December 2nd, 2008 / No Comments » / by apeman
Last week, I finally sold off my darkroom. I have not had the time for something that I once enjoyed so much, so it was time for my Enlarger, and other accessories to find a loving home. When we purchased our home in 2005, I had expected to have time to setup a semi-permanent darkroom in a corner of the garage. Three years later, and I still haven’t done that, and now with our first child on the way, its time to let it go.
My new “darkroom” is now my Ubuntu desktop PC, and my mobile darkroom… my macbook equipped with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I have really enjoyed my switch to digital, and being a techie, I am more inclined to sit in front of my computer and edit a few photos when I have spare time. So I feel this is a win-win for me.
If you are curious, here were the parts that I had in my darkroom.
- Saunders/LPL 6700 Dichroic Enlarger
- Rodenstock Rodagon 50mm F2.8 lens
- Saunders IC Enlarger timer
- Print trays
- Film Development tanks
- Boxes of paper
- misc. chemicals.
Next post in my photography series will be my review of the SMC Pentax DA* 50-135/F2.8 Lens.
Posted in: news, photo, pictures
Tags: black and white, darkroom, dSLR, enlarger, photography
November 21st, 2008 / No Comments » / by apeman
Recently, I was curious as to which lens I had been using the most. A Quick search of the metadata in my images in Adobe Lightroom yeilded that my SMC Pentax 50mm/f1.4 is hands down my most used lens.
In fact, it leads the number 2 lens by more than double the images. That’s an overwhelming win for this lens, and despite what dpreview recently said, this lens produces some of the most pleasing images, even wide open. I imaging my results are quite a bit different than theirs since I don’t photograph resolution charts 
This post is my attempt at a real world impression, not a review. Reviews photographing test charts, and other scientific measurements do nothing to show weather a lens will be considered good, or useful.
More after the jump…
Read more…
Posted in: Pentax, articles, photo, pictures, tech
Tags: 50mm, Lenses, Pentax, photography, SMC-P FA50/1.4
November 11th, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by apeman
Is it just me, or has Bell dropped the ball lately with the program guide? Most of the shows I watch have only a generic description and nothing else, causing the PVR to either ignore the event, or record duplicates of the same show. This only started happening a lot at the beginning of October, and has caused me to set all of my times to record “All Episodes” and then manually “skip” the duplicates.
Shaw Cable on the other hand, seems to have their guide together, and it has correct info for almost every show that I checked. Now if only they had the same quality to their HD content that Bell has, and switching would almost be a no brainer.
I am at the end of my Bell contract, and extremly frustrated by the guide, and very tempted to switch now. So my question to the readers of this site is: Have you been having issues with the program guide? If so, please add a comment below with the symptoms that you have been seeing. Bell does read this site, so perhaps somebody will see this and take action!
Rant over.
Posted in: 9200, DVR, HDTV, PVR, expressvu, rants
Tags: Bell TV, expressvu, HD PVR, HDTV, Program Guide, Shaw Cable
September 19th, 2008 / No Comments » / by apeman
Bell TV’s newest satellite, Nimiq 4 is due to launch today (Friday September 19th) at at 5:48 p.m. EST. Telesat, who is owned by BCE, will be launching the Satellite from the Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (no Borat jokes).
Nimiq 4, dedicated to Bell is rumored to be the first step in its transition to MPEG-4, however, I expect to see some more HD channel offered to us non MPEG-4 receiver owners within the next year. I anticape testing taking a while as this is the first new satellite in a while. Last year, Bell leased a dying statellite from Direct TV to supplement the aling Nimiq 2, which only had partial transponder functionality, and no redundancy like Nimiq 1.
As always, if you have questions, or more information, please let us know in the comments.
Posted in: news
Tags: Bell, BellTV, expressvu, HD, HDTV, Nimiq4, satellite, Telesat
September 17th, 2008 / 5 Comments » / by apeman
Today I noticed that my ExpressVu 9200 PVR now has software version V222. Changes besides updating to the new “Bell” logo include:
- HD logo on items in the PVR list.
- Grouping feature to group episodes of the same show together in the PVR window
- HD subtext on the HD channels in the Guide.
- Pressing the “Guide” button will now cycle through “All Sub”, “All Channels”, and “All HD”.
I’m sure that I have missed something here, so if you find something that I have missed, please leave a comment and I will update the list.
If you are noticing any bugs that have cropped up with the new firmware, try rebooting your receiever to see if it helps, as this will load the new fimware. If you are still having problems, please post a comment below and I will do my best to help.
Posted in: 9200, DVR, HDTV, PVR, expressvu
Tags: 9200, 9220, Bell, expressvu, HDTV, PVR
Last week, I finally sold off my darkroom. I have not had the time for something that I once enjoyed so much, so it was time for my Enlarger, and other accessories to find a loving home. When we purchased our home in 2005, I had expected to have time to setup a semi-permanent darkroom in a corner of the garage. Three years later, and I still haven’t done that, and now with our first child on the way, its time to let it go.
