June 2006 Archives

Bob is really a great photographer. By his permission, here's an excerpt on picking lenses. Don't you love IM?

Bob Wise says:
good, how are you?
Rich Tong says:
Goofing off. Scanning 35mm film from 1999 and looking for cameras. Have to leave in 3 minute to go to work We should talk cameras and lenses though, I'm deep into it right now. Think I need the very light Digital Rebel for walking around in China (less obvious, doesn't say rob me) plus the 5D for the serious stuff.
Rich Tong says:
But the issue is what lenses to get? Went though the whole Canon inventory and picked out a few (they are on tongfamily.com), tell me what you think. Also now going through Sigma. The Sigma stuff seems cheaper and if you are smart pretty good.
Bob Wise says:
I love my 24-70L
Bob Wise says:
Going to sell the 17-40 probably
Bob Wise says:
Get the sigma 12-24
Bob Wise says:
only decent wide-angle zoom for FF
Bob Wise says:
I'm definitely a zoom guy instead of a prime guy
Rich Tong says:
So what do you have exactly? I agree, the zooms don't have the same tradeoffs in the old days
Bob Wise says:
I have the 24-70L, 50mm, 100mm macro, 100-400L, and 17-40L
Rich Tong says:
Wow, nice lenses. Here is what I'm thinking: Sigma 12-24, Canon 16-35L, 24-105L, 70-200IS. It is a tossup on the 24-70L vs the 70-105L with the main difference being the F/2.8 vs. F/4.0
Bob Wise says:
24-105L is good. Has IS which is nice
Bob Wise says:
I think you will find that the 16-35 or the 12-24 are redundant
Bob Wise says:
I'm very tempted to get the 16-35 myself
Rich Tong says:
Yup, I was thinking the IS plus the ISO 800 performance of the 5D would help. I agree on the 12-24 vs. the 16-35. One or the other.
Bob Wise says:
the 12-24 seems to have the usual sigma QA issues... a bit hit and miss on getting a good copy
Rich Tong says:
I haven't found a review of the 12-24 yet, but the 16-35L has great reviews and is a good fit for the main lense of the Rebel given its factor. On the Sigma, you get what you pay for I guess, it is way cheaper. Makes ebay look good. these things cost!
Bob Wise says:
I think I'm going to order the sigma and see how it like it. If I don't like it I will sell it and get the 16-35
Bob Wise says:
I have really liked the 2.8 speed on the 24-70, though!
Bob Wise says:
It's a beast of a lens, though.
Rich Tong says:
Yeah, you are right, the 24-70 has the 2.8, but not the IS. These are all very big lenses you are right. been looking at sizes and weights
Bob Wise says:
BTW, the 17-85 IS with the crop works out to be very close to the 24-105 on the FF
Bob Wise says:
I think that is your China rebel lens
Bob Wise says:
I was very torn about getting the 24-105, but had to shoot a low-light wedding and went for the 24-70 - no regrets.
Bob Wise says:
See my photos
Rich Tong says:
Will check out. Hey, can I edit and blog this whole conversation. You are the font of all knowledge. Oops, got to go! Call me if you've got time, we can BS

OK, now that we have a Motorola V3, its fun to see what the internet world has been doing to customize it. It's kind of amazing the tools that are now available and the amount of hacking people have done:

• Motox. This is a big modding site with lots of firmware. The essentials are that Flash is the core operating system while Flex are the various ringtones and other files plus you need a language pack. In MOtox a Monster Pack includes all three.
• Motox MXLP. He's been hacking away and now you can use both English and Chinese on your V3 Razr. Wow that's very cool with somethi8ng called the 014D language pack that has US, Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
• Unimoto. This seemsl ike the most popular unlocker on the Motox forum.
• Cell-Unlock. Another software solution for unlocking.
• GSM Liberty. Don't know if this works, but for $25, you can take the V3 and use it in China or where ever else you are going. I often need to swap a SIM there. T-mobile lets you unlock but other carriers are less enlightened.

Alex got one last year, now its Calvin's turn. Some choices:

• REDLINE | ADULT BIKES | CONQUEST 24. This is a 24" wheeled Redline Cyclocross. It has a 17.4" standover.

PC Magazine normally isn't that useful anymore and it is a pale imitation of its former self, but this piece on cool utilities is really useful. Here are the top ones:

• Roboform. A great utility even if it does cost $30. Keeps track of all your passworks.
• PartitionMagic. Its is $70, but it really helps when you need to change your aprtition and move them.
• Network Magic. OK, so we are investors, it is kind of cool to see it here as away to manage your home networks
• Gibson Research. They have a bunch of useful utiliities like Leaktest and ShieldsUp!! to scan your computer
• Filmloop. This lets you scroll photos across your screen like a ticker.
• MSN Screen Saver. This displays photos, puts up dates and track your email.

Here are some for audio, video and photos

• Rawshooter. This is a RAW editor that works really well.
• Adobe DNG Converter. A free utility that converts from proprietary RAW camera formats into Adobes DNG
• Microsot Raw Image Viewer.. This is a power toy that lets you view RAW inside Windows.
• SteadyHand. An amazing $70 utility that takes the shakes out of your images.
• Video Convertor. This tools takes teh MJPEG that digital cameras use and converts if for $35 into DivX, AVI or MP4 formats.
• ID3-TagIT. I use Musicmatch for this and it works really well, here's a freeware alternative.
• Qumana. LIke w.bloggar, this is an offline client.

My buddy Bill was using Roboform for password saving and I liked it, but I'm too cheap to pay for something like that. There is an open source project that seems to do much the same thing called Password Safe

We have a pair of F10s and an F11, but one of them is now on the fritz. The lens cover won't open, even though the rest of the camera turns on. With Fuiji, you have to send it to an authorized repair center.

Fujifilm: Support & Contact Center: Repair Information & Locations: Consumer Digital Camera Repair. Service can be obtained by taking or sending your unit to a Fujifilm Authorized Service Center, or the Factory Service Center. If your unit is covered under warranty, you will receive an acknowledgment. If your unit is not covered under warranty, you will receive an estimate for the repair prior to any work being done.

They have one in Seattle on Dexter:

Washington
Photo-tronics
513 Dexter Avenue
Seattle WA 98109
Phone: 206-682-2646

Canon is really tough to get rebates from. But, you need to follow the instructions at Canon Rebates and you can Prequalify on the site which is supposed to save time. Also make sure to really read the instructions about what they want.

1. Copy of the dated sales receipt from an authorized dealer (make sure you are not buying grey market or from someone not authorized)
2. Copy of customer portion of the Canon USA warranty
3. Original UPC Code and serial numbers

Good luck!

Tong Family Blog: Canon i9900 ICC Profile Guide. Previously I had done some printing from scans, but now with this Digital Rebel set for AdobeRGB, its' time to really fine tune the printing. The basic information is in the ICC Profile guide. But, the instructions are way too confusing. Here's a step by step guide to printing the highest quality possible on a Canon i9900 froma Canon Digital Rebel XT shooting Parameter 2 (natural) and AdobeRGB color profile. The main complexity is that either you let Adobe do color management and make sure to turn off color management or vice versa.

See Canon ICC Profile Guide for the depth information on using Canon with Canon Printers. See Red River there are some tips that are similar to the ICC guide as well as instructions on using Red River Canon Printe Guide and get the Red River ICCs

Adobe Photoshop color manages

Here's how to let Adobe Photoshop do all the work and disable all the work in the driver. The big advantage here is that if you have a different color profile than AdobeRGB Photoshop can do the mapping to the printer. Also this works for different paper that isn't from Canon since the Canon driver naturally only knows about Canon paper:

1. Make sure your camera is set to AdobeRGB as its color space
2. Open up Pixmantec Rawshooter Essentials with the .CR2 file. Main thing is to make sure the color balance is right. Find something that is white in the photo and use the eye dropper to set the color. In the naming and location section set it to same directory to the converted directory. Set it for 16-bit TIF, AdobeRGB color space.
3. If you have Photoshop CS2, you can load it directly with the Adobe Bridge utility. For both, select color space RGB 16-bit and ProPhotoRGB so you'll have lots of extra color resolution when you manipulate. The Canon should be set to AdobeRGB when you take the photo by the way.
   1. Open up Adobe Photoshop CS/File Print Preview/Show More Options/Color Management in CS2, it is and select Source Space/Document which should be "AdobeRGB" since the i9900 can print most of the colors in there (BTW, in this world, sRGB 8-bit < AdobeRGB 16-bit < ProPhoto RGB 16-bit).
   2. In that same dialog for CS, set Print Space/Profile using the codes as follows (the Canon profiles are installed automatically when you install the Canon drivers).
   3. For CS2, the dialog is different, select File/Print with Preview/Print=Document/ and select the Options Color Handling/Let Photoshop Determine Colors, Printer Profile as noted below
      1. Canon i9900 MP1 means Matte Photo Paper, Print Quality 1
      2. Canon i9900 PR1 means Photo Paper Pro, Print Quality 1
      3. Canon i9900 PR2 means Photo Paper Pro, Print Quality 2 (the default)
      4. Canon i9900 SP1 means Photo Paper Plus, Print Quality 2
      5. RR 68lb UP Cani9900 Fine means Red River 68 Lb Ultra Pro Gloss which you install by downloading the ZIP file from Red River and then right clicking on the ICC file and selecting install
   4. Select Intent as Perceptual which tells Adobe how to handle differences. Adobe with Perceptual will try to do mapping from colors in the photo to the printer that a user can't see
   5. Uncheck Black Point Compenstation if you are using Canon paper, check Black Point Compensation if you are using Red River. I've no idea what this does exactly. At least I can't see it with my own eyes :-)
   6. Select Print... and you will to to the printer dialog box. Click on Properties for the Canon i9900
   7. Select Media Type to Canon Photo Paper. In Print Quality, change default to HIGH which unintuitively is Print Quality 2, to get the Print Quality 1, you click on Print Quality/Customer/Set... and select Quality/1
   8. With Red River, set the Media Type to Glossy Photo Paper and set Print Quality to Manual and in Set... select Print Quality Fine.
      Color Management
   9. Set Color Adjustment to Manual and Print Type to None. Unintuitively, this disables color management in the Printer Driver and lets Photoshop do all the color management.
   10. Red River also advises you DO NOT use the Preview Before Print option in the printer driver. This isn't the Photoshop page preview, but the one built into the printer driver. There's a bug where using the Canon print with preview can cause your photos to have a pink hue. Caveat Emptor.

Canon driver does the color management

Here is the instruction set for doing it the other way where Adobe sends stuff down and the Canon driver does the color matching. This works only with Canon paper it appears since the Canon driver knows about only its paper and can correct for it

## Start Pixmentic and save the .CR2 file as a 16-bit TIF with the AdobeRGB Profile
## Start Adobe Photoshop and open the .TIF file then choose Print Preview/Show More Options/Color Management/Source Space to Document: AdobeRGB and Print Space to Printer Color Management
## Click on Print... and go to the Canon i9900 Properties and Media Type to Photo Paper Pro and Print Quality to Custom and press the Set button and select Quality at 1
## Then choose Color Adjustment and select Manual/Set... and select Enable ICM

Is it just me or do there seem to be just so many social and other networking sites arriving on the network. With the amount of venture capital going into consumer web things these days, I can only guess what the explosion will be like. Anyway, continuing the campaign to get the username "rich" on every web 2.0 site or at least get a logon, here we go again:

• Web 2.0 Awards. At lest this is a shorter list. Just 300 top websites.
• Blogniscient":
• Wist. This is a wish list like delicious I think. Decent search, like I found the Motorola Q review for it.

Google Spreadsheets - Sneak Peek mentioned to me by John as good enough spreadsheeting. I'm on the trial.

Also Peter mentioned to me the Motorola Q and Dave has told me that Windows Mobile 5 is good. I'm glad I sold my RIM stock :-)

Digital Camera Info is the only site that I've found that has analytically compared the color, resolution, noise for these widely different cameras. It's interesting to see how a $2600 Canon 5D with aa $1100 lense compares with a $300 compact. Here are the high points:

• Professional DSLR. The Canon 5D at $2600 street is truly remarkable. You get very faithful color, 11 real megapixels, shooting at ISO 1600 with low noise and zero shutter lag. It's the dream camera but with a dream-like price.
• Budget DSLR. The $800 Digital Rebel XT is actually quite close in picture quality. It's probably the best compromise of quality and price there is. With a fast ISO 800 sensor, low noise and a true 7 megapixels even with the cheap kit lense. Only caveat is avoid the auto ISO mode as this was just terrible in these tests. You can easily set it to ISO 400 for everyday and push to 800 when you need it.
• Superzoom EVF. The $500 Sony H5 is the best superzoom and shows all the tradeoffs. You get a 12x zoom lense and weights less than a pound, but it's picture quality is the issue mainly because of the small sensor that has to be used to get the zoom so big. Unlike just about every superzoom, it handles low light ISO 400 well. But like most of the rest, you really only get 4 megapixels effective, the color accuracy "consumer like" which means it the reds are unnatural. And the 0.42 second shutter lag is really a problem for shots with kids and people. So get this one only if you can't stand the weight of the DSLRs.
• Compacts. The Fujifilm F10 and F11 is a standout, its lowlight performance works well to ISO 400 and with some tradeoffs you get to an incredible ISO 800 maximum. The main drawback is the color is red-pushed to please consumers. The main drawback is that it is relatively large and heavy with a 1" width wheres as most super compacts are a svelte 0.3" wide. I also put the SD500 in because, it shows that a 7 megapixel sensor camera can have less resolution that a 6 megapixel F10. It's all about lense quality.

Noise curves

5D
Rebel XT
H5

I built up a Home Theater PC last year based on the Intel Pentium M, the ATI 9600 with component output and a home theater case with 60GB of memory. I actually got it to boot up in 1080i mode although I needed a dedicated LCD monitor and I also found the ATI software to be really unreliable in driving the 1080 display. Plus, I had a IR keyboard and mouse that just didn't work from 15 feet away, so the whole thing has been sitting in the corner as a hot standby for when a PC crashes.

Well, never one to give up, I'm going to see what the state of home theater is now. With a DCT-6812 box and a Panasonic X30 plugged into a now old (7 years!) Mitsubishi 73905 rear projection TV, I'm actually quite happy. I don't know what I'll do when I really have to go to 1080p and the new step, where this 400 pound monster will have to go somewhere (you can't just throw that in the garbage!).

In the mean time, its interesting to see where HTPC technology has gone. A quick google:"HTPC" reviews that there are quite a few old sites like AVS Forum as well as new sites like HTPCNews and HTPCForums that are dedicated to just building them. Here's an update on what's available:

*

broadband » DVR From Comcast FAQ. I'm really just learning how to use this thing. It is way complicated. The main issue is that channel switching and input are just so slow. There are some kind of cool tricks though:

Copy to a DVD

Replayguide. This is a great guide that shows you how to take stuff from the DCT's hard disk and put it on your PC. The steps are from AVS Forum and are a little nerdy, but you can do it.

1. Load drivers onto your Windows PC that let you use firewire to connect to your computer. This makes the Motorola 6412 visible. You plug a 6-pin cable into the right hand side (from the back) firewire port and then into your PC
2. This Firewire port displays whatever the DVR is currently playing assuming that the 5C copy protection bit isn't set and then you run CapDVHS.exe to capture it and you get a .ts file. The sad thing is that Comcast has 5C protected everything now so this will only work for analog apparently. Sad!
3. User HDTV2DVD to convert the .ts transport streams to product MPEG-2 DVDs.

30 Second Skip for iGuide

There is a hidden feature called the 30-second skip. If you have the interactive guide, then recorded shows can have a 30 second skip, but getting there is complicated. You have to remap a key on your remote to do this by. You can see if you have iguide by comparing your set-top box interface with that iguide site. We don't have it here in Seattle, we use the Microsoft interface out here unfortunately.

1) Press the "Cable" button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.
2) Press and hold the "Setup" button until the "Cable" button blinks twice.
3) Type in the code 994. The "Cable" button will blink twice
4) Press (do not hold) the "Setup" button
5) Type in the code 00173 (for 30 second skip).
6) Press whatever button you want to map the skip function to.

• Deleting all your content.
  Press "replay" one time ( the arrow bending back )
  Press "MY DVR" three times ( button next to replay)
  Press "LIVE" one time ( button next to MY DVR)

Lyngsat Logo. An incredibly cool resource. When you are hacking up remote control scripts, I'm always looking for logs. This site has every logo up to date from just about every country. A great service.

Well, I haven't been super serious about this, but Plastic Bugs has a good guide for Mac users. I use Videora to do the conversion. The worst part is figuring out how to transcode. The short story is that if you have home videos, the H.264 format is the best. It is very efficient. Just encode at less than 768 Kbps for the video and 160 Kbps for the audio. I normally do 640 Kbps video and 96 Kbps for the audio because the digital cameras we use for most of this stuff is 640×480 interlaced with audio at 88 Kbps.

It's complicated to figure out what folks who are 55 years or better should be doing. Here's a quick list courtesy of google:"Seattle senior citizen":

• Seattle Parks & Recreation: For Seniors. Seattle Parks and Recreation Senior Adult Programs offer a wide range of activities for seniors that change each season.
• Senior Centers. A good list is here. There are centers in the Central District, Ballard, West Seattle. The Central District one has $12 dues and they run a variety of activities. It is at Jackson and 30th
• Community Centers. These are general purpose community centers. The Montlake Center is under construction, but Miller Community Center is close by and has buried in a pdf
  • Friday 1-3PM. Bridge for anyone
  • Tai Chi
  • Field trips like going to Olympia June 8, Thursday but you need to call specific days to 684-4240 at 8AM to register.
  • Morning Fitness will be held in the Miller Community Center Gym at 7 & 8:15 a.m.
  • Adult Karate will be held at McGilvra Elementary School Gym at 1617 38th Ave. E, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
• Call 206-684-4951 for city-wide senior programs
• CISC. This is a chinese information center. There is also an adult daycare called the Sunshine Garden.

There are some things a little farther afield:

• Seattle Bridge Club. They are up north at NE 145th. But they have a very active schedule 10:30AM on Monday thru Friday.
• Seattle Times Aging. There is section on aging and a senior calendar updated weekly on this site.

RC: Philips ProntoPro NG TSU7000 & Marantz RC9500 Remote Control Review (26). A good deep review of the quite expensive but very worthwhile TSU7000. I actually bought the older TSU6000 for me, Ken and Bill. It really does work well even though you need to program it. This new model has much better active matrix screen and more memory and more buttons, but remains very usable. Give it a look particularly if you are nerdy enough to program something.

Philips invented the whole mid-range customizable touchscreen remote control market, and although the Pronto is no longer the only color remote available in this price range, it continues to rank as one of the best.</blockquote

Sports - Reviews and free downloads at Download.com. Calvin loves sports games. Here is the place to get demo versions so he can figure out.

Mountain Biking Product Spotlight: MTBR Lights Shine-Off. For years I've recommended the Light & Motion HID lights. They are super bright, but the big drawback has been they don't run that long, so aren't that useful for more than a relatively short bike commute (2 hours at most) and they are heavy at over two pounds. In the last two years though Lithium Ion has made HID lights lighter so a pound is the penalty, but more importantly, LEDs are now so bright, you can get very light, but very bright lights. MTBR did a review and here's the best recommendation from a sort of ratings

• Jet Lites. Folks seem to uniformly like the Jet Lites products. The Phantom i Single Beam seems really popular. It lasts eight hours by the way. It odes weight two pounds and the 20 watt version lasts four hours, with the 12 watt lasts 6 hours.
• "Light & Motion ARC": . I have three L&M lights now, the old halogen and two HID. They have been great, although I push them so hard, the battery cord are always coming apart.
• Lupine Edison 10. For the true maniacs. At $800, it costs more than most bikes, but probably the best and brightest light out there. Metal Halide Xenon Bulb produces 900 lumens and equals a 64 watt halogen bulb. Its 16 watts, weight 720 grams

I now see why folks are building tools like Aperture. Actually processing a digital image really well is very complicated. The workflow for 35mm negatives to digital I kind of get now (Vuescan to Photoshop), but there is a whole new world if really want the highest quality output. The main thing is that if you shoot RAW, there is no in-camera processing of images, so you can tweak to your hearts content. As usual, you can either just use the Photoshop suite, or you can roll your own with different pieces. There is an amazing amount written about how to do flows. As usual, google:"canon raw processing" is a good way to start:

MKWPhotography.

Wow, this is an amazing well written summary of doing a Canon workflow. To summarize, here is how he does it:

1. Breezebrowser to copy the images from the camera to the computer. Personally, with a 4GB (heh, heh) card that stores 300 images in Large+RAW mode in the Digital Rebel, just taking it out is simple and Windows has decent tools for previewing. The main thing the third party tool allows is automatic renaming of the images to prevent duplication. You then delete and create a nice hierarchy like e:\pictures\$tif\2006\2006-06\2006-06-01\. One habit I personally picked up is duplicating dates like this. That way if you accidentally copy one directory into another you don't have terrible collision of filenames and directories.
2. Capture One. This is supposed to be an expensive but high control tool for converting the Canon specific .CR1 files into .TIF files. These guys have a zillion different versions but the LE is the low end and Pro is the expensive high end. It lets you set white balance and also you tie the camera's color profile in as well. LE is $99 whereas Pro is an astounding $500.
3. Photoshop. Then there is the very expensive Photoshop CS 2 or Photoshop Elements 3.0 if you've a lack of dough where you apply the rest of the tools
   1. Neat Image. This is a plug in for Photoshop that is camera specific and takes the noise out of shots. Very useful at ISO 400 and above. This is quite reasonable at $30 Home or $75 Pro versions. You really want the Pro because it has 16-bit image processing.
   2. DxO. Finally, there is the very cool DxO filter that automatically removes the optical distortion from lenses. There is a Starter (non DSLRs), Pro Standard and Pro Elite (what is with this naming!). The pricing depends on the cost of the cameras that they support. So the Digital Rebel only needs the $149 standard, while a 5D needs the $300 Elite.
   3. Unsharp Mask. This is the useful sharpening tool. He recommends using 100-150%, 0.6-1.0 radius and 3-6 threshold, although he usually starts with 100%/0.6/3 as a starting point.

Photography on the Net

Wow, there are lots of raw converters out there. Apparently one that is free is something called RawShooterEssentials. Outbackphoto reviewed it and says that its a very good free for now utility. There is also a list of the really great ones:

• Adobe Camera RAW. Part of Photoshop CS 2 (a stunning $460 and Photoshop Elements 3.0 and 4.0 (although many folks like 3.0 better because Adobe got rid of the very useful file browser). N.B. The academic versions are quite reasonable if you are a student or educator.
• Capture One. The first and the best of the independents
• Camera Raw, Canon DPP and Bibble are getting close.

Rawworkflow

There is whole site that is dedicated to nothing else other than RAW processing.