Hartsord's Random Stabs in the Dark

Tonight's agenda was rather unplanned. As with most of my Saturdays, I had to come in to work today (that's how it often goes in the wonderful world of manufacturing) and I even had to extend a bit to upload some files to our server. Not exactly the perfect beginning to an already short weekend. On the way home, I received a call from my wife regarding some issues she had. Long story short, I now find myself in the A-venue mall waiting for my wife to come back from a get-together with her high school classmates. Now, being a hefty guy, there's no way that I'm going to go without dinner; so I decide to drop into a little restaurant on the first floor called Focaccia. While waiting for my dinner to be served, I decided to make a little better use of my time and write a review of my experience of dinner on my iPod Touch. Beats being stone-cold bored, I say. Ambience: 3/5 Let's face it, this is no romantic rendezvous to bring your one and only with the intention of p...

As I mentioned in my previous post , I have received a batch of photography-related stuff to review, courtesy of Camtrade . At the heart of the package given to me is a new flash coming from LumoPro: the LP120 flash. I first heard of the LP120 from one of my favorite blogs: Strobist.com A little backgrounder on this flash: according to David Hobby, MidWest Photo Exchange (MPEX) approached him to help design a flash to cater to Strobist fans. Based on David's inputs, MPEX designed the LP120 and had LumoPro manufacture it. In the article, David Hobby described the LP120 as a step in the direction of the perfect strobist flash: lots of power; simple, manual controls; lots of flexibility; and lots of ways to trigger it. That article really tweaked my curiosity, so finally getting my hands on a couple of units to try out feels really cool to me. A little backgrounder on this flash: according to David Hobby, MidWest Photo Exchange (MPEX) approached him to help design a flash to ca...

Last week, I received a message from Jason Quibilan, also known as Camtrader on PiPho . He asked me if I was interested in meeting with him regarding a proposition of his. Personally, the idea really intrigued and excited me, so a couple of days later we met, and I came home with this: (Click on any of the pics to see it larger) Camtrader is a new company that is offering innovative new products to the Philippine photography scene. From facilitating trade of second-hand photography items to offering lens rentals, Camtrade is sending waves of G.A.S. through many a photographer's heart. They have a trading section set up on PiPho, and their introductory thread can be found here . Aside from the services I mentioned before, they also supply hard-to-find photography items to the local market. During our meeting, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Camtrade wanted me to review their products. They said that they were impressed with the review and endorsement that I gave t...

090628_Agent_8_18 , originally uploaded by Hartsord . Figurines are some of my favorite subjects for photography, since I can bring them out anytime, with little fuss or set-up. This figurine is Agent 8, from The Adventures of Spawn. She's about 8 inches tall, and comes with a base (although I didn't use it for this photo.) The set-up for this shot is similar to my set-up for the Hitman shot: the background is the same sheet of black felt paper, to absorb the stray light. I laid it on top of the bed, and stuck the back part to the wall with a small piece of blu-tack. The figurine wouldn't stand properly on the bed, so I slipped my macbook pro under the feltpaper to serve as a stand for the figure. I also had to adjust the position of her gun a bit to get her to balance correctly. I also took the opportunity to replace the battery of my Sekonic lightmeter. I set my Vivitar 285HV to 1/16 (the lowest setting), and took a reading of the light on her face, getting f/16 at ...

Last issue , I blogged that I had just gotten my new Cactus V4 triggers from Gadget Infinity . If you're interested in seeing what it looks like, you can check out that entry. For this entry however, I'll be writing about my initial review of its performance. As I've previously mentioned, I was previously using the Cactus V2s triggers (also from GI) to fire my flashes off-camera, but their performance was short of spectacular. I had to mod the antenna on the transmitter (to increase the range and reliability), and mod a 1/8" jack to the receiver (again, to improve reliability). Don't get me wrong, I've had a lot of success using them, but I had to put in quite an amount of work to get to that level. So now, with the new V4 triggers, I was hoping that their performance would be much better than that of the V2s transmitters. After setting up the V4 triggers (pretty straightforward, did not even have to read the manual), first thing I did is to attach my Sigm...

Cactus V4 Packaging , originally uploaded by Hartsord . I have long been a fan of Strobist mindset of lighting in my photography. I have built up my strobist set-up around a set of modded V2s triggers and receivers, but I must admit that I have not been completely satisfied with their performance. In particular, the V2s triggers are quite temperamental, especially with the hotshoes. My most reliable set-up is a modded set that links my Vivitar directly via PC to the receiver. It really works well, but does not really promote confidence with its looks. A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing around the Gadget Infinity website, looking for a possible additional flash to add to my set-up. My Vivitar 285HV has pretty much been discontinued, but I heard that Gadget Infinity (which supplies the Cactus V2s triggers) are coming up with a 285HV clone (warts and all). And so, I was browsing around their lighting stuff, when lo and behold, I find that they were now offering a new trigger set-...

Ash Wednesday , originally uploaded by Hartsord . I posted some of my Pics from this year's Lenten celebration over at my Flickr site here . Unfortunately I wasn't able to take much pictures because I joined our Parish's grand choir. Whenever there was a photo opportunity, I was most likely singing. Oh well. Hope you like my pics. Lent 2009

090117_25-Edit-Edit , originally uploaded by Hartsord . This is one of my recent photos. It was taken in one of our Parish's conference rooms, and I like it because it shows how easily you can set up a shoot if you know some basics. First of all, the background is a plain, cream colored wall. I was able to darken it a bit by keeping my main light quite close to the subject (about 2-3 ft in front), and the background about 10 feet behind her. The room was lit by fluorescent lights (which is generally not good), so I reduced its effect by shooting at 1/200th of a second (which affects continuous light, but not the light from a flash). My first set up actually had the subject about 15 ft away from the wall, but I found the background a little too dark; to fix this, I moved everything about 5 feet back towards the wall. In addition, my initial set up (Vivitar 285HV through 36" umbrella cam left, Sigma EF500 DG Super with snoot camera right for the hair light) also created hars...

Tauren Shaman , originally uploaded by Hartsord . I don't have much opportunity to go on model shoots, so I've taken to shooting models of a different sort. This is a 9" or so model of a Tauren Shaman from Warcraft. I was able to get it on sale at the Alabang Town Center, for about P1000. I really love the detail on this model. For this shot, I used my Sigma 24-70/2.8 EX DG Macro lens. The model is placed on a sheet of black felt paper held in my DIY lightbox. Lit with a Vivitar 285HV with a DIY grid on the right, and a Sigma EF500 DG Super on the left. One technique that I picked up from Strobist.com is to put a CTO gel on a flash to simulate tungsten lighting, and balance it with the tungsten setting on the camera. CTO gelled flashes will come out correctly, as with the right flash in this shot, but other flashes will turn out bluish, as with the left flash in this case, which only had a 1/4 CTO gel on it.

Gen 09 , originally uploaded by Hartsord . Hi there! I finally discovered how to set up Flickr to link with my blog. Maybe this will help me jumpstart my blogging. This photo is a test of my new Sigma 70mm/2.8 EX DG macro lens, and a practice of my Strobist technique. The figure is Gen, from Street Fighter, and it's a highly articulated figure (see the double-joints?), with replaceable hands and head. I really like that it's double-jointed, so I tried to duplicate some Tai-chi stances, especially with the replacement hands. Lesson: it's really hard to balance these things. The background is a piece of red felt paper stuck with blu-tack on my wall, and the whole thing is lit with a Sigma EF500 DG Super flash on the right side, and a Vivitar 285HV flash on the left. Well, you can look forward to more posts from me now! Edit: By the way, I'm now a moderator of PiPho ( http://www.pinoyphotography.org/ ), I now have a Canon EOS 40D, and most of my photos are now on Flickr ...

One thing I've been getting interested in lately is photography. I have an Olympus C-50zoom, which is a little 5 megapixel "point-and-shoot" camera, and I recently joined a local online photography group ( PinoyPhotography.org ), so I can practice and get feedback on my pictures. (You can check out my pictures at online at http://hartsord.photo.net.ph/ ) The problem that I have with pinoyphotography.org is that while almost everybody there has a lot of passion for photography, most of them have passions (and pockets) big enough to drive them to get digital slr cameras. While I do enjoy photography, my passion is not yet enough to make me get a dslr with my budget. I'll continue to hone my skills with my p&s for now. Which brings me to the question: how much camera do you really need? Nowadays, the rage is to have cellphones with cameras, and I consider myself a bit of a stubborn dinosaur because I still stick with my trusty Nokia 6100 (no camera) - I don't ne...

Happy New Year everybody!   I haven’t been able to post here in quite a while, as I’ve been pretty busy.  I’ll try to get a few more blogs in here in there.   As for new developments, I’m trying to get into photography now, so we’ll see what happens with that.   Until then, see ya!

Lean Manufacturing is what I do. That’s what puts the food on my table, and that’s what everyone at work looks to me for. I also happen to find it very interesting and fulfilling, so it’s a great job for me. Funny thing is that most people have no idea what I’m talking about when I say that I’m into Lean Manufacturing. The semi-technical definition I use for Lean Manufacturing is “a continuous improvement philosophy that focuses on the relentless identification and elimination of waste.” No, I’m not talking about garbage disposal, what I’m talking about is waste in a process: “Thoughtless or unnecessary expenditure, consumption, etc.” according to my little desktop dictionary. “So what’s so fancy about that?” you might ask. Nothing much, really, except that most people have difficulty actually seeing the waste in a system. About half of the work of someone doing lean is actually seeing waste for what it is, and the Lean way without waste can almost seem counterproductive; for example, ...

Hi there! Welcome to the second post in Hartsord’s Random Stabs in the Dark. For this post I thought that I’d write a little about the service that allows me to present this article to you: Blogger . I have always been a big fan of the service that Google gives. In virtually every way, they have given their users the best service that they can, starting off by giving an honest (for the most part) web searching engine that tries to come up with the most relevant sites to a search query in a logical manner. They have also kept the service as clean and as straightforward as possible (as evidenced by their main page ), yet have expanded their suite of services considerably . Among the tools added to the Google family is Blogger. Apparently, this used to be Blogspot, but the old service seems to be transitioning over to Blogger. The basic Blogspot URL (http://www.blogspot.com/) now redirects over to Blogger, but the blogs themselves are still on the Blogspot domain, as evidenced by the URL...

Hi there! Welcome to Hartsord’s Random Stabs in the Dark. I’m Hartsord and this is my blog. A little background on me: I’m a 31-year old father of two beautiful little girls, and I live in the Pearl of the Orient Seas, the Philippines. I work as a Lean Manufacturing Superintendent in a manufacturing plant located in the province of Laguna, and my interests range from computers, to singing, to reading, to RPG’s (the face-to-face kind), to playing collectible card games, or to just thinking about the nature of people in general. This is actually not my first attempt at putting up a web page, but it’s something I haven’t done in a long time. This is my first blog-type work though, but the format seems to be one I think will suit what I want to do here. One of the things I’ve thought about doing for a long time is collating all the random thoughts I go through from day to day. I consider myself as a contemplative guy, and I do enjoy going over thoughts in my head on occasion. Alon...