what photography related item did you buy this week?

[Mike Wingate]

That would certainly be more effective.

Thinking of making my own grids out of straws

I have stainless steel straws for bubble blowing. Waxed straws are for tuning loud speakers. Geddit....LOUD speakers!

 

[CD77]

Not photo related but my last (and I mean last as in never again) buy from the UK was a book I ordered as a Christmas gift from Blackwells.
(Nevil Shute's On the beach if anyone is interested.)
I ordered it about a week before Christmas and expected it to arrive before New year, it arrived last week!
And that was only after I had payed as much in tax and handling fee as the books price! If it had been delivered before Christmas I would not have had to pay the tax and handling.
Never again!

Brexit... the gift that keeps on giving (I voted to stay BTW)

 

[Holoholo55]

I got an Amazon voucher for Christmas.

Having read the product reviews, this week I bought one of these

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07VMKZ1K1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've tested it, it is now on the way back.

The clamp system is highly likely to damage my Godox TT685 because of the hump above the pull out wide diffuser
The honeycomb grid is pretty much useless because it's only 5mm deep and sits too close to the flash tube
The round diffuser is, well, round, but is otherwise no more effective than the rectangular Stofen inspired Godox diffuser supplied with the flash

I am highly skeptical of the great reviews that are prominently featured with this product. It has nice magnets, but that's about it.

Looks like a copy of the MagMod system, but maybe not as good?

 

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

I upgraded to the new version of ON1 Photo Raw. I still do most of my processing in Olympus Workspace. Photo Raw can do stuff that Workspace can't.

 

[RichardC]

On the way.....3mm white/black gloss acrylic sheets 300x300mm, 2mm steel sheet cut to the same size. Need to get a 1/4" fixing attached to the steel sheet, lick of paint, and.......viola, I should have a stand/tripod mounted platform for product photos that I can walk around.

#workphlo do the same thing off the shelf in the US for a very reasonable price, but the cost of getting it to the UK with shipping VAT and duty is prohibitive (£27 turns into about £80 in total), so needs must. Anyway, if it turns out to be a disaster, I'll use the acrylic elsewhere.

 

[Panolyman]

On the way.....3mm white/black gloss acrylic sheets 300x300mm, 2mm steel sheet cut to the same size. Need to get a 1/4" fixing attached to the steel sheet, lick of paint, and.......viola, I should have a stand/tripod mounted platform for product photos that I can walk around.

#workphlo do the same thing off the shelf in the US for a very reasonable price, but the cost of getting it to the UK with shipping VAT and duty is prohibitive (about £80 in total), so needs must. Anyway, if it turns out to be a disaster, I'll use the acrylic elsewhere.

I've got some of that black gloss acrylic sheet and have only ever photographed soft objects, (such as red peppers) and have found that the surface is badly scratched already, even though I've been very careful with it.
I'm wondering if it would be possible to get a piece of safety glass, perhaps painted or with sheet of vinyl on the back to prolong use?

 

[RichardC]

I've got some of that black gloss acrylic sheet and have only ever photographed soft objects, (such as red peppers) and have found that the surface is badly scratched already, even though I've been very careful with it.
I'm wondering if it would be possible to get a piece of safety glass, perhaps painted or with sheet of vinyl on the back to prolong use?

An alternative is plain glass with a black sheet of paper underneath it.

Friend of mine uses an old smoked glass TV stand rescued from the tip!

My acrylics tend to last a while, but until now I've only photographed plastic bottles. I'm building a portfolio of other stuff and have another project pending.

 

[Jeffcs]

A battery for an older sea life camera
But I have a huge Olympus gas bubble rolling around

 

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

Well it looks like I just dodged a bullet. I had been thinking about buying an Olympus 75-300mm f4.8 II lens. It has been on markdown for a while, at $399.99 U.S. Dollars ($150.00 off list price). When I went to getolympus.com a few minutes ago I saw they have extended the sale price through April 4th.

I have been having GAS attacks over this lens for a while, so I will probably end up buying one. But that decision can be put off for a while.

 

[doady]

A few more photography books I bought recently:

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Haikyo: The Modern Ruins of Japan by Shane Thoms
Interwoven by Kyle Meyer
Mal d'archive by Katharina Sieverding
The Dubai by Tor Seidel
Florida's Changing Waters: A Beautiful World in Peril by Lynne Buchanan

All new, and in total cost $62 CAD.

 

[CD77]

Today I took receipt of a graphics tablet to (hopefully) help with my fine detail editing.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07VKB37HZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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[PhotoCal]

Around 10 years ago, I bought a nice Maha AA/AAA charger along with a bunch of rechargeables. It's been years since I've purchased a non-rechargeable battery.

Another great benefit of not using disposables:
Not having to run to the store when you find your flashlight's batteries have died.

When I moved away from home I vowed to never buy a disposable battery again.

 

[scb]

I ordered new battery for my E M5 Mark II. I ordered an Olympus battery from bhphoto.com. It seems some of my batteries (Olympus and others) are not performing that well so I think I'm going to gradually get at least two new Olympus batteries for the E M5 MKII and E M10 MK11. I find that as a rule, on good back-up battery will get me through a day, and I still have the old ones if I need them.

 

[StM26]

I picked up a used Domke f-5xb bag which seems perfect for what I've been looking for.
Very pleased so far, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to go out for a day trip yet.

 

[Mack]

Went to JoAnn's Fabric and art store and bought some 1" nylon strap and parachute buckles and sliders to make a strap for a car seat. Had an accident where I had to slam on brakes and camera and lens flew off car seat and took a hit on the floorboard. Decided I better tie the thing down a bit better.

I have the RRS L-plates on all my gear and they have that quick-disconnect hole for the standard military-style MagPul QD push-button connector. Kirk is also doing the same QD for some of their plates too and they use a harder stainless-steel hole cap for the QD than RRS which is in the softer aluminum plate.

Shown below it's plugged into the RRS L-plate upright on my E-M1X. Strap connects around the seat back and gives me maybe a couple of inches to snap the thing into the L-plate to keep the thing on the seat and not flying about in the car. Normally a Pen-F and 12-100mm is hooked to it, but the upright L-plate on the E-M1X shows the hook-up better and the Pen-F QD hole is on the underside.

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[Michael Meissner]

Well it is sort of related to photography. I noticed my laptop (Lenovo T61) was starting to make louder noises with the fan and I was getting reports from the system that the system temperature was too high. Now generally at home I use my desktop systems, but when I'm on vacation, I use the laptop to load photos taken during the trip, and at least eliminate the clunkers (and of course surf the web and read forums). While I am locked down due to Covid, I hope that at some point in the future I will be able to do trips.

So I bit the bullet and ordered a used Lenovo T440p. Compared to the T61 it is a lot newer, but it is still a relic compared to modern laptops. Some of the features include:

• Same 14" size. While 15" and 17" laptops are nicer to use due to the larger screen, I find in practice that a 14" laptop is easier to pack and travel with than the larger laptops.
• This laptop has 16GB of memory compared to the 4GB on the T61. It has a slightly faster clock speed than the T61 (2.6Ghz vs 2.1Ghz, and it also has a newer generation of Intel i5). When I'm on vacation, I don't tend to run that much computational stuff, but the speed increase should be nice.
• This laptop has a 1600x900 TN panel pixel screen instead of the 1280x800 TFT screen. Yes, I would have preferred the 1920x1024 IPS screen some of the higher end models have, but I didn't want to spend that much more money.
• This is the last generation of Thinkpads that includes a DVD drive. Now, I rarely use a DVD drive these days, and I could have used a USB DVD drive for the few times I need it, but it was something I've used in the past.
• This laptop has USB 3 ports. The T61 only had USB 2 ports. It doesn't have a USB C port, but I do have some appropriate converter panels. The main thing I use USB 3.0 for on vacation is backing up the photos to a separate external drive, and it is faster with USB 3 instead of USB 2.
• This laptop supports bigger external monitors. I don't tend to use this laptop with my larger 2K monitor that I use on my main home desktop and work laptop system, but it is nice to have an option.
• It has a webcam in case I am silly enough to want to do a zoom meeting while on vacation.
• I found a seller in the same state willing to send it to my PO box via USPS mail. I live next to a pond and it is relatively undeveloped. All of the houses are on private dirt roads, and all of the delivery drivers routinely mis-deliver packages. Some of the drivers seem to try and hide the packages as well. Some of our neighbors got packages delivered to our house, and we didn't notice the package, and it got rained on. Also, the house they frequently deliver our packages too has a large set of stairs to get to the front door (where the delivery people put the packages), and the stairs don't have hand rails. As I've fallen a few times in the last few years, I am rather nervous of those stairs in winter (the neighbors use their garage which avoids those stairs).

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

A couple months ago, I decided to diversify away from big tech and back into the direction of FOSS for my personal computing and photography needs. I have a basic desktop, but I like something I can work with from away from the desk (spend most of my workdays at one). After a long search, I finally landed on the Dell XPS 17, which manages to cram a stunning 17" 16:10 display into a shell smaller than my wife's 15.4" Lenovo. It has a big battery as well, so even after a day of substantial use, I'm sitting at 59%. It has upgradeable RAM and even supports 2 NVMe slots. I bought it from the Dell Refurbished store during their President's day sale, and slapped Linux Mint on it. It's a nice looking device, if that's your thing. Oh, and it also fulfilled my wish for an SD card slot!

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[Bensch]

2 new (to me) lenses arrived today for my Nikon DSLR.

Have been after another Sigma 70-300 f/4-5.6 since giving mine away last year, and stumbled across 2 on eBay recently.

Sent an offer on the first one, and hadn't heard back from the seller before the second one was due to end, so placed a bid on the second one.

Won the second one, and then an hour later I received confirmation from the first seller that my offer was accepted.

So ended up with 2

Turns out the first is the DG Macro and the second one is the APO DG Macro, so a bit of a win I suppose

 

[Zapp DJR]

Jan 15th, 2021:

Oly 8mm f1.8 FE.
Cashback promo ends today, so decided pull the trigger on Wed, delivered yesterday. Cashback included, price was approx. 610EUR (calc. by av. EXR).
Expect to have some fun with it.

Follow-up: cashback received today. Lens is fun as expected.

 

[hernan]

Arrived Oly 12-45 ( i take some shots and seems really a great lens) and shutter realase button for my Pen F

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