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Showing posts from December, 2014

The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

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I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca
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Initial Thoughts on the Jarv NMotion Bluetooth Earphones

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The Jarv NMotion Earphones and Running Case As most people who follow my social media accounts know I took up running four or five months ago. One of the main things that keeps me running four or five months later is my phone and it's ability to both track my runs and keep me somewhat entertained/focused while running. So I thought I'd start off 2015 with an update to my running gear a set of Bluetooth stereo earphones. Problem is I'm just not sure if they (stereo Bluetooth earphones) are any good, and I wasn't about to buy a $100+ set only to find out I didn't like them. So I went eBay shopping. As any good eBay shopper knows you can get all kinds of Chinese knockoffs of questionable quality but dirt cheap prices there. That wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted something that wasn't top tier (LG, Beats, Jay Birds), but still had a name, their own website, and a minimum three star rating on Amazon. These Jarv NMotion earphones fit the bill, and, pur
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My Amazon/Runtastic Rant

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Runtastic Pro, Courtesy Amazon I just bought Runtastic PRO . Again. "But Iain," you say (oh, and it's pronounced Ian), "why would you buy the same app twice?" That is a good question. Back when I got back into running I chose +Runtastic  as my tracking app after auditioning half a dozen other apps. I liked the user interface, it connected easily to My Fitness Pal , my overall view of my activities and basic health stats, and there were other apps in their family that I am using (pushups, sit-ups, etc) that all talked to each other. Then a couple months later the Pro version went on sale at the Amazon app store. As an Android user it's nice to easily install apps from other stores, but I had for the most part ignored Amazon because, honestly, their selection of apps looked to be junk apps. Or games. But I bought Runtastic Pro expecting to get the same features I already had, plus some extras. I should have read the fine print. The Amazon version of the ap
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Moody Denver

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Moody Denver Airport I don't normally highlight a mobile photo here on my blog. I tend to use my VSCO Grid to show them. The reasons aren't necessarily because they aren't as good of photos taken with my dedicated camera, but because usually there's just less that can be done. Or more accurately, if using RAW photos allows me to push processing to 11, using JPEGs are more like a 5. And that's starting off with a clean photo to begin with. This photo wasn't clean, was shot through a dirty window at Denver International, and was noisy all over. The X, to it's credit, did automatically select to use it's version of HDR processing, which at least gave me something to work with. With mobile shots I typically stick to mobile tools for processing. The built in Google+ tools are pretty decent for most edits and processing, but I tend to use VSCO's excellent VSCO Cam for Android for the editing tools. I've tried using other dedicated camera apps
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Location: Denver International Airport, 8500 Peña Boulevard, Denver, CO 80249, USA
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Lunching Elk

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Elk at Lunch I don't do wild animal shots very often. Mainly because I don't have a long enough zoom to do it safely, and a lack of interest in birds (sorry  +Chuq Von Rospach ). So my requirements for taking animal shots are slow to non-moving subjects that don't spook easily with humans around. For day 4 of the nature photography challenge (shared with me by Chuq) I came across a herd of elk lounging and having lunch.
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Power of Nature

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The Power of Nature Day 3 of the nature photography challenge. I know I've shown this before on the site, but it's one of my favorite shots of this year.
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Popular posts from this blog

The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Upgrading to a 4K Monitor

Image
I'm in the process of getting back into photography which will mean a new camera, more on that in a later post. But the first step for me was a new computer, one with the horsepower to handle a modern day camera and its RAW files. Along with the computer comes a new 4K monitor. 4K is great for media consumption, right? Your characters on your favorite show or movie really look detailed and realistic. Scenery looks wonderful. Everything looks great, right? Wrong. You know what doesn't look great? That photo I took in 2012 that I thought was sharp but is very much not. I transferred over my past catalogs of photos over to Lightroom Classic and eagerly began opening up some of my favorite photos. At first I was happy with how the colors looked and how the scene was composed. Then I noticed it was a little soft. Well I had just gotten a new contacts prescription so that must be it. Changed to my glasses and the photos were even blurrier! I went through photo after photo and most ca
Read more