How's It going, all?

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Forsythia in the back yard is blooming...Spring is coming, although it never fails to snow on my middlest daughter's birthday...April 15. Watching reruns of Star Trek; Next Generation, and ComiCon appearances of the stars. Some of those guys are getting Really Old!
Sitting in the Sun's warmth in our back yard with our two doggies flouncing around, camera/70-300 ready, waiting to catch an airliner or three on final to the airport...yesterday, I saw a KC 135...and said doggies coming over to get an ear scratch every so often. Life is good!

YouTubing photo sites, to see where I can increase my knowledge...Watching Beyond Photography, and trying to set up my camera to "Shoot Aperture Priority Properly". Doing what Andrew says, not understanding the why of a step or two,(His camera has more menu options than mine) doing it anyway, and finally, figuring how to get it stored in my camera's U1 mode. Small victories! Thrill a minute existence, you bet!
Lots of time to think...a dangerous pastime for me! My Good Lady Wife ? says I have an overly generous helping of "The True Spirit of NEVER Leaving Well-Enough Alone"! I'm sure I don't know what she means!

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But...with my mind in free wheel, I started thinking about some photo myths that have become prevalent fairly recently...The absolute VIRTUE of shooting only in Manual Mode...like Andrew Boey (Beyond Photography) says, it's fun, but takes a lot of time! MANUAL Mode is useful. but thinking back to when MANUAL was all we had...that and the little information sheets packed in every film can, I LIKE what we have now!
BOKEH...how do you pronounce that anyhow?...and the idea that you need the latest whiz-bang f/2.8 expen$ive SuperZoom to create "good" Bokeh? Such a lot of words to canonize what we used to call Out of focus Background, and most everybody could do that with whatever equipment they had.

And...the more recent monster, lurking to pounce upon the unwitting Photographer...DIFFRACTION!

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Sooo...what is this recently-discovered (Only since photography was invented

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) cause of fear and discontent?
First of all, Diffraction IS!
It's a Law of Physics!
For my simple mind, this covers it. Light tends to travel in straight lines, and if forced through a smaller opening, (F/stop) in effect, the beams of light "trip" over the edges, and scatter "slightly". That's why larger openings are more "light friendly".

So, what does it all mean for the Photographer? While studying for my qualification as Military photographer, I had to memorize the term, and what it meant. In the following 60+ years, I've NEVER had the opportunity to remark; "Drat, that horrible diffraction just RUINED my photo!" NEVER, not once! In the real world, it can be safely ignored! Use F/16, 22, 32, if you got 'em! NOTHING significant will happen!
Blurry pictures mostly result from improper technique...too low a shutter speed, pressing the shutter release like you were smooshing a particularly ugly spider, or advancing age. We become more unsteady the more mature we get!.

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Bryan Peterson, in his excellent books, "Understanding Exposure", editions #3 and #4, devotes a page in each to show exactly what the effect of diffraction is. Not much! It is worth a look!
Be Safe, and Stay well!

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[NCV]

Well locked down here in Italy, any novelty has worn off long ago. I look at the distant mountains on my morning walk to the newsagent, wishing I could take a long walk in isolation away from humanity and above all the TV news with its litany of death and suffering. Even those items put there to boost morale make me sad.

Thanks to God, people are still calling me up for new work, so my studio is still pottering along and if people pay me I can still pay the bills.

Getting back to photography. Well I am digitising a lot of my old negatives from my time as a theatrical photographer (20 years ago). I have found a lot of stuff I missed the first time around and it has been nice to take a look at old favourites. Many of my subjects are no longer with us.

I am using DXO with its point adjustments, is very much like working in my old darkroom with those cards with holes cut in them or discs on the end of wires. The nice thing is having zero waste of materials.

Well, as for photography, many of us are in the study at home for a distant future mode, with all the advantages and downsides that this entails.

As for monsters of photography, well I have returned out of boredom and bad habit like a junky who just cannot kick the junk, to the DPR forums where Equivalence, Diffraction and Total light still reign supreme as top preoccupations. Make a sensible Thread or Post and you can be sure a group of Zombies will emerge from the woods to put you right.

I must also say there are some great and interesting people there too, but their voices often seem to get drowned out by the endemic Trolling .

If you follow the above forums for any time, you will get the impression that nobody learns the basics of photography anymore, you know the exposure triangle, the effect of aperture and the choice of shutter speed to match the subject. You just need to buy a Olympus EX1 with train or pet modes, and you are done, if you can match the mode o the subject.

I wore out John Hedgecoe's "Basic Photography" in my early years moving from the basics up though how he tackled various situations. I then moved on to the Ansel Adams trilogy as well as many other books. I prefer the written word over a video. I should get started in these days on "Follow the Light" by James Ewing, which seems a great introduction to my current photographic obsession; Architecture.

Stay safe, sane and out of harms way everybody.