Mois : juin 2019

Need I say more?

After months of farting around, a large Orange van (well, the van was actually white…) arrived this morning complete with ladder – and two kids got on with running the cable. It took a while principally because the two doing the installation took their time – but it was working in three hours.

I ran a speed test before changing over, and I was getting 8 Mb/s down and 0,8 Mb/s on up. When I plugged my system into the new ‘Livebox’ I instantly got 80Mb/s down and 170 Mb/s up – so, roughly 170 times faster than this morning – ok, I’ll go for that.

As an example of the advantages of having a faster upload, in one hour this morning my LARGE backup safeguarded the equivalent of a WEEKs previous safeguard…

This, at 14h CEST the 19th of June 2019, is what all the fuss is about…

Well for all Hasselblad fans this is NEWS. The XID, Hasselblads excursion into the world of mirror-less cameras, has been updated and here is the X1D Mark ll.

6000€ without a lens….so I sincerely hope it HAS been updated…

It’s a gorgeous peice of kit – made out of a single chunk of alluminium it’s relatively small and light at 650g (without a lens) . It keeps the 50Mp sensor (43 x 32mm) from the previous model, with a 3.6 inch rear touch screen and a 3.69 OLED viewfinder it’s really a very interesting beast.

It takes dual SD cards, has USB-C connectivity (and WiFi and Bluetooth of course) and is launched with the new XCD 35-75 f/3,5-4,5 zoom lens. This brings the range of lenses up to nine – from the 21mm f4,0 Ultra-wide up to the 135mm f2,8.

Now all that’s left is to find the ????€ to buy one….

PS Hasselblad also launched the 907x body today – here it is stuck on the front of the CFV ll 50c sensor back…

Sadly, as yet, there is no price published for this.

What a great way to celebrate our two (Gemini) birthdays – a long weekend in Berlin. And it was great – the weather was fantastic, there was loads to see, the people were great, and the food was good – what else could we want?

Our chosen hotel was very well placed – and very well served by the U-Bahn (metro) – the 72 hour all-transport pass we purchased was well used by the end of our stay!

We had booked an « Alternative Berlin » Walking tour, which started at 14h on our first day – the meeting point was infront of the Brandenburg Gate…

The tour guide, Sophie, was Welsh and was able to anwser most of our questions – the Walking tour took three hours and we visited the three major areas of the city, crossing backwards and forwards into the old Eastern and then the Western parts of Berlin as we walked.

It was 31° in Berlin when we were walking – but although we had no feet by the end of it, we were able to spotlight areas we wanted to visit during the following two days.

The East Side Gallery is a 1,3 kl stretch of wall that remains to the East of the city and has been dedicated to street artists, with the previso that they paint on the Eastern (otherwise unseen) side of the remaining concrete wall.

The following two days were almost as warm, but just as exhausting as we wanted to see everything! We decided to go out late at night to see what was lit up – and we weren’t disappointed…

Walking behind the Brandenburg Gate and the Bundestag, we discovered a very recent development of office buildings which looked terrific at night. This is the Paul-Löbe house and the Bundestag Library.

During the week the Berliners seem to come out at night, and the parks and open spaces were filled with people lounging around, drinking a beer and listening to live music…brilliant place!

Great trip – wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Berlin as a place to visit.

One of the minor disadvantages with the new Nikon Z series cameras is the size. It’s actually both good and bad – good in that there is a lot less bulk flaying around the shoulder, but bad in that for people with largish hands, the grip (to the right side of the body) isn’t deep enough vertically and the last (little) finger tends to be left floating.

Nikon have announced development (What? This should have been available when the body was announced – it’s only a battery case) of the MB-N10 which will provide room for two EN-EL15b batteries (but strangely, no shutter release, AF-ON buttons etc.) – the design goes back to the older D5*** and D7*** where a stalk replaces the camera battery. Sadly no-one has actually seen one…and frankly for the additional size and weight, I think a spare battery in a pocket is going to be substantially cheaper and a better solution.

The bulk of the grip is for the two batteries. There are no electrical connections on the base of the Z series cameras (yet…who knows what future designs will give us…) so this is the only way to connect the batteries to the camera electronics. The original battery door unclips and can be stored on the grip. Aside from the obvious increase in autonomy, the battery grip gives more vertical depth, and thus better ‘grip’ !

Back to the Meike MK-Z7G. Meike have obviously given this a fair amount of thought – the machining is really top class, and there is even a location ‘stalk’ on the plate which mates to a recess in the camera bottom plate – this makes the alignment perfect.

Another nice touch is the way that they have included a recessed plastic block into which the original battery door is clipped – it retains it’s job of being a ‘door’, but flush with the underside of the plate, rather than hidden and almost inaccessible under the plate in it’s original position.

Sadly the plate is not supplied with a hex key with which to fix it to the camera – a detail, but a lot of the ‘L’ plates and other accessories purchased from China are supplied with these (so it’s ok for me – I’ve already got loads!!)

The plate increases the vertical depth by 19mm which is VERY useful and comfortable – my little finger feels quite at home and the overall grip is improved without a huge increase in size and/or weight.

Shipping included I found this for 32€ on eBay and the (free) shipping took 10 days.

It’s been a while – but I’ve actually been quite busy since the last article.There’s a little bit of catching-up to do:

DECLIC 2019

This years edition was very well received – we had 77 participants and they all spent the day wandering around Auch (aimlessly!) taking photos…that was the point wasn’t it?

It wasn’t difficult for me to keep the themes secret – as it now seems to be only me who organises everything to do with the marathon, I just didn’t tell ANYBODY. Much easier.

The first indications showed up on the video projecter at 10h00 « Rdv at Ciné32 at 10h15 » – this is our local cinemea ‘complex’ and was easily within 10 minutes walking distance. I caught-up with the group at which point I announced that we would be heading off towards the river Gers. So we all set off…but after a couple of minutes I stopped everyone and asked if they would perhaps prefer to spend the morning exploring the abandonned military ‘caserne’ that we just happened to be passing…not unnaturally that got 77 heads nodding so we did just that – I had arranged for the gate to be unlocked and I was able to just open it and usher people onto the site!

We finally got back to the BIJ (the people really didn’t want to leave) at 12h45 at which point everyone started to download there images and eat their packed lunches.

We managed to consume 6 kilos of M&M’s, and produced 488 images. The jury sat the following Wednesday and tonight we will award the prizes.

Cie Bivouac

I’ve known this circus company for a few years now – we’ve always got on well, and they often buy a few of my images. They came back to Auch in late May for a ‘residence’ and as usual, they brought a new ‘structure’ with them….and this thing is huge!

This thing moves every which way – the square outer part revoles around a center pivot – the circular inner ring also revolves around the same point, but it also turns within the structure… This is not at all clear from these images, but when there are 5 people leaping and climbing all over it, it creates a superb impression…I think I’ve got some good material from the presentation, and afterwards they asked me back to do a specific shooting – the spectacle will be having it’s first night in three weeks – and they don’t have any visuals yet!

Berlin

Both our birthdays are in roughly a weeks time, so we’ve decided to celebrate both of them….in Germany. We’ve wanted to visit, so this will be our birthday present to each other!

We’ll be leaving on my birthday – and spending 4 days away – looking forward to this – if only to get away from Déclic!!