Drönare
Jag har nu testat att flyga drönare ett par gånger och själva flygandet är enklare än vad jag först trodde. Det är visserligen lite nervöst när den hamnar i ett läge där den försvinner från synhåll, dvs det är svårt att se den om det är träd i bakgrunden.
Bild- och videokvalitén är helt OK för mina syften så jag har inget att klaga på där. Det som är svårt är att lista ut hur man ska använda den för att ta vettiga foton och videos. Sedan är video rätt nytt för mig, jag har testat att göra video … och amatörmässigt är väl en väldigt välvillig beskrivning av resultatet. Men nu är det nog dags att bli lite mer seriös och försöka göra något vettigt.
Så nu ska jag försöka lära mig hur jag ska tänka för att kunna filma och redigera ihop något vettigt. Jag gissar att i bästa fall kommer det att ta lång tid innan jag har något att visa upp.
Men i vilket fall så är det kul att flyga … fast lite höjdrädd blir jag när den ligger på 50m 😜. Och sedan upptäckte jag också att allting ligger mycket närmare än vad jag trodde, jag går oftast mellan olika ställen och då känns de mycket längre än vad det är när jag ser det från 40-50 meters höjd.
The LUMIX G9 couldn’t handle it
I’ve been using the LUMIX G9 for about two years now, and I’ve been very happy with it. It has worked well in various situations, and it has been a joy when I’ve been walking around in different forests. But during the last 6-7 weeks I’ve discovered one situation where it doesn’t work, and now I need to figure out what to do.
I’m talking about is the lag between pressing the shutter and the actual exposure being made. It’s not a giant delay, in fact, I haven’t noticed it before, but it’s enough for me to missing photos.
What happens is that I’m indoors photographing martial arts, i.e., people move around quickly, and I discovered that I was missing shots because people had moved between me pressing the shutter and the photo being captured. And no, it’s not me!! I used to have a Nikon D4s, and I was able to capture these kinds of photos without any problems. I also tried a Nikon Z7 while using the G9, and I did not have this issue with the Z7.
According to the experts, it’s caused by the G9 using contrast detection for the autofocus, and there isn’t much I can do about it. So now I need to figure out what to do. I could stop photographing martial arts, or I could get an Olympus camera who apparently is faster than the G9, or … start building up a new camera system (you can probably hear my wallet screaming).
Well, this is something to think about during the holidays.
Sketch images
I decided to go out and try to take a few images during lunch. Instead of my usual walk I took the car and drove around a bit. I saw a few places that looks promising but it wasn’t possible for me to stay and properly explore the different places. I just took a few images to remember these places, hopefully I get the chance to take closer look before Christmas but things tend to happen … so who knows. Anyway here are a few of the photos I got.
Some "sketch images" from today
The last few weeks have been hectic, lot of things to do at work and I haven’t really been able to get out … while the sun has been up. But both yesterday and today I was able to take a decent walk - I need these kind of walks. Of course I had my camera with me but since the main reason for the walk was to get some exercise I didn’t really concentrate on the photos. But here are a few “sketch images” from today. With “sketch images” I mean photos I take to play around with things to see how things work.
This image is just a close up of some frost, the difficulty here is get the texture of the ice visible - I need to continue playing with this.
I took this image because I wanted to see how it looked like in black and white. For this image to really work I would need better separation of the tree from the background but … it wasn’t possible. But here is the B&W and color version, the B&W is basically standard conversion without any editing. I adjusted the color version a bit to try to bring out the warm colors. I should have worked more on the B&W version but …
And just some snapshots just because I liked the color of the light.
Cynisk
Ibland när jag går omkring i centrala Umeå så stöter jag på hus som ser ut på detta sätt.
Det är ju inte direkt någon trevlig syn och jag blir mest bara förbannad och arg. Jag inbillar mig nämligen att husen inte underhålls för att de ska bli så dåligt skick så att ”det måste rivas för det går inte att renovera”, sedan så kan huset rivas och något nytt flashigt hus kan byggas där. Cynisk? Jag? Kanske lite grann.
When an internet connection goes bad
We have had a fiber connection since 2003-4 and it have been very, very nice. At one time I had a better internet connection at home than at work. And during the pandemic we have been able to work from home without any internet connection problems.
All this has resulted in us becoming dependent on a good internet connection, and slowly things have been moved to some online service, simply because it’s convenient. However, since I’m highly skeptical about various online services all my important stuff is stored on my own “online service”. In other words I run my own server and also have local copies of all important data (i.e. external SSDs).
Sometimes I wonder why I do this, it’s extra work and money involved … but today I was reminded why. There is something wrong with the network in the house, or the connection to our house, or … In short, I can’t figure out what is wrong. The fiber converter seem to be working just fine, the switches & routers in the house seem to work, the transfer speed seem to be OK (not super fast but OK) and yet suddenly everything becomes super slow. Like really slow, my wife told me that it took 1.5h to watch a 40m show on Netflix due to all the buffering, and when I looked at the TV they must have been sending the smallest possible video because everything was very pixelated. A couple of days/weeks ago this happened once in a while, now it’s happening most of the time … could it be some problem with the lasers/fiber, with my stuff, something else? Right now I haven’t got a clue what the problem is but hopefully I get some advise on how to track this down tomorrow.
Anyway, this unreliable connection (it has taken my phone about 1 hour to send 4 photos to iCloud) makes it impossible to work with any kind of data that is stored online … except when “online” means that it’s on a server that is on my own local network. So I’m going to enjoy tomorrow — all data I need for work is stored locally, but all communication is going to be either impossible (forget Zoom/Teams calls) or be very, very slow (emails are coming in slowly … bit … by … bit). This could actually mean that I will get some stuff done tomorrow, which is good because I have a deadline.
But on Saturday I would like to have a normal internet connection, I’ve got some photos to upload/backup …
(Note: it turned out that it was all my own fault … I need to remember when I change configurations)