Cleaning out old files from my Mac I came across this press clipping of my friend Fritz Hoffmann. I didn't want it to get lost so I figured a post was in order.
Fritz always expires me. He picked up and moved to China in 1995 to chase his photographic dream. Fritz lives on the edge. Take a look at his web site.
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Category: Photos, PoliticsTags: Barack Obama | Comments (0)
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I can't explain exactly why I like this photo. It leaves me with a specific feeling. Shot wide open with a 50mm lens on a Canon 5D. I wanted the wires to be as far out of focus as possible.
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The Texas Observer found some problems with the border wall:
As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.
Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.
Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.
Brownsville landowner Eloisa TamezWhile the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.
“It has a golf course and all of the amenities,” Tamez says. “There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?”
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When we examine the history of modern torture technique by technique – and there are dozens of examples – we find that newer, "cleaner" tortures first appear in conditions of public monitoring, usually in democratic states. It is only afterward that we find authoritarian states adopting them.
If the spread of torture techniques suggests a blurry line between "us" and "them," it also teaches that there's no real boundary between "there" and "here." It would be ignoring history to assume that what happens in an American-run prison in Iraq will stay in Iraq. Soldiers who learn torture techniques abroad get jobs as police when they return, and the new developments in torture you read about today could yet be employed in a neighborhood near you.
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Is the Canon 50mm 1.2L lens worth $1,000 more than the EF 50mm f/1.4? That's the call you are going to have to make. Hopefully I can help you make that decision.
As a newbie to the Canon system and the 5D, I purchased the EF 50 along with the body. I like the FOV from a 50mm so this lens was a no-brainer. But was the 50L simply magic? Would I see the jump in contrast and micro detail when I switched to the 35mm ASPH cron from the revered V4 cron on my Leica M's? What about the the rendering of background detail when shot wide open? Don't make me say the "B" word…
After reading 5,864 posts on the internet about the 50L being the best/worst lens ever, I decided the only way to know for certain was to spend $70 to rent this lens for a week and put it to the test.
I will be the first to acknowledge that this is by no means a scientific test. I didn't shoot the USAF resolution chart. I will call it a real world test. I wanted to see how scenes look when photographed with both lenses. To do this I simply took the same photo with both lenses. Most of these come from a 2-hour walk around my neighborhood. Most times I took an f/1.2 and an f/1.4 version with the 50L and an f/1.4 shot with the EF 50. You will also find an f/2.8 comparison shot in the mix. That's the range that supposedly separates the EF 50 and the 50L.
All the photos have minimal processing. They were are all shot RAW and converted with ACR 4.3.1. They were re-sized to 1600 pixels wide because that's the biggest size I can fit on my monitor at 100 percent. I realized that I rarely make prints anymore. Everything is for the web or personal viewing. Even images where the 1.2 out shined the EF 1.4 in detail or edge sharpness were lost when I went down to 1600 pixels.
The photos have a modest USM and are saved as an image quality 10 in Photoshop. If you want to get your hands on some of the RAW files drop me a note. Otherwise, leave a question on this post.
I'm not sure if this will be useful, but I've also uploaded the ICC profile I created for my monitor, which is embedded in these images.
I did buy a lens hood for the 1.4 from HK Supplies via Ebay. It was dirt cheap and fits perfectly. I was concerned about how many knocks the front of this lens could take before needing repair. The lens hood is good protection against those knocks. I can still buy three more copies of this lens before I equal the cost of the 1.2.
In low-light situations the 1.4 focused as well as the 1.2 for me.
Category: Photo Links, PhotosTags: Canon 50mm 1.2L, Canon 50mm lenses, Canon 5D, Canon EF 50mm | Comments (12)
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