Sysadmin Field Notes - Photography Archives

January 20, 2008

Photos from our trip to the snow

October 14, 2007

Gruber likes the 28mm. I really never got used to it and just sold mine. The problem is the depth of field, it's just too big. It never "felt" like my trusty 50mm, even if on my Rebel the 50 is cropped more like an 85mm.

The 1.6 sensor factor already deepens your depth of field, and the wider lens even more so. For me, either on full frame (aka film) or 1.6 sensor, 50mm is where it's at.

Unless someone wants to send me a 35mm f/1.4 L. I'd give that a shot.

October 8, 2007

Photos from Caprice's Birthday Party

August 7, 2007

For the latest Strobist lighting assignment I ended up with two shots I liked.

The first is of my favorite kitchen utensil, my cast iron skillet. The stove is dirty from cooking, so it's kind of gritty. This is more what I had in mind, but wasn't thrilled with the outcome.

The other one is a drink strainer, a glass, on glass. I liked the kinda messy, abstract nature. I chose this one to submit (of course they were both late...)

Clearly I chose the less popular one, as the cast iron skillet has garnered 4 faves and a comment, while the drink strainer has been unceremoniously passed over. I have the worst time judging my photos...

July 4, 2007

Here are the pictures from our 4th holiday. Hudson loved it too much for words, Carson got freaked and wanted to get home. Maybe next year. :-)

Update: fixed link tag

April 24, 2007

There's a basic lighting technique (usually with a flash) that comes up occasionally. A lot of people know this of course, but it wasn't obvious when I started reading the strobist, and a lot of people still ask on the Flickr forums, so I did a diagram. Hopefully someone finds it useful. OmniGraffle (the drawing program used) is a pretty slick little application and I don't get to use it much.

March 16, 2007

A few weeks ago Canon announced the TX1.

I didn't really even know there was such a class of devices (haven't been paying much attention to the video world). Editing video is just sooo time consuming for me, it takes me forever to get around to it, and so I rarely shoot it. I have wanted to do more multi-media style stuff though, with audio, photo, and maybe short video clips. The camcorder is such a commitment to carry around though. And Cyndie has been wanting a small digital camera anyway.

So this thing just hits the sweet spot. Good (enough) quality short video clips, tiny, dedicated stereo audio recording mode (which is the killer feature for me). It's something we'll have on-hand basically all the time, and be able to do some fun stuff with I think. Seems like it will be much easier for me to import 15-20 minutes of video at a time, and once or twice a week stitch it together with some photos and audio to make a hopefully-not-too-boring short clip.

I'll be posting some of my attempts up here once it arrives.

February 21, 2007

Adobe Lightroom is now available.

I've used it since the first beta, and it is an excellent workflow tool for "developing" photos from a digital camera. The 1.0 adds some speed in the develop module, the best healing tool interface I've seen, some auto-masking features (called targeted adjustments). The develop module basically gets even better. Slideshow, print, and Web all finally get up to snuff as well.

On the downside, I still think the library module is a mess. I even think it's more schizophrenic than it was in the betas. The betas mostly abstracted physical locations away from you, by just putting your photos into the library and organizing them by shoots. It didn't do as nice a job of that abstraction as Aperture or iPhoto, but it tried.

Now that's been dumped and it's more of a filesystem interface. You can still organize into arbitrary shoots, but the default is folders, which actually correspond to disk folders. So it's like a file browser, except files still have to be in the lightroom db to store their settings (or have XMP sidecars). That scheme probably works better for people using a lot of other tools or fitting into bigger workflows. They did add tools to help update files that were updated outside of lightroom, or find files that have been moved.

Sadly, it's still slow as all get-out for just browsing through tons of pictures with small thumbnails. What I really want is to be able to figure out how to use iPhoto and Lightroom together better. Lightroom is choking on me now if I view all photographs (3660 or so), whereas iPhoto can zoom through the 10000 in my library there with ease). I want speed/browsing in the library like iPhoto (and the mac integration; screen-savers, remote photo viewing via front-row, etc.) but with lightroom's selection/picking interface and develop module.

I'm trying Picturesync a bit to see if that works as a good bridge, but not getting exactly what I want there.

I might try importing the iPhoto files into Lightroom in-place..I fear that might do terrible things though, but it might be what I want.

Once the Lightroom SDK comes out, maybe there will be some interesting things we can do there.

Here's my first Lightroom 1.0 gallery.

December 27, 2006

Here's a boatload of photos taken over the holiday season, in one giant batch. Enjoy. I don't think any of these have made their way to flickr yet, I'll post a few of the better ones there.

• Thanksgiving Trip to Oregon
• Santa Comes to Visit
• Getting ready for Christmas
• Christmas Eve
• Christmas Day
• New Presents: A bike ride

Update 1/4/2007: Whoops. Left out thanksgiving. Now we link to that gallery too.

October 30, 2006

In my neverending saga to confuse my readers by having different photo gallery formats, here are the pictures of Carson's second birthday.

The best are up on flickr also if you just want the highlights.

October 2, 2006

For those of you not following along on my Flickr feed, pictures of Caprice's Birthday party, the interior of a coffee shop, and yesterday's trip to Fairy Tale Town are up.

September 28, 2006

So I just barely finished and submitted my second attempt at Strobist assignment #6.

I thought they turned out great, I'm very happy with them. Mad props to Cyndie for putting up with me and doing a great job as model.

Comparing this work to my earlier stuff for me shows just how much I've learned. The strobist rocks.

Not the least of which is how to build a giant diffusion panel out of PVC. :-)

September 16, 2006

I'm spending a lot of time thinking about Strobist boot camp #6.

I think had better start shooting a few things. Right now, the only thing I know for sure is that option #2, the rocker, is out. I don't know anyone who looks crazy enough.

So it's the jazz singer or the career retrospective. I'm leaning towards the retrospective, because I have in my mind only one keyword, "subtle."

I want to feel like I'm actually controlling some light, instead of just propping up a few umbrellas in front of someone.

So now I just need a model, and a few more developed ideas. I think I'll see if Cyndie will be patient enough with me to test some setups with snoots and gobos. That's going to be test one, try to get some dramatic but deliberate light on a full face pic. We'll see how that turns out and go from there.

September 11, 2006

We had a great time at Ruchi's birthday party yesterday, thank you guys for having us.

I'm not sure if my iPhoto generated galleries hosted here, or Flickr is an easier way to distribute photos. So this time I figured I'd try both. Flickr has better searching, a slideshow, and is a little easier to work with. So here's the flickr photoset of party photos.

And for comparison, I did a local gallery as well.

Comment here or email if you prefer either.

August 23, 2006

Photos from our quick trip to Tahoe

July 2, 2006

Two things possibly of interest, first up is photos from our trip to Southern California. Very long, but there are some cute ones.

Second, a collection of some of my more "artsy" work from June. This includes some vacation pics that weren't family related.

Finally, a collection of portraits that I've put together while experimenting with ideas from the strobist, a very cool site about working with off camera flash. I've gone from an available light person to a flash person in just a month...I'm seeing a noticeable improvement in some of my portraits, and it only took $50 (umbrella stand holder and flash PC cord adapter). Check it out if you get a chance, it's well worth it.

As a small brag, my headshot of Cyndie for the first "assignment" was selected as one of the better ones.

One last thing I guess, I've been uploading a lot more photos to flickr as I shoot them. If you're interested, my profile there is probably the place to watch to get every day or so new photos of the family, or practice shots.

Update: Added flickr, strobist, and June portrait info.

May 29, 2006

Memorial Day Weekend photos.

I've been working on a few flash tests, inspired by the Strobist (great site). Mostly macro for now. So now I've got adequate light via the flash, but it's pretty flat., and the pictures look like illustrative textbook pictures. Need to figure out how to inject some drama with the light. I'll post those as soon as I have something more interesting. Or at least have collected enough to warrant a standalone batch.

May 21, 2006

Family photo update

April 10, 2006

Why not transparent lens caps?

1. Highly unlikely a general purpose lens can focus on something millimeters from it's front element. Probably not even close. So the text would be completely unreadable and nearly invisible. (Look through a camera viewfinder and put your finger right in front of it; notice that you can barely even make out the finger).

2. For anything with a through the lens viewfinder, is there anything more obvious that you have the lens cap on then an all black picture?

So I think transparent would actually be worse, because if you didn't pay closer attention (or if you were drunk), you'd look through the viewfinder and see a picture (albeit blurry and distorted, but on tiny digicam screens/viewfinders it can be tough to tell), and take the picture, thinking you were all right. But what you'd get would be an awful quality image. Better to not see anything, and know you have to take the lens cap off.

This only applies if you have a through the lens preview of course. If your viewfinder doesn't go through the lens, then the camera manufacturer better have provided some signal in the viewfinder that the lens cap is on.

April 7, 2006

Aman had a get together to celebrate our team's successes, and some of us moving on. I took some photos during the event.

White balance is off sometimes, because I was a little buzzed and forgot to set it properly. Sorry.

February 20, 2006

I don't know if it's just because Carson and Hudson are so cute, or if I'm really starting to get quite a lot better at shooting (practice makes perfect). I posted the past few weeks worth of pictures to the offspring blog. Even if you're not interested in my kids, you might find these interesting; I think they are some of my best so far.

• Cousin McKenna in the snow
• Carson looking sad - (probably at getting eaten by a mosquito)
• Carson against the sky
• Carson loves that tongue
• Happy kid
• Tire climbing

See, lots of Carson. I think it's because he sits still more, and doesn't yet make goofy faces at the camera. Hudson's moving too much usually I guess, although here's a here's a rare photo of him with a reasonable expression on.

February 14, 2006

Here's the most recent batch of kid and family pictures. I tried to pare it down a lot; a few of these (towards the end, of Carson), and I think are some my best ever.

January 29, 2006

I had a great time at this event, enjoy the photos.

Thanks very much to Aman and Ruchi for hosting.

December 28, 2005

Family photos from the holiday.

December 11, 2005

The title says it all, photos from Amy and Joe's Holiday Wine Tasting. Enjoy.

December 4, 2005

So I've fallen way behind on uploading interesting photos. We have our Zoo Trip with Grandpa from a while ago, my trip to Seattle for my birthday and work (not a ton of shots from that), and the best of the bunch, shots from our trip to Oregon for Thanksgiving. Not too many snapshots in the bunch, check my family/kid weblog for those.

November 12, 2005

I was just shooting mostly the kids, but I found a few interesting things to take pictures of.

Those are okay, but the best of the day are from the pictures of the family. Cyndie and Carson together is one of my favorites (doesn't Carson look a little like Dr. Evil there?) and this picture of Cyndie is up there too.

November 7, 2005

On Sunday, I had some time to myself and took some macro photos in our front yard to start getting a feel for it. It was windy, which made things complicated. Also the light was changing a lot, going from cloudy to sunny...I used my westcott light diffuser to even it up in a lot of cases (one cool thing about macro photography).

I think they turned out well, not very creative, and in some cases not very well executed (the wind was killing me as I tried to stop down for more DOF), but I like at least something about each of them.

I also discovered why good ballheads are important. With the camera lens combo, my ballhead has to get way overtighted to hold it at all. It also sags after a bit, and moves all over the place during tightening. That will have to get swapped out if I want to do more of this.

Anyway, enjoy.

November 5, 2005

I've always been fascinated with Macro photography, and now with a lens that does 1:1, I can subject the world to pointlessly large pictures of everyday objects.

I'll try to find more interesting subjects; this is just what was available at 12:00am at night.

November 5, 2005

It occurred to me that I don't think I linked these abstract night pictures anywhere. Here's something, while not high-art, appeals to me, that I never would have tried with film.

Not that the $13 a roll is a deal-breaker for expirimentation, but the time to finish the roll, run down to the store twice, wait in line...lowering that barrier to entry helps a lot.

I knew I'd shoot more, but an unexpected effect is that I delete more as well. Since it didn't take money and time to develop the shot, there's less committment to it. I'm much more likely to toss something with flaws, both because there's less investment and because I know I'll be out shooting soon again.

I still need to get more ruthless though; I'll try to keep hitting that delete button so I don't bore everyone too much.

Update 11/7: Fixed broken link.

April 25, 2004

I thought Hudson broke our old digital camera (canon A200), but I was wrong. Of course, I didn't realize that until our new digital camera (a canon S45) had arrived. It's definitely a far superior tool, which is good. Certainly though, 256MB gets used up a lot sooner at 4MP than it did at 2.1 (especially since I often didn't shoot at 2MP with the old camera). It even takes a long time to offload everything from the camera, even when using a CF reader. Maybe I need a faster CF card. Who knows. Here are a few samples.