Spoons.

Play. Play. Play.

Ricoh GR Digital II. And a half-dozen plastic picnic spoons.

Because, symmetry.

Last of the season.

Let the petals fall.

Fujifilm X100S.

From our rose garden at the old house. October 2014.

Classical glass.

 

A little macro action.

I have an adapter that allows me to use old manual-focus Minolta lenses on my micro four thirds cameras.

I made this particular lockdown garden shot – one of three Bulbine’s we have in pots on the back patio – using my Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX8 and a Minolta MD Rokkor X 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens that I’ve had for years.

I shot it square, there’s no cropping, but I did run it through the Urban Acid action, adding a few personal tweaks.

A twilight shot, the camera was pointed into the sun-less early evening sky, I shut it down a bit to get more of the flower and buds in focus – plus a smaller aperture allowed me to move the camera in closer. No flash, all natural light.

Titled “Yellow Bulbine,” I like this shot bunches.

Oh, and sorry about the really poor Mason Williams reference. Sometimes I just can’t help mysef.

Fiddlin’…

… in the digital darkroom.

I played around with one of my shots from last Sunday’s car show over in Round Rock at Centennial Plaza. This is the badge and right front-end of a silver colored Porsche 1600/356. 1956, I’m guessing.

The original photo was color, taken using the vivid setting available in the Sony RX100M3.

I use an older version of Photoshop, CS5 Extended, or Photoshop 12. I haven’t yet fully embraced Adobe’s subscription model and this rather old version still works on my trusty old 2012 Mac Mini.

I have the free version of the NIK software bundle installed and use it often for both color and black and white edits.

I haven’t yet fully embraced their subscription model…

For this shot, I used the Silver Efex Pro 2/030 Film Noir 1 filter to make the conversion to BNW. Love the grain from this filter. There are plenty of settings to mess with, including film types, vignette, and brightness/contrast. I also removed the image border.

Next I used the Photoshop burn tool to darken up the letter “P” at the top of the badge. I was pretty much shooting into the sun at ƒ/1.8 and a it got a little blown out, but there was enough there to recover.

I like that blown-out area to the left of the badge, framed by the badge and the curve of the fender, with the trees in the background and the fender’s shadow fore.

1970.

Heads-up, pick-up.

I was out walking the other day, heading for the mailbox, and crossing the street I noticed a shiny coin near the gutter on the other side.

It was a nickel. Heads-up, so fair game. It’s bad luck to pick up coins that’re tails-up, don’t you know. 8^)

I scraped away some of the schmutz from the face of the coin and saw that it was a 1970 S, minted in San Francisco. Cool.

’70 was a significant year in my life.

A tiny, tiny hole.

April will be here before you know it.

I’ve been using the Wanderlust Pinwide since 2010 and love that little thing, but it has its flaws. The main problem being it’s made from plastic.

The first one I purchased lasted almost a year with careful handling, but then I took the GF1/Pinwide combo with me on a 2-week trip to Italy – along with three other camera/lens combos – and by the time the trip was over the small tabs that hold the cap to the camera had broken off.

I was fortunate that Pinwides were still available for purchase and picked up a couple more. I’m still using one of them, careful to remove it from the GF1 body when not in use. The other still has the cellophane wrapper around the little tin container, unopened. Plus I still have the Slit.

When I saw the Thingyfy Pinhole Pro S11 advertised on a few photography sites I was curious, certainly. Aluminum. Clean design. Reasonably priced. Really cool. Why not?

I ordered it online at their site. Got an immediate email order confirmation saying I’d get an email notification when it shipped. In about 15 days, the email said. Waited for that shipping notice. Never came. Yes, I checked spam. I pinged them via email, Twitter, Facebook. No response whatsoever. Finally got a shipping notice via email and waited another week until it arrived.

Aside from the unimpressive customer service, the S11 is a pretty nifty little gizmo.

The unboxing was Apple-like. Great package design, inside and out. Really nicely done.

They offered a threaded aluminum lens cap for an additional $10, but the S11 came with a plastic clip-style lens cap, which was good enough for me.

I did order the 58mm UV filter, though.

I shot a few hand-held pictures the same day it arrived in the mail, using the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX1.

The GF1  was next, a few weeks later.

While the 11mm focal length is the same for both the Pinwide and the S11, the hole/aperture in the S11 is slightly larger, 0.14mm to 0.11mm for the Pinwide.

Another cool little gizmo.

Looking forward to this year’s Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on Sunday April 28, 2019.

 

 

Journey through the past.

Drop it.

It must have bothered me. Not enough to act immediately, but I’ve felt compelled lately to right a wrong that occurred some 10 years ago.

I really liked it. Was getting a lot of use out of it, too. I even took it to Omaha, Nebraska. Walked all over town with it while attending a conference for the university. Got amazing results with it. I absolutely loved the user-interface and menu system. Check out the specs on DPReview…

And then one day after work I was getting out of the truck and I dropped it. It wasn’t the first time that had happened. It was the third. And final.

It came with one strap lug and a hand strap. Not my favorite set-up. I’ll never be a fan of that configuration.

I absolutely loved the user-interface and menu system.

Over the years, I’d occasionally scour eBay to see if anyone was selling theirs. In early November I finally found a used Samsung NV11 in near mint condition for an extremely reasonable price. $66, including shipping.

When it arrived, I spent a couple of days reacquainting myself. Played with all the settings and took a bunch of meaningless pictures that eventually got deleted.

It was one of three cameras I used yesterday while on a photo stroll near the Texas State Capitol in Austin. PhotowalksATX. Great gang of folk.

I purposely set it to black and white and ISO 1600, and off I went…

 

 

Rodney

Backside

Flower

Looking up

Dome

Bald guy with glasses

Kevin

Texas star

Sixth

Bird

Ridiculously

Peel