1). It was the cheapest DSLR I could find (about $200 CDN all-in).
2). I’m an idiot.
Pros:
1). It’s a Nikon. Presumably that counts for something towards quality.
2). The shutter count is 2229, so it should be good for a few more shots.
3). It has a CCD type sensor, which gives the tonal qualities I prefer.
Cons:
1). Despite the low shutter count it’s 16 years old and could break tomorrow.
2). Only 10 MP, which is no place near enough according to today’s pundits. I’m not too worried because many of my favourite images were taken with even less.
3). The viewfinder is pentamirror type and 0.53x magnification so a little small for bad eyesight.
I do not care that there is no video, no touchscreen, no wireless connection, no fancy ‘million-point-face-recognition-AI’ focusing system, or any of that other ‘must have’ nonsense advocated by people trying to sell cameras or just plain not knowing any better. Ooh! The ‘maximum ISO’ is like film; 1600. Gosh, however will I manage? Good thing I’ve had a lot of experience with actual film cameras, eh?
One problem is that no strap was included, which means I’ll have to hang it off the Canon strap from the T3. That of course will precipitate something along the lines of a nuclear explosion, but that’s just the price we pay for our art right?
Of course I’ve yet to prove I can take a decent picture with it. If I can’t, I will be very upset. Especially since the culprit in such a failure is more likely to be me than the camera: I have reviewed my past postings and found that even before losing all my equipment to the Great Disaster my ‘acceptable shot’ stat had already done a 180 turn from “9 out of 10” to “1 out of 10” and I don’t look forward to repeating those results. Not even for a ‘mere’ $200.
Test image.
2026 will mark 60 years behind the lens for me, and even if it is the end I am going to go out clicking.
As I slowly rebuild the collection of videos here, I have come across certain technical aspects which may be of interest to some. Or possibly of interest to none. Whichever, I’m going to write about them anyway.
First up we have the DVD/Blu-ray debate. As you probably know, the latter offers ‘higher definition’ which is deemed to be an advantage. But is it really? Case in point: this collection of classic horror movies.
Eight old time terror tales.
Curiously this same set is also available on Blu-ray. But do we really need “high definition” for old (in some cases nearing 100 years) black-and-white films? These are the movies meant to be watched in all their grainy glory on a 19″ Sentinel B&W TV on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The low definition adds to the creepy experience, as well as evoking the nostalgic memories. In fairness, some old movies benefit from high-definition rendition. Or at least restoration.
So let’s look at another example; an actual ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison. By pure chance I happened to come into possession of both DVD and Blu-ray editions of Luc Besson’s best cinematic effort The Fifth Element:
The Fifth Element and The Fifth Element.
In this case we can clearly see the enhancement in the Blu-ray version; there is extra detail in the scenes which isn’t visible from the DVD. But does it actually make the movie better?
Well you could argue it does merely because it presents the scenes ‘as shot’, but that added detail doesn’t actually enhance the entertainment value (at least for me). So in this case I’d say either one is acceptable.
A different case would be a movie which is ‘visually spectacular’; the scenery being every bit as important to the story as the dialogue. An example of this would be Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments. With that film you could argue the scenery is better than the dialogue. You can in fact watch it with the sound off and just ‘enjoy the show’. I find that the two kinds of films which benefit the most from Blu-ray technology are the elaborate sets such as that (or My Fair Lady) and, curiously, films shot in the great outdoors where nature’s majesty is a significant factor. One example of that would be Lawrence of Arabia, even though the ‘scenery’ is often vast expanses of sand.
The second technical point I want to make is the matter of which ‘cut’ of a film you get. Let’s look at a couple of examples of this:
Two very different films which demonstrate a point.
Yes, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. That quintessential spaghetti western that’s even longer than its title. What about it causes me to include it in this discussion? The fact that when I got the replacement its ‘extras’ section included “deleted scenes never dubbed into English”. I couldn’t resist watching them. That caused my memory to go “wait a minute; I’ve seen those scenes in the movie and in English!” It turns out there was a restored version of this movie (with the deceased Lee Van Cleef’s lines dubbed by Simon Prescott), and I had it. C’est la vie. Er, I mean questa è la vita. The removal of the scenes doesn’t detract much from the movie, and their inclusion doesn’t add much.
Which brings us to the last movie, Amadeus. Now originally I had a DVD of this, and it was a pain to watch: the sound track came on without language and you had to stop the movie and set the language to English each time, including when you flipped the disc over to watch the rest of it. Naturally I figured the Blu-ray version would be better. In solving those two problems it was, and the pageantry is definitely enhanced. Unfortunately it has the opposite problem of GBU in that it is a “director’s cut” version with deleted scenes added back in. Not only do the extra scenes add nothing to the movie, they arguably make it worse. Every director thinks each frame of film they shoot is solid gold, so thankfully we have editors to correct this mistake. Over-all I’d suggest going for ‘restored’ versions, but not “direct’s cut” editions.
One final note: another ‘edition’ problem is that there are numerous remakes of many classic films, and I’ve yet to see one that is as good as the original much less an improvement on it. The industry attitude of “that one was popular, let’s do it again” is sadly and badly misguided. In some cases so much so that you can often find the new release for less than the first, and sometimes they offer both together for the lowest price. In other words they admit the new one is so bad that they will ‘pay you’ for taking it away. Despite this, it can still be a waste of money.
That’s enough rambling for today I think. Just be glad I did my own editing here and took out all the superfluous commentary on the mentioned movies themselves.
I wish I could give the latest post by Eric L. Woods a thousand thumbs up, but we’re limited to ‘one viewer, one vote’. He calls it Random Neural Firings, but I call it an excellent and humorous essay on … well cameras, brand names, and what is actually essential to photography.
Every word of it is true, from the ‘fanboy’ mentality of some to the companies not having users’ best interests at heart to what it takes to get the job done – and what it takes to amuse our more adventurous spirits. I know because I’ve been there in both the film (when I had hundreds of cameras in my collection) and digital eras (when I kept buying cheap but usable equipment just to have fun with).
Okay, so I have no camera now. That doesn’t make my opinions less valid. This year will mark 60 years of my being behind the lens, and I can’t even begin to guess how many photos I’ve taken. True, it’s all gone now save a few images preserved on this site and on an old USB drive I found at the cabin. What will come in the future none of us can ever know.
Fujifilm F80 vs. Canon 1Ds – the small and the large.
But in the meantime I recommend you read the linked work above, and give Mr. Woods an appropriate and well-deserved thumbs up. Then you can count yourself among the realist photographers, even if you don’t have a Realist camera.
Recently Chuck the writer made a post mainly about how fans of the series Firefly were missing their favourite show , and how they were grasping at the straws of the possibility of its resurrection in some, any, form. I’m not a fan of that particular sci-fi series, but I don’t blame them for missing it. The fact is whenever we lose anything from our lives we miss it, whether it’s some entertainment we liked or a favourite food or a loved one. What is no longer there leaves a void. Trust me; when it comes to loss I’m something of an expert.
But in the case of some things such as television shows there is also the consideration that it may have played out to the end. Continuing to produce a product merely to rake in more money from fans no matter what the detriment to quality is a bad idea. Yes, I’m looking at you Star Wars. And you Doctor Who (to be fair the latter was murdered, in my opinion).
Now hopefully Firefly wasn’t ended with some important character handing by their fingers over the edge of a precipice while the text “To be continued …” appeared on screen only for there to be no such wrap-up episode. But sometimes you have to let it go. Sometimes the show is over. Sometimes there are no more fudge bars. Sometimes people, not just characters, die.
It’s no secret that I am a fan of the humorous animated Star Trek: Lower Decks series. No, I don’t buy the merchandise and go to conventions; I just enjoyed it. Right up until they summarily decided to quit making it. Five seasons and then … BOOM! End of series. Firefly fans, I feel your pain.
What’s more I have to object to how Lower Decks ended: it was truly the story of Ensign Beckett Mariner Freeman (‘Mariner’ for short) and her journey from adorably insubordinate ensign to … Ah, there’s the problem; they ended it with her only having attained the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. To me this was not a complete story. To assuage my dissatisfaction I embarked upon writing my own continuation of the story. Not for public sharing and certainly not with any hope of seeing the scripts produced, just to ease my own mind. (And by ‘writing’ I mean largely constructing in the privacy of my own head as for various reasons not much of it actually got typed out on the computer*.)
What was the point I was trying to make? Oh yes; what happens after a story is ‘done’. Well my narrative saw Mariner eventually make captain of her own ship and get married along the way. Which led to the inevitable “she’s pregnant” conclusion, which is always the death knoll of any story. If you want your show to end, just make one of the main characters have a kid.
And then things went off the rails.
“17 Years Later” cropped up out of my imagination, with Mariner’s daughter and a couple of friends graduating from Starfleet Academy and having a rollicking adventure before being assigned to the Cerritos, which was the original ship of Lower Decks. After that it got … strange.
More story ideas turned up. More characters appeared. The venues changed and broadened. Most noticeably the tone of the writing shifted from ‘lots of jokes’ to ‘deep character studies’; quite a drift from the original. Although it was no longer Lower Decks once the focus shifted from the Cerritos to the Pioneer, it was now something that could hardly be grouped together under one label. This is not entirely surprising given my propensity for wandering from one thought to another (“the fundamental interconnectedness of things” according to Douglas Adams), but is not necessarily desirable. It is something that can happen with any writing series; a gradual (or sometimes not so gradual) shifting away from the original characteristics that attracted admiration in the first place.
Sort of like what happened to Star Trek with its later, darker incarnations.
Or what happened with this post.
*I did in fact complete one script that was something of a ‘stand alone’ story, and allowed my wife to read it. She insisted on it, in fact. I warned her she wouldn’t like it. As of this moment I don’t even know if she read it as she has never remarked upon it. I was probably right about her likely assessment. I usually am. I am probably also correct in my evaluation that the actual stories would be offensive to most people, if only because they aren’t ‘canon’.
It is Monday, March 16 2026 as I write this. Last week I had planned to call the doctor again today to mention that the tests he supposedly ordered three weeks ago still hadn’t been scheduled. But a funny thing happened last Thursday: I got a call from Inland Health in Kamloops to tell me that they’ve had an order for a chest x-ray for me, and it’s been hanging around there since August of 2025. What should they do with it?
I’m too polite to give the obvious answer (after all it wasn’t the woman’s fault that the whole system is messed up), but I did mention that driving two hours each way just for an x-ray wasn’t very sensible and she agreed. Then she said she could transfer the order to 100 Mile, but I’d have to call and confirm because everything is done on a walk-in basis now.
Isn’t that great? It used to be the doctor handed you a piece of paper, you took it to the hospital and got it done. Then they decided it would be ‘better’ if the doctor told Central Booking who then arranged an appointment and phoned you to confirm. Now it seems the doctor sends in the request and … you’re supposed to magically know when and where to show up.
Okay, no problem to call the local hospital on Friday and see if they got the order. Only they called first. Which I’d just been told they don’t do. Does anyone actually know how this ‘system’ works? Anyway I got it scheduled for today.
So what happens next? Well a storm comes in Sunday night and the almost completely bare ground gets two new inches of snow, plus a threat of snow/freezing rain/rain with high winds for today. Then it will warm up again and all melt off. But it just has to be as awful as possible on the day I must go to town for an appointment. That’s how the universe works.
Oh boy is that how it works! I go out to clear the two inches of heavy, wet snow of the vehicle and it had already started with the freezing rain. No matter; I go anyway. On roads that were making the AWD slip; that perfect combination of greasy slush on hard packed ice lubricated with fresh rain. Yes I am capable of driving in such conditions, but that doesn’t mean I want to. Besides, many of the other drivers are not up to such a challenge.
I made it. Went through the whole registration process, and sat down to wait for my picture-taking session. Until the clerk called my name. Seems she hadn’t noticed the appointment had been changed to 10:00 from 8:45. They had called to tell me this, but obviously while I was out clearing snow. No matter, I’ve got some errands to do and an hour to do them in. Since that’s how long a town trip usually is for me this will work out fine.
Or it would if the stores had what I’d come in to get. There again empty shelves are not uncommon. Made it back to the hospital in plenty of time. In fact I got to sit there and listen to a woman get registered for her delayed appointment. Which curiously was now at the same time as mine. Could they possibly have two techs working today?
No, of course not. Guess who got called in first. Hell I’ve only been waiting since last August; what’s a few minutes more? When I did get in the procedure took hardly any time at all, although the tech was confused by the extraordinary delay in the paperwork.
After that I drove home on roads still unfit to travel. I’m sure they’ll be fine tomorrow. When I don’t need to go anywhere.
Now we wait for the results. Which are likely to show nothing. Maybe if they’d done the imaging half a year ago when things were really inflamed they might have caught the problem. Oh well maybe the autopsy will reveal what was wrong all along.
Honestly you can’t make stuff like this up. It’s too farcical to believe.
P.S.: After I got back I found out a package I’d ordered was now waiting at the depot. How nice.
P.P.S.: Yup: 3:00 PM and 9C and all that winter has melted away.
I intend this post to be humorous, but be warned; it will be somewhat morbid humour.
So the premise is that the latest test results show my kidney disease has slipped gently from Stage 3A to Stage 3B (I don’t know why Stage 3 is divided up like that; the others aren’t). Essentially this means certain ‘new’ symptoms occasionally, but not continuously, manifest themselves. These symptoms being the ones normally associated with later stages of the problem.
This is where the humour comes in; how to deal with those symptoms.
One of the problems is interrupted sleep patterns. Do you know what the medical experts say you should do about it?
“Try and get a good night’s sleep.”
That’s right: the ‘solution’ to not sleeping well at night is to sleep well at night.
It doesn’t matter how many times you read that, it will never make sense.
It goes along with the answer to another of the troubles, that of excessive fatigue. I mean “barely get through the day” tiredness. What are you supposed to do about that?
“Get exercise.”
Um, right. Like running half-marathons or going to the gym and see if you can bench-press your own weight? Maybe jog around the block a couple of times when you have trouble doing an hour-long town trip with only four stops.
One gets the feeling that these ‘experts’ don’t talk to their patients.
Correction: they talk to them, but do they ever listen?
It’s one of those times when you’d like to shut their kidneys down for a day so they can experience that sensation of hydronephrosis and understand it isn’t the same as a kidney stone. I’ve had both, and can tell the difference. Unfortunately I could not convey that fact to my GP, who kept going on about how the last test (done at the beginning of February) didn’t indicate the presence of a stone.
But to humour me he ordered more tests. Which haven’t been scheduled. In two weeks. No doubt because the same as last time the orders have been lost in the overly-complex medical bureaucracy. Anyway the swelling has gone down and since I’m the one doing the measuring* I guess I’m the better judge of what’s happening.
Another symptom is when your skin tries to self-destruct from the inside out. Okay, that sounds worse than it is. Sometimes it’s just itchy, other times you can watch the urticaria rise up and see the red spots appear, and then watch it all calm down again (although the spots tend to stay in muted form). Normally this happens on the lower arms and legs, but occasionally it appears elsewhere.
For this I turn to the wisdom of my fellow sufferers, who each have their own experiences with calming the irritation. One of the silliest was the suggestion of a silk undershirt, which would be fine except that it wouldn’t cover the areas usually afflicted. Also the irritation isn’t from clothing rubbing on skin (although I can see how that would be an issue once the problem has presented). Besides that, the cost of such a garment is so high that it ought to come with two pairs of pants and a complimentary tie.
Mostly the skin issues are dealt with by bathing and lotions. The bathing question elicits a whole debate on yes/no and what additives are best. On the one hand a hot bath increases circulation and removes any residue on the skin (your ‘third kidney’), whereas on the other it dries said skin out which is likewise irritating. The degree of either factor is highly variable with the individual, including the hardness of their bath water and precisely what minerals cause that state.
The lotions seem to make more sense, even though many have ingredients which would seem more at home in the grocery aisle than stocked with toiletries. The downside is that again it’s highly individualistic as to how effective any of these products are, and in general most of them are heavy and greasy despite claims to the contrary. But hey; whatever works for you.
Well I found one that works for me. Unfortunately not available locally so I have to order it in. And when the bottle was half empty I figured I should order some more. Only the price had gone up. 125%**. No, I did not leave the decimal point out of that number. I don’t know what is responsible for that rip-off, but it’s probably just aimed at making my life miserable. Well at that they have succeeded.
And then there’s what CKD does to your teeth. Short version; I’ve got some stuff to treat them with at night, and go in for a repair at the end of the month.
Oh. Sorry. This posting was supposed to be funny. Okay, here’s the humour:
Amy is working at a bistro. A Vulcan woman comes in and mulls over the menu, remarking that she has become wary of human foods. Amy asks her why.
“When I was on Earth,” the woman explains, “a colleague convinced me to try a piece of chocolate cake. It did not go well.”
“Oh no!” cries Amy. “Are you allergic to chocolate?”
“No.” the woman replies. “However, I gained 5 kilograms in one month.”
(Disclaimer: among the things affected by CKD are memory and concentration, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this post. Not even the joke.)
What rain has done to the snow.
*Liquid in vs. liquid out. You’ll figure out what I mean.
**Before this posted I checked again and while the price did go up that high and linger there for days it has now dropped back down to something more reasonable: a ‘mere’ 27% increase. I bought another bottle.
Five years ago I wrote an epic rant against Daylight Savings Time, which included the idiocy of our provincial government running a survey about the matter which excluded the right choice of staying on real time.
Well guess what.
The morons did it.
As of today British Columbia switched to ‘permanent daylight savings’ or, as it’s being rebranded, “Pacific Time” (an obvious corruption of real Pacific Time).
Once again people who actually understand the situation have come out with all the data that explains why not only the repeated change but DST itself is bad for physical, mental, and economic health. And once again they’ve been ignored. (In case you think I’m talking through my hat: Daylight Savings Health Concerns )
Honestly: why are people so damn stupid? Moreover, why the hell are they proud of their stupidity? It seems these days the dumber you are the more you are celebrated.
Well I have a better idea than screwing the clocks up one hour: let’s move them ahead 24 hours! That way today will be tomorrow and tomorrow will be yesterday and yesterday will be today and the people who really matter can play golf all the time because everyone knows that changing the clocks is what makes the days longer.
For what it’s worth, the days here are already minutes longer than they are in Victoria where these decisions are made. By the time of the summer solstice our days will be hours longer than theirs.
Conversely, I am not looking forward to sunrise at 9:11 AM on December 21st. The people who live even further north will be even worse off.
But facts and reality don’t matter as long as you can get 18 holes in before dark, right? So what if businesses lose money, people get sick, and children die.
Doing the absolutely wrong thing is what’s important.
As for me I’m going to ignore the change as much as I can. Which should work out fine considering how much the world ignores me.
I went to bed. Woke up a couple hours later because the reflux was so bad. Took another pill, and started wasting time online while waiting for it to work. All pretty much a standard night these days.
Except for this cropping up:
1981 AMC Eagle 4 cylinder.
That, boys and girls, is an example of the last work I did for AMC. It is basically a Gremlin, except for three things: the different rear side window, the four cylinder engine, and the 4×4 drivetrain.
You can blame me for all three of those features.
For sale locally. $800. No I am not going to buy it.
Now I’m going to try and go back to sleep. Maybe when I wake up again this will have all been a dream.
I came across a camera for sale. A Canon EOS 60D. No lens, but I have a lens from the defunct T3 I was given. The 60D is 18mp, the same as my destroyed T100. But it’s a bit more ‘upscale’, having a top LCD display and weather sealing. It also has a pentaprism viewfinder, rather than a pentamirror.
The downside? It’s used of course. Something like 3,000 shutter clicks (out of a potential 100k). And … it’s 16 years old. One of the problems with technology is that age can damage things with or without use and abuse. There’s no warranty.
I don’t know. At around $300 it’s ‘affordable’ (if I delude myself enough), but for about another $100 I can get a brand new T100 – with lens. The latter has a dimmer (pentamirror), smaller (0.53x vs. 0.60x) viewfinder and no weather sealing (which has never been an issue for me).
They both seem rather expensive because … there’s that ol’ ‘eyesight’ factor: I was having difficulty seeing to make decent pictures with any of the cameras I had before they all burned up, and there’s no reason to believe I won’t have the same difficulty now since my eyes haven’t gotten any better.
Of course what I really want is a Pentax KF, but since that’s over $1000 it obviously isn’t going to happen. Foolish enough to gamble a few hundred only to possibly discover the money has been wasted.
I suppose I could always wait until someone else buys it. Then I wouldn’t have to agonise over the decision. You’d be surprised how well that strategy works.
Canon T100T100 with lens-reversing ring installed utilizing the 50mm Super Takumar.
Wandering Words 