A while ago I cataloged my photo's in
iView Media Pro (now property of
Microsoft). It took me hours to do this, and it still needed some finetuning.
Somewhere along the line, I decided to switch to
Adobe Lightroom for some weird reason. The actual importing of the photo's was quite easy, but somehow I wasn't able to import the metadata I had attached to the photo's. So this meant that I had to do this all over again. This time it took me hours without a couple of minutes. I did it a bit faster because of the more intuitive interface. Man, tagging sucks. I must remind myself to do this everytime I add new images.
Next time when I have an epiphany about changing image catalog/management tools I might want to read this as a discouragement.
B.t.w. the reason for changing from iView to Adobe was the better collaboration between the OSX and Windows versions. Somehow iView lacked this, even though it was available on both platforms. iView used absolute path to the images in the catalogs. As far as I can see, Adobe uses relative paths if you exchange catalogs. Anyway I exported, and imported several catalogs between the platforms and so far everything worked.
Yesterday, I bought a new piece of glass for my camera. I had two on my radar, but only enough money to get one. The contestants were:
And the winner is: the Sigma 10-20mm. A very nice ultra wide-angle lens. I guess that the Nikkor has to wait a couple of weeks.
You can see some other images I shot today on my
Flickr page.
Back in the old days, when I was struggling on the Windows platform, I used Nikon Camera Control with my nikon D100. Great tool for experimenting. Downside was that the D100 had a USB 1.0 interface, so it took forever to download the images.
During the transition to the Mac I found the OSX version, but it was only available for the PowerPC platform.... until recently. Version 1.3.x is Intel compatible, so now I can unleash the tool on my MacBook Pro.
Note: v1.0 installs on an Intel Mac, but it DOESN'T run. You need to upgrade it before you run it.
Too bad though that the D200 doesn't have a
LiveView kinda feature.
My old tripod were a pain in the @ss. The slightest wind made the camera rock like it was on a boat in heavy weather. The need for something a little more stable was there.
The original idea was to get a tripod which weighed about half a kilo. Could hold a weight of 10 kilos, and had the most comfortable ball bearing head available. And (not to forget) wouldn't cost more than 100 euros..... Well, that wasn't about to happen :-( .
So I bought a
Manfrotto 718B tripod (99 euros). It's small, weighs about 1.5 kilos and can hold about 2.5 kilos of gear (which is about the combined weight of my Nikon D200 and Sigma 80-400 OS lens).
So my old tripods [
1,
2] are for sale as of this moment. You may start your bidding. If you're interested, you should ignore the first paragraph ;-) . There's absolutely nothing wrong with the tripods.....
UPDATE: The tripods have been sold (sort of), so please stop bothering me :-)
And again
a ridiculous law in the United States. The land of opportunities, and lame laws.
Starting in August 2007, you can't be in one place for more than a half hour to make (scenic) photographs or shoot some video. This includes the setting up of your tripod etc.
So no more waiting for that special sunset, or waiting for the sky to clear for that one special shot of/for your sweetheart. To make it even more ridiculous, you also need an insurance of 1 million USD if you need more time (which means you need a special permit).
No doubt that this is initially intended for the professional movie makers or photographers, but there's the fear that this will be abused to harass the common man/woman/tourist.
It must be very handy to have very general laws/rules, which the government can interpret as they see fit. Why don't they just pass a law which is states "It's illegal to....". In this case they can fill in the blanks whenever they want... Oh wait, they already did... The Patriot Act.
A couple of days ago I picked up my new
Sigma 80-400 Telezoom lens with Optical Stabilizer. The lens costs a few dinero's, but you get one hell of a good lens for it. I'll try to post some photos demonstrating the Optical Stabilizer in the next couple days.
We're going (back) to Africa in a couple of weeks. So for that occasion I would like to get a new Telezoom Lens to go with my Nikon D100. Some researching on the Internet left me with the "
Sigma 80-400 F4.5-5.6 EX DG OS".
Today was the to be the day to order it (got approval from the CFO :) ), but the Nikon mount has some stock issues. The lens is NOWHERE to be found in the Netherlands :x. This leaves me with two options:
- hope that it's available BEFORE we fly to Africa or,
- get another lens (e.g. the Nikon version of the 80-400). Which costs "a bit" more.
Damn those manufacturers!
UPDATE: through some fellow "phototweaker" I got an address in Hilversum who might have them in stock. One phone call later I had it reserved. So the new lens will be here before the weekend.
