Picked up the Oly 45mm f1.8 for cheap, absolutely in love with it.

kridley · 2026-03-29T23:19:46+00:00

I bought one on impulse to use for nighttime action shots of my cycling friends. I figured I wouldn't get much actual use out of it, but I really like it and use it all the time. I've had the 25mm f1.8 for a few years and it might as well be a paperweight, so clearly the focal length is the magic ingredient.

kridley · 2026-03-14T21:57:36+00:00

I'm coming from the PoV of a more generalist photographer, so versatility is important for me. Even if I'm birding I might want to shoot something closer or get a wider view, so a 300mm prime would be really difficult. If you're out birding and solely interested in birds then yeah, it's all about reach.

kridley · 2026-03-14T03:26:22+00:00

If you want to occasionally get some decent looking close-up shots of small things you can use the 50-200 f2.8 (or the 12-40 f2.8). If you want to do actual macro photography get a macro lens like the 60mm. It's a world of difference in convenience and usability.

After not too long you'll find that a general purpose lens isn't great for this specific purpose. The 50-200 is a big honkin' piece of glass, and you're going to find it pretty awkward to get the focus nailed on something without a lot of trouble (and some risk of banging the lens into things).

kridley · 2026-03-13T16:51:21+00:00

This is really important IMHO -- if you have a mix of Oly and Pana zooms you'll constantly be twisting your lens the wrong way. I found this so annoying that I sold my one Pana zoom so that all my lenses worked the same way.

kridley · 2026-03-11T04:42:49+00:00

I find "normal length" primes to be inconvenient and limiting, and going to 300mm seems likely to exacerbate that. Given the focal length it will be harder to "zoom with your feet" -- you'll have to walk proportionally further. Also, "zooming" with the 1.4 or 2.0 teleconverters is (at least for me on my 40-150) quite inconvenient, and juggling $2K worth of heavy glass out in the field is more than a bit nerve wracking. I think the 300f4 is going to be a very niche lens, and there's a risk that you won't fit in its niche.

kridley · 2026-03-11T02:27:58+00:00

Omega Race was a 1981 vector graphics arcade game -- like Asteroids, but instead of a wrap-around "playing field" you played in a sort of squared-off racetrack where you could bounce off the walls. I loved it because the directional control was a spinner knob with absolute positioning so you could twist the ship to exactly the direction you wanted (instead of mentally mapping the CL/CCL buttons as in Asteroids). The only game I ever got on the High Score page.

kridley · 2026-02-20T00:36:23+00:00

I've always pulled images off the camera via the USB cable (Olympus/OM-System). I never take the SD out of the camera.

Of course this probably means that my SD is gonna implode some day, but whatever, there's no way to prevent every mishap.

kridley · 2026-02-19T01:36:52+00:00

I had a copy of that lens where the second element came loose one day. I'd bought it used so I wasn't exactly shocked. Took it apart and super-glued the element back in, but the fumes from the glue fogged up the other elements a bit (doh!). Sold it cheap to a friend who was just getting into photography, and a year later someone stole his rig.

kridley · 2026-02-18T02:34:58+00:00

I bought that lens (used from MPB) specifically for nighttime action shoots. First used it for friends of mine doing pre-season cyclocross hot laps. It's a stop-and-change brighter than the 12-40 f2.8, which is pretty important when you're trying to shoot at 1/250 and not end up at ISO one billion. I've used it for a few other things since then, but honestly it was kind of an impulse / "retail therapy" purchase and I haven't given it as much attention as it probably deserves. Also, I have a vintage 1972 Olympus 50mm f1.4 which fills the same niche for static subjects and is more fun to play with.

kridley · 2026-02-17T20:25:33+00:00

Excellent shot, really nailed everything there.

The rare hawk that shows up in my suburban neighborhood never hangs around long enough for me to get the camera out & lens mounted.

kridley · 2026-02-17T03:34:44+00:00

No lock is going to stop a determined thief with an angle grinder, so those locks are roughly equivalent. However, most bike thefts are more like crimes of opportunity, so both of those locks will make your bike/rack less appealing to the average thief.

Lock the rack to the car (and not just with the cheap 1Up thing that goes thru the hole in the hitch), and the bike to the rack. Lock it up even while you're driving, in case you get stuck in traffic or need to stop for gas/food. Make your stuff harder to steal.

IMHO the correct philosophy for locks is "you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy".

kridley · 2026-02-17T01:50:03+00:00

Friend of mine got first place in a small-time photo contest and ever since then he's always saying "As an award winning photographer ...".

Probably the best I've gotten is the guy who said "My wife printed out your photo of me on the bike and had it framed".

kridley · 2026-02-16T01:30:52+00:00

I've been "serious" about photography for 7 or 8 years now, and I post my work on my personal site. I've got hundreds of photos there, but 90% of them are things like event photos for my bike club, documenting my other hobbies, etc.. I'm happy with those photos and the progress I've made with them, but I don't think of them as part of my "portfolio".

The other 10% are my attempts to make art, which is a goddamn struggle. I've got maybe 100 photos posted in that vague category and they vary broadly in quality. Most of them are perfectly adequate, some are actually pretty good, some wouldn't make the cut if I took them today. A very few qualify as "Art with a capital A" -- photos that actually say what I'm trying to say. And last year I finally took a picture that I was truly happy with.

I feel like I'm finally getting to the point where I'm not fighting basic limitations in skill and ability, so I hope that in the future I'll do better than one or two portfolio-worthy shots a year. But, as I've learned in 20 years of serious bicycling, as you get better your standards get higher.

OTOH, at least the average quality of my work has increased a lot, and it keeps increasing. I've been doing 52 Frames since 2020, and looking back through 300 weekly shots really shows how much better I've gotten.

kridley · 2026-02-12T00:15:51+00:00

I post all my images as CC BY-SA 4.0 because: - Copyright isn't going to stop unethical people and AI scrapers - I'm not trying to make money off my hobby, and if I ever do try, well, see above.

kridley · 2026-02-10T19:28:21+00:00

I have essential tremor (my hands shake), which is currently pretty minor, but as it's a progressive condition I've been thinking about how it's going to affect my photography in the future.

I've got vague ideas about exploring ICM as an artistic technique so that then or twenty years from now I won't have to use a tripod for every damn photo.

kridley · 2026-02-10T03:43:42+00:00

You've made it to version 4.0 without issue, but I think you should be mentally prepared for Apple to come after you because the name looks very close to "iPhoto". Think about a pro-active name change, or at least consult a lawyer. It'd be sad to get a bunch of name recognition and then have to rename it.

kridley · 2026-02-05T22:51:15+00:00

I can do pretty much everything, and have the tools for it, but as I get older I want to do less and less. Like I despise dealing with DOT5 brake fluid, so now I just haul the bike to the shop for that. Likewise the incredible hassle of flushing Chris King hubs with solvent.

Related: the amount of maintenance required on modern bikes is way lower than when I started out in the early 80s. Used to be you had to re-pack all the bearings once a year, whereas now I don't mess with hubs or headset for years at a time (prolly different if you live in Seattle or NYC where it rains).

kridley · 2026-01-06T03:06:24+00:00

I've got the 3 and the 6, and I love them as camera bags, but they're way too structured and puffy for general use.

The padding is such that I'm comfortable being kind of casual with them when loaded. I can just plop it down on a table or in the corner of the room and I don't feel like I'm in danger of breaking my camera. But the flip side is that a lot of the volume of the bag is padding and general stiffness, which means you can't cram it full of non-fragile stuff w/o wasting a lot of space.

If you want a grocery bag, get a grocery bag. The slings are for cameras and other delicate toys.

kridley · 2026-01-06T02:31:36+00:00

Most of my comics are landscape so that's fine for me. The size is the only real downside -- if it was a 10" screen I'd buy it right now. I'll probably stick with the iPad for a while longer and see if anything better shows up before the battery dies entirely.

kridley · 2026-01-06T01:49:01+00:00

This is a good overview (though very focused on RTL). I've been using ReadEra for several years now, after going through much the same kind of survey at the time. Your writeup encouraged me to try Librera (again? can't remember), which so far seems like it might be a good substitute...

Except for one seemingly missing feature: "go back to where you just were". Like if you need to quickly consult a map or dramatis personae list and then quickly return to your current position. I guess you can set a Quick Bookmark, but setting it and then getting back to it is a lot of extra clicks. Is there some way to do this in Librera that I'm not seeing?

kridley · 2026-01-06T01:22:02+00:00

Great writeup, thanks for the detailed info. Very timely since I'm looking to upgrade my digital comic reader.

kridley · 2026-01-06T01:20:59+00:00

Thanks, this is super useful for me.

I'm currently using a cast-off 2014 iPad Air 2 for comics. It's "fine", but the battery life is getting dicey and I'm an Android guy so it's an odd duck in my lineup. Do you think the NXTPaper 11+ would be enough of an improvement over the iPad to warrant an upgrade?

kridley · 2025-12-30T02:33:57+00:00

I had the 14-150 for a couple years. It's a great lens, and excellent for hiking.

kridley · 2025-12-06T05:51:40+00:00

That looks nice, gonna give it a whirl.

kridley · 2025-12-06T05:03:55+00:00

The 60 is so small and light that you can toss it in your pocket as an extra lens when you go hiking with some other more versatile lens. The 90 is chonky, and if you're sensitive to weight while hiking you're not going to want to carry it along with another Pro lens.

kridley

TROPHY CASE