ƒ= {ƒ equals}

Sorry about the absence, been busy with moving out of school, horrid finals, starting summer school, etc. Finally got a place, we hope. It's on Vicente and 24th...ish. Still need to finalize paperwork, get the lease signed, etc, but we're workin on it. first on the list, but it gets kinda hard with 500 miles between here and SF. But yes, we will be moving into a place in the Sunset, 2br/2ba, nice kitchen and bathrooms, all the good stuff. happiness all around. 

Did some work for Marion Knowles (one of my mom's photographer friends) the other day got a grip of film out of her fridge. I love when people think they'll never use it and just give it away. makes me feel all warm and happy on the inside. And she had some legit cameras to shoot it with, so it's not like there wasn't a capability. Oh well, one person's trash is another's treasure. Got about.....10 or so rolls of Kodak's B&W C41 film, in 2 varieties: the Portra BW400 and the T400CN. 10 rolls of Provia, 5 rolls of velvia, some superia, reala, NPH400, NPS160, NHG800, a roll of kodak gold, 2 rolls of kodak HD, which I assume is a consumer oriented version of UC or something like that. or maybe just a finer-grained gold. who knows, I'll have to find out. I think it's in the Pentax right now. actually no, NPH400 is in the pentax, and the Kodak HD is in the OMG. NHG800 in the Nikon. more on that later.

Also scored a roll of Ektachrome 1600 (win!) and scala 200. sending that one out should be interesting. Took the Ektachrome (god that is a hard word to type for some reason) to Chrome in SD. Prices are about as good as Photoworks so hopefully that will be a good place to get my E-6 developed. they send out their B&W though... freakin weird. Develop E-6, sendout for B&W. makes sense. Their price also includes mounting, so I hope I get a discount on that since I hate mounted slides. anyways, I'll have those ready and hopefully up by Wedesday. 

Back to the NHG800. I'll be assisting Terri Rippee at a wedding tomorrow, hopefully the Nikon will deliver. and the NHG. and the neopan. will also be my first time doing anything photographic at a wedding. actually, I think it'll only be the second wedding ive attended. that seems weird to me. so, two rolls of NHG800, a grip of Neopan, and some NPH400 or NPS160. I'll bring both and I'll just have to see what kind of light I have to work with.  

as some additional news, I've got a bunch of stuff on eBay. if you need some vintage flashes, I guess I'm your guy. I've got...
Voigtlander VC21B
Vivitar 2500
Focal M500CS
Achiever 115A
Sunpak DC-3

I shot this in a DIY softbox.  inspiration/idea from the master himself, David Hobby.  at least I think it was his blog... oh well.  it's just your average medium sized cardboard box with four sides cut out of it, a poster board sweep, and copy paper taped on the top and right side, and also the inside left to act as a bounce.  Shot a 420EZ at 1/16 or 1/32 through the top and a Sunpak 422D through the side, also at 1/16th.  

In later shots, I snooted the 420 because I was getting weird shadows from the solid parts of the box.  you can see them to the right and left of the body.  stopped the aperture way down so I could tell where the light was hitting and adjusted the flash until it was hitting the paper diffuser and only the paper diffuser, not any cardboard.  tried to control the light spill from the 422D but I just didnt have the time or materials to try to flag the background.  the other shots turned out fine, but if I was doing serious work for pay, that would have been rectified.  all in all, a great DIY project that took about 45min from start to finish (my box cutters suck, I ended up using kitchen shears) that gave me some good high-key product shots for ebay.  certainly nothing worthy of calling art, but shit that definitely works for its purpose. 

On the film front: this is what I love about Velvia.  awesome.freaking.colors.  taken at the Tulip Garden in Golden Gate Park, SF.  You get some weird types there.  Asian guys with fat tripods and D3oos with huge lenses mostly.  Anyways, this was scanned on a V500, which I think is a ridiculously good scanner for the amount of money you can pay for it.  3200dpi gives you 14.7mp images (according to Adobe Camera Raw) from 35mm frames.  not too shabby at all.  it does kinda lack in the B&W department.  Vuescan just doesn't seem to be able to hit the exposure correctly for Neopan, FP4, or HP5.  And I'm hating Epsonscan.  stuff turns out sharper but its because of an aggressive unsharp mask, and it just doesn't give the highest quality possible. I'd recommend shying away from it, and also because it has a really hard time recognizing dark negatives and slides (im talking in terms of the positive image here). Anyways, enjoy.  

Nikon N8008s + Nikkor 28mm f/3.5 + Fuji Velvia RVP50