Shawn Blanc:
In that vein, I consider shawnblanc.net a success. There isn’t a specific website, blog post, ebook, or podcast episode, that I would point to as being “it”. But that’s the point. I hope that over the past three years, I have contributed a little bit to the ever expanding and ever improving creative space we’re a part of.
He must be mistaken, it has been three years already and he hasn’t written weekly top ten posts? Someone get him the blogging handbook already.
Good video in support of my philosophy that you shouldn’t waste money on a UV filter.
(Linked to the mobile site as the desktop version is Flash only for some idiotic reason I don’t care to know.)
I’ve used just a small portion of the lenses available for the Fuji X-system, but I wanted to share a few thoughts for those interested on the lenses I have tried.
This is the widest lens I have, and also one of the biggest. The pros of the lens for me are:
The biggest con is that the lens is truly big. When on my X-E2 the camera does not sit flat, as the lens diameter lifts the front of the camera up. The weight isn’t that big of an issue, but it is just physically large.
The large size does mean that you get a beefy set of adjustment rings, but it is by no means a compact lens.
Overall though, my favorite lens and the classic 35mm focal length on the X-system.
Buy it on Amazon, or B&H, and support the site.
This is the slowest lens I own, but it is also tiny in comparison to all the lenses, as it is a ‘pancake’ lens design. This is like a slower aperture, faster focusing, Fujifilm equivalent of the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 that everyone loves on the micro four-thirds system.
The only reason I own this lens is because it makes my entire camera setup easy to carry around. It’s interesting to note that Photozone.de loves the optics of the lens — I just am not enamored with the lack of aperture ring and the focal length is a bit odd (just like the Panasonic lens).
The size, and relatively low cost, is why you own this lens.
Buy it on Amazon, or B&H, and support the site.
This is probably the most popular lens (outside of the kit lenses) on the Fujifilm system. It provides the classic 50mm focal length on the X-system. It is fast. It is tack sharp. It is small.
This is truly the ideal lens for the X-E2 and it feels made for the camera. Truly fantastic. I have nothing but great things to say about this lens, but the lens hood, I hate the lens hood. It’s this odd metal hood that many love, but makes the traditional lens cap unusable when on, instead requiring use of a hood cap — I find that very annoying.
If you want to get started with primes, this should be at, or near, the top of the list.
Buy it on Amazon, or B&H, and support the site.
I rented this lens and was extremely impressed — as many told me I would be. I typically don’t like zoom lenses (more on that in a bit), but this is a truly good lens no matter how you look at it.
It is sharp, has optical image stabilization, and a decent aperture range for a zoom lens. Having said all that, I am glad I rented the lens and did not buy it. The cons are just to great for me on the lens:
I would happily own this lens, but only if I bought it as part of the kit — otherwise I wouldn’t bother because I think the stand alone price is a bit high for the lens. Having said that, it’s the best zoom on the X-system.
Buy it on Amazon, or B&H, and support the site.
I won’t dive too much into this debate, because it’s a big one, but I will note a few of my personal feelings on this — since this is something I struggled to understand initially too.
I fell in love with primes when I got the Canon 50mm 1.4 — from then on I was sold on primes. I just like prime lenses better now.
Primes can be faster, and have less distortion (operative word there being can). I used to be big into zoom lenses, but I find them more challenging to work with now then I do prime lenses. (Though more convenient.)
Instead of standing in one spot and playing with the focal length, I find myself actively exploring to find new angles and shots. I pay less attention to the camera, and more attention to the view — to me that is worth going with primes alone.
Of the above lens choices, the real decision is if you want the 35mm focal length (the 23mm Fuji) or the 50mm focal length (the 35mm Fuji, confusing, I know). The answer to which is highly personal, but I think I’m now a convert from the 50mm focal length, to the 35mm length. Luckily I have both, but man it’s a tough call.
Jeff Cable:
When I photographed the Summer Olympics in London, my deadline was shortened to 2 hours. That means that I would have to go through thousands of photos, pick the best, edit them and submit them to the team within a couple of hours.
Now, with the ever increasing immediacy of the Internet age, They want me posting images at each break. So that means that, when the buzzer sounds at the end of the first period of hockey, I have 14 minutes to download my photos (I shoot full RAW), go through them, edit, resize them and upload to Team USA.
Wow.
Patrick La Roque, while reviewing the drool worthy Fujifilm X-T1, had this excellent point to make about Fujifilm:
I had a girlfriend way back when who used to always leave one plate or utensil at the bottom of the sink when doing dishes, just for the sake of balance, of keeping the world just a teeny bit less than perfect. Sometimes I have to wonder if Fuji doesn’t embrace that same philosophy…
Shawn Blanc:
When reaching for an iPad around the house, I grab the mini. The mini goes with me when I’m traveling with my laptop. And I bring the mini when I don’t expect to need an iPad for anything but want to bring one anyway just in case.
That’s the iPad Air for me. I love the above passage, because it very clearly spells out how you know when something is the right device for you.
Dallas Sanders:
In 2008 I had a rare chance to take a bus trip from S. Korea to N. Korea. Here is what I wrote of that adventure
I’d love to take that bus ride.
I don’t recall what I took in my bag the first time to the hospital when we had Sloane, but I did try to pay a little more attention the second time around. There’s tons of advice for what mothers should pack, but what about the dad? The first thing you need to know is that labor, for the father, is boring — very boring.
With that in mind, here’s what I actually used this time around, what I needed, and what I packed but didn’t touch. I am not posting this to tell you what to pack, just to offer: “oh yeah” type stuff.
The first time I packed a backpack. This time I went with a small duffle bag: it was a bit too small. I’d advise packing something with extra room for the trip home (mine was stuffed to the brim from the get go).
Good review of the Olloclip — I haven’t had one since the iPhone 4. It was neat, but I never used it and it always accumulated too much pocket lint.
I think Stephen Hackett used my Olloclip more than I did.
I’ve got a pretty good system that works for me: keep the inbox empty by either putting tasks in task management apps, doing it, or delegating it.
Lopp’s system is a bit much for me, but I know about 10,000 people who could use this — and in doing so make my life easier.
This is quickly becoming my most favorite iOS app:
Reporter’s random prompts to answer a survey had made tracking the year a breeze and helped me to investigate questions that would have been impossible to answer using other methods.
Snow forecasts in Washington state are pretty horrible. I actually am not sure they have ever accurately predicted snowfalls. Anyways, my favorite weather blogger, Cliff Mass posted a couple of articles on why forecasting is really hard sometimes. A bit weather-nerdy, but insightful.
On the missed Washington snow forecasts:
Weak disturbances that develop on fronts, or frontal waves, are relatively small scale, are often shallow, and are very difficult to forecast correctly even over land. But in this case, it is even harder because they are forming and evolving over the ocean where our ability to detect and describe small-scale structures are not as good. And the snow events this week have all been associated with such frontal waves and to forecast the snow correctly requires getting their position, size, and motion exactly correct…something current weather prediction technology is still not adequate to deal with.
And on weather forecasting overall:
There are at least three reasons:
- The description of the atmosphere, the starting point of the simulation called the initialization, is flawed.
- The physics of the model, how basic processes like radiation, clouds and precipitation are described, are flawed.
- The forecasting problem is not possible considering the inherent uncertainties of atmospheric flows and the tendency for errors to grow in time.
Good reads.
Rachel La Corte:
Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday he was suspending the use of the death penalty in Washington state, announcing a move that he hopes will enable officials to “join a growing national conversation about capital punishment.”
Legal weed? Check. Same-sex marriage? Check. No death penalty? Check. Lots of things being done in Washington state these days.
Chris Bowler’s thoughts on Writer Pro are largely mimicking mine right now. It’s good, I have faith in it, but it’s not wowing me right now.
Food to Fitness:
Whiskey is beneficial for preventing cancer. It is high in anti-oxidants which help in restricting the growth of cancer cells. Whiskey contains ellagic acid which is a natural phenol anti-oxidant.
Works for me…
Bruce Schneier:
The Review Group believes that moving the data to some other organization, either the companies that generate it in the first place or some third-party data repository, fixes that problem. But is that something we really want fixed? The fact that a government has us all under constant and ubiquitous surveillance should be chilling. It should limit freedom of expression. It is inimical to society, and to the extent we hide what we're doing from the people or do things that only pretend to fix the problem, we do ourselves a disservice.
While I was on leave Editorially announced that they were shutting down. As Pat mentioned, this is a service that was used heavily on this site, and was quickly becoming universal among the editor-freelancer workflows. It was and is the best of the lot of services like it.
I was granted early access to the service, and loved the idea immediately, but I noted to the team at the time that it really should be a platform, not an app. In a longer post about the service I said:
But most of all I want it to act more like a service — for example, the way Github does. Wouldn’t it be great if writing apps could integrate Editorially support like they do with Dropbox? You pull down the latest version and it is checked out until you are done editing — then it is pushed back up for others to edit and review changes. You could write in your favorite app, but have the full power of collaboration. In my mind that is where these tools need to be heading and I’d post with exclamation points upon this vision being realized.
I think the web based nature is what killed Editorially, because I don’t know many writers who actually liked writing in Editorially. Almost everyone I knew wrote in their favorite app and copy and pasted in to Editorially — or just didn’t use Editorially because of that extra step.
Editorially should have been a platform.
We should have been able to open up Writer Pro, Byword, Ulysses, TextMate, whatever, and pulled down our documents, seen the changes, and edited the writing and sent it back to Editorially. The web view should have been there, but that should have been about as well used as Dropbox’s website is. In my opinion the focus of Editorially was too heavy on the app side, and not enough on the platform side.
Users should have been finding out about the service because all the good writing apps were suddenly including support for it. It’s a real shame the service is shutting down, but here, at The Brooks Review, we have already received recommendations for six other like services and I still hold out hope I will get the platform like service I desire.
The three Ps:
Perfectly normal for parents, and after the first few times it stops bugging you.