Shortly after attending CDFP 383: Digital Capture I for the first class at Ryerson , I looked into what CDFP 384: Digital Capture II was like.  In the end, I decided that I’d be better off struggling to catch up, rather than coasting for the new bit of knowledge.  With my former instructor’s blessing, I switched.

I’ll jump ahead a little here.  For readers making the same decision between Digital Capture I and Digital Capture II, I would say the key criteria are:

1. Can you use your DSLR camera “properly”?
2. Do you routinely think about what makes for a good picture when taking pictures?

A test for #1 would be if you know how to set “Aperture Priority”, “Shutter Priority”, and “ISO”, and why you might.

A test for #2 would be whether you’re the shutterbug in your social circle, and whether you experiment with using your camera in different ways.

I got my first DSLR (Nikon D40) a couple months before starting the course, but I’m pretty good at reading manuals, and my previous point-and-shoot had priority modes that I experimented with.  I also read a lot on my own online.  Choosing Digital Capture II was a good choice for me, and I was particularly happy with the instructor, Rob Davidson.  Rob has a blog here: http://robsinlight.wordpress.com/.  Rob’s a wonderful teacher, a great mix of knowledge, experience, and passion for the subject, with the right touch of eccentricity and humour.

First, the course outline (in brief):

1. Photographic Composition
2. Using Adobe Lightroom
3. Understanding and photographing Light
4. Introduction to Studio Lighting
5. Review first two Assignments
6. Lighting for Still Life
7. Portraiture: Lighting and Photographing the human face
8. Portrait shooting session
9. Retouching for portraiture
10. Understanding and creating the B&W image
11. Shooting B&W
12. Photoshop & Lightroom workflow
13. Photoshop Techniques
14. Studio Visit and Assignment review

Rather than try to recall and go into detail about each class, I’ll simply talk about the parts that were most memorable for me.

The first lesson, on Composition, was an eye-opener for me.  It was instructive to simply go through pictures, and have the instructor point out specifically the aspects of the picture that made it interesting.  Combined with the subsequent class on Light, which followed a similar show-and-tell format, I was immediately educated to take pictures for my first couple assignments.  I think from simply having someone describe clearly what I’d only vaguely and primitively understood in my mind, helped a lot.

My first couple assignments:

http://flickr.com/photos/relgar/sets/72157608210928338/

The middle set of classes, on shooting in studio for still life and portraiture, was interesting b/c I’d never been in a studio environment before.  The lights were tungsten, i.e. incandenscent/hot lamps; flash use is not covered in the course.  The class overall had fun in these sessions, experimenting with lights, and working with each others’ subjects.  The portraiture class, with its use of live subjects, was quite a different experience for me; most of the class had no problem, but I had a hard time.  The instructor’s talk about needing to “establishing rapport” with the model was quickly understood more clearly.  My pictures from that session were just terrible; I’ll omit them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/relgar/sets/72157608555414185/

Unfortunately, I missed both sessions on Black & White, to my regret.  Good black&white pictures aren’t as easy as just hitting “desaturate” on a picture manager.  I would’ve liked to understand more precisely what I should be trying for in black&white that’s different than colour pictures.

The last few sessions focused more on the use of Adobe LightRoom 2 and Adobe Photoshop.  We covered the basics, e.g. cropping, white balance, colour adjustments, etc.  It was somewhat expected that the students would read/learn on their own, too, though.  The Photoshop classes were probably one of my favourite classes, as they covered how to make common problems, e.g. red eye, skin imperfections, dark circles under the eyes, people blinking, removing objects from the scene, etc.  The way it was taught also provided the foundation for figuring out how to fix other kinds of problems, as I later discovered; a credit to the instructor.

BTW, LightRoom2 and Photoshop are expensive, but Ryerson’s campus store sells these products at student discounted price (much cheaper!).  Also, whatever other software products you have and use, for purposes of this class it would be better to use LightRoom 2 and Photoshop.  It’s what the instructor uses to explain things.  FWIW, I use Bibble and Gimp, but I have what might be described as “special needs” (or perhaps “obstinate mindset”), and fully realized the potential for self-inflicted misery in trying to translate the course instruction for alternative software tools.  Personally, I didn’t find it too onerous, but I’m a pretty computer-oriented person, to say the least. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the course, as much the material as the way the instructor taught it.  One last remark about the course: an oft-repeated mantra was “good photographs are determined by the 6″ behind the viewfinder, not the 6″ in front of it”, in reference that a better photographer was far more important than better equipment.  As I start down the road of this popular hobby, a minefield of expensive “must-have” gadgets and their add-ons, I’m trying to keep that in mind!

Plextor is the “high end” name in CD/DVD drives, but they carry a high premium.  Most go with middle-of-the-road brands like LG or BenQ, including myself until recently.

My BENQ DW1650 drive seemed a stalwart workhorse for a couple years, but started with quirks: turning rewritable discs into coasters, insisting taking the disc out and putting it back in… I thought it was just the new discs I was using, but the clincher came when burning wedding picture DVDs for friends.  While the DW1650 could read the discs it created, my friends’ vanilla DVD reader could not; a frustrating waste of time as I diagnosed the problem, and a disconcerting worry for backups I have on DVD.

Plextor prices have come down a lot; they used to cost a few hundred for even the lowest end one.  Typically I don’t chase brand names in technology, going by specs, but clearly box specs alone didn’t tell the full story here.  So this time around I went with the Plextor PX820-SA.

They look about the same outside, but the new burner is worlds different.  Compared to the BENQ, the Plextor:

• was able to use the discs that the DW1650 had decided were coasters, with a simple erase.
• can read newly burned discs immediately, without ejecting the tray.
• created discs that could be read by everyone else’scomputers.

Perhaps it’s merely the newness and not the Plextor name that created good results, and the new burner will get flaky with age, but I certainly hope not.  The salesman I bought the drive from told me something interesting, though:

• Him: “You know why people buy Plextors, right?”
• Me: “Yup…” (thinking quality), “… wait, why?”
• Him: “To burn copyrighted DVDs.”

Oops.  Still totally worth getting for non-piracy uses, just to save the hassle of realizing a disc works on one computer and not another.

From time to time, I engage in what can be described as “buying toys destined to collect dust on shelves.”  Skipping the psychoanalysis of why I do it, I usually recognize when I’m trapped in that mode, which helps a towards breaking the cycle, but I still end up with some momentos.  The SleepTracker Pro might be one such.

The company website promises to “Say goodbye to blurry mornings!” and talks in laymen’s terms about the sleep cycle and how the key is to be woken up at the point in the sleep cycle where one is nearly awake anyway.

Naturally, I was skeptical at first, but it reviewed well (e.g. Wired) and received favourable commentary on Amazon.  It is ridiculously expensive for what appears to be an ugly, but otherwise normal digital watch.  However, curiosity eventually beat out good sense (also refer to frivolous-gadget-buying-mood above) and the watch duly arrived.

Does it work?  Yes, in a fashion.  Particularly the first few days, I was impressed by how much it did not suck.  It really did wake me up at times when I was half awake.  I would groggily turn over and nearly fall back into slumber when it would trigger, and only after waking did I realize that how close I had come to waking and going back to sleep.  Remembering to wear the watch to bed wasn’t troublesome at all, and of course I didn’t notice it all when asleep.

The watch seems to be a simple accelerometer: it can sense when it’s moved, like a pedometer.  As you sleep, it maintains an average on how often you move your arm.  It uses that average to “guess” when it should wake you up, i.e. +/- X minutes around your target wakeup time.  It uses a mild beeping sound, and can be set to vibrate, too.  Vibration with no sound is a surprisingly relaxing way to wake up.

The downsides?  Other than the cost (rip-off, really), it’s easy to sleep through the mild beeping and/or vibrations.  Also, if you don’t move much in your sleep, or you’re pinned down somehow (e.g. lots of pillows on the bed, hugging a body pillow), it won’t work very well because it assumes some arm movement when you’re in “light” sleep.

As I have to “set” the watch so that it knows when I’m going to bed each night (just hold down a button), one unexpected “benefit” is that I have to give a long look at what time I’m actually sleeping.  As the product manual says, SleepTracker isn’t a substitute for getting enough sleep… but the guilt it helps create might be beneficial towards that. 

Having usually devoted  my “hobby” time to the pursuit of computers, in its various incarnations, I don’t know much about cars. Now that I finally own one that I care about, I’m starting to learn and get “in tune” with my car.

For instance, I learned that the correct tire pressure is not what’s printed on the tire, but what’s printed on a sticker attached to the chassis.  ^_^

The most recent learning occurred with winter at Toronto’s doorstep, requiring winter tires to be put in (learning how they work along the way).  After they were swapped in, I was shocked to find that I actually do have a “feel” for the car.  The new winter tires went on under-inflated (27 psi instead of 33 psi), and the handling went “mushy”; small adjustments to the steering wheel had half their usual effect, acceleration and braking seemed similarly muted when making small adjustments.

The funny thing is that for a couple paranoia filled days, theories of incompetent mechanics messing up the insides of my car flitted through my head.  Not that I actually know enough about car internals to know what they could possibly have messed up!  Thankfully one of those theories was that the new tires probably did not have the right air pressure.

Probably pretty basic knowledge for anyone competent at car maintenance, but at least I’m improving! :p

Congratulations to Billy and Amnon!  Their unique wedding perfect reflected their own unique relationship and life perspectives.

I can’t recommend my picture set as a good collection for the event; I frequently didn’t even have my camera with me.  Instead, I refer to one of the official photographers:

http://flickr.com/photos/dragonx/sets/72157607893584485/

For reference, here’s what I managed to catch: http://flickr.com/photos/relgar/collections/72157608348537750/

On the most recent of my many jaunts to the Bay Area of California, I took the time to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/relgar/sets/72157608229288145/

It was quite nice.  While Chicago’s aquarium has more acreage, and dolphins, the jellyfish exhibit at Monterey was as good as advertised.  The salt water tank and the older (i.e. huge) fish inside were also very impressive; my mouth watered as the bluefin tuna swam by. 

Finally made a dent in the picture processing backlog!

May I present… the wedding of Leslie and Gary!

http://flickr.com/photos/relgar/collections/72157608017790912/

As always, comments and marking pictures as favourites is appreciated; it helps me understand and take better pictures!

I recently realized that Starbucks‘ espresso machines requires that the barrista make two espresso shots each time (it has two nozzles).  I’d benefited a couple times before from an unexpected offer of a “bonus” espresso shot, but had assumed it was because the barrista mistakenly made two espressos.  After the third time, when there were no other customers around, it was pretty obvious that this could not be the case.

For cafes that do low volumes of espressos, such as those in Indigo stores - especially on weekend mornings or evenings - this seems a little silly.  I guess on sleepy Sunday mornings, I’ll be going to Indigo for my hit, rather than across the street.  :p

While packing for another trip to San Francisco, I took a break to do other things.  I returned to find that my cats had made some additions…

I really had nothing to with the additions.  I wonder what they’re trying to tell me…

A fellow alumnus was in town recently, so it seemed a great opportunity to spend some of my soon-to-be-lost vacation hanging with a friend, seeing the old campus again and taking Zipcar’s MIN Convertible out for a spin!

The convertible is a lot of fun, by the way… if you can figure out how to operate it!  Took us an hour of fiddling and being on the phone with Zipcar support, but it turns out there’s locking latches in the trunk that need to be set, or the computer refuses to take the top down (it will operate the sunroof only).  In addition to locking the latches, the onboard computer only “re-detects” the latches if the sunroof is closed AND you restart the engine.  Restarting the engine with the sunroof open doesn’t reset it.

There’s not much to say about Waterloo, it’s all about the pictures and resultant nostalgia really.  For example…

The campus seemed smaller somehow… I’m pretty sure I was in better shape then than now, so perhaps it was the weight of the books or the sleep deprivation that made it seem larger.  Interestingly, I seemed to remember most of the shortcuts and relative position of buildings - once I got within reasonable range anyway.  Here and there, I spent a few moments reliving those halcyon days…

I did keep my photograhy class assignment in mind, so many shorts were taken with “interestingness” in mind, as you can see from my commentary in the description.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/relgar/sets/72157607439831410/