The Return of the Bomber Jacket

Sometimes, things just happen.  Like the "return" of the bomber jacket.  I think this can count as the most ubiquitous item of this season.  (The jacket has never ever left us, it's just that it has become a fad by the fashionistas since I don't know when).

You can't go out without seeing a bomber jacket these days.  People tend to wear it oversized instead of fitted.

This is more of a bomber parka than a jacket.

I discovered the bomber jacket when I was in college.  I remember seeing plenty of them in Canal Jeans in downtown Manhattan.  The jacket is always reasonably priced in the mid $40s.  Not many people can afford the fur lined Gucci slippers to be on trend but a $45 jacket, you bet.

NYFW F/W 2016

When it's freezing cold, it's New York Fashion Week.

Macports, ImageMagick, GIMP

None of them is working.  So I am screwed.  The problem or my problem is I don't know half of what I am doing so it's extremely hard to fix any problems should they arise and arise they always do.  I have a feeling that because of the Xcodes update, something is broken.  It's going to be tough to fix them, at least for me.

In case there are some wizards out there, please let me know.

UPDATE:
I first discovered this problem when I tried to use Imagemagick to run watermark on my pictures.  Alas, it didn't work, so I thought it was the PATH variable.  And I guess it was.  Then I found out GIMP wasn't working.  Then I thought maybe it's the macports that wasn't working.

Finally, it was the macports.  And once I fixed the macports, everything works again, so far.  I don't know why but it's true the PATH was screwed up.

Anyway, once I put back the PATH both ImageMagick and GIMP start working again.

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

UPDATE:
I probably changed the ~/.bash_profile inadvertently.  So I need to add and save this line back to the file so it sticks.

back to business.

Big Camera

I should have written it last year.  Or maybe I have already?  Last year was actually worse with stronger wind and all.

When I am shooting in the cold, finger numbing, frost biting cold, close to 0 F cold.  I want to have a big freaking camera with big freaking controls.

Last year I thought I was going to lose my fingers when I was out shooting in the cold for hours.

Today I put on two layers of gloves.  And I wish my D700 was bigger.  I can barely feel my shutter release button.

Today I had a change of shooting MO, instead of going for my 80-200 or 70-200, I opted for the 16-35, went wide and wild.  It definitely is different.  I want to travel light so I brought the SB-600 instead of the relatively massive Sunpak 120J and power pack.  Of course everything is a trade-off.  With the powerpack, the Sunpak can shoot fast without any major lag in recycle time especially all I need is 1/8 of the power.  Not so with the SB-600.  The battery powered SB-600 can't quite keep up with the continuous shooting.  To be fair I don't think the Sunpak can either if it's powered by AA batteries.  I am glad I brought my Nikkor 16-35 f/4 instead of the 20-35 f/2.8 as the aperture blades of the latter would most likely to stick given the Antarctica like temperature.

Highlight of the Day

I got off work a bit later than usual.

When I got on the subway platform, I think I saw Alexa Chung in her golden slip-ons walking in my direction.  I don't know how I think I know it's her.  But I am pretty sure it was her.  I don't get to see fancy slip-ons like that every day.  The loafers practically light up the whole dreary subway platform and the subway car.  It was a week or so after the blizzard and the streets are pretty slushy but her shoes look practically new unmolested by the black snow, urban gravy or the likes.

I was too much of a chicken or got too much misplaced pride or too much self control to say Hello.

Then the other day I bumped into the quite possibly the most prodigious rock climber ever, Ashima Shirashi.  She was very petite and quite easily disappeared in the car.  I tried to look at her fingers and feet to see if they are extraordinary in any way.  I guess they aren't or they are.  I am no expert.  She was accompanied by her dad.  I read her profile on the New York Times quite some time ago and then now "all of a sudden" she is every where.  The New Yorker did a profile on her just a month or so ago.

Airdrop and random thoughts

This is really a random update.

After some incremental updates on both the MBP OS X and iPhone iOS.  I think I am on their latest.  I find the once iffy Airdrop works remarkably well now.  It simply drops and receives.  And I am happy to report that.

My iPhone5s is always out of space.  I hate to do housekeeping like that.  I think my next iPhone will have the biggest capacity available, currently at 64GB.  I will probably use it as for phoneography to realize my childhood dream of shooting moving images.  Probably want to get a beast grip and the moondog anamorphic adapter.  The Optex anamorphic adapter is too dreamy (read fuzzy and soft and out of focus) for some application.  Maybe comes March or early April.  I don't need another DSLR, do I?

Blizzard2016 New York City

Flash Bracket

I own a CB mini flash bracket, the original edition.  It's reasonable good.  It's handy and works pretty much flawlessly.  I wish it comes with some anti-twisting mechanism but it is like an add-on which is as expensive as it's rare for a tiny piece of aluminum.  I believe they have a newer version that has some integrated anti twist built-in.

I have some success mounting my biggie Sunpak 120J on it.  Though the mini ball head that I bought with it isn't liking the stress and weight that much and it's losing its grip ...

I think for the quality of the light, a top mounted flash should be better but I am just happy the flash is mounted on the side.  The bracket only allows flash mounted on the right of the camera with lens pointing out to subject; plus I use a motor drive for the D700 so mounting on the right is really the only right way.  But I think there is a time when mounting on the left makes a little bit more sense photographically speaking, that's when the subject is moving from right to left.




Well maybe it doesn't make a huge difference if the scene is not too dark.  Sunpak 120J hot wired synced with D700.  No it didn't fire the camera at all.

Deer Park Trip 2016

Shot at 1080p with the Optex 1.33X anamorphic adapter.  De-squeezed using HandBrakeCLI, Edited using iMovie.

The camera is the Nikon D7000 and the lens is the Nikkor 28mm f/2 AIS.  I attached the Optex to the Nikkor via a 52-58 step up ring.  The Nikkor has a 52mm filter thread while the Optex has a 58mm.  The 28mm seems to be the "sharpest" when used with the Optex.  Sharp is a relative term here.  I don't think I will ever get a sharp image from the Optex.  The minimum focusing distance is life at least 10 feet away.  The Optex does not come with any front filter thread so to attach a diopter is not a straight forward thing.

If you think sharpness is grossly overrated and value a wider format then Optex anamorphic maybe just for you.

Video Mystery

Every few years or so I will circle back and try to understand video.  Then I give up.

I still use my D7000 for video capture.  It can shoot at 1080p at 24fps or 720p at 30fps.  Now your experience maybe different from mine.  If I were to shoot static scenes then I guess it doesn't make any difference.  But if I were to shoot cycling on the velodrome, I find the footage has too much shudder or stutter.  The stutter is subtle and has nothing to do the playing machine or software being not optimized or being inferior to play video full HD.  I think the shudder has to do with the capture the way it's recorded in the D7000.  I think at 1080p and 24fps the shudder is pretty insufferable for action shots.  At 720p and 30fps, it seems like it's better, the motion is a bit smoother.

I set shutter at 1/50s for 24fps and 1/60s for 30fps.

Again this whole write up is not scientific or anything.

I think about bit rate and I read the D7000 captures at 20mbps and I guess it's not very good if you want to grade your video in post or when the scene is dark or when you are shooting moving subjects, that's the frame is quite different from each other.

Lucky me, D7000 can be hacked to increase the bit rate to some ~64mbps,  I proceeded to downgrade the firmware to 1.03 and patch it from the Nikon hackers.  The thing is I don't know what I lose by downgrading the firmware--probably lost the lens data from jpeg correction and I don't know what I gain on my video--other than the file would be bigger and I can't even play back the high bit rate video on the camera.

So I am able to shoot at 1080p at 24fps and at higher bit rate like 64mbps.

I am able to play the footage on my MBP but I don't think I see any noticeable improvement on how smooth the action become, like when a cyclist goes by.  Perhaps there is some but I really can't tell for sure.

When the video is shot with the the Optex 1.33 anamorphic adapter, then I use Handbrake to de-squeeze it so it can play at 2554 x 1080.  Then I notice when after the desqueeze the bit rate goes to 1 or 2 mbps no matter what my footage bit rate was.  I read somewhat about it but I could not fully understand it, well that's expected.  I think if the scenes or frames have a lot of changes then the bit rate would rise to capture the changes otherwise there is really no need to increase the bit rate.  Again I don't see any significant degrading in the video in particular motion scenes.

Now the raw footage is desqueezed then I proceed to use iMovie to whip up some project and use share to create a new high quality video like with titles and sound track.

And surprise, even with the above 1 or 2 mbps footage the final video can have a bit rate more than that.  So I am perplexed.  I thought you can't have what you don't have to begin with.  If the footage is only 1.2mbps how could the final video has a bit rate in the 10.

D7000 file.MOV at 1080p 24fps 64mbps -->Handbrake --> file.mp4 1080p 24fps 1.5mbps   ---> iMovie file.mp4 1080p 24fps 10mbps

What I want is just smooth action video.  Why so hard with D7000?

Again video is a major mystery to me.

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.