Steve McCurry – known for his 1985 cover portrait photo of 12-year old Afghan girl named Sharbat Gula that was taken with Nikon FM, Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 and Kodachrome 64
Jodi Cobb – known for her photos of the women of Saudi Arabia and of the Geishas
Wlliam Albert Allard – known for his photos of people using the Leica M6 35mm rangefinder system
Joel Sartore – through the The Great Courses, I have learned so much about how to take good pictures from him
Lynsey Addario – her book entitled It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War published in 2015 described that started with her father’s Nikon FG and 50mm lens
Sports Illustrated
Water Iooss Jr. – known for his photos of Michael Jordan and the SI Swimsuit models
My favorite lens is the Nikkor AF-S 58mm f/1.4G. With very shallow depth-of-field, it can be hard to nail down focus, especially at long distances and in low light. However, it produces 3D-like images with beautiful bokeh and sharp results when focus is achieved. Although it is the largest Nikon normal lens, it actually fits on the Nikon D800 nicely, providing good balance for the camera-lens combination.
It is truly a nifty fifty! I wish it was available when I was doing a lot of International travel from 2009 to 2013. In my travels, I’ve used the Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 AI-s or the Voigtlander 40mm f/2 on the Nikon D200 to minimize bulk and weight. Manual focusing on the D200 and other DSLRs, unfortunately, is difficult to get sharp results because DSLRs are not equipped with split-image focusing screens for precise manual focus. In addition, on the APS-C (Advanced Photo System type-C) image sensor, the D200 gives me 1.5x cropped images, e.g., 30mm focal length equivalent on a 20mm lens.
In addition to the above lenses, my favorite Nikon lenses – especially on the FX full-frame DSLRs such as Nikon D810 and Nikon D4s – are…
Prime lenses: Nikkor AF-S 24mm f/1.4G, Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AI-s, Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI-s, Nikkor AF 85mm f1.4D, Nikkor AF-S 200mm f/2G VR and Nikkor AF 300mm f/4.
Zoom lenses: Nikkor AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8D, Nikkor AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8D, Nikkor AF 80-200 f/2.8D and Nikkor AF-S 200-400mm f/4G VR.
My favorite lenses on the Fujifilm X-E2 camera are Fujinon XF 18mm f/2 R, Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 R (pancake lens), Fujinon XF 35mm f/1.4 R, Fujinon XF 60mm f/2.2 R (macro lens) and Fujinon XF 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 R LM OIS. Since the X-E2 uses the APS-C image format sensor, these lenses give me the equivalent focal lengths of 27mm, 41mm, 53mm, 90mm and 83-300mm respectively.
The worst lens I’ve used is Nikkor AF-S DX 18-70mm f/3.5~4.5.
Maggi’s Dance Recital | 30-MAY-2015 | Nikon D4s | Nikkor AF-S 200mm f/2G | f/2 @ 1/200 sec. | ISO 640Maggi Posing for Photo Shoot | 29-MAY-2015 | Fujifilm X-E2 | Fujinon XF 55-200mm f/3.5~4.8 R LM OIS | f/4.8 @ 1/60 sec. | ISO 1600Maggi on her 7th Birthday | 2014 | Nikon D800 | Nikkor AF-S 58mm f/1.4G | f/1.4 @ 1/125 sec. | ISO 100Maggi with Big Headphones | 30-MAR-2011 | Nikon D200 | Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI-s | f/1.2 @ 1/200 sec. | ISO 200Maggi on Christmas Day | 25-DEC-2009 | Nikon D200 | Nikon AF 35mm-70mm f/2.8D | f/4 @ 1/60 sec.Maggi on Christmas Day | 25-DEC-2008 | Nikon D200 | Nikon 50mm f/1.2 Ai-S | f/2 @ 1/125 sec. | ISO 400Maggi and Mom | 25-JAN-2008 | Nikon D200 | Nikkor AF 85mm f/1.4D | f/4 @ 1/60 sec. | ISO 100
While over 100 million Americans remember February 1, 2015 for the exciting Super Bowl XLIX football game when the New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks 28-24, we will remember it differently…
Just when the Super Bowl kicked off at 5:30PM, we had our own soup-a-bowl and enjoyed a bowl of noodle soup for dinner!
19.3 inches of snow accumulated during the weekend. Although it was a wondrous sight, we shoveled snow multiple times in the morning, day and night so that our driveway and sidewalks would be relatively clear of snow.
Eugene and Maggi were delighted to have a 3-day weekend when School District U-46 decided to close schools on February 2.
19.3 inches of snow as seen on our deck on the morning of February 2, 2015
At the Boy Scouts of America’s Wood Badge leadership training in 2012, the C7-127-12 course director Dan Zedan introduced the following quote to me and other participants. I didn’t know much about it other than Forest Witcraft said it. Scouting Magazine recently published about it here.
Just started reading “How Google Works”, a book I received at the Google for Work event on October 1, 2014. It made me realize that the technology trends of openly available information on the Internet, ubiquity of mobile devices and networks, and practically limitless computing power and storage of cloud computing have enabled frequent and inexpensive experimentation. Internet first, mobile first and Internet of Things (including wearable technology) have profoundly changed the world.
One other trend that was casually mentioned in the book is the role of open source technologies. The technologies like those powering ECP and this blog have matured, enabling people to not just use but create usable and low-cost solutions to solve everyday problems.
Interesting ideas include…
The smart creative is required to achieve success in the Internet Century vs. the knowledge worker of the twentieth century.
They are multi-dimensional, combining technical depth with business savvy, creative flair and hands-on approach to getting things done.
They don’t just design concepts, they build prototypes.
Attributes include taking risks, failing fast and learning from failures.
Just received an Arduino Uno R3 with Vilros Ethernet Shield kit in the mail. Will be connecting it to the Pi soon. Not sure what to do with it yet. It will probably demonstrate Internet of Things (IoT). Check back to find out what it will do.
UPDATE (03-OCT-2014): Installed the Arduino Uno driver software for Windows 8.1. Plugged the Arduino Uno to my Acer netbook via USB. Inserted an LED into pin 13 (long leg) and ground pin (short leg) of the Uno. Downloaded the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) software. Started the IDE and opened, compiled and uploaded my first sketch (program). Got the LED to blink at 500 ms, 250 ms and 100 ms.
UPDATE (04-OCT-2014): Tried the TMP36 temperature sensor. Next is to get the temperature data to be accessible on the Web.
UPDATE (05-OCT-2014): Got the Arduino to publish the temperature on a web page.
UPDATE (15-DEC-2015): Used ThingSpeak to scrape the temperature data from the abovementioned webpage and to create a channel for publishing the collected data on the chart below.
I was introduced to moonshot thinking at the Google for Work event in Chicago today on October 1, 2014. It challenges people to make something 10x better instead of 10% incremental Improvement by way of solving a huge problem with a radical solution that applies breakthrough technology. Watch this inspiring video. Read more about it at https://www.solveforx.com/.
The following is a partial transcript of the video:
[Google – Moonshot Thinking] Source: LYBIO.net
The actual moonshot is wonderful, inspirational, poetic, beautiful, involved great technical challenges, genuine heroism, it brought the world together. But think about the Polynesian islander on the dug out canoe, deciding one day they were going to go that way. No one had ever been that way before, no one even knew if there was anything that way before, it was amazing and it changed the world.
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Everyone else in the world is working on that next ten percent. If you can be the one that delivers that ten times improvement, you have a chance to really change things.
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You need a lot of courage in this work and you need a lot of persistence. One of the things that is really critical is not only having the courage to keep trying every day or thinking big. Even if you don’t really 100 percent believe it’s possible, like, you might think this might be possible, have the courage to try, that’s how the greatest things have happened.
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“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
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I think our ambitions are a glass ceiling in what we can accomplish.
When you find your passion, you are unstoppable. You can make amazing things happen, it’s been true throughout all of history.
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When Kennedy said that we will put a man on the moon, it’s about the fact that he said we don’t know how to do this yet, and we are gonna to do it anyway, and that sends chills up everybody’s spines, because if that happens, what couldn’t we do?
