An entertaining tale

I'm still very interested in taking photographs of the night sky. Looking around though, my options are somewhat limited financially - as are everybody else's options given that there's still a horrible recession going on.

The options I looked at were:
1. Getting a Nikon 1 J1 to take the photos. I almost had one too. There was one on eBay but it went for $83 which was above my maximum bid of $75. I already thought $75 was too high and had secretly hoped not to win the auction.
2. Getting a Rokinon 16mm f2 lens as primes are generally better than zooms. The photo above was taken with a Tamron 17-35 F2.8 zoom. It's good aside from the soft corners.
3. Getting a Zenitar 16mm. This was a fast f2.8 lens but apparently is very soft at apertures wider than f8. It's not surprising because Russian quality control is non existent.
4. Getting a micro four thirds camera with the kit zoom. Apparently the kit zoom is excellent and though it's not f2.8 the available ISO would permit the photo. This would cost about the same as the Rokinon lens.
5. Getting a new Canon camera that would have higher ISO, allowing the same level of image to be taken with my current F4 lens.

I used to have a Tamron 17-35 F2.8 but sold it due to it being too soft at F2.8. Certainly the photo looks impressive but the corners kill it for me.

The only gripe I have about my current camera gear is that I can't do night sky photos - which I'd love to do. I like the focal lengths I have. I am very used to the cameras and since one was a gift from my mother on an important occasion in my life, I'm attached to it. I'm not that keen on the bulk of the camera setup but there's little I can do about that. Canon like making big bulky Fischer-Price style cameras.

Whichever way I go, it looks like it'll take a while what with car tax and insurance both due in January. I'd been looking for a secondhand Rokinon but they seem unavailable.

posted from Bloggeroid

Domain names and photo hosting

Today, just for laughs, I looked at the dpreview "discussion" webpages. There's not so much discussion going on as puerile ranting, chest beating and nugatory, gratuitous posting. Mostly the issues raised on dpreview are along the lines of "waah. I just read this (from an unconfirmed or incomplete source) and think its the end of the world" or "how/what/where do I do/buy/get this" where the answer is usually easily available via online searches or better by putting down the damn tablet and heading to the library. Remember libraries? They have books and books have information in them. Better than that even, books don't need batteries so you can keep reading without having to plug them in. Of course, I'm talking about dpreview posters that usually will be found hunched over an elderly computer, surrounded by a sea of burger wrappers, empty coke cans in a foul smelling unventilated room with curtains closed so long that they're sticking to the wall.

Anyway, I digress. One of the posters asked an interesting question, namely what to do for photo hosting and domain names. For some bizarre reason they considered a domain name as a $35 purchase. Really - $35! Are they off their rockers? I've seen domains going for $3.99 and even free. Only a real schmuck would pay more than the minimum for the kind of skanky con trick that domain names represent.

"Hold up", I hear you say. "What do you mean by calling domain names thusly?" Well, in today's world, domain names are irrelevant. Do a web search in a few days for "$%4545454%$" and you'll get right back to this blog entry. Now, imagine - assuming you are not a dpreview "contributor" ergo compus mentus - you can come up with a memorable catch phrase for your photo pages. Something as memorable as "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "Wein, Weib und Gessang" would work. Poof! Your need for a domain name has vanished as too has any associated cost.

What about photo hosting? Who in their right mind actually pays to host photos? Actually the cretin that made the posting on dpreview seemed to believe that right-click protection would stop people downloading their photos and wanted it included. It's really rather sad that anybody should be stupid enough to believe anything online cannot be easily copied or easily have copy protection removed. Ebooks are a classic example - they're just zipped html folders. But back to the point - why pay to host photos? Free sites such as Picasa, Flickr, Instagram etc exist. The important thing to realise is that as soon as an image is available online, somebody will copy it and use it. I've seen it done. I've seen really grotty sub VGA images downloaded, printed and used as table decorations at functions.

So, domain names and paid hosting? Don't make me laugh! I've not paid for domain names nor for hosting for years. I don't have to worry about bills nor renewals. Of course an interesting sub issue is that having a paid domain and website does not mean anybody is ever going to visit it! I had a photo website for several years and no matter what I did would attract more than a pitiful number of visitors. I gave up on trying to sell snow to the Eskimos and stopped throwing money away on domain names and websites. Like as not nobody will visit your website so don't throw money at it.

Craigslist fun...

With all the bogus garbage on Craigslist, I thought I'd join in. The local Craigslist has a sea of adverts by photographers and for photographers ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.

These are the adverts for photographers...

Not too many in that page. There were more further down and many more in other areas. There was no shortage of photographers advertising though...

In my opinion, its all baloney. I doubt that anybody ever gets hired from responding to a Craigslist advert and I doubt that anybody ever hires anybody that responds to a Craigslist advert.

With that in mind, I put up a spoof advert....

Within hours one person wrote back saying "This is a joke right? You have got to be kidding..." But nobody else ever responded. Clearly I need to work on it to make it sound more plausible.

Indeed, the trigger for that spoof was remembering when I advertised photography online. The contact form on my website was filled with unsolicited resumes. Then some joker entered into a long and clearly bogus correspondence about needing a photographer to photograph his dead uncle in a casket in a funeral home.

If more replies come, they'll be posted. Somehow, I doubt anybody takes Craigslist seriously.

Meanwhile, there was an advert for a "sister wife" on Craigslist. Clearly a bogus advert so, using the dating side as a control sample, I posted my own bogus advert...

Nobody in their right mind would respond to an advert like that, or would they? I waited on tenterhooks expecting a sea of outraged responses. There was only one response aside from several bots trying to get me to reveal my real email address.

The outraged response really wasn't that outraged to be honest. They said " What kind of Mormon does gross stuff like that! Are you and you're wives even attractive enough to make a woman get her tubed tied! Sounds like you want a slave not a companion"

Again, I'll post further responses but since the list of adverts grows at a phenomenal rate - all with very weird stuff, there probably won't be more responses. I think the advert will quickly be subsumed by the mass of other advertisers.

So... Craigslist adverts - genuine or not? Probably none are!