This, obviously, is not a great way to get a killer portfolio.

Not totally true and not totally fair.... but.. :)

Serious compacts are near and dear to my heart. So, even though I've been ignoring increasing numbers of digital camera announcements because I don't feel that they actually offer anything new, I've kept up with the serious compacts, because my G7 is getting old...

I finally gave in and ordered the Dell U2410. My basic thought process was that the HP equivalent was too new and didn't offer anything persuasive above the Dell. The 27" and 30" versions were perhaps more expensive than I'd like. And if I didn't like the U2410 because it had banding or a color split, I could take it back...

MPEX and I go way back. When I was in grade school, my dad and I drove up from Cincinnati so he could buy me my Canon TX that has served me well ever since.

They also happen to be great at hunting down inexpensive camera gear for us off-camera strobist folks. Every time the Strobist blog covers the next piece of hardware they cook up, I feel myself reaching for the credit card... :D

It looks like there won't be any new film Leicas to join old Leicas on the display shelves of proctologists and lawyers everywhere...

A long time ago, before shutter and mirror design was sufficiently advanced, Canon made some Pellicle mirror cameras. The whole point was that you'd have a fixed mirror in place that would reflect some of the light up at the viewfinder and let the rest through to the film...

My needs for carrying camera gear are often idiosyncratic. Normal people don't expect to use an RB67 and a Sunpak 622 in the field. I do, and I'd like to carry them on my bike too.

Expiration dates on film are more of a guideline than an absolute rule. They are usually a few years out, and if you freezer the film, it'll decay more slowly...

About twenty years ago, Adobe introduced Photoshop. I've been using it for most of that time.

One of the optical constants that people sometimes forget is that small image circles (like the grain-of-salt sized 1/1.7" sensors) make fast lenses easy to make. Samsung is releasing a point and shoot compact camera with an f/1.8 zoom lens, which is pretty close to impossible in big-sensor land but will, assuming they design it right, work quite well for a compact camera.

I thought I was done writing about the troubles of buying a really good LCD display, hopefully before my CRT finally dies. Which, I might add, it stopped doing some of the antics that were causing me to think that failure was impending. But, no...

A few things that have been working lately...

Depth of field brackets on cameras are quite handy to start a discussion about picking the right aperture to get a desired depth of field and suggest the concept of the hyperfocal distance. I wish more lenses had them. I've got an old Vivitar Series One lens that has a quite pleasant set of depth of field brackets that work at any zoom length. Modern zoom lenses don't even try to get this right.

Loosing your inspiration is a form of impotence. The more you obsess over it being gone, the harder it is to get back. And I recognize this, so I just didn't bother scheduling much in terms of shooting and didn't worry about it...