Archive for July, 2010
Friday, July 30th, 2010
40mm Leica Summicron-C: The best cheap Leica lens
Steve Huff recently posted his choice for the best budget Leica lens, the 35mm f/2.5 Summarit-M. It’s the second least expensive lens in Leica’s current lineup, and I agree that it’s the best bargain new M-mount lens you can get from Leica.1 However, one of the great things about shooting Leica is that there’s a [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General,Photography,Technology by Ricky
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Against metrics, for art
Jed Perl’s piece in The New Republic is too short, but makes all the right points about why the arts matter and why being interested in things you know nothing about matters. It also reminded me of how so much media, so much of the online world assumes that its audience is stupid and incapable [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books,General by Ricky
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
David Grann’s Peter Paul Biro profile is the best New Yorker story of the year
If the New Yorker has run a better piece this year, I’m not aware of it. David Grann’s piece on Peter Paul Biro and art authentication (and forgery) is an absolute must-read.
No Comments » - Posted in Books,General by Ricky
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Rediscovering film with the Leica M7
Six years ago I gave up shooting film entirely and made my transition to digital photography complete. In the process, I moved from an SLR with nice lenses to a series of point-and-shoots whose convenience, I thought, compensated for their subpar image quality. Eventually, I gave those cameras up and moved on to more robust [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in General,Photography,Technology by Ricky
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Kodak Portra preset for Adobe Lightroom
Ever since I discovered it in 2004, Kodak Portra has been my favorite 35mm color film. So, I was thrilled when I saw that Michael Gray had put together some presets for color films, including Portra 160VC and 160NC. Click here to download the presets.
No Comments » - Posted in General,Photography,Technology by Ricky
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
How to show invisible files in Mac OS X
If you ever need to view invisible files in the Finder, open the Terminal application, type the following, and hit enter. If you want to hide invisible files again, repeat the process and change YES to NO. defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
No Comments » - Posted in General,Technology by Ricky
Monday, July 5th, 2010
Barriers to entry and start-ups
I’ve sat through more start-up pitches than I would like to admit over the past two years, and there’s one question that invariably comes up during every one: “What are the barriers to entry?” In other words, What will prevent someone else from doing exactly what you’re doing? It sounds great, right? Like, barriers to [...]
