HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

So you can stay on top of who is in the lead!  heh.  http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

Be safe and all that!

Score! Retina II and III Accessory viewfinder 35 / 80!

Yes.

I'm actually a bit excited about this wackiness!

Andy, http://www.flickr.com/photos/andychrome/ tipped me off to a pile of vintage Kodak camera parts at an antique mall that we both visit on occasion.  Turns out they had a bunch of hilarious, and mostly useless items. My eyebrow raised at a Kodak Retina Reflex, which was broken up pretty badly, and there were a bunch of plastic Pony cameras that were of no interest.

Then, underneath, in a large tin box...  I began digging through some of those old yellow boxes.  Hoods, series IV filters...  A really crazy Medalist macro back with pack film window and ground glass focuser.  That was weird.  I happened upon a perfect 135mm for reflex.  It was in the original bubble, and in the original yellow box.  It even had the instructions.  I started wishing I got into Retina reflex.  They only wanted $25 for it.  No, really!  There were original manuals for Retina IIIc, and others. Just got better and better.  Then I unearthed a little brown case with something really odd inside...

The Answerrrr.

The question, of course is, "How do you frame a shot with one of those horribly inconvenient alternative lenses that you attach to the Retina rangefinder?"  (Yah.  probably not that common a question.)

There are two mysterious lenses that come as accessories to the Retina.  One is an 80mm telephoto, and one is a wide angle 35mm.  The really weird part is that they aren't even entire lens systems.  The Retina II or III cameras allow you to unhook the front lens group with the turn of a small bayonet mount, and replace the front HALF of the lens with one of these specially designed alternative groups.  It might be pretty wacky, but it works a lot better than some horrible thing you screw on the front of a complete lens.  Weirder, you have to have adapter lenses of the correct manufacture.  A Schneider equipped Retina has a particular mount that will not allow a Rodenstock front group of any kind, and vice versa  Just that they were bizarre enough to design three front groups is pretty interesting.  That there is a set for each lens manufacturer, and that they are actually different...  I think these guys had a lot of spare time.  Of course, the alternative lenses probably don't perform as well as the native 50mm lens, but they do pretty amazingly well.  It is kinda wrong, really.

Problem is, if you install one of these weird lens fronts on a "small c" Retina, there is no way to know where the edge of the picture is!  The only frameline in the viewfinder is that of the regular 50mm lens.

Aside from looking gadgety, this accessory viewer gets the situation under control.  It has masks for 80 and 35mm that flip by a lever on top, and a knob at the back tilts the viewer downward for accurate framing at closer distances.  It also turns both ways with markings for feet in one direction and meters in the other.  Very cool!

Here it is with the 80mm Retina-Longar (goofy name!)

Just like the cameras, this viewer is made in Germany, and sports the same solid feel.  The vintage fabulous look doesn't hurt either.  Weird that I have never seen one before.

Wrong lens, idiot!  Now function follows form.

Would I look like too much of a moron if I left this thing on the camera permanently?

Kodak REALIST 3D camera from 1951

I don't have one of these anymore, but a friend, Tim Maupin, somehow gets a hold of this exceedingly odd Kodak camera, and we took a minute to figure it out.  It's actually a lot of fun.

1951 Kodak Realist 3D camera

Tim is a bit of a 3D enthusiast, or you could see him as just ahead of his time. 3D is moving in on society, and as there is increasing possibility of it becoming totally accepted as normal, he stands to be quite a bit ahead of us in figuring it all out.

Fascinating how he finds all the weird 3D related stuff that we might have overlooked.  Usually it has to do with futuristic technologies, like screens that allow you to watch 3D video with no glasses from anywhere in a room.  This time it happens to be something from the last time 3D attempted to take hold of our imaginations.


The Realist was designed for stereoviews.  If you don't have any, a stereoview is a standardized seven inch wide card that you load into a viewer, and observe as if you were watching the opera from the cheap seats..

Here's the wiki on all that nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy

I do collect stereoviews, but don't hold it against me.

This sweet camera is horizontally rather symmetrical, and has five front lens openings, only two of which actually expose film.  The central lens gets mirrored down, and under the film area to a viewing port, and you frame your totally square picture through a tiny hole at the bottom of the back. It takes significant getting used to.

I think it is looking at you

Weirder yet, you focus through a secondary port, which splits BOTH ways to a wide pair of square rangefinder ports at the lower far corners of the camera front. Ususally in practice, at least one finger covers one or both ports, making focus impossible. Once you figure out a way to view without covering the rangefinder ports, focusing is extremely bright and easy, using a single focus dial at the upper corner of the camera. Works like a tiny Koni-Omega. Just as fast and easy

.. a what?

The koni (konica) omega was a press camera that is rather known for the huge focusing knob at the side of the camera.
http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Koni-Omega
I digress...

I was kind of blown away at the block-of-steel feeling of the Realist, and the fact that all speeds, even the one second shutter speed worked perfectly. This one is an earlier model than the one I had, and it looks like earlier is clearly better when it comes to quality.  Feels like a Nikkormat, or a block of aluminum stock at the metal yard.  Very impressive.  It even has a flash shoe, cable release, bulb and T setting.

That the actual shutter speed dial is wrapped around the framing lens (the one in the middle,) now that's just bizarre. Why?  No idea.

I know you just saw this, but there's the shutter speed dial,

meaninglessly placed around the viewing lens.

Where does he find this stuff?!

Anyway, aside from their weirdo positions of things, and the weird brass clip the holds the film to the winder/counter sprocket wheel (more on this in a sec,) the camera is totally straightforward.

Yeah, Badassery firing button, and a real flash shoe.

Look! Square pictures! The shutters are linked as one, and the aperture and focus are synched, so one control does the same thing to both lenses.

You can see the viewing and framing ports at the bottom,

and the winder sprocket with the weird tab thing at the top.

The thing we totally spaced was that the film is supposed to go UNDER the little brass tab you can see at the top. I guesss this is so there is an absolute positive frame counting to make sure noting shoots over anything else. It actually spaces the first two pics alternating, and the third is a long wind to get out of the way of the used film.... if that makes any sense.  Without that correct, the camera just wound until you felt like stopping, reducing a full roll to about four wildly placed pics.  In focus?  not sure about that either as there is only one pressure plate for both pictures.  We shall see.

This camera is fifty eight years old and works absolutely perfectly. I wonder how many more of my point and shoot cameras will be long gone before this needs it's first service. how many more digitals will I have long tossed in the garbage before one makes a picture this good. A stereo picture this good...

I hope Tim gets some good use out of this. Very cool.

Wordling instead of the task at hand

Not the most exciting day, but...

Somehow, I wound up at Wordle, and did one of thos blog:


Looks like it says camera, light, and lens a lot. Not that I have a new magic photocontraption today. Well, I do, but the post is not ready, so you'll just have to wait.

It's too early for this stuff anyway.

Here's a link to Wordle.net, just in case you are as uninspired as I am this morning. Hey, it's kind of interesting!

People just don't get it all over again.

I must preface that I have nothing against lomography, or the amazing job they have done bringing creative and fun materials to milions of photographers.

So, with that said, I don't think people are getting it.

The other day, the web went ablaze with the latest Lomography antic: adapter lenses that allow you to attach a Holga or Diana lens to the front of a Canon or Nikon SLR or DSLR camera.

People are understandingly going bonkers over this, but they really aren't getting that this is going to be the pancake of photography.

Once again, allow me to explain...

The pancake (mmmmmm, the pancake) sounds glorious BEFORE you indulge in it. During the munching procedure, It still seems like the greatest idea, it is the honeymoon after all... but there is something sinister going on. Little do you now that one tiny pancake is the correct quantity and as you gulp down pounds of delicious pancake, you head towards the inevitable.

An hour later you are miserable and let down.

I feel this is the exact thing that will happen to all of these uninformed people that buy these holga/diana lens adapters.

Parting you with your money is great, but let's talk for a minute in YOUR favor.

There is a plastic mask in the holga camera. you know all about this. the mask makes the image smaller, so you can shoot 16 frames at 645 instead of 12 square pictures at a full 6x6. In the new Diana cameras, there is a superslide sized plastic mask that allows you to shoot 16 smaler frames at say, 44x44 or so. Most of you may not know what the hell superslide is in the first place, but who cares about that.

The point is that to get a mysterious, dreamy, gorgeous Holga/diana image, the first thing you do is TEAR THAT DAMN THING OUT, and use the entire frame. This makes use of the entire image area, including the horribly vignetted corners and the radially blurred magic that people associate with the term LOMO, DIANA, ad HOLGA.

A 35mm camera has a tiny frame, not even close to including the glorious edges that darket to direct your attention into the image as the great painters did. Most DSLRs, including the delicious new Canon 7d have even smaller sensors, the size of the APS cameras you throw in the trash today because they suck. These cameras don't suck like those APScameras did, but the image area is so small, you will only get the center of the frame. No cool vignetting. No dreamy image corners. All you will get is a high flare, and plainly unsharp picture.

Pretty lame.

It would be better to use ACTUAL creativity ad make up a weird bokeh filter with sharpie, cardboard, and vaseline the way they did in the 1930s. Come on people. Get a grip.

The again, I have noting against rampant consumerism. Carry on in full ignorance.

ghetto auto collimator explanified better

Thought I'd elaborate on this ghetto auto collimator thing from the other day, but then I could just repost some old material on it here. Hope this works, and I hope you get a laugh out of it all.

Here goes...

Ghettocollimator? I was sitting here, with a couple of cameras, dreaming of my autocollimator, when I got this crazy Macgyver idea. I figured, a collimator just shines an infinitely far away image into a camera, and if the camera is correctly focused to infinity, the picture would look good on the film. The secret is that the film image would then be visible if you could look in there with another camera focused to infinity. With a half silvered mirror, you can have the camera and the light source on the same axis. Sounds weird, but it works. Well, I didn't have any of that crap, but there were a few slide projectors, and a magically appearing half silvered mirror floating about. Here is the completed contraption. I must say, it works very well! This nonsense is obviously unnecessarily complicated as the mirror is in front of the viewer lens, thus making two optical sysyems necessary, (one for the projector, and another one for viewing) but hey. I only had a half hour to spare, and wanted to know exactly how well calibrated several cameras were. To reduce flare, A piece of black foam core with a hole punched in it keeps the light going only where it makes an image on the film. It hepled out quite a bit. Should be pretty obvious from here. the projected image (on left) passes through the mirror, and goes into the bessa in question (on right.) Since the lens on the projector is set to make an image at infinity, the bessa lens, set to infinity, should bring the image into sharp focus on the film. The viewing camera (on the bottom) uses the half silvered mirror to look into the camera and see the film. Since that lens is also focused to infinity, you can see right in there and know exactly how good your camera really is. Turns out, this old Voigtlander Bessa 6x9 is really sharp! ... and horribly out of line. Since you are viewing an actual image on a real live piece of film, this takes into account all sorts of things like film flatness. you can even wind the film live to make sure it all stays lined up. The longer the viewing lens, the greater the magnification obviously. with a 400mm on the viewing camera, you can on ly see the a very small part of the original slide for extreme pickiness! It's really fun to watch the image distort as you bend around the camera rails, and turn sharp when the lens says something other than infinity. You can reset focus dials with perfect precision, recollimate lenses, see all sorts of stuff, and find out the real effect, or lack thereof, that features and filters have on the final image. Turns out that of all cameras tested, this Bessa 6x9 is the only one that really needs mechanical help. I had no idea the lens was so sharp. Perhaps it might be worth a little work. Here is looking into the viewfinder of the "viewing" camera, which is some sort of screwmount Vivitar thing that was laying about. That is the actual image projected on the film inside the Bessa, as looked at right in there through the bessa's lens. The magnification is rather high, so you are looking closely at a tiny piece of the image in the middle of the film. Simply rotating the camera, you can view the corners of the image to see how the camera performs at different apertures. Yea, it's stupid, but it just takes too long to build a real autocollimator. Perhaps that will be the topic when there is a full hour or two for this insanity.

Nutty. I was really bored though. Hey.

and then there was the footcandle meter.

and so the footcandle meter and it's mysterious footcandles...

Yeah... I dunno.

This very cool old foot-candle meter was in Andy's stuff. He got it in a trade or something... maybe a pile of stuff from a relative. It has two ranges, actuated with a side mounted switch, and runs on solar power, like it should. No need for batteries.. ever.

Anyway, it works, and works well! There's something satisfying about an old needle meter that is accurate, especially if it is encased in stale gray bakelite, or brittle plastics of the past.

Oh yeah, about these mysterious foot-candles:

First off, to make sure we are all totally confused here: 1 footcandle = 10.76391 lux, and none of this has much to do with the brightness of a lightbulb.

Allow me to explain.

A foot candle is a measure of "illuminance." Notice I didn't say "Luminance." It's a measure of the light that is hitting something. Namely, your subject. It doesn't measure how powerful a lightbulb is, because as you get the subjet farther away from the light source, less light is hitting the subject. the "illuminance" decreases. The subject is less "illuminated." Not that they are getting any dumber or anything. It's all about the destination, and not anything about whatever source of light. Get it? You can't possibly say that this new flashlight puts out ten foot candles right?

That makes this meter useful for photography, lighting design... all sorts of things becasue we are all taking pictures of stuff, not the lights that light it.

So, how much light is a "foot candle" and how can that be converted to something useful that has nothing to do with people's feet?

The original idea was that one foot-candle was the amount of light that would hit the inside of a one foot radius sphere if, yes, there was a one candela source of light (basically a candle,) in the middle. No, really. a two foot diameter beach ball with a candle in the middle? Anywhere on the inside of the beach ball would be one foot-candle of light. Pretty simple.

Whatever.

So it's the amount of light that hits a surface. So you could get one "foot candle" of light with one candle a foot away from you, or, say four candles two feet away. or sixteen candles four feet away. Sixteen candles. heh. Remember two things:

ONE, we are measuring the light hitting the subject, not the amount that a candle can make in total or anything weird like that.

TWO, as with anything, inverse square law applies. Maybe I'll further digress with a quick diagram.

See? It's all about the "density" of the light.
Twice as far is the same light covering twice the height and twice the width, so you get a quarter candle per foot at twice the distance. Inverse square law!

Sorry about being redundant, off the subject and and referring to ridiculous movies, but this is MY blog so I can cry if I want to.

There's a metric equivalent to all this that's in meters and all that. It's called LUX. Much sexier name, and being metric, pretty much obsoletes foot-candles, although people still use foot-candles on things here in the US.

They are measuring the same thing, so one footcandle is simply 10.764 lux. When I worked in lighting, we just multiplied by ten and that was close enough.

Oh, and blasting sunshine is about 10,000 foot-candles anywhere here on earth.

What about camera settings?

Assuming 100 speed film or setting on your digicam nonsense:

10,000 FC(foot-candles) should be almost f/16 at a 250th of a second.

100 FC would be what? 250th at f/1.4 or so.

1 foot candle is about f/2.0 at a one second exposure.

maybe a chart later.

You can figure it out. Either that or get a hold of me and I'll scorn you for not having it figured out.

This is nuts. I'm going to bed.