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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Thu, 02 Sep 2010Out of curiosity, I decided to check out a different kind of glasses frame. The glasses I've been wearing for the last few years are cool, and I like them, but they're comparatively spendy now that my insurance has basically punted on paying anything for frames (side note: VSP is an awful provider, and my preferred optometrist had to drop them after too many gross experiences, and their compensation fell too low; I don't have any other choice through my employer, though, and prefer to have insurance for emergency coverage). So, my old glasses cross the line at $150 just for the frames. I found something that's close, but, as you can see below, a bit more... cartoony: the Titmus 70F prescription safety glass frame. Aw yeah.
I'm not committed to using them, but they're $27, vs the $150 for my old frames (which are dying and need to be replaced soon). Plus, as you can plainly see, the new ones are ANSI rated as safety glasses, a bonus for working in the shop, or riding a bicycle. I can even get side-shields for them, if I want to go all-out safety nerd. I'm actually kind of disappointed they didn't come with side-shields (the copy on the website was ambiguous). I'm not convinced I like the look, but it's different, and a hell of a lot cheaper... Posted at 13:49 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 27 Aug 2010Today was another one of those days that inspired me to grab the camera on the way out the door. Glad I did.
Posted at 13:43 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 25 Aug 2010My parents have taken off on their latest adventure -- a sailing trip aboard the SV Sequoia to Mexico and points south. I had my first radio contact with them last night, from 8:00 to 8:08 pm PDT, using 80m (3.870 MHz). It's a very noisy band, and we were only just able to hear each other. I really wish my dad's radio included a DSP to clean up the audio. It makes a substantial difference. As of 8 pm last night, they were southbound about 15 miles off the coast of Oregon, 20 miles from the mouth of the Umpqua river (Reedsport, OR). I didn't catch whether they were north or south of the river. They had the third reef in the mainsail, and the staysail out, so they must be working with quite decent wind, although if they said windspeed, I didn't hear it. The radio contact thing is interesting, because it's so variable in its reliability. At least this close, 80m is a very reliable choice in the sense that the signal is practically guaranteed to get there. The question is whether the atmospheric noise will overwhelm the signal or not. So, wish them luck! Next stop is San Francisco, probably in about 3 days. Posted at 09:09 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 26 Jul 2010After the questionable focus tests, I decided that the only real way to test was to take the lens out and use it. So, I wandered around Fremont and took pictures, being sure in each case that I was holding still, the subject wasn't moving, and the focus was locking on a reasonable thing. The end result was that at a variety of focal lengths, and a variety of subject distances, the lens focused pretty well 95% of the time. There were a few missed shots, particularly closer up. Basically, it's Good Enough. I'm disappointed that this is the result of spending $900 on a top-of-the-line lens, but I'm not sure what else to do about it. In the realistic light of day, no lens gets perfect focus every time, because the camera can't always get good focus. Obviously this one is well enough adjusted to work most of the time. So I'll keep plugging away with this one, and if it comes up obviously deficient in some other situation (such as the much lower-light environment of the theater), I'll sell it on to someone for whom it'll be the right thing, and look into other choices. In the mean time, it's nice to have my "good lens" back, and not be limited to primes (which take beautiful pictures, of course, so long as you want that specific focal length). Posted at 15:05 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 21 Jul 2010I sat down with a notepad and did some ordered and logical testing with my 24-70 last night. With no adjustment in the camera, the lens was focusing about right in most cases. This is good and bad. When I say "about right," that means that in something like 20% of cases, the focus was pretty unacceptably soft. When I dialed in +20 on the AF adjustment, the results were less predictable, with the focus sometimes right on (what?) and sometimes dramatically back-focused, like I expected. I didn't collect statistics last night, but I'll post a gallery of the focus shots later (I need to redo them with better light, to ensure that low light wasn't contributing to errors, although the lens has to shoot in low light in practice), and come up with some numbers. The bottom line is that right now I'm not comfortable with this lens's ability to focus correctly. This will probably end up with me renting that Canon 24-70 f/2.8L lens from Glazers again, to compare. The Canon L lens is pretty much the gold standard, so it'll be a good control result. Posted at 14:33 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 20 Jul 2010I got the lens onto the camera last night, and I'm honestly a bit confused about what I discovered. The best I can say is that the linearity of the focusing data seems questionable. With the full (+20 toward distance) adjustment dialed in, my 70mm at 1.5 feet test looked alright. Not ideal, but close enough. However, with that same adjustment dialed in, shots further away were dramatically back-focused (what you'd expect with this adjustment in place, and a correctly-functioning lens). With other tests, it looked like I was getting in focus consistently on the second shot, but not the first, and not by the huge difference I found in some other shots. I didn't have time to sit down and approach the problem systematically last night, but the answer I have right now is that I have no clue what's going on. I don't trust the lens to focus correctly. Once I get some rational test results that hit the situations I mostly find myself in, I'll have a clearer picture. I was too tired last night and fiddling with too many variables at once to have anything conclusive to say right now. More to come. I just need to approach the problem rationally and I should end up with a workable solution. Clearly the lens is getting close, and my messing with the AF adjustment in the camera was a lot of the confusion. Posted at 11:41 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 19 Jul 2010A quick recap of our story so far. Back in February, I took the plunge and bought myself a very nice lens, a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 HSM lens. It's roughly equivalent to the $1500 Canon lens of the same specs, but for $600 less. It was, at the time, the most I'd ever spent on a single piece of camera equipment; that includes the camera it was going on to. Fast forward a few months to June. I was talking with a friend, and we got to talking about autofocus, how it works, and how to test that it was working right. He recommended a test page, and I tried it out. Lo and behold, my new 24-70 lens was front-focusing a bit (the point that was actually in focus was about 10mm in front of where it should have been). So, I contacted Sigma, confirmed that they could fix the problem, and sent it in. A couple weeks later, it comes back. I excitedly fix the lens to the camera, and check it out. Nope, it's still out of focus. Oh wait, once I take out the camera's adjustment (which I'd put in before), it's way out of focus! It looks to my critical but unpracticed eye that they adjusted the focus point by 10mm alright, but in the wrong direction! Ok. Call Sigma back, explain the situation. They're very nice about the whole thing, offering to ship the lens back to them at their own expense. Get it shipped off, and the waiting starts. Almost two weeks after it was shipped off (having requested expedited service, since I'd already had the lens in once before), I got a phone call from them. It was one of their techs, and the (fairly confused) conversation boiled down to them saying, "Our calibration procedure doesn't cover the situation your test shows," and me asking, "So, the lens isn't guaranteed to focus in that situation?" The answer seemed to be that sure, it should, but that's not what we're testing for. (For the nerds in the house, I was testing at 70mm focal length, f/2.8, focused ~1.5 feet from the lens -- which is within its nominal capabilities.) There was a strong undertone of "Why would you do that? It's not a macro lens. You're an idiot, aren't you." Now, nearly two weeks after that phone call (the lens came back to me three weeks to the day after I sent it, so take all my "two weeks" descriptions with a grain of salt), it has arrived at my desk again. The note that came with it says:
IF YOU WANT THE BEST RESULT WE NEED YOUR CAMERA WITH THE LENS. CHECKED ALL IN GOOD WORKING ORDER. That sounds to me like they helpfully left the lens with its even-worse calibration in place. I'm not sure why my camera should be that different from their camera. I know that I saw the exact same error with two very different camera bodies (an XTi and a 7D), so it's hard to imagine that their test 7D could have been so vastly different. Perhaps the most galling thing about the whole experience was that phone call. The tech sounded like he was rolling his eyes and making the yapping-mouth gesture with his hand to the other guys in the room as he talked to me. It's news to me that a lens should be expected to not accurately focus within its design parameters. The fact that it has the problem doesn't make me feel very confident of its ability to accurately shoot the demanding photos I'm taking (low light, moving subjects, etc.). The fact that I had to send the lens back twice with a $900, top-of-their-line piece of equipment is very worrying, particularly if (as it appears) the second trip to the factory resulted in them leaving things exactly as they were after the first trip messed it up. The half-suppressed "You're a complete idiot" vibe is just icing on the cake. Of course, the real test will come tonight, when I can bring lens and camera together. I'll have an update soon with the outcome, but if at all possible, I'm never going to deal with Sigma's warranty service again. The method I've heard described for dealing with this is to buy 3 copies of the lens you want, then send back the two with the worst focus. An expensive way to do it, but it honestly sounds more surefire than going back to the factory for adjustments. Color me seriously unimpressed. Posted at 13:43 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 25 Jun 2010I got my 24-70 lens back from Sigma today (in for adjustment due to about 10mm of front-focus, which I couldn't adjust out), and I excitedly put it on the camera to test it out. The test shot came back ok, but it wasn't quite right still. Unhappy, I went to check and see if I could adjust it out, figuring it might now be close enough. Haha. No. The adjustment was still maxed out. When I pulled the adjustment out, the lens was actually further out of adjustment than when I'd sent the damn thing in. Sigma? Wrong. You have failed. So, in order to illustrate the problem (since apparently "front focus" doesn't mean the same thing to me that it does to them), I give you this terrifyingly graphic demonstration of the problem. Focus distance: around 1.5 feet
Posted at 01:00 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 18 Jun 2010
In which Ian ceases communing with the fishes (part II)
When we left off, I had just gone to sleep after an uneventful but death-march-like 11 pm to 2 am watch at the helm. I was deep in the throes of seasickness after having failed to take anti-nausea medication, and essentially couldn't keep anything down. I was getting concerned about deydration, because among the things I couldn't keep down was water. I was scheduled for the 8 am to 11 am watch, and I was awake ("up" is really the wrong term) at 7:30 to get ready for it. However, my dad, upon ascertaining that I was awake, told me that he was going to take my watch. I fought a very brief inner struggle, then thanked him and gratefully lay back down. Although I could have stood watch, it felt increasingly like a bad idea. I listened guiltily as Craig and Dave planned out the new, two-person watch schedule of four hours on and four hours off. At some point during the day (this was Thursday), I was up and (after visiting my old pal the sink for a minute) we were discussing the situation. We were north of Grays Harbor, which is about 1/3 up the coast, and which would provide shelter from the waves that were causing me so many problems. The Washington coast is nearly bereft of safe anchorages, particularly in the northern half. Examine a map of the coast, and you see that from Neah Bay at the NW corner of the Olympic Penninsula to Grays Harbor nearly a hundred miles to the south, there's nothing. At a roughly 6 MPH pace, a hundred miles is quite a distance. The question of the moment was, do we turn around and make for Grays Harbor (some distance behind us, and offering the considerable impediment of its own hazardous bar, which might require careful timing to cross without undue danger), or press on, and make for Neah Bay? Neah Bay was a greater distance, but lay in the direction we wanted to go, and was navigationally not as challenging. The center of the question, of course, was me. I had had moderate success taking miniscule sips of water, but nothing like the several liters that I probably required. I was in serious danger of dehydration, and although I wouldn't die of it in the timeframes we were discussing, it could still be debilitating. I asserted that it made far more sense to press onward to Neah Bay. I didn't know for sure what the distances involved were, but I had the impression that the ratio of distance was about 2:1 Neah Bay:Grays Harbor. It simply didn't make sense, as long as I was able to lie down and avoid being sick, to backtrack so far for the questionable shelter of Grays Harbor. Dave and Craig were willing to take on the longer watches, and so we eventually decided to remain on course up the coast, and make for Neah Bay. The rest of Thursday, honestly, passed in something of a blur to me. I vaguely recall that we shifted to a port tack (I was later told that we'd actually hove to for some reason, and it only felt like a port tack compared to the 30° starboard tack we'd been on for so long), and there was a period where the engine started up for a while. Apparently the engine was an attempt to see if the ride could be calmed by going a bit faster, but what actually happened was that we ended up crashing hard into every other wave, instead of every third wave, so they gave up on it. The next thing I clearly remember is waking up on Friday to the boat sitting perfectly flat and calm. I emerged to find that we were anchored in Neah Bay, and it was about 8 in the morning. As I'd predicted during my brief period awake the day before, calm waters had cured my seasickness. I still felt strange, but I no longer had an urge to throw up at the slightest inclination of my head.
I even managed to have a bit of breakfast, and went up on deck to take pictures of our miraculously flat anchorage. Neah Bay has a long, man-made breakwater stretching on the north side, which keeps the ocean swells out of the anchorage, and makes for miraculously flat water. It felt good to be over the seasickness. Now that we were in the Strait of Juan de Fuca ("Wan D'Fyooka" in local pronunciation), I should be home free. Our goal for Friday was to reach Port Angeles. It is a fairly short hop from Neah Bay to Port Angeles, perhaps 50-60 miles. Now that we were in calmer waters, our speed would pick up -- crashing through big waves takes a lot of energy. I went forward and raised the anchor (so pleased to have that electric anchor winch!), washing the mud off the anchor with the washdown hose (helpfully labeled WASH ROWN on the breaker panel below -- the boat was built in Shanghai, and they didn't get every last detail right). I got the fore locker ship-shape, and we were off! The trip to Port Angeles was practically boring, in comparison to the trip up the coast. The wind was directly behind us, but not strong enough to be worth putting up the sails at first (it takes a 20 knot wind to push the boat 4-5 knots downwind), so we motored. All three of us were in the cockpit, as the weather was pleasant (cold, but not raining, and not oppressively overcast).
The miles passed by quickly, and we traded watches on roughly a three hour schedule. Everyone had gotten enough sleep the night before that all anyone really needed was a nap. For the latter half of the day, we put up the sails and tried to catch what wind we could. We reached Port Angeles around 5 pm, having left around 9 am. The arrival in Port Angeles is a story in and of itself, with which we will commence in the next episode. Posted at 10:42 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 15 Jun 2010
In which Ian communes with the fishes
A few months ago, my dad approached me about helping with a trip up the Washington coast in his boat, the S/V Sequoia. I enthusiastically agreed, as I've been feeling a certain lack of sailing in my life lately. Well, it finally happened last week. I packed my bags and took the train down to Portland on Tuesday night, and we were casting off the dock in St. Helens early Wednesday morning. The river was pretty high, running fast with heavy floods from all the rain we've been having. My dad said that as of that day (June 8th), Portland had already broken the record for rainfall in the month of June. There were gorgeous clouds in the sky, and I found my camera in my hand as often as not. (All the images used here can be found in the gallery.)
We made amazing time down the river -- it must have been flowing 2-4 knots most of the time, and at one point I saw that our speed-over-ground was 11.4 knots. That's a speedy pace considering the boat's hull speed (its practical top speed) is only about 8 knots. One knot is one nautical mile per hour, which is the same thing as 1.15 statute miles per hour. So 10 knots is about 11.5 miles per hour. It's about 90 miles to Astoria (where the Columbia River joins the Pacific Ocean), and we had passed Astoria in the early afternoon. Of course, that trip wasn't made without one or two things happening. Dave, a friend from the yacht club who was helping crew the trip, kept exclaiming with a manic grin on his face, "I can't believe how fast we're going!" His boat is smaller, and has a hull speed of around 5 knots, so we were typically running about double the speed he could normally manage; the river was comparatively flying by for him. The most notable event was that a small orange speedboat with a flashing blue light came out to meet us, and we were in short order boarded by the Coast Guard! Two of the four officers in the boat came on board, and one of them went below with Craig (my dad) to perform a safety inspection while the other one stayed up in the cockpit with Dave and me to fill out paperwork.
Fortunately, if there's anyone in the world who's going to be prepared for a Coast Guard safety inspection, it's my dad, and we passed with flying colors. I was even harnessed to the jackline in the cockpit as the little boat came to join us, although that was, at that time, an extravagant and unnecessary step, sort of like keeping your seatbelt fastened while waiting in a parking spot. Shortly after the Coast Guard left us, we were passing out of Astoria, and over the Bar, which is apparently a hazardous crossing some of the time. Conditions for us were such that I didn't even know when we'd passed it. As we were going through Astoria, there was discussion of whether we should press on, or stop for the night. There was equally compelling evidence to support either choice: the wind was favorable right then, but was going to change before we could round the corner at the northwest tip of Washington, and no matter which way we chose, would have had us facing an uncomfortable headwind just as night was falling. The only choice was, would we face that headwind Thursday night, or Friday night? The path up the coast would necessarily involve about 24-30 hours of straight sailing, with no viable resting place. There are a couple of harbors along the Washington coast, but it's so much trouble to get into and out of them (with their own hazardous bars), that it usually makes more sense to just keep going. With three people, we'd each stand a 3 hour watch, for three hours on, and six hours off -- a very reasonable schedule that should allow for plenty of sleep. So, after about 10 minutes discussion and pondering of the options, Craig decided that we'd just head out, and Dave and I voiced our assent for this plan: there was no advantage to waiting, and there was a potential downside if we had any other kind of delay later in the trip. We aimed the bow west, and pressed on. A problem immediately arose: we wanted to sail, and now we had to raise the mainsail. The correct time to do this was about 15 minutes previously, when we'd been mulling the decision whether to go or not. So now we had to raise the sail in the increasingly heavy seas where the river joined the ocean, and we were starting to run over heavy and confused seas, with swells coming from all directions. I started almost immediately to feel a bit blurky, but ignored it -- I've never been seasick in my life, although I've had that blurky feeling before. Between Dave and Craig, they got the mainsail up, with me at the helm keeping us pointed into the wind. Then, it was on. We pointed the boat southwest to stay in the channel, and I went below to make an entry in the log. It was about 4 in the afternoon, and the weather had gone from mostly cloudy to a heavy, ominous overcast.
I came back above decks to find the staysail out (a small forward sail -- we were rigged for heavy winds, as the wind was 20-25 knots out of the west as we sailed out), and after a few minutes, clear of the navigation channel for the Columbia, we tacked to a northwest course, and we were off on our ocean adventure. We were all three up in the cockpit, enjoying the silence now that the motor was off, and we were receiving our thrust (all 5-6 knots of it, pretty good considering the size of the waves we were sailing over) from that stiff west wind. It would round to northwest at some point, and we were enjoying the favorable wind while we could. Craig at one point estimated that we were sailing through 10-12 foot seas. That is, the waves were between 10 and 12 feet tall from crest to valley. Fortunately, as we got clear of the land, they became less confused, finally all coming reliably from one direction. This made the ride better, although it was mostly a quality difference, not a difference of severity. The boat pitched up and down, and had something of a corkscrew motion: we were sailing northwest, with the ocean swells coming from the west, so we were hitting them diagonally. The boat would be rolled a bit to the right, then pitch her nose up, then roll left, then pitch down, and then start on the cycle anew a second later. About every third wave, we'd come down with a crash that killed half our forward speed, and sent spray off to either side. The foredeck was awash in seawater -- fortunately, not a bad thing, but an indication that we weren't in the friendly calm waters of Puget Sound or the Inside Passage of Vancouver Island. It also rained on and off, and the volume of water flying through the air encouraged me to put away my expensive camera and rely on my considerably more waterproof eyes and ears to record the passage of time. The motion of the boat increased in my consciousness, and I found myself feeling increasingly ill. The last time I threw up was roughly 25 years ago, and I wasn't interested in disrupting that record over a little bit of rough water. I thought back to that morning, when my dad had mentioned offhand the new anti-seasickness medication he was trying out. He didn't explicitly offer it to me, but that was my chance to speak up if I'd wanted some -- but of course it hadn't occurred to me at the time. Now it was too late. Whatever was to happen had already been set more or less irrevocably in motion. I was also getting cold, as I'd packed inappropriate warm clothes: too much reliance on long underwear, and not enough outer layers. The problem, of course, being that in order to get into the long underwear, I had to go below (seasick feeling +500%, more or less), then spend some time getting undressed, pull on long johns, then back into the outer layers, and back up above. I could tell from the way I was feeling that this was an absolute non-starter. Just going below would make me feel more sick, but the thought of inclining my head to pull on pants or take off my shoes made me feel palpably more ill just thinking it. So I sat, shivering and queasy, facing backward as the boat pitched and rolled and the wind blew. We saw every promised knot of wind, with the wind occasionally peaking 30 knots, and the wave size increasing as the evening wore into night beneath the heavy, ponderous clouds. I lasted until about 9:15. I had a sudden surge of nausea that sent me to the weather side of the cockpit, face into the wind, fiercely gripping the railings trying to marshall my rebellious innards. I controlled it for a few seconds, but someone spoke to me (probably to ask if I was going to be ok -- I'm sure my face was a mask of fierce concentration), and when I turned my head, that was all it took. I flew across the cockpit to the lee rail, crashing into it in my haste to avoid barfing either into the wind, or in the cockpit. The late contents of my stomach mingled with the frothing waves, and suddenly I didn't feel so bad any more. Warning: graphic descriptions of seasickness ahead. Skip to the next bold line if you don't want to read my musings on puke. I found myself viewing the whole thing from a very detached, objective place. I remarked to myself as my stomach voided its contents that the process wasn't nearly as painful as I'd remembered: there was no sting of acid, and although it was exercising muscles which hadn't been used that way in decades, puking wasn't hard. I was also surprised to find the taste of tomato soup in my mouth. When had I had tomato soup? Not for months, certainly. What an odd thing. I also noted that I might want to chew more thoroughly. I thought that was it, and I'd be fine, but my body apparently had different ideas -- it seemed to relish the newfound freedom, and was going to work out all the puking I hadn't done for the last 25 years. Over the course of the next 36 hours, I threw up more times than I could recall, and I got to the point where I understood the memories of acid sting: even with nothing at all in my stomach, I found myself heaving over the side, only I didn't get the relative respite of dry heaves. Each time, I brought something up, although toward the end, it must have been pure stomach acid: bright yellow and burning as it came up. But enough of that, let's return to the story without as much gross-out. Ok, done being graphic about vomiting now. I drank some water after the first episode, anxious that I shouldn't get dehydrated. It disappeared over the side a few minutes later -- apparently I wasn't going to keep anything down, no matter how inoffensive. My dad handed me some candied ginger in the hopes that it would help, but it just seemed to make the churning much more violent, so I discontinued it after a few tiny nibbles. Dave and Craig both felt terrible that I was reacting so strongly, but fortunately they had both medicated themselves against the problem, so they were unaffected by the heavy seas. We went on to our assigned watches. I was scheduled for the 11 pm to 2 am watch, and then again for the 8 am to 11 am watch. I went below and lay down with my eyes closed until it was my watch at 11 pm. Fortunately for everyone, lying down with my eyes closed was a perfect remedy to the seasickness, and I wasn't even uncomfortable in that position. Of course, every time I tried to sit up or do anything more involved than opening my eyes for a second, I became ill again, and made good use of the galley sink. Even so, I managed to pull on all my warm clothes before my 11 pm watch, and was much more comfortable as I went above. The 11 pm watch was not an eventful one. The sun had set around 9 pm, but it wasn't fully dark until nearly 1. I was amazed to note the difference in available light between 11 pm and 1 am. It was mostly in the ability to see clouds, but I was truly able to see the clouds until after midnight. Standing watch essentially means being the human in charge of not running into other ships for three hours. Sequoia is equipped with a nifty invention called the Monitor self-steering gear, which uses a devlishly clever set of gears and pushrods and vanes to steer the ship precisely in relation to the wind. Once you set it to sail at, say, 45° to the wind, it will continue to sail at 45° to the wind until there's no wind left to reference, or no progress through the water with which to affect the boat's path. So, to stand watch, what you do is keep your eyes peeled around the boat for anything with lights. Fishing boats are equipped with enough wattage to dazzle the sun, and freighters are adorned with an array of lights that would put you in mind of an over-the-top Christmas display. Every 15 minutes or so, you turn on the radar to make sure there's nothing lurking in the immediate future without lights. Of course, I was feeling like death warmed over. Any time I wasn't sitting with my face into the wind, my queasiness increased, and I had roughly as much energy as a marathon runner post-race. I shifted positions perhaps four times in my three hours in the cockpit, spending the majority of my time sitting in the aft corner, where I could catch a good dose of wind (cold be damned, I wanted the fresh moving air). I was harnessed in, as we all were while alone in the cockpit -- with a three hour interval between people checking on you, falling into the ocean was more or less guaranteed death. The only excitment which happened on my watch was the very slow passage of a fishing boat off the starboard side. I watched in glacial anticipation as its glow filled the horizon very slightly to the right of our path. Over the course of 30 minutes, it gradually came over the horizon, but as we drew near, all the zillions of lights shut down, and it sported only the running lights appropriate to a ship making way across the ocean. I wondered blearily if it were an illegal fishing trip; the fishing regulations are so draconian that most fishermen are granted a tiny handful of fishing days in a year. The urge to cheat must be overwhelming. When our little sailing light appeared to their dazzled eyes, I suspected they quickly shut down operations and headed back to shore so as not to be caught in the act. But this is only speculation. Of course they may have been out there legally and our arrival just happened to coincide with the end of their activities. Around 2, Craig popped up and asked how I was doing. I responded, "Sick," and moments later was leaned over the lee rail again. It's amazing how the slightest disturbance can change things -- I hadn't been actively ill my entire watch until I turned my head to address my dad, although I was obviously still suffering from seasickness. He took over, and I gratefully went below. My eyes had been forcing themselves closed for 10-15 seconds at a time for most of my watch (but I was proud that I never once fell asleep, which I confirmed by regularly checking the time on the instrument display), and all I wanted in the world was to go to my berth, lie down, and pass out as thoroughly as possible. And so, at 2 am Thursday morning, I shucked off the majority of my clothes, and lacking even the energy to pull my sleeping bag out of its sack, crawled into the quarter berth and fell into a fitful sleep. To be continued. Posted at 23:13 permanent link category: /misc A while ago, I wrote about a new CompactFlash card I'd gotten for a camera, and its ability (or rather, lack thereof) to work quickly. I was, in fact, frustrated. As part of that endeavor, I timed the card I had using a particular test: shoot 5 RAW images in quick succession, and time how long it takes from the first shutter press until the "busy" light went out. On the old camera, using the latest 8 GB card (not the one I returned, but the one that replaced it), the number was something like 15 seconds. Yesterday, I finally got my spiffy new Transcend 16 GB card, which promises to be dramatically faster (400x as opposed to 133x). This is to be used with the new camera. Out of curiosity, I decided to repeat my timing test with the old 133x card vs. the new 400x card. So, I set up with my little timer ready, and hit the button five times. Off clicked the timer as the light went out, and I looked at the time: 7.24 seconds. Huh. That was with the 133x card. The card that had taken about 15 seconds with the XTi. The XTi that takes pictures nearly half the size of the 7D's pictures. Wow. The new 400x card was actually a disappointing difference: 5.25 seconds for the same test. Hopefully it'll be faster to pull files off the card when doing an upload, at least. Still, the lesson was clear: the 7D is a much faster camera, and that's definitely something that doesn't suck. Posted at 12:20 permanent link category: /misc Sun, 13 Jun 2010It feels almost cliche at this point, but I saw the clouds going all pink and orange over my house, and I just had to run down to the park. This was shot with the 7D and the XTi's old kit lens (as my nice lens is off to be adjusted). Further proof that just because it's the kit lens doesn't mean it takes bad pictures.
Posted at 21:39 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 01 Jun 2010This is pretty much just a picture post. The rhododendrons are in bloom, and it's a very nice view out my window in the morning. I thought the world would enjoy seeing the same thing.
Posted at 09:01 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 18 May 2010I was on my way home this evening, and (the sun being out so late these days), noticed quite a sight. I had to stop, and pulled out the camera. This was the result.
I was pretty pleased. This may become a habit. Posted at 22:46 permanent link category: /misc Thu, 29 Apr 2010I stepped outside today, and immediately turned right around and went back inside. I had to get a camera.
For those following along at home, this is cropped, turned to black and white with the "red filter" preset, and a very very slight purple-blue tint added. I need to pick up a red filter for the 5x7 camera, clearly. This, by the way, is why you never want to use any of the black and white or funny-color presets in your camera. If I'd shot this in black and white in the camera, I never would have been able to apply the red filter, and get this striking effect -- it depends on color data being there. It's always better to take a perfect, balanced picture in the camera, and then adjust it later. You'll have way more latitude, and will almost certaily be able to get better results. Update: And, because I'm a big ol' nerd, I just went out and tried again, with the camera set to Fine instead of Normal. I'd previously thought that I couldn't tell the difference between the two, but I think that's because I hadn't found the right situation. Taking pictures of clouds definitely suggests that Fine is a better choice for big enlargements, but RAW would be an even better choice, and is what I should have been shooting with in the first place. Anyway, I thought the second picture came out well enough to be worth posting, as well.
Same treatment, but a slightly different tint, and a little bit less of it. Posted at 13:46 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 07 Apr 2010I posted this over of Ye Olde Tome of Faces, but I figured it was worth further exposure. Ian's Theory of Antagonistic Causation: any action taken in anticipation of a given outcome virtually guarantees the opposite outcome. Ian's Corollary of Antagonistic Cancellation: actions taken in conscious anticipation of the Theory of Antagonistic Causation instantly negate it. This, of course, explains the following situation: you're waiting for a bus, and all you want in the world is a cigarette. You look at your watch. There are at least 5 minutes left until the bus is supposed to arrive, and they're never early. Within 20 seconds of lighting up, the bus appears. This also explains why hopefully lighting a cigarette when you don't really want one absolutely never makes the bus magically appear. A similar situation: you're desperately hungry, and waiting for your order to arrive at your table. You decide to go to the bathroom, which seems to have the near-magic power of making the food appear. When you get back, the food has indeed appeared, but is also lukewarm and rapidly cooling. I was originally going to call them Murphy's instead of Ian's Theory and Corollary, but then I figured, why give that dude credit? Posted at 08:39 permanent link category: /misc Fri, 05 Mar 2010
A Lovely Non-Motorcycle Picture For A Change
Goodness, but those flowers look gorgeous...
Posted at 10:38 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 16 Feb 2010I know you're just dying to see it.
Note the yellow stain along the bottom edge. I'm pretty sure that's oxidization from being old. Never a good thing. And here it is inverted and contrast-enhanced (but nowhere near as contrast-enhanced as the first one):
So, more developer time is good. Fresh film will be even better. Posted at 22:45 permanent link category: /misc I developed the second exposure from our epic four-shot 5x7 photo shoot on the 31st. The first exposure was pretty milquetoast, as far as contrast went, so I went from 11 minutes to 15 minutes in the developer. It definitely made a difference, but the contrast still seemed weird. In fact, once I looked closely, I realized that the bits of the film which were covered up by the film holder were... well, kinda foggy. Uh-oh, thought I. 10 year old film. I might be dealing with film that's just past its use-by date. So I developed an unexposed sheet of film, to see if the film right out of the box was foggy and gross, or whether it was somewhere else in the process (such as handling, the film holder, light leaks in the camera, etc.) that it was getting fogged. So, this is the completely unexposed film:
That's pretty much exactly what it's not supposed to look like. Note the even darkness (it should be nearly glass-clear), plus the slight yellowish fringe around the edge. Oh well, I guess that 10 year old film is junk. I'll still process the other two exposures, because they're salvageable, but I know I'll get much better results with fresh film. Well, this is why I wanted to do a throw-away photo shoot first. Posted at 21:51 permanent link category: /misc I walked out the door to head up for lunch today, and stopped in my tracks. Between the towering rooflines of the buildings around me, I could see a strip of sky, and it was pretty stunning, bright blue and big puffy clouds. It was clearly a day on which I needed to bring a camera with me. So I did. And when I got to the cherry tree, I knew just what needed to happen. These were photographed near the PCC store in Fremont.
The photos are unretouched, except for a slight bump in exposure and exposure offset, which has the effect of increasing contrast and dynamic range. In Photoshop, look under Image > Adjustments > Exposure (at least in CS4). Posted at 14:40 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
