Ben’s Blog

Friday night, June 1st, at 11:08pm, Luke Benjamin Pharr entered the world. He weighed 7 lbs. 6 oz. and was 20 and 1/2 inches long. Both he and his mom are doing well. They were both discharged from the hospital Sunday afternoon after less than 48 hours.

I haven’t had a chance to go through all 142 pictures I took at the hospital, but I’ve posted a few that caught my eye (set, slideshow). More details and pictures to come as soon as I catch up on my sleep. :)

The 13th Annual Oxford Double Decker Arts Festival was held on Saturday, April 28th. The festival takes its name from the double decker bus that was imported by Oxford in 1994. The bus was a big hit, so another one was imported a few years ago. They’re used for special events and entertaining visitors. A bit of history for you: Oxford, Mississippi was named after Oxford, England in the early 1800’s in an effort to convince the state legislature to build a University here. Obviously it worked. Thus, the buses kind of fit with the British theme.

I wandered around during the early afternoon and took a few pictures with my Fujifilm F31fd. I’ve posted 15 of them on Flickr. The slideshow is probably the best way to view them. Don’t miss the history in the description of one of the courthouse pictures.

This is the first set of pictures I’ve run through Lightroom. It saved a couple of them that were pretty badly underexposed. In the past I would’ve had to just throw them away. I think I’m getting better at separating the wheat from the chaff. I took over 100 photos and pared it down to these 15. Your comments are welcome. If you don’t have time to look at the entire set, I’ve posted four below.

Earlier in the week I mentioned that while I was enjoying Lightroom, I wasn’t thrilled with the results I got when I exported my images. The colors were different between the Lightroom preview and the exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. The primary issue is that neither of those applications are color managed. (For more information on what that actually means, see Jeffrey Friedl’s tutorial I mentioned earlier.)

Another issue is that my monitor wasn’t calibrated, so I ordered a copy of Colorvision Spyder2express. In a comment on my last post, Jeffrey says this is just as likely to hurt the color matching as to help it. Thankfully, in my case, it did help it. I can no longer differentiate between the Lightroom preview and an exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. Here is the example photo I used earlier:

If your monitor is calibrated and you’re viewing it in a color managed application, it probably looks something like I intended it to. Otherwise, all bets are off. :) This is a photo from the Double Decker Festival last month. I’ll be posting some more soon. This particular one was pretty badly underexposed. I was able to save it with Lightroom.

Even if monitor calibration hadn’t helped, it’s always a good idea to have your monitor calibrated when editing images. I’ll never be able to control what my images look like in non-color managed applications, but at least I can control what they should look like. It does give me some amount of control.

While I still recommend Lightroom, I can’t really recommend it without some sort of monitor calibration package. I have no complaints about Spyder2express, and it’s only $60. Yes, there are better ones out there, but they cost a lot more. I’ll probably buy one of them some day, but for now I’m happy with Spyder2express.

I’ve been looking for a software project to do on my own time, and this experience may have pointed me toward one. Firefox should have some level of color management. However, I’m not sure where I’d even start, and it’s not something I want to get into right now with a baby on the way. Maybe in a couple of months.

I got my copy of Adobe Lightroom a couple of weeks ago, and I’m quite enjoying it (academic license, $94.95). The amount of tweaking you can do to images is amazing, especially with the RAW files from my Rebel XTi. I definitely made the right decision about getting Lightroom instead of Photoshop CS3. At this point Photoshop would just have too many options for me. Plus, Lightroom has lots of nice DAM (Digital Asset Management) features that Photoshop doesn’t. I’m sure I will want to get Photoshop CS3 at some point (perhaps around Christmas?), but right now I’m happy with Lightroom.

There is one small problem. I can tweak images to look exactly like I want them to in Lightroom, but then I have to export them to JPEGs. On my monitor at least, there is a notable color shift between the Lightroom preview and the exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. Here’s an example:

The first one is a screenshot of the Lightroom preview. The second one is a scaled down version of the exported JPEG. On my monitor (and my monitor at work) there is an obvious color shift. Depending on the calibration of your monitor and the browser you’re using, these images may look completely different to you. If I import the exported JPEG back into Lightroom, the two look identical.

All of this led me to investigate the wonderful world of color management. Jeffrey Friedl has a good color management tutorial on his blog. It’s seven pages long, but the first three tell you most of what you need to know. Jeffrey is the author of O’Reilly’s Mastering Regular Expressions. I starting reading his blog a couple of months ago, but I missed his tutorial because he posted last year.

As it turns out, neither Firefox, nor IE, nor Windows Picture Viewer is color managed. Lightroom is, of course. The sRGB color space is supposed to render correctly in non-color managed applications. I knew this, and was exporting using sRGB, but the color shift was definitely there. ProPhoto RGB is the working color space for Lightroom, and there are definitely some colors in ProPhoto RGB that sRGB can’t display, but I don’t think that, by itself, accounts for the color shift.

I posted to a couple of forums, and the most viable explanation is that my monitor is miscalibrated. I’m not completely convinced, but I have ordered ColorVision Spyder2 Express. Hopefully it will solve my problem. If it doesn’t, well, I needed to have my monitor calibrated anyway. It should be here tomorrow, so we’ll find out soon.

Today was my birthday. I am now twenty-six, which, I think, makes me officially old. I’ve been out of high school nearly eight years now. Cassie took me to Old Venice to celebrate. I ate entirely too much pasta. I also got to talk with Paul, my roommate from freshman year. He’s a manager/bartender at Old Venice these days.

We had an appointment at the baby doctor today. Luke is still doing fine. We go back every week from here on out. He is due in four weeks.

I finally ordered a camera today. Not because it’s my birthday, but because I finally convinced myself Canon isn’t going to offer any rebates this spring, and I need a chance to play with it before Luke arrives. You can expect Canon to announce rebates any day now. :) I ordered a Canon Rebel XTi and a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens to go on it. I got a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III CF card to go in the camera. I also ordered a copy of Adobe Lightroom a couple of days ago. I have been planning this purchase for a long time now, and you can expect me to act like a little kid when it gets here.

Now I need to get back to working on my presentation for my thesis defense.

Yes, it’s time for your weekly Ole Miss baseball update. Ole Miss won on Friday night and Sunday afternoon to take the series. A three-game sweep would have been nice, but we didn’t play very well on Saturday. My parents came up for the Friday night game. As you can see, it was pretty chilly. I took some pictures as usual, though this time it was with my new Fujifilm F31fd. I’ll do a review of the camera when I get a chance. (More below.)

On Friday night, Ole Miss had a 6-0 lead in the 4th inning, but Georgia cut it to 6-2 in the 5th, 6-4 in the 6th, and took a 7-6 lead with a three-run home run in the 7th. That should have been the end of the story, but Georgia dropped an infield popup to allow Evan Button to score in the 9th, tying it up. In the 13th inning Georgia scored a run in their half of the inning. We managed to score two runs to win 9-8.

It was a sloppy day all around on Saturday. The score was tied 3-3 going into the ninth, but we managed to walk three batters and they got a run off a fielder’s choice. Georgia won 4-3. Lance Lynn pitched a good game, but the defense had three errors, and we were held to five hits.

On Sunday we blasted them 9-0. True freshman Nathan Baker pitched six scoreless innings in his first career SEC start. I suspect we’ll see him again next weekend. Both Bukvich and Rodriguez were given a shot at the Sunday starting spot earlier in the season, but neither one did a great job.

In other SEC baseball matchups, South Carolina took two from Florida, Vanderbilt took two from Alabama, Tennessee took two from Kentucky, Auburn took two from LSU, and Mississippi State took two from Arkansas. MSU taking two from Arkansas is pretty impressive. It was at Fayetteville no less. The SEC standings look very similar to last week. Ole Miss is still tied with MSU for second in the West, one game back from Arkansas. Ole Miss is ranked 16th, 15th, 13th, and 23rd in the four major college baseball polls.

We play Southern Miss Wednesday night in Hattiesburg, and LSU this weekend in Baton Rouge. The Southern Miss game will be tough. We beat them by one run a couple of weeks ago in Pearl, a neutral site. We should take at least two of three from LSU, but one never knows.

The Ole Miss baseball team won their home series against Alabama this weekend by beating them 3-2 on Saturday and 15-9 on Sunday. Alabama won 8-5 on Friday night. (Post continues below picture.)

Cassie and I went to the Friday night game. I put some of my better pictures on Flickr. We should have won this game and swept the series. We were winning 5-2 going into the 8th inning, but we let them score five runs in the 8th and another one in the 9th to make it 8-5. Scott Bittle, our closer, actually walked in two runs in the 8th. It’ll be interesting to see if he gets another chance in a big game for a while. Cody Satterwhite seems like a better choice for a closer. He did a great job closing on Saturday.

Starter Brett Bukvich gotted pulled in the third inning of today’s game after allowing three runs. It’ll be interesting to see if he starts next weekend. He’s done well in the past, so I expect he will. Luckily our bats were hot today. Both Kline and Lynn, our other two weekend starters, have been consistently good this year. We just need to find a good closer.

We play Southern Miss Tuesday night in Pearl, Mississippi (a neutral site). That should be a good game. They already have wins over LSU and Rice this year. Next weekend we play a three-game series at Auburn. Auburn is 0-6 so far in the SEC play, being swept by Georgia and Florida.

Cassie and I went to see Ole Miss play Appalachian State University in the first round of the NIT Wednesday night. We won 73-59. During the first five minutes it looked like we might blow them out, but they actually kept it close until about halfway through the second half.

We play Clemson Monday night at their place. They are favored to win, but we definitely have a shot.

As you can see, I took my camera with me. That would be my old Canon Powershot A80 that has lots of noise and plenty of shutter lag. However, it’s been a long time since I took any pictures, so I enjoyed myself regardless. I’ve put some of my better pictures on Flickr. As you can see, there aren’t that many of them. :) The shutter lag on the A80 is so bad that if you try to get a photo of someone shooting, you often end up with a picture of someone getting the rebound. :) Also, the coliseum is relatively dark, so I wasn’t able to keep my shutter speed high enough to stop the action, which causes blurring.

In addition to the SLR I’m looking at getting, we’re going to buy Cassie a new point and shoot camera to replace the A80. Right now I’m thinking it’ll be the Fuji F31fd, but the Canon SD700 IS and the Canon SD800 IS are also in the running. More on that later.

There are a lot of unhappy Canonites this morning. Canon did make an announcement early this morning, but they did not announce the successor to the 30D like everyone thought and hoped they would. Instead we got a new pro camera, a new lens, a new flash, a new wireless transmitter, and a bunch of point and shoot cameras.

Good thing I didn’t have my hopes set on a 40D. However, it does mess up my plans of possibly getting a cheaper 30D. Some people still think Canon will announce the 40D in the next few weeks, but I don’t see it. It’ll probably happen in the fall.

The 1D Mark III that they did announce does have some interesting features. It has dual Digic III processors that allow 10 frames per second for up to 110 JPEG or 30 RAW images. It has 14-bit image processing, which is a first (most do 12). It’s LCD has a live-view mode, which is a first for a pro SLR. (Olympus has live-view, but their SLRs aren’t generally considered professional.) It also has ISO 6400, a new autofocus system, and the dust removal system that is in the Rebel XTi. It’s going to sell for around $4000. It’s safe to say I won’t be getting one anytime soon.

I’ve spent entirely too much time over the past couple of weeks in the forums over at Digital Photography Review. I have learned quite a bit, but I’m still not exactly sure what photography equipment I’m going to buy.

I have more or less decided on a primary lens. I’m going to go with the Canon EF-S 17-55/2.8 USM IS. It’s a little expensive, but it is apparently a very nice lens, and it will stay on my camera 95% of the time. The Tamron 17-50/2.8 was really my only other option. While the Tamron is cheaper, the Canon just has too many advantages.

As far as camera bodies go, I’m still trying to decide between the Canon Rebel XTi and the Canon 30D. Both have their advantages. My plan is to find someone locally that carries the Canon lens mentioned above, and see what it feels like mounted on both cameras. That lens is a little on the heavy side, but if it doesn’t feel unwieldy on the Rebel XTi I’ll probably go with it. It’s smaller, lighter, and less expensive.

Rumor has it that Canon will be announcing a new camera (or two) and some new lenses in the very near future; possibly as early as tomorrow. Most people believe the 30D will be replaced with a new model, but it’ll probably sell for around $1,400, which is out of my price range right now.

My eBay auctions (to fund my photography) are going well. I have enough to buy the Rebel XTi now, but not much else. I haven’t broken out the big guns yet, though. I will be doing that soon. I am going to try to sell some of my high end stuff directly to collectors to avoid the eBay and PayPal fees. I also have a couple of lenses that I’ll no longer need that I can sell.