Month: July 2024 (Page 3 of 4)

–Took the BMW to Hooverville Orchards for jam, sourdough bread, marionberry pie.

–Picked up my Rolex 1680 at Ivanov’s Watch Repair. They couldn’t fix it.

–Picked up a couple of esoteric (Petri) lens adapters at UPS. Going to be interesting getting that lens on a camera when it comes in.

–Went through my Tekna regulators. The exhaust port cover (plastic? nylon?) on one of the brass models just separated from its threads when I picked it up. This was one of the NOS ones, so it’s not like Teknas were so popular and used so much that they sat in the sun for hours and deteriorated. More like they were built with untested and/or cheap materials. Black nylon bodies crack a lot, needle seats turn to goo, plastic rings that hold hose to reg break, etc. Whereas most other regulators I worked with seemed like they’d go forever with a new poppet seat.

–Took Grace to Smart & Final for fairly major shopping.

–Took the pool chlorine test strips over to Kenny and showed him how to use them. His fountain is seriously over-chlorinated.

–Played with cameras. The SL2 seemed to randomly go wacky again, so I reset everything and set it up. It seems okay, but I’m not totally confident. So I went back to the Canon R5. I noted that (a) image stabilization is always on, whether it recognizes the lens or not; (b) the shutter speed and ISO dials I set up always work; (c) exposure simulation works and (after a shutter half-press) so does the exposure meter; (d) the viewfinder has higher magnification and SEEMS clearer–though that could just be daytime and/or magnification. So I’ll drop the SL2 for now, after ordering three adapters for new (old) lenses for it. I guess I’ll try the lenses on the SL2, and if they’re good, get adapters for the Canon. I really like the look and feel of the SL2, but the Canon’s consistency and viewfinder are big deals to me. Finally: I put the ebony grip extension on the R5 that I got from China a while back, and it is ludicrously wrong–not just slightly off. I wrote the seller, and I sincerely hope he sent the wrong base and will swap it out.

–Still hot; a little Delta breeze came up though.

–Dropped Grace off at KP Market while I picked up a dozen bagels at New York Bagel Cfe.

–Went to Bel Air for pine nuts, lunch cheese, cream. They are dead out of the store brand cream cheese. Seems ominous.

–Made pesto. Pretty much destroyed my favorite wooden spoon in the blender.

–Took a shower and shave.

–Hot again. Cut off some dead branches from the tree in our side yard. More to go. Might have to increase its water supply.

–Some years later, i finally figured out why some photos seem to suffer from camera shake while others don’t. Turns out the SL2’s IBIS only works when it “knows” the lens. The Summicron 50 adapter has contacts, so the camera recognizes it. None of my other adapted lenses is recognized by the camera. It took some setting up, but I eventually programmed a button to bring up “Lens Profiles.” All you have to do (all you can do) is tell the camera the lens focal length, then IBIS works. Unbelievable. Now I have to re-evaluate all my uncoded lenses. I don’t think this will make the Zeiss 35 (say) a compelling proposition, but at least it will get a fair shake (heh heh).

–Hottest day yet.

–Went to the Sunrise farmers market for tomatoes, squash, basil; Bel Air for milk, pizza, dessert.

–Put gas in the BMW and turned off (with difficulty) the “oil service” warning.

–The red elastomer inserts came in for the Silca push-on pump heads. Not at all clear to me that they’re any more flexible than or superior to the original black rubber ones. We’ll see.

–Motor City pizza for dinner.

–Spent a long time making pizza for the annual DV party at the clubhouse. Spent less time at the party than making pizza: I had totally forgotten how bad the acoustics are there. It’s a madhouse–even people who can ehar had trouble hearing.

–Konica 135 lens came in. Looks good, works fine.

–Tekna regulator came in, along with a whole bunch of other SCUBA stuff that I tossed. The regulator (nylon) looked new, but was really hard-breathing; the needle seat had gone soft as they do. BUT I tried a couple other needles I had (not sure if they were original or ones I made) and one of them worked great. Got three each nice brass and nice nylon Tekna regs. Time to start selling.

–Nice grip extension for the Canon came in, now that I’ve given up on it and boxed it. Did another test last night trying to revive the SL, but it just can’t compete with the SL2–now that I finally have it customized (in a way that simply can’t be replicated on the SL). Frustrating to have the exact same dials on the SL and yet be completely unable to get one of them to do ANYTHING. (I guess it does something in auto-focus mode, which I don’t use.)

–Super hot today. At one point the AC couldn’t keep up: set at 78, the temp was 81.

–Looked at Leica SL2-Ss; found a mint one and a new one. Did considerable reading up on them: just don’t see it. The down side of the SL2 (high ISO noise) is easily corrected, especially with the newer AI denoise stuff. The downside of the SL2-S (24 megapixels vs. 47) cannot really be overcome. I took photos of Kenny’s cottage cheese container in back with SL and SL2, using the auto-focus 23mm lens. Pretty stark differences in sharpness. [FWIW, I took the same photo with the Q2 Reporter: stunning results. That lens is incredible.]

–Red Baron for dinner.

–Brought the Sony A7R IV out and (more or less) set it up after reading about then buying a Petri lens. The camera is just too well supported to not use.

Hot hot hot.

–Put three Silca pumps together. They are very, very nice.

–Picked up the compass-like lens ring tool at UPS. Piece of crap. Ground it down for 15 minutes, it still wouldn’t fit the Biotar. Tossed it.

–Also picked up a gaffed deck of cards. Nicely done, but I don’t really see myself using it without hours of practice.

–Went to Bel Air for cream corn, mandarins.

–Barbecued chicken burgers for dinner at 106 degrees. It’s miserable alright.

–Happy 77 to me!

–Kenny got his fountain filter replaced; no more leaks. The guy from Leslie’s Pools doing the install gave Kenny some incredible BS about how too much chlorine would ravage his system: “It has cyanuric acid in it. I put some in my toilet and it just dissolved all the metal.” Right. I ordered some pool test strips so we can check Kenny’s chlorine AND cyanuric acid levels.

–Played with pumps.

–Went to Il Forno Classico at the Town Centre for birthday dinner. I had sea bass on”potato salad.” It was great.