Klaus' Korner » Lenses

In the News: 2013-11-26

Klaus — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 14:32:05 +0000

Apple News: Why Is Apple The Bad Guy For Defeating This Patent Troll?
Back in 2010, Apple was seemingly randomly sued by an eccentric 70-year-old crank who claimed to have “come up with the idea” of the smartphone. That lawsuit has now come to trial, and the crank has lost, but what’s confusing is how torn the jury seems to have been by the decision, even going so far as to call the alleged smartphone creator a “little guy” crushed by big business.
Read full story => CultOfMac

Technology News: Why did Apple buy PrimeSense? For a key technology it’ll deploy within a year
That Apple is paying $350m for PrimeSense, the Israeli technology company, suggests that the Israeli company’s systems will be a key technology for the company. It really wants it for something – and fast. The amount paid is comparable with the $356m that Apple laid out in July 2012 to buy the fingerprint recognition company Authentec – whose scanning technology was incorporated into the iPhone 5S, released in September 2013 – and the $390m paid in December 2011 for Anobit, another Israeli company, which specialises in flash memory technologies.
Read full story => TheGuardian

Programming News: “Hello, World” from Around the Programming World
In honor of the Hour of Code week, we thought it would be fun to compile (sorry, pun intended) a collection of everyone’s favorite first program in almost any language, Hello, World. Below are examples from a number of programming and scripting languages, many of which we have resources for right on this site. Keep in mind there’s a lot more to some of these languages than firing up a compiler and copying and pasting the text below into a dialog box, but if nothing else these examples will hopefully demonstrate some of the differences — and similarities — among various languages.
Read full story => Informit

Photography News: Cheapest way to Convert Normal SLR Lens to Take Macro Photography
Way back in 1983 I bought the Ashai Pentax SLR Camera with a 50 mm normal lens. For taking macro photographs with this camera, I need a costlier macro lens, costing more than 500 dollars, in place of the normal one. Wait a minute… while shopping around I found this little toy costing about 10 dollars…. extension tubes. An easy and cheapest way to convert your normal lens to take macro photography.
Read full story => Instructables

In the News: 2013-09-13

Klaus — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 13:37:43 +0000

Apple News: Will Apple’s free iWork for iOS impact Microsoft?
Apple introduced the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c during a media event earlier this week, but those weren’t the only big announcements of the afternoon. The Cupertino company also announced that it is making its iWork suite—which includes Pages, Numbers, and Keynotes—absolutely free for its new iOS device users. The free iWork offer also includes other applications such as iPhoto and iMovie, which are already standard on the Mac. Now that all new iOS devices will be offering iWork for free, one can’t help but ask, “Will this impact Microsoft?”
Read full story => TechnologyTell

Technology News: Smarter than you think: the internet isn’t dumbing us down after all
A writer for publications including The New York Times and Wired, Clive Thompson is used to defending the latest trends in digital technology from naysayers and skeptics. In 2008, he was one of the first to describe how sites like Twitter were about more than sharing what you had for breakfast. Now he’s written his first book, Smarter Than You Think, an investigation of how technology is helping us to learn more and retain information longer. Clive took some time to talk with us about the new book, distraction, MOOCs, and how he uses technology with his kids.
Read full story => TheVerge

Programming News: Programming Without Variables
Last week, I discussed two different philosophies of programming-language design. One philosophy is that programming languages exist in order to grant convenient access to computer hardware; the other is that a programming language should make it easy to write programs, and that the computer’s job is then to execute those programs. I used mathematical notation as an example. In general, mathematicians use a particular name to denote a single value in a particular context. The common notion in programming that a name denotes a “variable,” which might have one value at one time and another value at another time, is generally absent from mathematical notation.
Read full story => DrDobbs

Photography News: Zooming In: Using Telephotos In Landscape Photography
If you’re anything like me, when presented with a beautiful landscape, your first instinct is to reach for the wide angle lenses and take it all in. And there’s no doubt about it- wide angle lenses can excel in those situations. But don’t neglect the telephoto lenses in your bag when you find yourself faced with nature’s beauty. Telephoto lenses can create shots that are every bit as breathtaking as their wide angled brethren. Telephoto lenses, first and foremost, can allow you to isolate an area of the view you are shooting, because a telephoto sees a narrower angle of view than do wide angle lenses. Because of this narrower angle of view, telephotos also help normalize the size of near objects in relation to faraway objects. With wide angle lenses, when you fill the frame with a near object, it will appear much larger than a similar sized object placed further away. With telephoto lenses, near objects and far objects will appear to be similar in size, because telephoto lenses normalize the size and distance when comparing the two objects. The downside to this is that the scene can then appear to be static and flat.There are cases where the flatness can be used to advantage, for instance creating graphic images using the lines and colors of the landscape.
Read full story => DigitalPhotographySchoo

In the News: 2013-08-01

Klaus — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 13:36:59 +0000

Apple News: Reality Absorption Field: Apple’s cloud comeback
Look closely at the moves of the three main consumer operating system vendors. Each has become infatuated toward expanding into a new area from its strength among the landscape of hardware, software and service. For Microsoft, which has long been strong in software and has gained strength in services, its clearly tablets (as a broader hardware beachhead), or at least in defending its PC franchise from them. For Google, which was born on services, its software via its operating systems and – to a lesser extent – hardware where its Nexus brands and Motorola acquisition are areas of growing relative importance. And for Apple, which has made its name tightly integrating hardware and software, services have become critically important.
Read full story => TUAW

Technology News: The GeoWeb will change consumer and business behavior
Maps and geography have helped humans understand their surroundings in the context of their neighbors, their town, their country, the Earth, and the Universe for about the past 2,000 years. For about 400 years, since Mercator figured out how to portray the curved Earth on a flat piece of paper, not much changed in the world of geography — until the launch of 24 GPS satellites by the U.S. Department of Defense about 30 years ago. Digital location-based technologies are now a transformative force for consumers and businesses, particularly when coupled with the rapid adoption of mobile and the growth of big data. I’m a big believer in the future for “GeoDisruption” — the potential for consumers and businesses to interact in fundamentally new ways to take advantage of increasingly precise location-based technologies.
Read full story => ImpactLab

Programming News: Do you have a digital or social media will? Who will maintain your life online when you’re dead?
As we continue to pour our few remaining keystrokes into walled gardens we should be asking ourselves – who controls our content? You don’t want all your words to be wasted so I hope you own your own domains and have backup copies of all these years of content. If you die, will everything you’ve written become a 404? Some people choice to quit the internet, commit infosuicide and make everything return “410 Gone” but most us want our content to live on. If you die, who will maintain your sites?
Read full story => Scott Hanselman

Photography News: Sigma Mount Conversion Service: switch cameras but keep using your old lenses!
Sigma has introduced a new Mount Conversion Service that will allow photographers to swap their lenses over to a new camera system should they decide to switch brands – whether you shoot with DSLR or a CSC. The third-party lens manufacturer has unveiled a solution that will shatter photographers’ long-held allegiance to their lens mount by enabling them to convert the mount of their current lenses by changing the relevant parts for a different mount and internal core system. To use Sigma’s new Mount Conversion Service, your lenses will need to be a part of the company’s three new Art, Contemporary and Sports product lines – which currently include two full-frame DSLR lenses, three crop-sensor DSLR lenses and three mirrorless lenses.
Read full story => DigitalCameraWorld

In the News: 2013-07-15

Klaus — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 13:46:36 +0000

Apple News: How Apple’s App Store Changed Business at Its Core
In raw numbers, the Apple App Store’s reach is undeniable, with more than 50 billion downloads and about 900,000 apps in total. Though the stats are impressive, what matters more is the transformative influence the App Store has had in the business world, affecting everything from the logic of pricing to startup culture itself. Even as Apple got people used to the idea of having a supercomputer in their pocket, it significantly changed how businesses interact with consumers around the world, says Brian Blau, research director for consumer technology and markets at research firm Gartner. Thanks to Apple’s innovation, the way we think about product sales and delivery, about marketing and customer loyalty, and about what a hot new startup looks like will never be the same.
Read full story => Entrepreneur

Technology News: Will the Internet of Things change everything?
So what is the Internet of Things? Well, it’s too wide-ranging, too nebulous a concept to describe in one pithy soundbite, but we’ll give it a shot: it’s when objects in the physical world connect to the web – and each other. That probably doesn’t come close to explaining why it’s such a big deal, but look at it in this way: what if almost everything in the world – cars, computers, coffee mugs, cereal boxes, chairs, even cows – were all part of a huge global network? And each had an individual identity within that network? “Smart” chairs Take the example of a chair. In an Internet of Things scenario, you might be able to single out a particular chair, anywhere in the world and find out (a) if someone was sitting on it and (b) who that person was. The chair would only need to have a pressure sensor, an individual ID, an Internet connection and the ability to read RFID tags.
Read full story => PC Authority

Programming News: Why Mobile Web Is Slow?
Over the weekend quite a few people wrote to me about a well researched article written by Drew Crawford where he gives some insights about why the mobile web/JavaScript is slow and will not (for the foreseeable future) compete with native code. My opinion of the article is mixed, it is well written and very well researched, I also agree with a few of the points but I think that despite getting some of the conclusions wrong I think his reasoning is inaccurate. But first lets start with who I am (Shai Almog) and what I did, I wrote a lot of Java VM code when consulting for Sun Microsystems. I did this on mobile devices that had a fraction of the RAM/CPU available for today’s devices. Today I’m the co-founder of Codename One where I regularly write low level Android, iOS, RIM, Windows Phone etc. code to allow out platform to work everywhere seamlessly. So I have pretty decent qualification to discuss devices, their performance issues etc.
Read full story => CodeNameOne

Photography News: Do ‘Sharp Lenses’ Even Matter Any More?
There are numerous properties of lenses I care about. Color transmission seems important for digital; microcontrast never hurts. Bokeh matters to me, although whether it matters generally is always an open question. There are a number of properties that contribute to a lens being “well behaved”—for instance, you generally want the rendering to be fairly even from the center to the corners, and reasonably consistent up and down the aperture range as well as from close to far focus. A number of properties that were crucial to film lenses have become elastic with digital processing, so they’re not as critical any more. Barrel distortion, for example. Physical vignetting for another. These flaws can be adequately minimized (if not strictly completely “corrected”) in post, so they’re just not really that important to pictorial photography any more. Your lens vignettes a little bit wide open? Well, who cares? Just correct it if you don’t like it. (I actually add vignetting more than I subtract it.)
Read full story => TheOnlinePhotographer

In the News: 2013-04-07

Klaus — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:10:04 +0000

Apple News: Apple was right, widgets just ain’t cool
Without a doubt, one of the biggest differences between iOS and Android is its fundamental handling of information. Google decided to allow widgets onto a phone’s Home screen so that, theoretically, users would have the information they need right at their fingertips. Apple, on the other hand, has doggedly stuck to its guns.
Read full story => iDownloadBlog

Technology News: The Limits of Renewable Energy: A Call for Research and Development
Despite these trends, conventional wisdom holds that a “clean-energy future” is not only possible but looming. Through a combination of energy efficiency and renewable technologies, some argue, we can “solve” the problem of climate change. The case for “we’ve got all the renewables we need” recently received a boost from aNational Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study, which concluded: “Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.”
Read full story => RenewableEnergyWorld

Programming News: How important is it to reduce the number of lines in code?
Ankit works in J2SE (core java). During code reviews, he’s frequently asked to reduce his lines of code (LOC). “It’s not about removing redundant code,” he writes. To his colleagues, “it’s about following a style.” Style over substance. Ankit says the readability of his code is suffering due to the dogmatic demands of his code reviewers. So how to find the right balance of brevity and readability?
Read full story => ars technica

Photography News: A layman’s guide to extension tubes: common questions and answers
What are extension tubes? Extension tubes are hollow tubes without any optical elements. Their purpose is to position the lens further away from the camera, to enable a closer focus distance. How do they work? The greater the distance between the lens and camera, the shorter the focus range will be. Longer extension tubes may therefore deny the ability to focus at long range.
Read full story => DigitalCameraWorld

In the News: 2013-02-26

Klaus — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:42:43 +0000

Apple News: Apple’s Selling More Macs Because It Finally Has More Macs to Sell
Though supplies of its new iMac remain somewhat constrained, Apple appears to be making some headway in bringing supply of the machine into rough parity with demand. To wit, new data from NPD that shows Mac sales up significantly this year. According to NPD data cited by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Mac sales rose 31 percent year over year for the month of January. Why? Simple. Said Munster, “We believe the reason for the significant improvement in the sales data is primarily due to Apple catching up with iMac supply.”
Read full story => AllThingsD

Technology News: “There’s a Web for that”—will Firefox OS bring about the end of the app?
“We’re taking [the Web] to mobile” announced Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, talking about the company’s Firefox OS vision. This might come as a surprise to anyone who uses an iPhone, an Android handset, a Windows Phone device, or even a BlackBerry, er, BlackBerry. All of these have good browsers with rich HTML5 support. Isn’t the Web already on mobile?
Read full story => ars technica

Programming News: Rails 4.0: Beta 1 released!
Hot on the heels of the first production version of Ruby 2.0 comes the first beta version of Rails 4.0. The two form a great pair and are already running in production on a number of applications, including Basecamp Breeze. In fact, Ruby 2.0 is the preferred Ruby to use with Rails 4.0. The purpose of this beta is to get as many people as possible to try to upgrade from Rails 3.2 and earlier and to get an adventurous few to start new applications directly on Rails 4.0. That’s the only way we’re going to suss out all the issues and ensure that we can launch a solid final release. So please help us with that if you can!
Read full story => Riding Rails

Photography News: The love for the old or not….
As you probably already know I recently switched from my beloved Canon setup to the Sony A99. Some people did not get the idea behind this, but let me put it this way… I’m very picky when it comes to dynamic range, color and image quality and when I compared the A99 to the Canon 5DMKIII I could not really think off any reason not to make the switch, now I have to be honest buying all my lenses again is an idea that I did not like and also an idea that scared the heck out of me for the simple reason that I did not know anything about the quality of Minolta glass etc. And this triggered a journey that I will try to show you on the blog and give you some tips and buying advise as we go along.
Read full story => FrankDoorhof

In the News: 2013-02-18

Klaus — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:56:27 +0000

Apple News: What if iWatch isn’t actually an Apple smart watch, but an aptly named TV set?
As we entered 2013, the rumor mill has been increasingly churning out speculative reports regarding Apple’s rumored TV set and smart watch projects, almost on a daily basis. Even Bloomberg joined the frenzy with claims that Apple has as many as hundred product designers working on a wearable smart watch-like computer that “may perform some of the tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad.” But here’s the kicker: what if this group is instead working on a television set – fittingly referred to as an iWatch?
Read full story => iDownloadBlog

Technology News: We need a new era of digital journalism
News reporting is aging badly. Legacy newsrooms style books look stuck in a last century formalism (I was tempted to write “formalin”). Take a newspaper, print or online. When it comes news reporting, you see the same old structure dating back to the Fifties or even earlier. For the reporter, there is the same (affected) posture of effacing his/her personality behind facts, and a stiff structure based on a string of carefully arranged paragraphs, colour elements, quotes, etc.
Read full story => The Guardian

Programming News: Using Mind Maps for UX Design: Part 1 – Sketch Mapping
Mind maps are diagrams that visually illustrate how words, phrases, ideas, or concepts relate to a central key word or phrase. They are a visual thinking tool that helps to structure information and identify connections between items. To create a mind map, you simply start with a central idea, and branch out from that idea with each branch representing a topic related to that idea. Sub topics can be made in an infinite number of levels building off of each branch.
Read full story => inspireUX

Photography News: Prime lenses vs. zoom lenses
Here are a few thoughts on primes versus zooms. I’m John Harrington. There is a great deal of debate amongst photographers about whether you should shoot with a prime, whether you should shoot with a zoom. Zooms are great lenses because of course you can be at 24mm, wide open and then all of a sudden you need zoom in to 70mm, no problem, a 24–70mm is a really common zoom lens. If you have the opportunity though, I would strongly encourage you to consider primes.
Read full story => Photo Business Forum

In the News: 2013-01-30

Klaus — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:23:25 +0000

Apple News: Apple Has Been Granted A Trademark For Its Retail Store Design
Apple has been granted a trademark by the U.S. government for the design and layout of its retail stores, according to a filing at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The company had applied for the trademark back in 2010 but it was rejected twice before finally being approved now, according to ifoAppleStore. The trademark covers the glass storefront, the way the rectangular tables are arranged inside the store, shelving on the walls, the Genius Bar and more.
Read full story => Business Insider

Technology News: FIFA test chip in the ball, ‘Hawk-Eye’ goalline technology systems
Football’s governing body FIFA has had two different systems tested at a Germany stadium as they look to introduce goal line technology into top-flight football. Both ‘Goal-Ref’, a system which can verify whether a goal has been scored by using a chip in the ball, and ‘Hawk-Eye’, the camera system already used in tennis, were tested at the Duesseldorf Arena on Tuesday.
Read full story => Vanguard

Programming News: Building a PaaS in Ruby by Phil Whelan
Stackato not only supports developers in pushing apps using any stack, but it is also built using many different technologies and programming languages. Ruby is still the predominant language for these technologies, with Python, Node.js and Go chasing closely behind. In this blog post I am discussing how Ruby is used in Stackato. This will give some insight into the Ruby cogs that are turning in the background when you deploy your application on a Stackato cluster.
Read full story => Activestate

Photography News: Five myths about Image Stabilisation
Canon calls it image stabilisation, Nikon uses vibration reduction and Sigma has Optical Stabilizer. The name may be different but the aim is the same. IS, VR and OS all promise the chance to shoot sharper shots at slower shutter speeds. I love Image stabablised lenses but they can’t work miracles, so lets dispel a few myths.
Read full story => Gavtrain

In the News: 2013-01-20

Klaus — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:23:10 +0000

Apple News: This Week’s Must-Have iOS Apps: Documents, Finish, Poster & More
Documents, a great new file manager and media player for the iPad — which won’t cost you a penny — kicks off this week’s must-have apps roundup. Finish, a task management app designed for procrastinators, is also featured — along with Poster, the best WordPress client for iOS. We’ve also got a great new camera app that’ll help you take awesome photos on your iOS devices, without applying filters and effects.
Read full story => Cult of Mac

Technology News: This week in cloud: Amazon builds up; OpenStack staffs up; Oracle updates “faux” cloud
Amazon is reportedly on-board for a new data center build-out in Virginia; OpenStack Foundation preps for new year with board elections; another analyst declares Oracle’s cloud as a non-cloud.
Read full story => gigaom

Programming News: Introduction to C++
C++ is a compiled, general purpose programming language that supports procedural, object-oriented, and generic programming. C++ is a also a case sensitive language as well as C language. C++ is regarded as a middle-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. C++ is an object oriented programming language that allows programmers to build large and complex applications in a useful and efficient way. The prime purpose of C++ programming was to add object orientation to the C programming language, which is in itself one of the most powerful programming languages.
Read full story => cse tips

Photography News: The Phoblographer Staff’s Favorite Lenses
If you’re asked what your favorite lens is, how would you respond? Could you list one right away without hesitation and explain why it’s your favorite? It’s not always an easy thing to do (unless you’ve only got one lens I suppose) but it’s a question often asked of us here at The Phoblographer, so we’ve decided to share our opinions with all of you. Read on to hear from some of the staff.
Read full story => The Phoblographer

In the News: 2012-12-03

Klaus — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:27:25 +0000

Apple News: No RAM upgrades for new iMacs? Is Apple crazy?
Is Apple crazy? It might be, if its decision to make it near impossible to upgrade the RAM inside its new 21.5-inch iMacs is any indication. In all my years reporting on new Macs, this is perhaps the most ludicrous decision yet. It doesn’t matter how good it is in every other regard, that one decision makes this a computer to avoid – get a 27-inch model (which you can upgrade), or another system altogether. It’s that simple.
Read full story => Computerworld

Technology News: The Internet Isn’t Broken; So Why Is The ITU Trying To ‘Fix’ It?
We’ve been talking about the ITU’s upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) for a while now, and it’s no longer “upcoming.” Earlier today, the week and a half session kicked off in Dubai with plenty of expected controversy. The US, the EU and now Australia have all come out strongly against the ITU’s efforts to undermine the existing internet setup to favor authoritarian countries or state-controlled (or formerly state-controlled) telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with. The BBC article above has a pretty good rundown of some of the scarier proposals being pitched behind closed doors at WCIT.
Read full story => techdirt

Programming News: Agile is Not for Everyone
Someone asked me again about self-assessments for their agile transition. That got me thinking about this problem of transitioning to agile. I don’t believe agile is for everyone in every circumstance. Some people claim agile has “crossed the chasm.” Certainly, many people are aware of agile. Many people understand that a cross-functional team works in increments, delivering features asking for feedback. That’s at the team level.
Read full story => Johanna Rothman

Photography News: Which Lens Should You Buy
Choosing a lens for the DSLR can be quite overwhelming. Should you go in for a kit lens or invest in a specialized high quality lens? Will a prime lens help you take the shots that you want or it would be better to consider a zoom lens? Then there is focal length, aperture and other lens terminology that comes into play. Seriously, choosing a perfect lens can be a tedious job! And there’s no right answer to this question. In fact the best lens depends on what your requirements are. You can win over this complicated puzzle by answering this basic question: What do I love to photograph?
Read full story => APN Photography School