House photo day again today, and as
planned I took some photos with my “new” full spectrum Olympus E-PM1.
Started off with the Olympus M.Zuiko
Digital ED 8 mm f/1.8 Fisheye PRO. It proves to be really irritating that I
can't use the VF-2 viewfinder; without it I had great difficulty reading the displays. I really need to get
these cataracts seen to.
The results? We're not there yet. Somehow, despite all claims to the contrary, the first
two fisheye sets were out of focus. It seems to have focused on my hand on the panorama
bracket:
And everything was so fuzzy that Hugin wasn't able to find control points.
That seemed to be an issue with confirming focus. When I replaced the lens with the 9-18
mm, things seemed sharper, and they also did so when I put the fisheye back on. The camera
was set to “middle” focus (the middle 9 of 35 focus points); maybe I should set it to the
middle only, like I do on my other camera. But maybe the E-PM1 has difficulties with the
fisheye lens, either generally or without the sensor filter. In particular, all the photos
with the fisheye showed smudges along the bottom, what here was the left side. And they
weren't there in the photos taken with other lenses. Here roughly the same view first with
9 mm rectilinear and then with the fisheye:
And it seems from the last image above that the lens also has a hot spot, just below the
window. I should check my old Olympus Zuiko Digital ED
8 mm f/3.5 fisheye to see if it does better.
Once a year or so, round Christmas, I buy a prepared turkey breast from ALDI. Most of it is intended for slicing and
eating cold on bread, but the first time round we eat it as a roast.
On a previous occasion I noted that the cooking times were very accurate: 90 minutes
at 170° fan-forced to hit a meat temperature of 82°, but that the roast didn't brown.
That's at least partially because they want it cooked in foil. Yes, take it out of the foil
30 minutes before completion so it can brown. It's supposed to be turned after 40 of 90
minutes, so I removed the foil at the same time. Still not brown enough. Next time I think
I'll turn on the grill at the same time.
I'm really upset about the situation in what is now the State of Israel. It's horrifying,
and I can't see how anybody with any sense of decency can accept it. People who do object
talk about the plight of the Palestinians. But it's not because they're Palestinians:
they're humans, even if some of the current Israeli government seem to call them the
Hebrew version of „Untermenschen“.
Spent much of today watching the video series from Al
Jazeera about Al
Nakba. Somehow it's not so horrifying any more: after seeing what's going on now, it
seems almost “normal”. But it goes to show the power of propaganda. Golda Meir stands up on her hind feet
and claims that poor Israel is attacked by seven peoples with armies much larger and better
equipped than the Israelis. Who could believe that nonsense?
But people did believe it. I believed it until 1967, and the change in opinion came
slowly—not because I was in the area in May 1967, but
because I was in Hamburg with my
friend Abdul Matin Tatari in October 1967. I didn't
believe everything he said, and my doubts grew only very slowly.
But looking back with as neutral a viewpoint as I can muster, it seems that what Israel is
doing is completely in accordance with what they had planned even before the Second World War, and which was
published after the war: displace all the Arabs from what then was Mandatory Palestine. And
that's the gentle part. If they don't want to go, kill them. The current situation in
Gaza is just the next step in
a long-planned extermination of the Palestinians.
But why, why does the USA support Israel in this genocide? They had the moral high ground in supporting Ukraine against Russia's invasion. With their support of
genocide, they have lost that. By comparison, the Russians are gentle. I can only hope
that the International Court of Justice comes up with a damning verdict in the South Africa
v. Israel (Genocide Convention). And of course if the USA were to stop supporting
these atrocities, a lot could be achieved.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
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but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
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