The Grandmaster(s?)

In street fighting there is no right or wrong, only the last man standing.

I don't like the spacing between THE and GRANDMASTERS.
The tag line is galling.  Why call it martial arts?  Just call it Kung Fu.  To me, Kung Fu is more than a sport, it's a way of living, it sure cares about right or wrong and definitely means more than "the last man standing."  So I think the tag line is just bullshit.
The last question, why plural?  So the story is about more than one grandmaster?  Two, three, four or five?  I thought Leung is the Man, that is Yip Man, the grandmaster, the master of all masters.  Now it's more like "Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ziyi Zhang are ... The Grandmasters"--I think I can hear The Voice saying that in the trailer.

UPDATE 11/1/2010
imdb has it The Grand Master or the (WTF) literal translation First Generation Master.  I don't know how it becomes more than one master judging from the above poster assuming the poster is legi.  I am scratching my head now.

Portra 400 Ektar 100

I just noticed this Portra 400 no longer denotes NC or VC.  A quick trip to Kodak tells me this Portra 400 replaces the good old 400 NC and 400 VC.  Is it going to be good at both or neither?  We will find out.

I saw the prints in their booth, except for the head shot by Ryan Muirhead, I am not impressed with the other two, especially the night shot, the face has absolutely no details, it's like mud.  As for the wedding shot, the face is just too white and has no details--this is from yours truly who has never have any pictures published.  Anyway, I will try them to see what shows up.

Photoplus 2010

Old cameras never die, they just retire at KEH temporarily, waiting to be picked up again.

Music and photography belong together or so the vendor thinks.

Bazooka from Sigma

Leica, probably the most expensive 35mm camera analog or digital.

My faith is:  In Nikon, I trust.

The Nikon Temple where the Nikonians congregate.  The priestess there looks awfully familiar--this got to be her third year at the very least.

I think Nikon is one of the only two camera manufacturers that ever got to go to outer space. That means something, doesn't it?

That's Joe McNally and his butts, right there.

Vincent Laforet's Canon Booth

Sony is in the BMX business now just in case the camera business doesn't quite pan out.  Look how happy their sales/event lady is.  A happy employee is a good employee.  ka-cha.  Don't hold your camera like that unless it's a SONY that you are holding.

Kodak:

Still my favorite.  They have freebies.  They are giving out 120 Portra 400, the new emulsion that claims to th finest grain at 400 speed, as well as the Ektra 100 for free.  I don't know if it's because on the last day, but there is no more 135mm film to give out.  I got some of them and some sample papers and a one time use film camera.  For those unrealistic film sellers on Craigslist who ask for $3-4 on a roll of seriously expired film, I say shove it.  So that's very nice of them.  Fuji is nowhere to be found, but they were never as generous as Kodak, they actually sent samples via mail after the show.

Nikon

No more calendars by the time I was there, that is around noon on the last day of the expo.  That's a bummer.  I got to play with the D7000, no doubt a very nice camera.  I also got to mount a couple of lens on it, on separate occasion, a 35mm f1.4 and the 24mm f1.4.  Well, they are nice that's all I can say.  Man manning the counter says I can't insert a SD card to get pictures from it, I gladly obliged.  Plus, the lighting isn't any good and I am not a low light photographer anyway.  But nice lenses no doubt.  I am surprised Nikon got Jodi Cobb to talk about the topics she talks about in this venue.  Kudos to Nikon and Ms. Cobb.

D7000 at Photoplus at Javits Center

f/4.5 1/125 s @1600
It was shot NEF and converted to JPG using GIMP with UFRAW plug-in.  I didn't have the D7000 profile so I chose none and I kind of like it instead of using color matrix or my good old D70 profile.  Anyway, JPEG is saved at 85% compression with nothing thrown in.  The EXIF date is wrong.

f/4.5 1/60 s @1600, RGB profile, the image is warmer.

UPDATE 12/2/2010
I didn't mention the shock and awe I experienced when I could simply open the NEF file without doing any trick or hack on my part.  Like it just worked.  As I understand it, the D7000 NEF is new and third party vendors aren't able to open them.  Well I don't know, UFRaw just opens it no problem.

Times Square

This is everyday Times Square.
I guess if you were to wear heels these high, you would have to walk like her, just to balance.

UPDATE:

SCENES FROM A PHOTO SHOOT

I just got my 28mm f/2 lens with me. Do I wish I have my 80-200 with me at the time? ( Or my D3x for that matter?  Just kidding.)  Yes, but it's highly unlikely I will carry that pig of a lens with me without knowing what exactly I am going to shoot. With the 28mm f/2 I can't have the reach I want and I totally lose out on the auto department, no metering, no auto exposure and no auto focusing.

Lunch With My Canon F-1

The F-1, like any great cameras, doesn't make me a better photographer, but it sure gives my arms a great workout. Thanks F-1.

How to Name a Movie in Hong Kong

One word: homonym.  "Let Me In" becomes "吸血兒凶,"  a word play between "murder suspect" and "a child who kills" or "an ominous child."  By the way, a stern warning: if you are a bona fide movie snob, don't watch this American re-make because anything American is just shallow, let alone an American re-make, that would be too crass for your refined European taste.  Watch the original,  without English subtitles.  And better still read the original novel in Swedish.

Sunday Breakfast

Nikkor 28mm f/2 at f/2

Random Shots

Double the trouble.

It's a pain to get rid of the dust.  The negative wasn't exactly clean to begin with.  The entire roll was uncut, which was kind of OKAY (or even preferred if you know they just chop it off somewhere), unsleeved which was not, and stuffed into an envelope.  I wonder if she wore a  pair of lint free gloves to handle the negatives.  I know I didn't but I expect she does.  Oh well, I deserve it as I was too lazy to find a "good" developer.  I might as well shoot exclusively in black and white.  Tank developed by myself and so I got nobody to blame about but myself.  I, me and myself take all the credits and all the blames.

First Day of School

First day of school, that's if I remember correctly. The top one is scanned by yours truly. I think the more they do with the scan the worse they do. If they were to leave it alone, it will be so much better. The film soft gradation is gone when they boost the contrast and (over)sharpen the file. It just butchers the film.

 

42nd Street

Gyro Corner

Kodak 160VC.  Nikon FE.  Nikkor 28mm f/2

 The bottom one is scanned by myself using the sucky Epson Perfection V500 Photo.  It's straight from the scanner, well except to scale it to the smallish 1818 width to match the paid scanned file from some operation in midtown.
I can understand how I can do such a sloppy job but I just can't understand why people who got paid can do such a sloppy job, am I expecting too much?  I look at the negative, they just chop it off somewhere and stuff them in one single sleeve, all 36 exposures in one single sleeve.  If it's really you got what you paid for then I don't know how much I have to pay in order to get a modicum degree of professionalism and anal retentiveness from these operators.

Print Smut is Dead

With the passing of Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse, it really marks the end of print smut.  The Internet practically killed makes Penthouse, the mass publication that helped teenage boys worldwide better understand the female anatomy, irrelevant.  Is Penthouse still around, do people still read it?  I doubt it.

Austerity Measures Suck

I am with the French on this one.  People should be able to retire at 55 if they so choose.  That's what I remember, at the age of 55, people can retire and live a normal life happily ever after, the end.  Now it's more like 65 or 75.  And basically you work till you drop dead so they don't even have to pay out any pension benefits at all.  That's brilliant.  So more reason to burn more cars in the street so long as there is still gasoline which I read the supply is like in the Mad Max movies: fossil fuel is in short supply and almost non existent in France.  Wow, dooms day scenario now.  You know what's worse, even Lady Gaga had to cancel her concert in Paris.  People need entertainments, people need Lady Gaga especially in tough times like now.

Thomas' Wife Keeps Scandal Alive, Thank You Very Much

Remember Clarence Thomas?  Just when I thought my Coke is safe, Bang, Ginni Thomas is helping me remember what could have put on a can of Coke ....

I was utterly mesmerized by Thomas' Supreme Court nomination.  It was a televised spectacle solely because of all the crazy stuff Anita Hill accuses Thomas does and says; there is this quote from her testimony that I can't get it out of my dirty mind:  "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?"  Ever since learning this quote, I always check my Coke twice.  Anybody who saw or read the testimony couldn't possibly forget about it.  Now after some 19 years, his wife Virginia Thomas, certainly didn't forget, called Anita Hill, at 7:31 in the morning to ask for an apology.  After 19 years, at 7.31 in the morning!  Is she crazy or what?  I have always believed in Anita Hill and now it just reinforces my belief.  The Thomases are just nuts.

nytimes.com

Micro-Nikkor 55mm f2.8

Nikon D70, handheld shot at close range.  No tripod for any 1:2 micro shots.  They kind of underexposed maybe a bit, but I don't like whiteout.

Micro-Nikkor 55mm

I am not shooting any micro with the lens.  But the color and contrast are pretty nice.  At least I don't find it any better or inferior to my liking.

Details:  Nikon D70, manual focus and exposure.  A larger viewfinder and LCD definitely help in this situation.  Metering with non-CPU lens help too, but I suspect in the end, it's going to be my own judgment.  But I get by so far.  I like my D70.

Storm 2010 - The Aftermath

HC-110 1:49 for 8 minutes at about 68F.

Apple

Apple tops expectations and proves once again you pay a premium for anything that has that shiny Apple logo. Anyway, it's all about the iPad now. As iPad is underperforming in the market, it kind of sends the stock price on a tailspin in after market trading. But, I am sure the stock will bounce back very quickly. Because Apple just rules in the stock market.

Nikon D7000

Let the Nikon D7000 shitstorm begin.

There is hardly any camera launch without any online incident. Invariably there are some problems, perceived or real. As it is, there is a myriad of problems experienced by early adopters of the newly launched Nikon D7000. Some of them are subjective while some aren't quite.

Images are soft.
Well, what can I say, this can be subjective. If the image is soft it can be a few things. Lens is no good. Camera shake. Focus is off. Most lenses are good. Unless you jerk your camera when depressing the shutter release button, I don't see how you can have camera shake and I don't subscribe to the notion that you should shoot with a tripod, like all the time. If I "have" to shoot with a tripod then I shoot medium/large format. If focus is off then yeah, the image can look like poop. Some experts suggest it maybe because of the densely packed pixels, 16MP in a DX sensor, that may cause diffraction even at f/8. Well that would be a disaster if I have to shoot at f/5.6 or larger in order to just get sharp images. I refuse to believe that.

Camera won't autofocus.
Well this is either or, so there is nothing subjective about it. Some owners of course got the insulting response like did you turn on AF? You have to be an idiot to turn off the AF and complain the camera can't AF. People say it's oxidation on the contacts. So cleaning the contacts should help right? I don't know I don't have one. My D70 don't ever have this contact problem, so lucky me.

Dead pixels
Everybody wants a perfect camera with perfect pixels. I remember getting an IBM Thinkpad with a dead pixel on the screen. It was very upsetting. It was bullshit. Thank goodness I don't have to pay for it. I would be upset too if I find hot pixel with my $1200 brand spanking new camera even if somebody pays for it.

The rest of the complaints are AF speed; AF speed in video and loud AF noise in video. These I consider understandable. Maybe I shoot "sports" with my D70 so I don't expect much. If you were to shoot for Sports Illustrated then perhaps a D3s should be your weapon of choice. As to AF speed and noise I kind of half expected that so I don't take issue with that. But it's OKAY if others do.

I remember when D70 first came out there was this whole issue about moire effect. I was able to look past it and enjoy the camera until this day. With my declining vision, I wish my D70 has a bigger better LCD screen, better noise handling, meter with AI, AIS lenses, a bump in the mega pixel department, a 1080P video mode. So the D7000 seems to fit the bill very well. I don't upgrade my digital gear every year so I proceed with caution.

Nikon D7000

With good high ISO performance, now it's all too compelling to just be a closet shooter-stay at home and play with your camera and large aperture lenses. Nobody is going out to shoot any real pictures, like fall foliage or such, myself included.

Nikon D7000 Unboxing

Reported by Nikonrumors, some BestBuy is breaking the sales embargo before Oct 17 and selling the Nikon D7000 today. I guess embargo is made to be broken at least according to BestBuy. More straight from the camera jpeg's will be trickling in in the coming few weeks. Let's see how good the camera actually is.

update 9/9/2011
My own D7000 unboxing.

我只在乎你

Maudlin love song.

Big Mellon

Neverending Mooncake

Still eating mooncake from years ago...

The latest:  All gone now.

Hostess Cheongsam by Louis Vuitton

Finally.  The adored acknowledges the adoring.  Louis Vuitton, or simply known as LV, long been a favorite of China's nouveau-riche, does a Chinese themed collection.  Marc Jacobs of Louis Vuitton, in an effort to brown nose or for a clientèle that is too eager to acknowledge and pay tribute the newly rich and powerful, delivers an allegedly campy re-imagination of the traditional Chinese attire that is dare I say only fits for a Wan Chai hostess.  The clownish costumey collection is akin to American Chinese food--any self respecting traditional Chinese won't go near them and yet some may consider it acceptable or even clever and exciting.  Who knows?

The other pieces on this collection seem more palatable as in cheerfully ridiculous or campy as Mr. Jacobs intended.  But when it comes to the iconic cheongsam it just looks god awful horrendous.  But that's what fashion is about I suppose.  Or maybe, just maybe the whole collection is a fuck-you to China, much like the Nobel Prize committee giving the peace prize to Liu.

For genuinely highly sexualized cheongsam, I would check out Maggie Cheung's In the Mood for Love (2000).  The cheongsam there could have won the Best Supporting Actress role if only it was nominated in that category.

picture from style.com copyright belongs to its rightful owners.

How Old is an Elderly?

I came across this video from the usual places, one being at ESWN.  Maybe people are calling me an elderly man already, who knows?  Hong Kong has this youthful culture I guess, if you are not in your 20s, you are just old or an elderly.

Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit and Wifi Messes Up (RTL 8180L)

Initially it worked like a charm.  But then some where along those automatic upgrades and what not, the wifi became so unreliable that it could hardly be used--it can't be connected, it can't be authenticated, it kept disconnecting.  Basically it can't be used.  I had to resort to get a cross wire RJ-45 to join to my notebook wifi connection in order to fix it.  To make a long story short.  I have to go to realtek's super duper web site and download their Windows 64 bit inf file.  I got the ndiswrapper program in my Ubuntu and the rest is just picking the downloaded inf driver file which couldn't be easier.  But I really don't understand why the original Ubuntu or Linux module doesn't work over time.  It got to do with maybe an upgraded kernel or something because it worked initially.  Now I got my wi-fi back, and the signal seems to be more accurate instead of the like 126% that got shown previously.

update 10/6/2010:
Things just went downhill.  But I stopped it from sliding down further.
Again for reasons I couldn't explain and I hate it when I couldn't explain what happened.  The wifi stopped working again.  I reverted it back to rtl8180 but the connection was extremely iffy.  Very slow and sometimes the connection is no good.  I tried to use WEP still no good.  I wonder.  Because like I said it worked out of the box up until a certain point.

In the end, I reverted back to ndiswrapper using the Windows 64 bit driver, namely netrtw.inf.  I was able to get a realistic reading of the signal instead of something like 126% but poor connection, I got like 68% but pretty good speed considering it's a 11Mb b connection

here is my sudo iwconfig wlan0


IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"redacted"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:21:29:8A:F3:75
          Bit Rate=11 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:F400-2D6C-EFAE-76F5-16D2-1751-76A6-A290-C249-8E81-DE00-ECF8-43B1-78F6-C312-5B90   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:67/100  Signal level:-53 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:2019800144   Missed beacon:0


iwlist scan

lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:21:29:8A:F3:75
                    ESSID:"redacted"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:78/100  Signal level:-46 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                              24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

(note: screen capture on opening window doesn't work ... sigh, either entire desktop or selected area.  what's wrong with these people?)

If I were using the rtl8180 driver sudo iwconfig wlan0 shows I have Encryption key:off which doesn't seem right.  My guess is WPA doesn't work or work well with the native rtl8180 driver, actually the same can be said with WEP or no security.  In other words, it doesn't work well at all, at least that's my experience for the past few days.  The Windows netrtw.inf isn't flawless, there were a couple of times I couldn't get it installed with ndiswrapper but most of the time it takes it all right.  So it's very very weird.  Anyway, I rebooted the system a couple of times and it still works.

IF after a few days, it messes up again, then perhaps I would get a new PCI card for wifi G that supports WPA or other more advanced encryption technologies--does it make sense?  I guess it doesn't.

UPDATE 12/29/2010
Just to give an update here.  The wifi is still very much iffy meaning sometimes it just doesn't connect and sometimes it just drops the connection for no good reason that I know of.  If you need a solid connection then it is not really working.  One of these days I may just need to spend a few dollars to upgrade the wifi card.  The router seems to be fine as all of my, okay not all as my good old Thinkpad R51 does drop connection like once a week or so, but definitely not as temperamental as the Ubuntu.  Other devices, handhelds and notebooks work pretty flawlessly.  I am on Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit now.

Ultraman Cola