Switching from Nikon to Olympus: Part 1 – Isn’t Micro Four Thirds a Toy format?

Though I’ve not been a very regular blogger, I have done a decent job of documenting my various photography gear related changes here since my first DSLR, a Nikon D40, back in 2006. From that first DSLR, through my foray into 35mm film cameras, medium format, and the various other DSLRs I moved to along the way, those milestones have been written about here. And, with the exception of the medium format gear, all of that equipment has always been from Nikon.

Perhaps to my detriment, I’ve always been 100% loyal to Nikon. SLRs, DSLRs, lenses and accessories, I always bought Nikon gear.… Click here to read more!

Books Read: 2018

Using my (now aged) Kindle, I do a fair bit of reading. For some reason, whenever I finish a book I put it into a folder on my Kindle named for the current year. These folders exist only on the Kindle itself, so I thought I might start to keep track of them here on the blog.

At the end of 2017 I was reading a lot of memoirs of people who moved into the wilderness, both in recent years and in centuries past. That continued into 2018 and the first book I read was:

Winds of Skilak, by Bonnie Ward
This was an excellent book, written by Bonnie, about her and her husband’s journey leaving Ohio and moving to an isolated island on Skilak Lake in Alaska.… Click here to read more!

Review: Nikon Coolscan V ED – Still Awesome!

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).… Click here to read more!

Food, Inc. Is Worth a Trip

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.… Click here to read more!

Music I’m listening to…

It’s been pretty quiet around here on the blog lately which, as always, is an illustration of the inverse in my life. Work is busy, life is busy, plus it’s fall here so I’m spending as much time looking for foliage and visiting fairs as I can. That being said, I’ve been finding some more time as of late to listen to new music in all of my travels.

Back in the day I used to listen to Tonic, a rock band. I was never a huge fan but some of the unreleased tracks on their albums were really excellent.… Click here to read more!

Used Stuff from KEH.com

I ordered some used Nikon gear from KEH.com this week and I thought I’d mention how impressed with them I was. I should also mention that, of course, they nor anyone else is giving me anything for talking about their products and services. Odds are they don’t even know about it.

I ordered a Nikon TC-200 manual teleconverter and the Nikon 24-50mm zoom lens used from them. Both products were listed as ‘BGN’ or bargain quality according to their condition chart and both pieces look flawless.

The TC-200 is quite old as Nikon began making them on 1988. It’s basically a tube with some glass in it that doubles the focal length of a lens and make the lens one stop slower.… Click here to read more!

Real World iPhone thoughts…

I’m a geek with an iPhone living out in the boonies and I thought it would interesting to post my thoughts of iPhone use as a contrast to the big reviews posted by people in NYC and San Fransisco.

When I heard that the iPhone 2.0 software would support Exchange email I was pretty excited because it meant the iPhone might make sense for me to use as a phone. I’m a long time Treo user and was reasonably happy with that device. I was able to get my email, post to twitter and use it as a modem when I needed to surf the web.… Click here to read more!

Apple Leopard Server: Two Weeks Later

So, it’s been installed and running for two weeks. I think I made it pretty clear in the first review that it’s good but not perfect, nothing is and over the past 14 days I’ve had a chance to really dig in and learn new things and fix some problems.

If you have been following my twitter updates you may have noticed some, shall we say, frustrations, with the VPN server that come with Leopard server. Me, being lazy, setup a simple PPTP VPN for my use that I use to connect back home when I’m on the road or looking to secure my traffic from whatever random wireless I’m connected to.… Click here to read more!

Review: Apple’s Leopard Server

As you may have read in my twitter feed, I have installed Mac OS X Leopard Server on a basically stock Mac Mini for my personal use. The Mini hosts email and webmail, calendars, directory services and a VPN without any problems at all.

For a little bit of background, by day I am a Windows and Linux admin and am responsible for about dozen servers and ~750 users. I am very comfortable with servers and how they work so this setup was not my first go in the world of servers. This web server is hosted on one of my Linux servers as a matter of fact.… Click here to read more!

Review: JBL Onstage II

When I ordered my 160GB Black iPod Classic I also ordered the JBL Onstage II desktop iPod speaker system. I can’t think of another way to describe it. The feature set of the device is fairly benign, drop the iPod in and you can play back music. It comes with a basic remote to handle some functions such as volume, play/pause, and track skip. Media is chosen by manipulating the iPod itself. It also has a 1/8″ jack on the back to allow for device other than iPods such as computers, ect.

The crazy thing about this device is how good it sounds.… Click here to read more!