Sticky post
Monday, May 28, 2012 5:24:03 PM
Hey, folks, as a general rule, I try to post the pictures I put in these blog entries in a "Photos" album, too, so you can see them bigger, if you want to.
Sunday, May 12, 2013 4:02:50 PM
I've just recently put up a few photos in a couple of albums, and I thought you might like to have a look. The first is:
http://my.opera.com/derWandersmann/albums/show.dml?id=14188112
"Some shots accumulated during the past few days"
and the other is:
http://my.opera.com/derWandersmann/albums/show.dml?id=14182562
"Some little experiments in composition"
Take a look; have fun!
Cheers, all ...
Sunday, April 14, 2013 5:05:25 AM
Some stuff I've neglected while I was busy with the Gemini pictures. I've put them up here:
http://my.opera.com/derWandersmann/albums/show.dml?id=14010582
Have a look; enjoy.
Cheers, all!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013 4:52:28 PM
Well, folks, it's done ... I'm not going to post any pics here, because they're all in this album:
http://my.opera.com/derWandersmann/albums/show.dml?id=13979112
Have a look, and have fun!
Thursday, March 28, 2013 2:12:44 AM
Well, I suppose most of you have seen the adverts for this sort of device. I found this one by googling for "Spiratone Slide Duplicator", which was the name of the device sold by the Spiratone Company in New York, back in the film days. I never bought one then, but it seemed that it might work well enough for taking digital pictures of my old slides, so I started hunting. Almost immediately, this popped up, among other things:
The price seemed to indicate that it was of relatively good quality, so I took a chance and bought one, especially as it looked like the twin of the old Spiratone device.
I set it up on my camera, of which I show two views:
and
Operation is childishly simple, but it does take a bit of fiddling to get it set up. I'd say the fiddling time might vary greatly according to the lens being used ... this particular pair of shots show it attached to my 18-55mm kit lens.
A good, strong, white-light light source makes things easier, and avoids the noise which is so common with digital cameras at higher ISO ratings (I always tend to think that this noise is the digital equivalent of reciprocity-law-failure with film, but I have no confirmation of this).
The nice part is that you can use rather slow shutter speeds, since the camera and subject are one unit, and move together.
Some of my early results are shown here:
http://my.opera.com/derWandersmann/albums/show.dml?id=13904392
This was a little box of my old slides which were, for some reason, selected and treasured by my late daughter. I don't quite know why they were so special to her, rather than some others, but they were all together in a little box.
Almost none of them required any colour adjustment, though some of them (obviously) were not taken by me.
So, if you've been contemplating doing something of this sort, here are some of the results I got.
One warning: Depending upon which lens you select for the job, you may need an extension tube to get the slides into focus. Get the automatic extension tubes; you have no idea what a nightmare the non-automatic ones will cause.
Good luck!
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An additional note, for those thinking of following this route:
The listing above is, obviously, from Amazon. There are at least 40+ other listings (at Amazon) that show models or adaptations thereof, for other cameras. As a matter of fact, mine came with an adapter that would fit it to a 58mm diameter lens. (The "normal" Nikon filter size is 52mm, but some few lenses have 58mm filter sizes.)
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Another additional note (this is getting to be a habit!):
The attachment point of the device to the 18-55mm lens rotates as the lens focuses, thereby calling for constant vigilance that the slide carrier has not rotated so far out of alignment with the picture edges as to cut off corners. My 55-200mm lens' attachment point does NOT rotate; the focusing happens inside, somehow, so the next time I run a group of these, I shall try that lens, although I believe I will have to use an extension tube to get things into focus.
I will keep you informed.
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An update on the above remark about the 55-200mm lens:
It would seem that not all 55mm lenses focus to the same distance; when trying the longer zoom lens at 55mm, I found I was getting rather drastic crops ... well, more drastic than I wanted, anyway. The 18-55mm kit lens left me a little black around the picture, so I had to crop to get only the picture ... the longer lens, set at 55mm, gave a quite noticeably (and, to my way of thinking, undesirably) larger picture. The use of an extension tube would obviously only make matters worse.
I think my next attempt might involve the kit lens, set shorter than 55mm, in conjunction with an extension tube, although the pictures I have gotten so far seem quite satisfactory.
Sunday, March 10, 2013 5:11:31 PM
Having got my car back, I've been a little more willing to go about with a camera (It's amazing how walking long distances in the cold, dragging a heavy cart of whatever one has gone out for, can dampen one's enthusiasm for carrying a camera, too ... and for making little side trips.). I'm bloody glad to get the little beast back, I can assure you. It's amazing how the deprivation makes the possession much more appreciated. Despite the fact that the seats make me fold up like a damned jack-knife. She was running just beautifully a couple of weeks ago, when, suddenly, she wasn't. Frustrating would be a good word for the situation. Turned out the camshaft had just snapped, leaving only one set of valves able to move. I've never seen anything like it, and hope I never do again. I really don't like taking cylinder heads off. Makes me testy, to say the least ... I get what's known as an "engine-work backache", from the position I have to assume to work in there. Oh, well, all is taken care of, and at a reasonable price, too.
Anyway, I went out yesterday to have a look at the usual places (and, incidentally, to pick up some odds and ends of groceries), and found the little harbour-cum-boat-launch area to be, basically, boringly the same, except for one thing: the area surrounded by breakwaters was completely frozen over. I have never seen it do that before ... ice up around the edges, yes, but never completely frozen. And the queerest part of it all was that it hasn't been terribly cold this season ... I don't think it's gone below 0°F, except maybe one or two nights, all season. In fact, whatever snow we get seems to melt off at an unseemly rate. In total, I've shoveled perhaps 2 cubic feet of snow, max. Well, enough talk ... I took a few frames of the frozen harbour, and came home.
Cheers, all!
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 5:14:01 AM
Up until a few days ago, we in the Milwaukee area had virtually no snow. North and South of us, yes. Not a lot, but enough that one could guess that one wasn't in some kind of time warp, or had somehow gotten left out of the Universe. But here? None, save a slight dusting at separated intervals. It's the same "dry" pattern we had last year, both Winter and Summer. The big drought was another feature of it ... the jet streams have got disarranged, and who knows when (or if) they'll ever come back. Climate change is gettin' scary. On December 18, we had a wee bit, and I thought that maybe the dry spell had broken:
The snow was still falling, which is why the picture has an odd look.
Well, the short of it is, that was all we had until three days ago ... no precipitation for a good month and a half, and this in one of the snowiest, rainiest places in the continental US.
Then, last Friday, it finally snowed! This isn't what we'd have called a real storm, five or ten years ago, but I get the feeling that this is the kind of "big snow" that we're going to be getting used to. Maybe six inches, tops, and it wouldn't surprise me if this were all we got for the season. A few pics:
I'll post these, and some others in a new little album called "February 8, 2013". Feel free to look.
Cheers, all ...
Saturday, February 9, 2013 3:53:29 AM
COMPUTER PROBLEM IN FLORIDA, USA (True story)
TECH SUPPORT: "Technical Support, how can I help you?"
FEMALE CALLER: "Last night my computer started making a lot of hissing noises at me so I shut it down. This morning when I turned it on the computer started hissing and cracking, then started smoking and a bad smell, then nothing".
TECH SUPPORT: "I will have a technician come over first thing this morning. Leave the computer just like it is, so they can find the problem and fix it, or change it out with another computer. Give me your address and phone number and the technician will be there just as soon as he can".
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When the technician got there, the lady showed him where the computer was, and said what happened to it.
This is what the technician found wrong:
And you thought YOU had computer problems!!!
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 5:52:12 PM
I dunno how it happens, folks ... I just found another photographer that you should go have a look at. I don't know how I managed to miss him before, but I did one of those serendipitous stumbles, and found myself looking at some really interesting stuff ... highly polished work, some period B&W, lots of colour, and including an album called "Artwork". I don't know if he's a painter, too ... he doesn't say, but the implication is that the artwork is his.
Anyhow, go see him, it's worth the click:
http://my.opera.com/karldue/about/
Cheers, all!
Wednesday, December 12, 2012 10:03:02 PM
Sami suggested that I post a URL of an interesting photographer ... I dunno; maybe I've become some sort of a clearing house for this, but I certainly don't mind. Here's the address:
http://my.opera.com/theritu/albums/
It belongs to a (presumably; I think that Ritva is a Finnish female name) woman named Ritva Tiikala. There's no blog, and precious little "about", but the photos are interesting.
Pay her a visit, it's worth it ...
My Opera
