You know its finals time…
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in My Projects, Programming, School Related on June 9, 2010
A few quarters ago, I took PHIL 230. Our final exam had a quote id section so I quickly wrote a quiz app which I distributed to the class. Since then, the professor has been circulating the link as a study tool. So once a quarter, my web traffic spikes a day before each final exam 
.
This Quarter's Statistics
Last Quarter's Statistics
If you want to try it out, swing over to: http://www.prenticew.com/phil230quiz/.
DISCLAIMER: I wrote this in all of two hours or so and never looked back… I know there are some backend flaws, so don’t break it please
Senior Project Done!
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in School Related, Technology/Computers on June 4, 2010
Finally! It is done! The weight of 50 pages of senior project in my hands make me happy. If you’re interested in reading it, it’ll be up on digital commons soon enough (keep an eye out for a link).
Learning Photography — Prime Lenses
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in Photography on May 31, 2010
Whether you’re new to photography or you’ve been shooting for a while, if you’re still using your kit zoom lens — you should consider getting a prime lens as your next lens.
An EF 85mm f/1.2L II mounted on my 40D
What is a “prime” lens? A prime lens is a lens with a fixed focal length meaning that it can not zoom. So you may wonder why in the world would you want to get a lens that doesn’t allow you to zoom? Well there are at least a dozen reasons I could give you — among them: primes are cheaper (generally for the quality you get), sharper, and faster.
Zoom optical systems are generally fairly complex because they have to correct for more factors; thus, with a simpler design, primes often require less glass (lower price) and/or produce a higher quality image (higher image quality). Furthermore, prime lenses often have larger apertures (especially for the price). You’ll find primes with apertures around f/1.4 for under $500, whereas most zoom lenses with an aperture of f/2.8 are going to very likely cost over $1k! Faster apertures also make these lenses great for taking photos at night or in a dim room without a flash. The shallow depth of field makes these lenses great for taking portraits with a beautiful background blur as well.
In addition to the tangible benefits, prime lenses also help reinforce important concepts in photography. Many photographers become lazy and use zooming to compose their images. Zooming rather than physically moving yourself to recompose your shot makes a big difference! Using a prime lens forces you to move around to recompose and makes you a better photographer. Using a prime also encourages the photographer to focus on other thing such as focusing and exposure.
Shows the same subject shot at 24mm vs. 200mm.
You can see in this example that the same subject shot at two different focal lengths produce two extremely different images. Notice how the wide shot at 24mm emphasizes the shape of the glass and there is quite a bit of the background in view. In contrast, the 200mm shot compresses the detail and the glass looks pretty flat. Not as much of the background is also in the shot because the field of view is narrower. Because of this, telephoto lenses are generally preferable for shooting portraits because it does not emphasize facial features such as the nose or chin.
So which lenses should I get? Here’s a list of some prime lenses…
Cal Poly Spring Dance Show 2010
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in Photography on May 30, 2010
Highlights: Cal Poly Spring Dance Show – Images by Prentice Wongvibulsin
This year’s student choreographed dance show was even better than last year’s! You can find all 250 photos in the gallery below (http://www.photoshelter.com/gallery/Spring-Dance-Show-2010/G0000X2lu0PuqW1U). Also, photos from last year’s show.
Spring Dance Show 2010 – Images by Prentice Wongvibulsin
Discovering Research Week at Cal Poly YouTube Ad
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in Uncategorized on April 29, 2010
This begun as just a joke over dinner, that we should do a spoof of “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercial for Old Spice, and now — here it is:
Discovering Research Week @ Cal Poly (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E84Ax0p_1c)
When we shot this, we didn’t actually have the Discovering Research Week passports so I got to use Mocha for AE for the first time. Mocha is AMAZING. I also never used the sky as a blue screen before but it worked surprisingly well!. Unfortunately it was very windy when we shot this and I lack time and fancy-expensive equipment to make things better. All this was shot on camcorders rented from MDS on campus. Maybe some day I can afford the 5D Mark II
.
Special Thanks to
Dana Tryde at Clark Valley Farm
El Abar the horse
and Kara Schricker
If you’re bored, check out the other commercials I’ve done for eWeek: http://www.youtube.com/cpsloesc
Erasing Iterators from STL Containers (STL Vector, etc.) in a Loop
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in Programming on April 19, 2010
for( vector<aType>::iterator it = aVec.begin();
it != aVec.end();
it = (*it).shouldDelete()?aVec.erase(it):it+1){
// do stuff
}
Jillian in Black and White
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in Photography on February 28, 2010
I wondered around downtown with this wonderful lady doing her photo project today and decided to do one of my own! She was making portraits of employees in local businesses… and I was documenting her .
Entire Set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/echo0101/sets/72157623406726327/
Kara & Robbie
Posted by Prentice Wongvibulsin in Photography on February 28, 2010
I photographed this wonderful couple a few weeks ago! These are Kara & Robbie’s engagement photos.
The set on Flickr can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/echo0101/sets/72157623511918248/
Please click here to enlarge the photos if you are viewing in a browser.
