Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Friday, April 22, 2005
An uncharacteristic diatribe against an easy villian.
The Photo-Sideblog.The image of Zacarias Moussaoui was synthesized based on a 2001 photograph, and a drawing made in the present. I have aged and adjusted his appearance to account for three and a half years of intensive confinement. I made him look evil too with some eye treatment.
I remember Time magazine got in trouble on that with OJ, but too bad. Sue me. Oh wait - no, don't.
I started with this photo taken at the time of his arrest, shortly before 911, where he looks like an athlete or drug dealer - or the dad next door for that matter.
Now, accordingto this drawing by Dana Verkouteren of the Associated Press, the 911 defendant has a fuller beard, less vibrant complexion and a smaller overall presentation:
Zacarias Moussaoui says he's guilty, yet plans to mount a defense to save his life. Moussaoui (pronounced Moss'-uh-wee?) claims that he thought he was training to fly an airplane into the White House instead of the World Trade Center or Pentagon ... Wha, they have to let him go because ... they didn't guess the right building. I'm thinking Zack got it wrong though, and was just told he was supposed to pick up the 'Blind Sheik' and fly on to Afghanistan, or else crash into the White House, where the Bush family, and all the aids, and employees, as well as any visitors and tourists would have been killed. The president was, as you know, on a stump to advocate for No Child Left Behind in a Florida classroom.
But, if I recall, an abandoned rental car, at Logan airport, contained evidence that some of the operatives in the 911 attack were kept ignorant of the nature of their terminal role in the operation. Perhaps all of the pilots believed they were on a rescue mission, and would fly prisoners to freedom. So Moussaouri's defense is stupidity?
Or is he going to go for insanity. Let's see, he's pleaded guilty to 911. But he was going to murder the president's family and employees and destroy the presidential mansion that survived a terrorist attack (by our fine ally in the Iraq adventure) almost two centuries prior, instead of fly into the buildings that were hit? He's clearly nuts.
He's probably thinking that an insanity plea will get him out of the death penalty. But with Alberto "Say Cheese" Gonzales on the other side, I'm thinking the death penalty is about to get creative.
[Information about this story came from NPR. The photograph and drawing of Zacarias Moussaoui is from the New York Times. The photograph of A.G. Gonzales is from the US Department of Justice.]
comments
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
There is a huge debate going on right now, about the file format that Nikon uses to store Raw data from their newest digital cameras. Thomas Knoll, the author of Adobe's Raw conversion software, has has accused Nikon of encrypting critical data in their proprietary Raw format, the NEF file. The data that is alleged to be hidden is the White Balance of a photograph. The white balance determines the faithfulness of the colors of a photograph to reality, or the intent of the photographer. Without access to the white balance assigned by the camera at the time of the exposure, third party softwarew will need to guess at the correct combination, an assumption guarranteed to produce errors. This will make the image processors adjust the color by hand, something that will slow down the digital image workflow.
This is set against the recent introduction of Adobe's DNG Raw format. Currently the preferred method of acessing NEF files from Nikon's D2x, D2hs and soon the D50 and D70s cameras will be to use Nikon's software, Adobe's DNG format or a few third party Raw converters, some of which are said to have 'cracked' Nikon's encryption.
Nikon is in a position to move ahead here, by leading a consortium of vendors who support the NEF format. A format, like NEF, which has so far done very little interpretation (ie. preprocessing) to Raw files ideal for evolution into a true digital negative file. A format that truely acts as a latent image that can be re-developed in whatever methods are at the hands of the digital artist.
Mr. Knoll and others within the Adobe/Macromedia conglomerate should look at the possibility of not owning the digital negative format. Nikon should open their eyes to the possibility of leveraging their Raw format (which, for the purpose of a digital negative, is superior to Canon's DIGIC-processed CRW file, as it has been messed with to a lesser extent) with Occam's razor's power of simplicity. Unfortunately both sides are involved in a PR battle (with Nikon pretending not to notice) by taking their beef to the public streets.
As a consumer (remember the term, user?) of digital photography, I want to see cooperation and cross-development amoung Raw developers. Perhaps Nikon is afraid of domination by Adobe. Perhaps Adobe should divest themselves of the DNG format.
Oh, here's a photo of Susie taken with a Nikon camera and edited with Adobe's Raw processing software.
comments
Monday, April 18, 2005
Last night, from a dark sky location, ten miles west of Prescott, I observed M8, the Lagoon Nebula:
Observed with the 6 inch, f/4.9 Schwaar reflector with a 12mm Nagler eyepiece for a magnification of 79X.
comments
Friday, April 15, 2005
Ha!
For the first time ever, I did my taxes early. I took care of it this morning. In addition to paying for our wars, salaries for some pompus asses and courtesy checks for old farts, we also get to do pretty much what we want. Well, a lot of it anyway. So when you send the check, remember you're paying for your freedom. Don't let them forget it either.
comments
Bulletin board mavin, Iliah has posted an article by Dan Margulis that has prompted me to rethink upgrading to the new version of Photoshop later this month. Rather than the inclusion of a copy protection scheme (one that has not appeared on the Mac platform previously) the worst part now seems to be an unbundling of the file browser. Because of Bruce Fraser's white paper on Camera Raw files (which Adobe no longer has on their website - but fortunately, the author has expanded to a book) I began using the file browser for more than just a thumbnail preview tool. I now apply ACR settings to all of my Raw files while in the file browser as part of my accelerated work flow. Switching to a seperate application would mean this process would need to be re-created with new tools, with no guarantee that the functinality would be the same (and no hint it would be an improvement.)
Adobe should be aware that by taking side steps in their upgrade subscription, that they are not shipping enough improvements for their customers. And there are competitors on the horizon.
comments
Thursday, April 14, 2005
.jpg)
2Ce(NO3)6.jpg)
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
A graphical analysis of the sharpness of some of my lenses:
The horizontal axis represents the f-stop, that is the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the aperture. The vertical axis is an arbitrary scale, similar but not equal to, the resolution of the lens in lines per millimeter.
While I have not attempted to determine any systematic errors in this data, the sharpest apertures, the "sweet spots", of the three lenses can be seen from this plot.
NOTE: The 24-120vr lens was hand held with the VR function turned on. The 35 and 60mm lenses were bolted to a tripod for this test.
comments
Saturday, April 9, 2005
A little porch-stronomy:
Jupiter at midnight. This is a layering of three 1/30th second exposures using the old 950 camera, the 6", f/4.9 Schwaar telescope, and a 6mm Orthoscopic ocular lens.
comments
Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Here's a glamor shot of Heather:
Which I am posting because she was not exactly pleased with the montage I did last week using a couple images of her.
comments
Sunday, April 3, 2005
I had written a couple of reviews of CD's I'm listening to, but then Safari crashed. With a lot of text in the input box. And it was really good text - I feel like Ellen Feiss, but wait! This was on a Mac! Ok, I'm over it, but you'll have to wait until I've got more energy for redoing it to see what's up. Until then, go visit art historian Lee Sanstead's Tour of California Art Museums.
comments
