cool

spiffy stuff

I put the Noctilux to good use in late February. Click on the thumbnail above.

I'd planned to just take a group photo of the crew but getting people to pose for me seemed stressful.

I decided to go out on the coach's launch instead. Of course, at that time of year in Seattle,

the sun doesn't rise until around 7am, so photographing anything was a challenge. I used Kodak

Ektachrome P1600 (color) and Delta 3200 (B&W) film with the M6 and it's Noctilux and the

F100 and a couple of f/2.8 zooms. After dawn, I used Ektachrome 100S, which along with 100VS,

is the film I use most. I was quite happy with the results. Obviously, there's very noticable grain;

with other fast slide film, Kodak usually says "hey, it's fast film but, honest, there's not much grain"

but not here. For granular artistic applications is their description of P1600 (not too sure about the "artistic" bit).

Once again, it's amusing to read back on what I've written in this section.

It now seems odd that I was worried about using a lot of film with the F100. Since I got the Leica

back in September '00, I've probably used (ok, "shot"...whatever) at least four rolls of film every week.

I've discovered that processing film is like doing laundry - do it regularly and it's no hassle, soothing even

(maybe that's a stretch); let it accumulate and it's very, very boring. The Leica is small enough

that I carry it almost everywhere. It's certainly my default camera. I still use the F100 and D1 a lot

- there are many occasions where they are the best or only choice - but the Leica is always with me.

Ok, enough preamble.

As I mention below, I got the Leica with a 35mm f/1.4 lens. This is an excellent all-round lens,

although it is a little bigger than Leica's slower lenses. "Slower" means a smaller aperture - the "f" setting.

Aparture is how much light is getting to the film; shutter speed is how long you're letting light onto the film.

Oh, here's something that's confusing: a smaller f number represents a larger aperture. Fast lenses are

expensive, and long, fast lenses are very expensive. Here's a good example: Nikon has a 300mm f/4 and a

300mm f/2.8. Apart from the speed difference, they are very similar, quality-wise. The f/4 is about $1500 but

the f/2.8 is $5500. If you've been to any professional sports games, you would have seen one of these lenses.

I borrowed one recently and had a ball. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window" (without the broken leg!).

End of Photography 101. For more info, I'd suggest the "National Geographic Field Guide to Photography".

Anyway, as I said above, the 35mm f/1.4 (or 35mm Summilux in Leica terminology) is a great lens - a fast,

wide angle. I live in an interesting neighborhood that gets more interesting after dark and I realized last week

that almost all my photos are taken at night, so I got a new lens. It's a 50mm f/1.0. If you're not familiar with

aperture numbers, f/1.4 to f/1.4 may not seem like a big difference. Actually, it is: that jump is refered to

as a "stop" and each stop changes the light by a factor of 2. So, using the f/1.0 lets double the light of the

f/1.4 get to the film. It's really an amazing difference. There are some photos I took with this lens

on the December '00 page (go to new).

Anybody reading this page (and I don't think anyone does - tell me if I'm wrong) must think I have

multiple personality disorder. If you scroll down, it seems like I've changed my mind about digital vs. film cameras

a couple of times. However, it's not really true; I like them both. The D1 has all the advantages of the F100

(further below) and they use the same lenses. However, both cameras are pretty large and really obvious.

I mostly take photos of people and I thought it'd be nice to have something that was less obtrusive.

The camera store I got the Nikons from also sells Leica equipment. I played with one a couple of times

but it wasn't until I started a black and white photography class that I appreciated it. The Leica M6 is

very simple; film speed, shutter speed, aperture and that's it. It's small and very quiet and, best of all,

doesn't look like anything special. I've taken many photos that I wouldn't have got with either of the Nikons.

Of course, the reverse is also true, so I'm lucky to have both. Dropping into photo techno-speak, I'm using a

35mm/f1.4 on the Leica; the perfect lens for photos in dark bars! There are two great Leica resources on the web:

photo.net's Leica section and the Leica Papers page.

I've been using the F100 for a month or so now and although great, it's also been sort of a drag.

Film is expensive to get developed and after getting several rolls destroyed, I'm wary of using cheap-o labs.

I'm used to taking hundred of photos with a digital camera and having a dozen or so that are good -

an expensive proposition with film. To add insult to injury, almost all my photos end up on the web,

so I don't even want prints and scanning is real hassle. But an SLR with a real lens is the way to go.

The Nikon D1 seems to be the best of both worlds. It's bigger and heavier than the F100

(similar to the F5 ) but otherwise behaves just like a regular SLR. Almost all news photographers

now use either a D1 or the Kodak equivalent; these were taken with the D1.

Great for Angus-on-the-run shots, the D1 will take a burst of 21 images at 4.5fps.

More of the same.

Below I say that the PC100 "takes decent still photos". Unfortunately, this didn't really

turn out to be the case. The 1152 x 882 pixel stills from the PC100 are ok but they're

not close to the quality of the Canon S10. Also, the Sony doesn't have an on-board flash.

I wasn't too worried about this but when Sony announced the PC5, I decided to get one.

Now, before you say "Are you crazy?!", there was already a chap at Adobe who wanted

to buy my PC100 for the same price as a new PC5. So, it was just a swap. You can't see it in

the photo above but the PC5 is much smaller than the PC100. This is a good thing as it means

I'm more likely to carry the camera with me. Here are some photos (link removed 2007) of the PC100 and

the PC5 side-by-side. Amazing. The PC5 is small enough that there isn't room for controls;

a touch screen is used to manage the camera and it works pretty well.

Sony's consumer products like the PC5 are impressive but their Professional equipment

is amazing. After spending way too much time browsing their maze-of-a-website,

I ordered a miniDV deck and a 14" monitor.

I had this great theory that buying an external DV deck would save my little camera

from wear-and-tear. Unfortunately, this theory has hopeless economics: it'd be much cheaper

to wear out the camera, toss it in the trash and buy a new one. Or, to just buy a second camera

and use it as a deck. I knew this but made the mistake of playing with a miniDV deck - the Sony DSR-20 -

that we have in Adobe's tech support department. After using a consumer DV device, the DSR-20

is a joy. Every operation is super-fast and feels very solid (not sure how to define that better).

The 14" monitor I bought is a Sony PVM-14M2U. If you're come this far, you probably already

know what a monitor is - in the video context - but, basically, it's a high quality TV screen

for viewing video. It has higher resolution that a normal TV (good for viewing DV video) and has

better color. Ironically, it lacks a TV tuner; plenty of places to plug video sources into

(a DVD player, for example) but no way to watch "Wheel of Fortune" out of the box. Darn.

Getting away from all the digital stuff, I just got a Nikon F100. It's Nikon's most recent

35mm F-series camera. The F5 is it's big brother but I've used one of these and it is much larger and

more expensive than the F100. After using digital cameras, it's been nice to use a film camera again.

None of the instant gratification of digital, of course, but there are big upsides. Being an SLR, the image through

the viewfinder is wonderful. Shutter release is almost instantaneous (a big failing of current digital cameras)

and very fast: switch to "Continuous" and the F100 will take five photos each second. I have a great sequence

of Angus racing towards me; when I get it developed, you'll see it on New. Like any F-series, the F100 comes

without a lens; I got a 28-200mm F3.5/5.6D IF AF Zoom-Nikkor (quite the mouthful). It's a big, squat thing

that gives both a wide-angle and telephoto lens in one. At the next regatta, it'll be nice to photograph races

and actually have the boat fill most of the frame. Lastly, the camera's autofocus is very fast and

like the Sony Pro equipment, it and everything else about the camera feels very solid.

Now I'm going to take a class to learn how to use it all!

Mainly for making videos of Angus (my black lab), I decided to get a digital video camera.

I got a Sony DCR-PC100. It's very small and takes decent still photos.

Adobe makes great video editing software - Premiere and After Effects -

and I'm using these plus a product named Media Cleaner to make videos for dingoboy.com.

I'm using a Canopus DVRaptor card to get the video onto my computer

and an IBM 75Gb hard drive to store everything. It's all very good fun.

As I said below "I'm sure there will be a better model in a few months".

I was right! The CoolPix is great but is limited by no USB connection and no Compact Flash II.

Actually, even a bigger CF card wouldn't really help 'cause of the slow serial connection.

I bought the Canon s10 mainly for a trip to Australia. It's been a great camera, especially when

combined with the IBM Microdrive. The only problem is that it's battery life in really cold weather (-10C)

is pretty terrible: only a couple of minutes. Keeping the battery warm helps.

Read about the s10 here and feel free ask me questions.

As I said below #2: "by far the nicest PC I've ever used".

I was writing about the at-the-time new Dell Workstation 410

I still use that computer at work and still love it. With the digital camera(s) and web server,

I'm updating my web site much more often, so I decided it was time to get a computer at home.

Not an easy choice. I was tempted to get a Dimension (Dell's standard home model) but ended up with

a pretty fancy Workstation 420. I decided I'd rather get something that I'll keep for a few years.

Read about it here. It's a dual- processor 733Mhz Pentium III with 512Mb RAM and

a couple of Ultra/160 SCSI hard drives. It's swell. And I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it.

Speaking of swell, this is a great web server.

It's a Colbalt Qube2 and is an Internet appliance.

In this case, that means that it does a bunch of Internet-related stuff

with almost no configuration. Plug it in, give it an IP address via buttons on the back

then configure everything else via a web browser.

Underneath the cool blue cover is a MIPS processor running Linux.