Nice.
Update - the Wx Underground forecast graphic is for valley-floor locations, which is always ~4 degrees off from our hill-top site. It's generally warmer in summer with thicker atmosphere, but colder in winter thanks to cold-air seepage. We reached 80° Friday up here, and NWS temperatures near 750' show mid-upper 60s next week.
Nearly as nice!
Mirrorless systems did not play nice with my Minolta A- or Sigma SA- mount lenses. Both SA-L & A-E adapter setups came with many limitations. The FTZ solution apparently does not have those problems; also, nikon-G slr lenses* are both talented and available at good prices.
How to decide?
At some point one must choose from two decent options. Here's my z6 logic:
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| apotelyt table screen-shot |
The first call of a swainsons' thrush was heard on 5/18, right on schedule! Our first grosbeaks (black headed) were seen and heard five days later. We love both songs and it's nice to see and hear them.
We also had a deer family drop by, a mom and two small ones from last year. They camped out for most of two hours!
My surgery in early May was followed by damp weather, which has allowed the grass to grow tall. This coming weekend should be dry, so it should be taken down several inches soon!
I'm heading in for prostate removal on 5/5. Other than lawn mowing, it looks pretty nice for sitting in the outdoor swing and sipping fruity drinks! Spouse and ma-in-law can fight over the riding mower, assuming the battery is decently charged. Hopefully I'll be nearly mended by the 10th, though weight-lifting and twisting limits will remain for a few weeks.
I've heard it so often: "make sure your proposed system has the lenses you want before you buy in! ".
Yet somehow I didn't take it to heart when the S5 called. The L mount is still expanding, and lenses will assuredly appear as appropriate.
Oops.
Worse yet, very few mirrorless systems carry what I seek. Seek ye an 50-200mm in any 36x24 system that weighs under 800 grams. The answer is: μ43 and nothing else. The Lumix 35-100/2.8 is amazing - but larger systems offer nothing slower than f/4. Those are less bulky than their f/2.8 siblings, but still not in my comfort zone. I'd prefer my old Minolta 70-210 /3.5-4.5 or 100-200/4.5, both under 500 grams and plenty bright enough for a 36x24 sensor. But to make them autofocus requires a bulky adapter, and poof goes the weight and size advantage.
The nearest things are from Tamron, which means Sony E or Nikon Z. Since I actually own the Minolta 100-200, Sony sadly makes more sense. Both have tilt screens instead of flipout, so that's a positive. The α7³ has a BSI-tech sensor with two ISO channels and PDAF - both make it comparable to the S5.II and a slight improvement over the S5. Neither company has the aspect ratios or touchscreen features of the Lumix types though - ah well.
Me vs. TECH
As usual, I came in second.
I have three computers and a few phones/tablets. And a printer - and oh yes, a 'smart' television. These all conspire with each other in frequencies I cannot access, and choose which among them will take it turn in my torment.
This past week it was the computers taking turns. They mostly communicate with the internet, but very rarely with each other. All are in the same workgroup and use the same WiFi - but shared files often don't, and the internet keeps flashing in and out.
First up was the traditional tricks: reboots, network resets, even reworking the outdoor antenna that supposedly helps it all work. Finally, I descended to a network full reset - then things really went mad.
Two of the computers plug directly into WiFi box ethernet ports, meaning they should not be bothered by anything WiFi at all. Yet they were. After several attempts of varying types I recalled the 192.168 opening to the network internals. I rebuilt a 5Mhz and a 2.4Mhz channel and began reconnecting things to WiFi, removing the ethernet connections. Hooray, it all works!
Until the next day. OK that wasn't fun or effective.
The last two days found me trolling the web for newer WiFi drivers. I found an updated driver for the i7 box yesterday, and it's continuing to work via WiFi. Today I found a driver for the i5 box - but I couldn't get the file to the right computer. It's on my phone, it's on the i7 - but the i5 won't connect so neither google drive nor network connections will push it across! Finally a thumb-drive did the job. Now the i5 can't install it, as the driver needs to be uninstalled. Well I did that three times, but rebooting just reloaded the familiar old driver. At last I broke down and pulled the WiFi card from the i5 and restarted with ethernet, a clean WiFi slate and no drivers..
And now it works great on the ethernet port! OK I'm not feeling compelled to reinstall either card or drivers now. We'll see how long this lasts.
In the meantime the i3 box has been functioning again via ethernet for the last two days.
Yippee?
And today I found a $30 4g+ phone with a smaller screen, a USB3 charging port, and all the features I liked in my old Moto E5 Play. I'm really tired of juggling (and dropping) the larger Moto 5G Ace UW, or somesuch long name.
The tech world will make a Luddite of me yet.
Back story:
My favorite cell phone was the Moto e5Play. A nice size and screen ratio, nice performance, a good bit of memory, microSD capable and acceptable battery life. It even took a quick dunk with no repercussions!
With every new upgrade, I've missed it more. Actually it's still here, used as a voice recorder for music lessons - but it's not the same.
After dropping my 5G moto Ace yet again, I made a quick stop at eBay in search of a reasonable step down. I don't need 5G and would prefer something like.. well, a modern e5 play! And to my surprise I found one rather quickly.
I'm looking forward to stepping back!
I spent part of the day with my S5, changing button- and Q-menu settings. After recording the current settings on a spreadsheet, I looked closer at this:
.. and there were pretty much all the settings I use in one place! And even a couple more, like HLG and flash adjustments. Better still, the control panel and EVF are separate - so having it on the big screen doesn't limit my shooting through the eyepiece!
Maybe I don't need to program the joystick to control additional Fn buttons after all ..
I spent some time attempting to shoot birds with the S 70-300mm. Nearly all were grounded for no particular reason, but I shot in af-c anyway. I tried disconnecting AF from the shutter button but that didn't go well today. I'm still learning the camera and stumbling over whether ISO or white balance is in the middle position, and where that video button is hiding.
Practice, and practice more: that's what I need to do!!
I got two great deals on a prospective second camera companion for the S5.
First came a K-01, aka the mirrorless Pentax. Nearly universally panned for style and a few awkward details, it's a fine example of bad timing to market.* With a bargain 18-50re lens (also white), it's fairly quiet and has the sweet-16Mpx aps/c sensor that made the K5 and D7000 famous.
I was almost immediately caught by an online discount offer for a white Oly e-p5. With Sony's 16Mpx μ43 sensor that propelled the eM5 to glory, but in a smaller body crammed with features. Sadly, no white lenses are available..
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| White body but silver top on the e-P5. Each has its normal lens attached: smc-A 50/2 and TTartisan 23/1.4. |
As I put them against each other, neither has a viewfinder; the e-P5 does have a hotshoe evf available bit it isn't .. pretty. Both have a flash, unlike the S5, and the K-01 can use an external microphone.
Each has its special feature mix, and each has its awkward moments: Pentax put lipstick on a brick but previous Pentax users like me adjust fine, while Olympus menus are challenging to anyone who didn't practice with an eM5 first.
Both have sensor stabilized bodies, neither has wx seals. The e-P5 has two control dials, the K-01 just one. The Oly autofocus was speedy in its day, with years of mirrorless practice over Pentax, but neither is great when light levels drop. And both are lightly used: the k-01 has just over 10k clicks, the e-P5 under 2600!
As a former user of both systems, I have more comfort with the Pentax environment. My best-liked cameras were the K-5ii and e-M1. It's a tough call at first blush, but I don't feel rushed.
As to lenses in hand,
Second blush - among the lenses I listed was one important omission. I have two native K-mount macros, the 35/2.8 Limited and Sigma 50/2.8 in manual focus. These can both be adapted to the Pen, but only the 35 Limited can autofocus and expose. Since I have many slides and negatives to copy, that could prove important. Also worth noting is a K-01 effect to reverse all colors in an image, handy for color negatives. It also has 3-shot HDR for difficult high-contrast shots.. which means Kodachrome slides. While the eP5 has great extras including stabilized video, those points might be overwhelming.
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| Sigma 50 and Pentax DA35 Limited, plus PK-L adapter |
So the best image should come with the S5 then K-01 whichever lens is used. But.. most people duplicating slides and negatives this way claim that 14-16Mpx is plenty good enough to resolve the grain of most old film images. More resolution and detail doesn't really help the image in that case! To settle it for myself, I'll need to shoot a couple of sample slides with the K-01 and S5, decently focused and similarly lit, and see what I see. I might as well test drive the eP5 while the setup is there.
* It was too large (2025 models are larger), retained the K mount (genius to some), and CDAF was too slow (true) - but a K-02 could easily be made with sensor PDAF, a viewfinder, and the KAF4 mount with electronic aperture control.
I made a straight trade, essentially: eM1 and a couple of lenses for K-01 and 18-50re (both white!).
Well, it's almost February - our historically snowiest month on the hill-top. January has mostly been dry, cold and clear, with about 1/3 of normal precipitation. The pattern change is right on schedule!
I have surgery scheduled for mid-March based on our February snow history; looks like it was a good idea.
It's still about a week away, so no doubt the numbers will dance a while before the event unfolds.
Update: a respectable forecast! We had 2" in the 2nd, melted half of it then added two more! Quiet on the 4th but more showers on the 5th. No big dump (which was not predicted) and it was gone below 400'.
Until now I've been able to dislodge dust with a squeeze blower. Last week I took many images at the local park/lake and after further review, I saw spots!
When I saw the images I knew just what to do - until I saw the spots. These were not dusty bits holding on to the sensor glass by electrostatic magic, they were once-liquid blobs. Like rain on a windshield. I dabbed at them gently but they were not persuaded to leave, and once I applied a touch more pressure I had a smear.
It was clearly time for a wet cleaning!
I was not afraid of the process, but it hadn't been necessary until now. I learned that newer designs like rakes are common now, and my kit arrived in a short time.
I'm not sure if the camera came to me that way; I should think I looked at the sensor last month when the S⁵ first arrived but I'm not certain. And I don't know what the firm liquid was: I remember the Nikon D600 and its oil issues, but I'd expect the odds of oil spatter is much greater on an SLR than a mirror-free design.
But what do I know about it? Can't believe everything I read in the virtual world. Not even my own work, especially when I claim to own the perfect kit and will shop no more. Oopz.
I shall be watching my sensor more closely now!
