Scattered Thoughts . . .

I haven't done any macro photography in a very long time...  perhaps a couple of decades...  so I tested some of my photography gear over the past few days to see what works best for macro photography when using some of my newer gear. Although I have quite a bit of photography gear, I actually don't have any macro lenses.  Macro lenses allow you to get closer to your subject due to the closer minimum focusing distances that macro lenses provide.  I do, however, have some extension tubes which also can shrink the minimum focus distance which allows me to focus on objects that are much closer to the lens than without an extension tube.   Getting closer makes your subject appear larger in the frame (obvious, I know, but I had to mention it).  Lenses oftentimes only allow you to get as close as three feet or so.  With some lenses, you can only get as close as ten feet.  It is difficult to get a close-up view at those distances so adding an extension tube to allow you to focus at m

A s I've mentioned in this blog previously, we've been in the process of getting a new water supply to the house which has caused months of chaos not only in our neighborhood but for our schedule as well as for our home.   They dug up the roads all summer long to install a new water main so we were trapped at home every now and then.  On a good day, we'd have a detour and very rough roads to get out of our neighborhood.   After installing the new water main in (well... far underneath) the street, they dug up each resident's property from the street to the house to lay pipe and then install water meters at the front each house.  Now we are dealing with them connecting each house to the new water meters at the front end of our house.   For us, unfortunately, we need the new water main to reach all the way toward the back end of the house.  In order to get the water back to where the old water pipe comes up from underground, they had to run about 60 feet of pipe through ou

T his is going to be a rather boring blog entry and I'm only writing this entry because I haven't written lately.   My health has been rather lousy so I've been sticking close to the living room, bathroom and bedroom over the past few days.  Writing here has been farthest from my mind.   I've had breathing issues which is interrupting sleep so I'm overwhelmingly fatigued.  I had a cascade of symptoms that started heading toward anaphylaxis so I immediately jumped on extra medications and then some emergency medications.  My bones ache.  I had some gastro-intestinal issues hence my need to stick close to the bathroom.  And, I've had some blurry vision which is mostly affecting my ability to read music at the piano.   So, for the most part, I've been either sitting at my desk or sitting on the couch.  I have had a few cameras scattered around me while I work on refining my slow synchro flash techniques for each camera while using a hotshoe flash because we'

I really dislike cellphones and I probably mention that far too often in this blog but I recently upgraded my cellphone so felt it was time for a blog entry about "smart" devices.  How often I mention this dislike of cellphones here should be an indication of how much I truly dislike these things and especially in regard to how people can't seem to put them down.   I used cellphones during my career through the 1990s along with radios and landlines but effective and immediate communication was truly essential in my job.  I'm retired now and have absolutely no desire to be attached to a phone all the time.  In fact, my cellphone is set to "Do Not Disturb" almost always  unless I am waiting on an important phone call.  I have absolutely no desire to be fielding telephone calls at all times and I especially have no desire to be fielding any type of text messaging which is almost always poorly communicated, hence, I actually do prefer a phone call over text me

U nlike any other night in recent memory, tonight's sky appears to be crystal clear! We were at Shaw's to do our weekly shopping tonight (not in Waterbury, for a change) and to get our flu shots (last week was COVID shots) and, when we stepped out of the store, we were greeted with a very bright and noticeably sharp moon low in the sky.  I knew that when I got home, if it was still clear, I would be attempting to capture another photo of the moon.   Well, surprisingly, it was still clear when we arrived home so I put together a combination of lens and camera body that I have not used yet other than for capturing only a few photos of birds in our backyard.  I truly expected Waterbury to be cloudy when we got back home so I was quite surprised to see we also had clear skies here at home.  Using this combination of lens and body would be interesting especially handholding this very long, heavy and unwieldly combination.   For this photo, I reluctantly used a Panasonic G9 body (thi

A s I wait for my latest oncology test results, I've been doing some research about treatments and drugs that my oncologist has discussed with us in a recent visit.  I have to admit that I actually have been losing sleep over the direction my health is headed in recent years and this research isn't helping any.  If anything, I'm losing more sleep! My health has been so poor that the poor health makes it very difficult to sleep at times.  Most times, however, I can't keep my eyes open but, now, what I'm learning in my current research is keeping me up at night.   For the first five years or so that I've had this illness, I was very active in support groups and research.  I was actually a board member and had written a few lengthy papers for this national support group to help newly diagnosed patients.   In the beginning, this research helped me understand and come to terms with my future of surviving with this incurable illness.  Also, I was helping others in thi

I  don't think I've pointed a telescope nor camera toward the sky since the total eclipse on April 8th and even that day was overcast with thin clouds.  It has been a truly abysmal year for astronomy.   While the rest of the east coast has been capturing photos of a comet lingering in our night sky as well as capturing photos of unusually southernly northern lights colorfully illuminating the night sky, we've been under the clouds, rain and fog.  Even on the rare mostly clear nights, we've seen no northern lights.  Then again, I may have headed to bed far too early on those few clear nights to see the northern lights.  Regardless, as far as astronomy goes, the past six months have been absolutely horrible whether we're talking about daytime solar astronomy or nighttime astronomy. Tonight, however, I noticed the moon trying to shine through the clouds and decided to grab a camera, open the living room window, and shoot a few quick photos.  The moon was bright and il

I had a bit of a list of tasks to complete today before the temperatures drop below freezing.  I didn't get any of that stuff done though.  It was far too cold and wet outside today to spend any amount of time out there so I had no desire to head outside to work on everything that has water in it.  Instead, I stayed indoors. I did straighten up the house a bit...  did a load of laundry (although, now that I'm thinking about it, my laundry is still sitting in the dryer)...  and I installed the interior window of our kitchen garden window.  So, I did accomplish a few small things before sleeping all afternoon.  Actually, I didn't start on the garden window winterization until after my long afternoon nap.  Whenever I plan to accomplish something on any particular day, it must be right after waking up in the morning or after a nap.  I run out of energy far too quickly to wait an hour or two so I always jump on any tasks that must be done immediately.  Quite often, I even jump

W e had to head up to the hospital yesterday (for me) and, as always, I brought one of my cameras along in case I saw anything worth capturing.  This time I grabbed my compact Fuji X30 camera with its fixed zoom lens.   For those interested, the Fuji X30 is a small camera with classic rangefinder camera styling that was released about 12 years ago.  It has a fixed lens so there is no need for carrying extra lenses.  The disadvantage of this camera is the sensor is smaller than the sensors in my other cameras so the tonal quality isn't as nice as my other cameras.  Nevertheless, it does capture some nice images...  certainly better than any cellphone. Since I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car while we were driving on the highway, the car was moving at 65mph while I was shooting photos.  This meant I needed as high a shutter speed as I could get to avoid any motion blurring due to our speed as well as due to bumps.  Sheila's Honda Accord has a very stiff suspension mak