–Got the Cremina running and adjusted the pressurestat. Ready to go, though Great Infusions isn’t ready for me yet.
–Played with scans again. Seems like the latest scans hardly need adjusting in Lightroom, whereas the early ones needed lots. Could just be me. I looked briefly into tone curves, the apparent heart of Lightroom, and gave up quickly. Not something I’ll be good at for a long time.
–49ers lost. No longer got the magic.
–FINALLY got all the slides scanned. Vuescan continued to give me fits, but its Black Point slider really got the fog out of the photos–to the point where some of them will need almost no editing.
–Played a lot more with the scanner. Thought I had decided on Silverfast after doing a lot of playing around, especially with three pictures of Diann and me at Duke in December of 1968 (totally unremembered occasion). Turns out, after redoing them inVuescan, the Silverfast pics were garishly awful. That’s been happening a lot. Further discovery: rather than trying to guess how much saturation Lightroom will add to a jpg, just save it as a tiff. Three times the size, but impeccable quality. One further discovery: Vuescan has several different color levels–auto, white balance, tungsten, portrait, landscape, etc.–and it shows you how they will look before you scan. Many are identical, but some are much more (or much less) red. So, I think I might finally be almost ready to do everything over again with Vuescan –> Lightroom –> tiff. But to reiterate: it really is appalling how something can look good after a lot of LR adjusting, then look terrible the next day after I learn some new twist. Kind of like looking back on my abutilon pics: most are WAY too saturated and contrasty. Interestingly, my La Selva Beach pics seem mostly to hold up. Golden years, I guess.
–Great Infusions sold a Cremina. Further: I was all set to write to Orphan Espresso and tell them about my great find of right-sized group-to-boiler o-rings. Then I tried their too-small one again, and it went on and stayed. I give up.
–Went to UPS for Chemex filters, Cremina o-rings (perfect fit), and Osprey pack. Pack is large, has a bit of odor to it, straps are stiff, and it lacks a variety of pockets (one gig one with front/back divider. Still, great color and capacious.
–Played around a lot with scanner. Vuescan is a mess for me–tiff, dng, raw tif, dng tif, blah blah blah. Put three simple scans into Lightroom: one was dark and could not be made usable; one was okay, one was better but was covered with a haze or film. I gave up and went back to Silverfast (which came with the scanner). Got a great scan first time, which made me realize how red-tinged the Vuescan scans were. I suspect it’s adjustable, but I think I’ll just stay with Silverfast.
–Took Grace while getting bagels at New York Bagel Cafe, then to Bel Air.
–Went to Rite-Aid for RSV and Pneumococcal vaccinations.
–Played around a lot with the scanner. Found by accident that a jpg straight out of the scanner appeared to have better resolution than a dng brought into Lightroom then saved as a jpg. I dread getting deep into all the pixels/inch, bits/pixel crap, but I may have to.
–Went to UPS to pick up Cremina steam poppet, then Bel Air for coffee and cheese.
–Took a shower and shave.
–Paid $6,842 Sac County property tax (both installments).
–Had a bad night of diarrhea, which continued into the morning. Hope I’m not getting something.
–Heard from Jasleen Agroia in Dr. Firoz’ office. She recommended pneumococcal vaccine PCV20, sent in order to Rite-Aid.
–Made a pizza for dinner. Spread the dough thin on a round pan, overcooked it. Barely edible. Live and learn.
–Ordered Viton o-rings from The O-Ring Store in a realistic size for using on the Cremina group-to-boiler connection. Will never understand why Orphan Espresso uses (and sells) those seriously undersized o-rings. I believe I’ve installed one of those, correctly, the first time, once. We’ll see.
–Compared the TTArisans 75/2 lens with Helios 58/2 and Contax 85/1.4. No comparison. Helios was more saturated, Contax much sharper. The coatings are good–it doesn’t flare in my night shot–but back in the box it goes.
–Dropped off a Monterey BMW FedEx package with my signature verification signed (W.S. and William). It was sent to me a while ago, but I didn’t look at it closely enough to figure out what they were asking.
–Dropped off Matteo Diolaiti’s birthday gift at UPS. Picked up a second cheap Leica at UPS and managed to get the (NON-3D) button off intact. Put it on the SL2-S. Also picked up the TTArtisans 75mm/f1.5 copy of the legendary Zeiss lens. Weighs a ton, great ergonomics, takes a sharp picture. Bokeh to be determined later when (if) the abutilon blooms.
–Stopped at Smart & Final for a bunch of stuff. Drove the right rear wheel of the Beemer over a curb on the way out. No apparent damage.
–Didn’t do much of anything today. Grace is in an extremely foul mood.
–Had a bad night after the flu vaccination. Couldn’t get to sleep, a couple of shivers, minor aches. Went back to bed after breakfast, got up at 1:00, more or less okay.
–Put the Cremina mostly together, waiting for a steam poppet.
–Pizza for dinner.
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