Tuesday, April 13, 2010

A Response to Jimbo68 and Lloydy from FTF

The FTF is abuzz today, roasting poor NikonWorks for his or her (FTF seems evenly split on the gender) sending back of the HS10. Some might remember that I applauded that post, as many of those were the issues I saw with the camera based on the specs alone … well before finding out it is as slow as a slug.

I often get randomly razzed in that forum by several people, most of whom I have tangled with now and again. The fact that I am not there to defend myself apparently means nothing to these miscreants. Most of these fellas *never* back up their arguments with anything approaching data, so they can be dismissed outright 99.9999…% of the time.

But then we have the people who throw in the odd swipe … right out of the blue. People I don’t even remember suddenly have an opinion on me. That seems a little presumptuous …. but hey, it’s the Internet :-)

Jimbo68 popped this catty comment into the “returning HS10” thread for reasons unknown:

Kim used Nikon's post to bolster his opinion of the HS10. Strangely, he didn't use Lloydy's response.

Bolster my opinion. Hmmm … meaning that I needed to read it from someone I’ve never interacted with on the FTF to feel good about my own opinion? Have you ever read me? :-)

Frankly, it’s not strange at all that I ignored Lloydy’s reply to Nikonworks. I’ve always found Lloydy to have little in the way of computational ability, driven far more by competition and ego.

Nikonworks, on the other hand, appears to have a fully functioning control center perched up there on his or her shoulders. I naturally gravitate to those with some ability.

Lloydy responded to Jimbo68 shortly thereafter and proved my assertions above with the following post:

Re: Kim Still Visits the Forum
LOL  emoticon - wink

Incidentally, he never left. If you keep an eye on the 'Member Directory', you can see he has been logging in, since he left.

Now … the only way to “keep an eye” on the member directory is to go there and search by name. So … assuming Lloydy regularly logged in to check me out in the 85 days since I last posted, he would have seen that I logged in only a few times in total until this week, where I have logged in daily to follow a few threads. I started doing this because I got mentioned a few times and noticed a rather impressive spike in my blog traffic. This is the last month up to yesterday, this is visitors:

image

This is visits and page views:

image

See the spike there at the end? Two days in I started looking for the reason. I knew it would be on DPReview and it was.

So … back to Lloydy’s silly post. He likes to “make stuff up” … a lot. He regularly gets savaged when he posts technical info because of this tendency, and of course because the aforementioned issues make for some rather poorly constructed tests and arguments.

Anyway … here’s what my member directory entry looks like today, despite my having logged in every day for the last 5 days:

image

The “last posted 85 days ago” is dead accurate. I can’t post, because I don’t know my password :-)   But the member directory says I have not been seen for 9 days … that’s a bit weird. And of course it means that the member directly does not keep accurate records.

So not only is Lloydy making stuff up, he is making it up based on crap data.

Just like old times, eh Lloydy?

9 comments:

Dave said...

Hey Kim.
Someone kindly, or otherwise, pointed me to this.
We both know that 'last seen' means last login/logout.
Hiding behind a blog to make these sort of comments, is a little silly - Don't you think ?
The beauty of PC's is you can screen shot data, over time.
Look forward to your blog revision.
Cheers

Kim Letkeman said...

Dave, I dismiss the browser completely every single time I leave. Which means that the data is unreliable as each login is not recorded as a login. As I said.

How is this blog hiding? In the last 7 days I've had almost 4000 visits and 12000 page views. Pretty public, don't you think?

So are you saying that you have been screen-shotting my data (bearing in mind that you would have to search me each time or leave a window dedicated to me) regularly over the last 85 days? A little obsessive, don't you think?

Kim Letkeman said...

One more thing Dave ... I strictly avoided making any comments in the last few months ... until, that is, you could not help yourself. Remember that next time you feel the need to chime in with the juveniles.

Charlotte said...

Hi there,

Am not anonymous or snotty (well, maybe sometimes).

You seem like a difficult fellow to get in touch with....not even an email address.

I did come here from dpreview, because I have making my way through most everything pertaining to the S100fs. My father died in late November and my mother gave me his camera a few weeks ago, and I am determined to learn to use it well! ha

In my readings, I read your response to a fellow who pretty much has the same camera background as I do. He is a complete novice (as am I), and was asking about accessories. Your response to him, among other recommendations, was to buy John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide. I read some reviews on the book and the reviews from 2003 said that the book was pretty dated now. However, I want to learn the basics, i.e. lighting etc. Your post was from a year ago. Do you still recommend this book? Any others that you think are essential for a noob?

Hope you don't mind me cluttering up your messages. That is easily fixed though.

Thanks

Kim Letkeman said...

Hi Charlotte ... I cut off my email address because of the negative traffic I received from the FTF members, some of whom don't have two brain cells to rub together. I am easy to get in touch with, though, through this blog.

My condolences for your father's passing. Photography is a great hobby and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Yes, I still think John' Shaw's book has an excellent introduction to metering in it. It also has some good technique info. You might want to check it out of the library though, because the info is not something you need for long term reference.

I also like anything by Bryan Peterson, especially his two books "Understanding Exposure" and the one on shutter speeds. I like the book "Perfect Exposure" by Jim Zuckerman. These books give you great examples of how professionals handle tricky metering, and getting a great exposure is the one thing that tends to elude people because they never take the time to learn how a meter works.

Best of luck.

Charlotte said...

Hi Kim,

Thanks for your quick response and thanks for your condolences, is appreciated.

Have always had an interest in photography, but have never taken the time to learn about the intricacies of lighting, and what you need to know to take a good picture.

Thanks for the book recommendations, gives me a great place to start. I am excited to learn how to use this camera. As you said in the post I was referring to on dpreview, "the skills you will develop are portable upward".

Charlotte

Kim Letkeman said...

Charlotte: Best wishes for your time in the hobby. The more you experiment, the more you learn. And if you find light fascinating, you will have even more fun as you learn how to play with shadows to make dramatic images. I am a bit of a noob where adding light is concerned, but I highly recommend you read the web site strobist.blogspot.com ... look in lighting 101 and on location sections. It'll blow your mind.

Charlotte said...

Hey Kim,

Took a look on amazon for the Bryan Peterson books and the ones that you mentioned look like they are just what I am looking for.

I have been over to strobist a couple of times to look at his DIY macro studio, but have not spent a lot of time looking around. Will definitely check out lighting 101.

Charlotte

Kim Letkeman said...

Charlotte: Glad you like the Peterson books, he's one of the better authors for intro stuff.