Category: Topslakr

Posts by Topslakr

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Fuji Superia 400 Film Review

When I first bought my Nikon FE I canvased a few people I know that have or do shoot film to find out what they recommend for a general use film. Something that I could use for whatever might come my way. Everyone said to look for a 400 speed film and a number of them pointed me squarely at this Fuji film. It’s a standard print film that can be handled and processed most anywhere. I bought a few 36 exposure rolls and went to town, so to speak.

I am pretty impressed with this film. It does have a healthy amount of grain to it, though it’s not distracting, and it does very well with shadow detail.… Click here to read more!

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pfSense and the ALIX.2D2

In a recent post I detailed my current saga of server trouble. This time around I was having router trouble causing this website, and others, to fall offline. Not that much fun…

When life hands you lemons though, one needs to try to make lemonade. Since I needed to replace hardware I wanted to make sure I put in place some hardware I could trust to last another 5 years and hardware that would sip power… not guzzle it down like the now dead antique desktop tower computer had. My needs are pretty low performance-wise and I don’t need to have a super high performance setup.… Click here to read more!

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Servers, You Gotta Love them…

My home network is more complicated then most. I host some web sites, my email servers, and various other ancillary services that the average person doesn’t need, or want to worry about. As an IT person though it behooves me to have a test bed to try out new things, without the risk of losing company data.

In recent years I have been using IPCop as the gateway between my home network and the outside world. Generally speaking, it’s worked just great. I rarely had to reboot it and the web interface was usable, if slow. The only draw back for me is that they don’t seem to favor low power machines.… Click here to read more!

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Film, and why I like it.

I’ve been shooting a lot of film as of late. Nothing fancy, just standard 35mm film. I have not, nor do I plan to stop shooting digital it’s just that I’ve started shooting film as well. To be honest I don’t even remember why I started shooting film, it just happened one day. I guess it was around the same time Nikon released the D3 and the D700, digital cameras with an image sensor that is the same size as a frame of 35mm film. I got to thinking about the cost of the new digital cameras, $5,000 and $3,000 respectively and I wandered around the internet looking for the cost of color film and Nikon film SLRs that could use the lenses I already own.… Click here to read more!

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Norco DS-1220, Linux, and Green Hard Drives…

I’ve had my Norco DS-1220 for six or seven months now and have some time to adjust to it and really feel out it’s performance. When I first setup the system (transitioning from the Thecus), I had a 2TB RAID 5 array built with 5 500GB Western Digital Caviars. When the array was at around 95% capacity I decided to add more storage and began looking for the most cost effective way to do that. I always use generic 3.5″ drives and I usually pay as close to $100 each for them as possible. Typically when the time comes for me to add storage it makes sense to double my capacity and Murhpy’s law always seems to work out that drives twice as large as the one I am replacing are at about $100 each.… Click here to read more!

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Into the Sky

On November the 3rd I took my first flight in a small aircraft. Specifically it was in a Cessna 180 tail-dragger from the mid 1950s in beautiful condition with new upholstery and a traditional avionics setup with steam gagues and dials.

The day was overcast and cool but with very little wind and a cloud ceiling of about 3000 feet. When I woke up I looked outside I was worried the flight would be canceled but was quickly set at ease after a call to my friend Chris. With the clouds as high as they were they didn’t pose a problem at all and the forecast didn’t show any rain so we were still all set to go.… Click here to read more!

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Music I’m listening to…

It’s been pretty quiet around here on the blog lately which, as always, is an illustration of the inverse in my life. Work is busy, life is busy, plus it’s fall here so I’m spending as much time looking for foliage and visiting fairs as I can. That being said, I’ve been finding some more time as of late to listen to new music in all of my travels.

Back in the day I used to listen to Tonic, a rock band. I was never a huge fan but some of the unreleased tracks on their albums were really excellent.… Click here to read more!

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Fujifilm Neopan 1600 Black & White Film Review

I ordered this film to allow me to shoot in dark environments and also to capture in black and white. This is a ‘professional’ film designed to be shoot at ISO1600 but can be ‘pushed’ to ISO3200. ‘Pushing’ film means you shoot it a stop slower and then push the exposure during processing allowing you to bring out the images that are essential underexposed by a full stop. It’s a trade off in quality but the image you have it always better then the one you don’t and gaining that extra stop can make a huge difference in tricky low light situations.… Click here to read more!

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Fuji Velvia 50 35mm Film

Over the past few months I have been running various 35mm film stocks through my Nikon FE and more recently my Nikon N80 in an effort to find differences in the films. The film I was most excited about was Fuji’s Velvia 50. I know that professional landscape photographers that use Velvia 50 are using medium and large format films to get their stunning images but that didn’t discourage me from using the 35mm format.

The internet is filled with information about what makes Velvia 50 special but to boil it down the film favors reds and yellows and by extension adds warmth to the image.… Click here to read more!

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Back from Vacation… Where do I stand?

Well, I’ve just returned from a week long vacation into the white mountains here in New Hampshire. I am tired but it was enough of a change of pace for me that I’m feeling refreshed as well. To me, that’s what a vacation should be, a change of pace. We saw a lot of rain and had to change our plans continually but in the end we did find plenty of fun and new things to do.

We head into the mountains basically every year. If I were the only person choosing, it would be every year. I love that area.… Click here to read more!