PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Sept 9, 2011 17:21:17 GMT -5
Have a good birthday Bob,
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Sept 9, 2011 9:33:51 GMT -5
Hi all,
You may remember that despite my earlier protestations about never buying a P&S digital camera without a viewfinder I was offered a little Pentax Optio, 7.1 megapixels, waterproof, dustproof and almost user-proof complete with battery charger and still in its box at a price I couldn’t resist.
At first I had a lot of difficulty holding the camera steady, away from my eye, to compose the picture on the screen and make an exposure free from camera shake. Success rate was low. Using a monopod when I was out in my buggy improved the success rate but I still wondered if I’d made a mistake about not having a viewfinder.
I borrowed a couple of P&S digitals that had viewfinders, mounted them on a tripod and compared what I saw on the screen with what I saw in the viewfinder. At best I can describe the view in the viewfinder as an approximation of what was on the screen. Not only was there so much parallax error because the finder was above and to one side of the lens, but the area covered in the viewfinder was considerably more than the area on the screen.
I didn’t mind this so much because I usually crop pictures anyway. But I got to thinking that if I “pretended” I had a viewfinder – just a simple frame finder with no backsight – on top of the camera I could hold it steady up to my eye while I took the picture.
I made one up from some copper wire held on the top of the camera with Blu-Tack. It worked, more or less, but I couldn’t make any allowance other than guessing for the zooming in or out of the lens.
So I took the frame finder off and, having looked the picture on the screen, I just held the camera up to my eye, where I could brace my left elbow to hold it steady, looked at the subject over the top of the camera and brought the main subject matter into the middle of my eye-view.
After some practice I got quite good at this viewfinder-less eye-level composition. The pictures needed cropping, but I got what I wanted. When I was out taking pictures in a market I got a few odd looks sometimes from people with P&S digitals who held their cameras at arm’s length and shot what they saw on the screen. But I’ll bet I got a higher percentage of sharp pictures free from camera shake than they did.
The weather here today is rotten, heavy overcast with dull uninteresting lighting, and threatening to rain. I think I’ll stay indoors today, but if tomorrow is brighter I may stir myself to get out and about and take some pictures to post here.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 29, 2011 17:29:14 GMT -5
Lots of pictures and videos on BBC news today about damage caused by Irene, which was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the time it reached New York state.
The flash floods show a great deal of damage to property in some areas, and the latest report puts the number people killed at 18.
My heart goes out to all the folks in upper New York state and Vermont who saw the homes they built up over years detroyed in a matter of seconds.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 29, 2011 17:06:36 GMT -5
MIK
Many thanks for sharing the process you use on scuffed leather.
It's similar to the method I usually try except that for sticking down the remaining scuffed-up bits I usually use cockpit cement from my local model aircraft shop (Randy will no doubt be familiar with this). I've found this is an excelent adhesive for joining leather, I use it to hold the parts of a camera case where the stitching has perished before sewing again with waxed carpet thread.
I must admit I never thought of using an acrylic black lacquer mixed with water and black shoe polish. This is something I must expriment with.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 27, 2011 10:06:49 GMT -5
Hi, I must have bought dozens of bottles of Britvic Tango, a soft drink to which I'm quite partial, but not until today have I bothered to read either the cap or the label. I thought the sense of humour was worth at least a raised eyebrow. For literate chimps? Well, have you? PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 25, 2011 15:50:21 GMT -5
I see on BBC UK news that Hurricane Irene, which has already battered the Bahamas, is gathering strength as it moves towards the east coast of the US.
It is likely to affect the area from North Carolina up to New York City and maybe beyond.
Winds higher than 120mph are expected to hit the US coast at the weekend together with huge tidal waves.
My prayers are with our members - and everyone else - in this region.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 25, 2011 15:25:29 GMT -5
MIK,
You've done a beautiful job on the Pathe 9.5mm cine camera. What technique did you use for the scuffing of the leather on the top corner? This an area of restoration where I've had very mixed success.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 25, 2011 8:56:07 GMT -5
When it comes to natural phenomena of the destructive kind I want to be included out.
"River, stay 'way from my door".
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 24, 2011 17:04:41 GMT -5
Mickey,
I trust the cataract surgery went well, Mickey. It's such a common operation these days, done under local anasthetic, that I think the chances of complications are about 0.08%.
Was this the first eye you've had cataract surgery on, or a repeat in the second eye?
About three years ago I had cataract laser surgery on my left eye when the old cloudy yellow liquid was replaced by a clear synthetic liquid. I gathered that the yellow cloudiness was due to dead cells in the fluid which had turned yellow. I bit like having a permanent 2x yellow filter.
The whole operation took about 20 minutes, and it was well worth it. Quite painless. When I was allowed to remove the eye patch after two days the difference was truly amazing. Things were more sharply in focus, and the colours were just radiant compared with what they had been.
I may have to have the same thing done on my right eye sometime in 2012, and I won't hesitate.
Best part was that under the National Health Service it didn't cost me a penny!
Hope you feel the slight discomfort was well worth it.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 21, 2011 7:02:13 GMT -5
Dave,
You're quite correct, it was Bill Kerr. Sorry!
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 20, 2011 12:02:43 GMT -5
Dave,
Oh Dear, I feel a ramble coming on.
I found Monty Python a bit like the Curate's egg - good in parts. Some of it I found very funny but, as with many Beyond the Fringe comedians I felt that at times situations were being stretched to make them funny – and it showed.
I preferred my humour to be more sophisticated, not thrown in my face. My favourite comedy writers were Muir and Norden, with Galton and Simpson running a close second.
You may have noticed that both partnerships started with radio scripts. They were full of memorable throw-away lines, such as the introduction jingle to Muir and Norden’s Take it From Here which ended “half an hour of laughter beckons, every minute packed with seconds”. The reference to Kipling was probably lost to a high percentage of listeners.
Another classic Muir and Norden line, said to have started as an ad-lib in rehersal, was “Roman Soldiers , Number ... eye, eye-eye, eye-eye-eye, eye-vee”.
For me, the highlight of Galton and Simpson’s scripting for “Ancock’s Alf ‘Our” was the sketch “Sunday Morning”, not so much for what was said but for what wasn’t said. Everything depended on pauses and timing, which Tony Hancock and Dick Bentley carried off to perfection.
Another Galton and Simpson classic throw-away line was in the TV series “Steptoe and Son. Harold bought a reproduction chair which he fondly believed to be Georgian. Old Man Steptoe took one look and commented “Yeah, George the Fifthian”.
I haven’t yet mentioned The Goon Show, because it just can’t be classified. At the time, Valerie was working for the BBC and we often went to see the recordings. Quite a lot of what went in to the final recording was ad-libbed, such as the scene in which Secombe calls out: “Watch out, he’s got a knife!”. In his Eccles character, Spike Milligan ad-libbed “He’s got a fork and a spoon, too. I think he’s come to dinner”. That also stayed in the final recording. Does anyone remember “What’s the time, Eccles?”
I wonder if anyone here remembers “The Starlings” the radio pilot for The Goon Show? The credits at the end were: “That was The Starlings, a sort of radio show, with Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine. Script by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. The producer ... has fled the country.” It brought the BBC thousands of letters asking for more.
For me, such shows were always good, all the way through, way above Beyond the Fringe shows like Monty Python.
But pay no heed to me, I’m past my sell-by date. It would be a dull old world if we all liked the same things.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 18, 2011 15:48:18 GMT -5
Dave,
Like the XK120, planning the MGTC started before the war ended. But, unlike the XK120 it wasn't a "new" design. It used the same chassis and engine as the TB but the suspension was altered to use lever-arm dampers. and the springs were carried in rubber-bushed shackles instead of the TB's sliding trunnions. The body was made four inches wider at the seats, and the twin 6 volt batteries under the floor were replaced by a single 12 volt battery on the dash in the engine compartment.
In essence it wasn't a new car at all, just a revamp of the TB.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 18, 2011 9:22:46 GMT -5
Jaguar's XK120 was launched in 1948, Britain's first post-war sports car. The 120 in the designation referred to the top speed of 120 mph, and at the time it was the world's fastest production road-going car. The XK referred to the brilliant straight-six engine designed and developed by Jaguar's chief engineer William Heynes and Walter Hassan during the last few years of World War 2. I agree that it is a contender for the nicest looking Jaguar ever built, but to my mind it has to share that accolade with the Jaguar MkII Saloon. Echoes of that body style are evident in Jaguar's latest saloons. William Lyons always had a flair for body styling and for producing cars that looked much more expensive than the price. His late 1930s SS100 was, to my mind, the archetypal British sports car of the 1930s. It looked, and was, every inch a "Promenade Percy's" girl catcher. 1939 SS Jaguar 100 PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 18, 2011 8:06:55 GMT -5
Mickey, What you're hearing isn't a peculiarity of the AE1 shutter. It is the infamous Canon Squeak (or squeal). This is quite common on A-Series Canon SLRs and is caused by lubrication of the flywheel damper gears and bearings drying up. The real cure is to disassemble the camera, clean out the dried-up gunge and re-lube. However, it is possble to get rid of it without too much dismantling by using a hypodermic needle to put just two drops of oil on the bearings. I haven't done it, but I know two people who report success using a silicon based oil which is reputed not to run all over everthing. The method of doing this is on Rick Olsen's invaluable website. Here's a link Read carefully the part about taking the top cover off an AE1. It isn't intuitive! PeterW
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PeterW
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Uang
Aug 12, 2011 9:40:59 GMT -5
Post by PeterW on Aug 12, 2011 9:40:59 GMT -5
I know I’m a long time commenting on this shot but I’ve been interested in other comments. I get the feeling that people are trying hard to be kind about it, looking for good things to say.
Well, I’m going to be more brutal. As a technical exercise in differential focus and range of tones it’s fine. But ...
To use some garbled grammar: what’s it a picture of? A locked gate? Some graffiti? What??
Forget conventional ”rules” of composition, thirds, golden means and the rest. Like many “Rules” they’re for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men. More important in my mind are lines of sight that take your eye to various points of the picture and eventually back to the main subject.
Here, my eye goes straight to the word Uang because that’s all there is to look at.
Sorry, Didon, as a technical exercise it’s great. But as a picture? It just isn’t one.
PeterW
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