CAMERA GEAR

My take on cameras: 

Some of my all time best photos were taken with my first digital camera, an old Canon Ixus 330 1.9 megapixel camera that I bought back in 2002. It fitted in my pocket and was built like a small metal brick. I just wanted to mention that, because too much talk of overkill camera gear gives me the droop.

Something that seems to be seldom discussed online is that most images on web pages are only 300 – 500px wide. Or that most photos are viewed on platforms like Facebook, and the maximum image size on Facebook is only 720px wide. 

But most people don’t even click on the images on their FB timeline anyway, they just view the thumbnail – which is only 470px wide. And beyond that, most people are now viewing the entire internet on their squinty little phones. So the vast majority of photos are viewed online at less than 470 px wide, and in that size, just about any resolution would do the job.

On this blog my photos are mostly web copies saved at either 750px or 1000px wide, but if you would like a really big copy of anything, just ask me nice and send some nekid pichers ov yerself in exchange.

After five years and over 10 000 photos taken with the Ixus 330, I did eventually get around to getting something more bling – a Canon Ixus 960 Titanium, which I used to take thousands more photos for another five years.

It eventually met an unfortunate and wet demise, so I bought an Ixus 500HS in a styling blue colour. Smaller, with better specs in theory, it was an OK camera for a surprisingly cheap price, but the image quality wasn’t as good as the Ixus 960, and I didn’t stick with it for long.

Still having a soft spot for the 960 Titanium (A classic IMHO), I bought a replacement one in mint condition on Trade Me for a bargain $100, including a waterproof case. (The original retail on this combination would have been around $1200, but cameras are not appreciating investments)

In 2015 I upgraded to a Canon SX600, which was a dirt cheap NZ$200 on sale. And it was a good camera. It fitted in my pocket, even with an 18x zoom, and with 16 megapixels and a 3 inch hi-res screens it seemed pretty awesome for a pocket camera. At that point it was both the cheapest and the best camera I’d ever owned. 

Then in 2018 I upgraded to a Canon SX720 with an awesome 40x zoom lens, and 20 megapixels. To this day it’s still the best camera I’ve ever owned and it blows me away how far these little cameras have developed. I actually prefer it to the newer models and later bought a back up one second hand.

I'm still using my seven year old SX270 daily in 2025 and have no real desire to replace it. If it ever stops working I'll probably just switch to my backup one and continue on.

My take on cameras is that for what I want to use my photos for – mainly posting on websites and often edited with art filters, what matters is not high resolution but always having one in my pocket ready for action, and to be able to use it rapidly without having to look at it.

Taking shit loads of photos also helps me to get some I like. Each picture is raw material for the almost unlimited enhancements available in my favorite programs. 

Over the years I’ve downloaded copies of lots of image editing programs and tried them out, starting with Photoshop 4 in 1998, and my all time favourite version of Photoshop was Photoshop CS6 from 2012. That was the one I stuck with for 12 years, because hell could freeze over before I would ever pay Adobe a monthly subscription.
 

But Photoshop doesn't run on Linux, so since switching full-time to using Linux at the start of 2025, I've also switched over to using GIMP, starting out with Gimp 2 at first, and then upgrading to Gimp 3 when it was released in March 2025.

I'm slowly learning to use GIMP 3 and it's a very good program, but after using Photoshop for the past 27 years I had become stuck in my ways, and I still have lots to learn. 

On Android I mostly use Snapseed, Cartoon Pro, Mirror Lab, and Chroma Lab for doing my photo edits. Despite hating Google I really like Snapseed and find it the fastest and easiest to use image editor for all basic stuff.

 This is a photo I took on my Canon SX270 that has been lightly edited in Snapseed. It's not high res enough for serious photographers, but I took it from inside a bus anyway, and I like it, as it captures chemtrails, a gay building, a masktard, and a phone zombie, all at once, in Manners St Wellington NZ:
 

HISTORIC NEWTOWN

A classic photo from 1979 looking south in Newtown, Wellington, to the original brick hospital, and a Holden Kingswood taking off at the lights, with 3.3L of pure grunt raising the bonnet up as it surges forward - I used to love driving those old tanks!

And another old photo of the same intersection - this one taken in 1901 - that angle shaped building has been there since the dawn of time.

Another Kingswood in upper Cuba St around 1988

And a stylish Kingswood ute very like one I drove for a while a long time ago.

 

A BUNCH OF OLD CARS

 I have posted another image gallery - this one is some of my car photos!

See it here: CAR GALLERY

Long ago, back before all cars turned into gay lawnmowers, even on the streets of Wellington, there were still some stylish old tanks to be seen. Since around 10 years ago these have become as rare as hens teeth, but here are some photos I took between about 2000 & 2015.

Except for the top photo, which I didn't take (that's teenage me posing in it). That is my old 1967 AP7 Valiant which had the engine upgraded from a 3.7L slant six, to a 4.3L HEMI, with a huge twin barrel carb, six into one extractors, and a race cam. But it still only had the original drum brakes, so it was a real beast.

The gallery includes a bunch of old relics that caught my eye:

(Click on any of them to view in 1000 x 750 px size)

 

 

 

A RIDE ON THE TRAIN

Yesterday I caught a train from Wellington up to Waikanae, which is about 60k north of Wellington (the distance varies from 50k to 78k depending which website you consult!). Some of the route follows the coast and has some great views, so I took some photos. The weather was a bit patchy yesterday but there were some sunny parts.

Trains tend to have dirty windows which mess up photos, so before the train left I cleaned a suitable patch of window on the outside with my handkerchief!

Usually I stick to taking photos with a camera, but yesterday I was sussing out the internal camera on a 12" Samsung tablet. The big tablet was a bit ungainly to use as a camera, but after a quick edit in Snapseed, I liked each of these photos.

Tawa:

Porirua:

 

Pukerua Bay:

 

The West coast:
 

 

Takapu Road:

Pukerua Bay again but edited in OneLab:

PHOTOGRAPHING THE NWO

 This is a photo I took in Manners Street, Wellington, that I think captures many aspects of the NWO - with chemtrails in the sky, a masktard & a phonetard, a gay pride building and an old-school bank, yep, it's got it all really.

AFTER A MONTH OFF

Having a month off, whether it's from social media, or blogging, or both, always seems to help me to get things in perspective. It's not like I've come up with any revolutionary insights, in fact I just came to the exact same conclusions that I usually do, but sometimes a reminder is helpful.

THINK SMALL

Back when I was posting on my old www.frot.co.nz WordPress blog, and getting up to 2000 hits a day at it's peak in 2017-2018, it seemed worthwhile to do copy and paste posts, sharing other people's content that I really thought deserved to be viewed far and wide.

But these days with this www.sift.co.nz blog only getting about 300 hits a day, any contribution I might make to the dispersal of good content is a bit of a drop in the ocean. So this blog is primarily just about getting my thoughts in order and keeping my hand in. 

 

If my primary audience is not 2000 rabid conspiracy freaks, but only little old me and a bunch of AI bots, there is not much point behaving like some kind of arbiter of good taste and dispenser of "truth". Rather, as I keep trying to remind myself, I might as well just post whatever I feel like and have a good time.

 IT'S TOO LATE TO WORRY NOW

At the start of the Covidhoax back in early 2020, I was going hard out trying to tell everyone it was all bullshit. It was, but we live in a different world now, in some ways more aware, but in other ways even more fake than ever. I'm tempted to replace outing the Covidhoax with exposing the Climatehoax for example, but I think these globalist psyops all sort of have to play out now, because the current systems are collapsing, for better or for worse.

If there was one thing I have learned over the past five years it's that normies are clueless retards, and they will believe whatever bullshit they are told by the deep state controlled media, rather than research any contrarian opinions. So if I still keep posting that sort of stuff myself, it's really more about getting things off my chest, than because I genuinely believe this vast train wreck can be prevented now.

For better or for worse, the shit has already hit the fan, and I don't really think that can be reversed now. The final outcome may not be what the globalists think it will be, but their evil plan is already in motion.

LIGHTEN UP

If worrying is futile, fear never helps anything, and mind programmed normies are incapable of learning, we are probably better off to have a few LOLS...