Scattered Thoughts . . .

Yesterday, we drove out to Cabot to install a second monitor and Fire TV for our granddaughter, Kenzie.  This provided me with an opportunity to test this new Zeiss lens I picked up last week.   I only shot a few photos because it was a dark, gray, and gloomy day with very flat lighting.  To make matters worse, the clouds were creating an odd, unappealing color of light too.  Most of the leaves are off the trees now so the landscape around here is rather stark but I did find some patches of color worth capturing in photos.   As always, I was shooting out the window of a fast moving car... Even though the photos are nothing worth printing, I'm liking what I'm seeing from this lens.  The photos are sharp especially considering I was shooting from a fast moving car.  My guess is that my next opportunity to shoot using this lens will be in the snow.   On our way back home from Cabot after setting Kenzie up with a monitor and Fire TV, Sh...

When I picked up my primary Sony camera about ten years ago, it came with a basic "standard kit lens".  This wasn't a particularly good lens but it was lightweight so it got a little bit of use every now and then.   This kit lens was a bit large to use all the time but it was the lightweight characteristic of it which offset the rather uncomfortable size and made up a little bit for a lack of sharpness.  It still was rather bulky for lightweight carry all day long, wasn't all that great for low light photos and the sharpness was lacking but, in good light, I would occasionally get some good shots with it though.  This photo, at right, is one of the good photos I captured with it. I rarely used this lens because it was large enough to be uncomfortable to carry around all the time and, at best, it was a rather average performer, generally speaking.  If it performed well, I could overlook the larger size of this lens but I found I rarely used it.  I defin...

A bout a week ago, I wrote about an eclipse viewer that I made out of a discarded cardboard box for us to use during our upcoming eclipse.  I adapted this old shipping box to become a pinhole projection viewer.  The sun is projected through a pinhole and onto a screen at the bottom/back of the box so the person viewing the sun isn't looking directly at the sun but is instead looking at a screen with the sun projected onto it.  Actually, the sun in the sky is at the viewer's back so the person isn't even facing toward the sun.  There is no getting blinded by the sun using this little homemade viewer. This little project turned out well.  I have a large cutout to peer into the box toward the screen at the opposite end of the box and another cutout to mount a pinhole plate made of black construction paper.  Making the pinhole in construction paper made it quick and easy to test different sizes of pinholes.  After some experimentation, I sized the pinhole ...

I've been using an old Olympus telephoto lens on my Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera bodies for wildlife photography.  Well, I also use my Sony camera bodies at times but I'm lacking fast-focusing long lenses for my Sony bodies so I lean toward the micro four thirds bodies for this purpose.  These micro four thirds cameras and lenses are indeed "micro" sized and that is one of the major reasons I have this Panasonic gear.  Relatively small and lightweight is a very good thing when it comes to my extensive spinal injuries. I've used this long Olympus telephoto lens quite often when in my kayak shooting loons, ducks, hawks and eagles but this old lens is just a little too large and a little too long for easy handholding for such a fast moving type of photography.   Of course, when I'm sitting in a small kayak, I don't have much of a choice but to handhold this lens.  It is a challenge to keep such a long lens trained on my subject especially when in a roll...

All these delays in our home renovations has really snowballed at this point. My health and the weather were nowhere near in sync and, as a result, so many projects were delayed. Whenever the weather was good, my health was miserable so I could not accomplish anything. Whenever my health was well enough to accomplish a few things, the weather was so lousy that we couldn't get anything accomplished.  Now, the temperatures are below freezing every night and not much higher than freezing during the days. These cold temperatures makes finish work such as staining and polyurethaning impossible to do outdoors.  Unfortunately, I have a lot of wood to stain and polyurethane. Since I can't move all this wood outdoors, I am stuck trying to get it all stained and polyurethaned indoors without ruining our floors, walls, furniture, etc. This means I am stuck inside the small room I am currently renovating. I started staining wood today... I managed to stain half of the wide planks ...

I recently picked up a used Panasonic 45-200mm G Vario OIS lens to pair with my Panasonic G3 camera body. As some opportunities present themselves, I've been giving this combo a whirl and I have to say that, so far, I am impressed. Don't get me wrong... This lens is not even close to being my sharpest, most impressive lens. However, for its cost, size, weight and format, it is pretty impressive though.  This lens has a decent amount of reach being equivalent to a 90-400mm in full frame terms and that means a lot considering the small size of this lens. Also, having OIS (optical image stabilization) is a pretty huge plus. This image stabilization could come in handy in less-than-ideal light.   If I could find some birds or wildlife in my yard, I would test this lens in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, our neck of the woods seems to be void of wildlife lately. It is actually pretty quiet out there... no birds calling, no squirrels chattering, nothing. I've come to the conclu...