The Eutopian Light Mod? The Beauty Dish

As an amatuer photographer interested in lighting I was almost always drawn to a beauty dish, and I remember quite a lot of interest for Todd Owyoung's DIY beauty dish when it first appeared as a means for amateurs to obtain their very own cheap beauty dish - it wasn't for everyone but I've always been intrigued by the light quality from a beauty dish.

Budget Monolight: Godox MS300 practical observations

The Godox brand has been pumping out budget lights for a while now and in recent years the options for entry level monoblock has fallen away with Bowens folding, leaving only Elinchrom D-Lite RX One 100Ws (and its aging user interface/controls) or the Chinese Godox MS200/MS300 rated at 200Ws/300Ws. This is not a review (there's plenty of good ones over the years since its release in ~2019) but with budget/entry level monoblocks, there's generally reasons for the categorisation.



I had a chance to play with a loaner unit for a few weeks and some practical observations.

Regreasing an overly dampened Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AI-S

My Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AI-S was a favourite for many years and was one of my first manual focus lenses and the dampened, but not stiff, focus ring was a nice change from my plastic AF-S lenses. The major benifit at the time with the level of dampening was it helped with precise/limited movement for focusing at wide open apertures.



However with regreasing a number of other Nikkors I've started to prefer a softer focus feel - these are my notes for how to regrease/lubricate a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AI-S.

An old zoomer today: Nikkor 80-200mm f/4.5 AI

The Nikkor 80-200mm f/4.5 AI was a compact professional grade zoom produced from ~1977-1981 - it was regarded highly at the time with some preferring this iteration over the latter f/4 AI-S. This lens is fairly ubiquitous on the second hand market and its price is relatively low so it may seem to be a safe bet when picking up something used in this range. But how safe is this bet?

Sekonic L-478DR still relevant a decade on?

Hand held light meters relevance may been less common with photographers but they arguably still have a niche, particular in studio/flash applications. Certainly the availability of new light meters on is infrequent, with Sekonic being the only real players left in the market with their L-308, L-478 and L-858 series. The mid range L478 was release ~2012 with a touch screen but how does it fare a decade on?

Another closer look: Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/4 AI

The Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/4 AI was released along side the 55mm f/3.5 AI in 1977 and offered a more comfortable working distance and narrower field of focus over the 55mm - the longer lens is double the weight heavier (500g) compared to 245g of the 55mm.

Regreasing dry Micro Nikkor 55m f/3.5 AI Helicoids

The Micro Nikkor 55mm f/3.5 AI is an ~40 year old lens and my copy has various "dry or uneven" areas over its focus range after a few years of sitting idle. Lets see what it takes to fix that.

Hel(icoids) and back: regreasing a Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AI-S

Maintaining older Nikkor lenses has become easier with resources such as Richard Haw's website and also Kenneth Olsen's YouTube channel. However servicing details for my Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AI-S at this point are still not as widespread as some other lenses and with a lens thats approaching 40 years old, its in need of helicoid servicing as observed by a dry and gritty focus tactile feedback.

Unfortunately, even with the previously mentioend resources above (I don't believe there exists a specific YouTube tutorial), there were some admenents that would help those new to the 28mm. Here's my notes for seperating the helicoids of my Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AI-S in order to regrease.

The final pancake - the plastic 50mm f/1.8 AI-S pancake

The final 50mm f/1.8 AI-S manual focus lens, with its 0.6m minimum focus distance and missing rabbit ear/coupling prong, was a lens that was following the times and a shift away from previous Nikkors and their mostly metal construction. Whilst there was an earlier 50mm f/1.8 AI-S pancake which could focus down to 0.45m like the long nose version, that version was only available in Japan and short lived whereas this 50mm pancake superceded both the Japanese pancake and the long nose. Identifying the latter pancake can be done via the serial numbers (starting 4xxxxxxx) and the distinct shiney plastic-ness, particularly of the aperture ring and the additional bump on chrome index/grab ring - this bump was supposedly to help users to quickly orientate the lens, given the missing rabbit ears of earlier AI/AI-S lenses.



So what's this pancake like?

How many 50s do we need: 50mm f/1.8 AI-S "long nose"

The 50mm was the "standard" kit lens in the 1970s and there were a number of iterations across the AI and AI-S variations from the 1980s, ultimately leading up to the plastic 50mm f/1.8D. With so many iterations available of the f/1.8 AI-S, what are the key differences when looking to pick one up, especially the earlier AI-S "long nose"


^{Nikkors f/1.8D | f/1.8 AI-S "long nose" | f/1.4 AI-S}

Another Legacy Legend: Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 ED AI-S

The Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 ED AI-S released in 1981 seems to have acquired lengendary status over years but this lens but this prime focal length has perhaps fallen out of mainstream use over the last couple of decades due to the various overlapping zooms but how does it handle and perform today

A junk-bin Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 AI revived

The Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 AI was released ~1979, and whilst it seemed to have been shadowed somewhat by its 105mm f/2.5 AI-S sibling, still had a lengthy production run stretching into the early 2000s. Whilst I didn't have a need for this focal length, when I saw a junk condition lens for £15, it was hard to turn down even if was just to tear it down to see how these lenses worked.

Halide Linux Digital Workflow with RawTherapee

Phone cameras have steadily been improving over the last decade but one issue for serious photographers has been the ability to obtain full control of their camera settings and then the ability to obtain a RAW image for imrproved processing.



The recent iPhone Pro Max models have Apple ProRAW and can be enabled by default for the iOS camera, but if you have the non-Pro Max models you will need specific camera apps to allow you to make the most of the camera sensor.

The Halide MkII app has been a very good camera app that gives us RAW images - coupled with the OpenSource RAW editor RawTherapee we have, in my opinion, the basis for acceptable iPhone digital workflow.

Valgrind: noise reduction

Ensuring your delivered code is memory leak free is a standard concern for C/C++ developers and valgrind is a great tool to assist. One problem we can run into is extra noise from system/non project libraries masking your own issues. Refocussing is relatively straight forward:

Ford Focus Active X 2023 user experience

The 2022 facelifted Mk4 Focus, announced in Oct 2021, replaces the orginal Focus Mk4 (2018-2020) - only available in Europe - is to be the last production of the Focus line as Ford had previously announced it will be pivoting towards electric vehicles.

^{Focus Active X 2023 facelift}
I have previously driven a variety of family orientated Fords designed between ~1993-2015, including the Mk1 and Mk2 Monedo/Focus and Mk1 S-Max, there are a number of changes to adjust to and this is the experience of driving the facelifted Mk4 Focus Active X 2023.

Faking RPM db dependancies

The fedora packager manager takes care of all your dependancies but how do we deal with user compiled binaries and misisng dependencies?

Herman Miller Aeron: Replacing the Gas Lift

Having documented other people's difficulties with replacing their Herman Miller Aeron gas lifts, it was finally time to do the same for my own 1999 chair. What are the current challenges and tools available for this activity in 2022?

Since acquring my late 90s Aeron, most of the common parts have been replaced (sunken seat pan, plastic clamshell hip bolts, torn seat back, fixed arm rests, wobbly castors, torn lumbar support, seat pan edge foam insert) but whilst the gas lift had always been sticky and the chair wobbled, this was put off due to the reported difficulties. However more recently this was no longer an option to defer replacement since the gas lift would no longer operate, being stuck after lowering. But how easy and what options for parts are available.

Disabling debuginfods and manually loading symbols

Fedora 32 introduced debuginfod which is meant to provide dynamic debug symbols to debugging tools. The problem I've found is that using valgrind is horrifically slow as the debug symbols are downloaded and processed. One way to avoid the debug is to disable debuginfod is to rm /etc/debuginfod/*.urls; echo "set debuginfod enabled off" > /etc/gdbinit.d/debuginfo.gdb. But how do we get our debug symbols for gdb?

A local Openshift 4.x development environment on your laptop

Having access to dev OpenShift 4.x cluster that you control is invaluable - Redhat now provides this ability through their Code Ready Container also known an crc

Setting up the rest of the cluster and dev ecosystem is a little complicated at first so here's a set of notes documenting how it can be done on an 8core / 16Gb Fedora 35 machine.

Custom live Linux USB image: Working around locked down ThinkPad

At work we are getting pushed into a hot-desking setup and each member of staff is being moved onto a thin client ThinkPad. Of course a thin client is nothing more than a customised and stripped down Windows 10 build that connects to the firm's virtual desktop infrastructure, via a combination of CiscoConnect and VMWare Horizon client.

Since we're being forced to carry the ThinkPad to and from the hot-desk office, I'm going to use the ThinkPad for my own dev purposes en route. The ThinkPad's BIOS is not locked down so we can get into the boot menu via F12 or the BIOS setup via Enter but setting my own dev environment is not straight forward.