Tomorrow my whole section is coming into work and I have a project of my own that will take me all day Saturday and well into Sunday to finish. I'm tired right now, but I'm not worried about the weekend and finishing this particular miserable brain dead project as much as I'm worried about how much of me will be left to face the week ahead, a week which may require some minimal contribution - hell - coherence, maybe, a lapdog attitude and attentive behavior. Hi, ho. "Three hots and a cot, three hots and a cot." I must remember what living is like without them, say my thanks, show up in the mornings and keep on shooting.

I was looking at color photographs displayed on other journaler's pages this evening noticing the real punch and clarity you get with a digital camera. I use Kodak Ektachrome 100s, which is a professional slide film balanced for skin tones, or at least noted for the quality of its skin tones. The 100 is the speed of the film. For black and white I use Kodak TMY 400, which is reasonably fast (I can shoot indoors under most light conditions using an f2.8 or faster lens without having to get exotic and pushing the development). I've considered going back to TRI-X, same speed with a tasty grainier character, but my local lab only offers the TMY chemistry and TMY chemistry makes TRI-X overly hard and contrasty.

Anyway, I like the brightness and sharpness of the digital camera's color image, but less so when it comes to people. I've been turning over the idea of buying one of the big Nikon digital cameras that will allow me to use my current lenses. They're expensive, but you save the cost of film and custom development and over time that pays back your cost in fairly short order. I don't really shoot enough film to make it too much of a difference, but I'm close. If I shot as much film every weekend as I shot last weekend I could pay for one over the course of a summer. (I don't, but I'd like to.)

The question I have is what does the digital black and white look like? There's a setting, a button that switches the Nikon between color and black and white and I haven't seen a discussion anywhere or evidence of the quality and texture of the black and white output. That would be important. I'm sure there's an argument going on similar to the one between analog lp freaks and the older one between "tube amplifiers give better tone than solid state transistors" advocates. I believe and don't believe. Still, tonal character is important out here in the banana photography republics.