another orbit - another anniversary

While my life is about me, its important to realise that its not just about me.
While we are all "unique" its important to see that we are often alike, and feel like others have felt.

This post is a short essay to attempt to explain that from a specific perspective.

Once upon a time everyone knew that we measured time by things celestial, the motion of the sun, the moon or the stars in the sky. Somehow we just look at calendars now, which takes much of the significance and knowledge out if it.

As it happens I also believe that life is a series of cycles. Some are yearly and some are when you simply find yourself back in a similar place, after some years worth of time have gone under the bridge.

At those times you get to look across the gap and see clearly where you were. Like a mite crawling along a bolt thread, you can catch a glimpse of where you were and what forces were defining you. If you're lucky you can even catch a glimpse the things you were thinking and understand how you have changed into who you are now (or see how you've remained unchanged as the case may be).

Some orbits ago I got married in about this position of the earth in its orbit around the sun, but last year instead of being able to enjoy another anniversary with the woman I love I was instead standing alone and bereft. Barely months after her death I was struggling with a bug that was making my life hell. That bug was left in after a surgery in November 2011 and broke out in November 2012 resulting in an operation to attempt to clear it. Before I'd even properly recovered from that I was whacked back in for another "rape and scrape" and barely got home for my birthday. (yippee)

So looking across the gap to the place I was on the thread of life a year ago is interesting. I have lost all sense of proportion of time. While people say the years fly past, it seems to like many years have past since it was just last year.

Since this time last year I've recovered physically from the last surgery (although I remain on antibiotics, and am unsure if further surgery awaits), wound up my job (finished, quit), come to Finland to be here for the anniversary of burying my wife (which was in August) and spent the remainder the time contemplating and attempting to heal.

Along the way I've had a few encounters with people who are also grieving. One thing which seems to bother many of those people is hearing anyone say:

I know how you feel

I don't know why it bothers them, as personally if anyone knows how I feel then I feel sorry for them. For such knowledge comes at a price.

To grievers I say that others do not know exactly what you are feeling, that is of course impossible. Pick any person out there and they may have totally no idea how you feel. Don't you wish you were back then like that too? Not knowing your pain? (I sure do).

But there is enough in literature to demonstrate that (while not the same) many have walked down the path of anguish and difficulty. Is it the same? No. But if you can read something or see something (like art) which moves you, that pulls the tears from you and stops your breath; then that means they have gone through something similar and expressed it so succinctly that you had your own emotions pulled out before you like a Samurai disemboweling himself.

There have been many songs I've heard, movies I've watched and books I've read over time. Many times something has occurred to remind me of something specific in them that has brought me to tears.

I began to wonder if somehow everything I'd read somehow prepared me to be brought to this point in time with the ability to survive it all. The first time that I thought that I started crying with the pain of the notion that this was somehow fate. I have come to realise that it is simply that the authors had felt what I am feeling. So they knew quite an amount of how I feel even though they had never met me.

Recently I was watching Up! (with some trepedation). Carl looses his wife Ellie, and while they'd lived together a long time there were dreams they'd dreamed of doing which they never did. At a critical time in the movie Carl was flipping through Ellies scrap book of things she had dreamed of doing. He always stopped at the page of Stuff I'm Going TO DO. He'd shake his head and gently close the book.

Except at one stage late in the movie when he seemed to notice for the first time that there was something in those pages. Somehow he'd never looked at the book since they were kids together. So at a pivotal point he turned the pages over to discover something new.

Turning the page he saw that after they were married Ellie had continued to fill those pages of her scrap book, and he then sat down to discover the way that Ellie had lived her life with him. The happiness they'd had and the joy they'd shared together. The first page was their wedding photograph ...

followed by pages of pictures of the great times they'd had together.

We were so lucky Anita and I. We lived our lives doing everthing we wanted to do. We hiked together to many places in the world, worked at building our home and were growing together into a loving pair in the way that trees can sometimes grow together (joined at the roots but not strangling each other).

It breaks my heart that she is gone and that I now walk alone.

To those who are grieving too, I offer you this

Try hard not to let the pain overshadow the beauty you were together. Try to see that there is a part of that other tree still inside your living tissue. No matter where you go or what you do, keep that sacred and important.

Maybe you will be forever walking the path without such love in your life, and maybe one day you can find some love again. One thing which I'm sure of is that if you hold dearly the love you shared in your heart then that will guide you. If someone claims to love you and they can't accept the love you hold for the partner you lost, then that person is not able to love you for who you are. Which means that they are not able to love you.

I have already had the greatest love in my life, while I don't want to be alone I know from years gone by (and experiences and pains past) what happens when you give of yourself but there is no love. I know that if anyone claims to want me, but does not accept the love I have for Anita, then that can only lead to pain. I'm certain that is a worse pain than just being here without Anita.

So what I have come to see is that the love Anita had for me is protecting me still. If I respect that love it always will.

She's still providing direction for me, even if the steering is up to me.

Mad grows up

as a kid I loved Mad Magazine. It was a fun read. Of course we never thought about who the kid on the cover was, but I've started to figure out who he is now.

If you ever read ZeroHedge you'll see that many of the posts are done by Tyler Durden. Reading today its pretty clear Tyler is doing some interesting journalism

wow ... the biggest drop since 20 years ago. Well looking at the various indexes on the web (after they've published) we see on Yahoo.

that its a little widdy piddle down over there on the right, with much bigger devaluations in March 2013 and July 2013.

The picture on Google (zoomed into today) ...

does indeed show a massive ramp up in USD, its a pitty that taking that in a larger historical context (you know, like as little as 5 years)

reveals it the even more of a piddle that Yahoo short timescale charts reveal.

I believe that Tyler has spent too much time in the wrong places when growing up, and has picked up some distinctly bad journalistic habits. This hidden camera shows Tyler doing 'research' on the latest thing...

Tyler ... you really should start looking at taking the red pill rather than the twisted dream you're living.

But then he's just a Poe Boy from a Poe family. Well at least that's what the Raven said to me

I bet King Wang subscribes to ZeroHedge.

Long live the King.

lenses which are gold

Since the late 70's the price of Gold has gone from about US$200 per Oz to about US$1300 per Oz, which many finance people will tell you is not really growth, but a reflection of lack of losses (while the value of money falls)

Such store of value can also exist it seems in the photographic world with some items.

I have a friend and fellow blogger who is also interested in camera gear, and in a recent discussion on his blog discussed the Minolta 250mm f5.6 mirror lens. His words were to the tune of:

It has proven itself for the purpose of its design: small, lightweight, and inexpensive. The inexpensive part does not apply any more because this lens is selling at a few times more than its original price, but it's truly small and light

Which had me curious, I know well the advantage / disadvantage set of the mirror lenses. As the owner of a 'regular optical' legacy FD 200mm f4 lens (which is quite opitcally good btw) I thought I'd dig out the current selling price and found that its gone up like Gold.

To quote form JarJar Binks ... "Exqueeze me!"

Mirror lenses have an optical mirror which is coated in Silver ... but somehow this lens is Gold.

I understand the value of compact, and I also understand the downsides of donught bokeh and no aperture control. I don't know if the advantages are driving this price or if its "Kingdom of Wang" buyers. I understand that my friend picked it up back when the prices were sane ... but at these prices I genuinely expect that owners get more "joy of ownership" than use.

Like the ebay ad says "no signs of use"

I sincerely hope that the 4/3 rumor site is on the money with Olympus bringing out a new and current version. For that should restore some balance to the market.

Meantime I'll keep using my FD200mm as it cost me about $60, and I get to take pictures that I like with it. But be careful in picking your FD200mm because there are substantial differences between the New FD and the old FD editions. The more modern one weighs about half (at 440g) and has much better lens coatings. It also has a built in retractable lens hood and uses a more modern Inner Focusing design. Worth every penny of $56

I sometimes wish I could examine the Minolta and give it a test use, but at the current prices its out of my interest zone.

All taken with the FD200mm f4

Teles with Teleconverters (on x2 crop factor cameras)

Too much is never enough - or is it?

why

Many photographers starting out into 'birding' or other telephoto work always lament that their lens just isn't long enough. I grew up in the time of 35mm film (well and other films too) and a 300mm lens was something exotic that I just dreamed of.

For a long time I had to make do with a 80-200mm zoom (which actually did some good work for me) and eventually (as time passed) bought a few 300mm zooms to see. I liked them but they were often not as good at f5.6 (looking better at f8). The step up to a high quality fast (like f4) prime lens was out of my league.

Much later in my life (like a few years ago) I discovered the benefits of rapid obsolescence: NB the wealth of older Manual Focus lenses the market.

By this time I've moved over to Panasonic micro4/3 and could take advantage of insanely low prices in FD lenses (which pretty much could not be used on anything else previously {except NEX}).

The 300mm class is a good one (especially in micro4/3)  for a number of reasons:

• lighter weight (have you picked up a 600mm)
• lower prices (I paid sweet-F-all for my 300mm)
• good handling characteristics
• bright

I have owned both the Canon FD300mm f4 and the Olympus OM 300mm f4.5 (see my views on that here), and found them both neck and neck. Back in that article I made the observation that using the 300mm on a G1 body was like using it on a 35mm Full Frame camera with a teleconverter (and perhaps perfect film scans for those of us using film still).

Actually I've personally found that 300mm is enough to get you good shots of BSB's (that's Bloody Small Birds) and that Manual Focus actually helps you to get images of the thing you want in focus. In this image an AF system would drive you nuts focusing on the branches either side of the bird and after struggling with the camera the bird will be gone.

I often don't think there's more point in getting more than effectively 600mm as being closer actually gets you a better shot.

Well, since teleconverters exist (and can be quite good back in the Film Daze) I wondered about how it would actually work (in reality) on the smaller format digital, especially considering we are already doing an effective optical x2 anyway.

I went out and got a Canon x2-A teleconverter (there is also an x2-B, but the A is designed specifically with 300mm in mind) and had a look at the images. The excellent MIR site shows more information on the Canon x2-A extender here. I picked that teleconverter because I was using a Canon lens which it was designed for and its well regarded. I would expect that any other teleconverter would likely give me only equal or inferior results.

summary

• Is it worth the effort? to me, not really ... you'll need to work it out for yourself and your needs
• you don't get something for nothing, there is an exact x2 tradeoff ... perhaps more
• can upscaling solve the problem for you? Upscaling does have advantages.

the data

So, I took two shots (well more really, I took f4 and f5.6 and the bloody wasp kept moving around so actually I took lots more) one with the Canon x2-A teleconverter.

FD300 overview

FD300 + x2-A

Well it sort of looks like a x2 enlargement doesn't it ;-) Considering that these are scaled back for the WWW if you aren't printing them large, then a crop of the 4000x3000 native image will look just as good. For your interest here is the FD300 image cropped to match the x2-A image (bringing it to 2000 x 1500) and then resized down again to 1600 for web.

Similar isn't it. If you're only shooting for WWW (and not street side signage or posters) then of course the native sizes allow a x2 'enlargement' by being so bloody good at 100% pixels that you can crop the guts out of the images and still have room for a good size.

But that's not the whole picture (of course), as the exposure data is important. Firstly I used 400ISO for this test because I personally feel that after 400ISO the image quality falls off.
FD300@f4 gave - 2500th of a sec (handy to seize movement)
FD300@f4 + x2-A gave - 800th of a sec which is starting to push shit up hill with a fork because as this is effectively a 1200mm that's below the 1 over focal length rule. Actually I had to use a cable release as well as my most stout tripod (and yes, that means I took more pictures, evaluated them found camera shake and took more again).

So yes, you do loose 2 stops of speed (recalling that a stop is either halving or doubling the speed) so two stops down from 2500th - 1250 - 625th (assuming stepless shutter speeds). Now if I'd used 2 stops more ISO to bring the speed up on the x2-A shots I'd need to be 1600, which is like popcorn if you ask me ... YMMV

Ok, so lets look at 50% pixel enlargements. Why do I choose 50%? Well my personal experience is that looking on the screen @50% is very similar to looking at a print closely.

Also its important that if you want to look at these images as I screen grabbed them, then right click the image and open it into a new tab: because blogger scales them down to fit onto the screen.

Ok, so again its still clear that its a x2 enlargement, but something else is starting to become clear ... the x2-A makes the image appear a little less sharp (or perhaps viewed another way, magnifies the "we've already reached" the limits of the lens point).

To be honest contrast isn't as good on the x2-A image either (if you ask me).

Ok, so lets do the mathematical version of the x2 enlargement using a bicubic upsample of the plain 300mm lens image (on the right still)

Actually its not too different if you ask me ... however ultimate pixel peeping (like why?) shows that its not actually exactly the same:

and we see that the bicubic upscale has added a little gritty noise to the image (in the greens even!) and so it may just be that in the ultimate call on this: if you need every last pixel of the image and you really need to get in closer then the x2-A works better than a bicubic upscale.

IF you can live with the much slower shutter speed (cos a blurry image from subject motion blur will suck worse) then there seems to be a slight advantage to the TC, but if you really need the speed (like say under forest cover) then crop and upscale will allow you 2 stops more speed (with perhaps only little difference in quality).

As it happens (not presented here) I prefer the look of the FD300 stopped down to f5.6, it was that bit sharper and more contrasty. However I didn't present that here because on the x2-A version the shutter speed was down to 320th of a sec and most images weren't clear.

Conclusion

Its a tough call to say one is better than the other but if shutter speed counts then upsampled images will work as well (and you won't need the adapter :-)

Lastly, I'm not disappointed that I have it as I've used it on the FD200f4 that I have and found that its not bad. So when I'm not wanting to drag along my FD300 (which is not only physically large, but weighs about 1Kg) I can put the FD200f4 (440g and something I'm likely to carry anyway actually ) and my adapter (200g) in instead.

Have Fun