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That’s pretty cool. I knew about woot but didn’t know they did that.

How often do the BoC come along and how do you watch for them?

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TUBES.

I love the glow of tubes! Building a nixie clock is another thing high on my want-to-do list.

I had planned on taking a shot of my Heathkit H8 computer (that still works as far as I know) and its corresponding H19 terminal and H14 printer, all built as kits way back when. But so far the search has proved elusive and would involve completely unloading and repacking a storage closet to access. I think I’m going to have to settle for a little later model.

I don’t have an early calculator, but somewhere in one of those boxes I do have a 4-bit processor (Rockell R6500, forerunner to the 6502 used in the original Apples) experimenter’s board.

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I’m a “bit” (my wife would laugh at that qualifier) of an electronics packrat, so the only challenges for me in this one are 1) I couldn’t just go archive diving; 2) deciding which piece of archaic “junk” to photograph; and 3) digging through boxes in storage to retrieve said junk!

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Yeah, I can imagine not being able to open it up in broad daylight!

Lens caps are cheap and the fact that it had a filter on it probably means that the front element was protected (otherwise it would probably look like the filter).

Nice find!

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So do you all think I got a good deal?

It’s $99.95 new on B&H, so if the glass looks good and everything works, then I’d say you did well!

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To contribute content, here are some pix from years past:

Pumpkins & kids from 2003 (back when all the kids were still home):

Hobo from 2007 & Minnie Mouse from 2008:

Jack Skellington & Edie Sedgwick from 2009:

In case you’re wondering, Edie Sedgwick is from the movie Factory Girl. Evidently, she dated Bob Dyan and my daughter’s a big Dylan fan and had just seen the movie. And no, that’s not a real cigarette. 🙂

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Some nice shots there, Zero, especially of the lights which are hard to get right.

Looks like you have a pretty Halloween-friendly neighborhood. The neighborhood we lived in in Raleigh when the kids were growing up was like that. The whole neighborhood did a Halloween-themed scavenger hunt for the kids every year.

Now, my youngest is 14, so right at the “shouldn’t be trick-or-treating but did anyway for the last time” age and there aren’t a lot of kids in my neighborhood. We had exactly two doorbell rings last night for a total of 6 kids. 🙁

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Congrats on both counts! Is this your first?

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Yep, what Elsinore said.

I forgot to mention that when I use DPP, I resize while creating the new JPGs, which is what’s required to get the file size down. I generate a 640-wide version for Fark and a 1024-wide version for my popup “large” image (unless it’s portrait oriented, in which case I use a max height of 900 for Fark and 1100 for popup large).

[CauseISaidSo]

so how do I reduce the file size on this to make it work in Fark?

There is a lot of software that will do that for you, but I’ll only talk about the two that I use and know:

1) I’m pretty sure I remember you saying you have a Canon Rebel, right? If so, you can use Canon’s DPP software. Just open the image, choose Convert and Save, and set the JPEG quality all the way down to 1. In most software when you do this, the quality really stinks, but DPP makes nice looking images even at its lowest quality setting (which is necessarily to get the file sized small enough). You can also optionally resize it at this time.

2) Method #1 is what I use most of the time. However, sometimes even at the 1 quality setting the file is still too large. In this case, I save it with a quality of 9 and then load it into Paint.NET. When you save it in Paint.NET, you can choose a quality percentage and it will show you the calculated file size, so just adjust until you get it below the threshold. It creates much smaller files than DPP, but at a small bit of quality sacrifice, which is why I don’t use it unless I have to. Oh, and it’s also free.

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Incidentally, I read the EF85mm 1.8 is actually sharper than the 1.2 L equivalent.

I’ve heard that, too. I’ve also heard the same thing about the 50mm 1.4 vs 1.2. If I remember right, people were complaining that with the 1.2 they had to stop back to 1.4 anyway to get a sharp shot so it wasn’t worth the extra cost. And people with the 1.4 were pretty pleased with it.

It’s been a while, so I’m not sure exactly where I read it. It may have been from reviews on B&H, or it may have been here: http://www.the-digital-picture.com.

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The list of caveats to this opinion is a mile long: I don’t have a full-frame or high-resolution camera (30D), I probably don’t have the sharpest eye when looking at the subtlies of photos (CA, sharpness and the like), and I don’t own nor have any experience with any prime lenses.

Given that, I own one non-L (EF-S 10-22mm) and two L lenses (EF 2.8 24-70mm and EF 2.8 IS 70-200mm). I also used another non-L for quite a while, the EF 28-135mm kit lens that came with the camera (I’ve since given that to my son). Aside from the wider aperatures, L glass looks to be a bit sharper, feels a lot sturdier in construction and is better insolated from the elements, but the non-L glass is otherwise perfectly fine.

I doubt any of this info is useful to you for this specific question, but there it is just in case.

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I didn’t want to start a new thread just for this, so since we’re already talking about astrophotography of a sort, check out the APOD for 9/29 if you haven’t already: An Airplane in Front of the Moon. What a lucky (or well-timed and planned) shot.

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You do excellent portraits.

I agree. In particular, I realy like the lighting on your unused favorite.

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Just don’t let it turn into this.

Hey now, that would make for interesting subjects for those not involved in the brawl. 🙂

How do I go about having someone send them in for me, if possible?

You just need to have someone else post them for you with the text “On behalf of kashari” or “OBO kashari” in the post.

I’d do it for you, but as a TFer yourself, you’ll probably want to ask another TFer so you don’t have to wait the 4 hour delay.

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