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This is not HDR in the traditional sense. Any guess what I did to it?

Well, Go Bears, we beat Tennessee! That should silence any doubts about the Pac-10. What a game, it was a lot of fun to watch and see all of my old friends all in one place!

My new camera remains awesome, especially for those night scenes. [Nerdy photographer text follows, feel free to skip] I also picked up a 50mm f/2 Macro lens at a great bargain, widely regarded as the best lens available for the Olympus DSLRs, and I was amazed at all the beautiful portraits I got out of it, not to mention how fast it is! If you’ve never used an f/2 or wider lens, I highly recommend it. It sure it something to shoot at ISO100 under stadium lighting and still get 1/80-1/125 shutter speeds. My other lenses (f/3.5-5.6ish) were at ISO800-1600 for that, and the photos were barely passable with all the noise (though the E-510 is great about the noise, much more so than the older models). It certainly is a big step up.

So the point of this post, I guess, is that I’m turning 23 in a couple hours. This is my last post as a 22-year old. Woooo, big deal. Heh. I’m listening to Jimmy Eat World’s “23,” which is appropriate and a great song, and I always promised myself I’d listen to it when I turn 23. “Amazing still it seems / I’ll be 23 / I wont always love what Ill never have / I wont always live in my regrets.” God, that just hits me right now. I guess I’m growing up or something. And I think I ain’t doing half bad.

To my family and friends and everyone who has been a part of my life in the past year, Thank you. Now’s as good a time as any to say it. You’ve all made my life brilliant, and I can only hope I’ve been as good to all of you as you have been to me. Thank you all!

Alright then, now that I’ve said all that, time to have a fun birthday!

A couple nights ago there was a total lunar eclipse visible to most of the world (did you see it?) so I took a few pictures. They came out pretty well:

Not too bad! You can see more in the full album. They were taken with my new Olympus E-510, 40-150mm f/4-5.6 telephoto lens, and a tripod.

I’ve also got pictures from my Yosemite trip up here, I’ll post some to the front page when I get a chance.

Also, if you reading happen to be in the Cal Band, I’ll be working to put up an an album of the 4000-odd photos I took last year of everyone so you can purchase prints. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

I was waiting for the UPS truck all day today, and it finally came at 6 PM with my new camera. I was jumping around like a little kid on Christmas, which was probably scary for my roommate and his girlfriend to watch, but I couldn’t help it.

My previous camera was an Olympus E-300, but it was sadly stolen from my (accidentally) unlocked car about a year and a half ago. I never saw it again. Since then I’ve used my dad’s Olympus E-500, and it’s served me very well.

After Olympus released their new model E-510, I was pretty convinced it was the next step for me. It has 10 MP of resolution (not that anyone ever needs that), Sensor-shift Image Stabilization (works with all lenses), and Live View. In addition, it pretty much does away with noise concerns at high ISO, which was a problem with the E-500 and below. In fact, noise at ISO 1600 (the highest sensitivity) looks an awful lot like nice film grain, as you can see in this shot.

It came with two lenses, and while you can get the camera with just the wide-angle 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6, it’d be dumb to pass up a 40-150mm f/4-5.6 (80-300mm in 35mm equivalent terms) telephoto for only $100 more. Both are excellent lenses, despite the fact that they’re a little more plastic than their previous models, and the telephoto is a slightly slower (the clean high-ISO and Image Stabilization makes up for it). They’re sharp, have surprisingly nice bokeh, and are darn small and light (hence the plastic). You’ve never seen a 300mm equivalent telephoto zoom that’s as small as this one. A very portable package all in all.

Other than all that technical stuff, it takes beautiful photos! You can see them above, and if you view the whole post, and in this zenphoto album here. I’m going to Yosemite next week for a family camping trip, and I plan to take lots more. I’ll be sure to post them afterward.

One of my featured photographs on Wikipedia (English edition) has been selected as the Picture of the Day for Saturday, July 21st 2007 (two days away!). I’m going to be on the front page of Wikipedia! Woo!

Here’s the photo, click it to go to the template page and see what it’ll look like. And if it’s Saturday, head to Wikipedia’s front page to see the photo and my name next to it

Update: It’s past, but it was cool while it lasted. Here’s a screenshot:

This kinda sucks about living here in the summer:

And if you go to San Francisco, I mean, you’d think the fog would thin out a bit, or maybe that it’s between Berkeley and the city. But nope! I was there last night and it looked exactly like the picture. Cold, foggy, windy. Welcome to Summer in California!

I’ve been in the market for a new camera after having my Olympus E-300 stolen out of my car a while back, and before going on a ski trip this year, I decided to just go grab one from Best Buy. I did minimal research before going, but I’m happy with what I got, so here’s my review.

For specs and in-depth testing, you can read the excellent review at dpreview.

After using this camera for a couple of months, I’ve come to like it very much, and especially some of it’s very unique features. To get right to the point, these are:

• 28mm wide-angle zoom lens
• Optical image-stabilization that actually works
• Leica-branded sharp optics

That’s it really. Those are its unique features. The rest is pretty run-of-the-mill. But let me explain why those three are so great and make this camera worth its weight in plastic.

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My girlfriend discovered the most amazing thing last month in a tree right outside her apartment window—it was a hummingbird nest! Not something you get to see every day when you step out your door, but she did for over a month! It all started with the mommy hummingbird just sitting in her nest incubating eggs…

The mother hummingbird sitting in her nest. 2/1/07

Keep reading for over a dozen pictures, including one of a baby hummingbird learning how to fly. It’s priceless, don’t miss out on this one.

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