Tuesday, 20th September, 2022

In an effort to print more, or at least have more physical photos, I’ve ordered some storage boxes and more photo paper. My plan is to print the good ones each time I get some photos. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them other than put into the box but I think having them physically will encourage me to (a) look at the more (b) start thinking more about printing (c) make some physical photo albums or books for people as gifts.

Just ordered £100 of darkroom stuff. New chemicals but also some bits and bobs I think I need…they had some used Leica film bodies that I looked at for a while 😅

My sister has been staying for a while, so I’ve not really done anything I’d normally do. We played Wingspan board game tonight which was fun. The last time we played we played it wrong and it took forever, this time was much better. I called buying it for our dad for Christmas.

The first parts of my new smart heating arrived today, but other than open the box I’ve done nothing with it yet. Funnily the last piece I ordered arrived first.

I want to cancel Spotify and move to Apple Music. Just need to convince my wife it’s worthwhile. It does save £2/month, which I know is nothing but it goes towards one of the other subscriptions. I want to move to Apple Music as I suspect we’ll move to Apple One over time and this will make it easier to do so. I’d like to get the 2 TB iCloud but it’s only worthwhile if one or both of us have an Apple Watch and do the fitness+ stuff. My wife might do that, she does yoga from an app, but not sure she really wants an Apple Watch though. I sort of do, for voice control and messaging but I don’t really want more notifications and I like wearing my Casio watch. If I get an Apple Watch then I’d want to wear it all the time and my poor Casio would get relegated to the drawer.

Sometimes I wish I had just upgraded from the X100F to the V and never went into the world of interchangeable lens bodies. I’d been happy with the F for 2-3 years. I told myself I’d like the flexibility of different lenses, but really all that happens is that I want to buy more for various reasons. I’ve sold a couple recently to try and focus but it creeps back into my head. Like maybe I need the original 35mm f/1.4 as it “has character”, and as a small lens would fit well with the X-E4. I do have the 60mm macro for film scanning, and a zoom for kids football but do I also need a 50 f2, 23 f1.4, 18 f2 and 27 f2.8 as well?

I was watching some videos I took using the X-T2, and that reminded me I ought to get the 18-55 as that’s “great for videos with the OIS and minimal focus breathing or whatever”. After eyeing M mount lenses, these are all cheap, but it’s just more stuff and choices. Sometimes that’s nice to have the right tool or to change things up, but I did like the only decision being “should I take the camera? Yes/No”. I could easily sell it all and change, seems a little irresponsible given I’ve only just got the X-E4. Probably as supply is so limited I’d not lose very much selling it. I do like the compact size of the X-E4 and it does take lovely photos. It’s just boring…The X100 was fun, even though I only ever used the EVF. I used to find the D7000 fun to use, and now I couldn’t imagine taking that out with me. I’m just not sure what I want.

I also don’t like that I’m starting to think about a 50mm for the M2. Would mean I have the M2 set: 35, 50, 90mm and that doesn’t seem that bad. However, it’s then just another thing to think about. Probably the 50 would be more useful than the 90 though.

I have read a lot of comments today about one camera, one lens setup. I’m also feeling like we have too much stuff, and I need to get rid of things. Even digitally. I cleared out some movies and TV shows saved on the computer. I’d like to minimise the server, to save power and just to have less. The garage has so much stuff in it too. There’s a balance of getting rid of things and then keeping stuff for potential future use. I’m not throwing away a saw because I don’t need to saw stuff today.

Like when am I really going to use the TLR? But film cameras are harder/more expensive to come by so I should just keep it…

Remember back…June 19th,…I bought a year’s subscription to a piano learning app. I finally started using it this weekend. Was fun, started doing some boogie-woogie. I should do it more. 🎹🎶