being bored in the traffic jam.

today I had the exciting task to drive down to Temecula. A relaxing 500 mile ride...

So I left davis at 7.30 in the morning to be at the starbucks at 6.45 and on the highway at 7.00

A couple of hundred miles later (420 to be exact) I passed Los Angeles and got stuck on the 91 east. 2 Hours later I finally arrived at the 15. From here it's just 35 miles (or 40 minutes) to Temecula....

if the egoistic bank robber would have decided to not rob the bank this day and getting shot another day. It turned out that the cops shot him on the Higway 15 South and closed the only connection to Temecula for me. So I was sitting here and moving at incredible 1 mph, till I got to the section and they (The cops) winked all cars from the highway. As I learned in the DDR, if there is a line, go at the end and wait, you will get something. In this case a police officer led us around the closed part of the highway to a section which was open and I finally could continue my journey to Temecula.

1. left a 6.30
2. arrive in Los Angeles at 12
3. arrived in Temecula at 7.30
4. went shopping
5. lost my car and was searching it for an hour ---> its cold in a t-shirt
6. 10pm arrived at Lindsay's house

So during the time waiting I shot some pictures and the best you can see on top. The taillight of a 2000 Ford Thunderbird.

Christmas is coming soon so my parents though it would be nice to have some pictures from me and Lindsay. A professional photograph was a little bit expensive and hard to find in Davis so we decided to shoot them our self using a simple flash, a remote release and a lot of time. Once we had a handful pictures which where acceptable we optimized them in photoshop, cropped them, transformed them to black and white and done. The hole procedure took about 5 - 6 hours and the next time I need to make sure that the focus point is better and for portraits of more than on person, I should use an aperture of 8 - 11 instead of 5.6. But for the first try I'm quite satisfied.

Right now I'm spending my time in Davis waiting for packages, cause amazon was able to send them everywhere, except to our flat. Which also means that I had to delay my Christmas trip and Lindsay flew already to Temecula :(

fun on a Thursday

• Thai food - 8$
• one beer - 3$
• two slices of pizza - 5$
  
• stealing sushi from Lindsay - 0$

laying down with food poisoning - priceless

• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish
• human kind is not supposed to eat raw fish

it looks like I'm getting somewhere with my photo stuff. More and more people are telling me that I take wounder full pictures and I even sold pictures...

na I sold only 3 pictures so far, but its a start.

anyway time to take an old pictures which I took when I got my camera and analyze it.




Ok whats wrong with this picture?

• the white balance is off cause of the lamp in the background
• its very unsharp, problem is the cheap tripod which I had at this time and the long exposure
  
• there is no clear defined goal in this picture, where I'm looking at, what gives me this picture
• the crop is kinda bad, we could need more space on the right site and take off some of the top part

so what can we do in post processing to optimize it

• we can change the crop
• we can sharpen it a little
• we change the whitebalance
• we can convert it to blacl&white to give it a better mood and play with the contrast
  

today a friend offered me an incredible deal. A complete pc for 100$ So I asked him whats in the box?

A pentium IV 2.4 GHz
1 GB Ram
60 GB Harddisk
A shitty graphiccard
A wireless pci card

so short I bought this box, so that my girlfriend can play her sims game, we have a place to store movies and songs and I can play my stupid eve-online....

But when you buy a pc you also need a Monitor and a graphiccard. So I went to Frys and got a nice 20" Dspaly from samsung and a Geforce 6600 OC + some speakers.

complete price for the package was 500$, which is perfect.


...and tomorrow I go to the garage and get my car fixed.

why do I post a picture of a dinner,

the reason for this is quite simple. On thursday evening I got home and my lovely and now very proud girlfriend suprised me a dinner. It's basically tiny little chicken ( better known as very tasty snacks...) with zuchini and a good glass of wine.

The chicken's are called game hen and which is translates to "Rebhuehner".

mhm what can you do on a visit in temecula late in the night...

basically nothing except for keeping an eye on the shotguns, but thats another story. So I used the chance to hunt the antichrist of photographie....

called cinnamon the cat.

why is it the antichrist? Because it's fast, never stays for a second on one place and have so many different colors. The problem with the colors is if I expose for the white the pictures are under exposed, if I expose for the black, they are overexposed.

result of an exciting hunt at midnight....

mhm today my photo shop elements 5.0 license expired and I have to admit I really like this program. It provides the most of the stuff what I need right now. So what did I actually miss in photo shop elements? Actually only the curves from photo shop CS2 and the channel mixes. Which brings us to the gimp which is a nice program but lacks one important feature. It doesn't allows adjustment layers which are my favorite feature.

Time to download a photo shop CS2 trial to find out what else is use full.

Oh by the way as you can see in the picture, fall finally started here in California.

What is wrong with this pictures?

I really want to get rid of the shadows under the leaves and get some more details out. This can be done with a second flash on a very low angle.

today I received my big experiment, actually I did two experiments. The first was to order a user totally manual lens ( Nikon 200mm AIS F/4) for 89$ and a couple of years old.

The second experiment was that I ordered some high class steaks online from omahasteaks.com and I'm quite disappointed by the new york stripe steak. It was not tender at all. So I will send them an email in the morning to get my money back or at least a refund. At 90$ ( I got 50% off, normally is 180$)for 4 pounds of meat I expected a better quality.
The second experiment on the other hand surprised me. The lens looks brand new, has no dents, no scratches and an outstanding quality. And the manual focus works very well, I just wish I had better eyes or a Nikon DR6 which magnify the viewfinder and makes it easier to focus for me.
So tomorrow I will try to catch some birds with the 200mm lens to see how well I can focus under pressure. Sadly it won't work to use this lens with a 50mm reversed lens as macro for 4:1 magnifications. The pictures I got are more or less hit and miss pictures.

Which finally brings me to the conclusion that I will get over short or long a real macro lens in the range of 90 - 105 mm. So I can hunt bugs and have a working distance of over 2 cm from the front element.

As we can see in the first picture the reversed 50mm f/1.8 works very well for 1:1 magnification of still objects. But show me one bug which won't run away when you are 2 cm away from him with this combination and your hand is is 2.5 cm away turning on the aperture ring to set the depth of field.

Ok you always can freeze the bug before hand...

The pictures are taken at

1. 50mm f/18 reversed on D50 with SB600
   
2. 50mm f/5.6 lens on D50 with SB600
3. 200mm f/5.6 on D50 with SB600
   

today I finally received my reversing adapter and it's quite stunning. My little 50mm f/1.8 is now a macro lens with a magnification ration of 1:1. So I think I don't need a real macro lens anymore, which just saved me 400$ and I am very satisfied with the sharpness of the little lens.

Another ridiculous thing from Nikon is that they charge you 80$ for a wire to disconnect your camera and flash. Lets look in the future if I would get such a wire and later maybe another flash I would also need another wire. And I can't see me spending 160$ for 2 stupid wires if a wireless controller is around 250$ which can connect and remote control as many flashes as I want.

But why do I want to get the flash of the camera in the first case? Basically the idea is to define where the flash highlights are and on another angle you can increase the details in an object, like a sheet of paper.


i'm also very proud of me that I resisted to buy a used 300mm f/4 AFS today for 400$ (normal price is arround 950$... There had to be something wrong) And I have enough lenses right now to play with anyway. Lets wait till march.


...this post will be updated with a picture later...

it finally happend, I sold my first picture. Sadly it was the picture from the SR-71 blackbird which was supposed to be deleted a while ago and is now finally deleted from my website. Shit happens.

So lets see how much pictures we need to sell so I get my money back for what I spend sofar.

Nikon 28-80 mm F3.5-5.6 50$
Nikon 50mm F1.8 100$
Tokina 19-35mm 150$
Nikon 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 G 150$
Nikon 200mm F4 AI 100$
Nikon SB-600 Flash 180$
Bogen Tripod + Midi head 260$
B&W circular Polarizer 100$
Nikon D50 699$

It sound that I have to sell 200 - 400 pictures minimum to get some money back and its amazing how much money you can spend if you buy something here and something there. I just wished I had bought good glas in the beginning instead of getting the cheapest lenses available. 

progress with macros.

I'm finally getting a little bit better with my macro pictures. The pictures on the left are both taken with a combination of a 50mm and 70-300mm lens.

What acutally reallu surprises me is the quality of my camera with this combination at ISO 1600. I did'nt need todo any noise reduction afterwards and only incresed the sharpening and saturation a little bit to reduce the extreme CA.

Now why would I ever want to have a macro lens?

Maybe because you can focus from infinity to 1:1. In the case with the reversed lens you barley have any working distance and you cant say lets go farther awy to reduce the magnification, because of focus issues. So you need to stick with a magnification 1:x at distance y. Which leads to very limited framing.

so yes I can't wait until I got enogh money to actually buy my 3 dream lenses.

landscape: sigma 10-20 or tokina 12-24 (both arround 500$ new)
macro: tamrom 90mm or sigma 105EX (both arround 400$ new)
wildlive: nikon 80-200mm F/2.8 or nikon 300mm F/4 (both arround 900$ new or 500$ used)

At last but not least the wounder full R1C1 Flashkit from Nikon, which is ridiculous expensive at 600$ for 2 Flash's and a Commander.

I will consider the lenses for wildlive when I'm not able to use the 200mm F/4 prime I orderd last week for wildlive, because of missing metering and autofocus.


I also found a really nice website today which explains how you spend your hard earned money...

a little bit better crop of my work of the evening. And I really need to get the flash of the camera to define the highlight better on the class. I tried to bounce and diffuse it over the ceiling, but it just wont work as I want it.

Today I also received a nice email from adorama that they are very sorry about all the trouble I had with the 200-400mm Tamrom and transfered 280$ into my checking account. Nice ( and this lens is awefull, never again...)

I also looking right now for a buyer for my 28-80mm Nikon, cause I never use it anymore, because of the bad picture quality.


I also was wrong a couple of days ago when I said a 50mm F.18 can be reversed on the 300F/4 as a matter of fact it should be possible, but only with major vignetting. The 300 F/4 has a 82mm thread ( The new model 77mm which would be better cause 77mm filter are somehow standardized) and the 50mm F.18 has a 52mm thread.

Still the 300mm F/4 or 80-200mm F/2.8 lenses are a dream and have awesome reviews.

this day I noticed that my car has a small problem. I was not able to move the steering wheel. 40 minutes later I got towed to the next garage and they told me that I need a couple of things.

an oil change
an new differenctial
a new servo pump
a servo power hose

So I got the oil change for the start and a new differential. Which set me back close to 500$. The servo and power hose will be another 150$ in parts and 300$ in labor. I gonna fix this next month. 

this morning I got a call from adorama, because of my purchase from the day before. So after I talked with this guy for a while...

...it was a long talk...

....which ended in me cancelling my order. Because the lens which I wanted to buy needed a special adapter to work on my camera. I highly appreciate the call and will get the correct lens maybe later in time.

But I'm always get frustraded when I want to buy something and cant get it. So I ended up with buying a used manual lens and a reversing ring for 100$. The lens is a Nikkor 200m F/4 AI.
Means I need to focus/meter manual, which makes it perfect for my purpose, cause I can't use these features anyway on my camera with a reversed lens.

I also can use this lens as a normal lens, but not for snapshots, cause I need todo all the metering manual. So I spend more time with a picture which should result in better pictures.

Complete Macro Stuff I own so far:

• BR-2A to mount a lens reversed to the camera
• BR-3 to mount a filter on the reserved lens and mainly for protection of the rear element
• Reversing 52mm adapter to mount 2 lenses together. You can use tape, but I'm afraid my lens falls of and for 9$ it should be ok.
  
• 50mm F1.8 lens basically a portrait lens and reversed a nice macro with a very short working distance
  
• 200mm F4 lens to play with and used for magnifications of 4:1

Stuff to buy in the future:

• nikon DR-6 viewfinder
  for more comfortable work and has a build in 2x magnification, so I can see better what I'm doing
• Bogen - Manfrotto 454 Micro Positioning Plate for focusing, my current technique with the tripod and a lens as table is very inaccurate and results in unsharp pictures
  
• nikon SC-29 to get my flash of the camera and to the actual subject
• books to improve my technique first
  

Now I just need to find some bugs to see if I can take pictures of them with this combination too see how it works.

what do you get with this combination

• reversed 50mm gives you roughly 1x life size at F1.8 max
  
• reversed 50mm on 200mm gives you 4x life size at F5.8 max ( F1.8 + F4 = F5.8)
• reversed 50mm on 300mm gives you 6x life size at F7.2 max
  

the formula for reversed lenses is

magnification = main lens/reveresed lens

Another common problem is the more you read about the topic, the more you get frustrated. An example is this page which basically comes to the point:

A macro is a nice toy but each animal runs away or attacks if you get to close. So maybe skip the macro, get some extension tubes and a long prime lens 200mm+

Which results into

A standard set of extension tubes consists of

• 12 mm
• 20 mm
• 36 mm

which can be combined. The formula is in this case

magnification = extension / focal length

This can now be combine with a reversed lens to get an even higher magnification, if your working distance is long enough. To get a longer working distance you can use

• longer lens ( example 68mm extension/200mm = 0.34 (1/3 life size)
• teleconverter
  
• diopters

so basically extension tubes allow you to focus much closer with a long lens like 300mm, but you loose some light and the possibility to focus at infinity. It's also a hassle to work with them. On the other hand a new macro cost 500$ or a used Nikon 300m F/4 cost 500$ in good to excellent condition.
Which gives you way more possibilities. Not only macro (with extension tubes/reversed lens), but also wildlife and birds with a very good quality.

the disadvantages

• macro lens
• expensive
• very special
• very slow focus
  
• reversed lens
• very short working distance
• no metering
• no autofocus
  
• teleconverter
• loss in sharpness
• maybe no metering
• maybe no autofocus
  
• diopters
• loss in sharpness
  
• extension tubes
• light falloff
• maybe no metering
• maybe no autofocus
  

At least I have now enough toys and to learn for the next couple of month. A very nice article about what is possible can be found here

...life is a compromise...
...so take what you have and do this best with it...

this day I got the 70-300 mm lens hooked up to my camera with the D50 reversed.
And the results are very nice, but with the lens reversed the DOF is just to small. Even the sligthest movement in the flat occured that the pictures turned unsharp, so basically thats not how it works. It even got worse when somebody run up the stairs with a big box full of towels and a second box with proseco vinegar.

thank you so much mum + dad!

after I looked for macro lenses today I saw that there was a demo unit sale of tamrom 90mm F2.8 for 299$ instead of 489$ at adorama.

So I just ordered one full warrantied and If I don't like it I can return it or sell it on eBay.

The combination of the 90 mm and the 50 mm gives me a total magnification of 90/50*1.5 = 2.7

which will be way sharper and more comfortable too use then the current combi.

But now we finally start saving money for a couple month for trips too:

• Germany
  
• Hawaii
  
• Oregon
  
• Yosemete
• Yellowstone
  

macros,
ok I don't own a macro lens, but I read something about reversing a lens. The basic idea is to magnify an object so its 1:1 or bigger with your frame.

Lets look what are the requirements to reverse a lens:

- tape to connect lenses -> have some
- a prime -> have a 50mm prime
- a second prime or a zoom -> have a couple of zooms

the zoom I used is my "el cheap o" 50$ zoom, cause it was the only one which diameter somehow fits the diameter of the 50mm. I put a cheap UV Filter in front. to avoid scratching it. I tried my 300mm zoom which would give me a magnification of 6x, but could'nt get anything in focus.

So I had a mini macro with a magnification of: 1.6 (80mm/50mm = 1.6) Which should be a start. For the lighting is used one SB-600 which was not much help, cause m working distance was arround an inch. As macro table I used the 70-300mm lens, cause I could raise and lower it using the zoom/focus ring.
All pictures are right out of the camera with no adjustements.

conclusion
as we can see none of the pictures are per

this evening lindsay got all exited, cause she found a book, which includes an article olfiver,martin and I wrote a while ago.

You can find the book here. If you want to read the article, you can download it here for free.

The picture is lindsay looking at me annoyd and telling me enough pictures for today...

I really like the performance of this lens at 1.8 its so sharp, I always need to unsharpen and optimize the picture in post processing.

I also think I'm addicted to fast glass now and looked already for prices of used lenses like,

80-200mm F2.8 nikon
300m F4 nikon
90m F2.8 Tamerom Macro

And prob. will buy the macro soon, cause I have 280$ credit at adorama. Reason is that I returned a lens, which I did'nt like. ( 200-400mm Tamerom, very bad CA over the hole range, but quite sharp. We could read the registration number of planes on the airport 2 miles away!)

after I played a little with the 50mm I finally got a shot which I somehow really like, except that the highlight from the flash is wrong. I will correct it tomorrow or just open another bottle of wine and do it again.

one SB-600 bounced against the ceilling, a black sheet as backdrop, minor postprocessing to remove shadows and enhance the reflections. 

after I went to nuggets today to get some cheese and crackers I decedid to give ritz camera another chance and make some prints. So I grabbed my trusty D50 and went to this store and during waiting, I played with some lenses.

At least I wanted too...

after I asked them a couple of questions like

do you have....

- Nikon 50mm F1.4 -> no
- Sigma 50mm F2.8 Macro -> no
-Tamerom 90mm F.28 Macro -> no
- Kenko Extension Tubes -> no
- Nikon DR-6 Viewfinder ->
- Nikon 50mm F1.8 -> yes

yes?
Wow this was a first. So I played with the tiny gem 5 minutes and bought it afterwards. Originally I wanted the 50mm F1.4 ( 350$) but the F1.8 (120$) seemed a way better deal for me and I read quiete good reviews about this particular lens. Except that the mount of the newer models is a plastic mount...

Needless to say I just got another lens and I'm totally impressed. Except that it's really hard to make pictures, cause the depth of field is so small. The picture above was taken with a SB-600, F1.8. And is quite nice. (Except that I focussed on the glasses and so many stuff is out of focus...) 

yeah after two years I was finally able to aply for a credit card in the us...

lets go shopping :) 

a review somebody gave me in a photographie forum....

Hey, I went to your link and your images all need work starting from the basic. Composition is off, lack of defined subject matter, exposure, etc… You are not using your photography skills to focus the viewer. I get lost in your images because; I am not sure what you want me to be looking at. Learn some rules like Rule of 3, Leading lines, Sunny 16 etc… Then expand your knowledge by more professional standards by reading, viewing other professional images, workshops, mentorship, etc… You seem to be just starting out and yes, you need better equipment but, what you have is great for learning where to go from here and how to view images in your viewfinder. I think your direction in the images was for an artistic approach so; I edited one of your images for you to see the difference in how to direct a viewer. I did this post process but, you need to learn how to do this in the capture phase of your photography. Your current images are snapshots in nature but, the potential for outstanding image is there.
Your image
My image corrected
My image is not the best for about 5 minutes of work but, I corrected towards what I believe your attention was...Artistic in nature.
Do not get me wrong you seem to be at the place where all great photographer start. They had just enough equipment and a whole lot of desire. Focus your skill to the style you wish and master that skill before moving on to a different skill. Network with other professional photographers you wish to be like.
Take care and be safe.
God be with you,
Tony

damn this is devastating... 

this weekend I wanted to shot some fall pictures. So I got out of the house and jumped into the truck. To make it even more exciting I only took one lens with me. A tokina 19 - 35 mm. To concentrate more on framing the pictures and working with an wide angle of view.

Soon I found the first target, a couple of innocent ducks sitting around and doing nothing...
...1 hour later I finally could close up to them with camera, flash, tripod and could start taking pictures. I was 3 feet ( 1m ) away from them.
I love the look of white angles, but my telephoto would save me lot of time and some cropping of the pictures.

After I finished the ducks I drove around Davis and found a nice tree, a classic tractor and some fields and haystacks.

Finally I kept 5 pictures out of 100. You can find them here or just click on the big picture

Used stuff:

• Nikon D50
• Tokina 19-35mm
• B&W Circular Polarizer
• Manfrotto 3021BP Tripod with Midi Ballhead
• SB-600 Flas h with diffuser
• postprocessing using a trial of photoshop elements 5
  

o oracle I hate you...

currently I'm working on two major things in my favorite monster, called oracle.

1. create a script which automatical duplicates a given database each night on another server.

2. optimize the concurrency of the cluster to avoid row locks and table locks.


Problem number 1 took me only 8h of bash scripting and reading oracle books. I finally put it all together and tested it with a couple of backups.
You can find the result under: script

Basically it allows you to create a backup of your database using rman.

Problem number 2...

...working on it 

yeah I just found out how I can synchronize my blogspot account with my facebook account. Now I can annoy even more people with my stupid photo posts :)

picture on the left is a testshot from my flat too my neighbours (thanks kim for not cleaning you balcony) flat. To optimize my manual focus technique.
Only minor post processing involed to increase contrast and saturation.



me and natasha at her birthday party. Trying to look her in the eyes and serving her a cuba libre... The picture in the back is one of her awesome paintings!

today I discovered a website which finally explained a very nice feature in eclipse.

which saved me about 1 week to locate my current bug and to fix it. Ok I located it, to fix it is another question. At least I can do some math again and actually write some "smart" code instead of stupid gui programming or writing utilities.

i just wished I discovered this features years ago...
http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t19825.html

the picture is a red devil and my favorite target for flash fotographie right now. As we can see I have this ugly shadow behind the fish, so I need something to lighten it up. I can't bounce the flash and I cant use a diffuser, because of the glas.
But I discovered If I use my bike light and put it with a diffuser on top of the tank and a direct flash I get some decent results. Another flash or light on the right would be helpfull to remove or at least lighten the shadow. 

its amaizing how much space we have in our flat after I sold my 2 boards and sail and mast...

...and to actually get it out of our flat we had to move it over the balcony. So it was the right way todo.

anyway from a part of the money I just ordered a filter and a flash and from the other part I put away in savings for a vacation.

so what did I got,

77mm circular polarizer and SB-600 flash to learn the basics of using a flash and which can be later used as a slave flash If I ever think I need more than one.

I also made some nice 15 x 10 Inch prints from two pictures and autsch, you see the mistakes I do...

basically I sharpen my pictures to much.