The Sound of Melting Snow

Through the window comes
the sound of melting snow--
a warm breeze.
-sek, Oct 2008

It may seem a bit odd, a haiku about early spring just as we are heading into winter, but this one is based on an idea I've been kicking around for some years, trying to capture the experience of listening to the sound of snow melting from all directions through my window on a warm later winter day. I wanted to capture that feeling of prescience and anticipation and only now was able to compose a haiku around it.

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Minolta Lenses on a Four Thirds Camera

During the summer, I bought an Olympus E-510 digital single lens reflex camera. The 510 is a FourThirds camera and because of the of shallow flange of the 4/3 lens mount it is one of the most flexible cameras on the market when it comes to mounting legacy optics (lenses from traditional film SLRs). A 4/3 camera can mount "legacy optics" or lenses from several other manufacturers made before the DSLR era. Although unintended, this makes FourThirds a revolutionary mount. For the first time not only can a photographer mount lenses from different manufacturers who produce lenses to the "open" FourThirds standard, with inexpensive Chinese-made adapters lenses from nearly any manufacturer from the golden age of SLRs can be mounted as well. Third party adapters can be found for Olympus OM, Nikon, Pentax, Zeiss and Contax. The only one missing from the party was Minolta. I purchased an inexpensive OM to 4/3 adapter from ebay and mounted several OM lenses, a 50mm f/1.8, 50m...

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