Argh, Busy

So it's pretty much a given that I'm going to neglect my blog writing duties at this point, given that I'm a fully-fledged member of society and actually doing work now.

But I found this cool insect on my veranda today.  Considering it's the dead of Winter, I'm a little worried that it won't survive on account of there being no food around. On the bright side, my plan of leaving a trough out with bare soil, and letting the natural flora grow there seems to be working. I've already seen a few ladybirds, some spiders and now this guy out there.

Compare that to last Summer even, where the only insects that visited were moths, flies and spiders.

Unfortunately, I'm going to spray down my hydroponic system with some insect killer, and go after the stuff that's attacking my strawberries because no matter what I grow in there, it gets infested almost immediately.  I now understand why all the professional hydro growers maintain their spaces as clean rooms.

I wonder whether that's going to make a dent in the issue, or whether I'm just going to have to grow my hydro stuff in a cold frame looking thing.

I've already got a metric ton of different seeds I want to try in there, so hopefully I'll find a crop that is pest resistant.

I'm including this one for two reasons. First of all, this was shot at f22 which is as wide as it'll go, and the focal plane is still only millimetres. Very difficult to get good pictures handheld.

The second reason is look at his evil little feet. Kind of cool.

This one is the best of all the ones I took. I haven't done any editing, so it's a little bright, the colours aren't great etc. This lens is still pretty damned cool, and I'm reminded of that fact whenever I get time to use it.

P.S. The net is to stop the bloody pigeons.

Kept You Waiting, Huh

So it's been a while.

Turns out, getting a real job leaves a lot less time to do fun things like take pictures.

Fortunately, I managed to get out this weekend to a rose garden.

I took my massive bazooka 645 film camera, and my 5Dmk3 with an adapter to use with a Yashica 55mm macro lens from about 1970, if I had to guess. Needless to say, the pictures aren't exactly the sharpest things in the world, and the adapter is pretty janky, to the point where you don't even need to press the button for it to twist off.

Not exactly ideal when you're trying to turn the focus ring (not really a focus ring on this lens, more of a ratio selector) or change aperture.

Anyway, I came away with a few decent pictures.

I think the two types of photography that interest me the most are insanely close-up macro, and insane telephoto wildlife shots.

The telephoto lenses go for 5 grand at the lowest end, and I have a free macro lens.  Guess which one I'm 'into.'

These look a lot better on smaller screens with higher pixel density, because like I said before, they're not the sharpest things in the world. I wasn't allowed to use a tripod in the park either, so these are all handheld.

I can't remember what settings I was using, but focusing macro is a nightmare, the focal plane is so narrow that you (see: people who are bad at photography like me) have to use as narrow an aperture as possible to get as much in focus as possible. This means less light, which means either a lower shutter speed, or a higher ISO.

Combine these problems with the fact that all the plants were blowing around, and cutting the roses is frowned upon, making the entire endeavour quite tricky.

P.S. You know all those cool insect macro shots you see where every single detail is immaculate? All those insects have been killed and posed. The photographer then takes a bajillion pictures moving the focal plane along the length of the insect, then stitches them together. Stacking the pics like this ensures the entire length (or however much the artist wants) of the insect is in focus.  Not my cup of tea, really.

One of the cool things about going to a rose garden is the sheer number of varieties.

I had assumed that Summer would be the time to go flower peeking, but the park was full of visitors.  They were hosting some kind of chorus/band type event thing and there were tons of blooms.

I was even tempted to try growing a rose in my hydroponics setup... But I thought better of it.

What I did buy though, it a fungus branch. It's a bough that's been seeded with mushroom spores.  They're edible, so hopefully in about 2 weeks we'll see what's for dinner!

Through sheer tenacity and relentless button pressing, you can sometimes fall into an opportunity.

Like, for example, when a bee lands on a flower in just such a way that allows you to take a picture that isn't totally balls.

This is about 1:2 magnification, probably as high as it'll go and in direct sunlight. I can't think that there would be any other way that it would be this sharp (look, I know it's not sharp, but it's relatively sharp).

So we're coming onto the pictures I'm most proud of.

I'm not sure that there isn't some information missing in the whites in this one, but I really like the spiral leading into the centre of the image.

Sometimes you just have to roll with what you've got, right?

And now, onto my two favourite pictures.

I can't decide which one I like more. They're both excellent (in my opinion) for completely different reasons.

The first one is busy.  There's pollen everywhere, the colours are deep and contrasty, and the shapes are all over the place. This feels to me like the bud burst open and the flower was just there, exposed to the elements.

This one feels like a soap advertisment.  Where the petals are gently unfolding, slowly growing outwards.  The amazing thing to me is that they're both roses, but everything from the shape to the smell (you'll have to trust me on this one) were completely different.

So, these are the pictures from the weekend.

Not sure what the next photography outing will be, but I'm all in on macro at the moment. It's just such an interesting thing, seeing tiny stuff all big like.

What's All This Then?

So it turns out, not having the internet makes it difficult to write things and upload them onto a blog.

Turns, out, just because Japan is tiny and has a massive supply of people sitting around doing nothing in the public sector, doesn't mean getting internet hooked up is quick or easy.

As such, it's taken two months to get internet hooked up to the new house.

Oh, I moved house by the way.

Unfortunately, the new flat is utter garbage for a thousand different reasons. There's no sunlight, which (I've heard) makes growing plants difficult. The drains stink to high shit, quite literally, and the landlord told us to get fucked when we asked to have them fix it. The superfast internet I was sold on (one of the reasons I OK'ed this flat) is 10 meg. Running at less than 8. I get 800kb/s down. Turns out 1080p youtube doesn't work on such a slow connection. Turns out, 2 people watching 720p youtube doesn't work either.

Also our neighbours suck ass and this move is easily the worst decision I've ever made in my life. With the prohibitive cost of moving (for some reason the government doesn't want people moving here, so they allow the moving companies, real estate agents, landowners et. al to gouge the population. Eg. Moving out of the old house cost 6 months rent.  That's before the price of moving INTO the new place gets taken into consideration, or the price of moving vans (the wife wouldn't let us rent a van) or utilities reconnection etc. I've been told by the wife that we're not allowed to move for at least 6 years.

So my options are never come home, never be at home, or suicide.

As such, I've been doing tons of overtime at my job, and spending all day fishing.

Today though, there is a fireworks festival on the river I fish on, so I don't think the fish will be biting, and I don't think there would be any space for me even if they were.  As such, I decided to update the blog and upload a couple of pictures I took.

These are actually incredibly blurry. Not because they're particularly out of focus, or because the shutter speed was too high, but the lens is probably close to 40 years old, and it's using a JANKY adapter I bought off some dodgy chinese website. Regardless, if you look at these on a small enough screen they look alright.

I quite like the black background too.

I know everyone loves spiders, so here's another one.  I took one a few years ago that looked positively deadly, with red and yellow all over.

This guy looks a lot calmer, although I wouldn't want to meet him if he were scaled up to the size of my screen.  It looks pretty gnarly at this size.

Oh, duh. I just figured out why the government doesn't want people moving house. It's because the politicians are the landowners and landlords. Duh.

Literally, the Best Picture Ever Taken by a Human

This is literally the best picture taken by a human being in the history of mankind.

I qualify human, because I'm sure in my lifetime a robot will have taken a better picture.  Perhaps it will be an automated drone type thing, perhaps it will be floating in the ocean when an elusive giant squid floats by, being chased by a school of ocean faring piranha somehow.  Maybe there are aliens involved.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the picture:

Actually, before I get to the picture, just note that I've made some modifications to it, to ensure that no one steals this amazing picture and puts it on facebook with some misattributed inspirational quote.

Please feel free to e-mail me for a copy of the original.  (Only 2500 USD, one copy, digital, 240px by 320 px.)

Fly, My Dragon

So part of my Grandads camera gear were a set of lenses.  There were enough that I might even call them a suite of lenses.

One of the highlights is a macro lens that lets you get within centimetres of your target, allowing a really large photo on the other side.  I was interested in getting a macro lens before I came across this one because they're way, way cheaper than their telephoto counterparts.

Note that I'm talking about stuff for getting up close and/or magnifying macro, not the type to take photographs of people.  I'm sure there's a name for the different types, but I don't know them.

Anyway, as a bonus to buying the adapter to see if I can get Grandads slides onto the computer, I can also use his cool macro lens with my digital camera.  The result is this:

And this:

The video shows how hard it is to keep this thing still.  Modern cameras have image stabilisation, some in the body, some in the lenses.  Canon have chosen to put their system in the lenses, and because I'm using an old lens, it most certainly does not have image stabilisation.

The colours are also wonky, so I had to pep them up in my video software.  The result is an imperfect picture, but I quite like the image even in video.

Getting up close with a dragonfly is hard, especially at arms length without a tripod.  Next time I'm going to try to find a co-operative insect that's at waist height.

I don't know what the green insect is, but it was a piece of cake to take a picture of.

Luckily for me I managed to take a few more pictures at the park we went to, and I still have a ton from the UK to go through.  Tons more pictures to look at on a rainy day!

Lensageddon

So I bought my camera a few years ago, which means it's nearly time for the new models to come out.  Nikon have already produced their camera in my range, or are very close to doing so.  Canon are going to release their stuff in a few months.  Obviously, this camera was a once in a lifetime purchase, I'll never be able to afford something as expensive or frivolous again so I've been looking at the lenses that currently make up their lineup.

I really want a big lens.  One of the 400mm pro lenses that get you shot in america because they think you're carrying a bazooka.  The kind of lens that comes with an aluminium case for lugging it around because it's too big for a normal bag.

Alas, two things stop me.  Firstly and least importantly, I wouldn't use the lenses that much.  Wicked interesting animal pictures, strange portraits and occasional oddities aside, I'd probably only ever haul it out a few times a year.  Then again having one of those in the wardrobe would probably get me out more frequently.

The second and more important reason is obvious.  They cost, even second hand, as much as a car.  The cheaper versions would suffice for me, probably anything above f4 (if you don't know what an f number is, it basically means that, should I have this lens, my penis is bigger than someone with an f5.6, but smaller than someone with an f2.8).  Second hand price doesn't drop that much once you get to a certain echelon of gear, so all of these are thousands of wonga, even if used.

So I started looking around for other types of lenses that were feasible within the next year or two, stuff that had a practical use for me.  I really like the idea of a 50mm, a prime that you can just walk around with and take some pictures.  The 50mm primes are cool because they're really fast and relatively small, which means you can hand hold them just fine and use available light, which means not toting around a flash or tripod.  As I have none of these things it's almost the ideal type of lens.  Unfortunately the good ones of this variety are pretty expensive too.

So I'm back to square one.  I came across some interesting macro options.  These are cool because they let you blow up small objects, making them fill a frame with things you might not otherwise see.  If you get a normal macro lens route you can take quite nice pictures of people, and you can get pretty darn close to small insects too.  This is a kind of photography I could get behind, and despite the relatively low prices of these lenses, you need a tripod and lighting setup, which inflates the price.  To get the really cool pictures you would look at something like this.

It magnifies everything up to five times which is great because it opens up a world of photography that you can indulge in anywhere.  Looking at everyday stuff blown up to be huge is fascinating, and with the setup required being relatively small, you'd just have a box in the corner of the room with all the gear you'd need to take a picture.  You could probably take some really interesting videos too.  I think that's my next project.  Save up for that particular lens, clear out a corner and set something like that up.

Thousands of pounds are impossible, a few hundred might not be.  Super saving powers go!