Technical Troubles at the Pharmacy

Ever since my first roll of 110mm film I have always gotten my pictures developed at a pharmacy. I don’t know why, its just something I do. Maybe a little redneck, but if it is, then yeeehaw, somebody find me some nice leather boots, a saddle and some rope. Anyway, getting to the point of this already quickly derailing blog post, I had problems today with getting my photos from the pharmacist, or… lab technician, or confused old lady, whichever. Around 10PM last night (or 9PM, or 5:48PM, no one seems to know exactly when) I uploaded my pictures to the CVS Photo Store via Picasa. I received a full order confirmation, stating that my photos would be ready to pick up by 11am today. At 2PM I went into the store and very confidently asked the photo technician (who I think was busy reading her latest romance novel or something) “Ma’am, I am here to pick up my prints, my name is Kularski”. She then looked in the bins (under “C” at first) and couldn’t find it, she then asked me to spell it… she looked again, still… nothing. I handed her the paper confirmation and she began looking for the order… she found it…. as a failed download on the Kodak system. I figured it was no big deal and I conveyed that I was paitient and would wait for them to print. I assumed it wouldn’t take long, and that they would just have to be redownloaded or something. The photo technician called several people to find out if they had been printed or to figure out what happened. A few moments later a cranky shift superviser by the name of Vonnie came and explained the difference between 1-hour digital photo and 2-3 day service. This pissed me off a bit, because she stood there, less than 6 inches from me and insulted my intelligence. I reassured her that I did it the right method. Moments and many confused looks later, people were calling Kodak to find out what had happened. After 2 hours of me waiting and the photo tech pacing between computers to try to pull and print my order, it was determined that it was beyond the capabilities of the staff on hand to correct the issue and I was asked if it would be ok if the photos were sent to the lab for me to pick up in a few days. Reluctantly I agreed to the alternative, purchased the CR2032 I needed for my JP Jornada and then headed home.
Here I am, at home, with no pictures and wondering if this is what my summer prints will be like for all of the stuff I do. Will I have to go through this shit on a weekly basis? Currently I plan to go along with things as they are and then inform the store on Thursday when I pick up my prints of my plans and make sure they can handle me once a week.

ART390 – Introduction Photo




DSCF1684

Originally uploaded by Curtis M. Kularski

My instructor for Digital Photography asked the class to do an introduction picture… something very specific actually, he wanted us to take a mirror shot. Thats right, the typical lame frat-boy in a mirror type shot. I hate this picture. I did several and this one came out the best, but I still don’t like it.

Note: I’m doing this post directly from Flickr…

Feeling an SLR

Today I went on a little mission. I woke up this morning and looked over my ad-related email (special account for that), and saw that Circuit City had the Nikon D40 available in store, and even locally at the Gastonia store, so I had to go check it out. When I got there, I was surprised to find that they not only had the D40, they also had the D60, D80 and D40X.
Upon touching the D80, I fell in love… and then I fell over from how unbalanced it was. The D60 on the other hand, was much more balanced and something that seemed to be a sensible camera. The thing I think I love most about SLR cameras is the ability to focus and zoom from the lens assembly itself. It just feels more natural than using a button to adjust such things. The weight of the SLR cameras is a bit intimidating, and the number of controls is absolutely insane, but still… they are very cool devices.
So… for a third time, I will revise my opinion of SLR cameras. I think they are great, and perhaps one of the best tools for artistic photography, but they have drawbacks in that their sensors and mirrors are easily exposed and that there are moving parts to them. On the upside, control is more absolute and there is a great amount of flexibility.
I personally don’t think I am ready to go pure SLR just yet, but I think one day I might be… depending on how much I like photography after my summer course.

ART390 Gallery

http://aux.livecurt.net/ART390
I have posted a special gallery installation for use during the digital photography course. All of my assignments will be posted here first. Some for comment, some just to post.
I should have more to say about this… but I don’t, so there it is, have fun. BTW, like the subdomain?

Drooling Over Digital Cameras

I have spent the last half an hour drooling over digital camera, some of them SLR, some not. I have been looking very carefully at SLRs and trying to figure out what makes them special in digital cameras… from what I can tell… not much. The only thing different between a really good “point and shoot” digital camera and a digital SLR is that there is no special “high end” classification of digital cameras that will give you the level of control that an SLR will. From my research I have determined that Fujifilm no longer produces a consumer grade dSLR camera, they seem to be just for uber professionals. This change would be because of the great flexibility that is available in a high end digital camera with a fixed lens. SLR cameras have 2 major flaws in general, 1. they have moving parts, and 2. they expose too much of themselves. The moving mirror allows for an additional point of failure that doesn’t exist in a non-SLR camera. A P&S camera will likely recover from a minor fall, but unless the mirror is locked, there could be problems on an SLR. The true reason in the past for using an SLR is to allow for using only one lens for viewfinder and for exposure. In high end digital cameras, the CCD image is sent directly to the LCD and/or to a digital viewfinder, removing the use of multiple lenses, even though they are not considered SLR, since the lens is stationary. SLR cameras also seem to expose too much of themselves to the world. The interchanging of lenses is great on an SLR if you really want to spend a few thousand dollars on all of those special lenses. The truth of lenses on digital cameras is very simple… the only things that matter now are the range of the focal length and how well it can zoom. A very good digital camera will have a very versatile lens built in that will function as a wide lens, a zoom lens and a telephoto lens, all in one with no need to change. Also, if the lens is 55mm (or some other standard) with accepting threads, filters and special additional lenses can be added. On the topic of the camera being over-exposed… if you have to unscrew something and then rescrew something, chances are… dust will be there.
Anyway, before I started down the Anti-SLR path, I was expressing my recent droolings…I have been drooling over my camera’s big brother…. the Fujifilm FinePix S100FS. It is not SLR, but it is fucking awesome. It does image stabilization, has 14x zoom lens capability and also is 11.1MP, so I can do huge prints with it. My other drool-ling was the Nikon D80. It is a true dSLR camera, at 10.2 MP. I love it because its a Nikon and because it has an interchangeable lens kit. If I were to pick between the cameras for use right now I would go with the Fuji, because I don’t need the flexibility of changing lenses, but the Nikon D80 is definitely a camera to grow with. I guess at the moment I will stick with my FujiFilm S5200 and be quite happy, since… well… it has a 10x optical zoom, full manual controls and it just totally kicks ass (only 5.1MP, but I’m not printing any billboards this semester).
Here is the S100FS:

ART390 Course Open

The Digital Photography course at UNC appears to now be open 🙂 It wasn’t scheduled to be available until Tuesday, but it seems as though the syllabus, course website and course Blackboard module are now open and operational. I am quite happy and will likely spend several hours diving into the course and having some fun with it.

Lack of IT Courses

Me being the sort of paranoid bloke that I tend to be, I have been eagerly scouring the registries of my various institutions looking for a backup course for summer, in the event that one falls through. Usually I look in the areas of the arts, humanities (archeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc) and in Information Technology. This summer I thought it might be good for a laugh to designate one of my backup courses as an IT course… particularly as CSC234 – Advanced C++ Programming… which is a course that I have been wanting to take for many semesters, but have yet to have time to actually complete. Upon looking up the course prefix to locate available sections I discovered that in none of the traditional IT departments are courses being offered this summer, nothing in CSC (Computer Science/Programming), CIS (Information Systems), CTS (Technology), DBA (Databases) or Web (duh). Normally during the summer those programs are full of students, even two years ago when the programs were being redesigned and no one knew whether the course they took would exist at the end of the summer or not (Theory was that CAA or retroactive degree catalogs would protect them, and they did. Also new course codes were given a direct conversion matrix).
I found one department that offers an interesting course as a backup for the summer term, its SGD-113, Simulation and Game Development Program. Its a course that doesn’t do much for any requirements or anything, but it looks like a fun course. Unfortunately, I likely won’t take the course because I am in fairly popular courses for the summer and they are not likely to have any problems. Other alternates would be something like a literature course, but that would require me being quite desperate and ready to commit myself to reading during the summer, which I have heard can be quite enjoyable and is also quite portable. I have also placed a painting class as a backup, but the only problem with that is that it requires physical class meetings, which I frown upon during summer semesters, when I like to be flexible.
Note: backup courses are selected in the unlikely event that a primary scheduled course is canceled or needs to be dropped for some special reason.

Woohoo! Grades!

All of my grades are in now, and all of them are A’s. I am like so very happy right now. I can’t believe I was stressing for 3 days over what turned out to be nothing. I felt like I had done A work in my drawing class, so I shouldn’t have been so worried at all, but I guess that “borderline” feeling just overcomes me.