Knuckledragger

Oof. Matt Perry dies at age 54, apparent drowning.

Richard Moll, who found fame as a bailiff on the original sitcom ‘Night Court,’ dies at 80. RIP Bull.

Cars and cats, mostly. Firewatch_IRL. Mural in Amsterdam. First generation Mazda RX-7. Scotland has a police tractor.. "Put it in 'H'!" 300ZX Twin Turbo. Least confused Masshole. "Trophy wife." Trump's lawyer is using an Asus gaming laptop. 1971 Jeep J3000 pick-up. Studebaker Golden Hawk.

Nothing will top the ear-rape of playing Killing Floor with Colin, a decade or so ago.

Very long term HCers (which most of y'all, TBH) might remember I own a misfit assortment of vintage McIntosh gear. How vintage? 1969. Older than me. For reasons not worth explaining, in 1999 I got two C-22 preamps and one MC-75 amplifier. Two stereo preamps, one monophonic amplifier. Not exactly useful. With that said, I've stubborn held on to them for 24 years and counting. Today I moved them, and the amp nearly killed me. Glamor photo of the boat anchor I took in 2009. One of the pair of C-22s after I had all of the above serviced, 2009. A bunch of the Mac kit and other crap, hanging out in a spare bedroom, 2013. I stuffed the Mac kit, plus a bunch of other electronics, into an upstairs closed before I exited the mainland this past January. It collected quite a bit of dust. The MC75, looking rather grubby. I had a very bad moment getting it down the stairs. I grabbed it from the closet floor, and attempted to stand up. I was not wearing my back brace (100% necessary when lifting things these days.) I could stand up while holding the Mac. My legs said "yeah, that's not happening." Getting old is a real MFer. Eventually I got myself and the amp upright, but at significant cost to my back. After the above photo was taken, I did locate my back brace (stable door and all.) I loaded two pieces of framed artwork into the Fit (not exactly a specious vehicle) and used the MC-75 as a, well, anchor to hold them in place. There it sits. Yes, I straightened the damn 12BH7 once I caught my breath. This is the Fit, mostly packed. In there (besides all the Mac kit) is a Dynaco monoblock (visible behind the lamp), 3 wood clamps, a Technics SL-1200 Mk II, a Symetrix 528E voice processor (direly in need of servicing), a California Labs tube DAC I got from ...one HCer or other (which also needs repair), a Parasound DAC (still running strong, 30 years later), a Tascam 122 Mk III (the greatest cassette deck in history, I will die on this hill) that ALSO needs repair, a shit ton of semi-valuable fabric items used as packing material, my tool chest, and a giant "Ricky Ricardo" style chandelier. My (sainted, octogenarian) mother thinks I'm nucking futs. She's not wrong. My back is killing me.

A friend of mine posted about that thrift find in Discord. Turd in the punchbowl opinion: The Canon 50mm/1.2 is ass. It has remarkably lousy bokeh. It's better than the old Canon 50mm F/1.0, but so is basically everything else. TBH I'd rather have a good 50/1.8 like the OG 1986 Mk I. In the age of modern DSLRs and their insane high ISO settings, super fast primes are really not necessary. The cost and weight penalty brought on by super fast lenses is almost never worth it. Also everything I said above is not true for the the Canon 85L, and as best I can tell the Nikon and Sony 85/1.4s. Maybe I'm biased (I am) but the designs used in lenses longer than 50mm render OOF highlights in a much more pleasing fashion. In the case of the 85L specifically, it has this brilliant property of transitioning from the in-focus area to OOF seamlessly. The 85L paints the background in a way that the 50/1.2L completely fails to do. I have a bunch of photos I took back in the fall of '09 with the 85L and my crappy-ever-for-its-time 30D. I re-edited a bunch in the last few years. I posted some here a while ago, and I'll dig up a few more example later. Right now my (sainted, octogenarian) mother is pestering me to pack the cars to drive back to MV tomorrow.

I rescued what I believe is my grandfather's old table from my father's barn today: My grandfather went into a nursing home in 1994. My grandmother lived another 3 years but passed in 1997. My grandfather actually outlived my father by 6 months(!) There was a lot of chaos in my life between August of 2000 (when my father died) and uh ...today, really. At some point in the last 23 years I figured out that my father had grabbed a bunch of my grandfather's tools from the Vineyard and dragged them back here to the mainland. I don't think he ever actually did anything with them (he was already sick with the cancer that would take him.) I am far less inclined with anything involving woodworking than the previous two generations of men in my family. My grandfather build this house in the 50s, and expanded it in the 70s: (Seen here in regular digital, HDR, and Velvia 50, because I am a different kind of nut.) He also built this barn he called "The Doghouse": He also built the toolshed we moved next to it. My father, who was inhumanly energetic, invariably the smartest person in the room, and relentlessly competitive, was not going to be outdone. He built barns bigger than most people's houses: This was the "woodshed" he built, but he never actually put firewood in it. It turns out that he was even better at stuffing buildings full of ...shit, really. Meanwhile I'm barely qualified to assemble a shelf. Also I find most power tools kind of scary. Especially spinning blades. On the plus side, I still have all my fingers. Either way I'm dragging my grandfather's tools back to MV where they belong.

Not bad for a budget system.

I mentioned Katherine the dancer a number of times, but I haven't posted a photo of her in ages. She was a woman I met in a local nightclub not quite 20 years ago. She was a dancer in the New York club scene in the early 90s. For a variety of reasons she left NYC and now lives in a hill town in western MA. Katherine is ...quite a character, but I always had very good chemistry with her as a subject for photography. I took two sets of photos with her in 2006. The first of which was about 3 days after I got my first DSLR (the never very good EOS 30D) and the second was with the same camera 3 months later. At that time I had bought a 35mm F/2 and 50mm F/1.4. I also had learned quite a bit about taking photos, but still effectively knew nothing. Starting 2020, I began revisiting and re-editing the shots I took during those two sessions. I still pick away at the remaining unedited ones that I think are worth pursuing, but I'm largely done. In '06, I ran a bunch of the photos through the Holga and Lomo Photoshop scripts I liked at the time. In retrospect, it's clear I leaned in to lo-fi nature of the results those scripts produced to mask flaws present in the originals. 14 years later, I had different ideas, software and skills for editing photos. Instead of overly dramatic PS scripts, I've been working the use of lookup tables. LUTs are a thing primarily used in video, but with some careful work they can make subtle but impactful changes in still images as well. This shot always reminded me of the Houses of the Holy album cover. Taken with the never spectacular EF 75-300mm F/4-5.6 USM III. Her face is a bit blurred in this one, but I like the look of determination. A rare B&W conversion. This one just works better without color. Observant viewers will note that while I left behind many of my mid-00s bad habits, I still put a vignette effect on most of these images. I like how it looks on portraits.

These things are wild. Crazy phase correcting technology that I barely understand.

There's a French fella on Flickr named SBA73. He's got a Soviet made KMZ FT-2 panoramic camera from the mid 60s. Weird AF looking device. He's quite good with it: Apparently he develops the film himself.

125lb ~1200mm (1217mm, specifically) F/6.3 aerial espionage lens from WWII: It makes an "if you have to ask" sized image circle.

I like everything except for the position of that rotary mixer. Nobody wants to use a mixer placed at 90º near gut level. DJ Pro Tip(tm): Mixer location is far more important than where the decks are.

Cursed AI attempts a Christmas album by Arnie: I censored this one. AI legit dropped the hard-R N-word here.

Variations on theme:

There's a new AI generated meme, pizzagator. It started when someone posted this series of 3 images to the Midjourney subreddit asking if the images were real or AI generated. While the OP was almost assuredly trolling, the post went viral and to the top of reddit. That was two days ago. In the fast moving world of the internet and AI generated images, a lot as transpire. I know it wasn't the author's intention, but this one almost looks like blackface. I have no idea how a picture of Trump kissing a pig got into this set, but I'm leaving it. It's impressive how badly AI fucked up that pizza.

I've been lurking on the large format subreddit for a while now. It's given me mixed feelings. Some (many) of the submissions are remarkably poor. I see people laboring with giant cameras and expensive film stock (is there any other kind at this point?) producing results that can be charitably described as mediocre. For me the issue isn't the composition or exposure, it's the printing. Of course that's where the real skills of a B&W photographer come out. Conversely, there's a dude with a Linhof Technorama 617s III (a "small" Lin that shoots panoramas on 120 film, and costs north of $8500 without a lens) and a Schneider Tele-Xenar 250mm MC F/5.6 (around $7000). German gear is is kilometers deep into "if you have to ask" territory, schweinhund. With that said, the Linhof is a handsome looking unit: The lens looks like ...every other Schneider to me, but I will admit I know jack shit about them in general. The widget necessary to attach the Schneider to the Linhof is ...odd. All of this is superfluous, because the dude who uses ^ is a bit of a mushroom cloud laying MFer: NYC sunset on Ektar 100. Some place in the US I think. Ektar 100. Schneider Apo-Symmar L 180mm F/5.6, Ilford Kentmere Pan 400, 25A filter. Old Westbury Gardens, Schneider Apo-Symmar L 180mm F/5.6, Ilford SFX 200 | R72 IR filter. NYC night, Super Angulon XL 58mm F/5.6, Kodak Ektar 100. There's also a few brave souls who shoot Velvia on large format. 4x5" w/ a 90mm something-or-other. I rate this one a solid Velvia/10. I think most modern cars are hideous, indistinguishable lumps. These shots are amazing. Velvia panorama. The above are the exceptions and not the rule of what I've seen in the LF subreddit. It's enough to make me swear off anything bigger than 35mm forever. The rest of the time I think about selling the mainland house and buying a Tachihara 11x14" field camera.

RIP Tim Wakefield, Boston Red Sox relief pitcher. 57 years old is awfully young. Also screw Curt Schilling who is never not an absolute clown.

I have a post about photos I took of Katherine the dancer in 2006 and am still processing in 2023 with modern software (and, ahem, 17+ years of refined skills) as well as what I've actually been doing lately. That's all gonna hafta wait because I learned that it's possible to attach the absolutely gargantuan Canon FD 800mm F/5.6L to Canon DSLRs and Sony mirrorless bodies. Or attach the lens to the camera, as the case may be. To the surprise of no one, the old FD 800L is a cult lens. Of course someone stuck one on a Graflex Speed Graphic 4x5 camera. Don't ask me about coverage. WTF does one shoot with an optical trombone like that? The moon, obviously. Long teles are actually really good for landscapes. They compress the perceived distance between objects. This is reason #497 why large format cameras are better at landscape photos. Sony bodies actually let the user enter the lens type so it appears in EXIF. It might be the case that modern Canons can do this as well. Now this is my kind of photo. Nearing abstraction. There are also a legion of critter photos taken with the FD 800. TBH if I had one I'd probably attempt that as well. Quack.

Each bottle represents one year. I have ...questions. Squint. True for most people under 40. Sprocket Rocket, Kodak ColorPlus200, a Swiss kitty.