S3 New Look

After two years of shooting with this camera I finally caved and bought an adapter, though it was an aftermarket adapter, hence the tape. I've been wanting to play with filters for a while now, but couldn't bring myself to pay 30 bucks for a plastic adapter. I got a metal one on eBay for $14.50 with free shipping. Though it did take over a week to arrive. I then went and got some cheap filters to experiment with, most especially a circular polarizer. The only downside of all this is while waiting for the adapter to arrive, I finally made up my mind on my next camera. I'm going to try a Canon XSi. It's a 12.2 mega pixel DSLR, that also uses SD cards, which I now have a ton of (though they might be too slow.) All told I'll be spending over $1,000 on my new camera and 2 lenses. There goes a chunk of my bonus. Technically the camera and it's kit lens aren't that expensive, but I'm getting a dedicated macro lens too, at the same time, or I would never justify $400-$600 on one lens. I decided on it after reading many reviews, seeing test shots, holding the camera, and seeing a very funny forum post. It said someone who wanted the camera had taken 3,000 pictures with his point-and-shoot, so he thought it was time to move up. My S3 just rolled over again to 20,000 pictures, well technically it was in November. I've moved up to 21,326 as of yesterday. So if someone who took 3,ooo pictures thinks it's time to upgrade, I should probably upgrade as well. I was going to move to the SX10, but I've been unimpressed by the photos it's been taking, and it can't use filters, which just pisses me off. I've also found I really dislike the wheel they moved to from the S3's design. It does not respond as smoothly as just clicking. That's after 4 visits to Best Buy just to hold it and mess with the settings.

Ice. Icy, Ice. and a deer...

My walk at Moose Hill on Sunday. I'll add more later. The ice above wasn't directly on water. it was left there from when the marsh was higher. There were several layers until you got water. The trail also did a nice creaking and clinking thing as I moved on it, but it never went more than a half inch under water, so I didn't get wet.

Shaped Bokeh

I should not browse blogs. Photography blogs especially. On this one http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/ I scrolled through ten pages of posts and came across how to make shapes out of the out of unfocused lights in the background of pictures. Quick explanation is you cut a shape out of paper or card stock, set the focus on something close to the camera, and zoom in until the shape disappears on the viewer, with my camera that was about 72 mm with a 1 cm across star. You also want the largest Aperture you can get, i.e. the lowest number.

I haven't quite figured out how to focus on something closeup, but I did manage to make shapes out of some Christmas lights. I suspect it would have worked a little better if I could find lights in my house that didn't blink.

This is the first shape I cut out, notice the fuzzy bits of paper on the edges.

Made for fuzzy stars. The sharper the edges the sharper the images.

More in depth instructions than mine can be found here: http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_create_your_own_bokeh and here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shaped_bokeh/discuss/72157610869813179/

Cheap Camera Accessories

This week I finally caved and bought a cheap little slave flash trigger. It was about $12 on eBay. And amazingly enough it does work with the old Vivitar flashes we stored with the Canon AE-1. It works on the principle of setting off the remote flash when it senses a flash from something else, ie the S3. I don't know how long it's going to take me to figure out how to work the S3 and the remote flash so they're firing at the same time. My next purchase will probably be an adapter tube, and a polarizing filter, and possibly a flash bracket. I'm holding off new camera purchases until I decide if I'm getting a DSLR or not. The picture quality just keeps screaming to me. The Cokin P series of filters is intriguing me though, as I could use it on any later camera with just an adapter ring. And I recently discovered the true use of Neutral Density Filters. They easily make it so you can do very long water shots in sunlight, without overexposing, so I might have to try some of those too. The helpful tutorials that led me to these ideas can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/canon_s3_is_how_to/discuss/72157603671169448/ and here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/canon_s3_is_how_to/discuss/72157603671619056/

Last Cat Shelf... Finally

The last shelf is finally up, and the cat's licking her whiskers due to the treats required to get her up there the first time. She seems quite entertained about getting to touch the ceiling. I'll admit I airbrushed out some white spots on the wall to the left where I had to fill some holes made by inadequate mounting screws I tried yesterday. I'll be painting over them any day now anyway. And yes my living room really is that color.

What a difference a day makes

This week there was a nice alignment of several celestial bodies. The moon, Venus, and Jupiter appeared very close together (to our eyes.) If you were in the southern hemisphere I believe it even looked like a smiley face. Next time you'll be able to see it is in 2052.

Black Friday Clouds

Yes, I braved Black Friday to get one or two things on sale, though most of the deals I found were online. I also remembered to bring my A470 even though it was drizzling when I went out. After one store I came out to a perfect blue sky, with unbelievable clouds. I was even in some parking lots where the stores weren't in the way, and only a few light poles.

"Dogs and Cats Living Together!"

Since I got my first dog a number of years ago, the cat has been less than thrilled. She eventually stopped coming downstairs and I only saw her at night once the dog was asleep. It didn't get much better with the second dog. A few months ago I got tired of it. I started kicking the dogs out of the room for bugging the cat. (If I'm not in the room 99% of the time the dogs ignore the cat, so it is an attention seeking behavior.) I built cat shelves in the living room, figured out how to carry the cat downstairs without getting scratched ( the stairs are a closely guarded path), and moved on with the treats. It took 4 tries to find treats the cat would eat. She refuses anything without artificial colors and flavors, so I gave in and she gets Friskies (bleech!) cat treats. Just a few days ago I finally got my somewhat tubby cat to jump comfortably from shelf to shelf. (I only built two without a longing area, as I was unsure she would use them. I had been lifting her between the shelves, and encouraging her to jump down, since she wasn't quite ready for up.) I finagled the couch, and last night was her first time willingly jumping up all of them on her own, and she hung out there for a while. She's also been willingly coming all the way down the stairs, and hasn't been getting shanghied. (They jump her because her reaction is so spectacular, and for years she wouldn't scratch them.) I meandered out of the room, and when I came back I found this. (Mind you that dog is well aware I don't want her white hair and dirt on my dark colored, clean couch.)

Dogs and House Fires

So, one of my dogs is a dedicated counter surfer. There does not have to be food up there, just a previous presence of food, and she's up there looking. She also keeps licking the stove, and like most old stoves it has an irritating (to me) safety feature. You have to push in the knobs for it to turn on. You also have to twist them all the way around to light the gas. As one might expect a dog who counter surfs and a stove with this safety feature do not mix well. Once she turned on a burner when I was home, melted a milk jug. I was actually standing directly in front of the stove when she did it. A few weeks ago she did one better. I came home to a house reeking of that corpse smell (mercaptan) they add to natural gas so we'll notice it. My other dog threw up for three days after that. I locked them out of the kitchen, but pondered a solution. To turn on the gas you have to push in the knobs. I can't get the knobs off easily, so for convenience sake removing them wasn't an option. I came up with this. It's a piece of trim cut to a half inch longer then the width of the stove. The extra half inch means when you want to cook you can just slide it up. It sticks in there quite well, and the counter surfer has no interest in it, but can't turn on the stove, but can still lick the counters... grrr.... Also works against cats, and maybe small children.

I'll admit it...

I read Twilight. I managed to hold it off for so long though. I only read it a few weeks ago. And then I got sucked in. I bought New Moon, because I didn't want to wait the TWO MONTHS it took to get the first one out of the library. I didn't like Jake at all, so got Eclipse out of the library. That one only took a week. By that point I knew I'd have to finish it. Breaking Dawn also came from the library. Overall, I liked the series, or at least some of the ideas in it. That last book though... ouch. I'd say it was written either at a different time as the other three or even by a different person. It meandered a lot, maybe to use up all those pages? It just all got tied up a bit too neatly, and somehow none of the main characters suffer. I especially didn't like the middle of the book from Jake's view, but I disliked it before when that was done. Either a book is 1st person, or it isn't. The whole point is you only know as much as the person talking, so you don't switch around. Now I've got The Host: out of the library and am a little afraid to open lest I get sucked in like with Twilight.

Daylight Savings Time and the Night

I loathe Daylight Savings Time. Unlike, I guess a large majority, I don't have to get up early. I get up around 8, and get home from work around 5. I was perfectly happy with the sun coming up around 8, because it meant I didn't have to commute home in the dark every freaking day. I hate driving in the dark. Everyone drives slower, can't see as well, and the whole thing makes me nervous. So to compensate I go directly home from work leaving me with huge amounts of time to fill with something. Even if I go anywhere after work I still feel like I need to get home because it's dark... To make it more fun, neither of my dogs can read a clock, for about two weeks I get to wean their dinner time back to something normal. And they still want to go out an hour earlier now in the morning. This is the light levels if I'm lucky when I get out of work.

Freezing Cold Hiking

I like when it's cold enough for frost. We had a day of two like that in late October, and since then, nothing but warmish rain, and really weirdly warm days. I have lettuce in the ground with only a little cover that hasn't frozen yet. Fall Bulbs I planted months ago are trying to come up in the warm weather. I really can't wait for some snow, or at least an actual cold rain. My rosebushes, not only still have leaves, most of them still have buds. Weeks ago the blueberries considered opening their buds and starting Spring. A few days ago I saw an Autumn Meadowhawk (Sympetrum vicinum) in my back yard. It is way too warm out right now. Some pics from Moose Hill from October 30th, the last time it was really cold here.

Canon AE-1 Update

Well. It works, and I remember why I hate film cameras. 24 shots two nice ones. Anyone want a Canon AE-1 with some nice lenses?

Attic Cleaning and 80's Cartoons

So Sunday I got talked into cleaning out parts of my parent's attic. It is as you expect full of junk from my childhood, books and magazines that were not stored properly, and lots of shredded paper from mice. We hauled out about 15 milk crates full of books for donation, threw out some broken never used skis and poles, and I discovered Dad's been storing a 'Blue Bird' dummy terminal up there for more than 20 years... Some 15 year old sleeping bags went out, as did lots of assorted broken items. Only one thing looks resell able. A bike rack. Who's going to buy a bike rack in November? I found boxes and boxes of toys. My Little ponies have a very distinctive smell, though I don't remember any more which are mine and which are my sister's. It just sort of makes me want to find the original movies on DVD to see what I remember of them. I also found a little toy Pterodactyl with a button on it's back that moved the wings. Very low tech toy. I remembered it was from a TV show where the bad guys put mind control boxes on dinosaurs and attacked the good guys who had to get the dinosaurs to cooperate. Eventually I found the instructions to one of the toys, Dino Riders. A curious web search got me this: YouTube Dino Riders And then came the reasons I stay off You Tube My Little Pony: The Movie, Transformers. Someone, somewhere has saved just about everything. And yes we have entire collections of McDonalds and Burger King Toys, even though I never ate anything there but fries. I also saved a huge rubber maid container full of dinosaur and animal toys. And I actually packed it well enough it doesn't look like anything is living in it. At least I didn't find any enormous silverfish in it, like in some of the other containers. The entire attic cleaning is to convert the second bedroom of my parent's house into a movie room/ guest room. But we needed a place for all the stuff still in that room first.

Bird Feeders

I've been feeding birds for a very long time. But I've always been cheap about it. I hate how much nice bird feeders cost, and always tried to get by with the cheap ones. I've always wanted a platform feeder, mostly to keep the larger birds off my other feeders, where they just make a mess. I really love blue jays, but on smaller feeders they just terrorize the other birds. Last time I caught myself staring at that kind of feeder my brain pointed out it's 4 pieces of 1/2 with some screen tacked on the bottom, and some eye screws to hang it with. Hence this was made out of scraps in my house. I expect the squirrels to chew through the screen at any time. Until recently I couldn't figure out how to get good pictures of birds in the yard, but not obviously on the bird feeders. I picked up another Digital Wildlife Photography book at the library, and the author had put photogenic landing spots around his feeders, for the birds who were waiting for an open feeder to perch on. You just had to focus on the perch and wait. Now the only problem is finding some pretty "natural" perches, that the dog won't destroy.

Canon AE-1 Repair

So a few weeks ago I finally got to play lightly with my mother's old manual cameras. We found the AE-1 and a Sears camera. Both were declared broken a number of years ago, and left to slowly cook in the attic. Along with some nice lens. I originally went up there looking for filters, which apparently we don't have any of. Either way I forgot about it until a few days ago when I was considering buying a broken digital camera off eBay to take it apart. After a few hours it occur ed to me I already had two broken cameras I could take apart. The AE-1 wouldn't advance, or let you press down the shutter, but otherwise looked okay. And it had been stored wearing a lens, so there wasn't much dust on it. The battery in it had worked, because the light meter functioned. But I had yanked the battery when we decided it was broken. We pulled all the batteries for recycling. So I took as many screws out of the AE-1 as I could, and found what could have been the problem. Subsequent web searches also pointed to what I had fiddled with likely being the problem. However I needed a new battery to make sure. Popped in the new battery, and like magic the dead camera seems to function fine. I am going to replace the light seals (which have decomposed to a black tarry mess, then try a roll of film to see how it goes. It has some nice lenses though I think the base 50 mm is broken, as the aperture inside it seems stuck halfway open and doesn't seem to open all the way up. Most of the lenses also need to be cleaned. It looks like the auto winder doesn't quite work anymore, but it might just be since there isn't any film in it. Both flashes we had seem to still work, and refresh amazingly fast on eneloop rechargeables. I'll see how it goes. It has taken some excellent pictures in the past.

A Better Moon

I'm getting a bit better. Waning Gibbous 97% of FULL 10/15/08 11/:27 pm. 1/250 sec. F/3.5 67 mm.

Full Moon

It got cloudy last night, but I got to play with the full moon a little with long exposures.

Worm Composting

Before I built an outdoor compost bin I tried worm composting. Worm composting requires a plastic bin with some holes drilled in the side and top. You half fill it with damp shredded newspaper, add red worms, and they theoretically eat your veggie garbage. They turn it into worm castings, some of the best type of fertilizer for plants. Eventually they eat all the newspaper, so you slide the dirt to the side, and refill half with newspaper and food to get an many worms to migrate as possible to the new bedding. Then the worm castings go out to the garden, hopefully worm free. I have a 3 foot by 18 inch worm bin in the basement. I've been heavily neglecting it since spring when I built an outdoor compost bin. I checked on them today, and no newspaper left, no food either. An entire bin of worm castings. Now if I can just get the worms to migrate, great garden fertilizer. It does look nasty in there. But I've never noticed any smell, and no fruit flies, which plague the outside one.

Numb Arms

It never fails. I always put off closing up the pond until the water is so frigid I can't get all the plants up without waiting to thaw. This year After I caught the fish the plants all got dropped back down, and hopefully I'll have an even better lily show next summer. The real reason I'm so slow at it is setting up the winter tank for the fish. Each year they get whatever tank I have empty. Some years They've just gotten big tubs in the basement. They lucked out with a 55 gallon tank. I had 5 goldfish survive this summer, and I think that may actually have been the number I put out. The Paradise Fish was a no show, but he was getting several years old. Plenty of mosquito fish survived as well, but I'm down to one male. Since I'm going to actually be able to see the fish this winter, they got names.