Category Archives: Photographs

Apple scoop!

Photographs

You read it here first.

I’m pleased to be the first to bring readers this global scoop with my spy photograph of Apple’s new product, snapped on San Francisco’s Market Street yesterday. This will be announced, along with iPad3, in Q1/2012.

The Apple Shoeshine stand. G3, kit lens @20mm.

I have it from two reliable sources that Sir Jony Ive has said it still needs a bit of work, but remains confident that the final version will be available for sale in April. As you can see, the prototype has taken quite a beating, having been in development for over a decade. It will have the unique distinction of being the first Apple product to be made in America, using American labor, in a generation.

Rumors of a competing Microsoft version abound, but the last three prototypes collapsed, significantly delaying time to market. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, who insisted on personally testing what was intended to be the final version, is recovering well from his injuries. While still in a coma, and given to frequently screaming “Developers!, Developers!, Developers!“, his vital signs seem fine. We wish him well.

No details on pricing of the Apple version yet, but expect little change from $10,000, which will make it competitive with the much missed Apple Lisa.

A long day

Architecture, Photographs

Reaching out.

Click any picture for the slide show.

Of the three lenses I own for my Panasonic G3, the kit zoom (28-90mm FFE) gets most use. The wide Olympus (18-36mm FFE) zoom is a distant second and the third, the Panny long (90-400mm FFE) zoom mostly gathers dust.

I have a strong belief in not owning things I do not use, so the other day I took the long zoom to San Francisco with the sole aim of taking ‘long’ pictures, along with the resolution that if the day was a failure, the lens would be sold. For me anything over 35mm FFE is ‘long’ so when using a 90-400mm lens I really need to think differently. There’s no thought of switching between the long lens and the other two; the visualization process is so different that my tired brain cannot cope with yet another set of variables.

So I set about my task by thinking and seeing ‘long’, and a few good things cropped up on a late afternoon with light to die for. Focal lengths shown are Full Frame Equivalents (FFE).

Guess I’ll be keeping that Panasonic 45-200mm lens for a while longer. Funnily enough, on returning home I found that I had accidentally switched the OIS anti-shake button to ‘Off’ but for the most part lucked out. At 400mm FFE, handholding without OIS becomes something of a challenge. On a related note, the G3’s sensor, some two stops finer grained than the one in my earlier G1, allows the use of faster ISO settings – and shorter shutter speeds – without degrading quality, a significant advantage with longer lenses. 800 ISO is just fine, and 1600 ISO works well at a pinch, both allowing high quality 18″ x 24″ prints to be made.

The Caltrain terminus

Photographs

Guaranteed results, every time.

Located at Fourth and Brannan in south east San Francisco, the Caltrain terminus is my destination when taking weekly trips to the city. At a modest cost for the round trip from the Peninsula, including lunch and a revitalized psyche, that’s a whole lot less than visiting a shrink and, unlike that futile exercise, my trip invariable culminates in great memories, food and snaps. And as I take my push bike along, I get fit in the process of riding around the city on the Bay.

Further, I can work at my day job on the trip thanks to the hotspot on the iPhone which gives me roaming wifi and the iPad which gives me a screen I can actually make out. Some of my best investment ideas have originated on such journeys, aided by the good mood that the prospect of street snapping creates and the gentle rocking of the train, which is how man was meant to travel.

And, truth be told, I almost never fail to start the visit off on a high note, as the assembled greeters in the terminus building are a never ending source of wonderful, often moving, images.

Here are some recent ones.