Posted June 4th, 2009 @ 10:36am by Erik J. Barzeski
I'm once again attending the 2009 Memorial Tournament. I'm looking forward to trying out my 300mm f/2.8 lens with the 2x extender. Results last year with the 1.4x were quite good, and though I'm not expecting tack-sharp shots with the 2x, I think they should be more than good enough for web-based publication.
With two camera bodies this year, the 5D II will likely carry the 300mm (with or without an extender) and the 5D will probably have the 70-200 on it most of the time.
Prediction: a few thousand photos and some sore shoulders, ankles, and knees by about Saturday. 🙂
Posted June 2nd, 2009 @ 02:00pm by Erik J. Barzeski
If you sign up for Dropbox (which I recommend you do), please feel free to use this link. I'm told I can get up to another 3 GB of free space if enough people do.
People have often asked me why I don’t have an Apple TV, and the simple answer is because I don’t need one. I have an Xbox 360, and it can serve up digital photos, video, and audio from networked Macs using software like… Rivet from Cynical Peak Software. (I use similar software to interface my Mac with my PlayStation 3, too.) If I had a Windows Media Center PC I could link that using built-in software on the Xbox. And Microsoft’s Xbox Live online service offers video purchases and rentals, same as the Apple TV.
I wonder if Peter Cohen knows he can use Rivet to serve media to his PS3, too. 🙂
Posted May 30th, 2009 @ 02:01pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Saw "Up" today (the Pixar movie). Paid the extra $2.25 per person to watch it in 3D, too!
Some general comments… and bear in mind, I've only seen it once. Like an R.E.M. album, Pixar movies tend to grow on you with time as you peel through their onion-like layers:
- Best 3D movie I've ever seen. Of course, it's the only full-length 3D movie I believe I've ever seen. But really, in 3D, they do a great job. It's not the hokey "whoa!" 3D that makes you feel like things are going to hit you, but rather a subtle one that adds to rather than distracts from the action.
- The humor was a bit sparser than in previous Pixar movies. There weren't nearly as many "hardy har" moments and there were less of the more subtle jokes that Pixar movies tend to have embedded throughout.
- The basic premise for the movie is perhaps one of the most mature ones out there. Pixar movies have always had relatively mature themes, but this struck me as one of the "oldest." For adults, the pace of the story was good, and the story itself was fine (though how the heck is Muntz still alive and in better shape than Carl?).
- Given what I feel is a decreased level of "funny," though, I worry that this movie won't be as well-liked by kids as Wall-E. Adults seem to like it just fine - it's got a 98% rating at Rotten Tomatoes - but the central theme is a bit more important in this story than the central theme(s) in Wall-E, and the movie might be more tightly tied to that story.
- Then again, perhaps I'm under-estimating kids. The one near me seemed to understand everything just fine.
- Again, the 3D. Wow. If you have the chance to see it in 3D, do so.
Posted May 28th, 2009 @ 08:19am by Erik J. Barzeski
The LensAlign Pro is a $140 system that basically offers a plane on which you focus your camera's lenses and a ruler, tilted back at an angle, so that you can measure how much your camera front- or rear-focuses.
I've borrowed one from my buddy Josh (as I suspect a lot of people will be doing for $140), and I'm happy that most of my lenses - in a very quick-n-dirty test - seem to focus just fine. The 70-200 f/2.8L IS required the most correction. I set it in-camera to about -4, but having viewed the images on the computer, it's obvious it'll require a bit more.
Unfortunately, the LensAlign does a great job of exposing (no pun intended) some of the flaws in some of the cheaper glass out there. These images come from my 50mm f/1.4 lens (right image) as well as the 24-70 f/2.8L. I would expect the purple fringing on the 50, but I'm a bit dismayed at the performance of the 24-70. I'm not overly disturbed, however: it's rare that I shoot strictly black-and-white objects in harsh sunlight. 🙂
Posted May 27th, 2009 @ 02:42pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Yippee! First I saw it was at JDD's blog. A snippet from the linked articles:
Allowing EOS 5D Mark II owners to achieve even more stunning video results with the camera, the firmware update will include the following manual controls when shooting video:
Full aperture selection
ISO speed: Auto, 100 - 6400 and H1
Shutter speed: 1/30th - 1/4000th second
Sounds good. Will probably be a week or two late for me to use it for something really cool, but I'll take it whenever I can get it.
Posted May 25th, 2009 @ 10:32pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Holy crap! I haven't broken the 200/month barrier yet on my iPhone.
American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company -- almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.
But I don't seek people out, I am terrible at striking up conversations with strangers and I am happy exploring a strange city alone. I don't seek out political discourse with opinionated cab drivers or boozy bonding with locals over beers into the wee hours.
I'm not one to make conversation with random people either. I'd much rather just see what I'm there to see and talk with the people with whom I chose to travel.
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