Hell, there are interconnect cables that cost almost $20,000 for a one meter set (Tara Labs the Zero).
I also want to try and incorporate the iPod into a computer-based system to takeover background music listening duties when the computer is not actually on, as infrequent as that may be in my house. There are definitely products out there that will allow for some convergence of external music sources, as well as the computer. Problem is, I already had a Benchmark DAC-1 bought in 2005 and while it's fine for what it offers, it's also a bottleneck in some respects for building a system around, as my version has no analog or USB inputs. I finally sold it off recently, so I can now look at alternatives. I also sold off my Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 and X-PSU earlier in the summer in anticipation of getting that alternative. Three primary products that have caught my interest are the:
All three offer analog inputs, a USB input for computer sources, and analog outputs that can drive my powered speakers. If I had the money, I would choose the Grace M902, because the reviews indicate that it's lusher sounding than the tonally lean Benchmark DAC-1. However, I will likely end up buying the HeadRoom Desktop Amp with the basic amp and DAC modules, which allow me to save money from not having to buy the external PSU. Choosing the HeadRoom is all about cost, as the Grace M902 with its optional remote control, is almost double what the HeadRoom costs. The Benchmark DAC-1 Pre is in-between the two. I'm not put out by choosing the HeadRoom, as this company pioneered the high-end headphone listening experience and the amps are always regarded as being top notch. In some ways, HeadRoom is very much like the Mark Levinson (the company, not the man) of the headphone world. Mark Levinson pioneered the high-end solid state amp back in the 1970s. Tonally, the HeadRoom is probably in-between the Grace and Benchmark. While I wait for the right time to buy the amp (no real rush, as I may be switching rooms for the home office soon), I've gotten my audio fix in various ways, with the Thingee being a convenient accessory to bridge the digital and analog world. With the old Benchmark DAC-1 gone, I use the Thingee as a USB DAC to output a signal from the computer to a Rotel integrated amp that I use as a preamp direct to my Behringer powered speakers. The Rotel allows for connecting the iPod and even that old school component known as a CD player. Heck, I could even connect my prehistoric Nakamichi cassette deck - for those that have no clue, the portable Sony Walkman cassette player was my generation's iPod. Pretty straightforward and nothing particularly exotic about the setup except that in my system, I've suffered through dirty AC power corrupting my audio signal and ground loops. The irksome thing is that there has been some inconsistency depending on the computer I used. Using the former and huge 20-inch Acer notebook as the source component, if I kept it AC powered, the AC noise traveled through the USB connection and cable to the amp to the powered speakers with the end result being noise farting out of my speakers. The Acer also seemed to have dirty internal connections and I would get intermittent hashies coming from the speakers. Using my cheap Sony notebook has usually been pretty clean, but not always with the occasional AC contamination too. At the moment, using the BC Thingee to interface between the Sony notebook and the Rotel amp to the Behringers is giving me a noise-free signal. The Sony is fed the AIFF music files from a Western Digital MyBook external hard drive via Firewire 400 cable. iTunes is my music app for simplicity and convenience and is also what I use to rip my CDs. I know that this is not the politically correct way to get the best sound from ripped files, but you know, life's a bit too short to be messing around with EAC, lossless formats and whatever else I "should" be doing with my music files. So what does the Thingee sound like? Well UHF Mag gave it a pretty good review, which ultimately led me to make the purchase, but the way I gave it a critical listen is less than ideal. With the Benchmark DAC-1 gone, the only other decent DAC I have around to do a comparison review is the one inside the HeadRoom Portable Micro Amp. My assumption about which would sound better before I started the comparison is that the HeadRoom unit would win out because it can be directly connected to the computer whereas the Thingee has to output its signal to another device. My comparison was thus:
In both situations I would be hearing the digital signal from the HeadRoom's amp section. The Sony computer sourced the music files from the same external hard drive described earlier.
My assumption was correct; the HeadRoom directly connected offered a superior presentation than the Thingee, which had to go through the HeadRoom amp via an extra cable. The Thingee also has lower volume, which is another tricky matter, because if the volume is not levelled, the louder sounding unit will "sound" superior to most ears. The Thingee offers a more mellow and laidback presentation. It lacked high frequency bite, which is not the same as being too bright. The details were there, but it lacked drama compared to the HeadRoom unit. The Thingee also lacked the bass impact of the HeadRoom, which provided more oomph through the Shure SCL4 in-ear-monitors or the Sennheiser HD650 cans (I did not do speaker listening comparisons). Music listened to for the comparisons include an audiophile favourite, Telarc's Time Warp with soundtracks from sci-fi TV shows and movies (Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica). I also listened to some music from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and some pop and rock tunes to ensure I sampled a variety of music. In all cases, I heard the same characteristics between the Thingee and the HeadRoom. I also tried the Thingee outputting directly to my HD650 cans. Because the Thingee has no direct volume control, I had to use the computer's or iTune's volume control to adjust the level. Due to the HD650 being rather demanding to drive, I found that I could set the volume to 100 percent without blowing out my ears. The result is more immediacy with the Thingee driving the HD650s, but also a homogenization of the music compared to the HeadRoom. The music seemed like a big glob of sound compared to the separation of instruments I heard through the HeadRoom. All of this might seem like I'm down on the Thingee, but actually I'm not. It's no bad thing to be polite and laidback in this era of high frequency hash and noise that gets passed off as music. A lot of popular music is not well recorded and a lot of stereos do not offer high fidelity, so the Thingee can actually be just the, er, thing, to ameliorate the sonic assault on our ears. Case in point, the Benchmark DAC-1 has been near universally praised as punching well above its weight as a DAC. It holds its own to the once mighty Mark Levinson No 30 DAC (Stereophile's John Atkinson doing the comparison), which along with its companion No 31 transport, was once considered the best CD player in the world and cost like a Phase One digital back (in 1990s dollars too!) This is no small accomplishment for a DAC that only costs a little over $1000 whereas the mighty Levinson was near $20,000 back in its glory days. However, few reviewers mention the lean tonal balance of the DAC-1, with most praising it for the details offered. It makes me wonder if some golden ears have lost the high frequency response as those ears age. With the lost of ability to hear into the highs, a component that offers back some of that high energy might sound rather balanced. When I hooked up the Benchmark to my big hi-fi back in 2005 (after a good number of hours of burn-in) I tried it direct to my Classe power amp via balanced cables and found it much too lean. The Classe CA200 amp is not considered lean, if anything, it might be considered too polite and my Dynaudio speakers are considered also warm and laidback, so it was something to have one component alter the tonal balance so dramatically towards the lean side. Things did not sound “right” until the Benchmark was run into my Sonic Frontiers preamp for which I got the details without the loss of flesh from the music’s texture. Since going with a computer based system, I’ve tried to mitigate the Benchmark’s sound with the Musical Fidelity X-10 tube buffer (when the AC grunge didn’t drive me nuts with the noise).
Conclusion Some niceties are no need for special drivers, purely and sweetly plug and play with no need to be juiced externally. It's got all the common digital outputs, so you're not likely to wanting for a connection and it also has two analog outputs. For those wanting a USB DAC with more quality and a real case, look at the HeadRoom Micro units, but these need external juice. Next up on deck is the Shure SCL4 in-ear-monitor. October 15, 2008 - So after many rumours and hints at all aluminum notebooks, Apple refreshes the MacBook and MacBook Pros. The two lines see convergence of styling and casework and the MacBook's specs are starting to get blurred with the big brother Pro version. The screen resolution is still the ubiqitous 1280x800, but now the MacBook gets a discrete graphics card that can drive a big 30-inch LCD monitor. Impressive, but sheesh, what's with charging CDN $109 for a stinking Dual-Link DVI adapter, all because Apple decided to use the Mini DisplayPort interface? HDMI, DVI, Mini DP, VGA; it's an alphabet soup of interfaces. HDMI is clearly the PC favorite and now Apple is moving to Mini DisplayPort. Bollocks and a pox on all of them! For the MacBook Pro, I'm underwhelmed at the mostly cosmetic updates. There's nothing significant underneath the hood. No mobile quad processor option, no 500 GB hard drive option, no dual hard drive option, no 8 GB RAM option, and no eSATA. You want state of the art performance in a notebook, it ain't gonna be with a MacBook Pro. However, to be fair, if you were to actually get a fully loaded, balls to the wall PC notebook loaded for bear, it would likely cost you double what a very well configured MBP would cost. Looking at the MB and MBP, there's a $550 difference between the configurations I would buy with the main difference being the screen resolution, size, and speed of the hard drives offered. Tough choice, but if mobility were my main concern, I'd save the cash and get the MB, otherwise, I'd still prefer the larger screen resolution of the MBP for daily use. As for my own MBP, well the less said about this f@#$ing fiasco, the better. It's still sitting in the damn storage room and my source is now off on a three-week holiday. I'd kill the guy if he were not also the Canon user that's gonna let me play with his 5D2 for a LONG time when it comes in - now you know why I put up with so much with some of my computing purchases. October 13, 2008 - It's Canadian Thanksgiving, so allow me to rest and get over being stuffed myself with holiday turkey. This week will likely be a slow one for postings, as I have much work-related events and committments that will occupy my spare time in the evenings. However, I will try and catch up on some audio-related items on the backburner. For any Toronto-area readers, I'm being sent to Hogtown again at the beginning of November for a full week of work. However, evenings are free if anyone is interested in meeting and chatting over some suds (hence the TO themed photo of the week). October 10, 2008 - Over at TOP, there is an incredible offer from noted photographer and dye transfer printer, Ctein. Ctein is offering one small dye transfer print for $100, or two for $180. Ctein is one of the few remaining dye transfer printers left in the world. There will soon be a time when there will no dye transfer printers around period, because Kodak stopped producing the papers a few years back. The remaining few printers left can only print while their supplies last. Dye transfer printing is a very complex, tedious, and potentially expensive way to produce prints, but many claim that it is the pinnacle of color print quality with a color fidelity that cannot be matched by any current printing process. While there is a brief description of dye transfer printing on the TOP right now, you really don't get a sense of how meticulous the process is until you actually see it done. Few will ever see such a process in person, so a video of the process is the next best thing, which is what I got to view with a Luminous Landscape video journal that interviewed Ctein and taped his actual process. The offer by Ctein is for a limited time over the next nine days, as he needs to know how many orders are requested before he can commit to making the prints. He will try and deliver the prints by December. It is quite an offer to own a piece of photographic history, because, as I mentioned earlier, there no more materials being made and the dye transfer method of printing will eventually become extinct. I have already placed my order for two prints. October 9, 2008 - A reader offered a different perspective behind the product placements and hiding logos on otherwise recognizable products - liability. Producers do not want to be sued for inadvertantly showing a trademarked logo on a show. Blatant product placement may be a quid pro quo to avoid litigation. What a sad state of affairs to live in such a litigious world. In Vancouver, the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) has decided to take a zero tolerance stance against local businesses that use Olympic themed names or symbols, even if those businesses have been around for many years - long before there was any hope of Vancouver hosting the Winter Olympics. October 8, 2008 - It's completely out of left field for an optical and camera company such as Nikon, but check out this new product, the UP300 and UP300X. This looks like the airplane traveller's dream entertainment kit. October 7, 2008 - I forgot this comment about watching the hockey games played in Sweden. I noticed Ron McLean, the host of CBC's Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) using a MacBook Pro on his anchor's desk. However, when the first intermission break started and the telecast went back to McLean in Toronto, the Apple logo had been covered up with an HNIC sticker. How curious that broadcasters go to pains not to mention or display brand names...I suppose the better to leave open the option that a company might sponsor the broadcast or advertise during the telecast. I mean, why would Microsoft or any PC maker run ads during a HNIC broadcast if the show's host blatantly uses a competitor's product? Then you have the Hollywood shows (TV and movies) where product placements are encouraged to help subsidize the cost of production. Who has not noticed that so many of the CSI-influenced shows such as, er, CSI, NCIS, Bones, etc. use Nikon photographic equipment. Those cool cats in CSI Miami seem to love using the Nikon R1C1 Wireless Close-up system for all the forensic photography scenes. Who cares if none of the actors actually has a clue of how to actually use the gear, it's cool looking and it helps pays those bloated Hollywood salaries. Which reminds me that I always chuckle when I see scenes of the media hordes and paparazzi photographing a person. Again, clueless. About the only honest photography scene I can recall is an old episode of Magnum PI, when Magnum's buddy TC is talked into pretending he's a hotshot fashion photographer. They stick a Hasselblad SLR in his hands and tell him to fake it as best as he can. TC was of course like a fish out of water, unlike his surehandedness being a chopper pilot, always pulling Magnum's rear end out of the fire (or water - remember that classic episode where Magnum treads water the entire show). And, for gawd's sake, why do all the viewfinder shots look like refugees from the 1970s, even for D-SLRs? While I'm on this rant, how about when they show a supposed binocular view? When I was a kid, I bought my dad a set of Bushnell binoculars (hey, did you really expect a 12 year old to be able to afford a set of Nikon binoculars, get real). I couldn't wait to look through them, but when I did, I wondered why I was seeing a circular view instead of the two partial circles that I always saw on TV or in the movies. Hollywood bollocks sez I! Actually, I just recalled another "honest" Hollywood scene of photography...in an episode of Simon and Simon, Rick buys an expensive Nikon SLR kit, probably an F3. He goes on bragging about how good his photos were going to be, but at the end of the show, when the crime was solved, everyone asks Rick about the photos from his new camera. Rick sheepishly declines to show them, because he (not the camera) messed everything up. October 6, 2008 - The NHL hockey season started this past Saturday with two games played in Europe. The game played in Stockholm, Sweden featured the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh penguins. As only a Nikon-using photo geek could, I noticed Nikon ad banners mounted on the boards at both ends of the rink. As the TV camera panned from one end to the other, the Nikon banners were strategically located to be visible to the audience. I also noticed that on the rink, there were four key sponsors’ logos painted on the surface below the ice, one of which was also Nikon. I don’t know if the ads have been there for a while making their visibility and prominence an accident, or if these were deliberate to promote the two games being played in Europe. Whatever the case, it was good to see the Nikon logo so visible at a sporting event, even if hockey is not exactly a major league sport outside of Canada. Down in the US, we Canadians often wonder about and gnash our teeth at why cities such as Nashville and Atlanta have NHL franchises (other than that someone paid a crap load of money to the NHL and the owners to obtain a franchise). I would love to see hockey gain momentum and greater visibility, but you know, there’s a disconnect with playing a sport so heavily connected to winter, in the Sunbelt. Nashville looks to be on the ropes, especially since the minority owner turned out to be a fraud. Meanwhile, Jim Balsillie, co-founder of BlackBerry maker RIM, can’t even overpay his way into the owner’s club. Balsillie was rebuffed, because he made it pretty overtly clear that he planned to do an Al Davis (Oakland Raiders) and move the Nashville Predators to Hamilton, with or without the blessing of the NHL, or the Toronto Maple Leafs, who protect their southern Ontario turf like a pitbull guards a crackhouse. It doesn’t get more overt than selling seasons tickets in Hamilton before he’s even secured the deal to buy the team. Balsillie overplayed his hand. He should have secured the sale first then made the move, but these days, he could get the franchise through the backdoor by buying out the minority position. Once in, he could offer the rest of the owners the kind of money needed to forget the misery of being a sports team owner in a weak market. The rest of the NHL is not likely to block him again given the poor position of a handful of teams and the NHL in general in the US market. Anyway, back to my original muse, it’s nice to see Nikon being more visible with hockey. For the Canadian market, if I was the Nikon marketing person, I’d be all over the hockey broadcasts on the CBC and TSN. Think of the exposure to millions of ears across the country when the announcer declares the start of “Nikon Hockey Night in Canada.” For good measure, sponsor Don Cherry’s Coach’s Corner. There have been surveys suggesting that the 10 minute Coach’s Corner segment after the first period is watched by many more people than the game itself. How popular is Coach's Corner? You know those Hollywood bar scenes where when something happens, the whole bar goes quiet to single out the moment and/or person? In Canada, Don Cherry and Coach's Corner are that person and that moment...okay, maybe I exaggerate a tiny bit, but love him or hate him, Canadians listen. I'll wager that water usage skyrockets after Coach's Corner, when everyone goes for a pitstop in preparation for the second period. Nikon is also visible at major league baseball venues with many large sporting banners seen. It’s too bad archrival Canon, has a lock on the NFL sponsorship, but what about Nikon Monday Night Football...J Continuing on the hockey theme, Sunday morning, I'm doing my impersonation of a taxi driver, as I shuttle my kids to skating lessons and hockey games. During the first lesson for one daughter, I flip through Burnaby's leisure guide, which provides a rundown of all the leisure activities available at the city's facilities. I'm sitting in the stands of Bill Copeland Arena, which is home to the BC Junior A Burnaby Express hockey team. As I flip through the leisure guide, I come across an ad for the Express' hockey games. A team photo is shown and as I glance at it, I look up to see where the photo was taken in the arena. It's taken at one of the ends and based on the ads I see in the background of the photo, I can tell which end it is; however, I look at the bottom of the team photo and I see a massive Burnaby Express logo painted below the ice. Except that there is no such painted logo on the actual ice surface. Smaller logos are painted at the centre ice area, but are nowhere near the size of the logo in the photo. I wonder, did they paint that massive logo then ice the surface, then take the team photo, then melt the ice to remove the logo, then ice the surface again? Or, did they simply Photoshop the logo to make it seem like there was such a massive logo covering half the width of the arena? I'm betting Photoshop. HP has the new 24-inch printer, the Z3200 ready for rollout, but out of curiosity, I checked a Canadian online retailer for availability of the predecessor Z3100. Several are still available at the closeout price of just over CDN $1500, which is about $2500 off the old retail price. This is the unit that comes with an X-Rite spectrophotometer built-in to create custom printer/paper profiles. As the Luminous Landscape suggested when I first read of the Z3100 being phased out earlier this spring, this is like buying the Eye One Photo calibration kit and getting a 24-inch printer included for free. If you have the space for a big 24-inch, plotter style printer, the Z3100 is priced just right. If I had the space, I’d be very, very tempted to get one myself. Curiously, I wonder why HP has not produced a 17-inch wide sized printer to compete against the Epson 4880 and Canon iPF5100. I’m thinking a Z3100 to print Canon 5D2 files would make for one heckuva kit. For local, Vancouver readers, London Drugs will soon have a sale on Sandisk Extreme III 8 GB and 16 GB compact flash cards. I have to go by memory now, as I already recycled the flyer, but the 8 GB cards are less than $100 and the 16 GB cards are around $150. I believe the sale begins Tuesday. October 4, 2008 - Reader's coment:
Well, thanks, appreciate that, since both were just throw away shots used to illustrate another point. My Canon using source is all keen to get the 5D2 as soon as possible and is now on the waiting list at my local shop. Here's hoping that all the years of my big ticket purchases will leverage him one of the first units to arrive in Vancouver. Can't wait ;^) The 40D I was using in the past will have to go in for servicing, as the pop-up flash now does a stroboscopic thing - not that I ever used it, but the owner does because he hates using the big 580EX II flash unit (which, for some reason I still have, along with a couple of lenses, but we don't need to remind him of that ;^)
Sometimes, on my walk to the bus stop for the commute to work, I see a nice sunrise. Unfortunately, the immediate view I see is what you see at right, a mess of telephone and power poles with cables strewn every which way to juice the homes lined up along the back alley that I walk through. The view is not worth taking at all unless you like messy, overhead cables. However, walk along a little further and the view cleans up a bit and maybe you could get something. Nothing great, but something to show some nice morning light. You'll forgive me for taking the liberty of removing a lamp post from the middle left of the shot and goosing the colors ever so slightly 8^)
Sunrises are not the reason to bring a camera along with you all the time though. It's for the quirky things you might come across, such as the photo below, which I took yesterday...
The shoes have been hanging on the overhead cables for some weeks now and probably will be for some many more weeks to come. I finally remembered to bring along my little Sony digicam to take a quick snap of it on my way back home from work. There are other quirky things I've seen that I wished I had a camera to document. One of the luckier photos I've taken was of a woman made up like she'd been shot and beaten. She was out having a smoke and I walked by noticing her. I walked a few more steps, but went back and asked if I could take a photo of her, which she agreed and even posed like a zombie for me. September 30, 2008 - Okay a few of you good readers pointed that there is a work around to the Photoshop upgrade tariff, which at first glance would indicate a need to upgrade to get the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw. If you like buying and using the latest and greatest SLR available and if you prefer ACR as your converter of choice, Adobe will only support older versions of ACR until the next version of the Creative Suite is released. After that then only the ACR that comes with the newest CS gets updated with the ability to convert the newest RAW files. However, the work around is DNG. Run the newest RAW files through DNG and the old versions of ACR will open them up and allow you to do your RAW conversion. As one reader put it, "While this is not ideal it is better than a kick in the pants." Amen brother! Now, believe it or not, I knew about DNG, and I meant to mention this work around in my last post...but, I forgot. This is what happens when the hair on top starts to get grey and you start nearing a certain milestone birthday that signifies the beginning of a mid life crisis. While some fellas ditch their first wives and get themselves a buxom trophy blonde sitting beside them in the new sports car, maybe I'll let loose and get myself a Leica S2 system...either way I end up divorced and the kids don't get to go to university ;^) Another reader indicated CS4 may offer improvements in utilizing the GPU and it's possible that this will be a bigger deal for performance than 64-bit processing. Also, 64-bit processing will be of most benefit for handling very large files. I didn't know about the GPU processing, but I was aware that 64-bit processing would only benefit those working with large files...another omission due to flatulence from the grey matter. For those that plan to get the Canon 5D2, the Sony A900, and whatever it is that Nikon has to announce in November or December, now you can go crazy with the Photokit sharpeners and image enhancers that bloat your files to three times the normal size. My old D100 produced 35 MB, 16-bit TIFF files (after conversion). My D2X produces 70 MB, 16-bit TIFF files. Can we expect a 24 MP SLR to produce 140 MB, 16-bit TIFFs? And, if so, does that mean 300 MB files after doing capture sharpening with Photokit? How about 400 MB files after doing some output sharpening (this assumes already flattening any layers you may have). Maybe that 16-bit processing is worth the $200 upgrade fee...for those of you flush enough to afford one of the high resolution SLRs. Suddenly, even with 8 GB of RAM in my tower, I feel a little like Lord Farquaad from Shrek and have this desire to get 16 GB installed to compensate for my shortcomings...just kidding. PMA had a news item indicating that 29 percent of households surveyed, did not complete photo book projects. Some of the reasons were the complexity of the software, the time to produce a photo book, the cost, and the quality of the product. PMA's survey indicates that the photo book software needs to become simpler and faster to cater to the masses. This jives with my own limited experience with photo books. People that have seen my Unibind books like them very much. Some were inspired to create their own photo books after seeing mine, but I heard that some of the software they used from the vendors they chose, had limitations and did not do quite what they wanted. One person asked what it cost to create my Disneyland albums. I had to think about that and actually scratch out the individual products costs, such as:
That's a fair a bit of scratch to produce an album, never mind the time I spent to manually design the album - no stinking album software for me back then. However, I cannot complain about the quality of the printed images and obviously I like the way the album was designed :^) These days, I'd probably just use the Epson StoryTeller Photo Book software even if some of the templates offered are not quite what I'd like. The speed and ease will save a fair bit of time from having to manually resize and crop the images to fit the page. The way I created those first albums and the costs involved would scare off everyone who is not a photographer. However, in today's time of Blurb.com, I just can't see the process getting any easier and cheaper. The quality might not be as good as what can be done with a fine photo-quality inkjet printer, but who's going to be fussy when you can save about 50 percent? For me, I don't have a problem with investing the money into creating photo books that my kids will enjoy when I'm long gone. The big issue for me is time; there is not enough of it to do all the photo book projects I want to do. For those in Vancouver, a local computer shop is offering the original Drobo storage robot along with two 1 TB Seagate hard drives for a package price of CDN $570 (pre tax). I've never shopped at NCIX, but thought I'd pass along the information. Two packages are left as of this writing. I'd buy the package if I were not saving my loonies for the Firewire 800 Drobo along with four 1.5 TB drives to use with it. September 29, 2008 - I'm sure some long-time photographers are probably looking at the trend towards convergence of video and stills as a strange thing and wondering how the two can be compatible in the coming brave new world. The debate seems to be similar to manual focus versus auto focus, or more recently, film versus digital. Maybe way, way back in the Pleistocene Era, photographers argued the merits of in-camera metering versus manual exposure with a handheld meter. If Nikon and Canon can incorporate video capture into their SLRs without increasing the price, I'm all for it, even if I'm not one to use the feature much. Video just is not my thing and it would require a lot of time (years) of practice to obtain competence and comfort with it. I'm not going to suggest I'm anything great as a still photographer, but I like to think I'm competent, skilled, and experienced enough that when I go out I can come back with at least one or two decent photos. Give me a video camera and I'll be back to 1997 when I first picked up photography and didn't know a shutter from an aperture. No doubt that there will be plenty of photographers with the ability to do justice to both mediums, but I know myself well enough that I won't be one of them. However, that does not stop me from being intrigued with the way photography is evolving and where it might headed. And, as some have pointed out, just because a camera has a feature does not mean that you have to use it. There are a few features packed into my Sony W170 digicam that I have no interest in and will never use, even out of curiosity. Same goes with my D300. While there are features that have only come out recently that I love, such as Auto ISO, there are others that make no difference to me, such as Live View. The makings of a good camera for me is one that allows me to change settings quickly and efficiently and there isn't a whole lot more that I need beyond being able to control the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, as well as exposure compensation capability. All good cameras from every brand offer the basics described above, so what sets the brands apart is how:
This is just my list and yours may be different and note that the list is not in order of importance. My opinion is obviously biased, but I do find that the Nikon SLRs offer a good mix of features, quality, and user interface. I like what Canon is doing with some of their cameras and quality is always top notch, but the UI is a weak point for me, otherwise, I'd be happy as a pig in mud with either brand. CS4 has been all the rage with some blogs I read, but I've not looked too hard at the new CS4 and except for being able to utilize 64-bit processors with PCs, I'm not sure I really care either. I'm doing pretty good with CS3 and just as I was in no rush to upgrade from CS2, I'm in no rush with CS4. Truth be told, I don't even know how to use any of the cool tools in any recent version of Photoshop, and I'm fine with that. I'd rather spend my time getting to know the new RAW developers, as they have more importance to me than Photoshop these days. I suspect a great many photographers feel the same as me, but many (those that have bought one of the newest SLRs) will probably still upgrade anyway. Adobe didn't get to be a multi-billion dollar company by being stupid and it is probably the dominant player in the RAW conversion business with Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). Many use ACR as their RAW converter of choice, but Adobe has made a practice of only providng upgrades with the newest version of the Creative Suite. For example, will ACR, that's compatible with CS3, be upgraded to support the Canon 5D Mk II, or will you need to upgrade to CS4 to get a version of ACR that will convert the 5D2 files? For the $150-$200 that Adobe charges for each CS upgrade, if all you needed was ACR support, I'd be very quickly looking at alternatives instead of paying the fee for a version of Photoshop that doesn't offer anything much than the previous version. September 26, 2008 - A reader pointed that Warren Buffet had written some comments that would contradict my suggestion that Buffets likes companies that buyback their own shares. In his 2005 letter to shareholders, Buffet did state that he is against share buyback and dividends when they are tied to fixed price options for executive compensation. I think Buffet's comments are specific to executive compensation and the conflict of interest fixed price options create for executives who could be tempted to do what's best for their own pockets instead of for shareholders. However, my own comments were too broad and need clarification that Buffet likes share buybacks under certain conditions:
Buffet does not like share buybacks for the sake of just propping up the share price. Another sign of madness with a Nikon Coolscan 8000 selling for USD $1600 on eBay. Another $400 gets you a new CS 9000 with a warranty (if you live in the USA). I just don't get the mindset of some people bidding up prices like this. And, if you haven't figured it out yet, I wouldn't mind buying a medium format capable scanner, but I don't really desire to blow CDN $3000 on a new CS9000 (that's including taxes and a glass film holder from Vistek in Toronto). Thoughts of getting a decent purchase from eBay have gone down in flames after seeing what some old units go for. September 25, 2008 - The other day, a financial news item caught my eye. HP and Microsoft are setting aside several billion $ to buyback some of their own shares. Share buybacks and dividends are a way for a company to put some earnings back into the hands of shareholders. Dividends are generally hard cash deposited into your brokerage account while a share buyback will (hopefully) lead to a higher share price, as it counteracts the dilution of shares due to the granting of options. It’s the kind of activity that Warren Buffet likes to see companies do, as it puts the shareholders’ interest ahead of the companies and their managers. However, this is not what got my interest. What really intrigued me was that over the past five years, Microsoft has given back $115 billion to its shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. $115 billion! To put that into perspective, that’s enough money to buy out all of Apple’s shares at current market prices ($128 per share, or thereabouts). If Microsoft had wanted to, it could have bought out Dell many times over and have its own hardware arm to go with the software. Heck, it could have bought Dell, Canon, and Nikon with plenty of change leftover. It’s a staggering amount of money to contemplate and it appears that the days of Microsoft having a war chest of $40 billion or more in cash are gone, as the cash reserves are now down to about $10 billion. However, $10 billion is still about enough to buyout Nikon Corp., based on current share value ;^) Speaking of HP, it has partnered with Nikon to create an imaging kit comprised of the D3, RIP software and the new Z3200 printer. Nice kit, if you can afford it. Is this Nikon trying to counter Canon's success with its line of photo quality printers? I just do not get how eBay auctions can result in ridiculous amounts of money being bid for certain items. I just saw an auction for a Nikon Coolscan 9000 sell for almost USD $2,000. Now, this scanner did come with the expensive revolving glass film holder, but still, why would someone in their right mind, pay what is more or less new price for a used item? Sure new units comes in and out of store stock sporadically, but sheesh, if I'm gonna blow $2,000 for a CS9000, I want it to be new with a full warranty. In another sign of madness, a Minolta Scan Multi Pro apparently sold for $2,000 too. Good Lord man! If you gonna spend that kind of money on something discontinued several years ago with probably no support, might as buck up some extra bucks and get the superior Imacon 343. Madness, I tell you, madness... September 24, 2008 - As you may have noticed from the new Lensbaby ad, the company has introduced a new lens, the Composer. It evolves the concept into a slick new ball and socket design, much like a ball head for a tripod. As much as there's a conflict of interest with Lensbaby being an advertiser on this website and NikonLinks, I have to say that I'm impressed with what Lensbaby has done over the years, starting with a simple, but unique idea and evolving and improving on that idea. September23, 2008 - Finally! A new prime lens from Nikon that won't cost you your first born child. The long, long, long anticipated 50mm f1.4 lens with AF-S motor shows up and will be coming to a store near you in time for the Xmas rush. The lens is perfect size to toss in the old stocking. Now, hopefully, this is just the beginning and we'll have complimentary 28mm and 85mm f1.4 lenses to go with this meagre offering. The really big news of the day is Leica's new S2 SLR system with larger than 35mm format along with a nice set of nine lenses to get started with. No word on pricing, but let's just say that if you have to ask... Makes me think that there might be some truth to those Nikon MX format rumours after all. The so-called MX format is also alleged to be larger than 35mm and there is a new system being built around it. However, the rumour breaks down when discussing whether it's a rangefinder style or modular SLR system. No matter, I ain't gonna be able to afford it anyway. Heck, it's tough enough to scrape the pennies together for a future D700 purchase, which also ain't gonna happen anytime soon either. The new Olympus prototype compact with changeable lenses is also quite intriguing. The Micro 4/3 system might just be the ticket for those wanting a silent street camera.
It’s a good way to learn of photo books, some considered important to the history of the medium, such as Robert Frank’s The Americans, and others newer, but also important in understanding the power of photography. Reading Johnston’s enthusiastic recommendation of Vancouver Photographs was all that I needed to order a copy from Amazon Canada (with free S&H for most orders, I cannot recall the last time I was in Chapters to buy a book). Most of the photos in Herzog’s book are from the late 1950s to the 1970s with a smattering of photos from the 1980s into the 2000s. While the photos cover several parts in and around Vancouver’s downtown core, most seem to document two areas, Granville Mall and some of its tributary streets and the downtown east side, where Chinatown and the neighbourhood of Strathcona is located. Granville Mall is a part of downtown Vancouver that is closed to regular street traffic. Only buses and taxi cabs are allowed to use the closed off sections and the sidewalks are generously wide for pedestrian traffic. While the section of Granville Mall north of Robson Street has seen some development and cleaning up, the section south of Robson is rather seedy and run down. While the neon signs that are dominant in some of Herzog’s photos are mostly gone, many of the old buildings remain and are probably not terribly different from the years that Herzog was busily capturing an era of Vancouver long since gone. The downtown east side, encompassing Chinatown and Strathcona, still have many of the Edwardian homes and turn of the century buildings found in Herzog’s photographs. Interestingly, by the time Herzog was photographing the area in the 1950s and 1960s, many of the buildings already look run down and shabby. Little has changed for these parts of Vancouver, and in fact, the conditions are even worse, as the neighbourhoods have become notorious for mental illness, drug use, prostitution, and homelessness. It is not a pretty sight and is a recurring black eye for Vancouver, despite the city’s wealth, natural beauty, and splendour of having mountains to the north and an ocean to the west. The coming 2010 Winter Olympics will see government initiatives to clean up these desolate areas, but it remains to be seen if the change will be permanent or fleeting, simply to end once the world’s attention is no longer spotlighted on Vancouver. I commute through this area everyday on my bus ride to and from downtown, as my bus travels through the Hastings Street corridor to get to my suburb of Burnaby. I don’t think anyone really has an answer on how to address the many problems. When BC’s huge mental illness institution closed in the late 1980s, many former patients found their way to the downtown east side, as their families could not cope with their problems. Many turned to alcohol and drugs to mitigate the mental illnesses. My workplace department will be hosting a conference in October and the boss wanted a write-up of Vancouver’s attractions for the attendees. I wrote a very brief little tourist-oriented history of some parts of Vancouver’s downtown area. I mention Chinatown and Gastown, while avoiding mentioning the obvious, visual blight of the downtown east side. I sanitized the write-up knowing all along that there some areas of Vancouver that you do not visitors to go anywhere near. It’s not so much an issue of safety, for as rough as the downtown east side appears, you can still walk around without being bothered or fear being mugged. Back to Herzog’s book... One photo by Herzog had me, er, agog. A photo of Granville and Robson from the 1950s shows a trolley bus using overhead power cables to obtain power. Wow, I had no idea that overhead power cables have blighted Vancouver’s streets for at least half a century, because Vancouver continues to use trolley buses that obtain their power from overhead cables. The trolley buses have only recently been upgraded, so they don’t look and smell as bad as the old ones that were probably in use for at least two decades. Another photo shows a shiny new Pontiac car (love those fins from the 1950s) parked in the back driveway of an old, rundown house. Beside the car is a shed or garage with rusting metal walls. The irony is obvious for a new car to be found in the middle of such dereliction. There are the traditional storefront photos showing a store’s wares, which bring to mind Eugene Atget’s photos of turn-of-the-century Paris. There are also photos of people going about their everyday lives. It’s interesting to note how casual and nonchalant most of the subjects are and it reminds me of a comment I read about Robert Frank’ The Americans. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, a photographer could get away with walking around with a camera in hand and do some street photography without much bother. It seems more difficult to do these days where so many people are conscious of photography and now object to being the subject of a photograph by someone unknown to them. The issue is compounded further when people are more aware of their rights and are willing to exercise them. For example, there is case of a Quebec woman suing a magazine for publishing a photograph of her. The magazine argued that her photo was editorial and therefore did not require her consent, but I believe the lady won on the basis that she was not “news,” was minding her own business on her property and had had her privacy violated by the photographer. Then there is the more recent example of Virgin Mobile's Australian subsidiary being sued for using a photo taken off of a photo sharing website using the Creative Commons copyright. The mother of the teenage girl that is the subject in the photo initially filed a lawsuit against Virgin USA, Virgin Australia, and Creative Commons. However, the lawsuit dropped Virgin USA and Creative Commons and is now only against Virgin Australia – no update on its status at this time. Not being a lawyer and not knowing all the little details, it would seem that as far as commercial use is concerned, Virgin Australia did nothing wrong in applying the rights provided by the Creative Commons copyright that the photographer chose when he posted the photo. The argument by the girl’s family against Virgin appears to be about the violation of the girl’s privacy. It just serves that this ain’t the 1950s and we ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto; it’s a more aware and litigious world out there. Back to Herzog’s book... The use of color by Herzog is striking, especially given the era that Herzog was most active. Street photography is traditionally done in B&W, which can give some photos a timelessness that makes the viewer unsure of when the photo was taken. The color palette in many of Herzog’s photos give away their era with a unique character that is only seen in other color photos from the same period. There’s a warmth to them that’s inviting even when the subject matter is not so. I quite enjoyed the book, but then you would expect that from a Vancouver resident. I also found interesting that in an interview that prefaces the main photography section, Herzog mentioned that he was influenced by The Americans. I’m currently going through The Americans now and while I do like some of the photos, there are many others that I find...banal. Given the hype about this supposed seminal book in the history of the medium, I’m finding it a bit tough to understand why, but I’m not finished, so consider this a thought in progress. September 18, 2008 - Finally, Canon drops the other shoe and announces the much anticipated and long demanded replacement for the very well received 5D. The 5D is still much loved by its users and just as Canon created the class of camera dominated by the Nikon D300 and the new Canon 50D (remember the original Canon D30), the 5D is a class of camera also created by Canon. Where the 5D was long the sole occupant of that class, there is now some companionship and competiveness with the Nikon D700 and Sony A900 rubbing shoulders with the new 5D Mk II. There are of course, differences between the three full frame cameras that come in at the $3000 range. The 5D2 and A900 are closest in terms of resolution and speed, while the D700 eschews resolution for super high ISO quality and the potential to be a speed demon when used with its accessory grip. However, the 5D2 now matches the D700 and its big brother, the D3 with ISO 25k, but does it with 21 MP instead of 12 MP offered by the Nikon SLRs. This will make for some interesting pixel peeping once sample files are offered up and devoured by the masses eagerly waiting to utilize the Control/Command + keystrokes to view the files at ludicrous magnification. Sadly, I’ll probably be one of those sorry chaps without a life, doing the virtual peeping Tom thing with the sample files. I fully expected that Canon would bump up the resolution from 12 MP, but I expected something along the lines of 16 MP. However, here we have an affordable (relatively speaking), full frame SLR that matches the resolution of the $8,000 flagship 1Ds Mk III. The 5D2 is substantially superior for build quality over the much plastic predecessor and it too offers video capture, and for even longer periods than offered by the D90. The rear LCD matches the resolution available in the top Nikon SLRs and overall, I have to say this is an impressive offering from Canon. Maybe the only weak point would be the AF module, which is where the D700 will likely be superior, but, hey for $2700, did you really expect 1D AF performance? Canon was under the gun to deliver and while I’m hearing of some grumblings by some Canon users, I think the company has delivered quite nicely and we should wait for objective sample files and reviews from the key reviewers before criticizing the effort. Along with the 50D, the 5D2 sure as hell seems like a big F-U back to Nikon and a bold, bring it on, to Sony’s A900. The 5D2 suddenly makes the D700 seem overpriced and I would be surprised if Nikon did not respond quickly with a rebate and/or price drop of at least $500, if not more. It also puts pressure on Nikon to ramp up the plans for a D800 or D900 to do what it did with the D3, which is, more or less, throw the D3’s chip in a D300 body. With the speculated D3X offering 24 MP, people will be wondering when the same chip will be put in a D700 body. Nikon pleasantly surprised by doing it sooner than later with the D3/D700, but does it have enough production capacity to do the same for a D800/D900 along with the all the other SLRs being produced at Sendai? Another kudo for Canon is the continuing update of its fast prime lenses, as Canon also announced the Mk II version of the 24mm f1.4 lens. This accompanies the 35mm f1.4, 50mm f1.2, 85mm f1.2 and the new 200mm f2 prime lenses. While none of these lenses is cheap, for Canon users, it has to be sweet to have these options available than not, as many Nikon users continue to (rightfully so) gripe about the lack of updates. Having great cameras like the D300, D700, and D3 is excellent, but it sure would be nice to have prime lens choices that don’t date back from the 1980s and early 1990s. Why allow Zeiss and Sigma to do a brisk business in selling high quality prime lenses when Nikon could have a big piece of this pie for itself. I just don’t get it, unless this is a sign of Nikon’s relatively small size and inability to produce large numbers of cameras AND lenses at the same time. I’m quite certain that I will have an opportunity to use the 5D2 for an extended time and I can’t wait to get my hands on it to see what it offers. Earlier this week, Richard Wright died of cancer at the age of 65. Who is Richard Wright? He was the keyboardist for one of the world’s most popular and influential rock bands, Pink Floyd. When I flipped over the B section of Tuesday’s Globe and Mail newspaper (where the obituaries are located), the stark news hit me and made me realize that the era of the first British invasion was dying, literally. Only two Beatles are still alive and while the Rolling Stones are still going strong, have they really been musically significant since the 1970s? The Stones have also been fodder for geriatric jokes and rumours persist that Keith Richards actually died long ago, just that all the drugs and alcohol keep his body going. Seriously though, the death of Richard Wright is significant for me, because I “discovered” Pink Floyd during a difficult time of my life. While I have the entire collection of Floyd albums, there’s really only one key period of relevance for me, which is when the band reached its zenith with Roger Waters as the leader. Syd Barrett was the original guitarist, singer, and lead songwriter when the band was founded by Waters, Barrett, drummer Nick Mason, and Richard Wright in the mid 1960s. However, too much drugs addled Barrett’s mind, forcing the band to replace him in 1968 with David Gilmour, after Barrett became unreliable during concerts and recording sessions. With Barrett gone, Waters took on the bulk of the song writing duties and it took some time for him to find his voice, but when he did, holy smokes! The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the greatest rock albums of all time and while Waters certainly led the project, Wright contributed some important pieces (Dark Side was recorded at the famous Abbey Roads studio, and engineered by Alan Parsons - yes, the Eye in the Sky, Alan Parsons). With such a smashing success, Pink Floyd was under pressure to produce another epic. This led to increasing personal angst on the part of Waters, as he tried to come to terms with the success and accolades, but grew increasingly wary and suspicious of the music industry. The follow-up album, Wish You Were Here, is a tribute album to Syd Barrett, who coincidentally, showed up unannounced at the recording studio when the band was recording the album. The band members did not recognize the fat, bald man sitting at the back of the studio, but once they realized who he was, it left them dumbstruck and when Barrett left the studio, Waters broke down and cried at what had happened to Barrett in the seven years since he was dropped from the band. One of the songs from Wish You Were Here, Have a Cigar, is a sarcastically witty and cynical look at the music industry and the executives running the big labels:
The Syd Barrett incident during the Wish You Were Here sessions possibly inspired the scene in the Wall movie where Pink Floyd shaves off all his facial hair before performing in a concert with Nazi overtones (Barrett had shaved off all his facial hair when he showed up at the studio). The continued success of Pink Floyd continued to bother Roger Waters and it’s somewhat unfortunate that an incident in Canada eventually led to his opus, the Wall. During a concert in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, a fan kept squirting Waters with a water pistol until Waters became fed up and spat on the person. This action led Rogers to realize that being a super successful rock band playing in a massive stadium had led to a “wall” between the band and its fans. There was no longer an intimate connection, which was the case in the Barrett years when the band played small venues to appreciative fans. When the Wall project ran its course, Waters became antagonized by Wright and eventually ousted him as an official member of the band, such that Wright was considered just another session player during the recording. Wright would not return to the band until Waters himself left the band in 1985, which allowed David Gilmour to take over the reins. The significance of Pink Floyd for me is that in the early 1990s, when I was newly graduated from university, I felt alone, lost, and unsure of my future. I mean, what would you expect an arts major to feel like when thrown into the real world with little to no real career job prospects. This existentialist angst melded perfectly with the kind of music Waters wrote in the 1970s, of loners trying to find their way in a world that doesn’t understand and doesn’t care. I think I’ve outgrown that angst now, but Pink Floyd holds a special place inside of me for helping me become “comfortably numb” in the music when my life seemed like it was “obscured by clouds” and even hidden away on “the dark side of the moon.” While I’m not huge on reunions by old farts trying to relive their glory years, I am disappointed that Pink Floyd could not be more “careful with that axe (Eugene)” and bury the hatchet to old animosities. I guess there is a “momentary lapse of reason" whenever they get together, creating more “division bells.” While the band did have brief reunion during the Live 8 series of concerts, I was hoping for a more substantial effort, such as a new album and a tour. With Wright dead and Gilmour adamant that he will never again participate in a Pink Floyd reunion, it calls to mind the sordid breakup of the Beatles. Paul McCartney, who initiated the formal disbanding of the Beatles, attempted to reunite the surviving members of the band, but was rebuffed by George Harrison with the alleged retort of, not while John (Lennon) is still dead. I suspect that David Gilmour would say something similar if asked about a Pink Floyd reunion; not while Richard is still dead. Rest in peace Richard, while you play in that "Great Gig in the Sky." September 17, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Okay, let's set the record straight here: my website editing skills are rudimentary at best. This is why CameraHobby is so plain and devoid of any fancy flourishes. I could probably, eventually, figure out how to add in an RSS script to the website, but I wouldn't bet a venti, quadruple espresso, soy milk, no foam, no fat, no cholesterol , no transfat, no whatever else it is yuppies don't drink in their boutique coffees, on me being able to do so. However, with that caveat aside, let me look into it, okay ;^) Also, do you really want an RSS feed that will notify you everytime I fix a typo or grammatical error, as I'm wont to do from time to time. I mean, as writer and editor in one, I do tend to miss a lot of minor stuff even after two or three reads before posting. September 16, 2008 - A quick look at Wondershare's Flash Slideshow Builder is now posted. I read some comments recently that gave me a chuckle, a forum moderator just came to the realization that the coming Sony A900 is priced the same as the Nikon D700. We've had an inkling of where Sony had planned to price the full frame, 24 MP SLR for many moons now, way back when Sony showed mockups at the beginning of the year. Nikon and Canon have had ample warning that it was coming and where the price was expected to be, but so far, the Canon 1Ds Mk III is still priced sky-high and while many expect Nikon to have a response soon, few have any inkling of price. It had been rumoured that the coming Nikon would be expensive, but materially below what Canon charges for its 22 MP SLR. Now, who knows. The other interesting variable is Canon's replacement for the 5D. Where will the resolution end up and at what price? At the end of the day, the D700 is going to be the low resolution offering, but it may still be competitive depending on how well the 5D replacement's high ISO turns out to be. I was not too hopeful about the 50D's high ISO, but it seems I may be wrong, so that bodes well for a full frame Canon with the latest and greatest technology the company can throw at it. Some have asked why I have not bought a D700 yet...well, given what might be coming, I'm in no rush. Interesting times indeed and I can't wait to see what's going to be coming next week, as well as early next year. September 15, 2008 - Bibble Labs announced Bibble 5 will be released during Photokina. Check out the details in their news release about what's coming. I finally figured out why custom photo books made by Blurb.com have UPC codes on them; you can sell your own books through the website, which requires some sort of identification code to denote whose book is what, hence the little bar codes. I was actually all set to send in an order to Blurb.com to create my own 40-page, 12x13 inch portfolio book, but for whatever reason, I could not connect to the Blurb server and upload my files. I'll try again, but since it's failed the four or five times I've tried so far, it's not exactly giving me much confidence in the system. I'm finally settling in to read and take in Fred Herzog's book, Vancouver Photographs. It's quite an interesting look into a bygone era of my city and in some ways, it has the feel of finding a relative's old photo album. You recognize some of the scenes or locations in those photos, but it's hard to imagine what you know of a city being like it was in those old photos. About nine years ago, my family was invited to celebrate the 80th birthday of my father's uncle. There were four generations present with the great uncle, my father, me, and at the time, my only child. The uncle's family brought albums to the dinner and it was quite interesting to flip through those pages and see the B&W photos of some familiar and not so familiar extended family members. I remember one photo of the great uncle walking along the street with another person. Both looked dapper in the suits, overcoats, and fedoras of the era. There was obviously a third person walking along with the uncle and his friend, for who else would have taken the photo. As I get older, I understand more why photographs are important and while we can talk about film and digital, as well as preserving film or digital files, there's still nothing like looking at an actual print and just revelling in the moment that the print shows you. This is why I want to put some effort into the photo books I create today, so that my kids and their kids will have something tactile and tangible to hold and look at when it comes time for me to be pushing daisies (I don't know about the glue in some of those bindings though ;^). Digital technology is still evolving and it won't be long before CDs and DVDs give way to Blu-Ray, and mechanical hard drives give way to solid state, etc. While some file formats are certain to be supported for some into the future (JPEGs and TIFFs) due to their ubiquity and popularity, nothing is guaranteed. I just hope all that expensive printing with Epson K3 inks actually lasts as long as claimed, so that my grand kids can look at my kid's albums and marvel at how quaint life was in the early 21st Century in Vancouver, much like I'm doing right now with Fred Herzog's book. September 14, 2008 - As I type this, it's a mild 15 degrees Celsius in Vancouver. Beautiful sunny weather that's making up for a lackluster August, when it was quite cool and rainy on many a day, which despite Vancouver being in a rainforest region, was a bit much even for us. However, despite it being rather incongruous to the current weather conditions, hockey season is back and my oldest is on the ice for some practices and evaluation games before teams are set and the season officially gets under way in October (only three weeks away). Sitting with one of the dads from last year and making small talk, he asked me how many photos I took last year. I said I could only guess given that the number of photos I gave to the kids last year would have only been maybe 1/3 of what was taken, but I estimated that I took about 10,000 photos during last year's hockey season. Now, 10,000 might be a lot to some photographers and it might be a paltry amount to others and I admit that if it wasn't for the hockey season, my total numbers would be far south of that for the year. However, I was apparently the butt of someone's comments that I was a person who had a lot of gear, but never used it to actually take photographs. Now, I admit to being a tech and equipment whore and I won't ever hide that, but still, ouch! I'm sure the comments made were in good-natured fun, but an old saying did come to mind, those living in glass houses should not be throwing stones ;^) However, it is kind of sad to think that the measure of someone's photography should come down to volume, as if that makes up for quality, or lack of. There are certainly some that like to brag that they took the family out to the amusement park and shot off 5,000 photos in one day. Well, more power to them and good luck with sorting and editing all those files, even if they shot everything in JPEG format. This also reminded me of a time earlier this year when before I had my garage sale to sell some gear, I was in discussion with a person about selling one of my D200 SLRs. At the time, one D200 had about 7,500 frames and the other had about 8,500 frames. Both were less than two years old at the time and still had official warranty time available. The potential purchaser told me that my asking price was optimistic given the number of frames the cameras had, i.e., they were high mileage cameras to him. This took me back, because I considered both D200s to be low usage cameras (especially for digital), and it put me off in wanting to sell a D200 to him. I also didn't want to break up the D200/MB-D200 combo, especially, if the price was not going to be what I desired (he only wanted the camera, not the grip). The guy also made some other comments to try and leverage a lower price, which also made it very easy to take a pass on the sale. It's rather curious why some people get hung up on numbers. In the above example, the guy wanted to pay less than the market rate for a low usage D200. In the earlier example, I was made fun of due to my low usage. To keep the skills up, you gotta shoot, which means you're going to rack up the frames on the camera, but in absolute terms, is it going to make a difference if you go out one day and take a dozen photos and then a few hundred on another day? It may and it may not, depending on how you approach your photography. Some treat photography like work, you just do it day-in and day-out no matter if the muse strikes you or not. This is the Henri Cartier-Bresson example, where the great man was known to photograph two rolls worth before breakfast to keep in practice. Or from literature, Mordecai Richler would lock himself in his home office from 9 am to 5 pm every weekday and just type away. In another example from literature, Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in a three week burst of writing. To ensure he could type uninterrupted, he taped 12-foot long sheets of draft paper so he could type day and night. His first draft of On the Road was 120 feet long and one massive, single spaced paragraph. Different strokes for different folks. There are some subjects that I've photographed a number of times, but I'm not happy with anything I've taken, which means I haven't explored the subject in enough ways. However, it's not like I'm counting the frames and think that just because I took 200 plus frames I got enough. Sometimes you might nail the shot in the first few frames, but a lot of times, you might never nail it even after hundreds of frames. Now, because some don't like the way I throw tidbits of information without source references, here is where I sourced some of my comments above (and yes, I offer this with my tongue firmly in my cheek):
September 11, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Aw, couldn't you just take it as conventional wisdom that Sony supplies Nikon with most of the sensors used in Nikon SLRs...but, I suppose that would be too easy 8^) It sounds like you’re looking for the smoking gun, or in other words, an official quote from a Nikon or Sony official confirming that Sony is the source of most of the sensors used in Nikon SLRs. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no official quote or announcement to that effect, because Nikon has always been fairly tight lipped about who provides it with the sensors for its SLRs. Sony would not want to antagonize one of its largest and most important clients for its sensor business, so don't expect it to say it sources Nikon either. However, the lack of official comment from Nikon or Sony is not actually required, especially when it comes to identifying the D2X's sensor, but more on that later. The D3X comments, are I admit, speculation and an educated guess that Sony will be the source, due to the long-time relationship Nikon has with Sony. First, here are various quotes from other respected reviewers and commentators about the source of Nikon’s assorted sensors, such as:
Sony is also considered the source for some of the early Pentax and Minolta 6 MP sensors too (prior to Sony acquiring Minolta’s photographic technology). This is still just circumstantial and is not likely to convince you, but the above list of reviewers and writers are “tuned” into the industry and some probably have access to information, whether officially or unofficially, that the rest of us do not. However, let's throw in some people (ChipWorks.com) who have actually taken the D2X's sensor from the camera and have clearly identified it as a Sony sensor:
I think this should dispel any thought that the D2X's sensor is not from Sony. The two sensors used by Nikon that are probably not sourced from Sony are the ones designed specifically by Nikon, including the LBCAST in the D2H, and its evolutionary variant used in the D3 and D700. Nikon is very tight about who the sensor fabricator is for these two cameras and none of the big reviewers and writers consider Sony to be the fabricator. Another quote from ChipWorks, which has also taken out and analyzed the D3's sensor:
At the end of the day, it does not matter where Nikon sources its sensors from, as the device is just a raw part that I'm certain Nikon tweaks with its own technology, e.g. the Expeed processing engine. If and when the D3X is announced by Nikon, I don't think it will take too long for people, such as those at ChipWorks, to dissect (literally) the sensor and confirm whether or not it originates from Sony. September 10, 2008 - The past few days working with heavy paper and Unibind covers made me realize that as much as we may love some papers for their look and feel, they may not be the best choice for trying to produce a photo book. Ilford Gold Silk is a great paper with its luxurious weight, feel, and the quality of the prints you can make with it. Unfortunately, while the weight and feel is great for single prints, bundled together, it can make for an unwieldy book – unless you have the book professionally bound with a more robust binding than just thermal glue. The thickness and stiffness of the Ilford paper makes it harder to turn the pages and knowing how delicate the Unibind binding can be with a large stack of heavy paper, I don’t dare open the book up too much. Epson Premium Luster is probably as thick as I would want to go for a custom, DIY Unibind book and perhaps more appropriately, I need to consider a paper that’s even thinner with the ability to print on both sides, as another way to reduce the number of sheets. Moab used to make a nice, two-sided paper called Kokopelli, but if you can still find it, it’s merely new old stock, as Kokopelli is a discontinued paper. For Unibind purposes, my thinking is I gotta stick with lightweight matte paper. Not the really thick, cardboard-like fine art paper like Hahnemuhle Photo Rag, but the thinner Moab Entrada 190 or Epson Archival Matte (or whatever Epson calls it today). It would also be better to stick with thinner Unibind covers too. Right now, I have a stack of new 9mm thick Unibind covers, which is why I ordered some thermal glue strips – I don’t want to waste those covers and I want to see if a double layer of glue will do the trick for thicker books. However, for future books, I think going with 7mm covers is the max needed for a decently sized book made from fine art matte paper and 5 mm covers for books made with glossy paper. We knew it was coming for a long time, but it's still nice to see Sony finally announce the A900 SLR, which now holds the crown for the highest resolution 35mm based SLR on the market. One review of a pre-production sample indicates comparable image quality as the Canon 1Ds Mk III, but if we want to quibble, the Canon still comes out on top by a small margin. This bolds well for Nikon users expecting the D3X using the same chip as in the A900. However, as much as we would expect Sony to know how to extract the best out of its own chip, I suspect Nikon might still have a few tricks up its sleeve to squeeze even more from the sensor. Look at what Nikon's done over the years in extracting every last little bit out of those lowly 6 MP sensors that came out ages ago with the D100. Looking at various DPReview pixel-peeping test shots, it always seemed that the Sony SLRs fared a bit worse than Nikon SLRs despite using more or less the same sensor. Hopefully, we know what Nikon will offer sooner rather than later, but last rumour I came across is a December announcement and there are various hints of something big happening at the Nikon-sponsored WPPI show early in the new year. September 9, 2008 - Update on the Epson StoryTeller photo book kit: I downloaded the updated software for the kit and now I have the ability to save each book project separate from the Epson software (actually made by ArcSoft). By using the Export function in the software, this allows saving a book project's individual pages as JPEG files, which now resolves an issue I had with the original software, which only allowed saving the book project as a proprietary file format. With the individual pages available for printing in a color managed environment, I can now control the quality and accuracy. Tellingly, when the JPEGs are brought into Photoshop, there is no profile associated, not even sRGB. I mentioned getting acceptable results by using the Epson print driver, but you must use the Photo Enhance setting in the driver. Using another setting could result in prints that appear dark and dingy, whereas Photo Enhance gets you pretty good results - trust me on this, as 25 wasted sheets of Epson Premium Luster will attest to. I had some concerns about the Unibind cover not having enough glue to securely hold 30 heavy sheets of Ilford Gold Silk paper, and my assumptions were correct. I found a source for the glue strips used in the Unibind covers and ordered a bundle. I plan to double up the glue strip to see if that will provide enough glue to securely bind heavy sheets of photo paper to the Unibind covers. There's less concern when using fine art paper, such as Moab Entrada 190, as while it is a thick paper, it is not as heavy. Thus, less stress is placed on the glue binding. One tip I came across is after the heating process, drop the spine of the book on the table counter to help settle the pages into the binding, then allow to cool and harden. September 8, 2008 - I've started doing some printing with Ilford Gold Silk paper. Right now, I'm using it to print 30 pages for a little portfolio project and it's quite a lovely paper to work with. Colors pop off the page with a saturation that I've not seen in the papers I usually use, such as Epson Premium Luster and Moab Entrada. A custom profile was created for the paper using the X-Rite spectrophotometer kit and as expected, the prints are accurate, just with more punch, which is not unwelcome. However, I suspect that most people buying this paper are using it for B&W work, which I've only dabbled with at this time. I do plan to compare the paper with some others I have in-house for B&W prints, so more comments to come. A review I read a while ago indicated that Ilford Gold Silk is quite a warm paper, but I don't find it to be too warm actually. Certainly warmer than the cool Epson Velvet fine art paper, but not as warm as Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper. The paper has a finish similar to Epson Premium Semi Gloss or Epson Premium Luster, which I love and is my preferred finish for most printing jobs. However, sometimes, a project just calls for a fine art paper and my preferred fine art matte paper these days is Moab Entrada 190. There's a hint of bronzing fresh out of the printer, but I don't see anything to report after the print has been given some time to dry. The paper is very thick, but no problem with printing using the Epson 4800's sheet feeder. The paper is also quite heavy, which I generally like, but in this case, it may be too much of a good thing for trying to bind in a Unibind cover. As I found when I tried to bind about 25 sheets of Epson Premium Luster in a 9mm thick Unibind cover, there may not be enough glue in the bottom of the cover's well to properly bind all the pages. Epson Premium Luster is not as thick and heavy as Ilford Gold Silk, so this could be interesting to see how well the binding holds. The thickness and weight causes the paper to come out with a bit of a curl; however, the paper does settle down after a few minutes and it's not as bad as I recall Crane Museo Silver Rag being, which seemed to be permanently curled even before printing. As with all the Ilford papers I've tried in the past, there are no markings on the back of the paper, which is the unfortunate case with Epson's better papers. When you're creating a portfolio book, the last think you want is to advertise is the brand of paper you use. Epson bad, Ilford (and Moab) good. Cost is CDN $50 for 50 letter sized sheets, so over a buck per sheet after the taxman gets his ounce of flesh. Not cheap, but not as expensive as some of the other baryta type of papers. Definitely worth considering for important printing jobs, such as portfolio book prints and enlargements. MacBook Pro update - no, I still do not have the damn thing yet, but I do know it's arrived and awaiting delivery into my eager hands. My unit is locked away in a room with some 200 other notebooks, all of which need to be deployed first by my source to his real client, with me being a low totem pole priority. With the way things are going, Apple could very well announce the MBP's replacement within a couple of days, although more credible rumours point to October as the likely time for the new MBP rollout. September 4, 2008 - Photo books are the rage now. I’ve made some brief comments about them in the past and how they have proliferated from the domain of professional photographers to the consumer. A number of retail outlets offer custom photo books, and up here in Vancouver, they include London Drugs, Future Shop, and Chapters. Then there are all the online vendors offering photo books, which generally require downloading some basic design software and then uploading your finished design and photos to the vendor for creating the book. Books can be basic soft cover, hardcover, and leather covered and the layout can be simple to complex, as if a professional graphic designer had created the book for you. Other benefits include the ability to do double-truck images (where the image is printed continuously over two pages), or other layouts wherein the middle spine is no longer a hindrance to creating continuous images. You can also have custom covers for the book. A few short years ago, it would seem impossible to be able to create one’s own photo book that was professionally printed and bound, but those days are gone. No longer does one have to grovel to publishers in hopes of having a photo book published and distributed through traditional retail channels. Now, you can self-publish without mortgaging the house and work with low numbers that few traditional publishers would ever touch. However, I’m perhaps getting a little more involved as the subject of this review is a photo book kit that’s much more down to earth and is not of the quality that you would or could sell commercially. While there are plenty of vendors willing to do the grunt work for you, there are also kits available for those willing to get their hands dirty with most of the work to create a photo book. In my limited experience, the easiest and quickest way to create a nice, classy looking photo book is to get a Unibind Photobook Creator along with the letter-sized portrait or landscape oriented covers. The Unibind kit is about USD $100, which is really less of a kit than it is just the binding machine/heater used to heat the glue in the cover to bind the pages permanently. After you’ve gone through the design and printing stages for your pages, the total time needed to create a Unibind photo book is all of one minute. The book only needs a minute in the heater to melt the glue and after the heat stage, you just let the book sit for several minutes to let the glue cool and harden. Incredibly simple and fast if you stick with the traditional 8.5x11 sheets of paper and covers, and a bit more involved if you like the square format cover, which requires 12x12 inch sheets of paper (meaning, having to cut 13x19 sheets down to size or using cropped 11x17 inch sheets). For a more substantial and more expensive photo book, there are Moab’s Chinle covers and Moab’s custom Chinle pages made from its very fine Entrada 190 fine art paper. You can choose 8x8 or 12x12 inch covers that come with slipcases to make for an impressive custom album. This is all fine for the photo enthusiast or even professional to use, but consumers are not likely going to want to invest $100 for a Unibind machine and will run scared at the thought of spending CDN $150 for a cover and 30 sheets to create a 12x12 Moab Chinle album (this before any printing cost is factored). Most consumers also don’t have $1000 photo-quality printers to print the pages needed for the custom albums. In short, creating custom photo books from scratch can be a costly investment in money and time to do things right. However, many consumers might have low cost inkjet printers, maybe one of those all-in-one units that include a scanner and a photocopier function along with color printing. Some of these low cost units can even produce photo quality prints, albeit, without the last degree of color fidelity and print longevity that the expensive photo quality printers offer.
The Epson StoryTeller Photo Book Creator that I bought comes with the following:
After installing the software, I began the design process to create the pages for my book. The photos used were of my fourth child, from his first day to his recent first birthday. As one would expect of software included in every StoryTeller kit, the design software is pretty basic, but still offers enough editing parameters for the consumer. I did not bother with editing any of the photos with the Epson software, as I had already done this via Lightroom. First you select the photos you want to work with from the file browser, which show up as thumbnails on the larger right side of the workspace. From these thumbnails you drag the ones you want to work with into a filmstrip-like section at the bottom of the work screen. It looks similar to a timeline work area for slideshow or video applications.
There are several page templates available to choose from based on various themes (five themes with ten templates each for fifty available templates). Unfortunately, there is no ability to create your own custom page template. You can manually choose each page template within a theme (you cannot choose templates between themes, only within one theme) and then manually insert your photos into the spaces provided, or have the software automatically insert all of your chosen photos into the pages.
On each page, there are sections for you to type in an appropriate title, as well as caption spaces for you to type in a page summary and/or type in individual captions for each image. For my album, I only used the title captions and deleted all the individual caption sections. For each individual image, you can do some minor adjustments to the picture’s position within the template space, which is handy for trying to fit a rectangular picture into a square space. This is where I would have like some more editing leeway to either adjust the individual template spaces, or be able to create my own page layouts. Sometimes, you have a set of images that belong on one page to adhere to a particular moment, say, baby Harrison taking his first steps, but despite using the best available template page, it still is not optimal for how I want the photos displayed.
After designing the twenty pages, you print them out. While Epson goes to length to indicate that its kit is not just meant for Epson printers, you would expect best results with Epson printers. To Epson’s credit, they do provide plenty of detail on how users can set their Canon or HP printers for best results, including for the potentially challenging process to print the long cover sheet. The printing process has one weak area for those fussy about color management; there is none other than via the printer’s drivers. While I obtained acceptable results when printing with the Epson R2400, I would have obtained even better results if I could have printed in a color-managed environment using my own custom profiles. This brings up another wish of mine, I wish I could save the individual pages created as JPEGs or TIFFs so that I could print them in a color managed application. This would also allow me to print the individual pages and bind them in the superior Unibind covers.
It’s a good thing Epson includes two cover sheets with each kit, because I didn’t read the instructions closely enough and messed up the first attempt. I followed Epson’s recommendation to create a user-defined sheet, but didn’t check off the measurement to be in inches. Instead, I left it at the default setting of centimetres, which gave me a wasted cover sheet. After correcting the measurement, I tried it again and presto, one almost perfectly printed cover sheet.
I say almost perfect, because there is a bit of ink scuffing along the left edge of the front cover. The covers come folded over the kit’s inside box and for best results you need to flatten the cover before printing, otherwise you too may get some ink scuffs on your cover. After printing all the pages it’s time to create the actual book. Unlike the Unibind system, which also uses your own photo sheets to create a bound book, the Epson book comes with pages already bound into the cover. Each page has a half-inch adhesive section with the remainder of the page to be torn away via perforated edges. After removing the protective cover from the adhesive side, I used the full page to line up the 8x10 printed sheets before pressing down on the adhesive side. The adhesive is not so tacky that you cannot remove the sheet and realign again if need be. I found this method of inserting the sheets into the cover less than ideal. Trying to align the sheets to the full page before removing the perforated section is not precise enough and at the end of the process, my pages were not aligned as neatly as I would want. I would have liked some guidelines on the adhesive side to provide more precise placement of the sheets, something like light grey lines so that they don’t call attention to themselves. However, this might also indicate my own sloppiness more than a true weakness in the Epson methodology.
Conclusion
While there are good aspects to the Epson kit, such as the software, it does not offer enough precision or options for me (color management and ability to save the pages separate from the Epson software) and my first book is rather sloppy. However, you may have better luck than I did with the Epson StoryTeller kit. Update: I know I'm not the sharpest lens out there, but sometimes my own stupidity apalls even me. Here I just groused about not being able to save the Epson StoryTeller pages individually, so that I could print and bind them in a Unibind cover. While I may not be able to save the pages individually, I can still print the individual sheets and bind them myself. It was so obvious, but I couldn't see the trees for the forest. There's still the downside of not being able to print the pages with a custom profile, but now that there's less restriction on how to use the Epson StoryTeller software, I'm more enthused about creating some more albums. However, I'll bypass the Epson cover and go straight to using the Unibind covers instead. September 1, 2008 - I've been afflicted by a stomach bug that's whacked me out the past couple of days. Eight tablets of antibiotics and proton pump inhibitors a day for the next week is what I get for the grief my gut is giving me. Which is just my excuse for delaying a couple of short reviews coming in the following days. August 30, 2008 - Anyone notice that Nikon SLRs that have companion grips, look like of a piece instead of two separate units? I noticed this when looking at photos of the D90 with its grip mounted. Comparatively, the Canon 50D's grip looks a bit like a kludge with no smooth lines to make it look like one big camera. I recently turned on color management in Firefox 3 and it's kind of interesting to see how the colors are rendered now in the browser. Images that are not tagged with a profile like sRGB take on a dull blue tone, which is disconcerting. I discovered I never tagged my logo image with the sRGB profile, which required a quick fix to tag the image and then upload it again. Rob Galbraith provides some instructions on how to activate color management in Firefox 3, as it does not have a readily accessible control to enable it (as silly as that would seem). Confession time, it's been a long while since I've done any printing. Intentions to do so always get delayed by other things, so when I finally "had" to do some printing these past few days, it felt great to get my hands "dirty" so to speak. Maybe I've put aside printing projects, because it meant having to fire up the brutally noisy desktop; however, now that I've tamed the beast, it's a pleasure to be able to use it near silence. Maybe my wife will even give me some time to finally print off a photo book project of little Harry, who recently celebrated his first birthday. She's been nagging me to print some photos, because she has nothing to show off at work. She even bought some scrapbook photo albums, but guess who's gonna have to do all the work to actually fill the albums... August 28, 2008 - The rumours turned out to be true once again, as Nikon announced the D90, which will replace the D80. As expected, the D90 appears to be using the same sensor as the D300 in a D80 sized and styled camera body. Add in the snazzy three inch LCD and a few other features here and there and we end up with a nice little update to an important SLR in the Nikon stable. The wrinkle; however, as most know by now, is the ability to record 720p resolution video via the D90’s Live Mode. The video is HD quality using a pretty massive sensor (for video) and can record at 24 fps. A mono microphone is located at the front for recoding audio. Mind you, this is not earth-shattering video capability. As Rob Galbraith points out in his preview, the D90’s video mode is pretty limiting (primitive even) if you’re big into video capture. It harkens back to the early days of digicams offering video capture, but limited to just a handful of minutes instead of to the capacity of the memory card being used. The D90 can only record at 720p for a maximum of only 5 minutes, which is to keep the sensor from heating up too much. For the video capture limitations, I expected as much when I read of the first hints of the D90 offering video capture capabilities. And, as much as some people criticize the lack of features and creature comforts that videographers will need and want, I think such criticisms are premature. As I wrote previously (or, perhaps hinted at), the D90’s video mode is the pioneer, but will not be the standard-bearer. As others have pointed out, this is Nikon testing the waters to see how consumers and professionals alike will accept video capture in a still camera. And, really now, did you honestly expect RED One capability for $1000? Let’s get real, because the D90 is first and foremost, a consumer-level SLR meant for photography. Where the road to convergence will really be mapped out is in Nikon’s (and probably Canon’s) next generation of pro cameras (not including the now likely delayed D3X), i.e., the D4 and the 1D Mk IV. At this level, the kinds of things Galbraith points out as disappointing on the D90, will be more relevant. If the pro-level cameras are still lacking then the criticisms will be fair and appropriate, because there will be a lot more expected from the high-priced, pro SLRs. What I wonder about is whether the D4 will retain the classic SLR design, or if a new design is in the offing to marry and merge the needs of video and still photography. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of noted Italian designer, Giorgetto Giugiaro J Do I see a D90 in my future? No. As a still camera, it’s lacking in AF capabilities compared to the D300, as the D90 continues to use the same module as found in the D200 and D80, which was never stellar anyway. The D300’s speed and buffer are better suited for some of the photography I do. As for video, I want more than five minutes worth of HD video capture. However, as Nikon evolves the video capture capabilities, I could see the successor to the D90 becoming a part of the kit, as the ideal all-in-one travel camera (I hesitate to call it a D100, since that name is already taken). Taking the family back to Disneyland would no longer require carrying an SLR and a camcorder and the attendant batteries and tape needed to feed both devices. I expect that the word convergence is going to become much used over the next few years, as I have no doubt that Nikon will not be left alone in the coming brave new world. August 26, 2008 - News item from the folks that hold the PMA show every late winter (February or March):
Between Nikon and Canon, they still command 84% market share in Japan. Wonder how Olympus and Sony's five year plans to obtain 20% market share (each) are coming along these days... I keep forgetting to mention this and by this point, the sale is likely over, but the local Costcos in Vancouver were blowing out little desk lamps made by Ott Lite. If you've cruised through some websites, namely Luminous Landscape, you may recall some years ago that MR talked about certain Ott Lite lamps as being suitable for viewing proof prints. The Ott Lite that MR used was the poor man's viewing box at about $100, which is still a lot cheaper than the smallest desktop viewing boxes that go for about $400. The reason why the Ott Lite is worthy of use is the daylight balanced flourescent tube used, which allows for more objective and critical lighting than under the typical tungsten light used in most homes (changing now, I'm sure to fluorescent bulbs). I don't think the Ott Lites sold by Costco are the same as the one used by MJ; however, for $30, how can you lose. Around the same time that MJ discussed the Ott Lite, I paid $20 for a daylight balanced fluorescent bulb to use in my office lamp for the same purpose, to act as cheap proofing light. My wife bought one Ott Lite first to use as her own bedside lamp and before I could ask her to buy another for me, she went out and bought three more for the me and the kids. I came home one day and found them stacked in my home office. If you have young kids that still need a night light, the Ott Lites sold by Costco have little nickel sized bulbs in their base that should provide just enough light to suffice. It's bright enough at night that I turn my lamp away from the bed. There was an interesting posting over at TOP a day or two ago, wherein, MJ, the blog’s self-described factotum and chief bottle washer felt obliged to point out that he’d recently been attacked for a review he co-wrote about a Pentax macro lens. I won’t get into the finer points of the postings and the bruised ego it created, but after reading the exchange that caused the eruption of alleged abuse at Photo.net, a few sayings come to mine: much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot, and mountains out of mole hills. Granted though, as a sideline observer, I'm not the one being criticized and maybe I'd feel the same as MJ, if it were me. However, to my reading, both parties are guilty for taking a small thing and blowing it out of proportion and out of relevance about the focus (pun intended) of the posting, which was a review of what appears to be a dandy little lens from Pentax. Flare-ups such as this are notorious for happening on various forums, which is all too easy to happen when person-to-person discussion cannot take place and as such, all the physical and vocal cues and clues are MIA. I’d think that if the commenter and MJ were to actually meet and discuss their points of view in person, both would come to understand the other’s perspective and opinion and it would never have gotten nasty like it did on the Photo.net thread. The irony is that both the poster and MJ believe the Pentax lens to be quite a good lens. It makes me wonder sometimes, if maybe some reviews become general and bland, because the writer cannot be bothered to get too picky, knowing that he or she will be criticized for perceived faults by readers. Subconsciously, maybe that’s why I don’t get into doing much testing these days, as much as I like and enjoy seeing what a lens can do compared to another. Someone out there will find something wrong with how the testing was done and declare the test null and void. You’ll also be called an idiot at the same time for conducting a “flawed” test, which I’m certain I’ve been called over the years. Probably the one comment that hurt the most (tongue strictly in cheek), was (sniff, sniff) being called a “lightweight” compared to another Nikon using guy, whose name and eponymous website shall not be mentioned here J August 25, 2008 - China seems to be a regular source for leaked news. First there were the cell phone photos of the Nikon D700's brochure, which gave us the first real indication that Nikon had a new FX SLR coming out. I'm not sure if the Nikon D90 rumours came from a Chinese source, but it would not surprise me. Now, Canon China has apparently "accidentally" posted information about the new 50D, a replacement for the 40D. Seeing the 40D replaced so soon is surprising (I`d be kinda pissed if I were a 40D owner), but the 50D intrigues with a 50% increase in resolution from 10 MP to 15 MP and ISO 12,800. While the resolution bump is already a tad aggressive, when coupled with the spectacular ISO 12K, all in a DX sized sensor, I don`t have much expectation that the ISO 12K will be anything useful. It seems more like specmanship by Canon, because it`s taken a bit of a beating with the Nikon D3 and D700, while its flagship 1D Mk III has been dragged through the mud with the AF problems that Rob Galbraith has discussed to death. Where ISO 12K would be very useful would be in a 5D Mk II or 6D, which, as far as I know, no one has heard anything about. However, with the 50D offering 15 MP, that gives us a good clue as to what Canon`s lower cost full frame SLR will be offering for resolution. Makes you wonder if Canon will have a solid one-two punch for Photokina with the 50D and an expected 5D replacement. While the Nikon D90 rumour seems pretty solid, some are wondering if Nikon will have the high resolution FX SLR ready for Photokina. Thom Hogan does not believe Nikon will given the lack of leaks and photos of any prototype SLR being used at the Beijing Olympics. That`s a shame, because while the D90 will be very welcome, it would be nice if Nikon could break through the 12 MP barrier they seemed to have imposed on themselves. Update on my desktop computer: my quest for silent computing led to me doing away with the incredibly noisy stock fan/cooler units that came with my Xeon processors. I replaced them with very tall and quite massive passive coolers, but I was a bit lazy and didn't clean the original thermal paste when I installed the ThermalRight coolers. While the computer became beautifully quiet after the change from active to passive, the temperature increased significantly with no more fan units to keep the CPUs cool. This past weekend, I redid the job, but cleaned up the old thermal paste using Q-tips, paper towels and 99% rubbing alcohol. I applied some new thermal paste, being careful not to overdo it, as a little bit of paste is all that you need. I also added two 120mm case fans to provide some active, but still very quiet cooling to the massive CPU coolers. I had enough space to install one fan unit properly on one of the ThermalRight coolers, but there was not enough space for the second unit to be mounted in the recommended spot on the other cooler. However, I was still able to mount the second fan unit in a way that allows it to blow cool air on both coolers at the same time. Unfortunately, with the size of coolers and the fan units mounted, I had to adjust some other items inside, such as the side fan unit that blows cool air on the expansion cards. I also had to shift the graphics card from the first PCI-E slot to the second one to accomodate the space needed for one of the fan units. These two adjustments required a return to the ATI HD2900 GPU, because one of the heap pipes on the ASUS card extrudes out from the main card in such a way as to interfere with the side fan unit. The end result is two more large fan units mounted internally and one more on the GPU, which could lead to noise issues again. However, after boot-up, I found the noise to only be a very slight increase over the passive cooling system. While the all the fans inside the box amount to some audible noise, it's not at all objectionable and the noise from the hard drives is still noisier. It's no big deal to have the box on and running all day long. Curiously, when I monitored the temperature, I found cores 1-4 to be hotter than cores 5-8, whereas when the CPUs only had passive cooling, it was the opposite with cores 5-8 running hot. Doing my video rendering test still shows some worrying heat increases with the peak hitting 100 degrees Celsius, just as with passive cooling. However, unlike with passive cooling, hitting 100 degrees did not result in an immediate throttling of the CPU performance to try and spike the temperature down. With the fans blowing some cool air, the cores would hit 100, but still maintain performance. I was concerned about the fans exhausting hot air all around the the interior of the case, because the fan units blow cool on one side, but exhaust hot air on the other side. I oriented the fans label side facing the coolers, so that cool air is blown on them and hot air exhausts on the other side. However, I remembered that when the CPUs were actively cooled with their original fan units, the whole room would warm up considerably, meaning the old fans exhausted a tremendous amount of heat inside and outside the computer. While the computer with its new coolers and fan units still does exhaust some heat into the room, it's nothing like it was in the bad old days when I would go deaf in a heat wave. August 23, 2008 - My buddy, Rob Greer, from LA has created a blog section at this website. You can follow the adventures of this California wedding, portrait, and studio photographer. The guy's currently renovating a large space in an old building to be his live-in studio. Michael Clark, a professional adventure photographer from New Mexico has just published his latest newsletter (he publishes quarterly). Clark’s newsletters serve a few different purposes.
In this quarter’s newsletter, Clark discusses creating a DIY portfolio. How timely, given that I just wrote about how today’s photographer may decide to outsource the creation of photo books, given that there are online outfits offering good quality at low cost. Clark decided to create his own portfolio using products that should be familiar to long-time readers of this humble website, Moab Entrada paper and Moab Chinle albums. I used the same Moab Chinle album as Clark to create a wedding album for a cousin’s wedding in 2007 (wedding was in 2006). I also used the Chinle album to create a custom photo book for a former, but long-time supervisor of mine that retired last year. Both albums were created using Moab’s premade, pre-scored Entrada 190 pages meant for use in the Chinle album. The wedding album had images printed on both sides while the photo book had images on one side only. Both my cousin and my retired supervisor were thrilled with their albums. The album for my old supervisor was seen by a few people at work and I received a lot of kudos for the photos and the overall package, which was elegant and had a high-quality look and feel. While Moab does make thicker paper than Entrada 190, which I think are more appropriate for fine art prints meant for display, the 190-weight paper is just right for the album. Not too thick and not too thin; however, if printing on both sides, you must allow the first print side to dry thoroughly before printing on the other side. And, to continue the thought of DIY albums, I recently placed an order for more Unibind covers. While I love square format albums, using them with the 12x12 inch Unibind covers does not actually result in a truly square album, as you would get with the Moab Chinle album. The Unibind covers are exactly 12x12 inches, including the half-inch space meant for the binding, so you actually end up with an album that is more 11x12 inches for the pages. Unlike with the Chinle album with dedicated Moab pages available for it, I have to custom cut whatever paper I want to use to 12x12 inches. Humanity being imperfect, my cutting typically results in pages that are slightly off from one another by tiny smidges, which gathered together results in an imperfect bundle of pages. The letter sized Unibind covers are much more convenient to use, since all you need to do is just give the binding side of the paper a lit bit of extra breathing space. No cutting or cropping required; print, dry and then bundle up for the one-minute heat cycle to bind the paper to the cover. The letter size cover allows for your choice of all the paper on the market without having to cough up big bucks for 13x19-size paper, only to have to cut the large sheets down to 12x12. The Chinle albums are not cheap and you won’t really be able to do double-truck prints and full bleed prints are not recommended, but for doing one print per page albums, still worth a look. The big advantage with the Chinle and Unibind options is that you control the quality of the print and the paper used. August 22, 2008 - A co-worker showed me a little 7x7 inch album of her wedding photos that now has me rethinking the concept of do-it-yourself (DIY) or outsourcing. The co-worker had her photos taken in Hong Kong and as part of her package, she received the edited digital files. Due to the formal album being expensive and too big to haul around to show everyone, she went to www.blurb.com, uploaded her files and received a finish, soft cover 7x7 inch album for about $25. The quality is decent and it looks very much like some of the digest sized photo books you would buy in Chapters (or Barnes and Noble for the US readers). I was impressed that she could get all the photos printed (50 plus) for such a reasonable price. There’s no way I could produce a similar album for the price she paid and therein lies the rub. With the proliferation of low-cost, photo book producers and kits, is it worthwhile for say a wedding photographer, to try to do anything in-house? Chances are, even with the best Epson printers and good book binding equipment, your results will still not be as good as the professional photo book producers. By outsourcing, you can take advantage of images spanning two pages seamlessly. You can get a cover that wraps both front and back. You can get dustcovers, etc., etc. You design it, they print it. No longer will you have to sit around nursing a clogged inkjet printer into cleaning its tubes so that you can print a project. Hell, no longer will you even need a printer…okay, that’s going too far. Even if for nothing else but proofing, having your own printer is just about mandatory in this digital age. However, with outsourcing, you can now keep the budget sane and get nothing more than a standard 13x19 inch unit that does not weigh as much as a 10-year old and does not cost as much to feed it. Many professionals have long outsourced their work, but the cost used to be fairly high for amateur photographers to consider unless it was for something pretty special. Now, with outfits like Blurb.com, the cost is so affordable that everyone can have photo books created. While, I’m impressed, there is one aspect of the Blurb book that I don’t like, which is the inclusion of a UPC barcode on the back cover and some of the inside pages. The purpose is for enterprising photographers that want to sell their books in a commercial venue, but for many, such an adornment is useless and a mar on an otherwise good product. I do hope that the wedding books Blurb offers do not have such barcodes (why they ever would, I have no idea, unless you really think that retail consumers would want to buy your wedding album). While low-cost sources of photo books can be an advantage for photographers looking to cut capital costs and maximize profit, it might also be a double-edge sword that cuts them. A knowledgeable bride might try and squeeze the files from the photographer and bypass him or her to create her own album at the same online sites. You know, in thinking about how some brides are, things have not changed much from the film era to the digital era. In the film era, some brides pushed for getting the negatives as part of the package and many photographers refused, as reprints and enlargements were a big source of income. In the digital era, some pros still balk at selling their files; however, others that are more open and savvy with consumer demands, offer the files as part of the package, but price the package appropriately to make up for lost reprints or enlargements. I haven’t photographed a wedding job since 2007, but the last bride I worked for told me that she was going to have me do some enlargements for her. I did a couple of custom designed 16x20 prints for her that she gave as gifts to her family, and she said she’d back for more personal prints. I haven’t heard from her since late last summer and I suspect that she found more favourable prices for enlargements elsewhere. This is too bad, because I merely gave her what I consider proof files and never had a chance to do some custom edits. The files are all full resolution, but I consider them proofs, because they only went through a basic first edit. Meaning white balance adjustments, a bit of straightening if needed, exposure adjustments, etc., but no touch-ups and no glamorization. While I purposefully stopped doing weddings in 2008 for personal reasons, the absence and lack of pressure to edit thousands of files all at once has been nice. I have to wonder now if I really have the desire to keep at it, also keeping in the back of my mind, the pressures of work and how it can really mess up my summers. I was asked about August 8, but not knowing what work would do to my personal schedule, I had to turn down an opportunity to photograph on one of the most auspicious days of this young century (all those eights must have caused more than a few Asian weddings to occur). As it turned out, I was down in Kansas City that day, which if I had accepted the job, would have made my life really awkward and complicated. I may end up just photographing weddings on a referral basis from friends and family rather than formally as a business. While walking home from the bus stop a few days ago, I saw something that caused me to do a double take. On a side street corner, close to where I live, someone had placed a Styrofoam tray (the kind that raw meat would be packaged on) with a plastic knife and fork on either side with the words, “For you” written on top of the tray. It was the, er, meal that caused some comedic revulsion…a tray full of doggy doo. I thought about taking a photo of it, but I decided that I really didn’t want a picture of a doggy doo dinner. However, the fact that someone created this little piece of, dare I call it, art, made me wonder about the motives. Was someone just having some fun and making a statement, or was it a protest by a homeowner weary of the neighbourhood dogs fouling up his lawn? The timing was interesting too, because in Burnaby, many are concerned with a recent incident in one of our parks. A dog died after playing with and chewing on a stick that may have had some poison on it. The vet that treated the dog thinks that the poison is a common street drug, but official results are still pending the autopsy report. This has raised some discussion between dog owners and non-dog owners. Dog owners want to be able to walk and play with their dogs in public places. Non-dog owners want dog owners to be more responsible by keeping dogs on leashes and especially to clean up after their dogs when they do their thing on other people’s lawns. While I’m sure most dog owners are responsible people, it only takes a few irresponsible people to tar and mar everyone else. I’ve found doggie bombs on my lawn a few times and I really don’t like the idea that dogs come pissing on my lawn that my kids play on. However, the dogs annoy me less than their owners. A dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do and while dogs can be very intelligent animals, they’re not human. I sometimes wonder about the intelligence and arrogance of some dog owners who don’t carry plastic baggies to gather up their dog’s business. I also suspect more than a few dog owners carry a plastic baggie more for show than actual use. Which victimized home owner wouldn’t love to be able to scoop up the poop and deposit it on the irresponsible lout’s doorstep (inside a flaming baggie perhaps)? Now, don’t get me wrong, I love dogs (I also like cats too). I had a dog as kid, despite my dad being horribly allergic to cats and dogs. If I could convince my wife, I’d want a little dog of our own for the kids to enjoy and understand what it means to be responsible in taking care of a pet. While I love the big dogs, like German shepherds and labs, if I were allowed to have a dog, I’d likely get a Maltese or a poodle, because these dogs have real hair and not fur. They’re also small and it would be less constricting on them to raise them in an urban setting. And, I for one would use a plastic baggie for its intended purpose. Hey, as a father of four kids, cleaning up poop ain’t no big thing anymore – the best is when the kid releases a bomb in the baby bath tub right after you’ve done the soap-up and rinse off. I would say that cleaning up after a dog is a walk in the park compared to cleaning up after babies with squished up, messy diapers, but that’s perhaps not the best choice of words at this time. August 19, 2008 - The summer heat has arrived in Vancouver and I’m sweltering and suffering through temperatures in the high twenties (Celsius). I hate heat, even though I grew up with it in my hometown. Hot days and nights means less time spent in front of heat-emitting computers and writing new content. However, we have a bit of a cool break, so here are some thoughts du jour: The D90 rumours are pretty strong and the timing is right for Nikon to replace the D80 with an SLR that takes advantage of the current technology. I think there is little doubt that Nikon will announce this camera in September for the Photokina show. The big thing people are considering the ramifications of is the video and sound recording capabilities of the D90, which Nikon apparently wanted to test the waters with a consumer SLR instead of a pro SLR. Many talk about the convergence of video and still photography and it seemed inevitable that a still photography brand would take the plunge and try and offer some merger of the two mediums. News photographers are the ones at the forefront with many carrying camcorders to supplement their coverage. While stills are useful or both print and electronic media, video has only one function, to feed the online versions of publications. Personally, I thought Canon would have been the first out with a camera pointing towards this future convergence, but here’s little old Nikon with another first. While I certainly don’t expect the D90 to offer anything near the capabilities of even a cheap Mini DV camcorder, I will be interested in how the convergence is integrated by a company known for stills technology. The really interesting product will be future pro SLRs that Nikon provides with video capabilities. It’s a bit like the Apple MacBook Air. Great concept to make a notebook as light and as thin as possible, but the implementation in the first generation is not ideal. Processor and hard drive choices are limited and are too slow, there is not enough RAM, and users have complained about how the USB ports are accessed and the limited space provided around them. The really interesting product will be the successor to the original Air and hopefully, Apple will have heard and addressed the issues. Back to the D90: enough information has leaked out that we can expect a similar SLR with the D80. I’d expect that it will have the D300’s sensor, which means pretty good high ISO to 3200 in a smaller, lighter, and cheaper package than the D300. This makes it an attractive second camera for those already with a D300, or even for those with an FX camera. Travelling with a smaller and lighter camera is no bad thing, but the issue for me is how crippled will it be? Will it be so basic in operation and devoid of meaningful features that I would prefer to pack and carry a larger SLR? This is what I feel about the D40 and D60 and despite their attractive weight and size for travel, I’d rather not lose out on the D300’s useful features that allow less thinking about the camera’s technical settings and more time in taking photos. If the D90 follows the model of the D80 offering most of the D200’s features for less money, it will be another hot seller and homerun for Nikon. If you read my Kansas City piece, you now know that I have an Apple MacBook Pro on order. It’s probably already been delivered to my contact, but since he’s been out of town, I won’t be getting it until sometime this week. This should make for an interesting experience with plenty of fodder for blogging, as I work my way around Leopard. This is also the reason why I have not upgraded to Lightroom 2 yet, as I need to see how I get on with the Mac OS first and then take stock of what I really need in my transition to the Mac platform. As written about earlier though, I will not be abandoning Windows and it’s a matter of some research and decision making about how I will keep Windows. I may dual-boot via BootCamp, or run it virtually via Parallels, or possibly just have a dedicated PC around for kicks. I don’t consider my Sony notebook to be good enough to be that dedicated PC though, as its very modest 1.5 GHz Core2Duo processor is just not up to snuff for the things I want to do with an all around computer. August 18, 2008 - A little write-up about my trip to Kansas City is now posted. A link to a photo gallery is available at the end of the article, but if you want to see that first, click here. The larger your browser window, the larger the main image will be (about 1000 pixels for the large version). Lightroom's Flash gallery feature creates galleries with three versions of the main image, from small, to medium, to large. The size will depend on how big the browser is set. August 13, 2008 - Man, do I feel out of touch and behind the times after only five days away. Russia invades Georgia, the Beijing Olympics have started, and Nikon once again makes a dumbass move by introducing a new RAW format with the P6000. I understand the P6000 NRW format is already raising a stink and many others have already commented on it, so there's not much for me to add other than after several good moves forward, this is a step or two back for Nikon. This especially hurts because the P6000 had some promise as a flagship digicam that would herald Nikon being back in the game, much like the D2X and D200 laid the groundwork for Nikon's SLR resurgence. The D90 rumours seem pretty hot, so will Nikon introduce another dynamic duo in September with a D3X and D90? Who knows and no matter for me, as I won't be buying for some time to come. August 12, 2008 - I'm back from Kansas City, but my luggage is still in Denver, as of this writing. Will have a write-up of my KC experience and photos once I've sorted through them. August 7, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Sean Connery, er, die at the end of that scene... Ah, to eat sushi rolls off of a geisha's bosum...oops, thinking of another Sean Connery film with more direct ties to Japanese businessmen, Rising Sun. Anyway, I hear ya about how Nikon (and Canon) are not about to let Olympus, et al., try and muscle in on their SLR duopoly. Whatever Olympus and its partner, Panasonic, can come up with, Nikon and Canon will fight back hard to keep their marketshare. However, I'm all for the smaller players to try and shake things up and keep the big boys a bit more honest. In thinking about what kind of potential the Micro 4/3 has to offer, some have considered that you could have a Canon G9, or the now announced Nikon Coolpix P6000, type camera with exchangeable lenses. Intriguing and if the quality holds, a traveller's and backpacker's dream system perhaps. Others are speculating about rangefinder type cameras to come, which makes some sense given Panasonic's partnership with Leica. Personally, I wonder why Panasonic has not already bought up Leica. I'm sure the Panasonic management could just use the massive company's petty change account to buy the fabled company. I'm off to Kansas City until next Monday night. Have a good one and I'll catch up with everyone next week, as I exchange the west coast sushi for some midwest barbeque. August 6, 2008 - There's a big buzz going around the big photography sites about Olympus/Panasonic's Micro 4/3 announcement. Biggest news of the year, say a couple of sites...er...it's August and we still have the big Photokina show coming up next month. Mite bit premature sez I... The original promise of the 4/3 system was supposed to be smaller sized SLRs and lenses. Didn't really happen with the E-3 as big as any other capable SLR and the lenses didn't shed too many pounds either. The only real difference in size was due to the 2x crop factor that allowed you to substitute a much smaller and lighter 300mm lens in the place of a big, honkin' 600mm lens. While the size difference between 4/3 and APS sensors is not dramatic, they are there and while APS sensors have taken significant strides in quality, especially at high ISO settings, 4/3 has not kept up. There are many that suggest that the advances in APS can be similarly realized in the 4/3's sensor, but if so, why are we still waiting for D300 or 40D-like quality at ISO 1600? However, let's not be the wet blanket to spoil the debutante's entrance at the ball. With the need for a mirror box and prism gone, I (and a few others) can immediately see that the Micro 4/3 could really do well with digicams and bridge type cameras. While Micro 4/3 holds the real promise of smaller SLRs and lenses, how small can we go and still maintain ergonomic functionality. Look at the Nikon D40, it's tiny and lightweight, far more so than I would want for my hands. Olympus itself already makes a very small 4/3 SLR in the E-420, so how much smaller do we go before it becomes too small? Thus, I'm not certain this is where Micro 4/3's potential is. With digicams and bridge cameras, this is where Micro 4/3 could offer much larger sensors with superior high ISO quality. Whereas regular 4/3's high ISO quality is not keeping up with the Joneses in the SLR world, that same quality would be significant in the digicam and bridge camera world. Who wouldn't love to see a Canon G9 or the coming Coolpix P6000 come with a 4/3 sensor? The flies in the ointment, the other big brands that would take notice and produce their own digicams using APS sized sensors. However, while APS' advantage is its size for SLRs, the size could be a disadvantage, because a camera can only be made so small with such a large sensor (or, so I think). The other fly in the ointment, decreasing sales of digicams while SLRs are still going strong. Everybody and their grandmother has a digicam. If sales are now declining, we've already reached market saturation and maturity. August 5, 2008 - A reader asked if I might have some influence with Photodex, a site sponsor and producer of the excellent ProShow slideshow application. The reader, being a Mac user, would love to see a Mac version of ProShow. I have no influence, but it never hurts to ask, so I did and received a response that Photodex is aware of the demand for a Mac version, but at this time, there are no plans for such. Not to say that there will never be a Mac version, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Thus, for Mac users wanting to enjoy ProShow, BootCamp, Parallels, VMware Fusion, or some other method of running Windows on a Mac is your only means at this time.
From day one, the tower quickly winds itself up to a scream within 30 minutes of boot-up. After an hour, no one can stand to be in my home office for any length of time. It also outputs a lot of heat, but that I can deal with to some degree since I did grow up in a dry, desert-like environment as a kid in Kamloops. With so much noise driving me nuts to the point of no usage, it's stupid to have so much money tied up. I had to do something to mod the box and get my money's worth out of it.
I went to my local computer shop and bought an ASUS EN9600GT Silent. This is a $200 graphics card based on the nVidia chipset and offers 512 MB of video RAM. As its name suggests, this graphics card is silent...completely so, as it has no fan unit unlike most other high performance GPUs. The ASUS card uses large heatsinks to keep the card cool. Looks and I hope, will "sound" good to me. Measuring the noise The analogy of sounding like a jet airplane taking off is often used, but that’s hyperbolic since a real jet airplane taking off gets into ear-damaging noise levels if you are anywhere near the engines at full blast. However, I’m sympathetic to the analogy, because I’ve wondered if sustained exposure to my computer’s noise would damage my “golden” ears J There’s only one way to really tell how loud my computer is, which is to measure it with a sound level meter.
I did two tests with the sound meter placed in different positions. Why I did so, I will explain later on. For the first test, the meter was mounted to a tripod and set up in front of my main LCD to mimic where I spend most of my time when working in my home office. The height was set to approximate where my ears would be, which would seem logical enough. With nothing turned on and the door closed, the sound level in my home office does not register on the meter at the lowest setting of 60 dBA. The meter’s analog gauge goes down to minus 10 dBA, so that means the meter actually reads down to 50 dBA when on the lowest setting of 60 dBA. I played back some music from my iPod through my smallish multimedia speakers and at what I consider background listening levels, the meter registered around 55 dBA for classical music and between 58 to 60 dBA for rock music. According to some sound level comparison guides, this is around where close, but normal conversation would be. I cranked the volume to a level that I would never listen at with the multimedia speakers and hit 70 dBA with rock music. At this level, I found the sound to be quite grating and annoying, but this could also be an indication of the relatively low quality of the speakers. The better your speakers, the louder they will play without a sense of strain and without causing listening fatigue. The little Behringer multimedia speakers are inexpensive at around $120 and do not compare to their larger brothers, the Behringer powered monitors, which at $400 are still quite inexpensive for monitor speakers. With some frame of reference for noise in my room, I turned on the computer and did some measurements at different time intervals. At boot-up, the noise from the computer is definitely audible but is not what I would consider intolerable. The volume did not measure on the sound level meter, which means the noise is less than 50 dBA from where the meter has been positioned. After 30 minutes, the computer is starting to get warmed up and the noise is now measurable at 52 dBA. The subjective difference is quite noticeable from boot-up noise levels. After one hour, the noise measures 54 dBA and the computer is pretty much at full blast and unless you are already hard of hearing, few would want to spend more than a few moments being exposed to the noise. The measured noise surprised me, because 54 dBA is less than the measured level for the background music. Before measuring the computer’s noise, I was expecting the computer to be in the 70 dBA range. So what gives that I bitch so much about my computer being loud and here it measures less than background music and normal conversation volume? I initially thought that it had to do with some pseudo, psychological mumbo jumbo about how music is pleasant and that we enjoy listening to it. Thus, a pleasant noise that’s a bit louder won’t be as grating to us as unpleasant noise. Music also has lots of ebb and flow. It’s not constant and Romantic era classical music in particular, has huge dynamic range, going from whisper quiet one minute to full out rock concert level blasts the next.
I redid the test again, but this time with the meter positioned low, about two feet away from the back of the computer. This time, as soon as the computer booted up, I hit 54 dBA and an hour later, the box was screaming at 67 dBA. While not hitting my assumed estimate of 70 dBA, it’s close enough to understand that it’s loud and obnoxious. With the noise measurements done, it was time to replace the old ATI graphics cards for the new ASUS nVidia card and then re-measure again with the same setup as before.
Result #1 The fans are stock Intel units and while I’m sure they are technically effective in preventing the CPU from meltdown, are worthless if they scream so badly that you don’t even want to use the computer. Time to look for another solution. Doing some research on CPU coolers, I found a whole slew of CPU coolers for Intel socket 775 chips, which is fine if you run a standard Core2Duo processor. Unfortunately, I run Xeon chips, which are socket 771 and the forest of CPU coolers suddenly burnt away like a California wildfire on a tinder dry hill and left only a small handful of choices. The best of the bunch seemed to be Thermalright’s HR-01 X (X for Xeon). The HR-01 X can be used two different ways, depending on your needs:
In both instances, you need very good ventilation for this configuration to ensure the hot air gets vented out efficiently. I won’t bore you with the technical details of how to install the HR-01 X, but I do provide some pictures below. If you can read an instruction manual then you’ll be fine. One of the nice features of the HR-01 X6 is that you do not need to remove the motherboard from the case to install the cooler. I will note though that for my particular case and motherboard, installation took a while due to some very tight spaces that required a patient hand at using the small, supplied wrench to tighten down the coolers on the CPUs and the motherboard.
Result #2 Pre-mod and after one hour of idling, the CPU temperatures ranged from around 40 to 50 degrees Celcius (eight cores). During a video conversion test to render a DVD to iPod Touch format, all eight cores were used and the Windows Vista gadget that shows CPU usage was red-lined much of the time during rendering. CPU temperature hit a maximum of 72 degrees Celcius. Post-mod, the tower's noise was so silent that the Radio Shack meter did not register. I can hear the case fans running, but these big 120mm units are very quiet. For the first time, I can hear the hard drives operating, something that I never heard prior to the mod. Even after one hour, there was no increase in noise and now the tower is quiet enough that I would be happy to run it all day long. However, I do have a concern about how much hotter the CPUs would run with only passive cooling. At idle, after boot-up, the temperature ranges from 50 to 65 degrees Celcius, or 10 to 15 degrees hotter than with the noisy fans. After one hour at idle, the temperature has increased in range from 55 to 70 degrees Celcius. I pop in another DVD and render that to see how hot the temperature will reach. It does not take too long for the temperature to rise and hit 80 degrees, then 90 degrees, and then 100 degrees. Not all eight cores reach such high temperatures. I notice that one CPU seems to do the bulk of the work while the other lazes along at lower temperatures. The harder working CPU is the one hitting 100 degrees and I notice that when it reaches this very high temperature, it will suddenly drop by 20 or more degrees before rising again. I'm not certain, but this may be CPU throttling or shutdown to protect itself from the high heat. I also notice that the CPU gadget does not show the CPU performance red-lining, as it did with active cooling. While I love the modded computer's now very quiet operation, it's obvious to me that passive cooling is not going to be enough and that I should look into adding more fans to the big ThermalRight coolers. The problem though is space and whether I can install two large fans in such a tight space. Installing a fan on the top CPU shouldn't be a problem, but the bottom one may be an issue, because my Lian Li case has a ledge that separates the top 2/3 of the case with the bottom 1/3. The addition of two more fans will likely add more noise, but 120mm fans are generally pretty quiet and there are some that cater to the silent PC crowd, so I don't expect that the noise will increase by too much. More to come on this in the coming weeks, when I have time to check out how much space I have and which fan units will work best with the CPU coolers. I may also be re-doing the installation of the coolers, because as you may have noted in my pictures, I likely glopped on too much of the thermal compound needed to mate the cooler to the CPU. I also did not clean away the old compound after removing the old fan units. August 4, 2008 - So, my cousin comes by with a question about why his Lensbaby 2.0 doesn't work with his new Nikon D40. Now, some of you know that the D40 and D60 cameras do not meter or focus with manual focus or non-CPU lenses. However, in racking my brain about why the Lensbaby would not allow the D40 to operate, well that didn't make sense to me. Even with no focusing and metering, you should still be able to take a photo on manual mode. And, so it was when I mounted the Lensbaby on the D40, set the dial to M and took a shot. Checked the preview on the LCD and saw that it was dark, so we swapped out the f5.6 aperture disc inside the Lensbaby and shot it wide open (no aperture discs). Adusted the shutter speed to go with the lighting inside and I got a decently lit shot with a nice histogram. My cousin seemed surprised that I was able to immediately take a photo on manual mode, as he said he tried it, but the camera wouldn't take the shot. Obviously, he thought he was in manual mode, but really wasn't. He also wondered why the flash would not go off when he tried it with the Lensbaby. For this problem, I had no luck either and while a little message popped up on the LCD to suggest changing the flash settings or use a CPU lens, I could see no flash settings in the D40's menu. My cousin now senses that the D40 is "very" basic, perhaps more so than he had expected. I commented that I told him as much about the D40 and for that matter, the D60. Although, I did suggest that the D60 would have been the more appropriate camera if he wanted something now. Otherwise, my consistent message had been, wait. Wait for the D90 to come out and buy that as it will be the right mix of size, weight, and features for a budding photographer instead of buying SLRs that cater to the soccer moms and dads. He wondered if Canon should have been the choice instead and I said that as far as the Lensbaby is concerned, it would not have been much different and both systems need some experimentation with manual settings to get the right exposure. After he left, I thought to myself, hmm, he wouldn't be the first or the last to ask me for advice and then ignore it, because he didn't want to pay the piper. Some people ask about something, say printers, and me thinking that they're serious about wanting to get as good as they can reasonably afford, I suggest an Epson 3800. Then I hear them balking, or rather, choking at the cost, for which I ask, what exactly is the budget for a photo-quality printer. At which point I discover that spending $500 on a printer is already considered ridiculously extravagant and that all they really want is a reassurance that the $100 special at Best Buy will suffice. Now, I'm exagerating a tiny bit for effect with the above example, but it isn't too far off the mark. And, this doesn't have to be about printers, as it could be about cameras and lenses. I think the number of people who have seriously considered everything I've suggested and made the right decisions based on where they wanted to go with photography (or audio) can be counted on one hand. One of those few people is one that just went with my first suggestion of a D700/D300 combo after a few, very long emails back and forth about what he needed and where he wants to go with his gear. In between, we discussed getting a D60 or waiting out a D90, but in the end, he went with the kind of kit I'd be estatic about having. He also followed my suggestion about buying a MacBook Pro and he's adding a few more other items that I've mentioned. It's a nice feeling knowing that someone has considered what you have to offer (and the reasons for making those suggestions) and then followed through on it. It's even better when they rave about the gear afterwards, which validates my own thoughts for recommending those products. July 31, 2008 - Some quick items that I'm sure all of you know by now:
As you may have noticed on the right side column, Photodex, the makers of the very impressive ProShow slideshow program is now an advertiser at this website and also at NikonLinks. I've been using ProShow Gold for several years now and I don't think there is a better slideshow program out there that provides power, features and ease of use with a good UI. Thus, it was a very pleasant surprise when Photodex contacted me about advertising. Note though that other than the advertising rate, there is no other consideration provided. I paid for my current version of ProShow Gold 3 last year. If and when I transition to the Mac platform, ProShow Gold will be one of the key applications that will still have me run Windows, either separately or via BootCamp or Parallels, because I'm not aware of a Mac application that is, overall, as good as ProShow Gold. Following this train of thought about conflicts of interest between reviewers and advertisers, TOP has had a pretty interesting serious of posts about magazines and reviewers. While I'm not big-time reviewer/writer, I have had unsolicitated review products sent my way from time to time and the conflicts of interest issue always lurks in the background in my thought process as I prepare to write the review or article. Regardless of what you may think of me or others, I do urge you to read a series of reviews and articles written by the person. This will allow you to get a sense of where the person is coming from with his or her biases and preferences. From there, you can determine how relevant those biases are for you. For example, my biases for a camera is about image quality. If the product has stellar image quality then I can forgive other shortcomings, unless those shortcomings are such that they get in the way of the picture taking process. At the moment, as you may have read in my last post, I don't think much of the Nikon D40, but I don't want to make final judgment until I have had a chance to use it and determine its image quality and how much its shortcomings bar me from getting the photo. Other reviewers may accept lesser image quality from a camera if the UI provides outstanding access and usability. Of course, ideally, we would want both outstanding image quality and UI in one package, but camera makers have to make compromises and sacrifices. The balance of those compromises is up for us to weigh and decide on. And, speaking of conflicts of interests, I will shamefully ask that when you're ready to make some equipment purchases, you consider doing it through this site's B&H Photo link ;^) July 28, 2008 - After bringing home the D40 kit, I asked my cousin if he wanted the package to be "virgin" or if he wanted me to put my grubby paws on it and set it up for him. He said go ahead and set it up, so it gave me a chance to play with the D40, which prior to this, I had only seen on the shelves of the camera stores. Now, keep in mind that my following comments are first impressions only and I didn't even have enough time to do any test shots with it to compare to the D100 and D300. My cousin came by much sooner than expected to tote it all away. The D40 is tiny and while my hands are not large, I find it to be too petite for my hands. Even with the D300, I find the amount of grip to be just enough, which is why I prefer using an accessory grip if available. However, the small size makes for a very lightweight camera that can be packed along all day long without stressing your neck or shoulders. There is no top LCD display, so one has to use the rear LCD to display the information or peer through the viewfinder. A dedicated button at the top provides access to the information displayed on the rear LCD. If the D3 and D300 have too much menu choices and customization, the D40 is the opposite and some features I had hoped for are not available. Whenever I use flash with the D300, I set the slowest shutter speed to 1/30 to allow for as much ambient light to come through while still having a shutter speed that won't expose my shaking hands too badly. The D40's minimum flash speed seems to go no slower than 1/60. While there is an auto ISO feature, it does not appear as advanced as the D300, which allows you to set a nominal ISO to begin with, such as ISO 200, and then set the maximum ISO the camera is allowed to use, such as ISO 1600 or higher (I set mine to 3200). Thereafter the D300 will automatically adjust the ISO to suit the exposure settings. Working with the auto ISO feature is the ability to set the slowest shutter speed, similar to the slowest shutter speed for flash use. With this set, the D300 will adjust the ISO to match the slowest speed, which I also set to 1/30. The focusing with the 18-55 kit lens is not the slowest I've encountered, but it won't be giving the D300 any fits of concern. Focus lock does not seem as sure and able as the D300 when focusing in low light or on subjects with relatively low contrast. Honestly, the overall package is not one I have much desire to use; however, I will see if I can steal it for a couple of days from my cousin when the newness has worn off. Results are what really count and if the D40 delivers the goods for image quality, I can forgive many of the ergonimic shortcomings. I also have to keep in mind that the D40, camera alone, can be bought for under CDN $400 and when packaged with the 18-55 II lens, for about $460. This is less than a Canon G9 digicam, which helps to keep things in perspective. With my cousin buying a new camera and me unable to afford that snazzy new D700, I felt a little left out. I consoled myself with buying a new digicam, a Sony W170, for less than $300. You may have recalled me mentioning that I was thinking about buying a new digicam and I was predisposed to Sony, because I already had Memory Stick media. The W170 was always high on the shortlist thanks to its reasonable cost and a zoom lens that goes as wide as 28mm. The W170 also has Sony's SteadyShot technology, as well as ISO sensitivity to 3200, which I take with a huge bag of salt. There are a few other features that I don't think I'll find of any use, such as the slideshow capability and face detection. Compared to my old Sony W1 digicam, the W170 is about 1/3 slimmer and noticeably lighter. The W1 uses two AA batteries, which helps to account for much of the thickness, that and also being four years older in design. The W170 uses a slim Li-Ion battery. The W1 uses the full length Memory Stick Pro, whereas the W170 uses the half-length Memory Stick Pro Duo (I had the Duo version thanks to buying a Sony camcorder a year and half ago). A 1 GB Duo stick can hold a minimum of 246 JPEG files, but I suspect the actual number could be around 300, as JPEG resolution will differ from subject to subject. The W1 was a decent digicam in its day with its fast startup and nice feature set that allowed you to enjoy some manual control of the shutter speed and aperture settings. While the W1 maxed out at ISO 400, the image quality was a step above other digicams at that speed. The W170 does not offer control of the shutter speed and aperture as the W1, which is taking a step backwards to me. However, the wider lens with stabilization makes up for this and if the high ISO quality delivers then I'll happy to make that trade off. Having more resolution (10 MP with the W170 and 5 MP with the W1) is usually a good thing, but I'll have to see if it's too much of a good thing with such a small chip. Other good features to note are:
I always find it interesting to see how far technology progresses in a few short years. The W1 is a 2004 camera that in burst mode could take about nine 5 MP JPEGs before the buffer filled up and you couldn't shoot anymore. The W170 can shoot so many more shots at the full 10 MP resolution that I gave up before the camera did at 21 shots and no sign of slowing down. More impressions about the W170 will follow, as I will be taking it with me to Kansas City. July 27, 2008 - I was at my local shop yesterday taking care of a purchase for my cousin, who finally decided on what to buy. The first thing my contact mentioned after greeting me was if I wanted to see the new D700. I knew the D700 was showing up in the retail channels as of a couple of days ago, but I was still surprised that my own local shop had a few available at CDN $3300. The new SB900 was also on display with several available for purchase at CDN $540. I could have easily walked out with one yesterday, but I remained strong and fought off the temptation...made easier by the fact that I knew I had nothing left in the bank to make that kind of discretionary purchase (I only make purchases when I have the money in the bank to pay for it). I handled it and yes, it did feel chunkier than the D300. The viewfinder is nice and large, as expected, but I cannot make anymore comments about it since I didn't compare immediately to the D300. My cousin decided on the low cost D40 with the 18-55 II kit lens (non-VR version). He also picked up the 55-200 VR lens and a little Lowepro bag to store and carry the gear. After using my D100 for a bit, my cousin decided that he's not interested in editing photos and worrying about RAW versus JPEG. I guess he figured that he did not need anything more than just a basic SLR to snap his shots and get them printed wherever is most convenient. Looking over the lenses, I was taken back to 1997 when I bought the F70 and the equivalent lenses from that era. Lightweight, cheap and aside from the glass, all plastic. A foul whiff of fromage wafted from the boxes when I opened up the boxes. While both lenses are AF-S, there is a clear difference between AF-S on a pro lens versus AF-S on an entry-level consumer lens. On the pro and better consumer lenses, it does not matter if the lens is set to A or M for focusing. If on A, with the better lenses, you have auto focus but manual override whenever you want by simply rotating the focus barrel. Not so on the cheapo AF-S lenses. Set the lens to A and the focus ring (certainly not a barrel) is locked and there is no manual override allowed. The 18-55 lens also comes with the very cheesy, white plastic rear lens cap. The 55-200 VR at least gives you a real Nikon rear cap. In short, first impressions do not inspire confidence and if I were a lens snob, I wouldn't give these lenses a second look (or a first look at that). However, that would be a mistake, as Nikon is known to provide pretty decent optical quality in even the cheapest entry-level lens. If you have to live with compromises, Nikon has done the right balance of tilting towards the optics than the lens materials and construction. For that matter, how many typical users of these lenses are going to push them to their limits? The 18-55, being a very short and compact lens, can focus fairly quickly, but not as smoothly as the big 24-70 AF-S on the D300. There is a little bit of noise heard coming from within the lens, whereas the big lens is very quiet (but, not completely silent either). The 55-200 lens being longer is slower to focus. It's been too long since I used the original non-VR version of this lens to make any comparisons, but the current version is still sluggish. Going from near to far focusing is an exercise in waiting and there's even more noise emanating from the lens. Depending on how quick my cousin is to take his new kit, I may or may not have a few more things to say about the kit. July 25, 2008 - Man, I love the internet. I received a few messages with suggestions about what to see in Kansas City. Looking forward to the trip now that I have better sense of what's down there, and yes, I love barbeque! Thanks to everyone for their responses. July 24, 2008 - I'm headed to Kansas City, Missouri in a couple of weeks. Just wondering if anyone knows of the local attractions. While I'm sure the hotel will offer an internet connection, I won't be travelling with a computer like I did to Victoria. An iPod Touch will be about it in addition to my Blackberry. The airplane ride down will give me an opportunity to use the iPod for its intended purpose of being a multimedia travel device offering music and video playback. I can also see how effective my Shure SL4 in-ear monitors work to keep the airplane noise at bay. July 22, 2008 - A kind reader sent me a link to an article about the WD VelociRapter drives. To refresh everyone else's memories, the new VelociRaptors are 300 GB drives claimed to some 35% faster than WD's previous generation 150 GB Raptor drives (two of which are used in my desktop for OS and scratch disk). The VelociRaptor is somewhat unique being a 2.5-inch drive, but needing a massive heatsink to keep it cool, which physically makes it the same size as a 3.5-inch drive. However, as the article points out, the VelociRaptor does not have the same configuration as regular 3.5-inch drives for power and data connections. Depending on your computer, this may make for some difficult installation. I'm thinking most PC users using readily accessible drive cages and bays won't find much issue since the cabling is generally free and loose in most cases. However, not so for a MacPro Tower, which most people would use one of the four standard trays, which seem to require plain Jane, 3.5-inch drives with standard data and power connections. The article also made me aware that MacPro Towers actually have six SATA connections and all are available immediately instead of having to jump through hoops and hurdles, and then sacrificing a chicken and spilling its guts to read the innards to see if the PC Gods have been appeased, before you might be able to access more than four SATA ports on a PC motherboard. I have six SATA ports on my Intel server board, but the PC Gods help me if I can actually get the last two working without having the whole box freeze up. Using a third-party kit, I can install two non-standard VelociRaptors in the space allotted for a second optical drive in a MacPro Tower. With a RAID card installed, I could set up a 600 GB RAID 0 boot disk! If I want to get really stupid and crazy, I could setup another 600 GB RAID 0 scratch disk and still have two drive spaces available for data, which could be setup as another 600 GB RAID 0 array. If you don't need an optical drive at all, you could install up to eight hard drives inside a MacPro Tower. I believe the configuration would be six SATA drives and then two IDE drives (using the two IDE slots available for the optical drives). This could actually be reasonable since you can always install an optical drive in an external case and connect with USB or Firewire. I used to have one of my spare optical drives mounted in an external case and never had any issues with burning via USB 2. July 21, 2008 - Thanks to those of you that responded to my query about configuring a Mac. The answer, as can often happen, is simple and I over thought what I need to do. Now, if only Apple would announce a new MacBook Pro, I'd be set to begin my journey to the dark side with Darth Jobs 8^) Short book review: Single Exposures: Random Observations on Photography, Art & Creativity by Brook Jensen For those of you that enjoy black and white photography, you no doubt know about Lenswork, a magazine devoted to fine art B&W photography. Brooks Jensen is the editor and publisher of Lenswork and regular readers will know that I listen to his podcasts whenever he finds the time to record them. Single Exposures is a collection of the first year and a half of those podcasts, covering February 2004 to July 2005. To my surprise, I found myself recalling the original podcasts for almost all of them in the book with only a handful that did not twig the old grey matter. To my chagrin, I was astonished that it’s already been four years since Jensen’s first podcast, because it just means that I’ve gotten older, greyer, and miserably fatter in those years. I think I have some ability to talk competently about the technical aspects of photography, but I wished that I were only half as good as Jensen is in talking about the creative aspects of photography. While it’s certainly easy enough to go the Lenswork webpage that links to all the podcasts, having a collection in a small novel sized book is actually more convenient. You don’t have to click and then listen to each individual podcast in one go. You can sit and take your time whenever it suits you. There’s no need for the computer, AC power, and the internet to access Jensen’s thoughts. While not new content, I found myself enjoying them as much as when I first heard the original podcast. Single Exposures is available directly from Lenswork and if you buy all three books offered, you’ll get a discount and each book will be signed by Jensen. I'm now onto Letting Go of the Camera, which is a collection of essays written by Jensen over a 10-year period. The very first essay is a great intro about becoming an artist and it's the kind of jaded sarcasm that only an old hand at the craft like Jensen can offer. One interesting comment that Jensen makes in the second book is that the first 15 years of his photographic life is not worth much and it wasn't until after 15 years that he finally found his groove. Hmm, I've been doing and following photography for 11 years now, so it seems that I have another four years to go before I find my groove. This seems to make sense since the last few years have been rather dry in me being anything but a photographer and I find it a constant struggle to keep at the craft. July 20, 2008 - A question for the Mac users out there about cloning hard drives. If I use an application such as SuperDuper or Time Machine (?), can I create a mirrored clone on a separate hard drive that can be used to replace the original drive? To break it down, here's what I'm thinking:
Although this seems like a weird question coming from a PC user, I'm sure you can read between the lines of what I'm thinking about doing. However, this is not something about to happen in the short term (next month or two), but more middle term (within next year). July 19, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Okay, I think we need to calm ourselves down and not get ourselves messed up thinking about what Nikon might or might not do ;^) There's a lot that we "think" Nikon should or could do, but at the end of the day, Nikon is a business and it's going to produce products that help the bottom line. Although, the idea that Nikon's board of directors is taking a more aggressive stance is very promising and hopefully that will allow for more creativity for the engineers. July 18, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Aw shucks, this ain't a zero sum game, we just having a nice little conversation about Nikon's next camera 8^) Seriously though, no matter what camera Nikon comes out with, whether it's a 24 MP D3X or a 24 MP D700X, we Nikon users are going to end up being winners. With some comments indicating that a D3X version will be priced at $6000, heck, even Canon users thinking about buying the 1Ds Mk III should benefit, because there's not a snowball's hope in hell that Canon would be able to justify an $8000 price tag for a camera that won't be able to match up to what we expect from Nikon. Assuming that the $6000 D3X price holds, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 1Ds3 being dumped down to $5000 very quickly. The idea of Nikon producing a D700X version later on is a nice one and I would love to see this happen, but we don't actually have precedent for this. Nikon is still a newcomer to the world of FX format and we cannot assume that a D700X is in the works. If we look to the past and say that the D1X begat the D100; D2X begat the D200; the D3 has begat the D300 and the D700. That's already one more than expected and who's to say that the D700 isn't actually supposed to be a match for the coming D3X even though there's a mismatch in resolution. With three high level SLRs introduced in the past year, expecting another one relatively soon is optimistic considering that a D700X would likely be produced at the already full capacity Sendai plant. At best, I wouldn't expect such a camera to be announced until close to the 2010 Olympic Games hosted by my home city, Vancouver. This would give Nikon some time to sell the D3X just as the D3 had some time all to itself before the D700 arrived. So, with Nikon going gangbusters with SLRs (consumer models expected to be refreshed by mid 2009 if you read between the lines of Thom Hogan's recent comments), the Coolpixes getting their regular annual updates (whether needed or not), what about the lenses? We have two new pro zooms, three new specialized PC-E lenses, three new prime super telephoto lenses, and one higher end consumer zoom lens. These include, respectively:
The current lens lineup looks like this (manual focus lenses have been ignored):
Ignoring the duplicates that I think will soon be removed from the current list of lenses, we have 45 lenses. Add in the PC-E lenses and we have almost 50 AF lenses. This is a nice amount and pretty comprehensive to cover a range of price points and quality; however, a significant number of these lenses need a refresh and there needs to be a few more additions made. DX Lenses Where I think improvement is needed is for that fisheye to be AF-S and the 17-55 to have VR, just like the Canon 17-55 has IS. While Nikon is moving full steam ahead with FX, there are still a great many DX format users out there and many would appreciate it if Nikon would offer them a prime lens or four instead of forcing them to look to Sigma for some gratification. DX format 13mm, 17mm, 30mm, and 60mm primes would be nice to see (give or take a mm or two) and having them as f2 lenses would be even nicer. Zoom Lenses The 17-35 lens is still highly regarded, but a Mk II version would be nice since it's now almost a decade old. The 18-35 is a nice little lens, but a refresh and constant f4 aperture would be preferred. The two older 24-XXX lenses should be morphed into one 24-105 f4 AFS VR lens. The 70-200 is rumoured to see a Mk II version introduced. Meanwhile, put the elderly 80-200 on a diet to make it a smaller and lighter f4 version with AFS and VR. I understand the need to offer consumers a cheaper 70-300 alternative to the newer 70-300 AFS VR version, but at least give it an AF-S motor. The 80-400 should become a 100-500 constant f5.6 AFS VR lens. I really don't see the point of any lens starting at f4.5 and ending at f5.6. There are some other fanciful ideas such as 300-600 f5.6 lens, but now we're treading on territory owned by Sigma 8^) Wide and Normal Lenses Seriously though, what can I say, but the entire group here needs to be redesigned and given AFS motors. The 14mm lens seems out of place now with the 14-24 lens available, although the prime is smaller and lighter, but I don't think it's much cheaper though. It may seem foolish to put an AFS motor in a fisheye lens, but I'm just going for consistency, because I want all lenses to be updated to this standard (PC-E lenses excepted). The old 18mm lens is gone and I'm not sure a new version really needs to be resurrected, but the 20mm should be refreshed, as should the 24mm. A faster 24mm f2 version has long been wished for, but I think I'd rather see a 24mm f1.4, but I don't know if this is feasible with the F mount. If no 24 f1.4 then bring back the 28 f1.4 to go with the refreshed f2.8 version. While we're on a f1.4 kick, get some major brownie points with a 35mm f1.4 to go with the f2 version. The two 50 lenses are getting really old and tired and while a 50 f1 would be phenomenal, I think the F mount will only allow for a f1.2 version, so why not? Telephoto Lenses I don't know that the two DC lenses are big sellers, but they are considered very sharp lenses, so it would be nice to see AFS and VR updates. Same with the very elderly 180 lens and while the 300 f4 lens is not that old, for the life of me, I do not understand why Nikon did not give it a VR motor. This is a no brainer and I suspect that if the original AFS version had VR, I'd own one by now (same could also be said of the 80-400 lens). The rest of the super telephoto lenses are all good since they have all the best technologies, but I think we'd be happier to see a 400 f5.6 AFS VR or thinking a bit more boldly, a 500mm f5.6 AF-S VR lens added to the mix. In a keeping up with the Jonese and then blow by them move, I want to see Nikon make big statements with the super, super telephoto range. A 800 f5.6 AFS VR is a given, but let's show that Sigma isn't the only innovator here and produce a 300-800 f5.6 AFS VR along with a 1500 f5.6 and while we're at it, how about something completely mind boggling and a big FU statement with a 2500mm f11 lens. It matters little that only the FBI, the CIA, NASA and the Sultan of Brunei would be able to afford it. It's all about perception and size matters baby 8^) Micro Lenses Teleconverters and Extension Tubes Speaking of macro (or Micro) how about those dual element close-up lenses like the much loved 6T, but bigger like 77mm to fit the popular 70/80-200 lenses? How many Nikon users have been forced to buy the Canon 500D, because we had no choice? The three teleconverters are fine, but while the TC14E has always been highly regarded, the TC20E and TC17E are less so. How about tweaking them to extract as much quality as we can from the telephoto lenses that we would usually use them with. For that matter, how about Thom Hogan's idea of VR enabled telecoverters? Is there a way that in-lens VR could work with a VR TC to offer SVR (Super VR). Or, carrying this idea to logical conclusion, how about in-camera VR working with in-lens VR for the same SVR? Conclusion So, I get a call the other night from the person lending me the 40D, wondering when the heck Canon is going to annouce the 5D replacement. He's chomping at the bit to get one like right now. Unfortunately, there's been nary a peep, but then I don't cruise the Canon forums so I have no idea what kind of rumours are floating around out there. The desire to buy is getting bad enough that he thought maybe he should just buy the tired old 5D now, but I told him no. The camera is at the end of the life cycle and there's just no point spending good money on something that could be replaced anytime. However, the little devil sitting on my left shoulder poked me and made me tell him about this lovely new, state of the art SLR that just got announced and should be available in August. The price, resolution, and specs are all right up his alley. Of course, it means he would have to become a Nikon user...as I chortled my evil laugh. This just might come to fruition and damned if I didn't wish I was on the take with Nikon, because of he converts, it could possibly translate into some good sales of multiple cameras, lenses and accessories. Speaking of being on the take, don't forget the support that B&H Photo provides to this website. Go on, spend some money. It will do you and me some good ;^) July 17, 2008 - Thom Hogan has posted comments that revise his original speculation that the coming 24 MP SLR from Nikon would be in a D700 style body. His information now indicates a D3 style body. Hogan has also posted a review of the D3; an excellent, as always, review by the man. July 16, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Well, Thom Hogan knows a heckuva lot more than I ever will and I'm sure he has "deep throats" within Nikon Corp., but a D900 is far too similar to the Sony A900 for me to agree with this guess. I think the default choice would be a D3X, as hinted in the hacked firmware, which would make the body style a D3 instead of a D300/D700. With the likely introduction date around the time of the Olympics or Photokina (probably Photokina) there's no way that Nikon is still choosing between a D700 or D3 style body this late into development. These types of cameras take a significant amount of time to R&D and there's no doubt that there's probably a team of engineers already working on prototypes of the D4 and even D5. The choice of body style would have been made long ago if not right from inception. While a D700X would certainly be nice at a reasonable price point, I don't think it's feasible at this stage with the D700 already at USD $3000 and the D3 at $5000. The D3X is either priced the same or similar as the D3 or higher like the Canon 1Ds Mk III. While I admire Sony for providing its users with some information about the coming A900 and what appears to be a reasonable price for what it will ofer, I doubt that Nikon will be quaking and be forced to compete at the same price point. I don't think Sony has the engineering at this time to compete against all of Nikon's technology and expertise. If anything, I'm more inclined to believe that Nikon might actually be helping Sony through the back door. Look at the A700's AF engine and tell me if that ain't a carbon copy of the D200's. At best, I think Sony's AF technology is a generation behind Nikon's and Canon's. But, I'm sure you're ready to point out that a 24 MP SLR ain't gonna be anyone's first choice for sports or action and I would agree. However, for a camera carrying the D3X name, it's gotta have Nikon's best and I think only Canon is capable of pushing Nikon around. While the Olympus E3 has been marketed as having the fastest AF, I don't hear of anyone praising it when using it in low or bad light. Whereas Nikon and Canon have generally been excellent performers all around (Canon's recent AF troubles being the exception). A $3500 Sony A900 is very welcome, because it will help to shake things out and I agree that it in the long run, it should help to push prices downwards. However, if and when Canon reduces its price on the $8000 1Ds Mk III, it won't be because of the Sony A900, but because of a $6000 Nikon D3X. However, given the surprising D700, we have to keep our minds open, because Nikon is making a stir and until the fat lady sings, we'll all be guessing. In December 2007, I was giddy with excitement in getting the Acer 9920 notebook computer. It was one of the largest notebooks on the market with its 20-inch screen and thanks to a Core2Duo processor, I no longer had to wait for my jalopy-like Toshiba P4 notebook to do various mundane tasks. Seven months later and the Acer has lost its sheen and I'm looking forward to retiring it. Unlike the Toshiba it replaced, it won't take almost four years to replace the Acer. In comparing the Acer to my Sony notebook, I'm struck at times with how the Sony seems to operate a bit faster and smoother than the Acer. While both notebooks have the same processor, the Acer benefits from having a discrete graphics card and 4 GB of RAM. The Sony slums it with an integrated Intel graphics processor and only 2.5 GB of RAM. I would simply replace the Acer with the Sony as my everyday computer immediately if not for the fact that the Sony simply cannot drive a 24-inch LCD with any reasonable quality. The Acer with is nVidia GPU can and thus, for the time being, it remains as my default, everyday computer. To be fair, I have installed a fair number of applications on the Acer, including demanding ones such as the Adobe Creative Suite, Lightroom, Office 2007 amongst others. Windows Vista is also known to be a resource hog and is not likely doing the Acer any favours either. However, the cheap Sony is almost a mirror of the Acer for installed applications, so I'm not willing to give the Acer too many breaks. There have also been driver issues causing BSDs, which some would immediately fault Microsoft with (isn't Bill the anti-Christ and Microsoft the root of all evil?) However, my suspicion is that the internal components inside the Acer were slapped together a little too haphazardly. Many PC troubles originate with lousy parts quality and integration and it's my opinion that the Acer suffers from similar issues. The inability to get clean audio without AC and other interference is another major grievance, especially since computer based audio is how I want to feed my audiophile addiction. As much as I would love to just keep the money set aside for that sweet little D700, or even towards that much desired D3X, at this time I need a computer more than I need another camera. I would immediately replace the Acer with a MacBook Pro, but there seems to be some hints that the MacBook Pro is due for a significant upgrade, thus my wallet remains shut at this time. Does this seem like a big waste of money to want to ditch the Acer so soon? Well, at first blush it would, but I can't say too much, other than no, it won't actually be a waste of my money ;^) July 14, 2008 - Over at TOP, there's an article that took me back to my teenage years, when I received my first component stereo system. When I was the same age as referenced in Michael Johnston's trip down memory lane, I was also 15 when I visited a cousin in Vancouver and he gave me his old stereo hiding away in his closet. It was a Pioneer integrated amp and a turntable along with four bookshelf speakers. While it gave me much musical joy in my young and foolish years, it has as much resemblance to high fidelity as a truck stop cafe has to fine dining. I took apart the speakers when a couple of them began to falter and found single driver units mounted to thin and cheap wood - while it wasn't as flimsy as delicate balsa wood, it sure reminded me of it. No bracing of the cabinet and no mineral wool fill or other dampening material and the integrated cable was probably 22 AWG. Using an iPod through one of the many crappy speaker docks would have produced higher fidelity than my first system. Michael Johnston, by contrast, has fond memories of his first piece of hi-fi and has been compelled to seek out a rebuilt vintage amp, I want nothing to do with anything I used throughout my teenage years and into my very early 20s. I didn't get a true hi-fi until I was 21, when my parents relented and gave me enough bucks to build a nice system as a graduation present. A few components from that original system are still with me, but languish in whatever corner I can store them in, away from my baby's prying hands and knock on wood, to a time when we can afford to buy a larger house to accommodate everyone comfortably in the family. I think about what my boys are going to be like once they get to the age where music will be very important for them and what will be their first true sound system. Unlike me and Johnston, I don't think component audio will be much a part of their coming of musical age. I suspect that the first sound system will be iPod-based with maybe a good headphone amp and a nice set of cans, along with a set of powered speakers driven by the headphone amp. Add in a notebook computer to store all of the music files and it will be a pretty nice kit that would blow away what I had to suffer through when I was in high school and university. When I was in university, I was fortunate enough to have parents that allowed me to indulge and buy an LED printer. LED printers offered laser printer quality without the price and my 4th year essays were a step or two above other students that had to handwrite, type or print with dot matrix printers. By the time my kids are in school though, will physical essays still be a requirement, or will they email PDFs to their profs? Physical media will be something quaint that their old man has on the bookshelf in the form of CDs and going to a store to buy music will be a foreign concept as buying music online will be all that they will have known. If they want photos and liner notes, they can download them and display them on the notebook computer. Same with buying movies, tomorrow's kids will only know that movies are bought online and can be downloaded in an instant with fiber optic cables having replaced old school telephone and cable lines. Everything will be stored on super high capacity flash memory drives inside super thin notebook computers. Optical drives will be a relic of an age when we could not download and install applications. Or, perhaps Google will buyout Microsoft and offer Google OS and Google Office as online applications and your personal files and media will be available anywhere, anytime via Internet 3.0. Anyway, recently, I grabbed an old cassette tape off the bookshelf and played it back through an old and cheap Sanyo boom box. Cassettes, remember those? The cassette had a number of recordings from a record player, a 1980s vintage Oracle Delphi turntable. Even though the whole playback chain was compromised, analog vinyl through a cassette tape medium through a cheap tape player through old headphones, the sound was striking. The music on the cassette had body and flesh compared to the sterile and skeletal digital files. Am I merely hearing some euphonics or harmonic distortion (the good, even order type that tube amps are known for)? I don't know and I'm not suggesting that I plan to dump all my digital files and record everything onto cassette tape (can you even buy these anymore). What I think I heard is similar to what keeps sales of turntables and records brisk enough to support a large number of turntable makers. It is also similar to what I hear when music is played through tubes. The extra body makes the music more engaging and I've read that digital music files requires a lot more brain processing, so with analog, you can settle in for a relaxing music experience that's about music rather than equipment. Something to explore further when I win the lottery and can build a sound system built completely from technology that came of age in the 1950s. A nice, well thought out turntable, probably a Linn Sondek LP12, which is very good, but is no longer thought of as cutting edge, as more and more $50,000 plus players come out. A tube integrated amp, or a tube pre and power amp combo that is auto biasing so I don't have to crouch down and risk electrocution measuring and biasing the tubes (I exaggerate, of course). I'm thinking VTL here. Finished off with a set of Quad electrostatic speakers and all of it harnessed together with some no-nonsense Kimber cables. I would have said Nordost or Tara Labs cables, but while I'm a believer in the difference that cables can make to a system, it does seem ridiculous to use a full set of cables that cost more than the rest of the system combined. During the Victoria trip, I used the D300 sans MB-D10 grip and used only the 24-70mm lens. This provides a 36-105mm equivalent crop view and I have to say that I did miss going wider and longer that the 18-200 VR lens would have provided. Note to self, get my cousin to the store as soon as possible so I can get my lens back 8^) I tried the focus tracking feature of the D300 and while I've never been a big user of this technology, I found it quite delightful to have the camera position static and the seeing the focus points jump around to follow a moving subject (a slow moving ferry in my case). While intriguing, I'll reserve judgment until I've actually used it for something a bit more challenging, such as sports, or something a bit more important, such as a bride getting down on the dance floor. While I love what a D300 and 18-200 lens offers, I'm not sure that I'll be wanting to bring them to my next business trip in August, when I'm scheduled to travel to Kansas City, Missouri. It may be time for me to consider another digicam, something that I'm generally loathed to use, but one that makes more sense when wanting to travel as light as possible. Last summer, I took the Sony W1 with me to Savannah and while it did well enough, there were some moments when I really wished I had some more resolution and quality to the JPEG files. While I'm not all that enamored of what seems to be everyone else's favorite, the Canon G9, it is a definite shortlister. This despite it being a bit too big and a bit too expensive for what it offers, but it's still smaller than even the smallest SLR and kit lens combo. Another shortlister is the Panasonic DMC FX500, which offers a zoom lens that goes as wide as 25mm equivalent cropped view (ECV) at f2.8. That's pretty nifty to have in a compact camera. However, the current favorite would be the Sony W170, which offers a zoom lens that goes wide to 28mm ECV. It's cheaper than the Panasonic or Canon and I already have Memory Stick media for it. Sony has also come on strong to offer very good image quality in its digicams and noise is well controlled up to ISO 400. The Panasonic concerns me given how poorly Panasonic chips have fared for higher ISO noise quality. At this price range though, a 6 MP SLR such as the Nikon D40 is well within grasp and would certainly be a dark horse contender, even if the compact size consideration gets tossed out the window. On a private mailing list, there's some indication that the coming 24 MP SLR from Nikon will be much cheaper than Canon's 1Ds Mk III, which is around CDN $8500. A Nikon SLR in the range of $6000 is still very expensive, but easier to digest and if you figure that about a year after introduction, the price could be closer to $5000, that makes it within the realm of possibility for me. While a $5000 D3 made no sense to me, especially since the D700, a $5000 D3X offering 24 MP does due to the resolution offered in a pro-quality body. While I'm still of the mind that a D300/D700 combo for weddings would be killer, a high resolution FX SLR would be difficult to resist if the rumored price holds true. Another possible benefit is a reduction in price in the D3 since offering a 12 MP SLR near the same price as a 24 MP SLR does not make sense to me. Although it could be argued that each caters to a different market segment and thus should be seen as equal, but different in features and capabilities, e.g. 12 MP at 9 fps with usable ISO 6400 compared to 24 MP at 5 fps and a usable ISO 1600 (I'm speculating here). A 24 MP SLR still has a place in a wedding photographer's kit, because the D300 and D700 would be handheld, action cameras, while the D3X (or D4 or D7) would be a tripod-mounted camera for formals. It's a similar relationship to 35mm and medium format cameras sitting with equal prominence in a wedding pro's equipment case before the digital revolution changed all the old school, 20th Century ways of covering a wedding. July 12, 2008 - If you’ve been reading this website for a while, you probably know that I went to university in Victoria, BC. Victoria is the provincial capital city and is, depending on where you’re from, either a small city or a medium sized city of about 340,000. The 340,000 population is for all of greater Victoria, but the actual municipality is much smaller. Greater Victoria is made up of a number of small municipalities with the key ones being Victoria, Oak Bay, Saanich and Esquimalt.
For a city slicker like me where my own suburb is probably 500,000 and about as large geographically as greater Victoria, seeing Victoria fragmented into little fiefdoms is quaint. However, to some of the residents, it’s irritating to have so many little municipalities and amalgamation of some of the major ones would be welcome.
Victoria, being a popular retirement location thanks to its mild climate, is known for “blue hairs” or, senior citizens. With my alma mater attracting young students to its locale, and many deciding to remain in Victoria after their studies, Victoria has become known as the city for the newlywed and the nearly dead.
While much has changed since I graduated and left in the early 1990s, much has remained the same. While a coating of rust has settled on my familiarity with the city and how to get around it, I don’t think it would take more than a few days to become reacquainted. In contrast, Vancouver is sometimes as foreign now as it was in 1993 when I first moved to the big city.
Meeting a friend for lunch, he remarked that Vancouver is probably the only city in BC that has more condo development than Victoria. It was a comment that struck me as curious since I only saw one construction crane marring the Victoria skyline, such as it is with what, a single downtown “skyscraper” that might be all of 15 stories. In Vancouver, it seems you cannot drive more than a kilometer without hitting some major construction site, with the city continuing its building boom as we lead up to the 2010 Olympic games. While new buildings have gone up, Victoria still has an old feel to it with many historic buildings lining its streets. While nothing has matched my recollection of old Montreal, Victoria still has much of its old world charm, which again constrasts with Vancouver with so many gleaming steel and glass towers rising up in the last 20 years.
Victoria does seem to have gotten a bit rougher since I left it, with many a fight occurring after the bars close and more panhandlers than I recall. This is not to equate panhandling with busking, where street performers need a license from city hall to do their thing. However, the city is still a major tourist destination and while the streets seem less busy than in years past, there were still good crowds walking along the inner harbor walkways. As one would expect, tourists bring cameras and as you might expect of me, I took notice.
While digicams are abundant, I did notice more tourists using SLRs than I’ve ever recalled seeing anytime and anywhere. Nikon and Canon seemed about equal and were dominant, but interestingly, I noticed a number of people using Olympus SLRs. Most people using the entry to mid-level SLRs stuck to using the cheap, thin and hard on the neck and shoulders strap that come with the cameras. Thus it was easy to spot the name brands. I did not notice any Pentax or Sony straps, only Nikon, Canon and Olympus.
July 10, 2008 - Just a couple more days left in sunny Victoria, before heading home to the family. Today's photo, a view of the inner harbour from the elevator of my hotel.
July 9, 2008 - Drobo has introduced a new FireWire 800 version of its RAID-like data storage robot. Same price as what the original used to sell for as USD $500, but the original has dropped in price to USD $350. FW800 is an excellent addition, but it would have been nice to have seen eSATA included too. Since the engineers were already working to add FW800, why not take the opprotunity to add in an up and coming interface, one that's more popular in the PC world than FW800, which is still predominantly Mac?
It's the tourist season, but there seems to be a bit less energy then I seem to remember when I spent some summers here years ago. The high gas prices and lousy exchange deal for Americans are taking their toll on the very important tourist trade. I leave you with a sunset photo from last night (colors goosed up a bit with some Nik filters). July 6, 2008 - I’ll be away next week for work in the provincial capital of Victoria. While I’ll try and post updates as warranted, this will depend on where I can find an Internet hotspot. Just as last year, I’ll be bringing along a camera for some photography during my off hours. Last year it was the D200 and 18-200 VR lens, but this year, it will be the D300 and 24-70 lens. I would take the 18-200 VR lens again, but it's currently loaned out to a cousin contemplating his first SLR purchase. I loaned him the D100 and the lens to give him some time with it while we see how the pricing and deals are for the camera that he wants to buy, the D60 with kit lenses. He bounced around between a higher end Canon and the D80 before deciding to go with the D60. I told him to go to the stores and check out the handling of the two brands to see which one felt the best. Now, you know that being the good cousin that I am that I would have advised him that Nikon has the best feel and design 8^) He told me that I was right and that the Nikons felt much better than the Canons in the hand and he tossed aside any thought of buying a Canon. My less than subtle hints about having access to my Nikon gear may helped towards that decision too ;^) In the meantime, have a good one and I leave you with these parting postings, just incase I'm not able to post anything next week: Having read some of TOP's book recommendations the past month or so, I decided to expand my meagre library and get some of the recommended books. I only received the shipment on Friday, so it will be some time before I can write about them.
For something out of left field and perhaps a hint of where my computing future lies, I also bought Scott Kelby's The Mac OS X Leopard Book ;^) And rounding out this order from Amazon Canada, the 1980s movie Crossroads, starring Ralph Macchio - hey, it's about guitar playing 8^) Speaking of the 1980s, I finally finished off my collection of one of the best TV shows ever (at least from the perspective of an adolescent 1980s male), Magnum P.I. I now have all eight seasons on DVD and God knows when I'll work my way through all the episodes, given how much I have on my plate. These came in my last Amazon order, which included Joe McNally's book, commented on two days ago. A short note about file recovery software: I now have two from Lexar and Sandisk. Both companies throw it in free with their high-end flash cards, but because I don’t own any Lexar cards, I bought Lexar’s Image Rescue through Lexar’s online store. The Lexar card that you’ve read about here came with the borrowed Canon 40D. Sandisk’s software is called RescuePRO. The two software obviously have the same basic function, which is to recover image files that were deleted, either by accident from hitting delete button, or even from an in-camera card formatting. I’ve used Lexar’s software (version 2 and 3) a few times for its intended purpose and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at what it can do to recover lost files. Once, I loaned out my D2X to a friend to shoot his sister’s wedding ceremony and after he returned the gear, it was me that accidentally formatted the card and lost his files. Yes, I felt like crap and I apologized profusely, but only after I sweated bullets hoping to God, Allah, Buddha, Shiva and every other deity that the files could be recovered with the Lexar software. Image Rescue 2 did recover all the files, but not in their original Nikon RAW NEF format. They came out as TIFF format, which is actually, what the RAW file format is built on. Unfortunately, they were bastard TIFF files that Nikon Capture and Adobe Camera Raw wouldn’t recognize. Only Bibble Pro came through and allowed us to edit the files with all the usual editing parameters one would expect with RAW files. At that time, if I were Pope, I would have canonized Eric Hymen without the usual necessity of having the canonized person being deceased and having two confirmed, unexplainable miracles to his credit (and you thought Pope John Paul II had a liberal sainthood policy). Image Rescue 3 improves upon IR2, by allowing you to choose different file formats, such as JPEG, TIFF or RAW, and by camera brand, such as Nikon or Canon (amongst many others). This implies that what happened to me with IR2 won’t happen with IR3 and that RAW files will be recovered intact and imminently editable by their appropriate converter. Now, I just need another mishap to test this assumption…
Well, wouldn’t you know, I did another screw-up with the flash cards and took a card that had some files that I had not uploaded to the computer, and reformatted it in another camera. This is what happens when you have too many flash cards lying around and a dimwit memory that seems to be getting worse as I creep towards that big 4 – 0 (thankfully, still a couple of years away). The card had files taken with the D300 and I formatted in the D2X. I didn’t take any photos with the D2X, so the card was in a clean state when I remembered that I still had some files and retrieved it from the D2X. I ran Lexar’s IR3 and not only did I recover almost all my files, I also recovered a large number of other files shot many months before. These included Canon CRW RAW files even though I set the parameters to Nikon NEF. The software is definitely good, but not perfect, because as I mentioned, I recovered most, but not all of my most recent files. Still, who can complain, especially if you did the accidental formatting with a card full of wedding photos. Losing a small number of files is a small price to be able to recover 95% or more of the rest (which is why you should always take two or three shots, memory is cheap!) I had another opportunity to try the software to recover a brother-in-law’s files. This brother-in-law had the recent hard drive melt down in the computer. This resulted in him losing everything on his hard drive, including recent family photos taken at his brother’s wedding. Since the wedding was only in March, I felt for sure that IR3 could recover those files without any problems. That is until he handed me the card and told me that it’s been acting up and there had been some corruption before… Looking at the file structure, I could see a mess of corrupt folders and files and sure enough, while IR3 could recover some files, it could not recover all, including the important wedding day photos. As this was before I got a copy of Sandisk’s RescuePRO, I tried some other file recovery apps, but they got me more or less the same files as IR3. The corruption was too much to deal with, so I blasted it clean with IR3 to prime it for a fresh formatting in-camera. Lesson here is, first sign of corruption on a flash card, stop using it, get your files off the card and then see where the corruption might originate. I suspect that it’s the brother-in-law's Canon digicam, but that’s speculation and it could very well be the no-name brand card. This also shows me how cavalier consumers are with their cameras and image files. Now, I’ll assume that I’m preaching to the choir to most people reading this and that most if not all of you, have some method and form of backup for your files. Consumers without an interest in photography somtimes take too much for granted. As much as my wife looks on in disgust with how much I’ve spent on backup drives and boxes, there’s reason to that madness. In this digital age, it’s too easy to lose precious memories that can never be recovered. It's too bad my brother-in-law never talked to me about the corrupt card. I have several small capacity cards that are otherwise useless for me with 12 MP cameras and I could have given him one or two to replace the corrupt card. Doing so would have at least helped isolate where the corruption is coming from. If the new cards remain clean for a time, then we can point to the old card as being the culprit and vice versa, if the new cards also become corrupt, we can point to the camera. But, he didn’t and probably thought that since the camera and card still worked and he could still get his files, no harm done by the corruption…until he needed files recovered from it. Anyway, back to the software. When I received the Sandisk Extreme card and card reader, I used the new FW800 card reader as the interface to recover my own recently lost files. I tried Lexar’s IR3, but it would not recognize the Sandisk FW800 card reader and the inserted card. This is where I noticed the shortcoming of IR3, you cannot select a drive to try and recover files from. You can only recover files from a card recognized by IR3. I did get IR3 to work by using the Lexar USB card reader instead. I fired up Sandisk’s RescuePRO and here I get more flexibility in being able to choose all the available external drives to recover files from. RescuePRO also recognized the FW800 card reader and I pointed the software to it for file recovery. The results are pretty much the same as what IR3 got me.
The downside to using RescuePRO on a PC though is that it cannot handle the rich and expansive color scheme used by Windows Vista and whatever monitor profile I had gets dumped by RescuePRO. I find that tremendously annoying and not good behavior from a piece of software. It’s also a good idea to leave RescuePRO alone while it does its thing to read and recover files, less wise you end up crashing it and having to redo the recovery process.
While more flexible for accessing specific drives, I’ll use Lexar’s Image Rescue 3 as my first choice and only use RescuePRO if I have no other alternative. July 5, 2008 - Reader's comment:
Very good points to make and ones that slipped my mind, but somewhat implied when I talked about a compact camera that has enough memory to shoot multiple RAW files without a hiccup. A camera that can do that would likely have reasonable speed in operation. In short, while the D100 is so much Bantha doodoo (Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, where Luke battles the dungeon monster at the beginning) these days, if we take its basic speed and capabilities and put them into a G9 sized digicam, it would be homerun, a grand slam homerun at that. The D100 is pathetic compared to the D200 or D300 when shooting RAW. Shoot off a burst of 6-7 RAW files and wait 6-7 seconds before you can take another shot. Unlike the D300, which can rattle of at least two dozen RAW files in the same time (using a UDMA flash card). However, D100-like speed of operation and performance in a digicam would be a revelation and more than satisfactory for this style of camera. Speaking of my D100, my goodness, it has not aged well these past five years. I wasn’t sure if it was just my particular D100, but I’ve heard of others having the same issue, so it appears that some of the parts Nikon used inside of it, in particular the switches, adhered to the two-year warranty period and no more. The left side mode dial no longer switches settings reliably. I have the camera set to multi shot mode, but can’t get the camera to fire more than one frame at a time. Turning the dial to Aperture priority mode still leaves me in Program Mode, or vice versa. The 1.8 inch screen is laughable compared to the three-inch, high resolution screens available now. Heck, even looking at the D2X’s LCD is laughable compared to the D300’s screen. It’s amazing what $3000 bought you in 2003 compared to what $3000 can buy you now, e.g. the D700 with F5 speed capabilities and state of the art AF performance. I have almost exactly the same thoughts as you for the timing of the D700. Given how long Canon has taken to replace the 5D (before, there was no pressure, because there was no competition), one would have to expect that Canon will be forced to deliver whatever it is they have pretty soon. However, as you pointed out, Canon’s in tough with when they choose to announce. They could do it now and steal some thunder from the D700 with the 5D replacement, but that allows Nikon to respond back with the 24 MP SLR in September, which will push the 5D out of everyone’s minds. Which is exactly what happened with the 1D Mk III, when shortly after, the D3 and D300 were announced. Or, Canon could wait until after Nikon announces the new flagship, but then that makes them look feeble and as good as the 5D replacement should be, it just won’t have the sizzle as a new 24 MP flagship SLR from Nikon. When everything is tallied up for 2008, potentially, we have Canon announcing two SLRs and Nikon announcing two SLRs, but who do you think people are going to be buzzing about? I mean, Canon recently announced a new entry level Rebel SLR, but does anyone really care now that the D700 has come out? Maybe the D700 announcement was actually timed beautifully to continue stealing Canon’s thunder, just like 2007. Canon announces a KISS or XTC or XS, or whatever the heck the thing is called and shortly after Nikon throws out a significantly more interesting camera and more or less declares to Canon, is that all you got? While everyone expects a 24 MP SLR from Nikon, I don’t see a D700X in the mix. Nikon is a relatively small company fighting in a field increasingly being fought over by much larger conglomerates, such as Canon, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung. That Nikon has succeeded and is gaining market share in the SLR world is quite an accomplishment, but it does not mean that Nikon has endless resources available to pump out all those SLRs. Last I read, Nikon’s Sendai plant, which produces all the high-end gear, generally runs one eight-hour shift a day. The Thailand plant, which produces the consumer gear, runs more shifts, but the D700 is probably being made at Sendai. As for the naming, I did speculate before that maybe the new flagship will be the D7, or even the F7, to carry on the F legacy from the F6. This relates well to the past naming relationship we’ve seen in the D1 and D100, D2 and D200, and D3 and D300. Maybe the 24 MP SLR will be the D7 to match up with the D700. Sure, it misses the D4, D5 and D6, but it slots in nicely with the D7 taking the hand off from the F6 in carrying the ball. How it all flushes out will have to wait for the new flagship. At that time, we should have a better understanding of Nikon’s naming structure, but I suppose if you’re at all curious, maybe a patent search might dig it up, which in the past did reveal some juicy tidbits for coming Nikon SLRs. July 4, 2008 - Happy 4th of July to all the US readers!
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some introductory comments about Joe McNally's new book, the Moment It Clicks. I finished reading it yesterday and there's a lot of wisdom and humanity revealed in the book. The bulk of the book is of Joe's images with commentary or nuggets of wisdom gained from 30 years of hard work building up his reputation as a go to pro for general assignments. In looking over and reading about his history as a pro, it struck me that Joe McNally is exactly the kind of pro I would love to be, a generalist without any particular specialization. Sure, initially, I dreamt of being a famed, globetrotting landscape pro like Galen Rowell, but I love the idea of keeping one's skills honed by doing other styles or genres. Joe McNally has photographed news, editorial, portraits, sports, and all manner of objects with his masterful lighting skills. His clients are the crème de la crème of the North American publishing world with Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Life and National Geographic. He's well known as being a loyal Nikon user and because of his record of accomplishment, Nikon gives him early access to its new gear, e.g. he's had use of prototypes or early production samples of the D2X, D700, flash units and various lenses. It all sounds ideal to this wannabe; however, there's been a cost to all this fame (and maybe a tiny fortune). Joe's gone through a divorce and has missed many milestones in the lives of his two daughters. He writes of packing away and getting ready to depart on a big assignment and one of his daughters just gives him one of those looks that wrenches the heart of any parent. As he drives away in a taxi, he cries knowing that he chose the big story for National Geographic over being a parent. That's tough man and brings back down to earth what the life of a globe trotting photographer is really like. As much as I love the main part of the book, I think the real treasure is the back quarter where he offers up some real life stories on assignment and it offers a glimpse into Joe McNally, the man instead of just Joe McNally, the photographer. Highly recommended! Reader's comment:
2008 has so far been an exercise in understanding that what I’m enthusiastic about and would tolerate is not the same as what others would be enthusiastic about. I think the D300, within its technical capabilities as a DX format camera, is excellent. The D200 was certainly a nice SLR in its day, but one was always mindful of the compromise Nikon made in using a consumer quality AF engine. The D300 sharing the almost identical AF engine as the D3 now gets back to that beautiful F5/F100 relationship wherein those that didn’t need all that the F5 offered did not have to compromise too much by going with the F100. The F100 had the same AF engine as the F5, just not the powerful motors as the larger F5 could accomodate. I use a battery pack on my cameras about 90 percent of the time and I’ve been using pro zoom lenses for 10 years, so I’m used to working with the size and the weight. Stripping the MB-D10 off the D300 turns the D300 into a “compact” camera for me. But, that’s me and now I understand that this is still too much camera for many people. It’s also too much money for many people, but that’s a topic for another day. I think my turn towards understanding what others seek was at the beginning of the year when my friend and co-worker borrowed my D200 and 18-200 lens for his family vacation and later complained that it wore him down so much that he dreaded taking it with him by the end of the trip. I was speechless…okay, actually I wasn’t. I had some words in my mind about Alan being a wuss, which if you knew him, you would find incongruous given that Alan is a former university level wrestler and was once a hardcore bicyclist. So, he’s a fit guy and certainly capable of carrying my “compact” kit, which is why I was taken aback by his comment about the D200 being too big and heavy and how he really wanted something like a D60. Since that time, I’ve taken greater notice of how many other people desire a very compact SLR, but not necessarily a consumer grade camera. They want a D60 size SLR with D300 quality and capabilities and the old Olympus OM series is often held up to this reference of a small but highly capable camera. Similarly, many would love a very compact SLR that strips away a lot of the techno features and just left the basics. A digital FM3A basically. Visit the TOP for further discussion of FX/DX and what the D700 might mean for the future of photography – goodness, such existentialist angst and tons of comments about what some consider the ideal camera. I’ve now come to realize that a D300 is in fact, not a “compact” camera and its price and capabilities are lost on many people who do not share the same enthusiasm as I do. However, as the TOP speculates, the camera brands may not think that a small, but full featured SLR will have much appeal. Or, the brands have decided for us that small and light means consumer grade capabilities for the soccer moms while capable cameras must be pro grade in size and weight, because that’s what most real pros demand. Maybe, the great hope will be the Coolpix P6000 with its high ISO and RAW capabilities, but I’m not holding my breath. If it turns out to be another Canon G9, thanks, but no thanks. While many consider the G9 to be a nice little carry all, I think not. It’s a bastard size that is neither compact enough to truly be a carry anywhere camera, i.e. pant or shirt pocket, nor is it big enough to offer what we really need from this class of camera, a large sensor and enough memory to allow for fast flushing of the buffer when shooting RAW files. If the P6000 offers a DX format chip and enough memory to do 5-6 RAW shots in a row without bursting a virtual blood vessel and keeling over, then, hey, that’s interesting. Unfortunately, I just don’t see this happening. Nikon has not been a digicam innovator since the groundbreaking Coolpix 9xx series. Those were the days when Nikon led the crowd and broke the mould. Alas, breaking the mould seemed to have also broken the ability to continue leading and these days Nikon seems content to slap its name on whatever Sanyo throws off of its production line. The new Epson printers look pretty good with that new vivid magenta, but I’m still pretty happy with my older K3 printers. Plus, I took delivery of a crap load of ink a little while back for both units and that dampens any desire to upgrade, especially since Epson still has not learned that you cannot continue to screw the users with a lack of instant black ink swapping capability. July 3, 2008 - Warning, Nikon fanboyism comment alert 8^) D700 news has hit many websites and blogs and the TOP is no exception. In the comments section, there’s a posting by a Canon user insinuating that Nikon employees don’t have to do much work, because they just follow the dance steps laid out by Canon on the dance floor, a la Arthur Murray. Arthur Murray? What the …didn’t that style of teaching go out of style when Leave it to Beaver finally got cancelled. I mean, I don’t know, having been born many years after the fact. And following Canon’s footsteps? Sheesh! More like Nikon’s been wiping the dance floor with Canon. If Canon’s been leading with archaic and out of style ballroom dancing steps then Nikon’s blown those steps away with a mix of Dirty Dancing with the Stars. Okay, enough fanboyism, but check out Luminous Landscape’s recent posting about the D700 and some rumours about what has happened within Nikon Corp. that has led to this resurgence of the brand the past few years. While you're there, check out Reichmann's Coolpix P6000 rumour... Some wonder about the D700 and why Nikon introduced it now. Groan… For nearly three years that the Canon 5D has been in existence, a large number of Nikon users bitched and whined about Nikon not producing such a camera. When the D3 finally showed up, many were drooling in anticipation that it would blow the doors open for a D3-lite to come sooner or later. Well, the D3-lite has indeed arrived and sooner than many had expected. Even Thom Hogan initially thought that the D700 would not be announced until 2009 after Nikon updated the consumer SLRs that are the bread and butter of any SLR maker. So, what gives that a camera that many clamoured for is now here and we won’t have to wait several months for it either with a promise of first shipment by the end of the month. Nikon has listened and learned from past mistakes. The track record is certainly by no means perfect, but with the lurking I do at some forums, I’ve sensed that Nikon is making a real effort to listen to what the user base wants. Change though, does not happen overnight. It takes time, something that many users don’t seem to understand in this instant download and gratification world. Take Capture NX, that unloved child sprung from the minds of Nik software (a company that Nikon has equity ownership in). The first version was liked by few and far between with the majority giving it a big thumbs down for usability. Version 2 is much improved and there’s no doubt that those improvements came from the many comments from demanding users that need efficient workflow. Version 2 still does not address all those needs, but the users often don’t understand what’s required to develop software. All the meetings about what to include and what not to include in a major revision with the twin blades of limited time and constricted money supply dangling dangerously close to the developers’ necks. Getting back to the D700, we have a camera that is so much of what the D3 is for so much less money. It fits in very nicely between the D300 and D3. It’s not quite twice as much as the D300 and the D3 is not quite twice as much as the D700. The fit is just about ideal. For many, the D3 is still the preferred camera, because of demanding situations that call for the very best tools. For many of us, we don’t need all that the D3 offers and especially at the price demanded. With the D700, we have a choice and the compromises are minimal for the less than demanding situations many of us will find ourselves in for everyday usage. Having a D700 and D300 is an excellent kit to have. You can take advantage of the stellar optics of the 14-24 and 24-70 lenses with the FX SLR and use the 70-200 to its advantage on the D300 and get that pseudo extra reach of the DX format (yes, yes, it’s only a crop factor and not real magnification, let’s get over that). This FX/DX mix makes for a formidable wedding photographer’s kit. The UI is nearly identical so no fumbling around with different types of cameras. You can share the batteries whether you want to go compact without the grip (which is also shared, bonus) or go bigger with the grip and get more fps with the larger EN-EL4 battery. In short, this is getting towards my ideal of a system based approach to designing cameras and accessories. It always annoyed me to have cameras of different classes unable to share some types of accessories. This lack of systemization still exists between the consumer and pro range of SLRs, but at least in the pro range, we’re seeing more sharing, which means less money spent on specialized gear. The one oversight is that I wished the D300 shared the same round viewfinder eyepiece as its larger brothers instead of using the rectangular and less adaptable eyepiece used on consumer Nikon SLRs since the late 1980s. For $3000, the D700 is a helluva lot more camera than the 5D was three years ago for the same money. It puts a lot of pressure on Canon to produce an appropriate response and not let Nikon continue to hog all the glory since 2007 (actually, maybe since 2005 when the D200 came out and made the 30D the ugly princess at the ball). And, let's face it, who talks about the Canon 1Ds Mk III anymore? Fine camera and all and love Canon for pushing the resolution envelope, but $8,000! Let's get real. My expectation is that Canon is going to produce a real humdinger with its 5D replacement (mostly because Canon "has" to, or else hear more grumblings from its users, e.g. the 40D is what the 30D should have been instead of being a warmed over 20D). Throwing in a 16 MP 1Ds Mk II sensor in another plastic shell body ain’t gonna cut it. Nikon has shown that a camera maker doesn’t need to compromise on performance, features, quality build and weather sealing in order to meet a price point and Canon’s the one that has to follow those dance steps or Arthur Murray’s gonna be rolling in his grave. Does the D700 point the way to abandonment of the DX format? Not on your life! The entry level SLR market is where all the brands expect the lifeblood sales and revenue. The pro stuff is fine with their higher margins and all, but it’s the frosting, not the cake and Nikon needs to be busy baking up new consumer SLRs; ones that aren’t half-baked (sorry). Why the D700 is so exciting for me is that it offers the exceptional D3 high ISO quality in a more affordable camera. FX, DX, 4/3, or whatever else might come along is not the end, it's the means. The end is the image quality that you expect and demand from your equipment. You don't want your creative vision to be let down by gear that can't keep up. If the D3 quality were available from DX, I'd be happy as a clam shooting with such a camera, but current technology does not allow that to happen. Thus, moving to FX is fulfillment of the creative process that I desire to have available, but the FX chip in itself is not intrinsic. The mere size of the chip has no meaning, because 35mm format size is arbitrary anyway, but it's what Nikon and Canon have done with the FX sized chips that make it desirable, thus FX is extrinsic. When the 24 MP FX SLR comes out later this fall, Nikon will have a formidable SLR lineup, which can’t come soon enough for me. Not that I have any ability to spend that kind of money on a 24 MP SLR, but because it should free up Nikon to revamp the lenses (hey, a guy can wish can’t he?) July 2, 2008 - With a bit more time to digest the new Nikon announcements, the D700 is without a doubt, my next SLR purchase. Everything points to it providing just as good image quality as the D3, but for $2000 less. I expect that demand will be very heavy for the rest of 2008, so I'll just sit on the sidelines and let others try to get in on the coming feeding frenzy that always greets desirable new Nikon SLRs. Provided that my greedy, consumer side doesn't kidnap my saner self, I don't expect to pick one up until 2009, by which time, maybe, I might know enough about using the D300 8^) The SB900 is another definite purchase for those into taking advantage of the CLS wireless features, because now, instead of having to dive through cryptic menus, the SB900 offers a simple switch to move the flash from normal to slave mode. The SB900 also does away with the awkward fifth battery, which really screws up people using rechargeable batteries. Chargers generally charge in fours or eights and having several eight cell chargers, it's not a problem to charge five cells at once, but it is kind of a pain in the butt to have to buy and use an odd number of cells, because they are generally sold in twos and fours. The SB900 offers similar if not better recycling time as the SB800 with its fifth cell and can fire at longer distances thanks to its new 200mm focal length coverage. I also like the new SD-9 battery pack, which uses eight AA cells and can recycle the SB900 in 1 second. Sweet! This will be awesome for wedding and portrait photographers not wanting to get gouged by third-party battery pack companies that charge an arm and a leg for a battery and then another arm for the proper adapter cable. Bollocks, says I! The SD-9 finally does away with the now useless PC sync socket cable that the ancient SD-8a has, just incase someone really wanted to use a Nikon flash from 30 years ago. With four cells in the flash and eight in the battery pack, that makes for a nice even number of cells to recharge for a big job, instead of the bastard fifth cell to contend with. With my three Maha chargers, I can charge two full sets at once. Unlike with the D200 and a few of my lenses, I expect to keep all three of my SB800 units and the two SD-8a packs and just add to them with a couple of SB900s and SD-9 packs. I anticipate that when I'm back in the wedding photography game, I will need to supply my second shooter with some gear, so it's all good. Of course, that does mean having to pick a couple more SLRs and some more lenses...damn!
Although I'm not a granola-eating, tree hugging guy in tune with climate change and all that environmental angst, I do have to say I was surprised at the amount of packagaing used by Sandisk. I get a card reader and card coming in boxes that are the same size as what the much larger iPods would come it. I had to hack away at so much packaging for such small products that I was offended and I'm a right wing, red meat eating kind of guy who, despite the high gas prices, would still drive a SUV if his wife would let him own one J Not so much offended, because of environmentalism, but because less packaging should result in cheaper prices ;^) However, after emptying the package I realized why the box is so much bigger than the actual product; Sandisk includes a CD copy of their RescuePRO software with both the flash card and the card reader. Another included CD provides a trial of Photoshop CS2. The card reader also comes with two Firewire cables, one FW800 to FW800 and one FW800 to FW400, which is nice and makes the usual $100 price tag for the reader easier to bear. The $60 Lexar USB card reader came with no cables, which is kinda chintzy given how cheap USB 2 cables must be to make in some Chinese sweat factory. And, to be fair, the Lexar package is even worse than the Sandisk with the horrible, hard to cut bubble plastic. I wonder too, since the flash card is a storage device, why couldn’t the software be saved to it instead with a clear notice on the package that the card has extra goodies installed? For that matter, why not make the software available by download with a provided serial number to unlock the software? Anyway, all this worrying about environmental footprints is making me queasy. I better drive the gas-guzzling minivan the four blocks to Safeway and buy the largest steak I can find for dinner. Then I’ll fire up the bar-be and throw some more carbon into the air to cook the steak for dinner; the bloodier the better. I did the same two tests as I did with the Lexar card and reader a few weeks ago. I timed how many RAW files I could take in a 10 second burst with the Nikon D300 set to manual mode of f2.8 and 1/250 shutter speed. I got 21 photos with the Sandisk card, which is the same as the Lexar card. I then timed how long it would take to flush the buffer after a 10 second burst and here again, the D300 flushed the buffer and wrote all the files to the card in 10 seconds; same as the Lexar card. I then timed how long it would take to download 100 D300 RAW files off the card using the Sandisk Extreme Firewire 800 card reader. The computer used is my cheap Sony notebook with a FW800 ExpressCard adapter. I used this computer, because the heatwave in Vancouver does not make me want to fire up the big desktop and exhaust more heat into the already hot house. Also, the Acer notebook has been acting finicky with the ExpressCard adapter, which might originate in a known problem Vista has with Firewire devices and may require a patch to resolve. Here are the times:
A rough eyeballing of the sustained speed was around 35 MB per second. The Sony notebook did not hit the sustained 40 MB that Firewire 800 should be able to provide with the Sandisk reader, but I suspect the desktop will be pretty close to this as it does provide better times than using the ExpressCard adapter. The speed is better than using the Lexar USB 2 UDMA card reader, but not as dramatically as I had thought with the times being around 15 seconds faster than the USB card reader. However, if we extrapolate to larger cards with more files, those seconds will add up and make the Firewire card reader the go to device to transfer files to the hard drive. I also redid the test using the Lexar USB 2 UDMA card reader and with both the Sandisk and Lexar cards, I hit 1:18 minutes with a rough, sustained speed of around 25 MB per second. This is actually 2 seconds faster than my first round of tests. Objectively, Firewire 800 does provide superior speed over USB 2, but not as dramatically as hoped for. If your USB ports behave nicely and aren’t starving for power then you can get pretty decent speed. For the majority of PC users, the Lexar UDMA USB 2 card reader is the most practical choice, because Firewire 800 is pretty much a foreign interface outside of the Mac community. I was at my local computer shop the other day and asked if they had any FW800 cables and the employee said no, because FW800 is a Mac thing. On the other hand, if you are a Mac user, I’d take advantage of the FW800 interface and get as fast as you can get, which is the Sandisk Extreme Firewire card reader. Card wise, there's nothing really to choose between the Lexar or Sandisk cards. While Sandisk does make a big deal about the Extreme series of cards being hardier than others, there are plenty of pros using the Lexar cards in demanding situations. In choosing between the two big boys of the flash card world, I would simply buy the one that has the best price at the time that a purchase needs to be made. July 1, 2008 - Well, the worst kept secret for the last couple of weeks is now confirmed and the new D700 appears to be what everyone expected it to be, D3 quality in a D300 body with some features removed or reduced to keep costs down. Looks very sweet and I'm very happy that Nikon has gone with this camera so soon after the D3 and D300, although my wallet won't be very happy at all. There a few that speculated that Nikon would not or could not produce such a camera this quickly and that the D80's replacement would come first. I want to see it all and had hoped that the D90 or whatever it will be called, would be announced too, because I have a cousin itching to get one. He's all ready to just up and buy a D60 right now, but I suggested that he wait and see what happens this year, because I didn't see any point buying two-year old technology now when the replacement is so close at hand. Also, I would get to play with the D90 when he buys it, not that that's a conflict of interest or anything... ;^) The SB900 was kind of a last minute rumour and while nice with expectations that I'll buy one or two later on, I do hope that the UI has been improved, because I really dislike the menu on the SB800, which is something I'd expect Canon to engineer (just kidding). If you rarely use the slave mode, God help you in trying to remember how to set and operate CLS out in the field. The lenses disappoint, because we already knew about the 45mm and 85mm pC-E lenses. Where in the hell are the prime lenses that need a bigtime refreshment in the lineup? When the heck are we going to see the primes updated with the nano coating, computer assisted design with AF-S and VR motors? Let's see a 24mm f2, 35mm f1.4, 50mm f1.2, 85mm f1.4 and maybe a 105mm f2. Even though I would not be able to afford many of them, I would definitely be in on a piece of that 84mm f1.4 action and probably a 50mm too, but only if they come with AF-S motors. I want to move to all AF-S lenses, but Nikon's not playing ball. So, while excellent news for those of us wanting a somewhat affordable FX SLR, plenty are still waiting for the high resolution FX SLR and many more are waiting for the solid, middle rank consumer SLR that offers a taste of the D300 without the D300 price. How much longer with Canon users have to wait for the 5D's replacement now that it finally has competition? The D700 name is a curiosity, because it doesn't fit the current Nikon convention...unless the coming 24 MP SLR is going to be the D7 to carry on where the F6 left off in the legendary Nikon F mount legacy. Maybe this is a convenient way to avoid having a D4, because 4 is unlucky in Chinese-based languages, which Japanese has its origins so many centuries ago. Four rhymes with death in Chinese, which is why you do not see it being used much in the Asian cultures. However, this did not stop Nikon from using the number with the F4, although some naysayers might suggest that the F4 is what propelled Nikon to number two behind Canon when pros discovered how slow the AF was compared to Canon's USM. Anyways, just some idle thoughts on my part about what D700 means for future naming convention. As my ancestors are alledged to have said (paraphrasing here) we live in interesting times, but this is just awesome for us photographers. Reader's comment:
And, here I was thinking I had overdone it with the digital version, because of the near-gaudy colors and somewhat unnatural blue sky 8^) Seriously though, I like the film shot more, because the line of the building flows right into the line of the steam clock. It has better symmetry and the steam itself adds the element of what the clock is all about. Even at the best of times, being human, you’re bound to make mistakes no matter how hard you try. When you're a bit rushed and you’re doing a few different things at once, the chances of making mistakes go up. I might get a fact wrong in my postings and sometimes I get messages telling me about them. Most times, the messages are quite pleasant and friendly and along the lines of, hey Edwin, you made a little booboo here. This is exactly what happened with a little detail in yesterday’s update and this is great, because it helps me out and I appreciate those friendly notes. However, other times, people respond and the message is written as if they have their knickers in a knot and take me to task for some slight I’ve made. Over at NikonLinks, I made a rush booboo with a photo contributor’s name and his response to my message thanking him for the photo and that it was posted, was a huff of indignation about the spelling and could I please correct it properly. Oh, how embarrassing; sorry about that, completely unintentional you know. My fault entirely for spelling the name wrong, completely dumbass of me, but what’s the old saying, better to attract flies with honey than vinegar? I wonder, would this person talk to me with the same attitude in person as he did in email, where he can hide behind his faceless anonymity? Unfortunately, I’ve come across people in person who would and are surly cusses no matter what you do and say. June 30, 2008 - What a bloody hot weekend we had in Vancouver. Sunday saw much of the Vancouver area hit temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius and when I was in downtown yesterday morning, the sun quickly became a bear to deal with after only a couple of hours. By 9 am, the sun was high and hot, creating flat light and high contrast. Time to go home and prepare for another scorcher of a day. At least this time around, I remembered to bring my polarizers for the Canon lenses I was using. I even brought a blast from the past, a Cokin Blue/Yellow pola filter. The Cokin BY filter is not a true polarizer despite the name and it's generally used in landscape photos by photographers looking to add some extra punch to certain photos (think water and morning light). It is for the most part, a cheesy effect that has all the subtlety of an axe when a filet knife would be more appropriate. Below are some photos taken with the Cokin BY filter with the last one in the quartet being taken with a regular circular polarizer to saturate the blue sky.
After walking around in the downtown core for a few minutes, I headed down to Gastown to see if I could retake a photo of the steam clock I photographed on film some years back. Coincidentally, I took the film shot with Canon gear too (EOS 3 and 28-70 f2.8 L lens back then whereas, I used a 40D and 17-55 f2.8 IS lens this time). When I got to the steam clock, I looked up and seemed to recall that the tree was not so big and did not get in the way of my film shot, which I could only recall the basics of by this point. I took my shot, but I kept thinking that the angle was wrong and damn it, why did there have to be blue cables in the way, ruining the shot (the cables are being used to hold a up banner sign strung over the street). When I got home, I dug out the film shot to compare and yes indeed, my recollection about the angle being wrong was correct and the tree was less of a factor, because I took the film shot in late fall when the leaves had fallen. The cool fall air also helped to make the steam more visible. D'oh! I prefer the film photo more than the one I took yesterday. Colors are different because I goosed up the digital version a bit, whereas the film shot was scanned and left alone, so what you see is the color of the Fuji chrome film (Provia 100F is likely what I used back then) via a Minolta film scanner.
June 29, 2008 - The calm before the storm. Only a few more days before July 1 and realization of a lot of Nikon users' dreams or disappointments if the hyper-rumoured D700 does not materialize. Lost in the shuffle is the also expected D90 replacement for the D80. One of the alleged D700 photos has now been revealed as a fake. Sheesh! The lengths that some people will go to to spread such BS. Almost as bad as those idiots writing viruses (virii?) and trojans, with the way they get everyone worked up. Ever have to resize images upwards to print an enlargement and ever wonder just how good or how bad resizing techniques can be? Bicubic interpolation, the default standard available in Photoshop has been around for ages, but there are others such Genuine Fractals, which costs a bundle to buy. There may be another option coming, as David Bertholot has developed his own algorithms and created a website, www.imagiris.com, to show people his method of resizing images. At this time, there is no commercial product available for download and purchase; however, you can upload a file and try 2x and 4x enlargements at the Imagiris website. There is a file size limit of 1 MB, so you can't go crazy and try and create a billboard sized enlargement from your SLR. I tried it out with one of my images converted to JPEG via Nikon ViewNX (Nikon's free browser, as well as a limited, quick and dirty RAW converter). I converted the RAW file two times to have a reference and a test file to work with:
The results indicate that Imagiris is much superior to any of the Bicubic methods available in Photoshop, as seen in the screen shots below. In the four-shot image, you can see the file names and which enlargement method was used for the image. The last one is the original full sized conversion to JPEG, which again is just here as a reference.
Below is a comparison between regular Bicubic interpolation at left and Imagris at right, and just as above, Imagiris produces superior results:
Notice how the Bicubic methods have pixelated the diagonal lines found in the top left and right corners of the image and how much sharper the Imagiris version shows those lines. Imagiris did not do quite as well with the diagonal lines representing ropes to the sail's mast, as those are pixelated, but overall, there's little doubt that the Imagiris method of enlarging holds much promise and kicks on any method of Bicubic interpolation. Below is a sample of the whole image used for testing. It's the doorway to the Marine Building in downtown Vancouver. The Marine Building has been shown in TV shows and movies, with the last major exposure fronting as Reed Richards' home and lab in the two recent Fantastic Four movies.
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2010 Edwin Leong |
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The Apple Dual-Link DVI to Miniport adapter finally arrived and wow, it’s pretty damn massive at the business end where the DVI cable gets connected. A little un-Apple like and curiously, on the Miniport end, there is an additional USB cable. I take it that the Dual-Link connection requires additional power, hence the extra USB dongle. However, on the DVI end, there is a USB port; I suppose to provide back to the user the loss of the USB port at the computer end.
Last post, I mentioned waiting for one last set of prints I ordered from the fine folks that publish Lenswork magazine. Well, coincidentally, those prints arrived later the same day I posted those comments.
Ctein is one of a small handful of artisans still producing dye transfer prints and after listening and watching him go through the process in a Luminous Landscape video journal, I’m very thankful to be able to enjoy the ease and consistency that the digital printing process offers.
I would really like to see how a print made from the best digital process compares to the dye transfer process, which is optically based and requires meticulous darkroom work and preparation.
Once at the site, Reichmann markets his video journals, tutorials, books and prints. I’ve been subscribing to his video journal for many years and have all of them on DVD or in downloaded Quicktime files. I also have a few of his tutorials and purchased his book of photos taken in Bangladesh, but until now, I have never bought one of his monologues or prints, due to the high cost. The Lenswork special edition folio provides a very cost effective way to buy some of Reichmann’s prints. 
The Lenswork folios are an intriguing way of presenting a small body of work. Everything about the folios exudes quality and a perfectionist’s way of presentation. There is a double truck (8x20 inches folded to 8x10) text accompaniment that provides comments by the photographer, as well as some basic technical details about the folio. This colophon is separated from the actual prints with a translucent protective sheet. 
I had enough and finally gave into creating a 100 GB partition on the MB and installing 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate via Boot Camp.
December 9, 2008 - As hinted at and promised long before it was ever announced, I have a new SLR in-house for trial and review. I got my hands on it Monday night and I should have it around for a nice long stay. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as I give it a spin.
November 19, 2008 - 
Looking at the front and back covers, I initially thought that they had been enlarged and cut off for no apparent rhyme or reason. Looking more closely, what I see is that the Blurb printer has indeed printed my cover photos in whole, but larger than the 13x12 inch format. The larger size is so that the cover photos can be wrapped around the top, bottom and sides and then glued to the insider cover, as seen at right.
My preference would have been to print the cover photos as large as the cover size allows with no overlap; however, I can understand that the way Blurb does it allows it to deal with all manner of image formats (square, rectangle) in a consistent fashion.
The colors are mostly spot on and only certain blues seem to fall short in the Blurb book. Where my prints will have a rich, royal blue, the Blurb page is less saturated and muted.
Granted, that paying $80 for a book of my own images professionally printed and bound is almost nothing compared to what it would cost via the traditional self-publishing process pre-Blurb, wherein you may be required to guarantee a minimum print run in the thousands of units. However, I suspect that unless it’s for some special occasion, I will continue to produce my own, lower tech photo books via the Unibind process.
Back in 2005, when I bought the Shure E2c in-ear monitors (IEMs), I knew that they were entry-level with their just over CDN $100 price. I was still impressed though with the way E2c can block out the ambient noise and qualitatively, they were a league or two ahead of the Apple ear buds.
After trying some of the included rubber inserts, as well as a fancy set of rubber inserts I bought separately, I quickly returned to using foam again. The yellow foam inserts are softer and squishier than the orange coloured foam inserts for the E2c. 
Doing away with the external hard drives meant going big and I thought I went pretty big with a 1 TB Buffalo TeraStation Pro RAID 5 box. However, a RAID 5 configuration reduced the 1 TB capacity to about 700 GB, which didn’t last too long for capacity, requiring me to pull out those old external drives again.
My notebook system is backed up to portable, USB powered hard drives. The files include all my web files, important emails, current documents, current short-term photos, and all of my downloaded applications with copies of the registration or unlock keys. Some apps are bought the old school way of buying a physical product from a store, but many of my apps are downloads and its important to have several copies of those downloads and more importantly, the registration keys. In a worse case scenario where my computer is completely gone (fire, theft, etc.), I can rebuild and reinstall a new system in a few hours with my downloaded apps saved on a portable drive.
Let's start with the case itself, which is a plastic piece of plumbing pipe. One end of the Thingee has an AES/EBU and coaxial digital outputs as well as a USB input. The other side has a TOSLINK optical output along with mini jack and RCA analog outputs. The version of the Thingee I bought is considered the deluxe model and sells for CDN $200. I bought mine through UHF Magazine's online store.
With a small house filled with rug rats, I have no space to setup my big hi-fi, so I've had to make do with iPod and computer-based audio. It's been a challenge to try and build a decent sounding system utilizing the computer as a source, which is the way audio is headed - no more physical media like CDs (vinyl lovers being the exception who demand some physical interaction with their music).
October 3, 2008 - You've probably heard this a thousand times: always bring a camera with you. Or, how about: the camera you bring is worth more than the camera you leave home (or, some such saying).
September 22, 2008 - I was first tuned onto Fred Herzog’s book, Vancouver Photographs, via the TOP website, wherein Michael Johnston does a public service in making book recommendations every so often.
For these consumers willing to do a bit work, Epson offers a kit that at first glance, looks quite promising.
Confession time: last winter, I spent a pile of money on a new tower computer, but in the time since I've received it, I have only used it sparingly. It's got plenty of power, RAM and all that good stuff under the hood; however, there has been an aspect of it that I have come to despise and made me loathe to use it with any regularity: the noise.
First thing was to figure out where the noise is coming from. My first sound check led my ear to the ATI HD2900 video card. Doing a bit of research into the some recent ATI cards confirmed that ATI graphics cards are indeed considered noisy.
My Radio Shack meter is not very sensitive being only able to measure down to 50 dBA and it’s not the last word in quality; however, it’s all that I have and I have no use for another, more sensitive sound level meter. I set the meter to A weight, which apparently approximates human hearing and the response to slow to get an average of the noise level. 
Then the left brain slapped the right brain some sense and I realized that the placement of the sound meter was incorrect. As much as it seemed logical to place the meter at ear level, the microphone of the meter is a dumb, one way hearing device. Placing it high meant that it was measuring the reflected sound of the computer. It also meant that it was measuring my music directly from the speakers instead of indirectly, which is why the music measured louder than the computer, which, trust me, drowns out the music at background levels.
July 8, 2008 - Hello from Victoria. As luck would have it, my hotel has free Internet access in the room, so in the evenings, I can connect and get emails and keep myself up-to-date. Not much to say, other than Victoria is sunny and pleasant with temperatures in the low to mid 20s, not too hot and not too cold.
Joe McNally's the Moment It Clicks redux:
I received a Sandisk Extreme Firewire 800 card reader and a 4 GB Extreme IV compact flash card the other day, so I did a quick test and compared it to the Lexar UDMA USB 2 card reader and the Lexar 4 GB 300X UDMA card. I ordered these products from Camera Canada, which is a fine online retailer, although I generally do much more purchasing from Vistek.
