My view of the world

How come they didn’t have anything like this when I was a kid?

Buy one on here.

I take pictures. I’m not an amateur photographer with delusions that I’ll become famous or who wants to put them on display for the public to ooh and ahhh over, nor I think that anyone besides me will ever care what I shoot, therefore what I consider what I do to be taking pictures.

Yet I spend time and money on this hobby. I’m always lusting after a new lens or driving around looking for the shot that everyone else missed.

The difficulty starts when I mention my latest acquisition to my lady. She doesn’t understand why I spend all that money on something she has no interest in.

However - and you guys know where this leads - when she spends money on something that makes her happy the absolutely worst comment I can get away with is something like “I didn’t know something like that would cost that much, but I’m glad you were able to find one.” –Which sounds ever so much better than “why the hell did you spend that kind of money on that crap?” Which is what I’m really thinking.

What brings this up is my recent purchase of a Nikkor 50mm AIS f/1.4 for $200 at Casey’s Cameras here in Las Vegas. I then went online and spent more money ordering a lens cap, a hood and some filters from B&H in NY. —Believe it or not, I didn’t have a fast 50mm and if you’re trying to get a shot in a dimly lit room without using a flash you need a fast lens.

She showed up just as I was trying out my latest toy, saw it and made a snide remark about how I was always wasting my money. Of course me being me I had to say she should be glad that I didn’t buy a 135mm f/2 that they had for about $800… That was an oops.

She didn’t yell, instead she spent the rest of the day doing the deep sigh bit combined with “that look” and saying things like, “if you’d save your money instead of spending it on things you don’t need you could buy a nicer car.” And the ever popular: “I’m not criticizing, but……”

If you ever find yourself dealing with someone like this, take my advice - Buy the lens. It’ll be around and making you happy long after she decided she can’t fix you and has moved on.

For what it’s worth a 50mm on a DX camera is equivalent to a 75mm on a full frame, which is close enough to the 85mm I used to carry for me to be comfortable.

Google Chrome has been released. Whoopy– another web browser.

This one isn’t even an original idea, instead it’s based on an old version of Safari complete with all the old vulnerabilities.

The Google Chrome user-agent shows that Chrome is actually WebKit 525.13 (Safari 3.1), which is an outdated/vulnerable version of that browser.

It’s susceptible to the ancient art of carpet bombing and under Vista it drops downloads directly on to the desktop.

BTW: Apple patched the carpet-bombing flaw with Safari v3.1.2.

Chrome has potential, but what good is a really fast browser if it’s going to leave you vulnerable outdated attacks that the rest of the world has already dealt with?

It seems rather silly -or perhaps arrogantly overconfident- to release it while it still contains critical, well known, problems.

Being a Google product it will undoubtedly spy on us at least as much as IE-(pick-a-number).

Google records everything you do. Every search and every link you follow from that search.

Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” (The new Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate. see “porn mode”)

Yep, it keeps your browser from logging where you go, but it doesn’t keep Google from knowing and it seems to me that that is the real problem.

Google in particular as shown that it can search back 2 years to dig up a specific individual’s browsing history. Just because they were helping the police doesn’t mean that they aren’t using it to make money the rest of the time.

Our browsing habits are worth billions to advertisers so you don’t think trust a company like Google not to grab that profit at the first opportunity. –M$ has been recording everything there is to know about our computers and network activity for years and look where they are.

Speaking of a lack of privacy:
I just read something that says FaceBook not only tracks you on their site but continues to track you after you leave. Of course they fixed the problem.. really they did.

According to FaceBook: The company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users’ Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time.

They still track everything you do, they just promise not to tell anyone. I believe them… Really.. Why would they lie?

If you believe they aren’t going to find a profitable use for all that data they continue to collect I’d like to sell you some paint for that bridge you just bought.

I found a flash site with a tarantula you can manipulate, or you can just let it follow your cursor.
It’s at onemotion.com, which is a site built by someone with a serious interest in flash.

Here’s a screen cap of the critter.

There are some flash games but the spider is my favorite. If you have Flash 6 or higher give it a try.

The screen capture from the flash animation was done with the Flashfox addon Fireshot.

A friend –who has never run a bar in his life– has started running a bar here in Vegas called the Sunrise Ranch Bar and Grill.

He’s not working for a paycheck, instead he’s working for a piece of the action. Which would be all well and good if there was any action.

This joint is a dive. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s too dark inside, the music is too loud and the customers are not people who would be comfortable in a better lit place.

On their website they have some rotating pictures and a photo gallery. A quick look will tell you the sort of place it is.

Having said all that I will give him credit for cleaning it up quite a bit. He stopped a lot of the stealing by his staff, chased off the worst of the riff-raff and fixed some of the pricing. But they still don’t have a kitchen which will keep a lot of people away. And Latin night seems to have gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

He had someone parking their roach-coach out back, but they weren’t making any money even on the busy nights and he wanted them to be there 24/7. Needless to say they’re not there anymore.

A person who goes there fairly often and who is Mexican says that the problem is that it’s a “Gringo” bar, and if it was a “Mexican” bar it would be packed.

Ok, so how do we test this theory? If you turn it into a Mexican bar all your regulars and your bartenders, who are Gringos and probably don’t speak Spanish, will leave.
Did Latin Night bring in enough Latins that weren’t there with friends of this new manager’s friends to show any difference? –I doubt it.

The big problem is that in a town full of little bars, one more isn’t going to be noticed. And a bar with no kitchen isn’t going to attract the construction crowd or shift workers like a Big Dogs or a Bonanza Lounge.

On the plus side, they have cheap beer all week and a free BBQ on Sundays.

And would somebody please get that boy a real camera with a real flash.

Avoid Harmon and the Boulder Hwy for the rest of this long weekend!

I made the mistake of trying to get home via Harmon Ave last night. Forgetting that the Cannery was having it’s Grand Opening.

About 8:15 the intersection of Harmon and Boulder Hwy was at a stand still. Even traffic trying to turn left onto the highway was stuck because of the number of people turning left off of the highway who were not able to clear the intersection.

I made my travel choice based on the current mess on Flamingo Rd. They have everything from Nellis east torn up and are using the turn lane into Sam’s Town as a travel lane. Tonight is Friday and it’s a Labor Day weekend, so no matter which way I go I’m pretty well screwed.

What really bothers me is that it was the grand opening of a new casino and there wasn’t a cop in sight to direct traffic. This is typical of Metro. If nobody specifically requested traffic control they didn’t schedule any.

Why is it that every morning on the way to work I see three metro motorcycles with cops in yellow vests sitting around, ostensibly to direct traffic, but when there is a real traffic jam the only cop I see just drives past?

BTW: If you think those bike cops are there to direct traffic and not put there specifically to give out tickets you’re living a fantasy.

This is the new Eastside Cannery casino.

You’ll notice those strange orange fixtures sticking out from the sides of the building. Those are lights, but they’re not just any lights. They’re designed so they change color, fading through the entire spectrum over the course of a few minutes.

These are some sample shots taken from a friend’s backyard.

I hope those rooms have good curtains.

My first HDRi.

- Aperture prefered f/11
- ev .7
- 7 frames
- Jpeg fine
Converted with Photomatix Pro 3

Photomatix will align the frames by matching features or by correcting horizontal and vertical shifts.
You then do tone mapping to create a TIFF file. The software gives you a number of options including white point, black point and gamma with tabs for smoothing and micro contrast.

It was about 11am and the sun was pretty much overhead. In the mornings or evenings the effect is much more dramatic.

I do like the ghost pigeon flying through the top picture. That bird must really have been moving, because the camera was shooting at high speed which is about 7 fps and seems to be about 5 fps bracketed.

— Click on the image for a larger view. —

The back of Sam’s Town about sundown

Samples to show the exposure range.

I read a blog on ZiffDavis with the title eBay has Amazon envy: Cuts fees to get more fixed pricing. It made me consider how long it’s been since I used eBay and why I stopped.

Once upon a time I used eBay with a great deal of regularity. Now I can’t find the auctions for all the buy-it-now crap.

If I wanted to pay retail for a camera, new or used, I’d go to B&H, KEH or Amazon. I certainly wouldn’t go to what is supposed to be an auction site.

I think when you consider the amount of fraud that buyers have to contend with, the seller’s fees, the Paypal fees and the increasing volume of retailers that make finding a real auction item difficult, eBay has created a monster.

Now they’re forcing the little guy out in the name of retail, simply because there aren’t enough dollars in single sales to make eBay the kind of money their corporate greed requires.

eBay is an auction not a retail outlet, and if they can’t make it with the thing that made them rich how do they expect to compete with an established giant like Amazon?

Sigma has come a long way in the last few years. I now own three of their lenses.

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APO 120-400mm F4.5-5.6 DG OS HSM

21 Elements in 15 Groups
Angle of View 20.4 - 6.2 degrees
Number of Diaphragm Blades 9 Blades
Minimum Aperture F22
Minimum Focusing Distance 150cm / 59.1 in.
Maximum Magnification 1:4.2
Filter Size Diameter 77mm
Filter Size Bayonet-type Hood
Dimensions Diameter 92.5mm X Length 203.5mm
3.6 in. X 8 in.
Weight 1750g/61.7 oz.
Corresponding AF Mounts SIGMA, CANON, NIKON, PENTAX (1*, 2*), SONY (1*)
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I’ve had my 120-400mm Sigma for a couple of weeks now and have decided that I like it.

The HSM works great and in the park on a sunny day, stopped down to f/11 the autofocus is fast and sharp.
However:

–The problem with trying to quantify a thing like bokeh is that, except in extreme cases, it’s a matter of personal preference.

As a general rule glossy magazines expect the background to be effectively invisible, while newspapers are not nearly that fussy and your Aunt Jane, while looking at a portrait of her favorite niece, probably wouldn’t notice a slightly out of focus Mime.

The limitations of this lens are pretty much what you would expect from any lens with similar specs. And keeping in mind that I don’t shoot for poster size prints, I find the picture quality to be excellent.

Basically this turned out to be a great all around lens.

I wouldn’t hesitate to take it to a daylight auto race, although my old Tamron SP 200-500mm f/5.6 manual focus would be my first choice, but soccer under the lights in a park is pretty much a wasted trip.

I received 2 emails asking for a more detailed explanation of Bokeh:
I recommend you read Ken Rockwell for a far better explanation.