[schnee]

Back now. A PM to me will usually get my attention faster.

/NO REFUNDS!

[schnee]

I did a quick run through with the FSM to see what hosts we have used collectively. We’ve used over 1400 different hosts; here are the ones that have served 100 or more entries:

Domain                            URLs

flickr.com                         8549

imageshack.us                  4054

photobucket.com               3890

pbase.com                          710

stevecollis.com	                 472

tinypic.com	                 432

imageevent.com	         363

comcast.net	                 346

totalupload.com	                 344

mac.com	                         308

smugmug.com	                 307

davesweblife.com	         273

gwennick.com	                 200

yelley.com	                         190

ogra.ph	                         184

staplermofo.com	         171

humbug.org	                 165

livejournal.com	                 162

undergroundbastard.com 	 159

echo.cx	                         134

mit.edu	                         127

farkimages.com	                 123

google.com	                 117

ggpht.com	                         110

lotusimages.com	         109

photodump.com	                 106

insightbb.com	                 102

hostimage.org	                 100

(holy FSM, I hate trying to format data)

[schnee]

In other news, FSM isn’t picking up this contest.

I am so sorry about that. In the future, a PM to me usually will get my attention.

[schnee]

ipernity uses OpenID. That’s vague nifty in a geeky sort of way

[schnee]

Can the timer remote be used to auto-bracket exposures based on exposure time? Something like -2,-1,0,1,2 EVs? I’m thinking for massively easy huge HDRs.

[schnee]

If you want to permanently mod that mini mag, you can go get a big red LED from Radio Shack and replace the halogen bulb with the LED. You’ll have to open up the reflector of the mag a bit to get the led through (use a small file or something), but the two terminals of the LED go right into the power sockets for the bulb.

I don’t know what the part number is for the LED, but if you bring in the mag light, you can probably figure it out via trial and error (did this one lite? this one? this one? Ah…)

[schnee]

Or go Lens Baby.

A lens baby isn’t a T/S lens. Nor is it a tilt lens.

It is a selectable focus lens, which can be useful, but shouldn’t be confused with a lens where “sharp” is a design consideration.

/has a Lensbabies 2.0, and keeps looking at T/S lenses.

You either just saved me the cost of a Lens Baby, or cost me the price of a new T/S. I’m not sure if I should thank you or curse you.

but I do know I need to avoid ‘mofo – he likes to mug people for their lenses

[schnee]

Some hot Tilt/Shift action maybe?

Speaking of which, did you do that with your picture of the Capital?

Yes.

I’m starting a love affair with my t/s lens. I need to figure out if I want to rotate the tilt-action 90 degrees on the one lens I have and / or buy a different focal length lens.

Or go Lens Baby.

[schnee]

I think I’ve got a theme ‘set’ of pics for this one – a theme within a theme.

Do I detect a little perspective control going down with your images? Some hot Tilt/Shift action maybe?

[schnee]

Hmm, I don’t like the change to the “votes per theme for a person” graph.

yeah, that’s the thing I horked. I don’t even remember doing it. I’ll try to revert it soon’ish.

[schnee]

We’ll give the FSM a bit more time to ponder. Perhaps I’ve been schneed.

Did this ever get resolved?

[schnee]

I have a discontinued Minolta dedicated slide scanner that does a pretty decent job, if I take the time to do it correctly. It can resolve the dye clouds of the film emulsion, which seems to me to be getting about as much detail as needed. If the Nikon has an infrared channel (in addition to the RGB), you will then be able to minimize scratches and other physical defects on the slide, which is nice. The feature is usually called Digital ICE or something like that.

Scanning correctly can be time consuming – it can take 15 to 30 minutes to scan one (1!) slide when I pull out all the stops. And then there is post-processing, which takes even more time. Scanning tends to cause the image to go soft – a bit of edge sharpening helps significantly.

I can expand on this if you’d like.

[schnee]

I see we’ve found some new way to break it.

Oh, that’s not new. That’s me not being able to figure out how to escape “smart quotes” in regular expressions. Major blow to my ego, minor annoyance in the FSM. I’ll get it fixed.

I’m actually considering just capturing the entire headline, but then the display gets all horked.

[schnee]

That reminds me. Is there any way I can sweet-talk you into making my first contest entry disappear? I entered on picture on a whim back in 2005 that has totally dorked my statistics. I’m actually active now 😛
/totally understood if that’s against the rules.

While technically possible, I’m not likely to delete entries – facts are facts, and as U-Man says, this could open a whole can of worms. And hey, this isn’t American politics – past indiscretions count here.

However, the whole participation level thing is completely and totally derived – I could change the algorithm to weight recent contests more. Sort of like a radioactive decay or something. That I am likely to do. Let me noddle over it a bit and see what I can come up with.

[schnee]

You could do it with two PWs, a couple of hotshoe-to-household adapters, and some modified household powercables. Stobist.com’s Lighting 101 shows some ideas. You can fire two flashes with one PW – I’ve done it and it is a lot less than a third PW.

Basically, the off-camera PW is wired via household (two-prong) cables to both flashes. You’ll need a double-ended male cable.

Nice kit, btw.

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