Author: admin
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How I photograph paintings – on a budget
As you may have read somewhere else, my beloved is a painter (she’ll deny it, but it’s true). She works with oil on canvas, and has recently also picked up aquarels. My task is to photograph her pictures as accurately as possible, for her portfolio web site. Mind you: this is not a howto! What…
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The Hiatus — on backfiring auto-immune treatment, and more photog gear — March, April, May, June
Just when I felt I was gaining traction again, my meds decided to do a number on me. Or two, actually. As I wrote in January, I was put on a regime of Rituximab (2 drips, one on Dec. 16 and the followup on Dec. 30), in addition to the Prednisone and the Mycophenol acid.…
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Jazz cave re-lit, social media cleaned out – Peter’s February in review
My study annex music room annex studio (basically a renovated loft where too many things happen on not enough square metres), which I affectionally call the Jazz Cave, had received a new floor last November. But the lighting was still crappy — LED strips which were now 10 years old, and two of those were…
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Settling dust, a new camera, broken lenses — Peter’s January in review
When I retired in October 2024, I had not foreseen the events that would hit us. So, a bit of exposition first. Exposition It started with our washing machine coughing up its lunch and dying. Geting a new one was no trivial matter. Then, our house sprung a leak, causing rain water to enter the…
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The Gear Factor
No, this is not the eternal Canon vs. Nikon debate… if only because I avoided that route altogether (more on that later). This goes into the question itself — does it matter what gear we use? Without further ado, here’s my version of The Answer: 1. It depends on the photographer’s personality Some of us…
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Polymorphism, inheritance, and interfaces
Someone had trouble figuring out why .NET comes with all these interfaces for collections, so I thought, let’s write a concise blog post about that. Okay, that was a joke. I don’t do concise. And then I found out that I needed to explain interfaces, and polymorphism, and therefore inheritance, as well. So, rather than…
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Heavy machinery
On how the Dynax 7 refuses to give up its crown without a fight In a prior article, I summed up the difference between the Minolta Dynax 800si and the Dynax 7. The Dynax 7 is my favourite Minolta autofocus film camera, with one caveat: it appears to have a well-earned reputation for dying horribly…
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How to have fun with a tripod
Or how some affordable accessories will make your tripod a lot more useful I already owned a Velbon Carmagne 603 carbon tripod when, recently, I got me a surprisingly useful travel tripod from a Chinese manufacturer. The reason for getting the travel tripod is because the Velbon was pretty bulky, and very unwieldly to be…
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Why I love to photograph from a tripod
Sometimes I work from a tripod because circumstances dictate a long exposure time. That actually makes sense.And sometimes, I work from a tripod because I find that this forces me into a different, slower, more dedicated mode of photography. The mere act of getting the camera on a tripod apparently slows me down, and this…
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The best tripod is… the one you take with you.
I had a nice Manfrotto 055B with a 029 head.I still have a Velbon carbon tripod with a Velbon head, which is way better than it’s entitled to be. For all practical purposes, it’s every bit as good as the Manfrotto was, but lighter. Problem is, I rarely carried either of the two. Too long…