It's cool this morning, so I'm wearing jeans. I've learned that I don't like wearing jeans while biking. Not that I ever wear biking shorts either. I'm usually just in shorts! I have some synthetic lightweight hiking trousers I can wear when it's windy, I guess.

Anyway, I learned it again this morning when I biked to the garden. This time I brought along the Olympus E-500 with the 25mm/f2.8 pancake mounted. I have something of an irrational affection for that lens. Having bought one back in the day when I was shooting four-thirds dslrs, I sold it when I went strictly mirrorless.

Then I bought another copy after I looked at some of the images I'd taken with it. It's got kind of a "look," I guess. It's irrational. I like it.

Then, of course, I bought an E-500 dslr, because it has the Kodak CCD sensor and it was sprinkled with magic CCD dust made by the elves of Rochester, NY.

Anyway, I like the combo. Small. Lightweight. Simple. Gives a very mechanical vibe with the mirror slap and the noisy focusing motor.

Put a few up on Flickr. SOOC, because why not?

The only spider web I saw. There were a lot of those crazy webs on the low bushes. I don't know if those are spiders or some other insect. But I should have seen dozens of these.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:03 Sunday, 29 October 2023

I rode my bike to the garden and brought along the Stylus 1s. I really need to start carrying the OM-1 or E-M1 Mk3 with the 40-150mm/f2.8 mounted. The Stylus slips into the little handlebar bag that holds some tools, a mask and a beer koozy (I was a Boy Scout. "Be prepared.") with enough room left over for a compact camera.

The larger cameras would require me to put a bag on my bike, which I do when I'm riding it to the pond to look for birds. It's a little more effort, and I'm really trying to combine getting some kind of fitness activity in quickly here, with visiting the garden and maybe getting a few shots. But maybe plants and insects are as worthy as birds in terms of effort.

This is a jpeg straight out of the camera, because I'm lazy and it turned out just fine I though.

Speaking of spiders. Saw this one in April 2020. Haven't seen once since. Of course, I hadn't seen one before either. But I was hopeful and looking forward to seeing more of this amazing spider.

Since sunrise is at a such a late hour (7:24 a.m.), I figured we might as well take advantage of it and drive the golf cart down to the kayak launch and see what there was to see, and potentially photograph.

Wasn't spectacular. There were two young men putting their kayaks in to do a little fishing. Noise travels far on the water this early in the morning. Heard two boats long before we ever saw them.

Was glad we used mosquito repellant.

I mean, stuff like this...

This is a crop of the preceding image. Otherwise, straight out of the camera.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:21 Tuesday, 24 October 2023

But 400mm does let you do this.

I took the E-M1X to the airshow on Saturday because I was going to use the mZuiko 100-400mm zoom. It turns out that I might have been better served using the mZuiko 40-150mm/f2.8 with the MC1.4 teleconverter.

This shot is at 218mm, which is only slightly longer than the 210mm of the 40-150 with the teleconverter. The challenge is keeping the aircraft in the frame at 400mm.

The E-M1X handles the 100-400mm nicely and has subject recognition for aircraft, which I would say isn't really essential in an airshow. The subject is usually the only thing in the sky.

This shot is un-cropped. It'd probably be better at 3:2 where I could center the formation vertically, but I'm not that fussy usually.

Beautiful morning today, 60-something degrees, not a cloud in the sky. Saw not one but two little blue herons this morning. This one let me get the closest.

There I was, sitting in my recliner, engrossed in reading a new book, Sunburst and Luminary, An Apollo Memoir, by Don Eyles. Vague notions of lunch intruding at the back of my mind.

Suddenly, "BZZZZZZTT! Thwap!" Again, right to my immediate right.

Daylight and a sense of what surfaces might have yielded that sound gave me a clue where to look, even if I didn't know what I would find.

Cautiously pulled my little radio back, and there he (or she) was. A lost shield bug. I'm guessing they're not great fliers.

After snapping a few candids, I coaxed it onto my hand and took it outside. It seemed to like my hand, as it didn't want to let go over the garden. Gave it a nudge and it fell into the dirt, hopefully to live whatever a fulfilling life is to a shield bug.

Checked Mitzi's flight progress. Time remaining in flight is greater than the time remaining for the departure of her connection. Another night alone.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:10 Friday, 29 September 2023

Aunt Carol, who is 88, chatting with Mom at her birthday party.

Fixed one automation. Now trying to figure out the Forklift sync, because of course that doesn't work. I know the source folder changed, and I corrected that, but it didn't sync the image.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:23 Wednesday, 27 September 2023

Caitie doesn't like the way I photograph people. This shot was taken during an exchange we were having regarding my artistic choices, and she approached the lens while making her point.

I'll have to remember that trick.

Took a lot of pics for Mom's birthday. It was cloudy and cool, but it didn't rain.

I like this one.

Having only seen my first cattle egret around here a month ago, here's another one this morning. This one seems to need a bath. Kind of came up on it unexpectedly, so I zoomed and shot quickly thinking it'd fly away. So framing isn't ideal. I needn't have worried, but I didn't take my time and frame it up nicely.

This morning's birds are these mourning doves.

Dew point was reasonable and the sky was clear, so I pointed the EM-1 Mk3 to the sky with the 8mm/f1.8 fisheye mounted. Not a lot of excitement. Seems to be more satellites visible, I'm guessing those are mostly StarLink. Maybe an "Iridium flare" or something like it, or possibly a meteor. If I weren't a lazy man, I'd get up early and go to the beach and try to capture the comet. Bigger version at Flickr.

Put the drone up this morning. On the flight back from Miami, Mitzi had the window seat so I only got glimpses of a spectacular cloudscape. But I do have a drone.

Unremarkable photo. What is remarkable, and disturbing, is this is only the second bird (the first of two) I saw this morning. As I got toward the back pond, I realized I wasn't even hearing any birds. I normally hear mockingbirds, mourning doves, woodpeckers, hawks, whistling ducks, ospreys and bird calls I can't identify. Not all of them, but usually at least a couple.

Just before I got home, I heard a mockingbird, and then spotted it on the roof of a house. The only one I saw. As I'm typing this I'm hearing some kind of crane vocalizing outside.

Can't be good.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:33 Wednesday, 6 September 2023

Very pleasant morning today. 67°F! Supposed to get over 90° later today though. Still, I'll take it. I opened the windows the morning to get some fresh air in the house. I have a CO2 monitor and it's consistently over 1200ppm, which doesn't seem to cause any overt effects; but has been shown to cause measurable cognitive deficits in controlled tests. It won't matter, because I just closed the windows and it'll be over 1000 again shortly.

If I weren't laboring under those cognitive deficits, I'd look into plants or some other mechanism to reduce the interior CO2 levels.

Anyway, no birds this morning. I don't really understand it, and it's troubling. A few mockingbirds, a couple of doves and a woodpecker, but that was it. Nothing standing still long enough to photograph.

Spotted this green anole, which I don't see as often as the ubiquitous brown ones, when I was shooting some flowers. It'll have to do.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:00 Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Pretty pleasant this morning! 74°F, though the humidity was still rather high. It's fine until you start sweating, then it's just damp, not hot.

Went just before sunrise so brought the E-M1 Mk3 with the 12-100mm/f4 Pro. Wasn't sure if I could get the moon in the frame, and the star of this is the cloud. Overall, a nothing-burger, but I liked it.

This morning's moon. Had a glitch yesterday, posting the handhelds. Everything seemed fine at Marmot Industries, but the cross-posting to micro.blog seemed to go awry, with the image not posting. It picks everything up from the RSS feed, and that looked ok in NetNewsWire. So this is kind of a test post.

This is another handheld high-res shot with the E-M1X. The moon is almost directly overhead, which is the most challenging way to hold the camera and lens. I took three images, and even with Olympus' highly regarded image stabilization, you still have the hold the camera pretty still so that enough images of the subject are within the capture window to result in a satisfactory stitch. I normally get better with subsequent images when I'm pointing the camera nearly horizontally. In this case, I get worse. All three images stitched successfully, but the third one had more visible artifacts and softening.

Anyway, the clouds cooperated, I wasn't sleeping anyway, so here's the moon.

<img src=“https://nice-marmot.net/Archives/2023/Images/IMG_7326.JPG" alt=“From front to back, TI-74 BASICalc, HP-71b and HP-75 mounted in “the Pod”">

I will say the keyboards are much nicer on the 71 and the 75. I've missed keystrokes on the 74, but if I take my time, it's fine. "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast."

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 16:33 Saturday, 2 September 2023

Started walking at 0700, so it was still pretty dim. Brought along the E-M1 Mk3 with 12-100/f4 mounted. Tried to do something "artsy" with the setting moon over my suburban cookie-cutter landscape and failed. The tree is really the subject here, the osprey is just a bit of eye candy.

Idalia passed well to the north of us. All we experienced in my area were some clouds and gusty winds. I'd expected (and hoped for) a couple of inches of rain, but we got less than half an inch through the whole thing. We're pleased and grateful, and we know a lot of people weren't as fortunate.

I know these full moon shots aren't terribly interesting as photographs. Not close enough to reveal impressive levels of detail, and there's nothing terribly interesting in my bourgeois suburban Florida neighborhood, where the horizon is seldom farther than the house across the street, to put in the foreground. But I do retain some feeling of wonder that I can get a shot like this by holding a device in my hands. This is a handheld high-res shot from my E-M1X with the 100-400mm zoom mounted. Lately, my go-to camera for moon shots.

Little luck with birds the last few days. Stuck my head outside to look for the moon last night though. Wasn't disappointed.