It's been a year since I bought an Apple MacBook to replace my older Apple iBook. It has a trackpad that you can move a finger around to control a mouse, but I found out by accident this morning that by dragging two fingers on it, you can scroll.
It's amazing. You can scroll quickly with a flick of your fingers (or a flick of one finger while another rests elsewhere on the pad), or slowly move the page around as if you were shoving a paper around on a desk. The up/down scroll is really useful for web pages, but all four directions are nice when looking at a large image on the small laptop screen.
Clearly, this OSX feature is the forerunner of the ultra-cool interface seen in the iPhone adds (or in person, if you have one — something not an option yet for me in Kyoto).
I'm not sure what's more amazing, this feature or that I've had the laptop for a year before noticing it. I've known about it for only a few hours now, but its use is already second nature.
A related feature I discovered about a month ago is that if you move two fingers up on the trackpad while holding down the control key, it zooms the entire screen. Sometimes I would do this by accident while using the control key while typing quickly, somehow bumping the trackpad with my thumbs enough for the zoom feature to click in, but only a little. It would quickly auto-snap back to normal, so the effect to an unknowing me was exactly that which I'd expect to see with an LCD starting to fritz out. I was this close to calling Apple Support when I finally noticed what was going on, and realized you could use the feature to zoom way up (20×).
Sweet.
Still looking to cool off, so this time I'm going back to the fall when the leaves had just started to turn color, to when Anthony and I went on a hike up to the top of Mt. Daimonji (大文字山) one of the short mountains overlooking eastern Kyoto, Japan. We did it with his school friend Kana, her two brothers, and her dad.
I'd done the same hike the previous year, but without a four year old, much less two.
Kana and Anthony have a wonderful chemistry, as has been seen on my blog before (as they get caught getting out of line, find a way to stay in line, and ride a train together). I was looking forward to see what antics they'd be up to this time....
I had my camera with me, of course, but the results were mostly pathetic from a technical standpoint (poor focus, blurry, etc.). Still, I like the content and the story they tell....
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/90 sec, f/5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Starting off along the Canal
We walked from our place through Nanzenji, north along the Philosopher's Walk, until we cut east up toward the mountain.
After 45 minutes and 67 meters of vertical climb, we were at the outskirts of the city about ready to dive into the mountain.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lotsa' Energy
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 19mm — 1/60 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Road Ahead
(gets smaller)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/60 sec, f/4, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pausing to be Silly
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 23mm — 1/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Being Silly While Not Pausing
Soon after that, we entered the mountains at the trail head, and started hiking up. It was mostly fairly easy, although there were difficult portions from time to time. Anthony got tired quickly so I carried him on my back much of the way.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
At the One-Hour Mark: 144m Vertical Climb
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 18mm — 1/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
10 Minutes and 37 Vertical Meters Later
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/90 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
The Mountain is Quite Steep
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Pausing after 1 hour 20 minutes
(Photo by Kana's Daddy)
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1100 — map & image data — nearby photos
90 Minutes In....
Two hours and 392 vertical meters into the hike, we reached the top. We paused at the benches there to enjoy the view, and eat lunch.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 17mm — 1/100 sec, f/3.2, ISO 140 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lunch Atop Kyoto's Mt. Daimonji
The shot above is poorly exposed, but you can actually see our place (from which we started the hike) 2.85 kilometers (1.75 miles) away.
Standard: 1024×768 · 1440×1080 · 1600×1200 Widescreen: 1280×800 · 1680×1050 · 2560×1600 · 1920×1200 · 2560×1600
Kyoto Spring
Desktop Backgrounds
It's hot and humid in Kyoto now, so I'd like to try to cool off by returning to the quintessential pleasantness of Kyoto's spring.
The image above was made by applying the same Photoshop “Darken” blend-mode technique that I used to create the Color of Kyoto foliage desktop background last fall, but this time to a pair of pictures I took during a cherry-blossom outing in April.
Links below the picture are to desktop-sized images in both widescreen and standard versions.
Unlike the previous time where I used three pictures, I used only two this time. Also, instead of near/fall focus points, this time I varied the depth of field. Overall, it still creates a mostly muted, pastel-like result. Here's a portion at 50% resolution:
Here are the two images used in creating the first one above. The water is the Kyoto Biwako Canal, as seen from about the same place from which I made the first shot in this post about night long-exposure cherry blossoms.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 55mm — 1/180 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Standard: 1024×768 · 1440×1080 · 1600×1200 Widescreen: 1280×800 · 1680×1050 · 1920×1200 · 2560×1600
Vine and Bamboo Fence: Summer Edition
Kyoto, Japan
As I mentioned the other day, we visited the Nanzen Temple, and on the way, stopped by to see the area where I took the Vine and Bamboo pictures that I posted last fall. It seems that the vine had come back to life, so this is the summer version of the picture.
Just like last time, I've included links to desktop-background versions in various sizes, both widescreen and standard.
Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 23mm — 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO 500 — map & image data — nearby photos
Vine, Bamboo Fence, and Silly Kid
The vine emerges from behind the fence in its middle, with the part growing above the center apparently new growth. I find it mildly interesting that the new growth would grow at exactly the opposite direction. How does it know? Is it fixing a mistake it made by having gone the other direction last year? Or is it just trying to distance itself from the older vine, which perhaps got a bit stuck up after being featured on my blog?
I'll have to put “understanding how vines think” on my to-do list, perhaps between the permanent “understanding how women think” and “understanding how kids think” entries......
About a month and a half ago I was futzing around with night exposures and took this 30-second picture of the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. I was wondering whether I might get the really interesting results as I did during cherry-blossom season, but in this case the result was thunderously boring.
However, it was about this time that I decided to finally start playing with the new sharpening controls in the betas I was testing for Lightroom 1.1, and for whatever reason, I used this image as my first test.
Proper sharpening seems to be more an art than a science, but I don't really know much about it in either sense. I've learned a bit since starting to play with this (and now there's a long tutorial by Jeff Schewe on the same controls as they appear in Adobe Camera Raw), but it's still somewhat of a guessing game for me..
Anyway, at that time I didn't know anything and was just futzing around, and discovered that if you turn the controls way up (as shown at right), you can get an artsy “painting” effect. This is not at all how the controls are intended to be used, of course, and the effect is strongly dependent on the image, but it certainly can be interesting.
I couldn't talk about this until 1.1 went public, and so now that it has, I can show the results: here's the image with the maxed-out sharpening.....
Not Freaky. Not Artsy. Still Boring
Hmmmmm, it's not so different.
To see the freaky effects, you have to look at the full-resolution image (that is, one without a resize down to a smaller size). Here's a snippet at 100% resolution:
Painting-like Sharpening Effects
As usual, clicking on the images yields a larger version.
By the way, take care to note that the Masking control is the opposite from the others in that moving it to the right reduces the effect of the other controls. It indications how much of the image should be masked off (protected) from the other controls: fully left (a value of zero, the default setting) means nothing is protected and sharpening applies equally to the entire image. Fully right means that most of the image is masked off, with only the most high-contrast areas subject to the sharpening controls.
One more warning about using these controls in Lightroom. Results from sharpening changes are normally updated on screen in real time only when viewing at 1:1 or better. If you're in “Fit” or “Fill” or any other less-than-1:1 zoom, moving the controls has no apparent effect except to flash the “!”-in-a-triangle warning badge that's shown on the controls when not 1:1 or better.
The sharpening effects will eventually be propagated to the grid thumbnail and other smaller versions (you can force it by rendering 1:1 previews for the image) but you generally want to be in 1:1 mode while adjusting the sharpening.
Anyway, I've since found out that this kind of effect is a well-known artifact of over-sharpening, but having “discovered” it myself, I thought it was particularly interesting.