I have been fascinated by photography ever since I was a child. These days I am seldom more than a few metres from a camera. My photographic interests sprawl from artificial intelligence through to vintage zoom lenses. Unsurprisingly, there’s also quite a lot of Linux in the middle. :-) More…
These days almost all digital cameras offer excellent light metering, The old fashioned “light meter” has become a “thing of the past” to a large extent. Nevertheless they do still have their uses. For those still wishing to flirt with light meters but who don’t want to fork-out to the ÂŁ100 or so that a…
It was a lazy Bank Holiday Monday morning and we had just crawled out of bed, when we heard a bit of a splash outside. We opened the curtains and noticed the water in the pond was moving, But we didn’t know why. Fortunately Zoneminder captured the incident from one of our security cameras. So…
How do I calculate the kWH on my studio flash heads? Do I use 300 watts of electricity each time I fire them?
For reasons I won’t bore you with now, my wife and I need to be rather careful regarding respiratory infections. I did my last model shoot 2020-03-08, shut everything down pro tem due to COVID. Amongst other projects, I used the time-out to undertake a fairly major refurbishment of my studio. I wanted to get…
Today I took my Olympus C2500L camera for walk on Southampton Common.
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…
Just occasionally here in Britain we design and produce a product that is so simple, versatile and completely brilliant one wonders why no one thought of it before. The humble Benbo Trekker camera tripod is one such design. Whilst those expensive black plastic (aka “carbon fibre”) things everyone seems to be talking about look pretty…
I really like my Ulefone 3w ruggedised smartphone. But it is a bit of a “paving slab” to hold in one’s hand. Which makes it a tad awkward to use as a camera. So I looked around for a solution. i.e a well-made and solidly-built holder for my ruggedised smartphone, that would not break the…
“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…
Well, the weather has perked up a bit, But we can’t actually go out and do very much because of coronavirus lockdown. So I thought Id take a few springtime snaps around the old homestead.
Here are a few snaps taken as we installed Weather Station Aercus Weathersleuth WH24 External Sensor Cluster. It really needed to be up as high as possible, yet reasonably easy to maintain. It also needed to be clear of obstructions. Well, as clear as our postage-stamp sized backyard will allow. The only viable place was…
Raspberry Ď€4 for ZoneMinder Part 1 – Raspberry Ď€4 8GB for Zoneminder Part 2 – Update: Raspberry Ď€4 8GB for Zoneminder Part 3 – Another update: Raspberry Ď€4 for Zoneminder (you are here) My Ď€4 Zoneminder has been running for just over two months. Overall I’m pretty happy with it. The main issue I had…
There are many ways to break an SD slot, but a surprisingly common one is to jam a tiny piece of plastic it it that has snapped off from a damaged SD card. The tiny plastic dividers between an CD card’s contacts can snap off. I’ve had quite several cards do that over the years….
I’m a fairly keen amateur photographer. Over the years, I have collected quite an assortment of vintage lenses, filters and other bits and bobs. I have also encountered quite a few sticky filters. However, I can honestly say that I have never destroyed a filter by attempting to remove it. Having the correct tool helps…
I needed a few pictures for another article I’m writing. While I had everything set up, I thought I’d take a few additional snaps of various bits-and-bobs I have kicking around the studio.
Following on from my last article, this is Raspberry Ď€4 8GB for Zoneminder part 2. Now I have had time to set it up and test it for a while. Firstly, I decided to abandon the ARM64 version of Ubuntu on Ď€ because it seems slow and clunky. Basically it seems the current beta ARM64…
This is a overview of my adventures experimenting with a tiny Raspberry Ď€4 8GB for Zoneminder GNU/Linux-based security system. Raspberry Ď€4 for ZoneMinder Part 1 – Raspberry Ď€4 8GB for Zoneminder (you are here) Part 2 – Update: Raspberry Ď€4 8GB for Zoneminder Part 3 – Another update: Raspberry Ď€4 for Zoneminder Background I have…
Folks considering remote shooting via smartphone may wish to experiment with Pavel Khlebovich’s “IP Webcam”. Basically it’s an amazingly clever and full-featured app that allows you to control the camera(s) on your smartphone with a remote computer, using standard internet protocols. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam I initially got into it because it plays nicely with Zoneminder. Thus any…
Back in 2015 I bought 3 pairs of studio flash heads (one pair 400 joule, one pair 360 joule and one pair 200 joule). They were supplied as bargain bundles, complete with stands, brollies etc. via sellers on eBay. They were quite a bargain. Each flash head worked out at approximately ÂŁ50 per unit, They…
Our Floureon pan tilt and zoom external IP camera has shipped a bit of water. It lives on the south west corner of the building and gets battered by the strong south westerly prevailing winds we have here. So I took it off the wall this morning and dismantled it on my work bench. It…
Seems it’s time to buy another laptop. My trusty old Thinkpad has seen better days. Worse, a company with somewhat ironic name of “PCSpecialist” made a total pig’s breakfast of repairing my new Clevo N141ZU I had purchased from it earlier. “PCSpecialist” also lost my hard disk, then denied having it. And what “PCSpecialist” laughingly…
I recently purchased an unlocked Chinese Ulefone Armor 3W ruggedised smartphone – c/w Mediatek chipset, 8-core 64-bit CPU, dual unlocked SIM slots, 256GiB TF slot and 10300mAH battery. I have quite a soft-spot for cheap generic Chinese phones. Of course, one has to choose the product quite carefully. You need to ensure your preferred device…
OK, so we are still in coronavirus lockdown here in the UK and I have spent the afternoon playing! 🙂 I saw the basic idea on a web forum on a photography site, and decided to look around my garage and see if there was any thing suitable to produce something similar. I also took…
