Random Ramblings

So this weekend I was at west point on the eno. (I have another post in the works about eno itself). But I’m slowly starting to grow as a photographer (at least thats what I tell myself late at night looking at the latest batch of blurry pictures).

While at the eno, I had the chance and the need to try out two techniques I’d read about. The first was slowing water down. Or dragging shutter as my new book puts it. The idea is that for artistic reasons, you want the water to look soft and fluffy. To do it you switch the camera to shutter priority mode, select a slower shutter (I was playing around the one second mark). In SP mode, the camera then compensates by adjusting the aperature (and on my D80 the ISO if you have it in the right mode) to get a proper exposure.

I hope to include some of the pictures in a later edit of this post.

The second new technique was to just turn off the auto-focus and do it old school. The situation was that I was in the mill itself with the equipment running and I wanted to capture that, but the auto-focus just could not make up its mind. Switching to manual focus it at least seemed easy to put the pulleys and belts into focus.

We shall see….

A friend has been posting some of her dreams lately, and I had one last night thats a doozy. Probably qualifies as a nightmare, but not one of the really awful wake up tired kind.

I’ve kept a fish tank since I was … 10 or so, and thats where this all started. In the dream, I look over to see that the fish tank (a large one - 80+ gallons, very tall and wide, not very “deep” from front to back - all my dream fish tanks are like this, but I’ve never owned one or even seen one shaped like this) is full of snow.

Ok, thats pretty odd, but its raining (in the house? no this part makes no sense whatsoever) and the rain is melting the snow. Once the snow is gone I go over and look in the tank.

Despite the fact that it was JUST raining, the tank is mostly empty of water. All my nightmares/dreams about fishtanks are nearly out of water. I think its the implied stress of being responsible for living things and they’re DIEING because there is no water.

Anyway I go over and sure enough some stuff is flopping around. I reach in and move the “fish” (They’re never distinct in the dreams) to the larger puddles of water. There’s an eel (which I hate - too snake like) but its dead (double ick).

Here’s the good part - in the front of the tank is the head of a “fish” that sort of looks like the hammerhead guy from star wars. This doesn’t freak me out - I’m sort of expecting that “fish” to be in there. Except this one has …. grown. It starts to rear up. Cool I think. For some reason in the dream I think this is a tough fish to take care of - if its grown, I’m doing a good job. You know - despite the lack of water and the snow and the fact that its raining indoors.

(Yes, its like my id is lazy tonight and just put all the junk in my subconscious into a blender - I have no idea why this is all stitched together.)

Anyway, hammerhead is coming up the inside glass and really uncoiling now. (You’ll note the tank had to shrink magically for me to be able to reach in - so there’s not much glass between me and whatever the heck that thing is)

Hammerhead isn’t HUGE, but maybe 5-8 inches across, and the head is definately the big part of the “fish”. Which is really rather snake or eel like. Now coming over the top of the glass and really coming at me. This whole time in the dream is like “Wow, he’s alive. And my he’s grown. And um, thats a lot of fish really and lets back up slowly and get a good look. Ok, lets just back up slowly. Ok, forget slowly.”

And as this thing gets to be about 4-5 FEET from the tank I wake up.

Welcome to my mind.

Two blog posts in one day? Wow. Anyway, there’s all sorts of idiots and kooks on the net telling you how to organize your photos, so I figure I should too.

I started with a straight date (year/month/day) system, but didn’t like that even an amateur like me might take pictures at the park during the morning and be over at a friends that evening - and I didn’t like mixing them. Year/month/shoot also doesn’t work great as I will sometimes take pictures in the same place/thing more than once in a month.

A suggestion from Jeffrey Friedl (and someone else I forget) was to do year/month/day-name_of_shoot. I really like this (so far). That gets me a fundamentally date based system to prevent goofy looses due to misfiling things AND I have some kind of brief name for the shoot in there. Anything more specific organizationally belongs in keywords and collections anyway.

A word on collections. At first I ended up with a true mess of folders by strict date, collections naming 18 ways from sunday and a frightful fire drill of keywords. The previous paragraph states what I did with the folders but what about collections and keywords? Should “ducks” be a collection or a keyword? How about “Family Potraits”?

Collections in lightroom have an interesting property thats a feature or a mis-feature depending on how you look at it. Once pictures are in a collection (however they got there) you can still use the LR “pick/reject” flagging system. BUT these flags are collection specific. You might have the same photo in two different collections (because thats the whole point of collections - they can contain the same photos without duplicating them on disk like with folders/directories) and have it flagged “pick” in one and “reject” in the other. Because of this LR doesn’t let you delete the file itself (it calls this the master, but its just the jpg or raw file) from disk - if you flag all your rejects in a collection and hit “delete”, they are deleted from that collection only.

So don’t do like me and flag everything in collections… You have to then SELECT all your rejects, go back to the “show all photo’s” option and do your disk deleting there. Takes forever, let me tell you.

So - don’t create collectios based on topics. Collections are for “projects” like web output, the class I’ll teach next month, all the stuff I promised to put on DVD’s for the relatives. Keywords then are for organizing your photos. So “family” and “portrait” would get you all the family portraits.

While doing all this, I have just started learning how to do some of the quick develop settings (mostly to try and fix some of the over exposed photos from the D80) so next I’m going to play with output. Develop is such a fraught topic I want to save it for last.

Is now complete. Having switched from iphoto (back around christmas so I could load the digital picture frames which my family doesn’t use ) to f-spot (on linux) and now Adobe Lightroom I’ve been through the basics of digital picture hell and have only lost 2 shoots that I can think of.

I lost the photos of the biosci data center being built. Which torques me off no end, as how often do you get to build a data center from the ground up? I have no idea where these went. I took them with the casio point-n-shoot and could swear they ended up in linux SOMEWHERE but I need to boot the T40 again to see if I can find them one more time.

I also can’t find any photographs from LISA06. I bought the darn casio to shoot that (I haven’t had a non-cellphone camera since the late 80’s) so I’m also particularly disappointed at that loss. I can’t blame the casio - it was switching systems and not having photo specific software thats to blame for the loss.

Digging around in iphoto to see what I had in it was informative. Having now seen lightroom (and a little bit of aperature) iPhoto is just what it claims to be - basic digital camera support for the occasional shooter. If you shoot 100 pictures a month or less and use a mac, iphoto is for you.

Aperature is still too heavy even on this MacBook Pro. I may buy a copy anyway, as it has some nice support for creative output that isn’t in LR (book collections for weddings and stuff). But at some point I predict this MB Pro will go back to Duke and I’ll have to make do with the 1.5Ghz G4 15″ and while LR will be tolerable on it, Aperature won’t. I’m also really used to LR now so switching again anytime soon is Right Out(tm).

I went from about 1900 photos taken over 2 years to just under 1000. Some were duplicates apparently from importing the same SD card(s) more than once, maybe as I was struggling with f-spot. I was also ruthless in going through all the non-duplicates and throwing out anything that was totally hopeless.

Which has been very frustrating as my two primary faults as a photographer are painfully obvious now. I shoot in “P” mode (program mode) on my D80 most of the time still, and my exposures are all over the map. White balance occasionally rears its ugly head, but over-exposed pictures predominate.

But my very largest flaw is just plain old BLURRY PICTURES. I had hoped (really really really hoped) that the new Sigma 30mm f/1.4 would help a LOT here, and I think maybe it has. But I’m still shooting a lot of blurry crap. Unfortunately its not all throwaway pictures - the ones I did of my nephew doing this years easter egg hunt are particularly disappointing because you can’t re-shoot something like that. You either nailed it the first time, or you suck. I suck.

I fiddled around with some auto-focus test charts, but the only thing clear is that something is wrong, and I think its me. I have read where some people (including Jeffrey Friedl) had problems with the sigma 30. But as I’m new to this, I’m not ready to blame equipment just yet. Not until I get good enough at TESTING it to prove that its the gear and not me.

I can’t count the times over the years people have brought me broken code and asked if I could update the compiler on a given system. You know - because its the compilers fault their program doesn’t work. So I refuse to fall into the same trap.

Sigh. But it sure would make me feel better.

As I said before, I’ve discovered Adobe Lightroom (who are polite enough to offer free 30 day trials with just a download - no craptastic registration or anything). I’ve been working my way through adobe’s PDF overview and have bought my first LR book - Beardsworth’s “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom”. B&N had another one, but it was a step by step by very boring looking step guide - I wanted a general overview.

Now I just need a decent computer to run it on. My new laptop at work is a macbook pro (after years of using a very loyal IBM T40) but it isn’t here yet. I’m making do with a 7 year old surplus 12″ G4. Its just barely enough to “run” lightroom. (Which is an improvement over aperture - the CD for aperture won’t even let you TRY it on this machine).

Sftp and upload(export) to gallery2/flickr are supported with free plugins, so now I just have to go through about a zillion photos I’ve taken since christmas. At least I don’t have to fight f-spot anymore.

Do I feel bad about switching to OSX completely for photography? Yeah, but sitting f-spot and lightroom side-by-side is just silly. Digikam (the KDE equivalent) might be a little better than f-spot, but LR is the standard for a reason. The dual view side by side compare mode alone is worth the price of admission.

I may have to try the windows version under WINE.

I couldn’t help myself.

Last thursday at Tylers my friend Celeste let me take her picture at both 50mm and 30mm using my Nikon 18-55 kit lens. Since the kit lens is a fairly slow 3.5-5.6, the hand-held shot in low light was pretty blurry. But my goal was simply to see which focal length worked better for me. I was much happier with the 30mm. Per models request, I deleted the test shots.

Friday I bought a Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens from Camera Corner, the cool local camera shop. I’ve read mixed reviews about sigma’s in general and this lens in particular. So far, I’m pretty happy on both points. In certain circumstances, this lens ability to gather light is just freaky. Several times the image on the back of the camera has appeared brighterthan reality seen with the naked eye.

Both my other lenses are slow 3.5-5.6 “kit” nikkors. They’re good glass, for the purchase price. But the sigma is a VERY nice lens. (And seemingly quite heavy for its size)

The chief complaint online is with dodgy autofocus. So far, this one seems to focus very well most of the time and to hunt a bit other times. In low light, sometimes its fast to focus and sometimes its not. I’m going to play with it some more, since the primary reason I own it is for low light shooting.

Today I took it outdoors to see how well it handles regular shooting, and so far the results are really good. I’mshaky (dangit ) but the lens seems to do its job when I do mine.

So, on the recommendation of Jimmy Dorff from physics, I tried out Adobe Lightroom.  Its amazing.

I’ve been using f-spot in gnome on linux. Its _ok_. But I really haven’t been happy with how you go through new photos and figure out which ones you want to keep. Lightroom does this astoundingly well.

Only problem is, I have to have a mac to run it. Luckily, I have one on the way at work. For the heavy lifting, I predict I’ll be dual-booting or using VMware Fusion.

If this post is poorly written, I have a headache the size of rhode island.

I was roaming around Durham taking pictures again when I decided to have lunch at Elmo’s Diner. Since I was on 9th street anyway, I decided to shoot Fire Station #2 where Neal, my brother-in-law works.

Even better, I recognized his Blazer parked out back and called him on the cell phone. I got a couple of good shots of neal out front. Neal, being the cool guy he is, gave me a quick look inside the “house”. Those trucks are complex and very very clean.

They got a radio call though, and had to roll out. I backed out fast and stood to the side, getting ready to shoot.

And my camera started to jam up. I have my D80 set for “continuous”, meaning it’ll take pictures at about 3 frames per second for as long as I hold the trigger down. (I shoot in JPEG, since RAW processing is a step I don’t want to deal with at this point).

The reality is, it’ll take pictures at 3fps as long as the internal buffer holds out and the memory card (SD) can keep up.

Naturally, I was trying to shoot live with a crap slow card. I kept with it, hitting the shutter as the trucks rolled by as best I could. I’m now browsing for decent prices on a fast card. I have several 2GB cards, but as I bought them originally for my casio point-n-shoot or the D40, I didn’t pay too much attention to their speed.

For reference, the Nikon D80 was a write speed of 9-10MB/sec (depending on which spec sheet you believe). Assuming I need the faster one, that translates to the “66x” speed requirement that card manufacturers publish. Why they insist on basing everything on the 150KB/sec of the ancient CD-ROM speeds is beyond me, but they do.

Another quick lesson - walk around with the camera ON. Modern DSLR’s use very little power turned on - they really only burn juice when they are doing something, like driving the real display or focusing. The power requirements to drive that top display LCD are about the same as for a basic watch. If the camera is on, and action starts to happen, you’re ready to go.

I’m understanding the value people put on the “super zooms” like the Nikon 18-200 VR or Tamron 18-250. They are still “slow” lenses (f/4.5 to 6.5 depending) but they have such a wide range of focal lengths you can get just about any shot with one.

For my first add-on lens though I’m going to get the Nikon 50mm lens. Elliot let me borrow his 50mm f/1.8 for a couple of weeks, and I love being able to shoot in “available” light. The only choice is that one for about $100 or the even faster 50mm f/1.4 for around $290. I wish I could try the 1.4 before I buy, but I don’t know of anyone with that lens.

Somehow, I got in the habit of hitting 3-5 shots of any particular scene in the hopes that one would be in focus. I think this habit developed with my much hated casio point and shoot. Well its a terrible habit to get into. I love shooting, and making something. But I hate going through that memory card with N zillion pictures of nearly identical things.

Gah. So, today, I get out of the habit.

As a side note, I’m reviewing my pictures on my trusty T40 (which is developing a bad cooling fan - I either have to replace it or break down and order a new laptop through work). The pictures look DECIDEDLY different than when I previewed them at work yesterday. I don’t claim the T40 is perfect, but that Dell 22in is WAY off on the color balance or something.

This is an area (the PC support side) that I dread with photography - as an IT professional, the LAST thing I want is some other reason to sit in front of a computer. Worse, my preferred OS (linux) isn’t particularly brilliant at color balance and such.

I may have to buy a mac, which would be terrible mentally as at work they’re giving me ulcers.

Want to annoy friends and family, yet almost get them to enjoy it? Yep - I’ve discovered photography. I bought a 7.2 megapixel Casio EX-Z77 in Dec 2006 right before I went to LISA06. I hadn’t been to our nations capital since 1998, plus there was LISA itself, so I hoped to get some good  pictures. After all, it was a 7.2 megapixels - one of the highest resolutions at the time.

The casio is probably a decent point and shoot (and casio stills sells a slightly updated version, so they must have gotten something right), but I’ve never really been happy with it. The conference especially, but the DC trip in general I always seemed to be shooting low light, and the casio without flash just wasn’t getting anything worth having. The little built in flash is harsh and a QUICK way to piss off everyone in range. I did buy my mother one for christmas last year, as it IS easy to use and has a basic movie mode (with sound!) perfect for the grandkid(s).

So for christmas this year, I figured I blow some dough on a decent camera. A couple of co-workers are shutterbugs and some friends are as well. I was pre-disposed towards nikons because they seemed a little better built (for similar priced models), and I thought I might be able to bum lenses from them. So right before christmas I bought a entry-level Nikon D40 with the two basic “kit” lenses. It came with a free bag (whee!) and bought a couple of other bits to get started.

I considered the D40x, but the only real difference is the megapixel count, and I wasn’t about to fall for the megapixel myth again like I did with the casio. Basically, I was pretty happy with the nikon. I shot the family christmas pictures with it, and even blew one up to 8×10 to test. They were great!  (I was a total newbie, so had to use the idiot mode on the camera, but the rig did its job just fine).

Then I took it to a local duck pond, and had some problems. I couldn’t seem to get the autofocus system to do what I wanted, but the biggest problem was one of size - the camera is just too darn small for my hands. When whirling around trying to shoot a duck in flight (which the D40 handled pretty well actually) I felt like I was on the verge of dropping the damn thing, especially with the larger 55-200 VR lens mounted.

So I winced, whined and cried, but returned the D40 to the store for a D80 (I bought at a store because I wanted it for christmas day pictures - if I’d thought further ahead, I’d have bought online).

The D80 ROCKS. Its 500 bucks more, but its comfortable, it has more controls (the D40 makes you go through the menus way more, which is “easier” but not nearly as convienent), and many more autofocus points. I love the second control wheel (the D40 only has one).

Naturally, when I bought the D80 I also got a handy little $20 hand strap that works wonders and probably would have eliminated my complaint about the D40 being too small. Oh well. I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t find it until after I got the D80 - I’m really happy with this camera. I’ve got the 18-55 and 55-200 kits lenses. I’ve borrowed a 50mm 1.8 that works wonders in low light and is only about $110 new.

If you’re in the market for a great camera and have small hands or very simple desires, get a D40 (or the even smaller just announced D60). Its well made, its small, lightweight, and takes pictures you can easily blow up to 8×10. If you can afford it though, I highly recommend the D80.