There were 13 posts published in February 2009 (this is page 1 of 2).
My travels with a near 30-year-old camera continue: my tired but still lovely Minolta CLE from 1981-ish.
1) very fast film (high ISO numbers) has been disappointing. The 1600ASA Fuji stock I used in Brighton caused problems in scanning (bit soft) and also in the way that iPhoto displays the jpegs (seem to block and smudge, but when examined at 100% in Photoshop or Aperture, the grain was in focus and clearer, but still not great). The perfect film so far for the grey winter days has been the Fuji 800Z Professional film. I think I'm in love.
If I'm being kind I can see that the lens is resolving well enough, but straight from the scanner it's lacking some of the kapow and oomph that the Paris set had.
2) Older Leica lenses aren't all they're cracked up to be. The shot above was with an old Leica 28mm Elmarit-M 2.8. Not a bad lens in anyone's bag, but lacks the contrasty punch of the 40mm f2 Rokkor that comes as standard with the CLE. I really wanted it to be brilliant (especially since I'd swapped an Xpan body for it!) but it just didn't do it for me. Annoyingly, the amount of Aperture-twiddling I needed to do to in post-production rather spoils the point of dev&scan.
3) The new Leica aspherical is just lovely.
This is from the Regents Park set: Fuji160 film and the 28mm Elmarit-M 2.8 ASPH. It's a dinky, wee little thing and it's brought back the 'punch' and contrast. Look at this image at the original size and you'll see that the scanner's managed to get more of a 'grip' on the negatives – you can even see the water marks on the surface of the negative. Resolving power is wonderful and the delicate handling of out-of-focus parts (eg the little boy in the sand) is just beautiful. I'm in love. Motto – always read Ken Rockwell before buying a lens! Interestingly, after the Leica rebate this lens is the same price as a 20 year old second hand inferior one and now a worthy swap for my 10yr-old Xpan.
3) My CLE over-exposes. Routinely, by about a 1/3rd to half a stop. I'm not sure whether it's an artefact of the metering pattern (I don't really like averaging systems – I loved the 12% weighting of the Nikon F3, and everything since then is just not quite right). I'll run a few more films through before I commit to adjusting the ASA dial, but it's worth knowing.
5) You need to think carefully about the film stock and how you'll use/process it. I'm taking a lazy approach, aiming for zero intervention: C41 commercial process, machine scanning, import and upload. A bit of tweaking on saturation and the black/shadow level is all I'll do. Anything else is a) not true to the Cartier-Bresson decisive moment and b) if I'm going to mess around twiddling I might as well do a different approach!
I'm trying to settle on films that have the cool tones of Fuji film, excellent edge contrast (works best on the web) and good tonality. Fuji800Z is wining on the colour front. It may help that the lab, Panther Imaging on Clerkenwell Road, use a Fuji scanner. Then again, it may not.
www.processaway.net – Credit card processing available on the iPhone… Interesting development.
Not sure about security or my happiness about pin/card harvesting, but conceptually it's a further interesting move for mobile apps and commerce.
The Circle – a simple ToDo System to Get more Things Done : font.is – Elegant. If only my a) handwriting and b) self-discipline were ready to meet this challenge of this elegant approach.
I think I'll go as far as adopting circles rather than my current squares (either a square or a square with a tick. Simple, but not a circle).
TripAdvisor's 2009 Top 10 Dirtiest Hotels – This is what I call catchy marketing!
Making a feature of negative reviews. Wonderful. Also puts them in the category of honest and fearless advisor. Near.
Livescribe :: Never Miss A Word – oooh – a tingle of desire.
Now, all I need is Pelikan to make a digital fountain pen and heaven beckons!
Brandbook – Notebook World – Oh – heaven is a place on earth. It's here.
Not only is this every desirable element in my "Hi Fidelity-esque" Tourette's Stationery Specification Fetish, but this allows you to construct the very book(s) of your dreams.
It's made my day though.
Courtesy of Monocle who've gone and had a bunch made (although not as I'd have specc'd of course. Sigh).
Leica camera repairs – Luton – Old skool repairs for old skool cameras.
A quick heads up for a new role at a client, House of Fraser.
This is a really interesting post in a vital and growing aspect of HOF's ecommerce activities.
Initial setup of the affiliate and acquisition activities has been done by Chris Bishop, so it's by no means a greenfield situation, but it's an evermore important part of the marketing mix.
ever-tighter cross channel working – leveraging the in-store activity, PPC, SEO and on-site promotion for maximum customer satisfaction and of course profit.
The integrated, friendly and capable team at HOF are the cherry on this particular cake!
Note that applicants need to add a supporting note to their CV stating in 500 words or fewer the three tactical, "day 1" things you'd do to improve SEM and/or affiliate activity.
Profit per pixel second – pps?
Over the last couple of years I've had two concurrent obsessions when it comes to ecommerce: data and online merchandising. The former is the foundation of everything we do and sell online – product data, customer data, metadata, behavioural data… Increasingly, my interest in data has extended to behavioural and attention metadata, as well as the free(r) interchange of said data. The interchange is made possible with APIs, microformats and emerging XML standards in Attention Profiling Markup Language, APML. The open data and data portability movement is also vital for a future in which all sorts of data can intermingle, be mashed up and generally create valuable services.
I covered this for the last two years in presentations, culminating in my Digital Trends series given this month where we reach a level of 'epiphenomenology' and magic by extension of these trends. The slides for this presentatio are available on Slideshare.
In tandem, I've been working with clients and collaborators on advancing approaches to online merchandising – the art of selling online. We've covered this twice so far at the European eCommerce Forum (notes of the inaugural ECF are posted last year) and it's also a module in the upcoming Certificate/Diploma in Internet Retailing. The aim of course is to maximise the profitability of the merchandised 'page' online.
This approach was fine where eCommerce was in a growth phase and customers seemed keen to spend evermore time online. However, in a saturated market there's evidence that online customers are settling into a core group of a dozen retail sites (where 'retail' include aggregation/affiliate, voucher and cashback portals who – from a customer's perspective – are simply alternative ways to shop). The battle now is for the customer's attention as much as for their money once you have that attention.
These two themes come together in a measure for merchandising effectiveness – profit per pixel second.
This combines the notion of 'yield per pixel' presented to a customer, with the idea that one only has a given time in which to persuade the customer AND that those seconds have been 'borrowed' from the customer's other activities, their other favourite sites or simply from calls upon their time in the 'real' world.
This approach means that we might no longer want to 'retain visitors' on our sites for a long time – rather, a quick, effective visit might be best for the customer. We can also start relaxing about multiple, short visits to our sites (for example research, or monitoring stock availability or trends) if we can see that contributing to sales. The 'yield' or profitability measure focuses our efforts upon getting the most profit rather than buying the highest turnover.
I've been doing some initial work on how this proposed measure might inform day to day merchandising activity, or even be measured (since we know that 'not all pixels are created equal'), but I'd appreciate thoughts and help on this, not to mention alternative suggestions or rebuttals.
Do let me know either in the comments or via direct email, as well as volunteering to help with some data – in confidence, of course.
Last week I presented at Digital Shorts in Manchester. It was a really fun evening with an engaged crowd, good questions and a great set of conversations afterwards. And of course a beer or three catching up with some ex-Littlewoods colleagues afterwards.
The slide deck is available here – looking at how data + open interaction + standards + behavioural insights can lead to an 'epiphenomenology' or, put succinctly, 'magic'.
I don't want to spoil things yet (especially since I'm delivering the presentation in Brighton on 11 February), but I did want to note that this was the first time I'd had an event 'twittered'.
So we all know about twitter – microblogging, or a public-ish exchange of sub-160-character messages (think of a group instant-messenger session, or an IRC channel 'done' via single message) – but at this event there was someone in the audience 'twitting' my points.
On twitter you direct message at people by the incantaion "@[username]", so for example to be certain that a comment appeared on my 'radar' you'd include "@ianjindal" in the message. Think of this as a way of 'attaching' messages to me.
A further development are 'hash channels' – anything prefaced by "#" creates (or adds to) a channel. These can be created on the fly (eg #createdonthefly): the genius of these is that they act as a 'tag' or a collector: without the need to establish a 'channel' in any formal fashion, twits from any number of people can be aggregated into a feed.
This was shown to good effect with #uksnow (coverage of the recent snowy weather in the UK) or channels that formed to cover the recent emergency landing of a jet on the Hudson.
There's no 'ownership' of the channel and there can be conflicting claims (eg #TCUK was claimed by TechCrunch UK and The Co-op UK). The only 'right' in this instance is 'might'. You can't claim, own or protect a channel. However, as an ad hoc, current and flexible 'collector' these are ideal.
In the meantime, here are the slides from the evening.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Parking ticket leads to a virus – Combining 'real world' scamming and deception to get people to go online and install a virus.
Nikon F4 resource page – Uber-geekery on the F4. Respect.
Ocado secures £10m Sharia'a financing – Interesting financing option – probably the most high-profile commercial deal for Sharia'a finance.
Getting Started – Tribesmart – Social shopping service that allows collection and aggregation of products across the web using Firefox bookmarklets.
Fujicolor Pro 800Z – My new favourite fast colour neg film. Lovely grain, beautiful, cool colour balance and predictable exposure. I could swim in this stuff.