This week's Photo Friday challenge was a no brainer for me. Caffeine is the the drug to which the most people in the world are addicted. I snapped this photo back in my film days, right after I got my snazzy new macro lens. It's actually a tiny espresso cup, but because of the close up, it leads the mind to think it's a giant cup of espresso.
For a very long time, I've been thinking about sensor size and photography. Last year, I went on a terror, when I heard the quote: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough" - David Szymin, the only thing on my mind was getting closer. It was at this point in my life that I invested in a entry level macro lens that lets me focus to an amazing 21cm at 105mm. The problem with the macro world, is that if your subject is any bigger than a loonie, you can't get the whole thing in frame. Upon this realization, I knew that I needed to go wide.
Wide angle lens allow you to be really close to your subject and still take in the whole thing. Good for landscapes, group shots or anything where you want to show depth or distance. The problem that I'm facing, is even though I own a 18mm lens, I can only take 18mm shots with my film camera. My digital camera has a smaller sensor, which magnifies my lens and basically turns it into a 27mm. Pretty much what I had when I purchased my macro, and used it on my film camera.
I've been holding on to the fantasy that Nikon would realize that arch-nemesis Canon has a series of cameras that satisfy this itch, and retaliate with their own full sized sensor. As a matter of fact, Canon announced the EOS-1Ds over four years ago, and now have three cameras that offer full sized sensors.
Come on, Nikon, pick up your socks.
At last night's CPS meeting a fellow Nikonian and I talked about the full frame problem, and he is of the mind that Nikon won't release a full frame sensor camera any time soon, but I disagree. I think that Nikon has to make the move else they are going to lose a few of the very picky, myself included. I do, however, still have faith in Nikon, and with PMA happening in Vegas, right now is the time for the announcement to be made. I really hope my boys pull though.
Why is it I never sit down in front of my keyboard and state: I'm bored? Again, with the living life in fast forward.
Friday night some guests came into town and we went out to the Blue Nile restaurant in Kensington. The service was sub-par, but the food was excellent, and I really enjoyed the experience of eating the gooey meat sauces armed with nothing but spongy bread. Afterwards we wandered down the street to a nice cafe where a young band was playing. The poor kids put the starving in artist, as I think the lead singer probably weighed in at 10 pounds, of which 6 was his belt buckle.
On Saturday, Sonja and I did some running around until we headed out to Red Deer for a wedding. On the way out of town we noticed the police had cordoned off a big chunk of center street right around the Scotiabank. I scrambled to get my camera out and ready for this shot, and in the end we never found out what happened.
The wedding was a good time. It was a nice reception, and with the toonie bar, and a room full of marketers, it wasn't long before I was wearing my wobbly boots, dancing a storm up on the hardwood. I really enjoyed the menu selection, and staying in the lodge the wedding was taking place in was a very nice break from the normal routine.
Sunday we came back to town for a late lunch with Calvin and Heather, before heading down to Colin and Jessica's for a man's only Pampered Chef party. The party didn't stick to it's man's only status, but that didn't stop us from throwing the ruse away and playing poker for a few hours. In the end I managed to win two of the games for the night, putting me up $100 for the evening.
Now my week looks like a cluster of preparations, executions and final evaluations for client appointments, club meetings, homework, and Sunday classes.
This morning I knew I was up against something when I read this week's Photo Friday challenge. Scanning through my photostream I realized that nothing would that fit the bill. Some new photos would have to be taken in order to get this one done.
I rolled through some of the early entries to get some inspiration. I found some great shots ranging from posible plastic toys and isolated sailors to the more human sea side contemplation and beautifully composed shots of nature. I thought about wandering about downtown to try and find an isolated person sitting somewhere, when this idea came up over coffee. Of course, I could not supply the material, but the timing was right for this photograph.
At the beginning of the week, Glen turned me towards Google Reader, and at first I brushed it off as another of those fandangled feed aggregators and put it towards the back of my mind. I'm not entirely sure why I continued to play with it, but now it has it's hooks in me....deep.
The first thing that I noticed that set it apart from the bulk of the feed readers is that it is web based. There are a few strong web based readers, and I'll get to them in a minute. Having the aggregator on the web means that no matter where I am: Home, Work, a friend's house, on vacation, up north or down south I can use the same system everywhere. That is a strong plus.
The main feature, I find, that sets it apart from other online aggregators is the retention and marking items as read. As soon as I subscribe to a feed it marks where I've started, and if I go away for a week, it will keep track of all of the thousands of articles I've missed. Albeit, I've only compared it to Reddit's feeds and Yahoo's subscriptions but no other online reader I've found maintains that kind of retention. For the other two, if it isn't in the current rss/atom then it isn't displayed.
Two other amazingly simple features that set it apart are: The marked as read feature and the sharing feature. Because of the retention available it doesn't take long to accrue a few hundred items to comb though. If you have your feeds grouped, you can simply click on a group and mark the whole thing as read. Or if you spent some time at home catching up on entertainment news, with those articles being automagically marked as read as you looked at them, then when you have some time to kill at the internet cafe you can look over some of your other feeds without worrying about missing an article. It's such a simple idea, and it's implemented on all of the downloadable feed aggregators I've seen, but Google placed it seamlessly in an online application. The second feature, which was the one that Glen was really showing me, is the ability to share your articles and items. Google reader supplies an Atom feed of articles that I've marked for sharing, as well as going so far as creating a html page so that others can look at of my shared items.
Oh, and it's usually just a single click to subscribe with any intelligent browser.
Thus, in the span of a few days, I've made the switch from bookmark, ctrl-click navigation of the web, to a feed based devouring of content. The result: I'm taking in more and more of the internet, and enjoying every minute of it.
