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. 

it only took me 8 month to finally understand my camera. Today I discovered a new button ( you also could say I finally understand what todo with it ) The AE/AF lock button which basically does nothing than:

- lock the autofocus
- lock the autoexposure
- does one of both combined with the shutter









after playing with this for about 30 minutes I configured my cam so that:

AE/AF button - locks the focus
Shutter half pressed - locks the exposure in case you use P/A/S mode
Shutter pressed - takes the pictures

this allows me to move my focus point arround in a picture and to take n pictures with the same exposure and focus. Or if I don't press the AE/AF button the camera keeps focussing, but does not change the exposure. I never know why should I use this. But for action shots it's quite helpfull to always have the same exposure. Ok you can set this using the manual mode. But why should you make your live harder than it is anyway?

the nice thing about focus lock is that I don't need the one feature of the D80, the 11 Focus fields, you can simulate it/finetune it with the focus lock. It just won't refocus, which is a problem with moving objects. For example if you have 5 focus field (left,right,top,bottom,middle) and you want to have the object focussed in the top left corner. You can focuss it using the middle field, lock the focus and than move the camera so that your object of interesst is in focus at the part where you want to have it. Another way would to use manual focus in the first place, but I never can really see when the image is sharp and when it's not 100% sharp.

...the problems with glasses. I really should get some contacts, which reminds me to go to the eye doctor to test my health insurance...

the more I think about it the more I'm happy that I resisted and did not sold my D50 and upgraded to the D80. I also figured out how to simulate graduated neural density filters in gimp using several exposures of the same picture. Which saved me some more money. So I only will get a circular polarizer, once I can force me to pay 100$ for a stupid 77mm filter... 

good by surfstuff,

after I did'nt used it more than 4 times this year I finally bit the bullet and try to sell it for a good price. So it doesn't block the room anymore and stops collecting dust. It kinda hurts, cause it was a dream to have my own surfstuff, but it makes no sense to keep it and it looses from month to month more value...

so lets see what I can get for my rig and boards :(

after I used picassaweb for a couple of weeks now and I'm quite happy with them, they wanna start to charge me money, cause I have to many pictures on it. It is arround 25$ a year for 6 GB picture place and not that much. It's just for 25$ a year I also can get a pbase.com which is way nice and provides more features and a nice search function.

example I can search for pictures taken with a camera and a specific lens to compare my quality with the quality of other people. Means I can learn something how to improve my pictures and whats possible with my stuff. Which leads to not spending so much money on gear and improve my technique in the first place. ( it's amazing what kind of pictures some people shoot with stuff that has very bad rattings, like 2 of my lenses).


...i think I make the switch next month and get a trial account for testing... 

statistics, don't we love them all?

I finally decided to work a little bit with the statistic programm R again, and thought what could I analyse. So I decided to analyse which focal length I use the most with my D50 and was quite surprised by the result.

But first where to get the data from? In modern time like today your camera saves tons of informations in the jpeg files, so called EXIF informations.

what todo to get these data?

1. write a small script in python which reads the exif informations from all you files on the harddisk

2. stores this result in a txt file as matrix

3. start R import the data and do some statistics

After I saw this result it pointed me that my future plans to buy lenses are quite easy,

arround 300 mm prism lens -> not affordable
arround 100 mm prism lens for macro -> affordable from sigma with 2.8

and I'm still dreaming from a ultra wide angle for landscape fotographie, maybe in a year...

( proud of me that I refused the offer to sell my camera to a friend and get a D80! Just saved 500$...) 

after I did some more reading on several filtersystem I discovered that 2 out of 3 lenses have a great problem with filters. The lens barrel rotates and so the complete filter would rotate too and drop on the ground.
The second problem is that I need to use 4x4/4x6 filters instead of P size filter. I can mount the P size filter, but I can see the corner of the filters on the pictures.

This means, I tripple the money which I need to spend. At least I found out that a circular polarizer should be the highest priority and also the most expensive.

and later if money permits:

- graduated neural density 0.9 soft
- graduated neural density 0.9 hard
- graduated neural density 0.6 reverse
- neural density 4 stop
- graduated neural density 0.6 soft
- graduated neural density 0.6 hard

at least you can order sets of filter from adorama.com, which saves you some money and I don't need any warming/cooling filters. Cause I can do this in gimp.

also everybody recommends to stay away from cokin filter, cause they have a magenta color cast. So they recommend hitech, lee, singray.

further there is also the third possibility, you can simulate the effect in gimp and photoshop with multiple exposures. So I only need to buy a polarizer. I will try this for the beginning and save some money until I decide what todo with it.

what a nice saturday, after I got my car running in the morning ( prob. leak in the servo system, but after I fill it up its working quite well). I got an upgrade for my bbq, a 20 Gallon propan tank. Background for this is that I never can find the special cadrigdes need and after a year the bigger tank repays for it self. The initial cost was 75$ including needed connection hose and one filling is 10$. Compared to the small gas cadrigdes I used sofar, which contain one pound of gas and cost 4$ this is way cheaper.

Anyway later this day I fixed lindsay's bike and helped my new neighbour with her bike. The evening I finished with a mini bbq and reading some articles over filter systems.

Oh my new neighbours stopped by and provided me with some cake, because I borrowed them my plunger... 

after I payed last month 60$ for a Neural Density filter I figured out that this kind of filter system won't work for me. An example is in the left picture.
The picture itself is pretty nice, except for the shade arround the corners. This is due the screw one filter. The second problem is that the screw on filter are incredible expensive.
I want to have a couple of basic filters:

1. nd filters 4,6,8
2. graduated nd filter 4,6,8
3. circular polarizer
4. uv filter
5. haze filter

the reason for this filters is you barley can emulate this effect in photoshop. Cause the reduce the ammount/change polarisation of light. Once you took the image, you can't do anything about the light anymore.

The good thing of digital cameras is, you can simulate with photoshop. The best example are diffuser or changing color temperature.

The thread filter have all one big disadvantage, one filter cost 50 - 150$ depending on the type. I'm not going to pay so much money for some stupid filters. After I ask "dr google" I found a cheaper solution, cokin/quantary slide on filter. A set with 6 nd/graduated filter cost 100$ and I only have to buy 3 adapter rings to fit all my lenses. So in total it cost me 170$. For everything I want.

this means I will sell my thread filter collection and buy for the money I get a cokin system, once its in stock again.

another problem is my tripod I bought in january for 25$ with my camera. It's incredible instable and really difficult to adjust. So over short or long I will look at another tripod with a better head. I originally bought this to getting started, but never thougt I use it alot. Boy I was wrong.
As soon as I grab my 300mm zoom, I can't do anything without a tripod. ( the pictures are incredible unsharp). With the tripod there atleast sometimes sharp.

this are all 100% crops at maximum range of my 70 - 300mm 150$ zoom lens. The zoom is always very soft after 280mm, but I prefer to spend 1500$ on a nice trip to hawai next year instead of spending this kind of money on a 200 - 400 mm VR or 800$ on a 15 - 200 mm VR which I would love to have.

It's considered the best lens on the market, and covers more or less the range i have with my 3 lenses. The major disadvantage is it only works with DSLR's with a cropped sensor and not with full frame sensors, which will be affordable in the next 10 years for people like me. So I will stick with my current lenses for the next couple of years.

review of sharpness with a 25$ tripod and a 150$ zoom

somehow lucky shot with a tripod of a pair of ugly birds, somehow sharp
(300mm, f/5.6, 1/640s)






unlucky shot with a tripod of a joshua tree at sunset
(300mm, f/8, 1/13s)

sadly I did'nt see it on the preview, so I could try it again. Main problem in this case is the tripod, cause at 1/13s its just to shaky. It could be improved with the remote, but I lost my somewhere in the park and oredered already a new. Lucky me it's only a 10$ thing.





lucky shot without a tripod of a jackrabbit
(300mm, f/5.6, 1/1000s)

it was arround 1 pm and I had more than enough light to work with








so what next:

I would love todo something with flash, but I'm affraid to invest that kind of money.

1. 360$ for one flash (SB-800) to get started
2. 60$ for a SC-17 TTL flash cable to detach the flash from the camera
3. 200$ for a second flash(SB-600) for advanced lighting
4. 20$ for a color filter set for each flash

the main problem, I can only use nikon flashes with the D50 or risking frying the electronics of the cam. It's a common problem with the cheap sunpak flashes. And somehow this seems to be to expensive.

Another idea to work on landscape fotographie, my preffered pictures

1. 180$ for a Nikon DR6 Viewfinder, which allows me to actually use the viewfinder for pictures against the sky
2. 100$ for a set of graduated filters
3. 200$ for a flash(SB-600) to bring some light into the foreground and fill out shadows
4. 50$ for some lights to lightpaint

i think I will go for some filters and improve my technique before I invest so much money.

this morning I randomly discovered one of the coolest thing ever:

Lensbaby 3G - Bend • Lock • Fine Focus

and after a look of a couple of shots I really love the idea to play with this system a little bit. Ok before I have to learn a lot about fotographie, cause I have todo everything by myself, but it's never wrong to learn something...

a short review about this system (older version): review 

After I worked with java straight for 6 year, i finally could convince myself to learn another programming language. The background was that I had to write so many bash scripts in the last weeks, that I think bash scripting is not the best way.

so I was looking for a language which has following features:

1. plattform independent
2. interpreter based
3. fast
4. good community
5. good documentation
6. has support for objects

so I decided to try python and I love this. It's so much easier to use than bash, more powerfull than bash and can be integrated into java and other way arround.

to try some advanced features with python I decided to use it for a small project. Basically transforming the pubchem database (arround 7 Million xml documents/ 250GB) into a script to import it into a sql database.

this morning I decided to visit the historical airfield next too temecula. And they have a nice collection of aircrafts from WW-I until the desert storm. This is also the big drawback of this museum. Instead of covering one topic, they try to cover all and it just becomes to much and you can't enjoy it anymore.

The planes are mostly outside and wingless. What means they are dusty and sometimes not a very nice view.

pictures