A nice Sunday walk

I decided to end my free week like it had begun – with a nice walk. Alone this time, through the woods, and with only one camera and lens. Here are some images I took during my walk, which I all left in black & white:

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As always, thanks for viewing.

Using my compact flash

It’s definitely getting dark earlier, and getting bright later already here in the Northern hemisphere. No wonder in the middle of autumn, and with winter approaching soon.

That leaves you with a problem when photographing indoors – either accept very bad light (and thus, quality) in your “available light” photos, or make some light when and where you need it.

Setting up the studio strobe(s) is quite a long process tho, and we don’t own any compact TTL flashes – only inexpensive but very nice and reliable Yongnuo YN460-II models. And because even measuring the light is an additional step which takes some time and action, I wanted to get used to guessing the right exposure again. Turns out that I’m not that bad, I’m usually correct within 1 stop or so.

To try it out, I took two:

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Tuna the cat, October 2016, bounced flash (f/2, flash on 1/8th power) and

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Remarkable – Zuleikha reading, October 2016 (f/2.2, flash on 1/4 power from across the room)

I’ll continue to do that, and maybe get some more of these flashes. The experience and the knowledge always pay off when using them somewhere else as well.

As always, thanks for reading/viewing.

My free week is half over…

I have a week off of work, but since we don’t visit anybody and the weather isn’t that nice, I spend most of it at home.

So since our last Sunday walk, most of the photos I took so far were also from our home. At least I used all of my cameras, several different lenses, and even the polarizer filter which you still can’t emulate after taking your pictures. Here are some taken since Sunday, just for the reference:

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You are next… (E-PL5 with the 14mm/2.5 lens)

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While photographing a plant, I was watched… (E-M10 with the 25mm/1.4 lens and a polarizer)

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Tuna the cat, looking out (E-M10 with the 25mm/1.4 lens and a polarizer)

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Pegs (Clothespins) – “shooting” the DSLR (E-520 with the 40-150mm/4-5.6 lens at 150mm, 1/40th of a second, hand-held)

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Occupation: box tester (E-M10 with the 25mm/1.4 lens)

I also filled the remaining few photos on an ISO200 colour negative film; a cheap one from the grocery, and I brought away that film for development already. With this I used my OM Zuiko 50mm/1.4 lens wide open for these last shots – I wanted to see its quality again. But as always when using film, that has to wait a bit. After I have these photos back, I’ll decide what to do with the three black & white Kodak 400TX (Tri-X) films which are still waiting to be used.

Anyway, thanks for reading/viewing, as always.

A short Sunday walk, and another self portrait

We’re using Google’s “Fit” on our smart phones, and today Zuleikha wanted to have a short walk to count her steps. So that is what we did, and while doing so, I took her picture using my Olympus E-PL5 camera with the 14-42mm “kit” lens:

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In the end, both Zuleikha and Mitchie went a bit further than me, they both had around 7,000 steps. I had a few less as you can see:

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And now that Zuleikha went to bed already, I took another “selfie” using the smart phone. As a trigger only, the E-M10 camera and the Panasonic 25mm/1.4 “Leica”-branded lens took the photo, with a little help of one of my studio strobes:

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As you can see, the small LED reading light behind me was switched on, so without that flash I would have been a dark silhouette only.

Thanks for reading.

“Selfies”

This week I’ve got my first “smart” mobile phone ever. I’m still not sure if I need such a device (who would?), but since I have it, I could as well try to take some advantage of it.

The newer one of my two cameras has WLAN and can act as an access point for such a phone or tablet device, so you can share photos vie these mobile gadgets or use them the other way ’round to act as a remote control for the camera. Which is exactly what I did yesterday, first in the office:

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and later at home:

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These look a bit different than your usual “selfie”, because you don’t grab the imaging device itself, only the remote. Plus you can of course use all the controls of such a better camera, and like in the second photo, even studio strobes (camera-external flashes).

Such an “external viewfinder” – in my case with a 5″ screen diagonale – is fun, and much better than the infrared remote which I have for my DSLR. Like on the touchscreen of the camera itself, you just poke yourself in the eye (or tip onto any other point you want to have sharp) to select both the autofocus point, and to trigger the camera (and flash and whatever). This could also be used for shy animals, who would possibly approach a camera, but only if there’s no human behind it.

Real fun.

Thanks for reading.

Spain

Love that piece of music, onto which I stumbled again lately. And I’ve actually played it myself half a lifetime ago, together with Christian Hecker (p), and with Sven Thomsen (dr), when we formed a band for a theater group.

It begins – as so often – with Rodrigo‘s Concierto de Aranjuez (which I also have on CD, played by Narciso Yepes), but the rest of the piece is Chick Corea‘s most well-known composition.

And tho I’m no Patitucci (and played a 4-string bass only), it’s immense fun to play it, and also to see the “old guard” plaing it (Chick is 75 by now). Enjoy…

Thanks for reading.

A cool talk about team building

Carla Schroder posted an article on linux.com with the keynote video for LinuxCon North America, held by Dr. Margaret Hefferman.

Dr. Hefferman compares successful team building with the work and research from William M. Muir, Professor of Animal Science at Purdue University, who did research on poultry – which is why Carla’s article is headlined “How Building Strong Open Source Teams Is Like Raising Chickens“.

If you have the 20+ minutes, listen to the keynote of Dr. Hefferman – it’s worth it. Especially if you’re a manager.

This is dedicated to Robert, my boss, who has birthday today. With congratulations…

Thanks for reading.

Bright & dark

My plan was to use only one lens for a whole month – this time that would be the Zuiko Digital 50mm f/2 Macro lens from the Four Thirds system, usable on Micro Four Thirds with an adapter which also provides autofocus.

Or rather, it would have been. I decided today to stop this. Tho my recent portrait of Arno was one of the “most successful” photos I uploaded onto Flickr, the lens choice was just too restricting for me to keep it for another two weeks.

Anyway, here’s one more which I took using that lens today:

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Herbstfarben – autumn colours

And now I’m back to two zoom lenses; the normal 14-42mm on my E-M10, and the 40-150mm on the E-PL5. With that latter combination I just took this:

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Shadows on the wall

And since I liked the contrast between the day and night photos, I combined them for my header picture.

Thanks for reading.