Almost Christmas!

So I'm fairly sure Christmas was yesterday, and tomorrow will also be Christmas.

I say this because it's been more than a month and a half since the holidays and yet it feels like minutes have passed.

As a quick recap of the year so far, I was surprisingly ill for a long time, even by my own lofty illness gathering standards.  This spiralled into a few hospital visits where I was brushed off (booooo Japanese healthcare!) towards finding a clinic that I actually think might be halfway decent.  The doctor seemed to care which was nice, and I have hope that I might actually be able to find pain medication now that I'm not simply laughed out of the facility.  Things are looking up!

Now that I've finished with rugby, I've started playing badminton and occasionally fishing.  I've only lost about 7gbp's worth of gear on the three separate occasions fishing has been attempted, which is pretty good in my books.  I've yet to catch anything but rocks, so I'm looking forward to working through shoes, boots and eventually towards shopping trolleys.  At some point next year I expect to get a nibble, then towards the end of this decade I expect a fish might bite.  At my current pace, this is actually the cheapest hobby I've ever partaken in.

I am terrible at badminton.  I cannot play doubles to save my life.  It doesn't help that there's a language barrier (in most other situations a half second pause to consider what to say is acceptable, in a game as fast as badminton that is less acceptable).  What I have found is that I am pretty damned competitive against any of my opponents (they're all either 80, or heavily pregnant) if I just play by myself and ignore my partner.  This is of course bad form, so I only do it when I've stuffed up a dozen previous shots and feel like I need to make amends - or once an hour, whichever comes first.  I am not a team player.

Awa odori festival from a few years ago

A tall building in London, it might be famous or something.  I don't think many people know about it though.  Weird that the tour bus would even drive past it.

I've also bought a scanner, and I'm in the process of digitising all my film.  The eventual aim is to get to my Grandads slides and 35mm, and digitise those before they disintegrate.  At the moment I'm doing mine so I can perfect the process.  If I end up faffing about with his slides and film, there's going to be a fair amount of damage done because some of the slides are fragile to an extent that leads me to suspect he used them to cover roof tiles, or patch up glass in his greenhouse.  Either that, or they're quite old.

I still haven't dialed in the settings for the scanner properly, but I'm getting there.  I'm probably a thousand pictures in at this point so the act of physically loading the pictures is easy enough, but I'm not quite sure of the settings I want to use.  You can scan the pictures to ridiculous sizes with zero increase in quality, to the point where a single picture runs towards 2 gigs.  This is plainly ridiculous, although there are one or two pictures that I really like, that have had this treatment.

I will write a blog post about the process required to ensure as little dust gets into the final picture as possible though, because it is unbelievable how much crap comes through to the end product.

My main monitor isn't colour balanced which is also another problem, because the pictures look completely different on both my monitors, and then when viewed on a phone look completely different again.  It's a tricky situation, so I'm trying to save the pictures with the highest quality, with the most neutral colour balance possible.  This leaves a lot of otherwise good pictures looking quite bland until they are edited.

I've also recieved half a dozen lenses from very old cameras (they still use screw thread mounts, that's how old they are) from a friend, so am in the process of finding adapters for those.  There's a totally radical (dude) 180 degree fisheye that I desperately want to try out, and a crazy 600mm telephoto.  I have no idea of the quality, but they were going in the bin until they found a home here.

Now I've written that, back to studying Japanese.

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.)

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!

A Park and A Wheel

So last month (during the cherry blossom season) I went to a park with the camera in order to capture one or two of the trees in bloom.

I completely forgot about the picture until yesterday, when I had a day off and ventured into another park without the trees.

Some of these are from before - some from yesterday.  It's up to you to choose which are from which.

It wouldn't be a set of pictures from me without a black and white one.  This shows the texture of this rock pretty nicely I think.  Uninteresting for all but me, but this is my blog so tough.

Kasai Rinkai Koen has a lot of poppies blooming at the moment.  I don't know why; they certainly weren't there last year.

Maybe it changes yearly.

This is another shot of the same set of fields.

The ferris wheel will make a comeback later in the post.

This outcropping looked pretty nice with the reflection so I just took a quick snap.  It turned out to be one of my favourites.

This is a heron from a month or so ago.  He didn't seem to be too perturbed by the people passing by, we even saw him catching a couple of fish.

Bear in mind my lens is only a very mild zoom.

This blossom is pretty indicative of the millions of other cherry blossoms around Japan.  Once you've seen one of them, you've pretty much seen them all.

Having said that, when they're dropping they do look pretty incredible.

See?  This is a slightly lighter version of the one above.

I think this is a heron.  I've no idea what type.  It might not even be a heron, I don't know.  This one was slightly more shy, and the camera struggled with the whites so there's not much detail in the feathers.  Having said that, it's amazing how close you can get if you just go slowly.

And this is the next vision of the ferris wheel replete with bad elevator music.

Link Here!

And that's all for today.