I went to New York City lately on vacation and shot a bunch of film while I was there, wandering the streets with three cameras.

We have reached a new stage with Kodak, and I'm not pleased about it. With prior film discontinuations, Kodak gave advanced warning that a film was going to be discontinued, perhaps with a suggested replacement film. Now, we're faced with films being discontinued without the courtesy of advance warning so we can calibrate our process for a new film or alternatively stock up to complete a project while there's still film to be purchased.

Some notes on film, some cool and not-so-cool stuff out of PMA, and a few more tidbits.

Despite my film-shooting bent, I do like to keep up with the digital scene as well. This is all rampant speculation based on the available facts, given that nobody's dropping any expensive loaner hardware on my doorstop anytime soon.

I'm going to write a series of articles about photo archiving in the digital age. I'm at an interesting position to talk about these issues. I am professionally a programmer with more than a passing familiarity with imaging algorithms as well as a photographer who has displayed his work in art galleries. My wife is in the process of finishing up her masters degree in Library and Information science and has a degree in History...

There's a theory going around that we artists should be flattered by people 'stealing' our images. Because it means that somebody actually likes our work. People won't steal just any image, now will they?

I noticed that a lot of search terms related to my RB67 are appearing in my log since last time.
There really isn't much good info on the web about the RB67, I'll give you, so I want to help others out. You can always email me, too. I love my RB67 and am more than glad to share the love with you. :)

I'm not incredibly worried about the "death of film". I'm not tied to the use of film to the point where I'll have lost my creative outlet if it disappears, it just happens to be the right tool for the job. I'll buy a fancy expensive high-resolution digital SLR and move on with life. But there are supply problems with film.

Some months ago, I closed a stock photo sale and used the proceeds to add a new camera to my collection. I made the jump to medium format.

After reading Strobist, I almost purchased the recommended cheap old Nikon flash. However, I also wanted a flash to be carried around for impromptu situations that I could have better control over, I felt that the Nikon would be too specific to the Nikon cameras.

I've been spending a lot of time in the past year or so on finding ways to continue to shoot film, but doing it more economically. The first step was getting my own scanner so I didn't need to pay somebody to print or scan my photos. Lately, I decided that my cost of B&W developing was too high, so I set up my own darkroom

People in the 35mm and digital shooting worlds tend to place a lot of importance on having the sharpest lens and the finest grained film/highest resolution sensor. People shooting 6x7 or large format have far less to worry about. I wanted to try out Kodak E200 to see what it looked like for my next film comparison, since it was freshly-expired in 120 format at the local camera store, but I realized that I couldn't make any realistic assessment of how grainy it was in the 6x7 format. So, after playing with UC 400 in the 35mm format, I decided I wanted to know what it looks like on my 6x7.

My personal preference in natural-looking photography is to search out beautiful lighting instead of trying to create it. It has a habit of surprising you with beautiful colors and glows and shading. Plus, it's cheaper and I'm stingy. So I picked up the Sunpack Digital Flash.

A set of pointers on how to get a good long-exposure night shot using film cameras without wasting tons of film.

From Aug 6, 2006, to Aug 10, 2006, six pieces were on display at: the cATacLySmIc mEgAshEaR rAnCh