Just A Little Close-Up

DSC_5505

  • trees in early spring look strange
  • dusk is a neat lighting for plant photography
  • learning new filter and lens combos takes patience
  • higher ISO does not always sacrifice image clarity

Tripods, Again

Went by Wolf Camera and looked at their tripods. The selection sucked, basically 5 models that ranged from crap to crapier. Only one of the models did the 90 degree flip that I really like on my basic, cheap tripod. Wolf had no ball head tripods or anything even close. After finding that my chances of finding the perfect tripod locally were a bit low, I stopped by my aunt’s house on the way home (shes on the way, and has been begging me to stop in). My uncle showed me his video camera tripod. It has a solid head and nice leg assembly. It is very similar to the one I saw at Best Buy, except the one at Best Buy was a little fancier. I am thinking of forgoing the 90 degree flip for now and just going with a really good tripod and obtaining an adapter for the other angle. I don’t think I will be settling, but I do feel that this is the practical approach for now, since I can not find anything else locally, and I do not trust buying a tripod that I can not feel due to the high variability in quality.

Useless Sales Support

Want to know the worst thing about being a Time Warner customer? It isn’t the flakey service, or their inability to resolve problems, but their inability to do anything effectively, including operate a sales department.

On Friday I set out on a simple mission, to upgrade the account to be Road Runner Turbo (10Mbps) and add 2 DVR boxes, by upgrading from the normal “bundle” to a new contract package. The package is something I had received promotional materials for, so not exactly something that sales had not been briefed on. The process was supposed to be simple, fill out a form online and then it would be done. I went to pick up new boxes on Saturday, and was told the order placed on Friday did not take effect. This morning I received an email stating that the order could not be processed and that I needed to contact support. I contacted support online and was told to call them. Upon trying to call them I got a very friendly man who was perfectly willing to help, except for the fact that his department (sales) could not help me. Apparently I need a special “account retention” group. I was transferred to account retention and I was told to hold then asked what service I wished to downgrade. I was apparently sent to “downgrades and disconnections” and not “account retention”. I became frustrated after being placed on hold again and then waited a little while and called back, this time speaking to sales again and being again relayed to “retention”, this time everything that needed to be done was possible, but apparently the agent that referred me to retention had left the account open and since he was not in the same department, the agent could not signal the other agent to exit. I was told to call back in about an hour. I was worried I would forget to finish up, so after about 20 minutes I decided to check with online sales to see if the account had been released. It had, and “Mark” was trying to be helpful and tried to add the package I needed, only to discover that his department could not actually add the package, so he offered me a similar, but more expensive package (with less features). He did not volunteer the fact that I was being offered the other package because he couldn’t add the one I wanted until I corrected one of the terms of the package he tried to state (he implied I couldn’t add the package because I already had the services). I ended my online session, and Mark was nice enough to enter what I needed into a comment on the account. I called back again and the agent answered, announced she was in sales, I asked for “retention group”  before she could even do the account validation (which I had done about 9 times already by that point). She was nice enough to stay on the line until I was connected to a representative (she even placed me manually into the shortest queue). Upon reaching account retention, I barely had to give anything except for the account validation information, everything else had been entered by “Mark”. The retention agent processed my package change and got everything finalized. One small error on this agent’s part, she failed to recognize that I was calling from one of the phone lines on the account, and therefore, when the account changes were made, she forced my modem to reset and the call was lost. I called one final time, and “John” asked what I needed, I explained what had happened and he reverified the account, apparently everything was successful, he transferred me one last time, to an automated system for verifying the contract.

Such an exhausting day, but I now have two digital cable connections with DVR on both, as well as my digital phone and my Road Runner connection is now Turbo (and TWC owes me a wireless router).

Re: “No Lens Attached”

ok, on the thought of adding the information after the fact, that was a theory, which I thought might be easy enough to execute, except for one problem… I don’t know of an application presently installed that will actually do it. I thought ACDSee or Picasa might allow it, but it seems as though since the camera wrote 0mm and F0 instead of leaving the fields blank, I must find an alternative way to edit those fields.

Anyone have any suggestions for programs to edit ExIF information in images that won’t require me doing it an image at a time, and won’t cost me half a lens to obtain?

“No Lens Attached”

The D60 has a message it likes to show sometimes at varying points in its operation with a manual lens attached. Whether attached to the Orion telescope or the 500mm lens, the camera will state “no  lens attached”, even though the manual states that the camera accepts manual (non-CPU) lenses. There is no way to tell the camera about the lens that is attached to it either, which is another annoying factor, since it means I must manually enter my lens information into ExIF as an afterthought.

Tripods Suck!

Went out locally looking at tripods today and I have discovered one thing that they all have in common… they SUCK! I looked at and fondled several tripods. The only one I found that was stable enough for my purpose was a Dynex 65” tripod. The head was very stable and the weight was good, a very sturdy tripod. I was going to get it, but then discovered that the head only goes up, down and around, it does not flip to the side at all. I found that I love the way Dynex does their sliding heads. With the clip on heads, I am always worried that I wont get the mount secure when I latch it, or that I won’t get the mount seated properly and in either situation, the camera would be likely to fall off of the tripod, which would be very bad. I find myself unwilling to give up that basic feature of being able to rotate the camera to the side on a tripod that is $150. If the $60 tripod I looked at would have been more stable, but had that limitation (it didn’t, it would flip to the side), I would have been willing to settle for it.

In addition to looking at tripods, I also looked at camera bags after finding that I have more accessories than I know what to do with. I looked at them at Best Buy, but only found on that I really liked, it was a Lowepro Slingshot bag, but at $105, I decided I would prefer to keep looking for a bit before selecting a bag. Opteka makes a bag that is similar that I want to check out before going with a Lowepro bag. I would love to get a Nikon bag, but I have seen only negative feedback about them, and also Nikon is not making any decent sized bags anymore, they are all for the average consumer with their single lens DSLR, or perhaps a nice bridge camera (looks like those of us on a DSLR who have more than one lens or a super compact camera are pretty much screwed, even worse for those of us with one of each we would like to stick in our camera bag).  

I am hoping to go out early next week to Wolf Camera to see if they have a better selection of tripods or bags. I would really like to handle a low-end ball-head tripod (sorry pro-photography purists, if I have a spare $500 I am going to buy a new lens, not buy a tripod). I want a tripod that if I am on a mountain and I have to decide between sacrificing the tripod or myself, I want to be able to confidently choose it.

So this leaves me with a thought that I intend to answer next week.. which is better, a mid-to-high end standard tripod or a low-end ballhead?

Picking a Tripod

I am pretty good at knowing what I want most of the time, at least materially speaking (relationships are harder). My search for the perfect tripod is not going that way. I have decided I need a new heavy tripod because in certain conditions my tripod has too much play with the D60. I have looked at Amazon, Adorama and 47th Street Photo and there are way too many options (Amazon alone has 428 options). The specifications of the tripods do not tell me anything and the pictures tell me even less. The customer reviews of each product seem to be helpful, but not enough to be able to narrow down to my specific case. I believe I am going to have to go out into the world and fondle some expensive tripods.

I know I want a heavy tripod, something at least 10 lbs (I have my light tripods for hiking and travel), and I also want the ability to rotate to all sides, move up and down, as well as flip the camera to the side for portrait pictures. I have considered some of the ball head models, but I’m not sure that any of the ball head models will be the quality I am looking for in the price range I am looking for them in.

The issue I am trying to fight against is a slight vibration in the head of the D60s current tripod when I use heavier lenses, such as the 55-200mm or especially the 500mm reflector. I need more stability than the current tripod offers.

If anyone has a stable tripod they would like to recommend, I am open to suggestions, since I really do not have a clue as to what I am doing and could really use some advice.

The Tag Phenomenon

What is the big deal about tags? You can tag photos, you can tag blog entries, and you can even tag your bookmarks. What is the point of tagging?

I have just written the tag code for GITI. It is universal code that can be used by all modules for interacting with the GITI Tags table. Presently it is implemented by the Cookbook module in two forms. I am implementing it for “standard” recipe tags, as well as “meal tags” for associating recipes with meals or days. It is presently a very simplistic implementation, but from what I can tell, tags are very simple. I think this works for now, but I am trying to remember why I added the ability to tag these things.

COOKBOOKTAGS

Feeling Perverse

I am by no means the most sexually driven person in existence, in fact, any one who knows me knows that I care very little for actual sex. My sexual world consists of a variety of fetishes and kinks. My interests range from a simple foot/sneaker fetish to bondage and on the upper end of my desires and experience, enforced chastity. In general I do not worry about these things because they do not interfere with my normal life and I thought they were no where near becoming an obsession. My erotic world fits very neatly into a few black bags, an under bed box and a safe (as long as you ignore the top shelf of my closets). That world never sees the light of my normal life, it is hidden from all view, even my own, most of the time. My interests may seem strange to others, that has never bothered me, only those closest to me do I worry about incurring judgment from. The problem with that policy is that I am close to myself and I have to worry about what I myself think. Today, seeing all of the elements of my erotic world placed in front of me bothered me, I felt like I had just been exposed, even if only to myself. The amount of things I poses related to my erotic interests disturbs me. I am not easily bothered by many things and think of myself as open minded, but there is some degree of internal control that thinks that perhaps the amount of space I have that is filled with these things is beyond what it should be. I do not know how to proceed, I have tried the throwing all of the stuff away method before, but I regretted that. I am not morally bothered by the stuff I have, but I think I am a little upset that I do not use it more often and that I have managed to collect so much stuff without realizing it.