Star Trek

About fifteen years ago, I watched Star Trek every day after school. I always amused as the crews working on touch panels in the twenty fifth century. But just in a decade, iPads are ubiquitous, and it is as natural as everything else for some toddlers. Now wearables such as Google glass is coming. I wonder what the future might bring in ten or twenty years.

Well, after idling for some time, I did something useful today. I got an acceptance for my offer for IT consultancy. Albeit the low rate, at least its a start. Which prompt me to fix my laptop due to its slowness. After five years, I was wondering whether its time for a replacement. Usually I don't like working on a laptop, since at a comparable cost, its performance is far from a desktop. But if I need to travel, there is no other option.
So I began to Google the web and try to find what causing its slowness. It turns out that the IDE transfer mode is set to PIO instead of UDMA, for some puzzling reason (maybe a crash). So after a few restarts, it was fixed. It seems I still get to keep my notebook for at least another year.

Exciting Year!

2012 might not be a good year for some people. Financial meltdown, job loss, and there's the 21st December.
But not so for the photographic world, even at the start of the year, we're seeing D4 from Nikon, X-Pro1 from Fuji, and Lightroom 4 beta from Adobe.
Lightroom 4 now include a book module, and reworked sliders. A little bit confusing at first. You have to decrease the black slider if you want darker tone.

X-Pro1 is a particularly exciting camera, given the promise of higher DR from Fuji EXR sensor technology. It could be that digital will be able to produce film look at last.

Well.. come to think of it, some people will get poorer this year. Man.. I'd better not make any budget related resolution this year.. LoL

Back to work (or first post! (of 2012 :))

After a week of Christmas-New Year holiday I finally get back to work. I now practically have zero time for my personal muse. 


Two good books I recommend reading :

Who's in Charge?
Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Rational Optimist
by Matt Ridley

Rational Optimist
I've always been a pessimist, so naturally I have reservations about this book heheh. Early chapters of this book explains about the exchange of ideas, and later on, trade, which send me asleep. What can I say, I get bored easily, so I ventured to read other books, which brought me to the next book. Matt is sort of against the green movement, but given the facts, I think is justifiable. I must say this is a good book to start a year with optimistic outlook (hurry.. before 21st December LoL)


Who's in Charge
But after reading few chapters Mike's book, I can't help being fascinated on how our brain works and relate to Matt's explanation about how ideas exchange evolution. The fact that our brain consist of multiple processing centers working autonomously in parallel is rather amazing.


But as usual.. I haven't finish both books, and few others. So I'll write another time.


In other news, I got a new phone with my plan re-contract. Cost me $0, and it works great

I pulled the trigger

and budget....

Technology updates

Few things I have discovered while I'm away from blogging.
I just logged into the dashboard, and Blogger.com has announced that they have released iOS Blogger app!!
This means I can write my travel diary from my iPad. Yay!
And the other exciting stuff I have found is film Lightroom preset from X-Equals. I bought both bundle for a special $5. The list price is $9.99. Before I found these presets, my pictures were just dull. Its the best $$ you can spend on LR preset.
Pictures will be coming soon... hopefully. *cross fingers*

I just pulled the trigger

For this one in the evilBay. *sigh*

Hey at least it is a good investment *excuse* $175 for a good body that comes with box and manual I'd say it is not a bad deal. Now I have to find a matching lens for it.. muahahahaha!

GAS

I want a compact camera. Preferably a rugged mechanical one. Not film though. Something Leica-ish but not as big, and definitely not as expen$$i$ve! I was thinking about the new Fuji x100 but upon reading that the focus allegedly fly-by-wire, I was put off.
Okay.. enough daydreaming. I should go out more and shoot instead of buying more gears and books.

In Search of A Perfect Picture

I've encountered few issues over these few days. First of all, dusty lens! Just found out  that the Voigtlander I just bought have dust on the inside. But actually this is normal for any lenses. I thought it was the dust which caused spots on my shots, but turns out that it is the sensor itself caught dust. Now I must clean the sensor myself.
Then there's the autofocus problem on my Tamron. I suspect it was the PDAF algorithm since CDAF is perfectly fine.

Given the experiences, I come to a conclusion that, like life, there is no perfect lens (and photographic forums around the internet confirm this. Amen) But there's always a good news at the end of it, right ? Right ?! Yep! I just bought the carbon fiber tripod that I need (not want.. I swear :P), and the second GM firmware for my iPad runs without getting a WiFi problem anymore.

New Lens! Voigtlander Nokton 58mm/f1.4

I just got a new lens last week. I was very excited because of the technical review at photozone rate this lens as one of the best lenses. Sure enough after I try it, the lens produce stunning images!

Even everyday objects came out beautiful. Its a manual focus lens in Nikon F mount, with aperture control and metering. I think its a bit overexposed for my liking though.

On my Nikon :)

See.. the lens produce nice images that just leaps at you. I had to sell my Voigtlander Classic 35mm to fund this lens. Nevertheless.. I have no regret :) This lens is highly recommended. Its sharp wide open, nice OOF and good color rendition. Cmon, what else would you ask for ? ;)

iOS 4.2 for iPad

Can you say Folders ? Multitasking ? Yaay!

I took the plunge today and install the unofficial release of iOS 4.2.

And yesterday I got Bloomberg app for Android, plus an iTunes voucher to buy paid apps on the iPad.

Some screenshots to enjoy

Folders

Multitask

Shopping List

Ok.. maybe this list is to compensate my lack of skill, but some of the items here are really the essential tools for serious photographer, like the tripod. I just burn my budget for this month.. so.. (and still have to pay past expenses installment for the next few months LoL)

- tripod (Manfrotto, Sirui)
- flash, preferably SB 700 or up
- monitor color profiler (Spyder or i1)
- A3 printer (Canon or Epson)

iPad!

Have i told you that i like my new iPad?
The colour rendition is just superb. I like to browse through my recent Turkey trip photos and look for the details in the picture that I did not even notice when I took it. People at the window, the sparkling sand, ....
Not mentioned it has tons of books and magazines. And the recent NatGeo travel magazine is featuring Istanbul =D

Shopping Spree *kind of*

Today my books order just arrived, the Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers, 2nd Edition. And Ctein's Digital Restoration from Start to Finish, Second Edition: How to repair old and damaged photographs. I'm quite interested in printing fine art quality photograph, which means I have to cough more money, which I already don't have. I was going to get a dye-based A4 printer, but upon reading the book, the image quality degradation for dye based ink is much faster than pigment inks. So I'll probably get pigment based A3 Epson R1900.


The photo book from my recent trip to Turkey have finally arrived. It only takes three days to finish and deliver it. Quite impressive.

I have bought a dry cabinet for all my camera gear. I guess it is a necessary investment *cough*..
Not mentioned I also bought an iPad.. I'm bleeding money, I should go to the hospital now. *cough cough*

Fuji

Today the photography community is filled with enthusiasm when Fuji announced a revolutionary camera design. The significant innovation from Fuji is dubbed the Hybrid Viewfinder, which many photographer has longed for for some time.

The good news is its priced around $1000. Quite affordable for its quality.

Along with that, there are other notable technologies. What I'm interested in is the maturing plenoptic lens from Adobe.
Truly an exciting time to be a photographer

Memory

Another strip of my desktop SDRAM has died two weeks ago. This is the second Samsung RAM that quit on me. I advise you not to buy Dell products. My last ASUS mainboard lasts for 5 years without any problem whatsoever. My next rig will definitely a DIY. Cheaper and more reliable.

Android apps update

Today I get half a dozen updates for my Android apps. Facebook, FourSquare, Seesmic, etc.. sounds exciting =D Seesmic now have a widget for your tweets!