Happy Place

At Range Ready... (a first class facility) ...this morning.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Bobbi did the by-now traditional Roseholme Cottage turducken over hardwood charcoal on the little grill out back.

It was droolworthy as usual.

The turnip, apple, and fennel bulb in which the turducken was cooked.

The feature attraction itself.

The best gravy I've ever had, bar none.

Yummy.

Bobbi has the deets of the preparation over at her blog, in case you were looking for Christmas feast ideas.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for all y'all who drop by to read this blog. I hope you have a great holiday filled with good times and good food, enjoyed with the people for whom you're most thankful.

Me? I'm getting ready to go take some photos of the Drumstick Dash and then come home and maybe do some yard work until it's time for turducken!

Challenging conditions...

The heavy overcast yesterday morning combined with the long lenses I was using meant that I was shooting with the ISO on the cameras bumped up to 800-1600 in order to keep shutter speeds reasonably fast.

This was especially important with the Nikon D3, because the old push-pull 80-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens lacked any stabilization. A rough rule of thumb is that to properly hand-hold a shot without noticeable blur, you want the denominator of the shutter speed to exceed the focal length in millimeters. In other words, faster than 1/50th at 50mm, 1/100th at a hundred, et cetera. 

Past about 135-150mm, it's best to err on the side of caution, and I tried to keep my shutter speeds at 1/250th or better with the Nikon, especially because I was hand-holding a 2.73 pound camera with another 2.6 pounds of glass hanging off the front end.

This meant I was shooting at f/2.8 to f/3.5 most of the time, which doesn't give you a lot of depth of field to work with and frankly the old screw-drive autofocus lens struggled to keep up. I missed a lot of shots and when you had a pack of runners, only the center few would be in crisp focus with everyone in front of and behind them all fuzzy.

I only got a couple really decent shots with it.

The other camera I brought was the 2.63 pound Canon EOS 1D Mark IV.

The 1.68 pound* 70-200mm f/4L IS lens on the Canon was stabilized and could run at slightly slower shutter speeds. Further, like all Canon EOS autofocus lenses, it uses a focusing motor built into the lens rather than relying on a motor in the camera body like the old AF Nikkor. In the case of the 70-200/4L, this is Canon's fast and nearly silent "USM" ultrasonic motor.

I got a lot more keepers with the Canon.

I had a pretty enjoyable time and posted a bunch of pics to my Facebook page if you want to see more.

*For those following along at home, that's ten pounds of gear hanging from straps around my neck, which got pretty fatiguing after an hour and a half, let me tell you.

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Local Color

1953 Chevrolet 210 2-door sedan

A splendid late October Sunday afternoon in SoBro. You could sit on the patio at Fat Dan's, listening to the Bears game on the speakers, reading Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett, and watch the world roll by...

Snapped with a Canon EOS 7D & EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens.

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Pedaling to Protein

Saturday afternoon Bobbi and I saddled up the bicycles and pedaled down the Monon Trail to the intersection of 46th & College for an early dinner on the patio at Root & Bone.

I had the carpaccio mac, described on the menu as "thin sliced beef, soft egg remoulade, herb crouton, crunchy iceberg, pickled shallot & crunch capers", and it was absolutely delicious.

Bobbi ordered the Fried Green Tomato "BLT", which was basically a BLT sammich, sans the bread. It, too, looked yummy and I made a note to get back there and try it myself some time.

On the way home, we pulled off the Monon at Half Liter BBQ because Sunday was the last day of Devour Indy Summerfest 2023 and I wanted Bobbi to try one of the special desserts that Half Liter was featuring for the event. Knowing how much she likes bread pudding, she didn't want to miss out on the Buffalo Trace bread pudding (Homemade bread baked with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla and topped with a Buffalo Trace bourbon cream sauce.)

From there we pedaled home and chilled out and read for the remainder of Saturday evening.

(Well, I tried to watch Frankenstein on MeTV's Svengoolie, but I was too full of good chow and kept dozing off.)

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #245...

Here's a personal favorite of mine: A 1955-vintage K-22 Combat Masterpiece.

This pre-Model 18 with Spegel stocks basically lived in my range bag for years. I have no idea how many rounds it had before I got it, but it's seen rather a large number since then.

It's safe to say that I've busted more caps in this revolver than any other single wheelgun I've owned. It's entirely possible I've put more rounds through it than all other revolvers I've owned, combined. 

I couldn't tell you the exact round count I've put on it, but it's definitely in excess of 10k. Maybe as much as half again that total. There was one leisurely afternoon in the bays at MCF&G where I shot up a whole 525-round carton in a sitting, having to punch the chambers every hunnert, hunnert-'n'-fitty rounds or so to keep them from getting too sticky. Had to brush the cylinder face & forcing cone, too.

That was when I'd been shooting enough to still have a pretty good callus on my trigger. That narrow, serrated trigger chews me up enough these days that I'm usually pretty much done after a hundred rounds of fast double action.

I need to get that front sight fixed from where some previous owner had filed it down because he thought the gun was shooting low and left. Now, even with the rear sight bottomed out and cranked way to the left, it still shoots high and right of the sights. I've shot it enough that I can automatically dial in Kentucky windage at seven yards, but on an 8" plate at 20 yards you gotta hold off the lower left edge of the plate to get a ding.

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Caption Contest…

“Get in, loser. We’re gonna make you a winner.” -Gabe and Aqil, probably.

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Never know who you'll bump into at TacCon...

For instance, you might run into Annette Evans and Caleb Giddings.

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Sports, Illustrated

The annual Drumstick Dash here in Indy was slated to come right through our neighborhood this morning, so I was out there at 9:00AM with the EOS-1D Mark IV and the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L, ready and waiting.

I got my pro sports photog LARP on pretty good, I think...

Focus isn't quite there on the last one, but I love the pic so much...

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Action Shot...

Michael Grasso with the FN America High-Power at the range on Monday.

The D800 and 24-120mm f/4 VR is a handy combination.

This was my first range trip just for the fun of it in a long, long while. Well, I did get some work done, but mostly it was fun spending time with a friend.

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Challenged

Friday's trip to the Fair saw me supplement the digital Fujis with an analog one.

The current round of the Shitty Camera Challenge is called "Instant Regret", and I had my Fujifilm Instax Mini 40 in my bag to get some shots so I could play along.

The Instax Minis are a lot of fun. The pictures are about the size of business cards, so they're easy for people to stash in a wallet or pocketbook. Kids are fascinated by them, too, because they've lived their whole life in a world of screens, so instant hard copy output has a magical quality to them. I especially like the Mini 40 for its black & silver retro camera looks. It blends nicely with my X-E1 and its 23mm f/2 "Fujicron".

I even wore my matching t-shirt for the occasion!

All good things...

I remember talking with Farmer Frank about this sort of general feeling of melancholy I'd feel watching a good snowfall melt away, and that I couldn't figure out why it made me feel that way. He told me that it affected him the same way, and explained the reason. Deep down inside, our inner child associates the sight with snow days being over and having to go back to school tomorrow.

Relatedly, today's the last weekday of the Indiana State Fair, so I'm going to pedal down there a little earlier than usual, and maybe stay a little longer, and make a point of getting the photos that I've been meaning to get over the past couple weeks but didn't.

Because after today, it's back to waiting for next summer...

This was shot with the 50MP EOS 5DS, so it can be embiggenated to a crazy level of detail.

 

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I needed that...

I hadn't been to the zoo in too long. This morning featured a much-needed mental health break.

Olympus E-3 & Zuiko 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5

Hidden Masterpiece

My favorite kind of photography is candid portraiture of friends. Getting an image that really captures something of the person in a shot makes me happy. I've used some pretty spiffy cameras and expensive lenses to do this...

But the important thing is being there in the right place at the right time with a camera. We all have a camera with us these days, and it's often capable of getting the shot.

Anyone who knows Murphy can probably hear this iPhone snapshot...

Your phone may already contain a masterpiece, writes Mike Johnston in an article for The New Yorker. The trick is finding them...

Today, of course, we’re in the age of digital photography. Back in the eighties, I remember reading that six billion photographs were taken each year, a number that seemed as big as the ocean; currently, although exact numbers can’t be known, the world probably collects that many images every three and a half days. There’s a new way in which we can miss out on great photographs: they can be buried forever in the digital tsunami.

Many of us are now like those National Geographic photographers. Almost without trying, we can find ourselves with twenty-three thousand pictures on our camera rolls. Unfortunately, we don’t have picture editors to do the work of sifting and culling and considering. No one helps us discover which shots “have legs” and stay interesting the more we look at them; no one shows us which photographs say what we mean to say; and no one tells us how to identify the best and leave aside the rest. Many of us have also stopped printing our photos. It used to be that we were constrained by our physical photo albums, that we had to choose which pictures to keep and which to leave out. “Redaction is what transforms a quantity of images from a heap to a whole,” the photography critic A. D. Coleman once wrote, referring to the process of culling. The cloud is big, so we don’t redact. We live with our heaps.

Redacting takes time. You can’t edit pictures by thinking; you have to do it by looking. The more pictures you have, the more you have to look.

It's a great piece and you should go read the whole thing.

And then get to curatin'...

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RIP RX

My beloved shirt pocket camera, an original Sony RX100, has finally packed it in after three years of getting banged around and used in all kinds of weather and accompanying me on a lot of adventures. 

It's amazing how many memories you can pack into one of these little things.

They sell waterproof "tough" cameras in shock resistant cases, but even though they're probably small enough to go in the pocket, they tend to have have small noisy 1/2.3" sensors and slow lenses and lack the controllability of a real camera. You don't have the full range of PASM modes, you can't shoot RAW, et cetera. 

I used to use a Nikon Coolpix P7000 for this role, but the newer enthusiast compacts with 1" 20MP sensors and fast glass... the Sony RX100 and Canon G7X families ...are pretty perfect for this gig.

I mean, I carried it in the document pocket of my gun burkha in classes frequently, and it's taken some pretty good licks from the butts of pistols during the draw, especially when running from AIWB. It's been in Texas & Arizona summer heat, coastal Georgia fug, Indianapolis winters...

I think any little camera in that job is going to eventually lose the war. I try to buy 'em used in the $100-$200ish range and figure that if I get a two or three year run out of one, I'm doing pretty good.

I guess after payday on the 1st, I'll start shopping for a fresh one.

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Dead Meat

Bobbi cooked a pork butt vindaloo-style on New Year's Eve...

...and then the traditional Roseholme Cottage New Year's Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage. The weather fouled her plans of doing it over hardwood charcoal on the grill like last year but it atill turned out dandy... all the more impressive for having basically winged it. We filled our bowls for seconds while watching Wandavision on the telly.

As per usual, cooking deets are up at Bobbi's blog. Enjoy!

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Pure Liquid Umame

Look at this gently simmering pot full of goodness...

What could be lurking beneath that colorful, steamy surface?

Photos shot with Fujifilm X-T2 & 18-55mm f/2.8-4

It's a huge chunk of oxtail! Somewhere in there is a large slice of beef shank as well.

Served out in a bowl, it looked like this:

Bobbi has the recipe details up at her blog

The broth was absolutely delicious, and savory beyond belief. Sometime this week the leftovers of this will join the leftovers of the bison roast from Christmas in the stew pot.

This was our Boxing Day dinner, enjoyed while watching the second half of Hogfather on the telly.

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Cinco de Patrick

America has a Borg-like ability to assimilate cuisines and convert the minor holidays of our immigrants into excuses for everyone to get drunk.
"Welcome to the U.S.! Do you have any festivals that would lend themselves to wearing silly hats on 2-for-1 pint day?"

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 12, 2021

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #209...

If "roller-locked short recoil semiauto pistols" were a Jeopardy! category, it would only have one question: What is the CZ 52?

Commercial Sellier & Bellot 85gr FMJ averages over fifteen hundred feet-per-second out of this thing, with the traditional fireworks display at the muzzle and brass flung somewhere into the weeds on the berm.

These, along with the Makarov and various Tokarev variants, were among a trio of Cold War commie blasters that were imported in such numbers to actually have a bit of an aftermarket. Hogue does hardwood replacement grip panels, both smooth and textured, and some holster makers have supported it. Prvi Partisan even loads JHP ammunition, if you're so unfortunate* as to have to rely on one for carry.

Also, unless you're absolutely certain that the decocker has been checked out to be safe (or the gun's been modified to make it so) do not trust that thing. In a distressingly large number of them, the decocker essentially functioned as a second trigger. We spent a summer making the decockers safe to use on several thousand of them back in '03.

• Open the crate. 
• Pull the slides off all the pistols. 
• Put the frames on a cart and wheel it over to Shannon. 
• Shannon would huck the frames up in the mill, take a pass across the rear face of the takedown latch so the slide would sit a teeny bit further forward, and then hit the hammer face a lick on the grinder. 
• Wheel the cart of finished frames back to me. 
• Cold blue all the hammer faces. 
• Reassemble the slides onto the frames. 
• Pick the pistols up one at a time and hit the hammers a whack with the handle of a screwdriver to make sure they stayed cocked. 
• One at a time drop a dowel down the barrels and use the decocker to make sure the dowel didn't budge. 
• Put the pistols back in the crate. 
• Open the next crate. 

My car smelled like cosmoline all summer. (The Zed Drei was still fairly young back then and still whiffed of leather upholstery on warm Knoxville summer days. When it was ninety degrees out, I'd get in the car to drive home from the shop and the combination of the leather smell and the cosmoline that clogged all my pores and coated my jeans made a combination that whiffed of mildewed sweat socks and high school gym locker rooms. I have PTSD.)

*Look, when these were under a hundred bucks, you could argue that it beat a handful of nothing for a broke college student. Nowadays they're a collectible going for damn near new Glock prices and there have to be literally hundreds of better options for self defense in that price range.