Sunday, December 25, 2016

Vorsprung Durch Technik

Pinching the slogan from one of the German car manufacturers, here are the advances in technology over ten years. These two cameras were made in around 2003 (left) and 2013 (right). I've had the one on the left since 2013 and the one on the right since sometime this year.

The camera on the left is 3 megapixel, can run off commonly available AA batteries and offers a whole host of useful features:

  • Built in flash
  • Movies in VGA
  • Various modes including manual, aperture priority etc.
  • Intervalometer
  • Articulating LCD.
  • 100 - 400 ISO.
  • 3 megapixels
  • AA batteries
The one on the right offers
  • Interchangeable lens
  • Movies in HD
  • Various modes though these can be hard to access
  • Can take an external flash
  • High capacity battery
  • ISO up to 128,500.
  • 20 megapixels
What does all that mean? Well, in use I find the older camera much more usable and user friendly. The intervalometer is a pig to access but it works really well. The VGA video mode is supposed to be archaic but quite honestly it saves memory space, speeds up transfers and looks just the same as HD videos for pretty much every application I encounter.

The lack of AA battery support I find rather tiresome. It means that unless I shell out $50 on a second battery, when the batteries die, it's time to go home. With AA batteries, I can root around my glove compartment and find some. I can use rechargeable or disposable if needed. Of course if the camera breaks I could use the AA batteries elsewhere. Not so with the funky Olympus battery.

The lack of an articulating LCD is a hinderance on the latest camera. It's so useful for doing selfie videos, which I do for my occasional Photography 101 series. It is in fact the primary reason I keep the 3 megapixel camera.

ISO - that's just numbers as far as I'm concerned. Once ISOs go above 3200 then it's just silly numbers of increasingly limited practical value. As for megapixels, it's about the same. For 99% of applications more than 3 is a sheer waste of storage. Look at it this way... how many of your own photos do you view larger than the display Facebook makes for you? Exactly!

Having to dig through menues to access common functions - well, I'm not sure about that. With the camera on the right I seem to leave it in iAuto mode most of the time and it keeps getting things right.  The one on the left seems to work pretty well in program mode too. 

As far as interchangeable lenses go, I used to be really into lenses. Now I stick with the one that's on the camera. A longer lens would be useful for some subjects but no so useful that I'd want to part with the $100 needed to buy a secondhand 50-150. Years ago, yes I would have leapt at it but to be honest 90% of photography for me is doable with a 14-45. My Canon has something like a 24-300 zoom on it. 90% of the time it was never zoomed out that far.

The only reason I now use the Olympus for photos is that after I sent the Canon back for a warranty repair, the images were fuzzier than they had been. A cynic would suspect Canon slipped the camera a Mickey in order to force me to upgrade without realizing I have no brand loyalty only cash loyalty.

Have things advanced in the 10 years between the two cameras? I'm going to say no. In fact I think the camera of 10 years ago was a much more capable, more user friendly beast. As far as I can tell, there's not much difference in size between the two either. The lack of AA battery support is something that's a real deal killer for me. I would never buy a camera and pay new money to be fenced in by the manufacturer like that!

Friday, December 9, 2016

The smartphone scam

Everybody has one. The ubiquitous smartphone but put your hand on your heart - do you really need it? I thought I did but it turns out that I really don't, despite 80% of the phones bought annually in the USA being smartphones.

For about 18 months I was very happy with my Nexus 4. That was until the charging port became so loose that no cord would remain seated in the port. I tried everything from tape to play dough to keep the cord in place. Nothing worked! Eventually I got a cordless charging pad and that kept my phone charged until about August of this year. That's pretty much three years after I spent ludicrous money buying the phone. That is, of course where all the fun started!

Figuring it was the cordless charger I bought another one on eBay where the seller promised it would be here by the 30th. I figured I could go without a working phone for a week. Anyway, the week came and went with no sign of a charger. I dug out the old feature phone I used when I was in Britain and put a cheap Tracfone SIM card in it with a service that cost $15 a month instead of the $55 a month I paid for my smartphone connection. It was then that I found that nobody could figure out how to connect the features on my phone to the internet. The Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo etc apps just won't connect. Bang went $15 on that connection. I could have spent $20 on a connection that'd have lasted for 3 months with just talk and text.

A week later, as I'm starting a claim against the seller for a refund, the thing arrived. Excitedly and in eager anticipation I put my smartphone on the new charging pad and waited with baited breath. Yes, it began to charge. Coming back a little while later, the same thing that was happening with my old charger had recommenced. My smartphone charged for a brief while then quit charging. Given that two chargers are doing the same thing, I'm going to say the fault is probably the phone.

Needless to say, the seller of the charging pad was not happy about my neutral rating. Given that he gave a non working tracking number and lied about delivery date from California, I think giving a neutral rating citing delivery issues was fair. Anyway, he decided to try to offer me $1 to withdraw my poor rating. Nope. Not happening!

Having been using effectively a dumb phone since nobody can activate the features (Well, I think they could if they could be bothered) I'm actually finding life without a smartphone is actually quite pleasant. I'd had the sound turned off on my smartphone for a long time in order to avoid the irritating bleeps, bloops and blops it would make. Now my dumb phone rings when somebody phones me and bleeps when I receive a text message. I am not tied to the internet. I have no desire to check email nor browse the internet when I'm out and about.

About the only features of my smartphone that I used regularly were GPS navigation and the camera. Largely the camera has been replaced by the camera on my tablet. GPS is handy on a phone but it really eats the battery so it's not really that practical. I tend to prefer my in car GPS or now that I have to use maps at work rather than electronic navigation, I'm getting on quite well with old fashioned maps.

So, do I need a smartphone? No. I certainly do not. I am very unimpressed by the very short 3 year life of my $300 smart phone. If I bought a $300 TV that died within 3 years I would really be annoyed. I don't get why people are prepared to pay hundreds for devices that seem so throwaway.

Let's look at costs. I paid $300 for my smartphone and I get maybe a dozen calls a month. I paid $55 a month in order to get that dozen or so calls. So, in 3 years I paid 12x55 or $670 a year for the connection for a grand total of $2310 for a phone with features that aren't really necessary. Now let's look at how much my dumbphone costs. I paid $1.07 including tax for a SIM card that fits an existing phone. I can pay $20 every 3 months fir the connection. That's $80 a year for a grand total of $211.07 for three years. That's a saving of around $2,000. Not something to be sniffed at!

Meanwhile, since Blu nor Tracfone can activate the features on the phone, I'm not going to worry my pretty little head about them. Perhaps I would have gone for a new smartphone had not Straight Talk shot themselves in the foot. They sent an email advising me that I needed to renew my connection in order to "play on the internet". That really rang bells because playing on the internet is all I really was doing with my smartphone. That pretty much rankled me. I can play on the internet using my tablet elsewhere. Indeed, several years ago I used to use a MiFi pad for my internet connection and used $20 a month of data.

Comparing US and U.k phone and data deals, the USA is really getting ripped off. I understand that Tesco has a non contract deal where for £7.50 a month customers get 1gb of data and unlimited talk/text. That's about $10. Data is cheap in the U.K.

Of course it wouldn't be fate if three things didn't go wrong so here's the third. With my smartphone out of action, I'm unable to use the flashlight built into it. Thus I had to dig out my old Kmart flashlight with a built in generator. It's one of those lousy LED things and has barely had any use. After pumping it a few times to get light to inspect my tyres at work, the lever stopped working. Bearing in mind this thing never gets used, that's very poor. My mistake was in not buying a regular flashlight. I'd been convinced by the green scammers that a generator flashlight was more environmentally friendly. No it's nit if I have to throw the thing away after hardly any use in order to buy the flashlight that takes batteries that I would have bought in the first place. Now I'm going to have a job to fund a flashlight that takes regular bulbs!

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Hotel to avoid... Courtyard Marriott, Gatwick Airline to avoid... Aer Linugs

A couple of weeks ago, I had the sad news of my mother's passing so I had to go to Britain to attend her funeral. The journey over was somewhat easier than the journey back. Not being in much of a mood to document the journey over, instead I documented the journey back.
 On the way from London, I had noticed there was WiFi available on the trains though sadly by then my tablet battery was almost depleted. On the way back I fared better but noticed that had I had a UK adaptor plug for my USB charger, I could have kept my tablet topped up on the way. As can be seen from the white circle in the photo above, British trains seem to be equipped with electrical plugins now.

Oddly enough, on the way from the station two weeks before to my parents house, the bus that I rode on didn't have WiFi but the other busses in the fleet did have WiFi. Things have progressed. Even Swansea itself looked cleaner and more prosperous since I last visited.

Having said it looked prosperous, I was somewhat disconcerted to see that just about every store in St Helen's road (a down at heel road always) now seemed to consist of brightly colored Arabic and Syrian stores with signs up in English and Arabic. It was equally disconcerting to find my favorite little cafe in the market had vanished and that I could hear Arabic being spoken openly in a town where Welsh used to be commonly heard.
The train passed through many stations on the way to London though I didn't really start taking photos of them until I reached Reading and changed trains to get to Gatwick.
Having reached Gatwick and being entertained by a series of entertaining events that happened outside my window, the next task was to seek out an hotel. I didn't have any reservations made and there was a choice of two hotels. One was the Hilton and the other was a Marriott Courtyard. So, at just about midnight I walked in to get a room for which they charged the princely sum of £100.
The room looked good when I arrived then I noticed none of the trashcans had been emptied - they were all overflowing. Then there were wet towels just dumped in the shower and the bed though vaguely straightened looked like it had been slept in. I called the Front Desk and the Night Manager came up, apologised profusely and spent the next 30 minutes changing sheets, pillowcases, towels and emptying the trashcans. At no point was I ever offered a discount on the exorbitant rate for my filthy room. Thumbs down, Marriott Courtyard Gatwick!
My next stop was some little cafe in Gatwick airport to have breakfast since none was provided at the expensive hotel. That was quite good but at £6 was a little pricy. It served to prepare my stomach for the next of my series of antibiotics. Yes, antibiotics. For a couple of months I'd been unwell. As I work in the US as a schoolbus driver, I do get health insurance but the amount I get paid doesn't cover the co-pay which means I might as well just not have health insurance as I can't afford to use it! Thus, I made use of the fact I'm still a British citizen and used the much maligned National Health Service. I saw the doctor, free and had my medicine, free. That included antibiotics, a pain relieving gel and a steroid.
The flight from Gatwick to Dublin was uneventful aside from the flight attendants coming down the isle like scrounging beggars trying to peddle drinks that should have been free. If I wanted water, I had to pay for it. Needless to say, I arrived in Dublin quite parched and thinking very little of Air Fungus or to give it, its self-imposed name, Aer Lingus.
After disembarking from the Air Fungus plane, things immediately deteriorated. I knew I should have paid extra and flown Delta or United or some civilised airline. The first thing I had to do after walking along miles of corridors to passport control was to walk through the noxious fumes pouring out from the beggars at the airport trying to peddle perfume. There was no other way to pass than to walk through the toxic stench. Needless to say, I was very glad to be carrying strong antihistamines.
Being four hours or more after breakfast, I was again hungry. I got the cheapest food I could find and it was an astounding £9 which is surely some kind of rip-off record. Dublin airport ranks alongside Chicago for being one of the nastiest airports I have ever visited.
The flight droned on forever. In fact, it droned on for far too long. 8 hours on this leg for a flight that took six the other way. That was possibly helped by the fact the pilot flew 100 miles past Chicago airport then turned back to land at Chicago. Perhaps he was asleep having had too much Irish whisky? The seat backs had video screens in which it was possible to see the track that the plane was following. The screens also showed videos but the sound was so appalling I quickly had to give up. WiFi was availble but it needed to be paid via PayPal and PayPal wasn't accepting my password. That was OK though as the battery was almost dead on my tablet. The alleged USB charging port in the back of the seat didn't seem to work either.

Eventually we landed at Chicago where I transferred to another plane - this time to Charlotte. The airport had working USB chargers but the WiFi was set to cut out after 30 minutes with a demand for payment. Then I noticed the smallest soft drinks bottles I'd ever seen being sold for a massive $5 each. Clearly Chicago and Dublin airports are competing with each other to be the most ludicrously expensive!
The view from the plane above Charlotte was very pretty. I wished I'd had my real camera in my pocket rather than just my cellphone as the scene was much more intense to the naked eye than the cellphone shows.

After landing, I located the courtesy phone and arranged a room for the night. Being awake for already somewhere in the region of 26 hours, I was tired and in no condition to drive home. The hotel that answered and had rooms was the Quality Inn. The room was clean and odor free. It was quiet. I had a really good nights sleep.

After leaving, I went to write a review and read some truly horrid reviews. Reviewers were talking about hookers and drug deals etc. That was not the hotel I saw. It was clean, quiet and welcoming. There was some construction in the lobby but that happens at every hotel at some point. So, after dashing off to an appointment rather more hindered than helped by my smart phone's navigation, I eventually drove back home.

Hotel to avoid... Courtyard Marriott, Gatwick
Airline to avoid... Aer Linugs

The church at Halkyn

Today, I was in Halkyn, North Wales where my mother's ashes were to be buried. Though it was hard to part with her, I laid her casket in the hole dug for it. Yes, I did this myself, picking up and carrying the casket from the altar where the service was read to the graveside and lowered it gently into the grave. Yes, it was hard and I had to hold back tears to do it. In a way it was a way of returning my mother to her ancestral home where she may lie for all eternity amongst her family.

She did not have an individual grave. She had requested to be placed beside her father whose ashes were interred in her grandfather's grave. The graveyard was beside a beautiful 19th century church on a hill, overlooking a beautiful estuary.
The church was built in the 19th century in an older style. It's quite small but very impressive inside with very modern sound systems etc. The church had the odd effect of making me happy. It was even equipped with a flush toilet which was rather unusual. Whether the toilet then emptied into a cess pit into which less favored residents of the graveyard are tossed is unknown.
The stained glass windows were as impressive as my secondhand Olympus E-PM1 was at taking pictures of them. I must say that little camera is very impressive. I have to say that it is still in iAuto mode. There's nothing that it hasn't done well so far.
Outside, the church at Halkyn is clearly neo gothic with a tower. In the past, churches with towers were built as defenses for villages should roaming bands of brigands from the Viking lands come through. Most churches now have steeples rather than tower fortifications.
As can be seen here, the view from the church is spectacular. I've not looked at the area on the map but I am impressed. I had very much a feeling of peace, tranquility and happiness when I was here. I'm hoping my mother is now resting in peace.

A job for another day will be to erect a tombstone and to take a photograph of the grave. I did not take a photograph today because the grave was opened before we arrived and because aside from a few handfuls of dirt thrown in by myself, my father and our driver (a family friend), the grave was open and my mother's casket visible. It would have been grossly disrespectful.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Taking pitchers or taking photographs?

It doesn't make much sense these days to talk about f-stops, ISOs and shutter speeds. Out of interest, I put my PM-1 into iAuto mode to see what happened. The result is really quite excellent. Well exposed images that are mostly correctly focused and of good quality.

As long as a camera can produce images like these with the minimum of user interaction then I'd say having to know about things like f-stops etc is not relevant to anybody bar the geeky minority. Now, while I do understand then, having had my first camera from my late aunt in 1973, I'm probably nit the first to question their relevance now.

When automatic exposure cane out in the 1980s followed by automatic focus in the 1990s, I questioned why they didn't go the whole hog and have digital imaging too. They were already halfway there with the magnetic stripe on Super 8 carrying sound recording and with the optical recording of exposure data on APS film.

These days, with smaller sensors the risk of getting an image where only part of the subject is in focus is pretty much gone. Sure, the geeky minority might shingle and complain for that is what they do best but the fact is nobody wants to look at an image that's half way out of focus. It's not art as the short trousered geeky brigade will laughably claim. It's technical description is: crap photography.

The first image, way above, is really well exposed and focused, all in iAuto mode. The photo below is equally well exposed and focused in the same iAuto mode.
The photo below is one of only four disappointing images taken over the past few days. The problem here is that though the camera has tried valiantly to get the blackberries in focus, it really didn't quite know what it was supposed to be doing. Mind, even with an expert at the helm, this would have been an almost impossible task given light levels, time etc. so, though it is disappointing, it's nit actually a terrible photograph. The blackberries are clearly blackberries and uts only when you blow it up that you wonder what on earth the camera has focused on.
These photos were all taken over the last few days near Swansea, Wales on my trip over for my late mother's funeral an internment. Given this is not a photography trip, I took my Olympus EPM-1 with me. Thus far, the straight from camera JPEG images have been astoundingly good. In fact, they're so good, I really question the worth of recording ORF RAW files as well.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Arrived in sunny Britain

Well, I arrived in Britain last week and have been out with my camera. It's actually just about getting toward fall colors so it's getting to be prettier. I'll post pictures in a week or so, when I get near a computer. My iPad resolutely refuses to handle photos unless I upload them directly from my Mac.

I had a very interesting email yesterday. Apparently Twutterfeed is shutting down on the 31st. Twitterfeed copies my latest blog URL to my thousands of Twitter followers, each of whom ignores every blog entry. In their closing email, Twitterfeed listed various options for replacements. Honestly, since the stats were universally zero, I don't see much point.

Recently, one of my friends wanted me to go back on Twitter. I did and found Twitter to be as dire as ever. There are people that claim to use Twitter successfully but I'm not one of them. Lord knows, I've tried it every which way. I've tried joining topics and just been ignored. I've tried joining political debates and been ignored. It just seems that Twitter is like a soap box. One stands peacefully in a line waiting ones turn while not listening to the guy on the box. Then when it's time, one stands on the box and shouts toward the multitude without realizing that nobody in the line behind is listening and that the few pidgeons pecking away at the crumbs that the park sweeper is busily trying to sweep away while listening to his Sony Walkman aren't paying you any attention.

Indeed, Twitter came out with statistics that allowed me to see the reach of my tweets. Let's just say that the reach was about what I expected. Near enough zero interaction. Given that off and on I've experimented with Social media in general and found it to be totally lacking in the kinds of things I've been looking for, I intend not to waste another second on Twitter and Twitter based twaddle. Being somewhat of a cynic, I do wonder whether Twitter was so named because it's founder Jack Dorsey  reckoned that only twits would use it!

So, while I've been here in Britain, I've been taking some photos but as they're still on the camera, there being absolutely no way to upload them on the hoof to my iPad mini, I cannot yet include any. Certainly the iPad takes good images but unless you want to see what I had for breakfast, I'm not taking that out with me for photos.

This trip, I took my Olympus E-PM1 home to Britain. I've thus far left it on 1600 ISO and iAuto setting. Since the images are largely scenic, it really does seem to be doing a phenomenal job on my occasional walks. It slips nicely into my Barbour jacket pocket. I leave the 14-42 lens on it at all times - not that I actually have another lens anyway. I'm very happy with the apparent results on the screen. Some of the low light focusing has been less than stellar but otherwise, no problems - even with the ludicrously high ISO I preselected.

I am very lucky that on my last trip home in 2011, I took a photo of me with my parents using my Canon XT. That, I believe is probably the only photo I have of the three of us together. I can't take another like that as the whole reason for my trip to Britain this time was to attend my mother's funeral. I miss my mum!


Thursday, October 6, 2016

General update

Since my last blog update much has happened.

Two more of the four LED light bulbs that claimed 10,000 hour life have failed. That makes three out of four. All 3 failed to last a single year of intermittent use in the bathroom. The old incandescent bulb that I never replaced still works well and that has been there for several years. The moral of that story has to be not to waste your hard earned cash on LED bulbs. The savings in electricity are more than offset by the cost of bulbs. Add to that, the bulbs are non recyclable and will quickly become landfill.
I bought a GPS data logger from Amazon. It's the DG-100 by GlobalSat. I put batteries in it and logged some of my journey home. Then I discovered the CD has only software that works on Windows. I downloaded a driver for Mac from the company website and managed to upload a copy of the log to my Mac. As there was no software other than the driver that would work on Mac, the company suggested using google earth. Needless to say, google earth won't run on my Mac. It comes up with runtime errors.

Turning to the manual, it said the Windows software wouldn't run on Windows 8 and according to reviews, won't work on Windows 10 either. Luckily my lady had an old Windows 7 laptop. I dutifully loaded the software and it wouldn't recognize the device.

So, in order to use this $20 marvel of technology, it appears I have to read the file using my Mac, transfer it to a memory stick. Then visit milady to beg use of her old Windows 7 laptop then somehow get the software to read the memory stick file. That seems like a horrible lot of hard work, running from one computer to another in order to work around incompetently written software. I don't think I'm going out on a limb in calling this device a scam. I don't think it has a snowflakes chance of working!

In other news, I had the sad news of my mother's passing. I'd promised to visit this year but in the early part of the year couldn't leave my job to do it. Then in the summer I couldn't afford to go dye to outrageous air fares. Then I got a new job so was planning to visit at Christmas. Airfares are still outrageous at $1000 for a flight at a time when fuel prices have never been lower! Airlines are definitely price gouging!

Friday, August 12, 2016

I'm not a lard arse!

Reading today, one of the digital camera groups had an entertaining slanging match going on between  different factions over the size of cameras and the relative merits of the different varieties of cameras. To be blunt, the digital camera groups debate the same issues time after time in different forms. It gets very tiresome.

20 years ago I used to buy camera magazines because they had interesting articles. I stopped doing that after newer writers came into the magazines that didn't know much other than how to write an article. In fact they didn't really know how to research an article which meant that most of their work was of dubious to abysmal quality.

Long after the UK magazines had ceased to write anything but pap, some of the US magazines still had decent articles. I remember one suggesting the use of seed trays for developing prints as opposed to the proper print developing trays. It was an idea that would have worked as long as the print could reliably be kept from settling to the bottom of the tray.

Recently the magazines have been little more than gadget worship rags. In fact, that might be too much praise. They have become the equivalent of the television infomercial where a presenter demonstrates a product and says how great it is while trying to avoid smirking. I doubt I'd pay money for a magazine, these days. They're just too expensive to take to the outhouse to drag across your arse. That's all they're worth, these days!

The debates online seem to carry over to the articles written in the magazines. I wouldn't mind betting that the writers, in between burgers, do their research by reading internet abuse groups (can't really call them discussion groups).

Going back to the merits of different cameras, the whole battle started off with somebody asking whether people found their smartphones were taking over from other kinds of cameras. The answer for me is a resounding yes. Let me explain why...

  1. My smartphone takes darned good photos. 
  2. I can be assured my photo has been automatically uploaded quickly after taking it.
  3. Because my photo is stored in the cloud, it can be accessed and shared easily.
  4. I'm rarely anywhere without my smartphone.
  5. My phone is easily portable in my pocket.
  6. Each image is marked with time, date and location.
How about my DSLR, my mirror less camera or my elderly zoom compact? Well, they're all bulky. A lot bulkier than my phone. In order of bulkiness, my DSLR is the biggest and my zoom compact ties with my mirror less camera. 

To use the DSLR or the mirror less, I have to make sure the battery is charged. It's not something I use daily, weekly or even monthly so when I want it, the battery is usually dead. The zoom compact takes AA batteries but only gets used for VGA video due to the image quality just not being that great any more.

I was given the zoom compact back in 2004 when they were new for $500. Now I couldn't get $5 for it at a flea market. The DSLR I bought back in 2006 together with a ton of camera bits back when somebody abusively sold me on the idea of doing photography as a business. Since then I've managed to sell all but the bits I use. Having said that, the last time I used my DSLR was April of 2015. I did get a mirror less camera in the hope I'd be able to use that more yet it sits unused on my nightstand. Fortunately I bought it secondhand so not much money is invested.

The camera I use the most? My cellphone! 40 photographs this week. Thousands over the last few years. Would I regret selling my DSLR? I don't think so. I didn't regret selling the stuff I bought for the mythical photography business. What I regret the most is being hoodwinked and the money that was lost.

I would retain the mirror less camera. At the moment I'm unable to get the same image quality from my 2012 mirror less compact that I can from my 2005 DSLR but then I have not used it much and don't have the ability to manipulate raw image files for it. I had hoped that my elderly MacBook would do it but the operating system is too elderly and cannot be upgraded further. I'd hoped that the Toshiba Cambio device would allow me to load and manipulate raw files on my iPad but it seems the device just doesn't work. Thus, I can't get much out of my mirror less at the moment other than JPEG files.

So, where does that leave me? Definitely in need of a laptop upgrade in order to do anything further with photography. 

Where does that leave the guy/guyette  that left original question? Well, my answer is look at the numbers. The top two cameras used by Flickr users are phones. Of the top 42, most are phones. That tells me that we have achieved universally acceptable image quality on phones. These days, knowing what I do about photography, I don't think I'd ever buy a DSLR and certainly never anything brand new.
In the laughably abusive comments on the discussion group, it was suggested that Americans and lard arses were too wimpy to carry big DSLRs. The truth is as above, the equipment is hard to justify. Why should anybody go to all the bother of carrying a DSLR or mirror less camera or even a zoom compact when their phone produces really acceptable images? I'm not a lard arse nor am I wimpy. I believe in practicality.

Yes, a DSLR used correctly will produce a technically improved image but why stop there? Why not use a medium format digital by Hasselblad? Why stop at Hasselblad? Why not go for a digital view camera? "Cost" I hear you cry, all you who decry others choices to somehow validate your own. Does cost mean that a digital view camera is no good? No it just means the people on forums cannot afford a digital view camera and can only decry those with cameras they view as inferior.

I, for one, don't feel the endless sparring over cameras and worship of equipment furthers photography. Is it not better just to admire a good image? It does not matter whether it was taken with a box brownie or the latest marvel of technology. Some images are not even that great but are very noteworthy such as the photograph of Paris rooftops. Why is that so important? Only because it's just about the first surviving photograph

Saturday, August 6, 2016

The silly counter arguments used online

We've all heard it or read it somewhere. The arguments for and against different kinds of cameras are pretty nauseating. The online forums are full not of debates over the merits of different cameras but rather of mud slinging. A typical online argument starts with somebody saying something then the next person trying to tell them they are wrong while rugby tackling them to the ground and grinding their heads into the dirt while repeatedly stomping on their head. It gets nobody anywhere either fast or slow.

The arguments I've heard have been....
Image quality improves with sensor size.
Modern cameras are better.
Format X is better than format Y
Maker X is better than Maker Y
You must have a high ISO
If you can't carry all your gear, you're a wimp.

Really and truly, all those arguments are complete poppycock. They miss the main issue which is that photography is about the photograph, not the equipment. There seems to be a perception that one must be able to cater for every eventuality with lenses that allow photographs of single pinheads to fill the image right the way through to lenses that can see the writing in the dirt left behind by Eugene Cernan on the lunar surface.

The fact is, early photographers took great photos using single fixed focal length lenses. Photography is about the picture, not the tools used to take the picture. As an example, I have a wonderful photograph I took with a 110 film camera. It's probably the best portrait I've ever taken yet 110 was very sniffed at during film days.

It doesn't matter if you use a cellphone, a compact, a mirror less camera or a digital SLR. They are only as good as the photographer and the scene presented. I can go and take a blurry, grainy, unrecognizable image just as easily with a phone as I could with a digital SLR. Equally, I can take a brilliant photo with any of them.

One of the main problems people have is with their perception. What is a photograph being used for? Is it being used to judge the technical capabilities of a camera and a lens or is it going to be used as a social media image? 99% if not more, of today's photographs will be online only. Thus, any camera or cellphone will be able to achieve an excellent image.
Yes. It's a burger. That was my lunch some time ago. The image is quite decent and it was taken with a cellphone. Now, I'll show you a photograph taken with a digital SLR.
Both images are equally good, seen on the screen. Hmm... Maybe it's not really necessary to have a digital SLR? Maybe it's overkill? The fact is nobody really does anything more than glance at a photograph. It doesn't matter how good or bad the image is. Viewers just do not care. The only people that obsess about image "quality" are OCD.

There was a fuss because some newspapers are dumping their dedicated photography staff and giving journalists, iPhones to take photos for news stories. That is a pretty good idea. The days of the specialist photographer are gone. A journalist can take a couple of dozen photos with an iPhone, dictate an article and add some video then send it back to the office before he's even left the scene.

For news people, the standalone camera is a clunky, archaic anachronism from the 19th century. For the hobbyist, it's still not really necessary to have anything more than a cellphone.

I'd say that the only reason to have a standalone camera are

  • Posing value
  • The rare occasions when a longer lens is needed
  • The rare occasions when a feature unavailable on a smartphone is needed

I've sold most of my camera gear. I use my cellphone for almost all my photography these days. It's an elderly Nexus 4 from 2012 and the screen is beginning to delaminate. The battery life is horrible but it still takes pretty good photos.

Do I recommend you selling your cameras? Heck, no. You do what you want. This is my opinion and these are my experiences! I would recommend not throwing a lot of money at photography. It has a tendency to gobble money. As far as making a profit... The only person that makes a profit from photography is the camera maker. I've seen way too many photographers going out of business and living in poverty.


Friday, August 5, 2016

Entertaining assininities encountered today.

For a laugh, today I browsed the DPReview discussion forums. DPReview has some quite acidic flame wars which is one of the reasons I never bother setting up accounts on forums. I'd rather just marvel at the stupidity being posted without being drawn in to correct misinformation then being attacked because the truth isn't to other users' liking.

Today, several topics worth a belly laugh came up.


If I have been hired by a school as a photographer to work in another state, do I have to charge sales tax. 

  • If you're going to work in another state then you need a business license for that state and probably a local municipal license also. Tax could be paid in either state as long as it is paid. There is a caveat here. Government institutions do not normally pay sales tax but the sales tax return has to be filled out Well, the truth is that if you're going to work in another state then you need a business license for that tate and probably a local municipal license also. Tax could be paid in either state as long as it is paid. There is a caveat here. Government institutions do not normally pay sales tax but the sales tax return has to be filled out 
  • The discussion did not center around that though and it's debatable as to whether somebody serious about business would even ask such a serious question on something as frivolous as an online forum. I've asked several local sole traders whether they bother with forums and the answer is a resounding no and the reason is they don't have time to play around.
  • The advice given was, of course, laughable and clearly given by people who never have been in business and likely never in any form of management. The sad thing is that somebody who doesn't know enough yet might follow their advice.

Good enough to fool clients.
This is a very common answer when questions are asked. In this instance somebody had blurred the background of a photo to allegedly make the subject stand out. Several things come to mind here.

  • If fooling a client is a consideration then the person considering such an action is thinking in such an immoral way that criminality is going to be the very next move. Fooling people is not something anybody particularly in business should ever consider. The ramifications are too severe and wide reaching.
  • If the subject is so insignificant in the photo that it cannot easily be identified without manipulation then the photo is bad in the first place.
  • These blurry backgrounds are not artistic. They are a failure of photographic equipment to resolve an image satisfactorily. In the old days, lenses were not well designed and film speeds were slow meaning that anything outside of the prime area of the lens was blurred and especially so in less than great light. Photographers have been so used to the failure of equipment that they now consider a photo that's crisp across the frame to be abnormal. 
Scams
It seems every day they're posting about some scam via eBay, Amazon or the photographic retailers. 
  • Usually the alleged scam is because the buyer has not read nor understood the terms and conditions of the deal
  • Allied to the above, too many people seem to think its OK to buy an item, use it briefly then return it. Highly dishonest.
Given the above and that's just from today, I would consider most alleged photographers as being a very dodgy proposition. Indeed I am reminded of a documentary about a 19th century photographer who was perpetually broke and who would pawn his camera, pretend photographs didn't come out then use the clients money to get his camera back then actually take the photos. Very dishonest and to be frank, an attitude that seems to permeate photography at every level.

As an example, look at the professional photographers. Laughably, they demand deposits. This is not because they get too many bookings to cope but because clients are so rare that they have to use a non refundable deposit as a hook to snare victims. The actual photography is pretty much nothing. Anybody with a cell phone can take decent photos. 
Yes, the above image is a cell phone photo, taken in the dark with a Nexus 4. Now, could somebody with a camera costing thousands have taken a better picture? Possibly but it would have been a close call.

Reading photo forums provides a very interesting view of the world that's so distorted as to make the reader question what substances the writers have consumed. According to forums...
  • Clients know nothing
  • Clients have to be fooled
  • Photography makes money
  • There are never enough photographers to satisfy demand
  • Only the best equipment will do
  • Only the latest equipment will do
  • If equipment is more than a year old, it should be tossed out and replaced with new
  • If customers aren't coming it's because your photography is bad
  • If websites aren't getting visitors it's because your photography is bad
  • If websites aren't getting visitors it's because your website design is bad 
  • If nobody is ringing after you advertised in the yellow pages, your photography is bad
  • If nobody is ringing after you advertised on the side of your vehicle, your photography is bad.

Notice there seems to be no recognition of the fact people are not falling all over themselves to buy photography? Seriously, when was the last time you hired a photographer? I can honestly say I never ever have. I appeared in high school group photos but never hired the photographer and very often never bought a photo. I had some guy in Walgreens do some passport photos but they were a sales clerk and they used a compact. That's it - I have never ever hired a photographer. Very few of my friends ever have either. In fact, most friends that get married get the guests to pool their cellphone images and skip paying a bum with a camera.

So, go ahead, read the forums. Have a belly laugh but remember to come back. Reality still needs you!

Saturday, July 16, 2016

The Social Media Magic Bullet!

For those that say there is no magical bullet for social media, shame on you. There is a magic bullet that works very well for all social media. I've used it and it works brilliantly. I digress though. 
Today I looked at my iPad and noticed on the settings screen it lists Vimeo, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. That's actually really bizarre because I wouldn't let apps of such foulness near my iPad.

Android devices like Windows computers are well known for being loaded to the gunwales with trash software. Sadly, it seems that Apple has leapt onto the same bandwagon.

Thus far I have found no way of deleting junk ware or in this case, junk icons, from any mobile devices. Computers are far easier and in fact there was something called "Dell Decrappifier" that deleted all the junk software automatically.

As far as social media magic bullets go, the best one I have found is simply to delete the social media account in question. It frees your time, lessens your stress and allows you to be more creative. Social media is all about conforming to an artificial norm where people superficially pat each other on the back. It's a fake world full of fake people. Don't tell me that you have met all the people on your Facebook friends list. You haven't, probably never will and don't even know if those people really exist. They could be some kind of online app run by the CIA to play social engineering experiments on you. That 35 year old buxom maiden is likely to be a 50 year old unemployed drifter from Wisconsin who's sitting in stained shorts in a dirty trailer, surrounded by used syringes and empty beer cans.

Twitter
To deactivate your account: Sign in to twitter.com on the web. Go to your Account settings and click on Deactivate my account at the bottom of the page. Read the account deactivation information. Click Okay, fine, deactivate account. Enter your password when prompted and verify that you want to deactivate your account.

The reality is that it takes 30 days to become effective. Once you've done this, you need to delete all your Twitter cookies in order to avoid accidental reactivation of your account.

Flickr
Sign in to Flickr. Visit Your Account. Click Delete your Flickr account. Read the important messages, then click OK-NEXT. You'll be prompted to enter your password to confirm your account deletion. Check Yes, I fully understand... Click DELETE MY ACCOUNTNice and easy. Very final.

Vimeo
visit your Account Settings. Scroll down until you see the “Account Status” section and follow the steps for deleting. This will remove your account and all your content from Vimeo.

Facebook

This can be a real bitch. I have an old account with no personal information on it registered to an old email address. I reactivated email address and tried to log into Facebook to delete my account and was met with a refusal to allow me to proceed without sending Facebook personal documents such as a copy of my drivers license. That account cannot be used nor deleted it appears. Facebook is one of a myriad of random websites and I'd no longer send them my drivers license than I'd hand my wallet to the town drunk.

Looking at Facebook it seems accounts can only be deactivated, not deleted. The magic bullet is probably to delete the content on your account then to change your name to Joe Spud.

Now for those that think they're going to make money off social media via sales or advertising, it's not going to happen. I've tried it off and on, following advice to the letter and it never ever works. It's like these careers websites... You can spend your life unemployed if all you do is apply online for jobs. Let's see... How did I get my last few jobs...
1. Walked in after lunch, sought out the personnel manager and chatted to him. I got the job and stayed for 5 years.
2. Walked in, saw the project coordinator, got the job and stayed for a year.
3. I'd applied for a job on careerbuilder and clicked down a list of one click apply jobs. I had no idea what I was applying for. Had a phone call two days later, went in and got the job. Stayed there for 2 years.
4. Driving past, I saw a sign, went in on my way home and got the job.

See how very little of that involved the Internet. I make more money every week by working than I've ever made from Adsense or any other internet garbage.








Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Toshiba $&@#

A long while ago, I bought an iPad mini 2. This was to replace an appalling series of android tablets. To be fair, Android was ok as a system. It was just the build quality of the tablets that really sucked, hence I went through 4 in 2 years. Similarly I went through goodness knows how many substandard smartphones before getting one that actually worked.

Anyway, connecting a camera or memory card to my iPad is almost impossible. I could just plug a camera or card reader right into an Android tablet. That's until I saw this...
It's a Toshiba wifi adapter that allows me to see what's on a memory card or a memory stick. That's as far as it goes though. The software is atrocious. It's on a par with what somebody given a very short time budget having finished a series of evening classes in programming would have produced.

To be blunt, the software purports to let me download images and videos but nothing like that ever actually happened. All it allows me to do is to rename folders and view images. It's about as half assed as can possibly be which had me checking Toshiba's website to see that it really was a Toshiba device and not some 3rd world device with Toshiba's name on it.

Let's just say that I consider myself to have been ripped off. I can't believe I actually paid $10 for this piece of plastic trash. The problem with this kind of trash is it's not fixable, it's not salable, it's not donatable and it's not even givable - it is landfill. It's designed to scam a small amount of money and not to take too much landfill space.

The hunt continues. I gather this might be a good time to bemoan Apple's connectivity issues. Apple has great hardware but poor connectivity. The Android stuff has lousy hardware but great everything else. Maybe tablets just aren't ready for mainstream use yet?


Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Slow progress

Those that have been reading my blog for a while will recognize my need to squeeze every drop of blood from every penny. Thus, progress is painfully slow. No more so than in the acquisition of stuff, particularly when I have a low paying job with hours that precude any other employment. In addition to that, photography is not my first priority. First priority for disposable cash goes to the construction of my motor home. That, I need, in order to better my chances of being able to take a job in an instant.

After ordering my iPad mini 2 and getting my secondhand Olympus E-M1 plus a secondhand lens, I needed other things. In no particular order, a lens cap, camera strap, polarizing filter, lens hood and USB cable. As those had to be ordered from China to save money, there has been a time delay.

The polarizer is an unknown brand "Andoer" but to be honest, I bought some off brand skylight filters when I did high speed photography and they were excellent. It's not a coated filter so I could get reflections. I remember buying a Hoya multi coated filter and getting reflections. It turned out Hoya had three kinds of filters.


  • Multi coated - these just stop some surface reflections.
  • Super Multi Coated - these stop all surface reflections.
  • Digital Multi Coated - these are the same as Super Multi Coated save for the fact they're coated on the back as well as the front.


  • Needless to say, I did encounter a rare occasion when I did get reflections on the back of the filter. As far as I can recall, it was photographing Christmas lights one year. I believe it was caused by a reflection off the sensor rather than the multicoated front element. I'm really not sure how good this $3 polarizer will be.

    The lens cap turned up and is exactly right. The lens hood turned up and is frankly a disappointment. I had expected a bayonet mount to fit the lens. Instead, it's a screw in hood. That was a disappointment though I'm sure I'll be able to use it.

    The USB cable needed to update the firmware in my camera and lens has not yet arrived nor has the neck strap. They'll be here some day.

    I had desired a camera with Bluetooth or wifi in order to facilitate downloads to my tablet. I have, however, obtained for $10 a USB plugin that acts as a mini wifi server which in turn allows wifi access to any USB device. Of course now I have that, I can't find my memory card reader. Without buying another, I have to wait for the USB cable. It goes without saying that the camera uses a size I don't have!

    There is a viewfinder attachment available that looks pretty tempting. That would turn the camera into something like a DSLR. That might be worth getting if the tests come out well.

    Forthcoming is a competition at my camera club. The theme is 7 black and white images. I might take the opportunity to shoot a series of images with both my Canon DSLR and my Olympus ILC. If you recall, a few years back I compared images from a cellphone, DSLR and a zoom compact. They were all pretty much the same. I remember being called all kinds of names by the magpies on camera groups for my findings.

    Now, if the new camera is as good as or better than my Canons then there's a good case to sell the bulky Canon stuff. I'd want to match the range of lenses. For most of the range that's simple and cheap. The 45 -150 is about $100 secondhand. My current kit gets me to 480mm while the 150 goes as far as 300mm. I'll have to see if 300 is too short - if I buy a longer lenses. I see no need to have two bodies either. I am not a professional photographer and resent anybody trying to push me into being one. I am not, never have been and never will be a snake oil salesman.

    So, the futures looking rosier. Work ends tomorrow and stays off until September. That should give ample time to test and compare cameras as well as to completing my bus project. Not to mention actually having time to enter a competition!

    Sunday, May 22, 2016

    iPad on day 2

    Looking at the software available for iPad, there's a glaring gap... There just is no suitable app for blogging. Certainly I have tried a blogging app. As can be seen by yesterday's efforts, the big problem is that the app ignored all my nice paragraphing. There was no solution other than to uninstall the app.

    How am I blogging now? Simple. I am using the email approach to blogging. Blogger allows me to email updates of up to 10 MB in size. And of course one of the nice things about the iPad is that I can just dictate my blog entries which is a lot faster. Unlike Android it actually makes sense of what I'm saying. Android never could quite understand English as it is spoken.

    On the whole I am very impressed by my Apple iPad. In times of mistakes, it doesn't make a lot when I'm dictating. I probably have to correct about one sentence in every three. Android couldn't understand anything half the time. This is not an Android bashing session; this is merely comparison between my experience of the android on the iOS devices.

    Yesterday , I ordered a gizmo to read my camera memory using Wi-Fi. That should make a huge difference. Now, one of the questions I had was whether I should continue blogging using Google blogger or whether I should change to Wordpress. For the moment, it makes sense to continue with the Google blog. This of course is a downside to not using my own domain name for the blog. Had I used my own domain name then I would be able to switch blog hosts at the drop of a hat. As my blogs still do not make very much money even though they carry Adsense, there seems little purpose in spending money on a domain name. My typical AdSense income seems to be less than a dollar a month. A domain name, even a cheap one would cost about $10 a year. That is not going to finance itself. As I have said many times before in this blog I am totally done with financing the Internet. I don't pay for web hosting. I don't pay for domain names. I don't pay for anything that does not return more money than I am spending on it. This is particularly so regarding the Internet.

    If you haven't considered an iPad, maybe you too need to come out of your shell! The entry price can be as low as $250 for a full sized iPad Air. That's about what you'll blow on cheap Android tablets every year.

    The only thing I don't like about email blogging is that I can't add search descriptions and tags. I can include photos however and get them correctly formatted. Even the dictation seems to work.



    Sent from my iPad

    Saturday, May 21, 2016

    Ouchie ouchie, wallet hurtie

    Ouch! I've gone and done it now! Yes, dissatisfied with the lousy run of tablets, I have bought another but not just any other tablet. This time I bought an iPad. Call me nuts but I believe a product I buy should last long enough to be able to use it. My history of tablets has not been exactly rosy In 2013 I bought a Nook Color tablet cheaply just as it was about to be discontinued. That thing cost me $90 and never performed as desired. In the slightest humidity the screen would go bananas imagining phantom touches. A photo album would mysteriously flip through all the images or the screen would be utterly response less. Inside a place with powerful air conditioning, it would behave. In my car, outside or in my home it would not behave. Worse than that, I was displaying photos at a function and it let me down embarrassingly. By the time I decided to get rid of it, they were selling on eBay for $75. I copied the text of an advert that sold for $75 and added the same generic photo. I should have got more than $26 for it but that's my experience of eBay. Anyway, it was a case of probably being lucky to get $26 so I sold the damned thing. Roll on a year and i bought a $5 Android tablet that cost me $75 in Walmart. It worked but was very slow. It had such limited memory that only one or two apps could be installed. I struggled on with that tablet for about 6 months before upgrading. Eventually, rather than repeat the miserable experience of eBay, I simply gave the thing away. My next tablet was a refurbished Nexus 7. That was pretty good. The screen was pretty good. In fact, I'd say the screen on the old Nook and the Nexus were both pretty good for displaying photos. The Nexus worked pretty well. In fact, very well. As time went on though, it became ever more sluggish. Eventually, after about a year the USB port worked loose and then the tablet began to behave erratically as though something had gone amiss. That situation became so bad that a factory reset was the only solution. Sadly, the factory reset turned the tablet into a non functional device that merely looked like a tablet. I gather Android tablets have a tendency to do this. Hunting around, it transpired that it was possible to reflash the tablet. Nobody was prepared to do this however and despite my having a pretty intensive computer background, the instructions provided online were opaque enough for reflashing to be well nigh impossible. In the end I found people who said they could do it but they were the usual geek type places. You've all probably encountered them - grubby, pimply, not entirely honest and who will claim to be able to do anything but when faced with reality find they can't back up their claims and quietly shuffle away or put up the shutters when they see you returning. Anyway, one was so keen on doing business they never got back to me and never answered their phone. The other wanted $50 to reflash a $100 tablet. There was a 3rd but honestly, by then I had tired of visiting shady Mike Hammer type places that looked fly-by-night. Thus my next purchase was a $50 tablet from Walmart. That actually was pretty good. It even had a clamshell case with a little keyboard. The keyboard-screen angle was a little strange and the low quality LCD screen was viewable only from certain angles. That meant using it was a matter of physical contortions but it worked pretty well. That was an RCA tablet but more capable than the one I gave away. Three months after purchase, the usb socket broke rendering the tablet useless as it could not be charged. I knew the answer before I started... Nobody would want to fix it. Even though it was under warranty RCA wasn't particularly interested. Postage ($10) would have to be paid by myself despite the fact it was their lousy workmanship that failed. That rankled me.  Then there was the thing that they would not replace my nice purple tablet with a nice new purple tablet but rather with a reconditioned black tablet - not even close to a satisfactory resolution! Thus, being in the market for a tablet, I considered my options. I could have bought another cheap tablet and regarded tablets as being a $150-$300 a year habit. Just like a narcotics addict, I'd be hunting for my new tablet fix every few months after the last temporary fix wore out. Equally I could have just kicked my tablet habit. That would require me to resurrect my old MacBook which definitely needs a new battery. While resurrection is a plan for the future, I have my doubts about its value. I could spend $160 on a new battery and I'm sure after 9 years it would be best to replace the hard drive - probably best to do that with a flash hard drive at $300. That then puts me at $460 or $300 shy of a new champagne colored brand new MacBook. Somehow the new MacBook seems better value especially considering I cannot upgrade the operating system on mine past Snow Leopard. The only other option was to leap into iPads.  Years ago, I had a similar situation with phones. I bought cheap phone after cheap phone and never had my money's worth out of them. Then I went for a Blackberry and that was pretty good but died after just a year. Next, I moved to android phones and had a series of underwhelming phones that were ultimately unsatisfactory until I spent way more than I wanted to on my Nexus 4. That was actually a good phone until the USB socket died. Fortunately it had a cordless charging option which I've been using for the last year or so. I almost went for an iPhone at the time. My next phone probably will be an iPhone. So, having decided that after blowing a nett total of $289 on android tablets that ended up in landfill, I'd try an iPad. I'd already paid the equivalent price of an iPad in failed Android devices. Looking around, prices were outrageous but there were cheaper options. The iPad Air was $249 at Walmart. That was a full sized tablet. The iPad mini 2 was $269 again at Walmart. As it makes no sense at all to have a big tablet when I can simply use a laptop, I went for the smaller tablet. It's just the right size to be portable and the right size to use at night. Needless to say, I got it cheaper than Walmart wanted - that's no great challenge! Using the iPad I notice several things. Firstly, the blogger app is not available. Secondly, there are less apps to weed through. Thirdly, the Apple environment is different from Google's. As I'm a blogger user, this is a challenge. In use, the tablet runs very nicely. Battery life is excellent. Thus far I'm on 86% battery having had several breaks from writing and having done other things as well as writing over the past 3 hours. The screen is excellent. There's a security code I have to enter rather too frequently that was missing on android. On the whole though, it's more pluses than minuses. Next, I have to get my iPad to talk to my camera, mass storage, my MacBook and to camera memory cards. That could be challenging but I'm always up for a challenge. I was right in dumping Windows and going Mac. I'm probably right in dumping android and going iOS.

    Tuesday, May 10, 2016

    What did I do?

    Well, I started a chain of events in motion...

    A few days ago I ordered a secondhand Olympus E-PM1. That arrived pretty swiftly and of course that's when all the fun started. It arrived with no lens cap, no filter, no neck strap and no lens hood. Not even a filter to protect the front element.
    It's a nifty little thing with a high ISO of 12,800 - way higher than I was expecting. I have been able to download images onto a Windows computer but as there is no raw processing software, I'm a little limited right now.

    The good - it works really well. I have yet to take a night sky image that I really like but that's just a matter of perseverance. It's light and small. So small in fact that it's not going to look obvious.

    The bad - it really eats up the battery. I suspect I might have to get a couple of extra batteries. Olympus Viewer 3 is not compatible with my Mac as my Mac is 9 years old. I had been thinking of getting a new battery for my Mac since it has been misbehaving and I believe that misbehaviour is due to the 9 year old battery being several thousand cycles past its prime.

    My tablet is not going to be sent for warranty repair. I just don't feel it's worth sending my tablet off. Sure - for $10 I could get a replacement tablet but to be honest, it's not up to photography or anything remotely worthwhile. I suspect I'll probably end up using my RCA tablet for target practice in rather the manner of the now famous Death of a Virgin video I did some years ago with a less than satisfactory cellphone.
    The question is now whether I should get a way better tablet or a battery for my Macbook. I'm definitely at a point where almost all the technology I have is 10 years old and beginning to show signs of age. Don't get me wrong - my Macbook works perfectly well when it's plugged in now that it has got past the silly stage with the screen going black every time I took a breath.

    My aim with the new camera is to take pictures like the following sky picture but sharper in the corners. This lack of sharpness was caused by a less than stellar lens - the Tamron 17-35 f2.8. The corners were described by one critic as "softer than last night's mashed potatoes".
    I had a little go with my Olympus and got a reasonable night sky photo. I need to work more on this. I'm finding when I overexpose, I get purple blotches but that's not particularly important. That's just a response of the sensor to chronic overexposure. The photo is nice and sharp though.

    Interestingly, the tree leaves aren't that sharp. That could have been due to a breeze though. What I'm more interested by is the sky though. The stars are really showing well. I need to do more practice with this camera. I certainly need to be able to work with the RAW files.

    This is a straight out of camera JPEG with the 14-42 lens set at 14mm. It's not too bad. I'll have to do more testing and work out how to get the best out of it. So far I have discovered at least one camera software bug. When I get the connecting cable - it uses a small USB connector that I do not possess so I had to order one from China - I'll be able to use the one Olympus app that did download - the one that allows me to update the camera and lens firmware automatically.

    Things are definitely progressing. I might well have to upgrade my computer though. I certainly do not want to go over to Windows. I really detest the glitchy nature of the Windows operating system. Each version seems to be a giant step backward from the previous. I looked into a Chromebook but there's so little difference between Chromebooks and tablets there seems singularly little purpose in having one.

    Regarding tablets, I found that just about every existing tablet has a micro USB charging port. That's what failed on my latest RCA tablet. I did have an RCA tablet before but that just didn't have enough memory to be remotely useful. My Nexus 7 was pretty good but the USB socket worked loose and though I could cope with it, the software onboard corrupted itself rendering the tablet non-functional. My Nexus 4 phone (purchased in April of 2013) developed a loose USB charging port too. I had to switch over to using a cordless charger. It charges as long as I hold the USB cord in place so I went cordless instead. My Nexus 7 didn't have that luxury.

    I'm slowly trying to dig myself out of a technological black hole. I was dead right that a Mac would last far longer than a Windows laptop. I'd have been through between 3 and 5 Windows laptops in the time I have owned my Macbook and it still works. The alternative (which looks attractive) is a Windows laptop running Linux.

    More interestingly, my night sky photo taken with the Tamron lens was taken at 1600ISO and f2.8 for 30 seconds on a Canon XT. My (overexposed) photo with my Olympus at 128000ISO and f5.6 and 40 seconds. That's -2 stops on aperture, +3 stops on ISO and +0.25 stops on exposure. So, it's just over a stop overexposed. I'll play with it a bit more.

    Reading around, it seems that some photographers have used F4 with 800ISO to get great night sky images. I've read others that swear by 3200ISO and F2.8 with 30 seconds as being the only way to get a great photo. Given such a wide variance I have to assume other factors are at play than exposure. It might be that there's a wider variation of ISO sensitivity between cameras than there really should be. It could be the ISO standard isn't being adhered to all that strongly. It could be a problem with location - maybe my area of night sky isn't clear enough. I know a few miles away, the best I could achieve was this.
    As I've said, there's plenty room for experimentation and practice. Since the daily portion of my current job ends for the summer in a few weeks, perhaps I can head off for a few days to a dark sky area to do some real experimentation.

    Sunday, May 8, 2016

    I cannot reccomend RCA tablets

    In December I bought an RCA tablet. It was the 7 inch Voyager 2 Pro and was purchased in December from Walmart. No fault of Walmart what subsequently transpired.

    The tablet came with a keyboard case. The keyboard was a delight to use. The problems with the tablet were minimal. It was fast, had sufficient storage and worked well. The keyboard was at a very strange angle. With the keyboard level, reading the screen was somewhat hard due to its narrow viewing angle. A few apps wouldn't work on it. The screen was low resolution and didn't have a great color gamut.

    Then on the 20th of March, the USB charger port worked loose. It had been getting gradually sloppier and sloppier. It stopped charging the tablet totally. As it was under manufacturer warranty, I contacted RCA. They responded - eventually - with a series of very confusing emails. It transpired they wanted me to spend $10 to ship their incompetently constructed hardware back to them. They promised to ship me back - not a new purple tablet but a reconditioned black tablet. Basically they would be shipping me a tablet somebody else had rejected or had failed to keep their payments up on.

    So, because RCA is incompetent in their construction, they want me to pay $10 to ship their junk back to them. No - no way. I am not throwing $10 of good money away after $50 wasted on trash.

    That set me thinking. I spent $90 on a Nook Color. That let me down, embarrasingly, in public. At a time when they were going on eBay for $75 I listed it and got the princely sum of $26 for it. Way under the going rate. I took it just to get shot of the bloody thing.

    Then I bought a $50 RCA 7 inch tablet with 8GB storage. That was so worthless I threw it in the closet and spent $100 on a reconditioned Nexus 7. That worked reasonably well but stopped working about 12 months later. I did the factory reset which was when I discovered the factory image was missing. It had bricked itself!

    Looking around I found lots of people that allegedly fixed tablets. None would reflash my Nexus 7. I don't have a good enough internet connection out in the sticks to download the gigabytes of data needed to fix it. It went in the closet.

    So, next was the latest RCA disaster area. By now I have spent $290 on tablets and regained $26. Basically I have spent the $269 of an iPad mini and had nothing but frustration.

    It is looking increasingly as though Android tablets of whatever price are just throwaway devices. As soon as they go wrong, throw them away. It's not as simple as that though. All data stored on them can be restored after deletion. With villains so easily undeleting data, the only way to ensure data security is to destroy the device.

    So, I could spend $10 more on my RCA junk AND run the risk of somebody stealing my data. I don't think I'll bite on that one!

    Whre to go from here? Well, there are 3 options:
    1. Fix my laptop (it probably needs a new battery) and say "stuff tablets".
    2. Buy a new junk tablet and hope it will last longer.
    3. Stretch my finances, say "stuff it" and buy an iPad mini.

    From my experience, it seems the weak point on the Android junk is the USB charger. All of my tablets and my phone have USB charging ports. All the USB ports have failed. My phone is now charged solely via a cordless charging pad. My Nexus 7 USB was getting very loose. The latest RCA tablet has probably got broken solder connections. This is why Apple uses their Lightning connector.

    The reason why we have crappy USB connectors is because the EU wanted a standard power connector to reduce electronic waste. It actually causes more electronic waste because when the flimsy USB connector fails, the device is thrown away. It's just too expensive to repair them.

    This leaves me blogging with just my phone and a bluetooth keyboard. It's not a happy state of affairs. I am not happy! Given that my Nexus 4 Android phone is complaining of memory issues, I  suspect it is not long for the road either.

    Clearly I'm going to have to go forward from here. The solution might be an iPad mini and simply replace my phone when it dies - probably with a flip phone. Each time I buy a smartphone, I swear I will go back to a flip phone. Give that nobod ever calls me, that might well be the way forward. As far as the tablet, I'm not sure that I wouldn't be better just fixing my laptop and not bothering with a tabet. Perhaps just get a cheap Chromebook.