The Answer to Life's Problems....Add A Monitor

I love monitors, some more than others. One of my favorites is the Sony SDM-N50. I've coveted this sleek little LCD monitor for years. How many years? 13! That's right, it's not a typo. It was introduced in the year 2000. It cost $1499. That is also not a typo. I remember it very clearly. I was working in IT at the time and I wanted to order LCD monitors in the worse way for some of our facilities, but they were simply too expensive. However at the end of the fiscal year there was some extra money and "the big boss" asked me to come up with a rationale as to way we needed to buy them. So, I spent all of one day researching them, reading every "while paper" I could lay my hands on, until I finally came up with a piece of comprehensive research done by the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power. What they found was that LCD's lasted 2 to 3 times as long as standard CRTs in normal use, and consumed 20% or less power. After reading the synopsis of that, he told me that I could have $1500, and I could buy as many as I could fit into that amount. My supplier (CDWG) got me great prices for a few leftovers they had and I was able to get 3; 1 IBM and 2 Viewsonics. We used them at our front desks and I remember that all the "powers that be" were very pleased with them. 

However, the one I really wanted was this Sony. It wasn't just any Sony either, it was the most expensive one at the time. I remember that you would see them on all the network news shows, since (as you can see), it was not only an LCD, but the only one where the back look as nice as the front! It also was unique in that it only needed one thin cable with a micro connector for both power and signal. Plus there were stereo speakers in the base as well! 

The trick was that Sony moved the bulk of the electronics into a separate box that also included the power supply, AND 2 inputs too! Then you could tuck that box away somewhere out of sight.

When you look at how thin this thing is, it's really pretty amazing for something that old....and not bad for $20. Yup, found it in a pawn shop in a neighboring little town. I've been patiently watching this for nearly a year, waiting for the price to drop from $75 to $50 and then finally to $20. You might ask yourself; why would this "high end" monitor sell for $20!?! Well, because we live in the land of super-size-it. We always went bigger (not necessarily better), so old and small monitors are generally worthless. That same pawn shop has had a Dell 2007wfp IPS monitor sitting for over a year as well. 

No....I'm not trying to do this in my little office area. Then, what do I need another monitor for? Here's my situation: I've been using a 19" Westinghouse LCD TV/monitor as the 3rd screen for the Blackbird workstation through a switcher. That was fine as long as I was OK with not having somewhere to display the file server, but I'd prefer to be able to control it directly. The other option was connect the server, but have no input for the various PCs that I'm working on for people. So I had three devices with two inputs. The solution turned out to be adding one very small, very thin, $1500 monitor bought at a $1480 discount.
 

A Day & A Half of a "Spectre" Looking Over My Shoulder

It's a stressful time of year. Tax season (although I'm lucky and my wife does those), students are running amok (it's Spring....and all that that implies with teenagers), and testing season. For me, that means the all-important State testing is actually getting in the way of  preparing my students for the far more rigorous National Exam!!! On top of that, I had to take off on Monday because my kids were out of school, but my wife still had to work. Then yesterday, while my wife was at a workshop out of town, the school called to say that the daughter had vomited and I needed to come take my sick child home......so "A Day & A Half" of non-voluntary leave taken at the worse possible time. I decided that I could get some errands run on Monday morning, then work on computer stuff in the afternoon. That was the plan anyway......

Monday: 8AM. You know: no day starts well with a visit to this guy. So, after about 45 minutes of one-sided conversation. I was done, but the blowing cold front in combination with dental drilling had started a migraine. Then, it was off to see a client to picked up a computer that, after multiple tries was still glitchy with networking. I know that nobody in the working world should expect a low end P4 with 1Gb of RAM (maxed) running Windows XP/SP3 to function very well, but I have a reputation to uphold you know! So I picked it up to go home and work my magic. So we proceeded on to the book store (which is normally one of my favorite places), but after about 30 minutes the headache got the best of me, so gather up the kids and head home. Take Exedrin Extra Strength, curl up in a ball with the pillow over my head for a while. The rest of the day went in similar fashion and very little useful computer work got done.

Although I hadn't gone to work, this is a pretty accurate depiction of me at this stage. Here's what was on my plate, other than work: I needed to finish my file server rebuild, I needed to figure out something to do with my client's flaky machine, I had several Honey-dos and needed for my headache to go away (it had returned). Let's just say that not much of anything got done the rest of that day. Then yesterday didn't start out so well with having to leave school and pick up the sick child, return and get plans ready for a substitute teacher......THEN go back to the kids' school to pick up my son (it's in another town). After all was settled out around 4pm, I finally got to sit down in front of the computer.

Tuesday: 4PM. You might be able to ascertain that attempts to finish the server didn't go well...... And you'd be right, up to a point. You see, when I decided to pick up the HighPoint Rocket Cache RAID controller for the server, it was with a degree of understanding that I was making certain compromises. Understand, that for me, a $200 (list) component is pricey, but in the world of hardware RAID, it's pretty darned cheap. In my research I was able to figure out that HighPoint's products often receive mid-level ratings (2-3 out of 5 stars), not because they don't work, but you have to "work with it". It's not polished and the tech-support can be sketchy if you run into an issue.

Tuesday: 4:30PM.....And run into issues, I did! So for an hour or two, I was in tech-support H*LL......that is until I got it figured out.....on my own. Let me set the stage for you. First, I'm loading a server OS running mostly desktop hardware, so certain things won't go the way the manufacturer says it will. At least this time, I got the OS up and running without killing all the USB ports while trying to get USB3.0 working! Anyway, I got the drivers loaded, then got the RAID management software to load without a glitch, but despite the fact that it could see, AND manipulate the drives connected to the controller, I couldn't figure out how to get a "caching" array built. To add insult to injury, nothing about that software looked anything like the screen captures in the manual!... then it occurred to me that maybe I didn't have the correct software on my disk! There had to be a reason that this was returned to Amazon and thus bought from their warehouse site for $128! Sure enough, after a visit to their not-too-user-friendly website, I got the critical missing application. Apparently I got a disk for the RocketRaid vs. the RocketCache that I have. All the while, as I was figuring this out, I was on "chat" with their tech support trying to resolve the issue. They were very nice about it and apologetic, but clearly, their native language wasn't English. I want to say that HighPoint is Taiwanese, but don't quote me on that. So, after several hours of head-banging, the server is pretty much up and running. One of the SSDs isn't properly recognized, but I'd bet that given the used state of them, I'm not surprised. 

As you can see, the insides of this thing is pretty clean given that I've crammed 5 hard drives of various types, an optical drive, a Hauppauge HVR 1800 tuner card AND a RAID controller all in a Micro ATX case. I will say that I'm very happy with this Silverstone SST-PS07's design and construction. 

Tuesday: 10PM I couldn't stand it any more. I had to dig through the parts I had out there in the garage to see if I could scrape together something to resolve the client computer's issues. Out of various boxes came, an Asus P5Q SE Plus, motherboard, an Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 processor, an nVidia GTX video card, 2 Gb of DDR2 RAM and a Dynex PSU to run it all. I also was able to finally get the Artic Silver HSF that my brother sent me to seat properly in my "XP" box, so the stock Intel HSF from it went in as well. I haven't powered it up yet since I haven't come across a desktop SATA hard drive, but that shouldn't be a problem. At worse, I'll just use one of my many 2.5" laptop drives sitting around. 

I still have some issues to sort out, like the one unrecognized device, there's some unrecognized storage space on one of the 2Tb drives and what to do about the "other" SSD that's seen as a HDD, as well as getting the motherboard to output on HDMI. But those are all relatively small configuration things. So, in the end, after a day and a half of frustration and stress, I was able turned to my cure-all of getting computers to work to make myself feel better about things.

 

The "Micro" in Four-Thirds

This is what I feel like, most of the time when I shoot pictures. Although, I've long-since gotten over the desire to "look pro", when I have to images that I'm serious about, I pull out the big guns. In my case, that'd be the Nikon D300 (usually with battery grip attached) and the 18-200mm (35mm eq. 28-300mm) VR superzoom. Plus there's often a SB-800 flash attached! It's a big rig and weighs a lot. Can't argue with the quality of images though!

Although I've tried to create my own light-weight "street shooter" in the D50 married to a 28-80mm "G" version lens, in the end, it was still just too much mass and too much like the D300. I've got no complaints about this camera as it is, but I just wanted it to be something that it wasn't........a modern-day equivalent the legendary rangefinder. If you've never used a classic rangefinder, you really owe it to yourself to just go out and hold one if nothing else.

As you guys know; I gave in and bought a Panasonic GF-1. I didn't really have a good conception of how small and different it was until I pulled it out of the box! Holy Smoke!

That's it sitting next to my D300! I've got both similarly configured with the GF-1 mounting a 14-42mm (eg. 28-84mm) and a 18-70mm (eq. 28-105mm) mounted on the Nikon. Both have similar megapixels and pop-up flashes as well. 

However, what you see is the configuration that the Nikon is most often equipped in, which is the aforementioned superzoom and battery grip. The difference in mass is truly astounding! 

This side shot really gives an even more marked comparison. And I imagine that eventually, after I sell of a few things, I'll buy the 20mm/f1.7 "pancake" lens for the GF-1 which will make it truly pocketable! Today was just a quick-hitter to give you an idea what I've been playing with the last couple of weeks. More to come on this topic!

"From The Mind of Minolta"

Who doesn't remember that advertising slogan from the 80's and 90's? At that point, the originally created firm of Nichi-Doku Shashinki Shoten (or Japanese-German Camera Shop) was at their peak having surpassed both Canon and Nikon to become number 1 in the critical American market during this time! They were riding high. The company had been innovative for quite some time, being the first Japanese manufacturer to adopt the bayonet mount as well as full aperture through-the-lens (TTL) metering. Then in the late 70's being the first "multi-mode" SLR camera manufacturer with the XD-11 (U.S.) that is now the standard "PASM" (Program, Aperture, Shutter, Manual) modes that's seen on virtually every "advanced" camera on the market today. They were considered so advanced at the time, that it was Minolta whom Leitz turned to in the 70's when they felt the need to integrate electronics into their equipment, and the "Leica CL" was even made by Minolta in Japan. Something unheard-of at that juncture paving the road for future German-Japanese cooperative efforts such as the Sony-Zeiss, Kyocera-Zeiss/Contax, Matsushita (Panasonic)-Leitz, and Cosina-Zeiss/Voigtlander cooperative efforts seen today. 

So, what happened? I'm not going to get into all the details, but let's just say that arguably the most advanced of the Japanese camera/electronics (Laser printer, copiers, etc.) companies didn't move as quickly as the other major players (Nikon, Canon) in the transition to digital photography. Even the 2003 merger with another industry major player, Konica failed to revive it and ultimately ended up with the 2006 sell-off of most of Minolta's photography assets to Sony. But we're not here to discuss the demise of Minolta, but what it means to the frugal photographer of today.

If you are a photographer of a certain age, you've probably owned a Minolta (maybe even have one sitting up in a closet somewhere). Whether it was one of the famed SR-T series or one of the market dominating Maxxums, you know that they were eminately useable pieces of equipment and top notch optics. So questions concerning the brand have nothing to do with quality. 

.....which brings us to the Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D (what a mouthful) of 2005/6. This camera was essentially a digital adaptation of the Maxxum 9i, 35mm film camera. In the world of early 2000s, it was a highly thought of "system" camera just short of the professional Nikon and Canons. What we would today call "pro-sumer" equipment. Again, I'm not going to do a review, for which I'd recommend dpreview.com, I will say that it was very well thought of at the time. There were many excellent optics available as well as other systems equipment, but the really innovative feature was the very first application of sensor-shift technology to ameliorate ever-present camera shake. Although generally considered to not be as effective as in-lense reduction as used by ,Panasonic, Canon and Nikon, it tends to be less expensive and applicable across the board on any lens attached. As such it has been commonly adopted by virtually all other makers of advanced, interchangeable lens cameras. 

This camera was not only advanced, but; as the British would say, "a serious bit of kit"! Like other top level DSLRs there's a magnesium chassis, and controls to beat the band.

If you don't believe me; take a look at the back! This is what I'd imagine Batman's camera to look like (including all the rubberized control surfaces). Virtually all the contemporary reviewers of the day commented that it looked intimidating, but extraordinarily easy to learn and operate since the plethora of buttons keeps the user from having to delve into the menu system to operate it. This is pretty much the opposite from the norm for most cameras of today.

Although this camera was very advanced and the center of an elaborate and proven system it was ultimately unsuccessful in the marketplace. First of all, it was a top level prosumer camera aspiring to be the equivilent of the Nikon D200 and Canon 30D at time when those that level of equipment had moved on to 8Mp sensors. However, it's pricing (due to it's build) put it squarely in the upper range in cost of production. Really the "little brother" 5D was better positioned to be successful. Unfortunately, it's late arrival to the game also put them behind the proverbial 8-Ball since many had already bought into a "system" and therefore were not pre-disposed to switch after investing in a particular lens mount. Worse yet, by the time that this camera came to the marketplace in any numbers, it wasn't the D200 and 30D that it was competing against, but the looming introduction of the 12Mp D300 and 40D which came on the seen in first half of 2007! So, with the handwriting on the wall, and the situational of being more than one generation behind, Minolta made the inevitable decision to sell off to the only company with the resources to catch up.....Sony.

What caused all the retrospective examination of the Minolta and the Maxxum 7D? "$275 OBO", that's what! As always, I was scanning the local Craig's List ads to see if there were any good deals out there in my area. And down the in the Photography and Video section was an ad for a Minolta Maxxum and two Sigma lenses. Of the Sigma lenses (18-125, 70-300) of that generation, the less said the better, although the 18-125mm should be OK. I guess someone could use the other one until they can afford something better, the generic lenses of that type and age whether they be the original maker (Tamron, Sigma typically) or an importer such as Quantaray, aren't very good. But, back to the original thought: really, this advanced of a camera, of this build quality, with lenses so that you can use it immediately for........$275 OBO!!! I'd bet that the "OBO" means that he'll take $250. If you are the least bit concerned with the 7D's 6 megapixels, you guys know that my stance is that 6Mp is perfectly useable, especially for entry level. Remember that for our Alaska trip a few years ago, I took a 6Mp Nikon D70 and was very happy with the images it gave me (when I did my job).

A couple of last thoughts. No; it was not a "one-off" situation. I checked eBay and the mid-$200s pricing is in fact what that camera is selling for right now. Also, if you are the slightest bit concern at buying into a "dead-end" system, remember that it wasn't killed off, but taken over by Sony, so not only can you buy brand new Sony lenses, flashes etc., but even upgrade to using legendary Zeiss glass that are now made for that mount!

If I had random extra money, I'd have already snapped this thing up!
 

Return of the Advanced Rangefinder

In the photography world, people throw around the term "rangefinder" a lot. And in a photographic sense, I'd guess that some of them really do know what it is, but just for grins, I thought I throw out there the original use. If you'll look at the above illustration of a main turret from the battleship Yamato, you'll see two "ears" projecting from either side of it. Those are the two ends of optical "rangefinder" that it used to determine the "range" of it's target, so that it could train those 3, 18" guns.(the largest ever on an operational navy vessel) and lob shells the weight of a truck on it. Now, on to our originally scheduled program.

 

There was a time, back when cars had carburetors (sometimes 2 or more), crank up windows and people had one phone.....wired to the wall....the world was ruled by silver nitrate! Everyone aspired to a real camera, but most of us spent years with Kodak Brownies, or Instamatics, maybe even an Agfa C3. However we all knew that when we grew up, we'd have a 35mm camera, made in Japan, or if we were an engineer or doctor....maybe even an honest to gosh German one! A Rollei, a Voigtlander, a Leica or the "holy of the holy's"; a Zeiss Icon (ironically). Of course, everyone wanted a single lens reflex (SLR), but most would rather make a car payment (or two), maybe buy a washer. So they settled for an advanced rangefinder. In the late 60's to late 70's, most of these were similar to the Minolta Hi-Matic 7 illustrated above. Pretty much every maker had them and they were generally all pretty good. It didn't matter whether it was a Konica, Petri, Miranda, or Canon, these things were the "bread & butter" of the industry. 

Then there were the system rangefinders. Some like the Nikon S3/SP were the last vestiges of an older era before they mostly succumbed to the onslaught of the 35mm SLRs. The main players were Nikon, Canon, Zeiss, and Leica. These cameras were the province of old photojournalists who valued their simplicity, light weight and unobtrusiveness and old cranks who just didn't want to try the "new-fangled" stuff.

Then there was me. It was the late 70's and a 39mm (Leica) screw mounted Canon 7s was well and truly out of date. It wasn't anything like the Canon A-1 (which was considered to be the most advanced camera of that day) that I was using then, but I fell in love with it. The $200 that Plains Camera (of Lubbock, Texas) wanted was a lot of money to a 17 year old. But I save money from working in my mom's restaurant and with a little help from my brother, bought it. If you haven't used a rangefinder, you'll be amazed by it. They don't feel like, sound like, or work like an SLR. It's completely understandable why they are a street photographers dream. Mine came with a rather soft 50mm/f1.2, but as most of you know; available light is the point with this type of photography. So for a year or so, whenever I was was doing photography for me, this camera was the choice. I even bought a couple of old Canon screw mount lenses for it, but it was that 50mm that was on it almost all the time. Then came college, during which, I decided that if I took my cameras, I'd funk out of school. So my brother and I split what we had. He got the A-1 system and I got the 7s.....which I left at home. After college, I sold that system and bought a very usable Pentax rig centered around the MX, but that's another story. 

In the meantime, rangefinders had become "retro-cool" So much so that little known Cosina, became hailed for recreating the classic rangefinder under the licensed Voigtlander brand, but in a modern idiom. I know that Contax had the amazing G series, but they didn't cause much of a ripple in the market-place as a whole. However, the retro-rangefinder craze had gotten so that Nikon even re-released newly built versions of their classic S3 and SP.

Of course I couldn't participate in any of that, being a young teacher putting himself through grad school. However, I do have one regret that I didn't jump in and pick up a Minolta CLE while their prices were still down. The CLE is of course a slightly revised version of the Leica CL that Minolta had collaborated on with the revered E. Leitz firm.

Time moves on and so did technology, however, certain concepts did not. The desire to do candid available-light photography is still strong in some of us. The Henri Cartier-Bresson in us still wants to document life, and the best tool to use for that is a "range-finder" camera, or one that mimics it's features. In combination with a resurgence in documentary style photography and of course instantaneous social media, candid photography is back with a vengeance! Compact digital cameras are everywhere, but of course given their limitations, the less said about them the better. The marketplace has seen an explosion of what some call "EVIL" (electronic view interchangeable lens) cameras. And these days, even the "old guard", meaning Nikon and Canon have jumped on the bandwagon. They've run the gamut from the truly astounding, like the Fuji X100/X10, amazing (in price and performance) like the Leica M9 as well as (IMHO) missteps such as the Nikon One series. 

The majority of these have "large sensors" to up the image quality while avoiding the old noise bugaboo of the compact digitals. They range from the barely larger than compact digital Nikon J1/V1s, to the 4/3rds group all the way up to the full APS-C sized of Sony/Samsung/Canon and now Nikon with the Coolpix A. Olympus must be credited as being the "mover & shaker" behind the micro 4/3rd movement that has made such an impact in market acceptance of the concept.

These are without a doubt "serious" cameras with the expectation of performance close to, if not identical to equivalent generation DSLRs. The majority of them are systems cameras with the ability to change lenses and add shoe-flashes. Some even have optical viewfinders and many of the others have accessory electronic versions.

What does that mean for me? Well, barring a late life career change to something way more lucrative than a high school teacher: I'm not going to run out and buy the amazing Leica M9 and all the attendant E. Leitz glass. In all seriousness though, it's the concept that's important. As I've discussed before, I'm really drawn to the idea of "street photography", candidly recording life, as it happens. And based on my experience both from having owned and used the Canon 7s as well as trying to use my Nikon D300; I need to use something more in line with the former vs. the latter! I found that unless people were intensely preoccupied (like playing a sport), when I point the D300 with a super-zoom attached, it's something akin to pointing an RPG at someone. You have their complete attention. 

So I'm looking forward to the Panasonic GF-1 as an alternative to the D300. I have to say that I'm truly amazed at all the choices that are out there today. Enough so that we can make choices of what works best for the type of photography I want to practice.

 

Trip to NorCal

Yes indeed there was some of this in my recent trip to see family in the "Bay Area" of Northern California. My brother took me out in his Mercedes SLK one very nice morning. We even dropped the top. Up through the Portolla Valley, along the ridge of the Pacific range down to the lighthouse at San Gregorio. It was absolutely gorgeous. It's not too difficult to understand why this area has recently surpassed the Hamptons as the place with America's most expensive homes!

Then it was on down the famed Highway 1 to Pescadero and the Ano Nuevo Park to visit the elephant seals. That's of course, not my picture since we weren't allowed to get that close to them, but I'd have gotten similar photos had I have taken my "big" camera (Nikon D300 with lenses). However, I didn't do that. I'm going to blame this on my brother who tends not to be great with information. I thought that it'd be a simple family gathering to celebrate mom's 90th birthday, so I chose to take my ancient 3 megapixel Nikon Coolpix 995! I did get some pretty good pictures with it, but nothing to write home about though.

The trip was not for digital naught though! My brother gave me an extra SSD which has how allowed me to finish my son's replacement T61 laptop. He also sent me home with his old A/V receiver that was gathering dust out on his porch. It's old (Dolby Pro-Logic), but it should be a good pairing with the old Altec Lansing speakers I picked up at a garage sale to make a first system for my son's room. 

All of that is fine and good, but it's the other thing that made the trip awesome! Yup, that's it: the coveted Panasonic DMC GF-1! Before I get into discussing the camera itself, let me explain what happened. My rather generous sister who lives in Taiwan and I rarely see, had (as always) bought a number of gifts for my wife and daughter. And she wisely decided to NOT purchase anything for me or my son since she had no idea what we'd want. So she gave us money to do that for ourselves. My son will happily run out and buy himself an elaborate Lego set I'm sure, but I was having trouble decided what to do. 

Of course, if you'll scroll back to the top you'll probably note a bit of frustration at having had the wrong camera on hand because I didn't want to carry my rather large and heavy D300. As you can see in the above comparison between that model and an Olympus Pen E-PL! (which is pretty similar in size to the Panny GF-1), it becomes obvious what was on my mind. However, you always have to keep in mind my frugal proclivities. As it turned out, I of course started where I always do, just to see what the market was doing for large sensor'd compact cameras with interchangeable lenses. Quite probably due to the introduction of many models of that type in the last year, the price of GF-1s had gone down considerably since I last looked at them (about 6-8 months ago). They apparently are in the $200's now; generally without lenses. As I was contemplating getting a body and what it would cost "all in" to get started, I came across an listing for a complete one with the "kit" 14-42mm lens that was missing the charger but complete otherwise starting bid at about $180. It was a bit high for me and I was busy, but when I went back to look at it, I was a little surprised that it didn't sell AND the seller had lowered the price and relisted it at a $160 Buy It Now. I continued to watch it, but nobody was bidding. I bid $115, but it didn't meet the "reserve" and as luck would have it, the camera didn't sell for a second time (One Day Listing), so I contacted the seller and offered to come to a compromise. To shorten a long story, we settled on $150, he pays shipping, and now the "carry camera" of my dreams is on it's way from Maryland due to arrive tomorrow!

$150 is a GREAT price. I had to shell out $10 for a charger, but I can live with that. The thing I'll have to watch out for is that the camera is part of an extensive system (part of which you can see above) so I'll have to be careful  that my $150 deal doesn't turn into a money-pit. I do know that I'll have to save up enough to buy the 20mm/f1.7 that makes this it a great street shooter, but that'll be another challenge for another day. For now, I'm just basking in the excitement of wait for the box to arrive!