Netgear AC750 EX3700

I bought this many years ago and left it alone and almost forgot about it except seeing its wifi id or ssid.

I never needed to power it down.  I just downloaded and installed the firmware to give it an update.

This thing just works.

MacPro3,1 macOS 10.14.4 ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

This is a passable combination.

My complaint is the graphics is lacking or lagging in some cases.  I am not talking about editing 4K or any video editing at all.  I am talking about typing an URL at the address bar on Chrome.  It's slow.  And when I hit eBay to do some dumpster diving or rummaging, the page can look a bit torn toward the bottom, I don't know if it's some sort of script there that causes it.  My mid 2012 MBP doesn't exhibit these problems at all.  I understand this hack to put Mojave on unsupported Mac hardware has some graphics shortcoming, like dark mode or some sort doesn't play well.

I don't know if it's also because of the 256MB VRAM that's causing the general sluggishness.  This is the stock GPU that originally came with the MacPro3,1 or early 2008 machine.

The most popular GPU upgrade for this kind of Frankensteinish upgrade is the GTX 680 which still commands a some what high price on eBay "even" higher than the similar GTX 770 which supposedly is a marginally higher performance card.  But then again the GTX 680 is said to have a more consistent design across manufacturers making it more flash-able, which is what cheapskates do: buying PC GPU and flashing it to Mac using some ROM or firmware.  GTX 680 is considered very flashable whereas not so much for the GTX 770, unless you are some wizard.

GT630 has a 2GB version and I don't know if it would perform better.  It should be a simple install.
GTX680 or GTX770, more powerful GPUs for sure but you pay a higher price and you need to buy additional power cables to run from the MacPro motherboard to the card.

These cards designed for Windows will boot on a Mac but will not display the Apple boot up screen as they don't have the Mac firmware unless you flash the ROM to make them Mac if they're flashable at all.

MacOS 10.14.4 on MacPro3,1

I need to install this thing on my old machine again, almost from scratch but not quite.

I am not sure if it's worth the effort, not that I have something else better to do, but still.

The graphics card I have only has 256MB of RAM and it shows.  I need to upgrade that if possible.  There is an overwhelming amount of information out there regarding this but for the most part they are pretty confusing especially for somebody who isn't savvy enough.  I can hardly find information that can elucidate the issue somewhat.

Mojave or MacOS 14:
MacPro3,1 is not officially supported but with the right hack from dosdude1.com, it's doable
nVidia is the card that doesn't give problem
The equivalent GPU PC version card may work

I don't need any fancy 4K support, my display is only 2560x1080

Swollen Battery Apple A1382

The sign of a swollen battery was I couldn't press down the touchpad like I could before.  I have been using a separate keyboard and a touchpad for quite some time so I didn't notice that until I used the built-in touchpad.  I almost forgot if it's supposed to be that way.

An online search on the touchpad anomaly returns me the result that it may be caused by a swollen battery.  And as it turned out it was really the battery.

I removed the battery and the touchpad worked just like before.

I could work without the internal battery but anytime if the power cable knocked loose, the system will just shut down.

I went to the usual source like macsales but the third party battery is asking for almost $100.  I even went so far as to chat with them in order to get a discount coupon code.  Alas there was none for me.

After much deliberation, I ended up ordering from eBay.

The battery came as real as it can be except the serial number on the sticker doesn't match what's reported by the MacOS.  Battery health is Normal and has 2 cycle counts.  The manufacturer reported is SMP, same as the original battery that came with the MBP.

macsales still have video suggesting to calibrate the battery or the power management system of the MacBook ... On the other hand, there seems some consensus that the Li-ion battery doesn't need that or draining it to zero percent does harm to the battery actually.  I am a bit confused.  So I didn't do that calibration at least not intentionally.

The original battery is supposed to last for seven hours on a full charge.  It seems like the battery depletes on a linear fashion up to when it's 30% then before I knew it it dropped to 7% which stays there for more than 30 minutes and still going unchanged ...  I guess I am waiting for the system to shut down itself.  It's about 5 hours now.  I don't think it lasts 7 hours but definitely more than 5 hours and it's still going at 7%.  Maybe that's why it needs calibration, not so much on the battery but for the system PMS to know the battery better so it can accurately report the battery power as it depletes?  I really don't know.

100% Battery power began at 8:06 AM
7% at 1:34PM (It has been 7% for a long time)
7% at 1:51PM
2% at 2PM, also message to plug in
shutdown at 2:10PM
so it's 6 hours.

UPDATE: 4/6/2019
The replacement battery seems performing just fine.  So I am happy I didn't buy the more expensive one, most of the time the MBP is powered with an A/C adapter anyway.  Plus this is an old machine I don't want to invest more than I need or afford.  In a year or two I hope I can afford a better machine down the road.

Apple notebook butterfly keyboard debacle

This has been pretty much well documented.  From 2016 till 2018, the butterfly keyboard has nothing but trouble.  The latest being a Wall Street journalist did a piece on the keyboard and Apple acknowledged that there is a small number of keyboards that exhibit problems.

I was burned once by an iBook screen many years ago.  After that it took me like maybe a decade or so to buy another laptop from Apple.

Can you imagine people, well I can, or can I imagine myself spending $2,000 or $1,000 to buy a MacBook and ends up having problems with the keyboard all the time?  The keyboard is the major interface between the machine and the user, how can you screw it up?

Nobody ever asked for a new keyboard design.  Apple, come on, do better.  Fix that keyboard once and for all.

5G

We are getting 5G in 2019.  The We just means some people.  I think maybe in the second half or late 2019 there will be some 5G rollout in New York City.  I am not sure what carrier though.  Verizon seems to have 5G plan for home internet connection ready to roll out some a handful of cities.  The speed is roughly around 300Mbps which is still fast.  With 5G, 4K is more pervasive and realistic.  Verizon would bundle either Apple TV or Chromecast Ultra for their 5G customers.  5G really gives people an excuse to upgrade their hardware.

Internet Pricing and Related Rants

Loyalty doesn't give you any benefit.  FIOS just likes to screw their loyal customers with ever increasing bills.  If you are an existing customer with autopay you are like the best customer that FIOS loves to screw.  Don't bother trying to talk down the bill because there is nothing they can do.  Just cancel and move on and let them get back to you and offer you new customer pricing  For existing customer out of contract, a 75/75mbps I was quoted $69.99 with 2 year contract.  For new customer, 100/100mbps, the price is $39.99.  As far as I know, FIOS is the only provider that gives symmetrical download and upload speed.  Cable ISP has big download and upload differentials.  If you don't care about upload speed then it makes no or very little difference.  If you routinely upload media then I am afraid it makes a difference who your provider is.

Internet pricing is similar to medical billing, nobody knows what is going on.  What's worse than medical billing is Internet companies love to screw their existing customers.   I yearn for pricing like your neighborhood deli where items are sold as priced, a can of Coke is 99 cents and a loaf of bread is $2.99, period.

Fall and Winter

Nothing lasts forever.  I can't wait for the next winter to come along.  The dreaded spring and summer are on their way.

Different From and Every Day

If I hear somebody says "different from" or I read people write "every day" when he means daily,  I immediately think highly about that person.

Fixed Length Lenses

Not all lenses are made the same.  We all know that.  But let me point out the obvious.

I do not like variable lens length much the same I don't like variable f/stop in zooms.  That is lens protrudes or retracts externally when zooming out or in or even simply changing focus distance*.  I much appreciate the lens elements move internally and the overall lens length remains fixed during focusing and zooming.

* the oldie manual focus lenses actually do that, they protrude from a few mm to cm when focusing close, I actually don't get bothered by it.  The AF 135 f/2 DC is truly fixed length no matter what focusing distance.

Auto WB

Auto White Balance.

In the days of film, white balance is something you don't think much about or you think too much about it, like before you shoot anything.  This is the realm of professional, serious amateur or self important photographer I suppose.  White Balance is baked in the film, the only way you can change the white balance is by adding filters to color correct during the shoot or change the film back.

Digital changes that.  One can change the white balance from picture to picture on the fly.

The old filter or gel still apply as photography is still photography.

I have little concern on white balance if I shoot outdoor during the day.  The Auto white balance pretty much nails color temperature.

On the other hand if I shoot indoor with mixed lightning or with lighting I have no idea what temperature it is then I got into problem with auto WB.  If you add flash then you might even have bigger problem.  If I have absolute control like in a studio environment (not that I would find out), like able to shut off all the ambient lighting then problem solved:  just shoot whatever light white balance you using probably in the proximity of 5500K.  Back to shooting indoor event with flash and mixed lighting ... auto white balance just couldn't cut it in my experience.  I feel like I am forced to set WB manually and gel my flash using the same K number.  It's not perfect but I find it better than leaving it to my Nikon and adjusting it post in Light Room.  That's my experience.  Just to add to the mix to complicate things a bit, you can also shoot preset or shoot a 18% grey card as reference.  But I got to the point I feel like I just set the WB at 2900 and be done with it.  No grey card no shooting preset.

Auto ISO

I think this is genuinely a new Auto since the dawn of digital photography.

Back when I shot film, the ISO is fixed with the film unless you change the film back, change mid-roll otherwise you really can't change the ISO on the fly.

The settings of any film camera is likely to be Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Program and Manual.

Digital change this by adding ISO auto.

Often times I dial my setting to Manual so I have control on my aperture and shutter speed.  It's all about the parameters you want to let go and let the camera take control.

I set my base ISO to 64, aperture f/5.6 and shutter speed at 1/250s and WB at 2900K.  Indoor, the ISO can float up to ISO 4000 which is an ISO I can accept.  If you think you cannot accept that high a high ISO, you can set a ceiling so the ISO won't go above that even it's on Auto ISO.

I seldom do Auto ISO shooting Aperture priority, some Shutter priority if I shoot cycling races.

On "newer" camera, there is even a parameter minimum shutter speed under the Auto ISO.   This would be helpful as you don't want the shutter to drop too low if you shoot handheld or unnecessarily high.  Say if you are shooting at focal length of 200mm, in order to maintain reasonable sharpness you want your shutter speed no slower than 1/250s.  Or you can set the minimum shutter speed at Auto in which case the camera would decide what is the lowest shutter speed you can go.  There you can still tweak if you want it biased Slower (to favor slower shutter speed) or Faster or dead in the middle, I left it in the middle.

Shooting Auto ISO doesn't mean that the exposure would always be kind of correct.  If you shoot in bright daylight and set your base ISO100, Manual at f/2.8 and 1/60s, chances are your picture will be overexposed as the ISO will be out of range in the low side anyway.  The correct exposure combination is more likely to be f/16 and 1/100 at ISO100.

Auto ISO still under the "there is no free lunch rule."  Something got to give.

There are three parameters, ISO, aperture and shutter.  You can fix one, let the other two float, or you can fix two and let one float.  Or you fix all three manually.  White balance affects the color temperature which affects the color but I don't consider it part of the exposure.  Some people don't even consider ISO part of the exposure but that's up for debate...

Border

Border (Gräns, 2018) tackles the two most pressing phenomena of our time, trolling and border security.  The film opens with a shaky medium shot where protagonist customs officer Tina is seen looking out from the shore, doubles as her parking lot, at a cargo ship moored at the harbor.  She clumsily picks up a cricket from the dirt and gently puts it on a blade of tall grass, with the car parked she is ready for another day at work.  She is extraordinary ordinary and alarmingly ugly that perhaps not even a mother can love.  I was watching lots of Youtubers opining on IBIS as in in-body image stabilization being the standard of modern filmmaking.  Ha.  It was a bit of a disappointment seeing that opening shot so shaky that any self respecting Youtuber would not approve.

Border is based on a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist who also pens Let the Right One in.  Both are set in the mystic Nordic Sweden with wacky storylines and even wackier characters who are ostracized by society.  The two stories center on characters that are almost mirror reflections of each other; they are simultaneously the same and yet different.  In Border the woke character is Vore who stays woke and helps Tina woke and discover who she really is, sexually and otherwise.  There is no growth without pain as Tina plays detective at work and her own origin story.  By the end of the film, Tina has transformed.  Instead of gently picking up a cricket and rests it on some landing, she has no qualms of just treating it as food.  The film shocks and awes in its own quiet and subdued way, especially on the sexuality front which is as unpredictable as it can get.  Nothing seems obvious underneath the clothes.  The handheld shaky camera work and the overall art direction seems to suggest documentary and a very much down to earth aesthetic, but the story is just anything but or like the late Lagerfeld says (Border) is very much down to earth but just not this earth.  The movie is rated R.

The Curious Case of Olympus OM-D EM1-X ... and Fuji XT-3

I have not paid any attention to any mirrorless cameras until very recently.

The E-M1X certainly catches my attention.  As I am a fan of vertical grip and what's better than a vertical grip except for an integrated vertical grip.

The Nikon Z power grip is a joke, it's designed by some high school kid who cheated his way through classes.  It's not a a "motor drive" or anything except to hold extra battery.  It's for people who shoot portrait orientation and still use the primary shutter release even they are shooting with a D5 or D4s or with a genuine vertical with shutter release.

The price tag f the EM1-X comes in at $2,999

I will wait for the next iteration when everybody says the AF tracking is as good as any camera out there.

The Fuji XT-3 is about half of the price and allegedly has better image and AF than the EM1-X.

Maybe two years from now if I am not dead yet.

Nikon 20-35 f/2.8

LR never has a profile for this lens.  Now that I can't even use it it is not a concern any more.  Ha.

Quality vs Quantity

There is no quality without quantity.
-- Daidō Moriyama

I don't know how true this attribution is, but I remember it's attributed to Moriyama san.  And I further wonder if he says that in English or in Japanese and got translated.

I think I can get behind this nevertheless.

Back in post war Japan, he must have burnt through tons and rolls of film.

Event Photography

I just want to talk about shooting settings that I use.

I used to shoot almost exclusively on aperture priority.  I guess it's the topic or subject.  I set the aperture which controls the opening of the lens and let the camera take care of the rest.  Back in film days that's the setting I used the most and that's the only auto mode my Nikon FE has anyway.

When I picked up my camera again about a decade ago I faced with more varieties and more flexibilities.  When you shoot film you almost always got stuck with a single ISO and single WB film unless you really shoot professionally and change film back when you see fit in the middle of the shoot.

When I shoot cycling I tend to shoot with shutter priority and let the aperture float and sometimes even let the ISO float.  I don't bother so much as white balance.  Auto white balance is or was my friend.

When I shoot event I'd like to shoot manual, i.e. I fix the aperture and shutter speed and let the ISO float.  I set the base ISO the lowest first or some ISO I think won't go lower.  If I need to freeze people who are walking, 1/250 is the minimum, 1/500 should be ideal but then if you are shooting indoor with low light, you are lucky to get to 1/250 of a second.  If people are just standing there talking 1/60 or 1/125 can certainly freeze the subject.

If I shoot with flash or strobe, I tend to shoot manual but with fixed lowest ISO possible, it could be ISO64 or ISO400 but I'd like to have it fixed.  If the ISO is auto, it's essentially auto exposure and with the flash going off the picture is gonna overexposed for sure.

Event photography can be challenging as it could be outdoor, it could be flash and then it could be indoor with lots of tungsten and mixed lighting; all in one event.  I don't know other brands of camera, but Nikon tends to not auto white balance that well when it's indoor tungsten.  I tend to manually white balance it otherwise it comes out super yellow and orange.

With indoor, outdoor, flash, invariably something is going to screw up.  Like I forgot to set the ISO to not auto.  Or I forgot to set the white balance to auto when I went outside in the middle of the shoot.  I think it's then I appreciate on RAW or NEF format.  The file is certainly savagable even if over or under exposed and with the wrong white balance.

So event photography can be a challenge even I carry two cameras with a combined focal length between 16 to 200mm.  Thanks to high ISO and LR noise reduction, a f/4 max aperture is not as limiting as possibly ten years ago.  I am no Light Room and certainly not a Photoshop wizard but even armed with minimum knowledge I can savage a problematic picture.

Sunpak 120J full blast on silver reflective umbrella on light stand on camera left and right.  1/100s and f/8 at 25mm WB at 5500.  I don't think the skin tone is that great but I tried.  No Photoshop.

Note: as a photographer, there should be no excuse as you should really take control and ownership of the situation. That should be in theory as well as in practice.  Ultimately you are the one responsible especially when things go bad.
Control the situation:
Make sure both eyes can see the camera
Do not use a wide angle setting, I think 35mm should be the widest used as people look wider on the sides if the focal length got wider.  If you can shoot with a 85mm for group go for it but rarely can you shoot like this indoor with that much space.
Keep the camera focal plane parallel to the plane of the subjects.  Use a tripod if you can.
Keep the subject in a straight line across the focal plane or just mildly curved if you must.
Do not mix lightings.  If you can shut off ambient use 100% strobe, do it.

Often times, I don't heed my own advice.

Gel my Flash

Usually I don't shoot with flash in the temple.

This is shot bounced flash to the ceiling.  The ambient is always too yellow and red.  There is no way I can shut out the ambient.

I gelled my SB-800 with a 1/2 CTO.  Manually set the white balance to 2900 or there about.

I am sure the front and the back or the center of the hall has different WB as the left has sunlight streaming from the windows, while the back of the room has more tungsten light from the ceiling.  Then the middle has some fluorescent tubes.  The red lanterns add some orange to the mix as well.  I think gelling the flash is a must if you use flash in this setting otherwise the WB is even more difficult to correct in post.

This is shot with my 16-35 f/4 with the Nikon D700.  IS0640, f/5.6, 1/100, WB2900, flash CTO gel.  Light room adjusted.  I am quite happy with the skin tone overall.

Nikon AF Nikkor 20-35

It's on its way to KEH repair via USPS Priority.

KEH has this flat rate repair for some time but this is the first time I ever use them.  There is no guarantee that it can be fixed.  If parts need to be replaced and they don't have it then I am just paying for a round trip for nothing.

KEH charges $320 for Zoom repair plus $12 for shipping.  Assuming it can be fixed without additional charges, I would be out of about $350.  At the time of this writing, NJ has a version on craigslist that's $400 and it is like pristine with the hard to find lens shade too.  If it's in NYC, I may have a second thought.  Most of the versions on eBay sell around $500 or so.  When I paid for my version about five or six years ago, it was more than $600.  I bought it so I could take some event pictures for the cycling dinner fundraising.  It wasn't a pay gig.  Do I even have a pay gig?  Back then I didn't have a full frame camera so the lens was like a 30-55, my kit lens 17-80 was somewhat unreliable or I just found some excuse to get the 20-35 f/2.8.  It was a good lens.  The only time it failed me was during a Chinese year shooting the parade.  It was freezing, most likely below 32F.  So all the time it was pretty much stuck at f/2.8.  If I knew back then it was sticky blade, I would have just taken it out and gave the aperture lever a workout or simply shoot wide open f/2.8.  That was the only time the lens kind of failed.  I never had sticky aperture blades before until then.

Then I got a donation from my friend the Nikkor 16-35 f/4.  Its color rendition is different I believe and the f/4 is not a problem given the ISO performance of modern DSLR.  Alas, when shooting indoor the f/2.8 still have the upper hand in both areas: the viewfinder is a tad brighter and you can shoot at slightly higher shutter speed.

I can't stand it being a paper weight.

UPDATE: 1/24/2019
1/22/2019 KEH says it needs the part that is no longer available.  So sending back paperweight.  Oh well.  I tried and people tried.

A Part and Every Day

I can't stand them being together when they shouldn't be.

I am a part of that larger movement.

I go to work every day.

Please keep them apart.