As Bay State Cruise Co.'s Provincetown III ferry was pulling away from the dock, the captain announced that there would be rough seas. My traveling companion remarked that they should warn people of that before boarding, since some people get seasick. About 10 minutes out, we began to learn how prescient she was, as several people began turning shades of white and green. Less than halfway into the trip, several of them had run for the back of the boat to vomit in either the bathroom or hallway.
I myself happened to have woken up that morning feeling a little dizzy from a congested inner ear. About 15 minutes into the 90-minute trip, I was ready to die.
A while after we staggered off the ferry into Provincetown, a nice woman in the Chamber of Commerce told us of the bus routes back to Boston. When I mentioned we'd had a terrible trip in on the ferry, she laughed and said that a lot of people had already been in that day to find alternate transportation home. (I responded that, at least I no longer feel like a wimp. Without missing a beat, she said, "I'm not saying you're not a wimp, but at least you're in good company.")
On the way back, we actually missed the Provincetown III by mere seconds. This proved serendipitous, as we learned that the last way out of Provincetown that night was on Boston Harbor Cruises's Salacia, which turned out to be a much larger and more luxurious boat. That return trip was blissful, and well worth the fare.
It's not the Bay State Cruise Co.'s fault that the water was exceptionally rough that morning, and I'm sure the Provincetown III is a perfectly fine boat, with a perfectly fine captain and crew. But I have to say that I personally don't expect to ever risk taking a boat like that again. Without question, my next Provincetown visit will be on the Salacia.
Since I could only fit one lens in my Lowepro Toploader 65AW bag for the Provincetown trip, I decided this would be a good time to see how I like the 50mm/1.8 as a carry lens.
The bokeh was great in head shots with P-town scenes as a backdrop. The speed was essential for a few handheld shots at sunset on the beach.
Drawbacks included that, a few times, I desperately needed to go wider but couldn't back up far enough. A couple other times, I needed at least twice the focal length. I actually ended up taking few photos at all, and I think the fixed length was a factor in that.
This experience, and the likely Canon rebates in October, prompt me to update the carry lens candidate list from 2005-09-05 with current prices:
Canon Lens B&H ------------------------------- ----- EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM $420 EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM $600 EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM $1250
I'm also waiting for a good deal on a 50mm/1.4.
Refrigerator has not refrigerated since Sunday, and I didn't notice til yesterday (Tuesday) morning. Before the modern miracle of refrigeration technology, people must've eaten takeout at their offices a lot.
Cambridge (and Boston-area) residents, the Central Square ArtsCentral event is tomorrow (Sunday).
For adding a bh Quick Search to your Firefox, under the
"Quick Searches" bookmark folder, add the a bookmark with the properties:
Name: B&H Location: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=search&Q=*&shs=%s Keyword: bh Description: by neilvandyke.org
Great for looking up current new market prices on lenses, when assessing to how much eBay bidders have bid used lenses up over the cost of new ones.
The rainbow is for H.
Minutes before realizing I'd walked all the way to the office on a Saturday afternoon yet forgotten my card-key, saw this rainbow on the bricks in Kendall Square. Unedited except for cropping, shrinking to 25% size, and branding.
Other urban rainbow shots of mine were blogged on 2002-07-12 and 2001-12-09.
New version of my Privoxy actions file.
One noteworthy change to this version is that I've removed the block on Shockwave Flash. One of my reasons for blocking Flash is that it is an effectively closed proprietary format. (By effectively closed, I mean that, although a spec for some version might exist, nobody can seem to implement even that version, much less track a proprietary standard.) That's not the only reason to block flash — security vulnerabilities, flashy annoyance factor, and bandwidth usage are also good reasons — but it's one of them.
So why did I remove the block on Shockwave Flash? Well, I'm newly involved with a company that also develops a browser plugin for a format that is currently proprietary. My first intuition would be to block that company's format as well. However, my contract says something about acting against the interests of the company, which clause might arguably be thought to potentially apply to this situation in a kind of possible way or something, y'know. (As is obvious to anyone who knows me, the proprietary-Web-format thing was a huge con in my decision-making process on whether or not to accept this work, but other factors won out.)
The Monday Farmers Market in Central Square, Cambridge, behind Harvest Co-op, was out in full force on Labor Day. Among the farmers was Keown Orchards (mentioned here on 2005-06-13), whose photogenic wares included heirloom tomatoes and flowers. My favorite photo was of Jeremy and apprentice (sorry I missed his name) from Lampson Brook Farms, which is a co-op of several families who farm part-time, all-Organic.
There are a bunch of Farmers Markets in Massachusetts and around the US. Even if you're not in the US, I hear that agriculture is also practiced in other countries, so check Google to be sure.
I'm planning to upgrade my carry lens from the Canon EF-S 18-55/3.5-5.6 to something with Image Stabilization and a longer focal length (at least 80mm). The three main options at this point (with USA-warranty prices) are:
Canon Lens B&H Adorama ------------------------------- ----- ------- EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM $410 $410 EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM $600 $600 EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM $1250 $1250
Only the EF-S 17-85 (the other, more expensive, kit lens for the 350D) doesn't sacrifice width going from the 18-55. I actually use that width often. (If you're just now tuning in, the 350D has a 1.6X FOV crop factor, so 28mm lens is equivalent to approx. 44.8mm on a full-frame 35mm body.) I don't want to have to buy, carry, or change a separate wide-angle lens. I might be willing to buy and carry a cheap, small fisheye adapter for when I desperately need width for unplanned shooting.
The 24-105/4L would be my first-choice carry lens, but I can't cost-justify $1250. I'd probably go with the EF-S 17-85, if it were at the $400 price-point, but $600 is too much. The only reason I don't get the 28-135 right now is the big loss of width.
If there were a non-Canon EF or EF-S lens that had comparable optical, AF, IS, and build quality, I'd consider that, but I haven't found any yet.
I think I'll stick with the 18-55 and 50/1.8 II for most purposes right now. Maybe get a Canon 75-300mm of some kind, or one of those $100 cheapo 500mm, for occasional extra length, but not carry it regularly.
Speaking of my 50mm lens, the prices of the three varieties of Canon EF 50mm lenses grow by doubling:
Canon EF 50mm Lens Price ------------------ ----------------- f/1.8 Mk. II $75 new f/1.8 (Mk. I) $150 used on eBay f/1.4 $300 new
CNN.com top story: "Watch: Bodies bobbing in the water"
The "Watch" Web site label merely magnified the tasteless sensationalism of a heading that someone at CNN.com wrote for an item, "Bodies bobbing in water."
Do families of thousands killed or missing need to even hear about that right now? Does anyone?
Yes, the media needs to help push the politicians to do the right thing now, and then gut the politicians and Bush's crony political appointees for the abysmal response. (See Matt Wells's BBC News piece today, "Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?.") No, I don't think we need to resort to appealing to Americans through macabre sensationalism. It's hard to report or argue from a position of moral high ground when you're flopping about in the gutter, just looking for attention.
Given my proclivity for photographing Cambridge fire trucks (I think I've always been the first Google Image Search hit for "fire trucks"), it's fitting that the first photo from the Canon Digital Rebel XT that I post to the Web is of a speeding Cambridge Fire Engine 2.
That's unedited, except to shrink from 3456x2304 to 800x533, add a branding, and re-JPEG. I'm posting it not because it's a great photo (it isn't), but to show off the XT. I took three rapid exposures while whipping the camera along an approximate 180-degree arc, and the XT managed to get a decently-framed image with the truck pretty sharp against a very blurred foreground and background. The light is about as good as you could expect under the circumstances, too. This was despite having a very crappy AF-impeding linear polarizer on the lens. The flare is the fault of the polarizer, and possibly of my lack of lens hood.
(Yes, a reseller misrepresented the polarizer on eBay. I'm waiting to hear back on whether or not I can exchange it for a circular polarizer.)
If you like pictures of fire trucks, see also 2005-01-23, 2002-12-27, 2002-01-01, and 2001-12-14.
The Canon EF-S 17-85/4-5.6 IS USM is almost exactly what I need (within my price range) for my usual carry lens with a 1.6X crop factor body. But I hate to buy EF-S.
Of course, if I later get a body that doesn't accept EF-S, that'll probably be because it's full-frame, and 85mm wouldn't be long enough, anyway. Really, I'm thinking that buying lenses for a 1.6X crop with the intention of moving them to full-frame bodies at some point isn't often practical. Unless you can cost-justify the new Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM.
The $70 (shipped) Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 Mk. II does indeed make an OK portraiture lens on 1.6X, however.
Just retired a specialized Scheme-based Web software agent that has been running continuously for about 2.5 years (except for being taken down for configuration changes and for the PLT 2xx to 299 conversion). The agent served with surprising robustness, even in the face of changing Web site formats, freak network glitches, etc. It was only taken down because I've found newer interests.
I can't release this particular code for the agent, but the publicly-available libraries used included HtmlPrag, uri.scm, and Httper.
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