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Do you really agree to pay for this war ? And are you happy that those same people refuse child health care reforms ?

US fears Europe-based terrorism

One of the biggest threats to US security may now come from within Europe, US Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff has told the BBC.
He said militant attacks and plots in Europe over recent years had made the US aware of the “real risk that Europe will become a platform for terrorists”.

Mr Chertoff said it was likely security checks on travellers from Europe would be increased.

But he said steps would be taken to ensure travel and trade were not hit.

In the interview on the BBC’s World News America, Mr Chertoff said he had seen “home-grown terrorism begin to rise in Europe”.

He cited deadly bomb attacks on Madrid and London, and a terror alert affecting UK-US flights in August 2006, as well as “people travelling from South Asia and the Middle East into Europe and carrying out attacks there”.

He said it was important to increase security checks on passengers from Europe – most of whom are currently able to enter the United States without being screened first because of a visa waiver programme.

But Mr Chertoff added that immigration checks should not affect travel and trade – an important part of the US economy.

As the fifth anniversary of the creation of his Homeland Security department approaches, Mr Chertoff said the US was now a safer place because of the security strategies that had been adopted.

“Our ability to know who is coming across our borders, and to check them and to take their fingerprints now, is far better than it was five or six years ago,” Mr Chertoff said.

“We have deployed almost twice as many border patrols as we had five or six years ago. We’ve put up literally hundreds of miles of fencing and barriers.

“All of these are very concrete steps forward that have made our security much better than it was,” Mr Chertoff said.

BBC articleSimilar Posts:

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In France you have to know we pay today near 1,30 Euro/liter for 95 Octane (Regular) and it is rising each day. For many people it is nearing a point we better stop going to work. I have about 80 km every day with my car. But most lovely of it all, price we pay is made for 80% taxes. Dear Ms. Lagarde says ‘we’ have to start thinking differently and she promises to go talk to the producers to lower their margins …. OUTRAGEOUS ! Sorry but can’t help it to scream now. The only one who has a real potential to lower prices is the one taking most profit and that’s the French goverment. How does she even dare to tell such stupidity ?

Yes I agree we all are responsible for the ecological disaster we are creating on our home world but alternative techniques exist since long like hydrogen combustion systems but NO ONE is interested in it, countries are so depending on the taxes on fuel they will not promote it. Imagine we turn down our consumption by half…. imagine debt levels ….
It is not only ‘we’ that have to think differently, for sure many of us are well aware of the major problem. But how are we going to ‘force’ our leaders to think differently. Not only help the big money, those that sponsored their election, and instead serve the ones that have elected them (if you can still talk about a democratic process … another debate).

Time to impose a new rule in laws, separation of politics and economics. Politicians are not allowed to receive a single penny from economical forces and are not allowed to return favors.

An elected politician is supposed to represent those who elected him and not the economical powers…. seems we are very far away from this….Similar Posts:

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We’ll see how people react, already France is subject to strikes and November might be a hot month for politics .Similar Posts:

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It’s now about 6 weeks that I started to shoot like a wildman and time for a first impression. Was it easy ? Nope. Not at all. I did several years argentique shooting with an Olympus reflex. If you ever do the step, be prepared to be disappointed. It isn’t at all the same handling and way less nice results in the beginning. I even wondered if the body or the lens were faulty. Now I know they aren’t and the one that was faulty was me. Naive me thinking you could work equally on digital media. What I describe here can be seen as noob problems but hey, none are related in the manuals.

What happened ?

At first I shot most in the preset modes and in the standard jpeg saving. Results were let’s say satisfactory. 1000$ investment for images not really that more special that the little Olympus Z4000 I have. OK it is the preset and we know that these monsters need to be used in the special settings etc… after a week or so I switched to RAW and did the first images in TV mode (speed priority, aperture adapting)… oooohhhh boeee yek horrible. Under exposed, completely blurred, colors from another age …. clearly nil. Trying not to be disappointed, I ran out in the garden again and started again, wide angle, mid zoom, full zoom, low speed, high speed…. back downloading and ….. pfffff horrible results.
I won’t show you any, I deleted them all now… but imagine you take a snap by accidently pushing the button and you get no result … that’s about the level.
I started to get a little nervous not to say angry (my wife running of ) what was going wrong here ? I re read the micro manual and didn’t find a real answer. Well if Tv doesn’t work, let’s try the other options….. in short same result or I should say bad results.

The solutions

Back to the net and searching on many forums led me to the French Eos forum that is huge. Spend about 3 days reading in there and I have to admit the beginning to my photographie salvation started there. I wasn’t the only one having HUGE problems. Pfff feeling better now I ended with buying a book for the body and reading even more forum posts

First thing you have to know is that the size of your CMOS censor is something you have to know. Let me explain :
My EOS has a sensor 22,2 * 14,8 mm, a full size sensor like the EOS1D is equal to the argentique size 36 * 24 mm.
This is important for your focal length. To keep it short 36 / 22,2 = 1,62. This is the multiplier for your focal length.
Lenses today are expressed relative to 36 * 24 mm sensors. In our case we have to correct accordingly to our sensor and for my Tamron 18 – 200 it means in reality it behaves like a 28 – 320 mm zoom. Not quite the same as you can see. This is important for another golden rule I learned.
And Tamron has even a little tool you can use online or download to compare focal lengths. It allows you to see what happens if you are on a 36*24 or DSLR. Gives a good idea visually.
Other very interesting tool : depth of field comparison
Both tools are free which is even better.

What shutter speed is required in relation to your focal length when shooting out of the hand ? The rule is simple

1 / focal length

This is pure theory but know it is a good rule. Even after years of training and shooting… yes you have a more stable approach and you can go below but believe me…. keeping this rule as standard will already safe you many blurred images. And now you also understand why the multiplier factor accordingly your sensor becomes very important. As example the rule would give 1/200 sec for my full zoom for a Canon EOS1D with it’s full size sensor but with my EOS400D I need to correct this to 1/320 sec. This also means I loose one aperture compared to an EOS1D (there has to be some justification in price difference ).
A little tip on stability, if you shoot with low speeds, keep your arms locked against your body, not wide open like wings. You’ll be a lot better and breath out half and stop, then take your picture. This seems to be the best position to have stability.

Second thing I learned is the metering of the body. The EOS400D has 3 metering modes and believe me, you have to learn them and use them accordingly. First mode is the general mode where it takes full image and makes a balance on most dominant part. If you have for example a large part of bright sky and some little building in your composition, the chances are high you end with a nice sky and a black square. If you intended it this way… ok… but usually you don’t …
2 options : or zoom in on the building and meter, block the system with the * and zoom out to have your composition (beware a burned sky though) or go to a selective mode.
This brings me to the 2 selective meterings, one is centered dominant, and the last is centered pure. The second one will give more importance to the central part but still try to keep some of the surrounding in it’s calculations and the last mode is simply taking the center in account.
I didn’t find any golden rule for this. Really test it out and try to learn when to use what mode. You’ll be surprised of the results when changing that with the same image.

Third thing I learned and still learning, RAW mode. The body can already be preset with rules like sharpening, contrast etc etc but I set all to neutral now. All presets are in fact NOT applied to the image but added in the tags of the image. When you open the RAW file the program you use (most in any case) will read the tags and apply those presets already… but since you can change all at this moment, I see no use for this anymore. I just take all as is and post process each. This post processing of the RAW file is often compared to developing your negative. And in some ways it is really the same. You can act on so many different parts you can completely change the image. A dull grey sky image can be transformed in full summer colors with the white balance settings … just to impressive really.
Today my body is set all the time to standard daytime light, neutral and no pre process at all. I have to say that the results are equally better then before.

Fourth thing I learned is that the RAW images are often blurry. At first you are horrified but once you understand that the pre processing of the body is NOT done and it is up to you to do it…. yes when you use a simple little digital box, it does a lot before you download it to your computer, it corrects colors, contrast, sharpening, eventually takes out blur. It has all been done for you. And this isn’t done when you use RAW, all is there to do… yep more fun, 10 mins to take 50 pictures and 50 minutes post processing to maybe have 10 good shots

Fifth learning. Don’t be surprised to have pixels when you crop the image to heavy. Yep, believe it or not but with all our digital post processing programs we are so used to zoom in and crop to re compose our image, we just forget sometimes that a so called blurry part is in fact well over zoomed. We tend to quickly to ‘zoom’ in to the object we want and then are disappointed. Digital zoom isn’t lens zoom, remember. Even if the original is A3 size, don’t expect to blow a little part to A4. You can indeed easily crop on a part since the original is so big (3888 * 2592 pixels for my raw images) but if you crop to 500 pix and then want it as a 1024 pix background … it won’t be nice.

Sixth learning : comparable focal length lenses have prices going from simple to 4 times the price. There IS a reason. Quality !
My Tamron isn’t as good as one of those white Canon USM L series lenses. But it costs half. Learn the limits of your lens quality wise, mine isn’t good when there is low light, aperture is to low for that and it really doesn’t produce nice shots. But in the outside with a nice sunny day, it is really good and gives nice results. Also when using zoom lenses, remember that the distortions are worst at both ends, so avoid to shoot at those points pictures with details. You’ll loose them. Tun a little back and results will already be better, and for example if you want to shoot a tiny bird at full zoom, be sure that it takes on average at least 1/5 of the frame to have details. Less then that, you can crop afterwards but with disappointing results.

All in all, it took me several weeks to learn basics. It also took me a few books, a few hundred shots and many post readings to get to the point I’m happy with my camera. For sure I’m still far from what can be done with it. I saw results from other people with the same material way better then what I can do today. Today I received another book on developing RAW images. Most probably while reading I’ll often will say ahhh gosh that’s why …. and go back to one of the older shots and re develop them with a result 10 times better. You’re warned, if you go for your first digital reflex camera, be prepared for disappointment, many learning and finally the first really good picture Similar Posts:

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