Rob Faucher's Blog

In a previous post I wrote about the Ontario Regiment Museum in Oshawa and posted a number of photos of tanks and other armoured vehicles on static display.  Since then, I have been awaiting for a “Tank Saturday” where they roll by a number of restored and operational tanks and other armoured vehicles.  I am a bit of a military geek, so this was a real treat.

I truly admire the volunteers at the Ontario Regiment Museum, not only are they keeping these historic machines running, they have done a terrific job of preserving our local military history and honouring those brave souls who have fought for Canada.  This place is one of Durham County’s best kept secrets and I highly recommend a visit.

M4 A2 E8 Medium Battle Tank – Sherman

I really enjoyed seeing these lumbering machines roll by and fun was had by volunteers and spectators alike.  The summer is not over and I am looking forward to the next Tank Saturday.

I made a video of the event using my Pentax K-3.  This was actually the first time I used the K-3 to shoot video and it seems to to a decent job.  I also attached a cheap stereo boom microphone I got from Ebay since the K-3’s built in mono microphone is mediocre.

The footage was cobbled together with freeware editing software (kdenlive) for Linux.  I decided to add royalty free military music to the video.  The sound of the tanks was really cool, but it was offset by incomprehensible and distorted commentary spewing forth from a dysfunctional megaphone.  Hence the decision to smother it with music.  It was so garbled, it reminded me of that great comic scene in Jacques Tati’s classic film, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, where passengers at a train station are trying to decipher directions from an equally muddled public address system and it causes them to run randomly from platform to platform.

The footage was shot handheld with a heavy DA* 16-50 f2.8 lens, so expect some wobbly cam.   If anything, this first effort shows I’m still a green vidiot when it comes to video.  Make sure to watch the 720P version.  By default the wordpress youtube player shows the lo-res version.

As usual, please peruse the image gallery 🙂

10 item(s)

A few flowers and bird feeder is all it takes to bring a little bit of nature into one’s backyard.  It’s a good excuse to try out my new macro lens and put that big Sigma telephoto lens to good use.  Best of all, I don’t have to go far and I can smoke a cigar and drink some wine or beer and not worry about the fuzz ruining my day.   Here’s are some photos that run from the cute to creepy.  At least I stayed sober enough to still pull focus 🙂

[Show as slideshow]

All photos taken with a Pentax K-5, Pentax 100mm f.28 macro and Sigma 150-500 f5-6.3 APO telephoto.