This was taken about 6 years ago. He was still a puppy with a lot of unfocused energy. He gets plenty of exercise now mostly in the form of walks, and has calmed down a lot.
Did this dude say this somewhere I can go and call him an idiot directly? Because, if this wasn’t one of the corporate social media companies, I would very much like to.
As a veteran of the US Air Force, I can say that veteran is not exclusively a military term. You can be a veteran of any field, hobby, or activity if you’ve been there a while and are experienced.
We always get these people who might have served for a single enlistment (4-6 years), then make the rest of their life about their military service. It’s really cringey and they don’t deserve half the respect they think they’re entitled to. Your life shouldn’t be defined by a few years in a particular role.
(Hint: no one is entitled to respect. Respect is earned.)
For the record, I spent 20 years working an IT job in the military, mostly out of harm’s way. I feel weird when people try to thank me for my service. I didn’t really do anything worth thanking. Save it for people who laid down their lives in your defense. Most of us don’t actually experience that level of responsibility and hardship in our service; a lot of service members tend to have a pretty quiet career.
Hey, so I’m curious. Have you ever been to sports games or other events where they ask veterans to stand up to be recognized? Do you participate? And if you do, has anyone sitting close by asked you what you did in the military? What was their reaction when you say you were a non-comabatant? Just curious really, I mean no disrespect.
I don’t usually participate in these kind of events. Those closest to me know my service experiences and that’s usually good enough for me. I don’t feel right being publicly acknowledged and/or thanked by strangers. There are far more deserving people.
But my prior service does occasionally come up in social circles. I actually had a doctor ask me this morning what kind of work I did, and he was somewhat familiar with it, as his son in-law served in the Navy in a technical field like mine.
Most of the time, when I tell people I was in the Air Force, the first question people ask is, “What planes did you fly?” It blows their minds when I tell them I don’t know anything about planes; that my job was to fix computers. Not even computers on airplanes, just regular ol’ desktop computers, servers, laptops, etc. Anything that touches a computer network.
Only 5% of the Air Force are pilots. The other 95% of Airmen work in jobs either directly or indirectly supporting those pilots. We have a lot of generic job fields you might find in the civilian sector: mechanics, police, doctors, lawyers, cooks, firemen, chaplains, etc. All have a critical role to fill that ensure our ultimate flying missions are accomplished.
So yeah, there are a lot of people in the military who work a job that doesn’t put them anywhere near the front lines of war. In some careers, your job is the exact same as the civilian sector, except that you have to wear a military uniform while doing it.
The main lens I use now (Canon 5D Mk3) is a Sigma 50-500. It's more fiddly than the Canon stuff, and if I wanted to pay twice as much I could get a Canon lens that did a better job at one end or the other of it's range, but when you have decent light both of the 50 and somewhere close to the 500 can take some pretty nice pictures. If you need one specific shot, my Dad's Canon 200-400 is definitely more reliable, but I really like being able to go on a hike with one lens and get a variety of types of shots, and I take hundreds to thousands on a good hike so I'm not bothered by missing a single shot.
I also have a 24mm f/1.8 macro from them that's even more niche (despite the wide angle, it's not awesome for landscapes), but if you can get something close range, I really like the bokeh of the background and the subject is extremely sharp.
the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8, (that one with the concave front element), is my one desert-island lens, for sure. Me developing my own style went hand-in-hand with getting to know it better for a few years.
I used to love using “weird” and specialist lenses, but it’s so versatile, it killed my trying all kinds of cheap/vintage glass- since getting the Zeiss, everything else just stays in the bag.
I think I’ll have to go with my Pentacon auto 50mm f/1.8 multi coating.
Not the craziest aperture, but still wide enough for most situations. Surprisingly sharp for what it is, and a joy to use for reverse mounted macrophotography, too. Definitely produced some of my best shots with that lens.
I can’t say I have a single favourite, as it depends on situation, but I’m really loving my Nikkor ai s 300mm on my GX9. Aside from being the nicest manual focus I’ve had the chance to try, it takes beautiful shots. I’ve a couple of the obligatory Helios 44s that I’m servicing, but more interesting to me is the Helios 28mm. I have two of them, one made by Cosina I think, but the other is a rebranded 28mm Tomioka. I’ve seen the Tomioka-labelled one go for about 5x what I paid! With a speed booster on the GX9, that takes some really characterful photos.
Can you tell me a bit more about the adapter for the projector lens? That looks really proper, and I’ve been thinking about doing something similar with an anamorphic projector lens. I’d like to see some of the photos it takes too - are there any on your profile?
Unfortunately I don’t know much about the helicoid (the focusing part), it was already installed when I bought it from the seller on eBay. Though the helicoid has a very worn “Made in USSR” on the side.
But the last part that adapts the helicoid to Micro 4/3 is a pretty cheap and easy thing to get on Amazon or eBay as long as you know the mount you’re adapting from. In this case it was also installed by the seller in my case. Though I have bought those adapters (m39 and m42 to Micro 4/3) for other lenses I have.
I’ve shared a collection of stuff that I can share right now in another comment here highlighting some of the pics it can take, and a cool example of how it can focus on objects behind what’s in front of the lens.
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