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Tim Gray's website, mostly photography related.

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Last post: Jul 19, 2025
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Qudelix-5k
Jul 19, 2025 · original
This is a short review of the Qudelix-5K headphone amp/bluetooth DAC. 1 I recently wrote in a profile that listenig to music is a hobby, and it really is. I like to think have decent ears, mostly from doing live sound in college. I also have spent more money than I care to admit on headphones and headphone amps. I m here to say you don t have to break the bank to get an amazing sounding headphone setup. 2 First things first. Spend your money in the right order. Speakers/headphones first, amps second, DACs third. 20 years ago, there was decent differentiation between an expensive DAC and your phone/PC crap. Nowadays, cheap DACs are really good. For example, if you need something for your desktop, the Topping D10s is really quite good. If you want a nice set of headphones for home, get the Sennheiser HD 6XX . They are are $199, sound great, and are very comfortable. These aren t headphones
Small camera bags
Jul 18, 2025 · original
I ve been shooting a Leica M for many years now. I appreciate a small setup, and that includes my camera bag. For a long time, my go to bag was the Lowepro Sliplock 50 AW ( archive.org ). Back in 2009, I tried to buy a second one but they had been discontinued. 1 At some point in the intervening 15 years, the plastic clip on mine broke and I had to retire it. I ve been searching for a similar sized bag since then. In a quest for a really small but useful bag like that old Lowepro (1 camera + 2 lenses), I ve tried several. One thing I have been specifically looking for is a small enough bag to fit in my backpack while traveling, for plane stowage reasons. I like to travel with all carry-ons, so my clothes and stuff are in a shoulder bag, and my personal item is a backpack, which needs to hold all the other crap + my camera bag. Once I get to the destination, the camera bag comes out and c
Poot
Sep 6, 2023 · original
Sleeping Poot.
Keyboards
Sep 2, 2023 · original
I have used Apple keyboards forever, going back to whatever came with the used Power Macintosh 7600 I started college with. 1 I generally used whatever came with the computer I had. A dual processor G4, some titanium PowerBooks, etc. I ve been using the Apple Magic Keyboards (with the number pads) at home since they came out. I tried other keyboards here and there, but generally really like the Apple Magic Keyboards: low profile, good key action, and they look decent. I think I ve had 2 or 3 of them, starting with the USB plug-in one, and ending on a black Bluetooth one. I also have one at work. There were a few dark years where I had to use Windows machines at work. The first one had some crappy keyboard. When I changed jobs, I got a Logitech solar powered keyboard. Decent keyboard, kind of similar to the Apple Magic Keyboard in a lot of respects. That keyboard prompted me to try out a
HiDPI Monitors
Aug 19, 2023 · original
I recently upgraded my computer and decided it was time to upgrade my monitors as well. I have been using an old 24" NEC PA241W SpectraView 1 as my main high quality monitor and 2560x1440 (WQHD) HP Z25n for the other monitor. The NEC had some hours on it. The backshell of the calibrator fell off a while ago, but I could still use until around 2020, when the NEC software stopped supporting the old sensor. I figured I d eventually get a new NEC when I was ready. About a year ago, I started to look into a replacement, and it turns out NEC left the color calibrated monitor market. The NEC was a great monitor: KVM, hardware calibration, uniformity compensation, AdobeRGB gamut, and a 10-bit panel. Current options seemed to be limited to Dell (1 monitor), BenQ, or Eizo to get most or all of these features. Of course, there is that Apple Studio Display, which looks amazing, particularly with the
Internet presence
Dec 19, 2022 · original
Been a long time since I ve posted. What can I say, work has been very, very busy. About four years ago, I outfitted this site to interact with micro.blog . It took some work, but ultimately never found a community there. While I really admired the concept of hosting everything yourself and owning all your data, it ended up not be an engaging for me. Nothing wrong with it, just didn t keep my interest. My posts are archived on this site and at micro.blog/tgray . The whole twitter thing has generated lots of discussion. While I still have an account, I am no longer active there. I m only keeping tabs on some artists who I follow who are not posting elsewhere. Hopefully they move. I don t plan on deactivating the account as I d rather prevent someone from scooping up my admittedly worthless name. The twitter stuff got me thinking that, while I was never a prolific poster, I barely posted a
Back to BBEdit
Sep 6, 2021 · original
I ve used BBEdit for years. I think I started with version 4 sometime in college. I m sure I used borrowed copies until I started grad school, when I purchased my own copy circa 2001. I learned Python in it, wrote both my undergraduate thesis and my graduate dissertation, both in LaTeX, which I also learned with BBEdit. Once OS X killed Eudora, I moved to Bare Bone s Mailsmith email client, which shares a lot of DNA with BBEdit. I eventually moved on from Mailsmith due to the rise of IMAP (and really, iPhones), and I settled on mutt. This sounds like a digression, but I wrote some scripts to use BBEdit as my editor for mutt. I lived in BBEdit. Around 2011, 1 with me doing lots of Python scripting/analysis (and using mutt for email) I started to take a closer look at Vim. My sloppy coding had me going to the arrow keys all the time for corrections, and it was bothering my wrist. I bit the
Color film scan processing
Mar 7, 2021 · original
This post is a big update to topics discussed in Inverting raw scans and Thoughts on color negative scanning . For B&W, see the companion article B&W film scan processing . I no longer scan with my Nikon Coolscan V. I now use a Sony A7rII on a copy stand to make camera scans. For processing the resulting photos, I use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop (PS). My PS actions are available here . 1 Disclaimer : Color is hard to get right. I have had good results using the following process with my camera (Sony A7rII), Adobe s standard profile for that camera, my light pad 2 , and Kodak film. Your results may vary. A low CRI light source could deliver sub par results, as could other cameras. Maybe I just lucked out that my camera is well profiled and delivers good color. Step 1 - ACR Starting image in ACR with no adjustments. Bring your image into ACR. White balance on the film base. This s
B&W film scan processing
Mar 6, 2021 · original
This post is somewhat of an update to Scanning B&W negatives with Vuescan . For color negatives, see the companion article Color film scan processing . I no longer scan with my Nikon Coolscan V. I now use a Sony A7rII on a copy stand to make camera scans. For processing the resulting photos, I use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop (PS). My PS actions are available here . 1 Step 1 - ACR Bring your image into ACR. White balance on the film base. While this is probably not necessary for B&W film, it doesn t hurt. White balanced on the selection on the right of the image. I do enable optics corrections in ACR: distortion and vignetting. I found this gives better scans, particularly for color negatives . You can invert the image in ACR as well using the curves tool. From my experimentation, it makes no difference if you do it in ACR or PS. I do it in ACR as I can then export a downsized ve
Leica Summicron-M 90mm (pre-ASPH)
Feb 7, 2021 · original
This will be a shortish review of the Leica M 90mm Summicron, the pre-ASPH version, sometimes referred to as version III or the E55, model number 11136. 90mm is a classic portrait length, though it can be challenging to frame on a rangefinder (small frame lines) and focus at large aperture (rangefinder accuracy). It s still a useful focal length to have around. This is big and heavy for an M lens. Focus throw is long and heavy, much like the 75mm Summilux . This makes it easy to precisely adjust focus, but slow. I prefer a lighter focus feel and with this lens I find it useful to pre-focus to speed the process up. There might be some minimal focus shift with the lens, but I often shoot it wide open or stopped down to f/5.6, where it has been mostly fine. Much has been said about the 90mm APO-Summicron, how sharp it is, how it gets soft at short range, etc. This is not that lens. Wide ope
RRS Micro Ball(head)
Dec 30, 2020 · original
My only real tripod is the little Leica tabletop tripod . Not cheap, but consistently gets great reviews as one of the better table top tripods. The design has barely changed for decades, so one can pick it up relatively cheap used. I bought mine ten years ago, and as I also needed a small ballhead to level the camera, I also bought a little Novoflex ballhead. Leica makes one as well, but it s also pricey 1 and a bit larger. It s supposed to be a great unit, but for reasons I have forgotten, I didn t buy it. Long story short, the little Novoflex ballhead gave up the ghost earlier in the year, so I had to get a replacement. After a bit of research, I got the Really Right Stuff BC-18 Micro Ball . Really Right Stuff (RRS) also makes a small panning ballhead, the BPC-16, but this page convinced me to go with the BC-18 instead. This is a very brief review. This ballhead is great . The BC-18 i
Zeiss C Sonnar 50mm ZM
Dec 27, 2020 · original
About a year and a half ago, I finally broke down and purchased the Zeiss C Sonnar T* 1.5/50mm ZM . I don t know why. I had been intrigued by it for years, but questioned how much I d use it when I already had the wonderful Leica Summilux-M 50mm ASPH . I also have a classic Sonnar design in the Nippon Kogaku Nikkor-S 50/1.4 LTM lens, so why spend more money for a remake? Well, the Nikkor is an interesting lens, but the ergonomics of it are funny compared to modern lenses, it flares oddly, and it is decidedly soft wide open. It is a nice lens, but I moved on from it years ago. Zeiss was running a promotion for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions, and given my current employer, how could I resist that? Furthermore, as I had been shooting Sony more than the Leica, the 50 ASPH was not getting used much, and the it appeared to me that the C Sonnar wasn t too bad on the Sony (unlike th
macOS catalina and music
May 26, 2020 · original
I have a lot of music that I ve ripped myself. Not the massive collection that some people have, but reasonably well organized and tagged music going way back to the initial versions of iTunes 1 . Right now, I m at about 1,300 albums and 17,000 songs. I ve never really had any issues with iTunes, and while I ve had to do a few workarounds over the years to get my music to where it needed to go, I ve been perfectly happy with iTunes. I delayed upgrading my old mac to Catalina because of the iTunes - Music transition, and was worried I d have some problems. I finally got a new mac and was forced to upgrade. First things first, the upgrade went smooth using Migration Assistant, even though: My iTunes library was Tunespanned to an external hard drive. I also use iTunes Match (but not the Apple Music streaming service). I use a lot of command line utilities, including mutt for mail, installed
Novelist Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great science paper
Sep 30, 2019 · original
Pretty good tips on science writing, or any kind of writing. Novelist Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great science paper 125px permalink
Photos from lenses
Sep 5, 2019 · original
Below is a listing of lenses that I ve owned with links to photos that I ve taken with them and uploaded on flickr. Lenses that I have written up also have links to the article. I do not currently own all of these lenses and will likely never write up my thoughts about all of them. Leica M mount Konica Hexanon 90mm f2.8 Leica Super-Elmar-M 21mm ASPH Leica Summicron-M 28mm ASPH ( article ) Leica Summicron-M 50mm V Leica Summilux-M 50mm ASPH ( article ) Leica Summilux-M 75mm ( article ) Leica Summicron-M 90mm III (pre-ASPH) ( article ) Leica Macro-Elmar-M 90mm ( article ) Leica APO-Telyt-M 135mm Voigtlander VM Nokton 28mm Aspherical Voigtlander VM APO-Lanthar 50mm Zeiss C Biogon 21mm f4.5 Zeiss Biogon 35mm f2.0 Zeiss C Sonnar 50mm f1.5 ( article ) Leica LTM mount Nikon (Nikkor) 50mm f1.4 LTM Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f4.5 Voigtlander Color-Skopar 28mm f3.5 Sony E/FE mount Zeiss Batis 25/2 Ze

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