Blog Archive

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

We Treat it Lightly--Frank Hunting




We treat our sin lightly,
    often with less than
         a shrug of the shoulders.
That our sin has
   cut us off from God
      is a matter of indifference
          to most of us--
   and so we have become naturalized
       in our cut off state.
 And, we don’t want
        enough--to change it.
At the cross of Jesus,
   if we ever get there,
     we see what a terrible thing
         our sin is.
If ever we begin to realize
  God had to condemn His Son
   to the Cross
     we begin to realize
       how radically and irretrievably wrong
  we are
        at the very centre of our being--
we begin to realise what a totally devastating thing sin is.

This is from the devotional book by Frank Hunting called "Speaking Personally".There are other extracts on this blog including the last post.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The Only Thing to Do.

“Come unto Me.”

Think how often this is the last thing I do.
I go to my own wits,
  or to a book or a friend,
   or even to my fears,
         and doubts and anxieties.

But to Jesus?

He is often the last one,

         if at all I go to.

“Come unto Me.”

From the devotional booklet "Speaking Personally" by Frank Hunting

Monday, October 12, 2015

Super 8 Wedding Movies


home movie night

I have discovered that people are now shooting wedding movies on super 8 film.
What comes around goes around.
My Dad was a home movie enthusiast in the film days and as such he shot lots of family holidays, our school sports and also all of our weddings and also some of our friend's weddings.
He would be amazed if he was still alive to see something that some people now obviously value so highly that he once did as a normal amateur hobby enthusiast.
I guess that means nostalgia is in.
It is great as a "baby boomer" seeing these trends.
Vinyl records are in.
Still film shooting is in.
Polaroid shooting is in.
Using point and shoot film cameras is in.
Film is not dead yet.
Cassette recordings are still popular with lots of us older generation.
I have at times in the past transferred some of our home movies to digital just by projecting them on a wall and then shooting them with a mini DV camera.
I could do the same now with my digital slr or even my iPhone.
Over the next few months when I get some time I may have to see what I can do.
Some time back when my youngest son was doing wedding videos he shot some super 8 to use for the intro to his video of a wedding.
He was thinking ahead of his time.
He works on special effects on big budget hollywood movies these days.
I still have a collection of top quality super 8 movie cameras.
Now just to purchase some film and dust them off.

Ps. I wonder if the next step will be that people will want their wedding stills shot on film.
Then I could make a comeback.
PPS  It appears the next step has just been announced by Kodak with a new Super 8 film camera launched.
It would appear ideal for weddings as outlined above.
The only down side at at this stage it would appear it only has a standard lens which was not uncommon with some of the basic super 8 cameras in the past.
See this video interview with Kodak below.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/9747160361/ces-2016-kodak-8mm-movie-camera


From the book "Home Movies made Easy" by Kodak

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Springtime in our backyard again.

Our backyard birds are very active at present.
Many have young ones to feed.
Here are some recent pics.

Introduced white dove




Crested pigeon

Red wattle bird


Rainbow Lorikeet
Red crowned Lorikeet

Murray Magpie also known as PeeWee or Mudlark
Baby Blackbirds

crested pigeon

Sunday, October 4, 2015

How backward compatible are you?


Myself about 5 with Box Brownie

My dad filming birds with 8mm movie camera.


I find it an amazing thing to share my thoughts with the world via the media of this blog.
Through this I share photography,sermons, recordings and movies and whatever I deem appropriate.
Some of the things I post were created on technology that is fast becoming history.
Multi media when I was a young boy was fairly simple and not always readily accessible or used by the average person.
To read about people's experiences we had paper.
Magazines,books,newspapers,journals in particular.
Magazines became extremely popular with some featuring the top photography of the day.
Time magazine,National Geographic, the Bulletin and Punch became the in thing.
People wrote each other letters and post cards and did not have any idea there would one day be emails, texting, messaging, what's app,facetime, etc.
Some kept daily journals or diaries to enrich their lives.In a book or notebook.
If people wanted to enjoy music together it was more than likely sing songs around the family piano.
Recordings of popular music became available on 78rpm records made out of acetate.
These were first played on wind up gramophones and later valve operated radiograms.
Photography began in both stills and movies and started to be enjoyed by the average person thanks to Mr. Kodak.
My dad bought a second hand standard 8mm clockwork movie camera in about 1959.
From then on we had many wonderful movie nights watching colour movies of our school sports,family holidays, boats and birds and all of Dad's hobbies.
A special highlight was running the movies backwards.



Slide projectors were king for a while


Polaroid came and is still around sort of



Medium Format on the cheap.


We had no sound of course but experiments were made to play a record or tape recording simultaneously with the movie.
Each movie went about 3 minutes and dad would splice some together so we had a 20min uninterrupted screening.
Magnetic Tape recorders were appearing so recordings could be done in the home.
Reel to reel then cassette recorders.
Vinyl records both singles and LP's had a great leap forward from 1950 to about 1980.
We started receiving television transmissions in Australia in the 1950's and that brought the world into our loungerooms.
Amazingly I can revisit just about every episode of programmes I watched as a teenager on youtube today.
Radio was a common denominator through all these goings on and technology shifts and is still a major player, particularly for the older generation.
Now we can record any sounds on our iphones and broadcast them ourselves if we know how.
Mobile phones when they started were only for the rich now everyone can afford them.
As a teenager in the 1950's the greatest technology advance I could think of for the future was being able to ride my bike and listen to the radio.
That one came quickly with the invention of the transistor radio.
 Now we have as I write,the Internet,Pod casting,youtube,iview, usb sticks, mulitmedia software and the PC and Macs and live steaming at our fingertips.
WIFI and broadband.
If I wanted to I could actually stream my grandson's saturday morning soccer match to the world.
Digital cameras, tweeting,facebook,instagram,blogging,on line businesses and advertising that invades all .of our privacy.
So when I want to write for this blog and get something out of my archives to blog about, how long will I be able to extract sight and sound from my old media and translate it to a viewable medium here?
I still have most of the media I have talked about including, cassette tapes,cassette recorders, reel to reel recorders and tapes, 8mm and super 8mm films,movie projectors, gramophones, 78 records,45 and 33.3rpm vinyl records,film negatives, transparencies mini dv movie tapes to name a few.
I am gradually running out of space to keep it all and the trouble is that each software
and technology upgrade makes it harder and harder  to digitise and present and archive.
So should I bother?
I guess I'll keep trying.
How about you?
My Grandson enjoying 45rpm records. These machines are now great for digitising records,cassettes and cd's direct to USB

Cilla

Part of Vynil collection

books,cd's, note movie screen on left

Cassette tapes