I'm with ChrisA on this.

Captions - sometimes; factual lables - sometimes; nothing at all - sometimes.

Looking at three of my favourite shots (taken with three different brands of equipment ), there is only one might benefit from a caption, or a lable, or both. If I were that way inclined, the third shot could have several (different) words attached to it; they might explain the where and when, but would add nothing to the image. I used it as my (office PC) Windows wallpaper for some years, and it usually attracted comments like: "That's nice, where is it?". No-one remarked on the composition! And that, surely is getting back to John's original post.
Geoff

What a nice advertiser! "Hey folks, don't buy from me, I don't know what I am talking about".

Gun oil, typically "Youngs" brand in the UK, is used to preserve the inner workings of firearms. In my target shooting days, I probably spent more time removing it, than applying it, It does tend to thicken rapidly with exposure to air, and then affect the free movement of working parts.

Like Matt, I have freed off a lens (Russian Industar on a Fed 4) with a tiny spot of lighter fuel. I am about to do the same thing to another Russian lens. My preferred technique (transferred from other bits of precision equipment) is to saturate a cotton bud in the stuff, then press the bud to where I want the lighter fuel to go. That way the amount is more controllable.

Lighter fuel is mostly Benzene (not Benzine)and has a certain oil content. After its solvent effect, the spirit component evaporates fairly quickly, leaving the oil. I have seen it used to lubricate clocks, by suspending the works over a container of lighter fuel and letting the fumes deposit oil very lightly as the fuel evaporates. I was told that this was far better than applying "Clock Oil" with a feather.
Geoff

This was down as Kennet and Avon, but this is no longer accurate.
A small group will aim to meet next Saturday.
Details:
Saturday 14th August at 2.30 pm.
The Tea Room beside the canal in Bradford-on-Avon.
This is the building on the towpath side of the canal, about 100 yards SE of the bridge where the Frome Rd crosses the K&A (and where there is effectively a lock underneath the bridge). Parking is along the Frome Rd just before the bridge, or down a lane opposite the mini-roundabout where Junction Road meets Frome Rd (a council park – pay and display I think) but where one can walk along the towpath to the café.
Following an idea from Steve Chasey "Bring something interesting".
Your call on what is interesting.
Hope to see lots of you.
Geoff

Just as an alterntive ...
Create a grid in Powerpoint (easy if you stack some rectangles of the right proportions in a 3x3 layout and then draw lines down the stack and delete the original rectangles).
Now you can print this onto a clear sheet (aka viewfoil, as used on overhead projectors) and offer the sheet up to your screen and move it around a bit to check the composition. Sort-of similar to the suggestion from dougf8 but as an aid to doing it by eye. After a while, I reckon you would not need any aids.
Geoff

Once in a while, you see a shot and think:
"Oh, I wish I had taken that"
Number three is, for me, just such a shot (like the others as well).
Geoff

I *hate* predictive text!
Relatives visited yesterday. Shortly before their ETA I sent a short "whereareyou" message. Bro-in-law (navigating replies - without taking eyes off the road - "In troyarieie". He meant "In trowbridge". He said to his daughter - driving - "Geoff will figure it out".

Oh, and for George L:
My old Sony Ericsson (4 year old K510i)is also my current phone. It takes my key input, but needs some work with the 4-way button to get the letters to show what I mean. The big thing is that it does what I want otherwise.

But reading Thoramay's posts about forgetting:
Phone talks (hands free) to the car (Bluetooth). Before retirement, I would call my wife when I left the campus - and did not think about the process of making the call. A few weeks back, I picked up the car after a service, went to call home to give an ETA, and could not remember how to scroll through the Address List. ( You do it with the scroll-wheel, stoopid). Had to sit in the car and RTFM to figure it out, when I got home of course.
Almost make you yearn for the days when ASA 400, and settings of f5.6 and 1/250 would mean that you got a quick shot without fiddling with the controls - check the meter for the second shot if there was time.
Now it is more a case of Shake Reduction fighting a losing battle with the instability caused by MS - just bought a Monopod!
Geoff

Thoramay wrote
So do I.
Actually, I was formally taught programming in my second year at Uni (at age 50, no less ) on a Commodore Pet. Back to the room, do the exercise on my Apple II, into the department the next morning and convert into Commodore Basic, and save the file for the Lecturer to review.
Little did I think that only 12 years later I would be teaching Human-Computer Interaction at Masters level (brag).
Now I have to figure out why I got the WB wrong on some indoor shots this afternoon. Oh this modern technology.
Geoff (who edited this after a fumble-finger moment)

Just as a follow-on from another thread, some members of advanced years seem to cope with modern technology better than others.
I don't have much trouble with computers, but I have been involved with them for 25 years, and I stick to older stuff (XP-pro, for example)whenever I can. Menu systems on the digital cameras are not too bad, but learning to send Text messages was a continual battle with the "Predictive Text".
As a general observation from an "early 70s person", I do wish some of the people who write instruction manuals could be made to use them. There was an attitude in computer circles, that when developing a new piece of software one should write the manual first. Yes, a bit OTT, but there is more than one way to develop software, and I suspect some cameras as well are developed by different teams - and handle differently as a result. Then the manual is written by the people who developed the equipment, and don't seem to realise that they have left a lot of questions unanswered.
As an example, I want to know if my K and KA lenses will operate on my K200D. So I look for "lens compatibility" in the manual, and the words are not there. The information is there, but it is on a page headed"Notes on [23. Using Aperture Ring]". Many people of my generation will think that they know how to rotate an aperture ring, not look at the page, and then bemoan the lack of information - "Why did they leave that out".
So what do the rest of you more mature types think?
Geoff

Just had 10 copies of the Newsletter in my Inbox this morning.

Geoff

Morgan Computers

www.morgancomputers.co.uk and then look at software

£21.98 plus postage. Note that all you will get is the CD (it's an OEM edition). Your favourite large internet book retailer will cheefully sell you the "PSE7 for Dummies" book (the best one that I found as a "how to") at a resonable price.


HTH Geoff