Knuckledragger

I scored 3 rolls of Velvia 50 from Iris, at $6.50 ea (teh cheep) as well as a roll of Fuji Sensia 200. It turns out Velvia 50, besides being the best film stock in the world, also stands up to the rigors of cross processing quite well, and at half price, it becomes a comparative bargian (the Sensia was $10.50.) I'm going to expose the Sensia using my Vivitar Ultra Wide Slim pocket camera. It's a step above "trashcams" but not by much, it has a fixed shutter speed, aperture, and (duh) focal length. It's 1/125 and F/11 (which is Sunny 16 shifted one position) and a 22mm lens, which is really wide for this class of camera. The Ultra Wide Slim is famed for its massive vignetting, and fun effects when pointed straight into the sun. Shooting slide film with it is a benighted idea at best. Cross prossing said film is an even more demented undertaking. I can't wait to try it.

Watchmen in trade paperback. I have all the original comics from the 1980s, which I haven't read in over 15 years. I'm surprised how little I remember of the story. I didn't want to manhandle the now 20+ year old originals, so I coughed up $21 for the TBP. I also, uh, bought a lot of photography-related stuff, but I'll post on that elsewhere.

After a frustrating experience with Ritz Camera, I just got off the phone with Iris Photo. They do cross processing of film, but only slide film as print film. I probably should have known this, but slide-as-film is how 99% of cross processing is done. Film-as-slide processing is "reverse cross processing" and almost never done, as it's bad for the chemistry of the developer, and generally wrecks the film. As a bonus, Irish has an overstock of Fuji Velvia 50, and is selling it for $6.50 a roll. Of all the film stocks to have an excess of... wow. I'm leaving shortly to buy them out get a few more rolls for my MV trip. Apparently, Velvia stands up very well to cross processing. Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L + Velvia 50 + cross processing = psychedelic landscapes.

Mad Scientist Lights

Nice. That's one funky display on the top.

[OT] Blumenkraft ...nice. That's one of my favorite psy-dub albums. I've listened to Skylon (his new one) a few times, but I haven't found it to be similarly engaging as his first.[/OT]

Got a 12exp roll of Fuji Superia X-Tra 800 developed, and bought used 12" of Der Dritte Raum's "Hale Bopp"

*ahem*

I bought a new Finally. on Flickr - Photo Sharing!@@AMEPARAM@@http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3103/2632048408_d8ce521543.jpg?v=0@@AMEPARAM@@2632048408@@AMEPARAM@@d8ce521543 just a few weeks ago. IIRC, the buyer's guide was neutral at that point as well. I was aware that waiting a month or two might net me a cheaper and/or faster machine, but TBH I'd already waiting eight fricken years for a Mac. Unless you're a serious power user, the current line of MB/MBPs are fine for most tasks. If you need a machine now then why continue to torture yourself with a wintel? WRT refurbs, I concur with Recks. A friend of mine has an obscene amount of Apple gear, and he just got a refurb'd 30" ACD. It is indistinguishable from a new one, it saved him quite a bit. The only reason I did not get a refurb'd unit is that I have an .edu discount. At some point before the end of the year, I will be replacing my aging wintel desktop with a MacPro. Given the cost and performance level of those machines, it's well worth it to wait for the newest model/seek discounts. For the consumer level products like the MacBook, don't lose sleep over the product cycle.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3294/2696535550_131dfa78f2.jpg[/img This is the first alarm clock I ever owned, a Sony Dream Machine with 9-volt battery backup. I've been using it since 1985. In the preceding 23 years, I've had two other alarm clocks. Both were later iterations of the Sony Dream Machine model. They had ugly LED displays, vs. this one's gorgeous vacuum fluorescent one. They also died on me at most inopportune times, while this one has kept on ticking. At some point, the power cord became quite frayed, and the clock would lose power if I moved it. Two days ago it bit me with a small jolt of electricity. I spent half an hour today taking it apart, cutting out the bad section of cord, making a splice with some crimp sleeves, and re-assembling it. The clock once again works like a charm. As a side note, this is the first shot I've taken using a gray card and custom white balance mode on my 30D. I think it came out pretty well.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/319318036_bb0d36de65.jpg[/img

Fairy farts.

After blathering in several different threads about photography, and blindly looking around for an already extant thread, I'm making this one. The purpose here is for me continue to natter on about my mad obsession with light painting, and maybe even get a response or two. I've just posted about my issues with cross processing and slide film development, as well as discussing lenses in the recently bought thread.

*chuckle* The 70-200 F/2.8 IS might make your wallet lighter, but it has quite the opposite effect on everything else. I'm not a big zoom person (I like fast primes, faster primes, and anything that has excellent bokeh) but were I to get a 70-200, it would be the F/4 IS version. It's newer than the F/2.8, about 3/4 the price and half the weight. It's also sharper than the F/2.8 at similar apertures. That said, when you need a full stop more light, there is no substitute for a bigger aperture. I hope that monster zoom serves you well. The 100-400 is a beast, nicknamed the "Africa lens." IIRC, it's a push-pull zoom, which is enough to keep me away from it. If you need that kind of focal length, it is an excellent performer. Certainly, that's a good price for it. Similarly, $400 for the 17-40 is a steal, assuming it's a clean copy. The 17-40 is one of the real bargains in the L range (where "bargains" do not exist). It's a decent walk around lens on an APS-C sensor (I have a 30D) but that's not my real intention for it. I have two film bodies, a Rebel G (old, low-end model, but well built) and a Rebel K2 (new, decent feature set, but built like a toy). I got both for chump change, it's really a buyer's market for 35mm film bodies, barring exotics like the EOS1v, and the Nikon F5 & F6. My plan is to use the 17-40 as my primary film lens. I do mostly landscapes with film, for which the 17-40 is of course ideally suited. I have several excellent manual focus portrait lenses for use when necessary. I've used two copies of the 100mm F/2.8 macro, and I found it to be quite a solid piece of glass. It's decent for portraits, but the 200mm F/2.8L is sharper at distance, and has better bokeh. It of course rocks at macro, but if you're serious about that, budget for a ring flash. It's hard to get any DoF at macro distances, without stopping down like crazy. At least this is what my own limited experiences has taught me. $350 is quite a good price for one.

I am so stupidly busy with house renovations that I don't have time to list the insane things I am doing. That said, I got a call from Ritz Camera today. I dropped off a roll of film with them the week after last, and asked to have it cross processed (when print film is developed as slide film.) The girl behind the counter said they had to send it out to a lab to do that, and it'd take 5 additional business days. I said fine. Today I heard from the manager of the Ritz store, who said that the lab returned the undeveloped film, saying they won't touch it. I'm doubly pissed by this. The film is boring-ass Kodak Gold 200, which looks like shit when developed conventionally. Also, I've now lost over a week, and no matter what I do, the film won't be done before I leave for Martha's Vineyard on Sunday. So, this being the probably-not-appropriate place to ask.... anyone head case photographers (that's an redundancy if I ever heard one) have any suggestions for photo labs I could pester to get this roll cross processed? I need a good lab for slide film anyway; I plan on returning from MV with an exposed roll of Velvia (shot through my new 17-40 ultrawide).

The Photographer's Eye Nash Editions: Photography and the Art of Digital Printing (VOICES) Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs Matias USB 2.0 Keyboard & Mouse White Mac Canon EF 17-40mm F/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras All are fun, but that last one = ;D;D

YouTube - On-camera tour of my Betamax Library - 1978!!!