what do you do

when you feel like talking but can't find a starting point?

Go to the weather of course.

it is much less controversial than talking about josh and his dreaming of Ctodd... (i'd link both of them but i don't feel like it... "I'm a slacker..."

Looking at Plymouth weather forecast calls for rain in the 11 and 12 hours. Hmmm just before and during the race. Could i get that lucky? Could I? Could it really be mid 40s and raining? AND windy? Could it be?

Prolly not with my luck. It'll dry out, the sun will come out and the wind will stop right around noon.

Putney looks pretty good. Cool and sunny. And calm.

Either way... i'm pretty stoked for a fun weekend of racing. Probably the last double until the RI weekend mid december.

So waiting here - killing time - i clicked over to the flickr cross images and saw this one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/natearm/1925625884/

film...

cool stuff...

i do honestly miss the tactile feel of the heavy pentax spotmatic and the kick ass takamura lenses i got for it. I miss the control of the focus being exactly where YOU set it based on the view finder - not sort of repeated begging the autofocus to find the right spot to meter... That and the some times unintended focal point...

I dunno, there's alot to be said for digital. But the more i use digital, at times like this when i think back on the film era, time spent in the darkroom processing rolls and rolls of black and white tech pan or TMax and then making contact sheets, and printing on Oriental Seagull fixed contrast (usually 4 or 5) paper... the time in the dark room, sort of focused and driven.

Microscopes now aren't any different. TEM used to be the last vestige of film. But even we've moved onto digital. Dark room is no more. And i miss it. Maybe it is the creative process. Maybe it is a skill that i had learned and really mastered that isn't being used. There is an ace up my sleeve. I've got most of a darkroom in the basement waiting to be set up. benefit of dumpster diving when film labs are dismantled. Maybe the hope is to resurrect the art for my kids as they get old enough to play with the chemicals and process paper and film. That's the hope anyway.

It just isn't the same. Capturing images on a CMOS or CCD sensor with a bayer mask and some hoopty algorithm to create a color image using a device that just counts photons and then just turning the color off. The demand is not really there but i'd love a nice raw black and white ccd camera. get that stupid bayer mask off the sensor. turn off the wicked slow ass algorithm. raw fast dump of the pixel array. Someone one said that sony had a black and white digi cam but i haven't looked in a while and it was supposed to be pretty pricey.

Even the fancy digi-SLR don't have the same feel. Maybe i just haven't used one enough. But, they still have the stupid interpolative masking shit. Call me a geeky photo imaging nerd but i still don't like it. It works but it makes so many assumptions. Assumptions are never good. Well, not true, but it was my chemistry teacher in high school that drummed in ass/u/me i can't see the word without putting the slashes in there.

Enough about that. But maybe, just maybe i should think about taking out the roll or two of TMax i have in the drawer here and load the Pentax... would be fun...

race well, crash safely, and smile,
g