trip down market street

A Trip Down Market Street (originally a silent film), was made in 1905 by Jack Kuttner with a Bell and Howell 2909 camera mounted on the front of a cable car. It details Market Street in San Francisco a year before the 1906 earthquake and fire. This film is really a piece of work. Even though the film itself is in rough shape, the detail you can see in it is still pretty remarkable. The camera, cutting edge for its time (and is still respected today by camera aficionados), is a hand-cranked camera, the first one with the dual-reel design. You know, the ones you've seen in the movies. Apparently it takes some skill to hand-crank film at a constant speed of 16 frames per second. What's also sort of interesting is how Market Street still sort of looks the same a hundred years later. The buildings are all different, except for the Ferry Building which is at the end of Market Street (the building that gets closer and closer in the film). Riding the F-Market streetcar line nowadays, the view hasn't changed all that much. Well, there was a time when the Embarcadero Freeway ran directly in front of the Ferry Building, but after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the city finally had enough momentum to take it down. (If you haven't read it, I wrote an article on waterfront freeways back in May 2005.) Coming out on DVD on 1 August 2006 is Market Street 1905/2005, a documentary celebrating the 100th anniversary of the original film. The DVD includes Melinda Stone's 2005 remake of the 1905 original using both a Sony PD-170 digital video camera and an original Bell and Howell 2909 film camera from 1922 mounted on the front of a streetcar.

eyepiece and lcd monitor viewfinders

Last month, the New York Times published a piece in their Trends column, A Liberated View of the World as Viewfinders Eclipse Eyepieces (free registration required). In it, they described the a trend where the eyepiece viewfinder on consumer digital cameras are being phased out in favor of LCD viewfinder screens. I've noticed that some of the new digital point-and-shoots only have an LCD screen on them now. I suppose I understand why things are trending in that direction, but I just can't behind it.

From an engineering point of view:

• How does one take a picture with an LCD screen when it's really bright outside?
• Doesn't the LCD screen drain the battery quickly?
• Can one take a picture when one has enough battery to power the sensor, but not enough to power the LCD?

Maybe some of my friends with digital point-and-shoots can enlighten me :)

From a philosophical point of view, I like the eyepiece viewfinder. When I hold the camera up against my eye, it blocks out the rest of the world and helps me focus on the scene I am trying to capture. Looking through the eyepiece, especially on an SLR, means that I am seeing what the lens is seeing. The lens is effectively an extension of my eye. Light reflecting off the subject travels through the front of the lens, bends its way through the camera on glass and mirrors, and then strikes the rods and cones on my retina in a slightly myopic fashion. One nonstop ray of light. As they say, it helps me to be one with the camera and with the scene. I suppose one can do the same with an LCD too because the LCD is projecting what the lens is seeing, but one is doing that at arms length, as if the camera is an extension of the arm and not of the eye. Using an LCD viewfinder, the light reflecting from the subject has been translated into a digital electronic signal and then converted back into light by the liquid crystals. There's a layer of interpretation between the scene and me and I can't tell if the color is real and how clear the photo will really be. Who knows though, when it comes down to it, it's all particles and waves of energy in the end.

Maybe it's just a personal preference, maybe it's me clinging on to the ways of the old, but I hope they never design the eyepiece out of the digital SLR. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm a curmudgeon when it comes to technology. Figure that for a software engineer!

customer service

DC Cookie: Airplane Chivalry reminded me of an article I read a few years ago on customer service.

From Denning and Durham (2003):

When Jan Carlzon became the president of SAS Airlines in 1981, SAS was in deep financial trouble, with declining punctuality, service, and morale. Carlzon fostered a paradigm change he called "moments of truth," defining a moment of truth as any event that brought SAS to the mind of a customer. He included indirect interactions with customers—for example, a stain on an airliner's seat was not just a blotch on fabric, it was a moment when a customer formed an impression about the company. Within one year, a large influx of business travellers swung SAS into the black and within 18 months SAS was Airline of the Year. In his book, Calzon (1989) says of this:

At SAS, we used to think of ourselves as the sum total of our aircraft, our maintenance bases, our offices, and our administrative procedures. But if you ask our customers about SAS, they won't tell you about our planes or our offices or the way we finance our capital investments. Instead, they'll talk about their experiences with the people at SAS. SAS is not a collection of material assets but the quality of the contact between an individual customer and the SAS employees who serve the customer directly. ... [In 1986] each of our 10 million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time. Thus, SAS "created" 50 million moments a year, 15 seconds at a time. These 50 million "moments of truth" are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. ... We have to place responsibility for ideas, decisions, and actions with the people who are SAS during those 15 seconds: ticket agents, flight attendants, baggage handlers, and all the other frontline employees.

The article was originally about how the IT industry lacks customer service, but they cited this example from the airline industry. As for the IT industry, I can only say this: it is only one of two industries that refers to its customers as users.

Carlzon, J. (1989). Moments of Truth. New York: HarperCollins.

Denning, P. J., & Dunham, R. (2003). The Profession of IT: The Missing Customer. Communications of the ACM, 46(3), 19-23.

nikon d50 buying guide

This is a rewrite of an earlier piece of mine, Canon Digital Rebel XT Buying Guide, except it's geared for the Nikon D50. This is my advice (based on my lessons learned from previous purchases) for first-time digital SLR buyers. Hopefully this piece will be of some help.

Most retailers sell the Nikon D50 in a kit that includes:

• D50 (6.1 megapixel) camera body
• AF-S DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED Zoom-Nikkor Autofocus Lens
• battery charger
• battery pack
• camera strap
• camera-to-USB interface cable
• camera-to-video cable
• body, eyepiece, and accessory shoe covers/caps
• software CDs
• documentation

Note that the camera kit does not come with any (SD) memory. Some independent retailers might offer it as part of the kit, but most of the mainstream retailers do not. I've also seen this kit packaged with different/multiple lenses.

Problem: The lens that comes in the kit is not-so-great.
First, what does AF-S DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED really mean? AF-S indicates a silentwave (ultrasonic) motor, DX is a series of Canon lenses that work only on digital SLRs, 18-55mm indicates the focal length range of the lens (think of it as the zoom range), f/3.5-5.6 indicates the maximum aperture of the lens (think of it as the minimum amount of light necessary to use the lens), G is a new series of Nikon lenses that only work on newer camera bodies, and ED stands for extra-low dispersion glass (a better quality glass). Now for some gritty detail about lenses...

DX
DX lenses are lenses specifically for Nikon digital SLR cameras. Although the DX lenses physically fit the film bodies, they cast an image that is smaller than the non-DX lenses. This is because the sensor in the digital SLR is smaller than the 36mm by 24mm film frames (measure your old negatives if you want to verify). The D50 however is capable of using both the non-DX and DX families of lenses.

18-55mm focal length (zoom) range
On the D50, 30mm (normal) focal length is roughly equivalent to what your eye normally sees. So 18mm (wide) to 55mm (telephoto) gives you roughly +/- 2x of zoom towards wide or telephoto (so I guess that's 4x total). 18-55mm is generally considered a mid-range wide-to-telephoto zoom. Just keep in mind that the D50 has a 1.5x conversion factor. So 18-55mm on the D50 is equivalent to 1.5 x (18-55) = 27-82.5mm, almost equivalent to the 28-80mm lens on a full frame film camera.

f/3.5-5.6 maximum aperture
This is the real problem. Zoomed out at 18mm, the lens is f/3.5. Zoomed in at 55mm, the lens is f/5.6. The higher the f-number, the more light you will need to take a decent picture. This means, don't plan on zooming in and taking pictures indoors very well -- you'll need bright sunlight or a powerful flash to take good pictures. We know what happens on our point-and-shoots when we use the flash indoors: any trace of oil on skin reflects flat bright white light, skin tone looks horrible, the blood vessels at the back of the retina reflect red light and cause red-eye, and the photo is most likely overexposed (too bright). Nothing wrong with fun pictures like this, but if you're paying the big money for a digital SLR, I figure you want a little better. Just remember, the lower the f-number, the better. With a low f-number, you can take pictures in either low light or bright light, where with the high f-numbers, the lens requires bright light.

Solution: Buy the body and lens separately.
The body comes with everything in the kit mentioned above, except the lens, and usually costs about $100-150 less than the kit. (Kits sell for about $700, body-only sells for about $550.) This lets you buy a lens of your own choosing. The lens is the technical limiting factor of the quality of photos your digital SLR can take. With a low-quality lens, you get 6.1 megapixels of low quality images. With a high-quality lens, you get 6.1 megapixels of sharpness and color. (The other limiting factor is the human element: composition skills of the photographer.) Chances are you'll have more than one lens in the future, but let's assume you want just one lens to start with. Some of my recommendations:

A Better Zoom Lens
The Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC (be sure to check for Nikon mount) is a third-party lens that sells for around $400. Note that the lens has constant f/2.8 aperture, regardless of the focal length (zoom). Compared with the kit lens, this lens not only performs better in low light, but performs consistently regardless of the focal length.

A Normal Fixed Lens
By normal, I mean normal focal length, 30mm. As I mentioned earlier, 30mm is roughly what our eyes see. The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM (Nikon mount) sells for around $400 and performs really well in low light without a flash. This lens requires eight times less light than the kit lens to take a picture. By fixed, I mean there's no zoom. The lens is fixed at 30mm. Step feet forward to zoom in, step back to zoom out. However, giving up the zoom wins you a benefit: spectacularly sharp photographs. As in magazine-quality sharp. Examples tagged as 30mm are in my flickr photostream.

An Inexpensive, High-Quality, Fixed Lens that Does Portraits
If you're looking for quality bargains, the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor, sells for around $100. (Even cheaper than the kit lens!) It feels like a cheap piece of plastic, but the optical quality of this lens is hard to beat -- the resulting pictures are also magazine-quality sharp and it works well in low light. Being fixed at 50mm means that you will always be at 1.5x zoom relative to your eye. If you're in a small room, this might be an issue because you might not be able to back up enough to take a group photo, for instance. However, because it is slightly telephoto (zoomed in), there is some compression in the image, which means that when you take portraits, facial features (particularly noses) will be slightly compressed. Your subjects will probably agree to that. Not to mention, if you are taking a picture of a baby or a pet, you won't have to stand quite so close to get a good portrait shot. It's f/1.8 maximum aperture (low light capability) also means you don't have to fire the flash indoors, sparing your subjects' eyes from annoyance. Of course, you can use this as a general purpose lens too, not just for portraits.

The key is not buying the kit lens. If you look at some point-and-shoot cameras, some of their lenses are actually better than the kit lens in terms of range and aperture. If you're going to get a digital SLR, you might as well get a good lens so you can feel good about your purchase and know that your camera is taking better pictures than a point-and-shoot that's less than half the price.

laughing from within

I haven't laughed as hard as I did today when my friend J was telling me about The Notorious MSG in a Cantonese accent. Waa wah! From their song Dim Sum Girl:

It’s been so long since
I’ve seen you smile
Looking so good
Coming down that aisle
With that sexy dress
And a little dim sum
Make me crazy
When I order chow fun
People, they’re telling me
That i shouldn’t bother with a lady
Like you — you rock my world
Yes you — my dim sum girl
Watching, waiting
Waiting for you baby
To tell me that I’m the guy for you
And that you wanna be my lady
One day yes you will see that
I will always be
The one who will make fried rice
For you for all eternity

Read more about The Notorious MSG in the New York Times article Their Hard-Knock Life.

atomic models and intuition

DC Cookie: Sister Geekfest Part III - The Physicist is total bait for nerds and I totally bit into it.

I'm going to reprise one of my soapbox rants about science and engineering education, coincidentially as I am writing a research paper on software engineering education.

I think "Guy" from the post suffers from the same fate a lot of us do who went through traditional science education. A model is a representation of the real world. Our goal in science is to develop models (Newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, evolution, string theory, etc.) that explain the real world as we've observed it, as much as possible. The representation however is not the real world -- there is always a gap.

Now here's the catch, sometimes we choose less accurate models which are more simple to help us understand some basic principles. Depending on the context, you might not even need the more accurate model. For example, when we were in middle school, we were taught that electrons orbit around a nucleus in an atom, and the pictures showed electrons orbiting protons and neutrons in circular planet-like orbits. Then we went to high school and found out that those circular orbits are really s and p orbitals that aren't circular at all. Then we went to college and found out that electrons can go anywhere they damn well please and those s and p orbitals are probability distribution functions that tell us where the electrons are likely to be. So, all of these were models of our understanding, all correct, but in their own contexts. My issue with science education is no one is told that these are models.. so by the time I got to college and I was working on my chemistry problems, I was still thinking about circular orbits in my head and couldn't shake the picture of them because I was believing that everything I learned in science classes are absolute truth because hey, it's objective, it's science!

"Guy" stated things moderately correctly, but I think he was just blending models together that aren't blendable.

For those who care to know the answer... A neutron (udd, an up quark and two down quarks) removed from the nucleus does decay into a proton (uud), electron, and an antineutrino, but it does not imply that a neutron is composed of these particles. Just suspend common sense in quantum mechanics.

Sometimes you just have to throw intuition out the window. It's the only way I got through linear algebra (just to name one class). What the heck is an eigenvector in a polynomial space, really?!

low light practice

I decided to be anti-social at a happy hour and hid behind the viewfinder for a while. (My original intent was to carry the camera to practice taking pictures at night in the city in the previous post.) It ended up being pretty hit or miss -- again a lot of blurring in low light without a flash. Plus I didn't have a zoom lens with me, so it was pretty challenging composing in a space that's relatively confined. The good part was that my lens (Sigma 30mm/1.4) finally delivered the sharpness and color I've been expecting. Perhaps it's been user error up until now :P Anyway, I worked with what I had and here's the better stuff that came out of it...

night practice in the city

My goal was to have some shots of the city at night, maybe a couple streets and buildings, but then a jazz band was playing on the street at Dupont Circle and I got hooked in :) Below are some of the better ones, but I had a rough time with this set of photos. Everyone was moving and dancing, which was absolutely great, but that led to a heck of a lot of blurry photos. Some of the blur is cool though, like the motion on the washboard, but not all of it works. This was my first time shooting with sodium vapor street lights too -- and now I know what people mean when they say the flare (light spots) comes out green. I have to read up a little more and try this again sometime. I know motion at night is hard to capture though -- everything I've read about night photography so far talks about a tripod and keeping things still. I can't help it if the world likes to move at night too :) Even though the photos weren't my best, I still had a great time out on the street.

pairs of photos

Photographs usually have their own story to tell, but sometimes having a pair of photographs just makes the story even more interesting and richer in detail. In practicing, I've been taking pairs of photographs to make comparisons. Before/after, micro/macro, and control/experimental.

This reminded me of Edward Tufte's book, Envisioning Information, where he actually does go into detail about micro/macro readings, small multiples, and narratives of space and time. I suppose photography is in fact a form of information design. I love it, creative thinking meets analytical thinking :) For those of you that haven't heard, Tufte's long-awaited new book Beautiful Evidence has just been published! From his introduction to the book:

Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information. Beautiful Evidence is about how seeing turns into showing, how empirical observations turn into explanations and evidence presentations. The book identifies excellent and effective methods for presenting information, suggests new designs, and provides tools for assessing the credibility of evidence presentations.

Pre and Post Wish


Rings, Micro and Macro


Peaches, With and Without Flash

I'm not sure why, but cameras like to pop the flash and almost always ruin the photo. Unless you intentionally want to fill in the shadows, override your flash :) The last photo for today worked only because the shadows are there.


Six More Candles

eastern market practice shoot

Ah, Washington summer: hot, hazy, humid, with a looming threat of torrential rain. It didn't stop me from enjoying the photo meetup at Eastern Market yesterday though. My new wide-angle lens, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, finally showed up and I couldn't wait to take it out for a try. I ended up taking about 100 frames, but my favorite five are below (click for detail). There's about 30 total in my Eastern Market set and slideshow on flickr.


Sunflowers at Florist, 7th and Pennsylvania, SE


Peaches, Eastern Market


Placemats, Flea Market


Tibetian Singing Bowls, Flea Market


Round Watches, Flea Market

This lens is amazing for compositions and I like how sharp it rendered everything. The color turned out surprisingly well too. I set it to 12mm (20mm equivalent on a full-frame camera) and left it there, no zooming for the entire session, just composing with my feet: step forward, zoom in; step backward, zoom out.

a photo slips away

In a photo finds its way home, I wrote about how I found a subject in one of my photographs, with a little help from the Internet, and gave her the full-resolution original photograph to have. This story is also about a photo and its subject, but as the title indicates, the outcome is a little different.

A few months ago, a relative of mine was working with a client from overseas over the Internet. As a routine part of the project, this client e-mailed my relative a series of digital pictures, actually scans of photographic prints. The pictures were of a German cargo ship, taken by its crew. In flipping through the pictures, my relative found a picture of two of my aunts in 1977, refugees from Vietnam, being rescued from a fishing boat from the cargo ship. Needless to say, this was an astonishing find of a picture.

My relative printed the picture out on her office printer and gave it to my uncle, who then shared it with all of my aunts. My mom eventually saw the photo too and told me the story of how our relative found the photo. Of course, I immediately started asking about who took the photo, if the photo was dated, if I could get a copy of the digital scan, and if anyone had dug any deeper to get in touch with who took the picture and who owns the negative.

All in all, probably a few dozen people got a chance to see the photo in the months before I heard about it. Unfortunately, not a single person asked even one of the questions I had on my mind. When I tried to follow up and get more information, I found that my relative has since changed jobs. The original digital file was never saved (it was deleted with the email), no one has the person's name who sent the file. Essentially, no one knows a thing. All we have now is the printout from the office printer on plain old office paper. If someone, anyone, just asked one question about who, what, or where, maybe I'd have something to go on, something to start with. For all I know, we could have had the original photo by now.

I'm not sure why no one realized that there's only one shot like this in the world. Just like any investigation, there's only a small window of opportunity to trace information down. Sadly, in this case, that opportunity just slipped away. That photograph captured history, not only a history of the Vietnam conflict's effects, but our family's history. You can't pose for pictures like this. Why are group pictures with forced smiles so important? They aren't real! The cheesy group photos are us presenting ourselves the way we want to be. Photos like the one from the ship capture the way we really are and what actually happens in the world.

Is there any chance I'll ever be able to find that picture again? I'm afraid there might not be. It just burns me up to know that there is a slide or negative out there, somewhere, and I'll never know where it is, if it's being preserved and kept well, or if anyone cares.