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Repairing a dead YN565EX II speedlight
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Repairing a dead YN565EX II speedlight

Photographer pal changed the batteries in his dead YN565EX II speedlight flash gun. Unfortunately when he tried to witch it on, it didn’t work. He tried several sets of batteries. No luck. For those not familiar with the device, the Yongnuo YN565EX II is a relatively affordable battery-powered Chinese flash speedlight for both professional and…

How I mounted my 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens
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How I mounted my 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens

Several people have contacted me privately and asked for information regarding how I actually mounted my 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens on my µ4/3 camera. I hope in this article to shed a little light on how one can make such an old lens and seemingly-incompatible lens actually stay on a modern mirrorless…

120 year old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens, in action, on Portsdown Hill
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120 year old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens, in action, on Portsdown Hill

Regular readers may know that my 2023 Christmas project was to make this 120 year old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens fit on my µ4/3 cameras and actually capture some pictures with it. Unfortunately, at the time, the weather was too wet to take the thing outdoors. Fortunately by early January the weather became…

Making a 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens work on a modern mirrorless camera
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Making a 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens work on a modern mirrorless camera

Over Christmas I set myself a little task of trying to make a 120-year- old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens fit on a fairly modern camera. The lens was given to me in the late 1980’s by one of my very first models. It was a nice thought but to be honest, I came…

Simple street photography
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Simple street photography

My experience of street photography is to make oneself looks as insignificant and unprofessional as possible – which comes rather too naturally to me, TBH! 🙂 Kit should be small, light and ideally somewhat battered looking – a “distressed” look that most of my kit usually acquires after a few weeks’ service. No expensive-looking kit…

Multifunction USB rechargeable LED light
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Multifunction USB rechargeable LED light

Bought a bundle of multifunction USB rechargeable LED lights from a supplier AliExpress. I actually a bought batch of both types shown below because I like them so much. I paid a bit over a fiver each for them. Quite amazing for their size, weight and cost. Tough, water-resistant and rechargeable via USB C, c/w…

More about my new Ultrastar 20 TB hard disk backup system
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More about my new Ultrastar 20 TB hard disk backup system

I don’t quite know how I managed it but my personal/business dataset has now grown to around 17 Terrabytes. Most of it is spread across multiple smaller disks. This is becoming increasingly difficult to manage. In fact, we are decommissioning our 4TB drives. This is partly because they are well beyond recommended end of life,…

Nurses noisy but good-humoured protest
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Nurses noisy but good-humoured protest

Nurses’ noisy but good-humoured protest outside Southampton General Hospital today as first ever major NHS nurses strikes in British history take place.  Something about this touched me. Perhaps it was the sadness that these hard-working decent people have to do this. Or perhaps it was the gentle considerate way they did it. Every bus and…

UA1101l power storage unit
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UA1101l power storage unit

For my little IT business, the possibility of power cuts is very bad news indeed. So we invested in one of these things –  a “UA1101l” power storage unit. On paper, it stores about 3.6 MJ (megajoules) or 1 kWh (kilowatt hour) in EV (electric vehicle) grade LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) batteries. My tests suggest…

Raspberry Pi Sonos replacement
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Sonos alternative

We’re busy replacing a customer’s ageing Sonos distributed sound system with a Linux Media Server (c/w SAMBA for remaining Sonos kit) c/w these tiny Linux-powered SBCs (single board commuters) as replacements. Granted, this is merely a prototype. This unit us based upon a Raspberry pi 4B c/w 8GiB RAM, a capacitative touchscreen and an external…

BR-9C combined Geiger counter and EMF meter – initial impressions
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BR-9C combined Geiger counter and EMF meter – initial impressions

I just bought a Geiger counter from a seller on AliExpress. Well it’s actually a Geiger counter and EMF (electromagnetic field) meter, all combined into a single device. I have no idea who actually makes these things. There is no branding other than a model number “BR-9C”. Though I did discover that the enclosures used…

Blown lithium battery
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Blown lithium battery

A lot of buzz on the interwebs about Samsung mobile phone batteries. Whilst Samsung devices do seem particularly problematic, it can be an issue with lithium polymer batteries generally – especially the super skinny type. They really don’t like getting hot. I confess I documented this repair rather badly but I did remember to capture…

The secret documents at Mar-a-Largo
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The secret documents at Mar-a-Largo

I have just been listening to Mr Trump and his supporters explaining the situation concerning all those crates of secret documents that the FBI found in is house at Mar-a Largo. Apparently, the documents were all planted at Mar-a-Lardo by the FBI, they were not at all important, and Mr Trump had declassified them all…

Stainless steel router rack
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A fully loaded miniature stainless steel router rack

A few folks have asked me what I use to keep our various networking and internet connectivity kit neat and tidy, yet reasonably service friendly. Well, I have to admit that it was rather a muddle for a many years. That was until I decided to make a simple multistorey stainless steel router rack. Moreover,…

2021 incarnation, simplified yet improved. Note 15 amp PSU module, IEC mains socket and double 2.4A USB module on the top.
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Fed up with wall warts?

One of the problems with modern life is the plethora of plug-in mains adaptors or “wall warts” as they call them on the other side of “The Pond”.  Aside from the mess of wires, and the fact that often they are plugged into multi-gang power sockets an heaped on top of one another, building up…

Image processing using FOSS
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Image processing using FOSS

I belong to several online photography fora. One of the questions that repeatedly pops up is “what image editing software do you use?” and “what alternatives are there to Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom?” In this article, I hope to demonstrate that high quality image processing is perfectly possible using FOSS (free open source software). I will also…

Is a smartphone a substitute for a proper camera?
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Is a smartphone a substitute for a proper camera?

“Is a smartphone a substitute for a proper camera?” was an interesting question, posed on a photographic forum to which I belong . It certainly got me thinking… Firstly, I think there is a certain element of “using the right tool for the job” here. An analogy if I may: one can (un)do most screws…