SDN Photography Talk Thread

[aerius]

I won the University/Campus contest for photography, winning places 1-7 (out of 11) respectively
The 7 photos are printed, framed and on the walls of the all new students' "lodge"/hut.

Congrats!

The Fuji x100 samples are sending my mouth watering away.

This camera was so close to perfect, if it had interchangeable lenses I'd buy it no question.
I can't believe they made it as a fixed lens camera.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

This camera was so close to perfect, if it had interchangeable lenses I'd buy it no question.
I can't believe they made it as a fixed lens camera.

That's because Fuji's marketing dept has no long range vision. They are incapable of doing anything that involves a system of lenses.

[The Grim Squeaker]

This camera was so close to perfect, if it had interchangeable lenses I'd buy it no question.
I can't believe they made it as a fixed lens camera.

That's because Fuji's marketing dept has no long range vision. They are incapable of doing anything that involves a system of lenses.

Then again, making a series of lenses for just one system (as is the case today with various incompatible mounts) is something only the large camera companies can afford.
A built in lens makes much more sense - it's easier to design around, saves space, weight, size, better profit margins for Fuji, allows the exceptional hybrid digital/optical/rangefinder viewfinder etc'.
Most people who buy a DSLR don't change lenses. They really don't. In fact it's painful to see people with a 1k+ camera and a 18-55 kit lens.

Now, the merits of Fuji shipping the camera with a low light prime only lens as opposed to something a bit more versatile (i.e zoom) is another argument, they're going after the Leica/rangefinder/Street photography/older enthusiasts crowd, and many people prefer the "purity" of a rangefinder like design.
It's certainly a much nicer lens than, say, the Sigma DP1/2/DP2X..

[Marcus Aurelius]

The Fuji x100 samples are sending my mouth watering away.

It's a nice camera, but the price... I really couldn't justify spending US $1000 on it when you can get something like the Olympus ZX-1 for half the price. If it was $700, it would be a different matter.

It has an APS-C sensor though compared to the small one the Olympus ZX-1 has.

I know and in absolute image quality the X100 is no doubt better, but the ZX-1 (and Canon S95) has a very useful zoom range combined with 'good enough' image quality at ISO 100-400. At high ISOs the X100 is undoubtedly much better, but I don't think that is enough of an advantage the warrant the lack of zoom and significantly higher price. If it was just one of those, it would be more acceptable.

In fact, if you look at the ZX-1 ISO 800 shots at DPReview gallery, they are quite acceptable for anything but huge prints.

I really like my film rangefinders, which I have a larger collection than I can reasonably use, so I totally get the idea of the X100. But perhaps exactly because I still use my film rangefinders, I don't get too excited about it, either. Especially not at that price.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Then again, making a series of lenses for just one system (as is the case today with various incompatible mounts) is something only the large camera companies can afford.
A built in lens makes much more sense - it's easier to design around, saves space, weight, size, better profit margins for Fuji, allows the exceptional hybrid digital/optical/rangefinder viewfinder etc'.
Most people who buy a DSLR don't change lenses. They really don't. In fact it's painful to see people with a 1k+ camera and a 18-55 kit lens.

Now, the merits of Fuji shipping the camera with a low light prime only lens as opposed to something a bit more versatile (i.e zoom) is another argument, they're going after the Leica/rangefinder/Street photography/older enthusiasts crowd, and many people prefer the "purity" of a rangefinder like design.
It's certainly a much nicer lens than, say, the Sigma DP1/2/DP2X..

Fuji already makes a set of cine lenses, with higher demands of sharpness, resolution etc. THey also have some interesting sensor designs. They in fact had a few interesting LTM mount Fujinon lenses which are of stellar quality. They even used to make cameras on the Nikon F mount with their own sensors.

The trouble is that they are incapable of bringing together all their strengths etc. to produce something that works. That's is their problem. Thus they relegated themselves to short term products.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Fuji already makes a set of cine lenses, with higher demands of sharpness, resolution etc. THey also have some interesting sensor designs. They in fact had a few interesting LTM mount Fujinon lenses which are of stellar quality. They even used to make cameras on the Nikon F mount with their own sensors.

The trouble is that they are incapable of bringing together all their strengths etc. to produce something that works. That's is their problem. Thus they relegated themselves to short term products.

Fuji also used to make SLRs in the 1970s under the Fujica brand. They had the M42 screw mount also used by Pentax, Pentacon (Hail DDR!), Ricoh, Cosina etc. at the time. In general the lenses were of very high quality, some say even better than the vaunted Takumar (Pentax) lenses.

So Fuji can certainly make very good lenses, but for some reason they have been reluctant to design their own camera systems. At the moment it's probably too late now that Sony and Samsung have already entered the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera market, and Canon and Nikon will probably do so as well once they see the right moment for them as DSLR market leaders to do it.

[Simplicius]

Suppose you want to shoot medium-format panoramic-format images. You could buy a pro camera: $5700 for a Horseman, $3600 for a Linhof (no lens) or a secondhand Fotoman body for whatever they're going for. You could spring for an old press camera ($150 on the cheap end) and a rollfilm back for several hundred more. If quality isn't as important, you could spend just $150-$300 for one of Lomography Inc.'s Eastern Bloc toys.

Or you could grab an old Kodak and go to town with glue, cardboard, and cheap hardware. The old 116/616 format allows 6x12 images when converted to 120 film. What do you need to do?

1. Mask the film gate. Black-painted strips of cereal box are enough for this; can be taped on for easy removal later.

2. Eye-lever viewfinder. More cereal box stock. The calculations for viewing angles need only trigonometry; drop-in masks solve the parallax problem. Tape that sucker on.

3. Frame counting. You can see the 6x4.5 frame numbers through half of the red window. Tape off the other half and that's all done.

4. Spool adapters. To make the camera take a smaller spool, fill the space with rubber washers, a few nails as pegs, and a bit of plastic to extend the winding key.

Thus:


Total cost: $20 for the camera, $8 for the bits and bobs that I didn't already have in the 'shop'. (Leftovers, fabric bits, hardware odds and ends: save them. They are your friends.) For that trivial sum I get a respectable f/6.3 anastigmat and a nice big format in a package that folds to 8" by 1 5/8" and weighs only 2 pounds fully loaded. Not too shabby.

(Rain for the next two days, but I'll post results. Promise!)

[Marcus Aurelius]

Suppose you want to shoot medium-format panoramic-format images. You could buy a pro camera: $5700 for a Horseman, $3600 for a Linhof (no lens) or a secondhand Fotoman body for whatever they're going for. You could spring for an old press camera ($150 on the cheap end) and a rollfilm back for several hundred more. If quality isn't as important, you could spend just $150-$300 for one of Lomography Inc.'s Eastern Bloc toys.

Congratulations for a nice self-made panoramic camera, but you forgot one option: the Horizon 205pc. It's $2590 new in the 'net, but I'm fairly certain you can get one cheaper by looking around a bit. Since it has a curved film plane and rotating lens, you can get very nice real Panorama shots.

I think the 205pc is a little overkill for most people, though, since you can get a new 35mm using Horizon S3 Pro for less than fifth of the price. The Horizons are no toys optically and the newer models are reasonably reliable mechanically as well.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

You probably could grab a Hasselblad XPAN +45mm lens and get panoramic shots out of 35mm film.

[Simplicius]

Congratulations for a nice self-made panoramic camera, but you forgot one option: the Horizon 205pc. It's $2590 new in the 'net, but I'm fairly certain you can get one cheaper by looking around a bit. Since it has a curved film plane and rotating lens, you can get very nice real Panorama shots.

I think the 205pc is a little overkill for most people, though, since you can get a new 35mm using Horizon S3 Pro for less than fifth of the price. The Horizons are no toys optically and the newer models are reasonably reliable mechanically as well.

Heh, this is something like the Geo Metro of panoramic cameras next to all those 'Vettes, but I'm still going to joke about drag racing it from stop lights. Main limitations are 1/50th max. theoretical shutter speed, a lens that's a little tight for the format at near distances, not-readily-interchangeable lenses for those who like that capability, and a coarsely-graded focusing scale.

It works, though, and the lens is a good performer even without coatings and somewhat open. (I don't know what design; Kodak made it in-house so it's branded but not identified.) There is a light leak somewhere I need to ferret out.

Excuse the weird image quality; I just got VueScan and am not finding it particularly intuitive.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm using Vuescan myself, and sometimes I grit my teeth at the times when somehow either it doesn't talk to my Scanner too well or some weird bug with the scanner drivers.

Other than that, controlling color is ... sometimes frustrating.

[J]

It's surprising what one can find at garage sales every now & then.
This little beauty now joins our Pen-FT in the Olympus cult camera family.






It's in slightly rough shape, the motor drive socket cover is loose and taped in place, there's a bit of corrosion on the top cover from the flash holder thingy and the light meter is off by a stop. Nothing we can't deal with.

[aerius]

I found the service manuals for our Olympus OM-1 so I could fix the light meter and clean things up a bit inside and let me tell you, it was an adventure. Now I'm pretty good at fixing mechanical things and I'm used to working with small parts from my time in the electronics industry, but man, I wasn't prepared for fixing mechanical cameras. These things are freakin' complicated and have tons of tiny little parts. Even worse, to get to the part I needed to adjust I had to take half the camera apart so I had a couple dozen tiny little screws & parts laid out on my desk. Putting it back together was even more fun since some of the stuff was spring loaded and I had to fiddle with the darn things to get everything to fall into place. Basically, there went my entire afternoon.

What I wonder about now is how they built the camera in the first place. There'd have to be a ton of hand assembly work since it was built in the early 1970's so it kinda boggles my mind that they managed to crank out millions of them. There's gotta be an entire day's worth of work in assembling these cameras or at least a full day's shift, they must've had hundreds of workers just sitting there putting together cameras all day. That's gotta suck.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I found the service manuals for our Olympus OM-1 so I could fix the light meter and clean things up a bit inside and let me tell you, it was an adventure. Now I'm pretty good at fixing mechanical things and I'm used to working with small parts from my time in the electronics industry, but man, I wasn't prepared for fixing mechanical cameras. These things are freakin' complicated and have tons of tiny little parts. Even worse, to get to the part I needed to adjust I had to take half the camera apart so I had a couple dozen tiny little screws & parts laid out on my desk. Putting it back together was even more fun since some of the stuff was spring loaded and I had to fiddle with the darn things to get everything to fall into place. Basically, there went my entire afternoon.

What I wonder about now is how they built the camera in the first place. There'd have to be a ton of hand assembly work since it was built in the early 1970's so it kinda boggles my mind that they managed to crank out millions of them. There's gotta be an entire day's worth of work in assembling these cameras or at least a full day's shift, they must've had hundreds of workers just sitting there putting together cameras all day. That's gotta suck.

[aerius]

Yeah...that looks like the kind of work that would drive me insane after a couple weeks.


Anyway, we picked up a used film scanner from the local classifieds and let me say that getting the damn thing calibrated was a complete pain in the ass. The HP software it came with was completely useless so I got a copy of Vuescan and taught myself how to use the blasted thing, turns out the standard calibration procedure requires a bunch of test targets and files that I need to pay for so screw that. So I ended up taking a bunch of negatives & sets of good prints then scanning them and tweaking the settings till they matched, then saving the settings for each film into files. This was not my idea of fun. But now that it's done I can pretty much scan and get good colours every time, gotta tweak the brightness & contrast a bit though since some of my exposures were a bit off. Now I know why there's a giant market for colour management workflow stuff.

[J]

We recently finished our first roll of B&W film...and I had my picture taken by a gentleman with an 8x10 camera.
"Ok, hold still! It's a 1/5 second exposure and the depth of field is like 3cm!"
I think it took him close to ten minutes to get everything unpacked, setup, metered and focused, and he was working pretty fast.

[Marcus Aurelius]

We recently finished our first roll of B&W film...and I had my picture taken by a gentleman with an 8x10 camera.
"Ok, hold still! It's a 1/5 second exposure and the depth of field is like 3cm!"
I think it took him close to ten minutes to get everything unpacked, setup, metered and focused, and he was working pretty fast.

Yep, that's pretty fast for a view camera. 4x5 might be slightly faster, but not much. Now, imagine carrying one of those things around while you search for the best shooting location on foot, and you know why photographers assistant was a real job at one point (well, that and loading those roll film backs for wedding photographers a bit later). Of course, quite a few of the classic landscape photographers still did a lot of it by themselves. Before sheet film was invented you even had to haul part of the lab with you, because glass plate emulsions usually had to be developed pretty soon after exposure.

[J]

Yep, that's pretty fast for a view camera. 4x5 might be slightly faster, but not much.

There was another gentleman in attendance with a folding 4x5 camera. It didn't have the full range of movements found on the 8x10 and it was actually light enough to be used handheld, which he did. He was actually able to deploy it pretty fast, it just flipped right open and after twiddling a few knobs the camera was all set to go, I didn't time him but I'm guessing around 3-5 minutes from folded in its case to ready to shoot. I don't think he took any pictures of me though.

It was a pretty interesting day, we've determined that camera club people are weird, in a good way. Everyone decided to shoot B&W film for some reason and nearly everyone had multiple cameras around their necks. And there was a Polaroid camera cult or something, I think there were 4 or 5 people in our group with the things. A photo from the meet taken with our Pen FT, using yes, B&W film.

[aerius]

So yeah, not much going on these days, I have a half dozen rolls of film that I need to get around to scanning at some point but it's summer, it's nice outside and I don't feel like dicking around with Photoshop. I discovered that my scanner hates Velvia 50, it's too dense to get good scans off of it so I still have to get those done by someone else, seems to scan everything else just fine though.

On the camera front, we've ordered up a bunch of filters on ebay for shooting B&W film, they're all stuck in the mail thanks to the postal strike but that's fine since we're in no big hurry. The Olympus OM-1 is finally dialed in and I've now got a wide angle lens for it, plus a telephoto zoom which is also stuck in the mail, but that's ok since 99% of my stuff is done with a wide or normal lens anyway, the zoom was just screaming bargain that had to be bought. The OM and Pen-FT are our main cameras now, the digital's gathering dust and only getting used for snapshots and stuff that needs to go out fast.

On the digital side we went to the spring camera show and played around with a bunch of cameras, the Fuji X100 was awesome. It's a photographer's camera, it just works amazing for taking pictures and it's so simple & nice to use. Make an interchangeable lens version and I'd gladly pay double the price for the damn thing, it's that good, the fixed lens is the only thing stopping me from buying one. On the DSLR side, Pentax is where it's at for me, I can actually use their cameras without reading the manuals and figure out how to set all the basic functions just by playing with it for a couple minutes. Best user interface, bar none. Oh yeah, and their DA and FA Limited lenses are dead sexy, they're like quality Zeiss or Leica lenses instead of the plastic junk made by everyone else. If I ever get around to buying a DSLR I know which company I'm getting it from.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm seriously waiting for the Ricoh M-mount module. It might be what I need to use my M-mount lenses with, in lieu of a digital rangefinder option that continues to be exorbitant.

[J]

We heard completely unsubstantiated rumours from a Fuji representative at the show that they have an interchangeable lens version of the X100 in the study phase which will come to fruition if the X100 sells well. If this is true, and I dearly hope it is, it won't take long at all for people to stick all kinds of lenses in front of it.

[phongn]

On the digital side we went to the spring camera show and played around with a bunch of cameras, the Fuji X100 was awesome. It's a photographer's camera, it just works amazing for taking pictures and it's so simple & nice to use. Make an interchangeable lens version and I'd gladly pay double the price for the damn thing, it's that good, the fixed lens is the only thing stopping me from buying one.

We heard completely unsubstantiated rumours from a Fuji representative at the show that they have an interchangeable lens version of the X100 in the study phase which will come to fruition if the X100 sells well. If this is true, and I dearly hope it is, it won't take long at all for people to stick all kinds of lenses in front of it.

I got to play with one on a city bike tour - the thing is marvelous. It feels so good in hand - it reminds me a bit of my CLE. I might just have to sell a bunch of my older and less-used stuff for an M-mount X100.

On the DSLR side, Pentax is where it's at for me, I can actually use their cameras without reading the manuals and figure out how to set all the basic functions just by playing with it for a couple minutes. Best user interface, bar none. Oh yeah, and their DA and FA Limited lenses are dead sexy, they're like quality Zeiss or Leica lenses instead of the plastic junk made by everyone else. If I ever get around to buying a DSLR I know which company I'm getting it from.

They've been catching up in sensor performance, too. Their K5 is apparently quite the performer. I just hope Ricoh treats them better than Hoya did.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I got to play with one on a city bike tour - the thing is marvelous. It feels so good in hand - it reminds me a bit of my CLE. I might just have to sell a bunch of my older and less-used stuff for an M-mount X100.

I would love to have Fuji's jpeg processing with my M-mount lenses.

But something tells me that it'd be a pipe dream.

[Marcus Aurelius]

They've been catching up in sensor performance, too. Their K5 is apparently quite the performer. I just hope Ricoh treats them better than Hoya did.

That's because they switched back a Sony designed sensor after the K-7. The Samsung sensor used in K20D and K-7 was pretty noisy compared to the latest Sony sensors.

[phongn]

It's been awhile since I've last picked up the camera much but a friend asked me to document her wedding rehearsal - and it reminded me of how much I enjoy the 50/1.4. I rented a 100/2; maybe I'll go pick up some tasty Tri-X for my film body and see what I can play with.