The Hateful Eight 70mm, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The big news about The Hateful Eight is of course it was shot on 65mm film stock and transferred to 70mm print for projection.  Just like The Sound of Music or the good old days.  I believe the film was shot anamorphic meaning the image is actually squeezed vertically, and later un-squeezed (on to the 70mm print or during projection?) to make it even wider at 2.76:1 instead of the usual cinematic 2:39:1.

I went to see it in a movie theater by the Lincoln Square in Manhattan, which I think is one of the best.  It also houses one of the best IMAX theaters in the nation, or so I experience, or read and led to believe.

The few things I notice is the film is really film and by that I mean it evokes my early memories of seeing film with warts and all.  One thing I notice is that it isn't as wide or big as I thought it would be.  It is supposed to be wider than what's out there but I don't feel it that way.  The movie screen doesn't seem that gigantic or wide to begin with.  The flicker is pretty obvious right in the Overture before the start of the actual movie; and when the audio is off or low I can hear the sound of the projection which I think is something buried deep in my childhood memory and suddenly resurrected.  The outdoor blizzard scenes don't seem as sharp as it should be or I want it to be perhaps it's the nature of the medium or the scenes or a combination of them.  But the indoor shots seem sharp or sharp enough just not digitally sharp.  It has a rich quality to it.  The audio is great and I never notice any out of sync with the picture even though I tried hard to look at the lips too see if the dialogues are out of sync or not, and they aren't.  The film actually comes with intermission which I don't recall I ever experienced except for double features I saw eons ago.

So what is old is new again.  Film seems to be the next frontier, to be discovered, tamed and enjoyed once again.

By the way, the film is typical Tarantino, that's just another way of saying it got plenty of dialogues and gores, actually not so much for the latter by my standard.  Do I like it?  I like it all right but off the top of my head I am still more blown away by Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill--I saw Reservoir Dog on VHS too long ago to remember anything.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thank goodness I only paid 6.75 for the ticket.  The movie is all right, very typical J.J.Abrams, very mediocre.

Jones Beach, Long Island

Nikon D700 and Nikkor 16-35 f/4

Year 2015

Books I actually finished reading, not in any particular order

* Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin
The more things change, the more things stay the same.  Why not read a classic?  A Chinese classic.  I bought this 2-book edition way back when I visited Taiwan many years ago.  Then it took me still another few years to actually begin to read it from beginning to end.  This epic of a novel is credited to Cao Xueqin, a Qing aristocrat who wrote it in the 18th century and is believed to be largely semi autobiographical with characters and events heavily drawn from his own family's decline.  This edition comprises the usual 120 chapters.  By some account, the last 40 chapters were written, allegedly by, someone other than Cao.  Or some argue they were compiled and edited from lost and found Cao's manuscripts.  I will leave the detective work to the Redologists to figure that out.  This is an encyclopedia of sort of all things Chinese.  You can find nuanced accounts on anything from feast to funeral, occult to opera, and everything in between.  Not to mention the rich tapestry of characters, the achingly beautiful, the comically vulgar. the perennial scheming, and the incorrigibly licentious. Despite my shortcoming of the language, history and everything in general, I find the novel not as difficult as I imagined, at least on the surface.  The writing, maybe except the poetry, is not too difficult to understand even for someone like myself.  The premise of the story is laughably ridiculous and oddly fascinating as once upon a time there is a stone who got left out and left behind from mending the sky.  The stone turns to some demigod and saves a withering plant in heaven by watering it.  The plant survives, prospers and takes the form of a female body.  To return the benevolent act of watering, the plant vows to pay back the stone with all her tears when they reincarnate as humans on earth.  And reincarnate they do, and hence the beginning of the story of the stone.  It's redundant and utterly under qualified--that's a truism and of itself being redundant, on my part to heap praise on the novel that is considered one of the the four best classics ever written yet it doesn't stop me from saying this:  I found the novel emotionally engaging, utterly fascinating and ultimately a joy to read.

* Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee

*World War Z, Max Brooks

* Little Failure: A Memoir, Gary Shteyngart

Supercross Cup 2015

I was hoping that it would rain and got nasty.  Alas, that didn't happen.  It was more like diffused sunlight.  No hard shadow.  It was actually quite ideal for photo taking especially if you are into soft skin tone and all.  But it could also mean flat and lack of contrast lighting.  It becomes a challenge when I want to shoot at 1/2000s and maintain an ISO of 800 or so as light fades in mid afternoon and under the shade.

My technique, I do have some, is
(1) to shoot high shutter speed at 1/1000 or above.  Aperture f/2.8.  Try to maintain low ISO.
(2) to shoot low shutter speed at 1/125 or slower and pan, Aperture can be as small as the camera thinks it should be.  Lowest ISO possible.
(3) to shoot with a flash, rear sync, pan at 1/125s and f/8.  I use my Sunpak 120J at 1/8 of manual power, ISO 400.  Add or remove power for taste via settings, just like cooking.

My D7000 and Speedlight were basically destroyed by last year's cross because of water damage.  I paid a hefty fee for Nikon to fix them.

The D7000 is more responsive to the D700.  The shutter is definitely faster.  But, there is always a but, the D7000 seems to have a smaller buffer so it's fast but after a burst of some shots, say four, I can't shoot any more as the camera struggles to clear the buffer for the next shot.  The D700 is a bit slower and I haven't experienced similar episode with the D700 yet.  I like the D700 tone and color better.  The D7000 feels a bit flat.  The D7000 probably can use some post processing.  But.

The pictures could be found across the usual social media.  I don't want to subject my readers to further eyesores.

....

Both of my D7000 and D700 are capable cameras, and they can shoot reasonably high frame rate, around 5 I think.  I shot 1960 frames between 10:30 to 3:30.  Imagine if I have a D4s, I can't imagine how many frames I have to go through when editing.  It's just a nightmare.  The D700 and the D7000 files are all that big even when shooting raw NEF files.  The new Nikon prosumer models are now 24MB to 36MB, more pixels more storage and I guess more processing power.

PSAM

Everybody takes photographs in his own way.  There is really no right or wrong ways.  Of course, I am just lying.

For most of my cycling shots, I prefer to shoot at 1/1000s or higher; if I can shoot at 1/2000s or 1/3000s, that's even merrier unless of course when I want to pan my shots then a 1/125s would be acceptable or even desirable.

Most of my shots are done with my 80-200 or 70-200 lens.  In terms of f-stop I have no problem using f/2.8 so I can have higher shutter speed and shallow depth of field, not necessarily bokeh for bokeh's sake but to isolate the subject.

I used to shoot almost exclusively in aperture priority(A or Av, not adult video) whether action or non action.  Now I shoot a mix of shutter priority(S or Tv, not television), aperture priority(A) and manual exposure(M).  For the life of me, I could not figure out why someone shoots in program mode all the time.  Unless of course you don't care much about shutter speed or aperture or ISO or their combination.  There are situations when shooting program is kind of acceptable I guess.  Shots you don't care, like shots of family members or friends.  Or shots that shutter speed or aperture or depth of field don't matter.  Or when I shoot fill flash.  Anyway.  Seriously, I can't fathom myself shooting in program mode most of the time.  I can't give up controlling at least one parameter.  I control the aperture and let the camera control the shutter.  I control the shutter and I let the camera control the aperture.  I can't let the camera control every possible parameter even with some idea of where those parameters would be.  Shooting manual gives the most consistent result and sometimes it's really the preferred way assuming the lighting doesn't change the duration you use the same setting from shot to shot.

Of course, it's your camera, your pictures, you shoot however way you desire.

Hai-Tien Chorus Live at the Flushing Public Library on Main Street

This was shot with my D7000 at 24fps 1/50 and f/3.5.  I suppose I should have or could have shot it at f/4.  I thought people in general like their video bright.  I put the camera on my trusty tripod and ball head.  Not the best for video but hey what's the best anyway?

For stills, I use the D700.  I brought my two Sunpak 120J with two light stands and radio transmitter and receivers--I tend to overdo things.  In the end, I just used one 120J for a handful of shots in the end, powered by the power pack.  It was a minor struggle as I had to juggle with the camera and flash settings.  I guess one always has to struggle when shooting events and there is little time for preparation or prior experience.

The video is just straight out of the camera.  The 20 minutes recording time is not too bad, it's an inconvenience but not a show stopper.  Again, I accept that and work around it.  I don't have one single song that lasts long than that hard limit.  Even I didn't know the program details prior but it wasn't too bad.

The 20-35 is wide so I have no problem taking in the whole stage.  On the other hand, the 70-200 is too long especially on a DX body for this purpose.  The 70-200 was with my D700 for stills.  I did use the 16-35 for the group shot in the end and some super wide shots close the stage shots.  The only drawback of shooting the 20-35 is that there is no way I can zoom close to the performers if I want to.  The 24-70 would help.  Perhaps it's an advantage not to zoom so there is no distraction.  You just put a camera in front of the even and let it unfold, my kind of video taking or story telling.

Shotwell on Ubuntu 15.10

Something never changes.

Shotwell is still excruciatingly slow in importing photos.  May as well give up being some sort of photo manager.

As bad as Nikon's software is, the Nikon import is lightning fast.

Ubuntu 15.10

Somehow I never learned.

I had the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS running for a few months, with warts and all, like the most dreaded random reboots.  So again I forgot or ignored the pain I ran through and decided to upgrade to 15.10.  There isn't any direct upgrade path from 14.04 to 15.10 so I had to upgrade to 15.04 first.  And in the process something somehow wasn't done right, I got problems with stability and dependency and something was not installed in the course of the upgrade.  So in the end, the computer won't restart properly or booting into Linux.

Learning, surprise, from my last experience, I figured it's more time effective just to re-install or install the OS from an USB thumb drive than trouble shooting it forever.  So I downloaded the ISO image of 15.10 and made it into a bootable thumbdrive.

I was able to reboot into 15.10.  I thought I had an absolute clean install but I guess not.  I kept my partition as it was and thought I installed 15.10 over whatever I had.  When installing 15.10 it did say I had 15.04 which I guess was actually "installed."  I guess I had absolutely no luck with 15.04.

I experienced one random reboot after 15.10 in the few hours that I was using it.  I almost think it's a hardware issue now.  So it is pretty hopeless.

PDN PhotoPlus Expo 2015 Write-up

I don't remember since when the name became what it is today.  I think it used to be shorter.

I wonder what would happen if one day Nikon or Canon decide not to be part of the expo.  They are the tent poles of the event.  Sony actually might be just having as big a presence as Nikon or Canon, especially in the last two years.  Fuji sticks around.  And I don't think Kodak bothers to show up anymore.  Leica got a respectable show booth and gets a bit bigger every year.  It is somewhat comparable to their brand allure.  I am surprised to find Hasselblad but their presence seems a disservice to the brand.  But it is what it is.

Nikon basically provides the most generous display of merchandize for users to play with.

I hand tested or played with the new 24-70 as well as the 200-500.  The 200-500 is slightly outside my comfort zone.  And I wonder how useful it would be for me practically speaking--I am not practical so it doesn't bother me even it's totally impractical.  The thing is big but not too unwieldy to hand hold.  And actually with VR, I think you can acquire pretty sharp images all and all even at 500mm.  The price tag in relation to all things Nikkor is practically free--I know it sounds obscene but if you look at the pro lens price tag, they are sure around $2500.  The 24-70 is a 24-70 and I am not particularly turned on by it.  I guess everybody shoots differently.  My lens combination has always been the 20-35 and 80-200 or 16-35 and 70-200 or some variations of them since last year.  I find them most useful for my liking.  Most of the time I carry one camera and if I feel a bit insecure then I carry two.  I don't know how the 200-500 would fit into my shooting MO.  If the lighting condition is sub optimal you may need a better camera body that can give you better ISO performance than what I have now.  Talking about camera, I am again impressed with the D4s.  I shot mostly between the D4s and the D810 at the expo.  And I have to say I like the image on the D4s' LCD screen better.  It is by no means scientific or objective at all as I hardly go through the settings of each camera.  The exposure and the color seem better on the D4s: no blown highlight and color is vivid and saturated, again on the LCD.  Silly as it sounds I am really sold on the D4s.  I read somewhere the sensor on the D810 is actually better, so what do I know?  My next camera upgrade hopefully is a D4s or a D810.  Maybe my next single digit D camera is the D5 or D5s so it dovetails with my Nikon F5 from the film day.  I can keep dreaming, eh?  Camera choice for me is really a personal choice, it goes beyond specification and rationality.

I probably regret not having my D700 sensor cleaned at $40.  Oh well.  Just don't shoot at f/16.

PhotoPlus Expo 2015

Viewfinders and other ramblings.

I am old and old school.  I always prefer an optical view finder.  And honestly I think some of it are just being old habit dies hard.  I grew up with optical view finder.  LCD live view in the back of a camera is good but only if on a tripod with enough time to fine tune, zoom in and adjust given that I am farsighted now it's just hard for me to see or read up close.  So maybe an EVF isn't such a bad idea after all.  Except maybe the battery as a whole sucks compared to most of my optical view finder cameras which can keep going and going like more than a 1,000 frames with chimping in between shots.  Part of the full frame allure is in addition to having more sensor real estate and hence likely better quality the viewfinder is just better than those from a DX camera, again, all things being equal.  I also find it oddly liberating and inherently cool to use an add-on optical viewfinder on a hot or cold shoe.  Sometimes it's a leap of faith in composition and focusing but it certainly is fun to use, you just have to free your mind and ignore the fact that you're going to waste a lot of frames or worse film.  I have one of those for my Canon P rangefinder and it certainly was fun to use.  I don't remember the last time I used it, probably five years ago or so.  And the camera still worked flawlessly even not in the best of conditions--I certainly am too cheap to give it any TLA or CLA after I plucked it from eBay.  I was and am still surprised how the camera holds up all these years.  The last time I shot with it I actually developed the negative hands-on myself.

ZERO Halliburton, smh

Where is the proof reader?  Where is the quality control?  It's just sad.

2015 North South Lake

Maybe the first time we went to the North South Lake area was in 2010.

Photography is Kind of Physically Demanding

Two warriors sparring.  The "Chinese" or "Mongolian" wrestling.  "Shuai Jiao"

This is the third or fourth time I felt exhausted after shooting an event.  The first was the Red Hook Crit in Brooklyn, the second time was the Red Bull mini velodrome and the third was the UCI downhill in Windham.  I can understand why some people opt for the smaller sized mirror less cameras.

For most of the shots I took.  It was done with the following:-

Nikon D700, with battery.
Nikon D700 motor drive, with battery.
Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR with hood.
CB mini bracket
mini ball head for attaching the flash
Sunpak 120J with 4 AA battery cells and Paramount household sync cable to the D700
Sunpak TR-Pak II and 6 sub-C pack, power cable to the flash, mostly sat on the floor.

I was holding this rig on eye level most of the time from 10AM  to 5PM.  And toward the end of the day, my wrist was hurting my right rib cage was hurting, my neck was hurting.  And my right eye eyesight wasn't getting any better.

Every shooting experience is somewhat unique.  Shooting cycling, especially in the velodrome is somewhat predictable as they almost always come back to you.  Shooting downhill is like "once in a life time experience, hey it is gone it's not coming back."  Tennis and martial arts are somewhat unpredictable.  I guess if you are familiar with the Kung Fu form routine then it helps.  I am not familiar with the routine.  Composition and focusing are always a challenge when subjects move and move fast.

Portrait

This has no production value whatsoever.
Light between him and the wall.  Light in front of him slightly to the right and above the camera.
The lens is an oldie, Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 manual focus lens set at f/11 and shutter at 1/100s.

Picture Composition

Despite all the rules out there, my composition is largely or entirely dictated by the AF points of my camera.  If my AF points are mostly in the center then my subject is in the center.

Back in the days when manual focusing is the norm, you have a focusing screen with rangefinder split, micro prism ring and matte screen focusing aid and it's relatively easy to off center focus as the focusing aid is a piece of real estate on the optical viewfinder instead of just a focusing point.

The current Nikon models provide a 51 AF points which is kind of enough but composition can benefit if more points are present.

PS:  I just don't believe in or do focus and recompose.

Winner, Quitter and Loser

The winner wins, the quitter quits and the loser doesn't do anything.  Complaining and whining all day but doesn't do anything.  I think that's the worse.  If a person quits it just shows he knows maybe something is not worth pursuing and cut the loss.  A quitter can be smart and decisive.  Most people tend to make quitter a loser.  But I think there should be a difference.

FM Radio Trigger

I finally broke down and bought a set of radio trigger/receiver.  This set comes with one trigger and two receivers.

Between feeding your family and buying more photographic gears, sometimes you just have to make the rational choice: buying more but cheaper equipment but never stop buying.

This is a pretty generic trigger set and seems to be branded depending on who is selling them.  If it's sold by cowboy it is called cowboy.  This set I got is branded Neewer and has four different channels which I have no reason not to believe despite not checking each and every channel.  There are similar models that have sixteen channels.  Wow.  The quality isn't great but it isn't bad either.  I need to jiggle the battery trap door more than I like to open and close it.  In the first hour that I used them I managed to drop the receivers twice from the desk top four feet above the floor; it could be the same one or it could be once for each.  Nothing was broken.  So that's good news.  Overall they seem pretty well built or well built enough, no sarcasm.  The mis spelling of "Tigger" is just endearing and somehow assures you that it's honestly made by engineers who couldn't care less about spelling English correctly.

I tested them on my Nikon D700 and Sunpak 120J.  They just worked.  Just for the fun of it.  I also put the trigger on my Yashica Mat 124 G (next my Hasselblad 500C/M).  I used the provided PC sync cord plugged into the PC socket of the Yashica.  And it just worked.  The receiver also has the PC socket so if your flash or strobe doesn't have the hotshoe it would work with the sync cord.  And they certainly work on my Sunpak 120J that doesn't come with the hotshoe.  It's the little thing that warms my heart.  It's the little thing that enables and enchants.  No, you don't need line of sight between the trigger and the receivers for them to talk to one and other.

If you look for fancy features, you should look else where.  This set is only $16.05 shipped free from a warehouse in NJ.  And they just work.

UPDATE:
10/3/2015
Yes, it does work with the Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, with the 80mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens PC socket.  People who think you need to have some electrical or electronic camera is mistaken.  The $16.05 can be cheaper than a sync cable actually.  The PC socket totally works.

Electrical Works

I had very little idea how electrical appliances work.   In secondary school I took some wood and metal work class that involved lathe and drill.  I am glad (I still have my 10 fingers)  I did I mean not that I had any choice at all.  Back then it was all decided by the school and you just accepted the arrangement.  No question asked.   Looking back I wish I had known  more electrical stuff.  I hardly know anything about voltage, watt, amp, joules or watt per second that kind of things.   I think it is really a handicap.  As a little kid, one of or actually my only electrical primitive toy was a motor.  Sometimes a propeller or fan was attached and I thought it was fun.   And then there was this motor boat but I don't think I ever got its maiden voyage in any open water or water bigger than the toilet basin or any plastic pail in the bathroom.   Some of my more gifted, intellectually and every each way, friends were playing more serious motor model boats powered by engine.  Or even building PCs in the late 70s.  I think the guy was 14 or 15 if not younger.  I was and still light years behind them.

I am trying to build a battery pack for the Sunpak 120J, so Google is my friend.

Battereez

Sourced from B&H http://www.bhphotovideo.com/FrameWork/Product_Resources/SourceBook35mm/03flashesMeters.pdf

I am sold!

This tops carrying my blackberry on my belt.  NO doubt.

Sunpak Auto Pro 120J

Macbook Pro Upgrade

UPDATE:
9/18/2015
There are issues.  Every morning, when the lid is opened, the MBP fails to operate normally.  In one instance, it gives me the "recovery" screen, in another a folder with a question mark, and yet another an actual login screen--I thought I had it fixed.  But after logging in, I can't open applications, and "ls" is not recognized as a command at the command window.  In all instances I do some sort of restart if I can do the menu if not, the button, the machine is able to boot up with no problem.
I suspect it has something to do with waking up from "hibernation" or some deeper "sleep."   As the MBP always comes back to life between shorter sleep or what I think is shorter sleep:-close and open the lid.  This problem only happens during longer stretch of "sleep"--technically I am not sure if it's actually sleep or hibernation at all.  I reset the Energy saving screen, I can always hit the reset even I don't change anything.  I did the permission verification, command option p r.  But still not solving this wake up issue.  Oh well.

9/18/2015
Just reinstalled Yosemite from Apple.  It was like I wiped out the SSD, it was just the OS, the programs and data are intact.  So far so good but you or I don't know what's going to happen overnight.

9/21/2015
This "SEEMS" to solve the problem.  Uncheck Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
I read on Apple's doc.  it "seems" to suggest if you don't have a spinning hard drive then it doesn't affect anything or only affect some external attached hard drive.  But in my case it does seem to affect something even I have a SSD and the system reports as such.

10/9/2015
The struggle is real.  I guess the above Energy Saving setting doesn't really matter.  As it continued to give me trouble.  The more I read about it the more I feel like I don't know.  At some point I don't know if the MBP actually goes to sleep or not.  As the screen goes dark doesn't mean it's sleeping, that's kind of news to me.  So my problem could be the MBP never goes to sleep instead of going to a deep sleep and can't wake up.  So that's some crazy thought to me.  I proceeded to disable two programs or service, one is a virtual machine and the other is Time Machine.  And again that seems to really take care of the problem.

NOTE:  Not all Macs are created the same.  Not all of them are upgradable.  Mine is an old mid 2012 15" MacBook Pro unibody with non-retina display.

I upgraded the RAM to 16GB immediately after I bought it used or should I say refurbished directly from Apple.(Apple officially says the max is 8GB but I can install 8GB on each slot for a grand total of 16GB)

My pictures have been eating up the 500GB stock drive so I have decided to upgrade the MBP. (a real reason and an excuse to find some more distractions)

After much reading, I have decided to upgrade (in terms of performance but not capacity which is a downgrade actually) the hard drive to a 240GB SSD, bought another 2.5" 1TB SATA 6Mbs 7200RPM drive and put it to where the Superdrive is.  The Superdrive doesn't get much or any use at all.  Anyway, I got an enclosure for the Superdrive so at least I can use it when I really need it (unlikely but).  I ordered everything from OWC or macsales.com.  The site provides the most comprehensive instructions in text and video, as far as I know.  With that being said I don't think it's a total step by step hold your hand guide, especially when it comes to software, so you do it at your own risk, as always.

Personally I think the physical aspect like opening the case, removing and putting everything back in isn't too bad.  It's not easy as my eyesight is failing.  The tools provided by OWC aren't great but good, better than disposable I guess.  Just make sure you have some print-outs or another computer/screen to follow the instructions while you are actually doing it.

Once I placed my order, OWC emailed me and stated that I can call or email for support.  I took up that offer to question or confirm my understanding of the whole process.  At that point I had watched and read up quite a bit but still I had questions--when should I physically remove the existing or old HD and put the SSD?  I thought I should do it the toward the end.  I want to make sure my Superdrive slot can take the SATA 3 or 6G hard drive, there are some conflicting or confusing information out there.  Is it actually doable to specify the SSD just for the OS and programs installation?  Because I am cheap I bought only the 240GB SSD which is only half of what the existing hard drive.  So many questions!

OWC answered some but not all.  And I am still a bit confused as I have never done this before.  To my surprise OWC actually suggests to put the SSD right in and install the OS X from then on from scratch.  I was like for real?  You know how sometimes support answers questions.  It's like never complete.

I went ahead anyway even though I am not 100% sure what I am doing.

I do have a latest copy of Time Machine backup.
Power down the MBP
Out the HD and in the SSD.
Out the Superdrive, in the data doubler with the 7200rpm hard drive.
Put back everything

Once I attach the AC power cable the computer actually come back to life even the lid is closed so that's a surprise.
It shows a folder with a question mark as if I have the answer.  My response ...
Power down and up again and per instruction, do a command R (I was expecting it to go to the 4 options Disk Utilities of whatever is called screen).  But instead it goes to ...
It goes to Internet recovery, which I read about before but didn't expect that (that's why I don't fully understand when the OWC support suggests me to install the new drive first, when the heck it gets the utilities to install or recover as the old drive is detached)
It gives me a list of wifi network, I picked mine and entered the password
It then count down with a globe spinning for a good 15 min I think.
It gave me the screen I expected with Disk Utility as the 4th choice.
I went ahead and formatted the SSD and my 1 TB hard drive.  Things began to look good meaning doing things I expected.

I backed out Disk Utilities and chose Reinstall OS X
But crap it gave me Lion as the OS X to continue,  I want Yosemite!  (I think it gave me Lion as this was the OS that shipped with the machine.  Yosemite was a free upgrade)  I don't want to do Lion and then Yosemite again,
So I USB re-attached my time machine hard drive thinking OK maybe it can re-install Yosemite from my Time Machine
But that's not how it works I guess.
I restarted again

I chose to re-install OS X, and holy cow now it gave me Yosemite but before giving it to me it asked for Apple ID and password, reasonable enough.  I think that's the way it goes if I am not connected to the old drive or using Time Machine.  It looks like I am re-installing the OS from Apple's server directly.  I thought it would take forever given I am connected to Wifi ... but it was faster than I thought.

It took some 30 minutes to install (not counting migration) and toward the end it actually prompted me to migrate the data,  So reinstalling the OS and migration can be one process actually or two but it doesn't really matter.  I chose Time Machine but immediately I knew it was not going to work as it didn't give me the choice to pick what to reinstall and actually said I didn't have enough space to put it to my SSD after some calculating.

So I plugged in my old Macintosh drive I just removed using the enclosure and do the migration again--no need to reboot and back out, the old Macintosh would show up as a choice when plugged in , just like the Time Machine drive.  I had the good sense to buy the USB 3 enclosure and put it together while re-installing Yosemite.

The MBP saw the drive and I picked it.  It prompted for a password, that made sense as I don't want anybody to just use the hard drive.  And with this drive it allowed me to pick what to migrate, like users, applications, network settings and pictures.  It took its time to calculate the size of each available option to migrate.  And Pictures I un-select as it took up most of the HDD space.  And that's it.  It took maybe another hour or less to migrate.  I suspect if I don't do the migration, it would be so much faster just for the installation of Yosemite.

As I am typing this, the MBP just rebooted--or restarted, it seems like people no longer say reboot?  The menu says restart.

Despite the migration, I still have to enter a bunch of IDs and passwords like those for Facetime, Apple.  And the wallpaper is gone and defaulted to the stock Yosemite wall paper--which I think makes sense as the wallpaper JPEG file is with the old hard drive and now gone.

Success.