Tag Archives: gear

Moving damply

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The Red Cross just delivered some bathroom equipment which will help J. I had to test it first – after all I can hardly tell her it’s safe because it says so in the manual. It is very odd moving into and out of a bath when you limit yourself to the equipment and more so when it’ll be done in the wet. Machinery can be a nice thing but raising and lowering in a bath feels genuinely strange – and I could get out if I needed to. Apparently we cannot use it until the person who ordered it for J has been around and checked it, done a risk assessment and shown us how to use it. Well the guy checked it, she should have done the assessment already and I can figure the rest out all on my own. And if it can take me, it’ll take J. And it was indeed the Red Cross. Not the Council, not any part of the NHS. So either the Red Cross are filling a gap or the NHS are leaving that gap because they know the charity will fill it. As I have said before, do not think that Services we have – and that your tax apparently pays for – are there to help you. It is an illusion.

Camera stuff

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I bought the pod because there will be times when I want to take something up close / I don’t have an even surface and it will give me something to rest against. So far in the garden testing it has enabled the camera to sit atop a pole, on branches and on a picket fence. The grass was damp down the bottom of the garden and it provided a good base there too. Nice.
I also bought a Gorillapod SLR Zoom. I wanted some sort of tripod but nothing big and shiny. I tested it with a Tamron AF70-300 and it holds that with no real problem. Taking that too into the garden it will wrap (this is with the Canon 50mm) around a steel pole quite happily, around the same picket fence, around a branch – you get the idea. And because it is plastic there are no worries about water / dirt. This weekend I plan on a long walk with Winston and I’ll take both along and see how they work out.
What using both showed though was the tremor I have. Even wrapped around a pole tightly I could not stop the tremor bouncing the image as I depressed the shutter button. So off to ebay I went and I’ve bought a remote control. This will also be really useful when I try and get some pictures of the foxes that visit each night (they take food from J’s hand now) and of course I can get much better setup shots.
There are a couple of pics here.

(Pod was 15 quid from Jessops, Gorillapod 32 inc postage from ebay and the Remote is 15 from ebay. The Gorillapod has Jessop’s cheapest ball and socket head attached – it was 7 quid.)