Stereophile's comments on our room
Not sure if everybody saw this, but Jason Victor Serinus, who wrote the show report for the Stereophile Blog this year, said some very nice things about the sound in our room:
Stereophile’s comments on our room at RMAF 2006
Funny, during some of the time that Jason was listening to the system I was talking to Albert Porter about cameras. Albert is a photographer and thinks nothing of spending big bucks for cameras whereas I agonize over spending $1200 bucks (and get looks from my most significant one like I was crazy for spending that kind of money 🙂 ).
Anyway, we effectively got kicked out of the room because we were making too much noise (which we were – apologies to everyone – but I was spacing out being so intent on trying to pick Albert’s brain because over the years as I get better at photographing hardware, the better his photos look in comparison to mine – I know, kind of backwards, but it is true).
I guess that is one of things about shows – it is both a social event and a listening event – and the two are really quite incompatible.
Anyway, we just want to thank Jason for his nice report.
I’m sure that you have posted your camera equipment somewhere on the site but I didn’t find it based on a casual glance.
What camera, lense(s), and flash do you use to get the great pictures. Having watched the posts over the past few years, I would say that you photographing of hardware has been excellent.
As I looked over the CEDIA report and pictures, I felt like I was at the show. Great job, keep up the good work.
P.S. Your rooms sounded great and the music was just fine. Maybe not audiophile approved with Barber and Krall but real music that most of us care to hear.
Thanks, Boehler. We really appreciate the kind words.
My camera: this is what I wrote for the Montreal 2006 show report, with modifications so that it is updated for what I did at both CEDIA and RMAF.
“The camera setup I used was a Canon 20D with a 580EX flash paired with a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce. I used the Canon 16-35L lens on full-auto for the room shots and at f/11 with a shutter speed of 1/40 second at ISO 200 for most of the closeups (after doing almost 1000 test snaps pre-show here on one of our systems in a similar, mostly artificially lighted room, ISO 400 and 800 was found to be too grainy for the type of crop and zoom work we do on some of the photos). We also used a Canon EF 50mm 1.4 mostly at the same f/11 setting.
I used f/11 for both its sharpness and for its someone deeper depth of field in order to get as much of the typical faceplate shots in focus as possible. Yes, f/11 is somewhat light-challenged so for especially problematic black components it was stepped down to f/8 or so.”
The challenge is to get the right depth of field – so that everything is in sharp focus, yet be bright enough to see everything – which is exacerbated by the low amount of light in a typical hotel room at a typcial show. This is what Albert does so well that I did not notice when I first started out. As usual, the more you know about a hobby, the more the subtleties drive you crazy 🙂
Take care,
Mike.