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I've been wearing glasses since third grade — approximately twelve years. I get new glasses about once a year or so, to adjust to changes in my prescription and fix scratches and such in the lenses.
I don't remember when I last got a new pair — it's been a few months, at least. Since I got them, though, I've noticed a significant degradation in something — initially, something I wasn't able to place. Eventually I noticed what it was: colors were moving! Different colors shifted different amounts depending on what part of the glass they passed through. As with a camera, the centers are perfect, and the edges are the problem areas.
The primary case in which I noticed this for the first few months was when looking at syntax highlighted code: brightly-colored keywords would appear to shift relative to the baseline, some in different directions than others. I eventually mentioned this to Dad, who pointed out the principle of dispersion, and I noted that this was something that most of my lenses strived to reduce (for obvious reasons) through the use of low-dispersion glass (Nikon calls it "ED", and 3 of my 5 lenses have it).
I'm somewhat intrigued by the fact that Nikon makes eyeglass lenses, but I think that's taking brand loyalty (and probably price) a little too far...
Today I stumbled upon a remarkable example of this phenomenon: one of those neon "OPEN" signs at a store near my apartment. I was able to completely remove the red lettering from its containing blue box as shown below, just by looking through the top of my glasses instead of the center — not even something one would consider unreasonable or strange.
The dispersion in the image above is not exaggerated (though it's not to scale, the open sign was quite a bit smaller than in the picture; call it two fingers high at arm's length, or so) — I could repeatedly get the top of the box to clear the bottom of the type.
At this point, I'm quite convinced that this is completely unacceptable performance: it's extremely irritating, to say the very least. I'm fairly sure that something that happened during my last optometric appointment (or, at least, with my most recent pair of glasses) made this much worse, and I will be sure to bring this up next time I visit. (There's another whole rant to be had about how much I detest the fact that there are no truly objective measurements involved in eyeglass prescriptions, and how broken that is...)
Yeah... so... let me know if you wear glasses and have a similar issue, I'd be interested to hear from you! Find a neon open sign and do your own experiments!
I accidentally ended up in the middle of OB's Street Fair today. I made the best of it by avoiding the crowd, heading out on the pier, and taking a picture of the festivities (this one *really* requires a click to make it bigger, though I am not responsible for browser crashes resulting from the loading of the 25+ megapixel image):
And a 1:1 crop:
M-o-o-n... that spells moon!
From Japan With Love
A few months ago, I thought it would be neat to try my hand at using (*gasp*) film — mostly just for the experience, to see where we've come from, and what I've missed.
I got in contact with someone who was selling a whole kit (which he had acquired from his father) — discussing capabilities and the condition of the equipment. A few weeks later, we came to a very (too!) reasonable price (something like 40$, I believe), and he shipped me a perfect-working-condition 1975 Nikon Nikkormat FT2, a basic 50mm f/2 lens, the bag, a whole filter system, and another random lens he was trying to get rid of which doesn't fit on any camera either he nor I have (I eventually identified it as an Olympus mount, if anyone wants it; I think it's 70-200mm f/2.8 or something like that).
While it was on its way, I shopped around for film, eventually settling on one roll of Kodak Ektar (color, ISO 100), and one roll of Kodak TRI-X (black and white, ISO 400). Mike wanted me to get a roll of Kodachrome, to get the whole retro experience; unfortunately there's only one Kodachrome processing facility remaining in the world, and it's quite expensive to get film developed (and nearly impossible to do independently — apparently it's a very complicated process).
After it came (the day before Zoe, actually, so it got preempted slightly), I ran to RadioShack and got the battery required for the built-in light meter. I hadn't considered it needing power, and wasn't really expecting metering at all (a pleasant surprise!). The film still hadn't arrived, so I spent a little while toying around with all the buttons and levers, getting acquainted with the camera. One thing I've noted to people on numerous occasions is that it's relatively easy to contain almost the entire mechanism of the camera in your head and be much more "in tune" with the hardware than you could possibly be with, say, my D80, which I find rather neat!
The film arrived right in the middle of the second-to-last week of work on my final projects, so I didn't have a lot of time to take pictures. I did decide that I'd use up one roll before I left Troy, just to see what the pictures looked like, and if I was capable of metering and focusing with it and whatnot. So, I did exactly that! I ran around, taking not-horribly-interesting photographs of things around Troy, onto the color film.
The sound of the Nikkormat's shutter is much, much more satisfying than on my D80, which is much, much more satisfying than that of any other camera I've ever been around (and quite a bit nicer than the XTi/XSi shutter sound of Nate and DJ's cameras). Just thought I'd get that out there.
It's also incredibly heavy. I don't know why; I guess it's just well-built. I'm not sure that it's actually heavier than the D80, it's just... that looks heavy.
One neat thing: I get metering on my really long prime and my macro, which I don't get at all on the D80. That strikes me as bizarre, and I'm angry at Nikon for keeping that feature reserved for the D300 and up...
I took the film to Rite Aid; it turns out they no longer have 1-hour-photo, but instead have to send it away for processing ("Photo Lab" apparently now means "we print digital photos"). A week later (through ROFLCon weekend), I went back and retrieved my pictures!
They all turned out OK, surprisingly. A few right at the beginning were blurry, as I had a habit of grabbing the wrong ring (adjusting aperture instead of shutter speed) which had to be broken. All were exposed more or less correctly, thankfully (I was initially somewhat distrusting of the seemingly extremely simplistic light meter), and focus was generally good (I really wish they'd add that split focuser back onto the DSLRs; or maybe the highest end ones have it? it makes manual focusing much easier). Not interesting pictures, as I said, but they worked!
Now I've got the roll of black & white, which I'll probably end up taking to California with me, maybe. It'd probably be easier to get film developed there, too...
I sent one neat picture to Vivian in a card; a few out of the set that remain are sprinkled above.
Yashica and Soligor
Shortly before the Nikkormat showed up, but after I'd paid for it, Dad asked whether or not I'd be interested in some of his father's old photography stuff. Apparently Papa Cliff doesn't use his old Yashica TL-Electro much anymore (not a surprise; someone let him have a digital camera at some point), nor his old 500mm f/8 mirror "lens" (even less of a surprise; I said 500mm... he'd be lucky to be able to take a sharp picture of the sun at that focal length, with his shaking... I can't even begin to get sharp pictures at anything less than 1/800s exposures, and I'm relatively steady).
So, of course, I said yes!
How could I not? Another camera to play with and compare would be neat (I haven't gotten a chance to acquire film and try out the camera yet, but I will!), and the lens — once converted — could legitimately be useful; on the crop sensor on my D80, it turns into a 750mm lens. Wow! My next closest lens is my 180-turned-270mm, though it goes to f/2.8, so the shaking problem is drastically reduced from all angles.
Last night, Dad and I epoxied a Nikon lens-reversal ring (for turning that nice zoom you've got into a macro lens) onto the back of the lens; a bit of sanding and forcing things on seems to have gotten the lens to focus properly to infinity, unlike what some people on the internet seem to have managed.
I took it out today, and, as you can see, took some pictures! There are more (and larger versions) on Flickr. A lot of these would have been very hard/impossible to have taken with any glass I had before. Very neat! Thanks, Papa Cliff, I promise I'll treat it well and have a lot of fun :-)
I made a little scatterplot of the number of pictures I've taken each day for the last four-and-almost-one-half years (I have data back further, but it's uninteresting before I had a camera, obviously!).
You'll have to click on it to see details; I've labeled various high-yield or interesting events.
A few things:
- It's a slightly unfortunate visualization, because high-yield but spread out events (Andros, Barcelona, etc.) are harder to see than short events (like July 4th Fireworks, for example).
- It's interesting to note that Matt, not myself, contributed the largest per-day sum of pictures, when he took my camera to "Reptile World" and held the button down the entire time...
- You can also see that 2007 has a lot more total points (mostly around the 1 or 2 picture mark), because of APAD!
I took thousands of pictures this year (not including well over 20,000 timelapse stills for my final video project). I've pulled a few out of that batch which represent particular moments (unfortunately there are no pictures of Kaitlyn and I, something I'll have to remedy for next year!). A lot of these have already been posted here; this is to collect them together to make myself realize that these are all moments from the last year. Also, you'll have to differentiate between the two Amys yourself (it should be obvious in most cases); every time I add initials like we do in real life, the words look funny on the screen! They're in almost-chronological order (the vertical pictures mix this up a bit):
rms came and stayed with Matt (right down the hall from us) while at the RPI stop on his lecture circuit. It was quite an enlightening evening, to say the least. I've also been told there's a semi-significant possibility it's going to happen again this year! The picture is of Matt's signed ThinkPad lid. bigger
I finally gave up on Jayne mk. I (because of heat and expandability issues) and built a monster mk. II to replace it. Currently has a total of 6TB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and a nice 4890. Good, solid machine! bigger
RPI's administration had their share of issues this year, with the student body protesting over transparency within the 'tute's decision-making process. I'm afraid the issue is far from resolved at the moment, and I don't expect to see anything change during my stay in Troy. Luckily, I'm in the group of people affected the least by all of the decisions (I don't want to take foreign language classes, I don't eat at Commons, I live off campus, I don't want to be an RA, etc.), but I feel bad for those who are! bigger
Dad and I made a spur of the moment trip down to Cape Canaveral in hopes of seeing one of the last few shuttle launches. Unfortunately, some sort of leak caused a delay, and we weren't able to see the launch. There are still a few left, but I'm afraid we're going to have to settle for a Constellation/Orion/Ares launch instead. bigger
On the left, Matt sits depressed (not really, I promise!) in the hall in Davison as his Welcome Wagon and plastic flowers fail to lure Amy away from Nate. Not that that was his intent, or anything! bigger
On the right is the Girellis' dog, Bongo, who we all became good friends with while he stayed with his grandparents, across the street from us. He's grown to a slightly-less adorable size at this point, but we have lots of pictures of him from the good old days — and he's still very friendly! bigger
This remains one of my favorite pictures from my big lens — a happy, adorable Carol waving to us on a gloomy Troy day. She's the only one besides Matt who'll ever pose for pictures, so I take every opportunity! Hi, Carol! bigger
Some manner of hat epidemic broke out late in the spring semester; Matt, Nate, and Robb together purchased enough hats for a few small families! (this might be a slight exaggeration, depending on your definition of a family, but there was more than one hat per person) Matt, of course, acquired a red fedora. bigger
Carol, Connor, Ben, Andrew, and I (along with dozens of classmates) spent a good chunk of the semester toying with 8051s in hopes of stabilizing one of the LITEC blimps; this is a shot of some of the blimps resting on their moorings. We all eventually succeeded (some *ahem*Carol*ahem* with only moments to spare) — yay! bigger
Matt went to visit Mary at Amherst; he decided that he didn't know the way to the bus station, so I accompanied him to Albany. Unfortunately, we were very, very short on time, so we ended up running down the hill from Empire State Plaza (to shouts of "run, Forrest, run!" from bystanders) to the Greyhound station. Ended up succeeding, and Matt (I hear) had a nice weekend with Mary. I had to climb back up the hill to get to my bus home, so I took some more pictures around the Plaza while catching my breath and waiting for said bus. bigger
ISS became the third brightest object in the sky (after the Sun and Moon) this year; shortly afterwards, I made it my mission to capture it on its way overhead. This is my best shot of many as it streaked across the Colchester sky. bigger
In June, I traveled further from home than I'd ever been — and alone! I attended the Ubuntu Developer Summit for the Karmic Koala release, in Barcelona. I had a lot of fun, and (unlike some people who were there with me...) toured around the city in my free time. Sitting at my desk right now I have a hard time believing that I actually made it there and back and was outgoing enough when I needed to be and didn't die on any of my solo treks into the city... certainly a learning experience! bigger
For whatever reason, I took Amy's senior picture this year. I think it came out quite well; there are a bunch of alternatives, too, but this is the one she used. At the time, Mom was trying to pose Amy on various rocks and things around Airport Park; we saw this post and just had to run off and take some shots there; and they stuck! bigger
On the left is some of Amy's beading, which she's been spending a good bit of time on this year, as she makes all sorts of awesome little things for various people. It's also fun to grab the macro lens and take pictures of tiny little beads and intricate wire patterns! bigger
Another example of Amy's increasing craftiness; she made a beautiful rendition of the BSG logo out of chocolate on my birthday cake; she has since made many, many more awesome chocolate-based cake designs for various occasions. bigger
Over the summer, the four of us visited Boston to tour various colleges for Amy (and to hang out in Boston!). She got totally sold on MCPHS while we were there, and has since been accepted! So hopefully (the only roadblock being Mom, worried about her being so far away) by the next time I'm writing a wrapping-up-the-year blog post, Amy will have had a whole semester cozily settled into a dorm on The Fenway. bigger
Matt, Mike, Nate, Robb, and I all moved out of RPI's dorms and into an apartment; we've been there for a whole semester now, and it's been great! We've got a lot of space now, and best of all, a kitchen! The lack of dining halls is a little strange, sometimes, but I can't say that I miss Commons' food. bigger
A very significant part of my time during the fall semester was spent working on projects for Intermediate Video (1, 2, 3); it was well worth it, for sure — I had a lot of fun, got an A, and only irritated Matt a little bit with the constant (every 30 seconds) shutter clattering for two or three weeks on end. bigger
Matt acquired ants to fill an ant farm he'd had sitting around from a few Christmases ago; someone (Mike, I believe) got the great idea to set up a webcam on the ants and post it to reddit. Nate then plopped his laptop on its side behind the webcam and the ants, blaring Cascada and running the iTunes visualizer as a backdrop for the dancing ants (unfortunately, this part is not pictured). Amy was visiting at the time, so she might have gotten a slightly skewed idea of college life. Two or three weeks, a few thousand justin.tv viewers, and hours of — quite literally — laughing out loud later, we ended up shutting off the webcam. Some clips appear to remain on the site, and we have a nice reddit thread, too. bigger
"Get up, get out of bed, and get in the car." "O...K...?". Carol and Hana dragged me to Larkfest, Albany's (apparently) annual street fair. I wasn't sure what was up at first, but ended up having a great (if slightly shy, at times) day out with the girls, wandering the street (and hiding, while they shopped for jewelry) and consuming gigantic burritos. More pictures on Flickr, and there's a picture of the three of us on the Times Union website, too! bigger
Matt had a particularly unhappy day, so Nate and Mike went out and bought him a tiny orange betta fish, named Wanda (after the Gnome mascot, not the movie, though I'm sure there's a relation there!). Wanda's still happily swimming (though she took quite a long car ride home to Boston for both Thanksgiving and Christmas break, she survived somehow!) and providing Matt with dozens of hours of entertainment. bigger
Every year, Gnome holds a developer summit at MIT in Boston; this was the second year that Matt and I were in attendance. We spent a significant part of this conference hanging out (and discussing the finer points of the future of Gnome) with Jason, who I worked with over the summer on gnome-games. The picture is of after the conference (I'm too shy to take lots of pictures of people I only know from the internet!), when we went to visit Amy in Davis Square. It's got a little of everything; a classic Matt pose, Amy ignoring Matt, random strange bystanders, etc. bigger
Awwwwwwwwww. 'nuff said. All things grow with love! bigger
And that's it! The end of the year; a Christmas Poinsettia! bigger
What a great year :-)
I took Amy's senior picture earlier this week. I think it came out quite well!
Mom's trying to get me to offer to do pictures for other people to make some money on the side, but I don't think I could deal with other people, nor can I ever assure success of a photographic mission :-)
There's more at Flickr.
Quite often, my background on Kaylee is a picture I've recently taken... here's twenty of my favorite past backgrounds that I took (including the squirrel in Albany which I'm currently using), all CC-BY-NC-SA, so you can have fun:
P.S. There's Seed-y, Cluttery, shiny stuff coming soon, hopefully! Then, Barcelona!
About a month ago, I bought a Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 pre-AI lens. It turns out that my D80 doesn't accept pre-AI lenses — oops! — but, luckily, Robb's D40 does! So, I (with some sadness) gave the lens to Robb... it was cheap, and it's pretty awesome, so he might as well have it, rather than go through the hassle of modifying it or trying to sell it.
Fast forward another week. I've won a Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 AI-s: one of Nikon's sharpest lenses ever, the flagship of their 80s prime telephoto collection (and was still produced, though in limited runs, through 2006). Now, I'll note to you that this lens still regularly sells new for well over 700$, and used for not much less than that, so acquiring it for less than a seventh of that was quite a bargain (not to mention comparing that to what it must have cost originally, in 1983, a number I can't seem to acquire)... luckily, it's in absolutely outstanding condition, practically like new except for minor external scars.
The picture above is of the diaphragm of this lens, at f/32. I had a bit of trouble getting both my flash and my camera at an angle appropriate to take this picture, but it came out OK. The colors are cool, too. Below, you can see this lens all the way on the right, next to my macro (next from the right), my normal zoom lens (left of middle), and my 50mm f/1.8 (all the way to the left). As you can probably tell, it's rather heavy, and even dwarfs my camera.
This lens poses a few challenges for me. Actually, all of the challenges. Since I have a D80, and not one of the über-high-end Nikons, I don't get metering, so I'm all alone with full-manual there (I don't mind that so much); in addition, the lens is pre-AF, so I have to manually focus. This is posing more of a challenge than I'd initially anticipated; I don't really think I can get my eye close enough to the viewfinder to do a satisfactory manual focusing job very quickly. I think it'll come with practice — I'm planning on taking it out some day soon and trying to take, say, 50 completely-in-focus pictures in a row, just to try to train myself as to how to focus!
That image of adorableness is one of the first successful pictures I managed to get out of this piece of glass; the pictures that follow it in my Aperture library make it clear that I can't refocus while walking very well (yet!), as they're all rather out-of-focus in comparison. Still, it proved to me that the thing works, at least, and can produce pretty awesome bokeh while it's at it!
One night, I went down to the first floor Davison lounge, stopped this lens all the way down to f/32 (making for a miiiighty slow picture, so I had a tripod), and took a shot of the chalkboard, just to see what would happen. A lack of formal training makes experiments quite required, as well as being entertaining!
Later, Matt got a red fedora (yeah, yeah, make all the Red Hat/Fedora jokes you want, that was only partially the intent!). The first few shots were crappy, owing mostly to the fact that I have to stand in China to take a picture of a person, but this one came out wonderfully:
Finally, at PJ's opening day (which Matt, a good deal of my family, and myself attended, to quite happy stomachs), I cranked up the ISO for a film-grain-y shot of PJ hard at work. When I get back to my computer, what do I see? Exactly what I was looking for... (except the hard at work part... he enjoyed posing!). Awesome.
In any case, I hope to have a great deal of fun with this lens in the future. I might be helping (or at least trying) to take Amy's senior picture, so who knows — maybe it'll get some use then! She doesn't have that big of a nose, though, so it's not really necessary over the (faster, lighter) 50mm f/1.8 :-) teehee.
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