Monday, 16 October, 2023 —
photography
Nikon recently announced the Zf, a full-frame, 24 megapixel camera that follows the style cues from the Nikon FM and FE. It has brass dials for adjusting mode, exposure, and metering compensation. But, it is also a fully-modern, high resolution video-capable camera.
Thom Hogan has notable critiques about the form-factor, critiques he also had for the earlier Zfc and the decade ago Digital SLR Df. I agree with several of his criticisms. But, I also see the opening of a video from Nikon Europe’s Ricci Chera and he’s adjusting the dials and they have an ASMR-like quality of thunk. An apparent tactileness that, as nice as the other Z bodies and lenses are, apart from the on off switch and the exposure and aperture dials, buttons push and dials spin freely.
Hogan notes that physical dials that can be overridden in software end-up lying to the user. The same is true in vehicles that have physical volume controls or climate controls that can be overridden by touch panels or other secondary interfaces. But, something that some cars provide for knobs are detents, which give a tacile note of getting to the next setting. On smartphones, the equivalent are feedback haptics.
While I see the Zf as somewhat anachronistic, there’s an audience for this camera. My best guess is this is accessible with smaller primes for street photography. It can drive anything else available on the Z-mount, but I suspect it’s not going to be used much for, say, the f/2.8 400mm, setting aside Morten Hilmar’s Zf video where he considers using the Zf as a video and backup body to his Z9. Seeing and hearing that dial turning from Ricci, it comes across as an solid, expensive fidget toy. Fidget toy sounds dismissive, yet, I also would appreciate that tactile feedback, if maybe not the aural feedback. If the configurable rings on Z-mount lenses could give haptic feedback when changing aperture settings, or when manual focus was reached, an ISO setting was changed. Heck, I’d also like it at the common prime points on zoom lenses. Instead of framing at 48mm or 52mm, I’d know I was at 50mm. It isn’t important at all for the lens performance, but I’m just that particular about wanting to use my zoom lens at one of the typical prime focal lengths.
Another thing I think about is that here missed having a sense of the tactile with modern computers and cameras and cars.
There’s a sense of adding convenience and flexibility by moving things to flat screens and bad keyboards. Thinner phones. Removing buttons, switches, and dials that would all provide immediate physical feedback. Things are sleeker and can demo well. But, what looks good staring at it for thirty seconds and liking it isn’t the same as living with it and using it for months or years. While I see and understand the motivation for the short-term benefit, I also feel where things get worse if there aren’t some tactile affordances. For instance, I typed this paragraph’s first draft on an iPad using the software keyboard. I can do OK with it and it is quieter than typing on most physical keyboards. But, I am far more efficient if I use even the smallest, shallowest Magic Keyboard paired with Bluetooth. My fingers have a better sense of where they need to be, I get the tactile feedback.
The existence of a software keyboard is still super useful, I can work with it, just as I can work with touchscreen interfaces in cars. But, I’m a far sight better with a physical keyboard, a dial or knob to navigate with. Haptics or tactile feedback are super helpful.
Bringing this back around to cameras, I’m not the target market for the Zf, the older Zfc, or cameras from Fujifilm that evoke a similar aesthetic in the APS-C format. But, I want to see the concept of the brass dials that you know you’ve moved to inform the software-configured dials and control rings on camera bodies and lenses that I would more likely use. An option for detents, configurable haptics, or both please.
Saturday, 23 September, 2023 —
photography
Cosmos and bee
One element I talk about in a pending post about photography practice is using my yard and immediate neighborhood as a practice area. We have several different areas of flowers and plants that attract plenty of bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, birds, and other pollinators.
A long lasting flower, cosmos are in three or four different parts of the yard. So, walking around with the telephoto lens, I framed the flower with some out of focus flowers and stems as background. Then, the bee pops in and lands. Perfect.
Tuesday, 13 June, 2023 —
transplant
The most critical aspect post-transplant life for solid organ transplant recipients is staying on schedule with anti-rejection medications.
Transplant recipients ride a sometime precarious balance of keeping a healthy immune system, but not so strong that the body starts rejecting a transplanted organ. Depending on the transplant program, the match between the donor and the recipient, living with a transplant means at least one, but likely more, medication taken on a regular schedule, every day, for life. One my anti-rejection meds is taken twice daily, 12 hours apart.
Knowing this, it was utterly depressing to read of Dexter Barry’s death in Florida because he was arrested for a misdemeanor, could not pay bail, was jailed, and denied access to his anti-rejection medications.
Juliana Kim for NPR:
Barry, 54, pleaded with the arresting officer seven times back in November. He alerted the jail nurse and a court judge about his condition too. But in the two days that Barry was held at Duval County Jail in Jacksonville, Fla., no one allowed him access to the medication he desperately asked for.
Three days after he was released from jail, Barry died from cardiac arrest that was caused by an acute rejection of the heart, Dr. Jose SuarezHoyos, a Florida pathologist who conducted a private autopsy of Barry on behalf of Barry’s family, told NPR.
The article highlights that Barry waited 12 years for tranplant, and moved to increase his chances. Heart transplants require deceased donors, so I can readily appreciate finding an area where wait time for a deceased donor is lower.
I’m aghast at the repeated instances of preventable deaths in jails because seemingly no one can be bothered to follow-up and follow-through on making sure the incarcerated have the medical care they need. In this case, a man died, in part, because he could not readily pay $503 to satisfy bail conditions. Utterly abhorrent.
Tuesday, 23 May, 2023 —
photography
One great thing about living on a hill in the country is great sky visibility. Our visibility of the hill’s downslope starts to the southeast, so, at night, we get a great view of rising constellations.
Through the winter months, Orion and the Winter Triangle look fantastic. In January, with a New Moon, I can get the full Winter Triangle after it’s cleared the tree line from 8 pm onward. Heading towards Summer Solstice, the Big Dipper sits right over the yard, handle pointed towards the east southeast.
Our house isn’t in the darkest area, we can see sky glow around from Philadelphia to the south, the New York metro to the east, and the Lehigh Valley to the north and northwest. Even with the light pollution, the backyard is a fun spot to experiment with astrophotography.
Orion and the Winter Triangle
I’m working with single exposure images instead of image stacking until I get more experienced with focusing, exposure, and composition to make capturing, editing, and processing an image sequence worthwhile. The good news is modern cameras, lenses, and processing software are remarkably capable of yielding stunning results. On later dSLRs and recent mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, photographers can push ISO pretty high before really sacrificing image quality to noise.
Big Dipper just after sunset
As with other genres of photography, there’s a wide range of equipment useful for astrophotography. There’s not a lot of a equipment that’s necessary to get started. A recent interchangeable lens camera like a dSLR or mirrorless camera from any major manufacturer, a lens, and a tripod are enough to get started.
Some specifics to start with:
- An interchangeable lens camera, either a digital single lens reflex, or a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera
- A lens that:
- Can be focused manually
- Has a focal length somewhere between 12mm at the very wide end to 50mm at a standard viewing angle
- Has a maximum aperture at f/4 or faster (3.5, 2.8, 2, 1.4)
- A tripod
- A way to trigger shutter release without shaking the camera
- A wireless remote
- A corded off-camera shutter release
- A shutter release delay function on the camera
The limitations of the equipment you start with are worthwhile. There’s no moving star tracker here. Instead, the learning emphasis is on composition, exposure, and the part I’ve found the most challenge with, focusing. Throwing the lens into manual mode and setting the focusing distance to infinity ought to work, and yet, my results show an incorrect assumption with blurry stars. Using too high an ISO means photos get noisy and/or show banding. Too long of an exposure and the risk is motion blur from star travel. Star travel is fast enough that even at 24mm (in full-frame terms, 16mm for APC-C or 12 mm for Micro 4/3) exposure to exposure can be enough to see noticeable star movement, particularly shooting toward the equator.
There’s more info from Photography Life that concentrates on beginning Milky Way photography, but the general ideas there are valid for constellations, too.
Once I get a better sense of single-image composition and getting results I like in the backyard, I’ll be exploring night landscapes.
Monday, 9 January, 2023 —
mindfulness
social media
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around focusing my free time pursuing creative outlets like photography, writing, and software development. There’s a ton of books and magazines I would love to read and a bundle of coding projects I’d like to be productive on all at once.
I’ve spent a long time wrecking my attention in a few different ways. First, I spent a lot of time being Very Online. Second, I spent a lot of mental energy planning my creative efforts, while also using all of the available time for them in the planning and being Very Online. I read a lot, but not enough books, not enough worthwhile magazines.
Part of my winter vacation involved taking a break from my customary online space and slowing down. Chasing fewer threads of stuff to react to, to get angry about. Refreshing my creative thinking with some timely reading from Robin Sloan, and a piece from earlier in 2022 from Nicole Chung. Synthesis: The work can be lonely, but it’s worthwhile. Both were wonderful pieces. Some things you see or read, you find when you’re ready for them.
I’ve spent a good chunk of the last couple of weeks reading and rereading material on open/indie websites and, if there’s one thing I’ve found super inspirational about all of it is discarding the notion that it has to be for anyone else. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out a larger point and a larger project instead of just putting words down and sharing images that I’ve made. If something else comes out of that, cool, but I need some time where that’s a secondary or tertiary benefit other than just reducing the thought and focus friction around writing, coding, and photographing.
I’ve been taking more time to be outside or looking out my windows at the sky and trees. More time for walking. More time for thinking.
When I was younger, I was briefly part of a social crowd that was habitual, but I realized I stopped enjoying who I was with them. Secondarily, my boundaries weren’t respected. Accordingly, I found it necessary and refreshing to no longer frequent their company. The particulars aren’t important. It just ceased being a situation I was comfortable with, let alone wanted to invest more time and energy in.
My social media break is ongoing and indefinite. The recovered time is going toward endeavors I consider more valuable. Some of it is creative. Some is just choosing to slow down and relax. Instead of soaking in anger, snark, and a general malaise of learned helplessness, I’ve seen a bunch of worthwhile and creative websites I’m looking to draw some inspiration from.
“Slower, softer, smaller, focused, curious” describes how I’m looking to spend the next chunk of time.
Slower in the sense of not rushing. Reevaluating how busy I am and how much I self-assign and choose that busyness.
Softer in the sense of being easier with myself and with others. I’ll have more to say about this in a subsequent post.
Smaller in the sense, articulated in the linked posts, that writing or coding for myself, on a platform I’m wholly responsible for, is fine. Software-wise, what I want is a spice rack, and what I’ve been thinking about and working on are Hammer Factory Factories. Writing-wise, thinking less in terms of just writing and more in terms of assembling cohesive topics.
Focused in the sense of spending concentrated bursts of time on one thing, not scattering my attention like bird seed.
Curious as I like to believe I always have been. Nerding out on things like maps, websites, photography, and code. I look forward to sharing my explorations here.