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Greeting from Vegas
It is my vacation to vegas, first time to vegas, scotching hot, about 105F. So I would rather hide in the cool room in Venetian, using the ten-bucks-a-day internet, posting my recent image from O' Show.
(Created by Ian Goddard in honor of CDR William S. Donaldson, III USN, courtesy of twa800.com)
Smith Point Park is my long-time favorite beach park. It is closer than Montauk Beach, and is not as crowded as Jones Beach. I have been there countless times. But my most recent visit, a couple of hours ago, uncovered a new perspective to me.
You will never miss the international flags at the Beach Park. Of course, I see it too, everytime I went to the park. But I have never take a second think about what the flags for, mostly because I am not good at recognizing flags, which one is Germany, and Belgium? They all look the same to me, especially when flying. But this time when I drove by the flagpoles and anxiously heading the parking lot, I happened to see one line of words " @#$^% Flight 800 Internal Memorial". So I realized it is a memorial for probably an aircraft crash. This differs a lot from my original idea of what the flags for, I thought they are just part of the beach club.
What cause me to return to the memorial was that I suddently recalled one controversial "accident", which also happen in LongIsland some years ago, could this be the one?
Yes, it is, TWA 800. And the word "controversial origin" is exactly etched in the memorial. How can I ignore the existence of such a big memorial for so long time? It is totally a disaster, even worse, no one seems to know the true origin of the disaster. The government insisted on it being a mechanic accident, but people with abundant evidence believe it could be a friendly fire from a secret army operation. Others believe it could be connected to terrorist... The version from the government seems not be widely accepted. Some non-officail organizations try to find the trueth, or at least the trueth they believed. I even found several books on sale at Amazon.
It would be extremely hard to find out the very exact origin of the disaster. But it seems people are still not giving up. Those people are called truth warriors.
Did I say that I am getting sick of sunset?
It is humid in the weekend. Amanda and I started our five-hour journey in early Saturday morning.
We were heading Maryland to meet with Amanda's mother, who just came to the states from China visiting us.
We stayed at friends'. The host is a big fan of Hifi equipment and Classic music. We were lucky enough to share the great music in his "secret chamber" -- the luxury basement. My limited knowledge of the music didn't prevent me from enjoying the it: piano performace from talented young Chinese player Lang Lang, Green Sleeves, West Side Story, Wagner, Beethoven's Pastoral and etc.
The grand finale is the movie "Gloomy Sunday" or "Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod". The intriguing episode and melody were suddenly interruped by a thunderstrike. Very scary moment, both for the safety of the hifi epuipment and the coincidence with the movie plot.
Although we didn't finish the movie, we really had a great night.
Below is my Contax. Love the quality of the images, impeccable, superb! But the post processing becomes expensive for me, including the developing and scan. So I just simply go all digital, i.e. I sold the Contax and bought an Olympus C-7070. ( You are looking at the last picture of my Contax, which is from the lens of the new C-7070.)
So how do I made the decision?
I was looking for a digital camera to replace my contax, several things I felt critial for the decision:
1. Response time (startup, shutter lag, focus speed)
2. Control (manual focus/exposure)
3. Image quality
After reading reviews of over a hundred recent digital cameras, I looked down to several cameras:
a) Leica Digilux2 (Panasonic DMC-LC1)
b) Panasonic DMC-FZ5, DMC-FZ20
c) Epson R-D1
d) Canon G5, S50, SD20
e) Olympus C-7070, C-8080
Item (a) seems my ideal choice. It has the awesome Leica tag on it. It has a Vario-Summicron zoom (equivalent to a 28mm-90mm zoom for 35mm film), with manual focus control. Actually all the "photographic" controls (exposure, focus, focal length, metering pattern, etc.) are analog dials. Just what I wanted! And the price is just about right: $1400. But what ultimately turned me off is that it has a shady electronic viewfinder there. I would much more appreciate it if Leica just drill a hole in the place of viewfinder! It seems the owners can still live with the horrid, well, not me. This makes me think twice: Do I really need a Leica? Do I deserve to use a Leica? Here is the review from photo.net.
After getting rid of a), the puzzle gets much more easier. b) is good, but just good, nothing marvelous. And some reviewers complain about the image quality. I don't want to buy a camera and demonstrate to those reviewers, "Hey, you are wrong!". Basically I will just take their words, well, in a statistical sense.
Item c) is ridiculously expensive, let alone you need to buy extral Leica lenses for it. If you already have piles of Leica lenses, or you are filthy rich or your image products can cover your expenses, then you can go for it, but just not me.
Item d) is one considerable option, before I go desperate and find the trueth that after so many years of digital evolution, we still can't find a decent digital rangefinder. I used to have a Canon S40 and very happy with the images. But still it feels clumsy and the sliding cover power switch make it very slow. About the G5, I can't really say nothing. This legendary camera, together with its ancestor G2/G3 and descendance G6, already made their names by producing tons of high quality images. However, they are all not fast enough and just can't be my revolver.
So it comes to the Olympus C-series. I remember some a Magnum photographer is using cheap Digital P&S, and still get the work done! I did a little bit of search and proved that my ever-degenerate memory didn't cheat on me -- I got a name, Alex Majoli from Maganum Photos. His everyday gear is Olympus C5050 and C5060, now adding a C8080. He took those cheapos to Kosovo, to Iraq ... Everybody thought he is a crazy and a joke, but when you see the pictures, you know he is a modern hero! Another online article Use Your C-5050Z/C-5060WZ Like a Leica helped me make my final decision. It gives you step-by-step instruction on how to make the best out of a Olympus camera. That's it, that is all I need. Whether C-8080 or C-7070? They make little difference. C-8080 offers manual focus control, which is nice, but it is bigger than C-7070.
It is a tough four hours of hiking, more than we expected. We started without any food just a bottle of water for each person. We planed to return to the restaurant at lunch time with ample of food but ended up returning in late afternoon. However, the whole trip involed lots of teamwork, support and sense of accomplishment.
The most challenging part were the rocky shoreline and the final ascending.
I didn't get much exercises during the last six months. Ying invited me back to Stony Brook for a tennis game. I knew I was very weak for lack of excercise, but still I ran all over the court in the game. 15 mins later, I lost my balance and slipped. But things kept getting worse. I threw up because of the violent movement. So the 15 mins was all the excercises I had. After that I happily sat down with my camera, and started snapping pictures of my friens.
We were later invited to Frank's new apartment. He just became house-mate with Hongmiao and Stu. Their house is gorgeous, several yards away from west meadow beach. The view from their house is jaw-dropping. Those dogs are damn good at enjoying life. It is always great fun talk to them. And I got tons of new info for my Willow's LIst.
(Picture courtesy of cameras.com)
Street & documentary photography is my all-time favorite topic of photography. And recently I found myself addicted to the poetic Lomo photogrphy. The blur, weird images by the cheap plastic cameras is soo amazing. As an amateur photographer, or weekend photographer for now, I apperently don't have the luxury to develop and mass scan negtives. So I decided that majority of my images would be from digital, including the possible lomo pictures. Online search shows me an insane marriage of a $30,000 Imacon digital back (originally designed for Hasselblad), and a $50 plastic Holga camera, with a rubberband! Well, who says that a civilian can not marry a princess. Here it comes. I certainly couldn't afford the 30 grand digital image back, but I do have a digital sensor inside of my Digital Rebel. I plan to play with the gismo a little bit and keep building a digital lomo camera in mind. Actually I have seen some pictures online with Holga and Canon Ixus-i, which comes out quite successful.
Another great gadget I brought home is a Joy Stick TV game set, Namco 5-in-1 Arcade Classics. The Pac-Man game reminds me of the years when I was still a teenage, which is sadly more than 10 years ago. The ultra simple game gave me so much fun. I even invited some friends over my apartment just to share my pleasure :)
Am I just being old by picking up the memories from old-time or living young by playing the childish games, or the answer doesn't even matter? By looking at the exciting expression on Henglin's face, I know that at least I am not alone :P
