six:six:flight

six:six:flight, originally uploaded by monkey_pushover_tree.

Seagull in flight over Cockatoo Island; scanned in by new "Canonscan 8600F". This was just with its default settings, no second pass scans to remove dust or scratches, if anything i like seeing these. I'm also pretty happy on how these shots came out. It was an overcast day, and having 100iso film wasn't going to be very useful, so I pushed it to 400iso. The lucky film seems to be able to handle this quite well.

As for the scanning, I was pretty happy. Each image scanned in at 1200dpi; no where near the maximum, but good for test. Each too about 2-3mins to do. I didn't use any of the build in dust removal, simply cause it was late and well couldn't be bothered. The only downside seems to be the autodetect of image locations. It kept thinking it was 6x7 format. Changing to full manual and off thumbnail sorted this all out; then it would see 6x6 and slight adjusting sorted it. This could just be the film type, as there isn't much of a gap between frames or a color difference. But hey, I'm really happy with it so far.

red:rocks:desert

red:rocks:desert, originally uploaded by monkey_pushover_tree.

What a crazy couple of weeks; Sydney -> LA -> Las Vegas -> San Fransisco -> Sydney... Oh the joy of a modern workplace and global organisation. To be far though, it was fantastic. Las Vegas was for our user conference which was crazy as every. I mean it was work, but hey, there was a lot of fun that was occurring too. For the most part, it was between 2-4 hours of sleep each night, so when it finally came to a break I was shattered ( I think I'm still catching up on the missed sleep ). Still one of the highlights was getting out of Vegas and heading to Red Rocks. It was such a joy to replace the sounds of one arm bandits and people winning sums of money with the crunching of stones and the slight desert breeze.

But it was hot and dry; overhearing someone about cleaning their camera will give you an idea:
"Usually I just breathe on the lens and give it a wipe; breathing out here doesn't fog anything up".

So we trekked around red rocks doing the white rocks loop, amongst other things totaling about 6 miles. During this time I drank about 4 liters of water; most of which evaporated from my body before I could release it in traditional means. But it was worth it, there is nothing better than this place. Its dry dusty and yet teaming with life; compared to the unrealistic creation that is Vegas, I'd welcome going here at any time.