Well, that was quite a long dissertation and I now understand very well
your spending priorities. But what I don't understand is your inability
to accept that the limitations you find with digital photography can be
solved with the simple expedient of setting a -2/3 exposure compensation
on the camera. Just go do it. It's simple and you'll be happier. :-)
Chuck Norcutt
bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I'd like to respond to a few of the points people made in the last few
> Digests.
>
> First, a bit of background ...
>
> I'll be 72 this year. I married when I was 42, and for a few years we had
> a happy
>
> life, but from the age of about 3 of my youngest, things started to turn
> to custard; I
>
> would have been about 48. At the same time the then Labour government of
> NZ, to pay
>
> back environmentalists for support during the parliamentary election,
> totally
>
> disestablished the NZ Forest Service, so that along with all the rest of
> the staff
>
> (3,000) I lost my job. This was the first of what was to become known
> internationally
>
> as "the New Zealand madness". 3,000 doesn't sound like many, in the
> context of much
>
> larger countries, but in NZ, this was huge.
>
> I managed to find another job to use my skills (Fisheries, this time), at
> half the
>
> salary, but in 1995 after 9 years there, along with 60 others, I was laid
> off. This
>
> was Nov. 1995. Unemployment was running at 15+%, and nobody wanted an
> overskilled 57
>
> year old. I tried all sorts of things but could not find work.
>
> Fortunately, I had invested from the first day of my employment in the
> Forest Service,
>
> in an inflation-proofed superanuation scheme, and by 1995 I had been
> paying in for 42
>
> years. This kept the bread on the table, and both our kids got a good
> education. I
>
> note however, that I enjoyed my professional work in the Forest Service so
> much that I
>
> wanted to keep working in it until I was 70. It was a very productive and
> fulfilling
>
> career, and I know of very few to rival it.
>
> I stayed in the marriage so that I could be with my kids, fortunately the
> house was
>
> big enough that I could live in a part of it quite separate from my
> estranged spouse.
>
> It was a very lonely existence however, and I have to say that joining
> this group of
>
> Zuikoholics - and access to general e-mail as well, kept me company and
> sane, more
>
> than you can imagine. And not to overlook all I learned about OM cameras
> and Zuiko
>
> lenses.
>
> During this period I did several things that the computer enabled me to
> do. One, a
>
> world first, was to list in easy computer-accessible form, all 12,800 or
> so of the
>
> fern species of the world. I was assisted by a German man I met on the
> internet.
> See http://homepages.caverock.net.nz/~bj/fern/
>
> I also wrote a couple of books, one self-published, on NZ forestry topics.
> http://homepages.caverock.net.nz/~bj/book/
>
> I also chaired a committee which ran a major family reunion in 2006.
> See http://homepages.caverock.net.nz/~bj/SFR/SFR4.htm
> for pictures.
>
>>From early in 2006 an unexpected series of events made me think that my
> kids were
>
> pretty-much able to look after themselves, and that I should get out of
> the current
>
> sham of a marriage and find a new partner. A series of events led me to
> the site
> http://www.findsomeone.co.nz) which at that time had 55,000 New
> Zealanders ( in
>
> addition to others in the UK, Canada and Australia sites)
>
> That has led me to my new partner, Maggie (Margaret), who lived(s) in
> Central Otago.
>
> So this has resulted in us buying a house together. We have each put in
> about $200,000
>
> NZ; me as cash ( all my savings) and her half of what she will get when
> she sells a
>
> house she owns locally. At $400,000NZ this house is about at the national
> median price
>
> over the last year. Not an expensive house by some standards, and I have
> just a half
>
> share.
>
> $400,000 is equivalent to $285,364.15 USD, 224,112.07 EUR, 192,733.24
> GBP, 297,602.12
>
> CAD (Canadian), 321,351.39 AUD (Australian), 316,378.63 CHF (Swiss
> francs),
>
> 2,198,698.81 ZAR (South Africa Rand), and 5,738,319.65 UYU (Uruguay peso).
>
> Having bought this house, I'm living off my income. I do not have buckets
> of cash.
>
> While the house has 5 'bedrooms', since there are 4 of us living in it
> (Maggie, me,
>
> Chris her 40-year-old son on a medical disability pension, and his 7
> year-old daughter
>
> (Chris's wife died of cancer on daughter's 2nd birthday), the house is
> full; one is my
>
> study and one is the TV room to take the TV and its nonsense programs out
> of 'in our
>
> face' especially at mealtimes. 3 bedrooms used as such.
>
> At age nearly 72, there is an element of "live life while you can" in what
> I do; who
>
> knows if I'll live another 5 minutes, 5 years, 10 years, or even 20?
>
> One of the devices I used as a carrot to hold in front of myself, as
> encouragement to
>
> succeed with separation, was my boat which I had put into storage. I used
> to do a lot
>
> of fishing using that boat, but after the powerful van I once towed it
> with was stolen
>
> and trashed (burned) along with $6,000 worth of "stuff" I could not use
> the boat again
>
> as I had nothing to tow it with. Raising two teenagers made it impossible.
>
> Now I do have a towing vehicle; but it turns out I have bought a real
> 'white elephant'
>
> in the form of the Range Rover. It looks great, the body is fine, and it
> is great to
>
> drive; but it is very unreliable, and parts are very expensive. I was
> looking to buy a
>
> Nissan Terrano G3R or a Toyota Surf 3L turbo 1997, both of which are
> reliable and
>
> powerful enough. And tripped over the RR on the Trademe site. Some time I
> will be
>
> quit of it but not until I have finished moving and given the boat a few
> runs with it.
>
> The reasons I bought a 4x4 include; towing boat, access to mountain areas
> over rough
>
> tracks and access to snow-covered landscapes for photography, and with
> climate control
>
> for the summertime benefit of my partner who is unable to cope with high
> summer
>
> temperatures when travelling - due to a severe head injury some 6 years
> ago.
>
> Getting my boat recommissioned (including the trailer road-certified)
> after 20 years
>
> storage is a top priority. So also is lifting the roof of our garage by
> about 30cm,
>
> and substantially lengthening it so it will take the boat and some
> vehicles. The
>
> target time for this is about 2 years away. Some time I will post pictures
> of the back
>
> of our house, and also my two biggest bookcases which I hauled up into the
> study. I
>
> had intended to use facebook, but I don't trust facebook's intentions with
> the
>
> uploading add-on they now insist that I install on whatever computer I
> happen to be
>
> using. And I'm away from my base in Christchurch with my own computer
> which has the
>
> programs to upload to my photography site.
>
> Thanks to Chuck's guidance, I can now add terabytes of storage to my
> computer. All the
>
> advice I got told me that the motherboard would not recognise more than
> about 132
>
> gigabytes. In a simple hook-up test my computer man demonstrated it would
> recognise at
>
> least 500 GB. He also did a massive defragmentation using a program be
> bought; this
>
> has speeded up my machine hugely, but I'm not sure about it being fast
> enough to deal
>
> with RAW files.
> I have this idea in my head that a technology ( digital imaging - digital
> cameras )
>
> is/are a somewhat deficient process that just HAS to improve over time if
> it can't
>
> cope with highlights such as those generated from back-lit or strongly
> front-lit
>
> autumn leaves, and relies instead on third party inventions. But I also
> suspect that
>
> not enough digital photographers care enough to cause the camera companies
> to make
>
> that sort of improvement.
>
> Anyway, this is a long way of saying that there are other items in the
> spending queue
>
> ahead of a new computer. What I have, will have to do, for a while yet.
> Doing RAW
>
> files will probably have to wait a bit. And the labs that do the best
> printing here
>
> insist on TIFF files.
>
> Brian Swale
>
>
>
>
>
--
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