Tandemi

Merry Christmas and whatnot from Oulu! I had to buy this track frame from eBay because of the paint and the low price of 118 dollars. The top of the rear triangle has been welded off center but other than that, it is a great beater for my bar trips.

So last year I bought a new Nikon D600 frame, which cost more than any electronic device I have ever bought. I wanted the full blown sensor and full HD video. What I ended up liking the most wast the high ISO and low light sensitivity which allowed me to ditch my flash almost completely.

A mont ago or so I dropped the camera. It was in its bag so at first I thought I got off with a scare. Then when the next time I took a closer look I found that the mirror was hanging halfway all the time and covering half of the sensor. I am travelling a lot now for work so I had to have the camera courier carried to Helsinki (in hindsight I might have been better off by sending it to Stockholm). In Finland there is only one company that does all the service for Nikon and Canon, JAS Tekniikka.

The camera was then in JAS Tekniikka for service for a couple of weeks and they sent the camera back to my place in Finland. I was again in Sweden when the package arrived so my girlfriend forwarded it to me in Gävle. Everything seemed to be ok, I was quite happy snapping some shots of dredgers. Then, yesterday I was taking a picture of some serial numbers and I could not get the camera to focus at a close distance. I was in a hurry so did not think much of it. In the evening we went to have some dinner with my colleagues and I tried snapping a portrait of our secretary. With an aperture of 1.8 I could clearly see that the camera was not focusing correctly, the focus ways way at the back of the target. Trying to focus something at 5 meters would give mee focus at 200 meters. Autofocus and view finder both looked ok but the final picture was totally out of focus. I tried another lens and still I had the same problem.

In D600 you can already fine tune your focus even for individual lenses but now the body was so much out of focus there was absolutely nothing I could do with fine tuning. After experimenting I noticed the Live View is still working and focusing correctly. I called JAS tekniikka and told them the camera had not been serviced correctly and their answer was pretty much “yeah, we don’t take your word for it, send the camera back”. Five minutes later the technician I had been talking to called me back and told me to send all my lenses as well – “Sounds like the body is prefectly adjusted but your lenses are not”. To me that sounds like a bullshit attempt of making me pay for tuning my lenses after they botched up the body.

Anyway, this is what the focus is now like with auto focus and view finder with 50mm 1.8:

And this is the perfectly focused picture from using live view with 50mm 1.8:

EDIT:
Anyway, this is what the focus is now like with auto focus and view finder with 35mm 2.0:

And this is the perfectly focused picture from using live view with 35mm 2.0:

After a brief stint in Cherbourg I am back in Sweden. Once again the summer is passing by and I haven’t achieved anything. Thankfully I can see a silver lining looming in the future. Bättre Folk festival in Hailuoto, Bicycle Film Festival, King of Fixed and a trip to Boston.

But Gävle has become one of those miserable places I only want to get out of.

at least not Cherbourg

Here’s another useless award winning design invention that will never progress any further than 3D-modelling. A combination lock like this can be opened in a couple of minutes just by rubbing the dials with your thumbs. Done that. The strength of the lock is also compromised by the physical limitatioins of the seat’s size.

Not to mention that the use of such a seat requires a specially designed bicycle. On top of that the seat height cannot be adjusted because the whole seat post must be able to swivel back! That didn’t stop the designers from putting a quick release on the seat post and the rear wheel. That’s right, the thief can just walk away with the seatpost and the saddle stuck to it.

Also, look at how the back of the seat curves down where your seat bones are supposed receive support.

Compare it to the Specialized Romin (most comfortable saddle I’ve ever ridden)

I think they should just give the awards for 3D modelling and drop out the whole design bit.

Bored. No bike.

Here I am. The only thing between me and me enjoying my time here immensely is a bike. I have been writing to a bunch of sellers on Leboncoin.fr about buying their bike but so far no one’s replied. It is hard to be in France and not to speak French. We do not even have a local secretary yet that could help.