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| Sunday, 5 February 2012 | Dereel | Images for 5 February 2012 |
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Strange weather
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Topic: general, gardening | Link here |
Another day when I didn't do anything in the garden. The normally dry summer is making itself evident again. Woke up with temperatures in the high 20s and winds of up to 40 km/h, hurling up dust all over the place. But it didn't stay that way. By mid-afternoon the temperature dropped below 15°, and it started to rain.
In the morning it was too windy, and in the afternoon the rain kept me away. I could have attended to the vines on the verandah, of course—in fact, I should have—but I found some excuse.
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New growth
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Our Bromeliad is flowering:
Things are happening in the greenhouse, too. The Murraya koenigii (curry tree) that Peter Jeremy brought nearly two years ago was the only survivor of a number of shoots, and it didn't do much until January last year:
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It grew quite happily for a while, and then stagnated. About a month or two ago a Silver birch seedling established itself in the pot and rapidly outgrew the Murraya, which had hardly changed. But now it's growing again, and has almost doubled in size in the last month:
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High time for a bigger pot, I think.
The first Chile poblano that I grew from seed hasn't had an easy time of it. It got hit by aphids early on, and later by root rot:
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Amazingly, though, it has survived, although it's a continual fight against aphids. And today we have the first flower:
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It's no longer the only one, though—three other seedlings germinated, and I have been able to keep the other plants free of aphids, though I don't like the look of that ant on a flower:
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Cockatoo time again
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Lately we've had a lot of cockatoos around here, screeching their heads off. Today I tried to take some photos, not helped by the light. But I saw something surprising:
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That's a Corella on the left and a Sulphur-crested cockatoo on the right. It's unusual to see different species together.
| Monday, 6 February 2012 | Dereel | Images for 6 February 2012 |
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Right stuff is right!
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Message from Michael in South Australia today about my “right stuff” article. He agrees with Andy S. He points me at this video, showing how easy it is to put a Really Right Stuff panorama bracket together:
I really hate watching Youtube, but I looked at this one. It serves to confirm my dislike. It's badly produced, and he didn't stress the important information. In particular, he didn't explain how to adjust the position of the entrance pupil in line with the upper rotator. But it works, and it works well. The result looks pretty much like what I discuss in much more detail last month.
There are differences, of course:
The Really Right Stuff solution has much better workmanship than my bracket.
Using the L plate, he can move the camera from vertical to horizontal without readjustment. My solution has an L bracket too, but it requires readjustment.
His solution doesn't use a detented rotor, something that I consider important. Mine does.
His side clamp has a degree scale. Mine doesn't. This is a distinct advantage, and would have helped solve the stitching problems I had with my verandah panoramas a couple of weeks ago.
The Really Right Stuff solution is more modular, a great advantage.
The accuracy of the alignment of the vertical and horizontal rails is “flush”: in other words, it's up to you. It's also possible to assemble it with the rails offset, introducing an error. Other brackets are fixed, so this particular mistake couldn't happen.
And what does it cost? It's difficult to say, because this arrangement doesn't correspond to their bundled offerings. Searching through the myriad pages, I think that I could get an alternative from these components, starting from the bottom:
At the very bottom comes the detented rotor. Unfortunately, Really Right Stuff doesn't seem to offer one. This greatly detracts from the potential “all from one supplier” approach.
MPR-192: 192mm Multi-purpose rail for the bottom horizontal rail, only $75. This is the device that I looked at yesterday, without the clamp.
The CRD-Rail: Vertical rail w/ on-end clamp for $140.
A PCL-1: Panning Clamp for the horizontal axis through the entrance pupil. Only $235, without detents.
A MPR-CL II: MPR with integral clamp: $140.
An L plate. This is difficult: there's a different L plate for each camera, and they don't make one for the Olympus E-30, though there's evidence that they once did. But that's not important for pricing: they all cost $140, such as the B20DL: LPlate for Canon 20D without grip.
It's possible to attach the camera without the L plate, just a B20D: Conventional Plate for Canon 20D—again there's nothing for Olympus—which saves $85. But that also limits you to portrait-only orientation. I haven't bothered to look for a solution to that problem.
All this comes to a total of $773.54, including $43.54 postage. Of course, there's an easier way if we don't want exactly the configuration in the video: their Panorama Packages. There are two possibilities:
The PG-02 Omni-Pivot Package, which costs $535 and requires a nodal slide (MPR-CL II: MPR with integral clamp for another $140). They also don't mention it, but it's also missing the L Plate, which is necessary for this configuration. That's another $140. With $52.42 shipping, that comes to a total of $867.42. The components are different from the ones in the video, and they don't look as good. In particular, the upper rotator looks less robust. Still, it appears that they will do the trick.
I could also take the PG-02 Pro Omni-Pivot Package (savour that “Pro”) for $895, which includes not only the nodal slide, but a panning clamp without detents at the bottom. It still requires the L plate, so with $58.07 shipping, that's $1,093.07. And yes, the L plate is necessary, as the 360° rotation shows. For that I get the nodal slide and a PCL-1: Panning Clamp without detents at the bottom. This doesn't really buy me anything that the previous package doesn't.
So we have four possibilities, all of which offer roughly equivalent functionality. The solutions above still require a leveller and a detenting rotator. I'm still looking for a leveller, so I leave it out of this discussion. If I took the Sunway DDP 64M rotator in each case (another $170.92), the prices would look more comparable:
The PG-02 Pro Omni-Pivot Package for $1,263.99.
The PG-02 Omni-Pivot Package and accessories for $1,038.34.
The custom setup I selected above, for $944.46. This looks so much cheaper than the other two that I'm left with the worry that I might have missed some component. And that's a general issue buying this stuff.
What I have now, for $288.37.
Clearly my solution is less than a third of the price of the cheapest Really Right Stuff solution. What do I lose? There's no degree scale on the upper rotor. The L plate isn't adjusted to my camera (a moot point, since Really Right Stuff doesn't have one for my camera anyway). The workmanship is not as good. And that's about all.
Probably Andy and Michael (and potentially many others) are missing something: I already have a functional solution. The issues I describe in my diary are just that, details, and they have solutions. If I spend up to $1,000 more, I will still run into many of these issues.
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Wind damage and planting
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Out to check the rain gauge this morning and found some results of yesterday's wind:
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I'm not too worried about the Canna (first photo), since they only last a week or so each, but I was quite unhappy about the Alyogyne. I had already given it a post to steady it, but it snapped off at ground level. The roots on the one side of the Alyogyne were torn out, but the rest looks OK, so I rammed in a Star dropper and tied it to that. I hope it survives: it's one of the longest flowering trees we have.
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Pond issues
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Topic: gardening, animals | Link here |
In the afternoon, went past the garden pond and heard a particularly noisy fish. On further investigation, it popped out of the water and showed its head briefly before submerging again and popping up somewhere else: a Little Cormorant. It finally flew off, leaving at least one very agitated looking fish there. What do we do about that? Wire netting?
That wasn't the only problem. Every time we have stronger winds, the water irises tip over, and I have to get in the pond to put them back in place again. Clearly not a thing to do once a week, especially when the weather gets cooler. Today decided that an outer pot resting on the ground might help things.
And that caused a chain of events. We didn't have a spare pot, but had an ornamental grass in a suitable pot that we had planned to plant anyway, once it had finished flowering. That's the case now, so tried to get the grass out of the pot, not helped by the silly ridge inside, and used that. So far it looks more stable.
That left us with the grass, of course. Where should we put it? Somewhere near the pond, but there are a lot of plants that we intended to plant round there. So we ended up clearing the weeds and planting a number of plants:
The grass to the right of the bird bath, in front of the Salvia microphylla.
The orange flower we bought on Australia Day, to the right of the pond and roughly behind the Strelitzia reginae.
The Limonium perezii bought at the same time, to the left of the orange flower, requiring the removal of the first of many Watsonias. We'll see if it survives the winter.
The Juniperus squamata “blue carpet” that has been waiting to be planted since late winter, in what was once bed number 2 of our original square beds. This required removal of some white Pelargoniums that weren't looking too happy anyway.
So now, gradually, we're getting most of our plants planted. Hopefully I'll get the rest done soon. We still have a few trees in small pots that we brought with us from Wantadilla nearly 5 years ago. High time to plant them as a wind break to the north-east.
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Alternative panorama exposures
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Peter Jeremy came out with an obvious alternative solution to the “verandah east” exposure issues that I discussed on Saturday: take the photos in the afternoon, when the sun is coming from the north-west. Tried that today, and the sun promptly disappeared. But of course it worked better, and without flash. Here Saturday and then today, once again with mouseover alternation:
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That in itself isn't a solution, though. Firstly it won't be as good with sunlight, and secondly my real intention here is to find a good way to expose these problem images.
| This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have a horror of reverse chronological documents, so all my diary entries are chronological. I try to leave the pages here for two days; you'll find them all in the archive, so if I fall behind a day or two, you may find more here. Note that I often update a diary entry a day or two after I write it. | Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so. |
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