I went over to a nearby bike shop to get a quote for my damaged bike (ask if you're interested), and I had some time to kill while I was waiting for the manager, so I wandered over to a nearby dead-end street. Parked there was this very odd machine (which I took photos of, now that my cell phone has been fixed):

The only hints I can provide is that this machine is parked next to a marshy area, and a 40 food deep hole in the pavement with a pump pumping water out of the hole. Perhaps the machine is a mud processor/filterer/cleaner of some sort?

Can you guess what this machine does? I can't.

Today Melissa and I went down to Balboa Park to spend a very nice day outside. We went to the rose garden, the desert garden, and walked through the museum area. We also walked to an off-park deli (therefore it didn't cost too much), and had a bit of a picnic under a tree. Mainly I took lots of pictures of the roses.

I recently took the time to stitch together a few panoramic photos, which I wanted to highlight. The first one I took over winter break from Indian Rock in Berkeley. The clear and crisp air which follows a winter storm gives excellent views.

Here are some impressive thunderheads over the mountains east of San Diego.

While I was in Berkeley for Thanksgiving, I took my camera & tripod out to a parking lot near the Lawrence Hall of Science which has a magnificent view over UC Berkeley, Berkeley, the Bay and San Francisco. A rainy weather system had come & gone recently so the air was very clean and cold making the view even better than normal. As good as these photos are, closer to LHS there is a grassy knoll which has an even better view. The hill slopes off in front of you and there are no trees to block the view. However, it is now fenced off and is only accessible through the inside of LHS. Lame!

Continuing on my previous post I'm posting some more photos with my new camera. This time I've made some 4-up comparison JPGs showing my new SLR versus my old pocket digital.

The main point of the comparison photos is to see how the range of lenses compare. I've scaled down the SLR's photos and cut the aspect ratio of the Canon's shots, so image quality is not the main focus of this comparison. I also didn't play with the advanced features of the SLR because the Canon doesn't have the range of variability like the SLR. But I did take photos in two different modes just to see if I could discern any changes.

Overall the lens supplied with the SLR has about the same range as the Canon, while the telephoto lens & 1.4x multiplier attachment goes where the Canon can't. I took the photos on a partly-cloudy day so the ambient light changed between various shots, which diminishes the comparison value of color & exposure. One thing that is clear is the Canon suffers from the usual problem of depth of field. Even when I'm taking a photo of something close, the background tends to be in focus. In the above photo you can see that the Canon does have the background out of focus somewhat, but not nearly as much as the SLR.

One thing the Canon has going for it is portability, so I don't think I'll be abandoning it yet. It still takes great snapshots, and sometimes all I want is a snapshot.

My father gave me for my birthday a shiny new digital SLR. It's a Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D digital SLR. I already own a Minolta 35mm film camera, so I have a few lenses and accessories that are compatible with the new camera.

I'm still playing around with all the fancy features, and I really don't know how to use it to it's full potential now.

Let me start by saying that film is dead for amateur photography. The photos I took below are from my nice 35mm Minolta SLR camera. It's a much better camera than my digicam, and it was a joy taking pictures with it. The reason why film is dead is this. The film took over a week to be developed, and it cost $14 for only 24 shots + a CD. That's highway robbery, especially considering how long they took to come back.

Moving on, here are some photos from a Padres game on May 15, 2005, and some photos of my new apartment.

The Padres new park is nice:

It's built on an old rail yard, of course:

My new Mesa apartment, which will save me lots on rent over where I was before:

Some time ago I came across some old slides of photos I assume my father took. They appear to be from the mid-1970s. I scanned them but then kind of forgot about them. I was poking around on my archive DVD of photos and came across them. Here are my favorites:

A pretty sunflower:

My parents old kitchen, and one of their malamutes.

All I can think when I see this photo is "What a nice road to ride a bike on!";