Nikon Zf
Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.2 S
50mm, 1/640 Sec at f/1.2, ISO100
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic V15.4.1
Photo of the Month – July
VPN’s can you trust them
https://franklinetech.com/vpn-industry-2026
With authorities clamping down on what you can do on line, authoritarianism rising across the world, black hat hackers, scammers etc, the big tech companies spying on us; being on the internet can be a dangerous thing.
You may say; “I have nothing to hide, I am not doing anything illegal.”
But laws can change what today may be legal may not in five or ten years and what gets logged about you on the internet stays on the internet.
Using a private DNS, a privacy focused browser and reputable VPN can make you safer on line. A quick search will bring up options for DNS and browsers, but VPN’s are tricky. many are owned by the same parent company and there motives are suspect. Many of the review sites are also owned by the parent companies so the results are often their own vpn brands.
Weekly Visit to Lincoln
As the summer continues, I still try and get into Lincoln as least once a week. This is a view I have taken shots of many times. In the high contrast of the summer sun its not an easy shot but will join my collection as I document the area over the years.
MacMillan Coffee Morning
One of the local village pubs held a charity coffee morning to raise money for MacMillan Cancer Support.
We provided a rather nice chocolate carrot cake for them and instead of coffee I had coffee cake with a nice pint of Landlord Ale.
Rumours of an updated Nikon Z30?
With the rush to full frame, the cropped DX format is not getting a lot of love.
The above shot was taken in the studio with a Nikon D200 DX format sensor. The format especially for people wanting smaller and lighter is tempting.
I see now on the rumour sites people are saying a new viewfinder less Z is coming so will this be a replacement for the Z30. I am not into cameras without viewfinders but with upgrades to focus and video this could make a great B roll camera for people shooting video, or a camera to setup at a remote location. Or even a spare body that tucks into a small space in the camera bag.
Solar Eclipse 2026 – Partial in the UK
Last night we were in the garden with our little home made pin hole projector.
The last solar elipse in the UK was back in 1999. I got up at 3am in the morning and rode the few hundred miles down to the line of totality. Then pointed the motorcycle at the bluest and clearest bit of sky and road to the south coast.
Parked up in a pub carpark sitting in full biker leathers with a glass of cold lemonade I enjoyed my first and only total solar eclipse.
Last night it was about 90% in the uk, so with a piece of card, that we had punched a small hole into, and a piece of white paper, we projected the sun onto the paper to view it safely.
It did go darker and it was a great experience.
The next one is about 50 years away so its looking doubtful that I will make that one.
Cinema Lens
There has been a Long tradition with movie makers to find classic old lens with a certain look and have them re-cased as cinema lens.
Nikon announced a while ago they would be releasing a range of cinema lens and recently Cooke announced that their SP3 and AP3 cinema lens would now be available for the Nikon Z mount.
As is generally the case, these will be outside most people’s budgets.
The World Wide Web
I have a had a long career in IT. From mainframes to the start of the PC revolution and the start of networking computers. I have memories from the 1990’s of pulling up the floor to find where the good old coax cable had become broken and brought the whole network down.
I was browsing Mastodon and came across a reminder that last week that we are in the 35th anniversary of the World Wide Web.
Back then the first web browser just ran on powerful Next Machines at Cern, but they developed a universal command line browser similar to w3c that I use sometimes on one of my Linux ThinkPad.
Now with restrictive laws and age verification we are killing the open web; forcing people to use Facebook and other gatekeeping closed systems that steal from us and feed us a lie.
Thank you Tim Berners-Lee and the team, lets hope the open web survives.
Film Friday
An old one, from a walk though Lincoln. I was carrying a Canon A1 old manual film camera loaded up with Ilford HP5Plus film.
Street Photography – sneaking a shot or asking?
I see a few styles of street photography. The shot above, a general scene, people in the shot. Its a shot that people do not mind too much being in shot.
For the more street portrait style, I go up and ask people. It’s only polite. But I know some people just shove a camera in peoples faces.
Of course the opposite to street photography, when I hire a model and take her for a photo walk on a city street.
What’s your way of working?
Lunchtime High Street Walk
Each time I walk down the high street, we seem to have less shops and also less banks. Walk down a local street near you and document the changes over the years.