Comparison

As recounted long ago, I once dropped my then-favorite camera off of North Harper Creek Falls. The camera amazingly survived (after being dried out), but began a slow decline until finally it stopped working. It took the best photos for a simple point-and-click. Since those days, I moved on to an SLR which takes near-professional quality photographs. But I always thought that some of my photos with my old Powershot S3 IS were among the best I ever took. For one thing, it took much better Macro shots than even my SLR camera. And while it was only 6 megapixels, unless I was trying to blow up the photo to large dimensions, the sharpness of the images were exceptional. I've been told that this was the case because of the unique lens that Canon utilized for that model.

Last week, I found one of these cameras on Ebay. Like-new condition. Flawless cosmetically, and flawless functionally. I took it on a jaunt to the mountains yesterday and snapped photos with it, and with my SLR. Guess which photos were taken by which camera. One camera cost $1000, the other $39, postage paid, from Ebay.

1:

Backbone Rock Falls.

2:

The Falls.

3:

Molly's Knob.

4:

Park Bridge in Hungry Mother State Park.

5:

Raccoon track, Hungry Mother State Park.

6:

Rhododendron hell, Hungry Mother State Park.

7:

Summit area of Molly's Knob.

8:

Backbone Rock Falls.

9:

Molly's Knob.

10:

Backbone Rock.

Touchstones

One reason I really enjoy looking at Ebay from time to time is that I'll find something really cool. I tried to land a copy of this some time back when I was working on writing THE FLOCK, but I couldn't find one. But last month I just happened upon one in a random search. It was very cheap, so I nabbed it.

Bulletin of the Florida Museum of Natural History.

I really do wish I'd had access to this when I was working on the manuscript--it wouldn't have made any real difference in the plot or construction of the novel, but it would have been nice to be able to look at the contents of this issue as I wrote. It would have served as a kind of touchstone, I reckon.

So now I have a copy. And although the book is long since published and a sequel will see print in 2013, I'll keep this slim bulletin by the computer. Who knows what dreams it will inspire?

The wing bone of Titanis walleri.

Adventures on Ebay

I landed a copy of Panic #10 via Ebay. This was the first comic I purchased since a crooked dealer tried to rip me off there. I had bought three copies of Panic from a fellow I will leave unnamed for now. The books had been graded at "VG", which means very good. When the books arrived they were flaking, coming apart, two of them had detached covers, and the one that still had its cover attached was because the spine was heavily taped. I, of course, immediately demanded a refund which he did not want to grant. Hilarity ensued.


I have to say that Ebay was really good during this minor tussle. They demanded that the dealer in question refund my money and they even took a portion of it from him and added it back to my Paypal account, the remainder to be refunded as soon as I returned the worthless books, which I did.


This latest issue I got (from a more reputable dealer) is classic Harvey Kurtzman material. I will assume that he did the layouts. Much of the material seems to have his hand in evidence. But the bulk of the book was illustrated by Will Elder and Jack Davis, both of whom did their usual exceptional work. Davis, in particular shows his talent, but I have to think that Elder was filing off the edges of his art here--I think that while Kurtzman and Gaines intended Panic to be pretty much a carbon-copy of Mad, they were making some minor moves to tone down the harsher aspects of the humor of Mad in favor of appealing to a wider audience...or at least a slightly different audience. Unlike Mad, the last few issues of Panic received the Comics Code Authority approval. But obviously the sales were not up to Mad's level and the title was snuffed out.

PANIC #10.