July 2008 – Page 4 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

Beercan

In 1988 Minolta produced a 70-210mm f/4 lens that was fairly popular amongst Minolta film camera users, but which slipped out of production in the late 90’s. This lens was often referred to as the “beercan” due to it’s shape and size.

The lens is experiencing a renaissance and has become very popular with users of the Sony line of digital SLR cameras as it’s completely compatible and is optically very powerful and optically superior to most kit lenses and other lenses in it’s class. The price is very appealing as well when you consider that a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens will set you back anywhere from $800 to $2000. The Minolta “beercan” shows up on EBay fairly frequently and if you play your cards right, can be obtained for around $200-$250 depending on conditon. I’ve seen them sell for as much as $350 to $450 on rare occasions. I suspect the price is going up as Sony users become more common and set out looking for glass that performs well.

Known for its sharpness, rich color rendition and smooth creamy bokeh, the Minolta 70-210mm f/4 has become more sought after and more highly prized by the growing legions of Sony dSLR enthusiasts giving the lens a cult like status amongst Sony users.

I just took delivery on my personal beercan and it’s AWESOME! I found it via a Minolta dealer online and bypassed the ridiculous EBay bidding wars altogether. I won’t say what I paid for it, but it’s in near mint condition and I got a good deal. I have another one coming tomorrow and I plan to resell it.

Seeing it on my Sony Alpha 700 just gives me the happy

I haven’t played with it much, but here are some test shots using two of my most reliable models:

70mm

210mm

You can see the original sizes of the above images here and here if you are interested.

Nice Pants

New Flint Police Chief David Dicks orders police to crack down on sagging pants

I only recently learned that the sagging pants phenomenon has it’s origins in the American penal system. Prisoners combined one size fits all pants with the “no belts” policy of prisons to come up with this little bit of gangster chic.

The resulting “sagging pants” look was later adopted by the rap/hip-hop community as a way to enhance street cred and, I suspect, as a means of “keeping it real, yo” …

Personally, when I see some young person walking around, struggling to keep his pants on I am not thinking “gangsta” … more like “idiot.”

I’m much more “old school” about my trousers and I obviously had MUCH better taste in pants when I was young.

2008 Houston Press Music Awards

My band, The Flying Fish Sailors, has been nominated in the category “Best Traditional Folk Band” so please take time to go vote for us. You can find the ballot online at houstonpress.com/polls/musicawards08

We’ll be playing at the Awards showcase on July 27th from 4:00-4:45 pm at Dean’s Credit Clothing located at 316 Main St. in downtown Houston if you want to come see us play live.

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

Hard to believe that Technology Bytes has been on the air for 13 years, but here we are. I remember when we started up there was not much Internet going on for the general public. Windows 95 had just come out and everyone seemed to be scrambling to get multimedia kits installed in their 486 computers or get their modems upgraded to 33.6 or 56K so they could dial into their favorite BBS

A lot has changed in the last 13 years and Technology Bytes has been there for the ride.

Come help us celebrate this milestone in style as we get down, get funky at Dean’s Credit Clothing on Saturday July 19th from 7:30 till ?

Dean’s is a very cool space located at 316 Main St. in Houston, TX and features a full bar and a great atmosphere. DJ Amanda Robinson will be laying down the tracks as our DJ for the evening. We’re inviting all fans and friends of Technology Bytes (past, present and future) to join us so consider coming out to help us celebrate.

Please spread the word!

Zion’s Flame

Randomly encountered some “fire manipulators” in the back patio area of the Continental Club while I was out and about last night. I saw this as an EXCELLENT opportunity to play with some extended exposure shots using my tripod and the remote control for the camera

Not bad, but whirly-twirly shots like this don’t stay interesting for long so I shot a few more handheld with less exposure time and got some interesting shots

There’s a few more in the Zion’s Flame gallery.

Show Me The Money

Microsoft will pay you to use their search engine. I’m not kidding.

I know it sounds like that “Bill Gates Is Sharing His Fortune!” e-mail hoax many years ago that said that AOL and Microsoft were going to pay you money to forward this message, but it’s not like that at all.

I was casually shopping around on EBay to see what lenses were out for my camera. I was particularly interested in something along the lines of the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 or the Sigma 18-50 f2/.8 for a little versatility on the wide side in low light situations. As I was reading up on one auction the seller mentioned that the current promotion from Microsoft Live would enable the winner of his auction to save 25% if they were to use the Buy It Now option and pay through Paypal as part of the Microsoft Live Search Cashback Program.

This sounded interesting. I was pretty sure that I would, at some point, purchase the lens once I could justify the cost and the idea of saving 25% pushed the acquisition further into the realm of feasibility for a more immediate purchase.

I did my research and the cash back program is real, as are the discounts.

Basically, once I determined which lens I wanted (I decided upon the Tamron SP AF17-50mm F/2.8 Di II LD) and looked around on EBay to see if I could find one at a competitive price being sold by an EBay member that could be trusted.

The lens retails anywhere from $428 to $475 on average. After hunting a bit I found one for $440 which was in the right price range BEFORE the discount and about what a reasonable person would expect to pay for this hardware.

Once I located the lens I wanted I put it on my watch list in EBay and then browsed over to live.com to execute my search. I used the word Tamron and looked for the cashback option in the results. This is what that looks like:

Note that this one says 10%. When I did it the search result came back with a 25% link to EBay and when this promotion started the discounts were as high as 35%.

I clicked the link and once I was on the EBay site via that link I was basically locked in to the cashback option so I went to my watch list and clicked on the lens I had found earlier and bought it with the Buy It Now option and checked out via Paypal earning myself a $110 discount. On top of that, the auction I won included FREE shipping and a FREE UV filter so that saved me some additional moolah.

The catch is that you pay the seller the full amount and then you get a message in your EBay mailbox telling you that you’ve earned cash back. You click the link and sign up with Microsoft to receive your cash rewards. There’s a delay of about a week before the funds come available to make sure you don’t get the money and then return the item.

The limit is three item purchases per account and a maximum discount of $250 per item. That means if you had $3000 to spend on stuff you already planned on buying, Microsoft would pay you $750 to do it via their search engine. Not a bad deal. They paid me $110 to purchase a lens I was already planning to buy.

Sadly, the largest discount I have seen since I made this purchase is a paltry 10%, but you never know what tomorrow (or later this evening) might bring.