Ttartisan50mmf12 on The Singemonkey

May 16, 2025

Fri, 16 May 2025 19:36:46 +0000

I’m just still amazed at how sharp the #ttartisan50mmf12 is wide open at f1.2 even though I paid a chunk less than US$100 for it brand new. It’s such a great little all metal, all manual lens.

And yet it’s not a modern ultra sharp lens at the same time. You can see some weird little flares. It’s got real personality.

This is the most elegant Rolls Royce but, to be honest they were never the most beautiful cars. You only have to compare it to a Hispano-Suiza from the same era. The modern RR bricks are perfect for demonstrating that you’re an oaf with no passion for anything but power.

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:18:51 +0000

Bun staying out of the summer breeze through the open window by making rare use of this cat tower room that was once the fave of our dear departed Skitten.

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:16:04 +0000

And a few horizontal ones also from our first braai of summer. It feels like it’s really here now.

November 12, 2024

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:11:32 +0000

Some pics from our first braai of the summer, kindly hosted by @johnthevudio Swimming, good food, nice whiskey, birds and summer breezes, and loads of cute cats.

October 26, 2024

Sat, 26 Oct 2024 17:03:20 +0000

Boi’s official spring portrait

We did some wild gardening today helping Nicola in her mad dash to empty out her Gran’s house of 30 years before the bulldozers come for it - rescuing a few lucky plants.

July 04, 2024

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 14:58:19 +0000

Arum Lily 2: Lily masquerading as frozen exothermic reaction.

The lilies growing across the street seem to have come up early as I’ve seen none on the common while running where they grow in great profusion.

June 26, 2024

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 09:59:14 +0000

Caught Bun’s little fuzzy face this morning next to my old Fuzzface.

June 21, 2024

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:27:24 +0000

The Mouse is now firmly ensconced in my dad’s house. And she’s living up to her name/job-title as no mouse has been seen within since her arrival. She’s got to explore the outdoors for the first time in her life and is already in a feud with a squirrel that swears at her from a perch in the white stinkwood tree my folks planted when they moved in and now towers over the house.

June 21, 2024

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 12:06:01 +0000

Arum Lilly. Past its best but still worthy of a photograph. This one’s for my dear friend @sophdex today.

May 09, 2024

Thu, 09 May 2024 12:18:47 +0000

I’ve had a cold this last week but poor @kanesnaps came down with a dose of the ‘flu in the 35 degree heat of #africaburn He’s mostly recovered and doing great work with that Mustang bass as always.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:12:30 +0000

The Boi in one of his brief spells of wakefulness.

Watching lens reviews can sometimes be useful. I discovered this ttartisan 50mm f1.2 is quite a bit less sharp and contrasty focused at its minimum distance at f1.2. So stopping down to f2 makes quite a big difference when focused close like this.

January 21, 2023

Sat, 21 Jan 2023 10:05:21 +0000

Bun’s current top-favourite spot. We call it her tube.

November 20, 2022

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 17:44:07 +0000

Bunday morning.

July 26, 2022

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 11:59:11 +0000

This scene again. It was a three kingfisher day today - Pied (which we see most days), Malachite (we see these little jewels maybe every three counts or so), and Giant (seen more rarely - although this lady has a fave spot in the willow so maybe we’ll see her again next week). This in a place that shills for the developers love to pretend is a ruined, lifeless dump.

July 26, 2022

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 11:54:25 +0000

Terna as I found him soaking in the dawn by our river confluence bird count. In summer I really miss the late dawn that invites you to enjoy it without too much bother. This project is partly what inspired my newfound love for daybreak.

July 07, 2022

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 08:37:01 +0000

Early morning Trinket, aka Bun.

With the rolling blackouts due to our corrupt and negligent state power provider we’ve been using candles a fair bit. Bun can’t seem to learn that these lights are too spicy 🌶 for her and keeps singeing her whiskers.

April 17, 2022

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 13:48:10 +0000

I’ll take a ‘plain top’ Les Paul over a veneer top any day. The mystery of maple’s fungal growth patterns is that it changes depending on the angle of the light and how you look at it. Every slab of wood is completely unique. In just the right light, the faintest hint of flames becomes visible on the top of my 2010 Tokai LS150. And patterns that mean that it’s completely identtifiable - like that odd little curl and the deeper flame near the toggle switch. This is a workhorse rock guitar. It’s been banged up and played hard. But it’s still the best guitar I own against some pretty stiff competition.

February 14, 2022

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 14:11:30 +0000

This fella has been feeling like the house is the siege of Stalingrad since the painting began. But he seems to gradually be accepting that he’s not in mortal danger.

October 30, 2021

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 22:20:10 +0000

Perched where she can see who goes up and down the stairs.

October 25, 2021

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 09:39:18 +0000

More experiments with retro wildlife photography. These are plains zebras - the more common of the two species of zebra in South Africa. This one is widespread throughout the continent South of the Sahara. There is one more species that is deeply endangered that survives only in small, protected enclaves in Kenya and Sudan.

October 24, 2021

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 11:59:51 +0000

The Cape Buffalo - or African Buffalo. It has a far more violent reputation than most of its Asian cousins - especially the Water Buffalo which has been widely domesticated and provides mozzarella for your pizza. This buffalo has never been domesticated. It’s simply too strong and fierce. Of course they start off pretty cute.

October 24, 2021

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 11:53:38 +0000

Looking at some of my ‘B’ selections from our recent Kruger Park trip. This was more experimentation with my ultra cheap ttartisan 50mm f1.2 on my Fujifilm XE1 - shooting wide open to get a mid 20th C bushveld look. You can see the vintage lens design in this brand new lens in the slightly odd character of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

October 01, 2021

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 08:52:37 +0000

I took many hundreds of pictures of Skitten since 2007. But this was the very last one. When we first got it home from Maatjiesfontein, I was convinced that we didn’t need a third cat. I took the cutest pictures I could of it parading about to make into a collage to advertise it… and in so doing it tricked me into falling in love with it.

It liked to sit on windowsills and contemplate the world going by. A most philosophical animal.

September 30, 2021

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 19:39:31 +0000

My old man. He’s a lot less stern than he sometimes appears. I got to see the Prof of cardiology ask him some niche questions about ECGs today - still a valuable font of knowledge on his lifelong arcane speciality many years after retirement.

September 12, 2021

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 18:58:55 +0000

Impala Lilies are blooming in The Kruger National Park in spring.

September 09, 2021

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 18:07:46 +0000

The savannah woodland in the morning - also the world’s largest land animal.

I experimented a bit today using my Fujifilm XE1 and the fast manual focus 50mm f1.2. On full frame that’s a 75mm focal length and roughly an f1.8 aperture in terms of depth of field wide open. I was trying to go for a bit of an old-fashioned look like if you were in the bush in the ’60s with a Pentax Spotmatic with a Takumar 85mm f1.8.

August 23, 2021

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 10:29:55 +0000

If this goon is in Langebaan, does that make him the #langebaanlagoon?

August 23, 2021

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 09:11:07 +0000

@goflow42 nearly stepped on this beautiful lady just outside the Geelbek restaurant in West Coast National Park as we were walking towards one of the bird hides. This is only the second time @withoutaleaf and I have seen one of these beautiful cats in the wild - they can be spotted anywhere between here and Iran. Caracals are expert bird-ambushers. They can leap to extraordinary heights to pull down birds trying to escape by flight. This one was only slightly bigger than a house cat, but full grown males are considerably larger.

August 18, 2021

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 08:45:47 +0000

Morning Trinket.

Do people only still make black and white photographs to seem cool and sophisticated? The answer’s a little complicated. Knowing why you’d prefer a picture in black and white means you’ve spent a little time thinking about photography - which makes you a more ‘sophisticated’ appreciator of photographs. So then, in a sense, yes. But I can give you that ‘sophistication’ in not many words: Eliminating colour makes you more conscious of form, light and shadow, and detail. So, like any abstraction, it shows you things that that the full set of information may conceal. It helps you see the trees for the wood.

July 31, 2021

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 10:16:51 +0000

@withoutaleaf enjoying some well-deserved time off after over a 100 days shooting long hours. Convenient being able to stay home during the SA third COVID surge too. We’re both half vaxxed now though.