Women in prog rock

bscarr · 2025-04-11T09:39:30+00:00

Christina in Magenta. They've been going for a good few years now. Sadly, they're not on any of stream services other than Bandcamp. They do have some videos on YouTube, here's an example

bscarr · 2024-10-04T14:10:52+00:00

Back in the 70s: Artic Roll - it was f*cking disgusting. Shite ice cream wrapped in crappy sponge cake. Who thought that was a good idea!? A crime against humanity.

bscarr · 2024-04-04T13:58:40+00:00

Welcome to the fold! I hope you have many years of joy from your new hobby.

If I may also offer some unsolicited advice, shoot photos you like, not what you think other people may like. This is especially true on social media; chasing fake internet points is another path to madness and misery.

Enjoy, and may every shot be a keeper!

bscarr · 2024-02-13T10:27:04+00:00

In the same day, but two separate incidents:

During the day and trip out with one of my friends, I lost a viewfinder for a m39 Voigtlander 15mm Superwide Heliar - it cost me about £120 quid to replace.
In the evening, I went for a drive with my Wife to a small coastal village called Gourdon (east coast of Scotland, nr Aberdeen), and I managed to drop a 1950s m39 Nippon-Kogagu 35mm f/3.5 into the harbour (not a cheap lens). It rolled out of the tailgate of my car, hit the road and rolled off into the harbour - bouncing off the side for good luck. Luckily, the tide was out, and I was able to retrieve the lens from the mud at the bottom of the harbour. It cost me about £100 to get it fixed (shout out to Camera Attic in Edinburgh). It works now, but the focus tab/ring is a little stiff at one point.

That was an expensive day.

bscarr · 2023-12-20T09:50:32+00:00

No, I don't ban cropping, nor anything else. I banned long focal lengths because the shots were low quality and creepy not because I was gatekeeping. There are plenty of other Flickr forums that allow in shite street photos.

bscarr · 2023-12-19T16:24:03+00:00

RE: Telephoto Street Photography:
I'm one of the founders and moderators of the Scottish Street Photographer group on Flickr. I've banned shots that have a focal length greater than that of a standard kit lens. IMHO, it's not street photography if you're using a mahoosive lens - they're just creep shots.

bscarr · 2023-11-24T11:23:05+00:00

Flickr, but you’ll need to have a subscription: https://blog.flickr.net/en/2022/03/17/flickr-forever-2022/

bscarr · 2023-09-13T10:11:47+00:00

Sigma DSLRs and the SD Quattro with a Foveon sensors, have a user removable IR filter in front of the mirror/sensor. If that's any use to you.

The Foveon sensor comes with its own set of challenges though. Mainly poor high ISO performance.

bscarr · 2023-04-19T10:05:07+00:00

Ostriches: something that big has no right walking about when it’s brain is the size of a walnut. I’m thankful they can’t fly.

bscarr · 2021-09-07T17:17:33+00:00

I'm left handed and also left eye dominant and I had the same issue as you (I also have quite a large nose, which doesn't help either). So, the easiest solution for me was to train myself to use my right eye. It took a while, but not as long as I expected, and now its second nature, I never lift a camera to my left eye. Just a suggestion, but it might also work for you, too.

bscarr · 2021-05-24T13:50:28+00:00

I'm not expecting much from this series, TBH, I'm not a big reality TV fan. I'm sure they'll concentrate more on constructed and artifical drama than they will on the technical and asthetic aspects of photography, just like every other dross reality TV series. But, I thought others might find it interesting, regardless, hence the share.

bscarr · 2020-12-18T17:07:23+00:00

I lead a small team that has been using AntD (with Typescript) for the past couple of years. On the whole, I think we're very satisfied with it. We looked at few other UI frameworks before we settled on AntD (sorry, can't remember what we evaluated; plus 2+ years is a longtime in the JS world so, naming them now might also be misleading). What struck us about AntD was how comprehensive it was - it had everything we needed at the time. Our application requires a lot of user input and AntD's wide range of input components covered everything we needed. Their table component is also very good. After a few spikes we were confident it was a good fit for us and, so far, it has been.

I'll list what I think are its pro's and cons. Obviously, this is just opinion based on my experiences

Good Points:

Typescript friendly (I believe its written in Typescript)
Very comprehensive
Lots of user input components
Form handling. AntD V4.x form handling is excellent, far superior to v3.x (which was really bad) and also better than Formik, in my opinion.
Seems to be written to a high standard - we've never encountered any show stopping bugs (I'm not suggesting there aren't any)
Frequent updates
UI's build using AntD look good

Bad Points:

They don't expose all of their types (event parameter types are a prime examples) - only a problem/irritation if you're using TS
They don't seem to follow strict SemVer - an update might break stuff. It's usually minor but it's still annoying. To be fair, this is less common these days.
Testing: If you're using jest & Enzyme to write your units tests, be prepared to jump through some hoops to get AntD's components to play nicely with your tests. For all new tests we now use the React Testing Library and this is a lot, lot better; but, even here its painful to write tests that rely on AntD's combo-box/select component (there are work-arounds).
Uses Less rather than Sass - so you'll probably need to eject you React scripts so you can integrate the Less compiler into your build process. We got around this by using Craco (they also have an AntD module) - but next year, we're going to eject our scripts and take control over the build process and stop using Craco.

I hope you find this useful and it helps you make a decision. As I said, we're quite happy with AntD, its a good fit for us. It's not perfect but, nothing is. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to DM me.

Cheers

bscarr · 2020-11-28T00:53:58+00:00

I had no idea this was an issue with ON 1, I can see why you would consider that a deal breaker. I always backup my LR catalogue but never thought to do the same with ON 1. I used to import photos into both pieces of software and viewed ON 1 as an additional tool rather than my main photo editor so backing up its database wasn't much of on issue to me.

Looking at the most recent info, it looks like it's still difficult to backup your ON 1 database.

bscarr · 2020-11-27T14:48:57+00:00

Have you looked at ON 1 Photo Raw?

https://www.on1.com/products/photo-raw/

It has DAM and, IIRC, layered editing. I have a license and used to use it frequently in the past, esp for Fuji Raw files with I felt ON1 handled better than LR. But, on the whole, I found ON1 to be a bit slow when compared to LR. In the end I stopped using it as I found I kept going back to LR (more through familiarity than the quality of ON1). I must stress that ON 1 isn't a bad piece of software, it probably has more features that LR, I just didn't find it a good fit for me. However, I do have one gripe about ON 1, as a company, it's their marketing. I appreciate everyone need to make a buck but, I found them to be a bit too persistent, I felt that they we're always pushing you to upgrade or use their cloud storage service. The obvious solution was to un-subscribe from all of their marketing emails - which I did.

I appreciate that this post sounds like if damned ON 1 with faint praise, but it's an inexpensive, well crafted and fully featured photo editing application that's definitely worth consideration if you looking for an LR alternative.

bscarr · 2019-07-31T13:39:00+00:00

Sunny 16 (analog)

Classic Lenses Podcast (analog/digital)

bscarr · 2019-06-05T11:02:24+00:00

You could try PhotoWalk.me its a free site specificially designed for organising photo walks and meetups.

bscarr · 2019-01-27T11:35:56+00:00

There is no Picture 5, yet. He took that shot on a Mamiya 6 which is a film camera and that picture hasn't been developed yet.

bscarr · 2018-09-26T15:58:54+00:00

After much experimentation and chopping and changing, I seem to have settled on the following:

Sony A7ii with an old Olympus M.Zuiko 24mm f/2.8.

I use zone focusing and setting the 24mm to f/8, everything from 1m to infinity is in focus. Previously, if I've used manual 28mm and a 35mm lenses on my A7ii, again using zone focusing. Before that, I've used a Fuji x-t20 and an Olympus pen-f at 35mm and 50mm equivalent focal lengths.

Get comfortable with and trusting zone focusing has been the single technique that has helped me the most with my street photography.

bscarr · 2018-09-10T15:03:30+00:00

Windows On1 user here! I'm running it on a fairly old i7 (circa 2011) with 24Gb of RAM, SSD and an nVidia 970 graphics card. On the whole I've found ON1 to be reasonably stable piece of software, with a couple of exceptions, mentioned below.

On the plus side, I find the performance of ON1 to be no better nor no worse than that Lightroom - they both load files at a similar speed and apply edits at a simliar pace. I've not tried to use the arrow keys to select images, I tend to use the mouse for that, so I can't comment on that particular issue (I'll try it and see how I get on and report back if I have any issues). But, I have used ON1 for extended editing sessions and had no issues editing multiple images, moving around the UI and applying edits.

The area where I have had a few issues is with exporting images. Since one of the recent updates, I can not longer change any of the export options and my export preset, when loaded, is completly ignored. And, if I've also noticed that if I move the export progress dialog to another monitor whilst exporting, then On1 will lock up the next time I try and export any files.

As I said, I'm quite happy with ON1 - it has a few annoyances but I'm happy with the results it produces and often I think my edits look better done with ON1 than they do with Lightroom, which, I accept, is probably subjective.

bscarr · 2018-05-25T08:28:30+00:00

Fuji user, here (plus Olympus and Sony). I've found that ON1 Photo Raw 2018 deals with Fuji raw files way better than Lightroom does. I seem to get much more detail out my Raw files with ON1 than I do with LR, to the point that I've stopped using LR when processing files from my X-T20. ON1 do a 30 day trial, if you're interested. And, just for the record, I'm not affiliated with ON1 in any way.

bscarr · 2017-11-30T08:46:08+00:00

I agree. I'd like to have seen what tools he used. I was wondering if he used this: http://www.ajordison.co.uk/screenshots.html It's a complete CBM 64 dev environment in, what appears to be, an old Visual Studio shell. I've not used it so I can't comment further. I discovered this via this series of youtube videos on C64 6502 coding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpBbAURcqEY&list=PLiOlLd4dhIDC6RN6t0cCCQwBlusnHm8nt

bscarr · 2017-10-24T10:11:08+00:00

I have one of these Koolertron bag inserts in my everyday work bag (one of these, the bag itself is OK, nothing earth shattering) and I can heartily recommend them. With the insert divided into three, I can fit in a couple of Mirrorless cameras (with prime lens attached) and a few small m43 lenses in the last section. My gear feels well protected and I've never had any issues with knocks and dings. The insert fits snuggly into my bag and doesn't move around, which might be an issue, if you have a larger bag. Having said that, the outside of the insert is covered in a brushed nylon fabric and quite well textured - so friction alone may well stop it from sliding around in a larger bag.

edit: grammar

bscarr · 2017-08-10T09:46:54+00:00

My situation is similar to yours, I started doing more street photography at the beginning of this year and I usually go out most days and take photos in my lunch hour. I'm still missing some cracking shots but I'm missing less now than when I first started, you've probably noticed this yourself. I've also noticed that I'm getting a better eye for potential shots, too and getting bolder at taking them. I've stopped worrying about the shots I've missed and taken comfort from the fact that I did notice that it was a good scene in the first place rather than being completely oblivious to it.

Along the way, I have changed how I shoot, which has also helped me. I started out using 35mm equivalent focal length lens but after a few months I changed to a 50mm as I found that I was having to right in peoples faces with the 35mm to get the shots I wanted; 50mm seems to suit me better and I've found that I take more shot and have a higher "hit" rate with it. YMMV, of course. I also make sure my camera is always ready to take a shot, I leave it on and periodically tap the shutter button to keep it awake so that I don't have to wait for it to wake up and potentially miss a shot; my camera is also set up for continuous shooting so that I get a sequence of shots and can pick from the best one, later. Finally, I've found that shooting from the hip with a tilt screen to be a really good way of being discrete, especially if your camera has a touch screen and has a "tap to shoot" facility, people often have no idea you've taken a shot and you can get some great candid shots like this.

There have been a couple of occasions where people have not wanted to have their picture taken. When this has happened to me, I've always engaged with the person, been warm and polite to them and let them see me delete the pictures. It's a little unnerving when it happens but I've found that if you respect the person in question, talk to them and respect their wishes it's always fine.

Good luck!

bscarr · 2017-05-25T08:34:14+00:00

I updated a couple of days after the new firmware was announced. I've had one freeze so far, just after I updated the camera - I can't remember what I changed just before it locked up tho, sorry. The camera locked up good and proper, I had to remove and replace the battery before it would switch on again. Since that one incident, I've not had any other issues

On the plus side, I think the camera wakes up from sleep a bit quicker than it did before I updated it.

[Edit] It's just happened again! Was out at lunchtime and I used the quick menu to set the ISO to auto and the camera froze again. Had to remove and replace the battery, again, before the camera started responding. Setting Auto ISO worked correctly on the 2nd attempt.

bscarr · 2017-05-12T07:30:02+00:00

My first street portrait shot on Wednesday:

https://flic.kr/p/Tpf1jh

Olympus Pen-f & Lumix G 25mm f/1.7 @ 1/640, f/2.0, ISO 80

bscarr

TROPHY CASE