by R.I. Pienaar | Oct 12, 2006 | Photography
A few weeks ago moo.com launched a very nice service, they take your flickr photos and make small business cards using those photos.
They did a promotion where they gave batches of 10 away I got some of those as soon as they came out and have since bought 100. At US$19.99 it’s a steal – the equivalent of about GBP10.
The experience is overall great, the cropping doesn’t always come out exactly as expected I have 2 images that I literally just have to through away since they are spoilt but I put about 30 images in so that only really come to about 6 cards. My suggestion is just don’t crop with stuff too close on the sides, otherwise I can really recommend it if you want something different from the usual.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 27, 2006 | Photography, Usefull Things
I’ve always been a bit wary of buying stuff off eBay, something about it just always put me off. My recent acquisition of a old camera though is forcing me to give it a go.
I wanted a few things for the camera, a few more lenses I find 50mm a bit claustrophobic, it needs a leather case and some other bits. So I’ve been looking at eBay again. This past weekend I did my first purchase of a Schneider-Kreuznach Retina Tele-Xenar 135mm F4 Telephoto Compur Lens for my Retina IV camera, the item was a Buy Now and I was happy with the price so I got it.
The lens arrived this morning and is as good as new I’m very impressed with it, here is a shot of my camera with the lens fitted. It came in its original protective case and everything, not bad for GBP24!
I’ve also bought another Retina camera, this one is a Retina S, very similar to the IV but it includes 35mm and 85mm lenses, bags, kit bag and all the goodies even some thirdparty book on the Retina cameras. Still waiting for this one to arrive though.
The second auction wasn’t a Buy Now so I had to way up if I wanted to actually try and bid on it or not, in the end I decided to go with one of the Sniper services. I searched around, there are tons out there with payment options going from monthly, yearly, per item etc it was hard to choose which one. I eventually came across Gixen, it’s a free Sniper run by someone who is passionate about doing so and I felt happy to use his service rather than some company I guess it’s years of using Open Source. Anyway in the end I got the item after the sniper did it’s bid, now I am just waiting for the knock on the door.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 26, 2006 | Usefull Things
Recently I had to buy up some domains for my employer – iTouch – so I typed into a domain registrar the word itouch to see what it came up with, what was available etc.
It also showed me a bunch of suggestions of other similar domain names:
It’s wonderful, IsItWorthTheHurt, ItWillHurt, ItHurt these are great and a lot of ex-itouch people will want to rush out and buy some of these I am sure, but the best of the lot has to be WhyDoesItHurtWhenIPee, priceless.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 26, 2006 | Photography
Last night I developed my 2nd roll of film, this one went a lot better than the first.
I got the film into the spiral without any hassles at all thanks to some tips on the Flickr “I Shoot Film” group. There are also several other useful resources, a photoset that shows it step by step complimented with some text to describe it and also a very good PDF from Ilford called Processing your first B&W Film.
I am using all Ilford chemicals and film at the moment based on the PDF file above and I am happy with the result so I’ll stick to it I think.
In terms of cost, it’s hard for me to say exactly now since I bought all the actual equipment from Jessops due to the website I got it from screwing me over, if you buy from the right places and do some research all the chemicals and tools you’ll need shouldn’t set you back more than GBP60.
There are some recurring costs for the chemicals, below a little table of costs and estimated amount of film I should be able to develop with each:
| Chemical: |
Cost: |
Expected use: |
| Ilfotec LC 29 Developer |
GBP5.68 |
17 |
| Ilfostop stop bath |
GBP3.36 |
34 |
| Ilford Rapid Fixer
|
GBP6.96 |
17 |
| Ilfotol Wetting agent
|
GBP8.14 |
100s |
Based on the above the cost of each development is around 84p, add to this a fair amount of tap water but that can’t really be quantified in an amount.
Films I have bought till now at GBP2.99 each from places like Jessops, but I am waiting a shipment of 25 rolls of Ilford HP5+ from 7dayshop that cost GBP1.89 each.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 24, 2006 | Uncategorized
DPReview has finally posted their in-depth review of the D80, in the past with my D70 I waited for their review before buying the camera because there were a lot of questions about it, with the D80 I didn’t bother waiting since the word on the ground from those in Asia who got it first were very good.
From the conclusion part of the 29 page review:
The number of cons, and the fact that there are no serious ones, is a testament to the thought and work that has gone into the D80’s design. It’s one of those cameras which just feels ‘right and sorted’ from the moment you pick it up. Things just get better the more you use the camera, you will begin to discover the usefulness of major features like the customizable automatic ISO and the subtle touches like being able to tap the DELETE button twice to delete an image
This is a very good review and they give the camera a 8.83 average out of 10 points.
Very interesting to me are the new areas they’ve started including in their reviews, these relates to RAW vs JPG performance and for me it validates what a lot of people have been saying, always shoot RAW the advantages are staggering, now it’s been quantified.
If you look at Page 19 of the review they go through a test that defines the color range captured in JPG vs. RAW – a full explanation of dynamic range is in their Glossary. The test clearly shows that in a RAW file will give you a lot more luminance out of your images than just shooting JPG would. The D80 now has a RAW+Fine JPG mode so you can get best JPG and RAW files out of it for each photo, this gives you the best of both worlds.
Another RAW vs JPG related test in the review is that of resolution, it basically just takes a group of lines on a piece of paper that comes ever closer to each other, this demonstrates when the camera just cannot tell the difference between 2 lines anymore. The D80 test is on Page 16 near the bottom. From the samples you can clearly see that by just shooting JPG you will loose a lot of finer details in some circumstances.
