Rocco Galatioto, nice photos and good food

These have been posted before but they are worth  repeating. Just a whim.

Apple Launches a New MacBook with a 2880 x 1800 Resolution Apple laptops are a favorite of photographers already, but they just got a whole lot better. The latest Mac Book brings an absolutely incredible resolution to the table. The 220ppi Retina Display boasts a screen resolution of 2880 x 1800 - the highest yet available on a laptop or in the usual monitors for that matter. WOW! The MacBook alsot features plenty of processing power thanks to a quad-core i7, 16GB of RAM, and GeForce 650M graphics. It also sports a 768GB flash drive, enabling it to play up to four 1080p videos at a time, should you desire to do so. You can pick up the new MacBook Pro directly from Apple with prices starting at $2,199 and increasing from there based on your preferred configuration.

Spiratone on West 32nd Street was a Mecca for those of us who needed all sorts of gadgets and also some interesting optics. This very cheap fish eye had interchangeable mounts and  only 3 F stops but it was very fun to use photography must be fun otherwise why engage in it. This was called a semi fish eye and interestingly enough in a DX format digital SLR it covers the entire frame. These shots date from the seventies and were shot on Ektachrime that I developed myself using Unicolor chemicals and mounted on Spitatone mounts and mounter. Not bad cosidering their age,

Schneider Kreuznach has said it will begin making lenses for mirrorless systems, and has shown renderings of a 14mm F2.0 lens for the Micro Four Thirds system. The move will make Schneider one of the few independent lens makers building autofocus lenses for mirrorless systems, following the launches of lenses for Micro Four Thirds and Sony NEX from Sigma and a NEX 18-200mm from Tamron. As part of its annual review, Schneider says it will introduce a range of lenses for mirrorless cameras 'this fall,' which we're expecting to mean around the Photokina show in Cologne, this September. ( via Photoscala)

These Eltachromes form the middle eighties are from the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn before it also became gentrified and lost much of it's charm.

You have to be nuts to trust any of these on line hosting sites and so called clouds. The way to do it back up, back uo and then back up. Never let your files leave your site. How many companies are left from the time when digital took hold? How many have disappeared. Now this: Photo hosting site Fotki has said all its subscribers’ photos, galleries and comments are safe and that the site will continue, following cash concerns. Subscribers will also be able to download their full-size original images or have the option to pay ‘a small fee’ for continued storage or faster, FTP downloads. Founder and owner Dmitri Don also said the support of the Fotki community has ensured the site’s future. The company had previously asked subscribers for payment towards the hosting costs of the large original files, leading to accusations of holding images to ransom (though Don stresses the images presented on the site were never threatened). In response to this feedback, Fotki has now made...

The South street area before it became  the South Street Seaport afforded great photo opportunities. I shot a lot of slides there. These were all shot on Ektachrome 64 and the  35mm F2 Summicron. I would go on Saturdays when the Fulton Fish Market was close but it's rich redolence was always present.

These three scans show the hidden tricks that time plays on color slides, Some ones keep their colors some don't. In the latter case, one must convert them into black and white. This does add a certain quality to the photos. Many times it makes them better; at least better than the faded slides from which  the images are retreived.

These are some of my earliest "serious"[photographs. I was fascinated with Washington Square Park as I still am. It was and is a source of great photo opportunities. Here I used my first "good' camera, the canon FT and the only lens I has, the 50mm F 1.4. The film is 3M slide film made in Italy by Ferrania. It had a speed of 50. The colors have held up rather well.

Salemi, a wonderful mountain town in north east Sicily is one of those real gems that one would pass up unless one knows about them.. It is blessed with a first class municipal administration that has made it a joy to live and visit.