Sunday 23 October 2016

Lens, lens everywhere

Take one Olymopus E-M10.

Start with the "kits" lens' 14-42mm and 40-150mm.

They work and get some good pictures.

Add the 25mm f1.8, now that is a step up in sharpness and just a better picture.

Add the 45mm f1.8 and the results again move onto another level, that has become the goto lens.

There are lots of desirable lens'  but costs sky rockt quickly so the wishlist remains unfulfilled and tthe 60mm macro, 12mm f1.2, 75mm f1.2 and any of the new pro range remain in the shops.

But all is not lost.

A pair of extension tubes (10mm &16mm from "Meke" on Amazon, something like 30) produces good macro results, pleased with that, another set added good make for some interesting results.

Today a step further.

I read a article (I don't have the link, it was on an RSS feed and it took a few days for the content to percolate through) about connecting an old Canon lens to a body and getting some impressive results. Again a trip to Amazon to find that a cheap and cheerful OM to M4/3 converter is 6.99.

3 days later...my uncle's old Soligor 500mm mirror lens is strapped to the front of the camera, it is rather large and most certainly the part that needs a tripod.

Here is the scene taken with the 25mm lens.

Photos are duly taken, focussing is much harder and there is a noticeable wind in the garden today which does little to assist. The Oly's 2x magnification helps little with focus because the wind effect is magnified close up.

Here is the same picture with the 500mm mirror lens.

Ok so there must be a loss of focal length because the converter is essentially the same bit of kit as a macro tube (must try that!) but with a 500mm lens attached to a 2x crop factor camera I have something like 1000mm of lens and I am thinking moon photos.

Returning indoors to the bag of camera bits to find an end cap to discover an OM2x converter, so 2000mm is looking good.

Here is the same picture taken with the 2x converter and the 500mm lens, I gave up attempting to focus a this point.

Lastly, just to test I attached my dad's 50mm OM f1.8 zuiko lens and took the same shot again.

Saturday 22 October 2016

Fighting the good fight

Today I have had my first encounter with Apple products in the last, err, quite some years in order to attempt to provide me son with a working account on an Apple iPhone.

So everything online says what we need is Family Sharing. Which means I have had to set up an Apple Id. Which means I have to add my credit card to Apple. With means I need iCloud for Windows. Which means I have to add my details onto the iPhone because it's not possible to install icloud for Windows until my Apple ID has been used on an Apple device.

Multiple reboots later and the iPhone still shows no family sharing as the Apple website says it will.

Multiple reboots later and 1 time in 10 the newly install Apple iCloud on Windows finally logs me in without crashing.

Still no family sharing option.

Turns out family sharing only works from ios 8, apparently this perfectly working iPhone 4 can't have that.

So Apple how does one give an Apple phone to someone under 13?

Yes I still hate Apple products with a passion but at least I can rip this rubbish icloud for Windows off my machine now.

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Google pixel

I have been a loyal Google user,  I have a Nexus 7 2012 and a Nexus 4.
I would like to say that both are going strong but and nexus 7 suffers a from the abysmal performance that kicked in after the first couple of years. Timing seems to fit how Google wants to retire products which is a shame, we would all like newer toys buy most of us cannot afford the upgrade cycle.
The nexus 4 suffered from the poor battery life but a replacement from eBay solved that. Dropping it and breaking the screen twice in quick succession was the end though.
That said the nexus devices in their prime were excellent and the pricing was competitive for the quality and brand.
Now the pixel devices, oh come on Google get real, price sensibly and own the market.