Category Archives: Photography

Anchorage 1978

Film, Photographs

A new life for an old image.

For an index of all my Film related articles, click here.

I lived in Anchorage from November 1977 through October 1980, after which I moved to New York, new green card in hand.

The long summer days brought with them acidic colors and what better emulsion to do these justice than Kodachrome? I preferred Kodachrome 64 to the slower 25 variant, trading coarser grain for one and a half stops in speed gain. Even so ASA 64 rather pales beside what modern digital technology can deliver at a far higher quality level.

This image was taken on 4th Avenue which was ripped apart by a 9.2 earthquake in 1964, still the most powerful recorded in the US. Appropriately enough this occurred on Good Friday, for 4th Avenue was a den of iniquity back then, replete with dive bars and shady businesses.


Kodachrome yellow.

This image has been given new life when recently rescanned using the Nikon D800. The original Kodachrome slide is as good as new, no fading detectable. and was taken on my Leica M3 with the 50mm Summicron lens.

Itoya large print albums – update

Printing, Technique

Two choices.

I continue building a collection of large print legacy albums containing some five decades of my best photographs.


A photographic legacy

I first wrote about these here and the other day when ordering more from B&H, which has the best prices, I found that the profiled album was out of stock. Digging around the splendid B&H site I discovered that there are actually two versions of the 13″x19″ Itoya large print album, at much the same price:


Two versions. Click the image for B&H.

The other version, at left, touts the high gloss ‘Poly Glass’ vinyl sheets but, for the life of me, they look identical to those in the version previously profiled. So I snapped up a couple and can confirm they are every bit as good as the original. Each of the 24 vinyl sheets comes with a black interleaver to prevent image bleed through to adjacent prints.

Minting it

iPhone, Photography

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

The cell phone is an indispensable part of our lives. Hardly a genius observation. The camera in that cell phone is not only a fine photographic tool, always with you, but it’s also used for scanning QR codes, reading bar codes in the supermarket to detect unhealthy ingredients, and taking pictures of the minuscule print on product labels so you can actually read the text. Why, you can even use the cell phone to, you know, make calls, not to mention receiving spam messages from our Russkie friends inviting you to share your credit card information because of all the toll charges you owe and suggesting you fend off the Dobermans at the IRS with Comrade Ivan’s assistance.

I have been a loyal (read ‘stupid’) Verizon customer for the best part of two decades, when the other day I received this email. It’s hard to conceive of a more crassly worded announcement. Translated, it reads “Thanks for being a loyal customer, chump. Now bend over.”:


Corporate greed redefined.

That’s a 13.5% increase on my current rate in an economy whose inflation rate is below 3%. That’s not going to happen and triggers Dr. Pindelski’s New Year’s resolution: Any rate increase over 3% results in immediate dismissal of the provider.

A while back, speaking with my sister in West Sussex, it transpired that the UK has many cell service providers and her monthly rate of $19 covers two lines. Hardly a new economic concept – all competition drives down price. My new Verizon rate would be $127 monthly.

So I searched the web for a lower cost provider with good coverage and found Mint, whose coverage map you can access here.

Here’s the map – use the above link and you can enter your address for a more granular reading:


Mint coverage – a few holes in the West.

It’s similar to T Mobile’s, suggesting that Mint is buying excess capacity from T Mobile:


T Mobile coverage.

The Mint service provides for a 3 month $15 monthly teaser rate for two lines, whereupon the rate rises to $45 monthly. That’s a full 65% less than Verizon’s, an annual saving of $984. Heck, two years of this and I get that Leica M for the home theater.

Both my iPhone 12 (physical SIM) and my son’s iPhone 15 (eSIM) are ‘unlocked’ versions, meaning that Greedy Apple got $10 more for each phone. This premium was paid with the distant thought that a carrier change might be made sooner or later. If your phone is tied to a specific carrier you cannot switch, but at a $984 annual saving you can afford a new phone when you do.

There are two aspects to the switch. The easy part is getting an eSIM download from Mint, which arrived in the email 30 minutes after signing up. Secondly, the physical SIM for my iPhone 12 arrived one day later by overnight FedEx, along with the little pin to open the SIM door in the phone’s side. Impressive.

The hard part – you guessed it – is first you have to get the crooks at Verizon to release you from their usurious charges. You are meant to get a ‘Number Transfer PIN’ which you enter in the Mint application but, shock news, the link from Verizon is broken. Fortunately there are several ways of getting this Number Transfer PIN, and one of those worked for me. See below:


How to get the Transfer PIN.

My son’s iPhone was up and running on Mint within 10 minutes and my service was transferred 24 hours later when the new SIM was installed in the iPhone 12. Here is the happy result:


Up and running on Mint.

The only caveat is that the physical SIM is tiny and it took my son’s deft fingers and excellent eyesight to get it installed in my phone.


Tiny new SIM.

The service works well and all that’s left to do is to make sure the crooks at Verizon cease charging me while I enjoy the savings.

Because the transfer process is non-trivial and Verizon will make sure it’s as opaque and as difficult as can be, few will bother to make the change to a cheaper carrier. They already know that the integrity of cell carriers is right down there with that of cable TV providers and big banks. So they will bend over, grin and pay up. Thus the 13.5% increase to suckers (like me) will mightily boost the income of a business with a very wide ‘moat’ (meaning prohibitive costs of entry for prospective competitors).

And don’t make the mistake of thinking that Mint is a high integrity outfit. Right after signing up I received an email telling me that my data allocation of 5 MB per month was about to run out and that I should sign up for more at ridiculous cost. A quick check proved that this was a lie. One month later I have only used 2% of the allocation. Don’t fall for this scam.

So I did the only thing logically possible. After firing the bastards I loaded up on Verizon stock. Little competition, oligopolistic pricing and a very safe 7.2% annual dividend. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.


Reaping what I sow.

Other providers? I expect that the insurance company crooks and the gardeners will be the next in the firing line. This is too much fun, replete with schadenfreude.

Update March 19.2025:. Two months into our three month trial period and my son (in NY) and I (in the west) have had zero issues with the Mint Mobile service on our iPhones (iPhone 15 and 12, respectively), so we signed up for a one year plan at a mere $15 per month. Compare with $123/month at Verizon. And yes, VZ stock is up 14% since I bought it plus that high dividend yield. What’s not to like?

Shocking hypocrisy

Hall of Shame, Mac Pro, Macintosh

Apple’s planned obsolescence.

The other day I sadly took my 2010 Mac Pro to the recyclers. The resale value approximated what it would cost to ship this behemoth and the last six generations of OS X releases saw to it that none would run on the machine, denying me the security fixes announced seemingly monthly.


Can you spell ‘planned obsolescence’?.

While this piece is focused on Apple, like thinking applies to all computer hardware makers. They conspire with the software authors (in Apple’s case they conspire with Apple) to make sure that older machines can no longer run the upgraded operating system and many of the related applications. The conspiracy deepens when you look at the horrendous costs laid on users by ethically challenged businesses like Adobe who, in obsoleting earlier versions of their apps, use the planned obsolescence strategy to force you into a rental payment system, euphemistically known as the ‘subscription model’.

So it was with the memory of that great recycled Mac Pro that I read this well researched article in Macworld magazine. The bottom line is this:

So, in answer to the question: How long do Macs last? We’d say five to eight years, but beware that you may not be able to replace any faulty parts in a Mac when more than five years have passed since Apple last sold it.

Imagine if your house or your car lasted only 5 years. But, the hypocrites in Apple Marketing are the first to tell you about their environmentally friendly packaging for the new Mac Mini. It’s cardboard for heaven’s sake. See for yourself:


Hypocrisy redefined.

Any mention of the fact that your new Mac will be toxic landfill 5 years hence because Engineering was told by Marketing to make sure it’s obsolete by then? And because avoiding that required just a few lines of code? You must be joking.

Outstanding journalism

Photography

Beating the muderous dictator in the Kremlin.

Some fighters, of course, fight. These Russians squared up. They fired Kalashnikovs or shotguns at incoming quadcopters, threw their own helmets or rifles into the path of their descending tormentors or swung long sticks, trying to knock 21st-century drones to dirt with weapons from eons ago. When all other defenses failed, the instant before incoming warheads impacted torsos and limbs, a few swatted or kicked at the quadcopters with bare hands or booted feet, lashing out reflexively at the candid cameras sent to kill them. Then they absorbed shrapnel and blast. The explosions claimed many victims instantly. Others were thrown down and expired slowly, gasping or twisting or rolling in pain, sometimes with uniforms aflame, while observation drones collected footage of their agonies. Occasionally, wounded Russian survivors ended their own lives with hand grenades or by shooting themselves with rifles. Some played dead and ended up that way.

This extract from a superb year-end piece in The New York Times titled “How Suicide Drones Transformed the Front Lines in Ukraine” by C. J. Chivers, written in gripping prose with photography no less compelling from David Guttenfelder, testifies to the wisdom of subscribing to the last great newspaper in America. With The Washington Post now edited by a Murdoch goon (subscription cancelled) and The Guardian likewise (subscription cancelled) there’s only the NYT left for a sane view of an increasingly nutty world.


Superior journalism from the finest paper in the U.S.
Click the image to read.

It’s clear that the only way to stop the Russkies’ aggression in Ukraine it to take out the psychopath in the Kremlin or hope for an early end to his miserable existence. Where is The Jackal when you need him?