The café series

Well, actually no, although I did take quite a few in the kitchen today (including the extra of a glass of espresso on the machine).  The main image is of the droplets of condensation on the inside of the electric kettle.

Day one of eleven using a 200mm macro lens without taking a macro.  What's a macro anyway (skip this paragraph if you don't care)?  Before I bought this lens (another 2nd hand purchase) I did some research.  I believe, strictly speaking, it is an image that is at least as big on the senor (or in the old days, the negative, as it is in real life).  With that definition I will be hard pressed to take an actual macro shot with this lens because the senor in my camera has to be pretty well exactly 0.5m from the flat plane object I'm taking a shot of.  Any closer and it will be out of focus, any further away and it no longer be 1:1.  Just thought you might be interested - I was - but there's seems to be some debate on the matter so I could incorrect.

Anyway, I am trying to "get to know" this lens without resorting to a tripod or image stacking (which I'm kind of tiring of anyway).  I have gotten used to f1.4 over the last 3 weeks so 200mm f4+ is going to be a challenge (although I am resorting to auto-ISO).

Saturday - SMH quiz with my mum (and dad as he did not get on the golf course again today).  Frustrating today because my mum and dad were, as last week, completely unprepared for the 11am zoom call.  We finally got started at about 20 something past by which time I had spat the dummy "next week blah blah blah..." (the default position I traditionally take in my family - either that or complete cut off).  We persevered and got there in the end with a pretty healthy score (18 out of 25 I think it was).

Seems like zoom will be the norm in terms of family contact for a couple of months to come at least as Sydney experiences by far its worst case of COVID since began although it tends to be in pockets of the city.

There's a lot of talk about "a cultural divide" when it comes to our current approach to the virus.  Truth is, Sydney is a multicultural city, but I don't think it's as much as most people would like to think.  There are certainly large sections of the city where it's expensive to live.  Food's much the same across the city but accommodation is the killer.  I was born and bred here in a middle class family and had a good (government provided) education so had a pretty significant leg-up compared to many people who have arrived here from overseas later in their lives.  Those people, many of whom do not have the staid Anglo-Saxon background I have, live much closer together and rely much more on the family than we WASPs do.  Without wanting to romanticise that, I reckon that's a much better way to live but, unfortunately, the dreaded virus loves that lifestyle too (or so the debate goes).  It is those areas of the city that are showing (by far) the greatest infection rates.  The NSW government is, accordingly, enforcing much stricter lockdown rules (including curfews) just in those areas of the city.  Hence the "cultural" divide.  We will all have to wear masks outside from Monday but I am sure that there will be a much greater degree of enforcement in some areas rather than others.

Interesting weeks ahead...