hmmm.

October 31, 2007

As I get farther along I realize that I may have jumped the gun (mercifully with no investment yet) on this whole digital camera thing.The basic question is as such: What component of my life will this improve, besides having a sexy camera that may or may not be much more delicate than my current workhorse 25-year-old cameras? One that I will resent in three years when there is something in the 20MP range, my originally stated goal for digital?

Looking at these little 4×6 prints I made from the Lumix reminds me of a very important detail: if you want all the detail and smooth color, you need all the resolution you can get. My ideal print size is 12×18. They say this has changed, but I maintain that 300dpi is the bare minimum to make a print that I am happy with.

12 x 300 = 3600

18 x 300 = 5400

3600 x 5400 = ~19 Megapixel

So I need a 20 megapixel camera. These are just around the corner - I give it three years. Canon already has their flagship 21 megapixel camera on the market, but at $8000 I don’t think it’s the camera for me. At least someone recognizes that there’s a call for it, though. In the meantime, although film is losing its footing, I will be safe until 2010 at the very least.

I think I’m going to wait it out.

What of the print sale, then? Still on. I think I’m going to buy a lens that I had my eye on for the new camera, as it will work just fine with my old Nikons as well. But I guess I’m still going to sock money away for my future equipment purchase.

Mmm. Perspective control.

Posted in: photo chatter 4 Comments »

getting art in the mail is a great way to start the day

October 23, 2007

I asked Dan Goodsell if he took requests, for I had seen Shutterbug on his site but never in his Etsy store.

What should I find in my mail today?

Thanks, Dan.

It’s completely amazing.

Posted in: plug, wonderful things 2 Comments »

restless

October 19, 2007

UPDATE 10/22/07!

It seems like I’ve looked at hundreds of different gallery generators, services, and whatnot. I have finally settled on Zenphoto. They installation process was a little painful, but the results are immediately worth it. The galleries are slowly being replaced with new Zen versions, and then I have a little bit of tweaking to do to get the layout the way I want it (mostly the readability of some text colors).

—–

After very careful review I have concluded that I don’t like the galleries. Well, I like the automated part of zinging a folder directly from Picasa to Picasa Web Albums, but the resulting galleries? Not so much. They look just a little too… web-portal-ish. Must change.

I messed around a little with the Photoshop gallery-makers, but don’t really like any of them. Guess I have to get out there and see what I can find that I might like - mercifully the generators are a dime a dozen.

Somewhere in my history I swore I’d never be the kind of person who blogged about working on their blog. Oh well, another resolution gone bust.

Posted in: bloggy business, filler, photo chatter No Comments »

kitty kitty kitty

October 18, 2007

 

I was looking through my Polaroids for one in particular that somebody asked me for a print of. Still haven’t found the damn thing (and I remember seeing it once and thinking “how did that get there?”; did nothing about it), but I did come across this picture of Girlfriend - Rachel’s spectacular kitty.

 

Unfortunately, Girlfriend is no longer with us. But when she was, she was quite easily the most accommodating model on the planet. She would just sit and stare with her great big eyes, pleased that you were paying any kind of attention to her. I always felt incredibly guilty, as the flash made her squint and give me an exasperated look, but it never made her run away - as every other cat I’ve ever taken a picture of has done. Girlfriend was pretty hip.

 

Anyway, I hoped the Girlfriend image would help ease the pain and suffering that my lack of interesting posts must have caused. I have been so damn busy lately, and consequently no new images, no new announcements. I have been tweaking, refining, and making final prints of the images that people have asked me for, so if I haven’t been in touch about that, know that all your prints are about to emerge and be distributed.

 

In the meantime, no Chain Camera Store tonight, so a few prints and then I’m climbing into bed early.

Posted in: filler, photo, wonderful things 1 Comment »

And The Winner Is…

October 16, 2007

The Beta/VHS wars were decided for me. By the time our family invested in a VCR VHS was firmly in place. Why does it not surprise me that my junior high was firmly rooted in Beta?

As far as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD goes, though, it has all been up in the air for me since the two formats were announced. I had no real interest in sorting out either, to be honest. The only thing I knew was that I had grown severely skeptical of Sony over the years, so was leaning away from Blu.

Not anymore.

For it appears that the Blu-Ray copy of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is set to be released in November.

 

Of course, I have no intention of investing in HD anytime soon. It would mean an upgrade in my television, and I’d have to figure out the best way to adapt the LaserDisc/Selectavision stuff - most HDTVs are not set up to display the old stuff properly right out of the box.

(No. I am not going to give up on either of those old video formats. Thanks for asking.)

I still have time to see how this all plays out. I hadn’t intended to address any of this until I really had to. As far as settling for one format goes - well, it may just be that Blu-Ray dies and they release an HD-DVD version anyway. After all, Close Encounters has seen a number of releases: VHS, Beta, Selectavision, LaserDisc, 8mm videotape (!), DVD… what’s the harm in releasing a few more?

I’ll tell you, though. I’d love to see how the transfer looks.

Posted in: distractions 3 Comments »

Gettin’ There

October 15, 2007

Getting better with WordPress. It is obviously more complicated than blogger in that I regularly have to wade through code and lots of documentation/forum entries in order to get something to work the way I want it to, but the results are worth it. Refined banner? check. Random image generator? check. Links separated into two categories (took a surprising amount of sleuthing)? check.

Gettin’ there.

Soon I will be able to get back to content and worry less about presentation. As far as I can tell, though, the website’s days are numbered. I will, in fact, be making the page you are looking at now the portal for all things Inflight Shutdown. With any luck the changeover will be seamless and you will not notice a thing. The old blog is going to stay there as a kind of archive until traffic drops down to nothing and I tear the whole thing down.

Posted in: bloggy business 7 Comments »

More Movement

October 12, 2007

I do believe that I have decided to re-assess my entire web presence top to bottom.

The website is likely the first component to get the axe. Instead, I will make this blog the hub of all Inflight Shutdown activities, with links to galleries and all that good stuff.

Watch for developments! The galleries are already done - Picasa makes it so easy. Why wasn’t I doing this before? Not only is uploading a breeze, but so is adding images to existing galleries - that wasn’t so true with my old, tired method.

(p.s. - Yes, I know the galleries and links over there on the right are messed up. I’m workin’ on it.)

Posted in: bloggy business No Comments »

Welcome!

October 11, 2007

 

 

Welcome to the WordPress revision of my blog.The main reason I wanted to move away from Blogger was what I perceived to be poor image handling. Ethan and I have talked about this a little bit as it relates to Beer-O-Vision (mostly me whining about the size of some of the images), so now it is time to wade through the new rules myself and see if I can do any better.

There are a number of weird loose issues around (font colors, etc.) but I am addressing them as I go. If you see anything that you think I need to look into, please don’t hesitate to let me know!

Posted in: bloggy business No Comments »

Vancouver, Day Five: All Done

October 9, 2007

When I got up Sunday morning it was all over. There were no tasks, nowhere to be, nothing to do. After some contemplation I decided on the cluster of museums over the bridge that included the Vancouver Museum, The H.R. MacMillan Space Center, and the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

The Vancouver Museum was fairly interesting but panders a bit to the MTV generation. I would have liked a bit more solid information, history, etc. There was, however, an interesting temporary display about a Japanese Canadian baseball team that was broken up by WWII. Also interesting to see that Canada was a little bit more unforgiving once the war ended and forced their Japanese immigrants to scatter across the country instead of going back to Vancouver.

The Space Centre was disappointing. There were some cool artifacts of the space programs, but it was mostly about America - no mention of Canada’s big arm on the shuttle, although there was a replica in this little theater where they did a presentation about bodily functions in space. Snore. They also appear to have spent too much money on a ridiculous motion simulator that had a sad storyline about delivering a power actuator to Mars. Shouldn’t have bothered. Even the Museum attendant seemed kind of embarrassed by it.

The planetarium was nice, they had a beautiful Zeiss star projector like the one at Boston’s Museum of Science. The show was about light pollution - they did these cool 360 panoramic shots to simulate different cities and their effect on stargazing.

The highlight of the Maritime Museum was easily the report they kept of all the big shipping vessels out on the water. I didn’t take the time to try to match them up, but it was intersting to look over the ports of call and the likely cargo contained within. The exhibits were interesting - lots of ship models, and even a workshop where you could unnerve the ship model artist-on-duty by staring at him while he was working (needless to say I steered clear). Also went on a “rare” tour of the St. Roch’s engine room in addition to the regular tour.

Oddly enough I ran into Andy and Joanne at the Maritime Museum - they had rented bikes and by chance had stopped in at the museum to use the bathroom! We tried to get them onto a water taxi but no bikes allowed. So I waved goodbye and they went on their way. After a light dinner I walked back across the city and down to the water facing Victoria. Took some photographs down by the water. The one below is actually part of the big swoop-y convention center on the water. Take the plants away and it looks like the set for a Cronenberg movie ca. 1981. Pretty cool. The other is a fairly generic sunset - had I been in Stanley Park it would have been spectacular. Live and learn.

After all that I headed back to the hostel. Settled into my bunk for my only quiet evening in Vancouver.

That’s where the story ends. I got up the next morning, tidied up my things, and jumped on the airport shuttle. Rummaged around the shops for some candy bars to empty my pockets of change with and climbed on the plane. Flights uneventful, especially from Montreal to Boston - as soon as the plane stops climbing, it starts to descend! Odd.

When I got home I opened my bag to find that my sunscreen had blown some of its contents all over the inside of my new suitcase.

How nice.

Posted in: photo, vancouver 1 Comment »

Vancouver Day Four, Pt. 2: Reception

October 9, 2007

I’ve been slowly making my way through the disposable camera images. They all have basically the same problems: too much contrast, over-saturated, underexposed. Tedious to fix, but then again also conducive to getting into a rhythm and slamming through a stack of them. I must admit that my “run” only lasts so long, though, before my interest wanders to more arty topics.

I’ll get there, I promise.

As the evening progressed I started running around gathering up the forgotten cameras. Not wanting to waste any film I snapped off pictures almost at random, which every now and then would result in an expression like the above. Hey, I had fun, and it did result in some good memorabilia.

Note to self: desserts, Andy, and Joanne are a bad mix (see Vancouver Day Three for more antics)

One of the polls conducted was “bird” or “fish” (didn’t I already decide my entrée?). It was only revealed later that you were voting on what you wanted to be. Hmm.

This one came out totally bizarre - almost completely useless, true - but there’s something interesting about it. When pressed for a file name all I could come up with was “PostmodernMikols.PSD”.

There are about 45 total images that made it out of the disposal cameras with any kind of quality or interest level. Here’s ten. I want to clean up the rest of them and then go through the rolls again to make sure there’s nothing I missed.

Posted in: photo, vancouver No Comments »

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