Cattle grazing at Rancho Big Sur — on the Pacific Coast Highway between Monterey and San Francisco, Cal. Rolleiflex, Fuji Acros, Instant MYTOL.

Here are a couple of interesting threads from around the Net –

• In the “of local interest” category, a Flickr discussion in the Toronto group looks at where to get medium-format film (with an emphasis on C-41) processed in Toronto these days. Some of the labs that used to be reliable no longer are, whereas others have just plain closed. It’s good to get the “hive” opinion on this once in a while.
• Aaron Muderick comments on doing E-6 at home — he has a more reliable setup than I did when I ran the process in my own bathroom, but his motivation for going the DIY route for colour slides is the same.

… and a question: Are any of my readers (I get 50-100 hits a day, so I know you’re out there!) using Ubuntu Linux for serious digital darkroom work — scanning film, dealing with digital photos, etc.? I like the idea of Ubuntu, but the lack of Photoshop is a killer for me. I am comfortable with GIMP for simple tasks, but find it to have half the features and a quarter of the speed of Photoshop when handling identical tasks. In addition, Picasa crashes all the time under Ubuntu, and I can’t get my scanners to work properly. Any ideas?