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Monthly Archives: June 2010
Strength in Teamwork
In “real life” I work with a team that is geographically diverse. We are spread over the US and other parts of the world as well, so forming a team spirit is a challenge. Enter team-building as the solution!
My team meets on (approximately) a quarterly basis, for 3 days of intense strategy discussions, and “Death by PowerPoint.” But, the part of the week that really brings us together as a team are the extra curricular activities. Over the years, we have tried everything from golf to bowling, to dinners, to paintball melees. But last week, we were fortunate to have a really, really great team-building event: White-water rafting.
We were in the Boise, Idaho area, and last Thursday afternoon, trekked off into the surrounding mountains to visit the Cascade Raft & Kayak center on the Payette River, just outside of Boise.
We were torn between anticipation and trepidation, but 13 of us decided to go for it, and we were rewarded for our efforts!
Extreme Camera Technology
Over the past few days, I’ve noticed some rather extreme photographic technologies brought to light. Will we ever see these in our own camera bags? Probably not (except maybe in the last example), but it’s fun to dream:
Highly porous carbon nanotube batteries that store five times as much energy as capacitors, and deliver their power up to 10 times as rapidly as lithium ion batteries. I’d love to have some of these for my SpeedLites! (via Slashdot)
Canon 5200mm (yes, 5200!) F14 EF Prime lens. From a Canon Flyer:
"This is the only ultra-telephoto lens in the world capable of taking photographs of objects 18 to 32 miles away (30km to 52kms away). Having a focal length of 5200mm, Canon Mirror Lens 5200mm can obtain one hundred times as large an object image as that of a 50mm lens."
Canon patent application for in-camera HDR. Done right, this could open a whole new door in photographic capture, saving a whole lot of time in “merge to HDR.” Some cameras boast in-camera HDR, but if this ever becomes a reality, that’s one camera I’d love to have!
Now, if they could bundle all that technology into my smartphone, I’d be good to go!
Tarpon Springs – An HDR Adventure
I’ve been wanting to get back to Tarpon Springs for quite some time now… it has been several years since my last visit. It isn’t all that far away, but with traffic it amounts to a good hour’s drive. Finally, last weekend, Carol & I decided to make the run up there. We would have dinner, and walk the Sponge Docks, allowing my to take lots of pictures in the golden hour before sunset!
Nature didn’t cooperate, however; as we drove north we could see the clouds rolling in, east to west, and before we got there the entire sky was a gloomy grey. Rain was threatening, and sure enough, just as we arrived, the drizzle began. But an hour’s drive is an investment, and we decided to go ahead and have dinner anyway, and see what we could find worth photographing.
Being indoors, in the scenic Greek restaurant (The Parthenon, 751 Dodecanese Blvd; excellent food!), gave me a chance to try some high ISO images with my new Canon 7D. At ISO 12800, the images came out a bit on the noisy side, but Photoshop CS5’s Camera Raw features made quick work of it.
But the best was yet to come…