Kathy & I were sitting on a park bench this afternoon and a woman waddles up slurping an ice cream cone and sits down beside me. Insert your best stupid person voice here: “Don’t worry, I don’t have the virus, no one in my family has the virus.” I was speechless. Of course you don’t think of the right comeback until hours later, but what I should have said was, “funny, but I think maybe I do.” Instead we stood up and walked away. There really wouldn’t have been anything I could have said.
I don’t often link to outside content, but this new tune from NC folk singer David Wilcox is too good to not share.
I’ve never been to New York City. I know it’s a really big city but have no concept of how truly huge it is. Many of us who live in Charlotte like to think Charlotte is a big city, but it’s it’s just a small town with lots of people. An article in yesterday’s New York Times had a comment that underscored that point for me.
Pete Wells, the Times’ restaurant critic, was writing in “Restaurant Dining Is Back, if You Can Find a Table” about how restaurants responded to being able to open for outdoor seating. He indicated that the new rules went into effect on a Monday, and that by noon on that Tuesday 4100 restaurants had received approval for outdoor dining. 4100 restaurants! North Carolina probably doesn’t have that many restaurants in the entire state if you exclude fast food. Amazing!
Blacksville, SC is another one of those “along the way” places we passed through. This old store is across the street from the train station, which now houses the town library and will likely be the subject of another post. 🙂
Yesterday I received an email from our neighborhood HOA which contained a waiver that anyone using the pool or the clubhouse must sign. They are also supposedly working on some kind of disclaimer to state that the HOA bears no responsibility for anyone who gets sick. They paid an attorney to create these documents. Wouldn’t have been easier, less expensive and no less effective to just say, “Hey look, y’all know about this virus thing, right? It’s up to you to not do stupid stuff and your own responsibility for anything that happens if you do. Got it? Good.”
I was reminded of the above photo from our visit to Nova Scotia in 2013. A simple warning seemed sufficient for the people there. Canadians aren’t that much smarter than we are, are they? Maybe they are.
There are numerous reviews already on the interwebs about the recently-introduced X-T4, but I thought it might be beneficial to at least one person (probably only me) to summarize my first impressions based on my own user experience and my own preferences in a somewhat (hopefully) cogent blog post.
My very first impression when I pulled the camera out of the box was “wow, this thing is a brick!” While small in comparison to full-sized SLRs, the X-T4 on my scale weighs in at 21.8oz/618g vs. 16oz/455g for the X-T1. Both cameras with battery and card but no lens. That’s no small difference – about 36% by my calculation. But it’s not really heavy, as cameras go. The word I use to describe the X-T4 is that it feels “solid.”
When I downsized from the full-size Canon 5D Mark III to the X-T1 and the X-E2, I initially had a hard time adjusting to the smaller bodies, to the point where I purchased the accessory grips for both of them, and I would occasionally keep the L-brackets on them when walking around. I gradually got to the point where I was comfortable with the bodies without the grips, although it took me a while before I started leaving the grips at home. The X-T4 recaptures a bit of that “mass” with nicely designed grips on the right side, front and back. I’ll probably still add a Lensmate thumb rest, as that has sort of become “standard equipment” for me. I like the extra stability that the thumb rest provides.
I was initially excited about what I thought would be the ability to save multiple custom settings. But unless I’m missing something – which is certainly possible – it doesn’t save everything for a particular situation. As an example, I would like to set up a “Tripod” setting that locks in a low ISO, sets a 2-second delay and turns off image stabilization, among other things. I would also like to set an “outdoor” setting with a lower Auto ISO range, and an “indoor” setting with a higher Auto ISO range. But I can’t seem to get everything in each setting to “stick.” I need to mess with it some more but it just may not be possible. Not a big deal, but a small disappointment after I initially thought I could do that. Although I didn’t buy the camera for that function, it would be nice to have.
Physically, the X-T4 has some very small but very important improvements. Locks on the diopter knob, as well as the shutter speed and ISO dials. Almost all of the buttons are customizable, with almost all functions able to be assigned to a button. I have assigned a button to control image stabilization, one to turn the 2-second self-timer on and one as a depth of preview button. In addition to manual controls and the ‘A’ setting for aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation, there is a ‘C’ setting that allows you to control those same functions with one of the control wheels, so I can adjust (for example) aperture and exposure compensation using the wheels, keeping my eye on the viewfinder. That’s a new-for-me feature and one I think I will find useful. Dual card slots are not a big deal for me, but it will be nice to start out with two cards in the camera instead of just one. This camera takes big files – in excess of 50MB each – so cards will fill a lot faster! I’ll need to keep using the camera in specific situations to figure out things like the HDR burst mode, nuances in the metering & focusing options and other things. All in good time!
One of the downsides I have heard others mention is the new, fully articulating screen. I know there will be situations where I’ll miss the tilting screen on the X-T1, but I think there will a lot more times when I’ll appreciate the flexibility of the articulating screen. Also, I generally use only the viewfinder for shooting, so having the ability to turn the screen around completely will be nice.
I haven’t spent a lot of time pixel-peeping, but initially I have to say that image quality appears to be very good. I haven’t had any extreme exposure situations and I’m still messing with Lightroom settings, but except for the addition of a bunch of new film simulations (which I love), it seems like most of my other workflow remains intact. So far I have mostly been shooting with the also-new 16-80 f4 lens, although for last evening’s sunset photos I used the 55-200, also with good results. I’m going to love shooting with my non-stabilized prime lenses using the new IBIS.
I think that’s it for now. Once I have a few thousand photos under my belt I may have some more useful thoughts, but for now I just need to keep using the camera and solve any problems or challenges that come along. If anyone has any questions I’d be happy to answer them to the extent I am able.
Kathy’s birthday is coming up soon, so of course I did the sensible thing and bought her a camera. I think she’s going to let me use it. 😉 Actually, I did buy a new camera, but it’s for me. For her birthday I think we’ll plan to go somewhere fun for me to use it.
When I migrated from Canon cameras to Fuji cameras in 2015, I bought the X-T1, followed by a “backup” X-E2. When it was all said and done, I had a pretty enviable collection of lenses, both zooms and primes. The whole kit weighed a fraction of what my literal suitcase of Canon gear weighed, the Fuji cameras and lenses are excellent and I paid for most of the Fuji stuff for what I sold the Canon stuff for. Wins all around!
Now, 5 years later the camera technology has improved, to the point where when Fuji announced the X-T4 I knew it was time for an upgrade. The X-T1 & X-E2 are still excellent cameras. In fact, my youngest son is going to embark on his own photography journey with the bodies and two of my lenses. So they will go to a good home, and by keeping them “in the family” maybe I can borrow them back at some point! 😉 Not really, but I wrote that for his benefit….
I had looked seriously at the X-T3 when it came out, and it is an excellent camera. I actually rented one to try out about a year ago. The timing wasn’t right, I felt like I still needed a second body and it was going to require different batteries, memory cards, etc., and at the time I didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do. But after all the travel we’ve been doing the last year or so, the more I realized that I was just carrying too much stuff. I’ve always said – jokingly – that the more lenses I carried with me the more likely it was that I had the wrong one on the camera. So the idea of having to choose from 2 camera bodies and 8 lenses – or heaven forbid carry all of it with me! – seemed like things were getting out of hand.
Backing up a bit – several years ago we went from a 2003 Acura to a 2016 Honda. While we thought the Acura was a pretty sophisticated car, the 13 year difference with the Honda was astounding. The years do (usually) mean an improvement in technology, engineering and performance. Same thing holds true for cameras , even though in this case we’re talking about a difference of only 5 years! At the time I am typing this I haven’t even turned the camera on, but reading through the manual (YES, I did!) I am amazed at the improvement in just the custom settings alone. I can’t wait to see what the photos look like.
I’ll write about my initial impressions once I have had a chance to take it for a spin and see what it will do. But for now suffice it to say that the X-T4 is a pretty fine looking piece of equipment, I like the silver look instead of the all black of my X-T1, and I can’t wait to see how it performs in real life. Stay tuned for more thoughts and many more photos!
I realized this morning that today is the date of our retirement 2 years ago…time flies when you’re having fun! It’s amazing to realize that it has been two years. We’ve been very glad that we over-reached a bit on our travel through the first 21 or so months, since we’ve been making up for it the last few months.
The photo is from 2006, recently processed in Lightroom using more “modern” tools.
“You are what you eat.” Or if you follow nutrition writer Michael Pollan, “You are what you eat eats.”
A quote from a 2011 book titled “The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption” by Clay A. Johnson states “Our bodies are wired to love salt, fat and sugar. … Our minds are really wired to be affirmed and be told that we’re right. … Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they’re right? Who wants to be informed when they can be affirmed? What we do is we tell our media that that’s what we want to hear, and our media responds to that by telling us what it is that we want, and sometimes that isn’t what’s best for us.”
A recent conversation got me thinking about our information diets and the many parallels there are with our food diets. If we aren’t careful and mindful about how we eat, we will too easily be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of product choices in grocery stores and restaurants. The choices we ultimately make are heavily influenced by a number of factors, but not insignificantly we are influenced by marketing. The food industry is a very powerful force in our lives, whether we realize it or not. All the advertising we see is just one of the many visible ways we are influenced. Product placement in stores, packaging and promotion are all marketing. It is up to each of us individually to sift through all those choices to determine what is best for us. It takes work and it isn’t easy. There are a lot of mixed messages out there, and they don’t necessarily point us in the right direction.
It’s no secret that the quality of our food directly influences our physical health. People who eat a lot of processed foods, regardless of source, tend in general to be less healthy than those who eat less processed food. Vegetarians and vegans, by some measures, appear to be more healthy than omnivores. But being an omnivore doesn’t necessarily mean you are unhealthy. There are nutritional needs that can be met by any kind of diet, but meeting those needs takes some figuring out.
However you care to characterize or categorize eating preferences, all of them have positives and negatives. The key, it seems, is to do enough research and gather enough information from sources you trust, to (a) figure out what works for you, and (b) find something that is sustainable and that results in a permanent behavior change that will ultimately provide the result you desire.
How is an “information diet” similar to a food diet? Food companies don’t make money promoting spinach, broccoli and carrots. They make money by promoting high profit items like processed foods and drinks. And they use all kinds of methods to convince us that it’s OK to spend our money on the stuff that makes them the most money. And they know what we want because we tell them. They track sales by all kinds of methods, including those “Frequent Shopper” cards that give us awesome discounts on products and gasoline. And you thought they were just being nice?
Media companies make money by selling us advertising and promoting agendas, which allows them to sell more advertising and promote more agendas. They know what we want because – knowingly or not – we tell them. The “Recommended for You” content we see on Facebook is a result of the stuff we look at and interact with on Facebook, plus what Facebook sees us look at when they follow us around the internet (yes, they do). Google makes their money by tracking the websites we visit, creating a profile of who they think we are and what they think we are interested in, then selling ads and promoting content that their data tells them should appeal to that profile. Television networks get their information from other sources, but still have a very good idea of who their target audience is. Want to know who a television show is aimed at? Pay attention to the advertisements.
Just like large portions of salt, sugar and fat kick up the flavor of food to appeal to diners, loud and confident blowhards in the media (I use ‘media’ to include television, the press and the internet in general) are tailoring their messages to appeal to their audience. Who is that audience? It’s the people who their data tells them will tune in. These media companies and individuals don’t necessarily have to provide factual information as long as they are saying what their audience tells them it wants to hear. Similarly, restaurants don’t necessarily have to be considered “good” just because they give you a lot of food or season their dishes heavily to cover up the fact that there is otherwise no flavor. After a while, people don’t know what real food tastes like because they haven’t tasted it. By the same token, people lose sight of what their own opinions are because their mental taste buds have been dulled by endless loud and confident media tailored to sell them someone else’s opinion or agenda.
We have a hard-enough time making informed decisions at the grocery store. There are way more sources of information available in the media, and the companies that serve up that information have lots of ways to send us to sources they think will appeal to us, even more ways than the food companies do. It’s up to us to determine what sources will suit our needs the best. To figure out what goes into our information diet. And we owe it to ourselves to do the same thing with our information intake that we do for our food intake. As I stated earlier, we need to do enough research and gather enough information from sources we trust, to (a) figure out what works for each of us, and (b) find something that is sustainable and that results in a permanent behavior change that will ultimately provide the result we each desire.
We need to strike a balance between what appeals to us and what is good for us. And while those are not necessarily mutually exclusive, there may sometimes be tough choices to make. Just like our nutritional balance needs to contain the right amount of essential nutrients, I think our informational balance needs to include a healthy connection to reality. We have to determine what balance is right for us. Yes, I suppose it’s possible to get by on carrots and water, at least for a short term. It’s also possible to go completely “off the grid” and eliminate all sources of information. But I don’t think either approach is healthy long-term. I do believe that disconnecting from a lot of media is a healthy start. A second idea would be choosing carefully where our information comes from. The internet and social media can be a cesspool if allowed to get out of hand.
For me personally, Kathy & I haven’t owned a television for years, because at some point we realized that it was running our lives and that we were scheduling things around “our shows.” I have accounts with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but I use them in a way that makes sense for me – primarily as a source of information that I decide I want. I mute or unfollow people who share stuff I’m not interested in. If I want to find out about conditions in a National Park or the status of a particular business, Twitter is often a good place for current information. I only follow a handful of people and organizations, and add or remove them as my needs require. My Instagram account is highly curated in terms of who I follow and who I allow to follow me. I use a browser with appropriate safeguards to keep these people from tracking my search history and to block ads, and use an alternative search engine that doesn’t track my inquiries. I use a VPN that hopefully keeps my internet provider and others from getting too much information about my habits. I’m still using Google for some mail and other functions, but one of my current projects involves looking for a suitable replacement. That is not an easy task! My ways are not perfect, but I’m pretty comfortable with the level of information I receive and it works for me.
This is a long post, but it is important for us all to think about. I’m not an expert by any means, and since this isn’t a term paper I haven’t filled it with all kinds of footnotes and references. But I’m confident that most of what I’ve written is true and accurate, because I’ve taken a lot of time to figure it out in a way that works for me. I look forward to any thoughts you have on the subject, either by comments on this post or an email directly to me.
One of the highlights of Sunday was a visit by our son Scott and grandson Edison. We have an old Brio train set that Edison likes to play with when he comes, so we spent quite a lot of time with that. He also likes walking outside – especially on the brick retaining walls – and and running down the sidewalks and driveways. At 4 years old he’s a bundle of energy, and while we’re always happy to see him come we often take a nap after he leaves!
We got our Trump Dividend check yesterday. I’ve been calling it my “Government Cheese” after one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite blues singers.
Here’s a link of explanation for you yunguns.