[CitizenTony]

Nothing special, just an 8' table and my computers.

[naren]

My desk, with 12 inch 1.33 Ghz Powerbook, 3G 10 Gig iPod, JBL Creature speaker set, Airport Extreme, Conon printer, DVD's, annoying lamp and a fish. Well the fish isn't technically on the desk but close enough.

It's a nice room. Lot's of sun in the winter and plenty of breeze in the summer.

[Koodari]

My first desktop setup pic after getting the new monitor.
Can you spot it?



Fullsize version here.

No matter what I did I could not manage to get the monitor picture to come out well. It's as sharp as I can expect shooting without support, but even in this best version there is white "burnout" on the monitor. The camera is an Ixus 430. Does any photography-minded person want to explain what might be the prob? I don't really understand all the white balance etc. settings, but I tried about all of them including "custom". This best result was on automatic white balance. Flashes butchered everything in sight so after a few tries I went to no flash.

Outside is cloudy but reasonably bright. The "flame" is a reflection of my paper lamp at the back of the room.

[Luca]

Well, that's a very tricky setup to photograph. You have a dark foreground with a bright background, and a light source in the foreground as well. Gather less light, and the background and monitor look fine but the rest is dim and difficult to see. Gather more light, and the monitor and window appear blown out. If you just use full auto settings, your camera's light meter will go way up and dim down the picture a lot (by reducing aperture and exposure time).

Ideally, you'd add a couple diffused spotlights to illuminate the foreground. That way you could take a super short exposure and still gather enough light. The point is it's too dark inside to take a good picture. The flash will light up the foreground and leave the background alone, but it'll probably make the monitor hard to see in addition to generally messing up the image quality. And of course gathering more light would just mean the background would get blown out.

[murbot]

Just a quick note to say that I'm on the same computer I've had since the start of the year. Hell has officially frozen over.

[CoolToddHunter]

That's also a very bright picture on the monitor. So like luca said, anything you can do to fill the foreground is good. But a second step I'd take is turn the brightness on the monitor down. That will help equalize the differential (contrast) between the light and dark places in the foreground, giving a better exposure all around.

[atomicbartbeans]

Heh... wow, I didn't think there were many other AN'ers with an iBook. Nice computer.

[staph]

Originally Posted by atomicbartbeans Heh... wow, I didn't think there were many other AN'ers with an iBook. Nice computer.

I've got one, amongst others, and I believe Barto does too.

In fact, I thought quite a few of us had one… I could be wrong.

[liam]

Nice view out of your window Koodari - very jealous !!!

[Franz Josef]

Originally Posted by liam Nice view out of your window Koodari - very jealous !!!

And a neat desk Koodari - how rarely do we see that

[liam]

IlovemyiBooksTartofthemacaffairforme

[Jasoco]

Originally Posted by liam IlovemyiBooksTartofthemacaffairforme

A Jigga-wha?

[newt]

Here's the desk I work at. Nothing too fancy, just a Mac Mini and a Dell 2005fpw display. My powerbook will arrive tommorow, and I'll update the pic then


Click for a high-res version.

You can also see my Motorola Razr v3 in the picture.

[Koodari]

Originally Posted by Franz Josef And a neat desk Koodari - how rarely do we see that

I had just spent half a day cleaning and organizing things. Still have a persistent cough from all the dust there was before, so I was kinda forced to act.

Even the tape and folder on the desk were there because they had just been used to tidy up the cables.

The keyboard is the newest piece of equipment, taken into use on the day of the photo.

I also like the view. This is an university campus, built before the land had much value. Now the city has grown enough that if somehow available, this spot would fetch an astronomical price.

[GWARREN]

This is my rather lame setup. It is getting a major overhaul soon though - the aging iBook will be replaced some time later in the summer, probably with a Mac mini and 20" display, and the iPod will be upgraded to a 40Gb or 60Gb possibly, depending on how the 5th gen looks.

The CD rack looks rather empty at the moment as this is only about a third of my CDs - the rest are in an identical rack on the other side of my living room.

The desk (and the desktop) are always this tidy! The empty dock below, and to the right of the iPod is my camera dock, but I had huge trouble getting the camera in the dock while I took the photo, you wouldn't believe how much hassle that can be.

[shatteringglass]

I like the iPod mini that's sitting in the CD rack. Fitting and clever.

[Jasoco]

I didn't even notice that. I like it, and the blue thing at the bottom. They both set it off so it looks much better than just a whole shelf of CD's. Need some posters on your walls though. Unless they're too high up.

[shatteringglass]

GWARREN, did you get your furniture at Ikea? I think I have the same roll-out bureau that sits underneath the desk.

[DMBand0026]

IKEA rules. That's where my desk is from, and my dresser, and my bedstand, and my bookshelf, and a shelf in my room, and my chair.

I'm a total IKEA whore, but I'm not ashamed of it. It's not the highest quality, but it's great when you're on a budget.

[shatteringglass]

Originally Posted by DMBand0026 It's not the highest quality, but it's great when you're on a budget.

Haha, how true that is. Almost all of the stuff I've purchased from IKEA (and I've bought a LOT of stuff from them) have either broken or were already broken when I unpacked the goods on their first day. Well, not broken in the sense that they're not functioning, but "broken" in that there's always some part of any given item that's damaged, whether it would be a crack here, or a huge scratch there. Their quality control is pretty low.

And for some reason, I keep going back.

One tip: never buy light bulbs from them.

[polvoronn]

Originally Posted by Koodari No matter what I did I could not manage to get the monitor picture to come out well. It's as sharp as I can expect shooting without support, but even in this best version there is white "burnout" on the monitor. The camera is an Ixus 430. Does any photography-minded person want to explain what might be the prob?

The burnout is a result of the relatively small size of the pixels on your ixus 430. The sensor on your camera measures at 7.18 x 5.32 mm. With 3.8 million pixels (approx 4mp) in that little area, you can imagine how small each sensor is.

Now let's make the analogy that each pixel on the sensor is like a bucket in the rain with a cover (the shutter in this case) on top. When the shutter on a camera is released, light goes in and hits he sensor. With our analogy, the cover would come off and water would fill the bucket. The "burnout" occurs when the 'bucket' is 'full' of 'water'. That is, there is too much light for that one pixel to handle.

Now let's look at digital SLR's. Wanna know one reason why they take better pictures? simple: bigger sensors. Imagine a 4mp DSLR camera. As DLSR's come, they have a much larger sensor size. The new 350D has a sensor size of 22.2 x 14.8 mm, so each sensor (bucket) is about 300% larger. Given the same exposure times, each sensor on he 350D will not have to handle as much light, and is therefore better able to prevent any "burnout" because the 'bucket' is less likely to fill up.

Sorry if my explanation was a little unclear. The folks from Canon do a MUCH better job of explaining these things in a way people understand

[Koodari]

It never occurred to me that the sensors in the better cameras are bigger - I knew the optics were and stopped the train of thought there.

Most enlightening polvoronn.

[turtle]

Originally Posted by polvoronn Sorry if my explanation was a little unclear. The folks from Canon do a MUCH better job of explaining these things in a way people understand

I'd say you did a good job, Thanks!

[BlueRabbit]

Here's my setup, at least until I go to college in September. Wow, I never realized how messy it looks. It's cleaner from up close. And yes, I really am using a couple Mac IIci's as a stand for my Powerbook. I figured it would look cooler than just adding another table there.

[Franz Josef]

Wow, that is messy but 2 Mac II's as a table - that wins an award in my book. I've just checked the OED and that's the definition of "cool". I know a little shop in Vienna that has hundreds of olds Macs just sat there in the storeroom. I should make the guy an offer and furnish my flat.

[BlueRabbit]

Originally Posted by Franz Josef Wow, that is messy but 2 Mac II's as a table - that wins an award in my book. I've just checked the OED and that's the definition of "cool". I know a little shop in Vienna that has hundreds of olds Macs just sat there in the storeroom. I should make the guy an offer and furnish my flat.

Yeah, the Mac II's are good for that, since they're really rectangular and flat, like bricks. It would be really awesome if you could make a full-size table out of those, though. I remember seeing a picture on the Internet of someone who made a chair out of Mac Classics - it looked really uncomfortable.

[The Return of the 'nut]

[Jasoco]

It's not the same without a little TiVo guy in place of the DTV logo. I do like the blue though.

[Engine Joe]

Had to tweak a little contrast and brightness so you could actually see the beast under the desk, which in turn washed out the window, but there's the tradeoff when I only have 30 seconds and no access to Photoshop.



Got this setup on Friday. Elsewhere in the house is an iMac G4 and an iBook G4.

[faramirtook]

Those speakers there are PSB Alpha's. Product of Canada. Those Canadians have got it right. They put gov't money into acousitics reserch. Thats an old 70's Sansui 6060 sterio reciver. Works like a charm. That's an rev. A 17" 1.8 G5 SuperDrive. Also teh awesome.