1/160 @ f/2

Photography

Aldrin radios for exposure.

Here’s a fascinating piece from Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, showing the conversation right before Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. In the exchange, Buzz Aldrin asks Mission Control for the right exposure to catch the moment.

The “sequence camera” referred to is not one of the Hasselblad 500ELs used for the high quality images on the lunar surface. The lenses used on the 500EL were limited to f/2.8 (the standard 80mm Zeiss Planar) and f/4 (the 150mm Zeiss Sonnar). This was all on July 21, 1969, not that long ago. Imagine asking someone for exposure settings today!

Click the picture for the article.

Click the picture.

By the way, it figures they would give the photography duties to the nerdy one. Aldrin turned down a full scholarship offer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

You can read about the moon Hasselblads here. And yes, you can still fit a digital back to one of those bodies and bang away today without the inconvenience of film.

Digital back for Buzz Aldrin’s camera.

You would, however, do far better with a Canon 5D/II or Nikon D700 at a fraction of the cost.

iTunes U

Photography

A great front end.

iTunes U, which makes sound and video lectures avalable at no charge, had been available through iTunes on laptops and desktops for many years on both Macs and Windows PCs. Lost in the announcement and hype surrounding iBooks Author earlier in the week was the release of an iOS version of iTunes U which brings content to mobile devices.

The universities found here include the Ivy League (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, and Cornell and, yes, I checked with my ten year old that I got the list right), MIT, Oxbridge and many other US and UK establishments. Here’s the first page from searching on ‘Photography’:

The app is free. So is the content. Isn’t that wonderful? K-12 content is also growing which would trouble me mightily were I an US Teachers’ Union official. Now children can get private school quality at public school prices.

I’m loading up on this series:

If you have an AppleTV you can use mirroring to send output to your TV or powered speakers where the ATV is connected.

Kate O’Briens

Dining

An Irish pub.

579 Howard Street, SF.

Kate O’Briens is your basic Irish boozer, located opposite the massive TransBay construction project, the latter a great source of photographic inspiration. There’s seating outside, but it was a freezing day when I visited, hence the deserted look.

It’s dark and quiet inside, a couple of TVs playing English Premier League soccer games:

Regulars enjoy a pint.

You aren’t going to come here for gourmet fare, but I left happily sated after the meat loaf special and a glass of draft Smithwicks (the ‘w’ is silent, if you want to get it right).

Tuesday special – meat loaf.

Sorry about the blur – it’s dark inside and I forgot to switch the G3 to 1600 ISO.

$17 was the tab. Suits are not welcome here, it’s strictly a jeans place for working men. With the Transbay construction likely lasting another decade, the pub will be doing good business for a while yet.