I’ve finally discovered the joy of printing digital photos. It’s now 7 months into my stay in Seattle, yet sometimes my apartment still feels like a hotel, not personalized to the extent that I’d like. Running on some recommendations, I tried out Costco printing, with a few 12×18″ prints. They turned out pretty darned good – one had a nasty in blotch on it, but a quick call netted a new print, and all I had to do was swap the out the misprint.

Soon my walls will be filled. It’s a great incentive to finally post-process the tens of gigabytes of RAW photos sitting on my hard drives.

Nikon launched the D7000 this evening. It’s looking mighty fine. Here are some of the standout features for me, which have me salivating:

• Mag alloy chassis
• AF fine tune
• Meters with non-CPU lenses(!!!)
• 1/8000s shutter
• Real mirror lock-up
• 39-point AF
• 100% viewfinder(!!!)

I await proper reviews with impatience.

I came across Richard Franiec’s S90 grip over at DPReview, where the comments were enthusiastic. I placed an order and waited.

Richard was on vacation around the time I ordered, so I didn’t get the grip until a short while ago. Using 3M heavy bond adhesive, the grip attaches with great solidity. It feels like it’s welded, not adhered, to the camera.

The grip looks great, feels great, and vastly improves handling. It’s made out of aluminum and is very well machined. It doesn’t quite match the slick exterior of the S90, and is instead more textured to impart additional grip. Aside from making the camera feel steady in a single hand, it also forces the natural hand position over, such that the index finger now lies directly over the shutter release. Bravo!

It simply looks professionally made. Richard has made custom accessories for a host of cameras and this is just another in the line of great additions to already great photographic tools. With Lightroom 3 beta 2 doing spectacular things for image quality (mainly noise reduction), I’m really excited to get out there with this camera. After some post-processing tests with LR3b2, I feel comfortable with up to ISO800 on the S90, but I’ll leave the results of that test for a bit later.

I used to have a dilemma. I typically shoot RAW with my Nikon D90 and process them with Capture NX2. I much prefer the workflow and interface provided by Lightroom, but couldn’t quite get the same color and tone I got from Capture NX2. I knew that Lightroom didn’t have access to all the proprietary camera data that Nikon can put into NX2, but Lightroom always seemed to do something weird with the exposure of the RAWs I took, seemingly dropping the brightness or exposure on them. I would then need to tweak the hell out of the develop settings (boosting exposure, for example) to get it anywhere close to the Capture NX2 starting point. It was a pain. Even the camera Nikon camera profiles I downloaded from Adobe didn’t help matters.

I had become content, settling with Capture NX2, but recent glowing reviews of Lightroom 3 beta piqued my interest once more. More digging on the issue led me to download some Nikon color presets, which didn’t help, and one tidbit on Capture NX2′s handling of Active D-Lighting (fancy name for dynamic range expansion through in-camera processing). Apparently the feature works by underexposing the shot, then gaining up the photo in select areas to produce the effect of increased dynamic range. Capture NX2 reads the ADL setting and previews the RAW image with the adjustment. However, Lightroom, not knowing anything about Nikon’s proprietary ADL algorithms, simply spits out the RAW sensor data, resulting in the sometimes grossly underexposed image. Take a look:

On the left I’ve switched off ADL in Capture NX2 and you see the RAW sensor data. Meanwhile, on the right, Capture NX2 has done its wizardry and applied ADL – High. Lightroom will display the image on the left, even though the camera will show you something akin to the right in its preview display.

I fault myself for not turning off ADL in the first place when shooting RAW. Now that I know what’s causing Lightroom’s ‘apparent underexposure’ problem with Nikon RAWs, I can switch my workflow over. Hope that helps people out there who were just as confused as I was. I went through a ton of unsolved trouble-shooting posts during my search.

I took advantage of the excellent weather on Friday to so some walking at Discovery Park. I nearly stranded myself at the top of an extremely muddy climb, but managed to make my way down without getting into too big of a mess. It had been a week since I’ve seen the sun, and I just had to get outdoors. I walked around 6 miles, seeings views of the Cascades and then Mount Rainier near sunset, before retiring for dinner and a movie with some friends at Pacific Place in downtown Seattle. Little did I know there were Christmas festivities happening; parking was a pain, but I was filled with happy thoughts as I walked among the throngs of people listening to carolers.

The rest of the time was spent getting materials ready for graduate school applications. With no firm offer from Microsoft yet, I’m throwing out a safety net and applying for HCI programs at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Washington and University of Toronto. It would be a privilege to study at any of these schools; it could hardly be considered a backup. The applications are taking a heck of a long time. I don’t want to half-ass anything.

I finally got a chance to stretch a recently purchased Voigtlander 58mm f/1.4 out. Late Wednesday, I went with a coworker to The Commons at Microsoft and did some abstract photography indoors. I took patterns as my subject and perused the cafeterias. I’m getting the hang of manual focusing. It helps that the Voigt has a fantastic focus ring. Buttery smooth, if you will.

There are lots of interesting drinks at The Commons cafeterias. Above are some type of banana drink.

The Voigtlander has pretty nice bokeh and sharpness, but does tend to show a lot of CA around highlights. Just look at the coconut oil nozzle. Yuck.

Oh, this was the last time I saw the sun before my walk through Discovery Park – November 22. I was driving back towards Seattle when the sun suddenly starting bursting through the clouds near sunset. I made my way to the waterfront and caught sunset near the piers.

Next weekend, I’m escaping to warm, sunny (hopefully) California to visit a friend. I’m really looking forward to it.

I feel like I should start wrapping up my projects before my last week here; leaving it that late is always a bit of a setup for disaster. Things never quite go as one plans, and if no explicit schedule is set up for these final weeks, deadlines will inevitably drag. And in Program Management lingo, schedules provide a nice forcing function.

I went to the 2010 Seattle Auto Show on Sunday, and ogled some sweet, sweet driving machines. I sat in vehicles I had no business being in at my age and got up close and personal with the Tesla Roadster’s electric engine. There were the typical Toyotas, Fords, Lexus (Lexii?), Acuras, Mercedes, BMWs, GMs, and Hondas. But then there were the exotics: Fisker, Tesla, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, Lotus, Maserati, Lambo, and Ferrari. Interestingly enough, one of the cars that garnered the most attention was a Hyundai! The Equus was set on a rotating pedestal, doors open, showing the crazy interior, LED headlamps, adaptive cruise control, rear adjustable massage seats, a complete entertainment system, garish chrome grill, and no Hyundai badge – and all at a price of less than $50k when it comes to the United States next year, according to the lady giving the spiel.

No, that’s not the Equus – that’s the Ferrari F430

Back on the topic of work and career, my order for The Humane Interface and Don’t Make Me Think arrived from Amazon today. My passion lies in user experience and design, so I thought it was about time I read some of the books in the field. I attended a talk by a Microsoft PM last week on effective user interface design, which referenced these two books. I chatted with the speaker afterward, and she gave glowing reviews on the books so I went home and put in an order.

28mm – f/2.0
35mm – f/2.5
50mm – f/3.2
85mm – f/4.5
105mm – f/4.9

Ramps up pretty quick.