Here are the complications.

The main challenge of indoor sports is the lack of available light. One of the key elements in sports photography is a fast shutter speed (1/200s or 1/250s at the least). With that minimum requirement, I have two factors of exposure left to play with: ISO and aperture. Increasing either of these will allow me to have a faster shutter speed. But there are drawbacks to both.

The caveat to raising your ISO (your sensor’s sensitivity) is that it adds noise. Depending on your camera’s ability to handle noise, and your personal tolerance for noise, you may have different limits. Given my Canon T1is lack of proper noise handling, and my pathological case of noise-phobia, I limited myself to raise my sensitivity only up to a sacrilegious 800ISO.

So with two parameters fixed, it was a matter of getting a high aperture. But here is yet ANOTHER caveat. The larger the aperture, the shallower your depth of field. The shallower your depth of field, the slower your system takes to autofocus. And given that your subjects are running as fast as they can, your camera will be too finicky and unable to focus on a quickly moving target. This requires you to find a balance, such that you are able to allow ample light, and yet are still able to focus. Luckily I brought along most of my lenses to test with.

Here are the things I tried:

Two zooms (the 70-200/2.8 IS I, and the 24-70/2.8) and three primes (28/1.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.2). To make a long story short, here are the simplified lessons I learned:

• With my personal 800ISO limit, f/2.8 was not wide enough to allow minimum shutter speed of 200/s. I needed an aperture of f/2.0 or less. This ruled out my zooms, and left me deciding which prime to use.
• The max aperture of f/1.2 on my 85mm lens was too large for the camera to autofocus on moving targets, due to its razor thin depth of field.
• On a 1.6x crop sensor like my T1i’s, anything longer than 50mm (80mm equivalent) was too narrow to capture the action.

Given these limitations, my choice of lenses was whittled down to two: the 50/1.4, and the 28/1.8. I shot on Manual mode, with 800ISO at 1/200 to 1/250s and f/1.4 to f/1.8. I dedicated at least half of a game to each lens. Between these two lenses, I found the autofocus to be faster on the 1.8, but the framing more useful with the 50mm. Great!

……

Now hold on a second! A fixed focal length for photographing sports?? In most types of photography where the photographer does not have full control of his subjects, including sports or travel, a zoom lens is very useful and often required. I certainly felt this limitation, as there were very few scenarios that naturally yielded a natural frame.

When it comes down to it, getting the shot is most important, with other aspects, like noise, white-balance, or exposure coming second. That lead me to pick up the 24-70/2.8 lens once more. I went back and shot two more games with ISO 1600 and 3200. One bonus, in addition to being able to zoom, was having a faster autofocus. F/2.8 focuses a lot faster than f/1.8, because the depth of field is larger and the camera doesn’t have to be as exact.

The first two photos embedded in this post were shot at 800ISO. The second pair of photos were shot at 1600 or 3200 ISO. The amount of noise in the second two, compared to the first two, is significant. And you could say that the moments captured in the first two photos are just as good as those in the second two. However, the fixed focal length lens only allowed me to capture moments when I was lucky, while the zoom lens put more of the variables in my control allowing me to get the shot consistently.

When the topic of a prime lens comes up for new photographers, the 50mm lens is heralded as the most useful focal length, and the most classic choice of photojournalists’. Articles like this from shutterbug, combined with the ridiculously (albeit, relatively) cheap price of the 50mm/1.8 prime lenses available by Canon and Nikon, make it an obvious choice for first-time-prime-purchasers.

And while 50mm is a great focal length, on an APS-C sensor camera, it is effectively 80mm. While 80mm is great for portraits, it fails to serve as a general purpose lens. With that in mind, I sought an effective 50mm lens, which equates to 31.25mm on the APS-C sensor on my Canon T1I. While no such lens exists, there are ones that are close. I tried out both the 35mm/2.0, which I will review separately, and the 28mm/1.8, reviewed here.

The 28mm/1.8 (effecively 45mm on an APS-C sensor), does serve as a good general purpose, low light lens with no optics issues. It has become the default lens on my camera unless I have other, very specific needs.

Moving right into features, this lens runs on Canon’s UltraSonic Motor (USM), which focuses very quickly and quietly (I can’t hear it when using it, which is more than sufficient by my standards). In very lowlight (think dark room at night with dimly lit subject), it refuses to focus properly, but that could be partially the fault of my T1I’s very rudimentary 9-point AF system. To help out with these cases, the lens is also equipped with Full Time Manual (FTM) focus, which means you can grab onto the focus ring in AF mode, and focus on what you want to. This is incredibly useful when shooting in a crowded environment, and you want that shallow depth of field centered on a particular subject. No idea why this feature isn’t advertised with the lens (its not mentioned anywhere on its B&H page). Another aspect that isn’t mentioned anywhere is that this lens is internally focusing. That’s right: the front element stays still as focusing is all done inside. This proved useful when placing the lens (with a uv filter of course) up against a window, as i didn’t have to worry about damaging the motor. Lastly, the build of this lens is very sturdy. Nothing like the 50/1.8, and also beats the 50/1.4 in terms of build. Rest assured that thing is a rock, and your investment is safe from everyday wear & tear.

Before I move on to optics, I’d like to warn readers that I’m not  a pixel peeper. When printing I only worry about noise, and thats a camera-related issue. And any lens issues can easily be fixed in most photo editing programs. Having said that, Chromatic Aberration (CA) can be seen when viewed at the corners at 100%, but only in prominent, contrasty cases. Vignetting does exist, even when I shoot at /2.8 or /3.5. While it is not a strong vignette at all, I’m sure full frame sensors will suffer more from this.

Who should look into this: APS-C users for street/general-purpose photography; Full Frame users for landscapes.

Photos taken with this lens: http://www.flickr.com/photos/samarkamat/tags/28mm/

We all have some pretty standard uses for it:

• Checking the status of a non-responsive application (“Is it frozen? Or is it just… slow?”).
• Checking the memory usage, processs id’s, and a bunch of other information, about each of your processes. 
• Your CPU(s) usage.
• Your network usage. (though I dont really use this that much…

• Ctrl+Alt+Del  (the notoriety of this keystroke has permeated so far that even those who dont anything about computers, are still familiar with this one)
• Ctrl+Shift+Escape (I use this one… I think mostly out of my craving to be unique)
• Right-Click the Task Bar -> select Task Manager (if explorer hasnt frozen over that is…)

There might be still others, but I havent come across them yet. 

But NOW… on to some usefull tips that you might not have known. Lets start with your basic task manager. 

The first basic tip that many of you already know (and might find frustrating at first) is the Always On Top option under the Options menu. With this, you can ensure that your system monitor will always be in view, in all its glory. However, this can be a little annoying, considering that the task manager is a big window, and takes up a lot of valuable real estate on your screen.

Lets fix that. Double click the task manager in between the tab bar and the actual content pane. The figure on the right indicates this area in pink. Double clicking this will get rid of the menu’s, the tab bar, and leave just the display pane. This pane is resizable, and movable (just drag it by the border it has). 

This, by itself is extremely usefull. I keep a very small resized version of the Processes Tab on my desktop at all times. 

Sorted by memory usage, this gives me a very clear break down of where exactly my memory is going. And I like being in the know about how memory is allocated on my machine. An example of this window is right below.

So with something this small (yes this is the full size of the window), you have a much more useful utility to monitor your computer. As far as I knew, to change panels to say, the applications tab, you would have to restore the full manager (by double clicking the same border), and then manually switch tabs….

However, if you know tabs, and you know keyboard shortcuts, then you know the Universal Tab Switching Keystroke: CTRL+TAB! With this, you can switch panels to any of the four panels of the task manager from your keyboard. To a keyboard-fanatic like me, it doesnt get much better than this.

Having used rainmeter, samurize, and google desktop, I feel that if you’re just looking for a no-nonsense utility to give you basic info AND CONTROL over your machine, the default Task manager is the way to go. Now if you need to check your email accounts, manage your todo list, control your music, etc, I’m going to have to refer you somewhere else. 

Enjoy,

Samar

To add to the pot, a new feature that I’ve noticed is the ability to resize any text box that you may type into. This can really come in handy when the proivded area is just not enough. This will not, however, let you type in any more than is programmed to be that text field’s maximum length. 

For those of you who still prefer Firefox, this used to work with the Resizable addon. Unfortunately, this addon was discontinued (for good or bad), so for now you’ll just have to live without it.

If you want to skip my second-hand introduction of the feature and want to read about it directly from the developers, here is their blog entry.

Now for my quicker-and-dirtier intro, there’s two ways to work with this feature:

We know that the Reader isn’t your only source of cool information from the web. So say you found something insanely amusing or interesting on a site that you are not subscribed to or does not support RSS, then just drag This Link to your bookmark toolbar and voila! you’ve just shared it with your own thoughts on it if you want. Now your flow of information is not restricted to just within Reader, but is expanded to the rest of the web, unconditionally.

The other way to use this is if you are more of a blogger. In this case, you can write up your own notes from the link in Reader, allowing you to share your own thoughts.

In my opinion, this might be a feature that could take Reader’s social aspect beyond just shared articles, encroaching further into social bookmarking territory, alongside sites like del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Digg. However, since Reader is already built upon such a popular engine that provides aggregated information, this new feature might make it a better alternative to existing social bookmarking sites.

Even though there are countless ways to organize the Notebook, I will stick to my system, while using it to give you a tour of Notebook’s features. And then I will suggest a few other ways to store your information, in hopes that one of these may strike your fancy and get you started.

First off, before even getting to Notebook, the first thing you have to love is the ease of getting there. Simply type “notebook” into Firefox’s address bar, and poof! you’re magically redirected to your Notebook! (Gotta love the way Google integrates into FF. Try “gmail”, or even “gamil” if this is new to you!)

If this is the first time you’re accessing your notebook (and you’re using FF), then you would see a page that invites you to install the Google Notebook Firefox Extension. I personally like to minimize the number of addons I have running, so I removed this, but certainly check out the video to see how well Notebook integrates into your browser comfortably, placing all your information at your fingertips.

Continuing on, you will see your bleak and empty space, waiting to be molded and filled. You will start off in a section called “Unfiled bookmarks”. Yes, Notebook is also Google’s playground for maintaining your bookmarks online, but we will not discuss this much.

Go ahead and click on “My first notebook”. A small text box will already be open, and waiting for your input. Each of these boxes is considered one note.
They are all editable, formattable, removable, etc.
Notice how intuitively they work with the arrow keys. Moving up or down lets you move through various notes, allowing you to never have to reach for your mouse to edit within a notebook.
Deleting the contents of a note will automatically remove the note.
You can also drag and drop notes to rearrange them (or even send them to other notebooks).
Take a few minutes to play around and investigate. Creating new notebooks, setting the sort constraint should all be pretty self-explanatory.

Now to give our notebook some structure. Not to throw you into the deep end right away, but heres a view of the notebooks I maintain (some more regularly than others). Note that they’re not all “official” nor all “fun”. Splitting up the various categories of the information I store allows me to keep a bird’s eye view on what’s going on. All of my projects have a notebook, and all of my resources have a notebook for easy access. I keep my sort on “by Date” so that the most recently edited notebook is on top. Next I’ll take you into my School notebook for an idea of how an individual notebook can be organized.
Much like it’s real-life counterpart, my school notebook has a section for each of my classes (actually, they sit in separate binders, but I like this analogy, so we’ll float with it). Each of these sections will hold relevant crucial information, such as exam dates, important reminders, next actions, useful links, etc. To create a section, simply click in empty space in between any notes and select “add section”.
These sections are drag/droppable, editable, and removable just like notes themselves. You can collect notes into these sections easily, making them perfect for adapting to your tastes.

The rest of the organization I will leave up to you and your needs, but the last thing I want to discuss is the Sharing capabilities of Notebook. Just as you would share your Google Documents, you can also share your Notebooks with friends with Google accounts, or make it public to all by publishing it. This is especially useful for teams that need to brainstorm, and need a quick and painless mode to share information amongst each other.
For stronger sharing, you can export your notebook to as an RSS feed, or directly into Google Reader, to get the most up-to-date changes in your shared notebooks. For basic extensibility, you can also export any of your notebooks as an html page or even a Google Document, if thats the sort of things you go for.

If you guys give Notebook a shot and have your own impressions of its strong points or its shortcomings, let me know as I would love to hear them as well. If there are any features you wish to see in Notebook (such as Notebook-Gmail integration, or any other), leave those in the comments as well!

From the post on the site, it seems that the administration of this site has been passed on to a new person, as the original admin, Deimos, will be unable to fulfill this position.

Although Demonoid’s trackers have been up and available through the past months, the return of the site from its hiatus will surely be received warmly by everyone.

Cheers!

How much sleep do you think is daily obtained by the powerful healthy man who daily rattles up your street in charge of Carter Patterson’s van?  I have consulted a doctor on this point.  He is a doctor who for twenty-four years has had a large general practice in a large flourishing suburb of London, inhabited by exactly such people as you and me.  He is a curt man, and his answer was curt:
“Most people sleep themselves stupid.”
He went on to give his opinion that nine men out of ten would have better health and more fun out of life if they spent less time in bed.

Briefly, get up earlier in the morning.  You say you cannot.  You say it is impossible for you to go earlier to bed of a night–to do so would upset the entire household.  I do not think it is quite impossible to go to bed earlier at night.  I think that if you persist in rising earlier, and the consequence is insufficiency of sleep, you will soon find a way of going to bed earlier.  But my impression is that the consequences of rising earlier will not be an insufficiency of sleep.  My impression, growing stronger every year, is that sleep is partly a matter of habit–and of slackness.  I am convinced that most people sleep as long as they do because they are at a loss for any other diversion.

Given the points that Bennett makes, I am very much compelled to reconsider what keeps me in bed in the morning. Is it my internal clock, or is it really my disposition that it is my internal clock? Even if it is my “internal clock”, whatever that is, is it really set in stone, unyielding to my lifestyle? Isn’t this internal clock, in this case, just a ruse which also goes by the name of “a bad habit”?

I am not a disbeliever of biorhythms, and other rigidly regulated and schedules of our body’s internal systems, such as metabolism or sleep cycle. However I am a stronger believer of the subtle effect our mentality has on these internal systems. Just as, while I am not a disbeliever of matter (because that would be absurd), I am yet a stronger believer of mind over matter.

Loading a feed like this onto Google Reader and having them all open at the same time will load all the posts at the same time, slowing your internet down tremendously. But all of this can have a simple solution: List View. The default view in Reader is the Expanded View, which is great for 80% of feeds, like Slashdot, where posts are short and concise. However, for very verbose and object-heavy posts, it takes a load off of your bandwidth to load only one page at a time. So next time you’re waiting for the images on your tutorial to load, just switch to List View and enjoy the speed. The improvement might vary from blog to blog, and connection to connection, but I have definetely noticed an improvement, and hope you all do too!

I visited the Museum of Modern Art for the first time on Tuesday, for the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. Modern art has never piqued my interest, but it has been almost an obligation as a resident of this city to go visit at least once. This exhibit was the perfect nerdy excuse to fulfill that long overdue obligation.

Overall, I was very impressed. The exhibit did a great job of bringing together both technology and art. It consisted of the full gamut, from very pragmatic machinery, to other outrageous devices which can only be found in art exhibits, as well as everything in between. A good number of the displays I recognized from posts on Gizmodo or other gadget blogs, but it was all stuff that hadn’t been given its due share of awe and attention yet.

Before I start discussing the exhibits any further, I want to point out that the museum has posted a site for the exhibit that discusses all of the items on display in detail. Quite a feat, considering the number of displays. Now moving on!

Geeks and artists alike can revel at the clever and stylish design and use of all the technology presented. Of course, different crowds may hover closer to some parts of the exhibition than others. For the geeks, most of the gadgetry could be termed “cute”, but at the same time “ingenious”. The Odo set of toys for children included still cameras, video cameras and headphones — all kid-proof, and powered by kinetic energy. The Logitech MX Air mouse was actually on display as well (but not as an interactive item, sadly), which surprised me since I didn’t expect commercial products. The Atlas Gloves were an item that I think many of us have seen countless versions of, but nonetheless is a staple item of our vision of the future, thanks to its debut in Minority Report.

Other than Logitech, Other companies, such as Motorola and Microsoft offered a few of their bleeding-edge cool gadgets to display, but not surprisingly, I didn’t see anything from Apple there (those apple fans among us are better off waiting for Macworld again)

For the modern artists, there were plenty of amazing things I’m sure has never been introduced yet. New forms of furniture had an important role in this exhibit. The use of genetic algorithms as a way to develop better structured chairs was a new one for me. Virtual sculpting also stole the show, using cameras to detect motion of a 3D “paint brush”, and using a 3D plotter to recreate an exact replica of the virtual sculpture.

The computational origami was a comforting display, using computers to build very intricate and detailed pieces of origami art. This was before we stepped into the Futuristic Mores section. Their very first exhibition was enough to throw anyone off: using the gastric acid of dead loved ones to charge batteries. Following were the Accessories for Lonely Men, a hilarious set of devices to give the impression of a girlfriend to all the single men in the world. The other displays on this set ranged from almost macabre to curiously interesting yet sad.

I would say that if you have the time, and a free chance to visit (like if you’re a student), then this exhibit is definitely worth the trip. If you can’t manage it, then there’s always the site, which does a great job of presenting everything, but will also take quite a while to peruse.

On a final note, a friend of mine pointed out that whenever we envision the future, everything is inexorably sterile white. But this exhibition really changes that greyscale impression of the future by bringing it to us now, and filling it with pretty colors and styles.