Happy Holidays

Behind the Scenes

Caution, Yield To Aircraft

DSLR and Video!

So time and time and time again, I like to tell people that you don't really need a fancy DSLR to take really amazing photographs. For many years I have been taking some amazing photographs with my Canon SD1000 point and shoot. I just got tired of not being able to blow up my digital pictures into anything bigger than 8x10 without them getting pixelated. I started saving up money and finally made the plunge to purchase a DSLR. I still stand by my opinion that you can still take amazing photos with a point and shoot.

However, what I would like to tell you all out there on the internet is that this weekend, I discovered how awesome it was to use a DSLR for video shooting. All this time I have been using cheap portable hand held cameras (i.e. Flip or Kodak Zi8) for shooting video. After shooting video with a DSLR this weekend at my local air show, I was impressed by the quality and versatility that the DSLR can provide.

I rendered this video at 720p 60fps. When I watch it on my desktop, the quality is astounding! Youtube doesn't really do it justice because I think it downsizes it to 30fps and the compression artifacts show up a bit more. When I watch the fully rendered high definition version on my desktop monitor, it was a bit breathtaking. I think the only downside was that the 5 minute long clip was close to 800MB.

The small things in life....

Ever since I moved to the Midwest, there has been a lack of boba. There's no surprise here because the Midwest is known for BBQ, corn, steaks and a bunch of other good American food.

So you can imagine my surprise when I spotted a Lollicup shack while I was sightseeing in Kansas City. It was $3.75 for a cup of boba milk tea.

It tasted like Lollicup boba milk tea alright. They used the powdered stuff and the boba was mediocre. Ever since I was introduced to Half and Half during my last visit to Southern California, all the boba milk tea from the other tea shops started to taste average and boring.

I was still happy I had a cup of boba milk tea though. It was better than nothing. This is one of those times where you appreciate the small things in life....

Lessons Learned From Shooting with a Big @ss Lens

I had the opportunity to rent a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L Series USM Lens with Image Stabilization. This lens retails for $1700 and I rented it for $90 a week.

This lens has image stabilization which is great for daytime shooting on or off a tripod using reasonable shutter speeds.

However, evening shots are a different story. I tried to take a photo of the space shuttle on the launch pad at night using a tripod and a remote switch and couldn't figure out why photos were still coming out blurry.

It turns out that the $50 tripod I have was the culprit.


If you look at the base of where the lens mounts to the tripod, it's sort of a ball joint that is held tight by the screw handle. Even when I have the screw as tight as I possibly could without breaking it, the ball joint still moves with the enormous weight of the lens sitting on top of it.

When does it move you ask? This is the stunning part. The camera is completely still....until the shutter inside the camera flaps open. Once the shutter flaps up, that tiny movement internal to the camera is enough to rattle the entire camera body due to the offset of the weight of the lens sitting on a ball joint that cannot itself hold the weight.

When you have a distant object zoomed in, a slight shift in the camera body is enough to move what the lens sees by ten fold. I'm sure you all know (because we've all looked through telescopes before) it's the same effect as looking through a telescope. Lets say, you have the telescope focused on the moon but then you give it a nudge smaller than a centimeter. It may knock it completely out of your field of view.

In addition to the ball joint moving ever so slightly, the legs of the tripod was just about ready to collapse if I gently pushed down on the camera. This tripod is one of those where the leg is cut into three segments and each segment is held in place by a flap type rotating thingy.

I didn't realize it yesterday when I was shooting but I looked at the specs of the tripod this morning and it can support up to 13lbs. I must have been borderline otherwise, the thing would have collapsed on itself.

Food for thought. :D

Wacky Movie Ideas (Part II)

So Kirk provided the rest of the movie plot synopsis to "The Custodian". If you missed part 1, scroll down to the previous post below.

Title: The Custodian

Tagline: A custodian with a mysterious past goes above and beyond his job description....

Plot Synopsis: (Part 2)

It turns out that custodian Jack is really Jack Bauer. Jack has been recently unemployed and was looking to change things up a bit. He wanted a job with very little stress but good pay. He saw a job ad for a custodian and he thought he would be a good fit.

Needless to say, he took down all the bad guys and took home the world record for the highest body count in a period of five minutes.

-Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Wacky Movie Ideas

So if you can ever get a glimpse into my mind, there's always a bunch of crazy ideas brewing in there. It never suffers from inactivity which is sort of a bad thing because it's always thinking of multiple things at once. It's not very good if I'm driving because my mind can start processing on some crazy ideas and my focus will shift away from my driving and go towards fueling my imagination.

Anyways, I was eating breakfast in the hotel lobby today and thought of an interesting movie idea.

Title: The Custodian

Tagline: A custodian with a mysterious past goes above and beyond his job description....

Plot Synopsis: (Part 1)

Jack is just your average custodian. He has been working at the local town hospital for a few months now. The entire hospital staff loves this guy. He's friendly, personable, always mops the floors squeaky clean and does a fantastic job efficiently cleaning the rest of the facility. The hospital is about 8 stories tall and he manages to clean the entire facility by lunch time. He loves to start his duties in the early hours of the morning in order to allow time to take care of any surprises such as a sudden leaky faucet or a clogged cafeteria sink. In the afternoon when he is done with all of his primary duties, he chats with the nurses, secretaries, and doctors, building a good relationship with his co-workers. He is after all considered part of the hospital staff.

One day, a rather important person comes into the hospital ER. I don't really care why this person is important at this point. Anyways, this person was badly injured in a car accident and this was the closest hospital from the scene of the accident. The hospital staff proceeds to move this person up to the 8th floor after he/she is in a stable condition. This very important person's security detail decides to keep this person there since moving him/her could possibly make the medical condition worse. Also, no one knows this important person is at this hospital currently, let alone involved in an accident. If he/she gets moved, the person's enemies may see the massive caravan of vehicles moving from one hospital to another. The leader of the security detail decides to lay low for a few days.

Of course, with any standard Hollywood movie, there is a mole in the security detail. This mole notifies a terrorist organization that wants to take this person out since he/she knows something very secretive. I don't really care why the terrorists want to take this person out either, but they just do.

The terrorists end up being a team of mercenaries that consist of former special forces people from various countries like Mexico, Peru, and other sketchy exotic locations. They are all greedy people eager to make some money. The mole in the security detail paid these guys a ton of money to eliminate this person off the face of the planet.

The following morning, a pair of mercenaries begin their assault. They enter through the front entrance because they think they are awesome. They immediately take out two guys from the security detail, who were relaxing next to the water-cooler located near the entrance of the hospital on the first floor. *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* The two security guys drop to the floor.

Jack was mopping down the hall and when he heard the popping noise. He turned around and saw the mercenaries take aim at him. "Oh shh!@#$!", he says......

Look for Part 2 later. I'm tired of typing.

Would you like to contribute to what happens next? Write in what you would like to see happen next as Jack confronts these mercenaries. Remember, he can't die quiet yet so you can't have him get shot next....

Missouri River Flooding

The Missouri River is starting to swell from the excess rainfall. There has also been massive amounts of snowfall this past winter in the mountains of North Dakota and Montana which are all now just starting to melt. The excess water has exceeded the capacity of the river.....

The level of the river is expected to rise over the next few weeks...no one can know exactly how much it'll rise.

These are some baseline shots for comparison. I will try to take some shots in a few weeks and see how the water levels are....

Some areas like Haworth Park shown above, are already completely underwater. Evacuations are underway for some of the smaller towns near the river.

This is pretty crazy to say the least!

more post production

So after owning a DSLR for a little time now I've grown accustomed to how a picture should look; the sharpness, great low light, the bokeh, etc... This creates a problem when I go back and look at pictures I've taken with point and shoots or camera phones. They just don't pop the way DSLR pictures do. That's where our good friend Photoshop comes in. High pass addresses sharpness issues, a noise reduction plugin does just that, and gaussian blur delivers artificial bokeh. Color balance is also very important to create that faux pro look.

Here's an example of something I whipped up hastily. I'm sure it can look better with more patience and skill on my end.

*Original*


*Post*

Granted this transformation is a bit over the top with the color correction, aspect ration adjustment, and the vignetting, but you get the picture. ...

Composition

I'm excited about getting my DSLR finally after all these years. I spent the weekend practicing some composition on my old point and shoot. Remember, if your composition sucks, your photo will come out crappy no matter how fancy of a camera you have! haha ^_^

Maverick Radio

So I decided to make good use of my privileges at the local university radio station this week. I invited a local Omaha band to come into the studio to jam some acoustic music.

EVO4G Internet Radio Box

With my ongoing adventures trying to discover what this EVO 4G can do for me, my next endeavor involves beefing up my car stereo. You see, my car is rather outdated so it lacks an auxiliary port where you can hook up your mp3 player to. I recently got tired of listening to the radio stations around town while in the car, so I had to come up with something else. The stereo deck is so old that it can't even play mp3 CDs. Audio CDs can only hold up to 80 minutes of music while mp3 CDs can hold up to many hours of music. Mp3 players with internal memory can hold up to months of music. However, there's no way I could hook up my mp3 player to the car stereo without an auxiliary connection. Fortunately, that's really not the case!


Enter the Griffin iTrip. It allows you to hook up any device with a headphone jack into its FM transmitter. You set the frequency that you want it transmitting on and then set the same frequency on your car stereo and BAM, your stereo is now playing whatever your mp3 player is playing. It's pretty easy. The FM transmitter is powered by your car's cigarette lighter so you have a source of power there. So what about the power for your mp3 player, you ask (for those long road trips)?



Enter the Griffin iTrip's built in USB charger. All of a sudden, you have power for everything! hahaha



This is where the creativity comes in. Not only can you use your EVO for an mp3 player, but you have the power of the internet in your hands as well. One of the greatest inventions spawing out of the internet era is internet radio. I can listen to radio stations like KROQ (106.7) in Los Angeles or The End (107.7) in Seattle from my car in Omaha though my EVO 4G. You have just transformed your average car stereo into an internet radio box. For those of you who listen to Pandora, now you can listen to it while driving in the car.


I listen to BBC Radio 1 in the UK.


The only drawback is that in more populated cities, it may be hard to find a free FM frequency for you to transmit on. However, for long road trips where you are driving out in the middle of nowhere, it is perfect!