RSS FeedAs I mentioned in the previous post, last Sunday was my 32nd birthday; but I don't celebrate it. This obviously also means I don't get many presents for my birthday. My parents gave me some clothing stuff and Daniel gave me a very cool light stand and shoot-through umbrella for my flashgun; but that's about it. But the best gift came from someone that I deeply admire and respect: myself!
About a year ago I bought the Kodak Zx1 pocket camera that records 720p video's on SD cards. While the camera works fine and is water resistant; it has some limitations that really got on my nerve, and so I decided to look for a replacement. The thing that mostly annoyed me was the fixed focus. While fixed focus is fine for most outdoor situations, it does get annoying if you want to get a slightly closer look at something and it just ends up as one big blurry blob on your photo or video.
My criteria were clear to me, and I started to look for a compact camera with autofocus and 720p video recording ability. My eye finally fell on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W350. It's a tiny and very cute little point and shoot camera with a ton of features. It's about the size of a credit card, and it's only 16.7mm thick.
It has a 14.1 megapixel sensor and with the 35mm equivalent of a 26-105mm f/2.7-5.7 lens it gives quite decent image quality. Aside from decent pictures, it can also record 720p video with autofocus and even zoom ability. Especially the zoom is quite nice, because that is a feature that most compact point and shoot camera's don't have. The last feature I'd like to mention is that you can make panorama photos on this camera by just sweeping it from one side to the other. While the quality of the panorama photo is not the best, it's good enough for some funny pictures for websites.
I'm really happy with this little camera. Because it's so light and small, I can bring it with me at all times. So from now on my videos and "on the road" photo's will be much, much higher quality. Stay tuned for more of those 
Even though my kit was more-or-less complete, it still felt like something was missing; and I don't like that. While making photo's in dark places it always bothered me that I had to use LED based flashlights to light up stuff, which gives horrible color casting. I wanted something better, and so I decided to get a flashgun.
A bit of searching and reading reviews later I ran across a "Strobist" beginner set for a nice price. "Strobist" basically means that the flash is not mounted on the camera itself, but is handheld or on a light stand. The kit includes a Yongnuo YN460-II flashgun and a Cactus v4 wireless flash trigger.The wireless flash trigger allows you to put the flash up to 100m from the camera, and it still fires on the exact moment that it needs to; really cool. 
All in all it looks like a pretty decent kit, and the flashgun sure is bright enough! The cool (or bad) part is that I have to learn how to make photo's with a flashgun now, which seems like a fun challenge. I've seen some real nice photos that were made with off-camera flashguns, and I can't wait to make some of my own. 
The only thing missing in my photography kit, was a decent zoom lens to make wildlife photos and maybe shoot some close-up photos of artists at festivals. At first I was thinking of getting an 18-200mm lens, which would then replace the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my camera. After reading some reviews, and giving it some thought I dismissed that idea, because all the reviews mentioned that the image quality wasn't all-that, and well... I've gotten fond of the 18-55mm kit lens; it's extremely light, and it performs pretty good.
While browsing the web I noticed that the Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM was on sale at a store in Barendrecht. I decided to read some reviews, and generally liked what I read and saw. Today, Xariana and myself were in the area anyway, and I decided to make a little detour and pick one up.
It's big, it's heavy and it makes my camera look badass; I love it 
Oh and more importantly, it makes some very, very nice pictures too! My kit is more-or-less complete now; Maybe I will get a nice macro lens someday, but that's more a long-term idea.
One of the things on my wish list, was a fisheye lens. The main characteristic of a fisheye lens is that it has an extremely wide angled view. Some even go as far as an 180 ° angle. Because it has such a wide angle, you can put pretty much a whole room on a single photo if you position the camera on the right spot.
The second characteristic is that this extreme wide angle gives the image a spherical distortion. This spherical distortion gives portrait photo's a very funny effect, because the center of the image is magnified more than the sides. I really wanted one, but the only problem was that most of them are rather pricy.
While browsing a web shop stumbled upon a fisheye lens by an unknown brand that was almost half the price of similar lenses of the major brands. I got curious, but remained skeptical; after all the difference in price usually means compromises. After reading a few reviews and watching a lot of sample photo's I was convinced: this lens kicks ass! I'm talking about the Samyang 8mm fisheye lens, which is sold under many names. In certain European countries, including the Netherlands, Samyang lenses are sold under the brand name "Walimex".
So, what's the catch ? Well, it turns out there is no real catch. Optically this lens performs just as good, if not better, than some lenses that are twice as expensive. So why is this one so cheap ? The difference in price is in the way the lens operates. With most lenses, you can set the aperture size from within the camera. A tiny motor then makes the diaphragm either larger or smaller, and thus increasing or decreasing the aperture size. With this lens there is no tiny motor, and you can't set the aperture size in the camera. To make the diaphragm larger or smaller, you have to twist a ring on the base of the lens.
Aside from the manual diaphragm, this lens has no autofocus; it only has manual focus. This is no problem at all, because having a focus ring on a fisheye is rather useless anyway. Because of the extreme wide angle and spherical distortion, the depth of field is so amazingly large that no matter how you set the focus on the lens; pretty much everything will be sharp anyway. For example, if I set the focus on 30cm from the lens, then everything between 15cm and infinity will be in focus.
In short, by keeping this lens a fully manually operated lens, the manufacturer managed to cut the costs dramatically; making this lens extremely interesting for people that are looking to get a fisheye lens, but are not willing to sell their first-born child to get one. I totally love my new fisheye lens, and can't wait to get into the field and shoot some kick-ass photos.
Even before I bought my new camera, I already knew that sometime I would get a "Nifty Fifty" with a really big aperture for it. They allow you to make real nice photos with creative blur effects because the depth of field is very narrow. This makes these lenses very suitable for portrait photos. I just had to get one!
Fortunately, these lenses are also really cheap. There are no fancy zooming mechanisms in them, which means that they are really simple and therefore cheap. Another plus is that because there is no quality loss due to the zooming mechanisms, these so-called "prime lenses" produce extremely sharp pictures. I can't wait to make some photos with my new baby
With my spanking new camera, it became a bit of a nuisance to walk around with my old tripod, since it had no quick release plate. This meant that I would either have to keep the camera on the tripod all the time, or screw and unscrew the camera each time I want to move. It was time to get an upgrade.
A bit of searching, reading reviews and checking out tripods at photography stores later I decided to buy a Velbon Ultra Luxi M. It's a cute little tripod that is easy to carry around. It weighs just a little over 1 kilogram and folded up it's only 35 centimeters in length. Yet if you fully extend the 5 sections of its legs, and slide up the center column, it comes up to a very respectable height of about 155 centimeters.
Another cool feature is that you can split the center column in half, and fold the legs really wide, so you can get very close to the ground with your camera, while retaining full stability. It's a very thin and light tripod, yet it can easily hold 2.5 kilograms of weight without losing stability.
As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking pictures of abandoned and decaying pictures. While I’ve been exploring these buildings for quite some years, I never took photos of my adventures in the past; with exception of this photo. A few months back I suddenly decided to start taking some photos; at first with my cell phone, later with my Canon PowerShot A620.
On its own the PowerShot A620 is a fine camera, and it has served me well for nearly 5 years. But traveling through moist and dark buildings, I started to notice the limitations of a “point and shoot” camera; even though the PowerShot has plenty of options for custom settings. And since I started to like taking pictures more and more, I decided to start looking for an upgrade.
I had already decided that I wanted to get a “Digital single-lens reflex” camera; more widely known as “DSLR”. After reading a lot of reviews and comparing models, I had found my new camera: the Canon EOS 450D.
The EOS 450D has a very nice 12.2 megapixel resolution, which is more than enough to produce high quality images. The lens that was included with the kit is not –the- best lens, but it does its job quite well. I will probably get a better lens at some point in the future, but for now this lens will do just fine. The camera has a 9-point autofocus system that works remarkably fast. Where the PowerShot took about 1 second to focus, the EOS 450D does it in maybe 0.1 second. I’ve got a bunch of memory cards lying about that I can use with the camera. On a 4 GB card I can store 658 photos in JPG format or 177 in RAW format.
I’ve ordered some accessories from DealExtreme, which should arrive in a week or two. I’ve ordered a nice camera bag, some lens cleaning products and some useful thingies like a water level that you can slide onto the camera and a lens-hood.
It might take some fiddling and practicing before I will have mastered this beast, but I’ve read a lot of tutorials, watched a truckload of how-to videos, and I’ve got quite some experience with photography already; so it won’t be long before I’ll be able to produce some kick-ass pictures The results will, of course, be available in the photos section of this website. I can’t wait to get outside and play
I’m all set. This next Saturday (July 25th, 2009), I will be moving my new web server from the “staging area” (read: my bedroom) to the data center in Amsterdam. Sunday (July 26th, 2009) the old server in Canada will be powered down and dismantled.
Aside from departing from the server in Canada, I will also be departing from Xoops (the CMS that I’ve been using for 2 years now). I’ve decided to write my own website code, for a couple of reasons: security, speed and size (also related to speed I guess…).
The more code you have, the slower a site is, and the more can go wrong. Xoops is a very large CMS, with a lot of functionality (most of which I don’t use). If I write a minimalistic CMS myself, with just the things that I use; it should - in theory - make the site smaller, faster and more secure.
So… this Saturday my server will go online, but my website will be offline for a while until I’ve made a basic blog module.
Wish me luck!
Today, my black magic woman arrived. Unfortunately, it turns out that the 2x1GB memory I had arranged doesn’t fit. But with the 1GB that was in the server and 4GB extra... it’s still 5 GB and that’s still plenty for a webserver.
Some snapshots for your viewing pleasure:
*purr*
As some of you might, or might not know, I rent a dedicated server at iWeb in Ontario, Canada. They have some decent deals going on and starting at USD 69,- a month you can rent your own server. That is… if you stick to 1GB ram and either Linux or FreeBSD. If you want a different operating system, you have to pay extra, and if you want more memory, you also have to pay… extra. In my case it ended up at USD 109 a month for An Intel Celeron D 3.0 GHz with 2GB Ram and 300 GB IDE hard disk, equipped with Windows 2003 Standard Edition. The package includes a 10MBps uplink and 1 TB of traffic per month.
This is an average price for renting a dedicated server, but it always struck me as odd that I have to pay USD 10,- a month for an 1 GB memory module that costs € 15,- at my workplace. Time for change, I thought… so I did a bit of researching and found out that for € 49,- per month, I can collocate my own server on a 100MBps uplink with 1 TB traffic per month, at Trans|ip, the same company where I have my domains registered. It’s not rocket science to see that it would save me about €35,- to € 50,- per month, depending on the exchange rate of course.
I would get 10 times the uplink speed for less money. The only problem is that I didn’t have my own server. I had already decided that I wanted a certain minimal configuration:
- Dual Core processor
- 4 GB memory
- 2 Hard Disks in raid 1 configuration
First I checked the website of my employer, Aces Direct, of course. Unfortunately, the cheapest server that met my desired specifications was way over the budget that I had in mind. The problem is that most servers are sold without disks, and server hard disks are a bit more expensive than consumer hard disks.
Next I ended up at a company that sells reasonably cheap web servers. For € 399,- (ex taxes of course) you can get a simple server with either an AMD Athlon 64, AMD Sempron 64, or Intel Dual Core E2220 processor. A bit of research told me that neither of the AMD’s was Dual Core, and that the Intel was a first generation Dual Core processor and had performance that was comparable to a single core processor.
A co-worker told me that one of our suppliers might have something on stock. On our website, we prefer to sell the latest models obviously, but the suppliers might have an older model on the shelf somewhere. A quick E-mail here and a phone call there told me that indeed one of our suppliers had some older models on the shelf that might fit within my budget. The price would be comparable to the cheap web server with the AMD or Intel Dual Core processor, but it would be a Hewlett Packard or I.B.M. Of course I feared that it would end up way too pricy again due to the more expensive hard disks, but the supplier told me not to worry about it.
A bit of haggling and ass kissing later, I had made a very nice deal on my new server, which should arrive next Monday or Tuesday. I went a bit over my planned budget, but also managed to make a deal with my boss so that I can pay for the server in parts. I’ll pay half of the server in cash (which is well within my budget), and half of it will be deducted from my salary in 3 parts. So what did I get?
From a supplier I managed to get For € 819,91 inc taxes :
- Hewlett Packard Proliant DL 320 G5P with Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz processor.
- 4 GB memory upgrade kit.
- 2x 250 GB hard disk (hot plug)
Via another channel I also managed to get a 64-Bit Windows 2008 Web Edition license and an additional 2GB of memory for free (the guy owed me a favor :P). I think going from a Celeron D 3GHz with 2GB ram and IDE hard disk to a Dual Core Xeon 2.66GHz with 6 GB ram and raid 1 hard disks is quite a nice upgrade, and after the server has been paid off, I will save money and have more performance.
My Server should arrive Monday or Tuesday, so stay tuned!