Geeky Weekly

AUTO ISO on the Nikon D90

Andrew — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:35:39 +0000

I usually leave the main ISO at 200, AUTO ISO on with a minimum shutter of 1/15 and MAX ISO of 1600. That means the camera will raise the ISO to 1600 to try and maintain a 1/15 second shutter. If it reaches ISO 1600 and there still isn't enough light to maintain the minimum shutter, then it allows the shutter to fall below that setting. If you need to raise the shutter to avoid blur then you either have to lower your f-stop (if you aren't wide open already) or add more light to your scene (i.e. flash).

If you have the minimum shutter set to something faster like 1/60, it will start bumping the ISO once your light drops off a little, especially with slower apertures like f/5.6. What's your minimum shutter setting at? Which lenses are you using? The consumer lenses with f/3.5-5.6 apertures are fairly slow even wide open. In falling afternoon light this combination of slower aperture and high minimum shutter could cause AUTO ISO to kick in unexpectedly.

To complicate things a little further, if the flash is on, it ignores AUTO ISO and sets the ISO to the normal ISO setting (200 in my case) and it uses the "Flash shutter speed" (custom menu e1) as the minimum shutter. I have that set to 1/30 most of the time.

Tagged with: D90, nikon

SC2 Anyone?

Andrew — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:32:43 +0000

Got home from our roadtrip last Sunday and went back to work on Monday. Downloading of pictures was delayed until last night because of Starcraft 2 so hopefully I'll have some posted soon. Birthday is tomorrow and I need to hit the range soon, been way too long since I last shot.

Starcraft 2 is awesome by the way.

Tagged with: starcraft 2

Start yer engines

Andrew — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:37:54 +0000

Road trip starts tomorrow so I'll be on and off the grid for 2 weeks. Big Sur and then up to Washington to visit family. Will be putting a new lens through the paces as well.

Tagged with: vacation

My Steam purchases during the sale

Andrew — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:29:52 +0000

Steam is wrapping up a big sale and had daily deals for the past 2 weeks or so. I picked up some of the cheaper and older titles:

Overlord Complete - $4.50
Trine - $4
Max Payne Bundle - $3.74
Civilization IV: Complete Edition - $9.99
Osmos - $2.49
Defense Grid with all DLC - $9.99
Shatter - $2.49
Thief: Deadly Shadows - $2.99
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom - $2.49
Day of Defeat: Source - $2.49

Now just need time to play everything.

Tagged with: deal, pc gaming, steam

Chicago Just Got Pwned

Andrew — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:04:41 +0000

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf

Otis McDonald is one step closer to being able to exercise his 2nd Amendment rights. States and local municipalities can no longer say the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to them. The last 2 handgun bans in America will fall and then there's an open road for further progress.

Blogger coverage:

Tagged with: 2nd amendment, constitution, firearms, law

Blog Overhaul

Andrew — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:00:24 +0000

The release of WordPress 3.0 introduced a lot of good stuff behind the scenes that I wanted to take advantage of. The new built in Twenty Ten theme incorporates all this new stuff and is pretty nice so I ditched my old custom theme that I was never super happy with. Overall changes:

Switched to Twenty Ten theme
Customized header with one of my panoramas from Kauai (Menehune Fishpond just south of Lihue)
Built navigation menu using new Menu feature
Added Contact form
Added Google Reader snippet to display recent starred items in sidebar
Setup footer widgets with Recent Posts, Tag Cloud, Pages and Categories for unobtrusive navigation links
Deactivated Wordbooker, less content Facebook has of mine the better
Enabled threaded comments, giving it another try

Tagged with: theme, wordpress

WordPress 3.0!

Andrew — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:50:05 +0000

WordPress 3.0 was released yesterday and it's a very nice upgrade. Couple big features include custom post types and taxonomies, new default theme, new navigation menu system, merged MU (run multiple blogs from one install now) and tons of bugs fixes and tweaks. Be sure to upgrade!

Tagged with: wordpress

2010 California Primary Elections

Andrew — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:42:20 +0000

My quick rundown of the Republican Primary ballot:

Prop 13 - Yes
Prop 14 - No
Prop 15 - No
Prop 16 - Yes
Prop 17 - Yes
Governer - Whitman or Poizner (favoring Poizner for 2nd Amendment)
Lt. Governer - Sam Aanestad (anyone but the douchebag Abel Maldonado)
Secretary of State - Damon Dunn (better website, Orly Taitz sounds like a wacky birther)
Controller - Either one, Evans is a fresh face in politics
Attorney General - Eastman or Cooley
Insurance Commissioner - Brian Fitzgerald (not the douchebag Mike Villines)
Senator - Devore or Fiorina
Judge Office #28 - Kim Smith
Judge Office #35 - Soussan Bruguera
Judge Office #73 - Laura Matz
Judge Office #107 - Tony De Los Reyes
Judge Office #117 - Pattricia Vienna
Judge Office #131 - Maren Nelson
Superintendent - None, they all sound like union hacks
Assessor - John Loew (just because he put "Lower Taxes" as his middle name and affiliation with Howard Jarvis)

Tagged with: california, election

Best…tacos…ever.

Andrew — Sun, 30 May 2010 01:56:58 +0000

Went down to Tijuana yesterday with Ryan Morrison and some folks from Bakersfield to finish off some houses. Got tar paper, chicken wire and 2 coats of stucco on one house and a second coat on another. Before heading back across the border we got tacos at Ryan and the Amor's rep favorite place in all of TJ. The carne asada was fresh off the grill and the pork (aka Mexican gyro meat) was cut right off the rotisserie. Throw in a cold Coke and it hit the spot perfectly after a hard day of work. Easily the best tacos I've ever had.

Tacos and Coke in TJ

Tagged with: mexico, tacos

Facebook Gets Demoted

Andrew — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:04:58 +0000

Cory and Tommy took the big step of deactivating Facebook, but I'm just demoting it a bit. I removed all my personal information and turned off the majority of notifications. My wall and comments have also been disabled. I left pictures up, but will not be posting more on Facebook. I have configured my blog to post a "New blog post" teaser on my wall which people can click through if they care. I removed the Status Update feed from Google Reader and uninstalled the Facebook app off my phone.

I prefer my web presence to be somewhere I have more control of my personal data. I highly doubt I'll miss it since I never particularly liked it to begin with. Let our blogs live on.

Tagged with: blogging, facebook, privacy