Thewsreviews New Look

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: I'm biased.

The Long Version: When I first decided to go back to writing for a hobby, I never really expected anyone but me to see it. As a result, I chose a template design that I like for my own reason, and not the one that's the simplest, most legible, or most appealing. Making matters worse, over the past eighteen months I've increasingly gravitated to simple monochrome layouts, and shot-on-white photography. The look of the blog was not working the way I wanted it to.

The new layout is a better match to my other websites, looks more like my photography, works better with my Blackberry, and uses Verdana throughout, which is a more legible humanist sans-serif and a better match for my usual Myriad. I like it, and hopefully it makes the site easier and more pleasant to read.

And a bit of thewsreviews trivia: I picked the old template as a tribute to the original blogger site for The Online Photographer. I've been playing with a new layout on my test site for a little while now, and finally made the switch in honour of TOP's fourth birthday. I've previously mentioned that the Luminous Landscape is one of my top three influences on this blog; TOP and Mike Johnson is one of the others.

Spinning Tokens - The 2010 TTC Fare Increase

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 1 out of 5
Yeah, but: If only they'd done this before.

The Long Version: TTC tokens are great little things. Unlike the paper tickets that the Toronto Transit Commission phased out in 2008 (for adult fares), they don't get ruined if the go through the wash, they work in the automatic turnstiles that the TTC uses in all of its entrances, and they're more difficult to counterfeit - notwithstanding that the new bimetal design was introduced to get rid of five million fakes of the old aluminum design.

A TTC token has no face value - they're worth one ride, no matter how much that costs. The 2010 fare increase makes them the safest investment in town; their value is guaranteed to jump from $50 to $55 per troy ounce. According to information from the TTC, reprinted by the Globe and Mail newspaper: "Although there are about three million tokens in circulation, staff rely on about 400,000 tokens being recycled throughout the day in order to keep from running out." That means that there's only a seven or eight day supply in the system, and now people have a good reason to hang on to them. What could possibly go wrong?

The twenty-five cent fare increase was announced two months before it comes into effect, so it's no surprise that the TTC has had a surge in demand. They quickly - but not immediately - rationed token sales before eventually stopping them completely, which is the same thing they did the last time they increased the transit fares. But the TTC also has a corporate culture that emphasizes blaming their customers when things go wrong, which includes people actually using the transit system. The Toronto Star recently published an article "Hoarders Foiled as TTC Halts Token Sales" which is one of many articles that contains my favourite quote of the week: "TTC chair Adam Giambrone said the commission could have lost $5 million had it not suspended token sales."

Five MILLION Dollars! (and Curses, foiled again!)

To have their customers stockpiling tokens cost them five million dollars of lost revenue, then we would need to be holding on to every single token ever minted and have the fare increase by $1.67. Even the earlier unspecified loss of 'millions' in unearned revenue from customers buying their fares at a lower rate is implausible when the fare is only increasing by twenty-five cents. One million tokens, a third of the total in circulation, will increase in value by only $250,000 unless there's something seriously wrong with my math.

But token hoarding works both ways. The TTC is spending $50,000 to print temporary paper tickets that will only be valid for two months, and they'll need to be topped up by adding an extra 25¢ to the farebox each time they're used in January. The TTC won't be selling any more tokens until the fare increase comes into effect, which means that the TTC will also be hoarding tokens to its financial advantage. They'll make back the $50,000 investment - twenty-five cents at a time - by not selling a mere 200,000 tokens until after the price increase. By their own numbers, that's an average half-day's volume, and only one-fifteenth of the three million tokens in circulation.

More fun with numbers: inspired by information supplied by the TTC, the Globe and Mail writes in an article from November 22, "Ticket hoardings were costing the TTC an estimated $45,000 a day as frugal riders bought 20 per cent more tokens than they needed, stocking up in anticipation of the increase." [Note to the editors: Hoardings are temporary wooden fences. The correct phrasing should be 'Ticket hoarding was costing' - but I digress.]

A twenty percent increase on four hundred thousand is sales of an extra eighty thousand tokens a day, and at 25 cents each that's a potential loss of $20,000 - not quite half of the amount that the blame-the-riders movement is trying for. But even if the claim that the TTC makes of $45,000 a day is true, it's still less than half of what they'd need to reach their claimed loss of $5 million, even assuming that their losses started the day the fare increase was first proposed. And just for fun, let's remember that these costs are potential revenue that they won't get from the fare increase, which is valued at some $65 million dollars over the course of the year, and most of which will come from more expensive transit passes.

The TTC is using implausible numbers to villainize a huge number of its own customers, in what seems like a calculated effort to make themselves look like victims when people don't want to pay 10% more for the same intermittent-to-lousy service. This is nothing new, but it controls the discussion and intentionally directs it away from talk about how the system - transit and funding - is broken, and what can be done to fix it. Costs go up; the day-to-day and year-to-year fumbling of the status quo remains unchanged.

There's no question that the TTC is underfunded. There's also no question that the senior management hates its riders. Could those two things be related?

Manfrotto 345 Tabletop Tripod

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: Save some money and buy the expensive one first.


The Long Version: I've bought several tabletop tripods over the years, and I still know where a couple of them are. The Manfrotto 345 is far more expensive than the others that I've bought, but it turns out that it's worth it. This is a very solid little tripod that holds small cameras and speedlights with complete reliability, and can be persuaded to hold bigger gear, as well. It has probably appeared in more of my reviews than anything except for white bristol board.

I see that there's also a Manfrotto 709B, which looks similar but isn't the same. The 709B is part of the lower-cost Modo line, and the ball head is different. The much-more-expensive 345 is built out of a 482 ball head, 209 legs, and 259B extension. It also includes a case, which might be a reason why the whole 345 'kit' is a greater cost than the sum of its parts.

The tripod can work with or without the extension in place, and is much easier to pack when it's in pieces. (Note that I've never actually used the case that comes with the kit.) It's solid and not particularly light, but when I took most of the contents of the photo above (an E-510 replaced the E-1) on a trip to Australia, there was no way the tripod was staying at home. It's part of my standard kit for product photography because it can handle a strobe with a little 6x8" softbox attached, and takes up less room than my gorillapod. What it gives up in flexibility, it makes up for in stability, although with the way the extension tube telescopes, it's actually pretty flexible as well. Naturally, since it's essentially a low-level tripod with a long centre column, increasing the height decreases the stability. Compounding that limitation, its leg length and angle can't be adjusted, so there's no way to level the tripod on an uneven surface. TANSTAAFL.

When it's low and positioned with a leg forward under the lens, the 345 can handle something as heavy as an Olympus 35-100/2.0, and for added entertainment I've added the 1.4 teleconverter and an E-1 with the battery grip. The total load is about six pounds, so when it's heavy but balanced it still holds securely. I wouldn't want to do this with the extension in place, or on a windy day, but that has as much to do with the small footprint of the legs as the strength of the Manfrotto 482 ball head. I'm not going to endorse it for all-around field use, or say that it can overcome physics - it's just a small tabletop tripod. But it is a very good one.

I have two complaints about the 345, aside from the fact that it's more expensive as a kit at B&H than it is as functional components. The first is that the telescoping extension isn't the easiest to use. I've added the rubber bands for a little extra grip, which makes turning the locking collar much easier. Some additional knurling would have solved that particular problem, and it's not like Manfrotto to miss something like that. It's also not uncommon for photographers to solve equipment shortcomings with rubber bands and tape, so I can let that one go. The other problem is that after six years, the little cork non-slip disks have fallen off of the tripod feet. That's a bit more of a stumper, but I'm sure that a little ingenuity will be able to solve that problem, too.


My two highest endorsements are these: when I'm using it, I forget what it costs; and if something tragic happened to it, I'd go out and buy another one. It's not sexy, but it's reliable and it works. That's enough for me.