Tuesday and Wednesday of two weeks ago, I spent skiing at Sankt Anton am Arlberg, Tyrol, Austria. I landed in Munich Monday late afternoon, took a train to Munich East, then to Kufstein, Austria, then a two-hour ride up into the Alps and a mile walk to my hotel ( Read more... )

mew0422's mom got me an awesome camera bag for Christmas, a Lowepro Slingshot 200 All Weather. With it, I can take my camera skiing. (It was cold, I gave it a chemical hand-warmer to keep it warm.)

Last weekend I took some pictures at Wildcat which has a spectacular view of Mt. Washington and a fair amount of bumpy narrow terrain and tree skiing, which I ( Read more... )

I took a few pictures of my car right when I got it, but they didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Also, since then I've slipped down the waxy slope of learning a thing or two about auto detailing. Since I work for 3M, I bought a handful of their fine products from the company store ( Read more... )

I went to see monster trucks last night in Providence. I've seen them once before in Anaheim and once again, they did not disappoint. There was smashing, fire, rollovers, etc. all in the tiny space of a hockey arena.


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Dear Lazyweb,

danielmarley did me the disservice of exposing me to the time suck that is Strobist. Now I am eager to get my Canon 420EX Speedlite off of my camera so I can use a softbox or an umbrellaSo the question is: what's a good way to get the flash free of the camera given that I have a Canon flash and a Canon camera. I could get an expensive master ( Read more... )

As described previously, I went up to North Conway to chase trains in the snow with my new camera. I had a great time along with a lot of other guys running around with camera equipment chasing trains by car.

They essentially towed the steam train in up the hill with a diesel-electric Geep. The steam locomotive is 86 years old, so I guess going up ( Read more... )

Plenty of people take pictures of trains, but with the exception of photo shoots for GE, it is rare that full-sized trains are there as models. With that in mind, someone at the Mass Bay Railroad enthusiasts had a brilliant idea: charter a steam train for a day to do a photo shoot.

This unique event will feature multiple photo stops and photo ( Read more... )

Dear Lazyweb,

The danger of learning about optics is that you start to see the shortcomings of your otherwise great 4-year-old camera with a point-and-shoot form factor. (The camera was released December 2002, almost a full 5 years ago.) I'm looking for a DSLR. At the moment, I lean toward Canon, which is the brand I have, including having an ( Read more... )

Compact fluorescents

Compact fluorescent lamps don't suck anymore. I had written them off after my parents got them when I was younger. At that time they weren't very white, flickered, and took a while to turn on. Today they don't seem to flicker, have a fairly good spectrum, and start up quickly. (They do get to about 80% instantly, it takes a ( Read more... )

My car radio recently gave up the ghost. In pulling it out of the center console I managed to blow the fuse for my dashboard backlight. Driving at night without a speedometer backlight was annoying, but not dangerous and not problematic. It was frustrating, so before I left to drive from Greenfield, MA to Troy, NY (a two-hour country-road drive) I ( Read more... )