aerius

A couple sticks of dynamite ought to do the trick, if that fails follow it up with a wheelbarrow full of ANFO.

I was wondering when it would come out, the Olympus booth had a mockup of the camera back in October of last year. They also said they had a new Pen series in the works that's geared towards professionals, no word of a release date on that one either. One from last year

The example below is probably about as much as you can expect from negative films without doing a bunch of Photoshop work or going to slide films. Negative films just don't have the deep solid blacks and vivid colours of slide films, if you want those eye popping sunsets on film you'll have have to shoot Velvia. Hydro towers with Ektar 100

Well, the next question would be what is it about those film photos that grabs you and makes you go "wow"? Is it the colours, is the sharpness and details, the composition or subject, or is it something else entirely? Or is it a certain "look" which you can't really place or define? In my case it's the colours, I think Fuji Velvia looks awesome and there's really no way for me to consistently duplicate those colours in digital. That's why I still shoot film. That and my slide projector, I can subject people to actual slide shows.

Reala is a fairly muted film in terms of colour, it's made for portraits more than anything else. It softens contrast and reduces saturation to give good natural skin tones in most lighting conditions. If you're aiming for vivid looking sunset pictures with bright saturated colours, you'll have to use another film such as Velvia. Generally speaking, digital has the edge in low light conditions once shutter speeds get below 1/15 to 1/30 or so depending on the subject and how steady your hands are. Then there's the joy of mixed lighting, digital automatically adjusts its white balance to fluorescent, mercury lights, incandescents and so forth, plus most things in between. Films are balanced for daylight for the most part, for other lighting conditions you'll need filters to make the colour balance look right. This, I think depends on what you're looking for in your photos and what you define as "better". Kinda like audio in a way, depending on where your priorities are you may prefer CDs or LPs, it's the same idea with film & digital cameras.

Another camera to consider is the Samsung NX100, it's about the same size as the E-P2 but has a larger APS-C sized sensor. Lens selection is unfortunately rather limited, but if they have what you need then I think the NX system is way better than either the micro 4/3 or NEX systems. The Samsung absolutely kills them when it comes to ease of use, you have direct button & control ring settings for all the important stuff like exposure, ISO, colour balance, flash mode and shutter speed, no going through menus at all. The manual mode is fucking genius, one control wheel sets the shutter speed and the other sets the aperture, the LCD displays a needle type light meter with a histogram so you can see how good the exposure is.

If all else fails there's Rocky Mountain Film Labs which handles all sorts of odd films including the Kodachrome K-14 process. It'll cost you though and it takes a while for the film to get back to you.

There's also the Fujica 690 and 670 series rangefinders which come in interchangeable and fixed lens versions. You'll need a separate light meter unless you're using the 100mm AE lens but that shouldn't be a problem if you're used to using manual controls on a camera. Long discontinued, unfortunately, so you'll have to buy them on the used market. I thought about buying one earlier this year but ran into the same problem you did; the cost of all the other stuff required to support the camera is absurd and I'm neither skilled nor committed enough to use it. The results are awesome though, one of my friends uses the G690 as his main camera and the prints he makes for exhibits and clients are simply outstanding.

The theory I've heard is that a regular HD pollutes the crap out of the power supply and that's why it's better to have a SSD. Apparently all the control circuitry and stuff that moves the heads around on a regular HD also throws a bunch of noise into the power lines and that's what's messing up the sound.

Thanks! I scanned the prints myself and did a bit of editing to make the scans look like the prints. My 10 year old scanner makes everything too green. Yup. I think I posted a couple somewhere in this thread but I can't find them right now so I'll just put'em all back up again.

It depends on the lighting and how the film is exposed. If you're shooting when the sun's starting to get low in the sky then yeah, skintones will go reddish. And god help you if you underexpose. The key to shooting people with Velvia 50 is to do it when the sun's high in the sky and to overexpose the film a tiny bit, you'll lose a bit of saturation but Velvia has a ton to spare so it's not a big deal. It's still not the greatest film for portraits since the high contrast can lead to harsh shadows if the light's not perfect. Kodak Ektar 100 works pretty well for me as a general purpose film. The one downside is there's a fair bit of colour shift depending on the exposure, treat it as a slide film where you have to nail the exposure dead on or things can get real wonky, it's not like regular negative films where you can be off by a full stop with minimal effects. A few Ektar 100 shots, developed & printed at the local supermarket.

Old school Kona Explosif in nearly mint condition.

Except we weren't wearing shorts today, and there was a bit of snow in places so we could power slide a few turns.

A couple shots from my Olympus Pen-FT with the 40mm

I tried one out at a recent digital camera gear show and was less than impressed, it's a giant freakin' lens that's literally twice the size & weight of the Canon equivalent. Focusing seemed ok, if a bit slow compared to Nikon & Canon's lenses, this was fine since I was shooting a model on a chair but I wouldn't want to try action photography with the lens wide open.

You can take pictures like this in absolutely crappy lighting. This was a poorly lit convention hall, they had a softbox & bounce flash setup at the booth but it was only for the DSLR cameras. I shot this with the kit zoom on the Olympus E-PL1, the only thing I've done is resize and crop it. I deliberately blurred this picture a bit for a softer focus effect by shooting at something like 1/8 of a second at ISO 100 on the slow kit zoom, actual photos will be a lot sharper. With a Canon S95 or any other P&S camera, the skintones won't come out as nice and it'll take some editing to make the colours & contrast look right. And even though there's no image stabilization, you can crank the ISO on a micro 4/3 camera a lot higher while still keeping good image quality and decent shutter speeds, especially with a fast lens like the 20mm/f1.7. Personally I'd rather get the Samsung NX100, it about the same size as the micro 4/3 cameras but has a sensor that's twice the size. I also find it's simpler and easier to use than the micro 4/3 cameras, the menus are simpler and the dual control wheels are a joy to use. The only thing you give up vs. the GF1 is the built in flash, to me this isn't a problem, your needs may vary.

One of the fun parts of living in a big city is you never know what you'll run into on any given day. Like a decked out elephant in the middle of a city park.

Check the brake clearance first to make sure the smaller wheels will fit over the brakes. Some vehicles these days barely have any space between the brake calipers & the wheels so moving down in wheels size can be a problem.

Fall colours should be peaking in a week or two, time to see what Velvia 50 can do.

Is it just the end of the bar that's going into the slot or are you sliding half the bar through the slot? If it's the former than it doesn't really matter since aluminum's pretty soft and it shouldn't be hard at all to file or grind down the end of the bar if needed.

It's a small miracle that my family's GM cars didn't spectacularly self-destruct back in those days.

Wayne just touched upon something which I think is pretty important, the listening you do in a car is normally very different from the kind of listening we do in our homes & "serious" hi-fi systems. For one thing you're not going to be going "check out the low noise-floor, you can hear a pin drop" unless the car's parked with the engine off, the vast majority of the time the car's being driven and there's a ton of noise from the wind, road, and engine so you'll never hear the quiet parts & subtle details. You're not listening to the finer points of the music, most of your focus will likely be on the rhythm & groove of the song. If the car stereo can carry a beat and not make your ears hurt, it's probably good enough. Taken from that viewpoint, there's not much to complain about on the list.

At current market prices, there's around $230 worth of gold in each window.

McLachlan. I've met her a few times and somehow ended up having breakfast with her earlier this year, she's a truly remarkable woman. Really nice and down to eath, and she has this way of putting you at ease and making you feel like you've known each other for a long time even though you met like 5 minutes ago. Briefly met Wanderlei Silva last year, he's a scary looking badass especially considering what he does for a living, but he's the probably the nicest guy you'll ever meet. He truly cares about his fans and he's just a super cool guy to talk to and chill with. Doug Gilmour & Peter Zezel used to visit the shop I worked in around 10 years ago, sometimes one of the other Leafs players would drop by with one of them. They were pretty quiet guys and didn't really like to talk much about hockey, but other than that one issue they were nice guys.