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GBC Pinnacle 27 Roll Laminator, Photo Quality, 27 -Inch Width, 1.0 to 3.0 mm Thickness, NAP I or NAP II Film Compatibility, Gray (1701700)

For over 60 years the GBC brand has been a world leader in products that help consumers protect, preserve, secure, organize and enhance their printed materials. GBC binding and laminating machines and supplies help professionals finish documents quickly and easily with style and customization. The GBC Pinnacle 27 Roll Laminator is a photo quality roll laminating system ideal for large schools and offices. The laminator utilizes standard roll film up to 3 mil thick, and accepts both NAP I and NAP II film. It features a fast 6-9 minute warm-up time and laminates at a speed of 12 feet per minute for increased productivity. The easy to use control panel features a temperature ready indicator, 2 push button heat settings, LED indicators and adjustable speed dial. In addition, the Pinnacle 27 is equipped with a built-in footage counter to track film usage, as well as a built-in trimmer at the back of the machine. When changing or loading film, the tray table disengaging locks automatically shuts the power off for additional safety. It is cUL approved with a limited one-year warranty that includes on-site technician service. Perfect for laminating banners and continuous feed applications!

we're getting ready to head out. only, it's more like: he's ready, and has been for some time; i'm still working on it. getting ready, ready for whatever it is you're about to do, is a process. and you have to be careful, take your time, get everything just right. not perfect, because no one really knows what perfect is. but as close to that as you can. you have to astonish and wow. not the people who you're about to chare some space with, no. you have to wow your man.

he's in the living room with a news channel on television, cold beer getting warmer in his hand, and his face is nothing but frustration. we're going to be late. he hates being late. he hates anyone being late for anything. work, dates, appointments, even bills. there is no such thing as a grace period. if you say eight o'clock, that's what it means and if you're later than that, even by a few minutes, you're a liar. he's maybe a little crazy about that. once, i took fifteen minutes past the time he said he wanted to leave, i come out of the bathroom, and the asshole left without me! regardless, it's the only weird thing he has, which, considering what's out there guy-wise, i came out with one of the better ones. he's my guy.

applying make up isn't up on top of my list of things i like to do, but when you do it, you gotta do it right. take the time. symmetry and getting [prettier] needs patience. girl at the make up counter at the store, the one with all the rad tattoos and afro, i wish i could do at home what she does for me at her job. but it's something you pick up as you go along. it's the girl equivalent of guys learning how to play ball out in the courts: something you do and learn from others as you grow up.

once everything is in place and it's time to leave, he's fuming! i can see it in his eyes and the way he's sitting. but he'll wait for me. after that other time and a stupid fight over it, we talked about it and turns out we decided i'm the exception to his rule, so he needs to relax. of course, he relaxes after we're already late. in the meanwhile, however, there he is, probably on the same beer bottle from a couple hours back. he's probably curing me so loudly in his mind. but i come out and sit next to him and wrap my arms around me, and maybe my skirt pulls up on my thigh just enough that his hand touches my leg and:

electricity.

in the car, he lets me change the playlist if i let him smoke. fair trade off. i click through his ipod and find the playlist he made me and he lights up a cigarette and rolls his window down and i hit play because i hate it when people hit random on a playlist clearly intended to be listened to in this order. placebo comes on and he blows out smoke. his left arm dangles over the opened window and he's steering with his right and i lean over and rest my head on his shoulder and put my hand on his stomach and start singing a little and the city lights going by outside, they look especially pretty tonight. street lights and neon signs and lit up billboards, they always make the city prettier when you have somewhere to go in this town. he flicks his cigarette out the window and the song changes to suede and he rolls his window closed and he drives with his left hand and takes mine from his stomach with his right and we interlace our fingers and he leans over and kisses me.

restaurant is so crowded, but everyone's having such a good time! i know i am. i know he is too; i love it when he talks with my friends about whatever it is they're talking about. they're so unlike him in so many ways, but look at them: as if they were old friends already!lots of food and lots of drinks and maybe one too many old stories. same stories we tell each other about when from before and who and all of it. why do we tell the same stories, even the embarrassing ones? i mean, we all know them by now. sure, we know them, but after a while they slip away from us and we don't ever think about them until nights like this, when we all get together and share them again until they're forgotten. something i never understood. but how these people make laugh and enjoy myself!

after we leave the hospital and get home, he asks me if i want some whisky and i say yes. he says i look so pale. i'm afraid. i'm frightened. what we just saw, what just happened. less than twelve hours ago, everything was sane. now? he hands me my drink and we both sit on the couch. it's nearly afternoon and my feet hurt from my shoes and my face feels like it could peel off like a mask. he puts hi arm around me and we sip our drinks, the only sound is our breathing and the clinks of ice in our glasses. i melt in his arms and i shudder at the image that i won't get rid of for a very long time. i look up at him and he looks at me, eye contact, and he tries to smile but he can't. i feel my eyes water and he sees it and he pulls me closer and sets his drink down and wraps both arms around me. he won't let m

Alright, I distracted myself with that last post. It's ok, it happens often. ;-)

One of the things I like most about my job is that it is not just about selling cameras. With each camera we sell, it is as easily about educating that person in how to use their camera as it is about them actually buying it. I love the educational aspect of my job. It gives as much back to me behind the counter as those in front of the counter tend to get.

Anyway, one of the things I have the privilege of explaining frequently is shutter speeds and apertures. I never find it a mundane conversation. I remember all too well those early days of fumbling with an aperture-thingy that was well beyond my understanding. I just knew that rotating that ring made the needle in my meter move up and down and I had to get it in the center. Really, that was the bulk of my understanding of apertures at one point. Not an iota more.

Anyway, understanding shutter speeds and apertures is really important. Basically every single camera in existence uses them from your cell phone, to your pinhole, to your 5D, to your B&J 8x10. (I give bonus points to those who can tell me any of the remarkably few ways to make an image without a shutter, aperture or both ;-D)

Yet for as important as they are, they can be a funny subject. Early on they can be unfathomable in their complexity and later on they become so second nature as to be taken for granted. So this next bit is meant as a primer for those new to the subject and a refresher for those not. Because every time I get to teach them over the counter I am reminded of their importance myself.

I generally start off by comparing a shutter and an aperture to the workings of the eye. Aperture refers to the hole created by the aperture blades, generally inside your lens. If you set your camera to f11 and your shutter to 1 second and look down into the lens as you depress your shutter you will see a number of blades closing down to form a smaller hole in the middle of your lens. That is your aperture. In relation to your eye, it is like your pupils. When things get bright, those blades contract to allow less light to pass through. When things get dark, they open up allowing more light in. The measurement of this opening is represented by the numbers on your aperture scale which generally read something like 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4 ,5.6... sound familiar. The lower a number is, the wider the opening and hence the more light that passes through. Apertures like 16, 22, and 32 are smaller openings that allow much less light in. Generally a lens' fastest aperture is considered its "speed". This is why most lenses are demarcated by their focal length followed by their maximum aperture, such as "50mm 1:1.2" The aperture is expressed as a ratio, but the important number is that which follows the colon. So this 50mm would have a maximum aperture of 1.2, which allows a lot of light through the lens and is considered very fast. This would be a grand lens for low light photography where you want to preserve high shutter speeds.

Apertures represent one-half of an exposure. They control how much light passes through your lens. That is why they are so important when it comes to flash photography and night time shots of the stars. When using a flash, the flash fires so fast that your shutter catches its full intensity everytime, regardless of your shutter speed* (I put an asterisk there because there is more to that statement that I am not going to get into tonight). So the only way to limit how much of that flash-provided light hits your film is by closing your aperture to allow less of it to pass through your lens. Same with stars. If you use a smaller aperture while doing star trails, the dimmer stars' illumination will be cut out if you use too small of an aperture.

And if that were not confusing enough, aperture also controls your depth of field, that is how big an area of your photo that is in focus. Those wider apertures have narrower focus, while the smaller apertures have greater fields of focus. For example, focus on some flowers on the ground in front of you that are... say... five feet away with an aperture of no more than f4. Now without changing your focus look at something on the horizon. It will be out of focus. Your depth of field at f4 is generally not great enough to bring things at great distances apart into focus at the same time. To remedy this close down to f11 or 16 or even 22. The further down you go, the greater the distances between near and far you can bring into focus simultaneously. This is a popular technique for landscape photography. But it works in reverse too. Say you have some friends who want a portrait, but they insist on standing in front of a dumpster. Well try a wider aperture, with an aperture of 1.8 or 1.4 you might find that you can focus on their faces and put that nasty dumpster behind them unrecognizably out of foc