A rant on the whole ’support local’ ideal

I’m in the mood to rant.

I went in to Radio Shack today to look at momentary contact and sliding switches for my vertical shutter release mod on my Winder ME and was pleasantly surprised to not find what I was looking for.

In Iowa, it’s sort of a big thing to buy local to keep shops in town (even international chains from my point of view) as it provides jobs and keeps the towns alive. It’s also a growing trend nationally, but with the advent of the internet, buying things online and having them shipped to you makes life easy.

I’m all for buying local, but what I’m not for is shops not carrying the items I’m looking for. What’s the point of buying local if I can’t get what I need locally? I guess this is probably going to end up as a rant against Radio Shack, but they used to carry far more electrical components than they do now. I don’t think there are any other stores in town that someone can walk in to and find a wall of resistors, capacitors, etc. My google search turns up a list of distributers who work on large scales, but there is some promise, Iowa Radio Supply, who just happen to be less than a mile from my house.

So where did Radio Shack go wrong? I don’t really know, I do know that they did come in handy while I was in Virginia Beach for work, well at least for one part we needed.

Because I couldn’t find two simple switches (which Radio Shack does carry, just not in the form factor I need), I have to spend a couple of hours looking through Mouser to find the right part. Mouser is huge and the carry pretty much anything electronic you can think of that might be needed.

I’ve Reached the Finish Line

Hot Air Balloons at the Tanager Fest Balloon Glow

I can’t believe I was able to finish my sofobomo before the end of the weekend, especially when I started taking shots yesterday morning. I’m kind of relieved that it’s done, but I’m also 50-50 on whether I like the book or not. It’s not what I originally wanted to do for a theme, but you can’t always do what you want. I have ideas for next year already, unless I do them alongside my experimentation with new photographic techniques I am picking up by reading the internets.

The book can be found here. Definitely let me know what you think by throwing a comment in my direction. I’ve gone through a couple of the books already complete and there are some good ones.

Blind Man’s Arrow

Star Trails – Matsell Natural Bridge Area – Bronica ETRS

I got to thinking today, mainly since my student loans are killing my income, of selling the Bronica and using the money to buy food. Don’t know how I feel about that, since I really like the camera and have used it quite a bit when I’ve had the film for it. I have one more roll of Ektachrome 64T that I think would be good for star trails, assuming I start them in complete dark and let it expose for a couple of hours with a polarizer on the lens.

Saturday is the start of my SoFoBoMo project (limited since I have less than 30 days left). I think I’m going to sort of expand upon the new idea to include other cultural events around Cedar Rapids. There is evidently some balloon glow Saturday night as some park that should be interesting. Erica mentioned going to the Farmer’s Market with me to take pictures, but I was going to shoot all digital for the project and if she goes, she gets her D80. I guess I can roll with the point and shoot Sony of hers. I can assume that most all of the people who would be reading my SoFoBoMo book wouldn’t enjoy looking at crappy scans from Target.

I did get a chance to try out the overlapping frame panorama technique when the family went to Palisades for a picnic. I took a shot of one of the foot bridges and have no idea if it’ll come out well, but at least it was an attempt.

In crazy engineering land, I have a couple of personal projects I am currently working on.
 - Pentax Winder ME Vertical Shutter Release
 - Controllable Macro Focusing Rail (with Eric)
 - Panoramic View Camera
 - Bronica ETRS Remote Flash Trigger Bracket

I just thought of the vertical shutter release idea today, to make shooting vertical with my Pentax ME Super’s easier. All I need to do is get a momentary contact switch and a small sliding switch (on/off) and create some sort of housing I can attach, probably mold some fibreglass. I already took the winder apart, so I know where I need to solder the wires to get it to work. I’m pretty excited for this because it’s a relatively cheap project