Category: photography

MOT – 26 October 2020

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The red car lives to fight another day!

Out at 8am to take the Red Micro to the garage for MOT. Since we’d driven down to the garage, and had nothing else planned for the rest of the day, we went for a walk, since it was such a clear, dry morning. We walked down and round the stadium, then back home for breakfast. Like Scamp said while we were out, we should do this more often. Lie in bed reading on the cold, wet mornings, but on decent days we should be out and enjoying what little sunshine we get now that the days are shorter. It’s a plan. Whether it turns into action is still to be seen.

After breakfast we did sit around for a while and basically ‘footered’ for what was left of the morning. Just after lunch we got a call from the garage to say that the car had failed MOT because of a broken coil spring on the driver’s side. I’d guessed that might be the case, because I’d noticed during the week that it seemed to be listing a bit to that side, and said as much to JIC yesterday. Not too expensive to fix and they had one in stock, so it would be done today. With that dealt with we went for a walk around St Mo’s with a bit of a spring in our steps. Because the light was good and also because the car would be fixed today, we went round the pond twice! On the way back I grabbed today’s PoD of leaves beside the path to the Adventure Playground. Later in the afternoon we paid our dues and picked up the car. MOT’d, repaired and serviced. Scamp had a smile on her face. We drove home in the dark. First time driving in the dark since about February!!

Sketch topic today was “Hide”. I was tempted to put in a signed blank page to the effect that everyone was hiding, so I couldn’t draw them. Instead I drew a bit of a face peering round an open door. The ‘Hide’ part of Hide ’n’ Seek.

Scamp cut the last of her roses today and they were sitting in a vase on the coffee table. With such good light streaming in the window I couldn’t resist the opportunity. Look on Flickr and you’ll see them.

Tomorrow Scamp is meeting Annette who is coming to Cumbersheugh to get her Juke MOT’d. How is that for synchronicity? I may go for a walk.

Wet Ones – 21 October 2020

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That used to be the name of hand wipes. Now it seems an apt description of the days this week.

The sun was splitting the trees this morning and we took a chance on it staying with us when we drove over to Mugdock Park. It was a bad choice. At least, for the choice of weather it was a bad one. It rained on and off all the way there, but we’d come prepared with raincoats and boots. We needed them. It was just liquid air we were walking through for a while. Down past the old ruined ‘Big House’, then down the hill to the tree lined walk. Crossed the boardwalk over the bog to Mugdock Castle on the banks of Mugdock Loch. We were in and out of the trees all the way, but I did get a few shots through the trees and of the trees themselves. It was a bit dreich, but the colours were beautiful and the company was good. We continued round the loch in the hopes of getting a cup of coffee in one of the wee cafés, but one only had outdoor seating with no available umbrellas. One only had uncomfortable bar stools available and by that time the notion had left us. We changed our footwear and went home. Annoyingly, the closer we got to Cumbersheugh, the better the weather became and when we arrived home, blue sky was showing through the clouds.

After lunch Scamp drove to Halfords to get a rear wiper fitted. I told her I could do it. The biggest problem was taking the old one off and I’d done that at the weekend. Not without a fair bit of wrestling. With the wiper in place we tackled the scrubbing down of Scamp’s car. It needed it. One of our neighbours who was watching the action said “Oh, so it’s a Red car then!” That is its first wash this week. It’s going to need at least one more, probably in a carwash before it goes for MOT next week.

Dinner tonight was Chicken Tikka Masala and I was chef. It was a slightly less than successful curry. I don’t think I’ll be using that recipe again.

Today’s prompt was “Sleep”. Another vague request. Thinking along the lines of “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?”, I asked the question:
“Do insomniac sheep dream of counting humans?”
Answers on a postcard please.

PoD was a grab shot walking through the avenue of trees at Mugdock. I don’t know who the bloke was wearing the red jacket, but thank you sir for providing my focal point. ARPS = A Red Point Somewhere!

Tomorrow we’re booked for breakfast at Calders with Isobel. Let’s hope the rest of the day is not another Wet One!

Off to see David – 18 October 2020

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He’s a hard man David. He stands there every day, wind, rain or shine.

We couldn’t agree what to do today. Scamp thought maybe we could walk round Glasgow Green. I wasn’t all that keen. Various other venues were discussed at length before we settled on a visit to Lakeland to get a flan dish for Scamp to make a flan in, strangely enough. That was it settled. We drove to Stirling and found the aforementioned flan dish and also found that Lakeland had fallen out with Dobbies which they used to be joined to. They had lowered the portcullis and were not receiving visitors from that shop. Dobbies had removed their outrageously expensive food shop and replaced it with a Sainsbury’s, which is probably why the portcullis was down. Otherwise the crafty Stirling folk would load their shopping basket at Sainsbury’s and waltz out through Lakeland without paying. I do hope Lakeland and Dobbies patch up their differences and exchange Christmas cards when the time is right. I hate seeing neighbours falling out.

With slightly more than the single flan dish in our bag (and paid for) we headed on to the motorway and up to see David Stirling. He was the man who invented the SAS and his statue is one of the most lifelike I’ve seen. It stands on a plinth with his greatcoat blowing in the wind and a pair of binoculars in his hand looking over to the hills he used for training his commandos in WW2. I had gone there because the view on a good day is tremendous. Today wasn’t a good day, but it gave me a chance to test and compare two camera lenses. None of the photos were going to win any prizes, but the difference in the shots was startling. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say any more on that score. Just let’s say the new camera is a STOATER!

Back home we needed potatoes for tonight’s dinner, so I volunteered to walk down to the shops and get them. On the way back I got today’s PoD which is simply two leaves stuck on a bush. You could almost say they were trapped on the bush and that would lead you neatly on to …

Today’s prompt was Trap and the sketch you see here is my answer to that request. There has been a bit of discussion going on at Inktober 2020 about the relevance of this year’s prompts, and some folk are saying they think it’s a good thing to have vague prompts. They make you move out of your comfort zone. I see where they are coming form with that argument but too many vague prompts make you think of simply giving up.

It was a sad day for me today. I packed up my old trusty D7000 ready to be uplifted by the man from DPD tomorrow to go to MPB to be sold to someone who would hopefully get the same amount of joy from it that I did. Look after the 7000 whoever you are and it will produce great pictures, just the same as it has done for me almost 23,000 times.

Tomorrow, it will be a day of comings and goings photography wise. Scamp is out in the morning with Veronica for coffee at Calders where I’m told not to go because they don’t serve what I would call coffee.

Oh yes, the Flan!! Wonderful. Worth the trip to Stirling to get the dish. Not any good for you Hazy, too many eggy weggies I think!

Writing – 8 October 2020

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So much writing today.

This morning I sat down to write to my brother. We communicate by email and send each other what we consider our best photos. It’s roughly an email every two months, but I’ve been especially tardy of late and realised with a bit of a shock that my last epistle was sent on the 25th of July. It being the 8th of October today, that makes it nearly three months. I’d a fair bit to tell him, because a lot has happened at this end in the intervening 75 days. It started with Good Morning Alex, and was finally posted with Good Afternoon Alex. He deserved the time. His photos this time were excellent. Another photog who has moved back to Canon from M43. I must admit that I like the Olympus cameras and the Lumix lenses and the light weight of the cameras. I also like the detailed complexity of the menu system that allows you to change almost every bit of the hardware, but I’ve never liked the 4:3 format. I much prefer the 35mm 3:2 format whether it’s full sensor or APS-C. I just think it looks better. Anyway, I finally posted the email with my contribution of images in the afternoon. I felt better after that.

Having been sitting around all day, I needed to get out and walked down to the shops to get some stuff for tonight’s dinner, but mainly for the walk and maybe a chance to grab some photos. I didn’t get the stuff for the dinner and I didn’t get any photos either until I came home. I saw the light shining through the yellow leaves of the chestnut tree outside our house and took some shots of that, but none of them really worked for me. Instead, while I was making dinner I was putting some fish wrappings in the outside bin where they wouldn’t smell the house and saw one of Scamp’s roses just opening and there was still enough light to grab a shot. That was PoD. The rose is Remember Me and it goes through some amazing colour changes from bud to fully opened.

Dinner was Mediterranean Fish Stew. Another one stolen obtained from JIC and Sim’s recipe book, and another winner. I’d definitely make that again.

Sketch prompt today was “Teeth”. I couldn’t decide what to draw that would reference the subject. Scamp suggested the teeth of a comb. I thought of a saw’s teeth. Eventually I just sat and doodled a face with broken teeth and there was today’s picture right there.

Tomorrow all the pubs and restaurants in Central Scotland will close at 6pm and remain closed until the 25th of October. We may go out somewhere, anywhere tomorrow to have a pre-lockout drink or a lunch.

Old Friends – 6 October 2020

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I’d barely started to clean up my room this morning when Scamp noticed that she had a missed call

Crawford & Nancy had phoned to suggest a meet up today on Clydeside. Beautiful day, far too good to be clearing out cupboards, so we phoned back and said “yes” then were off to Rosebank. We were there first, so we booked a table, collected a buzzer and messaged the other two that we were had arrived and a table was booked. We went for a browse round the tat that always seems to be on offer in these places. Inevitably nothing caught our eye and we soon recognised the other masked pair arriving. Stood talking and getting in everybody’s way for a quarter of an hour or so before our buzzer buzzed and we were shown to our table. Food was good, better than the standard garden centre fare. Scamp had Mac ’n’ Cheese and I had Scampi. Everyone had chips with their meals. For what must be the first time, I had a really decent Americano in a garden centre. Usually it’s a teaspoon of coffee in the portafilter and half a gallon of water. This was real coffee. As good as my coffee, well almost. After the meal we sat and talked for another couple of hours. Eventually we were all talked out and said our goodbyes. I’m really glad Scamp noticed she’d that missed call.

We stopped at Mauldsley on the way home so I could grab some shots of the bridge and the gatehouse, aways a favourite of mine. Unfortunately because of the recent flooding there were a lot of industrial protective barriers up and there was no chance of the shot I wanted from the edge of the river looking up at the bridge and the house, so I had to be content with a shot from just over the bridge looking back at the house. I was shooting into the light which wasn’t ideal, but managed use the foliage of the trees to shield the lens from the worst of the bright sunlight. I spoke to a couple of blokes packing up after fishing. Apparently today was the last day of the trout fishing season and the river wasn’t really ideal with heavy and dirty water, still running off a spate. Drove home and it looked as if we just missed a heavy shower when we were just past Hamilton services, so maybe that fifteen minutes or so at Mauldslie had been a good choice.

Back home the photos looked good enough. Started working out how to interpret today’s prompt of “Rodent”. The rodent I was thinking about was a mouse, or to be more accurate, a bluetooth mouse. After about an hour of work I gave up on it and copied a Mickey Mouse from a piece of cloth I had in my room. That eventually morphed into what you see here. It’s not perfect, but it fits the prompt and that’s all that matters.

That was a really good day. A few hours spent with old friends just shooting the breeze and catching up. Plus, Scampi ’n’ Chips & Mac ’n’ Chips. What’s not to like.

Scamp is booked tomorrow for coffee with Annette. I think I will be continuing the clean up / clear out of the painting room, all being well. We’ll be listening intently to Nick the Chick’s latest proposals for a Circuit Breaker to halt Covid and hoping it has no unwanted implications for travel.

The dream is gone – 5 October 2020

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If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Today I took back the Sony A7. It was so nearly perfect, except I have the feeling it might have been bashed about by a few people before it met me. Scratches on the baseplate. A deep scratch on the border of the back screen. I could have lived with those. There was nothing there that my own collection doesn’t have in some fashion, but it also had lots and lots, I mean LOTS of baked-in spots on the sensor that I couldn’t shift with sensor swabs and sensor cleaning liquid, that was the final straw. I couldn’t live with that. It’s only a bargain if it’s worth more than you paid for it. This one wasn’t. So with a heavy heart I took it back to JL today and got my money back. However, before I took it back I did find out what that APS-C switch did. It worked. It automatically cropped off the bits the lens couldn’t cover. Nice work Sony.

After driving back home on a beautiful day and having lunch, I did my Sudoku and eventually dragged myself off to St Mo’s to take some pictures with my ‘old’ cameras. The ones with the clean(ish) sensors and fewer scratches. There wasn’t much worth photographing today, because the clouds had rolled in and the light was decidedly dull. I watched Mr Grey stalking something deep in the reed beds, but he was too far away even for the zoom of the TZ90. I did grab a few shots using the post focus trick, but again, the light wasn’t directional enough to make anything worthwhile of them, but it’s still a clever trick.

Spent a profitable half an hour after dinner sketching tonight’s Inktober topic which was ‘Blade’. Mine is a fairly direct interpretation of the prompt, but the clever ones were Blade(runner) and Blade, the Wesley Snipes character. They probably took hours to get just right. Mine was the rough for a more detailed piece, but as it was progressing it got better and better and I just liked it. So did Scamp. She gave me the greatest praise by saying she was wondering who had drawn it!

PoD was a mediocre St Mo’s landscape. I should have taken some time out this morning in Glasgow and gone for a walk, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

I hope some of you recognised the title of this blog which is the second last line from “Comfortably Numb” by Gilmour & Waters. Possibly the best Pink Floyd track ever.

No plans for tomorrow.

An improving picture

Posted on by Zogman

It started off dull, but then the sun found a way through.

Spent most of the morning struggling with the Sony menu system and after reading many pages on the net, began to see how to control this full frame beast. Managed to get two Nikon lenses working with it, but the third, the long zoom was uncontrollable and I gave up in frustration and had lunch.

Scamp suggested a walk to calm my nerves, I think and I agreed. We walked a circuit of Broadwood Loch, stopping a couple of times to get some shots. The best one I got IMO was what you see here as PoD. It’s a view of the loch from the car park using the old Nikon 10 – 20mm lens on the Sony A7.

<Technospeak>

The problems are:

  1. The ‘Type G’ lens has no aperture ring, so aperture has to be controlled with a ring on the adaptor. Therefore you, the photog, have no idea what aperture is set and are shooting by eye.
  2. The lens is an APS-C which means the coverage of the lens is meant to be for a smaller sensor than the full frame sensor, so what you get is a sharp image enclosed in a circular frame with a dark surround.

In other words, it’s a bit hit and miss, mostly miss up until now. With that said, once the image has been cropped and exposure adjusted, it looks fairly reasonable, if a bit distorted. Later in the afternoon I discovered that Sony had thought about point 2 above and included a switch, buried deep in the labyrinth of the menu system, to adjust exposure for APS-C lenses. Too late for the afternoon’s photo session.
</Technospeak >

OK JIC, you can come back into the fold again

It was a very pleasant walk for all the photo babble. Sun was shining, birds were singing. A beautiful October day.

However, I’m afraid the lovely A7 has to go back to JL this week. I don’t know who owned it before me, but they didn’t know or care how to keep it clean. Today’s sunshine revealed hundreds of dust bunnies all over the sensor. You don’t notice them on dull days, but on bright days they come out to play. If I was conscientious I’d get out my cleaning swabs and give it a good scrub, but not after I’d paid good money for it. It was cheap, but not that cheap. Lovely though the gradation of tones is, it has to go back and well within the 30 days too. However, before it does go, I’m going to have a good look at that APS-C setting (the one JIC doesn’t know about, because he skipped that part of the blog.)

Dinner tonight was Scamp’s Just Soup followed by Mushroom Risotto. Soup was up to Scamp’s usual high standard, risotto could have been better, a bit stodgy.

Spoke to JIC and got the lowdown on interview technique and things going on down south. Scamp booked a house we’re hoping to have for a week at Easter 2021 all being well.

Today’s Inktober sketch was a Radio. I chose Scamp’s DAB radio. The drawing is a bit rough, but it’s good enough.

Tomorrow it’s going to be dull and wet. I may go to the butchers in Muirhead and get some carnivore food. It will stop me mourning the loss of a dream camera.

High Hopes rained off – 3 October 2020

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Well, I had high hopes that we’d manage a wee walk early in the day. The weather thought differently.

The rain started about 11am and it hasn’t stopped since. To be fair, the weather fairies warned us this would happen, but you live in hope, don’t you? Instead I spent the day … doing nothing. Nothing creative was achieved today. I think I sat in front of the computer for most of the day and hardly moved. At 11.15pm my Fitbit records 2,097 steps. That’s well below our daily average.  To give myself something to do I made a loaf.  It’s ages since I baked and I thought I’d get some practise in so I can criticise the efforts of the numpties on GBBO.  It actually turned out very well.  Impressed!

What I did do today was fit all three of my useable Nikon lenses on the Sony A7, using an adaptor that the kind Amazon man brought me this afternoon. I’ve used one of these before on the Olys, but it was always with heart in my mouth, hoping that when I pressed the button to release it from the lens, the pin it controlled would actually disengage. Sometimes it did, right away other times it had to be coaxed. As you can imagine, that didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. This one seems far better engineered and more solid. What’s more it works. Of course you lose all the electronic connections between lens and camera, but I don’t mind having to do a bit of manual focusing if it means I get to use my quality Nikon glass again. Unfortunately because of the reduced light levels today I couldn’t really test them fully. Hopefully we’ll get that done tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was Baked Potatoes. Accompaniments were Tuna Mayo for Scamp and Venison Burgers for me. Both were deemed brighteners on a dull, dreich day.

The topic for today on Inktober was ‘Bulk’ and my drawing for that was a well stuffed car with lots of bulky stuff. Not quite the exact solution the author of the list was asking for, but it was my interpretation.

PoD was one of Scamp’s roses, Troika. Beautiful colours when it’s in bud, but they reduce in intensity fairly quickly, even outside. It was taken with the kit lens for the Sony A7 in poor lighting tonight. I took it while we were watching The Birdcage on Amazon Fire Stick. Brilliant film, even if Robin Williams wasn’t at his manic best. It was far, far better than the film we sat down to watch, Get Duked. Just don’t watch it.

Tomorrow we’re hoping the rain will stop for a while.

Temptation – 1 October 2020

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I warned you yesterday that I was going to do it and today I did.

I swithered, that’s a good Scots word, isn’t it? It means I couldn’t decide quite what to do about the camera. Eventually I settled for leaving it until at least the afternoon before choosing whether to go in to Glasgow or not. Last night as I was going to bed, ‘Not’ was winning. Today I swithered. I laid my case before that preeminent judge, Scamp and she listened impartially without giving any decision, because she knew I’d make my own mind up when the time came.

After lunch I made the decision to go in to JL and hold the camera if they still had it. That’s always been my way to assess the usefulness of a camera. You can read as many reviews as you want. Balance the Pros and the Cons, but if it doesn’t feel comfortable in your hot little hands, you’re not going to use it. Many, many years ago I picked up a camera, a Sony strangely enough, and knew it was worth having. That was a Sony F707 which I still have (Scamp will tell you I still have all of them and that’s nearly true) and it still feels ‘right’ in my hands. It’s just got a few problems now that aren’t repairable, but I still don’t want to part with it.

So now I have a Sony A7 full frame camera with a 28 – 70mm lens sitting on the table in front of me. It’s second hand.  It’s been used and taken back to the shop. There are a couple of scratches on it, but nothing serious. Tomorrow I’ll take it out for a walk in St Mo’s along with the Oly E-M1 which knows St Mo’s fairly well and we’ll see what they can come up with. Little and Large.

The new camera’s battery was charging this afternoon, so I took the Oly out to get some photos in the sunshine. There wasn’t much doing, but it was good to walk about without a raincoat or a fleece on. Cool in the shade, but plenty warm in the sun. I just found out about fifteen minutes ago that I picked up a tick on my travels. First one I’ve had in ages. Must be less blasé about them. I know our minds are on Covid just now, but there are other nasties out there, waiting for the unwary.

While I was out, Scamp was making mince ’n’ tatties with cabbage and carrots. She, of course, denied herself the pleasure of the mince and had the veggie version. Dessert was stewed apples and rhubarb with custard. Our own apples and rhubarb. All the apples have now been picked and the rhubarb too is finished until next year.

Today being the first of October is the start of Inktober. Today’s sketch is of one of the fish statues we saw in Corralejo back in 2016.  It will do to cover today’s topic of ‘Fish’. PoD was a bramble leaf from St Mo’s.

Tomorrow we have no plans, but the weather looks reasonable, so we may go for a walk somewhere interesting.

Another bright sunny day – 26 September 2020

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It looks like the end of September is a bit of an Indian summer. Certainly better than this year’s Scottish Summer.

It was too good a day to waste, so we got ourselves kitted out with boots and wet weather gear, just in case, and drove over to Chatelherault (I managed to spell it this time without resorting to Google! Am I not clever!?). There’s a fairly big carpark there and it was already full when we arrived, but I didn’t want to park there anyway. The potholes are decidedly deep an I didn’t want to damage Blue’s delicate substructure. Instead, I chose one of the little carparks and found there were only about five cars parked there. People are so blinkered. They see the main carpark and think it must be better because it’s so busy. It’s not.

Boots and jackets on and with a walking pole each, we strode off towards the Cadzow Oaks. John had introduced me to them a couple of weeks ago and although the biggest one was cordoned off while they do some health checks on it and decide how best to support it, the slightly smaller ones were still magnificent enough to demand I took their photos. Because they are so large and so close to you, it’s difficult to get them all in without using an ultra-wide lens and I hadn’t brought one, choosing instead to travel light. Instead I took about 20 shots and knew I could produce a decent patch together later in the computer. For some reason the camera was over exposing everything and I couldn’t work out why, but, again, I could deal with that later too.

We walked on past the oaks and found a path that was climbing steadily along the side of the ravine that sloped down to the Avon Water. Nobody we spoke too could definitely say where the path led and how long it would take to get back to the visitor centre if we followed it. We decided to go back the way we’d come. Rather than just returning to the centre and inevitably going home, we extended our walk to take in The Duke’s Monument. I’d been there before and found it a forbidding and eerie place. Even today on a sunny afternoon it felt cold and unwelcoming. Coupled with the overexposure of the camera, the shots I took weren’t what I’d intended. I sat down and puzzled it out. On the E-M1 there’s a little lever, near the eyepiece that allows you to meddle with far more settings than are good for you. It was sitting in the ‘Meddle’ position and I’d been twiddling the wheels that should be marked ‘Screw up your settings here’. It was the work of mere minutes to repair the damage, but that didn’t fix the thirty odd photos I’d taken. I set myself a reminder to switch the bloody thing off when I got home, and after we walked the mile or so back to the car and after driving home, that’s what I did. I took great care to turn off that switch. I think that’s what I like about the E-M1. It’s so easy to screw things up, but there’s usually a way to put them right again if you know where to look in the massive menu.

Back home, sitting in the warm living room with the sun shining through the blinds, I had a Guinness and Scamp had a Pimms to quench our thirst after a long walk. Not as long as the walk two Saturdays ago, but with almost as many hills.

PoD was one of the Cadzow Oaks, reputed to be over 800 years old. They were growing when the Crusaders set off on the Fourth Crusade and when Genghis Khan invaded China. If they could speak, what stories they could tell.

Tomorrow we’re hoping for another good sunny day. We may go for another walk.