gurdymonkey | Test Batch #3 and What-Were-We-Thinking Guy

For those not up to date, I've been messaging back and forth with What-Were-We-Thinking Guy. He said the reason for his inquiry was to start exploring options, even though finances aren't going to permit him to actually contract with someone to make garb right away. I told him that it sounded like neither of us were ready to take this any further right now. I also encouraged him to think about making his own, which he may end up doing. Last night he posted a photo of a garment in progress and it looked to me like he's fairly capable.

Test batch# 3can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157615959651100/ ~~is loading slowly but surely to Flickr as I write this~~. I shot in the "museum mode" which means the camera went noiseless, flashless and picked a default ISO setting of 1600. Things looked very promising on the LCD. When I downloaded them, I noticed that at full screen-view they're somewhat grainy. Grainy is not blurry. Grainy is not looks-like-it-was-shot-through-the-side-of-a-dirty-fishtank. Grainy is also what would've happened if I'd tried to shoot with high speed 35mm film in those conditions. (Grainy mostly goes away at smaller image sizes as you'll see if you peruse the album at Flickr.) Even the really dark shot of the tea room doesn't look bad unless you kick it up to the largest size.

Compare shots of the same koto under the same lighting conditions. Left the 3800, right the F100fd:

Bonus points: a 16th century basket with the sort of openwork found on caned Western chairs, which helps the plausibility of my kaga chochin project.

Some of the folding screen pics are kind of meh, but part of the test batch process is deliberately taking some sloppy-ass pictures just to see what happens.

I hopped BART back to Oakland after I maxed out my puny little 128 mb XD memory card, crossed town to Best Buy and used the last of my Christmas gift gard balance on a 4 gig SDHC chip (which, of course, cost less than a third what the 128 mb card cost me a couple years ago), a spare NP-50 battery and a copy of "Persepolis" which is now out on DVD and well worth owning.