19-5-26

19-5-25

Merge, the music venue, is not long for this world. This will be the last show I see there. Hopefully a new home is found soon enough.

19-5-24

19-5-23

It's pen week here in Vancouver. This beauty arrived today, and it's got a nice weight and balance, but the ink cartridge was empty and the clicking mechanism didn't work. It wasn't cheap. An angry email to the company expressing my disappointment resulted in a tracking number for a replacement within the hour. Do I even want a replacement? I'm not sure. I won't drop names before the replacement shows up. After that, I'll be honest with how I feel about this pen, and its replacement. I'll be honest, I have a bitter taste in my mouth because of this pen. It's going to have to be pretty spectacular to make me forget how messed up the first one was. I'm hopeful, but I won't know for sure for a few days. Interesting days.

19-5-22

19-5-21

19-5-20

19-5-19

These two things have been floating around town for over a decade. I hadn't seen them in a few years, and then here they were. Still don't know what they are. Hollow and on wheels. Art? Maybe art.

19-5-18

19-5-17

Pens. It's always been a thing. Now it's more of a thing. Kawecosport fountain pen with Sailor Jentle ink.

19-5-16

Nikon D750

Nikon has promised to fix my D750 at no charge. This is good. I know it's a few years old but it should last longer than a few years, right? Right? Regardless, the best warranty is the one you never have to use, but the second best warranty is the one that lasts well into the life of a device, and a company who fixes stuff they obviously screwed up in the first place is a good company.

I don't have the camera back yet. So film experiments continue. Not that there's anything wrong with that.....

19-5-15

This building....

19-5-14

19-5-13

Neighbors. So good.

19-5-12

19-5-11

Smoked a brisket. 10 hours. It was amazing.

19-5-10

19-5-9

19-5-8

19-5-7

19-5-6

I've taken this photo before. I'll probably take it again. I feel like I'm running out of photographs in this city.

State of the Union.

In July of 2016 I parted company with $2491.19 of my hard earned money in exchange for a Nikon D750. Nikon owned my soul because I had bought a not small collection of Nikkor and Nikon compatible lenses for my D700. In June of 2016 the command dial of my D700 had stopped working. This made it hard to change shutter speeds in manual mode and thus hard to take photographs. I bought a first release issue of the D700 in July of 2008 meaning it provided me with 8 years of uninterrupted and dedicated service. I think 60k exposures or so? Whatever. The controls shouldn't have worn out when they did, but they did. 8 years isn't long enough a service life, never mind the less than 3 years the D750 has given me. But as the D700 stopped working I was left with a bag full of Nikon lenses and no Nikon, so off to the store to buy a good but not necessarily top shelf Nikon camera body, a D750.

Today the D750 shutter doesn't work. For a while now the first shot of the day resulted in an ERR message and a stuck shutter. It would work fine with the second and all subsequent shots, but the first shot was always a functional disappointment. As of yesterday the shutter has decided it no longer wanted to get out of the way of the sensor before any photograph was taken, leaving a dark band across the top of every photo I take. I guess $2491.19 doesn't buy what it used to. Nothing lasts forever, but $2491.19 should last longer than 3 years.

So the camera is now in a box somewhere between Vancouver and Mississauga where someone in a service center might fix the camera for me. It might cost me another $599 according to Nikon's web page.

In the mean time, a 50 year old Pentax Spotmatic will return to regular rotation. The Spotmatic wasn't cheap when new, but it wasn't expensive either, and 50 years later it's been in the shop only once for a light meter repair that cost $100.

I don't know if you can even buy a good camera anymore. And that's unfortunate. But I still have a good camera, no matter how obsolete it may appear.

Film photographs to come. Soon. ish.

19-5-5

Quarry Rock.

19-5-4

19-5-3

19-5-2

Theme of the week.

19-5-1

19-4-30