A public service announcement: do you have a working flashlight in your home? Do you know where it is, should things go bump in the night, or there is a power outage, or a fire | earthquake | storm of locusts?
Scene at a recent fire in Vancouver.
An electrical fire knocking out the power and heat in half a downtown high-rise building had members of Vancouver's Emergency Social Services / Disaster Assistance Team respond to provide emergency shelter.
If the answer to the above questions is no, then how about making 2012 the year you make sure you have portable lighting readily available in your home, your office, and your car | bike | rickshaw? Once that's done, then move on to creating | replenishing | stocking up that emergency kit(s) you keep promising you'll look after but never get around to checking off the task from your to-do list.
A resilient community starts with prepared individuals and families.
Is there a correlation to the darkness or mood of my photographs and the weather of the day? Maybe.
VCC Skytrain Station, shapes galore
I'm not really happy with how the above photo looks; I'd under-exposed it to the point where bringing up the values to highlight the person on the escalator was difficult. Maybe the overall photo could be improved with more grit.
This reflection was straight up and easy; I like the warble.
A sight for sore eyes today...
Sadly, showers return Friday and full blown rain will again hover over Vancouver like Harry Potter's dementors all weekend.
I love this sign but until last night had never stopped to photograph it. This is just a drive-by, I need to do something more with this in the future.
East Van, Clark and East 6th Avenue, Vancouver
Updated, January 6 - I like these better:
Knight Street, Vancouver
5 seconds, f/22, ISO 200, handheld.
We are not amused.
All my best to you and yours and I hope that you are also looking forward to what 2012 will bring to us all.
"There aren't enough lenses" is an often heard complaint about the Sony NEX system, usually lobbed at the platform by users of the more established micro 4/3's system which unsurprisingly has more lenses available today.
Another common complaint - the Sony kit lens isn't good enough, a charge usually lobbed by someone who hasn't used it.
In fact in the middle of its focal length the kit zoom isn't bad at all.
The attached 100% crop and scaled down 1200 pixel representation of the same provides an example of the 18-55mm Sony E mount kit lens going up against the acclaimed Zeiss ZM 25mm f/2.8 Biogon. For good measure I've included a test sample, taken on a different day, using that same Biogon lens on the Ricoh GXR Mount A12.
Unless nitpicking, on the NEX-5N the Sony kit lens compares well enough with the Zeiss Biogon. Not bad for a kit lens. The camera itself, not the lenses, is responsible for the overall softness when compared to the GXR and in particular edge and corner softness or smearing will be found with some wide angle lens designs on the NEX.
On the GXR - no question, I want the Biogon. This camera, like the Leica M9 costing many thousands more, has no anti-alias filter fronting the sensor and it turns out this returns more than just increased accutance but improves the behaviour of wide angle lenses on cameras with short back focal lengths like the Ricoh GXR or Leica digital M cameras.
If only the NEX were anti-alias filter free...
All rain and no sun make Mike a gloomy boy in December!
