Just Shoot Me

I expect there will be some more photos of me popping up now that I've attended a south bay photographer's meetup. I'm guessing about 40 people attended during the course of the evening, and it was pretty evenly divided between Canon and Nikon geeks. Someone brought a Polaroid Land Camera (now an antique because they have stopped making film packs for it), and there were a couple of Hasselblads and Leicas, I think. And one or two Fuji, Olympus and miscellaneous snapshot cameras.

Everyone was friendly and willing and eager to show me their cameras and chat about advantages and annoyances. I've been looking into switching from Nikon to Canon, and was disappointed to find that most of the things I find annoying on the Nikon D80 are done the same way on the Canon 40D. From what I saw, I'm guessing both companies buy their basic program chip from the same company, and engineer their own menus around it. I was also hoping the Canon CMOS sensor would give better white balance, but side by side they both shot identical orange tinted images even when WB was set for incandescent light. Using a gray card, they both shot green-tinted images. The 40D does have better light sensitivity, though. It includes a bright 3" LCD which marketing made them put there to appeal to all the amateurs who think a digital camera needs to use the LCD as a viewfinder, but I just find it annoying.

And I was also disabused of the notion that faster lenses are available for the Canon. If anything, people were reporting a narrower range of available lenses. For instance, no one had an 18-200 mm or anything approaching it. Most of the Canon folks are used to switching lenses for wide angle and long telephoto.

Anyhow, excellent meetup, I'll be back.

Do I Hear An "Amen!" ?

Today's media-manufactured election controversy involved the allegedly reverend Jesse Jackson muttering under his breath to a fellow guest on a Fox interview that he would like to cut Obama's nuts off for speaking down to black people. He was referring to Obama's stock speech #387, "Ain't it horrible that black men abandon their families and ruin their children's lives".  Jackson apologized and claimed he didn't know the microphone was on.

I have two completely separate comments:

1. Mr. Jackson, if you were truly a reverend, you would know in your heart that the Lord's microphone is always on. Do I hear an "Amen!", brother?

2. Mr. Obama, your African father deserted you and went back to his other four wives, leaving you to be raised by white women, yet you are now one tiny step from being the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States. Tell me again how having an absentee father ruined your life?

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I have worked with Jesse Jackson. I actually owe him for landing me a job. In the process I learned what a complete phony he is. ( the rest of the story )

So who-all is going?

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