(via Karen)
Archive for the ‘photo’ Category
it was ever thus
Saturday, April 7th, 2007stickers
Thursday, April 5th, 2007
his & hers superbes
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
The small image doesn’t do them justice, but I saw two Raleigh Superbes locked together near Dundas on Yonge. These were the deluxe ones with the locking steering column and the front dynohub. Lovely bikes, definitely sensible.
Vaughan Wind Turbine
Monday, April 2nd, 2007
A modified AOC 15/50 wind turbine at a Honda dealership in Vaughan, ON. If you click through the link, you should be able to get to the full-sized image.
bunny car
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
Lindt Gold Bunny ad car outside the downtown Hilton yesterday.
the discarded galosh
Monday, March 12th, 2007
Winter is nearly over …
flash bang wallop
Friday, March 9th, 2007I’m rather taken with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2. Not merely does it look like a proper camera, it doesn’t handle like a gimmicky electronic toy. I love the wide-aspect images, and it stores all the EXIF information I need for panoramas. I could do without the proprietary USB/video connector, and it would have been really nice to have auto-bracket enabled on raw shooting for exploring HDR images, but it is not a huge deal. Neatest basic function is the ability to view your pics as a calendar, each day opening up the ones you took then. Nice.
Barnack’s ghost is probably troubled by the use of the Leica name on such a frivolous device. I will be able to claim the famed “leica glow” on my shots now, though.
I’m thinking that this camera is targeted towards the sophisticated grandpa. It’s able to track the ages of two children, so your pictures can be tagged as being of Baby X at age Y. Useless? Well, someone could use it.
Oh okay … some photos are here: http://scruss.com/gallery/v/lumix_lx2/
camerangst
Wednesday, March 7th, 2007I told myself that I wouldn’t upgrade my P&S until the pixel count doubled for an affordable price. I didn’t define ‘affordable’, though, leaving myself perhaps too much consumer wiggle room.
Anyway, 10+ megapixel compacts are here, but there are many contenders. The Panasonic DMC-LX2 has a nice lens, but is expensive and looks a little soft unless you shoot raw. The Canon SD900 is lovely and tiny, but maybe that’s all.
Do I really need to upgrade at all?
Things I Saw in Vancouver
Thursday, March 1st, 2007Things I Saw in Vancouver - and yes, there are flowers in bloom. Beware of the cute sea otters, though they’re not quite up there with the Oh Noes! otter.
a narrow escape
Thursday, February 15th, 2007I narrowly avoided buying an old Speed Graphic camera on eBay today. I regretted bidding almost immediately; film is a pain, and I’m glad I didn’t win. It would have been a nice ornament, but nothing more useful.
self portrait as mobile phone
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
(found while clearing up old files.)
fauxlomo
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
Portpatrick, taken with a Fujifilm MX-1200 pretending to be a lomo
For probably no better reason beyond babbittry, I’ve always half-wanted a lomo. Half-wanted, that is, because of my previous experience with “Russian” photo gear (I’ve had a Lomo TLR, a Fed rangefinder, and a Pentacon six) and its legendary quality control. I’m also so done with film.
A while back, Donncha wrote about a GIMP Lomo Plugin. While it looked handy, the link to the code is now dead. You can find what I think is the same one here: http://flelay.free.fr/pool/lomo2.scm (or a local copy here if that link dies: lomo2.scm). Just pop it in your .gimp-2.2/scripts/ directory, and it’ll appear as a filter. The original author’s comment on Donncha’s blog contains good settings: Vignetting softness=1, Contrast=30, Saturation=30, Double Vignetting=TRUE.
I knew there was a reason I retrieved my old 1.3 megapixel Fujifilm MX-1200 from my parents’ house. And that reason is fauxlomo!
Costco Photo Centre, part II
Friday, January 5th, 2007So I got the photos back today. The service is pretty quick; I sent the order at 16:45, and had a ready-for-collection confirmation at 10:41 the next day. After braving the lines at Costco (no fun), I had a look at them.
The prints are pretty good; colour’s bright, everything’s sharp, and there’s no obvious digital artefacts. But I got a bunch of dupes (maybe those failed uploads didn’t really fail at all). If I needed pictures again in a hurry and cheaply, I might go for Costco, as long as it wasn’t for anything really important.
I’ll still thinking about a networkable photo-printer, though. CompuSmart had a demo HP Photosmart 8450 for cheap, but it had no cables or PSU, so was pretty useless.
Costco Photo Centre: cheap, but stupid
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007So I’ve got the holiday photos, and want to print them for those that like that. I’d used Future Shop in the past, but Costco is offering such cheap prints, I thought I’d give them a try.
Probably a mistake:
- Their drag and drop uploader is an ActiveX control that only works under IE on Windows. Use any other browser, and you get presented with an old-school HTML form. For 94 pictures, that would get dull quickly.
- The uploader transmits several images at once. It seems that if any of the uploads should fail, all the files uploading at that time also fail. Uploading a few at a time doesn’t seem to help much; around one in ten files will fail randomly.
- While the uploader does warn you when an upload fails, it’s up to you to remember which files haven’t worked. Clicking Retry just takes you back to the uploader, and since it’s an embedded applet, there’s no browser history to take you back to note your failed uploads.
- The albums store files in the order uploaded, and can’t be changed.
- Long file names get truncated, and then get uselessly used as the title on the back.
Still, I’ll let you know how it all went when I get the prints in a couple of days.
Stewart’s Images :: UK October 2006
Sunday, October 29th, 2006Stewart’s Images :: UK October 2006 contains photos of our trip.
about to be gone
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006This corner of Bloor & Bedford is about to be gone:
It has memories for us, as the first place we stayed when we arrived was just up the road. Breakfast was at Country Style (which became a Booster Juice after the massive Tim’s opened across the road), lunch was from Pita Factory, the daily paper from Gus at the Mac’s, dinner was sometimes at Swiss Chalet #1; all on the same block, all going to be gone.
If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that hugin neatly severed a couple of heads. It might smart a little, but with some bactine and gauze, it’ll grow back in the morning.
more big boats
Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
Algoisle loads grain.
Algosoo loads salt.
strange, but cute
Saturday, August 26th, 2006cat at rest
Friday, July 28th, 2006
