Here’s some more links about the newly announced Canon EOS-1D Mark III:

• Official Mark III Flash Website
• Mark III White Paper (from RobGalbraith)
• Video presentation of Mark III (in French)
• Getty Images editor’s thoughts on Mark III
• Sample Mark III images

One thing that I’ll miss in the Mark III is the old control layout. After having used the 1D-series for the past 6 years, I’ve grown accustomed to holding down a button while using the control dials to change settings. I always felt that this method was superior for preventing accidental camera settings changes. In the D30/10D/20D/30D/5D and now the Mark III, you can now let go of a button after pressing it before being able to spin the control dials. When I eventually upgrade to a new camera, I’ll just have to get used to this.

New features of the Mark III that are more appealing to me include the ISO 6400, highlight recovery, live view, weight reductions (if not smaller body), 19 cross-type AF sensors, and lower noise at high ISOs. Canon has a huge market share advantage in the digital SLR marketplace, and the Mark III no doubt will continue this dominance.

I haven’t been following the Amgen Tour of California all too closely, but today they are riding from Stockton to San Jose in Stage 3. Since I’m pretty close to where they’re finishing in San Jose, I think I’ll head downtown for the conclusion of the race today.

Around 2:45 pm, I dusted off my bike, pumped up air in the tires, and took a ride for the first time in 2007. I rode the 4 miles to Santa Clara Street where the bike race was ending. I must not have ridden fast enough, since the leading pack just finished when I arrived. Still, I was able to catch the shattered remnants of the peloton finishing minutes later in front of City Hall. I was sad to see that there weren’t that many people attending the event. I had expected at least two or three deep along the railings, but there were plenty of open spots that could even fit my bike.

I had brought along my Digital Rebel XTi in my water hydration pack to shoot some photos. The camera is small and light, but the AF performance leaves much to be desired. Canon just announced the 1D Mark III, but I’m saddened to see that it’s still in the same big body format. I was hoping for a smaller 1D-series camera. There’s more announcements to come, so hopefully Canon will surprise me. There’s a 63-page white paper on the Mark III on RobGalbraith’s site. It’s an in-depth look at all of the new features of the camera over the previous Mark IIN version.

In thinking about the bike race, I should have went earlier to get freebies, hang out with the fans, and take more photos. Until next year, enjoy these photos!

Read the rest of this entry »

The highlight of this weekend was on Saturday, when Aaron “Chief” Douglas, Michael “Anders” Trucco, and Tahmoh “Helo” Penikett, stars from our favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica, descended to Pier 39 for an autograph signing appearance at the Antiquities of California shop. BSG fans had to work their way through hundreds of unsuspecting tourists to get to the end of the pier where the signing was taking place.

The event took place from noon to 7:00 pm. Rae and I got there around 3:30 pm, and we were surprised that there weren’t more people around. I had heard about the signing on the excellent All about Tahmoh Penikett fan website, but I guess the publicity for the event only got around to hard-core BSG fans. Members from Galactica Actual, a fan club here in the Bay Area, were in full force.

Rae and I got Tahmoh to sign our poster for our BSG-themed housewarming party, Dia de Los Padres. In addition, we got an autographed photo of the three stars with us. It’s not everyday you get to meet actors from your favorite show! In Hollywood, they can make anyone any height. In real-life, however, Rae and I were hobbits compared to Aaron (5′11″), Michael (6′3″) and Tahmoh (6′2″)!

We had a 4:00 pm appointment to get to, so we had to leave early and didn’t have the opportunity to talk further with the actors. Despite the time crunch, Rae was able to ask Tahmoh about his favorite martial arts movie (Enter the Dragon), get his opinion on Tony Jaa (he does the real stuff!), and his desire to feature more martial arts action in BSG. As for me, I just told the actors that I hope their characters don’t die this season or next. Every week, I’m always afraid that one of the characters is going to bite it. Last week, Chief and Cally almost got done in via the airlock. This week, Chief stages a worker strike and gets in trouble with Adama. After that, we have several episodes that will be advancing the main plot, and you know the fireworks will be coming. The promos are saying that one character will die, one will be revealed to be a Cylon, and one will find Earth. It’s entirely possible that one character will do all three things (hint, hint). We’ll find out in a few weeks!

Read the rest of this entry »

The March meeting for the Camera Owners of the Bay Area (COBA) user group will be held on Wednesday, March 14, 2007, in Cordura Hall 100 at Stanford University from 7:30-10:00 pm.

PMA Roundup

Chris Pedersen will be returning from PMA with a roundup of the latest announcements and products.

TBA

Our second presentation will be announced in the coming weeks.

Monthly Assignment: Green

Each month, COBA will feature an optional monthly assignment and contest. Members are highly encouraged to participate as the point of the monthly assignment is to motivate you to take photos, try new techniques, and learn.

Spring is coming, the environment is big news, and more people will soon be buying their first digital SLR. The topic for this month is Green.

Only new photographs taken from today to the meeting date will be accepted. Please print a print of your photo to the meeting.

Here’s food for thought. Suppose we won this year’s Super Bowl. It’s entirely likely that the same coordinators would have left for the exact same jobs. Phillips to Dallas. Cameron to Miami. Chudzinski to Cleveland. Manusky to San Francisco. The success of the Super Bowl would have given coordinators plenty of opportunities to move on and seek promotions. Would that success be enough to melt the animosity between General Manager AJ Smith and Head Coach Schottenheimer for another year or two or three?

They would still be in a situation where they would have to replace several coordinators. Everything that has happened before would have happened again, and Dean Spanos would have had to deal with the power struggle between AJ Smith and Marty. If they were going to fire him, they should have done it at the end of their meltdown to the Patriots four weeks ago, not now.

What’s going to happen now? Will the new coach want to install a new defensive or offensive scheme? Will they clean house and bring in all of their own coordinators and assistant coaches? Will the players be too strung up to be able to play effectively next season? With this move, Smith and Spanos are effectively saying, “It’s Super Bowl or Bust!” It might have worked for Tampa Bay a few years ago, but will it work for my beloved Chargers?

People have been calling for Pete Carroll to take over the head coaching job. The only way this is going to happen is if he had complete control over personnel. Thus, the only way that Carroll is going to be the Chargers head coach is if Spanos fires AJ Smith!

WTF? According to new reports, Dean Spanos has fired Chargers head-coach Marty Schottenheimer on Monday evening, despite leading San Diego to a 14-2 regular-season record.

“Today I made an extremely difficult decision: Marty Schottenheimer is no longer the head coach of the San Diego Chargers.

“This decision was so hard because Marty has been both a friend and valued coach of our team. But my first obligation is always to do what is in the best interest of our fans and the entire Charger organization. I must take whatever steps are necessary to deliver a Super Bowl trophy to San Diego. Events of the last month have now convinced me that it is not possible for our organization to function at a championship level under the current structure. On the contrary, and in the plainest possible language, we have a dysfunctional situation here. Today I am resolving that situation once and for all.

“My decision means that our organization will be obligated to pay the last year of Marty Schottenheimer’s contract and will begin an intense search for a new head coach at this relatively late date, but these are sacrifices that I believe are necessary to give the Chargers the best possible chance to win on the field this season.

“Our fans deserve to know what changed for me over the last month. When I decided to move ahead with Marty Schottenheimer in mid-January, I did so with the expectation that the core of his fine coaching staff would remain intact. Unfortunately, that did not prove to be the case, and the process of dealing with these coaching changes convinced me that we simply could not move forward with such dysfunction between our head coach and general manager. In short, this entire process over the last month convinced me beyond any doubt that I had to act to change this untenable situation and create an environment where everyone at Charger Park would be pulling in the same direction and working at a championship level. I expect exactly that from our entire Charger organization in 2007.”

I’m sad for Marty. He deserved better.

Sir Izaac has posted the second part of Paul Guyot’s Einstein presentation from the 2006 WorldWide Newton Conference.

The same day that we’re having our first COBA meeting of 2007, Stanford will be hosting the conclusion of the 20th Anniversary Tour of Richard Avedon’s In the American West. The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University will be holding the exhibition from February 14-May 6, 2007. From the website description:

Richard Avedon was already world famous for elevating fashion photography to an art form and for his insightful portraits of men and women of accomplishment, when the Amon Carter Museum’s first director, Mitchell A. Wilder, saw Avedon’s 1978 portrait of a Montana ranch foreman. Wilder asked the artist to make portraits of others across the American West under the sponsorship of the Amon Carter Museum. From 1979 to 1984, Avedon traveled through 13 states and 189 towns from Texas to Idaho, exposing 17,000 sheets of film through his 8-by-10-inch Deardorff view camera.

Focusing on the rural West, Avedon visited ranches and rodeos, but he also went to truck stops, oil fields, and slaughterhouses. Rather than playing to the western myths of grandeur and space, he sought out people whose appearance and life circumstances were the antithesis of mythical images of the ruggedly handsome cowboy, dashing outdoor adventurer, or beautiful pioneer wife. The subjects he chose for the portraits were ordinary people, coping daily with personal cycles of boom and bust.

Found this on Fark.

The Sony Ericsson t68i phone that I had dropped over a month ago had recently started some dropping on its own. Plagued by dropped calls, I decided to do something about it. I had these used AT&T BlackBerry and Nokia phones at the house that I wanted to use as a backup phone while I wait for the iPhone to be released. The only problem was that the phones were locked, meaning I couldn’t just swap my Cingular SIM card into the phone.

Making matters worse was I tried to unlock the phones unsuccessfully before. Apparently, you only have a few chances to unlock the phone by entering some codes before you had to use a cable method. Ugh.

I succumbed and purchased some $15 software to unlock the BlackBerry 7210. I had to update the firmware and software on the BlackBerry before the Windows unlocking software would work, but as of last night, I have a “new” phone. I also downloaded the now free PocketMac so that I could sync information between my Mac and the BlackBerry. Since I don’t have a data plan, I can’t get email on the phone, but that’s fine with me. I’ll save my money until I see the plan rates for the iPhone. No doubt, they are going to be expensive!