I think Hugh gave me this last summer, I say this because it would seem a foregone conclusion that I would smoke the havana. But there is a chance it will be the the hard core choice of many other smokers. I don't smoke many of these Drew cigars anymore, just no time. But the ones I have smoked have been very thoughtfully blended. Nice smokes. So it IS a bit harder choice than it would seem, and the weather is batshit today...GUSTY winds, 40-50-60 mph from the SW. SO it might be warmer in air temp, it is still a tough smoke outdoors. I might get away with one indoors today, since it is 'warm out there', mid 50s I guess. Warm enough to flush smoke out of the house and not freeze in the process.
Went out today and shot some pics with this last new wrinkle of my overall plan to dominate the world through cameras. I love the world that you see through a wide angle lens. It reminds me of looking through a viewfinder and roaming the eye around in this square little world, reading what I can around it's periphery, trying to see what the camera claims its doing. You have to get right up close to what you want to shoot, or there is really no shot. The Sigma 10-20mm ultra-wide angle lens is fairly accurate in how it presents the world, with just a little linear distortion, which most photographers would say they prefer, to enhance the other-worldly quality of their results. This is not something you use to go show someone how straight you are building their house. But if you don't use a ruler to measure lines in your little world, then you can take this lens and create pictures that force a viewer to confront them. In a private world, where people are doing candid street photography with a 200mm lens from across the street to capture private little moments in the lives of others, this lens tells you that if you want to see anything, you had better go introduce yourself to it.
Well HEY there, Queen Amidala, I didn't mean to catch you getting out of the tub, but I wondered if you could help me straighten something out..."
I went back to shoot some more pictures behind this bar, and was shocked at how far away I had to stand to get anything substantial in my shot. I had been so spoiled by the field of view in ONE DAY, that I couldn't live without it.
I could take a picture of something intimate without having to wait for people to move. Furthermore, if the background was no problem, I could get lazy with the framing and leave a ton of red bricks in the photo, or I could fill the frame with graffiti.
I tried this shot again the next day and I had to stand IN THE STREET to frame it only a little wider than this. In this particular frame, I am standing a foot from this brick wall. Man that lens is capable. Which is why I really have to smoke a cigar, to celebrate the end of me buying cameras and camera-related accouterments. I hope I never spend another cent on metal and glass, just relax in a zone where everything used somehow miraculously manages to stay intact in my hands and take great pictures until I pass it on to someone else, and on and on until it no longer functions in a world that has passed it by. Now, to see if I can take a great picture. For tomorrow the ninjas may take my camera.
My sister is getting anxious now. She feels like the Nikon D70 is going to take any joy out of taking photos that she may have NOW prior to taking delivery. I will say that it has been a challenge to squeeze anything out of this camera that makes sense. But this is like the first WHEEL, or the first cell phone. It might have been cool in Miami Vice days to hold up a shoe-sized cell phone to your temple and fry your brain, but if you wanted to call ahead and order lunch, you had to break some eggs. Everything about digital SLR cameras has gotten more sophisticated since the introduction of this model. But this is what makes it fun for me. It would have been fun for my DAD, too. He would KNOW why more megapixels doesn't mean a thing to a person with skill at taking nice photos.
But there IS the little quirk or two, 1.) metering that is good but hardly consistent. Pointing and shooting and NOT checking to see what just happened is not wise. 2.) The camera is inconsistent in color and contrast. For every session, you will need to establish that the camera is set up well enough to get a usable product out if it. Nothing more than a few test shots, hell, they're free. But both things are manageable and in a way, make you think more about what you really WANT to have as your result. I think it will be MORE OR LESS point and shoot, but with better image quality.
With all that in mind (and with a promise to get back to CIGARS in a week or so) I shot some photos getting out of the car at 6:50 am at work. The battery has since died and is not allowing me to fire the shutter now, so LUNCHTIME shots are not happenin. But outside of the fact that I did not set ANY camera settings, this is ABOUT what I saw this morning. The white balance is off, not sure how easy it is to for the camera's brain to AUTO white before the sun comes up...it gets a pass. If I had set up a SPOT metering, I could have kept that sky from closing the iris down. I think I needed to meter in the darker areas. But the CAMERA and its designers wanted me to have access to the lovely nuances in the sky, I guess.
I turned around and fired off a second shot, this one much better exposed to the TRUE light conditions. The color and overall feel are as I saw it. Had I taken the time to white balance, it would have been nicer, but I don't guess that affects the levels, so ehh, again, this is how my morning eyes saw it for the most part. And to be honest, everywhere I have taken the camera, I have come back with something useful. I just have to shoot a lot more to ENSURE
that I have SOMETHING. Its ALL gonna be fine, sis.
And then I got into the office and set up the camera on a tripod to see if I could eliminate any camera movement and see JUST how sharp the lens could be if I wasn't there shaking it. But then I decided I would play a little long exposure fun and games....
I was pleased with the camera's handling of the lighting in this 4 sec. or so exposure. And it certainly looks sharp enough. But til I test it out again tonight, ehh, I am just posting to entertain and inform my sister. But soon more cigars, I promise.
And lest I forget, her son just accepted a full tuition scholarship to the institution of his choice, well, provided he chooses the school that offered it, anyway. I am impressed that a modern youth has the give-a-crap to survive today's education system and come out in demand by colleges everywhere. Well DONE C-man. Got yourself a free camera with that one, lol.
As you already know, or if you are arriving late, you will find out NEXT, reading downward, I have been testing a couple of 'new' old Nikon D70s, and its as if I have NO SKILL whatsoever in shooting photos with a camera of any kind. Consistently over-exposed, terrible color, etc. But then I am finding that it is rarely a lost cause with some adjustments in Photoshop, and I am getting the feeling that a lot of what we see in 'modern digital cameras' is a decade of learning by the industry to sweeten the image very effectively in camera before you ever see it. This old D70 is right there on the cusp of technology where digital began. These almost-large sensors were housing large pixels and could take great photos (in 2003) that rival anything you see for amateurs today, but the software packed in to it for turning this old sensor's light input into imagery has come a long way since 2003. Everybody is tweaking everything now. And when you get everything right, you get good shots in the camera. If you get one or two tiny things wrong, you have to seriously work with Photoshop to get levels and colors to look the way you saw them.
I know this is not cigar related, but my sister sometimes reads this, and one of the cameras is hers now, so finally figuring out how to make it take a good picture and then handing it to her and saying LOOK OUT, this camera is insane, is important to me. Mostly I just share my dejection at looking like a rank amateur instead of a career picture creator. So here is about the last pic I took in my camera tests, and there was no sun bouncing into the camera, I seem to have hit the exposure properly, with no exposure compensation dialed in...nothing done or not done by me to destroy the camera's effort to make me look good.
Interesting dynamic range. Interesting to also see that the camera IS CAPABLE of not taking crap-ass pictures. Now I just need to find the circumstances under which it is willing to do so.
Then there is this one that I took not because I like to take flower pictures, just like everybody who gets a digital camera and runs out of ideas after they buy 5 lenses, but because the Camelia is such a difficult flower to see in a beautiful state just with your eyes. But to find one and have a digital camera in hand is a little miracle. The Camelia does nothing but die ugly from the moment it blooms. You don't get the week or two of slow and graceful aging of a rosebud. It pops open and then every insect in town tramples all over it and it gets brown spots in mere hours, turns brown all over in a few days, and then hangs on in disgusting brown and white clumps until a strong enough rain comes and knocks them off.
Not only did the camera handle the light, it handled the color. it looks really nice there. And then I saw a coupla hipster girls duck into the local market for some beers, and left their bikes all by themselves.
I had to do some tweaking in Photoshop on this one, it hatched from the camera too bright, not enough contrast. I don't MIND tweaking in a program, but my sister might not think its very much fun, especially since her point and shoots do a much better job of hatching pics with proper brightness, contrast and saturation already baked in. I don't think I lost a lot of info in bringing down the brightness here, but who knows. In the end, the pic works for me, and so does the camera. But I could see getting my butt in a crack and not getting a shot I want because I am not lucky enough to have figured out what the meter is trying to tell me I am doing. We'll see, I don't have to turn it over til Easter. I can still figure out why I suck at pitcher takin.
Last week it was me in Nashville messing with my camera, and it instead messed with me. I never really used the automatic functions on my cameras much, that was the point of getting a point and shoot camera in a non-compact form, with full user controllable shutter and aperture features. But when I picked up a DSLR for the first time, it really kicked my a55. I have been taking some form of pictures for 37-8 years. But I never thought I could come home with photos that were SO wrong. Lazy mistakes and blurry vision. Too much Viewfinder-to-glasses issues, back and forth. It is a dinosaur, the Nikon D70, but it is capable of taking great photos. I just had to catch up with the lack of....well, pointing and shooting. Being able to SEE well is kind of a requirement to being consistent with focus and exposure in low light at lower speeds I found, haha. I look at that little TINY screen on the back of the camera, (state of the art in 2004, I guess), and I think, ehh, "I can trust the autofocus accuracy". Its better than putting on my glasses. It looks kinda in focus and its the right general exposure. No. Actually you can't. Better to put on your glasses after every test shot. At least on MY old, ornery camera. You need to be on manual focus when the camera is having trouble focusing where you want it. I should know that, but I got lazy. I learned that if I don't have to RUSH to get a shot, and the light is iffy, I need to manually focus as a matter of course. I wasted a ton of 'exposures', but that allowed me to make ALL the mistakes and get ALL the shots I needed, too. I only had a few setups where I thought I wasted the entire series of photos out of focus, or in some other doofus manner.
So my friend Mark calls me up at work and asks me if I felt like coming out that night to see a couple of ladies he books sometimes who play as a single act a lot, but like to play together to good effect, financially and musically I guess. They had driven over from Nashville, and he told me he thought I should come out. I'd surely have a good time. But he rarely calls without something in mind, (although it has been 8 months since we have talked, so I also took it as a greeting), so I sensed he needed a photographer, video or otherwise. He often wants SOMEONE to come out and shoot pics when he brings someone to town. And I REALLY needed to get out and flog this damn vexing lil punk-a55 camera. In the end, I STILL had to shoot a LOT of shots before I even began to see where the hell the camera thought I should be shooting, in both exposure and focus. I wish I had stayed manual focus most of the night. The focus sensors need work, or I need to pay attention. After while I managed to get it all right, but I learned a lot about how I have to do it to pull everything I know together a little easier next time. I'd fix one of my issues and another would pop up. I am not fast enough to react yet. I am not maximizing my opportunities.
But the only reason I was there in the first place was to FORCE the camera to show me what the hell it was and what the hell it was doing.
So I got there early by fifteen minutes so I could check out a lens that I doubted I could use, but was gonna try. The lens I needed to test was not good in low light, and also soft when it is wide open, so I shouldn't have even taken it, and as a result I got 15 shots in before it became useless as night fell in the streets of downtown Memphis.
Here is where it gets funny. I have a friend, Jesse Scherr, who is a skilled photographer, and I respect him as much for that skill as I do for the fact that we worked together for many years and he is a great friend, very reserved yet hilarious. So I walk into Double J Smokehouse, in sight of the notorious Memphis Lorraine Motel. I am wearing a black photographer's vest, (because I had a LOT of lenses to test with this new camera and in this light condition.) It is stuffed with a few lenses, cigars, lighters, cutter and batteries and a few other things. And I figured if I caught any guff at the door, I could say honestly I was not there to have fun, I was there to do a job. I am too cheap to pay for the privilege of doing a friend a favor. Well there was no need for that apparently, but I still needed mobile storage, so I walked in with it. And there is Jesse sitting at the bar. He's waiting for the same friend. And I walk in like this doofus in a photog's vest. So he watches my camera and beer while I return the useless crap to the car a block away, embarassed that I had all kinds of cool crap for this ancient camera with a woodpecker inside, peckin' out the photos. I needed to take my short, fast lens and dump the rest, for many reasons I can't bore you with here.
The girls were pretty easy to shoot, they were both photogenic and stage polished, and everything they might do that I actually intended to shoot, I could have easily shot in three songs. So I shot three songs and sat down for a beer. I found out that I was 'welcome' to smoke my cigar upstairs, apparently out on a balcony, lol. But there were tables and a nice breeze, so I smoked a Serie P No.2 from Partagas and kind of enjoyed it. It was fresh out of a tube, so it was not properly dried, but it was 6 years old, maybe 5, so it was somewhat dessicated already, for a tubo. I enjoyed it, even though I dropped it before I lit it, and the foot got bashed up a bit. Not the best of circumstances, and I had to rush it somewhat, so while it was smooth, strong and creamy, I didn't get a lot of interesting flavor. But hey, does it look or sound like I suffered?
I had a good chance to test out the camera, and I am skipping one tonight. I could shoot a TON of great stuff at the St. Patrick's day parade on Beale St., but I think I will avoid people this afternoon.
What with the new pope and all. Might be safer to stay at home and clean the house.
One great thing about living in Tennessee is the ability to take day trips to such great cities, and also there are some really BAD things about it, and that's driving to Nashville to smoke cigars and drink with a friend and having to drive home 3 hours afterwards. I did not drive drunk, but the length of the drive over is NEVER as arduous as the drive home. IT TAKES FOREVER! Thank goodness for McDonald's and usually SONIC, but not tonight. I went over to Nashville to hang out with my friend Bill86. Bill is a lot like me, overly opinionated, and always right. We try to make people understand how smart and right we are, and 8 times in ten they just think we are a55holes. But as anyone who knows me knows, that's their loss. I am a tremendous human being. And furthermore, I don't CARE if they find me to be an a55hole.
I went to the area around Vanderbilt University to a place called South Street Restaurant, and showed up an hour earlier than scheduled, because I have a few new cameras and lenses I wanted to test. And after the day's shooting, I have to tell my sister, LOOK OUT. I am used to point and shoots, and I have gotten lazy in using them. I am not the kind of guy who just turns it to AUTO and shoots, but I AM A GUY that is used to a great modern convenience, and that is Point & Shoots that show you in the viewfinder or on the LCD what your current combination of aperture and shutter speed will produce if you were to click the shutter at any given time. It might be black or blown out, or hell, maybe perfectly exposed. Well today I took out my 'new' used Nikon D70. And in the viewfinder of the D70, its always Sunny in Philly. I always see great shots in great focus, and I fire away, always thinking that I am a photographic genius. And then I get home to my computer and look at the blurry, over-exposed CRAP I shot and go "DAMN, that really sucks." I CAN take a great photo, but again, I have grown lazy and stopped paying attention to the little things, like exposure meters or histograms or flashing ISO AUTO warnings and other things. And so I shoot crap. Luckily inside South Street today, all I really had going wrong was the white balance. I had been shooting in cloudy conditions and came inside and forgot to re-white the camera. So bear with my photos.
The first smoke I had was a Montecristo No. 4 and it was pedestrian, nothing to get excited about. Certainly nothing I photographed. I traded a few cigars with Bill, who was so kind as to give me a Bolivar Edicion Regional German No.1 (or is it a 2?), a Laguito No.1 sized cigar, a HOT, HOT, HOT regional, one that you were very lucky to get if you got even one, never mind a few boxes. and Bill hooked me up with that cigar that I have been wanting to try for YEARS. Thanks.
Here's Bill....
And here is a Cohiba Panetela I worked my way into second...
and next to it a Patron Reposado, a Jack and rocks and a Yeungling pint, all being worked on kinda simultaneous like.
That's all the SERIOUS drinking I did today, I had a few more pints, but no more liquor. Its not good to drink and drive. But drinking and smoking was the deal today, so I had fun while I could. I guess I should have framed it all together, but I was shooting the cigar. You can see a little of the white balance issue there, too. Later on I got into a Monte Edmundo 2007 that was about the same as all Edmundos, underwhelming, but a good cigar to drink with, cause it just burned and gave me something to do with my hands.
Now, that is not to say that I didn't burn it DOWN to the end, oh no, I smoked it alright. Bill and I always talk about the exact same thing every time we get together to mini-herf, it is hilarious. But it never seems like we are talking about the same stuff, its just been so long that we forgot what we talked about the last time. Cigars, vendors, people that get on our nerves, job trouble, hot bartender chicks, and I also always say, "OH, I remember what I wanted to tell you", then I take a puff and forget what it was. Same thing I do here all the time, but with a cigar in my hand.
And we smoke and we smoke, and Bill eats, and I do not, cause I eat chips and drink Mountain Dew all the way to Nashville, so I am never hungry. Today I also had an Esplendido, which I rarely do anymore. It was good to get one in today. I used to just hoard them and never smoke em. Today I had one that was creamy and strong, though not overly flavorful, at least not up to the potential of the smoke. But I smoke too fast when I herf with Bill or anywhere. I run my mouth and smoke too fast.
But I got everything I wanted today, I got to go to the campus of Vanderbilt and take a bunch of terrible pictures that show me that I need some SERIOUS practice shooting my new camera. I used to take such fine pictures and now I look like a half-trained chimpanzee. I am gonna work on paying more attention to the viewfinder screen and all it is trying to tell me. But in the end I can't see very well, anyway. I have the viewfinder set up to my eye 'prescription', but the rest of the world and the buttons on the camera are still blurry unless I stop and put on my glasses, during which time I can't take pictures, so mostly I just wing it like I always did with Point and Shoots. Damn 'good' cameras, they suck, lol......
But all in all it was another good day, and another good mini-herf with Bill. Wish you had been there, you'da had a good time, I know it. My sister is in New Orleans right now, so I KNOW she is having a good time..
After such a great victory finally getting a great smoke out of the Partagas Serie du Connaisseur no.1, I was happy to cut and light the second skinny smoke of the weekend, this great little La Gloria Cubana smoke. As the Partagas was a real first for me, the day I finally smoke the Medaille d'Or No. 1 will be a first as well. But for now, I get to smoke the No.3 again. One way of setting this up is to say that I have never had a bad No.3, after having about a half dozen. Spoiler alert.....today would not be the first bad one.
Today I decided to bundle up a bit and head downstairs to see if I could get the birds to ignore me long enough to get some photos while the ate me out of house and home. It didn't take long, and the real challenge was getting Ralph to chill out by himself long enough to quit scaring the birds. I asked him to bring me his ball, which you might remember from previous posts, always makes him go straight to his doghouse to PREVENT me from getting the ball. This works well in peaceful smoking, but today served the birds well, too. Today was the first time I have seen Goldfinches at my feeders, I am sure they have been there before, but I am working during most of the time they are feeding. Seeing them today really tripped me out. I did manage to get a great shot of a House Finch, too. He and his wife. The camera I used does not like to focus at the long end of the zoom, so I had to manually focus, which is always a challenge with MY eyes.
But back to the cigar. Another tremendous smoke, amazing again, how something so thin can taste so great. A lot of cedary, creamy flavor, with a stark citrus note that is so refreshing. The burn was great, too, even though the wind had the thing rolling off the table every time I put it down for a second. Hard to take pictures with one hand holding a cigar. These cameras are OK, but I am not overly impressed with the Fujifilm HS-20EXR. OK, let me re-phrase that. I am impressed, but I do not like it better than the camera I turned on to the repair shop, which came back as another model after Hurricane Sandy severely damaged Fujinon's NY/NJ facility. It does not like to focus, you have to fight with it so damn much.
OK, back to the cigar AGAIN. Jeez its like I have A.D.D. or something.
What was I talking about, again?
Another razor straight burn, outstanding draw, took a ton of abuse and kept on bringing the delicious flavor. I even walked around the yard and worked with it in my mouth which I never do and it did not get nasty. These are great little cigars, good luck finding either one of the panatelas I smoked this weekend. And I really DO mean that. FIND THEM, do what you have to do and get even just a fiver of either one. You won't be disappointed. Metric tons of delicious citrus, tangy, creamy flavor, and a very distinct, clean profile. A yummy 92 points.
After a long hiatus since my Mardi Gras smoking to let the weather clear out, its back to the grind again. I have been on a real tear lately, buying up camera gear like a fiend, a hoarding fiend. But now that I have bought up every reasonably-priced used Nikon and lens, I can return to being myself and saving money like some kind of old age pensioner. Since that is essentially what I am anyway.
I had been wasting a lot of time and effort and cash buying high-end Point & Shoot cameras, because I didn't want the expense and hassle of a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. I can see now just how prescient that was, I was VERY smart to have stayed away, at least for as long as my little moat and battlements held. That effort ended officially on or about February 20th. I began selling point and shoots and buying up SLR bodies. It started innocently enough, I wanted a decent OLD body for me, and maybe one for my sister. On top of that, just a normal lens for both bodies. END OF ASSIGNMENT.
By the time it was all over, one of the two cameras I bought was WAY better than I expected it to be and I selfishly kept it for myself. So now I had TWO Nikon bodies. I still needed to buy a body for my sister, whom I love. But apparently not enough to give her this other great Nikon body. But I had originally wanted to keep this under budget. So I looked and found a $99 Olympus body and a lens for it for $69. It was a good enough camera, hell it was a DSLR, right? That in iteslf made it "good". But it was not GREAT....the more I thought about it, the more it was JUST like the olden days, when the jacks and mouse story happened.
Little diversion from the plot so far. When I was just a kid, my mother thought it would be appropriate if we started using our own money to buy Christmas gifts for each other, amongst the three children in my family. Great idea. I am not sure what happened before, maybe my PARENTS bought non-Santa gifts for us and disguised them as being from each of the other kids. But to begin this project-idea, we went down to the ben Franklin store, which at that time MIGHT have actually been a T.G. & Y. store. I already knew the toy section there quite well, I had coveted all the little stamped steel friction toys that you drug backwards on the floor and then released, sending them zooming forward til they ran out of wind-up. So I knew what MY plan was going to be. I would buy what I wanted for me, then use the leftover money to buy THEM something. By the time I had lavished myself with treats, I had just enough money left over to buy my one sister a rubber mouse and the other a set of jacks/ball. WHO buys someone a rubber mouse? What was she, a CAT? Anyway, whatever I have become in my life since that was greatly affected by that embarassment. If I am ever overly generous with gifts today, it is because I never really understood the perspective of another person as well as I did that day. It changed me inside and cut me to my core. I must have mentally resolved never to do that again. And such is the way I learned every hard life lesson that I ever learned; the hard way.
Again, I digress. But that story will somewhat explain why I was not going to do that to my sister this time. I could give her a rubber mouse DSLR, or the DSLR I had intended from the beginning. Now this was NOT going to be some kind of giant 'statement buy', it was going to be the cheapest, most left-behind, used Nikon they offer nowadays, the Nikon D70. This is a relic, a dinosaur, a complete 2003-2004-era also-ran in the modern world. However in it's day, it was extremely capable and in use as a camera capable of delivering professional results. It is probably the single highest-selling digital SLR Nikon ever produced. Now that it is the cheapest used Nikon you could find, did that somehow wipe all that glory away? Hell, I didn't think so.
But during the time I spent agonizing over the original purchase wave, deciding which one to buy and what lenses I should get with it, THREE used Nikon D70s disappeared from the shelf, as if someone had been watching me and was trying to stick their foot up by butt for spite. I bet those cameras had been there for a year, and now all of a sudden, three in a day disappeared. Granted, I got one of them, but that left NO D70s left a week later when I decided that I had to replace the Olympus I got for my sister. So I went to another vendor and picked one up. So now I had in my posession FOUR DSLRs and a few lenses. Luckily my nephew is graduating high school this summer and he is into photography and the ridiculous old Olympus would suit him to a tee, his first DSLR. Making it all that much nicer is that the damned Oly is a freaking great little camera. Takes brilliant, colorful photos.
So after all that, everybody wins. Well, except me. I went on a lens buying spree that basically broke me. Had to sell a bunch of cigars to make up the damage, which I had to do anyway, so don't cry for me, Argentina. But I went from being a very well-equipped and sensible Point & Shoot owner, happy as a clam, to being just another one of the sickos who has been infected with this NEEDY camera gear disease for which there seems to be no cure. The only thing that balances it out in the end is that out of ALLLL the stuff I bought, I only paid 'new' prices for one lens. Everything else was bought USED. Down to the memory cards and shoulder bags. I probably have in my hands now some $15,000 worth of camera gear and am only out maybe $2000. Despite the depreciation, it still WORKS like $15,000 worth of gear, I am happy to report. And in the end, everybody's happy. Even me.
And for my sister who reads this blog, don't let the outpouring of hidden facts (some not hidden, poor girl, I burdened her with most of the play-by-play via email, in that classic OLS writing style, 400 words to say 50 word ideas) discourage you. I bought a ton of TV gear to ready myself for freelance work, and I bought a ton of Still gear for my own pleasure. I know you will use your camera and get another ton of enjoyment out of it, and I will gain even more satisfaction in the purchase during the times I will be there with you snapping away. And if I recall, you handed me down some accessories during my first foray into 35mm photography, which, quite unsanctioned by you, became a bold quest to snap cheerleaders in the most embarassing possible moments for my own perverse, high school pleasure. IT DID give me a good shutter finger, though. So there's that.
As for the SMOKING part of this entry, sorry, that happens tonight. I need to test out a 35mm 1.8 lens in the fading dusk light. I understand it is quite a fast lens, so we shall see how it all goes. And it could be that I ride to Nashville on Saturday to smoke with my friend Bill, so maybe some photos of that, too. NOW, back to saving money like a normal person in a depression. Thanks bankers and mortgage lenders!
