Last night was a bit rough.

I've been looking into new equipment purchases, a 13" printer and a 35mm f2 lens. I know I can't afford either right now, but I can look and try to figure out where what I want when I finally have the cash. The lens that I really want is a Carl Zeiss, now the Canadian Zeiss distributor doesn't mention the 35mm on their site, but they do mention the 50mm f1.4 and by comparing the the European prices of the two lenses I can deduce that the Zeiss 35mm would cost me roughly $1200CN before taxes. Suddenly the Nikon AF 35mm f/2D at $400 doesn't sound too bad, despite mediocre performance and construction. As an added bonus, the Nikon lens won't disable the TTL metering on my overly computerised F55 (I will get Zeiss glass, it'll just be later than I'd hoped).

As for the printer, I'm looking at an HP B9180. Unfortunately I live in the interior of British Columbia, so the boxstores that the Canadian HP website directs me to and tells me to "call for availability" not only won't have the printer, but (based upon visits to their respective websites) don't even stock the ink cartridges. Looks like I'm going to be forced to buy online. (oh and the HP Canada site is a byzantine mess, at least as bad as Nikon Canada's was the last time I entered that hell)

The photo is Grand Forks, last July, shot near the Station House Pub. There had been a couple of deer down that I had wanted to shoot in the long grass using the other end of my 28-80mm zoom, but by the time I'd set up the ol' tripod to deal with the low light and long-ish shutter times they'd buggered right off, so I reset and took this.

Well the snow's been melting around here, I'd say that it's more than half gone, and the temperatures have been fairly mild over the past, well, week or so. And we're supposed to have a mix of sun and cloud just about everyday this week, so I think I've got a pretty good chance to go out and snap some pics, probably on Wednesday or Thursday.

I watched Logan's Run last night (I bought the DVD last Wednesday, along with Blade Runner), I'm a bit surprised with the PG rating given the violence, nudity, sexuality and apparent drug use, particually since Blade Runner has an R rating for the same reasons. Admittedly Blade Runner is darker, grittier and has more violent content, but both movies get a Canadian Home Movie Rating of 14A. But then the Canadian Home Video Rating System (which only applies to video rental/purchase) is a very different critter from MPAA system. The MPAA rates Benny & Joon as PG while the CHV rates the movie as R (roughly equivalent to NC-17 in meaning and intent). *sigh*

The pic is of the north face of the Penticton Law Courts, downtown, near Okanagan Lake and the casino (and City Hall, but who cares about that?). Shot 7 July 2005.

I'm having one of those days, weeks, months, years, lives.

It looks like the past four month's work may have just gone down the proverbial shitter.

I've been scanning some of my older work and noticing really harsh grain and had been blaming the film (I was using a different film then, a store brand, but still). So anyway, playing a hunch, I turn off all sharpening in the Nikon program and boom, problem solved. So now I have to go back and rescan, at the least, the six to eight other rolls of this particular film that I had scanned with preliminary sharpening done in the scanning program.

But here's the rub, if the "bad" film scans better without the sharpening what about the "good" Fujifilm I've been using for the past 18 months (giver or take). Am I going to have to rescan the 15 to 20 rolls of Fuji Superia I've shot (not to mention the editing of all these rescans). The answer is yes, because as much of a pain in the ass as it's going to be, I am an anal prick when it comes to image quality (which happens to be the second biggest reason that only going after a 13 inch printer, I'd rather make a superb 12x18 than a mediocre 20x30).

Now to go and bang my head against that brick wall I've building for the past four months.

*note: I think it only fair to mention that the problem has much more to do with me than it does with the Nikon Scan program. My understanding of unsharp masking comes from my experience with Photoshop, in which the "radius" of the unsharp mask is expressed in pixels, while in Nikon Scan that same "radius" is expressed as a %. I also have no doubt that there are other differences in the way in which the two programs handle USM procedures and effects. Add my inexperience with film scanning itself, specifically just what a 20 mega-pixel scan of film X should look like on a computer screen at 100% magnification, and, well...

While for the most part, I maintain the Infinite Tangent as a photoblog, it is an infinite tangent and there will be times when something pisses me off enough that I will write irregardless of whether or not I have a pic to post. Deal with it.

Pulled from Sexual Evolution:

the $6,000 raised by a coalition of exotic dancers apparently isn’t good enough for the Breast Cancer Society of Canada. The women have been raising money for breast cancer research and awareness ever since another dancer – a friend of theirs – was killed by the disease. That particular charity had accepted money from the women before, but apparently certain major donors objected to the charity’s connection with strippers. Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate, but apparently the Breast Cancer Society of Canada does. Honestly, they should be ashamed.

To be blunt, the Breast Cancer Society of Canada is being run by idiots and cowards. The correct moral action when threatened like this is to hold a press conference, out those certain major donors, and state quite clearly that the BCSC exists to fight breast cancer not to support the false moralities of small minded, Loveless individuals and organisations.