I’ve noticed that recent photos I’ve shot have been less sharp than I usually shoot. Some were due to camera shake and others just were slightly out-of-focus. One of the downsides of shooting with nice lenses is that you can’t blame the equipment when the shots aren’t sharp!

I’ve also been re-reading Joe McNally’s excellent book on small strobe photography, Hot Shoe Diaries. In it, he mentions something that didn’t resonate with me the first time I read the book as it did this time. He describes how he holds his camera: to his left eye, with the camera body pressed into his shoulder for stability.

I’ve always instinctively held my camera to my right eye (I’m right-handed, if that matters), but I tried his method after reading the section and son-of-a-bitch—I might be left-eyed! I’ve always been lucky to have excellent eyesight, but just before my recent 40th birthday, I recognized that my eyesight—especially close-up, is waning. I’ve been inadvertently testing my vision through my recent acquisition of a manual focus lens. Not only does holding the camera to my left eye feel pretty natural, but my left eye may be just a bit stronger than my right—something I’m pretty sure wasn’t the case until recently. Additionally, the stable stance he recommends seems to have helped with the camera shake induced results.

McNally also describes “Da Grip” on his weblog, complete with video. Great tip!

The Daily Shoot is a simple site that gives you photo assignment/inspiration each day. There’s no game—no winning or losing—just an idea to motivate you to pick up the camera. Photos are uploaded wherever you want and you simply tweet to @dailyshoot with a hashtag representing the assignment number (like #ds226). Simple and fun.

My first submission is rather banal, but was still fun and only took a couple of minutes. It also helped that I got a new lens to try out, but that’s the topic of another post. In fact, today’s Daily Shoot assignment involves circular objects, and the rim of that lens is circular…hmmm.

iPad

Neighborgoods is a site designed to help people share items with their neighbors. Great idea, with a nice site.

Wonder Woman’s 600th issue hits the stands tomorrow, complete with a new “reimagined” storyline and new costume. I’m not sure I dig it, but I’m willing to give it a look if they make it available via their iPad app; I’m done buying physical comics.

Nice! The old Flickr photo page was really long-in-the-tooth in my opinion, so this is a welcome improvement. I particularly like the arrow key navigation, “lights out” mode and the easier “share” options. Great job so far!

Great news about my favorite suite of GTD apps. I can’t wait for the iPad implementation!

Looks pretty good. That’s more bad news for Flip/Cisco.

Here’s a set of photos from the areas affected by the BP oil spill. It’s a nice set of images of a terrible situation. Here’s more about the TEDxOilSpill Expedition.

More sucky Lightroom 3 news:

For those who use lenses without profiles, Adobe Labs offers a separate app, Adobe Lens Profile Creator, which you can use to make your profiles. Unfortunately, if you’ve got one of the new Micro 4/3 cameras, like Panasonic’s slick GF1, you’re basically screwed, there is currently no way to create a profile for Micro 4/3 cameras.

Gah. The one case I’d have used the feature for.

Lightroom 3 is out, and I’m really surprised at the feature list. Mostly I’m surprised at what’s not there: soft proofing. It’s been a glaring omission and it’s unforgivable that its still missing in the third major incarnation of the software.

I mean, I get that they want people to double dip and buy every Photoshop release too, but I want to do my corrections and printing without leaving Lightroom. Guys, I’m going to buy Photoshop anyway. Can I please just not have to launch it when I don’t need to, other than to see WTF is going to come out of my printer?

It’s maddening enough that I even considered skipping the upgrade for the first time in the program’s history. I decided that I’ll hold my nose and upgrade anyway; $99 is cheap enough that I’ll bite.

I can’t believe that fucking video support made it into a photo application before soft proofing though. I’ll use a video program to work with my video, thanks!

Boo.

For those friends with bikes who also live in apartments. A bit kooky, but would be fun to see in action.

More reasons to love AT&T. (And another “feature” of the WiFi iPad.) 😕

I recently got a chance to watch a demo of a 3 DTV for the first time. The setting was a Sony Store, watching their high end model in one of the demo rooms. The content was a demo played from a Sony Blu-Ray player. I always assume demo content like this was hand-picked to show off the system in the best possible way.

My very first impression was that it was stunning. The clip was from a football game, and shots from the sidelines showed a depth that was truly impressive. It was easier to discern the angles and positioning of the players than on a traditional TV.

After watching for a few minutes, and seeing a few different media types, I was less impressed. First, I was increasingly distracted when the 3D effect was applied in situations in which it didn’t enhance the subject on screen. For instance, in dialog scenes, the 3D effect made me pay less attention to the dialog. This might be because I was conscious of this being a 3D set and this might diminish over time.

The glasses get annoying pretty quickly. As glasses go, they’re bulky and obtrusive. They’d definitely get in the way of a shared viewing experience, since they block a good deal of your peripheral vision.

Most importantly I became aware of, and distracted by, a really annoying flickering. Now this might be this particular TV, but since it was a flagship model in a brand store, I imagine that it’s likely an effect on other sets too. I’d compare the effect to looking at a computer monitor with the refresh rate set very low, but this was more pronounced. I was in a good demo environment: sitting down, directly in front of the TV, about 12 feet back. The light was a bit high since it was a store, but I wouldn’t say it was overly bright.

The effect was severe enough that once I got past the “wow” factor of the initial football clip, which was easily the most impressive and compelling demo on the reel, I would have walked away were I in the market for a new TV.

This is a nice HTML5 app that gives a visualization of various time zones relative to your local time. It can be used offline from the iPad too.

I worked from home today (in San Jose) and after I finished up for the day decided to try a ride at a place I’d never been before: Santa Teresa County Park. For the tl;dr crowd, it’s a nice park with some singletrack, nice views and at least one nicely technical, rocky trail. It’s worth a trip if you live somewhere in the south bay. I’m not sure I’d recommend it, based on what I rode today, if one had to drive any real distance to get there.

Somewhat embarrassingly, I’ve lived in the SF Bay Area my whole life and in San Jose for almost three years, but I really haven’t explored many of the south bay biking options. Last year I spent quite a few rides exploring the Soquel Demonstration Forest (“the Demo”), and it’s one of my favorite places to ride now, so I know I really need to explore more down here.

I recently came across a site, Bay Area Bike Rides, that details quite a few rides in the Bay Area, including GPS tracks, maps, etc. I picked Santa Teresa based on the details on that site, and found it to be useful.

Getting there was straightforward, although the parking was frustrating. I knew there was a fee to park there, and the park’s site stated that you could self-serve via a machine with credit cards or cash. Once I got there, there was only one machine I could find, and it didn’t take MasterCard, which was the only card I took with me. It also wouldn’t take the various bills I had on me. Luckily (after wasting a few minutes of light), there was a ranger in a truck who told me not to worry about paying, so I set out.

Here’s where embarrassing admission #2 of this post comes in. I’ve had the Edge 705 cycling GPS for a few years now, but I’d never used it to follow someone else’s track before. I set the track as a “course” in Garmin’s parlance, which showed me where the person who created it rode, and I’d be able to compare my ride to his.

Unfortunately, I misread how the ride started and didn’t realize my error until I’d climbed quite a bit of a rocky, technical trail called (appropriately) Rocky Ridge Trail. I pressed on climbing. By the time I got to the top of the trail, which was a challenging climb for a first timer, I realized that there was a fire road leading to that point, which was probably the route I meant to take. (As a quick aside: the site mentioned earlier says this about my accidental climb. “In my opinion, you’d have to be either nuts or masochistic to do it in the opposite direction.” Oops.)

Instead of descending the fire road, I turned around and descended Rocky Ridge, retracing my steps. It was a fun, technical downhill and the vista on the way down was nice.

Once at the bottom, where I started, I talked a bit with a guy on a cyclocross bike who said he rode at Santa Teresa daily. It was getting late but I wanted a little more of a ride, so with some new tips in mind, I climbed the fire road I’d seen earlier. It’s challenging because of its slope, although smooth. Once at the top, a radio antenna on a peak called Coyote Peak, I connected back to the Rocky Ridge trail and took another shot at that downhill. It was even more fun a second time.

It was too late for more, so I got in the truck and went home. I wouldn’t call it an unqualified success based on my missteps, but it was fun and I now have more info to explore more another day. I’d recommend it as a good before or after work ride.