Action mode, uh, in action...

I went shooting with my business partners a couple of weeks ago and brought along the camera. It was overcast and very windy so there wasn't alot of available light, but on the other hand there weren't alot of harsh shadows either. Sport mode racked up nearly 500 images in just an hour or so of running drills. The good news is that at 6.5 frames per second you have a decent chance of catching spent casings in the air, muzzle flash, and other visually cool imagery.

We started with pistols, Kerry has good form here. A box-stock Glock 17, everything you need and nothing you don't:


Josh takes a turn with his Para Ordinance. Good recoil control here, notice that even with two spent casings in the air you can draw a line from his eyes right through the sights. This is how its supposed to be done:


The table in the background was set up as a barricade. Putting accurate fire on target while keeping as much of your body as possible behind cover is more difficult than it sounds, and not something easily practiced without physical objects to hide behind.

We moved on to rifles. I took a turn behind my old warhorse M4:


We test fired a customer's pre-89 Polytech as well. If you need proof that guns are good investments here it is-- these guns sold for $175 to $250 before they were banned from importation in 1989. In its current configuration, with underfolding spike bayonet, you could sell this Polytech for $1500 without much difficulty.



Erik brought an FN Tactical Police Shotgun which we all naturally just HAD to try. For a pump it didn't recoil very much, due to the barrel porting, recoil-assisted pump action, and its significant weight. I dutifully snapped away as paper targets downrage were pulverized.

Here you can see the barrel porting at work, venting expanding gas from the fired round upwards, thereby pushing the barrel down and cutting down on recoil:


As Josh pumps the action the spent hulls are still smoking:



We spent the rest of the session doing a couple of unorthodox prone positions, urban prone and reverse prone, which are handy to know but difficult to practice. Here, a cardboard box takes the place of a street curb for purposes of the drill. Laying on your back and shooting from behind a street curb is uncomfortable, but not nearly as much as standing straight up and being ventilated by the bad guys!



After seeing me run drills with the Microtech STG556, Kerry had to have a try. Though based on the Steyr AUG which has been in service since 1977, this is the carbine of the future as far as I'm concerned, and made in the USA to boot!


Kerry still prefers his trusty M4. Old habits die hard.


The last drill we did was the infamous "under the car" drill. You have to get extremely low, turn the rifle sideways and struggle with your sight picture as best you can. Since I wear glasses I always find it very difficult to get everything lined up and put accurate fire downrange from this position. Nevertheless, the technique stopped the infamous "Hollywood Shootout" of February 1997, and is worth drilling. Robber Emil Matasareanu had taken several hits to his upper body which had all been absorbed by his kevlar armor, and was in the process of hosing down squad cars with an illegally modified AR15, when an enterprising SWAT officer used this firing position from underneath his squad car and cut Matasareanu's legs out from under him. It was game over for the bad guy, and once he went down the acute lead deficiency in his diet was quickly remedied by several helpful officers of the law.

With a table and the "curb" box providing a firing port, Erik tries the "under the car" position with a full-length AR:



I think its just a little easier with a pistol, as you can hold the firearm more properly:



Good fun and good practice, but our time was over far too soon. With the post-November-election panic buying and the attendant skyrocketing of ammo prices, the round count was much lower than it would have been a year ago. With the entire country buying guns and ammo at a rate never before seen in the history of our nation, (60% more volume than this time last year and still not slackening although the election was nearly five months ago!) we would all do well to remember that a firearm is nothing but a liability and a source of false confidence if its owner fails to train to proficiency with it. It will not magically save your life all by itself with no effort on your behalf to master it, anymore than it will leap to life and kill you in your sleep out of some mechanical malevolence. Without proper training, our firearms are no more useful to us than they would be to sheep, who only know to run and inevitably be shorn when they cannot run any longer.

We, the masters of our tools, are the true weapons. It is that mastery which allows us to confront evil men and defeat them, and thereby earn the right to call ourselves good men.

She Lives in Yesteryear

Got a chance to take a day off work this week and visit my grandmother, who is in a rest home close to my extended family. We had lunch and spent a few hours in conversation with the matriarch. I enjoyed every minute of it. She has been diagnosed with alzheimers, and for her the memories of the past have a stronger grip on her mind than present reality.

Getting a few high quality photos of her was one of the main reasons for my purchase of the 40d. I'm still learning the technical aspects of the camera, and lighting conditions in the interior of a rest home were less than ideal, so I shot alot, did some exposure bracketing, fiddled with settings, and shot more. Almost 200 raw images in all. I'm getting better all the time.

I still hate flash photography. I greatly prefer just taking a pile of natural light photos and ignoring ones with blurs and other defects, and cleaning up the better ones with the image processing program. Flash is just useless to me, it flattens everything out, washes out colors, creates obnoxious shadows, and generally bothers the crap out of the people I'm trying to take photos of, resulting in posture and facial expressions that are less "real". Its hard to help people forget you are taking pictures of them while blinding them every few seconds.

So, screw the flash, here's what I came up with in the soft, orange light of the rest home....




I saw this expression many times and it is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. She was always the anchor of the family, and now when one of her children talks to her she tends to look at them in the way that a small child looks at their mother or father. Sixty years ago, her children must have looked up at her in the same way, with the same dependence in their eyes, but now the roles have been finally, irrevocably, reversed.


Walden, a frail old friend, was brought by his son for the visit.


We had a few good laughs and I managed to catch a couple of them with the camera. I love photos of people laughing, because people aren't being self conscious about being photographed as they let loose with a good laugh. Its a very natural thing to do and a beautiful thing to be able to record.




The lighting inside was so dark that I was forced to put the lens aperture wide open, giving me a very short field of view. My father and my aunt were sitting right next to each other and yet I couldn't get them both in focus at the same time without resorting to flash photography. Nevertheless, the following two images make for an interesting comparison with each other I think.



I took alot of photos of Grandma's hands. I've been fascinated by them for years. Ravaged by arthritis, gnarled like the roots of an ancient oak tree, they speak a language all their own. She came by these hands honestly, and her finger still bears rings given to her in 1942.



Twin daughters and an only son. I did get a couple of decent, posed "mug shots" outside in better light, but I don't get the same joy out of posed photos that I do from candids.


Bless you Grandma. I know living like this hurts, but we don't want to part ways with you for awhile yet.

Bikes

I've been really busy the past couple of weeks. A ton of court during the days and even at night. Night court isn't as funny in real life as the TV show was, mostly its boring standing in lines waiting to see tired-eyed prosecutors with rubber stamps in their hands. Hey, its a living, right?

The other day a couple of motorcycles pulled up right in front of my law office. Had the camera lying around so I hopped out for a minute and took some pics, first of the bikes and then of the riders. The images turned out so-so, kind of bland really, I didn't feel like I really captured the essence I was looking for, so I started messing around with some image manipulation software to see if I could make something noteworthy from them.

This man's bike was wonderfuly old school. "Ape hangar" handlebars, a wire spoke front wheel with a single disk brake, and a matte finish to the fuel tank all make the bike very 1960s, which I really like. I was trying to be dramatic with the angle but I got it wrong, the handlebars don't look as tall as they really are for some reason. Even though I was lying on my back to take the pics (not in my suit, I didn't have court that day) the angle just isn't as dramatic as I thought it would be.



So I took the raw image and started playing with Gimp 2 image manipulation software. Using the "threshold" tool I came up with this version of the image, which I think is more dramatic. The rooftop in the background, which you probably didn't notice before, now becomes a dividing line cutting diagonally across the image. The rider's face is a stark contrast to the black background, his sunglasses and pouting mouth taking on a new attitude. I also love how the front wheel looks. When I think "Harley", I'm thinking something more like this:



The woman rider had a more dressy bike with lots of chrome and a very practical full windscreen. I loved the "Deluxe" emblem on her front mudguard. A little playing around with contrast and saturation levels netted this image, which is full of interesting colors and shapes (for an item which, on the face of it, has no colors but black and silver).



I also did this one by messing with contrast settings and the like. The cooling fins on the twin cylinder engine look like the ribs to a Terminator or something. I just like the stark mechanicality of it (now I'm making up words, look out folks).



As the bikes started up and rode past me I set the camera to shutter speed priority and set my shutter speed very low. If you do this right, you can get a pretty focused image of a moving vehicle with a blurred background, conveying the sense of speed. I've tried it before with some luck, for example on this pickup truck.



Unfortunately I think I overstepped myself a bit and set the shutter speed to a full second of exposure. The resulting images convey motion and a bit of the "wild horses" excitement of riding a motorcycle, but the vehicles themselves aren't very sharp. Props to the woman rider for flashing me a peace sign as she went by--thanks for providing my image with a focal point! I love it!

Playing with toys

A couple doors down from my law office is one of those multipurpose comic book/figurines/warhammer/magic-the-gathering type shops. I casually call it the nerd store, and happily walk in occasionally to check in and see what's going on in there, because I too am a nerd. I like to gander at the comic books, buy some back issues of The Punisher occasionally, and I especially like their extensive collection of carefully painted tiny figurines.

They have, uh, alot of figurines. This image has not been cropped or altered in any way, its simply a test to see if Blogspot can digest a raw 10.1 megapixel image and how it will display that image.



Did I mention this is a large image?

Phil, the proprietor of the nerd store, said he wouldn't mind if I played with the figurines for awhile. The nerds use the figurines for some kind of roleplaying game, and each one rests on a disk roughly the size of a quarter, displaying various attributes such as speed, power, magic, or the ability to order more pizza late at night. Again experimenting with apeture settings, manual focus vs. autofocus, and just trying to learn the camera, I started snapping away.

There wasn't an abundance of light in the store so with the camera set to auto, the flash popped up and started fill-flashing everything to death. At first my play was pretty uninspired. This photo does show a bit of the scale of things, these figurines are very small.



I soon put the camera on manual flash override and tried my best to hold it as still as possible while taking my shots. I also tried to get as close as I could while still maintaining focus. Again I found that for this sort of thing the manual focus beat the autofocus, not for precision but for control. The autofocus on this camera always chooses the closest object which is nearest the center as its focus point, and that's not always what I want depending on the composition.

I'm very pleased that I got the focus on this shot right. Look how short the field of view is, Iron Man's face is in focus but his feet are not. We are talking about a distance of well under an inch.



In this shot Batman needs to be in focus, not the dusty plastic railing in front of him. Manual focus was the only way to go here.



I took the same image and manipulated it a bit with the software that came with the camera. I cropped it tighter, increased the contrast, and removed some of the color saturation, as well as sharpening it up. I was going for a "Dark Knight Returns" aesthetic, how do you think I did?



That's enough for now. Next time, Harley Davidsons!

First non-photography post: the coming financial apocalypse is now!

I really like this graph from caluculatedrisk.com. By looking at the history of previous economic crashes perhaps we can divine what is coming next. Which line appears to be headed south more dramatically, 1929 or 2009? Uh oh.

Four Bears

Economist Karl Denninger just flew off the handle in an editorial posted only a couple of hours ago on market-ticker.org. Right now I'm actually kind of glad I don't have any investments to worry about, because he's leaning on the panic button about as hard as I've ever seen. I'll let him explain:

Whats Dead (Short Answer: All Of It)

Just so you have a short list of what's at stake if Washington DC doesn't change policy here and now (which means before the collapse in equities comes, which could start as soon as today, if the indicators I watch have any validity at all. For what its worth, those indicators are painting a picture of the Apocalypse that I simply can't believe, and they're showing it as an imminent event - like perhaps today imminent.)

All pension funds, private and public, are done. If you are receiving one, you won't be. If you think you will in the future, you won't be. PBGC will fail as well. Pension funds will be forced to start eating their "seed corn" within the next 12 months and once that begins there is no way to recover.

All annuities will be defaulted to the state insurance protection (if any) on them. The state insurance funds will be bankrupted and unable to be replenished. Essentially, all annuities are toast. Expect zero, be ecstatic if you do better. All insurance companies with material exposure to these obligations will go bankrupt, without exception. Some of these firms are dangerously close to this happening right here and now; the rest will die within the next 6-12 months. If you have other insured interests with these firms, be prepared to pay a LOT more with a new company that can't earn anything off investments, and if you have a claim in process at the time it happens, it won't get paid. The probability of you getting "boned" on any transaction with an insurance company is extremely high - I rate this risk in excess of 90%.

The FDIC will be unable to cover bank failure obligations. They will attempt to do more of what they're doing now (raising insurance rates and doing special assessments) but will fail; the current path has no chance of success. Congress will backstop them (because they must lest shotguns come out) with disastrous results. In short, FDIC backstops will take precedence even over Social Security and Medicare.

Government debt costs will ramp. This warning has already been issued and is being ignored by President Obama. When (not if) it happens debt-based Federal Funding will disappear. This leads to....


Tax receipts are cratering and will continue to. I expect total tax receipts to fall to under $1 trillion within the next 12 months. Combined with the impossibility of continued debt issue (rollover will only remain possible at the short duration Treasury has committed to over the last ten years if they cease new issue) a 66% cut in the Federal Budget will become necessary. This will require a complete repudiation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, a 50% cut in the military budget and a 50% across-the-board cut in all other federal programs. That will likely get close.

Tax-deferred accounts will be seized to fund rollovers of Treasury debt at essentially zero coupon (interest). If you have a 401k, or what's left of it, or an IRA, consider it locked up in Treasuries; it's not yours any more. Count on this happening - it is essentially a certainty.

Any firm with debt outstanding is currently presumed dead as the street presumption is that they have lied in some way. Expect at least 20% of the S&P 500 to fail within 12 months as a consequence of the complete and total lockup of all credit markets which The Fed will be unable to unlock or backstop. This will in turn lead to....
The unemployed will have 5-10 million in direct layoffs added within the next 12 months. Collateral damage (suppliers, customers, etc) will add at least another 5-10 million workers to that, perhaps double that many. U-3 (official unemployment rate) will go beyond 15%, U-6 (broad form) will reach 30%.

Civil unrest will break out before the end of the year. The Military and Guard will be called up to try to stop it. They won't be able to. Big cities are at risk of becoming a free-fire death zone. If you live in one, figure out how you can get out and live somewhere else if you detect signs that yours is starting to go "feral"; witness New Orleans after Katrina for how fast, and how bad, it can get.

The good news is that this process will clear The Bezzle out of the system.

The bad news is that you won't have a job, pension, annuity, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and, quite possibly, your life.

It really is that bleak folks, and it all goes back to Washington DC being unwilling to lock up the crooks, putting the market in the role it has always played - that of truth-finder, no matter how destructive that process is.

Only immediate action from Washington DC, taking the market's place, can stop this, and as I get ready to hit "send" I see the market rolling over again, now down more than 3% and flashing "crash imminent" warnings. You may be reading this too late for it to matter.

Dilbert worries about his mortgage

*******
EDIT: I'm editing this entry the morning after I posted what's above this line. The top headline of the morning seems to back up at least one of Denninger's predictions:

Bill Seeks to Let FDIC Borrow up to $500 Billion

Why would the FDIC need to borrow $500 billion when the only thing they do is backstop failed banking institutions? The only possible answer is that the senate believes there will be up to $500 billion worth of shortfall on the way in total FDIC insured bank institutions which will actually fail, and FDIC will need that additional money for payouts on top of whatever they already have in the system.

I wonder if this has ever happened before-- has FDIC ever had to borrow money like this from our government to cover their responsibilities? I don't know.

Its alive! Its astounding!

The big brown truck made good on my tracking number's promises this morning. I opened up the box with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation-- ordering online for the first time from any place I've never shopped with before is cause for nervousness. But everything was there, boxed up very nicely and all in the original packaging. Therefore I can share with you all the exact link to the package deal I got, and advise you that you can order your very own 40d package deal from the folks at Digicombos with confidence.

Digicombos Canon40d

When I opened the lens up I was in for a surprise-- the good kind. The lens that comes with the $800 combo was simply advertised as an 18-55mm lens, and I figured it was probably a cheapo throwaway lens, because this package deal costs exactly one dollar more than the body itself does at many other online retailers. Nope, the lens is an EFS model that even features image stabilization and costs $175 if purchased seperately. Score! Here's a review of the lens itself.

EFS 18-55mm F3.5-56

So, like a kid on Christmas with his long-desired new toy in hand, I scanned through the quick start guide, put memory chips, batteries, and lenses in place, and bounded downstairs with a spring in my step looking for anything to take a picture of. I decided I'd try to take some closeups at first, just to test out the focus limits of the EFS lens, which is not a "macro" model at all.

A Playstation controller sitting on the couch was my first victim. I realized that as long as I can get pretty close to my subject, the sheer size of the raw images generated by this 10.1 megapixel camera will allow me to crop quite a bit instead of resizing if I want, thus making the subject appear huge if that's what I want to do. Like this:


I spied a wasp on the carpet near the front door. He seemed friendly enough so I snapped away at him as well. In exchange for his being such a good model for me, I declined to smash him flat or vaccum him up after I was done.


I took the camera with me to work, and in the late afternoon ran to the bicycle and skateboard shop across the street from my office. Kevin, the proprietor of said shop, was willing to do some bicycle tricks for me so I could try out the "sport" mode of the camera. At 6.5 frames per second I generated more than 50 images while capturing three tricks. Sport mode worked like a charm, I'm hooked.




Having played with some of the automatic "dummy" settings I decided to delve into the semi-automatic settings that bridge the gap between the easy presets and the fully manual controls. On the way to dinner I had some fun with the shutter speed priority mode, which automatically adjusts the aperture of the lens to compensate for a manually set shutter speed. Traveling in a moving car while experimenting with very slow shutter speeds of a full second or more resulted in a few fun shots. Taking a photo of a car traveling the same speed as ours, with a shutter speed of a full second, an ISO of 400 and an aperture of F8 resulted in a photo reminiscent of about a thousand magazine ads I've seen:


After dinner I convinced my wife to stop by a local car dealership so I could play for a minute with the flash override and see how good the light gathering of the camera was in a parking lot at night. Auto dealership parking lots are pretty well lit, but I thought it would still be a bit of a challenge to take some decent pics with no flash at all. A very clean Challenger SRT awaited me in its black-on-black glory. Perfect. I found that I got better results using manual focus with IS enabled than by using the autofocus. One day when I grow up and get a real job, I want to drive to the court in a car like this one:


Alas, I will be driving a Civic with 216,000 miles showing on the odometer to court tomorrow morning for a 9am docket. So its way past time to stop blogging, and start sleeping.

I won't have the Canon 40d nestled under my arm tonight like Ralphie with his Daisy BB gun. That spot is reserved for a particularly lovely woman who is already downstairs waiting for me.