I was recently gifted a few camera lens filters. One is a standard pink-ish sky filter. The other two are creative effect filters. There is a Variable Star Filter filter and a Halo Swirl filter.
I got to play with the Spiral Halo filter today, and I really like what it has going on. Here are some of the pictures:
Playing with the zoom on the lens and being creative with light and choice of subject, I was able to get some weird...I don't know what you call it, by taking some pictures through the thin branches of a tree:
One of these days. Actually, nights, I will take the Star Point filter and do something with that.
I was given these camera filters a very long time ago, and have never been able to get them to work particularly well. I asked Reddit about it last night, and someone kindly pointed me to an eBay auction for the exact same thing.
Turns out this is a filter kit from Korea.
As I said, I was never able to get them to work particularly well. Probably because the mounting kit that came with my set is for lenses with a 52mm filter ring, which I don't have many lenses that fit that description. The couple I do have, everything was just too close to get more than a vague blurry outline on the colored ones, so I took my Box o' Filter Junk and built something.
I ended up taking a wish.com fish eye lens, and clipping the mount ring from the kit directly to that. I paired it with an old but very beautiful Nikon 50mm f=1.4 lens on a D40X and had some fun with it.
Most of the filters with designs still won't focus, but the cloudy, dreamy designs are interesting:
What I really enjoyed, however, were the semi-transparent weird bokeh (maybe?) filters:
Yes, the light was weird. The sun just couldn't decide if it was going to come out or stay behind the clouds. There is very little in way of forgiveness with regard to a single f-stop or shutter speed setting. There were a few times where it was either super dark or super washed out and nothing in between. I did experiment with putting a crosshatch filter between the lens and the fish eye to tone down some of the light, but it didn't do much. Maybe next time I'll put an ND filter in there. I think I have an adjustable 52mm someplace.
All in all, I did enjoy messing with these and I will be figuring out how to use them more often.
I purchased my first DSLR at the very end of December in 2012. It is
a Nikon D40x. I used that thing until I wore the shutter out in August
of 2018. I spent an obscene amount of money getting it repaired rather
than just replacing the camera.
Ironically, in October of 2018 I got my hands on a Nikon D3100. My
roommate from years prior had one and I thought that I liked it when we
were in Texas in 2012.
You know what I did with that camera? Not a whole lot. I whip it
out and use it occasionally for some darn thing or other, most recently
the eclipse in 2024. I like the pictures that it takes, but for some reason, that particular camera never resonated with me.
In May of 2021 I purchased a Nikon D3500. I like that camera, and
used it pretty exclusively (for my digital stuff) for a couple of
years. I never fully put the D40x aside. It still saw the occasional
bit of use, but for a while it was relegated to backup (above the D3100,
I might add) use.
After doing some serious soul searching and trying to decide if it
was worth keeping all of my camera stuff or offloading it, I decided to
do something. That something was to go use every camera that I own.
That was an expensive endeavor, since the majority of them are 35mm and
film isn’t exactly cheap anymore, but I did it. I also developed almost
all of the rolls myself at home, which was fun.
In doing that, however, I realized that for me, the fun is being able
to get a good photo with whatever is at hand, and I think that I kind
of lost that for a while when I was using the D3500 with it’s fancy
lenses and settings and blah blah blah.
There is also the random side effect of accidentally acquiring at
least 4 more functional Nikon 35mm cameras, but that’s a story for
another day.
Needless to say, the D40x seems to be back to being my go-to camera,
which is fun and challenging, since I don’t tend to use automatic lenses
with it. I went to the Robert’s Camera store annual garage sale last
weekend, and snagged a Vivitar 400mm lens for $5, which I’ve been having
some fun with as well. Maybe I’ll put a couple of photos with that
lens up here soon.
My local camera store had a "garage sale" today. I went down there to see what it was about. Admittedly, it was a last second decision and I got there less than a half hour before they closed, but I'd say it was worth it.
I found a 400mm Vivitar lens in a box for $5. It looked pretty clean, so I bought it.
It is pretty big. It has a TX mount, which is removable and interchangeable. I've had a TX to Nikon F mount for a long time, I bought a 135mm Vivitar lens a while back to use with it, so I knew what I was looking at.
I put the lens onto my D40X to mess with it for a few minutes, and I can safely say that this is most definitely not a lens that is usable indoors. Which I already knew, but it was nice to have some confirmation:
Yeah, this was from 15-20 feet away in a different room. I'd need to have a very elaborate external lighting arrangement in place for this to work indoors.
Outside, however is a different story:
The duck is from across the street, the rest of it is from about as far away, but next door.
All in all, I'd say it's worth the $5 I paid for it. I'll be interested in what I get taking it outside on a nice day this summer.
I was working with one of my children on their schoolwork this
morning, and we came to a color by letter page in the phonics book. My
child colored the picture, but it didn’t have anything for the skin
color.
After looking at it for a few minutes, I realized that if colored correctly, she looked an awful lot like someone I knew.
I went ahead and gave it a try…
I wasn’t wrong.
Made all the more entertaining since one of our other friends tends
to refer to her as queen/princess/baby girl depending on the situation.
I had something big written up here regarding the situation with my
life for this. But I could not bring myself to press the “Publish”
button…That way drama lies.
This particular range of thoughts will, end up being thrown into my
little black book. You know the one…The one that will never be seen by
anyone.
It’s been so long since I’ve sat down and read a damn book. So in the
last four months, I have read forty-three books. So I’ve read the
fifty listed below:
My “Currently reading” list is going to be where I start 2025:
I’m
actively reading The Horns of Ruin (Not pictured. I forgot to mark it
as in progress), Storm Front, Midnight in Chernobyl, Reed of God and
Wrath of Poseidon. I need to finish The Shadow, Mike Nelson’s Mind Over
Matters, Church of Cowards and The Citadel of Forgotten Myths. I’m
going to treat those as stand alone books. After that, I’ll finish
Prelude to Foundation.
Once I get through Wizard and Glass, I may switch over to audio for
the last five Dark Tower books. The Fargo series by Clive Cussler is
something I will be done with, after Wrath of Poseidon, so that clears
those up.
The Horns of Ruin is a book I snagged once because the cover looked
cool. I did the same thing with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Which I
actually enjoyed. This one, however, I’ve started a couple of times
but still haven’t been able to get it. I just moved it to my Kobo, so
now that Storm Front is done, I guess I’ll get through it.
Upcoming for 2025, I would like to get through the following 30-ish books:
Finish the Dark Tower – Stephen King
Garrrett, PI – Glenn Cook
The Martian – Andy Weir
The Warrior of Mars trilogy – Michael Moorcock
Relic – Alan Dean Foster
The rest of the Derrick Storm/Nikki Heat books by Richard Castle
Make Room Make Room – Harry Harrison
Those
are what I want to read, There will be plenty more random, spur of the
moment books. As much as I didn’t like the Havana Mysteries books, I
might go ahead and read the last few of them. Wheel of time? Eh. I
lost interest about halfway through the sixth book a few years ago.
That series might be relegated to Audio for the next year.
I don’t know about Foundation. I have eyed the series off and on
over the last thirty years, but…Man. I don’t know. I understand that
it is supposed to be some sort of sci-fi masterpiece, but do I have that
kind of dedication? Meh. Seems unlikely.
I’m tempted to write an elementary school level book report for each
book I read in 2025, but I don’t know. That seems like more work than I
want to put into this project. I think I’ll give it a go for Midnight
in Chernobyl. That sounds like an interesting challenge.
I picked up an old Yashica FX-3 camera at a flea market a long time ago. The "leather" started peeling the first time I tried to use it.
The pictures were great:
(Photos taken July 10, 2011)
But the camera itself looks like crap:
I didn't think much of the camera itself for a long time. I occasionally pulled it out and used it, but I really didn't do much with it. Until recently. I decided a while back that I was going to use all of my cameras. When I was reading about the Yashica, I came across a website that was selling custom skins to replace the terrible leather. After a great deal of research, voting, etc, I settled on a new finish:
I present, for your consideration: The Red Special.
Honestly, I'm pretty happy with it, and I'm pleased to note that despite sitting in the attic for years, I can still get amazing images out of it:
I’ve managed to sit down and start reading the books again. Hopefully this can be a daily thing going forward.
This turned into an insane thing. I finally went through and cleared
up my Kindle device list. That involved removing something like a
dozen various PCs and old phones from my account. I also saw fit to
actually move my Kindle books onto my old, junk-tastic Kindle, because
why not.
Which reminds me, I need to see if Calibre will let me sideload my Nook books onto my old, junk-tastic Kindle.
So far, I’ve gotten through The Great Gatsby (weird), and Magic
Kingdom For Sale – SOLD! by Terry Brooks. I’m working on Whitley
Streiber’s Majestic for the first time since the late ’90s when I was in
middle school, and a Ben Shapiro book titled The Porn Generation.
Because, well, I’m interested to see what he has to say about that.
My goal is to track this stuff on GoodReads as well. I might link it here, I might not.
