i managed to waste another day, idling around midtown. i purchased a new lens for the DSLR…a fisheye lens, which looks lovely. it’s the type of lens used to make 360-degree panoramics, VR, immersive, buzzword… i first knew of these lenses when i worked at SI, and a photographer got access to the grounds at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia. this was before the tournament began, and the groundskeepers at the Masters were (justifiably, i think) unwilling to let anyone traipse across the grounds before play began. some phone calls and arm-twisting occurred and we got EXCLUSIVE ACCESS to the grounds, where a photog set up a tripod and a fisheye lens on what was probably a $25,000 digital camera ($25 today), and he scored some cool-for-its-time 360-degree click-and-drag stuff. a tiny triumph for the web site’s editor, at a time when the rest of Time Inc. looked at the web site (and the Internet) like it was a doomed fad.

i always wanted to make similar surround-scapes but never got around to investing in the right lens. this might not be *the* lens but it’s all good fun. i had a fisheye lens in my office at CNN but if I remember it right it only fit certain Nikon digital cameras of the pre-2005 Coolpix line.

fisheyes are basically toys,but i think i could do good stuff at (where else?) the big cemetery with the lens and a husky tripod.

i just gotta get my technique down, and i’ll try that out at home, or in comfortable climes.

i picked up another toy: a keychain camera. i actually was looking for a hat camera, which i will get eventually, but the keychain cam is cool, too, in no small part because i actually needed a new keychain. $65 is a lot of coin for a keychain, or is it? i had the same leather strap keychain since the 7th or 8th grade, when i bought it at a Flea Market in Tampa. it was 99-cents, and i bought it with my dad present. about a year ago the leather thing broke off, i have no idea where it landed, and all i have now is the castrated metal nub on which the strap once hung.

so i needed a new keychain, is what i’m saying, and why not get a keychain with a video camera built in?

and i got 10 rolls of film. all this at B&H. you go to B&H.

i can use the fisheye on the film SLR, too, but i doubt i’d waste the expense of film matter and developing on the mercurial mystery-innards of the film contraption until my skills reach those of the virtuoso. at present i am a virtuososo.