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Awesome Tool roll collaboration with Lemolo Bags!! These things rule and are super versatile. They are space great for Brooks style saddle loops but will strap on any saddle, handlebars, racks, toptubes, pretty much any where you wanna stick it. And, they come stocked with Full Size tools!! From the tiniest Park allen wrench up to 8mm, 8-11 mm box style Park wrenches, Topeak full sized chain tool, two Tire levers, a green spoke wrench and even that chainring bolt tool no one ever has around! Also has little bungees for keepin a tube of your choice in the roll. I couldn't be more excited on how these came out, Elias at Lemolo is amazing and really nailed this. They are $120 fully loaded with tools and ready to ship.
Tool kit left in the wall of an abandoned office car park, strange as all the tools looked brand new, there was even a set of cutters still in their blister pack.
These are the old farming tools in Kastamonu. There are wheels of cart, wooden plow, ox cart and so. Tools are exhibited in the garden of Vedat Tek Culture Center / Kastamonu.
NURBURGRING, GERMANY-19 MAY 02--S&S: Raymond T. Conway--Tool's Maynard James Keenan performs at the Rock am Ring Festival in Nurburgring, Germany, on May 19th, 2002.
Gull Lake, Saskatchewan. This tractor was sitting in the yard of the now empty home my great grandparents established in the early 20th century.
Come see me at : www.Chanyungco.com / Breaking The Ice / Good Press Gallery / Fistful Of Books & follow me @elchanyungco on instagram ❤︎
These were not posed by me. Perhaps someone else did, but I like to think these were how someone left them when Knight Foundry closed in the mid 1980s after more than 100 years of operation.
Note the initials engraved into the compass and the caliper. Someone treasured that bit of technology.
Taken from Ellis Bridge looking over a tool trader's spot at the Ravivar Bazaar (Sunday Market) in Ahmedabad. The display of tools at this particular stall is about 4 times that which you can see here and is all set up for only one day a week.
See colour image.
Shooting Tool is harder than it looks. 1 song, 15 ft tall stage, completely backlit, Maynard hangs out at the far back of the stage, mostly obscured. Then sometimes you get lucky and he moves the mic out of the way.
Some background:
Instead of a story compiled/edited by myself, a very good “real” source: an article about the “American Spirit” project from 1996, scanned from a magazine and posted elsewhere:
This and some more information, including a drawing of the (apparently never) finished aircraft and a photo of the semi-finished airframe on airliners.net were the basis for my build.
The kit and its assembly:
This is my third and last entry to the “Racing” group build at whatifmodelers.com that ended in Feb. 2019. It is nothing less than the attempt to re-create the potentially fastest piston engine aircraft in the world as a model, based on the sparse information I was able to gather (see above). The aircraft’s design is quite odd, and it is worth reading the design background in the article, because it was a true “garage build” with the intention to use as many existing components in order to save costs and development time.
This was, more or less, mirrored during the building process, and like the real “American Spirit” the model consists at its core of a Matchbox T-2 “Buckeye” jet trainer! The T-2 fuselage lost its nose section, the ventral engine bay and the original cockpit fairing. This left a lot of fuselage surface to be re-constructed. The fin was clipped, too, just like in real life. At the fin’s base I added a cockpit opening and implanted a cockpit tub, taken from a Revell G.91. A new bucket seat (probably from an Academy Fw 190) was installed, and a new, tight canopy – I think it originally came from a Revell Go 229, but it was trimmed down considerably to match the T-2’s fuselage lines. The canopy was blended into the fin root with massive 2C putty sculpting, and the area in front of the windscreen was created with 2C putty, too. Both a tedious PSR process.
Once the upper fuselage shape was finished I started searching for a cowling and a matching propeller. After several attempts with bigger engines (e. g. from a Super Constellation) I eventually settled upon a rather narrow (but bleak) cowling from an Pioneer2/Airfix Hawker Sea Fury, which turned out to have just the right diameter for the re-constructed T-2 fuselage and matched the “American Spirit” drawing’s well.
It also had at the front end the right diameter for the propeller: it comes, just like in real life, from a C-130 Hercules, even though I used a late variant with six blades, a resin aftermarket piece, taken from an Attack Squadron engine nacelle set. Unfortunately, the spinners were molded onto the engines, so that I had to cut my donor part away. Three of the six propeller blade attachment points were faired over. While the original “American Spirit” carried clipped blades from an Electra airliner, I used parts from a P-3 Orion – the come very close in shape and size, and were easy to install. Finally, the propeller received a metal axis and a matching styrene tube adapter in the Sea Fury cowling.
Once the engine was in place, the cowling was filled with as much lead as possible, since the model would be built with an extended landing gear.
However, a large ventral section was still missing, and it was created with a leftover underwater section from a model ship hull, and lots of more putty, of course. A small tail bumper was added under the fin.
Once the fuselage was more or less finished, I turned my attention to the wings and stabilizers. The latter were supposed to be “un-swept F-86H stabilizers”, but unfortunately I could not find visual evidence of what this would have looked like. I tried some donor parts, including stabilizers from an F-86A and D, as well as from a MiG-15, and eventually decided to use individual parts, because nothing looked convincing to me, either swept or straight. Actually the MiG-15 parts looked the best, but they were too small, so I used the wings from an 1:144 Panavia Tornado (Dragon) and tailored them into a sweep angle similar to the MiG-15 parts, but with more depth and span. Not certain how “realistic” this is, but it looks good and compliments the swept T-2 fin well.
The T-2 wings saw only minor modifications: the wing tip tanks were cut off and the tips as well as the flaps faired over, since the “American Spirit” did not feature the latter anymore. The small LERXs were cut away, too, and instead I added small air intakes – the “American Spirit” probably did not feature them, but I wondered where the aircraft’s engine would feed its carburetor or an oil cooler? The respective gaps on the fuselage flanks were filled accordingly.
Some more work waited on the fuselage, too. The aircraft’s drawing showed shallow openings on the forward fuselage’s flanks, but their function was not clear – I assume that the exhausts from the 18 cylinder engine were collected there, 9 on each side, so I carved the openings into the massive plastic and putty fuselage with a mini drill tool and added exhaust stubs as well as deflector plates.
Another issue was the well for the front landing gear – this came, together with the complete front leg, from an Italeri F-100, just like in real life. The good thing about the Italeri kit is that it comes with a separate well tub, which made the installation quite easy. I just cut a square section out of the lower fuselage behind the engine and the landing gear well snuggly fell into place, with only little PSR effort. And, to my surprise, the end result seems to be a very good match to the real life design – even though I was not able to confirm this with picture material.
The main landing gear was taken OOB from the Matchbox T-2 – and it is really a weird sight, since the T-2’s track is very wide while the wheelbase is unusually short. But the source article indicates that this must have been the designers’ plans!
Painting and markings:
While the model’s hardware came quite close to the real thing, the livery of the “American Spirit” was totally open, so I created my own. I felt that two design directions would be appropriate: either a relatively dry and clean design, e. g. in overall silver or white with a little trim, or something patriotic, reflecting the aircraft’s name.
I eventually settled for the latter, and considered several approaches in white, red and blue, and eventually settled for one of my first ideas, a kind of “flying American flag” in an asymmetrical design, somewhat inspired by a Bicentennial F-106A from 1976: this machine carried a white fuselage with some red trim stripes and a blue nose section that featured lots of tiny white stars. I took this layout a little further and gave the “American Spirit” a dark blue engine cowling and front fuselage section, as well as a single blue wing. From that, wide red and white stripes stream backwards across the other wing, the fuselage and the tail. The design was mirrored on the undersides.
The stripes were painted with a wide brush with Humbrol 19 and 22, after the kit had been primed with white and had received an overall white basic coat with acrylic paint from the rattle can, too. The blue section was painted with Revell 350 (RAL 5013/Lufthansa Blue). I tried to add some “wavy flag texture” effect to the basic paints with slightly different tones, added wet-in-wet to the basic paints, but the visual effect turned out to be minimal, so I left it like that.
The stars are all individual waterslide decals, coming from an 1:87 Allied WWII markings sheet from TL Modellbau. The big white stars that are the background for the starting numbers on top and below the blue wing come from an 1:72 F4U. The red and blue starting numbers themselves were taken from a TL Modellbau sheet for firefighting vehicles: they are actually parts of German emergency telephone numbers…
Some stencils and leading edges on all wings, created with generic silver decal material, completed the outside, and finally I painted some fake panel lines onto the hull with a soft pencil. The T-2 air brakes, which were retained for the “American Spirit”, were re-created with fine black decal lines. Similar material in silver was used to simulate panel lines for the cooling air outlet flaps on the cowling. Unfortunately, the T-2 kit itself did not come with much surface detail, and any leftover rest (like the air brakes) disappeared during the extensive PSR sessions and under the primer and paint coats. Finally, the kit was sealed with a coat of semi-gloss acrylic varnish (Italeri).
A massive scratch-build. While challenging the work on this model was fun because it followed in its creation a similar process as the real “American Spirit”, which was, AFAIK, sold and never completed. In the end, I am positively surprised how close the overall outlines seem to come to the real (and odd-looking) aircraft, even though the garish livery is purely speculative, so that this model is, despite its roots in the real world and the attempt to stay true to the original, a fictional/whif piece. The finish is a bit rough, though, but that’s probably the price to pay when you create things from scratch.
While the ceiling is much lower downstairs, Fred Meyer managed to pack yet another decor surprise into the hardware section -- this long wall mural of tools! I actually quite like the art style here, plus it's way better executed than the last tool drawing we saw here.
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Walmart, 1994-built, W. Service Rd. at Rich Rd., West Memphis AR
Sony RX1 User Report.
I hesitate to write about gear. Tools are tools and the bitter truth is that a great craftsman rises above his tools to create a masterpiece whereas most of us try to improve our abominations by buying better or faster hammers to hit the same nails at the same awkward angles.
The internet is fairly flooded with reviews of this tiny marvel, and it isn’t my intention to compete with those articles. If you’re looking for a full-scale review of every feature or a down-to-Earth accounting of the RX1’s strengths and weaknesses, I recommend starting here.
Instead, I’d like to provide you with a flavor of how I’ve used the camera over the last six months. In short, this is a user report. To save yourself a few thousand words: I love the thing. As we go through this article, you’ll see this is a purpose built camera. The RX1 is not for everyone, but we will get to that and on the way, I’ll share a handful of images that I made with the camera.
It should be obvious to anyone reading this that I write this independently and have absolutely no relationship with Sony (other than having exchanged a large pile of cash for this camera at a retail outlet).
Before we get to anything else, I want to clear the air about two things: Price and Features
The Price
First things first: the price. The $2800+ cost of this camera is the elephant in the room and, given I purchased the thing, you may consider me a poor critic. That in mind, I want to offer you three thoughts:
Consumer goods cost what they cost, in the absence of a competitor (the Fuji X100s being the only one worth mention) there is no comparison and you simply have to decide for yourself if you are willing to pay or not.
Normalize the price per sensor area for all 35mm f/2 lens and camera alternatives and you’ll find the RX1 is an amazing value.
You are paying for the ability to take photographs, plain and simple. Ask yourself, “what are these photographs worth to me?”
In my case, #3 is very important. I have used the RX1 to take hundreds of photographs of my family that are immensely important to me. Moreover, I have made photographs (many appearing on this page) that are moving or beautiful and only happened because I had the RX1 in my bag or my pocket. Yes, of course I could have made these or very similar photographs with another camera, but that is immaterial.
35mm by 24mm by 35mm f/2
The killer feature of this camera is simple: it is a wafer of silicon 35mm by 24mm paired to a brilliantly, ridiculously, undeniably sharp, contrasty and bokehlicious 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Image quality is king here and all other things take a back seat. This means the following: image quality is as good or better than your DSLR, but battery life, focus speed, and responsiveness are likely not as good as your DSLR. I say likely because, if you have an entry-level DSLR, the RX1 is comparable on these dimensions. If you want to change lenses, if you want an integrated viewfinder, if you want blindingly fast phase-detect autofocus then shoot with a DSLR. If you want the absolute best image quality in the smallest size possible, you’ve got it in the RX1.
While we are on the subject of interchangeable lenses and viewfinders...
I have an interchangeable lens DSLR and I love the thing. It’s basically a medium format camera in a 35mm camera body. It’s a powerhouse and it is the first camera I reach for when the goal is photography. For a long time, however, I’ve found myself in situations where photography was not the first goal, but where I nevertheless wanted to have a camera. I’m around the table with friends or at the park with my son and the DSLR is too big, too bulky, too intimidating. It comes between you and life. In this realm, mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras seem to be king, but they have a major flaw: they are, for all intents and purposes, just little DSLRs.
As I mentioned above, I have an interchangeable lens system, why would I want another, smaller one? Clearly, I am not alone in feeling this way, as the market has produced a number of what I would call “professional point and shoots.” Here we are talking about the Fuji X100/X100s, Sigma DPm-series and the RX100 and RX1.
Design is about making choices
When the Fuji X100 came out, I was intrigued. Here was a cheap(er), baby Leica M. Quiet, small, unobtrusive. Had I waited to buy until the X100s had come out, perhaps this would be a different report. Perhaps, but probably not. I remember thinking to myself as I was looking at the X100, “I wish there was a digital Rollei 35, something with a fixed 28mm or 35mm lens that would fit in a coat pocket or a small bag.” Now of course, there is.
So, for those of you who said, “I would buy the RX1 if it had interchangeable lenses or an integrated viewfinder or faster autofocus,” I say the following: This is a purpose built camera. You would not want it as an interchangeable system, it can’t compete with DSLR speed. A viewfinder would make the thing bigger and ruin the magic ratio of body to sensor size—further, there is a 3-inch LCD viewfinder on the back! Autofocus is super fast, you just don’t realize it because the bar has been raised impossibly high by ultra-sonic magnet focusing rings on professional DSLR lenses. There’s a fantastic balance at work here between image quality and size—great tools are about the total experience, not about one or the other specification.
In short, design is about making choices. I think Sony has made some good ones with the RX1.
In use
So I’ve just written 1,000 words of a user report without, you know, reporting on use. In many ways the images on the page are my user report. These photographs, more than my words, should give you a flavor of what the RX1 is about. But, for the sake of variety, I intend to tell you a bit about the how and the why of shooting with the RX1.
Snapshots
As a beginning enthusiast, I often sneered at the idea of a snapshot. As I’ve matured, I’ve come to appreciate what a pocket camera and a snapshot can offer. The RX1 is the ultimate photographer’s snapshot camera.
I’ll pause here to properly define snapshot as a photograph taken quickly with a handheld camera.
To quote Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So it is with photography. Beautiful photographs happen at the decisive moment—and to paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson further—the world is newly made and falling to pieces every instant. I think it is no coincidence that each revolution in the steady march of photography from the tortuously slow chemistry of tin-type and daguerreotype through 120 and 35mm formats to the hyper-sensitive CMOS of today has engendered new categories and concepts of photography.
Photography is a reflexive, reactionary activity. I see beautiful light or the unusual in an every day event and my reaction is a desire to make a photograph. It’s a bit like breathing and has been since I was a kid.
Rather than sneer at snapshots, nowadays I seek them out; and when I seek them out, I do so with the Sony RX1 in my hand.
How I shoot with the RX1
Despite much bluster from commenters on other reviews as to the price point and the purpose-built nature of this camera (see above), the RX1 is incredibly flexible. Have a peek at some of the linked reviews and you’ll see handheld portraits, long exposures, images taken with off-camera flash, etc.
Yet, I mentioned earlier that I reach for the D800 when photography is the primary goal and so the RX1 has become for me a handheld camera—something I use almost exclusively at f/2 (people, objects, shallow DoF) or f/8 (landscapes in abundant light, abstracts). The Auto-ISO setting allows the camera to choose in the range from ISO 50 and 6400 to reach a proper exposure at a given aperture with a 1/80 s shutter speed. I have found this shutter speed ensures a sharp image every time (although photographers with more jittery grips may wish there was the ability to select a different default shutter speed). This strategy works because the RX1 has a delightfully clicky exposure compensation dial just under your right thumb—allowing for fine adjustment to the camera’s metering decision.
So then, if you find me out with the RX1, you’re likely to see me on aperture priority, f/2 and auto ISO. Indeed, many of the photographs on this page were taken in that mode (including lots of the landscape shots!).
Working within constraints.
The RX1 is a wonderful camera to have when you have to work within constraints. When I say this, I mean it is great for photography within two different classes of constraints: 1) physical constraints of time and space and 2) intellectual/artistic constraints.
To speak to the first, as I said earlier, many of the photographs on this page were made possible by having a camera with me at a time that I otherwise would not have been lugging around a camera. For example, some of the images from the Grand Canyon you see were made in a pinch on my way to a Christmas dinner with my family. I didn’t have the larger camera with me and I just had a minute to make the image. Truth be told, these images could have been made with my cell phone, but that I could wring such great image quality out of something not much larger than my cell phone is just gravy. Be it jacket pocket, small bag, bike bag, saddle bag, even fannie pack—you have space for this camera anywhere you go.
Earlier I alluded to the obtrusiveness of a large camera. If you want to travel lightly and make photographs without announcing your presence, it’s easier to use a smaller camera. Here the RX1 excels. Moreover, the camera’s leaf shutter is virtually silent, so you can snap away without announcing your intention. In every sense, this camera is meant to work within physical constraints.
I cut my photographic teeth on film and I will always have an affection for it. There is a sense that one is playing within the rules when he uses film. That same feeling is here in the RX1. I never thought I’d say this about a camera, but I often like the JPEG images this thing produces more than I like what I can push with a RAW. Don’t get me wrong, for a landscape or a cityscape, the RAW processed carefully is FAR, FAR better than a JPEG.
But when I am taking snapshots or photos of friends and family, I find the JPEGs the camera produces (I’m shooting in RAW + JPEG) so beautiful. The camera’s computer corrects for the lens distortion and provides the perfect balance of contrast and saturation. The JPEG engine can be further tweaked to increase the amount of contrast, saturation or dynamic range optimization (shadow boost) used in writing those files. Add in the ability to rapidly compensate exposure or activate various creative modes and you’ve got this feeling you’re shooting film again. Instant, ultra-sensitive and customizable film.
Pro Tip: Focusing
Almost all cameras come shipped with what I consider to be the worst of the worst focus configurations. Even the Nikon D800 came to my hands set to focus when the shutter button was halfway depressed. This mode will ruin almost any photograph. Why? Because it requires you to perform legerdemain to place the autofocus point, depress the shutter halfway, recompose and press the shutter fully. In addition to the chance of accidentally refocusing after composing or missing the shot—this method absolutely ensures that one must focus before every single photograph. Absolutely impossible for action or portraiture.
Sensibly, most professional or prosumer cameras come with an AF-ON button near where the shooter’s right thumb rests. This separates the task of focusing and exposing, allowing the photographer to quickly focus and to capture the image even if focus is slightly off at the focus point. For portraits, kids, action, etc the camera has to have a hair-trigger. It has to be responsive. Manufacturer’s: stop shipping your cameras with this ham-fisted autofocus arrangement.
Now, the RX1 does not have an AF-ON button, but it does have an AEL button whose function can be changed to “MF/AF Control Hold” in the menu. Further, other buttons on the rear of the camera can also be programmed to toggle between AF and MF modes. What this all means is that you can work around the RX1’s buttons to make it’s focus work like a DSLR’s. (For those of you who are RX1 shooters, set the front switch to MF, the right control wheel button to MF/AF Toggle and the AEL button to MF/AF Control Hold and voila!) The end result is that, when powered on the camera is in manual focus mode, but the autofocus can be activated by pressing AEL, no matter what, however, the shutter is tripped by the shutter release. Want to switch to AF mode? Just push a button and you’re back to the standard modality.
Carrying.
I keep mine in a small, neoprene pouch with a semi-hard LCD cover and a circular polarizing filter on the front—perfect for buttoning up and throwing into a bag on my way out of the house. I have a soft release screwed into the threaded shutter release and a custom, red twill strap to replace the horrible plastic strap Sony provided. I plan to gaffer tape the top and the orange ring around the lens. Who knows, I may find an old Voigtlander optical viewfinder in future as well.
Some small layout tools I have made. The one on the far left is a sliding bevel of my design. It is designed to make it easier to lay out dovetails close to the edge of a piece of wood. The middle one is another dovetail layout square. Its odd shape enables you to rotate it with the little knob which sticks out, when you are near the edge of the wood again, where it is usually tricky to hold the square in place. The one on the far right is a simple little square designed to fit into the bottom of a dovetail where no other square will fit. It was a bit of a decadent luxury to devote so much time to cutting it out just for this one specific application, hence it is not the best finished in terms of polishing.