Robert Pence

Excellent tour!

Observant eye! Those are great. More!

Great photos! McConnelsville actually looks pretty good. Apparently the long impoverishment of that part of the state has resulted in a lot of old buildings surviving without being extensively hacked.

The CPU in my head is a lot slower than the one in my computer; consequently a lot of its processing is done in background, and sometimes it surprises me with stuff I had forgotten I was even thinking about. Or maybe it's my slow memory, or fragmented file storage... Anyway, this just popped up on my mental screen: < :type: > Jake, isn't it just the opposite on Orthochromatic film? I think it's because it's highly sensitive to blue light, just as sensitive as it is to white light, that the skies blow out. I think it doesn't respond to red light, which is why reds render as black in the old photos, and why photographers could process the film or plates under a red safelight. Panchromatic film, which I think became commonly available in the mid- to late-thirties, overcame the insensitivity to red light and renders reds in tones of gray, but for the most part is still highly sensitive to blue and will usually render blue skies as white and fail to show clouds, if shot unfiltered. A yellow filter blocks part of the blue light and darkens the rendering of the sky, making the clouds stand out without much adverse effect on foliage or skin tones. An orange filter produces a stronger effect, and a red filter, especially when combined with a polarizer, can yield almost-black skies. Because panchromatic film is sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light, and even goes a little bit beyond the visible spectrum on the blue end, reflected UV makes atmospheric haze more bothersome in a photograph than it is to the naked eye, and a haze filter can be optically-clear glass, often with a coating to increase its UV absorbtion. Panchromatic black-and-white film has to be developed in total darkness because its sensitivity encompasses the entire visible spectrum. </ :type: >

I'm eager to see the pics. I've heard a lot about Ann Arbor, but never explored it.

C-Dawg, take a look at the Epson R2400. It's pricey, but probably the cream of the crop. It can deliver archival quality up to 13" x 19" on a wide variety of very good paper surfaces. I use its predecessor, the 2200, and have always been pleased with its ability to deliver fine detail and good tone separation in the shadow areas. A couple of pro photographers have thought that one of my black & white 11 x 14 prints from a scan of a 35mm T-Max 100 neg was a darkroom silver print. A year or two back, I read a very favorable review of the HP 7960 in Photo Techniques, too

Dear Me! Ithn't that jutht tho thweet! :wave:

Do suppose somebody actually paid money for that video?

Hooray for muggy summer days!

Maybe they follow the same policy as in Indiana; off season traffic is so light that the gate receipts wouldn't cover the cost of collecting them, so they don't bother. Spring through fall, when more people use the parks, the gate charges apply.

I just dug the camera out of the back of the closet to see if it would help me remember. The built-in selenium meter no longer works, but the available shutter speeds range from 1 sec to 1/500 and the apertures go from f/2.8 to f/22. I wasn't shooting fast action or close-ups, so for a 50mm lens f/5.6 to f/8 gave good general coverage outdoors, and shutter speeds were probably in the range 1/125 down to 1/60, maybe sometimes to 1/30. I'm usually comfortable hand-holding down to 1/30 for casual photography, but below that I'll find something to lean against or something to steady the camera against. I'm up to my ears in a project with a deadline that's hurtling toward me, but after I finish it, I'll dig up some of my 44-year-old K-10 slides and scan them and post them.

Actually, it wasn't that bad in well-lighted outdoor situations. I just learned to be very steady, and I got a lot of very respectable slides from it. When I got caught without a tripod in less-than-optimal situations there were usually alternatives -- set the self-timer and put the camera on top of a trash can or fence post, or hold it against a wall or pole, or sometimes just sit on the ground and brace my elbows on my knees, etc. There were other films, of course. Kodacolor was ASA 100 as far back as I can remember, but for the best pictures in its time, you couldn't do better than Kodachrome 10. Sorry about wandering away from the thread topic. Now, where's my walker? I could find it easier if I could just remember what I did with my spectacles! :|

Most of what I'm about to say is ancient history and irrelevant now (what's new?). Please indulge my rambling reminiscence. ("When I was your age, life was really hard") [ :speech: ]When I got my first 35mm camera, back when most people were still using charred sticks to scratch designs on their cave walls, the slide film of choice was the Kodachrome later referred to as Kodachrome 10, for the ASA (ISO) number. As with any change, many photographers mourned Kodak's switch to Kodachrome II, or Kodachrome 25, in 1962. The old stuff had stronger red saturation, better resolution and finer grain, but, Oh, Man! The contrast! Hold it down to preserve bright highlights, and the shadows went to inky black. On blue-sky sunny days a polarizing filter helped by holding down the brightness of the sky and taming reflections, but that left you with an effective ASA rating of about 3. Still, people learned to work with it. Look at the superb National Geographic color photos from the fifties and early sixties; almost all of that work was done with Kodachrome 10. The alternative to Kodachrome 10 was the "faster" Ektachrome, rated at ASA 32. It was a decent film in regard to color rendition, but almost took contrast to the other extreme. It was comparatively grainy, too, and worked better in 120 format than in 35mm. It didn't have the permanence of Kodachrome, either, especially because it could be processed by independent labs that didn't always exercise tight control of processes and chemical expiration limits. Independent labs gave inconsistent results and the slides processed by them tended to shift after a few years. With proper storage, though, Kodak-processed Ektachrome could be expected to stay reasonably stable for 20-25 years and not shift completely out of reach even after that. [ / :speech: ] :sleep:

It's all so unnecessary; there's never any trouble except on nights when there's a full moon, and no one has ever been able to prove it was me! :|

Reading looks pleasingly dense and surprisingly intact. Bellefonte is a real charmer, and Penn's Cave isn't far away. They have boat tours, but I don't know if it's open in the winter. The war memorial park at nearby Boalsburg is one of the more moving things I've experienced in roaming parts of Pennsylvania, too. I've always skipped over State College, but should probably check it out.

Peeing your pants can give you a warm feeling, too, and it's just about as good an idea. :x

I like those a lot. They make me wish I was allowed outdoors after dark. :roll:

An amazing sight, to see so little activity and traffic! What an experience!

C-Dawg, I think you can still get 1.35 volt replacement batteries from Porter's. The mercury batteries are illegal, but there's a zinc-air battery that supposedly delivers identical performance.

The realtors need to quit shooting their own stuff and hire photographers who understand the product and market and the art of photography. A friend of mine photographs high-end properties in San Francisco for realtors, and gets outstanding results by paying attention to the setting and composition and by using some simple techniques especially suited to that kind of work. Probably the most effective of those is the practice of photographing from a kneeling position. It eliminates the perspective distortion in standing eye-level photos, and generally gives the room a more spacious, balanced and attractive look.

I second that. There are a lot of situations where exposure can't be controlled for optimum results when taking a photo, especially on sunny winter days and in early mornings and late afternoons on clear summer days. Shadow/Highlight is amazingly capable. Its abilities go beyond opening up over-dense shadow areas; it can pull down washed-out highlights, too, without over-darkening normal or shadow areas. Be sure to click the "show more options" box. Then you can adjust the range of density ("tonal width") over which the exposure correction ("amount") takes effect. The halo or fringe that sometimes occurs along a boundary between a dark area and a lighter area can be managed with the "radius" setting. Worshiping Shadow/Highlight is the real reason the knees wear out on my jeans :-D

I've always admired the building, but I never realized how wonderful the clock is, in its own right! Thanks for showing that!

But subtle; the rainbow flag is discreetly half-hidden, but if they're not more careful about keeping the gate closed, the pink plastic flamingos will escape and give the whole thing away. :-D Some of us are high-class, and some aren't. Judging by the type and amount of clutter, I'd say...

Looks pleasantly upscale.

I can comprehend that feeling. As a former bf and I were leaving San Francisco after spending a few days immersed in San Francisco's gay microcosm, he put into words what I'd felt for a long time: "You know, I think I'm happier in a smaller city where we live and work and shop around all kinds of people, and being gay makes us a little different. Here, it feels like everybody's trying to fit an image and some people have forgotten that anything exists outside their little enclave." Visiting a "gay ghetto" can be fun once in a while, but I don't think I could ever have handled living in one, even when I was young and pretty. (Maybe especially then.)