This Old Blog

two seniors say hello It's Thanksgiving week. I'm taking a few days of personal time before Thanksgiving Day because I'll be flying on business to Japan on Thursday. My wife and I are running around trying to get as much done as possible before I leave her alone with the two Labs and the three cats. She'll have our two daughters to come and visit as well as all her friends and our neighbors, but still, I worry. And because I worry I plan accordingly. One trip was to our vet with Max and Lucy. Max needed his ears checked, and Lucy needed to have a minor operation checked to see if she was healing well. Both little guys came away with flying colors. Max in particular is happy because his ears are in great shape. Max is a Lab, and Labs are Hounds, and a Hound's ears are very important to them. you don't smell like a puppy... While we were in the waiting room for out turn with the vet, many little characters, large and small, came over to pay their res...

I look damn silly in this costume... Yeah, Ruby, you look damn silly in that costume... We had a large number of Trick-or-Treaters come by the house this past Halloween. It started early (just barely past sundown) with two little kids, probably first graders. Parents stood on the sidewalk watching, laughing when Ruby came out in her costume to greet the kids. And the kids, even ones afraid of dogs, were immediately put at ease with Ruby's costume. As the night grew progressively late the age of the treaters grew progressively older until the last, a group of polite ninth graders, showed up around 8:30pm. I gave them the rest of my dwindling candy supplies, then turned off the outside lights and called it an evening. Every single kid was nice and well behaved. I had my E-M5 set up for the evening with the flash that comes with the camera, but the only subjects I used it on were Ruby and Lucy. I had the Panasonic 25mm mounted on it and opened up. As this is the first ti...

excited It's tough being a visiting parent. You want to treat your children like small children instead of adult children, to reach out and protect them still. The hardest part is acting with restraint. You offer praise without being asked, and carefully nuanced advice when asked and only when asked. It's a different form of parenting. It goes to underscore that you never stop being a parent. Your parenting continues in small and surprising ways as long as you live and breath. This is by no means everyone. This is a small fraction. And it's extending, slowly, as my daughters build their lives. The things I have, especially my cameras, are far more important as instruments to capture moments of what is really important to me than as things to own unto themselves. wary annoyed I have begun to shift (or perhaps the word is "pivot") in my photographic technique. Here's a surprising personal revelation. I find I don't quite like the added expo...

Max turned 13 today. He's now the third-oldest Lab we've ever owned. The longest lived was our first, a yellow named Rhett, who lived to be 16. Second longest was Rhett's companion Katey, a black who lived to be 15. Katey was my very "first" dog; I never owned one personally when I was a kid. Katey was still alive when Max first came to live with us in January 2000. Katey was born on a January. A month later, in February, I had to put Katey to sleep because she'd developed a large inoperable tumor, and our former vet didn't catch it in time. Sixteen and fifteen is a long time to live for any large breed; typical lifespan for a Lab is supposedly twelve years, so I can't complain when they pass. To celebrate Max went out for his typical walk. He's not quite as energetic as he once was. He and I both walk a bit slower these days, due to problems with our joints (me primarily with my knee replacement). My wife took Max and Ruby to the vet for so...

It's been raining on and off all day today, starting around 11am. Several thunder showers have passed over the house, but nothing that would drive the animals to take cover. Just a lot of rain varying from light showers to the occasional, if short, downpour. So I've been playing with the GX1 today with the 20mm and learning a bit more about Lightroom. Nothing specific to LR5, just general skills. I continue to be impressed with the output from the GX1. It, combined with the 1.7/20mm, make for a very nice combination. Ruby's photo is SOOC, cropped and resized by LR5. I discovered that changing saturation in the menus is not actually changing saturation (although I really wish I could). It changes the tint, from dark sepia at -2 to neutral to dark blue at +2. I have saturation at -1, or light sepia tint. I love the monochrome images that come out of this camera. Maybe I could do better in post with LR5 and Nik Software. Sometimes I think the light areas could be a litt...

Taken the same time as "party of two", this photo of just Ruby shows why I prefer sepia over neutral black and white. There's just more life in the sepia output, and the dark areas are truly dark. Part of this is the composition, but part of it is the internal tinting that takes place. Both of these (rubester and party of two) were taken with the E-PL2 and Panasonic 14mm at f/2.8. Foreground/background separation is rather nice. Again none of this was retouched; SOOC. Love me, love my Labs.

max and ruby Can't get through a TV program without the Labs showing up. It's showering again this evening so everybody came in to be with me. I'm watching " Dinotasia ", narrated by Werner Herzog (who sounds an awful lot like Christopher Lambert ). The Labs keep looking at the TV whenever the dinosaurs roar, then turn around to look at me as if to ask "what was that?" I guess Labs don't like dinosaurs.

Photographers are as fickle a bunch as you'll ever deal with. We can never settle down with any given camera or lens before we grow tired of its charms and yearn for something newer, fresher, more attractive and exciting to us. Take as an example my affair with the M.Zuiko 2.8/17mm. I've written about the 17mm in the past . The copy you see mounted on the E-PL1 above is my second. The first copy I had was silver. I purchased it because of its small silver size and because it was considerably cheaper than the Panasonic 1.7/20mm at the time. I used it quite a bit on my E-P2 until one day its front cosmetic element fell off into a Boston street back in March of 2011. The lens didn't stop working, but it fell out of favor when it lost a bit of itself. I was a fool to feel that way, but a friend wanted a µ4:3rds 17mm to play with so I sold him that one for $100, less than half what I'd paid for it a year before. And then a short time later I went out and got this copy,...

What the hell just happened? The rain rain rain came down down down In rushing, rising riv'lets, 'Til the river crept out of it's bed And crept right into Piglet's! Poor Piglet, he was frightened, With quite a rightful fright. And so, in desperation A message he did write. When the girls, who are now in their 20s, were in elementary school, their favorite cartoon character was Winnie the Pooh. This song, first heard by the girls in the Disney movie "Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day," was an immediate hit. The youngest identified with Piglet, and so the song took on an even more special meaning for her. They loved the story in the song and the alliteration of the lyrics. After all these years every time the rains come and the little creatures all come to camp around me until the weather passes, I still hear this snatch of song play in my inner ear. Although no load thunder was heard this early in the season, the wind and rain kept banging t...

All taken with the E-M5 and the M.Zuiko 14-42mm II kit zoom. The E-M5's quick focus, touch screen, and very quiet operation allowed me to get close enough to the animals for the captures. That, and the high ISO performance of the sensor (Ruby at the top and Lucy at the bottom are ISO 3200). The E-M5 is, without a doubt, the best Olympus digital camera I've ever owned, 4:3rds or µ4:3rds. And the consumer zooms I've used, specifically the 14-42mm and 40-150mm, have done excellent yeoman work, especially on the E-M5 body. This is the digital camera that Olympus has always been capable of producing (see the OM-1), and the digital camera they should have produced before they did. I sincerely hope Olympus produces more cameras like the E-M5, but more importantly, I hope Olympus survives to produce more like the E-M5.

Max with Plumbago blooms About a week ago a NEX-5N arrived at the house with just the stock 18-55mm kit zoom. Today I finally received a Fotodiox OM-NEX lens adapter so that I could use my OM lenses with my NEX-5N. In order to use my manual focus OM film-era lenses with the 5N and the adapter I had to enable Release w/o Lens under Menu | Setup . I then selected Peaking Level of High and a Peaking Color of Red in the Setup menu. And then I went back to shooting raw. Unless the subject is colored red, focus peaking works a treat with the 5N. This is the one feature above all others I would have liked Olympus to have added to its digital cameras, especially the Pens. I managed, after a fashion, to learn how to manually focus my OMs with my Pens (E-P2, E-PL1 and E-PL2), but it was a slow process. With the 5N focus peaking system, correct focus is absolute and certain, and for me at least a lot faster. I've also noticed another feature I appreciate on the 5N, and that's ...

It's been Primary Tuesday all day today. I'll vent my spleen about that in another post, but right now I want to give thanks for having my Labs to come home to at the end of the day. It's not like I don't love my wife, I do; it's that the Labs (and all make of dogs, I'm sure) give us their unconditional love, day in and day out. There is no quid pro quo with a dog. They're a vital part of the healing oasis I come home to every day. When they played as buddies four years ago, like big Max did with little Ruby, they both played as pups. "Dragon fights" is what the girls called them. Teeth bared, chuffing and huffing and soft mouthing each other. They circle and pounce, and Max was always the one on the ground, being careful not to step to hard on little Ruby. They'd make you laugh so had at times it was difficult to photograph them. These were taken four years ago when Ruby was still a pup. Max was really beginning to like playing with Ruby ...

These are photos taken in November 2008 when Ruby was ten weeks and Max was eight. Their fourth and twelfth year birthdays, respectively, are coming up in August. For whatever reason I got all sentimental and started to look for these particular photos. Max has certainly grown older since then, with prominent dark areas around the eyes. Ruby has just grown up, although if you see them standing side by side there's no mistaking smaller Ruby from larger Max. Max is still as energetic as ever, and takes to his walks with the same gusto he's shown since he was a five month old juvenile. Ruby has been "trained" by Max, and acts as his backup annoyer when I don't move fast enough to dress them out in their leads for their daily walks. The only difference is I'm now careful not to walk Max nearly as far as I once did. His age, my knees, and the heat and humidity make me more cautious about the time and distance on any single walk. Instead we spend time out in the b...

It's still a lazy time to hang around the house and do all those house chores, inside and out, that have accumulated of late because of work and my bum knee. The knee is actually healing, and I'm able to get out and Do Something Useful, like raking up bag after bag of leaves that have fallen and continue to fall as our extended fall season continues. We really don't have a real winter in central Florida, we just have a very short spring, a long hot summer, and a mild fall that runs from November to March. I've actually gotten some of my best fall foliage photos in early December up in Tallahassee. Max and Ruby like to hang with me in the back yard while I work; it's a dog thing. I've had Labs do that since I've had Labs going all the way back to when my wife and I first married nearly 30 years ago. So in between filling trash bags with leaves I grabbed the E-P2, quickly mounted the M.Z 45mm, and went back out to grab a few shots of the Old Man watching ...

This was the first Christmas day when neither of the girls were home. All we had were a collection of Labs and cats to keep us entertained. And for the most part we stayed in the house and entertained ourselves with the various gifts we'd gotten each other. My wife was very pleased with the Nook Tablet I'd gotten her, and kept remarking how easy it was to use compared to the Nook Color I'd gotten her last year. I'll put a review of it up on thewsreviews in short order. All of these except for the first were test shots taken with the M.Zuiko 45mm and the 40-150mm R lenses on the E-P2, under various lighting indoors, out, and mixed. I'll be doing more detailed personal reviews of the three lenses I got in December, but for the now let me say that the two new Zuikos were light and whisper quiet. And for what I paid for the 40-150 R ($160 on sale this month), I have to say that the 40-150mm R is an incredible bargain considering how good it is. From what I can ...