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sirfrogsworth · 2 hours

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I got the purse for my photography class assignment.

These are just quick phone photos. I just wanted to see how light fell onto it so I could figure out what kind of lighting design it would require.

And I think I accidentally chose the hardest object to light in the existence of product photography.

I drew up a lighting mockup of what I think it would take to light this how I imagined it.

The smaller rectangle is the strip softbox light. And the big rectangle is about how big the diffusion panel will probably need to be. And the gradient is the falloff of light I would want to reflect into the purse.

And if you notice, that giant diffusion panel is right in front of where the camera would go.

This is going to require some problem solving.

I'm glad I have until July.

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sirfrogsworth · 7 hours

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So here are all the cards I found.

And they all had our names on the back.

And I don't know if they are actually our names or if this is one of those tattoo situations where they put a menu item on your shoulder and tell you it means fierce warrior.

When I tried to use Google Lens to translate, this is what it said.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

I found this card inside one of my mom's books. I think we got these on vacation, but I don't remember for sure.

Can anyone read this?

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sirfrogsworth · 8 hours

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I found this card inside one of my mom's books. I think we got these on vacation, but I don't remember for sure.

Can anyone read this?

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sirfrogsworth · 8 hours

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I spent way too much time trying to figure out what the hell this means. You could post this on "I'm 14 and this is deep" and people would not question it was written by a 14 year old.

I finally just had to break it down bit by bit to try and figure out what he was trying to say and why it was nonsense.

I think the big problem is that Elon is assuming direct opposites always exist.

He is assuming if people believe "might makes right" is bad then "weak makes right" must be good. Why is "weak makes right" the opposite? That phrase is commentary about the abuse of power and how the victors write history. The only opposite you could derive is that the weak are unheard.

He's inventing a position that I don't think exists. Sometimes strength is required to do what is right. But with great power comes great... you know the rest.

He then invents another position where the oppressed are good and the strong are bad.

Again, oppressed and strong are not opposites.

However...

You can be both mighty or weak and be in the wrong.

You can be oppressed and bad. (See: Caitlyn Jenner)

You can be strong and good.

But you cannot be both oppressor and good.

You cannot be a billionaire and not oppress.

The strong must try to protect the weak.

And the non-oppressed must help fight oppressors.

There is no morality where oppression is justified. We must unburden people from their oppression no matter what. And whether they end up being good or bad, strong or weak... is up to them.

I think Elon has heard people saying all billionaires are evil and this is him trying to counter that. I don't think he succeeded and it's hilarious how many of his stans replied to this like, "Yeah, you are so right" even though this is an incomprehensible attempt at philosophizing.

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sirfrogsworth · 1 day

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It might sound silly, but one of the most difficult aspects of taking care of my dad was... NCIS.

He had trouble concentrating near the end. And his tired brain just couldn't absorb new things very well. But all he was able to do was watch TV. He tried watching other shows he was familiar with, but they didn't have a lot of episodes and he would get through them very quickly. He loved The Mandalorian, but there were only 16 episodes at the time.

But NCIS had hundreds and hundreds of episodes. The main show (his favorite) was up near 400 at the time going all the way back to 2003. He could remember them well enough but by the time he got through the entire series, he could start over at the beginning and those episodes wouldn't be so fresh in his brain. So it didn't feel like he *just* watched something.

The thing is... I don't like NCIS.

At all.

My mom loved Law & Order and I found those much more tolerable. But NCIS is just narrative hell for me. Every episode followed a strict formula. The characters never developed. They never grow or change. If they experience a traumatic event they will take an episode to deal with it and then that event basically never happened.

It's like if "status quo" manifested as a television program.

I eventually convinced him to watch a movie in the evening. And then I would try to get in some extra naps when he watched NCIS. But when I couldn't stand watching any more episodes I bought some giant over-the-ear headphones and just watched YouTube videos on my laptop.

Sadly, my headphones still couldn't drown out that theme song—which has not changed one bit in 20 years. It's this horrible electronic music that was dated even in 2003. It sounded like one of the producers asked his nephew to whip something up in Fruity Loops.

My biggest relief was when the baseball season started. Finally we had something we could both watch and enjoy together. And when the Cardinals ended up losing I was more sad about NCIS returning than I was about the team failing.

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sirfrogsworth · 1 day

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Can anyone spot the problem here?

#low effort conservative trolling #it's a book store

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sirfrogsworth · 1 day

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Let's talk about vintage lenses.

Here is your cool samurai show with modern lenses.

Here is your cool samurai show with vintage lenses.

Hollywood is no stranger to fads.

We are currently in the middle of a "make everything too dark" fad. But that fad is starting to overlap with "let's use really old lenses on ridiculously high resolution cameras."

This is Zack Snyder with a Red Monstro 8K camera.

He is using a "rehoused" vintage 50mm f/0.95 Canon "Dream Lens" which was first manufactured in 1961.

This old lens is put inside a fancy new body that can fit onto modern cameras.

Which means Zack is getting nowhere near 8K worth of detail. These lenses are not even close to being sharp. Which is fine. I think the obsession with detail can get a bit silly and sometimes things can be "too sharp."

But it is a funny juxtaposition.

The dream lens is a cool lens. It has character. It has certain aberrations and defects that can actually be beneficial to making a cool photograph. It's a bit like vinyl records for photography.

[ Peter Thoeny ]

It has vignetting and distortion and a very strange swirly background blur.

[ Gabriel Binder ]

Optical engineers have been spending the last 60 years trying to eliminate these defects. And I sometimes wonder if they are confused by this fad.

"I WORKED 70 HOURS PER WEEK TO GET PERFECT CORNER SHARPNESS!"

And whether you prefer to work with a perfect optic or a vintage one... it is a valid aesthetic decision either way. I think vintage glass can really suit candid natural light photography. You can almost get abstract with these lenses.

[ Peter Theony ]

Personally I like to start with as close to perfect as possible and then add the character in later. That way I can dial in the effect and tweak how much of it I want. But even with modern image editing tools, some of these aberrations are difficult to recreate authentically.

That said, it can be very easy for the "character" of these lenses to become distracting. And just like when someone first finds the lens flares in Photoshop, it can be easy for people to overdo things.

Zack Snyder decided to be his own cameraman and used only vintage glass in his recent movies and it has led to some complaints about the imagery.

I mean, Zack Snyder overdoing something? I can't even imagine it.

Non camera people felt Army of the Dead was blurry and a bit weird but they couldn't quite explain why it felt that way.

The dream lens has a very wide aperture and it lets in a lot of light. But it also has a very very shallow depth of field. Which means it is very difficult to nail focus.

[ Peter Thoeny ]

Her near eye is in focus and her far eye is soft. You literally can't get an entire face in focus.

There is no reason you have to use the dream lens at f/0.95 at all times. But just like those irresistible lens flares, Zack couldn't help himself.

Here is a blueprint that you can't really see.

Extreme close ups of faces without autofocus at f/0.95 is nearly impossible to pull critical focus on.

Looks like Zack nailed the area just above the eyebrow here.

Let's try to find the point of focus in this one.

Ummmm... she is just... blurry. Missed focus completely.

But Zack isn't the only one going vintage. I've been seeing this a lot recently.

Shogun is a beautiful show. And for the most part, I really enjoyed the cinematography. But they went the vintage lens route and it kept going from gorgeous to "I can't not see it" distracting. And perhaps because I am familiar with these lens defects I am more prone to noticing. But I do think it hurt the imagery in a few spots.

Vingetting is a darkening of the corners of the frame.

Light rays in the corners are much harder to control. A lot of modern lenses still have this problem, but they create software corrections to eliminate the issue. Some cameras do it automatically as you are recording the image.

Vintage lenses were built before lens corrections where a thing—before software was a thing. So you either have to live with them, try to remove them with VFX, or crop into your image and lose some resolution.

It's possible this is the aesthetic they wanted. They felt the vignetting added something to the image. But I just found my eyes darting to the corners and not focusing on the composition.

And then you have distortion.

In this case, barrel distortion.

This is mostly prominent in wide angle lenses. In order to get that wider field of view the lens has to accept light from some very steep angles. And that can be quite difficult to correct. So you kind have to sacrifice any straight lines.

And sometimes this was a positive contribution to the image.

I thought the curved lines matched the way they were sitting here.

But most of the time I just felt like I was looking at feudal Japan through a fish's eye.

It's a bit more tolerable as a still, but when all of these verticals are bowing in motion, I start to feel like I am developing tunnel vision.

I love that this is a tool that is available. Rehousing lenses is a really neat process and I'm glad this old glass is getting new life.

This documentary shows how lens rehousing is done and is quite fascinating if you are in to that sort of thing.

youtube

But I think we are in a "too much of a good thing" phase when it comes to these lenses. I think a balance between old and new can be found.

And I also think maybe Zack should see what f/2.8 looks like. He might like having more than an eyebrow in focus.

#photography #cinematography #lenses #vintage lenses #shogun #long post

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sirfrogsworth · 2 days

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I ordered food for 5mg Mounjaro Froggie.

But I am now 10mg Mounjaro Froggie.

And now I have too much food.

I suppose that is a good thing in the end.

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sirfrogsworth · 4 days

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I'm feeling it, but it is really subtle. Not sure if it will get worse or not, but this is much more tolerable than when I first started Mounjaro.

I guess we'll see if I spoke too soon.

#pukewatch2024

I finally got the next dose of Mounjaro. I've been trying to get this for about 4 months now but too many people wanted to use it for aesthetic reasons. My pharmacy had a single box and they put it aside for me. I have the best pharmacy in the world. They are so great.

It is double what I was taking. And I am a little worried I'm going to get sick. I'm hoping that I have a good tolerance from being on it for so long now. But it's hard to know if this drastic change will take some getting used to. I also skipped a step. I was supposed to go from 5 to 7.5. But they only had 10.

So I will either be puking tomorrow or I will be just fine. I guess we'll see which it is soon enough.

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sirfrogsworth · 4 days

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I had to post some corrections on my eclipse post.

I've been even more diligent with fact checking ever since that John Wick gun magazine flip debacle.

I mean, I was pretty diligent before, but I made sure to double check pretty much everything from that point forward.

It sucks when you get things wrong. My heart sinks every single time. I try to track down how I got it wrong and make sure to learn from it.

But when something has been reblogged so many times and there is no way to reach everyone with the correction, it just feels like you let all those people down.

But the physics of light is incredibly complicated and I don't think my brain is working anywhere near 100% right now. It was probably a recipe for misunderstanding and then passing that misunderstanding along to others.

I don't know.

I think it is just going to feel bad until it doesn't and I'll move on and learn from it.

And try better in the future.

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sirfrogsworth · 4 days

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I finally got the next dose of Mounjaro. I've been trying to get this for about 4 months now but too many people wanted to use it for aesthetic reasons. My pharmacy had a single box and they put it aside for me. I have the best pharmacy in the world. They are so great.

It is double what I was taking. And I am a little worried I'm going to get sick. I'm hoping that I have a good tolerance from being on it for so long now. But it's hard to know if this drastic change will take some getting used to. I also skipped a step. I was supposed to go from 5 to 7.5. But they only had 10.

So I will either be puking tomorrow or I will be just fine. I guess we'll see which it is soon enough.

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sirfrogsworth · 4 days

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I'm worried that if I ever meet any of the YouTubers I follow in real life i am going to be shocked at how slow they speak.

"It's really nice to meet you, but I don't suppose you could speak approximately 1.75 times faster?"

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sirfrogsworth · 5 days

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Watching the octopus doc on Disney.

Not to be confused with Doc Octopus on Disney.

It's narrated by Paul Rudd and he just has this calming way of narrating. Though I think he was uncomfortable saying, "special mating arm" and "she expels the sperm from her previous encounters."

They decided to go with "octopuses" as plural. Which is the most fun version to say. Better than fucking octopodes.

I just saw an octopus brawl. And you'd think that would be exciting because there are 16 arms involved. But, it turns out everyone on this planet fights the same.

In the end, we just hug.

Boxers end up hugging.

MMA fighters end up hugging.

Women MMA fighters end up... umm...

Fighting is hugging, is what I'm saying.

And it would seem that is no different for octopuses.

16 arms of glorious hug fighting.

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sirfrogsworth · 5 days

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I'm prolific and pretentious.

That tracks.

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sirfrogsworth · 6 days

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THIS!

This is perfection.

I finished Rebel Moon 2.

It's like... watching someone set money on fire.

It's best to watch it in spurts. That way the terrible-ness doesn't overwhelm.

I know I was just arguing with someone about how art is subjective and you can't declare a subjective thing terrible outside of an individual experience.

But there are some objective measures of artistic quality that I think Zack failed to meet. It didn't seem like he had an actual cohesive story in mind. The movie felt like he thought of a bunch of visual spectacles that were informed from his favorite childhood movies and he wanted to recreate them in his own style.

And instead of a story it felt like he was writing excuses.

"I want a character to have a lightsaber. So I am going to come up with an excuse for them to have one."

"I want a cool robot fight scene, so I am going to come up with an excuse for that to happen."

"I want a giant spider lady, so I'm going to make that a thing in this universe despite every other character being human."

And he just did that for every single visual spectacle he wanted to create.

I think the laziest writing was when he wanted to do cool flashbacks so he had all of the heroes sit around a table and tell each other their personal history. And the excuse was, "If we are going into battle together, we need to know who we are fighting beside."

And so they just went around the table explaining their tragic backstory like group therapy minus the talking stick.

And this movie took itself sooooo seriously. George Lucas had some self awareness and knew some of his shit was straight up goofy.

Zack is just... "I'M MAKING ART!"

I will say, there was one very funny moment in the movie. And it is only funny because of all of the super serious seriousness.

I took a picture of the funny moment.

You ready?

I just saw this and burst out laughing. Maybe it's only funny to me. I am a little sad they didn't add the "Sir" to his name.

I hope Tony got a nice piano out of this.

The best I can describe this movie is like a child playing with action figures. They will imagine little stories as they make their figures fight each other. And they don't really make much sense. But it doesn't matter because they are just worried about entertaining themselves and no one else.

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sirfrogsworth · 6 days

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"I am a student of light" is a common photography parlance. That wasn't just my normal pretension.

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sirfrogsworth · 6 days

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So... someone downvoted me for this.

And I've been downvoted for a lot of things before.

But I understood why I was downvoted on those things.

This makes no sense.

That is a legit helpful comment and some stranger on the internet cut my 2 upvotes in half and I am going to find them and I'm going to downvote them right on the nose.

The nerve!

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