On The Sunny Side
Posts filed under Personal
Rotterdam Seen From The Maas
Park Hoge-Veluwe Photo Meet
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Park Hoge-Veluwe for a photo/gear meet. The meet was organised by the (or at least one of the) biggest geek/tech fora in the Netherlands. Here are some photos of that day.
The photos were taken with my Leica M9 + Leica 50mm Summilux Asph and the Fujifilm X-T1 + 18-55mm.
Fujifilm X-T1 and Lee Filters
Lee Filter System
During the time with my Nikon D300 I always used regular (thread) filters (circular polarizers, and ND filters). Since the release of the Fujifilm X-T1 I wondered if a Lee filter system might be better / more flexible (not cheaper!!!!).
At the moment they offer the normal 100mm filter system and the new 75mm filter system (Seven5). The latter is designed specially for the smaller camera's (MFT, Mirrorless APS-C, etc.).
Fujinon XF 10-24mm f/4 R IOS
The Seven5 series is cheaper since it uses smaller filters (75mm versus 100mm), and since my Fujifilm X-T1 uses relatively small lenses this could be a winner (the kit lens has a 58mm filter thread). Until I found out that the new ultra wide angle Fujinon XF 10-24mm F/4 R OIS has a 72mm filter thread. And as you might guess, I'm really interested in that lens.
Fortunately, Lee has a 75-to-72mm adapter, so technically the Seven5 system can be used with that lens.
Adaptor ring thread sizes:
The holder attaches to the lens via a screw-in adaptor ring. The adaptor ring is available in the following thread sizes: 37, 37.5, 39, 40, 40.5, 43, 46, 49, 52, 55, 58, 60, 62, 67 and 72mm.
But 72mm versus 75mm doesn't leave much room on the vignetting side of it. Chances are that you get serious vignetting on the ultra wide end of the focal range (10-14mm), because of the filter holder attached to the lens.
Just to make sure, I dropped Lee an e-mail, and this is what I got in return:
“I tested a pre launch version of this lens last week on my XPro-1 - 10mm is very wide and the lens is the maximum size our 75mm holder can accept. You do get vignetting below about 12mm, which is still good given that is 15mm FF equivalent.
You would have no problems with the bigger system and a wide angle ring at 10mm, but the system is much larger and more expensive.
The s5 system works very well on all other X lenses - you just need to decide whether those last 2mm of focal length are really important to you.
Personally, I will be sticking with the 14mm prime (but upgrading to the X-T1)
I hope this helps.
With regards,
Tech Support - LEE Filters”
Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R
So, there yo got it; Accept additional vignetting on the ultra wide side, or invest in the more expensive 100mm filter system. But before I even invest in a filter system I need to see some independent reviews of that new lens. I might even get the Fujinon XF 14mm f/2.8 R. That lens is available at the moment and is highly recommended by several sites [2] / reviewers / users.
Choices, choices, choices
UPDATE: After much deliberation I bought the Lee 100mm kit with two adapter rings. One for the Fuji 18-55mm (58mm filter thread) and one for the Samyang / Rokinon 12mm f/2 (67mm filter thread). I also added the Big Stopper (10 stops ND) and the Little Stopper (6 stops ND) to my cart.
So in the event I decide to switch camera brand/systems with different lenses (filter threads) I can still use this filter system. I only have to get new/other lens adapters.
REDELIJKHEID.COM Turned Black
and not that I wanted it.
This weekend all the REDELIJKHEID.COM services went down. This included;
- Mail services (for the family)
- My website (this website)
- My father's website
- My photo website
- Tumblr
- etc.
Updating to iOS 7.0.5 Turned Ugly
During the update of my iPhone it got stuck in the so-called recovery mode. This means that everything on the iPhone is lost, and that you need to restore everything from a backup. Thankfully, the last backup was made 10 minutes before the upgrade process began. So no worries there.
The panic started to kick in when the actual recovery process terminated with an unknown error (17).
An unknown error occurred (17)
No matter what I tried, the error kept re-occurring
Searching the Interwebs, I founds several forums mentioning modifying the hosts file on your computer. Any entries referring to the apple.com domain should be removed.
Checking the hosts file out (located @ /etc/hosts on a Mac), I found a reference to a gs.apple.com with a specific IP address. At that point things started to dawn on me....
A couple of years ago I started to experiment with creating your own MobileMe thing (so I would have no need to purchase a MobileMe account back then). In that process you needed to fake some Apple web-servers. One of those servers was gs.apple.com.
After removing the entry from my hosts file and rebooting my iMac, the recovery process went flawlessly.
This 'experience' made me wonder; Did the 'crash' of the iPhone happen because of the hosts file entry? If so, this could be disastrous if someone made these servers unresponsive (e.g. DNS hack, or whatever), since the iPhone would become a brick. At least for as long as these servers are not accessible....
The 4K Video Enabler
Differences in resolution
The biggest thing during The Consumers Electronics Show in Vegas (CES) was the 4K televisions. 4K is a reference to the resolution. Current TV's (LCD/LED/OLED/Plasma) usually have a resolution of 1920*1080 pixels (1080p). The 4K versions have 4 times the resolution. Capable of displaying UltraHD content at an affordable price. These TV's sell for $1000 - $2000.
NaughtyAmerica offers 4K downloads
All very nice, but the average Joe has no real access to 4K content. Sure, there are some videos on YouTube in 4K, but most of the time it's just plain old 1080p (if you're lucky). The current HD media (BluRay) isn't officially certified for 4k content, so the only alternative at the moment is downloadable content. Guess which industry is on top of things? (pun intended).
As with almost everything in the past (VHS / Internet / DVD), the porn industry is one of the first to embrace the new technology. Now all we need is fiber to the home with a minimum of 100Mbps to enjoy the new format.
Creating Funny Money
is not as easy (of funny) as it might sound.
Last weekend we a dinner celebrating the 12.5 years of marriage of my sister-in-law. Our gift was a gazillion envelops filled with;
- useless paper
- 10 euro bill
- .....
This way they had something to do when they came home from the dinner. The fourth option was supposed to be funny money; scanned and severely altered euro billet.
The initial idea was to create a euro bill for 12.5 euro's, but that would take too much work, so I opted for a 55 euro bill (just clone the existing 5 on the 5 euro bill).
Autumn Colors
I'm Published (sort of...)
Someone mentioned that they found a link to my website in a Juniper exam training PDF. Looks like I did a good job on describing the implementation of the Application Firewall feature in the Juniper SRX.
Here is the link to the actual article.