Tag: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

Travel Plans and Parental Controls

Bellana came home late last night. Late enough that I was asleep. I woke up at 4:00am for some reason and checked the driveway and her car was there. Wonderful! My step daughter is home!

By 8:30am though we had dropped her off at the airport. She’s flying to Denver, meeting a friend, and then driving back to somewhere in North Carolina. From there she’s going to Atlanta and flying to Orlando where she will meet up with the rest of us for our Disney trip the week after next.

That’s a lot of traveling!

Her flight hasn’t boarded yet, but according to flightaware.com it is still on time. Safe travels, Bellana! We love you!

On an unrelated note, I think I need to set up parental controls on my computer. I think I need to block ebay. Yeah… I bought another camera last night. What the fuck, Robert? This one is a 35mm with autofocus. It has a 50mm lens too. Bonus! I still don’t think I will take any film on our vacation, but it is pretty clear my self imposed two month film hiatus isn’t going to last more than a few days. Oh well. I tried.

While we’re on the subject of film, I got a notification from the lab I sent the last batch of film to that it arrived. That was Thursday afternoon. I was hope hope hoping that I would receive word that the scans were available yesterday but I gots nuttin’. I doubt they’ll be working over the weekend, so hopefully early next week we’ll have the results. I’m optimistic that the five medium format rolls come out okay. Four of them might at least. One of them might be a smidge under exposed. I had the light meter app on my phone set wrong during one roll. Dumb ass. Everything else (hopefully) was free of user errors or dumb ass fuck ups. Fingers crossed.

Another Day, Another G.A.S. Attack

Yesterday I mentioned that watching a YouTube video lead me to want to buy a Gibson Firebird.

That was yesterday. Today a YouTube video is leading me to want to buy another Gibson Les Paul.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.) is a bitch, people. It’s a serious problem.

No Road Trip

We were going to drive to Vermont and visit the kids but my stomach is off a little today and a 3-4 hour drive while in this state is not a good idea. We’ll try again another day.

As I sit and wait for my stomach to calm down after my lunch’s french fries I have been watching Doctor Who like it’s going out of style. I finished season seven of the original show and I am down to the last couple of episodes of season 12 of the new show. Right now I am taking a pause from the Doc to deal with some gear acquisition syndrome.

I mentioned my little Nikon point and shoot camera (Coolpix S7000) is on the fritz. I want to replace it with another pocket sized point and shoot but the research I’ve done online is staggeringly depressing. The one camera that I keep looking at, to the point of almost drooling over, is a Ricoch GRIII. It looks like the pocket sized point and shoot of the gods. Feature wise it looks as good as my Nikon Z5 mirrorless, outside of the ability to swap lenses though.

Unfortunately this little bugger costs almost as much as my Z5. It costs a friggin’ fortune at nearly a grand in US dollars. WAY too expensive for what I am looking for. Way too expensive by light years. Every other manufacturers competitor is even more expensive too, and also a little bigger which defeats the purpose.

There is no way I would spend this much money on a pocket point and shoot, but holy shit snacks kids do I want one of these suckers. Woah is me, right?

Gear Acquisition Syndrome, Again

Figures. I finally cave in to recording my guitar direct through some sort of amplifier simulation and almost immediately a pedal company releases a new line of amplifier simulation pedals. TC Electronics is the culprit. I doubt that these new pedals are going to be in the same league as the one Strymon makes, or Universal Audio’s line, but the TC stuff will be a whole lot less expensive, I can pretty much guarantee that.

I am not going to buy one of these… yet… I am going to think about buying one often. Very often. Even if I did pony up the cash, I would never like it as much as my actual Deluxe Reverb. You know, the actual amp this thing simulates? Yeah, real is always going to be better. It’s just that the sim is less likely to wake up your sleeping wife when you play through it at 5:00am.

Overslept

I set my alarm for 5:00am and didn’t get out of bed until about 6:40. Oh well, after a rough few days I think I needed it. I still do, I am feeling super tired still.

I was planning on getting my exercise in for the day, then getting ready for work, then (assuming Jen was awake and not in an early meeting) I was going to add the final guitar parts to the two songs I’ve been working on. Nope. It’s after 8:00 now and I just closed my exercise ring and had a protein supplement breakfast. My stomach is okay so far, though not really 100%. I’m still feeling a little beat up after the rough week, but yesterday was 99% fine and I am hoping for a trend. I’ll use the stop watch at lunch and dinner and see if it keeps me on track. It doesn’t always work, there are other ways to fuck up apart from just going too fast, but it worked for me all day yesterday. I still don’t know what went wrong with the late night pudding cup snack last night. I was really shocked at how that one turned out.

I am planning to go food shopping after dinner tonight. Once I get home I will try to add the last guitar parts to the two songs so that I can start mixing and get them in before the end of the month.

We did a lot of planning for Bellana’s college graduation weekend last night. Once we get through all of the logistics I am going to start obsessing over the photography options. I’m hyper focusing on lens options (yes, the pun was intended… focusing… get it?). I was thinking about trying to get a long zoom so that I could get close up shots of the stage from our cheap seats. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think I might want to go for something super wide so that I can get the whole scene when the family is all together. Like, what if we go to dinner to celebrate afterwards. If I have a 40mm lens on the digital camera and a 50mm lens on the film I’m not going to be able to get multiple people into a shot unless I stand up and walk away. Maybe I want to look into getting a 28mm, or even an 18mm lens so that I can grab nice wide group shots.

Oh to be able to actually know what I’m doing. Heh heh.

Okay, time to go get showered and dressed and get ready for work. Happy Monday, he said with biting, dripping sarcasm.

Catching Up After a Couple of Off Days

The last couple of days have been weird, health-wise. First it was the headache issue on Tuesday, then it was stomach issues on Wednesday. Now here we are on Thursday and I am feeling a little like a wrung out face cloth. Here’s hoping today will be a quiet day.

We’re having some HVAC folks come and tell us what they need to do to replace the mini-split in the bedroom. We’ve had it serviced a couple of times this winter, but it’s just not working and we’re more or less unable to heat the bedroom without using a space heater as a supplement. They won’t actually replace it for another week or two, but they are coming for a fact finding mission.

So, television. Yesterday was the premier or season three of The Mandalorian and I could not be at a higher hype level. The first episode was excellent but… I think today’s third episode of season three of Picard might have been better. I did not see that coming, kids. I was just glued to the screen as I was getting this morning’s jogging (yogging) in. The captain vs admiral conflict seemed a little forced and out of character, but everything else? Fan-freakin-tastic. The bad guys behind the bad guy? Fan-freakin-tastic! I can’t wait for episode four. I also can’t wait for episode two of The Mandalorian, but that’s a given. In the Star Wars vs Star Trek debate, I come down on the Star Wars side, generally, but only by a little bit. Regardless of which franchise you prefer, it’s a pretty good time to be a space opera fan, am I right?

For the first time in a year, I am suffering from guitar gear acquisition syndrome. There are two overdrive pedals that I really want to buy, and I also really want to buy an amplifier simulator that I can use as a plug in through GarageBand. Last year I finished the RPM Challenge with a plan to do their Record Every Month challenge throughout the rest of the year. I had a goal of two songs each month that I could pretend were a single. I failed completely. I didn’t write a single song over the 11 months between the 2022 RPM and the 2023 RPM (with the exception of a few failed attempts in November). I am going to try again, but I am probably not going to record guitars through my amplifier on a regular basis. I am thinking I can do direct input more often and I want a good amp sim that I can use consistently. The one I am looking at is only $40, but I just don’t want to spend any money. We have a mini-split to buy after all.

Speaking of gear acquisition syndrome, I also really want to buy a new lens for my new camera. I adore the 40mm lens we bought for Disney, but I’d like a little zoom option. Possibly because the cats are suffering from The Zoomies every night and it just sort of inspired me, you know? I also really really want to buy a 35mm film point and shoot and I don’t know why. I want to buy a 35mm film camera with autofocus functionality too, but that’s going to cost some dough, and I think I can get a point and shoot for pennies. I want to go Nikon, as usual, but decent Nikon point and shoots are stupidly expensive on ebay. I looked for Pentax options yesterday and saw some with the starting bid of $1.00… so yeah, that could be a better option. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll hit the thrift stores more often.

Okay, time to get breakfast and get my day started. I have a lot of meetings today and need to be ready for a long day at the home office. Wish me luck.

The “U” Word Scares Me and My Wallet

Last night my camera scared me. I took out the memory card so I could upload the picture of my cat that I posted here last night. When I put the memory card back into the camera it errored. What was that? I took it out and put it back in… same error. I went all Nintendo on it’s skinny ass and blew on it as well as the card slot and it was fine again. I took a few pics this morning and I just uploaded them to Flickr and I put the card back in and it’s fine.

Sigh of relief.

It got me thinking though… I bought my DSLR in January 2010. That was 12 years ago. That seems like a long time for a tech gadget. A really, super long time. When should I start considering thinking about the “u” word? You know… upgrade. Realistically, I probably should have been asking myself this question five years ago (at least), but even though I know I can probably fix this problem by picking up a new memory card, I have to start thinking about what camera comes next.

I went on Nikon’s website to see what they have available these days. For DSLRs , the D5600 is marketed to advanced beginners and it costs $700 without a kit lens. The D7500 would probably be what I looked at if money wasn’t an issue, but it costs a grand for just the body.

What about mirrorless? That’s the future, right? Shouldn’t I get on the wagon before it leaves that homestead? The Z fc is clearly the coolest camera on the Earth at this time. Yes, it’s a retro inspired, hipster focused gimmick, but now that I am nutty over old manual film cameras a mirrorless camera based on an old design is right up my alley. I’ll take one to go, thank you. Except that it costs $959 without a lens, and the lens mount is different than my DSLR so I will need a new lens as well and the price with a kit lens is $1,099.95. There is also the Z50, which I think is the same guts as a Z fc, and that will be $999.95 with a lens.

Shit.

I don’t want to leave Nikon-land and I don’t want to buy a used camera…

Shit.

Maybe I should start looking at Fuji… those probably cost a mint too.

Anyway, here are some pictures I took around the living room just to make sure everything still works. I put a mono filter on the RAW files in honor of the gloomy camera atmosphere.

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No Pain, No Gain, Something Something

I walked/marched in place for 30 minutes this morning before work. At lunch time I rode the exercise bike for 15 minutes. I have been trying to work the bike into my daily routine for a couple of weeks. Hopefully things will work out in such a way that I can do this regularly.

The downside is that my legs feel like rubber and walking is a little bit of an adventure. Yikes.

Here comes some camera nerd thoughts. Ready? Okay, I installed a light meter app on my phone yesterday. Dad’s camera has a built in light meter and I would utterly be toast without it. I assume my Nikon has one built in too, but I don’t know where it is or how to use it (now that I think of it, it’s probably just the auto mode). At lunch today I tested it out a smidge. I picked something to shoot, used the light meter, used manual mode on the Nikon, set everything the way the meter told me to, and took a picture. It looked okay on the D90’s little view screen. I then turned off half of the lights in the cellar and did it again. The picture looked okay but it was a little on the dark side (insert Vader’s breathing here).

I then repeated the entire process with the Pentax. The internal light meter looked good in both cases, so I think the app is probably close to accurate. How will the pictures look when I get them developed? I haven’t a freakin’ clue. Not even a tiny inkling of an idea. It may be a long time before I get the results. I took the roll that was in the camera (the 35ish year old roll that Dad started and I finished) to CVS on Saturday. They said 7-10 days… so I should be getting a call from them any minute now. (For those of you reading this post at some random future date, it hasn’t even been 48 hours yet. I was kidding. Get it?)

What else? Do I need to get a camera bag for Dad’s camera, or do I need to rearrange the bag that I have so that it can hold both cameras? My bag has the D90, two lenses, and some other little things. I can change the size of each section in the bag so I know I can fit the camera in there somehow, I just won’t be able to fit all of the other stuff. I have three lenses for the D90, including one that would be on the camera, and two for the K1000, again including one that’s actually on the camera. I may have to leave the extra lenses at home when I take the bag out somewhere. Maybe I get a bag for the two cameras and another bag for the lenses? Do amateur goofballs do that?

I also saw some youtube videos showing a couple of accessories that have kicked off my camera gear acquisition syndrome. Amazon has a remote shutter that screws on to the actual shutter switch. I could use the shit out of that for long exposures. I also saw a timer that is a little windup clock thing that also screws onto the shutter. I think K1000s might have come with that at some point. I wonder if Dad had one. I can’t find any of those anywhere online, including ebay.

And that, dear friends and neighbors, is my lunch break post for today.