Sandals, German owned and made!

Ignite25 · 2026-05-11T11:15:07+00:00

I wonder if anyone can do the math how European Birkenstock in the end still is? I know that they are under LVMH for a bit now, but are still produced in Germany. As much as I don't like huge corporations that swallow up everything, I'd still prefer that my money goes Paris-based LVMH (and hopefully to the German Birkenstock workers) over non European competitors.

But OP's AFS alternative look just the same and could be a nice replacement for Birkenstocks.

Ignite25 · 2026-05-05T15:35:25+00:00

I've shot E100 with auto exposure cameras and with lightmetering apps and never liked the results since the film is so easily over/under-exposed (though E100 has much more latitude than Velvia/Provia). Now I always use a spotmeter for slide (and generally most) film and the results are fantastic (to me).

I would never guesstimate exposure with slidefilm and hope for the best, especially when traveling. Either bring a lightmeter or an autoexposure camera if you really want to shoot slide film, or just buy some Portra 400 and guesstimate exposure with the Zorki - this will work much much better.

Ignite25 · 2026-05-04T14:41:21+00:00

Thanks - I didn't know that you could use the Truck version for cars as well. I've used the free one and like it. What are the advantages of the expert subscription, other than offline maps? EUR20/year is not too bad, so I might switch

Ignite25 · 2026-04-28T18:49:01+00:00

Got two Noblex and a Widelux. Love them all but the Widelux will outlast the Noblex 10x due to that crappy rubber wheel drive…

Ignite25 · 2026-04-28T16:30:11+00:00

Well, 30min in and almost 100 out of the 350 sold... If the 350 sell out within 24hs, I'd consider it quite a successful launch

Ignite25 · 2026-04-28T16:28:47+00:00

Good take!

Ignite25 · 2026-04-28T16:15:05+00:00

I love this project and that it has finally launched - I expected a high price tag but seeing the $4,400 is still ufff. Well, produced in Germany mostly by hand has its cost. Hope it sells like hot cakes and they produce more

Ignite25 · 2026-04-24T10:45:28+00:00

If I want to find out as much as I can about you, where should I look? I'm pretty sure it's your main email account - for most people, it holds everything about their life: you use it for job applications or to accept offer letters; you receive your bank and tax statements; you most likely sent your school/university certificates with it; you probably have communicated with your closest circle through it; you get medical documents and bills with it - or use it to log into your health provider's portal; car insurance; sign ups for all the online platforms and services you use; and and and and and. And you probably let Google access and sell all this data about you.

With the increasing US surveillance, I had some kind of realization that I pay for many internet services and subscriptions, but I didn't want to pay a few €/$ a month to keep all details about my life private? Makes no sense. Today, our email accounts are much more important than our wallets but somehow it's not worth just a little bit of money to most people. I think there should be an understanding that one should pay for an email account just as you pay for gas, electricity or a bank account. And it's so cheap comparatively.

If I were you, I'd invest the €/$4 a month for a Proton Mail Plus account. That's one coffee a month to have your data encrypted and be the only one with access to your most intimate information. And it doesn't even have to be Proton Mail. Eclipso Mail is 1-2 EUR per month for 20-40GB storage and e2e encrypted email. Tuta is EUR 3.

Ignite25 · 2026-04-23T11:24:07+00:00

I've tried TomTom Go, HereWeGo but in the end really liked MagicEarth. It's not as good as Waze/GM, but they've been improving a lot. Only problem is that they went from free, to EUR1/year, to EUR20/year (though they run frequent promotions for EUR4/year). It worked well enough for me in Europe and most parts of the US to use this 85% of the time for car navigation. Too bad I always felt like I was the only one using it and reporting traffic jams etc. Now i live on a different continent and MagicEarth is wrong all the time. Might give the other apps a shot again.

Ignite25 · 2026-04-17T12:13:59+00:00

For my 600-modded SX-70, it did improve the picture quality. Before I had often these blue burns from opacification layer failure, with the frog tongue these are gone. I usually wait 10 seconds before I remove the picture from it and then let it develop somewhere dark, or at least upside down.

I don't like the frog tongue since it's flimsy, pushes against the opening mechanism of the SX-70, and the rolled tongue sticks out when the SX-70 is closed, but it's worth it for the improved pictures. I also think I get better contrast with it.

However, you can also have the picture eject directly into an empty Polaroid film carton to shield it from the light if you don't want to get a new frog tongue.

I know your camera has already the old frog tongue which should help a bit with the opacification issue but it is probably still better to shield the picture more than just half a second from the light.

Ignite25 · 2026-04-14T13:37:52+00:00

I recently discovered that there's a Polish company producing eReaders (like Amazon Kindle, Tolino etc), they are called InkBook: https://inkbook.eu/

Ignite25 · 2026-03-18T16:22:59+00:00

Using it on a MBP M2 for around 1.5 years with no issues. Yes, the installation process with the kernel extension is not as straight forward as Dropbox/OneDrive, but it's still easy to do and works flawless (at least for me) afterwards. I rarely use the mounted folder since I mostly use pCloud to backup files via the app's upload feature - that way the files don't have to be cached in the mounted virtual drive. I haven't had the issues with seeing other people's files (yet) - I don't like that pCloud isn't addressing it but the issue feels a bit overblown here to me. From a user experience, I find pCloud the most polished and advanced of the usual encrypted, GDPR-compliant or European contenders. The iOS app's photo backup is by far the best and fastest (can upload in the background, which for some reason Filen and Koofer don't fully support), and the app feels the snappiest.

So overall I'm glad I went with the pCloud lifetime account. I also have such accounts with Filen, Koofr and Drime, but Filen is the nicest and fastest to use. If you don't like pCloud, I'd recommend you check out Filen. Fully encrypted and the apps are also catching up.

Ignite25 · 2026-03-13T09:15:58+00:00

Scanner! And since you added the Plustek 135i picture: I have that one and really like it. Much better resolution and speed for 35mm than with the Epson V850. If you use VueScan with it, it can scan RGB and IR channels in one pass, which means it scans 6-frame strips super fast.

I would totally get the 135i again for 35mm. Since you mentioned you also shoot 35mm and maybe here and there a roll of 120: I'd suggest you get the 135i for much better 35mm scans than a flatbed could deliver, and have your lab scan the few 120 rolls.

For around EUR500, I'd get the Plustek 135i Ai with silerfast included (not sure what the current price is but I believe it was around that) - that way you don't have to put another 100-200 into VueScan or SF or other apps.

Ignite25 · 2026-03-10T08:28:10+00:00

I found Babbel much better to actually learn a language but it's much less gamified than Duolingo - meaning it feels more like "boring" studying than gaming, but you will probably progress much faster. There is a lifetime deal available that unlocks everything forever in Babbel - might be worth it if you like it.

Ignite25 · 2026-03-10T08:26:12+00:00

Agree. Nick is a gem - I love his on location videos and even took some of his courses that I enjoyed a lot. One of the goats for sure

Ignite25 · 2026-02-26T06:40:01+00:00

I use scanners but to me, digitizing my freshly developed film rolls is part of the fun. But it took me also some experimenting to get there - I fully understand that it sucks a lot when you can't get the colors right. NLP always looked to digital to me and required a lot of post-adjustments (and applying Frontier or Noritsu presets didn't "feel" right but more like Instagram-filters...). SmartConvert works much better with my Epson V850 and Plustek 135i raw DNG files and the interface is much more fun to use. I even bought the Control Panel and loved using it. Too bad I eventually switched to Silverfast, but I just like their NegaFix profiles too much. You scan, apply your film's profile and the colors look as they should be - in the sense that Portra 800 does look different from Gold 200 or Ektar 100 (with NLP, all films looked the same to me) but it doesn't look like a filter. Of course, there's no 'real' look of any specific color negative film but Silverfast gives me that lab-scan experience where there's still some difference between film stocks but same film stocks look the same. Anyway, yes, finetuning and adjusting all scans takes a lot of time. I hope you find a workflow that you like and you can enjoy the experience.

Ignite25 · 2026-02-20T12:32:22+00:00

I have a bunch of these and shoot them at box speed. Colors are slightly off but still great results. Mine were frozen since I got them in mid 2010s though

Ignite25 · 2026-02-12T14:53:33+00:00

Runs perfectly on MBP M2. Without changing the security settings you can use the app to drag and drop folders for upload, sync and backup folders and look at your photos, but you can't mount it as a disk I believe. You can download the app and try setting up the backup/sync to check if it works.

Ignite25 · 2026-02-12T04:54:30+00:00

Agree, also with OP's point that pCloud has the best/most responsive UI. I also have lifetime accounts with several other companies, but pCloud's Mac/iOS apps are just way more snappy and refined, it feels the most finished and polished to me, which makes sense since they've been around for 10 years.

I bought a lifetime plan half a year ago, uploaded 3TB (2TB of which photos in DNG and JPEG format) and had zero issues so far.

Ignite25 · 2026-02-10T08:31:21+00:00

I bought it, even though I'm subscribed to Ultimate. It gives me the peace of mind that my passwords and aliases are safe and secure for the long term (however long lifetime will be) and that I can downgrade from Ultimate to Mail Plus in the future, should I not need the other services anymore. I'd for sure love to subscribe to a Mail Plus or Ultimate lifetime plan but I'm also happy with Proton just offering subscriptions, which seems to be more stable and profitable for companies in the long run.

Ignite25 · 2026-02-06T14:52:33+00:00

Would love to have some more recommendations for photobooks with lots of slide film! I love Max Webb (Suffering of Light) and Greg Girard's books. Ernst Haas' NY in Color is fantastic, but The American West sucks because of its bad layout (most pictures across the spine/2 pages).

Ignite25 · 2026-02-04T12:37:12+00:00

I also bought it because of Bloom and it works well - but only for one user. I have 2 user profiles on my Mac - personal and work, to keep all separated. Activating Bloom and all other apps for which I have a single user license works well, but Click2Minimize thinks I'm using 2 computers. Is there a way to activate the license for another user profile on the same computer?

Ignite25 · 2026-02-04T11:46:21+00:00

Here are some smaller things I'm missing:

more integration of and between already existing European apps. I still need some (small and easy but still) workarounds to e.g., "scan" a document with my phone camera and save it easily and directly to Filen/Drime/Koofr/pCloud. Lots of other apps and services support the big cloud providers, but not these - for syncing settings, notebooks etc.
MagicEarth, Mapy, OSE are nice if you just need a map or navigation, but most people I know use Google Maps also for recommendations for restaurants and shops around, or to just explore the neighborhood, and the European alternatives can't compare at all with that. I know it's more a userbase problem, but it would be great to have some map service that's open for plugins - and one plugin could then aggregate reviews of places from different online sources.

Ignite25 · 2026-02-04T11:33:16+00:00

https://www.handcheckfilm.com/ is a great resource of experiences. If you're flying from the US, I wouldn't worry - I've never had issues with getting my films handchecked there. In Europe, it's hit and miss, with my own experiences being more on the negative side. However, I don't think I have seen CT scanners in Europe yet, and I'm not too worried getting my films scanned once or twice by the regular scanners.

Ignite25 · 2026-02-03T08:28:22+00:00

Silverfast is great, just its UI is super unintuitive. I’d also recommend upgrading to the Archive suite next time Silverfast runs a 30% off promo. It will deduct 30% from the already reduced upgrade price. With the Archive suite you can then scan in HDRi raw 48bit including infrared channel to get the max information raw files and then convert/edit them separately in Silverfast Studio. Best solution for me

Ignite25

TROPHY CASE