23rd December 2018 simon Blogging, Photography, Reviews One comment

Bosch EasyControl room stat and smart rad controllers

This post describes my experience of using the Bosch EasyControl smart room thermostat with smart radiator controllers. Although it will probably be of no interest to anyone who visits my site for it’s photographic content, I hope it will prove useful to people thinking about specifically purchasing the Bosch EasyControl unit or another smart room stat. Bosch EasyControl System The Bosch EasyControl system is a modern replacement for the standard central heating timer and combines the job of room thermostat […]

18th November 2018 simon Blogging, Photography, post processing Leave a comment

Moving from Lightroom to ON1 Photo Raw

A couple of weeks ago I posted how I was trying out Alien Skin Software Exposure X4 as a possible replacement for Lightroom after I’d cancelled my Adobe subscription. Well, in the end I didn’t plumb for Exposure X4, but instead went for the latest release of ON 1 Photo Raw 2019 instead. As I explained in my previous post, I ended up cancelling my subscription to Lightroom quite quickly and so was left without a photo editor. Just as […]

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4th November 2018 simon Blogging, Photography, post processing 2 Comments

A quick look at Alien Skin Exposure X4

Earlier in the year I wrote a post about a software photo package called ON1 Raw because I was planning to cancel my subscription to Lightroom. Well, a couple of days ago went ahead with the cancellation, but instead of ON1 Raw I actually started trialling Alien Skin Exposure X4 as my photo editor. Although I had planned to cancel Lightroom in November, in the end I cancelled it on October 30th and in quite a hurry. I was looking […]

21st October 2018 simon Blogging One comment

Site Changes coming up to simonhawketts.co.uk

I’m finding it difficult to get the time to post articles to this site at the moment because of other work and personal commitments. As well as a major landscaping project in the garden, we are having a new boiler fitted in a couple of days and then we are re-designing and refitting our 20 year old kitchen. On top of this, I’m also planning how I’m going to move my woodworking / DIY workshop from its current location in […]

19th August 2018 simon Blogging, Camcorder, video Leave a comment

8mm film quality compared to VHS-C tape.

It’s a busy time for me at the moment because I’m on holiday for a couple of weeks and instead of going away somewhere I’m doing some garden landscaping at home. However, in between bouts of digging and bricklaying, I’m also trying to take the next steps in my project to build an 8mm telecine machine. Because I haven’t made much progress on that project, a couple of weeks ago I purchased a few old VHS-C camcorder tapes because they […]

29th July 2018 simon Blogging, Marconi Instruments 3 Comments

Memories of Marconi Instruments

This is an introductory post to some reminiscences of my time at Marconi Instruments in St Albans, Stevenage and Luton. I will probably follow up with other posts as I recall incidents over the total of 24 years I worked for Marconi Instruments, from October 1978 to April 2002. Although this won’t be interesting to a large number of people, I want to document what I can still remember before I inevitable forget it and also the act of writing […]

23rd November 2017 simon Blogging Leave a comment

Site subscription changes

A short post explaining how you should re-subscribe if the email notification is important to you.