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I totally love this... I shot this image at ISO 100 at 1/60th of a second! In not all that much natural light, indoors! f/1.4 is a whole new world of lots of light and shallow depth of field (I have an f/2.8 lens, but it has to be 6 ft from the subject, and I have the f/1.8 50mm, but its focusing is too unreliable for regular use).
Fun! Looking forward to sticking this thing on a 5D Mark II sometime soon!
Technorati Tags:
photography, lens, 50mm
Our Christmas cards from Apple arrived, very cool! (designed in iPhoto using a template... I didn't color correct or anything on these pics of the cards, apologies)
Read my review of Guadalajara on Yelp. The short summary: it's excellent. A couple pictures to accompany the review:
The mess, post-tacos:
Guadalajara:
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food, houston, tacos
We went to NASA (Johnson Space Center) recently (first time for me and the kids), and the last stop is Rocket Park where they take you into the building the Saturn V rocket is laying down in. Cool thing is it's not a mockup, it was the rocket that would have been Apollo 18 had that mission happened.
Anyway... IT'S FREAKIN HUGE!!! It's taller than the Statue of Liberty!! UN-believable. They shot that thing into space?!
Very much worth the trip to see it. Here are some pics which will utterly fail to really convey the size of this thing...
This is a shot of the first two stages (there's another almost half of the rocket to the left, not in the shot):
Stage 1 and the main engines:
Just one of the main engines:
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photography, saturn v, rocket
UPDATED: more pics, see below
Max (owner of Catalina) got some Hario hand grinders in and I bought one on the hopes that it would replace my Kitchen Aid ProLine for French press and Chemex brewing.
The Hario has ceramic conical burrs, a "drive shaft", a simple adjustment mechanism, and a crank... along with a glass bowl to catch the grounds and a plastic bowl for beans. One burr (large, outer) is fixed to the plastic bowl and the other (small, inner) is fixed to the shaft. The adjustment "dial" is just a nut on the shaft, really, which "screws" the shaft up and down, thereby moving the small burr closer or further away from the large burr.
I have mixed opinions on this thing, but I'll give you the punch line first: it's roughly as good as my Kitchen Aid for French press or drip grinds, and much better for espresso grinds. I'm not sure it competes with my MACAP espresso grinder, but it is impressive for fine grinds.
My mixed opinions come from the design of the shaft and the way the small burr moves. The shaft is only fixed to the "body" of the grinder in one place: the top. This means that the small burr (fixed to the end of the shaft) is free to float around away from a perfect center line. At the very fine end of the grind spectrum (espresso), this is almost non-existent because the burrs are so close together. The small burr just doesn't have any room to move laterally.
However, for coarse grinds, the burr has plenty of room to move, and it does. This means an inconsistent grind. You get some (not too many) very fine particles along with some big chunks. This is too bad, because the burrs are clearly very good, and a better shaft/body design would turn this from pretty good to fantastic (DIY project?).
However, the results are no worse (or not significantly) than my Kitchen Aid, which cost $200. The Hario costs a quarter of that.
Here is a coarse grind w/ the Hario:
And a slightly finer grind from the Kitchen Aid, for comparison:
And compared to the Kitchen Aid in size:
Bottom line, I like the Hario, but I think it could be significantly improved. It's competitive with my Kitchen Aid costing four times as much, and significantly better for finer grinds. I probably give a slight edge to the Kitchen Aid for French press grinds, but a definite edge to the Hario for espresso grinds.
And there's the "hand" part... expect to get a workout grinding enough coffee for 2 large cups of French press. :)
UPDATED WITH MORE PICS:
Handle and adjustment assembly:
Grind adjuster:
Outer burr (bottom view):
Inner burr:
Inner burr and shaft:
Bottom view up through shaft "housing":
Handle and adjuster disassembled:
Technorati Tags:
coffee, espresso, grinder, hario
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