Focus on the future....Or Not.

I had a focus problem.....

The world has a focus problem....

Down weekend! A well needed but squandered weekend! Okay not quite splattered but smooshed.

In order...

Back to paid work.. YAA!

Walked the Rio Grande edge at Montano bridge.

6000 paces and I know for a fact that the Samsung Galaxy watch failed at getting every pace.

Whenever I put the watch up to see the paces it stopped logging my steps. Sooo.... I have to do a real test and count my steps then see if it updates after I put my wrist back down.

Its a great watch really. It was a good purchase and I've used it for logging sleep and heart rates and steps and stairs ... not bad.

Love being able to change the watch face any time I want and love the fallout 4 pip boy face but I switch about to others depending on my mood or need. It also lasts ( power) a long time.. long time... I have yet to even get it lower than 60% before I have a moment to put it on the charger. I usually do that in the evening when I am sitting down.. Quickly it charges right up. I also do not like things tight on my wrists or fingers and the band that comes with it is nicely flexible. I did purchase two different bands but have yet to swap them out.

I could do a blog exclusively on it but there are a lot out there already.. granted the are way wordy.... or yappy.

If you want more info just let me know and I will add more information on a later blog.

A break here.. or tab...

Last weekend I captured three cameras worth of video. Two on my own and one on Eric's balloon. Spent the week trying to process the video from one 360 camera only to see that its quality was very very bad. So back to reprocess the full 360 into a different profile. This time I created a dual front and back view in one frame file. So that is now sitting on the drive waiting for some editing and Youtube.

More on that in a moment.

On the walk to the Montano bridge... I wanted to get some shots of the flora or what existed and up close... but I did capture more than just that. I will post some of the shots below and explain what happened as we go.

I wanted to see how well the Sony RX10V4 did with very close focus items.

One of the wood carvings in the small park like space. Location of a bosque fire back a bunch of years ago. Sony does nicely from a distance to closeup.

It was a bit breezy but still it was able to keep the focus pretty good. Not great on this one. It was from a few feet away and I started to have a problem.

Closer.... zooming in... and the focus lock fought like crazy to decide what to focus on or if to focus at all.

Back to a distance close up and all is well. Locks on nicely and crisply.

Testing the color and checking for funny colors on edges... none.

Distant shot close up and all good with the focus. Nice as all get out.

Under the West side of the bridge... very nice to see there was no piles of trash under and just minor graffiti.

Far and close. It works great with a close up from distance.

Here it fought me forever. I was about three foot off and zooming in and focus would go out the window.

Harshly crazy zooming in and out and bouncing along. The camera has a manual zoom and I used that but it has a setting that causes the first touch of the focal ring to pop the zoom all the way out... frustrating any chance to get it locked on.

This was just a regular four foot away no zoom shot. Branches swarming the fence.

Loved the lines on this.. as I was frustrated with the focus problem I just started shooting things that caught my eye... Lines!

The fade from brown of the trees on the bank to the edge of the river..... that way>>>

Fading to the blue to the full river... granted the river isn't BLUE... its green brown...but it looks nice.

A bit of junk caught in the river... didn't notice the two birds on the other bit till I brought in a bit of light.

My favorite... Far shot of the reeds and fuzzy bits. Still all brown. Not much color at all if at all.

A canal in New Mexico!!! Yeah.... no... not good enough for a narrow boat. Some green in there.

Off to the side of the drive in there is a little Free Library box and even a box with dog pick up plastic. Nice Albuquerque nice.

So when I got home I dumped all the shots then went through the settings where I could see the menus out of the stronger winds and try and figure out what was happening. 

I found that when you focus in on something you want to be very very close to.. or .. macro.. you do not zoom in. You stay at about 24mm and move the camera close to what you want... and I did and guess what.... wow.. you can have the lens about half an inch off the subject and it locks focus fine... Like below. pixels anyone?

Another you can see each separate pixels on a 4k screen. So that solved the focus lock problem. I did go into the menus and shut off the zoom on manual focus. Nice. works great.

On twitter I got a ping from Geoff of AlltheStations fame and he was playing a game I played in the 1970s... great game but never thought it still existed... My copy is a bit worn and missing bits.

Guess what.. Its on Amazon!!! Its not changed from the original but has a different version of play if you want.. so its now on my Christmas list.

If you haven't heard of it.. go find the book by Pat Reid.. Escape from Colditz. Big book but captivating. I need to get it for my kindle.

Now I have another video from Mo's flight in Highperactive.... looks good.

The other things I have been doing this quiet weekend is working out Youtube... how to get videos on it.. how to get funds via youtube and a site called Paetron.... so there are plans in store to bring the balloon thing to youtube.

Working out the process... as there is a lot to think about and set before starting out... I've learned a lot from those videos I have been watching all these past weeks. Lots to do ... lots to write down.... lots to edit.

Stay tuned!!!

A weekend full of Ballooning. Isn't that they way its to supposed to be?

It should be..... But in these day and ages where we are older and the crew is thinner and the days are stranger....well.... sometimes hiding in bed is nice. But its time to get out and get some good air.

Saturday three Ken Kennedy balloons were out for some family pictures. Updated information is that there are seven still alive and flying. More info on that later.

After we got to the launch site we had winds moving East to West lightly. Sun was not up so we expected a flip and laid out West to East.... well that didn't happen and two of us had super fun almost bag overs ( putting your envelope over your basket all floppy like ) but survived. Granted it took me three times and three moves of the envelope to stand up. Ended up laying out South to North.

After that we launched and looped around from the Southeast to the Northwest..then back up and over the hospital across Unser and back to land on the corner of the field. The crew were able to pull us back to the back of the trailer exactly where we took off from.  Always a fun thing.

We are planning a new photo shoot on Fiesta Field in the afternoon to get the Sandia mountains in the background. Its a plan!

Sunday Mo took Highperactive out to play with the Top Gun teams. He didn't score but he did get a good feel for the racer. Its quite different than his 80 Avian hybrid. One slight change in level flung him off and it because impossible to recover before the first target closed.

I crewed then took pictures. Lots of pictures. Okay.. not that many but .. well ... there were more good ones in this file.

Posted below are Saturdays In Czech shots ( including clips from the vcams ) and then after that Sundays Highperactive shots.

Fabric Shadows.

Putting the crown in In Czech.

No the truck is not a basket.

Kennedy envelope bags are all very very interesting. In Czech ( AKA Terpsnickery ) bag is like the silver bag in the background.

Three Kennedy's. One in the air in between, one laying down still.

Up and out.

Kodak 360 cam clip of the hot inflation.

GoPro. Looking down from way high up...always weird.

Mo looks over the side and freaks everyone out.

Kodak 360 of Eric being cool on lay down.

Sunday TOP GUN...Targeting. Bags thrown out and down at the target.

Measuring from the center of the big X.

Highperactive against the Sandia's

Lookin for a place to land.

There were a lot more pictures but I'll load them to my web site instead of cluttering up this place.

I have been heavily watching Cruising the cut.. link here... Narrow boating in England.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6SNxiLzSlh8e0yjndE9o_A

Dave is fantastic at explaining everything you want to know about narrow boating the canals in England and also showing the beautiful landscape and is damned funny.

Now he has opened another vblog on upgrading a van to a camper van and all that goes with that. He seriously has more patience than I have fibers in my carpet.

I plan on supporting him in his quests here in the near future.

Really.. just go and try and watch just one of his videos.. try.. like a good bag of potato chips.. ya just cant have one!

I am watching others about Narrow boats but Dave is tops for educating and making it all enjoyable or horribly informative even if the subject is cleaning and refitting the toilet cassette... dont ask.. go search in his list of videos.. you will love it....and I also now watch Geoff and All the Stations. Vicki as well.

So its Dave and Cruising the Cut ( Cut being the canals as they were cut in... when you want some very good calm boating and views... the knowledge bit is snuck in, just sit back and let it flow kind of thing... So much information is now rattling in my head and I have to NOW tell everybody I see.. sorry...not sorry. Remember... Engine on tick over passing other boats moored on the sides of the canals. DO NOT drink nor swim in the canals!! So much!! PS.. he has hours long videos of just gliding along the canals.

Geoff and Vicki and All the Stations..  Link..link... hang on...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7ttKX46nJxUeXZ0aoD4Q5g

Fast pace... inexhaustible Geoff.. great vblogging and editing is as good as Dave's as he has a team doing it too where Dave has Dave and his awesome abilities.. Everything you wanted to know or didn't think you didn't ( yes you really did need to know ) want to know about everything "train" in England. Tube station trivia and then stations and trains and services and I DO NOT KNOW HOW THEY KEEP IT ALL STRAIGHT!

Tempted to send Dave a 360 Kodak cam to see what he does with it.

Tempted to have Geoff checked for high sugar and tea levels.

I'm now watching Robbie Cumming's and his Narrow boat adventures while waiting for Dave to do another trip. He is on the younger and more head banging side of boating the canals. Funny and a completely different and rule bending view...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJASnkUsECmCJdfkmoD8AAw

Trying to get Dave over for next Fiesta to Cruise the Rio Grande in a Hot Air Balloon... LOL

So on the personal side its been a nice weekend after a lot of un-nice weekends and days.

I've enjoyed watching things where I usually never watch television at all.

I still did edit all the pictures and I have three video files from flying Saturday to edit and process.

Not bad at all.

Next weekend is a down weekend and then if all goes well we will get Highperactive back out for a fun fly the next weekend after that...first weekend in Feb.

Hope you all have a great week.

//www.CruisingTheCut.co.uk

http://allthestations.co.uk/

Dreary wet weekends

Its a pretty dreary weekend. Now its sporadically snowing after some rain. Not a day for positive thoughts or any positive actions.



The federal govt is still in shutdown ( partial hah ) so no payday this time and maybe next time also. This will get thin quickly. We are expected to contact our personal services that bill us to let them know we are in this situation and seek delay in our payments. Sigh. just more work to do and hassle after the fact.

So you could sit and stare out the window and try not to think.. not like that works.

You could study something but wow.. lets really depress ourselves.

I decided to level my brain to watch those narrow boating videos and All the Stations videos... I posted the links last week for both.

I have finished all of the Cruising the cut vlogs... It took a lot of back to back ( binge ) watching but each one was interesting and about 12 minutes long which made for ease of viewing. Plus Dave was.. is pretty good at setting the camera, having good audio levels, not boring you to death regardless of what he was tinkering with. Most times he was doing some boating and some dyi stuff to keep his boat up. All good interesting stuff. He even has a few hour to over hours long videos of just the canal boating with no over dubbing which are very nice and relaxing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMKJR5n4gLw

Just boating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTq301T_XZ0

Now he is into I think his third year of living on his narrow boat and has picked up building a camper van out of a regular panel van...

I think one of his most endearing things is his off side comments.. when talking about insulating the van he went off to ad hock say.. using recycled sheep.... and someone in the comments took him seriously.

I now know as much as I think I need to on all those boating bits.. cost for used and new .. what to look for and what to run away from... if I was ever to consider that as a lifestyle change.... Considering retirement.. if I get to retire.. it would be a wonderful way to spend a few months... I believe Visas are only good for about 6ish months. Lots of considerations in all that but it would be interesting. If you watch this segment on youtube he relates what made him do what he did.. and it was only supposed to be a year but now its full change.

I assume he is living on his vlogging income.... I dont know that for sure.. he is an excellent editor and videographer. If he is... that is excellent. I still think a Narrow boat would be a great base camp for photography forays into the countryside. Something to think about....

I did edit up my own narrow boat but it needs some modifications..



Middle is my edit using visio to full dimension set up. Its a 71 ft partial cruiser narrow boat. I saw one that had closed off cabins and I liked that the most and added a bunch of things like bed and head end shelves and a full shower as well as skylights and other things I might go into in next blog once I have cleaned up and added detail to the drawing. Yeah.. unless things change Ill do that next blog.

Other than that I charged the Canon ELPH 350 camera I got from Fiesta two years ago and went looking for things to shoot... but that was a bust as it was too cold and wet to do.. I took some tests.. then I shot some with the Sony.. and yes there is a difference....expected.

Canon

With enough light it is pretty crisp.



But in the dark is gets very noisy.


And soft. 

It did okay with the dew drops on this moss but still fuzzy when zoomed in on.


So as much as they say its not the camera that makes a good shot... a great shot needs some good glass and a crisp shot.

Sony RX10 gets real crisp even in crap light.


Dark cloudy sky's and I can still get detail on water droplets.



Trying to capture a snowflake in flight is beyond my ability sadly.

So many and nothing to latch on. Even going manual didn't help. Not that I tried hard.


So I think I have the equipment to do the photography I want to do .. now I need a couple of things... Time... Money ( reopen so I get a paycheck would help ) and a little support.  So many delays.. hahaha....

Mostly my wanting to squirrel away money and then the spending so much on a ticket thing,...

Vlogging.. is it there to do? Since I was thinking on the new blogging site this wouldn't be much of a further stretch... Should I do a series on Ballooning? Start from the beginning? Start with putting the equipment together? Reedit existing videos so they can go on Youtube... cutting music out as they do not like that and there are copyright restrictions.... Instead of just for my personal use.. It can be done.

Gotta get in that mode.. or mood.

Back to see what Dave is up to after lunch then I need to think on moving some posters and then something something before prepping for another week of free work.

Cheers!