The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, June 12, 2006

Monday, June 12, 2006

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Monday, June 12, 2006
started 6/12/2006; 12:15:58 PM - last post 6/14/2006; 12:14:25 AM

Doc Searls - Monday, June 12, 2006

6/12/2006; 4:15:58 PM (reads: 5502, responses: 5)

Overseen

Ben Hammersley, with his new Camera (the large very top-of-the-line Canon) shoots me with my new Canon 30D, at Reboot8.

By the way, I'm not the only photog who's into the 30D.

Gilder redux

George Gilder, from an interview with Michael Krasny on KQED's Forum in 1994:

"We have an obsolete mass media. The mass media, with their centralized systems, broadcasting to millions of people, necessarily seek the lowest common denominator: our morbid fears and anxieties. So, almost by force of gravity, broadcast technology leads to an ever more immoral culture. A computer culture will supplant this broadcast culure.

"Computer culture resembles less broadcast culture than book culture. The book business is drastically different than the video business. There are 55,000 trade books published every year in the U.S., and half of those, by the way, are religious books.

"The difference is that books are narrowcast. They respond to primary interests rather than lowest common denominators. The book business has something for everybody. Narrowcasting is much more effective. This is why video in the future will resemble the book business, rather than the current broadcast model.

"TV is in a predicament where it takes more and more advertising to support less and less content of less and less substance. And I think we will escape that predicament with computer technology, which is becoming the cheapest technology in the world. It is computers' cheapness that will allow them to blow away the TV business in coming years."

-- Forum, KQED, 1994

Here's George today on Net Neutrality:

What matters is not the neutrality but the net. There won't be any broadband net if no one can make money investing in it. Only if the net is narrow will allocation be needed. So ironically net neutrality laws are the most likely current cause of an un-neutral net.

Not sure I agree with that, as written; but I've always liked George's respect for the good work only business can do. Meanhwhile, for a great sum-up on Net Neutrality, here's Adriana.

Countdown to zero

Geoff Moore lists his Top Ten Truths Abouth the Digital Ecosystem. In reverse order.

Here's my list from 1995, and a shorter version of the same pile of thoughts from 1992.

Let's hope so

Bill Kinon, writing from Nairobi:

In short order, the $100 Laptop will debut in the developing world - running on the aforementioned free operating system, Linux. WiMaxx networks will blanket this world, just as cell networks now blanket Kenya and other parts of Africa. (Almost everyone I run across in Kenya has a cell phone - including people who live in Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa.) The developing world will be connected at a level unimaginable two years ago. Millions of new voices will join the conversation. Issues and problems will be revealed, discussed and solved in those very conversations.

Governments will fall, corruption be revealed, new ideas explode and lives be radically changed as the Generous Web weaves its magic throughout the planet.

Not sure about the Wimax part. But I'm with Bill when he says,

I'm not Pollyanna-ish enough to believe that the Generous Web will solve all the problems of the planet. But it does have the potential to solve many.

Bonus link.

PodTech gets Scobleized

Dave Burke: Am I going to re-subscribe to PodTech with the addition of Scoble? Uh...yeah.

discuss

Andrew Leyden - Next time we meet

6/12/2006; 6:38:20 PM (reads: 795, responses: 1)

Doc,

Next time we meet up, I'm going to bring my Canon EOS A2-E 35mm film camera and I think we are going to shoot the same things from the same view. I'm really interested in getting a side by side of a pretty good 35mm and your sexy new digital.

discuss

Doc Searls - Re: Next time we meet

6/12/2006; 7:53:29 PM (reads: 910, responses: 0)

I've alresdy done comparisons with my pretty-good Minolta film setup, which served me well for many years. (After the Nikon, and then the Pentax, setups were stolen.)

I came late to digital photography -- I only bought the 2002-vintage Nikon Coolpix 5700 after it was discontinued and discounted in April 2004 -- because I didn't see any results that I thought competed with film photography.

I still think the best film still beats all but the best digital.

But what I've saved so far, in film and printing expenses, alone makes the difference worth it.

Also the fact that I can post immediately on Flickr, 23hq, Bubbleshare, BuzzNet or wherever.

Your Canon rocks, by the way. If you have the time and the money, think about getting one of the best of the new Canon digitals. I'd consider the 20D or the 30D the bottom of that range. Your lenses should work.

discuss

Greg Janée - airplane window technique?

6/13/2006; 10:53:03 PM (reads: 790, responses: 2)

I've been enjoying your aerial pix. Do you use any particular technique for shooting through airplane windows? My photos never come out as nice as yours... they're always shot through a scratchy window and have a bluish tinge that can be partially, but not completely, removed by Photoshop.

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Doc Searls - Re: airplane window technique?

6/14/2006; 12:35:25 AM (reads: 923, responses: 1)

First, get a seat on the shady side of the plane. Few airplane windows, even for pilots, are clear. They're often dirty, scratched, distorted, pitted, infiltrated by water that turns to frost at altitude... It's a big help not to have the sun shine on all that.

Second, shoot a lot of telephoto, or make sure that you're focusing beyond the window itself. If the window has stuff on it, a digital camera with autofocus (which they all have) will sometimes focus on the window rather than the scenery.

Third, it helps to have a camera with a flip-out viewer in the back, so you can shoot at angles that you can't see while belted in your seat. This set of shots was taken from a back seat in a 777 that had no window. I angled the camera to take shots out of a window partially obscured by the seat in front of me, when it wasn't obscured when the passenger there reclined. That's why most of the shots in that series were taken while ascending or descending. That's when the flight attendants tell you to put your seat back forward. I actually didn't see most of the scenes in that series, except through the angled viewer in the back of the camera. This is a great drawback of my new Canon 30D. I *have* to look through the viewfinder. Once my old Nikon is fixed, I think I'll go back to using that instead for this kind of work.

Fourth, most pictures taken from altitude will be a bit hazy. You can reduce much of that in Photoshop under Image/Adjustments/Levels. Move the sliders that adjust the white, black and gray points of the photo. This often works much better than adjusting brightness/contrast, color saturation or color balance. Once a veteran showed me how it was done, it was like a veil was lifted from my eyes. I still have a lot to learn, but that was one excellent lesson. Oh, and PhotoShop isn't the only tool that does this. The Gimp does it too. So does much of the photo software that comes with cameras these days. iView Mediapro too.

This series of shots, almost all the way from Santa Barbara to Denver, were looking down from 40,000 feet through very hazy air. Colors were so muted that I adjusted the color levels then converted the shots to black and white. This is kind of a last resort, but sometimes the results are very effective.

Hope that helps.

discuss

Greg Janée - Re: airplane window technique?

6/14/2006; 4:14:25 AM (reads: 1033, responses: 0)

Wow, thanks! That's a lot of good advice.

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