aerius

Build something totally different like Gary Pimm's Solid State Tabor amp. It has about the right amount of power to go with a set of Lowthers.

Got completely humiliated at hockey by a bunch of women. Mind you they were all former members of the Canadian national team and have dozens of gold medals between them so I don't feel too bad about it. On the other hand I still got my ass kicked by a bunch of women in the 40's. Then again so did the rest of the guys on my team so I'm not alone here.

Completely unexpected and a total bummer, he was a great guy and built some kick-ass gear. I had a brief PM exchange with him on diyaudio and I always looked forward to reading his posts there. RIP

I think a homemade softbox would work for you since you already have a flash. There's a ton of plans for them out on the net and they're simple enough to build. Or you could have a bit more fun building your own light tent, it's a little more involved but it gives more consistent results.

Out of those two I prefer the S95 since it's a bit smaller and I'm also more familiar Canon's control & menu system since I'm a Canon owner. However I'd rather grab the Olympus XZ-1 since its lens is a bit faster and it stays a lot faster on the telephoto end of the zoom range. That makes it a lot easier to get sharp pictures when you're zooming in on a distant subject.

Can't say I've seen that one before, I've only used Pace machines when I worked in the industry, mostly the PRC2000 and you don't want to know what that one costs. And they're called rework stations since they're used to rework and fix the dickups from the wavesolder and reflow oven machines. Which is the one I really don't get, why is it called a reflow oven?

Well, Zeiss and Schneider-Kreuznach have recently signed on with the micro 4/3 system so my guess is there's some nice prime lenses on the way. Unfortunately they ain't gonna be cheap.

A couple sticks of dynamite ought to do the trick, if that fails follow it up with a wheelbarrow full of ANFO.

I was wondering when it would come out, the Olympus booth had a mockup of the camera back in October of last year. They also said they had a new Pen series in the works that's geared towards professionals, no word of a release date on that one either. One from last year

The example below is probably about as much as you can expect from negative films without doing a bunch of Photoshop work or going to slide films. Negative films just don't have the deep solid blacks and vivid colours of slide films, if you want those eye popping sunsets on film you'll have have to shoot Velvia. Hydro towers with Ektar 100

Well, the next question would be what is it about those film photos that grabs you and makes you go "wow"? Is it the colours, is the sharpness and details, the composition or subject, or is it something else entirely? Or is it a certain "look" which you can't really place or define? In my case it's the colours, I think Fuji Velvia looks awesome and there's really no way for me to consistently duplicate those colours in digital. That's why I still shoot film. That and my slide projector, I can subject people to actual slide shows.

Reala is a fairly muted film in terms of colour, it's made for portraits more than anything else. It softens contrast and reduces saturation to give good natural skin tones in most lighting conditions. If you're aiming for vivid looking sunset pictures with bright saturated colours, you'll have to use another film such as Velvia. Generally speaking, digital has the edge in low light conditions once shutter speeds get below 1/15 to 1/30 or so depending on the subject and how steady your hands are. Then there's the joy of mixed lighting, digital automatically adjusts its white balance to fluorescent, mercury lights, incandescents and so forth, plus most things in between. Films are balanced for daylight for the most part, for other lighting conditions you'll need filters to make the colour balance look right. This, I think depends on what you're looking for in your photos and what you define as "better". Kinda like audio in a way, depending on where your priorities are you may prefer CDs or LPs, it's the same idea with film & digital cameras.

Another camera to consider is the Samsung NX100, it's about the same size as the E-P2 but has a larger APS-C sized sensor. Lens selection is unfortunately rather limited, but if they have what you need then I think the NX system is way better than either the micro 4/3 or NEX systems. The Samsung absolutely kills them when it comes to ease of use, you have direct button & control ring settings for all the important stuff like exposure, ISO, colour balance, flash mode and shutter speed, no going through menus at all. The manual mode is fucking genius, one control wheel sets the shutter speed and the other sets the aperture, the LCD displays a needle type light meter with a histogram so you can see how good the exposure is.

If all else fails there's Rocky Mountain Film Labs which handles all sorts of odd films including the Kodachrome K-14 process. It'll cost you though and it takes a while for the film to get back to you.

There's also the Fujica 690 and 670 series rangefinders which come in interchangeable and fixed lens versions. You'll need a separate light meter unless you're using the 100mm AE lens but that shouldn't be a problem if you're used to using manual controls on a camera. Long discontinued, unfortunately, so you'll have to buy them on the used market. I thought about buying one earlier this year but ran into the same problem you did; the cost of all the other stuff required to support the camera is absurd and I'm neither skilled nor committed enough to use it. The results are awesome though, one of my friends uses the G690 as his main camera and the prints he makes for exhibits and clients are simply outstanding.

The theory I've heard is that a regular HD pollutes the crap out of the power supply and that's why it's better to have a SSD. Apparently all the control circuitry and stuff that moves the heads around on a regular HD also throws a bunch of noise into the power lines and that's what's messing up the sound.

Thanks! I scanned the prints myself and did a bit of editing to make the scans look like the prints. My 10 year old scanner makes everything too green. Yup. I think I posted a couple somewhere in this thread but I can't find them right now so I'll just put'em all back up again.

It depends on the lighting and how the film is exposed. If you're shooting when the sun's starting to get low in the sky then yeah, skintones will go reddish. And god help you if you underexpose. The key to shooting people with Velvia 50 is to do it when the sun's high in the sky and to overexpose the film a tiny bit, you'll lose a bit of saturation but Velvia has a ton to spare so it's not a big deal. It's still not the greatest film for portraits since the high contrast can lead to harsh shadows if the light's not perfect. Kodak Ektar 100 works pretty well for me as a general purpose film. The one downside is there's a fair bit of colour shift depending on the exposure, treat it as a slide film where you have to nail the exposure dead on or things can get real wonky, it's not like regular negative films where you can be off by a full stop with minimal effects. A few Ektar 100 shots, developed & printed at the local supermarket.

Old school Kona Explosif in nearly mint condition.

Except we weren't wearing shorts today, and there was a bit of snow in places so we could power slide a few turns.

A couple shots from my Olympus Pen-FT with the 40mm

I tried one out at a recent digital camera gear show and was less than impressed, it's a giant freakin' lens that's literally twice the size & weight of the Canon equivalent. Focusing seemed ok, if a bit slow compared to Nikon & Canon's lenses, this was fine since I was shooting a model on a chair but I wouldn't want to try action photography with the lens wide open.

You can take pictures like this in absolutely crappy lighting. This was a poorly lit convention hall, they had a softbox & bounce flash setup at the booth but it was only for the DSLR cameras. I shot this with the kit zoom on the Olympus E-PL1, the only thing I've done is resize and crop it. I deliberately blurred this picture a bit for a softer focus effect by shooting at something like 1/8 of a second at ISO 100 on the slow kit zoom, actual photos will be a lot sharper. With a Canon S95 or any other P&S camera, the skintones won't come out as nice and it'll take some editing to make the colours & contrast look right. And even though there's no image stabilization, you can crank the ISO on a micro 4/3 camera a lot higher while still keeping good image quality and decent shutter speeds, especially with a fast lens like the 20mm/f1.7. Personally I'd rather get the Samsung NX100, it about the same size as the micro 4/3 cameras but has a sensor that's twice the size. I also find it's simpler and easier to use than the micro 4/3 cameras, the menus are simpler and the dual control wheels are a joy to use. The only thing you give up vs. the GF1 is the built in flash, to me this isn't a problem, your needs may vary.