Thursday, October 30, 2014

PhotoPlus Expo 2014 p3


The church of Nikon is in its usual location, right at the right of the entrance.  Attendees were greeted with its yellow plastic fantastic bags which were in generous display and ample supply everywhere on the floor, just like all prior years.   The first thing I asked the Nikon rep I met was the Calendar.  Nikon used to give them out.   Alas it stopped last year and there was none this year either.   What a let down.   The truth is there are really fewer freebies each year.  Did Kodak even bother to show up?  I don't think so.   Fuji still came this year and they were giving out instant pictures and prints.   Pretty generous of them.
Corey Rich (left) preparing for his presentation.   His "Dedicated" for the Nikon D4s is by far the best promotion video coming from Nikon.  It pretty much set the standard.
Sean demoing the "drone" which was used for shooting "Dedicated."


Corey and Sean using the rig to demo a shoot using a volunteer from the audience.

PhotoExpo Plus 2014

Or PhotoPlus Expo, whatever!
Being a VIP, self-proclaimed of course, and cheap I got to pre-register and just pick up the expo badge when I got there.   But the lines for pre-registered attendees were longer much longer than those for on-site registration.  Adding to the confusion and crowd was the many marathoners who were there to pick up their bibs.   But nobody should get confused with who is who, one is lean, mean and healthy and the other is just like yours truly.  The lines weren't moving just like the morning traffic of Manhattan.  It was uber ridiculous.   Anyway I just waited in a shorter line that is meant for  on-site registration.  I noticed I wasn't the only one.  The woman behind the counter asked for an ID and printed out my badge.  No begging required.   I was then on my way to candy land

PhotoPlus Expo 2014

It's this time of the year.  All the camera nerds congregate on the midtown west at Javits center gawking at camera equipments.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Yosemite


Just give it another chance.  Why not?
it took about an hour to download and install the latest and possibly the greatest OS X.

Hopefully this MBP will last, unlike the iBook I had eon ago.  Maybe I shouldn't have said that but here it goes.  This one is bought refurbished directly from Apple.  The model was first released in June 2012, according to some web site OKAY not just some web site, this mid 2012 model is probably the last of its kind that is user upgradable.  The newer retina display models aren't all that user upgradable.  The machine looks new to me.  The battery has 2 cycle counts and I don't see anything that looks or feels old--I read somewhere "most" of the refurbished items are just unsold inventory or actual returned items with battery and case changed.  The machine is cling wrapped.  Almost immediately I upgraded the whatever OS X there to Yosemite and upgraded or downloaded many of the free apps like iPhoto and such.  I haven't heard any noise from the machine or feeling the heat from the palm rest area.  So all is well.  The machine is not cheap but hey it's 38% less than the sticker price; while most are just 15% off which I don't find so appealing.  I did some research on eBay even with no sales tax collected and I don't think I can get this peace of mind and condition from any eBay sellers for a machine like this.

Finally, at long last, I can use iMovie to edit my movie.  Well it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but hey that's me.


ImageMagick

 I don't remember if I installed that via Homebrew or MacPort. I might have installed using MacPort.  But it's kind of messed up as ...