crappyjones123

A little foreshadowing before Thanksgiving dinner.

NY strip steak with a mushroom sauce I made for the first time and broccoli to celebrate passing my first final.

Nice conversion Jon. Funny, a friend asked me to take some pictures at a baby shower this past weekend. Haven't looked at all of them yet but here are a few. And my favorite so far...

I was joking Deepak.

I think windows is the problem there doc. These things don't happen on a Mac.

Julie went to Sears on Tuesday to get 2 tires changed. When she went out to the car to drive home, the door handle was broken. She went back in and complained and the assistant manager said he couldn't get to it the same day so she would need to leave the car over night. He told her that if it was something small they would take care of it but if it was expensive she would need to pay. I went over and he changed that statement to small charges coming out of pocket, big charges coming out of their 3rd party insurance. On Thursday evening I went to go pick up the car and while the door handle was fixed, the remote keyless entry no longer locked or unlocked the car. I left the car over night and Julie called the corporate office and filed a case with them. After a couple of phone calls corporate said that we would need to essentially need to deal with the local Sears car shop and she refused to give us the Store manager's name or contact information. Today the shop told Julie that they will get to the car whenever they can. The manager said he spoke with his mechanics and none of them broke it and that it must have broken on it's own between the time that the car was fixed and when I came to pick it up - the car was still in the repair area when I got there). He told me I would need to pay for any and all repairs this time around because they are not at fault. Suggestions? She needs to get to work and school so I gave her my car and now I haven't had one since Tuesday. They refused to pay for a rental as well since the door handle being broken was did not make the car unsafe to drive. I have missed all off campus hospital visits since Wednesday due to this.

Not my feet. D800 + Sigma 35/1.4

I set it to no DC. Just shot it as if it were a "normal" lens.

I'll check tonight if I can find time Ari. The CA is almost absent on the 35mm even at f/1.4. I dont know if longer lenses have more CA though.

The d800 is fantastic. I am starting to like the sigma a lot more. In low light it is tack sharp whereas the 135 is very soft and suffers from a huge amount of CA wide open. At times the eyes just turn out to be blobs which is not good for a portrait lens. But I think I might have a less than desirable copy. I will repeat the tests once I have a tripod to rule out user error.

The one I just posted was taken with a nikkor 135/2 dc. All the ones in the long post were with a sigma 35/1.4.

Woah that's real cool.

As much as I love Zeiss glass, I don't like the look of the Otus. I wish they had stuck to the rugged look/feel/construction of the distagon series. The Otus seems prone to rub marks and discolorations. Not something I would like to see in a lens that expensive. Then again, I don't have the money to buy it so I guess my opinion doesn't really matter.

With the second round of med school exams over, a few friends and I decided to take a break and head to the local watering holes to procure some choice beverages for them. 1. The afternoon started with a trip to "The Pub" where absurdly tasty lamb burgers were consumed with two fingers of Macallan 18. The gorgeous caramel was making it difficult to focus on focusing. 2. I collected myself and tried real hard to focus properly. 3. Fast forward a couple of hours and we ended up at Primanti Brothers in search of a good pizza. 4. 5. Everyone we came across greeted us with a smile 6. We came. We bit. We were stuffed. 7. The sendoff included a smile too. 8. We ran into a couple of wise guys who couldn't figure out the "who has two thumbs" joke. No, they weren't drunk. 9. They showed us how what their mating call was. I promised them I would try it when I got home. It didn't work. 10. Then they showed us how Arnold posed in the Mr. Universe competition. 11. We came across a model who only wanted a dollar in exchange for services rendered as a subject. 12. Some people pretended (quite poorly) that they didn't want their picture taken. 13. The night ended at The Drunken Taco where we had an excellent conversation with Gil who wanted me to email him this photo as he liked it a lot but wanted to make sure that I knew his name was Gil, not Gill. He mentioned with a quivering voice that his mother would have killed him if he ever received any correspondence addressed to Gil. All in all a well deserved break from the books. Now back to the grind.

The gentleman across the table is a Russian Scot. Or a Scottish Russian. And likes nice whiskey. One of the girls who was there was about to put ice in the macallan and he nearly died.

Celebrating the end of second set of exams with a macallan 18.

The 105 DC goes for only maybe $100 less on the used market these days. Took a break from Histology today.

Couple more from the same day.

It's HEAVY. And looooooong. I find it rather cumbersome at times. Then again, I have only every used 35/50mm in the past so could stand fairly close. Even with the 105 dc I didn't have to walk back as far. The guy didn't know what he had. Sold me the 135 dc for an absurd price because "it made too much noise while focusing."

Thanks guys. No burning or dodging. Just adjusted levels in LR 4 and cropped it. Haj, it's taken with your favorite Nikon portrait lens

Yes, I missed critical focus here and I'm not usually a fan of blown out backgrounds however, the image carries with it a nice story. Hope you like it. I saw this gentleman on my way back from the edge of the Deerfield Beach pier. He was rather quiet and diminutive and went about baiting his hooks with a mother's patience. A welcome relief from the gregarious bunch fishing off the end of the pier. His motions were practiced and deliberate and while his brow scrunched with concentration his entire body was relaxed. He had obviously done this before. I watched him admiringly for a few minutes and then asked him if I could take a picture of him. He stared back at me in terror as if I had asked him to commit some heinous crime. Feverishly, he took out his receipt indicating a fishing permit. I took out my camera and flashed it in front of him hoping he would understand my request. He calmed down immediately as he understood I wasn't an inspector. No matter how much I tried to convince him, he wouldn't stop sticking the hook in front of the lens. I still don't know what he thinks I wanted to take a picture of but he swung the fishing line so proudly, I didn't protest and included it in the frame. I thanked him for his time and he opened a giant cooler he was sitting on and grabbed a plastic bag. Now I was confused as he motioned for me to look inside. I saw more fish in that cooler than all the ones the guys at the end of pier had caught. Given my lack of knowledge on the proper way to gut a fish, I politely declined. But I walked away smiling.

Very nice. Super clean at ISO 6400.