Knuckledragger

A friend of mine has the Fireface 400 in his recording studio. While he really likes the sound of it, especially the mic preamps. That said, he wishes he'd sprung for the 800. His main complaints with the 400 are: The wallwart, and how difficult it is to plug in to the back of the unit. The MIDI connector, which is crap (irrelevant to H-Cers, I know.) Lack of a front mounted power switch. Most of these issues are moot if one isn't rack mounting the unit, but my friend is and now kind of hates his 400 because of it.

I dunno about a pale "Nikon look." K-Rock turns the saturation of his Nikons up to 11 and goes for cartoon colors. The pro and prosumer Nikon bodies have quite a few saturation and color options buried in their labirinthine menu system. This part two of the gig I did last October (right before the epic snowstorm and 8 days without power.) DJ Frankie Bones was the headliner, and he arrived very late only to have about 20 minutes to play. As I said in my on the subject, Frankie negotiated a deal where he'd go back to the promoter's house and do an exclusive set in exchange for most of his fee. At the end of the night I listened to Frankie spin to about 25 people. It was amazing. He has been DJing for 25+ years now, and his set showed a profound understanding of the history of dance music. The only set I've heard that was better was when I saw Afrika Bambataa play in 2007. I like this silhouette of Katherine in this one. Liquid sky and glass gobos. Frankie, back in the promoter's studio. That widget in the middle is a hybrid DJ mixer and Traktor (DJ software) controller. It looks shiny, but I did not like using it. Give me a real analogue mixer any day. The above setup, available light. One more of Katherine. The above shots were all taken with my battered old 30D and mostly my 50mm F/1.4 and 17-50MM F/4. Click through for EXIF. I have still more images to post from the first few outings with my (second) S95. They're gonna have to wait for another post.

Man, I hope they didn't do that to a real vintage 300SL.

The best idea I saw WRT reaching an audience that doesn't already know about SOPA and PIPA was in a reddit comment a few days ago: the legion of porn tube sites should all go dark in a similar fashion to reddit and wikipedia. Take away people's porn and they take notice.

SOPA and/or PIPA would take out imgur (where I host 99% of the images I post) and minus (the other 1%), and severely cripple YouTube and Vimeo. This is to say nothing of the source sites (reddit, the LJ randompictures feed, etc.) That'd leave ...funny text stories from usenet? On a semi-related note, a Polish friend of mine informs me that "pipa" is a slang term for vagina.

Today is January 18th. Wikipedia, Reddit, and many other sites are going dark in protest of SOPA and PIPA. https://www.google.c...ing/takeaction/ If SOPA or PIPA pass, there won't be any more Slow Forum.

This thread keeps popping up like a turd that will not flush.

^^ Those are awesome, Archos.

I've had my (second) PowerShot S95 for about a month now, and at this point I'm pretty used to it. The combination a 28mm FoV (and 6mm DoF) at F/2 is nice after working with APS-C and 50mm for so long. Since there is basically no need to stop down, I use the second control dial to adjust ISO and shoot in full manual. The controls on the S95 do feel painfully slow to me. I know it's fast for its class, but I'm spoiled by the physical controls of an SLR. I've shot with my 30D for 5 1/2 years now and it's essentially an extension of my hands. I rarely I have to think about what I'm doing. Not so for the poor S95. I am forever waiting for it to catch up with what I want to do. Likewise, the S95 kind sucks at autofocusing in low light, especially when the brightest light source in the room is pointed at the camera (as is usually the case in my nightclub photos.) Again, I'm spoiled by my 30D and more to the point my 580EX's AF assist beam. I've experimented with manual focus on the S95 (leaving it set to infinity focus, which is more or less always what I want.) Unfortunately, it has a bad habit of going back to AF if I power it down or change modes. The fastest technique I've founds is to focus on a distant, but well-lit object then recompose on what I want to shoot. Since I'm shooting full manual, exposure is not an issue. Even though it has a comparitively diminutive sensor, the S95 has arguably better high ISO performance than the ancient 30D. Also, it autodetects tungsten and corrents for it, which blew my little photographer mind when I first discovered that feature. So anyway, some pix: Late last month I helped run lights for Steve Aoki who is apparently a big deal right now. I'd never heard of him before and wasn't overly impressed. That didn't matter though, as the younger generation of club kids who attended this show (in droves) loved him. It was a great opportunity to test out the S95 again. As is often the case, the best photo of the evening was taken with my 50mm (on the 30D, of course.) I have two other shows to post photos from, but they'll have to wait for another post. The software gets ornery if one puts too many images in a post.

...and now it is with a heavy heart that I must report that the Dear Leader's residency in Club Slow has ended. The populace will now openly weep.

It is. The Dear Leader taught him everything he knows about house music.