Hoya-Pentax

Catching up on some of my RSS newsfeed, I see that Hoya will buy out Pentax to create Hoya Pentax HD Corporation.

I think this makes a lot of sense, Tokina (a Hoya trademark) already markets Pentax-designed lenses for the Nikon F-mount and Canon EOS-mount. My next lens purchase is going to be a Pentax-designed Tokina.

Most of us think of Hoya as a company that makes really nice filters at a reasonable price. But they also are the Hoya, Kenko, Voigtlander and Slik brand names. If my eyeglasses lenses are any indicator, Hoya is a huge optics company.

With the backing of this giant and the introduction of the K-100D and K-10D, who else thinks Pentax will soon claim the #3 camera spot from Olympus?

Posted on by tychay 5

Lens QWERTYUIOP

Found on Flickr:

Ok so the deal is right now I’m looking at either a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 or a nikkor 80-200 2.8. But I see there is the AF-D and the AF-S version of the Nikkor. I can’t find the AF-S anywhere on B&H or anything.. is this an older model? What are the pros and cons of af-s and af-d? Isn’t af-s for single shots and af-d for continuous shooting?

Please help as I’m pretty much a noob at all of this newfangled fancy lens stuff.. what with all the “dg” and “apo” and “hsm” and “d” and “qwertyuiop” lenses

The problem is the AF-S is now sold under 70-200mm, not 80-200mm which is discontinued. AF-S’s are a newer model.

Your first confusion is that Nikon has overloaded the “AF-S” term. On D70-level camera’s “AF-S” stands in contrast to AF-C and stands for single and continuous focusing (which is actually overloaded with two distinct focusing features that are separate on a Nikon D200-level camera).

On lenses, AF-D is actually now just “D” and stands for the addition of distance information delivered through to the metering system. This assists greatly in flash metering. In many new lenses this has been repalced with “G” where the aperture ring has been removed for a cost savings (and thus requiring camera bodies that can control the aperture electronically).

“AF-S” stands for an internal piezoelectric motor included with the lens, (Nikon calls this a Supersonic Wave Motor or SWM).

In this case you are thinking of a lens that would be tagged on the Nikkor group as 70-200mm f/2.8G VR and whose official name is the 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor, a lens I own and love.

In the older 80-200mm models, there are three that are tagged in the group: 80-200mm f/2.8D (the AF-D you allude to), the 80-200mm f/2.8D new (an improved design introduced in 1998 that allowed for faster internal focusing and added a tripod collar), 80-200mm f/2.8D AF-S (the AF-S you allude to). For the sake of completness there was also an 80-200 f/2.8 AF and 80-200 f/2.8 AI-s, but nobody shoots with those anymore.

[A breakdown of lens acronyms after the jump]

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

Got a new iPod for Christmas?

iLounge has a great overview of their site’s resources.

Their Free iPod Book and Buyer’s Guide are my favorite because they’re drool-ready and a free download. Remember when this stuff was published in book (and later magazine) and you had to pay for it?

I’ve been using them since I got my first iPod in 2001—they were iPod Lounge before Apple laid down the law(yers)—and they’ve gotten better and better. My only complaint is that I wish their RSS feed had images.

Posted on by tychay 1

Nikon going full frame

The origins of this rant begin with a question about Canon’s camera roadmap that occurred during a Christmas party. It built up steam when reading Ryan’s excellent series on camera purchasing and overtopped my levies of tolerance when I was reading this thread on Flickr.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!

I’m tired about hearing about how Nikon is going to go “full frame” or about how Canon is going to crush Nikon with a cheap full frame camera.

This is magical thinking on behalf of Nikon or Canon owners. That or Chicken Little thinking if the order is reversed.

[The economics of “full-frame” after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 38

Buying a digital camera

With Christmas here, Ryan has been writing a series on purchasing a digital camera. I thought I’d link them for a number of you who have expressed interest:

  1. About $100 or less.
  2. Mid-range ($150-$350)
  3. dSLR alternatives: Why not to buy a dSLR and high-end non-dSLR digitals.
  4. Entry-level dSLRs and Entry-level dSLR models
  5. To Infinity and Beyond: professional setups

Here is my “series”:

  1. What camera should I buy?: on purchasing a pocket camera
  2. I’ll buy what he’s buying: caveat emptor on dSLR purchases
  3. That eternal question: SLR vs. bridge?: Deciding between a large digital camera and an entry dSLR.
  4. Considering an entry level camera: Purchasing your first dSLR.
  5. Is my camera “professional”?: What makes your camera professional?

You can see my guide is haphazard and a bit elitist. It’s also really dated—though I’m proud of how much of it has stood the test of time.

Still, it might be fun to compare and contrast our approaches/philosophies.

Posted on by tychay 5

window.error and login checking

Chris pointed me to a new Ajax security hack.

The way it works is by loading a window.onerror handler and then loading a remote site as a <script> tag that will generate a slightly different error when logged in vs. not logged in. That’s pretty clever.

The reason Chris probably chose to add Amazon to this is is because Amazon has a CSRF that will allow you to add any book to the Buy It Now!. Coupled with this script, you can only do it when the attack will actually succeed. Nice.

Hmm, I better check my Amazon account to see if I’ve “accidentally” bought another copy of Chris’s book. 😀

Posted on by tychay 0

Using a photo

I got an e-mail today in which someone asked to use a photo of mine for a Christmas prayer.

A photo of mine

This use is well within my creative commons license, but it’s always a nice touch when I’m shown how my photos are used. Besides, I always had a soft spot for Episcopalians. 🙂

I noticed they’re using Joomla as their CMS. That’s interesting. Their template seems to be missing deep links, though.

[More of photo usage after the jump]
Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Jeeeeeee–suuuuusss

Someone’s blasting Christian Pop in the small apartment complex I’m living in.

Somewhat bothersome.

At least it wasn’t anyone who has complained to me about noise.

Posted on by tychay 0

URL encoding in Javascript

I mentioned this in my Ajax and eCards talk, but if you’ve ever had to encode querystring of anything that isn’t ascii, you’ve run into troubles with encode(). The solution is to use encodeURIComponent().

Here is an article that outlines the difference between the three escaping functions.

The quick summary is, don’t use escape() use encodeURI() to encode URLs or encodeURIComponent() when encoding string parts that form a query string. In Ajax, always use the latter and form the string yourself.

Posted on by tychay 0