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  1. Lawrence A.

    Music The Amazing Emporium of Wondrous Tunes (aka: What are you listening to?)

    The Brahm's 4th Symphony in a live recording from 1943 by Wilhelm Furtwangler. Nice stuff.
  2. Lawrence A.

    What books are you reading for pleasure these days?

    "Aquanaut: The Inside Story of the Thai Cave Rescue" by Rick Stanton, of the British divers who found the boys. I've been watching interviews and documentaries and reading articles and books about the rescue all week. A compelling, touching story. At the time, in 2018, I wept in joyful...
  3. Lawrence A.

    Adobe Weirdness

    After months of Lightroom locking on me, I finally realized there was a catalog conflict causing problems. All is well there now. But when did Abode stop identifying itself on automatic bank withdrawals? Until this month it was always identified as Adobe systems. This month there was an...
  4. Lawrence A.

    How's weather at your place?

    79 today, with 81 forecast tomorrow. Very nice, but it's time to think about getting the AC ready for when it is needed.
  5. Lawrence A.

    Music The Amazing Emporium of Wondrous Tunes (aka: What are you listening to?)

    Bach Geistliche Lieder in a digital restoration I did from old LP's. Hilde Roessel Majdan and Hugues Cuenod. Beautifully consoling and simple.
  6. Lawrence A.

    Music The Amazing Emporium of Wondrous Tunes (aka: What are you listening to?)

    For some unknown reason, I woke up this morning thinking of a tune I sang in class in grade school, "Ah lovely Meadows, green and wide..." I was happy to find it on Youtube and to be able to assure myself I hadn't made it up. This is not the finest rendering of it, but you get the idea.
  7. Lawrence A.

    Rant: I think Iā€™m done with USPS for a while

    I've never had a problem with the USPS this time of year until this year. But with a Postmaster General trying to kill it, I'm not surprised. When a merchant did not include my unit number Fed-X picked one out of nowhere and delivered it.
  8. Lawrence A.

    What books are you reading for pleasure these days?

    Waugh can be uniquely funny, even if he was a rather difficult human being.
  9. Lawrence A.

    What books are you reading for pleasure these days?

    I just finished Max Hastings, "Retribution: the Battle for Japan" about the closing year and half of WWII in the Pacific. It's not the kind of thing I usually read, but it is well written and interesting. Then I rewatched the Japanese movie, "Emperor in August" about the last days of the war...
  10. Lawrence A.

    Bushfires

    Still, I'm happy to learn you are not near the fires. Utterly devastating.
  11. Lawrence A.

    Attention-seeking me.

    Good luck Sue.
  12. Lawrence A.

    Cut the apron strings today. Quit Adobe

    My CC subscription is cheap enough to continue, but I have until the end of the year to decide whether to renew. Truth is I'm too lazy right now to switch to new software. After my summer trip, when things settle in the Fall, I'll give some of these a try. I'd miss Photoshop, which I've used for...
  13. Lawrence A.

    Chrome has gone dead

    My go-to browsers are Opera and Vivaldi. Been using Opera for years, when it had stuff other browser didn't. Now I'm just comfortable with it. And definitely duck duck go. Opera has a built in VPN that you can switch on and choose the general world location of the server. I don't use it much...
  14. Lawrence A.

    Book Review: Point and Shoot Nature Photography by Stephen Ingraham

    I'm probably going to take my next long trip with just a point and shoot, in this case the wonderful Olympus Stylus 1s, which is a versatile little beast with a relatively fast lens and smaller than the competition. I might throw in the Leica X1 too, but if I find I don't have room, I won't...
  15. Lawrence A.

    Next time, bring a real camera, stupid!

    Snapseed is wonderful. Between it and Photoshop Express, the bases are covered. I should have learned long ago never to say never. :)
  16. Lawrence A.

    Next time, bring a real camera, stupid!

    I have to confess that since I got my Note 8 I sometimes go out without a camera. It was pretty much unthinkable until then. Even in Laos I was lazy and sometimes pulled out my cell phone for a quick snap instead of the camera,like those below. By the way, I lugged that genuine Stetson in the...
  17. Lawrence A.

    This may strike a chord - it did with me.

    I can rarely afford the new stuff, but it does not stop me from lusting over this or that to buy used when I can afford it -- like an original Sony RX-1 I just got. But it's records too, or was until I could not fit anymore in the house, and computer gear. The answer may be to head off the the...
  18. Lawrence A.

    OK. We Get It. You Shot It With Your Phone.

    Yeah, irony seems to be a dying art. I'd recommend reading Jonathan Swift and Voltaire -- extensively -- to anyone wanting to attempt it.
  19. Lawrence A.

    Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.8bn

    "...you are the product." It's true, one of the reasons I avoided Facebook until it became such a great way of staying in touch with my adopted Lao family. I keep as tight control on my account the usual burgeoning list of "friends", but a lot is inevitably being sold to the highest bidder.
  20. Lawrence A.

    Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.8bn

    My Smugmug account costs me $8.xx (cannot remember the change) a month, and I'm very satisfied with it.
  21. Lawrence A.

    Photographer Loses $20K in Gear Via American Airlines

    If an airline asked me to checked $20,000 worth of gear, I think I'd skip the flight and book another airline I knew could handle the article in carry-on. Yikes!
  22. Lawrence A.

    Dale was right!

    For me the size of the RX10 was a deal killer. If I am going to carry that much weght around,the EM5 and a superzoom are a better option for me. So I sold ths Sony and got another Stylus 1. If I need better IQ, I have cameras that will give it to me. (and I find the Stylus1 IQ really quite...
  23. Lawrence A.

    Dale was right!

    I find myself using my EM5 less and less, though I am not ready to part with my system camera, essential to me for some things. But what I shoot most are the compact zooms, whichever one I have, and the Leica X1. I've finally admitted that while I like having a camera that changes lenses I...
  24. Lawrence A.

    Dale was right!

    I use an old manual focus 300mm Olympus Om lens for birding on the E-M5 and in body stabilization works great. But it's not a take wherever you go outfit.. Superzooms exist for a very good reason. There are trade-offs, but there are trade-offs with everything -- and I don't mean just cameras. I...
  25. Lawrence A.

    Is traffic on photo boards way down?

    The "level of vitriol" is what gets to me. I have just decided to give up going to mu-43, because it seems to have been taken over by that sort of gear-head. There has to be a "better", a winner and loser. I find it coounter-productive and exhausting. I may stop by now and then and post on the...
  26. Lawrence A.

    Is traffic on photo boards way down?

    I know I was fairly inactive most of the winter, but winter is usually an off time for me. Maybe it's because we're all involved in presidential politics. :eek: As for people being sick of gear talk, check out the vociferous yelling about the new Pen-F at mu-43.com. Olympus seems to have a...
  27. Lawrence A.

    Whats your favorite (Digital) camera for street photography

    The basics. They can be very liberating.
  28. Lawrence A.

    Whats your favorite (Digital) camera for street photography

    I don't do much street shooting, except when I travel, so I don't have a camera dedicated to it. But when I have attempted it, I found the E-M5 with either the Oly 25 or 45 worked quite well, depending on how far back I was. I thought that after dusk the Pana 20 was frustrating on the street...
  29. Lawrence A.

    Shooting Manual With Auto ISO...A Discussion

    Interesting discussion. Until recently I never used auto iso, mostly because I'm a control freak, but since getting an X-Pro 1, I use it a lot, with C1 and C2 set with different iso parameters and use of the exposure compensation dial to tweek exposure. I shoot almost exclusively manual and...
  30. Lawrence A.

    Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones and picking at the musical bones

    I know nothing about the Stones, but ALL the best cheeses stink -- a really good Stilton should be creamy, ripe, and stinky. Sorry guys. If it doesn't stink, it must be Velveeta. And now -- damn it! - I really want some Stilton and a good pear.
  31. Lawrence A.

    Handily, I am my own grey card...

    Silver threads among the gold (or black, as the case may be).... You do remember the first line, right?
  32. Lawrence A.

    GASoholics - what is your number??

    Amin wins! So, let me see if I can remember the ones that got a way, some of them because I didn't care for them, some because I needed to free up some funds. Just the digital: Olympus E-300 Olympus E-510 Olympus C5050Z Olympus C8080Z Olympus E-PM1 Olympus E-PM2 (two of them) Olympus XZ-1...
  33. Lawrence A.

    GASoholics - what is your number??

    It's too painful to think about the ones that are gone, even with more cameras than I need in the house. At the moment I have 4 digital cameras: The Olympus E-M5, The Fuji X-Pro 1, the Leica X-1, and the trusty little Fuji X-20. And lenses, of course, filters, etc. But those are the cameras...
  34. Lawrence A.

    effing blown highlights

    That X10 is a little jpeg miracle. I agree with Luke about blown highlights. To me they seem especially objectionable on slides and digital photos, but even doing black and white printing in a photo lab, I seemed to spend half my life trying to bring tone into blown highlights without, however...
  35. Lawrence A.

    happy Mother's Day

    Sunday was the first Mother's Day without my mother, who passed away the end of February, and it felt very strange. Even though I am in Albuquerque and she lived outside Boston, where I grew up, I always sent flowers, and of course always called her. This shot is one taken Mother's Day 18 years...
  36. Lawrence A.

    The Selfie Culture Arms Race

    Pardon, voudriez-vous s'il vous plaƮt, prendre un clichƩ de moi devant la Tour Eiffel avec mon appareil?? You might even -- horror of horrors! -- even meet someone. "It's the new generation coming in with fresh ideas.....They aren't grounded in any "traditional" forms of thinking so the sky...
  37. Lawrence A.

    Interesting article on noise on dpreview

    I haven't yet read the article, but I have practiced "exposing to the right" on the advice of experts and found it simply doesn't work for me. I find blown highlights in digital photography much uglier than any failure in shadow capture. A personal bias. Whatever the numbers say, it does't work...
  38. Lawrence A.

    Considering picking up an X20 - trading my RX100 vI - Good Idea?

    For me the first two RX100 versions were never in the running. No eye level viewfinder is a deal breaker for me, though not for others, I realize. So it depends on what is most important to you. As Ken said, and I agree, the X10 has a decided jpeg advantage over the X20, though if you shoot raw...
  39. Lawrence A.

    Record Store Day. Best Wishes to Luke!

    A record?? That would be the best medium for distributing recorded music yet invented. :biggrin: "There's a fancy new bottle of sipping tequila staring at me, so I gotta go." Have a sip -- but just a sip, mind you -- for me.
  40. Lawrence A.

    Record Store Day. Best Wishes to Luke!

    Today is Record Store Day! (I swear; it's an international day celebrated the 3rd Saturday in April) So good wishes to our very own record store owner, Luke!
  41. Lawrence A.

    I've Finally Reached "Zen" Of Gear Inner Peace!

    I hope your wife gets better and that her health improves.
  42. Lawrence A.

    My Mother: 1916 - 2015

    I realize I've missed the new appreciate button, and have been using "like". Nonetheless, I do appreciate all your kind comments.
  43. Lawrence A.

    My Mother: 1916 - 2015

    This is perhaps not the place for it, but my mother passed away yesterday evening, and up at 3 AM unable to sleep, I wanted to share a few pictures and thoughts of her. When a bit over a month ago she told my sister she was ready to give up, I knew we would not have her for long. From a...
  44. Lawrence A.

    I swore blind I never would do this!!

    HI David I should have left the whole discussion of the cloud aspect out of it. What I meant to point out is that the problem, at least if I understand what you are saying, is one of proprietary files more than the subscription format itself. I don't know if there is a stand alone version of...
  45. Lawrence A.

    I swore blind I never would do this!!

    The nature of proprietary files more than of the Cloud program. I have my raw .orf files imported from my camera, and any program that will open Olympus raw files will open them. I process them in lightroom and save them as 16 bit tiffs, and again, if I drop Photoshop tomorrow, I can (and have)...
  46. Lawrence A.

    I swore blind I never would do this!!

    The price stayed the same for me in December when I renewed. Much as I enjoy it, I wouldn't have paid very much more to keep it. I think Adobe heard that loud and clear when people were voicing those fears at the start and indicating that it was a deal at $10, but not at more.
  47. Lawrence A.

    I swore blind I never would do this!!

    I swore the same thing because I thought it was all cloud based and you had to use an online program. But I've been paying them for a year and I I just renewed. Nor do I regret it (after figuring out why I couldn't print from inside Photoshop) I've never been able to afford a new version of...
  48. Lawrence A.

    Oh Lawks.....I am 60!

    Happy Birthday, Sue!
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