Leaderboard

A cursed mix of AI,Photoshop, politics and professional wrestling: AI clearly thinks Joe Biden is Ric Flair.

Let's talk about exotic lenses. What a cute kitty. Taken with a Sony full frame body and a Meyer Optik Diaplan 100mm F/2.8. The Diaplan was sold as a projection lens, so it lacks an aperture. It's nearly identical to the Meyer Trioplan 100mm F/2.8, which is very expensive cult lens. The appeal of both is the "soap bubble" bokeh they produce. I am not convinced. Historically, Japanese photographers (the obsessive nuts who coined the term "bokeh") look down on strong rings on OOF highlights. They call that "nisen bokeh" and view it as a bad thing. I tend to agree with them. The Trioplan is a meh lens that's soft and not terribly contrasty wide open, and only okay once stopped down. There are far cheaper lenses with modern build quality available for a fraction of a price. To wit: There's a clean Trioplan 100mm F/2.8 on the 'bay right now, with its original carrying case (also clean). Seller wants $850. Bro, you can buy a real lens for that kind of money. Goddamn vidiots have driven up the price of old manuals to insane levels. [Knuckles, please not another vidiot rant.] Also on the 'bay is a completely new TTartisan 100mm F2.8 in M42 mount for $155 shipped. Don't be too surprised if I buy one of those in a couple months. On the other end of the spectrum: Mercedes car show. Taken with a full frame Sony body and their 14mm F/1.8G. That is a $1500 lens, and dare I say it a bargain for what it is. I'm not super familiar with Sony bodies, but their lens lineup is pretty spectacular. They make a 135mm F/1.8 that's superior to the legendary Canon 135mm F/2L. It's sharper and has (on paper) better color transmission. Snow in Yakitori Alley by Ben Torode on Flickr. Sony 135mm F/1.8 wide open. They also make a number of killer 35mm primes (my favorite focal length) including a $1200ish F/1.4, a significantly cheaper 35mm F1.8FE, and a Zeiss designed 35mm F/2.8 Sonnar. Sony 35mm F/1.8, wide open by Steven Kramer on Flickr. Alfa Romeo in Vancouver, taken with a Sony body and 35mm F/2.8 Sonnar, stopped down a bit. Bonus: Taken with the Sony FE 16-35mm F2.8 GM at the wide end. Giving the Canon 16-35mm F/2.8L a run for its money. This is an audio snob site (at least on paper), and Sony's (to quote Kevin Gilmore) wireless drive-by-wire management is the stuff of legend. With that said, they are also an enormous company, and utterly dwarf Canon and especially diminutive Nikon. When they, you know, actually bother with their products they punch so hard it's scary.

Happy Birthday my friend!

Not sure if anyone has used this stuff to touch up the inevitable scratch during DIY or perhaps to infill, but it seems to work pretty well! No before pictures from all the loading port area, but a tough area on the top where there is a matte finish..

Sorry, no pic. But I had the second half of a mushroom sandwich I ordered at the brewpub with Al and Claire last night. Lightly battered and fried hen of the woods mushrooms, caramelized onion jam and arugula, on a delicious roll. Delicious. BTW, why isn't anyone asking me why I'm not fat?

i posted this elsewhere. here is a copy Its all about size (as in core cross sectional area) and maximum flux before saturation. its obvious from the graphs above (posted elsewhere) that the core saturation of the eha5 transformer is about 1.4 tesla indicating the cheapest of core materials. better and much bigger transformers are available from lundahl and edcor. which will both give 20hz to 20khz +0 -1 db and will actually do 1800vpp with a 50 watt amplifier over the full frequency band. without series resistors. without filters. as far as i can tell lundahl does not specify maximum field strength. edcor does and its 2.01 tesla. there are custom c cores with magic materials that can do up to 2.5 tesla. these are a bit expensive. the ll1630 mentioned above (posted elsewhere) will NOT do this. core size is too small. you need a transformer with a minimum of a 30 watt core. The 60 watt edcor are MUCH better. the ifi iesl which is extremely sensitive to power amplifiers is yet another example of a poor design with a tiny transformer. does not matter how carefully you wind the core if you drive the transformer into saturation. the result will be a box about 3 times the size of the eha5. and a weight of about 20 lbs. cost about $600. nope, no cheap way of doing this.

Just for perspective, every time you walk across a carpet on a dry day, and touch your hand to a doorknob getting a little electric shock you are discharging a kilovolt or two of static electricity. .

The horrors of Derna, with an estimated >20,000 dead as a result of two poorly maintained dams bursting, is alas a direct result of a state ruled over by two opposing political parties and inevitable lack of maintenance of infrastructure. That said, there have been apocalyptic storms battering central Europe and North Africa over the last month or so Madrid Spain https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/subway-train-lines-roads-closed-madrid-central-spain-after-heavy-rain-2023-09-04/ Greece https://floodlist.com/europe/greece-floods-september-2023 Bulgaria https://floodlist.com/europe/bulgaria-floods-september-2023-update Georgia https://floodlist.com/asia/georgia-floods-landslide-september-2023 Slovenia https://floodlist.com/europe/slovenia-floods-august-2023 Turkey https://floodlist.com/asia/turkey-black-sea-floods-july-2023 Russia https://floodlist.com/europe/russia-hundreds-evacuated-after-floods-damage-200-homes-in-sochi