The Daily Parker

Less than 24 hours ago, I put my old camera on Craigslist: $500 for the body, two old lenses, the battery pack and charger, and a 32 GB CF card.

This afternoon, someone stopped by my office, played with the camera for five minutes, handed me $450 in cash, and that was it.

Thank you, Craig. That was remarkably painless.

I'm not sure this produced a significantly different photo, but I've done another quick HDR image with Lightroom. First, the basic shot, posted the day after my visit to the Joint Security Area on the North-South Korean border:

Here's the first HDR attempt posted a week later:

And here's one with Lightroom 6:

The second HDRI used different source images, but only from a few seconds later. Are they significantly different? Maybe insignificantly? I must ponder...

Upgrading my camera unfortunately meant I had to upgrade Adobe Lightroom as well. But I discovered that Lightroom 6 has a basic HDR feature, which I didn't expect. For a long time I've been taking bracketed images in order to make HDR images, and then forgetting about them. Images like this one:

For comparison, here's the non-HDR image I posted back in February:

In this case, the HDR imagery expanded the dynamic range of the image without making it look really bizarre. I think it's a stronger photograph as a result, though the bottom image is still pretty.

I've just upgraded my main camera to the same model's Mark II. The first shot doesn't seem that impressive, as it's a daylight shot of a familiar view. (There are noticeable differences in Lightroom, however.) But check this out:

That was shot at ISO-51200, 1/60th second at f/5.6. I mean, holy crap.

To put this into perspective: in order to take that shot with the Tri-X Pan film I used as a kid, I'd need a 2-second exposure at the same aperture—a 7-stop difference. The mind reels. Yes, it's grainy, but it's still crisp and accurate. (It's B&W because the sodium vapor street lamps don't produce any red light, so there's no way to correct the colors.)

The 7D I got four years ago was the first digital camera that was as good as the film cameras I used to use. This is the first one that's better.

Here are the stats, updated from 2011:

...with my new camera:

More details forthcoming...

This was the view at the top of North Pond on my walk this afternoon:

...and also preparing for a fundraiser at which I'm performing tomorrow:

• Microsoft has moved Azure Premium Storage to general availability...
• ...and also improved SQL backup and export services.
• Coincidentally, my favorite performance analysis tool just added a feature I need this week. Color me happy.
• The United Center, where the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks play, is getting beer robots.
• British photographer Marcus Lyon does not like sprawl. And his photos are kind of cool.
• There's also a poetry map of Toronto. One of my friends just discovered her street corner has a poem about it.
• The long-range climate forecast for Illinois predicts bog-standard weather. I can live with that.

And did I mention Apollo After Hours?

My to-do list today only has 14 items on it, of which 6 are checked off already. The actual time it will take to accomplish the remaining eight items varies between 20 minutes (laundry, tonight, essentially a fire-and-forget activity) and four hours (Staging release of the Holden Adaptive Platform).

So, once again, I'm going to shove a bunch of articles to my Kindle:

• Within a 10-minute walk from my house is a mausoleum built in 1858 that the city didn't move when it created Lincoln Park.
• Virgin America will fly A320s from San Francisco to Honolulu, which means we really are living in the future.
• Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens will close 200 stores in the next few months. No word yet on which Chicago stores it might close.
• Wildlife porn alert! Urban coyotes.
• I missed the Last Week Tonight episode last October in which John Oliver asks, Ayn Rand: How is this still a thing?
• Another one from Citilab: see L.A.'s amazingly-clear parking signs. How come we don't have them in Chicago yet?
• Did I already link to the new Azure Table Storage design guide?

Now to do the next few things on my list...and watch the thunderstorm outside my office window.

My first real Euchre tournament is coming up in a little more than two hours, so I'm preparing by doing exactly what I would do anyway: listening to Weekend Edition. The last guest was Mary Norris, copy editor at The New Yorker, who has written Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen:

On the best way to become a good user of English

Well, a person should read. And read, and read. Preferably good things. I might suggest The New Yorker, for instance ... [Henry James] is a wizard, the master! Yes, they don't call him the master for nothing.

I might have to read the book. I'll put it right next to Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

Apparently my last four weekends have been pretty busy. Once again I have almost no time to post anything, not least because it's sunny and 13°C, so Parker and I are getting ready to go hiking.

So here's a listicle. Generally I hate them, but this one from Inc. listing frequently-misused cliché phrases made me point to my screen and shout "yes, that!"

11. Baited breath
The term "bated" is an adjective meaning suspense. It originated from the verb "abate," meaning to stop or lessen. Therefore, "to wait with bated breath" essentially means to hold your breath with anticipation. The verb "bait," on the other hand, means to taunt, often to taunt a predator with its prey. A fisherman baits his line in hopes of a big catch. Considering the meaning of the two words, it's clear which is correct, but the word "bated" is mostly obsolete today, leading to the ever-increasing mistake in this expression.

I'm waiting with bated breath for the next bit of list bait to cross my Facebook feed...