Moo (new) Business Cards are coming

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I ordered a set of business cards from Moo. I had been trying to figure out where to print my cards with a photograph on them (not just 4 color), and wasn’t really finding anything. Thought I would give them a try. You can link right from your flickr pictures and re-crop them in the web app, but I decided to make new images resized for the cards without my name on the front – I put all the text on the back. I ordered one set of 50, and submitted 8 different pictures. Here are a few of the ones I used. (I am showing the flickr images)

I just added this sunset pictures on flickr.

Montana Sunset

I could only use the front grouping of the trucks. Not really sure how it will look.

Backward Mack

I had to modify the crop on the apples to get it to fit on a card.

Green Apples

Back from SD, MT, ND

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I have been back from my trip now for a week and a half. Not sure why I didn’t post that sooner. I have started to post some of the pictures to flickr.

We went through the South Dakota Badlands, the Black Hills and Rushmore, and then stayed in Montana here:

Montana Living

I found a new favorite subject to take pictures of too. Goats:

Angel and Rio

More from all stages of the trip in the Summer Vacation 2008 set.

New lens (again) (and again not so good)

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I must say, I am happy with B and H. When I called to talk about the lens, they said, send it back. They didn’t try to talk me out of it. If you have a credit card (with room) they can charge you a second time for your purchase, ship it out how you got it the first time (2 day) and then refund you when they get the old one back, so that’s what I did.

The new lens seems fine. I don’t have the same problems as before, and it seems just as sharp. I need to try to take some tests vs the Nikkor kit lens to see if I can tell a diference.

Edit: Not so good. It has the same problems. It seems that changing the focal length will sometimes cause it to malfunction. Just shooting on the same focal length seems fine. I don’t get it.

New Lens going back

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The Tamron 17-50 has an issue. It sometimes doesn’t think that it is attached. I will be shooting pictures, when it will just stop auto focusing. Sometimes if I turn it off and then on, it will say the lens is not attached. That just doesn’t seem good. It was really sharp though. I was tempted not to send it back it seemed so sharp. I have a new one coming, and hopefully it will be just as sharp.

New lens on the way

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Yesterday I ordered a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di-II LD from B&H. I went to National Camera first to look at it, and I liked it. I also tried a Nikkor pro lens, and it is obvious that he build quality is higher, and it did focus faster, but the prices of those things are just not justifiable to me. When I get the Tamron, I will try to compare it with the 18-55 Nikkor kit lens I have. The price difference was over $100 from B&H with shipping (2 days) and National Camera with tax. Almost a quator of the price. I wanted to buy it local, but sheesh…

One chance a year

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I was in Montana over July 4th and wanted to try to get some pictures of fireworks. We decided not to go to the main show in town, so I was left trying to get shots of the few things we bought, or what the neighbors were using. I set up the tripod, picked some setting based on a Scott Kelby book, and fired away. Nothing turned out. Didn’t get color really. Just white blurs mostly. Then I realized that I had left the polarizer on. No wonder it was so hard to focus in the dark! Arg. Oh well, next chance is only a year away!

No D90

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Disappointing. I was hoping to be wrong. I really wanted a D90 to be released on July 1. The D700 is an interesting camera, but a full frame sensor worth a few thousand is not what I am looking for. I am hoping though that the newly released SB-900 flash will put downward price pressure on the SB-800. The new tilt-shift lenses they announced are also interesting, but not what I am looking for.

1008 Photostream views

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I had been hoping to jump into flickr right at the same time that I had 1000 photostream views and get a screen shot, but I missed it. It jumped up to 1008 today. I checked photostats, and as of this post, I have 4,701 views on individual photos. Closing in on 5,000. Does it matter? Not really, but it is nice to see that people want to look at my photos. One cool thing is that 20 of my photos have been selected by people as favorites. Cool.

How many shutter clicks?

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I was trying to find out how many times I had pressed the shutter on my D40. I came accross a web site that can dig into ALL the EXIF data from an image. Jeffery’s Exif Viewer. I found that my camera has 13,229 actuations on it. Holy smokes. That’s a lot of pictures in less than a year. (Seems like it to me). Then I thought, wait, I bought this reconditioned. Maybe there were 10,000 on it when I got it. Nope. I dug up the first “role” that I shot on the camera. 216 on what I think was my first picture. Not too bad. I had feared that there would have been more.