Messages posted by "Wonko The Sane"

Re:Camera opinions

Wonko The Sane — GMT

CA stands for chromatic aberation. It usually shows at high contrast borders (light-dark). In your picture it shows at tree branches - the purple fringing. You can do nothing about it, it is a property of the lens (obviously this one is very bad in that regard). Sometimes it gets better if you open the aperture. As for noting settings, you do know that every picture you take allredy has embeded a lot of information in itself, right? It is called EXIF info and contains details like ISO setting, aperture, shutter time, focus mode, exposure mode, flash fired or not, exposure compensation and on and on and on...

Re:Camera opinions

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Wow, you captured nice subjects! I like the first one. It could use a longer focal length to zero in on the bird a bit more, but I guess you alredy zoomed all the way in... It is hard to catch a bird in flight (and focus correctly) so good job there! The second one is close enough, but I have never seen such a bad example of CA on any lens before. Is this a crop or the whole image? The third one would be golden if it was not for the camera shake. Too bad, so cool colors.

Re:First Pictures, New Camera

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Beautifull!

Re:Windows XP vs Windows Vista (THG Review & Benchmarks)

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Huh, that's odd, I get 5.2 and I have a lowly to mediocre comp... 250$??? Did you buy the full (non OEM) version or is it really that expensive where you live?

Re:Movie Reviews

Wonko The Sane — GMT

I just watched Sweeney Todd yesterday. This one is a must see! Finaly something new, refreshing and genious! I am telling you, you have not seen a film like this yet. The humour, the pace, the singing, the acting (hats off to Helena Bonham Carter!!! loved her in Fight club alredy), the story... perfect! Awesome colours, awesome light. The best film I've seen in a while! 10/10 Not for kids though, duh. I also saw John Rambo a while ago. That was a nice suprise! The movie has that typical Stalone feeling all over the place. The story is reasonable, although somewhat simple. But that is not really what Rambo was about at any time, right? Its not overly heroic (but it is still Rambo) and it really shows the devastating power of war to you in a classic way that has become a trademark for Rambo movies. Again, I like the colors, they got it perfectly with the story. The lighting is.. well it looks like there is no artificial lighting, which works very well in this case (and is actually pretty hard to do, to light in such a way that it is not notable). The fights look so realistic it is disturbing at times! I like that the scenery looks pretty dull and crude. A fine conclusion of one of the classic movie series. 7/10

Re:Windows XP vs Windows Vista (THG Review & Benchmarks)

Wonko The Sane — GMT

BotFodder wrote:

My assistant said that on his home computer, he saw great performance gains (particularly in games) when he went through the process to remove/disable the sidebar. I have yet to try this

That was the first thing I did, removed the freaking sidebar. Improved things very much. I don't get it how a simple clock and some weather icons can eat so much CPU time. Interesting enough, when I had a yahoo (maybe it was google) sidebar installed it did not criple the performance at all and it could also show clock, weather, photos and such. So basically the same thing, only it worked like it should. I googled some for backup troubles I had, seems that general consensus on it seems to be that backup center in Vista is not worth beans. That's exactly what I need in business edition of Windows, a lousy backup center. Thanks for the info on permission msgs. I'll look into it.

Re:An engineer feature I'd love to see

Wonko The Sane — GMT

This works sometimes : Make a really neat, tall wall right in front of the turret, so he can't shoot a thing. He jumps out, you kill the wall and jump in yourself. It is a bit of work if he is jumping in every time you jump out for repairs... But in 90% of times, it works if you ask/explain nicely A possible solution: the freshly spawned turret/vehicle could be locked untill the owner jumps in and out. Would work for spawn-thiefs but not repair-thiefs.

Re:ECHO!! Dont...look...behind...you.....!!

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Chameleon wrote:

I never did trust those Crayola crayons back in school. They always gave me this strange vibe.

And my teacher thouth I was making things up! I knew it was true, knew it, knew it! :)) :))

Re:Winter pics from the DC'ers

Wonko The Sane — GMT

It did not get much "wintery" here this year. This is all the snow I found (the Alps):

Re:Windows XP vs Windows Vista (THG Review & Benchmarks)

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Short conclusion: don't get Vista. My experience and my personal opinion (which may be totaly wrong, contadictionary to everything else and itself too): 1. On a desktop I have Vista and XP. I rarely boot to Vista, like 1%. That says a lot. 2. My notebook came preloaded with Vista and I manage to live with it. 3. Compared to XP, Vista looks better, does have better GUI and is easier to use. It also boots and shutdowns faster than XP. So there's that. 4. Everything else works notably slower in Vista. 5. I still can't get my HP inkjet to work properly with Vista and my new Vista certified TV tuner doesn't work in Vista (works in XP, go figure). 6. The endless "Windows needs your permission" msgs are making me crazy. It seems that everything you want to do needs your permission. About 37 permissions actually. And you can't turn it off. 7. Vista is very smart. For every problem you encounter it goes search a solution on the internet. Too bad it never finds one. 8. Vista crashes at least as much as XP. 9. It seems with every iteration of MS OS the user gets less control over his PC. MS has to realize that it is myPC and I want it to do what I want it to do, not what MS wants it to do. EXAMPLE: File backup. Such a neat feature, very easy to use etc. But: while choosing what to back up, you can't pick specific folders, you can only choose partitions/disks. So if you back up, you have to back up everything on that partition. And that is not the worst thing. You absolutely have to backup the partition the OS is on. This happens to be C in my case and it also happens to be the only partition, where I don't keep my files that need backup. (I am talking about file backup not system backup) Another "awesome" thing with backup: first file backup took 31GB for me. Out of curiosity, I made another backup just after the first (without modifying any files). It wasted a whole 49MB. Perhaps MS thinks it's OK to waste 49MB 'cos people have 500GB disks and its OK to waste CPU time, 'cos CPUs are getting better. I don't agree. You dont waste a single MB unless you need to. If I buy a better CPU I want better performance. Not a more demanding OS that will make my new shiny CPU perform exactly like my old CPU. I am still hungry for an OS that is: fast, easy to use, stable, looks nice, gives you control and does not bug you. Vista gets you "looks nice" and "easy to use". I am very happy that most people didn't make the same mistake I did by purchasing Vista or Vista preloaded machine. Interesting enough, this post was written on Vista and I am not pulling my hair out. Yet.

Re:Your highest score post...

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Wow! And with a medic! Wow! ^:)^ ^:)^ ^:)^

Re:Camera opinions

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Snowflakes... Sounds interesting. How do you shoot that? Catch it on a glas plate? As for macro lenses, Sony has two, 50mm and 100mm both f2.8 and both go to 1:1. They are a bit expensive. As for other macro options, I know that the following Sigma lenses fit Sony (all go to 1:1): -50mm f2.8 EX -70mm f2.8 EX -105mm f2.8 EX -150mm f2.8 EX HSM -180mm f3.5 EX You might want to consider Tamron 90mm macro too. As for the quality, general consensus seems to be that there is no bad macro that goes to 1:1 made today. Sigma 70mm f2.8 EX seems to be optically among the best lenses ever tested. However, since you alredy have sub 70mm focal lengths covered with your zoom, it might be wise to get a longer macro that could double as a telephoto/portrait too. So perhaps you might want to look at focal lengths at or above 100mm. Bare in mind that longer focal length gives you more working distance too (e.g. for shooting bugs which might be scared off if you get too close) Of all the mentioned lenses I only owned Sigma 105mm f2.8 EX which is a great lens for macro/portrait/nature/pruduct/zoo shots, but not suitable for sports (e.g moto GP) because of somewhat slower AF speed. The prices increase with focal lens though, Sigma 50mm will set you back for around 250$ (I think this is the cheapest lens that gives you 1:1) and Sigma 105mm for around 400$. Another option is using macro extensions, inverted lenses (you loose AF this way) or non-true macro lenses (cheaper, less magnification). You can also buy closeup filter that you can attach to the zoom you allredy purchased. It is cheap, increses magnification somewhat but degrades optical quality (resolution and distortion).

Re:06/21/2007 Engineer class officially in beta!

Wonko The Sane — GMT

Elite does not count. :) He'd beat me, you and everyone else as a weapon master too I guess. ^:)^ ^:)^ ^:)^

Re:Camera opinions

Wonko The Sane — GMT

BotFodder wrote:

However, both groups, in my experience, tend to agree about one thing: Sony dSLRs are crap.

It looks like you have experience with some funny people than. :) There is absolutely nothing wrong with image quality of Sony DSLRs (Or Olympus, Pentax and Sigma DSLRs for that matter) Make pictures wth each brand, put them in front of the people and noone will be able to tell which picture came from which camera. But it is a fact that Nikon and Canon have the largest selection of lenses, flashes, grips, TCs, remote, etc to choose from. Widely available too. The way I see it, the main investment in DSLR is accesories, not tha actual camera body. I do know that some people get along with a body and a lens or two just fine. For people that don't plan to invest big bucks it doesn't really matter much which brand they choose. Getting most for your money is more important in that case. I think grizzled chose well, that certainly looks like a lot of equipment for $450. I hope you enjoy it and I am really looking forward to your results!

Re:06/21/2007 Engineer class officially in beta!

Wonko The Sane — GMT

My weapon master (lvl170ish) owns my engineer (lvl140ish) big time. I dont think my weapon master has been outscored by any engineer yet playing side by side (playing on his own or even with moderate help of other engs). My WM can mostly score above 2k with good WMs playing around, while my engineer score falls waaay down when guys like violator join.