The Tech + Photo Blog

I’ve had a good number of requests asking about specific night photography techniques, and although I cover Photographing Scenes at Night and Handheld Photographs at Night, neither of those cover capturing intense, quick motion.

It’s difficult enough during broad daylight to capture fast-paced sports action, but oh my, come nightfall the problems are compounded. The two biggest problems sports photographers face at night are lack of light and non-standard white balance. The second of these is rather easy to remedy on the spot or, to a certain extent, in post production (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc). The issue of stopping action at night, however, is something that software can’t really fix, it must be dealt with while you’re out there shooting.

To capture outdoor sports moments at night, including football, soccer, baseball, etc… you’ll need a good dose of both equipment and technique. Let’s take you through the list…

The Lens

• Fast - For telephotos, fast usually means f2.8. If you’re shooting at 5.6, your getting 2-stops less worth of light making it to your sensor. That means your shutter speed must be twice as long!
• Telephoto - If you want to get close to the action, you’ll want 200mm or better on your lens. Most consumer and pro-sumer DSLR cameras help out here because of the 1.5x Crop Factor (read more about crop factor here). With a Nikon D300 for example, a 200mm lens gives you the equivalent zooming power of a 300mm lens. Nice!
• Image Stabilization / Vibration Reduction - This falls into the “nice to have” category. If you don’t have it, you can still get some great shots, if you do, it’ll boost your ability to get cleaner images. Remember though, that anti shake type technologies only help stop your own camera movement, they don’t help stop action. Again. VR and IS will not make blurry action shots any clearer. As you’ll read below, a monopod can sometimes help more than IS/VR features… Plus, it’s a whole heck of a lot cheaper!

The Accessories

• Monopod - This one is definitely helpful at night. A good sturdy monopod attached to your camera body (good) or lens (better) will help steady your shots at night by keeping the shake and vertical movement to a minimum.

The Camera

• High ISO - A fancy acronym for what is basically “sensitivity to light”, (read a primer on ISO here). A camera with the ability to shoot low-noise, high-ISO images helps a lot here. In some cases, you can make up for a slower lens with a super high-ISO, but you don’t want to rely on that because higher ISO can also mean a dirtier image. Do some test shots at ISO 1600, 3200, 6400, or whatever your highest settings are, and see which results are acceptable to you. For sports at night, you’ll usually want to peg that ISO as high as is reasonable.
• Manual Exposure - If you have the ability and the game is after sunset, set your exposure manually. The lighting conditions on the field are going to be very consistent all night in most stadiums. This takes less processing time/power from shot to shot and gives you consistency, which makes the editing process much easier.
• Put the Flash Away - For heaven’s sake, don’t use your flash. Keep it with you in case you have an up-close opportunity, but mostly you’ll want the flash off. Remember that the action is mostly going to be too far away for the flash to have any effect. What’s worse, shooting in auto mode with a flash will lead to grossly underexposed shots. If you do encounter a player close up in play, you’ll probably blind them and be taken out as they miss their mark and sail into you instead.

The Technique

• Follow the action - That is, keep an eye on things as you shoot and move your lens with the players and ball. When you get the hang of this technique, you’ll notice players becoming more crisp and backgrounds becoming more (motion) blurred. This is especially important when you’re working with equipment that forces you to use a slower shutter speed.
• Smooth and Steady Motion - Easier said than done, right? It’s important to practice your motions, ALL of them. Even a smooth movement when tracking the action can be nullified by that itchy, overbearing trigger finger. Practice being smooth in everything you do and your pictures will look as good as you

White Balance

• Custom Settings - Stadium lighting can be in a spectrum that your camera does not have a good pre-set white balance for. If it is already nighttime when you’re setting up, try to get a custom white balance reading right off the bat using a white background (a white card helps, but you can use any white object that’s handy). If your camera does not allow a custom white balance, try to toggle between settings until you find one that gives neutral looking whites and stick with it for the whole game.

Well, good luck and happy shooting!

-PL

Popularity: 14% [?]

We all like to root for the underdog. Slowly becoming a major contender, the ‘little guy’ Fotki has some amazing features, but is it trying to grow to far too fast?

Navigation
If there is a fault with Fotki, it is that there are just so many options (29 in fact) that users can’t help but be overwhelmed. From the perspective of the person uploading and organizing photos, the interface (see below) could use some better organization, as the array of buttons, menus and folders tend to clutter the interface.

When it comes to the photo viewing experience, most of the navigational clutter is cleaned up. Fotki earns high marks for ease of use on the visitor side, offering options for ordering prints, viewing a slide show, and sharing photos all at the viewer’s mouse click.

Fotki also offers a co-branding option for ‘professional’ photographers and it seems to work very well when browsing photos. The Fotki 2-panel interface simply drops in around your branded wrapper and allows clients to view photographs in a familiar setting. This approach works well all the way until your clients attempt to order prints, but we’ll get to that in the ‘Ordering Prints’ section of this article.

Uploading
Fotki offers quite an array of photo uploading options. Although there are many platform specific choices that operate only on Mac or Windows, I found the best option to be Fotki’s Java Uploader. This uploading tool loads in the web browser and offers an interface much like your file browser. Plus, it is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. How’s that for options!

If you’re running Windows 2000 or XP, your best option (and the coolest one I’ve seen yet) is Fotki’s Desktop Client. This little client allows you to upload photographs directly from the Windows file browser without having to log into Fotki using a web browser. It’s quick, easy and allows for on-the-fly resizing of your photos to minimize upload time. Neat!

Once you choose an uploading option, the process moves along quickly, depending of course, on your Internet connection speed.

Sharing Options
Sharing photos is also relatively easy. Sending cryptic links out to your friends and family is not part of Fotki’s game. Instead, they offer you a personal Website URL, such as “johnsonfamily.fotki.com”. Pointing your family to your photo album has never been easier! Well, once people memorize the “fotki” part, that is. You can also easily add password protection, print ordering, and an option to allow downloading of original-size files.

Ordering Prints
Fotki has kept their $0.09 pricing for 4×6 prints in-tact and it remains the best deal out there. Other options abound for print sizes at Fotki, ranging from small wallet prints to 24”x36” posters. Print prices are more than competitive with other major online photo sharing and printing Websites and print quality very good. What Fotki misses on is the other consumer-goods such as t-shirts, mugs, iPod covers, etc. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but worth noting. Watch for a comprehensive print-quality shootout between Fotki and the other major services including Kodak EasyShare, SnapFish and Shutterfly.

As I mentioned earlier, Fotki also offers co-branding with the option to sell your prints, either at cost or at custom set prices. This allows professionals the ability to turn a profit when shooting events that would normally require print order forms. The problem Fotki has, is that these transactions take place outside of your co-branded look and feel, most likely due to SSL encryption requirements, so the user does tend to feel a little uneasy during the ordering process. It also does not help Fotki’s professional-photographer report card that the ordering process does not offer an intuitive shopping flow if users are interested in purchasing multiple prints.

Summary
Wanting to print cards, shirts, aprons, and other crazy photo gifts? You might find yourself better off with a full-service Website such as kodakgallery.com or snapfish.com. Looking for a power-house backend for selling prints? I’d look elsewhere until Fotki cleans up their ordering process.

Update 9/15/08: Fotki does offer mugs and t-shirt printing, and has plans to expand their line of photo-related products (thanks, Nick).

However, despite its shortcomings in these areas, for photographers attracted by the co-branding option as a means of simply sharing images with clients, or those who are looking for a Website to share photos with friends and family, in addition to making glossy or matte finished prints, Fotki has some very compelling options in its corner.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Tech companies get way too involved in their own little world. Or, rather, I might say (without ruffling any feathers) engineers at tech companies. I think that a big reason why otherwise awesome technology is not adopted or widely used is because the back end is far too transparent to the end user. Most people have enough complexity in their lives. I personally know some programmers who slaved for the product, ate pizza for two weeks straight and peed in a bottle under their desk. These guys go through a lot, but that doesn’t mean the users should have to suffer the same fate to create a firewall access rule!

For example, Joe Bob User wants to give his employee access to a file on his server while the employee is at home. What Joe Bob should not have to know is that he is adding a new user account with WAN to LAN access through a VPN tunnel with a network address translation of a virtual IP on the same physical subnet as the protected network resource. I probably lost 95% of the general population in that last sentence, hell I even lost myself! Most network security appliances are far more convoluted even that that, and therein lies the problem.

What Joe Bob should have to do is drag a photo/avatar/name of a user over to a group that represents users with unlimited access to a resource (server, IP, file folder) and be done with it. The new user authenticates with user credentials and a VPN tunnel is created for them. All the user has to know is their login credentials (possibly two-factor) and that they are on a secure connection to what they want. All Joe Bob has to know is that the user can connect to the files he needs and other people can’t. Done.

This does not mean that the geeks are left out either. They love to tinker, love to know what is going on behind the scenes. And that can still be done without making things difficult. We can still show these types the logs, the statistics, the rule matrices, the advanced configurations, but do it with graphical interfaces that make sense of this information. I don’t care how geeky a person is, no one likes hunting through a 500 page guide full of error codes and messages to find out what is going on with their network.

Apple, as much as I sometimes loathe the cult-like club of a company, have done well in this regard; hiding all the technical junk from users in an effort to bring a simple, integrated experience. For tech geeks, myself included, that like to know what is going on behind the scene, this can be a turn-off. But for most of the world, simplicity (and by association, ease of use) is a very important element, and one that Apple captures. The end result, is that we should give customers an experience that takes the backend out of the picture, that takes the complexity of how a solution is built and hides it well, behind smoke screens, turning gears and ultimately, that shiny, glossy interface that gives them a sense of control with simplicity.

Simplicity such as this requires engineers… but it also requires direction that thinks outside of engineering conventions.

-PL

Popularity: 46% [?]

After 879 cups of coffee and a few too many sleepless nights, I am very proud to announce that the SonicWALL Secure Wireless Networking: Integrated Solutions Guide is published and now available on Amazon.com and in the “Networking” section of book retail stores everywhere.

All of the content in this wireless series of blogs is a teaser for the above book. A title which I’ve had the privilege of working on, along with some great writers and developers including Khai Tran, Joe Levy, Dave Parry, Jeremy Pollock, Susan Weigand, and countless others.

Today we’ll take a look at the difference between “coverage” and “bandwidth”. In other words, just because you have an access point covering a relatively small area does not guarantee access for as many people as you can fit into said small area. Conference room surfers and wireless Starbucks denizens beware!

Poor Placement for Bandwidth

In terms of wireless, “coverage” does not just refer to the physical area covered by an RF signal; coverage also refers to available bandwidth in that area. The figure below illustrates the site survey results of a typical small office where physical coverage is excellent, yet bandwidth constraints are often an issue.

Location A – Cubicles
These access points are well placed. One is in the corner, using a 90-degree antenna, and one is a ceiling-mounted unit with a standard omnidirectional antenna. Because most users in this area are hard-wired in cubicles, wireless demand is generally not very high, so using a single access point for a large area is an acceptable solution in terms of bandwidth.

Location B – Conference rooms
This access point is not well placed. Even though the single, ceiling-mounted omnidirectional access point offers decent physical coverage, this access point serves several conference rooms. Combined, these rooms are designed to hold over 150 users at any given time. Because of the high user density, and the fact that most of the users in this location are often using wireless, having a single access point installed here is a poor design choice.

Optimal Device Placement for Coverage and Bandwidth

A better choice for the conference room area would be to dedicate a single access point to each large conference room, using a lower transmit power to keep the signal within that room. The smaller conference rooms could be served at a ratio of one access point for every two conference rooms, depending on user density. Figure 19 illustrates optimal placement of access points serving the conference room areas and unmanned front entry.

Location A – Conference rooms
These two access points are well placed, lowering the signal strength (to limit reach) and splitting up the duty of covering conference rooms among multiple access points. Because of the high user density, and the fact that most of the users in this location are often utilizing wireless, having multiple access points in place is a good idea.

Location B – Front office / lobby
Wireless coverage is limited in this area since the front office is more open to the public than other areas of the office. If this company is using Virtual Access Points (VAPs) and has set up an SSID for guest login and Web access, then coverage in this area is more appropriate.

Overlapping Channels in High Traffic Areas

There are often situations where multiple access points must be set up in a confined area. College campuses are a good example of this necessity, where user density demands more bandwidth. More bandwidth demands higher access point density.

In these situations, a key limitation of 802.11b/g networks becomes apparent in that there are only three discrete channels to choose from.

Although 802.11b/g technology makes use of eleven (11) channels, only three (3) of those channels are “non-overlapping”. Think of this like you would an AM/FM radio. When you manually tune between radio stations, you hear two things. 1.) a bunch of fuzz, and 2.) both radio stations fighting to be heard through your speakers. The situation is just as bad for wireless networking. Because of this, most deployments stick with channels 1, 6, and 11, as they don’t interfere with each other.

When access points are placed very close together it results in overlapping channels and degradation in client stability and signal quality. Client wireless hardware is easily confused when it sees two access points of the same SSID, operating on the same channel. The result is that they tend to jump back and forth, causing momentary connection drops. Or worse, in a constant tug-of-war, the client simply refuses to connect to either access point.

SonicPoints and integrated wireless security appliances offer the following advanced solutions for the overlapping channels problem:
802.11 data rate – Adjust the minimum data rate at which the SonicPoint will send data to clients. Setting a minimum data rate of 24mbps, for example, will cause clients with an 11mbps connection to be ignored.

Transmit power – Adjust the power (dB) rate at which the SonicPoint transmits. As discussed earlier, you can experiment with this during the site survey, with the goal of providing a good balance of signal and bandwidth coverage. Areas that require more bandwidth can be serviced with multiple SonicPoints set to lower power settings.

Beacon intervals – Set a shorter beacon interval for your SSID/BSSID beacon (less time between beacons). This can help speed up handoffs between access points when users are mobile and when clients are initially connecting.

Channel selection – Although selecting AutoChannel will usually provide adequate performance for most situations, a deployment with many access points in close proximity to each other might warrant manual channel selection. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are the non-overlapping channels in the 2.4GHz range, and should be used for access points in close quarters. Manual channel selection adds a bit more complexity in subinterface and provisioning because you will need to carefully plan out and provision three distinct SonicPoint groups, one for each channel.

Getting into the nitty gritty, in reference to the illustration above, the management of these SonicPoints could use a global profile, but would require three separate groups—one for each wireless channel. These access point groups should be on separate physical interfaces in order for the channel assignments to be split while maintaining a group-based deployment.

That’s where things get a bit complicated. Especially in large-scale deployments. You’re on your own there.

Till next time…

-PL

Popularity: 40% [?]

Oh, the crappy airline seat. It’s almost an oxymoron in its own right. I mean, aren’t they all crappy?

Well, yes. And no.

I’m talking about the seat where the back does not recline, the tray table is stuck in-between the seats, the seat in front of you has no storage room underneath, the seat across the isle is not a seat but… a rank bathroom. Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, if you’re a guy or gal who is consistently flys in coach, you want to be as picky as I am about where exactly in coach you are sitting. Heck, even if you fly first class, not all seats are made alike.

Well, I came across this nifty Website called Seat Guru that helps solve this problem. The site shows you the cabin layout of almost any plane on almost any airline, along with color-coded seats, and notes on why each location might be good or bad. Pretty friggin helpful!

Also, what good would that information be if it were out of date? Well a large portion of the site is driven by frequent flyer feedback, so it stays relatively up to date. At least, i’s always been correct for me.

The website is http://www.seatguru.com/, it’s free and, given that you have to pay for peanuts and wine nowadays, it’s wicked helpful for making you feel like you are getting the most out of your coach seat.

Well, off to Raleigh for me this weekend. Glorious. How about you?

-PL

Popularity: 55% [?]

All of the content in this wireless series is just a teaser for the book I’ve been working on along with some great writers and developers. The book is titled “SonicWALL Secure Wireless Networking: Integrated Solutions Guide”, link coming as soon as it’s up. The book should show up in stores later this summer.

I told ya I’d get more of these out. This article continues the series on wireless networking. Today we’ll take a look at some common 802.11 interference issues. Although the content here applies to a large commercial deployment, these techniques can also be used in home or home office setups.

These days, finding an environment with no Radio Frequency (RF) interference or noise is fairly implausible. Only if you are setting up an office in a secluded redwood grove you can count on RF interference to be a non-issue. Well… even then, the redwood trees might just be among those fitted with high-gain cellular antennas, an all-too-common occurrence today. Regardless, you should expect to deal with some level of signal interference in your deployment.
The illustration in this article shows three common RF interference types. Let’s discuss what they are and how all three can be addressed.

Radio Frequency Interference

Location A – Rogue access points or wireless test lab:
Problem – Wireless product test labs and other (valid) rogue access points are problems in many WiFi deployments. Even if the access points in question are using different SSID nomenclature, channel overlapping is almost sure to be a bandwidth buster for legitimate wireless users.
Solution – Either eliminate all rogue access points, or force their owners to use a set channel that does not overlap with your distributed wireless solution. For dedicated wireless test labs, or areas that must be secluded from RF noise, convert that specific area into a Faraday cage, blocking a significant amount of wireless signals from entering or leaving the room.

The Faraday Cage was developed by 19th century inventor Michael Faraday. It demonstrates that a room built of a conductive material will shield its contents from electric or static electric currents. This effect also exists for wireless radio transmissions, although to a lesser extent.

Location B – Spectrum noise for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
Problem – Your phone system is partially wireless and uses the 2.4GHz spectrum. Whenever someone in the office takes a call on this phone, wireless connection speed is reduced in the surrounding area, and to top it off, callers often complain of white noise during their conversation.
Solution – Give VoIP a try. VoIP will work in tandem with your wireless network, instead of against it. Another option is to try a phone that uses a different spectrum, or to go completely wired for your phone service. For more on SonicWALL VoIP implementation and capabilities, refer to the Configuring VoIP SonicOS feature module available at: http://www.sonicwall.com/us/support

Location C – Off-network access points
Problem – Your neighbors need wireless, too! Unfortunately, the walls that separate you are made of drywall (refer to Table 2 on page 29 for more information on physical barriers). The result is that their wireless signals plus your wireless signals equals client confusion and RF noise. Wireless clients in this area may have trouble connecting or keeping a connection if your channels overlap with those of your neighbors.
Solution – Overpowering your neighbors with high-gain antennas is an option, but not a particularly neighborly one. Instead, you could simply use a different channel for wireless access points bordering this wall and ensure that your neighbors do the same. Performance in some dual-channel wireless devices may take a hit, but it is better than dropped connections—or unhappy neighbors.

Popularity: 54% [?]

Because taking a photograph is essentially a matter of capturing light, the night photograph is not always an easy thing to accomplish. Nevertheless there is a profound public interest in capturing photographic images at night. This article is geared towards the night scene or landscape and helps you “bend the rules” of photography a bit in order to take great nighttime photographs.

Recommended Equipment
Before attempting a night photo shoot, make sure you have these items packed:

• Digital or film camera with manual aperture and shutter speed capability
• Solid tripod
• Bright Flashlight
• Low ISO film (digital users can set their ISO to a low setting)
• Auxiliary light such as an off camera flash (optional)
• Cable release or remote trigger for your camera’s shutter (optional)

Find Your Scene
Find the night scene you want to capture and set up your tripod. Be sure to tighten your tripod’s camera mount snugly.

Part of finding the right scene also includes looking for dynamic lighting, interesting shapes, textures, and juxtapositions, anything that seems to have a special meaning at nighttime. Keep in mind, objects that are not particularly special during the day can become beautiful subjects after the sun sets.

Correct White Balance and ISO
The most common white-balance and ISO combination for night landscape photography is Tungsten/Indoor at ISO 200. Shooting with ISO 200 or lower is a good idea because it offers the best fidelity for your photograph, although it does force longer shutter speeds (another reason to invest in a good tripod). Try to avoid using the daylight white balance setting for night scenes as it will often capture skewed colors that are too yellow.

Set your Aperture
Pick an appropriate Aperture (f-stop) setting. For long night exposures (30 seconds or more) it is often recommended to use a bigger number (smaller opening) aperture such as f16 or f22 in order to capture crisp detail in the foreground and background. If your camera does not offer long exposure (at least 30 seconds), you should try using an aperture setting of f2.8 or 5.6 in order to capture enough light for a properly exposed photograph. Keep in mind that with smaller number apertures, focus will start to become a major issue. You might want to keep a flashlight handy to aide yourself in focusing at night!

Meter for Light and Select Shutter Speed
Lighting conditions can be so tricky at night, they tend to trick your light meter too! If you are shooting in an area with sparse artificial lighting (street lamps, neon signs, car headlights), you will often find your light meter overexposes the photograph. As a starting point, try picking a shutter speed that is 2-3 stops faster (underexposed) from what your meter reading tells you. Shutter speeds for night scenes can range anywhere from 15 seconds to several minutes.

An exception to the “2-3 stops under” rule is when you are shooting under completely natural light such as moonlight. If there are no artificial lights to be found, you can often trust your meter reading for good exposure.

Focusing at Night
Focusing at night can be difficult because built in autofocus systems cannot do their job without light. If you can’t get a good manual or auto focus lock on your subject, try pointing that flashlight (bet you’re glad you brought it now) at the center of where your camera’s focus point is. Now hold the shutter button half-way down, but not enough to take a picture. This will help obtain a good focus lock. After you’ve focused once for a scene, switch to manual focus if possible and your camera will not have to hunt for focus each time you take an exposure.

If you are photographing a landscape where the objects are mostly far away from your lens, try using a small aperture (say, f22), and focusing manually to infinity (as far out as you can focus). This technique often gives good results in situations where it is otherwise difficult to focus.

Getting Creative
If you have the optional off-camera flash (or other light source) available, try using it to light parts of your scene. Fire the flash from different angles or even paint the scene with a flashlight while the exposure is going. Since night exposures tend to be many seconds (or minutes) long, you should have ample time to create your own dynamic lighting.

In the shot above, I used a single flash and simply snuck across the middle of the frame (while still exposing) to fire the flash again with a different gel. Most of the time in long exposure night shots, there won’t even be sufficient light for the camera to record an image of you walking across the frame. Ooooh, you’re the phantom photographer!

Well, have fun at it… till next time!

-PL

Popularity: 72% [?]

The photographer’s trick bag can run pretty deep with gizmos and optical sorcery, but this one is downright intuitive. You may not be throwing away your VR lens in favor of the “$1 Image Stabilizer”, but perhaps it’s a good thing to throw in your gear bag for emergencies. From experience, I’m thinking something like: monopod gets force-checked by TSA, falls off baggage cart and is run over by a 200,000lb pound plane.

Even if you don’t think that could happen to you, check out the video from my fellow Eagle Scout…

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - Watch the top videos of the week here

Popularity: 66% [?]

This is a good one. And apparently it’s pretty damned common too.

I installed Office 2007 recently, and all of a sudden Microsoft seems to think that I want to send Email in French.

At first I was a little puzzled as I read the first sentence in my email (post-spell check). Why on earth would Outlook suggest I say something like “Wyat iso gong on hère”? Now, I can’t be sure — a French speaker could help me better — but I think Outlook just changed my fairly standard “let’s do lunch” email into some statement about me taking a young stag to court (see below, you be the judge).

At least it left my name alone!

Clicking around a bit in Outlook Express, and eventually looking into the spell checking menu, I found that the only drop down for Language dictionaries was “French (France)”. Nice.

Microsoft are indeed aware of a problem where, upon installing Office 2007, Outlook Express “forgets” how to spell check in English (and Spanish, and German).

Apparently, this has to do with the fact that Outlook, the little leach of a program it is, using Microsoft Word for all of it’s word processing. That includes spell check. When Microsoft updated the spell check modules for English, Spanish and German, well, they didn’t bother to make sure poor little Outlook Express could read any of these dictionaries.

How to Fix It?

There are a few options:

1. If you still have the old Microsoft Office CDs (as in you upgraded from a previous version) , you can go back and install just the spell checking features from the old Microsoft Office suite. Outlook Express should pick those up and it’ll be able to understand English.
2. You can download a third party spell checking plugin such as Spell Checker for OE.
3. Upgrade to (and pay for) Outlook 2007

That’s about it. I’m going for the second of three. Let me know how your’s works out.
-PL

Popularity: 54% [?]

New technology is becoming more adept at solving other technology-related problems, but we should learn that it will never be able to solve all of our human-related problems. In fact, relying solely on technology, often makes things worse. A great example of technology gone completely berserk and useless is Ethanol fuel. So today, I’d take a quick look at this superhero fuel and the country that is backing it…

Yes, here comes team America trying to solve the “alternative fuel” puzzle by pushing corn-based ethanol as a cleaner burning, homegrown alternative. Ethanol is a natural food substance which provides a renewable energy source and helps decrease our dependency on foreign oil while stimulating domestic economic growth at the same time.

WHAT?

Well now, let not my opinionated banter sway you. Read up on some of the wondrous facts made available by our government on behalf of ethanol fuel. The following are the top 3 reasons why we should use corn-based ethanol to power our vehicles:^[1]

Boosting Agriculture

Because it is made primarily from corn and other agricultural products, ethanol increases demand for these crops, increases the prices farmers receive for these crops, and brings economic development opportunity to the rural areas where the ethanol is made.

Let me give you another little tidbit of information here. American farmers already can’t produce enough corn to meet demand in the domestic market. Yes people, we use over half of our corn production to feed livestock and other forms of meat. Yes, it’s a completely inefficient use of energy in and of itself. That’s a whole different rant, and it’s a tangent I don’t want to go into here so keep reading…

Yup. American’s corn farmer’s can’t produce enough corn to feed the appetite of their fellow countrymen, countrywomen, and bovines yet we are burning it to make gas.I’ll give them one thing here. Ethanol does increase demand for corn, which in turn increases the price of corn. Nice. So I’m paying more for corn because you want to create some illusion that your mammoth V-8 SUV is environmentally friendly? OK, just a few little problems with that…

First, the inefficient distillation process used to create ethanol produces waste from what used to be a great deal of usable food and takes more energy to create than the energy it will provide to an ethanol-powered vehicle.^[2]

Second, ethanol isn’t always cleaner burning than gasoline.^[4]

Economic Stimulation

Ethanol production will generate an additional $19.6 million in household income annually.

Wonderful. Give America a minor shot of adrenaline right where it counts, in the thyroid. Or is it the buttox? At any rate, that doesn’t really matter. Really, do you know how irrelevant $19.6 million is to the American economy as a whole? Dwight Freeney, one of the top paid NFL players, was given a salary of over $30 million last year. Sure, he’s overpaid. But that’s not the point. The point is, a paltry 20 mil is nothing to a country whose national debt increases by 1.69 billion per day.^[3]

Folks, let me also remind you that this is one of the purported TOP 3 REASONS why we should buy into ethanol.

Cleaner Air

Ethanol blends are likely to reduce carbon monoxide emissions in vehicles by between 10% - 30%, depending upon the combustion technology.

First, that HUGE percentage range given is really disconcerting on its own. Second, carbon monoxide emissions have already been reduced over 70% simply by creating improved engine and catalytic-based control technologies.^[4] Many gas burning cars, such as the Hyundai Elantra and Volkswagon Jetta (PZEV versions) are certified as partial-zero-emissions vehicles. Gas can generally burn as clean as ethanol, so please remind me why we are wasting a potential food source if there are currently gas burning cars that are already cleaner than ethanol burning cars?^[5]

Do I really need to close this out with some comment on how terrible of an idea Ethanol is? On how appalling it is that we are investing billions of dollars on a fuel that, even if every last kernel of domestic corn available was used, would put a roughly 10% dent in our gasoline needs?^[7] There is no hope of replacing any remarkable portion of our energy needs with Ethanol.

Let’s start discussing other avenues. Perhaps ones filled with bicycles and pedestrians instead of cars powered by Orville Redenbacher.

-PL

Sources:

[1] According to the American Coalition for Ethanol - http://www.ethanol.org/index.php?id=34&parentid=8
[2]Roger Segelken, Cornell University - http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/Pimentel-ethanol.html
[3]According to the national debt clock - http://brillig.com/debt_clock/
[4] Statistic from Clean Car Campaign - http://www.cleancarcampaign.org/emissions.shtml
[5]CBC News - http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/03/30/ethanol-emissions.html
[7]University of Minnesota - http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Ethanol_fuel_presents_a_cornundrum.html

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