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Using Classic Lenses, Yashica DX 35mm f2.8

Yashica 35mm m42 Using classic lenses Nigel Borrigton

Yashica 35mm m42
Using classic lenses
Nigel Borrigton

Yashica DX 35mm f2.8, M42 Lens

Over the years I have collected a few classic camera lenses, the Yashica f35mm f2.8 m42 lens has to be one of my most valued and liked.

Back in the 1960’s this lens would have cost a good amount of cash as it was at the top of Yashica’s Slr lens range, the main reason for this being that it had the then New DX coating and a 35mm focus length was becoming very valued for 35mm film camera.

Yashica 35mm m42  02

I use this lens a lot, not all the time but its always at hand if I need it, I think you can see from the images below why.

If I use it on a dx sensor camera it provides for a 50mm focus length, a length that I like a lot for framing landscapes. As for the famed DX coating, well I think that you can see form the images below that it still works very well. The colors and the contrast in these images ( taken last week ), are just great. The images taken facing right at the sun show just how little flair this lens produces.

Gallery

County Kilkenny Landscape Photography 2015 1

County Kilkenny Landscape Photography 2015 2

County Kilkenny Landscape Photography 2015 3

The First winters snow of 2015

The first of the Winters snow 2015 Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington

The first of the Winters snow 2015
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington

We had our first snow of the winter overnight and I could not resist getting out to get some images of the forest paths with a covering .

Sadly on the way home it started raining and most of the snow has disappeared but it was great to get out into this weather and see the first snow of 2015 !!!!!

First snow of 2015 3

First snow of 2015 4

First snow of 2015 1

Drift wood, shadows on the beach

Shadows on the beach Nigel Borrington

Shadow’s on the beach
Nigel Borrington

I took this image back in November on a beach walk, I found the shadows from this drift wood very attractive but then wondered what came first the foot prints or the wood ?

From A Tree’s Point of View, a Monday poem.

The Tree
Winters tree
Nigel Borrington

People pass me by without a second glance,
No one likes the ugly tree with no leaves.

My branches extend out in every which way,
Getting tangled within each other.

I look still on the outside,
Yet inside, water and nutrients course through my tissues.

I stand in wait, until the season comes,
When my arms are no longer bare and the fresh, green leaves can hide away my hideous outsides.

mdancer1399
Polk City, IA

Frozen in Time – a Kilkenny standing stone.

Landscape Photography from county kilkenny Nigel Borrington

Landscape Photography from county kilkenny
Nigel Borrington

Frozen in Time – a Kilkenny standing stone

I came across this standing stone while out walking through some fields at the top of one of county kilkenny’s many hills, the Moon was sitting right above it and I felt it was a very appropriate moment.

Ireland has so many of these stones and few are protected, many thousands must have been removed over time and the ones left only survive because the land owners care enough to keep them. It is thought that most date back some four to six thousand years so can you imagine just how many times the moon has passed over this standing stone marking the passage of each day.

Standing looking at this view however time felt frozen !!!!

Planning and starting 2015. a Picture board.

Picture Board for 2015

Picture Board for 2015

Well I have been a little quite on my blog during the holidays and into the new year, I hope you all had a great holiday period 🙂

To start 2015 here, I just wanted to say a huge thank-you to anyone who has been visiting this blog since I started it about two years ago. Thank you for your many likes and great comments I have enjoyed sharing my images and the places I visited and also enjoyed reading and visiting so many other blogs from around the world 🙂 🙂

Starting a new year is always a challenge, we are all meant to reinvent the wheel and take on life in a new way – aren’t we !!

Maybe however the best plan is to just look at what you have been doing with your life and just build on these areas, I sat down on Monday morning and put a little picture board together of the things I want to build on during the year ahead, these areas are included in the images there.

I am going to start to look at how I can include some new areas in posts here, it could be that I start some new blogs in word-press and then just place links here if the posts are not relating to photography etc ….. ?

Almost all my posts to date have been mainly about the places here in Ireland that I have visited along with some poetry and art that I wanted to share, this year I am going to share the things I am learning or doing a little bit more !

Violin and Music Plans

For the last few years I have been learning and planing the Violin and I want to share a little more about these experiences and the type of music I love playing the most.

2015-4

I am not an advanced or a professional player but love to play and learn, I feel that music like many things is not about being the finished item but about journeying your way through a learning process and having some great fun along the way !!!

2015-1

Computer development skills and plans

For a large part of my life I worked in the I.T. industry, starting back in the 1980’s on IBM main frame systems, mainly programming in Cobol/rpg and C++ during my time. I want to start to share a little about some plans I have to get back and then keep in touch with these skills.

Raspberry Pi

This will most likely be a new Blog !!!

I also would like to start to share how I see the current computer industry, when I started training in ( I.T. ) it was not easy to get the skills you needed however it was much easier however to see how you could apply yourself to these skills. Today with the internet and you-tube etc … its must easier to put skills together but less easy to see how these skills can be used, mainly due to the all controlling Microsoft !!!

Over the last three years or so however, there is a growing change in the area of small scale computing and its nothing to do with tablets or phones , it’s in small computers such as the credit card computers or Development boards, systems like the Raspberry Pi here above – have sold well over a million units in a very short time and have been followed by many other single board PC’s like the cubie-truck.

These systems have reset the computer industry back to a time when learning about computer technology was not about Microsoft windows and it many ( problems, virus, its costs, and its latest versions ) but about being able to learn fully and openly what a computer can do and at the cost of the hardware only, these computers use Linux OS – as their operating systems and as such follow almost the entire growing world of none Microsoft based devices such as (Apples OS-x, Android phones, Bare-metal devices(using machine coded applications), Linux based desktop and laptop systems along with internet servers and cloud servers).

I want to share something about this area of modern computing, from a very basic level to a level that shows just how the two systems in the images here the (Raspberry pi and Cubie-truck – boards) can be used both independently and along side a windows based computer, many of the current engineering and science fairs show projects using just these kind of devices !

2015-3

Photography Plans

I will still be posting lots of images and articles on locations here in Ireland!

2015-6

One thing I want to do very much is to capture my local landscape as we move from the winter months into spring !

2015-5

Eternal Forest, a Poem with Images

Eternal Forest Nigel Borrington

Eternal Forest
Nigel Borrington

Eternal Forest

To long once more for that golden age
Is to be a pilgrim of spirit
Travelling through time
Paying homage to ancient ways
Long forgotten and fallen from use
To breathe new life
To reclaim identity
An awakening and rebirth

Eternal Forest-5

A Spiritual journey of self renewal
Undeniable birthright
Irrepressible heritage
Inseparable legacy
An honoring of the ancestors
And generations past
Like a wilting tree regrowing withered roots
To stand proud once more
In the eternal forest

Eternal Forest-6

Christmas time and the mystery of the Christmas tree

The wild Christmas tree millennium woodlands Kilkenny  Nigel Borrington

The wild Christmas tree
millennium woodlands
Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington

It’s almost Christmas , so a big Happy Christmas Holidays to you all 🙂

While I was on an evening walk yesterday in one of county Kilkenny’s woodland parks – the Millennium forest, I came across a tree I see every year and every Christmas this one tree has been decorated with all kinds of great Christmas decorations !!!

Each year I have wondered who comes here to do so, as its a great thing to do and see as you walk past !

I think it has something to do with the origins of this forest , in the year 2000 the Irish forestry company coillte planted one forest in each of the Irish counties and made sure that each forest contained at least one tree for everyone living there. They then sent a letter to everyone telling them where in the forest their own tree was. each tree is not numbered as such but you can locate the area/plot number for your tree.

Clearly someone has taken full ownership of their tree, decorating it each year as they would a tree for their own front room.

So I think the great mystery of the Decorated Millennium Christmas tree is partly solved , I hope to be lucky next year and come across who ever it is who comes back to their tree each year.

Who every you are, Thank you and Merry Christmas to you !!! 🙂

The Christmas tree 2

The Holly-Tree , A Poem by : Robert Southey

Woodland Holly, County Kilkenny, Nigel Borrington

Woodland Holly,
County Kilkenny,
Nigel Borrington

The Holly-Tree

By : Robert Southey

O reader! hast thou ever stood to see
The Holly-tree?
The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves
Ordered by an Intelligence so wise
As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen,
Wrinkled and keen;

No grazing cattle, through their prickly round,
Can reach to wound;
But, as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.

Winter Holy tree 1.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,
And moralize;
And in this wisdom of the Holly-tree
Can emblem see
Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme, –
One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad, perchance, I might appear
Harsh and austere;
To those who on my leisure would intrude,
Reserved and rude;
Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be,
Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree.

And should my youth – as youth is apt, I know, –
Some harshness show,
All vain asperities I, day by day,
Would wear away,
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly-tree.

Winter Holly tree 3.

And as, when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,
The Holly-leaves their fadeless hues display
Less bright than they;
But when the bare and wintry woods we see,
What then so cheerful as the Holly-tree? –

So, serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;
So would I seem, amid the young and gay,
More grave than they;
That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly-tree.
Robert Southey

The Lake, an Image and a poem by : Brian F Kirkham

The Lake, Nigel Borrington The Lake, A poem by : Brian F Kirkham

The Lake, Nigel Borrington
The Lake, A poem by : Brian F Kirkham

The Lake

Calm, Clear, Cool –
The lake lies in its hole
whilst wondering in the woods
a fisherman has a goal

Sat on a chair
by the waters, still
he casts out a line
and goes for the kill

His float bobbles in the water,
awaiting a big fish
He’s hoping for a salmon,
for a suppertime dish

Finest lures he bought – on sale
and bait he uses – he hopes – prevail
the lake, keeps hidden, the whereabouts
of the big Salmon, or Lakeland trout.

The lake it seems is calm and still,
fisherman falls asleep until –
the noise under water makes him wake…
the fish are in another part of the lake.