Saturday morning at 7, Finn and I got our clothes on quietly, pulled the Scout out of the garage, and went to get breakfast together. Then we hit the first yard sales of the season.
This is a tradition that dates back to Finn’s infancy, when I would get her dressed and fed by first morning’s light, then set her in the backpack and hike the neighborhood while Jen slept in. She and I scored all kinds of things together, from bikes to desks to toys and tools, and Saturday morning was always the highlight of my week.
We started on our side of Frederick Road and worked our way back through the leafy streets until we hit the edge of the park. Finn was on the hunt for charms for her bracelet, and the first score of the day was a huge green glass ring the size of a doorknob and a small coin in the shape of a paw.
Across Edmonson, there was a huge community yard sale happening, so we parked the Scout and walked, hand in hand. At first the pickings were pretty slim until we hit a house where a kid was unloading extra LEGOs, and Finn picked up a good-sized bag for $2. I found her a copper pin with a cursive F which a nice woman named Frances gave her for free. At some point, we began following a dude up the street who was asking after old cameras and adult bikes at each house. After a few stops, we caught up with him as he rummaged through a box of old photo gear and walked away with a light meter. I swooped in after him to grab an old Nikkormatic with a 50mm f/2 lens. The guy gave it to me for $10 because he couldn’t get the lens to unmount (after paying, I walked away and had it off in seconds).
Later we stopped at the house of one of Finn’s kindergarten friends, who were having a yard sale and a lemonade stand, and we refreshed ourselves. I struck up a conversation with his father, who had seen the Scout around town, and we found ourselves hanging out for another hour while the kids played in the driveway. At some point I noticed he had an old lens sitting on his table and found it was another Nikon mount, and demanded he let me pay him $5 for it. He threw in a nearly new Lowepro camera bag with it, which is just the thing I didn’t know I was looking for, but fits my camera and four lenses perfectly. His neighbor was selling a pile of window A/C units, so I picked out a nearly new unit for peanuts and threw it in the back of the Scout.
After tearing Finn away for lunch, I got busy in the garage sorting through all of the bins of stuff I brought back from my parents’ place. I cleaned out and moved the toolchest into place, organized the drawers and put everything away. He sent me home with a spare circular saw, belt sander, drill, rotary sander, and a router, all of which will be hugely helpful. The router I’m going to build a table around (or buy an inexpensive table for) so that I can mill wood faster.
I organized a pile of spare wood left over from the porch job, moved the engine to the back corner, and knocked down the last parts of a rickety old shelf to put new wood hangers up. Then I found a place for an 8′ section of beam from Grampy’s barn. Suddenly there was a whole lot of room in the garage.
Later in the day I futzed around with the new lenses and got them both to work in Manual mode; the Nikkor 50mm f/2 lens is nice, but will mainly be a backup for the AI 50mm f/1.8 lens I’ve already got. The other lens, however, has been fun to play with. It’s a Nikon-mount Vivitar 28mm f/2.5, so it’s wider and has a huge focus range. I spent most of the weekend learning where its sweet spots are so that I can get faster at shooting completely manually with it, which is fun. 28mm is a great distance to shoot from, too–not too close and not too far away.
Sunday was another good day of work and play; Finn had piano and swim lessons in the morning, and then we checked out an E-state sale (Finn’s pronunciation) behind the elementary school. It was pretty creepy–like walking into the Silence of the Lambs lotion-in-the-basement house, but interesting to check out. The owner had been an artist in NYC in the early 80’s and then moved to Catonsville sometime later, but his style was arrested firmly in the Reagan Decade, so it was a time capsule of quirk trapped in a little purple house.
Then we got to work in the garden in the afternoon moving bulbs and plants around to try and take advantage of the new sunlight available now that the cedar tree is gone.
We worked hard on this project until 5:30 or so, and broke for a quick dinner so that we could meet the neighbors across the street for some time in the playground. The weather was perfect, and the sun was warm. Our neighbors had to leave a little early to answer the call of nature, but Finn was playing with another girl, so we stayed. Her mother struck up a conversation with us and we talked until after the sun had set behind the school and the air cooled off. Saying our goodbyes, I carried a very tired, very barefoot girl back across the street and we put her into bed.
Amazon has been offering “unlimited” photo storage through their Prime account for a while, but for some reason I haven’t noticed it until today. I’m a little unclear as to what “unlimited” means–I think it tops out at 1TB, which is a lot of space, but, then, we have a lot of photos and video files. I’m doing a test upload of images from work today, and I’ll see what kind of options it has for organization–so far the interface looks pretty basic, and I like to organize by YYYY/MM so that I know where to start looking (when you shoot digital seriously, it’s easy to flip the counter on filenames, which means there are multiple instances of IMG_4453.jpg over the years). There is a Cloud Drive app available, which is nice, and apparently there is a way to automatically sync photos taken with iPhones to the service. More info on this as I get it.
Update: I’ve uploaded everything from 1999-2005 so far, about ~19GB of data. Amazon uploads work best through Chrome, which supports folder structures. Because a lot of the file and EXIF structures have been written and rewritten (or processed out), a lot of the early photos get categorized by their modification date, which means there’s stuff from 1999 showing up in 2014. But, it’s offsite, which is nice; now I have to do some testing with recovery and download.
I bought those lenses the other night; the price was too good to pass up. They’re not top-of-the-line metal bayonet mount lenses, but for the price they were a bargain. I did a little finagling here at work and took possession of a spare Nikon D80 body with a battery charger, so when I go north in April I’m going to bring my Dad an entry-level DSLR kit to replace his ancient Coolpix 4500. He was the one who got me into photography back in the day, and bought me my first SLR for college. I’m hoping he’ll enjoy an upgrade to something more flexible and powerful.
So I’m going to take a look at some Nikon glass tomorrow night. When I joined up with WRI, I made a deal with myself not to spend any major money on DX (cropped sensor) Nikon gear, figuring eventually I’d trade up to a full-frame kit of some kind. However, I’m always on the hunt for a bargain, and I saw a pair of VR lenses come up on Craigslist a few days ago for a very good price. If they check out they’ll make a decent addition to our gear.
It sounds like Jeremy Clarkson is going to get the axe from Top Gear tomorrow, after he flipped out on a PA and allegedly assaulted the guy. I’ve not been able to see the last 3 seasons of the show because it’s not streaming anywhere and our shit FIOS TV package doesn’t include BBC America (fuck you very much, Verizon), so I’m not current with the series, but it sounds serious. The rumors are that he verbally abused the guy for a half an hour before attacking him, which is just out of control. He’s just an asshole, but I wonder why none of the producers stepped in and cooled him off before things got out of hand.
I’ve had about two weeks with a Joby Slingstrap Pro and I have to say I like it very much. I’ve used it with both my Nikons and the Canons at work, and I carried it to the car show on Sunday where I shot 220 pictures inside and out. It’s extremely handy for on the go shots–I used it at Finn’s soccer game on Saturday and found that I could be talking to someone, see something interesting, and have it up and ready to shoot in seconds. It’s got a locking clip right under the lower buckle to keep the camera tight under the shoulder which is great for commuting. The only issue I’ve had is when I take it off, like I was doing at the car show to shoot low from the ground, and then try to figure out how to put it back on. I have to hold it out in front of me and tell myself, “the loop goes in the front.”
Meanwhile, I used a Canon 5D mkII over the weekend exclusively and while its focus issues haven’t gotten any better, I think I’ve learned how to work with it in shooting situations to get what I want more consistently. The menu system still confounds me, as it does on the 7D, but I can get around a lot easier now that I’m used to the layout. It’s hard to say what I enjoy so much about the results I’m getting, but I suspect it’s the lenses.
Renie sent me a link to missingmoney.com, a link that’s been making the rounds of social media lately, and it turns out they have a record of me from back in my immediate post-college days. After hesitating for a few minutes, and looking over the disclaimers, I printed out the requisite forms and made ready to send my information in. There’s no telling how much or what the money might be from; all I can do is send the information in and hope for the power of compound interest.
We took Finn out for pizza and ice cream this evening after another great week of reports from school. She’s doing great and seems to be settling in very well. We have plans, actually, for Sunday afternoon with one of her schoolmates’ families—a family we’ve not met before. Fingers crossed.
I got the sick iMac up and running with the help of some tools and a new hard drive. After some research, I did my first migration from a Time Machine backup, which seems to have been successful. Being able to help friends save money makes me feel good.
Meanwhile, at work on Thursday, I set up and shot a single-camera interview on a Canon 5D with lavalier mics, and after reviewing the footage, I think it went really well. Later that day I shot an event on the roof of our office (we have a swank living roof with tables and chairs and trees) with the same camera and a high-powered 70-200 lens, which worked out great. After getting used to the differences between the 5D MII and the 7D, I was able to quietly move around and capture some great candids as well as the entire shot list. I had a great review this afternoon (it’s actually coming up on one year at WRI) and I left the office feeling really good.
I also successfully made the case for hiring a junior designer for my department based on some rough numbers from the past three years, which will help our productivity and internal capacity greatly. As my role shifts from designer to manager, I’m having problems letting the joy of digging into a single project go (I am never happier than when I’m focused on a task and in the zone) and shifting to head juggler. But thinking in broader terms is something I’ve been itching to do for years now. It’s great to be empowered, trusted, and listened to.
I’m casually looking at Micro 4/3 cameras as an alternative to carrying a huge DSLR to and from work every day. Even though I see exactly the same things every day in my commute, I’d like to get back in the habit of shooting something regularly. As my recent Flickr feed indicates, I haven’t been shooting anything at all during the week other than the odd Instagram picture, which is sad. I’d like to keep things light and simple if possible. The hipsters are all about the smaller format mirrorless cameras right now, and I’m intrigued by the combination of small size and lens interchangability.
The biggest question is which brand I would start with. Olympus and Panasonic were the originators of the M4/3 format, and from all I’ve read their cameras are very good (Leica digitals are just rebadged Panasonic units, after all). I’ve also heard that Fuji’s cameras are very good from a first-hand source, so I started looking into their product offerings. However, they don’t use the M4/3 lens format–so they’re out. Most of the reviews I’ve read say Sony is making the best mirrorless cameras right now, but they’re not M4/3, and I’ve been on a Sony boycott for 20 years due to repetitive burns with expensive A/V equipment and some substandard video gear in the early 2000s.
So, back to Olympus and Panasonic. The Olympus E-P5 is a beautiful camera with a lot of the features I want, and a nice retro look I appreciate. The E-PL7 is a variant of the same basic model. Panasonic has the DMC-GX7 which tracks almost exactly to the specifications of the Olympus, plus or minus a few features.
Then, there are the lenses. The Wirecutter did a great writeup on M4/3 lenses that explains a lot of the details between price, performance, and flexibility. Lenses are the expensive and important part of photography, because a good lens can make a bad camera better. I’ve been using Nikon DX lenses with my first DSLR, and I’ve been happy with their performance, but having used pro-level Canon lenses at work I’m seeing the benefits of better glass. If I was to buy a M4/3 rig, I’d probably buy an adapter to use my DX lenses with the new camera and slowly invest in M4/3 glass. But I’m also seriously considering the purchase of a full-frame Canon DSLR to take advantage of the excellent lenses I have access to at work.
All of this is pipe dreaming right now. I don’t have the cash to drop on a new M4/3 camera or even a mid-level Canon DSLR. I’d have to line up some kind of photography job to help pay for that. I think what I’ll do is take a weekend to rent a M4/3 camera–Lensrentals has the Panasonic GX7 and an Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 for $60; a test drive is in order before I make any kind of major purchase.
A picture I took of Hillary Clinton is on VICE. I don’t know whether to be happy or irritated with them–but at least they gave attribution (to WRI).
I so want to do kite aerial photography, but I don’t have $100 to drop on a powerful enough kite yet. I can set up the rest of the gear pretty inexpensively, and with a GoPro tripod adapter, I think I can make some other cool stuff work too…
7 Simple, Cheap Photography Hacks You Should Try Out: DAMMIT, we were just at IKEA last weekend. Now I gotta go find a revolving egg timer.
Pro monitors for shooting digital video often cost $1,000 or more. Here’s a DIY Dirt Cheep Monitor project that rings in around $30. I have use for a $30 monitor, and may well attempt this little hack.