Monthly Archives: October 2005

Canon 350D and Nikon D50

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Today was my lucky (in some way) day!

I am currently pretty ill so I had to go to the city to get some medicine and visit a doctor. As I already was there I gave my last film roll I made for development. It was a kodak shop and they said that I can have the images back in one hour.

Using that time I went to a drugstore and got something for my cough and asked for a doctor in the area. As I went to the doctor he had already closed. Because I wanted the images badly (otherwise I would have nothing to put online in my photoblog) I went to another photo shop and looked around. There was a very helpful guy with whom I started a conversation. He showed me the Canon 350D and Nikon D50 for comparison.

Now comes the interesting part. Both cameras are technically same. The canon has some drawbacks. First of all it does not really lie in the hand. The grip for the right hand is somehaw small and does not fill the hand. The controls are edgy and one has the feeling that this thing is real plastic. Also the shutter sound is edgy. It is a simple “klack”.

Now the Nikon for comparison. It feels bit bigger. (even if both cameras have no noticable weight difference) The grip lies very good in the hand. The surface is rugged and feels more like a metal body and not plastic. Very pleasant. The controls are big and smooth. Also the shutter has a nice sound. The camera is purring when you release the shutter. Lovely thing. I also think that Nikon is less noisy then the Canon.

This comparison is fully subjective. And when you think about buying anyone of that cameras try yourself. And pull your own criteria for the final choice.

When you want to compare the cameras using the more technical and objective approach you can go to DPReview and take a look.

I know for myself that I fell in love with the D50. The only problem is the money 🙁

The next thing that is pushing me to buy a digital SLR is that the light meter in the Praktica is finally fully broken. Before it got only stuck and now it is not working at all. And I hear something falling around inside. Another point is the price of film development. I payed 26Euro today. The positive side was that they finally done everything right. The negatives are cut correctly and quality of the photocd is very good. But 26Euro??? Sorry guys that is too expensive!

Back to Praktica … I am very sad about the camera being broken I really started to fall in love with that camera too… 🙁

Photography Podcasts

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I would like o share with you two podcasts that I regularly listen to.

The first one is Secrets of Digital Imaging by Dennis Hays. It is a very interesting podcast for everyone new to digital photography or photography at all. I encourage you to listen to the podcasts from the very beginning. They are very educational. You can subscribe via iTMS or through this link.

The second one is MBP-Podcast by Martin Bailey. Martin is discussing his own photography and how he did the photographs. One can learn a lot here too. You can subscribe via iTMS or through this link.

If you know any other podcasts about photography that are worth listening please let me know.

Having a Cold for doing Art

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Damn …

Why can’t I be a computer. I would have an antivirus … and could download a quick fix for that flew. That really sucks I tell you. My head explodes and feels like filled with batting.

I pump myself with teas for a cold and Aronia tea, aspirin and Rutinoscorbin.

I hope that I am fine soon. :/

I used my time where my head was not able to think to take photographs is my room. I made up a scene with shells, dice, ipod and glasses. I took about 20 images, with different times and aperture openings. I am really eager to see how this images got. (of course I took the pictures with Praktica that is why I can not show you the Images yet)

On friday I tested out the flash for Praktica on a friend’s birthday party. I am also eager to see them.

I will try to make the images if I manage it to get out of bed tomorrow.

Gimp native on Mac OS X

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I was really waiting for someone to do it and it finally happened. I am using Gimp myself on Mac for postprocessing my photoblog images. It is pretty unconfortable because it needs an x server.

Now there is an effort to port GTK to Mac OS X cocoa framework. There is also a screenshot of Gimp running on the ported GTK.

I hope the project continues and ends in success! Thank you guys!

Praktica super TL (2)

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I finally have the first Images developed that I took with Praktica. They are really good, better then I expected. I posted the first sample in my photoblog, there are more to come. Sadly the scans are not as good as they could be so you can not see the real quality of the shots 🙁 but I think you will still get an impression.

I developed the images at PhotoPorst. The guys cut the negatives not correctly so some images have cut off corners. The scanned images are also not the quality I would expect. The next time I will try another photo shop. Hopefully they will do it better. We have 5 photo shops here in Rosenheim so I have something to choose from. 😉

photoblogs.org

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After another session tweaking around my site I finally added Creative Commons licensing notes to all pages (hopefully). The photoblog site is also pretty finished contentwise. The thing that still remains is matching the themes of the blog, gallery and the photoblog. That means a lot of work.

I also added Twisted view of Esden photoblog to photoblogs.org. If you like photoblogs go there and you will surely find tons of very nice blogs. I also would be very happy when you add me to your favorites there. 😉 You can see my list of favorites here.

Pixelpost

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As you already know I have installed a photoblog on my site. I use Pixelpost for that. It is a pretty nice and simple system having nearly everything you need.

The problem is that this software is very crappy written. I installed it and tried to upload an image. Everything went ok only that the thumbnail has not been created for the image. I spent one hour debugging only to find out that it is failing because I have no jpeg support in gd2 php plugin. I do really not understand why people are not doing right error handling. At least the install script could have checked that! The calls to these functions are muted (not yelding anything on an error). I really could kill someone for that.

Spending another two hours on bugfixing the code I finally acheved that I do not get 20 error entries in my apache logs on a link click. I will try to collect all my fixes and post them to the pixelpost developers in the next days. But for that I have to spend another evening getting the code really clean because my fixes are pretty hacky for now. I really wanted that thing running.

I also added another WordPress plugin to integrate the latest and one random thumbnail image on my blog site. You find the plugin here. It worked without any hacks or tweaks. That is how I like a software to be. 😉

Praktica super TL

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Yesterday I was at home in Ingolstadt visiting my parents. My mother was so nice to borrow me her SLR camera. It is a pretty old Praktica super TL. It is a Eastgerman production and even has a fan community. You can find the documentation of that camera here. More info can also be found here.

The camera has a Carl Zeiss Jena, Tessar 2,8/50 lens. It is a very good lens. The design is 100 years old but it was remade many times. Zeiss is producing the lens till today. Even if the lens is pretty dark 2,8f. The positive side of the lens is that it draws very sharp and is very light. It as also called Eagle Eye of your camera. You can read more about it here.

As you can imagine it is not a digital camera so it takes some time till there will be sample images. I took today 18 images and in the next days I should finish the film. Taking that images the camera got stuck three times and messed up three images. That happens when you use old mechanics that are not used often. But nevertheless it is a lot of fun taking images with it. It is loud like hell and heavy. Just like firing some kind of weapon.

I am really asking myself if there is a photoblog somewhere where someone is shooting photos with such an “ancient” technology.

Back to germany

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After two months of traveling and visiting three countries I am back in germany. As you may know I was in Holland and Poland what you may not know is that I also was in Bulgaria for two weeks. I had a very nice time with some friends from Rosenheim there.

I really miss the warmth of the climate there. It is really cold and unfriendly in Germany now when you compare 12 degrees here with 24 degrees that we had there.

But everything that is nice has to end some time.

Tomorrow semester begins and I have to go back to university. Somehow I am sad about vacation ending but otherwise I am very happy to see my friends here and that I had such nice time the last two months.

Being back home means also that I will restart regular posting in my blog and coding. Hopefully I will find enough time between lectures to do that. I whish everyone who goes back to University in the next days a good semester and lots of interesting stuff to learn.