Thursday, April 29, 2010

iPad update

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When I got the iPad last Friday. Apple on 5th avenue were out of their folio cases. Fearing my own clumsiness and also my kids curiosity, I needed something to protect my new toy err... Investment. I bought a belkin sleeve. It was decent as a protective sleeve, but absolutely useless out of it. The iPad is fairly slippery on the back and I'm afraid of letting others handle it without any protection.

I went to the apple store today and they were nice enough to let me exchange it for the apple case. I really like it. It makes the iPad easily accessible as well as presentable. It can sit upright in a picture frame style, which was why I originally wanted the apple case to begin with.

Now on to some of the bugs with this tablet. One glaring issue are the wifi dropouts and inability to reconnect to the same network. Ive done a little digging around and learned that if your iPad wakes up from sleep mode, and t won't reconnect to your network, heres what you do: go into settings > brightness > and bring the slider to the left, then move it back to the right. You'll notice your wifi signal has returned. Yeah, I know it's a pretty stupid bug.

Initially apple tried to blame this on your router, suggesting you upgrade the routers firmware, set G or N and not both. I find all of those excuses ridiculous. All of my other commuters and devices connected to the network have zero issues. Apple hopefully recognizes this issue and will correct it in the next firmware.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

iPad: wow was I wrong!

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When Apple announced the iPad, with its specifications, I was left a bit unimpressed. I consider myself a power user. I work on two macbooks and a Mac pro at work. My work consists of graphic designs, illustrations and photography. Most of us wanted a tablet with Mac OSX on it, for both productivity and fun. Instead we got a bigger iPod touch. I ignored it for a month after it was released, until my coworker brought his in one day. We were all in a meeting, where for the better half of it, I was on his iPad. All of my hatred for this device faded very quickly, with each passing second I played with it.

I really didn't miss Flash like I thought I would. Actually, good riddance, I say. I don't miss those stupid facebook games, and other flash content which burned through cpu cycles, killing battery life. The only flash related content I'd miss not having was Hulu. But guess what? Hulu app is coming to the iPad! Since we're on the topic of apps, the one app I find to be pretty amazing, is Alias Sketchbook pro. I've used this app on the mac before, and to me, it was always a program better suited for touch screens. I've ignored it until it was available for the iPad. After I grabbed it off the App store, I was blown away by how responsive this was. Being a 10 year photoshop/painter user, this app felt very natural too me. I knew what to do right away. I do find it awkward painting/drawing with my finger, that's why I ordered the Ten One Pogo Sketch stylus pen. I can't wait till it gets here.

It's great as a ebook/PDF magazine reader. As a matter of fact, I'm having the best experience reading my PDFs with this device. It's incredibly fast. I Have PDFs as large as 150mb and yet, it manages to load and go through them very quick. All thanks to the quick cpu architecture of the iPad. The ebook experience is good, though not as good as e-ink found in the Kindle and Sony Reader. E-ink looks just like a real printed page, offering less eye strain and better legibility under sunlit conditions. The iPad isn't terrible under similar conditions, it's just not as good. It's essentially a computer screen, it will cause eye strain if you're not careful.

Another thing I will use this device for, is a presentation tool.

I'm in the business of selling my creative services. Everything ranging from design, art direction, illustration, retouching and photography. I used to lug around my 13" macbook to present to clients. But now, I have an even more portable, sleeker and impressive way to present my work. It's the iPad. Now, I didn't get this device solely for the purpose of presentation, I got it because I'm a tech geek, parent, movie buff and a heavy iPhone user. If you love your iPhone and/or iPod Touch, the iPad is for you.

My iPad was purchased a week before the 3G version is released. I got the 64gb wifi model. I am already paying for data service on my iPhone, I'll be damned if my mobile carrier gets more money from me to have data on another device. So, what did I do? I used MyWi app for my iPhone as a wifi hotspot. It's been flawless so far. 3G is faster on the iPad then it is on the iPhone. The iPhone3G's main bottleneck being the processor itself. The 3Gs I'm hearing is significantly quicker. Anyway, Mywi is only available through the cydia store, which can only be installed after you Jailbreak the device.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Shooting against the sun

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It's very easy... for nikon CLS at least. I used my zeiss 35mm f2, at f5.6 aperture and let the camera decide how much fill light is needed, in TTL.

New additions: 14-24 2.8 and 135 f2 DC

It's been a while since i posted anything. Some of the reasons have been work load and not knowing if anyone is even reading this blog hehe.

I'll keep trying anyway.

Here is a three shot bracket HDR with the D3x and Nikon 14-24mm f2.8.
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I absolutely love this lens. Having been an owner of the 17-35, which is pretty good, the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 is in another league. The lens is sharp, wide open, corner to corner. Based on all of the reviews out there, this lens outdoes other zooms and primes in its range, from any lens maker.

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As for the Nikon 135mm f/2.0D DC, it's a superb portrait lens. I'm currently in the middle of shooting around the office with it, so images won't be available till later. I will say this, from my observations off the LCD screen, it appears to be sharp and magical. This is amongst the elite with bokeh render.

I believe the Nikon 135mm f/2.0D DC is discontinued or in limited supply. Rumor has it nikon is planning on refreshing it with nanocoating and VR.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Maybe I'm going blind

I can't seem to improve my keeper rate when shooting with manual focus lenses. Especially the 100 f2 makro. Despite improvements I've made to the viewfinder and focusing screen, It is less than 50% when trying to get the eyes in focus. I could use live-view if my subjects are absolutely still, which is fine for portraiture and objects, but when trying to stuff that's sorta stop and go, live view isn't the quickest solution, so I tend to bracket my shots whilst focusing at the same time.

The vision in my left eye is perfect while the right(shooting eye) is a but blurry. The diopter adjustments are missing maybe one more click to perfectly calibrate my right eye. I may have to try adjusting so I could shoot with my left.

The bits of negative manual focus experience I've had was just enough to make me miss my autofocus lenses, in particular the 85 f1.4 and to some extent the 105 micro vr. The 100 f2 zeiss however replaces both them for what they specialize in, portraits and macro, respectively. I can live without AF on this lens so long as I'm not attempting to shoot sports or kids running around. I have a couple of other primes to meet those needs.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Crossing fingers

Sometimes, I wonder if it's even worth it to put all the time and effort that goes into a pic for stock photo submissions.

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This one image took around an hours' worth of retouching alone. Nothing special was done, I had to comb through many pixels at a time to clone out anything and everything that's copyrighted. Such as logos or recognizable man made objects, like cars. The yellow BMW doesn't look so much like a BMW anymore, thanks to some modifications. That really is the only thing I worry about. Cars can be so tricky, it's such a gray area, because even when removing a logo or emblem off a car isn't nearly enough these days.

Anyway, I just uploaded that pic and hopefully they won't spit on it. So, wish me luck.

You can view the full image here, just remember, you can download it and make prints for your home, I probably wouldn't use it in an AD, because iStock lawyers will come knockin'