All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
As previously whined, I am entering an extended period of limited access to the internet and limited time to post. I will check as circumstance allows but it will be inadequate. I’ll catch up at night and try to provide content but I predict quantity and quality will suffer.
Apologies from the management. On with the show!
Well, I couldn’t resist. I went on Sony’s website and found the pages with the firmware update (4.00). But upon reading the instructions I found out that since my firmware was at version 1.01, I had to first update my camera to version 1.05 before updating to version 4.00. The warning said that if I went straight to 4.00 it would cause an error and then I wouldn’t be able to fix the problem. Well, the camera gods are a jealous bunch and defying them is very unwise so along with many a grumble and even a few mumbles I went through the procedure twice.
1.01 to 1.05
1.05 to 4.00
And what do you know? It really worked. The drive menu had new options that included focus bracketing. After following the instructions from a YouTube video, I was able to quickly and easily run a quick bracket on a preserved tarantula spider specimen and send it through my focus stacking program (Affinity Photo) and, voila, edge to edge sharpness.
Now this was just a quick test. I had a kid’s party starting and barely got the files stacked before I had to go referee grandkids for Camera Girl. But it was definitely a proof of concept and I can see how this will work for even some field shots. Definitely usable for macro shots of plants like mushrooms and such and even for resting or sedate creatures like resting dragonflies and such. Of course, butterflies are out of the question. But a little testing is bound to bring up other applications.
So, all in all, this is an amazing surprise from Sony. Kudos to them for hearing my cries in the wilderness. Bravo, gentlemen, bravo.
My intention is that the main village where the insurrection started shall be burnt, and that thirty of the ringleaders shall be shot; an impressive example is needed to contain the hatred of the peasantry and of that soldiery. If you have not yet made an example, let there be one without delay… Let not the month pass without the principal village, borough, or small town which gave the signal for the insurrection being burned, and a large number of individuals being shot… Traces must be left in the cantons which have rebelled.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Ah, the calm before the storm. I have this weekend completely off before the next seventeen days of misery and isolation. So, I’ll enjoy these two days to the hilt and then, “abandon all hope ye who enter here.” For what it’s worth it seems like Trump is enjoying himself a lot more than Kamala. Her cackling has diminished and her ranting seems to have replaced it. From everything I’ve heard she is a truly awful person that makes those around her miserable. If she loses, I wouldn’t be surprised if her marriage ends and many of her other connections to human society.
The latest “controversy” is that Democrat voters will be using the branding ,LA (get it, comma la) on their clothing to get around the restrictions against wearing the candidates’ names or images at the polling place. So, we’ve reached back to, I guess, kindergarten or at most grammar school in our tactics. What’s next, will the Democrats be telling “yo mamma” jokes?
Anyway, the weather around Dunwich has been remarkably mellow for this time of year. I understand we’re expected to have a string of three or four 75-degree days ending on Tuesday. That’s phenomenal. But because I’ve gotten used to fall weather, it’s almost too warm for comfort.
I wrote that post about Sony adding focus bracketing to their firmware update for my A7IV camera. I intended to wait until after my captivity before updating the firmware but it’s killing me to not try it out. I think I’ll bite the bullet tomorrow morning. I have this dead luna moth that I found this summer and I’d love to play around with focus stacking it. Well, we’ll see. Tomorrow is a busy day. We have a kid’s birthday party coming up and I’m sure Camera Girl has a laundry list of honey-do’s lined up for me. And honestly there are several things I should be working on anyway. So even if I update the camera I may have to wait.
It should be interesting to see how the country changes regardless of who “wins” the election. I think there’s a growing cohort that realizes that something is very broken with our whole social order. The fragmentation now extends to a polarization by sex. Younger women and men are lining up in opposition to each other philosophically. I really do believe we are seeing the beginning of a permanent split. Basically, women who have accepted the new template for living for a career will not be having children. And that means that men will have to find wives who want to have children elsewhere. I guess mail order overseas brides will become more the rule than the exception and over time the cat ladies will die out. Well, that’s a solution of sorts.
The “October Viewing” movies has been fun for me but it’s gotten me thinking about what a monster is. Is it only freakish creatures like Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster or can it be a man like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates? Obviously, the actual humans are scarier because they really exist. When you hear about the things that Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer did to their victims you understand that inside they truly are monsters. So maybe creating fairy tale creatures like the movie monsters is a way of distracting ourselves from the true horrors that we don’t want to contemplate. But our society has grown up and now we prefer to scare ourselves with realistic monsters. I remember when I read Thomas Harris’s “Red Dragon” back in the 1980’s it struck me as an interesting crime story and nothing more. But when I thought about the way that that the murderer selected his victim families by working in a photo lab that developed family home movies, it chilled me to the core. If a motivated psychopath could select his victims without any direct connection to him then how could anyone hope to protect his family from this random agent of horrifying destruction? Basically, you can’t. Random chance rules all of our lives. That I found horrifying. So maybe I should include “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs” in my October Viewings. Or maybe that would take away some of the fun. Well, October is waning I better hurry up and make up my mind. What do you folks think?
I do not see in religion the mystery of the incarnation, but the mystery of the social order; religion attaches to heaven an idea of equality that stops the rich from being massacred by the poor.
Napoleon Bonaparte
At this point I considered attaching a video of the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah. I had been waiting and hoping and praying that Sony would add focus bracketing to my Sony A7 IV camera by a firmware update but had more or less given up.
They did it! Well, they made the update but I haven’t updated my camera yet.
But I watched the video below and did a quick jig around my house and am now calming down enough to type this post.
Ah hell, let’s add the Hallelujahs!
TomD replied:
Really!!??
I’ve been wanting focus bracketing for years! Years ago, FB was a relatively expensive windows or apple program and you had to shoot with the camera tethered to a computer. What a PIA.
I’m gonna update right now.
It can immediately help with a number of different types of shots I do. Aircraft in a museum for example. Museums are crowded with a constant problem of subject isolation. Far enough out to get the entire plane in the shot and there is a LOT of stuff competing for attention. Close enough with a wide angle and there is the depth of field problem.
photog replied:
I had to do two updates. First I had to go from version 1.01 to 1.05. Then 1.05 to 4.00. But it worked. I’ll load up the trial macro focus bracket soon. It’s much easier than the damn tether.
It’s getting close to midnight and I just got home a little while ago. So, I’ll cudgel my brains for a few minutes and come up with an idea. Napoleon Bonaparte is the author of the quote of the day (in fact I’ve got a solid month of them together). And if we look at his era there are some things to think about. Napoleon came into prominence because a great nation was reduced to chaos by a popular rebellion. The existing regime foundered and the revolutionary conquerors were totally inept and allowed their movement to spin completely out of control and turn to anarchy.
Well, that’s not where we are now. But there is a regime running our country that seems to be either unaware of or unconcerned by the impoverishing of the American middle class. And so far, this regime has suffered essentially no ill effects from this policy. Our elites and their lackeys are doing great. Their material condition has never been better. But I think they underestimate the changes that will occur if the Unted States become Brazil. I think they assume that things like a stable currency and the personal safety of wealthy people can exist under the conditions they are fostering. I think if they allow the devolution of the country to continue the way it is currently going that many of the advantages of the American system will quite simply disappear.
I was thinking about Friday’s quote of the day, “Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power.” They are encouraging anarchy. But they don’t have a way to insulate themselves from the results of anarchy, not in the last resort. If we continue to slide toward lawlessness, places like Malibu and Martha’s Vineyard will just be places for organized gangs to swoop down on and pillage. And what happens when the Mexican kidnapping gangs start snatching the children of millionaires and billionaires? What if they snatch the grandchildren of George Soros? Will his defund the police prosecutors turn around and beg the cops to go back to doing their jobs? Well, even if they wanted to, once things slide too far, it would take draconian methods to fix things again.
And that’s where I was going with this discussion. Basically, if the elites let things go too far, then the result will probably be a strong man. He probably won’t be as brilliant a general as Napoleon. But he will have to be quite ruthless. How something like that ends up is usually not good. When a democracy or a republic turns into a despotism it doesn’t typically go back again. How all of that would go for us is not clear to me. At this point I’m not particularly optimistic to say the least. The rapid deterioration over the last twenty years has been so bad that I wouldn’t be surprised that a Harris presidency might be the catalyst that initiates the collapse.
Well, that’s a cheery thought here in the depths of the night. But this is what happens when I have to work too late. It encourages black moods. Tomorrow will be better. I have this whole weekend off before the two weeks of enslavement finally engulfs me on Monday. Well, good night.
Commerce unites men and makes them; therefore it is fatal to despotic power.
Napoleon Bonaparte