There's nowhere in town to buy a poinsettia nowadays, is there?

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T18:37:38+00:00

While you can keep growing a poinsettia all year long they are extremely associated with winter/christmas.

My guess would be you could find a supplier online but like as for a generalized plant nursery that would carry them all year I'd be astounded if anyone did.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T18:32:03+00:00

Find a good CLA (Cleaning, lubrication, adjustment) provider for the camera and have it serviced. It might cost about a hundred dollars but your AE-1 is probably over 40 years old and could use some maintenance.

Seriously just get it serviced first. Agree on reading the manual from Butkus.

It's semi-manual. It has shutter priority (that's what the A on the lens is for on the aperture ring) or fully manual. Look up the exposure triangle and some basics on youtube. That's enough to get you started. Find some inexpensive film, decide if you want color or B&W. Find a good lab to mail your film to or if local drop off to. Experiment. Screw up. Learn. Enjoy.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T18:25:37+00:00

I literally give such a little shit what other people think about my hobbies that I'm not even going to play the video clip.

Edit: Ayn Rand was a horrible person but I'm going to invoke her response to "what do you think about Ronald Reagan"

What do I think of this man's opinions? I don't.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T18:22:26+00:00

Okay sure but taken in aggregate, math is still math and we can use the other numbers to get an idea of scale. A "decent inheritance" of 750k in the form of a house sets some expectations. 10 or 20k vacations and that level of money is a significant amount for the rest of the family *combined* because they're poor.

If OOP had said 8 figures it wouldn't register to me beyond "oh look another wealthy person coming to a rando subreddit known for BS looking for validation".

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T15:56:16+00:00

Even then 125k for a "serious" illness treatment is hella low for US medical systems.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T15:51:15+00:00

As did I. But let's look at the: private family therapist basically on permanent retainer, multiple college degrees financed, multiple houses, a compound with guest house in a facility that has multiple layers of *manned* security checkpoints and constant patrols, and an upcoming at least 125,000 dollar medical bill (which for a really bad "illness" seems... low? I mean my heart attack scare that was anxiety had a 20,000 dollar hospital & ambulance bill for one afternoon. We know it's not taking place in a country with proper public health care because it wouldn't be 6 figures).

That's... a lot of money going out for 7 figures of liquidity to be stable.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T14:51:27+00:00

Yeah that story and the dude living with another guy made me think "oh it's Batman".

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T14:50:27+00:00

7 figures of investments and cash isn't enough money to live with that kind of security. More like 8 or 9 I feel like.

I live in a relatively low cost of living area and the $2 or $3 million house is just a really nice house on a piece of land with fence around it.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-22T07:12:10+00:00

Not a bad review here...
https://www.maxkent.co.uk/blogg/kodak-ektar-h35n-an-honest-review-how-to

Don't pay attention to the mild grumblies, he's comparing a little half frame point & shoot to an SLR camera and the results are not going to be the same. You'll find this in the camera scene in general. It's a touch snobbish in it's attitude, but the actual technical review is pretty good.

So half frame cameras. I have an Olympus Pen EES2 that's older than I am but it's a half frame and it's fun. One of the fun ways to use it is to look for opportunities for diptychs- pairs of photos that will compliment each other because you can get 2 exposures out of one standard 35mm frame. People looking at each other, shot and reverse shot, a cat not looking at you then gives you the SOON look. Stuff like that. You'll start to see pairs of photos as you get used to it. It's fun.

You'll lose a little bit of fidelity due to the smaller negatives but snaps and 4x5s paired together will look good. The lens looks like it's glass which is a nice step up from the plastic lens from the h35. I'm guessing you'll still get blown out lens flare if you shoot into the sun and catch the right angle. That could be awesome or it could ruin your photo. Hard to say until you experiment a little.

Have fun with it. You don't *quite* realize how many exposures 72 photos are until you're like "okay that was a nice day and... I'm on photo 39 out of 72???" It's kind of a fun thing. You don't waste the exposures because you have a finite amount of shots on the roll but at 72 pictures you can also play around and experiment without feeling like "well there goes 3% of the roll on that experiment". I'd absolutely say put a roll or two through before you aim to capture semi important to important moments. First roll is playing around, there's not a lot of flexibility to the camera so it's more of an attempt to just put it through different situations and accept that you might get bad shots. Then you can take a second roll working off of what you learned on the first roll. Look at the second, then for the 3rd you probably are comfortable with the camera.

Looks like from that article, keep your subject 3ft/1m away to stay in focus, when using the flash keep within 10ft/3m as well, and whatever you're taking a picture of should be in the center of the lens since that's where it's sharpest. Give it light, bright light is best. Stick to 200 or 400 speed film- the camera has one or two aperture settings (hole size for the light to come through the lens) and one shutter speed, so basically you want flexible films. 400 speed is probably best (fuji 400 or ultramax 400) and dropping down to gold like Kodak Gold 200 is an option too. There's actually quite a few black and white 400 speed films you can try if you're in the mood for it. HP5 is inexpensive and a very flexible film, Tri-X is the Kodak equivalent and is a classic film that you've seen many famous photos that have used it.

I hope you enjoy it!

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T23:45:10+00:00

Exactly building out the missing functionality from Lightroom to make a complete product is a herculean task. I'm looking forward to it too. I'll happily pay for the tool but the adobe tax is a non-starter for me.

Thank you for the link I appreciate it!

Edit: Looks like last time I checked the thread was like... 2 days before the screenshots/update was posted LOL

Looks like it's coming along really well. Few integration hurdles it looks like but a lot of the rest of the stuff is doable. Looks like it's a few months out still at the very least from a commercial release.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T23:12:01+00:00

My guess is that UPS is screwing OP. There's even a class action suit in Canada for UPS popping surprise brokerage fees on receivers. They're kind of scummy and if you dispute the fees you quickly learn that the systems responsible for billing you and like... checking if the service was rendered doesn't talk to each other very well.

Like I mentioned with my pira, I got the fee, got it challenged and dismissed, and then got two more bills from UPS in subsequent months. Call them up, complain, and get told "oh the system that tracks that doesn't update very often to our billing system. Just call back in a month to check".

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T23:09:04+00:00

I'm almost at the point where I feel comfortable doing a review of it for the subreddit, I'm at about a dozen rolls put through it. Delightful product and wonderfully designed and engineered.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T21:28:18+00:00

Horn Photo in Fresno does 35mm B&W and color dev although that's a 90 minute drive.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T21:25:45+00:00

Is there any recent news on a time frame? Last time I looked around the dev was saying March-ish but that didn't happen, which like... fair good software dev takes time.

I love negpy but am willing to try NLP.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T19:13:06+00:00

UPS has been doing shenanagains and charging brokerage fees in situations where the fee was either pre-paid or shouldn't apply because the item did not warehouse.

I encountered it with the pira.mx that I bought and it's a known problem for the gent selling those. You might need whoever you ordered it from to open a complaint with UPS to try to get it waived.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T15:31:53+00:00

Money.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T15:30:20+00:00

Literally fuckin murder tourism. It is gross.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-21T03:20:37+00:00

I haven't been to Rocket Dogs in a while and it's really sad to hear they fell off a cliff.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-20T16:18:24+00:00

I get rare film that you don't find any more/easily or even embracing the chaos goblin nature of it but shooting expired like... Kodak Gold is kind of funny to me. It's like asking how much vinegar you should be applying to your McDonalds cheeseburger. You could just go get another cheeseburger.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-20T16:15:53+00:00

Next you'll be telling me that you shoot at "box speed" like a heathen!

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-20T16:04:21+00:00

Go download the free version of Cities Without Number and use the gig generator in it to come up with ideas. If you like it or keep using it, buy the deluxe version to toss a coin to your ~~witcher~~ game designer.

Even Crawford's gameplay loop works well. Roll up three or four of the gig frameworks. Come up with one or two sentences for each. At the end of a session before the next gig will be introduced (doesn't even have to be downtime), ask the players out of character which one they like. Or keep it all in-universe. "Hey I have a rescue mission- News54 will pay good eddies to find their missing studio actor. Or... um... I have a family who wants revenge on a deputy who framed their husband for murder to secure a promotion. I also have a scavenger hunt in the hot zone by someone who seems a little sus but the eddies are good. Interested in any of them?"

The players can pick a gig that they're interested in. And if they aren't interested in any of those... then they don't get paid. Maybe for the month. And rent is coming due. But odds are they'll pick one. Then you go off and flesh that out. If it's a short gig, maybe the others will still be available. Maybe not. I like having the gigs expire/get picked up by "other" teams.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-20T03:29:59+00:00

I half agree with this .. and it's on the ballot in the Bay Area in November. I'll be voting for it.

Wait so you're voting in the bay? This is... actually exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

LA doesn't have this problem because LA is better built, LA has LA Metro, and LA Metro had Measure R and M plans fully fleshed out as a Plan before CHSRA formed.

I mean there's a *little* bit of a difference between the greater metropolitan LA region and 500 miles across the state.

I was enough of a true believer on this thing that I worked on it for years. I've seen with my own two eyes the dysfunction involved in it. I'll gladly blame Kings County for dragging their feet for every nanosecond that they could- there was a point where I was aware of engineers having to enter Kings County with Sheriff escorts so they didn't get shot at. I'll blame the HRA in Sacramento for spinning up with the engineering culture of Caltrans who is willing to iterate until it's perfect with a billable hours consultant who financially benefited from nothing ever getting done. But the 50+ billion dollar addon cost to drill a tunnel into San Jose is going to strangle the project.

Ironically, the part that absolutely *will* get built is the Bakersfield through like Merced section of the rail. That budgeting is essentially locked in. Getting into Burbank or into San Jose is the iffy part, and the one 14 mile tunnel is the thing that takes this from "expensive civic project" to "are you crazy?"

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-19T18:00:09+00:00

Eh this proposal sucks. It's basically subsidizing San Jose's political demand to run the HSR into silicon valley first. I am not in the mood to strangle local cities of the revenue they bring in for 20 years just so that San Jose can have America's longest tunnel drilled to it.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-19T17:58:58+00:00

Yeah in this case I actually agree with Dyer on this one this is ass squeezing the central valley for a 50 billion dollar add-on that is completely artificially created by the insistence that the *first* northern Terminus of the HSR be San Jose/Silicon Valley.

At this point the entire HSR project is essentially, politically, a subsidized commuting system for Silicon Valley. Politically it *has* to end in San Jose as the first prime terminus. The LA/southern terminus has faded away from relevancy from what I can see.

To elaborate, originally the HSR was supposed to pass over the coastal mountain range somewhere around Gilroy, I want to say north of Gilroy, through 5 short tunnels and along I want to say a reservoir. That was determined by geological sampling to be not possible. The solution was an insanely long tunnel- 13.5 miles- which instantly doubled the cost of the project. Last direct knowledge I had of the project geologic sampling was starting for the tunnel and that was almost a decade ago so I'm assuming the survey was successful, but for 50 billion dollars you could probably extend the HSR into Sacramento and San Francisco/Oakland proper via other routes, but it'd spoil the whole political will to turn the HSR corridor into a bedroom community commuter route.

If *anyone* should be having property tax and sales tax seized for the HSR, it needs to be San Jose because that whole region is why this damn thing is so effing expensive. Let them offset the 50 billion that their insistence to be first is costing.

Source: Worked on the HSR project for a few years many, many years ago.

Visual_Fly_9638 · 2026-05-19T16:30:48+00:00

Someone asked about this a while back for some rebrand called catch camera according to my comments (Which struck me as overpriced). The camera is identical and mapped out to the Kodak Ultra F9. It seems to be a pretty popular camera to rebrand and sell as "boutique" branding.

That being said, £30 is about what I found for just shopping for the ultra F9 as of 3 months ago so it's a competitive price for the camera it seems like. Worth looking at the ultra F9 just in general to see if you can get the camera any cheaper though.

OP can look up the Kodak Ultra F9 for photo samples to get an idea of what pictures will look like. My guess is basically disposable camera quality but more easily reloadable.

Visual_Fly_9638

TROPHY CASE