OK … I reckon I should put this up, here …

I’ve been telling various friends and fellow photographers about this stuff for a couple of weeks, now, and it seems to me that I ought to pull it all together in one spot, so I don’t have to keep telling everyone separately. So, read this stuff …

Most of us, in one way or another, have been into photography for some time, and the advent of digital is not so far in the past that most of us don’t remember it. In fact, many, if not most of us, had some pretty fair film equipment for a while before the first didgies came out (Imagine that! A million pixels! WOW!). Lots of this old film equipment was top-of-the-line, or pretty close, and (if you’re anything like me), it caused and causes a twinge of regret, if not guilt, at the thought of these works of mechanical and optical art sitting on a dusty shelf in a dusty closet, getting old and deteriorating, unused.

After all, there was nothing wrong with them the day before digital photography swept the globe. Now, don’t get me wrong; I love digital. I was delighted to take it up, because, some years before, I was forced to put my good ol’ cameras away, because I was poor, and film and processing went through the roof. See my profile. Digital gave me a chance to shoot again … only 4 MPixels, but it was a floor model, on sale for $100 off. I was on wheels again … well, figuratively, anyway.

I’ve kinda been stewing about those cameras and lenses in mothballs for quite a while, and then I ran across this article by a photographer that I respect, and it started me thinking. And everyone I’ve told about it seems to find it inspiring, if nothing else. Here’s the article:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/free-digital-camera.htm

He’s not offering to give you a didgie, nor is he going to tell you where to go out and get one; he’s telling you how to use your good ol’ film camera digitally. If you haven’t got one, you can probably pick one up on the cheap. Various localities may not have a Costco, but they’ve probably got something similar … I know my local Walmart has some sort of processing/scanning service, for 29¢ each, last I looked. There are probably others, Brits have Tesco, f’rinstance.

Anyhow, read the article, and do what you want.

And … this has just come to my attention. It seems to be an appeal for crowd-based financing, as such things are done these days, and the idea is VERY appealing. I STILL don’t have the money to jump in on this, but if I had, I’d be there, you betcha.

http://mashable.com/2013/08/24/digipod-slr-film-replacement/

Well, there it is … read the article, see the vid, and (as Augustine says) do what you like.

Cheers, all!

OK … There seems to be a problem with the links. Very strange. Try ’em, and if they don’t work, copy=>paste ’em into your address bar. They seem to work OK, there.
Thanks for your indulgence.

FOUND THE PROBLEM: Words found it; it’s due to the fact that the entry of a URL form adds its own http:// onto the URL that you enter. It doesn’t show when you read it, but it’s there, all right; you can see it in the “EDIT” page. I took ’em out, so they work now.

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Found these today …

I figured I’d better get ’em before some lout with a mower happened by.




That’s it … not much to say.
Cheers!

 

Closeups …

Well, I said I might get some closeups of the blossoms, and here they are.
It must be pointed out that the first few are small tree that I can’t see from my window, and, in fact, when I was out shooting the photos in the last post, was not blooming at all. Now it looks like it’s made of white fuzzy caterpiggles. (LOL … the spell-checker doesn’t like Pogo words!)







Now, these next are from the trees in the last post, i.e., the ones about which I remarked to Eva that they looked like peppermint hard candies. They had been through a bit of a rainstorm (thankfully, not much wind), so I was walking on petals, but enough remained for these shots. Paradoxically, I think the reduced numbers made for more-easily composed photos.



I rather like that last one a lot.
Now, this is something I’ve never seen, though I’ve lived with a magnificent locust tree for some 30 years in my own yard: That little sprig, covered with little round beebles (excuse the technical term), is new to me; I’ve never seen one before. It looks a bit like what a coleus thinks is a flower (What in hell does a coleus know?). Wikipedia says it’s seeds, but locusts are kinda famous for their big ol’ seed pods that get all over your lawn and have to be dealt with, some way or other. This does NOT look like that. I’ll keep watching.

And that’s the lot.
Cheers, all!

 

AND …

The flowering crabs in the courtyard are … well … flowering!
No closeups this year … yet, anyway … I sure made enough of them last year. I was carrying groceries, this time, and it was bloody hot, at least for me: 85°F. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m not a person who handles heat well. Not at all well.
The last time I posted any closeups on these blooms was on April 14, 2012 … “Things are starting to bloom”. Have a look; I may shoot some more in a day or so, I don’t know.
Here are the ones I took today:




Enjoy!
Cheers!

 

Green and Gold

… no, nothing to do with the Green Bay Packers.
The real green of living grass, decorated (liberally) with the gold of Springtime dandelions … the time has FINALLY arrived! There will probably be very little commentary from me in this posting, and if you find the shots somewhat repetitious, please forgive. I was absolutely besotted with the verdant Spring landscape. I thought it would NEVER happen. Here they are:









I know; it’s a lot of photos, essentially the same. Count yourselves lucky; I threw out about three times this number!
Take care, and Cheers, all!

 

During the last spate of dreary weather …

After that one nice day when I took the pictures of the electrical transmission tower (about 3, 4 posts back) we got another rather prolonged spell of weather that was, to say the least, non-photogenic. Dreary and grey, in other words, and not too bloody warm, either.
Well, as usual, the little Oly was within reach, and Mr Cat was doing what he does best, i.e., being himself, and therefore, amusing.
So, here they are, from several different days.
First, his intense look:

(Note: There was absolutely nothing unusual out that window at that time.)

This is during a section of his usual daily 20-hour nap:

And here, he says “WTF do YOU want? This better be important!”

Next, after having found himself a suitable pedestal (a very sturdy shoe box), He regales everyone with stories of how he was the model for the Egyptian Sphinx. Due to the construction of his mouth and vocal apparatus, the closest he can get to “Sphinx” is “Mrrrow?”

I reckon it’s just lucky for us that we appreciate his true importance.

“You better believe it, Bud!”

“Aha! Trying to sneak up on me in the dark, eh?”

“Cripe! I’m going back to being a sphinx again.”

“I’m getting mixed up … no … sleepy, that’s it.”

“Good night, folks …”

 

It happened one night …

LOL … Apologies to Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable.
A strange little occurrence, of no great significance, but some amusement … I was sitting in the dark, on the edge of the bed, about to go to sleep, when I noticed, in the dark, a spot of light, all alone, with no explanation, no clues as to its identity, no nothin’.
My camera was within reach of where I was sitting, so I popped the flash open, centered the spot in the viewfinder and fired it off.
This is what I got:

LOL … it’s the snap on the flap of my shirt pocket, hanging over the back of a chair.
Here’s a better view:

I didn’t see what it was until the next morning … It cracked me up.
Take care, folks …
Cheers!

 

About the only decent photo weather we’ve had, lately …

It’s been mostly a dull, uninteresting grey … the sky, the landscape, and my mood. A word of explanation, here … my mood was affected by the outdoors, which, as I said, was uniformly dull and grey. The temperatures have been low, and the result was that not only was it unpleasant to be out, but the Springtime changes in this patch of earth were damnably slow in coming. A world of “Same ol’, same old”.
But I did get this one day, and got a couple of shots while visiting a friend in her new apartment. Not much, but it was something. I might have got more, but it was my turn to cook, and I do take some pains with that, and stayed indoors.
Anyway, here they are … I loved the carpark with the power lines and towers:

Well, with a tower like that, how could I resist?

And, of course, a tower like that requires something like this (please forgive any lack of symmetry, I’m getting a touch old for squirming about on my back, even in the grass):

And that’s about it, I reckon … except that evening, just before loading the shots into the pooter, I just took this shot … messy, unorganized, without any particular interest … but I liked the light.

And th … th … th … that’s all, folks!
Cheers!

 

Catchin’ up … again

Well, I THINK I’m OK … this is a new machine my kid built for me. He put new guts in my ancient box (one I had given to him about 20 years ago, when I switched to something else). It was funny to get it back. I reckon some boxes are made protean enough that you can just switch motherboards in and out without too much sweat. I’ve got a dual-core chip in it, and the motherboard will accept up to an 8-core, if I want to melt the internet. And it will hold up to 8 Gig of RAM, so I can work on some heavier stuff that needs lots of processing power, like some of the format conversions that I like to do, and things like that.
It needs lots of tuning up … I’m trying to figure out how Windows 7, 64-bit works, and getting the browsers fixed up so they work the way I want them to … or work at all, for that matter. I’m having lots of trouble with things hanging in mid-operation, mass invasions by popups and unwanted redirects, and outright refusals to obey orders. IE seems the best at most things, but Firefox is a close second … Opera won’t work at all. That last doesn’t surprise me much … it was getting that way, anyway.
I haven’t been doing much photography … we’ve had lots of visually uninteresting weather, and There’s been a lot of need for me to stay close to home. Taking care of a bipolar is rather a full-time job. She just went through a rather extended period of irrationality, but seems to be herself again, the past couple of days. Now she won’t believe me when I tell her what she did. And I sprung my back trying to get her picked up off the floor, so I’m taking dope and being VERY careful what I do and how I do it. It’ll fix itself, but it’s something of a trial. The real kicker is that she can’t remember me doing it, so she keeps asking me why I’m acting like a cripple. When I tell her, she doesn’t believe me.
Anyway, my troubles aren’t all that interesting … I’ll get some photos fixed up and posted in the next couple of days.
Glad to be back; I’ve missed you all, and this place.
Cheers, all!