I’ve done a LOT of studio type macro. If you want the easy way to do macro shots its with a lighting setup. I’ll attach a shot of my light box setup below. BTW: Important that the lights be 5000 kelvin color temp (daylight).
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Light box (above). That’s my old Sony A850 on the tripod. I build the light holding framework around the box with PVC tubing. I’ll also post a shot of what I was mostly doing.
A Mexican coin shot using the light box. One reason straight on lighting alone won’t work is that it won’t create the shadowing that defines the shot.
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Speaking of cameras, I’m about to acquire another body. It’s been about 6, maybe more, years since I gave my ASPC Sony a6300 to my wife and went entirely to full frame, full sized cameras. When it comes to photographic quality, you can’t beat them, but they lack in one really important respect: full frame, full sized cameras are too big and too expensive to carry constantly. I kept the A6300 with a Zeiss 16-70 f4 with me almost all the time. It’s small enough to fit in a pocket or console and be available. It wasn’t exactly cheap but but if it was lost, stolen or broken, it wouldn’t be like the $5K-$6K hit for one of my full frame bodies + a Sony GM series lens. And, frankly, you would would have to look very hard to tell the difference between most shots from my 6000 series cameras and the full frame cameras.
A significant portion of my favorite shots have been serendipitous.
The wife is attached to the 6300 so I’m about to get a newer A6600 for less that a thousand and I already have the big investment, the lens selection in hand.
I think it was Newt Gingrich (I think) who today published an article stating that he would have also voted that way. Wondering about the rational, I meant to go back to read it but got side tracked.
The thought of this devastating invasion purposefully brought on by the Federal Gov in defiance of law, reality and logic is bizarre. And the thought that efforts to lessen the invasion are being defeated by the very agency tasked with defending the border is—–it is so far beyond the bounds that I literally don’t have the words to express my dismay.
Not just Weimar Republic though they are the most famous if not the most egregious example.
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Zimbabwe for example. Attached is a photo of the $100 trillion dollar Zimbabwean bill with the dubious distinction of being the largest denomination bill in human history.
I bought a number of these bills for about dollar and some each in around 2009. I gave them away as gag gifts. Amazingly, a couple of years ago I happened to find that the $100 trillion dollar notes had become rare and expensive. I checked a couple of minutes ago and found them selling in the $100 to $500 dollar (US) range with some higher. I gave about 30 of these things away. The joke is on me.
Adding to the irony, if I sold the notes on the market now, the US Gov would take 25% of my profit away in the form of capital gains tax on collectables. I’m getting a headache trying to think of all the ironies wrapped up in that.
Some outfit in Germany (no irony there) printed these notes for the Zimbabwean government, so they are of substantial quality.
“Speaking of totem poles” As my mother used to say when faced with a comment from out of the blue.
“or worthless ducats that cannot be exchanged for anything meaningful” Some ducats can be exchanged for quite a lot. This is a 4 Ducat Franz Joseph gold coin from my collection
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On the next post is my take on a silver proof version of the Florida State US quarter and a really amusing silver Mexican coin.
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I’ve got several thousand shots of different coins like that.
Amusing, but about 15 years ago, APMEX, the largest online supplier of precious metal products tried to hire me as their product photographer but I was already employed as a Civil Engineer.
This photo was purchased by a Mexican Publisher for inclusion in a Mexican elementary school level arithmetic text book.
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If you look around the perimeter it shows the Mayan counting system. Base 5 apparently but humorously, they assign minor deities to each number.
I’ve got a Mexican contact for trading interesting stuff back and forth.
Reports of Disney’s Death Are (Not?) an Exaggeration
Stephen Green | 5:11 PM on November 27, 2023
As Disney’s two-time CEO Bob Iger prepares to host the company’s annual town hall on Tuesday to provide “hints or guidance for what the next phase of ‘building’ will bring after the problem-solving phase,” it’s time to ask if Iger is able “to ‘quiet things down’ after years of culture wars.”
The first quote comes from a Hollywood Reporter item on Monday detailing the company’s Wall Street woes. Traders and managers will be watching Iger on Tuesday for “possible color, body language or even outright updates on various topics,” ranging from the company’s ongoing series of box office flops to troubles at their fabled theme parks.
The second quote is courtesy of Jonathan Turley. His Monday column — almost in time for Adam Smith’s 300th birthday — shows how Smith’s “invisible hand” has undone the company’s woke agenda. Disney is now “negatively associated with activism by a significant number of consumers,” Turley writes, and is “even reporting a decline in licensing revenue from products associated with Star Wars, Frozen, Toy Story and Mickey and Friends — iconic and once-unassailable corporate images.”
“Wish” is Disney’s latest animated effort that isn’t a sequel or reboot and it opened over the long Thanksgiving weekend to middling reviews and worse box office sales. Well, not entirely not a reboot — one of the characters is the glowy Star, as in Pinocchio’s “When You Wish Upon A Star.” “Wish” looks to be another big money-loser in a yearlong series of them, including “Indiana Jones and the Whatever McGuffin,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” the live-action Little Mermaid, and most recently, “The Marvels.”
The Disney+ streaming service is losing money and eyeballs. Impressions — the streaming measure of viewership — is down 14% from last year, the company says.
The worst news is that Disney’s intellectual properties — the company’s seed corn for future growth — are in terrible shape.
The good news is that $7.5 billion in cost-cutting measures have restored some sense to the company’s balance sheet. The bad news is that the maintenance-heavy Disney World and Disney Land are reportedly looking a little worse for wear. Or as Wall Street’s Jamie Lumley warned, “As the business looks to slash costs and make streaming profitable, there are sure to be concerns about cutting too deep and impacting the business going forward.”
But the company can’t cut its way to health. It needs to start selling tickets again to the kinds of movies and theme park experiences people expect when they see the Disney label.
Walt Disney and his brother Roy were jealous guardians of the Disney name and reputation. Given so many more recent changes, this seems like much longer ago than 1983, but I’m reminded of “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” It was considered a Very Big Deal at the time when Disney produced a Ray Bradbury film with such a dark mood and storyline. At the time — Walt had died and Roy was no longer involved in day-to-day operations — Disney was looking to branch out from family fare like the Herbie movies and “Pete’s Dragon.”
Results were mixed at best, and I’m being overly generous.
It took a 1984 hostile takeover attempt and a long-term recovery plan courtesy of incoming CEO Michael Eisner to restore Disney’s luster. Eisner understood Disney’s creative strength — and it wasn’t in jumping on the Star Wars bandwagon with “The Black Hole,” or another cheesy Love Bug movie.
It was in getting back to classic animation with “The Little Mermaid,” and in recognizing similar strength in the fledgling Pixar Animation Studios.
Iger can cut costs but, in the end, what he needs to do is remember what the Disney brand means — and work as furiously to restore it as Eisner did, and as Walt and Roy used to work to protect it.
Unless we see evidence of that in Tuesday’s town hall, Disney shares might be up a bit on Wall Street’s hopes but I ain’t buying.
I’m way out of the way this time on the Panhandle. But we get our share.
Ivan in 2004 was a class 5 as it was approaching but hit as a 4. Damn near destroyed the area. A 20 something foot storm surge, It destroyed the multi-mile long I-10 bridge over Pensacola Bay and around 70% of the remaining buildings had blue tarp roofs for years.
I had a fishing boat that I kept on base at NAS Pensacola. I was over a month later before anyone could get on base. Going over the bridge to the base, we saw 100’s of boats just everywhere, beached, capsized, holed, sunken, I was pretty sure it insurance time. Got to the marina, which was also an RV storage yard, all junked at this point. I found my boat in the RV area still sorta attached to the trailer. It hadn’t drifted off to join the boat graveyard in the bay because the lower unit on one of the motors had jammed through and wedged in the wall of a big RV that had somehow stayed in place.
Another big one hit the following year but there was nothing other than the odd tropical storm until 2020 when one came through and destroyed a good portion of the Pensacola to Gulf Breeze bay bridge. Believe me, that was a BIG deal cutting the metro area in half for 1-1/2 years until they got a couple of lanes. Every one had to do a almost 40 mile detour.
Down here, it doesn’t have to be a hurricane or tropical storm. Spring 2014, we had 25 inches of rain in an 8 hour period. It was the freaking apocalypse. Damage was still being repaired in 2020.
Camera Girl and I journey today to the southernmost border of New England where the smoldering ashes of what was once Gotham City color the horizon with a somber palette. But we will be celebrating family and life and all that stuff. This week will be Camera Girl’s greatest challenge. She will be besieged by teeming hordes of berserk descendants desperately trying to fend off thoughts of the impending school year.
It will take all her powers to occupy these desperate young’uns and divert their attention from the impending horror. Of course it will really help if somehow we can avoid torrential rains for the week. That will provide us with so many more options for activities than being stuck in the house with the boob tube and my feeble wits.
But once the week is complete, it really will be fall. And it’s been a very strange summer. So much rain and so little sun has destroyed the vegetable garden. Other than some tomatoes and what looks to be a decent crop of eggplants it has been a disaster. I think we’ve gotten one zucchini and so far no butternut squash. And while we’ve gotten a few red razzberries from the plants I put in last year and the plants have increased and spread, I can hardly say they have been a success yet.
And as far as the blueberries, whereas I managed to get a few handfuls of berries last year, this year the birds perfected their technique of picking the fruit precisely before I myself judged them ripe enough to eat. And it was a bumper crop. I guess if I’m really serious about eating any of this fruit I’ll have to start using netting over the plants. Who am I kidding? I’m too lazy to do that.
And likewise, the rain put a serious dent into the flowers in the yard. The butterfly bush died back to the ground because of the lack of snow cover during the coldest part of the winter. It sprouted from the roots eventually but was a mere shadow of its size and bloomed very late. And many other plants were late and stunted. The only pleasant surprise was the Inula helenium (elecampane) that I put in last year. The stalks were seven feet tall and there were plenty of bright yellow flowers.
Also there were very few butterflies this year. Probably the sparse snow cover again. Well, complaining won’t do any good so best to just move on. I’ll just chalk it up to experience and hope that this year we get more snow. Wait, more snow? What am I saying? Oh well.
So fall in Dunwich is a busy time for me. We’ll be pretending to re-elect First Selectman Cthulhu which is always a painful process involving the loss of several bureaucrats in his entourage when he becomes aggravated and therefore hungry. My part in the process is also, let us say, delicate. I’m required by tradition and statute to second the motion for his unanimous re-election by acclaim. If I hesitate by more than a split second after the original motion is exclaimed my fate will be sealed. Therefore I have perfected the “echo method.” As the motion is being spoken I echo the words coming out of his mouth almost simultaneously. It sort of sounds like that scene in the movie “Pride of the Yankees” where Gary Cooper is saying, “But today … today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” And so I can keep each word going just that little time extra needed to detect the last word and begin my sentence without any noticeable pause. Actually quite ingenious. It’s quite remarkable what fear can do for your IQ.
Well, it’s time to get going. The sun is shining and nothing has burned down or exploded in the news yet so I can wish everyone a nice day with at least the hope that it’s possible. Adios amigos.
Updates
Bigus Macus
It was down in the mid-sixties with low humidity this morning in Hampton Roads. It will be hotter tomorrow, but I’m ready for Autumn to start. I’m getting the fireplace cleaned and inspected this week and I need to cover the firewood for the start of the season.
TomD
Meanwhile, down here in the Florida Panhandle, fall hasn’t yet appeared on the distant horizon as we’re looking at a white hot week: in the 100’s with saturating humidity. It has been like this for a month, there is a big and stable high pressure system camped out in the middle of the country.
What we need is a tropical storm to come through and bust this weather stasis up. A similar pattern seems common in late summer and will just stay until pushed out by a big system.
Unlike California, tropical storms are common enough down here as to not overly upset us.
A few years ago, I decided to see what it would be like to ride my road bike (bicycle) in a tropical storm (wind only at that time). At one place where there’s about a 100’+ 5% grade hill to climb, the wind was pushing me up the hill at over 20 mph.
I find myself gravitating to nature photography. My “long” lens used to be a Sony G 70-300, A mount that worked (via adapter) with all my previous E mount Sony cameras.A supurb lens. Until I got to the A7IV series, that is, same camera as yours.
I tried to replace it with a Tamron 70-300 but the image is missing something. The Tamron does workman like images, see image below, but it is missing the “pop”, I don’t know how to describe it, the something special that I got with the Sony. I go back through my photos and am really surprised at how many of my very best came from that lens.
I’m now lusting for the very new, now really released yet but heavily reviewed Sony 70-200 F4 GII lens. Apparently it also takes incredible images through a 2x converter or I could also shoot it through my ASP-C sensor A6400, which would change it to a 105-350 mm in case I need something taller. It seems to have the same, how do you say, ‘glow” as my 10-year-old lens does/did.
In the meantime, my Tamron is sitting dejected over in the corner saying, “What am I, chopped liver?” No, actually pretty damned good for the price but when you’re reaching for the stars—–
Tamron Shots below
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Pretty good lenses don’t have to cost a lot. Here’s a 30mm f2.8 Sigma on my Sony A6400.
