And?

Not a lot. I picked up the wedding slides and the contact sheets this afternoon after work and they look pretty good. Boy, howdy do I like the color I'm getting with slides over the color I'm getting with digital. Understand I like the images I'm getting with digital, but digital skin tones don't compare with film. The image above was shot on Ektachrome E100 G, a Kodak professional slide film, and the skin tones, black or white, are really excellent. The digital images need extensive manipulation, since they tend to misread the reds, and the end product isn't the same. You don't want to screw up your reds unless you get a kick out of spending your life fiddling with PhotoShop in front of a computer. Hi, ho.

I mentioned this to the guy who did my black and white and he pulled out some prints he'd made for a client from images shot with one of the $30,000 digital backs you can buy for medium format cameras, comparing the skin tones to images shot with film. They were good, but no cigar. Am I happy with my digital camera? Yeah. Am I going to buy another? Yeah, when the Nikon D2x is released, but I'm to some degree going to hold my nose when I pass the plastic. This digital technology is off like a rocket, everyone knows it's the future of photography and I'm happy enough to be on board, but I do grumble, people, I do grumble.

Tomorrow is Friday, a day to think about the weekend. The car now has 450 miles on it and I'm starting to get a sense of the gas mileage I'm getting. I think it's over 20. I'd been hoping for 25, but my guess is I'll be lucky to get 21 in the city. Then, of course, for someone who buys a tank of gas every six weeks (a fifteen gallon tank, now, instead of a ten), I have no complaints.