Bought some new plants today.

Just bought some new plants for the right part of the aquarium. Ceratopteris thalictroides and
Pogostemon Helferi. The first should grow and fill the right back of the tank. The second is a somewhat hyped foreground plant from Thailand.

I'll just have to wait and see how these do in my aquarium, too early to tell now.

Oh, and I got these plants here:

my aquarium

my aquarium
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Tank is a juwel rekord 60 which is 11 years old now. Over the years it's accumulated a few scratches. I did a total rebuilt about a month ago. Still a bit sorry I didn't go for a sand bottom instead of gravel.

I'm not entirely happy with it yet, the Hygrophila polysperma in the front right requires almost constant pruning and I want something long but not massive for the back right. Was thinking valisneria but somehow I've never had much success with these.

I came home today and found the shrimp swarming all throughout the tank. Normally they don't swim that much and spend a lot of time foraging. So I popped in some food, sera sinking wafers.

Pretty good stuff really. When you have a lot of shrimp like I do just break one of these in four and an hour later it's all gone.


One of the fun things to watch is what happens when the shrimp smell the food, they will litteraly walk over each other to get to it. It's also not unusual to see two or three shrimp do a tug-of-war over a small scrap.

Nano and pico aquarium fascination

Since the recent overhaul of my Juwel 60-ish liter aquarium I've once again become fascinated by the idea of a second aquarium. Unfortunately I do not have the room for a second full size tank and even finding a spot for a small extra tank will be a challenge.

Recently the nano and even pico aquarium has gained a lot of popularity. There's an ample supply of 10 and 20 liter setups two of which have caught my attention.

Aquael Shrimp Set 20

Superfish Aqua-Qubie 25

Both are roughly similar in dimensions, both feature a tiny filter and heater. The Aquael has an 11 watt PL light which is typical for tanks in this class, the superfish is one of the first that features a LED light of about 3 watts power consumption.

Of course there's also plenty of more conventional rectangular aquariums in the 25 liter class.

Then there's another class, the pico aquarium. Slobodan Lazarevic is a master of the subject as you can see here:

A dream in just 2 liters!

There's various other things of course like a pickle jar.

Practical fishkeeping (lovely magazine) has some good information on planting a small tank.

Boraras  and Trigonostigma in the small shrimp tank

Recently I did a big tank overhaul. Once that had finished and settled I started looking for some new tank mates for my 54 liter tank. It's planted and features an anubias covered piece of wood as it's centerpiece. The tank was inhabited at that time by 3 Boraras brigittae, a lonely golden tetra and a large number of shrimp. It's filtered by the standard juwel filter setup.

I started looking for some more brigittae to bring the school back to a decent size again. Bit of research showed me there's a few species that are largely similar.

Boraras brigittae

Boraras brigittae - Mosquito Rasbora by j_wijnands, on Flickr


Boraras merah



These are Indonesian and largely similar.

A bit further up in south east Asia we find Boraras Maculatus. Some source list this as Mainland only especially the Malay peninsula but other sources claim it's also found in Sumatra.


Boraras maculatus by Chantal Wagner, on Flickr
http://www.fishbase.org/summary/Boraras-maculatus.html

Further to the west still in Thailand and Vietnam there's Boraras urophthalmoides


Boraras urophthalmoides by swordw, on Flickr

Now the latter I've never seen in shops here in the Netherlands but the first three are available but not all that common. These fish are also mislabled extremely often!

All of these species have a few things in common first and most apparant is of course their size. These fish are tiny! A hefty adult female could measure a whopping 22mm, literature lists 25mm as maximum. They're also found in somewhat similar conditions, heavy planted streams in the forest. Lighting is dim and there's loads of leaf litter and other debris on the bottom.

Once my tank stabilised I bought a school of 10 merah because I just could not get any Brigittae within a 50km radius of where I live. Followed the standard introduction technique and to my intense relieve the merah immediately hooked up with the remaining brigittae.
Over the first week I've lost 2 of the 10 to unknown causes. With a good shrimp population dead fish just disappear.
They seemed to do well, the school falling apart in 3 groups when hunting for food but immediately hooking up again if they thought there was any danger. Seeing these little guys drift just below the surface waiting for any insects is great fun, they really seem to think they're jaws!
One of the male merah has developed a strange fixation with the left wall of the tank, it's constantly fighting it's own reflection. Two others have joined up with a brigittae and can often be seen hunting in the dense population on the edges of the tank.

Things really perked up after I introduced a dose of peat to my filter. As the water coloured the fish perked up. They're now displaying full colours all the time, not just at meal times and some are now making overtures to the females of the group.

A happy brigittae especially can be really quite colourful as you can see



Additionally I got 6 rasbora Hengeli or Trigonostigma hengeli as they're known since 1999. Most people will know this as a small fish but compared to the boraras species it's positively huge!

My store had a mix of adult females and somewhat younger males. The smallest of which is here next to a merah






The adult females are almost twice as big.

Hengeli comes also from Indonesia but a bit more towards the eastern islands. Even though they don't seem to mind the difference. It's a more active and noticeable species than their tiny tankmates but they do get along well. Old eeyore the tetra hooked up with them, is happy once again and even had a brief romantic interlude with one of the younger male hengeli

The Hengeli also seem to appreciate the addition of peat, they're now flying full colours almost all the time.

Feeding these is easy, they take the staple of Tetramin flakes easily but I do have to grind half the flakes rather fine between my fingers otherwise it's just too big for the boraras. I've also fed TetraFreshDelica Brine Shrimps. Which they take too when it's moved around by the filter but otherwise don't really care for too much. Pretty soon the weather will heat up here and I will see how they react to fresh mosquito larvae.

All of these are absolutely safe for adult shrimp, apart from an occasional attempt to steal food from a shrimp they leave each other alone. In my opinion the boraras could make a nice addition to a well planted aquascape. Do keep them in groups of at least 8 otherwise they will act skittish.

After figuring out that the fine white gravel I got on the bottom of the tank was the most likely cause for continuously high PH and KH values I decided it was time to do a major overhaul.

Is what I had on the bottom. After some serious head scratching I decided to test it. Put it into some vinegar and after 72 hours it was completely dissolved.

So, time for something new. I bought a bucket of Dennerle Deponitmix

Which I know is long lasting and shrimp compatible. I also got two bags of Dekoline quartz . The dekoline quartz is obviously quality stuff. Contains very little dust and no debris whatsoever. Easy to work with. Just to check I put some into vinegar as well and after 72 hours it was completely inert.

So, d-day. Got some buckets ready and a big tub for the plants. Filled one with water from the tank and spent considerable time catching every little shrimp. Even found some in the filter who'd been without water for at least 15 minutes and who happily wriggled away again.

Four hours later I'd removed the old gravel, rinsed out the tank somewhat, poured the new substrate and gravel and replanted the tank. I've decided to give the Hygrophila polysperma one final chance. Planted a dense clump of it. If that doesn't work I'm going to replace it.

aquarium by j_wijnands, on Flickr

For the next week at least I'm not even going to touch it, just see if the water values stabilize. After that I'm going to do a phased restocking.

Calumet 7300 tripod review

Yes, I am fully aware that many people advise never to save on a tripod. I know Thom Hogan wrote a good piece on the subject. http://www.bythom.com/support.htm

However, I just didn't have a $1000 to spend on a tripod and I really wanted one anyway. I decided to look at the budget end of the market and see if I could find something useable for less than a 100 euros.

• Calumet NL
  
• Calumet UK
  
• Calumet DE
  
• Calumet USA
  

I like calumet as a shop. Unlike some other bigger shops in my country the staff are friendly, know their stuff and aren't pushy. When I got a monopod I topped it of with a calumet head. That's since outlasted the monopod. So, when I went looking for a tripod I remembered calumet's own brand.

When I googled I mainly found people asking questions about this, not many sharing opinions so here's a first look. This is going on vacation with me for some field testing, I will update after that.

Other options in this price range are Velbon, which is nice enough. In fact I was using my dad's old tripod which dates back to the days when aluminum was a novelty and which seems to be made of parts left over from some cold war warplane. Other options include hama and cullman (seem to be identical) and various other noname brands none of which really appealed to me.

So, I went for the calumet 7300.

It can extend high enough that I hardly have to stoop to look trough the viewfinder (and I'm 2 meters tall)




For extremely low shooting you can remove the bottom bit of the central pillar.

The head is a simple but well made 3-way:


Which includes a tiny spirit level. Controls are simple but well constructed.

The tripod is able to support a d300 + sigma 150-500 without getting wobbly (unless it's windy)


Pulling up on these clamps with calumet cast into them allows you to spread the legs further. You have a choice of 3 positions.


When you get it as low as this it gets a bit bouncy. Sliding the legs in helps with that but it's not able to provide the level of support the serious birders get from their gitzo tripods

The whole tripod weighs in at about 2600 grams and comes with a 3 year warranty. I don't think it's an excellent tripod but I do think it offers very good value for money. At a price where you'd struggle to find a basic set of Manfrotto legs you get a capable, no-frills tripod. To my mind it does show that budget tripods are not all bad.

I like herons. We get 'm in two basic flavours. Tame, sometimes tame enough that if you go fishing somewhere it will sit next to you ready to snatch whatever you catch before you can get the hook out.



Then there's the more or less wild variety. A lot less used to humans and incline to take off if they think you get too close. This one didn't, judging by the beak it's so young it has not yet learned to act wild.

Herons have another advantage for us photographers, they're one of the few birds with a build-in grey card (you know, those cards with 18% grey you can get to really nail your exposure).



It's true, meter on a grey area of the bird using spot metering and you will nail the exposure each and every time!

Grasshopper Warbler
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Yesterday I got my first ever chance to photograph a grasshopper warbler. These are generally shy birds that are often heard but rarely seen. The characteristic sound is a very long rattle, almost like a rattle snake. I heard this one long before I got a chance to see it. This was an unusually tame bird, I got the chance to take 40 pics at a comfortable distance. Light wasn't from the best direction but this way it does work I think. While I was observing it I was stunned at how long such a tiny bird can make so much noise.

Here's the sound one of these makes:courtesy of wikimedia

Six-spot Burnet
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Anyone who's spend any time outdoors shooting wildlife and insects will sooner or later find that disruptions in a normal pattern are what catches your attention. The most common is, of course, movement, anything that moves catches your attention. But, it can also be shapes, some things draw your attention immediately because the shape does not fit what your subconscious expects to find. Somewhat trickier is colours. I noticed this burnet because the colour clashes with the pink plant it is sitting on. So I got down on hands and knees, mounted my trusty 100mm tokina and got out a flash and a cable. Some additional light from just on the left side and I got a dozen nice shots. I think this one is one of the nicest because it brings out the antenna but I still need to sort out the rest.

Ant eye to eye
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

A red wood ant. These insects fascinated me ever since I was a little boy. There's something about the size of them and their anthills that impressed me.
Over in the west where I live these are not very common but in the wooded areas in the south you find these a lot more. They will feed on absolutely anything they can drag into their nest, they certainly enjoyed a few mosquitoes I swatted.

Shooting was challenging in a new way. Of course there's not much light and I didn't feel like holding a flash in one hand, a camera in the other (yes, this is shot handheld)while balancing over an anthill so I just cranked up the iso a bit and did my best.
No, the challenging is following a specific and and focussing on it. There's a certain effect that shoals of fish and some herd animals like zebras used to confuse predators and it was having the same effect on me, confusing!

I think I shot 30-40 pics and got three that I liked, two of which went on flickr. You can see the other here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_wijnands/5884976407/

Ruff
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I love aviaries. They offer a unique chance to get good pictures of species that are otherwise difficult to find and even more difficult to shoot. To get a shot like this in the wild I'd need to do a lot of reconnaissance and spend a few hours in a hide.

Photographically this is relatively easy. Avoid blown highlights, get down to as low as you can, relax and shoot.

Via Flickr:
A male ruff in Blijdorp zoo

common tern
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Let's start something else, a photograph a day type of post. Just a picture and the story behind it.

I noticed this bird hunting along a channel that also had some tufted ducks, a mute swan family and a few grebes. I like terns, nice colouring and interesting behaviour the way they swoop down and plunge into the water to catch a fish. In flight it reminds you of a black headed gull sometimes until you seem them close to eachother, the tern is significantly smaller.

Now, like all mainly white birds these are tricky, it's all too easy to blow the white bits. Additionally you want a nice and high shutter speed to capture any sharpness.

So, I metered on something middle brownish on the ground and set the camera manually for it. Then a matter of tracking and keeping focus.

Nikon D300, Sigma 150-500
Exposure 1/3200 sec
Aperture f/6.3
Focal Length 500 mm
ISO Speed 500
Subject Distance 21.1 m

Had to crop because it was in the bottom left of the frame.

Pentax Q, the right camera at the right time?

Earlier this year I've blogged about what I expected of Nikon's mirror-less offering (which still has not been released). At that time I'd expected Canon to also come up with such a camera. I never expected the relatively small company Pentax to come up with a radically different mirror-less camera. But they did and here is my review of the Pentax Q (based on the press release)

Mirror-less?

Now, a quick refresher on camera technology. For years we could divide the digital cameras on the market in two categories. Compact cameras which did not have changeable lenses and DSLR cameras which did. In this picture you can see why they call it a single lens reflex.



The light that enters the lens is reflected upwards by a mirror which then goes trough a prism (or a reflective coating on the cheaper models) and reaches the eye of the photographer. It's been a more or less unchanged design for decades. It works, you see what you are going to shoot but the mirror takes up space and the mechanism that moves it out of the way takes up more space. This effectively places limits on how small you can make one of these. Olympus' E-420 and 620 are about as small as you can make of these cameras.

In 2009 Olympus changed all this with the introduction of the E-P1 "Pen". A small camera, no mirror just a screen at the back but it still featured changeable lenses. This allowed them to make a camera that was significantly smaller as you can see in this picture with a 14-42 kit lens on the left.



That lens is the kind of big thing you see in the first drawing.
Because of the interchangeable lens this class of cameras is also called EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens)

Mirrorless in 2011

Fast forward to 2011. Olympus and Samsung have a nice range of cameras and lenses using the M 4/3 mount. Samsung is working on building their NX series and Sony entered the market in a rather massive way with their NEX series of e-mount cameras. A complete list can be found here. From the first, rather clumsy, Olympus we've seen a rapid development. The number of available lenses has progressed nicely. 3rd party manufacturers are also the market and, because these mounts are smaller, there's adapters available to mount all sort of lenses on these cameras.


Of course holding a combination like this, a Pen with a 180mm Nikon, stable at arm's length so you can use the screen will be a challenge.

Pentax enters the market

The last few years Pentax often gave the impression of being an "also-ran" in the highly competitive DSLR market. Good cameras, good lenses, excellent backward compatibility but somehow they seemed not very innovative and easily forgotten.

And then, suddenly a press release about a mirrorless camera that was different. From dpreview.com:

To make clear what the rather opaque 1/2.3" figure actually means, it equates to a surface area of around 28mm2. This is around 1/8th the size of the sensor used in Micro Four Thirds cameras and 1/13th the size of the the APS-C format sensor in Sony's NEX. The advantage of this is that the lenses for the Q mount can be made a lot smaller than those for other systems, but the downside is that the image quality is more likely to resemble that of a compact camera than a DSLR.
(source: http://www.dpreview.com/previews/pentaxQ/)

So, a small sensor in a small camera. How small is easily seen in this picture on dpreview:
http://a.img-dpreview.com/previews/pentaxQ/images/sidebyside1.jpg
It's actually small enough to make a Sony NEX look big!
This small sensor and the lack of a real grip (The fat part you see on the Sony) will be sufficient to cause any serious photography writer to dismiss this camera out of hand as being nothing more than a toy. Thom Hogan, a writer and photographer who I deeply respect, has already done so and I suspect many more will follow. He's even compared it to the 110 cassette SLR from late 1970s. For those of you who are too old, it was a SLR camera based on the tiny 110 film cassette. It came out as 110 was already going out of favour. Read more about it here on camerapedia.

Now if we look at the camera (pics courtesy of Pentax' press release)







We do indeed see a tiny camera with a cute lens. From the nice retro leather case to the flash that can pop up a bit on an arm, thought has gone into the deisgn. Let's look at the features.

HD Video

These days everyone has a big HD television in their home and people are looking for cameras that can do HD video. Doesn't matter that the quality comes nowhere near professional quality on most, it needs to do HD because consumers know HD=good. The Q does not disappoint here. 1920x1080 pixels in 30fps. No word yet on the quality, the length of the clips or what autofocus does during recording.

Bokeh

Bokeh is a japanese word describing what the out of focus areas of a picture look like. Go to any place where inexperienced photographers meet and sooner or later you see the word leading up to the purchase of a 35 or 50mm f1.8 lens.



Pentax ticks the box. From the press release:
The PENTAX Q comes equipped with newly developed bokeh control function, which allows user to capture the image with obtrusive objects in the field of view optimally defocused. With this function, the camera will automatically judge the focused subject as well as relative distance of each object from the camera in the field of view to apply optimal defocus effect to each object to stand out the main subject(s). This function will allow even a first-time digital photographer to easily capture the images with such effects as background defocus or foreground defocus that otherwise require certain extent of familiarity with the photography.

Now, how this works remains to be seen. It could be some sort of clever software trick, it could simply be a complicated way of saying aperture priority. Pentax gave it some thought and made sure the box is ticked.

Colours

Once again, let's go to that photography novice discussion board. Take a " which camera to buy?" discussion and sooner or later someone will say "I prefer Canon's colours over Nikon's". Every camera manufacturer tweaks jpg output trying to find the balance between accurate and crowd pleasing. On the Q pentax addresses this with these "smart effect modes"
• Brilliant Color: Creates a lively atmosphere by raising the saturation level almost to the point of color saturation.
• Unicolor Bold: Creates an extremely high contrast image that retains one particular color in the image.
• Vintage Color: Produces a toy-camera-like effect, with a choice of several different finishing touches.
• Cross Processing: Produces a unique image with unusual colors, as if treated with the cross processing** used in film photography.
• Warm Fade: Creates a low contrast image with the white balance slightly shifted to pink shades.
• Tone Expansion: Produces a dramatic image with an artistic finishing touch, close to an intensified HDR (High Dynamic Range) effect.
• Bold Monochrome: Produces a low-key, high contrast image with enhanced sh
Effortless Bokeh control

So we see the outlines of the target audience. Check the apple or android market places. There's a ton of apps dedicated to vintage, black and white or cross processing. It's hip!

Other options

Sensor cleaning, check! Image stabilisation, check! Facial recognition, 25 AF points, aspect ratios of 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 or 1:1, 9 shot multiple exposure, all check!

Lenses

Here I see Pentax making a bold move. The camera is sold as a kit with a 47mm f1.9 equivelant lens. That's as close as you can get to the standard 50mm lens that came with any DSLR from the 1960s untill well into the 1980s. It also stops any zoom factor dead in it's tracks, it doesn't have any zoom! Zoom is sold seperately as the 27.5-83mm f2.8-4.5 lens for $299.

What truly impresses me is a $129 fish eye! Fish eyes are hot with a certain crowd. The cheap screw-on lenses are doing well on ebay as are the 8mm f3.5 lenses that are sold under various names (bower, tiffen, samyang) This kind of picture is a must for a certain audience:




Another populair thing is toy cameras. Lomography is hot, Diana toy cameras are sold for insane prices by trendy stores like urban outfitters and the newbie boards are filled with questions like "Do I need lomography film?" and "where can I get 120 film processed and printed?" The craze has gone so far that you can eaven mount toy camera lenses on your Canon or Nikon.

Pentax knows this and they are selling a toy camera wide angle and tele lens for less than $100!

Conclusion

In my opinion this camera has everything to be a big hit with a certain audience if Pentax plays it's cards right. It needs to reach a price point where it can compete with the Sony NEX and the Nikon D3100 and Canon T3. It needs a hip add campaign and perhaps a bit of guerilla marketing as well. If Pentax can do that then they will have a product with a strong appeal to a certain part of the 16-30 demographic. I can picture many teen girls who "just love photography" whining to get one for christmas.

Links

Press release on Pentax UK
DPReview's preview
Pentax USA

How to clean up memory on your Android phone

Yesterday my Android phone started complaining about low memory. A quick check gave me Navigon of course as a main consumer of space. 26mb and it refuses to shift to the SD card. It wasn't the top scorer though, that was contacts storage.

Some further investigation gave me http://android.appstorm.net/how-to/clear-space-without-rooting/ with some good step by step information on how to handle that.

While creating a backup of my gmail contacts I noticed that there were 2100 of them. Now I don't even know 210 people let alone 2100. So I dug into gmail and it seems it's added everyone I ever mailed to my contacts.

Anyway, using the instructions above I managed to shrink my contacts storage to 424 kb.

How to save battery life on an HTC Desire

Early this year I bought an HTC Desire to replace the horrible Nokia 5800 I had. Nifty little phone, I like it a lot but it eats trough a battery charge in a day or so. I finally got to grips with that. Here's my tips

• Disable dynamic wallpaper
• Disable any radios you do not use (bluetooth and wifi especially)
• Disable Wifi positioning (settings- location- use wireless networks)
• Set phone to GSM only if you don't need data (settings-wireless & networks -Mobile Networks -Network mode)

Now I get three days out of a single charge instead of just one day.

Gray Heron catching a fish

I'm on a rather busy and intense project at the moment so whenever I can I take the camera with me to the office and go for a walk in my lunch break. Lovely way to keep the stress under control.

Today was decent weather as well for a change. Barely out of the office I spotted my very first Green Woodpecker! Not a good picture unfortunately.

A little further I spotted a grey heron against some dried out reeds. Now these birds are a common feature of the water rich parts of our country (which is most of it really) but despite being common I like them. Big enough that even a 300mm will do if you apprach with care. Colourful enough to make a nice shot most of the time.

I'd just shot a frame thinking I'd get a nice portait out of it when suddenly it struck and caught a fish.

I was set for a portrait, barely set in fact so the shutter speed was slower than it should have been but because these birds are big and stationary hunters I could get away with it.

Timing from the first splash, which I excluded thinking it's not that interesting, to the fish swallowed took about 5 seconds.

All pics are clickable for the bigger versions

A simple landscape

DSC_7891_trix400
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

This was originally part of a panorama when I noticed this would make a fine B&W. I ran it trough Nik's silver efex and accidently slided the layer opacity back a bit and was surprised on how nice that turned out.

This will not draw in the crowds on flickr but I really like it, the lack of colour somehow emphasizes the emptiness of the landscape.

Masterchef 2011 is all messed up.

I liked Masterchef in most of it's incarnations. The celeb edition didn't do all that much for me but on the whole I found it nice to watch. The format works and the English edition was shot very well. Attractive lighting, nice colours, it looked like the motion version of a high end cookbook.

As an example, check this clip.



And now this:



Which looks to me like they got a set designed by Gordon Ramsey, sacked the old crew and hired camera and light people that are used to doing gameshows.

I don't know, perhaps it gets better after the first round but this is no longer on my list of excellent food shows. Too bad!

I've started to blog in Dutch as well as in English. My Dutch blog can be found here: http://wijnands.tweakblogs.net/blog/ Apparantly I'm more succesful there, my two posts are rapidly moving towards a 1000 pageviews.