What modern cameras can do

Few things are as taxing of a camera and photographer as bird photos. The high sensitivity of the new sensors and the speed of autofocus these days is pretty amazing. And not to forget you have to be a pretty durn good photographer to do something like this.




Talking about animal photos, this is cool.

Roy Lichtenstein character

This page says the girl is dressed up as a comic book character. I'd say it would be more accurate to say she's dressed up as Roy Lichtenstein's idea of a comic book character. Neat idea anyway.



Apropos Lichtenstein, isn't it weird how in some parts of the world it's usual for the imitator to be more successful than the originator? I don't think any comic book artist ever got as rich as Lichtenstein. And certainly at and before Lichtenstein's prime, they were not considered "artists" by very many, they were treated basically like sweat shop laborers.

Compact-camera comparison

M Reichman compares the popular and capable semi-compact Canon G11 with my newest fave, Panasonic GF1, the latter having a bigger sensor.

Below is a sample of the difference at relatively high ISO (about 600). At 100 to 200 ISO, the difference is much smaller, negligible. At 800 to 1000 it's bigger.

Lord V's photostream

Lord V's photostream.

Norah Jones - What Am I To You?

[Thanks to TC Girl.]

Not normally my type of music, but there are always exceptions.
Hmmm, embedding disabled, so you'll have to go here.

Ministry - N. W. O. (updated)

Ministry - N. W. O. (New World Order, quoting George Bush Sr.) (And in fact this is not an endorsement. Al Jourgenson, the heart of Ministry, made a whole album later just about all the things he hates about Bush, this time Junior.)

Thanks to Jan, here is the orginal video for the studio version, which I think is even better.




... I'm reminded of Scarecrow from the same album (Psalm 69), another old fave. Admittedly it ideally should be played loud on very good speakers, since it's a "wall of sound" song.

Update: Magnetic Mary prefers the one below. And that's great too. (I think it's the closest Ministry has been to a hit, no?)

Getting better

Isn't it funny how you can keep learning, long after you thought you were done?
For example, I did not start using macros and typing-completion software until last year, thirteen years after I started using computer, and using them a lot. And now these things are saving me hours of work every month, I'm sure.

Also, a couple of weeks ago I got a new, faster Mac Pro, and set it up with an extra Cinema display so I now have two side by side, and with the new OS Snow Leopard which is faster and nicer and has some features I really use, like the huge image icons. And all these things, surely along with new levels of ability and willingness on my own side, has made me reach new levels of efficiency and joy in computing and producing. I really feel much more productive, faster, and joyful in my work (and play) than I did just a month or two ago. It's so kewl.

Saving blogs (updated)

Once every couple months I save my blog to my own hard drive, in one-month archives. We've heard of companies who suddenly decide to give up projects, especially unprofitable one as Blogger surely is, and the sad but typically human tendency is to suddenly pull the plug and not save archives, and not give the users any warning so they can save all their work. It's insane, but it has happened so many times.

Firefox is better than Safari for this. Safari saves either as just html without pictures, or a web archive, which only Safari can open. Firefox saves as an html files with graphics in a separate folder, so it can be open from the hard disk by any browser. (It does not save the large versions of images which you could click to get, but I can live with that.)

Update: Chris pointed to this as a better way of saving a blog. I haven't tried it yet.
Update... I have now. When I do it the "export blog" way, I get a 54MB ".xml" file... and my computer doesn't know what to do with that...

Net pics

Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm F2.8

Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm F2.8 macro/portrait lens for M4/3 review.

Fourteen lens elements! In a non-zoom lens! Including an aspheric and an ED element. Holy cow.
This is not a cheap lens for sure, but it's a special one, and I think it's great that they are coming out with really premium lenses for a smallish format such as Micro Four Thirds, this will help the format win favor with serious photographers, which will encourage the producers to make more better products, and so on back and forth.

The female nude in history and society

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Morcheeba - "Enjoy The Ride"

[Thanks to TCGirl and Laurie.]

Here's another Morcheeba song, The Sea, which I've liked for a long time.