Hey all. Back in the day (some number of months ago), I was marginally
active around here. Today, I hadn't looked at my PDML mailbox in so long,
there were over 10,000 unread messages. What the heck happened?
I changed jobs. Well, sorta. I'm still working at the same camera shop,
but now I'm not on the sales floor. I run the digital lab. This entails
large printing (I get to use the Epson Stylus Pro 9600, which can print up
to 44" wide by however long you want (which ROCKS!)), lots and lots of
scanning, photo restoration, laminating, and mounting. I'm also the store's
in-house graphic artist, which means I make graphics, signage, and ads.
Compared to the relative chaos of retail sales, my new position is a lot
less stressful, but takes a lot more energy.
To bring Pentax into this post, I've been meaning to mention some awesome
enablement I've recently aquired:
smc M(star) 300mm f4
and
smc 500mm f4.5
Of course, a couple weeks after getting these lenses (no, I won't tell you
how I got them. suffice to say it was legal, but you'd all kill me if you
knew the story) I accidentally cracked the LCD screen on my *ist. The
screen itself still worked, but the hard plastic over it was cracked when I
tossed something too close to the camera. $185 to fix the damn thing.
Karma? Almost makes me want to consider believing...
So I've been shooting a lot of film these days. The Nikon CoolScan 8000ED
in my lab has come in handy very much here. I swear, if I could afford it,
I'd buy two of those scanners. Nothing I've seen from any other film
scanner (and I've used Epson, KonicaMinolta, and Canon scanners, both
film-dedicated and flatbed) comes close to the quality of the Nikon 8000ED.
The software's a bit of a pain in the butt at times, but it's worth the
hassle.
Just for fun, here are a couple shots taken with the M(star) 300mm:
http://www.neovenator.com/special/barker.jpg
http://www.neovenator.com/special/people.jpg
and one with the A 28mm 2.8:
http://www.neovenator.com/special/bri_dessert.jpg
So anyway, these days I don't have a whole lot of energy for much after I
get home from work, but I'm trying to get back into the PDML habit,
especially with all the shooting I've been doing lately on my days off.
It's as if not having my digital around has made me want to shoot *more*,
for some weird reason.
Got a major deadline at work tomorrow, so I've gotta hit the hay.
John Celio
--
http://www.neovenator.com
AIM: Neopifex
"Hey, I'm an artist. I can do whatever I want and pretend I'm making a
statement."
