Food & Photos

As I am sitting here in lab during a loooong incubation, I decided to write about my dining experience last night. Yilin and I went to New Leaf Cafe, which is in Fort Tryon Park, and which I pass by very regularly. For years I have told myself that I would eat there one day. Well, that day was last night, and here is the review. Bon jour, good night, and thanks for all the bacon.

On another note, I have been a bit discouraged by the length of time it took to get my slide film developed for Thanksgiving (it arrived just before Christmas), so I bought the chemistry to do it myself. Despite never having developed slide film (I have only done B&W), it turned out well. Very well, indeed. But now there is a conundrum that I would face regardless: our scanner in lab, the only film-capable scanner that I have immediate access to, sucks as a film scanner. Allow me to demonstrate:

The following slide from my Mount Washington expedition was scanned in as is seen here:

This is a bit disappointing because the slide looks brilliant. So after about 30 minutes of Photoshop we get this:

This is much better in terms of tonal range, brightness, color cast, removal of dust, scratches, and moire, proper orientation, cropping, etc. But it still doesn't compare to the original (the vignetting you see is due to the low light in an early morning snow storm; removal of this would take probably another 30 minutes). Hence the need for a real film scanner, preferably one that can scan medium format (6x6 and 6x9) as well. Perhaps that is what I will do with part of my tax return...