Ted::Blogs()

Photo::Day Trip to Monterey

I went on a short day trip to Monterey with my wife today. Since I was with my wife, I couldn't bring my usual photo gears and I brought my 5D, which is my lightest and most compact one - I know how this may sound, but it is actually lighter and smaller than my medium or large format outfit:)

We had late lunch at the Marriott hotel, which was just gorgeous. On the way out, I stepped outside on the balcony to take some pictures. Right below the hotel was a photo-spot where you can spend hours taking wonderful black and white pictures. I couldn't take much today, but I'm just happy that I found a place to come back when I have time.

Tech Tags: monterey marriot photo

Photo::Digital Negatives, Part III

As I've blogged before, I'm in the process of experimenting digital negatives with my Epson 2200 printer and Pictorico OHP Film. I've discovered that somehow my contrast adjustment curve is so different than usual ones that I cannot use Dan Burkholder's method. I finally received my new X-RITE 810 densitometer and I started the callibration as suggested by Mark Nelson right away.

The process he describes in his e-book looks quite complicated, but it actually is very simple.

1. Find out the standard exposure time for your paper, developer, film material using a 21-step wedge.
2. Print a 101-step callibration pattern without any curve applied
3. Measure the densities of each of the 101 cells
4. Create a contrast adjustment curve using the excel sheet provided with the CD-ROM
5. Apply the new curve, print the negative and print the callibration pattern again

The whole process took about 1.5 hours and it was quite straightforward. My curve shown left actually looks very different from the usual ones. It kinda just darkens all the hightlights and shadows. The acual print that I made looked pretty good. It was actually the first time I was able to make a digital negative print that looked similar to what I saw on screen. The hightlights were too light and I am planning to re-callibrate next week.

The following shows how the image changes during each step of the conversion before printing it. First one is the original color image, the second one is b&w converted, the third shows the inverted image and the last one is after the adjustment curve applied.

You'll notice how dark the resulting negative is. I will soon post how the print looks like.

Tech Tags: digital+negative dan+burkholder mark+nelson x-rite+810 densitometer epson+2200 contrast+adjustment+curve

Photo::Night Vision for the Darkroom

Until a couple of days ago, I wouldn't have thought that I would be buying a night vision device. But here I am, clicking on eBay's 'Buy it now' button for the ATN Viper Night Vision Goggle ...

I have been experimenting with a film developing technique called, "Develop by Inspection (DBI)". I am going to blog about this experiment soon, but here's the spoiler. Whenever you're trying a new film, you have to (well, you'd better) callibrate your development time in order to achieve full control on the contrast of the negatives. It is very time-consuming and although I know some people who loves the process, I'd rather spend time shooting pictures.

DBI is a technique where you actually inspect the negative during the development. In order to do this, you have to use a special safelight with Dark Green filter like Kodak's #3. So, I bought a new safelight and started the experiment a couple of weeks ago. However, you can't really turn on the light too long during the process, so it is best to use a footswitch so that you can turn it on and off quickly. I was browsing throught APUG's classifieds yesterday and not only found a good deal for the footswitch, but also learned that the seller was using a night vision goggle for DBI.

So, that's the story and I'm really excited about this. I am hoping I can use this for many other darkroom uses like, loading films, color paper processing, interneg (I am also planning to blog about this. Stay tuned) processing and so on.

Maybe I'll even find some use cases outside of the darkroom as well:)

Tech Tags: night+vision ATN+viper dbi darkroom develop+by+inspection safelight interneg apug

Music::Allofmp3 Revisited

If it's too good to be true, there must be something wrong with it. I've bought about two dozens of albums at allofmp3.com (here is the link to my previous article) in the past couple of weeks and I am, in general, happy about it. They're dirt cheap, great quality, no DRM and have huge selections. Can't really complain. But I'm about to.

The payment system

Being a Russian company, allofmp3 provides an anonymous payment method called XROST (which lets you pay via paypal) to ease the mind of security-paranoid american users. For the first several times, it worked well, but recently they were moving their payment provider and I was forced to use their credit card payment system called Chronopay. (Now you can use CMPASS to buy an iCard which is the same as XROST and even shares the same account) When I tried to use it, I was able to make the payment but I couldn't get the pin-code (that's not good, huh?), which is required to refill your allofmp3 balance. I've sent numerous complaints to allofmp3, but haven't heard back from them yet.

Downloading music

There are three ways to download music today. If you purchased the music via their web interface, you will be sent the links of the files to download via email and you have the option to download it in your 'My Downloads' section on their website. In this case, I strongly recommend using a downloading agent like, Reget, Go!Zilla, FlashGet, GetRight, or NetVampire. The second download option is to use the "allofmp3 explorer". This is a windows client that lets you search, browse, purchase and download music. It's not as fancy as iTunes, but still works pretty well. The last option is to use their 'AllTunes' application. This is another windows client that does pretty much everything that allofmp3 explorer does. I am guessing that they are replacing their explorer with this new application.

The big problem is that their download service is quite unstable sometimes. When I was downloading The Flaming Lips album which consists of 56 songs, almost half of the songs couldn't be downloaded at the first try. I was expecting to be able to download again, but the links just disappeared as if they were downloaded successfully. Their FAQ states that, in such cases, you should just repurchase the songs and you won't be double-charged. So I did so, and I had to do this many times because some songs were keep failing at the end of the download process. Then I noticed that my balance was keep shrinking. So I checked my download history and found that they were charging me all along! I sent several complaints via their 'assistance' page, and I got the reimbursement the next day (whew!). I'm glad that they responded, but this just should never have happened in the first place. I still have this problem once in a while and now I have decided to only download the songs in a stable networking environment.

Is this really legal?

When I first heard about this site at the TWIT podcast, I was very excited to hear that this is actually legal. It is said that they are taking advantage of the loophole in the copyright law, but it is still legal. But today, in this week's TWIT, they were talking about this site again and this time they were saying that it is an illegal service. Even the Russian government declared them to be illegal.

These three issues really made me think again whether I should be using this service. Until I figure out, maybe I should check out emusic, which seems to provide DRM-free music at low cost ($.25 per song).

Tech Tags: allofmp3 illegal+music music+download anonymous+payment emusic copyright+loophole TWIT

Photo::Photographer's Resource on the Web

Here are some useful links to photographer's resources on the web (in no particular order).

Photographer's communities:

Photo.net (forums, classifieds and galleries)

Photo.net is probably the oldest, most popular photographer's community that covers all kinds of photographic topics. When you do a google search on any photography related subjects, you will see lots of articles pointing to their discussion forums. Their classifieds section is also quite popular, mostly for analog equipments. They also have a huge gallery where people can be critiqued, but I never was a big fan of it because of the ill-designed user interface. It is now run by Rajeev Surati, who is a photographer-turned-scholar from MIT.

APUG.org (forums, classifieds and galleries)

This is a relatively new community founded by Sean Ross, who says it all happened by accident. APUG stands for "Analog Photography Users Group", but I think the most loyal group of people are the large format photographers. You will find ton of useful information here, and I especially appreciate the immediate response that you get when you post questions. They have a relatively small classifieds and galleries sections as well.

FredMiranda (forums, software and classifieds)

This site is run by Fred Miranda, who is a photographer and software programmer. I think the site started out as a place to get photoshop plugins, and then people started to talk about the various subjects surrounding them. That is probably why most of the active members are 35mm/DSLR users (especially Canon users). They have quite active forums, galleries, weekly/monthly challenges and equipment reviews. I particularly loved their 'buy and sell' forum because there are tons of ads being posted everyday and it is really quick and easy to sell stuffs, especially if they are cannon gears. If you own a cannon, this is probably the best place to hang out.

Camera Information & Reviews:

DP Review (reviews and forums)

This is a very well known camera review site. Any new digital camera or related equipments will be reviewed by Phil Askey, and usually he's the first to review (many times even before public sales starts). His reviews are always in-depth and his review format is appreciated by many users and fellow reviewers. He is sometimes blamed to favor Canon equipments, but I don't buy that. You will find lots of digital point-and-shoot or DSLR camera reviews, but won't find much medium or large formats here. It also has very active forums and you will always be able to find gear junkies who love to make 'my gear is better' argument.

Luminous Landscape (reviews)

This has a rather long domain name, but once you visit this place you will bookmark it, so it's not a big deal. Here you will find very unique reviews about a wide range (35mm, medium format, large format, digital, analog, printing, etc.) of equiments and processes. Most of the reviews are done by Michael Reichmann, but there are also lots of reviews by other pros and semi-pros. I love this site for the abundance and uniqueness of the content.

Unblinking Eye (information)

This site is somewhat like Luminous Landscape, but with less subjective information IMHO. It is a great resource for analog photographers, but I have to confess that I have'nt had much chances to use this site.

Steve's Digicams (reviews)

This is very similar to DP Review, but lacks the forums. Steve also focuses on writing reviews for point-and-shoot digital as well as digital SLRs.

Photo Galleries/Critiques:

Photosig (galleries, critiques)

This is a very unique site in that they actually charge users for memberships. They have a rating system where each uploaded pictures will be rated by other members. What's even more interesting is that the critiques get rated as well. In theory, this sounds very cool, but in reality it's really hard to honestly critique other photographer's pictures. What I really like about this site is the feature that allows users to browse pictures based on a variety of equipment information such as, camera, lens, and film. Photosig also has websites for different countries.

RaySoda (galleries/critiques)

This is actually a Korean site. I am only listing it here because of the unique contents. This site also has a rating system, but its a very simple 'recommendation' scheme. The owner (Aki) has designed a complicated algorithm that determines the pictures to be shown in the front page. The algorithm balances various types of pictures (popular/high quality, portrait/landscape, color/b&w etc.) and nobody has a clear idea on how it works. This is a good place to see the works of many young Korean amateurs.

Tech Tags: photography+websites photonet apug fredmiranda dp+review luminous+landscape steves+digicam photosig raysoda

Music::iArt for iPod users

Ever since I discovered Allofmp3.com, I've been filling up my iPod rather quickly. There are lots of benefits of using Allofmp3 instead of iTunes to buy music, but one of the disadvantages was the fact that the Allofmp3 files do not include the Album Arts.

I did a little bit of research and found this neat little software called iArt, by iPodSoft. This program can search the album arts through Amazon or Google and let you apply it to an set of mp3 files with same album tag on your hard drive. I liked the fact that you can do this on a iTunes Playlists basis, because that's how I organize my songs on my iPod. Here is an excerpt from the website:

iArt is a shareware program that can be used to download album art or lyrics for your iTunes or iPod library. It currently supports searching Amazon or Google Image Search for artwork and new sources can be made through it’s plugin architecture.

I liked the fact that this is a simple application that does only one or two things and it does them pretty well.

The main screen is shown on the right. It shows the playlist selection box and three options: i) Automatic Internet Art Retriever, ii) Hard Drive Wizard and iii) Lyric Searcher. The Art retriever is used for searching the album arts for the given playlist and the hard drive wizard looks for the album arts stored in your own mp3 files.

I especially like the 'automatic' mode, which works great for lyrics. The software is only $10, and you can pay via paypal. It is not really a commercial-grade quality, but as long as it does its job, I think it's worth every penny.

Tech Tags: iart ipodsoft ipod album+art lyrics mp3 allofmp3 itunes

Movie::And the Oscar goes to...

I just watched the 78th Annual Academy Awards. I would say that it was a very 'quiet' one, without much surprises. Oscar ceremony is a big entertainment event for me and my family, and we have always had the Oscar pool for the past 15 years or so.

This time, I was trailing my wife by 2 points two thirds into the game, but I finished strong, getting all the final 7 categories right. The Best Pictures was the most important one, because everone else thought that Brokeback Mountain was going to win and I was the only one to get it right. At the end, I got 16 out of 25, which is a bit above average compared to other years (Usually, I would get 12-15 right).

The Host

I was surprised to find Jon Stewart hosting the ceremony. He is a good comedian, but I didn't think he had enough of name value to run the show. He was pretty funny all along, ("Oscars, Martin Scorsese: zero, Three 6 mafia: one"), but no song-and-dance, and no controversies. I guess he was okay, but I really miss Billy Crystal for I always enjoyed his openings.

The funniest moment

We all agreed that Ben Stiller was the funniest guy tonight. He came out to present the "Visual Effects" award. He was wearing a green spandex and acting like he was invisible neck down with the special effects. He would later pull out a green mask and pretended as if the envelop was opening itself. It was classic Ben, and nobody does this better. Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell were hilarious as well.

Pleasant Surprises

I was really happy to see George Clooney win the Best Supporting Actor for Syriana. I wanted him to win because I think he is one of the not-so-many mainstream actors/actresses that are good enough to win an Oscar.

Oh, Nicole Kidman was stunning as usual:)

The Montages

The montages are one of the reasons I like the Oscars so much. The official site lists 6 different montages that were shown during the ceremony: Heroes & Heroines, Film Noir, Widescreen, Issues, Spectacles, and Biopics. I think they missed out the first one, which I thought was the best - it was about the 'gay' scenes in the old pictures (mocking Brokeback Mountain).

The Best Moment

I'm a big fan of Robert Altman, and it was great to see the giant get acknowledged by the "mainstream" academy. I love his unique style (sometimes it can get too complex for most people), and it was great to hear that he just finished another one. ("A Prairie Home Companion") He looked wise but older than I thought and I didn't know he had a heart transplant 10 years ago. He said he has 30~40 more years in him, and I surely hope so.

The Biggest Moment

When Ang Lee won the Best Director award, it seemed like Brokeback Mountain was going to get everything they wanted. I usually pick the same movie for the best director and the best picture, but I just felt that this could be one of those years that they would be a split. In fact, I think the academy tries to split them whenever they can to justify the separation of the two categories. There were two very outstanding movies, Brokeback and Crash, and they couldn't ignore one of them for the main awards. I thought it was very well done.

...Could have been better

Overall, I thought the 78th Academy Award was well done, but I really hoped there would be more enthusiasm. The host, at one point, made a joke that Three 6 Mafia was the most excited one, and it seemed like that's how it ended. Everybody was cool and happy, but nobody was Cuba-Gooding-Jr-happy or Roberto-Benigni-happy. I don't think anyone made an impressive acceptance speech as well - I was even starting to miss James Cameron's famous "I am the king of the world" moment.

Tech Tags: oscar academy+award brokeback+mountain crash ben+stiller jon+stewart

Music::Recommendations from a friend

Several weeks ago, I asked my dear friend Andy for some recommendations. Andy is a lazy blogger, who is "a Korean, US Permanant Resident, living in Japan and working at a French company." He's a great guy, but more importantly, he is a music buff with a trustworthy taste.

This is what I got from him:

A few suggestions of different kind… let me know if you like any then I recommend some more.  Some of them aren’t exactly new

Something hard:

• …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (yes that is the band name.  Obscure but great) – best CD: “Source Code and Tags”
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
• Foo Fighters (led by David Groehl from Nirvana)
• Black Keys (for something bluesy)
• Mars Volta – try De-Loused In The Comatorium (punky)
• Cursive – The Ugly Organ

Also try:

• Arcade Fire – Funeral (only one CD but it is the most critically acclaimed CD of recent years.  Imagine Bowie or Talking Heads)
• Modest Fire – “Good News for People Who Love Bad News” is a big hit (ask your son) but I prefer “Moon & Antarctica”
• Fiery Furnace – “Blueberry Boat” (weirdness)
• Anything from Flaming Lips
• PJ Harvey “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea”

For something folky (imagine Neil Young):

• Bright Eyes
• Clem Snide
• Elliott Smith (not exactly new since he’s dead now)

So-called low-fi or emo:

• Deathcab for Cutie “Plans”
• Anything from Yo La Tengo
• Shins

So-called dance rock that is popular these days (your son might have some):

• Killers
• Franz Ferdinand
• Arctic Monkeys

-ak

I've been too busy to try them out, but I did try "... And they will know us by the trail of the dead" and I really liked them. I'm planning to listen to some of the other recommendations, but if you have any good rock music to share, please let me know!

Tech Tags: music+recommendation rock+music new+rock rock+recommendation rock+band

Music::Led Zeppelin Tributes

Led Zeppelin is, by far, my all-time favorite band. I have to confess that I stayed away from music since the 90's (related to my new passion in movies and getting sick of the rap/hip-hop trend). But since I bought my iPod G5 and discovering Allofmp3.com, I started listening to music regularly again.

I am trying to listen to new bands, but I have yet failed to find any band that's good enough to buy an album. I guess this is a new thing - bands are focusing on selling songs than albums because of the new download services? Anyhow, I tried Pandora.com to find new songs that I would like, using their recommendation service. I entered some Led Zeppelin's songs but I didn't really like most of their recommendations. I was very disappointed since I heard so many good stories about Pandora, but then I realized a simple fact:

"There are NO new songs that are as good as those of Led Zeppelin's anymore. Period."

So after I bought several Led Zeppelin albums, I decided to try some 'Tribute' albums. The first one I bought was "Great Zeppelin: Tribute to Led Zeppelin" by Great White. I've never heard of Great White, but I was amazed at how good they are. I love the selections, and I especially enjoyed "In the light", "Tangerine" and "Thank you". If you are a Zeppelin fan, you will be amazed at how good the band is, and how good the singer is (Jack Russel sounds just like Robert Plant. I bet you won't be able to tell the difference unless you hear carefully).

I was so encouraged by this, so I bought another tribute album called, "Encomium: Tribute to Led Zeppelin" by various artists. This one is very different from the Great White's. It includes 12 different Zeppelin songs by 12 different artists. I liked some and I hated some. I really liked the ones that were totally different from Zep's version, but were yet pleasing. For example, I loved "Thank you" by Duran Duran the most, because it is absolutely Duran Duran sound but still very good. In the meantime, I hated "D'yer Maker" by Sheryl Crow and "Custard Pie" by Helmet With David Yow (What's wrong with these guys?). It seems like "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Good Time, Bad Times" cannot be ruined no matter who plays them.

So the first one was great, and the second was a hit-and-miss (but I still enjoyed it very much). Now I am planning to try some other tribute albums such as, "Stairway to Rock (Not just) A Led Zeppelin Tribute", "Livin' Lovin' Played: A Led Zeppelin Tribute", "Led Zeppelin: This Ain't No Tribute Series -- All Blues'd Up!" and "Pickin' on Led Zeppelin, Vol. 1-2" - all by various artists. I might even try "Chamber Maid: The Baroque Tribute to Led Zeppelin"!

...then there are a whole bunch of solo albums by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page I need to catch up with. That should be enough for a while:)

Tech Tags: led+zeppelin tribute great+white enconium pandora allofmp3

Photo::Digital Negatives Part II

For the past couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with two different methods to print digital negatives in the darkroom. Here are some of my observations:

• Dan Burkholder's curve didn't work for me at all. The curve makes the negative darker, and expands the contrast in both shadows and highlights. In theory, this should work, but in my experiments, the print came out murky.
• Dan should really explain the parameters he used for printing: The paper, developer, lightsource, and most importantly the paper grade.
• Mark Nelson argues that Dan's approach works only in his environment and thus new curve needs to be made for each person's own environment. I think it makes a lot of sense. However, that doesn't exactly explain why I got such murky prints - I would expect that at least the print would be an improvement over a straight print.
• Mark's method makes total sense but it didn't work for me for two reasons: i) When I did the callibration with the color wedge, the print came out too light that none of the cells came up white (black was fine), and ii) The scanner method is not accurate enough and it just adds more variables (such as the scanner and the software). You really need a densitometer for this method.
• I am suspecting that the printer setting (Epson 2200, Photo glossy) that I use for the printing material (Pictorico OHP film) does not generate enough of density. When I tried the 'watercolor paper' setting, which uses most ink, the negative got denser but I got roller marks as well. I need to test with something between glossy and watercolor. However, even with the thickest negative, the print itself didn't improve enough.
• The best negative I got so far was a handmade one, based on trial and error. Interestingly enough, the resulting curve looks very different from Dan's curve or any other published ones. I must be doing something wrong.
• I made the conclusion that I need a densitometer in order to properly callibrate the curve, so I took the plunge and bought a 'X-Rite 810' densitometer, which supports both transmissive and reflective metering. This one is quite expensive, but I justified myself by thinking that even if this whole experiments failed, I would be able to use this for film negative contrast control.

I just found this curve at this site. (This site is very informative, which complements Dan's method very well) It actually looks very similar (but better than) to my handmade version. I definitely need to try this out tonight.

Finally, I would really love to talk to someone who successfully made a print from digital negatives. I'd like to learn exactly what parameters were used so that I can at least identify where I'm doing wrong...

Tech Tags: digital+negative darkroom dan+burkholder mark+nelson