Hoho's Log

For Glady's Birthday...

**NOTE** This is an old entry that I thought I had already published, so I'm publishing it now. Original date was way back in April.

She wanted to go to the Winchester Mystery Mansion. So we went, and we discovered the genie of the mansion:

Da Genie.

Kel and Mavic try to get a better look at the genie.

Our tour group, Glady, Mavic, Tessa, Thess, Mike, Jerry and Tita Tessie.

Tessa, looking for Mr. Right?

The Eugenios, Mike, Mavic and Tessa. Bakit kayo galit?

Shooting from the hip: Jerry

Christmas Baby!

What am I doing up at 6AM on Christmas Day? Well, my sister was brought to the hospital a few hours earlier with labor pains. So yes, a new member of our family! More details in a few.

UPDATE: Janine Danielle is now home with her older sister, Justine Gabrielle.

Happy Holidays!!

In the United States' big melting pot of cultures, the traditional Merry Christmas greeting has given way to Happy Holidays, to encompass all other holidays being celebrated this season. So, Happy Holidays to everyone out there!!

The Golden Gate Bridge

When I first got my Nikon D2X, Jerry, Glady and I went around the Golden Gate Bridge to shoot some night shots to check out how well my new camera performed. Jerry brought his Canon Elan 7E with him to shoot some color reversal film.

Here are some of the long exposure shots that I took...

The Golden Gate Bridge, with the lights on:

Shutter Speed: 30s
Aperture: f13
Focal Length: 116mm (70-200mm AF-S G VR)

The Golden Gate Bridge, at around sunset:

Shutter speed: 1/8s
Aperture: f22
Focal length: 105mm

The Palace of Fine Arts, earlier in the day:

Shutter Speed: 1/125s
Aperture: f7.1
Focal Length: 28mm

Some Sausalito houseboats:

Shutter Speed: 1/125s
Aperture: f5.6
Focal Length: 38mm

Apple Aperture

No, this is not a review.

Earlier this month, I got Aperture from the Palo Alto Apple Store. After installing it on my 15" Powerbook, I started to import some photos that I took early in November.

Running Aperture on my 15" Powerbook with a 1.5GHz G4 Processor, 1GB of RAM and an ATI 9700 Radeon Mobility with 128MB of Video RAM is decent, not at all that bad. There are some delays in getting a tool to respond, but not all that bad.

I've found that Aperture greatly simplifies my raw workflow by putting all the tools that I usually use to select and generate final images for my projects. I do miss a few of the tools that I use in Adobe Photoshop, which means that Photoshop will still be a staple in my digital darkroom.

Two things that I would like to see changed in Aperture is the addition of curves and a more refined unsharp mask tool. With those two items added/updated, Aperture would definitely be a program that would be a bargain at the $499 price that Apple is asking for it. At this point, if I want to do any curve changes or do a better job of sharpening, I'd have to do it in Photoshop.

I've found that Aperture occassionally produces some weird results. Below is one of the images that I made some changes to, including a crop, the other images that I changed weren't cropped and came out ok.

As you can see the image's last few columns of pixels is stretched out. I have not been able to figure out what the exact settings were to be able to repeat this weird problem, as some of the other cropped images did not have this problem, only about 2 out of over 50 images exported with this project.

Flickr!

I've had my Flickr Account for a while now, and never used it for anything. I realize that I hadn't explored the full extent of the service. Until I went to a small reunion with my high school classmates. I uploaded a bunch of the photos from the reunion there, and finally, started to use it.

It wasn't until I took photos for one of my former co-workers at Cisco, that I realized what I could use my Flickr account for. She needed some of her friends and relatives to see the pictures, and have them be able to get prints made. And coincidentally, while I was browsing around, I see that Flickr now has printing available for US based members! Now, I'm uploading the pictures from the wedding reception, and will send the URL to her.

If this goes well, I can upload some more pictures from previous weddings so that the couple and their families can get prints made too!