Author Archives: danijel

Some photography stuff

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I’m now going to write about something I usually don’t write much about, but which makes possible all the stuff that I publish online. Hardware.

Why I don’t write about it, well, because I just assume it implicitly. Computers, cameras, lenses, they are tools. If they work well, I don’t give much fuck about them. When they fail or become a pain in the ass, I have to think about them and do something. Such as now.

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This is my main camera, Canon EOS 5d dSLR which I bought in 2006. I used it to record a huge number of photos, including majority of stuff used on a photo exhibition and in my commercial work (corporate and private websites).

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This is the second time the mirror fell off. The first time I glued it back with superglue. The second time I did the same, but I no longer have that much faith in the process. There’s a factory recall for it, and of course I could have it professionally serviced, but the problem is, it’s 10 years old. Technology did manage to advance significantly in the meantime and while worth fixing, it’s not worth keeping as my main camera. As in, I need a new camera body to put my Canon lenses on.

This is my secondary camera:

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It’s the Olympus E-PL1, a micro four-thirds body that I use to mount legacy Minolta lenses and macro extenders. It creates excellent images, almost on-par with the Canon 5D.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The problem is, everything on the camera except the sensor is a pile of shit. It’s the most awkward, uncomfortable, unergonomic camera imaginable and despite great image quality it made photography a huge pain in the ass for me, especially since it’s usually my walkaround camera of choice, being small and light. It also doesn’t have a viewfinder so I can only take pictures holding it at arm’s length, like a phone. This doesn’t help with image stability. Also, you can’t see shit on the screen during strong sunlight, which happens to be when there’s best light for translucent motives. Essentially, I put it on the floor, guesstimate the focus and pray. That’s not how you’re supposed to do things. On a tripod, of course, it’s great, but having the smallest possible camera and then taking a tripod along that’s several times the weight and bulk of your proper camera, that doesn’t make much sense.

The Olympus has one absolutely great quality: it shows you exactly what the sensor sees, including 100% magnification, which is great for manually focusing with precision that’s completely beyond any autofocus system that I’ve tried. This means you can really nail the sharpness, if you work slowly of course. Which I do. Also, you can overlay the live histogram on the display, very accurately nailing exposure without retrying. Also, it has in-body image stabilization, which is incredibly helpful for hand-held work in low light, which is about 50% of everything I do. Those things are so helpful that I’ve found myself neglecting the Canon for the Olympus, with the result of not being able to use all the Canon lenses that I have.

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What can Canon do, that Olympus can not? This.

As a result, I figured out that my ideal camera would be something that has live view with the articulated screen (so that I can put it in the grass, and tilt the screen upwards to see what I’m doing), a quick high-resolution viewfinder, 35mm sensor with the same image quality as I have on the Canon, to be small enough not to be bothersome when I take it with me for a long walk, it needs to have sensor-based image stabilization (because none of my lenses have IS) and it has to be able to work with lenses adapted from both Canon EF and Minolta MC/MD mounts, so that I could use everything I already have because it’s good and I don’t feel like wasting money on duplicating optics.

As it turns out, such a camera exists: all three Sony A7 second-generation models fit all my requirements. Since A7S II is specialized for video (which I don’t shoot) and too expensive, and A7R II is too expensive, I decided to get the A7 II. Advantages: not too expensive, and has the same goodies as the other two, minus the super-fancy viewfinder and the super-fancy backside-illuminated ultra high-res sensor from the R model. I decided I can live without those for the benefit of costing half the money and being identical in all other regards. As for the resolution, I shoot at 12-13 MP and from that I routinely make B2 sized prints. 24MP will be just fine. Yes, I’m competent enough to actually utilize the R-model’s 42MP sensor, but for the difference in price I can get all the lenses I would want, and those are worth more to me.

I recently bought a used Sony R1 for my kid, and I tried taking pictures with it myself. The image quality, when used properly, is so similar to Canon 5D that it looks like two shots taken with the same camera and different lenses. It has gorgeous image quality on low ISO, paired with a lens that is excellent when stopped down properly.

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The problem is, it’s a perfect camera for slow tripod work and shitty camera for hand-held work, especially in low light. No image stabilization of any kind, very noisy above base ISO, and very difficult to focus accurately due to shitty AF and very low resolution viewfinder and display without any indication of in-focus areas. Also, the lens is not sharp on close focus, especially wide open, which is how I use it for more than half of my photography. Also, it only has that one lens, so no macro extenders, and no extreme wide angle. Not good for me. Great for my kid to learn photography, though, so it’s still a big win.

Regarding lenses, I have a love-hate relationship with the “mid-range zooms”. I had several excellent ones – Minolta MD 35-70mm f/3.5 and Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, for instance, and also Canon EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5. The last one isn’t really appreciated but I made most of my closeup and landscape shots with it.

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EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 “shit lens” with macro extension tubes

It’s a pathetic-looking creaky plasticky thingy that makes jaw-dropping pictures if you know how to use it. So it’s obvious why I like this type of lenses. The reason why I hate them is that when I have one, I tend not to take it off my camera because it’s convenient, and so I end up using it in places where it sucks and it degrades the quality of my work. Especially when I use the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 on the E-PL1, which is optically my worst lens and is just fucking terrible in all ways but one: it’s small and light, and so I end up using it instead of proper, albeit heavy pieces of glass.

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So, of course, I got a mid-range kit zoom for the Sony, the 28-70mm thing that everybody says is soft and has low contrast. The problem is, the alternative is the Zeiss 24-70mm which has better contrast and it looks nicer, but most copies seem to be soft and can be actually worse than the cheaper kit zoom. So I said, OK, let’s get the plasticky cheap one because it was almost free (the kit with the lens was barely more expensive than the body alone), and I can use it on a tripod stopped down to f/13-16 which is where I take most of my tripod photography on 35mm, and it better be tack sharp there. But if it’s any good, I’ll have one light walkaround autofocus lens if I just want to have something better than my phone with me and not carry several kilos of gear, and if I want sharp, I have lenses that do just that. The 24-70mm Zeiss, it’s simply too expensive for me to buy without testing the specific copy extensively prior to purchase; it’s a thousand-euro lens, for fuck’s sake. For that kind of money, it better give blowjobs and make great coffee. But according to all reports, it’s optically sub-par, and if I want a really sharp one in that range, I’ll probably try something from the Sigma’s Art series, like the 24-105mm. If I want light, I’ll have the plasticky cheap one, and if I want something that’s both light and good, I’ll get the 35mm f/2.8 Zeiss. That one is almost pocketable, it’s really sharp, and it can still cut the depth of field well enough for my uses. Also, 35mm is probably my favorite focal length for landscapes, because anything wider usually grabs telephone poles and similar stuff that I want to omit in normal situations, and is still wide enough to make sense. I also love how the other Sony-Zeiss prime, the 55mm f/1.8, draws, but that one is more of a specialist tool. It does portraits and closeups excellently, but for those I would actually prefer the 90mm f/2.8 macro. For walkaround photography, the 55mm is too long; my walkaround lenses are usually the 17-40mm or the 15mm fisheye, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if I end up using the fisheye as the mainstay on the Sony.

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Someone will say, what about the lack of autofocus on the adapted lenses? Honestly, I usually work slowly and turn the damn thing off anyway in most cases. The only thing for which I really prefer autofocus are the portraits, because with manual focusing it’s really difficult to get the eyes critically sharp on as shallow depth of field as I prefer it to be, because the model’s breathing motions are usually all it takes to bring the iris out of focus. Accurate focus confirmation, however, might be enough for me to get accurate focus with MF lenses.

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Olympus E-PL1 with Minolta MD 50mm f/1.7, manual focus

I anticipate the question: why do you whine so fucking much when it’s obvious that you manage to make similarly good pictures with any kind of equipment you get your hands on? Because the process of making the pictures is supposed to be fun. If something is painful to use, I will stop using it. Some pieces of equipment had the result of making me turn away from photography almost completely. Equipment is important in the sense that it can either feel nice and wonderful to work with, or it can feel like having your nails pulled with rusty pilers. I tried both, I don’t have to tell you what kind I prefer.

Anyway, it’s just me thinking out loud about it. You’ll see the pictures when the actual camera arrives. If the Americans don’t cause a nuclear war first.

The current situation with Syria

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An American army general directly threatened Russia with war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wCwJ8pfXXo

Russians are taking the threat seriously and are currently performing extensive civil defense drills for 40 million people, who are test-driving the nuclear shelters and hazmat suits.

Prior to that, Americans stopped the bilateral talks with the Russians over Syria and are now contemplating a military solution to overthrow Syrian legitimate government which they don’t like because they prefer the jihadists, according to a recent leak.

The Russians responded to this “leak” by stating that Syrian army is under their defensive umbrella and any attacking aircraft will be promptly taken down without much investigation where it came from. They also mentioned that “stealth” is bullshit and that their radars see American “invisible planes” just fine.

https://www.rt.com/news/361800-russia-syria-usa-aistrikes/

Essentially, Syria is now a no-fly zone for America and their slave-countries. Technically, they can fly, but they cannot perform combat actions. OK, technically they can perform combat actions too, once.

America can now back down and try to achieve their goals in some way that is less hazardous. But that’s not the America we all know. More likely, they will try to immediately push against the imposed boundaries.

But let’s put it this way. Russia is not really bathing in money. Nuclear shelters for 40M people cost serious money. Massive drills that encompass such a huge portion of the populations are also expensive. This means they are perceiving a serious and direct danger of an all-out nuclear war. And I don’t mean all-out for Harambe.

About cults, and what makes them bad

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I’ve been thinking about what differentiates cults from religions. So, let me get the obvious concepts out of the way.

It’s not size. Every religion starts small. Buddhism started with Buddha giving a sermon in Sarnath, near Varanasi. Christianity started with Jesus and his dozen disciples. Islam started with Mohammad seeing a demon in a cave, who scared him to the point of wanting to kill himself, and his wife telling him he’s not crazy, he’s a prophet (true story).

So, the fact that something at one point has billions of followers doesn’t mean it didn’t start with a lunatic having a psychotic episode in a cave.

The other thing to get out of the way is the etymology. In some languages, “cult” is negatively charged while “sect” is neutrally charged, in others it’s the other way around. For instance, the Croatian translation for “cult” is “sekta”. So, when the Croats try to make some big thing about false etymology, trying to prove that “sect” derives from “secare, sectum”, “to cut”, not only they are wrong (it derives from sequi, sectum, “to follow”), but their etymology would be meaningless to the English audience to which “sect” is a neutral word. So, the word itself has no sinister connotations.

If I had to make a very simple definition, sticking to English language, I would say that “cult” is a “sect” you happen not to like. It’s like the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists. Freedom fighters are the terrorists you happen to like, or they work for you.

There’s no significant formal difference in appearance or organization between the craziest and most vicious cults and the best, noblest spiritual movements mankind has ever produced. They all start with some guy with an idea, he attracts followers, and it either grows from there or dies out. So, the cult-like form doesn’t really tell you anything valuable or informative. So, saying that something is a “cult” because it consists of a spiritual teacher and his followers is a completely non-sequitur argument. It doesn’t tell us anything important about spiritual, ethical or intellectual merits of the entire thing. It’s like saying a car is red. OK, it’s red, but what brand is it, what engine does it have, how fast does it go? To say that something is a “cult” is essentially saying it’s a following of some kind. But whom are they following, why, how, and to what end?

The interesting thing is, there are other very similar social structures, but they are not called cults. A gang, for instance, is a cult in all ways but one: it has no spiritual pretensions. But to turn it around, how many cults are so bad that you can say they are gangs with spiritual pretensions? I can make a good case that Islam was exactly that. It was a gang that robbed caravans around Medina, and later spread throughout the world using primarily violence and deception. If anything, it is more a gang than a spiritual teaching in its social structure, even now. But in case of Buddhism or Christianity, that doesn’t hold. There some Buddhist sects that behave like gangs – Aum Shinrikyo, for instance, and I could make a case for Nichiren. In Christianity, I don’t think I can remember of any notable sects that acted like gangs. In Hinduism, there are unfortunately several examples, for instance the Thugee, a sect of Kali worshipers who made a ritual out of strangling and robbing passengers on roads. So, what does that mean, that within religions you can have sects that are cults? Yes, but what does that tell us about cults? First of all, if you describe such a religious gang as a cult, any sane person will agree on the definition. The problem is when detractors use the term to denote any religious group that they wish to slander, pointing out superficial similarities with known evil cults, in hope that they will avoid having to point out what exactly is wrong with the group they wish to malign.

So, let me give my definition of a cult. A cult is something that has the formal qualities of a religious group, behaves like a gang, and has no deep and authentic spiritual guidance.

What does that mean? It means that the only difference between early Christians and early Muslims is that Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to go out and rob the caravans of “infidels”, and that unlike Mohammad he actually had an authentic spiritual connection with God. You can’t judge them on superficial similarities, because the crux of the matter is whether they are good or evil and whether they are from God or not. People today try to present it as if the bad thing about a cult is that it follows a spiritual leader. It’s not. If you followed Jesus or Buddha, how is that a bad thing? It is only a bad thing when the spiritual leader of the group is false. But that’s the difficult part – how will you know whether the leader is authentic? It’s easier to just claim they are all false and then what remains for you is to see whether a group matches a simplified description. That’s what atheists do. I advise against it.

There’s another interesting phenomenon – heretical sects within an evil religion, that are authentic spiritual followings; an example of this are the Sufis in Islam. They had an interpretation of Islam that was more Vedanta than Islam, they were thought of as heretics by the Muslim main stream, but if anything, they were on the path of sainthood. So, the fact that something is a heretical off-shoot of some religion doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. Being main-stream isn’t necessarily a good thing.

There’s another thing – trying to define moderation as good, and radicalism as bad. If you want to say someone is good, call him a moderate, and if you want to say someone is bad, call him a radical. That actually works only if you’re talking about a philosophy that is inherently evil, and so if someone follows it consistently he becomes an evil person, and if someone doesn’t really take it seriously, he can be a good person. This is the case with Islam. The more consistently you follow it, the more evil you get to be. That’s why you can equate “Islamic radicals” with “evil Muslims”. However, it doesn’t work with other religions. For instance, what’s a radical Jain or Buddhist or Christian? What’s a radical Yogi? Does someone become more evil if he practices pranayama with kumbhaka of over a minute? Does he become evil if he walks around in soft slippers and a mask so that he doesn’t kill bugs and microbes because violence is the ultimate evil? Does he become evil if he does japa of 32 rounds a day? Does a Christian become super-evil because he’s so radical he enters a convent where he does nothing but pray, fast and commune with others like him? Such people are not the summit of social productivity, and they frequently exclude themselves from society at large, but even the most anti-religious advocates couldn’t describe them as “evil”. Weirdos, maybe. But not evil.

Evil, that’s what you become if you have your daughter’s clitoris cut off because of your religion, or if you kill other people while shouting how great your God is. Yes, you can become evil by taking religion seriously, but it does matter which religion you take seriously. They are not all the same. If you take some of them seriously you are more likely to become a saint than a thug. However, if you take a thug religion seriously, you become a thug. So, there’s another definition of a cult: it’s a gang of thugs who take an evil religion seriously.

So, basically, if you don’t like some religiously-flavored group that takes its teaching seriously, it’s a cult and the members are referred to as brainwashed zombies or Borg drones. If you like it, it’s referred to as a convent of monks. If you like a rebel group, they are partisans or guerrilla fighters. If you don’t like them, they are bandits or terrorists.

Thoughts about America

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I’ve been following the situation in Syria lately, both the US-Russia “agreement” and the situation on the ground, and here are some of my thoughts.

First of all, America has almost zero control on the ground, among the jihadists. They will take American weapons, but they will use them to shoot the “Christian dogs” immediately afterwards.

Second, there are no moderates in the opposition there. All the moderates are aligned with the government. For quite a while the rallying call among the jihadists was that Assad and similar “dictators” need to be overthrown, because they are not democratic enough, and guess what, “democratic” there means “Islamic radical”.

Third, if you allowed the people there to elect a government, they would put an Islamic caliphate in power, which is what ISIS is. ISIS is the manifestation of the will of the local populace. What’s immensely worrying is that America if arming and financing those idiots, both directly and through their client states in the middle-east, and that’s why they are so difficult to defeat. Essentially, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS are what democracy will produce there, in the same way as it produced the current regime in Iran. It was the result of the popular uprising against American meddling in their affairs, and it’s not going anywhere. So, basically, in the middle-east democracy means radical salafism, an Islamic caliphate. That’s what the Muslims would create if you allowed them to pick their own government, and that’s why the only way to introduce some semblance of Western values, progress and technology there was to impose some kind of a secular dictatorship.

Fourth, the main difference between America and Russia at this point is that Russia wants to stabilize the middle-east and avoid the spread of chaos and war, and America wants the opposite, it wants to completely decivilize the middle-east in a state of perpetual war where all the cold-war era client states have been destroyed, and the local Islamists essentially have no financial or industrial capacity for spreading Islam to the west.

Fifth, in the long-term, what America seems to be doing might actually save the Western civilization, if they are actually doing what I think they are. In the short-term, it causes regional chaos, which seems to export itself into Europe and America through the wave of migrants. Those migrants are too stupid to take part in the Western economy and can only serve as drain on our resources and form dens of terrorists and troublemakers. Essentially, they are worth nothing and cost us dearly.

Sixth, I don’t know which troubles me more, that America seems to insult and provoke Russia so blatantly, or that Russia reacts so calmly. Russian calmness most likely means they are simply buying time and forcing America to start the nuclear war, which they accepted as inevitable. Were it not so, they would probably try to avert it with an aggressive posture. This entire thing looks like a game for the public opinion after the war, where America wants to kill all the Russians while portraying them as aggressors and itself as a defender of peace, while Russians seem to say “we know you’re the aggressors, just go ahead with whatever you have planned, but don’t expect us to take part in your games”. The Russians are very careful not to do anything that could be used as an excuse for the start of a nuclear war. However, they are prepared for it.

Interestingly, although a bear is used to symbolize Russia, I think they are acting more like a rattle snake. They are sounding their warning but they remain in a strictly defensive posture. If you ignore the warning and step on them, they will bite you, but they will not attack first, they will not leave their defended zone. Also, I noticed a very interesting thing – Americans seem to be laying traps for the Russians, things like the artificial Ukraine crisis, where they expected Russia to react by invading Ukraine, but Russia evaded the trap and instead opened a completely different theater of action in Syria. America now tries to create a situation in Syria where Russia will have to react in a way conducive to the nuclear war that they desire, but I expect Russia to evade again and open a completely different theater to project its influence. Essentially, what America seems to be doing is provoke the rattle snake to strike, so that it can cut its head off, but the rattle snake sees through it and acts very strategically. America is more powerful, but the Russians are smarter. The entire situation looks like a conflict between an IQ 90 bully and an IQ 130 geek, where America is the bully. The usual development of such conflicts is that the bully keeps beating up the geek, but the geek strategically uses his advantages in such a way that he suffers through the ordeal patiently, finishes school with high grades, creates a tech startup company and earns millions of dollars, and the bully gets to deliver him pizza. Essentially, the geek knows he can’t win the battles, but he can position things so that he survives them just long enough for the strategic situation to shift to his advantage.

The most worrying thing in the entire situation is that America behaves like a bully who thinks he’s invulnerable because all the power in the world is on his side, and nobody will stop him. He will bully whomever he feels like, and he will control the narrative in order to present the victim as the villain. America acts in a way that is consistent with a serious power trip of someone who never had to endure a crushing defeat, and that’s the worrying part, because if that’s true, it means they don’t even understand or care for the warning signs of the rattle snake, and they will simply proceed to attack.

Their problem is that the Russians and the Chinese see through them, they understand what they are dealing with, they have time on their side and they will strike, when it comes to the point of “use it or lose it”. And considering the IQ difference, they have a very good chance of completely surprising the Americans and winning. The Americans are very powerful, but they are overconfident, reckless, internally conflicted and stupid. This is not a winning combination.

Evil, it’s what other people do

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Whenever some bad shit happens, it’s always other people’s fault. You’re fine. Nothing wrong with you in any way.

When your government kills people, supports terrorists, dumps toxic waste into the environment, cuts down forests or introduces shitty laws, it’s not your fault. It’s the government. It’s the other people.

It’s the politicians, the rich, the elitists. They are evil, corrupt, deformed, they serve Satan. But you, the common people, you are good, right, proper, decent and you serve God.

You just want to have safety, food, water, gas, job and other infrastructure. You’re going to protest if you don’t get it, and you’re going to remain silent if you’re pleased.

You just want to be happy and want your children to be happy. The duty of the politicians and the industrialists is to figure out how to make the details work. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to dirty your hands with the messy details. You will just vote at the ballot box and you will vote with your wallet at the store. You just want results.

You are great. If only the rest of the world was as good and decent as you. If only you could get rid of the politicians and the capitalists, who are evil, then all would be great.

Do you even get it, or is my sarcasm so close to your actual opinion that you don’t even recognize it as such?