DMV FTW

I got a parking ticket for having expired registration stickers on my car (CVC 5204a). $76. What.

I'm further miffed because I, like a good citizen, renewed my registration online when it was due, but never received the stickers from the DMV. Granted, that was 6 months ago, but maybe I have a chance to contest the citation under subdivision c, which grants exemption if the owner has made the proper application for registration but hasn't yet received the new documents.

I go to the DMV today planning to use this argument to weasel my way out of the $76 parking fine and the $18 sticker replacement fee. After waiting half an hour (even with an appointment), the clerk shot down my plan. She says you can only request no-fee replacement material in the window between 30 and 90 days after registration renewal. She was also highly skeptical of my plan to contest the citation.

But after seeing my ticket, she informed me that if a DMV officer verifies that I've installed new tags, then it's considered "corrected" and I don't have to pay the parking fine, just a $25 administrative fee. And then I guess I was particularly charming, because she waived the sticker replacement fee.

At home, I call the Santa Clara parking IVR system (press 7 for correctable violations), but that says $10. I look up the Santa Clara bail schedule to arbitrate. It defers to the California 2010 uniform bail schedule, which says $25. And I get the feeling that I'm not entitled to the lowest advertised price in this case.

So, yeah - I spent just over an hour at the DMV today, but ended up paying $25 instead of $94. I guess it's a form of PD - those willing to pay subsidize those willing to wait in line. But parking fines isn't your typical market, so is that still a good thing?

Food updates

Over the last month we've made some interesting food:

Not that interesting, but a sushi feast! There was crab (cooked), roast eel (from a can), and some kind of raw fish. It was actually really good, so I'm disappointed that we forgot what it was. All I remember is that it was the only thing at Mitsuwa that wasn't on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch "Avoid" list.

Next time, we'll try i love blue sea, a San Francisco distributor of sustainable, sushi-quality seafood.

We'd also gotten some wild Alaskan salmon. We salted it. That is, we put salt on it (and a little pepper), put it in the fridge for two days, and then ate it.

It was really salty.

I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but SC's Russian friend says it's the best way to eat fish.

We bought turkey hot dogs from Safeway at an incredible discount ($0.49 for a standard pack of 8). Ever since we went to Chicago three winters ago (January of 2008), we've been trying to replicate Chicago-style hot dogs (I can't believe that place has a Wikipedia page). At some point we gave up on matching it exactly, but we still try loading up on toppings.

This one has horseradish mustard, diced tomatoes, grated Colby Jack cheese, onion, slightly questionable avocado, sliced pepperocinis, ground pepper, and celery salt.

We decided to make chicken Parmesan, with some modifications. We used thigh meat, which we like more than breast, and we didn't have bread crumbs, so we dredged one in whole wheat flour and the other in oatmeal. They actually both turned out about the same - a whole lot like fried chicken. And that's the secret to chicken parm's success as an American staple: it's fried chicken...with cheese.

Back from NJ

Back from New Jersey! We took a few more day trips to some places of interest nearby - West Point USMA (nice view of the Hudson, but it was overcast and we had to stay with a tour group due to heightened security), High Point (but we got lost, so didn't make it), and Longwood Gardens (very pretty). Once the photos come out (Wednesday), there should be a lot to post.

More NJ adventures

Went to the shore today; have some cool pictures but I'm going to wait for the film to get developed and then post the pictures together. On the way to dinner we saw a very large full moon low near the horizon, kinda reddish in hue. I took a picture but I don't think it quite captures how big the moon was...

In New Jersey for Thanksgiving

I was really looking forward to taking pictures of broad swathes of multicolored leaves, but it looks like most of the trees have already lost them.
Our United flight didn't have any food! It's mainly our pride that prevents us from buying those snack boxes, but that still means we had a miserable flight.
While waiting at the airport, I snapped this picture on my iPhone 4. It'd been raining all morning and the sun had just broken through the clouds. There's no HDR - just a dark sky and a bright foreground (at least relative to how bright the sky usually is).

I was pretty excited to take a photo on the Velvia in my 35mm camera, but by the time I'd walked to our seat, gotten the camera, and walked back, the rainbow was gone.

Adventures with f/1.8, macro, and lighting

Got another batch back from Snapfish! This roll was Fujicolor 400 Superia, again. I've also started keeping an exposure log, which is a pretty sorry substitute for EXIF tags. The analog world: pure barbarism!

This one was shot with my new 50mm lens wide open at f/1.8. It's illuminated by sunlight through a curtain to the right. And you can see how shallow the depth of field is! Not even the whole avocado can be in focus. Also, it turns out I'm not great at judging focus through my camera's viewfinder (Nikon N65). I should start using autofocus, especially for stationary shots like this.

Also, what happened to this avacado pit? The avacado tasted a little funny, too. But we ate it anyways!

These two show the fish tank taken at 28mm f/3.5 (top) and 50mm f/1.8 (bottom). Faster shutter speed (1/30 vs. 1/8, both hand-held) accounts for the increased sharpness.
Other notes: bright streaks in top photo are reflections of bright room in tank glass. Better to take these photos at night. Also, some exposure compensation (say, -1 stop) may be in order.

  

  

  

These are taken with a +4 close-up filter at 50mm f/1.8, so the depth of field is quite short. The close-up filter is 58mm diameter to fit the 28-80mm zoom lens, but the 50mm prime lens has a 52mm diameter thread, so I had to hold the two together by hand. These we taken with manual focus, which means they are a bit out of focus.

80mm, f/5.6, afternoon light. Dark bird against illuminated leaves. Not great.

 50mm, f/4.8, 1/90, with flash. Super washed out, but why?

80mm, 1/90, with flash, noon light. The fill flash is much more subtle in this shot. I think it's because the zoom lens is an AF-D model, whereas the 50mm prime lens is an older non-D model. The -D version provides focus distance to the camera, which uses it for metering (including TTL flash metering). I think this is the type of situation it's designed to compensate for. Still, doesn't illuminate the bird as I'd like.

80mm, 1/90, f/8, during a 30-minute window where the late afternoon sunlight illuminates the feeder directly. I guess photography is more of a patience game than I had thought, because this is so much better looking than the other shots. Next time, maybe I'll try taping a white card to the railing for fill lighting and shooting from a lower angle to reduce background clutter.
This also seems like a pretty good shutter speed for blurred wing motion. Since it is the camera's flash sync speed, it must take ~10 ms for the shutter curtain to traverse the frame. So if the hummingbird fills 1/5 the frame, it'll take 2 ms + t_exp to capture him. Assuming a 55 Hz hovering wingbeat typical of the ruby-throated hummingbird, the wings will complete 0.66 cycles at 1/90, 0.33 cycles at 1/250, and 0.17 at 1/1000. So without a flash, it's pretty hopeless to try to freeze wing motion. Speaking of shutter speeds, I think rolling shutter motion distortion effects are kinda interesting, though I'm probably not going to see it on hummingbird wings.

Why not achromatic eyeglasses?

I've been reading about the history of camera lenses, and it got me thinking about the yellow and purple fringes that I always see around bright white objects. Why do my glasses have such poor chromatic aberration? I will spend all of my adult life looking through them, so I'd like them to have a bit higher fidelity. Do they make achromatic eyeglasses? Would it be too expensive? Too heavy?

Photo processing vendor update

Cost

It turns out I'd rather think in terms of cost per roll rather than cost per photo, so here's the reformatted cost schedule (assuming 9.25% sales tax for K&S, Snapfish, and ScanCafe):
EDIT: Added Walgreens, which still does one-hour photo

Vendor (service)	$ / 24 exp	$ / 36 exp
Keeble & Shuchat (develop only)	5.46	5.46
Keeble & Shuchat (prints)	14.33	19.04
Keeble & Shuchat (1.6 MP scan)	15.24	15.24
Keeble & Shuchat (6 MP scan)	20.70	20.70
Keeble & Shuchat (slide develop only)	10.32	10.87
Keeble & Shuchat (+ 1.6 MP scan)	6.50	6.50
Keeble & Shuchat (+ 6 MP scan)	14.15	14.15
York Photo (prints + 1.6 MP scan)	5.50	6.15
York Photo, as advertised on website	4.25	5.45
Snapfish (prints + 1.6 MP scan)	6.97	7.63
Snapfish, using pre-paid credits	6.64	7.30
Walgreens (prints + scan)	13.09	16.37
ScanCafe (9 MP scan)	7.60	11.41
ScanCafe (18 MP scan)	9.96	13.68
Larsen Digital (9 MP scan)	8.88	13.32
Larsen Digital (18 MP scan)	10.08	15.12

ScanCafe and Larsen Digital also charge shipping per order, approx $15. Larsen Digital has a $40 minimum order.

Quality

From the scan quality comparison, York and Snapfish come across as about the same. K&S had better color, but I wonder if that's just the result of post-processing, which I can do in-house. Is it worth the $8-11 premium over York and Snapfish? Probably not.

As for York vs. Snapfish, they're indistinguishable in terms of scan or print quality. Turnaround time is also identical (York was a few days slower mailing the prints, but I really don't care about the prints). I like the Snapfish mailer better, though, and I get the impression that they were more careful about dust and scratches, but that might just be in my head. It's also sketchy that York has two different prices listed. It basically comes down to difference in perceived competence. Is that worth the $2 premium? I think it is.

So far I've only gotten the 1.6 MP scans, which have been seriously disappointing in terms of sharpness and noise. So what makes sense for high-resolution scans? I think ScanCafe beats out Larsen Digital in every category (so far there are only two: pricing and website quality).

What about ScanCafe vs. the K&S 6 MP scans? For negatives, Snapfish + ScanCafe is $2 cheaper than K&S (not including shipping) and probably higher quality. The downside is slower turnaround, but this is mitigated by the bonus prints and 1.6 MP scans.

It's a little different for slides. York and Snapfish don't do E-6, so I'm stuck with $10.87 for slide processing (on top of the already-more-expensive slide film). As for scanning, ScanCafe is still $3 cheaper than K&S, but this time there are no intermediate low-resolution scans.

Conclusions

Keeble & Shuchat, while local, fast, and good, is just too expensive. Snapfish is slightly (35%) more expensive than York Photo, but I think it's justified by the better quality of their website and film mailers. I have yet to compare the high-resolution scanning services, but I expect ScanCafe will be the leader there.

Chicken stock

We've gotten into the habit of making chicken stock from scraps and it's been working out pretty well! We save skin and bones, and when we have two small tupperwares full, we boil them along with some chicken feet. We've been experimenting with adding other things: onion, celery, carrots, and various spices. Most recently, I tried thyme, but that didn't turn out so great.
Anyways, we do the first batch in this stockpot (pictured outfitted with my crocheted pot cozy). Afterwards we transfer the bones (discarding the skin) to the insulated pot and do a few batches there. I like adding some vinegar to dissolve the bone.

The stock we get is not as strong as the stuff at the store - it's easily overpowered by other ingredients - but it has a ton of dissolved (or is it colloidal?) gelatin, which gives it a deeper texture. It's also supposed to be better for you.

Image capture device comparison

Now that I've taken a lot of pictures of hummingbirds, I can use it to compare some image capture methods. The 5 contenders are:

1. Canon PowerShot SD450 (5 MP CCD)
2. iPhone 4 main camera (5 MP backlit CMOS)
3. Keeble & Shuchat (Kodak Gold 100)
4. York Photo (Fujicolor 100)
5. Snapfish (Fujicolor Superia 400)

Hummingbirds in trees

Powershot SD450

Keeble & Shuchat

York Photo

Snapfish

No iPhone entry in this category, but we can see some trends here:

• Touch-ups performed: increase contrast on Powershot photo, nothing on K&S scan, increase contrast and decrease brightness on York and Snapfish scans.
• Better sharpness and less grain on Powershot. This is probably due to greater resolution. I don't think it's the optics (though there is greater depth of field there), and I'm pretty sure we're not at a resolution where film grain would be visible.
• Color distortions on overexposed regions of the Powershot images. I think this has to do with the way digital sensors vs. film saturates.

Hummingbirds at feeder - backlit

The lighting isn't great here, but I can take these pictures without even getting up from my desk, so I have lots of them.

Powershot SD450

iPhone

Keeble & Shuchat

York Photo

Snapfish

A surprise video entry from the Powershot! In a fair comparison, the iPhone probably takes better video, but the digital point-and-shoot has tele zoom (17.4mm with a 5.75 x 4.31mm sensor) and a flat bottom so I can set it down on a table.

• Touch-ups performed: nothing on Powershot, iPhone, or K&S scan; decrease brightness and increase contrast on York and Snapfish scans.
• Still better sharpness and less noise on the digital natives compared to the film scans. I think a better quality scan would make it a fair fight.
• Color is pretty nice on the iPhone and K&S scan.
• As an aside, you can really notice different optics by comparing the depth of field here. The iPhone lens has a larger relative aperture than the 35mm SLR, but the focal length is so small its depth of field is huge. Same with the Powershot, though to a lesser degree.

Hummingbirds - better lighting

Keeble & Shuchat

York Photo

The K&S scan again shows off brilliant, saturated colors, and the York scan is more muted and drab. I really think it's the scan quality (and subsequent in-shop software enhancement) rather than the lighting or film. This one also came out really sharp - I wonder why that is. I guess you get what you pay for.

Conclusions

• Powershot doesn't do color as well as film and requires more touch-ups than the iPhone. Its autofocus is also slow. But at least it's a real camera.
• iPhone lacks flexibility. There's a reason why there's only one iPhone photo...
• Keeble and Shuchat did a great job on the scans, color-wise. Wish it were higher resolution and less expensive, though.
• York Photo and Snapfish are real cheap, but the scans kinda suck. We'll have to see how Scancafe does, because York/Snapfish + Scancafe is still cheaper than Keeble & Shuchat.

Film back from Snapfish

These came back from Snapfish Thursday (3 day turnaround, just like York Photo). I think they did a slightly better job with dust and scratches. Like the York scans, the brightness on these were also off (I did some software adjustments):

With the 400 speed film, I tried a shot of the fish tank, which is lit by a single 20W fluorescent tube. I think the shutter speed was 1/8 or 1/10.

I really ought to start writing down the exposure information for each shot. I don't remember anything about the shutter speed or lighting.

 The next few photos are from the Palo Alto Foothills Park.

SC contemplating some lichen (Alectoria sarmentosa, I think)

 A duck thing nibbling aquatic stem plants.

The colors on a lot of these came out really muted...I wonder what I can do about that.

Here's that hill I took a picture of in HDR mode on my iPhone. Colors look a lot better here, and I guess the fact that this came out means the film's dynamic range is wider than the iPhone's.

This came out very sharp. Maybe this means my other photos are out of focus...

I keep finding myself distracted by the hard edges on the out-of-focus twigs in the background.

The film definitely renders color differently than digital. I haven't figured out yet under what circumstances that's a good thing...

New lens

Got this from eBay this week: Nikon AF 50mm f/1.8 lens (shown on the camera, with my 28-80mm zoom lens beside for comparison). Seller said it was the AF-D version, but it's not. Came out to $88 with shipping, and my reservation price for the non-D was $75, so I'm a bit annoyed, but still excited to have it so whatever.
Shot some pictures in low light with reasonable shutter speeds; excited to see how it turns out. I'm also curious how the bokeh looks on this lens.

First round of photos back

This is the roll I sent to York Photo for developing. Photos first, technical details later:

A challenger appears! This was taken during a particularly cooperative time at the feeder. At one point there were up to 5 birds more or less getting along and sharing the feeder. Now there's just two birds battling over who owns it.

This one is using the perch. In between sips, he kept peering over the side of the feeder, probably wondering what the hell I'm doing. I think this guy is the one currently winning the turf war.

I can't really tell which bird this is. I liked the sense of depth of focus from this photo, though.

I wanted to capture how the curtains glow in the direct sunlight in the morning, but taking a picture of the curtains directly doesn't really convey that. I think including the window frame would give more contrast, but at the time I wanted to crop out the ugly stains on the lower part of the curtain (left by the last tenant).

One morning I got up particularly early and, due to the shortening days, I actually caught the trailing end of the sunrise. I liked the warm glow on these leaves just starting to change color. I swear, though, in the 30 seconds it took me to put on pants and get the camera, the light had changed. I took a picture anyways.

Our pumpkin! Which got turned into pie! And then mold!

Gah, this picture needs to be straightened. But look! Colors! Only some of the trees change color here, but there are a couple of them near our apartment. It's nice, but I miss the brilliant displays and the associated smells and sounds. The first time I went home for Thanksgiving was my junior year. Riding home at night, I was confused by all the debris blowing around the highway: it'd been 3 years since I'd experienced autumn and I'd forgotten about that whole thing with the trees and the leaves.

This and the next few photos are from a walk through the Dish. This a ... red berry tree. Juniper? Anyways, I was drawn to the red bits, but I think the leaves are the most interesting part of this photograph. What an odd shade of green! I wonder if they looked that way when I took the picture. It reminds me of the color of Fuji film boxes.

The green part is Stanford campus (faculty housing, I think) and the yellow part is the Dish. There's something about water management here...

 A tree! SC likes this photo best, and I agree.

Technical Notes

These were shot on Fujicolor 100 with a Nikon 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens and processed and scanned by York Photo. They did a real quick turnaround (3 business days from mailing out the film) and have the best prices, but I have some complaints about their work.

This is what the tree photo looked like when I downloaded it from their site. Way overexposed! Did I do that? But I've been using the automatic exposure modes, and I didn't have this problem with the roll I had processed at Keeble and Shuchat.

Did they scan it poorly? It's weird that I was able to extract so much detail from what appears to be pure white. It's like there's some kind of dynamic range compression going on, which is more typical of film overexposure rather than digital overexposure. Maybe Keeble & Shuchat did some exposure compensation for me?

The second complaint is more concrete: dust and scratches on the scans. First of all, they processed the film, so there's really no excuse for that. Second, isn't ICE pretty standard nowadays?

Finally, I had some shots that gave me some technical feedback I'll keep in mind for the future:

I wanted to take a picture of the lichen growing in this branch, but the auto exposure overexposed the branch in order to balance the dark background. In this case, I think I'd have to use the spot meter in M mode.

I wanted a silhouette of this weird looking trunk holding up a cloud. I stopped the aperture down pretty far to get both in focus. There's a lot of glare from the sun, though, which is not too surprising, but I wonder what I could do to mitigate that. Maybe a lens hood? Does the small aperture make it worse? More importantly, can I get the lens flare artifacts without that haze?