Random Photos

[Point Conception]

Along Jomtien beach rd.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

We visited Exbury Gardens (in Hampshire, UK) a couple of days ago. It's an amazing sight all year round, but in rhododendron and azalea season it's quite overwhelming!

 

[Jonathan Scott]

My Panasonic Lumix TZ200 ("travel zoom" camera, compact with up to 15x optical zoom) is very convenient to carry around and has a viewfinder which is very useful on sunny days. I spotted a butterfly which was too far away for me to identify immediately but this photo clearly identifies it as a green-veined white:

 

[BillTre]

My Panasonic Lumix TZ200 ("travel zoom" camera, compact with up to 15x optical zoom) is very convenient to carry around and has a viewfinder which is very useful on sunny days. I spotted a butterfly which was too far away for me to identify immediately but this photo clearly identifies it as a green-veined white:
View attachment 371168

Shots are a great way to make IDs and to see details of wildlife (if you can get them).

 

[DennisN]

I just read another hilarious photography gear review...

Gear reviewed:

1) LightDow 420-800mm f/8.3-f/16 zoom lens
2) NBD 4K Vlogging Camera

(about the LightDow 420-800mm zoom lens)

Even the act of focusing will cause the lens to fall apart.
...
Worse still is the complete lack of sharpness or optical corrections.
...
I hope you like the color purple because your image will have an overall color cast which is especially egregious anywhere that light meets dark.

The reviewer (I think) using the zoom lens. Source: here.

More funny quotes can be found in the article , source:

Worse Than a Lump of Coal: A Review of Terrible Gear (PetaPixel)
https://petapixel.com/2023/12/23/worse-than-a-lump-of-coal-a-review-of-terrible-gear-from-wish/

 

[pinball1970]

Whitby last weekend doing a gig. North East coast of England.

 

[pinball1970]

It was also Goth weekend.

 

[DennisN]

Time for some more Soviet glas...

Here we have the Soviet Jupiter-37A 135mm f/3.5, which I personally don't think is
a particularly attractive lens...

Jupiter-37A (side).

...but even though it was made behind the Iron Curtain,
it is actually rather well constructed. It's pretty small
too, and a pleasure to use, I have to say.

Jupiter-37A (front), where the 12 aperture blades
forming almost a perfect circle can be seen.

But what's more important is that it can deliver photographically,
and sometimes truly blur the backgrounds into oblivion...

A yellow light bulb in an alley.


Shooting animals with manual lenses like this one can be, let's say, ...challenging ,
but I managed to get a decent shot of this jackdaw since the bird was rather calm.

Western jackdaw.


More flying things...

...the lens can even get an ok shot of an airplane way up in the sky
(but I want to point out I did quite a bit of noise reduction in Photoshop
on this one and the next, and please also note the photos have been heavily cropped; the planes were much smaller on the original photos)...

A flying metal can with wings.

...and one more...

...to be honest, I can't say I enjoy shooting airplanes, but I sometimes do it
when they fly high above me in order to try the resolving capabilities of the
lens I'm using (and myself ).

If the far away airplane is resolved with ok sharpness, the lens is probably
pretty sharp; at least that's my experience.

Another flying metal can with wings.

Flowers outside a store.

Lens used: Jupiter-37AM 135mm MC f/3.5, which I also can warmly recommend .
Note though that it's vintage and fully manual, but it can nevertheless make some quite impressive shots.

 

[collinsmark]

'Took a flight back to flight to midwest (US) last week. 'Passed over (or at least near) the eastern part of the Grand Canyon. Here are a few pics.

After the fact, I had to spend a lot of time on Google Maps trying to figure out what I was looking at. I figured it out. Details in the captions.

All pics in this post taken with the 50mm Summilux-M ASPH. Aperture was around f/5.6 (maybe f/8): just something to put the lens near its sharpest spot. It was bright enough and the flight was smooth enough that I wasn't overly concerned with shutter speed; it was around 1/200 sec. Auto ISO, highlight weighted metering.

Figure 1. "Little Colorado River." The view faces North (-ish). The river flows from the lower right to upper left in the image. The river merges with the actual Colorado River to the extreme left in the image (difficult to see the merging). The central part of the image is an area called "Emerald Pool," according to Google Maps.

Figure 2. "Colorado River." This image was taken a few seconds after the first (see Fig. 1), tilting the camera up to see all the way to the horizon. Here, the "Emerald Pool is in the lower right. The Colorado River flows from the upper right to lower left. The Little Colorado River flows from the lower right to the lower-mid center, where it merges with the Colorado. According to Google Maps, the image center contains the Nankoweap Mesa, where the "Nankoweap Granaries" can be found.

Figure 3. "Another view of the Little Colorado River." Here, the view faces northwest. The river flows from the bottom left to the top (in the image). The Emerald Pool is up top.

I should have more pics of the trip to come in future posts (mostly pics from Nebraska, not the Grand Canyon).