Category: TomD

Guest Contributor TomD’s Content

Guest Contributor – TomD – 03JUL2023 – Sony Lens Options

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD , , , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

DSC03736.jpg
DSC03736.jpg

We’ve both use the same camera body but your lens collection tends to the telephoto side compared to mine. I was left totally without anything longer that 105 mm when I moved to the A7IV and found that my old A mount 70-300 would become pure manual focus, even with the latest Sony adapter.

I grew up with manual focus but, back them, cameras had a split image focusing system to tell you when you were in focus. That consisted of twisting the focus ring while looking through the viewfinder until the upper and lower parts of the image perfectly aligned. Looking thorough the old Sony lens in the new body gave me no focusing information at all. So, bleah to that.

I thought about getting a new e mount version of the same lens but I thought $1300 a bit much for as little as I use long telephoto. But, I concluded, paying 40% of that figure for the Tamron version, which had good ratings, to be an acceptable bet.

Below is a shot of a female Cardinal that I photoed in my yard this AM at a range of around 70 feet. Even at 300 mm, this is a big crop.

Quick aside: The split image focus system is a spinoff originally derived from the Dreadnought era Naval gunnery optical rangefinders that prevailed in all the worlds navys in the until the advent of radar ranging during WWII.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 17JUN2023 – The Converged Corporation

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

To me it’s a mystery, the nature of the process by which a publicly traded corporation allows their prime directive to morph from creating and marketing the best products possible under whatever economic constraints and generating a profit for the owners to social justice, profit be damned. It doesn’t make sense from the corporation’s viewpoint.

The only analogy that I can think of is when a virus invade a host and, infecting the cells, co-opts the machinery of the cells to the purposes of the virus with no allowance for the continued health or, indeed, continued existence of the host.

Actually, an accurate analogy, I think. (One more word beginning with a and I could have had a straight.)

Guest Contributor – TomD – 30MAR2023 – It Never Ends

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

DSC2881.jpg
DSC2881.jpg

The problem for the Dims is they don’t know when to stop, anything.

Their first big win, in the 60’s, Civil Rights, was passed as “equal rights for everyone”. The nation was fine with that but it has evolved into permanent “affirmative action”, hard quotas, reverse racism and actual persecution of whites.

After several decades of gun “safety” laws, it has finally reached the point that we were promised would never be be reached: the current dominant political party proposing outright confiscation.

God knows where this “climate change” thing is going to end up.

I do believe that this current trans mania just beats anything that has ever happened before. The nation evolved to “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the 90’s (I think). Everyone was cool with that. Later, there was a bit of trepidation over gay marriage. Then it evolved further to the persecution of people refusing services to openly gay couples. But who could have anticipated the shrieking insanity it has become today, the 57 genders, gender change by the need statement of what you are today. Drag queens performing school sponsered sex shows for grammar school children. The government performing “sex change” butchery on per-pubescent children without the parents knowledge or consent. The domination of womens sports by men who self proclaimed themselves women, on this day anyway.

If this isn’t a present day recreation of Sodom and Gomorrah, I don’t know what else it could possibly be. A society this sick needs to heal itself or go down.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 25MAR2023 – Scientific American Goes Woke

photog Current Events, Fake Science, Guest Contributors, TomD , ,

Did a quick google (Laura Helmuth) and found she’s chief editor of Scientific American. That would be hard to believe if SA hadn’t been totally co-opted 20 or so years ago. I hate it too, I subscribed to SA for decades and absolutely devoured every issue. I remember the issue with the article on the Supernova of 1987 in the Great Crab Nebula. Whoever wrote it did a great job, it was exciting, mesmerizing, illuminating. Back then, the basis of the magazine was purely science

I watched politics and what is now called wokeism creep in. There was an editor change, don’t remember the names now, but that opened the gates. SA hired a new columnist (again don’t remember the name), who on his 2nd column, stated flatly that the verdict of history was now in and the political organizing system of the future was clear and that was socialism.

Oh, yeah? That was it for SA for me. Now you don’t know if any particular article is true or an outright lie intended to mislead you to believe in some woke bulls***t.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 26JAN2023 – Life on the Florida Panhandle – Part 1

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

I live on the Florida Panhandle. I think the area is ideologically closer to being a part of Alabama than the peninsula. Add to that the heavy military, ex-military presence and relatively sparse Southern indigenous population and we’re essentially our own little time capsule.

There are damn few weirdos here to self expel, though, if they ask, we’d be happy to help.

My nearest neighbor, who lived a few hundred yards away, died a few weeks ago. He was, like me, an ex-Marine, A Sergeant Major (E-9) but he had 24 years in compared to my pitiful 4.You can’t imagine how impressive a real USMC Sergeant Major is. They are disciplined, dedicated, controlled, focused, steady and composed. Marines call it squared away. Everything we should aspire to be but almost all of us fail in some or several aspects. He had a flagpole in front of his house and played reveille and taps at appropriate times and ran the Colors up and down with appropriate ceremony EVERY day. You don’t see that in Manhattan.

 

Update:

Comment from Ed Brault

Reminds me of this great short:Reveille.
https://youtu.be/YyZ9b4My6NUhttps://youtu.be/YyZ9b4My6NU

 

Guest Contributor – TomD – 10JAN2023 – A Civil Engineering Perspective

photog Guest Contributors, Science, TomD , , , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

I’m a Civil Engineer specializing in structural for most of my career. For almost all in-ground concrete installations, the nature and strength of the subgrade is more important than the strength of the concrete. Subgrade means whatever the concrete is sitting on. In other words, no matter how strong the concrete or asphalt, it isn’t any stronger than what it is bearing on.

I’ve never been associated with residential work but in commercial, government,, etc. work, testing the subgrade is very important. It should be to you too. If you’re spending a lot of money on asphalt or concrete in a non-controlled environment, for your own sake. please call a local geotech outftit, explain your circumstance, and get a proposal.

If you’re spending couple to several 10’s of thousands, please spend a couple of hundred ensuring it doesn’t fail in a year or two.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 07JAN2023 – Republican House

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

It’s over now but I think the whole circus has actually been a net positive. The worst thing that could have happened yet another round of Democratic Lite policies from the House. We’ve seen a number of those and just look at where they got us.

Maybe, just maybe this will lead not just to a veto of the egregious Dim policies but also a showcase of policies desperately needed by the country even if not enacted for now.

Also, someone has to look hard at Biden to determine if he is, as I suspect, wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party. And the Dims simply won’t do it.

The Dims have long concluded that the Constitution, freedom, financial sanity, rational policies, the betterment of the nation all be damned, that the true brass ring is raw power achieved by any means. Anything that hinders their ultimate achievement of that goal is a plus.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 31OCT2022 – Photo

photog Guest Contributors, Photography, TomD ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

Arlington.jpg
Arlington.jpg

It’s now been very close to a year since we ditched our Sony A7III’s and procured Sony A7IV camera.

As a now pushing 2 decade user of Sony Cameras, starting with the A100 in 2005, I was used to each subsequent camera generation being a huge improvement over the preceding in at least several important aspects. That is until the A7III to A7IV jump. Other than the sensor resolution change from 24 to 33 megapixels, the rest of the differences seem that they were closer to a firmware update than a generational change. And, frankly, I’m not at all certain that my image quality has changed much at all over the last several generations.

I’m now hearing rumors of the Sony A7V but I’m pretty sure I won’t be an early adopter.

I think the Sony that I liked the most was the small APS-C Sony A-6300. It was so small that I could carry it anywhere and you would have had to study long and hard to tell the difference between than camera’s images and the images from it’s much larger brothers. It did give up a LOT in low light though.

In 45 years of semi-serious photography starting with a early 70’s Nikon F1, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions about the order of importance of the various elements to the system that, combined, make a good photograph:

1: The photographer (at least 80% right there)
2: Lens
3: Camera body
3: (tie) The rest of the equipment, filters, tripods, etc.

Though this is hard to admit for an engineer, I question the extent that technical merit even plays in a good photo. Below is a shot that I took 15 years ago standing at my Fathers grave at Arlington National the day after my mother’s body was added.