What's New 2009

Click here for July to December postings

June 30, 2009 - Catching up on some misc. items:

• Kodachrome is finally gone with Kodak officially acknowledging what had long been expected, that it will cease production of the venerable color slide film. As a few have already asked, is it worth lamenting? Will Kodachrome be this generation's glass plate? I shot a few rolls back in the day and it always seemed that every second order came back from the Qualex processor with an apology note and a free roll of Kodochrome to atone for the screwed up processing, such as slicing a frame in half. I am not one of those lamenting the demise of the film.

• Phase has purchased some assets of the Leaf brand from Kodak, which Kodak in turn received from the purchase of Vancouver-based Creo, which Creo in turn received from purchasing Scitex, which Scitex bought Leaf way back in 1992. This basically leaves two dominant medium format brands and platforms with Hasselblad using its own in-house backs (an asset garnered from the merger of Hasselblad and Imacon) and Phase/Mamiya - although Mamiya still exists nominally independent of Phase, it's telling that Mamiya OEM cameras are also sold as Phase cameras and Phase now has an ownership stake in Mamiya. Mamiya still makes it own backs, but I have to wonder for how long now that Phase is likely running the partnership.

Neither news item is of much concern to most of us, because most of us have gone digital with digicams and SLRs, so Kodachrome is a yawner. Phase taking over some Leaf assets is kinda like taking note of which multinational car company has taken over ownership of Ferrari or Bentley; interesting to a degree, but the products are priced so sky-high that there's no chance of ownership unless you hit that 1-in-14 million chance at the Lotto 6/49 or receive an inheritance from a rich, reclusive uncle (I still hold out for the latter 8^)

The more I read of some initial reports about the new Olympus PEN, the more I think that it's close, very close, but did not quite hit the mark. I recall reading somewhere that Olympus designed the PEN as a step-up for the digicam crowd, which explains some of the features, or lack thereof and is yet another example of a camera company missing the enthusiast target.

I can't blame Olympus though, given the economic times and the need to make some good sales to recover costs. However, this does provide an opening for Nikon and Canon to roll out enthusiast oriented serious compacts of their own. Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath on it, as we are finding that camera companies simply cannot afford to tailor products for a small, albeit vocal, market.

June 29, 2009 - Well, I'm back, sort of. I'll be taking it a bit easy the next week or so, as my right eye recovers from the surgery performed last Thursday morning.

What you see at right is a sanitized look at my puffy and swollen eye. This is taken two days after the surgery (self portrait, using a bathroom mirror). As I write this update on Sunday evening, I'm now able to have the right eye open without any impediment.

If I posted a photo of my eye open with the eye lids pulled up and down, you would probably be grossed out at the literally, bloody mess the eye is now.

As far as the surgery, other than not being able to see anything, it went well. Don't worry, not being able to see is normal due to the aforementioned blood inside the eye, as well as to a gas bubble injected inside to help keep the retina in place. It could take a few weeks before the eye clears up and the vision starts to come back.

The surgery was not as long as I expected at 45 minutes and I was not put under a general, but just a local anesthetic, meaning I was awake the whole time. It was a rather odd feeling having the doctor mess around with the eye and doing all that he had to do while I was awake and not feeling anything at all.

To recap, I had two problems to deal with, a cataract and a detached retina with the latter being the more serious issue to deal with. In order to see how bad the retinal tear was, the cataract had to be removed. No lens was inserted to replace the cataract, so I will have another procedure when the eye has healed and the doctor can do some measurements to figure out what kind of lens to insert.

With the dense cataract out, the doctor could see that the tear was not as bad as feared. A buckle was still used to mechanically attach the retina to the back of the eye and a laser to close the tear. Instead of silicone oil, the doctor injected a gas bubble, which applies some pressure on the retina to reattach.

The gas bubble led to some discomfort, as I had to keep my head faced down as much as I could for three days. My back started to ache from lying on my stomach, and trying to sleep while face down is just about impossible.

During my face-down time, the iPod Touch became my best friend as I listened to music, watched some movies, did a bit of web surfing, and could take a gander at some emails here and there. I also spent a fair bit of time with the AKG K701 headphones and now feel that I have a good measure of how it sounds compare to my old standby, the Sennheiser HD650s.

I'll be working on that review, as well trying to get caught up with a book review assignment. You'll forgive me if postings are a bit light the next week ;-)

June 24, 2009 - Reader's comment:

Read your cool comments about nodal points and panos etc. My wife and I are HUGE pano nuts and I can't recommend highly enough "AutoPano Pro" and "AutoPano Giga" software from Kolor. This software does the most astounding job of merging photos together, and now even will go HDR panos. And the part that blows my socks off is that the product comes with the Windows, Mac and Linux version on the same CD - and the entire company is 3 guys working in an attic office in France. It is just amazing what these 3 guys have done. An excellent review of the product is here.

Thanks for the tip. I hope to get into doing real photography, including panos just as soon as I deal with some personal stuff, including finding a new house by the end of the month as well as resolving an issue with my right eye, which requires some treatment.

Being a photographer you can imagine what it might be like to have your vision severely affected. All I can suggest is that if you experience what I experience, get your eyes checked immediately.

About three weeks ago, I was at work when all of a sudden I experienced a major flashing in my right eye. I'm sure most of you have probably experienced seeing brief, bright flashes in the peripheral vision of your eyes. And all of you have floaters streaming across the field of vision. Both are natural occurrances and part of the aging process as the vitreous gel at the back of the eye tugs against the retina. The tugging results in the bright flashes you see and for the most part, there's nothing of concern.

However, what I experienced was not just a tiny pin prick of light, but a flashing that resembled lightning bolts flashing on both sides of my peripheral vision. Immediately after the flashing I saw a huge increase in floaters. I could see the remnants of the flashing for about an hour after, somewhat similar to seeing a bright light and then having the impression in your eyes, even with your eyes closed. The floaters dissipated, but over a few days and afterwards I didn't too much about it. Big mistake!

The flashing and increase in floaters is the first sign of a retinal detachment and requires immediate attention. I left it alone and last week I noticed a tiny little shadow in the very extreme of my peripheral vision near my nose. At first I thought I was just seeing a wierd shadow of my nose, but over three days the shadow increased in size. Visiting my optometrist led to a sameday referral to an opthamologist who confirmed the retinal detachment and scheduled me for surgery.

He has to put buckles (silicone bands) inside the eye to close the hole and allow the retina to re-attach. My eye will be also be injected with silicone oil, which will help with holding the retina in place. As he described it, it will be a long and nasty bit of surgery, but at this stage, it has to be done to give my right eye a change to regain vision. As it stands now, I've lost about 1/3 of the vision in my eye. And, that's not the end of it, as I also have a cataract in the same eye, but the retinal problem is more pressing and needs to be dealt with first. At least the operation will get rid of the cataract, but from what I know of cataracts, I'll need another procedure to put in a replacement lens.

Being visual people, I just wanted to pass along this experience so that you will treat your eyes better than I did this month. Given my history with my right eye (yes, there's even more that's happened with this eye in my past), there has been many a time that I feel like I've been cursed with the eye of an old man, because these are generally things that happen to senior citizens and not to a man less than forty years old.

June 23, 2009 - Reader's comment:

For a long time I have also wished for something sort of like a Canon G10 with an APS-C sensor.  Of course, as you say, it would have to have a less ambitious zoom range.  I have sort of been thinking that an Olympus E-420 or the new Olympus E-450 DSLR might be half way reasonable as a small camera. Not a RF-like camera, but they are pretty small:

Olympus E-420:  129.5mm x 91mm x 53mm; 380g
Olympus E-P1:    121mm x 70mm x 36mm; 335g
Canon G10:        109mm x 78mm x 46mm; 350g

There is a 25mm f2.8 pancake lens that could be added.

I'm currently favouring the Panasonic G1 or GH2 as my preferred small camera, but since I'm in no rush, I can wait and see what the reviews are like for the Olympus PEN.

Scott Kelby's blog post about going to Italy without his camera gear was rather interesting. Without his usual travel kit, he bought himself a D5000 kit in Italy and wrote that this little gem has even better high ISO than the D300. Intriguing, and for a Nikon user, I should perhaps not be so hasty to cast a covetous eye on mine neighbour's camera.

Check out Thom Hogan's current comments about Nikon missing the boat on the PEN and Panasonic G series. Add Canon and Sony to the mix too though.

Just read the July Stereophile's review of the new Sennheiser HD800 headphones and boy, are they reading like they're the best cans ever. And, for USD $1400, they had better be, but while the price seems very high, the HD800 are not even close to what the most expensive headphones cost. Sennheiser's own custom Orpheus from a decade or two past, probably set the standard for bespoke pricing.

Interestingly for AKG K701 users, the reviewer stated that a few hundred hours of break-in time is needed for the K701s to sing - a set of K701s with custom cabling is the reviewer's reference set of headphones. Thus, another reason for me not to rush my own look at the K701s. I'm now burning them in again with the iPod on continuous playback for probably at least 24/5, before I give them another serious listen and compare to the Sennheiser HD650s.

June 22, 2009 - Reader's comment:

I looked at the specs and reviews for the new Olympus Pen digital. Looks good but the lack of a viewfinder bothers me. Recently bought the Ricoh R10 to carry around and leave in my briefcase. The LCD is clear but I still prefer the viewfinder. I use it by holding it close with locked elbows. I can't get over when I see people using a point and shoot at arms length with the LCD and complaining about fuzzy photos. Lets see how the Pen fares in the marketplace.

I'm thinking it's going to do gangbusters in the initial going, because a lot of people will buy on the belief that it will meet their pent up desire and demand for a high quality, yet compact camera.

To the reader that submitted the baby possum photo last week: I need your name for the photo credit. My email response to you bounced back.

Back in 2005, due to the influence of a co-worker, I got back into audiophilia. Well, actually, I became an observant bystander by subscribing to the Absolute Sound and Stereophile magazines. These days, trying to afford any of the big-buck components reviewed in the magazines is to dream the impossible. However, I did hook onto the headphone scene, wherein, for much less money, you can have excellent sound that is personal and a lot less disruptive to your family and neighbours.

I bought a Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 tube headphone amp, Sennheiser HD650 headphones and Benchmark DAC-1 as my key components for headphone listening. I bought some other smaller amps and accessories along the way, but the three components were the jewels.

Eventually, the bug to change things around bit me and I sold the X-Can amp and DAC-1. Instead of having two components taking up space and precious power outlets, I wanted a single box with DAC and amp built-in. The DAC-1 actually has a headphone amp built-in, but I wanted more functionality from the DAC-1.

I looked at the Grace M902, which has the desired functionality, but costs quite dearly at around CAD $2,000. Benchmark upgraded the DAC-1 to offer my desired functionality with a DAC-1 Pre version, but this version costs nearly as much as the M902.

What makes the DAC-1 Pre more desirable is that it offers a set of analog inputs, a USB input, a pre amp function, and an output defeatable headphone jack.

• Analog inputs allows for connecting a non-digital source to the DAC-1, such as an iPod – I don’t always listen to music through the computer and it’s nice to be able to have music in the background from a non-computer source
• USB input – for most occasions, I would use a computer and having a USB input allows for a direct connection instead of having to use adapters or auxiliary USB-to-digital boxes that I had to use with my old DAC-1
• Pre amp function allows the DAC-1 to control the volume with a set of powered speakers
• Output defeatable headphone jack allows you to plug in a headphone and mute the output to the powered speakers so you don’t have to turn off the speakers whenever you want to do some private listening

$2,000 is a fair bit of change to blow on an amp/DAC-1 combo and I wanted something less costly. I bought a HeadRoom Portable Amp, which is an amp and DAC in a conveniently small package. Nice build quality and good sound at a much lower price point, but alas, I discovered after purchase that this particular amp only works on battery power. There is no ability to keep it running on just AC power and running continuously on battery power will drain the battery after about 20 hours.

I bought another HeadRoom amp, the Micro, which is also in the same small package as the Portable, but this time as an AC-powered amp without a DAC. I bought a Blue Circle Thingee to provide the DAC function.

In hindsight, with the money spent, I should have just bought a HeadRoom Desktop amp/DAC combo, which would have done everything I want and probably still come out ahead in cost. Ah well, you live and learn.

So, no more money spent on amps and DACs for the time being, but maybe another set of headphones…

Ever since reading about the AKG K701 cans, I’ve been very curious and wondered if they might be the ideal compromise headphones. The Sennheiser HD650s are great cans that would be on the warmer, darker side of the tonal spectrum. Great bass impact, which helps to provide a solid foundation for rock and classical music. Comfort wise, the headband pinches a bit, so probably not the best for those with larger heads.

I used to have a set of Grado SR100 cans. Compared to the Sennheiser HD650s, Grados fit on the other spectrum of the tonal range with the brand sound being fast but lean and bass not being as fully extended – note: I write this with not a huge amount of experience with Grado cans. While I’ve listened through a set of RS-1 cans, I’ve not listened through the old HP series, which some consider the best to come from Grado.

AKG cans seem to straddle the middle ground between Sennheiser and Grado; more open in the high frequencies than Sennheiser, but not as strident as Grado.

While interested, I did not expect to buy a set of K701s anytime soon. However, after being asked to do some book reviews and posting the reviews on the main Amazon.com website, I was “forced” to buy the K701s (yah, my rubber arm got all twisted up).

I discovered that I have to be a customer of Amazon.com in order to post reviews. I’m already a customer of Amazon Canada and have bought many books in the last few years, but unfortunately, the two websites are separate and purchasing histories are not shared. In order for me to fulfill my book reviewing obligations, I had to become a customer of the big Amazon website.

Thus, I surfed around the site trying to find something simple and affordable to buy. Music downloads seemed ideal, until the site popped up a message stating no sales to Canada allowed. Curses!

With nothing else of interest, I decided to check out the headphones and there I saw the K701s selling for USD $262. Add in another $41 for S&H and I paid USD $303 for the cans, which translates into CAD $350. I thought, hey, not too bad for cans that used to sell for $500 plus. Then a friend told me about his brother buying a set of K701s at close out from a local high-end audio store for CAD $250. Curses!

Curiously, the reseller, who shall go nameless, had no problem selling the K701 to a Canadian, while other Amazon retailers refused to due to distribution rights and restrictions. A buck is a buck in this global village and it astounds me that some companies still don’t get this global economy thing, although governments do with all their hefty taxes and duties charged on imported goods.

The package arrived courtesy of USPS and Canada Post and I had myself a nice, new set of AKG 701s, since superseded by the K702s and given how cheaply the K702s sell for these days, I wonder if K703s are due anytime now.

The K701s are classic Apple iPod-friendly white in finish. Unfortunately, my classic white iPod died a few months back after four years of mostly fine service (with two DIY fixes to keep it running the last two years). No matter, and with apologies to Martin Luther King, it’s not the color on the outside, but the quality and character inside.

The K701 ear pads are circles compared to the ovals of the HD650. Both cans have nice, comfortable cushioning that wrap around the ear as opposed to fitting on top of the ear like Grado headphone do.

Whereas the HD650’s headband is one piece, the K701 is two pieces with an outer, dual wire frame for rigidity and an internal, padded leather headband. The K701 look a bit retro to me and remind me of the cheap and awful headphones used by my elementary school. Thankfully, they sound anything but cheap and awful.

I did no serious listening until at least 50 hours of burn-in time had past, which was primarily done using an iPod on continuous play mode, outputting to the HeadRoom Micro Amp set for a robust volume (not bleedingly loud, but loud enough I could easily discern every note and lyric from three feet away).

Putting the K701 on my head felt very comfortable without the slight pinch of the HD650s or from my former Grado SR100s. First listen gave me a lively sound that I could tell is more open and airy than the HD650s, but they also seemed a bit damped in the bass. I don’t get quite the bass impact and wallop as from the HD650s. It’s not to say that there’s no bass, which is very much the old Grado SR100s; there is bass and there can be good impact felt, but the weight is not there.

It’s like listening to a set of full range speakers that can plumb the nether regions of the bass in the low 20 Hz range and then listening to a speaker that only goes down to about 40 Hz. The full range speaker will provide the music with a solid foundation and if you’ll excuse the term, there’s just more there, there.

One trepidation I had with the K701 is that they would be brighter than I would prefer. However, I was relieved that while more sparkly in the treble, the K701 is not strident as my memory keeps telling me about Grado headphones – strident to the point of unlistenable with much pop and rock that are not known for high fidelity sound engineering.

As with everything else, I seem to be promising a review at some point down the road. My only defence is that it does take a while of regular use to come to terms with what a product offers. Case in point, my Epson Artisan 800 printer. Great specs, but there are aspects of use that I don’t like. If I had just written a review during the honeymoon period, I’d be writing a review that would not be of much use to anyone. So, more detailed review of the AKG K701 headphones coming down the road.

June 20, 2009 - The new Olympus camera is the latest “buzz” on the net with many hoping that finally, a major brand finally gets it and has produced a small, mostly pocketable, but no-compromise camera.

To rehash the old desires, many have longed for a camera with certain feature sets and ergonomics, such as available with Canon’s highly regarded G series of digicams. However, what many do not want is a tiny image sensor to be placed in that digicam sized camera, as is the case with the Canon G series and marks their biggest weakness.

Yes, digicams can produce very nice image quality when used at the lowest ISO settings and if you went so far as to use a tripod, the enlargement capability might even surprise you, but how many of us actually want to use a digicam at ISO 80 mounted on a tripod? Didn’t think so.

If Canon would do something sensible, such as put in a DX sized sensor in the G10, it would be a hit. Certainly, some compromises would have to be factored in with the main one being very conservative with the lens used. You would not have a wide to telephoto reach anymore with the larger sensor, but if Canon used a short, 28-50mm lens with a reasonably fast aperture, say f2.8, that would not be so bad, especially since ISO 1600 would not be a huge compromise. If Canon took it further and created a new mount and a small set of interchangeable lenses, well, now we’re talking. If the new Olympus E-P1 takes off, how soon before Canon gets on board with such an offering?

Notice I don’t mention Nikon, because it’s been so many years since Nikon has done anything innovative in the digicam market. Nikon used to be a leader when it introduced the unique twisting lens design in the long gone Coolpix 9xx series of cameras. While there have been some interesting Coolpix cameras the last year or two, none seem able to challenge Canon’s dominance in the higher end digicam market. Even Panasonic is producing more laudable digicams, such as the LX-3 with a true wide-angle view of 24mm, and Panasonic has its own small, serious camera offering with the G1 and GH1 pseudo SLRs (no mirror box and pentaprism, thus not true SLRs).

It’s not that Nikon couldn’t wow us with something special, such as a rangefinder type of small camera. Nikon has a long history of making fine rangefinder cameras and to me, this is what Nikon should do to make a very distinctive splash in the emerging serious small camera market that Panasonic and Olympus are embracing.

Now, onto the new Olympus Pen; it certainly looks like a rangefinder in its basic styling, but there is no rangefinder or any type of viewfinder, whether it be optical or electronic. This surprises me and is the biggest question mark I have about what otherwise looks like a very nice, but very serious camera. Although, I do have to wonder about the efficacy of those Art filters and that e-Portrait feature to smooth away blemishes – if there’s a filter that will make me look 30 lbs lighter, I’m all over that like I usually am on a bowl of ice cream, hence why I need to look 30 lbs lighter.

The movie mode is a nice convenience, but since I’m not a movie guy, I’ll just consider it the cherry on top of the sundae…mmm, ice cream sundae.

There’s only two lenses from Olympus to support the new Pen, so same issue with the Panasonic G series and a limited selection of lenses. While you can use older and larger 4/3 lenses via an adapter, that takes away from the purpose and ideal of a small camera. There hints of more lenses to come, but will they be some compact primes, zooms or both?

External viewfinders can be mounted to the flash shoe, but I don’t know about this, as it takes away from the clean, sleek lines and portability of the camera, which gets back to the lack of viewfinder. Are you really suppose to hold the Pen out in front of you like everyone else does using digicams, which results in compromised stability?

However, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and wait to see what the reviews state about the ergonomics and usability of the new Pen. As we’ve seen with the Sigma DP series, there are people willing to accept less than stellar usability and ergonomics for the promise of excellent image quality (when fate allows for all the planets and moons to be in alignment).

June 18, 2009 - Readers' comments:

It is a misnomer to call it Digital X-ray, or digital camera for that matter.

There are hundreds of analog amplifiers attached to each channel of the Digital X ray machine to process, condition, and somehow manipulate the signals into a data converter such that a DSP can wrestle with it.

It is amazing how much analog it takes to make that digital X ray possible.

Okay, you lost me at "...hundreds of analog amplifiers attached to each channel..." 'cause I'm liable to think about audio and the DAC process when listening to digital files 8^)

Edwin, have a look at the Markins ball heads.

I've seen the Markins ball heads come up on the Nikonians site years ago, when one of the founders of Nikonians appeared to be distributor. They look like nice ball heads, but as with the RRS BH-55, I'm doing good with my old school Arca Swiss B1. However, the Markins price for its top ball head is quite a bit cheaper than a new Arca Swiss Z1 ball head. Interestingly, the North American distributor for Markins is located in a suburb of Vancouver.

The Arca Swiss Z1 with lever lock and dual panning action looks pretty sweet, but costs dearly at nearly CAD $800. The only thing you would need to do panoramas with this head would be a nodal rail. However, cost-wise, it's probably a wash between the RRS BH-55 with PCL-1 panning clamp or the Z1 DP with the lever lock.

June 17, 2009 - I did an eye check up the other day and marvelled at how digital technology makes life easier for the optometrist. Before I went in for the usual eye exam, where the doctor flips in and out lenses of varying degrees, his assistant took photos of my eyes.

Once inside the exam room, the doctor pulled up the digital images on his screen and was able to look at both eyes at the same time. The photos allow him to look right to the rear of the eye where the optical nerves meet before branching out to the brain.

This detailed view of the rear of the eye is a way to detect conditions such as macular degeneration, which is something to be concerned about the older you get due to it being the leading cause of blindness amongst senior citizens. The digital image of the eye does not mean the end of the optometrist doing a physical check of the eyes though, as he still peered into my eyes using his bright light.

As I looked at the digital image, it was quite reassuring to see that my left eye is in fine shape, because on the weekend, I took a blow to that eye when one of the extended family kids accidentally smacked me in the face during a game of ball hockey. The eye went red due to burst blood vessels and looked a lot worse than it really was (like I’d been crying the entire weekend). No damage, although I did officially discover that the left eye could use a small bit of correction, but the doctor said no glasses needed just yet.

On a related note, my dentist is also digital with the x-rays taken of my teeth. The x-ray machine does not look much different then when I was a kid, but now there’s no waiting a half hour for the film to be developed. The x-rays are also taken digitally and the dentist comes in immediately after to view the images on the computer screen. He can pull various images from a row of smaller images at the bottom of the screen and drag them up to the larger portion of the application’s window for a detailed look; kinda like a much simplified Adobe Bridge.

Speaking of the eyes though, as I’ve gotten older and creep ever closer to the milestone 4th decade anniversary, I notice that my eyes no longer focus in as close as before. Ten years ago, my minimum focusing distance was around six inches, but today, that distance has increased to around 10 inches. It’s not I cannot see closer than 10 inches, I can, but doing so seems to cause headaches and things don’t snap into clarity like they do when I hold the book or paper out at 10 inches.

I also get headaches trying to read fine print now. The catch-22 is that I need to bring in the small print close to see the text, but because I cannot really focus in comfortably, my eyes get strained, which will ultimately lead to a headache if I don’t stop. Move the text to a comfortable distance and it may end up being too small to read. How soon before I need to get reading glasses that will perch midway down my nose so that I can read regular books and newspapers?

And, how about all those vitreous bits, aka, floaters that dance before your field of vision? Do you ever see flashes in your peripheral vision? The older you get the more they occur and the more floaters you’ll get as a result, as the flashes indicate that the vitreous gel at the back of the eye is shrinking and separating from the retina. The joys of getting old.

June 15, 2009 - Reader's comment:

Your comments about selling used photographic equipment are true. Seems as soon as the camera leaves the store its work about half. I have rarely sold old equipment. It just doesn't bring enough to merit it.

Most of my digital stuff is done with the D 80. I kept the D 50 and D70 as spare bodies but I still use them because I find that the MP really does not make much of a difference for most shots unless you want to get really large.

Well, speaking of making really large prints...

The last few years, I’ve seen a lot more references to stitching and creating panoramas. It seems to me that the trend towards massive prints (brought on by the relative ease of creating leviathan prints with the large Epson pro printers) has had a role in this trend. In order to print large, you need a lot of resolution, but not everyone can afford to spend $30,000 on a digital back (without even the camera or lenses to go with it). Even with an ultra expensive digital back, the resolution (back in the day of 16-22 MP backs) would still have not been enough to produce that 60-inch print. Thus, photographing a scene and considering it just one segment of a larger scene became a way to obtain the resolution that technology could not give us.

I recall Tim Fitzharris, in one of his PopPhoto columns, wrote about upgrading to a Mamiya 645 kit with a Phase One digital back. This in itself is no surprise since Fitzharris takes a lot of landscape photos for stock, but what did surprise me was him mentioning his experiment to take multiple photos and stitching them together. I think Alain Briot has done similar stitching of photos using a medium format back. My surprise is that a high-priced, high resolution back is still not enough for some pros.

The simplest panorama is a single row picture in which you pan a levelled camera horizontally and then merge the photos together using software, such as Photoshop. Sounds simple enough…

Back in January 2008, I loaned my then D200 and 18-200 lens to a co-worker for his family trip to Mexico and Disneyland. On the cruise to Mexico, he took several horizontal photos of a quaint Mexican tourist town and merged them together using a consumer-quality photo editor. He gave me his JPEGs and I created a panorama using Photoshop. Below is the original, massively long pano, as well as my more modest crop of the most interesting part of the original.

It seemed to work well, but when I started reviewing image more closely, I could see that there were joints that did not mesh well at all and I had to do some editing to clean up where Photoshop was unable to align the photos together. I was less than impressed at Photoshop’s capabilities, but today, I realize the reason why Photoshop did not do so well: parallax distortion. The Mexican panorama was created from a series of handheld photos for which there would have been no hope of keeping the nodal point consistent shot to shot.

Parallax? Nodal point? Groan!

As I researched the way to properly create a panorama from many discrete photos, I realized that some pretty pennies would have to be spent in order to have the right tools to create even a simple, single row panorama photo. Or, maybe I was just looking for an excuse to finally buy something from Really Right Stuff ;^)

Over the years, most of my Arca Swiss compatible camera and lens plates have been bought from Kirk Enterprises in the USA (I bet they’re a bunch of Trekkers down in Indiana). Kirk has/is a popular vendor for accessories catering to serious amateur and professional photographers; however, over the years Really Right Stuff seems to have overtaken Kirk as a purveyor of high quality Arca Swiss compatible camera and lens plates, as well as Arca Swiss compatible ball heads.

The RRS BH-55 tripod head is probably the finest ball head derived from the venerable Swiss ball head made, God knows how many years past. It’s not that I know anything about the BH-55 head, since I’ve only seen it once in person, but it certainly seems like most of the big name pros have adopted it. It used to be that pros like Moose Peterson and John Shaw migrated from the original Arca Swiss to the Kirk copy of the ball head to the RRS copy.

I still have my Arca Swiss B1 head and while I certainly admire the BH-55 from afar, I don’t see a need to replace the B1 even after a decade of use. Similarly, I’d love to own a carbon fibre tripod, but my nearly decade old aluminum Gitzo 1345 still does the job.

I seem to be digressing…

Anyway, RRS has some great information posted on its website and printed in its product catalogue on how to do panoramas properly. With my initial research, I thought that maybe I could get away with just a focusing rail to use directly on the Arca Swiss B1 head. Kirk makes a nice looking macro focusing rail and Acratech also has a nice looking rail for panoramas.

The reason for a rail, whether for macro work or for panoramas, is to allow for adjusting the camera/lens combo off the ball head’s centre of axis. Normally, when using a non-telephoto lens, you mount the camera on the tripod head so that the camera is on the head’s centre axis. However, with panorama photography, you need to place the lens’ optical centre above the tripod head’s centre of axis. If you don’t do this then you will get parallax error and mismatched stitches during the postproduction edit.

Knowing a lens’ optical centre may take some trial and error and the lens must be perfectly level to eliminate parallax.

Using a tripod is obviously essential to getting a level camera and lens, but when working on uneven ground, you’re probably wanting stability first before levelness so a level base may not be possible with the tripod. However, you can level a tripod’s head using a levelling base, sold by Gitzo and Acratech, amongst others.

Levelling the head allows you to pan the head horizontally. It goes without saying that the tripod head’s clamp must also be level, because you will have defeated the purpose of levelling the head with an accessory base if you do not have the clamp level too.

Thus, there are two points of a traditional ball head to keep level if you intend to use the head to pan horizontally; the entire ball head itself where it mates with the tripod and then the clamp where you place the camera or lens’ quick release plate.

A levelling base sounds like a great idea and I admit to looking at the Acratech model with avaricious eyes, but ultimately, I don’t like the idea of another accessory coming between the ball head and the tripod. I want that union to be as clean and solid as possible. This means having to keep my clamp level as well as providing for a way to pan the camera. If the ball head is not going to be level and I merely level the clamp only, panning the ball head will result in an off kilter set of individual photos for my panorama.

My solution, buying a custom panorama clamp from RRS. I also bought a RRS panorama rail and set of mini clamps for the rail to complete my initial foray into taking and making panorama photos. Total cost, about CAD $600 after currency conversion, S&H and duty. If I had gone whole hog and bought RRS’s ultimate panorama kit, the cost would have been over $1,000. However, after seeing RRS equipment up close and personal, I must say these are beautifully made and exquisite in quality. I almost feel like a Hummer owner that never wants to use the vehicle for its intended purpose of riding off road.

The specific pieces are:

• PCL-1 Panning Clamp
• PCL-DVTL dove tail adapter for the PCL-1 - being a clamp, the PCL-1 can actually replace the original clamp for your tripod head, but since it's a bit large, I prefer the original B1 clamp, which requires the dove tail adapter in order to be clamped in the B1's head
• 192 PPP package, which includes an MPR 192 rail and two mini clamps

Side view of the full rig

Top view

PCL-1 Panning Clamp

PCL-1 with the dove tail adapter to allow use with the B1's original clamp

192 PPP package

The mini clamps, which can be adjusted to be parallel or perpendicular to each other for use with telephoto lenses with their own tripod mount or with camera plates

How the kit would be used with a camera mounted - this is just an illustration and does not denote the nodal point for the Canon lens in use. Since it's a zoom lens, it will have a different nodal point for every focal length, which is why I suspect that when I do my own panoramas, I will likely use prime lenses to keep things simple.

My basic kit allows me to do single panoramas. While it would be possible to do multi row panoramas (both vertical and horizontal shots to create a massive single photo) by adjusting the ball head vertically, you have to be sure to keep the vertical orientation perfectly plumb  to avoid parallax distortion. I’ll worry about this when I receive a request to print a 60-inch wide photo for wall display J

So, that’s it for now; just a description of my latest accessory. Now to find the time to actually use it…

I started off with an off kilter tripod, as seen in the smaller image above this one. I levelled the Arca Swiss B1's clamp, as seen in the bubble level above. All this means is that my clamp is level only for this specifc position.

Rotating the B1's base (my finger is pointing to that control knob) even slightly results in a non-level clamp.

Returning to the level position again, this time, I rotate the RRS PCL-1 Panning Clamp (finger is pointing to that control knob).

I can now rotate the PCL-1's clamp 360 degrees and still maintain a level base.

June 13, 2009 - Has this ever happened to you: you buy something somewhat expensive or valuable to you and use it happily for years, maybe even decades. One day, after so many years of fine service, you decide to upgrade and finally move on and want to sell that something, only to be shocked at how little value and worth it has on the market. To you, that something still has value approximating the original cost of acquisition and you’re surprised, perhaps shocked and a little more than offended that others do not agree with you.

It’s curious how the human mind works at times and how we mesh so much of our subjective lives and values into things. The result is a distortion in objective value and worth.

Case in point, my D2X had a worth of CAD $5,000 in 2006 when I bought it new. Today, it might have a value of circa CAD $1,000. It’s been three years, but to me, selling a low mileage, like-new D2X for $1,000 is such a huge hit that I prefer to keep it than to take a $4,000 bath on it. And, I do recognize that with this being the digital age, what was once new and state of art can easily become a nearly worthless also ran a year, maybe two down the road.

Digital not only affects digital cameras, but also film cameras such as my Bronica medium format kit. It’s value on the used market might, if all the planets and moons align with the sun, fetch me enough to buy a D700, which I do not consider to be a reasonable trade off given that it’s a two camera, five lens kit with a plethora of accessories. To my mind, this kit’s value is still in the five digits for what I spent on it. The objectivist would likely remark that the Bronica kit is even more worthless just sitting in my cabinet whereas selling it for whatever I can get would at least put some cold, hard cash in my pocket, ready for deployment elsewhere. I guess this is the flip side to everyone has a cost.

Thinking about this brought to the fore from the deepest recesses of my puny grey matter, of a day in Victoria, when I was working as a student mover the summer after my third year. We were moving the belongings of two separate households into one house after a man and woman decided to move in together. We packed the woman’s belongings first then drove to the man’s house to pack his items before delivering everything to the new house.

The man was in his early 30s at the time and living alone previously, he had, as you would expect, a stereo system. Since I was all of 20 and a poor student, I didn’t have the bucks for a component based stereo and always admired the systems of other people. However, inexperienced as I was at the time in the neurotic obsession of audiophilia, I knew enough that the man’s stereo was entry-level, probably no more than $1,000 for the entire system.

As I started to carry off his original stereo boxes, the man commented that those boxes did in fact contain the item stated on the front of the boxes. In other words, I’d better be careful in carting them off. I’m sure I gave the guy an acknowledging smile, but inside I was scoffing at the sense of high value he gave to the cheap components inside. So young and already an arrogant SOB in the making J

June 10, 2009 - Well, wouldn't you know, a mere six months after I buy a MacBook and here comes Apple with the friggin' MacBook that they should have built in the first place, with a Firewire 800 port. I want to say something, but I won't, but let me just say that my thoughts run along the lines of what Samuel Jackson is known for uttering in just about every movie he's in, similar to Arnold uttering, I'll be back, in just about every movie he's been in ;^)

With that said, I am happy to see that there are more choices available and now all the MacBook Pro models finally support 8 GB of RAM, even if I cannot afford to max out the RAM. However, what's with keeping the 13-inch MBP stuck in consumer land with 5400 RPM hard drive options? Sheesh, throw us a few more bones and give 'em the 7200 RPM options, as with the bigger MBPs. I mean, it's a "pro" model now, isn't it?

Pricing seems to have come down a bit, but a maxed out 15-inch MBP will still set you back a cool $4219 in Canuck bucks. A maxed out 17-inch model is nearly $4600, which is about what a good, entry level, eight core Mac Pro tower will cost. Still waiting for the quad core iMac though 8^)

On a personal note, my house deal crashed and burned. We found out that there is a gas and/or oil pipeline running right beside the property. In the best of times, this is not ideal, but living in Burnaby makes us more sensitive to pipeline mishaps due to a 2007 incident with Kinder Morgan.

Kinder Morgan hired a contractor to do some digging of a pipeline it owned in Burnaby. The map provided to the contractor turned out to be so old and dated that the contractor dug in the wrong spot and ended up bursting the pipeline, spilling crude oil onto the houses in the neighbourhood, as well as Burrard Inlet. Some of the houses in the neighbourhood cost in the millions of dollars and the incident was a huge black eye for Kinder Morgan.

While you would expect Kinder Morgan to have learnt a big lesson and do some surveying to update the maps, why take chances? Thus, I continue to look for a house big enough and within my limited budget to accomodate my brood.

June 6, 2009 - Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Not the busiest for new news photographically, but very busy at work and on the home front, as my wife and I finalize a deal to buy a new house. Actually, it's not that I don't have things to write about, as I do have various reviews in mid-life, waiting for me to find the time to attend to them.

With four kids, the old homestead just became too cramped with little space available for anyone to get away from things. The new house will be double the size, which means, goodness, a larger space for me to setup my digital darkroom. No longer will my office look like a technological windstorm had gone through it and left all my gear in a shambles. I'll even have space to finally setup my hi-fi and keep it safe from the prying hands of my destructive two year old. However, first thing is to sign the formal contract and then slowly start packing things up for the big move later this summer. Busy, busy, busy!

June 1, 2009 - My latest purchase of photographs for my meagre collection, is of landscapes taken and created by Mehmet Ozgur. This is another Special Edition portfolio sold by LensWork magazine.

Now, if you were paying attention to what I wrote, you will have noted the use of "created" for what are supposed to be photographs, especially since I already used the word "taken."

When I first saw Mehmet Ozgur's photos published in LensWork #78, I was enthralled with their otherwordly beauty. There is something primal and biblical about the photos that evoke a Lord of the Rings kind of landscape, or even going way, way back to the beginning of creation when Adam and Eve were given dominion of a new world.

When LensWork started up their Special Editions program again, the first thing that came to mind were Mehmet Ozgur and his photos and how I wished that his portfolio were available for purchase. Now they are and I was quick on the mark to make my purchase and received #19 of this Special Edition. Not that the number really means much since these are inkjet prints that can be easily reprinted with near perfection over and over again.

When I received the 10 image portfolio, I read Brooks Jensen's comments and then it all became clear about why Mehmet Ozgur's images were so captivating; they only exist in his mind.

These landscapes were created by Mehmet Ozgur with some obviously excellent Photoshop skills. Looking at the photos and trying to figure out what and how he had done this magic, the obvious thing are the skies in each of his photos. They are dramatic and breathtaking and really give some of the photos that beginning of time feel.

It's not that the photos are created wholly from imagination, because one of the photos is of an already famous geographic location, Horseshoe Bend. Any number of photos have been taken of it already, so Ozgur is obviously working with real landscape photos he's taken, but then using the digital darkroom to finish off the photo to what his mind's eye sees.

Taking it further, purists will likely hate what Ozgur is doing, because he's probably compositing elements and scenes from other photos to create a new photo. You might even question where it should be called a "photo." It's something that I'll need to mull over and consider for a future post, but in the mean time, I still very much enjoy Ozgur's photos, or...creations.

May 29, 2009 - I finally got to watch Michael Reichmann's video interview with Henry Wilhelm of Wilhelm Research, the leader in testing for print permanence for many years. Although over an hour long, it was fascinating listening to a man that is so knowledgeable about so many aspects of digital printing. I think it's well worth your time in watching and listening if you have an interest in the history of inkjet printing and what you need to do now to get the best prints with the longest permanence. However, if you don't have an hour to spend, here are some quick highlights:

• You must use pigment ink printers - nobody that cares about print longevity uses dye inks and printers
• You must use the original inks from the manufacturer
• You must use high quality papers, but they don't have to be from the original manufacturer
• Dye inks and matte papers do not work well together, which is probably why we always seem to hear that dye printers work best with glossy papers
• Ozone is killer for dye prints, which has a major effect on permanence and is a major reason why most photographers do not use dye ink printers

May 28, 2009 - TOP has posted a review of the Sigma DP2 and the first set of responses castigate the reviewer for being so hung up on the poor build quality (for such an expensive camera), technical issues such as freezes and black frames, and general usability. Some of the responders are owners doubtless stinging from the reviewer's assessment that the DP2, like the DP1, is not ready for primetime. The responders stress the image quality available first and say that it's so good that it makes up for all the faults of the DP1.

Well, I don't know about that. Now, I've never seen a DP2, or a DP1, and I don't have any intention of seeking one out, so I'm treading in deep, shark infested waters by making comments about the camera, but I'd be mighty pissed too if a USD $700 plus camera froze regularly and gave me black frames instead of a picture.

You can make some allowances when the image quality is indeed superior. Take the Canon 5D2, for example. I'm not fond of the Canon UI and find everything to be ass-backwards, but the image quality at high ISO trumps that of my Nikon D300, so I find myself using it more and more for ambient light photography (flash still seems somewhat behind Nikon's quality). This probably is not the best example, since Canon is an excellent camera maker, whereas Sigma is still suspect.

It's unfortunate that Sigma did not take the lessons learned from the DP1 experience to make the DP2 a really good, compact camera. From the sounds of it, when the DP2 is indeed working correctly, it can be capable of producing some really nice photos.

I forgot to mention that when I was the Epson print academy, I handled the D3 with the newish 50mm f1.4G AF-S lens mounted. Everything people say about the slow focusing of the lens is true, it is indeed glacial and this is with Nikon's best auto focus SLR. Not impressed at all and it's doubtful that I'll want one. I can manually focus faster and that's saying something, so if I really wanted a fast 50 lens, might as well splurge and get a Zeiss.

Ordered an L-bracket from Kirk for the Canon 5D2. Since I get to use it for such an extended period, might as well use it right and get some accessories to make the experience better. Now, I'm looking into some panorama accessories, so I can try some high resolution stitching and photo merging.

May 27, 2009 - A couple of book reviews:

The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes by Joe McNally

David Hobby is justly credited with starting a now worldwide phenomenon of using, small strobes effectively in the field. Hobby gave the movement its name, taken from his blog website, Strobist. However, Joe McNally was a strobist years before being a strobist was considered cool.

Both McNally and Hobby utilize the small strobes effectively out of necessity, to do their jobs; Hobby as a photojournalist (on leave now to make something out of the Strobist website) and McNally as a freelance, editorial photographer who works regularly for Sports Illustrated and National Geographic.

Having taken far too long to read Joe’s latest book, the Hotshoe Diaries, I’m ready to report that this is another great look into what it takes to make great flash photos. Flash photos so good that in some cases you don’t even know that they’re flashed – don’t have good enough light for a classic window-lit portrait, make your own by strobing a window to make your own north exposure window light. It’s awesome to see the kind of stuff McNally has to come up with in order to get the shot.

The Hotshoe Diaries is not strictly a how-to book in that Joe lays out step-by-step what he did and used to get the photo. What McNally offers is showing one, great flash-lit photo with an accompanying essay to explain how he did it and why he did it. Although the book’s title might indicate novel, guerrilla style use of the small, usually camera-mounted flash, many of McNally’s photos are anything but simple. Many require ample production and literally creating a studio in the field; however, there’s enough of the more simple productions that make me think, hey, maybe even I might be able to do that.

If you’re a regular visitor to his blog site, you will recognize several of the photos and write-ups in the book. McNally is widely regarded as being a master of using artificial light and the book will provide ample evidence to support that claim.

Incidentally, is it me or is McNally having some fun with the book’s title with a jab towards David Duchovny and a pre X-Files show Duchovny was in called the Red Shoe Diaries? If you don’t know, Google it J

Disclosure: these comments will be posted on Amazon's website at the request of the publisher, who provided the review sample

Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: The Ultimate Workshop by Jeff Schewe and Martin Evening

This book is written by two of the biggest names in digital photography education.

Martin Evening is the UK-based commercial and fashion photographer who has written the book that this one takes its title from. Jeff Schewe is a US-based commercial photographer and educator, who conducts many seminars and presentations on digital photography and digital printing. Both are partners in the PixelGenius enterprise that brought us the PhotoKit sharpening automations. Adobe has so much respect for what Pixel Genius has done that it went to the partners of Pixel Genius to incorporate the output sharpening routines for Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom RAW converter.

Whereas Martin Evening’s Adobe Photoshop for Photographers is an A to Z reference for photographers to understand how to use Photoshop, the Ultimate Workshop book assumes that you have already read Evening’s reference book or already have a solid understanding with Photoshop and the number of tools available. The Ultimate Workshop jumps right into teaching you a number of techniques in Photoshop. Some are general to most current versions of Photoshop and others are specific to CS4 due to the use of new tools.

The book is segmented into major sections with the first few dealing with general information about preparing files, such as using Adobe Camera Raw to convert files to something Photoshop can work with. Other introductory sections get into some useful retouching techniques, but the really meaty retouching techniques are in the second half of the book.

In the second half, Schewe and Evening show some actual assignments that they worked on and what steps they took to satisfy the art directors. They also get into using some of the more advanced tools and techniques available in Photoshop from straightforward merging techniques to create a new large photo from several small ones to creating a fisheye effect photo using non-fisheye photos. Quite impressive!

Some of the tips I found particularly useful are how to effectively make intrusive and unwanted details in an image disappear. In my home city, we have trolley buses that use overhead power cables and most of my photos of the downtown area are blighted with those cables. Evening and Schewe provide you with the technique and tools to utilize in CS4 to create an unblemished photo. It serves to make CS4 a worthwhile upgrade too in order to have access to the new tools, like Stacks, that can make your life easier when editing your photos. I found the use of Stacks particularly interesting as a way to remove people from a busy scene. It used to be that in order to get a clean photo of a popular location, you had to do a massively long timed exposure, so that moving people would not register on the film. Now, you can use Smart Objects and Stacks to render a clean scene. Unfortunately, in order to get the Stacks tool, you need the more expensive Extended version of Photoshop CS4.

Most of the techniques provided are, as you would expect, manual ways to do things in Photoshop. Take noise removal as an example. While Evening and Schewe take you on a step-by-step process to remove noise, they admit that their Photoshop’s technique can be bettered by third-party applications such as Noise Ninja or Noiseware. They are also not shy in using techniques developed by others, such as Mac Holbert’s mid-tone contrast enhancement. However, Holbert is no stranger, as he is now a partner in the Pixel Genius venture and will work with Schewe, Evening and others to improve on the PhotoKit products.

There are also a few of the more common things you would want to do with Photoshop that don’t have the sizzle of using Stacks. These include beauty edits to correct blemishes, loose hair and how about hair roots? These are all very useful for people photography, of which most of us must do everyday with our friends and family. I’m called upon to do annual family portraits and I really wished I knew some of these techniques for years past, when I’ve had to do many of the same things used as examples in the book, to correct strobes reflecting off eyeglasses (low ceilings) or the closed eyes of one person in an otherwise good group photo.

There is also a discussion on how to manage your digital files and thoughts on archiving and backing up. Back in the day when the Nikon D2X was new, Schewe made some noises about how wrong it was of Nikon to encrypt the white balance data in D2X RAW files. Reading his comments on archiving made me understand why he’s so passionate about having open standards in order to preserve the integrity of the photographer’s files for the future.

The Ultimate Workshop shows the digital photographer how much power is available to them using Photoshop CS4. No longer does a photographer need to outsource the postproduction to a retoucher if the photographer takes the time to learn the tools at hand. The Ultimate Workshop is a fine way towards learning those tools.

May 25, 2009 - Track II of the Epson Print Academy was a nice way to spend a Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised to see all the big name presenters were actually here in person. The five include Jeff Schewe, Andrew Rodney, Greg Gorman, Mac Holbert, and John Paul Caponigro. These are some of the biggest names in North America when it comes to expertise in color management and digital printing (especially with Epson printers, naturally, of course) and in using Photoshop and Lightroom.

The session was sponsored by London Drugs with representation from Wacom, Amplis Foto (major Canadian distributor of photographic equipment), Nik, and Nikon. I thought the Nikon presence was ironic since all five pro presenters are Canon users. Nikon's table had the latest SLRs and lenses available for handling including the D3, D700, D300, D90, D5000 and D60 (no D3X though).

There was a largish print sample at the Nikon table, taken by the local rep using the D700 and the 70-200 lens. I looked at it up close, because I was impressed with the integrity of the 12 MP FX quality at a print size larger than the native resolution of the D700 would allow. Then I looked at the edges and corners and marvelled at how sharp it was. I was thinking, hey did the Nikon rep get a "good" sample of the 70-200 compared to mine which shows a clear drop in quality along the edges? Then I realized that the print is 4:5 aspect ratio and thus had its edges cropped; sneaky ;^)

While I did pickup a few tips and learned some new things here and there, I have to say, most of the material presented are things that I already knew or am already doing and applying in my workflow. I don't mean that from being an arrogant, know-it-all, but as more of a geek who has read or viewed a lot of books and video tutorials on the subject matter. For example, much of what's covered in the Epson Print Academy are things covered in the Luminous Landscape Print tutorial, which Jeff Schewe did with Michael Reichmann. However, I went for the experience and to be in the presence of some of photography's "rock stars" as much as I went to gain new knowledge.

One topic that the pros took some delight in is in always working with 16-bit files flagged with ProPhoto RGB. Prior to the Epson x900 series of printers, working in ProPhoto RGB might have been considered excessive, because it's such a huge color space involving imaginery colors that no human can see or machine can display and print. However, as was shown in the session, the Epson x900 series are now capable of printing beyond Adobe (1998) RGB. In order to be able to encompass the gamut of the new x900 series, you have to work with ProPhoto RGB. The pros felt vindicated that their mantra of keeping as much information as possible had been proven right by the march of technology.

Another thing that had been bugging me in recent months is where do you set the brightness level of LCD monitors? If you follow the recommendation of some of the calibration and profiling software, you should not let your LCD's brightness go above 120 cd/m2. This seems too dark and harkens back to the day when everyone did their editing in cave-like environments. As Andrew Rodney explained, you adjust the brightness to match the ambient light conditions of your work area. If the work area is dark, then maybe 120 cd/m2 is appropriate, but if the work area is bright, then adjusting the brightness up is the way to go. What you're looking for is a match for viewing the print as compared to the monitor.

Rodney showed how he has his desktop setup, with a GTI viewing booth on one side, a CRT monitor in the middle, and an LCD on the other side. For all three devices, the brightness was adjusted to be equal in a darker work environment (more for the CRT than the other two devices). The GTI viewing booth has a light source that can be dimmed without altering the color balance, so it's easier to adjust and match to a monitor.

While my primary editing monitor, the 30-inch Dell LCD, is set for a brightness of 140 cd/m2, the 24-inch Acer LCD is above 200 cd/m2. I set the Acer to default settings and left it at that in order to be able to compromise and go back and forth between OS X and Windows Vista. I also find the brighter level to be more comfortable for viewing in both daylight and evenings. Adjusting down to 120 cd/m2 is just too dim for my particular Acer LCD. Since, the Mac is not my primary editing computer, I'm okay with the higher amount of brightness. Curiously though, in daylight, the Dell and the Acer seem fairly well matched with the Acer seen as a touch brighter than the Dell.

An Epson 4880 printer was given away, but I was not so lucky to win this or any of the door prizes given away. I did make off with a sample print made by John Paul Caponigro during his presentation with a demo Epson 7900 (24-inch wide printer). At the end of the day-long session, JPC asked a couple of trivia questions and the attendees with the right answers got the prints. I responded correctly to JPC's question of what kind of motorcycle Jeff Schewe rides. Most of the responses were Harley Davidson, which was true up until about one and a half to two years ago, when Schewe bought a BMW - I knew this from watching the Luminous Landscape Lightroom and Printing tutorials.

JPC was kind enough to sign the print when I asked and I have to say, the man is amazing with the way he thinks about photography as art. If you've seen his photographs, you know that he thinks outside the box with the kind of art he creates and this carried through in his presentation. There's much philosophy involved, but he's also a technical master too. I never thought much about OS X's Spaces feature, which allows you to segment the Mac's desktop into four distinct windows, each running an application, but JPC utilized it very effectively in his presentation.

The print was made on Epson's Exhibition Fibre Paper, which is Epson's response to the trend towards papers that finally match the look of traditional, silver gelatin papers of the darkroom era. It's a heavy, thick paper, but it seems prone to scuffing, as I noticed a few of the sample prints made during the demo sessions had scuff marks. I don't know if the paper was already scuffed or ended up that way during the printing process. It's a nice, if expensive, paper otherwise with a finish that is quite unique. It's not glossy, matte or lustre in the way my other papers are. It's similar, but not the same as Ilford Gold Fibre Silk.

May 22, 2009 - I realize rather too belatedly that I did not say much about the D3X beyond its quality of build, quality of images, and its high price. I said nothing about its metering, the quality of the viewfinder, dynamic range, etc.

I guess I was so excited and fixated on the 24 MP of resolution that I lost sight of everything else, especially when trying to do it all in two weeks.

The other things are the kinds of things that you would take notice of from prolonged use of a camera and are not necessarily the things that hit you on the head like resolution and ISO noise do. However, I suspect that because they did not call attention to themselves, I moved along to the things that interested me the most.

I also did not test for how well the D3X files interpolate upwards, for example, to a 24x36 inch poster print. At least this one I can test for more easily since I have the files to continue working with them. Not that I have a 24-inch capable printer, but meaning that I could interpolate the file up and then crop a section for printing with the Epson 4800.

May 21, 2009 - For Vancouver readers (and non-Vancouver too, I suppose), a friend is selling his Nikon D300 with the MB-D10 and Nikon 18-200mm f3.5-5.6G AFS VR DX lens on CraigsList.

This is making me think that maybe it's time for another Garage Sale by yours truly. It could be called the "Cash is King" garage sale. I'll have to consider this for a few more days, but if any of you are interested in things that I already own, give me a shout - yes, I know this might be difficult without seeing a list of gear for sale, but some of you have been with me for a long time and "know" what I have ;^)

Pentax introduces the new K-7 SLR that slots in the enthusiast class of cameras, a la the Nikon D300 and Canon 50D. Resolution is 14 MP, which fits nicely between the D300's 12 MP and the 50D's 15 MP.

Take a read of Mike Johnston's initial comments over at TOP, as he's much more eloquent than I am in describing the need for a small, but still fully featured and capable SLR. The K-7 is a very nice start to a hopeful new trend in downsizing some SLRs without downsizing the abilities.

Think D60 or D5000 size with D300 features and you'll understand where I'm going. Full disclosure though, I'm just riding the bandwagon driven by the likes of Johnston and Thom Hogan in wanting a smallish SLR for walking around, travelling and hiking. This is why the Panasonic GH-1 seems so appealing to me at this time.

I used to poo-pooh notions of having a small SLR as being less than he-man and made fun of my co-worker for daring to write that my former D200 was too big and heavy for his family vacation. However, I've seen the light, or rather, my back, neck and shoulders have felt the weight too often all these many years of photography.

I can still recall when a friend and I went hiking in North Vancouver and I loaded my Lowepro Pro Trekker with full 35mm and medium format systems. Before we reached the top of the trail, I had to stop, because I felt like puking my guts out, and this was back in the day when I was kinda, sorta in shape - okay, I wasn't really in shape, I just weighed less than I do now 8^)

May 20, 2009 - I received a news release yesterday (for some reason, I seem to get these things unsolicited) that mentioned a name that I had not thought of for years, Iomega. The news release announced a new portable hard drive from Iomega, but digging deep into the recesses of my grey matter, isn't Iomega the brand behind the Zip Drives? I still have one of those parallel port devices dumped in my large RubberMaid container where all my old tech gear go to die.

Man, talk about innocent times, when a 100 MB Zip disc was just about able to contain my entire computing life. In the earliest days of CameraHobby, circa 2000, I backed up my website files to a Zip disc. This was way back in the day when 20 MB was all that I needed from the web host to store this entire website.

Today, I could backup all the files to a CD-R with some room to spare. Today, a D3X RAW file converted to a 16-bit TIFF file would more than exceed the capacity of those old Zip discs.

Speaking of storage, upgrading the MacBook's drive to 500 GB just means being able to store more files, which meant a heckuva long time for Time Machine to do its first backup after I finally completed installing all the apps. I'm also chagrinned to realize that my two 160 GB portable drives are now useless for mirroring the new internal drive. Thankfully, I have a couple of 320 GB portable drives available to takeover the mirror backups I do on a weekly basis (or, at least try to ;^)

You may recall me mentioning that I planned to buy an Epson Artisan 800 all-in-one to replace the Epson CX4800 as my new general, office printer. Well, I have it in-house now (the wife has not noticed yet) and have it running with the MacBook.

It's not meant to be a photo printer, since I have the R2400 and 4800 for that purpose, but I did a few quick 4x6 prints on Epson Premium Glossy Paper (the only Epson paper I have smaller than 11x17 inches) and darned if they don't look nice. And, this is letting the printer handle color management via Photoshop. Now, I'm going to have to create some custom profiles and really see what the Artisan 800 can do. Note, this is my first experience with an Epson printer using the Claria inkset. The R2400 and 4800 use the UltraChrome K3 inkset and the CX4800 uses the Durabrite inks.

I will, of course, write more about the Artisan printer in due course.

May 19, 2009 - Okay, no pretense or build up, here's the Nikon D3X review.

The sample shots from the May 18 post below is an experiment I conducted on my last night with the D3X, which was to photograph a number of 35mm and 120 format slides. I used a small light box to illuminate the slides and photographed them with the Nikon 105mm VR Micro lens.

Some of the 35mm slides I had already scanned when I still owned a Minolta Scan Dual III film scanner, so it was an easy thing to pull one of those old scan files to compare to the photo taken with the D3X. I downsized the D3X file to 3600 horizontal pixels, which would produce a 10-inch wide print at 360 dpi. Coincidentally, this matched almost exactly to the original scan file.

I ran both files through Noise Ninja to smooth out the film grain and then gave them a PhotoKit Output Sharpening at their respective DPI settings (the D3X at 360 while the scanned file is at 300 dpi). The sample at the left is from the D3X while at right is the file from the film scanner. The prints I made also show the superiority of the scan file.

While it's not the kind of thing you would normally do with a SLR, in short, no, a $9,000 SLR won't give you the same quality as a $500, true film scanner 8^)

Next up, three waterproof digicams that showed up chez moi on rather short notice and I have them for even less time than the D3X, so no rest for the wickedly lazy, such as me.

May 18, 2009 - Sorry, still working on the D3X review; hope to post later tonight. In the meantime, see if you can tell me the difference between these two sample shots; if you can actually guess what it was I was doing, huge brownie points (sorry no prizes, economic turmoil has drained the CameraHobby prize budget):

May 14, 2009 - The D3X has been sent back and by the time you read this, it should be at its destination back in Toronto. Now to crunch the pixels, make some prints and finish off the review (look for it sometime next week).

While it was sad to see the camera go back, it was also a relief too in not having to be responsible for someone else's $9,000 camera 8^)

You'll forgive me if I don't post much from now until next week, as I clear off some review projects.

May 11, 2009 - Misc items:

• My D3X test shots were completed yesterday and I spent a couple of hours looking and preparing them for the review. With only a couple of days left, there's not much more that I can do shooting wise, but there is one last project that I'd like to get through before returning the camera. I'll write about that one another time

• Finally upgraded the MacBook's hard drive with the 500 GB, 7200 RPM unit. Due to time constraints I've not been able to install all the apps yet, so I'm not checking emails as often. I could have done things simpler by mirroring the old drive onto the new drive and then installing the new drive for a more seamless upgrade route, but I wanted everything to be "clean." This stems from the malware/virus incident that afflicted my websites and as much as I believe I'm clean from any keyloggers, I wanted to play it completely safe.

• I'm a bit behind the times in commenting on the Panasonic GH-1 pricing of circa USD $1500. That should make it somewhere around CDN $1700 for us Canucks. That's probably about right for what the GH-1 offers, which includes the 28-280mm equivalent, all-in-one zoom lens. Something I have my eye on, but I'd like to see that price go down a wee bit more first though 8^)

• Canon is coming out with rebates on a select few cameras and lenses and some expect Nikon to do something similar. Gee, what a surprise...NOT! Rebates indicate sales are lackluster, which any non-economist could have told you would happen when both brands raised prices after the financial turmoil hit the fan. Yes, we understand that raising prices had to do with the currency exchange when the USD took a dive against the yen, but the timing was awful and hit photographic consumers with a double-whammy of recession and higher prices. Dumb and dumber!

May 9, 2009 - I resume my D3X testing this morning with this being the last weekend I get to use it before having to send it back to Nikon mid next week.

For Vancouverites, the Epson Print Academy is returning to town. Saturday, May 23, both Track 1 and Track 2 will be offered and held at the Vancouver Convention Centre (Canada Place). I attended Track 1 a couple of years ago when Vincent Versace was the host. This year, I am attending Track 2, but there is no designated host that I can see. Track 2 runs from 9:30 am to 5 pm and includes lunch. There is also a draw for registered attendees to win a 4880 printer.

The list of speakers include some heavyweights in the world of photography, printing and color management, but as in Track 1, they are likely presenting in video form and not in real life. Still, should be very educational and if you recognize me, come by and say hi ;^)

I don't know if this is a sign of a close-out sale (Epson appears to be releasing new printers now), but the Epson Artisan 800 all-in-one printer is on sale at London Drugs for $250, which is $100 off regular price.

I plan to buy one, because I've been looking to replace the Epson CX4800 with a more full-featured all-in-one printer. One that can print on CD/DVDs, as having an auto document feeder (ADF), so that you don't have to scan one page at a time.

I could find all-in-one units that offered CD/DVD printing and other all-in-one units that have the ADF, but only the Artisan 800 offered both in one unit. Fax and wireless capability is nice, but not necessary for a color-capable, daily home office printer.

What stopped me from buying an Artisan 800 earlier is the regular $350 price, which I did not care for. At $250, it's still a bit pricier than I'd like, but within the range where I'm okay to pull the trigger on the purchase. Consider that these days, you can buy very capable all-in-one printers for well under $200 and you'll understand why I blanched at the original $350 price.

Note though, if you're local and want this or any other printer, there's a provincial electronics recycling levy that will be tacked onto the price (this is Canada and we "love" being taxed to death by our various government so that they can provide us with shoddy services).

Update: the London Drugs sale does not begin until Tuesday, May 12.

May 7, 2009 - I don't know about you, but I don't consider spending five-hours babysitting an upload of this website to a new server, to be much fun; especially when the Vancouver Canucks hockey team are in a playoff battle against the Chicago Blackhawks; however, it had to be done.

As regular readers know, I've had an issue with website security and my site causing some readers to be redirected to a website loaded with malware and viruses. If your computer lacked anti-virus protection and firewalls, your internet browser was at risk at being redirected and open to infection. If you were properly protected with up-to-date anti-virus protection, then chances are the anti-virus application would have halted the redirection and warned you about it.

This was not a case of CameraHobby being the actual source of the malware and virus, but due to an iframe hack, it would have been a cause if you did not have proper security and protection. It's an object lesson in being protected and the risks associated with surfing the internet.

Even Mac users can be affected if they fall victim to Trojan Horses being installed; however, OS X, like Vista with UAC turned on, will not allow any software to be installed unless you actually authorize it. Thus, you have to be very gulliable to become a victim. Case in point, I was surfing a website about paintball guns (I used to be an avid player in university and was reliving those days by looking up some old guns I used to own) and clicked on a link about the Bud Orr AutoCocker (one of my old guns). I immediately got an OS X window popping up requesting authorization to be redirected to a site in Russia, which of course, I declined. I looked at the site's source code and near the bottom, was an iframe piece of code.

So, once I knew that my site had been hacked, the question was, how did this happen. Doing some research, I came across one detailed forum posting that discussed how an iframe hack can happen. My computer may have been infected with a keylogger and the hacker got a hold of my ftp user ID and password; however, I considered this to be unlikely since the way I ftp does not require me to type in my user ID and password everytime I update the site.

In the same forum thread, another poster commented that keylogger hacks are a minority of the cases and that the majority of iframe hacks are due to software used on and for websites, such as forum and blogging applications. Except that my website does not use such software. The only thing that might be a culprit are the scripts used for the Google and Chitika ads, which is another unlikely cause.

I muddled around for a bit still trying to figure things out. Meanwhile, readers would send me advisories everytime their virus app picked up suspicious behavior. Curiously, whenever I visited the website with Firefox, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and no redirection occurred. Only by looking at the source code from the web server, could I see that in fact, the site had been hacked again, which required an upload of a clean index file.

Since the hack was ongoing, I decided to move the website to a new host, one that ranks high in reviews. Admittedly, my old web host, Host Excellence, is one that has a spotty record for quality and service as reviewed by other web publishers, although, until this incident, I had been a satisfied client.

Out of a lark, I did a search on "Host Excellence iframe hack" and that's when the haze finally cleared on why my site was being hacked. The web host and its parent company are allegedly lax in keeping their software current and my site is definitely not the only one that has fallen victim to those lax standards.

I hope this finally closes the chapter on this incident, which has been a nuisance for me, but a terrible experience for those without appropriate protection from malware and viruses. For that I apologize for any inconvenience suffered.

May 6, 2009 - If you are reading this update, you are now viewing this website on a new webhost server. Since the old webhost was compromised, moving to a whole new server was the best solution.

All the files and folders have been uploaded and there should no longer be malware warnings or prompts that this website is at risk. I'll have more to say about the incidents that led to moving the website to a new host.

May 5, 2009 - The site will be undergoing some maintenance and you may find some temporary service interruptions occurring in the next 48 or so hours.

May 4, 2009 - I have a write-up about my short trip to Shannon Falls yesterday. As I was preparing the write-up, I thought that I should provide some links to other websites about Shannon Falls and the Stawamus Chief rockface, so as to provide some background for the readers.

Clicking on one of the first Google search links got me to this website. Now, humour me on this, but go to that page and scroll down to the bottom where there is a photo of a creek with a foggy background then compare to the photo below:

They are in fact, not the same photo, as much as I was surprised at first look. Looking at the flow of the water in the bottom, middle will reveal that they are different photos.

However, take a look at the photo below, which is another frame I photographed from the same shoot. The colors and saturation are different, but that's just a matter of editing after scanning (the picture below is actually a scan of a print, because I didn't want to dig out the original slides). Look closely at the composition and the details of the water formation and spray and then come to your own conclusion. A remarkable coincidence, don't you think...

For the planned drive up to Squamish to visit the Stawamus Chief and Shannon Falls, I thought I had a couple of companions lined up to go with me. Unfortunately, one backed out due to a family commitment and the other backed out on Saturday night after seeing a hard rainfall in Vancouver. In the end, it was just me and my eleven-year-old boy heading out around 6:45 am on a fine spring day (no rain at all during the day).

The Sea-to-Sky highway (or technically, Highway 99) connecting Vancouver to Whistler is scenic, but winding in the first half to Squamish. Until the recent construction to widen it for the 2010 Olympics, much of it has been two-lanes only. This can result in a long line of cars stuck behind a slow going semi truck or motor home. The highway has also seen many fatal accidents occur, as cars traverse the winding road at high speeds. The widening is very welcome, but as of this writing, a lot of the highway is one big construction zone for the widening work.

This is one reason to head out in the early morning hours and avoid traffic. Going early also means beating the tourists that stop off at Shannon Falls Provincial Park. When we pulled into the parking lot of the park around 7:35 am, ours was the only vehicle in the lot and we were the only people walking around the main walkways and trail.

With some 35 lbs of gear (including the moderately heavy Lowepro Pro Trekker backpack) to carry, I was not planning to hike up the Chief rock face. I only wanted to go as far as a walkway bridge overpass, which marks the start of the hike up the Chief. Getting to the bridge already had me sweating bullets and I wondered about the wisdom of carrying the D3X with 14-24mm lens mounted to my Gitzo tripod.

The view from the walkway bridge and also the location of my 1997 photos above - you may recognize the trees on either side of this shot as being the same in the older photos

As I scrambled up some rocks and slippery wooden steps, I noted that it would just take one misstep to see some $12,000 worth of equipment fall onto the big rocks along the trail to the bridge. It’s one thing to take risks with your own gear, but quite another to do so with someone else’s gear – that you’re responsible for should anything happen to it. Sobering and I made sure I treaded gingerly on the more challenging portions.

After about two hours, we packed up and drove home. In all, this little outing took about four hours and gave my son an appreciation for some mild hiking and the impressive Shannon Falls. I also let him take some photos with the D3X (after I set it up for him) and explained some rudimentary basics of the histogram, when he saw the RGB graphs on the LCD.

If I did not intend to make the outing a photographic one, I would have taken him up to the top of the Chief’s first peak (three peaks in total). But, with all the gear on my back and knowing how I’m in such piss-poor shape, I was not up for the moderate one-hour hike. It makes you really appreciate the qualities of having a very lightweight kit for hiking.

I didn’t even have a lot of gear inside the backpack:

• D3X
• D2X – not used except for a couple of snaps of my son taking pictures with the D3X
• 14-24mm f2.8
• 24-70mm f2.8
• 70-200mm f2.8 VR
• 105mm f2.8 VR Micro
• Other sundry accessories such as polarizing filters, cable release, backup hard drive (not used), extra CF cards, cleaning cloth, etc.

As much as a Panasonic GH-1 and single, all-in-one lens, would be really sweet for taking along on a serious hike, the high resolution, full frame capabilities of the D3X would probably prompt me to suck it up and haul it along – that is, if I actually owned one. However, I would want an alternative to the large and heavy Lowepro Pro Trekker.

Backpacks are excellent for hauling large amounts of gear from one location to another, but are really crappy for accessing gear during a fluid, shooting session, which is why I was carrying the D3X and attached lens mounted to the Gitzo.
If I were really serious about hiking on a regular basis, I would have to find an alternative to the backpack.

Because I know the Lowepro products the best, I would likely build a Street and Field system that allows access to all the gear on the belt and chest harness. I would end up looking like GI Joe with such a web-belt system, but functionality trumps looks.

Speaking of looks, it’s been so long since I used the Pro Trekker for its intended purpose that it’s been like the Hummer of backpacks; technically a capable 4x4, but owned by people who will never take it off road.

May 2, 2009 - I did my first set of pixel-peeping test shots this morning and see some interesting things when comparing the files taken with the D3X, the Canon 5D2, and for kicks, my old D2X. Key lenses used are the Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR and the Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS.

Reviewing the files via Adobe Lightroom, to my eyes, I do see a qualitative difference between the D3X and the 5D2 that favours the D3X. Given the price disparity, I'm sure you would say that is how it should be.

There is also an unfortunate part to the test, as it confirms what many have been saying about the Nikon 70-200 lens, that it's really a lens meant for the DX format. My sample clearly shows that edge and corner resolution does not match the excellent centre resolution, whereas the Canon lens is better in providing edge-to-edge and corner resolution. The results match what DPReview came up with when they tested these two lenses.

Within its DX limitations, the D2X held its own thanks to what I suspect is a tighter pixel-pitch of its 12 MP sensor compared to the higher resolution cameras.

I hate to be a tease, but you will have to wait for the formal review before seeing the comparison samples. I also want to repeat the test again to ensure consistency with the first test.

May 1, 2009 - Okay, so now you know that I have a D3X on loan from Nikon Canada (actually, an external agent that looks after Nikon Canada's marketing and review program). It's a two week loan period and to ensure that Nikon Canada gets it back, they have my credit card number, for which they will charge the full freight if I decide to "forget" to send it back.

It will be a busy time, as I also have a book review obligation for a publisher of some well known dgital darkroom books and they expect a review in about two weeks too.

Postings from now until the D3X review gets posted will be slim, but I may post some "what am I doing now with the D3X" type of comments and photos. For example, Saturday morning, I plan to do the first set of pixel-peeping test shots at a favorite location. Saturday evening, possibly an outing at Burnaby Mountain and then Sunday, I may try for a sunrise session from Cypress Mountain before heading out of Vancouver to the Squamish Chief (all tentative plans, btw).

So far, the only thing I've done is to charge the battery and make sure it actually works. I suspect that I'm only the second (at most, the third) reviewer of this particular review sample, as the shot count is below 3,000.

I did a mild cleaning, because there were fingerprints on the top and rear LCD. The viewfinder was a bit grungy and the rubber had a bit of dirt dusting on it. A faint ashtray smell was detected and since the time zone was set for Atlantic Canada, I surmise that the previous reviewer is a smoking, landscape (or some sort of outdoor) photographer from the Maritimes. But, no one ever suggested that I was Sherlock Holmes, so I'm probably out to lunch with my guess.

Time to dig out the electronic cable release, set the D3X for 14-bit capture and dust off the old Gitzo...

April 30, 2009 - A brother-in-law borrowed the Navigon GPS a couple of weeks ago, but when he came to pick it up, he declined on taking the windshield mount due to its bulk. He also crudely referred to it as a dildo, which brought some chuckles from both of us. Useless trivia - the rock/jazz fusion band, Steely Dan, is named for a steel dildo from the William Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch 8^)

What the brother-in-law did not know was that I had already ordered a couple of replacement mounts, because I didn't care for the, ahem, dildo, myself. My reason was less for the shape of the windshield mount and its juvenile connotations then for the distance between my eyes and the small screen. Also, there seems to be a growing movement to ban the use of windshield mounts in certain states and provinces, e.g. California.

Close-up of the air vent mount >>

I ordered air vent and cupholder mounts, ostensibly, one for each of our two vehicles. I tried the air vent mount in my crossover and discovered the limitations of a relatively cheap $15 mount. The angle of my vent places the GPS at an awkward angle and while I could angle it sideways as well as rotate the GPS in a clockwise rotation, what I also needed is some downward tilt. Unfortunately, the air vent mount does not offer such flexibility. What it really needs is a ball head style joint to allow greater movement at many angles, similar to Navigon's windshield mount.

The cupholder mount seems better and the cup portion can be narrowed or widened to fit into most vehicle cupholders. I only ordered one cupholder mount, because only our minivan has cupholders located in the centre dashboard area. The crossover has the cupholders in a centre console that divides the driver's seat with the front passenger seat. The location is about where your elbow would be when sitting in the seat.

Air vent mount

Both mounts come with a holder for the GPS unit to be cradled in. The GPS can be left in the cradle and moved from one vehicle to the other, as both mounts use the same attachment system.

I think the price is reasonable for what you get, but the quality is a bit lacking with the plastic build and I'm not entirely confident of the stability of either mount if I were driving a winding road at speed, such as the Sea-to-Sky highway that connects Vancouver to the ski resort town of Whistler. Thus, I'm not bothering to provide a link to the online retailer that I ordered the mounts from.

Cupholder mount inside my vehicle - not the intended vehicle for this mount

This is my desired next monitor (the 30-inch model, of course), but not until I get that Mac Pro tower ;^)

I seem to be forgetting something...oh yes, click here to see what will be occupying my time for the next two weeks 8^))

April 29, 2009 - The loan agreement has been signed and returned and the review item should be waiting for me at home when I return from work later today. Details to come with tomorrow's update ;^)

Yesterday, I mentioned seeing a 2.5 inch version of WD's VelociRaptor hard drive. These are the latest generation of WD's class leading 10,000 RPM drives and WD claims some 30% faster speed over the previous generation of Raptor drives, which I currently use inside my desktop PC.

Indeed, a 2.5 inch version of the drive exists, but alas, they are not meant for use in notebooks and are still considered server-grade, enterprise drives. Interestingly though, there are now three versions of these intriguing hard drives:

1. the original version is 300 GB in capacity and comes enclosed inside a massive heatsink. The drive is actually in a 2.5 inch form factor, but with the heatsink, is the size of a regular 3.5 inch desktop drive. Due to the design, the SATA and power ports are in a non-standard location at the rear of the drive.
2. the aforementioned 2.5 inch version of the drive, which is still 300 GB, but comes without the massive heatsink wrapped around it, and
3. the most interesting version for me, a backplane model that is also in a 2.5 inch format factor and 300 GB, but comes with a different heaksink design

Number 3 is most relevant for me, because it places the SATA data connector and power socket in the industry standard location, i.e., in the same location as every other 3.5 inch SATA drive. This allows the backplane version to fit inside the Mac Pro tower's hard drive bay with no fuss or muss.

Without the backplane version, a Mac Pro user wanting to incorporate the VelociRaptor would have to use a custom kit to fit the drives in one of the SuperDrive bays. The user would also have to utilize one of the two extra SATA ports instead one of the hard drive bay's port (the Mac Pro has four standard hard drive bays, but has six SATA ports).

Visions of a Mac Pro with a RAID 0 configuration now dance around inside my head...

April 28, 2009 - I finally took apart the 2 TB WD MyBook World Edition NAS box. If you recall, I found the speed of this NAS to be so slow to be of no pratical use in my system. I resolved to take the damned thing apart in order to recycle the two 1 TB drives in another external case. I bought a dual-drive Vantec NexStar MX case that offers USB and FW400/800 ports (forward thinking to the time that I have a Mac with native FW800 support) for that purpose.

Four screws hold the white, plastic case to the main chassis of the MyBook WE, which was the easiest part of the dismantling. After removing the external case, I was left with a metal skeletal structure protecting the two drives. I had a bit of time trying to figure out the metal structure and how to actually get at the drives. It appeared to have been something that came out of Rube Goldberg's mind, but I finally figured out that access was through the bottom plate and once I had that off, I could press in on the two plastic sliders on either side of the drives and pull the drives out (after disconnecting the SATA data and power cable).

As of this writing, I've not installed the drives inside the Vantec case, but since I have two of these cases already (in USB 2 only flavour), I know that I'll get acceptable USB 2 speed.

Speaking of external drives, I just bought a 500 GB WD MyPassport drive. Every year, it seems like I need to buy another set of portable drives to accomodate all the data I like to have access to on a mobile basis. Just brutal, because it was only last year that I bought some 160 GB portable drives along with a 320 GB drive.

Continuing this thread on hard drives, I'll be ordering a Seagate 500 GB, 7200 RPM, 2.5 inch drive to upgrade the MacBook. As much as I'd like to upgrade the MacBook's RAM to 6 GB, blowing $500 to get a 4 GB RAM module from OWC just does not seem like good value at this time ($500 is about what I would end up paying after currency exchange, S&H and taxes).

I don't know if I saw this right when I was cruising for the Seagate drive, but it appears that WD is making a 2.5 inch, 10k RPM Raptor drive for notebooks. I'll have to research this more. It's rather pricey at CAD $400 for a 300 GB drive. Compare this to the 500 GB Seagate that I'll order at CAD $180.

April 27, 2009 - As far as physical media is concerned, the four horsemen are thundering ever closer from a once distant horizon. The locusts are spreading and pestilence is in the air. The rivers run with the blood of ones and zeros from hapless discs.

The generation that will only vaguely remember the compact disc has already been born and they will barely recall that those quaint five-inch discs is what mom and dad used to use for playing back music and movies (software is mostly downloaded these days, even pig-like apps such as MS Office and Adobe Photoshop). We won’t even get into vinyl, which despite a mild resurgence is nothing more than a comatose, near-dead man walking. When the baby boomers that can actually afford the ridiculously astronomical prices of the high end turntables are gone, what will become of vinyl? While vinyl will survive amongst a small group of aficionados, I can’t help but see vinyl eventually become the tin type of photography. Interesting and cool, but not for the masses; however, this is a discussion for another day.

Today, we talk about a product that will help to seal the deal on physical, digital media. Prior to this type of product coming out, if we wanted to create a media server for our home entertainment systems, we needed a computer to store the media and serve it to the TV.

While many have preached the convergence of the computer system with the home entertainment system, I haven’t seen any such convergence amongst the masses. People still keep the computer in a separate room from the home theatre. And, really, can you blame us for keeping them separate? I mean, who wants a noisy computer hooked up the TV and what’s the point if you lose the convenience of remote control of the system because you’re essentially using the TV as a glorified, low resolution monitor for the computer?

There are multimedia notebooks that come with remote controls and I’m sure there are some other options available for the couch potatoes, but I really don’t think the whole computer with TV thing is all that elegant.

The Apple TV box is a nicer way of doing things with wireless serving of a computer’s multimedia files to the TV (or store the media locally with the built-in hard drive), but it’s rather pricey for what it does. Why can’t there be a device that just allows a hard drive full of multimedia to be connected directly to the TV without the need for a computer and for a lot less than the Apple TV, which, costs CAD $350 for the 160 GB model. Oh, wait, there are such devices and one of them is the Western Digital TV HD media player.

The WDTV is a diminutive box that provides you with USB ports to access media files on an external USB hard drive via your TV. To be honest, the way the WDTV works, it really seems like a completely stripped down micro computer with a rudimentary OS that uses the TV as a monitor. It’s only function is to search and access media files from a connected USB hard drive and allow you to playback those files on a regular TV.

The WDTV has two USB ports to support two external hard drives connected at once. It has one set of regular RCA audio and video output jacks and one HDMI jack for HD content and surprisingly, there is an optical port for feeding the sound to an outboard DAC. Other than the power jack, that’s all there is to the WDTV.

The WDTV comes with:

• A small remote control (uses two AAA batteries)
• The ubiquitous and cheap three-corded RCA composite cable for the audio and video
• Power adapter
• A support rest meant for use with a WD Passport drive – Western Digital would prefer that you use one of its portable, bus-powered Passport hard drives, but you can use any external hard drive with a USB connection
• CD-R for some Arcsoft conversion software and the PDF manual for the WDTV

Operation is simple, connect the WDTV to the TV via RCA or HDMI, connect your USB external hard drive and then juice up the WDTV. With the TV set to the video input that the WDTV is connected to, you will see the home menu screen and various types of media icons such as for music, videos or photos.

Before using the WDTV, I wondered if I would need to adjust the folders on the external hard drive for compatibility or easier access with the WDTV, but this is not necessary. I left my drive alone and via the on-screen menu, had the WDTV search for all video files. After finding all compatible video files, it displayed generic icons for each video on the screen. I had to scroll through the icons to read the file name to clue into which video was which. Thankfully, the sorting is alphabetical, so it’s not too hard to run through all the files.

For my inaugural use, I had a mix of video files on the hard drive used (a 320 GB WD Passport) from files ripped via Handbrake to tutorials purchased from the Luminous Landscape. Some are AVI files, some are M4P and the tutorials are Quicktime files.

I scrolled to one of the more recent files ripped via Handbrake, the Da Vinci Code. As my CRT TV predates HDMI and with no HDMI-to-DVI cable on hand yet, I used the old school RCA cable and jacks to connect the WDTV to my Sony TV.

The quality was not bad played through a less than optimal cable connection and considering that my Handbrake rip was at iPod Touch resolution (somewhere around 400x250 pixels). For sure, DVD is superior, but let’s just say I was not terribly offended by the picture quality seen. What did offend me though is that I lost the left and right edges of the picture view.

My rip of the movie kept the original 16:9 aspect ratio and what I expected the WDTV to do is shrink the video size to stay within the TV’s traditional 4:3 screen. I later discovered that this is only an issue using the cheap composite cable and does not happen when using an HDMI-to-DVI cable,

Another, but minor irk is with the controls on the remote. When you press the Options button, you get a menu showing up on the top of the screen, presenting you with some options for sound, picture magnification and picture placement. When I played with moving the picture around, I found that the button controls do the opposite of what you expect. Hitting the right cursor button on the remote moved the picture left and hitting up caused the screen to scroll down. I felt like I was using a medium format camera and a waist level finder. I don’t know if this is specific to my sample of the WDTV or to all samples. I also found the remote to be somewhat sluggish in response, kinda like using a digicam compared to the speedy response of an SLR.

When you first use the WDTV, you may find that the bottom information display for the length of the movie does not disappear on its own. Since it gets in the way of the very bottom portion of the picture, it’s rather annoying. You can only get rid of this display by hitting the Options key and then hitting the “I” icon to make the information display disappear.

Another issue is that you cannot fast forward or rewind for some movie files. Which ones are affected seems to be on a file-by-file basis and thankfully, most of my files can be fast forwarded or rewound. Fast forwarding can affect the picture quality and make it a bit jerky, as if the WDTV is struggling to re-sync the video with the soundtrack. I pause then resume play, which seems to clear this up.

I found that my Quicktime video tutorials from the Luminous Landscape played the video fine, but the audio track is not compatible with the WDTV.

Lastly, while you can turn the WDTV off via the remote control, there’s still power going into the WDTV, which in turn will continue to power any bus-powered USB drive connected, even if you “ejected” the drive prior to powering down. You need to physically disconnect the USB cable from a bus powered drive in order to really power down the drive.

I suppose that’s a number of minor issues, but even so, I still like the WDTV and the convenience it offers in being able to call up any number of video files I’ve saved to a hard drive.

A family resemblance with WD's MyBook series of external hard drives >>

The quality using an HDMI-to-DVI cable, even with iPod Touch quality rips, is quite good when played back on my old 32-inch Sony CRT TV. While I would not place the playback as being DVD quality, to my eyes, it is a much closer comparison than you might expect from a 1 GB file compared to the usual 7-8 GB DVD movie files. The comparison is perhaps not unlike comparing MP3 to CD; rip a CD at a high enough bitrate and the quality can be very close to CD fidelity.

The only thing I’m really not liking is the thought of having to rip all my DVDs, so that I can have my video library easily available on demand. It took me several long weeks to rip all my CDs to AIFF format, but it’s been worth it to have the flexibility of being able to listen at home and on the road without ever having to bother with handling the actual CDs anymore. Ripping the DVDs also means keeping them safe and pristine from the hands of my kids.

Once I’ve ripped all the DVDs and have them stored on an external drive, I can literally dispense with the physical media players. Why keep two or three boxes around to take up space when one small hard drive will hold so many movie files. Or, if you have a home theatre setup, all your audio files too.

Devices like the WDTV is where I see convergence headed. I would still consider it rough around the edges for user friendliness, but I can’t be too hard on it given how inexpensive it is and the flexibility it offers.

Other interesting products to keep note of are external hard drive cases that offer the media player interface built-in. Throw in your own hard drive of choice and then copy all the files over to it and away you go with one less device and cable to worry about and even less space to clutter up around the TV.

The next step, a nice looking, DVD player-sized box that allows easy insertion and extraction of an external hard drive (think Drobo) along with all the bells and whistles of a modern home theatre device for output connection. I’m sure there are more than a few people out there with more files than can be stored on a single hard drive, especially if those files are HD or super high quality audio files (beyond CD fidelity to true 24/96 fidelity). The player I envision would allow you to insert a hard drive of movies when you want to watch, then remove, and replace with another hard drive filled with music for when you want to listen.

No computer, no wireless hassles, no DVD or Blu-Ray players, etc. Just a single box to feed all the different types of media that you want to keep, including photos to share viewing on a large, HDTV.

April 25, 2009 - Sorry for the tease, but I should have some exciting review news by mid next week; however, I want to wait for official confirmation before I reveal what the next major review subject will be. Stay tuned...

April 21, 2009 - Reader's comment:

Your comment about photography memory would be much more severe if it had been Nikon wanting to charge $1000 for 8GB of Compact Flash.

Memory is cheap, is cheap, and is cheap. We should vote by buying a Dell instead.

I was doing a search on local shops that specialize in Mac and somehow got to a local blog post about some service issues at one of the local shops. The guy's whingey post is irrelevant, because his complaint about the store was out to lunch, but in the comments, he ripped into Microsoft and the usual Machead rant about how great OS X is compared to Windows. Big yawn, what's new in the world of Macland?

It surprises me at times how vitriolic people can be on both sides, but I find it good entertainment.

The iMac RAM is so pricey because it's a notebook RAM module (same as for the current MacBooks). The RAM modules for the Mac Pro tower are less extravagant in cost.

I've priced out some Dell workstations and found the cost to be quite a bit more than a comparable Mac Pro. It's been that way for a few years now, which is contrary to what a lot of people think when comparing a (cheap) Dell to a Mac, but you gotta compare, um, apples to apples ;^)

Remember when Google wowed the world in 2006 with its purchase of YouTube for some $1.65 billion? With the way Google has been steaming along, you'd figure that it should be raking in the profits with such a well known, pop culture website. Guess again, because an investment bank has made an educated guess that Google is losing almost $500 million per year due to all the bandwidth and storage needs for YouTube. It's an educated guess, because Google does not break out the revenue and expenses for YouTube separate from its own financial statements.

Jeepers! $500 million a year!? Who does Google think it is, a US-based car manufacturer? Sorry, bad joke in light of all the turmoil still going on with GM and Chrysler. Chrysler especially since it's on a two week death watch as it nears its end of month deadline to lower its costs in line with Toyota and Honda. Get the unions to agree to the concessions and there's hope with a Fiat takeover, but if not, it's bankruptcy proceedings.

The news article I read described how YouTube is a Web 2.0 type of site that would empower people to create and post their own content. Which it did, but as the author noted, most advertisers don't want to pay good money to post ads with the majority of the users content, because, well, most of it is crap. Sorta related is another opinion piece about posting so much of today's embarassing moments online.

I'm sure most of you know who Rob Galbraith is, a Canadian digital pioneer, who has a popular website posting photography industry news and detailed camera reviews. He used to host a popular forum section at his website, which was free and frequented by a number of pros. Unfortunately, the time, cost and maintenance in keeping the forum going was getting to be too much, so Galbraith sold the forum.

The new owners turned it into a pay-for forum: you pay to post and access the forum. It's a model that seems to have worked for another site that is frequented by pros, the DigitalWeddingForum.com, but not so for the former Galbraith forum. Former users mention that it's a pretty quiet forum with only a fraction of the membership of the old, free version.

The Galbraith situation is a smaller example of the YouTube situation; people love to use a great service when its free, but balk at the thought of having to pay for that service, as if it doesn't cost the owner any overhead to keep the site running.

April 20, 2009 - For the past ten years, every time spring rolls around, I walk around the neighborhood trying to get a photo of the cherry blossoms before they get blown away by the spring winds and rain.

Living in Vancouver means that when it's not raining, the spring sky is usually overcast, so when a bit of blue is seen, you have to take the opportunity and photograph, because the next day, even the next hour, may see the blue sky disappear.

In all the years of trying to take a cherry blossom photo, I've never taken one that I've been happy with. It's an elusive subject to try and show the delicacy of the blossoms in a meaningful way.

Over at TOP, a posting about the 425th anniversary of the Hahnemuhle paper company had me thinking of a once mighty Canadian company, which is North America's oldest, the Bay, formerly, the Hudson's Bay Company.

The Bay is a bit of a youngster compared to Hahnemuhle at 339 years of age (a royal charter created the company in 1670), but it was once an empire onto its own founded on the trading of fur around the body of water that gave the company its name.

The company is inextricably linked to the history of what would ultimately become the nation of Canada. It had trading posts as far west as Victoria in what was then New Caledonia (the current province of British Columbia), which would allow the fledgling nation to expand its reach when it took over the Northwest Territories from the company.

Today, the Bay is now owned by an American parent company and operates department stores under the Bay, Zellers and Home Outfitters brands.

Last week, I mentioned looking into the security of this website and seeking some kind of alternative in the hope of reducing the threat of hacks. I don't think there's anything more that I can do about the security as I erased and uploaded all the pages again to ensure no page had any errant code. However, in reviewing the site, I'm thinking a redesign is in order with a proper structure to allow easier archiving and recalling of posts by the readers.

Just about everyone gets offended by the prices charged by Apple for RAM, even diehard Macheads. Consider that if you were to buy a top of the line iMac, the price would be around CAD $2600. This would buy you a 3.06 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an NVIDIA GT130 GPU. However, if you desired to max out the RAM (always a good thing), Apple will charge a kingly price of $1200 to double up the 4 GB to 8 GB, or $600 per 4 GB module.

Thinking that Apple's price is rather extortionate, I asked my local computer parts shop what they would charge for two 4 GB modules for the iMac. The price...CAD $1475...before 12% taxes! Cough, gag, choke!

I was advised that there's only one factory producing these types of RAM modules and in Vancouver, there's only one distributor for the store to order from, so there's no elasticity in the cost. Thus, Apple's $1200 price tage is actually a better deal than upgrading on my own, because I wouldn't have to eat the cost of the original two 2 GB modules that come standard with the iMac. But, $3800 is helluva lot of money to blow on a computer with severe upgrade limits.

Americans have it better, because OWC offers an 8 GB upgrade kit for USD $730. In the US, Apple charges $1000 for an 8 GB upgrade, which, after exchange rate conversion, is the same cost as in Canada (current FX rate is about CDN 1.21 to USD 1).

While I could order from OWC, I would not save much money. At USD $730, that works out to about CDN $900 (the bank issued Visa will charge an extra 2-3% for the FX). Then, there's the 12% tax charged by the provincial and federal governments on goods imported into Canada, which will take the price to over CDN $1000. And, I've not even included any S&H charges yet. Apple's $1200 cost is suddenly not as extortionate as I once thought.

April 18, 2009 - An article in the Wall Street Journal about Leica and its recent troubles with departed CEO, Stephen Lee. Interestingly, the article states that Leica invented auto focus technology, but sold it to Minolta (the two had a partnership in the 1970s that produced some lower cost rangefinders and lenses).

If the story is true about Leica selling Minolta some AF technology then it would seem that Minolta ended up with the bum's rush, because it got sued by Honeywell for infringing Honeywell's AF patents. Some suggest that the lawsuit and massive monetary penalty is something Minolta never recovered from and set it back from being able to challenge Nikon and Canon.

April 17, 2009 - If you read the National Post article I linked to yesterday, you will have discovered how a person’s reputation can be destroyed by posting malicious comments on a website that has no scruples or ethics by its publisher. Although Google is not guilty of originating and posting the malicious comments, by virtue of its power as the most used search engine, it can spotlight those comments to the detriment of the victim.

Google has the power to remove the specific page from its search results, so that it can reduce, if not, eliminate the comments. We know this because Google has acquiesced to the demands of the Chinese government and is now acting as a de facto censor for the Communist government.

While I’ve not been in the position of the victim, I have been in the position of the publisher in my role as the owner of NikonLinks, hosting some legacy websites, which were taken on by the original owner and founder of NikonLinks.

Shortly after I took over NikonLinks, I received a call out of the blue from a woman in New York asking if I could remove a page from one of the legacy sites I was hosting. It seems the original writer, who is likely long deceased, had a beef with the woman about a transaction and felt that the woman had not fulfilled her obligations in delivering the merchandise as specified.

Google had picked up the page and of course, whenever someone did a search of the woman’s name, the complaint page came up high in the Google search results; enough so that the woman felt compelled to contact me, as it appeared to have affected her directly (due diligence by others, job prospects – I’m not quite sure).

I had no interest either way so I removed the page and never thought about it until now when the National Post article jarred my memory. Did I do the right thing in removing the complaint page? The details are one sided from the complainant’s perspective without any opportunity to rebut from the woman, but what if the complaint is bonafide? Did I unwittingly remove from the record something that people should know about the ethics of the woman? Then again, what if the complaint is exaggerated, written and posted in the heat of the moment. Too often, when posting a complaint, we describe all the actions that put us in a good light and the alleged offender in a bad light, lacking the objectivity needed for a fair assessment of the dispute.

An interesting and somewhat philosophical debate, but based on the National Post article, it certainly appears that Google is all corporate these days and is not using the great power it has accumulated with a sense of responsibility, even if it is acting within the law. However, from Google’s perspective, this is probably another in a long list of requests made to it from people feeling the heat of the Google search results. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff and where do you draw the line for altering what your flagship product does so well?

April 16, 2009 - I "think" this website is clean of whatever bug ailed it last week, but I cannot be fully certain of it, given another report that this site is allegedly a source of virii or malware.

I've done the Google malware checks and nothing comes up. I've scanned my computers with no results indicating any infection of any files. I've looked at the source code and see nothing amiss. I even installed one of the free anti-virus apps on my old Sony notebook (after removing my old standby, Kaspersky) to browse the site, because the free apps have been the ones that have flagged the website for other users. In short, if the site is still a problem, I'm out of ideas to fix it as it currently exists today.

Thus, I will think about and then try to come up with an alternative by the end of the weekend. Thanks for your patience.

From Tuesday's National Post newspaper, comes a story about a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare with an expatriate Canadian living in New York as the victim and Google as the faceless entity in the castle subjecting the person to a horrible trial (Kafka, castle, trial...get it, well maybe not.)

I'll have some more to say about this story with a personal experience as a web publisher tomorrow.

April 15, 2009 - I came across another irksome annoyance working with the Mac yesterday. Although I have little to no skills working with publishing software, I was given a project to put together a newsletter. It sometimes is the case that based on the personal interests I have, at various imes, I have been mistaken for being a pro photographer, a software engineer, and/or IT support, which I assure you have nothing to do with my real job. However, it does seem to mean that when someone has a technical issue, they often think, call or give it to Edwin.

Anyway, in thinking about how I was going to put together a newsletter targeted to a particular industry that falls under my employer's regulation, I first thought of Adobe InDesign as the natural app to do something that should be pretty straightforward. In seeing the tools, I saw mention of layers and I'm thinking, hey, if InDesign supports layers, then this ought to rock and let me add in various graphics and text boxes and move them around just like I would with composite images in Photoshop.

There's just one little problem: I don't have a freakin' clue how to use InDesign and the only way I could learn would be to read a book. Given my recent lament about not having enough time to read books that I want to read, what do you think are the chances that I would have the time to read a book that I don't want to read? Right!

Plus, using InDesign means having to use my own computer and not being able to pass on the editorial and production project to someone else down the road. Creating a newsletter in Word would be the best option for future flexibility.

I started out using a newsletter template that came with Mac Word (I figure that I could save the finished product as a Word 97-2003 for compatibility with work, which is a few years behind the times for using the latest version of Word). As I became familiarized with the design options available in Mac Word, I soon put together what I thought was a pretty decent looking newsletter, complete with finished articles.

The newsletter is actually meant to distributed electronically as a PDF to save on production costs and make it more flexible by inserting hyperlinks and email address links. However, we still want to be able to print in-house using our color laser printers on 11x17 tabloid sized paper. With a simple four-page design, we could print all four letter-sized pages on a single sheet of 11x17 and then fold it half to create an instant letter-sized newsletter (since I designed the newsletter as single pages in Word, I have to composite the PDFs in Photoshop in order to create a two-page spread for printing on the 11x17 paper - I'm sure there has to be a simpler way of doing this, but I'll work on that later on.)

After completing the design and sample first issue, I used Mac Word's "Save as" to create the PDF. It looked good to go, but as I reviewed the PDF, I ran the mouse over all the hyperlinks and found that non of the HTML links worked. Only the email address links came through the PDF process intact. Say what?

Doing it again resolved nothing and then using Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 to create a PDF from file gave me a message that my Mac Word docx is either not recognized or became corrupted. Say what, redux!

Doing some research I discover that this is yet another little pissing match between Microsoft and Adobe for compatibility with Mac applications. There are no issues doing the same thing in the PC versions of Word and the Adobe applications, but for whatever reason, there is with the Mac.

This is related to the issue I had before (still have) with trying to copy and past Mac Word content into Adobe Dreamweaver. Works great on the PC and I even get my little smiley face character (to denote a joke or humour) kept intact through the copy and paste process. With the Mac, I have to use an intermediary TextEdit app that comes installed on the Mac and appears to be the equivalent of Microsoft's WordPad that comes installed with Windows. Unfortunately, the smiley graphic gets lost in translation through two copy and paste edits.

Fortunately, there is a workaround to my missing hyperlinks, which is to copy the MacWord file to my PC, which has Office 2007 installed and then PDF it, which works as it should.

Now, some of you may helpfully suggest alternative applications, but in the business and government world that I work in, Word is king and PDF is highly leverage for the electronic dissemination of the documents that we produce with Word. And, as mentioned earlier, there will hopefully be a time when I can handover the project to someone else, which means it's gotta be seamless with the apps that we use at work.

April 14, 2009 - If you have an interest in following photography rumours then no doubt that you heard about the new Nikon D5000 and saw the then alleged photos with its bottom-mounted articulating LCD screen. Even the release date was spot on by the rumours, which is surprising given generally how inaccurate rumours are.

Anyway, the D5000 is an interesting beast in name only, as it's an oddball that seems more in line with a high end Coolpix model than an SLR. I mean really now, is there something wrong with using D75 or D85 to denote its place in the Nikon SLR hierarchy? But who knows, maybe when the D60 stock runs out, the D5000 will slot in between the D40 and the D90.

Also release today and in a continuing sign that Nikon is fully supporting the DX format is a new wide-angle zoom lens offering 10-24mm coverage (15-36mm FX equivalent). This certainly makes the 12-24 lens seem like the odd lens out now given the very nice 2mm additional wide angle coverage with no loss of mm at the long end and only a half-stop loss in aperture speed.

DPReview is already speculating that the Nikon 10-24 lens may share some DNA with the Tamron 10-24 lens. Great, another piece of fodder for the conspiracy theories that some of Nikon's cheaper consumer lenses are made by third-party manufacturers. Tokina has also figured in some rumours for higher end Nikkors. However, there's never been anything definitive to point to any partnership between Nikon and Tamron (or Tokina), unlike the known partnerships between Tokina and Pentax and Tamron and Sony, for which lenses are quite obvious that they're rebadged Tamron or Tokina lenses.

These should be nice additions to Nikon's lineup, but you have to figure that there's gotta be at least one more consumer SLR to replace the now aged D40. For those of us desiring to live in a more upscale neighborhood, we're still waiting for the other shoe to drop on the D700X (or D800 or D900), the smaller and hopefully much cheaper companion to the D3X.

April 13, 2009 - As everyone knows, time is considered a commodity and as is so often griped about, is in very limited supply.

Being a humble and humbly compensated government bureaucrat, I'm enjoying an extra day off this Easter Monday, to go with the satutory holiday of Good Friday. It's a rare opportunity to take some time for myself and catch up on some reading. In one good two-hour session, I was able to read the latest Lenswork and National Geographic magazines. I hope to really get into Joe McNally's latest book, beyond the introductory chapters and eventually, some other books bought a while ago, but that I have yet to tackle.

On top of all the reading that I have so little time for, are the movies I want to watch and the guitar chords that I want to learn.

I have an itch at the moment, a spending itch to buy something, almost anything in order to give an opiate-like desire some relief. In years past, I would have no problem finding any number of sundry items, be it computer or audio hardware, or photographic gear; however, this year, I'm don't find myself in need of anything that I just have to have.

This is not to say that there are no desires, too many to list, but in terms of me actually parting with money, not a whole lot. I think I've gotten past the whole economic turmoil thing and I feel ready to do my consumer duty to spend some money, but not for the sake of just spending though.

A few Canon accessories will likely be it in the short term, such as a 1.4x TC and remote cable release, but there's really nothing major that I need. The desire for a D700 has been severely blunted with the arrival of the Canon 5D2 and will be for as long as I'm able to use this fine camera. For a little while, I wondered if maybe I should buy a Canon 40D, a camera that I was quite impressed with last year (image quality wise, if less so about the Canon ergonomics), but then I realized that I already have a camera as good as the 40D, if not a bit better, in the D300. Silly rabbit!

Audio-wise, the new Sennheiser HD800 are going to be the new statement headphones and for $1500, they had better be. That's almost 3x as much as my HD650 cans (2x after adding a custom cable for the HD650). I would also have to add in about another $1500 for a headphone amp upgrade to do justice to the HD800 if I were to actually to buy a pair. However, I'm quite satisfied with the HD650 driven by HeadRoom's Micro Amp.

We could definitely use some new furniture (along with a big screen TV), but my kids are experts at destroying anything that's nice within moments of contact. While the older kids are moving out of the search and destroy phase, my littlest guy is only entering into that phase and it will be a few more years before we can risk buying nice furniture. We still need a bigger house too.

Car wise, I finally got my long-desired SUV (actually, a crossover rather than real, hard trail driving vehicle like a Jeep or other truck-based platform) at the beginning of the year. Not new and probably a few more miles on it than we would prefer, but still in fine condition and it's refreshing having a vehicle that actually has some balls to it when passing. The first little while driving it required a bit of conditioning to not gun the pedal like I would the Mazda MPV, because there are a lot more ponies running under the hood. The CVT transmission is also an interesting experience with no shifting or jerking and no hearing the engine rev up and down as the gears change. Just a smooth ride with the engine providing an optimum output of power to match the amount of gas pressed. The old Mazda MPV is looking a little tired these days and while I'd love to replace it as well with maybe a Toyota Highlander or Honda Pilot, again, we need a bigger house more.

Maybe all this is just some sober reflection after staying up late the other night to review all my receipts from 2008 in preparation for my tax return. There were several big ticket purchases made last year (MacBook, D300, 14-24 and 24-70 lenses, two Drobos and more hard drives then I have fingers) and while I did sell some old gear to help finance the new, I still spent a lot more than I had expected.

April 10, 2009 - In my reading travels this week, there seems to have been a few more references to Apple and Mac than I usually encounter.

First, I'm cruising through the online Rangefinder magazine for Nikon-related links for, well, NikonLinks. Most of the time I skim through all the articles looking for some mention of the profiled photographer's gear and as soon as I read "Nikon" in goes the link. One of the few regular sections of the magazine that I actually stop and read fully is John Rettie's column on equipment reviews, because I like his style of reviewing and writing.

Rettie is comfortable with both Canon and Nikon (having used both systems regularly) and is a Mac user. His latest review in the April 2009 edition is of Lenovo's beastly W700 laptop, which runs the Windows OS - laptop is a misnomer for this notebook, because of its size, weight and all the features it offers, such as the optional slide out second screen, built-in Huey screen calibrator, and built-in Wacom tablet. It's also very costly, coming out around USD $6,000 if you pimp it to the max.

Rettie reviewing a PC notebook is of no concern or surprise, since as a professional reviewer (also working professional photographer) he's going to use any number of gear from all makes and brands. What gave me a chuckle though was a comment where he described the Windows Vista OS as being clumsy compared to Apple OS X.

Now, I do admit to having sipped...okay, I've taken good draw of the Apple Kool-aid...and I do like what the Mac offers for just, well, working as you would mostly expect and want a computer to work, but it ain't perfect, like some Macheads would have you believe. And, Rettie's description of clumsy is aprospos for some of the things that continue to irk me about the Mac OS compared to Windows.

Things like the file and folder strucure, which seem less useful and flexible than using Windows Explorer. Or, the ability to copy and paste file names to the clipboard when I'm going to insert a reader's photo while editing my home page in Dreamweaver - this comes in handy for copying the photographer's name and title and then being able to paste in this information on the webpage after I've inserted the photo.

Photoshop's 32-character limit for the Mac continues to frustrate when no such limitation exists in the Windows version when I create web galleries. And, damned it all, the mouse action still annoys me although I no longer have repetitive stress in my right hand, or at least, not as bad as it used to be when I first started using the MacBook.

The second article that I came across is Colby Cosh's column in the National Post newspaper. Cosh used to dismiss Mac users as essentially a bunch of Kool-aid drinking cultists; however, he's changing his tune now that he's had his first taste of Mac software with his recent purchase of the iPod Touch. As Cosh writes, we should not make light of the history of where "drinking Kool-aid" came from. I remember as a kid, seeing a photo of the Jonestown mass suicide. It's a testament to the power of photography that after so many years, I could still recollect the photo and the key elements of seeing dead people surrounding a metal tub of the poison.

Cosh even mentions how his Touch is pretty the much the first device he's ever had that presented no problems in connecting to a wireless network. That made me think back to the struggles of trying to get Windows 2000 to play nicely with my wireless network. I never did get it to work and Windows 2000 makes Windows XP and Vista seem utterly Mac-like for their ease in getting the wi-fi to work.

Third and last article is Mike Johnston's (the TOP) recent hagiographic post about the 24-inch iMac. Now this one is of interest, because I'm struggling now with wondering if this particular Mac should find its way into my office instead of the Mac Pro.

Obviously, the Mac Pro is what I "want" to buy, but you know, blowing $5k or more is quite sobering, especially when it has no revenue generating use. I don't do weddings anymore, so it's hard to justify that kind of coin for a computer that really just caters to my ego, and, I can't forget that it wasn't too long ago when I already spent that kind of money on my desktop PC.

Another thing that concerns me is performance. The iMac tops out with a 3.06 GHz Core2Duo processor, which should be a nice upgrade from the 2.4 GHz C2D processor in the MacBook, but will it be enough for the kind of money needed to buy that particular iMac?

I remember in the time before I bought the MacBook, I was reading as many user comments as I could find and one comment that stuck in my head was by a MacBook Pro user. This user's MBP also has the 2.4 GHz processor and he stated that it's as fast as he needs for photo editing and he waits for nothing even when having multiple apps open.

After some months of using the 2.4 GHz MacBook, I'm thinking the user is on crack if he considers the 2.4 GHz processor to be fast and powerful enough. To be fair though, I'm writing from the perspective of trying to edit Canon 5D2 files via Lightroom and 16-bit, multi hundred MB, layered files in Photoshop, for which I see that stupid, spinning beachball far too many times than I care.

I also find the MacBook to slow down when I'm doing some specific edits in Dreamweaver. Whenever I edit the photo galleries, which are somewhat buried in subfolders, the MacBook slows to a crawl, whereas no such problem occurs when doing the same edits in Windows (same MacBook and same CS3 suite of applications, but obviously the Windows version).

Thus, while I have come around to liking what the iMac concept offers, I'm not entirely sold that it will have the muscle under the hood. When I pop the hood, I want to see a hybrid of Clydesdales (for power) and thoroughbreds (for speed) providing the horsepower and not a bunch of little pygmy ponies.

But, I think I may be overanalyzing things here and expecting the iMac to do more than what originally made it compelling enough to consider, which is as a quiet, everyday computer that will occasionally do some light photo editing, rather than expecting it to be a real photo editing machine that will also do everything else I use a computer for.

April 9, 2009 - After a day of quiet, another report of this website being flagged as infected by another anti-virus application. Looking at the source code from the web host, I came across this line of code:

First thing that sprang to mind, ah geez, I really have been hacked by some dastardly bastards from some far away land, but honestly, I don't know. I don't enough about iFrames and whether this is something legit from the web host to gather usage stats on my site, or if this is really a hack. I do note though that my web host uses "Webalizer" and not "Webaliser."

I uploaded a clean index file and did some other security measures, so we'll see what happens. If you keep getting flags from your anti-virus software about this website, please let me know.

April 7, 2009 - Thanks to everyone that responded to yesterday's post. I'm going to take a wait and see stance for a couple of days and see if anyone else sends me a note about possible malware infection of the website.

I suspect that the issue, if valid, is related to the Chitika ad posted on the left side. I'll be looking further into those ads and making sure that I'm not using vulnerable graphical ads that may have slipped through Chitika's filters.

Lastly, I realized that I did not make myself very clear with a sentence in my last post:

i.e. the numbers like 198.168.1.1

When I used the sample IP address noted above, I meant this as an example of what an IP address is (for people who may not know). I did not mean to imply that the above set of numbers is CameraHobby's actual IP address.

The sample IP address used is of course the default IP address for Linksys routers, which is the router I use at home. It just happened to be an easy and convenient IP address to remember when I was typing out yesterday's post.

So, thanks to everyone that wrote in to clarify this point. I'll try and be more precise in what I describe 8^)

Navigon 5100 GPS
I’ve had a Navigon 5100 GPS unit for a little while now, but have hardly used it for its intended purpose, which is to help me find my way around my own city.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really get out much these days. Work and home life don’t leave much time for other pursuits. Only during hockey season will I have a need to regularly venture out of my suburb of Burnaby and into Vancouver, Richmond and New Westminster. Occasionally, I may drive out to Coquitlam and Port Moody.

To find my way to the other hockey arenas, my MO has been to do a Google Map search and then print it off so that I can bring it with me in the car. Since most of the arenas are near major streets, it’s not too hard to navigate using just the printout of the map.

However, last weekend, my son had his year-end team party in another suburb of Vancouver, Surrey, which I have no clue whatsoever in finding my way around. A perfect opportunity to see how good the Navigon GPS is. To provide some reference and a belt to go with the suspenders, I still printed off a Google Map and directions to get to the party location from my house.

Incidentally, for local readers, the party venue is Sports Starz on 84th Ave and I have to say that when I walked in, my first thought is, wow, this is the kind of place pre-teens dream about. A huge electric car racetrack, arcade games, pool table, air hockey, and three batting cages to boot. You pay the fee for the team party and everything is free access, meaning no coins of tokens to purchase to play any of the games, which is unlike some other chintzy kids places that charge extra for such things even after paying a fee to get in.

As we pulled out of the driveway to get going, the Navigon told me to turn left, but the Google Map told me to turn right. Since the general direction of where we needed to go was right, I turned right and decided to use the Google Map directions. I ignored the smooth female voice advising me to make a u-turn if possible.

After a couple of miles of travelling and a few ignored directions, the Navigon finally computed a new route to suit my direction of travel and finally synced with the Google Map directions. The Google Map directions had me drive into New Westminster to cross the Patullo Bridge into Surrey. This would get me onto the King George Highway, which I would follow until I got to 84th Ave.

As I drove into New Westminster to get to the Patullo Bridge, the Navigon advised me to turn right a few times, whereas the Google Map had me following Columbia St. until I got to the ramp to get onto the bridge. I kept with the Google Map directions, because it seemed more direct to get onto the bridge, or it would have been if I had not missed the ramp, which had no signs indicating that it was indeed the ramp for the bridge. The Navigon was silent and did not advise me to “bear right” when I should have.

After realizing I had missed the ramp for the bridge, I drove on Columbia St. for a short distance and then the Navigon finally chimed in and started with new directions to get me back onto the bridge. I followed the directions and here, finally, the Navigon did its thing in getting me back on the right path. After crossing the bridge and getting onto King George Highway, it was easy driving to Sports Starz.

After the gaming party, the team headed back to Burnaby to a local pizza place to gorge on pizza. I turned on the Navigon again and I noted that it was advising me to travel back the same way as I got to Surrey. However, I decided to follow some of the other parents who took a different route back into Burnaby, using the Queensborough Bridge. I was very thankful that it was a Sunday with moderate traffic on the roads, as it allowed me to keep up with the mini convoy of hockey parents (with a few yellow lights along the way 8^)

As with the trip into Surrey, after a couple of miles of ignoring its advice, the Navigon finally recomputed the route and gave me the correct directions to head to our destination.

Navigon 5100 Basics
The Navigon I have is now a small unit, whereas a year or so ago, it would have been average in size. Nowadays, most units offer 4.3 inch screens and some higher end models offer voice command to avoid having to enter in an address.

The Navigon comes with a windshield attachment arm that the unit is mounted to. It has an internal battery, which can be charged with an included car power adapter. A thin wire antennae comes with the Navigon. This antennae has a small suction cup, which I take is meant to tuck the antennae away along the bottom of the windshield. I find this antennae to be quite annoying as it always gets into a tangled mess and when I use the GPS, I just let the antennae dangle down the passenger side of the car’s centre console.

It takes a few seconds of holding down the power button before the Navigon will turn on (same with turning if off). After powering on, it takes another couple of minutes to acquire the satellite signal.

Before I mount the Navigon to its windshield arm, I’ll enter in the new destination address, as it’s easier than when mounted. You can enter the data by the address number first, then the street and then the city, or by city then street and then the street address. I found it much more straightforward to start with the city and then entering the street address.

Once programmed and the satellite signal is locked in, you hit an onscreen “Start Navigation” button to start rolling on down the highway (with some Bachman Turner Overdrive blasting through the stereo 8^)

Usage
In the vehicle I drive the most, the Navigon would be situated almost three feet away from where my head is. That does not make for a useful view on the small three-inch screen. Contrary to what I though about using a GPS, I hardly looked at it while I was driving and following its instructions. For me, the real benefit and key to a GPS unit is actually the voice telling you where to turn.

This shot, taken with a 17mm lens (full frame) provides a close approximation of my field of view when driving and as you can see (or not) the GPS is quite small sitting so far away

This is rather ironic since the big reason why I bought this particular GPS unit is that it offers a 3D style view of complex roadways and intersections instead of the glorified street map view. I read about this feature on Terry White’s blog, where he reviewed a similar Navigon GPS unit. I thought the 3D view was pretty cool and went for a Navigon unit instead of one of the better known GPS brands such as from Garmin or TomTom. Now, here I am talking about how I don’t even look at the screen when using the GPS.

Incidentally, the 3D view only comes on when the Navigon decides that the road you’re on is complex enough to warrant it (maybe the Los Angeles freeway system warrants this), otherwise, you get the standard 2D view. In my limited use of the Navigon in Vancouver and area, I’ve never seen the 3D view come up – of course it might help if I actually looked at it more

Perhaps, if the GPS was not mounted so far away from my eyes, I might glance at it more, but from this experience, I’m not inclined to want to spend more dollars buying another GPS with a larger screen. However, I would be interested in a GPS that offered better and more efficient directions ;^)

Conclusion
I’m rather mixed with my assessment of the Navigon GPS. It seems to only know the major streets in a city when computing a route and will ensure that you take the long way around to getting to a destination. That’s not very efficient and is a waste of time and money in gas.

On the other hand, when you’re in a jam and stuck about where you are and how to get back on the right route, it can come through and keep you smelling like roses. I should also note that it’s one thing to use a GPS in your own city where you have some passing familiarity with major routes and streets, but a whole ‘nother thing to be in a strange city with nary a clue about how to get around. In which case you would never know if you were taking the longer way around.

I'm going by memory at this point, but I believe I bought the Navigon 5100 for about CAN $250, on sale at Future Shop.

April 6, 2009 - A housekeeping item to clear out: I received a few readers' messages indicating that this website may be infected with malware. One note came about from an anti-virus software scan and two others came in with Google Safe Browsing warnings.

Obviously, I'm not pleased at all to think that my website has been hacked or infected. I made sure that there was nothing from my end, by doing a virus scan of the MacBook, which indicated a clean system.

There is some JavaScript on the website, but those are related to the B&H, Google and Chitika ads, none of which have been problems in the past. There's a text link ad and then a Flash ad, and that's pretty much it for anything exotic on this site. Since I have the same types of ads on NikonLinks, with no indications of problems there, I don't think the ads are the cause.

That would leave the web host company as a possible culprit, but since NikonLinks also resides on the same host's server in the same folder structure as CameraHobby, it does not seem like this is the right course to pursue too.

One of the other things about this problem that confuses me is that one of the reader's messages gave me a link to the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic that flagged this website. The location of the site was an IP address, i.e. the numbers like 198.168.1.1, instead of "http://camerahobby.com."

Just one problem, the IP address does not match the actual IP address of CameraHobby. When I did a Google diagnostic of both the text URL and the IP address for CameraHobby, Google indicated no issues. Thus, I'm at a loss as to why my website would all of sudden trip Google's Safe Browsing flags referencing an incorrect IP address.

If anyone with more experience with web issues can shed some light, I'd greatly appreciate it.

April 1, 2009 - No April Fools Day joke today, just another rant about Nikon.

Nikon recently posted new updates to View NX and promises an upgrade to Capture NX later this month. The updates are posted at various regional Nikon websites and given the Tower of Babel tongues spoken throughout the world, it certainly makes sense for regional websites to have dedicated websites in the local language.

What I don't get is why the English language version of a free application, View NX, should somehow be tagged based on different regions or countries. If I download the application from Nikon Canada's website and install it, but later on, I download an upgrade from Nikon USA, a message will pop up advising me that I have a different regional version installed and to please uninstall the old before installing the new. Despite that the English View NX is the same no matter if I download it from Canada, the USA, the UK, or Japan.

This is stupid and has been around for a coon's age going back to the old Nikon Capture days when assorted pros around the world got screwed if they downloaded an upgrade from a region other than their own. This despite them having legitimately purchased the previous version and being entitled to the upgrade. Pros being who they are, are often impatient to get the latest app as quickly as possible and in this global village era where the whole world is online, it's sometimes faster to download the app from Asia than in North America or Europe.

First, you would think that Nikon could coordinate a software rollout so that all regions post the new version at the same time. I mean, many corporate websites use a content management system that will allow webpages to be updated, but held back from public posting until a specified time. Is it really that hard to send a note to every regional subsidiary and state that the new View NX gets released at 12 am, March 24, so as to ensure everyone around the world has simultaneous access?

Second, why do people have to sign in and start documenting who they are and what Nikon equipment they own and use before being able to download a free app? I may be confusing this with something else I've downloaded from Nikon, but I do remember having to list out my gear and at one point, having to enter in the serial number of my old D100 back in the NikonView 6.x days, before I could download the free app.

There has got to be a better way than to continue regarding the world as if the internet does not exist to allow instant communication and information transfer.

March 31, 2009 - So, yesterday at work, a coworker hands me a printout of an email he received about some new doomsday virus that's purportedly the worse that Microsoft has ever seen, etc., etc. I suggested that the email itself is the virus that's meant to be spread around with the giveaway being a line in the message requesting that it be sent to everyone you know.

However, I also flippantly quipped that I don't have to worry anyway since I use a Mac at home, to which another coworker mocked me for being part of a cult. I replied, indeed, we're all a bunch of vegetarians meditating in front of a portrait of St. Jobs. Then I told them the story of how Jobs, in his younger days at Apple, believed his vegetarian diet would allow him to forgo the daily rituals of bathing...until a senior manager took him for a walk and told him to take a shower, because he was literally stinking up the joint.

Anyway, I digress. After that little lighthearted banter, I realize, egads, I've become one of them, a smug Mac user, arrogantly dismissive of all the thousands of viruses out there in PC land (despite me having anti-virus software on my Mac - belts and suspenders you know).

What's next, that I'll give up my Nikons for some shiny new Canon...er...never mind ;^)

On the topic of Mac use, the only web editing I'm doing these days with the PC is for creating the web galleries in Photoshop, otherwise everything's been Mac the past two weeks. The only reason for round-tripping web gallery creation is because Mac Photoshop has the 32 character limit. Although the Photoshop "Save for web" option has a setting to deselect OS 9 compatibility, it finally dawned on me that this has nothing to do with Photoshop's automated web gallery feature. Thus far, I've not found any technical solution to the 32-character naming issue with Photoshop's web gallery other than using short names, which doesn't work for me.

With the way things are going and with me being less than flush, I know the much desired Mac Pro is a long ways off. Thus, I'm considering an iMac to become my daily use computer and allowing the MacBook to be what it really is, a portable computer for road use. No immediate plans, just thinking out loud.

If I do go this route, I won't be ordering the 8 GB RAM option from Apple, given the ludicrous pricing of $1200 to upgrade from the default 4 GB of RAM.

Finally received my copy of Joe McNally's The Hot Shoe Diaries and can't wait to dig into it. McNally's the man when it comes to using portable light, although David Hobby at Strobist has been awesome for helping educate the masses on the viability of using hot shoe flashes.

March 30, 2009 - After letting it sit for way too long, I finally hooked up the 2 TB Western Digital World Edition NAS. I pulled out an old router to do the bridging between the NAS and the PC desktop (same router as used with the old Buffalo NAS).

I didn't expect anything special for upload speed, but I was blown away...blown away with how awful the actual speed is. The WD NAS is pretty much the worse external drive I've ever used for speed, access and reliability.

I've recommended WD's MyBook and MyPassport external drives to a number of people, but I've always discussed the USB or USB/Firewire versions and never the World Edition NAS, because it's not a model I had any experience with until now. Now that I do, I can readily recommend never using one unless you specifically have a gigabit router and the patience of Job to live with the speed.

To be fair, my old D-Link router is nothing special and maxes out at 100 megabits, but in reading some reviews of the WD NAS, even with a gigabit connection, the speed is still nothing special. I really should be using a gigabit capable router, but here's the issue: for the approximately $150 I would have to spend for that gigabit router, I could buy a dual-drive USB/Firewire 800 external case offering individual, RAID 0, or RAID 1 capabilities.

While I would not have a network attached device, which I admit is desirable, I figure the significant speed increase would be more than worth my while in giving up network convenience. Having a network would mean no more swapping portable drives or flash cards to transfer files from the PC to the Mac; however, this is not a make or break issue.

I figure that instead of spending the $150 on a new router, I'll buy the dual-drive case and take the WD NAS apart to cannibalize the two 1 TB drives for use in the external case.

The WD NAS certainly seems like an attractive and relatively low cost way to add high storage capacity over a network. It can be configured as RAID 1 so that instead of having one massive 2 TB volume, you will only see a mirrored 1 TB drive, which provides security through redundancy.

For a dual-drive configuration, it's about the size you would expect and keeps its footprint small. There's a fan unit at the back that goes on when the drives get warm and although I've heard it at startup, I've not heard it in actual operation. When you do hear it, it's quite loud and grating.

Aside from the RJ-45 network connection and the power socket, there is also a USB port to add additional storage capacity. If this unit were one of the USB 2 and/or FW 400/800 models, I expect that I would be satisfied with its performance given that I've been using a USB 2, 500 GB model for several years now.

I had to stop using the D-Link router, because I was getting too frustrated with the speed and ultimately, with its reliability. Even though I was wired from the NAS to the router to the computer, I kept getting network drop outs.

Wanting to isolate the issue, I tried the MacBook and got new issues involving permissions, so I could not copy files to the NAS from the MacBook and neither could I delete files from the NAS.

Thinking that maybe the D-Link router was a problem, I connected the WD NAS to my primary, wireless Linksys router. Reliability improved even though I was now connected wirelessly to the NAS via the MacBook, but performance still blew. It felt like going back to the dark ages of USB 1 speed, which is unacceptable when we are on the cusp of having the blisteringly fast USB 3 standard arriving soon to a computer near you.

I'm throwing in the towel on this WD NAS, as much as it's become a case of me looking at a gift horse in the mouth (the WD NAS was a Christmas present), and as mentioned earlier, I'm going to remove the drives and use them in another case.

I suppose you get what you pay for. The WD NAS costs around $500, which is cheap in the world of quality NAS boxes that cost a few thousand dollars for superior reliability and speed. Even the old Buffalo NAS that I griped about in the past offered far superior performance using the same old D-Link router.

Some interesting tech gadgets that have caught my attention:

• Tablo from Hantech - in light of the new Wacom Intuous 4 catching some big buzz, here's a much cheaper device that brings the world of pen navigation to your notebook. I'm wondering about the efficacy of using a pen stylus directly on a regular notebook LCD screen though, as opposed to the current glossy screens that have a protective piece of glass in front.
  
  I have visions of the future when my all my kids are old enough to leave Dad's toys alone and not wreck his hi-fi system. When that day comes that I can setup my big hi-fi, I want to setup a computer-based source to playback my music and I'm thinking that a pen style of navigation would be great to access my files in iTunes. Imagine having a source notebook by your side and using a pen instead of a mouse to select your music files.
  
  
• Mediasonic HM2-SU2TV - this is an external hard drive case that doubles as a media centre. Install the hard drive capacity of your choice and then upload the compatible video, audio and photo files to the hard drive. Then connect directly to the TV without the need for a computer and be able to access those multimedia files. HD resolution available, so you don't have to give up visual quality.
  
  With the way my kids tend to destroy toys and scratch up discs, having something like this seems far more safe than letting them have at the original DVDs. This device also has a USB port to allow you to add more storage or use other auxillery devices like a thumb drive.
  
  The only down side that I can think off: having to rip all my DVDs so that I can have my movies available. I remember how long and tedious of a process it was when I ripped all of my audio CDs to AIFF and MP3 format. Although I don't have as many DVDs as CDs, the DVD ripping process takes much longer.

March 28, 2009 - It's back to the future, as I finally gave into TuneUp Utilities 2009's suggestion to turn off almost all visual effects in Windows Vista to speed up the system's performance.

The result is that my desktop system looks just like Windows of a decade ago when Windows 2000 was king before XP supplanted it. It's kinda jarring to see such a bland OS environment again, but subiectively, the 64-bit Vista system is perkier with windows and apps opening and closing quicker than before turning off all the bloated Vista visual effects.

Since the desktop is not one that I'm using everyday, I don't really care anymore if I don't see nicely rounded corners, transparent windows, and drop shadows. The one visual effect that I didn't turn off is for the text, which is worthwhile for making text easier to read on a screen.

Quick and cheap with immediate dividends for performance.

On the topic of improving performance, it seems Intel's new line of solid state drives (X25) provide very meaningful upgrades. I've read of one user replacing his RAID 0 pair of drives for the OS and apps with a different brand of SSD and getting better performance. This is something especially since the user's RAID 0 had Western Digital Raptor drives, the fastest non-enterprise drives available.

I was curious and looked into some pricing, which was a breathtaking experience because the 160 GB Intel X25 goes for CAD $1000 at my local discount shop. The 300 GB VelociRaptor goes for about CAN $350, which even if you configure a RAID 0, is still only $700 for two drives, but then depending on your system, you may need a RAID card, which may negate the savings.

Other users have commented on how good these new SSDs are for use as scratch disks. Windows boot times and Photoshop startup times are significantly reduced, which makes the SSDs quite an intriguing option for the next desktop upgrade.

I was thinking of setting up a RAID 0 for the OS and apps when the time comes for the new desktop, but with the way SSDs are coming along, by the time I'm ready for the upgrade, the SSD route is my likely choice. By then, the pricing should be more reasonable with larger capacities available.

March 27, 2009 - Luminous Landscape posted a brief review of some new inkjet papers. After reading it, my mind wandered off into wondering just how many inkjet papers there are available for photographers to use. There are the main printer brand papers, such as from Epson, HP and Canon (already too many to count here), and then there are all the third-party papers available. Some are leading brands on their own, such as Hahnemuhle, Crane, Moab/Legion, while others are bit more obscure and let’s not forget some store brand papers, such as from Staples (OEM’ed from real paper manufacturers, I’m sure, of which there are only a small handful worldwide).

There’s just too many to keep track of and while I’m certainly curious about how the latest flavours of the month are for quality, my wallet ain’t as flush as it used to be for me to buy a dozen sampler packs or packages of letter sized paper.

I’ve been following the advice of Jeff Schewe from a Luminous Landscape video tutorial, which is to settle on just a few papers and really get to know them inside and out for what they can do with your photographs. At the time, I think Schewe only used two Epson papers, one matte and one RC-based, for the bulk of his printing.

For me, I have more than just two paper types available on my shelf, but long term, I think I’m settling towards three primary papers (with some exceptions based on my supply of certain sized papers):

1. Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl – for everyday printing on a lustre surface. Inexpensive, but nicely thick and no lettering on the back side, which is good for photo books. I would substitute Epson Premium Luster paper if I didn’t have a supply of this paper.
   
   
2. Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk – for quality printing to be given to others or for framing or portfolio display. Very thick, so not the best choice for making photo books. I like Hahnemuhle papers too, but have not tried the equivalent Baryta paper yet and given how pricey it is compared to Gold Fibre Silk, probably not anytime soon.
   
   
3. Moab Entrada 190 Bright/Natural – for matte paper printing. The more I use this paper, the more I like it. I would normally opt for the Natural color, which does not use optical brighteners, but I’m not fussy enough to turn away the Bright version. This is a Goldilocks kind of paper, thick enough to feel good in the hands, but not so thick that it cannot be used in a photo book. In fact, photo book use is the main reason why I like using this double-sided paper. I don’t have any recent experience with the latest matte papers, so cannot think of a good alternative.

Other papers still kicking around:

• Epson Archival Matte – has a new name now, but I can’t recall what it is at the moment. Bought some non-standard size sheets for use in Prat Pampa portfolio books, but no longer into doing this kind of portfolio display with this low cost paper; however, I may consider cutting the sheets into smaller sizes for photo book use.
• Epson Velvet – nice paper, but have not had any use for the remaining 13x19 sheets on my shelf
• Moab Kokopelli – double sided with a lustre finish, bought mainly to cut down into smaller sheets for photo book use – no longer made by Moab, so any supply found is new old stock
• Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 – bought a box of letter-sized sheets to try out. Nice paper, but I don’t have a much use for really thick 8.5x11 paper beyond just sampling and testing purposes (too thick for photo books).
• Epson Premium Luster – have various sizes on the shelf from 8.5x11 to 11.7x16.5 to 13x19 to 17x22. The larger sizes have been used for prints meant for framing from 11x14 to 16x20 sizes. I still have a good supply of the 17x22 250 gsm papers, so it will be a while before I need to think about an alternative for the 16x20 print sizes.
  

A recent news item discussed lower sales of digital cameras in Canada for 2008, which is no surprise given the recession. However, 2008 sales are still higher than in 2007. Interestingly, 4.4 million rolls of film were sold in 2008, which to me still sounds like a lot of film. This is a 44 percent decrease in film sales from 2007 and 2009 sales are projected to be 2.5 million rolls.

Speaking of film, official confirmation that the Leica R9 is now discontinued. This is nothing new, as word leaked out at the beginning of March that Leica sent notice to retailers of the R9’s demise. While the R9 has some fans, many regarded it as already an anachronism when it was introduced due to the advances made by Nikon and Canon in film SLR technology. It seemed to me that using an R9 system was far less about the camera than it was about using the Leica lenses.

Another nail in the coffin of classic cameras, the Pentax 67 II and 645N have also been given the hearse ride to the film graveyard. While the 645N SLR is toast, the lenses may yet see new life if and when Pentax (or rather, Hoya) sees fit to bring out the digital version of the now venerable 645 SLR.

Another sighting of a mockup with rumblings of a 30 MP sensor being employed. Which is all good, but the resolution has steadily increased over the years that Pentax has been displaying this vaporware “concept” product. Back in the days of the first iteration, the resolution was slated to be 18 MP, this when 35mm format SLRs could only boast of circa 12 MP. Now that we’ve hit 24 MP in 35mm format SLRs, Pentax is forced to up the ante on resolution. Me thinks, two years later, the digital 645 will still be discussed as “coming and imminent” and the promised resolution will reach 39 MP, which is now already passé thanks to the new 60 MP backs being deployed.

On the topic of Pentax and the demise of the beastly 67 II, it has reminded me that I have such a beast languishing in my cabinet alongside my nearly forgotten Bronisaur 6x6 system.

The old P67 is often called a 35mm SLR on steroids, but is it really compared to some larger 35mm SLRs?

Truly, I have meant to use and review such beast, but I never seem able to rouse myself suitably to lug it out into the field where that gloriously sized 6x7 real estate would be put to good use. I even have a supply of film, B&W and chrome, still residing in my fridge waiting for that eventful time when I will cast aside my infatuation with things digital and return to witnessing the impact of medium sized chromes on a light box.

My meagre, but yet unused supply of film for 35mm and 120 format

Fact is, a few years back, I really thought that I would finally give into my still longstanding desire to own a Nikon CoolScan 9000 and do all my serious photography with my Bronica SQ-Ai, and for as long as I could borrow it for, the Pentax 67 II. Yes, the 67 II is not mine and is in fact borrowed from a benevolent and generous friend, who may have forgotten that he’s loaned it me. One can hope, but probably not

The time to get a still new CoolScan 9000 may also not be long for rumours have floated that Nikon has stopped producing them, which may account for the regular lamentations of no stock at even hallowed venues, such as B&H Photo.

The cherished status of these medium format capable scanners sees CoolScan 8000 units sell on eBay for as much as what new CS9000 units go for (when actually in stock). Interestingly, Vistek, Canada’s B&H wannabe, seems have had stock for as long as I’ve had an interest in the CS9000, but Vistek lists the CS9000 at a sobering CAD $3000. Pre financial crisis and currency pressure, the price had been as low as CAD $2500. Being back up to $3000 takes us back to when the CS9000 was first introduced, which leaves a foul aftertaste in the mouth of my now frugal self.

Having said that, even at $3000, the CS9000 is still beer budget compared to the champagne wishes and caviar dreams (or perhaps an arm and a leg and your first born) demanded by Hasselblad for its much heralded scanners (formerly Imacon). Alas, I cannot even afford a good beer these days and I may ultimately have to make due with an almost beer product in an Epson V700 or V750 flatbed scanner should I decide that film still has some currency with me.

Desiring a CS900 is one of those right brain desires, but when I analyze it objectively with the left brain, I do not see myself giving up the speed and convenience of digital, especially since I have a 21 MP SLR available. I can moan and gripe that the larger resolution files tax my computer systems, but at least I can take a photo and begin to edit immediately, even out in the field.

In thinking about the whole film versus digital thing again, I wondered if maybe there’s been some false economy with the digital age being cheaper than film due to no more film and processing costs, never mind the time and other cost factor of getting to and from the lab and then sorting all those slides or prints afterwards.

Did I need anymore film camera than what the Nikon F100 offered me? No, although a F6 would certainly be dandy and I would consider it a wonderful upgrade, but the F6’s price douses any such spark. If film were still king, the F100 would have likely been replaced in 2007 or 2008, which would have been a solid 8 years of life for a camera that cost CAD $2100 back in 2000. In less than eight years, we’ve had three generations of Nikon’s prosumer class D-SLR:
1. The D100 at CAD $3300 at introduction circa 2003
2. The D200 at CAD $2100 at introduction circa 2005
3. The D300 at CAD $1800 at introduction circa 2007

I suspect that before the eight-year period is out, we will have the D400 introduced and priced in the $1800 range. Pre recession, I would have guessed a price of $1500.

So, eight years at $2100 or eight years at $9000. The $7000 difference would buy almost 500 rolls of slide film for some 17,000 exposures (more for cheaper color negative films).

17,000 sounds like a lot, but over eight years, that’s only about 2100 exposures per year, which is nothing in the digital age where a person could shoot that in a good weekend effort (I hit that in one day at my peak as a digital wedding photographer). Using my own less than prolific standards, I suspect that to shoot the equivalent amount of film would have cost me over $20,000 over my sample eight year period.

To be fair, there are other costs associated with digital, such as memory cards, computers, external hard drives and RAIDs, but other than the memory cards, most of those costs would still exist with film, because I would have been scanning and working with those images on the computer, just as I do with digital files.

While film technology continues to be improved upon, could we really have expected film to reach the dizzying heights and quality offered by cameras such as the Nikon D700 and Canon 5D2 offering ISO 3200 quality that no film user could even dream of?

Nostalgia can offer a romantically imbued tinge to one’s glasses, but I always feel like one of the characters in the Diet Pepsi commercials when my mind drifts to what seemed like simpler times. These commercials have a thirtysomething fellow daydreaming back to his youth, which initially seems fun only to be jarred awake by a rude memory and makes him appreciate living in the current times. I love these commercials, because they really hit too close to home with my ‘80s upbringing.

It seems like a lifetime ago when I was a teenager gloating at the existentialist angst depicted in shows like the Wonder Years and thirtysomething. Now, I’m the thirtysomething guy with all that angst as I deal with a wife, kids and trying to forge something of a career.

March 23, 2009 - Friday to Sunday was spent completing a project for my son's hockey team (I know I promised not to mention hockey for at least a week; I lied). I burned copies of all the photo files I took since last October to the beginning of March on DVD-R discs. I created some slideshows using those photo files and created video DVDs with logos etched via the Lightscribe process. I printed 5x7 sized versions of the posters I created for the boys for the DVDs' protective covers and finally, I printed the 12x18 sized posters on 13x19 inch paper.

When the big sheets were being printed, I noticed something about some of them that was not as apparent to me when I was creating the posters. Some of the posters seem to have more visual impact. Looking closer I realized that those posters had white or near white backgrounds surrounding the player's heads. As a reminder, here's a sample of a poster:

The background I'm talking about is the blue and yellow surrounding the top of Patrick's helmet. What I should have done is to select that background and Curved it up to near blowout, so that the head appears to be floating in white space. The other photos had headshots where the background was the ice surface, so it was already near blowout. To me, having the lighter background makes for a better looking transition using the Gradient tool.

When creating the posters, I was kicking myself for being sloppy with some of my head shots. At a couple of practices near the end of the season, I grabbed the boys as they came onto the ice so I could take the tight head shots I wanted for the poster. Unfortunately, I trusted the camera's auto focus too much and got a few beautifully focused shots of the helmet cages in front of the face. Using f4 or f5.6 did not give me enough depth of field necessary to get the face crisp.

Thankfully, for some of the games, during the breaks in between periods and when I could catch the players doing line changes, I took enough tight-in shots to give me other files to work with. Those photos required some enlarging to fit my 10-inch height for the posters. Some came out looking pretty good, but others are pushing my limits for acceptable quality. Some of the shots were taken with the D300, which made me nervous for how good a mere 12 MP would offer me compared to 21 MP from the 5D2.

On the topic of printing, I know that some photographers like to setup a big print job and then use a RIP or RIP-like app, such as Qimage, to run the print job while they do other things, or even go to sleep, as they setup the job to run overnight.

If the prints are left alone for only a few hours, it's probably fine, but for inkjet prints, I would not want to let them sit one on top of the other for extended periods. Inkjet prints outgas and depending on your printer and the ambient environment you print in, the outgassing could last from 24-hours to several days.

Most of you have probably heard of or read the tip about placing a clean piece of paper in between prints if stacking them. If any of you have actually done this, you will notice that after a day, the clean piece of paper is no longer crisply flat, but slightly wavy. This is due to the paper absorbing the gas and moisture from the print.

Outgassing is why you always want to give the prints at least 24 hours to dry before sleeving or framing. If not fully dry, the outgas can fog up the glass in the frame or the protective sleeve.

While I'm sure most of you know that if it's too good to be true, it usually is, I should point out that not all Google ads seen in the right column of this website can be taken at face value.

In the good old days when our primary source of new information were the photographic magazines, a few were known to accept ads from every unscrupulous vendor that wanted to pay their way into the magazines.

I'm sure most have heard of the Brooklyn-based vendors whose addresses lead to nowhere and are known to advertise too good to be true prices on desirable cameras. You call them up and they try and sell you a host of unwanted accessories and warranties at inflated prices. Or, they've stripped the camera from all the included accessories and sell those separately, also at inflated prices.

By the time everything is said and done, you'll likely pay a lot more than what reputable stores like B&H Photo would charge. Trying to cancel an order after they've already got your credit card number can be a futile chase to nowhere.

In the electronic age, those vendors are advertising with Google and unfortunately, the sleazy ads will make their way onto my website through the Google banner ads.

I cannot control which ads Google places in the banners, because Google uses keywords within my own text to filter and display contextual ads. Thus, at this time, all I can do is advise, buyer beware.

I wonder if ultimately, Google wil face mounting pressure from all the web publishers using their AdSense service and conduct some due diligence on their advertisers. I'm sure that it was due to mounting readers' pressure that compelled PopPhoto to preface the big ad section at the back of the magazine with some sort of checkrated assurance and warning. Buy from a checkrated vendor and you're less likely to encounter problems with your order; buy from some other vendor and you're on your own to face the wolves.

What would it take for Google to take notice long enough to stop taking over the world and pay attention to the quality of its advertisers? A huge class action lawsuit maybe? One by consumers that got ripped off by the vendors advertising through the AdSense service? I don't know, just thinking out loud.

With that said, there's a big reason why I'm using the B&H Photo affiliate program, because this store really is the best and whether you use my link or another, you cannot go wrong with B&H.

March 22, 2009 - Reader's comment:

I have a dual boot iMac - no Parallels or VMware Fusion. No problems with Windows. I use Windows XP Service Pack 3. Yes, the dual boot is not ideal but for about 1 1/2 years I have had no problems with Windows or Leopard. No Windows Vista - I will not use it!

Windows XP seems to run better than on a PC.

My iMac is the Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz with 2.5 GB RAM. Works great on everything!

Yep, I've been avoiding using VMWare the last week. I suppose I should really give Mac another shot at doing the website updates and getting a better FTP client app.

I can’t recall where I came across it, but I keep thinking it was at Scott Kelby’s blog and in reference to Jay Maisel, one of the most highly regarded photographers in the USA.

It has to do with that old hoary chestnut that it’s the photographer and not the gear that takes the photo. The reference had something to with giving Maisel a point and shoot digicam while an amateur used a top-notch SLR kit and seeing who would come back with the better images. Of course, we would expect Maisel to come back and wipe the floor with the amateur.

You could substitute Maisel with any number of fine editorial/generalist photographers and expect the same result, e.g. Joe McNally, Michael Yamashita, etc.

This reminds me a story involving Arthur Morris, probably the best bird photographer in the USA. Allegedly, another photographer (an amateur, I assume) was suggesting that Morris was only as good as he is because of all high-priced Canon SLRs and big glass he uses. Morris challenged him to a shoot off and offered to swap gear and see who would come back with the better photos. Apparently, the challenge went unanswered.

While it makes for a good story, let’s get some perspective back, because there is a reason why Morris uses the best Canon cameras and lenses for his photographer. Have you ever seen the guy in his element? Morris crawls in the muck to get into position for taking his bird photographs. Can you imagine a Canon 5D surviving the conditions that Morris works in? Incidentally, I've seen photos of Tim Fitzharris wading chest high in a lake or river, as he photographed his wildlife subjects. If my memory is correct, Fitzharris was in Africa and the river had crocs in it! (possibly it was in Florida, in which case, instead of crocs, it was alligators that presented the danger - I just seem to remember that there was an element of risk and danger involving big-teethed reptiles)

The other obvious reason for using the most expensive lenses in Canon’s arsenal is the subject matter itself. Birds are skittish and don’t like being intruded upon, which requires a healthy distance and/or the use of blinds. Many birds are also tiny, all of which necessitates the use of big, heavy and fast telephoto lenses with the 600mm f4 long the champion. However, Canon’s new 800mm f5.6 IS lens is likely to be the new king for bird photographers.

Morris has written of experimenting with double teleconverters attached to his already long super telephoto lenses. That’s some pretty massive magnification and I can imagine it being quite a challenge in dampening vibration.

Now, with that context out of the way, what do you really think Morris would be able to do with a little digicam? He could probably still wipe the floor with most people if he used one of the new crop of super zoom digicams, but a regular old digicam of the 38-140mm variety for his primary subject matter, well, let’s just say I have my doubts.

Same goes (mostly) for Moose Peterson. Moose made his name with wildlife, whether it be huge bison, tiny chipmunks, or like Morris, birds. Moose uses big fast Nikon glass like the 600mm f4 super telephoto and the 200-400 f4 zoom for the same kind of reason Morris does: jittery critters and the need to magnify them from a distance. However, since I read Moose’s blog on a regular basis, I know that he’s pretty darn good landscape photographer too, so giving him a digicam would still result in him kicking ass. In fact, he often has a Nikon Coolpix P6000 with him even when he’s using the big glass – it’s what he uses for taking the Moose Cam videos.

My point is that yes, the photographer’s skill is very important, perhaps paramount, but equipment is also important and should not be underestimated and relegated to a has-been status by a silly cliché.

A few weeks back, when I was standing in the media box that’s in between the player’s benches, waiting for the hockey game to start, the opposing coach noticed the Canon 5D with the 70-200 lens and asked if I was here to photograph the game, i.e., was I media. I replied that I was just a parent on the Burnaby side and then he asked if I could take some photos of his players, giving me his business card for emailing the photos.

He mentioned that he would love to have some photos for his team’s end of year party and that various parents had taken photos throughout the season, but no one had any decent equipment to get any good shots. I offered no guarantees and took a few extra shots that morning to get some coverage of his team.

After reviewing and editing, I had about 130 or so files for him, which would not work for email. However, since he worked in the downtown core, close to where I work, I dropped off a CD-R of sRGB profiled JPEGs for him about a week later.

He emailed back the same day offering enthusiastic thanks for the photos and suggesting I should be a pro. As much as that was a great ego boost, I doubt that I’ll be challenging Dave Black anytime soon as a sports photographer. This is very much a case of a photographer knowing his limits of competency even if he has decent and mostly appropriate equipment available.

One last item to mention about hockey and I promise no more for at least a week – hey, it’s in our Canadian blood J

At this year’s tournament, I noticed no pro outfit on site to take photos and trying to sell them to the parents. Last year, there was a table at the front of the main lobby area of the arena where contact sheets were on display for review. At the back of the lobby area was another table where the photographer would edit the files via a laptop and printed the samples with an Epson R2400 printer.

This year, nada, zip, zilch for any pro presence. As I understand it, the photographic company contacted the tournament organizers last year and more or less begged to be the one to cover the tournament. I have no idea what happened this year and can only speculate that maybe sales were not so hot for the outfit to request to be back on site for this year.

The coach from last year suggested that if I wanted to be the one to be on site providing the photographic coverage, it was my opportunity to turn down, which I did by never mentioning the offer with him again.

Just as some photographers run screaming from requests to photograph friends and family weddings, I slinked off silently, because I know I’m out of my league in trying to do this kind of event photography. I wrote about why last year, but quickly, they are:

• Lack of human resources to photograph and edit photos from multiple games happening in one day
• Lack of appropriate lighting gear to allow for shooting at lower ISO settings and getting good depth of field to mask minor focusing errors, e.g. using big mono lights to get f5.6 instead of f2.8
• Lack of human resources to cover the display table and respond to questions and take orders
• Lack of printers suitable for event photography, such as the pricey Kodak, Sony, Mitsubishi, and Shinko dye sub printers capable of outputting 4x6 or 5x7 size prints (ideally, 4x6 to 8x12 would be best)

My thinking about doing event photography where the clientele is fleeting is to try and make sales very quickly post game, which means being ready and equipped to print orders in-situ.

March 20, 2009 - Got this link from Scott Kelby's blog, of the top ten annoying things that photographers say to each other. Funny and a few hit a bit too close to home, such as his "Dude!" comment, which I've used back in the day when Keanu Reeves became the hottest actor around post Matrix breakout. There's a companion top ten annoying things to say to wildlife photographer that's also pretty good.

Forgot to mention another annoyance with the Windows on a MacBook experience. I've had to reactivate Windows a couple of times recently, which kills me because there is obviously no hardware changes that have occurred with the MacBook.

Appears to be related to VMWare Fusion (Parallels users apparently can suffer similar problems) and Bootcamp. One legit install, but accessed two different ways. Funny thing is I had been going back and forth without any problems and then all of a sudden, prompts to reactivate.

This is the kind of thing that helps to push people over to the dark side ;^)

The hockey season is over now that our local spring break tournament is finished. Another bittersweet life lesson learned in playing a key game very well until the last few minutes when the opposing team rallied back from a deficit and won the game. Winning meant a hope at playing another day for some medals, but it was a quiet locker room when the parents entered after the coach gave his final post-game speech.

I could see some players sitting in contemplation of what might have been while others had eyes close to tears. The locker room had none of the banter and male child jocularity of past games, as everyone understood that there would be no more games to be played.

My son learned to play in some positions outside of his comfort zone, which is for the better. Last year, he played a forward winger and had the role of being in front of the opposing goalie to block his view and hunt for rebounds as the shots came through. He did that again for some games, but also played a few as a centre and a number as a defenceman, despite being not so fleet of foot.

What many say about Patrick is that he's a smart and has a knack for being a sound positional player, which makes up for the lack of speed. He watches how the play is developing and more than a few times I've seen him head for where he figures the puck is going to be instead of just chasing where the puck is. Hockey players utilize the boards surrounding the rink, so it's a bit of geometry to figure out the angles when the puck is bounced off the boards.

As a parent, you go through those ups and downs with the kids and that last game played was thrilling, having me on the edge of my seat in nervous anticipation. Our goalie was spectacular through the first two periods with several great saves and a few break away chances for both teams could have sealed the deal for or against us, but the other goalie played well enough to keep his team in there until they could rally.

The officiating had me cursing inside my head for a few missed calls, some flagrant, but given that the refs are mere kids themselves, you can't come on too hard on them. Let's just say that there was no hometown bias with this being a Burnaby tournament (we live in Burnaby and Patrick plays in the Burnaby minor system).

The other team was also doing something generally not considered to be very sporting for "house" league teams. Their best player was on the ice for most of the game, which is probably fine for the competitive "rep" leagues, wherein winning is a key consideration. For house league teams though, it's less about winning than playing hard and having fun. Thus, house team players all get equal ice time no matter their skill level.

Our coach balanced out the lines so that beginning players were supported by experienced players and no matter the situation, even if pressing to get an equalizer in the last few minutes of play, the lines were never stacked with the best players.

Photographically, I was less prolific than last year and really didn't get going until after the new year. Much of my attention was in photographing individual players instead of the actual action. The purpose is that this year, I wanted to produce some better looking posters for the kids, an example of which is below of my kid. Nothing fancy, just a few shots layered on a 12x18 inch canvas with the edges feathered with the gradient tool. Even though the Burnaby teams wear Colorado Avalanche colors, the kids voted on naming themselves the Thrashers, as in Atlanta, hence the logo and color scheme of the letters and the borders.

Similar to last year, I started with my Nikon gear and ended the season with borrowed Canon gear. Last year, I had the D200 to start with and ended with the Canon 40D. This year, it was the D300 and I finished off with the Canon 5D2.

As I've posted a few times previously, the 5D2 does not have the speed of the D300 or 40D in shooting sports, but damned if that full frame sensor doesn't make up for it with cleaner high ISO quality than the D300. And, when I've nailed the focus, damned if that 21 MP resolution isn't awesome to work with for cropping tighter into the action or player.

I didn't get the vertical grip for the 5D2 until right near the end of the season, but honestly, I didn't miss it for doing portrait mode photos, but for the extra grip and comfort to help stabilize that sweet 70-200 f2.8 IS lens.

What I noticed is that due to the loss of the 1.5x or 1.6x crop factor with DX SLRs, the size of the player in the viewfinder was no different whether I shot in landscape or portrait mode, unless he was very close to me. From 50 or more feet away, I never had to change the camera's orientation.

I did miss the DX crop factor when photographing in our home arena. In fact, I really dislike photographing in the big arena we play our home games due to the distance from the top of the stands to the ice. Standing in between means blocking the view of the other parents, as I discovered last year when a parent from the other team told me to stop blocking his view - as opposed to him just moving his butt a few rows down in a nearly empty 2000 seat arena.

The home arena is also darker than most because the arena staff turn off 1/3 of the lights for the minor hockey games. I much prefer photographing in the two other Burnaby arenas due to the better brightness and more intimate stands that get you closer to the action.

Below are some photos of Burnaby Lake arena, which is one of the best I've photographed in. This is the same arena that I saw one pro use a mono light to bounce light off the silver ceiling. Another pro used on-camera flash in this arena.

I only use the 70-200 lens for photographing the hockey games, but since I wanted to get a feel for how wide the Canon 17-40 f4 lens is on a full frame sensor, I took a few snaps yesterday at different focal lengths for comparison (focus is in the middle of the goalie's blue half circle).

17mm	24mm
36mm	70mm
135mm	200mm

With my eyes, the 17mm coverage is pretty much the same as my full field of vision. It's not that I can actually see the extreme edges in clear focus like the camera and lens can, but they can be seen with my peripheral vision

It's refreshing to have an ultra wide lens back again, but these days 17mm is probably not considered ultra wide anymore, what with the Nikon 14-24mm lens and let's not forget Sigma's 12-24 lens too. The above shot is not even showing the full 17mm coverage of the Canon 17-40 lens, as I had to straighten it, losing a bit of the extreme corners and edges - blame it on my leaning tower of Pisa way of seeing things. You can see some barrel distortion at the extreme top of the frame.

At right is a full frame shot at 17mm of the cozy time and scorekeeper's box. It's a box that not a lot of parents like to see, because not a lot of parents know how to use the timekeeper's console.

That would include me, because I had to learn how to do timekeeping this year. Timekeeping is actually pretty basic as far as the function is concerned. You start the time when the puck is dropped by the ref and you stop the time when the whistle is blown. When goals are scored, you enter them for display on the scoreboard and same for any penalties called

When I got the quick five minute tutorial, I wrote down step-by-step instructions of the most common things to happen in a game. Writing the instructions down has been key for me, because trying to remember the proper key sequences can be stressful, even for a minor league hockey game.

Everyone expects the scores and penalties to be displayed as soon as they occur and when a parent unfamiliar with the console is in the box, some restlessness can rumble through the players boxes and stands. On occasion, a parent can forget to start the time again, which results in shouts of "TIME!" from the stands.

Minor hockey can also have some obscure rules that if not told to a timekeeper, the person would be oblivious and incur the wrath of irate parents who feel offended. For example, in our minor hockey system, when one team dominates and scores so many goals as to create a five goal differential (e.g., 6-1, or 8-3), you're not suppose to display anymore goals scored by the dominant team. You still log them officially for the score sheet, but not on the scoreboard so as not to demoralize the weaker team.

Last year, I was doing some scorekeeping for some other games and the timekeeper and I did not know about the rule until an irate parent came by and told us about it. After the next goal, the ref finally came by and suggested that maybe we should stop displaying the large goal differential. Ah, yah, thanks, we got that now. Hell hath no fury like a hockey mom scorned.

March 16, 2009 - With the transition to using a Mac for everyday computing, I’ve not talked too much about using it for editing photos on the go. It’s one thing to be editing at home with the MacBook connected to a larger, external LCD, but it’s another to use the MacBook on the road.

In short, on the road, using the MacBook for editing photos is something to be endured rather than enjoyed. This is less criticism about the MacBook than it is about its size, but there are some specific things I’ll talk about later on.

The size is a double-edged sword. On the one edge, the size is nice and small, if not the lightest notebook available. My brother-in-law’s Toshiba Protégé is ridiculously lightweight for a full sized notebook (for me, 12-inch screen or larger), which makes it a great computer for such a frequent traveler. The MacBook’s aluminum build is awesome, but there is a price (albeit small) in weight to be paid for that build quality. I don’t mind, as I prefer a robust build in my computers and cameras.

The other edge of the sword is that the small size is also a liability for being able to edit effectively and efficiently. I have to magnify more frequently to check critical sharpness and the overall image view is down to somewhere around 16.7 to 25% when I’m working with Canon 5D2 files.

The glare from the glossy screen can be bothersome, depending on where I find myself on the road. I also notice a certain quality from the screen, which I find disconcerting.

During a recent two-hour hockey practice, I figured I’d get in a little bit of editing time while my son goes through some body checking drills. I was working on some 12x18 inch posters for the boys on the team and was layering four or five different images on the canvas.

The general design had one large, tight face shot of the player on one side with a few smaller action photos on the other side. I used the gradient tool to fade the edges to white for all the images. As I copied and pasted in my photos as new layers and began moving them around, I noticed the images took on a pink cast near the edges where the gradient started its fade to white. Looking at this more closely, I noticed that it was when I applied the gradient in the original image before layering it on the larger image that the pink cast showed up most prominently.

I’m not sure how to technically describe what I’m seeing. I’ve seen something similar before using Bibble Pro to render my Nikon RAW files. Using the Highlight Recovery tool would sometimes produce weird pink or blue artifacts in the highlight areas to be recovered. Working on the same files with the MacBook driving a larger LCD does not show the same pink casts in the gradient.

For actual power and speed, it has not been too bad, but I’ve seen the spinning beach ball a few times when I was working with the 200 MB, 16-bit TIFF files. I thought that it would be a bit faster and more efficient, given how speedy Photoshop CS3 is with creating web galleries (as compared to my old Sony notebook with a 1.5 GHz processor, whereas the MacBook has a 2.4 GHz processor).

For rendering RAW files, it’s not as quick as the big desktop, but then that’s to be expected given the disparity in processing power available in the desktop PC. While on the topic of speed and PCs, it seems that in recent months, my big PC has gotten a bit slow. The snap and speed with which it used to cruise through RAW files in Lightroom, or for editing files in Photoshop, seem to be diminished (or is it just working with 21 MP files in recent months?)

This may be an indication that I need to cleanly reinstall the OS and applications and perhaps take stock of which apps I actually use and which ones I don’t and get back to running a lean and mean, pure photo editing machine without any other extraneous software to bloat it. I mean, do I really need to have the full blown Office Pro installed; not at all. There are also other apps that I’ve not used since my wedding photography days.

The Windows registry has probably become too large, unwieldy and/or too fragmented, which would be another cause of a computer slow down. I wonder if I should just take a chance at trying to install OS X on it instead ☺ What I’ll probably do though is just wait out Windows 7 and do a clean install of the next generation OS along with some updated applications.

Anyway though, using the MacBook as a non-photo editing mobile computer is otherwise fine. This update was typed up (in between the photo editing sessions) over two days in cold arenas for multi hour hockey practices and skating lessons for one of my girls.

My last comment to make is that with my configured MacBook, I'm really not liking using VMWare to run Windows in parallel with OS X. The lack of speed makes me feel like I’m using a P4 generation PC, which is not good in this day of C2D and quad core processors.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the concept of VMWare and Parallels to run Windows and OS X simultaneously and I’m blown away with the apps written by software engineers who are so much smarter than I could ever hope to be, but as an end user, the concept does not always meet with the promises and expectations – at least with my particular MacBook. I'll probably do a RAM upgrade to 6 GB and replace the hard drive with a 7200 RPM unit, which will hopefully make the VMWare experience more endurable.

Windows runs great when I boot into it cleanly, which I tend to do for most web edits and updates. However, I’ve run into a little issue recently with the printer driver and spooler in Windows.

When I cleanly boot into Windows, I get a spooler error message after booting up, which indicates that my ability to print has been completely messed up. My general office printer, the Epson CX4800, does not get recognized and I cannot reinstall the driver due to the error.

Curiously, the printer is recognized and available when running Windows via VMWare. I “think” what may have messed things up is in trying to have printed something through Windows via VMWare. It didn’t work and the next time I booted into Windows is when the spooler errors began. Appears to be something having to do with trying to access a network printer without having the proper driver installed. In an abstract way, it kinda makes sense to me since Windows and OS X can share files as if they were part of a pseudo network, but I get headaches trying to figure out a workaround that does not involve having to reinstall Windows via Bootcamp again.

March 13, 2009 - Two Friday the 13th's in a row - how often does that happen?

Power outage last night had me dust off the Tronix battery packs I bought a few years ago to power my Visatec mono lights on location. I used them to power desk lamps and provide the house with some light. With the power back on, they go back to being heavy, dust collecting door stops.

Last week, Scott Kelby posted about how he rarely uses the Curves tool in Photoshop now that he can do so many adjustments in Lightroom.

This thought of which tool I seldom use, or rather, most often use germinated in my mind for some days, but finally hit home for me after I finished editing the last set of hockey photos. The season is over for us now, as we came in third during the playoff round, which means we missed the opportunity to play for a banner. Having a banner hanging on the walls of the home arena means forever being immortalized as all the players and coaches names are listed. A tournament over spring break will be the boys' final hurrah.

Anyway, as I was editing I realized that I'd be nothing without the crop tool, be it in Lightroom or Photoshop.

I hate to make it sound like I shoot first and then compose later, but that's often what happens, especially with the full frame 5D2 and the 70-200 lens. There just is not enough reach to get the right composition and with the extra resolution offered by the 5D2, I can crop and still have a nice sized file for later printing.

Continuing with my excuses, the only AF sensor on the 5D2 actually capable of following the action is the centre sensor, which also necessitates some cropping otherwise I end up with everything dead centred.

Less you think I'm dumping on the 5D2's capabilities too much, I'm finding Nikon's 51-point 3D tracking ain't all that great either for following and tracking fast moving subjects. Others have noted that how Nikon implemented its top AF module is different in the D3/D700 to the D300, with the D300 getting the lesser implementation.

March 10, 2009 - So I finally had enough of my kids eating me out of house and home and I decide that they're gonna have to earn their keep.

First up, baby Harry. I showed him some pointers about the stock market and setup an E*Trade account for him. The least he could do is try and earn some money for his college education.

I'll consider it a bonus if the little guy can day trade enough to get his old man a D3X 8^)

March 9, 2009 - I was cruising around the massive Wiki, reading up on Stephen King (the author of many now classic horror novels) and came across this tidbit of information:

"Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met.

From that, I recalled some quotes from a book I'm reading now:

"I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock 'n roll riffs and electric blues - the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again." Keith Richards (The Guitar Handbook by Ralph Denyer)

"Practice, practice, practice. Practice until you get a guitar welt on your chest...if it makes you feel good, don't stop until you see the blood from your fingers. Then you'll know you're onto something!" Ted Nugent (The Guitar Handbook by Ralph Denyer)

Legend has it that Steve Vai used to practice playing the guitar for 10 hours a day! Similar to King, Canadian novelist, Mordecai Richler treated his writing like it was a job and would spend the 9 to 5 hours, Monday to Friday, locked in his office, typing away (I've probably used this example too many times by now).

I'm sure you know where I'm going with this, as it's advice that pops up every so often at various photography websites and blogs: practice your craft if you want to be good at it. Get to know your camera so well that it's an extension of your hand; and the only way that's going to happen is if you use it regularly.

I'm as guilty as the next person with family and work commitments that take away from spending quality time with the craft, but as others have noted, if you think and read about photography, that definitely helps too.

The past weekend, I decided to try something that I've been meaning to for a while now, but always seem to forget to do. I used a flash to photograph a few shots at one of my son's hockey games.

I've saw one pro do this during a hockey tournament back in the spring of 2008, and while I was not overly impressed, I thought it was interesting and certainly a lot cheaper than running a series of mono lights on top of the ice rink's plexiglass walls, as I've seen at another hockey tournament.

I used the Canon 580EX II flash unit with the 5D2 with the flash head zoomed out to its maximum of 105mm. Since I'm not at all familiar with Canon flash (first time I've used the 580EX II that's been sitting on my shelf for several months), I used it on E-TTL mode with no flash compensation. The 5D2's setting were my usual of ISO 3200 with plus 1 ambient light compensation. The aperture on the 70-200 f2.8 IS lens was set to f2.8.

In the rink I was in on Sunday, the shutter speed was ranging from 1/400 to over 1/1000 at ISO 3200 and f2.8. Very nice and fast and much brighter than our team's home arena, which I might get 1/320 if I'm lucky. I noticed that the big arena we play the home games in only turn on 2/3 of the lights when it's the kids playing and only turn on all the lights when the major tenant (the Burnaby Express junior A team) plays its home games.

Since I was in experimental mode, I only took a handful of shots during the beginning and then packed away the 580EX II flash. The major reason why is because I tend to do a burst of continuous shots when I see a player steaming down the ice with the puck. I didn't want to overheat and damage the flash from doing 5-6 shots in a burst (remember, this gear is borrowed). I was probably being too cautious, since the bright arena would mean less light being needed for each flash pop.

I noticed something curious with the way the big Canon flash worked with the 5D2. With ISO 3200 set on the camera and f2.8 on the lens, pretty much every shot would be at risk of being blown out at the 5D2's sync speed of 1/200. However, I did not get any blowned out flash photos, which was the curious thing.

I noticed the aperture value changing from the nominal f2.8 to a range of f5.6 to f7.1 just prior to releasing the shutter, but when I released the shutter, the aperture value reverted back to f2.8. Looking at the exposure data, I can see that in fact, the aperture was stopped down to match the output of the flash and thus, provide a correct flash exposure. Pretty cool, but perhaps not really desired if you really wanted the narrow DOF of f2.8; however, that just means working with a lower ISO speed, which is not a bad thing, or dialing down the power of the flash output for negative compesation.

The flash does give the photos a certain "pop" that's quite nice and helps to fill in the shadows, even from 50 or more feet away. I was worried about ghosting happening with the rather slow 1/200 sync speed, but I didn't see any from the first few shots taken.

Next time around, I'll have to try the flash for a full game, being mindful of stopping my finger from being too trigger happy.

March 6, 2009 - Over at the TOP there's a post about a senior Olympus manager stating that 12 MP is enough resolution and that Olympus would not be competing in the megapixel race.

Interesting comments and while a nice breath of fresh air in the seemingly relentless race to push the resolution boundaries, for some reason, I see ulterior motives for the statement made during an interview at the PMA show.

Olympus, as you may recall, originated the 4/3 system, which uses a sensor size that translates into a 2x lens crop factor (or magnification, for some) compared to a FX sized sensor. The sensor means pretty tightly packed pixels, which in turn factors into the ability to get really clean, high ISO quality. While many argue that whatever technology comes up with to improve FX and DX sized sensors, the 4/3 sensors will similarly benefit, I have my doubts. How many actually think that Olympus can get D3/D700 quality from a 4/3 sized sensor?

As for 12 MP being enough, well, you know, even though Nikon never stated anything publicly, it sure seems to me that Nikon thinks that 12 MP is enough resolution too - D3X not withstanding.

From 2005 to current, 12 MP seems to be the sweet spot for where Nikon has staked out its resurgence to battle Canon for SLR supremacy. The D2X was the first 12 MP SLR followed by the D3, D300, D700, and D90. Any bets on the resolution count for the D60's eventual replacement?

Will Nikon's continued use of the 12 MP sensor continue on? Maybe not if the D400 rumours hold true and Nikon feels pressured to offer an answer to Canon's 50D, which might not be such a good thing for high ISO quality.

March 5, 2009 - Mea culpa time - last week I posted comments about a National Geographic article on the Alberta oil sands development. I made assumptions for which I admit make an ass out of me for jumping to conclusions based on a newspaper story I read about Canadian politicians reacting to the NG article.

I've now read the NG article and found that it's not as bad as I had thought. Do I think it's completely objective? Well, I might have until I read the last few lines in the article, which I think give away the author's stance about the oil sands.

I had a lot more that I initially wanted to say here, from oil sands to health care to other topics, but I'm going to end it here as far as politics is concerned. Some websites can get away with being unashamedly political, but then it's not too hard when 95% of the readers share the same political leanings. It's kinda like being a Yankees fan. With so many World Series victories, it's a great big, grand bandwagon, but it takes real perseverance to be a fan of a team that's been cursed for over 50 years 8^)

Now, let's get back to discussing what the title of this website is about...

Reader's comment:

1) Children are supposed to outlive their parents. That story is heart breaking. I would never recover from my children passing away in my arms.

2) I just read Thom Hogan's random thoughts on opportunities lost for Nikon and Canon on his site in this recession. I agree with him that Nikon is going into survival mode instead of innovate and dominate (don't know about Canon). Such is a big lost opportunity. Nikon is wasting this one for not strategically innovate, filling out the niches, pushing out the competition, gaining more defensible market share, and winning in the hearts and minds of its users.

You and I are not going to spend one red US or Canadian cent with any new Nikon stuff until the prices are back in line. Where is that high quality 4/3 system for people like me who travel a lot on business and don't want to lug a D200 w MB200 grip and a 24-70 monster lens? I will carry 20 lbs of equipment for my Hawaii vacation, but not up the 10,000 ft mountain with my skis and poles in order to head down at 40 miles per hour.

As one of our now more famous politician just said "you should not waste a good recession."  I admit that Ram Emmanuel is an idiot to be quoted like that but his fighting spirit is in the right frame of mind.

1) Yes, those stories about children suffering wakes you up to what's really important. Photography, politics, whatever your interest, it's fun, it's diversionary, but it don't mean a thing if you have really sick kids that you know are not going to recover.

2) Thom also figures that Nikon's going to have more DSLRs coming later this year. However, David Cardinal posted comments that maybe more lenses are in the offing, including the long awaited replacement for the 80-400 VR lens. But, as Cardinal is doing now in trying out a Sigma 120-400 OS lens, I may be inclined to do the same myself. The question is which mount version do I get if I decide to buy ;^)

Pentax seems to be doing some interesting things with surprise lens offerings popping up out of nowhere (actually, didn't Pentax have a road map of new lenses, or was that Olympus?). While Pentax seems to be hanging in at the moment, long term, I share Thom's opinion about which brands are going to be viable. Or, in other words, I wouldn't be rushing out to buy a Pentax kit, as bad as that would be to see such a venerable brand go the way of the dodo.

However, with news that Rollei is a dead brand walking, being a venerable photo company means nothing if you cannot innovate and adapt to changing times. The digital revolution is now ten years old and it didn't take that long for the paradigm shift from film to silicon and yet some brands just never understood what was happening and when they finally did, it was too little too late.

It seems the survivors are hunkering down in bunker mode to just ride out the storm to fight on in a better (economic) day. With cash being king for everyone, hunkering down and stopping the spending is going to prolong the ordeal.

Visiting Terry White's website, I got my first bit of news about the new Macs (see next item below), but I was surprised when Terry wrote that while new desktop Macs usually meant he pulled out his credit card, not this time around. The financial crisis is making him hold back, because of the uncertainty despite being employed and living a pretty good life.

Even the super rich are hesitating. Out of NYC are reports that people are forfeiting deposits on luxury condos just to extricate themselves from the purchase. Some of the deposits hit seven figures, so you can imagine how much the condos cost.

Apple has launched new desktop models from the Mini to the iMac to the Pro Tower. The iMac finally allows up to 8 GB of RAM installed. Schweet!

Although, after pricing out a top-end iMac with the fastest processor and 8 GB of RAM, I gagged at the nearly CDN $4,000 price tag. For another $1,000 more, I can configure a really nice Mac Pro Tower with 16 GB of RAM and three (!) GPUs for $5,000. Granted that the iMac comes with an LCD (built in) and blowing an extra $1k bill ain't chump change, but it's all relative. $1k on its own is a lot of money but not when compared to what it would get you, e.g. an iMac versus a Mac Pro Tower.

I'm making no bones about the fact that my next desktop computer purchase will be a Mac Pro Tower, which in no way denotes my throwing in the towel on Windows. To the contrary, I'm typing this up now on the Vista Ultimate side of my MacBook. Mac's make great PC hardware 8^)

However, let me just state too that the Mac side of life is pretty good too and I have a better understanding of why OS X is highly regarded compared to Windows. Not perfect, but it is nice working with an OS that's less fussy to maintain.

March 4, 2009 - Panasonic announced a Micro 4/3 SLR, the DMC-GH1. The HD movie capability is not what interests me, so much as the new sensor, which I'm hopeful will provide better quality ISO 1600 photos. Along with the new all-in-one 14-140mm lens and you now have a beautiful, lightweight travel kit.

Getting in on the action is Samsung with its NX series. While still a prototype, Samsung is promising delivery by the end of the year, which is fantastic to have another competitor in the ultra compact SLR niche.

So, who's missing here? No prizes given out for the obvious answer of Nikon and Canon; however, there's still time to produce competitive products - if both can wean themselves off producing more digicams than the world wants.

Lensbaby launches 0.42x Super Wide Lens - as you know, Lensbaby advertises at this website and at NikonLinks. Good people with unique, fun products and definitely worth checking out.

As a parent, reading stories about children in dire straits is heartbreaking.

Yesterday's Globe and Mail newspaper had an article about a family that suffered the worst loss possible, the death of a newborn daughter. The parents made the decision to remove life support from the five-day old baby due to the massive brain damage the baby suffered during a high risk pregnancy. The parents feel the circumstances could have been avoided if the mother had been at a hospital specializing in high risk pregnancies.

The really heartbreaking part of the story for me was that when life support was removed, it took about four hours for the baby to pass away. The parents took turns to hold the baby and cuddle her in her last moments of life. That would devastate me if I were to go through the same situation.

Yesterday also had me reviewing the March Rangefinder issue for NikonLinks and I came across another tragic story about children. This article, profiling the photographer, Paul Fusco, was illustrated with Fusco's photos of children from Belarus, most suffering from deformities and mental illnesses caused by the radiation poisoning from the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.

The children with the deformities are abandoned by the parents to the state and they end up in an institution where the only loving touch they receive is from the nurses. It's been a generational period since the Chernobyl accident, but the effects are still with us.

I can only be thankful that with four healthy kids, I have not had to experience such tragedy.

March 3, 2009 - Readers' comments:

I have come very close to buying the R-D1 used. I have 2 Leica rangefinder cameras and also 2 Voigtlander Bessa which use Leica M bayonet lenses. I like the Leica and Bessa because they are light and quiet. I use them for B&W film to do street photography. If the new Epson would sell here for about $2,000 it would be a great value. 6 MP is more than enough.

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Your economy must be better than mine because I can't see myself paying even $1000 for an apparatus that emulates seeing double induced by copious amount of drinking. A 6MP Japanese range finder is at best...$500.

In the US, the D3x is now about $7,000. Still way too much, but the market has spoken and $8K it isn't.

Good luck Nikon. Let's see what the market will say about the 20% increases in those Nikon lenses.

6 MP is never enough ;^)

Actually, Canada is hurting, but not as badly as the USA. Our financial institutions are more tightly regulated and while the financial crisis is dragging down the share value of the Canadian big banks, fundementally, all are in pretty good shape. Our bank CEOs are even voluntarily giving back salary and/or bonuses given all the bad press about US bank executives taking away ridiculous amounts of severance or bonuses even while their institutions have tanked and are now begging before the taxpayers.

Our provincial government is apologetic for having to introduce a budget that's some $500 million in deficit, which is a might bit better than our eastern neighbors in Alberta with a deficit of $1 billion. However, both are drops in the bucket compared to what the Governator is facing in California and Obama in DC.

NikonWatch posted some comments about the Japanese facing Nikon price hikes in April. Even the home market is not immune to rising prices. If true, I ain't gonna be in a position to be buying anything new for a while yet, which is exactly what Nikon, Canon, et al. should be avoiding.

If photo geeks like me are keeping the wallet in the pocket, how are the companies gonna fare for the remainder of 2009? I should be in a position to buy in the summer and I'm willing to buy, economic downturn and all, but as much as I understand the need for the price hike, I'm not going to buy until I see those prices drop.

Here’s an item having nothing to do with photography: a tire pressure gauge.

I don’t like the old style, analog tire pressure gauges. Fiddly, inaccurate and prone to becoming defective, so I bought a couple of digital tire pressure gauges and I think they’re great.

Of the two, one is larger and more expensive (the Nascar unit), but has a few more features to warrant the higher price.

The cheaper one (Accutire) is a $12 gauge and is straightforward to use. No buttons or any other input required and a simple LCD provides the number readout. Insert into the tire’s air stem and hold for a second for the gauge to take a reading and display the tire’s pressure. Simple, just like those fussy analog gauges, except, being digital, more accurate.

You probably don’t need anything more than this simple digital gauge, which I bought to put in the glove box of the family van.

The larger digital gauge is double the cost at $24 and is as simple to use as the cheaper gauge, but it offers a few additional features. You can set a reference tire pressure, but that seems superfluous since most car tires are referenced to 35 psi. However, this gauge provides a Timex watch-like Indiglo backlight for the LCD, which makes it easier to read in case you have to check the pressure in dim light. The gauge also has a LED light oriented to shine on the tire, as you search for the air stem.

While these features are nice, I did notice that the more expensive gauge is also more sensitive and thus more accurate with measuring the tire’s pressure.

Our second vehicle seems to lose air pressure regularly and a 10-second buzzer sounds shortly after you start driving to nag you into checking the pressure. If you hear multiple buzzers it means more than one tire needs to be checked. While some versions of the vehicle offer detailed maintenance information about exactly which tire needs to be checked along with the tire pressure reading, our version does not, so manual checks it is.

Last weekend, I took the SUV to our local gas station to check the tire pressure and correct the one that’s been setting off the warning buzzer. As it turned out I needed to bleed off some air in the front tires, as both were at 40 psi instead of 35 (temperature fluctuations I guess, as the last time I checked them, they were at 35 psi), but it was the rear tires that threw me for a loop.

I checked one and the cheaper digital gauge read 20 psi, so I start putting air in. Checked it again and it still reads 20 psi. Weird. I check the second rear tire and this one is really low, something like 14 psi and it really needs air, so I put air in and then check the pressure again. Except that the pressure is lower than before I put air in. Really weird. Did this a few times and got nowhere and other than continuing to lose pressure on the one tire, so I figure something is wrong with the tires and I’ll need to take the vehicle to a local tire shop for fixing.

A few hours later, when my wife came back from her shopping, she gave me a tongue-lashing about how lazy I am in not checking the tire pressure for over a week. Chastened, I head out to the gas station for one more kick at the can (or tire, in this case) and lo and behold, when I parked in front of the air hose, a sign was up stating “Out of Service.”

Now, it all made sense with why my first attempts to pump air got me nowhere and why the one tire kept on losing air every time I tried pumping it up. Curiously, when I mated the air hose with the tire’s air stem, no telltale hissing noise came out. The second time around was when I used the more expensive digital gauge and noted that it could read the really low tire pressure on the one tire whereas the cheaper gauge faltered.

I drove to another gas station with a working air hose and pumped up both rear tires. Using the digital gauge made it child’s play to ensure I had 35 psi from all four tires and now no more annoying warning sounds nagging me...from my wife, or the vehicle 8^)

March 2, 2009 - Initially, I thought this was a very early April Fools Day item, but alas it ain't so when I saw the mighty DPReview confirm the announcement of the Epson R-D1x rangefinder.

You may recall the original Epson R-D1, as a 6 MP, Cosina-made digital rangefinder. Cosina was an obvious choice to source a rangefinder shell, as the owner of the company is a huge fan of film rangefinder cameras and has produced a number of such cameras under the Voigtlander brand.

If I recall the price correctly from three years ago, the original R-D1 was a USD $5,000 camera, which was already a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a camera based on a sub $1,000 rangefinder camera, which itself is based on a sub $500 film camera.

Now the new R-D1x is a more reasonable USD $3,000, but it appears that it's using same 6 MP chip as the original. It's not that the 6 MP is all that bad, as Nikon's gotten a lot of mileage from it going back to the D100 to the current D40 SLRs, but let's put it in perspective: the D40 is now a sub $400 SLR. For the cachet of a rangefinder camera with an ancient sensor, you'll pay Sony A900 kind of money and needless to say, the Sony A900 is a far more capable camera with 4X the resolution.

This is just nuts and it's in the same category of Nikon charging USD $8,000 for the D3X (in Canada, paying CDN $9,100 for a D3X is considered a sale price!) I mean, sheesh, you don't even get a little red dot on the front of the camera to denote some meaningless, Teutonic superiority on the Epson camera - granted that the R-D1x costs a lot less than the M8.2 with the aforementioned red dot on its front.

It's probably no coincidence that the R-D1x will only be available in Japan, because I just can't see the rest of the world being interested.

However, with all that said, I'd bet that Epson could easily get USD $5,000 for a real update to the R-D1 by ponying up and paying Nikon for that D3/D700 sensor...

The Canon 5D2 kit is now pretty much fleshed out, as I now have the 17-40 f4 and 24-105 f4 IS lenses in-house to go with the 70-200 f2.8 IS and 50 f1.8 lenses. Also got the BG-E6 vertical grip and will wonders never cease, but it has a real to goodness AF-On button in it, unlike the vertical grips for the DX SLRs (30D, 40D), which do not.

Looking at the BG-E6 when I opened up the box, I see no rubber surround (neither does the BG-E2N for the Canon DX SLRs) around the base where it mates with the 5D2. However, neither does the MB-D10 for the D300, so I can't be too smug about this (there's some speculation that the lack of rubber surround on the BG-E6 may have contributed to the failures experienced by 5D2 users on the Luminous Landscape Antarctica trip).

Looking at the 24-105 lens, I was disappointed to see such a shallow lens hood, which obviously indicates that it's only going to be useful for the wide-angle focal lengths and not the telephoto range.

Luminous Landscape has posted comments on the D3X, but after reading it, I have to wonder what exactly was the point? Reichmann previously decided that due to the high cost, he would not be purchasing a D3X and then whinged about Nikon not providing him with a review sample. Then, as fate would have it, Nikon Canada did send him a review sample in time for his big trip to Antarctica.

His comments indicate that he gave the D3X short thrift and had all but one lens to use for the entire trip, despite having a pretty good complement of Nikon lenses available. His thoughts about the D3X are rather anticlimatic since they echo what DPReview said in their review and while of full of praise, it feels a lot like being damned with faint praises.

It's not that I disagree with Reichmann's ongoing crusade about the D3X's price (I very much do agree with the thought that the D3X is overpriced) even at the same time he's confirmed the purchase of another $30,000 Phase digital back, but if you're gonna make a big deal about not getting a review sample and then end up getting one, well, don't you owe it to yourself and Nikon to do more than a half-ass job?

I very much like and support Reichmann and Luminous Landscape, but the D3X is not one of his better hands-on reviews. His latest digicam reviews were better done.

February 27, 2009 - Misc news items and other stuff that I found interesting this week:

• Annie Leibovitz mortgages her photos - the NY Times had a story about how artists like Leibovitz are finding themselves in financial difficulties and with real estate worth so little these days, the only thing of value is the art produced by the artists. Finance companies specializing in loaning capital against art are doing a brisk business due to the current market conditions. Leibovitz apparently needed over $10 million to pay off her mortgages on several homes and consolidate her loans; her collateral is her extensive collection of photographs taken over a 30-plus year career.

• Ritz Camera files for bankruptcy - Eamon Hickey posted his thoughts at the TOP on why Ritz failed; essentially, digital has led to the demise of the film development and 4x6 snapshot photo printing business. While people still do print their photos, they're more selective instead of having to have all 24 or 36 exposures printed, as was the case when film was king. People I talk to informally mention that they take lots of digital photos, but they all end up on the hard drive and never get printed. Hmm...sounds like someone I know, whose name shall not go mentioned (cough, Edwin, cough).

• National Geographic's March issue has a story on the Alberta oil sands - I've not had time to read my subscription copy yet, but it apparently dumps on the massive oil sands projects as an environmental crisis in the making. It's causing some controversy, enough so that our federal politicians are being questioned about it and thus far, both the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are not impressed with National Geographic. However, let's get real here, because would you have expected anything less from the magazine? Editorially, it's lock step with Al Gore's blame everything on human actions and I don't recall the magazine ever being objective enough to discuss other reasons, like solar flaring. As far as the oil sands are concerned, since it's considered to be the second largest deposit of oil after the Middle East, I don't think our good neighbors to the south are going to be eager to see continued development halted, especially since it's widely thought that Saudi Arabia is now over the middle hump of its proven reserves and is now on a downward slide in depleting those reserves.

• Joe McNally's new book, the Hot Shoe Diaries, is finally released, which means I should be getting mine from Amazon soon. I've had it on order since last November or December.

• Still no word on my Nikon-to-Canon lens adapter from 16-9.net. Appears to be a very popular item due to the backordered status.

• Lightroom 2.2 slowing down - maybe it's the 21 MP 5D2 files choking Lightroom, but as I do my edits, after a little while, Lightroom slows to a crawl and at times, completely stalls, requiring a restart. All of my editing these days revolves around my son's hockey team and based on how poor the 5D2 is for photographing action, I tend to trash a lot of my photos. When I notice Lightroom starting to slow down, I go the recycle bin and empty it of all the trashed 5D2 files, which seems to help in keeping Lightroom going. Sometimes it can be as few as a couple dozen files in the recycle bin and other times it can be so many that I'm dumping a couple of GB worth of files. Can it really be the 5D2 files, or am I suffering from some sort of system issue and/or memory leak problem?

We had a light dusting of snow yesterday, which is not unheard of for Vancouver, but is generally not a normal occurrence for us living on the "wet" coast of Canada.

Mix of dark clouds and clear skies, with the sun rising in the clear sky portion and providing some beautiful, golden light. Here are a few snapshots taken on my way to the bus stop in the morning around 7:25 am (no edits other than cropping the middle photo).

February 24, 2009 - Below is an interesting trend posted by PMA about the popularity of SLRs, based on the number of photos posted on the popular website, Flikr. Canon has three of the top four cameras, Nikon has one, and rounding out the top five is Apple’s iPhone.

Once upon a time, I wondered if Apple might come out with its own digicam at some point, based on the classic iPod’s form factor. The classic iPod is nicely sized to fit in the electronics needed to turn it into a digicam, especially if you use one of those folding lenses as found in some Sony digicams (and former Minolta digicams).

My thinking was along the lines of; could Apple do for the photo industry what it did to the music industry? Certainly, an Apple iCamera could not be the same run of the mill camera produced out of the Sanya, Panasonic and Canon factories. It would have to offer the same user-friendly ergonomics that Apple is lauded for and also offer something unique that propels it to the forefront, similar to the iPod’s click wheel or iPhone’s and iTouch’s touch screen. There would also have to be an iTune-like portal that allows users to post photos; probably tied into the MobileMe accounts.

However, I suppose with the way the iPhone has taken off and since it has a built-in camera, Apple already has its iCamera of sorts.

PMA Data Watch: Most popular photos on Flickr shot with DSLRs
PMA Marketing Research has surveyed the Camera Finder page on the popular photo sharing site Flickr to see which camera phones are most popular and compare usage to that of the most popular point-and-shoot cameras, but overall DSLRs are actually the most popular cameras on the site. Popularity is assessed by tracking the number of users as well as the number of images uploaded on any given day with each particular model highlighted.

Four of the five most popular cameras used in the Flickr community are DSLR models from Canon and Nikon, with the Apple iPhone taking the fifth spot and beating out all the point-and-shoot models. DSLR users, on average, upload more pictures per user than those uploading from popular point-and shoots and camera phones, according to the site.

The most popular DSLR camera on Flickr, is the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi. On Feb. 17, there were 98,216 items uploaded from this camera by 7,313 users. This averages about 13.4 items per user, much higher than the average uploads from any of the popular point-and-shoots and camera phones. The Nikon D80, another popular DSLR, boasts 66,103 uploads on the same day and 4,529 users. While there were fewer uploads and fewer users of this model, each user uploaded 14.6 items on average. The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT and the Canon EOS 40D DSLRs are next in line in terms of popularity.

DSLR users are generally not classified into specific demographic groups based on age or gender, but instead encompass a variety of demographic segments. DSLR owners also tend to be more experienced picture takers, as the DSLR is unlikely to be their first camera purchase and most likely to be an additional purchase, according to PMA Marketing Research. Those owning DSLRs are more likely to take pictures for a variety of reasons when compared to the typical digital camera owner. Therefore, it follows that they would be most interested in uploading images to social networking sites for their talent to be shared. For more information on the modesl mentioned above and more visit the Camera Finder page on the Flickr website.

Back when Micro 4/3 was introduced, I was dismissive, thinking that, well if it really turns out to be something good then Nikon and Canon would follow suit with their own DX-based design. But, you know, that Panasonic G1 is kinda growing on me as a concept.

Yes, the G1 is a real camera and widely available now (so, it's certainly not a "concept"), but I’m not about to order one for myself. Based on what I’ve read of the image quality and features of the G1, I think a G2 is what I’d want to wait for before I’d plunk down some hard cash for another incompatible camera system to supplement the Nikon kit (and possibly, a future Canon kit).

The size is so nice for travel and while the two Panasonic lenses are not speed demons, their small size while offering a very nice range (28-400mm) is enticing. However, instead of a 14-45mm lens, I’d like to see a 10-25mm lens offered (20-50mm equivalent) to get nice wide-angle coverage (along with a fast 25mm lens).

The concept to me is that I really do hope that Nikon and Canon have paid attention and can come up with a rival offering along the lines of a G1. I have nothing against EVFs and if it can be coupled with an electronic shutter, so much the better for completely silent operation. What I don’t want to see though is a simplistic D40-like camera that offers none of the advanced features that make the higher priced SLRs like the D300 so desirable.

What I and a lot of other photographers desire, is a small SLR-type camera that compromises only in size and weight, but not in features, capabilities and image quality.

Reader's comment:

Looking foward to your Lensbaby Composer review!

I have the LB 2.0 (now reborn as the muse) and wondering if it's worthwhile for me to sell it and get this new version.

I've heard that the "bokeh" or out of focus areas look different with it compared to the old LB 2.0 and wondering what your observations in that aspect are.

Well, I guess that means I'll have to borrow a Lensbaby 2.0, as I don't have one in-house anymore. Or, maybe I can get by with the Lensbaby 3G, which is the same, except for some funky bolts that allow the tilting and shifting to remain in place. The 3G also has a separate focus ring like the Composer, but the optical element is the same.

Ah, I'll just borrow the 2.0 from my cousin, but of course this means that the review will have to wait another week or so...

February 23, 2009 - Another quiet few days as far as any news or commenting is concerned. The PMA show looks to be a quiet and boring one with most new products already announced.

I'm using a Lensbaby Composer here and there and hope to have some thoughts posted by the end of the week.

February 20, 2009 - Reader's comment:

Under the harsh economic condition, I don't have a 100 bucks. But, I would like to trade my daughter's arts for yours. That way, we can both benefit. Are you in?

Well there goes the idea of funding Sally's college education. Maybe I need to get a cat to take some funky $275 photos for me...

After going so many years without an automated solution to backing up files and keeping them synchronized on my big PC system, I finally had enough of relying on my faltering memory to keep things sorted out. Time for me to finally go with an automated solution to keeping all the mainline storage in sync with the backup storage.

I chose ViceVersa Pro as the application of choice. There’s no particular rhyme or reason for the choice as there are plenty of other options available. VVP came up a few times on a Nikon pro list and I figured if working pros like it for backing up their extensive library of images then it should be fine for little old me.

I installed the trial version to see if it would work as well as the pros said it did; it’s always nice to try before plonking down $60 to actually buy.

I fired up the two Drobo robot storage devices for the backing up process. I knew that there were at least a few hundred files that needed to be backed up, but that I had neglected to do over the past month, so here was an immediate opportunity to see how well VVP would work.

First thing to do with VVP is to select the source folder from one of my hard drives inside the PC, then I chose the destination folder on my USB Drobo. My Drobos are mirrors of the folder structure I have spread out on two internal drives inside the PC.

After selecting the source and destination folders, VVP does a comparison between the two folders and after a minute or two, a large window popped up showing all the files on my internal drive that are different than my destination folder. Looked good, as VVP picked up all the files that had not been copied over to the Drobo.

You won't be able to see much of anything in this screen shot, but the left side is the source drive and the right is the destination drive. The middle window shows the progress of copying the files over.

I selected the method for backing up and chose the Synchronization option at the top of the list. This seemed too easy, as I clicked on the Execute button.

As I watched VVP do its thing, I noticed that the status window showing the progress was showing files being copied from the Drobo to the internal drive. Er, hey, that’s not what I chose and that’s not what I expected; however, after a minute of thought, I realized that VVP is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing based on the Synchronization option I chose.

VVP is synchronizing the files to be exact not only from the internal drive to the Drobo, but also from the Drobo to the internal drive. Thus, all the files I had edited and deleted off my internal system were being copied back over from the Drobo. Okay, that was a dumbass moment on my part…what is it they say about assumptions making an ass of yourself…

After VVP finished copying from the Drobo to the internal drive, it needed me to click on the Close button in the status window in order to start part two of the process, which was what I had really expected; for the files to be copied from the internal drive to the Drobo.

Whereas the first job only took about 12 minutes to finish copying 16 GB of files from the Drobo to the internal drive, the second job would take much longer due to the larger number of files (35 GB) and the slower transfer speed (for some reason, about half that of the first job).

It seems to have worked quite well and without any glitches, other than my own assumptions about how synchronization would work. The nice thing about VVP and synchronization is that it works with the actual files and not with proprietary archive file types.

What I would like to see though is the ability to set parameters such as only synchronizing files one way and not both ways. An ability to synchronize multiple backup drives would be nice too. Otherwise, works as desired and automates the process for me so that I don’t have to worry too much about manually backing up my files. Well worth the $60 to make my life easier and less complicated.

Success with both source and destination folders synchronized

February 18, 2009 - Well, I guess we all figured Canon would respond to Nikon's newish PC-E lenses with updated versions of its own T/S lenses, and so it has with a Mk II version of the long overdue for a refresh, 24mm T/S. However, from out of left field, Canon also announces a 17mm T/S lens.

Say what?! A 17mm T/S lens?! Jeepers!

Is there really a need for such a wide T/S lens, although I suppose on a DX format camera the 17mm becomes a more pedestrian 27mm (Canon DX format sensors have a 1.6x factor compared to Nikon's 1.5x). The 17mm lens will cost around CDN $3000, which makes the idea of using it on a DX SLR a bit silly. Anyone that can afford $3000 for an exotic lens can certainly afford the additional $3000 to get a 5D2.

From the sublime to the ridiculously stupid and pretentious:

In yesterday's Globe and Mail in the Social Studies section comes a snippet about a Seattle gallery displaying photographs taken by a cat. Yes, a cat, as in the domesticated feline that likes to sleep on top of your TV all day and then prowl all night, all the while disdainfully tolerating your human presence (can you tell I'm a dog person?)

Apparently, the owners of Cooper the cat, were curious about what their cat does when they're not around, so they hooked up a small camera to his collar. The camera was set to take a photo every two minutes and it did for a year.

Limited edition prints are available for USD $275 each of 16 select photos. The edition will be limited to 100 prints for each of the 16. If they actually manage to sell all 1600 prints at $275, that will be a cool $440,000. Not too shabby for zero work and zero artistic merit, but what does that say about the humans willing to blow $275 for a digital snapshot taken by a cat...and the art world wonders why the real world makes fun of it.

If anyone's interested, I have finger paintings done by my daughter in kindergarten going for only $100 per print. Very limited edition and I'll even throw in some surprise crafts too. Scribbles by my 19 month old toddler go for a bargain $50. Hurry though, as Harrison Leong originals will go up in price once he turns two in July.

February 17, 2009 - Reader's comment:

While again not a definitive sample, I used my D200 in Zambia at Vic Falls in January '08. The degree of humidity produced from the fall's mist at that time of year can be best described as consistent torrential downpour !

I used the camera for about 15 minutes, shielded with a plastic garbage bag and my poncho then finally put it away because it was getting really hard to use and there wasn't much to photograph in that level of visibility, anyway. We then used one of those little waterproof Olympus Sw's for a while.

Afterwards, say about 90 minutes, we did a helocopter ride over the falls and the D200, only then, began to fog up a bit and the last couple of shots were too foggy to use. However, the camera dried up shortly aftwrwards; continued to work just fine for the rest of the trip and I didn't give it much more thought. I did have a backup, though, my D70 was along for the ride. Didn't use it at the falls, though.

The lens on the D200 was the Nikon 18-200.

And from the same reader, a detailed PDF article about backing up data, written for his photography club members.

As some others have suggested on other sites, it's too bad we could not come up with a Franken-camera. Think of Canon's high resolution sensors in Nikon SLRs, able to use Canon prime lenses and Nikon's wide angle zoom. We're sorta a ways there with adapters allowing for the use of Nikon lenses on Canon SLRs, but unfortunately, that means having to use Canon SLRs with their ergonomics 8^)

Speaking of adapters, I gotta send a line to that fellow in the UK and enquire about my Nikon-to-Canon adapter...

February 16, 2009 - Ever since Luminous Landscape posted an article about what equipment worked and did not work in Antarctica, a little fuss has been worked up about the failure rate of the Canon 5D2.

According to the article, 70 percent of the participants used Canon with the remaining 30 percent using Nikon. There were several other brands present as well, but this was more along the lines of a person having two or three different systems along, such as medium format supplemented with Canon or Nikon.

Of the Canon users, half of them had the 5D2; total number 26. Most of the Nikon users had the D700. Six of the 26 5D2 cameras failed for a failure rate of 25%, which is surprisingly large for such a new camera.

While one Nikon lens did fall apart, none of the Nikon SLRs failed. For those of you familiar with Michael Reichmann’s photo-centric expeditions to Antarctica, you may recall that the last time Reichmann did the trip (two years ago) there were a number of Canon failures also.

Light, but consistent rain brought down the Canons (also similar to two years past). While the 5D2 is not rated as being particularly weather resistant, it does have some weather sealing and I do seem to recall Canon making noises about the 5D2’s weather sealing whereas the original 5D never had such claims.

Some use the Luminous Landscape article to throw their own abuse on the 5D2, whether for moisture-related failure, or not. Others chime in, well, sorry to those chaps in Antarctica, but ne’er a problem seen with my 5D2 (while also neglecting to mention that they’ve probably never used the 5D2 in any sort of inclement weather).

As a “mostly” dispassionate observer on the sidelines, I take amusement and entertainment from the verbal projections flying back and forth. I say mostly, because I do still have a 5D2 in-house for extended use and have marveled at the images it can produce when I’ve gotten the technical parameters correct (exposure, focus, tripod and all that other fun stuff).

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this story before, but I do know a person that had a Canon 1D Mk II (8 MP, PJ and sports SLR) that also suffered from moisture problems. As was described to me, the photographer was using the 1D2 in light, drizzly rain (surprise, surprise), and it stopped operating after some time.

At this point, the story gets a bit fuzzy for me (due to the length of time) for whether or not Canon Canada charged for the service, but I do remember the surprise I felt when I heard this pro SLR apparently lacked seals around the viewfinder, which allowed moisture in and shut down the camera.

Now, I know I’ve told this story before, but I’ve taken my decidedly consumer, with no claim whatsoever for being weather sealed, D100, out in harder than drizzle rain a few times and never experienced an operational failure. At worse, I had some condensation form in the top LCD, but this eventually dried away. I’ve used the D200 and D2x in some drizzly, but consistent rain for a couple of hours at a time and never had an issue either. No form of protection used in any of my times out in the rain with my Nikon SLRs and lenses (incidentally, one of the failed 5D2 SLRs in Antarctica was protected with a Kata camera cover).

Now, my sampling of four SLRs (one D100, two D200, one D2X) does not mean anything statistically, but it is not an uncommon story heard time and again by Nikon users. And, to be sure, I’m sure there are probably several 5D2 users that have used the 5D2 in rain and come out none the worse for wear.

As for me, I’ve not used the 5D2 outdoors yet, as the majority of my usage has been for photographing family or hockey. Come to think of it, I’ve not used the D300 in any inclement weather either, so call me lame J

This latest sampling of Canon failures in Antarctica will turn into one of these niggling and nagging doubts I’ll have sorted away in the back of my mind. I’ll probably open the drawer and pull out this nugget next time someone asks me about Canon reliability.

It's by no means fair or objective for the 5D2, but human nature being what it is, the Antarctica experience is what's going to stick. Similarly (but for different reasons), the first thing that comes to mind when the Canon 1D3 is spoken of is the poor AF performance that was first revealed by Rob Galbraith. Whether or not thousands of 1D3 cameras perform as expected by pros all over the world, the poor AF compared to the predecessor 1D2 has marked the camera.

February 10, 2009 - Well, well, Nikon finally produces another DX prime lens (yawn). There’s the usual resentment floating around now about the lens not being FX, etc., but you know, there’s nothing wrong per se with the new 35mm f1.8G AF-S. It should make a fine lens to supplement a DX camera kit, in between the usual 18-xx and 55-xxx zooms. The price is right too at USD $200.

No, the only thing criticism is with its timing in that it’s about five or six years late to the party, but better late than never I guess. Even if anyone that wanted a serious piece of normal glass for his or her DX Nikon SLR already bought a Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens (me included). For those didn’t like the Sigma’s $600 price, they could use the cheaper, but still capable Nikon 35mm f2 lens.

Ah well, nice to see Nikon throw the token bone to its large DX user base, but it’s nothing that I’ll have much interest in, as my DX lens buying days are over. FX is where things are headed and I’ve re-jigged the kit to eventually reflect a FX bias.

The bigger question for me these days is which brand of FX am I leaning towards…(evil smirk and laugh) J

February 9, 2009 - In the February 7 post, I briefly mentioned the hardware I use to backup my files. What was not mentioned was any software used to help with keeping a handle on all those backups, namely, because I've not used any on the PC side in recent times. I used to use NTI Shadow for doing incremental backups of my daily files, but this isn't the right kind for keeping multiple backups in sync.

I've been doing manual backups from pretty much day one of me having any clue about doing backups, which means having to recall which folders require backing up and which do not. Eventually, I'm going to falter and forget something and this will probably be when that optimist, Murphy, will strike with his law.

On a Nikon forum, there was a thread about syncing software, which was rather timely and from the postings, I've decided to give an application called ViceVersa Pro a try. I'll report back in about a week or so to let everyone know how this works out.

In my February 6 post, I mentioned that I would love to see Nikon produce a set of no-compromise lenses. To expand further, these would be lenses where no compromises are accepted for build quality, as well as optical quality. Size and weight would increase, because my thought is that they would have to be bigger so that they create larger image circles to reduce corner fall off. My thinking is that such lenses would follow the design of the Zeiss lenses for the defunct Contax system.

Well, after reading some reviews about the Sigma 50mm f1.4 lens, it appears that going bigger and heavier to create a larger than normal image circle is exactly what Sigma did.

For a 50mm lens, the Sigma is a monster with a 77mm filter size - consider that the old Nikon 50 f1.4 AF has a 52mm filter size. I don't know that the Sigma has the kind of build quality that would meet with my Leica-like no-compromise standards, but I suspect that it is very well built, just like my own Sigma 30mm f1.4.

A review of the Sigma at the British Journal of Photography, makes mention of another design feature of the Sigma 50 lens (also shared with the new Nikon 50 AF-S lens). It seems that older, fast lenses would suffer from focus shift when used wide open (caused by spherical aberrations), which in turn would appear like back or front focus to the user.

I would love to see Sigma develop more lenses along the lines of its 50mm lens. Fast 24, 35 and 85 lenses would be lovely. As it is, I'm seriously thinking that when the wallet recovers some, the new Nikon 50 AF-S is going to be bypassed for the Sigma 50.

February 8, 2009 - There are many different genres of photography and each has its dominant masters, e.g.

• Sebastio Salgado for documentary
• Joe McNally, William Albert Allard, Steve McCurry amongst others for editorial (no coincidence that many shoot for National Geographic)
• William Neil and David Muench for landscapes

Note that this is nothing more than overturning a small pebble on a massive beach, as far as naming photographers is concerned (just pulling some names from the top of my head).

In the world of North American pop culture photography, Annie Leibovitz is right up at the top of the food chain. I’m sure Leibovitz is fairly well known outside of North America, but since I’m not absolutely certain of just how well known, I’ll only be speaking from a North American perspective.

Leibovitz has become something of a caricature of the overindulgent professional with the unlimited expense account. This is what happens when you’re the lead photographer for Vanity Fair magazine and was the former lead for Rolling Stone magazine.

The stereotype of the pro with the large numbers of assistants who do all the grunt work so that all Leibovitz has to do is show up, click a few frames and then call it day, seems to get thrown around. There is also innuendo of digital retouch artists doing the “real” work of salvaging sloppily taken photographs to create the extravagant photos that Leibovitz is known for at Vanity Fair. As Leibovitz admits, she has, at times, handheld the camera when she knew she should have used a tripod.

There’s probably some truth in the rumours, but it belies that Leibovitz had humble beginnings and worked hard over many years to become who she is today, arguably the best known celebrity photographer in North America. A person so well respected (or of suitable reputation) that she was requested to take official portraits for the UK’s (and Canada’s) Queen Elizabeth II prior to the Queen’s most recent state visit to the USA.

That job ended up with some mild controversy after the producers of a documentary about the royals decided to subvert and reorder time by showing what appeared to be an annoyed Queen storming out of the photo session. In fact, the Queen was fussing about her dress as she was about to enter the room for the start of the photo session.

The only real controversy during this shoot was when Leibovitz suggested the Queen remove her tiara for a "less dressy" look, only to have the Queen remark, “Less dressy? What do you think this is?” As in, the Queen dressed herself in the very formal Order of the Garter robe (at Leibovitz's request) and it was unseemly to ask her to be "less dressy.”

Incidentally, this is also a shoot where Leibovitz’s retouch artists did have to spend some time messing with one portrait of the Queen dressed in a dark cloak, standing in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. In fact, the portrait was taken indoors, as the Queen’s handlers refused to allow the monarch outside; another faux pas in thinking that the Queen would venture outside in all her formal and regal attire. The retouchers had to merge and blend a separate photo taken earlier by Leibovitz of the gardens.

Leibovitz was a military child, constantly moving around the country as her air force father was transferred from base to base. As a very young adult, she spent some time in Israel, before returning to the USA and enrolling in college to become an artist. She dropped painting for photography and in what seems to be one of those being at the right place at the right time moments; she got picked up by a new magazine based in San Francisco.

The new magazine would be about rock and roll, but more about the life around rock and roll rather than only about the music itself. Leibovitz became a photojournalist with Rolling Stone magazine and quickly looked the part by carrying two or three Nikons. She explains that everyone used prime lenses back in the 1970s because zoom lenses were not good enough. My mind conjures up the grizzled Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, with him strutting around the jungle with his three or four Nikons around his neck and shoulders.

After a long stint at Rolling Stone, she joined Vanity Fair and eventually became the lead cover photographer, which marked a severe change from photojournalist to studio photographer. Leibovitz dumped the 35mm gear for medium format quality; first Hasselblad and then ultimately, a dual Mamiya RZ67 system so that a double truck photo was comprised of two merged 6x7 frames. I wonder why she didn’t just use a 4x5 system instead of fussing with two synchronized RZ67 cameras.

For cover shoots and important internal features inside Vanity Fair, Leibovitz would have a team of assistants to work with her, from stylists to make-up to photo assistants. The Vanity Fair assignments are obviously the ones that made her reputation (or stereotype) as a top celebrity photographer. Although, she did photograph a number of musicians during her time at Rolling Stone and even took a hiatus to tour with the band, the Rolling Stones.

Some famous (or infamous) photos were taken by Leibovitz, such as the naked and pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. Others, I had no idea that she was the photographer, such as the quiet and contemplative series of portraits taken in the early 1990s for an American Express campaign.

The book is primarily text with only a smattering of small photos for illustration. Honestly, seeing some of the photos in their un-retouched state makes me wonder and much of her work is not to my taste, but I still wanted the book to read about the larger than life Leibovitz.

She’s got a lot of cachet and power and as one story has it, she hired Joe Buissink to photograph her sister’s wedding, which obviously is quite an endorsement. I’m sure Joe was already quite well known and highly regarded, but being anointed, as it were, by one of the major domos of photography had to have been a jewel like feather in his cap.

Interestingly, there's little in the way of politics discussed. When I got to her chapter titled, Groups, it started off with a 2001 photo of George W. Bush and his closest advisors, and I thought, ah here we go, where Annie spouts off on having to photograph W and his neo-con team. Well, ah, actually, no. It really was just an intro on how she photographed groups with the dual Mamiya 6x7 system. The only rebuke offered was when she was advised that Bush wanted his Chief of Staff included, for seven people total in the photo. However, Leibovitz and her team had setup and tested the lighting for six. Ah, such controversy.

I suppose that because she's still an active photographer, it's better not to make any enemies and be cut off from prestige jobs and access to people. It was after all, her notability as a photographer that got her priveleged access to the OJ Simpson trial by none other than Judge Ito himself, apparently, a diehard fan of hers. Contrast this to what seems like a career ending move (although not likely) by Jill Greenberg and her hateful depictions of John McCain.

February 7, 2009 - Terry White recently posted a blog item about losing his data even though he was using a Drobo. My eyes went wide when I read his intro since I have two Drobos myself and I was eager to find out what went wrong with Terry’s Drobo.

In fact, nothing was wrong with Terry’s Drobo, it worked fine and its much vaunted feature of monitoring the hard drives inside the Drobo indicated that Terry’s drives were perfect.

What befell Terry though was a corruption of his file directory at the OS level, which meant that while his data was still on the drives, he could not access them. The Drobo has no feature or ability to tell you if anything is wrong with the data itself, only if the hard drives are okay.

This ultimately required a rebuild of the data on the Drobo, which Terry was able to do thanks to having a backup of the Drobo’s data on other external drives. In Terry’s system, the Drobo is his main storage drive, whereas in mine, they are backups.

Just goes to show that you can never be too safe and taking a belt and suspenders approach to backing up is cheap compared to losing all your precious data.

To recap what I have for my PC system (as posted last year in response to a reader's query about backups):

1. 2 TB of internal storage in my octo box PC – this is my main storage
2. 4 TB of backup on a USB Drobo – backup #1
3. 4 TB of backup on a FW Drobo – backup #2
4. 2 TB of backup on two 1 TB external drives kept offsite – backup #3

Yes, having four copies of all the files is overkill, even for me. I only meant to have three copies J

The original idea was to have one Drobo backup the PC system, while the second Drobo would act as the primary storage unit for the Mac system. I do plan to have it this way eventually, but I’m going to have to bide my time for getting a second and more powerful Mac system.

At right, are the three hard drives kept off site at my work place. The two NexStar drives house two 500 GB drives each for 2 TB total capacity. The pouch contains a 160 GB bus powered drive that is a mirror of the MacBook's drive.

The MacBook system has the following:

• (3) 300 GB external drives for Time Machine backups – I plan to rotate the drives as they get filled, using a hard drive adapter that allows you to insert “naked” drives into the adapter instead of having to use an external case for each drive
• (2) 160 GB portable drives for mirroring the hard drive using Super Duper – I rotate them offsite on a weekly basis – if the MacBook’s drive fails, I can recreate the system and lose at most, a week’s worth of data, but truthfully, there’s actually not much that has not already been backed up in other ways, e.g. #3 below
• 320 GB portable drive as a general backup of all the data that I have on the MacBook, or want access to but don’t want to clutter up the MacBook’s hard drive – I plan to get another portable drive so that I have two copies of this too
• 40 GB portable drive that backups the PC side of the MacBook, namely, all my website files – this is just the suspenders for #3, which as the belt, also backs up the PC side of my data too

This does not include the 2 TB MyBook World Edition drive that I've yet to install into my network and upload data to for another redundent set of data.

Hard drive capacities continue to increase with 2 TB capacities announced for desktop computers and last weekend, at my local Costco, I noticed 500 GB portable WD Passport drives selling for around $160. I love these portable drives and nowadays, it's hardly worth it to build your own given how inexpensive the Western Digital drives are. There's just no excuse to get a couple of these puppies to backup your systems.

February 6, 2009 - More comments continuing from the February 4 post:

I agree with your answer to the question of whether a stimulus package would work. That means, despite spending over $1 trillion (number boggles the mind) under the guise of stimulating the economy, we will have to wait for WW3 before a recovery takes place....

On question 3, your data seem to show that innovations are behind the success of the duopoly. The period from 1982 to present (27 years), there were few innovations from other players (Minolta, Olympus, Konica, Pentax, Leica, Mamiya, Bronica, Hasselblad ) which eventually led to all exiting the mass market photography business (35mm or smaller).

The medium market is not a mass consumer market and the players there are all into such niche markets that they make no impact on the mass market consumers. Even there, it really comes down to a duopoly of Hassy and Mamiya. So, by extrapolation, we can say that even during a down time, if a company can focus its R&D resources to design and produce excellent and relevant innovations to the market (image stabilization, USM motors, cheap to produce but excellent optics, digital imaging at affordable prices, noise reduction software in-situ), then when the good times return, its competitive positions will be that much better than its competitors.

What other innovations can we expect from the minds of Nikon and Canon engineers, I wonder? Could it be ... more dynamic range for digital sensors rivaling that of film ... 5-6 stops VR-IS ... insane ISO speed ... night photography for the masses to eliminate flash all together ... ? Add your imagination here ... for we can't invent something that our minds did not imagine.

One more point. I understand the mathematics behind the 20% Nikon price hikes, but ... good luck with it Nikon. I am priced out of the market for most of the equipment they make starting with the D3x.

I would really hate to think that we need another world war to get us of this current slump. Although the US has been fighting two wars for as long as or longer than WW II, it has not been a total war effort like WW II was. There’s also no lingering threat of an adversarial superpower like Japan and Germany were in the 1930s and 1940s, or like the USSR was from 1946 to 1990.

Russia is certainly more belligerent under Putin’s control, but the man’s a calculating pragmatist who may rattle the sabre every now and then, but is in no condition to wage another cold war, especially now that oil prices have also tanked.

I think China is far more interested in creating wealth than starting wars, although it’s anti-west posturing at the UN is a tired old act of self interest, e.g. Sudan and access to oil. The new administration is making noises about China’s refusal to adjust its currency vis a vis the USD, but Obama needs to tread lightly given how willing China has been in buying US T-bills to finance the growing deficits.

In short, while the US does face a dangerous foe, it is nebulous instead of being a known entity as Japan, Germany and the USSR were. Unless bombs were to rain down on Mecca, there is no condition that would result in another world war for the USA; however, that’s not to say that Obama couldn’t take a page out of the Gipper’s 1980s playbook and promote a massive military build up, which in turn could spur economic growth (somehow, I don't think so). Reagan’s genius was spending the USA out of the cold war and bankrupting the USSR. But, then again, the growth of the fixed income market and leveraging that ultimately led to the current mess also began under Reagan's watch...

I threw in the medium format references more to break things up from an almost all 35mm review of innovation. I also held back a few more innovations by Pentax, which would have made the 1960s look like Pentax’s decade.

While Nikon seems to have a reputation for innovation, I don’t think it’s quite as well deserved as it might seem at first glance, as other brands were first out for various technologies that we take for granted now (AF-S, VR, T/S lenses). However, Nikon has been good at taking the innovation of others to improve its own products. As some have suggested, Canon may be first out with something, but it takes Nikon to perfect it (don’t shoot the messenger, just repeating a line I read some years back).

We should also be mindful of a brand’s reputational history. While Pentax was quite innovative during the 1960s, it never gained much traction with the professionals, who flocked to Nikon. Canon had a number of excellent cameras and lenses in the 1970s, but it was not until the EOS era that it finally caught up to and then surpassed Nikon for professional market share.

With Canon, pure technological innovation propelled it passed Nikon with the likes of USM, IS and an electronic lens mount devoid of mechanical linkages that still exists to this day with the Nikon F mount. With Nikon, during the dark ages of Canon supremacy, I’ve little doubt that it was Nikon’s cherished history that kept the flame burning with the faithful, e.g. the sluggish auto focus of the F4 compared to the EOS 1 turned the tide for news and sports pros to Canon.

Improvements in dynamic range, IS/VR, ISO speeds are what I would consider as expected from Nikon and Canon. We’re moving on from the 12-bit era to the 14-bit era, which will ultimately lead to the 16-bit era that the medium format backs are now entering. However, what about the day when we hit 24-bits in a RAW file? But then, do we really want 100 MB RAW files to work with? Think of the computing horsepower we would need to work with such files. It will make an octo core box of today look like tomorrow’s Mac Mini.

How about in-camera HDR? In the same way that we bracket shots with exposure compensation for merging in Photoshop, what if the camera did the blending automatically for you? Of course, the camera would store all the bracketed and blended files on the flash card so that if you wanted to do it manually, you could.

For high ISO, I love the idea of never having to use a flash unless I specifically wanted that kind of look. We’re very fortunate to live in a day where we can get usable ISO 3200 photos, but for me, it’s not enough. I want ISO 6400 photos to look like ISO 100 photos. I don’t want to see noise and splotchy color blobs, nor do I want to lose dynamic range and color saturation when I shoot in very low light. I’m at the point where I don’t necessarily need insane ISO speeds, so much as high quality ISO at the speeds. There’s a lot of work that can be done in this aspect of camera performance.

How about in-camera DxO style correction? Today’s cameras are already starting down that road with the ability to fine tune the focusing for your specific lenses, as well as vignette control and dust spot referencing, but the problem is that these are all manual procedures. What we need is automation so that the camera and lens automatically communicate with each other for optimum results. Some basic test or reference photos might still need to be taken, but there after, I’d expect the camera to store the results in memory so that every shot is automatically corrected for focus and lens aberrations.

It would also be nice to have a truly accurate white balance sensor that won't buckle down and start sobbing when confronted with mix lighting conditions. It's ludicrous that we still need to use white balance cards or ExpoDiscs if we want to ensure that we have a good reference frame.

Pretty much every camera comes with a USB port, so why not allow the menus and custom functions to be displayed via a computer screen or laptop. Of course, I’d want some good software to be included to allow for computer control of the camera, but being able to make adjustments via a computer and then saving to the camera would be much nicer than having to fiddle through so many menus.

I was thinking of direct saving of files to an external hard drive, but with the way flash technology is advancing for speed and capacity, I no longer see the point. The new SD specs are incredible with massive data throughput and 2 TB capacities forecast by the end of 2009. Can't wait for the new USB and Firewire specs, because we'll need them to move so much data around. Of course, if it could be done wirelessly at such speeds, so much the better.

I want flash units with wireless control via radio frequency instead of glorified optical or infrared. I also want the ability to control all the wireless units via computer like some of the high-end studio strobes.

I want Nikon to make a series of lenses that have zero compromises. Nikon’s been making optics for over 90 years, so it obviously has the ability to make world class lenses a la Leica and Zeiss. It may mean that Nikon has to do what Contax did before it folded, which was to make, essentially, medium format sized lenses for a 35mm SLR. This allowed the Contax/Zeiss lenses to cover the entire 35mm frame with minimal fall off in the corners.

Such lenses would be big, heavy and expensive and probably the only one I would be able to afford would be a 50mm f1.4, but it would be nice to see Nikon return to some of the 1960s glory days when it came out with some pretty exotic glass. Remember that a lot of consumers buy based on perception rather than any real need or ability to buy a brand’s best products.

FX SLRs for the masses – after a few more years of amortization, the D3’s FX chip should have paid for itself and just as Nikon has squeezed far too much life out of the tired old 6 MP sensor from the D100 days, Nikon could do the same with the FX chip. Throw that puppy into some sensibly priced consumer SLRs and clean up. Throw the D300’s DX chip into a revamped D40/D60 shell and lower the price to $300 and clean up even more.

Make a premium priced, concept digicam using the same FX sensor. Or, do a limited production run to see what kind of demand there is for a pocket sized digicam with the FX chip. I’d bet that it would be a home run even in today’s times. While, you’re at it, make a sensibly priced M-mount rangefinder with the same chip and cause Leica’s management to collectively loose control of their bowels.

The need to stick to the rectangular sensor size is silly. Give me square so that I no longer need to buy accessory grips just to shoot a portrait mode photo. A 36 MP 6000x6000 sensor should not be difficult to produce given that we already have 6000x4000 sensor sizes. Square also maximizes the image circle of a lens.

The Panasonic G1 and the bridge cameras from about five years ago point the way for future viewfinder technology, especially if video convergence continues. Optical viewfinders will give way to EVFs as the technology improves. This means that we will finally have truly silent SLRs and no longer receive evil glares when we take pictures during a show or ceremony. Incidentally, I really don’t see the Red system as being a factor at all, because it’s so expensive compared to current still cameras and until I see a still image extracted from video that can match the best of still technology, I’ll continue to be a doubter.

For a wedding photographer, a D40 sized camera that offers tomorrow’s ISO 6400 with a quality that matches today’s ISO 200 while being absolutely silent in operation, would be a huge boon to capturing spontaneous moments. Throw in a pro quality 20-300 f2.8 AF-S VR zoom lens that isn’t the size of a Carl Gustav anti-tank weapon, and we’re talking!

These are quick thoughts and nothing extraordinary; more just evolution of the paths we’re already on now. For a real shake up, I think a significant leap in sensor technology has be developed to move away from Bayer interpolation and AA filters. Get rid of these two bottlenecks and color fidelity and sharpness could improve dramatically.

Nikon’s and Canon’s price increases – yep, just like you I understand the need to re-price based on the appreciating Yen to the USD, but it just seems like so much folly to me. Panasonic is going to lay off 15,000 workers world wide; the Chinese economy is tanking, dragging the rest of Far East Asia with it; Europe is hurting big time and the biggest market in the world has suddenly become a net saver instead of spender.

You raise prices in North America and Europe to make up for losses back home, but what happens when North America and Europe refuse to buy? Consumer spending is already haemorrhaging the retail sector and raising prices is not going to help reverse that trend.

Seems to me that losses are going to come anyway, but how do you want those losses? Because of currency exchange or because of a loss of market share from the higher prices scaring off purchases. I’m no MBA and wouldn’t know the first thing about business, but given the choice between the two, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and shore up market share? Given that both Nikon and Canon are doing this, it seems like some game theory thinking and collusion has been applied. Pentax seems to have gotten it right by decreasing the prices of its kits (apparently Nikon expects a severe 50% drop in sales and a loss for the next quarter).

The ordinary consumer walking into Best Buy with some cash for a D40 kit is not going to understand the nuances of global FX. All he or she is going to see is that the D40 kit that sold for $400 last week, is now selling for $450 this week. And, at this level, $50 is not chump change.

Hell, $50 is a lot of money to me – I got dinged a couple of weeks ago by one of those private parking firms that have their attendants lurk in the bushes and then rush out to ticket you as soon as you’ve gone inside the store. For the sake of missing out that I had to buy a $2 ticket while I was in the vendor’s building for 15 minutes, I was fined $50.

I paid the vulture’s bill, because I decided that my time wasted in not paying and then dealing with their sleazy collections agency is worth a helluva lot more than $50. Thoughts of Kiefer Sutherland taking a baseball bat to mailboxes in the movie, Stand by Me, came to mind for what I’d like to do to the parking company’s ticket boxes J

Thankfully, I’m an introverted and demure Canadian who adheres to the country’s legislative motto of Peace, Order and Good Government (the USA has the so much cooler Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness). Many often wonder about the differences between Canadians and Americans because of our long and close friendship, but those mottos pretty much sum up the differences.

Random, non-photographic thought – is it me or are those blue tinged car headlights too bright? So much so that you are blinded from the glare when such equipped cars come at you in the opposite lane. When those vehicles happen to be SUVs, well it’s that much worse, especially if you’re driving in a low sedan.

Coincidentally, an article in a recent Globe and Mail discussed this problem and how some people are coming up with new ideas. One is that we should actually drive with our high beams on all the time, because it does not take much speed to overdrive a car’s low beams. To get around the blinding glare, you equip the lights with sensors that will detect other car's lights, which will then cause a little blocker to shade part of the light to reduce the intensity and the glare for the opposite driver.

One of our vehicles is equipped with said blue tinged headlights and I don’t find them to be much better than the other car with the traditional, yellow tinged headlights. I also find the yellow tinged lights to be much easier on the eyes when driving.

February 4, 2009 - Me and my big mouth; here's some writing suggestions from a reader:

Since you are a history major, here are questions if you want questions:

1 - Is there ever any history of a stimulus package being effective in stimulating the world's biggest economy?

2 - Is there any history of a major price jump by a photographic company that also creates loss of sales and market share to a competitor who chose not to raise prices?

3 - Is there any history of a photographic company increasing product development in a recession and come out to beat its competition when the good times return?

It's been a few too many years since I've had to do research for a university essay, but here goes:

1. The only stimulus package that comes to mind that would be at the scale of what we're seeing now is the New Deal of the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt became president of the USA. It followed Keynesian economic theory of massive government spending during recessions to propel the economy to growth. However, as I learnt it, the real economic stimulus package that finally got the USA out of the Depression was World War II. The massive industrial building to support the war effort was just the thing to put everyone back to work, along with changing the employment landscape by taking women out of the kitchen and into the factories (with so many men fighting in the war).
   
   As an aside, the five of the ten largest points drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average occurred in 2008 with percentage drops of between 4.5 to almost 8 percent. However, on October 19, 1987, the DJIA dropped by over 22 percent, which is the largest percentage drop by the DJIA in one day. Even the two worst days of the 1929 crash were around 12 and 13
   percent respectively on October 28 and 29.
   
   Between 1929 and 1932, the DJIA lost 89 percent of its value after hitting a peak in September 1929.
   
   Subjective lesson: sell in September and take a cash position!
   
   
2. This one I don't know enough about to comment on, but if we twist the question a bit, we could perhaps look at Canon's development of the full frame 1Ds series that pummelled Nikon on the marketing front. It added insult to injury that after starting the mass market digital revolution in 1999 with the D1, Nikon was not able to carry the momentum and allowed Canon to takeover top spot when the 1D was introduced. With the 1Ds, Canon had a monopoly on the full frame, high resolution market.
   
   The 1Ds was astronomically priced compared to the DX format offerings, but no one else, save for some medium format backs, could match the 24x36mm size sensor. Who knows what Nikon had in the R&D centre for prototypes, but as everyone knows, Nikon was unable to respond until 2007. This gave Canon five years to build up a following and gain more market share even if sales of the 1Ds series were very low and maybe even a loss leader, as the prestige factor brought many more new users to the brand.
   
   
3. For this one, we need to take a rough (and I do mean rough) look at some of what happened in the 20th century for photographic development. Obviously, not everything will be mentioned and as most know, I have a Nikon and Canon bias as far as the brands I follow, so forgive me if I've missed something really awesome that Pentax, Minolta, et al. introduced to the world.
   
   Some of my years may be off by one or two and you may not agree with the intrepretation of when a bull market occurred and when a bear market occurred (DJIA as the reference)- again, very rough and I'm borrowing the data from another source, so don't shoot the messenger:

My thoughts are that despite being in a bear market era, the 1960s through the 1970s saw much innovation from all the leading brands. My subjective interpretation is that just as the 1970s forced auto makers to produce small, fuel efficient cars, the camera brands were producing compact, but quite capable SLRs. Think of the Nikon FM/FE and Olympus OM series SLRs.

The bad times of the 1970s, which saw rising prices in a deflationary cycle, probably prompted the brands to come up with lower cost production methods to lower costs. The Canon AE-1 is the obvious trend setter, as Canon found cheaper parts to mass produce these very popular SLRs. Nikon had the FG and EM SLRs to cater to the mass market.

The history also shows some missed opportunities for Minolta with the first integrated AF SLR, as being found guilty of violating Honeywell's patents to produce that milestone SLR, was a financial blow that Minolta had difficulty recovering from. And, as mentioned above, Nikon was unable to capitalize on the D1 momentum when Canon responded with the 1D in 2001.

However, despite facing a huge tech meltdown in 2000, both Nikon and Canon continued development of digital technology and despite a missed opportunity for Nikon, it's survived and continues to be a leader despite being an optical company without the backing of consumer electronics sales that Canon, Sony and Panasonic enjoy.

I would say that as duopoly, Canikon has wiped the floor of the competition when the tech meltdown faded to memory. Minolta was finally forced to capitulate and sell the photo division to Sony, while Pentax has sold itself to Hoya. Olympus has not gained anymore market share and Panasonic is too new of a player to determine how well it will do.

As we Chinese are alleged to have cursed, we live in interesting times...

February 3, 2009 - I guess I gotta get this off my chest...the @#$% Steelers won another Super Bowl! I'm still bitter from the 2006 Super Bowl when the officials revealed that they were unabashed Steelers fans and screwed the Seahawks with a number of questionable calls.

Steelers fans are like Habs fans, no matter where you go, you can't escape them. For those unfamiliar with the Habs, it's short for Les Habitants, the nickname for the Montreal Canadiens. Just as Pittsburgh is now the winningest championship team in the NFL, the Canadiens are the winningest team in the NHL, although Pittsburgh has a long ways to go to match the 24 Stanley Cups won by the Habs. Only the New York Yankees have won more championships (26) than the Habs.

It takes little effort to cheer for the Steelers (or Cowboys or 49ers, for that matter) or other perennial winners like the Habs and Yankees. I mean, sheesh, where's the effort in that. It takes real dedication and perseverance to cheer for a team like the Seahawks or the Vancouver Canucks ;^)

If you're a Canucks fan, do I really have to mention the dark days of the 1980s when we had the V logo and the putrid, yellow home jerseys? The return of the original 1970s colors is excellent (same color scheme as the Seahawks) and I'm all for returning to the original logo and making sushi out of the Orca mascot.

Anyway, I'm just ranting...

I just finished watching a couple of videos posted by Moose Peterson at his website about cleaning his gear and I'm glad to see that I have a similar, high tech tool as he does, namely, an old t-shirt. I have a few lying around my office that I use for dusting and general cleaning. You know the shirts I'm talking about, the 20 year old one that now has holes in the arm pits, or has grease stains from spilling some Pizza Hut bits and pieces on it.

A few days back, I also watched one of Moose's videos taken in Yellowstone, where he's taking photos of mountain sheep. Moose is using a D3 and whenever he's shooting, well, it really does sound like he's shooting with a machine gun with the way he rattles off the frames.

Now, this is not a comment about Moose's shooting style, but just about how impressive that D3 sounds when it's gunning at full bore. I was inspired to bypass the Canon 5D2 for my son's last hockey game and return to the D300 with its MB-D10 grip to fire at 8 fps. Sometimes, you just gotta run and gun like Moose does to capture the action and a paltry 4 fps from the 5D2 (along with it's first frame hesitation) does limit how you photograph action.

Getting back the 1.5x crop factor with the DX chip was also welcome to get in tighter. I really gotta look into getting a 1.4x TC to use with the Canon 70-200 lens, or even a 300 f4 to really maximize the 21 MP of resolution.

Nikon's released a whole slew of new Coolpix cameras. I've not looked at any in detail, but that P90 certainly catches the eye with the 24X zoom and ability to fire at 15 fps (!) The ISO 6400 is likely to be a bad joke, but man, that 26-624mm lens range is going to raise a few eyebrows. Video mode is offered too, which is now so standard as to be a bore.

Speaking of video, I haven't even tried it out on the 5D2, which just tells you how unimportant it is for my needs, but I'm thinking, everybody and their dog (or Moose) is doing videos these days; shouldn't I? Just thinking out loud...

February 2,2009 - A bit of a dry spell for postings in recent weeks. Partly not a lot to really discuss and partly being busy with doing a bit of NikonLinks redesigning, as well as housekeeping at this website to prune away some deadwood.

About the only thing to note at the moment is Nikon's (and Canon's) price increase, or expiration of rebates on cameras and lenses. It's not the kind of thing that you would expect a multinational company to do in the midst of a severe economic downturn. The recent quarterly results from a number of big companies indicate a flow of red ink with no end in sight. Even the mighty Microsoft is laying off thousands of staff to try and bolster the bottom line. Thus, with all the doom and gloom, raising prices instead of cutting them seems foolhardy.

Not that I was in any position to do any major purchasing anyway, what with the way my wife continues spending as if there were no recession. My own bottom line got blasted down further no thanks to some untimely expenses that I've had to cover; she's like a government (any level) with a profligate attitude of spending, because it's not her money...and no, she doesn't read my website, so I'm okay making these comments ;^)

I "thought" that I'd be in a position to get that D700 by now, but alas, no more; however, I really should not be complaining. I'm doing okay and I've got or have access to some mighty fine gear and I should work on getting the most out of them instead of complaining.

However, being in a bit of a dry spell at the moment, I'm open to any suggestions or questions from y'all...

January 26, 2009 - Photographing my son's hockey team from this year and last year, I noticed that the players sometimes create symmetrical lines and formations when chasing after a puck or a player with the puck. The above photo is an example, as are these below:

It's not unlike a flock of birds, or even a formation of airplanes (the demonstration teams at air shows like the Canadian Snowbirds or the US Blue Angels). The hockey player formations only last for a few seconds though, as eventually the puck handler either scores, mishandles the puck, or is chased down by the opposing players.

Speaking of scoring and allowing me a brief proud pop moment, if you will, here's my kid doing his celebration after scoring a goal.

There's something wonderful about seeing the kids score goals, with the look of utter joy and excitement. At this level, it's all for the love of the game and it makes all those early morning practices, the driving all around to different arenas, and the thousands of dollars spent, worthwhile.

There are a lot of life lessons to be learned playing organized sports and far be for me to deny my sons their Canadian birthright in playing hockey...eh 8^)

January 23, 2009 - Here's a link to a photo game where you try and guess a person's age based on the photo posted. After making a guess, you'll see the correct age along with an opportunity to guess another person's age. The website will accept your own photos...if you dare...

January 20, 2009 - PMA news article about Canon regaining number one spot in DSLR sales:

Canon regains top spot in Japanese DSLR market in 2008
BCN Inc., a market research firm monitoring POS data from 2,360 electronics stores operated by 25 major consumer electronics appliances marketers, announced shares held by manufacturers of digital cameras, printers, and other electronic devices in the Japanese market in 2008, reports JPEA International PEN News Weekly.

Canon Inc. regained the top spot in the DSLR segment with a market share of 40.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from 2007. The EOS Kiss X2 (Rebel XSi), an entry-level new model boasting high performance almost equivalent to a middle-class DSLR, became the main growth engine. Also, such new products as the EOS 50D and the EOS 5D Mark II introduced in the latter half of 2008 fueled the growth.

Nikon Corp. had taken over the lead for the first time from Canon in 2007, but relinquished the lead with a market share of 39.9 percent, down 4.0 points. Sony Corp. strengthened its marketing operations by introducing three entry-level models, including the Alpha DSLR-A350, came in third with a 9.2 percent share, up 5.0 points. Olympus Corp. came in fourth with a 4.8 percent share, and Hoya Corp. (Pentax) moved down to fifth place with a market share of 4.2 percent, down 1.6 points.

In the field of lens-built-in digital cameras or point-and-shoot cameras, Canon held the top spot for five consecutive years, with a market share of 18.3 percent in 2008, yet it lost 1.4 points due to more competition. Casio advanced to the second place from the fourth gaining 2.3 points to 15.4 percent, followed by Panasonic (15.2 percent, down 0.9 points), Olympus (12.2 percent, up 1.7 points), and Sony (12.1 percent, down 2 points).

In the field of printers, Seiko Epson maintained the lead over Canon, with market shares of 44.6 percent in the inkjet printer segment, 39.3 percent in the photo printer segment, and 46.1 percent in the multifunctional printer segment.

The top two positions see little change in market share, as Nikon and Canon command 80 percent of the DSLR market. If memory serves correctly, it is a small drop from the nearly 85 percent held a year or two ago.

Some may remember Sony and Olympus both wanting 20 percent market share to themselves, but I commented that only Sony would be in a position to come close (although I did think both were a bit delusional thinking either could actually gain 20 percent). Now, Sony is in a solid third place position with just over 9 percent, but Olympus seems to be stagnant with its consistent 5 percent. However, where might Pansonic end up if the Micro 4/3 format has some legs to run the DSLR race?

In the digicam race, what happened to Kodak, as it was dominant not too long ago. No surprise to see Canon in top spot again, but wow, Sony's fallen dramatically from its once solid second place to fifth place. There was a time when Sony seemed poised to overtake Canon. Is it a sign of Sony's boring digicam line-up or just Sony dedicating itself to higher margin SLRs instead of the saturated digicam market?

How much longer will SLR sales prop up sagging revenue, especially with a deflationary trend towards saving. The USA, the most important market in the world is now returning to historic savings figures, which does not bode well for the rest of the world looking to America to spend the world out of recession.

I finally watch the Da Vinci Code movie the other night. As much as I love movies about religious myths, I just don't have time to indulge in watching much TV and being able to sit down and watch a movie all the way through is an unheard of luxury. However, I was curious about how the movie would depict the Catholic Church and one of its organizations, Opus Dei. The Church being as old, large and as powerful as it is, will always be a target for conspiracy theories.

The curiosity about Opus Dei originates from the time a friend and I were hired by the Vancouver Diocese to photograph the 2006 visit to Vancouver by the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarría. Coincidentally, my friend and I were hired to photograph the Vancouver Diocese's 2002 ceremony of the canonization of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. You can see some of the photos taken during the Vancouver visit at the Opus Dei website (last four photos in the group).

Photographically, it was like being a paparazzi for a rock star breezing his way onto the stage and then whisked away after his talk. Technically, it was a brutal environment to photograph in huge hotel ballroom that offered dark and dingy light. Oh to have had a D700 or 5D2 back then...

While I have an interest in religion, it's as a student of history, not because I'm religious in any way; however, whenever people ask about me having four kids, I tell them that I'm a repressed, closet Catholic 8^)

January 19, 2009 - Apologies for the lack of new posts; it's been a busy time doing other things. There's also a lack of new and interesting things happening at the moment, as far as any new photographic news is concerned.

I'm still chugging away with the MacBook running OS X and Windows Vista at the same time; not ideal, but works for me at the moment. The Dual-Link DVI adapter does wonk out from time-to-time with it giving me the fuzzy TV channel look on some occasions and a smeared, Vaseline on a filter look on other occasions. It does not happen often enough for me to stop using the MacBook with the 30-inch Dell LCD, but it is annoying nonetheless and I may ultimately look for another solution.

Still using the Canon 5D2 and getting to grips with what it offers. Should have some more lenses to use with it later this week, which will make for a much more versatile kit. Also placed an order for a Nikon-to-Canon lens adapter, so I'll finally be able to mate some Nikon glass to a Canon SLR and add another element (no pun intended) to my lens testing and satiate my curiosity about using Nikon optics with Canon sensors.

January 12, 2009 - I'm tired as a dog these days; spent the whole weekend cleaning out the garage instead of editing my photos and doing some printing. A dirty little rat got into our garage and started nibbling away at some of our food stored there. Turns out the little bugger was using our minivan's engine block as his nest, which would explain why our van had a nasty smell the last little while.

While I was cleaning out all the accumulated crap in the garage, I kept a hockey stick on the ready to slapshot the rodent into the afterlife. Unfortunately, no opportunity to do so and have any companion rats say to me, ooh, you dirty human, you killed my brother (sorry, a weak attempt at paraphrasing a line that James Cagney never actually spoke in the 1931 film, Taxi).

If and when the weather ever cooperates to become nice and clear on a morning that's actually free for me, I hope to do some more shooting with the Canon 5D2 and try a little experiment I've had in my head.

January 7, 2009 - Apple introduced the expected 17-inch MacBook Pro yesterday at an otherwise ho-hum MacWorld. Speculation runs that Jobs bowed out because he didn't want to be seen at such a lame MacWorld ;^)

No new quad core iMac, but the 17-inch MBP does give me hope that Apple is finally going to break the 4 GB RAM barrier for the future 15-inch MBPs as well as the future iMac. Not that anyone would want to pay Apple's rate for 8 GB of RAM given that it's a $1200 upgrade over the standard 4 GB in the new 17-inch MBP.

Throw in the new solid state drive option and the 17-inch MBP comes in around $5500, which is territory that gamers PC notebooks used to have to themselves. That's a pretty big chunk of coin for a mobile computer with a battery that cannot be swapped out. Apple claims pretty optimistic specs for the new battery, but if the reality is anything like the iPods's batteries, cut the expected life by half.

With all my talk and emphasis on pixel peeping Canon 5D2 files in recent times, I didn't talk about print qaulity at all, even though I produced a few 16x20 prints from the recent family photo shoot.

The prints look great and the family loves them. As I expected when I saw the slight softness in the second row of people, there was nothing to be concerned about in the print.

As I print more and come to understand the relationship between what I see and edit on an LCD monitor versus what I expect to see on print, I've taken to giving the on-screen image a slightly overexposed look. This translates into a normal looking print on paper because the print is a reflected light media whereas the monitor is a transmissive light media and the print cannot compare to the on-screen view.

When I was editing the files, I initially started with a white balance based on a reference shot that included some WhiBal cards. This resulted in a nicely warm looking image on the screen, but as I edited more files, I wondered if maybe the warmth was maybe too much and thus ended up cooling down the images a touch.

The prints, on Epson Premium Luster 250, ended up looking a touch cooler than expected and I realize now that I should have left the white balance at the reference level. As I said, the prints already look great, but having that bit of warmth would have pleased me more.

If you're ever asked about retouching people photos, you can tell them what I tell people, who are non-photographers :

"That smooth looking skin you see in my photos actually requires a significant amount of editing; hours of hard work laboring in Photoshop. What I have to do first is take a sample of perfectly unblemished skin and than layer it on top of the old, wrinkly skin.

As most adult faces have no perfectly unblemished skin, I had to find an alternative source of perfect skin. Since I happen to have a baby in the house, when I had to change the baby's diaper, I snapped a shot of his bum and then used that to provide the sample needed to correct the blemishes.

Thus, the skin that you think is as smooth as a baby's bottom..."

Of course, this is just a joke, but I did use it on a brother-in-law a couple of years ago when we were discussing the touch-ups of his face for the family portrait 8^)

January 5, 2009 - Did you see the posting by Rob Galbraith on the new Lenovo ThinkPad W700 notebook computer? It's a beast, but wow, what a photo geek's delight. A second LCD panel that slides out from the right side of the main screen; that's f'ing beautiful man! And, don't forget the built-in Wacom tablet.

Now this is a notebook that the designers thought outside the box for and makes Apple look like a staid old grannie. I mean, sheesh, where are the quad core CPUs, support for 8 GB of RAM, and ability to install a 500 GB hard drive in the MacBook Pro? Of course, the Lenova is probably double the cost of a maxxed out MBP though, but hey, it's only money 8^)

Another series of pixel peeping samples with the Canon 5D2, this time with a test that's a bit more stringent than my first one. For some laughs and a bit of curiosity, I included the old D2X and the Sigma 30mm f1.4 DX format lens.

Since I had the cameras and lenses out to test with a subject that I find very useful for comparing resolution, I decided to compare my two 50mm f1.8 lenses. One is quite old now and was made in Japan, while the other is the current version made in China. The comparison is posted on the old 50mm review page (scroll down the page). Which do you think will be sharper...

January 4, 2009 - Looking over the family photos I took on New Year’s Eve, I got a sense of what the 5D2 offers when used optimally, e.g. on a tripod and ISO 100.

The last time I did such photos, I used the D2X and the files from that camera interpolated quite well to produce 16x20 inch prints. Although it only offers 12 MP compared to 21 for the 5D2, the D2X still exposed a lot of details that required touching up in postproduction.

Things like moles, pimples, facial hair and other blemishes were captured by the D2X. The larger files and superior resolution of the 5D2 reveal even more, showing off hair where you don’t want or expect to see them. Skin pores are revealed in all their glory and touch-ups are required as much as they were with the D2X files. Interestingly, I didn’t think that the 5D2 files needed anymore touch-ups than the D2X files, but I’m going by memory at this point in time. However, I don’t recall seeing as much peach fuzz details with the D2X compared to the 5D2.

I was in some of the photos, as my family tried to have some formal portraits done, but uncooperative and cranky kids made it a near useless exercise. There are times when selling the kids on eBay seems like a good idea...

Looking at the photos was quite a shock in how many moles and blemishes I have on my face. I see my face everyday in the bathroom mirror, but the 5D2 made it brutally clear that I’m packing on too many pounds (cameras add 10 lbs don’t they?) It also revealed that despite shaving that morning, my razor does not shave as close as the commercials would claim. Maybe subconsciously, this is why I avoid being the subject of photographs in favor of being the taker of photographs J

Other things that revealed themselves at 100 percent pixel level review is that a high resolution, full frame camera will reveal flaws in technique. Much like great high end audio equipment reveal flaws in the recording process, the 5D2 revealed that some of my handheld shots lacked the crispness that the tripod mounted photos have.

It’s not my handheld shots were unusable, they were still fine for printing some 5x7 and 8x10 inch prints, but I was surprised at the loss of sharpness even though I used 1/200 as my shutter speed, which would be a two-stop buffer from the usual rule of thumb of shooting at the reciprocal of the focal length of lens being used (mostly the 50mm f1.8). However, after getting over my surprised I remembered that some of my photos were taken with the 70-200 f2.8 lens with IS turned on. The results have the makings of another experiment/test to determine whether I was a bit too sloppy (but, not anytime soon though).

Speaking of sloppiness, some of my photos just were not good enough to produce 16x20 prints suitable for framing and hanging on the wall. Concentrating on the facial expressions made me miss some other details that didn’t reveal themselves until I started editing them.

I suggested a redo at another time for two family groups, but one family suggested that I just enlarge a recently taken informal family portrait. This was during the tobogganing session I wrote about last week and while the 8x10 print looked nice, I was not so confident that the file would be good enough for a 16x20 print – keep in mind that going from an 8x10 to 16x20 is 4x the surface area and is not just a 2x linear enlargement (four 8x10 prints fit in the same dimensions as a 16x20 print).

I used the D300 (at ISO 400) and 18-200 VR lens for the portrait and while I mention the two regularly as my travel kit, the more I use the 18-200 lens the more I’m of the opinion that it’s only good enough for 8x10 prints.

Now, let me clarify that I’m not suggesting that when the 18-200 lens is used with good technique that it cannot produce a larger than an 8x10 inch print, but come on, do you really expect the 18-200 lens to be used on a tripod with mirror delay and a cable release? It’s a lens that’s meant to be used handheld and it’s a fine all-rounder, but used the way most would use it, I’m just not finding it to offer suitable quality if large prints is the ultimate outcome.

The lens is slow, which necessitates higher ISO settings to get a fast enough shutter speed, even with VR turned on.  On many occasions, you cannot stop it down in order to maximize the optical quality unless you shoot in bright light. The bokeh is nothing special too, which is just adding insult to injury.

In order to enjoy great convenience, you have to sacrifice something to the photographic gods and for me, it’s enlargement capabilities. I did print a 16x20 of that informal portrait, but as I expected and to my eyes, the quality does not hold up and I can see pixilation in some of the details from the interpolation.

By comparison, I or others have handheld the D2X and I’ve been able to produce fine looking 16x20 prints. Other than the obvious difference in cameras, the big difference was the quality of the lenses, which were either a 28-70 f2.8 AF-S or the 17-55 f2.8 AF-S DX, which are professional quality lenses in every sense, from build to optical quality (as well as cost). With such lenses, shooting at f5.6 results in maximizing the image quality whereas f5.6 is wide open for much of the 18-200's range.

Also posted today are my first set of pixel peeping samples and comparisons with the 5D2 and D300. There are some caveats with this first set, as explained on that page and I will have more critical comparisons to come.

January 2, 2009 - Happy New Year to everyone! My hopes and wishes for a successful and prosperous 2009; may your resolutions hold true!

You know, if there’s a hell for photographers, it’s gotta involve kids photography. I did a family photo session for my wife’s siblings, which involves four family groups and 10 kids and it was a helluva time trying to get all the kids to cooperate long enough to get a few decent shots.
                                                                                                                
Kids older than one and younger than three are problematic, because they’re at the age where they recognize their parents and don’t like to be held by adults that they’re not familiar with. Their attention span is about as short as the shutter speed used to take the photos (1/200 in this instance) and they often need someone standing over or beside the photographer to grab their attention and look towards the camera.

I expected this, but I didn’t expect some of the older kids being pouty and uncooperative. Throw in other kids acting like, well, kids, and you have a classic situation of throwing gas on the fire – my oldest was a brat who behaved like a jackass throughout the session and instigated a few of the trying moments I had.

The session, however, was an opportunity to put the Canon 5D2 through its paces to ultimately produce some 16x20 inch enlargements for each family group. Just one snag though, as I only had the 70-200 IS lens suitable for use on the full frame camera. Thus, the day before, I bought a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens; the smallest and cheapest lens in Canon’s lineup – I’ll have a couple more Canon L zooms coming to use with the 5D2, but not for another week or two.

This tiny Canon prime lens is so cheap that it does not even have a metal lens mount – even the equally cheap Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens has a metal lens mount. However, cheap in cost and build does not necessarily mean cheap in optical quality, as 50mm lenses are generally the easiest to design and get right. While the 50mm f1.8 lenses may not be the equal of the more expensive 50mm f1.4 lenses offered by the various lens makers, the cheaper variants do not give up all that much.

50mm appealed to me not only for cost, but also for versatility in that I can do some foot zooming to go wider or tighter with minimal distortion, unlike wide angle lenses that have lateral distortion along the edges – the effect of seeming to stretch human bodies horizontally when they are placed at the edge of the frame (telephoto lenses have compression effects). The 50mm lens will also come in handy for some pixel peeping comparisons with my Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens on the D300 (not the most suitable of comparisons to the 5D2, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment).

Since everyone was meeting up at one house for a New Year’s Eve dinner, I setup my lights in that house’s living room. I used my two Visatec Solo B1600 mono lights (600 watt/seconds) firing into 60-inch umbrellas. The Canon 5D2 was mostly mounted to my Gitzo 1345 aluminum tripod with the Arca Swiss B1 ball head. On occasion, I handheld the camera for photos that I knew would not be enlarged to 16x20.

The nice thing about working in this living room is the high ceiling to accommodate the large umbrellas at a decent height. As many of the adults wear eyeglasses, the higher you can set the mono lights, the less risk of reflections showing up in the eyeglasses.

Since I don’t do this type of photography all that often, I felt a little rusty and focused all my attention on the facial expressions of the kids, trusting the adults to pay attention to the camera. As might be expected, trying to get one good shot requires taking several photos, but I could not shoot all that quickly, because the strobes needed a few seconds to recycle after each shot. Shoot too quickly and you’ll get either a completely black frame from gross underexposure, or images that are dimmer than they should be, because the strobes did not recycle fully.

After setting up the strobes and angling at what I thought would be suitable for coverage, I adjusted the power to output f11 light at ISO 100, as metered by my Sekonic 508 meter.

This required about ¾ power output from the strobes, but being one of those expose-to-the-right practitioners, I adjusted lens’ aperture to move the histogram as close to the right while still giving myself some headroom. This resulted in an actual working aperture of f9 instead of f11.

While this is a smaller aperture than I usually work with, after viewing my shots at 100% in Lightroom, I could see that where I had two rows of people, the second row was softer than the front row due to a lack of depth of field. I focused on a subject in the front row and let the depth of field fall where it may. I could have used a smaller aperture, but with digital, diffraction becomes an issue for most lenses past f11. I’m not too concerned about the slight softness in the second row though, as it won’t be noticeable in the final print.

The second technical part of this project is to edit the photos using the MacBook instead of my usual editing computer, the eight-core Xeon tower. I wanted to see how the MacBook would fare for Lightroom and Photoshop editing of the 21 MP 5D2 files, which weigh in at 25 MB per RAW file and can convert to 150 MB, 16-bit TIFF files.

Subjectively, there seems to be some lag in working with some of the files in Lightroom, especially conversion from RAW to TIFF in Lightroom 2.2. This is no surprise, as RAW conversion is a processor-intensive job, which the PC tower handles with relative ease. Photoshop worked seemed pretty good though when I was working with the 16-bit TIFF files converted from the 5D2 RAW files, although, my Photoshop edits tend to be pretty light duty stuff these days.

While working with a 30-inch LCD is wonderful, on the day after the shoot, I was at another family group’s house for lunch and dinner, so I only had the MacBook and it’s a pain in the ass working with such a small screen. Certainly usable in a pinch, but not something I’d want to use for long editing sessions. Keep in mind that I feel this way about my PC notebook, which has the same resolution as the MacBook; neither (without an external monitor) are anything I’d want to use for more than quick and dirty edits.

On an overall basis and as I expected, the MacBook is not going to be replacing my PC tower for serious editing work involving anything more than maybe a couple of dozen photos.

Speaking of editing, a few of the shots required a bit of Franken-editing due to closed eyes and some reflections in the eyeglasses. While the height of the lights were sufficient for most of the photos, if a person held his or her head at the wrong angle, reflections could flare up.

One edit of closed eyes was pretty quick and easy to copy and paste a set of open eyes from a shot taken just previously. With the lights outputting a consistent burst of flash and the pose the same, I didn’t even have to worry about the transition edges. For sure, you would be able to see the transition in a very, very large print, but for the size that I’d be working with, no one would ever know that the eyes had been copied and pasted from another image.

Editing eyes I don’t have an issue with, but I’m not so sure I’d really want to try and tackle the replacement and editing of some one’s head to remedy closed eyes and/or reflections – talk about cutting of your nose to spite your face J

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