The Humans Are Dead

A couple days ago I got my first chance to venture out of the backyard with my new camera. I know, I know… cemetery photos are totally “photography 101″. At least it’s not more flowers and I did make some atempt to stay away from the typical cemetery shots on a few of these. I’ve figured out most of the camera features but I’m still getting to know how the camera reacts to different lighting situations. The instant feedback of a digital camera really helps to speed the learning process becasue you can instantly see how something like changing the shutter speed affects the shot. If a shot is over exposed you just trash it, make an adjustment and take another.

I finally decided on and bought a new camera. I’ve been looking at both the Nikon D50 and the Pentax *istD L trying to decide what to get. I had a Pentax K1000 back in Uni with a macro/wide lens that I loved, but somebody walked away with it. I haven’t done any serious photography since I lost that camera. I few years ago I received a Nikon EM with a couple nice lenses as a gift, but unlike when I was in school, I no longer have easy access to a dark room. So I’ve never even used the Nikon, but of course there is the possibility that the lenses I have would work with the digital Nikon body.

The decision was made when I went out to Circuit City this weekend to check both cameras out in person. Handling both cameras I liked the feel of the Pentax much better. The hand grip on the Pentax has a kind of hollowed out area where your fingers grip the camera which I thought made for a more comfortable and solid feeling grip of the camera. The Pentax is a bit smaller and a lot lighter than the D50 even tho it features a bigger 2.5″ screen.

Now I already think I’m pretty biased towards the Pentax anyway, but the feel of the camera reinforced it. Then I looked at the price. The Pentax *istD L is on sale this week and offers a $100 rebate, bringing the price of the camera to around $450!! I went home to check prices on the web to see if by chance they had dropped elsewhere. I didn’t find any other retailers offering the rebate, so I went back to Circuit City yesterday and bought it and a high speed 1GB SD memory card that was also on sale.

I’ve only had time to mess around with it a little bit, but I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I headed out to the back yard to take a few shots and they turned out very nice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year the company that I work for does the website of the local airshow as comp work in exchange for a little advertising. I’ve personally built the site the last 5 or 6 years. The airshow was this weekend.

Springfield Air Rendezvous

Anyway, the different acts give a limited number of rides to the big airshow sponsors depending on availability and scheduling. This year the airshow folks offered up a pair of rides for my boss and me. So Thursday afternoon (6.22.06) the boss went up with the Lima Lima Flight Team and I took a flight with the Red Stars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ahh the first post. This is where you’re supposed to make promises and layout the grand scheme of things to come. Well, at this point the scheme isn’t all that grand and certianly not planned out. My intention is for this to be a journal of my design, development and art work, to which I’m sure other topics will bleed in.

Now I have to find the free time to design a template for this mess of a “blog”.

But first, in programming tradition, I give you the…

Hello World