Thursday 25 June 2015

Ear, ear!

There are somethings you don't anticipate doing but then for reasons best known to themselves, it just happens like having being using for a good two and a half years with one pair of headphones they are picked up by a n other and you find the wire has broken. 
You repair that only to find the transducer that makes the sound in that ear seems to be damaged too.
With that in mind, you've only one real option here, replacing it and as I have have a small female face many bigger headphones just don't sit right on my ears which leads to a bass light sound your options are a bit limited.
One I did find was Beyerdynamic's DT235 which is quite a smaller fitting model with a soft piece over the plastic headband rather than anything chunky.
One big improvement is the lead which is quite a bit thicker than similar models around this price (about GBP £45), wired from the left with internal connections to the right unit which is less likely to break off.
Looking around I spotted a vendor selling a pair off at  substantial discount as a unused catalogue return less than what most wanted my previous pair for for I bought these instead.
The sound is a good deal less congested on busy tracks sounding very open, the bass while extended doesn't over dominate proceedings and the transients, those very fast sounds often associated with percussion are surprisingly good.
I'm impressed by this unplanned for upgrade which works well with my Fiio X1 digital audio player.

Friday 19 June 2015

Down by the canal

If you were wondering why all this photo talk but where are the pictures the reason was a big delay at the lab as, given this is 2015 I actually  wanted them scanning to jpeg digitally using a professional scanner rather than the cheap and cheerful sub $60 offerings you can get.
Here we have a moored Narrow Boat (aka a "Barge in Northern British) along the Trent and Mersey canal in the North-west Midlands of England.
Taken on Minolta X500 (aka 570 back in Canada and the States), Tamron 28-80 F3.5-4.2SP on Fuji Superia 200, handheld.

Thursday 11 June 2015

Filling the digital gaps

One of the good things about digital download sites is sometimes albums that aren't currently available on record or cd are made available in that form.
This is a good example of one, the tenth Commodores album form the Fall of '83 which was not issued on cd in the UK or States and to whom had been long deleted  on  tape and record featuring the hit Only You.
Well as part of the Apple's Mastered For iTunes program all the Commodores albums have comeback out, freshly mastered and in with them was this, which I've only ever owned on pre-recorded cassette and my only digital copy was that copied to MiniDisc several years back.
Also included in it are the Caught In The Act and Movin' On albums the latter does sound a lot better than the PTG cd taken from a rather distorted record and the classic Hot on the tracks,Zoom,Natural High and Midnight Might albums, the home of hit 45's Brick House, Sweet Love,Just To Be Close to You,Three Times a Lady and Still.
Naturally I topped up on titles I don't have on cd for my music collection as these AAC 'lossy' encoded versions do sound rather good.

Thursday 4 June 2015

Objectively yours!

Did someone say Snap! last week?
Hmm the film is off to the lab and I'll be shortly test driving another "Those have loved" item fairly soon.
Going cheap and I mean cheap was this the type 27A Tamron 28-80mm F3.5 thru F4.2 variable aperture across the zoom range lens complete with Minolta MD mount that needs a bit a clean externally and required front and rear caps as they're MIA.
The main advantage of it is you can go from a fairly wide 28mm to a practically portrait short telephoto 80mm focal length with a twist of this two touch zoom's zoom range knob without change lenses on your camera.
Opinions seems to vary about it's quality, it appears to be potentially more troubled by flare for having the sun to the side of the front element than some (although I've bad memories of the mid 90's Centon 28-70 F3.5-4.5 which was very prone to it!) and it appears to benefit from used past F5.6 more being a bit soft wide open but if used hand hold with ISO 200 film in good light shouldn't be a problem for general 'our day out' photography where changing fixed length lenses in the street may not be easy.
The close focusing is good so while not the equal of dedicated macro lens for close ups is serviceable in the field.
It takes a 67mm filter which is a bit on the big side and usually dear but I managed to track down a UV one cheaply.