One of the local parks has a frisbee golf course so we brought one with us this latest visit.
First, I most likely could use “better” frisbees. I remember the game store in Berkeley having a whole wall of different frisbees for aficionados of this hobby.
Second, I have no idea if it made me any better, but I was constantly reminded of what I learned in Tai Chi. I tried to root my self in the ground and let the body relax, whipping around to initiate a wobbly sad flight trajectory.
Third, my almost 40 year old body was pretty compliant while on site. But it only took the ride home for my left arm to decide that this sudden uptick in this particular repetitive action was traumatic enough to send alarm bells for the rest of the day.
Finally, my daughter had a ball running up and down the hills chasing the frisbee and throwing it around.
My last two decades in a nutshell, encapsulated in a plastic disc.
As an architect I’ve always been picky about my writing tools.
As a draftsman, I started using 2H lead, but learned a lighter touch and transitioned to H lead for my line work. For my lettering I always used HB lead, which Staedtler Mars discontinued during that stint and caused a minor panic, but we bought enough to last me thorugh to leaving for graduate school. And yes Staedtler Mars was a better lead than Alvin.
I also have picked up a few fancy fountain pens over the years, but ultimately they were too scratchy and have not been used.
I appreciate the fine points of rollerball pens, but I don’t like the fact they can get cloggy.
And the micro fine points of razors are nice for about half a day until they get frayed under my heavy hand, at which point they are not at all pleasant to use.
But my tool of choice is the Papermate Flair pen. It’s a finely crafted writing tool that is cheap enough I can have copies all over the place and feel no pain when it runs out of ink or when one is lost. With a plethora of colors, I can make multiple layers of notes on a single sheet of paper. The felt tip runs smoothly on any type of paper. The point is fine enough to make good notes, but blunt enough to degrade gracefully. It is in short, my perfect pen.
When I first got my Nikon D40, I took a self portrait in the bathroom at Grant Street. I did the same when I got my manual focus 50mm lens. And then I got a 500mm f/6.3 lens which I’ve since given to my father. And thus ended that run of self portraits that was intended to celebrate each addition to the collection.
But quite by accident I ended up taking a shot of myself with my Tokina 500mm f/8 lens. I had pulled out this lens due to the “watching/voyeur” assignment on OTP and I saw a glimpse of myself in the sliding glass door and took a couple shots of myself. Its not perfect, between the vanishingly thin DOF and the longish shutter speed, it wasn’t gonna be clean, but its good enough to kick up the collection again.
The spoon was quite a luxury. I bought it on my wife’s fake birthday and it was a pricey little fellow hand carved from a tree in Jasper, Texas that had been taken down due to Hurricane Ike. It was a brutally hot July noon in Houston at the farmer’s market at City Hall, but an interesting conversation and a memory worth way more than $50.
I just got my new mirror lens from Adorama on Friday and I spent a good amount of time messing around with it today, stalking some birds and feral cats that hang out in a local parking lot. For what its worth, I should preface that I have been messing around with a 50mm f/1.8 series E for the past couple weeks so I am pretty familiar with shooting in full manual without metering.
So here are some general thoughts. For a full review by Peter Kolonia check out popphoto.com.
Given that I had wanted a 500mm lens and didn’t want to pay big money for it, the Mirror Lens is the way to go. Basically, there is really only one common option (both new and used) – f/8.0. The only alternative is the ProOptic lens from Adorama with f/6.3 (fyi, these lenses come with only one f/stop) My question before purchasing the lens was whether the f/6.3 would be an unforgiving DOF (the manual says 1/2″ at 6′ close focus). After playing around, I agree it is a very thin and unforgiving DOF, but as someone who is used to shooting wide open at f/1.8, it really isn’t that thin!
What did surprise me was lens shake at 500mm. As such I think the extra speed of f/6.3 was WELL worth it. As someone spoiled by f/1.8, going to f/6.3 was a shock. Combined with the desire to keep the shutter speed near the focal length for hand held shooting, I was shooting at iso400 around noon on a sunny bright day. By the time the sun just started setting, I was at iso800.
I found focusing quite smooth. My only gripe with the lens is that I wish there was more barrel that did not rotate while focusing so that I could keep more of my hand supporting the lens while focusing.
People say that mirror lenses are small and unobtrusive. Well they must be speaking in relative terms because is this lens is definitely big enough to be noticed when walking around. It doesn’t help that ProOptic decided to paint the barrel white instead of black. Then again, I haven’t handled a real 500mm lens, but from what I see online, I don’t think you can even really “walk around” with those beasts!
Of course the big question with these lens are the bokeh rings. And I can attest that those mirror lens bokeh rings do really show up any time you give them a chance. But, if you just roll with it, you’ll survive — and even have some extra optical tricks to play with when you get tired of straight photography.
For $160 I think this is basically a no brainer if you have a little money and want to dabble in telephoto photography, as long as you don’t find the funny bokeh rings are as hideous as some people on photo forums like to exclaim.
The 80/20 rule definitely applies, – you get 80% of the function for 20% of the price of a full size 500mm lens.
