As much as I regretted missing Balticon (all the more so knowing
that Urban Tapestry was performing), I did have stuff to distract
myself with at home over the weekend. A new toy
uh, extremely important new used piece of equipment that will extend
my capabilities in one of my crafts. Okay, that description applies
to the near future; over the weekend it was Fun New Toy. And of
course I really had to play with it in order to learn how to get
the most out of it (not that the lack of such an excuse would have
made any difference). Thanks to the kindness of another person on
a mailing list I'm on, who made a very nice offer and a time frame
for payment that I ought to actually be able to manage, I've finally
got a DSLR.
So as a side effect of spending so much time playing
ah, experimenting with the camera, I've spent a lot of time in GIMP
the last few days, tweaking what I've shot. And finding out which
of my odd ideas confuse the camera, and trying to figure out how to
de-confuse it when I want to do those things. (Like using a pinhole
lens.)
( speaking of which, here's a large picture of Perrine
that I wanted to share (1024x684 JPEG) )
Using the DSLR feels very different from using the digital
point&shoot. Not only because it has more controls and
different features, but because it feels so much more
familiar since most of the film I've shot has been
done using SLRs. It does have a "PHD" mode ("push here,
dummy") of course, and fancy modes beyond any of my
film cameras (mostly -- with one exception -- due solely to the
age of my film cameras, not the fact that they use film) ...
I don't know of anybody marketing a fully manual digital
camera, so I don't think there's a digital equivalent of the
legendary K1000 ... but one thing I've already noticed is that
instead of making my old manual-camera skills obsolete, this
system just makes applying those skills faster and easier.
Despite the limitations of the p&s and the increased
versatility of the DSLR, there are a couple of things that
a point&shoot or rangefinder-style digital camera does
more conveniently: two that come to mind are using the LCD
instead of the viewfinder when putting one's eye to the
viewfinder would be geometrically challenging or uncomfortable,
and using the LCD as a viewfinder that can be artificially
brightened via the exposure-compensation setting, in poor
light. (The p&s is also smaller and lighter.) In an
SLR the mirror blocks the sensor until the shutter button is
pressed, so it can't use the sensor and the LCD to preview
a shot, only to review a shot already taken. (Presumably
this could be done when mirror lock-up is used,
I suppose -- do any DSLRs do it that way? The camera would
have to close the shutter and drain the charge on the sensor
before firing, I guess, but I don't know what major obstacles
there might be.)
In addition to playing with pinholes and macro, I spent
a while hunting dirt bikes and birds. Catching birds in
flight with a long lens (but not really birdwatching
length, just long by normal standards) is a lower-stress
activity when I know I can just zap the missed shots and messed-up
shots and reclaim the space, instead of each near-miss costing
me a frame of film. But I'm going to need a lot more practice
with birds before the next time that I try going after bats.
I'm not sure what the small birds in Baltimore that move in
not-quite-bat-like ways are. (That is, they're gobbling
insects out of the air, AFAICT, which means they're solving
the same problem insectovore bats are, though anatomical
differences result in flight path differences.) I'm guessing
they're swifts, assuming Baltimore has swifts, 'cause
swallows have a more distinctive tail, don't they? There
are a few other species visible along -- or over -- my street
as well. The robins make short, low-altitude flights
across the street and back, not staying in the air long
enough for me to get them;
pigeons mostly make short flights like that too, but they're
slower and sometimes fly above rooftop height, so they're easier.
The others mostly stay up where they're silhouetted against the
sky -- once in a while I manage to catch one with
the
underside of its wing illuminated by the setting sun.
Any of y'all good at identifying birds from their
silhouettes?
( bird silhouettes (500x500 JPEG) )
(
1024x1024 version @ Flickr)
That covers much of my weekend. But other things happened as
well:
B brought over a scavenged rackmount computer. Unlike the other
rackmount computer I've got, the graphics card in this one gets along
nicely with Ubuntu Linux. Two older machines are starting to fail,
so migration will be a double win (the more stuff I stuff into the
rack, the more floor/desk space I get back).
And when I got stabbed in the back with eight of
these... |
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... I decided it was time to wield these: |
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And finally, ( links to a few more recent photos )