Topslakr July 13th, 2010
*** What follows is a post which, as usual, is written more for me then anyone else. It has taken more than 1300 words to help wrap my mind around medium format, the Mamiya 645 Pro, and how it compares to my past knowledge of 35mm cameras. I only hope you are sitting if you choose to read this, as you will be asleep before it’s end ***
I’ve been thinking for some time about picking up a medium format film camera. It’s been nagging at me for a few years and when I was recently helping my parents dig out some old slides from their honeymoon, we ran across a few medium format slides from when my dad was a child. I was immediately blown away by the quality of the frames and it was the final push I needed to really start looking for a camera in earnest.
After digging around on the web comparing various cameras, each with unique pros and cons, I had figured out that I was interested in a camera that could accept a waist level finder as well and be able to swap film backs, mid roll. Read more... (1358 words, estimated 5:26 mins reading time)
Topslakr May 18th, 2010
To my mind, I see three ‘goals’ in photography: Documentation, Journalism, and Art. You may have other goals in mind but for me I’m usually shooting with one of those goals in mind.
The art goal is easy to define. Any picture that you have taken simply for the sake of taking it. Maybe you’ve spotted an interesting texture, a unique geometric pattern or just a vibrant flower and taken a picture.
Defining journalism photography, especially in contrast to documentation photography, can be a little more difficult to put into words. I see the types both being about gathering information, be it about a local disaster or celebration. The difference, for me, is that when I’m documenting something I’m doing it for my benefit and when I’m in journalism mode, I’m doing it for others. Allow me to elaborate.
When I’m shooting in the journalistic sense, I’m trying to capture an accurate representation of what is happening. I’m trying to put my opinion of a situation aside and gather all available information around me through the eye of my camera. When I’m shooting to document something I’m simply gathering information that I care about. Read more... (542 words, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)
Topslakr March 4th, 2010
First, as always, the story. Scroll down for my ‘review’.
As a film shooter I’ve been struggling a lot lately with getting my images converted to digital. I have tried two scanners, the Epson Perfection V500 and the Plustek 7500i and while both get reasonably good reviews online, I was not having any luck getting quality scans from them. I’m sure it’s operator error but even at low resolutions the scans were not even half as sharp as the source film and once scanned it took me a long time to process each image to have good color and contrast (let alone getting the scanner to help clean up dust and scratches). I was getting pretty discouraged and wondering if I should really still be shooting film at all. I was looking around online and people with the same scanners as I have were getting great results that looked nothing like mine. They were all talking about curves used and a series of tweaks performed in Photoshop or other software and frankly, I’m not that kind of photographer. I want to be shooting, not processing. Lots of people love the digital end of photography but I am not one of them. I want scanning to be easy. I want to be able to press a few buttons and have scans that look.. you know.. like the film I shot. Read more... (1762 words, 5 images, estimated 7:03 mins reading time)
Topslakr November 17th, 2009
I’m not a doctor. I’m not an expert. I know only what I’ve been doing and how it’s been going for me. I’m not telling anyone what to do or making a recommendation. This is what I’ve been doing for the past year and it’s been working well for me so I thought I’d document the process a bit.
All that being said, let me explain a bit of background. I’m a pretty average American guy with more then a few extra pounds hanging around that I would like to get rid of. Generally speaking, I’ve never been one to eat a lot of fast food but I do have a sweet tooth. I enjoy spending time out side but don’t often find myself with the extra energy to really get out and exercise with any regularity. When the weather is good I play tennis with friends and do some biking but when the weather isn’t good, I’m much more likely to stay in. Read more... (1496 words, estimated 5:59 mins reading time)
Topslakr September 29th, 2009
I know it seems like the blog here is dead. It appears Twitter has taken over and I’ve given up writing longer form articles. It’s as though my world has moved from 1400 words, to 140 characters. When you get right down to it though, I’ve just not had the time or motivation to get things posted here. I don’t have anything to say at the moment…
I’m in the process of buying a house, my first house. In keeping with my current life goals of growing an increasing amount of my food, I’m trying to find a livable place with a good bit of land for short money. Not all that easy here in the Northeast US!
I’ve never done this before and it’s been quite fun and challenging but most of all, it’s time consuming. I’ve found a place that I like for what I want to pay and we’re in the process of negotiating. It’s been going on for several weeks now and we keep running into road blocks. The current issue is with the septic system. Read more... (343 words, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)
Topslakr August 5th, 2009
Most movies dealing with the business of food are jam packed with horrible images and generally scary content. They typically seem hell bent on scaring you and then the movie just ends. This was not the case with Food, Inc. Sure, the film included the obligatory clips of the mistreatment of animals and other not so pleasant topics, but in the end I didn’t leave feeling powerless, I left thinking that I could, in a small way, begin to correct what is happening.
The movie was laid out around many topics, each of which is covered only briefly. They offer a description of what each problem area with our food supply is and then brought in some people to help put a real face to the issues. You hear from a pig farmer, a corn farmer, a mother who lost a child, a farmer doing things the ‘old’ way and a company selling product to Wal-Mart, among others. It’s really quite interesting to see a day in the life of a farmer these days and what has changed. Read more... (413 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)
Topslakr June 16th, 2009
Time for another incredibly exciting post about linux servers and their power use. I have built and tested my Atom server and I’m pretty excited to note that it uses 33 watts when idle and a whopping 37 when under heavy load. You can find a detailed description of the parts I ordered to assemble the server on another post on my blog, so I won’t go back into it here. I will need to make one change going forward though. Hitachi no longer makes the 80GB laptop hard drives that I was planning to use but Seagate’s Momentus drives are almost exactly the same power use. It is important to point out though that while these drives are laptop style drives, they spin and run at basically the same speed as desktop drives so performance on them is very good. Read more... (1001 words, estimated 4:00 mins reading time)
Topslakr May 29th, 2009
As a geek and IT person by trade I have a somewhat unique setup at my home, in terms of computers. I have several web servers, a mail server and a large storage array that I keep running for my personal use. On the one hand, it’s fun for me and allows me to do things most people can’t dream of, but on the other hand it’s all valuable training setup and a great place to do testing before trying it on production servers at the office. The stakes are much lower for me then for the company I work for. To that end I have a stack of server hardware, sitting in my basement, running all day and night sucking down power.
As a lone person accessing the network and with several pretty low profile web sites it’s not crucial for me to have ultra high performance. All I really need is reliable hardware, and the cheaper the better. With the exception of my recent router upgrade all the hardware I use for servers are just old desktops that were replaced for one reason or another. Free hardware is (was) better then having to spend money and is a great way to get started. Read more... (1971 words, estimated 7:53 mins reading time)
Topslakr April 20th, 2009
This past Saturday we began building our first poly tunnel. This project also signaled the start of filming for the upcoming video podcast. I enlisted some filming and photography help from a friend of mine that was there and I think we got enough recorded to make an episode work. Time will tell.
We have some final work to do on the tunnel which we are planning to take care of next weekend. Once that is done and filmed I should be able to start piecing together the video post, which makes me pretty nervous…
Fingers crossed!
Topslakr
Topslakr March 23rd, 2009
I’m preparing to go out on a limb here. I’ve ordered a camcorder, some various bits of kit and I plan to embark on a project to create compelling footage that is both entertaining and informational about… farming on a small scale. I just might be crazy.
I believe that producing a substantial amount of your own food will be easy and not take a tremendous amount of time. Based on this I am going to try and document my process to do just that and will publish my findings for all the world to see, even if I’m wrong. I don’t want to post some clips of me pulling weeds or looking at a gathered information about time spent per day ect, I want to talk about my process, the costs, the reasons, and how it turns out. Read more... (1010 words, estimated 4:02 mins reading time)