I just read an interesting column by Dvorak over at PC Magazine about the increasing size of crap on our drives. One of the things I’m missing in his article is the size of todays operating systems. I manage to remember the times of Windows 3.1 and Dos which came on a bunch of floppy disks. Today we need DVDs to install our OS and applications.

Also look at games, years ago a CD was enough to ship an awesome timekiller. Today they arrive in the form of dual-layer DVDs or a Blu-ray Disc. We just don’t really care about the size of an application (or game) anymore. Just insert a new drive and install away. Drives are getting larger and at the same time the cost per gigabyte is coming down. (more…)

Some of you might have wondered what I was doing when I posted about going to do late night photoshoot of an industrial park. Well, the answer is pretty simple. I went to the Landschaftspark Duisburg again. This is an old industry area that is open to the public for no cost at any time of the day and, I actually believe, of the year. You can walk inside of many of the industrial plants and enjoy the park feeling of it. (more…)

A few days ago Daniel and I went to Düsseldorf airport to take some photos. After a few minutes the German border police drove past us behind the gates. Another few minutes later, we have already left the original spot at the gate, they showed up outside the gate.

They didn’t mind us at all, unlike their colleagues in the US and UK as of late. Does anyone actually keep track of these happenings? I’d love to take part in creating a website to document these things, which recently seem to get out of hand.

Ich hatte letztens das Problem, dass ich für ein besonderes Ereignis schnell ein passendes Objektiv brauchte und dazu noch einen Blitz. Kaufen war nicht, weil das Geld dann doch etwas knapp war für das gesuchte. Was bei Autos funktioniert muss es doch auch bei Kamera-Equipment geben? Naja, ganz so einfach war es dann leider nicht. Viele Foto-Geschäfte vermieten zwar auch Kameras, Objektive und Zubehör, wollen aber meist neben teuren Tagespreisen den vollen Preis als Kaution, am besten noch in Bar.
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Want your own tag cloud? Check it out here.

As some of you might know I use a tiny Java application on an old cellphone called TrekBuddy to track some of my photowalks. Apart from geotagging the photos at home you can use it to see where you were on a map like in Google maps or Google Earth. Google Earth is able to read the GPX file, for Google maps you need a webapp like GPS Visualizer (Note: there are many tools out there which do this job, just use your favorite search machine). I don’t know yet how I’ll use this data but I won’t delete the GPX files from now on after I tagged my photos.

Last August Canon released an update to its camera lineup with the EOS 40D. With some parts that have previously been “tested” in the EOS 400D/Rebel XTi this camera now has some nifty stuff that the 30D lacked. It now has the self-cleaning-sensor, they call it “EOS Integrated Cleaning System”, a 10.1 Megapixel sensor, the DIGIC III processor and live view using the 3″ display.

I currently am in the decision-making-process about upgrading from a 400D and recently had the chance to get the 40D, 5D - both of which are the primary suspects to go into my bag soon - and also Nikon’s D300. I unfortunately had rather short time to spend with the D300, but from what I can say it has some nice features compared to the 40D, but the price, lenses and handling are keeping me from going Nikon.
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