The Sect of Rama

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For photos I care about, I usually use my Nikon D70 coupled with the 35mm F2.0 lens. The point-and-shoot Canon SD600 is often for the quick and lazy shots- except when it comes to macros. The built-in macro lens on this tiny P&S camera is wonderful. Take for instance these carpenter ants, apparently feasting on some nectar oozing from another bug eating the Japanese maple tree (symbiotic or not, I'm gonna kill those aphid thingies so my tree stays healthy. Sorry Buddhists.) This was hand shot (f2.8, 5.8mm, 1/320s exposure) of moving subjects, I don't remember the last time I cleaned the lens, and it still turned out crisp. That tiny lens never ceases to amaze me.

Via, a time lapse of the financial district, Fisherman's Wharf, Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill and Nob Hill San Francisco as viewed from across the bay in Sausalito- available all the way up to 1080p. A bit boring before dawn, and during the day-- but morning and dawn are stunning.

Their about page seriously stirs the photographer-geek in me. Very cool stuff.

After shooting digital photography almost exclusively for about 5 years, I've finally had my first memory card go bad. The 5th photo written to it is consistently corrupted. Luckily for me, its the high end Lexar Platinum II 2GB CF with a lifetime warranty, so I'll be returning it shortly. (Funny that its the fancy model that has failed, whereas all my Kingston and Sandisk cards continue to chug away.)

The fact that the failure is at the "beginning" of the memory card makes me wonder if the habit of formating the card after each photo session has prematurely worn out the leading memory cells, but Rob Galgraith claims otherwise:

Individual flash memory cells have a limited lifespan. That's the bad news. The good news is that their lifespan is usually measured in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of erase/write cycles, and that the better controller designs utilize an algorithm that's designed to balance the wear across the entire card's cells.

CompactFlash and SD cards are designed to automatically and transparently map out memory cells that go bad, or in some cases when they reach a predefined limit, i.e. 300,000 erase/write cycles (note that this figure is just an example; manufacturers may use a different figure). Cards should continue to function long after a few cells have expired, since even the busiest photographer's flash memory card won't start turning off a significant number of memory cells until after many years of service.

Despite this, my plan going forward is to ensure each memory cell gets more equal use by only formating the card as needed- like when its 80% full. A 4GB card allows for somewhere around 670 shots in RAW, so that shouldn't be too frequent for me.

I normally have indoor and outdoor slippers, but while making a pumpkin leak soup one night, I realized I needed some rosemary from the backyard, so I just grabbed a flashlight and scissors and grabbed some quickly. The following morning, I realized why you shouldn't wear your indoor-only shoes outside. Sorry Mr. Spider:




While on a call this morning, I heard the cat tossing something around in the hall. Its usually a stolen sock, so I went to go intercept and found this completely destroyed toy mouse. Never seen one have the rabbit fur stripped off. Guess I'll find that bit in the litter box later. :)




The house really isn't as filthy as these photos suggest, but I think I'll be doing some spring cleaning this weekend...

Two people I know recently picked up Nikon D40's, and I ended up giving the same bit of advice to them both. Seems appropriate to share it with the internets. This is strictly opinion, so please no debates- if you feel otherwise, you write about it. :)

1. Watch out for cheap camera gear online- either lens or bodies. They're often refurb, or non-USA warranty. Going forward, I'll probably only buy from B&H. (Adorama did a shady bait-and-switch with me once. They're on my blacklist now.) 'course B&H doesn't always have everything in stock- like the 18-200VR that I've been on the wait list for going on 4 months.

2. Pick up this strap, and toss the OEM one. I don't know why i waited 3 years to do so: Domke Gripper Camera Strap 1.5" with Swivel Quick Release.

3. get a good UV(0) filter for the front of any lens you care about. I like "B+H" (not the same same as the B&H Camera mind you) brand, but they can cost a lot. Hoya and Tiffen will do in a pinch. I honestly can't tell the diff, but people claim there are. The filter is sacrificial- it takes the scratches. Get one ASAP.

4. Download the trial version of Adobe Lightoom, watch all of the videos from Lightroom Killer Tips, start shooting in only RAW, and postprocess everything of value.

5. Eventually pick up a bulb to clean your sensor, an iR remote, and a decent tripod. You'll need them all in time- so just get it up front so you have it from the start.


Now for lens. There are tons of them out there, but they're all a compromise of some sort- either price, quality, availability, etc. And picking lens is sort of like religion: its a debate as soon as you open your mouth. So in short, I'd stick with the kit lens until you can form your own opinion. (Plus not all lens are compatible: the D40 doesn't have an autofocus motor in the body, so you need to get AF lens with motors in them.)

When you either a) have an important event coming and know you'll shoot a lot, and/or b) "outgrow" the kit lens, I'd consider one or all of these:

1. nikon 50mm f/1.8. Its $100, and super sharp. Its awesome for portraits. Great bokeh, f1.8 means its fast- low light isn't a big issue. Insane value.

2. nikon 18-200VR. Its spendy, but I've seen very little bad about it other than that. Great all around lens if you can stand the weight. No lens swapping like you'd need to do with primes.

3. Sigma 30mm f1.4. This will probably be my next lens, rather than the 18-200VR, but its mostly due to personal shooting preferences.

After my feeble threat to Nikon that they better show us some camera blingage via PMA 2007, we're finally seeing some announcements in the form of the D40X and a new lens, the 55-200mm VR, which should has an MSRP of $249. *Yawn*. I hope thats not all they've got under wraps...

Ah well, as of tonight I'm one step deeper into the Nikon camp with the purchase of SB-600 external flash. Combined with a diffuser and the sweet 50mm f/1.8, I hope to nab some great portrait shots of the family in the coming weeks.

First Pentax releases the K10D, now they come out with my near dream (by spec) lens: a new DA* 16-50mm ƒ/2.8. At a list price of $900, its not too far off from Nikon's impossible to get (and nowhere near as fast) 18-200VR.

Is it just me, or has Pentax's (and even Canon's) recent releases stepped out ahead of Nikon lately? I'm tired of the D40/D50 news, I want a D80 replacement/rebuttal post haste! As in before I invest heavily in more glass. Like now.

While walking across the building this afternoon, I noticed my friend Will T. in the courtyard setting up a telescope. He tells me its to check out Mercury transitting the sun, which won't occur again until May 9, 2016. So I run down to my office to grab my point-and-shoot camera- here's a shot it produced while wedged against the eye piece. Thats Mercury at six o'clock, a sunflare at five o'clock.

Flickr adds geotagging and maps support. Nice to see, but I think its going to take more before it really takes off. $150 cables for prosumer cameras and convoluted image post-processing to geocode the photos is just asking too much from the typical point-and-shooter. Most people don't bother tweaking images before dumping them online (me included most of the time), who's going to sync their GPX tracks into the EXIF, except maybe on rare occassion?

This needs to get cheaper and easier... maybe bluetooth enabled cameras that pull GPS coordinates automagically.

Here's a nice review of the currently available CF and SD cards. Seems not much has changed from the 2+ years ago when I got my Nikon D70 and did homework on which cards are best: Lexar and Sandisk are still on top, most everything else is a wash. If you're put-off by the 19 pages (mostly images and graphs), here's a summary:

• - Unless you're sure your device works with 4G+, stick with 2G or smaller due to various incompatibilities.
  
  
• - Getting the fastest cards out there is usually unnecessary, since your device probably can't write that fast anyway.
  
  
• - The speed ratings (eg "100X") are mostly bogus, based on ideal scenarios not likely to occur.
  
  
• - "Ranked as the best card for overall average read and write speeds, the 4GB Lexar Professional CompactFlash 133X card with Write Acceleration is our preferred choice."
  
  
• - If you're looking for 2GB in SD format, Lexar Professional SD 2GB 133X is the best, with the Kingston SD Ultimate 2GB 120X not too far behind.

Via Matthew, who doesn't seem to have any interest in blogging this stuff himself ;), an impressive setup for taking high speed photography of flying insects. This shot is nearly as impressive as this one!

Don't try walking around any metropolitan area in the States with that gear. You'll probably be locked away under the Patriot Act.

By way of a friend, a convincing argument to take digital photography shots only in RAW. I've avoided doing so this past year with the D70 mostly because spending countless hours postprocessing my shots with Photoshop CS (or the apparently quite popular CaptureOne LE) isn't my idea of fun. But in his essay, Petteri Sulonen suggests you might regret that your "early work" is only in JPEG. That struck a chord with me. I equate it to the shots I've taken years ago on my first digital camera, and how the quality is so poor compared to today's standards that the shots sometimes make me cringe. Perhaps I'll feel the same way someday about my in-camera processed JPEGs...

So on my next shooting session, the camera will be dumping data as RAW, and I'll try my hand at a workflow that goes beyond picking a handful of the good ones, rotating, possibly stitching a few, and dumping them to my gallery. Perhaps with practice it won't be as time-consuming as I fear...

Wes Weber on the Adventure Rider forums posted a great set of photos a while ago of his dad and others ripping it up on some hardtail Harleys back in the 50's.

Miscellaneous photos taken in Japan.

PhotographyBlog has a good review of the new Nikon entry level DSLR. In a nutshell: 90% of the features of the D70s, with a lighter plastic body and lens. Unfortunately the thing is mostly silver/gray, not black. My guess is Nikon used this "cheaper" look to help differentiate between the D50 and D70 series.

As much as I love the solid feel of my D70, I can appreciate the weight savings after hauling that thing on Yosemite backpacking trip recently. It will be interesting to see how well these plastic units hold up in the field...