Decisions, Decisions
I’d really like to pick up a telephoto zoom soon. Right now, I’m trying to decide between one of these two:
Both lenses ring in at about the same price and come with similar accessories (lens hood, case, and front/rear caps).
The Canon is a little slower and will introduce a 20mm gap between it and my wide-angle Tamron SP 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II LD IF, but going from 50-70mm is really just a matter of taking a couple of footsteps. The added 50mm on the long end sounds good, and Canon’s L glass is top-notch in terms of both image quality and build quality.
The Sigma is no slouch in the image quality department though, and while it’s a little shorter on the long end, it’s a constant f/2.8 that will be very useful if I need to shoot indoor or evening/night action (like sports, for example). Then again, I’m not afraid of using high ISOs anymore. It also weighs half as much as the Canon, which might be something to think about if I want to take it on a hike.
Both have some variant of high-speed focusing.
Bah! I’ll fuss with the decision and ask some folks at NSOP for their opinions.
Tennessee’s War On Photographers
Now here’s some nonsense.
A man walking through Tom Lee Park pauses to snap a photo of the iconic Hernando DeSoto Bridge. Another man shoots pictures of numerous downtown buildings.
Many would assume the men are tourists taking in the city’s sights, but law enforcement officials say they could be terrorists staking out possible targets.
[...]
“You may think a guy is just shooting pictures, but if you report it to us, we’ll send it on to the FBI and they may have four or five other reports of the same thing,” said Richard Pillsbury with the Tennessee Fusion Center, a collaboration between the Department of Safety and the Department of Homeland Security.
Or… they may just be tourists. Imagine that, people photographing landmarks.
Now, don’t get me wrong — I believe that people should be aware of what’s going on around them, if only for their own safety. And by the same token, a community has a natural feeling for what’s ‘normal’ behaviour and what isn’t. But this is just pushing people to snoop on each other — and worse:
Operation Sudden Impact is an alliance between the sheriff’s office and 54 regional law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism. Public affairs officer Steve Shular said the collaboration will allow better information sharing between agencies in case of a major emergency or terrorist attack.
In the next few weeks, Operation Sudden Impact will bring representatives from all 54 agencies to Memphis for a one-day saturation exercise. Officers will perform traffic stops and gang interdictions and serve arrest warrants.
“Every arrest ticket written in 24 hours by each of those agencies will be reviewed to see if any of those people, even those with minor traffic charges, might have any connection to any possible terrorist activity lurking in the region,” Shular said.
A one-day crash course? Sending officers on an anti-terrorism crusade under the guise of ‘normal’ police work? A traffic stop should be the end, not the means to an end.
SOURCE: Tourist or Terrorist? :: The Memphis Flyer :: City Reporter :: The Fly-By
Upgrade to WP2.5.1 Complete
A security vulnerability has been disclosed in WordPress 2.5 and patched in Wordpress 2.5.1 — if you’re using WP for your blog, please upgrade it. The upgrade was pretty painless — but make sure that if you add the SECRET_KEY entry in your wp-config.php (and you should), that your secret key doesn’t include the apostrophe character (’) in it, or it’ll break stuff. I use the GRC Perfect Passwords page to generate my high-strength random passwords.
In other news, you can find rainbows pretty much anywhere (click to enlarge):
Testing SmugMug Gallery
UPDATE: Turns out the is caused by saving your photo in the sRGB colour space; SmugMug will convert any other profile to sRGB upon upload, which was causing these strange colour shifts.
More info:
“SmugMug Mucking With Colour?” on NSOP forums
“SmugMug Saturates?” on DGrin forums
As a result many of the links are now dead as I’ve since cleaned up the galleries. Anyways, this is a strong argument for automating as much of your workflow as possible in Photoshop, to avoid forgetting such simple tasks. PEBKAC.
OUTDATED STUFF:
I’m trying out SmugMug right now as a host for my photography gallery. So far it’s pretty simple to use, but I’m noticing one particularly annoying thing — it seems to fudge the colours in my images, blowing out the highlights.
Below are two links to the exact same file — the first was uploaded to SmugMug, and the second was uploaded directly to my webserver via FTP. If you open the links in new tabs and flip back and forth between the two, you will notice a colour shift.
http://gongzero.smugmug.com/photos/284421678_5Ja9f-O-1.jpg
http://www.gongzero.com/images/photos/oldport-17april2006/tracks.jpg
On my PC (calibrated monitor, system-wide colour management in Vista) the second image is pretty much exactly what Photoshop shows me. The SmugMug-hosted image is not (her hair is blown out to hell, and things are typically more orange/red).
Very strange. If I can’t figure out a fix for this in my SmugMug settings then I’ll certainly be cancelling my account.
A Brief Comment on Western Civilization
Western Civilization is so wonderful that we can riot over a silly game played by millionaires while other, poorer countries, have to riot over food shortages and fixed elections.
Go Habs Go!
(Noise) Ninjas Rule
I broke down and bought the Noise Ninja Pro Bundle. Holy crap, this thing is amazing. What it does is analyze your photos for noise profiles (you can download profiles for your particular digital camera from their site, too), and employ sophisticated algorithmic magic to clean the image up. I found a set of scans from a concert shoot I did in 2004 and put together this composite to show the difference.
This is a 100% crop from a photo taken on Fuji NPZ-800, pushed to 3200. Then a 16-bit scan @ 2820dpi was done on a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III film scanner. The only other processing done to these sample images was spot healing brush work to remove a couple of specks of dust.
Click to enlarge the image in a new window.
The image on the left is otherwise unprocessed; on the right, Noise Ninja was used to remove most of the noise.
Very impressive, and this is just with the default settings. Once I learn the settings a little bit more, I’m sure I’ll be able to better compromise between noise reduction and maintaining detail.
Here’s the final photo (again, as always, click to enlarge):
And Then There Was One
One final left, this coming Wednesday. I’m just so burnt out that I can’t bring myself to study anymore… thank God for study dates.
Listening to the national anthems being sung during Game 5 of the Habs-Bruins series, I came up with this little setup for my photo of the day.
Photo of the Day
As you can probably tell, I’ve been trying to put up one new photo per day. It can be kinda hit or miss.
Today, is a miss.
Crumpler ‘The Sinking Barge’ Photo Backpack
I’ve been looking for a multipurpose camera bag lately. I’ve got two that I normally use: a Tamrac Velocity 7 sling bag, and a Lowepro Stealth Reporter 650AW. The Tamrac is great as a walkaround bag; it’s small enough to be inconspicuous, but large enough to carry my Canon 20D with a Canon 28-135mm USM IS lens attached, plus my Canon 50mm lens and a Canon 420EX external flash — but not much else, aside from little things like memory cards and a lens cloth. On the other hand, the Lowepro will hold more equipment than I own, plus a 15″ laptop, with ease, has a built-in raincover, and while it fits carryon requirements, it is pretty unmanageable to tote around town.
So what I was interested in was a versatile bag that would be equally comfortable on a day hike, bringing stuff to and from school or work, and playing a carry-on/carry-around role for travel. A bag that will allow me to haul around some camera gear (Canon 20D, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8, Canon 50mm f/1.4, Canon EX420 and the incidental accessories), and whatever else I might want for the particular outing of the day — i.e., for school, my laptop, a binder and a lunch; for a day hike, change of socks, food, and a sweatshirt. That kind of thing.
Enter Crumpler’s The Sinking Barge backpack. I own a Crumpler sling bag and therefore am a little familiar with the brand’s impressive build quality, so when I found this backpack and looked into its features, I was sold.
No Thanks, I’ll Take the Stairs
Daniel on the NSOP forums found this gem:
This week in the magazine, Nick Paumgarten writes about the lives of elevators, and tells the story of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator in New York City’s McGraw-Hill building for forty-one hours. Here is a condensed look at White’s ordeal, as captured by the building’s security cameras.
Workie Workie, Like a Jerkie
Just a quick update between finals for all two of you dedicated readers. Ever had one of those weeks where you’re absolutely certain that you have final A on Monday morning and final B on Wednesday afternoon, only to find out Sunday morning that you mixed the two up?
Yeah, it’s been great.
Also, per my earlier post, I’m finding that the WP Mobile Edition plugin is acting a little funny, so I’ve deactivated it. I don’t think this site gets much mobile traffic anyhow.
Otherwise, what’s new… let’s see, my butt is numb from studying, and I’ve ordered a new camera backpack which I’ll review promptly when it gets here.
And, for those that are here for my crappy photos, I updated my macrophotography gallery with a new image.
Like Oil and Vinegar
I tried my hand at abstract photography last night before bed. Let me know what you think.
Click on the photo to open the full-size version in a new window
Computer Security on the Cheap
A few folks have asked me to talk a little bit about how I protect my computers and home network, so I thought I’d oblige. My security policy stems from two things:
- I’m paranoid.
- I’m cheap.
I’m no security guru by any stretch of the imagination; I’m just interested in this stuff, and read up on the topic whenever possible. Please take anything you read here with a grain of salt. Post in the comments section if you have any corrections or additional information.
Some Props
During study breaks, I’ve been adding some functionality to the new site and I wanted to give credit where credit is due.
First, the theme I’m currently using is a slightly modified version of OneHertz’s Mandigo theme for WordPress. By ’slightly modified’, I mean that I adjusted a couple of things in the sidebar and footer. By complete coincidence, OneHertz is a web application and site design firm based in Montreal.
I’ve also added two WordPress plugins by Alex King, a web developer based in Denver. First is the ShareThis plugin, which you see at the bottom of every post/page on this site. Per the developer:
This plugin will allow your visitors to share your content via social bookmarking sites and/or e-mailing the post to a friend.
The second plugin by Alex King is called WP Mobile Edition, which allows PDA and Smartphone users to view a mobile-friendly version of the page. It should autodetect the mobile browser you’re using; it seems to work fine in Opera Mobile on my HTC Touch.
Finally, I really have to hand it to Microsoft for Windows Live Writer. It’s essentially a blogging tool for your computer, which seems to be handling WordPress just fine. In fact, everything but the absolute first post on this site, ‘Oops.‘, has been written and published in WLW — it even handles uploading pictures smoothly and effortlessly. Post drafts can be saved on your hard drive, or online. Windows Live has had some hit-or-miss apps, but WLW is definitely a bullseye.
That’s it for now. Back to studying for finals.
Countdown to Oz
After years of hemming and hawing, I’ve finally gone ahead and booked a trip to Sydney, Australia.
Backstory: Best buds Darren and Jodi moved there few years back for school and such, right around the same time that I entered the hell known as engineering school. I’ve wanted to go visit since then, but being in an co-op program means that for the entire length of my program, including summers, I’m either taking classes or working at an internship — in other words, no more than a week to ten days off between semesters.
And the kicker is that they’re coming back to Montreal in the spring of 2009. So my window of opportunity to visit the other side of the globe on the cheap is rapidly closing.
Well, I’ve got eight months of work term coming up, from May through December, and I’ve decided that I’m going to take advantage of the two weeks of Christmas break and get the hell out of Dodge. I booked my airplane ticket Wednesday (on United, bleh). The countdown begins. I’m putting the ticket in my safety deposit box until then because I know I’ll otherwise lose it sometime between now and, say, August.
Sadly, because I have
- only two weeks for traveling
- very little money after airfare
it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to travel outside of Sydney too much, but that’s okay. I’m mostly going to see D&J anyhow. But, if anyone’s got any tips or recommendations for things to do out there, let me know.
Oh, and because I know I’m going to catch flak for this from a certain someone: Helsinki is next on my list — probably February 2009.
Oops.
Yeah, I did it again. I was getting annoyed with Joomla and just wiped the site. This will be the last time, probably.
