I am less than two hours away from winning an ebay auction for a cheap, Soviet medium format TLR camera from the 80’s. I am the only bidder so far. Think I am going to win? Neither do I, but let’s see how it goes.
I’m exhausted. I have a massive headache. I have body aches all over. This is the post-covid booster shot blues. I was planning no working in the office tomorrow but now I think I am going to push that off until Tuesday. Just on the off chance that I’m not quite over this by tomorrow morning. Here’s hoping a good nights sleep will fix me right up.
This week’s episode of The Penguin doesn’t launch for another 40 minutes so I am going to write a blog post to kill some of that time.
You ready?
Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith posted a picture on instagram today (at least I think it was today) that was taken backstage at a Maiden show in Toronto. In the photograph is one Mr Alex Lifeson who apparently is an Iron Maiden fan? Larry and Mike and I are going to see Maiden in less than two weeks. Do you think there’s a chance that Alex Lifeson will be at that show too? I hope so! I think it would be the best thing ever to watch Big Al air guitar to The Trooper. That would freakin’ rule.
Tomorrow is Monday. Back to work for everyone. Sad, painful, depressing. All that stuff. I have a small mountain of paperwork to do this week. I need to find a way to not be distracted by other work responsibilities so that I can get it all done as soon as humanly possible. I have the day off on Thursday because I wanted to be home and off the clock in time to run our house’s Trick or Treating.
I have one very important non-work responsibility that I have to take care of tomorrow. Well, two actually. I need to pick something up at the drug store for Jen tomorrow before work. That’s not what I am writing about, though it is important. The thing that I am writing about will also hopefully happen before work. I need to buy five tickets to an NCAA hockey game. UMass Lowell (my and my wife’s old school) at University of Vermont (my step daughter’s old and my step son’s current school). Harry and I went to a game last year. This year Jen and Bellana and Harry’s girlfriend are going to go too. I need to get the tickets in advance because I am crazy and don’t want to wait.
Hockey… as a family… how cool is that?
While on our day trip to Burlington, Vermont today, I took a camera with me. A film camera. Dad’s Pentax K1000 with a roll of Kentmere 400 (black and white) film. I shot about two thirds of the roll. I know for sure that I completely and utterly mangled a few of the photos, but one or two might come out okay. If the weather is okay on Thursday (Halloween) I might use the morning portion of my day off as a photo morning. I keep talking about Boston…. maybe I could go to Boston for a little while?
Okay, we’re now 25 minutes away form a new episode of The Penguin. I think I am going to post this literary masterpiece now and listen to some music until the show is released on the MAX app.
Recently I gave up on my idea of learning how to make sugar free ice cream at home. Somehow, my beloved bride Jennifer responded to me getting off the homemade ice cream wagon by jumping on the homemade ice cream wagon, which has pulled me back into the fray.
Earlier today we went to a grocery store to do some research. How much does stuff cost and how long does it last before it goes bad. We also found a few different brands of sugar free ice cream to try. You know, for ideas and stuff. We don’t have an ice cream maker at the moment, but we’re watching the web for sales. Come on, amazon (you effin’ psychos), let’s put that ice cream maker with the built in compressor on sale!
A few minutes from now I am going to head to my father’s place. He has an issue that requires frequently changing a bandage. My brother and sister and I are taking turns. It’s my turn today. He has stuff to do this afternoon so I am planning on popping in, changing the bandage, and popping out. I am taking a camera with me. There’s a spot near his place that I might stop at for a minute or two if I have the time. Fingers crossed.
After that I will come home and have dinner with the love of my life. After that? Band practice. After that? Come home and hang out with my Jen and then sleep. After that? Work in the office. Oh shit. Today’s Sunday. Crap.
We went to an antique store in Lawrence, MA today. I was looking for camera gear and not expecting to find anything.
I was right that there wasn’t much to see, but I did see one that has me super intrigued.
$79 seems way too much for this, but I am going to spend some time on the YouTube doing some research and maybe I might go back again. Folding cameras from pre-war are sort of what I was thinking of for my first step into the medium format world.
I wrote something the other day about the new Pentax 17. The first new Pentax film camera developed since the 1840’s (approximately). I love the idea of it but it’s half frame and zone focusing and more expensive than I was hoping (though just about as expensive as I figured it would be). Also, the camera I took from my father when we cleaned out the house is a Pentax so that seemed fitting somehow.
I won’t be buying one. At least not for a while. I want either an SLR or a point and shoot. They say they are working on both of those, but I’ll just have to wait and see.
Turns out there is another new film camera on the way. It’s a point and shoot with autofocus and it’s not half frame. That sounds awesome! It’s called the Rollei 35AF though I guess it isn’t made by Rollei? Whoever makes it is just licensing the name? I guess. Also it’s going to cost 200-300 more than than Pentax 17 so… yikes. Again, way more than I want to spend, but probably just what I would have expected to spend. This is more like what I would like to invest in, though I would still much rather get a new SLR that would have little side benefits like repairability and warrantees and fun stuff like that.
I was really excited when I heard that Pentax was going to make a new camera model. My Dad’s camera, which hurled me down the film shootin’ rabbit hole that I likely will never be able to crawl out of, is a Pentax so that’s kind of karmically fitting.
Then they announced it was going to be half frame. Huh. Okay, I guess. I have enough trouble getting things to look half decent in a full frame resolution, I can only imagine how shitty my stuff would look at half of the resolution. I was still interested, but a little less interested.
Then I learned that it’s not an autofocusing camera, and it’s also not a manual focusing camera. It’s just a zone focus deal and since it’s not an SLR you don’t see through the lens when you look through the viewfinder, so focusing is literally guesswork. Huh.
Am I still interested? Yes. Am I as interested as I was a few days ago? No.
The YouTube is suddenly riddled with review videos. Today must be the officially sanctioned Pentax Press Day, or whatever they call it in the biz.
Here is one I haven’t watched yet:
Here is another one I haven’t watched yet:
Here is one that I am watching as I type this:
Here is one I have watched:
The Bad Flashes video just said the sale price will be $499 and the on sale date will be June 24th via the Pentax website. $499 is too expensive for me. My interest just dropped to very near zero. Sorry, Charlie. Maybe if the price comes down I will check it out, just to be a part of the party and stuff.
Here’s hoping it’s successful and leads to a new full frame SLR. That would be really cool.
What am I doing? I don’t know. I feel like the universe is in a weird place right now (yes, I know that mathematically that sentence does not make sense). I don’t know.
I had the opportunity to play my guitar tonight and I sat on my ass on the couch watching TV. I watched an episode of Torchwood. I’m trying to get back into that. While I was on the AppleTV app formerly known as HBO Max I figured I’d maybe start watching The Leftovers again. I watched the first episode. I’ll go to my grave saying that the second season of that show is television perfection. The first and third seasons are great too. The first season is just so soul crushingly depressing though. It is tough to get through and I suspect that watching one episode is part of the reason why I feel like I am in a screwy state of mind right now.
The point of all of this though is that I could have played guitar tonight and I did not. Ugh.
I had two slices of a small pizza for dinner tonight. The second one came back for another view. Oh yeah, TMI Alert here. Yeah. It went down, but it didn’t stay down. Shit. I ate too much too fast and paid the price.
I’m on the youtubes right now watching a photography channel. It’s a pro photographer telling me I should use Aperture Priority instead of Manual Mode. But what if I want to use Manual Mode? I use Aperture Priority a lot with one of my film cameras. The term Aperture Priority wasn’t invented yet when the camera was built, it’s called Auto on the camera, but it’s the same thing.. I use it because the light meter inside the view finder is often hard to read. I like using Manual though. It makes me feel like I know what I am doing even though I don’t really know what I’m doing. The video also says to keep the aperture away from the extremes. Don’t use f2.0 or f16, use f5.6 or f8. You don’t get the blurry background as much as you do with f2, but you get some which is more than f16 gives. The video says the images will be clearer in the middle ground apertures. I think I had figured that one out on my own and was starting to come around to this way of thinking. Then again… I really dig all that blurry background.
Miss Robin Sparkles says hello.
It’s Monday night, just about bed time. Almost 10:00pm. At this time four days from now we’ll be about seven hours into our road trip to Florida. That’s the main reason why I am in such a weird headspace tonight. I just want to go. I want to leave now. I don’t want to worry about work or anything outside of travel. I just want to go. I have a shit load of stuff to do before we go, but I just want to go.
Ugh… I should just go to bed.
Looking ahead to tomorrow. There is likely going to be an NHL predictions post for the third round. I am hoping the Edmonton Oilers will win their game seven tonight against Vancouver. If that happens there will be exactly one team that I kinda like in the Conference Finals. If they lose, there will be three teams I hate one one team I don’t care about. My heart is officially no longer in the NHL playoffs at all.
Also, expect lots of posts where I talk about how I just want to jump in the car with Jen, my wife, and head out on our trip. I have vacation-itis right now. Big time.
I have a new workspace for telecommuting. I had a desk in the cellar that had a work computer section and a personal computer section. When I took my photo a day pic at lunch time or whatever, I could plug my Nikon Z5 into my personal computer, a MacBook Pro, and pull the RAW file into Apple Photos, convert it to a PNG, and then upload it to Flickr.
On the new desk, I don’t have the Mac next to me. It’s just Windows. That means I don’t have a way to convert from RAW to something else. I suppose I could find an app to do it, but I don’t want to install anything on my work laptop. Instead, I changed my camera workflow a little. Instead of saving RAW files, I am not saving a RAW file and a JPEG. I’m also saving the two formats to separate memory cards. RAW goes to the card in slot one, and JPEG goes to the card in slot two. That means I can put the JPEG card into my USB card reader, and upload to Flickr directly from the card. That way I am not saving anything to my work computer, and I can still take care of my photo a day thing during the work day.
I went to ebay tonight and put a very small bid onto a very, very old film camera. Does it work? Maybe. I wouldn’t have bid if the top bid at the time wasn’t really, really low because the camera is older than my parents and who knows if it functions at all.
I want to dip my toes into medium format film, and folding cameras from the 1930’s seem like the least expensive starting point… and a $25.25 bid isn’t going to hurt the bottom line.
Inside the Red Head's Head 