Tools and Toys

Web building stuff

My first web page, Ducky's Story was basically hand edited HTML. Hand edited with vi while telneted into my Internet service provider. That was not fun and I doubt that you can find anyone (dumb enough) who still does that. I now build my web pages locally and upload them to my provider once they appear to work.

Computer Environment

(I have my systems networked together on a 10BaseT network. Since I don't really need the bandwidth, the price of 100BaseT hubs really needs to drop before I upgrade.)

Netscape has an OK html editor built in. It does a good job and is quick to learn and easy to use. The Photosuite program is great for simple retouching, sizing and manipulation of pictures. Not as powerful as Photoshop, (not even in the same class) but a lot less expensive. Although sometimes, only Photoshop will do what needs to be done. I touch up some rough spots in the pictures, resize them and compress the color bit depth. Photosuite also has a great screen capture feature!

The background on Ducky's page was also produced with Photosuite´s edge trace utility. I started with the same photo that is the first picture on Ducky's page, blacked out the background and shrank the image to a smaller size. Then used the edge trace facility, compressed the colors down to mono and fixed up some rough spots.

 Photography

My camera is a Canon A1. Its almost 20 years old, but short of the older non-automatic focus Nikons, I can't think of anything better. I usually use either a standard 50 mm f1.4 lens, a 75-300 mm f5.6 zoom lens or a 28-80 f5.6 zoom lens. I always use Kodak film. I liked the Ektar stuff, but you can't get it anymore. The 64 ASA film gave great color saturation outside in good light. Now I use the standard Royal Gold in either 100 ASA or 200 ASA. I try to not use anything faster than 200 ASA. I do keep some 400 around in the event of an emergency; but I almost never use it and then have to toss it since it gets pretty old. Indoors I'll try different things to improve the light, including using work lights and floor lights. Sometimes I'll filter to improve the color temperature. When I must, or if its easy to get away with it, I'll just toss on the speedlight and use the flash. Generally, I prefer to avoid the flash since the light produced is usually too harsh. Bouncing the light off a white ceiling does help some.

I found a couple of local processors that do good work. One is rather inexpensive and I use them for "everyday" photo finishing. When I have special jobs and want better quality prints, I use a lab that is geared more to professionals and commercial photography. If you do not have your own darkroom (I don't have the space) a hand print from someone who knows how to do them can really make a difference in your photos.

Videography

Under construction... I had an Intel Indeo, but it left something to be desired. Currently, I’m using a Winnov Videum capture card. It does not do video playback, so I need to get a better card someday.  I'd really like to get into nonlinear video editing. We'll see. Since I gave my sister my Sony CCD-V9 8 mm camcorder and my brother has my Canon A-1 Hi-8 camcorder, I have a bit of researching and shopping to do. I really like the Sony VX-1000. It is a very nice camcorder. The only problem that I've seen with it, other than the price, is that under low-light conditions, there is quite a bit of noise in the picture.

Java

Under construction... I have just started to fool around with Solaris Java Workstation and Microsoft J++. I think I like Java Workstation better, but I could be biased since Sun's stuff is more portable than Microsoft's.

Keeps watching for developments. I may have time someday to do some neat stuff.