100-400mm test photos

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I picked up a couple lenses at the same time. You saw examples of shots from the other lens. I finally had the right lighting conditions and the time this morning to go test out the other lens, a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 "L" series lens. This lens is quite a beast, weighing in at slightly over 3lbs, which I believe is more than double the weight of the camera body itself. No, you won't be particularly discrete carrying this thing around, but it does take pretty good shots.

We have several ponds in our neighborhood, and there's often a lot of birds (primarily ducks and Canadian geese) in the ponds, which made for some great photos.

It was a bit windy, which didn't help matters since I wasn't using a tripod, but I still got several decent shots. I'm impressed with the colors and clarity of the images, and it's nice to be able to get great shots without getting so close to the subject that you disturb it.

From 275mm:


From 400mm:










From 320mm:


From 400mm:






From 200mm:


From 100mm:


From 400mm:

50mm test photos

I picked up a couple of new lenses for my camera the other day, one of which is a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 prime (no zoom) lens. I had been wanting a super-fast lens so that I could get better blurred backgrounds (bokeh) on portraits and artistic photos. So far, I've been really happy with the lens in all aspects but one: getting it to autofocus on the right part of the frame has been tough. I suspect this back focus problem could be fixed with some adjustments to my camera, so I'll have to figure that out later. In any case, I just shoot with manual focus most of the time and everything is fine.

Anyway, the bokeh is exactly what I'd been hoping for with this lens:









Becca took this photo at her friend's house, and I thought it came out quite well:



The lack of zoom limits your options as far as landscapes go, but the details are very sharp in all corners of images and the colors are very accurate.



All in all, a good purchase.

spring at last

Sunset in my neighborhood:



Flowers on the tree in my front yard:







Home sweet home:



Spring lasts about five minutes here, but it's beautiful. As much as I like winter, I'm happy to see leaves and flowers again.

random asia photos

I've been pretty lazy since I got back to the US a couple Tuesdays ago. It took me over a week to overcome my jet lag, and based on the fact that I fell asleep at 6:45 last night, I would say I'm not completely out of the woods yet.

Being back has been both good and bad. I didn't miss sitting in an office all day, or dealing with corporate bureaucracy. I did miss, however, being productive in those environments. It's good to see factories, meet people and discuss the future, but that took up so much of my time while I was gone that most of my "real" work didn't get done. A week and a half later, I'm still digging myself out of the hole.

I have more to write about my trip, but for now, I'll just share some more photos.

Ever wonder where all those gadgets and gizmos that enhance your life come from? Here's a typical factory production line:



Factory attire is in this year:







You thought Britney Spears and Michael Jackson were bad parents? They've got nothing on this lady:



Why drink from a cup when you can have the whole pitcher?



Chinese food is so much more colorful and interesting than our food:







A typical meal on my trip. I'd only been there for a couple days by the time this picture was taken, and by the look on my face, you can tell I'm already tired of big group meals. I think this was the worst meal I had on the whole trip. Strange, considering the yummy coagulated pig blood that was in my soup and all the tasty items that were served that had been scraped from the ocean floor.



Hot pot!



More hot pot!



It didn't take long for me to get bored and start making faces and doing weird things.





As weird as I might sometimes be, people in Taiwan take it to a whole new level with their fashions and hairstyles.









Hong Kong rules. I'll never get tired of this view.



Special thanks to my co-worker for lugging his DSLR around everywhere and getting these cool shots.

random thoughts on my asia travels

I'm back now--got home last night, close to midnight.

- Working in sales in China would be awful. The Chinese concept of hospitality far exceeds that of America's, so Chinese salespeople are always taking their customers out to dinner, or out around town, or whatever. Both weekends I was in Asia, I had representatives from my suppliers take me around the cities I was staying in, and not for 2-3 hours, either. It would be tough to not have a life.

- The Chinese idea of hospitality can get pretty old after a while. It's nice to have people look after your every need, but at the same time, I was never able to get any alone time, other than when I was in my hotel room or the bathroom. Between the general lack of privacy and having meetings every day of the week, I got to the point where I was tired all the time by the time I'd been there a few days. I'm still feeling pretty exhausted now.

- Anything goes in Taiwan. ANYTHING. From unusual fashions to crazy haircuts to the scooter phenomenon, Taiwan isn't the most orderly place in the world...but that also makes it a very cool place, too. You just have to make sure you don't get hit by a scooter or car.

- I'm glad I grew up in a place where the value of food is typically determined by how good it tastes, rather than by how difficult it is to obtain, how exotic it is, or how nutritious it is. I ate some downright nasty food, including pig blood, seaweed and abalone. I managed to avoid some even nastier things, like jelly made from seafood parts, but I won't always be this lucky.

- Like Mexico, the sodas in China taste better. Since I don't drink tea, coffee or alcohol, my Chinese colleagues quickly learned to request Sprite for me at every restaurant we visited. It wasn't always available, though. In Chinese areas, restaurants tend to specialize in certain foods/drinks. So, if you go into a teahouse, don't expect to get any soda, bottled water, beer or anything else. Fortunately, they don't care if you bring in stuff from the outside.

- HK is still a really cool place. Being there again was a big thrill for me, even if it was for less than 48 hours. I got plenty of chances to use my Cantonese and eat local food, included a blessed plate of bbq pork over rice with choi sam vegetables (no idea what the English name is), with the ginger/green onion sauce on top. Man, do I miss that stuff.

- Business class rules. Going back to coach for my non-business travel will be a major drag. No wide, reclining seats. No lounge with free food and internet access. No 12342134897565 offers for drinks during the flight.

- The Chinese need for group interaction and decision making is incredibly inefficient. Seriously, do we need to talk for 20 minutes just to say "no"? Do we need to bring 18 people to a meeting when two will do? Do we need to recap every decision five times in the course of a three-hour meeting? China will be a major powerhouse when people learn to think and act independently.

- I have some really cool co-workers in China. It was great to put faces with names of people I've been having conference calls and trading emails with for as many as two years.

- The Chinese need to learn to accept air conditioning. I'm sorry, but keeping every room at 80F just doesn't work for me. It's so uncomfortable for a big white man like me to wear slacks and long-sleeve shirts and sit in meeting rooms at that temperature all day long. When I got back, I hopped on a scale and was expecting to find that I had gained like 10 lbs, but I'd actually gained no weight. I'm sure the lack of A/C was a big contributor to that, as were some other...er...unmentionable problems.

taipei afternoon

I arrived in Taiwan on Thursday night. It's interesting--despite the fact that the people are Chinese, there were some things that I noticed were quite different than mainland China right away. The accent is a lot different than the Chinese spoken on the mainland. Tons of people ride scooters here. The cities don't look very planned, in the sense that there are really old, crappy looking buildings right next to brand new, shiny ones. The people dress better and the women are more put together--makeup, hair and all that. And, it's not as crowded as I was expecting it to be.

Most of my time has been spent working, of course. I went to an LCD panel factory yesterday, which was pretty interesting--the parts I understood, anyway. I had to wear a face mask, head mask, full body suit and rubber boots to go in the factory. They don't make such things breathable, so I was covered in sweat by the end of the 30-minute tour. Yummy.

We had hot pot for dinner last night. If you're not familiar with this, it's where you sit at a table and have a pot of boiling, flavored water (e.g., curry or hot pepper) into which you put meats and vegetables to cook. I hadn't done this since 1999, so I was happy to do it again. I'll post some pictures when I get them from my colleagues.

We walked around a night market after dinner, which was fairly entertaining. There were all sorts of trinkets and strange foods for sale. I would have been up for getting food there instead of in a restaurant, but my American colleague was afraid of getting sick and thus played Officer Buzzkill for the evening.

We had meetings this morning (talk about lame--Saturday meetings suck), and decided to head into downtown Taipei after that. Our first stop was a teppan-style restaurant, which was good times. During the meal, one of my Chinese colleagues asked me what the craziest food I'd ever eaten was, so I proceeded to run through my usual list--pig blood, duck tongue, pig's ear, snake, etc. He wasn't too impressed with my answer, and then proceeded to tell me that when his sister had her baby, the placenta was cooked up and served to him and other people in the family. He claimed he wasn't told what it was until after he ate it, but since he was extolling the virtues of the placenta (i.e., it's really good for you and all that), I'm not so sure I believed him. Talk about disgusting.



We decided to hit Taipei 101 after lunch. 101 used to be the tallest building in the world, and it's still taller than anything in the U.S., which makes it the tallest building I've ever been in.



The area around 101 is quite nice--high-end shops, shopping malls, etc. I was quite surprised to find a long line of people waiting to get into the local Cold Stone. It reminded me of being back in Utah on a Friday night.



It's overcast today, so the views from the top of 101 weren't as great as they otherwise would have been.



There was some interesting art in the observatory at the top of 101. I have no idea what purpose it served, but it made for some interesting photography.







Yours truly with some of my colleagues I'm traveling with: