A friend just showed me this terrific program that creates a unique slideshow with background music. You can upload your own photos or access galleries already created on Smugmug, Flickr, Picasa, and others. Clips of around 30 seconds are free, but then there is a charge for already videos.
Here’s one of Joe’s recent wedding that I think turned out pretty well:
Believe it or not, but I do have a ton of stuff that I’ll eventually get up on the blog. Sorry for the huge gap in updates. For now, I’ll post some pics and links to a couple of the weddings that I attended this summer:
Justin and Allison’s Wedding and Misc Photos from Atlanta:
Joe and Anne’s Wedding:
In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)
In this tightly cropped image the NASA space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope are seen in silhouette, side by side during solar transit at 12:17p.m. EDT, Wednesday, May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida. The two spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)
I lost my trusty old Minolta G400 that I had for quite some time. Over the years it sure took some great photos from all over the world. I’m still hoping to find it somewhere… Recently, I’ve been using my Canon Digital Rebel XT (lenses: Canon 28-135 f3.5-5.6 EF IS USM, Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II, Canon 18-55 f3.5-5.6 EF-S USM). However, it would be nice to get a compact camera. I started looking at point & shoots again last night when I saw that Amazon was selling the Canon PowerShot SD770IS 10MP Digital Camera for about $160. I’ve been very happy with the quality and performance of my Rebel XT so knew that I could trust the quality of the SD 770IS. It is the most popular P&S on Amazon and has gotten terrific reviews. I think it has okay manual controls (or as close to manual as you can get with a P&S, meaning independent adjustment of shutter speed, film speed, and aperture). However, after reading the more technical discussions on the dpreview forums, it became apparent that the camera is good but not that wide. I’m also a little weary of companies continually bumping up the megapixels without changing the technology behind the underlying sensor. Packing more megapixels into the same sensor just means that there will be more noise. Fortunately, the SD 770IS does come with a newer, faster processor than my Digital Rebel so it is able to fix problems with noise quite well. I was almost thinking about going ahead and buying the SD 770IS since Amazon is offering it at that price until it is sold out. That camera, I think, has a very stylish body, is compact, and has traditional Canon quality. However, I value picture quality and improvements in underlying sensor technology rather than just strict megapixel improvements. For example, a 6MP DSLR will take better photos than a 12MP standard point & shoot because the sensor is much larger. See here and here.
FujiFilm gets this: “There is strong demand in the digital camera market to increase the number of pixels on a sensor, which, all too often, is used as a convenient yardstick for image quality [...] As the photodiode gets smaller, the problems of increased noise, blooming and clipping increase.”
Fujifilm has unveiled the FinePix F200EXR digital compact, incorporating its new 1/1.6” Super CCD EXR sensor. The camera is the first to use the company’s EXR technology that can use the sensor in three different ways to optimize resolution, dynamic range or low-light performance. The F200EXR has a 3.0″ LCD, 5x optical zoom, dual image stabilization and HD (stills) output. An EXR Auto mode lets the camera select which of the three sensor modes is used or the user can make that decision themselves.
Here’s FujiFilm’s introduction of the FinePix F200EXR. Here’s a description of how the Super CCD EXR sensor works. Youtube has a video of it. It is has a pretty nice looking body too and is still compact. However, it is pricey; Amazon has it for pre-order at $399. However, good quality + solid construction means that it will last me a long time. I’m hoping the price drops so that I can get it as a birthday present in July.
The Found on Smugmug blog had a great entry called “See Spray” that showed beautiful pictures of sailboats in the San Francisco Bay.
Over Christmas break this year my brother and I took a hike in our backyard. The snow was a few feet deep in some places. The animations below were created by taking RAW photos as fast as my Canon Rebel XT could in continuous mode. I then loaded them up in Adobe ImageReady and exported them as a Flash animation. They are about 16MB total, so they will take awhile to load. I’ve set them to only run once. To watch them again, just right-click and choose Play.
Here’s the traditional photos from Christmas 2008. We sure made some great homemade pizza!
Last Saturday I decided to head back to the Pike Lake Unit of the Kettle Moraines. I got a lot of good photos last time, but this time I wanted to try a different lens. All the photos from this hike were shot with the Canon 18-55mm kit lens. It was nice to have something a little wider than my 28-135mm, but I did miss its image stabilization and sharpness.
Senator Obama’s proposed “tax cuts for the middle class” are actually marginal rate hikes in disguise.
It’s pretty simple. If you have an adjusted gross income of between $85,000 and $100,000 or so, Obama won’t raise your marginal tax rates. If you’re anywhere else in the income scale, you’re not so lucky.
Although Obama is offering a new series of tax breaks, they undermine rather than improve economic incentives. First, whether or not you get those breaks will depend on your income. In Washington, taking away tax breaks as families work harder to make more money is called a “phase-out.” Economists have a different name for it—we call it a tax. Reducing a person’s tax credit as his income goes up also reduces his incentive to earn more income.
Source: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/august-08-08/the-folly-of-obama2019s-tax-plan
Pike Lake State Park Photo Gallery
Photos from my hike on the blue trail at Pike Lake State Park in the Kettle Moraine State Forest of Wisconsin. The weather was perfect. Unfortunately, the bug spray I brought didn’t stop the flies from “attacking” my head throughout the hike. I’m definitely going to wear a hat next time. Three of the photos were handheld HDR.
Photos after the break:
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The International Cycling Classic is a series of bike races throughout the Midwest in the month of July. Some of the best riders not in the Tour de France come here to race.
The Point Premium Root Beer International Cycling Classic presented by Time Warner Cable is the world’s largest multi-category cycling event. The 40th annual event will take place from July 11 – 27, 2008. The highlight events of each day’s racing will be the men’s and women’s Superweek Pro Tour races, featuring top professional and elite amateur cyclists and teams from across the U.S. and more than 20 foreign countries. The 2008 event series will feature races in twelve city centers throughout Eastern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, including many locations throughout the Greater Milwaukee area.
Nowhere else in America can cycling fans see 17 consecutive days of the highest-caliber bicycle racing. What Wisconsin and Illinois will witness again this July is the fusion of the best athletes in the world and today’s high-tech bicycles in an explosion of speed, power and excitement. Join us to see why bicycle racing is one of the world’s great summertime spectator sports. Come and see why the International Cycling Classic is known throughout the world as Superweek!
Photos:
Carl Zach Cycling Classic
The Great Downer Avenue Bike Race
