Gangnam Style

Total crap or brilliant? Haven't decided yet. At least it's different from the mainstream music crap. You decide.

Sammy J & Randy

Hilarious improv comedy.

Skunk Anansie in the Heineken Music Hall (2011)

After being gone for at least a decade, Skunk Anansie is back with a new album. Last week thay gave a concert in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam (NL), and it felt like old times.

It wasn't a concert where they played mainly new songs from their new album Wonderlustre. They mainly played those great old songs like Hedonisme, Brazen, Every Day Hurts (Twisted), and many many more.

Skunk Anansie @ HMHThis was also the first time I could use my new Nikon P7000 at a concert. Photo's were pretty much out of the question, since we were sitting all the way at the back. That's to far. Even for the 200mm at the long end on the Nikon. So I shot several videos.

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Triggerfinger in Paradiso

Last night we went to a concert/CD-release of the Belgium rockband Triggerfinger. This was also the first time I brought my new Nikon P7000. The following photos and video were shot with this new Nikon Coolpix Perfomance series compact camera.

The concert was great. Great enough to get their latest CD in the lobby. I hope we're gonna hear more of them.

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My Blackberry is not working!!!

Just watch...

Don't you just love the British for their sense of humor :-)

Vanishing HD Space on Popcorn Hour

Sometimes you think you're mind is playing tricks on you. I have that sometimes. E.g. I have a Popcorn Hour  (Networked Media Tank) which holds movies and series I watch. Bits and Bytes come and go on that machine. Thing you've seen are deleted, and replaced by new content. But over the 'years' it seemed to hold less and less content. Oke, movies have increased in size (10-20GB per movie is nothing nowadays). So I didn't really think much of it....

Until I started transporting the content with Transmit instead of FileZilla. Transmit was configured to show even the hidden files, and hidden files it showed. I found 4 hidden temporary pureftp-upload files of almost 32GB each. The timestamps on those files differed from late last year to a couple of months back

.pureftpd-upload-<some random string>

The problem was that I couldn't remove them from the Popcorn, but I really wanted my 120GD of free space back. Turned out that the FTP daemon on the Popcorn was locking these files. Reboot of the popcorn didn't help.

The way to remove them was to stop the FTP daemon on the Popcorn in the menu, and access the device through SMB (or another protocol you can use), and make sure that you can see hidden files.
Select the files and press delete, and they should be gone. After that you can re-enable the FTP service if you like.

Rammstein @ Gelredome

Rammstein @ GelredomeOn Sunday December 6th, we saw the Rammstein 'Liebe ist für alle da' tour in the Gelredome in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The evening started with the support act Combichrist. These guys use drums and synthesizer to generate lots of noise. Music/rhythm; good, vocals; bad :-). Definitely not my cup of tea.

Just after 8 o'clock Rammstein started with the song 'Rammlied' from their latest album. Probably the best song for opening their show. And a great show it was. The show was filled with enough pyrotechnics to provide a small village in Siberia with warmth for at least a year.

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Lumix LX3 in Poor Light Conditions

Metallica @ AhoyLast Monday I visited the Metallica Death Magnetic Tour concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (NL). A relatively small establishment for a rock band like Metallica, but great for the fans (if you got tickets), since the podium was centered in the middle of the arena. So everyone was relatively close to the stage.

I brought my Lumix LX3 for this occasion (since I won't be allowed entrance with my D300 + 70-200mm lens). This was the first time I brought a (P&S) camera to a concert, so I had no idea of what to expect of the quality.
I must say that I did try several settings, but the iA (Intelligent Auto) mode left me with the best images. Downside is that this mode produces only JPEG's and no RAW files. The A, P, S and M modes are too susceptible to the light changes (over- or underexposed, or just blurry images), and the light conditions change a lot (almost every second).

The movie-mode of the camera performs relatively well. Extremely bright lights results in vertical lines across the movie. The audio is not that good, but hey... it's a digital still camera with filming capabilities.

The only downside of the camera was (and still is) that it lacked zooming to 400 or 600mm :).

The photographic results can be seen on my flickr page.

Unpredictable Exposures

When shooting from a tripod and/or with Live View on your (d)SLR you may find strangely exposed photos. Some are darker than others.

This could be related to the light seeping in through the ocular on your camera. Normally you have your eye against the ocular, but when you use e.g. Live View on your camera, you watch the LCD. This leaves the ocular 'open', and unwanted light might enter the camera and screw up the exposure of the photos you're taking.

I created a small example were I shot several high-speed images (in Aperture priority mode) while I used a small flashlight to pass a beam of light over the back of the body (e.g. car lights passing by in low light circumstances). I made sure that I also 'touched' the ocular with the beam of light.

You can see that the exposure goes from normal to dark, and back to 'normal'.

I haven't found any real differences when you're shooting under normal circumstances, but when (a strong) light is shining in or on the ocular, you might be in trouble.

Photography Seems Equal To Terrorism

... Well, at least in some places.

Even though it's categorized as fun, it's not funny at all. Photography is not a crime, as long as you're not photographing state secrets or plans of the new nuclear power plant.