Saga Ruby

The Port and Starboard engines revolution counters of the MS Saga Ruby (formerly named Vistafjord and Caronia - the later as a transatlantic liner under the Cunard flag), positioned on her Port bridge wing and photographed during her latest call in Funchal, on the past Tuesday.

Picture taken with Panasonic DMC-FT3 and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Vila Baleira at dusk

The Vila Baleira, the main city and capital town of Porto Santo island, as seen from the Nossa Senhora da Graça chapel. This temple is considered one of the most important in the whole island, with its origins backing to 1533. From its front yard, high in the hill, we have a privileged view over the whole Porto Santo SW coast and beach.
Picture taken with Nikon Coolpix P7100 and Sirui T-005 tripod and ball head. Post-processing of a converted NRW to TIFF file in Nikon View NX and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ver. 4.1.

Departure of the Costa (Neo)Romantica

The departure from Funchal of the Costa (Neo)Romantica, a couple of days ago, photographed from the PS bridge wing of the P&O cruise vessel Ventura.

Picture taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT3 and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ver. 4.1.

Easter in Porto Santo

The Porto Santo city hall decorated for the Easter, one week ago.

Picture taken with Nikon Coolpix P7100 and post-processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ver. 4.1.

Cheap wide angle and close-up lens for the Nikon P7100

I'm getting more and more fond of the Nikon P7100 over time. It's a compact, granted. But it's a serious compact, with complete manual override of its automatic functions. And regardless of what many bloggers might say, I really enjoy the (although small!) optical viewfinder. Adding to so many functions and versatility, you have also the possibility to shoot RAW (NRW) files. Forgetting the small sized sensor and the obvious problems associated with that, this camera is pretty much portable and quite capable of professional results. It's as close as you can get to the Leica M and the "decisive moment" philosophy by a mere 300 bucks.

But it still is a compact. And despite a professional-grade body build, we are limited for all the eternity with a fixed 6-42.6mm f/2.8-5.6 (optically competent, 28-200mm-35mm equivalent, lens). Aware of this limitation, it wouldn't take long for the market to come up with a few solutions to extend its optical versatility.

A kit that is, probably quite popular, is the wide-angle/macro adapter. There are several of these on the market. Nikon, particularly, has its own (the Nikon WC-E75A lens used in conjunction with the UR-E22 adapter ring). But with a price tag of about 200 Euros I started immediately looking for cheaper alternatives. And if you search E-Bay, like I did, you'll probably will find several ones, beginning at 20 or 30 Euros. These kits are basically composed of three pieces: an adapter ring (or extension tube) and two lenses. Well, in a way it's actually a single wide lens that has the ability of being separated in two. To use the kit on its basic wide-angle function, you attach both lenses to the extension tube and all the kit to the camera body (after removing from the body the camera's attachment ring surrounding the lens).

If you want to use this useful accessory as a close-up device, you just separate the lens in two components and attach just its "Macro" lens to the extension tube. And voilá... you have two useful lenses in one.

The typical wide-angle and macro lens adapter kit that you can buy on the E-Bay, made by several independent makers, is normally composed of these items: an extension tube (used to connect the lenses to the camera body) and the optical kit, generally composed of two screw-down lenses. To use the kit as a wide-angle adapter both lenses have to be connected together. But if you unscrew the wide-angle front element, you can use the Macro one as a close-up accessory. Two lenses in one. Not bad for 30 Euros.

 

Just pay attention to one detail: not all the independent extension tubes on the market are a perfect copy of the original Nikon UR-E22. Meaning that the original Nikon accessory has two "dents" that interact with the camera body and blocks the zoom lens to extend more than its 28mm position (the shorter length), thus preventing serious damage to the lens if you zoom it with the accessory lens mounted on the body.

All these wide-angle kits that you can buy are to be used with the zoom in its minimum position. Naturally. However, if you are buying an independent one (as I did), just make sure that, after being installed on the camera body, the extension tube interacts with the camera's electronics and doesn't allow the zoom range to extend. It's easy to test that. Just install the extension tube on the camera (without the front lens) and try to zoom afterwards. If the lens doesn't respond, it means that you bought a "safer" kit. And therefore you are protected from a serious damage if, by mistake, you operate the zoom lever when using the kit lens.

You can, also, always go to the camera's menu and switch on the "wide-angle converter connected" mode. That way, you will be protected no matter what. Just don't forget to switch it off after removing the kit lens, or you'll go mad trying to understand "why doesn't the bloody camera zoom? It was working perfectly until a few hours ago!".

Without the wide-angle lens...

...and with it. Although the angular difference is not that great, it can, however, in particular circumstances, make a difference. And for thirty bucks... who's complaining?

My trusty Nikon Coolpix P7100 with the wide-angle/macro kit lens adapter bought on E-Bay by a mere 30 Euros.

A cheap Swiss Made Invicta watch

A Swiss Made Invicta watch for only 100 pounds? As soon as I layed my eyes on it, I had to have it. And so far... I'm really enjoying it.

The model in question is the Invicta Pro Diver GMT, with the brand model nº 5125. It's a GMT watch, with a Swiss Ronda quartz movement. That's probably the reason why Invicta places on the dial the elitist "Swiss Made" words. Could it be assembled somewhere else, or is it a true Swiss made watch? That's probably a question only Invicta can answer.

According to the Invicta web site, these are the characteristics of this lovely watch:

Invicta Pro Diver GMT
Movement:
Components: Swiss Quartz
Maker: Ronda
Caliper: 515.24H
Case:
44mm
Screw down crown
Flame fusion crystal

The smooth unidirectional bezel, rotating counter clockwise, is numbered from 2 to 24, allowing to a thirth time zone to be read.

 

The screw down crown with the already famous diving helmet engraved, and the words "Master Of The Oceans" engraved on the case.

The fabulous clasp, identical to the one on the Invicta Grand Diver. A model with whom this watch has several similitudes. It is, nevertheless a smaller and therefore more usable (portable?) watch.

The clasp lock with the Invicta logo engraved. It closes by pressure, with an additional security lock. It works.

The case back, with some nice engraving detailing several characteristics of the watch.

"Swiss Made", the magic words that normally mean a heavy price tag. This was not the case here, since this watch is on sale on the Amazon.co.uk by a mere 92 Pounds. A nice review, made by Jon Trey, from this watch is placed here, on the BDWF.net. Since the reviews of this particular model are so scarce, I leave the link to this one here. One of the very few.

Orientation with a GMT watch

The art (or science) of orientation using a conventional analog watch is quite explained through the web, with a plethora of written pages about it. However, the process is not that obvious. If you check this page, of the GlobalSecurity.org website you'll see what I mean. Well, it's not rocket science. But it's also not a direct calculation. You'll have to point the 12 o'clock mark to the sun and then bisect a line between so and so... Nah... I'm getting tired just by reading it. So you can imagine how surprised I was when I've read this page from the Omega watches site. Granted, they were talking specifically about a GMT (or dual time) watch. But they were promising the perfect, direct and infallible system to find the North point (on the North hemisphere), using for it just a simple dual time analog watch. But... is it a reliable method? For the test, I used my Citizen GMT Ecodrive.

See the photo bellow:

Both the Citizen GMT Ecodrive and the Silva 15T Ranger compass were positioned flat on the ground. As you can see, the red magnetic needle in the compass is pointing to the (magnetic) North. The trick to use the watch to make the same job is to point its hour hand to the sun (as you can see by the shadow direction). And so I did. If the process is scientifically correct, its GMT (or 24 hour) hand will point to the North. Can you see how accurate it is, compared with the magnetic compass? So can I. I rest my case. Enjoy the outdoors.