Why you want a Polarizer Filter

I recently bought a 50mm lens with a circular polarizer. I though I’d share some quick examples to show what a polarizer filter does for your photo’s.

The polarization effect is probably one of the few (if not only) effect which you can not reproduce in photoshop or any other image processing program. Most applications try by increasing saturation, which is nowhere near the effect of a real polarizer.

By rotating the filter, you have the luxury of choosing how much effect you want to have, anywhere between 0% and 100%. The shots below give you an idea what the range of the effect is:

Starting Java app from Applescript

Suppose you have a Java Swing application which you can start by typing the following on the command line:

java -jar myTerrificSwingApp.jar

If you want to make that application start from the Finder in OSX, there are a lot of options which range from ugly to convoluted. If you need a quick fix, here’s how to do it.

T(w)inkering

Now that the twitter hype is cooling down, and companies tart to realize that it is, in fact, just CB radio in a new asynchronous form, only the “true tweeps” still hang around. And now, it’s time to t(w)inker with it.

Migrate from Password Gorilla to KeePass

I used to use Password Gorilla to store my passwords, because it can run on both Mac and Windows. Because my password database keeps growing, Password Gorilla is becomming a very slow starter, even on my new solid state disk. A few weeks ago I learned that KeePass is a much more modern application, and is available for both Mac and Windows. Here’s what I did to get all my passwords into KeePass:

Shooting 16:9 with a 4:3 Camera

If you have a Canon Ixus 80IS, like me, and you shoot video for your widescreen television at home (like me), you may want to try out this little trick.

The Canon Ixus is a 4:3 camera. The video that comes out of it is almost square shaped. When you try to make a 16:9 video, you can stretch it, or crop it. Cropping is far better, but you need some “headroom” to do that. If you made a closeup, chances are that you do not have enough room to crop to a 16:9 format.

I solved this by making this little chart, which I placed on a memorycard and put in my camera. By previewing the image on the camera’s display, you know where the “16:9 limit” is. I put two pieces of half-translucent tape on the camera, so I can tell what fit’s inside the 16:9 frame. I also included the other formats, like 3:2, and 2.39:1, should you want to make wide-screen theater movies

Then, I load up the movie in iMovie, and it will be cropped perfectly. Suppose you missed the 16:9 frame or want to re-center your shot, you can always press the “crop” button in your project to tell iMovie which piece of the image you want.