Live from Austin!

Quote of the week:

“Draw envious looks when you carry your Cyber-shot^® W and T Series digital camera in the understated and elegant LCS-TWA/T carrying case.” –SonyStyle.com

Just be careful someone doesn’t snatch it.

Now that I’ve been participating in Flickr for a while, I’ve realized that digital technology has fundamentally changed the nature of photography. Perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right places, but I don’t recall seeing any discussion of this amidst the hype about Things Digital.

On the face of it, digital cameras shouldn’t have been that big of a disruptive factor. Film cameras were so cheap they were given away as promotional items, whereas digital cameras were hundreds of dollars. (Still are, if you want a decent one.) Minilabs had brought 1 hour processing to the world, and dropped costs to around 30¢ a picture. It’s not like there was anyone who needed to think about the expense involved in taking a particular shot.

Of course, there’s an immediacy to digital; you can print your photos in a minute or two, and you can print a single photo without waiting until you finish a roll. Yet film got there first, in the shape of Polaroid, and look what happened to them. Also, printing your own digital photos is expensive—you end up eating up any cost savings you made by shifting from film. Also, if you’re lazy or forgetful like me, you let images collect on your memory card and download them once a week.

Is it the Internet that has been the catalyst of change? Again, I’m not really convinced. People had flatbed scanners long before they had digital cameras, and plenty of people still dislike viewing photographs online, in spite of the superior image possible from a computer screen.

So it seems as though digital photography doesn’t really offer anything all that radical; just a combination of minor improvements. Yet somehow, digital photography has led to radical changes.

First off, it has changed the nature of the subjects people take photographs of. As a child, I was lucky enough to be given a camera and plenty of film. I started off taking pictures of objects that I found interesting—close up pictures of toys, the grass under my feet, and so on. It didn’t last, though. I don’t remember whether it was explicitly communicated to me, but I quickly learned that the primary purpose of photography was to record pictures of people grinning while standing in front of famous places.

Now, though, everyone seems to be reconnecting with the childish glee of being able to record any small piece of the world they see, and show it to other people. With a digital camera, people somehow feel free to photograph a discarded beer can, a rusting sign or the bruise on someone’s leg.

The second big change is commentary. Partly it’s the fact that you can access the photos immediately, but I think a lot of it is that you have a natural way to associate comments with the picture, without having to start a scrapbook. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

My mother used to write on the back of prints with a pen. This was less than ideal. With a ball-point pen the smooth front surface would often get visible markings, and the ink would generally rub off all too easily.

With digital photos online, the commentary can be more of a shared, social, collaborative experience. And you don’t need to turn the photo over to see the words.

The third change is that photography has been democratized. Yes, professionals can often do a better job, turning out photos of consistently high quality; but it seems as though with persistence and lots of experimentation, all kinds of ordinary untrained folk are capturing occasionally stunning images. Maybe they don’t know how, but that can come later.

The final change is the sheer mass of images available to everyone to look at. This is really a side effect of big change #1, that people take pictures of everything now, combined with the existence of handy Internet web sites. Want to see a picture of (say) a steam train, a glass of water, a capybara, or a sock? There are hundreds on Flickr, and if you run out there you can try any of half a dozen other photo sites, or Google image search.

Well, the beloved parental units are now back in the UK, about to fly off to Ireland. Life here is gradually returning to normal, except for the extreme backlog of work. The original plan was that they would drive off and explore Texas Tuesday thru Thursday each week, then Friday thru Monday I’d take time off work and we’d do family stuff together. In the event, they stayed here for the entire three weeks.

Dad did a bunch of random household things that I just hadn’t managed to get to, like removing the ghastly chandelier in the dining room and replacing it with a modern one, and wiring around the dimmer circuits on the ceiling fan lamps.

More excitingly, they recently got broadband, and we managed to sell them on the idea of video chat. Having done that, we managed to upsell the idea of a Mac, so they took home a new Mac Mini. Mum is now able to use iPhoto to straighten, crop, correct and print digital camera photos, something she had failed to master using Photoshop Elements on Windows. I also set her up with a non-Hotmail mail account, with Apple Mail ready to go, and imported her address book. She was amazed by how easy it was to e-mail sensibly-sized photos, type in names and have the address appear automatically, and so on.

As a side effect, we now have iChat + iSight. I couldn’t justify buying the camera before, but staying in touch with my family was a compelling purpose. Not that I know many other people with iSight, but…

In 2001–2003, I had a rather bad experience with Nikon Digital’s repair service. The product I had problems with was an APS adaptor for a high end film scanner, but other people have written to me with similar tales of woe regarding digital cameras and digital SLRs.

Briefly:

1. I discovered that while Nikon are reknowned for the quality of their lenses, they also make some really shoddy products. High price and the Nikon name is no guarantee of quality.

2. I found out that if you buy a faulty Nikon digital imaging product, such as a scanner or a digital camera, your chances of getting it repaired or replaced with a working product seem to be pretty slim.

3. When Nikon were unable to get the product to work after four attempts, I couldn’t get a refund for the non-working product without a year of ignored letters, phone calls and faxes.

4. The Nikon product jammed with some of my irreplacable negatives inside. I couldn’t open up the unit to get the film out without voiding the warranty, and Nikon failed to extricate and return the film.

I did finish scanning the rest of my APS film cassettes, no thanks to Nikon. I had to break open each cassette, pull out the film, and chop it up into individual frames. I then mounted each frame in a 35mm glass slide, adjusting for the size difference by using plastic spacers cut by hand from old subway passes using a sharp knife and a metal ruler. As you can imagine, the process was very fiddly and laborious and no fun at all.

Anyway, here’s the whole sorry tale…

Continue reading »

We’re back from Las Vegas. Further details to follow. In the mean time…

To the baggage thrower who decided to steal stuff from my suitcase

I expect by now you’ve discovered that the exciting looking rectangular device is a battery charger for the proprietary battery pack of a digital camera, and not the digital camera itself. Unless you happen to have exactly the same make and model of digital camera, it’s likely to be of no value to you.

Similarly, I imagine you were disappointed when you discovered that the iPod Firewire cable was not accompanied by the iPod itself. You did succeed in pissing me off by stealing it, because it meant a trip to the Vegas Apple Store, but other than that your light-fingered activities were pretty ineffectual—as it happened, the camera battery lasted for the entire trip, and we had a fully charged spare anyway.

Still, a hearty “fuck you” in your direction. I will, of course, be reporting the whole thing to the TSA in great detail, as what with the anniversary of the whole Lockerbie thing and the current Orange Alert, I imagine they’re not too keen on people like you being able to fiddle with the contents of luggage undetected.

Sony have announced the DSC-F828 digital camera. The details to drool over:

• Carl Zeiss T* coated Vario-Sonnar lens. It’s f/2 to f/2.8 / 7.1, with a zoom range equivalent to 28-200mm (7x). The T* coating cuts lens flare and reflections.

• CompactFlash slot. Yes, finally Sony give in and support CF.

• 8 megapixel. 3,264 x 2,448. That’s better than ISO 400 35mm film.

• Four color CCD. Sony have added blue/green sensors to the CCD grid, for better resolution at the frequencies where the human eye is most sensitive—which means more accurate and natural-looking colors.

• Macro focus down to 20mm.

• Fully adjustable double lens rings. Adjust zoom and focus manually like on a conventional SLR.

• High resolution digital viewfinder.

• RAW image support so you can get the full 14 bit resolution of the CCD.

• Takes 58mm filters.

• Selectable focus point. Use a joystick to indicate exactly which part of the scene to focus on.

• True TTL flash.

Plus it has all the DSC-F717 features such as laser focus, night shot, spot/multipoint/center weighted metering, exposure lock, proper flash hotshoe, custom white balance, 100-800 ISO, shutter speeds from 30 seconds to 1/2000, 3+ hour battery life, and live histogram in the viewfinder.

It also records MPEG1 video with sound at 640×480 30fps. And it’s black.

As far as work goes, today was a change of pace, as I was asked to travel to Virginia to give a presentation to a bunch of sales account managers. These are the guys who handle the big customer accounts and keep the million dollar deals flowing, and the company needs to make sure they know everything there is to know about Lotus software… so I was asked to go tell them where they can find everything there is to know about Lotus software. Metaknowledge. There’s more to this nickname than mere whimsy.

I had the option of staying overnight at the conference facility outside Leesburg, but I had been advised that it had highly limited entertainment options. I decided to fulfil a dream and make it a day trip, traveling with just a courier bag for luggage. Businessmen are supposed to just carry a briefcase, but a courier bag is close enough.

I got to Logan at a civilized hour, and made my way through security; the line was short. The long line was the one on the other side which snaked across to the Starbucks counter. They were the only coffee vendor on the gate side of the security checkpoint. I queued for a while, and then saw the sign saying that the espresso machine was out of order.

Well, that was that. I walked off. I needed caffeine, but Starbucks filter coffee is the crack cocaine of the coffee world; charred to perfection, it packs 3-4 times the dose of regular home-made filter coffee. Instead, I found some insipid New England Coffee Company stuff at a pretzel and hot dog stand. It had been formulated on the Dunkin’ Donuts principle that if you water it down and add lots of cream and sugar, nobody will ever notice the difference. Pity I don’t add cream or sugar.

The flight down was uneventful. I ended up sitting next to a dark-haired girl from Colorado who was about to start eighth grade, and was traveling alone. She was reading a book on genetics, which looked to me like an introductory college level text. She was very talkative, so we started chatting about genetics. She was also interested in web development, and told me how much better Fireworks MX is compared to the version I use. To round it off, her favorite subject is mathemetics, though she also likes languages and is studying French, Latin and Hebrew.

I showed her the book I’m reading at the moment, which is a biography of Nikola Tesla. I told her about a few of his inventions, and how bad luck and bad judgement had cheated him out of fame and fortune. She thought my noise cancelling headphones were really amazing; I explained how they work. We chatted on and off for most of the flight.

To be honest, she reminded me a little of the geeky Jewish girl on Malcolm In The Middle. I was overjoyed to discover that young girls like that really exist; I hope she goes on to great things. I almost wanted to give her my e-mail address in case she wanted to chat, but of course people would probably think I was a Catholic Priest…

I don’t remember there being girls like that when I was at junior school. If there had been, I might have shown some interest in talking to girls. I also hate to think what she’s going to go through when she winds up in an American high school. But anyway…

The presentation went well, I think: I was the last person to present that day, and nobody walked out. I wrapped up early, making up for everyone else running over schedule all day, which I expect was popular. And a couple of people commented that they’d been with the company years, and had still learnt something.

The week-long training event has a rather tiresome “Top Gun” aviation theme, so I snuck in some extra clip-art of my own. A slide on getting initial bearings was illustrated by the Navy Avengers of Flight 19, which famously disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. The new giant web portal for all IBM software group content was illustrated with a picture of the Hughes HK-1, better known as the “Spruce Goose”. Finally, a slide of information about bug reporting and technote databases had a shot of the Hindenburg. I didn’t label any of them, so I wonder if anyone got the references.

I’m now at Dulles Airport. I booked a late flight back, which allowed me plenty of time to chat to people after the presentation, get a cab to the airport, have something to eat, pick up a latte, and settle down by a power socket. Good move—if I’d booked the flight before this one, I’d have only just made it, which would have meant a big dose of stress. As it is, I’m pretty relaxed.

Dulles airport seems to be pretty empty after 6pm on a Monday, which made getting through security a breeze. Unfortunately, I read that they’re going to introduce new rules requiring security guards to check the functioning of every single electronic device. I’m not looking forward to traveling with that rule in place. For vacations, typically I have a PDA, digital camera, phone, camcorder, CD Walkman, headphone amplifier, noise cancelling headphones, and I guess we can add the GPS to that list now too. I draw the line at taking the laptop, though the phone does have a web browser.

I’m also irritated to read that the airlines have won back the customers they lost to Amtrak. Mind you, it probably comes down to price—it costs more to get Acela from Boston to New York than to get a plane. Libertarians will say it’s because Amtrak doesn’t have competition, but I have a hunch it has more to do with the fact that the airlines get billions of dollars more in direct and hidden subsidies.

There’s an Air France Concorde on the runway outside. It bugs me a little that I’ll never get to fly on one. And even after all these years, I can’t look at a Concorde without thinking of Barry Manilow.

The other thing about spending time in airports is that I end up looking at newsstands, which is generally a depressing experience. Arnold Schwartzneggar? Oh, puh-leeze. Already the far right Republicans are denouncing him as far too liberal; I guess they’re still upset that their prefered choice of Austrian to join the party shot himself in a bunker in Berlin years ago.

The flight was delayed. Very delayed. While we were supposed to be in the air, the plane was still on the ground at LaGuardia. I finally got home at 01:30. sara gave me a gentle, welcoming snore as I collapsed into bed.

I decided it was time for a digital camera upgrade. The PowerShot S100 has been a wonderful camera, but the new S400 has almost double the resolution, as well as more manual controls and a longer zoom lens with the same aperture range. The result seems to be insanely detailed pictures. With the full original files (1-2MB JPEGs) you can enlarge the squirrel to fill the whole screen and see every individual hair on his body. I think I’m going to be quite happy taking the S400 to England as my only still camera for the vacation. The best part is, the camera is slightly smaller and lighter than the S100, about the size of a packet of cigarettes…

Sony plans to introduce Blu-Ray discs this year. They’re 12cm, the same size as DVDs, but start with a capacity of 27GB. Plans are to increase that by 2x fairly quickly.

Looks like I’ll be able to move my photographs to a single disc more quickly than I thought…

Also announced was the PEG-NZ90. Feature list:

• 2MP digital camera with flash
• 16MB RAM
• Palm OS 5 on 200MHz XScale processor
• Removable rechargeable battery pack
• Built-in Bluetooth
• Slot for 802.11b card
• 320×480 screen with 16 bit color
• MP3 player
• High power IR
• Movie and sound recording and playback
• Memory Stick slot
• Tiny standard-layout QWERTY keyboard
• USB printer port
• TV output for slideshows/presentations

There’s a big picture to drool over too. Now that’s a handheld for the 21st Century, at last…

If you’ve played the game Riven, you might recognize this image as the view from the crater towards Gehn’s laboratory. Except that it isn’t; it’s pipework from a hydroelectric plant near Snoqualmie Falls in Washington State.

One of the interesting things about wandering the woodlands and mountains near Seattle was noticing just how much the whole area resembles the game. The wooden walkways through the woods were so Myst-like, I expected to see strange corroded metal machines. In retrospect, it’s not particularly surprising; Rand and Robyn Miller are both from Spokane, and many of the textures used in the games were obtained by travelling the west coast with a digital camera.

So until they produce a direct-to-brain full sensory interface version of Myst, a visit to Snoqualmie, Mount Rainier and the Cascade Mountains is highly recommended.