The Flying Scotsman

Photographs

Steam locomotion at its best.

The Flying Scotsman was a British three cylinder steam locomotive which served on the London to Edinburgh run from 1923 through 1963. It was the first passenger locomotive to reach 100mph (that in 1934!) and was designed by the Englishman Sir Nigel Gresley who would go on to craft the Mallard, the fastest ever steam train, and the most beautiful.

The British, despite having ruled half the world’s economy just one hundred years earlier, were slow to convert to diesel power which was clean, far lower maintenance and cheaper to run, so whereas America had largely done so by the late 1950s, the British continued on their merry way building more steam locomotives well into the 1960s, all scrapped after very short service lives.

I am a member of that dwindling cadre of passengers who can claim to have enjoyed 100 mph on the Scotsman, having taken it from London to Dundee in 1960 at the tender age of nine, to visit my eldest sister, then a student at nearby University of St. Andrews. She gave my youngest sister and me a Scottish Terrier, the source of much joy for the next decade and a half. Tough, resolute, no toady, he exemplified all that is best in the Scot.

The BBC had a program with current video of a restored Scotsman running – at sadly low speed – on a midlands cruise. This is (mercifully) a commentary ‘lite’ documentary, allowing the viewer to enjoy the sight and sounds of this special locomotive. Some of the images are nothing less than spectacular, though it has to be added that someone should give the Beeb an iPhone so that they can learn about HDR.



In the cab. The American instruments are marked ‘Westinghouse, England’.


Simply gorgeous.


Letting off steam – too much and your boiler will burst!


The locomotive is incredibly popular, crowds lining the route.


Ah! England, where the sun always shines.

Now when I wrote ‘enjoyed’ that needs qualification. In reality, steam train travel was awful. Noisy with dated and grimy interiors, and when I foolishly opened the window in a tunnel the full reality of steam, oil vapor and coal dust was visited upon my person. I arrived in Edinburgh smelling like a Welsh miner, and suitably bruised from the pounding my youngest sister had deservedly given me. Steam trains are great as long as you are a spectator from a distance, and this BBC documentary does the Flying Scotsman justice.

The fine British painter Terence Cuneo has done the Scot justice in oils, and reproductions of his canvas make for fine gifts for those of your friends with good taste.



Terence Cuneo’s tribute in oils to the Scotsman..

Should Apple make a stand alone camera?

iPhone

Capitalizing on its software and hardware advances.

In an end-of-2019 piece I wrote:

“I have had two transformative iPhone experiences – in 2007 when I bought iPhone 1 on the day it became available, and this year when I bought the iPhone 11 Pro which will change the photography hardware landscape permanently. All of the big makers will be gone in a few years. The iPhone’s camera is an order of magnitude better, doing things the clumsy SLR offerings can only dream of. The remaining reasons to buy clunky gear are that you need high definition from really long lenses – a couple of guys at Nat Geo – and because showing up at the Vogue studios with an iPhone to snap today’s supermodel just does not earn machismo points.”

So should Apple make a stand alone camera?

Apple has made a stand alone camera before. That was in 1997 and sensors were not up to much and, face it, the product looked like a door stop.

But now, with computational software making bad images great, with image quality rivaling that from big, clunky gear, and Sony’s superb lenses and sensors in the iPhone 11 Pro, is it not time for Apple to capitalize on its imaging prowess and make a true camera?

I no longer think this make sense. No one who has used the latest iPhone as a camera wants to revert to interchangeable lenses and all the bulk and weight of the traditional digital body. When you have computational photography working for you, a feature missing from every stand alone camera out there, who needs the clutter of lenses and gadget bags? Heck, even tripods are passé. On the other hand, most serious snappers using the iPhone will confirm that its ergonomics are pretty awful. There is a total absence of physical buttons and dials with all those satisfying, confirming clicks, and gripping the thing steadily – and keeping digits out of the way of the ultra wide lens’s field of view – is not easy. However, I do not think that Apple is about to return to physical controls in its pocket devices any more than it is likely to add a mechanical keyboard to the iPhone.

No, there’s lots of room for ergonomic improvement within the constraints of the iPhone’s small size and now, with chief designer Jony Ive no longer with the company, I expect that ergonomics will improve fast. Ive confused svelte with easy to use and his obsession with light weight and looks resulted in devices increasingly hard to hold and with mediocre battery life. A minuscule increase in thickness in the iPhone 11 fixed the battery life issue for good – good for a day of really hard use with ease – and I expect that the iPhone 12 will revert to the square sides design of the magnificent iPhone 4.


The iPhone 4 of 2011.

Aperture wheel? Not needed, as each image is stored with a depth map, allowing depth of field to be adjusted in post processing. Shutter speed wheel? Nah. With OIS shutter speeds don’t matter a whole lot and in action images burst sequences allow the best image to be easily chosen. Point of best exposure? Just touch the screen. So after much use of cameras in the iPhone I am coming around to concluding that the desire for physical controls is so much refusal to adapt and change. All that’s needed is a carcass design which allows this slippery-as-an-eel device to be held with solid purchase for the fingers. You know, like that iPhone of a decade ago.

Plus who wants a stand alone device robbed of all the functionality of the regular iPhone?

P.S. Apple – a longer fourth lens would be nice!

O’er she goes!

Motorcycles

Time for a new rear tire.


Taking a rest.

Do not try this with a modern motorcycle, My nephew, who has the misfortune to ride a modern, high tech rice burner, writes: “If I were to do that with my bike, I would have $3,000 of plastic to replace.”

My hard working 1975 BMW R90/6 actually does give a nod to the world of tech. It has exactly one purely electronic part, in addition to the usual collection of electro-mechanical relays. It’s a $1 diode which, naturally, failed last year. Its purpose is to permit use of the electric starter with the bike in gear, when the clutch lever is pulled in, should you stall at a red light. Not something I would ever do, you understand.

With this shaft driven masterpiece, rear wheel removal – a new tire is dictated – is a matter of removing one axle nut, loosening one axle pinch bolt, removing the gas tank and draining the carbs. That all takes five minutes. Then, ably assisted by my son, who is home for the holidays, she’s tipped onto the right cylinder and passenger foot peg, the axle is pulled and the wheel lifts right out. I’m too old to replace my tires at home, so it’s off to the local grease money and $25 and a few minutes later all is done, with no garage language required.


New British Avon AM26 tire in place. It pleases me no end to use a fine British tire on a German motorcycle.

Rick Stein’s Secret France

Cooking, Photographs

Food and photography.

For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.



Click the image to go to Amazon US.

Rick Stein started life as a British DJ then migrated to working in a kitchen. One thing led to another and now he has popular restaurants in Cornwall and Australia. His emphasis is on fish and seafood and relatively simple preparation. He travels the world discovering new cuisines which are profiled in popular BBC series. Get a UK server address and you can enjoy these here because, goodness knows, the BBC’s non-existent marketing acumen prevents US residents from watching these shows on their iPlayer app.

While Rick has put in strenuous duty in hell holes in Asia, Latin America and other disease pits where you spend more time sitting on the porcelain than eating from it, his latest book and TV series, named ‘Rick Stein’s Secret France’ shows that the best cuisine in the world is not very far from his native Cornwall. It is, of course, in France. In this series he tries to answer whether French cooking has gone downhill in a world obsessed with fast food ‘culture’ and Facebook.

He concludes, rightly, that the only cuisine a civilized person should consume is French and that the French remain the best cooks. Unlike the Italians who have yet to discover it, the French cook in butter, not oil, the way nature intended. And the variety of French fish, seafood, meats, cheeses, pastries and wines is all any aspiring gourmand needs in a lifetime of quality eating.

The BBC has published a book of recipes from his French sojourn which, like his earlier one, is profusely and beautifully illustrated not only with images of the dishes he prepares but also of the places he visits. Unlike the Mexican tome, replete with recipes for corn and crap (is there worse food on earth than Mexican, accompanied by equally bad music?), the French one is delicious in every regard.


Regular foodie hangout in Burgundy.


Seafood delights in Clermont-Ferrand.

There is a great deal to like here. Indeed, even if your preferred dining location is the local McDonald’s cancer factory, you will enjoy the photography in this fine book.

Vive La France!


A typical recipe which I made yesterday. Delicious.

The BenQ PD3200Q 32 inch monitor

Displays, Photography

Bringing in the New Year.



The 32″ BenQ monitor running Lightroom. Strong daylight over my shoulder does not distract.

My Apple 30″ Cinema Display was bought ‘pre-owned’ 5 years ago and saw daily use.

Elegantly housed and with a minimum of controls, it was easily calibrated, did not drift over time and was a joy to use. The 16:10 aspect ratio was squarer than the more common 16:9 and worked well with my applications and needs.

It failed at Christmas and was over a decade old. Originally selling for $3,300 I had paid just $400 for mine and that’s what its replacement, the BenQ PD3200Q cost new from Amazon. It went into service yesterday and comes with a 3 year parts, backlight and labor warranty. There are cheaper displays in the 32″ size range but BenQ has a tradition of catering to photographers and the display comes pre-calibrated, with the calibration chart included, no less:



Included calibration chart for my 32″ BenQ monitor.

Sadly, the aspect ratio is 16:9, and 16:10 no longer seems to exist. The stand adds a counterbalanced height adjuster to the tilt function, the latter shared with the old Apple Cinema Display.

Out of the box I found the Brightness setting of 72 too bright and turned it down using the easy to use touch buttons to 56. These buttons are located on the bottom right of the bezel and are only lit when being adjusted. To their right is an illuminated off-white on-off indicator which turns orange when the display is in sleep mode. The display’s power supply is integrated; there is no separate power supply transformer.

I measured illumination uniformity across the screen – extreme edge, center edge, center. There was no noticeable difference.

While this is a 2560 x 1440 display, I much prefer the larger font setting, thus:



Scale setting for the monitor.

This is yet another reason not to spend money on a 4K primary display, where the font size is ridiculously small.

There is a plethora of outlets and pass-throughs sprinkled along the side, rear and underside of the panel. The near useless ‘instruction sheet’ – one of those ‘no words’ things beloved of the Germans and now the Japanese – shows 2 USB3 power-in sockets, 4 USB3 power-outs, line-in and line-out (for external speakers), a Hockey Puck connector and four video outputs – DP, HDMI, DVI and mini DP. The DP cord provided is terminated with a mini DP connector, but I prefer the more robust DP to DP locking connectors and spent an additional $7 at Amazon for one. HDMI and DVI cables are also provided, so there is no lack of video connectivity. There’s an instruction manual on a provided CD (CD? Really?) but I did not bother looking at it.

The Hockey Puck is an exercise in redundancy:



The Hockey Puck.

The purpose is to activate and use the on screen display menus to adjust the monitor. As this is done once in a blue moon, and is easily accomplished using the touch panel referenced earlier, this is just so much useless clutter on your desktop, serving no useful purpose.

How is the color balance and fidelity? Perfect out of the box. This excellent performance out of the box is reason alone to pay a little more for this display. There is no light leakage and the construction quality, fit and finish are excellent. The display surface is semi-matte and does not suffer from specular reflections.

Interestingly, the side panel also has an SDHC socket for your camera’s storage card. As my only camera is now the iPhone 11 Pro, which I connect to the Mac Pro using a Lightning cable, this adds no useful function for me but will be appreciated by many still using old technology.

So what’s not to like? Like every pitch black device in the home – hi-fi gear, TVs, toasters and so on – it’s butt ugly. The stand is an exercise in industrial competence and has all the charm and warmth of one of Brunel’s inventions from the Industrial Age. The screen will rotate through 90 degrees and as it’s already huge at 32″ diagonally, that’s just plain dumb, and will place lots of strain on your connecting cables. There are built in speakers but even modest external ones (I use old Logitechs) will be better.

I drive the display using an Nvidia GTX980 video card in my 2010 Mac Pro. I checked it with the ancient Nvidia GT120 using a mini DP connector and it works fine, though the video rendering can be slow with this prehistoric piece of hardware.

Gaming use? Search me and look elsewhere. This site is for grown-ups, not children.

For photographers needing a traditional display which comes properly calibrated, and who do not want the small fonts that 4K delivers, the 32″ BenQ PD3200Q is recommended.



Did I mention it’s ugly? The QR attachment for the stand conceals standard VESA wall mounting threads.