Author: ruminator

Daily Image — 17 September 2023

ruminator
The signs of fall are showing. Shot with Fuji X-E4 and Fujinon 35mm f/1.4 at f/2.8 with the Kodachrome 64 film simulation.

While walking The Girl in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, I noticed that the colors of the bear brush1 are changing. This started a couple of days ago. The lodgepole pines, of course, have not changed.

I can feel the difference in the air as well. Over the last couple of weeks, it is not as warm in the afternoons. Fall is coming.

I look forward to it as it is after the summer heat and we move into the cooler months. I love the weather here in the high desert. it suits me. The heat lasts only a few weeks and the remainder of the year has wonderful weather.

I enjoy being outdoors with The Girl. We have fun. Life is good.

1I am sure this brush has a formal name. I recall calling it bear brush from back when I was a kid. I think it will stick.

Remainders: 16 September 2023

ruminator
While on the trail a couple days ago, she posed for me. Shot with Fujifilm X-E4 and Voigtlander 27mm f/2 Ultron at f/2. SOOC using Tri-X 400 film simulation.
  • This week, The Corporal did a mid-week video on his preferred load bearing gear. It is worth a watch.
  • It is something I have been thinking about. I like the idea of a smaller pack to support a belt. Sometimes I want to carry a camera bag and a full pack is too much for a short hike. That lead me to researching The Corporal’s LBE and then I landed here.
  • Faizal Westcott posted a video that includes a brief review of Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act. I downloaded a Kindle sample, but might decide I want a hardcover book.

The photograph was from walkies a few days ago. I have been carrying the Fujifilm X-E4 with the Voigtlander 27mm f/2 Ultron mounted. It is a manual focus lens that has a chip. So the aperture setting is sent to the camera for recording in the EXIF data of the image. The focus is very smooth and focusing is fast and easy, provided I set the correct color for the focus-peaking assist.

Daily Image — 13 September 2023

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Shot of Aloha Liquor Store with the Asahi-Kogaku Optical Company 58mm f/2.4 at f/8 with the Sony A7Sii and Vivid Creative Look.

This (very) vintage lens came to me a couple of weeks ago. It is from an Asahi-Kogaku rangefinder camera, probably made in the 1950s. I had to order a M37/M42 adapter so I could mount the lens. Then I got busy with field work and did not take time to shoot it.

Well, I decided to reprovision my stock, so I took The Girl and we drove down to Aloha Liquor. She waited while I did a little shopping. Then I made this capture of the store front.

The lens is certainly sharp at f/8. The colors are not quite as nice as the Hexanon 40mm f/1.8 produces. But they are good.

I made a second capture in black and white, below, of my Lucas plushie. This one was shot wide open (f/2.4). It is also quite sharp and there is a hint of swirly bokeh in the background. It looks like this lens will also produce some soap bubble bokeh balls as well. I need to play with it some more.

One more thing — this lens is heavy. There is a lot of metal in the lens.

This is a shot of Lucas using the Asahi-Kogaku Optical Company 58mm f/2.4 wide open. Captured with the Sony A7Sii and the Black and White Creative Look setting.

Daily Image — 11 September 2023

ruminator
50 Percent Off — While walking the streets of Placerville, California, I came across this rack of on-sale clothes. I liked the look. Capture with the Fuji X100V, 23mm Fujinon f/2 at f/2.8. Tri-X 400 film simulation.

There are other reasons to remember this date. I suspect it was the for my grandparents’ generation and 07 December. I have not forgotten and will not forget.

On a lighter note, I was on my way home from Sacramento a couple of weeks ago. I stopped in Placerville, California for a bite of lunch, although it was a bit early. So I walked the streets a bit to see what I could see.

This rack of clothes caught my eye. So I made the capture.

Then I wandered back to Mel’s Diner for a shake and a BLTA.

Life is good!

Daily Image — 10 September 2023

ruminator
I love textures. This old log attracted my attention with the combination of surface texture and the play of light on the surface. I made the capture with a Fuji X-E4 and a Voigtlander Ultron 27mm f/2 at f/8. I used the Kodachrome 64 film simulation.

The Girl and I are hiking up near Spooner Summit a lot lately. It is cool up there. The lodgepole pines give a lot of shade and I love the sound of the wind in them. The risk of snakes is less than it is in the sageland. There are lots of things to photograph and the offering changes often with the change in light.

The area was burned a few years ago. Many of the trees are undamaged. But there are plenty of downed trees that can be interesting (both for The Girl and for me). There are also lots and exposed rocks that provide interesting textures.

It will take me a while to exhaust the area of photographic subjects.

On this particular day, The Girl and I hiked our regular trail from the staging area. She sniffed about looking for critters while I explored visually. I found this downed tree and like the texture and play of light across the surface. I made the capture. Post-processing was light with a little change in contrast and a little boost to the color.

When we returned to the staging area, I setup a radio station and activated the park. The site is also a designated Parks on the Air site (actually it is a double — two parks). It was a good day. I am grateful. Life is good.

On This Day

ruminator

It has been awhile since I just wrote something. OK, so here goes something…

A part of me would like to ditch WordPress and go back to Textpattern. I developed a weblog format that I really like with Textpattern and ran if for many years. That is, until my hosting service decided they no longer wanted to be a hosting service. I guess me having a grandfathered free account, probably along with many others, might have had something to do with that.

So, the original owner of the hosting service, and developer of Textpattern, stated he would take the servers and honor his obligation.

Well he did, to a point. I was hosted on a unit called Pendrell and it failed catastrophically. There was a lot of back and forth about getting data off the backups. But it never materialized.

I had a backup, but still lost about month’s worth of entries. There was a lot going on in my life in 2013 and my weblog was not the highest priority.

I found another hosting service and setup a WordPress content management system. I never did work out how to migrate my old Textpattern content to the new CMS. There is more than ten-years worth of writing in that archive. I still have the backups.

Now I wonder if it is possible, or even wise, either migrate back to Textpattern (which is now open source and richly maintained) or try to find some help migrating my old Textpatter content to WordPress.

WordPress is probably the most widely used CMS. As such, it is regularly subject to attack. I have had to clean up a couple of times after being hacked.

I think that Textpattern is less susceptible to attack simply because it is not so widely used. I might be wrong. But I really liked my design and it was easy to change colors and header image once or twice a year to spruce it up a little.

I have a lot of content here on my weblog. A lot of it does not see much attention because it is far in the past. I was thinking about this and decided to see if there is a WordPress plugin that will display entries that I wrote on the current date. There is — it is called On This Day by Room34.

It is now implemented on the sidebar of my homepage.

In reviewing my work (after adding the widget to the sidebar), I came across an entry Trolls of the Internet Species. I read it and it is still true today.

Why this rang my bell again, so to speak, is that I watched an interview with Dr. Jordan Petersen a couple of days ago. He was answering questions about psychopathy and mentioned in passing Internet trolls. I do not have a link to the interview (The Telegraph was the channel), but it is definitely worth tracking down and watching.

I like the widget. I still wonder what to do with all of my archived content.

Remainders: 09 September 2023

ruminator
Here she comes!

Another week, another few links:

  • I need to back up the Microsoft Surface Go 2. A quick review of my options led me back to a legacy Microsoft tool, System Image Backup Tool. That is a mouthful, and it is no longer supported. But I do not care for the alternatives at this time.
  • Leatherman just released a new EDC pouch, the Adapt Kit. It looks quite interesting as a small supplemental toolkit that will hold a multitool, bit set, accessories, and maybe a small gun cleaning kit.
  • ZAID makes good leather products for photographers.
  • So does Clever Supply Company.

Daily Image — 09 September 2023

ruminator
I came across this bag of office supplies left in the grass at the old flume. I wonder why they were just dropped. I will never know.

While The Girl and I were walking here in town a few days ago, she hunted ground squirrels while I looked at the roses growing along the old flume. I saw this bag of office supplies that were dumped in the grass. It made me wonder why there were left behind… Was someone interrupted? Were they stolen from the nearby Office Depot? Why were they just dropped?

I will never know.

Daily Image — 02 September 2023

ruminator
Lately I have been shooting normal(ish) lenses during my daily walkies with The Girl. Yesterday I carried an old Hanimex 135mm f/2.8 along and shat a few frames with it. This one I like, captured with the Sony A7Sii with in-camera black and white conversion at f/8. I did post-process a bit in Iridient Developer, made some contrast adjustments and added a bit of sharpening.

Over the last month or so, with the exception of two outings, my images were captured with normalish lenses. The two exceptions were some captures with the Nikkor 85mm f/2 and the Zuiko 85mm f/2. On a full-frame camera, like the Sony A7Sii (which I carry a lot), 85mm is a short telephoto focal length. It is most commonly used for portraits.

I start to see the telephoto effect (compression of distance, shallow depth of field) at a focal length of about 105mm. Yesterday I carried a Hanimex 135mm f/2.8 in the bag. The Carl Zeiss Jena 50mm f/2.8 Tessar was on the camera (Sony A7Sii) during most of our walk. Near the end of walkies, I decided to mount the Hanimex and see what that gave me.

The Hanimex was reviewed and recommended by Nigel (Zenography channel). It is not an expensive lens. They are quite common (East German Cold War era). But, they are also quite sharp, good quality, and have good contrast. I picked one up off fleaBay a few weeks ago for not much money.

Nigel is right — the lens is quite sharp, even wide open. It has good image quality. And I quite like the telephoto look of this shot of River Road from the Silver Saddle Ranch gate staging area.

The Girl and I had a good walk. The weather is cool, very much fall-like. We have had some rain and I am hopeful that keeps the wildfires away. My thought for today is that maybe we will drive up to our current favorite portable operation site this morning. We can walk some and I might set up a station and see if the bands are better (yesterday they were poor). I think I will take makings for coffee or tea.

Whatever we do, it will be good. I am grateful The Girl is strong and healthy. I do not mind that she is a bossy-bitch. Life is good.