Viewing Category: Personal
2012 Feb 03
I bought the Sony DT 35mm lens a few weeks ago and it has become my favorite lens. It’s regarded in the Sony/Minolta circles as a no-brainer lens because of the great image quality and excellent value. The lens can be had brand new for $179! The first impression after picking it up is that it feels really light and cheap. It’s very plasticky. Even the lens-mount is polycarbonate, not metal. But just mount it to the camera and the good qualities of this lens make themselves known. First, on the dSLR with a crop factor of 1.5x, the 35mm is roughly equivalent of a normal 50mm on a full-frame or film SLR. This make the images seem very life-like since it is very similar to how the human eye sees things. The old standard 50mm is good, but on the dslr is a bit too long. The 35mm is pretty much the perfect replacement. Like the nifty-fifty, it’s a pretty fast lens, with a max aperture of f/1.8. It’s fairly sharp wide-open, but stop it down to f/2.8 and it is really sharp!
The one minus about the lens is that it is a little loud. I guess it’s just the SAM motor as compared to the silent SSM focusing in the higher-end lenses. But if this had an SSM motor in it, it wouldn’t be so cheap and I most likely wouldn’t have bought it. Actually compared to my old Minolta lenses, it’s fairly quiet!
The best things about the lens in my opinion are the excellent colors and smooth bokeh. I guilty of going overboard on the bokeh in a lot of my shots, and this lens just adds to that. Because it’s a fast lens, you can shoot in pretty poor lighting and still get good results. The color reproduction is very good, and when I switched to my 24-85mm zoom (which has a good reputation in the color department), the colors and contrast seemed so blah and bland. I really am getting spoiled by the 35mm lens!
Another advantage to this lens is the extreme light weight. My A77 is a fairly heavy body, but with the 35mm on it, it feels almost perfect. I really love this lens and I’m so glad I bought it. If you shoot Sony/Minolta, you have to get one!
View more of my photos shot with the 35mm SAL F/1.8 Lens
2012 Jan 11
A couple months ago, I lost my Sandisk Clip mp3 player. The last time I saw it, it was plugged into our stereo upstairs. We had some people over including a bunch of kids so I am pretty sure I put it away somewhere for safekeeping, but I haven’t been able to find it. I also lost the center post to my compact tripod. Bay had removed it so that he could adjust the tripod really low to the floor for one of his stop-motion animation projects. I found the post once, and put it back on the tripod, but a few days later Bay worked on another project and removed it again. I vaguely remember taking the post and putting it somewhere safe. Well, you know how that goes!
So last night I decided to go room-by-room and search every inch for these two items. Unfortunately, my search came up empty. However, I did find a few other things that I had lost or forgot that I even owned! Firstly, I found my two “hanko” or signature stamps. My grandfather gave me one of them when I started painting back in my teens, and I picked up the other one during a visit to Hong Kong. I’ve been thinking of creating a watermark for photos using these, but didn’t know where they were. Secondly, I found a nice 72mm circular polarizing filter. I bought this around 1989 for an old zoom lens. My new 16-50mm lens uses this same filter size so that was a bit of a score.
I’m happy that I found these two things, but still kind of perplexed about where the mp3 player and tripod post could be. I checked all my pockets of all my clothes for the mp3 player, and then all the places that I would think I would put the tripod post for safe-keeping but no dice. A mystery!
2011 Apr 20
One of the pocasts I listen to regularly is The Loh Life by Sandra Tsing Loh. She’s a writer and performance artist and her short 3-4 minute podcasts revolve around her life in Southern California. It’s fun to hear her talk about the various locations around town, and makes me miss living there sometimes. She’s hilarious too, and her podcast always brings a smile to my face. Enjoy!
Her official site
Her wikipedia entry
Her podcasts
2011 Mar 19
I’m not a Billy Joel fan. But I do remember this album cover. The only problem was that I never really what was up with it. I didn’t realize he was holding a rock. I didn’t know that the album was named “Glass Houses”. Up until a couple days ago, I had always just assumed he was making a silly “Saturday Night Fever” pose. Cuz dang, it sure don’t look like a natural throwing position to me.
2011 Mar 17
Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion show came to town and so we all went to go check it out. It was at the Cedar Park Center, which is about 10 minutes away from us (so convenient!). As usual the Cirque du Soleil production was great! The theme seemed to feature four different cultures: Indian, African, Southeast Asian, and European. The show starts out with the “clowns” who speak some kind of strange language that vaguely resembles a romance language. It was mostly gibberish but sometimes a “bellisimo” or “amigo” was thrown in. Throughout the show these clowns make funny appearances. I think it’s to give the stagehands time to change things up and maybe let the performers change costumes. This time, I didn’t think the clowns were as funny as usual and their skits weren’t that easy to follow. I was mostly just waiting for them to finish so that the next group of performers could wow us with their incredible performances.
And there were plenty of incredible performances to be seen! Up early was a truly fantastic juggler. That to me is always so mind-boggling how he can keep track of so many flying objects. Other familiar performances were the group of gymnast/contortionists who do their incredible balancing act. These girls must not have any vertebrae because they can bend to impossible angles. Then there was the man and woman who fly around the stage from those long ribbons. This was the “artistic” portion of the show, and frankly, I was struggling to keep my attention focused. Could have done without this part… But some new things that I haven’t seen before really made this show memorable. There was a trampoline act where the performers would jump off a wall and then bounce back up to ledges on the wall. It was so cool because they looked like they were running up the side of a building. Then there was another act that involved acrobats jumping through rings. This was neat because the would do a tumbling run, then jump through the ring, do another roll, and then through yet another ring. You just have to see it to believe it. Towards the end there was a group jump-rope act. And by group, I mean about a dozen guys jumping over multiple ropes while forming a pyramid. It was some crazy stuff!
Another cool thing about these shows is that the music is live. You can see the drummer and percussionist just behind the stage, and the singers can really belt out their new-agey tunes. Dralion was an incredible show and I’d easily recommend it for all ages. It’s definitely worthy of the Cirque du Soleil name.
Make sure to click on the link above, then watch the preview video to get a taste of all the performances.
2010 Dec 24
Parker Posey in Waiting for Guffman. So funny.
2010 Dec 23
My bro sent me this amazing video. Wow!
Here’s another one of his incredible vids.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I was obsessed with the film Diva, so when Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue was released, it was a must that I see it in the theater. Since it was an artsy foreign film we saw it at the Bijou Theater in Hermosa Beach. I loved the movie so much that I went back to the theater a few months later and asked the manager if he had a movie poster. He went into the back room and brought it out for me! I think I still have that at my folks’ house.
The story follows the relationship of Zorg and Betty, as she slowly becomes unstable and ultimately goes insane. But despite the dark parts of the film, there’s lots of funny and touching moments. And the soundtrack is fantastic!
2010 Nov 12
Here’s a really neat map over at GOOD that traces out some of the most famous trips of all time. Pretty cool to see the route that Captain Cook took on the Endeavour, or the route taken in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, especially because I just read the books. (Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz for a super look at Captain Cook) I’m disappointed that Joshua Slocum’s voyage in Sailing Alone Around the World isn’t on the map though.
Interactive Map at GOOD
