Scattered Thoughts . . .

S heila and I had another visit to my oncologist today.  Overall, it was a relatively uneventful visit but there were a few things discussed that I should write about here mostly so I can reference it in the future to refresh my memory before my next appointment.   I should also note that after these specialist visits, I have a flurry of activity in scheduling appointments with other doctors for more exams and tests.  This forces me to acknowledge the seriousness of my health problems which I normally push to the far recesses of my mind as often as possible. During this appointment with my oncologist, we discussed my ongoing problems idiopathic anaphylaxis...  how my body responds, how I have been treating it with medications, frequency, severity, triggers, etc.  On the positive side, I was able to report that although I do continue to experience idiopathic anaphylaxia with no warning, these recent episodes have been manageable and less severe than some pre...

I n reference to the title of this blog entry...  I'm still learning a lot of things each and every day but, lately, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about a new-to-me medium format camera.   Today I had a bit of a detour though. I was working on doing some basic editing of these two photos, below, so I could post them here in the blog but Photoshop kept crashing on me and telling me that my GPU, OpenCL, OpenGL and DirectX were 'not compatible' with Photoshop.  I knew that was nonsense because I've been using Photoshop on this computer for many months with no problems.  I ended up spending the entire day troubleshooting this problem but I think I finally have resolved this problem which, honestly, should not have happened in today's world.  It was an incredibly frustrating day! I wasn't going to get into any detail about these computer problems but I should add a bit more here so I can reference this if this ever happens again.   I have two gr...

A fter I wrote about my new-to-me Fuji GFX medium format camera last night, I got to thinking that I should probably add more camera size comparisons since I had written about how small this new Fuji medium format camera is compared to other cameras with smaller sensors.  So, I captured a few more photos this morning. This first photo shows my tiny compact Fuji X30 camera (on left) compared to the new Fuji medium format camera.  This compact Fuji X30 is small enough to easily slip into a coat pocket...   This next comparison is showing a camera that has a sensor that is a bit larger than the above compact camera but now the camera body is almost as large as the Fuji medium format camera!   This is my Panasonic G9 (on right) with its relatively small four-thirds sensor (same as 110 film size) yet the camera bodies are quite similar in size and shape.  The Fuji GFX medium format camera (on left) has a sensor roughly the same as a 6x4.5 film camera so the...

A s I mentioned in this blog many times in the past, I've always wanted to move into medium format digital photography.  Cost is a huge factor but patiently waiting for a decade while keeping an eye on prices daily has helped me slowly acquire a couple of medium format cameras recently.  One camera is an old film camera while the other is a digital camera from 2021.   Twelve years ago, I upgraded into Sony's full frame format and I still love that system.  Even compared to medium format, this Sony system has some significant advantages over medium format.  My Sony camera has great image quality and is ideal for sports, wildlife and fast moving grandchildren so it gets a lot of use and I'll likely never put it to rest anytime soon.  The image quality of this full-frame system is great and it is a fast shooting camera which definitely comes in handy when there are kids often nearby. As good as the images are when captured on full-frame sensors, medium fo...

I really haven't written much nor done much in the past three months or so but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things now.   Sheila and I had COVID through December and into January and that always takes a lot out of me mostly due to my primary health issues.  Before I even had a chance to recover from COVID, Sheila and I picked up flu-A which, for me, lasted until about two weeks ago.  Sheila felt miserable for only a week or two.  I, however, have had great difficulty getting past these two back-to-back viruses though.  Fortunately and at long last, I'm now feeling as though I can get back into having some fairly productive days...  as much as my other health issues will allow anyway. Over the past couple of weeks, I've spent my few waking hours each day exercising in an attempt to build up my strength and stamina.  I also gained about 12 lbs during this extended period of riding the couch every single day and I definitely want to lose...