Gitzo Traveler Series 1 GT1542T Tripod x Markins Q-Ball Q3 Traveler Ball Head

The Gitzo Traveler Series 1 Tripod (GT1542T) and the Markins Q3T Ball Head are a match made in heaven! My goal was to find a light and compact combo that can handle heavy equipment. This was the best I could come up with…

The Gitzo tripod is made of carbon fiber and can handle loads of up to 17 lbs. I was hesitant to buy this at first because I wasn’t too fond of twist-locks. I was led to believe that twist-locks take longer to expand than flip-locks, but after trying out both systems at a few local shops I found out that you can unlock all three twist-locks at the same time with one twist. It turns out that twist-locks work out much better for me! So that opened the door to many brands I had been avoiding for years: Gitzo, Feisol, Induro, Benro, etc. I decided to go with Gitzo…

This tripod fully collapses to 17″.

The Markins ball head I picked out was designed specifically for the Gitzo Traveler tripod. It can handle loads of over 60 lbs – way more than I will ever need and way more than the tripod could ever handle. I purchased a plate for the D800 grip and a foot replacement for my 70-200mm lens.

The head and plates are “Arca-Swiss” compatible so I am able to use parts and plates from Arca-Swiss, Acratech, RRS, Markins, Wimberly, Kirk, and many other vendors.

Here is my gripped D800 with the Markins PG-50 plate mounted to the ball head.

Some shots with the Markins LN-20 foot replacement for the 70-200mm lens.

Here is a full shot of the entire combo.

This is how the combo collapses – under 20″ in length and under 4″ in girth!

A close up of how the combo collapses.

This pairing was the lightest combo that could support a pro camera carrying a 200mm lens. The entire combo weighs in at 3 lbs! (The tripod is 2.2 lbs while the ball head comes in at .8 lbs!) Hopefully this combo will allow me to carry a tripod to more venues more often!

DSLR Camera Simulator

I was hunting for some basic photography websites, explanations, and tools for my cousin, who would like to learn photography, and I ran into this…

Click on the image to hop to the site. What an awesome way to learn and see how each of the major adjustments change the results!

Great night to shoot the Moon…

…so I did!

Tech Changes at Home

I’ve been busy with a lot of technology changes at home…

One of the hard drives in our home server was failing so I decided to replace them all with 2 new 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Drives. Whenever one fails, I always assume the others are close to failing as well.

I got sick of the slow internet speeds we were getting with AT&T Uverse. Just a few years ago, it was the fastest technology around. Now it’s one of the slowest. Since I was maxed out on their available internet options, I had no choice but to switch to Comcast Xfinity. While I was at it, I decided to switch over all services: Internet, TV, and Voice.

When the Comcast installer arrived, I was surprised to see that they install the same idiotic cable boxes they were using over 4 years ago when I left their service! Motorola DCT6412 – sound familiar? LOL What a joke. I recorded one HD basketball game and the DVR was 33% full. In under 24 hours, I switched out the boxes for a cable card and purchased a TiVo Premier XL4 DVR with Lifetime Subscription! This would be our 4th TiVo – I don’t know why we ever left!

This TiVo rocks! It allows me to record 4 HD streams simultaneously! I didn’t realize how much I missed TiVo until I started using the peanut remote again! Ahhh, feels like home! No more crappy vendor boxes!

BTW, after switching from Uverse to Comcast, it made me realize that Uverse uses way too much compression for their video streams. The Comcast picture is SO much better.

Since I changed out our internet service, I thought it would be a good time to get rid of all the old wireless access points in the house. I bought a second Netgear WNDR3700 (N600) Wireless Router and am using it as another dual band wireless access point. No more 802.11G in our house! It’s all 802.11N and in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz! There isn’t a weakspot in the entire house!

Future tech plans…
Time for me to replace our printer – it’s been about 3 years and it’s starting act up.
I want to buy 2 more 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black Hard Drives to give me a total of 8TB storage on my server.
Almost time for another iMac!

In non-tech news, I tuned my camera and lenses using LensAlign.

I also got my photography project off the ground – pseudo Polaroids will be surrounding my home office!

All this “work” has been making me so damn tired! Time to take a break from tech!

Halleluja – My lens is calibrated!

After a week or two of testing out my new 14-24mm lens, I was a bit disappointed. At first I thought it was poor technique or over-expectations from all the hype with this lens. Images I had captured up to this point were blurry or out of focus – they ALL really sucked. I knew something was out of whack when SheryAnne’s point and shoot photos were coming out light years better than the photos out of my rig. Since I am an amateur at photography, I figured it had to be me. I focused on improving techniques to keep the camera from shaking, shutter to focal length fundamentals, and lighting fundamentals. So I continued to shoot, test, learn, and study how to use this lens…but my photos were still coming out poor. After reading Seb’s review on the LensAlign focus calibration system, I thought I’d give it a try to see if I had any calibration issues – it turned out that I did! The calibration system revealed a significant amount of back focus at 14mm and by the time I stretched the lens to 24mm, it was front focusing! After fine tuning the lens and camera using the LensAlign system, my photos have been more in line with what I expect out of this lens – sharp and consistent! Here are some samples after calibration:

Now I understand why photographers love this lens!

And for you geeks out there my final AF Fine Tune settings ended up being:

50mm f/1.4 -2
14-24mm f/2.8 -18
24-70mm f/2.8 -3
70-200mm f/2.8 0

So now you can see why I was tripping over my photos prior to calibration! LOL