My real name

I picked up a new netbook last night. It’s been over a year since I last looked at them so I knew almost nothing about current models. I wanted something lightweight with excellent battery life that would run Linux nicely to replace my MSI Wind U100. I also wanted it to be as cheap as possible.

It looked as though almost any current netbook with a 6 cell battery would do the trick. Happily the cheapest netbook I could find was also entirely lacking in glossy plastics so I walked out of the store the proud owner of a $340 Samsung NP145 Plus, whatever the heck that is.

A quick google showed that there were some issues with function keys and suspend on this model, but there were posts on getting it working and a PPA with drivers - I was resigned to putting a bit of work in but cautiously optimistic that I wouldn’t be running Windows on it long.

The process went something like:

• Install Xubuntu 11.10 from a USB key
• Notice that everything works except the backlight adjustment
• Notice that the backlight adjustment does work at the Grub bootloader
• Dredge up the append ‘acpi_backlight=vendor’ to the Grub boot line from memory
• Wait, what? That’s all ?

Suspend works. Sound works. Wireless works. It pretty much all just goes. 

Despite having picked this model out entirely for being super cheap, it looks like I’ve lucked out. The keyboard feels great, the build quality is excellent and the battery life is amazing. Even better, it takes DDR3 so it has happily omnomnomed one of the spare 2GB DIMMs I had lying around from upgrading my Mac. It runs cool and quiet. The touchpad buttons have a really nice click to them. There are just so many more nice things I can say about this machine, which is absurd given my cellphone is worth more than two of these.

Xubuntu runs very well. I’ve moved away from Ubuntu for the same reason as everyone else I know - I really struggle with Unity. I don’t really want much from a desktop environment - a nice launcher (gnome-do), network-manager and a reasonable power management framework. Xubuntu is a nice place to be, with all of the Ubuntu packages just an apt-get away but without too much in the way of fuss and bother. 

It also looks really pretty :)

I’m not very good at street photography. I’m too timid and hesitate and then the moment is gone. The Fuji X100 is a street photographer’s dream, and yet I walk down the street carrying it in my hand never taking a shot for fear someone will take offense.

I spent a week in Wellington recently visiting a friend and we spent a fair amount of time walking around with our cameras. I found his presence reassuring - all 6’ and 120kg of it - and started to feel a little more brave. Interestingly, what triggered the change was swapping cameras with him for a short stretch of waterfront stroll. Now armed with a 7D and big intimidating 24mm f1.4L, I found myself seeing the world differently. 

Looking through the viewfinder isolated me from the scene in a way that made me feel invisible. The fast auto focus and even faster shutter speeds allowed for quick frame and fire, before I was noticed. I found myself becoming confident, even aggressive, quickly snapping off images of anything I liked without worrying who would see me.

After handing the tank back, the feeling stayed with me. Perhaps not so much the aggression but my new found confidence held and I was able to shoot people without being afraid. 

The Wellington trip was quite a good one for photography. While I was there someone set a car on fire in the middle of a pedestrian mall in a very dangerous form of protest. Dave and I saw the smoke rising high into the sky and then dashed to his apartment so he could get a telephoto lens. The X100 not having this luxury, I was ready to go. 

35mm is a nice focal length for photo journalism. It requires getting close to the subject, which draws the viewer into the scene and engages them. It feels like standing there. Admittedly, shots at 300mm from the end of the street are better than nothing if the police cordon won’t let you get any closer.

I felt I had taken some great shots, and was very excited about my first attempts at both street photography and photojournalism with the X100. Small, quiet, unobtrusive - it’s great if you don’t want to be noticed. The high lasted right up until someone mentioned to me that the NZHerald had picked up one of my photographs on their story about the blaze. I clicked through to see which they had chosen. 

Oh. The one I had taken with my iPhone while not being able to see the screen to compose, just so I could get the shot on Twitter faster. 

Oh well. At least I’ve learned a valuable lesson - be brave and just shoot, and that the NZ media have bad taste in where they steal their images from.

Reposting old content from my now defunct Wordpress blog

The last year or so I have had trouble finding enthusiasm for digital photography. This was sad given how much I’ve enjoyed photography in the past, and also left me with a nagging sense of guilt for my insanely expensive camera collection.

I’ve decided to try and do something about this - and so I’ve swapped this:

For this:

The Sony NEX-5 is an interchangeable lens system camera that’s obviously inspired by the Micro 4/3 cameras from Olympus and Panasonic. It has a larger sensor than the Micro 4/3 systems, and a different lens mount for which there are only a few lenses available. It’s the smallest camera of it’s kind, and surprisingly cheap for the quality at $1499 NZD for the two lens kit. The kit includes a 16mm f/2.8 pancake, and an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. I’m having trouble getting photographs I like out of the 16mm but the 18-55mm is just stellar.

I made the switch because the Canon kit was too heavy and cumbersome to carry around on a daily basis, and I found myself leaving it at home more and more. I decided I needed to sell it while it was still worth doing so. It wasn’t an easy decision and I thought it would be hard to give up - how would I survive without my 24mm f/1.4 L or my 100mm f/1.8 macro?

Turns out, quite well.

When I first started taking photos with a DSLR it was with my ex-partner’s 20D and the then Canon kit 18-55, which was considered a very bad lens. Some of the best photographs I’ve ever taken were with this setup, as I learned how to use that one camera and that one lens very, very well. Looking through my flickr stream, I think the majority of the photographs taken with my 7D are actually worse than those taken by my cheaper cameras. The 7D is a superb piece of equipment, but I allowed acquiring lenses to get in the way of learning how to get the best out of what I had.

So far, the NEX-5 is just what the doctor ordered. Not only did I manage to swap out my Canon gear for the NEX with a cool few grand spare, but being so much smaller and lighter it comes with me everywhere. The image quality of the Sony sensor is just spectacular, giving me crisp, sharp photographs with great colour. I’m still learning how to take good photographs with it but so far I’m impressed with what the camera is clearly capable of. When Sony release the new primes they’ve announced are coming this year I’m going to pick up a 24mm or a 50mm (depending on how fast and how expensive they are) and consider my set more or less complete. They wont be coming for a few months - but I think the lens I have and I want to get better acquainted first.

Images below taken with the Sony NEX-5.

I have long been intrigued by the idea of Project 365. The general idea is to take a photograph each day for a year and post them online. There are quite a few tangible benefits of the project, including a very vibrant online community of people also participating who can be very supportive.

Last month, I thought I would ignore my fear of failure and give it a try. I’m only up to day 20, but I am already finding the project is generating a lot of thought for me. Some of my experiences have been typical of those who take on the project, and some have been quite surprising.

I assumed that the project would get me out there more, taking more photographs. What I didn’t realise was that it would actually cause me to take fewer photographs. I’ve become wary of ‘using up’ too many good photography ideas in one session. Since the idea is to take the photograph daily, if I have a good idea for tomorrow’s photograph then for it to count I need to take it tomorrow. This causes me to be miserly with inspiration out of fear that I’ll need those ideas later when I’m struggling to come up with something interesting to shoot that day.

Before taking on this project, I would only upload my best images. I use Flickr as an online portfolio, a place to display art photography and invite criticism to learn from. Since starting Project 365, I have felt that the standard of images I am posting has dropped. Some people seem to be able to produce a half dozen excellent photographs a day but I have never learned that skill. If it were not for the feeling of pressure to upload something, anything, many of the Project 365 images would not have made the grade.

Of course, it goes without saying that taking a photograph every day can feel like a bit of a drag at times. Some evenings I just want to go to bed with a book and I start to feel absurdly resentful of the entire idea.

That isn’t to say that the entire experience has been negative. The one sublime gain of taking on this project is that I am now back to seeing everything around me with a photographer’s eye. It has brought back the feeling of moving through a hidden world of glory that I can translate for others through the use of my lens.

This is how I felt when I first started taking photography seriously. Somewhere along the way I lost that passion and vision as I instead amassed gear that I thought could replace it.

I’m very thankful to Project 365 that it has helped me bring those feelings back. Still, I feel the negatives are enough for me to take my lessons learned and call it a day. I’m going to continue to carry my camera and to consciously cultivate seeing the world with wonder but I am now going to remove the pressure to perform whether I feel like it or not.

I am now content to fail.

The fast lens and excellent high ISO performance makes the Fuji X100 brilliant for casual night photography. Both of these shots were taken using the in-camera black and white, and both are actually slightly noisier after processing than the SOOC files. 

Handheld, manual shutter at 1/30th, and ISO dropped as low as I could to still get the exposure I was after. (2000)

Camera braced against the handrail of a bridge, manual shutter at 1/15th and much higher ISO as it was a very dark scene. (3200)

I’m still just in awe that this little wonder handles high ISO better than my Canon 7D.

I have a reasonably large collection of old and antique cameras and lenses that I really should go through and catalogue. The extent of my attention so far has been to steal all the nice Minolta Rokkor primes and adapt them to my Sony NEX.

I adore the high ISO performance of the Fuji X100.

I have only been aware that it exists for two weeks, but in that time through my reading about this camera I became convinced it was perfect for me. It’s a compact marketed by Fuji as being the professional’s choice, featuring an APS-C sensor and a fixed 23mm lens (35mm equivalent) with a maximum aperture of f2.0. The relatively large sensor and wide aperture mean this camera excels at low-light photography without requiring the bulk of a DSLR.

It has all the manual control you could possibly ask for, with a manual aperture ring on the lens and external dials to set the shutter speed and exposure compensation. The manual focusing does leave somewhat to be desired but I am content to either set the camera to hyperfocal focusing or leave it in automatic. 

It also looks absolutely stunning, with retro styling inspired by rangefinders. It’s hard not to notice the similar style cues to the current Leica range.

While the camera reviews very well, there are also many posts by people who are frustrated with what is commonly called a clunky user interface. I found the Fuji X100 posts at neilvn.com to be an excellent read while I was researching the camera, as they gave me a clear idea of whether these issues would really cause problems in day to day shooting. I was also inspired by the quality of the photographs the camera can produce in the hands of a professional photographer.

Other helpful reviewers were http://www.stevehuffphoto.com, and http://www.kenrockwell.com, with Ken Rockwell’s site including a users guide and a wide range of real life photographs to examine.

I haven’t had any real issues with the UI so far, but I have noticed that I seem to be more willing to adapt to a different way of using a camera than many of my photographer friends. It seems many people expect more customisation so they can change the settings and interface to suit the way they are used to working. I certainly wouldn’t want to make a value judgement about either way of approaching a camera, but this camera does seem to require someone who is willing to learn and change their habits.

I was a little worried that the fixed lens would be hard to get used to, but I am fast falling in love with the 35mm field of view. It’s so close to what my eyes are seeing that I am coming to learn how to compose before raising the camera at all. I’m struggling a little with macro photography - the Fuji has a very nice macro mode, but I seem incapable of stopping myself from shoving the camera right up to my subject. The most effective macro shots I’ve seen browsing flickr taken at this focal length take a wider view and isolate their subject using the rule of thirds and DoF instead of filling the frame, something I’m still trying to learn.

The image quality the Fuji delivers is nothing short of stunning, particularly at high ISO ratings. Even at ISO 3200 the images are excellent and in day time shots it feels like the quality of light has more presence than I am used to seeing on my Canon sensors.

As motivation to keep developing my photography, I’ve decided to try a project365 and post a photograph a day for the next year. I don’t feel my photographs are as striking with the Fuji yet as they were with my DSLR but I know this reflects on me rather than the camera. Hopefully having it as my ubiquitous companion for the next 365 days will help me truly learn how to master its potential.