Woo-hoo, I just updated my iPhone to the new 2.1 firmware that Apple released on Friday, and the great iPhone unhappiness I had when I got it two days ago seems to have been assuaged. In my home office, I now generally get four or five signal-strength bars, out of five.

Experience will tell whether there's actually a good signal, or it's just telling me that there is, but it bodes well.

One warning to those installing the new firmware: it takes quite a while. iTunes displayed an "updating firmware" for so long (5+ minutes), I figured that something had [...]
View full post »

I got an iPhone today, and I hate it.

I've been longing for an iPhone since they were announced. They finally became available in Japan this summer, just prior to my trip to The States. Now that I'm back, I've finally procured one.

I'll admit that the geek in me is interested in all the fun things one can do with an iPhone, but the overriding reason for wanting one is that I want a phone whose features I can actually use. Lots of cell phones have lots of features, but they're always hidden behind a user interface designed for [...]
View full post »

High-dynamic-range – HDR – is an image-processing technique that's been gaining popularity over the last few years. HDR can be used to create some amazing, impactful, stunning images. For some eye-popping examples, see this page, which is just one page of many that are linked from this HDR roundup.

I haven't created anything amazing with HDR, but I utilized HDR in whipping this image together, just for this post...

HDR attempts to overcome a limitation of current camera technology... a limitation that disallows a camera from picking up fine detail in the dark shadows and bright highlights of a scene [...]

View full post »

Santa Ponsa from Sean McCormack on Vimeo.

Timelapse Panning Video one hour compressed down to 12 seconds   -   no sound by Sean McCormack ( larger high-def version is here )

At right is a short timelapse video (12 seconds, no sound) that Lightroom expert Sean McCormack made from the collection of 300 images he ended up with after setting his camera up on a tripod and having it take a shot every 10 seconds for 50 minutes.

To see the high-resolution version, go here and look for the "four arrows" icon at the lower-right of the video. [...]
View full post »

I found myself suddenly lusting for a second monitor (Lightroom 2 supports two monitors), and with visions of a tax writeoff dancing in my head, I opted for the mid-level Eizo FlexScan SX2461W, a 24" widescreen that offers a 1,920 × 1,200 desktop in luscious relatively-wide-gamut color.

(If I'd had visions of hitting the lottery dancing in my head, I'd have gone for the $6,000 Eizo ColorEdge CG221)

I had trouble setting up my XP box for dual monitors until I installed the latest drivers for my ATI graphics card -- ATI's new "Catalyst Control Center" made it trivial to [...]

View full post »