A co-worker of mine, Darren, suggested that it would be interesting to see what focal lengths are most popular in our image collections. He whipped up some perl code that would recurse through a directory hierarchy and spit out some data on lens focal length. I expanded the code a little so spit out per-image information and did some rudimentary digging with R.

One of the drawbacks, of course, is that only my EXIF tagged photos are represented here, or, put another way, only my digital photographs are represented here. I don’t much expect that the results would change in the film archives, except for the fact that I’d expect the 50mm focal length to return and 85mm to shine. Clearly I use these lengths a lot. You can also clearly see that I have no sub 70mm zoom capability in that the data shows very distinct peaks under the bottom end of the 70-200 zoom.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the 70-200/2.8 zoom is used almost exclusively at 70 or 200 and then again with the 1.4x TC when shooting sports. Combined with the 1.6x crop factor inherent in the 20D body and you can see that I have peaks at 320 and 450.

I also ran a quick check on metering modes, just to see what I use. I guessed that Av and M would tie with Tv a distant third. I was wrong. I shoot a ton more Manual mode (M) than I thought. (Thank you Ansel Adams and all you zone system junkies!).

Apertures – once again, I tend to shoot a lot at wide-open or nearly wide open. This is largely what drives my desire to keep my primes and my L zooms. Nothing, not even IS, can simulate the bokeh and speed of nice fast glass.

Well. KC and I successfully completed our technician grade amateur radio exams and the paperwork from the FCC has arrived. KI6TDK and KI6TDJ respectively. Yeah. Radio time. I think it is amusing that I have a US callsign and a Canadian Aviation RO permit too. It will be interesting to see how it reconciles in the future. Perhaps it really doesn’t matter.

Photo is Saturday morning — coffee and repeaters.

KC and I have been considering getting a ‘real’ bike-to-bike communication system and with that comes the discovery that almost all GMRS / business radios need to be licensed. With a Technician Ham ticket being a mere weekend course and with that opening the possibility of ‘real radios’, I’m interested in hearing from any of you that have your ticket.

What portable rigs have you tried, anyone have any experience with the Kenwood TH-F6A, what about the Yaesu VX-7R, or newer. Anything from ICOM?

I have an ICOM-A23 for aviation that I’m very pleased with, but this is a new application so they may not be the incumbent that they are in the aero world.

Any comments or thoughts around portables are welcome. Since it is a bike application, I don’t have room for a mobile sized unit.

It occurs to me that I don’t even know which of my friends have a ham ticket, so feel free to educate me.