Category Archives: Images

Apparently, I Do Take a lot of photos

Posted on April 3, 2008 | Comments Off on Apparently, I Do Take a lot of photos

Last night, while covering a Charity Poker tournament, I shot my 20,000th photo on my Nikon D80. I discovered this using a program I wrote in PERL to copy my image files from my SD cards to my PC. It puts a little summary at the end and extracts info from the image files EXIF info.

In this case, Nikon stores the shutter count in the image (That and other info effectively gives the image a serial number!) which I list in the summary. In this case, since getting my D80 on August 10th, 2006, I’ve taken 20,004 images. Granted, I don’t take as many as I used to, but I guess that is a lot.

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Camera Models found as per images:
NIKON D80
Camera Lens found as per images:
Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 EX DG Macro
Shuter count as per Images: 20,004
Copied: 213
Skiped: 0
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Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Big Bang Baby” by Stone Temple Pilots from the “Tiny Music…Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop” Album.

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MoMA Feature: Destination Alessi

Posted on February 15, 2008 | Comments Off on MoMA Feature: Destination Alessi

We went to the “MoMA Feature: Destination Alessi” event Wednesday night. Had a great deal of fun checking it out, lots of good design and interesting people. You can see the entire set of photos here.

Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Rescue” by Eve 6 from the Horrorscope Album.

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I love a Rainy Night

Posted on February 5, 2008 | Comments Off on I love a Rainy Night

Friday night, the rain came down really hard, which really sucked to walk thru, but was an opportunity to take photos afterwards.

After it rains is often the best time to take photos. You get reflections off the streets, the air tends to be clear and the overall look just works.

In this case, I took close to 70 photos and was happy with about 8 of them. That’s the great thing about Digital SLR’s, unlike film, you don’t waste anything by taking photos.

Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Paralyzer ” by Finger Eleven from the “Them VS. You VS. Me” Album.

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Greenwich Village Halloween Parade 2007

Posted on November 4, 2007 | Comments Off on Greenwich Village Halloween Parade 2007


Lost Playmate Bunny?

Originally uploaded by S.D.
To Recap:

  • 4 sets of AA batteries (3 sets of rechargeable NiMh) for the flash.
  • 540+ Photos over 3 2gb SD cards.
  • Incredibly tired afterwards.

Needless to say, it was a blast, despite being crushed against a Police barricade.

The photo on the right was from the people gathering at Spring Street and 6th Avenue. I met other people from Flickr early on, but we got separated as we each got good vantage points.

Next time, I have to get there earlier so I can get into the starting area.

Things I learned:

  • Keep all memory cards in my jacket pockets. Getting memory cards out of my backpack was a chore to say the least.
  • Use the 18-200mm lens at a High ISO. The Sigma was great at f2.8, but from the results with the Flash, I think I could have used the slower lens.
  • Wear a costume and march in the parade. I got photos I’m happy with, but walking about would have been better.


Music I’m listening to right Now:
I Don’t Wanna Be In Love (Dance Floor Anthem) by Good Charlotte from the “Good Morning Revival” album.

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Been Way too busy lately…

Posted on December 1, 2006 | Comments Off on Been Way too busy lately…



Crossing the street

Originally uploaded by S.D..

On the plus side December is when things get slow at work. 
At least I still manage to get out at lunch and shoot photos from time to time.

This is a photo that came out exactly the way I planed. She was waiting for the light to change, I focused on her, got off three shots and this one came out the way I wanted. I've been taking pictures for a while and I'm constantly trying to learn new things or plan out a photo before taking it. In this case, I succeeded.

 


Music I'm listening to right Now:
Sadly, nothing at this moment.

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DxO Optics Pro V4

Posted on November 13, 2006 | Comments Off on DxO Optics Pro V4

DXOUpon attending a session of my Wife's photography class, the professor, Chuck Delaney made reference to DxO Optics Pro being good software for processing images. It's available for Trial download and supports many different Camera/Lens combinations.

Unfortunately, it does not yet support my AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm in combination with my Nikon D80. But it does support the Nikon D70s with that  lens, so I used an image I took in August as a test. It does support the D80 so the other functions worked very well, just not Automatic Lens correction.

Basically, I fired it up, loaded the image and let it go to work. The results are pretty good and took a lot less time if I were doing it via Photoshop.

I also used it to Batch process close to a hundred photos I took at a Birthday party. With the exception of three photographs where the Flash didn't fire, everything looked great. It automatically processed my NEF files (I shoot in RAW),  got the White Balance just about perfect and Skin tones looked good too. If I were shooting a wedding (several hundred images, easily) I'd want to use this software as it was very easy to set up.

Since it doesn't support my Camera/Lens combination yet, I'll hold off, but once it does I'm sure thinking about it. The price it's going for isn't bad and it worked fin with my Old Desktop PC (circa 2001) running a Pentium 4 and 1 GB of RAM.


Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Violet" by Seal from his "Seal" Album (1991).  

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Gorillapod SLR Zoom

Posted on November 6, 2006 | Comments Off on Gorillapod SLR Zoom
Gorillapod SLR Zoom

I pretty much carry my camera everywhere and occasionally come across a situation where I suddenly need a tripod but don't have one as my regular tripod was left at home.

An actual example: It suddenly rained and the streets were nice and reflective. The view from one of my managers office has a good angle on Park Avenue South, but to really get a good shot, I like to take a long exposure. Without a tripod, it's impossible for me to keep the camera that steady. 

While attending the 2006 Photo Plus Expo  this past Friday,  I came upon Joby demonstrating their new Gorillapod Pro (Since renamed the Gorillapod SLR-Zoom) and was impressed enough to buy one. 


Short Review: I really like it. Will the Gorillapod replace my regular Tripod? Nope, but I'll keep it in my bag for those many times when I need steady base for my camera.

More details after the break.

 

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Mushroom Hunting" by The Seatbelts from "Cowboy Bebop CD Box [BOX SET]". 

 

Continue reading →

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Posted in Cool Stuff, Images

Cool Sony Advertisement

Posted on October 10, 2006 | 1 comment

Just saw this on Gothamist. It was done over a year ago, but still very cool. See the Behind the scenes movie after the break.

Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Did You Get My Message?” by Jason Mraz from the “Mr. A-Z” album. Continue reading →

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Me in a Nikon Advertisement

Posted on October 8, 2006 | Comments Off on Me in a Nikon Advertisement

Me in Nikon Advertisement
Originally uploaded by S.D..

In July, I was lucky enough to be among the 16 photographers that were chosen to participate in an advertising campaign for Nikon. It didn’t really hit me until I turned to Page 35 of Popular Photography (Janny got me a subscription) and see my face in the lower corner.
😉

My contribution is in the lower corner of the website, just left of the American Flag by Timothy Schenck.

To be perfectly honest, I think the other photographers are much better than I am, such as Timothy Schenck or Joseph Holmes (whom I saw at NYCPB6) just to name a few.

I really believe I’m lucky to be counted among such creative people.

Best viewed Large or Original.

Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Never Ending Story” by Limahl from the “The NeverEnding Story” Soundtrack.

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Storage issues…

Posted on October 5, 2006 | Comments Off on Storage issues…

HDMind you I really like my Nikon D80, but at the Volume of pictures I take combined with shooting RAW images and 10.2 Mega pixels, I max out my Hard disk on a regular basis.

It's down to a routine:

  1. I take photographs, attempt to download them to my PC
  2. get a nasty message saying the Drive is full.
  3. I burn a few days worth of Images to DVD
  4. A week or two later repeat step 1.

On the plus side, My images get burned to DVD fairly often, but I was thinking there may be a better way.

  • Ignoring budget constraints: The Netgear SC101. It allows you to plug this onto your network and look like a regular Drive in Windows. I like that it's low cost but currently not designed to work with windows. Also I keep reading negative things in reviews available on the Web.
  • Another option (again ignoring budget) is the LaCie Biggest F800. It has RAID support but It only has Firewire and USB 2.0, not Ethernet.
  • Yet another option is putting a Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A into the PC and mirror two drives. Might be th most cost effective way of ensuring Safe data. The RAID Card is about $75 and two Maxtor 500gb Drives are about $275 to $300 each. 

I could simply add a new HD but that would prolong the issue. Likely I'll go with the 3rd option with SATA drives. When I get a new PC (Mine is a Pentium 4 from 2001…) I could just add the drives into the new case.


Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Ever Fallen in Love?" by Fine Young Cannibals from "The Raw & the Cooked".

 

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Posted in Different, Images