My old favorite camera strap

I bought this strap about 14 years ago, to have a padded strap for my film cameras that I was using on long day-hikes in the Santa Cruz mountains.  It was far more comfortable than the stiff woven ones that were contemporary with the camera(s) (an 80s Sears-branded pentax and a 70's(?) Yashica).

When we bought the D50 8 years ago, I immediately moved this strap to it, as it's far better than the strap that came with the camera.

It's a simple strap, but a design that I highly recommend as a replacement for the stock straps that come with cameras.

This exact strap doesn't appear to be available any longer, but a very similar one with quick releases is currently available.  I'm not sure how I feel about the plastic quick releases on the new version.

Luma Cinch Camera Strap

Ever since I bought the D600, I've wanted a new camera strap.  The ones from Nikon are clearly meant as a token, and work as advertising for them (and to thieves as to the expense of your camera).

Our older camera, a D50, has a strap on it that I first bought 14 years ago, to replace the "vintage" stap that I had (woven blue/white/black pattern).  It's neoprene was far more comfortable.

So I've been looking at the Black Rapid, and a few others, and was pointed to Luma Labs by a friend.  The Loop was interesting, but out of production due to a patent lawsuit from Black Rapid.  Which also excluded the Black Rapid strap, as I wasn't too keen on their business practices with that lawsuit.

After reading a number of reviews, I settled on the Luma Cinch, with the QR plate, although I don't have a need for QR at this time.  I wanted the solid mounting point that the QR plate offers, and the positioning for when a heavier lens is attached.

The cinch with plate includes:

• the cinch strap itself
• arca-swiss compatible qr plate
• mounting screw for qr plate
• optional locating pins for qr plate (if your tripod mount uses them)
• allen wrenches for the pins and mounting screw

My first impressions:

The strap is really nice.  Well stitched, with a thick neoprene pad, with solid hardware.  The cinching sliders are really impressive for their each of movement, and their ability to stay put.

But... The mounting screw is a typical black oxide socket head cap screw.  This will rust in the wet.  They should have used a stainless screw for this, not black oxide.  I'll be swapping this out at a later date, as I'm not sure I can find 1/4"-20 socket head cap screws very easily here in Paris.

The allen wrenches and the screw are lightly oiled (for rust prevention), so your fingers will get a little dirty when installing (you can see some residue in the below photo of the bag).

Mounting the straps to the camera and the base is straightforward:

And all done, now to just adjust the straps and get it to sit right while wearing it.

Wearing

Going from a "neck" strap, worn loose (and often worn cross-body), to a dedicated cross-body strap is a little unusual feeling.  But it's easy to adjust the camera to different heights at your lower-back or hip.

Fully cinched up, the camera is quite stable, easy to put into the small of your back, which is where I prefer to carry it, especially here in Paris with crowded streets and with bollards right at camera-bashing height if worn to the side of your hip.

When you want to "deploy" the camera, it's quick and easy to loosed the strap, and rotate it to bring the camera up and around.  I've found that I need to keep the back strap almost fully extended to be able to easily bring it up and forward.  Fully taking in the front half of the strap nicely plants the camera again.

If wearing the camera low at your side, you should be careful of having it too long, so that the camera can touch the ground when crouching.  As the parent of a toddler, this is a common occurrence for me.  A lightweight lens plus speedlight rotated the camera such that the speedlight could easily hit the ground when crouching down to her level.

After an evening of food blogging photography, I definitely like it.  But the real test will be a longer photowalk trip, or a day out sightseeing with the camera being continually brought up for use, and then put back for ease of movement.

Food Blogging: French Mushrooms

Today I decided to get up the courage to try the fantastic-looking mushrooms that I've been seeing at the green grocers.  I'm very glad that I did.

I picked up a basket each of:

• Cêpes
• Girolles (Golden Chanterelles)
• Trumpettes Noirs (black trumpets, another chanterelle)

To get an idea of the taste of each, we sautéed them in nothing but butter (as some reading suggested that most of the flavors popped when cooked as they are fat-soluble.

The Cêpes

The cêpes were very meaty, and due to the accidental use of higher heat than expected, they came out like mushroomy, meaty (pork), potato chips, but not quite so crunchy.  Very tasty.

Les Girolles

Fruity/flowery and peppery.  Apricot is one description that I read, and I'd agree with that.

Les Trumpettes Noirs

These taste like mushrooms.  Earthy, meaty, and delicious.  These are going to be fantastic in omelets.

And when mixed with the Girolles, they complement each other wonderfully.

Food Blogging: French Toast à la Française

Today I made one of those staples of American cooking, French Toast.

Doing this here in Paris isn't hard, since I don't follow much of a recipe to start with (I guesstimate all the ingredient amounts, and it's pretty forgiving.  But making it in Paris gives you access to a slightly different set of ingredients than normal

Qu'est que ce?

ooh, la la!  Fresh pain de brioche from the bakery a block away.

And with that, we need to add some other ingredients:

• Fresh eggs
• heavy cream
• butter (unsalted)
• vanilla extract
• cinnamon

and, to give some extra flavor while cooking in the pan:

And of course, an assistant to help in the kitchen:

Slice the bread to your desired thickness.  I went with about 1cm (1/2") this morning.

In a bowl, whisk together:

• 2 large eggs 
• 1-2tbs of heavy cream
• cinnamon
• vanilla extract (1-2 tsp)
• pinch of salt (since the butter is unsalted)

The proportions are all very hand-wavy, I'm not sure if these are even close, I just go "that's about right" every time.  I should really measure it all out sometime.

But, doing it this way causes the cinnamon to do that thing where it clumps up, instead of diffusing itself through the mixture:

 
There's an easy solution to that.  Put the cinnamon (or any dry powder) into the bowl first, and add a tiny bit of liquid to it, and mix.  I've found that the alcohol in vanilla extract, or fatty/oily liquids work better than watery ones (milk is awful for this).  After a very short bit, you should get a paste that you can then easily mix into your other liquid ingredients (and the eggs):

Pour your mixture (this is the first round, where the cinnamon wasn't properly mix) into a shallow dish with a flat bottom:

Drop in 1-2 pieces of bread, depending on the size of your pan, and coat both sides of the bread.  Don't let the bread soak up too much mixture, or it will end up being too eggy.

Heat up your pan to medium or so (about where you fry eggs at), and then add 1tbsp of butter to the pan, and some of the walnut oil.  Mix the oil into the melted butter, and coat the whole pan surface.

You want a pan with a flat bottom, not one with a domed surface like this one.  Our good pans are in storage, these are the ones in the apartment.  I miss our Le Creuset cast iron pan, which is wonderful for this sort of thing.

If you don't think you've got enough cinnamon on the bread, you can sprinkle more on while it's in the pan (on the wet side):

Cook to a golden brown on both sides:

Et Voilà, c'est fini!

Using fresh brioche (which isn't too dry), allows the surface to be nicely cooked with the egg mixture, but without making it an egg-bomb.  Notice how light and airy it is.  A brioche with a fine crumb will work better than one with big air bubbles in it.

And now, for the test:

What do you think, does she like it?

Yeah, that's what I thought.  She likes it.

Notre Dame

Notre Dame is probably Paris's second most famous landmark.  This is my quest to get some decent photographs it.

---

The first week we were in town, we went to the Île de la Cité, the Island of the City, in the middle of the Seine.  Unfortunately, it was overcast and grey.

The cathedral is amazing.  The scale is hard to wrap your head around as you walk up to it.

We climbed the temporary bleachers that face it (setup for the 850th anniversary of the cathedral), and admired it.  But none of photos from that really came out well.

We walked around it's south side, through the park between it and the edge of the island.

There's a great view from there of all the detail that went into the upper stories: the buttresses, sculptures, and gargoyles.

The best find there, though, was the small playground.  My daughter had a blast.  I love that Paris is sprinkled with little playgrounds.

We walked around the south side, and then crossed the bridge at the east of the island so we could go to the other island, Îsle Saint-Louis, to get lunch and (hopefully) some Berthillon ice cream.  No luck on the ice cream front.  But as we crossed the bridges, we saw that the view of the cathedral was better from the bridges and the Left Bank.

This is taken from Îsle Saint-Louis, right at the edge of the wall, above the quay.

But an overcast day just doesn't make for great photographs.

---

So during our week off that we took in July, we tried again.  No go, it was overcast again, and the lines were ugly, so we went to Ste Chapelle instead.

So about a week ago, the weather looked nice, with lots of big puffy clouds going past, so I decided to head back down while my daughter was napping, and see if I could finally wrangle some good photos of the cathedral.

And I planned ahead, thinking that I might have the best luck on the edge of the Left Bank.  And I think I was right.

I took the Metro to the Cité station, and then headed straight South, crossing the Petit Pont.  I was rewarded with a view of the cathedral that was about the right scale to actually see it, but there were trees in the way from here at the middle of the bridge.

So I finished crossing, and starting walking along the edge of the sidewalk, peeking at the cathedral through gaps between the sales stalls.

Getting better.  But it wasn't until I got to Pont au Double, the pedestrian-only bridge that runs to right in front of the cathedral, that I started getting some great views.

Then I went down the steps and started taking photos from down on the quay.  It's really a great place to view the cathedral from:

It's nice being able to get some glimpses of people for scale, too.

And from there, with a long lens, you can still make out all the wonderful detail, which is easier to see now that the sun is out.

I admit to having a soft spot for the gargoyles.

Once again, the view from Pont de l'Archevêché is wonderful.  Although not everyone is a fan of the locks.

I ended in Square Jean XXIII, which is at the East end of the cathedral.  It quite a lovely place, with the fountain and all the flowers.

The full set of photos from the last trip are here, with geo-encoding if you really want to see where I was standing.