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[A200/Tamron 18-250, either a Promaster or Hoya Pro1 Digital MC UV filter, ISO100 1/320s F8 27mm effective -0.0eV > dcraw A200 ICC H0W AHD 3-color +0.0eV > Gimp contrast +1, usm 1.0-0.50-01]

(too dark, but the clouds are nicely-rendered...though I'm afraid to read all the stuff that I wrote here :)

I'm sure that there's a valid point or two buried in the 5000 words that follow...but succinctly, what leaps out at me here is that compared to shooting film, at least so far, the images off even the A200 are "crisp" and clean even if they do have a slight CGI effect..the main problem is the wrestling that has to be done to get a good result from a raw file, if you don't trust the software to render it for you in "automatic" mode. Post-process, whatever. Render is a shorter word, easier to type so I think that I'll just use that from now on. "Render the final image". You can either do it manually (like using the flags in dcraw) or trust the software (like running dcraw with no flags).

If you just take a decent exposure at F8 or so, ISO100, with a decent subframe, run it through dcraw with maybe the -o1 -w -W -T flags, you'll get this or something close to it. Probably a little brighter. I think that I can summarize the text below just by saying that it's a lot easier & cheaper to get good shots handheld in the day at low ISO with a decent little subframe than it is to get good shots handheld in low light at any ISO with an expensive fullframe. Though maybe there are a few other "nuggets of wisdom" buried in there. I say so much, sometimes.

You still have the problem of money tied up in the camera and lens when you're not taking shots with it. Whether it's $1500 for the camera and $1k for the lens, or $300 for the camera and $300 for the lens, or just $300 for the camera and lens combined. Sure, given a dozen rolls of film you're coming out ahead. But it's still money. And as time goes by, that gear is simply going to be worth less and less eventually ending up on eBay for peanuts. You end up losing more money in the gear the longer that you have it, which swings the financial balance back towards film. Maybe film shots don't look quite as clean, and certainly they can be more trouble to prepare, but basically they're the same shots. With more fine-detail. But sure I can't pop a roll of ISO800 film in a film camera and shoot it handheld in low light without a flash unless the lens has IS and that makes this a different issue because now I need to buy an expensive IS lens as well, just for the handful of lowlight or long shots that I might ever want to shoot and now I'm just saving money on the camera-body and taken all together that again makes a cheap subframe look like a decent deal, at least for shots in good light at low ISO. Film is just a lot harder to shoot and get good results with than digital. The question is, just how much are the shots worth to you...and how good are you with film?

With film you can now buy a decent SLR cheap, literally for under $50 on eBay, and shoot film in it for about $5/roll. That's $15 for 100 shots, sure. But just how many shots are you going to take? There is simply no sense in getting the worlds' best camera-gear, getting great results with it...and then hardly shooting it. You can't shoot it if all your money is tied up in it. Yes it's not worth shooting if the results aren't good enough but the main issue is to find a happy medium between cost and quality. A camera that you can afford to buy, keep and take out shooting, that gives you results that you enjoy viewing. Not just one or the other. This is not nearly as easy as it seems. Even this A200/Tamron 18-250 rig cost me $800, and I could only stand the results out of it at ISO200 or below during the day and ISO400 in low light. Maybe ISO800 in a pinch. Most of the time it just sat in my bag and I ended-up selling the camera and lens on eBay for $200 each. 3 months later. The lens lost 60% of the retail value over the summer. It was selling brand-new for 50% less than I paid for a used one, and I paid less for one on Amazon than they were selling for on eBay. That lens retailed for $500 earlier this summer. Amazon is crushing the retail market for electronics gear by allowing people to sell their used gear on it at a fixed price and brokering the sale. You can get slightly-used gear well off the retail price with all the guarantees of a regular Amazon buy. You aren't happy with the gear, the seller doesn't get paid. The same thing that eBay is trying to do, but eBay isn't brokering the sale unless you pay with paypal. Amazon takes regular credit-cards as well as paypal. Plus eBay is, well, you know: "eBay". Like CraigsList, it just has a reputation from all the people that have gotten screwed on eBay over the years.

So prices are low on eBay but that goes along with the risk of buying goods on eBay.
There is virtually no risk when buying through Amaz

Day 118 of 365: Some new props from the Chinese Dollar Store as I like to call it. They're selling all kinds of crap, but the owner is Chinese and has a lot of Asian kitsch. The mask was 3 dollars, heh.

For TOTW: Monochrome
For TRP: The Human Condition.

The More You Know™: In Japan, Geishas are hired to entertain guests at parties. Their time is measured by the time it takes an incense stick to burn and is called senkodai (Ú™ă, "incense stick fee" - did you notice how I sneaked in some Japanese characters, looking all worldly and like I know what I'm talking about?). I'm not sure how many incense sticks I could have burned while taking this picture, but I'll be sure to make it up to Sara.

Schmobist: snooted speedlight shot through window blinds at 1/4th and some ambient room light. It's composed of two exposures so I could dodge away heavily on the mask.

XP113 (very surprising because this looks like shit as a thumbnail).