I waited a long time to watch this movie and finally watched it last night. Overall, I think it was an enjoyable movie. Loved the “feel” of the way the film was pieced together and the music was great too.

It seems that in general, most guys hated the movie and most girls liked it. I know that that sentence has a few implications to it and it might imply that I’m a girl. I’m not. But here’s how I see it:

Summer was definitely messed up. That doesn’t mean to say that Tommy wasn’t an idiot. In one scene, Summer tells Tommy that she can’t give him what he wants and at that moment, he was OK with it. Lets just say he was thinking with his wrong head. But is it so absurd that someone can not want something they don’t fully understand? To Summer, she never experienced love and that’s why she never wanted a serious relationship.

So how did she end up married just a few months after breaking up with Tommy? She found the love of her life. That’s it. What she did was definitely wrong, but in THIS SCENARIO is it so far fetched? I don’t think so.

In any case, true love as media portrays it is not considered true love in my book. As Christians, we love because Christ loved us first. When we model that love to one another, it’s a beautiful thing.

Oh, and that Zooey Deschanel? Yeah, she’s freaking cute.

I rented a tilt/shift lens this past weekend for my cousin’s wedding. Sadly, the wicked witch of the north (AKA the wedding coordinator) prohibited me from using it to it’s full potential. But I digress…

All in all, the lens was pretty darn cool, but definitely requires some time spent with it to learn it’s ins and outs. In “normal” photography, the focal plane is always parallel to the sensor, but a tilt/shift lens allows the photographer to change this plane. This allows the photographer to have a tremendous amount of control over depth of field. Other uses allow the photographer to correct perspective distortion and to take panoramas without moving the camera back.

There’s so much more to keep in mind when using this lens and the tilt/shift adjustments. Not only does tilting or shifting change the perspective or focal plane, it also introduces vignetting and changes in the exposure are also necessary. I feel like extreme tilt or shift also affects the sharpness of the lens. But overall, the lens is very fun. If my large format lenses sell, this lens may be next on my list.

IN A NUTSHELL:

Pros:
- Options! Change that focal plane!
- Great colors
- Sharp (for the most part)
- Opens tons of creative doors

Cons:
- Lack of sharpness when using extreme tilt/shift (but could be due to poor technique)*
- Takes some time getting use to, but obviously there will be a learning curve
- If you don’t have Live View, you better have a split-prism focusing screen

I’m going to go against the grain here, so if you’re going to hate, just remember: haters wanna hate.

Overall, I thought the movie was OK. It wasn’t spectacular, but good. I feel like it’s one of those movies you can watch once, appreciate it for what it is, and not be able to watch it again (kind of like Little Miss Sunshine). There’s obviously some deep things going on during the movie. Not all families or relationships are perfect, but that’s LIFE. So deal with it. Got it.

The music on the other hand was nothing short of amazing. I thought Karen O’s stuff was pretty good, but was REALLY impressed by Carter Burwell. Actually, come to think of it, the two compliment each other so well. Really an impressive score and soundtrack.

So it was a good movie. Great in some regards and just so-so in others. In any case, it’s worth watching in the theater, but in hindsight, I wouldn’t mind watching it at home either. Cheers.

Ok, the last post was a bit of a joke. I’m going to share a few initial thoughts about Snow Leopard now that I finally have it installed.

“If you build it, they will come.”
Apple made a Microsoft like move and basically released a service pack for Leopard. Snow Leopard isn’t super crazy. Actually, it’s been more of a headache than enjoyment these past few hours. Honestly, you don’t need to jump the gun with this OS update. It’s not revolutionary to common folk like you and me. But like all other Apple products, the moment something is released, it becomes the new hot thing. Don’t get your hopes up.

Incompatibility but mostly compatible
Because Snow Leopard was newly coded, some of your old apps might not be compatible. I’ve already run into issues with my mouse (Logitech MX Revolution) and an FTP app that I use (Cyberduck). Luckily, Cyberduck issued an update today that is compatible with Snow Leopard. Logitech on the other hand hasn’t, which is surprising, seeing as Cyberduck is a one man show and Logitech is a huge corporation. However, I was able to find a quick “cheat” online that allowed me to reprogram my mouse so I could use most of the buttons. Definitely a backwards step.

On the bright side, the rest of the apps I use work. No issues with Photoshop or Bridge yet.

Bad things happen to good people, but Apple has your back
Apple promised more reliable installation with Snow Leopard. They didn’t lie. The power went out in our neighborhood TWICE while I was installing Snow Leopard. My iMac decided to shutdown TWICE while installing Snow Leopard. That’s FOUR times the installation was unexpectedly interrupted. Well, after a few more tries, Snow Leopard was able to install completely through. I didn’t lose anything important on my computer (remember to BACK UP!), so kudos to Apple.

Less is more
I should take a cue from my own title (this post is getting long), but Apple also promised that Snow Leopard would take up to 7GB of less space as an OS. Installing Snow Leopard freed up around 5-6GB for me. Not bad.

Leopards run faster in the Snow
It’s amazing how simply recoding an operating system can bring about hardware performance gains. Finder and Preview are definitely faster and noticeably so. Other apps however seem to run at the same speed. Apple also promised quicker shutdown and reboot times. It’s noticeable, but the difference isn’t night and day. Waking up from sleep seems to be about the same, if not a tiny bit slower.

Premature conclusion
Overall, I think my lack of enthusiasm for Snow Leopard stems from the nightmare installation process. Twice it wasn’t Apple’s fault. They can’t control power outages. But the other two times, they refused to fix my iMac, and for that, I hate them.

The bottom line is this: Snow Leopard is big. It’s a big update. But will people like you and me who browse the internet and edit a few pictures here and there benefit tremendously from it?

Not yet.

Now, we have Snow Leopard. Apple built up Snow Leopard from the ground up. It is now entirely 64-bit compatible and a lot of the staple apps like Finder were re-written in Cocoa. What does this all mean? I don’t know. I’m assuming faster and more efficient. I just read all that other stuff on the interweb.

Since I am no expert when it comes to operating systems, I’m going to share my own take on Apple’s new OS.

The Packaging

Apple has revolutionized the way to package their products. They have consciously gone green and paid great attention to even the finer details… such as packaging. From this photo, we can already see how much less of a footprint (not to mention carbon footprint) the new packaging takes on the desk. If we take a closer look…

… We can appreciate just how thin and petite this box is. But don’t let size fool you. Packaged inside this small box, is an ENTIRE operating system!

Extras!

Apple graciously offers TWO of their white logo stickers so that you can give them to friends and family who don’t actually own a Mac. They can then put it on their Dells or HPs and try to feel better about themselves. Or if they’re feeling really crazy, they can stick it on the back window of their car to show the world their Apple pride.

In all seriousness…
A lot of the changes Apple did with their “new” OS is “under-the-hood” improvements. 64-bit this, 64-bit that… It will mainly benefit when apps are written in 64-bit. Sure the OS itself will run quicker now (which is a good thing!), but we won’t really see anything drastic immediately. As of now, I’m waiting for Time Machine to back up my current data on Time Capsule. I have CRACK DAT PAT software that requires a one-time license and I’m not sure if installing Snow Leopard will affect me in any way.

Sadly… I should expect faster Time Machine back ups with Snow Leopard but alas… I don’t have Snow Leopard installed. Yet.

And sorry. I just wasted 5 minutes of your life.

[SPOILER WARNING... Maybe, but not really]

I watched District 9 last night. Initially, I thought the movie wasn’t that great and this was with very little expectations going into the movie. It felt long and things only really picked up towards the end. But after thinking about it a bit, I think it was pretty decent. The movie goes deeper than simply blowing things up. There’s obviously an underlying social theme to the movie. I think I’m going to have to watch it again to truly appreciate it…

But I can wait til it comes out on Bluray.

Now I just need to watch 500 Days of Summer. Been waiting forever.

The Lens
The lens itself is very compact and very light. It’s a manual focus lens and uses the M42 mount, so an adaptor is needed. Most companies sell the lens with an adaptor already mounted and they have them for most cameras. The focus ring is marked with distances ranging from 0.3 meters to infinity (Yes! Infinity focus!) and it’s made of a nice rubber material. The aperture is adjusted manually via a small ring located towards the back.

Sharpness and Contrast
Most people these days are worried about the sharpness of a lens. I read a few reviews and people said the lens wasn’t too sharp unless stopped down to higher apertures. I find the lens to be sharp even wide open (f/2.8) and pretty darn good stopped down to f/4 ~ f/5.6. At anything higher than f/8, I can see the effects of diffraction and the image quality suffers. The lens itself produces nice, punchy contrast and good colors as well. I haven’t noticed any strange color casts (yet), but I’ll have to shoot more to know for sure.

This is a 100% crop. No sharpening, but I did adjust the levels, which will bump up contrast. Still, nothing you wouldn’t do in post.

Bokeh
For such a cheap lens, it produces decent bokeh. Most wide lenses don’t produce the best bokeh and this lens is really wide. You can notice “rings” in the bokeh, but to be honest, this is pretty darn good.

Another 100% corner crop. I believe this was shot at f/2.8, but could have been f/5.6.

Fishy-ness (Distortion)
So on a full frame camera, I find the lens to be fishy enough. I used to own a Peleng 8mm fisheye which had a huge image circle and you could actually see the inside of the barrel in your pictures. The Zenitar fills the entire frame and doesn’t leave the dark corners, which I like. If you have a crop camera, don’t expect the lens to be so fishy.

The fishy-ness varies with how close you get to the object. I was probably 2 feet away when I took this picture, but it should give you a good idea of how much distortion you’ll get.

Overall, seems like a fun lens. I’ll put it through it’s paces and report back in a few days.

About a week ago, we finally replaced our old Netgear router for a brand new Apple Time Capsule. Some might call me an Apple fanboy, and to some degree they may be right, but I could care less about what they think. Just kidding. I won’t get into technical details because I don’t know them myself, so this will be a pretty basic review. If you have ADD or just don’t care, the bold titles should say it all.

Wireless Printing
The biggest thing that I’m WOW’d by with the Time Capsule is wireless printing. Yes, you can do this with other routers, but this is my first, and it’s amazing. My mom doesn’t have to move from her work station to the print room just to print out documents anymore. I don’t have to e-mail documents from my iMac to my Powerbook just to print things. Seriously, it’s a winner. To be able to click “print” from the other room and hear your printer start up is very satisfying. It’s like magic.

It’s Faster
Another thing that I’ve noticed is a more pleasant web browsing experience. I’m not sure if it’s my service provider or if our router just sucked, but before, I couldn’t even scroll through Facebook pictures or even log in to check my e-mail. Ever since we replaced the router, things have been much smoother. I did a download/upload test with both the old router and the Time Capsule and the results were the same. So maybe it was the router. If you’re a Verizon DSL user (Lord have mercy on you) like me, one thing I found out that was their DSL was not optimized for Mac OS X. Maybe having the Time Capsule as a router may have helped. Not sure if there’s any truth to this though. The Time Capsule is equipped with wireless N and G, so maybe that’s why my iMac is seeing the performance gains.

Wireless Backups
I haven’t tested this yet, so I’m not sure how much the network speed will take a hit during transfers, but it works. If you’re a Mac user, you can setup Time Machine to sync directly with Time Capsule. That’s it. PC users can use the Time Capsule in a similar way, but you’ll have to manually back things up, unless there’s a program that does back ups for you. Another bonus is for MobileMe users, who can then access their data from Time Capsule from anywhere around the world!

Share your WiFi, Not Your Life
This feature is REALLY nice. We have a lot of guests over and it’s annoying to tell 15 people your wireless password or in our case, we had to input their MAC address through our router. The Time Capsule solves this by creating a separate, guest wireless network. You can activate and deactivate the guest network as you please. The guest network isn’t tied to your Time Capsule’s data, so people won’t be able to snoop around through your stuff.

I’m not sure what else there is to the Time Capsule. Those are the only things that stood out to me. I guess another thing is that it looks really nice, like most Apple products. It does make my room look a little nicer.

Really nerdy post. I love it. Bye.