www.totalsham.com

I was looking at the logs for this site today and thinking that I get a decent number of visitors but never get any comments on the postings or the photos. It turns out that I had somehow configured things in such a way that comments were disabled on both the main site and the gallery! Ooooops, I guess that explains it! Anyway, you can now comment on these posts or on photos (or albums) in the gallery. Feel free to leave a note!

Hmm, between this and getting PicLens working, I'm actually making some progress on the site... now to do something about the terrible graphic on the top of the page, put up a few reviews, put proper descriptions on the photos, etc...

I've done a few test photos with my new K20D now, you can find higher-rez versions here.

Here's a "new and old" shot with my purchased-new K1000 in front of the K20D box.

...and a 100% crop.

Here'a a '50s Kodak camera that was my grandfathers.

Here's a couple 100% crops, to give an idea of both just how big 14.6 megapixels is, and how sharp the K20D's sensor can capture a photo.

The above shots were taken from a tripod, manually focused. The viewfinder is definitely larger than the K100D, but I admit that the new Live View is also great for manual focusing especially on a tripod - it's quick and easy to zoom in and fine-tune the focus exactly. The lens used was my Lester A Dine 105mm F2.8 1:1 macro, which is extremely sharp. Now, here's a handheld shot that I liked, playing with wireless flash. This is from my Pentax 10-17mm fisheye at 10mm, F800, 1/20th of a second, handheld. The bottom lens is my Zenitar 16mm fisheye, if you're curious.

So far, I really love the camera - I've got about six weeks to really learn it well before our next trip down to Florida. There are a couple annoyances but mostly things that will hopefully be addressed by a firmware update. Also hopefully Adobe will update ACR soon to recognize the new files.

This is exciting to me. If you haven't used PicLens before, you should really give it a try. It's a way of viewing online galleries (like Google image search results, Flickr, Picasa, etc, and now this site) in a nice full-screen environment. You get a "3D wall" that you can scroll back and forth over, and a single-click will bring one image closer and a double-click shows that image full-screen. It's very slick.

Give it a try!

I just bought my third DSLR!

A Pentax K20D... just released, and it's a real stunner. I can't wait to put it through its paces on our next vacation!

One of the many new albums I've added is photos from our September trip to California and Disneyland.

There's many more where those came from. Check 'em out and feel free to comment if you're so moved. Maybe some day I'll even get around to adding descriptions to the photos! :)

Holy cow, has it really been almost five months since I updated the front page?

Well, I have been working on the site - all the old content is back, and I've been adding more photos. (Almost 5,000 now, though some are duplicates.) I'll highlight a few specifics in the next few days. I have been battling with Lightroom to get colors that I am happy with, and I think I've finally got the issues licked. Meanwhile, some albums have different versions, with old ones still existing but hidden, just there for older hotlinks to them.

I also have a Pentax K20D pre-ordered (whoo!), so I'll be continuing to add a lot more content in the coming months! I also hope to do a few reviews and some comparison shots between different lenses as well as some other articles.

Now, hopefully I'll actually do some of these updates!

The content should reappear very soon, hopefully....................

Update, Sunday night: I'm still ironing out a couple little bugs but the site is mostly functional and I'm re-adding photos as fast as I can.

Yesterday, we took my son Jack to Seabreeze, a small amusement part just north of Rochester. Some photos are here.

My son Jack had a great time, it was his first time riding some rides solo...

He even rode Bear Trax, the kiddie-sized coaster! He ended up riding five times and loved it, the only thing he didn't like was getting off it!

This was also my first chance to use my newest lens, the Pentax 10-17mm fisheye. It was a ton of fun!