Knuckledragger

Someting I ate on Tuesday made me quite ill. I spent all of yesterday in bed, except for the 20 minutes I managed to get up, and eat a rice cake. Today's achievements have been "sitting up" and "walking." Next challenge might be "going downstairs" and (shudder) "trying to eat."

hunter3!

You bum! *I* want an EOS-1V! ...uhh, by that I mean "congratulations, you now have the best EF mount film body Canon ever made." I have not purchased one because they command too much on the used market. My next film body will be an EOS 1N or EOS3. Hey Aerius, you have any scans of your Velvia 50 shots?

Didn't Oppo used to make silver units? I swear some of their older upscaling DVD players were silver.

I had use of an 85L II for five days last year. My best advice with regard do that lens is this: Don't try it if you don't want to buy it. As the saying goes "A luxury, once sampled, become a necessity." Longtime readers of this thread might ave seen some of these images before: The 85L has a number of downsides besides cost. It's gigantic, massively heavy, and both its objective and rear elements are huge and very vulnerable. Were I to shoot with it all the time, I'd invest in a battery grip (seriously the 85L's AF motor sucks juice like no tomorrow) and an UpStrap. The weight does have one odd bonus. It makes the camera so dense, I was able to hold it for 1/13th of a second and get a surprising number of keepers, like this one: F/1.2, 1/13th (ya rly), ISO1600. It was stupidly dark inside the nightclub.

Has to be the same dude. Also:

I will say that my use of Velvia 50 with human subjects is pretty limited. At nearly $3/frame when all is said and done, I don't shoot it casually. What I suspect is that if people are using light sources besides daylight, it's quite possible that Velvia 50 renders skin tones in a reddish manner. I really like black & white film for portraiture. Kodak BW400CN works in a pinch, and can be developed anywhere. It is no substitute for Tri-X, however.

From what I've observed of rave culture, MDMA can lead to magical star fairies.

I have not used them, as there is a decent lab near me. That said, I know several photographers who use mail order service to have their slide film developed and have had great sucess. To put it delicately, these people are smoking the minty fresh crack. The Kodak Gold series has the worst color I have ever seen for a modern print film. Quite the opposite is true. Velvia 50 (and its two cousins, 100 and 100F) are quite a cool film, and tuned for daylight. Skin tones are quite pale with it. It is true, V50 is not the best for portrait photography unless one is looking for a specific artistic look or is really good with the use of warming filters. I have not shot many other slide films besides V50. I have made use of Fuji's Sensia line (particularly the ISO 200 iteration) and liked it. As for price, it's all relative. A 36 roll of Velvia 50 is $12-13 around here. Superia is even more expensive ($15+). Processing fees for slide film is more expensive than print film as well. Kodak does make some decent color print films, like the Ultra Color 100UC, but they're at least $10 for 36 exposures. The moral here is that film is expensive. 35mm is still a bargain compared to what medium and large format photographers must cough up. My friend Eddy pays $2 per frame for Tri-X in 4x5" sheets. His friend shoots 8x10" and pays $4-5 per frame for the cheapest film he can buy. He said Velvia (the now-discontinued original, not the new Velvia 50) was $18 for one 8x10" sheet, and twice that to have it developed. The advantages of film is that the bodies are cheap on the used market, don't get obsolete, and of course when it comes out right, film beats digital hands down for image quality. Lastly, one of the great joys of slide film is cross processing it. As it turns out, Fuji slide film stock is very hearty and holds up well to rigors of cross processing. This is especially true for Velvia 50.