my photo blog

Taken with the Fuji F30 in macro mode, ISO 200, 1/100th, f4.3.

I guess the only thing weirder about being an old Journey fan from the '70s is not recognizing them reincarnated in 2008, and realizing they're back touring! Apparently they played a stadium event last night, and sold out the Concord arena tomorrow night and have been touring a lot.

Neal Schon and his wife ended up sitting in front of me on the flight to Oakland, and I mentioned how I was a fan and used to see the band at the Days on the Green.

Towards the end of the flight, the flight attendants asked Neal to the back for photographs with them, which he obliged. I hope they didn't mind me tapping the back of their chair trying to remember the melody to "when the lights go out in the city..."

Seemed like really nice guys. I'm now wondering what they sound like now. Apparently they found their current singer Arnel Pineda after seeing him sing their songs on youtube!

Photo was taken with a Fuji F30, f4, ISO 400, 35mm equivalent focal length of 85mm.

This was taken shortly after a morning rain. Taken with Fuji 400 color film in a Hexar AF. Developed in D76 1:1 along with half of a film canister of finely ground coffee. Scanned in 24-bit, 2400 dpi color mode.

Kitty sleeps in funny positions. Taken with a Hexar AF at F2 with Fuji Reala 100 color negative film. No flash, but +1 EV. Processed in D76 2:1 for 13 minutes at 70 deg. Scanned in Epson Scan 3 to grayscale with unsharp mask on low.

Not exactly a photography related review, but some thoughts on an interesting video start-up, that recently underwent a change in focus from content/community to a video tool. Some info. on the company is below.

So yesterday, after a few days away from the video conversation site founded by Loic Le Meur, seesmic.com, I quickly found out that 3 of the producers who regularly ran interactive shows with product inventors as well as people making changes and heading up causes, regularly initiated new topics for discussion (this could get random quickly, but definitely drove up posts), welcomed newcomers, and basically grew the community, showed videos from their homes, while dining, driving, at concerts and while traveling, were laid off.

The private San Francisco based company’s site is in alpha, or pre-alpha, despite having had two successful rounds of funding, from institutional investors, as well as a very well connected set of influential angel investors including Atomico (Skype founders), Reid Hoffman, Steve Case, Jeff Clavier, Ron Conway, Michael Arrington and Pierre Omidyar and others. There’s an interesting article about some of these investors here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=397

Over the last three months, the site has undergone little change, and the majority of the posts were from a few dozen regulars. There were comments from employees that the occasional sluggishness of the site might soon be fixed as the underlying Flex and Flash based architecture might be replaced with more efficient programming and may compete with the video discussion site 12seconds.tv, and the employees were regular testing mobile client use using Nokia N95s.

Yesterday, or on Monday, the CEO and founder, Loic Le Meur, commented briefly that the site was focusing away from content, and to concentrate on being a “video conversation tool” and a new site to be launched soon. His video reply in the thread, which currently is one of many on the topic, and has over 120 replies is available here:

http://seesmic.com/video/D3pZgiMHUE

While I’ll miss the content and community angle that the producers initiated and implemented, which is what attracted me to the site initially, especially the random guitar lessons and playing, as well as reviews of things I had never heard of like batter blaster, pancakes that come from a pressurized can, whose inventor came on to be interviewed, the technology and its use as a tool for individuals and businesses is interesting to me. I’ve used digital video conferencing solutions on dedicated lines before video was widely used over the internet, and have used and watched the growth of internet video as bandwidth and codec quality increased with the Mbone (multicast backbone) which used IP multicast in the early ‘90s, and CU-SeeMe (later White Pine Software) which came out of Cornell in 1992, and later Netmeeting, Skype, and integration of webcam quality audio/video into the many IM programs which we have now.

Currently, both 12seconds.tv, and seesmic.com both require the Adobe Flash player, and both consume a lot of local resources, but to be honest, the video and audio quality is generally not any better than video conferencing that was used 20 years ago over dedicated 128kbit ISDN lines. In fact, it's no better than the average youtube clips, which begs the question of the business model as a video tool only. However, it’s free or cheap, and like voice over IP over the internet, it’s likely to get better, and Seesmic may be one of the companies to help make it better along with 12seconds.tv, Adobe, and other vendors providing tools and engines behind the front end.

Copyright 2008 Ted Matsumura, All Rights Reserved

This is on the third level. The ferries are huge, with cars down on the bottom, and a cafeteria and seating on one or two floors, with ample covered and outdoor space for walking, eating, reading and taking in the spectacular view.

This is on the ferry from Anacortes to Friday Harbor. The deck can get windy, even in August, but the views are fantastic. Taken with a Hexar AF and Reala 100 film. The island on the left may be Lopez Island, which we made a quick stop off on the return trip.

Taken with the Fuji f30 at 1/140, f3.2, ISO 200, at 10.4mm (~49mm 35mm equivalent)

This close up of a rusting white post was taken with a Fuji F30 at 1/200th, f3.4, and ISO 200. The lens was at 12.2mm, or 35mm equivalent of 58mm which seems to be a lucky focal length for this p&s zoom lens, providing sharpness, and low distortion with close ups. Converted from color to b/w in picasa 3.

This is the kids steering wheel for the ferry from Anacortes to Friday Harbor. Was taken with a Hexar AF with Fuji Reala 100 film and developed in D76 straight for 12 minutes.

Taken with a Nikon F3 with 80-200 f4.5 lens on a tripod. Film was Kodak MAX 800 color, developed in D76 1:1 for 15 minutes at 72 deg. F. Scanned at 16-bit, 2400dpi grayscale.

Chris is taking b/w photos with the Nikon F3 and AI Nikkor 80-200 f4.5 zoom on a tripod, with cable release. This photo was taken with a Canon A550 at 1/100, f2.6, at ISO 80. I have to remember that in the widest lens setting, this camera has a lot of barrel distortion - note the curvature of the top deck railing.

Hexar AF, Reala 100.

Hexar AF, Fuji Reala 100.

Taken with the Hexar AF in a Japanese garden. Film was Fuji color Reala 100, developed in Kodak D76 1:1 for 13 minutes at 72 deg. F. Scanned at 16-bits, 2400dpi.