nicely dull

Though the Lincolnshire of the mind is generally flat there are subtle undulations in the landscape when one is amongst it. I was planning on finding a nice flat spot somewhere and posting a picture of the GPS on my phone demonstrating that a particular spot is below sea level but the level of inaccuracy often means that the altitude at the bottom of a drainage ditch is described as tens of metres above sea level. Similarly when we were here in September we popped past the highest spot in the county but the height was similarly mis-reported, at one point laughably claiming to be over 200m up. Absurd.

After a nice long walk along to the river then along the river then back inland to the road then back along the road then back to the house in order to try and use up enough fuel to be hungry for the meal this evening at the place recently taken over by a bloke who was in my sister's year at school I reckon I might have to rescind my initial positive impression of the 50mm f/1.4G. Although it obviously has a wee bit more in reserve in the gloom where my other lenses would have maxed out and started underexposing it seems to be under-reporting the true aperture a bit and blowing out highlights even though I generally leave -0.3 underexposure dialled in. The barrel distortion is noticeable, perhaps more so as it absolutely shouldn't be there on a 50 where there's no accompanying wide-angleness to mitigate any bending of horizons. I'm pretty certain there's a bit of back-focussing going on, too... anything from a couple of millimetres to a couple of centimetres to the rear of the intended (and allegedly in-focus) target which sort of hamstrings something with a very narrow DoF, especially when it was bought to replace something which had issue with accurate focussing at long distances... although the D80 might not have the newest AF in the world it's fine with the 35mm f/2. I'll see... if the shop will take it back without complaint then it might get exchanged for something else.

Is everyone excited? The weather-divulger on Look North this evening tried to get everyone in a festive mood by revealing that we're apparently in for a grey christmas. On the plus side I've still yet to hear the two most irritating festive-time songs. If I remember to remove the special festive-song CD from the rack in order to conceal it somewhere when everyone goes to bed then I might even make it through tomorrow with my ears unabused.