Douglas L wrote:
I was going to attend the airshow at MacDill base in Tampa, Florida on March 26-27, but they removed the B-2 from the show. I am guessing it's being put on alert...Still a nice lineup but the light is in the wrong direction. I will skip this show this time. I have seen the B-2 several times, still can't get over the strange feeling watching it approaching, such an alien looking piece of work. I will still see the SpaceX rocket launch at the Kennedy Space Center on the 30th. Elon Musk got to be one of the most interesting persons in recent memory, IMO. ...Show more →
I think he has changed a little since he moved to Texas. We are beginning to work on Jeff Bezos now.
Good Evening Everyone. Just got back from a day long assignment at Legend Aircraft. A day of planning, culminated in an hour in the air, and it was beautiful.
This assignment was non-stop bop, dozens of locations with little time to regroup in between. This image was the first one we had this morning and the lighting conditions were horrendous. The marketing director that I was working with held my light stand up the staircase to the right. I set the FJ400 at 3.8 out of 9 (the power scale goes from 1.0 to 9.0 in .1 increments. Turned out that 3.8 created a perfect balance. This image would have been impossible absent the FJ, with it we were on our way to the next location in about 20 minutes. ...Show more →
Ah so ….. Lights – Cameras – ACTION! Those new lights are a blast – getting modelling like that in outdoor sunlight. How are you getting on with that new 85mm? Has it made friends yet? That 32 RF lenses over the next four years announcement by Mr Canon made me chuckle. In my head I had you needing a delivery of smoke and mirrors prior to a “discussion” with The Office Of The Budget.
Good Afternoon Nick! I had every intention of utilizing the 85/1.2 on that shoot, but the perfect scenario didn't present itself. The industrial portraiture that the assignment was all about never called for the shallow DOF of the 1.2, so I didn't pull it out. Most of what I shot called for f4.5 or a little above. The Westcott's were a pleasant surprise, very intuitive. The assignment was so fast paced that it made me a little nervous to toss a brand new piece of equipment into the mix without any hands on experience, but from the second I powered them up it was old home week, "Bob's your uncle!" and all that..................
I've been limping along with my 2018 MacBook Pro for a year or so, but I think that I have come to an impasse. The computer is still pretty powerful and with lots of RAM, the sticky wicket is the 2TB hard drive. That was the largest drive available when I bought it and 2TB is just not large enough, four is really the minimum and I'm looking at eight. I don't keep any files on my laptop, just software and sometimes a folder that I'm working through, but it keeps reminding me that "my disk is almost full" and it gets pretty wonky. Guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet, and I'm sure they'll release the next generation 15 minutes after I pull the trigger.
Heli Expo was in Dallas this week and I was able to attend both the convention, and part of the departures of some of the many helicopters on Thursday afternoon.
This is a K-1200 manufactured by Kamar Industries. It is an industrial crane helicopter and has the weirdest looking set up of propellers I've ever seen.
I mainly took video of it, so these are all the actual camera views I've got to show.
I think that's Kaman. They've made meshed rotor helicopters since the 1950's I think. Not terribly common but has been around for a long time. The advantage of the meshed rotors is that they balance each other out so a power robbing tail rotor isn't required. Link to a 1950 picture (not mine) below.
After a frustrating day of IT I threw my hands up and emailed my Apple Small Biz rep and ordered a new MBPro. They are, like everyone else, 6-8 weeks out. Mac has ditched the 27" iMac and introduced a new "Mac Studio" that can be souped up for our line of work. The new MBPro is maxed out, fastest processor, loaded with RAM and topped off with an 8TB SSD, it should be pretty speedy.
JWilsonphoto wrote:
After a frustrating day of IT I threw my hands up and emailed my Apple Small Biz rep and ordered a new MBPro. They are, like everyone else, 6-8 weeks out. Mac has ditched the 27" iMac and introduced a new "Mac Studio" that can be souped up for our line of work. The new MBPro is maxed out, fastest processor, loaded with RAM and topped off with an 8TB SSD, it should be pretty speedy.
After 6 years of frustration running (cough, cough) Windows on my wife's Mac I got her a Dell XPS laptop. Took the Mac and the Windows machine to our local Apple authorized repair shop and had them remove the Windows so she could have a real Mac and a stand alone Windows machine for her sewing software that only runs on Windows. Dell told me 3 days to configure it like I wanted and 2 day shipping; 3 weeks later I got the Dell! After I received it Dell customer service called me to tell me they were giving me a $100 refund for messing with me.
I found out if I run all my photo processing through the desktop, the photo processing is fantastic. PhotoMechanic and LightRoom are both running M1 SoC natively so eliminating the hard drive sped things up significantly. After I finish processing the photos I copy the files to the external hard drive will I do other things. I can't imagine how fast your new MBP will be maxed out. That is great!
Mike Brewington texted me about five minutes after Apple did their big dog and pony show earlier this week, he wanted to know if I had ordered my Mac Studio yet.....................
JWilsonphoto wrote:
Mike Brewington texted me about five minutes after Apple did their big dog and pony show earlier this week, he wanted to know if I had ordered my Mac Studio yet.....................
...and $8k later you will have the fastest system available...for a year or two!
I couldn’t resist. Jim is always on a quest for bigger, better, and faster. I’ve always been a PC guy but when the M1 chip came out I added a Macbook Pro to my bag of tools. The learning curve is kind of steep for an old guy but its getting easier. At home I still rely on the PC I built a few years ago but on the road the MB Pro picks up the load.
Immediate obsolescence is just something that you have to get used to these days. I just spent 6 grand on the MBPro and I'm sure they will announce a 16" MBP with the Ultra chip in the next six months. I pushed this as far as I could, just maxed out and you can't upgrade SSD capacity on 2018 MBPro's because the SSD is soldered into the board.
This was the first air to air run with the R5. We launched a half an hour later than planned because a pilot ran off the runway in a Luscombe and we were helping him. His tailwheel spring snapped on landing. So, we had a little less light than we had planned on. I pushed the envelope, shutter speed never went above 1/80th. I also tested the efficacy of the Kenyon 6x6 working with IBIS. The air was a little bumpy, but it smoothed out toward the end of the shoot. One of our pilots had not done any formation work so I chose the 100-500 RF to give me a bit more reach. The 6x6 and the longer lens was a fairly heavy combination, but it worked.
