Usually, an article like the one you're about to read would go something like this. First, I'll establish my credentials by telling you how many articles and books about open-source photography I've written. Then I'll tell you how much I rely on open-source software in my photography workflow and how much I appreciate the tools I use. And then there will be the inevitable but segue.
Continue readingShortly after we moved to Germany, I jokingly told my wife that the moment we get interested in trains, we can consider ourselves completely assimilated. Fast forward seven years, and we're getting up at 05:00 in the morning to catch a train ride organized by Fränkische Museums-Eisenbahn e.V. Nürnberg (FME).
Here's what happened. When my wife bought an issue of the Eisenbahn Romantik magazine for her family back in Denmark, she also got a flyer advertising an upcoming train ride from Fürth to Utting am Ammersee organized by the collective responsible for maintaining the Dampflokomotive 52 8195-1 steam locomotive (click the link to geek out on its tech specs). The flyer promised an unforgettable ride in a vintage train set, an optional bus tour to the Andechs monastery (the home of arguably the best beer in Bavaria), and a dinner onboard the train. All of this for a very reasonable price. How can you say no to an offer that tempting? You can't. And neither could we.
And by "let's talk" I mean I'll do the ranting, and you decide whether you want to stick around.
I already have a perfect neck strap. I got it for free when I bought a Nikon FE in Ginza, Tokyo. I think it was in 2013. The strap served me well with a variety of film cameras, and now I'm using it with my Nikon D800. Despite its age, the strap looks like new. While it's the most unremarkable neck strap, it's also everything a good neck strap should be. There is no branding whatsoever to attract attention. It's made of a single piece of webbing, so there is no stitching that can fail. The strap is soft, and its loops are made of strong plastic. This means that 1) I can wrap the strap around the camera or lens, 2) do so without worrying about scratches, and 3) I can loop the strap around my wrist, so it can act as a wrist strap. There is an anti-slip strip on the inside of the strap. In short, it's an affordable, simple, reliable, and functional strap.
In which we eat trapizzini, take photos of Cinquecentos, enjoy the quaint charm of Orvieto, gawk at a skull with ears in Naples, and eat more trapizzini.
So the engineers became proud parents. Their chicks grew up fast and pooped a lot. And while we were in Dublin, they left the nest. End of story — or so we thought.
Last Friday and Saturday, there was a flurry of activity: it turned out that we'd got a new team of engineers, and they were attempting to build a nest from scratch at the other end of the awning. I say attempting, because Sunday morning, we woke up to this: the entire nest fell down right into a pot on our terrace. 🙄
