This photo was taken with my Nikkor 18-35mm f/2.8 on my D60. The lens doesn't have image stabilisation (IS in Canon lingo and VR in Nikon lingo). It's a wide angle zoom, and it's fast so you usually don't have to worry about hand holding the camera in low light (camera shake is more of a problem with telephotos and less of a problem with wide angle). It was taken at 17mm f/2.8 at 1/10 of a second. At 17mm it's the same view you'd get on a film camera as about 25mm, so the traditional rule of thumb is that you should shoot it at at least 1/30 of a second (one over focal length).

Close up (this was cropped, not resized) reveals that I got away in this case shooting a bit over one stop slower than the traditional rule of thumb. Sometimes you get lucky.

din dins

This one was also taken hand held, but with the Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 VR that came with my D60. It was taken at 35mm f/5 at 1/4 of a second with VR turned on. This illustrates the strength and the weakness of (any form of) image stabilisation. Without the VR the dish and the tablecloth would almost certainly have been blurry. With or without VR though, the shutter speed was too slow to freeze mum's hand. You don't always want to do that of course, sometimes a blur expresses the moment better than a freeze frame.

On balance I would rather have a faster lens without VR than a slower lens with VR. Generally the faster lenses aren't as cheaply made and produce a sharper image, but they are also more flexible in low light (or even in bright light if you want to freeze a helicopter rotor blade or something like that).

Even better would be a fast VR lens of course, like the Nikkor 17-200mm f/2.8 VR. If I get one I'll shoot some tests to compare in camera image stabilisation with my Minolta Maxxum 7d + Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 to lens optimized image stabilisation with my Nikon D60 + Nikkor 17-200mm f/2.8 VR. Should be interesting.

• 11 February 2009 03:30pm: Is there NOTHING that will covert a flow tools file into IPFIX? Without UDP buffer overruns? Of course? It's always the UDP buffer overruns.
• 12 February 2009 07:14am: Suddenly Google talk is working with my Jabber server again. Awesome guys only took you forever and a day.
• 13 February 2009 10:16pm: Annoyed I found a bunch of E-6 to scan this weekend but I left it at The Point and the scanner and I are in Wyoming :(
• Yesterday at 11:25am: I just blew my share of the federal stimulus handout on camera gear and I haven't even gotten it yet.
• Today at 10:01am: the graveyard looks pretty after rain with the sun shining on it.
• Today at 11:10am: it's like we have our weekly meeting every week now. crazy.
• Today at 11:26am: Lenny is finally blessed as stable. We've been using it production for over a year.

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• 5 February 2009 12:11pm: Quarterly update means free lunch after. Always nice food too.
• 5 February 2009 04:21pm: Allison is whining because we don't have any spare hard drives to give her. It's getting annoying.
• 5 February 2009 05:01pm: I was just thinking Allison's behaviour would be age appropriate for my little sister... seven years ago when she was six that is.
• 5 February 2009 10:21pm: It will be good to spend a few days at The Point and not have to commute all the way to/from Wyoming every day.
• 6 February 2009 08:37am: Standing room only on the train. Nose to stinky arm pit.
• 6 February 2009 10:18am: I started saying ko again. It's weird.
• 6 February 2009 03:54pm: Mail server migration went off pretty much without a hitch but the connection to muse dropped out and now I can't update the DNS! *sigh*
• 6 February 2009 04:12pm: Got to muse. nullslice is now nullray. Your local DNS server may take a while to update.
• 6 February 2009 10:38pm: of course I spoke too soon because there was stuff I forgot... :/
• Yesterday at 06:43pm: I am going to start saying "after now" again. It's like I pick up a camera and I turn into myself three years ago.
• Today at 05:56pm: 65 dead in Victoria. How much longer before they stop saying "..since Ash Wednesday" and just say "deadliest fires in Australian history" :(

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At work yesterday, I got into this drawn out argument with my boss about an API that I had designed (and implemented). It was a respectful argument and in the end I think we came to a compromise that we were both mildly happy with. It is a funny thing because this one little function call seemed pretty uncontroversial when I wrote it, but it has somehow managed to draw the most criticism (Gordon suggested a change which didn’t get made weeks ago).

I hate arguing with people because whenever I look back on arguments I see how I was either too zealous in arguing my point, or give in too easily. On Friday I was arguing with Kim about macro lenses. Short version is that I made an assertion that, while true if explained correctly, I didn’t feel like arguing the point. That feels like every argument (read: every conversation) that I have with her, as she is totally unable to see my perspective, as a result I sort of intensely dislike her.

Yesterday was also Russian and I was going to bring my computer with me so that I could go to Potts Point after class instead of home (Potts Point is closer). Only when I left work I realised my computer wasn’t in my backpack and I panicked. I remembered closing the lid to my computer so that it would go to sleep, but I couldn’t remember if I had actually put it in my backpack. The only time I hadn’t had my backpack with me was when I left it at work briefly to go to the bathroom and if it had been stolen that would have meant it would have been someone at work. I was relieved when I got home and it was sitting in its place, asleep, but unmoved. I felt weird that I could have thought that someone at work could have taken it, because it is a smal company and everyone knows everyone (not that people don’t steel in those situations, but it is somehow worse when they do?).

I usually make it a rule not to get to close to my co-workers. I was hoping this might be an exception, but days like yesterday remind me that there are reasons that I have those rules. Nothing really terrible happened (in the end), but events leave me vaguely uneasy.