How technology has changed.

A couple weeks ago, my manager at my day job gave me a stack of old photography magazines. I've still read only one, but it was really interesting.

Practical photography, October 1958 cover story was about, " Automation an eye-opening report on the future of photography".

An add for a pop-on rewind crank for your Leica M-3 made of "high grade 303 stainless steel" first caught my eye. I realize that in my day job, I deal with a lot of what some old-school machinists would consider exotic materials, but 303 is barely more than high-grade dirt, as far as that goes. It took me a while to remember that this was '58, and stainless steel as a whole was barely more than ten years old. I'd love to know what they would have thought of 440-460 series steels.

The part that I really found interesting was later on, with a bit about "what will your camera look like in 1970?"

Is it me, or does that thing look like most of the compact digital cameras on the market today?

To look at it section by section, and see how close they were:

Zoom type lens- I've never seen anything like this on a 1970's era compact camera, but by the eighties that had mostly been figured out, and today's compacts have an even wider zoom range. I was just looking at a review of the new Panasonic/Leica V-Lux 20, which has an equivalent of a 25-300mm zoom.

Parallax correcting viewfinder- not really available on a compact until the advent of newer digital compacts.

Ultrasharp color corrected... lens- never did quite happen. Ok, some of the new compacts come close, but you still get a significant depth of focus shift through the zoom range on most cameras.

Automatic exposure adjustment- Got straightened out by the eighties. SOLAR battery? Wow!

Acceptance angle of photocell- Once the shift was made to Through the Lens metering, this got MUCH better.

Electric drive motor- Again, not so much by '70, but... as far as automatic rewind of film, I know some cameras did this, but sometimes I found it a nuisance. I liked my first Nikon- I had to hit two buttons simultaneously to rewind the film.

Exposure button advancing film and re-cocking the shutter- pretty much followed the motor drive.

Drop in Loading- remember that god-awful APS film a couple years ago? I guess modern flash memory cards would also count.

Built-in ring flash- sounds like a good idea. I've never seen it.

Universal color balanced film- Never happened. With many of today's digital cameras, the automatic white balance setting does a reasonable job, but even my DSLR gets tripped up on occasion. I really don't see any way (chemically, or electronically) to get this right 100% of the time.

All in all, most of what they spoke about has come to pass, although not in the twelve year period they were thinking.

Something else about this issue: the letter from the editor was about how automation in photography would make [professional photographers] obsolete. This has not happened. I don't have any stats on this, but I would venture a guess that there are at least as many (if not more) cameras per capita now than ever, and a correspondingly obscene number of BAD photos being taken. Yes, there seem to be more "professionals" now, as well- also of varying grades. No, I do not yet consider myself a pro, although I think I'm getting there.

-J

Open Letter to an Asshat

This is completely off of my intent in having this blog, but I can't bring myself to set up another site just for this, so please forgive me. It's just that I've had ENOUGH.

I was sitting at my local pub last night when a guy who was a year ahead of me in high school walked in and sat down next to me. He then started (again) to gripe at me about how much his life sucks... he's going to be 39 next month, has no driver's license, blah blah blah. He has no DL because he was hanging out with his coke head friends (more on that in a second), got pulled over, and refused to take a Breathalyzer test. PA law has stated for at least 20 years that if you refuse the test, you accept the penalty for DUI. To be honest, I'm not sure if it's a "no contest" plea, or a "guilty" plea, but it doesn't really matter. The "I only had three drinks" excuse DOES NOT apply if you refuse the test. After that, he started getting into his good friend/neighbor who also has "the cops keeping an eye on him," who also just got out of jail... he was in for felony possession with intent to distribute....  basically, class 3 narcotics in a baggie. OK, say you do have a prescription for those, they need to be in a proper container with the prescribing doctor's name as well as yours. If you put them in a plastic bag, that's automatic packaging for distribution. Back to the first guy... after griping at me about how much his life sucks, he smiled and started telling me about "this girl who will do anything for pills." The fact that you hang out with a crowd where you could possibly meet someone like this isn't a clue as to why your life isn't going anywhere?

OK. I'm done with that. This morning, I was logged into [name withheld] social networking site, and saw a post that really got me going. This guy was bitching at his "friends" for not asking how he was after a car accident last night "at 130 mph." First, what in god's name are you doing driving at least twice the posted speed limit almost anywhere in the continental US, unless in a sanctioned racing event? Second, what would possess you to drive like that on wet (it was drizzling last night) roads? Third, how could you POSSIBLY expect sympathy?

Basically, I'm getting to the idea of accepting responsibility for one's own actions. I've done a lot of messed up stuff over the years. I've also gotten in trouble a couple times- both less frequently, and less severe than deserved most of the time. On the occasion I did get caught, though, I owned up to the fact that it was my fault, bad decision, etc. In the end, you bring it on yourself, and should not EVER blame someone else or look for sympathy.

I think I'm done now.

-J

Adobe Lens Profile Creator

I recently upgraded to Adobe Lightroom 3. For those who are unfamiliar with it, Lightroom is an amazing piece of software. I've found it to be a great help in keeping my photos organized, as well as make my post-processing MUCH easier to deal with. What used to take several layers and a lot of time, I can now get finished in a matter of seconds, especially when shooting camera raw.

Anyway, after the upgrade, I was poking around online for tutorials to learn how to use some of the new features, and found that Adobe had released something called the Lens Profile creator, which can be downloaded for free at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lensprofile_creator/. The program comes with a selection of PDF files which are black and white checkerboard patterns of different sizes (grid size and block size). Ideally, Adobe recommends (for a prime lens) at least nine different photos at each of three different distances at three different apertures each. Yes, this amounts to one heck of a lot of photos.

I decided to give it a whirl, because I've been using my wide angle lens a lot more than I used to lately, and much like most lenses of this type, there's a bit of vignetting (darkening) around the edges, and I really hate how straight lines get pulled, especially in the corners.

After a trip to Kinko's to have the largest grid printed (my printer can only handle up to 13" wide paper), I went into my studio space, and set up the first of the grids on a piece of foamcore (also from Kinko's) on an easel, and set up a pair of daylight balanced fluorescent bulbs equidistant from the board, and at 45 degrees to it. After about an hour, I downloaded everything to the computer and got started.

First off, if you're going to do this, one word of advice, WATCH YOUR EXPOSURE. because the grids are black and white, getting your camera's exposure meter to read everything correctly is tricky (it works on to try to get the mid point to match an 18% gray card. Since there's no tonal midpoint in these grids, it will likely get confused). Also, I had found some instructions somewhere that led me to believe that before you get started, you can make any normal raw adjustments before you import the photos into the program. Unrortunately, I found that if you're working in raw, for some reason, the profile creator WILL NOT look at the sidecar file. So after I got everything imported, and set up, I let the computer do its thing, for six hours! I think a lot of that time was because the exposures were a little less than optimal on a number of the photos.

one of the photos from the mid-distance group- notice that the lines aren't parallel to each other- this is normal with a wide angle lens.

So after all was said and done, I saved the lens profile, and got back to work. Here are a couple versions of the same photo from my Philadelphia trip, before and after applying the lens profile, with no other adjustments made:

Before

After

I love how the vignetting is gone, and now the lines are much straighter.

Photo Trip to Center City Philadelphia yesterday.

     Ok, so not exactly the brightest idea I've had in a while. Since I have the week off for the bi-annual plant shutdown, I decided to head downtown to work on some projects I've had in my head for a while. Unfortunately, I picked the hottest day in over a decade (official high 102 degrees).

     I started off the afternoon at the querilla skateboard park in South Philly, but there was nothing really going on (no great surprise,) so I headed up to center city. I had no idea how much they've done around the art museum. It's actually a really nice place to hang out.

     I wandered around the Waterworks/Boathouse Row for a while, a little before dusk, and then wandered a little bit down West River drive, figuring on shooting the obligatory Boathouse Row from across the river shot. I found a decent place about 45 minutes before it was going to get dark, so just hung out for a while watching the cars/cyclists/joggers (!?) go by. Thank goodness there was a breeze. I got a few decent shots in increasing degrees of dark, and then headed back toward the museum. Out the corner of my eye, toward the Waterworks, I kept seeing what seemed to me to be flashes of light, but I wasn't entirely sure. After working my way around to the north end of the 'Works complex, I set up my tripod for a 30 sec. exposure of the rest of the building. About halfway through, a very nice older gentleman showed up with his grandson, and his point-and shoot with the really annoying strobing orange redeye reducer and flash... totally buggered up my shot- thank goodness for digital. I also noticed that the flashes I had seen were people taking pictures of the building, and not turning off the flash. For anyone not familiar with it, The 'Works is a quite attractive Greek Revival building complex on the bank of the Schuylkill river, off the north side of the art museum (I will be posting photos soon- they're currently in post). The way the buildings are lit up at night offers a spectacular range of contrasts in shadows and shapes, which would be totally destroyed by camera flash.

I was asked a question the other day...

About midway through my shift, a coworker picked up a scientific calculator, and started asking me some math questions.... square root of 80 (didn't know off the top of my head, beyond 8.- something), what's pi (surprised I knew it to 5 decimal places), etc. I then threw a couple more in, like what are the sine/cosine of 45, etc. Another coworker chimed in with, "what's two plus two?"

Both the original coworker and I looked at her and said, "five."

Later in the evening, she asked me how that equation works. I tried, in vain, to explain that except in the cases of geometry and the straight arithmetic we were taught in elementary school, there are usually extenuating circumstances in the middle that tend to change the answer from what is expected. This reminded me of an old Sidney Harris cartoon from the New Yorker which has always been one of my favorites:

I've been pondering a question.

Way back, when I was first learning about HTML programming, the rule was (and still should be) to program for the least common denominator, as far as the equipment viewing the page goes. At that time, it was 640 x 480 screen resolution.
Lately, I've been thinking about something. With my new computer setup, I've been adjusting my photos according to how they look on my (quite beautiful) calibrated monitor. This is great for print, but looking at my other monitor, which is straight out of the box, basically the same thing everybody else has; my photos are significantly lacking. Does this mean I should be doing everything twice, the first for print on my good monitor, and again to the other one for online viewing?

-J

Evidence of Higgs Boson revealed.

Just something I noticed the other night. I was reading the label of a package of candy cigarrettes I had been given, when I found something odd. The nutritional label states "Total Carb. 14g," but the front panel says,

"NEW WT .042 oz (12g)."

First off, what exactly is "New WT"? It must mean that they've found the Higgs Boson, and managed to remove several from the candy, because somehow, there's apparently 2g of sugar in it that have no mass. I really didn't know that the guys running the LHC at CERN had gotten that far.