Monthly Archives: March 2012

The iPad 3

iPad

Another quantum leap.


The New iPad – I call it iPad 3 for clarity.

When iPad 1 came out I bought it on the first day. This was unlike digital cameras which took many years before sensors were large/good/cheap enough to make err… sense and indeed, when the Canon 5D came along all my film gear – Leicas and Rolleis – was out the door soon after. Henceforth, film would be for people with time and nostalgia on their hands.

But the iPad was different. The technology had been thoroughly debugged in several generations of iPhones and the price was right. Most importantly, as I wrote in The Unfair Advantage, the iPad created a rift between those who got it and those who did not. It was a quantum leap in delivering information and it is now increasingly becoming a creative tool, in addition to being the outstanding consumption device of our time. To all those naysayers who said “It’s for consumption only” (This is a bad thing? Is not much of study and learning consumption?) I say that I’m glad I don’t have you managing my money.

Since iPad 1 came along two years ago the only paper books I have bought have been on art and photographers. The lamentable state of migration for the latter, and the absence of a 21″ iPad makes that a necessity. But a decade hence, I would expect art books to go the way of all others. Into the garbage. All my technical gadget manuals exist solely on the iPad.

So it’s no surprise to say that some time later today, the nice Fedex man will deliver my 64gB iPad 3, complete with Verizon LTE 4G capability. I have been using iPad 1 tethered to my iPhone using AT&T for 3G and it works well if not very fast when wifi is not available, which is far more often than the press would have you believe. And I’m talking in civilization, meaning the Bay Area, not Fly Over country. The switch to Verizon is rational – better service, better 4G, better coverage. I’ll drop the tethering option on the iPhone and the net will be cost neutral.

Why upgrade? Because the new display will be like moving to an HD TV from a CRT. And the iPad is mostly about the display. The machine will be noticeably faster than the iPad 1 and Verizon LTE is rumored to knock the socks off home broadband! With broadband being the slowest link in the chain, that’s not trivial. It depends on how crowded the airwaves are but I have read that 20mbs download and 22 mbs upload are common. Compare that to 11/1.4 which is the best AT&T can deliver over antiquated copper cables to our home. The display and LTE are revolutionary changes, not evolutionary. The iPad promises to be faster on some tasks than all but the most capable desktop machines and with an unchanged battery life of an amazing 10 hours. iPad 1 was revolutionary. So is iPad 3.

iPad 1? First it’s off to repair for a new back. I have dropped it on all four corners on concrete over the past 23 months and it’s pretty badly dented. That’s what happens when you ride your bike with cameras, iPad and a propensity to fall off. Once refurbished, it will become a home TV and sound controller, as well as a book reader lying around for anyone wanting to use it, and moving one step closer to the reality of a tablet in every room. And, for the life of me, I cannot think why any sane person would buy a tablet from any other maker at this time. So you don’t like Apple? Get over it. It’s just a tool which has nothing to do with brand loyalty and everything to do with fitness for purpose.

Arthur C. Clarke the great novelist and futurist, nailed it back in 1968 in his book which became Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, 2001 – A Space Odyssey; it would seem that Apple is well ahead of NASA at this point:

Aaah! So that’s whence the “pad” moniker came ….

Update:

My New iPad is up and running and I just signed up for Verizon 4G service. This is all you need to know – as expected the upload speed is completely insane and the download speed compares to home broadband:

The New iPad on Verizon 4G.

Comparisons?

Home broadband – 11/1.4.
iPad1 on home wifi – 3.6/1.6
iPad1 tethered to AT&T 3G – you really do not want to know (OK, OK, it’s 1.4/0.3 if you really must know how much AT&T sucks)
iPhone 4S on home wifi – 2.9/1.8.

Like I said, the New iPad with Verizon 4G is a revolutionary development.

And finally, here is the iPhone 4S using the Verizon 4G hotspot from the New iPad – up to five devices are supported:

Can you say WOW!?

Unless 4G slows greatly with increasing adoption, Apple and Verizon have cut one of the biggest wires holding back true high speed mobile computing. And I promise this is the last time I will say anything nice about the US cellular oligopoly.

Recharging:

The iPad 3 uses a 43 watt Hour battery (iPad 2 – 25) so as both use the same charger, it will take 72% longer to fully charge. Based on my overnight measurement, iPad 3 will take 12.65 hours to fully charge from zero, compared with 7.4 hours for iPad 2. As there are only 24 hours in a day and the battery runs for 10 and needs 12 to recharge, you need to plug it in right away once fully drained, charging overnight, if you want to use the iPad 3 first thing in the morning. In practice, I find I rarely ran my iPad 1 down more than 50%, suggesting a recharge time of just over 6 hours to recharge fully.

Verizon 4G at peak hours – 3/20/2012 update.

Measured from a restaurant on Burlingame Broadway, at lunch. The diner has no wifi and I’m only getting 4 out of 5 bars signal strength:

What the good people of Seoul, South Korea have enjoyed for ages but will take a decade or two to come to the most powerful nation on earth ….

At 40+mbs download speeds everything is instantaneous, and faster than I can touch things on the screen.

The Library

Photographs

Gaol-birds only.

The prison library in Alcatraz once held 15,000 books for the few hundred inmates. Not a bad ratio.

Alcatraz library. D700, 16-35mm @ 24mm, ISO 800.

The library, and the garden once tended by inmates, are the closest you get to a semblance of humanity in this evil place.

Lightroom 4’s enhanced ability to pull up detail in the shadows, especially if you expose for the highlights as I tend to, works nicely here.

Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 lens

Nikon lenses

The legend continues.

This was one of the finest portrait lenses of the manual focus era. Mine dates from 1970, the period in which Nikon’s mechanical quality peaked. As with all similarly designed lenses, the focus ring is a delight to use and the absence of half stop clicks on the aperture ring a welcome ‘feature’ indeed. Seldom has a feature more confused precision with accuracy, an especial irritant when Aperture Priority exposure is used. As with the 50mm and 200mm of the era, the filter size is a mere 52mm, with engraving, fit and finish as you will not find in today’s offerings. The lens is sharp at any aperture. Vignetting is not noticeable at f/2.5 and the balance and feel on the large D700 body are excellent. I see no color fringing.

In very good condition with perfect glass and a period, reversible lens hood and caps, it cost me $125, already converted for AI operation on modern digital bodies. No protective filter is needed with the hood in place, but the rear element is fairly exposed, dictating the use of a rear cap when the lens is in your bag.

While the diaphragm has but six blades, the absence of high refractive index glasses and simple single anti-reflection coating combine to produce gorgeous rendering of out of focus areas.

Winston works on his latest Lego. At the maximum f/2.5 aperture, ISO 800.

The EXIF data for the above are wrong, as I forgot to dial in the right lens! Another reason to add a CPU. I originally processed this in LR3. Having just upgraded to LR4, I converted the file to the new 2012 Process and it’s subtly better, with improved rendering of light and shadow in Winston’s face.

A wonderful lens for those seeking reality, not brutality, in their portrait work.

Alcatraz

Photographs

Cruel and unusual punishment.

On occasion, we Americans get genuinely serious about convincing the world that most of us were dropped on our heads at childhood by careless mothers, and one standout example of this behavior was the Volstead Act of 1919 which prohibited the sale (if not the consumption) of booze. This quite exceptional piece of stupidity lasted until 1933, creating in the process several American dynasties whose fortunes were made through bootlegging. Whatever the downside of our modern legalized system of corruption known as ‘political donations’ at least it should ensure that no such foolishness recurs. “All control drives up price” the economists teach us, and Prohibition set about proving that in a big way. That little dictum also avoids mention of criminality, which thrives on that which is prohibited.

When the tax authorities finally got to doing the job the FBI could not, namely catching many of the bootleggers, they used tax evasion as the crime, and hang the multiple homicides. A place was needed to lock these capitalist opportunists away and America set about converting its former military prison on Alcatraz Island to a civilian gaol, which rôle it served from 1934 through 1963. It was opened to civilian incarceration just as Prohibition was repealed, but still did a number on the likes of Al Capone and Mickey Cohen, both of whom served time there for tax evasion. Both became popular heroes as a result. The small matters of drug running and the prostitution rings these fellows ran were somehow lost on the public at large.

So in preparing our son for a trip to ‘The Rock’ the other day, I made sure to fill his head with tales of Big Al and speakeasies, finally splashing out on the tickets.

If ever there was a place which set out to administer cruel and unusual punishment, then it has to be Alcatraz. Despite the fairytale setting with views of San Francisco to die for, every effort was made to shield these from inmates’ eyes, and the high walls, minuscule cells and dim windows seem almost calculated to enhance the insane mental cruelty of the place. “An eye for an eye”, appears to have prevailed over the US Constitution and the Eighth Amendment which has it we should behave like civilized people, not like savages. Oh well.

Alcatraz is now a federal park and is in poor shape. Despite the large tourist revenues, it’s being allowed to fall into disrepair, with the sea air speeding matters along. Why, for example, would the magnificent Governor’s Mansion and the Officer’s Mess be gutted, roofs gone, exposed to the elements?

I’ll let my snaps do the rest of the talking, all on the D700 with the 16-35mm lens:


The Golden Gate.


The Officers’ Mess.


Where uniforms for the armed forces were made.


Armored glass.


Guard.


Showers. Don’t drop the soap.


The cells.


My son Winston, in Al Capone’s cell.


Love, freedom, escape.


Atop the staircase from the exercise yard.


Cynically named ‘Broadway’, the main drag.


Escape.

Nikkor AF 35-70mm f/2.8D zoom lens

Nikon lenses

A fine optic.

My latest excuse for adding inexpensive, older Nikkors to my collection is “Roy made me do it”, the Roy in question being none other than English photographer Roy Hammans whose work I greatly enjoy. Now if some guy with a burgeoning check book and conflicted interests – you know, one of those ‘reviewers’ who gets gear free from the manufacturer – tells me something is good, I disregard the ‘advice’ and turn the page. But when a great photographer tell me this is one superb lens at a bargain price, and one which he has happily used for two decades, I think nothing of simply plonking down my cash and waiting for the mail man.

My latest addition is Nikon’s mid-range pro zoom of the 1990s. It’s autofocus and fixed maximum aperture, beautifully made in an all metal barrel, and goes for a song. While closest focus is 2 feet, it will go down to 1:4 life-size at 35mm when a small button is pressed and the focus ring turned. That’s pretty close to the front element at the minimum focus distance and you have to focus manually, but it’s handy in a pinch.

On the camera at 70mm and off at 35mm in Macro mode.

The front element is exposed so a filter and/or hood probably make(s) good sense for protection. The front of the lens rotates with focus so this is not the ideal lens for use with a polarizing filter. The lens uses push-pull zooming like the 75-150 profiled earlier and shows very minor zoom creep when extended at 35mm with the lens pointed to the sky. No effect in real world use, as the zoom pretty much stays put where you last left it. Everything else you need to know is in Roy’s review and test data. This lens is AF but has no VR. There’s a lock for the minimum aperture on the related ring which is used for Aperture Priority automated exposure metering. Contrast is high even directly into the sun, definition is excellent across the frame at all apertures and autofocus is fast.

Roy prepared a very data rich analysis when educating me about the lens, which you can read by clicking the picture below. His mouseover illustrations are especially informative, permitting instant comparisons between results at different apertures. The minimal loss in definition from diffraction at f22 is especially noteworthy:

Click the picture for Roy Hammans’s Nikkor 35-70 f/2.8 tests and comments.

Since this lens was discontinued, Nikon has made its mid-range zooms wider and bulkier – and they cost a lot! Meaning four to five times as much. If your other lenses mesh nicely with the 35-70mm range, look no further, unless you really must have Vibration Reduction. This lens has none.

Some snaps:

Blow Horn. At 70mm, f/16.

The Oakland Bay bridge. At 52mm, f/16.

Triumph. At 40mm, f/5.6, My vignette. I have never seen a motorcycle I did not like.

Fishermen’s Wharf, SF. At 52mm, f/6.7. My vignette.

Self portrait with bike. My vignette. At 35mm, f/13.

Fog City Diner. Sun in frame. I used f/22 to get the star effect. Note only minor ‘ghosting’.

Pier 9. At 48mm, f/11.

Wharf. Lots of these, many in poor shape, in San Francisco. At 58mm, f/6.7.

I have created a lens profile for use with Lightroom 3 and 4 and Photoshop CS4 or later. You can find it here. This profile will make correction of distortion and vignetting a one click process, once installed.