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The Canon 300D was announced this sometime last night. It's an entry level digital SLR aimed at the consumer market. Canon developed a special EF-S 18-55 lens for the camera to try to hit most point and shoot users needs. It offers the ability to upgrade to the standard EF line at any time. Pretty cool. I think you all should go buy one so Canon can lower the price of the 1Ds to within my reach. I love that camera.

update: Canon USA is marketing the 300D as the Digital Rebel.
update2: The official press release.

I have the hiccups. Ugh! I *hate* the hiccups.

I forgot to post these yesterday. Here are three midtone sharpening actions for Photoshop. This one was originally created for the Nikon D100 by Roberto Casavecchia, but will work well for others. Here is v1 and v2 of Christoph's attempt at bettering Roberto. I don't know either one of these dudes, so don't sweat it. Just download these and try 'em for yourself. I'd like to hear feedback as to how they worked for you. I've been too busy to experiment.

Cheers!

pee ess... You can still get DigitalVelvia if you missed it in the earlier post.

This morning I got on the commuter bus just behind one of the VP's from my company. He has historically been the typical executive and you corporate IT slave types understand exactly what I mean. I didn't think much of it other than I was running about 30 minutes later than usual because of my back... that is, until he gave me the stinkeye of recognition. How dare an underling come to work on exec hours?! I wonder if that punk ass would be stinkeye'n me if he knew the amount of overtime I put in. So yeah, the back thing has gotten worse. EL is all doped up on some codeine cocktail the dentist gave her and I've elected not to turn those into Flintstone chewable with hopes that the pain will subside as it works itself out. I believe it to be a pinched nerve because it is aggravated by certain precise position changes and movements of my spine, but what the fuck do I know. It may be a muscle or a baby alien growing inside me waiting to pop out at lunch. Riding the bumpy ass METRO to work didn't help my back at all. Riding the bumpy ass METRO to work probably didn't help my corpo-slave image either since I know without a doubt that the stinkeye exec will call my VP as soon as he gets settled into his oversized office and has ordered his underpaid assistant to fetch him coffee. Perception may not always be reality, but perception is always the truth. One cool thing about riding the bumpy ass METRO to work is it's entertainment value. It's always fun to watch people. A lot of people sleep and make weird sounds or drool. Some folks dress like rodeo clowns and talk to themselves... although you don't get much of that on the commuter routes. Today there was a business woman sitting across from me that was probably in her mid to late twenties dressed like a hooker. I wonder if I dressed like a hooker at work if I would get preferential treatment. EL packed my lunch today. I love it when she does that... I should go get one of those metal lunch pails with comic book heroes on it. Ha! Better yet, to work up some office controversy, I should get a Hello Kitty or Strawberry Shortcake lunch box. That's the ticket. This time next week peops will be flying into Houston for the wedding. So much to do and so little time to do it. I have to find a place in Austin that can do sushi for a Saturday morning pickup or delivery. I have to get the music in order... which should be easier than the sushi thing, but time consuming. Time is something I have little of these days. Oye! I think I'll start my caffeine binge off on the right foot this morning. I need an espresso machine at my desk... maybe one with an inline cooling mechanism so I can steam the shots into a tube that leads to my mouth after passing through this engineering marvel. It would be like an IV drip in the hospital... except we'll call this one the IT drip. Fitting, I think.

"The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts."

Pain. I am in serious pain.

New ones.

1/60 f/5.0 ISO100 "Taken for Granted"

The problem with the peanut gallery can be summed up in one short quote:

"If you buy a camera, you are a photographer. If you buy a flute, then you own a flute."

Ansel Adams was a genius and I bet the majority of peops out there look at his photos and think they can come close with that $6.99 disposable and a half-off hour processing coupon from Eckerds.

I never claimed to be good, but I see some absolutely fabulous photography over at Photo.net followed by the most ignorant fucking comments imaginable. Where do these people come from? I understand that unless you try to take those types of photographs, you have little understanding of what goes into creating them, but the fact that most consider paint on a canvas art in some way, shape, or form, yet believe that same talent, skill, and focus can't go into a photograph is disturbing.

Have some art for lunch... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40

Lunch.

Monday has snucketh upon me yet again. One of my colleagues began his two week vacation in the British Virgin Islands this weekend. This should be interesting. I pissed my boss off on Friday by making some snide remarks about the ridiculous hoops we are jumping through for The Bob's. My tongue is sore from chewing on it in the office. My sister comes back from Virginia today. Note to self: don't forget to pick her up at the airport. I went through this weekend and added some older photos to the 13th Stone site, sending what was the beginning of a well balanced gallery into bug skewed misery. Heh. The truth of the matter is, I don't care right now. Get some bugs. I'm so tired these days. Tired all the time. It's lack of exercise and working in a fluorescent cell... I'm sure of it. Lisa's advice about ditching the laptop is good stuff, but unfortunately I can't get rid of it due to the nature of my work. I may be able to use a docking station again when sitting at my desk. I got rid of my docking station because of Linux incompatibility, but recently I've been running the corporate standard MS load because our internal developers write shit that makes proprietary calls to MS "features" (transparent authentication based on domain membership, etc.), so I must comply to access certain resources vital to my job function. I call them on it and ask for a workaround (like a cookie based authentication requestor that will allow cross platform specificity) and the reply with ridiculous bunk. Laziness. Basically, I can't fault them. They are swallowing some passed-down-from-the-mountain order like the rest. It happens. My commuter bus this morning had seats with a bright, multicolored tropical pattern on them. It was as if the METRO wanted to remind people of a lighthearted, pleasant atmosphere and how most of them were not being carried to it. Wheeee! Happy Monday beeyotches.

I'm not sure if a weekend can go by without work calling and fucking it up. I woke up in an unusually good mood this morning. EL and I went for a walk today near the creek and ran across a effin huge spider...





I wasn't really in the photo taking mindset, but I almost always bring a camera with me now days, so I snapped a few shots. One turned out, but the rest were crap without a tripod. We were in a very shaded area of the woods. Anyhoo, the cool thing about this spider was the web. It was so complex and very strong... like fishing line. It was filled with tens (maybe hundreds?) of baby spiders of varied size and color. Apparently, this was the momma. Anyhoo, the lens cap is off the 28-135IS which has a 72mm filter size. That's one big-ass spider! (sorry Sam and Sean)

EL saw a stick bug of some type that had the coolest mantis style head on a swivel. Very interesting.






We saw a couple of deer... one doe and one fawn... spots and all. I even got a couple of robber fly shots. I find that I get really frustrated and hurry my shots when I'm all hot and sweaty. A heat index resting around 120 degrees Fahrenheit will tend to do that to you. I'm not trying to make excuses, but I see a trend in the quality of my photography when I'm uncomfortable.






Did you hear about the elevator guy? Some doctor was walking into an elevator after this lady walked in and the door shut and pinned his shoulders. The elevator went up and decapitated the guy, trapping the lady in the elevator with his head for a while. Freaky shit. Anyhoo, gotta run.

Today was filled with the shots that got away. A robber fly that murdered a bee... one quick blurred shot before he flew away... a deer in the woods during a nature hike at Jones... never close enough for a clear shot... it goes on. I love the new lens. I added a few shots over at 13th Stone, but nothing that really stands out. Maybe I can get some tomorrow... hope everyone is enjoying the weekend.

I think I pinched a nerve between my left shoulder blade and spine. I started having periodic sharp pain in that location months ago and always attributed it to lugging a heavy laptop bag around. I even took all the extra goodies out of my bag that you would expect to find there (extra patch cords, spare lithium ion batteries, etc.) in an attempt to lighten the load even just a bit. It will go away for a few weeks and return, but recently it's lingered. I am not keen on seeing a chiropractor because I had a good friend from high school that went for an adjustment in the late 90's and had a lobe of his vertebrae snapped off... permanent damage. I'm not sure where I was going with that... I probably just mentioned it because I'm in pain. I am so glad it's Friday. It's not that it has been a extraordinarily long week... I mean, I took Wednesday off... it's just that work is so unbearable. I saw paperwork yesterday where my boss has listed Joe and I as fractional full time employees on the paperwork being developed for the outsourcing evaluators. I have not worked a 40 hour work week since I started with the company. Joe and I do not only our jobs, but the jobs of others. We pick up other peoples slack all over the company. We take calls on nights and weekends... holidays... no matter. It is becoming readily apparent that the books are intended to be cooked to make outsourcing look like the better option. I feel the at some senior executive level, the decision has been made and all this time tracking and job justification with "The Bobs" is only a paper trail to show due process... much like documentation of council and progressive reprimand before termination. It's chickenshit if you ask me. I'm going to ask my boss how he calculated his percent FTE on the document today, but I doubt I'll get better than a politician's answer. The sky looks hazy today. Yay! An ozone warning day. Fucking smog.

Newly added. What do ya think?

Did some test shots with the 28-135IS to see if IS is really what it's supposed to be...









both shots out of camera... no sharpening... taken handheld at 1/10th sec.

yep. it works.

For all you Canonites interested in infrared photography... Here is a breakdown of lenses that are good and bad (via user testing) for the purpose. Some lenses have optics coating and or construction that produces undesirable artifacts in IR exposures. Just some FYI...

Good
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L
Canon EF 28-135mm/3.5-5.6 IS
Canon EF 28mm f/2.8
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 MKI
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 MKII
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L
Canon EF 75-300mm/4.0-5.6 IS
Canon EF 135mm f/2L
Canon EF 100-400mm4.0-5.6 IS L
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro

Bad
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8 L
Canon EF 20mm f/2.8
Canon EF 35mm f/2
Canon EF 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5
Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8L
Canon EF 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5
Canon EF 35-80/4.0-5.6
Canon EF 50mm/f1.4
Canon EF 50mm/f2.5 Macro
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS
Canon EF 85mm f/1.8

The un-Honda ad.

No post yesterday. I took the day off. I took the day off from work and from most everything else. I want to say thanks to all the friends that called to wish me a happy birthday. I appreciate it. Birthdays are not that big a deal these days and seemingly lose meaning with each passing year, but it still feel good when someone remembers. I spent the entire day with EL. We had lunch with Sam at Tamale Imperial... excellent banana leaf wrapped tamales to die for... then stopped downtown and got our marriage license. We had to chuckle when they made us raise our right hands and swear we weren't married to someone else. I stopped and took some infrared shots of the giant topiaries at the River Oaks Plant House, but they were all out of focus due to insufficient compensation for IR shift. My 100mm has not comp markings, so I was ballparking. I'll take more time to do some focus bracketing next time I go alone when EL isn't waiting on me. We went to Moody Gardens because I wanted to see the Bugs! IMAX presentation. It was an entomologist's porno... oh so yummy. The cinematography was fucking amazing. We had day passes, so we went to all the pyramids too. I dig that rainforest. We stopped for one of Harry's sets on the way home and arrived sleepy just before midnight at our humble abode. Sam (the spider lover) and Marianne had stuffed a 6" rubber spider in the mailbox with a birthday card. That was cool. The drive to work was hard to take after a day of relaxation with the wife-to-be. It took forever to get in because the roads were wet. Houstonians leave all common sense and reason at home when it rains. It's an unpleasant and constant artifact of life in Houston. You just deal with it. My decision to drive in was precipitated by the KUHF dude saying there was a huge HOV block just as I was arriving at the commuter lot. I'm glad I drove. It gave me time to prepare for the day and listen to some news. I'm not in agreement with our sending troops to Liberia... but then again, I don't think we should still be in Iraq either, so I guess it makes little difference. The fluorescent lights are humming with that familiar 60Hz melody and the office air is thick with hate and discontent. The coffee taste as I image licking the rectum sweat from a diarrheal rhinoceros would and my boss has already harassed me for useless statistics and paperwork to justify my outsourcement. Yep. The only good thing about today is it's not Monday.

On a lighter note, nine new additions at the 13th Stone gallery... no bugs.