Sunday morning photo, mixed light, b&w

Now that I finally have a camera of my own again, I’m always on the lookout for photo opportunities. So when Tuna the cat decided to lay down on a warm spot of our heated floor just in front of our kitchen entry, I took two quick shots. And in the first of the two she was looking directly into the camera with a very intense stare.

This was in mixed light – natural daylight from outside, and artificial light from our kitchen which sadly doesn’t have any window. And although Olympus cameras do a very good auto white balance, they can’t of course correct for two totally different light temperatures – so I knew the end result would have to be in black & white (the only sensible resolution if you don’t use flash on your background).

And this is what I did. First I switched to black & white with a simulated yellow filter in Olympus Viewer 3 (same as if I had done this inside of the camera before even taking the photo). Then I checked and compared with the “fine art” preset no. #19 in Silver Efex Pro2 (and sfx won). And the final touches and the midrange colour toning (from grey to brown) were done in RawTherapee 5 in Linux as always.

So this is the result, cropped to a 3:2 format:


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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

About these Flickr embeds: I decided to use the new “block” from WordPress 5’s “Gutenberg” editor from now on. The difference for you is that I can’t alter the resulting HTML code to let the photo open in another tab or window anymore, so if you simply left-click on such a photo you will be directed to Flickr (and away from my site). If you don’t want that, then from now on you’ll have to right-click the image and select to open it in a new frame yourself.

As always, thanks for reading and viewing. Have a nice Sunday!

“Unchain my heart” Rita Payés Sant Andreu Jazz Band

Ok, let’s celebrate WordPress 5.0 “Bebo” with a Youtube video:


“Unchain my heart” Rita Payés Sant Andreu Jazz Band

Should I cite my own comment on that video of Joan Chamorro and his students? Here you go:

Wow. Perfection. My Christmas or birthday wish? Your “presents…” and “Jazzing” series. I’ll order all of them.

myself, in a comment on Youtube

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

More about the song: see Wikipedia

Another photo of Tuna with my new camera

That Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark 2 is a terrific little camera. I only have it since a few hours, but I love it already. So when I saw Tuna on her favourite chair in our living room, I switched on two of my studio strobes, and took her photo again:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

As always, thanks for viewing.

WordPress 5, Gutenberg, and Twenty Nineteen…

Ok, I’ll simply start writing here in a normal “paragraph” as they called it now, and then add some other stuff. Like for instance an image:

Squier Vintage Modified Precision Bass Fretless

Or “custom html”:

Here I’ll insert a link to Zuleikha’s page. It should open in a new tab or window…

Next will be a Flickr photo:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

What else do we have? A “classic block”, whatever that might be…:

Aaahh, looks like an embedded mini version of the former editor which is now called “classic”…

Then comes a “heading”:

Ok. H4 here.

Then, a “gallery”…

Or a “list”:

  • one
  • two
  • three
  • many…

Finally, a quote:

don’t waste time it’s prime

© marmotte
Lyrics: Sistahood

Ok, enough for now. There are many more “blocks” which you could add, but let’s see how it all turns out in its default form…

Ciao for now…

An exceedingly generous offer

Almost a month ago, my camera stopped working. The technicians from its maker said it’s an issue with the mainboard which would have to be replaced, and the cost for that including work would be ~ 160€. Considering the cost for a replacement which was 3 times that amount, I agreed upon the repair offer.

But as it turned out, they needed a part for my camera which they couldn’t get anymore. And so they came up with another offer: for that calculated repair cost they would instead send me the camera’s successor (see above, usually 3x the repair cost).

Wow. Of course I just couldn’t refuse that. And after some waiting, today my shiny new toy arrived, the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark 2. And of course I had to check it immediately, first with mixed daylight and artificial light:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

And a bit later with two of my studio strobes:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

So finally I can take photos with an own device again. Cool.

And wow, what a generous deal! Now I have to make the device mine, and set up everything like I had it before.

Cool.

Still no camera…

I’m still waiting for my camera, so in the mean time I used Mitchie’s again today to take another photo of the cat. Used Rawtherapee on Linux only this time to “develop” it from the raw file:

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Tuna the cat, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2018

I’m writing this with the new editor in WordPress 5, new from this evening.

Interesting…

Up & Down with Anne

Here’s our latest collaboration from Wikiloops which this time started from a private band project. Each single instrument was mixed masterly by OliVBee who is also the composer of the original template, and the guitar player:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

List of musicians:

This is the second time that I revisited this track after first being introduced to it in Steinfeld at this years Wikiloops member meeting, and after recording another version with Shi.

So this time, thanks to Oliv (again), Martin, Anne, and Charlotte.

And thanks to you for listening.

A few more cool videos

Here’s another great lesson from the Vox Earworm Channel on Youtube:

I know most of the music presented here, but it’s surely another thing if you are younger than me. And the channel as a whole is good – even Mike loves it!

And here’s a different, funnier one – featuring our “marmotte” from Wikiloops:

That guy has some more funny videos – but it helps if you understand some French for some of them.

Enjoy…

A photo of Tuna from yesterday

I still don’t have my camera back from repair, so yesterday I took Tuna’s picture with Mitchie’s E-M5 Mk2 camera. She had the 45mm/1.8 lens on it:

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It’s an in-camera black & white picture with a simulated yellow filter, but I mid-toned it in post with RawTherapee.

Thanks for viewing.