Posts

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D300: MB-D10 Battery Grip

When I picked up my D300 I also bought the battery grip, as I mentioned in a previous post my primary reason for buying it was the ability to be able to use AA batteries if need be. I also bought a spare battery for the camera which also fits into the grip so when it came in I of course tried it out.

When you buy the grip it comes with two battery holders, one for the same type of battery the D300 takes, and one that holds 8 AA batteries. Also of note is that the grip is able to boost the frame rate of the D300 from 6 frames per second to 8 frames per second but there is a catch.… Click here to read more!

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D300: Buffer Size and Limitations

Lesson Learned: If using the D300 and you have Active D-Lighting enabled it will limit your frame buffer to 12 shots.

Active D-lighting is a new feature found in the D300, as well as the D3 I believe. Basically, it’s a way for the camera to optimize the image as you shoot. I’m really boiling it down here but it will enhance the dynamic range of an image to make the photo look more like you eye sees the world. Ken Rockwell has a much better explanation on his D300 review, an excellent resource. It’s the place I go for the real scoop on all things photographic.… Click here to read more!

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D300: Interval Shooting

I had band rehearsal last night and, just for fun, I put the D300 up on the tripod and set it to take a shot every minute. I was able to put the ‘Interval shooing’ option into my ‘Custom’ menu so it was easy enough for me to get to but it’s not all that intuitive to setup. Once I completed the options they made sense but at first glance I was somewhat confused as to what I was changing. They feature set offered for interval shooting is pretty good though. You call have it start shooing at an interval right away, or at a specified time which makes is versatile both for fun time lapse shoots as well as for some kind of surveillance shooting.… Click here to read more!

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Topslakr.com Format Change

This blog is now more then a year old, quite a milestone for me. Typically I throw a blog up, use it for a few months and then take it down and replace it with something new, overwriting any data that had been there before. I’ve been blogging for years now but all I have to show for it is 12 months of content. If you are stalking me though you could look over at the wayback machine which seems to have a spotty record of me online since 2004. They are missing anything older than that as well as 2006.… Click here to read more!

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Review: Nikon D300

Since I bought my Nikon D40 back about a year ago I’ve taken nearly 20,000 shots with it and could not be happier with the device. It does everything I had hoped it would and had a large enough feature set that I could grow into it a bit. I love it. It marks a real turning point for me in terms of becoming a ‘photographer’. One thing to be clear on though, spending money on cameras does not a good photographer make. What the D40 does do for me is allow the camera to get out of the way and let me take pictures.… Click here to read more!

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My OLPC Laptop

I’ve spoken about the OLPC laptop before, Twice, in fact. Mine has finally arrived after much wasted time on Fedex’s part. I still prefer UPS. Fedex was supposed to deliver the OLPC on Dec 20th, I didn’t receive it until the 26th. Whoops!

Within the box you find the laptop, a power adapter, the battery, a quickstart guide and a letter from Nicholas Negroponte.

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The first thing I noticed was just how small it is. For whatever reason I was expecting it to be about 50% larger. The keyboard is very small and I cannot touch type, I can only hunt and peck with my index fingers.… Click here to read more!

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Leave Your Jacket in the Car!

First off, I live in New Hampshire. We have more then 12″ of snow on the ground and the high today is expected to be 25 degrees Fahrenheit. My recommendation to you is to leave you jacket in the car. Always.

Lets look at the facts. Your home is warm, you car is warm (or will be in a minute) and your destination is likely to be warm. So why are you wearing a jacket? How long does it take you to get from the door to the car? Lets be generous and call it 30 seconds. So, when you are ready to leave you put on a jacket, hat, gloves, and boots and dash outside and jump into your car.… Click here to read more!

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Blog Downtime

Had a bit of downtime this past week. It was totally my fault. As you may know from reading the Server Configuration Page, I run this webserver as a VM using VMWare‘s VMWare Server. Long story short, they released a beta of the next version of VMWare Server, VMWare Server 2.0, and I just had the try it out.

As of right now the software is working great. I screwed up the uninstall/install process of the software which caused me some unneeded headache but once I sorted out my mistake and got things rolling I’ve been pretty happy with it.… Click here to read more!

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‘Tis the Christmas Season

Thats right, I said it. I celebrate Christmas and I’m not afraid to say it! It doesn’t bother me that you might celebrate something else or nothing at all. If you are Jewish then please wish me a happy Hanukkah, I promise not to be offended. This current atmosphere or being insanely politically correct is, in fact, crazy.

I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, even if I do say so myself, and I am able to cope with the notion that you might have a different set of beliefs then I do. What is the goal of these people who get so worked up over Christian or Jewish or whatever else references?… Click here to read more!

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Using all that you can

Well, the greatest holiday of the year has come and gone and what do we have to show for it? Heaps and heaps of food. Sure, we all know how to make the turkey last, making all manner of turkey recipes for weeks to come but what about the bones? The carcass. You make stock of course!

I’m a meat eater and I have no problem with that. I have a lot of problems with they way meat is produced, hence my on going effort to try to produce at least some of it on my own, but eating meat is not something I find offensive or wrong.… Click here to read more!