Knuckledragger

That Mountain Dew set caused me to fall down a deep cursed AI rabbit hole. There's gonna be a lot of such images mixed in with the regular Slow. Most sane Gary Busey fanfic. In the parlance of our times, most comprehensible AI meme.

I can't recall if I posted the screenshot of the "Workers in Tennessee collecting the Dew from the Mountains" post in here or not. Either way, here's the whole set.

I'm jealous of this room.

Setup by Devon Turnbull at the Lisson Gallery in New York. I don't mind it except for the turntable, which gives me PTSD flashbacks to elementary school. I saw Mr. Turnbull described as a "hi-fi influencer" which is a term I refuse to accept.

Neat setup, but I'd not want to DJ from that position.

The following is in poor taste, uncalled for, and downright mean: In all seriousness, I hope Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr gets the medical attention he needs ...just as soon as he gets out of office.

I have (another) long winded post about cheap cameras with plastic lenses in the works, but I've been distracted by artificial intelligence. Someone has let loose an AI bot on Flickr. The account has six photos uploaded to Flickr. They are all very competently done. The images have full EXIF, so it's clear they were all taken with a 5D III, in the last few years. Here's where it gets weird. This bot account scans images uploaded by other users then spams an AI generated comment on them. It's weird and inhuman. Some examples: The Edgartown lighthouse, April 2007. Dollar Store Camera and Kodak Gold 200. The bot says: You fuckin' WOT, m8? The EDG lighthouse is famously short and about as majestic as a seagull. (NB: This is unfair to seagulls, which can appear quite majestic while flying.) "Calming body of water." lol. Sweetened Water Pond (across the street from where I now live) in November 2006. Dollar Store Camera, Kodak Gold 200. Authentic light leaks and muddy colors. The bot says: Definitely some "vibrant hues" and "lush trees" going on here. SMH my head, as the kids say. This bot account commented on a bunch of photos in a similar fashion. I'm not entirely sure what is the goal of the operator of this account, but it seems to be working. The photos on bot's account page have hundreds of favorites and comments. Also today I discovered that one of my old Flickr contacts, who used to do square landscapes and artistic model shoots has switched things up a bit. His work looked like this years ago: Iceland 2009. Just down the street from Birgir! (Not really.) Paris 2010. Model in France, 2010. This guy is now posting porn. AI generated porn. Of thick black women. Initially I thought they were real, but AI's "uncanny valley" lighting almost invariably gives itself away. NSFW: This one has a "bo-ob." It's a really weird time to be alive.

It's true that black and white print film has no equals when it comes to capturing and reproducing a wide dynamic range of values. It's also true that at LEAST half the work with B&W film is in the darkroom, making prints. Ansel Adams was an undisputed master of this process. Henri Cartier-Bresson claimed to be allergic to developer chemicals and had other people do the work for him. I've never shot, developed nor printed B&W print film, so I am in no position to talk shit. So anyway, there's this fake-ass B&W film that Kodak used to make called BW400CN. It's black and white film that is developed the same way color print film is done. Meaning it's easy for scrubs who don't have access to a darkroom, and a total gamble as far as results go. Also, I have great beginner's luck followed by a roller coaster plunge. Let's come out of the gate swinging. This is one of the best shots I've ever taken and will ever take. The inside of the Edgartown lighthouse, 07/28/08 - 3:43PM. 17-40L at the wide end, Canon Rebel K2, Kodak BW400CN. This shot is lightning in a bottle. Here's the underside of that same bottle. Looking out the porthole. This photogenic little trustafarian fuck blew out my surf guitar amp, returned it to me broken, and then de-friended me on Facebook. Kodak Rebel G, Kodak BW400CN, and the mighty Meyer-Optik Orestor 135mm F/2.8 showing off why it's a "bokeh monster." My friend Alyssa's patented look of disapproval. 5/25/08 - 7:00AM at the breakfast diner. EOS Rebel K2, EF 85mm F/1.8. Kodak BW400CN. Okay, let's drop that other shoe, shall we? 02/22/09 - 5:04PM - 17-40mm @ 17mm, F/8, 1/45th. Rebel K2. Kodak BW400CN. This is an absolute nightmare. The soup nazi says "No midtones for you!" The ancestral cottage on MV, 09/15/09 - 5:34PM - 17-40L @ 17mm, F/9.5, 1/180th, Kodak BW400CN. This one is actually one of the better frames from the second two rolls. 10/04/09 - 5:25PM - 17-40L @ 17mm, F/13, 1/30th, Rebel K2, BW400CN. The lack of midtones and detail in general is appalling. I actually like the composition of the shot, even if my dumb ass had the lens hood on the wrong way. See that black bit in the upper left corner? Memento Mori. 10/06/09 - 5:43PM. Rebel K2. Kodak BW400CN. The mushroom cloud laying motherfucker of a lens that is the Canon EF 85mm F/1.2L II @ F/2, 1/2000th. I had to stop down because the poor Rebel K2 said "bro, I can't move my shutter fast enough to compensate for that much light!" Leave it to a bad BW400CN run to wreck 85L bokeh. The road where hopes for midtones go to die. 03/06/09 - 5:19PM - 17-40mm @ 24mm, F/13, 1/350th. I have a bunch more, but I've made my point. I still have one last roll of BW400CN, some 14 years later. I dunno if I can be arsed to expose it. At this point I'd rather attempt to develop Tri-X in my bathroom.

The Monochrom does show a lot of values of gray. It's funny how it just ends suddenly with low light detail. To my eye it behaves more like slide film that B&W print film in that regard. Related: Anyone remember when B&W slide film was a (common) thing? It's all but nonexistent these days.

I forget who said it, nor do I remember the exact quote, but words I live by are "The biggest enemy of present you is past you." I have spent more time than I want to contemplate going over film exposures I took in 2008. My first EOS film body was a Rebel G, which I only used for a few rolls before getting a Rebel K2. My notes for the exposures I took with the Rebel G are spotty at best. For at lest one roll of film (Kodak Supra 400) I did take careful notes on the time, date and lens used. The problem is that I did not save this list anywhere I can find. 2008 was a tumultuous year for me. My at that point aged Windows XP machine went kaput due to a bad motherboard. I bought my first Mac laptop in 2008. I then spent considerable time copy all data off the pile of HDDs that were inside the old Windows box. Related, it was during this time period that I lost a really important 30GB archive "DJ Mixes and music by SoulSeek members." This is irreplaceable data from the early days of slsk, including mixes from a bunch of OG members at least two of whom are no longer with us. It was also during this time that I lost some photography related data: A number of entire photo sets are gone, as is the meta data notes for I don't know how many rolls of film. I have developed an eye where I can approximate FoV on full frame to make reasonably good guesses as to what lens I was using in many situations. I recognize what my 35mm F/2 looks like. I can usually identify a 50mm. I can spot the damn 300mm Orestegor, because I used it sparingly at best (now would be a great time to question why I feel the need to own two of them, but I digress) and because it's FoV is like nothing else I own. Telling apart my 135mm and 200mm primes? Not so easy. I have to reconstruct what lens I thought I was using on unknown shots by cross referencing them with frames I uploaded in 2008. This has been a maddening process. For example: I suspect both of these shots were taken with my 200mm F/4 Orestegor. A lens, I might add, that I cannot currently locate. I have torn apart my house looking for it. I found the pleather case I used to store it for 15 years, but not lens itself. As the kids say, inb4 I buy a second copy of the zebra 200mm. Both these shots had the lousy noise that color print film generates on a coin flip and in the latter case, off colors. I ran them both through Topaz DeNoise AI and did some mild adjustment in Photoshop. I really make it a point to not do drastic edits to print exposures if I can help it. This was definitely taken with my 35mm F/2. I'd know it's DoF vs FoV anywhere. Similarly, I recognize its bokeh. Looking the other direction on the same morning. Again, I'd be willing to bet that this is the 35mm F/2. The noise in the original was awful, so I ran it through Topaz again. I didn't make any other changes. I actually quite like the look of this shot. It might be a hair underexposed, but I think it works in this case. The diminutive Edgartown lighthouse. This shot was awfully noisy, so I spent longer than I usually do in Topaz, removing noise but not erasing the film grain. What I recall is that it was the middle of the day and a fog bank rolled in out of nowhere. Such weather conditions are not exactly unheard of on an island. The Edgartown docks. What I like to call the "poor section" of town. EOS Rebel G, EF 35mm F/2 and Kodak Supra 400. I did a mild denoising with Topaz and slight cleanup in Photoshop. Once again I had to work backwards from photos I uploaded in '08 to figure out the time, date and lens. What I have not done and really need to do is create a new local text file with the information I've reverse engineered today. Flickr is a side that's been around for nearly 20 years, but I do have some doubts about its future. The truth I have data stored on there that I don't have locally. Right now I have strong desire to do ...anything except for digging up old exposure data. Ugh. It stopped raining so I think I'm going to take my boat anchor of a 5D IV for a stroll.

We're fast approaching a point where it will impossible, even for those in the know, to differentiate between AI generated gobbledygook and genuine audiophool purple prose.

Did I say film scans? I mean "through the viewfinder" silliness. So there's a longstanding technique of pointing modern digital cameras at the viewfinder of old film cameras. Specifically top down viewfinders as most TLRs have. This process works best with medium format cameras that have large, square viewfinders. I don't have one of those. I do have an early 50s Praktica F. X 2 35mm SLR that has a wacky waist level viewfinder. First off, the photo that inspired me, all the way back in 2009: Oskars Cirsis on Flickr pointed his D700 at his Pentacon Six (neither of which I have and both of which I covet) and really hit it out of the park. He wisely removed the viewfinder hood, which would make the Six hard to use, but much easier to photograph. It only took me 14 years to finally get around to trying out this technique myself. Alex Yanchenkov did the same thing in late 2012 with a 5D Mk II pointed at a Kiev 60. Same idea done in 2018 with an iPhone by Josh White on Flickr. The iPhone's pseudo HDR makes the process much easier. As I have said, I don't have a medium format camera. I've priced out various MF SLRs and TLRs on the 'bay, and they suffer from the "small pickup truck syndrome." 10-15 years ago, they were dirt cheap on the used market. Now they're all "no lowballs, I know what I have." It's a really weird time to be alive. The F. X 2 SLR I have is 35mm of course, so it has a much smaller viewfinder. It also has a pesky flip out focusing loupe which gets in the way: It folds away ...mostly. Also my poor F. X 2 is much, much more dirty than this example and no amount of cleaning will fully restore it. With that said, others have used this exact camera for through the viewfinder photos: Both done with a smartphone. The telltale pseudo HDR is all over these shots. NB: I don't hate the fake tonemapping that smartphone camera apps do for snapshots but it's one of those things that cannot be unseen. So anyway, I've made a couple attempts at my own TTV shots over the last few days: F. X 2 with an Ashai Super-Takuma 50mm F/1.4, wide open and infinity focused. Shot with a 5D IV and 35mm F/2 (F/16, 1/4, ISO100) which has had a broken AF motor since 2009. I used a pair of tripods, so there's legs visible all over the place. Same as above, except for I swapped my Tair 11a 135mm F/2.8 in place of the Ashai. The following day, with the Ashai 50 again, this time using my iPhone (which weighs about 1/100 of what the 5D on a tripod does). It was not my plan to capture the truck in the middle of the viewfinder. I was explicitly trying to avoid any cars, but I live on a busy road. Even on a Sunday, there's a bustle of vehicles going past. With all of this said, the truck did manage to get itself framed rather well. "I meant to do that!" Bonus: This is what the setup looked like from my first attempt (using my 17-40 vs the 35mm). The problem here was that the sun was beating down on the deck and the camera body was brighter than the viewfinder. Also, I've been looking at non working medium format cameras on the 'bay. The problem here is that besides the "small pickup truck" syndrome, TLRs are for the most part quite good looking cameras. People like having a TLR as an art piece on their mantle or wherever. While I'd love to have a non-working Rollei (Bill Tague's personal one, photographed by me in 2010), the prices of them are too expensive for what they are. I understand the appeal. Rollies are beautiful mechanical marvels. There are some cheaper models out there: This Ansco Anscoflex II TLR 620 is $50 plus shipping. It is, and I want to be delicate here, also the UGLIEST GODDAMN CAMERA I HAVE SEEN IN MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE. It has the most horrific institutional aesthetic to it imaginable. It looks like it was used for mugshots in 1963. It is genuinely so repugnant I'd rather be condemned to a life of shooting Kodak Gold 200 than ever use it. I'd rather quit photography for another 10 years than have it in my house.

Austria is offering free public transportation for a year, but you have to get a specific tattoo first. Did they even say it out loud before enacting such a policy? Even read it back once to themselves?

What.

Obligatory,

Spilled tumeric. #brandnewsentence

I've been going through scans of film exposures I took in '06-09. I had very mixed results. For reasons still unclear to me, I had massive beginner's luck with Kodak BW400CN and Fuji Velvia 50, followed by some just awful photos (largely due to bad processing I think.) I experienced hugely mixed results with Kodak Gold 200, which is to say I did quite well with a meh film stock. I also had a lot of fun with a couple trash cams. One I bought at a dollar store in 2006: Shown here last week (taken with my new 5D IV and 85/1.8). I actually had two of these IIRC. A black one and this blue one. Both have crappy plastic 35mm F/11 lenses and lots of light leaks. I got rid of the black one at some point, because one dollar store camera is arguably too many. I also had (and still have) a Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim: Seen here in the summer of '08. It's got a 28mm F/22 lens and considerable better build quality than the $1 camera. It's still a plastic toy, but it's a damn Leica by comparison. I put 3 rolls of film through the $1 camera(s), and one through the Vivitar. I had mixed results with both. At the time, I only uploaded a handful of photos from each roll. Revisiting the scans I'm much more forgiving of bad shots now. My relaxed attitude is for a host of reasons not the least of which is the fact that's been 15 years. Below are only newly uploaded photos. I might go over some ones I liked back in '08 later. The family cottage on MV, taken with the $1 camer and Kodak Gold 200 in November of '06. I really like this shot, and not just because the cottage has been torn down for over a dozen years now. The $1 camera managed to do organically what all the Hipstamatic type cameraphone apps attempt to recreate. The hill across the street from my house on MV, November '06. This shot has been hugely popular on Flickr and I'm not entirely sure why. The truth is that it was a cold November day, but not nearly as bleak looking as the $1 camera and Kodak Gold made it out to be. Pointing a cheap plastic camera with an F/11 lens and fixed 1/30th shutter at the setting sun is a dumb idea. This is a terribly exposed shot, but the car with is headlights on makes the image for me. I get a strong 70s horror movie aesthetic from it. My yard on the mainland, October '06. Six years before I had a bunch of trees cut down. That's an authentic $1 camera light leak on the side there. The view from my back yard on MV, April 07. $1 camera and Kodak Gold engaging in some impressive synergy here. Another shot of my back yard, very similar to the one above. Most of those trees are gone now. What these two shots illustrate is that lighting is the single most important part of photography. Also water is wet, and I strongly suspect it rolls downhill. Edgartown Harbor with Chappaquiddick in the background. That's the famous Mad Max catamaran sailing along, which is something I only just down figured out. My mother had a good friend on MV for many years named Ruth. She was an Austrian, born in 1924. Ruth had done a great many things including being a skilled sailor. She spent her last years owning a farm on Chappaquiddick (Chappy is not that big and there are not many farms on it.) Ruth took a very dim view of Mad Max precisely because it was a catamaran. The first shot I ever took with my Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L, 7/23/08 - 5:58PM (by that point I'd learned to take mostly complete notes on time and exposure.) I had the 17-40 attached to my Rebel K2 loaded with Fuji Superia X-Tra ISO 800 bleh print film. Not a very interesting shot, but it was my first time using the 17-40 on a full frame format. None of the photos I've posted so far had any edits to them, except for this one. The colors were too washed out and the contrast was just awful, so I relented and did a slightly cleanup in Photoshop. $1 camera and Kodak Gold, October '06. In this case, the cheap plastic lens made the image look cheery and nostalgic and less like a horror movie. I have ...a lot more print exposures that I've gone through. Next time: A cheap fisheye adapter a friend lent me attached to a mid 1950s 50mm prime, further evidence that 35mm F/2 is my favorite lens and maybe some terrible B&W shots. Also maybe some current stuff taken with the 5D IV.

Oh hey, remember this thread? This isn't a sound system. Those are self powered speakers sitting on either side of stack of Mac gear that is for sale. With that said it's a nice assortment of kit there.

We're not done. AI generated mugshot made hours before. It's a good example of what AI gets wrong. Now two three(!) stars from Home Alone 2 have had their mugshot released. Also this is grossly unfair to Mac. There's been a lot of examples like this floating about. This is unfair to 80s one hit wonders. Also, I quite like that song.

The internet has been busy: Bonus:

Neener.

Remember when a certain Kevin Gilmore described the way Sony operates as "wireless drive-by-wire" management? Pepperidge Farm remembers.