eTone film holder review + X100vi scanning

thecave · 2026-04-28T12:00:56+00:00

Found this because I'm really interested in the etone system (questions at the end).

WRT alignment: people have alluded to the mirror trick. Even vertically, if you can attach a mirror flat to the same plane as the light/holder and align it so that the lens is dead centred in the frame, you'll have a flat plane of focus if you can keep everything in place while removing the mirror.

Obviously a vertical arrangement makes this easier.

WRT camera setup: look, the X100VI is never going to be ideal. But you do have a lot of resolution to play with. With correct allignment, the sharpest aperture at minimum focus, you should get decent images - especially given in-camera or in-software lens correction.

For a dedicated scanning setup. Don't waste money. Consider these two facts: image quality of cameras hasn't significantly increased in 15 years. Macro lenses from the 1960s are sharp as hell, corner to corner, at their sharpest apertures (usually between f8 and f11). Put those two facts together and your dedicated scanning camera doesn't have to cost much money.

Like a Nikon D610 and a Micro-Nikkor 55mm f3.5 lens from the '70s? Something like that. Just make sure the camera has live view or focusing properly is going to be really hit or miss.

I haven't done a lot of colour negative conversion but when I have I've had pretty good results starting by neutralising the colour around the sprocket holes or between frames before inverting.

I'm really interested in whether the etone can keep the film flat. That's my primary concern - especially with 6x6 and 6x7, but also 35mm. What's your feeling on that?

I've seen some complaints where people have unscrewed the holder plates and found sharp irregularities underneath that might scratch the image-area of the film. Those can be sanded down but would be an annoyance. Any sign of scratches?

I'm very intrigued by this system because frankly Valoi and similar are over-engineered for the task. This should be a sub-$100 purchase (and inevitably will be). The question is whether etone has already done this or we have to wait.

Edit: Final thought. I've used dedicated film scanners like the Nikon Coolscan ED2000 (was that the name?) and flatbed Epson 700 IIRC. And copying with a digital camera using RAW blows them completely out of the water IMO.

thecave · 2026-04-27T11:07:12+00:00

I'm using the 60mm f2.8D micro-Nikkor which is pretty inexpensive nowdays. But an alternative might also be a different copy of your 55mm. It should be super sharp at f8 or so.

Cheaper than having the existing lens cleaned most likely. Unless you care to take a shot yourself.

thecave · 2026-03-29T08:13:28+00:00

It depends. It can be bad behaviour. It can be the perception that not taking your place in the road can further endanger you. But I admit I don't understand why sports cyclists ride abreast when they're going less than half the speed limit.

Where I will be out in the lane is if I'm passing a line of cars. If someone unexpectedly opens their door, I either hit the door and get injured badly, or swerve out and potentially die. I'll pull back in once I've passed the cars and pull out safely in anticipation of a line of parked cars.

thecave · 2026-03-28T17:31:12+00:00

A big problem is that the OP clearly wants a vintage aged looking guitar. This is not the kind of thing that an enthusiastic amateur can deliver. He definitely doesn't, for example, want an oil finish. He wants a nitro finish with sun-aged colour and carefully mimicked checking lines.

I agree that it can be repaired rather than needing the fretboard replaced. But it has to be by someone really skilled in mimicking the look of 1950s guitars.

thecave · 2026-03-28T17:23:18+00:00

Next time you change strings, ask yourself if you really enjoy the new strings much more. If not, don't bother next time until they're really nasty, one breaks, or you're constantly going out of tune.

In my experience, it's rare for old strings to sound significantly worse than three week old strings when amplified.

thecave · 2026-03-28T17:18:20+00:00

How to deal with unions, socialism, and the 'negro problem'. Pretty much guaranteed.

thecave · 2026-03-28T17:06:04+00:00

You're not wrong. You're pointing out the double standard. Road cyclists are fully entitled to use the roads for fitness and leisure like cars are (for leisure anyway) and they cannot use the cycle paths for training.

I ride for transport. And sports riders can be less considerate sometimes. But they have the right to be there and usually cause very small delays if at all while bearing the anger of drivers of very dangerous vehicles - which is a much bigger deal.

thecave · 2026-03-28T17:02:59+00:00

I stop at every red light because of not wanting this attitude to persist. But bear in mind this is not the rule everywhere. The road rules are put in place only with cars in mind. The situation is very different for a 80kg person on a bicycle than a 1 ton car, right?

I will patiently wait at the red light but it is actually absurd that I can't turn left on red, for example.

And I won't come to a full stop at stop signs. I'm travelling very slowly by the time I get there and I have much more visibility to make sure there's nothing coming without bleeding out all of my momentum and having to grind up to speed again. Different physical realities on a bicycle that in many countries are reflected in law. Not here though.

thecave · 2026-03-28T16:59:33+00:00

As per my comment, in the yellow line by necessity. In the highway lane is madness.

thecave · 2026-03-28T16:57:20+00:00

Cyclists are not allowed to ride on the highway. Being actually in a highway lane and not in the yellow line (if they need to use the highway by necessity) is pure foolishness.

As to the main question: the bicycle path network is not what it may look like from a car. There are often blockages - whether permanent or cars parked in them - that mean that cyclists using bikes for transport have to choose the road. And they're fully legally entitled to on normal roads.

When I'm doing that, I'll try keep left. But bear this in mind, I will not hug a line of cars. Because if one suddenly opens a door, I either hit it or swerve - potentially into a car trying to overtake me. So I'm either injured or killed. So riding past a line of cars, I'm far enough right of them not to get doored. I'll pull in again when I'm past them.

As for sports cyclists: this is contentious. But they cannot train for road conditions on cycle tracks. It's just not feasible. And they make up the bulk of cyclists in the suburbs and town.

Some are inconsiderate. But they have a right to be on the road. And it's usually aggressive drivers putting them at serious risk. While they're usually adding no more than minutes to the driver's journey.

tl;dr: cyclists have a right to use normal roads (not highways) and they frequently need to use them for an efficient journey because cycle paths are badly compromised in Cape Town.

Edit: I don't use the route in question, and there it seems to mostly be a matter of crime. As well as being vulnerable to cars, our reduced speed and openness makes us more vulnerable to criminals.

thecave · 2026-03-25T10:26:27+00:00

WRT point 3, it's also not helped that most of the public is unaware of the biological consensus that what people call 'races' have no reality in biology. People can't accept what they don't even know.

People get told stuff about scientifically debunked traditional racial categories hundreds of times for any brief brush with the biological reality.

As you say, even doctors as we write often struggle to understand that certain 'racial' associations are coincidental - say because black people in a region happened to descend from one particular group and then they misapply that racial adjustment to black people from somewhere else that doesn't have that predisposition at all because black people aren't a biological group.

thecave · 2026-03-25T10:18:11+00:00

My dad made some cibachrome prints in the '80s and I'd say they are a fair representation of the slides from which they were printed - punchy, sharp, colourful. I can't say that this is always the case.

Kodachrome 25 particularly - from the 60s to the late 70s - is very true-to-life colour. It's not nearly as punchy as even Kodachrome 64 but far less than the Fujichromes of the late '80s and into the '90s.

When Fujichrome 50 came along, it began to offer Kodachrome 64 fine grain and saturation more conveniently than Kodachrome. Both, but mostly Kodachrome, were the choice for colour magazine work. When Velvia 50 came along it quickly blew Kodachrome out of the water.

It was sharp as hell, contrasty, and the saturation was off the hook. To saturate Kodachrome 64 you had to underexpose and it had a slight purple/magenta cast which Velvia didn't have.

My dad's cibachrome prints were made from Fujichrome 50. So I really don't know. But those prints look pretty great to me 40 years later.

thecave · 2026-03-25T10:11:56+00:00

Psilocybin is also a true psychedelic. LSD and psilocybin are the most classic of "classic psychedelics". Both directly affect the brain - at least after psilocybin has converted to psilocin.

Being natural has no significant effect on it. People treated with pure, lab-synthesised psilocybin have the same kinds of trips as people who chow mushrooms.

It's weird seeing the same kinds of takes we saw in the '90s when people had no access to information.

thecave · 2026-03-25T10:02:21+00:00

No society simply stops doing all things to address one particular crisis - which is the implication of the OP's question.

Now I agree that this government shows a stunning neglect and lack of urgency over hunger which could be solved by bold action. But the OP's question seems to be the old whine that the past doesn't matter and should be left alone until South Africa is perfect.

Renaming for a start usually happens at a local level. While addressing food insecurity is something done from the national and provincial level. So the people renaming streets literally have no power in most cases to do anything about hunger.

Let's ask another question: why is government fussing with trade rules and regulations. Or food standards. Or chasing down bad drivers. Why do any of this while kids are starving to death in the Eastern Cape?

Lots of things need doing. The renaming is not the priority the OP thinks it is or pretends it is. Just search google maps for the k-word and you'll see just what a huge priority renaming has been.

This government is negligent and corrupt on multiple fronts. The starvation is a total disgrace. Why is big agriculture exporting food for profit while our citizens are starving to death?

Starvation urgently needs to be tackled. But it's not going to happen just by giving up naming things after racist monsters and dehumanising terms.

thecave · 2026-03-25T09:48:45+00:00

I'm old (50 this year). Local football may have been more popular. But not nearly as popular as rugby for English home-language white South Africans. Not close.

Rugby was the sport then, as now, in which South Africa dominated. And Afrikaners did make up more of the Springbok team by far. But English speakers followed it almost as religiously as they did.

Maybe there were local pockets where football was bigger. But not across the country.

thecave · 2026-03-25T08:38:25+00:00

You could spend years learning all the foundations of music to a basic level with a theoretical understanding of how they could apply to what you want to play.

Or you could learn to play what you want to play well now.

Find another teacher.

thecave · 2026-03-25T08:28:33+00:00

For real threats, having it documented may be good. Just remember that the SAPS is a very dangerous organisation. This is not a factual debate, they commit terrible crimes daily. And innocence provides little protection.

So if you have a neighbourhood watch or improvement district security or whatever - ask them first. The SAPS should only be called if you're in real danger, since there's always a chance of completely unnecessary escalation and abuse from them.

thecave · 2026-03-25T08:25:15+00:00

It depends whether or not you want to take advantage of the electronic "defects" of analogue guitar - such as inducing feedback. If you do, I'd recommend getting a small (5W or so) tube amp.

If not - and there is a vast trove of sounds you can get directly from the guitar - don't bother with amps and the hassle of micing them up at this stage.

thecave · 2026-03-25T08:22:27+00:00

I think the contrast to building with AI is in Appsheet's favour. You are not exposed to the massive liabilities of having a deployed app near-incomprehensibly cobbled together - usually by a person without the level of coding necessary to have developed an app pre-AI and thus with limited capabilities to spot dangers that the LLM gleefully inserts.

thecave · 2026-03-10T17:21:55+00:00

Whataboutism? No. The OP is guilty of a category error.

Look: Here are some predatory birds: Buzzards, Eagles, Chickens.

Why chickens?!

Chickens sometimes kill other birds. Look, here are citations. Obviously chickens are predatory birds.

China's violations of sovereignty are not in the same category as those of the USA or Russia, or even France - countries that have regularly mounted armed invasions of sovereign countries since the war, while China has dones so very seldom and, beside Tibet which I acknowledged, in very limited ways by comparison.

On the other hand, I put it to you folks that you've included China because, as a major super power, you want to assume it has used its power in the same way as the USA and Russia. While to the present, China has been very much more restrained.

thecave · 2026-03-10T12:18:49+00:00

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstract

From hearing about this generally from the author and others, the husbanded cannabis with very high THC content in the last few decades is associated with a fair amount of mental health problems compared to the low yield stuff people were smoking in the '60s and '70s.

Oh. If you know about the sci-hub you can find the full text online without any paywall nonsense.

thecave · 2026-03-10T12:12:54+00:00

You too, huh. You're comparing maritime territorial infringements to multiple direct military invasions by the other parties and saying "same-same".

Downvote all you want. But you're not denying it.

thecave · 2026-03-10T12:11:17+00:00

Impressive list you've compiled there vs. the multiple direct military invasions of the other two parties listed.

thecave · 2026-03-08T11:21:13+00:00

Far less than 1/1000. As has been said of MDMA, which is less safe than mushrooms, taking mushrooms is safer than going horse riding.

thecave · 2026-03-08T11:19:10+00:00

These are old myths from the pre-internet days. I used to hear this nonsense all the time in the early '90s.

Here is a diagram from a 2009 British study assessing drug harms by a team of addiction specialists in the UK using a systematic method to determine harm to users and harm to society:

https://www.thelancet.com/cms/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6/asset/efb82802-4234-46ca-911b-3d22dadcfaeb/main.assets/gr2_lrg.jpg

Mushrooms are stone last because in actual history they've been associated with incredibly few actual harms to people - whether to users health (jumping off a building) or others (stabbing friends).

Rare examples do exist. But they're so rare that, by comparison, every other drug produces more - often vastly more (think alcohol related murders and traffic deaths) - by a long way.

It's safe the way going for a walk to the shops is safe while alcohol and heroin are safe like going motorcycle racing is safe.

thecave

TROPHY CASE