May 26, 2007

It's Also Here!

Lightning struck twice for me this week.

I walked into Cooter's Village Camera in Highland Park, TX and inquired about Nikon's legendary 18-200mm VR zoom lens. I added my name to their "six months or more" waiting list quite a while ago, and I wanted to see where things stood. I was hoping that I could actually buy the lens in the fall, just as band marching season picked up.

That's when they "made my day". They had the lens in stock. I blurted, "Sold!" before the attendant could finish the sentence. After spending months (and not a few mornings waiting outside stores) to buy a Wii, I wasn't going to let this one get past me. The even more amazing thing was that they were charging less than MSRP for this lens: $709 instead of $749.


Nikon's legendary 18-200 AF-S IF ED DX f/3.5-4.5 VR zoom lens

For the camera nerds:This lens is one of Nikon's secret weapons against Canon in the DSLR market. Canon doesn't have a lens with the range and vibration resistance that this one does. It fills a range that for most amateur photographers is the complete span of focal lengths and f/stops, plus the VR mode means you don't have to drag a tripod around in many environs where it's impractical (e.g. museums). The lens is slightly bigger than the 18-55mm DX that Nikon bundles with their better DSLR kits, opening the possibility of not needing a camera bag to bring extra gear and lenses. Read Ken Rockwell's review (link above) to find out more.

Posted by Steven at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

It's Here!


Canon XH-A1 1080i HD Digital Camcorder

After over a year of planning, fundraising and nerve-wracking waiting, I took delivery of a Canon XH-A1 1080i HD camcorder yesterday. It's going to be the work horse of the Boyd Band A/V Team (myself, Cliff Caldwell, Laurie Blackmon, et. al.). I took some quick footage of our cat Forte, which is here (warning: this is a 100+ Mb file and it plays at 1680 x 1050).

Posted by Steven at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2007

Excellent Minolta Manual Focus Camera website

Check out this Minolta manual focus camera website. It covers all the cameras in my collection:

I didn't realize that Minolta changed the SR-T the year after I got mine (in Dec. 1976) to have a lesser light meter (they dropped the CLC metering system). I also didn't realize that Minolta considered the XD series superior to the X-700 (I have three XD bodies versus my original 1984 X-700). These websites are really handy for finding out these details long after the camera is discontinued.

Posted by Steven at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2006

Critters


Critters at Barbara's house.

Posted by Steven at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)

Barbara's Garden

Interesting stuff around Barbara's house ...



Posted by Steven at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2006

Aaaarrg!

My photo archive hard disc went all plinky-zingy on me yesterday. I'm going to have to pay a small fortune to (hopefully) get the disc rebuilt and recover the images. This means that almost all the photos I've taken on the Nikon D70s are currently in limbo (I'm asking anyone I gave a DVD containing images to lend it back to me so I can at least recover those images).

To stem this problem from taking down my website, I added redundant hard disc to my Mac server and setup Backup to fully image the web site and other stuff. I sleep the backup discs so they are not running around the clock like the others, but I still don't trust big discs. There's just no other media to backup to that's as fast (its a circular argument).

Wish me luck recovering the year's photos; going with a cheaper disc recovery place is a risk (I've received quotes from $500+ to over $2400).

Posted by Steven at 04:03 PM | Comments (2)

October 18, 2005

We Should All Have This Problem

Sleep sex attacks? That's the name of the article on the BBC News website.

Imagine awaking in the middle of the night to find your partner trying to make love to you - while they are sound asleep.

"Sleep sex" is a term coined by US scientists to describe the phenomenon, which can cause people to commit sexual acts on themselves or their partners - while asleep.

The condition can range in severity from disruptive moaning to unwanted, and sometimes violent, sexual advances to their partner.

But no matter how serious their night-time behaviour, patients did not remember what they had done the next morning.

The Stanford scientists, whose research is published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, believe the condition is caused by a sleep disorder combined with emotional problems.

This just sounds like post-marriage "nocturnal" behavior. Besides, isn't the wife supposed to sleep through sex?

(I can just hear the roar from Anne and Melanie on this comment.)

"I'm just kidding!" -- Fericito.

Posted by Steven at 06:28 PM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2005

Nikon D70s dSLR

Yesterday I purchased my first digital SLR camera, a Nikon D70s w/18-70mm DX lens. I've already shot over three hundred frames; of Anne and Alanna at Tae Kwon Do, around the neighborhood, the house, of Ruby, and I am looking forward to the first marching band football game this Friday and AnimeFest in two weeks.

Posted by Steven at 12:53 PM | Comments (1)