tdot's rants

Warning – even though it’s been more than 6 months since the last post, this is almost entirely all camera geekery… no fun personal updates here. Or that’s the plan anyways. Let’s see how the post goes…

So there are two kinds of D-SLRs (big digital cameras, the biggest kind you see in normal stores, with removable lenses): ones with APS-C size sensors, and full-frame sensors. The former is the default: this sensor is roughly 4 times smaller in surface-area than the full-frame sensor, which refers to being the same size as 35mm film. Which no one seems to use much anymore, so it’s odd that the tech is always in comparison to a bygone, but hey there are still film diehards out there so maybe this is an ironic tribute.

I’ve been waiting over a year to buy a full-frame camera, because you need one when you do professional things like weddings (which I started doing not too long ago). I’m a Nikon guy (primarily because they feel so much better in my hands), and Nikon (like Canon) has a roughly 3-4 year release-cycle for new full-frame cameras. Nikon has two that are within my reach (and a third that’s not): the really expensive, and the expensive. The lesser one, the D700, cost about $2700 when it was launched, and the more expensive one, the D3 and then D3s, cost about $5000. My plan had been to wait for the successor to the D700, believed to be the D800, and buy that. It should have been out in late 2011, but thanks to a massive tsunami and ensuing nuclear chaos, and then a big flood in Thailand on top of that, it still isn’t out.  The D800 is rumoured to be announced on Feb. 12, with a rumoured price-tag of $4k.

At xmas, I played with the camera my mum bought, the Nikon V1. It’s a smallish camera, one of the new “mirrorless” cameras. It’s not much bigger than a pocket camera, but it has interchangeable lenses. And after playing with it, one thing became apparent: these new mirrorless cameras have a whole lot of really useful innovative tech that their bigger cousins from upstate clearly don’t have! Things like a new hybrid focus system, which can (as I understand it) basically focus anywhere on the sensor (traditional DSLRs are limited to certain “points” in the image), and do so really really fast (I was astounded how fast the focus on the V1 is, even in very adverse conditions like harsh contrast or very low light). They also have impressive shake reduction: i have unsteady hands and generally shoot no slower than 1/50 without a tripod, but with the V1 I could shoot 1/5 handheld! That might have been a lucky day where  I had less coffee, but it really impressed me.

Now here’s the kicker about all this cool new tech in the V1: last week Nikon released the D4, their brand-new flagship DSLR, clocking in with a massive price-tag of $6k. And what do you get for the extra $1k over the D3s’ price? 4 megapixels, and that’s about it! There are other things, sure — the usual improved ISO range & performance, better metering, yawnity-yawn-yawn-yawn. But how many cool new techs like the V1 are implemented in the D4? Zip, zero, zilch. This is Nikon’s flagship — you better believe that the D800 is not going to have cool tech that the d4 doesn’t have. That means the D800, while rumoured to have a zillion (36) megapixels, will have only that — more pixels. No cool new tech. And for thousands above the cost of the D700 (if that rumour is true), that made me think… do I need a D800?

Consider also that even if the D800 is announced on or around Feb. 12, the earliest it would start shipping is a month later. Then it’ll take up to 3 months to get to switzerland. So i’d get one around mid-summertime — way later than needed for weddings and other jobs, so i’d be borrowing again, or renting if my one acquaintance who’s kind enough to lend me the D700 realizes that he doesn’t need to be so incredibly nice

Tie these things together, and I’m buying a D700 tomorrow, used, for about $1700. Sure, i’d like 36mp, but I can’t wait till mid-summer, and the extra thousands of $ beyond the price of the D700 is only worth it to me if there is some cool new tech included, like that which the V1 impressed me with. Since that ain’t happening, I ain’t waitin. Then again, Nikon could pleasantly surprise me, in which case I would sell the D700 for hopefully a small loss, and buy the D800 after all. But with all the other equipment I need to buy (I skipped the whole line of reasoning about how I need to buy a portrait lens and a lighting system this year, and both of those are in jeopardy if I buy a $4k D800!), it doesn’t seem likely.

I’m really, really looking forward to owning a full-frame camera.

On a cool rainy saturday morning after drinking much too much strong coffee, I found myself playing drums in the garage, thinking that I spend a disproportionate amount of time wanting to do things (or wanting to have things) that I can’t do right now, or can’t have right now. With all four of my limbs blissfully occupied in the business of keeping my neighbors on the irate side of the fence, my mind was free to think about this a little more, and a gem popped in (the first thought i’ve had often, this part not) — what is my ideal life at 35, if it were to be living in this house? Well, that took all of 0.0034s to think up: it’s riding the motorcycle to today’s photoshoot (as my full-time job), and stopping off at the practice/studio-room in winterthur where my drumset is to have a quick play before getting serious and taking awesome photos of fun & beautiful people.

There are so many ways to go from there, but here’s the first thought I had after thinking this: @#$!, i’m already so close!

The definition of blessed, being: Thingwise – I already have most of the photographic equipment needed to start as a full-time job (what I need next is a brand, the network, and the on-shoot skills), I already have the drumset of my dreams (seriously – birch masters studio paired with maple masters custom, sounds just awesome), I already have the motorcycle. Do-wise – I already love taking photos and have the skill to edit them well (lots of room for improvement in the actual photos I take, but that’ll be fun to learn), I play in the church band and have an offer to join a friend’s band, I have my first pro shooting/engagement coming up in a month’s time (nervous!).

So really, there’s a somewhat clear set of steps to get there.

That’s pretty rad

My son has just been placed beside me, gurgling / cooing away, sucking his thumb whole fist in a super cute way. He’s growing so fast! I definitely want a lifestyle that has me being home more often, and not in a “working at home” way (which means you shut yourself in a room and still miss out on him growing up). Also not in a “home all the bloody time” way either – I think being a photographer would be relatively perfect. Or perfectly relative. It occurs to me that I have absolutely no problem with having absolutely no idea how to be a dad, and i’m not sure if that’s because D is spending so much time being (and worrying about being) the perfect mum (srrrrsly: she reads books on it! as if I would ever have the patience or dedication to do that for anything). I’m so grateful that he’s beyond perfect: super cute (man we see soooo many ugly babies here in switzerland), gurgly/smiley almost all the time when he’s not crying, sleeps really well, doesn’t have colic/acid-reflux/downs/insert-a-zillion-things-that-can-go-wrong-and-often-do,here… but this appreciation doesn’t stop all the thoughts of “man I really wish we could go-hiking/go-motorcycling/insert-noahless-activity-here”. And that comes back to the original thought in this post, that I spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about the things I can’t do/have. I think i’m good at enjoying the things I do have/do, but need to stop trying to think about how it could be better all the time.

Actually having a job is making this easier: it was hella hard after Noah was born not to keep thinking like this while sitting around the house almost every day. I don’t have millions of regrets that I dwell on all the time (I mean about the time I had off after noah was born), but man if that was a taste of retired life is like, then i’m going to hate being retired. Of course it’s nothing like being retired: having a newborn baby (specifically, your first) and having no job for the first time ever (in ~24 years of life, if you count school being a job) is probably the greatest challenge i’ve overcome (ha! yes, my life is that easy. suck it ) and nothing like being retired. Well.

The new job is difficult and easy at the same time: german is very difficult (the job is in german), the corporate structure/processes is/are difficult, the completely different way people work is very difficult (and i’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg on these)… but knowing my boss already is just as big of an advantage as I hoped it would be, perhaps even more (in terms of my feelings of anxiousness, nervousness, and self-confidence) – for example he made me laugh out loud 3 times on friday – and, the “bigger fish in smaller sea” (in terms of technical expertise only!) feeling is more than I expected and of course that appeals to my arrogance completely

Thirty years old and the one thing I already know that I want to teach my son is something I have no idea how I came by myself (did my parents teach it to me? is it genetic? did I learn it in one of my jobs — no I must have started out somewhat like this already? is it a product of my environment?): the combination of confidence and intuition applied to a drive to be strongly introspective, which leads to a good understanding of oneself. Right now i’d be happy with just less stinky farts though.

Time to change my shirt.

… I used to blog? Me neither.

In the meantime you can read about my drama that’s ensuing over trying to get the paperwork ready for our baby that’s not even born yet. So far the next step is for me to go down to my home-insurance office and ask them to reissue a german statement in french instead. Confused? Yup, that’s expected.

(mooving is what you do in cow-obsessed countries like switzerland). So we move on saturday. yay! stress! but actually things have been going very well. Daneille’s been a mad boxer, and i’ve done a bunch of the logistical stuff (utilities, arranging the contract / stuff for new house, arranging the new people for our apartment and the cleaning, etc). We’ve come a long way – our chairs just walked off today (a crazy couple from Boston who took the 6 heavy chairs…wait for it… ON THE TRAIN! just the two of them. awesome), and actually today was relatively epic… we woke up early, drove the green car to frank’s house, traded up for his minivan, drove an hour or so to luzern, bought the new chairs daneille wanted (used, cheap, yay), drove all the way back to the new house in effretikon, offloaded them, drove back to our place, loaded up a full minivan of boxed stuff, drove it to the new place… drove back to frank’s, switched back, drove to microsoft, got rid of the car, hopped on the tram to ICF (church) where i was leading the band, arrived only 10 mins late (miracle), led the band (it went surprisingly well considering how bad the rehearsal was), did church, met up with a couple who are interested in marriage counselling and talked to them for quite a while, got a ride back from a friend from Germany who brought us boxes, met up with the Boston couple who took the chairs … and now i’m going to do WHAT THE FUCKEVER I WANT TO DO

And that was my sunday.

But seriously i’m super happy we’re moving, we’re going to see friends more often and still be able to get to our church & smallgroup just as easily. Plus the commute to the work is one train (no changes), and i have free 3G internet provided to me from work. So really, it could be just fine. Here’s hoping! The place itself, well you’ve seen D’s photos on facebook. Suffice to say, today it was grey shitty dark and raining, and when we were leaving after offloading the last lot of boxes I remarked that we had never needed to turn on any lights cuz it was so bright inside.  WIN!  (can you tell who’s still sour from his dark cave of a house in duvall?)

This week is going to be LEGEN–wait for it—-wait for it—–DARY. Because, we ship our product this week (YAY!) after 2 years or so of working on it. So we get wed-fri off basically – and we are heading up to strasbourg on wednesday to par-fucking-tay for 2 days straight. i’m pretty excited to get away for a bit and blow off some moving-stress steam. Hopefully D can have something fun/similar too, i’m thinking of what I can dream up for her   Our smallgroup has all volunteered to help us for the big day of the move itself (this coming saturday, prayers welcome), and a bunch of people from church too. Got the van reserved, gonna call ppl up this week and make sure everyone’s committed and then it’s GO TIME BABY

Foot still hurts but i’m following all the advice, wearing birks all the time indoors and inserts all the time outdoors, and i think i can feel it getting maybe a little better, not sure. Had a great trip in Canada simply (if for no other reason) because the weather was so kickass – warm sunny and lots of beautiful trees. Had a nice stopover on the way back in heathrow (london) too — met up with a friend who works in the airport (dave stubbs) for coffee. Definitely a reason to connect thru heathrow from now on!!!

Looking forward to getting settled in, home for xmas, and taking lots of pictures. And more starcraft2.

That’s right folks – if you thought you were done hearing the ongoing diatribe about my foot, you were wrong. My foot, let me show it to you: AGAIN! PART TWO! THE REPRISE!

First, here i’ve converted the pics I got from the MRI into a movie so you can see the layers of my foot. Yeah, the layers baby, layers.

Next, here’s a static shot with some explanation of the problem… it turns out i have the equivalent of tennis-elbow, in my foot. grrreeeattt.

ZOMG!!!11!!one!1! TIM! TIIIIIIM! YOU HAVE YELLOW AND RED LINES IN YOUR FOOT! ZOMGZOMG!!!

Actually, no, I’ve drawn in three lines to help explain. The white line is just below the strong tendon that runs from the forward side of your heel to your toes. It connects to your heel in at a point, and seen from the top it would look like a big “V” because expands as it goes towards your toes. The yellow line is right below that point, where the tendon connects to the hell. The red line is just up and right from the problem: see that white-ish area between the heel bone (black) and the greyish mass of the tendon where it connects to the bone? That’s the problem. White = fluid — basically it’s an inflammation, not too bad, of the liquid variety. Here are the key points: it’s not a tumour, not a bone facture, not a bone intrusion… in fact, it’s basically nothing to worry about. Yay! 

Diagnosis: some fancy latin name – who remembers that shit?
Prognosis: get better shoes, ignore it for a month and see if it gets better; if not, ultrasound is an option (bombarding the area with high-frequency sound-waves in the hope that it loosens something up)

So, in short, i’m glad it doesn’t hurt too much cuz it looks like there’s @#$@-all i can do about it.