• competed in a city league ski racing league, and our team won the whole season
• had the worst Christmas ever #christmasfail08
• been [positively] excited about a presidential inauguration
• played a UO officially sanctioned flip cup tournament with the club sports olympics, and we WON
• broke a slalom ski
• went from 5 down to 2 e-mail accounts, and one of those may be going a way soon
• met a girl, her name is Angela, many of you have even met her by now
• graduated from college!!!!!!!!!
• successfully survived a road trip with Angela through 9 states
  • Yellowstone, Ren Faire, Badlands, Wall Drug, SLC, etc…
• partaken in a few dancing lessons (ssssh! don’t tell anyone!)
• somehow convinced Angela to buy a Mac
• dealt with 2 flat tires in 2 different states I don’t live in, and neither one on my personal vehicle
• turned 27
• competed in 9 waterski tournaments in 6 different states, and waterskied in a 7th state
  • including Collegiate National All-Stars for slalom+trick, and AWSA Western Regionals for 3-event (and qualified for but didn’t go to AWSA Nationals)!
• upgraded my wordpress blog, twice, without posting anything
• volunteered with a church group on a construction project
• bought a Playstation 2 from a thrift store for $12.50 and repaired it myself
• sold my old DSLR and bought a spiffy new one, and taken thousands of photos with it
• attended a number of concerts
• given up on my football team, due to some unFavreable circumstances
• finally started getting my online portfolio and résumé up-to-date

…and some other stuff too, I assure you. But now that you’re updated on my life, maybe now I can get this site fully back on track again?

(above: Canon 50mm f/1.4, Canon 50mm f/1.8, Canon 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro)

Note, I did not test the faster lenses stopped down to match the slower ones. I suppose the DoF/fall-off is mostly as expected for the different apertures. But the main reason for the compact macro is it can do this (read on):

Notice just over 1 line of printed 10pt text is in focus, this lens can focus much, much closer to the subject.

Now, on to David’s fancy new lens, the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 macro. We intended to compare this one to the Canon 28-70 f/2.8 I’m borrowing from Tom at work, but were a little too unscientific about the testing. However, because of the price of the Canon (and figuring they should be fairly comparable as a medium-telephoto), I was more interested to see if the Tamron could also take the place of having a dedicated macro lens. Here are a few tests (Tamron 28-75 left/first, Canon 50mm Compact Macro right/second):

(above: Admittedly, my cropping here wasn’t perfect, but it appears the DoF fall-off on the Canon is more rapid, and both are very sharp where they should be. So from a larger distance, the Tamron does it’s job. However, it simply cannot get as close to the subject as the Canon, meaning you would have to crop the digital image to produce the same result)

(above & below: The Canon is clearly more clearly focused, look at the “teeth” on the edge of the coin. I can’t be entirely sure if this is because of the lens, the setup of the shot, or because the photo from the Tamron needed to be cropped big-time to produce a comparable framing)

The fact that both of these final tests produced the same result indicates to me that having to crop the final image down and the resulting quality is substantially less, and so the Tamron is not an adequate replacement for a prime macro lens, if you intend to use it for extreme close-up macro photography. Let it be noted that the Tamron isn’t marketed as a dedicated macro lens, so these tests were merely done as research to see which lenses I want to plan on getting… eventually.

I hope to do another test soon comparing the medium telephoto lenses in a controlled environment. Stay tuned, but don’t wait up for it

A little backstory leading up to this entry here. About 2 weeks ago, I checked out a really nice lens, and took it with the rest of photo kit to a waterski tournament where I shot a little over 1500 photos. All this with the hopes of selling a few prints to people. Now on with the research….

The first place I looked at was ExpressDigital’s PhotoReflect (I’m not providing a link, they’re not worth it, keep reading), because it’s where the 2008 AWSA Western Regionals photos were posted. I looked around the site, looked a little clunky but usable. Their rates sounded high at first glance (I’ve since found out they are indeed relatively low). For low-sales-volume accounts, they scrape 18% off the top, but don’t charge any bandwidth or storage fees.

The second place I looked at was PhotoWorks which also has free upload and storage, but their pricing markup is severely limited. The only options are a solid $ increase (ex. adding $10 to the cost of the print, regardless of size), or a solid % increase (ex. add 400% to the cost of the print, $1.14 4×6 and $209.70 for 20×30)

I kept on looking, asking a few photographers I know for recommendations. Unfortunately most people I know don’t sell their work online. Enter Zac. He suggested a few sites to check out. The first, PhotoShelter, is what he’s used in the past, and they have a “free” account to try, cool. The others DigitalRailRoad and RedBubble seemed to be capable, but targeted at other audiences.

Now for comparison, PhotoShelter seems the best option, as they handle all the printing and shipping stuff, and they scrape 30% off the top. But there is a $50 setup fee, and I would soon need more storage for $7-10/month (so $50 setup + $120/yr). DigitalRailRoad does not have a free account option, starts at $50 setup + $50/month, and they scrape 40% off the top. Most expensive, lowest margins, not a good combo. RedBubble seems to be targeted more towards art stuff.

These all seemed a litle overpriced now, and I remembered that PhotoReflect was free except for the 18% scraping. So I signed up for an account to try it out, excited to try their plugin for Apple’s Aperture. Low and behold, the plugin crashes Aperture every single time I try to connect to the website with it. Doing some research, other than providing the crappy plugin, they provide ABSOLUTELY NO MAC SUPPORT. Bullox.

Another option is using SmugMug Pro account which costs $150/year and they scrape 15% off your markup. The biggest selling point for SmugMug is also it’s biggest downside, the website is really Ajax-heavy. While it is a SWEET looking site, I’d worry that the glam of the site might be offputting/intimidating to some customers.

Ultimately I don’t think I’m ready to throw myself into the world of pro-photography, which is what it would require to justify the investment of joining most of these sites. I do want to start making some money from my work so I can justify spending more money on equipment, and more time in the field. So for now I’m still stuck thinking about what I want to do.

EDIT: I just realized with PhotoWorks, you can use the % markup with a minimum $ markup. For example, I can say 300% markup, but a minimum of $5. This seems to create a nicer price scale, though I wish I could markup the larger items less, since I don’t think I’d be selling many.

I’ve skied at Mint a few times, but only at the Emerald Valley’s Northwest Championships tournament. This was the first one where our club wasn’t as required to do the work. I still helped out with scoring and judging, it helps to practice at a variety of locations, learn the quirks of the computers and whatnot.

22nd ANNUAL MINT LAKE OPEN
TourID: 08W133C
Yacolt, WA
7/12/2008 to 7/13/2008

Slalom Rd 1: 4 @ 58k, 23m
Tricks: 810 pts (personal best!)
Jump: 64 ft (personal best!)
Slalom Rd 2: 2H @ 58k, 16m (personal best!)

I also took some photos from the site (click image above for gallery):

Towards the end of the “shoot,” we wandered over towards the playground equipment and took some interesting shots.

I’ve decided to keep using the school’s EOS Elan 7, and the recommended TMax 400 film for the foreseeable future (for the purposes of this class). I didn’t like how my Rebel K2 winds all the film and exposes it in reverse.

This is the third roll, and the first in a series of 2 rolls taken near the Fern Ridge Reservoir in west Eugene. David and I wandered around, and climbed up an embankment. Took pictures of small animal skeletons on the ground, of the horizon, and birds in the sky, among other things. What do you think?

These were all taken with the EOS Elan 7 using TMax 400 film.

The site was the Willamette River near Aspen St. in Springfield. All shot with Digital Rebel 300D, mostly using EF 28-90mm lens.

If you can believe it, there are more photos after the break.

Then I found a tennis ball in the woods and decided to do somewhat of a “study” with it. I would photograph it, kick it and photograph it again, and repeat the process until it was time to go. I tried to re contextualize the ball each time, and I think in most cases I was successful.

The challenge here was the setting was mostly the same, a walking path alongside the river, with vegetation on both sides. I think the number of shots I ended up with was appropriate, even though the reason for stopping was because my memory card filled up. I can see myself repeating a similar process again, and see if it takes me anywhere interesting.

I said: “Most of mine are on strips of light sensitive celluloid… er.. film, which I have to develop myself, so I don’t have anything to look at yet.”

Mike replied: “You might try some Preparation “C” on those sensitive celluloids. Just apply liberally to your F Stop and wait a few hours.”

Here’s my 2nd roll of film. A little misleading, I’ve been using 2 cameras, and I started this roll first, but it was the last (of 4 so far) to get finished, developed and scanned. Same deal as before, side image to view the rest of the album, or squares to see the individual images.

Since I’ve taken to the hobby of photography, I thought I might take another photography class (the last one I took was in 2002). I also thought I might start posting the photos here on my blog. To liven things up a bit, I’ll post some highlights of one roll of film at a time.

Click the larger image to the right to see the album, or the square thumbnails to see a larger version of that photograph.

This first roll was taken at “the pond” where we waterski here in Eugene.