http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog Popey's blog on photography, computing, web design and anything else that I have a view on... Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:14:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When I used to shoot 35mm film, one camera that I loved using was a Ricoh GR1s.  This little beauty was built to last, with a magnesium alloy body containing a retractable 28mm f2.8 lens which gave stunning results.  When I moved to digital and the original GRD was announced, ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=256 Introduction. One of the most desirable lenses for many Leica rangefinder owners has been the 50mm Noctilux. This lens has seen several iterations since the introduction in 1968 of the original f1.2 version. The current version, with a maximum aperture of f0.95, retails at £6181! The reasons for the appeal of ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=218 Introduction 2008 was a special year for my wife Karin and I as we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. We knew we wanted to do something special to celebrate and came up with the idea of a 'mini grand tour' of Italy, taking in Rome, Florence and then a couple of days ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=112 Introduction A few months ago I decided to get hold of an ultra portable PC.  I originally wanted to get an Asus EEE PC with a 9" screen.  Various on-line dealers had other ideas though.  Try as I might, I ended up being sent versions that ran Windows XP rather than ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=145 Having had our Italian class cancelled this evening gave me the opportunity to process the other scan that I made yesterday.  Both shots have now been printed on Permajet Fibre-based glossy paper at A3 and they look lovely. Here's the second shot: [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="437" caption="Shen Hao HZX45II 150mm Apo Sironar ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=140 Yesterday, we finished celebrating our 25th Wedding Anniversary at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxfordshire. We had a wonderful time. The food was exquisite and the service was incredible. I had arranged for a bouquet of red roses to be presented to Karin as we ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=135 Someone I know said the following about the Apple I-Phone: "It's a bit like Paris Hilton. Expensive, quite nice to look at, but what does it actually do?" I guess it's possible to make a similar observation about Leica M cameras and lenses. Sure, they are expensive. Arguably, ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=102 And what a week! Politically anyway. Not just from the perspective of what's just happened in the US, but at work, the issues I mentioned in my previous post just won't go away. I think the best strategy is to keep a low profile. Once the ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=84 Why is it that large organisations feel the need to involve all sorts of people in issues that frankly, they have no understanding of and can add absolutely no value to. Why also do these people then feel the need to "get to the bottom" of a problem. ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=77 It was time to stop procrastinating and do some more coding on updates for David Pentland's website.  David wants to be able to give more details about the pictures on the site, for example, materials, size information and not least, price. I'd completed the database design a couple of weeks back.  ... http://www.monomagic.co.uk/blog/?p=69