Knuckledragger

You weren't taken with the 85L, VPI? What didn't you like about it? The weight? The glacial focusing speed? The battery drain? The extremely vulnerable front and rear elements?

That appears to be a refurb 5Deuce.

Good lucks, Yikes. If you can't land a high end audio job, maybe there's employment for you in THIS sector:

^ Best dog evar. The 2011 Senate.

x2. This thread has been a fascinating read for me, and I'm an utter neophyte when it comes to the Dark Arts of Soldering.

My Miele was $400 11 years ago. Mum's WTF-fancy vaccum was $1200 5-6 years ago.

I just found out my friends Josh and Gina now have a baby girl, Ella Rebecca Moulton Born 1/3/11 at 11:58 am 7 pounds 1.5 ounces, 20 inches long. Little brat stole my birthday!

I'm (mostly) blind in one eye, and I have a mild hatred of 3D technology. I saw exactly one 3D film (Toy Story 3) and it was meh at best. I find it vaguely distressing that 3D is now becoming the standard in the upper end of flat panel TVs. I'm not a big fan of paying for technology I won't ever use. I saw a couple local-dimming LED lit LCD panels recently, and I quite liked the look of them. They're a bit pricey at the moment (way north of 2 grand). This thread as piqued my interest in the Panny plasmas.

A few thoughts: Color print film is fun, but a bit of a gamble. Frame for frame, it's not going to consistently best a modern digital camera. If you're serious about color film photography, you'll end up shooting slide film and having it processed by professionals. Proper scanning of side or print film is just as important as the developing. In the past, I encountered rolls where the prints looked great and the scans were awful. The answer is to buy a scanner and do it yourself. Professional labs will do competent scans of slide film, but not cheaply. Black and white print film is a totally different universe. There is an awful lot of latitude in exposure, and a lifetime of creative control in the print. I think it was Ansel Adams who said "The exposure is the score, the print is the performance" but it might have been someone else (Knuckles has not had his coffee yet.) Lastly, if prints from scans look the same as from negatives, than the guy doing it is a hack.

Slower Forum!