What a year. It has been 3 months since the last public post, much has occurred in this duration.
Graduating into a recession
Pre-Covid19, it was almost certain that the world economy would lose steam in 2020. We were nearing the the end of the long term debt cycle, it was merely a question of when the recession will strike. Is it possible to avoid a recession entirely? Theoretically it is possible, although like all cycles, a recession merely corrects the faults that have build up in this period and remove the ineffective firms so the healthy ones can progress on. To avoid a recession would be kicking the can down the road, protecting firms which no longer contribute to the economy except to leech off resources.
The Final Semester
What I had not expect, was the emergence of a worldwide pandemic to accelerate the situation and send the world into a shutdown. My final semester in “school” would thus be mostly spent in the comfort of my own room. Not that I had to spend much time in campus anyways. By aggressively pilling on modules early on in Year 1 and 2, I was left with only 3 modules in the final semester.
The plan was to allocate the final semester solely to completing my Final Year Project, instead of sharing precious time with other core modules. This gamble did not produce the results I had expected, as the first few years of modules cramming resulted in lower than expected grades and the final semesters becoming too “free”. Final exams were mostly cancelled, with one modules being graded solely based on the results on a single test. A test which I scored 90% on. The A+ grade was all but certain for this module.
Job Hunting
The Aviation industry had a rather gloomy outlook early on when the pandemic struck. With countries on lockdown and fears of importing the virus forcing air travel to a minimum, there was no doubt the industry would not fare well in the coming months and years. This meant there wouldn’t be much job opportunities in the MRO or manufacturing sectors, if any at all. Job cuts seemed very probable as well.
To counter this, I had to focus my attention away from the industry, into companies and career paths which was outside my area of expertise and plans. The entirely job hunting period was stressful and bumpy, but thankfully short and fruitful.
The Telelens
Ever since I took my first moon shots a couple of years back, I knew I wanted to try again sometimes in the future with better equipment. A better camera and a better lens. What defines a better camera and a better lens? A camera with more megapixels for cropping and wider dynamic range definitely helps, as my initial setup only managed to hit an equivalent of 300mm, producing a photo with the moon taking up a small white speck on the frame. It was torturous to even get the focus right at that size. Next would be a lens which had a longer telephoto focal length with image quality sufficient to capture the fine details of the moon craters instead of capturing a photo which can pass off one taken with tiktok face smoothing filters.
The ideal telephoto lens would be a decent 70-200 f2.8, but it’s expensive and not entirely suitable for moon shots or wildlife photography. A 100-400mm lens fits the role better but suffers from poor low light performance and less attractive bokeh. At half the cost of a used 70-200 the price-performance value the 100-400 presents in unbeatable, though if money is not a consideration getting both would be the solution.
The photos above are taken with the Sigma 100-400 lens in good lighting conditions. Focusing seems to be limited by my camera, although with only one body I am unable to confirm the suspicion. The lens performs decently well although it seems to have a tendency to lose focus and get stuck on the far end without being able to refocus back to the subject automatically. The focus ring is also stiff and a little grindy when turned, almost as if sand got into the focus ring.
