And So It Goes...

 

A panorama from east to west, looking southward on the mystical corner of Westfield and Westfield down in the heart of Broad Ripple Village proper.

Off to the left is the vacant spot where once stood Brugge Brasserie, site of blog meets, get-togethers, and who knows how many lunches. They closed early in 2020 for non-‘Rona-related reasons and swear they’ll reopen someplace with less rapacious rents real soon now.

Dead ahead is the vacant lot where the shell of the Broad Ripple Steakhouse stood. First place I went to eat in Indy. Bobbi took me there for dinner when I drove up from Knoxville that one weekend to see the exhibit of Roman art from the Louvre at IMA back in ‘07. I think the last time I was there was a birthday dinner with Shootin’ Buddy in ‘09 or ‘10. It’s been closed and boarded up for quite while.

Slightly right of center is where the teeny building was that was the original home of Boogie Burger, and then La Chinita Poblana.

It all got pushed over in the last few weeks. I don’t know what’s going in. Probably another four- or five-story “mixed use” apartment building. That’s just what the narrow lanes of Broad Ripple need, another hundred  units or so’s worth of commuters. To say nothing of the effects on a creaking old sewer system designed around single-family dwellings and a few businesses.

Deep Dish Delish

Bobbi has a profusely illustrated post up with her recipe for yesterday's dinner, which was...and I am not kidding here...the best food I've had in a long time. 

I stuffed myself until I could barely move and, in an unprecedented move, left most of a slice of corned beef on the plate so I could finish up the vegetables. The oyster mushrooms and big chunks of russet potatoes that had been stewing in the juices in the bottom of the pan were amazing. I nearly floated blissfully up into the air like that cartoon dog after he ate the biscuit.

Blogging has occurred...

...over at the other blog.

It was supposed to be a sort of Sunday Smith-esque piece but dinner last night was something of a distraction, as shall be explained.

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Hey, look!

RECOIL has put the entirety of my Girsan Regard review on the web, free to read. I hope it's as fun to read as it was to write!

Variations on a Theme

While preparing last Sunday's delicious dinner, Bobbi was already musing aloud about plans for today. I have to say, it smells and looks delicious.

Trying to not enquire about the timer every five minutes is difficult.

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"Rangefinder Style"

So, in my attempts to get better at street photography, I've been messing with what are called "rangefinder style" mirrorless cameras. Basically, mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras have sorted themselves out into two major types: "SLR style", which have an electronic viewfinder mounted in a hump at the top, where the prism housing of a single-lens reflex camera would be, and "rangefinder style", which either put the electronic viewfinder in the upper corner of the flat-topped camera body, like old rangefinder film cameras, or dispense with it altogether and just have you compose using the main screen like a point & shoot digicam.

Now, neither variety has the market cornered on retro styling. Sony's cameras, both the "SLR" a7 family and the "rangefinder" NEX/a6xxx cameras, aren't likely to be mistaken for film cameras. Similarly, Canon's EOS M family has both styles, but other than the M6, they are decidedly unretro. The M6, on the other hand... 

"Is that a film camera?" is a common question when carrying the M6. The other key to street photography is a lens generally in the 28mm to 50mm range (in full-frame 35mm terms), with 35mm being a common compromise length. Canon's EF-M line sports a compact 22mm f/2 pancake that is lightweight, sharp, sports an aluminum barrel and manual focus ring, and is very reasonably priced for its performance. It focuses as close as six inches and I used it for a lot of my photography in the dungeon-like basement at SHOT '20.

With the 1.6x crop factor of Canon's APS-C sensor, the lens has an equivalent field of view to 35.2mm in full-frame terms, which puts it right in the sweet spot for street photography.

While only one of Canon's EOS M cameras can be described as retro, pretty much all of Fuji's X-mount cameras echo the lines of film cameras of yore.

While Fujis are heavy on the aesthetic, there is a certain practicality to them as well. The better X-mount lenses, the XF line, have actual rings to turn to adjust aperture, and shutter speed is adjusted via a dial on the top plate. This defies the convention established by Canon's EOS film cameras and since followed by just about everyone else, which has these functions controlled by twiddling multipurpose dials to change numbers on a screen or in the viewfinder.

To get your street photography on, Fuji offers the XF 23mm f/2, which is a fast-focusing lens with rugged weather-resistant construction, outstanding Fuji optics, and a price tag to match, being a full two hundred dollars more than Canon's EF-M pancake. And it's the cheaper of Fuji's two 23mm offerings, with Fuji's XF 23mm f/1.4 giving you another full stop of aperture for almost double the price...oh, and you lose the weather sealing.

If you really want to get dissed for affordable 35mm equivalent lenses, though, you have to go to Sony.

 The Hasselblad Lunar is just a Sony NEX-7 in designer clothing. This isn't entirely a bad thing, as the NEX-7 was a Very Big Deal when it dropped. It's got a 24MP APS-C sensor, which was about as many megapickles as you could get in a crop sensor back in 2011. Along with the Olympus OM-D E-M5, the NEX-7 was the first mirrorless camera to start luring pros away from DSLRs.

Because it's an NEX-7 under the titanium and carbon fiber skin, the Lunar uses the Sony E-mount lens library, and the closest thing you can get to a 35mm equivalent crop-sensor lens from Sony is the Zeiss Sonnar T* 24mm f/1.8, which is only a third of a stop brighter than the 22mm Canon or 23mm Fuji, and comes with an eye-watering $1000+ price tag.

This whole thing with the rangefinder-style cameras to learn some street photography skills is just a fun side project for me, and the Lunar is essentially a toy and not something I use for work, so there's no way I'm dropping a grand on a lens for it. Fortunately Tamron makes a well-regarded 24mm f/2.8 for a fifth of the money. Unfortunately it's intended for full-frame cameras, so it's a little on the chonky side since it has to throw a bigger image circle, but it's still small and light compared to the bazooka-like superzooms common on DSLRs these days.

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Closed still...

On the one hand, The Vogue is part of the reason I avoid the heart of Broad Ripple on weekend evenings. Like the meat market bars on the strip, it's the crowded and noisy core of the entertainment district.

On the other hand, it's also right at the heart of the neighborhood's DNA, and seeing it shut down like this is painful. The signs say it's temporary. I hope so.

Automotif CCIII...

I used to strongly prefer the more sharply-creased "New Edge" lines of the later '99-'04 Fourth Generation Mustangs to the original, rounded '94-'98 SN-95 look, although my preferences have reversed over time (yes, even before I got the '94 GT).

That being said, this red New Edge GT that's been driven through some of the more tasteful portions of the Saleen catalog is a pretty sweet-looking ride. I wouldn't kick it out of the driveway.

...in Minecraft.

I'd somehow missed this last year, but it's neat as dammit.

A Pile of Cats

Huck and Holden get along well enough, I suppose. Especially when they're sleeping.

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Pop Will Eat Itself

There's a four-part article on Medium by freshly-dragged NYT journalist Donald McNeil Jr. that's worth a read for people with weird and mystical notions about how "the media" works, on both Left and Right. It's a lengthy but informative read.

Was it cancel culture? Or was it an opportunity for management to get rid of a troublesome worker? You decide!

Why Not Both Por Que No Los Dos GIF from Whynotboth GIFs

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Cartoon Villains

The New York Times has a piece up discussing a New Jersey lawsuit against Smith & Wesson.

"She places her gun in a red leather handbag and gets into her car. The gun, in her bag, sits in the front seat of the vehicle as she drives to work. She then brings the gun, still in the bag, to a meeting with colleagues at the office. She then takes the gun, in her bag, to lunch, where she sits at an outdoor cafe. After that, she goes to the gym — and the gun comes with her. Finally, she goes to a shooting range, where she takes the gun out and fires it at a target. “Nice pistol,” says the man next to her.

That’s the plot of a television commercial for Smith & Wesson.

However, almost everything in the ad would be illegal in at least 35 states if the woman did not have a concealed carry permit, which the ad ignores."

Funnily enough, I've never noticed a single Chevy commercial ever mentioning that it's illegal to operate their products in at least fifty states without a driver's license, yet I don't see the NYT clutching their pearls at General Motors' ad agency.

Anyhow, the point of the lawsuit isn't to win, it's to go on a hunt for something that, quite frankly, probably isn't there.

"Gun manufacturers have long been immune from liability for gun crimes and deaths because of federal laws that protect them. As a result, virtually no one has been able to mount a legal case that would allow for access to records from inside a gun manufacturer, be it internal emails, memos, notes or other material showing what gun industry executives say behind closed doors about the products they make.

But Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey — a longtime gun control advocate — decided to do something novel: In October, his attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, sent a subpoena to Smith & Wesson from the state’s division of consumer affairs as part of an investigation into advertising fraud, seeking a trove of internal documents."

I don't know what kind of Scooby Doo villain true confessions you think you're gonna find, there, Mr. Grewal, but having met a few firearms company executives over the years, I can tell you that they don't do a lot of mustache-twirling and evil cackling. I mean, you'd think if anyone would let their hair down and blurt out their Auric Goldfinger evil machinations, it'd be at an open bar mixer after a couple drinks, but thus far I have come up short on stunning revelations.

Still, though, I wouldn't want you rifling through my emails for stuff to cut-and-paste out of context, either. 

Would you want me rummaging through your stuff, Mr. Grewal? 

Hell, you probably have a book in your office right now that says "I...kill...puppies...tomorrow". Granted, it's the dictionary, but the words are in there, and in that order. Do you deny that? Have you pledged not to kill puppies anymore? Why not, Mr. Grewal?

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QotD: Bad Economics Edition...

"Populism is a lie and a logical sophistry. The very idea of the “struggle of the haves against the have-nots” presupposes the zero-sum fallacy that only a fixed amount of good things exist in the world, and I can only have more good things if I take them from you." -P.J. O'Rourke

Half-Assed Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I love my Peak Design 10L Everyday Sling. Heck, I love pretty much every Peak Design product I've used. Their design is great and you can tell that the people who design the gear are people who use the gear and know what it needs.

They're basically the Magpul of the photography gear world, right down to the Wish-tier knockoffs and lo-bujit imitators.

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Turbo noisemaker...

I've said before that British aircraft designers tend to produce aircraft that look one of two ways: beautiful or hideous. That's not entirely true, though, because there's a third category: so hideous that it's actually kind of cool-looking.

Hey, via a vid posted by EB Misfit, check out the Fairey Gannet!

The Gannet, which first flew in 1949, was designed as an anti-submarine and strike aircraft to operate off the Royal Navy's carrier fleet, which still numbered around a dozen ships at the time.

One of the interesting things about the plane is the powerplant. Called the "Double Mamba", it was basically two small Armstrong Siddeley Mambas side by side, driving a common gearbox, which then output the power to contra-rotating props. The pilot could selectively shut down one of the turbines and feather a prop to reduce fuel consumption and increase loiter time, which probably came in really handy in sub-hunting, to say nothing of the Airborne Early Warning variants.

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Hey, look!

Concealment issue #21 is out! On page eighteen, I give my honest opinion of the Bond Arms Roughneck in 9mm, which is actually a lot like my opinion of derringers in general. It's for the "Crap Shoot" column, which is a look at guns in the two-hundo-and-under price bracket.

I don't know if they're on newsstands yet, because I have a digital subscription; I'll have to go check at the local Walgreens today. You can get digital copies here.

Return to Normalcy

 I will not consider things to have returned to normal until Preston Safeway once again regularly stocks Charmin Sensitive and eight-roll packs of regular Bounty paper towels.

They’ve resumed a normal stocking and availability level of Charmin Soft and Charmin Strong, the rationing signs have been down for over a month at this point, and you can get all the Bounty Essentials you want, but regular Bounty still has not returned to my teeny corner grocer. Nor has the green-label Charmin, which is the Cadillac of bumwipe.

Maybe it will arrive with the first green shoots of spring.

Stewed in its own juices.

Bobbi has blogged up her recipe from last night's dinner, which was truly delicious.

I bought the fish sauce she mentioned when I was searching for garum, on one of my ancient Rome jags. It's enhanced several recipes lately with its yummy umami goodness.

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This is a cloud at which I could cheerfully yell...

"Which is all preface to a larger issue – the digital age’s fetish for large aperture lenses. Like most fetishes, it can’t be justified rationally. It makes no sense. In the digital age, when hyper ISO is a reality (10,000 ISO being common), there simply is no need for them. None, other than to pimp the one-trick pony that is ‘bokeh,’ which, to my eyes, is the single worst visual affectation brought about by digital capture. Suffice it to say that, as a general rule, the more you rely on bokeh to make your photographs interesting, the shittier the photographer you are. Full stop."

Sure, a little background separation is nice in certain types of portraiture, and the ability to make it vanish...mostly, at least...can be handy for some kinds of pedestrian product shots, but if you're running around shooting everything with the lens WFO, that's just poor craftsmanship.

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Blogging Has Occurred...

Over at the other blog...

"So the above photo has two Smith & Wesson rimfire revolvers, built probably about thirty years or so apart. The top one is a .22/.32 Heavy Frame Target, an I-frame revolver built probably sometime in the late 1920s. The lower one is a Model 34 Kit Gun, dating to the late '50s and built on the Improved I-frame.

If you look at the cylinders...specifically the rear of the cylinders...you will notice a difference. If you pop open the .22/.32 Heavy Frame, the rear of the cylinder looks strange to anyone accustomed to Smith & Wesson rimfire revolvers, because the charge holes are not recessed to accommodate the rims of the cartridges."

Click on the excerpt above to read the rest.

Incidentally, that copy of Hatcher's Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers I have is something of a prized possession. It's a nice leather-bound, gilt-edged reprint from '85. I stumbled across it while browsing at Powell's in Portland with Farmer Frank back in 2012. When I told him I didn't have a copy, he looked surprised and fronted me the dough for this one on the spot.