niels olson

In the French Quarter I must agree Bourbon Street is worthless, the streets adjacent to it are far superior. The St Charles Street Ferry is a good route for old homes in general, I only wish I had a tilt-shift lens. City Park was also great.

Here's a photo from one of my sets on Flickr. The exif data indicates I

was manually controlling exposure and had my D100 set to f/11, 1/400 s,

ISO 640, colorspace was I (sRGB with neutral balance), the lens was a

20/2.8, and the white balance was auto. I was shooting with the setting

from 11 am to noon. Obviously there's a lot of blow-out but, that's the

objective in snow. I probably could have recovered a lot of detail by

1) stopping down a bit (no more than a stop though, given the colors

appear about right) 2) shooting in Adobe RGB, and 3) shooting in RAW.

One thing I've found is that telephoto lenses remove all context in

snow because they omit so much background. People end up appearing to

float in the whiteness. If at all possible shoot with a wide ange lens.

If you're shooting snow sports, be prepared to get scary close and have

the shutter set to fire continuously until the trigger is released. You

still have to pick that first shot, but you may be surprised by the

second or third shots you didn't have time to frame in the viewfinder.<div></div>

A comment on .Kaa's post. A yellow 8 is the typical filter for caucasians. If you need more blue to correct the yellow, then you're back to green.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684845709">Frenchmen Desire Good Children</a> was recommended by the reservations clerk at the Ramada. Apparantly the tour guides have to be licensed and they use this as their study guide. In addition to the Weather Channel, she also recommended <a href="http://www.theneworleanschannel.com/weather/index.html">WDSU</a> for local weather.

Well, I suppose if you did have the highest sum of ratings in a year, that might actually be worth a resume bullet, depending on the job.

I was logged in at the time. Not sure what was going on. Not sure if you can check my access in log files, but I'm certain I was logged in because I saw it again after my first post.

I find myself in the same situation as William Bean. I carry a Nikon D100, a 20, a 50, a 60 macro, and a 70-210 zoom, plus a polarizer and an neutral density .9. If I'm actually in photo safari mode I also carry a tripod.

It was something about a phone service package by company called packet8. It was one of the vertical banners, not the Google ads that go across the top. I have no banner ad in that space now.

photo.net users are far and away the highest quality photographers on the Internet. This community is educational, something few other sites accomplish. Mature is the right descriptor.

The banner ad "Nice package" currently being displayed on the forum

front page is the most offensive thing I've seen on this site. Can

some other ad be posted?

Don't be offering the choice booklist only by e-mail! Type it up once, put it on here and we'll all be indebted to you forever!

Excellent online textbook by a non-PhD: <a href="http://johnlind.tripod.com/science/">John Lind on photography</a>

I'd say Oahu is more expensive than the rest of America by 15-20%. That, of course, ranges from cheap at the military bases to insane around the tourist attractions.

 

If you applied a French Quarter shooting style to downtown Honolulu you could come away with some interesting pictures. Looking back, some of my best memories are the stores that cater to the locals. Involve the local fruit, the quilts, the people. There are waterfall parks all over the place, but ask before you go because they may be dry, depending on time of year. The north shore also has some good opportunities. There are small villages and groups of houses on the main road of the north shore that present some interesting studies. If you get to Maui, that's the real North Shore.

 

There's a crazy bazaar at the football stadium every Sunday. Ford Island has a couple of spectacular houses maintained for the senior officers, and the old control tower from the Pearl Harbor bombing still stands on Ford Island. The Missouri is also a touristy sort of show.

 

There warehouse district is hard to, but there are some intensely interesting craftsmen working in there. JJ Koa is one. Koa is a local wood. Check out the container store. They import furniture from Polynesia, literally in containers. Lots of hotels outfit their lobbies out of this hole-in-the-wall. Orchids cling to the concrete columns of the H1 highway between the warehouse district and Pearl Harbor like weeds, which could make an interesting contrast.

Here are some previous threads on New Orleans as well:

<ul><li><a href="/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00AuYo">Mardi Gras in New Orleans guide</a> by <a href="/shared/community-member?user_id=486572">Stan Strembicki</a><a href="/member-status-icons"></a> (2005-01-25)</li>

<li><a href="/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=008CkG">Latest update to American Journey - New Orleans</a> by <a href="/shared/community-member?user_id=425522">Rokkor Fan</a><a href="/member-status-icons"></a> (2004-05-09)</li>

<li><a href="/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=006aEK">New Orleans, Again, Next Week</a> by <a href="/shared/community-member?user_id=503305">Stephen W.</a><a href="/member-status-icons"></a> (2003-11-21)

</li>

<li><a href="/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005QzW">Looking for New Orleans locations</a> by <a href="/shared/community-member?user_id=696026">Dougal Ingram</a><a href="/member-status-icons"></a> (2003-07-05)

</li></ul>

I have an interview at Tulane on 31 March and I scheduled an extra day

to shoot the French Quarter, and anything else (recommendations?). I'm

looking for location recommendations, as well as any particular

nuances of New Orleans in March (weather? lighting? crime?) I plan to

take 35mm and digital SLRs with lenses between 20 and 210, a flash

(guide number: 92 feet), and some filters (ND .9, polarizer, green,

red, yellow, 812 for warming), maybe a tripod, what would you

recommend? Browsing around the web it looks like wide angles are the

order of the day. Is it worth it to haul myself out of bed at 4am to

get good light? If so, where's the best spot to catch those precious

dawn photons? Likewise, recommendations for sunset? Any particularly

good travel guides or photography books on New Orleans? <a

href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=425522">Antony

the Rokkor Fan</a>, has a good place to start <a

href="http://www.rokkorfiles.com/America.htm"> New Orleans

research</a>. Local artists or photographers you'd recommend (contact

info?)? How do I get to the rooftops to shoot the streets below? Any

film recommendations? Where's the closest camera store I could get

interesting film (tri-x pan, Velvia, TMAX, etc)?

Since you don't have the EH-5, here's the pins in order as you face them on the camera, clockwise starting from upper left: +, NC (no charge?), -, NC.

It may be a pin in the video cable, perhaps cheaper to repair.

My wife is from RI and has nothing but good things to say about Rizdy. She strongly encouraged my brother to take his MFA there (he ultimately decided on Nebraska because he's a Huskers fan). I know nothing about mica accept from their website.

 

General comments, not about either school:

 

Most small schools (less than 5,000 students) push the same advertising and admissions drivel through their public sites. Quite underwhelming, all. In general, I'd suggest you research the institutions by reading the newspapers of their local communities and journals relevant to your chosen subject, seeking articles written by faculty. Talk to professionals and pointedly ask them what they think of the graduates from these institutions.

 

Take chemistry (through physical chemistry if you dare), and physics (through quantum and optics, again, if you dare), and a programming course if you really want to know your subject from the inside out. Everyone's hero here, Bob Atkins, is a PhD physicist. The site was originally developed as a student project in Phil Greenspun's classroom (Computer scientist at MIT). If you really want to push an envelope, take biochemistry. Maybe you can come up with a rhodopsin-doped emulsion that's enzyme catalyzed and thus hyper-specific for one color.

 

I recently stumbled into a great idea: get a $25 pocket watercolor kit from Windsor-Newton (seriously the size of checkbook, even the brush is collapsable), and a pack of lanaquarelle watercolor paper (stock number 57-203). You'll learn to see and learn (yes learn about learning) more about your subject if you involve your motor cortex in your studies.

 

Since you're in Maryland, you may want to go to Edward Tufte's 1-day class in December, check out www.edwardtufte.com. I'd recommend his books to anyone involved in visual communication.

I just performed Doug Green's procedure, except I used naptha (what I had available). I would recommend not using alcohol unless you know it's 100% methanol: the balance of the stuff you get at the drug store is water, which is acidic. You may not notice water's acidity when you drink it, but look at the underside of an old car. It will terrorize your diaphram and shutter coatings.

I'd also recommend sitting down with at least fifty Q-tips and promise yourself to use all of them and get more. Only touch each Q-tip to the lens once and then treat it like hazardous waste: throw it away, don't get them mixed up with the fresh ones. Poor a very small amount of solvent into a small cup (minimize surface area of the solvent: they all evaporate and they're all noxious). Don't dip the Q-tip in solvent. Lightly and quickly touch it to the surface of the solvent: it will wick up more than you need. If the cotton looks soaked, then it absorbed too much solvent. Throw that q-tip away and try again. The idea is you'll invariably touch the edge of one of these q-tips to the edge of the lens tube, and the thin gap between the shutter and diaphram will immediately wick excess solvent between them. So use as little solvent as possible. Also try to keep touch the end of the q-tip, not the side, to the solvent.

 

For the wrench: I used a Sears multi-blade spanner set ($6.00 for 6 types of blades, found on the clearance table) and ground one set down with a Dremel until it fit the spanner ring on the lens. In retrospect, if you've got a Dremel, then a cheap dinner fork has got more than enough metal to grind down into blades. And you certainly don't need a fancy grip for the wrench: the front lens assembly is torqued to, maybe, two inch-pounds. Seriously: a cheap fork and a dremel are the way to make yourself a first rate, custom made spanner.

 

Third: I uncovered what appears to be some pitting on the front surface coatings of the rear group. I suspect these were caused by not doing this procedure earlier. I'm sure this is the first time it's been serviced since purchase. Any thoughts on this pitting?

I just performed the Doug Green's procedure, except I used naptha (what I had available). I would recommend not using alcohol unless you know it's 100% methanol: the balance of the stuff you get at the drug store is water, which is acidic. You may not notice water's acidity when you drink it, but look at the underside of an old car. It will terrorize your diaphram and shutter coatings.

I'd also recommend sitting down with at least fifty Q-tips and promise yourself to use all of them and get more. Only touch each Q-tip to the lens once and then treat it like hazardous waste: throw it away, don't get them mixed up with the fresh ones. Poor a very small amount of solvent into a small cup (minimize surface area of the solvent: they all evaporate and they're all noxious). Don't dip the Q-tip in solvent. Lightly and quickly touch it to the surface of the solvent: it will wick up more than you need. If the cotton looks soaked, then it absorbed too much solvent. Throw that q-tip away and try again. The idea is you'll invariably touch the edge of one of these q-tips to the edge of the lens tube, and the thin gap between the shutter and diaphram will immediately wick excess solvent between them. So use as little solvent as possible. Also try to keep touch the end of the q-tip, not the side, to the solvent.

 

For the wrench: I used a Sears multi-blade spanner set ($6.00 for 6 types of blades, found on the clearance table) and ground one set down with a Dremel until it fit the spanner ring on the lens. In retrospect, if you've got a Dremel, then a cheap dinner fork has got more than enough metal to grind down into blades. And you certainly don't need a fancy grip for the wrench: the front lens assembly is torqued to, maybe, two inch-pounds. Seriously: a cheap fork and a dremel are the way to make yourself a first rate, custom made spanner.

 

Third: I uncovered what appears to be some pitting on the front surface coatings of the rear group. I suspect these were caused by not doing this procedure earlier. I'm sure this is the first time it's been serviced since purchase. Any thoughts on this pitting?