This morning I was originally headed out to see if there was any of the mist left along the Erie Canal. I was too late, but, as I was driving there I noticed there was some left in the higher areas near by. A quick U-turn and I took a road I do not remember actually taking before. It was headed up, so I took it. After a mile or so I happened upon a small cemetery. I put a page up for pictures from it. Nothing special, just some record shots. It is named the Robbins Cemetery. I never did get any of the mist. Always tomorrow…………

Update 12-10-2011: The next day there was another bit of mist/fog. I drove back to Robins Cemetery and managed a few shots with the mist. I have posted them on the same page as the originals.

Here are a few pics from a short walk in the woods on a late Fall day with full Sun and 60+F. A rare occurrence in Central NYS. Taken with a Canon XTi and a Canon EF 85mm f1.8. All images at full open aperture.

The lens used was indeed the Canon 85mm f1.8, not a Sigma as the images are mistakenly named.

Canon XTi with Peleng 8mm fisheye in M42 mount.

An hour or so later, after plowing through a bunch of mathematical drivel on many websites, I had a thought (and, yes, it did hurt – a lot!). In the olden film days, most lenses had DOF (depth of field) markings on them.

These, since they were from mainly the film and early autofocus 35mm sized film/full frame sensor days, were simple to adjust to hyperfocal (the largest DOF possible including infinity). Set the aperture to the desired size and set the focus with the infinity sign on the same aperture mark. A look at the distance lined up with the other matching aperture mark gave you the closest focus point.

An example >> With the lens set at F22, the infinity mark at F22, and the other mark at 5 feet (for example here only!); everything from 5 feet away to infinity would be in focus.

Ah ha!
Full Frame = use the same values

Now, the mumbo jumbo well known on the Internet, where everything is made as complicated as possible in order to be known as an expert out standing in the field (old joke – I know). The bottom line after reading between lines was- a full frame lens has less depth of field when used on a crop sensor. Simple so far. How much less you ask, well – following directions; using a TI 2943 function calculator and Kentucky windage; it comes out that a 1.5X crop sensor will work out to be about 1 F stop less on the lens markings. Examples: Using a 1.5/6 crop sensor – set the aperture to F8 and use F11 for the infinity mark. Using a 2.0X crop sensor – set the aperture to F5.6 and use F11 for the infinity mark.

Sounds pretty good. Off to the field (OK no more field jokes) to check out this wisdom. Canon XTi (1.6X crop) with the Industar 50mm lens and it works as determed by the SWAG method above. (Mr. Spock, how long until the dilithium crystal containment explodes, and us with it? Well, Captain, since my sensor array is offline, my best Scientific Wild Ass Guess is .. massive explosion follows..) OK, on with the Olympus e-510 (2X crop) and it works again. Good enough for my street shooting anyways.

The images below are shot with the Olympus e-510 and the Industar 50-2. The lens is set at F8 and the focus with the infinity at F16. I felt F11 would be too dark in a lot of places in NYC and the lens is only marked to F16, so I picked F8. The closest shot to the lamp pole was 60 feet from the round bushes that are nicely in focus as is the lamp post. Why use the lamp post? Well I figured it would pretty well pose as a person’s height without asking for minimum wage. The lens markings show 5 feet as the minimum and infinity as the maximum. Well, due to the loss of actual DOF due to the crop value, the focus falls off pretty much at about 10 feet close to 100 feet distant in real world as can be seen in the pictures. I stepped back about 10 feet for each image. In the last image the bush is about 90 feet away. So, I have arrived at a setting that is approximately 10-100 feet in focus. Good enough for street shooting for me. (I did change the distance on the lens from meters to feet. I also fudged a bit when converting infinity from meters to feet)

Remember to read my warning at the bottom of the right hand column for my weasel room if you follow my instructions. They worked for me, but, perhaps not for you.

OMG !!! AM I GUILTY OF INTERNET MUMBO JUMBO ? After checking above, I see no place where the use of a calculator or my phone a friend is needed. Phew !

The focus ring has very nice damping. Smooth and stays put. However, the aperture ring is very looooooooose. Since the entire range from f3.5 to 16 is only about 40 degrees of rotation (by eyeball reckoning), it sometimes (quite often actually) changes between shots. The lens cover fits on the ring and I wonder if by removing and replacing the cover, the ring becomes loosened? I had considered using it as a street lens by super gluing it at f8 and also gluing the focus at the hyper focus value of f16 – I still may do this.

For the price, it is well worth purchasing just to have it in your pocket for street shooting. It is not as sharp overall as a $300USD+ pancake lens from a major manufacturer, but, it costs about 1/10th as much. See my page of shots from NYC on 4-16-2011 using this lens and my Olympus e-510 to the right. In addition, I have used it with my modified Fuji S2 (the mount replaced with a cheap M42 adapter ring to allow infinity focus), a couple of Canon EOS film cameras and my digital XTi. It plays well with them all.

Last night I bought a *new* copy of the lens in M42 mount for $29 delivered from Moscow on e*bay. There are two versions sold- one with the M39 mount and one with M42. It is six years newer (made in 1977), it will be interesting to see if the physical aspects have changed at all. Russian lenses seemed to be mass produced and then warehoused out as the need came. So, it is not uncommon to purchase new + unused lenses over 30 years old. Sort of like the cosmoline coated rifles from the late WWII era that are available still.

As indicated above, I have no reservations about recommending this lens. Last night there were over 50 of them for sale on e*bay. Go for the cheaper end of the pricing. A couple of dealers think that by charging over $100USD for this lens makes it better than the $30USD ones. Check out the sellers feedback, a good Russian dealer usually has thousands of sales with a low percentage of negatives (you certainly cannot please everyone all the time).

Update 06-16-2011

I received the new lens today – I purchased it on e*bay on June 2nd in the Evening EST – since that would be late night/early morning I figure the turn around time to be ‘door to door’ of 14 days. Very good time I believe. The lens is in immaculate shape. I paid $29USD for the lens and shipping. The seller on e*ay is – grandseller with 3846 positives at this writing and 100% positive feedback.

The aperture adjustment is smooth and tight.

I have just spent a bit of time trying to get a Ubuntu CD to boot on a Power PC Mac G4 single 400 mHz processor 512MB RAM 2x AGP video card, Ethernet. All I can say is DUH! I have been able to put Ubuntu on a Levono N500, several small PII PC’s and such with no problem. Well, I finally figured out what was going on. The keyboard, a generic from Staple’s, while acceptable to the G4 under OSX 10.4, will not work when booting – the ‘c’ is not recognized. Further, the ISO file on a CD will not work- it has to be on a DVD. I hope this helps someone else to save time.

1) Burn the ISO file from the Ubuntu website on a DVD, even though it says to put on a CD
2) Use a MAC compatible keyboard while booting the DVD, I borrowed one from my main Power Mac.
3) Make sure you are using a Ubuntu Distro labeled as powerpc in the name. I used ‘ubuntu-10.04-desktop-powerpc.iso’
4) Put the ISO file on your desktop in a corner to make step 5 easier
5) Burn the DVD with the Apple Disk Utility that comes with OSX

I will add info here as the installation goes onwards.

Update 1
– still doing install on HD – taking a while on a blank 160GB drive
Be prepared to do some squint and stare as, at least in my situation, Ubuntu could not figure out the video during the live CD installation prior to the hard drive installation. The low-res screen is terrible! It might work better, if you are able, to remove the built in AGP video card and substitute a plain vanilla PCI card. No guarantee, but if I ever do this again, I will surely try it.
Update 2
– installed on hard drive but unable to get better than 800×600 screen
I spent about 6 hours following several different ways of getting the old el cheapo monitor to be recognized. I went to the Ubuntu sites and the Apple sites and nothing actually worked. Finally I took my own advice and pulled the OEM 2x AGP video card out and put in a plain vanilla PCI video card. First, I tried re-booting and the installation would not accept the new video card and went black. Then I put the live/install DVD back in and did a live start up – voila! All the modes from H800-1260! Then I did a new install over the old. Now it will be another couple of hours of updates (377 files off the Ubuntu site) before I can consider it a done deal and go shopping for a flat screen.
To summarize what I have learned the hard way- the fact that a monitor comes up with only 800×600 and as an unknown monitor only means it is an old monitor that is not plug and play- the low resolution is the fault of the OEM 2x AGP card.
Update 3
– all is well
The 377 updates are all installed. The screen looks good. I had to replace the CDROM drive as the original one started to do a whole lot of searching and clicking. I replaced it with an old 16X DVDR drive I found in a box on the floor. I can always plug in my external firewire DVDRW if I need to write anything before I find a good sale on a replacement. Also, I would like to boost the RAM to 1GB, however the price of replacing the PC100 sticks is a sticking point when the whole idea is a cheap online system. I guess I never mentioned that I was doing this to use online while the Ethernet dual 450 mHz G4 1.5 RAM is being used for photography. The only item I actually will be considering soon is a basic flat screen ~ 20″. I just can’t imagine using the 14″CRT I used to set up the Linux machine. This leaves enough parts (a friend bequeathed me four G4 machines of various flavors from a company upgrading to the Intel Apple line and I had purchased another one used) to make a third machine that will need RAM and a DVDRW to complete. Perhaps next Winter. I hope I remember to re-read this posting BEFORE I start
Update 4
– memory ordered
I found a seller on e*bay selling 256MB PC100 cards for ~$5US each. I bought two separate deals at $9.99 for two cards and .99 cents shipping. They are pulls from PowerPC’s. I will soon have 1GB of memory for the Ubuntu G4 and 512MB for the last G4 future upgrade. While closing the box, I noticed just how close the memory chips are enclosed by the case and the internal CD/DVD drive. In the past on a dual G5 I had heat problems from the memory chips overheating and had to run with the case open. I believe I will remove the drive to allow better air flow, put one of those neat looking memory card reader / USB / Firewire / audio units that fit in the very front of a 5.25 space and put the drive in an external firewire enclosure. If I can find some neato thing to put in the 3.5 space, I will ditch the ZIP drive. If I do the same to the main machine, I will be able to transfer stuff between the units via a 16GB memory card, keeping the main box offline. Gotta keep these G4′s running !
Update 5
– some final notes
I purchased an LG GH22 CD/DVDRW internal drive from B*estB*y, put it in the G4 and immediately noticed a strange behavior. The tray would only open halfway, hesitate, and close right back up. Also, Ubuntu did not immediately recognize the drive as installed. I figured that by updating Ubuntu both would be fixed. Half right as usual, the drive was recognized as being mounted, but not by model or brand name, further, the tray still would not open correctly.
A couple years ago I purchased, from e*by, a dozen used Bel*in external drive enclosures. They have both USB and firewire connections. I put the LG drive in one of these and it works OK as far as the drive opening and closing and reading files off a DVD is concerned. I don’t have the inspiration currently to try to try the writing of a DVD/CD, but, the speed at which the files were read with the drive with a firewire connection is very impressive over the original Apple drive.
At this point, I see I will have to purchase a PCI card with USB and firewire sockets, a rodent, a flatscreen, and probably a used Apple DVD drive since the Firewire drive will not work as a boot drive. Otherwise, I am well on my way to having an online machine that is fairly virus, etc proof; keeping the dual G4 for my photography completely isolated, except for occasional quick update searches.

November 27, 2010 was a cold, clear night with an almost full moon. This is a shot of an old cemetery, lit only by the moonlight. The moon was almost directly behind the camera and very high. The clouds are backlit by city lights approximately 23 miles away.

Canon XTi, Canon f1.8 50mm MkI, f setting 5.6, shutter 30 sec, ISO 1600

I was invited to go with some friends to this event in Washington DC. I am not normally a political type person, however, I decided to take the trip to experience the event.

It was impressive, we caught the first Metro in the morning at an originating terminal and by the third stop it was pretty much full. An aside here – there were literally hundreds of people waiting to even get into the station itself as we pulled out on time. I am sure a delay in departure of even five minutes would have filled it.

We walked from the main Metro station to the Lincoln Memorial area. It was easy to find – just follow the people. When we arrived around 8:30ish (1 1/2 hour before the start), there was already a large crowd, however there was still room to set up chairs. I took pictures from about 1/3 of the way back from the Lincoln Memorial building itself. The people kept coming in and soon the area was pretty much people getting very close to each other.

When Sarah Palin was speaking, I had decided to work my way back to the WWII Memorial, it took me through her speech and into the next speaker to get there. It literally was a chore to work through the press of people still arriving. A couple of pictures in that area and I headed up to the base of the Washington Monument to get some height. Along the way I took shots with both the 8mm Peleng and the Canon 28-135 IS – with and without the 1.7 extender. Most of the distant shots of the overall rally areas were taken with the Washington Monument directly behind me – to give some scale. The distance between the 2 is ~ 6200feet or ~ 1.2 miles. The wooded areas to each side of the reflecting pool are hiding additional open areas where screens and speakers were set up. Theses areas were also full of people.

I wandered around to the front of the Washington Monument and took some shots of the other event that day- Reclaiming the Dream. It had not started as yet when the pictures were taken (1038AM from EXIF).

Here are some of the 217 images I took. Click on the small image to open it to a larger view.

Edit 1) I just added a larger size image of the ‘Big Brother Is Watching You Dangerous Taxpayers Helicopter” – click on the lower image to expand it – not either of the smaller thumbnails.
Edit 2) Added a pic of the other rally of the day.

Some details from DownTown Disney. April 2010. The statues are made of Lego’s.

Duck pond shots