2006 January

Gear : Epson R-D1

Epson R-D1 Well, this camera is hardly going to be news to people who are interested in it, I figure that anyone who would want one of these already knows it exists. I’ve been struggling lately with what to do with my (significant) investment in film cameras. One of the areas that causes me serious is how to reconcile my childish and irrational lust for a Lecia M5 M7-TTL. Yes, I’ve been after one of these (loosely) for a long, long time. [ Leica Rangefinder History ]
These days, it’s about the only thing that has been holding be abstractly to film, well, that and my 4×5 gear. There is still something incredibly satisfying about looking at a snappy 4×5 chrome (E-6) on a light table.

Turns out my reconciliation of going with bits over halide may have a happy ending. Unlikely partners, Epson and Cosina have teamed up to produce an M (and L) mount compatible digital rangefinder body that looks shockingly like it belongs in the M-family. The Epson R-D1.
Kudos to Epson and Cosina. I don’t know much about the camera yet, but I do know that the camera store up the street sells them. I might pop in and take a look or see if they have them in the rental program. For this kind of investment I would expect that try-before-you-buy is a must, not a should (as an IETF’er might say).

Now Reading (Slowly) : The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

I’m slowly working my way through this book. It’s been on my `reading’ list for quite some time, but it gets pre-empted quite regularly. Only beacuse it’s too big to fit in my briefcase on business trips, therefore I find it a bit too much effort to lug around. I’m really learning that I prefer the trade-paperback format for books. Too bad, because they are never released in TP format right away.

More details and my opinion will follow when I get a moment or two to ‘reinstall’ the book in my reading-flow.

Title: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
Author: Thomas L. Friedman
Published by: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 0374292884

Search for this book on Google or Amazon.ca.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.0

I’m about to attempt an upgrade to WordPress 2.0, which is now released to the public.

Obviously I’ll update this once I’m done and we’ll see how well it all works out.

Update: Wow, well it appears on the surface that I survived the upgrade.

I’ll look around and see if anything is obviously broken, but so far, so good.

Update 2: The upgrade was fairly painless. The only bug I’ve encountered so far is that the image upload mechanism has changed rather radically and relies entirely on JavaScript support and appears to have a few bugs.

PoTW : Ekr, No Photos

Exposure Information

Title:	Ekr, No Photos?
Exposure Information
Focal Length, Aperture, Shutter	5.8mm, f/2.8, 1/60s
Light	Ambient with Fill Auto Red-Eye Flash
Camera	Canon PowerShot SD200

I’m chaning things up a bit and moving to a picture of the week. Too much stress to keep a meaningful photo each day, the idea here is to ensure that I keep shooting, not that I just display old photos.
Since ekr was bugging me to put up a photo of the day, I decided that I would. Thanks to the unknown photographer who provided me with this fine example of mountain biking journalism.

More PoTW can be found via this link.

Blazing mouse sets fire to house

Blazing mouse sets fire to house: “A lesson in Instant Karma™”

BBC Mouse Victor

Rough summary:

Man finds mouse in house,
Man throws mouse into burning leaf pile,
Man finds mouse in (now burning) house,
House destroyed.

(Via HTMLoTD.)

Konica Minolta Exits Photofinishing and Camera Business

According to this press release from Konica Minolta, they are exiting the camera and photofinishing businesses.

…in today’s era of digital cameras, [...], it became difficult to timely provide competitive products [...]

skipping

1. Camera Business

In camera business, we have reached an agreement with Sony Corporation(Sony), [...] , to jointly develop digital SLR cameras in July 2005. In order to [...] maximize possibilities of the [...] technologies accumulated through development of SLR cameras in the years to come,[...] it was best to transfer assets concerning camera business to Sony.[...]

In this relation, we have decided to withdraw from camera business,
such as film cameras and digital cameras, within Konica Minolta Group as of March 31, 2006.

Sony is planning to develop digital SLR cameras compatible with [our lens systems]

2. Photo Business

In today’s shrinking photographic market represented by color film and color paper, [...] it is quite difficult to maintain profitability in this field, and we have decided to withdraw from photo business.

For color film and color paper, [...] , we will [...] cease our color film and color paper production by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2007.

For minilab business[es], we will cease production of the system by the end of fiscal year ending March 31, 2006[...]

3. Personnel Management

As a part of Konica Minolta Group’s restructuring, [...] we have decided to reduce worldwide Konica Minolta Group employees by 3,700 from the current 33,000 including early retirement offering by September 30, 2007.

…

…we will remain powerful…

What’s up with remaining powerful? Lost in translation I fear.

Wow ! With Kodak discontinuing their film camera offerings a few years ago, Nikon severely restricting their presence in the film space last week and now this. Fine Art photographers are in for an uphill battle as the options will become increasingly boutique and less mainstream. I suppose this is a good thing for dedicated artists, and a bad thing for the casual hobbyist that happens to still dig film.

Anyone want to buy my Hexar Silver ? Marvelous camera…

Update: I decided to dig up a link on the Hexar on the official site and, surprise surprise, this snuck up on me:

Dear Konica Minolta Consumer,

Effective October 1, 2005, Konica Minolta Photo Imaging Canada, Inc. will cease its operations in the Canadian market only. All other world-wide Konica Minolta subsidiary’s and companies will remain operational.

[..]
Sales and distribution of Digital/35mm cameras, film scanners, binoculars, photo meters, and their accessories will however cease in Canada. [...]

While we have made every attempt to execute these transitions with minimal disruptions we thank you for your patience in the event your responses are delayed.

Minimal disruption?? : Nice. Exiting a market and entire country can hardly be called minimal disruption, unless you consider that Canadians make up roughly 0.5% of the global population (but substantially more of the addressable market). Blah

PoTW : Stanley Theatre

Title: Stanley Theatre
Exposure Information:
Light: Ambient Light (Daylight)
Focal Length, Aperture, Shutter Speed: 50mm f/2.0 1/8000s
Film / Gain : ISO 200 Equiv.

Description: The Stanley theatre is a wonderful old-school theatre that started out as a live stage, evolving into a Famous Players theatre from the Second World War through to modern times. I met my wife while she was involved in the community education effort that ultimately led to the rennovation and rebirth of the theatre as a live stage venue once again. The Famous Players maple leaf motif is still clearly visible in the facade, but cleverly bears an “s” for stanley instead of the trademarked text. This is a beautiful theatre and they perform a very successful series of plays throughout the season. When this was taken they were holding over “Beauty and the Beast” for their absolute last week.

This particular shot is an early attempt by myself to figure out how to use my new toy — a LensBabies 2.0 lens. The idea behind the LensBabies is to imitate an old school Holga. If you don’t know what a Holga is, let Wikipedia help you out since their article is very well put together. Basically, they are an old, cheap 120 format (medium format) camera that was manufactured in Hong Kong. They have a lovely softness to everything outside the central focus due to their overly spherical and overly simple (and plastic) lens design. I’m still taking baby-steps with mine (no pun intended) so we’ll see what develops. Certainly some people acheive outstandingly unique results with these things, so I look forward to deciding on my own unique application for it.

More Pictures of the Week (PoTW): link

Exif Data :

PoTW: Sisters – Imogen and Ramona

Title: Sisters — Imogen and Ramona
Exposure Information:
Light: Ambient Light (Tugsten)
Focal Length, Aperture, Shutter Speed: 50mm f/1.4 1/60s
Film / Gain : ISO 800 DE^*

^* Digital Equivalent

Imogen (2), Ramona (4) are daughters of a good friend of ours.

More Pictures of the Week (PoTW): link

MTV : They’re Sorry

Perhaps MTV is just a sorry excuse for a consumer choice provider. Dave points out that they are all about choice, as long as you choose Windows™. Following his lead, this is what I get when I head over to their download page to watch some teen-candy:

In order to offer a broad selection of full-length music videos on-demand and free of charge, MTV Overdrive uses Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect videos from unauthorized re-distribution.

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Plug-in for Macintosh does not support Windows DRM. If DRM support becomes available for Macintosh, MTV will develop a version of MTV Overdrive that works on a Mac.

What I really like, is how they:

conflate the generic concept of DRM with Mircosoft Windows™ DRM, and;
apply spin to make it look like it is somehow Apple’s fault and/or problem.

Nicely done. Good job. Spin doctor indeed!

MacBook Pro

intel dual core logo (Apple)

I was going to resist, but I am very excited to see that the new MacBook Pro is from the Pro line and not an updated iBook. This will be blogged to death and reported on for weeks, but I might as well chime in: I’m keen.

I wonder what the plans are for the 12″ space?

I’m really hooked on smaller portables for flights and tight places.

I love the tagline on the Apple website :

What’s that Intel chip doing in a Mac? A whole lot more than it’s even done in a PC!

Of course Steve waited until I personally purchased a 20″ 2.0GHz iMac G5 iSight before releasing the product, so you can all thank me for helping bring this to market faster.