Sound of Music

I recently rediscovered the various bits of (entry level) hifi kit that I've accumulated over the years and then were relegated due to the rise of digital music. However, there was more than nostalgia for the loading of the CD and waiting on the TOC read than for the various snake oil I left behind.

Focus Shift: 50mm f/1.8G

The 50mm f/1.8G was Nikon's update to their cost effective 'D' and initial reviews where favourable. However, after using this lens for a number of years now I was still having issues with misfocus at wider apertures on my Nikon bodies. This behaviour was consistent across 2 other 50mm f/1.8Gs too but recently someone pointed out an optical phenomenon called focus shift that may be a potential cause...

iOS upgrades and further hate for iTunes

There aren't too many things I hate about the iPhone but there are many around iTunes: the lock-ins, the inability to get data back out of the phone, the single point of failure (sync PC crashes, then what).



But I still kept my iPhone. However, the iOS 7 and iTunes 11.1.0 mess really does make me consider the alternatives.

IDE power to Dell E520

Adding harddisks to an old Dell E520 should be easy - it's built with easy slide compartments. And it would be easy if you are adding newer SATA disks - if you're adding old school PATA (aka IDE) disks from your other (even older) PCs then it's a little more painful.

Speedlight Beauty Dish for the Masses?

The beauty dish is probably up there as an amateur's holy grail of lighting modifiers after they've exhausted the various umbrellas, softboxes, grids and bedsheets.

However the hotshoe speedlight beauty dishes tend to be a very limited for the speedlight/hotshoe market except for David Tejada's infamous plant pot dish or Todd Owyoung's 'chinatown special'. The professional/non DIY beauty dish market for speedlight options is ruled mostly by Kacey and Mola, discounting the no name ebay pans/S mount mods.

But now LumoPro provide their 22" beauty dish offering - how does it fare?

Rear End Cleaning: 85mm f/1.4D

Oh dear.. Whilst I don't care too much about dust on internal lens elements, I do care about the dreaded 'f' word.

Firefox Java hanging workaround

Recent updates of Firefox and Java don't tend to play nice. I've had existing JRE 6 installations that were fine but then Mozilla adds these JRE versions to their vunerablity blocklists.

The net result is that the previously working Firefox/JRE plugin combination now hangs and crashes Firefox (Windows 7 x64). The same plugin works in Chrome. I hate poorly implemented upgrades.

D* Eyecups

One thing that is apparent when looking through a recent FX viewfinder for the first time is the larger size when compared to the DX viewfinder. But with a larger viewfinder I found that it had a tendancy to have more light leaking past my eye that would give me difficulty in seeing TTL.

Live Once!

It used to be pain to create bootable media (CD and USB) that would contain a standalone OS. Whilst this is somewhat (very) old news here's a quick primer for creating a Fedora bootable USB stick.

Wacom Volito2 CFT-420 and Win7

I rediscovered an old Wacom Volito 2 (aka CFT-420) recently and managed to get it working with Win7/x64.

Insane D800

The D800 broke many barriers when it was released - at the time of release/review DxO Mark awarded it the highest score in it's history (indepth analysis here); Mike Johnston at TOP made the following glowing statement following his own personal review:

For 25 years I've deliberately made it a point to experience a wide variety of cameras of most types: I've tested dozens of cameras, owned dozens of cameras, and seen and handled literally hundreds more.
[..]
Cutting to the chase: all things considered, the Nikon D800E and Nikkor AF-S 35mm ƒ/1.4G lens is the best overall photographic device of any description I have used thus far in my life.

High praise indeed although it hasn't been all positive news.

105mm f/2.5 AI-S: Another old school Classic

The Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 coupled with a Nikon FM2, was reportedly the combination used to capture one of the most recognised portraits of recent times: Steve McCurry's "Afghan Girl". But how does this lens perform when not in McCurry's hands?

Minolta Flash Meter III: Too Square to be Cool?

The Minolta Flash Meter III was released in the early 1980s and feels very much like it's time but how is it for basic metering?

Mega JS Mama's Twin: cloned at 50"

Mama's got a brand new bag twin - a Chinese made 120cm x 120cm umbrella framed softbox.

CNX2 WB Correction Confusions

^{[ These are notes for my WB hacking with CNX2 - it's not meant to be a WB tutorial ]}

Still trying to get to grips with CNX2 white balancing for skin tones. I understand that skin tones should result in R>G>B, with a ratio of [ 1 | 0.85 | 0.75 ] being 'reasonable'.


^{red top | blue bottom | neutral third left}

However, most skin tone tutorials refer to corrections in CYMK but CNX2 gives us RAW development corrections with red-blue values only, although it does give us colour balance corrections with CYMK in the adjustment section.

What are the problems with performing development WB corrections with red and blue only?

Single/Double/Close In Diffuse Action

Lighting shiny products and options: bounce-style softbox (Westcott Apollo) vs straight through softbox (Ezybox)




Vanilla modifier vs extra diffusion vs vanilla modifier close in.

Manfrotto 498rc4 - Not quite like a 486

Manfrotto's ballheads are reasonably priced items that will last a lifetime. I had a 486rc2 compact ballhead that served me well but wanted something that was a little bigger.



Step in the 498rc4 midi ballhead.

Cumulative Key and Fill

^{fill only | key only | key and fill}

Maths seems to rule the world and normally in a complex way. These are notes to allow us to approximate the final exposure based on an overlapping key and fill light.

Wet Spring Cleaning

As with most things commercial, there are a million different products claiming to be the ultimate solution. However it is difficult to narrow these down without recommendations and worse (if you are in the UK) then once you have decided to follow a recommendation, you are likely to find that what you want isn't readily/easily available.

Reaching for Another 50mm: 50mm f/1.4 AI-S

The 50mm 'standard' lens was the 'kit' lens of yesteryear but that didn't mean that they were poor quality. In recent times, the 'basic' Nikkor 50mm was the very affordable and highly competent 1.8D but how does this compare to it's older uncle, the 50mm f/1.4 AI-S?