Scattered Thoughts . . .

T here is no doubt that I am liking my newly converted infrared camera.  Well, I'm liking the images it produces.  I have always liked this type of black and white photography for its deep shadows, bright foliage, beautiful tonal qualities and remarkable clarity.   Before actually having one of my cameras converted to infrared, I didn't realize how affordable it can be to convert a camera to record only in infrared wavelengths.  Considering the low cost and the beautiful monochrome images this creates, I am very happy with my decision to have one of my camera bodies converted to record only in infrared wavelengths. As much as I am happy with my decision to have one of my old camera bodies converted to infrared, I am now finding that the old camera I had converted to infrared seems to be having some age-related problems as well as some service-related problems neither of which makes me all too happy.   Because of the latest and curious problem that I recently noticed developing

I mentioned in a previous blog entry that I had a big dust spot or dirt spot on the sensor of my newly converted infrared camera.  I also mentioned that I didn't know if I could still clean this sensor the same way I clean all other types of camera sensors so I went  back to the website for the place that converted my camera to infrared to see if they address this question. It turns out that I can clean my infrared converted sensor the same way I clean the sensors in all my other cameras.  That was good news because I am already well-versed in doing that quickly and easily.   This morning, I removed the lens and placed my camera under my magnifying lamp on my desk.  I immediately saw that changing lenses outside in the windy environment the other day was an exceptionally bad idea.  I have never seen so much debris on a sensor!  I would definitely need to clean up this sensor. My first step in cleaning a sensor is blowing it with a bulb blower.  I hold the camera in the air with th

M y health is still quite lousy so I have been laying low and looking for things to do that require little energy and that take up little time.  I've been laying low since mid-January so this is getting kind of old.  I'm still not sure if this poor health is simply a "new normal" for me or if I am experiencing an extra long term recovery that is taking far more time than usual.  Or, if perhaps my health has worsened significantly...  or a new secondary illness...  or a newly ineffective medication...  I'll discuss all of this with my oncologist next week.  In the meantime, I am still struggling each day to do the smallest of things before sleeping away most of the day. I've been extremely and overwhelmingly fatigued.  Even on those rare occasions when I feel "okay" for a short time, I am quickly so exhausted that I must lay down.  I'm also still struggling with significant difficulties breathing a few times each week.  Then throw in the usual gas

B ack in February, both Lukey and Kenzie had sports events on the same weekend.  Lukey had to travel to Saratoga, New York for a hockey tournament while Kenzie had her annual end-of-season figure skating show here in Barre, Vermont.  This particular holiday weekend was fast becoming a logistical nightmare and this logistical nightmare was developing at the last minute after months of planning. We were told about Lukey's February hockey tournament way back in October.  Literally the moment we were told about this tournament, Sheila and I started discussing making reservations at our favorite inn in Saratoga.  We like Saratoga so we were making plans within mere moments of Lukey telling us about the tournament.   We knew the hotels in Saratoga would book very quickly and we were correct.  In the few short hours that we were discussing and planning this long weekend trip, our favorite inn was filling up quickly so we knew we had to book the weekend immediately.  Actually, within just

Y esterday, while I was writing about my infrared converted camera, I realized that perhaps I should shoot some images for a comparison between visible light in color, visible light in monochrome and infrared in monochrome.     This morning I shot a photo of our backyard in color in visible light followed by a monochrome image in visible light with one camera body and then moved the lens over to my camera body that now only shoots in infrared and shot a monochrome infrared photo.  To keep things as controlled as possible, I used the same lens with the aperture set at f5.6 for both cameras.   The wavelengths of light that the infrared camera captures are in a relatively narrow band of light so I needed to slow the shutter speed down a bit for the infrared image so I could capture a bit more light.  Conversely, since visible light is a much broader band of light for our human eyes, I needed to use a faster shutter speed to cut back on the available light.  Although the infrared camera ne

I had previously written about sending one of my old camera bodies in for service.  I sent it to the west coast to have the sensor converted from seeing and capturing images in visible light to only seeing and imaging in infrared light.   There are different levels of infrared conversions that can be done but I chose to have this camera body converted to see only light wavelengths above 830nm which is deeper into the infrared wavelengths.  These wavelengths make for very interesting, very crisp black and white images with a clarity you simply cannot attain in visible light.  Some things render the same in infrared light but many things a quite different with a very noticeable increase in clarity. Naturally, I couldn't wait for my old camera to arrive on my doorstep.  It arrived last night about two weeks earlier than I had expected, but still, it seemed like an eternity to me.  I think it spent more time traveling from and to the east coast during shipping than it did at the faci

When we spent the day at Echo science and nature museum earlier in the week with little Miss Ellie, I naturally was reminded of our last visit to this museum.  Back in the summer of 2021, we brought Lukey and Kenzie there.  I don't think I ever shared any photos from that day so I guess sharing them late is better than not sharing them at all so here are a few from that day in 2021. If I remember correctly, we brought Lukey and Kenzie up to the Burlington waterfront two or three days in a row that summer.   The kids were able to do a local newscast in front of a green screen.  They had a few choices of backgrounds for this newscast.  We were able to email the videos they created to ourselves but the video quality was exceptionally poor.  If I remember correctly, the sound quality was so poor that it was mostly just noise.  The kids had fun creating their own news reports though... The day before we went to this museum with Lukey and Kenzie, we went on a cruise on the Spirit of Etha