What is 5,000,000,000 ?

Flickr just announced they have reached 5,000,000,000 picture uploads yesterday. What does that mean? Nowadays, you can purchase 2TB hard disk drives for less than $200. How many of these drives would you need to store 5,000,000,000 pictures, assuming each picture is minimally about 2MB on average.

Well, I threw the numbers in the calculator, and this is what it means. You would need 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of storage space so you would need to buy 5000 of those 2TB drives to hold 5 billion pictures. They are probably using various storage configurations which would require more than 5000 drives but roughly speakingCool!

Airshows

Just in case someone is wondering what lens to bring to an airshow, I'd recommend you bring something like a Tokina 80-400mm lens. This is an FX lens so it's equivalent to a 120-600mm DX lens. A bigger lens would be nice but having done some shooting at the Toronto airshow this past weekend, I find the 80-400mm range to be perfect for this purpose. There was somebody there that had a prime 500mm lens but that was too restrictive I thought. Sometimes, I wanted to zoom out to 80mm and often I'd like to zoom in at 400mm. There was one moment I wished I could zoom out to 18mm but that was only one time so 80mm was fine for all intended purposes.

Here was a couple of shots from this weekend airshow:

Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6

A couple of friends went down to NYC and picked up this super-wide angle Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 for me. I think I now have the full set of ranges and types of lenses: a super-telephoto (a Tokina 80-400mm, and a Nikkor 500mm), a walk-around (Tamron 17-50mm, Nikkor 18-200mm), a portrait (Nikkor 50mm), a macro (Nikkor 105mm), and a super-wide (Sigma 10-20mm). Now, I need more time to get out there and shoot cool stuff!

Macro with a Nikkor 105mm AF-D

I decided to bite the bullet and invested in a second hand Nikkor 105mm AF-D lens -- not the VR version. I shot some tests and it looks much more promising than my 50mm + extension tube system. What I was looking were the following:

• Depth of field: the 50mm system gave me only about 2mm to work with. There was no way I could not capture the whole body of a bee with it. The Nikkor 105mm gives you something somewhere between 1.5mm (at maximum aperture) 10mm (at f/16) to 25+mm (at f/57 at 1:1 macro). This greater DOF will be extremely useful when shooting without (and also with) a tripod.
• At minimum aperture, the picture in the viewfinder through the 50mm system is completely dark so it is nearly impossible to focus on the subject. It helps in bright daylight but light is not always available. With the 105mm lens, the aperture stays wide open until you release the shutter. This way, you can easily focus on the subject.

Some issues I found:

• Not that I did not know, but things become quite jittery at macro level. Without a tripod it is hard to obtain a sharp picture unless there is a strong source of light.
• The Auto Focus system is a bit hard to use. I use this lens with my D300 and I was trying to shoot a ruler at a 45 degree angle to gauge the DOF. The AF has no problem with hunting for a focus point 40cm away but was having some problems at really close distance. I'd be better off using manual focus in this case.

Well, I took some shots of a house fly on a flower (weird uh?) yesterday. I was quite happy with the result. I used the built-in flash for these shots (image contrast adjusted and image sharpened a tad bit in Irfanview):

Macro with the 50mm and extension tube, part 3

A couple of macro shots of a tiny spider clinging to a wall:


DOF is really small at all f/stops!

Macro with the 50mm and extension tube, part 2

It rained hard about an hour earlier. I thought I'd look for some insects to shoot after the rain. There were a few but only one that stayed in one place long enough for me to shoot.

I have no idea what this fellow is, but it is colorful and tiny (maybe 1cm long). Was it going to drink from the water droplet? It took me 10 shots to get its head somewhat focused. (My 50mm with the extension tube is far from the perfect macro setup, but it helps that the D300 can meter properly.)



There was a weeny tiny little larva on this flower. After the rain, the larva was crawling in very wet cracks.


The world according to a water droplet hanging off the tip of a leaf.

Camera bag

Finally, I found the right camera bag for my super sized cameras. It is not too small, not too big, just enough to fit one of my two cameras with many of my camera accessories. It is actually not a camera bag. I stumbled upon this $10 wine and cheese cooler. The bag is padded all around but probably not enough for camera equipments so I added some extra padding with bubble envelopes and some cartons I obtained from Michaels' a couple of months ago. With some Krazy Glue and some more foam sheets, I've got a camera bag. The outside is black and has that nice design I can take the bag to parties and wedding receptions.

There is a small compartment at the top to store various little items. The bottom compartment is where I'd store the camera, lenses, and a flash.


Here is my oversize D300 (with a lens, a battery grip and hand strap) fitted in the bag: