CBN TV - The Uncut Brian Welch Interview - Video

CBN TV - The Uncut Brian Welch Interview - Video

I'm not really a fan of Korn. Ok, I'm not at all a fan of Korn, but this interview is really interesting to me. Brian "Head" Welch still exhibits the damage years of drugs and alcohol can do, but, I get the strong sense that this is an honest, open and genuine man. Maybe I'll check out his solo stuff. It's a long interview - be warned.

What's old is new.

Recently I shared some photos I took with a self-modified Canon FD mount, 135mm f2.8 prime lens. This is a lens manufactured in the 70's and 80's for canon FD 35mm SLR cameras like the A-1 AE-1 etc.

When Canon switched to the EOS system in the 80's they introduced the EF and later EF-S lens mount system. In creating a new camera mount, they created a whole new revenue source, as photographers wanting to upgrade to an EOS body, had to upgrade their entire collection of glass.

Yikes. Well, fuss or not, the new Canon auto-focus lenses were appealing, as were the new plastic fantastic bodies. You can't easily adapt an FD lens, because the EOS bodies had a much longer focal plan distance.

Well, as they say "there's nothing you can do that can't be done" and I've had some success modifying *some* FD lenses to work on an EOS body - specifically my 7D.

Early, not particularly compelling, results can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ryanpg/Portraiture135mmManualDIYLens#

Since most current Canon DSLRs don't have manual-focus-friendly focus screens, i.e. no split screen or microprism ring, getting a sharp capture can be challenging.

So the question was put to me, why?

Most people seem to like the initial results. A few have wondered why I'm interested in such things. After all, rebuilding camera lenses sounds pretty intense. People express interest, even excitement, but it's still a little perplexing as to what, if any, benefits there are to wrestling an "old" lens on a "new" camera.

Below is an email I sent recently, containing a few of my thoughts regarding this question.

A fellow photographer in reference to my modded 135mm f2.8:

"That is really cool. How did you get into doing this? What made you want to try it?"

My response:

"Thanks. Many factors.

- I believe current glass is way overpriced. I know there's a lot of engineering and tight tolerances involved, but seriously $2K for "L" series lenses? They roll em off the assembly line just like they do every other product. Seems like marketing and market control. *

- There's a lot of really cool old glass out there. Sometimes it can be bought for a reasonable price, sometimes cheap. It's just a shame to see it go to waste.

- I like to "tinker around" and this is an affordable way to do it - and get some interesting results too.

- Ever notice how different all the multi-coated lenses look, compared to good "old-fashioned" glass? I bet you have. My FD mount 135mm lens has two or three elements. New stuff has thirteen elements with AS glass, coatings etc. blah blah blah... The less glass the better IMHO. Sometimes the new lenses just look harsh to me. No character you know?

- Today, manufacturers can design highly precise lenses using software. They simply dial in the compromises they want to make, to achieve the exact lens they want to bring to market. I like the idea of a person or group of people, intimately familiar with photography, working to design a lens with the characteristics they WANT, that's why a name like Zeiss, originally meant something. There was an aesthetic driving the design.

Btw, I think it's funny how companies tag the Zeiss name on currently manufactured lenses. Zeiss has been dead since 1888. A "Zeiss" lens made today is no different from a canon or sigma or promaster for that matter - in that it's designed on a computer.* Funny really.

Whew! that was almost a rant! I still use current EF mount lenses though too - I just can't justify spending $1,000 for an auto-focus but softer version of my $25 modded 135mm. For portraiture do you really want to rely on auto-focus anyway?

Also, I think a lot of people who complain (myself included) about digital not resembling film, are actually complaining about the optics rather than the sensor. I'll attach a couple full-resolution images. I'd appreciate you're thoughts about how "film-like" the b/w one looks.

By the way, the only thing done on these was a little white-balance and exposure adjustment, and some noise removal on the color one. No sharpening at all.

So yeah, to sum it up - I'm just cheap! :)"

Footnotes:

* I do love Canon and Canon tech. They along with Nikon have really pushed the technology in amazing ways. It's incredible what kind of camera can be held in the palm of the hand for under a thousand.

** I don't mean to disparage the Zeiss optical company, as I understand things, they are still innovators especially in the area of microscopy and biomed technology.

I love google. But I married Gnome.

Now, I'm a loyal guy. More than just willing, I'm committed to making things work.  I have been using the Gnome desktop for 11 years now. ELEVEN years, and all this time waiting for things to improve, filling out bug reports (as I've been scornfully told to do). Yes, I've gone through the onerous and complicated process of signing up with "bugzilla" and submitting bugs. Guess what? I've got open bugs from 2003 still marked "NEW."

I've invested a lot in Gnome.

But google is exciting. I can't help it, it may be due to my gullibility and tendency to respond to marketing as some have suggested privately, but really, what marketing has google done? Essentially, they've established themselves as a brand by doing cool things. Rather than promising to do cool things once everyone's on-board. And they see the amazing potential in free open source software and development. Yet, they never use "it's free software" as an excuse for a poor product.

Gnome and the other free and open source desktops are a huge disappointment to me personally.

In 2005, the Gnome Project started the now laughable "10x10" campaign. The goal was to grab 10% of the desktop market by the end of 2010. At the time, I was behind the idea 100% and feeling good about the possibility of some innovation and quality software bringing people on board the linux and FOSS ship. Well, how're they doing? Linux - regardless of desktop - may have actually broken the 1% point! Whoop-de-do! Utter abysmal failure.

Guess what, that's about to change.

Google released Android in October of 2008. They now hold 15% of the mobile phone market [note: based on mobile web consumption - sales figures show a more modest 5-7% range - thanks Chuck]. In 16 months, Google did in the mobile phone market, what gnome could not do in ELEVEN YEARS on the desktop. [Ed. note - the following hypothetical quote will sound best if you imagine it being said by a very tearful Sally Struthers] "Oh, oh, oh... But you're comparing apples and oranges! The mobile market is different than the desktop, windows blah blah blah, Mac OS, whah whah wha... Become a heating and cooling specialist in the comfort of your own home!" [Ed. note - I got carried away, sorry.]

Guess what Sally? I'm going to make a prediction. Google's chrome-os will gobble up more than 15% of the netbook and portable market in less than two years. In fact, I'm going to suggest, Sally, there will come a time when your visit to the Best Buy computer aisle will be illuminated by linux desktops - not running gnome, KDE or any other of the desktop environments who've already had their decade-long shot. But running google's Chrome-os. Oh, and I also predict it will be quickly ported to X86 hardware too.

And when that happens, I know who I'll be betting on to get to the 10% mark first. And it won't take 11 long, painful years, and I won't have to create an account to file bugs, and I won't have to listen to lame excuses. I'll be one of the 10% running that desktop OS. And I won't be using Gnome.

Final thought: the reason the linux-based Open Source Desktop hasn't caught on with the public, is simply because... it sucks. But there's a sea change ahead Sally. And I want to say "Thank you google, for android, chrome and soon for chrome-os. Thank you for vindicating me. For validating my years of FOSS advocacy. Thank you for brining the ideas and principles I feel strongly about, to the people who have, turned away in apathy to my appeals for participation in free open source software. Thank you for giving them a compelling reason to use open source software - to enjoy it. Thank you for never once shifting the blame or responsibility for your shortcomings on me, the user. I'm on board!"

Raw is my Green

Oh ye thronging mass of readers, pressed one against another, hoping to catch a faux pearl of knowledge. Hear me now. Hear me now.

So this blog post isn't about the next thing in dieting. It's tagged photography, fool! Maybe it should be tagged, photography fool. Anyway, here's the history. As soon as I learned what "green mode" on my camera was, I was horrified and disgusted. "You mean to tell me," I screamed in the direction of the rising sun, that birthplace of all quality optics; Japan, "this camera has aesthetic autopilot - and you actually insult me by suggesting I might need it? I curse you to the seventh generation!" The fist-pumping and spitting was just an instinctive impulse. You should have seen the look on the faces of the middle school graduates I was photographing at the time.

Your camera has green too of course, it's currently the spot your mode dial is set to. It's where your mode dial has always been set. Did you even know it could be turned? Maybe I should explain what "Green" is.

Some camera manufactures use different colors, but Green generally means "full auto." Which sounds cool if you're a rapper, or member of a militia, but a photog who shoots Green? It's a shame no one can recover from. You've opted out of being in control, instead you've let your camera pick the shutter speed, the aperture, and in some cases even the ISO. You want to, nay, you must get off the Green stuff!

 Now, Green has been a neglected spot on my dial for a long time. Long before I had a clue what I was doing. Well, ok, I'm still working on cluing myself in actually. And I admit, there have been times green mode would have resulted in an acceptable capture instead of a over/underexposed mess, but uh, yeah I guess it's just my prophet's pride that keeps me from twisting that little dial over to the Green square.

So what's a photo-dork to do? Easy answer: shoot raw. First, no one will accuse you of not being hard-core when you shoot raw. I mean, raw is more labor intensive to process, eats up more disk space (requiring you to carry more CF/SD cards), offers less guidance in post-processing, is a secret proprietary format, requires expensive or uber-geeky software to use... what's not to love! All those barriers mean you're on photographer who's in-the-know.

For those of you who are in-the-don't-know, I'll explain. RAW format files are basically unaltered data-dumps straight from the camera's sensor. There's a little processing, but generally what you have in a RAW file, is the record of what photons, at what frequency, hit where on the sensor. This is (seriously) cool because no data is lost to compression or in-camera processing. Raw also makes no adjustments for white-balance, no sharpening, no adjusting color, no exposure compensation, no wonderful artistic filters. With some cameras the white-balance value and other time-of-shot information is stored with the file. But only stored with the file, not applied to it in-camera. In post processing you can choose to accept the camera's assessment or apply your own, the benefit again is that no information is lost - till you save your RAW file in a printable/viewable format like JPG, PNG, GIF or whatever. And as an added bonus to all those intimidating barriers listed above, you can fix your bloopers and mess-ups from not shooting green, or P for that matter, more easily when working with a RAW file.

All those uncompressed bits and bytes, just might hold enough information to allow you to bring up some detail in those underexposed shadows. Maybe that blown-out sky, has some subtle remnant of the clouds that looked "just like a pony!" This extra, subtle, information can be a shot-saver, as you are able to "pull up" that faint information which likely would have been lost in in-camera compression and processing. When working with under/over exposed images in RAW format, generally, one is able to regain a couple stops on both ends. Yes, you gain a couple stops on both ends and you get extra cool cache.

Try it out now, no one is listening, just say it quietly to yourself "Tsk, I've forgotten my DSLR even has a blue, err.. green or whatever... setting. It's just one of those features I never use. Like, oh I don't know, like art filters or saving as JPEG." Feels nice don't it? So there you go! You get to amp-up cool photographer blah blah by saying things like "Oh, I always shoot raw!" and, "Huh, I didn't realize a camera of this quality even had a green mode!" I'm sure you can come up with some of your own. Feel free to submit portraits (in RAW please) displaying your curled lip, your furrowed brow, or your eyes in mid-roll - whilst glaring at your mode dial, set on Green.

My current favorite air pistol - but why?

My Sheridan .20, 5mm caliber H-series pellet gun. It's a multi-pump. It's not particularly powerful. It's not particularly accurate. It's got plastic grips. But it looks nice.

I think it looks very nice.

It's also a very solid feeling gun. The grips are the only plastic on the gun. Working the pump lever is not difficult, though it's quite the potential palm-pincher. When I got it, the trigger guard was broken. I just bent a piece of brass plate, drilled and tapped a hole and viola, doesn't look SO bad. I might open up the bottom of the trigger guard though, just for some freaky-stylie.

Stem Cell Treatment : BiotechConnection.com

Open Source Medicine?

I'm encouraged by recent developments in what's being called "personalized medicine." Cultivating adult stem cells and using them to replace or repair damaged tissues is an incredibly exciting idea. The cloning of T-cells to shore up the body's reserves and help turn the tide in fights against cancer, autoimmune diseases and AIDS, has the potential to turn deadly disease into chronic disease. And in many cases, incurable diseases seem on the verge of being completely treatable. All through the use of personalized medicine - treatments and cures tailored by a single doctor or treatment provider, for use by a single patient.

So, what's the bad news? These treatments are expensive, and nobody in the health care industry is willing to pay for a cure. Personalized medicine, generally entails the development of drugs, cells or tissues only compatible with the donor, who is most often the victim of the disease. In other words, these treatments are customized to the individual and therefor not marketable broadly.

The majority of medicinal treatments available today are subsidized by profit driven entities in the health care arena. Most often maligned - justly or not - are the pharmaceutical companies and the health care companies. Since a massive dose of my cultivated T-cells will do nothing to cure your disease, there's little in the way of money making potential. After all, I'm just one customer, and my cure is only good for me. How would say, pharmaceutical companies, benefit financially from such treatments.

More and more the future of human health is becoming about a process rather than a pill. Expenses related to treatments individual to the patient, cannot be amortized among those with similar illnesses. Worse yet for drug companies and health insurance corporations, a one-person one-cure scenario does nothing to lubricate the massive churning financial engine of highly lucrative drug and treatment markets. In the case of cloned T-cells, which in one case have been used to completely cure a man suffering from melanoma (skin cancer), there is no profit to be made by the drug companies at all, the hospitals gain nothing, doctors are not compensated by insurance companies who's interests are not in saving an individual life, but in maintaining the current market system.

The process of extracting, processing and culturing T-cells takes place between one doctor and one patient. Though the cost of treatment may be nearly as high as the total cost of medicating a person through death, the money would not be shuttled back and forth between huge corporate interests. If covered by private insurance, money would be drained directly from the reserves of company coffers, and into the waiting veins of the sick. Practically thrown away, resulting in nothing more than a saved life.

Obviously, this can't work fiscally, right? Some would point out that the high cost of medication and treatment is what pays for research and development. And this is currently the case. If drug companies and insurance companies lost the ability to make billions of dollars in profit, how would research be funded?

My response is so simple as to likely be completely impossible. This is where government should step in. Yes, government should involve itself in the medical welfare of the people. Isn't that the role of benevolent government? To further the good of the people. Taxes, WPA style programs and collaboration with researchers, who tend to be motivated more by "pure science" than cash payouts, would fill in the gaps left by profiteering pharmaceutical companies, doctors and pharmacists, dwindling bank accounts. I'm not talking about government deciding who should live or die, or even who should receive what treatment. I'm talking about the corporate body of citizens as represented by elected officials, choosing to divert money to pure, legally clear and patent-free, uninhibited, pure research, with a focus on curing disease.

I'm no dove, not quite a hawk, more like a turkey really, but when I think about the billions of dollars spent on warfare, weaponry, litigation, back-room deals and pandering to horribly inefficient and broken commercial colossi, I wonder, what could be accomplished if that funding were all diverted to simply finding ways to make us more healthy. Could the U.S. government commit to curing cancer, no matter it's effect on the economy of drug companies and insurance companies? Unlikely? Yeah. But for twenty years I've been told the same idea as applied to free software could never work. I mean, nobody can make a living just giving away a good thing. Right?

Worker ID Card at Center of Immigration Plan - WSJ.com

Worker ID Card at Center of Immigration Plan - WSJ.com

This freaks me out. I don't want to submit to ANY biometric data mining. Not to mention it is starkly reminiscent of the "mark of the beast" prophecy in the bible.

Canon 7D, conspicuous consumption & "What do I really need?"

So, we live in pretty amazing times. In many ways. Lately, I've been thinking about consumerism and personal satisfaction. I've got a Canon 7D which is just an absolutely amazing device. Without listing boring specifications, suffice it to say: it's got bells whistles and more mega-pixels than a 20"x30" print could ever need.

Yet, I'm not happy with it. I mean, I am totally happy with it... but not really. Ah, the double minded man is like a wave of the sea...

I've noticed auto-focus is slightly off. In fact, more than 60% of my exposures are out of focus. Canon offered we OCD tweakers the option to micro-adjust auto-focus, but for reasons outline below, this doesn't seem to provide full satisfaction. But, should I be seeking satisfaction at all?

I guess I should clarify. I take snapshots. Of my wife, my dog, pretty flowers, landscapes. I'm not a professional, I'm what they in marketing call, an "enthusiast." I take pictures, save them to my computer, sometimes post them on the web, sometimes print them and give them as gifts or hang them on my walls.

From Pictures

I do some minor post-processing, and this is where the "trouble" starts. When I zoom in to 100% on the computer screen, some of the pores and hair follicles on the faces of portraiture subjects are "soft." Perhaps the mandible of an ant is out of focus (using a non-macro lens) nearly 60% of the time. It drives me crazy! I mean, I know the camera is capable of sharp captures, but so many of them are "soft" this way.

Ok, so if anyone is reading this, hopefully you're getting my sarcasm and self-deprecating humor, and yet "the truth is said in jest." Even though you're in on the joke, you may still be thinking "So what? The issue is so minor, as to be completely negligible - unless you're zooming in to 100% magnification - and why does anyone need to do that?" There is a serious question here.

Many questions actually. Like:

What do I need?


Should I expect a level of performance commensurate with my expenditure of cash? Or need the device's performance only match my own?

What monetary expense is justified by gaining what level of quality, features, etc?

Because something "should" perform a certain way, does that justify spending time and aggravation in pursuit of that performance?


I have a 35mm Mamiya film SLR that's really fun to shoot. The results are pleasing, even though processed at the Walgreen's photo-center. I can tell dog's have hair, because I recognize them as dogs - I can make out four legs and floppy ears. There's not a chance I could identify an individual hair on my mutt Phoebe's head by examining an exposure from my Mamiya. Yet, the pictures it produces are aesthetically and personally pleasing. I spent $24 on that Mamiya.

I've invested a lot of time, money and "heart" in this whiz-bang do-hickey of a camera. Why?

I find that often, the justification for my conspicuous consumption is invented long after the purchase. "I need it for my new blog.", "I'm going to start selling prints.", "I want to get into micro-stock photography." etc. etc. etc. But, where does the cycling drive to, spend, justify, be disappointed, repeat ad infinitum, ever end in satisfaction, or dare I say happiness.

So this personal rant, doesn't have any answers, doesn't offer any guidance, and only raises questions. Somehow, other people seem to either lack that nagging internal voice to seek for perfection in the material world, or know how to ignore it. Or at least have the sense not to voice it. For me, I know "turning it off" isn't an option. I'm fairly sure turning the internal dialog into a debate doesn't help. Voicing it is a call to be judged and condemned.

Will sending my 7D into Canon for auto-focus recalibration help? Should I sell it and give the money to the poor?

If anyone has figured some of this out, please take a minute and let me know how you have done so. Perhaps there are many people fighting this same battle here in the U.S. of A.

Buildings are falling in Chile, children are starving in Haiti, and I just read a quote "there are more slaves in the world today, than any other time in history," but I'm suffering too. My camera has soft-focus.