Thursday, April 30, 2015

Temporary hiatus

I've just moved house. As written before, I moved out of a rather run down apartment, close to the local jail. It was at the end of a dirt track with surrounding houses filled with multiple families. Next door to me was a house containing 3 families, all earning minimum wage and struggling to survive.

Out of curiosity I had a look into getting the free mobile phone given to people on low income when I was briefly unemployed after the company I worked for closed down. I discovered most of the residents seemed to have a free obamaphone.

The house was generally OK - very quiet with nothing untoward happening at all. It was overrun by cockroaches and spiders until the last year or so when a lizard took up residence. That would eat the roaches but had a tendency to dump the shells and legs in the corner of the room. There was a crack down the front door that let heat and insects in and gaps under the front and back doors.

Me, being me, I left the place all sparkling clean despite the fact its the landlords legal responsibility to clean after a tennant leaves. In fact, I probably did a far better job of cleaning than whoever cleaned the place before I moved in.

Anyway, photography is on hold for the moment while I work on the rest of my motorhome. Currently only the bedroom is truly usable though this weekend might see the bathroom and toilet area getting some major work. Its so much quicker to work on the motorhome when I'm not living 12 miles away from it. Thus, the pace of progress may well speed up.

Meanwhile, after a trip to the zoo with a group of friends, during which I had the opportunity to test out an Olympus OMD-M5, I came to the conclusion that was probably the way I wanted to go with photography. My Canon cameras are 10 years old but while they still work, lack some of the modern features that I'd love to use such as higher iso, built-in WiFi and built-in Bluetooth. Its a bit aggravating also to have two camera bodies when I really, truly, only want one.

Its also all about change and moving on from the past, minimizing on clutter and becoming more streamlined.

The crux is that there may be a short break of up to a few weeks while I construct the rest of my motorhome and work on changing camera systems.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Why the post about a pink bedroom?

Simple - I screwed up. The post was originally destined for the bus blog. As many of my readers know, or should know, I run three blogs.
1. Http:\\www.schoolbushome.blogspot.com which is about building a motorhome out of a 20 year old school by us from Louisiana.
2. Http:\\www.britishphotographer.blogspot.com which is a blog about the travels of a British photographer in the USA.
3. Http:\\www.tehisp.blogspot.com which is a blog about photography from the perspective of a British photographer in the southern USA.

Going on from the pink bedroom, this particular bedroom is in a soon to be motorhome. This is intended to be a base from which travel photography can be undertaken.

Ever since I arrived in the USA about ten years ago, I've wanted to take photographs of fall foliage. Here, in South Carolina, the fall foliage has been little short of disappointing. Perhaps the best fall picture I have was taken a year or two back. It is, however, not quite what I really want from a fall photo.

About 20 years ago I saw an advert for a holiday in the USA. It was a case of spending around £1500 ($2250) to spend 14 days on a bus touring Virginia to see fall colors. These days with inflation, that would surely be about $5,000. The photos accompanying the advertising were gorgeous of a valley with a lovely old watermill surrounded by highly colored vegetation.

So, now you know why the pink bedroom is so important to a blog on photography.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

The battle for the bedroom

After a later than desired start due to indecision on how to proceed with the bed followed by a trip to Lowes in order to buy some 3 inch screws to put legs on the bed. After returning from Lowes, with the screws, 3 legs were installed on the bed.

The fourth leg was somewhat of an issue. The wheel arch is underneath the end of the bed at one side. I don't like having things flapping loose and couldn't screw a bracket through the wheel arch. Thus, the small ledge on the side of the bus that caused so many problems has come in as a support. Because I'd already put OSB above the ledge, a full piece of 2x4 would have been pointless. Thus, a piece of 2x2 was used.

At the moment the 3 attached legs are supporting the bed and the fourth leg is just propped into place. Tomorrow I'll pull the bed out and paint the underside and legs, the walls and floor by the bed and wait for it to dry. Monday morning or tomorrow evening, depending on how long the paint takes to dry, I'll screw the bed into place and make a start on painting the rest of the floor and lower walls.

The plan is to paint the lower walls and the bed, white. There will be doors and they will also be white. The pink is a little more intense than expected though quite pleasant. At some point I'll have to put a haning rail for clothes, a desk, a secondary partition at the end of the bed and some drawers. I suspect it's going to be better just to put Walmart's plastic chests of drawers in place rather than building sets of drawers in the bedroom.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Checking out a mirrorless camera

A few days ago or is it a week - I've been so darned busy of late building my own home - I went with a photography group and took photos. We had a blast!

Now the thing that particularly intrigued me was the new mirrorless cameras. Not only are they physically smaller and lighter than my 10 year old Canon camera but the lenses were smaller and lighter too. In terms of cost there wasn't much to choose between them.

Discussion centered around the future of photography and one fellow had heard one camera retailer saying that camera phones were the future of photography. I must admit that I agree. At the moment it's hard to read that crystal ball but from where I stand, I see the following:
1. Large Format has all but vanished. There are no large format digital cameras.
2. Medium Format has largely been replaced by 35mm format digital cameras.
3. 35mm format digital cameras are being replaced by mirrorless cameras.

The whole trend is toward ever smaller sensors and cameras. Today the image quality of the average cellphone exceeds that of most 35mm print film. We have attained photographic nirvana! Well, as far as image quality goes anyway. There will always be the odd sourpuss and his cronies that hate everything except their own warped vision.

As far as I can see it, we're getting back to the 1990s and the year 2004. Let's say there seems to be a 10 - 15 year cycle developing. In the 1990s, manual focus film cameras were replaced by autofocus cameras. Much to the regret of many photographers, the depth of field scale vanished off autofocus lenses, leaving no accurate method of actually working hyperfocal lengths. In about 2004, digital SLRs came out and replaced film SLRs. Now we have mirrorless compact cameras that do just about the same things a digital SLR did but without the bulk, the weight and the silly mirror.

In 1990 everybody dumped their manual focus film gear and went for autofocus. In 2004 everybody dumped their film cameras and went for digital. Now it's time to dump digital SLRs and go with the lighter, more convenient option. Before I had the opportunity to try the mirrorless camera, my only prior experience of mirrorless had been a Canon S1 IS that had been gifted to me in the dim and distant past. Indeed, I still use that camera albeit solely for making videos. Now I am convinced - the way forward is mirrorless and only an idiot would hang onto a digital SLR and lenses. Their resale value will only plummet further. Already digital SLRs are at a point where an old one isn't worth the cost of the gas to drive to a store to sell it.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Reading my spam folder

Occasionally, when the mood takes me, I read the spam in my spam folder for laughs. Amidst the usual viagra and star's breasts spam, there was some C-Net spam. I can hear the wail going up now "but c-net isn't a spammer" but yes they are. Anybody that sends me email that I repeadedly don't read is a spammer. Heck, I was chatting to the director of the company I work for and he referenced some email that the company churns out. I told him I had not read it because I get so much email. Truth is I refuse to read company email in my personal time and since the company won't allow employees to read email during work time, I'm never going to read their emails.
But getting back to the point, this email was all about smart watches. They were discussing the latest trends and some shocking prices. There was also some discussion about every manufacturer making a smart watch and the public being somewhat reluctant to buy them.

One of the smart watches discussed was $1,195. Yes twelve hundred dollars! For that price I could buy 120 cheap Timex watches and break one a week for the next 30 months. Equally I could buy a Rolex and be able to show off what a pretentious snob I had just become. Or I could buy a $1200 smart watch that screams "I was born yesterday - take me for a ride".

Thus far aside from a couple of students who were playing with their smart watches in a very pretentious and attention-grabbing manner, I have seen no smart watches in use and none in the stores. I'm not really sure quite how they're any advantage over my 2003 Lorus Quartz watch with its luminous hands and date display (that's never right because I never check nor update it when a month has less than 31 days). My Lorus tells me the time. I'm not sure if a smartwatch even has a clock on it as the promotional displays always seem to show a picture of somebody's child on the face. My Lorus needs a new battery every 18 months and can be submerged to a depth of 100 meters. I've never done anything more than splashed water on it so I can't check that grandiose claim.

There's all the talk about being able to see the display - at a time when people are demanding phones with bigger screens because they can't see the display clearly. Then there's this whole bluetooth connectivity thing. Bluetooth eats batteries. This is why bluetooth headsets came in and have largely vanished. The smartwatch will connect to your smart phone. Your smartphone will become rather hot as it uses power to run bluetooth to power a smart watch with a battery that barely lasts a day.

I bet somebody will come out with a smartphone app that works as a viewfinder for a camera that enables people to take photographs up the skirts of unsuspecting woman. I see absolutely no use for smartwatches and will continue to use my old Lorus untl it dies. Then and only then will I consider a replacement.

The future of smartwatches? They could well be the Filofax that was usurped by the PDA that vanished then was replaced a few years later by the smartphone. The only problem - the smartwatch seems to serve no function other than as a toy.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Nikon US to file Chapter 11

Visible briefly today before it was pulled ( http://www.nikonusa.com/en/About-Nikon/Press-Room/Press-Release/Chapter11.html), Nikon announced that Nikon US was filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was outlined that plummeting camera sales in the face of the current economic downturn had made continual US operation unprofitable. It is as yet unknown what this means for Nikon in Japan and Nikon in Europe.

As USA Today remarked in its own article on Nikon's pulled press release, it was unsurprising that Nikon was collapsing from within. During the golden years when people would buy a new digital camera every year chasing image quality upgrades they didn't need, the profits rolled in. Now that everybody has a camera of optimal quality, there's just no reason to buy newer cameras.

Indeed, from my own experience, my cellphone produces images on a par if not better than a Nikon D70 from 10 yeas ago. The new mirrorless cameras sweep Nikon's digital SLRs out with the trash, being faster, easier to use and cheaper.

As of earlier today, Nikon's President, Kazuo Ushida was unavailable for comment, according to USA Today. @kazuoushida, the personal Twitter account of Kazuo Ushida has been closed. It is understood that Mr Ushida may well have been rushed to hospital after attempting Seppuku (ritual atonement suicide committed by many Samurai which involved cutting out the stomach with a knife).

Where does this leave Nikon users is the big question. Will Nikon's products continue to receive support albeit from 3rd countries? Will the Chinese company Damon Paper pursue the remains of Nikon to produce cameras under the Damon Paper label?