A series of amazing Cold War Era photos of some big bad weapons.

See more of these at http://www.behance.net/MartinMiller/frame/56260

Google and Life Magazine have teamed up and have digitized almost all of Life Magazine's image archives dating from the 1700s. Impressive.

Above is one of the images.

Just add "source:life" to your Google Image Search.

This is Jupiter...Lots more pictures through this link: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/07/views_of_jupiter.html

Images as seen on boston.com

2.35, originally uploaded by 4L4N M4K.

This is not old New York.

Shot while wandering around different sections of Brooklyn one weekend afternoon. This was close to my final stop before heading home. I have always loved the view from this park.

These are some amazing photos of Mars.

How fascinating.







Shot by NASA.

Found at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martian_skies.html

Over the past couple of weeks I've been doing a ton of research about camcorders. Unfortunately there doesn't exist the equivalent of a dpreview.com or fredmiranda.com for camcorders and I've had to rely on a hodge-podge of reviews from different review sites with varying creditability and also reading the reviews off amazon.com.

While I love amazon.com and think it is a great site with often times great reviews, the lack of a "creditability" rating for the reviews leads me to sometimes be skeptical about the actual review quality - you never really know who is reviewing a product - is it a category pro or is it some kid that has no clue about the product but just happens to think that a product is rad because it has a metallic purple color?!?

From everything I've read though - and skepticism aside, the Canon HF100 seems to be one bad mama-jama of a camcorder. Despite the reported immature recording codec (that's geek speak for recording and compression format) - yes, this camcorder uses compression for the video stream, unlike HDV, this camcorders small size and reported video quality is making me have serious tech-lust.

Other camcorders that I've been considering are:

• Canon FS100 - Non-HD - I strongly considered this, but ultimately I am leaning against it since despite recording in a format that is easier and less time and computer intensive to edit, I just worry that I'll regret getting it 6 months down the line when I am aching for HD video quality. And besides, in the big scheme of things, the $250 price differential is really nothing.
• Canon HF10 - This is an HD cam, but I didn't seriously consider it since it is basically the same cam as the HF100, but it has some built in memory, but costs a ton more
• Panasonic HDC-SD9 - Another HD cam that records in AVCHD format. While being about $70 cheaper than the Canon HF100 and having a comparable feature set, many of the reviews I read, mention about the poor low light performance of this cam. I guess the noisy images that Panasonic is known for in their still cams carries over into their video cams too. While I happen to love Panasonic still cams and believe that their strong feature sets and lens quality outweighs the negatives, I'm not sure I could live with the noisiness in my video.

While I shoot a lot of still photography, I don't really know nor do video, so my demands for this video cam are actually quite basic. Needed, in priority order, are:

1. great video and sound quality
2. small size
3. the ability to record to SD cards - I don't trust hard disk based camcorders and I hate the idea of having all the clutter of tapes

More info and video clip samples:

• Review from camcorderinfo.com
• Clips at Vimeo.com

Came across this site today while browsing my server logs. This site is über cute. What a fresh take on travel photos!

Check it out: http://minikae.blogspot.com

Everyone knows that I enjoy photography. I just came across this site that is like a Flickr of panoramas where people upload their panorama pictures and you can view them via an interactive browser built into the site...

What makes this site amazing aren't the viewing tools, but like Flickr, you can geotag your images and you can browse for images using the site's Google Maps mashup feature. So Cool!

This site gives you a new perspective on landscape photos as they give you a 360 degree view of any given location...Some of the travel sites out there should really partner with this company, because the photos and the site are really amazing.

Check it out.

http://www.viewat.org

Just wanted to post a full res image shot with my new 24-105mm L.

EDIT - Blogger doesn't do full res, but you can enlarge this one quite a bit, so you'll get a pretty good sense of this lens.

Click to enlarge.

Football season is coming to an end and I am finally getting around to writing about my new Canon EF 24-105mm L IS lens. I read tons of reviews on this lens and weighed the pros and cons just like any other photographer would when faced with buying their first serious piece of glass - (I won't rehash all the pluses and minus of this lens and the other lens that are comparable, as it has already been done many times over). Since this lens was easily twice as expensive as any other lens I have purchased in the past, the decision weighed heavily on me. Ultimately though, I think I made a great decision. This lens is very sharp, has fast auto focus, and is simply a joy to use since I can spend more time taking pictures rather than post processing them (more on this below).

As I am sure that any photographer who shoots digital already knows, just because you CAN edit and tweak your pictures doesn't mean that you necessarily should...BUT, because you can, you always end up doing so...And also, just because you can pixel-peep doesn't mean you should, but again, you inevitably do. The Canon 24-105 L makes all these inevitabilities all in all, less painful.

My previous main lens was the Canon EF-S 17-85mm IS. While I thoroughly enjoyed this lens (great range on my Canon Rebel XTI) for about two years, I ultimately wasn't super satisfied by it. As I used it more and more, the more I realized that I hated certain aspects about this lens - namely, the barrel distortion at the wide end and the awful chromatic abberations. While the barrel distortion is actually quite easy to fix using Adobe Photoshop's Lens Correct tool or PTLens, it proved to be time consuming and rather annoying in terms of my overall workflow. Additionally, and unfortunately, the chromatic abberations were not nearly so easy to fix and required a lot of tweaking to "get it right".

I don't really like spending tons of time editing my photos, and I like being able to do a quick flip through and choose my "picks" and "rejects" using Lightroom. With the 17-85, I often found that after culling my "picks" I had to pop over into Photoshop to correct the barrel distortion on all my wide angle keepers and painstakingly correct the chromatic abberations, which were killing the sharpness of my pictures.

Now, after having shot for a while with my new 24-105, I can easily say that my post processing time has been reduced by an order of magnitude and I find that the majority of tweaks that I am doing are simple white balance, color saturation, and sharpening fixes all in Lightroom.

With this lens, the contrast simply pops - this is a really difficult thing to explain, but once you see L glass and the contrast and sharpness that it provides, you'll know it. I used to emulate this kind of pop by cranking the clarity slider in Lightroom and then increasing sharpness, but again, this took time and really only had maximum effect in the sharpest part of the image (namely the center of the frame where the 17-85 was sharpest). The corner to corner sharpness of the 24-105 is VERY GOOD.

In terms of ergonomics, the 24-105 took a bit to get used to - the zoom and focus ring positions are reversed and the lens is MUCH heavier than the 17-85 (if you are coming from the 18-55 kit lens, you'll think someone attached a boulder to your camera body). After about 30 minutes of shooting though, both these became non issues. What you'll also notice is that the zoom ring is quite a bit stiffer than the 17-85 and the 18-55 kit lens - this is a good thing as it prevents lens creep and inspires a sense of solidness with this lens. Given the added weight, in low light shooting you'll notice that you'll have to modify your hand holding technique - or at least get used to the increase in weight.

As you can probably tell, I really like this lens. I won't say that it is right for everyone though - although, I will say that it was very right for me. Whether this lens proves to be equally right for you, really depends on your shooting style. On a crop body like the Rebel XTI I shoot with, many people say that the lens isn't wide enough and is really equivalent to a 38mm lens and that with the 17-85mm and the 17-55mm, you get true wide angle. While I don't dispute that you lose out on a creative range by giving up the 17-24mm range, the question that you need to ask is how important that range is to YOUR style of shooting. After analyzing my EXIF data for over a year's worth of pictures I found that I really didn't shoot much in that range and when I did, it was typically landscape type shots that I would have easily switched over to my 10-22mm to shoot.

Is this lens a compromise - yes, of course it it, but so is every other lens. With this lens, you get great sharpness, a very useful shooting range (if you like street photography and candids like me, then the longer reach of this lens is perfect), image stabilization, and a constant f4 aperture. What you lose is a true wide angle range and about a thousand bucks.

Ultimately if you are considering this lens, you already know about its positives. In the end, it is really up to you whether this lens suits your shooting style. If I were a big time landscape and nature photographer, I'd probably have the same complaints as some of the other people out there. What I would encourage you to do is to browse around at people's galleries that were shot with this lens and see if your shooting style matches their photographs that they took with this lens.

To take a look at some photos taken with the 24-105mm and the 17-85mm, check out my Flickr photostream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alancmak/.

Summer Out of the City, originally uploaded by 4L4N M4K.

Wow, has it been this long?!?

Living in New York City there are a lot of things that you miss. Sunsets at the beach, the sound of the ocean, salty water crashing into your face, and the relaxation of the pace of Long Island.

When I was a kid we used to go out to the Hamptons for day trips. These days, now that I no longer live out on Long Island, those day trips are no more. My last time in the Hamptons was for Super Saturday - a designer clothing fund raiser that raised money for ovarian cancer research - a few years ago.

This weekend I traveled out to the eastern edge of East Hampton. I left the City at about 8PM and eventually made my way out to the house. Unfortunately I have a habit of inventing my own ways of getting to the places I need to go and sometimes that isn't the smartest thing. This was one of those cases and I ended up too far north and had to stumble my way back down south before I had gone too far east to do so. Luckily the guys at the gas station were helpful and pointed me in the right direction.

After hauling some ass to make up for lost time I made it onto the dark roads of East Hampton and was able to find my way to the house.

DAY 1

The next morning I kayaked for the first time - SO much fun! Those things are so much faster than the canoes that we rented during our trip last year to Whistler, British Columbia. After a leisurely ride out to this little island and scaring away the local birds with my silly duck calls I paddled back to the house and got ready to go to the beach - Oh how I miss the beach.

The beach was awesome - perfect water and tons of fun waves. I slapped on the SPF 15 and tanned for the second time this summer. I got a bit golden - like I was dipped in some light soy sauce - I'm like a "see yaw gai" now, by the way.

After a few hours of tanning and boogie boarding we left to go pick up our dinner. On the menu tonight were lobster, clams, mussels, and some veggies. We went to the most weird and obscure of seafood places to get our stuff - the place sounded like they sold more pool supplies and water filtration systems rather than seafood. Whoever thought of this name must have been aching to not have any customers - the place was called Multi Aquaculture Systems - WTF, who names a seafood market that?!? Even more weird were these gigantic dogs in cages hanging out by the fish pools. I wasn't really sure if they were breeding fish or fighting dogs!

Once we got in we inquired about the price of the clams and the lady said they were $5.50 a "douzen"...Huh, $5.50 a thousand? Yes, $5.50 a "douzen"...Hahaha...she meant "dozen". Of course I was the only one that understood...Otherwise that would have been one SlickDeal! Awesome dinner - we grilled up the clams and steamed our lobsters to perfection. I had the big momma lobster and it had a ton of bright red roe in it - so much so that I unfortunately couldn't even eat all of it.

After dinner we headed out to Scoop Du Jour for some yummies. I had my fave - strawberry ice cream - yes, I know I am boring with ice cream. After the ice cream we headed back to the house and went to bed.

DAY 2

We slept in this morning and missed the early morning kayaking but rushed to get out of the house to head to the beach before all the parking was filled up.

Once again the water was perfect - this time a bit less of a current and smaller waves but a touch more undertow. Unfortunately this day at the beach I managed to sink my vintage Ray Ban Aviators - so sad - mostly because of the sentimental value as those glasses were my dads. So dumb of me. I am usually so careful but this time a biggie wave hit me on the back and swept my Ray Bans away when I turned my head for a brief moment.

After another nice afternoon tanning and getting even more golden, we headed back for a quick dinner before I headed back out to the City.

Driving back was OK as I didn't hit much traffic. I actually managed to follow the directions for most of the way through the short cut - but I'm still not certain the road names are right. Luckily the car in front of me was from Port Washington (where I grew up) and I was able to follow him most of the way. I finally got onto Route 27 anticipating a quick drive to the LIE...Yeah, fat chance. I hit a major jam shortly before the exit for Route 104...Once again the explorer in me set out to find a new way...and I new way was found...I got onto the LIE and it was smooth sailing from there...After about 2 hours and 45 minutes I was back in Manhattan and so concluded my Hamptons weekend.

This coming weekend I'll be out there again. Hopefully by then I'll have a new pair of Ray Bans and some nicely pre-tanned skin ready for some additional color. Huzzah.

Geisha-a-go-go, originally uploaded by 4L4N M4K.

I was lucky enough to capture this unpainted nape during our recent stay in Kyoto. Taken during the days leading up to the Gion Matsuri, many Japanese girls dresses as maiko and geishas during these days.

Camera: Canon SD800IS | ISO: 1600