Martins site

Pentax iz da shiz!

martin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:48:17 +0000

I finally made up my mind. Unless I happen to win Scott Bourne’s competitions (two wonderful Nikon and Canon cameras as the 1st prize, pretty please please!) I’m going to stick with Pentax. This past weekends photography excursion to WWF helped me make my mind up, and I realized that the lenses I have are excellent and I know how to make good photos with them. It’s not like Pentax is a small obscure brand that no one has heard of, no, it’s more as if Pentax is the 3rd most known brand, and in many peoples opinion the brand which gives you most for your money, and when you think about it you will never be able to tell from a photo if it was made using a Canon, Nikon or Pentax, right? You will see much more if the lens was good, and most of all, if the photographer knew what he/she was doing…

So, my mind is made up, I’m sticking with Pentax. I do however want to learn more and work more with my photographing since it is something which inspires me a lot, so I might look into getting a newer body (the K-x looks VERY promising, especially considering it’s really cheap compared to other cameras with those features and that quality), or/and a new lens, since I don’t have anything now which lets me make macro shots and/or tele shots… Tamron 90 macro or 70-200 f2.8 looks really interesting…

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Winter Word Festival

martin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:03:13 +0000

We visited Winter Word Festival yesterday and today. It was very much fun to meet some of my fellow members of the Strömstad Photo Club. Judit likened us to a group of sharks, hunting in a pack Here are some of the photos I took…

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Trip to Belgium…

martin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:34:30 +0000

I got home yesterday evening (or actually early today) after a quick visit to one of our offices in Belgium. Me and two collegues departed from Sweden (2 from Gothenburg, 1 from Malmö) and arrived in Brussels on Tuesday. I was a bit surprised to find that it wasn’t very warm. It was even below freezing, which I wasn’t expecting… But, they have 2-3 weeks head start on the spring, so their snow had mostly melted away, and we had sunshine. Even though we didn’t have any time to check out Antwerp or Belgium it was still a nice trip, even though it meant very long days, and lots of tasks. I hope I’ll have a chance to visit Belgium again, but this time with a chance to have a quick visit to the city, and not only the Airport and the harbour

And oh yes, of course I bought some chocolate to bring home as a gift for Judit who was at home taking care of business

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Snowing again…

martin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:04:39 +0000

This is the longest and snowiest winter I can remember. When I was a kid it felt like the winters were usually snowy, but none of them was snowy for as long as we’ve had now. As far as I remember we’ve had constant snow now since December, and it’s been very cold some times (-10C usually and -25C some times). It hasn’t snowed so many times, but since it’s been constantly cold the snow has stayed.

This morning there was 20 cm of fresh snow, and quite windy, so the snow had gathered up in drifts, in some places as much as 40-50 cm, which makes shovelling really “fun”

Now I wouldn’t mind if this snow went away and we got some spring, I’ve taken more winter-photos this year than all previous years combined

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Shrove tuesday / Fettisdagen

martin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:35:50 +0000

Today is Fettisdagen (sw. literaly translated; fat Tuesday). It is a day with old traditions, but these days it’s mostly a marketing ploy and excuse to eat Semla, a wheat bun, cut in two parts, slightly scooped out, filled with almond paste and whipped cream. When I was a kid these buns were only made for this day, but now you can get them at coffee shops as early as the beginning of January. Granted, this little bun is delicious and does well compared to many pastries etc, but its getting less and less special when you eat it many times.

I’ve had three Semla this year, my 3rd being the one I had today, and I don’t think I’ll have any more now this year. There are a few seasonal specials that used to be sold only at certain times of the year, but now many of them are becoming standard products which can be bought all year round. Julmust (Christmas softdrink) can now be bought early in the fall, Påskmust (Easter softdrink, identical to Julmust) will be on sale in a few weeks I guess, and it’s not going to be long before there’s Sommarmust (summer softdrink), if somebody hasn’t already invented it…

Am I turning into a cranky old bastard who will go around saying; “It was better before!”? Who knows, I guess time will tell

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Let there be light…

martin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:37:40 +0000

I have a plan.

My plan is to go through my old camera bags and find the flashes I have, but haven’t used for ages. Since I got my 50 mm lens many years ago I didn’t have to use the flash to get enough light, and I very much liked the natural light that lens can capture (although the lens is quite “soft”). Now however, since I started listening to Scott Bournes photo blog (photofocus) I realized many photographers like sticking a flash on the camera even though they have lenses that could provide short enough exposure times without the use of flash, so there must be something more to it than just the exposure times…

I haven’t really experimented much with flash, bouncing it off walls, ceilings, using soft boxes etc, and I think it might help me understanding flash photography a bit better if I made some tests with it. I have two flashes (one old pentax, and one really old one that I got from my uncle when he decided to scrap his old camera) which both work, and are quite ok, but aren’t totally compatible with my camera, but they should work in manual mode, so I’ll try to figure out how to rig one of them on the camera, and use the other as a slave. I know it has the photo receptor and can be triggered as a slave. Maybe I’ll try setting up some sort of little studio place for it. More info to follow

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