Prepare to have your fucking head blow’d off. Well, if you’re a photo geek. Light acceleration with electromagnets. I’ll take one. Analogue is back… in the terabytes.

Hi all, just wanted to share the absolute fastest way I have found to clear up the yellowing of lenses due to rare earth content. I’ve cleaned up several Takumars and now a 50/2 Wetzlar rigid ‘Cron with this lamp. After witnessing the speed in which it just cleaned up this Leica beauty from 1970, I was compelled to share this technique. For whatever reasons, it is able to clear up the yellowing of lenses  FAST. Like in all of 24 hours. Not a week of sitting in the windowsill trying to harness the sun.

So here’s the secret tool.

The JANSJÖ work lamp from Ikea. Item number 101.287.34

It’s an LED unit, but evidently puts out a highly focused beam of UV light that you can bend down right into the barrel of your lens. Seriously this thing works awesome. I’ve tried other UV bulbs to some good results but still those take days to undo the yellowing of decades of the radioactive breakdown. This lamp will cure it overnight. 2 nights, and you’re back to like new.

Hope this is helpful to someone… other than just Ikea’s lamp sales.

Hooked up on a Teac A-4300SX for Fates’ Florida animation studios audiophile room today. Great sounding ‘prosumer’ unit. The real find was the old mustachioed guy’s collection of 20+ reels of rare recordings of everyone from Howlin Wolf to Leon Redbone. Sounds awesome blasting out of the DynaKit system.  Keep listening analogue fans; as the ad below says, don’t let the music stop!

‘

Random R-D1 snaps with Russian Glass from 1959 (Jupiter 3 & 12 ). Click thumbnail for big size and slide show:

Not since cakewrecks baby: Crappy Taxidermy

I wanna have a pint with agency guys that championed this one. “Just sayin’”

If you have to ask about these… you don’t want to know.

R-D1 with CV 21/4 (terrible low light lens btw) shots (click one to start slide show):

So I finally found an affordable Epson R-D1.  That’s a digital rangefinder camera. What’s fun is you can easily trick people into thinking it’s a film camera. It definitely is a challenge to use, but pushes the way you think about framing… and unmistakably makes you more deliberate in your clicks. One real bit of odd history with this camera is that it was announced in 2004, and subsequently has been released twice more (R-D1s & R-D1x) without ANY UPDATES to the taking sensor! It is a cult classic for that reason alone.  Read about the R-D1 here in an early article.

Anyway, been snapping some stuff with it. Here are some early shots (click one to start slide show):

Yeah, yeah you’ve got the perfect network pitch for a cop show ever concocted. You used the they fight crime generator endlessly to generate the perfect ethnically and world-view-opposed team up ever seen. You’re thinking your idea makes The Wire seem like Elmo’s World. Whatever dude. It’s all shit compared to this:

Guerilla Group 8 : ???????????

This Japanese cop show was built around Mitsubishi’s current car line up, so you know it’s good.  Basically it looks like the guys at Mitsu paid the film crew to blow up a bunch of Toyotas, and drive their showroom floor around looking  1980′s good (in the early 90′s mind you).

It had all the right goods to promote it. You could never hope to reach the level of brand-synergy that this show had… show why bother trying? Just give it up and go back to your Bromantic Comedy because that genre still doesn’t have it’s perfect creation just yet.

Why does Nortega care? No reason beyond the fact that I own a set of the super cool and rare Volk Group C rims pictured below on the gullwing-doored Mistubishi Starion… and would like to have the toy gun and badge set even further down.

See the rest of this post >>

Print & Digital Ad for Guinness served at the Perfect Pint bars in Manhattan. Click for larger size:

… and below is the original photo minus the text & graphics. Click for larger size: