B&H

You'd think B&H knows what they are talking about when it comes to photography.  Wrong.  If you are confused with Nikon's alphabet soup of lens specification and thinks B&H can help you navigate the treacherous lenscape that's Nikon's lens lineup, you are out of luck here.  Because B&H is just as confused as you. Or apparently their huge Winter 2011 catalog is just like my blog, without any competent proofreading whatsoever.

Here is a scan from p.176

A trip to NikonUSA doesn't help either, if they have that piece of information anywhere I don't see it or at the very least their lame-o search says hey I don't know what you are talking about.  But just don't expect NikonUSA knows what they are talking about either, because they don't, just like me.  I just gave Google a chance after my previous failed search on NikonUSA, and Google was able to return the search I was looking for right from NikonUSA.  It says, on NikonUSA, and I quote,

 "G-type NIKKOR lenses have no aperture control ring and are intended for use on Nikon D-SLRs that allow the lens aperture to be adjusted via the camera's command dial." So you see, I wasn't making it up--NikonUSA really doesn't know what they are talking about.  G has really nothing to do with whether the camera is D-SLR or just plain old film SLR. In Rockwell's parlance, it just means gelded and he is right.  A G lens is a gelded lens that lacks  a physical aperture ring, period.  So my assessment of NikonUSA is again right on, they don't know what they are talking about.  And while we are at it, look at the DX explanation, do they really expect people to understand what they are trying to say?  Without clicking on the hyperlink?

Veterans Day

Veterans Day

The top and bottom ones have better white balance.  The middle and bottom ones come from the same frame, just different scans.

Technical details:  The negative (bottom) curves so much so that it presses against the glass in the middle.

People Are Serious About Their Kids' Grades

As a parent I can understand though it still surprises me that some parents react the way they reacted:  they got so upset that they kind of demand the teacher to change the grade and make an apology to the class or something.  And I am talking about fourth grade here.  Probably in part because of the "emotional damage" the low grade caused their child.  I say deal with it.  Most kids are dumb and I say give them all a low grade so they know how to deal with it in life later.  Because for the most part people are really dumb and they don't really deserve all the excessive praises now teachers dish out indiscriminately.

Postcard From France

This carousel just echoes with my oft posted pictures here.  I love carousel except the airport kind.  Thank you very much.

Technical Details for the anal retentive set:  Scanned at 300dpi using Epson V500 Photo via Ubuntu 10.10 64 Bit.  Flipped at GIMP.  Thumps up.

What Time is it?

Hong Kong is now 13 hours ahead of New York City.
If'it is 8AM Nov 9 in Hong Kong, it's 7PM Nov 8 in New York City.

How to Name a Movie in Hong Kong

From Hong Kong Yahoo movie.
Homonym still rules.  Every movie kind of becomes a comedy which is not bad actually.

精求有情人 (The Switch)
湊仔戀咁嚟 (Life As We Know it)
午夜來嚇 (Paranormal Activity 2)

Times Square

Kodak 160VC, Canon New F-1, Canon FD 28mm f/2.8, and yes with the ridiculously heavy motor drive too.

Sometimes I wish I were shooting with a 24mm on a real 35mm camera.  But other times, I was like oh the 24mm is just too "wide" for that shot.  You know I am just hopelessly good at coming up with lame excuses.

I got this roll of 135mm film developed some lab closeby.  It wasn't a good experience.  The fact that I used that lab knowing full well they kind of don't give a fuck of the negative is testimony to how lack of principle I am.  This was my third roll of film done there and might very well be my last roll.  In theory, any mini-lab can do a decent C41 development, that's if they take pride in what they do.  In practice, it's like nobody gives a fuck even some so called pro lab.  I got my film ripped and they had the ball to deny it.  Again, you got what you paid for if you are lucky.

I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous but I really find digital images too clean to look almost dull and lifeless.  I cannot believe I said that.  At the same time I hate to scan the images knowing it's really hit or miss to get a clean scan with no dust at all.  ICE is not 100% and plus there is no ICE with the software that I use.  So it's a pain to scan.

UPDATE 11/5/2010
I have received tons of emails regarding how I scanned what I scanned.  If it's a good scan, it's because of me and myself.  Nobody helped me in that department.  OKAY there is some online who selflessly shares his knowledge and thoughts on scanning.  And one of them is Mr. Wayne Fulton who operates a website called very humbly Scanning Basics 101 or www.scantips.com which I find to be most helpful though I don't understand most of them but it got me started.  I shall take all the blames for all the ugliness you see here, it's absolutely not a reflection of Mr. Fulton's fine website.  No guilty by association.

UPDATE 11/5/2010
I don't know how the heck I removed the picture hyperlink.  Crap.

Horsey

School

Kodak 160VC shot using a Canon F-1, 28mm f/2.8. Scanned at 2400dpi.

Election Day

Seeing Double

The bottom one is the original while the top is "color corrected."  Of course, I really don't know what I am doing here.  I just followed some cookbook to tweak the color.  This was shot using my blindly eye so the focus was off, the shutter speed was a bit slow--that is being my usual sucky photographer self.

How to Name A Movie in Hong Kong

Or how to give a sucky movie an even suckier name?  A clever homonym of course.  Homonym rules in the Hong Kong movie naming industry.  Because every single movie is named using homonym.  Very Clever.

Election Day Breakfast

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.