Easter

There are any number of beliefs or issues that various Christians consider to be most important to the faith. Some emphasize social justice as defining the gospel (personally I would run fast from anyone who falls in this group), some believe strongly in rituals, and some place a lot of emphasis on "faith", as though faith was the targeted end, or at least they are hesitant to define who or what is the object of their faith. I believe that the absolute essential tenant of the Christian faith has to be the resurrection of Jesus. If someone claims to be a Christian, but denies or downplays the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, they are standing on very shaky ground. If people claim that the gospel (or good news) revolves around Jesus' teachings about taking care of those less fortunate or about loving thy neighbor, and they skip over the death and resurrection of Jesus, they are completely missing the gospel.

Scripture and Jesus himself are both very clear in telling us why Jesus came to dwell among us here on earth. First of all, Scripture and Jesus are clear about who Jesus is: God himself. It is difficult to reconcile the concept of Jesus as a great teacher or as a prophet, but not God. How could someone who was so clear about His identity, to the point of being stoned for blasphemy, be given those titles (teacher, prophet) if He was not God? Delusional maybe. A liar perhaps. Or He has to be who he claimed He was. A great teacher would not purposely mislead those he is teaching. A prophet would point people to someone greater. Jesus was clear: I and the Father are One. No one comes to the Father but through me.

The resurrection is significant because it was Jesus dying for our sins, bearing the full weight and payment of penalty for those sins, so that we might have eternal life with God. This is the gospel: that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son . . that whosoever would believe in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). It's all about our separation from God, His desire to be in relationship with us because of His love for us, to the point of allowing His own Son to die on a cross as a full payment for the sin that separated us from God. It is up to us individually to accept this gift. No one else can do it for us, there is nothing we can do to earn it.

This Easter, please consider these words. Consider your own relationship with God. Have you accepted this gift, this salvation, that God is offering to you?

Photography 101: Session 04

Before I go any further, I mentioned depth of field a couple times in previous sessions. Depth of field is another function of aperture, as well as the focal length of your lens. Macworld recently posted an excellent article that describes depth of field in a much better way than I ever could. I would highly recommend taking the time to read through it if you are interested in learning more about this important tool.

So before we leave the subject of exposure, which has been our subject for the first three sessions, we need to go over one more exposure function in your camera. By now you should know that your camera has a built in exposure meter. This meter will analyze the lighting within the scene as you point your camera toward your subject. Based on that light, your camera will determine what it believes to be the proper exposure (if you have it set to one of the auto exposure modes). It will also tell you in manual mode, but you have to manually make the aperture and shutter speed selections. But depending on your subject, the auto exposure can be fooled. There are ways to control how your exposure meter is reading the light.

Your camera might give you up to three different ways to meter a scene: 1) multi-segment, 2) center weighted, and 3) spot metering. Multi segment usually divides up your meter into 5 or 7 sections. When you point your camera toward your scene, the camera is actually making calculations based on the lighting it reads in each of those 5 or 7 sections, and then averages them out into a proper exposure. This, in most cases, is what I would recommend you set your meter to. It is probably the safest setting. Center weighted takes the exposure reading based on what is in the center circle of the viewfinder. Let's say you have a person in the shadows with brightness all around them. Since the person is the important part of the image, you might want to use center weighted metering, point your camera with the person in the center, and take your exposure based on the light that is falling just on that person. Your meter is ignoring all the other light in the scene. In this situation the person would then be more properly exposed, but all the bright area will get blown out. The third metering method, spot metering, refines the metering even further. The metering is based on a smaller "spot" in your viewfinder. If you wanted to meter the light falling right around a person's eyes, you could use spot metering to get your meter reading from that small of an area (depending on how close you are and what lens you are using), getting a more precise reading.

I shoot mostly in multi-segment metering, largely because I am always afraid that if I change it to spot I might forget to turn it back, potentially giving me exposure readings that I don't want. As I say this though, I keep thinking I don't utilize these other metering options as much as I should.

One more consideration that fits this discussion: most d-slr cameras have a button near the trigger button that allows you to lock in an exposure. If you are using spot metering or maybe even center-weighted, and the area you want to meter is not in the center of your viewfinder, you might want to point your camera so that the area you want to meter has the spot on it, and while you are taking your reading (by holding down the trigger button half way), you hold down this exposure lock button. That keeps your metered exposure reading locked in while you recompose your scene. You need to keep that button pressed while you shoot your image.

Next session will get into something different: indoor photography and flash.

The Entertainment Reform Bill

For decades now there have been a small but growing number of producers, entertainers, artists and directors (PEAD) who have made a disproportionate amount of revenue compared to the millions of other workers within the entertainment industry. Some of the PEAD rank as mega-stars, bringing in an income through fees and royalties that most people would agree is excessive. For decades this disparity has created a two class system within the entertainment world. At the same time fees paid by the general public have risen to a point where many Americans simply cannot afford this kind of entertainment. Millions of Americans are denied one of the most basic of rights: entertainment. It is imperative that Congress step in, take over the entertainment industry, and bring justice for those Americans who have lived without entertainment, especially the young. The Entertainment Reform Bill will introduce the right tools needed to make this dream a reality. This is just the beginning.

First, PEAD who see personal annual revenues over $250,000 will be levied a special tax rate investment that is 15 percentage points above all other Americans. Those PEAD who see personal annual revenues in excess of $1 million will incur a flat $250,000 per million above their normal tax investment obligations. These additional investment charges will help provide a more equitable entertainment community. (Parenthetically, we have not figured out a way to increase the revenue of those who earn the least, so for now we will resort to taking away from those who make the most, providing equity within the industry).

The second phase of this bill will be the start of the Rural Entertainment Mandate. Mega-star entertainers typically perform only in venues that hold over 10,000 people, which limit these kind of performances to urban areas. Rural Americans are denied this most basic right of entertainment. Under this bill, mega-star entertainers will be required to perform a minimum number of performances per year in venues that hold no more than 250 people and are in areas designated as "rural" by the Entertainment Commission.

Third in this bill will be a mandated limit in ticket prices. Entertainers must have their ticket prices approved by the Entertainment Price Structure Commission. This includes concerts, theater performances, and movies. Excessive pricing will incur a severe tax penalty.

Royalties to private individuals will be abolished. Any recognized royalties will now go into a relief fund that encourages and teaches conservative policies and ideals. For far too long this minority group within the entertainment industry has been treated unfairly, long denied of any equitable opportunities for success. The fund will help rectify years of abuse and intolerance.

Award shows will also be abolished. Americans have long been subjected to this exercise in excessiveness and self-absorption. These shows have served as an annual "in your face" event that divides America into a collective of those who have and those who have not. Additionally, no one should ever be signaled out for displaying excellence.

It is important to understand that with these measures, the federal government is not interested in running the entertainment industry. This is important legislation however as the federal government continues to make itself a larger presence in the lives of individuals, making life better for all. We must all do our part.

A Free Market

Dr. Paul Kengor and Dr. Shawn Ritenour, both of Grove City College, have a nice dialogue about the free market, economics, socialism and the Bible. Very relevant for today. An excerpt below:

"The foundation of economic activity and policy is private property. All action requires the use of property and all economic policy is about how people can legally use their property. To benefit from the division of labor, we must be able to exchange our products, which requires private property. Private property is definitely Scriptural. The Bible explicitly prohibits theft, fraud, moving property barriers, debasing money, violating labor contracts, as well as coveting. These prohibitions apply to both citizens and rulers. In my text, I apply this conclusion to issues such as confiscatory taxation, government subsidies, business regulation, and monetary inflation."

Photography 101: Session 03

Summarizing Aperture Priority, you set the aperture you want and the camera will automatically determine the proper shutter speed for what the camera believes is the proper exposure. If you select the largest aperture your lens offers, you are optimizing your shutter speed relative to the available light. You are allowing the most light to come through the lens, which in turn means less light has to come in through the shutter, resulting in a faster shutter speed. In most cases that is what you want when shooting outdoors. Keep in mind that Program (Auto), Aperture and Shutter Priority modes are all auto exposure modes. If I go out on a fairly bright day and shoot in Program mode, that mode might automatically set my aperture to f8 and shutter to 1/500, and that might be fine for what I am shooting. But what if I want or need a faster shutter speed? Personally I would change my mode over to Aperture and set the aperture to the fastest (most open) I can get it, which for most consumer lenses would be either f4 (2 stop difference) or f5.6 (1 stop difference). That will automatically change my shutter speed to the fastest I can get under the circumstances, or in this case, either 1/2000 at f4, or 1/1000 at f5.6. I personally almost always shoot in Aperture Priority and leave my aperture wide open. So, what about Shutter Priority?

Shutter Priority: Shutter Priority behaves just like Aperture Priority, only now the shutter speed is being set by the user and the camera determines the aperture. Now let me say right up front that I cannot think of a time in my life when I shot in Shutter Priority. I have yet to come up with a need to do so, and my guess is you will not have a reason either; so I am not going to spend much time on it. The only reason I can come up with for why someone would want to shoot in Shutter Priority is if they wanted to shoot a series of images at the exact same shutter speed. Not sure why though. My feeling is if you want to control the shutter speed, do it within Aperture Priority. It will basically give you the same results. Remember, these are both auto-exposure modes, so the resulting exposure will be the same. In Aperture Priority, if you wanted to dial in a specific shutter speed, just adjust your aperture until you get that shutter speed reading. I have found that to be just as quick and easy to do than setting it over to the Shutter Priority mode. My advice: don't worry about this mode.

So that brings us to one last exposure mode: Manual.

Manual Mode:  When you point your camera toward what you are about to photograph, your camera's exposure meter will analyze the scene and determine what it believes to be the proper exposure. In most cases it will be pretty accurate. There are times however when your camera meter will be fooled. Usually it will happen in bright situations, like on the beach or in the snow, or when it reads the sun reflecting off of a window. The camera will read this as way more light than what is really there and will tell the shutter to close down quicker than it should, resulting in not enough light exposing the image. You end up with a dark image.

Let's say you are on the beach and it is really bright out. Now let's say that the proper exposure for these particular conditions would be f5.6 at 1/1000 of a second shutter speed. At the moment we don't know these numbers because we have no way of measuring them up front. We point our camera towards the water and white sand and the camera interprets the exposure as f5.6 at 1/2000 or maybe even 1/4000. In other words it believes there is a lot more light than there really is, so it is not letting as much light in through the shutter as the scene actually requires. The result will be a dark, underexposed image. This is often why snow looks dark blue or our beach pictures look overly contrasty. Not enough light was making it through the shutter to properly expose it. Since the camera is giving us a reading of let's say 1/2000, we need the shutter to stay open a bit longer. So let's try 1/1000. Now, if you bounce around between Program, Aperture or Shutter Priority modes, you will get the same exposure because they are all auto modes. So if you are in one of these modes and you go to set your shutter to 1/1000, you will unintentionally also be changing your aperture to f8. Effectively, nothing has changed in regards to your exposure. To gain control over your exposure settings, you have two options: 1) manual mode, or 2) exposure compensation dial.

If you set your exposure mode to Manual, you will have to set both your aperture and your shutter speed manually. If you know from looking at the monitor on the camera that the settings f5.6 and 1/2000 were too dark, you could then manually set it to f5.6 and 1/1000 and see what happens. For good measure you could even take another shot at f5.6 and 1/500.

Exposure Compensation (EC): Many cameras have some kind of exposure compensation dial. I use mine quite a bit. This dial allows you to stay in Aperture Priority and override what the camera is picking as the shutter speed. Oftentimes I will shoot in a situation where I know the camera is not reading the exposure correctly. It can be off by a full stop, either overexposing or underexposing the image. The EC dial lets me very quickly dial in a compensation for that, either up or down. If the camera is telling me to shoot it at 1/1000 but I want it to fire at 1/500, rather than switching over to Manual mode and dialing in everything manually, I can just turn this dial, basically fooling the camera to accept a 1/500 shutter speed.

I realize that all of this sounds like work, and if it is new to you it probably also sounds confusing. The best thing you can do is hold your camera, read through this and play with the settings. See how the different settings affect your exposure, or not. It's one of those things that the more you use it, the more natural it all feels. And you gain control over your camera, especially in difficult situations. I could tell you up front what to set your camera at in various locations, but that information might not entirely accurate, and you wouldn't understand why. Hopefully this will help.

Coming up next will be a wrap up of exposure, including the different ways your exposure meter works; followed by indoor photography with flash.

We've Been Here Before

I remember the late 1970's. It was post-Viet Nam. American morale was brought down by an apparent failure in that war. As troops returned home, they were spat on in some cases, and given very little respect by most Americans. Iran was holding American hostages. Jimmy Carter was president. Interest rates were at 21%, inflation rose to 11%. Gasoline prices spiked and, at times, was scarce. A military attempt to rescue our hostages in Iran failed. The Olympics, a usual source of national pride, was boycotted by America during the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow. American pride . . largely gone. Few people flew the American flag. In my lifetime, that period was a low point in terms of the American spirit and morale.

Then came Ronald Reagan. Many conservatives have an affection for Reagan because, to them, Reagan represented a true conservative in his policies and ideas. I remember Reagan most for the complete 180 he orchestrated in the American spirit. It was night and day. Carter leaves, Reagan enters, and Americans are once again proud to be an American. In many respects though, the economic circumstances America was in during Reagan's first year or two were still dire. Unemployment continued to grow. But three things were happening: 1) tax cuts were implemented, 2) Reagan made it clear that the government was getting out of the way so people could prosper on their own, 3) Americans responded with unprecedented economic growth.

Reagan made it cool again to be an American. He was not just a great leader who connected well with people, he continually spoke with conviction about the greatness of America and the American ideal. He saw government often being the source of our problems rather than the ever present answer to those problems. It is a stark contrast to today, when our political leaders look to the government as being the only answer. Problem with health care . . the government will take it over. Problem with your car . . the government will take it over. Problem with your bank . . the government will take it over. Reagan would have none of that. You have a problem . . fix it yourself. Have a problem . . what am I doing that is making your life miserable?

Today, just like the 1970's, we need another Ronald Reagan. We need someone who speaks with great affection for America, not taking every opportunity to rip it apart or transform it into Europe. We need someone with a clear vision to strip the federal government of year's of accumulated acquisitions it has no business owning. We need our country back in the hands of the people, not unions, not big business, not George Soros. We need someone who inspires us with, not the greatness of government, but of the greatness of Americans and our American Constitution. Boy I miss Reagan.

Photography 101: Session 02

A recap of Session 01: You want a photo that is properly exposed. To get that, many people set their camera to "program" (or "auto") mode. This lets the camera determine what the proper exposure should be, given what you are pointing your camera towards. The camera is automatically setting two things: aperture and shutter speed. In program mode the camera makes those choices for you, which in many cases might be fine. If you are happy with your photos in this setting, there might not be a reason for you to change it. But if you want to take a bit more control over your camera, understanding how controlling aperture and shutter speed will impact your images, you will be able to experiment with greater flexibility and get much more out of your camera. You can do this by simply using one of the other exposure modes your camera hopefully has: aperture priority, shutter priority, or manual. For more information on that, please refer to Session 01. So when and how should you use these other exposure modes?

Aperture Priority: As I mentioned in Session 01, I use Aperture Priority just about all the time when shooting outdoors. Aperture is controlling how much light is coming through the lens. The more light you have coming through the lens, the less light you need to come through the shutter on your camera. This of course is all relative to how much light is available, but the dynamics don't change . . more light through the lens = less light needed through the shutter. You control that light coming through the lens by opening and closing the aperture. I prefer to just keep my aperture as wide open as possible in most situations, so I set my aperture to 2.8. In Aperture Priority, once I set my aperture to what I want (usually 2.8 with my lenses), the camera will now determine the shutter speed for me to get the proper exposure. Because I am letting in the most light possible through the lens, I should be getting the faster shutter speed possible. A faster shutter speed lets less light in through the shutter than a slower shutter speed.

So why do I shoot in Aperture Priority? The main reason is that it optimizes my shutter speed. As long as I have my aperture wide open, I can relax a bit knowing that I am shooting at fast shutter speeds. In most cases a fast shutter speed is a good thing. If people are blinking or moving, a faster shutter speed gives me a better chance of getting a good photo. If I am having a difficult time holding my camera still, a faster speed will help counteract that. This is all especially true when the light is not that strong. If your aperture is not open all the way, you are working against yourself by not optimizing your settings.

Let's say you are outdoors and it is early evening. The sun is setting. Your camera is set in Aperture Priority with an aperture of 8.0 and you are getting a shutter speed reading of 1/30 of a second. That might work for you, but there is a chance that at that shutter speed, you might not be able to hold your camera still, resulting in blur. So now that you have control over your camera, change your aperture from 8.0 to 5.6 to 4.0. That is two stops. Remember those are fractions, 1/4 is a larger number than 1/8, or in other words, you are opening the aperture up, allowing more light to come through the lens. To compensate for that additional light, your shutter speed will need to change: from 1/30 of a second up to 1/60 and up to 1/125. Those are two stops to compensate for the two stops change you just made with your aperture. Because you are in Aperture Priority, as you change your aperture the camera will automatically adjust your shutter speed. Under these conditions you will have better chances of a good photo at 1/125 shutter speed than you would have at 1/30 of a second.

Let's say that 1/125 is still too slow for you considering what you are trying to photograph. Now what? Well your one last option (besides adding a flash) is to up your ISO. Let's say your ISO was set at 200. If you change that to 400 (or one stop), your camera will now adjust your shutter speed up to 1/250 of a second (a one stop change). Raise you ISO up to 800 and you gain another stop, or 1/500 of a second. You have to be careful though, because with each raise in ISO you are possibly introducing more digital noise to your image. Given the choice of a blurry bad image vs. a good one with some noise, I would opt for the noise. Sometimes that can be fixed with software after the fact.

Aperture also affects the depth of field in an image. I won't get into this much here except to say that this is largely affected by the focal length of your lens. Longer focal lengths coupled with a wide open aperture is how you achieve portrait images with a blurred out background. Wide angle lenses will give you a more even focus of foreground and background, good for group photos and landscapes.

Next session will pick up on Aperture Priority and then go into Shutter Priority. Please feel free to post comments or questions.

Coming Soon: Single Payer

If the health care bill signed today continues toward reality, there is no doubt in my mind that the inevitable future of health care in the U.S. is headed toward a single payer system. Private health insurance will become a thing of the past. Some people see this as a good thing. I do not.

First of all, why is it inevitable? The simple answer is because that is what the people on the left, particularly Obama, want. Their real desire is for the federal government to have full control over the money. Need a recent example? How about student loans. The health care bill was crafted to destroy private insurers. How long can they survive having to cover everyone, regardless of their risk? This is much like when lenders were mandated to lend money to people to buy a home who could not afford to pay back their loans. We all now know what happens when that takes place. People love the concept, as long as it is presented to them as something that is free. Imagine builders being mandated to install elevators in all homes with 2 or more stories. Yeah, I'd love to have an elevator in my home . . and it will be free. Free? Someone has to pay for it. Builders won't absorb that cost, they'll pass it along to buyers. So much for free. Same is true with health insurance. Someone has to absorb the cost of insuring millions of additional people, especially high risk people. When insurance companies are regulated to increase premiums by only so much, eventually they will be in a position where they are paying out more than they are taking in. Eventually they will go under.

The bigger issue though to me is that we have the federal government making promises to the American people (coverage for all with pre-existing conditions and no limits in benefits for example), but the only way they can achieve those promises is by mandating a private industry to fulfill those promises; all while conveying to the American public that this will come at no price to them. The larger question is what right does the federal government have to make such impositions on the American people in general, and on private companies specifically. People on the left will respond that this has been done in the past. They will point to federal regulations mandating safety measures or protecting civil rights. And they are right. But with each regulation and with mandate, a small sliver of freedom is taken away from Americans, forcing companies to either quit or move outside the country. Pretty soon, not only do those slivers start to add up, but eventually larger slivers are taken. And pretty soon you have a huge one, in the name of a health care bill.

One more thought: those on the left who embrace abortion do so on the notion of the right to privacy and the right of a woman to have full control of her body, absent of interference from the government. Wasn't their whole argument based on the concept that the government, by banning abortion, should not be able to tell a woman she has to have this baby? Shouldn't health care be a matter of privacy as well? What happens when the government starts making health care policies (mandates) as part of their socialist style health care that requires individuals to take certain medicine or bans certain medicine? Why are the same people who hate government interference when it comes to abortion now welcome government interference when it comes to all other matters of health care? To me it is the same disconnect the 1960 radicals had with their "down with the system" protests, all while embracing heavy handed dictators. Some things I just don't understand.

For Americans who have always wondered what it would be like to live in Europe, pretty soon you'll be able to experience it without leaving your home.

Photography 101: Session 01

Casual photographers usually put their cameras on "auto" or "program", relying on the camera to do the heavy lifting. Many times this is okay, but not always. Sometimes you will get better images when you take control over your camera. I find this mostly when it comes to indoor photography, especially when using flash. I thought I would offer a short tutorial here to help people understand some of the basics of the camera. Knowing the basics will help you a lot when it comes to taking control of your camera.

Most decent point and shoot and d-slr cameras give you a choice of shooting modes. The basic modes (the ones you want to learn) are aperture priority, shutter priority, program (or auto), and manual. Some cameras have additional modes, or scenes, that you can use, but I would recommend just learning and using the basic modes. So what are these modes, and when would you use them?

First of all, a few items you need to keep in mind. The main objective is to achieve the proper exposure. There are a number of ways to achieve the number "1". You can add 1/10 + 9/10, or you can add 3/10 + 7/10, or 5/10 + 5/10. If "1" represents your proper exposure, you need to juggle between the right combination of aperture and shutter speed to achieve that proper exposure. Aperture (aka f-stop) runs with numbers like 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16; whereas shutter speed numbers run like 2/4/8/15/30/60/125/250/500, etc. Going from one number to the next is considered a "stop". Moving one stop in shutter speed has the same affect in terms of light as one stop in aperture. So using my number "1" analogy, if I change 1/10 to 3/10, then I have change my second number from 9/10 down to 7/10 in order to add up to "1". One more important thing here: the aperture and shutter speed numbers are fractions. You need to put a "1" above the number, so you have a shutter speed of 1/2 a second, or a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second. With apertures, 1/4 is a bigger number than 1/16.

Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Program modes are all auto-exposure modes. The camera is determining the proper exposure. All three of these modes should be giving you the same exposure. What varies between them is the combination of numbers.

Aperture Priority: Aperture deal with the lens. It controls the amount of light that comes through the lens. If it is bright out, you might want to reduce the amount of light coming through the lens by closing the aperture (setting it to one of the higher numbers). If it is dark, you would want to do the opposite. Apertures also control your depth of field, or in other words, how much of what you are shooting stays in focus. This also has a lot to do with the kind of lens you are using. In most cases it is best to open your aperture up as wide as possible, letting in as much light as possible through the lens. This allows you to shoot your image with a faster shutter speed. With Aperture Priority, you are setting the aperture where you want it, and then letting the camera determine the shutter speed.

Shutter Speed: Shutter speed deals with the camera. It controls how much light comes through the camera. A slower shutter speed allows more light to hit your sensor, but think about it, as long as the shutter is open, the camera is recording information. So if someone is moving, you will capture all the movement, which means blur. To eliminate blur you want to shoot at a high shutter speed. A higher shutter speed means that less light in coming through the shutter, so you very well may need to bolster the amount of light coming in through the lens by opening up the aperture. Remember, these two work together, and your ultimate goal is a proper exposure. Shutter Priority allows you to set the shutter speed you want, then the camera sets the aperture automatically.

Program Mode: Program mode basically lets the camera determine both the aperture and the shutter speed. Usually it tries to optimize both, which can be fine, especially when you are outside. But oftentimes you can optimize the aperture and/or shutter speed much better by using the shutter or aperture priorities modes. I personally use Aperture Priority almost all the time when shooting outdoor. I like opening up my aperture to the max, not only so I can blur out the background with my longer lens, but because it will give me the fastest shutter speed, which is usually what I want.

Manual Mode: Manual mode lets you set both the aperture and the shutter speed manually. This can be handy in difficult lighting situations when it appears that the in camera exposure meter might get fooled by the lighting, thereby giving you a wrong exposure. Manual mode also comes in handy when shooting indoor with flash. I shoot everything indoor in manual mode. More about that in another posting to come.

One more thing to keep in mind: there is a third element involved in affecting your exposure . . the iso setting. ISO is light sensitivity. Lower numbers like 100 or 200 means less sensitive to light than the higher numbers. In digital terms, higher iso numbers can result in more noise in your images, so you generally want to use lower iso numbers for cleaner images. One of the biggest breakthroughs in digital though is the advancement in iso quality. It used to be that shooting at 400 iso brought noise. Now, in the higher end cameras, you can easily shoot at 3200 or 6400 with minimal noise. Those higher numbers mean shooting in even lower light. ISO numbers jump in "stops" just like aperture and shutter speed, so raising the ISO means being able to compensate with higher shutter speeds.

Lots of info here that might be new to you. Read through it a couple times, maybe with your camera in hand. Some lower end point and shoot cameras don't have any of these settings on them, so you are stuck. A good reason to spend a few dollars more on a camera that has these settings.

CBO Numbers for Health Care

Much is riding on the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) numbers concerning the health care bill. This past week the CBO reported that the health care bill will provide about $138 billion in savings for the deficit over the next 10 years. One point needs to be stressed here: the CBO can only issue a report based on the numbers Congress provides within the bill. If those numbers are not correct, or if there is no way those numbers will ever be realized, then the CBO numbers will be wrong. But the CBO has to go with Congress' numbers, with no qualifications.

To put this in perspective, let's say I want to buy a $1 million house, something that is beyond my ability. I fill out a loan application and tell the lender that I plan on marrying a wealthy heiress in about four or five years. In addition I plan on tripling my business, in large part by working 3 times harder than I do now. I attach numbers to these things, which in the end give the appearance that I will be making a lot more in 5 years than I do now. Additionally, I leave off of the loan application that I owe a neighbor $200,000. So, based on this information, should the lender give me a loan? If the lender was Nancy Pelosi, the answer would be yes. So what happens when I get this loan from Nancy Pelosi and none of these things come about. There is no way I can pay back the loan. I go in default, or bankruptcy.

This is essentially what is happening with the CBO numbers. There are two main sources of "income" that Congress has provided to the CBO to goose their numbers: 1) roughly $500 billion in Medicare savings by eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, and 2) a tax on cadillac insurance plans (mostly union related) that is supposed to be imposed starting in 2018 (roughly $130 billion). So, do you really believe that those numbers will become a reality? I sure don't. What are the chances that Congress, under pressure from unions, will repeal the cadillac tax? Even democrat leader Stenny Hoyer admitted that Congress will have to show courage in the future to make that happen. Yeah, right. And the $500 billion in Medicare waste and fraud? They have been talking about that for years, with absolutely no "courage" to do anything about it. And then there is the doctor fix in Medicare. That item, which has to happen, will cost an additional $200 billion; but that is a cost which won't look good on the CBO numbers, so it has been left off the health care bill and placed into a separate bill to be voted on later.

So when democrats throw around the CBO numbers, don't believe them. It would be like giving me a loan for my million dollar house, although I am still working on the rich heiress.

My Website

I'm in the midst of doing some renovation on my website, with the help of Mike Keene, master web designer and husband to my niece Kindra. This is a concept that I'm considering using on my homepage.

(un)Intended Consequences

I have a friend in Florida who is a financial/legal person with a large hospital. This guy understands policy and he understand economics. He told me that when stimulus money was sent to Florida early last year, there was a mandated provision that some of that money go to hospitals to hire more doctors. Sounds good. Problem is that there are a limited amount of doctors in the market, so when hospitals went to hire additional doctors away from other hospitals, those hospitals ended up having to offer their own doctors more money to stay. My friend said when this all started they were paying their doctors $130,000 a year. By the time it was over they were paying those same doctors $160,000, and they basically had the same amount of doctors. In other words, the stimulus allowed the doctors to get a $30,000 raise, and the stimulus paid for that, for a year. After that, the hospital was stuck with continuing to pay that additional amount on their own. No new doctors were hired.

It's always good to hear the back story of these "brilliant" moves by political leaders who apparently don't understand basic economics. Stories like this are the reason why I don't trust the numbers these people use to sell their health care reform, or why I don't believe their assertions will ever come about in the way they promise.

If Nancy Pelosi can put a definite number of how much money will be saved through eliminating fraud and waste in Medicare, that means she can point to where that fraud and waste is taking place. Why isn't she or anyone else going after that right now? Why do they need a bill to do that? If the bill does not pass, does that mean that she (they) will not deal with this waste and fraud?

If insurance companies are evil because they raise premiums 30-40%, isn't our federal government just as "evil" for raising our taxes, our debt, our deficit by those same percentages. I have no love affair for insurance companies, and I am definitely not anti-government; but democrats are falsely setting the insurance companies as the bad guys. The truth is their profit margin (3.3%) is rather small compared to most private industries. In fact there are 85 industries with higher profit margins. If Obama really wants to stick it to health insurance companies, make them compete with each other across state lines. Most monopolies, particularly the government, hate competition.

Obama Interview With Bret Baier

After watching Barack Obama's interview with Bret Baier Wednesday evening, I suspect that people who like Obama will believe that Baier was rude interrupting the non-stop talking of Obama, while those who don't like Obama will believe that Obama was defensive and never really answered any of the questions directly. One of the first questions was if this bill was so great for America, why has it been so messy trying to get it passed by Democrats who control both houses? Obama eluded that question.

What struck me most in the interview though was the question about Medicare. The question had to do with the double accounting taking place with the 500 billion "savings" in Medicare. That in and of itself is a huge question that, again, Obama didn't want to have anything to do with answering. Actually the answer he gave was the stuff for those who like to run fact checks. I doubt that anything he said was actually true. But what struck me more was his admission that Medicare is in deep trouble financially, to the tune of 38 trillion dollars. Medicare is essentially a government run insurance program, primarily for the elderly, started back in the mid 1960's. There are three ways you can describe what Medicare has become over the years: 1) heavily depended upon by elderly citizens, thereby making it impossible to change; 2) a cesspool for fraud and waste; and 3) a huge drain on our overall financial deficit. So the big elephant in the room question is this: how is this health care bill, with the inevitable takeover of all health insurance by the federal government, going to be any different than Medicare? What will prevent this entitlement from becoming an even bigger cesspool for fraud and waste, or from driving our economy into complete ruin?

I suppose the answer from Obama would be that with all Americans forced to carry insurance, younger healthy Americans will be paying into the system, helping to cover older and sicker Americans. Two problems: 1) what scheme does this sound like . . Social Security . . and we all know what great shape that is in; and 2) All that money out of the pockets of the young means that they will have even less to spend on buying a house or going to school or to save for eventually raising a family.

One other question that I have heard no one explain, even though Obama uses it over and over again in his talking points, with no one asking him how this actually will work: how do you cover people with pre-existing conditions and make it work financially? What happens when people hold off buying insurance (paying a penalty instead), then apply for insurance when they need it, knowing they cannot be turned down? Are there limits in how much coverage a person would get before someone comes along and says "enough". Right now, according to Obama, this bill will provide all things good and nothing bad. Somehow I just don't believe that. Apparently though, there are a lot of people who do.

Things You CAN'T Do When You're NOT a Dog

Low Cost Wedding Photography

I stumbled upon this article by photographer Sharon Dawson concerning inexperienced wedding photographers and thought the closing remarks were full of wisdom. Thought I would pass it along.

"While finding affordable wedding photography that fits your budget is important, taking the guy with the cheapest package you can find is taking a huge risk. Many top-notch wedding photographers have made enormous adjustments in their prices to compete with the Canon Rebel Gang. Don't be fooled by flashy websites, prices that you should find suspect, and promises of glorious, award winning photography for a thousand bucks. Take the time to really talk to your prospective photographer and learn about their experience. Flashy websites can be bought; experience is earned."

California and Las Vegas

I just got back from my trip out to San Diego and Las Vegas. Got to spend time with cousins in San Diego, friends in Lake Elsinore, and then off to Las Vegas for the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International trade show. The trade show was great for me . . always good to learn some new things and get some inspiration along the way. Although I have been to San Diego a couple other times, this was the first trip where I felt like I got to actually see the sights. Point Loma, Balboa Park, the Midway, Coronado . . it was all great. Here are a few images taken with my little Canon G9. Would have loved to have had the big boys with me, but carrying the G9 makes traveling a lot easier.