Pass the Paschal Lamb

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,

Well, Easter has arrived and Camera Girl is killing the fatted calf (well, she’s serving beef anyway).  She’s going all out and in addition to the roast beast there will be lamb and a pasta course with the requisite meatballs and sausage, and various other paschal delicacies like stuffed mushrooms, rice balls and so forth.  So that means we’ll be stuffed to the gills by the time dessert is served.  She’s serving four different homemade cakes and various ice cream flavors along with Klondike Bars which are an especial favorite of several individuals (including me!).

All of this food will incapacitate some of the attendees (including me!).  Probably the girls will avoid the worst ravages as they are more moderate in their grazing and sluicing habits.  Whereas all three generations of men will be fighting over possession of the recliners in the living room to better accommodate their bulging stomachs and comatose brains.  I don’t assume there will be any great demand for movies from this tranquilized crowd but just in case I’m trying to decide what classic cinema I should have queued up for their viewing pleasure.  I think when I was a kid the choices were “The Ten Commandments,” “Ben Hur” or “The Wizard of Oz.”  Now “Ben Hur” is easily lined up with Easter.  “The Ten Commandments” also is linked since the Last Supper occurred on Passover and the movie chronicles the occasion of the first Passover.

But exactly what is the link between Easter and “The Wizard of Oz?”  I guess back in the 1960s the television networks must have had to pay top dollar to air that children’s favorite and they must have thought it would seem even more special if it happened when families gathered for a holiday.  I guess I can continue the tradition this year.  Well, unless the kids stage an insurrection and demand some vapid modern show.

Of course I could go another direction altogether.  A double feature of mid-century science fiction (let’s say “Them!” and “The Thing from Another World”) or W. C. Fields’ “It’s a Gift” and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”  Both of these options would provide entertainment that greatly exceeds what would typically be found on the cable channels today.

But maybe what we should do instead is even more revolutionary.  Maybe we should sit around and talk.  After all, how often does the family all get together in one place and find out how we’re all doing?  There’s a lot going on in the family.  Businesses are being started, students are entering the work force.  There’s even a romance that will be represented at the table I believe.  That’s a lot to discuss.  Maybe that’s what we should do.  After all, pretty soon those finishing school will start dispersing far and wide and since I’m getting up there who knows how many more times, we’ll meet face to face.  So, I should take the opportunity to spend some time talking to them while I can.  I think that’s what I’ll do.  Let’s see how that works out.

Tom’s World – 04APR2026 – Photography – Depth of Field Preview

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

DOF-Preview
DOF-Preview

The picture I posted is of an old late 70’s era lens for a film camera. It looks a little grungy but I haven’t touched it in well over 20 years.

This lens has a feature that all lenses had at the time but not any more and I don’t know why. It is called “depth of field preview”. This is set up at f4. See the 2nd ring out from the body? It has the straight vertical orange line with the little 4, 8, 11, 16 on each side of the vertical. Notice that the lens is now focused between 10 and infinity (meters). Now look down at the 4’s on each side of the orange vertical. They show that the camera will be focused from around 10 meters to infinity. That explains your shot above.

The DOF preview also tells you that if you were shooting f16, you would be focused from roughly 4 meters to infinity.

To this day I miss this feature. But I guess that it requires too much thinking (read any) for today’s public.

UPDATE:

I should mention that this camera is a Canon AE 1 from sometime in the late 70’s. It was an auto exposure (AE) but you still got to set ISO and shutter speed, and not to mention focus vis a split image distance finder.

(Quick historical aside: split image was the principle optical range finding method for most naval gunnery prior to radar. If you’ve ever seen the zagged warship camouflage paint schemes from WWI and up to mid-war WWII, the purpose was to defeat or eliminate the effectiveness of split image range finding. It gives you no clear planes to match up.)

I had a main camera before the AE1, a Nikon F1, a pure manual camera though it did include a “match needle” for setting shutter and f stop. Before match needles, we had to carry a light meter on a cord around our necks. Things were definitely manual but that meant that you had to have an understanding of all of the elements involved and how they related.

I learned to shoot with my Dad’s single shot 1934 depression era .22 bolt action. No magazine. In order to shoot, you had to, open the bolt, take a single .22 round, insert it in the chamber. close the bolt, pull back the firing pin, aim and fire. Just like having to set all the elements of a photograph, this little production meant that the shooter had no instant backup and had to think about about what he was doing, and understand.

I remember trying to teach my stepson how to shoot with a Ruger 10-22, an autoloader. The 1 lesson was a disaster. With all the easy backup rounds, he had no motivation to absorb the elements that go into a successful shot and just start spraying to little effect. All further lessons until he was a fundamental shooter were with Dad’s old Winchester single shot. Or as I was later pounded into us in the Marine Corp, “sight alignment, trigger squeeze”. I already knew but I did qualify Expert using a M14.

Successful photography is a balancing lesson between a number of variables. Until you learn those variables, one by one and how they interrelate——–

An Honest Review

photog My Fiction, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy ,

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a few more reviews on Amazon for the “The Sniper.”  And today I got my first somewhat negative comments.  Take a look.


4.0 out of 5 stars Uneven political thriller good for a slow day

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2026

Format: Kindle

The Sniper is a good, but uneven political thriller.
It’s not particularly deep, but entertaining. I liked the plot. I liked most of the characters.
The lack of a star was in the author’s (and maybe the editor’s) lack of basic writing. While the beginning of the novel is a great premise, the lack of detail is astonishing. It’s like someone describing a video game, but just the broad strokes. I read for the details.
The other nitpicky thing is that the basics of prose dialogue is ignored entirely. An exchange between two characters is all one paragraph. And then there’s the commas (or lack thereof). It’s the classic of “Is it Thanksgiving or cannibalism?”
It’s a casual read. If you can read past the details, the general plot is pretty good.

 

Very interesting.

The Good:

  • The Sniper is a good … political thriller.
  • … entertaining. I liked the plot. I liked most of the characters.
  • … the beginning of the novel is a great premise
  • … the general plot is pretty good

The Bad:

  • … uneven
  • It’s not particularly deep
  • … the lack of detail is astonishing. It’s like someone describing a video game, but just the broad strokes. I read for the details.
  • If you can read past the details

The Ugly:

  • The other nitpicky thing is that the basics of prose dialogue is ignored entirely. An exchange between two characters is all one paragraph. And then there’s the commas (or lack thereof). It’s the classic of “Is it Thanksgiving or cannibalism?”

Yes, very interesting.  First of all, this is honest criticism.  This fellow doesn’t know me from Adam and he doesn’t owe me anything.  That’s valuable to someone who wants to know whether his writing is any good.  So, look at the things he likes; “entertaining. I liked the plot. I liked most of the characters.”  Those are the most important basics of a story.  That’s pretty good.

Look at the criticism; “uneven, not particularly deep, lack of details are astonishing.”  He wants more!  Okay, that’s a problem.  This reader probably wants lots more technical description.  So, in terms of the mining equipment and the technology for collapsing the earth under a city he wants the details.  Fair enough.  Well, there will be sequels and we can get that stuff fleshed out to satisfy the technical type.  But since this book was about Bogey and he wasn’t a technical guy, I left that stuff aside.  When Connors and Cutter get their stories, I’ll geek out on the details.  So that’s okay.

Now for the ugly, I’m guessing that the reviewer was an author or an editor himself.  I decided not to use a professional proofreader/editor for the book.  I felt comfortable with the level of standard English I could provide.  The reviewer is obviously very sensitive to the conventions of professional editing.  And that’s legitimate but I’m guessing a lot of my readers won’t be as sensitive to that level of editorial finish.

So, I’m pretty happy with that review.  I got an honest review and four out of five stars is pretty damn good news.  So, I’m hoping to get a bunch more reviews and who knows I might even get an honest 3 stars from someone.  I can take it.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 03APR2026 – Photo

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This was shot in the experimental Aircraft section of the Museum of the USAF.
Details of the shot are that it was shot on a Canon EOS Rebel using a 28 MM lens af F4 1/60th second exposure ISO 800 handheld

The view looks out from the Valkyrie Cafe. The large aircraft in the foreground is the last example of the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber. Also in the frame are the YF-12 (an interceptor variant of the SR71/A-12), two gemini capsules including the Air Force Blue Gemini prototype (never flown) 2 X-24 lifting bodies (famous from the opening sequence of 6 Million Dollar Man), and barely visible to the far right at the back is an X-15.
IMG_0062.JPG
I am a bit surprised that I got as much depth of field as I did at F4, but I was shooting in shutter priority mode as I didn’t think I could hand hold it much below 1/60th

 

Alone or Unique?

photog Current Events, Science , ,

There are several YouTube channels that use an AI generated voice and image of Richard Feynman (Feynman Reborn, Think Like Feynman, Physics with Feynman) to discuss scientific topics; physics, astronomy, technology, etc.).  Now this does seem a little weird.  Why use the AI simulation of a scientist whose heyday was eighty years ago?  But if you watch a few of them you realize that Feynman’s voice has a very natural and unpretentious style and the authors have tried to match his approach of making the mysteries of science accessible to people who don’t possess sophisticated technical expertise.  Whether he’s explaining quantum mechanics or the impact of mass to energy conversion in a fission reaction, his reasonable, clear speaking style is highly engaging.

Today I was watching a video in which he took the position that the chances of us ever receiving a message from another intelligent civilization travelling around another star was basically zero.  Now, he wasn’t dogmatic.  He freely admitted that the calculations involved contained at least four or five variables that no one really knows the correct probability of.  In other words, how do you determine what the “average” length of time that a technological civilization lasts?  Ours has lasted at most a few hundred years.  But even that is not a real data point.  We still don’t have a way to “send” a signal out to other star systems powerfully enough to be heard.  And we definitely don’t know how long our civilization will last.  So, each of the “factors” for figuring out how many interstellar civilizations there are is either somewhat speculative or just plain guessing.  And by the end of the video, he was championing the case that we will never “hear” from anyone “out there.”

But what was nice was that he openly admitted that he had no authoritative proof and in fact negative proof would always be inconclusive.  And he also said he would love very much to be proven wrong.  I guess I’m really saying I like the way that the maker of the video remained humble in making his case.  Of course, you could say he’s hiding behind the great man by using his image.  But I will admit he’s picked a very good “spokesman” in Feynman.

And of course, this is all very timely with the recent opening of the very popular movie “Project Hail Mary.”  Right now, “Rocky” is a box office star and everyone’s favorite intelligent extraterrestrial rock crab.  But the fact that “Feynman” just told me that Rocky doesn’t exist and that we could never meet him doesn’t destroy the fun and excitement of the story.  Because at the end of the video “Feynman” sums up the situation by saying that even if we are the only intelligent life in the whole cosmos that in no way takes away from the wonder of our existence.  In fact, he counters that if we are unique that makes everything about us more astounding and everything around us more precious; the air, the warmth, the miraculous mechanism of life itself.