Author: Topslakr

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Installing X-Plane 10 on Fedora 20

I’m a bit of an aviation buff and have been known to spend a fair few hours playing flight sims. My favorite sim these days is X-Plane, and thankfully it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. My current host for X-Plane is Fedora 20 and since there is a bit of extra effort to make it run properly, I thought I’d outline my process here.

First and foremost – This post assumes you have installed the appropriate graphics drivers and are not running whatever drivers were just included ‘in the box’, as it were. My system has an NVidia GeForce GT 640 and I use the akmod-nvidia drvivers from RPM Fusion, which works great.… Click here to read more!

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Camera Equipment Change… Again.

It seems like every year or so I rethink my photography equipment and make some changes. I’ve gone through many variations of my day-to-day photography kit but I seem to keep reducing the amount of automation present in the system.

My plan for this coming year is to spend as much time with a manual focus, mechanical camera system as I can. I am keeping my Nikon F80s, Nikon F5 and Nikon D7000 but I’ve sold off my spare Nikon N80s, and Nikon FE bodies. When the situation requires digital or highly automated film shooting I will have those bodies available, but my day-to-day system will be based on the Nikon FM.… Click here to read more!

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Building an Inexpensive iSCSI SAN on Centos 6

I was recently given an HP DL360 G4 server with two 36GB SCSI disks. At first blush the system is of little use in todays tech landscape due to it’s low storage capacity and limited processor feature set. My unit has two Intel Xeon processors at 3.0Ghz without Intel’s VT technology and 4GB of RAM. It would make a good single use server for many functions and would grow in usefulness as it’s storage capacity increased. SCSI hardware has fallen out of general use in recent years and has been superseded by SAS, or Serial Attached SCSI, in much the same way that for desktop machines SATA has replaced PATA.… Click here to read more!

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Image: A Job Done on The Farm

In recent years I’ve been more and more drawn to being closer to the food I eat. I’ve been slowly building my own garden and starting to plan for my own animals to be raised for me. A few years ago I spent some time helping a friend get their garden setup and on the day captured below I had just finished rototilling a patch of ground. It has never been tilled before and had grassed planted on it for many years. It was rough going and with the elderly rototiller I had at my disposal I was completely exhausted by the whole event.… Click here to read more!

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Medium Format On My Back: Weekend at the Fair

My first chance to shoot with the Mamiya 645 on the road came a few weeks ago in the form of a local fair in the neighboring town of Kingston called ‘Kingston Days’. Quite a creative name, I know. I spent several hours there over two days with the Mamiya.

The first day there was truly the first time I shot with the Mamiya so I loaded up my photo backpack and set out. As a part of my ‘process’ for always trying to reduce the amount of gear I own, I constantly try to evaluate which items I use and which I don’t.… Click here to read more!

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Choosing the Correct Camera Gear

I am constantly trying to evaluate what camera gear I need and what camera gear I don’t. I am in the process of selling off a considerable amount of equipment and cutting back to just the gear I like and use. I don’t consider myself a collector of camera gear so selling on unused equipment is just a matter of course for me. If I find myself leaving certain pieces of gear at home or just not taking it out of my bag when I’m out shooting, it goes. I don’t want to carry gear I don’t use and I don’t want my money tied up in gear collecting dust.… Click here to read more!

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Film in a Digital World – Capturing Film Shooting Data Automatically

One of the benefits to shooting digitally is that you have a record of the settings and equipment combinations embedded into each image you make. Every time you click the shutter on your camera, be it a high end DSLR or a cheap point and shoot, the image file has what’s called EXIF data baked into it. You can look at the image and then reference the settings you used to make it, which is very helpful in learning the interactions between shutter speed, aperture and ISO. When I was learning to use my DSLR I used this information all the time and as I’ve moved over to film I have used my experience in digital shooting to help me set the camera for the image I want to make.… Click here to read more!

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Medium Format On My Back: The Prep

I’ve never been excited about photography in a studio setting. A lot of people enjoy working in a studio but I’d much rather be shooting landscapes, hiking through the woods or wandering through a local fair. When I started considering a medium format camera it was always in the context of taking it with me to interesting places. Since hiking with the camera was my plan from the start I was careful to seek out a medium format camera known for it’s relative portability.

The Mamiya 645 Pro, the medium format camera I’ve chosen, is on the smaller side of things in the medium format world.… Click here to read more!

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Delving into Medium Format Film Cameras

*** 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.… Click here to read more!

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Three Shades of Photography

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.… Click here to read more!