My Quiet Life

I am getting weird reflections like this on longer exposures with my camera. Any ideas what would cause this? Is it reflections off of a lens element? Is it normal? Does it mean my lens is just crappy?

These were both taken with a Canon EOS D30 with a Canon EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 lens
Pictures below:

UPDATE: Kenny was right -- it gets better as I stop down the aperture. Example pictures here.

UPDATE 2: The consensus (minus a minor flame-war) on photo.net agrees with everyone here -- that it's just a common problem with cheaper lenses, made worse by the UV filter.

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Sometimes I say awesome things (in a discussion about the purpose or lack thereof of marriage):

Misery says, "I respect your belief that marriage is stupid. But I don't think it is"
You say, "you haven't done a very good job of convincing me"
You say, "so far we have: a) awesome party"
You say, "b) societal norm"
You say, "yeah, not convinced"
Misery says, "c) societal form that serves a function"
You say, "what function"
Misery says, "norm"
You ask, "compliance?"
Misery says, "like I said, our society is based on this dyad"
You say, "social or economic"

[blah blah blah -- Chris]

You say, "I think marriage is positive as a way to subjugate the working person, and (less so now) as a way to subjugate women"
You say, "'taxes' is circular"
You say, "tax advantages are subsidization of marriage"
Misery says, "which is why the majority of the hegemony is married? That makes no sense"
Misery says, "marriage is USED as a weapon of the hegemony. Who are you kidding?"
You say, "that's what i'm saying"
Misery says, "i.e., combine resources and make an empire"
You ask, "what?"
Misery says, "it serves a function"
You ask, "you're saying marriage is a good thing because it allows rich people to join forces?"
You say, "the percentages of married people that are rich versus those who are not rich disagree with that assessment, anyway"
Misery says, "I'm saying I don't know why marriage exists. I just know it's used as a weapon of the rich to become richer"
Misery says, "it serves many functions"
You say, "like what"
Misery says, "holding up society"
You say, "what does that mean"
You ask, "is it turtles all the way down?"

Come on, that was pretty good, right? Turtles. Diss!! Yeah. Man, I'm a nerd.

Amanda has the most amazingly uncanny ability to find awesome music. It just comes naturally to her, I guess. She's been digging on this song by a band called The Pipettes (pronounced with a short 'i', evidently. They are not female pipes) for the past couple of weeks, during which I was pretty much oblivious or dismissive. Then she grabbed the album, We Are the Pipettes via emusic, and I finally got around to listening to it. It's pretty amazing. It was annoying at first, but now I can't get it out of my brain.

[http://www.place.org/~cwage/sounds/Pipettes_Pull_Shapes.mp3] (The Pipettes - Pull Shapes)

The Pipettes are basically one of those pre-fab bands, or something -- the result of an idea that someone had, where they put the band together around it, rather than a group of people deciding to just make music. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The idea is 60's girl pop rock, complete with the polka-dots and hand-dancing and 60's hairdo's. It's a bit obnoxious, really, and I am not sure I could stomach it, visually, sitting through an entire show of theirs -- they lay it all on a bit thick. Okay, we get it, you're retro. Uh, anyways, where was I..

[http://www.place.org/~cwage/sounds/Pipettes_Judy.mp3] (The Pipettes - Judy)

Oh right.. The music. It rocks. It's awesome -- this album would stand well on its own with or without the retro 60's kitsch. Apparently it's these 3 girls singing and a backing band (called "The Cassettes"). No word on who actually writes the songs, but they are dope. My favorites are "Pull Shapes", which is probably the most modern of all their tracks, with a sortof Cheerleader-chant-ish vibe that reminds me of Supersystem a little. "Judy" is a nice little ditty with lots of lush harmonies. "A Winter's Sky" is this sortof depressing, slow song, that sortof reminds me of Duran Duran's "Winter Marches On", which also has the word "Winter" in it -- coincidence? Probably.

[http://www.place.org/~cwage/sounds/Pipettes_A_Winter_s_Sky.mp3] (The Pipettes - A Winter's Sky)

Lastly, there's this song that is sortof a punchy Beach Boys-ish song.. except it's a rather depressing tour of, well, a pretty bad relationship -- called, appropriately, "Sex". Lyrics transcribed by yours truly:

[http://www.place.org/~cwage/sounds/Pipettes_Sex.mp3] (The Pipettes - Sex)

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Actually, these are from a few days ago. Both from this article:

At the Pentagon, senior military planners cast the conflict as a localized example of America’s broader campaign against global terrorism and said any faltering by Israel could harm the American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's right, folks. The Israel/Hezbollah/Palestine conflict is a localized example of America's broader war on terror.

Yuval Steinitz, who heads the defense preparedness subcommittee of Parliament’s Foreign and Defense Committee, is critical of the current pace, arguing that the air war has not been sufficient. A ground war should have started sooner and should be prosecuted more energetically, he said, occupying southern Lebanon northward at least to the Litani River, some 15 miles from the border.

Wow, that sounds like a great idea! I wonder if they could make a strategic alliance with the Maronites to help occupy Lebanon while they crush and expel the PLO, er, Hezbollah from Lebanon! What could go wrong?

Attention photography nerds:

I currently have a Canon D30 with a basic 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom lens, and it's pretty great for multi-purpose stuff, with one exception that is annoying me: it's not very wide at all. With the 1.6x multiplier on the D30 CMOS sensor, even at 35mm, it's really 56mm. So anyways, I am interested in making my next purchase (probably not any time soon -- i am just researching) be a wider lens.

My question is: should I get a fixed, faster lens like the EF 24mm f/2.8, or should I save my pennies for a more flexible, wider zoom lens? I hear so many stories from people buying lenses they never use, so I want to err on the side of flexibility here rather than heading the direction of having a bag full of lenses. Thoughts?

UPDATE: In case anyone is interested. I am not really sure if/when I will ever buy a new lens, but when I do, I am thinking that for the short-term, I will get an EF 50mm f/1.8 II -- it's not any wider, obviously, but it's a good, solid, fast lens that I think would go greatly with the D30's 1600 ISO for low-light portrait photography and stuff, which I find myself doing a lot of.

Long term, I think I will save my pennies and maybe some day buy the EF 28-135/3.5-5.6 IS USM, which is a well-rounded zoom which isn't TOO hideously expensive at around $400. But that's way too rich for my blood these days.

The worse idea I've ever heard:

A Metro Council task force drafted recommendations today that include offering BellSouth, Comcast, internet service companies and other communications providers as-yet unspecified incentives for dramatically increasing the availability of higher-speed broadband services throughout Davidson County by 2011.

It's these little brief snippets of state/corporate collusion that can really open your eyes a bit.

This picture is actually a botched job -- a tonemapping algorithm that did a poor (subjectively) job. It looks cool, though, I think. I have been playing with HDR imaging lately. It's .. hard. I will maybe make a post detailing my workflow procedure so far. In the meantime, here are my most successful experiments so far. Not spectacular pictures, but just results where I refined the process. You can see a a less wacky version of the same composite here.

Amanda and I went to see The Play tonight. It was quite enjoyable, and Amanda was even quoted in it, making her almost as famous as Aunt B.

For those just joining us, B wrote parts (a great deal, from what I could tell) of a play called Faith/Doubt, which is a series of stories compiled from Nashville themed around religion -- namely, faith and doubt.

I enjoyed it but I am not sure it was entirely for all the right reasons.. See, here's the thing. I came away from the play with the following: Religious people: crazy. Sarcastro, er I mean, Atheists: funny. I am not sure if that was really the intent -- I mean, we all know how I feel about religion, so maybe this is the result of some of my own biases going in. But pretty much every story that was not self-deprecatory or mocking that fell into the "faith" category was, well, at least a little bit crazy. Usually a lot crazy.

But, it wasn't all crazy. Parts of it were actually touching.. There was one story from the perspective of a Sunni Iraqi girl that was pretty good, though I couldn't help but be a snotty know-it-all in noticing one thing that irked me. She talked about how the war in Iraq was basically a religious one between Sunni and Shiite muslims, and how she was Sunni, etc. She then talked a bit about being in the states after 9/11, and how she felt isolated and alienated, naturally, because she was a Moslem. Further, she felt angry, because Osama Bin Laden was "one of them -- who we're fighting against". Osama Bin Laden is a Sunni Muslim ("one of us"). But whatever. Anyways. Only I could fisk a random story from some Iraqi girl character in a play, right? I'm such a cockhole.

The last bit which was a story of a native american woman talking about her near-euphoric descent into death, finished off with a decent song. It was awesome -- beautifully written, and the actress had quite a voice.

In any event, it was funny and very entertaining, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Sam Smith, who I mocked openly earlier this week, has a pretty good review of Lady in the Water, which makes me want to see it -- if only because I might hate it for a different reason than I would have thought.

UPDATE: NK's review actually really makes me want to see it, now.

Amidst various swirling rumors of the buyout/non-buyout, HCA is facing trouble on the labor front. Thousands of HCA workers are threatening a strike if talks don't progress:

"My coworkers and I never wanted to strike, but we will if we need to.
Our patients are suffering because of the poor working conditions at
HCA/Riverside Community Hospital. I am willing to walk a picket line for an
industry standard contract that allows me to provide safe, quality care for
my patients. My coworkers and I will not settle for anything less," said
Russell Main, a Respiratory Therapist at HCA/Riverside Community Hospital.

Coincidentally, Kevin Carson just addressed the health industry in his recent post about professionalism:

Professionalism undermines the separation of work and home. Throughout the entire service sector, increasingly, low-paid wage workers are expected to think of their job as a calling, and of customer service as something to sacrifice "ownlife" for. In nursing, an occupation that fell under the spell of professionalism long ago, this is old news. For all of living memory, hospital managements have cynically manipulated nurses' concern for their patients to guilt them into working unwanted overtime. This is often done, deliberately, in preference to hiring enough staff to avoid overtime, because it economizes on the costs of benefits.