Blogchunks

Weirdness....

You know, I've just got to say....

The internet isn't just weird. It's weirder than weird. It's at that level of weirdness beyond what you or I could have possibly imagined as the maximum, epitomizing level of weirdness. Beyond what any mere mortal could describe, it would take a poet of great genius to even approach an accurate description of the weirdness, and even then, it would only be a faint reflection of the reality. That's how fucking weird it is.

Damn. Why did I ever think that greater understanding would be a good idea? Just give me the fucking blue pill already.

posted by cke @ 12:56 AM 2 comments

I hate to just do the "post a link" thing on here, but this one I can't resist:

Picture Perfect Parenting

It's a riot!

posted by cke @ 7:39 AM 0 comments

My Musical History: Part 1 of 3

Over on the DriveWeSaid forums, someone posted a request for people to talk about their "music history". I wasn't going to do it, but eventually couldn't resist the temptation, and came up with this, which, truthfully, would only be part one of three:

Okay, lemme take a stab at this. Keeping this nice and linear proved to be impossible, but what the hell:

Born in 1968. Earliest songs I can remember would be "Jennifer Juniper" by Donovan, and "Yellow Submarine". These are from the pre-1972 era, before my family moved to our current city.

Later favorites (like in the 1972-73 period) would be "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers. Also, "Teach the Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Still love both of those--in fact, that whole Allman Brothers album is on my lifetime faves list. Another notable fave from that period would be "Morning Has Broken", the Yusuf Islam version. ;) I don't listen to that one very often anymore though.

There was also frequent exposure to a bit of classical music at this point. My Dad had a nice Sony reel-to-reel tape player, and I was fascinated by the motion of the reels, and their relationship to the little counter thingee, plus I enjoyed relating the sound of the music to the little level gauge needles that waved up and down. It was also very cool when he would record something, because then a neato red light would turn on behind the level gauges. :) The coolest thing of all about that machine, though, I wouldn't grasp until much later. That was the fact that you could put four standard-length albums on one tape, and still get reasonable sound quality. 3 3/4 ips, I believe it was, on quarter-inch tape. Far superior to cassettes, and, IMHO, the clumsiness of them was a feature, not a bug. Dad even had a tape slicer which he would have to use sometimes. :)

In any case, he had a couple of very nice classical reels, that he actually bought: one was some excerpts from The Messiah, G.F. Handel, not sure what orchestra (although I could check, since I now have this exact recording on CD), with Leopold Stokowski conducting. This was long before the "period instruments" craze caught on. :) Other one was a recording of the Dvorak 9th (aka The New World Symphony), which piece ended up being an all time favorite of mine, too.

In 1975, one of my Dad's younger brothers made him a tape consisting of the following: Renaissance, Scheherazade, Rick Wakeman, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table on side one. Side two was Justin Hayward and John Lodge, Blue Jays, and Chuck Mangione, Chase the Clouds Away. All four of those albums later on ended up being major influences on me in one way or another, and I still number all four of them among my all-time favorites. Once I got into college and got my very first CD player (1986), I began a many-years-long quest to obtain all of those albums on compact disc. I had to wait a long time, but eventually I got them all. More recently, I set up all four of them, in order, as an iTunes playlist, calling it "Fred tape." Fred was my uncle who devised the original.

Lessee. Late in the 5th grade, I started learning to play the saxophone, and this naturally led to an interest in music played by saxophone players. In fact, it led me back to the aforementioned tape, in particular the Chuck Mangione part of it, because the sax player on Chase the Clouds Away was actually fairly good, plus he played soprano sax, which I thought was extremely cool (this was long before soprano sax became mainstreamed and Kenny G'ed to death). This in turn led to an interest in what passed for jazz in those days. Fusion was a big deal at that time. Later on, I got interested in the Big Band era, in high school. I still love swing, and consider it one of the musical high points of the 20th century. There is just nothing like a big band, with five really kick-ass sax players, all playing together. I love that, especially if the section is really well balanced.

The primary fusion-jazz interest lasted through my sophomore year in high school, at which point I met a guy who would end up being one of the three most influential people in my life, in terms of music: my high-school band director. He had been on sabbatical my freshman year, but was now back. He had a very keen interest in classical music, and was very passionate about sharing it with his students. His favorites were the post-romantic period composers, Gustav Mahler in particular. He would often go so far as to arrange classical orchestral works for concert band, so we would have the opportunity to play them. His magnum opus in this respect was his arrangement of the first movement of Bruckner's 4th Symphony, which takes over 20 minutes to play--a very ambitious work for a high school band to attempt (and it was absolute hell for the percussion players, who had no part at all in the entire piece, except for the one guy on tympani). We played that my senior year. Other highlights were the final two sections of Pictures at an Exhibition, Mars: The Bringer of War from Holst's The Planets, and a whole shitload of other heavy-duty cool stuff. We never got into the standard elevator-music high school band stuff very much. And we never once had a Christmas concert during those three years--he considered learning to play Christmas music a waste of valuable time, a sentiment with which I agree to this day. I also took a music theory class with him during my junior year. I remember one day we spent pretty much the entire class period listening to a new recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra that he had just acquired (St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, IIRC). It was that kind of class, very few people, and very little demand to maintain a traditional high school classroom structure.

Back to sophomore year: In spite of the new exposure to a whole new realm of classical music, I didn't lose interest in jazz, because that was also the year I started studying with a local fusion jazz saxophonist (he would also be one of the three most musically influential people I've met), and he introduced me to a lot of stuff that I hadn't been familiar with before then. Charlie Parker, mostly--I regret to say that I lacked the sophistication (or possibly the patience) to really get a lot out of listening to Parker in those days, but I did find it an interesting challenge to learn to play the solos, especially the double-time parts. That sort of thing is great for showing off. ;) My sax teacher also loaned me a 90-minute cassette filled with some really wonderful classical saxophone compositions, performed by sax great Eugene Rousseau. To this day, I regret that I didn't manage to get a decent copy of that, for none of that music was ever released on compact disc, that I am aware of (update--I just saw something on Wikipedia which might contradict that statement).

Must backtrack a bit at this point: There was some exposure to popular music from the mid-70's until about 1983 or so. Faves from that time period were Abba, The Album, and Heart, Dreamboat Annie, both of which my parents pretty much played to death on the turntable. There was also Cruisin' by the Village People, my very first album purchase. ;) I also recall listening to a lot of Neil Young during that period. Not sure what the album name was--this was one of the last of the big tape reels that we made. It was the album with the long Montezuma song on it. But I gradually drifted away from all that, as I started getting more into jazz and classical. I recall being totally incapable of tolerating punk at this point--seriously, I hated it with a passion, and didn't have a much higher opinion of the popular music of the early 1980's, either.

In high school, thanks to my band director, I started collecting classical albums. Actually, that was kind of a joint effort between me and my father, mostly him because he had more money than me. I take credit for getting him started on it, though. :) One of the highlights from this period was a wonderful recording of Mahler's 2nd Symphony, which I got as my 16th birthday present. The Solti, Chicago Symphony, two-LP set, it was. At first, I didn't get that music much at all, and just enjoyed the more accessible parts of it. But one day, I sat down with the liner notes, and more importantly, the translation of the words, and just patiently listened to the whole thing, all the way through. By the time the big climax at the end came, I was practically shaking with emotion, tears streaming down my face, absolutely amazed (and somewhat embarrassed) at the reaction I was experiencing. This was a turning point in my life--the music had opened a door in my heart, allowing me to experience a depth of feeling more intense than anything else I'd ever experienced. I was never the same after that, and started intentionally seeking out other music that would have that affect, or other similar affects, on me. Turned out, there's a lot of it out there. Richard Strauss, J.S. Bach, and Richard Wagner are probably the big three for me, for a long time, in addition to more Mahler, but there were a lot of others as well. I especially liked Wagner in high school--I went through a period where I would check out entire Wagner operas from the library, and listen to them all the way through in one sitting. I was a musical addict. For those who don't know, the typical Wagnerian opera is five hours long. I could never do that today, don't have anywhere near the time. :)

So, that's the highlights through the end of high school, which is kind of a good point to take a break.

---

Upon proofing this, I realized I have mostly neglected to mention the first of the three most influential people in my musical life, and why he was so important: my father.

But this is getting too long, so I'll have to skip that.

Not sure if I'll finish writing this. After high school, things get even more complicated.

I figured, considering how long it took to get that all out, I'd damn well better post it here.

posted by cke @ 12:51 AM 0 comments

Attention, SG-1 fans

Space rock on a collision course

From the article:

engineers and scientists say they are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a one in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.

Emphasis added. :)

posted by cke @ 6:23 PM 0 comments

My List o' Lenses

(This is more for my own reference than anything else...)

Lenses that will "work" with the Nikon D40

• Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S
• Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S DX
• Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF DX Fisheye*
• Nikon 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro
• Nikon 200mm f/2G IF-ED AF-S VR
• Nikon 300mm f/2.8G ED-IF II AF-S VR
• Nikon 300mm f/4 ED-IF AF-S
• Nikon 400mm f/2.8D IF-ED AF-S II
• Nikon 500mm f/4D IF-ED AF-S II
• Nikon 600mm f/4D ED-IF II AF-S
• Nikon 12-24mm f/4.0G ED-IF AF-S DX
• Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S
• Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S DX
• Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED IF AF-S DX
• Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX
• Nikon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX
• Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR
• Nikon 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR
• Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S
• Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED AF-S
• Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR
• Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR
• Nikon 200-400mm f/4G IF-ED, AF-S VR
• Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM
• Sigma 180mm f/3.5 EX DG APO Macro (1:1) IF HSM
• Sigma 500mm f/4.5 EX DG APO HSM
• Sigma 800mm f/5.6 EX DG HSM APO
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
• Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG Aspherical HSM
• Sigma 17-35mm f/2.8-4 EX DG Aspherical HSM
• Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3 EX DG APO HSM
• Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 APO EX DG HSM Macro
• Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 EX DC APO RF HSM
• Sigma 100-300mm f/4 EX DG IF HSM
• Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG APO IF HSM
• Sigma 300-800mm f/5.6 EX DG IF APO HSM
• Lensbabies*

* I've included the Lensbabies and the 10.5 Fisheye even though they won't autofocus on the D40--the lensbabies because they obviously won't focus on any camera, and the fisheye because, although it would need to be manually focused, the fact that it's a fisheye lens means that the focusing should be fairly trivial.

This listing is based on product offerings that are listed at Adorama.com--at this point, I haven't checked either the Nikon or Sigma websites to compare with their official product listings.

posted by cke @ 2:49 PM 0 comments

Nifty landscape simulator. Very cool.

It reminds me of a screensaver I used to have--I think it was one of the "After Dark" modules, back in the early 90's. Except the look of the results is pretty different.

Here's a reduced-size sample of what I came up with, after fiddling around with it for quite a while:

posted by cke @ 10:37 AM 0 comments

Movie Comments: Dreamgirls

I saw Dreamgirls a little over a week ago.

Is there anyone other than me who felt that this movie isn't really as great as it was supposed to be?

I had three main problems with it. I'll dwell on those, and skip over almost all of the good parts, because you can read raves about those all over the internet.

First, I don't think this film really works as a musical. This is surprising, considering it's based on a musical. But here is what I mean: In a "musical", you have people singing and dancing in inappropriate places and at inappropriate times. This is how you know for sure it's a musical, because when they do that, it feels like a musical (actually, it feels damn weird at first, until you get used to it). In Dreamgirls, all the singing in the first half of the movie (roughly) happened in situations where singing would have been pretty appropriate--singers on stage, for instance--so it didn't feel like a musical, it felt like a normal movie about musicians.

Then, all of a sudden, there's a scene where one character (played by Jennifer Hudson) starts singing in a completely inappropriate situation. This would be perfectly normal in a musical, but since we haven't been given any obvious "this is a musical" cues up to that point, it ends up being an extremely jarring moment in the film. Seriously, even knowing in advance that the movie was supposed to be a musical didn't help me here. It just feels wrong, flat-out wrong, and that was the point when I started downgrading my opinion of the film, which I had felt was pretty superb up to that point.

In order to have prevented this situation from happening, there should have been at least two scenes like this earlier in the movie, preferrably with one of them right at the beginning. This would have established the "this is a musical" mindset right away. Alternatively, they could have just transformed the whole thing into a straight drama, with lots of realistic musical numbers. Either way would have worked, although I think a full-blown and correctly set up musical would have been the better choice. What they did in reality was try to straddle the midline between these two choices, and it didn't work. In a straight drama, people don't burst into song in the middle of a conversation. And in a straight musical, they typically doesn't let realism get in the way of the music.

Second problem: A lot of the raves about this movie are pointed at singer Jennifer Hudson, and in fact, just earlier today, she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She may deserve that Oscar, for her acting. But what I want to talk about is her singing, which has everyone acting all impressed, except for me. When she was singing the lead part in the trio, in the first section of the film, then I was impressed. But after she started in with the solo numbers, I quickly realized that here was someone with a really great talent, who really needed some sensible guidance on how to use it. The problem is most definitely not her voice, which is fabulous and powerful, but her style of singing. I kid you not: I had never heard of Jennifer Hudson prior to seeing this movie, so I had no idea who she was, and knew nothing about her background. Nevertheless, at one point during the movie, I found myself thinking, "She sounds just like an American Idol contestant." Imagine my amusement when I discovered that's exactly what she was.

What I mean is that she tends to lay on the drama a little too thick, which makes the song tiresome instead of exciting. I have to wonder if she's infatuated with the power of her own voice, and is making the mistake of thinking that more is automatically better. The truth is that too much power actually has much less of an impact.

The most amusing analogy I can think of to explain this concept is that of a teenager who is mightily impressed by the power of the word "fuck." Being infatuated with that power, the teenager proceeds to use the word about twenty times every minute, not realizing that the result is more ridiculous sounding than impressive. To retain the its power, "fuck" must be used in some moderation, at which point it becomes one of the more useful and versatile words in the English language.

To bring this back into the realm of music, imagine if Beethoven had written a symphony that called for the orchestra to play fortissimo for about 85% of its length. Critics would quite rightly call it trash, regardless of any obvious talent he might have displayed in its composition. Or, imagine if Charlie Parker had played nothing but really, really fast notes, all the time showing off his mad fingerin' skillz. He never would have been considered a jazz great if he had played like that--rather, he would have been considered an idiot savant. Good musical performance requires an amount of restraint on the part of the performer, in order to not spoil the climaxes of the song, which aren't going to seem very big if the whole song is big. It's a matter of contrast, not a matter of absolute volume.

With a little experience, and hopefully some constructive criticism from people who care, Hudson has the potential to become a first rate singer. I hope this happens, because then I can buy her CDs (or, okay, download her songs from iTunes). She should also seriously consider pursuing ensemble work--with a couple of really good backup singers, for example, like in the first half of this movie. No lie, that was some good stuff. Just make sure she sings lead.

Moving on to my final issue: I felt there was a substantial problem with the dramatic arc of this movie, specifically the problem of trying to maintain a good emotional pace when the primary story concerns a trio of women who start out with a fabulous sound, only to turn into a mediocre pop trio when Mr. Dumbass Producer Guy (Jamie Foxx) first demotes the lead singer to backup, and then throws her out of the group entirely. The music suffered from these transitions. It became much more pedestrian, the pop music I heard repeated endlessly on AM radio in the 70's until I could hardly stand it anymore. This is a problem because, in a musical, the music obviously plays such a central role that it is the primary source of drama. So, when the film goes from really excellent music to music that isn't all that spectacular, you end up with a dramatic arc that starts out very strong, and then fizzles out into a long, tedious anti-climax. It doesn't work, and I found myself getting fairly bored towards the end. There was what was supposed to be a big, climactic number to finish things off, but I didn't think that final song was nearly strong enough to overcome the malaise that had occupied the previous 45 minutes. (Hudson didn't sing lead in this song--a fact which was realistic within the storyline, but which really had a detrimental effect on the impact of the song. I guess this is yet another example of how the movie didn't quite work as a musical. As I have said, a full-blown musical typically doesn't let realism get in the way of the music, and they really went for realism at the expense of music in this movie. Obviously, this realism would have been a tremendous asset, if only they had decided to make the movie a straight drama, and here we come back full-circle to my original objection.)

This is sounding like a pretty negative review, but please realize that what I've written here are the only problems I've been able to find with this movie. I think these are significant enough so that I am in complete agreement with the Motion Picture Academy, who failed to nominate it for a Best Picture award. However, that doesn't mean that it's not worth seeing, because it most definitely is. I may even give it another look, if I have time--the beginning parts are absolutely worth seeing multiple times, and perhaps a second look will give me a fresh perspective on the rest of the film. (Also, you've just got to see Eddie Murphy in this movie. Here's a guy who really does deserve that Oscar nomination...which he got, earlier today.)

posted by cke @ 11:49 PM 1 comments

We don't need no steenking badges!!

I made myself one of these goovy Flickr "badges". Javascript and Flash required.

[edit] Okay, it didn't work to post it here, since scripts aren't allowed in posts, apparently. So I put it in the sidebar instead. Actually, that was probably just as well, it looks fucking awesome over there.

posted by cke @ 3:13 PM 0 comments

The St. Petersburg Open

I rarely talk about sports on this blog. Or anywhere, for that matter. But this article on heat difficulties at the Australian Open was pretty interesting, I thought:

Extreme heat too dangerous

SEVERAL distressed players yesterday called for an overhaul of the tournament's extreme heat policy after being pushed to physical and mental exhaustion at Melbourne Park.

Play was banned on outside courts from 12.15pm as the temperature hit 40.8C, but that was too late for leading players Maria Sharapova and David Nalbandian, whose matches had already started.

The two stars were forced to the brink of their capabilities - and are lucky to still have Open hopes - after suffering in conditions Sharapova called inhuman.

The women's top seed said she suffered delusions before edging past Camille Pin 6-3 4-6 9-7.

"I was so delusional I couldn't think," Sharapova said. "It was really tough. It was hard to think about what you were going to do on court because you were, just mentally, trying to find a way to kind of make the points shorter and basically trying to find a way to win.

"But sometimes when it is that hot outside, your mind doesn't work properly."

Nalbandian, 25, said the conditions were horrendous after recovering from a two-set deficit, and saving two match points, on Margaret Court Arena to beat Janko Tipsarevic.

His younger opponent by two years feared his heart might stop before withdrawing in the fifth set after winning only one more game for the match after leading 5-2 in the third set.

"When I asked for the doctor at 5-6 in the third set, I felt like my heart was like, how you say, pounding, and then it would suddenly stop, and then pound and then stop, and then after I felt like vomiting on the court," Tipsarevic said.

"I felt incredible exhaustion."

That's pretty bad. However, there are differing points of view:

Tournament spokesman John Lindsay said, while organisers were mindful of the concerns of players, they had received resistance in the past when attempting to introduce, and then improve, the extreme heat policy.

Lindsay said four-time winner Andre Agassi was one player adamant that overcoming extreme conditions was part of the challenge of winning the Australian Open.

Just to put this in perspective, the Australian Open is one of four major tennis events known as the Grand Slam. A player (or doubles team) is said to have won a "True Grand Slam" by winning all four of the tournaments, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open, in a single calendar year.

So, as usual, I had a crazy idea. Why not make it four out of five? The fifth tournament would of course be the St. Petersburg Open, and it would be held outdoors, in March. Or maybe April--I'm not too familiar with how cold that city is in the spring months. Probably pretty cold. (May wouldn't work, because that would be too close to the French Open.) They could have a similar rule, only applied to temperatures (wind chills, specifically) going below a certain threshold. That would balance out what seems to me to be a bias in favor of players who come from warmer climates (like Agassi).

Or, better yet, they could just keep doing what they're doing until a top ranked tennis player dies on the court from heat exhaustion, since that seems to be what they're hell-bent on doing at the moment.

posted by cke @ 8:42 AM 0 comments

Diffraction

[note - Today (1/18/07) I noticed an editing mistake in the 3rd paragraph that was significant enough that I felt it had to be corrected. The way it was, it just didn't make sense. I also couldn't resist adding in a little more at the end of the paragraph.]

I learned something interesting recently about photographing using smaller apertures. At smaller apertures, diffraction becomes a problem, negating any depth-of-field benefit that might be gained. I imagine this is why lenses for 35mm cameras haven't featured apertures smaller than f22 (or f32 in some cases) for a long time. I recall seeing in my Dad's old Nikon lens books, dating back to the early 1970's, some of those old supertelephoto lenses stopped down to f64, but, as far as I know, their newer counterparts don't do that--given the fact of diffraction, there wouldn't be any point.

Anyway, here's what is hopefully a reasonably clear explanation of this fairly complicated concept: Diffraction Limited Photography.

The reason this is a concern is that when you reduce the size of the pixels in a digital sensor, diffraction is more likely to be an issue at the pixel level. Thus, a camera like the Nikon D2h, with only four megapixels on a DX-sized sensor, is pretty much going to be able to use the entire range of apertures available on modern lenses, because the pixels are big enough so that the "airy disk", which is the interference pattern produced by the aperture, is small compared to the pixel size, even when the lens is stopped down to the smallest apertures. On the other hand, a camera like the Nikon D2x, which has the same DX sized sensor, but sixteen megapixels, is necessarily going to have much smaller pixels, so it's going to be affected by diffraction at a comparitively lower f-stop. Note that the top-of-the line Canon DSLRs would have less of a problem with this, because they use larger sensors, meaning larger pixels. And on your typical point-and-shoot digicam, with its little mini-sensor, it isn't going to be worth stopping down much past f4 or so. In fact they may as well just make those things with fixed-aperture lenses, as far as I'm concerned.

So, what does this mean for me, personally? On a camara like the Nikon D40, there apparently isn't much point to using apertures smaller than f11 or f16. See the section entitled "Visual Example: Aperture vs. Pixel Size" on the linked page (you'll need Javascript to be turned on for their chart thingee to work). Choose Nikon D70 as the camera, because it's got basically the same exact sensor as the D40, and then wave the mouse over the various aperture choices. The grid shows the effective pixel size, and the white, fuzzy disk shows the airy disk. At f11, everything's pretty much okay, with maybe a teensy bit of diffraction impinging on adjacent pixels. At f16, the dimmer parts of the airy disk are definitely starting to impinge on adjacent pixels, but still, maybe not enough to be a problem. The best way to test this would be some test shots taken at these two apertures. It's entirely possible that f16 would be perfectly fine for most situations. Take it to f22, though, and you're definitely starting to have some problems. And f32 is obviously fucked. The bad news is that my variable aperture zoom lens, at the longest focal length, will stop down even farther than f32.

This all sounds pretty bad until you realize that, with a smaller sensor, you can use larger apertures to get the same depth-of-field that you would have on a larger-frame camera.

On the other hand, it does kind of suck when your largest aperture for a particular lens is only f5.6--you only get a total of two or three stops effective range out of that lens. Sharpening up the sensor (by increasing your megapixel count), would only tend to aggravate the problem (if you're viewing the image at full, 100% resolution).

So, chalk this up as yet another reason why the so-called full-frame format might end up making a comeback on Nikon's digital SLRs. The downside, though, is that it'll come with a cost, because the only people who'll really care about this stuff are professionals and enthusiasts. The average consumer is not going to care.

posted by cke @ 3:11 PM 0 comments

Lens Lust

A page all about the Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6 lens, which is apparently the largest telephoto lens in the world currently "in production" for 35mm and digital SLR cameras. I put "in production" in quotes because they only make these on special order, and there are supposedly only 12 of them in the entire world. They cost as much as a cheap house and weigh about 40 pounds. Heavy duty tripod included, when you buy one. How nice.

The linked page shows the lens hooked up to a video camera, which is kind of a bummer. I'd kind of like to see it hooked up to one of Canon's Digital Rebel series cameras. :)

posted by cke @ 8:36 PM 0 comments

Movies: Best of 2006

I've always wanted to do a "Best of Year" list like this. Unfortunately, I didn't really get organized about keeping track of which movies I saw until November, so all the earlier months of the year were what I could glean from poring over my Yahoo movie ratings. Some may be missing, I am not sure.

In any case, here are my top movies for the year 2006 (in alphabetical order):

• Blood Diamond
• Cars
• Casino Royale
• Clerks II
• The Departed
• The Devil Wears Prada
• The Fountain
• The Illusionist
• Little Miss Sunshine
• V for Vendetta

I was just barely able to come up with ten movies for this list, which I guess proves that 2006 wasn't exactly a bumper year at the multiplex. As for which one ranks the highest....heh. Good question on that one--most of these are solid contenders, and there are such radical differences among them all (try objectively ranking The Departed and Clerks II, for instance) that I find it quite difficult to say. If pressed, I'd probably go with Casino Royale, believe it or not. My reason? I saw it three times, and enjoyed it each time more than the last. That's very, very rare in a movie. The Departed would be a close second, though, and The Fountain most likely in third place.

Honorable mentions: Art School Confidential, Imagine Me and You, Marie Antoinette, The Matador, The Quiet and Thank You for Smoking.

I did also want to mention a few others, in various categories:

In the "So Close, and Yet So Far" category, signifying films that could have been great if they hadn't fucked themselves over in some significant way, I put The Black Dahlia, Lady in the Water, and The Descent. I also have a special "Domino" category (in honor of Kiera Knightly's 2005 movie of the same name, which was itself a trip and a half down weirdness lane), in which Crank is the clearly insane winner, with Slither and Snakes on a Plane in the runner up positions. These movies are always fun to watch, whether they're any good or not--and Slither was actually a pretty damn good representative of it's own particular sub-genre. Then there's the "Worst of the Year" category, which is unfortunately fairly crammed full this year, featuring Beerfest as the all around loser, but also including Mission Impossible III, Pulse, Superman Returns, The Covenant, Ultraviolet, and Underworld: Evolution. And those are just the ones I saw. Then, some movies that I enjoyed probably more than I should have: School for Scoundrels, Flyboys, John Tucker Must Die, Take the Lead, Deja Vu and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Well, that was fun.

posted by cke @ 10:52 PM 0 comments

Casino Royale, Craig recieve BAFTA nominations

A little over a month ago, I stated that the newest James Bond film, Casino Royale, was

the best James Bond film ever made, and that Daniel Craig is the first actor to play the role who may turn out to be as good in it as Sean Connery. It also holds up very well as a straight action movie--in fact, I can't think of an action film I've seen in several years that's as well put together as this.

Today, the BAFTA nominations were announced, and Casino Royale received a total of nine nominations, including one for Daniel Craig as Best Actor.

Relevant details from that article:

Daniel Craig, the controversial choice to replace
Pierce Brosnan as superspy James Bond in "Casino Royale," was vindicated with a nomination for best actor.

"'Casino Royale' has got nine nominations including best actor for Daniel Craig which is really one in the eye for all those people who said he wasn't the right person for the job," film critic Mark Kermode told the BBC.

Here's hoping this movie receives some notice at the Oscars, although I have to admit I'd be surprised--the Oscars are so often a peculiar mix of faux-highbrowness and just plain stupidity. There is a chance, though. Most of Casino Royale's BAFTA nominations are in technical categories such as "Achievement in Special Visual Effects", "Sound", or "Editing" (I heartily concur with that last one), and I've never noticed a tendency for the Oscars to show any particular bias in those sorts of categories.

It should also be noted that the fabulous Eva Green was nominated for "The Orange Rising Star Award" (whatever that is). Several years ago, she turned in an impressive and tremendously courageous performance in The Dreamers, and for Casino Royale, I doubt a more suitable person could have been cast in the role of Vesper Lynd. Seriously, she epitomizes the modern James Bond girl in a way that Denise Richards and Halle Berry did not. (In fact, it's fairly obvious that Green totally redefines the concept, to the extent that the term "James Bond girl" just isn't right anymore. So, somebody think of something else, okay? Make it something interesting, too. Something catchy, clever, and suitably dignified. "James Bond Woman", for all it's accuracy, is, in a way, not accurate, because it falls into the error of defining the female character in terms of the male lead, when she is very much her own person.)

One more thing: A complete listing of the BAFTA nominations.

posted by cke @ 1:34 PM 0 comments

A couple of photo links

Encountered while surfing today:

Megapixel.net - a fairly large site, includes a review of the D40 (they also have one for the Pentax K10D, which I seriously considered purchasing, except I wasn't able to find any place around here that had one in stock.

A D40 group at Flickr: Nikon D40 Club

And a small blog devoted to the D40: Nikon D40 Users

posted by cke @ 2:34 PM 0 comments

New Camera

Yay!

I finally made up my mind about which camera to get, after much agony. In the end, I went with the Nikon D40, which hadn't even been announced when I first started this quest. And then, when it was announced, my initial response was that it couldn't possibly meet my needs.

However, after reading some very helpful commentary on kenrockwell.com, I began to ask myself what exactly I was getting this camera for, and realized that the D40 would come pretty close to meeting my needs. I did have a small number of reservations: The kit lens, which is not optional on the D40, has a rotating front end on it, which makes the use of a polarizing filter impractical. It also has a plastic bayonet mount on the back, like a lot of the cheaper Nikon lenses. Actually, those are the only significant reservations I can think of right now. However, since the D40 is so inexpensive--half the price of the D80 with it's own default kit lens--theoretically, I'll be able to afford to get a nicer replacement lens at some point. There's some reservation out there in camera-bug land about the D40 due to the fact that it won't focus with any non-AF-S Nikon lens, which means most of the current lineup. It is significant, however, that all of the recently released lenses in that lineup are AF-S, except for a fisheye lens (for which focusing isn't much of an issue), so I think it's obvious what Nikon is doing with this camera, namely, they are signifying an intention to move more towards lenses with built-in focusing motors, and away from cameras with built-in focusing motors. The advantage is that you get faster focusing (on Nikons, anyway, since focusing was already pretty accurate on the older lenses, the main area where they stood to gain was in speed). I can attest that this little 18-55 zoom kit lens does focus pretty quickly--much faster than I would be able to myself, with my old Konica split-image system. Besides, this issue isn't even relevant to me. Prior to two days ago, I didn't even own any Nikon lenses, so what do I care if a bunch of lenses I don't have, and never will, are not very useable on this camera? And how many lenses am I going to be able to buy, anyway? I could very well end up with only two, and be satisfied with that. One of the things I was most sick of with my old camera was switching lenses all the damn time.

The other thing which the Ken Rockwell site helped me to do was some thinking about where I want to go as a photographer. Rockwell contends that the job of a good camera is to get out of the way of the photographer, so the photographer can concentrate more on making good pictures, rather than twiddling with stuff. This echoed a fear that I had already felt quite a while ago, namely, that once I got into digital photography, it would just lead to endless hours in front of the computer, messing around with "optimizing" the photos. Or, alternatively, endless monkeying with settings on the camera. I want to photograph, not twiddle. Furthermore, I want to work on my compositional skills, to see whether I really can improve if I set my mind to it. This goal isn't entirely consistent with lots of twiddling and adjusting, so the fact that the D40 has fewer knobs and settings than its more expensive siblings is actually a feature, not a bug. This has been borne out by my experience with the camera so far: I have been concentrating on learning how to operate the essential stuff on the camera, such as adjusting exposure compensation, learning when and how to get the flash to do what I want, adjusting white balance, how to read the various informational displays (as well as how to find the various informational displays), how to disable/enable the focus-assist lamp, and stuff like that. I want to get this stuff down now, so that when the weather gets a little better and I get out into the field, and need to do a particular thing, I'll know how to do it pretty quickly, and not have to mess around paging through menus trying to find stuff. In this sense, the D40 is quite cool, simply because there's less stuff to learn--after only two days, I already feel like I've made substantial progress, and have most of the important stuff down pat.

Other reasons for getting this camera include the idea that there isn't much point in blowing a lot of money on a camera body that's going to be obsolete in two years anyway. I also like the fact that it's a six-megapixel camera (I don't want to deal with ten megapixels right now, although, as it turns out, since I've decided not to mess around with RAW images right now, I could have set a D80 to lower resolution and gotten the same effect).

So far, it's been going pretty well. I need to examine some of the pictures I've been taking and check for quality of results--sharpness, focus, etc. I've been feeling somewhat limited with the 18-55mm focal length range, as if I could use some extra magnification on the longer end. My original idea was to upgrade to the lovely 18-200 VR lens when I get my tax refund. However, this lens continues to be virtually unavailable, so there is no telling when I might be able to get my hands on one. I may settle for the 18-135, although it's apparently far inferior to the 18-200 (not only shorter at the long end, but not having the vibrarion reduction feature) and overpriced for what you get.

Anyway, enough of that for now. What I really need to do is practice, and shoot. I feel sort of like the dog that habitually chases cars, who has now actually caught one, and isn't sure what to do with it. :)

posted by cke @ 3:48 PM 0 comments