I just found out an interesting and, for me, very useful revelation. Recently, I had switched to an Android phone and my previous Blackberry phone provider was terminated. However, that means there probably won't be any more of my blackberry fotos here. You may want to go elsewhere or have a look-see at my other blog: http://fractionalsecond.blogspot.com/

BUT FIRST, an important announcement .... Recently, I was thinking about getting a GPS tracker (data logger) for my Android. The free Google app, when I began to install it, required me to allow nearly every piece of data on the phone accessible to Google so I decided against that. When I read through all the things that were checked, it seemed that Google's Mytracks was straight out of the pages of the spy agencies. So, once again I began thinking about my Blackberry 8310's GPS capabilities. Voila!

I discovered that my Blackberry's GPS unit works without phone service. I had to go to Options -> Advanced Options -> GPS Services and make sure it was turned ON. I turned it off for a few seconds and turned it back on, stepped outside as it was searching for satellites. In less than a minute later, the display showed 6 satellites and had refreshed the previous reading. Voila and Eureka!!! ... or is it Eureka and Voila?

Next, I activated my tracking program, bbTracker, my friend when I'm roaming the forest, and took a very short walk. The tracker immediately started plotting my progress. The image below shows the my excursion's route. The chart was saved and then re-opened just to make sure the whole process worked. I edited some digits out of the GPS data so you won't know, without some research effort, where the concrete step is on my front porch.

I think I'll keep my Blackberry 8310 for a while longer. It now makes an inexpensive GPS data logger.

Uh Oh!

The writing on the little strip of white tape says "Use Slide Bolt Above" Didn't someone write a song "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" That would have been appropriate background music.

(JFTR - I stayed for a few minutes)

rainbow river barge

rainbow, river, barge

Whats That in Today's Money?

So, I was thinking about putting a late 80's version of a Kodak 110 point-and-shoot on EBAY. The box top has a price tag. Hmmmm - what's that in 2013 bucks? Wow, how far we've come. A lousy 110 film camera for almost 40 bucks ... back then. Well, the camera isn't lousy but that 110 film was pretty pitiful - unless you wanted artsy grainy contrasty 4X6 "jumbo" prints. Then again, the camera - plus the film - didn't weigh much at all.  Pop it in your pocket and go. 

Sometimes, theories prove out ...

Ok - here's the scoop. In theory, if one

(a) takes an incident light reading of the illumination that is striking a scene,
(b) the meter is accurate and set properly,
(c) the meter is held properly to
(d) measure illumination representative of that lighting the scene,
(e) and the camera is properly adjusted properly and accordingly,

then the elements of a scene will expose themselves properly, according to their own individual reflectance values - providing the camera has the ability to record the total range of brightness of the elements in the scene.

Here we have a Sekonic L-308s, set to the incident light reading mode and ISO 400. The reading was taken (the meter was held) so the white dome was illuminated by the sky light softly coming in a nearby window (somewhat up and to the left of the meter). The dome was held very proximate to where it is in the photograph. The setting indication is 1/30 sec at f 5.6.

Theory number 2 is that older Nikon AI lenses can be used, on manual settings, with many of the SLR digital camera bodies. The photo 400-pixel below was born from the unaltered original that was uploaded. However, the linked, uploaded image, a duplicate of the image taken, may not be displayed in its original quality/resolution - something that, on this blog, is arguably beyond my control. The original image was captured on manual exposure, using a 1980's vintage Nikon Micro Nikkor 55 mm lens on a mid-2000's vintage Nikon D-70 body. The aperture was set to f 5.6 and the sutter speed set to 1/30 second. Twas taken hand held, focused for sharp meter indications and composed for a variety of object reflectances. There is white tissue and a white plastic bag for highlights and black leather in shadows (on the camera back) to create dark shadow detai.

TaDa! Of course, this image has a few highlight details that have been lost, gone over the top. They are in reflections in the white plastic, especially in the edge of the white nasal tissue, and, probably, on the tip of the white dome. The darks nearly bottom out in the black leather shadowed areas. As such, for this camera's high-quality jpeg setting, this scene represents the range of brightness values that can be recorded. Sometimes, it's cool to know that results follow established theories when parameters permit.