Trying to get back into my streams.place habit — I feel like I've been writer's blocked this year, and especially this summer.
Major highlights: Woke up early to get to USPS Agnew to mail my Olympus XZ-2 package and submit my USPS application and pay for the money order and fees. The overcast morning with slight humidity immediately made me feel like autumn started (technically starts tmrw). Circled around the small townblock before I gave up and pulled into the health center parking lot and saw the USPS office quite literally nestled in some trees along a path. Weirdly cozy. My helper was a bit blunt, but she was very fast. Drove back to Milpitas, got a car wash and a mid cup of coffee from Loop, and then headed home. Late breakfast of chicken soup with lots of chicken cuts, meatballs, and beef slices with fresh noodle — leftovers from yesterday. Grandma clearly worked very hard for the noodle soup! Pulled the trigger on the GF1, 12-32mm lens, and (Leica?!) electronic viewfinder on eBay, Amazon, and MPB respectively and should arrive middle of next week. About 110 + 140 + 93 = $343 — I was actually thinking of not getting the EVF because the Panasonic LVF1 was so overpriced at $130+, so this cheap Leica branded viewfinder (exact same port) was incredibly ironic. All items listed in excellent condition. I actually didn't want the GF1 specifically but after being burned on the LX3 (stuck f/8 aperture) and the XZ-2 (soft lens, esp. at infinity) and kind of expecting a relatively high baseline level of image quality I gave in. And it's interesting, that GF1 — and similar first-gen Micro Four Thirds sensors — were actually manufactured by Panasonic. Something about the color science or the color filter array makes them look quite punchy, even in darktable (which tries to start from as neutral as possible). I feel like color strength is pretty elusive. Other high-chroma(?) RAW files I've worked either have compromises in the camera itself (GX200, LX3 are pretty old) or is actually a product of the OEM base curve applied in-camera (editing Olympus JPEGs in darktable), or in OEM post-processing as part of a two-step workflow (editing Sigma X3F --> TIFF --> darktable).