Studio lit by LED
I rather like LED lighting. I never cease to be amazed what one can do with it – and do very cheaply. So I decided to have a bit of fun in the studio, with some of the latest budget RGB LED and a couple of Cokin starburst filters.
Photography
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 manual-focus lenses. Unsurprisingly, there’s a whole load of Linux in between. :-)
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Repairing my vintage Tannoy Monitor Golds
I decided to have a go at repairing the HF tweeters unit in my vintage Tannoy Monitor Golds. It was a tricky old job. More pictures to follow.
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Hedgehog in the garden
For some time now, this little fellow has frequented our garden. We have a sort of hedgehog highway behind the shed. And because we have no cats or dogs, they hedgehogs are free to pretty much come and go as they please.
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My studio at night
More LED experiments – this time using some small daylight LED and a 12 volt DC power supply to light the Dexion racking.
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Repairing an elderly Tamron 80-210mm lens (103A)
I’ve had this old but very chunky Tamron 80-210mm Adaptall 2 telephoto zoom lens since the mid 1980s. Only I noticed that the overall image quality had become rather poor. I wanted to find out why. When I shone a small torch through it, I noticed what appeared to be a haze. Despite several cleans…
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Macro with a 58mm 44-m4 Helios lens and a 10 mm macro ring
Macro shots using an elderly Soviet era 58mm 44-m4 Helios lens and a 10 mm macro ring. Much to my surprise, it seems to work remarkably well, certainly on my little µ4/3 camera. I particularly like how the shots of my cute little Юпитер (Jupiter) 50mm f/2 came out…
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Fifty shades of shed
This little project was intended to capture colour-cycling RGB lighting. One of these days I must get around to doing it again and making a rather better job of it.
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Southsea in the rain
I was fortunate to be given a rather nice 20mm f/1.7 Lumix prime lens. So obviously I needed to test it. A 20 mm with a nice wide aperture is particularly good for street photography. So I braved the awful weather and made my way to Southsea one wet and windy Sunday afternoon, and grabbed…
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Pecs, Hungary
Another Christmas with my girlfriends parents in Pecs, Hungary. I always enjoy my Christmases in Pecs. And her folks are such lovely people. These are a few snaps from around the town, just after Chirstmas…
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Checking out my new lens tilt mechanism
I treated myself to a lens tilt mechanism and a vintage Helios 4m-44 58mm f/2 lens. So I figured I needed to go out and test them. These were taken from Portsdown Hill, facing south, over Portchester and Cosham. Being able to tilt the lens means one can shift the focus onto a particular part…
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2014 Retrospective
It’s the end of our second full year in our new home. Here are some random retrospective snaps from the year that’s just shot past us.
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“This Is Hans in Ungarn, from Pécs, Hungary…”
“…playing his favourite music, I hope you like it.”
These are the first words you will hear when you connect to the internet radio stream of Radio Pécs International. And I recently had the pleasure of meeting the man behind the show, Hans Randau. His station is located in a small basement room in his lovely home, which overlooks Pécs, a Mediterranean style town about 200km south of the Hungarian capital, Budapest.
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Pecs at Christmas
Spent the Christmas with my girlfriend’s parents in Pecs, Hungary. They are lovely people and Pecs is a lovely place. And there is always something quite special about central European Christmases. (More pictures to follow)
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2013 Retrospective
2013 was quite an interesting year for me, not least because we finally moved way from my tiny terraced cottage overlooking Southampton common, to a much larger place, where there is enough room for a reasonably usable home studio. Only moved 35km, but it felt like moving to another planet. Of course, it takes a…
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Weald and Downland Museum
2013-09-08 we had a family outing to the Weald and Downland living museum, Sussex, England. In addition to being a very interesting place to take a camera, it is also home to a gaggle of particularly photogenic white Embden geese (bottom of page 2 and top of page 3 in the gallery below). Having a…
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Day trip to Hayling Island
I took a day trip to Hayling Island today, armed with a little Fuju HS20 EXR bridge camera.
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Pictures to sell a house with
Trying to sell our house and move somewhere with a bit more room. However the pictures taken by various estate agents (realtors if you are American) are nothing short of bloody awful. So I thought I’d have a crack at it myself.
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Steampunk watchstraps
I seem to have accumulated quite a lot of old wrist watches that have no straps (or “bands” if you are American). So I needed to figure out a way of being able to use them. Then I saw these straps on eBay. They are genuine leather and they only cost a few quid a…
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Pécs open air concert and dancers
Spent the day in Pécs, watching the summer concert and dancers.
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Aircraft HA-MDT and HA-MAM spray insecticide over Pécs
Another warm afternoon in Pécs.as a pair of very noisy biplanes buzzed overhead for an hour or two spraying insecticide over the city. Their purpose was to kill mosquitoes. The aircraft were single-engined, twin-winged PZL-Mielec AN-2R, tail numbers HA-MDT and HA-MAM. They looked and sounded like something that belonged pre-World War 2. However, they were…
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The Candovers and Alresford
Today we took a day trip to the Candovers in Hampshire with old friends. While there, I took a few snaps of Church of the Virgin Mary, Preston Candover. We the went on to Alresford.
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Houghton House Bedfordshire
Just spent a fine spring days with friends photographing Houghton House in Bedfordshire, and some of its environs.
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Hong Kong Cemetery
Today I took a walk around Hong Kong Cemetery. I then took some snaps around Central and caught the Star Ferry to Kowloon. Kowloon is away interesting especially after dark. Then I caught the bus back to Hong Kong. Its route included Hong Kong’s famous Harbour Tunnel.
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Protest in Central
I found myself in Central Hong Kong today, as I stumbled upon a protest. Seems some of Citibank’s customers are not altogether happy with the banking corporation.
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Hong Kong Museum
[jump to gallery] Back in Hong Kong for a few days. Today we’re in Kowloon visiting the Hong Kong Museum. I must be getting old because I remember seeing a lot of this stuff for sale in Woolworth’s when I was kid. But before we look at my photos, this was the song playing at…
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Shinkansen to Kyoto Japan
Today we went to the beautiful city of Kyoto, on one of Japan’s legendary Nozomi Shinkansen trains. The Nozomi is Japan’s fastest train service and runs on the Tokaido and San’yō Shinkansen lines. The service only stops at the largest stations. Its N700 series rolling stock reaches speeds of 83 metres per second (300 km/h…
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Himeji Castle Japan
Day trip to Himeji Castle, photographed by my girlfriend Zsuzsi.
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Himeji Japan
Took a short Train ride to Himeji today.
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Osaka Japan
Decided to take a break from Hong Kong and spend a few days in and around Osaka, Japan. It rained quite hard today, so we took a riverboat trip. Also found some LED geese.
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The noisy bullfrogs of Mui Wo
Mui Wo is generally a quiet place. However there was one hell of a noise outside this evening. It sounded like a herd of raging bulls. But noise wasn’t bulls, it was bullfrogs.
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Day trip to Macau
I hopped aboard a catamaran and took a day trip to Macau today. I took a camera too…
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Times Square
Went to Times Square, Hong Kong today, and took a few snaps…
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Another wander around Kowloon
I decided to take another wander around Kowloon today. Nathan Road is always fun at night. The gaudy neon signs are surprisingly photogenic, if you like that sort of thing. And you get excellent views of Hong Kong from across the harbour.
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Coastal Defence Museum and Tung Tung
Today we took a wander into Honk Kong hopped on a tram and took a look at the Museum of Coastal Defence. Then we went on to Tung Lung. Tram ride was fun too. I managed to grab a seat right at the front of the top deck, and took lots of photos. Shame it…
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Around Mui Wo
Decided to take it easy today. So we spent it wandering around Mui Wo again.
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Trip to Tai O
Today we took another trip to Tai O on Lantau – the strange village on stilts.
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Mid Levels and The Peak
Decided to wander up the Mid Levels Escalators on Hong Kong Island. This took us to Mid Levels and then caught the tram to The Peak.
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Trip to Shatin
Wandered across to Kowloon today, then up to City One Shatin. I also took a some snaps of a few of the “10,000 Buddhas”, on the way.
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Wandering around Mui Wo
Spent the day wandering around Mui Wo, on Lantau, Hong Kong.
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Mui Wo brushfire
Today we had a fairly big brushfire up in the Mui-Wo Hills. A helicopter carrying a large bucket of water was dispatched to put out the fire, along with several fire engines. The helicopter, tail number B-HRN is a Eurocopter AS-332L2 Super Puma Mk2, owned by the Hong Hong government. More about this aircraft https://airport-data.com/aircraft/B-HRN
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Hong Kong Train Museum and Shatin
Wandered up to the Hong Kong Train museum, took a few snaps then went on to City One Shatin.
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Tai O
Today we took a ride to the strange seaside community of Tai O in Lantau, one of Hong Kong’s Outer Islands. It is famous for its stilt houses, canals and waterways, seafood and street snacks.
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Lantau and Po Lin Monastery
Today we enjoyed a pleasant cable car ride in Lantau, Hong Kong up to the Po Lin Monastery and the Giant Buddha.
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Kowloon and Central at night
Spent the late afternoon and evening wandering around Kowloon and Central, Hong Kong.
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Chueng Chau in the Outer Islands
Today we enjoyed a pleasant boat ride to Chueng Chau, in Hong Kong’s Outer Islands.
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Kowloon and Central Hong Kong
Just spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around Kowloon and Central, Hong Kong.
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Hong Kong in the Rain
Spent the afternoon wandering around Hong Kong in the rain. Despite the gloomy skies and the poor light, it still manages to be such a strangely photogenic city.
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Heathrow Airport
Just a few idle snaps as we wandered around Heathrow as we waited for our plane to Hong Kong.
