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RB Design All Things Photography http://photo.rwboyer.com/ 2014-10-31T00:00:00Z RW Boyer What Kind Of Photographer Are you? http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/31/what-kind-of-photographer-are-you/ 2014-10-31T00:00:00Z 2014-10-31T12:29:36-04:00 RW Boyer

Landscape, or portrait, or documentary, or street, or a dozen other things might be the first thoughts that pop into your head. The question goes beyond merely genre. Let's assume you care about whatever you point your camera at no matter if it's still life, flowers, bugs, people, trees. A tiny bit deeper and we start to venture into bigger questions. How do you want to represent things in front of your camera? How do you want them to feel? Why?

These are questions that are easy to answer if you're doing commercial work; Anything the client wants. When it comes to your own projects and photography they start to get harder to answer along with a thousand other more perplexing conundrums. I wanted to share some of my own proclivities and how they play out in terms of decisions related to more technical matters such as gear, tools, software, and other such things debated endlessly on the internet. I realize that none of us are singular dimensional. We all have different flavors and needs here and there but for the sake of discussion let's pretend we only want to do "that one thing" that we gravitate to the most. I hope to give a glimmer of insight to your own thought processes as opposed to suggest you use mine. Think of them more as a template to get to your own answers.

What's floated my boat for as long as I can remember is making photographs of people in certain documentary-like circumstance. Somewhat of a cross between street photography, environmental portraiture, or some strange mutated baby of the two. I'm looking for a certain something that happens. Far too complicated to go into here but I am familiar with conditions, gear, and approach that are better suited to what I'm looking for than alternatives.

Tripods, and lights, and reflectors, and assistants are not conducive to getting what I want. In terms of imaging aesthetics I fall into a particular rendering I prefer. Negative film way back a decade ago happened to give me the response in real world light that worked well. I shoot at wide-ish apertures and slow-ish shutter speeds like 1/125th and 1/250th and use ISO 400-1600 in 80% of real-world circumstances. Easy. My images are not that dependent on insane amounts of detail from a lines per millimeter measurement. I do have strong reactions to overall "look" that's either working or not working with various image capture medium sizes, focal lengths, and the way the whole deal renders holistically at f/1.4 thru f/4 or sometimes f/5.6.

When it comes to output I really like more intimate images somewhere between 6 x 9 to 11 x 14 in actual size viewed close up. When viewed close I want really great tonality and depth. Up until my retina MacBook Pro LCD screens just don't cut it. Now they do but I still hate distribution on the web because of the complete lack of control over the end viewing experience, size, color, etc. That puts me in "I don't give a flying f#$@k mode" for web distribution.

Every once in a while I'll make a crazy big print for myself for my own work on my own projects. I mean crazy big like 4 feet x 6 feet or 6 feet x 9 feet. That kind of scale. Output wise pixel counts or ultimate resolution are inconsequential to me for the work I like to make most. I was fine with 35mm and 120 ISO400 speed film. Both made fantastic smaller more intimate prints with fantastic tonality and color. Crazy big print sizes don't really count since no camera has enough pixels to do 300DPI at crazy big sizes for close examination. It's more a matter of certain pictures "work" at big sizes and others don't — far more subject and lighting dependent than pure technical quantities. Put another way I don't care if I can only make 20 inch prints at an output beyond human eye sight resolving power or I could make a 24 inch print at the same resolution for even a 30 inch print at that resolution. All of them are beyond my target print size for close and intimate examination for the feel of a "real photograph" or even on a retina display. If I'm making a huge print than the difference is a nit between 12, 16, 24, 36… or whatever. In other words I'm okay and have been with 35mm or 120 film print sizes.

I also happen to like the inherent aesthetics associated with capture medium of those 35mm or 120 dimensions and focal lengths associated. I would feel differently if I shot things really far away or I wanted everything near and far in focus. I would also feel differently if I shot static subjects locked down on a tripod with tilt-shift lenses. The mechanics vary but the discipline and dynamics of the situation are similar to shooting large format back in the day. Yea, done that here and there but not my main interest; Still isn't.

I'm pretty simple to satisfy but that's only driven by what I like to shoot. What do I need? Not much, something that approaches 35mm or 120 film "look" when I output the sizes I like. A device that is smallish, with reasonable sized normal-ish lenses and a capture medium that allows me to shoot in real-world light without bringing gear and assistants to the equation. No lights, stands, reflectors, nothing. Negative film did all those things for me. Only in the past two years am I starting to get to where I was for my requirements. Doesn't mean yours are the same but all of the decisions you make about cameras should one way or another relate to what subject you like to shoot. Trying to optimize for all subjects usually compromises all of them to a degree.

More to come.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/31/what-kind-of-photographer-are-you/ Projects, Editing, And Distance http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/24/projects-editing-and-distance/ 2014-10-24T00:00:00Z 2014-10-24T12:58:16-04:00 RW Boyer

I spent another hour this morning going though my semi-insane but illuminating edit process for a long-term project. The term edit used in the sense of cull, choose, etc. rather than modify, manipulate, or choose a particular look. To summarize, my edit process starts from scratch every time, looking at the entirety of what I shot on a particular day. I compare that go-around to the last time I went through them all. What I'm looking for is a consistent set of choices that have months of time between each. Today I found stasis ion a particular group of images shot a little over a year ago.

Sounds great but now the really hard part comes. I don't have a target number I need from any particular occasion. I don't even have a target for how many images the project will ultimately contain. I have an loose idea. I know for certain I don't want anywhere near 47 from any particular occasion My gut tells me more like five. The pile will sit for a while before I attempt to decide. I may even look at those 47 in the context of other sets reaching the same steady-state. A much better idea than attempting to force some really small number looking at one subject on one particular day in isolation.

Culling that forty-seven down do something that makes any sense has many challenges that increase exponentially when folding in the dozens of other subjects I've photographed for the project. Those come in a few different forms. The image at the top of the post serves as a reasonable illustration of one challenge. Without context or juxtaposition it doesn't communicate anything about what the project is about. Even if I did juxtapose it against something else It probably doesn't work in the context of the project. Here's the rub; I really like that one. It's easy to force that picture into making sense when it doesn't. I'll contrast the red herring above with a couple that work much better but I don't like as much.

Or maybe this one will work better depending on how I lay out the primary project presentation…

One thing I am sure of is that the top one that I like the best does nothing for communicating what is the core of questions and observations of the sole reason I'm working on this project in the first place.

This image certainly works better — different day different but that should serve to clarify the conundrum a bit.

The funny part is that the above photograph may not make it into the final project. I'm not sure I like it enough. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish with a given project these kinds of things are actually the hard part. Making those editorial decisions on top of your aesthetic sensibilities. This particular one stands out but there are a lot that creep in that aren't so easy to spot. One thing that helps is distance but this isn't a sure fire thing.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/24/projects-editing-and-distance/ Sharpness, IQ, Etc. Continued http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/22/sharpness-IQ-ect-continued/ 2014-10-22T00:00:00Z 2014-10-22T09:28:37-04:00 RW Boyer

All the world's a stage, and the all the men and women merely players William Shakespeare

A severely twisted follow-up to the post comparing image quality of ancient Nikkor glass to far more modern equivalents. I thought a slightly misused Shakespeare quote might illustrate what that post was really about. At the very least I want to put that post into a context that's not arbitrary.

I have one long term project that's not even close to being complete that may serve to illustrate an appropriate context. Approximately the same time last year I had the opportunity to work on that project for a day. That was not my plan. I had a completely different set of goals and photographs I wanted to make when I boarded a train Friday evening about a year ago. A hurricane or tropical storm, however officially classified, literally rained on my parade. There's no way to prove it turned out for the best. It certainly didn't feel that way at the time. I'm still not enamored with the light I was forced to work with. The quantity, the quality, and the color were all challenging — an understatement.

The picture at the top of the post should serve to illustrate a point in a dramatic way. Let's talk about sharpness. I don't think any person, even those that debate nits would argue any particular better lens would somehow improve this image. There's a possiblility a lens capable of higher ultimate resolution might harm a lot of the qualities as a whole. It's out of focus so sharpness and resolution and MTF all don't count for anything.

I'm not enamored with out of focus pictures just because they are out of focus. Sure, I take a few on purpose here and there. Reserved for when it feels right and suits the mood and overall gestalt. This particular one has made it though several rounds of "I might use this" editing. The question is why.

People are my favorite subject matter when it comes to photography. Over a very long time the pictures I gravitate to, the ones that excite me, and the ones I find interesting fall into two closely related categories. First, when the world is no longer a stage — when that goes away even if only for a brief moment. You can feel it when it happens. It happens with great photojournalism and documentary photography. Occasionally it happens with commercial, portrait, or other more session oriented circumstances. When it does happen that's not an assurance you have a photograph that communicates that characteristic well.

The other kind of thing that floats my boat are when pretense and the world disappears but theres a reaction, a provocation, and a "real" moment between photographer and subject — an intimacy. From my perspective they are similar having one nuance of differentiation. The photographer either disappears or not. In both cases minor theoretical optical differences are irrelevant. Gear and glass choices have everything to do with what you are trying to accomplish.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/22/sharpness-IQ-ect-continued/ Sharpness, Detail, Quality, And Old Glass http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/14/sharpness-detail-quality-and-old-glass/ 2014-10-14T00:00:00Z 2014-10-14T11:19:03-04:00 RW Boyer

To varying degrees we all fetishize camera gear, especially glass. Pouring over specs and comparisons, our own testing. All of this in the quest for more better stuff. Are some cameras "better than others" — sure. Are some lenses "better" than other lenses — absolutely. The real question is in what particular way are they better. An even better question is do you give a crap. I'm going to propose that in most cases you probably don't and in many other cases better is extremely variable on circumstance and so far down the list on any given optical property as to what difference it might make that how much you actually like to carry and use something is actually a better metric. Microscopic optical differences are important only in a narrow slice of real world photographs.

Just for the hell of it I decided to make some quick and dirty non-clinical, non-laboritory comparisons between some new-ish bestest best stuff and the oldest, cheapest glass I have. Not extensive certainly but representative over a broad range.

The image at the top was my Nikon 50mm 1.4G. A lens of reasonable design, reasonable cost, but performs up there with the best of them. Here's a Nikkor 50mm 1.4 S from some point in the mid-1960's:

Holy crap they are very very different. Yes but the two biggest differences are the way the light is falling from one minute to the next and color rendition. I shot all these with a fixed daylight white balance to highlight that really really old glass that's single coated does have differing color characteristics but that's a nit if you shoot AWB and also RAW. The other differences from there that are way behind that are the completely different vignette characteristics from one to the other. This makes it impossible to do a strait-up comparison exposure over the entire frame. I could monkey around with lens corrections etc but I wanted you to see these unmolested. Neither has corrections of any sort in post.

Here's the same image from the 60's lens I made a bit more similar with a tiny tweak to WB. I could get closer by actually measuring but who cares.

With that factor a hair more similar it's easier to evaluate some other things that are farther down the list. First off is contrast. The newer lens definitely has better contrast overall and better micro contrast. Be careful when evaluating sharpness though. Both are damn sharp on the exact plane of focus but in the real world that's tough to figure out. They are slightly different with the old lens being higher on the subject and a bit closer to the camera. The two lenses have extremely different focus fall- off properties. With 1.4 lenses close up that's noticeable. Which is "better"?

It depends on the subject, the mood, etc. In many cases I would like the focus falloff, less micro-contrast, less overall contrast and rendering of the older lens. Let's take shooting people for instance… If I wanted crazy sharp and crazy micro contrast why the hell would I be shooting at f/1.4 anyway? I kinda like the overall smoother look on the old lens in the mood I'm in today. So yes… the newer lens is "better" unless of course you want a smoother look… Which one's smaller? Which is built better? Which feels better to use? The old lens by a wide margin. I could show you the obligatory 100% pixel view… could you see the difference? Yep you would see more of the same. More micro-contrast and if we used ever increasing numbers of pixels we might even see more actual detail at some point. Is detail that critical? To what magnification do we want to look at? More pixels doesn't really give you "sharper" it gives you the ability to look at your image with more magnification when hitting the Z key. Who cares beyond a certain point.

How about a superlative 28mm in the form of my "pro-zoom" compared to my free Nikkor 28 f/3.5 from the later 1960's. Here's the pro-zoom — a really good one by any measure wide open…

Here's the ancient lens…

Again these have very different properties. Take my word for it in the center wide open the old one and new super lens are the exact same in terms of contrast and sharpness and detail with as much magnification as you can get from 16 megapixels. The big difference is the vignette which is extreme and starts immediately on the old lens. Some of this shows up on film but a lot of it has to do with the old design as a far more extreme light-ray to sensor angle than the new one. The newer but still ancient AiS designs for both the 28/2.8 and 28/2 don't do this. Is this a bad thing? Depends. In this picture it might be a good thing. Color is a bit different but I'm not even going to bother making them closer or even the same.

Here's a surprise… The old one has less distortion and is actually wider by a hair. Hold on a second you might say, that can be fixed in post. Consider that fixing distortion will make it even less-wide. Hmmmm. Trade offs. I won't mention that the pro zoom sucks to actually carry around and use. The old lens is tiny — smaller than most micro 4:3 lenses. It's also a work of art in terms of build quality and feels good.

Okay let's move to a short tele. I rigged the game here a bit. A really good 105mm — the AF-D 105mm f/2.8 against about the cheapest lens you can buy in old style Nikkor telephotos. The ubiquitous "nobody wants one" 135mm f/4 Q. Here's the new one close up from where I was standing with the 50mm and 28mm.

Absolutely crazy sharp even wide open at the actual point of focus. Hard to tell looking at the whole frame but very shallow in any case. Hint: A bit above center on the corn husk in the middle of the frame. Now here's the black sheep, can't give 'um away 135 Q.

Wow, that's crazy sharp. It's the closest focus distance I could get on that lens so it's farther away. Poor planning, my bad. The farther away-ness is a bigger reason for the increased DOF and also the perceived increase in sharpness than the f/2.8 to f/4 thing. Really — it is. In fact that stop difference might be close to being cancelled out by the increase from 105mm to 135mm.

Let's fix the exposure and crop in a bit for similar image sizes to see what happens…

There we go… looks great. Doesn't it? It's even rigged in the 105mm macro's favor which is technically "better" closer up than the non-macro which is not as good at the very closest focus distance as it is farther away. There's not a huge difference but there. Oh, one more thing… the color is the same too. Strange but true for this single coated hunk of stuff from the dark ages. I'm not going to bother with 100% crops. Your perceptions of things are not going to really change that much, they will be about the same or reinforced. This last example does show something important though. Context plays a huge role in perception of image quality. The longer lens farther away is probably perceived as "better" than the better lens closer.

Just some food for thought. These are extremely exaggerated due to the age of the glass I used. Newer AiS glass is "better" and in a lot of cases on par. If I shot any of them stopped down even a little bit all the differences including the vignette on the 28mm/3.5 would go away. Are you shooting hand-held? Moving subject at all? Like breathing? Remotely on the slower shutter speeds like 1/125s? If so all of that will overwhelm any "quality" difference in glass and perceptions of image quality will be almost entirely dependent on scene, context, light, post processing, etc, etc, etc until we get so far down the list it doesn't matter.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/14/sharpness-detail-quality-and-old-glass/ Skin Tone - Part III http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/02/skin-tone-part-iii/ 2014-10-02T00:00:00Z 2014-10-02T06:22:36-04:00 RW Boyer

Installment number three discussing skin tones is a simple one. Just for the heck of it I posted it on Medium.com since I haven't been active over there in a bit and wanted to test some of the new features added.

For those of you that don't monitor Medium here's the latest skin tone installment.

Skin Tone — Part III

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/10/02/skin-tone-part-iii/ Skin Tone - Part II http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/29/skin-tone-part-ii/ 2014-09-29T00:00:00Z 2014-09-29T10:24:37-04:00 RW Boyer

A hopefully much quicker follow-up to Part I where I discussed the interplay of a few things like exposure, contrast, saturation, and color correction when looking at skin. Today I wanted to come at this from another direction to illustrate a bit more on something that's always of primary concern — light and something closely related — context.

These illustrations are some quick exposure tests and demonstrations I made during a window light mini-workshop way back in May 2014. Perfect day for participants. Two models for the price of one by a quirk of fate as well as the perfect day to illustrate a lot of important points. As for my exposure tests… Meh, as usual so they won't distract from the discussion with any sort of wonderful-ness. Happened to have my ancient 28mm Pre-AI connected to my camera and didn't bother changing it up so ignore the framing and my careless perspectives and focus on just skin.

Let's start with the shot at the top. Light directly from the side, with no real fill in a very large room hence very dark shadows. What was the light like outside? A mix of blue sky and sun almost completely obscured by a bank of clouds that covered only half the sky. That's an important point as it will give you cooler light than a completely cloud covered sky but warmer light than clear blue sky and no sun. I normalized post processing parameters here for illustration and discussion not optimization. Import preset was VSCO film 02 Portra 400. I set the white balance to my personal tweaked cloudy for my camera. A touch warmer and a touch pinker than what Nikon's cloudy setting puts out. I didn't measure it or have a gray card in frame but will assure you it's technically too cool and a bit too pink.

Let's take a look at the next shot that's literally Mary taking one step back.

What's going on here? The direction changed as the window is more to the front instead of from the side which is obviously quite important. The other thing is the lighting ratio is less. There's less difference between the highlights and the shadows. How much different? About a stop. The reason isn't because the fill came up, it's because the main light from the window is a stop less. I brought the exposure up so that the brightest parts of the skin were about the same as they were in the first shot. Less contrast means more exposure flexibility in where you decide to put your mid-tones… Better? Worse? Neither, just different. Same post processing treatment and still technically on the cooler side and a slight touch on the pink side but that's okay. In fact I could probably even go a little cooler and it would be okay — a matter of taste. Softer light tends to be okay as cooler, if you go too too warm (and sometimes "technically" neutral it might look too warm due to context) it tends to look off because in nature softer light is almost always cooler — we've seen this our entire lives.

Keeping white balance the same setting I shot the same exact shot as the one above but an hour later when Mary was let go and Anastasia stepped in…

Holy shit, that's way different. How can this be? Same exact shot as the previous one. What the hell… Okay, you might notice the color first off as it's way different but what's far far far far different is the light which is associated with the color but is not the primary reason it looks so different.

Technically speaking it still on the cool side of neutral of the main window light but it is warmer. Technically the softer light coming directly thru the window is much cooler too so how can this be? Here's whats changed and what's going on if we break it down:

The sun came out. You can't see it based on my framing but the clouds went away, we have full blue sky (hence cooler window light vs cloudy or mostly cloudy) and sun streaming in the windows and hitting the interior of the room all over the place.

The most important place the sun is relative to this photo is directly in front of the subject which is providing boatloads of up-light fill, similar to a big reflector bouncing light up right out of frame. Possibly better as in powered fill.

The second most important place the suns hitting is everywhere else in the room which serves to bring all of that bounce back fill up even more making the window light coming from camera left and slightly above Anastasia very very close to all the fill. So again even a lower lighting ratio.

Last thing is color. The sun is much warmer than the cloudy sky and crazy warmer than the blue sky and now that it's so close to that "blue sky" main light it's actually warming all of it up significantly.

Note — very very important. Warming up or playing around with the color will absolutely not make the pictures of Mary look anything like the pictures of Anastasia. It's the light not the color. Both of which are fine and both of which are technically not "correct". Note how cool the highlights on Anastasia's face are. If I were to hold up a gray card and angle it even slightly toward the window then white balance according to that this picture would look crazy warm, crazy saturated and way off. The slightly cool color balance relative to the fill and VERY cool color balance compared to the blue sky window light only are serving to give Anastasia's skin a less saturated look. Remember I mentioned that the temperature slider can alter how saturated skin is… that's because it's very close to the same hue as skin. Well, at least it's in the same neighborhood.

Let's take a look at one more shot in terms of color and context. Again not any fine tuning just used my tweaked version of Nikon's "daylight setting" for my camera which amounts to a half a hair more pink than factory "daylight".

Technically this white balance is way too warm. If I were to measure it then correct it in post I would most likely get a cooler rendition possibly a pinker rendition as well. Looks fine. I could actually go a bit warmer. Completely different color rendition of Anastasia's skin so it's not even based only on the subject. I told you I was hiding that sun via framing. This was in the corner on the floor directly in the background of the shot previous to it. Much warmer and much "greener" in the parts that are directly lit by sun. In nature that hard light screams warmer so typically hard light it's okay to go with a warmer more saturated rendition. It makes visual sense. The shadows are insanely cool but so dark that's fine. Even if they were more open as long as they were at a high ratio it would still make sense contextually. It's what happens in nature and we're all used to that.

More later, that's enough to consider for the day. Bringing this stuff together and then mixing in your own personal taste when making decisions on how to render skin is the key rather than some route recipe. Recipe changes based on context and subject and feel and mood. Even what time of day you it actually is or how you want to make the time of day "feel" counts. More red/orange feels more like afternoon generally speaking, more neutral feels like mid-day, more yellow tends to feel more like morning. Just my take on things.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/29/skin-tone-part-ii/ Nikon Df Fan-Boy Day http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/26/nikon-df-fanboy-day/ 2014-09-26T00:00:00Z 2014-09-26T18:44:33-04:00 RW Boyer

Here's a lighthearted short and sweet post for the weekend. Hooray, The weekend! I've been happily shooting the Nikon Df for quite a while now. Of all the people I've run across that gave this camera a chance — as in more than snapping off a few frames and declaring it stupid — every single one feels similarly to the way I do. This camera does have a bit of magic to it. It's combination of size, controls, imaging characteristics, and some sort of X-factor (note the provocation here) this is it. It's inspired me to go out and shoot, and shoot and shoot. I've even got a few projects I'm working on that are outdoors — who wouda thunk? More on that some other day.

I thought I would give a few of you a laugh with a few of the differing kits I've been constructing as go-to gear combos. None of those particularly heavy or cumbersome. The kit at the top is my "standard" do anything with no plan. I know, it's laughable but just wait a second and I'll give a brief somewhat coherent explanation of them.

Let's see what we have here… A hybrid kit of AF and manual focus AIs Nikon glass. My garden variety 50mm 1.4G AF that nobody but me actually thinks is worth a damn. Works for me. Sharp, predictable, reasonable rendering, cheap. I'll back-button focus this for the most part. My long lens to end all long lenses — the venerable but crazy awesome soon to be classic collectors item getum while you can Nikkor 105DC AF-D. Note to self: Grab a 135mm DC soon just because I know these are not going to be around forever at dirt cheap prices they are now. That covers the Tight shots. No need for anything else. If something is so far away I need a telescope I'm not interested. To cover the wide we have the strangest two-fer ever. An genuine original Nikkor 18mm f/3.5 AI not a popular lens ever I bought mine instead of a 20mm. I also bought a 20mm AF-D later which then spontaneously broke in the middle of a commercial shoot. Never bothered replacing it. Liked my 18mm better anyway. To cover all the rest of the ground my brand new (to me and condition wise) 28mm f/2 AIs. Phenomenal lens absolutely every bit as "good" as the 28mm 2.8 AIs
 (also have one of those) with maybe a hair more barrel distortion but a stop faster and about the same price.

So there you have it. My do anything/everything kit. That doesn't mean I haul that everywhere every time I walk out the door. I could, I just don't. Sometimes when I want a bit lighter I skip the 18mm and substitute an 85mm 1.8 AF-D for the 105mm. Shaves off more than a pound and takes up a lot less space. I also have a skip the tele kit that looks like this.

Same deal just loose the 105mm or 85mm. I rarely use those unless I have a specific intent anyway. Never miss them. I sometimes go all manual focus and swap out the 50mm 1.4G to my trusty 50mm f/1.2 AIs. Looks like this…

Just as often I'll loose the 18mm and go 28mm and 50mm of either the manual or autofocus variety. All of these kits are manageable and don't bog me down in the least. The manual focus kit is a joy to shoot with sumptuous and when used with any care really gives up nothing to modern glass. The 18mm is a lens you really need to get to know due to a few quirks and inconsistencies depending on how it's used but I swear the thing seamed like an impossible hunk of glass back when it was a current item. Small, light, super great resolution close up (CRC), minimal distortion for something that wide, and even good corner performance at f/8. I know that sounds bad but trust me, if you are familiar with super-wides there's still not much out there that bests it in the corners. Corner sharpness is tricky with super-wides. I would say that it is not silly to compare it to the 14-24 at 18mm where most wides are a joke compared to that monstrosity. Oh and it has magical looking flare and ghosts that are very manageable. They almost look fake which is hard to do with modern glass. Like this…

Here's a couple of people I ran across over the last month that also feel a little of that X-factor Df magic I talk of. First up is a fine are abstract-y guy that switched over from his "beloved" Fuji X-series to the Df when his gallerist told him he had to up his game. He was surprised… Well no crap, the Df produces files that are meaty and thick as far as you want to push it… forget noise — the the point it's the color and tonality. Add on top of that it shoots at least a stop faster at higher ISO's than the Fuji's lies about effective ISO vs the numbers it shows you and you'll definitely be in for a surprise. No matter what he shoots I found his work interesting even though I'm usually not a fan of this type of thing.

Andy Feltham purges himself of the Kool-Aid.

The next guy is a street-shooter. Nice work too. He considers the Df a game changer for his low light portraits on the street work.

Danny Santos' mesmerizing street portraits.

Nikon Df fan-boy or not check out their work. Extremely interesting. Either way here's something to consider no matter what device you gravitate towards using to make your photographs; Take your standard kit out of your go-to bag and put it away every time you come back from a shoot. Next time pick your gear selectively. I will assure you you'll take less. Get a smaller bag and choose the bag you want to carry (or none) then choose what your essential gear is. We all get caught in the must cover all bases for all occasions non-sense. In many cases you'll never miss that macro unless you set out to do macro shots. Same goes for the huge zooms or the other lenses that are there "just in case".

Have a great weekend.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/26/nikon-df-fanboy-day/ Skin Tone - Part I http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/25/skin-tone-part-i/ 2014-09-25T00:00:00Z 2014-09-25T06:59:47-04:00 RW Boyer

Dad, will you take picture of me and Jill with your good camera. Daughter #3

I break out in cold sweats with any sort of request that comes close to that formula. Here's why; That's nothing like "hey, lets spend a couple of hours making a great picture at this awesome spot, with am unbelievable setting, at a great time of day, with a couple of things brought to the table to optimize it all, and remotely appropriate photogenic, flattering wardrobe". In this case it meant right here, right now, in the 32 seconds prior to us having to meet other people already on their way to the restaurant in whatever horrid (photographically) striped shirt that might be on at high-noon with not an attractive setting within the 30' we're at. That's what this kind of request always means. Not with clients but definitely with family and friends that are not into making pictures. Hey, you make awesome pictures. I've seen them so get your awesome camera and crank one out here and now. Oh and make it really quick with no fuss. Ummmm, sure… right.

I shot a few. Of course I would. How did they work out? Meh, whatever. Here's one where I did use my considerable innate StupidCrap™ at provoking a laugh - a real one vs. the iPhone selfie practiced posed defaults most teenage girls instinctively summon when an imaging device is aimed remotely in their direction. I thought this particular 30 second photo session might be a great place to start for a question that is so broad it defies any magic button answer. I got a shout-out from eBuddy Steven Chan via twitter that was something along the lines of:

Got any good books to recommend on skin tone?

Hmmmm, that depends on you answering about 8,004 other questions. How about we start with just a couple…

I defaulted to a very workman like generic reasonably decent recipe for generally acceptable skin tones for this set of ultra generic, poorly executed, not-so spectacular images. The upside is I did them at about the same time as this question came up — quite literally. The other good thing is there's no distracting greatness that will at all influence your perception of the matter at hand. Skin and just skin with no exceptional wonderfulness.

This kind of rendition is absolutely capable of building a career on. Safe, generally attractive and adding even a smidgen of care, wardrobe, setting, shallow DOF or anything else will turn it into fantastic by most measurements. You see it all the time. Personally I default to this if I want something safe. Others can't make a picture to save their life if it's not this kind of rendition. Let's take a look at what's going on here and what sort of post processing might influence this one way or another and where that might land in terms of how big or small a part of skin tone perception it is.

What's the absolute most important thing going on with the shot at the top? Answer: The light, end of story. Any magic color or anything like that? Not really.

Dead neutral white balance set via shooting a pre-set white balance in camera off a gray card.

Sort of safe exposure. Probably should have gone a bit brighter but added +0.33 in post (more on that later).

Generic preset on import (VSCO Portra 160).

What else is important? Hmmm, Light… yep extremely important. Low ratio as in not a lot of difference (a stop at best but less depending on how you measure it) difference between shadow and highlight on skin. Sort of soft but not completely flat. A hint of specularity to it as can be noted by the highlights on tip of nose, highlight areas of cheeks, frontal portion of forehead between eyebrows, etc. It could use a bit more specularity mixed in truth be told to be optimal. Oh yea and pretty much from the front and not too high. There you have it. Almost forgot. the response curve is next up as in contrast response curve. I despise most default digital RAW processor and built-in camera response curves for two reasons. Contrast in all the wrong places is the first and primary. The VSCO film 01 presets do a response curve more to my liking for skin. That's important for perception of skin tone for sure.

Anything else? Oh shit there's that color thing but that's a tricky bitch. What I'm looking at right now is probably a hair different than your monitor and this is dead neutral with whatever skew and split tone VSCO is putting on top of that. Lets change that all over the place with differing VSCO film 01 presets with different color skews and different split tones to see how giant an influence it is (sarcasm — the first two are far more important).

How about a horse of a different color Fuji 160C?

Color is completely different but what's most noticeable in terms of skin? From my POV it's the different highlight contrast more so than the color skews. How about VSCO film Portra 400…

Hmmm, different color but again not really different. How about we start really messing about with things? Before we do that I'll offer a few points to consider when it comes to skin based on the four million photographers I've worked with that had great technical understanding and no shortage of glossary definitions of various terms but were missing something quite obvious visually but not anywhere to be found in the most learned texts or workshops or other recipes, the connectedness of some of those terms everyone uses to verbalize things that ultimately are visual.

Saturation and contrast are related in a big way. Generally as contrast goes up so does saturation. Typical digitally generated files are "off" in what I happen to like compared to remotely modern negative film emulsions. Specifically they are to saturated at too low a mid-tone contrast level. Key point — generally. Circumstances rule with all of this stuff.

Luminance levels are related to visual perception of color saturation. The darker something is (relatively speaking — lets say mid-tone vs a stop more than mid-tone vs a stop and a third more than mid-tone) the more saturated it will appear.

Too much saturation in skin and too dark a rendering make it almost impossible to get a reasonable "skin color" no matter what the hue, skew, WB or whatever you might adjust because it's the "wrong color". Conversely lower saturation and lighter renditions make things far more flexible and the perception of "good skin color" far easier.

Most real world light is actually a few different color temperatures so there's no such thing as "dead neutral".If measured it depends on which way the gray card is aimed even by a few degrees. The higher the saturation is the worse this looks and more noticeable it is. See above.

If you haven't played around with skin a whole lot I will assure you that luminance issues will appear as white balance issues and white balance issues will appear as saturation issues and saturation issues will appear as color correction issues in one big giant tangled mess.

Let's see how all that plays out shall we? Here's VSCO 160C again but in the ++ variety with fade set to "none" and blacks set much deeper (blacks+) both of those things effectively increase the contrast a bunch. They give you a much more typical digital contrast increase without touching saturation directly. In fact all of the VSCO color skews actually take a bit of saturation out.

Here's the same thing but only one change, less dense blacks, for the numbers oriented blacks = +25 which happens to be what VSCO uses most of the time on most presets. Less contrast and less saturation without ever touching anything "color related".

We still have a far more modern contrast level with none of that VSCO fading so let's leave it at that contrast level (which is still better than most defaults as it doesn't have contrast in all the wrong places and a bit less saturation due to the minus saturation in the VSCO color skews) and take out a lot of saturation relatively speaking as in overall saturation slider -10…

Let's take saturation down a hell of a lot to -20…

Most people if I didn't use that word saturation would perceive that lower saturation as cooler even though the actual hues, white balance, etc, are the same which brings us exactly to that point. Let's take that desaturated image and warm it up a bit…

The change in actual color in that warm version is massive - I mean quite massive like 600 points more temp starting out at 4850. That much at that starting level is massive. If the staring point was 10,000 then 600 is a nit. The change visually is not absolute based on the 600 number. It depends on where neutral actually is. Not really the point. The massive warmth increase looks a bit like more saturation. If I didn't walk you through this theres a really good chance that crazy warm white balance is actually perceived as too much saturation when the saturation is quite low or the other way around most likely; Too much saturation is perceived as way too warm, etc.

Let's take a look at the horrors that occur at "normal saturation" along with the too warm white balance with the stronger contrast and stronger blacks. In other words where the image was before we lowered saturation in a big way.

Okay, that is not good for sure. Now it's color balance is way off and it's got way too much contrast and way to much saturation. If you are having trouble knowing which particular dial to turn hair is usually easier to visually remember than skin — strange but true. If hair that should be yellow or brown is turning red you have a color balance problem and possibly a saturation problem too. Now for an even bigger horror show. Remember what I said about luminance or brightness level of skin and how it can play tricks on your perception of hue, color correctness or saturation. Let's exaggerate this for effect… Here's just a hair less exposure of the freak show above.

Now that's making my eyes bleed. As a rule of thumb the more contrast you have dialed in one way or another the more gigantic the effect of even a little bit of "exposure" difference going in is going to make. Let's go the other way just to show you what I mean about how luminance tends to distort all those words we use to describe color. Here's the other side increasing exposure to the same "little bit degree" as we went on the less exposure side.

All of this is meant to exaggerate that interplay a bit. If you are an old hand at all this you already know but trust me, there's a really good chance if we didn't walk thru it step by step you might not know if you have a luminance, color correction, saturation problem or all of the above. This walk-thru was not intended as a recipe. In fact it's not even representative of my particular taste on color, contrast, or luminance of skin this week (that changes). It's not even a discussion of fine tuning. The only intent was a few broad brushstrokes of relationships key factors when deciding how you want to render skin in your photographs. Even more, I hope a starting point for a few of you to step off in getting to where you want to go.

How do I like things? On or about the first image with a hair more exposure, probably less than a third of a stop swing that I've been playing with here. In terms of color I like it a little cooler and a little pinker than neutral as well as a nit less saturated. That's all fine tuning though.

More to come. Feel free to ask any questions.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/25/skin-tone-part-i/ A Gaggle of RAW Processors, Part I http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/22/a-gaggle-of-raw-processors-part-i/ 2014-09-22T00:00:00Z 2014-09-22T06:55:17-04:00 RW Boyer

As you may be aware, I'm a huge fan of Apple's Aperture 3. I continue to use it daily for real work even though it's a lame duck. That status sends people in the tech age into panic attacks, causes them to break out in cold sweats, and other associated anxiety related disorders. Obviously there's a point at which Aperture 3 won't work at all. Might be two or three major releases of OS X, might be five, might be two. It's certainly not one. New camera support is part of the OS and will likely continue to be. I'm not worried in the least about myself nor my workflow nor my images becoming obsolete.

I realize that I'm in a unique position. I have been for years. I really don't depend on any particular tool I merely use whatever I like the best and happens to be the best tool for the job at any given moment. I have been using all of the mainstream Aperture look alike software for as long as they've been around. I have, know and use, Lightroom in various versions, Capture One, Nikon Capture NX/2, a few other really crappy ones. The big three are regulars for me. I do a lot of education and post-processing work for a lot of photographers that requires I have more than just a passing knowledge of the big three. That's kind of unique. Not just fiddly-diddly familiarity but prolonged use of Lightroom, Aperture, and Capture One.

I'm not at all advocating anyone that doesn't have to waste the time to become intimate with a bunch of software that all does the same thing in any way. I've had far more conversations than I've ever wanted to regarding the merits of each in the few months since Apple announced that Aperture was no longer in the process of development and improvement. We'll all have to wait a bit to see what the Apple photo ecosystem looks like post iPhoto and post Aperture. I'm not interested in what it looks like day one. I'm far more interested in how it feels and how it looks like it will evolve. That's going to take a bit longer than day one release. That's okay, this all changes all the time anyway. It's a fallacy to think you'll be doing exactly the same steps 5 years from now than you are now. You may get to the same place but how you get there might look a whole lot different.

That brings us to today's topic. If you really, really, really want to move from Aperture or anywhere else what do the choices really have to offer? How do you decide? I'll offer some opinions and hopefully give at least a little bit of a flavor of each as the stand at the moment. Hard to predict what any will look like down the road. At least that's hard to predict tactically which seems to be what everyone is interested in. Over the long term the "safest" bet is probably anything out there will look a whole lot like what Apple does than it will look different. How's that "safe"? Ask yourself this: What tech, UI, etc, etc, etc. doesn't look like something, work like something, or is a virtual duplicate of what Apple as already done? Not a whole lot. We could debate that but not really important.

Other companies may move you along a bit slower but that's not always a good thing. I've never really been enamored with any particular software or the mechanics of using it as the primary concern. I really only care about my data. If my data is okay — at least the data that's immutable — I'm fine. I don't really count any particular post processing data like adjustments or whatever as data. Technically it is but that's never been where I spend my time. I also re-process and re-imagine any particular treatment of an image pretty frequently. I've always considered knowing where you want to go independently of any given software far far more important than what the software does. Especially what the software does by default.

I'll leave you with a few illustrations to consider for a moment. You can open the illustrations and see all the JPEG artifacty compressed pixel glory of my iMac 27" screen for each image by opening it in a new window.

Take a look at the top image first. That screenshot at the top is Lightrooom 5.

The screenshot directly above is the same image in Aperture 3. The following is yet again the same image in Capture One 8.

What is all this? This is not a comparison of which particular rendition you prefer. It's actually a demonstration of how when it comes to how an image looks all of them are more the same then they are different. The default contrast curves for each is radically different. None of these screenshots are "out of the box".

The first one at the top is typical first pass treatment. VSCO Film Fuji 400H applied on import. I did two other things. A "highlight save" from the VSCO tool box and instead of doing color by eye I choose a very specific point on the white wall on the background for a neutral WB. I also turned off split toning and grain. I can take that or leave it. I did want there to be some apples to apples here in terms of a baseline besides the actual RAW file.

The second screenshot from Aperture is pretty much typical for me in Aperture 3. I use the same point on the white wall for the WB color correction. From that point it's 5 seconds worth of adjustments. Black point to 0 (the hugest difference; Aperture tends to be way more contrasty with much blacker blacks as a default. The reason is black point. I then slapped on a typical curve to put the mid-tone contrast where I like it. Here's the real shocker; No messing around with color skews or anything like that, just WB black point and a normal RGB curve. I would say it looks more like 400H VSCO than it does different. Funny stuff as the Aperture 3 VSCO 400H and all the rest are completely wonky and look so far out in left field they're unusable for me. Oh yea, I did a few spots like I did in LR as well.

Last was Capture One 8. Just came out this week I think. Same WB neutral point on the wall. A quick curves adjustment and C1 also needed an exposure tweak of +.33 stop. Now for the punch line, I wasn't trying to "match" any of these except my arbitrary WB neutral point. I could make them closer if that was the goal. I had already done one set of adjustments when I shot these. For the other two RAW processors I just used them and did "what I would usually do". Not in terms of some technical recipe but in terms of the feel I wanted. What each particular tool does exactly is not super important. Knowing where you want to go is far more important.

Does one particular piece of software out of the three have some magic the other ones don't? Not really. Each has particular strengths, weaknesses, etc. One may have a tiny nit here or there that is more convenient than the other two but they will all do basically the same stuff when it comes to making RAW adjustments or ability to produce whatever look you want. That's why I weigh all the other things so much more than what any particular one looks like out of the box or what I consider special case fringe adjustment capabilities.

With that out of the way (maybe). Next up we'll take a quick drive by of what each of them feels like to use, strength and weaknesses for managing boatloads of files, and suitability of tools related to organizing, getting to which particular images are best out of a bunch, etc.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/22/a-gaggle-of-raw-processors-part-i/ The Nikon D750 Etc. http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/16/the-nikon-d750/ 2014-09-16T00:00:00Z 2014-09-16T11:27:21-04:00 RW Boyer

Yet another gear post, oh my god. I shoot Nikon cameras, it's no secret, rather than being the quintessential Nikon Guy I'm more of a camera brand agnostic. You want proof? I have a Ricoh GR vs a Nikon Coolpix A. Since I rant and rave and talk about what particular camera I happen to be using at any point in time I talk about Nikon cameras a lot — mostly about cameras I actually own and use rather than ones I don't. Hell, even when I went off into left field regarding some of the committee bullshit about the Nikon Df I went out of my way to use one to confirm my opinions. Turns out I was way off. So far off I plopped down my own cash to get one and love shooting it. That brings us to today's point — The brand spanking new Nikon D750.

Disclaimer: I obviously don't have one. I haven't seen one in person, I haven't used one. I have talked about it a lot over the last few days because dozens of people have asked me about it. I thought I would share a few thoughts with you that summarizes those conversations as well mix in a dose of gear acquisition thought process. Of course there are tangents I'll go off on, possibly even some ranting. Here goes…

Cutting to the chase. What exactly is the D750? Well… as far as I can tell with the utmost due diligence, it's a D610 with the incrementally upgraded Expeed-y-er 4 chip, less hobbled firmware, and the non-crappy AF system the Vice President of cheapness and committee design bullshit decided was absolutely required so all of us idiots wouldn't buy it and push us to the D800/D810. The MSRP price point is really foolish because it completely obliterates the market for the D600/D610 as well as flushes all of that hard work the cheapness VP and product positioning committee did right down the toilet. Oh yea it has a tilt-y wonky screen thing.

Here's the real deal the D750 isn't really a D700 that's updated it more like a D650. Now I'm not a Nikon Guy so that's not a bad thing — it's a good thing. I really don't know where the Nikon guy community will fall on this considering it's not the fully-pro-pro setup that's exactly like the D4 just in a smaller package. That's still the D800 style body. For me I have no problems at all with the packaging or the fact that the D750 is really more like a D650. The only thing the newly formed cheapness/product positioning committee got their way on was the camera badge.

So what does all this mean and why do I call the price point foolish etc, etc.? Let's pretend you're in the market for a two thousand dollar-ish full-frame camera and Nikon happens to be on your list of stuff you're looking at. Let's see we have the D610 at and MSRP of $1999.95 with a current $200 back instant rebate. Then we have the D750 at $2200 which is pretty much a D600/D610 without the committee hobbling process that's completely artificial. As an added bonus I get the Expeed-y-er chip which adds a tiny nit to the "speed" and gives me another ISO setting which isn't really good for anything but it's there and the tilt-y screen that has a few more pixels to brag about as well. The biggest thing is that you will have a name badge that says D750 which just screams far far more pro than the D610 for sure. I mean come on nobody would go for a D650 it feels too much like an amateur camera. Now a D750, that's the ticket, it's exactly the same as an upgraded D700. Then again so is the D600/D610 but this time it's got the badge to prove it.

If you're in that two grand market there's no way in hell you're going to go with the D610 to save a couple hundred bucks. You must be an idiot. Now you might have to live with your current hunk of crap camera for a couple months while the even bigger idiots buy up D750's for more than MSRP but that's not long. Especially the D600/D610 users that absolutely require an upgrade immediately. Once those guys are out of your way it will be smooth sailing for what has to be the best-est Nikon camera to buy at this very moment for normal people all things being equal. Unless of course you need a D4s or a couple of more pixels.

All that sounds very negative so let's put that in a positive light. We could have had this camera two years ago at the same entry price as the D600. There's nothing new in this release it's all the same stuff Nikon has had for quite a while. Well except of course the expeed-y-er 4 chip which doesn't do a whole lot compared to the expeed-y-not-so-much 3 chip. Here's how this will pan out; The D750 will sooner than you imagine hit D610 price levels which probably means the D600/D610 is either going away or will be considerably reduced in price and so will the D650 if there ever is one. I expect the D600 line will either be dropped because of the bad karma of the internet lynch mob or Nikon is creating a new full frame entry level price point with the D600 line that will be at or less than the mirrorless full-frame Sony entry price. That's good for us OVF lovers for sure.

So what should you do? It depends of course. You have a few options that are not wildly different. Let's go through them.

You want to get into Nikon FX for dirt cheap: Wait about 5 minutes and you'll see D600's that are perfect, barely used, and completely capable of producing the exact results as the D750 for way less than $1000. Same goes for the D610 with better auto-WB in terms of price plummeting for barely used ones now that half of the current owners will absolutely need to upgrade. Get one of those. Unless of course…

You shoot movies more than anything else in which case you now have un-hobbled firmware that adds a few niceties but no game-changers like changing Aperture on G lenses while in LV/movie mode and some other nits. If you do movies at the level where any of this counts sure go ahead the D750 is your deal but then again most people that actually will have any real world difference in use have way more invested in video/movie crap than the meager $2000 for a DSLR body.

You shoot long lenses at long distances of things that move a lot where the better AF point spread really really does a great job and makes a world of difference. Then again the D7100 is a good plan for that too… hmmm. If you theoretically think it will make a world of difference think twice.

Bottom line; If you're going to drop $2000-ish on a new camera like right now the D750 is the way to go. If you are open to waiting and see where the D610 really lands in Nikon's pricing scheme or are okay with a used one you can save yourself a shit ton on a D600/D610 instead, make the same pictures, and have pretty much anything that really counts for anything including the same sensor.

I've heard crap that could be considered hallucinatory when it comes to D750 specific wonder-ments on the interwebs. Some of it comes from Nikon other stuff seems to be made up or the result of a mental disorder. Here's one from Nikon… "A newly developed 24 megapixel sensor", yea right. Same sensor that's in D600/D610/A7/RX1/etc. for absolutely sure. Here's one that DP review somehow came up with while smoking crack or sniffing glue… "A completely different build that's like the D4 that uses metal everywhere unlike the crappy D600/D610 that's all plastic. Really? Really really? Ummmm… Nikon did change some of the market speak for the hybrid construction they've been using (which is fantastic by the way) but when I translate that to normal-people speak it's pretty much the same thing. Hell if you cannot tell that it's the same basic body as the D600/D610 except for the flippy screen you must be having some issues yourself. In any case, no matter what word play the marketing guys used I will assure you the most breakable thing in terms of construction is definitely the flippy screen. The construction is great but it's the same hybrid construction as the D600/D610/D7000/D7100.

Let's wrap this up. Snarky, sarcastic, ranting aside about things past and all the lunatic stuff from people that sell cameras for a living the D750 is a fantastic camera by all accounts. It's pretty much as I said a non-hobbled D600 at around the $2000 mark. What's to complain about? Nothing. Then again at the fire-sale prices of D600's and soon to be falling D610's new or otherwise if you are on a budget and are not a big movie guy that's the smart ticket. Especially if the minor advantages of the real FX focusing pattern are not going to make one iota of difference in what you shoot.

Knowing what you shoot, how you shoot it, what makes any difference and what doesn't is really the answer in knowing what's the best bang for your buck. Even more important is knowing what you actually like in terms of camera gear and how it really plays in use. For me EVF's are a no go. I don't care about the difference between the 39 point focus system and the 51 point system nor do I care that much about AF. I like cameras about the shape and size of an old Nikon F3. I don't like any lag in any of the operation of cameras. Hence I love my Nikon Df. If it breaks, I wear it out, or there's a significant change in real dynamic range I might upgrade to something similar if Nikon continues to make that.

Let's take the AF system example which for the most part is the biggest material difference in shooting stills between the D600/D610 and the D750. For me it is no different. For most people it really isn't much difference in practice. I shoot people at wide to normal-ish focal lengths. I use manual focus most of the time. If I happen to use AF it a lot more like a convenient manual focus than it is using a big point spread and focus tracking and auto point shifting and all the other stuff that is so very slightly better between the two systems. I have the focus decoupled from the shutter button with back-button focus. I don't reacquire focus every shot — waste of time. I shoot the same 90% of the time no matter if I am using my 50mm G lens w/ back-button focus or my 28mm AIS. I acquire focus, I compose, I make a few shots.

The screen shot at the top is an example — random from some crap I shot with Lori fooling around while not doing much else at the Baltimore location over the weekend. It's a 100% view (open in a new window and blow it up to see all the pixels) of a 3/4 length shot using a 28mm AIS manual focus lens on my Nikon Df. Hand held, human at normal fluid motion speeds, my typical M.O. If you take a look at the framing you can clearly see that focus coverage of either system does not cover my focus point. Rarely does for what I shoot. Even if it did I would probably shoot the same way I do now for a bunch of reasons based on trying everything and understanding how human subjects moving at normal human speeds play at around 3 feet away. Different story at 10 feet or 20 feet for sure. Not my thing.

Here's one using the 50mm G on the D600 really really close up and back-button focus but same way of shooting.

We can only hope Lori doesn't kill me for showing un-retouched stuff of her skin under a microscope. A fluke? Not really, just a few random images that are representative of the whole session.

Another:

And another:

A change of venue:

Another…

How about one outside…

And one more…

Enough, actually too many. Did I blow a few? Sure but I shoot like I do because I get a better hit rate not because I get a worse hit rate. Probably about 90% or better if I'm paying attention. My far far bigger issue is shooting indoors at the shutter speeds called for and subject motion. The point is that if you can get yourself off the upgrade treadmill that's certainly designed by committee or we would have seen the D600 as the D750 now exists when it came out you can focus on what actually matters based on what you shoot. For some people the D750 represents the best camera out there at the moment. It's a great setup for just about anyone. For other people a used D600/D610 will produce the exact same results in practice with no difference at all for far, far less money. Know yourself, your subject, and how you work before you let anything else influence your requirements.

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/09/16/the-nikon-d750/ Playtime Extended Edition http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/08/30/serious-play-the-extended-edition/ 2014-08-30T00:00:00Z 2014-09-23T16:15:23-04:00 RW Boyer

Yesterday, after the morning fog had lifted and my head was engaged a few notions crossed my mind. Gear, LaRoque, wintertime, projects I've been putting off, color vs. black and white, putting my money where my mouth is, etc, etc. Maybe more than a few notions crossed my mind. After a long stretch of the dreaded paperwork I wanted to deal with a few of those photographically. So I grabbed the GR and set out to do just that.

First off, winter's coming. Isn't that a line from somewhere. The angle of the sun was the first indicator for me. That got me to thinking about LaRoque and his abject failure to respond to my geometry challenge. Probably too, too busy hawking Fuji gear or straps or other nonsense. Who knows? Screw it I've been playing with it for a year and learned a thing or three. Here's the next challenge for LaRoque — even earlier this year. Let's see what he does this time around…

I'm going to walk thru a series of shots I made with my head in the game. Experiments and play for sure. Experiments to see how I might deal with color in that project I mentioned that involved motion. I know for sure it's not about color but if I keep the colors simple and subtle that might be better than black and white. The other thing was a followup on playtime and how messing about gives you ideas and what you do with them is the important part. I gave myself a mini-project. Make pictures of two different things one I hate visually and one I like visually but see them in a different way. Simple enough, right?

The shot at the top was my exposure calibration and to see if I could maintain sharpness given all of the earlier coffee with the little GR — biggest challenge with the GR is motion blur due to me. Okay, look's like it's good but probably need a slower shutter speed for how I want this to go…

Hmmmm… this is the direction but need to be a bit more careful the 28mm sucks in a lot of stuff. Maybe need to relax a bit as well.

There we go, now I have the hang of where I'm going. I can make this sharp at this speed and it's playing well just not what I want. I want it more female in shape and form.

Ooops blew that one but soft is kinda cool too. No stick to the game plan it's a copout to go soft with the focus and motion.

Exactly, just to quick to produce the bending of laws of physics I want. In other terms I want softer curves.

There we go… exactly but I really like the way the highlights overlap in the last one… hmmm let's try to do both.

Getting there but I need to keep the highlights overlapped longer. Tricky.

Almost, but not quite; Let's try it another way.

Yea, now that's it, that overlapping highlight is so cool. Let's go for something a bit more solid.

Pretty neat. Okay enough of the contact sheet. I tried some other things after that landed on a place where I liked the sparkle-y highlights (I'm a sucker for shiny objects) and made this one before declaring it done…

The camera is a magical device. It can turn anything into anything else. They deserve respect and so does your subject. Hopefully this destroys any notion of sharpness IQ nonsense as if some recipe is going to produce that. How do you perceive these… sharp enough to convey sharpness. What's important about gear? What's important about technique? The only thing that's important about either is that it gets out of your way — that's it. What's important about play — everything but only if you actually use it to execute ideas. I am shamefully guilty of too many ideas without execution. I become distracted and single tracked. I helped to make an idea a reality this year which is super enjoyable, I've attempted to help a bunch of other people with getting bullshit out of their way to execute what they wanted to make while shelving or procrastinating on what I want to make. Water under the bridge. The part that I'm not guilty of is actually playing and refining the play.

Oh, forgot — what is this stuff? Well having shot it the first few shots are a dead give-away. It's the bane of my existence; plastic blinds. I hate plastic blinds they're pre-constructed awfulness is everywhere. I hate the way they look. Hate everything about them. The only thing that might revolt my sensibilities more is the never ending ubiquitous fucking neutral beige wall-to-everywhere-carpet. Horrible stuff — why do we all surround ourselves with such ugliness?

In any case here's the specs for those that are curious.

Everything was in camera via motion.

Shot one-handed at 1/6 second.

Colors going in were pretty much neutral what you see is some of the more extreme versions of random one-click VSCO film 05 presets. I forget which one's are which but generally they are the "blue" or "green" versions or the ++ versions which exaggerate the color casts and add they're own.

Wanna know anything else? These are all the shots from first to finish, the EXIF's all there if you are that curious. At the end of it none of it is about the "how". The real question is the what.

So Mr. Geometry LaRoque; Here's a simple challenge. Shoot a fucking mini-blind with the blasted Fuji. I'm sure it will be better. Actually I'm hoping it will give me something to think about. Winter's coming…

RB
  http://photo.rwboyer.com/2014/08/30/serious-play-the-extended-edition/


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ProformaTECH 2014
ProformaTECH 2014—the premier technology conference for senior corporate finance executives —will be held at the Venetian Las Vegas on February 13, 2014. A "noise-free" practitioner-driven event, ProformaTECH offers a core focus of educating CFOs and other finance leaders on how technology is fundamentally and strategically changing operations in corporate finance.
ProformaTECH 2014 will feature 20 educational sessions in four conference tracks: Operational Advantage; Managing Change; Financial Technology Landscape; and Change Anticipation and Readiness. ProformaTECH 2014 will host interactive presentations led by CFOs, industry leaders, and subject matter experts from organizations such as APQC, KPMG, Financial Executives Consulting Group, Proto Labs, and Papa Murphy's, as well as non-profits and government entities.
John J. Stephens, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, will deliver the event's keynote address.
For more information and to register, please see the ProformaTECH website: http://www.proformative.com/technology-conference
When: Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014
Where: The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, 3355 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas
Cost: $350
Age limit: 21+
Categories: Conventions, Conventions
Event posted Jan. 10, 2014
Last updated Jan. 10, 2014
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text:
Celtics coach Doc Rivers, in his weekly interview on WEEI's Dennis & Callahan Show, discussed the flurry of Celtics activity at the trade deadline, in which the team came close to deals that would have broken up the Big Three of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett before ultimately keeping that group together (along with Rajon Rondo).
Allen was the closest to going, as the Celtics nearly had a deal that would have sent the shooting guard to the Memphis Grizzlies for O.J. Mayo and a draft pick. It had reached the point where GM Danny Ainge -- not Rivers -- called Allen to inform him that the deal was almost certainly going down, before an 11th hour change of course.
"Usually that's my job [to call a player before he is traded], and I was instructed to, but I never did. Danny did, or talked to him. But no, I didn't have to do that," said Rivers. "The best news was talking to him that we're not doing anything, when he pretty much knew we were. ... I was happy with the way he handled it. Ray, he's such a pro. You know how feelings get hurt. Ray was great."
Meanwhile, a rumored deal in which Paul Pierce would have been traded to the Nets for the expiring contract of Mehmet Okur (and his expiring contract) and New Jersey's lottery pick in the upcoming draft was not close, in Rivers' estimation.
"That wasn't close at all," said Rivers. "That had no chance."
Rivers understood why the team considered trading the veterans, including Allen.
"You have to look at the future as well, so I understood that," said Rivers. "It was hard, but I understood that."
However, he was relieved when the deals did not transpire.
"That would have been a very hard day if we had to pull the trigger and do those things," he said. "I just like our guys. Obviously, you've got to do what you've got to do and business is business, but Ray, Paul and Kevin, as far as I'm concerned, the longer we can keep them together, the better. That may be the best for the team. It may not be. But I just like them."
While Rivers and the Celtics are mindful of balancing short-term and long-term interests, the coach suggested that it would have been nearly impossible for the team to enjoy its current late-season surge towards the playoffs had it made one of the rumored trade night deals.
"No, I don't think so," Rivers said of whether this run would have been possible after a deal. "Just with new guys on a team, that would have been difficult."
To listen to the complete interview, visit the Dennis & Callahan audio on demand page. For more team coverage, visit weei.com/celtics.
We find out what Chris Price was right and wrong about when he made a few predictions before the Lions game. Also, we hear some new ones regarding Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers.
WEEI.com's Mike Petraglia and Chris Price preview Sunday's Patriots-Packers game, one that many are calling a possible Super Bowl preview.
We get our weekly NFL update with SI/MMQB's Peter King. Peter talks AFC East, first round byes, Jonas Gray/LeGarrette Blount and much more.
How have the Celtics looked after a couple weeks? Could they be a playoff team? These questions and more...
Sam and Ben talk with Greg Dickerson about how fun this year's Celtics team is to watch as well Jeff Green trade ideas.
Kyle Draper joins Danny Picard to talk about the Celtics chances this season in the Eastern Conference, last Wednesday's home opener blowout against the Nets, and Rajon Rondo's future in Boston
The Red Sox trotted out their newest FA acquisition Tuesday afternoon, third baseman, Pablo Sandoval. The Kung Fu Panda then joined MFB to talk about his conversations with (former) Giant teammate, Jake Peavy, about playing Boston. He also stressed that this move was the next big challenge in his life, and addressed some concerns about his defense, stating that he is focused on being at the hot corner for the duration of his contract.
Buster Olney of ESPN joined MFB to talk about all the free agent news surrounding the Red Sox over the past 24 hours
Red Sox beat writer Brian MacPherson joins Danny Picard to talk about the Red Sox going after Jon Lester and other free agents.
Andy Brickley joined the show to talk about David Pastrnak's first game, the offensive struggles, and Milan Lucic playing with the Swedes.
Dale and Michael get Jack Edwards' 'state of the B' report and talk about the win over the Blues at the Garden on Tuesday.
Andy Brickley joined the show and touched on last night's convincing win over a good team, Matt Bartkowski needing a wake up call, and the NHL review process.
Special Teamer Don Jones was waived in a surprising move, Chandler Jones practiced and the Patriots gear up for what could be their most difficult battle left in Green Bay.
Celtics columnist, Chris Forsberg, joined Butch and Gordon Edes to talk about the young core of players, Brad Stevens' need to win, and the tough November schedule that the Celtics struggled through.
BC football sideline reporter Scott Mutryn with the worst impersonation of all time.
We find out what Chris Price was right and wrong about when he made a few predictions before the Lions game. Also, we hear some new ones regarding Sunday's game against the Green Bay Packers.
Andy Brickley joined the show to talk about David Pastrnak's first game, the offensive struggles, and Milan Lucic playing with the Swedes.
Rick Pitino had some curious comments after a blowout victory. Richard Sherman takes on the NFL Media policies. Christian talks about a pill for farts.
We get our weekly NFL update with SI/MMQB's Peter King. Peter talks AFC East, first round byes, Jonas Gray/LeGarrette Blount and much more.
Dale and Michael give their four selections for the MLB Hall of Fame... this year's finalists were announced today.
Dale and Michael talk Bruins and discuss the supposed practice scuffle between Tuukka Rask and Soderberg, and DJ Bean dials us up to give his thoughts.
Mikey remixes Billy Joel "Movin Out" in honor of the Patriots playing the Green Bay Packers
Brandon covers the NFL, particularly the Detroit Lions for Bleacher Report. He gives us his thoughts on this Sunday's game and how the Lions stack up against the Patriots.
Mikey, Villani, Lenny and Kerry Byrne are talking Patriots-Lions and how the team this year stacks up to Patriots teams of the past.
The guys previewed the upcoming Packers Patriots game and discussed the media's latest tweet beef.
Jerry Thornton's first podcast explores sports stories that would make for interesting 30 for 30 documentaries.
Andy Merritt of the New England Hockey Journal joined WEEI.com's Scott McLaughlin to talk about the play of Vermont and Providence, as well as other happenings around Hockey East. Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy also joined the show to talk about his team's good start, his freshman class and how he uses possession stats.
Ben Cherington joined us to discuss the Sox off-season moves.More from this show
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Ashley Byrne of PETA joined the show on the proper way to celebrate Thanksgiving.More from this show


text:
|By Business Wire
Article Rating:
|February 27, 2013 12:01 PM EST
According to Gartner, Inc., "By 2016, 20 percent of CIOs in regulated industries will lose their jobs for failing to implement the discipline of information governance successfully."¹ Employees have become accustomed to having unlimited access to the data they desire by bringing their own devices into the workplace. More data is being stored in the cloud, allowing access to it anytime from anywhere and the possibility of exposing sensitive corporate information is just one of the dangers of cloud-based file sharing. Axway (NYSE Euronext: AXW.PA), announced today it sponsored a survey completed by IDG Research Services that examines what IT managers are doing in relation to managing cloud-based file sharing services.
IT departments are making an attempt to manage policies related to cloud-based file sharing tools, but their efforts are often ignored according to the survey's results. Of the 131 IT managers that responded, 54 percent said they had a policy requiring cloud-based file-sharing tools (excluding email) to be vetted and approved by IT before employees could use them. Some 30 percent said they had no such policy regarding the use of these tools. Surprisingly however, nearly four out of five respondents admitted that employees fairly frequently use unauthorized cloud-based file-sharing tools, regardless of any existing policies.
John Thielens, Chief Security Officer at Axway said, "I would speculate it's likely closer to five out of five employees, including executives, that are fairly frequently using unauthorized cloud-based file sharing tools. Axway sees the problem all the time, and it's not limited to rank-and-file employees. It is important for companies to constantly have the ability to govern the flow of data while employees are using cloud-based file sharing tools."
The survey reveals that the most important features to IT Managers and departments for cloud-based file sharing products are the:
- ability to enforce security and compliance policies and controls
- ability to encrypt shared files
- ease of use and user adoption
IT Managers said the most prevalent concerns with cloud-based file sharing products are:
- sensitive data leaks and data loss
- loss due to theft
- loss of control of the data itself
When considering products to help provide governance around file sharing, IT Managers stated the ability to cover both email and cloud-based file sharing as the most important feature. Just under one half of the respondents stated they were applying the same policies and controls to both email and cloud-based file sharing. Axway recommends this approach as a best practice. "The ability to apply common security policies to both email and file sharing is the most efficient and effective approach," said Mike Dayton, senior vice president, Axway Security Solutions Group.
Axway's DropZone™ product meets both the revealed criteria. DropZone is a secure enterprise-level file-sharing application that is easy on users and IT administrators. It integrates with MailGate SC, Axway's secure email application, so IT can manage both email and file sharing from the same platform, and allow users access from their preferred mobile device.
Download the whitepaper: "Cloud-Based File Sharing Challenges the Enterprise"
For more information on Axway's security solutions: www.axwaysecurity.com
Follow Axway on Twitter: @Axway
Read more on the Axway blog: http://blogs.axway.com
¹Gartner Press Release, "Gartner Says Master Data Management Is Critical to Achieving Effective Information Governance." January 19, 2012.
Axway (NYSE Euronext: AXW.PA), a market leader in governing the flow of data, is a global software company with more than 11,000 public- and private-sector customers in 100 countries. For more than a decade, Axway has empowered leading organizations around the world with proven solutions that help manage business-critical interactions through the exchange of data flowing across the enterprise, among B2B communities, cloud and mobile devices. Our award-winning solutions span business-to-business integration, managed file transfer, API and identity management, and email security– offered on premise and in the Cloud with professional and managed services.
Axway is registered in France with headquarters in the United States and offices in 22 countries. More information is available at www.axway.com.
About Axway 5 Suite
Axway 5 Suite offers control and optimization of the flow of data through integration, visibility, policy, security and reliability to govern business-to-business interactions, communities, systems and data types — within and beyond the enterprise edge.
High-performing enterprise Software Quality Assurance (SQA) teams validate systems that are ready for use - getting most actively involved as components integrate and form complete systems. These teams catch and report on defects, making sure the customer gets the best software possible. SQA teams have leveraged automation and virtualization to execute more thorough testing in less time - bringing Dev and Ops together, ensuring production readiness. Does the emergence of DevOps mean the end of E...
Nov. 27, 2014 05:00 AM EST Reads: 1,775
"Matrix is an ambitious open standard and implementation that's set up to break down the fragmentation problems that exist in IP messaging and VoIP communication," explained John Woolf, Technical Evangelist at Matrix, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Nov. 27, 2014 04:00 AM EST Reads: 1,510
Connected devices and the Internet of Things are getting significant momentum in 2014. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Jim Hunter, Chief Scientist & Technology Evangelist at Greenwave Systems, examined three key elements that together will drive mass adoption of the IoT before the end of 2015. The first element is the recent advent of robust open source protocols (like AllJoyn and WebRTC) that facilitate M2M communication. The second is broad availability of flexible, cost-effective ...
Nov. 26, 2014 11:45 PM EST Reads: 1,784
How do APIs and IoT relate? The answer is not as simple as merely adding an API on top of a dumb device, but rather about understanding the architectural patterns for implementing an IoT fabric. There are typically two or three trends: Exposing the device to a management framework Exposing that management framework to a business centric logic Exposing that business layer and data to end users. This last trend is the IoT stack, which involves a new shift in the separation of what stuff happe...
Nov. 26, 2014 11:30 PM EST Reads: 1,637
The Internet of Things will put IT to its ultimate test by creating infinite new opportunities to digitize products and services, generate and analyze new data to improve customer satisfaction, and discover new ways to gain a competitive advantage across nearly every industry. In order to help corporate business units to capitalize on the rapidly evolving IoT opportunities, IT must stand up to a new set of challenges. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrateg...
Nov. 26, 2014 09:00 PM EST Reads: 1,673
Cultural, regulatory, environmental, political and economic (CREPE) conditions over the past decade are creating cross-industry solution spaces that require processes and technologies from both the Internet of Things (IoT), and Data Management and Analytics (DMA). These solution spaces are evolving into Sensor Analytics Ecosystems (SAE) that represent significant new opportunities for organizations of all types. Public Utilities throughout the world, providing electricity, natural gas and water,...
Nov. 26, 2014 06:00 PM EST Reads: 1,613
When an enterprise builds a hybrid IaaS cloud connecting its data center to one or more public clouds, security is often a major topic along with the other challenges involved. Security is closely intertwined with the networking choices made for the hybrid cloud. Traditional networking approaches for building a hybrid cloud try to kludge together the enterprise infrastructure with the public cloud. Consequently this approach requires risky, deep "surgery" including changes to firewalls, subnets...
Nov. 26, 2014 04:45 PM EST Reads: 1,194
DevOps is all about agility. However, you don't want to be on a high-speed bus to nowhere. The right DevOps approach controls velocity with a tight feedback loop that not only consists of operational data but also incorporates business context. With a business context in the decision making, the right business priorities are incorporated, which results in a higher value creation. In his session at DevOps Summit, Todd Rader, Solutions Architect at AppDynamics, discussed key monitoring techniques...
Nov. 26, 2014 04:45 PM EST Reads: 1,121
Want to enable self-service provisioning of application environments in minutes that mirror production? Can you automatically provide rich data with code-level detail back to the developers when issues occur in production? In his session at DevOps Summit, David Tesar, Microsoft Technical Evangelist on Microsoft Azure and DevOps, will discuss how to accomplish this and more utilizing technologies such as Microsoft Azure, Visual Studio online, and Application Insights in this demo-heavy session.
Nov. 26, 2014 04:45 PM EST Reads: 1,135
The Internet of Things will greatly expand the opportunities for data collection and new business models driven off of that data. In her session at @ThingsExpo, Esmeralda Swartz, CMO of MetraTech, discussed how for this to be effective you not only need to have infrastructure and operational models capable of utilizing this new phenomenon, but increasingly service providers will need to convince a skeptical public to participate. Get ready to show them the money!
Nov. 26, 2014 04:00 PM EST Reads: 1,665
One of the biggest challenges when developing connected devices is identifying user value and delivering it through successful user experiences. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Mike Kuniavsky, Principal Scientist, Innovation Services at PARC, described an IoT-specific approach to user experience design that combines approaches from interaction design, industrial design and service design to create experiences that go beyond simple connected gadgets to create lasting, multi-device exp...
Nov. 26, 2014 03:45 PM EST Reads: 1,610
P2P RTC will impact the landscape of communications, shifting from traditional telephony style communications models to OTT (Over-The-Top) cloud assisted & PaaS (Platform as a Service) communication services. The P2P shift will impact many areas of our lives, from mobile communication, human interactive web services, RTC and telephony infrastructure, user federation, security and privacy implications, business costs, and scalability. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Robin Raymond, Chief Architect...
Nov. 26, 2014 02:00 PM EST Reads: 1,920
Scott Jenson leads a project called The Physical Web within the Chrome team at Google. Project members are working to take the scalability and openness of the web and use it to talk to the exponentially exploding range of smart devices. Nearly every company today working on the IoT comes up with the same basic solution: use my server and you'll be fine. But if we really believe there will be trillions of these devices, that just can't scale. We need a system that is open a scalable and by using ...
Nov. 25, 2014 09:30 PM EST Reads: 1,958
The Internet of Things is tied together with a thin strand that is known as time. Coincidentally, at the core of nearly all data analytics is a timestamp. When working with time series data there are a few core principles that everyone should consider, especially across datasets where time is the common boundary. In his session at Internet of @ThingsExpo, Jim Scott, Director of Enterprise Strategy & Architecture at MapR Technologies, discussed single-value, geo-spatial, and log time series dat...
Nov. 25, 2014 09:30 PM EST Reads: 2,016
"Verizon offers public cloud, virtual private cloud as well as private cloud on-premises - many different alternatives. Verizon's deep knowledge in applications and the fact that we are responsible for applications that make call outs to other systems. Those systems and those resources may not be in Verizon Cloud, we understand at the end of the day it's going to be federated," explained Anne Plese, Senior Consultant, Cloud Product Marketing at Verizon Enterprise, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at...
Nov. 25, 2014 09:00 PM EST Reads: 1,803
"For the past 4 years we have been working mainly to export. For the last 3 or 4 years the main market was Russia. In the past year we have been working to expand our footprint in Europe and the United States," explained Andris Gailitis, CEO of DEAC, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at Cloud Expo, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Nov. 25, 2014 08:15 PM EST Reads: 1,783
The Domain Name Service (DNS) is one of the most important components in networking infrastructure, enabling users and services to access applications by translating URLs (names) into IP addresses (numbers). Because every icon and URL and all embedded content on a website requires a DNS lookup loading complex sites necessitates hundreds of DNS queries. In addition, as more internet-enabled 'Things' get connected, people will rely on DNS to name and find their fridges, toasters and toilets. Acco...
Nov. 25, 2014 07:00 PM EST Reads: 1,888
The term culture has had a polarizing effect among DevOps supporters. Some propose that culture change is critical for success with DevOps, but are remiss to define culture. Some talk about a DevOps culture but then reference activities that could lead to culture change and there are those that talk about culture change as a set of behaviors that need to be adopted by those in IT. There is no question that businesses successful in adopting a DevOps mindset have seen departmental culture change, ...
Nov. 25, 2014 07:00 PM EST Reads: 1,557
"Cloud consumption is something we envision at Solgenia. That is trying to let the cloud spread to the user as a consumption, as utility computing. We want to allow the people to just pay for what they use, not a subscription model," explained Ermanno Bonifazi, CEO & Founder of Solgenia, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at Cloud Expo, held Nov 4–6, 2014, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Nov. 25, 2014 06:15 PM EST Reads: 1,634
Enthusiasm for the Internet of Things has reached an all-time high. In 2013 alone, venture capitalists spent more than $1 billion dollars investing in the IoT space. With "smart" appliances and devices, IoT covers wearable smart devices, cloud services to hardware companies. Nest, a Google company, detects temperatures inside homes and automatically adjusts it by tracking its user's habit. These technologies are quickly developing and with it come challenges such as bridging infrastructure gaps,...
Nov. 25, 2014 04:30 PM EST Reads: 1,815