Archive for April, 2007

While looking around in a search engine, you may find a few nice things. Today, I stopped by the quite large list of videos listed on Google search engine for the keywords “Thelonious Monk”. The guy was one of the most inventive jazz players. The first time I heard him, I was nearly rocked off my chair.

Electronics and optics of our photo (or video) equipment are relatively sensitive to temperature. This leads us to as the question about its protection against heat. There are plenty of rumours and a lot of bad ideas about the best method to protect your photo camera against heat during a photo safari.

Example of a bad idea: Put the camera in a plastic bag (the type you use in the fridge or the freezer). It hardly limits the temperature (the thickness of the isolating plastic is very small) and you will soon notice that the bag is more a nuisance than anything else without bringing noticeable benefits (after a few minutes only, you will see no temperature difference inside and out of the bag).

It has often been told that the white colour of the high-end lenses from Canon or Minolta-Sony eases their use in very sunny conditions (and that the black colour of lenses from Nikon and others is better for the South Pole). Even if it is formally exact that white better reflects the Sun visible radiation and so reduces a little the internal temperature of the lens, this effect is very small in most conditions. It is more common to say that -for devices correctly handled- the thermal conduction (contact with hot air) is more effective than thermal radiation (exposure to the Sun light).

The simplest is certainly to avoid exposing too much your photo equipment to direct sun light (or limiting it). For example, keep it as much in the shade as possible (think about a sunshade, etc.) But you must never abandon you equipment in an overheated and closed vehicle (think of the same sound advice as givent to the parents of toddlers: Do not leave them in the car in front of the beach). Furthermore, take advantage of the merest wind to cool down your equipment: In a safari open vehicle, there are always locations where the wind is important when driving (but beware of humidity and dust that may come with it if your devices are not seriously air- and water-tight).

One simple and efficient idea (but not always easy to implement correctly): use an insulated isotherm box. If you do not open it too often, it will keep a rather cool interior and will maintain your equipment protected from the external harsh conditions. My father has been using this for years to transport photo devices in long car trips.

But, do not over-do it. Do not include ice, dry ice or any other source of cold/freeze. It could create an enormous temperature difference between the outside and the inside. The cure may become worse than the sickness, with formation of condensation, thermal shocks that would be dangerous for the well-being of electronics, mechanics, etc.

Last but not least, do not forget that there are thermal stress conditions to avoid for your photo equipment: The cargo compartment of an airplae is not a good place for your photo equipment; Putting your camera in front of the outlet of a car air conditionner could bring very dangerous thermal shocks.

Those were the elements of my own epxerience. Yours is now welcome (even more if you have good tricks to apply).

OK! the video does not actually explains, but it translates. For those of you who know Internet forums (of all forms), it’s easy to recognize the local habits.

Cautious: Not safe for work.

This is all best understood when you push it all into real life.

As announced earlier here, I went to South Africa for a photo safari. Now, I’m back and I am currently rumaging through the 1500 images I brought back (don’t worry; most of them are just crap that I will not inflict on you). But some will be appearing on the site in the coming days. To initiate this, here is a white rhino encountered at the end of the very first game drive. The light was quite poor, but it was the first time I was seeing one in the wild.

White rhinoceros
(Click on the thumbnails to see the larger image)

Microsoft promised that the new graphics standard for Windows (DirectX 10) will not be applied to anything older than Windows Vista. This was enough to push some people in looking for ways to make it work on Windows XP (WinXP), or on Mac, or on Linux. A guy, named Cody Brocious from San Diego, California, claims to have had the first success at this. He created a wrapping code to make those DirectX 10 appplications (mostly games) run on Windows XP and even on some DirectX 9 hardware.

That could quickly become one of the most interesting development in video games for Windows this year.

Cody Brocious official Project Alky blog.

From the Inquirer.

The Washington Post recently asked Joshua Bell, internationally acclaimed violonist, to go play his Stradivarius in the Washington subway at rush hour.

What did you think happened? Nearly nothing, of course. A few bucks of pocket change for a violonist more used to big checks, a few passers-by stopping for a short time, one admirer finally recognizing him.

An article a little more lengthy than usual, along with nice videos, to describe the whole experiment with its high times and its long empty slots.

Washington Post: “Pearls Before Breakfast” (Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?), via Neatorama.

The photographs of David let us fly over a world of dreams where balck and white photography uses wisely the quality of materials surfaces (water, earth, woods, etc.) More specifically I noticed his nice Water gallery where I invite you.

Who said that black and white photography would disappear with digital technology?

Canon recently published a set of PDF documents collectively titled “EF Lens Work III” that give you all the details about the EF lens system and their application to the digital photographer. It is a very necessary reading for the Canon user, but also a very good information for the others.

When, as I do, you want to include some bits and pieces of software code in a WordPress post, it starts to become a serious headache. As a matter of fact, WP has not really been prepared for this and it creates a number of issues. Those I already encountered here:

• The <?php tend to disappear (unless you start juggling)
• Some charcaters would not display at all (or badly)
• The overall presentation is pretty bland if you use <code>

So, I looked for a plugin (nearly everything in WordPress is done by adding on of those marvellous little code gems that can be included in a few seconds into the basic configuration) adapted to this task, easy to install (I don’t want to be stuck with heavy maintenance just for this), easy to use.

Here is the summary of what I checked and my opinion regarding them.
(more…)

This week, nVidia launched a large number of new 8500 and 8600 graphics boards (the low cost complements to the 8800 series that is currently at the high-end of the market). nVidia also presented its 8800 Ultra (overclocked 8800). Thus, nVidia is now fully covering the market (from low-cost to high-performance) with DirectX 10 compatible solutions (capable to manage all graphics from all the versions of Windows Vista and to support the new games that should require this platform during 2007).

Meanwhile, AMD (previously ATI) is still announcing its HD 2600 series (also known under the R600 architecture code name) that should hit nVidia with high-end features including full support for HD-TV applications.

I find it striking to see that AMD is currently under fire from all sides. The CPU division is facing an Intel betting on its technical advantage of the time and leading AMD into a bloody price war that strangle margins. The graphics division (ex-ATI) met difficulties when developping the R600/HD 2600 and that delayed significantly the products that are no longer expected before May 2007.

I have to admit that -in this context- the financial results of AMD announced this week (profits loss of 611 millions dollars for the first quarter) cannot be surprising. Parallely, Intel finances are flying high and its market share is continuously improving again. The billion-dollar-question is how AMD will be able to correct this doom trajectory. We expect this obvious impatience the arrival of the new processor architectures (double and quadruple core, specifically) able to really fight against the Core 2 Duo from Intel and the first boards based on the R600 chipset to see them back in the game again (Journalists accredited by AMD will be in Tunisia next week to discover all the details, but they are not allowed to speak until AMD lifts the NDA).

Before that, it is probably important to be patient with AMD and to remember that it is only by giving them our purchases that we can support a company that nearly broke the monopoly of Intel on the processors (with all the Customer advantages of free competition).

A neat trick that was hanging around the Internet but that I found in Transnets. How to search with Google for the MP3 files of your artist of choice. Use the following search phrase (replacing Roumazeilles with the artist name):

Mozilla just announced the availability of the newest version of its email reader Thunderbird.

New functionalities.

English versions:

• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux

French versions:

• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux

Amazon just opened the pre-orders for the Canon EOS 1D Mk III, high-end digital single lens reflex. Announced availability: 20th June.

Digital Photo Academy is a Panasonic-LUMIX initiative for the American users of digital cameras. They will be holding teaching courses and presentations open to all users of those D-SLR and compact cameras.

The web site is not yet open, but more news just before May 2007.

If you are interested in the simulation games like Civilization, you may be interested to know that 2K Games is hiding a free download link for the (slightly older) Railroad Tycoon, on the home page of Railroads! web site.

Download Railroad Tycoon.

Have fun, be free.

In our series of reference technical papers, we invite you to go and check “What’s behind vibration reduction“, a very interesting description of the technology Nikon uses to reduce image blur caused by vibrations of the photo camera (or of the photographer). It is quite nicely done (cool desing from Nikon) and deeply documented. Just take some time to check it all.