Imagination

I've always had a very vivid imagination, and have a moderately strong "artsy" side. I enjoyed comic books in high school, and was a regular reader of some of the readily available (but not necessarily mainstream titles) such as Howard The Duck, Conan the Barbarian (the large format, black-and white one) and Heavy Metal. I had wanted to draw in the style of the Conan comics, and after much practice had become underwhelmingly mediocre at drawing some body parts, so I abandoned that venture. I wanted to paint for the longest time, but just never got around to putting down cash  for paints, brushes, easel, etc; the closest I ever got to this was painting 25mm miniature wargaming figures (soldiers), 1/32 scale military models and 1/700 scale WWII waterline warship models. The "25's" I was not bad at, the 1/32 scale stuff was pretty hit-or-miss, but I was pretty good at the waterline models. My favorites were Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) destroyers- I had a book that had a detailed history of the IJN which gave brief unit histories of nearly every ship from the Meiji Restoration until the end of the Second World War. The book was a British publication with very high quality paper and lots of photographs- I used it as my painting guide (I loved painting Japanese characters on the ships' sides) and for modelling some of the ships' rigging (the wires or ropes which stretch from mast to mast on a ship); it's quite amazing what just a few pieces of rigging do for a ship. This book was also my main data source for creating ship data cards for Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame. In short, I was one of "those" kids who had weird hobbies and not a ton of friends who wanted share in the hobbies and games.

Oh, and I am an only child.

I mentioned I have a pretty vivid imagination. Not always having playmates available, it was not uncommon for me to play a game of Monopoly or Risk by myself... with the maximum number of players! I also starting writing stories in high school, generally science fiction; most didn't get past a chapter or two. My enjoyment of writing has carried on into adulthood, and this blog is it's latest manifestation.

The other "artsy" thing I've always enjoyed was photography. Before anyone knew what a "selfie" was, I took one in my Dad's 1965 Chevy Impala wagon. I had to be around ten years old, and it was on a trip to visit relatives in Minnesota. (It should be noted that this was truly "back in the day"- the car had seatbelts, but their use was not required). I was in the back seat where the green Coleman cooler was. I put my head over the front bench seat and looked down- there was the camera. Unable to resist, I grabbed the camera and took a picture of... ME! It's a great picture, and we have it in a photo album somewhere.

That was the first picture I remember taking. I've taken many more since then. At one point, I even took Photo Tech classes- long before digital. I've shot 126, 35mm and even Kodak disk. This past week, though, I entered the digital age with our acquisition of a Nikon D3200.

Back in my 35mm days, I owned Minolta XG-M and X-700 camera bodies; I still have the X-700, along with a 50mm, 35-70mm and the prize of my old lens collection: a 250mm catadiaptropic lens! The "cat" is a special telephoto lens that is much smaller and lighter than a typical 35mm lens. It is unique in that the aperture is fixed, and that it uses a pair of mirrors inside the lens to attain the greater focal length. When I took the hood off of my cat, it had pretty much the same dimensions as a standard 50mm lens; to the casual observer, I was using a standard lens- the weight ( and therefore balance) were also similar. The downsides are twofold. First, the lens is slow- mine was an f5.6, and could be further stepped down by a rear-mounted, screw-in gray filter to f11. The second downside can also be exploited as an in-camera effect: the doughnuts.

This is my lens on a later-model body with a motor drive.

The doughnuts were formed by the back mirror, as I recall. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see something at the front of the lens that looks like a new moon- that is the front mirror. If you were looking at the lens head-on, there would be a large red circle (the back of the front mirror) surrounded by the silver of the rear mirror. The rear mirror has a hole in it which accomodates the image gathered by the rear mirror and reflected by the front mirror. When looked at through the rear of the lens, the front mirror is tiny. These lenses are also more delicate than a standard SLR lens, because the position of the front mirror is critical, and any hard handling can make these lenses useless.  

That's all for now. No cool photos to post or data to report... but hopefully I should have some soon!

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.