Photography Everything I know

Virtually everything I know about the technical aspects of photography.

 prime lenses are always sharpest, lightest (unless you carry so many around with you)
 invest in lenses not bodies 35mm+ 50mm+ 85mm+ 200mm+
 see what lenses (fish lens / 2.8 super zooms ) can be rented for special needs.
 you will be married to a mounting system, choose wisely or plan specific systems for specific tasks
invest in lenses & crop factor rather than bodies
glass always has a longer value over time.
prices of lenses are easily doubled for just incremental feature (1.8 $100-200 1.4 $500)
invest in light meters if you make space for it in your work flow, especially in studio work/flash work.
 teleconvertors can double but you loose an F stop or more, and focus/vibration issues are added
 Adapters could be use for other systems/mounts but usually loose autofocus and metering
 F1.4 prime-2.8 zooms lenses are aways very expensive and heavy
 DOF F1.4 is very narrow DOF F4+ is wider depth of field
 putting a UV filter will diminish the final image, use sparingly or not at all if you can be careful
 all kit lenses are typically crap 100$ won't be recooped if you try to sell.
 Non Full frame bodies (dx)  multiples the focal length of attached
 DSLR over 20MP is equiltivant to 35mm scans of negatives
 Cameras that have 32MP is greater than the starting level of medium format
 Watch for Actuations on Digital cameras as shutters do wear out
 Evil cameras are much smaller but typically has smaller sensors, and require different lenses that use normal F ranges or very expensive Fast lenses.
Bridge cameras, put better glass (sometimes up to 2.8F fixed) but still use a tiny sensor and suffers from crop factor.
When considering sensor size always based on density of pixels / physical size, there will be a physical limit to the resolving power
Iso noise is more important than megapixels
High end professional cameras are 2-3 better stop in iso performance (500-3k-8k)
{ future understanding of crop factor and focal length }
more blades in the lens the better round out of focus point light

 Nikon DX Crops DX/FX lenses and multiple focal length by F1.4
 BW digital cameras have more resolution that color

 Don't forget minimal focus distances
 Weight will be a hinderance during travel
 taking really good pictures will be the focal point rather than the travel (photographic trips)

 Built in flashes are typically only work with shorter focal length
 the faster the lens (larger the apature) the more expensive it is
 the sharpest is always 2 stops above the lowest settings (unless specially noted to be sharp wide open)
 telephoto > 75 mm        (flattens requires more distance)
 portrait lens is 85 mm  (flattens requires more distance)
 standard 50mm  (equilvant of eyesight)
 lanscape < 28 mm  (distortion requires less distance)
buy one large nurtralizers/circular filter rather than indvidual ones
forcing yourself to be compose an image ala film is much more benificial for the creative process
it's reecommended that you shoot film to hone your craft.
generally the bigger the sensor the shorter the focal length can be reached and the better DOF which will expose the bokah that is covented by many.

Film has far higher resolution given the cost,
 lighting is everything (be it ambient or artificial)
 low light performance is typically very expensive
 think of your target subject matter
 cheap lense have F3.5+
 composition rules all
 night shots are better with smaller devices
 rule of thirds
 don't blame the camera, learn to use to it's limits/strengths.
 Video problems (rolling shutter) is a common problem with SLR that use CMOS, Older Video cameras use CCD (there are fixes but require post processing)
Printing, be aware that eye has a finite limit of resolution based on viewing distance,  the father away you are the lower the resolution of the document
Calibration is required between LCD, printer.
LED typically has a blue tint that has to be adjusted for. CRT are better at color matching. Full Gamut monitors are expensive.

F!ack that apple universe and other non prorpiratary standards

I've always considered data just that data when it comes to information and that includes media.

The latest toys in a big way force you to choose. the Apple universe only supports so much and they are very rigid about it. I guess it's for the user experience but it's a painful leap when common standards aren't supported and of course interopability with other system is the last thing on there mind. Only the open source people will rejoice but they don't work on platforms such as Ipad or the lastest android idea.

The basic idea that a lot of people will need to have duplicate libraries or redo them to insure that both standars can read them. http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=92346 for reference.

mac PC universe

Macs are the propritary ones aside from the windows users who unknowingly used  wma that would be your fault.

To sync to the Touch, iTunes needs to see the files. The touch supports the following audio formats:

quote:

AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV

and the following video formats:

quote:

H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

furthing that, if yo uget into the ipad world the video seems (again another issue)

AirPlay Mirroring to Apple TV (2nd and 3rd generation) at 720p

AirPlay video streaming to Apple TV (3rd generation) at up to 1080p and Apple TV (2nd generation) at up to 720p

Video mirroring and video out support: Up to 1080p with Apple Digital AV Adapter or Apple VGA Adapter (adapters sold separately)

Video out support at 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable (cable sold separately)

Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

Retina display, it's just 4x the resolution of the older ipads ( 2048 x 1536 ) your videos at 1:1 are now smaller, sure scale up but it will just use 4 pixels to represent 1. bfd.

Ebooks? I guess that's worth another post.

Pirch98 sound settings

go to Highlight and turn off Been on highlight message.. this always drives me insane as it beeps everytime I talk. WHY is this a default >,<

Use Raid 0 for OS (with cavets)

You should seperate the data you use vs the programs and OS that you use.

Additionally assuming you can plan ahead build the OS and programs on Raid 0 which will double your read write speeds that allows the system to self distruct if something goes wrong but can easily recover if you have an ongoing backup solution..

instead of the 1200MBit/sec you can have 2400Mbit/sec (remember that this is shared so it drops down by half or more with multiple operations)

OTA HDTV in GVRD (free)

I don't want to pay for TV signals, the why bundles work you typically more economical to however I don't like the idea of being cut off from local news. Fortunately this is where OTA comes in. This is just a pointer to a old page that has kept up with making as well as recieving the 4-6 OTA channels.

• CBC – CH. 58.1
• Global – CH. 22.2
• CTV – CH. 33.1
• Omni – CH. 42.1

http://johnbollwitt.com/2009/01/20/getting-over-the-air-ota-digital-television-dtv-in-vancouver/

I hope allow my multiple TV's through a signal cable but that would mean having multiple wires throughout the house.

I may have to resort to streaming via DLNA.. won't that be fun. http://alenblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/watch-online-tv-ppstream-pplive-etc-on-tv-via-dlna/

Maximum throughput

theses are real life bandwidths unless noted

Real World Speeds
		Mbit/sec	MB/sec
Conventional PCI (32-bit)	shared? Theorectical max	1064	133	Therorictical
AGP 8X			2,100	Therorictical
PCI Express 1x	250 [500]*		250	Therorictical
PCI Express 2x	500 [1000]*		500	Therorictical
PCI Express 4x	1000 [2000]*		1000	Therorictical
PCI Express 8x	2000 [4000]*		2000	Therorictical
PCI Express 16x	4000 [8000]*		4000	Therorictical
PCI Express 32x	8000 [16000]*		8000	Therorictical
IDE (ATA100)		800	100	Therorictical
IDE (ATA133)		1064	133	Therorictical
IEEE1394B [Firewire 800]	~100 *	800	100	Therorictical
Esata		640	80
Sata		nt	nt
Sata II  (3Gbit)		nt	nt
Sata III (6Gbit)	velociraptor 10K 600GB	1200	150
Sata III (6Gbit)	Newest 2012 SSD	4440	555
USB 2.0	Using a ssd	280	35
USB 3.0	high speed memory or raid config	880	110
Thunderbolt	high speed memory or raid config	9600	1200
100BaseT Ethernet	Sustained	88	11
1000BaseT Ethernet	Sustained	640	80
1000BaseT Ethernet	Burst	1200	150
Rogers 3G		8	1
Rogers LTE Existing		20	2.5
Rogers LTE Future		40	5

Truth about LED backlit

LED is a newer technology primary reasons for introduction is lower power consumption in laptops (CCFL of the past drain the battery very quickly in comparision) and the longer life of the LED itself.

The problem is if you care about color. LED backlight especially in the lower end of the pricepoint have inaccurate color. ACER is known for this, samsung apparenty has a better reputation but it has to do with the design of the LED, it does not generate white light instead it gives off a blueish white which will effect your colors accuracy.

It's actually cheaper to make LED but because of the limited supply it has jaked up the price.

In short LED backlit laptops are good since portability is more important but when it comes to desktop units, color if that is important to you shouldn't be sacrificed and you need to look at the screens for yourself if you can tell.

Also remember backlit can mean edge lit the most common or more expensive backlit where the entire back is being lit. the TV market gave up on this because it was so expensive to produce.