ming thein – Ming Thein

Photoessay: Tsukiji Market

February 27, 2012 by Ming Thein

Tsukiji Market is the spiritual home of sushi, sashimi and most Japanese cuisines. Every single edible (and sometimes perhaps best not eaten) creature from the deep can be found for sale here; how anybody decides which supplier to go to is baffling, because there are just so many of them. It’s also a chaotic environment where photographers might get taken out by one of those three-wheeler carts if they’re not paying attention. The authorities closed off the early-morning tuna auctions – where fish fetch as much as US$150,000 each – to tourists and photographers because it was distracting business. Having been lucky enough to witness it firsthand, I think it’s safe to say that you wouldn’t have a clue what’s going on there anyway – they don’t even speak to each other in normal Japanese, and bids are conducted by a system of secret handshakes that are hidden behind a glove. One has to be there very early to see any action at all – simply because the food has to reach its destination in time for lunch. And no trip would be complete without a hearty breakfast at one of the many surrounding stalls that support the workers. Here’s an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Tokyo workshop with Leica. MT

Series shot at various times with the Nikon D3 and D200

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: japan, market, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photo, photoessay, photography, street, street photography, thein, tokyo, tsukiji

POTD: International Polar Bear day

February 27, 2012 by Ming Thein

Bob and Nadiah. Leica M9-P, 90/4 Macro-Elmarit M + SB700

Today is international polar bear day. Bundle up and turn down your thermostat a little (or if you live in the tropics like us, reduce your air conditioning power) to try to slow global warming a little. We don’t want all the polar bears to go extinct now, do we? MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD Tagged With: leica, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, polar bear, potd, thein

A word (or ten) on bokeh

February 26, 2012 by Ming Thein

Bokeh. Possibly one of the most misunderstood, yet most bandied-about terms in the world of photography today – right up there with dynamic range, resolution, A-is-noisier-than-B and other such myths.

The term is a derivative of the Japanese word boke, which doesn’t really have a good translation into English. The closest we can get is ‘the nature/ character of blur’. It’s certainly not quantitative in any way – what constitutes good bokeh and what is bad or ugly bokeh is very much up to the viewer. There are some who like ‘busy’ bokeh where out of focus areas take on double images, swirls or other patterns; some like the pentagons and other shapes on highlights. Yet others prefer a uniform wall of gaussian blur foreground-background.

Cigarette. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF 85/1.4

What factors affect bokeh? Mechanically, the lens design plays a big part. The nature of the optical formula and placement and design of the diaphragm, specifically. In general, round diaphragms produce the best bokeh; though having said that, the Leica 50/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH has some of the nicest bokeh around, but that has a strange multi-pointed star-shaped diaphragm. Telecentric lens designs generally have better bokeh than conventional spherical designs; this is because you’re less likely to get crossing of rays after and before the nodal point within the lens, causing double images and the like. It’s also why most of the new Nikon f1.4 lens designs have beautiful, non-offensive, smooth bokeh; they’re all telecentric designs and optimized for digital sensors.

One important concept to explain up front is depth of field. For a given aperture and focal length, a certain percentage of the focus distance will be in acceptable focus. This percentage doesn’t change with the focus distance; the difference is the longer the focus distance, the wider the actual, physical range that comes into focus.

The beginnings of snow. Ricoh GR-Digital III – yes, a compact!

The rules of optics also play a big part. The degree of blur is related to:
1. Real focal length (not effective 35mm focal length; longer focal lengths have shallower depths of field and thus more pronounced blur)
2. Aperture (wider apertures have shallower depths of field and thus more pronounced blur)
3. Distance between camera and subject (shorter subject distance means shallower depth of field – remember the percentage explained above).
4. Distance between subject and background (the further away your background from your subject, the more the blur).

Indian wedding. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

With that, let’s look at two examples.

A. Worst case: subject is far away from the camera and close to the background; very short real focal length and moderate aperture. What will happen? Everything will be in focus. This scenario is precisely why compact cameras are incapable of delivering any noticeable blur under most conditions.

B. Best case: subject is close to the camera, with a distant background; long real focal length and fast aperture. This is your typical telephoto shot: beautiful isolation and no hint of foreground or background. It’s why you can shoot through light foliage or fences with a telephoto and not even notice their presence in the final image.

Evening. Leica M9-P, 50/0.95 Noctilux-M ASPH

Good and bad bokeh, generally?

Remembering that it’s down to personal preferences, most individuals prefer:
1. Good gaussian defocus in background areas: uniform blur all over, with no double imaging
2. No color fringing on highlights, either left-right (lateral) or background-foreground (longitudinal).
3. Round highlights with uniform luminance, smooth edges and no internal pattern (those circles you sometimes see in out of focus areas are interference patterns caused by imperfect lens grinding or minute surface imperfections in moulded plastic elements)
4. Similarly smooth uniform blur in foreground out of focus areas. The foreground is something that few people look at or consider when addressing bokeh; it’s important because distracting foreground bokeh means that you can’t shoot through or around things. Nice foreground bokeh dramatically increases your composition options.

Flowers. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF.2 2/28 Distagon

Which lenses do I think deliver good bokeh?

There may be some surprises in this list.
1. Any of the fast-aperture super telephotos.
2. The new Nikon f1.4 AFS lenses; 24, 35, 85.
3. The Nikon 105/2 DC and 135/2 DC.
4. Most of the Leica M ASPH lenses; specifically the 35/1.4 ASPH FLE, 50/1.4 ASPH, 50/0.95 ASPH, 90/2 APO ASPH. I don’t personally like the swirly bokeh of the older f1.0 Noctiluxes – caused by uncorrected spherical aberration.
5. The Zeiss ZF 85/1.4 Planar, ZF 35/2 Distagon.
6. Special mention to the Zeiss ZF 2/28 ‘hollywood’ Distagon – its curved plane of focus increases the apparent bokeh at the border and edge zones because the plane of focus is brought even closer to the camera than the central zone. It’s a pretty unique optical formula, and delivers spectacular results.
7. The Ricoh GR-Digital III – what, a compact? Yes. Used close up and wide open, the bokeh is up there with the best of them.
8. The Canon 85/1.2 L II
9. The Olympus ZD 45/1.8

Parting shot: Light is much more important than bokeh. You can always isolate a subject by the way it’s lit regardless of your lens and camera; you can’t do it if you’re using a telephoto lens as a crutch. What happens when you can’t get far away enough to get the whole subject in the frame? MT

Apple. Olympus E-PM1, ZD 45/1.8

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: bokeh, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photography, thein

POTD: Bridge shadows

February 26, 2012 by Ming Thein

Bridge shadows, Prague. Leica V-Lux 30

A photograph doesn’t always have to have a point; sometimes the visual interplay of light, shadow, texture and pattern is enough. I shot this with a compact super zoom – the Leica V-Lux 30 (Panasonic TZ20) because my M9-P would not have been able to get the right perspective with ‘only’ a 50mm as my longest lens (this shot required about 105mm or thereabouts). MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD Tagged With: abstract, leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, photography, potd, thein

Photoessay: Ginza

February 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

This article is the first in a new series of photoessays – a short series of 5-10 images, a small amount of words, and a return to putting the focus on the pictures rather than just the how-tos and equipment masturbations. After all, the final image is what it’s all about.

Ginza, Tokyo is known for two things: being a temple to the height of luxury consumerism, and having the most expensive real estate on earth. Here’s an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Tokyo workshop with Leica. MT

Series shot at various times with the Nikon D3 and D200

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: ginza, japan, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, nikon, photo, photoessay, photography, street, street photography, thein, tokyo

POTD: Breguet La Tradition, part 2

February 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

Another take on the same watch shot a few days ago with the Nikon D700. Leica M9-P, Visoflex III, Bellows II, Zeiss ZM 2/50 Planar. And one Nikon SB700, two SB900s.

A very different view to the D700, right? The transparent trapezoid is a pallet jewel, which controls the locking and unlocking (tick and tock) of the escapement, along with transferring rotation impulses to the balance. It’s barely visible to the naked eye, and no more than a millimeter long, which makes the whole frame around 8x12mm, or about 3:1 magnification. Lighting is normally tricky, but I got lucky with this watch – it has a transparent cutout around the back precisely where the pallet fork and jewels are, which allowed me to light it from behind, with just a little fill from the front to provide definition to the gears. MT

Filed Under: Leica, POTD, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: breguet, escapement, la tradition, leica, macro, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, photography, potd, thein, watch

The perils of lots of ideas, but not quite enough sleep

February 25, 2012 by Ming Thein

I couldn’t sleep last night (again) but as compensation I did wake up with an idea.

Put your favorite lens on your favorite camera.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

Not this, but close. I have thought of this before, but it only works for macro, and not that well.

So I dug out the adaptor rings, to make another sacrilegious unholy matrimony between systems.

This guy (Zeiss ZF.2 2/28 Distagon):

Plus this guy (the M9-P. A lens-lens thing goes beyond wrong and into completely impractical territory.):

Yee har!

Except, there’s no RF coupling or live view.

Oops. *slaps forehead*

The very limited testing I did do (you didn’t think I’d just mount it and not try to take a picture, did you?) showed the combination definitely has promise. And f2 still requires some finesse to focus accurately on full frame, especially high resolution full frame. But there were no odd artifacts, and the lens is definitely capable of resolving more than the sensor. Curiously, I think it might even perform slightly better on the M9-P’s offset microlens-and-non-telecentric-wideangle-corner-optimized sensor than the D700’s uniform one. Too bad we’ll have to wait until Leica eventually brings live view functionality to an M body to find out.

In the meantime, I’m going to find out if Miyazaki-san of MS Optical (makers of those lens-cap triplet designs and noted lens surgeon) can make an RF-coupling, though I suspect it may be tough because the focusing ring rotates the wrong way, and the focus throw is much shorter than normal Leica M RF lenses. MT

Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews, Leica Tagged With: adaptor, distagon 28, leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein, zeiss

The importance of shot discipline

February 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

I’m going to start by defining shot discipline. There are two aspects: timing and technique.

Miss it, and the moment is gone. Procession, Nepal. Nikon D700, 24/1.4

Part one: Timing

Imagine having a revolver, and say four enemies that are going to come towards you in a short space of time – too short for you to reload. You’ve got six shots. If you’re good, you’ll only need four; if you miss three times, you’re screwed. How is this relevant to photography? What part of the workflow is limited to just a few shots? Your buffer, especially during fast paced action. (Why do you think pro cameras have huge buffers? Insurance.) Anticipation and waiting for the critical moment – that peak in action when everything comes together – is very important; more so if your camera doesn’t have a motor drive or a huge buffer.

The revolver analogy is a good one. I’d compare a D3/D4 class camera to a machine gun with a telescopic sight: it’s complicated, but you can spray and pray indefinitely and probably get something good – even if you have no skill or experience whatsoever, simply by the sheer weight of statistics. (If you take a thousand photographs, one or two will probably be okay – similarly, aim in the right general direction and you’ll probably hit the target once or twice). In experienced hands, it’s impossible NOT to get the shot.

Honestly, I found shooting with the D3 too easy. Same goes for the D700. The M9-P, on the other hand, is a completely different beast. It’s like a Magnum .44 or a Desert Eagle 50 Cal; utterly useless to a beginner, but a fantastic tool if you know how to use it. But, you pretty much only get six RAW shots when the barrel is hot. See why timing is important while shooting action?

Do I find it limiting? Yes, but only if I’m not paying attention. And guess what: that was the simple part to shot discipline.

Spot the Himalayas. Would more resolution be better? Actually no, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The scene itself was resolution-limited by atmospheric mist. Nikon D700, 85/1.4 G

Part two: Technique

The higher the pixel density of your camera, the more technique matters. For a fixed sensor size, small movement on a low-resolution camera matters less than on a high resolution one. Let’s say camera A has 4MP, and camera B has 16MP – that’s double the resolution, not quadruple (2x in each linear axis). If you move by a factor of half a pixel on camera A, the image is still pretty much aligned with the original pixel it was focused on; your edges might be a bit blur, but you could probably use unsharp masking to fix the perceived acuity. If you move by the same factor on camera B, you’re going to be out by a whole pixel. And that’s not fixable by unsharp masking. Increase the resolution further, and the effect is compounded. Those original 2.7MP APSC cameras were pretty forgiving, actually. The 24MP APSC ones will not be.

Technique actually covers several things.

1. Stability. This is the biggest one. If you don’t move, then your edges will stay where you focused them on the sensor plane. All will be sharp. So how do we achieve this? Several ways – the easiest is a sturdy tripod. Good shutter tripping technique – roll gently, don’t jab. And the last way is to reduce apparent movement by maintaining a high shutter speed, either by cranking the ISO, using faster lenses, or using a flash.

mmm, lenses.

2. Lenses. Good lenses have better resolving power, right? Yes, but these days, the difference is mostly visible only when shot at maximum aperture. By f8 or f11, most lenses are capable of resolving identically to near as enough makes no difference at the sensor plane. And certainly not enough to be noticed in a moderately-sized print. Having said that, test your lenses carefully to determine what the optimal aperture is, and by what point resolution is ‘acceptable’. Look at the corners. It’s pretty important to do this before buying too, to avoid any issues or inconvenience later on. Just one of the reasons I’m still happy to go to a real retail store to buy stuff; I want to make sure the lens I’m going to use is going to perform the way I expect it.

Speake-Marin Immortal Dragon. The eternal fight between more DoF and diffraction limits. I cheated a little by using a wider focal length, which has more DOF for a given aperture. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZM 2.8/28 Biogon

3. Watch out for diffraction. Although all lenses have an optimal aperture, the smaller the pixels, the closer the diffraction limit will be to wide open. Most compact cameras – especially the 1/2.33″ kind – will resolve optimally wide open, and be noticeably softer if set to f5.6 or f8. (This is one reason most manufacturers use a switchable ND filter rather than a real aperture; also on a sensor that small, everything is in focus all the time.) For instance: I can use f45 to shoot macros on the 4.1MP D2H without noticing any diffraction softening; however, by f27 on the D700, I’m seeing a noticeable reduction in acuity. That limit becomes f16 on the 16MP APS-C cameras, and I suspect as low as f11 on 24MP APS-C. F8 is as far as I’d go with any lens on Micro Four Thirds.

Missed focus in either direction would turn this from a keeper into junk. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF 1.4/85 Planar – manual focus

4. Focusing. If you’re shooting a rangefinder, make sure the RF is properly calibrated for the lenses you normally use. Be aware of focus shift with aperture stop down. If you’re shooting an SLR, make sure your AF system is properly calibrated, especially for wide open lenses; use the AF fine tune function if you’ve got one. Shoot live view, wide open, manual focus and magnified to determine what the absolute best result you can obtain is, and then adjust your AF system until you achieve that consistently. AF accuracy matters most when shooting wide open – sadly these days SLR focus screens are optimized for brightness rather than focusing snap, which means it’s much harder to see when something is in focus or not. (Camera makers want to sell you the latest AF lenses, so they discourage you from focusing yourself.) It isn’t helped either by tiny viewfinders. If you’re going to use your SLR manual-focus, it’s worth adjusting your mirror zero position and focus screen shimming to ensure that what you see in the finder does in fact match what the sensor sees. And a coarser matte split prism or micro prism screen helps immensely, too. Don’t try to do this yourself, however – it’s difficult and there are a lot of fragile, easily scratched components inside the finder which can be irreparably damaged if you don’t know what you’re doing.

5. Maintenance. This also covers several things: make sure your lenses and mounts are clean, for one. Clean lenses are obvious. Clean mounts, less so: a little bit of misalignment between the lens/ mount/ sensor combination can cause noticeable softness on one side of the image. It mattered less in the days of film because the ‘sensor’ plane had some thickness to it; you could be off by a bit and the image would still be focused on the emulsion. A digital sensor is a perfectly flat single plane, with no forgiveness in the front-back direction.

A good example of condition-induced limits. Paris. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

Bottom line: if you don’t think you can handle that many pixels, shoot in a binned and downsized raw mode, or get a camera with fewer pixels. You’ll save yourself the hassle of handling enormous files, too. I know that under certain conditions – photojournalism and street, for example – it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll be able to fully achieve more than 12MP of resolution on a full frame camera. This isn’t because I’ve got poor technique, but simply because there are restrictions put on you by the shooting conditions – for instance, being jostled by people; having to shoot in extremely dark environments at high ISO; using a MF rangefinder with wide open shallow-DOF lenses on a moving subject. The list of excuses goes on. Bottom line: I know I’m the weak link in the imaging process here; I’ll try to improve, but I also recognize my limits and won’t fall into the trap of thinking more MP will make for a better image. It won’t. In the studio however, that’s a totally different matter. MT

Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, bokeh, how to, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, thein

POTD: Reflections of sky

February 24, 2012 by Ming Thein

Reflections of sky, Kuala Lumpur. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE

Filed Under: Leica, POTD Tagged With: leica, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, photo, photography, potd, puddle, reflection, sky, street, thein

10X10: 100 ways to improve your photography: Processing and Editing

February 23, 2012 by Ming Thein

Today’s post is the final one of 10 in the 10×10 series. While the previous posts have dealt with the during-shooting part, today’s post is appropriately going to deal with the last thing you do after shooting: processing and editing.

Photoshop is a fix all for everything, right? It’s also come to represent a dirty word; when something has been ‘Photoshopped’ it’s no longer authentic or original, and the skill of the photographer has been severely diminished. Wrong, think again. Photoshop is the equivalent of the darkroom from the film days: sure, you can add things to the scene, but they look odd and unnatural. The main thing you did in the darkroom was finalize the exposure: adjust the density and brightness, and fiddle with the contrast. Maybe some dodge and burn. How? Chemical mixes, timing and cutout masks. We do the same now – except the chemicals are your raw converter and curves layer, the fixer is your save button, and dodge and burn is a brush tool.

So what is editing exactly? The process of removing unwanted material – in this case photographs – to leave a more coherent story or narrative; being selective about what you show is just as important as having something to show in the first place. There’s no point in having technically brilliant but boring images – but you can make a story out of perfectly timed moments, even if they’re a little noisy or blurred.

Disclaimer: As with every other article in this series, I’m assuming you know the basics already.

The flying Vianney Halter for Goldpfeil. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

10: Keep all of your raw files. You never know when somebody might ask for a color version of a B&W image; don’t lose that sale because you were trying to be cheap on storage. Storage IS cheap.

Sinister chitty chitty bang bang. Leica M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

9: Sharpening should be the last step. If you sharpen too early on, you’re to end up with extra noise and less tonal information, especially for images with a lot of fine detail. Why? Because of the way sharpening works. It increases apparent acuity between adjacent areas of different luminance by increasing the difference in luminosity between them. Making something brighter or darker – with images containing a lot of fine detail, this means a change to a large area of the image – will inevitably destroy some tonal information, especially at the extreme ends of the tonal range.

If the G-P F1-047 was titanium and on a blue strap…it’s really aluminum and on a tan strap. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

8: Let your images mature before deleting. Look at your images immediately after a shoot and pick out your favorites. Then do this exercise again two weeks later. You’ll probably find that there’s been a big change. Why? Immediately after the shoot, you remember how difficult it was to get one shot; that effort put in affects your artistic judgment. Two weeks later, you’ll probably not remember as clearly, and you’re more likely to go with your first instincts. Go with the latter selection.

A tale of two frames. I initially preferred the first frame; but a month later, I think there’s more of a story and more contrasts in the second one. M9-P, 28/2.8 ASPH

7: Calibrate your monitor. Whether you use one of the Spyders or the built in utility in OS X, it’s important to adjust your monitor to produce as accurate color as possible – this is important for both print and screen; you want to make sure that other people see the same thing you put in so much effort to create. For print, you can attach the color profile to the file; a good printer will be able to match the print to what you see on screen. It’s also important to know the gamut of your monitor; I’ll never do any serious editing on my 11” MacBook Air because the screen has terrible color. On the other hand, the 27” iMac/ Cinema Displays are fantastic, as are the 15” and 17” MacBook Pros.

Intentional color. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

6: Do most of your adjustments in the raw converter. This is important, because the data is in its highest bitrate form – which means making large changes to the file at this stage has the least impact on image quality. If you do highlight recovery on a 16 bit raw file, you’ll probably have a decent stop or two (assuming a good sensor) before you get posterization or false color. Now try doing the same to a jpeg and you’ll see what I mean. By the same token, keep your files in the highest bitrate form until you’re absolutely sure you’re not going to change anything again – and that might be a Photoshop file in 16 bit with all layers, or it might be a quality 12 jpeg. I generally don’t edit again, so I save my finished files as a maximum quality jpeg. Remember that print doesn’t have as much dynamic range as a computer screen, so if it looks fine on a calibrated monitor, it’ll probably look fine in print.

Sunset shadow. Nikon D90, 18-200VR.

5: Buy a good tablet. I like the Wacom Intuos 4. It will help you immensely to lay precise masks and control your dodge and burn; the tip is pressure and tilt sensitive to control brush size and density. It’s much faster than doing things with the mouse, too – once you get used to how the entire tablet area maps to your screen. Get one that suits your screen size. The medium 6×9” is perfect for my 15” MacBook Pro.

The Beach. Leica M8, 50/1.4 ASPH

4: Don’t overdo anything. Turning it up to 11 works for some shots, but not most. Too much sharpening leaves haloes. Too much contrast loses tonal detail. Too much saturation makes it feel unnatural and cartoonish. Etc. And don’t even get me started on overuse of HDR; overlapping tonal values are jarring to the eyes.

Turning it up to 11. Nikon D90, 105VR

3: Always have backups of your backups. I’ve had a situation where a new OS caused some serious issues with my primary computer; the upshot was that none of the files were readable. My primary backup drive – a Maxtor; I’ll never buy one of those again, just too many have failed – started making the click of death when I connected it, and I was able to get most of my data off in time before the drive crashed and died. Good thing there was one more backup copy. My current management strategy is to keep all finished jpegs on my editing computer; there are two duplicate backups with all the raw files (in the same file structure) on external drives, one of which lives in my bag and goes with me everywhere; I also time machine the primary drive whenever I do a backup to the externals. Generally I’ll do a backup once I finish editing a batch, which might be 50 or 100 images or thereabouts. Storage is cheap. Lost files are priceless.

Blue water. Nikon D3, 24-70/2.8 G

2: Integrity matters, especially for photojournalists. Whilst I’ll have no compulsion removing dust from a watch product shot or litter from fine art street photography, I absolutely will NOT touch the content of the image for photojournalism. This is because once you do, and if you get caught, your credibility is instantly nonexistent.

Panerai Mare Nostrum, on a GuB Marine Chronometer. Clean well, because even at this relatively low magnification, it’s very visible. Nikon D700, 60/2.8 G

1: You can’t polish a turd. Don’t think that you can rescue a compositionally weak image ‘in Photoshop’. You can’t. You can’t change the lighting. If you didn’t get it mostly right in-camera, you’re not going to be able to fix it in Photoshop. You can fix exposure, color, contrast and the way the image appears; you can’t change the content. If an image is good, however, you can make it extraordinary. MT

Color palette and tonality hugely affects the feel of an image. But the content must be there to tone in the first place. Nikon D700, 28-300VR

Note: Observant readers will have noticed different frames/ watermarks on my images. They date to different eras in my photography career. The very latest set (Feb 2012 onwards) has a black frame and watermark at the top left – because I found that the Facebook buttons obscure it if placed at the bottom. Slightly earlier images have black frames and ‘Ming Thein | mingthein.com’ in the bottom left. Those date from early 2010-Feb 2012. Mid to late 2009/ early 2010 have ‘Ming Thein | AGENCIA VM’ and black frames; anything before that is frameless and ‘Ming Thein / *photohorologer MING’. I stopped using that last tagline after numerous people copied it. Just in case any of you were curious.