QotD: Bad Image Edition...

From my friend MattG:

"You can generally tell a hit piece, lately, by the photo which accompanies it."

Go and RTWT...
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A Pair of Sevens...

I went walkabout to Fat Dan’s to get ribs for lunch. I was carrying the Sony a7 with the 24-240mm zoom my friends bought me, in case I saw things along the way that needed photographing.

Fat Dan’s is packed on a lovely early autumn weekend. There’s a Cubs game and an IU football game on the tellies and the overhead doors that face the street are both rolled up. Both the dining room and sidewalk tables have a bunch of people doing interesting people things.

And I have a full-frame camera with a bazooka of a lens on it that is about as un-subtle as if I started swinging an RPG launcher around. The only way I’d be less able to get candids would be with a big ol’ putty-colored Canon L-lens.

I wish I’d brought my black Pentax Q7 with the 15-45mm f/2.8 zoom. I’d order another beer and just sit here against the wall and enjoy myself...

Poor kitty...

Rannie is always so miserable at the vet's office. Our local vet has gotten Fear Free certification, but Miss Wu is generally shaking like a leaf and wanting to just stick her nose in a corner and pretend that none of this is happening the whole time she's there anyway.

Lucky score...

So, I had bought an EOS-1Ds to go with the old 70-200mm f/2.8L lens that a reader had graciously made me a fire-sale deal on. And due to KEH's error and their appreciation for my honesty, I wound up with an EOS-1Ds Mark II for $399. And I had an EF 40mm f/2.8 still laying around from the days when I was shooting Canons.

Because good things, like bad things, apparently travel in threes, I saw a new listing pop up on eBay for a Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens...usually about $3-400 on the used market. This one was $167.

The seller had an excellent rating, offered a money-back guarantee, and said the only reason for the price was because of a crack in the plastic shell on the lens.

That seemed worth the risk for the price.

The lens works fine. It's an older Sigma EX zoom, so it's a little soft wide open at longer focal lengths and can hunt for focus in dim light, but for a $165 lens, it seems to be the berries. Now I have some wide(ish) angle glass to go with the 70-200 tele. Can't wait for vacation!

Mo'cycle...

Shot with the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II & Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX DG lens.

I had no idea this bike even existed before I walked past one yesterday, and now I want one.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #175...

Coming soon to a post on the sadly-neglected other blog, a Colt New Line revolver in .38 rimfire. This one dates to 1875. Unlike many European firearms manufacturers, the Colt plant has never been bombed flat by the Luftwaffe, RAF, or the Eighth Air Force, and so serial number records exist going back to the beginning, and Colt has made them electronically searchable, at least for date of manufacture.
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I LOL'ed.

OOCQOTD: "Aside from 'separating money from rednecks', there is nothing the [Taurus] Judge does well."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) September 26, 2018

L'affaire Kavanaugh...

You know what pisses me off about this whole situation?

My conservative friends keep bringing up Bill Clinton and The Evel Knievel of Chappaquiddick, and they don't grasp that the #MeToo movement was in *response* to that environment in the past.

People don't understand how common sexual assault and straight-up rape is...and, yes, #MeToo...and this groundswell happens where now we're not going to sweep it under the rug, we're not going to let it slide with a "boys will be boys" or "she should have been more careful".

But somehow the movement got shanghaied, first by people who diluted the meaning to "someone at work said my ankles were fat", and now finally we've come to this.

DiFi's smug little last-minute "Aha! I've got a 'gotcha' that'll stick it to the GOP but good!" expression...its blatant politicization...is in danger of becoming the Pickett's Charge of the #MeToo movement. Movements have backlashes and pendulums swing both ways. Thanks for f$cking it up, Diane.
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Boom.

Democrats haven’t chased this many people out of restaurants since the civil rights era. https://t.co/KAMWcUWPqf

— J.R. Salzman (@jrsalzman) September 25, 2018

Last night...

I saw the color of the light streaming in the kitchen window, and grabbed a camera and ran out front to see if I could capture it...

The above photo was with the Fuji X-E1 and the Zeiss 32mm f/1.8 lens. I wished I had a more conventional wide-angle lens for the Fuji, but lacking that, I ran back in and got the fisheye...

By the time I got the fisheye on the camera and got back out front, the sky had lost most of its dramatic color, but I was still happy with the "pools of light" effect I got in this photo.

Brunch!

View this post on Instagram

Brunch @gallerypastryshop is a #chorizo, #poblano, red onion, & feta #omelette with a side of @smokinggoosemeatery jowl #bacon! #brunch #southbroadripple #yum

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Sep 23, 2018 at 1:28pm PDT

Warning Parental Advisory

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #174...

A friend of a friend found this full-size PX4 to have too long of a reach to the trigger. I traded her my Gen3 Glock 19 for it.

The plan is to shoot the 2,000 round test through it this autumn and then maybe send it to Langdon Tactical to get some lovin'.
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I need to emulate the bee...

...and get busy.
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Neat-o!

I met up with my friend who uses the nom de blog "Global Village Idiot" today to do some fun hanging out here in the Circle City.

The centerpiece of the day was a tour of the Scottish Rite Cathedral downtown.

One recent addition to the camera bag really came into its own...

Scottish Rite library, full of books on how to take over the world by organizing pancake breakfasts, no doubt.

 I did a lot of interior shooting with the Fuji X-E1 (rapidly displacing my Pen E-P5 as my favorite "LookaLeica", thanks to its controls.) And the reason I used it so much was because the 7.5mm f/2.8 7Artisans fisheye may not be the sharpest lens in the world when run wide open, but it does a bang-up job for shooting interiors with iffy lighting. For the price, I don't think you can beat it.

The lens is available for Fuji X-mount, Micro Four Thirds, and Sony E-mount and is stupid cheap.

Real men don't shoot mouseguns!

I have no idea how Chris stays so poker-faced through these.
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Lost the knack...

After sitting in its case, untouched, since late April, the Smith & Wesson 4046 came along to the range yesterday. After putting a hundred rounds through the Wilson EDC X9, I put a box of fifty rounds through the Smith.

Obviously, I have lost the knack for the gun's trigger in the five months since I last pulled it. Nevertheless, it ran through all fifty rounds with no problems.

This makes 300 rounds through the Smith since it was last cleaned and lubricated. 1,700 rounds to go.
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More Huck...

This was shot with the Sony a7 & Sony 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens. Zoomed all the way out to 240mm, the f/6.3 max aperture doesn't allow for the dramatic background defocus of faster lenses, but it still takes an okay picture with a well-lit subject.
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The Eagle Has Landed...

FedEx showed up at 5:42PM yesterday. No unboxing video, sorry. Here's the end result:

KEH called me and said they'd invoice me for another $200. That seemed fair to me.

It's money I wasn't planning on spending and really don't have to spare, but a week or two on ramen is good for the character. Besides, a couple hundred bucks for a clean conscience is a bargain. Now the camera is mine fair and square and I don’t feel like I’ve put one over on anyone. And $499 for an excellent-in-the-box 1Ds Mark II is still a screaming deal, as a quick perusal of the used ones on Amazon will show.

Here's the comparison I promised with the equivalent field-of-view lens on the Micro Four Thirds OM-D E-M5. One is a walking-around lens, the other...not really for just casual roaming with a camera by your side.

I have a Lowepro Apex 120 camera bag that's a leftover from when my go-to camera was a Canon Rebel XT with an 18-135mm travel zoom, and there's no way it will accommodate a massive pro body like the EOS-1Ds Mark II, no matter what lens you put on it, but it'll swallow the little Olympus, complete with 35-100mm zoom and the battery grip, no problem at all.

By the time the lens got here, it was cat-feeding and dish-washing time. So it was headed for dusk when I threw it on the camera and took it into the back yard where there were squirrels who could serve as models for some test shots...

Hey, little fella! Pose for the camera!

I was impressed by how easily it grabbed focus through that little gap without any hunting or confusion by the tree trunk or vegetation. I am going to have fun with this setup next month!
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The Back-Saver...

The Online Photographer is spot-on with the observation he makes in this post. I have been extremely impressed with the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 so far, and its size makes it easy to tote pretty much anywhere.

Here it is with a pint glass for scale...

When the Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L gets here, I'll get pictures of them side-by-side.
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