May 30, 2003
Finke Desert Preparations
Wednesday Tien-Ling and I will be headed to Alice Springs, Australia to spend a week photographing the world's largest outdoor desert race, the Finke Desert Race.
Willing Ambassadors
The very friedly administrative staff at Finke has helped me out in getting better access to the racers than the twelve thousand other spectators will see. We've been given contacts with the American team from the Pine Gap spy satellite base in Alice Springs, Mr Dave Fellows, buggy racer with one of the fastest rides in the whole race, local bike champion Mr. Rick Hall, and finally, three-time Finke Desert Race Champion, Mr. Stephen Greenfield. I'm hoping to get some great race-crew shots and good insight into the hairy details of the 460km roundtrip circuit.
I called a couple of the drivers today, and they were all exceedingly helpful and enthusiastic. It sounds like there is a reasonble chance I may get to view part of the race from a small plane. This could be fantastic. Friday night, at the scrutineering (judges picking over the cars looking for rules violations -- fair-like atmosphere) I'll meet these folks face-to-face and figure out the logistics.
Gear Setup
I've spent the last couple weeks assembling my photo kit, working out the details of how to photograph cars moving 120mph, and the logistical concerns of moving along a 230km track in a 4x4 camper with forty pounds of camera gear and an indulging wife.
Speaking of indulging, Ling has participated in some achingly dull photo 'research' recently.
Photo Research
One weekend was spent doing endless loops for me in the car at varying speeds while I tested various shutter speed settings to measure blurring. (Conclusion: blur car + sharp background = boring)
Last weekend I spent learning the different focus controls for my birthday present EOS-1v camera body. Simultaneously I was figuring out how to pan a car moving at highway speeds with a 400mm lens. (Conclusion: approximately 1/250 is a good shutter speed -- decent blurring of the background while keeping the car body sharp and a little bit of motion conveyed by the wheels. Depending on how fast the car is going, and the degree of 'abstracted' background you want, it seems like you are safe in the range 1/125 and 1/500. For my tastes 1/500 was a bit too much total freeze for me)
The third project I worked on was to figure out the pareto variables for taking sharp photos. Several things learned:
These all were interesting projects to work on, actually. I did them all as rough prototype experiments. If I ever was bored enough I would like to redo them completely and add some quantitative analysis to the interpretation.
May 13, 2003
Quick Set of Lesson Links on Photoshop Sharpening
I've been unhappy with my use of the Unsharp Mask in Photoshop. I feel like I am a very coarse tuner.
I found this short page on how to use the Unsharp Mask on a scanned slide, with the intention to print it.
It gives a rule of thumb that "divide the true scanner resolution by 300 to get the maximum degree of magnification for an image to appear "sharp" in the print." My scanner runs 4000dpi max. 4000/300 = 13x = 1300% enlargement.
1300% enlargement of a 35mm slide is a 12.2" x 18.5" print according to this table. That's not too bad.
Beyond just optimizing the radius, threshold, and volume of the Unsharp Mask, it seems just as important to apply selective filtering.
May 10, 2003
Color matching with the Epson 2100
Here is my workflow...
1) slide image of some green plants growing on orange desert rock in warm sun.
2) scanned w/ Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 w/o any modifications.
3) pull it into Photoshop 7, run 'auto-contrast', which is all it seemed to need.
4) print out the photo on an EPSON 2100 w/o any other adjustments than making it the desired size (28cm x 10cm) Used epson Archival Matte Paper and epson inks.
Problem is that the printed photo doesn't have the same color as the slide.
The image in Photoshop, and on my monitor, looks much closer to the slide than my photo.
So the problem in the workflow is in printing the image, apparently not something I am doing in photoshop.
It's hard to describe the problem without showing you the digital image and the printed image.
a) dynamic range between brightest to darkest seems compressed. I guess this will always be, compared to a slide or monitor.
b) the colors are off. Especially the green. Something like 'the green is washed out and maybe a bit too green.' The colors are somewhat flat, and a bit 'primary'.
I had the idea that maybe I needed more saturation, so I turned that up +17, but the output still had the 'flat, primary color' look to it.
As far as I know, the print settings regarding paper, quality (high), etc. were all selected properly.
Ideas on what the solution might be?
I can say this: if the printout looked as close to the slide as the image-on-monitor looked compared to the slide, I'd be totally happy.
Science Fiction World
In the shower this afternoon, I reflected on the past twenty-four hours, which were quite pedestrian and banal. Then it occurred to me that had the same twenty four hours' events been described to me fifteen years ago, it would have sounded amazing and fantastic. Not quite the broken physics of science fiction, with levitation and time travel, but certainly the networking and computer power of any story we might have read.
So all day long I sit at a NASA-style command console, in front of four massive flat panel displays. They're providing price feeds from markets around the world, news from at least three different wire services, real time messaging with fifty people, a model of world oil markets which eight traders maintain collaboratively and concurrently, and an enourmously powerful risk management and pricing system. Beneath the monitors is a phone system with scores of lines, as well as a dozen live duplex intercoms connecting our console with business partners around Singapore, London, and Tokyo.
After I left the office for the day, we go next door and sit in the massive atrium lounge of the Marina Mandarin hotel. There we switch to using handphones, and talk to the same brokers and traders as seamlessly as we did inside the office. The international connections are as clear and quick as any local call.
At midnight, with nothing but the US and European markets left running, I go home, and sit down in front of my home computer, where I have a condensed version of the same information at work. During lulls in trading, I hop onto the USENET, search for some music a friend requested, downloaded it, and burnt it to a CD, complete with JPG scans of the album covers. As I am burning CDs I'm having glitchless three-way conference calls with my colleague in Singapore and a broker in London.
When the western markets finally close at 0230 I use my handphone to send out a quick text message to my colleagues summarizing the close and go to bed.
I wake up at noon on Saturday, walk into the study, and see a chat message from my mother in Pennsylvnia. She's telling me to goto www.wrif.com in Detroit. My sister is a professional DJ there, manning the hellish midnight to 6am shift, but I can listen to a simulcast of her broadcast. Two minutes later I am listening to my sister broadcast to greater Detroit, while commiserating with my mother in Pennsylvania that I am too old and square to even know the music groups.
Then just before I go out to get lunch (indian curry; we haven't reached the hellish future of CHON tablets yet) 31die in California emails me regarding arrangements to play a collaborative war strategy game online versus anonymous players around the world later today. The schedule is a bit screwed up, so to alert me, he'll just send me a text-message to my handphone via a web page later today.
None of what I have described here seems especially cutting edge. It isn't. But what really sunk into me as I was washing the sleep out of my eyes is how much that says about our advancement. This technology that would have sounded so crazy in 1988 is utterly pervasive just fifteen years later.
It's an interesting exercise to try to observe the details of life from the third person. It's also interesting to try to imagine what pervasive technology we'll enjoy in 2018.
May 06, 2003
Exciting Desert Race
Last year I became quite smitten with the video and photo footage of the Paris-Dakar Rally. The ultimate would be to participate in the race, but as I thought about it, it would be a great adventure to even spend three weeks following it through North Africa as a photographer.
I've never photographed something like that, so I could do with some practice first. So I started looking around for some smaller-scale and more accessible events where I could gain some experience. I initially found that Perth was holding a stage in the World Rally Championships. That sounds pretty excellent. But as I came to find, they're quite difficult about giving press/photo access to the event. As I was losing enthusiasm for this event, I started looking for more 'country' events -- more carefree organization, friendlier, with good access to wild desert race action.
Although I was aware of the Finke Desert Race earlier, I had never really considered to go there. After all, it's held in Alice Springs Australia in June. I'll be going to Alice Springs in August already. Why go twice?
Upon deeper reflection, it became the shockingly obvious answer:
One lesson I've been learning about travel and travel photography is how much better it is to be able to meet locals, talk with them, and get their story. So before I knew it, the friendly Bonnie Hayes, administrator of the Finke Desert Race, had found some race crews who were interested to let me tag around and shoot.
The brilliant thing is, the crews she liased with are not Bubba and Jeeter from the local BP station, racing their weekend junker. One fellow is a past winner of the race! (which he completed on a motorcycle) The other team, racing a buggy, is a crew of Americans. "They drag their kit all the way from America for this race?" Nope. They are all stationed at what is officially called "Joint Defence Space Research Facility Pine Gap," and what is, in reality, an Alice Springs NSA/NRO listening post that intercepts electronic communication around the world. Talk about a colorful group of people to get to hang out with!
So this all happens around the first half of June. So in the meantime I have to nail down some logistics (paying for the expensive flight, booking a bushcamper to test) and start finding some wisdom on photographing car races.
May 05, 2003
Homepage from Outer Space
Ling is away in Australia for the week. I'm home at loose ends for the weekend. Among other dissipations, I wasted a bunch of time getting thrashed at Command and Conquer: Generals by people who were way too good for me.
Angry, bitter, wounded I point fingers at the lack of a moderated ranking process. Leave it to 31die to figure out a dandy idea of, essentially query-based fight arrangement. For instance I would say: "match me against someone who really sucks."
This discussion led me to thinking about how the Chess World forms their rankings; what is the formula?
Well I looked around, but very soon was sidetracked by something much, much more entertaining. Apparently a Professor 'Elo' is credited with first inventing the chess rating system. Well, this fellow, Sam Sloan, disagrees and he is not happy about it. The article is almost instantly tedious, but if you page down through the miles of exhaustive rankings lists from, say, July 31, 1951, you reach the bottom which has some other links, which includes a link to Sam's personal web page...
Sam's Side of the Story
His page starts out in that stupid, dopey way most 1998 homepages might have. Proud of his daughter who is serving in the Marines... pursuing his chess hobby... researching his family tree... warning the FBI about September 11...
His hobby is turning into a bit of a headache...
The book "Descendants of Hugh Thomson" by Don Thomson briefly describes a Thomson ancestor of mine (first name not provided) who was burned at the stake in Scotland by Presbyterians, and two other Thomsons who were tied to poles in the Irish Sea and then left to drown when the high tide came in.
This is what the chess politics people have been trying to do to me for the longest time.
...but he needs the diversion of chess to let some of the steam off, after being refused entrance to his daughter's USMC graduation by "General S. A. Cheney, commander of the camp ... due to a problem with FBI agent Mike Hagen."
His family problems and busy life as a NYC Taxi Driver aside, Sam is an active, though unappreciated author.
Now that one enemy is out of the way (turn those speakers on!), it's onward to find Honzagool.
Sam helpfully points out a clue he's already found in the media, this picture:
with the caption (I am not making this up) "Is this woman Honzagool, mother of my daughter, Shamema?"
Conclusion
I don't know... there is a lot of prose, a lot of links to digest in Sam's site. It's 2am here, and even without Ah-Ling yelling at me to goto bed, I know I must. Even though I don't know how all this will play out, I have some confidence in Sam's ability to see it through. Afterall, the guy did escape from an Afghani prison.
May 04, 2003
Why can't my Garmin Etrex be more like my Trek Liquid 20 ?
Every time I use my Garmin GPS, I hate it more, braced for the next thing to go wrong with it. Every time I ride my Trek Liquid 20, I like it more. I'm wielding it better every ride.
So after six weeks, what comments do I have?
Tires
If you are going to mountain bike in Singapore, you must like riding in mud. I've never gone on a ride here where I didn't cover myself in it. Last week it was a long stretch of sewage-stained clay mud near Seletar. This week was mud puddles at times as deep as my hubs in Ponggol.
The stock IRC Trailbear 26x2.25K tires have been great for these conditions. They seem to shed the sticky clay quickly. They've got phenomenal grip around the at-speed trails at Bukit Timah. Finally, they are knobby enough to find good purchase climbing rough, rocky hills. (But, like any mtb tire, watch out for wet pavement.)
Paint
In the showroom, the bike looked very cool--high tech suspension system and a very sharp blue paint scheme.
Well, after six weeks the bike still looks very cool--high tech suspension system and a paint job that looks like I recently completed the Paris-Dakar Rally.
I truly have no idea why the paint finish is so soft, but there are huge patches, totally denuded of paint, where my foot rubs while pedalling. Seemingly everywhere else are scores of scratches and abrasions. I don't know if it was a bad paint formula, or the frame's exotic alloy is particularly hard to bind to. My brother-in-law's Trek 850 doesn't show the same high speed wear. I don't mind, but I can imagine others might not like it.
Maintenance
After my early experiences with the brakes, and a 'Chainsuck Event' on an early ride, I realized that this bike is too high-performance to neglect like I've done with my previous bikes.
Consequently I've been cleaning and lubricating the chain weekly, and keeping the shocks wiped clean.
Since I like to keep the tires at relatively low pressure (and they seem to bleed a bit anyway), I bought a proper floor pump. Using the shitty little micropump on the presta valves is an infuriating and exasperating experience.
Others
Several of the fingers which hold the little plastic guard that separates the rear chain/sprocket from the spokes/hug have snapped off, allowing the plastic disc to orbit around bizarrely. It would be a giant job to replace it. I think the solution will be to zip tie it to the spokes
Conclusion
I'm very happy with the bike, and am hoping that I can figure out some way to bring it with me on our trip to Outback Australia this year.
It was funny... after I drafted this entry, I looked around for some links to include. Google's current 'Trek Liquid 20' favorite is a blog by another guy who has documented very nearly the same opinions as me. Sounds like he has much more severe chain/transmission problems than I do. I've only been struck once, and it wasn't very bad. Also, it sounds like he tunes his suspension more than I do. Mine is basically set on the equivalent of 'medium' most of the time. I haven't ridden Moab-quality terrain yet, so I'll save the ultra-sorb for that...
Pox on the House of Garmin
So when I set off on a bike ride this afternoon, I tried to make out the strange color along the bottom of my Garmin Etrex Vista's lcd display.
"Oh, yes, of course, it's condensation inside the unit."
"But, Garmin claims the etrex is rated for 'Immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter', and all you've done is ride your bike in the rain."
"Ah, but you see, it's a Garmin... and nothing Garmin says has to be true at all and their products can be entirely defective."
So I don't know what the hell to do about this unit. I can hardly send it back to the USA for yet another rebuild.
I don't know why it leaked. Perhaps because I am using Garmin's own bicycle mount, and it has a poor seal? (Actually... I think that the battery compartment is outside of the immersion-sealing zone. That is, the battery compartment could flood (it could easily with the microscopic rubber seal they provide) but the internal compartment holding the computer stays dry.)
I really wish they'd get themselves in order. Their products are universally crap.