Tech Tuesday – Scientists develop new ‘photonic’ chip that could make quantum computers a reality

Here is a link to a news article combining photonic technology with quantum computing. Pretty exciting stuff!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312936/Scientists-develop-new-photonic-chip-pave-way-quantum-computers-future.html

by the way, watch out for the rollover advertisement on the left. It is extremely annoying.  Somebody should tell GE that ads like that lower customer opinions of their product.

Crazy Big! Canon Develops World’s Largest CMOS Sensor

Crazy Big, there’s even pics to show the difference between the old sensors and the new giant one – side by side.

Here’s the link: http://www.canonrumors.com/2010/08/canon-develops-worlds-largest-cmos-sensor/

Go to canonrumors.com for the story (click the picture)

Sony Works With University To Create New Blu-ray Laser

another repost from digg. Here’s the link:

http://hothardware.com/News/Sony-Works-With-University-To-Create-New-Bluray-Laser/

Sony is cooperating on building a violet colored laser. click the link for the details.

Intel develops first photonics-based, 50Gbps chip

just a repost from an article I found on digg (click on the link)

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/27/intel.chip.uses.lasers.to.hit.record.speeds/

not a new product yet,  just a cool new technological breakthrough.

PowerPig Rocks!

howdy folks,

I stumbled across powerpig on flickr recently and wanted to share his awesome sense of humor as well as his mad photography skills with you.

click on the image below to see powerpig’s flickr page with many more clever photos.

“business is slow” by powerpig on flickr

I might also mention that he has shirts for sale on the flickr page. Just click on the link that says “wear it” on the right side of the page.

Worst movie ever (or best)

I think somebody should make a movie starring William Shatner, Shaquille O’neil and David Hasselhoff.  Just imagine 90 minutes of shat, shaq and hoff puns. It wouldn’t even matter what the plot was. It could be about a nascar driving space pirate who is looking for his lost stuffed animal or any other topic you could think of. It wouldn’t really matter as long as the pun-a-thon keeps rolling.

Back to the beginning

I have decided that I am tired of blogging about photography (exclusively).  There are many photography blogs out there with many things to say.  Unfortunately, many of them say the same things. There are a few standouts – if you follow photography in the blogosphere then you should know which ones I’m talking about. But enough about this. From today on, I am blogging about whatever strikes my fancy. Usually I will have a theme for the day (such as “photography friday” or “monday musings” or some other cheesy topic.  But… I never know until I’m writing, what the topic will be.  Sometimes it will be a great conversation with the “crew” (my co-workers).  Sometimes it will be some random interesting thought that I want to share.

Well enough for now.  Have a great day – (if you’ve managed to read this far).

How to “legally” become a photographer

I ran across a great article the other day on Digital Photography School.  It covers various types of legal protection as well as a few good insurance options.

Here’s the link: http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-legally-become-a-professional-photographer

The problem with reviewing photo labs

I try not to complain, I really do. Only the things that bug me the most get voiced on this blog. Today I want to talk about reviews.

I’ve seen many reviews of various photo labs and have come to the conclusion that nobody has a clue how to do it right.  There. I’ve said it.

Every review that I’ve ever seen consists of the reviewer sending identical files to different labs and then critiqing the results.  “lab a is too yellow, lab b prints a little dark, lab c has issues with borders….”   You get the idea.

Here are the problems and solutions (at least from my viewpoint – since I do work at a lab):

1.  multiple people correct the color- you never know which color technician checked the color. There are varying degrees of skill within that group of people as well as various factors that can affect their performance: such as personal problems, or technical problems such as a monitor drifting out of calibration or even the time of day – a person is more likely to loosen tolerances right before breaks, lunch or at the end of the day.
2. Sending one identical set of files is not enough to randomly sample average output from a lab. To find out what a lab consistantly produces, it would be much more accurate to send multiple samples over a span of time.  A particular lab might have a printer or profile issue or a bad batch of paper (it happens). testing over time compensates for specific issues and also addresses the issue of multiple color technicians.
3. If you really want to see how well a photolab can perform, consider sending in problem files such as over or under exposed files, really bad color or bad skin tones, blown out whites, blocked up shadows, odd file types, extremely large or tiny files, or even weird items to color match (if possible).    Even a mediocre photolab could make great prints from good files. Put the lab through the paces and see which ones shine.

Some review items are great: prices, hosting time, packaging quality. But for your own piece of mind, take the print quality with a grain of salt. If the reviewer doesn’t take the time to get a real quality sample – then their misinformed opinion of print quality could steer you towards an inferior photo lab.

In-camera stabilization coming to Canon cameras

Not sure how soon or even if it is near or distant future. Here is a link to a canon patent for in-camera sensor stabilization.

http://www.canonrumors.com/2010/01/new-canon-patent-finds/