... threatens McCain's base.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Photo journalism art
Here are some journalistic photos which goes way beyond what we're used to seeing from that area.
On a different note, I find it fascinating and puzzling how many people will allow themselves to become unrestrainedly emotional about another person. No human being, whether he's a lover, a guru, a politician, a musician, or whatever, can be the savior of another.
On a different note, I find it fascinating and puzzling how many people will allow themselves to become unrestrainedly emotional about another person. No human being, whether he's a lover, a guru, a politician, a musician, or whatever, can be the savior of another.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The misappropriation of femine beauty
"If we are going to move beyond pride and shame to a strong humility regarding our bodies, we must stop listening to the voices that tell us beauty is either trivial or dangerous. It does matter that every girl learns to see herself as beautiful and offer her beauty to those around her in appropriate ways. It matters that we allow each other to put our longings for beauty on the table where they can be taken seriously. It matters that any loss or lack of beauty, from aging to mastectomy to thighs that our culture deems "bad," be grieved honestly and cleanly. Beauty is not trivial or dangerous. It is powerful and important. It deserves to be on the agenda for any faith community wrestling with the big spiritual issues of our time."
Article
I'm not sure why he would turn to theology to find answers about beauty and psychology, but I do agree with his conclusion above.
Article
I'm not sure why he would turn to theology to find answers about beauty and psychology, but I do agree with his conclusion above.
Resolution puzzle (updated)
Here's a challenge for you brainy types:
There's a lot of evidence that in many instances, you can increase the level of detail a camera delivers by either improving the lens or by increasing the pixel number.
It seems to me logically that if one works, the other shouldn't. Because if improving the lens makes the picture sharper, then that means that the individual pixel is smaller than that len's blur point, and if that's the case then putting in more pixels should not make a difference if you don't improve the lens also.
And conversely, if improving the pixel density makes the picture sharper, that means that the len's blur point is smaller than each pixel, so therefore it should make no difference to improve the lens (without improving the pixel density).
Update: Ctein, a top dog in photographic technical savvy, helps me out:
A technically accurate explanation is very complicated, but I can give you the easy version by referring back to film photography (the mathematics is very different for discrete digital samples, so this is correct but inaccurate).
In analog, continuous imaging, the final blur circle is the square root of the sum of the squares of all the contributing blur circles. That is:
Blur(total) = SQRT (blur1^2 + blur2^2 + blur3^2 …).
Examples of sources of blur are film resolution, lens resolution, focus error, and camera vibration. For the sake of simplicity, ignore everything but film and lens resolution.
If you have a lens that is capable of resolving 100 line pair per millimeter and film that is capable of resolving 100 line pair per milliliter, the above equation says that the combined resolution will be 70 line pair per millimeter (approximately). In-camera film tests bear this out, by the way.
Suppose you were to double the film resolution. The combined resolution of film and lens would now be 90 line pair per millimeter, about a 25% improvement. A visible and significant change. Conversely, if you doubled lens resolution, you'd also see 90 line pair per milliliter. (If you doubled both, the resolution would jump to 140 line pair per millimeter.)
An asymmetric example: let's start with film that resolves 100 line pair per millimeter and a lens that resolves 150 line pair per millimeter. The combined resolution is 83 line pair per millimeter. If you double the film resolution, the combined resolution improves to 120 line pair per millimeter. If you double the lens resolution instead, the combined resolution is 95 line pair per millimeter. Improving either resolution visibly improves total resolution, even when one is much better than the other.
To put it colloquially, it's not the weakest link in the chain that determines the resolution of your system, it's the combined weakness of all the links. A chain with two weak links is less strong than a chain with one weak link.
As I said at the beginning, the math is very different for digital camera sensing, but it would lead you to the same conclusions ( although with different numerical results, of course) for pretty much the same reasons.
----
Thank you so much to Ctein (it's a hard C: "K-tein"). This is cool. It tells us that the two factors have to be way out of balance for it not to pay off to improve even the stronger one. (But of course it will always pay off better if you improve the weaker one.)
It's still counter-intuitive to me, but since it's supported both by math and by experience, I guess I'll have to bow to it! :-)
And by the way, an example of what this means in practical terms is that for me, it means that if I do eventually decide to get a high rez camera like the new Canon 5D, I don't have to invest in the very newest and most expensive lenses for it to make a difference (in big prints).
See, this was not just theory for theory's sake. :-)
Of course it's still a question of what that might mean for me artistically. And so far it seems to me that usually the answer is "not very much", so I'm cooling my heels. After a point, there's a diminishing "return on investment" in resolution. Where that point is, is a matter of application. Landscapes or architecture usually need much more resolution than portraits or snapshots.
There's a lot of evidence that in many instances, you can increase the level of detail a camera delivers by either improving the lens or by increasing the pixel number.
It seems to me logically that if one works, the other shouldn't. Because if improving the lens makes the picture sharper, then that means that the individual pixel is smaller than that len's blur point, and if that's the case then putting in more pixels should not make a difference if you don't improve the lens also.
And conversely, if improving the pixel density makes the picture sharper, that means that the len's blur point is smaller than each pixel, so therefore it should make no difference to improve the lens (without improving the pixel density).
Update: Ctein, a top dog in photographic technical savvy, helps me out:
A technically accurate explanation is very complicated, but I can give you the easy version by referring back to film photography (the mathematics is very different for discrete digital samples, so this is correct but inaccurate).
In analog, continuous imaging, the final blur circle is the square root of the sum of the squares of all the contributing blur circles. That is:
Blur(total) = SQRT (blur1^2 + blur2^2 + blur3^2 …).
Examples of sources of blur are film resolution, lens resolution, focus error, and camera vibration. For the sake of simplicity, ignore everything but film and lens resolution.
If you have a lens that is capable of resolving 100 line pair per millimeter and film that is capable of resolving 100 line pair per milliliter, the above equation says that the combined resolution will be 70 line pair per millimeter (approximately). In-camera film tests bear this out, by the way.
Suppose you were to double the film resolution. The combined resolution of film and lens would now be 90 line pair per millimeter, about a 25% improvement. A visible and significant change. Conversely, if you doubled lens resolution, you'd also see 90 line pair per milliliter. (If you doubled both, the resolution would jump to 140 line pair per millimeter.)
An asymmetric example: let's start with film that resolves 100 line pair per millimeter and a lens that resolves 150 line pair per millimeter. The combined resolution is 83 line pair per millimeter. If you double the film resolution, the combined resolution improves to 120 line pair per millimeter. If you double the lens resolution instead, the combined resolution is 95 line pair per millimeter. Improving either resolution visibly improves total resolution, even when one is much better than the other.
To put it colloquially, it's not the weakest link in the chain that determines the resolution of your system, it's the combined weakness of all the links. A chain with two weak links is less strong than a chain with one weak link.
As I said at the beginning, the math is very different for digital camera sensing, but it would lead you to the same conclusions ( although with different numerical results, of course) for pretty much the same reasons.
----
Thank you so much to Ctein (it's a hard C: "K-tein"). This is cool. It tells us that the two factors have to be way out of balance for it not to pay off to improve even the stronger one. (But of course it will always pay off better if you improve the weaker one.)
It's still counter-intuitive to me, but since it's supported both by math and by experience, I guess I'll have to bow to it! :-)
And by the way, an example of what this means in practical terms is that for me, it means that if I do eventually decide to get a high rez camera like the new Canon 5D, I don't have to invest in the very newest and most expensive lenses for it to make a difference (in big prints).
See, this was not just theory for theory's sake. :-)
Of course it's still a question of what that might mean for me artistically. And so far it seems to me that usually the answer is "not very much", so I'm cooling my heels. After a point, there's a diminishing "return on investment" in resolution. Where that point is, is a matter of application. Landscapes or architecture usually need much more resolution than portraits or snapshots.
When pictures hurt web sites
When pictures hurt web sites, article.
"The company has found that when placed on Web pages, images can act as barriers to action rather than the sort of eye candy that generates sales when placed on magazine covers. Users don’t just ignore them; they try to look around them. Worse, when action buttons (or “triggers”) such as subscription fields or purchase links are placed near or even on those images, users look straight past those too then click away."
Shocking.
"The company has found that when placed on Web pages, images can act as barriers to action rather than the sort of eye candy that generates sales when placed on magazine covers. Users don’t just ignore them; they try to look around them. Worse, when action buttons (or “triggers”) such as subscription fields or purchase links are placed near or even on those images, users look straight past those too then click away."
Shocking.
Laforet and the 5D's video
BlankPhotog pointed to this Vincent Laforet article about the video capabilities of the Canon 5D2. He is not a videographer, and the article is overly breathless to my taste, but then there's the claim that the 5D2 takes better low-light video than the Red camera, so it can't be bad.
It does take longer clips than the Nikon D90, and higher resolution, and I think it has a mini-plug for a microphone which is essential for decent audio, so maybe it's actually a possible solution for serious video, we'll see how goes.
It does take longer clips than the Nikon D90, and higher resolution, and I think it has a mini-plug for a microphone which is essential for decent audio, so maybe it's actually a possible solution for serious video, we'll see how goes.
Rocket Man redux
All wonderful versions, but Kate is hottest.
(Oh, my pal Laurie (male) knew her when they were teens. I'm envious. Apparently he inspired the Man With a Child in His Eyes song.)
(Oh, my pal Laurie (male) knew her when they were teens. I'm envious. Apparently he inspired the Man With a Child in His Eyes song.)
Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers
Odd book titles.
One of my favorite odd possessions is a book called "The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750-1900". A very thick book, it's a historical treatise on scholarly debate about life outside Earth, and it's written in the most amazingly academic language. I won it in a contest.
The same site also points to a Nipponese video with a slapping machine. Those Japs are off their lids. :-)
One of my favorite odd possessions is a book called "The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750-1900". A very thick book, it's a historical treatise on scholarly debate about life outside Earth, and it's written in the most amazingly academic language. I won it in a contest.
The same site also points to a Nipponese video with a slapping machine. Those Japs are off their lids. :-)
Floating cities
I like people who think big.
Also the Lillypad.
By the way, what happened to science fiction with vision? It seems to me that modern science fiction is mostly about dystopic futures and characters who are petty criminals and druggies.
Also the Lillypad.
By the way, what happened to science fiction with vision? It seems to me that modern science fiction is mostly about dystopic futures and characters who are petty criminals and druggies.
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