coherent_rambling

Topaz does a really nice job on the noise, and it's very noticeable in the fur.

I'd like to see the whole image be quite a bit brighter, personally. It's really hard to see the detail in this.

If my 2015 Mustang GT (base 6MT, non performance-pack) got t-boned by a dump truck tomorrow, I'd buy another 2015-2017 Mustang GT base. I might try to find a Premium. The 2018-2023 looks a bit better, can have active exhaust, and has marginally more power, but they screwed up the manual gear ratios; it's viable in automatic.

It's fast, loud, comfortable, surprisingly economical, and has a big trunk. It's not really a sports car (hence omitting the performance pack), but it's a damn fine grand tourer and a very livable daily driver.

I've tried a lot of the other options, for durations ranging from a test drive to a few years.

• Hot hatches are fun if you drive like an asshole but don't feel special if you drive them normally. Some people love that aspect, but personally I think it makes them boring too often.
• The GR86 is an absolute riot if you live near twisty roads and punishing if you don't.
• Corvettes feel huge and unwieldy in traffic even though they're not that big. The lack of even token back seats makes them a lot harder to live with, too.
• Camaros have lousy visibility.
• The Challenger drives like a moderately-quick truck.
• Kia dealers treat the Stinger like it's a Ferrari, so good luck buying a new one.
• The WRX is still decent, but I think it also suffers from the hot hatch syndrome where it only feels special when you drive it hard.
• I haven't driven a Z. My instinct is that it'll be years before the price gets reasonable on a new one, but the old models might be fun if you don't need back seats.
• I haven't driven a GR Corolla. No idea if it'll have the hot hatch problem or not, but I can't find one to try anyway.

Yes, that's literally true (or was before the Russian army visited). The ambient radiation in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which is all you'd see on a map, is only slightly elevated. The main risk there is of disturbing the ground or abandoned debris and exposing much more dangerous material buried just below the surface.

I don't qualify (I haven't posted yet) and don't need another light anyway. But I'm excited to see some familiar faces over here, and hope to see this place grow.

I'm hoping this will be the more in-depth and technical community. There's already at least one ITAP, [email protected].

In theory a lab scan should be better, right? They've got the expensive equipment and trained personnel. But in reality, that equipment might be poorly maintained (and getting elderly, since it's probably 20+ years old at this point), and that staff might not be trained well, or might not care about your pictures all that much.

I started DSLR scanning this year, and I'm really happy with the results. Prior to that, I'd sent rolls to a few different labs online. My best results so far were from Memphis Film Lab, and I would definitely recommend his service, but I didn't care for his color corrections. That's fine, he has an ordering option to not make any corrections, but in order to have leeway to make your own corrections, you may want to pay extra for the 16-bit TIFF scans and deal with 140-MB files. I can DSLR scan, get 20-MB 14-bit compressed RAW files and tweak the colors to my heart's content. I don't have quite as much resolution as Mr. Memphis' scans, but it's more than enough.

If your go-to is ISO 160, I assume you normally shoot Portra?

It's easy with B&W; I shoot almost entirely Ilford HP5+ and can meter it anywhere from ISO 100 to ISO 1600, as long as I mark the canister and adjust my development concentration and time.

With color you can still push/pull process and accomplish something similar, but it's much more likely to give you a wonky result. Plus, it screws with the standardized C41 process timing so labs are likely to charge more, if they push at all.

You might want to go with an ISO 400 film stock if you're doing color, and pack an ND filter or two to deal with sunny days. If things get really gloomy you can probably push a roll or two to ISO 800 without much trouble.