Friday, October 22, 2010

Lensbaby 2.0 on a manual focus camera

After having struggled with getting satisfying results with my lensbaby 2.0 on my Pentax MZ-S and Pentax K20D, both autofocus cameras, I had an epiphany and decided to use the lensbaby on my old, manual Pentax ME and all of a sudden it came together. As you probably know, the lensbaby is focussed by adjusting the tube length and tilting the lens to adjust the sweetspot with one hand while the other hand operates the shutter. After having used autofocus lenses for so long, I had completely forgotten the effective tools that a manual camera offers to help focus. The Pentax ME comes with with split image and a microprism ring in the centre in the viewfinder which offers a lot more help focussing a lensbaby than focussing just on the matte of my more modern cameras as the autofocus points would light up but cannot be relied upon. See also my most excellent blog http://monochrome.me.uk/blog/

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Kindle

Got my 3G Kindle finally a few weeks ago and I love it; as a bonus it has free 3G access in 100 countries allowing me to read email and visit webpages when stuck under another volcano ash cloud. If you’re into the classics like I am, there are a load of free ebooks available from Gutenberg.org, etc. If you read Dutch, make sure to check out DBnl.org. Even though they don’t have the books available in Kindle format (Mobi or Kindle), but only in PDF. On the plus side, the Kindle PDF reader has correctly displayed all PDF files I have sent to it, but I prefer to convert my PDF files to Mobi format with the Mobipocket Creator to allow me to set font side, etc. Nothing is simpler.

Google and ye shall find.