In which it totally feels like hump day, but it isn’t.
Weather in the Walla Walla Valley
First there was sun.
Then there was wind. Then there was hail.
Then the power went out. Management decided to send everyone (but me) home, and they all left and had had just enough time to get into their cars… and the power came back on. So they all had to come back.
I didn’t have to help clear the queue, though, because it was my lunch break.
Vintage Photography
I’ve been playing with The Bricks every day because they’re just so cool looking. Finally got the Tele-Sandmar on Brick The Younger today:
Still need to clean and adjust the rangefinder before I can actually shoot anything with it. I ordered cheap film from Adorama and it won’t be here for a few days anyway; hopefully the camera will be ready by then. Last night I learned how to remove (very easy) and replace (total pain in the ass) the exposure counter. This means I’m one step closer to taking the top panel off of the camera so I can clean and adjust the rangefinder!
I don’t think I know anyone with a scanner. I realize it seems weird to take film images simply to put them into electronic format, but I’ll tell you what: all the pictures in my Flickr account? are still there. All the photos and photo albums I once had? are gone. No idea where they are. Maybe I have some in boxes, but I think most of them were rotten and not worth saving from the farm. So I’ll have to pay extra when getting my film developed to have them all scanned.
I wonder how many rolls of film it will take me to really grok this:
Even though you focus your camera lens on a certain distance, the picture will be sharp in front of and behind the point focused on. This “range of sharpness” (depth of field) depends on the lens opening used and the lens focusing distance.
The smaller the lens opening, and the greater the focusing distance, the greater is the the lens’ range of sharpness. The range of sharpness will be least when the lens is used at its largest opening and shortest focusing distance.
Working at an ISP
In other, wholly unrelated news, we had a six-state DSL outage that lasted about two hours. An hour into it, all the rest of the staff’s shifts ended and I ended up in here alone. My brother gave me the saddest little “Sorry to leave you with all this, but my day’s done” shrug on his way out the door. I have about 40 calls to complete.
In other words, I am alone and TOTALLY FUCKING SLAMMED AT WORK TONIGHT.
And now, to close, a little about this bullshit worm scare story in the news:
A pox upon CBS and CNN and every other news agency that picked up this stupid Confiker/Downadup worm story! You are making my job stupider!
I’m not against educating people about Internet security, not at all. I am against hysterical reporting. I am against having customers freaking out on my phone and over LiveChat and through email for two days because some reporter learned about a particular kind of threat that’s been around since last autumn!
Here’s an email reply I sent to a customer:
>From : XXXX xxxxxx@bmi.net
> Phone : (xxx) xxx-xxxx
> O/S : Windows XP
> Comments : Do I need to worry about a virus tonight?
Hello,
Run Windows Update and make sure you have all available service packs and security patches installed in your operating system. Then force your anti-virus program to update as well. You should be fine.
The worm that made the news isn’t really news; it’s been out for quite awhile. The operating system hole it exploits was patched by Microsoft last year. The only people vulnerable to this worm are those using non-patched copies of Windows. I really have no idea why this thing even became ‘news.’
Have a great night!
Actually, the one good thing about all this is hearing people practically say “fuck” in German all day long and knowing they have no idea they’re doing it.
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Depth of field is cool to play with. The bigger the number (f22)= the smaller the aperture = more in focus.
The smaller the number (f4) = larger aperture = your subject is more focused than the rest of the frame.
I think it would be harder to learn with the rangefinder than an SLR. More expensive, too. Have fun.
Harder and more expensive, I’m certain! LOL! But I don’t have an SLR. The only DOF experimentation I’ve ever done is with my Land camera… it has a portrait kit (takes pictures like this) but there are no adjustments and therefore no way to learn how to adjust a proper lense for wider aperture. -m
Pictures of cameras… it’s poetic in a way. I mean, if you can’t get the cameras up and working, you use them as photo subjects because they are so cool looking.
And you make an interesting point about the impermanence of actual photos. I find digital photos are easier to store, organize, and label than actual photos. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but true.
I agree completely. -m
Wow, just realizing it’s probably been about 3 years since I developed any real film, but back when I did the last time they made me CD’s to go with the developed pix so it was easy to just pop the CD in and upload the jpgs. Can’t remember if I had to pay extra for the CD or if it came free, but either way, it was definitely worth not having to scan them.
Scanning pictures sucks; I usually pay the extra to get the CD. Plus I don’t have a scanner! -m
I think that most places will give you an option to simply put them on a CD for you, I think this is done by the negatives so that the quality is fantastic. I’ve seen some digital images from film and they have a warm quality.
When I was shooting a lot of film with my Elph, I always got my images in both prints and on CD. The ones I got on CD I still have most of, but who knows where the rest went! -m