The Online Photographer

["Open Mike" is the (partly) off-topic Editorial Page of TOP that appears on Sundays. This one's an update about all the off-topic "gear" enthusiasms I've bashed you over the head with in the 2020s. This is sort of a "what I did during COVID" list, camera at the bottom. Speaking of updates, did I clean the kitchen yesterday, as I said I was going to? I did not. Did I update all the comments? I did not. I'm such a jerk. First rule of blogging, for me: never make promises. Tomorrow, I will wade into the debate and disputation over the new OM-3, guns blazing...promise.]

Pool: I got a pool table late in 2020, the worst year of the pandemic. For many years it was my biggest material desire. It's a cosmetically not-so-perfect nine-foot 1965 Brunswick Gold Crown I (one) that I got for a good price. I had a large shed built to accommodate it. Radical solution, but there was no other choice. It was one of the best things I ever did. I use it to get up and stretch from sessions at the computer, and hardly a day goes by that I don't at least clear a few breaks. I enjoy it enormously. I knew I liked pool from the first time I was exposed to it as a boy, and I've liked it all along, and I still like it.

Watches: I'm not going to be a watch collector! To "demystify" the subect (the term is Oren's), I ended up buying nine watches, all quartz, none of them very expensive and a few of them quite cheap (<$100). I only like and wear two of them: a Seiko 120th anniversary quartz and a Casio Oceanus T200. (These aren't affiliate links, just pictures of what I have. You're a photographer, you probably like to see.) I like the Casio a lot even though Casio changed its support of it for the worse a year or two after I bought it. That's the one I wear every day, and I'm fine with it. I could get along without the Seiko. The rest of the watches I bought I'll be getting rid of somehow. Want a watch, cheap? Get in touch.

Keyboards: An abject failure. I'm afraid the truth is that I cannot learn to touch-type—there is something off in my brain and fingers. I gave it a strong try this last time, practicing for long periods of time every day for many months. I never got much above 20 WPM, and never got to the point where I didn't have to think about it. It just doesn't kick in for me*. And I have poor manual dexterity, something I've known about myself all my life; I'm forever hitting the wrong keys, or just catching a bit of the key next to the one I'm aiming at.

At least I got one thing out of the attempt: I finally forgave myself for not sticking with touch-typing when I got my first typewriter at age 14. I had always regretted that, but now I think maybe I just sensed at the time that it wasn't meant to be. And I did identify the perfect ergonomic board which solved my own hand pain completely, the only one that did: it's this one. (Which reminds me—I have to send the one I have here back. Yikes. Forgot about that.)

There will be no more talk of keyboards on TOP.
I can only imagine your disappointment.

Coffee: You might recall I used to get green Kona coffee beans—100% Kona, not 10% like in Hawaiian restaurants—from a reader on the Big Island in Hawaii (thanks, Phil R.), and roast it myself. Best coffee I ever experienced. Unfortunately, I had a bout of a-fib in 2018, and an A-B-A test (quit coffee for three weeks, then went back to it) confirmed that coffee was making it worse. Haven't had a drop of coffee since. I switched to white tea, which still has a little caffeine, but, compared to coffee, only a little. I drink it with lemon juice and a little crushed saffron. Entirely unexpectedly, I like my morning mug of white tea every bit as much as I ever liked coffee. I get my tea from TeaVivre, in Fujian Province, China. They have a warehouse here, so orders come quickly.

Shaving: A complete success. I wanted to investigate "wet shaving," the accepted term for using double-bladed, single bladed, and straight razors to shave with. I had always hated shaving and it irritated my face, and I rebelled at the ridiculous cost of the multi-blade cartridges they foist on people now. It was part of a general effort to try to enjoy the things I have to do anyway. I had to try a bunch of alternatives, and I bought a number of double-edged razors and tried a bunch of blades and shaving creams. I settled on a radically simple and cheap solution. I have a fat-handled Gillette Tech razor made in the late 1930s, and I use Kai blades made in Japan because they last a long time, and for lubrication I use shaving oil—I use Shave Secret (it's cheaper at Wal-Mart, or you could even make your own). I can't say I love shaving now, but it's now perfectly gentle on my face, I get a nice close shave, I almost never nick myself, and my rather oddball method is very cheap.

Computer: Since I got my M4 Mac Mini, the computer has utterly disappeared as an issue/worry/impediment in my life. The M4 Mac Mini is about the size of a half-squashed softball, very easy to site on the desk. And it just sits there, silent, as cool as if it were off, and works exactly like it should. I haven't given it five minutes of thought or worry since I got it all set up and sorted. The thing I like best? Near-instantaneous start-up. Long story short, best computer of the ~17 Macs I've owned, or worked on for employers, since 1984. If you're thinking it might suit you, you won't be disappointed. If you're coming from an Intel Mac to Apple Silicon, man, just do it. You're in for a surprise and a treat.

B&W camera: An out-of-the-park home run. I continue to be grateful I discovered my oddball but totally customized-to-me Sigma rig. It's a Sigma FP with 45mm lens and an LVF-11 viewfinder (it's just a magnifier for the viewing screen) and this handgrip (the grip is not an affiliate link, it's just so you can see what I chose). I had the camera converted to monochrome-only by having the CFA (color filter array) stripped off the sensor, so it "sees" only B&W. While I don't recommend this solution to others, I love it for myself. It has liberated and energized my photography. It's tricked out with a perfectly sized bag, extra battery, carefully selected straps, yellow filter, and well-researched cards (you might remember that bout of gear obsession. The linked post is accurate except I sold the Wise card reader when I got the CalDigit TS4 for the computer, which I'm also very pleased with). I think of it like a 4x5 view camera that's portable, needs a tripod less often (although I use a tripod much more often than I ever have before in my life—hey, it's a 4x5, plus, Bryan says I should), and doesn't require film development. I always struggled with 4x5 film processing. Speaking of processing, I use FastRawViewer Monochrome2DNG for ingestion, raw conversion, and demosaicking. A simple, easy-to-use, effective app. Again, this isn't a solid mainstream do-everything option in its modified monochrome form, but for me it continues to be close to perfect. Just look at the gorgeous, subtle highlights at the top of my latest upload. That's filmlike, I think. I hope (you can't really plan!) to use this "FP-m" for the remainder of my days.

I also have a Fuji X-T4 (here's the current version) along with a variety of lenses, and my iPhone, and I use both of those quite often.

———

Is that everything? Most of these, er, enthusiasms, I'm pretty convinced, were part and parcel of COVID isolation. I'm an introvert and I like alone time, but COVID isolation was too much of a good thing. My social life is continuing to recover.

Mike

*I'm the opposite of our friend Carl Weese, who taught himself to touch-type in one day as a boy using the rudimentary instruction book that came with his budget typewriter. He can still adapt to new keyboards in five minutes.

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