Notes on life, art, photography and technology, by a Danish dropout bohemian.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Falling off and John A's pictures
Also we sometimes saw things he had not noticed when he took the picture, and which you needed a big screen (or print) to really notice, for example on a very good picture (see below, the picture with the train), three people very far off, but perfectly placed under a bridge. A really nice detail.
John and I talked about how different people react to jokes, some not getting them sometimes, or even getting offended. John said he talked to people about how he'd once been hurt in a bicycle accident, and recently he fell off a mountain (the guy is fifteen years older than me, but has more energy it seems) and dislocated a shoulder. So now, he tells people, he is done with highly active activities where there's a danger of falling off. "Like bicycling or mountaineering. And sex is right out!"
Believe it or not, it seems many don't get it or laugh.
Here's some of his recent pictures. I think he has a great eye for composition*, what do you think? (I'm trying to get him to start a page on Flickr or Picasa or something.)
* I did not have to crop a millimeter of any of them to fine-tune the compositions, that's not something you see often.
Below is a detail from the train picture mentioned (and shown) above:
Theories on how you get babies Updated
One afternoon a little girl returned from school, and announced that her friend had told her where babies come from.
Amused, her mother replied: "Really, sweetie, why don't you tell me all about it?"
The little girl explained, "Well ... OK... the Mummy and Daddy take off all of their clothes, and the daddy's thingy sort of stands up, and then mummy puts it in her mouth, and then it sort of explodes, and that's how you get babies."
Her mom shook her head and said, "Oh, darling, that's sweet, but that's not how you get babies... That's how you get jewelery!"
--------
Update:
Little Susie goes home from school and tells her mum that the boys keep asking her to do cartwheels, and is it because she's very good at them?
Mum said: "YOU should say NO - they only want to look at your undies".
Susie said: "I know they do, that's why I hide them in my backpack"!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Polychrome!
Blur on the 20mm (updated)
Normally you don't use a smallish sensor camera for good background blur (the GF1 as a Micro Four Thirds camera is in-between DSLR cameras and compacts with regards to this), but with a fast lens, you can get some if you try.
This lens has a pretty nice "bokeh", which is a fancy (japanese) word for the qualities of out-of-focus blur in photos. Some lenses (particularly zooms) gives it hard edges which is normally less aesthetic than smooth, soft blur.
While the bokeh does look ok here it certainly doesn't get into the kind of creamy niceness you can get with a 70-200/2.8. It's hard to get anything at small focal lengths in the best of lenses. What aperture were these shot at? f/1.7? An improvement over a P&S I guess.
You're right, for really soft background, one needs a bigger format and preferably longer focal lengths.
Again, the MFT format is in-between in this aspect too. (Yes, this was F:1.7.)
"Were ya on yer belly for that grass shot"
Nope, that's one of the good things about live screen cams over DSLRs.
(Especially if the screen is hinged.) (Which it isn't on the GF1, sadly, maybe my only real misgiving about it.)
Yes, many new DSLRs have live screens too, but sadly their autofocus is *very* slow in this mode. So far Panasonic is the only company to have out cameras with live-screen autofocus which is pretty speedy.
Knaked Knitting (updated)
Born To Die In Berlin
But I feel Nina's version is far superior. She not only added valuably to the lyrics, she gave the song an actual melody.
Admittedly, you will have to search long to find more bleak lyrics than these...
But fucking hell, what a great song when Nina sings it! (I hope you can open and play this file, I don't recall if it's one of the rights-protected files or not.) Update: there's some indication not everybody can play it. Try this file instead.
Junkies, whores and pimps
Devils around my bed
There is no choice and no difference
And no one seems to notice
Sometimes I feel like screaming
Sometimes I feel like I just can't win
Sometimes I feel like I was born
To die in your arm in Berlin
Intoxicated by the orchids
Abandoned in the garden
Demanding morphine for communion
Because my soul was burning
Sometimes I feel like screaming
Sometimes I feel like I just cant win
Sometimes I feel like I was born
To die in your arm in Berlin
Stranded in the sweet windings
Breathing the pale moon silver
Tasting the last drops of life
From a sweet transvestite's lips
Sometimes I feel like screaming
Sometimes I feel like I just can't win
Sometimes I feel like I was born
To die in your arm in Berlin
-
Panasonic GF1 Field Report (updated)
Panasonic GF1 Field Report, camera review.
It's a good review, and I agree with almost everything he says, with a possible exception: that 1600 ISO is fully usable. Like a commenter here pointed out, you do get a noticable decline in image quality going from 800 to 1600. Rather less detail. Though it can be improved somewhat by slagging through the RAW files procedure, it is not for big prints. Bigger cameras like the Nikon D90 or Canon T1i have much better low light quality. It pretty much follows sensor size, and like I have said, this one is in-between DSLR cameras and compact cameras in that respect. But I do hope next generation of Micro Four Thirds cameras improve this yet another step, that would be kewl.
Oh, by the way, I had not even thought of trying out the video quality until reading this review. He is right, it's excellent. And it could not be easier to use, and both focus and exposure are automatic in real time, very very good.
... It should be said that unlike with the (more expensive) GH1, you are stuck with the built-in microphone, and while the sound quality from that is pretty good, this does limit the camera to amateur use for video. Sound quality has always been a main bottleneck for video quality, you do need an external mic.
Long days on the bitch
The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'.
-- Phillip Lopate
Funny thing, innit, how that divides people. Me, I'm with Phil. I wonder what type of person loves vacations, and which doesn't.
Broad satellite broadband
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Captain's parrot
A magician worked on a cruise ship. The audience was different each week, so the magician did the same tricks over and over again.
One problem: The captain's parrot saw the shows each week and began to understand how the magician did every trick.
Once he understood, he started shouting in the middle of the show: "Look, it's not the same hat!"
"Look, he's hiding the flowers under the table."
"Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades?"
The magician was furious but couldn't do anything. It was, after all, the captain's parrot. Then the ship sank.
The magician found himself on a piece of wood in the middle of the sea with, as fate would have it, the parrot.
They stared at each other with hatred but did not utter a word. This went on for a day and then another and then another.
Finally on the fourth day, the parrot could not hold back: "OK, I give up. Where's the friggin' ship?"
Funny thing is, my dad told this joke 40 years ago, in a variation. In that version, the parrot always yelled "he's got it up his sleeve, he's got it up his sleeve!" And in the final line it said: "OK, I give up. You lost your shirt. So where's the ship?
Valley tree, October (updated twice)
Panasonic GF1 with 20mm F:1.7. (The combo weighs less than a pound.)
This came out more powerful than I'd dared hope for.
Part of it is that (due to the sky) I used auto-bracketing, and selected a lighter version than the otherwise perfectly serviceable auto setting had chosen. More light in the picture, see.
Update:
Here's another pic from today. I liked the funny juxtaposition of this grey environment and those brightly colored bits.
Update:
TC [Girl] said:
I really like the contrasts of the brick wall vs. the colors, like you mention (and thanks for including that. That helps a great deal to interpret/confirm what you are trying to show in the picture...for amateurs like myself. :-) The pic looks like a B/W pic...with just those few bits colored in.
Thanks, dear.
It is funny, once I get into "picture mode" I see pictures everywhere. I was just walking home, a bit bushed, so I kept putting the camera in my closed pocket on my thigh (The GF1 with this lens is just small enough for a large pocket), and then I had to take it out again several times on the way. The grey picture was very close to home, well after I'd decided I was burned out creatively for the day.
Nikon D3s, lower light
Funny enough, according to survey, 1600 is all most people say they need. I think it's up to what you're used to. It's not long ago that 400 ISO was the highest you could use in good quality, so we are still amazed at good 1600 ISO quality. The philosophical idea behind this, I guess, is that we just a bit more than we are used to, then we think we'll be happy. If we have a new level (of anything), then after a while we are used to it, and want a bit more. (We get used to higher levels faster and easier than lower ones.)
Giant puppets
I don't know, there's something about the girl-puppet in the video that I find creepy. And according to the Comments, while I seem to be in the minority, I'm not alone. One commenter said: "nicely taken video of that overly cute girl!" and another said: "Its very impressive, and very creepy."
Maybe it's because they've come just close enough to make it look and move like a human that its striking un-human-ness becomes depressing.
"Amazon Extends Kindle Beyond United States"
"The pricing for newspapers is surprising as well. The New York Times, sold in the United States to Kindle users for $13.99 a month, costs $27.99 here in Europe. Even the International Herald Tribune, which is actually published in France, is more expensive here: $9.99 in the United States compared to $19.99 for Europe.
There's no reason to charge twice as much for European customers; after all, one of the Internet's major advantages is that distance doesn't matter. I thought newspapers were trying to survive, but if the Kindle is their big chance, it looks like they're going to blow it."
No kidding. Even without daily reading, fourteen dollars per month is a reasonable price per month for getting the NYT digitally... but almost thirty dollars? You have to have a good reason for spending that.
Art, fun, and technique
And I can sympathize. It is fun to learn about process. I had a lot of fun with manual-focus cameras and in darkrooms in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It can sometimes be necessary to know about process, in case the automatic functions don't work perfectly, as is wont to happen.
And not the least, it's irritating to have used hundreds or thousands of hours learning a craft, only to see new generations being able to do the same thing without all that work!
There are many aspects. For example, 90% of the time, when doing walk-around photography, I'm happy to have the camera use Programmed automatic to decide aperture and shutter speed. (Especially with small-sensor compact cameras, where you rarely see a real difference.) But if I want to make a professional-looking portrait with a nicely blurred background, I need the right lens/camera, and I need to know how the aperture works and how to use it to get the effect I want.
Part of the questions are, do we do it for art? For business? Or for fun? And if the latter, what matters most, the result or the process? What do you enjoy most?
To a mountaineer, taking a helicopter to the top of the mountain is "cheating" and uninteresting. To somebody who just wants or needs to get to the top quickly, doing it the hard way is silly.
Quotes (job security)
"Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment."
~Ira Gassen
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
~William James
Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done. Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security.
~Unknown
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
"Self-Reliance," by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Updated)
"Self-Reliance," by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quote:
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."
Anonymous said...
Emerson's essay 'Self Reliance' is just one of many that can help people to find a peaceful, joyful life. His thoughts helped my wife and I find an incredibly easy and rich life (Ditto for some of Thoreau's essays). Just getting and then living his thought below can make all the difference.
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness."
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
20mm lens part II, Revenge of the Sith
Any Photoshop experts in the audience?
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I want to make an Action which pastes my URL into a photo, then moves the text to the lower left bottom of the image, and then saves the image as a JPG.
The problem is that when I use a batch to run the action, the text is placed in a different place depending on the dimensions of the original picture! (For example if some are portrait-oriented and some are landscape-oriented.)
Until now I've solved it by resizing all images to the same height, but that should really not be necessary. How do I make an Action which can do this in a Batch?
Paper iPhone stand
Make an iPhone/iPod stand out of paper.
I guess it's good for viewing video or whatever. Clever anyway.
How light changes things
And the thing is, it's hard to see on that photo, but actually it's a dark blue door.
On the outside and from new, it is a very dark green, so dark that it has to be good light for people not to mistake that for black too.
But I painted the inside blue to match all the other doors in the apartment, when I painted those. It's a gorgeous, deep color.
(And really I don't think that any of the doors, including this one (the front door) are actually even real wood. But they have the texture, and it shows through the paint in a very pleasing way.)
How the light is changes the way things look and feel to an amazing degree. Just look at these two pictures, with and without flash... you wouldn't believe it's the same door.
Here's the outside of the door:
And below, with the flash on. (That's why pros tend to use indirect light: the flash on the camera flattens things out in a generally un-pleasing way.)
And closed, seen from the outside: Today is a nice, bright day, so you can see the deep green color. In just a bit dimmer light, people tend to think it's a black door. Again, light changes things much more than one would believe.
Ray's sunset
Monday, October 12, 2009
Pussy galore
One December day we found an old straggly cat at our door.
She was a sorry sight, starving, dirty, and she smelled terrible,
she was so skinny and hair was all matted down.
We felt sorry for her so we put her in a carrier and took her to the vet.
We didn't know what to call her so we named her "Pussycat".
The vet decided to keep her for a day or so and said he would
let us know when we could come and get her.
My husband, (the complainer,) said, "OK, but don't forget to
wash her, she stinks."
He reminded the vet that it was his WIFE, (me), that wanted this dirty cat, not him.
My husband and my Vet don't see eye to eye.
The vet calls my husband 'El-Cheap-O', and my husband calls the vet 'El-Charge-O'.
They love to hate each other and constantly 'snipe' at one another, with my husband getting in the last word on this particular occasion.
The next day my husband had an appointment with his doctor who is located in the same building, next door to the vet.
The MD's waiting room and office were full of people waiting to see the doctor.
Suddenly, the side door opened and the vet leaned in, he had obviously seen my husband arrive.
He looked straight at my husband and in a loud voice said, "Your wife's pussy doesn't stink any more. We washed and shaved it, and now she smells like a rose.
Oh, and, by the way, I think she's pregnant......
God only knows who the father is!" Then he closed the door.
Panasonic 20mm lens (40mm-equivalent)
I'm a little disappointed that Panasonic's new compact prime lens (non-zoom) Micro-Four-Thirds 20mm F:1.7 does not have stabilization (or the camera body). It would be nice, because otherwise it's a real damn pleasant lens, physically and optically. It's the equivalent of a 40mm lens in 35mm film terms, and very compact.
(And the lens with the Panasonic GF1 actually fits in my pants pocket. Although visibly. "Is that a GF1 in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?")
But even though I think no stabilization is just stupid these days, I can live without it if I have to, in this case. For one thing, the lens is sharp at full opening. For another thing I have found out that if I'm not too rushed, I can take a sharp picture at 1/15 of a second, with a 40mm-equivalent lens. I honestly did not think I could. I used to get the occasional shaken picture at 1/125.
Either the cameras and shutters have gotten better, or I have. I suspect both are true.
Lookit this picture. At 400ISO, 1/15 second, F:1.7, hand-held. The picture looks like there was much more light than it looked like in reality. That end of the corridor is very dark. (Oh, obviously that is not a flash which is reflected on the door, I didn't use flash.)
I did not sharpen the picture in the computer, in the interest of objectiveness.
I used to think that if I had a "street camera" with just one lens and no zoom, it should have a 28mm lens or a 35mm. But I might just be coming around to Sally Mann's and Mike Johnston's position that there is something "Goldielocks" about a 40mm. It takes in the scene naturally. 50mm is a bit too long, it's a shame that it became the defacto "normal lens" for some reason or other, despite the diagonal of the 35mm format, 43mm, being closer to 40.
mini displayport to dvi adapter
"Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame"
They become like dadaist poetry.
One I just saw today was "Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame".
("Shame", by the way, is a word which the British press loooooves.)
It sounds to me like the lyrics to an avant-garde rap song. So I wrote it.
Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame!
Lang-da-di-dah, dang-dah-dah!
Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame
Looo-di-doo, di-doo, ling-lang
Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame
Go North, go South, it's still the same
Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame
Parents, teachers, nobody to blame
Nobody to blame, nobody to blame
Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame,
Rock out yo-yo, rock out ho
Schoolgirl Facebook Bully Shame
Panasonic and variations and confusions
I just ran into two other small examples. I wanted a PDF version of the manual for my Panasonic camera. (It was not included on the software CD, which is lame in itself.) Usually it's pretty quick to find by Google. But I couldn't find it, for several minutes. Then I stumbled over a comment on a site that the booklet is not called either "manual" or "guide", both of which I had tried, but "operating instructions". Sigh.
And when I plug in the battery charger and the battery starts to charge, there's a stable green light. Looking in the manual, sorry "instructions", I found out that this light turns off when the battery is charged. Other battery chargers have a red light which turns green when ready. (This I find more logical.) And yet other battery chargers (Canon) have a blinking green light, which blinks faster as the battery gets more charged, and stops blinking when the battery is full.
Is it any wonder we can be a little confused?
Danger veggie
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Draw a pig, personality test
Aside from the many possible objections (like it being difficult to draw with a mouse), it's a bit of fun, and I must say, it got my personality dead on. Well, sort of.
you are direct, enjoy playing devil's advocate and neither fear nor avoid discussions.
you are emotional and naive, you care little for details and are a risk-taker.
you are insecure or are living through a period of major change.
You are a good listener.
You have no sex life.
-
A fly in the ointment (updated)
What do you do about flies?
I am suprised you haven't blogged Kseniya Simonova's sand animation yet.
A mere 3,928,595 views still at this point. But it is trending.
She is awesome, but I didn't blog it, because I don't enjoy war as a theme for art. Just a personal thing.