Category Archives: Hardware

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The Nikon D800

No more Cold Turkey.

‘Cold Turkey’ refers to the process whereby and addict gives up addictive substances in one fell swoop. No weaning, no cutting back, no phasing out. Bang. All at once. The most compelling version of the process can be seen in French Connection II where poor old Gene Hackman is made an addict of heroin by his captors. It’s a disturbing movie and a good one.

And when the iPhone 11 Pro came along I went Cold Turkey with regard to my DSLR, MFT and 35mm film hardware. The Nikon D3x, the D700, the two film bodies – FE2 and F100 – and two Panny GX7 bodies along with a plethora of lenses were all sold, right down to the last lens cap and card reader. In the four years since I have been chugging along (almost) happily with that iPhone and its successor, the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Almost? Well, in a word the ergonomics are indistinguishable from the function of a bilge pump. Both suck. And the reach at the long end is extremely limited.

So the other day finding that I might want a ‘serious’ camera on occasion I reneged on the ‘iPhone only’ commitment and bought a DSLR and lens.


The Nikon D800, introduced in 2012. Mine came with two Nikon batteries
and the ghastly factory strap, quickly replaced with an Upstrap which I found in a drawer.

My D800 body came with a mint 85/1.8 AF-D Nikkor which I immediately resold. Never sell a body with a lens – you will lose money on both, as did my seller.

What is the thinking behind buying a camera discontinued almost a decade ago, along with a 28-300mm VR Nikkor discontinued in 2021? There is a host of good reasons.

Quality: As an upper end Nikon body, the D800 succeeded the fine D700, upping the sensor megapixel count from 12 to 36. Who needs 36 megapixels? See below. The body is robust and the shutter long lived with subsequent iterations (D810, D850) adding little.

Economics: At introduction the D800 retailed for $3,000. The latest Nikon mirrorless digital bodies sell for $2,000 to $5,500 (Z6/II, Z9) and you need the latest Z series lenses to take full advantage of what these offer. By contrast the used D800 I just acquired ran me $525 with a very low shutter count of under 16,000.


Open a snap in Preview for a shutter actuation count.

You can buy beaters with hundreds of thousands of actuations (probably ex realtors, wedding snappers and war types) for just a little less, which seems pretty dumb to me (KEH on the web, Roberts Camera and many others on eBay), especially given the abundant availability of lightly used bodies. I got a mint body and, for another $450, a mint 28-300mm ‘lens for all seasons’ VR Nikon AF-S lens. And I had to splash out another $13 on an SD/CF card reader (the D800 can use one of each) as mine had been sold at the start of the Cold Turkey interlude.

Negligible depreciation: With the D800 having lost over 80% (!) of its original cost in the decade since it was discontinued it’s not going to go much lower very fast. So if I get disillusioned with my purchase it’s out of here for negligible net cost. Same reason I only buy used cars …. every 20 years!

The Nikon F mount: It’s probably fair to say that more lenses were made with the Nikon F mount than with any other. The new mirrorless Z cameras dictate the use of a kludgy adapter with these and you do not get the full functionality of the latest Z optics. But with the Nikon F mount you do get access to some of the finest SLR optics made at ridiculously low cost. My own journey through that cornucopia of choice is best seen here. And all those manual focus Nikkors work with the confirmation light in the viewfinder of the D800, taking the guesswork out of critical focus.The D800 will happily use old screw drive AF-D lenses as well as the latest AF-S optics, not to mention the old and vast range of manual focus lenses.

Weight: The D700 weighed 40ozs, the D3x 50ozs, with the Z6/II and Z9 coming in at 25 and 47ozs (!), respectively. The D800 weighs 35ozs, just 10ozs more than the Z6/II. Not bad.

Cropping: While sensors of 45 megapixels are now common on the high end, the 36 megapixels introduced with the D800 was a revelation. If your lenses are of decent quality then you can extend the long end with cropping rather than carrying extra glass. Here’s a case in point:


D800, 28-300VR at 300mm. ISO 800.


Crop of the above image.

The cropped image is one quarter of the full frame, meaning the focal length equivalent is no less than 1200mm. Handheld. VR is the icing on the cake of the D800’s big sensor. The crop is unprocessed – the minor color fringing and sharpness drop off are easily fixed in Lightroom.

Lightroom: I refuse to ‘upgrade’ to Adobe’s subscription version of Lightroom. I prefer to keep control over my images. My purchased version (6.4) has not been materially improved and natively supports import of D800 RAW files with no special tricks required. All I have to do is plug in my $13 USB3 card reader into the 2010 Mac Pro (still barely improved on by Apple, and adequately powerful to deal with the D800’s large files), with USB3 being a nice way of speedily handling those 70 megapixel uncompressed RAW files. Nice.

In conclusion, if you want a state-of-the-art camera and lens combination, have no issues with buying used, do not wish to spend over $1,000 and lose very little should things not pan out, the D800 with a modern polycarbonate-encased Nikkor AF-S lens is the way to go. And the ergonomics are the best on the market – button placement, feel in the hands, use with gloves, the menu system, and so on.

An old Mac Mini for the home theater

A tremendous value.

When crafting my home theater the default assumption was that the enormous 55lb. energy quaffing Mac Pro would be the computer of choice. This has served me faultlessly for many years and one of the really nice benefits was that four large hard drives could be accommodated within the chassis where many movies were stored. For perfect streaming nothing beats hard wiring, no wi-fi to go down.

Interested in saving power and cutting intrusive bulk, I was reading about the latest M1 and M2 CPU-eqipped Mini’s and quickly realized that this was far more computing power than was required for the simple job of streaming movies. (The Mac Pro, of course, is total overkill, but it’s so inexpensive nowadays that economics are not an issue). So I searched around and came across this rather ancient 2014 Mac Mini on Amazon which, in its base configuration, ran me just $126. Sure it has no internal additional hard drive storage, but that was easily side-stepped with a cheap Probox like the ones I have been using for years. The old Mini is blessed with no fewer than four USB 3.0 sockets and a Probox is connected to each, meaning 16 external hard drives are accessible.

By the way, the availability of these old Minis on Amazon is spotty but keep checking and they crop up. You do not need more than 4GB RAM or the costly SSD option for streaming movies. The advertised image is incorrect – the 2014 Mini I received does not have a slot loading DVD drive. Mine came with a fresh installation of OS X Catalina (10.15). Here are the connection options on the machine:



Abundant connectivity.

Note the presence of an HDMI socket which is used to connect to the UST projector in the home theater.

The Mini has several advantages over the huge Mac Pro in this application. It uses far less power (6 watts idle, 85 watts max, compared with 125/285 for the Mac Pro), is easy to hide (you really do not want ugly computer boxes cluttering up a home theater), has HDMI built in (the Pro needs a suitably equipped graphics card) and, most importantly, comes with excellent Bluetooth 4.0 sensitivity. The BT in the Mac Pro is simply awful. Why is this important? Because you can hide the Mini away in a credenza, no status lights showing, and it responds perfectly to a Bluetooth mouse at 15 feet, where the Pro really struggles, even with an external Bluetooth ‘dongle’.

So if you are looking for an inexpensive, elegant computer solution for your home theater installation, this old Mini is just the ticket. Mine arrived in absolutely mint condition from a vendor named ‘iSpyDeals’. And should the small 500GB hard drive fail, it’s easily replaced. Why, you could even install a cheap SSD for even snappier performance. Just do not make the mistake of thinking that you can use this computer for heavy video processing ….

Here are the specifications and options for the 2014 Mac Mini which is still supported by Apple, if you like spending hours on the phone with a clueless ‘technical advisor’, one whose native tongue is anything but English:



Specifications.

iPad mini – 2021

Neither fish nor fowl.

The other day saw me with many accumulated ‘free’ shopping points on Amazon Prime, courtesy of a couple of years of ordering home delivery of groceries during the pandemic (I cannot speak for other states, but Arizona shoppers interpret personal freedom as a right to infect and get infected, dropping masks at the first opportunity, making the supermarkets places to avoid) so I thought I would buy myself a toy.

I no longer have any interest in traditional bulky, inept cameras which lack dozens of the features and capabilities of the iPhone, and the iPhone 12 Pro Max has been my ‘go to’ camera since it was introduced. So a new camera was out. By the way, that iPhone too was more than ‘free’, paid for with the proceeds of all the MFT and FF DSLR hardware.

So I sprung for an iPad Mini, the current 2021 model.


iPad 9.7″ A1893 and the iPad Mini A2567.

I rather think what pointed me in this direction was mention by a friend that saw him with a colleague who whipped out the Mini from his jeans’s back pocket. While I’m not into accidentally sitting on devices, if that can be helped, the idea was planted. And yes, the Mini does indeed fit the rear pocket of a pair of genuine Levi 501 button fly jeans perfectly. Heck, it probably fits the counterfeit pair made in Turkey which are gracing your bottom as I type.


In my Levis – nearly put my back out getting this shot …..

Setup is trivial. I simply downloaded my iPad’s data and apps from the iCloud where I have a monthly backup plan running all of $3.23. But you can just as easily transfer everything from your current iPad. Apple could not improve on this painless process.

On a more serious note I have given up on the Kindle as a reading device having had three fail over the years. They cannot be repaired. Disposable tech at its worst. I read a good deal and while reading on the iPhone 12 Pro Max has been nothing but a joy – light, superbly engineered, nice screen size – the thought occurred that maybe a slightly larger screen than that in the Kindle without the bulk of the full sized iPad would be nice.

For comparison, my iPad is the 6th generation model, now discontinued. The screen is 9.7″ diagonal and the device remains perfectly fine for reading, composing blog entries, noodling with stock charts and the like. The iPad Mini has a screen area 27% smaller than the full size device. Here are the comparative specifications for the iPad and the iPad Mini, courtesy of MacTracker:



Specifications.

While the older iPad adopts the rounded edges found on iPhones through the iPhone 11, the 2021 iPad Mini has the square profile ones found on the iPhone 12 and later. They make for decent single handed holding, provided you have long fingers which can comfortably span the device. Mine do, but only just. The Mini could be 1/2″ to 1″ narrower for maximum comfort. Here are the weights:

  • iPhone 12 ProMax, with bumper – 8.6oz
  • iPad Mini – 10.3oz
  • iPad 6th gen – 16.5oz

Reading using the Kindle app, there is a very noticeable drop-off in brightness at the edges. Enough that it’s irritating, and frankly inexcusable on so costly a device. I measured it at two stops, which is unacceptable – like a 1970 era wide angle lens before computer generated design improve things. Not visible in other apps. Why have no ‘expert’ reviewers remarked on this? (Answer – because they do not read. Most are besotted with puerile games). By comparison, my sixth generation iPad shows no such drop off. Also, auto color temperature management renders a slightly warmer image than the full size iPad.

I fitted a stick on loop strap to aid in holding the Mini when reading in a prone position. There are many styles on Amazon, and it helps when reading sprawled on the sofa, the Mini held up in the air.


For easier prone reading.

For those who like long reading sessions while sacked out on the sofa, this is an essential addition to the iPad Mini in my opinion, especially if your hands are small as you will have difficulty spanning the rear to hold it up.

While the screen can be very bright in room lighting, it remains useless in direct sunlight. Only the Kindle works well there. Screen definition is outstanding, by the way.

Apple chintzed on the screen coating and deleted the oleophobic coating on the iPhone which is really good at fighting fingerprints. No that big a deal but at the price asked that is really cheap of them. There’s Apple for you. Always squeezing those profit margins.

Conclusion:

After a period of hard use I confess that I think the iPad Mini is very poor value for money, especially if you already own a large screen iPhone. The best use case I can think of is if you have a small screen iPhone and no iPad and wish to read a lot. But, in that case, a full-size iPad might be better and the base model is certainly cheaper.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that it’s not meaningfully easier to read on the Mini for lengthy periods than on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, and the Mini’s management of font sizes, even in native applications like Apple Mail is poor. The native fonts tend to be too small so you go to Settings->Accessibility to adjust them, whereupon the screen displays frequently become a mess.

The implementation of TouchID to sign in with your fingerprint is also quite strange. On the full-sized 9.7″ iPad you simply hold your finger over the big home button at the base of the screen. With the iPad Mini you have to lightly touch the fairly small and narrow on/off switch at the top right of the device. It’s counterintuitive, so much so that Apple was compelled to add a flag below the button when TouchID is called for. Sure, it’s very fast, and I’ve given it a week to see whether this is just a problem with being comfortable with what I know, but I still come to the conclusion that it is a poor design. Fingers do not react well to small, narrow touch surfaces. Indeed, programming fingerprints for this small area button is a chore as the finger(s) has/have to be repositioned many times for all of the fingerprint to be recorded.

At the recommended retail price of $500 it’s just greatly overpriced. I paid $400 plus tax (AMZN special) and I still think that is $150 too much. At the price asked, the device should, as a minimum, include FaceID and a lot more memory. For comparison the current base iPad retails for $329, uses a fast A12 CPU from the iPhone X (and the Mini is indeed very fast, using the A15 CPU from the iPhone 13), and seems priced about right. How a device with a smaller display and battery can cost 60% more than its larger sibling is hard to understand.

One positive note is that I have not found the modest memory capacity of 64 GB to be a limiting factor. It’s half of that in my full size iPad (the current base model chintzes yet again, as the memory is just 64gB – what is it with Apple and gouging for memory?), but I really do not need very much for my purposes which include reading, blogging, the occasional stock market chart, email and so on. There is absolutely no purpose in using the camera if you have a modern iPhone.

If there is a consolation it is that mine was “free“ as I bought it with those accumulated Amazon shopping points. I’ll lend it to my son to see if he likes it. If he does, it is his. If not, it’s out of here. Save your money. If you must have an iPad, the base model at $329 is an excellent value by comparison.

Remove ads from Apple News

Too much of a bad thing.

Like any news reader seeking to preserve his sanity, I installed AdBlock on my desktop computer and laptop years ago. At no charge this removes intrusive ads from news feeds, replacing them with a blank space or a grey box.

And it has worked well for years.

But when Apple’s iOS devices added Apple News, there was a handy news consolidator whose content you could curate. Well, whose feeds you could curate as the content, which started with light and bearable advertising a couple of years back, has let greed rear its ugly head. AdBlock did not work on Apple News content. Read a typical Washington Post story on your iPhone or iPad and you will get a blaring ad every two paragraphs of text. I already pay for the subscription and see no reason why it should include unsolicited ads, especially as those increasingly include politician lookalikes to make them doubly irritating. You want to lie to me, steal my money and then pay for the privilege? I don’t think so.

It turns out there’s a simple solution which actually improves on the desktop/AdBlock experience, for the ads are stripped out with no empty spaces testifying to their absence.

It’s called NextDNS and you can download it from the App Store for just a one time charge across any number of iOS devices.

Installation is simple.

After downloading, go to the Smart DNS app and touch Enable on its home page:


Enabling

Then touch the dots at the base of that page to get to the configuration screen, touch ‘Custom Configuration’ and enter this code in the ‘Configuration ID’ field:


Enabling

Now jump to the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and go to Settings->General->VPN, DNS, & Device Management->DNS and touch ‘NextDNS’:


Enabling

You are done. Exit AppleNews, restart it and the ads are gone.

If the custom configuration code does not work generate your own code using the instructions here.

The app is free for the first 300,000 ad removals per month (that’s a lot), and $19.90 annually thereafter.

Who owns the company? Best as I can find out, it’s a Delaware company owned by two Frenchmen. No obvious indication of dirty Russkies trying to infiltrate your system.

Is it perfect? No. The process is somewhat akin to catching a drug addled Russkie athlete cheating in the Olympics. No sooner does detection technology catch up with the latest drugs than the Kremlin finds new and improved ones which defeat detection. The process here is the same. The maker of the app has to maintain a database of offending sites so as to know to block them. So the occasional ad does get through, but it’s still night and day compared to the original with no ad blocking.

The obsoleting of expertise

Denialism rules.

The first time a driver lapped the famed Nürburgring racing circuit in under 7 minutes was in the mid-1970s when Niki Lauda accomplished the task in a Formula One Ferrari. No, you could not buy one at the corner store. Lauda almost died at the ‘ring in 1976 when his car crashed and was consumed, along with Lauda, in flames. Niki survived and added two more championships to his total, but accomplished something far better for the sport. His fiery crash saw to it that henceforth no more Formula One races would be held at the 13 mile circuit, built in the 1920s when tires were slim and drivers were fat. Getting speedy help to an injured driver on a circuit so long was simply not possible.

But the fascination of the circuit refused to go away and, to this day, you can pay up a few Euros and have at it on a nice drive through the beautiful Rhineland mountains.

Niki was driving the old fashioned way, with three pedals and a gearshift. There were maybe two or three other drivers in the world who, given comparable machinery, could match his time. Certainly not you or me.

But Porsche well knows the marketing cachet of the ‘ring, so in 2013 they asked their racing driver Marc Lieb to have a go in a 918 Spyder which you absolutely could buy at the local Porsche dealership, albeit after a wait of a few months while they made it back in Zuffenhausen.


Lieb’s 918

That 918 Spyder only had two pedals – go and stop – and Porsche’s magic Doppelkupplung transmission, a device so complex that for once the German love of complex nouns usually reserved for simple descriptions was entirely justified. We know it as the PDK (Pretty Damned Kwik) and it first saw the (retail) light of day on late 1990s 911s. Today you can even get it on some Honda motorcycles! Anyway, the PDK provided two gearboxes in one casing, one waiting for the upshift, the other for the downshift. As there was no longer any need for transmission fluid to confer the force which advised the direction of the change, along with the attendant delays dictated by the laws of hydraulics, the gearbox shifted right now, faster than any human could shift a traditional manual box, like the one Lauda used. And Lieb delivered in spades, returning a time of 6 minutes and 57 seconds and you can see the whole glorious thing here. What that video does not tell you is that when Lieb tried in a regular stick shift version of the 918 he could not break 7 minutes …. Technology had obsoleted the skill of gear shifting for ever. You may still enjoy shifting, but you will never be as fast as a PDK automatic. One thing remains unchanged. Neither you or I could remotely match Lieb’s lap in that off-the-shelf Porsche, but the technology makes a better driver of us all.

This somewhat lengthy preamble brings us to an interview with famous Leica photographer Ralph Gibson, excerpted below. You know, the Ralph Gibson of such great 1960s works like The Somnambulist and Deus Ex Machina, which brought his own special vision of the world to the printed black and white page. Of course it was black and white. And in a book. What did you expect?

All of a sudden the software that makes everybody in the world a photographer also makes everybody’s photographs look exactly the same. My iPhone shots aren’t any better than yours and yours aren’t any better than the person next to you. There’s a homogeneity that comes with this.

I want to know how this technology, which we will consider to be a formal construct, impacts what I’m able to say in my photographs, which is the art that’s discussed in terms of form and content. Let’s say the form is digital imagery. How does this speak differently than analog film, silver gelatin? There is a difference, and it has to do with the fact that the image is somewhat compressed, in terms of its perspective. The laws of perspective were invented in the Renaissance. Prior to that time, painting was entirely two dimensional. That particular illusion of space, from the picture plane back, as we’ve grown accustomed to it in film, is foreshortened on the digital sensor.

What has happened to poor old Ralph, in all this denialism, is that his gear (shifting) skills have been obsoleted and, man, does he rue that loss. The premium his ability confers to manually focus, expose just so and brew the developer as he had learned over decades – all of these have become irrelevant. Stated differently, the iPhone is Gibson’s PDK. Not for one moment can he tell an iPhone picture from his Leica film snaps, although there will be hints. The cell phone version will be sharper, better exposed and come with lots of data missing in his film version. And it can be sent around the world in a matter of seconds, not days or weeks later in some stuffy old book decorating a coffee table.

Film cameras, stick shifts. So much technological detritus. Technology makes a better photographer of us all.