Fortunate F3 Find

A Nikon F3 HP found again, put a special strap and a no less special lens on it

I’m moving house and while getting some furniture out of the old place, my son found my old Nikon F3 HP among the flotsam and the jetsam. A nice surprise!

Fujinoctilux

Fujifilm’s XF 56 1:1.2 R WR lens on my XPro2

Got this light-gatherer recently and it really leaves a good first impression.

Leica SL3 Hands-On

Slightly updated SL3 body (second top wheel visible here to the right of the viewfinder hump, finally, we have input wheels for all three items of the exposure triangle!), perfect lens (f/2.0 APO 35 mm SL, ‘nough said!).

Moving House

My bookshelf at night

Since I got that key for the new rental flat, I’ve been moving house.

I wanted to downsize, simplify everything, get rid of old burdens, live in an age-appropriate manner and only surround myself with things that I like and that I really need. I moved out of the house and into a rented apartment. Here are a few documentary photos of the change:

On a Mac? On a Mac!

Shhh … Wanna know a secret?

Capture All, Let Postprocessing Sort Them Out!

A video mostly taken with the Insta360 X3 but for the last part, which is with the DJI Mavic 3 Pro.

There’s a Learning Curve in the Air

That was yesterday afternoon: first the Avata drone was almost dunked in the river, then I switched to the Mavic 3 Pro and finally got still images with the Nikon. My thanks again go to Philip Glass for his relaxed attitude towards pirates.👍

Two Better Cameras for the Air Tripod

That’s quite a camera module on that gimbal! Image from the DJI Germany website.

Here’s a 48 MPx aerial photo of a nearby village from last weekend made with my DJI Mini 3 Pro drone.

And here’s a 100% crop from the same photo, as good as I could get it starting with the *.dng file and after careful denoising (yes, even a 100 ISO file shows noise in the shadows!) and sharpening in Lightroom Classic. I have the well founded suspicion that these are not really straight from the (tiny) sensor 48 megapixels, they’re 2x or even 4x uprezzed *before* writing the *.dng file. These so-called RAW files will develop ugly artefacts at the merest touch of the sharpening slider. Lightroom’s otherwise very capable AI denoise function will also make a mess of them.

Now, this won’t do! I’ve decided to upgrade the cameras that sit atop the air tripod and have invested in a DJI Mavic 3 Pro drone.

The Pariah of the Lower Atmosphere

A democratization of the aerial view

Drones and the people flying them have been getting a bad rap in recent years. In Europe, this has led to a change in legislation and to stricter rules regarding where and how high you can fly. The laws coming into effect the day before yesterday also mean that you need an A1/A3 license for more drones than in the year before. Only the mini drones weighing less than 250 g can be flown without a license. So, is it still worth it?

Whoop!