Board on the Floor (Blog Notes for the Week)

Sorry for the absence of a "Blog Notes for the Week" yesterday. I fell sick! Had a meal that didn't agree with me and it wrung me out all afternoon. And the backup staff here is just negligent, is all. It sort of goes without saying—when you have a one man band and the kazoo player gets sick, the guy who plays the cymbal with his foot is also out.

Where's our food?

This past week went by quickly here in the Finger Lakes. It's been hot but not excessively so, and our mini-drought seems to have more or less broken—it has rained three times in the past two and a half weeks. The grass that didn't die is coming out of dormancy and greening up again. I did lose some, though. The soil is permeable and although the trees seem to be able to get some water—whether from deep roots or out of the naturally humid air, I don't know—the grass doesn't do well without rain.

The Week in Review
So here was our week: on Monday we gave Nikon maven (and friend o' TOP, and occasional commenter) Thom Hogan a sendoff for his Summer break, and talked about Nikon the company for a while. That was a popular topic.

I followed that with a Don Quixote tilting-at-windmills suggestion for how Nikon could create a "mini-system" for APS-C without having to actually invest in manufacturing a whole system. Nikon was not at home, so I pinned the note to the front door. Maybe the butler will find it.

That and the followup post, call "The System Concept," drew the most comments of the week. A few shrewd commenters noted that the very concept of a "camera system" is itself changing under the new world order, which is doubtless true, though Fuji is doing a fine job and finding good success with the older system model. Finally on Tuesday we all got a little envious of Jarob Ortiz, who landed that "dream job" that went viral last Winter.

I'm going to try to establish Wednesday as the day for "Open Mike," which has been without a home (in the schedule, I mean) since I started working on book projects on Sundays. This week was the first tryout. I wrote about an in-person visit from longtime TOP reader and RoadRunner magazine writer John M. Flores, who came on his cool electric motorcycle. Very interesting guy. (All TOP readers are much more interesting that average.) I'm hoping we can stay acquainted.

On Thursday we updated the situation with larger-than-life photographer Jay Maisel's larger-than-life New York City house, certainly one of the most interesting photographer domiciles in history. Jay is a fine teacher, too.

Finally, on Friday, I wrote about a very cool feature—well, very cool for portrait photographers, anyway—on the Sony A6300: eye recognition with continuous tracking. I should have mentioned my onetime solution to this problem—in my old studio loft in Chicago, I put a wide board on the floor, and asked portrait subjects and models to stand on it. That kept them from moving up or back and more or less in the same plane, and made it easier for me to keep focus. It worked fine. For grade-school-aged kids especially, who did a good job of staying on the board but who otherwise might be all over the place.

Turns out the eye focus feature is not unique to the A6300...but then, I knew we'd learn about that. Readers educate me as much as I educate you. Lenya schooled me about what katuschka (катушка) really means, which was an unexpected bonus. I'd been saying it for years, a meme absorbed from a high school teacher I liked. And in all those years, never knew what I was talking about! Fun to find out.

See you on Monday, when you will enjoy the very first new feature paid for by the new Patreon campaign! The Patreon campaign will pay for things like books and equipment to review, new content, and various other work-related expenses. It still needs to get a bit healthier to be really useful, though, so if you haven't contributed, I hope you'll consider it.

Some schtuff:

• Beach bum hat
• Beaches
• Curved LED monitor
• World's Best 50mm lens?
• The Sea
• Lensbaby Composer Pro II Sweet 50
• High-tech water balloons
• Adventures in record collecting
• Nikkor 105mm ƒ/1.4E
• Fuji Instax film
• Jay Maisel rocks

See you next week—hope you have a relaxing and restorative weekend.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Like what you read?
Join our support campaign or buy something

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Comments

[Len Salem]

Lenya is probably strictly correct about the meaning of Katushka but a Google search turned up this Urban Dictionary definition:

"Girl that is crazy and weird and isn't afraid to show it. She's smart, beautiful, funny, thoughtful of others and she is REAL. She doesn't fall in love too easily, but she has guys around her. She is a very caring, outgoing girl. You can always trust her with anything. If you have a Katushka in your life, you are really lucky."

I rather like the sound of her - reminds me of the enigmatic Leonard Cohen song "Susanne", and certainly it's a more romantic meaning...

[toto]

"Katuschka" could have stood for tush - may be just an attempt by the teacher to sound sophisticated.

[Chris Kern]

Buried more than half-way down the blurb at the link for the LG curved monitor:

With over 99% coverage of the sRGB spectrum, this LG monitor's superior resolution makes it an ideal choice for professional photographers, graphic designers or anyone looking for highly accurate color.

Ninety-nine percent of sRGB? And they’re bragging about that?