General > Except for the Pig
Small Animal News
Sindobook:
I don't normally submit commentary, but here is some quick stuff.
In response to Samantha's post, let me clarify that Samantha is referring not to the local area but to the area immediately to the south. This area, which is under Mikey, has been relatively harmonious and secure ever since the expulsion of Yue-bing years ago. The small animals in this area have typically gotten along just fine. But if you go about 20 miles south, it is a much older area where rival factions of small animals have settled in for much longer. You have three basic factions in that area now, two of which actively hate each other and will probably never get along. Due to basic philosophical differences. That area is much more established, there's no significant predators in that area so there is really nothing driving force for the small animals to unite or anything like that. The third faction that pops up from time to time, they always remain neutral and come and go like the wind.
Sindobook:
In response to your questions, many people miss this, but know what each mode means and how this interacts with the flash.
AV mode the flash basically intends to use the flash as a fill flash. The flash will fire at some arbitrary intensity (determined by the feedback through the lens and the camera). FEC adjusts this intensity after it is determined. EV does not have its normal effect, it will try to make the scene darker / lighter but the flash feedback will compensate to offset this. The end effect is that, to a limit, EV adjust simply shifts the ratio of ambient and flash light.
TV mode operates similar to AV mode.
I don't know about P mode, I never use that one.
M mode is the most versatile and can be used in a number of ways.
1) To balance a dark background with a bright foreground. Switch to spot or center metering and meter based on a bright spot in the background (Adjust Shutter Speed and Aperture until the meter falls close to +/- 0EV). Now meter based on the foreground, switching the metering type as necessary. It will probably be -3EV or more. Take the picture and the flash will try to bring the foreground up to the level of the background. Sometimes it will bring up the background too, in this case meter to the background being a little under (-1EV or so).
2) When you don't have enough ambient light. Meter on the subject, getting as close to 0EV as possible. The closer you can get to 0EV, the better. Typically I aim for -1EV or -2EV, -3EV is pushing it. When you take the shot, the flash puts out only enough light to get to 0EV, based on feedback.
The main use of FEC is not to offset the brightness of the flash. In general the feedback system does a pretty good job of this. FEC comes in most useful when you are shooting a semi-reflective surface or something that over-illuminates when hit with light from the flash. This way you can dial down the flash as necessary.
Sindobook:
One of the most basic problems is procedural, a 50% quorum must be established before any business takes place or is voted on. Old rules assigned the mascot votes equal to the number of other voting members "plus one", ie. if there were seven voting members the mascot would then get eight votes. This rule worked fine and no one ever complained b'cos the mascot was always a small animal that could be trusted to abstain and never actually vote on anything. But ever since the pig left us, they have been slow to choose a new mascot and therefore quorum cannot be established since more the half the votes (on paper) are controlled by the mascot. So no actual business and votes have taken place since then, most unfortunate I know but then what can you do.
Sindobook:
To me this isn't a tricky subject at all. In 'the best' conditions it will make little to no difference at all. And my job, ideally, is to find those 'best conditions'. It can take experimentation, it can take time, but getting there is what matters. Once you find those 'best conditions', skills are secondary, and 'gear' barely matters at all.
I'm not saying that skill doesn't matter, without skill you will not be able to find those best conditions, unless you stumble across them by chance. I'm not saying gear doesn't matter, it does, when conditions are not optimal or 'the best'. But basically when I am compressing 9+ EV of dynamic range down to between 6 and 7 EV and using f/5.6 ISO 200 even with a polarizer still on the lens, no amount of high-end camera-ness is going to make the picture look much better.
It's when those conditions are not 'the best' that those other things start to matter most. People can try to compare and/or compete, but always consider your objective. Is it to 'take' good pictures or to 'make' good pictures. In groups, this is the difference between an individual and a leader. An individual's goal may be to 'take' the best picture but the leader's goal is to 'make' good pictures for the subject. If someone else can 'take' a better picture (comparatively) the individual might see this as reason to get upset, where as the leader will see this as evidence that they are doing their job well.
Sindobook:
I can list all the steps here, you might need to use a little bit of trail and error since everything is set up a little different. But this is what works on my setups, at least.
1) Open Internet Explorer. You must be using Internet Explorer (you cannot use another browser). IE8, the version that comes with Windows 7, or IE7 should work fine. You should be using a disk with the NTFS filesystem in order for this to work.
2) From the menu on the right, Tools->Internet Options. This brings up the "Internet Options" dialog. In the dialog that comes up, under "Browsing History", press Settings. For "Disk space to use", set the maximum of 1024. Take a note of the text below "Current Location". It might be something like:
"C:\Documents and Settings\Pig\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files" if you are using XP. If you are using Windows 7, it will be a little different and longer, but regardless the last directory will typically be "Temporary Internet Files". Just make a note of it, you'll need it later.
3) Back to the "Internet Options" dialog. Press the "Delete" button under "Browsing History". This next dialog works a little different for different versions of IE, but basically you want to use it to delete "Temporary Internet Files". In some cases you'll press the "Delete files" button then confirm, in other cases "Delete Temporary Internet Files" is a box you check, after which you hit the "Delete..." button or some such.
4) Now go ahead and browse to the page. It's important to let all 'streaming' media files download completely, which can take a minute or two. When everything is done downloading, go to the next step. Don't do any other browsing (on Internet Explorer). You can use another browser if you like.
5) Open windows command line. Navigate to the directory noted at the end of step #2. Now you need to navigate to some non-indexed directories. They won't show up with the normal dir command or any other windows calls. Use a dir /ai to find them and navigate down into them. The first one will typically be something like "Low" and the next one should be "Content.IE5".
6) Now that you have navigated into "Content.IE5"l, you need to find the media file. If you do a dir /ai from Content.IE5, you'll see any number of non-indexed directories show up. They all look like random combinations of letters and numbers, fortunately they're only 8 characters long. The name of the media file is set by the site itself, for instance Nico Nico Douga uses smile*, Youtube uses vidplayback* or videoplayback*, etc. But typically the media file is so much larger than all the other files you shouldn't have too much of a problem finding it even if you don't know the name.
Take advantage of dir /s to find these files. For instance, "dir /s | more" will list off all the files in all subdirectories and then you can look for a really big file (typically in the range of 10-100mb) which will be the media file. Once you know the naming convention of the website you are using, you can do something like "dir /s vid*" to show all files with that name in any subdirectory under the one you are currently in.
7) Once you find the media file you must copy it out of there to a directory you can see. Make a directory off your c: root like c:\scratch and copy it there. Once you have this figured out, you can write a batch script to do this for you. Generally your command might look something like:
copy \3j9dvxn6\vid* \scratch
8 ) Once the media file is copied out of IE's cache, you will likely need to give it an extension. Sometimes, in the case of .mp4 files this will not be necessary, but in the case of most .swf, .flv, and other files, they will have no extension when thy are copied out so you will have to add it yourself. As for how you know which extension to add, trial and error is the best I can do. Nico Nico Douga uses mostly .flv but will occasionally use .swf. Youtube uses .mp4 for most HD and .flv for most everything else.
9) Windows Media Player Classic HomeCinema can play back most of these file formats, like .swf.
10) Once you have your media file, you'll want to go back to step #2 and clear out the cache again. If you do this just before getting a new media file, it makes it quicker since you don't have to look through as much junk.
11) You can use other web browsers to do this, there are instruction online to do this that work. I tried using Chrome and Firefox to do his. The problem is that these drivers will not cache large media files, and there doesn't seem to be any way to set the max cacheable file size limit. For Firefox it is around 64mb, for Chrome it is around 40mb. These sizes quickly get exceeded these days, especially when dealing with HD video.
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