Mostly Black & White

newton:~ chammann$: locate fancontrol

chammann — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:22:39 +0000

The front plastic panel is a bit shoddy, but it’s running well. And LOUD!

Fished myself a server out of the ‘bay, an IBM eSeries xServer 345. Two dual-core Xeons 3.2, three 32 GByte Ultra320 SCSI HDD in a RAID 0 with hot spare, 3 GByte RAM, four network interfaces, all for 50 Euro. It was very clean inside and data-wise, booted only into the various BIOSes and RAID configuration utilities, no remnants of it’s former configuration found on the disks. Two disadvantages became apparent right away when I tried to set it up: Being quite an old model (ca. 2003), disks for it are hellishly expensive and rather small. The biggest I could find online is an IBM 300 GByte for 363 Euro. Talk about casting pearls before swine, I think I’ll make do with the three disks that are in it and perhaps use an adapter. The other thing you’ll notice right away is how loud the fans are right from power-up. I think they run at max and never turn down irregardless of server load. There’s got to be a way to tame them!
Setting it up, I had a bit of difficulty getting Ubuntu Server on it (the CD drive wouldn’t boot the Solaris DVD, go figure!). Those Xeons are i686 processors, so we’re in 32-bit land. Having wasted some CD-Rs on 64-bit Linux ISOs, I finally found the right ISO and one of the last remaining CD-Rs to burn it to. Then the CD drive in the server was a bit temperamental and wouldn’t allow the beginning of the Ubuntu installation to finish several times. Well, enough war stories, I’m happy to report that the installation is advancing smoothly now, mainly over the net:

Booting Linux, Yay!

Now, where do I find a way to turn down these jet engines, er… fans? Any advice welcome.
Oh, and about the machine name. I had a scheme running with $evil-computer-name-out-of-a-novel-or-a-movie, but I’m fresh out of them. Now it’s natural philosophers.

Swan Rising

chammann — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 13:24:05 +0000

Swan Rising

The Leica M Gestalt

chammann — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:06:34 +0000

In the 90-ties, Leica M cameras came in these spiffy, red velvet-lined presentation boxes. Just had to do a bit of Skript-Fu on that.

A film-loading Leica has it’s own Gestalt. Even Leica itself couldn’t wholly transfer this impression onto their digital M bodies. My M9 is fine, thank you, but it doesn’t feel like a Leica in my hands and in use. There are just too many haptic and procedural differences compared to the models before the M8. When I sold my MP, seller’s remorse set in as soon as I returned to using film again. My recently acquired Leica M6 0.85 brings back that Gestalt. I’d like to talk about what I mean with this in this post. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a Leicaphile’s drivel!
Grasp a Leica M film body and it is instantly recognizable. The rounded sides and the shallow depth feel comfortable in hand, the film advance lever, the shutter speed dial and the release are where they were originally placed on the M3. I fitted a soft release button that makes a lot of difference for slow shutter speeds as well as for that fast, subconscious shutter actuation on the street. With a button like this, your index finger no longer pushes into the camera, you place the joint between the distal and middle finger bone on it and a real soft downward movement suffices to take a shot. Granted, you also take more photos of the inside of your camera bag.

If seeing is believing, does a camera that allows you to keep both eyes open while taking a shot make your photos doubly believable?

A photographer is a visually oriented kind of person (duh!). So, it makes sense to use a camera that facilitates seeing in the situation, and the Leica M does excactly that. Especially if it has a 0.85 magnification viewfinder like my M6 has. You see, in a rangefinder camera, the viewfinder’s magnification doesn’t change with the lens mounted as it does in a SLR or an EVIL camera. Frames for the lenses are superimposed on the viewfinder image in the Leica as needed. You can see around them in the viewfinder and this helps enormously in composition. That effect is enhanced if the viewfinder magnification is high enough for you to keep both eyes open, fusing the image through the viewfinder with the unimpeded one from the left eye. A healthy human eye has a horizontal viewing angle of about 160°. In street photography, you use that to see someone stepping into your frame, to judge movement and the play of light. Just not possible with a bulky (D)SLR or through a laggy electronic viewfinder. Not really possible with Leica’s standard 0.72 magnification viewfinder (though there is a magnifying lens available that brings it up to 0.85). The 0.85 viewfinder in my M6 (also available on request for the M6TTL, the MP and the M7) is more of a 0.95 viewfinder and I have instant fusion of both images, the frames and the rangefinder patch seem to float in space before me. In essence, the camera disappears. This subjective vanishing trick is enhanced by the subtle noise the shutter and film transport in this mechanical marvel make. Very silent, but you’ve heard that, haven’t you?
There you have it, this is the Leica M Gestalt: it vanishes in use, letting you feel and react with your subject. On the street and in crowds, I have often already taken a photo before I realize that I have. It is easy to get one with the flow of life around you.

The innards of a M6

But let’s not get all Zen-like, it is just a camera. What else is in there except some insanely well made mechanics? As you can see above, some electronics to take care of measuring the exposure, i.e. giving you some data you can judge yourself with two triangular LEDs in the bottom of the viewfinder. That’s all you really need, put a lens (Oh those Leica lenses!) on the front and a good film in the back (I’ll take Tri-X developed in Diafine, thank you!) and head out!

Fetish Fone

chammann — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:45:58 +0000

There’s something Lost in Translation here. Or, to drag in another movie pun, it’s a Shame.

So, a new iPhone. The sixth iteration, curiously numbered 5. And I’ve had all but the original model. This time around, my contract was up for renewal, lessening the subjective financial blow. A bit half-heartedly but still unavoidably, I ordered it three days after it was announced and was surprised to be in the first wave of deliveries, recieving it the day before yesterday. It is gorgeous, as the late Steve Jobs would surely have remarked had he lived to present it to geekdom. So what is this strange attraction?
The Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology has the following definition to offer:
“In its original meaning, the word “fetish” (portug: feitiço from lat. factitius: artefact) denotes an object of veneration, an idol, a religious item endowed with magic powers. Such fetishes were, and still are, worshipped in many preliterate societies.”
There you have it. Oh dear! Explains a lot, doesn’t it? Just replace “religious item” with “gadget” and “preliterate” with “computer-illiterate” and it applies. And it makes perfect sense that the purveyor of these magic objects should be the second most valuable company in the world. They can ask for profit margins above 100% percent on these fetishes and their customers admire them for it. Only natural that the stock market should push the price of ONE stock above 700$.
So, yes, I feel satisfied and ashamed. And I want a command line app on my fetish fone .

This Machine Photographs People

chammann — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 20:08:53 +0000

The Ricoh GRD IV camera is a fluke on the market of small-sensor, compact digital cameras. It is made for photographers who want a fixed focal length, customizable, quickdraw camera to photograph humanity as it goes along it‘s merry way to oblivion in tight spaces. Sean Reid called it a „pocket sketchbook“ in his review and I couldn‘t agree more. If you succeed with it to make good pictures, they will not stand out because of their technical quality, but because of their engaging content. It is so unobtrusive and fast to work with and it‘s 28 mm in film days equivalent focal length forces you into such close contact to your subject that you can‘t help but get some moving photos. Like a Leica in days of yore, it needs some practice to slice that special moment out of the flow of life around you. In the beginning, you‘ll get lots of frames that have just been vacated by your subject. This will not be the cameras fault, look, there‘s a manual focus setting that almost removes shutter lag. No need to frame with the back screen that can be a bit stuttering, it can be switched completly off. Use the GV-2 accessory brightline viewfinder!

See? Very grippy crinkle finish, too.

After getting it, I found myself in this learning phase and so I‘ll show a test shot from a stationary, albeit weird object (click to enlarge!):

A picture of a moustache purse in RAW Therapy

See how the leather on the rim of the bag is rendered? This is without sharpeneing.
I see a lot of promise here, both for good enough photos qualitywise as well as for direct, engaging photos on the street.

A Simple Box

chammann — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 14:57:32 +0000

The little camera that could… dwarfed by it’s lens

Nikon did something audacious with their D3200: They put their best APS-C sensor into their “Beginner DSLR” body. And there are some more signs of a guerilla agenda for that camera. It still can be set to all traditinal exposure modes (P, A, S and M) and the “Guide” mode for a structured introduction to photography (and for missing the decisive moment while chimping on the back screen… ) is on a separate position of the mode wheel. You never need to go there if you don’t want to. There are no “Art Filters” or similar in-camera effects, Nikon postpones that kind of gimmicry to postprocessing. Of course, it shoots RAW as well as JPEGs, and let me tell you, the NEF files from this 24 MPixel sensor are something to look at. Here’s an example (clickable for full-size version).

A very detailed and harmonic representation of the wood grain and the soundhole rosette of my Martin. Even though the strings are a bit in front of peak sharpness, their windings in combination with the high 24 MPixel resolution still elicit color moiré.

As the metadata show, this picture was taken with the AF-S Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 G at f/5.6 and with flash. Other pictures from the first batch have shown that with this high-resolution sensor you have to have your technique down pat. Focussing errors, camera shake and object movements are rendered as exact as finest details of your subject are!
For me, it was a natural addition to my mainly film-based Nikon kit. I had toyed with the idea of a Pentax K-5 as an alternative, but that one is three years after it’s introduction and sensor technology has made significant advances sine then. Plus, I’m heavily invested in Nikon lenses.

On the Edges

chammann — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 18:27:03 +0000

Today I want to talk a bit about framing. Not about the process of putting a picture in a frame, but about taking an excerpt of one‘s surrounding and making a picture out of it. In photography, they way you do this determines the quality of your art. Together with pressing the shutter at the right time, of course. Photography is easy *1), you just need to get two things right.
Let‘s leave the decisive moment aside for now and think about framing. Most photographs have a main subject that has a discernible form, a describing silhouette. Yes, I am again excluding a lot of pictures and styles, but bear with me here.
This subject can be positioned in the frame in three distinct ways:
Loose:
The subject rests within a bed of environment, background, context. This non-subject matter gets enough space so that the subject can breathe.

See?

Composition rules like the rule of thirds may be applied, but can be disregarded as well. In this way, composition can be balanced or unbalanced, but the relationship between subject and context is always resting, self-assured. The subject presents itself in a calm manner, it‘d be hard to insinuate tension here.
Asymptotic:
Now this one is interesting, mainly because it sits at the divide between the other two, undecided where it will go, in tension. Lines in the composition graze at the borders of the frame asymptotically.

Architecture holds still long enough for that, if you’re not HCB.

This draws the eye away from the center of the frame, where you‘d mostly find the subject. There‘s your tension right there, and you‘d need a mighty attractive subject or an interesting composition to make this work. Main compositional lines should not intersect the borders at (about) a right angle, that‘d give an exploding effect.
Tight:
Now here we are in Robert Capa‘s territory: „ If your pictures are not good enough, you weren‘t close enough.“ Interesting statement for a dead war photographer. Anyway, now you‘ve framed too close, but then again, you didn‘t get it wrong. By cutting the silhouette of your subject with the borders of the frame, you enter the domain of the innuendo, the uncertain. Your picture is deliciously out of balance and could well go on and on beyond the borders of the frame. You know how they say that successful art happens in the viewer‘s head? Here‘s an example of that!
(Example’s coming, I’ll have to look one up on the main computer)
And how do you decide between these modes of framing? With your feet, and your eyes telling them when to stop walking. Zooming is lame and only allowed prior to walking. I mean it, mainly because the focal length influences perspective, too.

*1) No, it isn‘t.

Think Different!

chammann — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:33:04 +0000

Turning a Slogan on it’s Head

Just to set the record straight: I know this is wrong usage and the second word should be adverbial. „-ly“, you know. Apple surely knew how to make a slogan stick. Anyway, I want to turn this meme around today and talk about my experiences going away from Apple‘s walled garden. For me, this meant a return to Linux: I had used it as a desktop system until I changed over to Mac OS X while it was still in beta, ca. 1999. And it meant a change of hardware. The first laptop I bought explicitly for Linux was soon gone on to another user when my son killed his MacBook with a cup of tea to the keyboard. The weeks I had the ThinkPad X1, I appreciated it‘s responsive keyboard and the fast SSD. And I must admit, I actually enjoyed tinkering with the configuration of the not-quite-up-to-date Ubuntu Linux system on it. When my son got it, I had it up to almost mission-critical status, and he surprised me with capabilities I didn‘t know it had (videochats on Skype, anyone?).
Anyway, with it gone, I soon missed a Linux laptop and couldn‘t quite see myself returning shamefacedly into the Cupertino fold. So, after some deliberation, I bought another ThinkPad, this time a T520. It‘s a model with a 15.6 inch screen (that scared me with it‘s horribly blueish default color calibration. Luckily, a solution in form of a very ergonomic icc profile was soon found on a review site, of all places on the world wide web! Yet another example of how you can often bootstrap yourself out of difficulties on Linux. Provided you have web access. The lifeline of these postmodern times of ours…), a 1/2 Terabyte (spinning, ugh!) HDD and dual graphics cards (Intel integrated and a much faster (and voltage-guzzling) Nvidia one). The keyboard is even better as the one in the X1, and by that I mean clickier, more positive feedback.
For nostalgic reasons, I tried SuSE liniux 12.1 out on it at first, because that‘s what I had on my computers in the last century (ha, I always wanted to write a sentence like that!). Best regards to Nuremberg, but it is crap! It‘s rpm-based packaging system it recalcitrant and doesn‘t provide all programs I wanted. The Linux version of the Spotify music player is one case in point.
After that I got a CD burned with the current Ubuntu 12.4 (Precise Pangolin, love these alliterative monikers) system and had a running system in a few hours. In the first few days using it, I’ve been impressed with the diverse and well designed coding tools available on Linux now. And I don‘t mean Eclipse, no, no, no…
The graphics boost when switching to the Nvidia card (with Bumblebee installed, you just call the programm from the command line and prepose „optirun“) is astonishing, glxspheres run on the integrated card with 1-2 fps, about a hundred times faster on the separate Nvidia card. On the other hand: DVDs run fine on Intel‘s chips, it depends, I guess.
So, on this ascension weekend, I will be coding!

I Dreamt of the Bechers Tonight

chammann — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:17:19 +0000

Click to view slideshow.

Error Circle

chammann — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:52:34 +0000

A smurf tied up in the forest

Sometimes there are so many errors in an image that quality comes round again to being, dare I say, good? Example in case above. I had expired SPUR DSX ultra-high resolution film in my F6 and the new 105 DC lens on it when I chanced on an eerie scene while on a walk through the forest. Someone had tied a smurf balloon to a utility pole at a crossroads. It had lost some of it’s helium and was barely floating to and fro in the balmy spring air, turning this way and that, showing his spooky face or the shriveled body. I took quite a few shots and went my way, shaking my head. What would be the impression if someone encountered the smurf at night?
When I developed the roll, the SPUR Modular UR developer components I had left didn’t look too good, one of the fluids had turned medium brown from oxidation. And they weren’t that good, the film came out severely underdeveloped, the strip showing only faint image traces. Resignedly, I still pushed it into the scanner. Though the histogram occupied only three instead of the usual 9+ stops of density range, the scanner did what he could with the data available and I got images that were grainy but sharp, not much of a gray scale and they showed a lot of dust. Regardless, I pushed them on into Aperture and tried out some Nik Silver Efex Filters on them. One I almost never use, called Pinhole Camera (a heavy vignette, steep gradation and still more grain), gave me the impression I had visualized out there in the forest with the tied-up smurf. After two technical errors and a cheesy choice of software filter.
So, don’t throw your errors away! Work with them!