crappyjones123

Thank you for your help Larry. Much appreciated. The team I am part of, as a whole, would like to raise $2500. The $250 was just the arbitrary number the website out on as a personal goal.

Analog stick thingy was what I have at my parents place. Will grab it over the weekend. Have cast iron pan. I did get lucky but as you mentioned the 350 in the oven did dry the surface out well. Next time I won't use the grill pan but a flat cast iron pan which should get hotter too. I don't care for grill marks but for a nice crisp crust all around instead of just where the grill marks are. Every time I have used foil the steak has come off soggy as it basically just boils. However every time in the past I seared first before putting it in the oven which might have tightened the fibers and squeezed it out juices which collected in the foil.

Suggestions for inexpensive meat thermometer Jacob? I have one at my parents home but I left it there because it was rather shitty.

Thank you Todd. Extremely generous of you. An extra lap for Mrs. Todd. Cancer has not been kind to my family. 1 uncle lost to lung cancer and 4 aunts lost to ovarian and breast cancer and now my mom has been going to for regular screenings for issues with breast masses and my sister has been having problems with ovarian cysts and fibroids for the past few years. It's just a shitty disease but things like these keep morale high. I am trying to have the AV people show this as a joke but I am not sure others present will share my sense of humor. The gentleman is considered a joke in the medical community.

Mentally I couldn't get over seeing that much pink. I guess I'll have to give it another try sometime. We went to some super fancy place while visiting Niagara Falls and it looked almost exactly like the picture. I asked the chef to throw it on the grill just for the grill marks even though he kept trying to convince me it was fully cooked and safe to eat. I guess I don't mind the pink as much as I mind the lack of a crust.

Interesting. I think the lowest my toaster oven goes is 250 maybe. The range oven probably 300. How long would you suggest cooking the steak at 250 for?

I'm participating in a Relay for Life event with some med school colleagues next Saturday. We have a ways to go towards our goal so any help would be much appreciated. Thanks Below is the link for the donation page. http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?fr_id=56825&pg=personal&px=36448377

I cooked it at 350 for 15 minutes in the oven. Then maybe 15-20 seconds on each side on a hot grill pan. What's the advantage of lower temperatures?

I miss the simple life. Med school can be quite a drag sometimes. The Grand Canyon is a hostile place for all life in general but I wonder how many people go there and come out with it being their happy place - the place they go to in their mind when they are down. The ice cold water that rattles your spine. The merciless sun that glares down without care and dries you up within minutes to where you pray for the cold spray as you raft down the Colorado river. The lovely conversations to be had at camp sites with people you would have never ordinarily met. The night sky unblemished by street lights and with the moon so bright that you wonder why you brought a flashlight in the first place. It is hostile but it is a simple place. It is my happy place. To visit it again someday...

Chateaubriand steak with lemon grilled peppers and green beans. Might be the best steak I've ever made. Flipped the script this time and stuck it in the oven first and then seared. Might do this from now on.

Was sharing pictures with someone who later introduced himself as the director of one of the fanciest art galleries in miami. Asked if I wished to be represented by his gallery and I was more than thrilled to say yes. Then got the contract via email and found out that gallery representation requires a fee be paid beyond the commission on sales. It was $1000/month. I was ecstatic before the email but now I'm sad.

Jacob, D700 for <$1000. http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1283595

One of my friends, Alexandra, and her fiancee, Andre.

Dinner for the lady tonight. Bourbon and peppercorn salmon and cajun marinated catfish, with steamed green beans and fresh spinach.

Yes. They said to wait till Wednesday and that they would contact Adorama themselves to see if the matter could be sped up.

Ken, I pay off my cards daily to make sure I live within my means but also to maintain my credit history. So it's not like have something to hold over the credit card company. Rather the credit card company is paid and so is Adorama. It is I who doesn't have the product I paid for. Adorama refuses to release the funds to my credit card company until their internal investigation and UPS' internal investigations are done. Seems reasonable but the amount of time they are taking to do it is absurd.

Brent said he liked this one the most on Facebook. Edited it on my laptop instead of the monitor at my apartment so colors might be a bit off. Don't have photoshop so can't play with layers or blend images in Lightroom but recently found out about the Enfuse plugin which allows you to blend images. Still not sure how different sliders work and what kind of effect they have on the images but here is a poor attempt at blending images. I took one image underexposed and another overexposed thinking blending them will give me better dynamic range but I seem to get better results from single frames with the D800. That or I don't know what I am doing with Enfuse. Will play with it some more later. Edit - yay for intact EXIF data.

Gene, EXIF data can be seen here - http://500px.com/photo/64555441 http://500px.com/photo/64566503 I had a fairly dark ND filter (I think 64x) in front of the sigma 35/1.4. It's quite annoying that imgur strips exif data from images uploaded to it. Are there any free image hosts that are allowed here that don't do that? The first one is actually quite close to what I saw. Just more saturated due to the longer exposure. But the water really looked that green color close to the beach. Farther out it was nice and clear blue. The second one is a bit more cooked. I boosted vibrance quite a bit and pulled back saturation. Sharpened and boosted contrast on the pier a wee bit - can't really tell the difference. Took it into Color Efex 4 and stacked a vignette filter for the darker corners and a warmth filter to tone down the grey and blues as they were rather distracting in the clouds. Took it back in lightroom and reduced overall clarity and reduced saturation even more.

Slightly different processing.

Thanks Nate. Spring break started yesterday at 5 so I thought I would go to the beach early morning. Got up and looked at the weather - 77 and clear. Got to the beach an hour later and it was pouring. Snuck this one when the rain let up for a few minutes.

Sigma 35/1.4

Hokay. Will call Zeiss USA tomorrow.

What would Zeiss do here? Adorama is one of their biggest sellers. They aren't going to yell at them.

Nope. Never going back to Adorama again - Helen was rather flippant in her response to the first email. I didn't even get a response to the second email. I am basically out $2200 right now for an untold amount of time which is quite annoying.