A “Type-In” is an event during which people get together with their typewriters at a library or coffee shop. They talk typing, show interested people how typewriters work and let them try typing for themselves. I read a story about a Type-In at which there was a young boy watching over his mother’s shoulder. As soon as his mother began typing, the boy exclaimed, “The letters go right onto the paper!

In my previous post about the X-Pro2 and 56mm I wrote, “I feel like I could actually make some decent images with this combination.” That sounds suspiciously like a belief that specific gear is required to make a “decent image” and could start a whole thing about it’s-the-photographer-not-the-camera or the best-camera-is-the-one-you-have-with-you trope. To be clear, I of course believe that a good photographer can make good photos with any camera. But other than to prove a point, who would would want to?

Gene at the buffet. X-Pro2. 56mm f1.2. Acros simulation. I took this photo of Gene at brunch today. It’s not a good photo, but I really like it because it looks the way I want black and white photos to look. I like deep blacks, sparkly highlights, and smooth out of focus areas. This was shot using the X-Pro2 with the 56mm f/1.2 wide open. It’s straight out of the camera via the Acros (with yellow filter) simulation.

I’ve only had the Fujifilm XF 56mm f/1.2 R for a few hours and I can already tell we’re going to become fine friends. I love fast lenses, and f/1.2 is darn fast. The only other lens I have for the X-Pro2 is the XF 23mm f/2 R WR which is terrific for when I want the full-frame equivalent of 35mm. I enjoy taking portraits, and the 56mm is perfect for that (85mm full-frame equivalent).

Here are the places I post at least semi-regularly: baty.net - my main blog for most of the last (nearly) 20 years snippets.baty.net - Newer microblog for easily-posting short posts, links, and photos baty.blog - Trying out Blot.im, which is terrific Tilde.club/~jbaty - because nostalgia photos.baty.net - A recent addition for just photography-related posts micro.baty.net - A micro.blog hosted site because I root for indieweb projects stream.baty.net - On-again, off-again experiment with WithKnown notes.

Few things trigger my nostalgia meter more than Polaroid cameras and film. It’s not because I spent my childhood shooting Polaroids. I only had access to a Polaroid camera a few times. It’s the idea of Polaroid that I love. It’s the iconic shape of the instant SX-70 photos. It’s the genius of Edwin Land’s design of the SX-70. It’s Andy Warhol. I bought an original SX-70 several years ago when The Impossible Project (now Polaroid Originals) started making (or trying to make) integrated film.

I decided to use my Tinderbox-generated static blog as a real world test of https://zeit.co. It was pretty simple. I started out with a folder full of HTML files generated by Tinderbox. Then… Install Zeit Desktop Run now from within the html folder Done. The site is now available via an auto-generated URL like notes-xxxyyyzzz.zeit.sh I’d of course rather use a nicer, more permanent URL so I did this…

Adobe recently released the new Lightroom CC and threw my entire process so thoroughly into question that I’ve stopped using Lightroom to edit and manage my photos. I’m not a fan of subscription models, but if the value is there then I’ll pay. Ten dollars a month for Lightroom and Photoshop is totally fair. That’s not what pushed me away from Lightroom. What pushed me away was Adobe’s inexorable march toward forcing me to keep my photos in their cloud service.

I like files. I like knowing where my “stuff” is, without depending upon additional software. For as long as I remember I have kept my digital photos in a nicely-organized set of files and folders on my Mac. In recent years, these files have been managed using Lightroom but they are still just files on the filesystem. I know where they are, because I put them there. Lightroom’s library mimics the underlying files and folders.

I don’t mind grain so much but HP5+ @1200 in Diafine is pretty darn grainy. Leica M6. 50mm Summicron. HP5+ @1200 in Diafine. Pakon scan.

The new version of Lightroom CC will automatically keyword photos so that I can search for things in them like “Car” or “Tree” or “Dog”. Apple Photos and Google Photos do something similar. Here’s how Adobe describes “Sensei”: …the ability to search through all of your synced photos, leveraging the power of Adobe Sensei to automatically tag and keyword your images for you. Now you can find photos you’re looking for by searching for what is in the photos.

A couple times a year I find myself in an all-text-for-all-things mood and today was one of those days. This is different from my similar put-everything-in-emacs mood, as it involves neither Emacs nor Org Mode. So today I dusted off my configurations for the following: Tmux - Used for keeping an eye on a bunch of terminal apps at once. Taskwarrior - A favorite CLI-based task manager. Powerful yet simple.