Filed under: CGIA, Random Jibber Jabber | Tags: Alex Roman, architecture, CGI, design, film, photography, Realistic, The 3rd and the 7th, The Third and the Seventh
If you like photography, design, film, or architecture. You owe it to yourself to watch this short movie. Alex Roman is pure genius. The film is entirely CGI save for a few elements like birds and people, but everything is so well integrated and processed so thoroughly it’s easy to forget that it’s all fake. Obviously a few elements have to be CGI, like the floating water and books, but it blew my mind when I found out that everything was fake. I usually pick up on that sort of thing. It took a few viewings after that to pick out the clues that it was fake. They’re subtle, but they’re there.
The Third and the Seventh‘s site reveals more on this though process, and I highly recommend visitting it. To view the movie, click the image below. It’s best viewed in full screen HD. Anything less is a disservice to Roman’s work. 
Filed under: Random Jibber Jabber
One of my classes (a digital photography course) is requiring me to “start out” in film. Until now all of my photography experience has been with my Nikon D90. The camera is so automatic it can even pick your subject for you if you let it. Now, I’ve tried manual settings before, and I know what each function does, BUT I have no idea how to combine these to make a half-decent photo. Switching to an all manual film SLR is a huge jump. Suddenly I have to tell the camera everything rather than it tell me. The SLR I’m working with for this is a Ricoh KR-5, and it has a HUGE advantage over my D90: A split prism focusing screen.
Manual focus with most DSLRs is a HUGE pain. The viewfinders are small and get fairly dim on smaller apertures. What may look in focus on the viewfinder is often ever so slightly off. That’s not the case with the Ricoh. It’s viewfinder is large, bright, and the split prism at the center makes it dead easy to focus. Whatever you want in focus just lines up in the center, as demonstrated below with the battery being in focus, and the house behind it not. You can tell because the battery looks normal, but the house looks shifted over slightly at the seam.
I’ve looked into getting one for my D90, but it seems the ones available have trouble metering on apertures smaller than 5.6. That’s unfortunate as while I do have a couple of fast lenses, my kit lens is the one I use most and it’s widest is 3.5-5.6 in it’s 18-105 range. I realize there are likely very few readers at this point, but if any of you have any ideas or know of a better split prism focusing screen for a D90, your input will be much appreciated.
Filed under: Random Jibber Jabber | Tags: content, fascinating, first, intro, introduction, post, promise, underwhelming
Ah, the first post. Often little more than an underwhelming introduction or promise of more content. Guess what? This is too. Fantastic. I’ve been trying to make this thing display the time posted in MY time-zone, but it refuses to co-operate. Awesome.
