Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Slow to pull the trigger

Well, I've not ordered that photo printer yet...mostly because I've become pretty convinced that I'll need a color calibrated monitor as well, which for a good one will mean the more expensive newer type IPS panels, along with a color calibrator.  The 25.5 inch  NEC LCD2690WUXi2 with calibrator I had my eye on at B&H just stocked out, and they seem to be the only US supplier (though you could pay more to buy the monitor and calibrator separately, or get another monitor -- but I want a 25.5 inch monitor, and this is an in between size).  So I'll just wait for now...hope the monitor goes back in stock.  Mostly I'm just stalling to see if my fancies move elsewhere in a few week.  I could order the printer now and deal with the monitor issue down the road, but that strikes me as wishful thinking about costs.

Also, the 2690WUXi2 covers the full AdobeRGB color space, something smaller NEC monitors don't seem to do, though it's not clear I want to go there...though this monitor and the Pro9500 printer could handle it. Not that the images would display correctly on regular monitors.

And you gets lots of advice along the line of

The unfortunate truth with monitors is you get what you pay for. ...This brings me to my first recommendation. Buy the very best monitor you can afford. Scrimp on your computer upgrades, a new camera body or flashy accessories. Your monitor is the most important investment in your digital photography workflow.

In any case, whatever I buy will cost less, even in nominal dollars, than my huge --- ahm, 19 inch -- Sony CRT monitor cost in 1997. 

Looks like I'm getting a large format photo printer...

Well, my wife has signed off on the purchase.  I did explain the cost structure and potential cost escalation from the follow-on monitor purchase.  I also explained the size of the printer.  The Canon Pro9500 Mark II is currently the leading contender.  A bit more research and I'll probably make the purchase.  This would commit me for now to the matte side of the glossy-matte spectrum.  It should be a fine printer on which to learn how to print.  If worst comes to worst I'll be buying another printer in a few years, but mostly I expect to walk down the learning curve on how to calibrate printers and monitor with at times confusing documentation.

Now I'm into researching appropriate paper (aka media). Ilford Galerie 8.5x11 Gold Fiber Silk seems to be the leading contender for large format high quality paper B&W printing, but I'm less clear on paper for color printing or small format or lower quality B&W printing.   Some grades of Ilford's pearl or satin paper looks promising, but I'll need to research more.  In particular, is the Ilford paper too think for this printer? Officially yes it seems, but people seem to use it nevertheless and like the results, and this paper may actually be so good it falls into an allowed thick paper category...more later...also, given all the calibration issues that seem to arise I should probably get some of the manufacturer recommended Canon paper types, if just as a baseline.

Update #1: my standards for research go up when the purchase moves from the realm of desired but hypothetical to "I'm going to pay money for it and be stuck with it".  So this may take more time.   Clearly there are people out there who don't like this printer, either since they don't know how to use it (all the color management and calibration issues) or they like glossy prints. There is a size issue here: small glossy prints may look better than matte or semi-glossy (pearl) prints, but once you're into large formats or framing behind glass matte dominates.  But there are trade-offs here.  And I don't have any personal experience with the matter. 

Getting a New Monitor Update

Well, I've done quite a bit of research and am starting to get a better sense of what the products out there are and what the trade-offs are.  Sadly, I'm also learning that while my Dell 1907FP is good for what it is, it is a 6-bit TN LCD:

The inexpensive twisted nematic display is the most common consumer display type. The pixel response time on modern TN panels is sufficiently fast to avoid the shadow-trail and ghosting artifacts of earlier production. The fast response time has been emphasised in advertising TN displays, although in most cases this number does not reflect performance across the entire range of possible color transitions. More recent use of RTC (Response Time Compensation—Overdrive) technologies has allowed manufacturers to significantly reduce grey-to-grey (G2G) transitions, without significantly improving the ISO response time. Response times are now quoted in G2G figures, with 4ms and 2ms now being commonplace for TN based models. The good response time and low cost has led to the dominance of TN in the consumer market. 

TN displays suffer from limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Also, TN panels represent colors using only 6 bits per color, instead of 8, and thus are not able to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available from graphics cards. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles pixels on and off to simulate a given shade. These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and bothersome to some.^[2] FRC tends to be most noticeable in darker tones, while dithering appears to make the individual pixels of the LCD visible. Overall, color reproduction and linearity on TN panels is poor. ...

External consumer display devices ...mostly use an analog VGA connection, while newer, more expensive models mostly feature a digital interface like DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort. Inside external display devices there is a controller board that will convert CVBS, VGA, DVI, HDMI etc. into digital RGB at the native resolution of the display panel.

For photo editing -- to get closer to what you see is what you print, as well as just reasonable image quality on the monitor -- other technologies seem called for.  With a bit of research some of the NEC (i.e. LG produced) monitors seem like appropriate choices, for instance the NEC LCD2690WUXi2 (not clear if the European version, linked here, is 100% the same as the US version), a 25.5 inch 1920 x 1200 resolution monitor.  It might be hard to go back...one thing I'd not recognized is that high quality and decently calibrated LCD monitors rely on decent quality ambient light and are not in themselves very bright.  Low quality monitors are much brighter. 

Aftermath

Light here reflects ambient lighting. I could change that...

Also some premath:

Museum Questions

Inspired by the family's trek through Boston area museums -- the MFA, JFK Library, Peabody Essex Museum, ICA, visited in order of increasing child acceptance, tomorrow they get to go to a puppet theater -- some questions:

1. Did ancient Egyptian peasants expect an afterlife?  When did commoners start expecting an afterlife?  I know, what any of this means needs elaboration...
2. What's the deal with Jacqueline Kennedy's voice/accent?  She is pretty much a beauty ideal, but that voice would drive me crazy.  What is the cultural history of this kind of voice?  How was her voice perceived at the time?  How much was this her public voice only? 
3. What did Americans sell to China in the pre-1840s China trade?  When did opium and tea get going and how did America fit into that trade?  In general, what commodities were important by value, as opposed to their historical memorability?  How did the economics of long-distance trade come out in terms of covering ship construction costs?  There must be lots of data on family finances of trading families. 
4. How could the NYC-Albany passenger only steamship lines coexist with the railways?  What were the relative traffic volumes for passengers and freight?  Why take a steam ship if you could take a (faster?) train?  Where trains that awful?  I've always thought of passenger steamships as a Mississippi or Ohio river phenomena, but the Hudson was also important (see Vanderbilt). 
5. How does basic C-print technology work?  I.e. how did the world work before ink jet printers? I know the high school level explanation, but that doesn't really answer the question...like why didn't C-prints exist before the mid-1940s? 

Thinking of getting a Photo Printer

The Canon Pixma PRO9000MkII Inkjet Photo Printer and the Epson R1900 Large Format Photo Printer seem like the two most obvious choices after a few minutes of research -- I'll start reading reviews. Something like the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 Inkjet Printer (or Canon PRO9500MKII) is probably too over the top as a place to start.   The Canon PRO9000MKII seems the most unproblematic printer suitable to novices.  I'll also need a monitor calibrator. And I should do some research on printing supply costs. All larger format printers are in the 13x19 inches range. 

Some random reviews of the Canon PRO9000MKII: WP, Imaging Resource, TechnologyGuide, PC World.The WP review of the Canon PRO9500MKII, with more at PrinterInfo. 

Update #1: Ah, the big difference between the Canon Pro9000MKII and Pro9500MKII is that the first is a dye ink printer and the 2nd a pigment ink printer.  Supposedly better image quality and less cost (at least for Canon printers) with pigment ink, though I cannot judge the magnitude of the difference. It also seems to line up broadly with the gloss for dyes and matte for pigments.  Matte seems to be 'more sophisticated'.

BTW, is that matt or matte? Wiki claims matte is American English and matt is British English, but I'm not sure that's the key difference. 

Update #2: hm, after a bit of internet reading the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 Inkjet Printer or Canon PRO9500MKII don't seem so over the top anymore.  

Update #3: One issue may simply be that I don't currently have all that much space and these are big machines:

For the uninitiated, the Pro9500 (like most 13x19 photo printers) may look like a standard inkjet, but the scale is fundamentally different. By our measurements, with all trays folded up, the Pro9500 measures 30 by 14 by 7.5 inches; compare that to a standard 8.5x11 photo-inkjet (Canon's ip4600, for instance), which comes in at roughly half that size. Hence, you'll need some dedicated desk space – or an entire desk – to make use of the Pro9500 Mark II. With all trays deployed, plan on setting aside about 30 by 40 inches for the device. Presumably, if you're shopping for a printer in this class, you have a dedicated photo work space and won't be taken aback by the machine's bulk.

I'll need to see what space I can find.  33.4 lbs. 

I also liked this comment on large format printers:

But wait, let's think about this. Just how much empty wall space do you have in your place?

It's not a big deal to print a bunch of 4x6 prints and stick them in a drawer. Or make an 8x10 to put in a stand-up frame on the shelf or an end table. But if the word gets out that you're making 13x19 prints, you may find yourself uninvited to certain social gatherings. There's only so many of these you can display or give away.

Comments/suggestions welcome.

Snow

Decent snow even by New England standards. 

Arlington National Cemetery Today

The vast amount of prime real estate the Kennedy family's graves cover is impressive and maybe a bit unseemly, with Ted Kennedy's grave on a separate plot adding to the family's already considerable frontage heading up to Lee's Mansion. 

National Air & Space Museum

Archives of the United States of America

From playing around with Lightroom a few weeks ago -- def. time to get a manual.  Iso 100, 2s, f/10.  

Purple Fringing

This is the worst purple fringing I've seen on my 17-55mm lens every.  Some of this may be a dirty UV filter...Usually I don't see this, but high contrast at night is known to be problematic.  Still, not a huge deal if not 100% cropped.  Below the without postprocessing for color blur, then with postprocessing for color blur (I'm surprised DPP doesn't do better than this), and reduced.  Iso 800 at f/2.8, 1/30s.  17mm, the problematic end for this lens. 

 

Fruit

Canon 7D high Iso shots

Some of these Canon 7D high iso shots don't look that bad.  But my 40D does okay at iso 1600 occassionaly as well.  But a semi-decent looking iso 12,800 shot just isn't going to happen with the 40D. Not that I can imagine it is common with the 7D either.   Hard to tell those are iso 3,600 as well --- the 40D's iso 3,600 shots are just useful for documentary purposes. 

The Photography Expansion Path

So what are my options for photography purchases, beside getting a decent book or two on how to use PS CS4? 

First, a bit of a warning: the December 2009 issue of Consumer Reports has page devoted to SLR lenses.  All zoom lenses and none are in the quality category I'd consider.  On the other hand, they do recognize what they are doing and give none of these lenses an 'excellent' rating for image quality (though most get 'very good').  Then again, this may be the right sort of recommendation for someone who goes to CR for buying advice on SLR lenses. 

So what are my options?

1. Most realistically, I need a bigger monitor than my current 19  inch Dell Ultrasharp 1907FP.  I do have an old 1997 24 (?) inch Sony CRT in my basement in CT, so I'll give that a try first.  Two monitors in parallel would be nice, if I can get the old monitor to interface with my current machine.  But I don't know if the color and resolution on this CRT is going to be good enough.  But it is something to try first.   But there probably is a new 24 or 27 inch LCD screen somewhere in the future, hopefully a WSXGA 1680x1050 or a WUXGA 1920x1200.  Photo editing on a 19 inch screen just isn't feasible with PS CS4. 
2. As for lenses, there are no obvious choices right now.  I tried out the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 last summer, but sent it back for front focusing -- like many many copies of this lens -- on my 40D.  I could try again and send the lens and camera in to Sigma for calibration.  But I wasn't blown away by the lens and I'm not sure it's worth it.  But getting some practice might help, as well as a lens that focuses well.  Besides this lens, there is a long list of obvious lens choices, but none that stick out as terribly compelling.  On the short end there is a wide angle fast zoom like the Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8. I've not been too happy with the performance of my Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS zoom at the 17mm end, feeling that it could have better resolution, and I'm not sure a wide angle zoom will solve this complaint: there seem to be inherent problems with zooms at wide angles (though a specialized zoom might do better), something reflected in the cost of good wide angle primes -- and even those seem to have problems.  Finally, these resolution issues may simply call for getting a full frame camera.  The next lens is the highly regarded Canon 35mm f/1.4 L, which everybody seems to like...but it is expensive.  There is also a new version coming at some point, not that this necessarily matters.   This would get me two stops more light than my zoom and better contrast and color.  On the long end the 135mm f/2 (see this 700+ posting thread on flickr) and the 200mm f/2.8 are the obvious choices and ought to be quite useful for shooting indoors and at dusk, as well as being optically good lenses.  I'm not sure I want to go the 1.4x extender route for my 70-200mm f/4 IS, but that would be another option, but I'm not sure I want the compromises that entails.  No way to know without trying it out though.  A macro lens might also be a good idea....as you can tell, I've not zoomed in on any particular lens. [Update: turns out that the Canon EF 300mm f/4 USM L IS lens falls into the price category I'm considering here, something I'd not been aware of.  This would, also with the 1.4 extender, get me into serious bird/wildlife range on 1.6 crop camera.  Bigger than my 70-200mm f/4 IS lens, but light for a 300mm lens. Over 10 years old, so the IS isn't up to modern standards. Not weather sealed.]
3. Finally, cameras: there are three choices, or rather realistically two choices here.  I'm locked into Canon due to my existing lenses, even if Nikon currently seems to have the better cameras. Canon may be remedying that situation somewhat.  The newly released 7D is the obvious and most affordable upgrade from my 40D.    The 40D has three main issues: resolution/color/dynamic range due to a crop sensor (hard for me to assess given my lack of experience with a full frame sensor and the fact that these image characteristics stem from many sources), low light noise and color, and autofocus performance when tracking.  The 7D may help with the autofocus and maybe a bit with the high iso shots -- I need to see more reviews, but the reviews so far sound like the 7D AF system is a significant improvement for tracking -- and the 40D 'ssystem is pretty bad.  The 5D II helps with a full frame sensor and good high iso performance, but it's tracking autofocus is most likely less good than the 7D.  It is also more expensive.  Out of my price range is the 1D IV which should improve all all dimensions, even if it is a 1.3 crop sensor. So the 7D may not be worth it, especially given the option of waiting for next year's 1.6 crop camera. At the same time, without a full frame camera is may make little sense for me to buy better lenses like the 35mm, 135 and 200mm lenses mentioned above.  Also, the full frame 5D II doesn't work with my EF-S 17-55mm zoom and I'd need a new zoom or I'd need to rely on prime lenses still to be purchased for everything below the telephoto range.  And it isn't clear that there are good zooms for the 5D II -- primes may be required, though there are longstanding rumors of a improved EF 24-70mm f/2.8 USM L with IS coming soon.  But that's an additional cost.  Without the lens quandary I'd probably make the jump to full frame. 

So it's waiting for now, with maybe a new monitor at some point.

Gratuitous old food photo with 100% crop (Iso 400 & flash, 55mm, f/7.1 -- most issues are I think sensor size issues, not lens issues, but who knows, some of the color issues my be lens related): [Incidentally, I did not buy the Mott's apple sauce.] 

Playroom landscape

Kids got to pull out playmobile for the first time in months yesterday. Kid #2 and #3 were thrilled.

Soup

My favorite soup.  Requires some cheese as well...

Halloween

Kid #3's Halloween basket as photographed by kid #3:

Saturn Ring Photography

via the Boston Globe:

4

The moon Prometheus and its nearby disturbance of Saturn's F ring. Prometheus periodically gores the F ring, drawing out streamers of material from the ring. The image was taken in visible light at a distance of approximately 950,000 km (590,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) 

8

Jagged looking shadows stretch away from vertical structures of ring material created by the moon Daphnis, a bright dot (8 km, or 5 mi across) casting a thin shadow just to the left of the center of the image. The moon has an inclined orbit, and its gravitational pull perturbs the orbits of the particles of the A ring forming the Keeler Gap's edge and sculpting the edge into waves having both horizontal (radial) and out-of-plane components. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 26, 2009, at a distance of approximately 823,000 km (511,000 mi) from Daphnis. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

9

Another view of waves in the edges of the Keeler gap in Saturn's A ring, created by the embedded moon Daphnis. Image acquired on July 11, 2009, at a distance of approximately 496,000 km (308,000 mi) from Daphnis. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

15

Cassini captured this image of a small object in the outer portion of Saturn's B ring casting a shadow on the rings as Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox, on July 26, 2009. This new moonlet, situated about 480 km (300 mi) inward from the outer edge of the B ring, was found by detection of its shadow which stretches 41 km (25 mi) across the rings. The shadow length implies the moonlet is protruding about 200 meters, or 660 feet, above the ring plane. If the moonlet is orbiting in the same plane as the ring material surrounding it, which is likely, it must be about 400 meters, or 1,300 feet, across. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Time to Get some Decent Photoshop CS4 Manuals

Real World Camera Raw and Real World Sharpening would be obvious books to look at. Now I just need to get over the fact that the relevant math isn't in any of these books...

I've not really used either ACR or Adobe Bridge or Lightroom yet, and just messing around I cannot figure how to use them to get what I want.  At least not that to the extent that I know what is supposed to happen...below hitting +100 on what Lightroom calls 'clarity' just to see what that does. Also some tone auto tone curve adjustment in DPP, but not my usual DPP raw processing. Below, for contrast, just going through DPP as usual without aiming for any effects. 

National Portrait Gallery

Again, nothing too exciting...I may have to do my research before visiting museums, not after, to make the visit more interesting. I did learn that this is the Old Patent Office Building:

Designed in the Greek Revival style by architect Robert Mills, construction started in 1836, and the massive structure took 31 years to complete. United States patent law required inventors to submit scale models of their inventions, which were retained by the Patent Office and required housing. Once home to many early government departments, today the structure houses two museums of the Smithsonian Institution, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.

In Pierre L'Enfant's plan for the capital city, the site of the Patent Office Building, halfway between the Capitol and the President's House, was set aside for a monumental structure. L'Enfant envisaged a "church of the Republic", which he later modified to a Pantheon devoted to great Americans. Mill's described the proportions of the Greek Revival central portico as "exactly those of the Parthenon of Athens", a departure in Washington, where previously ambitious public buildings had been based on Roman and Renaissance precedents. Fireproofing the design was an essential concern: Mills spanned the interior spaces with masonry vaulting without the use of wooden beams. Skylights and interior light courts filled the spaces with daylight.

After years of political infighting, in which Congressional committees questioned Mills' competence and insisted on design changes that inserted unnecessary supporting columns and tie-rods, Mills was summarily dismissed in 1851. Construction continued under the direction of Thomas U. Walter, one of Mills' harshest critics^[1] and was completed in 1865. The building's west wing suffered a fire in 1877, destroying some 87,000 patent models; it was restored by Adolf Cluss, 1877-1885, in the style he termed "modern Renaissance". ...

In the 20th century, the building was occupied by the Patent Office until 1932; it then housed the Civil Service Commission. A street-widening sliced away the monumental stairs to its south portico. In 1953, legislation was introduced to demolish the building for a parking lot; but President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation giving it to the Smithsonian in 1958 (Public Law 85-357, 72 Stat. 68). This was an important victory for the historic preservation movement in the United States.

The 1950s seem much further removed than they were when I was a kid.  It isn't just the passage of time, culturally, technologically and politically the distance is just more noticeable.  It used to be that the 1950s were the immediate pre-history of where we were now, before the 1960s spit us out where we were in the 1970s, when my historical consiousness starts.  Now the 1950s seem as far away as the 1930s when I was a kid.  Well, that may be just the interposition of more history.   But is also the media and information information brought by the internet -- how do you relate to people who didn't live their intellectual and cultural lives in front of a computer screen?  It is so obviously a different world.  That's not just the feel of the 1950s, in covers the 1970s and even the Reagan era.  Modern cultural life starts under Clinton.  Carter seems faded, Reagan artificially preserved.  And I lived through these eras. 

Who still cares about Clement Greenberg, who does get a portrait (sorry, I didn't photograph it)?  Back in 1980 this still seemed like something you might want to know about, but now? 

I did like the portrait of George C. Marshall,  mostly for the type of representation of authority it aims at.  (photo via the Smithsonian below)

The bald guy squinting below is Sam Houston.   

No kids except one two year old in a stroller.  Youngest people around 22 years old. 

I did learn about Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, who I hadn't known about previously.  

Capitol

A handheld shot of the Capital Capitol.  High iso noise and limited color range. Why people have tripods. 

Manassas Tree Photos

Some of those notoriously difficult to photograph trees.  Not sure I got the sharpening settings right here.

Here's a 100% crop of the photo one up.  You can see the problems this lens has a 17mm.  Shot at f/7.1, wider open this lens supposedly does better. Artifacts are from sharpening, but you need sharpening with branches. You don't get these issues with this lens at 55mm, or with my 85mm or 70-200mm lens.  It may just be that wide angle zoom lenses do this -- or even wide angle prime lenses, at least on a crop sensor.  Not sure...not that this creates a problem at 50%. Update: indeed, this may mostly just be diffraction at f/7.1, since that puts the Airy disk about about twice the pixel size of the camera.  Which is why you shoot landscapes with full frame cameras. 

Manassas National Battlefield Park

A very very nice park like landscape, in much better shape than I'd assumed given the debate about nearby development.  Stonewall Jackson and all that, not that I can keep the lore straight, but having visited the battlefield may help.  I've mostly stayed away from Civil War history...so why did it take the North so long to win given its material superiority?  The area of operations is almost static in Virginia for the first three years of the war.  I can think of the obvious explanations: a) the North was still mostly agricultural as well and war was not yet that material intensive, b) the South was large and softer in the West than in Virginia, c) mass losses were politically and militarily hard to take for the North, d) large operations from scratch take time, even years. 

And yes, it is setting in which one can even photograph trees. 

Update #1: since I could not remember (and it is not emphasized in the exhibits, not clear why), size of forces and losses in the First Battle of Manassas (First Battle of Bull Run), where most -- but not all - the photos below are from:

Union casualties were 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312 missing or captured; Confederate casualties were 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13 missing. ...Strength figures vary by source. Eicher, p. 87-88: 35,000 Union, 32,000 Confederate; Esposito, map 19: 35,000 Union, 29,000 Confederate; Ballard, 35,000 Union (18,000 engaged), 34,000 Confederate (18,000 engaged); Salmon, p. 20: 28,450 Union, 32,230 Confederate; Kennedy, p. 14: 35,000 Union, 33,000 Confederate; Livermore, p. 77: 28,452 Union "effectives", 32,323 Confederate engaged. Writing in The Century Magazine, adjutant generals James B. Fry cites 18,572 Union men (including stragglers not on the field) and 24 guns engaged, Thomas Jordan cites 18,052 Confederate men and 37 guns engaged.

Losses aren't as bad as I'd expected, but my standards may be different than those of the times.  Also what does 'missing or captured' mean here for Union forces?  How many walked away?   It's my understanding that desertions in the Union army were in the same order of magnitude as losses, but there are obviously reporting issues, both for desertions and losses. 

Update #1: Jody comments:

We were in Springfield this spring and the kids were intrigued by the "Civil War in Four Minutes" video there. Online, the music is more clearly overbearing, but in the small theater at the Lincoln Museum, it's not as easy to notice your emotions being played. In fact it was hard not to cry. The kids' first question: why does it look like the South is winning? My short answer: because the map zooms in on the south, so it looks like they've got all the territory, but they don't. Of course, that doesn't answer the question at all. I'm not an expert at all on the war, which is somewhat laughable (over-specialization), but if I had to guess, I'd say the war dragged on because of lack of political will for conquest in the north, extremely poor generalship (most of the best professional army men returned to their home states in the south), and the sheer physical challenges of re-taking southern territory. It took several years of economic strangulation (not to mention diplomacy in Europe to isolate the South) before physically re-claiming southern territory was realistic. And it took that long, too, to get generals capable of doing the job -- and then they did it by changing the "accepted rules" of warfare (although I've always wondered how much those rules had already gone out the window in Europe). One interpretation of the Emancipation Proclamation says that Lincoln had to do it because the "union men" had lost their will to fight for that cause by late 1862 and he had nothing left but to rally the abolitionists explicitly. I don't know if the letters from common soldiers support that assertion, but the Proclamation did bring in huge numbers of Black recruits and changed the motivations of black (slave) residents in southern territories, too. Did the Proclamation enable re-conquest, or signal that the generals were finally ready to do it? The classic (boring) test question, with the usual answer: a little of both. Or so I assume. I'm really wandering far from my comfort zone here. (Again, laughable. This is PRECISELY my period. But not my subject.) Oh, here's the video! http://www.maniacworld.com/civil-war-in-four-minutes.html Notice the moments in the video when there are no battles to speak of but the casualties are mounting fast. Typhoid in the camps, I assume.

Saturday Afternoon Walk

The bottom crocodile has indoor lighting, so the white balance is a bit hard to get right. That photo is also shot handheld at 1/15s due to low light. But crocodiles don't move much. 

Sensor Dust

Time to get my sensor cleaned?  Shot at f/13, 30s, iso 100.  Dust shows up a these apertures.  Still temp housing...

Harpers Ferry

Drove out to Harpers Ferry late this afternoon.   As usual the 17-55mm is my most problematic lens, not sure it is behaving itself here.  Also a good amount of flare. 

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS

Put the 70-200mm on my camera again, after not having used it for weeks. 

Also the no flash version, hand held at 1/13s, Iso 1600, f/4. White balance is much harder to get right here due to the mix of indoor lighting, should have been shot with a white balance card.  Also high Iso may just degrade color?

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro lens

The newly released Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro lens goes on the list of possible lenses, though not right now for the obvious reasons. The older non-IS non-L 100mm f/2.8 macro is Canon's standard macro lens and cheaper...also supposedly very good.  As is the even cheaper EF-S 60mm f/2.8 version.  So I should probably go for that... IS on a macro lens is a new feature, here with supposedly with stabilization for shifts and not just rotation.

Update #1: a flickr thread on this lens. 

Sunday Evening Walk with the Rest of the Family

We also hit Thomas Sweet in Georgetown first, to fuel the kids. Good sorbet.

Weekend Walk

Few people due to the rain.

Butterfly

What species?  Looks like a red spotted purple to me, a mimic of the poisonous pipevine swallowtail. 

Also, a bonus toad photo.  Looks like an American toad, a very common species we also have in the yard in CT.  Quite small, I'd say less than an inch maybe half an inch, magnification here is similar as for the butterfly above:

Fairfax County Patchwork

All part of the landscape of urban sprawl. Also part of the suburban economy, since this is, I believe, an equestrian barn. 

Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2

Pulled down a trial of Photoshop CS4 just now, with Lightroom 2 to follow.   Might as well try out the standard software since it is the obvious expansion path. And yes, there are are serious discounts out there. 

Update #1: hm, my screen size is clearly smaller than optimal for using this software.  24 inches would be better than my 19 inches, and the resolution would have to be full HD for the image to be optimally visible.

Update #2: getting a 1920x1200 monitor may, it seems, overtax my video card in my current computer, pushing down the refresh rate.  Hard to know for sure...how would I find out? Also not clear what refresh rate I need.  Currently 60Hz on 1280x1024.  1920x1200 is the maximum resolution the video card can handle. 

Canon 7D is out

Well, the successor model to my 40D camera is out, after the 50D update last year wasn't seen as compelling by consumers.  I'll wait and see how reviews pan out (here, here and here for a first look).  I'm still looking for a full frame camera with good autofocus for significantly under $4000.  That may be a bit of a wait.  The standard update time for getting new cameras seems to be three years, so I'm still on schedule for sometime fall of next year. 

The 7D has a new faster autofocus system and about one stop (or more?) better low light ability, both of which would be nice.  But in a year the new camera available will be even better....

Oh, the 7D also appears to be a decent HD video camera.  Not that I care, video is just good at demonstrating how bad my technique is. 

Living by Myself

It is starting to feel a bit weird.  I get to fly up north for Labor Day. 

Riverbend Park

I took a brief walk at Riverbend Park.  Astonishingly empty for a nice Sunday afternoon.  Maybe, on the high side, 20 people out on kayaks.  Odd for the middle of a major metro area with millions of inhabitants.  Where do people go instead?  As usual, I'm annoyed by photography -- I should be doing better than this...landscape with lots of fine detail is just challenging.  And yes, that is the Potomac. Not a larger river.  

By Special Request

A relative who never reads this blog requested photos of the red ribboned piggies at kid #1's birthday party a weeks ago. 

Also, how do you batch upload photos in typepad, since there are even more than posted here?  I sent in a help ticket on this.  I suspect they don't have the function to discourage high bandwidth posting.  Large size for effect, sorry for those with smaller screens. No serious post-processing, who has the time? 

Update #1: Typepad has the expected response:

Thanks for the note, but at this time, there isn't a way to upload
multiple images into a post like you're describing.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. We are always looking for ways to
enhance TypePad for our users, so we will keep this in mind as a
possible future feature for the system.

(Not) Photographing Houses

I was walking around a few days ago and thought I'd photograph houses I ran across, but I gave up on that project quickly.  I didn't want to annoy anybody, even if I wasn't challenged.  Furthermore, taking photos of houses is hard, especially if one doesn't want to draw attention to oneself.  Lots of good looking houses don't photograph easily.  Not quite as hard as trees, but houses look better on site than in a random photo. 

Disk Breaks

I've developed a fondness for my car's breaks.  Astounding breaks work as well as they do considering the forces and the amount of energy dissipation involved. 

Monarch Butterfly

Got one accidental photo of the Monarch in flight, but at 1/500s there's too much blur. Also not a macro lens but the 17-55mm. Finally, this is shot at f/8 and I have the impression the lens performs better wider open, at f/5.6 or so. Below the lens wide open at f/2.8. 

Breakfast Fish

And yes, the Red Sox found some underpaid security guards to fire for steroids. Surprise. Fish was very fresh. 

Krakatoa is still active

via Climatechange, from the Daily Mail.

Why is a good autofocus system so hard to make?

The NYT reviews the Olympus EP-1 along lines that I've seen before by other reviewers:

[T]he EP-1, which will be available next month, is supposed to be the hybrid the whole world has been waiting for: the guts of a single-lens reflex camera in the body of a pocket cam.

An S.L.R., of course, is one of those big, black, bulky cameras that take magazine-quality photos. Professionals tolerate the weight and size because they have to.

Amateurs generally choose smaller, cuter cameras — but they make profound sacrifices in the process. The photos rarely look as good as S.L.R. photos, especially in low light. Far too many pictures come out blurry, because the sensor inside is so tiny. And shutter lag — the delay after you press the shutter button — is enough to drive you into therapy.  ....

[T]he final straw: the E-P1 is slow to focus. Horribly slow — sometimes two seconds. Its shutter lag is so bad, photos of athletes, passing cars and magical cute-kid shots are almost out of the question. Olympus explains that the E-P1 doesn’t have a dedicated autofocus chip, as an S.L.R. does, so it uses the same “contrast-detection” scheme as point-and-shoot cameras. Heartbreaking.

I don't have a good understanding of why good autofocus systems seem so difficult to make.   They seem to work on point-and-shoot cameras, but mostly since the demands on them aren't large since these images aren't that sharp to start with.  Canon cameras have had a whole slew of AF problems in the last few years and my 40D isn't that great for moving objects.  But you'd not even try shooting something that is moving with a point-and-shoot and expect even 50:50 AF reliability. 

A better AF system is one of the things a more expensive SLR should get you.  Indeed, it is my impression that once you get to full frame digital SLRs the competency of the AF system is the biggest difference between cameras at different price points. 

Update #1: partly the issue seems to be that getting a good AF system requires putting resources into it.  A good AF is just expensive and cutting costs results in lower performance. There is less scope for newer and cheaper and just as good or better technology. 

Owl again

That owl again.  I'm more aggressive here about getting into the shadows, probably too much so. 

Below processed like a photo without any contrast issues -- does provide a better sense of the light:

One more pig photo

In lieu of kid photos.  Maybe a bit oversharpened and I'm not sure I get to color curve right either. 

Time to Buy Photoshop CS4

Well, I may be looking at buying Photoshop CS4 and some of the standard plug-ins like Photokit Sharpener (or other similar products), since that may be where my highest incremental return for getting better photos is, not a better body like the 5D Mark II.  Also, I've been thinking of getting a 3rd party lens like the wide Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X Pro DX and I'd need software to correct the chromatic aberrations that are endemic to wide lenses (and very noticeable in landscape shots with high contrast, say building edges or tree branches), something that Canon's free DPP doesn't do for 3rd party lenses.  DPP also just doesn't allow for enough fine tuning, especially local adjustments.   Now I just need to wait for a sale -- there was a 50% off sale back in February.  Though DPP may be a better RAW converter than Photoshop's  ACR. 

Better technical documentation of how image processing is done would also be nice -- for instance, a technical explanation of optimal sharpening via capture sharpening in RAW demosaicing and then output sharpening, and the role of various enhancements like 'smart sharpening' along the way.  Understanding the issues at a theoretical level would be nice. 

Below I'm getting slightly more agressive about sharpening than usual, and playing around very slightly with a harder tone cure and adjusting the black point upward. Very slight adjustments though, just enough to be noticeable (not sure the black point adjustment is even noticeable). 

Rumors of a Canon 24-70 f/2.8L IS II Lens

Canon Rumors reports that a Canon 24-70 f/2.8L IS II lens might be forthcoming soon.  Very similar to my 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens, except for full frame cameras.  Much better build quality and weather sealing as well.  Price is not rumored yet. 

I'd been thinking that I'd miss the IS on a standard zoom if I got the full frame 5D Mark II. 

Random Nature Photos

From the lens and camera that I dropped today. The seagull is a bit off focus, but I don't think that is a camera problem, just a faraway -- this is a crop of the original photo -- seagull moving fast. The usual caveat that the monitor I'm using while on vacation isn't the best and makes detail, especially color and contrast, hard to see...