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Home >> Old News Items What's New Archives 2008 - January to June 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.
June 28, 2008 - As some may have noticed, there is a new advertiser on the website, BlueCubit. BLueCubit offers printing software, which is described as:
And, of course we still have the intriguing and very fun Lensbaby and the always reliable and solid retailer, B&H Photo, helping to support this website. It would be just dandy with me if you made some purchases from these fine vendors. Unless I get hit by a bus, I will be in downtown Sunday morning at around 7 am, give or take some minutes. 666 Burrard, Park Place at Burrard and Dunsmuir. Nothing fancy or formal, just another walkaround session to try and notice more of the architecture of Vancouver. Last time, I used the D300 and three zoom lenses. This time around, I will probably bring out the Canon 40D kit to give a couple of the lenses a much needed workout. June 26, 2008 - I just realized that I have not posted any comments about the much rumoured D700 FX SLR that many are speculating to be announced on July 1. It's not that I haven't been keeping up in reading the rumours and viewing alleged photos, just slipped my mind to talk about it. Based on what I've seen, it looks pretty real and I have a nice warm and fuzzy feeling about Nikon offering more or less D3 quality in a D300 body. It's a given that such a camera will not be a speed demon like the D3 and will not be as well sealed against the elements and will lack that last bit of Abrams tank build quality, but hey, I can be very happy with a Bradley instead 8^) I would love to own a couple of D3 SLRs like my buddy Rob in California, but whereas Rob actually has legit business to warrant $10,000 worth of cameras, I, alas, do not. There is also a sense of ridculousness of blowing $5,000 for a single D3 now, only to find that maybe 2-3 years later, Nikon will announce the D4 and expect you to pony up all over again. I gave into my desire to own a state of the art SLR in 2006 by buying a D2X and while it did not cost me $5,000, it's close enough to the amount and not very far in the past that I don't still shake my head at how much I spent. Today, a D2X might be worth $1500 and I heard of one well worn unit going for under $1000 (and I do mean very well worn, as in a local PJ's cast off). If you do photography for a living, or at least earn decent money from photographic activities, the cost is just business, but I'm not there yet and each buck spent is mostly my own. However, enough of my kevetching. The alleged D700, if rumours hold true, looks like it will be a very sweet wedding photographer's camera and will finally give the long-lived and respected Canon 5D some competition. Of course, as soon as the D700 is official, Canon will announce its replacement for the 5D (6D or 5D Mk II?) I'm sure Canon learned its lesson when not too long after it announced the 1D Mk III to the world, Nikon trumped its long-time rival with the D3 and D300 announcement. A tremendous one-two punch that caught Canon by surprise. The 1D Mk III's early AF problems just rubbed salt into the wound and momentum swung over to Nikon for the first time since the original D1 came out in 1999. This time around, it would certainly seem that Canon has held back the announcement of a camera that many felt should have been out many months ago. And, of course, I expect that whatever replaces the 5D will have an increase in resolution. Just as the 5D seemed to offer 1Ds quality in a consumer body, I'm thinking the replacement will offer 1Ds Mk II quality in a 40D type body, which mean a 16 MP SLR that will keep the 5D's vaunted high ISO image quality. Also, you would think that Canon has to respond to Nikon's science fiction-like high ISO settings and offer at least ISO 12800. A bump up in MP should keep the fanboys happy and give some sensitive Nikon users feelings of agnst and inadequacy about not measuring up if the D700 holds at 12 MP (yes, Freudian analogies done on purpose 8^). Other rumours floating around for July 1 is a replacement for the SB800, the much mentioned 24 MP D3X (or D4, or D7, or F7) and some lenses (which ones, I haven't seen anyone pinpoint). Should make for a nice holiday week for those of us in North America with July 1 being Canada Day and the US having the 4th of July a few days later. I'm thinking about doing another early Sunday morning walkaround session in downtown and as per the last one a couple of weekends back, this is an open invitation to anyone that wants to join me. If I do go (not confirmed at this time yet) I expect to be out a bit longer and perhaps end up in Chinatown at the Sun Yet Sen Gardens, which opens at 9:30 am. It's the kind of walk that requires a bit of flexibility, so sans tripod and the distance walked means that I hop on the bus instead of driving and paying the stupid meter fees that the city of Vancouver charges. If anyone is interested, I plan to be at Burrard and Dunsmuir, in front of the Park Place building at 7 am, give or take 15 minutes. I will try to post Friday night, if I will be heading out. June 23, 2008 - A look at the OWC Mercury on the Go portable hard drive is now posted. I finally got around to playing around with the iTouch and converting some movies to MPEG4 format. I'll reserve my comments about the video quality for later on when I'm more prepared to offer final conclusions on the iTouch as a whole, but sheesh, what a difference computer processing power makes for rendering video. I converted the Transformers movie on my cheap Sony notebook, which has a lowly 1.5 GHz Core2Duo processor and 2.5 GB of RAM. The whole process of rendering the video to MPEG4 took about two hours (give or take a few minutes). Then I converted Quigley Down Under (QDU) via the desktop with its dual quad 2.66 GHz Xeon processors (eight cores) with 8 GB of RAM. Now granted, the data from QDU is not as much as the Transformers, so if I were to have converted the Transformers via the desktop, the time would have been slightly longer, but the desktop rendered QDU in about 25 minutes (give or take). For both jobs, I used the free HandBrake application to convert to the iTouch's MPEG4 format. When I opened up the Task Manager on the desktop, I could see all eight cores being used for the rendering job. While having eight cores may seem like overkill for a computer that is used predominantly for photo editing, it actually isn't, espcially if you shoot RAW files. Rendering RAW files to TIFF or JPEGs involves processing power over RAM and editors such as Lightroom and Bibble can use all the cores you can offer them. For local readers in the market for speedy UDMA compact flash cards, on Tuesday, June 24, London Drugs will have a sale on Lexar 8 GB, 300X, UDMA cards. The price is normally $250, but the sale price is $180 and you get a free Lexar USB 2 UDMA card reader too, which results in a $130 value back to you ($70 off the card and a $60 card reader). London Drugs also has the 4 GB version for $80, but no card reader. Other retailers may be offering an $80 rebate instead of the card reader for the 8 GB card. Remember my brother-in-law's computer that died a little while ago? The timing of it pointed to the then recently released Windows XP SP3 update offered by Microsoft. It seemed the most logical explanation, but I was never fully convinced that it was XP SP3 that caused the hard drives to go wonky. SP3 may have caused some users some grief, but using a workaround generally ended the grief; however, this presumes that the user experiencing problems still has access to the file structure on the OS drive to use the workaround. My brother-in-law's computer had no file structure left at all after whatever mishap befell the box. There was nothing left to attempt a workaround solution. The only silver lining was that the hard drives still appeared to be functional and there was a possibility of extracting them to try and rescue the files on the data drive. I finally got my hands on that data drive to see if I could do anything with it. Alas, from the time of the computer dying to the time I got the hard drive, it appears to have died an ignoble death. I could not get the drive to mount no matter if I placed in an external case or inside a spare computer and no matter which jumper setting I used. The one last option left to try and recover the lost photos will be to get the camera's flash card and use some image recovery software and see what kind of box of chocolates Forrest Gump will leave me. June 20, 2008 - Okay, stop me if you've heard this one: you're at work near the end of the day and just about to pack it in to go home, or you're on the way home already and the phone or cellphone rings and it's your wife asking where you are. Um, well, I'm on the bus heading back home. Oh good, when you get off at your stop, could you stop by Safeway and buy a block of cheese for tonight's dinner. Uh, sure. My wife calling me up and asking me to do exactly what's typed above made me think of a recent National Geographic story in the May issue that's all about China. One of the stories describes the life in a poor, interior village, far away from the hustle, bustle and wealth of Beijing or Shanghai. The village, while considered a minority, because the residents are not ethnic Han Chinese, nevertheless, still seem to live a pretty Chinese life, including a strong belief in the mysticism of feng shui. While poor, it does not mean that the modern world is kept at bay with technology making inroads into the village with televisions and now cell phones. The writer of the story described how the cellphone has allowed the wife at home to be able to call the husband working the rice paddies, to ask if he might stop and pick some wild vegetables for that night's dinner. Global village indeed! Incidentally, there are some other things described by the writer about the village life that fascinated me. When new babies are born, the parents go into the forest and select a coffin tree. It's a relatively young tree that will grow stout as the baby grows up and ages. When the tree is sufficiently thick, it is cut down and carved into a coffin that will be stored in the basement or shed of the intended person until needed. The story also describes a feng shui ceremony that the villagers used to find out why their village seemed to have been afflicted with bad luck. The ceremony involves some of the village men blindfolded and seemingly put into a trance to ride "ghost" horses that eventually lead them deep into the spiritual realm to find out the answer. Surprisingly, the bad luck has been caused by someone burying a body in a rice paddy, which the village men were able to divine the location from the feng shui ceremony. To a westerner, it seems bizarre and a bit too much mysticism, but then I have to wonder, how did those men find the body? However, there are assorted other rituals involving the dead that would probably make us in the west scratch our heads. Tibetans have their sky burials (Google it if you really want to know) and the Chinese again, sometimes have weddings for the dearly departed. For example, if a man or woman die young, the parents may try and find another deceased person of similar age and circumstance and wed them so that they are not lonely in the afterlife. A news story I read a few years ago, described how some living relatives would resort to kidnapping dead bodies to conduct the wedding. Again, bizarre.
If you read National Geographic (and Life when it was still around) then you've seen Joe McNally's photographs plenty of times. Joe is noted for being the photographer to convince the mighty National Geographic to finally allow a major cover story to be all shot digitally. This is the article that celebrated the 100th anniversary of flight and McNally covered it with the Nikon D1X and D100 SLRs, along with privelaged access to the then prototype Nikon 12-24mm f4 AF-S DX lens. Joe is also noted for being a master with light, whether it be on a massive scale, such as maybe to photograph a radio telescope, or the ultra portable of an SB800 flash to light a portrait. I recall seeing in the section of the magazine that highlights the issue's writers and photographers on assignment, there was a shot of Joe in a driveway or parking lot with a massive amount of cases and boxes that he had gathered to light some of the subjects for his story. If I recall correctly, all that gear was to light the aforementioned radio telescope. The forward of the book, written by noted Photoshop guru, Scott Kelby, describes how the book came to be and why. The book is not another technical how to manual, but a written version of Joe's live presentations wherein he discusses an idea and then shows you a picture that perfectly fits the idea or suggestion that he gives to you. Ideas and suggestions, hard won over many years of photographing for some of the most demanding and prestigious publications in North America. I do find amusing that Joe uses a lot of photographic jargon, but that he has thoughtfully provided footnotes to provide a definition of the jargon. There's also a glossary at the end of the book for some other terms. I mean, I could probably have figured out that "ripping film" probably meant shooting film at a pretty fast pace, but the exact definition used by Joe is to shoot in bursts by never lifting the finger off the shutter release button, which obviously means ripping through a lot of film. Even though I've just begun reading the book, I think it's going end up being a favorite of mine when I'm done and I've always been taken with general, editorial photography. The type that has no particular genre, but is just the photographer working in a manner to capture the best photograph he or she can. It could be a simple, single-person portrait one day or the largest laser in the world. I should have a look at the OWC Mercury on the Go portable hard drive posted on the weekend. Other things to be eventually looked at are:
It might seem curious that I have some vdeos and publications on Nikon Capture NX 2, but I do plan to get this RAW convertor to supplement my set of tools for the digital darkroom. The Adobe Camera Raw tutorial might also seem curious since I'm big into using Adobe Lightroom and the two convertors share a lot of the same processing DNA. However, I generally use Lightroom for editing photos that I plan to keep and want to archive, whereas I use ACR for photos that are one offs and that I have no intention of keeping, e.g. product shots for articles and reviews. I haven't bought a specific camera tutorial book since I first bought my Nikon F90x, but given all that the D300 can do and the lack of time to get my butt out and about to try all that the D300 can do, I figured that I could cheat a bit and buy Thom Hogan's eBook. I've said it many times before that I think Thom Hogan is the best Nikon reviewer/writer on the Internet and I expect a lot of good materials and tidbits of info from his D300 guide.
The book, Landscapes of the Spirit, offers the kind of images that made me want to become landscape photographer way back in 1997. Excellent landscape art and a nice way to wind down from a hectic day. The $15 gets you two PDF files, one as a single page presentation so that you can focus your attention on one image at a time. The second PDF offers the traditional two-page view of the original book. The electronic version also gives you an extra couple of pages of technical information about each image, which were not included in the original book. I enjoyed it thoroughly and it's probably been the best $15 I've spent in recent times. More information here and you can also check out William Neill's blog page. June 16, 2008 - Busy father's day weekend. Had hoped to get out on Saturday morning to do some comparison test shots, but got thwarted by the wife's early morning dentist appointment. Then it was babysitting time in the afternoon for me while the wife was out and about and then a big family barbeque at her brother's place for a father's day dinner. I did get out on Sunday morning into downtown for about an hour and a half and spent a pleasant time with a reader who was an even earlier bird than I was in making it out to the Park Place building. After getting back home, time for me to cook up some breakfast for my own father and then getting the kids off to a birthday party in the afternoon. I also managed to put together a look at a couple of Lexar products, a 4 GB 300X UDMA compact flash card and the USB 2.0 UDMA card reader.
If any of you have been keeping up with Scott Kelby's blog, you know that he's been railing against the need for permits to photograph using a tripod in many US cities. Related to the topic is how security guards and police officers often don't know what the rules and regulations are for the use of tripods or even just for general photography. I figured that with the early Sunday morning outing that we might see a couple of security guards come and approach us. My hunch was correct, because as soon as I got off the transit bus (it stops right beside Park Place) I saw John talking with a security guard. I wondered if John was getting some hassle from the security guard, but it was actually just conversation and maybe some admiration of John's 70-200 VR lens. The security guard was quite pleasant and said no problem with photographing the building since we were not media. Later on, as we walked along West Hastings, I was photographing the main entrance to a building when one of the doors opened and another security guard popped his head out and wondered what I was doing. I just smiled an mumbled something about photographing the doorway and he went back inside and left me alone. While I can understand the frustrations felt by innocent photographers just wanting to take a photo of an interesting subject, security guards have it tough when they may not know exactly what the regulations may be. They will generally take the conservative choice and say no rather than take a chance that they may be wrong. Security guards just don't get paid enough to take any potential flak from higher ups. Last week a reader asked about the Epson R2400 printer and wondered if my recommendation to bypass the R2400 and buy the Epson 3800 still stood given that Vistek in Toronto is now clearing out the R2400 for CDN $600. After doing some quick calculations, I replied that yes, my recommendation still stood in buying a 3800 at CDN $1250 instead of the $600 R2400. It all comes down to ink and below is an exerpt of my reply:
And, of course, with the 3800, you will have 16x20 inch print capability in a relatively compact desktop sized printer instead of being limited to 13x19 with the R2400 (the R2400 is capable of using rolls though, so you can print longer than 19 inches, but are still limited to a 13 inch width). June 13, 2008 - Interesting news from HP about a new high performance, color critical LCD computer monitor developed in connection with noted animation studio, DreamWorks Animation. Only USD $3500 for one billion colors... Another item of interest, also from HP, is the Blackbird 002 custom PC. Fairly impressive PC that seems to have taken into consideration the thermal (i.e. heat) characteristics of high performance PCs and attempted to mitigate it as much as possible. Liquid cooling is de rigeur, but also plenty of copper heat pipes for the mobo, RAM and CPUs. In fact, inside the Blackbird, each of major heat generating components (CPU, GPU and PSU) are isolated in their own chambers so that cool air coming in does not get mixed up with hot air coming off of the components. Smart wire dressing for improved air flow finish off the interesting design. Finally, the kind of custom PC that "I" would have designed 8^) All yours for around USD $7000 for the top model with the best performance and cooling features. As much as the the Blackbird sounds pretty sweet, I think I'm leaning towards Mac next time around. As I was telling another reader in a private email, I'm driven towards Mac because of the hardware rather than the software. I'm not a software zealot and Vista versus OS-X is a meaningless debate. I've discussed the MacBook Pro before, but the two key features that I like about it is that it offers a Dual-Link DVI connection to drive a 30-inch LCD, as well as Firewire 800. HDMI and eSATA, as seems to be becoming popular on PC notebooks are not features I consider of much value (well, maybe eSATA would be nice, but there are adapter cards available if I really want it). I'll be interested to see how long it takes Apple to update the MacBook Pros to accomodate more than 4 GB of RAM. HP now offers notebooks that can take two 4 GB RAM modules for a nice 8 GB. I'd also like to see more hard drive options than a measly 250 GB running at 5400 RPM. Where are the 320 GB, 7200 RPM or the 500 GB, 5400 RPM options? The Mac Pro desktop is elegant and seems very well designed with all the flexibility and performance options to give me some wood (ahem)! I love that you can install up to four video cards inside the box, but it would be even better to be able to fit more than four hard drives. Six SATA ports would be nice, along with faster burning optical drives. The iMacs, well, maybe nice if you can't afford better, or good for the wife and kids, but wake me up when the 30-inch version arrives, or when the 24-inch version offers Dual-Link DVI. Another interesting thing about Apple is that since going with the Intel chips, the prices have steadily come down at regular intervals. Where once not so long ago, a 4 GB RAM upgrade on a MacBook Pro would have cost you $900, you can now go from 2 GB to 4 GB for a not unreasonable $200. And, lastly, if worse comes to worse, I can always boot up Vista... ;^) June 11, 2008 - First up on deck for review is something that is actually not on the list at left, which is the National Geographic Earth Explorer Shoulder Bag (Medium size). Reader's comments and question:
That is really unfortunate and I feel for you. I know a little bit of what you feel, as I had my first Nikon F90X, a lens and flash stolen from me years ago, but that pales compared to what you and your family just went through. I’m sure there is a litany of emotions being experienced by everyone from violation to anger. Your warning and suggestions ties in somewhat coincidentally with that of my brother-in-law who experienced the computer problems a couple of weeks ago. Since I didn’t have time to look into the problems, another brother-in-law did and reported back that the hard drives are toast and all the files are gone. If true, the first brother-in-law has lost many family photos taken this year, including wedding photos taken at his brother’s wedding, none of which were backed up. While the computer can be rebuilt with new hard drives, the brother-in-law rightly thinks that hardware is meaningless without the data that used to be stored inside. It’s a tough lesson for him to have learned and now he’s resolved to establish a backup process using external drives. However, I do have some hope for him, as what I observed of the computer indicates that the hard drives were detected and working, just that the data on the OS drive was gone. However, all the photo data had been saved to a second drive, which I’m hoping to get my hands on and see for myself if the data is truly gone. The suggestion to note serial numbers is another good one and taking stock of all that on has is an excellent idea, along with photo documentation of each item in case something happens to me too. Part two of your email is a bit of a dangerous question for me to answer J This really depends on when you ask and what is currently available, because I’m somewhat of a sponge that absorbs data and what I think today could be 180 degree different tomorrow. However, here are my thoughts on the current situation: If, and this is a big if…if you can afford to wait to buy, I would bank away the cash for the short term and see what the summer holds for us as we get closer to the Olympics. There is the much rumored 24 MP Nikon SLR that some speculate as being announced sometime next month. Now, I’m not suggesting that you spend the kind of money that would be needed to buy a super high resolution, FX Nikon SLR, but it would be interesting to see if the much hoped for FX version of a D300 comes out at the same time. There is also the somewhat overdue Canon 5D replacement and this would be a very interesting camera if it were to receive an upgraded body, such as found in the 40D. Faster AF, with a modest increase in resolution could make it as much of a giant killer as the original 5D was compared to the high priced 1Ds SLR. The dark horse in this so far two horse race is Sony. When the 24 MP SLR finally arrives it could trigger a nice arms race that should benefit us, the photographers, by having a third full frame contender. No idea about the price, but there’s always hope that Sony uses its considerable size and financial clout to make the price very competitive, which would put pressure on Nikon and Canon to keep their prices somewhat sane. Pentax, Olympus, et al. hardly register on my radar, because I don’t find any of their products compelling enough to look beyond Nikon, Canon, and the somewhat behind, Sony. Sorry to any Pentax and Olympus users out there reading this, nice products and all, but just not for me and no doubt that you probably say the same about Nikon, Canon and Sony. If you feel that you need to do an immediate replacement due to pressing needs, then I would simply suggest that you get another D300. Note to readers, I know the person asking the question and a bit about his previous equipment, hence the familiarity. This would also be an opportunity get some nice, new f2.8 AF-S zoom lenses, such as the 24-70 and 70-200. Throw in the 12-24 for the wide angle and then supplement with a Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens for low light. I would not go beyond these four lenses for the time being simply because everyone expects Nikon to revamp its prime lens lineup and many are hoping for AF-S versions of at least the 50 and 85mm lenses. Maybe even hold off on the Sigma lens to see if an AF-S version of the 35mm f2 lens will be forthcoming. However, if you wanted to add in a macro lens, either of the 60 or 105 AF-S Micro lenses would be sweet, immediate additions. I expect that the water will be far less muddy after July and August for Nikon users. On the Canon side, the 40D is a very nice, capable camera, but given how long you and I have been Nikon users, the Canon UI takes some getting used to and going back to a Nikon SLR is like putting on that old, leather baseball glove that just opens and closes effortlessly. The three-inch LCD, which you’ve already enjoyed, is simply a joy to use and while there are many features and customization available in the D300, the Nikon menu system is more informative and intuitive to use than the Canon menu system (kinda like going from DOS command line to Windows GUI). Add in the much heralded new zooms and the powerful and flexible wireless flash capabilities and it’s not really not that hard to suggest sticking with Nikon. There’s also that awesome travel lens in the 18-200 VR that Canon does not offer (although Sigma and Tamron have their own variants now, Canon users can certainly have all-in-one convenience). However, at the end of the day, results matter and I like the results that come out of the 40D while I’m still getting a handle on what the D300 can do, so cannot offer much comparative comments at this time. June 9, 2008 - While the title of the photo of the week is "Ugly" that also sums up my weekend. My exam was written last Saturday and the less said the better about the most challenging exam I've ever had to sit through. Good news though is that I have my life back for the next little while and I will now slowly try to make my way through the products listed in the left column. Lots of little personal projects to try and work through too, but there are these little things called work and family that seem to get in my way. I just hope the breather lets me reduce some stress and get back on an even keel. Man, photographing a 12-hour wedding is no stress at all compared to trying to remember formulas and ratios that have little meaning for me on a practical basis. So, stay tuned for the new articles and reviews as they slowly trickle out. Also, for any local readers with nothing better to do this coming Sunday, I'm planning to do an early morning walk about in downtown Vancouver to photograph some of the office towers. By early, I mean around 7 am, so as to avoid as much humanity as possible. Will probably be out for a couple of hours. Anyone wanting to join me is welcome to do so and I will probably start with the Park Place building on Burrard and Dunsmuir - it has the rather ominous address of 666 Burrard St. If there are any changes to my plans, I'll post them on this page. June 5, 2008 - About the much heralded, highly regarded Nikkor 14-24 lens. Many complain about the huge front element and the lack of ability to use filters with it; however, if we really desired to, couldn't we work around this problem? I was thinking about it and remembered an old PopPhoto article by landscape photographer, Tim Fitzharris. Fitzharris came up with a quick and dirty method of quickly attaching large, rectangular graduated neutral density filters to his Pentax (now Mamiya) medium format lenses...gaffer tape. I was thinking that if I got a filter large enough to cover the 14-24's front element then I could workaround the issue of using filters. The 4x4 and 4x6 inch size should do as the 14-24's front element is about 1/4 inch shy of being four inches wide. Get a couple of these and use Fitzharris' trick of attaching via gaffer tape and Bob's your uncle. The only quibbling issue is the cost of such filters. While graduated neutral density filters in 4x6 size are not too bad at around CDN $160 or so from Lee or Singh Ray, the circular polarizers get pricey with the cheapest I've found to be Lee's at CDN $290. Over at TOP there is a recent posting about the lamented bridge cameras once made by Sony, which through the comments section, later evolved into a general lament about the demise of the high-end bridge camera of every brand. Prior to the purchase of KonicaMinolta's photographic assets, Sony was a leader in this class of camera with the R1 the pinnacle, albeit too short lived despite so much potential. I liked where the R1 could have taken us even if I didn't care much for the somewhat high cost. The R1 was the first and only bridge camera that used a DX sized sensor, which given what Nikon and Canon have done wth their most recent DX format SLRs for image quality, points to lost opportunity. Just think of what an R2 or R3 could be if still made and developed by Sony? An all-in-one, sensibly priced, SLR-like camera with high ISO quality like the D300 or 40D that is completely silent in operation - no mirror box, no mechanical shutter. In other words, the perfect camera for use during wedding ceremonies, court trials, movie sets, recording studios and any other noise-sensitive environment where photos are desired, but not the noise from an SLR. While the original R1 had a very nice, generalist focal length Zeiss lens, succeeding cameras need not have been tied to the "normal" range zoom lens. For sure offer one for choice, but also throw in a super zoom version and while I'm dreaming of lost opportunity, how about a single focal length version, say a 30 or 35mm f1.4 lens, which would equate to a 50mm lens in the FX world. Unfortunately, no one seems interested in making such a camera, what with SLR prices having fallen so much in the last couple of years, but still offering the best profits for the camera makers. While bridge cameras are still made by Olympus, Panasonic and in particular, for being best in class, Fuji, it seems to me that if you're serious about quality, but need to go simpler and/or lighter, you gotta look towards one of the consumer SLRs, such as D60 and a small complement of lenses. You can pick up a D60 along with two VR zoom lenses for less than what the R1 sold for back in 2006, when it was last available. And, if memory serves me correctly, the D60 with a consumer zoom lens attached is actually even more compact than the R1. One of the reader's comments at TOP offered that all that most consumers need is a good, compact, all-in-one bridge camera because it would be taken everywhere and be available for taking photos. Well, I differ on that, because one person I know did buy the last bridge camera made by Nikon, the Coolpix 8800, and while it is, when compared to an SLR, compact and fairly lightweight, the size was still an issue for the owner. The CP 8800 was eventually supplemented by a Fuji digicam to truly be the take anywhere camera, which incidentally is what I've been preaching for a couple years now. Buy the good, capable, do anything SLR for those times that you have the desire for the best quality, but also get yourself a compact digicam to put in the shirt or pant pocket for those times where you're not out trying to be Ansel Adams. Even the smallest bridge camera won't fit in any pocket save for those of a winter parka and it's always nice to have the choice of choosing the best camera for the occasion, which I certainly admit is not always an SLR, even if I'm somewhat allergic to pretty much every digicam available now. Even if that mythical R3 existed today, I would still tell a prospective purchaser to budget for a tiny digicam to supplement the bigger camera. Speaking of which, I suppose I should be following my own advice... June 3, 2008 - Nikon has announced Capture NX 2, which was already known to be ready for imminent release due to a showing at a photo show in France a few days ago. As much as many hated Capture NX 1, kudos to Nikon for listening to users and making what appears to be significant improvements to its RAW converter. Dual monitor support is now provded (always big in my book) and the UI is said to be improved. Check out the review links at my other site, NikonLinks. Yesterday's post mentioned how I felt I didn't have NTI Backup Now setup correctly. I've now set it up the way I want. As seen below, I set NTI Backup Now for Incremental Backups:
Incremental means that only new and changed files will be backed up to my assigned drive, whereas when I had set Differential, it seemed to more or less do a whole backup again, which is redundent and not necessary since I would have already done one in the first place. My first, whole backup of my chosen folders and files is about 35 GB and the first Incremental backup done last night resulted in a new backup that is all of 714 KB in size, which would just be updated website files. Now that's more like it instead of having to do a whole another backup lasting 30 plus minutes. My backup drive is a spare and "naked" 3.5 inch Seagate 320 GB hard drive. I say naked, because it is not mounted in a traditional external case, but in on of those new, perhaps faddish, hard drive docking stations. The one I bought for about $34 can accomodate naked 2.5 and 3.5 inch SATA drives and connects to the computer via USB 2. Instead of spending $30 or more each on individual cases, you get a single docking station that you can rotate the drives in and out of as needed. Of course, you don't get the protection of a dedicated case, but for use with backup drives that don't travel far from the desk, it's a handy item. For those of you interested in creating custom photo books on your own for a reasonable cost, Epson has a kit available called Storyteller Photo Book Creator. First off, this is not the kind of book that a pro would flog onto his or her clients, but for consumers wanting something a little bit more interesting than the usual 4x6 album, it looks interesting and seems reasonably priced at CDN $30 per kit. The basic package is an 8x10 sized book (5x7 also available) and comes with 22 sheets of Epson glossy paper. I'm hoping the paper is the good stuff, as in Epson Premium Photo Glossy Paper, but I haven't looked at the paper closely enough to tell if it is and for only $30, I have my doubts. The kit also includes two plastic protected book covers. Two of the 22 8x10 sheets are meant for you to practice with and the extra book cover is also meant for practice too. The kit comes with a CD with the Epson design software (Windows only) and a pretty detailed instruction booklet. While one would assume the kit is ideal for use with Epson printers, Epson is marketing the kit to users of other brands such as HP, Canon and Dell. Additional details available at the Epson USA website. I bought a couple of kits and will try them out to finally create some long overdue baby albums of my youngest, Harrison. So, stay tuned along with all the other planned for updates listed in the left side column. Incidentally, the reason why I don't consider this as something a pro would offer is that the way the book is created is with individual sheets of prints. Unlike the Unibind system which also uses individual sheets of prints to create a true bound book with those individual sheets, the Epson kit uses adhesive strips bound to the book cover to attach the prints. Once I've created a finished album, I'll post some product shots to show you what I mean (easier to show than to describe). June 2, 2008 - A reader sent along this suggestion for backup software, Cobian's Backup. I've not tried it, but an interesting aspect of it is that the backup files can be browsed normally on the backup drive rather than being in a proprietary file format, as with NTI Backup Now and other similar backup applications. I've noticed that every scheduled backup using NTI Backup Now generates a large file of around 30 GB in size on the backup drive, even though I've set it up for an incremental backup of only files that have changed since the last backup. I'll have to look into this, because 30 GB is certainly not an incremental one, but the whole she-bang. A while back I talked about the Wacom Bamboo tablet and how I didn't like the manner in which the pen's position on the tablet is absolute to the where you want the cursor to be on the screen. For example, if I want to click on the Start button on the lower left corner of the screen, the pen also has to be positioned in the exact same lower left corner of the tablet. I mentioned that I would prefer if the pen could set for relative positioning like a mouse, in which case you could life the pen off the tablet and the cursor would remain where it is on the screen and not jump around to where you next positioned the pen on the tablet. Well, what a dummy I feel like not to have noticed that you can choose between absolute and relative positioning of the cursor when using the pen and all it is just clicking on the appropriate box in the tablet's settings. As seen below you can choose to use the Bamboo in pen mode (absolute positioning) or mouse mode for relative positioning:
Even the very old Graphire tablet I complained about now offers this change in mode, as I discovered when I downloaded the latest driver for it to be used with my kids' computer (my youngest daughter likes to draw and scribble using MS Paint). May 30, 2008 - With next week being the home stretch leading up to my exam, I'm gonna cover a few items to tide everyone over, as I bunker down. On the continuing theme of backups, I decided to give NTI Backup Now a try, since it came loaded on the Acer, as part of its bloatware. Of all the Acer-included applications, NTI Backup Now might actually be a good and useful program. I set it up to first do a full backup of all the important files on the Acer's two hard drives, then I setup a schedule for it to do incremental backups at a regular time that I'll likely have the computer on, but probably would not be doing much with it. It seems to work okay, except that Vista's User Account Control blocks the automated schedule aspect of NTI Backup Now, which rather defeats the purpose of having an automatic backup process that I don't need to worry about. I also wonder about the utility of using NTI and other similar applications that seem to backup to a proprietary file format that only it can read and restore. I mean, what if I was too stupid to have created restore discs for the Acer and then had a system crash that left my drives kaput? Would I have to get another copy of NTI in order to access the backup file? Hopefully, I won't have to worry about this. I'm also a belt and suspenders kinda guy. While NTI is my belt, I still plan to do my own manual backups to separate drives, which would be my suspenders. These backups would be less frequent than NTI's daily, incremental backup, but would be a mirror and obviously not in some kind of proprietary format. On the topic of backup drives, I received my OWC Mercury On-the-Go portable drive a couple of days ago. I ordered the Firewire 800/USB2 interface version with a Hitachi 160 GB 7200 RPM drive. Unfortunately, I've requested an RMA to send it back to OWC, because it died shortly after I started testing it out. I was looking forward to getting this drive to see how speedy Firewire 800 would be. To prepare, I ordered an ExpressCard FW800 adapter for my notebook computers and PCI-E FW800/USB2 card for my desktop. I thought I was all set to finally taste the kind of speed that Mac users were crowing about. My taste will have to wait a bit longer now, because of the drive's failure. When I first set it up, I tried the USB 2 connection first to give myself a baseline performance for comparison. I created a test folder of 100 Canon 40D RAW files on the Acer to copy over to the OWC MOG drive. The USB 2 performance was not impressive and at best, it's middling with a sustained speed of about 10.5 MB per second. This version of the OWC MOG costs USD $190 (not including exchange, S&H, and taxes) and its performance is whipped by the half as much 160 GB portable Western Digital Passport drive I bought at Costco last year. The WD averages about 17-18 MB/second when connected to my Acer and it sure as hell ain't no 7200 RPM drive unit either. My other 2.5 inch portable drives, also with 5400 RPM drives also have better speeds than the OWC MOG with typical speeds of 12-17 MB/second. Ah well, I didn't buy the OWC MOG for its USB connection, so in goes the ExpressCard adapter and I'm full of anticipation that I'll get to see speeds reaching 30-40 MB/second. Firewire 800 is theoretically faster, but theory usually does not translate into reality. Has anyone ever come close to getting the full throughput of USB 2's theoretical speeds? Everything's connected, I turn on the OWC drive and...nothing. No juice. Everything's connected properly, but nothing's happening. I pull out the OWC instruction manual and notice something about some FW interfaces may not work if the device connected does not have its own power supply, like the OWC MOG. I read the FW ExpressCard instructions and see that in fact, it will not work unless the device has its own power, or I supply some power to the ExpressCard itself. SNAFU! I look at the power connection for the ExpressCard, then I read the power specs and I wonder if I might already have a power supply to fit it. As luck would have it, the power supply/charger for my Nexto backup drive has exactly the specs needed to juice the ExpressCard. I'm in business. Firing up the OWC MOG worked and I begin my little test of moving the 100 RAW files over to the new drive. My anticipation turned into severe disappointment when the speed was all of 1.5 MB/second, an incredibly slow spec and far worse than the already slow USB 2 speed. At this point I figured that something was wrong with the drive to be so slow, but to be sure, I tried it with my Sony notebook and desktop computers, but the drive failed to mount to any computer, including the Acer, whether it be with FW800 or USB 2. Dead as a paperweight and FUBR. The ExpressCard needing external juice to work with a FW800 drive is another disappointment, because it defeats the notion of being able to enjoy FW800 in the field. My other new toy that also just arrived at least works, the Blue Circle Thingee, which is a USB DAC. I'll have more to say about this interesting device later on. The Thingee won't win any prizes for build or parts quality given that it looks like something even I could throw together, but it's quite a versatile device if you get the fully tricked out version that I bought. As a USB DAC, it's entirely bus powered, meaning no need to juice it independently. It gets its power and data feed from the USB connection and then you have a plethora of output options. I have the following:
When outputting a signal, both digital and analog outputs are live, so I can feed another external DAC, as well as self-power speakers and even a headphone amp, which is currently how I have it setup at the moment. However, my home office is always a work in progress for changes and reconfigurations and it can change from week to week as I try and get the optimal setup. As good as the Thingee seems to be, even it cannot turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. The Acer has ground loop issues when used in certain setups with my larger Behringer self-powered monitor speakers and internally, there's contamination of the music when running iTunes with other applications at the same time. However, using the Acer and Thingee with my smaller Behringer multimedia speakers eliminates the ground loop problem, which is a big point in favour of the Thingee. Using an optical digital output to the Benchmark DAC-1, which feeds the big Behringer speakers, also keeps the ground loop in check. Prior to getting the Thingee in-house, I was lusting big time after the HeadRoom Desktop amp, but now, believe it or not, I might finally be satiated with my current setup. It's not quite the simple and stripped down system that I wanted to build with a HeadRoom amp as the heart, but there's enough flexiblity to cover all the bases now. More to come in June. It's been said by more than a few people that women don't like big and heavy devices compared to men that like their toys bigger, louder and more obnoxious. Many female wedding pros eschew the big and heavy pro SLRs from Nikon and Canon and prefer working with the consumer models because they are much smaller and lighter. Along these thoughts, back when I upgraded to the Acer, I gave my wife my old 17-inch, P4 Toshiba notebook. She never cared much for it, even though as a notebook, it's still much smaller than a desktop. Around the time that I was shopping around for another, smaller notebook for mobile studying, my wife asked her brother if he might have something to lend me. I think it had a lot less to do with helping me study than it was to try and stop me from spending more money. No such luck, as I still bought the Sony notebook ;^) However, she still took her brother's spare notebook, a very compact 12-inch Fujitsu wth the old school 4:3 aspect ratio and somewhat lowish resolution. She immediately banished the poor old Toshiba, because she much preferred the smaller Fujitsu. The Fujitsu is also a bit more sprightly havng a Core Duo processor (not Core2Duo like the Acer and Sony). Looking at and handling the Fujitsu, I have to say that for studying purposes, it would have been quite dandy. It weighs so little and its size allows it to fit in just about any bag or case I might use on the road. However, being a man, I still like my gear to be big, loud and obnoxious... The Toshiba is now much used and appreciated by my kids though, as they paint and draw pictures along with playing games on it. Speaking about my Sony notebook, regular readers may recall that I found trying to profile the LCD was quite troublesome no matter which monitor calibration package I used. I could profile it, but then it would disappear whenever I opened certain applications, making it unstable and next to useless for doing any image editing. The profile would also sometimes disappear when I plugged in peripheral devices like external hard drives. By accident, I discovered if I turned off Vista's UAC, the profile generally stayed put, making it more reliable. Since I don't keep any important data on this notebook (unless someone really wants my CFA Level I formula and ratios notes), I'm not concerned with turning off UAC and have been using it this way for some time now with very good stability for the monitor profile. May 27, 2008 - Seems like everyone is talking about backups and crashes this week. Check out Scott Kelby and Terry White for their backup procedures. Some of what these two Photoshop masters use can only be done with Macs (Time Capsule and Time Machine), but the basic ideas are relevant for everyone no matter what platform you use. Luminous Landscape linked to a review of the 30-inch HP LP3065 LCD monitor and this looks like a pretty sweet unit. Nice and large like my own older 30-inch Dell, but much closer to Adobe RGB color gamut (90 percent) without the high price of an Eizo, or the 30-inch NEC that I was eyeing for a future upgrade. Aside from the image quality, another feature I like about the HP LCD is that it offers three dual-link DVI connections. This would allow me to use it with another computer than just the big, noisy and hot running desktop. The old Dell only has one dual DVI connection. My idea is to get the HP and a MacBook Pro to rejig my digital darkroom. The MacBook Pro is the only notebook I know that offers a dual-link DVI connection that can drive a big 30-inch LCD at native resolution. It would replace the Acer I'm using at the moment as my day-to-day computer. The Acer offers regular DVI, but it maxes out at 1920x1200 resolution (currently, it's driving my 24-inch Acer LCD as my main monitor while the 20-inch notebook screen is my second monitor). The extra dual DVI connections on the HP would allow it to be connected to the desktop, so that I can also work with my long planned for dual 30-inch LCDs. Now, to just come up with the $4000 or so needed to get that MacBook Pro and HP LCD... Thanks to everyone that responded to my query about the rebooting loop. I'm probably going to leave well enough alone and stick to my original advice given to the user, which is to reinstall the OS. Given his user habits, this is probably a good thing anyway. Cruising through the Imaging-Resource website, I read a press release from Samsung about how it will launch a high capacity, solid state hard drive. This would have Samsung offering two high capacity solid state drives with 128 GB and 256 GB, with both offering faster speeds than current mechanical hard drives. This sounds really sweet and I hope demand takes off so that the prices can come down quickly to allow us mortals to afford a notebook running one of these drives. Right now, as I check the prices at my local computer parts shop, 64 GB SSDs are over CDN $1200 from OCZ or Crucial. It would seem ridiculous to buy one of these to put into something like my cheap Sony notebook, which cost significantly less money in total, including RAM upgrade. However, I'd expect Apple to jump on the SSD bandwagon in a big way and offer the Samsung drives as options with its MacBook Pro notebooks - Apple already offers an SSD option with the MacBook Air. Of course, SSD points the way towards desktop computers and who's gonna argue against less heat, noise with greater durability and security for our files. Hopefully, if I don't already get a MacBook Pro in between, when it comes time to do the next round of upgrades, SSDs will be common and more importantly, cheap. May 26, 2008 - Related to the topic from the May 21 post, last Friday evening, I got a call from a bro-in-law, asking for some help with the computer I gave him about a year ago. Seems the dual processor HP box with Win XP Pro is stuck in a continuous reboot loop. The Windows XP splash screen shows up with the little scrolling bar at the bottom to show that boot-up is in progress. Unfortunately, after a few seconds, the blue screen of death flashes for a brief moment and then the computer crashes and tries to reboot, and so on and so on. Trying to figure out what could be wrong is rather open ended since it could be hardware or software related, or a combination of both. No new hardware had been installed and the timing seemed to coincide with the recent Service Pack 3 update for XP, so I figured maybe something went wrong during the updating process and we would have to roll back SP3. Worse comes to worse, we could try repairing the XP install using the original installation disc. Or, so I thought. After trying a Recovery Console fix to uninstall SP3 with no success, I then tried to repair the XP install by going in through the install disc and treating it like a new install. Doing this should still get the install disc recognizing that XP is already installed and then ask if I want to repair it. No such luck either, which is rather odd. After this set back, I realized why the Recovery Console method failed, because somehow, the C drive's directory structure was completely toast and without the ability to access any folders and files, there's no way for Recovery Console to work. I should have also suspected something was wrong when Recovery Console didn't ask which install to repair, as it normally would along with an administrator password. Going in through the install disc, when the repair option should have come up, all I got was that there was a partition available on C drive and that I would need to format it in order to continue installing XP. I realized at this point that something had totally corrupted the OS and that it would have to be reinstalled, which I wasn't going to do given my studying time constraints. My first thought is some sort of virus, but I don't know enough about this set of circumstances to go beyond this and I don't know anything about the kind of stuff downloaded and installed by the user. The experience did serve a leson though, which is backup, then backup again, and then backup a third time. The user did at least follow one piece of advice I gave him when I gave him the box, which was not to save any important data on the OS drive and to save everything to the second, data drive I installed in the box. It's maybe a bad assumption, but I'm hoping that whatever toasted the C drive didn't kill the D drive and that his data is still okay. If anyone can shed some light on the origins of the OS becoming corrupted and leading to the reboot loop problem, I'd be interested in hearing from you. May 23, 2008 - My Nikkor 24-70 f2.8G AF-S arrived yesterday, which now completes my revamping and updating of my basic kit. As most know about the 24-70 lens, it is longer and slimmer than the 28-70 AF-S lens it replaces. The hood is no less large though and just as with the 28-70 lens, the 24-70 gets longer as you zoom wide and shorter as you zoom in. This is a good thing, as the lens hood remains stationary when zooming, so as you zoom wide, the lens barrel extends and the hood effectively becomes shorter. Thus, the hood is always optimized for the focal length you choose. It will be a while though, before I can really use the lens in any serious fashion (same with the 14-24 and D300). Other misc items that may interest readers and for which you can check back on me in about a month's time are (I say a month, because while I expect the items to arrive next week, I won't have time to do much with them):
My search for an easy, cheap and convenient way to get audio from a computer-based system has now led me to an interesting product offered by Canadian hi-fi brand, Blue Circle. It's called...the Thingee...and the description of it sounds like it's put together by a guy in his garage, but it could be just the, ahem, thing I need for my system given that my big Acer notebook doesn't seem to get on well with either of my M-Audio external sound card/DACs. The Thingee is a bus-powered DAC with both analog and digital output. Bus-powered means it has a USB connection and no need for an external power source. It bypasses the low grade sound card offered in pretty much every notebook computer, no matter what the brand or even price level. You can output the digital output into another DAC, or use the analog outputs to feed an amp. I plan to use the Thingee to interface the Acer with my new Behringer MS20 multimedia speakers that now sit astride the Acer. The Behringer MS20, if compared to regular bookshelf speakers are small, but could be considered large for computer speakers (consumer variety). The MS20 is self-powered with the amp residing inside the right side speaker with the left side speaker fed from the right via a single RCA interconnect cable (you need to supply your own interconnect). All the controls are on the right speaker, which include power, bass, treble and volume. With an audiophile background, I set the tone controls to the middle, never to be touched again. The volume controls kinda threw me for a loop when I set the MS20 up. There are two volume pots on the MS20, which I initially thought were to control the left and right speakers individually, which would actually be annoying to have to turn down or up the volume individually, but not so. The MS20 offers two analog inputs (RCA and 1/8 inch mini jack) and with no obvious switch to select the source, I wondered how I would be able to choose the inputs. As it turns out, using the volume pots; one pot controls the RCA input and the other the mini jack input. Very clever. The MS20 also offers a 24-bit, 192 kHz DAC built in, so there are coaxial and optical digital inputs available (also volume controlled individually), but let's not kid ourselves about what kind of quality is going to be available from a DAC built into a set of CDN $120 speakers. Consider the digital inputs more as a convenience item. Behringer has made a name for itself (or himself, since the company is named after its founder) for offering low cost, pro audio equipment. Not the last word in absolute sound quality, but certainly not bad and I think very good cost-to-quality ratio, as both sets of my Behringer speakers are well made. With the pro audio background, the MS20 has no conflict with the inputs being used and outputting sound at the same time, e.g., if I have a digital coaxial cable feeding the MS20, it's controlled by volume pot 1. The mini jack analog input is also controlled by volume pot 1 and if both are used at the same time, I can hear both sound sources without the MS20 breaking a sweat. Same with using the two analog inputs at the same time. No comments on sound quality, as I find speakers generally need many hours of break-in before they settle down (100-200 hrs), so again, another work in progress. At lower volume levels, I find nothing particularly objectionable, but at higher levels, the sound gets hard, which has me reaching for the volume to turn it down, but this is expected of small speakers with low power output (especially new ones). I will say though, that like most small speakers, the MS20 disappears and images quite effortlessly. When the Blue Circle Thingee arrives, I'll connect the Thingee via its analog RCA outputs to the MS20, which will allow me to connect an iPod to the MS20 via the mini jack connection. That should do it for a basic Acer based system that will be used primarily for computer sounds (listening to Podcasts, watching YouTube movies, etc.) and background music listening. Serious listening, these days generally done via headphones or in-ear monitors (my newish Shure SL-4), is still done with the Sony notebook being fed AIFF files from an external hard drive and driving the HeadRoom Portable Micro amp - the big Acer is a "dirty" notebook that cannot consistently output clean audio signals no matter which connection I use, thus it is unusable for serious music listening purposes. I purchased the Blue Circle Thingee from UHF Magazine in Montreal for CDN $190 and the Behringer MS20 from Oakwood Broadcast in Winnipeg for $116. As a Canadian making a purchase over CDN $60, UHF covers the S&H by Canada Post, but Oakwood ships by courier, so expect a somewhat hefty charge relative to the value of the speakers. Oakwood also appears not to carry inventory, so what you order has to come from the distributor or factory, so it may take a while. May 21, 2008 - Studying financial ratios and calculations made me remember why it is I majored in history and why I wrongly thought back in the late 1980s, when I left high school for university, that I would never have to deal with numbers (academically) again. Markowitz, Sharpe, Du Pont, time value of money, discounted cash flows, Gordon Growth...argh! Taking brief breaks every now and then, I listened to Brooks Jensen's latest podcast about using our memory machines, both organic (our brains) and inorganic (our cameras). Jensen tells a story of an explorer who had set out to hike the Grand Canyon and photograph his journey. Unfortunately for the explorer, at the beginning of this journey, a gust of wind blew his camera over a cliff side and he was left with no means of recording his Grand Canyon exploration. Instead of giving up, he continued on and and took in the sights with even more intensity than when he had the camera, because he knew that he would only have his memories when the journey was completed. This story reminded me of my own, single trip to the Grand Canyon, along with several hundred other tourists streaming in by bus and car. It was back in 1997 and the day before, my wife and I did some quick nuptials in Vegas (yes, it's true, we kinda eloped). At the little chapel, I took a brochure of a Grand Canyon tour and the chapel folks were quick to help out and arrange everything for us, including an early morning wake-up call and pickup at our hotel. A four hour bus ride ride, including a stop at the Hoover Dam (the surrounding terrain is otherworldly, like a Martian landscape) took us from Nevada to Arizona. Once at the Grand Canyon (Southern Rim), I found myself wanting to take so many photos with my Nikon F70 that I hardly stood still to just take in the majestic natural wonder. I shot slide film, color negative film and B&W film; probably 5-6 rolls in less than two hours. And, you know, to be honest, when I did take time to just look, I found it difficult to take in the physical size of the Grand Canyon. I also found the colors to be muted in reality, which probably added to the difficulty to find scale and contrast in the mile deep gorges. When I got the prints back from the lab, the color negative prints were a little bit more saturated than reality, but not unduly so. The Velvia slides, though, were dazzling in contrast (early to mid afternoon sun) and saturated colors that did not match the reality as seen through my eyes. However, relating back to Jensen's story and podcast, there are definitely times that my memory is a blur and I can barely recall how time has past and I'm thankful that I took pictures to remember those times. Case in point, I have four kids and while memories of my first child is still vivid in my mind, memories of the next child is less and so on with each child. With my fourth, I wondered where did the preceding ten months go, as he's crawling around and getting into everything now. If I didn't have pictures I'd have a tough time recalling how he's grown and changed so much with every month. On another topic, I had better get my butt in gear and start printing all those pictures of my kids this summer, because so many exist only as digital files on my hard drives (thankfully, at least three copies spread out over three storage devices, along with older DVDs). My first and second kids' first year of life is all on film with 4x6 prints in albums. My third is mostly digital with a sprinkling of film prints here and there. My fourth child is 100 percent digital with nary a film print in existence taken by me. It makes me wonder how many parents are in a similar situation as me, with most, if not all of their precious memories buried away in the digital equivalent of a shoebox, aka, the hard drive. Unfortunately, unlike me, I suspect many parents do not have robust backup systems with two, three and even four copies of the digital files available incase the inevitable hard drive crash occurs. I think it was Brooks Jensen again (or maybe it was TOP's Michael Johnston) that wondered out loud if the early 21st Century will become known as a lost era in human history, because instead of having long-lasting film, we transitioned to bits and bytes (or zeros and ones) to record and store our memories, with many not bothering to back up those files. Assuming websites like Flickr, PBase, Picasa and other photo hosting/sharing websites continue to exist, as much as I have some disdain for them, maybe they're not such a bad thing afterall, because it will help our era archive our memories, even if it's all in the public domain. May 15, 2008 - Been busy with the day job this week; doing field visits then coming home and logging in a couple more hours documenting my findings. Doesn't leave much time to ponder things photographic, but then again, there has not been much in the way of news recently. Some interesting items of note though:
I was thinking, wouldn't this be a nice little camera to throw into my everyday bag and always have a camera with me, but then I'm also missing that ultra compact, truly pant-pocketable digicam (is that a camera in your pants, are you just happy to see me?) However, after some thought, the S100FS doesn't make sense for a person like me. I think the S100FS would be fine for those wanting better than the typical digicam, but without the desire to spend more dollars on a real SLR kit. For a person, such as me, with SLRs and available lenses, getting a D60 makes more sense if I really want an everyday camera to throw into my work bag. Slap on the 18-200 lens and Bob's my uncle. I'd be missing the extra 150mm of telephoto reach that the Fuji offers, but would have more flexibility in being able to use my Nikon flash units and faster lenses, as needed. Not that I'm rushing out to buy a D60, just thinking out loud, that's all. Nikon Canada has reduced the prices on some SLR kits, SLRs and lenses. This would twig my mind into thinking that replacements will soon be coming for the D40 and D80 SLRs and the now elderly 80-400 VR lens, but Nikon also reduced the price on the D60 and D300 SLRs, which are not going to be replaced anytime soon. With the lead up to the Olympics and Photokina, the rumours of a D90 and D10 (a FX chip in a D300 shell) will ramp up, along with anticipation of the 24 MP FX SLR. May 13, 2008 - A reader sent me this blog posting written by wedding pro, David Ziser. It describes a new motion by New York City Council to require wedding boutiques and studios to be licensed and post a bond. The motion also suggests that wedding photographers not be paid until the photos are delivered. All of this stems from a recent incident where a large New Jersey wedding photography studio closed its doors and left many brides high and dry with no photos and no refunds. While the Ziser post details a specific incident of bureaucrats involving themselves in something they don't necessarily have business in, it's along the same vein as banning photos of specific landmarks, such as bridges, and forbidding the use of tripods in many urban settings. Closer to home, if I want to photograph in a little dockside park that happens to be on land owned by Ports Canada, I need a permit. No matter if it's early in the morning, there's no one around and I'm not in anyone's way, the publicly accessible land is still private property and I'm offside if I did not obtain prior approval. I was told by another reader that the restriction is about liability issues. Follow this thread further and we have churches and pastors restricting what photographers can do in churches and ceremonies. Anglican and Catholic churches come to mind as being fairly strict, but even these very old and traditional segments of Christianity can pale in light of restrictions imposed by some Protestant churches. All of this, I'm sure, has been caused by jackass photographers that bent the rules or threw them out to get the shot. Or, in the case of NYC motion, by a poorly run business that went under and stole the dreams of a number of brides. Unfortunately, the bureaucrats' solution is like an amputation to treat a scab and you can never legislate ethical or moral behavior. May 10, 2008 - Bibble Pro is now at version 4.10 and if you visit the news release page, you will see some screen shots of the future Bibble 5. Looks pretty slick. Instead of discussing my disturbing consumer spending habits, let's discuss something else instead. For Vancouver-area readers and photographers, here's a chance to give back and do some good for the community (as sent to me in an email):
BC Lions Society website (contact information at bottom of page) May 8, 2008 - The 28-70 lens is now sold, which means I can move onto the remaining piece to complete this round of upgrades, the 24-70 lens. If anyone is interested, my Benchmark DAC-1 is still available... May 7, 2008 - I picked up the 14-24 lens yesterday. I asked my store contact to hold one for me last Sunday evening and as it turned out, mine was the last one available. My contact forgot that he held one back for me and told me I'd have to come back when they received a new shipment. Then he remembered, oh, wait, I put one on hold for you. He walks to the back room and comes out with my brand new lens. Whew, maybe he was just messing with me.
The 24-70 lens is sold out as well and my contact indicated that it could take a while to get more in due to a shortage (or, is it just high demand - six to one, half a dozen to another). The 14-24 lens is indeed a large lens, or at least the front of it is, but it's not "quite" as big as I thought it would be given some comments I read. However, that front element is indeed bulbous and seemingly vulnerable to potential knocks and dings. The integrated hood is hardly any protection at all and I will be keeping the slip-on hood very close by to cover the front element whenever I'm not using the lens.
It's too bad that Nikon did not copy Sigma's implementation for its 15-30mm lens. This Sigma is similarly bulbous and also has a a very short lens hood, but Sigma had an eye towards DX format shooters when it allowed a front filter to be attached to its two-piece lens hood (a filter ring and lens cap that covers the filter ring). According to Thom Hogan, using a filter on the Sigma causes vignetting even on DX format cameras, so it's not ideal. In the case of the Nikon 14-24, maybe something along the lines of a 95mm sized filter - yes, they do make such large filters, because I have one for my Bronica 40mm wide-angle lens.
While 14-24 is a helluva full frame, wide-angle zoom lens (Sigma actually does better with a full frame 12-24 lens), on the D300, it's merely wide and not anywhere close to being ultra wide, as it would be on a D3. The 14-24 becomes a rather prosaic 21-36 lens on the D300, a range that's been around a coon's age and harkens back to one of the original wide-angle zoom lenses in the much heralded Nikkor 20-35mm f2.8. So, does this mean that I "need" to get a D3 just so I can make full use of the 14-24 lens...I shouldn't answer that ;^)
Below are a few quick snaps of my electric guitar, taken with the 14-24 lens on the D300...oh yah, I bought the guitar that I've lusted after for many a year a few weeks back.
The Fender Stratocaster (Strat) is the quintessential electric guitar. The shape is iconic and is immediately what most people think of when they think electric guitar. There was never any doubt that for my first electric guitar, it would be a Strat. The hardest choice was, which Strat to buy. There are so many to choose from at varying price levels. There are the cheap knock-offs, such as Squire Strats, then there are the real Fenders, but made in Mexico and then there are the higher-end models made in the good old USA. I eventually settled on an American Standard model in Candy Cola Red. I really wanted my Strat in a natural wood finish, but within each series, Fender only offers limited color choices and if the finish you desire is not available with the series you want to buy, tough luck. Maybe the custom shop models allow you to choose a color or finish, but I was out of luck for the natural wood finish with an aged stain. Red was my second choice finish. The American Standard Strats are the lowest cost models made in the USA and go for about $1k in Canada. The American Deluxe models go for a few hundred more and was what I thought I'd be going with, but amp and effects pedal costs had to be factored into the overall budget, so I went down a level for the guitar. The sales guy assured me that I would not be slumming it all with the American Standard Strat and that it's not so much lesser than it is just different, but he did acknowledge that the Deluxe models do have some better parts.
I'm not big into accoustic guitars, which is why I've been looking at the hollow and semi-hollow electric guitars, but if my skills improve, I eventually would like to get a 12-string accoustic, because the sound is so much richer than the standard six string. The first tune I've trying to learn is Dick Dale's Misirlou, but let's be honest here, I'm only trying to learn the opening riff to the song made famous by the movie Pulp Fiction. It seems like a simple enough riff to learn, because it's all on the first E string. You have to pick like mad with the right hand while the left hand slides up and down the frets along the single string. If I do it slowly, a person listening could probably hear a semblance of the classic surfer tune, but trying to do it with any speed results in a mess of uncoordinated fingers and picking. Chew gum and walk at the same time? Ah...no! This is definitely a situation where that old hoary chestnut of it's the carpenter, not the hammer rings true. Or, as you readers would usually hear, it's the photographer, not the camera. My Strat is fine, even if it's not the top-of-the-line model (photographically, it's equivalent to a Canon 40D). So, the brutal mess of noise emanating from the amp when I play it is indeed the result of an incompentent, axe-wielding carpenter. I feel like I'm back in 1997 when I bought the Nikon F70 SLR and had no inkling how to use the damn thing. You all know what's happened to me since that fateful summer in '97 ;^) Maybe in a few years, I'll have enough hours on the Strat to start GuitarHobby.com...
May 6, 2008 - Comment from the reader that called me on the "sucker's game" comment:
I want it all and I want it now! However, I tend to always think about weddings, events and sports in low light whenever I think about gear, so while a D3 would be very nice to have, the 200 f2 has been serenading me like a siren, beckoning me to come crash myself on the rocky shores.
The 200-400 lens is another wished for item and it's dropped about $2000 since it was first introduced, which puts it right in the D3 range. This would allow me to play at Mr. nature and wildlife photographer wannabe.
Lots of choices, so little money to make them with. May 5, 2008 - Two more lenses are now gone (12-24, 18-35) leaving just the 28-70 lens left from my garage sale. Take a wild guess as to what I'll be putting the proceeds to... Taking stock of what I sold versus what I bought and/or will buy and I'm (only a little bit) chagrinned by it all. Two D200 SLRs with MB-D200 grips had to be sold to finance the purchase of one D300 with the MB-D10 grip. Three lenses (12-24, 17-55, 18-35) had to be sold in order to generate enough moola to buy one new lens (hey, you're supposed to guess). And, I'm still hoping to sell one last lens, which would go towards the purchase of another lens. With the D300 and the 14-24 (was your guess right?) I at least did not have to invest "new" money for the purchases; all of it was from the sale of older gear. If the 28-70 lens also sells then I would have to invest some new money to complete the desired goal of getting a D300 along with the 14-24 and 24-70 lenses. If the 28-70 goes then the final tally of old versus new kit leaves me short one SLR and two lenses. However, given how I've come to feel about the D200, I'm more relieved and happy to say good riddance than to be non-plussed about being a camera short. The D200 was a good camera in its day, but its day has come and gone with the current D300 and Canon 40D being superior. With the lenses, I cannot recall the last time I used the 18-35 lens in a serious fashion, so selling it was no tear-jerker for me. Selling the two DX lenses means an eventual transition towards an FX SLR, on the hope that Nikon comes up with a 5D equivalent of its own. However, I'm keeping an eye on the pricing of the D3, which is now available for CDN $5000 in some shops and by the time the 2009 wedding season rolls around, the price could be palatable enough for me to swallow - on the assumption that I get enough jobs to warrant the purchase. Having a D3 (or D300 FX) along with the D300 would be a pretty nice kit to have. The D3 for the obvious available light moments, as well as for wide-angle photos, while the D300 would be more or less permanently attached to the 70-200 VR lens. I still have the 18-200 VR and Sigma 30 f1.4 lenses and they are the only DX lenses left now, but I see no reason to sell them. Together, they make a nice travel kit with the basic D300 in tow, because hauling around a D2X (or D3) is rather overkill unless the travel is photography-oriented. Of the other lenses remaining I would not mind dumping the two 50mm and one 85mm f1.8 lenses, but only when Nikon finally gets it act together and offers AF-S versions of them. These three lenses are now the only non-AFS ones I have (not counting my two old AI lenses). A newly designed 50 f1.4 (or f1.2) and 85 f1.4 AF-S would be lovely additions. Throw in a 24 f1.4 and I'd be in hog heaven. All just a matter of time...I hope. I said something about this being a sucker's game and a reader called me on it and said I was a sucker too, because I'm playing the game as well. Damn it, I guess I am 8^) May 4, 2008 - Further to my last post about upgrading lenses more frequently than previously thought, DPReview has posted its review of the Nikon 70-200 VR lens. Most users of this lens would have probably thought that the review would be another homerun style report for Nikon. Not so. As a DX lens, the review found little to fault the highly regarded medium telephoto zoom lens and indeed the words used were along the lines of, nearly flawless. However, on the D3, the reviewer was quite disappointed and found its performance more or less unacceptable for an expensive pro lens. It adds some fuel to the fire that maybe, just maybe, the rumour of a replacement holds some credence. The timing would be right given that Nikon has replaced the also highly regarded 28-70 for the 24-70 and the 17-35 for the 14-24 (although some might question whether the 17-35 should be retired by Nikon). The 70-200 VR is now five years old and while superb with DX SLRs, the high demands of the FX chip maybe showing up the DX biases of Nikon engineers back when the lens was on the drawing board. While I was not bothered by its flaws in the corners with full frame, that was with 35mm film (remember that), whereas most would agree that digital capture is more demanding and exacting of lens quality. If the D3 is showing the lenses flaws in the corners, imagine what a high-resolution 24 MP SLR will reveal. If I did own the D3, I wouldn't be too bothered by the performance of the 70-200 lens, because for the most part, I'd expect that I would still use it mostly with the D300 thanks to the 1.5x crop factor. However, if a Mk II version of the 70-200 VR lens does show up, I would probably be hammering away at the piggy bank and rushing to buy one, just as I did with the original five years ago. May 2, 2008 - A reader sent me this link about one person's custom storage array: http://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=posts&t=6755 My response back was: HOLY SHIT! That is one f@#$ing awesome setup. The guy is my hero :-) Seriously, that is one mean-ass storage setup and once the 24 MP Nikon and Sony SLRs arrive, I can imagine a few photographers will need something similar once they start churning out those massive RAW files. Hell, probably more than a few pros shooting with the big-buck Phase, Leaf and Hasselblad digital backs could use something like this custom array. God, if I keep going, I'm gonna mess myself up 8^) I've been thinking about cameras and lenses (really, what a surprise), but not in the usual sense of lusting after the latest and greatest (well, not as much). The idea that lenses are for the long-term while cameras can come and go is one that some adhere to and I've heard of some photographers keeping almost every lens they've ever owned. Bjorn Rorslett comes to mind as a pro who has probably kept every single lens he's owned with his 100 or so Nikkors (give or take a few). While in the film era, one could at least hold onto a good camera for 7-8 years before a new one showed up, in the digital age, the time span is now, at best, three years and usually sooner, like two years. So, holding onto good lenses for the long-term sure as heck makes senses it seems and was what I thought I was going to do back in 2006, when I did my last major round of purchases. However, I'm not so sure about this long-term, Warren Buffet style, buy and hold strategy for lenses anymore. I sold my 17-55 DX lens and hopefully, sometime this week, I will receive word that two other lenses will also be sold too (I have a person helping me out). My oldest lens that I bought new is now the 70-200 VR lens, which is now a mature five years old. My newest is either the 105 VR Micro or the 18-200 VR lens - I can't remember which one I bought last, but I'm thinking the 18-200 lens. If the two lenses sell, it gives me, along with the 17-55 sale, enough to buy the 14-24 lens, while the 28-70 still remains in the stable. That's not so bad and it means I only lose the 4mm difference from 24mm to 28mm, in a three zoom lens kit that covers most of 14mm to 200mm. I wanted to sell the 28-70 lens too, because I also want the new 24-70 lens. A few people have asked why I want to sell the 28-70 lens, because I've stated that its a good sample and much better than the 35-70 lens that it supplanted. All I can say is that the 24-70 looks really nice and those in the know like it more than the already excellent 28-70. Time does not stand still and technology advances. Long-time readers might recall reading about 35-70 lens wherein I stated quite boldly that I would never sell it despite some shortcomings with ergonomics and lens range. The 28-70 lens changed all that and why would I ever want to use the 35-70 lens when I have a superior alternative available? There was no point keeping the 35-70 lens that I regarded as a paperweight after seeing the difference from the 28-70 lens. After that experience, I've been careful not to make such declarations anymore, because even the awesome 70-200 VR lens will eventually be replaced and so too will the much heralded 14-24 lens. It may be for a much longer period than SLRs, but nothing is forever. And, no, I'm not trying to make excuses to justify my latest desires...really 8^) May 1, 2008 - Reader's question:
If you're choosing between the D200 or D300, go straight to the D300 and never look back. While the D80 is considered to be a bit better than the D200 for higher ISO, the D300 appears to be much better - but, a caveat that I've taken very few photos with the D300 at this time. Physically and ergonomically, the D200 and D300 are nearly identical, but the D300 with its companion MB-D10 adds some nice upgrades. The most obvious is the three-inch LCD, but the grip also adds a small thumb controller so that you no longer have to do a big finger stretch to change focus points. The grip feels more solid than the MB-D200 and I like not having a stem that has to go into the camera's battery chamber. This makes the grip easier to store away in the camera bag if I decide that I want to go with a more compact camera. There's also no need to remove the original camera battery door either. Small things for sure, but nice that Nikon can continue improving the design. AF is faster and more sure, but in a quick test of using the outer focus points, those points still falter when trying to acquire focus on a low contrast subject. The center point and maybe the immediate one or two points surrounding it are more reliable, which is still much better than the D200, wherein even the center focus point still faltered when pushed, e.g. sports and fast moving subjects. I was using the 18-200 lens for this quick test, so the faster pro lenses could be better for this. Speed is very nice and as you might expect when using the larger EN-EL4 battery, the 50% increase in frame rate is noticeable. There will definitely be a more duplicates and triplicates if you set the D300 to 8 fps and Continuous focus mode with release priority, but I don't mind at all to get the faster frame rate. So, outwardly, while there does not appear to be huge differences between the D200 and D300, there's no doubt in my mind that the D300 is a worthwhile upgrade and I'm not looking at the Canon 40D as much as I used to :-) I've not used the D80, so cannot offer any comparison, but for event photography such as Bar Mitzvahs or weddings, I'm happier having the D300 available now with the ability to get cleaner ISO 1600 files and being able to push up to 3200 if need be. I'm quite confident that if you get a D300, the D80, D70 and D50 will quickly start to gather dust, because of its immediate superiority. Again, don't even bother with the D200. I can only imagine what a D3 would be like to cover an event... April 29, 2008 - Boy, what an embarassment to be at work and just happening to go to one of my websites, only to see some outrageous ads being posted by one of the advertising feeds I signed up with to generate some revenue. One day, I see iPods, digital cameras and printers being flogged and the next day I see stupid ads wanting people to test out their IQ or flashing that they may have won something. I've taken down all the offending ads, because they are not what I had signed up for. Speaking of which, I'd be mighty grateful to y'all if you make your purchases through the B&H Photo link found top left of this and every web page of this humble site. Every little bit goes to the equipment slush fund ;^) April 28, 2008 - Okay, call me weak, call me a hypocrite, call me inconsistent, call me whatevery you want, because I didn't have the discipline to hold out any longer. After getting a pocketful full of cash from selling the D200 SLRs, I bought a D300 with MB-D10 grip and a BL-3 battery cover to allow me to use the EN-EL4 battery from my D2X. If things go well this week, I might be able to sell off a couple more lenses and one of the two new Nikkor zoom lenses could find their way into my camera bag too. I know that I said I was in no rush, and truly I was not. I know I said that I wanted to see what Canon is going to do with its 5D replacement and truly, I still do. However, as I pondered what I should do, I decided that I was going to spend this cash sooner or later, so might as well spend it sooner. Plus, I owed my sales guy at my usual shop a favour for helping me with the D200 sales, so why not reward him with a sales commission. The Canon grass is still a factor, but I finally clued in that with the 40D lender fully intending to buy whatever replaces the 5D and that I would have access to it whenever I need it, that there was no need for me to spend any of my money on any Canon gear. As it is, I still have the 40D, 17-55 and 70-200 IS lenses on hand and I can snag the 10-22 wide zoom and 580 EX II flash whenever I desire. I could have actually sat pretty using the borrowed Canon gear until I really needed to buy a new Nikon SLR, but I'm sure you'd prefer that I have something meaningful to compare it to. And, you know, as I pondered my recent spate of purchases, I "could" have afforded that D3 afterall, but then I'd have none of the other goodies that I have now if I had actually bought a D3, e.g. i1 Photo, Nik software, Wacom tablet, etc. One of my other new purchases is a bit out of left field and while it's tangentially related to audio, it's actually more music related, if that makes any sense. It's something I've desired ever since I was a kid after I bought my first record, AC DC's For Those About to Rock, We Salute You. Take a wild guess if you wish 8^) Back to the D300, I've only used it sparingly for family snaps this past weekend, as my oldest turned 10 and I covered his party with the new camera. I'm still evaluating the AF, but that 8 fps is sure nice after the 5 fps speed of the D200. It's very easy to let rip 2-3 frames in a single burst - unintentionally, just like with the 40D. However, my subjective impression is that the 40D still has a slightly more hair trigger than the D300. That three inch LCD is indeed very nice and while I've not done any serious review or pixel peeping (just no time at all |
I bought Joe McNally's new book, the Momen It Clicks, and while I'm still working through it, I like it and the kudos thrown at this first book by McNally, are all deserved.
June 17, 2008 - Making the rounds through some noted photography websites is that William Neill is now offering one of his older landscape books in electronic format for only $15.
At right is a shot of me during the Sunday morning outing (thanks to John for the photo) at Park Place.
A few posts back, I hinted at finally giving into a long-time craving I've had since I was a kid. I finally gave in and bought a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and now I'm going to work on imitating my Fender-using guitar heros of Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
I also bought a Fender Blues Junior tube amp and a Boss ME-20 multi effects pedal to get me going. I love it all and I can't wait until mid-June when I finally get my life back and can put some time on the new axe. However, gear junkie that I am, I'm already thinking about my next guitar. I thought I'd get myself an American series Fender Telecaster (and pretend to be Keith Richards or Bruce Springsteen), but now I'm thinking of an Ibanez semi-hollow guitar, which is a copy of the classic Gibson or Gretsch guitars favored by BB King (Gibson), Brian Setzer and the late Chet Atkins (Gretsch).
