Who down wit' P.I.D.? Yeah, you know me!

Gorillafritz has an excellent post on the importance of positive target identification in averting tragic, and potentially fatal, mistakes:

"Let me start by saying that no one in this situation did anything wrong. The cop was trying to make sure a boy wasn’t going to kill himself. The homeowner was legally defending his residence from a suspicious intruder approaching the back door of his house. Some frazzled nerves, poor training, or a couple more pounds of pressure on either weapon’s trigger would have resulted in a tragic outcome.

How do we prevent situations like this from going bad?"

Go read the whole thing.

Your house is not a free-fire zone. Use a flashlight. If you don't have a flashlight... well, you're wrong ...but if you don't have a flashlight, turn on the lights. If the power's out, ask "Who's there?"

Don't just shoot at shapes and shadows.

'Tis the Seasonal...

Stepped out the front door at 8:57AM this morning to go shoot photos of the Drumstick Dash. I could hear the countdown for the 9:00AM start from the front porch as I walked to my observation spot, which is at the two mile mark of the 4.6 mile course.

It was 34°F outside when I left the house, and we're still early enough in the season where that feels pretty darn cold. By the first week of February, anything above freezing'll feel like sunbathing weather, but today I was regretting not switching out the cotton socks for the wool socks in my dresser drawer by about 9:30. With good wool socks, the waterproof Merrell Moab shoes I wear in winter are good enough to wear well down into the 20s, but standing around on asphalt, the cotton tube socks just weren't hacking it for insulation.

I took the Canon EOS 40D with the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom lens as well as my usual EOS-1D Mark IV, and even though the 40D is seventeen years old and can be had for less than a hundred bucks these days, I was pretty happy with the first few shots I've processed.

Rugged

There's a certain attractive quality to rugged, reliable gear. Think of the adulation heaped on Glocks for their durability:

A saying I remember from being in camera stores where my dad worked when I was a child was "If you have a Leica and a Nikon and have to take a photograph over a wall, stand on the Nikon and shoot with the Leica, because it won't hurt the Nikon."*

Jim Grey was just out and about with a new-to-him 1963-vintage Nikon F, which was the company's first pro-grade single lens reflex camera:

"The F is nigh onto indestructible. It would surely survive a drop from your hands to the ground, it would probably survive a drop off the roof of your house, and it might just survive a drop from an airplane."

It still works great for a sixty-year-old tool! No wonder survivors are bringing good money.

Do you know what else a Nikon will survive? Fifty years of being buried in a mountaintop glacier near the summit of Aconcagua, with twenty four frames of potential evidence of foul play sitting exposed inside it, waiting to be developed...

"FOR NEARLY 50 years, a Nikomat camera, carried by an American woman, sat frozen in a high-altitude time capsule. But it was not frozen in place.

Where the camera was dropped may not be where it was found. The Polish Glacier has been shrinking and shifting, cracking and moving downhill by the pull of gravity and with the change of seasons.

And on a sunny day in February 2020, the heart of the Argentine summer, the camera sat on a stocky penitente, like a museum piece on a pedestal.

[SNIP]

The camera was intact; the only crack was inside the lens. The mechanisms worked. The leather holster screwed to the camera bottom had probably protected it from leaks."

*The only exception might be if your Leica is a Leicaflex, aka "The Diesel Leica", which was their baroquely overbuilt attempt at an SLR. One survived plummeting to the floor of the Mojave Desert from a crashing F4 Phantom II.

Screwing up by the numbers...

At first I thought this was going to be a typical "Parents need to secure their guns better" story.

Basically, 16-y.o. kid sees someone rifling through mom's minivan in the driveway and then, after the guy has already closed the door and started walking away, kid fires two shots from his upstairs bedroom window. He hit the car burglar in the back, and the dude staggered a couple doors down the street, whereupon he collapsed in a neighbor's yard and expired.

So my first read of the incident was "Gosh, lady, if you had kept your gun locked up, your kid wouldn't be up on homicide charges right now."

But wait! There's more!

It turns out that the teenager wasn't the only one in the house with an absolute and total lack of discerning legal judgment that night. Turns out mom was no Einstein herself.

According to court documents, when police spoke with the 16-year-old, he told them, "My mom got cameras, I checked. Dude got a ski mask, hoodie, checking every car in the neighborhood..."

The shooting suspect's mother allegedly told police she woke up from the Ring camera and was scared. She called for her son, and she said he then got a gun. According to court documents, the mother then said, "He shoot two, two times I think."

Police claim they found ammo, along with two spent shell casings, in the 16-year-old's bedroom, and a 9mm gun in the mother's room.

If the prosecutor is feeling froggy, mom could get fitted for an orange jumpsuit alongside her offspring on charges of IC 35-47-10-6 - Dangerous control of a firearm, but she'd have the defense of being too dumb to realize that sniping dudes in the back from the second floor was a felony.

Folks, for the umpteenth time, your gun is not a Batman Badge.

Here's my periodic reminder that "the basic standard of "A reasonable fear of immediate, otherwise unavoidable, death or grievous bodily harm to yourself or another innocent person" applies everywhere. In your car or in your yard, in your home, while you roam, or on a boat while afloat. Otherwise you may not shoot them, Sam I Am."

You can't just whack a dude for rifling through your glove box, nor can you ask your kid to do it for you.

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Fossils at the Fair, Part 1

Surely a fourteen year old camera is a useless fossil, right?

Not so fast...

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II hit the market in November of 2008. It sported a 21MP full-frame sensor and was the first Canon DSLR (and the first full-frame DSLR from anyone) capable of recording 1080p HD video. The 5D Mark II was used to shoot things as diverse as the opening credits of Saturday Night Live, whole episodes of House, and scenes in Hollywood movies like Act of Valor and The Avengers.

At launch, the MSRP for the camera was $2,699 without a lens. Nowadays you can pick up a nice used body for $350 or less, which is about as inexpensive as a good full-frame DSLR gets. A lot of these cameras were picked up by enthusiastic amateurs based on the hype and then sat largely unused until their owners decided to trade them in on some new mirrorless hotness or other. Batteries are still available new and of course you can use the entire library of Canon EF lenses without having to worry about an adaptor.

One of the attractions of using the Canon EF lens mount are its "L"-series lenses, identified by their red rings, high quality construction, premium optics, and (typically) enormous price tags.

The latest version of the L-series midrange zoom, the 24-70mm f/2.8L II, goes for something like eighteen hundred bucks at BezosMart, but you can get the older version from the 1990s, the 28-70mm f/2.8L, for around six bills at KEH Camera Brokers if you're willing to settle for "Bargain" grade. (And you should be, because KEH grades very conservatively. Their 'BGN' would be 'VG+' most places.)

Introduced in 1993, the 28-70mm f/2.8L was noted for its optical qualities and indeed still holds its own at DxOMark. I use mine on my 50MP EOS 5DS without worrying about it not being sharp enough on the super high res sensor.

So there you go. If you're willing to shop used, you can get a very competent professional DSLR body and lens setup for eighty percent off.

(Cross-posted at the other other blog.)

Tactical Buzzwording and Practical Pistols

A reader of Greg Ellifritz's wrote to him to inquire whether he should use the P365 he actually carries or the larger P320 he uses as a bedside gun in an upcoming class. The instructor had recommended using the P320.

Fundamentals: On a square range.

Of note was how he described the class: "[A] two day Defensive Pistol 1 Course where we will be firing at least 500rds per day."

Like the class instructor, Greg recommended going with the larger pistol.

"In a weekend shooting class that involves firing more than 500 rounds a day, you will get incredibly fatigued. You will get blisters on your hands. You will be sore from the recoil (even from a 9mm). Shooting 500 rounds in a day while actually concentrating on learning new skills is a demanding endeavor both mentally and physically. Recognize that most gun owners will never fire 500 rounds out of a single handgun in the course of an average lifespan."

While instructors will often hang a label like "tactical" or "defensive" off a class like this for marketing purposes, the fact of the matter is that a good quality 500-rd/day class is generally going to be a pure shooting mechanics class because there won't be time for anything else. The closest thing you might get to tactics is if the instructor encourages a sidestep on the draw.

To put this in perspective, compare the round counts for some classic classes. A forty hour MAG-40 class is spread over four to five days, and twenty of those hours will be in live fire, with a round count of approximately five hundred rounds, total. A classic Gunsite 250 is five days of training, some of it in shoot houses and other moving, "tactical" type situations, and the round count for the whole week is about a thousand rounds.

Tactics: In a shoot house.

By comparison, I've taken two-day mechanics-focused classes with trainers like Todd Green, Ernest Langdon, and Scott Jedlinski that burned up that much ammo in a weekend. Part of it is that every drill needs to be repeated as many times as there are shooters in a relay, so that the instructor can give each student direct observation and coaching feedback. 

Some of those gunhandling skills are going to port over to pretty much any pistol you use, and for those that don't, there are instructors who teach classes specifically geared toward smaller pistols and/or working from deep concealment. The round counts and the pace of those classes will also be adjusted accordingly, to allow you to, e.g., tuck your shirt back in over your PHLster Enigma between drills or properly re-holster a pocket-carried J-frame.

Interactive: Force on force against an opposing will.

Relatedly, Dave Spaulding has a good piece in G&A where he breaks down the different types of training. He arranges them in a hierarchy, but you could easily look at them as a three-legged stool. 

"Over time, I’ve come to look at firearms training as a three-tiered pyramid I call the Hierarchy of Combative Firearms Training. The tiers are: 1) Essentials (I prefer this term to “fundamentals”); 2) Combative Aspects; and 3) Interactive Aspects. You must properly train and anchor skills through each level before you attempt the next. For example, would you take a counter-terror driving course before you take basic driver’s training? Of course not. Along these same lines, you should not try to fight with a pistol until you’ve learned how to shoot and manipulate it. Some think they are one in the same but that is not the case. If you throw a punch before you’ve learned how to make a fist, your punch won’t be effective and will likely result in injury and failure."

Practical Popguns

It's no secret that I'm a fan of a flyweight deuce-deuce for an "around the house" gun. A Smith & Wesson 43C or Ruger LCP II .22 stuffed with eight or ten rounds of Federal Punch or CCI Velocitor is light enough to not drag down pajama bottoms or sweatpants, as well as being cheap and easy to shoot.

Putting a few into a dude's snotbox at three to five yards is bound to have an effect, rimfire or not.

Don't take my word for it, listen to Hsoi. He's smart.

September 5, 2022 I was dumbbell bench pressing the 95s. I start going down for rep 7 and something felt weird in my left wrist. I immediately stopped. I don’t know how to describe it, but… something… shifted? All those little bones in your wrist (carpal bones); if you know what the carpal bones look like, just imagine something… shifting, getting compacted by 95# of steel. Yeah. Makes you wince, doesn’t it?

I went shooting soon thereafter. Shot my P365XL with the Wilson grip and inserts. After 100 rounds I couldn’t stand it – the pain was too much.

I’ve been hangin’ with a few guys into revolvers (GuG, Hizzie). I mean, “the underwear gun” is a thing. And with the stuff Rhett‘s been doing. Well… I figured now’s a good time detour and play with this concept.

Yes, the LCR is hard to shoot it because it’s lightweight with a heavy-ass trigger, craptacular snub-sights. But I can shoot it… a lot. I can even shoot Federal Punch (my defensive load) and not feel bad about the money.

Go read the whole thing and give it some thought.

But remember, to really get the best use out of a revolver, especially a subcaliber one, it's important to remember the revolver's U-shaped utility curve. Practice, practice, practice...

Caleb explains the curve.

That reminds me, I should get some speed strips and put in some serious dedicated .22 wheelyboi practice myself.

Constitutional Carry in Indiana

Finally, after a dozen years of trying during which it died in House or Senate committees time and time again, constitutional carry legislation was signed into law by Governor Eric Holcomb yesterday.

The permit repeal, called "constitutional carry" by gun-rights supporters in reference to the Second Amendment, was criticized by major law enforcement groups who argued eliminating the permit system would endanger officers by stripping them of a screening tool for quickly identifying dangerous people who shouldn't have guns.

Twenty-one other states already allow residents to carry handguns without permit — and Ohio's Republican governor signed a similar bill last week.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter joined leaders of the state's Fraternal Order of Police, police chiefs association and county prosecutors association in speaking out against the change.

Carter, wearing his state police uniform, stood in the back of the Senate chamber as the bill was being debated. He said after the vote that approval of the measure "does not support law enforcement — period."

That bit of performative BS from Superintendent Carter was just gratuitous. "Bad guys might carry a gun without a permit!" is just an idiotic argument. Bad guys already carry guns without permits, because they're bad guys. They don't care about gun carry permits any more than they care about robbery or murder permits. That's how you know they're the bad guys. The permit process, no matter how streamlined, is only an impediment to lawful citizens who'd like a chance to shoot back.

With Ohio and Alabama having passed constitutional carry laws this year as well, that brings the total number of states with permitless carry to twenty-four, just one shy of half the country. Remember when it was just "Vermont Carry"? Heck, when this blog was started back in 2005 there was just Vermont and Alaska; Arizona didn't become the third state until 2010, and that's when the floodgates really opened.

Soon you'll be able to drive from Mobile to Coeur d'Alene, Cleveland to Brownsville, Tucson to Bismark, or Harpers Ferry to El Paso, all with no permission slip for your blaster.

I'm sure we've covered this before...

Your house is not a free-fire zone. It is important to positively identify anything you are pointing your weapon at. If you're not willing to shoot it, you shouldn't be pointing a gun at it; that's right there in the basic safety rules. And if you don't know what (or who) it is, then how do you know if you're willing to shoot it or not?

Yes, you can search* and PID indoors quite adequately with a modern weapon-mounted light, one with good output and adequate spill, using good technique. If you do not know how to do that, use a handheld to avoid waving your blaster around and muzzling things... and people ...you shouldn't.

You don't even really need any special gear, though. Your house does have built-in room illumination, right?

Alternatively, you can use your Tactical Audible Target Identification Friend-or-Foe System, or T.A.T.I.F.F.S.

You know, the one where you say "Who's there?" with your mouth.

*Although, really, why are you searching? If you're that sure that someone's in the house, why not just fort up and call the po-po and let whoever's in the house know that you've done so?

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Bargain Bin Shootout

If the end of the beginning for serious digital photography was the 1999 launch of the Nikon D1, the first all in-house digital single lens reflex camera from one of the Big Two Japanese camera makers, then the beginning of the end for film SLRs was in 2003. It was triggered by a digital SLR price war caused by Canon's launch of the EOS 300D.

Known in the U.S. as the Digital Rebel, the 300D sported the 7-point autofocus system and 6.1MP sensor like that on Canon's semi-pro EOS 10D, but where the 10D sold as a body only for a $1,999 MSRP, the Rebel could be had for $999 complete with an 18-55mm zoom lens.

How was this done? Well, firstly some features were deleted (and some disabled). Also, the bright, but heavy and expensive, glass pentaprism viewfinder was replaced with a lighter, dimmer, cheaper pentamirror. Finally, the rugged magnesium shell of the 10D got binned in exchange for a thinner plastic body.

The launch of the Digital Rebel brought DSLR cameras in range of the casual photographer and kicked off a price war between Nikon and Canon that reached its apogee... or perigee? ...in 2008-2009, the years that arguably saw the final maturing of the DSLR market. Since then changes in DSLR cameras have been mostly evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

The five years between the introduction of the Rebel and '08-'09 saw furious competition between Nikon and Canon as each tried to grab a bigger share of the entry-level DSLR market by packing ever-cheaper beginner cameras with ever-better features until something had to give.

So Canon and Nikon each peeled off an even cheaper model to serve as an enticing price leader in boxed kits sold in big box stores, leaving the original entry model to continue accruing more advanced features without as much of an eye toward absolute minimum MSRP.

Canon followed the original 300D/Rebel with the 350D/Rebel XT (8MP, same $999 kit price), then the 400D/Rebel XTi (10MP, $899 kit), and then the 450D/Rebel XSi (12MP, $899 kit). Then in 2008, while the Rebel XSi was still fresh on the market, Canon slid an entirely new camera beneath it in the lineup: The Rebel XS, called the 1000D overseas; in Canon's numerical marketing, the fewer the digits, the higher-zoot the camera, with the ultimate pro DSLR body being the 1D series.

Relative to the Rebel XSi, the Rebel XS lost the "i" suffix, as well as a handful of features. It recycled the 10MP sensor from the XTi, and the 7-point autofocus system from the XT. While the XSi had moved to a higher resolution 3" rear LCD display, the XS used the same 2.5" screen as the XTi. These and other shortcuts allowed Canon to drop the price of the basic kit with an 18-55mm zoom lens to only $699, a price point starting to put the squeeze on higher end point-'n'-shoot "bridge cameras".

From this point on, Canon designated their better US-market Rebels with a "T" prefix and an "i" suffix: T1i, T2i, et cetera. The cheaper entry-level models lost the "i", like the T3 below.

Canon didn't iterate these bargain-bin models as frequently, so the 2011 T3 is the direct successor to the XS. It picked up the 12MP sensor and 9-point autofocus system from the XSi, the DIGIC 4 processor (then-current across the Canon DSLR line, but long in the tooth and about to be replaced in the higher-end models), and added the ability to shoot 720p video.

So in 2011 the customer who went looking for a DSLR at Best Buy or in the camera aisle at Walmart or Target (hard to believe now that just ten years ago Wally World and Tahr-jay had a whole aisle of cameras) had their choice of two boxed Canon kits: the 18MP T3i with an 18-55mm lens for $899, or the 12MP T3 with the same lens for only $599.

The price-conscious shopper wasn't going to care about details like a body shell of smoother, thinner plastic, the lack of a separate door for the memory card (it shared the compartment on the bottom with the battery, which was cheaper, but precluded swapping cards while mounted on a tripod), or the fact that the T3 was built in Taiwan rather than Japan. The T3i also had a bigger, articulated LCD screen on the back, the ability to shoot 1080p HD video, and other details... but three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks.

In 2009, Canon's biggest competitor reorganized their entry level line as well. The big box store DSLR shopper would find a pair of kits from Nikon: There was the D5000, which competed head-to head with Canon's T1i. It had 12MP, an articulated LCD, could shoot 720P video, and came with an 18-55mm lens for $850.

Competing with the cheaper Canon Rebel XS was the new Nikon D3000. It was extremely stripped down relative to the D5000, and much smaller. It lacked video recording and an articulated screen, but this wee little DSLR came with a wee little price tag; with the kit lens included, the tariff was only $449. 

Essentially, Nikon was using the 10MP CCD sensor and 11-point autofocus sensor from its old D200 semi-professional camera, hooked to the new EXPEED processor.

The D3000 had a built-in tutoring "Guide Mode" for novices, and had a minimum set of physical controls, with fewer buttons and most settings controlled via a menu on the rear LCD screen.

Comparing the extreme entry-level cameras from the two companies (and it's a generalized comparison as the T3 is an iteration newer than the D3000), the Nikon feels more solid in the hands. It combines beginner friendliness in its minimal buttons and "Guide Mode" with features of more expensive cameras that the budget Canon lacks, like the soft textured rubber on the handgrip and the separate side-mounted door for the memory card. The viewfinder on the Nikon is noticeably brighter, although that's relative; both are cramped and dim compared to the pentaprism finders on pro cameras.

The kit lenses both have pretty much identical specs, including "VR" Vibration Reduction on the Nikon and "IS" Image Stabilization on the Canon, as well as the same range of focal lengths and apertures, and are (other than the lens elements themselves) constructed of plastic from the filter ring to the mounting flange. However the Nikkor DX AF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR feels much more upmarket compared to its rival; once mounted on the camera where you can't see its plastic flange, you could be forgiven for thinking it cost a good bit more than it did, while Canon's EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II never stops letting you know it came in the box with the camera like a prize with some Cracker Jacks. 

Literally the only place the Nikon feels chintzier is in the diopter adjustment for the viewfinder, which is a fiddly sliding bar arrangement instead of the normal dial on the Rebel T3.

When I'm done with this DSLR project, I'm going to sell or give away the Rebel T3, but I'm keeping the Nikon D3000. When you get done with Guide Mode and don't need the beginner's training wheels, you can do like I did and go into the menus and switch the status display on the rear LCD screen from its cartoon-like simplified graphic look to the normal white-on-black status display other Nikons use. While in the menu you can also correct the only real physical control shortcoming by reassigning the "Fn" function button on the front of the camera, which comes from the factory set to start the self-timer, and switch it to be the ISO control button.

The basic 10MP CCD sensor and 11-point CAM-1000 autofocus core of the D3000 is still plenty adequate for solid work if you don't need to shoot video; after all, it's the same guts as the Nikon D200 I used as my main camera for years, just in a smaller and lighter package.

These entry level cameras were key to Canon & Nikon's marketing plans for over a dozen years, intended to bring in new buyers and entice them to move up inside their respective manufacturer's ecosystems to bigger and better things. The Nikon entices you by feeling like a real camera, while the Canon makes you maybe wish you'd spent the extra money for the next level camera from the start...or perhaps bought the Nikon in the showcase next to it.

(Crossposted at Digital Fossils)

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You have got to be kidding me.

Look, just because you have the right to keep and bear arms doesn't mean you have to exercise that right.

For instance, if your self control is so poor that you go running down the street in your underwear, chasing down a car full of teen and preteen girls, literal church youth group members, and drag their adult chaperone out of the car by her hair and hold a gun to her head... well, maybe firearms ownership isn't a good fit for you, dude.

Multiple girls inside the car reported hearing the sheriff ask the woman who she was and say "I will f----shoot you," according to investigators.

The youth group leader, who grew up in the house next to Rowland and considered him a family friend, said she told Rowland her name and that she was his neighbor, but added that the words did not seem to register.

"That's when I really got scared because the gun was still at my head and he didn‘t know who was," she said, according to the affidavit.

And you certainly have no damn business being the sheriff of anything.

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #207...

I mostly got out of the 3" Smith & Wesson N-frame game except for this Mag-Na-Ported Model 629-1. It felt wrong to not have a .44 Magnum revolver of some sort around the house, and this one's a pretty cool example of the breed.

The pre-"Endurance Package" lockwork precludes the use of heavy loads ("Whee! My cylinder's turning backwards!") but who wants to shoot Elmer Keith Memorial Rhino-Rollers out of a 3" tube anyway? If you can't do it with a 240gr projectile at eleven or twelve hundred feet a second, you need to go get a long gun, not a bigger revolver.

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Living and learning...

I went up into the attic to rummage around for a round of .38 Spl Nyclad ammunition to photograph for this post, but came up empty-handed. Sorry about that.

Nyclad ammunition originated as a way to minimize lead contamination on indoor ranges by enclosing .38 Special 158gr lead round nosed bullets in a polymer envelope. So you'd get all the benefits of reduced barrel leading offered by jacketed ammo without the expense.

Somehow, over time...and especially after it was discontinued...the hollow point varieties of Nyclad ammo acquired a mystical reputation with some gun nerds as being a wonderbullet in the expansion department. I'm sure there are plenty of nearly 20-year-old posts at The Firing Line and The High Road where I'm extolling the virtues of the standard pressure 125gr hollow point Nyclad .38 Spl load as some sort of ideal self defense round for snubbies. I probably said things about how it expands easily because it doesn't have a jacket to retard expansion or something.

I was wrong, and in multiple ways.

First, standard pressure .38 Special bullets just generally don't expand very reliably at snubnose velocities unless you use a light-for-caliber bullet, like 110gr or 125gr, and even then you need to shoot bare gel or water or some other medium that provides no challenges for the bullet. Four-layer denim? Naw, dog. That bullet ain't expanding.

And not expanding is actually fine for these bullets! Because if a light-for-caliber 110- or 125gr .38Spl bullet does expand, you'll wind up looking at marginal penetration, at best.

It doesn't matter if a bullet hole is .312", .357", or .451" in diameter if it doesn't go through something important.

"Well if that's the case, Tamara, why don't you carry a .22?"

Well, because .22LR at handgun velocities has marginal penetration to begin with and doesn't deal with bone well. But, being aware of its limitations, I still do carry a Smith & Wesson 43C loaded with CCI Mini Mags around the house on those days when I don't change out of pyjamas.

At snub velocities, I'm a lot more worried about penetration than expansion, which is a big part of why I went from carrying a five-shot .38 J-frame to a six-shot .32 H&R Magnum J-frame. No .32 H&R JHP load will reliably expand at snub velocities, but that's okay, I'd rather they didn't. In terminal effect, it doesn't much matter which load you put in the .32 H&R, since they all do the same thing: Shoot pretty much right through a 16" gel block, provided the hollow points don't expand, or you use LSWC ammo in the first place.

To quote my friend Al Thompson, who's shot a thing or two:

"Hadguns are not great stoppers, regardless of caliber. There are many documented instances of rifles and shotguns failing too. :) It helps (IMHO) to think of a handgun as a remote control drill with zero shocking power or an arrow or an icepick. It's not a rifle."

Out of an Airweight J, there's not much difference in blast and recoil between a 148gr .38 Spl wadcutter and a 95gr .32 H&R Mag lead semiwadcutter. Both have a flat meplat which should minimize glancing off of ribs and such, and aid in penetration. Both have pretty similar terminal ballistics.

Only hits count, and the parts that count as a "hit" are smaller than most people think. Quoting again, this time from Darryl Bolke:

"All of a sudden the speed you can deliver an accurate shot to an acceptable target becomes different because the acceptable target is the size of a grapefruit in the upper chest or head...period. Anything outside of that area with a pistol will likely require additional shots which requires a full reassessment to press that trigger again. Complete misses endanger innocents and as Wayne likes to say, “They all hit something”."

There are a lot more misses on this target than the internet originally led me to believe.

Finite

"That's all there is, there won't be any more." Those are words that will cause me to really evaluate how I enjoy something. Whether it's something as trivial as the last scoop of pistachio ice cream in the house late on a Saturday night or more somber, like the last book from a favorite author who'd recently passed. It makes me want to savor it properly and stretch out the enjoyment.

This was the entire theme of a short, half-hour National Geographic documentary, entitled "The Last Roll of Kodachrome". It documents the travels of photog Steve McCurry, who got the last roll of legendary Kodachrome slide film off of Kodak's Rochester production line, as he decided what to shoot with those final thirty-six frames.

This was brought to my mind recently when Fuji announced that they were discontinuing their Pro 400h color film, due to the complexities of manufacture.

FUJIFILM PRO 400H film is a unique product that is coated with a fourth layer – requiring specialized raw materials and chemicals. As it has become increasingly difficult to procure the raw materials needed to produce PRO 400H, we regret to inform you that after careful consideration, Fujifilm has made the difficult business decision to discontinue PRO 400H.

When I got the news, I checked online sources as well as my local brick and mortar camera shop, but I might as well have been looking for toilet paper last April or 9mm ball ammo last August. The locusts had already descended.

Some sites have offered more balanced, philosophical, or even contrarian, takes on the significance of the event and what it portends for the future of the film biz itself. (Film sales are, in fact, surging in general. Kodak Alaris is actually bringing dead films back and talking about releasing a new one. And vinyl outsold CDs last year.)

None of that changes the fact that I have thirty exposures left on the roll that's currently loaded in my EOS-1N, and then there's this...

My last roll of Pro 400H (probably)

Sixty-six shots left. I need to spend them wisely, savor them. I'm pretty certain at least half will get used at Tac-Con next month, shooting portraits of friends.

And so it goes...

Anyway, if you're interested, the entirety of "The Last Roll of Kodachrome" is on YouTube for your viewing pleasure:

Kodachrome was iconic enough that its ending, and the pilgrimage of the final rolls to the last lab still running a K-14 processing machine was the inspiration for the movie Kodachrome.

I find it unlikely that there will ever be a 400H movie, let alone a song by Paul Simon or a 400h State Park.

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Huck

Snoozy Huck with the D3 & 24-120mm f/4. Had to shoot wide open so should have used a lens hood. Still...those eyes.

Huck and Holden spent a bunch of time both this morning and this evening wrestling all over the house at various levels of full throttle, so this afternoon's quiet time (some of which they spent dozing side-by-side on the futon) was much appreciated.
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Find, Fix, Finish

Having recently read Relentless Strike, a history of Joint Special Operations Command, from before its actual formation up through Operation Neptune Spear, I then picked up Killer Elite, which is more specifically a history of "The Activity", which is JSOC's in-house intelligence outfit.

Consisting of "knob turners", or signals intelligence guys, as well as more conventional human intelligence operatives, this is the organization in JSOC responsible for the "Find" and "Fix" parts before the doorkickers (or a drone strike or JDAM) do the "Finish" part.

It goes into a surprising amount of detail on the methods used to track down everybody from drug barons in Columbia, to war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, to the various Islamic terrorist franchises operating around the world right now.

If the history and methodology behind this stuff is as interesting to you as the action, shoot-'em-up parts, then this book will be worth your time. And the Kindle version is very reasonably priced!

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Bargain lens...

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For the #Nikon shooter on a budget, the bang for the buck ratio for this thing is off the chain. (As long as your camera can focus it.) #nikon80200mm #d700

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Mar 10, 2020 at 10:05am PDT

I've linked before to an older Ken Rockwell piece on not buying older digital cameras, and he had a point when he wrote it...back in 2005.

"Likewise, why would I want to bother using my three year old huge, heavy and cumbersome $4,000 Nikon D1H DSLR when a D70 is better, lighter, sharper, runs longer on batteries and is even easier to use for only $800?"

The D1H bordered on experimental, basically v1.5 of Nikon's first in-house DSLR, and it used big and fiddly NiCad batteries (which it drained at a prodigious clip). Five year old digital cameras were pretty well outclassed in every way in 2005.

Nowadays, though, I have no real problem using a Nikon D700, a camera that was discontinued in 2012. It lacks conveniences like an articulating touchscreen or wifi, but those are things I've never used enough to miss on a camera. I offload my pictures via SD or CF card and sneakernet anyway. This older camera is a screaming deal for a rugged prosumer full-frame body.

Heck, for several years after the D700 was discontinued, some people contended that Nikon hadn't offered a real replacement; the D800 & 810 were high-MP studio/landscape cameras and the D600/610 lacked ruggedness and weather sealing and shared the control layout of the consumer-tier Nikons. It wasn't till the 750 was released that there was a "true D700 successor".

But a new D780, the just-released second generation D700 successor, is a twenty five hundred dollar proposition, and even a refurbed D750 is still over a grand. Meanwhile, this fairly low shutter count D700 cost the same or less as the lower tier D5600 you'd get at a big box store, and unlike that D5600 it has the focus motor in the body so you can shoot lenses like that push-pull 80-200mm f/2.8 lens in the picture.

Since Canon's EF-mount 70-200mm f/2.8 L lenses have integral focusing motors, like all EF lenses, and will work on any EF or EF-S body, even used examples of the first, non-IS versions tend to go for more than six bills online. The 80-200 in the picture is the equivalent Nikon pro lens from the era and has great optics and that fast constant 2.8 max aperture like the premium glass it is, but its inability to be used on less expensive bodies keeps its price more reasonable.

Robin sitting very still in a little tree as I walked past with the D700 & 80-200/2.8

100% crop

Oh, so that's what it means...

The APS film format came and went while I wasn't paying attention. It showed up a couple years after I'd stopped working in the photo biz, and by the time I was paying attention to cameras again, it was 2001 and I was buying a Sony Mavica digital camera and film photography itself was collapsing precipitously.

The Nikon looks like a regular SLR, while the EOS IX is self-consciously '90s cyberpunk

The name survives because what we currently refer to as "crop sensor" DSLR & mirrorless cameras use a sensor that gives a "crop factor" of 1.5X (1.6X on Canon) and is referred to as "APS-C".

As it turns out, there are three ways you can shoot a picture on an APS film camera. The standard one, which uses the entire negative, is in a 16:9 aspect ratio and called "H" on the camera, for "High Definition", since HD video was a new and novel thing at the time. There was also a mask that would crop the sides off the image to give a more traditional 4:3, referred to on the camera as "C" for "Classic". Finally there was a "P" mode for "Panorama", which aggressively cropped the top and bottom of the image for a 3:1 ratio, which returned 4x11" prints.

Note that the image was only cropped in the viewfinder, using LCD or mechanical masks, or sightlines, and the instructions for each print size were encoded on the film for the lab's printer to read. The actual negatives were all recorded full size for each image.

The name "APS-C" survives as the most common sensor size in DSLRs because sensors were crazy expensive to make. Camera companies had experience projecting images onto a piece of film this size, so there we were. As sensors became relatively cheaper, and relatively easier to make efficiently, ones that are the same size as legacy 35mm film became more common. (This is because lenses are the important thing in photography. Get bought into a lens ecosystem, and you're likely there for a while.)

Incidentally, APS-H lived on into the digital era as well. While Nikon's first pro digital body, 1999's watershed D1, used an APS-C sized sensor and didn't increase the size until going full-frame with the D3 in 2007, Canon thought that pro photogs needed more sensor real-estate. The sensors in Canon's 1D, their first in-house pro body in 2001, were larger, giving a crop factor of 1.3X. Because of this crop factor similarity, they were called "APS-H", even though they used a standard 4:3 ratio.

To give an idea of how much the price of the sensor affected the price of the camera, the APS-H 4MP EOS 1D dropped in 2001 for $6500, and a year later the full frame 11MP EOS 1Ds joined it in Canon's lineup for a whopping eight grand. That's better than $200/MP or, looked at another way, seven dollars per square millimeter of additional sensor size. At seven bucks a square millimeter, the head of a pin would be $28 and a penny would be almost two grand.

(I had thought that the Canon EOS IX and Nikon Pronea 6i were the only semi-serious APS film SLRs out there, but it turns out there's another!)
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Professional Camera

State Fair steak sandwich. Amateur camera in background.

It's a sign of the times, I guess, the level of security you pass through to get into the Indiana State Fair. There's an almost courthouse-like magnetometer arch and an accompanying table with a tray for your pocket detritus.

Bobbi and I pedaled down the Monon Rail Trail to get there, since the state fairgrounds are barely a dozen blocks away and bicycle parking is free. I left my blaster at home and, before I left the house, I swapped out the usual Spyderco Delica pocket knife I carry for opening boxes and such for a little Kershaw Chive, figuring it was as tiny and inoffensive a knife as you could imagine. At the last minute, I binned it, too, since I was planning on buying a flint or obsidian blade from the knapper in Pioneer Village. (Good thing, too. They wouldn't let Bobbi bring her normal-looking work pocket knife through the checkpoint).

When I got to the entrance to the fair, I noticed that the sign at the entrance said "aerosol sprays" were forbidden, too, so I put my pepper spray canister in the document pocket of my Royal Robbins overshirt along with my flashlight, and then pulled the shirt off and handed it through along with my camera before I stepped through the arch.

Despite the shirt being weighed down with cell phone, pen, notepad, flashlight, pepper spray, camera batteries, CF cards, and house keys, it cause not a single batted eye.

What did cause consternation was the camera.

The rent-a-cop looked at my Nikon D700 with its 24-120mm travel zoom on it, looked up at me, back down at the camera, and finally intoned "Professional cameras aren't allowed."

"Huh?" I replied, wittily.

"They don't want professional cameras. They have the rights to pictures," said the guard.

"Uh, that's not a professional camera, that's my camera."

"What are you taking pictures of?"

"I dunno. The fair? Tractors? Baby goats? Kids eating funnel cake?"

"But for what?"

"I dunno. For me? For my Facebook page? For the hell of it?"

"Freelancer?"

"No, just a person with a camera."

"They don't want professional cameras."

"But it's not a professional camera! I'm not selling photographs!"

"It looks like a professional camera."

We have reached an age where any actual physical "camera" looks, to the great unwashed masses, as though you are there to shoot for Reuters or NatGeo. Never mind that the "professional camera" in question was a creaky antique, at least in digital camera terms, and was equaled in pixel count by the iPhone in my shirt pocket. In the smartphone era, "no camera" rules are at King Canute levels of ineffectuality.

He wound up letting me bring the camera in, albeit sullenly and reluctantly. I wonder what will happen when I return tomorrow?

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Rules of Engagement

There's an article up at SI right now to which I feel the need to offer a counterpoint.

It opens thusly:

"Precious few of the tactical-training courses I’ve taken devoted any amount of time to the art of stealth while defending the home. That’s mostly because being quiet and hiding doesn’t do much for participants who paid to shoot hundreds of rounds downrange while moving, reloading, diving for cover and yelling “Clear!” as they pie a room and take out a cardboard army of bad guys (not that there’s anything wrong with that)."

The entire article is about the need for stealth with one's home defense shotgun, and not making any noise as one moves about one's domicile while looking for intruders.

I'm going to totally avoid discussing the advisability of actively clearing one's house in search of a bad guy, as well as whether a long gun is the right firearm to use while doing so, and focus on the "stealth/don't give away your position" thing that is such a recurring subject in general home-defense advice.

To very loosely paraphrase a big city major crimes detective of my acquaintance who has investigated more than a few of these sorts of incidents, most of the time someone is in your house, it's because they think you aren't. (I mean, unless you live the sort of life where you have targeted assassination squads after you, and I'm afraid that that sort of thing is way, way outside of my lane.)

Lying silently in wait in the dark for someone to shoot is often a recipe for a Negative Outcome.

Alternatively, you could ask "Who's there?"

Even if it is a bad guy and not a family member, pet, or drunk neighbor, ensconcing oneself in a safe position, dialing 911, and loudly announcing that you have a gun and have called the cops is likely to save money for carpet cleaning bills and legal fees.

A friend quipped "What, and no advice to drag the body inside?", which was funny, but...y’know what? I got to thinking about that, and this is more pernicious than that.

“Jes’ drag ‘em inna house” is something that most non-dumb people who have watched some TV police procedurals can suss out for themselves as bad advice. It trips the BS detectors of all but the most clueless.

But this? This feels right exactly because it sounds like how ‘bad guy in the house’ scenarios play out in Hollywood. The bad guy is never a tweaker who’s after a watch and some jewelry and who bolts when they realize the homeowner is there and armed. (It’s also never the homeowner’s husband home a day early from a business trip.) It’s always some elite killer team or serial murderer who’s there specifically to get the homeowner. And why wouldn’t you want to hide and ambush those guys?

Darryl Bolke preaching the gospel of the gauge at Tac-Con '18. No running, diving, or cardboard armies of bad guys involved.

UPDATE: A clarification has been posted, which I am reproducing below.

"Editor’s Note: This column, running in the April 2019 Shooting Illustrated as “Stealthy Scatterguns,” spurred a few comments from readers who seem to have skimmed over the larger point of the article. At no point does this article suggest or intimate that homeowners ought to seek out criminals inside a home. At no point does this article suggest that homeowners ought to sneak up and shoot potential criminals unaware. At no point does the article say that stealth attacks are preferable to calling the police and holing up in a defensive position. It doesn’t say these things, because homeowners ought to call the police and retreat to a designated safe room. However, there are time when stealth and investigation remain prudent.

Unknown noises are a fact of life, and not every unknown noise will (or should) drive people to immediately retreat to a safe room while dialing 911. Law-enforcement officers will not be happy arriving to a suspected home invasion only to find that your storage bins in the garage fell over, particularly if this happens on a regular basis.

Additionally, even if a homeowner suspects a burglary or home invasion is taking place, children and other family members may be in other parts of the home. Getting children to a safe location is paramount before settling into a defensible location and announcing you are armed. Anyone who’s gathering information about an unknown noise or getting family to a safe spot inside the home would do well to move quietly.

We regret leaving room for incorrect inferences to be made, and that is entirely the fault of the editors."