Mois : octobre 2024

And this doesn’t concern a new camera (for once) but it does involve something to do with photography…

APPLE have recently started marketing updated products with their new processor – the M4. There have been MacBook Pros, iPads etc. but what interests me is the Mac Mini.

This is (almost life size) the new Mac Mini 2024 – 12,7cm wide and 5cm high – tiny!

As with previous editions, APPLE have actually REDUCED the price (by roughly 200€ here in France) and doubled the base RAM to 16Gb from 8Gb.

The cunning buggers have hidden the on/off switch underneath the chassis instead of it being on the rear face – this is ok, but putting ports (particularly the audio jack) on the front is a pain – I don’t like cable draping everywhere.

To avoid having the audio cable plugged in all the time, I’ve invested 19€ in a Bluetooth dongle which can attach to my sound system – this way I can stream music wirelessly.

There are now 2 USB-C ports on the front face, and three USB-C Thunderbird on the rear, but no more USB-A ports. No problems – most of what I connect is USB-C anyway…

Size comparison with the previous M2 model from 2022

The processor is supposed to be roughly twice the power of the previous (M2) one – whether or not this will help much in day to day stuff, I can’t say, but it will certainly help when it comes to rendering large 45mp images in LIGHTROOM.

Can’t wait…until the 8th November 🙂

Very happy to see Cie L’Oublié(e) and Raphaëlle Boitel come back to Auch for the festival this year.

Raphaëlle is a choreographer, and her latest opus is in fact two shorter works, played one after the other.

La Bête Noir – talks about a woman’s inner struggles – lots of writhing around, but the light and her movements create a very interesting spectacle.

In the second act she climbs a ladder – or what seems to be a ladder – but the ‘rungs’ are in fact large steps that move from right to left creating a really interesting patterns of movement both for the steps, but also for Raphaëlle to perform on.

Petite Reine was the second piece, performed by Fleurianne Cornet (and her bicycle) – and ( I quote) « tackles the issue of being held captive by love » – oh ok…

High on imagery, the lighting was excellent (but there’s never really enough for a photographer…) and created a great atmosphere.

While I very much enjoyed the two, the first one won in my opinion.

The latest circus festival started last night, the 18th of October and will run for the next 10 days.

I’ve got about 16 or 17 pro spectacles to see/photograph, and at the same time, I’ll be covering the Federation of French Circus Schools annual get together which will involve upwards of 50 ten minute shows performed by circus schools from around France.

Here are a couple of shots from last night – the company was « Les Filles du Renard Pâle » and the presented us with « Révolte ou Tentatives de l’Echec »

Aside from an almost total lack of decent light (laughs) this was interesting – it’s always fun to see it actually rain on set…

Tonight I only have one performance to see – and that’s probably going to be pretty dark too…more on this later. I can’t help feeling sure that my fan ‘Someone’ from NIKON RUMORS could do a whole lot better than I, but this is my blog so you’ll have to put up with my rubbish…

NIKON announced a few months ago, a series of firmware updates for the Zf, Z6_ll, Z7_ll, Z8 and Z9.

These were trumpeted as ‘major’ updates for autofocus etc. so naturally, the NIKON users are impatient to see what these can do.

Zoom forward to early October and NIKON anounce that there seem top be problems updating the firmware on the Z7_ll and so they were holding back everything until this problem was identified and fixed. People asked why the update couldn’t simply be launched for the other cameras, without a response.

Mention was made of another update concerning Adobes Content Authentification system, regarding the Z6_lll – in the comments section on NIKON RUMORS I ‘dared’ to ask why we hadn’t any news of the expected updates and was immediately criticised by a total jerk hiding behind the screen name ‘Someone‘ (‘No-one’ would have been more appropriate...)

Bottom feeders like this I generally ignore – their unique existance is to piss people off – they don’t make images or contribute in any detectable fashion, just pollute the fora with inane comments designed to get clicks… Sadly there are many (I’ve often wondered if it’s just one mental case with many screen names…) and it’s frustrating when you see the efforts of the forum managers, particularly of Peter over on NIKON RUMORS, that these morons exist and create friction which doesn’t actually need to exist.

His comment made me smile as it was pretty obvious he hadn’t read any previous blog posts (probably can’t actually read…) as he encouraged me to just accept that my camera is what it is, and not moan about it…

OK asshole, have it your own way