|
Forum: General Talk
09-28-2022, 04:31 PM
|
| |
My only experience with them ordering equipment was when the box arrived (it was a bellows) and the "packing" consisted of a small sheet or bubble wrap that didn't quite cover the base of the box. No damage done luckily, but it could have been a lot worse.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
07-10-2021, 03:39 AM
|
| |
I jusy picked up one of those studio lighting kits, three tripods, a couple of brolleys and three flash heads for $20. Someone who is moving house and used to photo babies apparently was clearing the garage and wanted rid of it, so I was happy to oblige for that price.
The heads flash, there are a couple of extra cables and bits that show it was packed away with other gear and then never taken out again, all I need to do now is work out how to trigger the flashes
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-14-2021, 02:14 AM
|
| |
Not my purchase but the memsahib, came home yesterday and she'd bought a very nice dried flower arrangement for decoration. My macro lenses and I are going to have fun for hours....
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-02-2021, 01:57 AM
|
| |
Just put an order in for a new tripod. As the company didn't have a big social event this year they sent us all e-gift cards, which somewhat restricted which stores we could spend it in but what the heck.
I went for a cheap tripod with a ball head which was what I was really looking for, and a spare battery for the camera.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
12-31-2020, 06:59 PM
|
| |
Nice! I did suggest Tunnocks Caramel Wafers a while ago but that was a little too localised. Jaffa cakes would be an alternative but they don't stack easily, so the question should be "milk chocolate or dark chocolate digestives"?
|
|
Forum: General Talk
12-21-2020, 02:04 AM
|
| |
When I have some spare time over the holidays I'm going to do some DIY and make up a flash diffuser. So today I bought some foam floor tiles and a packet of opaque document wallets. I already have the plan courtesy of Alan Walls Photography
|
|
Forum: General Talk
11-26-2020, 01:26 AM
|
| |
Interesting design, how does the Autofocus work?
|
|
Forum: General Talk
11-06-2020, 06:45 PM
|
| |
Many years ago I read an article about an in-car sound system. The article went on about how this system allowed you to set up the left-right and the front-back channels to basically let you "sit" in any seat of the auditorium. Whilst it was obviously aimed at those who went to concerts a lot, I always thought it was somewhat wasted on me as between the off-side wheel bearings and the hole in the exhaust I just had to crank the volume up enough to drown out everything else
|
|
Forum: General Talk
10-09-2020, 02:17 AM
|
| |
Many many years ago, a student started studying at Aberdeen University. Now this student was a good Scots lad, loved his porridge, and came up with the grand plan of buying porridge oats in bulk so he had more beer money. He could have a big bowl of porridge in the morning, and any left overs could be allowed to cool and set and then cut into bars for snacks.
It was the first case of scurvy they'd seen in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for more than 200 years......
|
|
Forum: General Talk
10-07-2020, 06:22 PM
|
| |
Isn't it? The meat is wrapped to shield it from any dirt or vapours that the engine would give out (or the road throws up) and the heat from the engine cooks the meat. As long is you wash your hands after handling the raw meat and don't handle the cooked meat with unwashed hands then I can't see how it is not sanitary.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
10-06-2020, 04:45 PM
|
| |
I had one colleague who famously drained both batteries in the car by leaving freezer on overnight, not quite sure how but he was somewhat gifted when it came to electrical things.
As for an oven, a South African colleague regularly cooks a small roast when driving across the outback by wrapping it in two layers of tin foil and sticking it in the engine compartment, Obviously it is a little difficult to select how well cooked the meat will be, but by the end of the day it is a hot meal ready and waiting.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
08-19-2020, 08:50 PM
|
| |
I bought a dozen or so Cokin filters back in the 80's and used them quite a lot, mostly for landscape shots. I've still got them but as I only had one mounting ring I can only use them on one or two lenses.
I always thought they were less clumsy than screw in filters and more flexible when using the graduated filters as I could adjust where the graduation started.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
06-19-2020, 06:54 PM
|
| |
I tried that on my little French box a couple of decades ago, bought the parts which they assured me were correct and took them home for what I thought was day of twisted and grunting. Turned out the big bolt on the top of the first one was seized solid, I was bending the allen key rather than moving the bolt, so I ended up cutting the bolt off.
Disassembled the rest of it, assembled the bits back into order, offered it up to the car and found the lower mounting bolts were in the wrong place. Phoned the garage, got the spares department and explained the issue to be told "oh, you've got the dash 2 version....."
Now had a car with one shock absorber that didn't fit and one in place.... managed the get the right parts by a roundabout way and got the right ones fitted.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
05-16-2020, 08:47 PM
|
| |
Oh the joys of thermionic valves! We were taught on a couple of radio sets that still ran on valves and the pre-start check was to power on and wait five minutes. Then you ran your finger along the top of the valves and if any were cold you powered down and changed them out before proceeding.
The problem with the modern equipment in part is because of the dependance on microchip technology. Circuit boards have become so compact that you can't repair them, so it's a case of throw it away and get a new one. Again during training we were taught to carry out repairs on circuit boards, but at that point (early 80's) the miniaturisation had not reached the point of multi-layer boards and circuit tracks the thickness of a human hair. Our repairs were carried out by scraping back the varnish layer, soldering a thin gauge wire across the break, and revarnishing the board.
Back in those days there was a real fear of a Nuclear war, and a lot of time and effort went into designing electronics that were "hardened" and could withstand an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a nuclear explosion, especially for military use equipment. Nowadays, well we don't need a nuclear explosion but a decent sized solar flare hitting the atmosphere would damage equipment that is not protected. One big juicy solar corona and parts of the world could be dark and quiet until a lot of things get replaced.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
05-15-2020, 10:07 PM
|
| |
On a similar vein, many years ago I was taken a train from Birmingham to Edinburgh, and as you do on long train journeys got chatting to the bloke opposite me. He'd worked for Philips, and for a time had been on the team that developed the Laser Disc, which was basically a 12 inch CD for video. It was a great concept for the time, the picture quality was fantastic but was let down by the fact you had to buy the pre-recorded disk rather than record your own. In the end it stopped production as the new VHS tapes became the preferred medium, but he added that in the time the system was in operation they never had a systemic failure. Any reported failures were down to individual components, but the design itself did not incur any failures.
I've worked with engineers over the years who do nothing but monitor failure trends and have sat in on the sort of meetings they have around systems failures and their potential impacts. in the right business models techniques like FRACAS (Failure reporting, analysis and corrective action system) will identify trends in failures and what caused them, then identify what to do to stop it happening.
Design changes, more frequent maintenance and additional safeguards are all options, but cost money. With some many things these days the cheaper option is often to let it fail and pay out if someone complains. See the Ford Pinto saga for a classic example.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
05-12-2020, 03:10 AM
|
| |
I got the car serviced today, and had to get a puncture plugged.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
04-25-2020, 05:25 PM
|
| |
Over the years we've moved houses quite a bit, so when we got something new and expensive like a tv, stereo system, stuff like that, we would always keep the packaging as there was a good chance we would use it the next time we moved. The loft was always full of empty boxes, but come the time to move again they would all come down and things would go back into their original packaging.
Used to amaze the removals guys, who would rock up expecting to have to pack all this stuff and find it sitting there boxed and ready....
|
|
Forum: General Talk
04-04-2020, 08:49 PM
|
| |
I dug out my kids lego months ago and use it to support a number of macro projects and it comes in very handy. As for the cars and trainset, you could have hours of fun with that Gary, I look forward to seeing the images.
My latest "acquisition" if you can call it that are a number of caterpillars. I noticed them devouring my potted orange tree, so instead of just getting rid of them I did some digging and found out you can actually rear them in captivity as it were. I now have two coffee jars on my work desk with various leaves and as last count six papilio anactus (dainty swallowtail} of various sizes. The largest one (Eric} has already featured in a number of his own photoshoots, and if I play my cards right he could make his own "caterpillar to butterfly" calendar.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
03-17-2020, 01:50 AM
|
| |
Yes you did, and I thank you for it. Others however were not as generous....
It's a moot point anyway, I haven't any caramel wafers in the house at the moment.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
03-15-2020, 01:47 PM
|
| |
I prefer to refer to myself as a technician, not as qualified as an engineer but at least I know which tool to use....
An old boss of mine used to say about graduate engineers "they can tell you how many smarties are in the jar but they can't get the lid off...."
|
|
Forum: General Talk
03-15-2020, 12:07 AM
|
| |
Au contrare my friend, the caramel wafer is layers of wafer biscuit interlaced with layers of caramel, wrapped in chocolate. Admittedly it's harder to see when you dip it in batter and deep fry it....:D
|
|
Forum: General Talk
03-14-2020, 07:25 PM
|
| |
A couple of minor issues with that old chap:
1. We don't get the US SMU down here in the NASA owned "antipodean" sound stage; and
2. Even if we did they would probably have been on the list of "items to panic buy".
When I offered an alternative ASSMU (Aussie Scottish SMU} of the world famous Tunnocks Caramel Wafer it was scorned by many here.....
|
|
Forum: General Talk
03-13-2020, 10:16 PM
|
| |
Ricoh Rikenon 35 - 70 zoom. Sorry no photo as I have no acceptable SMU in the house.
It's seen better days, if it was a book the outer condition may be described as "foxed" and it's missing the rubber focus ring. The glass however is clean and blemish free so the price of $25 is reasonable in my mind.
Ran a couple of test shots, accepting it as manual focus only the images look pretty decent. The primary reason for purchase was to use as a substitute for the fixed 50 currently on my bellows, it now gives me a bit more flexibility in terms of tweaking the magnification without changing lenses and the 35 mm end of the spectrum can be useful in a landscape scenario.
|
|
Forum: General Talk
03-10-2020, 01:04 AM
|
| |
I did see a joke advert which said "Man with Corona virus seeks Woman with Lyme disease..."
|
|
Forum: General Talk
01-25-2020, 05:58 PM
|
| |
I was tempted to ask exactly how long you've been taking photos, but decided against it....
Nice image though
|
