Month: August 2021

Who Are We Waiting For?

photog Current Events

Who is Real America waiting for?  I’ve been saying for a while that we need someone who’s smart and brave.  I’ve been trying to imagine what that looks like.  I think what it will look like is someone who figures out how to beat the FBI and the White House.  It’s someone who will trigger the FBI to come after him and come up empty.  He’ll do something they don’t like and they’ll get a court to give them a warrant and they’ll come to get him and they won’t be able to.

And I’m trying to think how that happens.  He can’t be a governor or a sheriff or anything they can go after because they will.  They’ll go after family to get at the man.  That’s what they did to General Flynn.  He’s going to have no family that they know of.  Maybe he won’t have a name.  Or at least not a real name.  He’s going to have to be good at disappearing.  But he’s also going to have to take action from time to time.  And those actions are going to be ones that rally the people.  Maybe he’ll attack an Antifa or BLM riot.  Not necessarily a violent attack, in fact something that humiliates them would be even better than a violent attack.  Maybe some kind of foul-smelling glue that will take days to remove would be the best result.  The point would be to disrupt and demoralize them.  Doing that would give our side a win.  But the bigger win is if they can’t punish the perpetrator.  He needs to remain at large to do it again somewhere else in some other way.

What we need is some kind of Robin Hood who hits the bad guys where it hurts but doesn’t pay the consequences.  The ultimate would be if he could hack the intel services and publish the most embarrassing information to discredit people like Comey and Brennan and Clapper.  Or better yet, people like Biden and Obama.  That would do our enemies great harm and provide us with a morale boost.

So, let’s review.  I’m looking for a Robin Hood working for our side.  Do I really think anything like this will happen?  No, not really.  What we’ll have to settle for is someone like Ron DeSantis who will have to stand up to the White House and the Justice Department and risk being targeted by them.  They’re already unleashing all the media and bureaucratic minions they can to attack him for all the good he’s doing.  They’ll try to accuse him of endangering Floridians because he won’t mandate masks and vaccines.  They may even try to blockade his state using the airlines and other useful idiots who can make trouble for Florida.  Will he have to give in?  Let’s hope not.  Because if he can resist long enough for the COVID spike to subside Biden is going to look stupid again and DeSantis will look like a hero.

So, what I’d like to see is Robin Hood fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham and Price John and rallying the Saxons.  But I’ll settle for a politician who has the smarts and the guts to figure out a strategy that makes the Biden Administration look like the slimy crooks that they really are.  Setting a precedent by winning a staring contest with Washington is what we need.

Testing the Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro and Sony 135mm f\1.8 A-Mount Lenses with Sony LA-EA5 Adapter on  Sony A7R IV Camera – Part 3 – Tracking

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These are still just early results but I am happy to say that the tracking and eye autofocus does work with the motorless A-Mount lenses.  The limitations of these lenses is the speed of the autofocus.  In other words for a slow moving target like a walking human or a relatively slow moving target like a hummingbird moving in a small area around a food source like a feeder or a flower bush the camera will track the target quite well.

But when I had Camera Girl throw a ball to Larold across the lawn I couldn’t even come close to keeping him in the viewfinder.  That of course is my own fault.  I lack the tracking skill to keep the running dog in front of me.  He’s just too damn fast for me.

But I’ll think up some better scenario to test the tracking algorithm.  The other part of the test is to see whether the lens could autofocus fast enough to keep the target in focus.  This has yet to be answered.  I’ll look at the results today and see what I find.

09AUG2021 – OCF Update – Photo Mania

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I beg the indulgence of the non-photographers in the audience as I spend an inordinate amount of time this week playing around with the camera rental equipment I am testing out.  I am performing due diligence on the news of the day but in this silly season a lot of it is the same old, same old.

Yes the Republicans are preparing to fold like a cheap suit and allow the Dems to pass horrendously awful legislation.  Yes, everyone talks about how awful Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom are as governors but they’ll elect guys just like them next time around.  Yes the vaccine no longer prevents COVID but we must blame non-vaxxers for preferring to skip it.  Yes, the citizens of large cities are recoiling in horror at the unending violent crime wave that has turned their neighborhoods into shooting galleries but they’ll vote for the next Lori Lightfoot or Bill de Blasio as soon as a Republican jails all the murderers for them.  Really just the same old thing.

The big news of the day is Camera Girl was cleaning the pool and she found an American Giant Millipede at the bottom of the pool still alive.  She has rescued it and set it up in a cage and Princess Sack-of-Potatoes has named it Milly.  Ah, just what we needed another exotic pet.  At least I’ll follow up with some photos at some point.

So I will try to put together some meaningful non-photographic content today but please bear with me while I use my rental time productively.  And if the zombie apocalypse does occur today at least I’ll have camera in hand to document it.

Testing the Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro and Sony 135mm f\1.8 A-Mount Lenses with Sony LA-EA5 Adapter on  Sony A7R IV Camera – Part 2 – First Impressions

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I took the camera out yesterday and played around with the 200mm macro.  The A7R IVA has a very nice viewfinder but what I doscovered was that A-mount lenses on the LA-EA5 are not considered eligible lenses to use a feature called “AF in Focus Mag.”  This feature allows you to autofocus while in a magnified view and it is a fantastic feature for doing macro work.  Not having this feature with the 200mm macro is a sore disappointment.  I didn’t anticipate this exclusion.  Damn you Sony!  But that being said, I am going to see if I can use animal eye AF to compensate for this.

With respect to general performance the autofocus speed is acceptable.  And in the short time I’ve tested it, the accuracy of the focus seems quite good.  The A7R IVA camera is relatively close to my A7 III in action and function so there aren’t too many things to get used to.  Today, if the weather holds out, I want to try a running dog focus tracking experiment.  Harry (or Larold as he’s been nicknamed by my oldest grandson) is our younger pointer and he is incredibly fast.  I’m going to try and track him as he sprints across the front lawn.  I think I read that tracking doesn’t work with Animal EYE AF.  This seems strane so I’ll try it both ways, animal and human eye AF.  But even if the tracking is just on his head I think it will be an interesting experiment.

I also want to try out eye AF on insects and hummingbirds.  Hummingbirds will especially benefit from the tracking function.  Losing focus on a hummingbird with a macro lens and its very long focus windup usually means a costly time delay in getting the set up again.  And believe it or not I’ve never used tracking on hummingbirds before with my normal lenses and camera even though they are available.  When you’re set in your ways you can miss a lot of useful opportunities.  I’ve been reminded of that recently but this one really got me thinking.  I have to go over the A7 III’s capabilities and see what else I’m missing out on.

 

Stay tuned.  Much work to do.

 

 

08AUG2021 – OCF Update – This’N’That

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So the big news is I’ll be busy testing out my A-Mount lenses on the LA-EA5 adapter.  But I’ll keep up with what’s going on in the world.

The two headlines that caught my eye this morning are:

2 Chicago police officers shot, 1 killed in West Englewood shooting

I watched the clip and listened to pop-eyed Lori Lightfoot emoting for the shot cops.  Really kind of hard to believe she has the best interests of the police officers or the wider public in mind.  I will say she seems burnt out.  I doubt she runs for re-election.  Not that anyone would elect her at this point.  She is the poster child for a law and order rebound in Chicago’s future.  But maybe I’m wrong.  The numbers at this point may be for the gangs to run Chicago.  And I say let them have it.  Anyone who stays in the big cities has a death wish.

NBC sees ‘worst case scenario’ as Olympics ratings plunge amid ‘woke’ protests

I was reading the comments and the overwhelming majority opinion is that NBC and the sponsors got exactly what they deserved.  Whoever is still watching the “Hate America” Olympics is the woke sports viewer.  Apparently they’re not a big enough crowd for money to be made by sponsors and advertisers.  Good.  Come back when you can make believe you love America.  But at that point the number of suckers will be a pretty small number.  They’ve killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.  Now they can pound sand.

Well, the COVID harpies are pushing for vaccine passports and masks again.  They’ll be torturing small children going to school this year.  So far they haven’t forced the grocery stores and retail stores to force their patrons to either prove they’re vaccinated and/or wear a mask but it’s probably in the cards.

But I just attended a family get together yesterday and despite the nervousness of certain folks we didn’t have any mask nonsense or even waste any time talking about it.  Hopefully we’re past all that at this point.

Well, off to do some camera work.  Stay tuned.