Hey everyone!

Just realized that last night I passed the 7000 pageview count. W00t!

That's really cool. And without me posting that many new deviations lately. Yes I know, I've been slacking. Didn't have time for any 3D artwork and didn't go out that much for taking photos either.
I'm looking forward to going on vacation this summer. Hopefully I will have lots of new photo material to show afterwards. It's still some time until then and I haven't got everything planned yet, but the thought of vacation is what's keeping me going these days.

Thank you everyone who's been visiting!

- Duncan

*UPDATED* (see below)

In case you noticed my recent outburst of creativity, there's yet another reason for it, following my recent PC upgrade: I have now equipped my new PC with several new peripherals, namely a really good mouse (Logitech MX-400), a Spyder 3 Pro Color calibrating sensor and a Wacom Bamboo tablet!

Using the Spyder 3, I have adjusted my screen and videocard to finally have a true, pristine picture with truly natural colors. Boy, did my eyes fail me before! It really makes a -huge- difference. In hindsight, photo editing didn't make much sense until now. Several pictures I edited before looked -really- crappy on other displays.
Nice side-effect: The picture is much easier on the eyes too.
I've also added a second lamp to my desk, illuminating the area behind the screen with a "daylight" (6500 Kelvin) energy saving lamp, thus reducing contrast between screen and surrounding - especially in the evening. I think my eyes will soon thank me for these measures.

Replacing my old, wireless mouse (having a crappy, dust-bunny attracting optical sensor) with the new wired(!) laser-sensor mouse made a lot of sense too. A wireless mouse might be comfortable at first sight, but when moving the mouse pointer very slowly over tiny distances, some wireless mice tend to be jumpy and inaccurate. My old rodent also had a habit of making the pointer creep around uncontrollably even when not touching it. Very annoying.

Best addition to my desktop though is the Wacom Bamboo tablet!
Photo editing has never been more fun and more effective than with this awesome input device! It's very accurate, has a natural feel to it (just like using pen and paper) and the pressure sensitive tip really rocks! UBER-AWESOME!

With all these great news, there's only one drawback... that's basically it in terms of Christmas for me this year

PS: Ok, I'm officially spoilt now!
I got some cash for Christmas from my grandma and I decided to throw out my ancient Deskjet 970 printer too and replace it with a Canon iP4600 printer. I spent the evening fiddling with settings in Photoshop Elements and the printer driver to get the best possible quality and "wasted" a few sheets of expensive 4x6" photo paper and precious ink but the final results are amazing.
So there, I've basically replaced my *entire* technical equipment in a little over a year. Now what?

...*Boredom ensues*



Well, what can you do to fight off boredom?

...right: Get NEW equipment!

Update 04/23/2009:

I've just gotten my hands on an update for Photoshop Elements to Version 7 and (that's the real cool toy for an "oldtimer" like me) I got a 2nd hand 35mm film scanner! Now I can finally digitize all my old 35mm SLR negative film strips! (Well, the good pictures at least)
Even though the scanner ist almost 9 years old, it's got an amazing scan quality. It probably can't compete with my new Alpha 700 pictures but it would be a shame to let the pictures go to waste.
Now I just have to sort through my countless bags of miscelleneous photos that I never found the time (or discipline) for getting them organized. Some date back to roundabout 1992. Gee whizz...

Update 06/13/2009:

I got dibs on a Minolta AF 500/8 Reflex tele lens. It arrived today. It's a very compact, strong tele lens. Nice for wildlife photography (without the need to haul 20 lbs of equipment around) and also great to take a stab at astro-photography. The Minolta reflex is the only mirror reflex lens on the market capable of auto focus. It's a real gem and I got it at a truly reasonable price. It's got a few caveats like a fixed aperture of f8 and a funny bokeh but I can live with that.

So here I am, stuck with my notebook PC for the time being. Last friday, my trusty old Athlon PC bit the dust after roughly 5 years of devoted service. Ok, apparently only the video card got fried (probably after me switching from 1280x1024 to it's max resolution of 1680x1050 after getting a new TFT screen, maybe it died from overexertion, who knows?) but I decided that there was no point in getting a new AGP card for the old box. After a weekend of online research and comparing prices and pushing my personal spending limit up repeatedly, I ordered a shiny new PC yesterday, made to specs for me. It was like walking the tightrope for me, between what I would like to get and what my finances would allow (naturally). Just having bought a large TFT didn't help either.
So here I am, waiting for the new box to arrive (probably on thursday) and then I will have to reinstall everything on the new PC (it comes bare bones with no OS or anything preinstalled): Windows XP (yes. XP. No Vista! Blech!), Linux, DAZ Studio, Photoshop Elements, Firefox, Thunderbird, yadda yadda and then move all the gazillion files over from the old machine (external USB harddrive cases to the rescue!)
I guess I won't be facing boredom for a couple of days...

Here's some specs of the new box:
Intel Q8200 CPU (quad core! W00t!), 2GB RAM, 500GB harddrive, GeForce 9800 GT
It's still not top notch but a whole lot faster than my previous setup and will hopefully prove to be a decent 3D rendering machine for DAZ Studio, smooth photo editing tool and also allow some decent gaming now and then. The Mainboard has some scope for later upgrades too, so I hope this workhorse will stay with me about as long as the last one did.


EDIT: It's *THERE*!!!
I picked up my new box this afternoon and I'm right now installing stuff and transferring data from the old harddrives over to the new one. Boy, how I hate migrating stuff from one PC to another!
Installing all my programs again was such a big hassle alone. I've been working for almost 6 hours now and I'm still not finished
But I think it was really worth it. The new box is really slick. The case is black with shiny piano finish, the fans inside are all very quiet and most of all, it's operating quick from what I've seen so far (though I couldn't really test it yet, it's clearly not yet time for any 3D rendering or gaming).

Great Southern Land, in the sleeping sun
You walk alone with the ghost of time
Well they burned you black, black against the ground
And they make it work with rocks and sand
I hear the sound of the stranger's voices
I see their hungry eyes, their hungry eyes
Great Southern Land, Great Southern Land
You walk alone, like a primitive man
You walk alone with the ghost of time and they burned you black
Yeah, they burned you black...Great Southern Land...

This will be my last deviation for a while, as I'm about to go on a truly unique vacation (well for me anyways) starting this thursday!
After long preparations, saving up money, gathering equipment (especially photo equipment) and last but not least a nasty cold which tried to stop me on the finishing stretch, I will be heading Down Under! Yes, that's right! I'm going to Australia! For a whooping three weeks cross-country adventure tour!
(Ok, it will be a guided tour. So I'm a wuss, sue me!)
I'll be traveling from Alice Springs southward. After hiking through the Kings Canyon and the mandatory stop at the Uluru, we'll also visit Coober Pedy, the Grampians, Kangaroo Island, The Great ocean Road and finally Melbourne and Sydney.
If all turns out right, I will be taking a gazillion of great photos and DeviantArt will have to buy a new harddrive cluster when I come back home.


UPDATE:
Yes, I'm back home. Already. Meh. Too bad.

As you can see by my recent updates, I've started sorting through the photos I took on the trip. I hope you like what I've posted so far. I wish I had more time for photography during the trip. Even through I took many pictures (more than 1500), many of them were taken rather rushed during long hiking trips that didn't leave much room for taking photos in a relaxed and mind-focused manner. Three weeks were much too short for this trip actually.

W00t!

It's there!

I finally got myself a true macro lens for my digital SLR camera!
I found an affordable second hand (but almost new) Tamron 90 mm/2.8 1:1 macro lens in a photography BBS and it arrived in the mail yesterday.
You can't imagine how cool this thing is! The sharpness and the amazing extreme close-up potential of the lens is awesome!
I've spontaneously visited the botanical gardens in Wuppertal/Germany today and went photo-hunting for insects. They have a vast variety of dragonflies there, buzzing around the little ponds there everywhere. Dragonflies are the coolest flying insects. Period.
Too bad though that they have such an amazing eyesight, you have to creep up on them very carefully or else they'll just whizz away. I did get a bunch of cool shots though. I still have to learn how to properly focus the lens though. Still not sure wether to do it by hand or let the auto-focus do the job. The closer you get, the more perfect the focus needs to be "spot-on".
Anyway: A good macro lens is certainly one of the most fun toys for a dedicated photographer, on par with a powerful tele lens.

UPDATE:
This Tamron SP 90mm lens is so FU**ING AWESOME!!!
Just now I'm beginning to fathom the full potential of my Sony Alpha 700 camera! The 16-105mm kit lens that came with the camera is decent - better than it's reputation I think - but this prime lens really does magic on my camera! It's not only great with extreme close-up macros but also for medium distances and portrait shots. I'm really loving this lens!

W00t!