Category Archives: Photography

Rick Stein’s Secret France

Cooking, Photographs

Food and photography.

For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.



Click the image to go to Amazon US.

Rick Stein started life as a British DJ then migrated to working in a kitchen. One thing led to another and now he has popular restaurants in Cornwall and Australia. His emphasis is on fish and seafood and relatively simple preparation. He travels the world discovering new cuisines which are profiled in popular BBC series. Get a UK server address and you can enjoy these here because, goodness knows, the BBC’s non-existent marketing acumen prevents US residents from watching these shows on their iPlayer app.

While Rick has put in strenuous duty in hell holes in Asia, Latin America and other disease pits where you spend more time sitting on the porcelain than eating from it, his latest book and TV series, named ‘Rick Stein’s Secret France’ shows that the best cuisine in the world is not very far from his native Cornwall. It is, of course, in France. In this series he tries to answer whether French cooking has gone downhill in a world obsessed with fast food ‘culture’ and Facebook.

He concludes, rightly, that the only cuisine a civilized person should consume is French and that the French remain the best cooks. Unlike the Italians who have yet to discover it, the French cook in butter, not oil, the way nature intended. And the variety of French fish, seafood, meats, cheeses, pastries and wines is all any aspiring gourmand needs in a lifetime of quality eating.

The BBC has published a book of recipes from his French sojourn which, like his earlier one, is profusely and beautifully illustrated not only with images of the dishes he prepares but also of the places he visits. Unlike the Mexican tome, replete with recipes for corn and crap (is there worse food on earth than Mexican, accompanied by equally bad music?), the French one is delicious in every regard.


Regular foodie hangout in Burgundy.


Seafood delights in Clermont-Ferrand.

There is a great deal to like here. Indeed, even if your preferred dining location is the local McDonald’s cancer factory, you will enjoy the photography in this fine book.

Vive La France!


A typical recipe which I made yesterday. Delicious.

The BenQ PD3200Q 32 inch monitor

Displays, Photography

Bringing in the New Year.



The 32″ BenQ monitor running Lightroom. Strong daylight over my shoulder does not distract.

My Apple 30″ Cinema Display was bought ‘pre-owned’ 5 years ago and saw daily use.

Elegantly housed and with a minimum of controls, it was easily calibrated, did not drift over time and was a joy to use. The 16:10 aspect ratio was squarer than the more common 16:9 and worked well with my applications and needs.

It failed at Christmas and was over a decade old. Originally selling for $3,300 I had paid just $400 for mine and that’s what its replacement, the BenQ PD3200Q cost new from Amazon. It went into service yesterday and comes with a 3 year parts, backlight and labor warranty. There are cheaper displays in the 32″ size range but BenQ has a tradition of catering to photographers and the display comes pre-calibrated, with the calibration chart included, no less:



Included calibration chart for my 32″ BenQ monitor.

Sadly, the aspect ratio is 16:9, and 16:10 no longer seems to exist. The stand adds a counterbalanced height adjuster to the tilt function, the latter shared with the old Apple Cinema Display.

Out of the box I found the Brightness setting of 72 too bright and turned it down using the easy to use touch buttons to 56. These buttons are located on the bottom right of the bezel and are only lit when being adjusted. To their right is an illuminated off-white on-off indicator which turns orange when the display is in sleep mode. The display’s power supply is integrated; there is no separate power supply transformer.

I measured illumination uniformity across the screen – extreme edge, center edge, center. There was no noticeable difference.

While this is a 2560 x 1440 display, I much prefer the larger font setting, thus:



Scale setting for the monitor.

This is yet another reason not to spend money on a 4K primary display, where the font size is ridiculously small.

There is a plethora of outlets and pass-throughs sprinkled along the side, rear and underside of the panel. The near useless ‘instruction sheet’ – one of those ‘no words’ things beloved of the Germans and now the Japanese – shows 2 USB3 power-in sockets, 4 USB3 power-outs, line-in and line-out (for external speakers), a Hockey Puck connector and four video outputs – DP, HDMI, DVI and mini DP. The DP cord provided is terminated with a mini DP connector, but I prefer the more robust DP to DP locking connectors and spent an additional $7 at Amazon for one. HDMI and DVI cables are also provided, so there is no lack of video connectivity. There’s an instruction manual on a provided CD (CD? Really?) but I did not bother looking at it.

The Hockey Puck is an exercise in redundancy:



The Hockey Puck.

The purpose is to activate and use the on screen display menus to adjust the monitor. As this is done once in a blue moon, and is easily accomplished using the touch panel referenced earlier, this is just so much useless clutter on your desktop, serving no useful purpose.

How is the color balance and fidelity? Perfect out of the box. This excellent performance out of the box is reason alone to pay a little more for this display. There is no light leakage and the construction quality, fit and finish are excellent. The display surface is semi-matte and does not suffer from specular reflections.

Interestingly, the side panel also has an SDHC socket for your camera’s storage card. As my only camera is now the iPhone 11 Pro, which I connect to the Mac Pro using a Lightning cable, this adds no useful function for me but will be appreciated by many still using old technology.

So what’s not to like? Like every pitch black device in the home – hi-fi gear, TVs, toasters and so on – it’s butt ugly. The stand is an exercise in industrial competence and has all the charm and warmth of one of Brunel’s inventions from the Industrial Age. The screen will rotate through 90 degrees and as it’s already huge at 32″ diagonally, that’s just plain dumb, and will place lots of strain on your connecting cables. There are built in speakers but even modest external ones (I use old Logitechs) will be better.

I drive the display using an Nvidia GTX980 video card in my 2010 Mac Pro. I checked it with the ancient Nvidia GT120 using a mini DP connector and it works fine, though the video rendering can be slow with this prehistoric piece of hardware.

Gaming use? Search me and look elsewhere. This site is for grown-ups, not children.

For photographers needing a traditional display which comes properly calibrated, and who do not want the small fonts that 4K delivers, the 32″ BenQ PD3200Q is recommended.



Did I mention it’s ugly? The QR attachment for the stand conceals standard VESA wall mounting threads.

A revolutionary year in hardware and software

Photography

Big gear is dead.



First there were fragile, glass Daguerrotypes and messy wet collodion plates. Then along came inflammable and unstable nitrate cellulose base coated with light sensitive chemistry. And finally modern film made its appearance, offering stability and not suitable for use as a fuse in a Molotov cocktail. Kodachrome appeared about that time and after a few tries offered the best combination of fine grain, stability and exceptional color rendering, though the original 12 ASA speed was nothing to write home about.

So Kodak proceeded to invent digital imaging and, being Kodak, decided it would never rival film and went bankrupt as a result. Kodak’s management made the captain of the Titanic look like a winner and even today’s Boeing management looks competent by comparison. A huge technology gain was thrown away and with it tens of thousands of US jobs in Rochester, a company town if there ever was one.

The lead in digital imaging was taken by Sony with its ever better sensors and, really, neither Nikon or Canon could keep up. And while Sony has recently made a bunch of competent – if surpassingly ugly – mirrorless digital cameras, they saw the writing on the wall and devoted their sensor design brains to the next new thing, the cell phone. They dominate the sector today. It’s fitting that one of the few companies whose design chops were admired by Steve Jobs remains a key partner of today’s Apple, now the world’s largest public company.

Steve Jobs and Apple did not invent the cell phone any more than they invented the pocket music player or the desktop computer. Rather, they took what was out there, saw how awful the ergonomics were and designed these devices to appeal to everyman. The results were the iPhone, the iPod and the iMac, the ‘i’ denoting Steve’s interim CEO status after returning to the company he had founded and which had fired him a few years earlier. His design insights remained undimmed but during his absence he learned how to manage a team of hardware and software engineers, his charisma and communication skills attracting the best of the best. Good thing he shucked the ‘interim’ label.

And the iPhone became the transformative electronic device of our time. Everyone wants an iPhone and those poor souls struggling with Android devices offered by the serial thieves at Google and Samsung do so because their time is worth as little as their easily stolen data and, well, they just don’t get it.

I have had two transformative iPhone experiences – in 2007 when I bought iPhone 1 on the day it became available, and this year when I bought the iPhone 11 Pro which will change the photography hardware landscape permanently. All of the big makers will be gone in a few years. The iPhone’s camera is an order of magnitude better, doing things the clumsy SLR offerings can only dream of. The remaining reasons to buy clunky gear are that you need high definition from really long lenses – a couple of guys at Nat Geo – and because showing up at the Vogue studios with an iPhone to snap today’s supermodel just does not earn machismo points. Look at Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and you will see how that will change. The official snapper on the moon space station is using a camera scarcely larger than the iPhone to document the plotting of the day. Next generation’s David Baileys will too.

Sure some cranks will stick with DSLRs, just as others adhere to film and LPs, tediously proclaiming their purported superiority. But that’s not meaningful market share by some 5 orders of magnitude. As for my Nikons and Panasonics, they have all been sold along with the raft of lenses and attachments I was increasingly reluctant to lug about. They will shortly be nothing more than paperweights.

Surveying the pace of change in the iPhone’s capabilities over its first 12 years is breathtaking. Just think what the next 12 years will bring. Meanwhile, you can read about my journey of discovery of the best picture making device on the planet here.

Amos Chapple on the iPhone 11 Pro

iPhone, Photographers

The virtue of carelessness.

A few days ago I wrote this to a photographer friend:




The virtue of carelessness.

Not a couple of days later an excellent pictorial by New Zealand photographer Amos Chapple from the cultural center of the world, Murmansk in Russkieland, says this:




Chapple on the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera.

To see Chapple’s outstanding images and share in his iPhone 11 experience, click the image below.




Russkies discuss invasion plans. Click the image for details.

It bears repeating that the quality of the Android competition is only relevant to your choice if your data either have no value or you enjoy having your device hacked by Ivan. Want security? Stick with iOS.

As regards the author’s complaint of Night Mode not always working with the telephoto lens, it actually never works with that optic. It’s currently restricted to the standard and wide lenses.

Zojirushi NP-GBC05 Induction Heating System Rice Cooker

Cooking

Properly cooked rice. Finally.

This is one of an occasional series on cooking devices which make a difference. For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.

Purchase considerations:

I haven’t been eating that much rice this past decade, a period which, not coincidentally, coincides with my outlay of $10 on a rice cooker from Walmart. Named the Aroma it did nothing so much as stink. The outside would get dangerously hot – I’m talking burns if you touch it – and it was criminally incompetent in discharging its appointed task, that of making fluffy, nutritious rice. Just the thing, in other words, for the Walmart shopper and boy, did I ever get what I deserved?

So after every use I would swear at it lustily, promising myself to never trouble it again. Our relationship finally came to an end when the last batch of rice this execrable excrescence ever produced was burned on the bottom and raw on the top. Accompanied by a healthy and most satisfying kick, it ended up in the recycle bin.

After much research one manufacturer’s name kept cropping up, accompanied by praise as often as not. Zojirushi. Now I’m too old and wise to believe anything I read in Amazon reviews, but I do like to scan the one star ones as it’s probably unlikely anyone is actually paid to write those. Only 4% of ‘reviewers’ (chaps with a third grade command of the English tongue, without an analytical thought in their make-up) trashed the Zojirushi and their reasons were either that the non-stick coating flaked (yes, this will happen if you place the container in the dishwasher with its extremely high drying temperatures – duh!) or that the device failed after a relatively short period of use. Goodness, how hard is it to give the non-stick surface a rinse and a swipe with a soft sponge?




Zojirushi NP-GBC05 Induction Heating System Rice Cooker and Warmer, 0.54 Litre capacity.
The bright chromed lid opening button is a fingerprint magnet. Yes, it’s Made in Japan.

Accordingly, when I bought mine from Amazon I splashed out an additional $40 on a 4 year warranty which includes shipping costs both ways. And while an additional $40 is a lot, the machine alone ran me $180 + tax and I see it is now up to $225. That’s an awful lot of money for a rice maker, but then $10 for the Walmart stinker was a lot considering it never worked properly. Plus I had all the proceeds left over after selling all my MFT gear and buying the iPhone 11 Pro. And it was Christmas.

Use:

How is it to use? The machine has a 24 hour clock and can be set so that the rice is ready at a stated time. A batch of rice – whether 1/2 cup for one person or 3 cups for six (not 2 as engraved on the container) – takes 50 minutes to cook. Owing to the use of induction coils which surround the removable, non-stick container, heating is even throughout the rice and even on a first try the result was near perfect. I use common or garden Mahatma long grain white rice (newly bought after the old lot moldered in a container for years) and made the mistake of washing the rice before cooking. I used the clear 6.1 oz. container provided. The result was too mushy. So on a second try I did not wash the rice (in fact the rice packet says not to wash before cooking) and slightly cut the water. I used the green 5.8 oz. container (a seemingly minor difference, but these Japanese chaps power down a lot of the stuff while cranking out Nikons, so I trust their instructions) and slightly under-filled the container with water, thus:




Zojirushi water level for two cups of rice, enough for four people.

I went for the ‘sweet rice’ level, which is just a tad below the regular rice one. The result has been perfect the last three times, which means we have already eaten more rice in a week than in the past year. Thank you, Walmart. Incidentally, a Zojirushi ‘cup’, measured using their provided containers, is about 3/4 of a standard American cup. The Japanese, sumo wrestlers apart, are a small people ….

There are also settings for porridge (yecch!) and brown rice, the latter with an optional three hour presoak to allegedly improve release of chemicals which will double your fertility and put 35 points on your IQ. Uh huh! The special offer on the Brooklyn Bridge arrives after you mail in the warranty card.

The use instructions are written in perfect English (they must have used a Japanese to do the translation) and are clear and unambiguous.

Safety? Except for the small area on top, marked with two ‘C’ characters’ denoting the steam vent, you can cradle the device in your hands all day long, for it is properly insulated. And speaking of Nikons, the quality is comparable to that of those (mostly) well made prosumer cameras. Meaning it’s really good. The parts fit properly and the seams are even, just like on a Toyota. Not a whole lot seems to be going on during the cooking cycle except for the release of a few wisps of steam towards conclusion. There’s a folding carrying handle and if the 3 cup capacity is too low, Zojirushi will be happy to take more of your money for a larger one. Their site is here. Rice readiness is indicated by a sweet little melody which can be changed to beeps or to silence. Amazingly some Amazon reviewers complain the default melody cannot be turned off – these are the ones with 3rd grade reading skills.

The device will keep your rice warm for over 12 hours, but you are instructed to fluff it up after the conclusion of the cooking cycle, using the provided spatula.

Stupid design error:

So all is sweetness and light, and your wallet is lighter, too. Great rice every time, after a lengthy cooking cycle, but you simply program the timer to be ready at mealtime and load up the rice and water well in advance. No big deal.

But it wouldn’t do to make a perfect product and Zojirushi well and truly soils the sheets with its battery installation. The machine includes a small battery whose purpose, best as I can tell, is to keep the 24 hour clock running when it’s unplugged and to retain programming instructions for the readiness time. Zojirushi has yet to discover the EPROM, patented almost a half century ago. That battery is soldered to the circuit board, which means that you have to ship it back should the battery fail and you cannot live without retained programming instructions. (If you want to avoid programming, simply load her up and press the big yellow ‘Cooking’ button and your rice is ready in 50 minutes). So if you want to avoid paying for the shipping and repair costs because some twit decided to solder the battery in place, buy the warranty, as I did. You can bet that the round shipping trip plus repair costs will exceed $200 so the risk/reward on the cost of the warranty probably solves.

I rather suspect that the battery issue goes away if you keep the machine connected to the mains at all times, but I prefer to store it in the pantry in the interest of maximizing available countertop space.

Conclusion:

I cannot speak to longevity, yet, but the induction model Zojirushi makes perfect rice every time and has one idiotic design error, a memory battery soldered to the circuit board. A determined user would drill the casing and install an external battery holder, soldered into that circuit board. I can see doing that when the warranty expires and the battery dies the day after. Is it worth over $250 with warranty cost? How much rice do you eat and how much do you have left over after selling your antediluvian photo gear and buying the iPhone 11 Pro?