Testing out my new 100/2.8 macro during lunch… Hopefully will have time to do a lot more macro shots this weekend…
new lens
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Photography
Snapshots gallery migrated to Flickr
It took a while to do as I had to do each album manually, but it’s done, I have moved my snapshot gallery to Flickr!! Check it out!
Technorati Tags: flickr
gallery to flickr
My snapshot gallery contains almost 4k images and it’s really getting a bit slow. Gallery2 sucks even more on my server, so I’m considering moving snapshots to Flickr. I upgraded to a pro account and found this gallery2flickr script, it didn’t quite work out of the box, but of course after 15 minutes of hacking I got it to work… At least I was able to transfer a random album from my snapshot gallery to flickr. Basically I switched to their new API authentication method, now it goes to flickr and asks for permissions. When you setup your API key, point the callback URL to auth.php
Instead of installing the script to the albums directory I installed it to my base gallery installation directory, this is because my albums tree isn’t really accessable from the web.
Here’s the modified version of go.php if interested, obviously, I’ve taken out the API and secret keys.
some snapshots from mwong’s wedding
Took a few pics with Sherry’s point-and-shoot camera:
rjuhn, ayn, jwilson, ayip
me and sherry
rjuhn, ayn, ayip
the stuff
mwong & sherry
kurian, greg, jwilson, mwong, vlee, ayn, tze
FINALLY made it to BWS NYC
More at my snapshots gallery…
Philip Greenspun’s new “How to build an EOS system” article
Greenspun blogged about how he hired a Pakistan guy for $10 to pull together information from Amazon to complete this article. pretty interesting what people would do for $10… I must confess that I haven’t read the entire article, but Philip Greenspun, creator of Photo.net, serious photographer and professor at MIT, should know what he is talking about… but I downloaded the portrait picture taken with the 70-200/2.8L IS, looked at it in PS, the model’s eyes weren’t exactly sharp!! hmmm… focal length was 115mm, full frame, shutter speed was 1/200s with IS, so that should’ve been plenty fast. The shirt was actually tack sharp, so maybe focus was off because of the infamous “focus-then-recompose” problem? 😉 hmmm…
Adobe engineer explained why no universal binary for PS
Scott Byer wrote in his blog the reasoning behind the decision to hold off a Universal Binary release of PS until 2007. So the main problems, he said, were their f’ked-up legacy 68k codes and using CW when they should’ve migrated to Xcode when they were advised to. I believe Apple told developers to do that 5 years ago. Mathematica probably has as many if not more customized assembly routines yet they released 5.2 as a Universal Binary apps back in February. Same thing goes to Apple’s very own Aperture.
Living Photoshop: Macintosh and the Intel switch.
This comment by coreen is right on the money:
So what your saying is that the last transition was the one where you slacked off and gave the customer a second rate set of tools. I am not trying to be mean or anything but it just sounds like you should have been working on eliminating the old 68k code completely so you would not have to rely on emulators and plug-ins. AND if i remeber last time Adobe was one of the last ones out of the gate to go native…or pseudo-native as it were(besides ..the ahem “other company” but at least they got it right the first time). Then during that time you managed to really concentrate of windows version and its performance. If I were your boss… you’d have been fired for lack of forthought in an ever changing business. Adobe has had enough time and resources to be prepared for something like this. Steve admitted to working on intel processors years back in a keynote. I am so glad i never bought CS2. I will stick with CS1 for now i guess. I appreciate your explanation but it really didn’t garner any sympathy. If I misunderstood anything please correct me.
and this one by Andy:
As a professional software developer I have worked on small private and very large commercial projects, using Codewarrior, VS and XCode on multiple platforms. Not keeping your codebase up-to-date and easily switchable from one tool set to another is lack of foresight and planning.
Yes, maybe your codebase is old and complex. Time for a rewrite, buddy. If you don’t do it, your competitors might just overtake you.
Only big companies like Adobe can afford to ignore that and survive. And the users suffer.
And this by Claudio:
Apple herself is aware of the complexity of this port, so the
guidelines suggest to first compile your project as Mach-O in your
actual development tool, and then port the project to Xcode.
Photoshoot with Miss Vilan
After a couple of dry months the stars finally lined up for a model shoot, I think it went well, Vilan was a really cool model, great to work with.
I took about 600 frames, first pass I flagged 47 of them as post-processing candidates, that’s around 10%, which is extremely high. Usually it’s around 2 out of 100 that I’m happy with. Here are 2 of them:
More at my portfolio.
Technorati Tags: 20d, canon, photography, photoshoot, portrait, glamour
SanDisk doubles capacity of Ultra II SD Plus: Digital Photography Review
SanDisk doubles capacity of Ultra II SD Plus: Digital Photography Review:
its award-winning storage card that combines USB connectivity and flash memory storage. The card looks and functions like a typical SD card and its high speed makes it ideal for digital cameras, camera phones and digital video cameras. Folding the unique card in half reveals a high-speed USB 2.0 connector that plugs into any USB port to easily and quickly transfer photos or other data to a computer without the need for a separate card reader.
Damn, the SanDisk SD memory with built-in USB connector is finally out (soon enough)! I’ve waited more than a year for this! 🙂
New Canon pro photo printers announced
The i9900 disappeared from Canon’s site a couple of weeks back, after they introduced a new ink system along with a few new consumer printers. So I fully expected new pro printers to be announced at the PMA… Looks like they just did that, and we have the PIXMA Pro 9000 and the Pro 9500. From looking at the specs, the 9000 is pretty much my i9900 with the upgraded (ChromaLife100) ink system, and the Pro 9500 uses 2 more inks for better color outputs.
One of the main disadvantages of the Canon printers used to be their non-dye-based ink, which basically means the prints won’t last as long as those printed from the Epson printers. I really didn’t care that much, but if I were to sell my prints then I probably want a dye-based system. So Canon developed their ChromaLife100 system, which supposedly have 100 years life when stored in a photo album, and 30 years for framed prints if you also use their photo papers, and 10 years otherwise. So for me it’d be 10 years as I print with Ilford Gallerie Classic Pearl papers exclusively… (In 10 years a 50-dollar printer will probably print better than any of these pro printers though)
The Pro 9500 seems impressive, I wonder what price points these new printers will be set at. The i9900 was around $400, I guess the 9000 will be at $400 and the 9500 at like $500 or more? That’s not too bad if the quality is better than the i9900. I don’t think I’d upgrade mine any time soon, unless they stop making the old ink…
Technorati Tags: canon, pixma, i9900, photography, printers
Canon 30D – I am disappointed
They addressed only 3 items on my 30D wishlist, namely spotmeter, ISO display in viewfinder and better LCD. They added a soft touch electromagnetic release which I would love to have, and I forgot to include that in my wishlist… I am still kindda disappointed at the minor improvements though, I must say, but at the same time I am a bit relieved as I won’t have to sink yet more money into photo gears… It’s the eye behind the viewfinder that really matters afterall… Having a 1DsM2 or 5D won’t automatically make one a better photographer…
Canon EOS 30D gets official – Engadget
The 30D shares the same 8.19 megapixel CMOS sensor as the 20D including other core components such as the 9-point AF system, 5 fps max shoot rate, and 1/8000 top shutter speed. And yes, it remains compatible with 20D accessories. Some notable enhancements include a new 2.5-inch 230K color LCD, Canon’s more flexible Picture Style menu, an increased burst depth, and the welcome ability to change the ISO while looking through the viewfinder.