A 36C afternoon at Gilroy Gardens, I was trying out some action shots with a Tamron 17-55 f/2.8. By turning up the ISO and keeping a very steady hand at a slow enough shutter speed, I was able to render this picture of my son in the next strawberry posing mid ride. I love the contrast and sharpness with which the ride was captured while the surrounding trees are whizzing by; without this effect, you’d have no idea if the ride was stationary or moving. It was only by fluke that my son was also wearing red to top it off. Thanks to “Understanding Shutter Speed” by Bryan Peterson for helping me figure all this out. The lens, however, had to be returned. When zooming to the far end, the contacts would knock out of line making the lens unresponsive.

I’ve owned a few gadgets over the years that I’ve regretted buying, good contenders would be the Palm Pilot, Apple Airport Express, Sharp Zaurus (is that a shell prompt in your pocket?). After 3 months I put them up on Craigslist to collect dust elsewhere. Here, though, are a few that have withstood the test of time:

1. Top of the list is the Forge de Laguiole Corkscrew which I received as a gift from a friend when leaving Japan 8 years ago. I anticipate using this one wine opener for the rest of my life, it’s one of those products that gives you the ‘just works’ feeling. The weight is right, it feels great in your hand, every cork is extracted with such deft swiftness you feel like a pro every time. You’d swear it even makes the wine taste better. I have a vision of handing this over to my son years from now with some cool one liner he’ll pass on to his kids.

2. The Hefty Classic Double-Edge Safety Razor by Merkur Solingen doesn’t need to deliver promises of a shave so good, the ladies will never even see you coming (so it’s 5 blades that gets the girl…). 100% inspired by an article on the art of shaving I fell hard into the world of wet shaving and haven’t looked back. My son is going to get this one too, lucky him.

3. It was Craigslist for the the Apple Airport Express and hello to the sexy Slim Devices Squeezebox for me 2 years ago. This is the only gadget in my list and for as long as it lasts, or as long as internet radio is kept alive, I’ll use this as my prime source for audio enjoyment. Not only does it look cool but it works like a dream. I spend 90% of my time with the squeezebox plugged into one of my pandora stations. Big up Slim Devices (now owned by Logitech) for being a great company with a great product and great customer support.

4. Picture yourself on your favourite Big Sur bluff, walk through to the rear of your 1989 Volkswagen Vanagon, swing out the table, get out your camera to get some shots of the vultures flying around you. Sip a hot cup of tea while jazz streams out of the radio. Pop the top and head on upstairs to read a book lying down with a panoramic ocean view. When it gets dark close the curtains, turn on the lights and crack open a cold beer from the fridge, or perhaps a whisky from the cabinet, plug in the laptop and enjoy a movie. Fold down the seats for a good nights rest. When you’re all done the next morning head back to San Francisco cruising no more than 60mph as the rest of the Bay Area gets to wherever they are going faster than you, then finally put it away just like any other car (it’s actually shorter than the Passat Wagon). This vehicle is my routine escape where I can forget about it all.

What are some of your favourite things?

Playing around with the basics of photography, my first hook was all about blurry backgrounds aka boke. I read that in theory a large aperture will decrease the depth of field and cause only the subject to be clearly in focus but I’ve also read that fixed lens digital cameras tend to be very generous when it comes to depth of field, to the point of being the envy of SLR users, and tend to be pretty poor at boke. I wanted to see for myself what could be done with my Canon S3 IS. All these shots are as they came out of the camera and taken with the Av mode in order to have control over the aperture.

No Zoom Large Aperture (6mm – f/2.7 – 0.003 sec) Despite using a large aperture in this first shot, you can see that the bridge and the buildings in the background are still relatively clear and are not really calling out the subject as much as we might like. I’d read that it makes a difference if you use a large aperture in combination with zooming into the subject so…..

Full Zoom Small Aperture (72mm – f/8 – 0.017 sec) I took a few steps back and zoomed all the way in keeping the subject full in the frame. To demonstrate the difference I closed the aperture all the way down to see exactly how the aperture would affect the shot. Notice there’s a completely different background relative to where I’m standing, the picture is taking on a completely different perspective and the background is quite blury. Next step was to adjust the aperture and see what happened….

Full Zoom Large Aperture (72 mm – f/3.5 – 0.003 sec) Now it’s looking much better; seems the art of boke lies in stepping away from the subject, zoom in tightly, open up the aperture as far as the light meter will allow and fire away. The camera would only let me get as far as f/3.5 at 72mm.

Full Zoom Large Aperture (70.4 mm – f/3.5 – 0.003 sec) Using the same method but picking a non-distinct background causes blurring beyond recognition putting the entire focus of the shot on your subject. This shot was against a cluster of trees and seems to demonstrate the effect quite well. Check out some great examples of boke using the Canon IS S3 in this Flickr forum.

Las Vegas Fountain

Just thought I’d get this one in before an entire year rolled by since my last post. Knowing that not only did I need to replace my broken camcorder (Sony) but also my digital camera (Canon), after a whole lot of research I bought a new Canon S3 IS. This camera has impressed me no end and seems to me to be the perfect stepping stone before getting a full fledged Digital SLR.
This shot was taken on a recent trip to Las Vegas on a bright and sunny day with the shutter speed maxed out; suffice to say it blew my mind when I saw how well it came out. Here’s what I like about this camera:

• Fold away LCD and digital viewfinder – I prefer not to use the LCD because it drains the battery and is impossible to see in bright light. The viewfinder has everything you would normally see on the LCD so it’s easy to do all your shooting without the LCD.
• Usable Buttons – My old Canon S230 had a good number of features for manual focus, focus bracketing, shooting video but they were all hidden away in hard to get to menus. The Canon S3 IS has most of the features you’d need at your fingertips so you can enable them without taking the camera from your eye. A small thing but makes such a big difference.
• Full Manual Control – I never really got into my film SLR mainly because by the time the results came back, you’d pretty much forgotten the situation in which you took the shot. Being able to alter aperture, shutter speed and ISO, instantly see your results, adjust and try again is a surreal experience.
• Zoom Zoom Zoom – The combination of the 12x zoom and the Image Stabalization allows you to take some mind blowing shots.

Thoroughly recommended. For further proof of how versatile this camera is check out the Flickr Canon Powershot S3 IS photo pool.

German engineers tend to be somewhat savvy when it comes to cars but they made one fatal mistake in the past that lost the 5 star rating from their American customers; the vehicles were perfect in every sense but they were missing cup holders. In order to remain competitive they had to grit their teeth and design into their product a feature which is of little use when you’re shifting gears at 120MPH down the autobahn, but without which there would be little use for drive-thru espresso bars at your interstate mall. When you hear about globalization applied to software development it means product globalization and is simply the act of getting a product to be accepted the world over. Today you can buy a BMW in most countries of the world making it a truly globalized product but rarely the same identical product in any two countries. Each country has their legal, practical and aesthetic requirements that shape the end product. In order to build a product that can be globalized it needs to be designed in such a way as to allow small deviances from a large common base. The act of designing an adaptable common base is often called internationalization while filling the gaps with all the requirements of a particular country is referred to as localization. An internationalized product is fully operable and works in at least a single base locale. The product has been localized when it has been adapted to work in something other than the base locale. When a product has been localized for many countries it can be though of as becoming a globalized product. Continuing the car analogy, designing the car so that the steering column can potentially be configured on either side would be an act of internationalization. Physically building a model with the steering column on the left would be an act of localization. Translation is often mistakenly interpreted to mean localization but is in fact merely a small part of the entire localization effort. If all you did to sell a Japanese toaster oven in UK was to translate the instructions you’d be in trouble the second it graced 240v. The secret to success in building a global product lies in managing the balance between where to stop generalizing and where to start customizing. More generalization is a better thing for you as it makes the product much easier to maintain. On the other hand, more customization is better for the customer as they get a product that is highly relevant to their culture.

A recent trip to Delfina called for a revisit to my Ten Most Favourite Places to eat in San Francisco list. Taste in food is obviously a very personal thing but if a few of these entries resonate with your top ten, you might want to try out the others:

1. Koi Palace
2. Firefly
3. Delfina
4. Tartine Bakery
5. R&G Lounge
6. King of Thai Noodles
7. Naan & Curry
8. Blue Bottle Coffee
9. Kiss Seafood
10. Delica

In no particular order, Koi Palace is quite possibly the best dim sum you’ll ever have, well worth the one hour wait at Sunday lunch time. Firefly has a cosy local atmosphere and I’ve had too many great evenings here for it not to be on the list. Delfina has fantastic truffles home made buffalo mozerella caprese worth hunting out a parking spot in the Mission. Next door, the Tartine Bakery is simply in a league of its own. Try the banana or coconut cream pie. R&G Lounge is one good reason to venture into Chinatown for food; don’t leave without ordering a crab dish. Both King of Thai Noodles and Naan n’ Curry are two great local chains sporting cheap and tasty curries. The folks at the Bluebottle Coffee Company are very passionate about what they do and want nothing more than for you to enjoy great coffee. Finally, Kiss Seafood on Laguna Street and the strangely named Delica rf-1 are the only two places in the area that really seem to do Japanese food the way I remember it.