The Pool is Closed

There is a pool in my back yard ... an idea hatched at my ex's father's cottage one sunny Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1998. This seemed like an interesting idea at the time, and I went along with it with few reservations.



Of course, one must own a pool before one realizes how much they cost and how much time they take. I have refined my approach to pool maintenance over the years and it does not take that much time any more. With the exception of this year's incredible green explosion, I have had crystal clear water for years now.

But there is always the pool closing to remind me of the dark side of pool ownership. I used to pay people to open and close for me, but they wanted $250 each time (that's $500 per year) because of the time the cover took, so I started doing that myself.

I like to wait quite late in the year to close my pool because I find that early closings breed too much algae. I realize that pool companies simply float a pile of chemicals on the water to help with that, but I just prefer to hammer it once with concentrated chlorine and then close it up. The low temperatures keep the water clear until spring.

So this past weekend I approached the pool closing with my usual resistance. I decided on Sunday afternoon to drain the pool and then perform the remainder of the tasks next weekend. But the weather forecast did not look very good, so I chose instead to take a half day off yesterday and finish the job while we had warm temperatures. I've closed the pool with snow falling before ... and it is *not* fun.

I began by gathering the stuff I need to close.


This includes two huge jugs of RV anti-freeze, which is the non-toxic stuff. Two lengths of hose are used to hang in the pool from the pump intake in the skimmer so that I can drain below the skimmer. Note: you cannot fully drain a pool or the liner will pop right out and may be destroyed. I also grabbed the Gizmo, a device that prevents the skimmer from cracking as water freezes inside, and the 3 foot foam, which goes into the pool drain to prevent that pipe from cracking, since you cannot empty it of water. The foam goes deep enough to remain below the frost line. And of course a couple of plugs for the outlets to prevent water from getting back in as the snow fills the pool over the winter.

The first step is to drain the pool ... which I do with a few minutes of backwasdh (to clean the filter sand) and rinse followed by emptying the water through the waste setting. This goes through a hose into my front yard.


I use the cleaning head to weight the hose lengths down and keep the pipe open ... works perfectly.


As the water receeds, I notice some strange blue staining along the edge. I think that this is the chemical blanket that keeps the water form evaporating too fast ... but I don't really know.


Of course, to put the hoses into the pump intake in the skimmer, I first had to remove the leaf basket ... and I find that there are more leaves in there than anticipated. I imagine that the filtration was running rather poorly the last month or so.


So now I just let the water run to the back yard ... this takes several hours, as I am pumping about 15,000 litres to the front yard. So I go for a walk to record the remnants of the garden in November ...

My neighbour has a lovely crab apples tree next to our fence.


My Serviceberry bush has a few pretty branches left ...


And of course my other neighbour has a monstrous Blue Spruce hanging into my yard. I love these things ...


A view of the pool from the far end of the yard ...


And I am done for the day. The next day, I pick up where I left off.


First thing to do is to unscrew the cap from the bottom of the filter to allow it to drain.


And then open the chlorinator (on the left) and the pump. I vacuum the chlorinator with the shop vac (a 4.5 horse unit with a blower port.)


I also open the two drains on the pump (out of sight.) Then I set the filter on its winter setting, which eases strain on the gasket that seals the top and allows the handle to move between settings.


Around the back of the filter head I remove the glass window from its mount (left hand hole) and the pressure guage.


Here's a view of the pump with the drain plugs removed.


Npw tp othe heater ... there are three drain plugs for the heat exchanger. I need to open those and then blow them out with the shop vac from its blower port..



Other side ...


I notice a few moments later that there is a spider crawling up the filter against the water current. Very strange ... he fell back at least 5 times while I watched.


After blowing both sets of drains with the shop vac and then pouring one of the jugs of anti-freeze into the intake and outflow pipes from the pump end, I attack the skimmer.


The length of foam goes into the left hole, which connects to the main drain of the pool. The Gizmo is screwed into the right hand hole to protect the skimmer. The teflon pipe / thread tape us used to ensure a decent seal.

And after ...


I need to seal the outlets in order to keep the anti-freeze in and the water out. This keeps the pipes in perfect shape for next year (this is my 12th closing so I know this works well.)


I loosely reconnect all piping in order to keep animals out. You don;t want them in the pipes, dead. Jack hammering out the pipes would be hugely expensive.


And finally the baggy with all the little drain plugs etc is put back into the pool kit and it is stored.


Another swimming year is over ... to be resumed next June.

Note: A few years ago, I stopped using a cover after discussing with my boss how he closes his pool. This is vastly less effort each spring and fall and the water actually starts out cleaner, since the cover creates a lot of algae in the spring and that inevitably spills into the pool.

F70EXR Captures Birds in Flight

Birds in flight is a specialty of large numbers of shooters out there ... and I've seen some stunning images. There is nothing quite as breathtaking as a Snowy Owl coming in for a landing in bright sunlight or a pair of Eagles clashing or pretty much any hawk taking prey ...

But then there is the rather pedestrian stuff that us non-specialists get while, well, fucking around you might say :-)

When I first got my dSLR, the D70s (now in good hands with a friend of my son's who is studying journalism), I dabbled a bit with shooting birds. One of my favorites from back then is this shot of a Canada Goose (a.k.a. Shit Machine) taking off. Truth be told, he was trying to get away from me, since this was the only way I could think of to get him to take off ...


I later captured geese and ducks in actual flight several times. This was most satisfying since I was shooting a consumer camera with a very slow consumer lens (Sigma 18-200 1st generation mega-zoom) ...




Ok ... mundane, but fun. Now dial forward four years and I don't shoot birds in flight regularly ... in fact I have not shot BIF for years. But this evening I was outside draining the pool and there were a lot of gulls and geese flying overhead on their way somewhere. They were, in fact, flying north ... so I believe that they were searching for fields to stock up on stubble before the big migration southwards, which will start very soon.

Anyway ... since they were crossing not too far from my yard, I was able to get some rather nice shots of the very late sun (30 minutes before sunset) blasting of their feathers. And since I had the F70EXR with me, I was able to test the stabilization (I was panning) and the dynamic range in one go ...

My first few shots were kind of far away ... and it took me a while to figure out how to even see a small bird on the LCD when the cam was not yet focused to infinity. I eventually figured out to focus on something a long way away and then move from a large object to the birds in a maneuver that resembles star-hopping ...

This one is a 100% crop of an image where the gull (a.k.a. Shit Hawk) was rather tiny. Note, though, that it is reasonably coherent for a bird that far away ...


I panned for this shot as they passed behind some neighborhood trees ...


This one was facing west (previous two faced east) ...


And then things started to cook ... the birds flew directly over the house several times ... and I was able to get some very satisfying images (remember ... this is a $250 compact camera :-) ...



And finally, I was able to pan with a plane taking off ... this is again a 100% crop ...


Now that's a very coherent image for a 100% crop of an image shot at full zoom while panning ... if you are wondering what the heck that is, it's this ...


A Bombardier Q400, which Porter Airlines uses to fly around Ontario.

F200EXR versus G10 and G11 ... 1600 ISO ... Who has the best high ISO?

I've tried to answer this a few times now ... but people keep posting all sorts of partial comparisons without equalizing size etc etc .... so I thought I'd compare these three cameras using this methodology:

1. Take the images from imaging-resource.com ... using their standard setup with fabrics etc to get some low contrast details and a few shadows into the mix.
2. Show the F200EXR HR, F200EXR SN, G11 and G10 images at 1600 ISO.
3. Capture sharpen and equalize contrast a bit in ACR5.
4. Transfer to CS4 in 16 bit mode.
5. Normalize sizes to 10mp. G11 stays the same, F200EXR SN doubles in size. F200EXR HR drops a bit. G10 drops by 33%. Use bicubic in CS4.
6. Use Topaz 3 to equalize shadow noise. ** Departure from norm of not touching the output, because I want to compare what the cameras look like when equalized, not straight from the cam, which really doesn't tell an enthusiast anything terribly useful.

Now ... once process, we have about the same level of noise in shadows and about the maximum sharpness we can get from the details. This is where you would be with any one of these cameras with this basic processing of a 1600 ISO image.

I created two sets of crops from these four images and they are quite instructive as to the strengths and weakness of each of the cameras.


Click on the above to see the crops at full size. There is little doubt that the Canon G11 is the best, almost across the board. The G10 is very competitive in thaqt it retains low contrast details second best and retains a pretty decent 3 dimensional rendering. The SN mode of the F200 looks best in a few spots, but suffers from the need to upsize, making details a bit coarser than on the G11 and G10. The F200 in HR mode is horrid ... at this ISO, the NR in cam has demolished the edges and the low contrast details. Some say the F200EXR can be shot in HR mode ... I think that's a bad idea at all ISOs ... but at anything above 200ISO it is an utter disaster ....

My detailed analysis of the crops follows:

Set 1. Small crops of details.

1. First column contains lettering that has horizontal cross-hatching in it. Few cameras can show the hatching even at low ISO. But at 1600, it should be nigh-on impossible. Yet the G11 shows it, and the G10 shows it clearly.
2. Second column contains a bit of writing from one of the labels. All four look ok, but the Fujis have an edge to them that the Canons avoid. The SN mode continues to suffer a bit from its dramatic upsizing, yet the writing is almost legible ... a decent performance when you consider that the writing vanishes at normal print sizes. These crops are basically the equivalent of a 3 foot wide print.
3. Third row shows a clip from the scale on the wheel and the light colored paint brush. The G10 shows the scale perfectly clearly while the G11 is close. SN mode shows the longer lines clearly and hints at the shorter lines. HR mode shows the longer lines and seems to blur out the shorter lines. HR mode destroys the paint brush edges and texture while SN mode shows a bit of the hair texture. The Canons do much better on the brush hairs.
4. The fourth column shows an edge of the cup with some background shadow area and the yellow brush handle. The G11 is perfectly clear with perfectly smooth background ... no noise to speak of. The other three don;t look very good at all. SN mode would be second on noise with the HR mode next and the G10 last.
   

So in the first group, the G11 and G10 seem to win without difficulty. The G11 wins overall, having the smoothest shadows, but the G10 gives it a run, retaining better detail in several areas. SN mode is competitive with the G10, but HR mode is awful to my eyes.

Ok ... HR mode was never conceived to be tested at 1600ISO, but I show it because the review sites inexplicably capture HR mode quite often for their ISO ladders. This is an error for obvious reasons. Unfair to Fuji and to their readers.

But lets move on and look at larger crops ... these have a slightly different purpose. Here, I want to show how good the images tend to look from a 3-dimensionality perspective ... i.e. does the camera retain sufficient realism. I also isolate some of the more obvious low contrast details to see how well the camera would render fabrics, foliage, hair, fur, etc .... again at high ISO.

A note on 1600 ISO. Some say that a compact should never be used at such a high ISO. I disagree. There are times when you want to carry only a compact or you cannot get a bigger camera into a venue. High ISO can be very useful, especially when carefully processed. Not all concerts are well lit. Not all rooms are well lit. The woods are often too dark to shoot at low to mid ISO. There are *many* situations in which you need higher ISO. SO these tests are legitimate.

My analysis of the second set of crops, organized in rows this time because of their size:

1. Row one is a crop of the crayons on the left side of the image. I find this the best area to look at whether a camera manages to retain a 3 dimensional look to the images. The crayons only look real of the edges are smooth and the tones are subtle with proper gradients. The G11 looks magnificent. Perfectly rendered. Quite the feat at 1600ISO. Surprisingly (to some, not to me), the G10 is next best. Clearly almost as good, with just a little bit of edge softness. The tones are good though, nothing flat looking about that crop. The SN crop looks pretty good, but not up to the Canon standards. The edges really suffer from the upsizing and the usual SCCD and EXR artifacts. But the tones are decent and there is a feeling of 3 dimensions. A passing grade in my opinion. The HR crop has been utterly brutalized. Edges destroyed, artifacts everywhere and very flat or posterized tones. Very hard to get the 3D feeling from that crop.
2. Row 2 is the fabric area, where several colors intersect. The cross hatched fabric next to the black fabric makes for interesting contrast. The black has a very subtle pattern, as does the blue above it. The G11 retains the best overall balance of detail and color, although it has a slight green cast in the blue fabric, which none of the others have. The SN image looks almost as good, as does the G10 image. The details on the cross hatched fabric are best in the G11 image, and almost as good on the other two. The HR image has destroyed the detail on pretty much all the fabrics. They are just plain color with harsh edges.
3. Row 3 is the famous fiddler label. It shows subtle details like the rows in the field and various bits of detail in the beard. HR mode continues its poor rendering. The G10 seems about as bad here. The SN mode seems the best to me, with the G11 having finer looking detail, but no more detail ... or more accurately, slightly more in some areas (field) and slightly less in others (face and beard.) And its slight color cast is annoying.
4. The cross hatched labelo with the small lettering preferred selection. There is hatching in the label itself and in the larger letters and the surround at the top. The SN image shows the background cross hatch the best. It shows the hatching in the surround of the big letters, but not in the letters themselves. The G11 shows a slightly muted form of the hatching, as does the G10. And both show all the hatching. HR mode shows nothing there, having smeared away everything.
5. Row 5 shows a shadow area between two bottle. The G11 walks away from the pack here. Amazing clarity of the edge of the lighter bottle on the right, and amazing smoothness to the background itself. The G11 *did not need any help from Topaz by the way.* The SN mode looks pretty good too. Some large grain left, but basically smooth and edges intact. Slightly better detail around the reflection than the G11, no doubt because of Fuji's higher dynamic range. But overall, second best for sure. HR mode looks pretty poor ... lots of weird artifacts, really poor edges ... some details smoothed over almost completely. A mess. And the G10, while showing better edges than the HR mode, is a disaster for weird blotches of noise in shadows. That's the G10's Achilles heel.

Final comparison of 800px images. You can see a surprising number of differences even at these tiny sizes. Right click on each image and open in a new tab to be able to switch between them. Original file names are intact and should be obvious.

Here are the places where differences are fairly clear even at 800px. This is the F200EXR at HR size so I outlines areas where it loses detail.


F200EXR SN


F200EXR HR


G10


G11


So my verdict ... the G11 looks great without even running extra NR. Wow. By extension, the S90 will also look great. The F200 in SN mode looks quite good too. But extra NR may be needed at times. The F200 in HR mode is awful. Don't shoot it at high ISO. And finally the G10 ... better than most people believe, but very weak in shadows. Which means that only someone skilled in post processing should even consider it.

So will I buy the G11? Maybe ... it is tempting to replace my G10 with it. But it is not a big rush since I use the G10 mainly for video at this point. The F70 should carry the load for my concerts. Would I buy the S90? No. No reach. I am not a street shooter, so I need both wide and long. The F70 fills the bill. Would I buy the F200? No. The F70 is close enough in IQ and has the features I need ... mainly reach.

What should you buy? The G11 if you need an advanced camera with excellent high ISO and controls. The S90 if you need excellent high ISO and compactness and don't care about reach. The F70 is you want it all (my presumption is that the F70 is close enough to the F200 in noise that the features override.) The F200 ... hmmm ... basically get one if you are anal about 28mm image quality in the corners at 4:5 ratio.

Serious Crime Close to Home

Wow ... last night I drove Nick to the local bank to let him get some cash out to pay a friend for a Hip ticket from last month ... and then to drop him off at his friend's house ... I'm the DD in the family.

Meanwhile, as we approached the local Shopper's Drug Mart at the end of Jockvale (on Strandherd), we saw a police cruiser blocking the way with its lights flashing. As we got closer, we saw a cruiser at the other end of the parking entrance doing the same thing ...

And then we saw police stringing up yellow tape. There was a strange yellow tripod there, which caused Nick to speculate that they were providing security for surveyors ... but I suggested that this was crime scene tape. And I was right ...

Note: This is around a mile form the house ...

Two stabbed, one pedestrian hit in Barrhaven

Updated: Sat Nov. 07 2009 11:43:40

ctvottawa.ca

A young store employee may have saved a woman's life as she was stabbed in front of a Barrhaven Shoppers Drug Mart on Strandherd Road.

Media reports say Brenda Van Leyen, a Canada Post worker, had recently left her boyfriend.

Around 4 p.m., Van Leyen was stabbed near the store and the 21-year-old Shoppers employee tried to step in. She was left in serious condition with multiple stab wounds, and is still in hospital.

The Shoppers employee was also stabbed, but treated in hospital and released.

Police are hunting for a man who is said to have attacked Van Leyen and the employee.

As Ottawa police responded to the call, one cruiser struck a pedestrian. A 43-year-old man -- also a Shoppers employee -- was taken to hospital with serious leg and head injuries.

Police closed the Strandherd-side entrance to the mall Friday night pending an investigation, which is ongoing. The force's special investigations unit has been called in.

Anyone with information should contact Ottawa police at 613-236-1222 ext. 5493 or Crime Stoppers at 613-233-8477 (TIPS).

What a Crock

I decided a few days ago that I would like to find a way to make decent meals without as much effort. It is far too easy to succumb to tiredness at the end of the day and simply order in, especially with three of us with such varied tastes.

I also have this problem with the Heinesuppe ... my existing pot only makes enough for about 8 bowls, which does not leave much left over for later. This last time, I got only a few bowls, and left the rest for Nick, who loves this soup.

So I went online to my favourite kitchen store (Kitchen Stuff Plus in Toronto) and looked around to see what was available. Turned out that a nice Rival Crock-Pot (6 liter) was on sale from about 130 to 59 ... that's a deal I was not about to pass on. And there was a wonderful 20 liter stock pot with glass lid and 18/10 heavy stainless construction on sale for 79 ... so I ordered both of these, finding that there is also free shipping over 100 bucks. Good deal ...

Two days later, they arrived in a huge box sitting on my porch. Wicked ...

The stock pot is embarrassingly large :-) ... I won't show an image yet ... that'll come when I next make the soup.


But the crock pot is perfect ... the ceramic insert can be used separately on the stove and can be carried to the table. Excellent. There are two cooking settings, low (6 to 8 hours) and high (4 to 6 hours) ... and a WARM setting, to which it automatically jumps at the end of cooking. This is important as you can stretch your workday to 12 hours and the food is hot and ready when you arrive.

My first recipe was Hungarian Goulash. I dropped by the Loblaws to grab some stewing beef (never use the good stuff ... it's just not necessary), some fresh paprika, onions, a large green pepper, diced tomatoes and that's about it. See this recipe.

I was a little freaked when I finished adding ingredients ... the pot was full and there was no liquid ... just massive amounts of veggies and a little meat hidden amongst it all. But no worries ... 7 hours later it was a lovely stew and I served it over penne.


Nice ... Jon was ambivalent, but then he is always ambivalent about food that is not within a narrow set of foods. Nick was too busy to try it last night as he had to write a complete 8 page essay after work ... it was due at midnight and 1 minute late would have cost him 10 marks. He made it, but lord knows how it reads :-)

But after a couple of nice bowls for Jon and I, I was able to pack away two large containers of left overs. That'll be lunches for me for the next week or so. Cool ... I think we'll be doing stuffed pork chops or perhaps Swiss steak next ... not too sure ...

So ... interesting experience. I look forward to cooking more complete meals in this thing ...

Jill Zmud has a new CD!

Photo by Brian Goldschmied

For those who remember my post regarding Songwriter's Night at the Rainbow Bistro, I commented at the time that Jill Zmud, a friend of a close friend, was preparing her first full CD. And now it's here!

She has posted five of the songs on her MySpace account, so go and have a listen. I listened twice through this morning and I must say that this is a winner. You would be forgiven if you lapsed into the same relaxed state of bliss that Norah Jones's first CD evoked (in me, anyway) ... Jill really sounds like Norah at times. Back at the Rainbow, I also thought I detected moments of Sarah McLaughlin and Tori Amos in her voice, but not on these songs. This is very Norah with Jill's own tone. Really nice sound.

The songs are very open ... not too many instruments ... nice smooth sound with good production values. A great listen. Look for her on iTunes and CD Baby in the near future.

Meanwhile, take in her launch party at the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Quebec.

Halloween Tally

Forgot to mention this on the great eve itself ...

12 kids ... 3 groups .... 8 ... 2 ... 2 ...

Took me 3 days to kill off the evil chocolate ...

The neighborhood is about done I'd say ... only us used up old farts left ...

*sigh*

Showered in Pain

Lame title ... but I noticed a slash of sunlight coming into the shower the other day and thought it might be fun to try to capture the drops as streaks. The result is moderately pleasing.


The next day I was wrestling with Jonathan in an entirely juvenile burst of energy and he grabbed my hand and slammed it into the door as we approached the house. The result was rather painful ...


As E.T. would say .... ooooooouuuuuuuuuuch .....

F70EXR -- Is High ISO Good Enough to Shoot with Auto ISO 1600?

My standard recommendation for this camera is to shoot most of your images in P mode with M size set (I prefer M3:2) and auto ISO 1600. There are always people who are very unhappy with grain and go to great lengths to get grain free images, usually by setting lower ISO manually, or by shooting in Auto ISO 400 or 800 modes instead.

This is all personal preference, and who am I to tell you what ISO you should shoot at?

But let me show you why I don't really mind what I get at 1600 ISO ... I shot a pair of images at 200 ISO and 1600 ISO to illustrate the difference in grain between the two. It also illustrates how much of a difference 3 stops can make ... in this case I was shooting by the light of a bright compact fluorescent bulb 2 feet above the subject, a cable box remote.


What you see here, especially if you click on the image to get the larger version, is that the grain on the 1600 ISO crop is not obnoxious at all. It is in fact quite pleasant. Mainly monochrome grain, few color blotches ...

So why risk blur when images look so good downsized?


Beats the hell out of me ...

And for those who like nostalgia, have a look at the F11's rendition ...


Still has some magic ... reasonably clean image at 1600 in bad light, white balance also ok, but loves to blow highlights :-)

Note: If you see quite a bit of obvious grain, you are probably looking at these on an uncalibrated panel. Trust me that you will enjoy your photography a lot more if you invest in a decent MVA, PVA or IPS panel and get a hardware calibrator ...

6yr old sings Whitney ... CREDIBLY!

Connie Talbot was 6 years old when she went on Britain's Got Talent and did a spectacular version of Over the Rainbow. It was so good that she easily swept through to the next round. That was her *first* performance in front of a large audience ...

Fast forward 6 whole months ... she is still 6 years old ... and she records her first album. And it is good. This is a song from that album and I can't quite believe how we she does Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" ... it blows my mind. Much more than the Andrew Johnston post I made a few minutes ago ... this girl is in grade 1!

Pie Jesu by Andrew Johnston -- Blew my Mind

Wow ... this kid should touch your soul. If he doesn't, see the doctor ... it might be missing ...




Edit: A longer version in the final ...

500 Impressions in 2 Minutes!

I didn't think it was possible, but you just have to watch this guy do it ...

Drowned by an Apple Smugstorm

I am no doubt a member of a fairly large group of independent thinkers who consider Apple's unbearably smug adverts smearing Windows in every possible way to be getting tiresome. And that is, of course, an understatement.

What really chaps my ass is that Apple has suffered many of their own indignities over recent years ...

• How many people have had to reinstall iTunes a dozen times? (I have)
• How many times did that fry either your library or your iPod? (several for me)
• How many people *fear* the next iTunes reinstall? (everyone)
• How many have had an iPod die early? (:-))
• How many people have replaced an iPod battery? (I have ... ripping the damned thing completely apart in the process)

Shame on Apple for their arrogance in the face of their lack of perfection ...

But what really bugs me :-) is how poorly they appear to have tested iTunes 9 on Windows 7 with their older iPods. I have the 160GB Classic model and it completely uses up all of my memory on Windows 7, slowing the system to a crawl and crashing other apps.

See this page for a discussion.

Here are the instructions given there to fix the problem ... I'll edit this post when I get a chance to perform them.

Please make a screen shot of your USB drivers in "Device Manager"
I'm looking for Apple Mobile Device.
Perform the following operation:

1. Connect your Apple device to a USB port
2. Listen for the connection, it usually occurs twice in succession.
3. Go to device manager,
4. Go to the end of the device list and expand the usb list.
5. "APPLE MOBILE DEVICE" should be visible.
6. View the screen shot I supplied.

If its not visible you will need to remove all Apple Software, ITunes, Bonjour Apple Mobile Service, everything apple including Quick time must be removed.
Then you must re-install.

Edit: After a complete uninstall of every Apple product, reboot, and installation of the latest iTunes / Quicktime download, things seem ok. I find that the iPod still hammers the USB bus ... but the memory seemed stable this time ... running free memory to zero pretty quickly, but leaving available memory stable throughout the sync.

Fotolia Update

As some of you know, I have a few images up on Fotolia, a microstock site of some note. The average selling profit to me has been about a buck an image lately, and October was a banner month ... 17 sales for a total profit to me of $18.80. Yeah, I know, that's peanuts ... and does not even come close to covering the costs of the hobby itself.

My point, though, has always been that this is really on the strength of one series of images ... my pen and ink images, the best of which has 126 sales on its own ... the whole series of three images has a total of 165 sales over the last few years. Imagine how one could do with a few dozen heavy hitters ...

Anyway, after the success of October ... and considering that September was not too bad either ... I thought I might be undervaluing these images. So I doubled my prices across the board. And was surprised to get a sale today ... only the second day after the start of this experiment. Interesting ...

EveryTrail for iPhone

When I last went to Gatineau Park, I looked around for a GPS map for my iPhone and found the EveryTrail site. This application allows you to track your trip, whatver it is, to almost any level of accuracy -- the caveat being that high accuracy equals high battery drain.

I used it during the Pink Lake walk ... and somehow screwed it up. I think I used a feature that required a constant link to the Internet, which of course I did not have.

But now I have 3G on my phone in test mode (free for a month), so I thought I'd check it out again. I turned it on while sitting in the Broadway restaurant at the end of our breakfast (Jon was there with me but Nick begged off, ostensibly to read Hamlet.) I also captured an image with the iPhone, which EveryTrail can use directly on the site as a visual waypoint. Very cool ...

Once completed, you can save the trip as a draft, to be uploaded later, or you can upload directly to the EveryTrail site. I did the latter and it sent me an email (which you specify when you register on their site for free) containing a link to the trip.

The site provides a direct link to twitter and Facebook, and also a field that you can copy to embed the trip or the slide show, both of which I embed here:

Test: Broadway to WalMart to Home at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps

Test: Broadway to WalMart to Home

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Community

I find the site and the application quote easy to use and recommend you experiment with it to see how useful it is for you ...

Moving your iPhone to a New Computer -- Apple's Shame

My god .... what a chore. iTunes is now at version 9 ... so they are on to their 9th life. And yet, these cats can't get the simple process of moving your iPhone or iPod to a new computer to work worth spit.

You have to remember the authorizations of your "audible accounts" ... you have to figure out how to export and import your library (I created a new library so apparently I can no longer import my other library) ... you have to remember to export and import play lists separately (why do these not come with your library?) ...

This could all be automated with one command on iTunes ... "Move iTunes to another computer" and the choice of the home base for iPods and iPhones could be handled with "make this computer my iPhone's home computer" ... it's a trivial concept ...

On Apple's advice forums, you can see this thread, which documents some 14 3rd party utilities that have been written to help with the process ... each does it differently and will varying degrees of completeness and success. Unbelievable ...

Apple are unbearably smug in their commercials ... but they should be ashamed of their iPod / iPhone software cluster fuck ...

Shame on you Apple.

A November Haiku

a flurry of leaves
soft winds, sunny skies fading
winter's bite anon

Ok ... I'm not much of an artist ... but I think this one captures November just fine.

Annoying Laughs -- The Treatment

No one has these cojones ... but everyone wishes they did :-)

My brother shared this link on Facebook, and I traced it through Google back to what I think is the original, which I share here ...

The Bartender Hates You 9 - Watch the top videos of the week here

The Most Beautiful Girl in the World -- a YouTube star!

I recorded quite a bit of video of Savannah when I was in Winnipeg on holidays ... and I posted the first and best of these on YouTube tonight. She's so cute ... Nick provides the background guitar by just plinking away for fun ... but it's nice.

F70EXR and F200EXR -- test Large versus Medium size -- which is better?

The short answer is that medium is better ... in *all* circumstances.

Well ... if you shoot bright light all the time and very fine, but very high contrast details ... and you like to pixel peep at 100% ... then shooting HR mode might satisfy you now and again.

But for general purpose shooting without requiring of constant thought or the use of the battery-eating EXR AUTO mode, just shoot P mode with M size.

My test today is a pair of shots of a stack of books I have to file at some point ... I focused on the label and title of the Nelson DeMille book Wild Fire (good thriller by the way.)

I cropped the focus area first, since it is bright and should be quite close between the two ... I found in fact that the labels and text are more readable on the 5mp image that was upsized to 10mp than it was on the 10mp native image.

Those who have read my thoughts on this in the past know that I consider the HR mode to be evil ... it shows weird edge artifacts, no doubt caused be a combination of the rotated SCCD matrix, and the strange pixel-paired EXR arrangement of the colors. Between these two, they are performing some ugly math to get a simple image matrix. With the binned mode, we no longer have the pixel pairs, so we are back to the original SCCD demosaic algorithm, which we know works very well.

Added to the strange bayer mask, we have Fuji's selective noise reduction. At 10mp, the details are very fine, yet there are a lot of weird artifacts that no doubt look like noise to the jpeg engine. So Fuji tries to smooth the flat areas, which inevitably damages edges of letters etc. This is *very* obvious in these images.

Starting with the crops ...


Remember to click on these images to get the larger 800px versions. The crops show just how much cleaner the edges appear. Start with the words "Pix Reg." on the circular label. Perfectly clear on the upsized image, but the x is destroyed by edge artifacts in the 10mp native image.

Next, have a look at the spine of the book "Follow the Stars Home" by Luanne Rice, just below the book by Anne McCaffery and Jodie Lynn Nye (The Death of Sleep.) The title is discernible on the 5mp image while it is simply mush on the 10mp image.

The next crop down is the spine of "Light: Science and Magic", a superb book on artificial lighting, especially of difficult subjects like glass and mirrors. The word Light on the upsized 5mp image is crisp and clear while the 10mp images shows it weakly with a lot of grain. The fine grain has fooled some people to declare that edge definition is much better in 10mp mode ... this, of course, is obviously not true. In some very few cases, the 10mp mode can resolve a bit more high contrast detail, but there is *always* the price of chroma noise and edge artifacts along with smoothing of any low contrast details.

The final crop is the Harry Potter spine ... it shows poor definition on the author's name and it shows a lot of nasty chroma noise on the main part of the spine. The noise on the 5mp mode is mainly luminance grain ... a much more pleasant form of noise.

What I find really interesting is how these issues are subtly visible even at tiny web sizes. Showing the upsized image first:


It looks pretty good. Everything is crisp and clear. The 10mp image looks superficially similar ...


But now take a look at some of the crop areas. Also look at the title of the Stephen King book "The Stand" ... you will see that the title stands out clearly against the red background with the 5mp image, which blending back in (the result I believe of NR and edge artifacts combined) to make it harder to read on the 10mp image ...

I see no reason to *ever* shoot 10mp on the F70EXR or 12mp on the F200EXR ... every time I see a pair of images from these cams in the two sizes, the issues with edges and low contrast detail stick out like a sore thumb.

I realize that many people don't see this ... but train yourself to look for this kind oft thing ... it won't be long before you see the kind of improvements that make a big difference in your image's ability to convey 3 dimensions.

Autumn Leaves -- Clinging to Life

One of my neighbours a couple of blocks away has a beautiful Maple tree in his front yard. Every time I drove by in the last week or so I remarked to myself that I really needed to try to capture the amazing pastoral scene ....

Of course, a tree like that in the middle of a field on a sunny day could make for an award-winning image, while a shot of someone's front yard on a cloudy day (that's about all we've had for weeks) makes for a documentary image. *sigh* ...

Still, worth a shot. I popped over at lunch one day last week for a few minutes, carrying the big lenses (Nikon 300mm F4 AFS and Tamron 180mm F3.5 MACRO) and my little Fuji F70EXR. The first thing I did was set up the tripod on a sidewalk across from his side yard (he lives on a corner, which helps with angles.) Obviously, I had to avoid too much clutter and preferably take the car parked across the street out of the equation.

I set the F70EXR first to about 180 then 270 and chose to shoot the Tamron. 300mm would be simply too much. I was able, however, to also capture some nice images with the Fuji compact.

I started with this shot from the Fuji ... it shows the traditional weakness of small sensor cameras, the inability to isolate your subject ... the Blue Spruce across the street is just as sharp as the wonderful Maple. But at least you can see what I was working with.


I was able to isolate the hanging part of the tree without a too-distracting background.


And to show the lawn, which was perfectly blanketed by lovely leaves ...


I then switched to the D300 and the Tamron for a while ... here, I show the front yard without including the neighbour's yard as a sharp detail ...


A better angle for the Tamron ...


An isolation shot of the tree and its lower branches ...


A detail shot of one sprig with the rest of the tree thrown completely out of focus ... this is why I love dSLR shooting ...


At this point, I'd had my fill of the tree itself and decided to turn my attention to the leaves on the ground. Any leaf that was upside down was covered with beautiful, evenly-spaced, large water droplets. Really, really pretty.

My Feisol 3471 tripod can lay almost flat and allow the cam to point straight down ... for some reason, I forgot to capture that interesting detail shot. Another time, I suppose.

Meanwhile, I started shooting the leaves individually and in small groups.




I also captured the leaves with the Fuji F70EXR, which means hand holding the cam right above the leaves when shot wide or about 3 feet away on full tele ...




Obviously, I was enamored with the water droplets ... but I also love the details in the leaves.



This last shot is incredibly sharp ... so I thought I'd see what sort of detail I could extract with Topaz Adjust 3 ...


And I was done ... but before leaving, I grabbed a couple of images around that rock in the yard with the Fuji ... I thought these were kind of nice ...



The snow will arrive soon here, but I appreciate the Maple tree's ability to hang on very late into the season ... it means we have lovely colors around the neighbourhood right up until the snow gives us a completely different look ...

Images for Ashley's Web Site

I was asked to provide a selection of images for Ashley's web site, and that caused me to go through the 1800 images with a quick pass to select images that represented his work, his style and his invention (the scissors he uses) very well. Obviously, I also sent a second selection of the images from my first post on his work.

I started by working in color and sent a few emails to Crombie for some guidance as to the appropriate sort of images to select. Turns out I kind of had it wrong at first, thinking that a series of images of the cut would be useful.

For example ... the beginning ... one of the very first images I got, after her wash but before he started doing any serious cutting.


Very early on ...


An hour in or so ...


And he continues ...



I like this shot ...


And this was the last one I processed fully before seeking guidance over email ...


It turned out that the cut was entirely secondary to Ashley himself and his patented scissors. This made perfect sense to me and I restarted my search for images, discarding some I had already processed. I also ran into color problems over and over ... no cyan on his head because of the overhead lights and so on ... after speaking with Crombie on the phone, I went with black and white again.

I first went through the already processed group to find the few that met the new criteria. I felt that these four made the grade ... and note that in these shots the model (Amanda) is supposed to be secondary, although that is sometimes difficult to convey.





And now for the new shots processed only to black and white ...


One thing that Crombie noted to me when he saw these is that Ashley needs to dominate the image, and I found that many of my images were of the work and few were of the man. Something to keep in mind next time.

Some showing his concentration while cutting ... I chose several variations because of the change in Amanda's expression ... the web designer and Ashley may have very specific goals for how they want the mood of his work conveyed ...




Facing the big north window in case they want a brighter backgrop somewhere.


Combing her out with a great big smile ...


And with a more introspective look ...


A detail shot of his hands and body position when working low ...


A shot of his hands pinching the hair for some trimming ... his face slightly out of focus but prominent.


A shot of the scissors in use ...


A nice shot of Ashley himself ...


A nice isolation shot of the scissors ... obviously marred by cutting them off slightly. But since there was no other like this, I thought perhaps the shot would have some value ...


A very promionent placement of the scissors ... clearly showing their unique design ...


A crop from the same image ... I only cropped three times in the entire series ... this is one of them ...


Another image of the scissors in use ...


A superb image of Ashley with the scissors in action ...


And again working with the scissors ...


Nice isolation shot ... I believe that we posed this one (I eventually realized that I needed to find out what his trademark was and that was when I heard about the scissors and the patent ...)


Another shot posed I believe ...


If this was posed, it was the last one ... but I think this is live again ... I really like how Ashley himself frames the scissors ...


Detail shot of scissors in hand with the other punching the hair tightly ...


And when it was all over, I got Amanda to pose for some shots in the window area ... this image best shows the cut, and it's a beauty ... as is the model.


I have hundreds of excellent images form the shoot ... many of Amanda, which I will try to cull later on for a series just on her ... meanwhile, these had a specific purpose in mind and so are not representative of all stages of the cut. But they are a pretty good sampling and I must admit that I like processing both types of images from the compact and the dSLR. But I truly love the way the background goes smoothly out of focus with the dSLR .... there is simply no contest in how the final images look ... to me at least.

H1N1 Vaccine -- Turned Away Today!

Barrhaven, a smallish (45,000 or so) suburb of a larger suburb (Nepean) of the city of Ottawa, has a 2-day roving H1N1 vaccine clinic. Here is the listing on the city's clinic web site:

Walter Baker Sport Centre
100 Malvern, Barrhaven
October 28, 29, November 23, 24: 2:30-8:30 p.m.

So the boys and I popped over today at 3:13 to get in line ... we knew it would be a long wait, but the boys brought sufficient reading material to get them through and I was going to play with my iPod, since I am testing a data link for a month.

And when we got there, we saw a woman heading downstairs to the lobby to post the "Clinic Full" sign.

So a clinic that is open for 6 hours fills up completely in 43 minutes. The last people to arrive will be waiting for 6 hours until 8:30 this evening. Wow ...

This after the CBC reported that health officials have fixed the problems in Ottawa's clinics ... I suppose that posting the bugger off sign less that 12% the way in is one way to go ...

Edit: My son's friend went 2 hours early the next day, and they were already out of the vaccine. 2 hours early! Apparently, for a small burb of 45,000 people, they thought that 1600 does would suffice ... duh ...

F70EXR can achieve Critical Sharpness!

Ok ... I found an example from the Crombie McNeill workshop last weekend that blows my mind with its sharpness. This is shot at 115mm and shows just how much detail that this camera is capable of rendering in moderate light ... the shutter speed would have been 1/25s at 1600 ISO without the -1EV compensation I used to keep her skin from getting to bright, so not so much light ...

This images is tweaked in ACR but otherwise straight from the camera ... take note of the globs of mascara on her eyelashes and the texture of the skin below her right eye. Very nice ...


Remember to click on the image to see this screen shot at 100%.

Crombie McNeill Workshop and Ashley Garrett Virtuoso Styling

Crombie reminded me the night before in an email that there was another workshop on Sunday, October 25, and this one was one that I had been waiting for ... a chance to experiment with lighting in a studio setting.

The location was a large space on the main floor of an apartment building, which had been left pretty much open. Ashley Garrett was letting us use the space, I believe in return for a photoshoot of his work. While the workshop went on, Ashley cut a young lady's hair and the process and result were really something to behold. Her name, by the way, is Amanda, and she is a lovely person with really stunning eyes.

I managed to participate in about 30 minutes of the lighting workshop when Crombie pulled me aside and asked me to handle the photoshoot for Ashley's work. I am so glad that I was both offered the opportunity and was sane enough to say yes :-)

This post describes the environment, workshop and a brief trip through the 3 and 1/2 hour styling job. It took so long for several reasons. One, Ashley is now teaching, so this was paced as would be a seminar. I captured just about every single moment on 4 memory cards (had to borrow one from Paul near the end) ... a total of, wait for it ... 1,800 images! Yes, that is not a typo. I got 1,800 images from the D300 alone ... *not counting those you will see here* ...

Blew my mind too.

So one thing to keep in mind ... these images are the snack. The meal comes later when I have culled and processed the 1800 images from the D300. These images are all from the Fuji F70EXR. A small, but capable compact camera. Search this blog for "F70EXR" to see many other posts, totaling over three hundred sample images.

The images you will see here are in black and white. The main reason for that is that the lighting in this room is brutal for photography. There is the rather blue shade coming in from full length windows at the front and the back of tre space. There are the very orange halogens along the walls and scattered throughout the ceiling. And there is the 5000k light (much warmer than the shade coming in from the windows but much cooler than the light on the walls) that was coming from the left of the styling location most of the time.

The difficulty in getting a decent skin tone drove me to go black and white all the way. I am hoping for a better result from the D300.

Crombie assembled the crew of about a half dozen participants and 2 models (a third would arrive later) and began discussing the types of light we would work with.


This was one of three setups in the space ... these are soft boxes with strobes. He used modeling lights to demonstrate the various forms of lighting, as shown here on Anna.




I took a break while the gang got going, each person taking the lead from the strobes and hooking it up to their hot shoe in turn. The strobe setup was at the back of the space and turning and facing the front of the space, we see how open it is. The following image is the only color image in this post, showing Queen Street and facing North.


Back to the workshop ... I waited my turn as some were shooting and others were examining their results with the instructor.



Note that the above image was salvaged from a poorly exposed back-lit image. Not bad, and only possible in black and white.

I managed to get an image of the third model (Chelsea) when they began using the continuous lighting setup. At this point, I was taking a break from using the D300 for a few moments and thought I'd show the continuous lighting and the proximity to the space in which I was capturing the styling work.



Obviously, there were people in my space pretty often ... and I had to be extremely careful with backgrounds, as it was easy to get really ugly combinations of arms and legs and light stands and what-not.

At some point, I wandered back to the strobe area and shot Marie-Eve, without the benefit og the strobes. Just by the modeling lights. Go Fuji!


A more contrasty version with a touch of glow.


After I began running low on memory for the D300 I shot a series with the F70EXR. They turned out surprisingly well.




I love head shots ... it's certainly part of my journalistic style. I always go in for details while trying to capture the action. Here, I zoom in for a shot of Amanda's lovely face, showing the progress so far.


I've had the pleasure of seeing virtuoso performers at the NAC ... brilliant soloists that so things you find hard to believe. Watching Ashley style Amanda's hair gave me the same sense of skill and accomplishment.



SInce the window area was about 6 feet from where Ashley was working, I was able to track the final shooting location, the large window ... this of course gave off a wonderful northern light. Very soft, but very directional. Balderson taught be just how amazing that kind of light can be.

Anna posed there for several people. I think Paul was leading this parade ...


And back to watching Ashley work ...



I walked around into a tight corner to shoot them with the room itself as background. This shows the light from a different angle, but allows you to see the room in behind.


We're getting closer here ... so I zoom in for more head shots.



And we continue ...




You can see here the clips he uses to temporarily get hair out of the way. He keeps up to three of them on his sleeve while he works.

A brief peek over at the natural light area and I can see that Paul is getting Anna to curve herself ... looks really nice.


And back to Ashley and Amanda ...



Things are looking *really* nice now ...


At some point here, Ashley mentioned that he could stop any time if they were pressed for time. This elicited a bit of surprise from Amanda's mother, asking why he could just stop? Ashley mentioned that it's a process, and he can pick up when they come back next time for coloring of her hair. This got a chuckle ... but soon enough he really was done.

I shot more images of the final product, but those were done with the D300 so you'll have to wait for the next post, which will have far more detail on the cutting. Surprisingly though, these images are quite good for documenting the styling. Short of a detail shot on the scissors Ashley uses for thinning edges, which he invented and for which he holds a US patent, I think we have a lot of good detail here. But let's wait and see how the other 1800 images come out :-)(


Amanda and her mother left then, after we exchanged email and blog addresses so they could see Amanda's images. (Remember, I have much better images from the D300 ... these are the light snack preceding that meal.)

Once the photo equipment had been packed up and put into the cars out back, I popped back in to see Ashley's son (whose name I have forgotten ... I'll fix that later) set up to record. He plays a mean guitar and sings quite well too.


And one final shot of Ashley himself in his street garb. A much different look.


So ... a strange workshop for me ... not what I envisioned, but in some ways much, much better. Met some interesting people, watched a real professional do his thing, shot images of a beautiful young girl ... good times. Now if only I can squeeze out a few dozen hours to cull and process those 1800 images from the big cam ...

Some Brilliant Things about Windows 7

When you plug in a USB headset, active Audio is moved there. And when you unplug it, audio moves back to the speakers. Wow. Vista could never do that ...

It takes far less memory.

The whole MAC-like task bar is awesome. As good as the MAC's in my opinion (I own a mini.)

It sleeps. It really does. And not only that, but when you switch the machine back on, it does not go through the BIOS boot sequence, it jumps straight to the login screen ... instantly. Vista simply died every time I tried to sleep the machine, so I had to boot from scratch every day ... this is such a pleasant change ...

More later ...

F70EXR -- Is It Sharp?

Why, yes. I shot a 3 and 1/2 hour styling session today during a Crombie McNeill photo shoot for portrait lighting. I'll blog that separately. But during this session, I had occasion to use the F70EXR off and on. The lighting was rather difficult, to say the least. Orange halogens against the walls, and sprinkled through the ceiling. A huge north window casting light onto her face most of the time (onto her left side -- image right -- for these images.) And a photo session with continuous lighting that bled a little 5000k light my way from camera left.

So ... I was shooting at 800 or 1600 with this cam (it's choice in P mode) and at 5mp. The shutter speeds were nothing to write home about ... 1/35s I believe. This means that critical sharpness relies upon her not moving and the F70's sensor-based IS.

Well ... it did the job twice in a row. I captured two images that I show here. They have been processed to mitigate the damage caused by the lighting and to enhance the existing sharpness. I like both, but one had sharp eyes and one had sharp hair. Neither had both -- at least not critically sharp. The kind that gives you a visceral reaction.

Here are those two images ... it is unlikely that you will be able to tell the difference between them just from the web sized images. So I will also include crops at the end. The F70EXR is critically sharp all right ... but when shooting this close, depth of field is razor thin so you'd better make sure you capture several images.

Windows 7 Installed and Running -- Stage 1

Ok ... after much thought, I resigned myself to a fresh install rather than running out and buying the ultimate version of Windows 7 to perform an upgrade on my machine. Several factors, but the key one was that I like to refresh my machines now and again and this is a good reason to do it.

So ... step 1 ... how to install? Turns out that a dual boot configuration was the most sensible technique. That way, I could run either OS until I was sure that I had recovered everything of interest on Windows 7.

To do this, one must either install a new disk (no SATA ports left) or partition the main disk into two. I have a 1TB main drive, so this sounded feasible. And since I was coming from Vista, it's a piece of cake because Vista has the necessary disk management tools built in.

To partition, one simply shrinks the main disk partition in the disk manager and then creates a new partition and formats it NTFS. It did not take long at all. Then, boot the CD and choose a fresh install, *not* an upgrade.

I did that in about an hour.

Step 2 is copying one's user account and settings, along with key data folders over to the new partition. This is truly simple, since Vista and Windows 7 both have the Windows Easy Transfer tool built in. This tool can migrate all your stuff over a USB cable or using a USB drive or CD/DVD. What they don't make clear is that you can simply drop the migration file into any folder on the original partition and then directly read it on the new one. Piece of cake.

I selected my main user account and and email, which required no intervention by me. Then I manually selected my iTunes library and several key folders, including my entire Documents folder, which holds everything I have accumulated since buying my first PC in the early 80s. The transfer file was 100GB and took 90 minutes to generate. It took almost that long to import to the other side, but when it was done I was staring at an identical desktop with every file intact. All of my pointers from the desktop to files in my main data folders worked just fine. Wow ...

One more thing ... I came back upstairs this evening after watching some tube (Con Air ... fun movie) and found dead silence. This was quite forboding since the last time this happened, my power supply had blown. When I switched it back on, it booted straight to a login screen .... it had been asleep! Vista was *never* able to successfully resume from sleep ... but Windows 7 had no trouble at all. Awesome!

Swine Flu ... Get Your Shots!

Yes, there are confusing messages. Yes, it is only a "moderate" pandemic. Yes, the symptoms in the vast majority of cases are "mild."

But this flu spreads quickly and the more cases we allow to happen, the more opportunites this virus has to mutate into something to be feared.

Read this article to see why you really need the two shots this fall ...