Another backup photo today.
I like this one, the layers in the scene really stack up with the reflections in a rather pleasing way.
I am very pleased with this lens; I wish I'd bought one before. It's much nicer than my previous 50mm f/1.4, but has kept the things I liked about that lens. EOS R5, EF50mm f/1.2L
We marked Eve's birthday with a trip to @danslenoirlondon today.
A remarkable experience, and a real hands-on insight into the world without vision that she had lived through latterly.
I don't think I've ever been anywhere so utterly, impenetrably dark. The closest experience I can think of was a tour I once did at the Ilford Photo factory. The very darkest area was, as you might expect, the film production line, and even that had occasional tiny betalights to navigate by.
We went for a drink and a wander round afterwards; the late afternoon light was great, and perhaps perceptually intensified by the couple of hours we had spent in the dark.
Today's actual photo after the jump.
I thought this was a reasonable, not-too-cliched debut for my new fisheye lens.
It's taking a bit more getting used to than I expected, you need to get very close, and it's weird to have it zoom between full frame and circular images.
I'll probably ruminate on here about how it compares to some of my other wide lenses once I've played with it a bit more.
I took a walk this evening and this dropped-and-retrieved glove caught my eye.
We had a lovely day today, sunny and warm for the time of year.
I went for a walk in the woods with my parents, and we spotted lots of these Scarlet Elf Cup fungi.
This one's a stack of 10 photos. I manually incremented the focus between shots.
I bought myself another 2nd-hand lens yesterday, the EF8-15mm f/4 L fisheye. I've been considering one for a long time, but they don't come up locally all that often.
While it works well, it is not in perfect condition; it looks like the protruding front element has made contact with one or two things over the years, as it has a few very fine scratches, and the weather seal was pretty well mangled, as is relatively common with used L series lenses.
The seals aren't protected when the lens is capped and stuffed in your bag, and they're made of a fairly soft silicone, so they're easily snagged and torn if you aren't careful.
The new RF series caps are a bit bigger and protect the seal, so I have contemplated either getting a few of those, although they're a rather tight fit on the EF lenses, or perhaps 3D printing an extra ring to attach to the EF caps to cover up the seal.
Fortunately, the weather seal is a fairly straightforward repair now I've found a ready source of affordable replacement seals. I've made this repair on several of my lenses now with good results.
Hopefully I'll have some wacky fisheye photos from this lens to share soon.
The interminable cloud broke up for a few minutes this afternoon in between showers.
I took myself out for a walk this evening to decompress a bit.
I'd say it worked, although I did end up with sore feet!
I thought this ex-light was interesting.
A backup photo today. I got home from work utterly exhausted, fell asleep on the sofa, and nothing useful was done.
I spent a bit of time today looking at the surfaces of a metal component that had fatigue fractured, and ended up taking some photos for the report. If I'd remembered to take the correct lens with me, I might even have posted one here, but alas I did not.
Therefore, you'll have to make do with this snackro of the fracture surface of a Matchmaker chocolate instead.
It's much tastier, and a lot less chewy than a lump of steel, I'll give it that much.
This one's a 3x magnification photo (plus a minor crop), and is a stack made up of 37 frames.
Defocus, attempt to recharge in time.
I've not done very much this weekend, but hopefully I've marshalled enough brain cells to be a vaguely productive member of society next week...
I did buy a nail gun in preparation for fixing the destruction that ensued as part of my re-wiring escapade last week. It turns out that a nail gun is a rather entertaining piece of equipment, and I'm wishing I bought one earlier.
I have thoroughly tested it on several chunks of scrap wood. Let's just say it's fortunate that the nails come in boxes of 2000, and not 50 😁
I also discovered that Bailey is a talented actor, and will do a very convincing impression of a dog with a dislocated shoulder if he disapproves of being cleaned of spilled ketchup. This Oscar-worthy performance will continue until cats are mentioned, upon which he will bolt for the garden, and my heart rate will slowly return to normal.
Back up to date...
I'm knackered after this working week. Not quite at the point of burnt out, but certainly feeling a little singed. Not exactly sure why, but it is what it is.
We have been "enjoying" pretty miserable weather for far too long now!
You guessed it, another backup shot.
I dragged myself out for a walk tonight before heading back into work to reset an endurance test we have running.
Not a backup, for a change.
Another late backup shot.
I'm running out of backups...
It's a late backup today, shot on my London trip a couple of weeks ago.
I was absolutely knackered after work today. I flaked out on the sofa and woke myself up a couple of times with a particularly horrendous snore.
Predictably, now it's approaching midnight, I've perked up nicely and don't want to go to bed (as usual).
I've got a few daffodils on the go at the moment, so I thought I'd give them a spot of macro treatment. This one's a 4x magnification shot, un-stacked this time.
I 3D printed a grid for my Godox MF12 flashes the other night, and gave it a go here. It seems to work OK.
It's quite interesting working at this scale, even a small flash like the MF12 has the look a much larger light would have at a more normal scale, but you still need quite a lot of power.
I've been intending to sort out a dodgy bit of diagonally-routed wiring in the house for at least a couple of years, but never managed to find a suitable combination of time and motivation until today.
As I chiselled out the badly routed wire, I found the workmanship was so much worse than I had expected - these two cables had been roughly joined by twisting them together, with a token few wraps of tape over the top, then the whole mess was cemented into the wall.
I'm very lucky the house didn't end up burning down from this sort of bodge.
I thought I'd channel the fire risk with the lighting on this shot before knuckling down and fixing the disaster.
This light's predecessor was a constant fixture from my childhood bedroom window, and I always rather liked it.
It was recently upgraded to this LED fixture - while it's quite a bit bigger than the old one, I'm quite pleased they've kept the classic style rather than switch it to a brutalist modern looking thing.
Energy efficiency and progress aside, I do kind of miss the comforting orange sodium glow
Not the best of photos I suppose; I could have done with getting slightly higher (and probably waiting until Bailey's been trimmed), but I think it's quite cute nonetheless.
In any event, chasing a ball and licking me thoroughly was more on his mind than posing for photos, so I didn't get another chance.
A bit of a busy evening tonight helping a friend with some CAD and 3D printing - this one's a 23:53 last ditch effort to capture something half-presentable.
Turns out it's quite tricky to follow the motion of a 3D printer while keeping in focus (ish)!
A few minor points notwithstanding, I'm very pleased with this printer.
Seems an appropriate coda to the day, which was largely spent measuring things, thinking about measuring things, and talking about measuring things.
Not necessarily in that order.
And albeit to rather higher precision than the trusty steel rule can deliver.
It's very rare I use this lens without focus stacking, but today is one of those occasions.
This one's a manually incremented focus stack of 13 shots.
This lens is pretty old, and didn't originally work on digital bodies, but a rather clever person from the Czech Republic came up with a neat little implant chip to upgrade these old Sigma lenses and keep them functional.
Rather pleasing, because it's a good lens.
For only the second time this week, a photo taken on the day!
I went to an exhibition with my in-laws, and took the opportunity to engage in a bit of light street photography.
I don't think I've been on the tube in over a year and a half.
I found it slightly less stressful than last time. Small progress, I guess.
I'm very late posting this backup photo, after an exhausting week.
I suspect this one will be a bit of a marmite photo, with its unconventional framing.
I like it though.
At least it was into a nice sunny morning though.
I'm very late posting this backup photo, after an exhausting week.
I'm very late posting this backup photo, after a very full-on and tiring week.
I'm very late posting this backup photo, after a very full-on and tiring week.
My friend has just bought himself a drone, but as he hasn't got round to dealing with the paperwork of getting his operator and Flyer IDs yet, he hasn't been able to fly it. As a result, I got the privilege of taking his shiny new toy for its maiden voyage.
It seems mini drone camera tech has come on quite a long way since I got my Mini 2 - the low light performance of the Mini 4 Pro is really quite good, and with a bit of fettling in Lightroom, it polishes up rather well.
A backup photo today. After a bit of a lie-in, and some miscellaneous pottering around, I met up with a friend to hand over something I'd made for him, then ended up with an impromptu visit to my sister and brother-in-law.
Short story shorter, I ran out of day, so I hereby present a shot from the weekend.
But Bring Your Wellies.
It was a lovely day today, so much nicer than the last few wet days. I'm glad I got out for a walk with my parents.
I'm enjoying this lens too.
Yet another backup photo today, shot about a week ago.
Another busy day left me out of time and energy to shoot anything, but I'm not sorry to be able to share this one, I rather liked it.
Today was indeed interesting at the EMC lab. I learned rather a lot, and with a little persuasion, our test object passed the first round of testing.
The day did contain rather too much in the way of coughing test engineers though.
Unpleasantly stressful in that regard.
I went for a little walk this evening to decompress my mind and spine, and got this shot through the window of a closed coffee shop.
A backup photo today (posted late, naturally).
Speaking in the context of the day in question rather than the day of posting: I spent a rather busy day preparing kit for testing at an EMC lab.
I anticipate an interesting day tomorrow.
Better than a poke in the eye too.
Not the finest photo to grace these pages, but at least I got a brief glimpse of the Aurora tonight between two banks of cloud.
I've seen some absolutely spectacular photos that other people have managed to capture over the last couple of days, I'm very jealous, and want to move somewhere with better skies!
It's a backup photo again today; it was 4PM, and I'd finished the main job for the day, so I thought I'd use the last hour of the day to take a quick look at some mods that have been requested to a piece of software I wrote a while back.
The next time I looked at the clock, it was 7:30, dark, and I was hungry.
I don't know what it is exactly, but I often seem to sink into a hyperfocus when I'm working on software.
I quite enjoyed it though.
I thought this bollard light gamely hanging on despite being the wrong way up reminded me of how I feel some days! (Not this particular day though, fortunately)
It's a backup photo today, shot yesterday.
I did take a few photos today, but I preferred this one, so I'm posting it.
I upgraded my venerable EF 50mm f/1.4 USM to a used EF 50mm f/1.2L today.
It's a only a minor upgrade in light gathering ability, just 1/3 stop, but it is significantly sharper.
The R5 at 45MP asks quite a lot of your glass.
I've been casually looking for one of these lenses to come up again locally for at least a year, so when I saw one had appeared in Wex recently, my self-control fairly quickly went out of the window.
It was a very pleasant afternoon to have a wander round, despite the football crowds. The fans all seemed to be in good spirits and peaceful, at least at this stage, so the atmosphere was pretty relaxed.
I saw this misty field on my way to work and had to stop and grab a photo.
And mind the icy surfaces.
A backup photo today from a nocturnal wander last week.
A backup photo today, I've had a busy and productive day, bashing out a test report and a few other bits, then after work I did some machining on a little project I've been working on recently and fixed something that's been in my pile of things-to-fix-for-people for a while.
The ice formations in this puddle were hugely varied, with all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes. Most of the other puddles were just frozen over flat, so I'd love to know what was different here.
