F550EXR – Light snow day …

Over night on Valentine’s day we got a dusting of snow. I captured a few images in the early morning of the 15th and processed them in Lightroom. This first one is the usual view of my Lilac bush in the front yard. I made two mistakes with this image, and left them both in so you could see it.

First, I failed to correct the while balance to the snow. So the image is decidedly cool. And second, I failed to click the “remove chromatic aberration” box here:

It does not come on by default, which I find weird. By the way, this is the lens profile I downloaded for ACR and LR found it with no problems. Cool …

I remembered the white balance with the next image, but not the CA removal …

You can see that LR has no problems rendering the shadows on the snow and giving it the necessary dimensionality and texture. I really find it much easier to process snow in LR 4.

There, we see the layer of snow that blanketed use. Not thick … an inch or so. And it would soon be long gone as temperatures have risen since then …

The street is a bit slippery but that does not last either …

For those who don’t like the F550 based on reports of bad lenses in the forums … if you get a good one, the camera is really good. Especially if you shoot and process RAW. One place where this really shows up is the distant branches, which are quite clearly legible when you click on the image to see the 800px version …

D70s and 18-200VR – A taste of Chicago …

This is another revisited image in Lightroom 4. And a good chance to remind you that, if you have not yet had the chance to visit Chicago and partake of the unbelievable deep-dish pizza, then get that on your bucket list asap.

Anyway … the image as I originally processed it in CS3 with process engine 2003. A rather blunt instrument. This whole series was shot in JPEG … back when I was going through my “listen to Ken Rockwell” phase. I smartened up after a while and switched to RAW … permanently as it turned out. Sheesh …

And here is what I processed today. Some of you will inevitably find it a lot drier and cooler. C’est la vie … can’t please everyone, and if you are not running a hardware calibrated IPS panel, please don’t even bother commenting on the color, because you have no idea what is in there. (I don’t either, but for other reasons :-)

The details in the pizza are spectacular by comparison. Take a closer look …

Seriously … that taste is to die for.

The bottom line is that I am enjoying the way Lightroom presents my images to me. And editing in Lightroom is fun, especially with such a sophisticated process engine.

A not eon the D70s. This image is only 6Mp, yet the clarity at 400ISO is excellent. There is little noise, and despite being shot with a kit megazoom at f/8, there is nice and smooth bokeh at a relatively short focal length.

When people talk about value for money, they invariably talk about super zooms like the new XS-1. But the XS-1 cannot capture this image … you have to walk way back and shoot a longer focal length or you have to accept an in focus background competing with the subject. And the clarity and noise at 400ISO are not going to be as good. Not even close. And this is a 7 year old design that can be purchased for about 225 for the body and 400 or so for the lens (first generation, this one is.)

There are very good reasons for buying a super zoom. But don’t be fooled into thinking you will be able to shoot in the street with one. The X10 can do it because of the very fast lens, but the XS-1 cannot. Of course, the X10 stills carries the ORB tax.

Stupid is as stupid does …

Right wing speeches are like a box of chocolates … filled with blobs of brown stuff …

My friend Petra from the Netherlands confirms that this speech is moronic

For those who need some corroboration, here’s Phil waxing eloquent, asking the question “is he disingenuous or just stupid?” It’s in the second quarter of the video.

 

The WiFi issue has galvanized one group to reveal a stunning lack of critical thinking …

I have no bone to pick with the Catholic Teachers. Well, perhaps the fact that we are still having a little trouble separating church and state is an issue, but hey … it’s been there a long time.

But when they want to stifle progress with an unbelievably slack bit of logic, well …

If you click on it and read the paper, you will see that they are calling for a stoppage of the installation of WiFi in the classroom in order to protect the children from the negative effects of radiation.

They cite cell phone regulations as the primary radiation source quoted by the World Health Organization in a paper on carcinogens and they cite the fact that many countries have stricter guidelines than we do about exposure to this radiation. That being 15 minutes a day. However, what the teachers fail to discuss is the fact that cell phone radiation is transmitted directly into the user’s skull from an effective distance of zero.

This is not at all the same thing as sitting in a room where WiFi is running between devices. Most of those devices are on the floor (computers), on the desk (laptops) or on the ceilings (routers) and thus the distances are dramatically higher. Radiation effects drop rapidly with distance. And I quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Distance

Distance
Increasing distance from the radiation source reduces the dose according to the inverse-square law for a point source. Distance can sometimes be effectively increased by means as simple as handling a source with forceps rather than fingers.

But here’s the kicker. Virtually every child in school today comes from a home with tons of the same wireless radiation from multiple devices.

That is … these children all have a wireless router in the home and they all have one or more computers, cell phones, iPods or iPads. Add to that one or more wireless phones at one of three bands (900Mhz, 2.4 Ghz or 5Ghz), the last two bands overlapping those on the router and computers. They might often have laptops or iPads on their laps every evening, possibly all evening.

In other words, every home is already flooded with this radiation, and no one talks about that because there is nothing much to talk about.

Basically, the cry to take it out of the classroom appears to be utter nonsense from the get-go. The same lack of critical thinking that has the stupidest of celebrities campaigning against vaccines.

The source might be a movie, but this clip is by far the best explanation of this mob mentality that pervades the political landscape these days …

And here is a great article that really debunks this stuff …

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/02/oh_no_school_wi-fi_is_making_our_kids_si.php

B&H Photo shipping to Canada … FAST!!!!

I ordered Lightroom 3 during B&H Photo’s $69 24 hour sale on Wednesday morning, the 15th. They shipped it at 1:36am the next day, the 16th. And it arrived here at noon the day after that, the 17th … today. I was not home at the time, so I’ll just pop over to the local computer store to get the package after work.

Amazing …

http://BHPhoto.com offer a customs pre-clearance on the basic Purolator shipping charges, and they collect the taxes and duties (which are tiny.) This is the way to go as your goods will just squirt across the border and arrive at your place within days. If only everyone understood cross border issues the way B&H Photo does.

Proud owner of a new Porsche!

Nikon D7000 & Nikon 85mm 1.8D  400iso  f/2.2  1/250 –2/3ev -- built-in flash at –2/3ev

So I tried it in one of my USB3 ports and …. pfffft. Nothing. Tried it in the other and …. nothing. Strangely, other devices work fine in those ports.

I figured I’d try it in a USB2 port as I could not believe that I had 2 DOA drives in a row. (The crappy Seagate I had did not work in any port.) And sure enough, it fired right up. I immediately loaded up the disk manager and wiped out the auto backup software and its partition so I could format the entire disk as one massive backup drive.

I turned on disk compression as well, since fast CPUs can apparently keep up with the disk, thus improving throughput by shrinking data. Of course, images are already compressed, but every little bit helps.

Anyway … it’s plugging away right now at a snail’s pace, copying over 80,000 files. Should run most of the night but, hey, backups after this are incremental so what do I care. I have to investigate the USB3 mismatch in impedance (figurative, but perhaps for real too :-) but am in no real hurry. With 2 backup drives online I am happy again.

This thing is built like a tank and is a beautiful piece to behold. Well worth ordering from BHPhoto. In fact, it is cheaper than many other models and can only be considered an incredible bargain. BHPhoto shipped it for 12 bucks and it arrived in barely 3 or 4 days, including clearing customs. Most impressive. I can’t recommend B&H Photo highly enough.

I just checked and the damned thing just dropped another 5 bucks. Geeeeeez!

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/793107-REG/LaCie_302002_2TB_F_A_Porsche_Designed.html