Damp reflections

It's a damp start to the day here and really we've been into getting things really more ready for being away, sorting cards and gifts out, heck I even bought some wrapping paper from T G Hughes while out of the metal foil sort rather than the thin printed paper.

I have sorted a few things out for the Christmas period in advice such as the calendars as they get overlooked in the rush around food, family arrangements like card deliveries and presents which given how things went here last Christmas with problems with dad probably makes sense.

We are getting some great illustrated stories at the forum which all helps keep things fresh having seen what has happened at some and indeed one shut a fortnight ago but really my thoughts are more with memories of my late Grandfather this week.

We spent many a day in his longer than average garden playing on a swing, taking an interest in his plant flower planting, helping out when not down at the park watching him play Crown Green Bowls in the summer when he wasn't taking an interest in what I was doing.

Given how things sometimes got at home that was really appreciated.

The weekend kick about

It's friday so after a few different than usual posts we'll go to something more like what normally talk about on here.

Playing a Donna Summer album sent me back to 1977/8 when while I wasn't blessed with the best co-ordinated legs football was a big interest of mine, watching  Grandstand and Final Score every saturday as back then matches on any other day were exception and "When saturday comes" only meant one thing involving hat, scarf and coat.

Replica kits were thing back then although they were nothing like as expensive as today and arguably better made so yes a young me wore them when trying to score goals.

Now this week we've had a rather hard hitting report into the state of football club finances showing the debts major premiership clubs have, insolvency and that if creditors were to miss a payment that would be enough to drive 32 clubs to the point going into administration.

Really the cost structure of the game and a more even distribution of the money needs changing with some urgency and I feat it may be others will need to step in to ensure reform happens as certain borardrooms of top premiership do nothing as they compete against other for signings turning a blind eye to the costs.

The Spirit of Radio

Some things do go far back into time, specifically my teens and one group I always liked was the Canadian power trio Rush who originated from the Greater Toronto Area who were more well known for their albums rather than singles starting with the self titled album from 1974.

A common feature of many of their albums  up to 1978's Hemispheres was the long, sometimes side long composition on a theme with many changes in tempo and very intelligent, often thoughtful lyrics.

Later albums were to have shorter songs but much of the essence of that - the impeccable playing and lyrical composition - remained from numbers like Freewill, Subdivisions, Red Sector A and Time Stand Still.

Thus they were handly the sort of group that slot on a five or six track a side Greatest Hits set so you bought each and every album.

That said, if you were looking for something that showed ability off, this double album  greatest hits set released last week some years after the initial cd is it coming complete with an insert aleven though coming in at £28 from Juno, this is a lower mid price issue.

It does contain the first two parts of the magnum opus, entire sidefilling 2112 but let's be honest, for that the thing to do is get the whole album - plenty of decent used copies can be had on vinyl as it was a steady seller during the vinyl era and ditto A Farewell To Kings for Cygnus X-1, the space thriller set to music.

I don't think there would be another trio of brilliant rock musicians who could do any better than the magical musical output of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart. They became iconic musicians in progressive rock history long time ago and I believe here you can listen to a great compilation of their works to understand why.

So you bought that?!

We mentioned last week about this being originally a Photography centred blog which is quite true although the reason for photography as far as I was concerned was to capture memories and that matter to me or things now that will over time become them.

In a few respects blogging while good for the writing part - a bit like a scrapbook - posed issues with pictures not least if you wanted to make a post within a few days and it may take a week to get the film back with scanned images so for just about eighteen years shaped what I used from a basic digital compact camera to a DSLR.

I hear friends say "The only time I ever take it (the dslr) out is to events where I want more lens choice and control otherwise I use my smartphone or compact camera" and I can understand why.

The "new to me" Sony compact with full exposure mode choice and a fairly fast lens works well unless you need the viewfinder as strong sun can make looking at displays almost impossible the odd time ot proper macro photographing abilities.

What I do miss is the concentration, the absorbing nature of  making a picture on traditional manual focus film camera, altering the settings as you view the scene.

You feel more involved if you will with the act of taking that picture.

Thus often thinking about from the early 2000's, I decided to get a fully manual exposure film camera with mechanical shutter just for the fun if taking pictures for posterity and I might add more relaxation.

That's the top plate and you're naked with no automatic wotsits, just metering by hand owning the results and any mistakes as no silicon chip is going to do it for you but you can just get on with it without setting frame modes, program exposure modes or video options.

You take pictures, it commits them to film. That's all.

Having less means you don't have to think "where is that feature?" and everything you use is to hand from the aperture and focus ring at the front, the shutter speed selector that does a dizzy 1/4000 of a second and the winder that has the meter battery switch come on at 30 degree turn of it.

Best of all it can take later pre 2003 Auto Focus lenses for Nikons AF cameras as they fully meter on it which takes in high quality lightweight zooms which because they don't play well with Nikon DSLR's that rely totally on electrics for aperture setting can be had for little money so I got a Sigma 28-105mm zoom lens which is just perfect for taking pictures where changing lenses can be a pain like crowds or near beaches that love to blow sand in to your camera.

Film can be mailed to Photo Hippo in Burnley who do develop and scan it putting them online to download as soon as it's done plus any prints.

We're going back in time!

Measuring light

It's Friday so after last weeks post and a meal out we are going back a little to the origins of this blog.

The start point of this blog was Photography to which other things got folded in over time but one thing that is really useful is a seperate light meter because ever since the early 1980's intergated metering in the camera has moved on from traditional centre weighted systems to more advanced multi-zone matrix metering, spot  metering systems systems the thing that gets overlooked in camera PR material is they're all set to assume what is reading represents a  18 % mid grey and often what it sees is lighter or darker than that.

What that means is that if you were to rely on your own cameras metering it's likely to produce a picture that's too dark or too light and while print films are more tolerant of errors, slide film can only tolerate at best about a half an f stop and the sort errors we can get can be 2 f stops  and that's fatal.

By using a basic seperate light meter, set to match the film speed setting you take a reading of what light is falling on your subject or place say a 10 x 8 gray card (Kodak made a lot of them) in front of it and after turning the dial set a matched shutter speed and aperature on your camera knowing that will be right.

This Russian one uses a selenium cell so needs no batteries (Yay!)  and fits in a pocket where  it'll get you out of a hole.

She's super bad now...

At one level as far as UK music fans are concerned the Jackson Five dissapeared in late 1972 with the Lookin' Through The Windows albums and reappeared in mid 1976 in reformed The Jackson form with Show You The Way To Go.

On the other this has lead to an underappreciation of just how good they were in their last Motown days as put simply few gave them a chance as as they ditched "The Corporation" the group of Motown songwriters and arrangers, they were up with the best Funkster of the day.

Thus when this was issued in 1977 sales were low and the UK edition dropped the odd track to make what had been concieved as a three lp set to a double which basically means you need the American edition.

Unfortunately my copy got damaged in the post looking like a heavy pointed intem pressed into and broke a portion of the first disc so we'll waiting on a replacement copy but as I only have cd's of the studio albums this would of been a great vinyl option removing some of the filler of the first four albums leaving us with the hits and greatest musical achievements.

Publishing

In a week where the image loading tool here seem to be broken - too much needless tinkering for mobile users who tend not make old school blogs it must be said  - you might be forgiven for thinking using paper and cutting out images to stick on to with those opaque squeezy glue containers might be a better idea.

You know, how we used to do our scrap books with all our cuttings ready and a stack of marker pens for adding the text.

I did have a great time away and thankfully those pictures did take on the other blog although the welcoming did feature "boys and girls" which was appreciated without drawning too much attention to just why.

Travel on proper touring coach with air conditioning and comfy seats really does help even if I tend to go stiff after an hour or so especially having had issues with my knees recently.