When I got my Beomaster 4000 with it's gorgeous rosewood case, they only sold single 16 bit wall mount CD players. You'd wave your hand and two glass doors would open up so you could mount the CD and watch it spin and play. Way cool. I ended up getting a Vector Research 20 bit CD player/5 disk changer. The Beomaster came with a bunch of four colour literature about the product and history of B&O. Hoping I remember this right, but the story in that literature that I just loved was that the company hid an underground radio during WWII in the lobby of the company in a display case. I guess it drove the Nazi's crazy trying to find it.
Several months ago I found this lens locally in excellent condition except for the notorious zoom creep which was remedied with some tape on the bottom of the barrel. Both Curtis and Leighton recommended the purchase when I asked their advice. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to perform as well as it does. Mostly I’ve just done boring shots around the neighborhood to test the lens. This shot was wide open in dim light, so it would probably be sharper with better lighting.
I built this bed in 1997, and have been sleeping on a waterbed since the mid 1970's. Due to age, and other age related perks - getting in and out of bed has become more difficult. So we made the big switch to a "purple" mattress. Draining the mattress and getting it out of the frame is a big deal. Clearing a path for the new, and to remove the old made me realize that I don't think I ever photographed the bed I built 28 years ago. An opportunity. The seven foot columns are fluted Red Oak, Rosewood, Walnut, Quilted Maple, Lacewood, Padauk, Purple Heart, Zebra Wood, and Wenge are all part of it. None of it is stained, and it all is finished in about a dozen coats non-yellowing water based polyurethane so that the natural color of the wood can show.
Edit to fix the year. Guess my memory is slipping too.
Waterbed mattress just prior to draining - D850 with 28mm f2.8 ais - iso 2500
All made up new, higher mattress - D850 with 28mm f2.8 ais - iso 2500
A few photos from a traditional Irish music event that I help organize each October, shot with the Nikon 85/1.4 Ai-S. The first two are digital; the third was shot on film (Foma Ortho 400) with my FM3a.
James Markus wrote:
I built this bed in 1996, and have been sleeping on a waterbed since the mid 1970's. Due to age, and other age related perks - getting in and out of bed has become more difficult. So we made the big switch to a "purple" mattress. Draining the mattress and getting it out of the frame is a big deal. Clearing a path for the new, and to remove the old made me realize that I don't think I ever photographed the bed I built 29 years ago. An opportunity. The seven foot columns are fluted Red Oak, Rosewood, Walnut, Quilted Maple, Lacewood, Padauk, Purple Heart, Zebra Wood, and Wenge are all part of it. None of it is stained, and it all is finished in about a dozen coats non-yellowing water based polyurethane so that the natural color of the wood can show....Show more →
Jim, as usual, your skilled handy work with wood is beautiful Hope you enjoy the "Purple". Did NOT work for my back!
Just so you know, I think that one of your "fur kids" has assumed ownership of the "new bed". Enjoy!
James Markus wrote:
I built this bed in 1997, and have been sleeping on a waterbed since the mid 1970's. Due to age, and other age related perks - getting in and out of bed has become more difficult. So we made the big switch to a "purple" mattress. Draining the mattress and getting it out of the frame is a big deal. Clearing a path for the new, and to remove the old made me realize that I don't think I ever photographed the bed I built 28 years ago. An opportunity. The seven foot columns are fluted Red Oak, Rosewood, Walnut, Quilted Maple, Lacewood, Padauk, Purple Heart, Zebra Wood, and Wenge are all part of it. None of it is stained, and it all is finished in about a dozen coats non-yellowing water based polyurethane so that the natural color of the wood can show.
Edit to fix the year. Guess my memory is slipping too....Show more →
James that's a work of art and should be somewhere in a stately house - if only there was room in the East Wing!
As I mentioned before I rarely use my MF glass and I'd like to offer the following on this board to keep them in the family.
I'm not terribly concerned about price but more concerned about lightening up on "stuff" as I don't want to leave Ingrid having to sort out my cupboards after I pass on. Ideally I'd like someone to take the lot.
This is not to by-pass Fred. If anyone is interested please PM me with what you are prepared to pay + shipping from SA - Probably by DHL.
Note - there is no fungus and the dust spots which I saw after uploading are literally dust spots.
Brad, excellent captures at the Irish music event.
Pebble Beach 17 mile drive, @ f/4. It was a windy day and not so easy to lock focus on the tiny buds.
The Lone Cypress which is believed to have been seeded in 1750. It looked great when I first photographed it in 2018. It has not recovered from the storm damage in late 2019. It remains a super majestic view that is extremely popular with tourists.
Nice pictures but something in the processing makes them look like watercolor paintings, with all the detail lost - looks like very aggressive noise reduction and/or lots of compression when uploading. Maybe check some of those settings?
fjablo wrote:
Nice pictures but something in the processing makes them look like watercolor paintings, with all the detail lost - looks like very aggressive noise reduction and/or lots of compression when uploading. Maybe check some of those settings?
Hmm. (Thanks for the observations and critique.) The only processing was with GIMP, resized to 1400 long dimension, application of GIMP's Enhance/Sharpen algorithm using the default parameters to remove any resized-induced fuzziness, then saved as jpg with nominal 100% accuracy. The downsizing may have cost some detail.
The two tree shots were with my 35mm and 50mm. The Concord River was with the 35mm (IIRC).
For the dragonfly I would normally use the 200mm from a distance but in this case it was probably with the 35mm, maybe with the 50mm, because that's what was mounted at the time. I extracted a 9.7MByte (2363 long dimension) section using MS Paint, saved as bmp, processed with GIMP as with the others. So the compression wasn't quite as much as for the others. Otherwise I'd say no special processing.
Maybe GIMP isn't the best tool. Or maybe the originals were not so great. I miss the split-image focusing of my Nikkormat! So for your critiquing pleasure, here are the originals. They were captured in the Z5 II as "Fine *" jpg's, Auto color balance. The red tree is a sugar maple that really looks like that! FWIW, I have two monitors, my laptop's and one for the Linux Mint machine where I've been running GIMP. The laptop looks washed out, the Linux monitor much too warm. I don't know what to trust, have to guess. But I did no color processing.
Hmm. (Thanks for the observations and critique.) The only processing was with GIMP, resized to 1400 long dimension, application of GIMP's Enhance/Sharpen algorithm using the default parameters to remove any resized-induced fuzziness, then saved as jpg with nominal 100% accuracy. The downsizing may have cost some detail.
The two tree shots were with my 35mm and 50mm. The Concord River was with the 35mm (IIRC).
For the dragonfly I would normally use the 200mm from a distance but in this case it was probably with the 35mm, maybe with the 50mm, because that's what was mounted at the time. I extracted a 9.7MByte (2363 long dimension) section using MS Paint, saved as bmp, processed with GIMP as with the others. So the compression wasn't quite as much as for the others. Otherwise I'd say no special processing.
Maybe GIMP isn't the best tool. Or maybe the originals were not so great. I miss the split-image focusing of my Nikkormat! So for your critiquing pleasure, here are the originals. They were captured in the Z5 II as "Fine *" jpg's, Auto color balance. The red tree is a sugar maple that really looks like that! FWIW, I have two monitors, my laptop's and one for the Linux Mint machine where I've been running GIMP. The laptop looks washed out, the Linux monitor much too warm. I don't know what to trust, have to guess. But I did no color processing.
The colors are fine, the issue is the lack of detail. I downloaded the first one and had a look at the Exif data: 1/8000s at ISO 4500, probably with noise reduction on a rather high setting - that explains most of it. Also seems out of focus (some of the leaves in the back are in focus, but most aren't).
I'd recommend trying to keep your ISO lower. If you make sure that the focal length is set correctly (matching the lens that's currently attached) then the IBIS in the Z5II will be very effective, even with adapted manual focus glass. You could have easily taken that image at ISO 100.
Also check your noise reduction and sharpening settings on the camera - usually best to set noise reduction to the lowest possible level, sharpening at default or lower.
