These batteries rock my face off

Posted on February 23, 2009

I have a lot of photographers that read my blog, so I’m going to start mixing in some geeky photography stuff just for fun, and to help out anyone that may actually benefit from my incoherent ramblings. Here’s a little gear tidbit for you all.

Nobody likes going through a gazillion AA batteries for their flashes over the course of a year. Many buy rechargeable batteries to save some dough, and usually they perform better than regular ol’ alkalines. The thing is, not all rechargeable batteries are created equal.

Enter Powerex. My friend Joe C. told me about these, after I had tried everyother major brand under the sun, and was never happy. These bad boys recycle faster than a california tree-hugger driving a prius, and I can shoot almost all day on one set. Definitely on two. Plus they last well over 1000 charges. And with the Powerex Pro 8-battery charger you can fully charge them in 1-hour, less if they aren’t fully drained. You can also soft-charge (or deep-cycle) every now and then in only 2-hours, which improves their capacity.

The down side is they cost a little over 3 bucks a pop, meaning $25 for an 8-pack (but hey, they come with a cool plastic case), and the charger can cost as much as $70. Tooooooootaly worth it though. Try the Adam Nyholt Powerex 30-day challenge. If you aren’t satisfied I GUARANTEE that I’ll take those batteries off your hands, free of charge.

Goodbye Cable, Hello Apple TV

Posted on February 8, 2009

It started off with the simple need to easily display slideshows on my TV so I could have proofing sessions with my clients. We had just moved in to the house, got the living room set up, and were preparing for our first such proofing session (two on the same day, actually). I was experimenting with hooking up my laptop to the TV and was just not happy with the way the photos looked– no matter how much calibrating I did. Finally, the night before our proofing sessions I thought, “what a great excuse to buy an Apple TV!” I sent Kacie out to the Apple Store just before closing, as I finished some things around the house. When she got back I hooked it up, and a few clicks later it was syncing with iTunes on my mac. I selected to run a slideshow of some of my wedding photos and they looked gorgeous! No calibration necessary.

After a few weeks of playing with the Apple TV and buying episodes of Bones that the DVR missed because it wasn’t hooked up, we had a revelation. We only keep up with, at the most, 10 shows a year. If we bought the season pass on iTunes (in HD, of course) for each of these shows, assuming they all cost $70 each (which is higher than they actually would cost), that would come out to $700/year. We currently spend $90/month for digital cable, which comes out to $1080 year. That’s a savings of over 300 bucks! Plus, we can watch each show when we want with no commercials (and no fast-forwarding through commercials), the quality is better than cable or satellite, and we can get all the shows on premium channels like HBO without paying extra (which was not included in the $90/month for Comcast).

Now, we don’t watch local news or live sports, so this works out well for us since neither is available on iTunes. However, with a cheap TV antenna I can get over-the-air HD of all the local channels for free (and in better quality than Comcast, since it is not compressed), so we do have access to news and sports if we want. We found this to be a win-win situation, so….

We canceled our cable service. It was a very gratifying feeling. It’s only been a week since we went cold-turkey, but it’s going well so far! I’ll let you know how we feel 6 months from now.

Video from an SLR???

Posted on October 1, 2008

If you keep up with photography technology happenings, you’ve heard that Nikon’s new consumer SLR, the D90, will record up to 5 minutes of 720P HD (at 24fps) Video. You might ask why this is a big deal, because you can go out and get a HD camcorder relatively cheaply, and will be much easier to use than an SLR for recording video. The big deal is this: with consumer camcorders, you’re limited to the cheap lens permanently attached to the camera. With a D90 I can now use the thousands of dollars I have invested in suberb Nikon glass. I can also take advantage of the large apertures on some of my faster lenses, getting that shallow depth of field look that we love so much from movies. A couple downsides: 1) the built-in microphone on the D90 is awful. You’re not going to win any awards at SXSW with that kind of audio, and 2) the ergonomics of an SLR are not designed for shooting steady video. One company has proposed a rig to help with that, however:

Pretty crazy looking, huh? The picture is swiped from the Pro Lost blog. Check it out.

Canon has also announced the new 5D Mark II that will capture 1080p video at a 30p frame rate. This has people excited because it is higher resolution, but it is not 24p, which is the standard for the film industry, which again is the goal everyone is trying to achieve. We want the convenience of shooting video with the look and feel of film. We’re getting close. Check out this video from photographer Vincent Laforet, shot entirely on the Canon 5D Mark II, and you will be blown away!

Ellen Feiss returns to TV?

Posted on August 14, 2008

So those of you who keep up with Apple culture (and are total dorks, like me) may remember the famous “switcher” ad with Ellen Feiss. The 14 year old student who’s PC “ate” her paper. Apparently she was a little loopy because of the cold medicine she took that day, but millions in the all-knowing internet community have confirmed are pretty sure she was actually high from smoking pot. Either way, the ad is pretty funny.

I was watching TV tonight and saw the following ad for Clean & Clear, and swore to myself, “That has to be Ellen Feiss”. Check out the videos below. What do you think?

The original switcher ad:

The Clean & Clear Commercial (actress on the right):

Harmony 1000 Universal Remote Review

Posted on January 20, 2008

Street price: $399-499
Overview: An affordable, intelligent, entry-level touch-screen remote that doesn’t need to be programmed by a professional installer.

Pros: Excellent physical design and ergonomics for a touch screen remote. Sits in your hand just right. Easy to use activity-based interface. Bright color LCD. Lightweight. Pretty decent battery life. Relatively simple setup considering the complexity of the remote. “Smart state” technology let’s the remote remember how it has set your components so it doesn’t actually turn the TV off when you go from “Watch DVD” to “Play Xbox”, for example.

Cons: Setup software doesn’t work well on macs. IR blaster a little too weak (remedied with use of the RF extender). Some devices react a tad slow to commands (may be fixable).

FULL REVIEW:

Before we get started:
Let me say that I was hesitant to buy this remote because of some very negative reviews on sites like Amazon, Circuit City, et al. The consensus was the remote is a good idea, but poorly executed, and not a mature product. In other words, it was very buggy. I noticed that the dates on these negative reviews were BEFORE Logitech released a major firmware update in October 2007. If you look at the reviews AFTER October 2007 there is a much higher percentage of satisfied users. I also found out there was ANOTHER major firmware update in December 2007. With these updates I can say that I have experienced none of the problems some of the early adopters complained of. The good news is the first time you hook your remote up to your computer and run the software it will update it with the most recent firmware.

Set up:
This remote comes with setup software that stores all of your remote info online. I’ve heard mixed reviews about it working on macs. I decided to give it a try, and wish I didn’t. When I attempted to install and run the software I couldn’t even get the software to load up without crashing. Additionally, the installer totally hosed my disk permissions, meaning it screwed up a bunch of other stuff on my computer. If this happens to you, just open disk utility and run the “repair disk permissions” tool, and you should be OK. I am running Leopard, so maybe that is the problem. I ended up using parallels to set up the installer using windows.

To begin setup the software asks you to enter in the model numbers of the equipment you have. The database is enormous and surprisingly complete. It even found my Comcast DVR. After that, it asks you to set up “activities”. For example, “Watch TV”, “Watch DVD”, etc. Then it asks you some questions about how your devices are connected/set-up. After a 5-10 minute setup process you’re done. When you hook up the remote for the first time it will update it with the latest firmware and then load your device settings onto it. After you start to use it you’ll find there are ways you want to tweak it. The software gives you tremendous flexibility for this. You can rename your devices, program custom buttons that may not be in the remotes database, teach it new IR commands, adjust the timing of the signals, and much more. It took me about 10 minutes for the initial setup and cumulative 2 hours of tweaking and re-tweaking to get it just the way I want. I consider this a huge success considering the complexity of the remote. The only kinks I ran into were the Mac software issue, and after the initial setup some of my devices weren’t being controlled at all. I removed and re-added them and they worked just fine.

Ergonomics:
My first impression of the remote was how comfortable it felt in your hand. It’s LCD is on the left side of the remote, for use with your left fingers, and the physical buttons (volume, channel, directional pad, etc.) is on the right edge. The grooves on the back are placed perfectly so that when you hold the remote with one hand, your thumb is in just the right spot to use the controls. Keep in mind with any touch screen remote it is easiest to use it with two hands, and you usually have to look down to see which button you are pressing. This takes some getting used to if you are used to “stick” style remotes.

Performance:
Using the remote is a breeze. You start by selecting an activity from the Activity Menu. For example, when everything is off and I press “Watch TV”, my receiver, TV, and Cable Box/DVR all turn on. The TV switches to HDMI input 1, the receiver switches to the TV input, and the remote changes to control the cable box. If i then want to watch a Blu Ray, I press the activity button, and then I select my “Watch Blu-ray/DVD” activity. The TV stays on and on HDMI input 1, the receiver switches to the DVD input, the cable box turns off and the Blu Ray player turns on. You get the point. The remote remembers the state of every device so that it doesn’t accidentally turn the TV off when it is already on, for example. For this reason it is important that you ONLY use the remote to control your devices, or it will lose track. For this same reason you have to make sure you keep the remote pointed at you devices while it is performing it’s commands because if a component misses a command the remote won’t know. If it does lose track, there is a help button that will ask you a series of questions so the remote can re-orient itself.

One of my gripes about this remote is the IR blaster on the unit is not very powerful, so if you don’t have it pointed right at your components they won’t receive all the commands. It also makes it difficult to use the remote when you are in other parts of the room where you may be far away or at a steep angle relative to your entertainment center. I fixed this by purchasing the RF extender, which I’ll discuss below.

Battery life is as good as I can ask for. I keep the unit on the cradle when I’m not using it and I’ve never run out of juice. It will easily last at least half a day off the charger while I watch TV/listen to music and work around the house.

Customer Service:
Before I bought the RF Extender I called customer service to ask a question about it. Logitech has a dedicated line for Harmony remotes and I got to speak to a human very quickly. He didn’t have a good answer to my somewhat-obscure question, but I won’t dock them for that.

RF Extender:
The Harmony 1000 is capable of sending RF signals. For you to control your components, you’ll need to buy the Harmony RF Extender. I got one new for $65 on ebay. For the price of the remote however, I think this should have been included. The RF extender is a little device that receives the RF commands from the remote and converts them to IR which it blasts out to your components. You can either place the unit near your components, or it has 8 small IR transmitters that will adhere directly to the front of each component. This allows you to place your components in a cabinet, or even allow you to be in another room controlling your home theater. Setup was a breeze. You connect it to you computer, run the setup software for the remote, allow it update the firmware, and then you tell it which components will be controlled by the extender. I’m loving this so far because now I don’t have to worry about where I point the remote when I use it, and I don’t have to worry about my components missing commands and the remote losing track of what’s going on. An added bonus: My Marantz receiver has an “IR Flasher” input on the back. It is a 1/8″ phono jack (like a headphone jack). Incidentally the little IR transmitters connect to the extender by a mono 1/8″ cable. So I bought a mono male-to-male 1/8″ cable and hooked it up from the extender to the back of the receiver. Works like a champ– and I don’t have to have the little diode stuck to the front of my unit.

Conclusion:
I am very glad I bought this remote, but I think the RF Extender is almost necessary to really make it a great experience. I give it 4 out of 5 stars because it is not perfect, but very, very good for the price.

John Nack on the “Death of Photography”

Posted on December 14, 2007

John Nack is the Senior Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop, and he has a blog in which he discusses all things photography, especially as it relates to processing in Photoshop or Lightroom.

In a post this week he tackles the idea that many people believe in a world of digital photography, “true” photography is dead. Old-schoolers claim that digital photography and manipulation steals the art away from photography. I of course couldn’t disagree more, and neither can John. He says:

… much of this “is photography dead” discussion strikes me as sterile and pointless–and maybe a strawman that’s not worth beating up. Yet I wonder whether it’s driven by veteran photogs feeling threatened–comercially and aesthetically–by so many affordable tools that make competent image-making so much more attainable.

As a relative new-comer to the business (compared to guys who have been shooting longer than I have been alive) I can say that the game now is obviously very different than it was for those veterans who started 30 years ago. And it’s true– they are afraid. They’re afraid of losing business, and they’re afraid of losing what I call creative credibility. Meaning, what they used to get paid big bucks for, any soccer mom with a DSLR can pull off. Their work no longer carries the weight it once did. It no longer is the standard of creative expression. Sure there are masters like Ansel Adams and Anne Lebowitz whose work will forever remain classic, but for most photographers who refuse to take advantage of the new tools available to them, their work has simply become average.

You can say that digital makes us lazy, and there’s some truth there; and yet it also fosters free experimentation & instant review of the results. That quicker learning cycle, plus autofocus, good software, etc. helps get people “good enough” (technically, anyway) without years of slow and costly apprenticeship.

Because it is so easy for the average person to take great photos, the bar has been raised. Because it is so easy for a creative person to create artistic photographs without years of training, the bar has been raised. We professionals have to do something to make ourselves stand out. We have to push the envelope of creativity, use technology to its maximum potential, set a new standard of creative vision and technical mastery. We have to give people a reason to pay us their hard-earned money

Life, art, and expression move on. If “photography” is something so brittle & exclusionary that it can’t bear evolution, then goodbye and good riddance. (Don’t let the film door hit your ass on the way out…) It isn’t, of course, so maybe we can just bury the is-photography-dead schtick. But I’m not holding my breath.

Photography has absolutely changed. It has drastically changed, and with major shifts in technology it will continue to change again and again. But it is not dead, and it never will be.

A Guided Tour of the iPhone

Posted on June 22, 2007

Ok, if you can watch this whole video and NOT want to buy an iPhone, then you deserve an award or something. Maybe an iPhone.

Microsoft Surface: Geeky Cool

Posted on May 31, 2007

Microsoft recently launched a site to promote their new technology product, Surface. It’s a well-done site, by the way. The technology is very, very cool, and looks to forever change the way we will interface with computers. As I browsed through the site a couple things came to mind.

1. While Microsoft seems to have come up with some very neat implementations of this technology, it seems Apple will beat them to the market with the iPhone, which will be released in June and use a seemingly identical technology for its interface. Additionally, Microsoft currently only has plans to release this for commercial use.

2. This technology was first introduced by Jeff Han at TED over a year ago. I remember seeing this video, and being totally amazed. I said to myself that this is very cool hardware, but what will make it or break it is the software that’s written to take advantage of it. It seems both Apple and Microsoft are doing just that.

3. Microsoft is primarily in the software business. While they’ve had success selling peripherals such as mice and keyboards, the fact that Apple is using a similar technology tells me that neither one of them own it, which means it is being licensed to both companies by Jeff Han, which means he will probably become very, very rich in the near future.

Jeff said of the Apple iPhone:

The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous, and I’ve always said, if there ever were a company to bring this kind of technology to the consumer market, it’s Apple.  I just wish it were a bit bigger so I could really use both of my hands.

And I think he hit the nail on the head (not that the iPhone is too small). There will certainly be some great commercial applications, but people want to get this in their hands– to own a piece of this technology for themselves. I think that the first company to start bringing multi-touch interfaces to consumers is going to take the lead in this market. I for one can’t wait.

True Apple Geekiness

Posted on May 12, 2007

Ok, you’re not a hardcore Apple fan until you attend an Apple Store grand opening. This morning, at 10am the mall by my house finally got an Apple store, and oh how glorious it is. I am super excited because it is within 3 minutes of my house (the next closest store is 40 minutes away).

Clint, Chris, and I got there at 9:30 am, and there were already probably 100-200 people in line in front of us (the first 1000 got a free t-shirt, so we were good). At about 15 minutes to opening, 5 or 6 apple store employees came running up and down the side of the line, yelling, cheering, and giving high fives to an equally enthusiastic crowd. At this point, an on-looker turned to a security guard and asked, “what’s going on”, to which she (rather excitedly) informed him of the opening of the Apple Store. I could almost here him thinking, “Man, I’m not that excited about my computer.”

When they opened the store there was loud music, continuous cheering, and probably 50 or so Apple Store employees from around the city lined up inside giving away t-shirts and complimentary high-fives. It was really a surreal experience, which reminded me why I’m a Macintosh user– the pretty hardware or well-designed software may draw you in, but it’s the Apple Experience that keeps you in the fold.

I forgot my camera, but I did manage to use the iSight built in to an iMac display model to grab a pic of us at the store. I also set the iMac’s desktop background to our picture to officially “mark” our territory

Mac-users really are a kind of cult…….

Chris, Me, and Clint

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