The holiday season is up on us, and we’re getting prepared for it as best we can. The neighbors have supplied more than enough cheer for us after installing their neon manger scene.
I finally got around to sending our older Canon PowerShot off to the company’s customer service center a few weeks ago. To recap the story quickly, earlier this year our PowerShot SD110 started malfunctioning, taking shots with a magenta cast and horizontal lines through each frame. Research revealed that Canon had an out-of-warranty replacement program for the problem, and a quick phone call confirmed our camera was eligible.
I had dawdled in sending our camera in not because I was waiting on the company for anything, but because I never got around to the UPS store to drop the package off (new baby and all). I should also mention that Canon’s customer service has been nothing but stellar from the beginning. Each call I made was handled by someone obviously well-trained and motivated, and they sent me a pre-paid UPS label promptly via email after my first contact. When our camera arrived at their shop, I got an email notification. And when they emailed me about a return package en route, I expected it to take a week or so to arrive.
Imagine my surprise when we got a FedEx delivery this week, with a small but curiously heavy box inside. Accompanying the box was a dry, matter-of-fact letter which informed me they had, in fact, tested out camera and found it was defective, and because parts weren’t available anymore, they shipped us a replacement PowerShot SD900 instead. I think you could have knocked me over with a feather.
It’s a refurbished model, which means it had been returned to Canon for repair/replacement; there are a few small nicks on the corner where it had been dropped somewhere. Otherwise, it’s a clean unit with a huge LCD display and 10MP resolution. (The physical condition of our old 110 was embarrassing). The battery is charging on the wall as I write this, and I can’t wait to try it out.
My first serious digital camera was a Canon G3, which I loved, and when it came time to go to DSLRs, I went with Nikon over Canon for various reasons I don’t recall even though it seemed like everyone I read was doing the opposite. I’ve got nothing but good words for our Nikons, and I still plan to upgrade to a D90 when I can afford one (I have already made a sizeable investment in Nikon glass), but I still praise Canon to the heavens whenever I’m asked for an opinion. This customer service experience almost makes me regret going with Nikon, because I do vote with my pocketbook, and I’d like to reward this company for going above and beyond the call of duty. They could simply have told me there was nothing they could do, and shipped back our brick; they could have discontinued the program years ago. Instead, they have further cemented my brand loyalty, and made an evangelist out of me. Nice work, Canon.
Back at the Panera again today, because the stupid transformer behind our house blew out this morning for no particular reason, again. Of all the days to do so, this was a bad one; I’ve got sketches due this afternoon and a conference call. There’s nothing like shouting over the din of a coffeehouse during a conference call.
In happier news, a Flip Mino appeared on our doorstep this morning, mostly because the Kodak was sold out at Amazon and I’d still need to buy a memory card to use the damn thing. I opened it up before I left (clearly, they looked closely at the iPhone packaging; theirs was done very well) and within 15 seconds was shooting video. I then plugged it into the USB port of my MacBook, and within 20 minutes the battery was fully charged. Later this evening I’m going to do a side-by-side comparison of the video from my Canon G3 with the Flip video to see what the differences are. Overall, I like it very much so far.
Update: I totally get this thing now. And it’s really a work of genius; all of the best design cues (minus the case, which honestly feels a little cheap) are taken from generations of the iPod and put to good use here. What I’ve read elsewhere is completely true: It is absolutely perfect for capturing something quickly with a minimum of fuss and bother, at the expense of high quality output. But the portable form factor, ease of use, and utility outweigh my desire for uber-quality HD video—I’ll get something that shoots high-quality video a little later. Right now, this is all we need.
The spam issue has been solved, I believe. Yesterday evening the site got the shit kicked out of it by spambots, at the rate of one a minute, for about three hours. I shut commenting down completely, and then by accident stumbled on CommentRegistration, a plugin that lets me authenticate commenters locally. So if you’ve commented here before, please take a moment to register (it’s fast, free, and you’ll get a new toaster with deposits over $1,000!) so you can continue to comment all you like. I’ve fixed the problem with registrations not working correctly. I’ll verify you, and then you don’t need to wait a day to see your comment come through!
Really, give it a try so I can test out the system. Please!
In other news, the rain barrels are empty and the air conditioners are out of the windows. It’s officially autumn around here, which means I need to insulate the gutted exam room this weekend to keep some of our heat inside, as well as mix up some hydraulic cement and seal up the holes in the ice room downstairs. And, remember that cabinet I started refinishing last year? I have a few more screws to drill to finish it off so that we might actually use it! Oh, and there’s the lawn, which has two weeks’ growth and half the neighborhood’s leaves… I’m very optimistic, I know.
Update 10.23: I’ve disabled that plugin and removed it, because I was getting unreliable and unexplained results. The documentation is pretty sparse, and there isn’t any customization available unless I start hacking Perl, which I’m too tired to do right now. I’d like to just enable TypeKey on this site (a hosted authentication system) and be done with it, but the documentation for that is about as sparse as it is for this plugin. I found this writeup of someone else’s experience, and with a little tweaking, I’ve got 90% of the service hooked up. Please do me a favor and try this system out. I know it’s another web service to sign up for, but they can handle stuff like lost passwords and info updates where that plugin I tried could not. I’d really like to hear from you all; I just can’t deal with all of the spam right now. And please let me know how it works for you.
Matt Haughey, the creator of MetaFilter, just switched his personal weblog over to TypePad, and wrote a post about why he did so. If someone as technically proficient as he decides to make his life easier, I’m listening. There’s real food for thought in there, and I have to say, after four+ years of banging my head against MovableType, using a hosted CMS package is looking pretty good right now. One of the reasons this weblog hasn’t changed its look in two years is because it’s such a goddamned hassle to do so. For the short term, I’ll stick with what I’ve got, and look into a more modular template system for 3.3. Down the road? Who knows.
Our friend S. has done more for the Lockardugan clan than we can possibly repay. She has nursed kitties, watched over the house, coordinated showers, served as a maid of honor—the woman does it all, with a smile.
She’s getting married in a few weeks, and asked me if I could take pictures at the wedding. This is something that fills me with alternating waves of dread and excitement, because I’m thrilled from a technical aspect, flattered from an artistic standpoint, and terrified I might fuck something up. I’ve been doing some research into basic wedding photography tips, and one of the newsletters I subscribe to had a list of good articles on the subject.
The first article is focused on making happy clients, by doing things like mapping out a shot list, using diffused light, setting expectations, etc. I know I’m going to have to scout out the location of this wedding because it’s outdoors, and definitely find a few backdrops to shoot against.
The second article adds a technical tip: shooting in Aperture Priority. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the Manual settings the last time I shot people outdoors, so I’m going to muck around with this setting a little tomorrow—I don’t know why I didn’t try this earlier.
Several of the commenters suggest lenses that are out of my current price range. The 18-200 VR lens would be a good choice, and a wide-angle lens like the 12-24; I can rent the 18-200 for $35 locally, which isn’t bad at all. I’ll have to see if they have a wide-angle too.
The thing that scares me the most is using the flash; I’m still not up to speed on settings yet, and that’s going to take practice. What I need to do is read up more on TTL metering to see if that’s my best bet, or use something else. I found a book at the store last night which had some great, simple rules of thumb for using TTL flash (especially to reduce red-eye), and doing some digging around the internets I’ve found a few places where the concepts are explained in plain english. This is an article on using multiple wireless TTL flashes. I’ll add more here as I learn.
Apparently the Canon point-and-shoot we own, the PowerShot SD110, has a known issue with the CCD going bad and distorting images. According to the service notice, they will replace the CCD, but I don’t know if this offer is still good. I’m going to call tomorrow to find out.
Update: They believe the problem is theirs to fix (but aren’t sure yet). They have sent me a prepaid UPS label and an address to their repair facility so that I can send it in. For a four-year-old camera clearly out of warranty, I am truly impressed by their customer service. This is the kind of thing that keeps me loyal to the brand.
There’s a guy near here who has a ’67 Barracuda with a 10-foot paint job (it looks great from 10 feet away or more) that I finally stopped to shoot pictures of. It was parked in such a way that good shots were hard to get, but I did my best for you, esteemed readers.
Spending WAY too muh time at lunch reading, I came across this article about changing perspective.
I wish I knew more about the psychology behind this, but my guess is that we as humans are visually stimulated by novel points of view. If it’s something we’ve seen before, well, it’s just not as visually stimulating as a photo taken that we’ve not ever been able to see with our own eyes.
I know I am fascinated with alternative viewpoints, from macro shots, forced degradation, timelapse to 3-D, I’ve tried it all with varying degrees of success. Point-and-shoot has its place, but I’m interested in trying out stuff like kite photography.
This has me thinking about an idea I’d hatched a year or two ago: buying a painting pole, rigging a mount at the top, and setting a camera on it with either a remote shutter release or on an intervalometer, for things like the parade.
Especially considering the number of similar shots I’ve taken at the parade over the years— often of the same subject.
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It also got me to thinking about my next Nikon lens, a 12-24mm wide-angle. Of course, it’s $900, but a guy can dream, right?
Update 8.14: Photojojo just did an article on this, with some helpful advice on tracking down parts.
Remember when we were kids, and we’d play games out in the street or in someone’s backyard, and we’d call a do-over? Somebody’d kick the ball into a bush, or a car would come down the road right in the middle of an important play, and it was universally understood that things would just rewind a couple of minutes and start again, like erasing a videotape. Well, I’d like a do-over for most of yesterday, please.
It started out on an upbeat note; Mr. Scout brought over the window regulator for the Jeep and we tore the door down to put it in; unfortunately, the part was not a match to the one in my Jeep, and there seemed to be no way to use parts from the replacement to fix the broken unit.
We then decided to take advantage of the weather and go back to the pick & pull yard to hunt more Jeeps. It seems that parts (and part vehicles) are more plentiful for Grand Cherokees than for the regular model, both online and in the junkyard, and my particular model (2-door, second generation, power window) is even rarer than the 4-door. We did however find a junked PT Cruiser, which featured luxurious bucket seats that are supposed to be bolt-in replacements for Scout seats. Eight bolts later, we were walking up to the pay area with the seats on our heads, but not before making a detour to a section of the yard we hadn’t seen before, featuring some ancient Detroit iron: a three-porthole Buick, a rounded early 50’s Ford, and a pair of Opels, among other things. I shot about ten pictures, and we were on our way. As we got up to the counter, the redneck in charge of shoplifting told me they have a strict no-camera policy, and made me erase my memory card after giving me some bullshit about smashing lenses.
Returning to the Scout we’d found last week, we pulled a lot of plastic and other rare parts, having no luck pulling the hubs or the seat bases. It was about this time I checked my phone and found this lovely sight:
I don’t know when or how it happened, but it was enough to ruin my day right there. Strangely, I can still call in and out, and the touchscreen still works on the damaged areas. I’m going to visit the Apple store to see if there’s some kind of repair they can make; if not, it looks like I’ll be purchasing a 3G iPhone earlier than I planned.
My afternoon was spent working on an illustration; I decided to experiment with an idea I’d had a few months ago to see what results I’d get, using the negative space instead of the positive. The results were a lot less than I’d hoped for.
The linework looks cheaper, like a quick marker drawing, and not expressive like I’d imagined. It also could be because I’ve been having problems getting my cutting nibs to vary line weights properly—they seem to get dull very quickly, which is not what I’m used to. If I could regulate line weight better, I’d be happier with the results.
I took the same sketch and started making a traditional cut, and about three-quarters of the way through I realized the initial sketch, while reasonably good, did not capture McCain the way it should, and the resulting piece looks like someone else (Jen says it’s Ed McMahon). His head is not as long as I’d made it here, and his distinguishing features aren’t represented well enough.
There were several highlights from yesterday, so it’s not like I was constantly followed by a black stormcloud: we have Andersen 400-series windows officially on order for the front porch. Jen had a great client meeting on a new project, and we got our second delivery from the organic farm (I don’t know how we’re going to eat all this lettuce, chard, and spinach). I was just hoping to produce a success of my own, something I’m sure everyone can understand.
So it’s back to the drawing board for Jeep, phone, and scratchboard.
Update: One trip to the Apple Store, my choices were thus:
1. Continue to use the busted phone and guess at everything on the left side of the screen.
2. Wait until July and buy a new 3G iPhone for $200, but take an additional $10/mo. hit on my data plan.
3. Spend $250 to replace my iPhone with another 1st gen model.
I chose 3, because I’d love to have the 3G but I don’t want to pay AT&T an additional $120/mo. for features I may not even use. As it was, when the Genius rang me out, he told me happily they’d just reduced the replacement cost from $250 to $199, so I “saved” a little more money.
Upon inspection of the iPhone cases available at the store, only a select few might have protected my phone from catastrophic screen damage, and they tended to be the ugliest offerings on the shelf. (Imitation calfskin? stitched black leather? I don’t think so).
