ok, camera nuts...

[gmgraves]

On 5/29/2019 at 11:09 AM, Ralf11 said:

https://www.dpreview.com/news/5265710996/this-wooden-leica-is-a-covert-music-box-with-rotating-lens

 

not sure if it does MQA

Actually, it looks more like an Argus C44 than an M series Leica!

[gmgraves]

14 hours ago, accwai said:

 

The wooden box doesn't have film advance lever so it can't be a film camera, as auto advance for film Leica M requires attaching the clunky Leica Winder M to the bottom. And it even has a "display" at the back. In terms of overall layout, it actually looks very much like the recent digital Leica M Typ 240:

I still think it looks more like an Argus C-44 than it does a Leica, I had a Leica M3 for years, had the winder too as well as the auxiliary finder for 35mm, 50mm, and 135mm lens. Excellent camera. Kinda wished I’d kept it.

[gmgraves]

On 6/2/2019 at 6:33 PM, gmgraves said:

I still think it looks more like an Argus C-44 than it does a Leica, I had a Leica M3 for years, had the winder too as well as the auxiliary finder for 35mm, 50mm, and 135mm lens. Excellent camera. Kinda wished I’d kept it.

Well, I wished that I had kept it EXCEPT for the fact that it uses film, a decisively obsolete technology (as far as I’m concerned anyway. You are reading a man who has gone the entire photography route including mastering B&W, E-6 color reversal, C-42 color negative, Cibachrome color and Ektachrome color prints. I had and used a cold-light head enlarger (35mm and two-and-quarter), and had my own darkroom. I don’t miss that mess at all, even if it was terribly creative. I’ll take a digital camera, Photoshop (or GIMP) and a good large format Inkjet printer, any day!).

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

 

I had a state of the art Fujimoto cold light variable contrast b&w head enlarger, the whole nine yards. The chemistry was killing me though. But man, looking at my 16X20 and 20X24 silver gelatin prints, as nice as my digital prints are (Imacon scanner to a Canon ipF6400 on Epson Legacy Platine), they are pieces of art, imperfections and all. The analog smoothness and depth just isn't quite there with digital. 

Amen to that brother! I agree that digital isn’t as good as film under most circumstances, but, the darkroom requirements have always been a PITA, and I’m glad I don’t have to do it any more. 

[gmgraves]

23 minutes ago, accwai said:

 

Master of B&W... Awesome! Do you have your photos online anywhere?

By mastering B&W, I meant that I had the chemistry and the enlarging down-pat and knew how to use Adam’s modified “Zone System” for roll film cameras. I didn’t mean to imply that I was some kind of B&W “master”. I do not have any photos online, but am thinking about putting some there. I probably have 10,000 digital photos on iPhoto.

23 minutes ago, accwai said:

 

 

Came across this at V. Tony Hauser's shop in downtown Toronto a few weeks back:

 

 

Given the Copal 3 shutter has about 4" diameter, the body is probably a Folmer & Schwing 12x20. V. Tony Hauser does platinotype. He's pretty much stuck.

Now THAT camera can do the Zone System big time!

23 minutes ago, accwai said:

 

On the flip side, a lot of the photo objectivists have gone digital I believe. Andreas Gursky shoot with 4x5 Technikardan but the stitching and processing in the backend has been all digital for a long time. Candida Höfer is supposedly digital capture as well now. And Edward Burtynsky is supposed to be all digital too, Hasselblad H6D-100c except when shooting with drone.

With film becoming harder and harder to get, and more expensive, most of us either already have or soon will be forced to go digital, like it or not. For the kind of photography I’ve been doing for some time, I find that it is just fine.

[gmgraves]

8 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

yes, film is obsolete

 

now, what speaker is analogous to my Hasselblad 500 C/M ??

 

and what speaker is is analogous to my Nikon F3?? *which I don't shoot but you will still have to "pry it from my cold, dead fingers")

I feel that way about my F4!

[gmgraves]

9 hours ago, accwai said:

 

How does one modify zone system for roll film?

Obviously one can’t apply it to to the film processing because all frames are processed “blind” and at once, so you have to do it on the print end only. Ansel Adams wrote a book about it. If you’re really interest, I suggest you read it.

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, accwai said:

 

I think I found it. Book 2 Chapter 4 under the section 35mm and Roll Films correct? Finished. Thanks for the suggestion.

No problem. At one time, I had the entire set of Adam’s books, and it seemed to me that he wrote a later volume about adapting the Zone system to roll film photography, but I might be misremembering. The fact that you found information on it is what’s important. In the early Seventies I took a live summer course in photography from Ansel Adams in Yosemite National Park. We became good acquaintances and kept in touch till his death.

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

The Zone System - I think everyone with a camera should read it

 

 

it is a way to think about, and characterize, the Dynamic Range of a scene, as rendered on film or a sensor - it is needed (for one reason) because the eye has a DR that greatly exceeds that of any film or sensor, much less a print

 

 

Quite true. There is not a lot one can do to manipulate the DR of digital. But a little manipulation is possible in Photoshop or Gimp. Irrespective of that limitation with digital photography, I found that once I had taken Adam’s class and read his books, that I thought about photography in an entirely different way.  I found that I always kept the zone system in mind when taking pictures. Even now, I will look at a scene and think about the tonality of it, deciding, perhaps to under-expose a scene by a stop or so, with a mind to bring up the highlights again in Photoshop. But one has to keep in mind that today’s digital sensors have far more restricted dynamic range than did almost any B&W or color film. When shadows go to D-max in a digital shot, forget it. There is nothing there digitally, and photo manipulation software can only turn the D-max gray, without bringing up any shadow detail. The same is true on the other end of the spectrum. A burned-out scene cannot be toned down to reveal the lost detail like it can sometime be done with film.

 

Keeping all that in mind has made me a much better digital photographer, but you can’t really do much with a cell phone camera or a simple point-and-shoot.

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

Actually, highlights are the biggest issue with digital - I find with my Leicas I can recover a lot from the shadows but if one blows the highlights there's really nothing there. Having to shoot 'chromes is probably the best way to learn your p's and q's of exposure. You only got one chance! (and boy did I blow it at times, esp when foregoing a snip test). So I try and shoot digital as much as possible like slide film.

 

I learned the zone system when I was bout fourteen. I think it's an important foundation - that should then be broken. Like all 'rules' in art, the best, most forward innovators take those and turn them around. 

I find that shadow detail is recoverable as long as the shadows haven’t gone D-max. There is no detail in digital black. You are right, shooting digital reminds me of shooting the early Kodachrome 64 (K25 was always more forgiving in terms of DR, but it too was extremely contrasty). Ektachrome was better, depending on the generation and the film speed. The high -speed Ektachromes (200 and 400) were always more contrasty than the low speed emulsions. But, I found Fujichrome “Velvea” had the widest DR of any color reversal film (Agfachrome was also less contrasty than Ektachrome, but it’s high amount of grainyness made it less than popular with me (especially when it was processed with E6. For some reason, it was much less grainy when one sent it to Agfa for processing).

[gmgraves]

23 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

with digital, it is cheap & easy to exposure bracket and stack in post

 

 

I also hear that there will soon be a way to unfold all your film shadows using MQA

You joke, but it got me to wondering if some similar manipulation couldn’t be possible inside the JPEG envelope? Might not do anything about DR, but it’s interesting to speculate.

[gmgraves]

On 6/10/2019 at 3:21 PM, Ralf11 said:

I do think it is possible, but to use esldude's patented phrase it would be irrelevantware.

 

 

I keep over-exposing things with my Hasselblad (using a m43 camera as a light meter) so my relevant question now is which 120 roll print film has the greatest DR, and how many stops off am I...

My advice would be to go to a well stocked photo shop and pick yourself up a standard “18 percent gray card”. Take it outside and use up a roll of color reversal film bracketing a number of stops over and under what the m43 tells you is the correct exposure. Of course, place a Post It note in each photo starting with the m43’s reading off the gray card, and then go in 1-stop intervals over and under. When you get the reversal film back from the processor (or out of your own tank), find the frame that’s closest, on direct examination, to the gray card (again, under natural light, of course) and that will be the correct exposure when using the m43 as a light meter. This is really the only way to accurately calibrate the ‘Blad with the m43. BTW, this is good advice for any camera and separate light meter when used together. Once the base-line for proper exposure is determined, then, of course you are in a position to creatively alter the exposure to fit the situation and get consistent results.

[gmgraves]

On 6/15/2019 at 11:26 AM, daverich4 said:

 

Not sure where you got that idea but it’s not true. 

 

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/dynamicrange2/

I have owned any number of digital cameras, both Nikon and Canon. The one I have now is a Canon, and none of them have had the RECOVERABLE DR of a good reversal  film like Fujichrome Velvia, or a long tonal range B&W film like Kodak’s Panatomic X or Ilford’s C41 processed XP2. So, I don’t know where the author of the article you link to, above gets his data, but it certainly doesn’t track with my experience. 

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, daverich4 said:

 

This isn’t a photo forum so I will respond once leaving you the final word. A quick search for film vs. digital dynamic range turns up hundreds of hits, every single one of which disagrees with you. 

 

If personal experience is your final arbiter, mine disagrees with yours. I don’t know what your background is in photography but this is mine. I started processing Ektachrome at home more than 50 years ago using Kodak’s E2 Process. My degree in Photo Science is from the Rochester Institute of Technology and I worked in and managed commercial photo labs for more than 35 years before retiring. 

 

Your mention of sometimes exposing for the shadows also is not a description of best practice when shooting digital. The majority of distinguishable tones reside in the highlights and are very limited in the shadows. This link is to an old article but it a good description of why that is and is still relevant. 

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150209012804/http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

While I have extensive photographic and darkroom experience, I have to bow to your obviously greater experience and education in the field. I am more of a “gifted amateur” as I only mastered the various darkroom techniques to suit my own curiosity about such matters. My only “schooling” in photography was a summer course in Yosemite National Park with Ansel Adams, and my subsequent casual friendship with him. 

While my experience with digital vs film WRT DR tells me that film is better, I may have an explanation for that belief on my part. I have had a number of digital cameras, mostly Nikons (I have a Canon, now), None of them were (or are, currently) full-frame 35mm format. All of my interchangeable lens Nikons required me to multiply the focal length designation of each lens by a factor of 1.5. My last two digital cameras were a Nikon Coolpix P900 (24-2000mm equivalent optical zoom range) and my current camera is a Canon Powershot SX60 HS (20-1300 equivalent optical zoom range). The Nikon died after a year so I decided not to replace it with another Nikon. I find the Canon a much better camera in every way. I went the non-interchangeable lens route because, at my age, I was getting tired of schlepping a bag full of lenses along, and it made me think twice about taking a camera with me when I went on a trip. My point is that all of the digital cameras that I have experience with have sensors smaller than full-frame 35mm. Perhaps larger sensors have better dynamic range than the smaller ones do, and I certainly have no experience with two-and-a-quarter or Leaf or other brand digital backs for view cameras. Perhaps in these larger formats, digital does better than film in DR, but I would have no way of knowing that. I maintain that my experience tells me that film is better, but I can see where that obviously incorrect opinion might be colored by the digital cameras on which that opinion is based. Live and learn, eh?

[gmgraves]

32 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Totally get that, and still have my Leica M3 and M6 because the form factor let me bring them with me everywhere.

 

I switched to a Canon DSLR (ultimately 5DII) and found that the form factor resulted in my not bringing it everywhere ... too heavy and bulky and obtrusive.

 

... the Sony (A7rIII) is smaller, and allows me to use those sweet Leica lenses (manual focus). No question the newer lenses are heavy. I can also use my Canon interchangeables on the Sony. 

 

It depends on how irritated you are with the current IQ ... If you've met AA then I'd consider getting a full frame mirrorless (Sony EF allows adapters to everything) and a manual 35mm pancake-ish lens to go along with the kit lens.

Not interested in going back to interchangeable lenses. Plus, being retired, I don’t have the disposable income I had when I was a single guy making $200K+ in Silicon Valley. Still single, but no longer able to live the hedonistic lifestyle that I was used to! At any rate, In spite of small sensor’s possible shortcomings, I find that my Canon SX60 HS suits my needs right down to the ground.

[gmgraves]

On 6/18/2019 at 2:21 PM, lucretius said:

 

I think a better question might be: How much Panasonic is there in a Leica?

 

At one time, Leicaflex cameras were basically Minolta innards refined and installed in Leica-built bodies and some Leica lenses were Minolta glass in German Leica-made mechanicals.

in the 1970’s when Popular Photography was still around and testing lenses, it was easy to see that generally speaking, Nikkor,  Canon, and Asahi Takumar lenses performed better than did either Leica or Zeis-Ikon lenses. In tests between Hassleblad optics by Zeis, and Bronica lenses by Nikkor, that Bronica optics were superior

[gmgraves]

13 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

 

Not sure where you're getting this from. Leica did make a compact camera in conjunction with Minolta called the CL, and two lenses for that (a 40 and a 90). They may have supplied some electronics for the SLR's, but in general were all German designed and built (and consequently the electronics were always the weak link). Leica did have a few lenses made in Canada in the '70's and '80's to exacting German standards. 

 

I doubt Leica or Zeiss lenses were ever bested by Nikkor's and Canons. Maybe on a unique lens to lens basis (and Nikon/Canon made a lot more lenses at the extremes than Leica, (they also had huge aerospace etc contracts to do r&d)), but not as a whole. A 28 Elmarit M will blow a Nikkor 28/2.8 AIS out of the water (also a very good lens). Keep in mind also that Leica M lenses were designed to be their best wide open or near so. The Japanese did make some very fine glass though. In the darkroom I always used Fujinon enlarging lenses which at the time were cheap and considered even better than Rodenstock APO's by many. When I got out of the darkroom I sold mine to my local lab - the owner grabbed them up as quickly as he could. 

The Leicaflex R3 was indeed based on a Minolta SLR. I recall clearly a review of the R3 in either Popular Photography or Modern Photography where they showed shots of both a disassembled R3 and the Minolta camera upon which it was based. The mechanical parts looked identical except that the parts used in the R3 had undergone more “finishing” and were more refined (Leica had to justify their exorbitant pricing somehow!).

As I recall, the Minolta lens glass was used in early Leica zoom lenses, particularly the 70 to 210 mm “Vario-Elmar”. There may have been others.

that Leica glass is or was generally better than Japanese Canon, Nikkor, or Takumar is a matter of personal opinion, and not backed-up by lens test results in Pop or Modern Photography back in the day. One place where the Leica glass was better than any of the Japanese glass was in the 50 mm f1.4 Summalux, but the reality is that lenses are spotty. For instance, the Nikkor 90mm f2.0 portrait lens was one of their best lenses while the 135mm f2.0 was one of their worst and Canon’s equivalent lens was excellent. The Leica 135mm f3.5 was an extremely good lens while their 135mm f2.0 was not as good as any of the three Japanese lens of the same focal length and lens speed. Leica was very late to the zoom lens market (as well as the SLR market). Leica’s Prime lenses for the M series of range finder cameras was their metier.

I agree about the Fujinon enlarging lenses. I had two, one for 35mm and one for two-and-a-quarter.

[gmgraves]

11 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Are we still comparing Leica R (SLR) to Nikon/Canon? This is like comparing a Porsche minivan to a Honda Odyssey! 

 

135 kinda pushing it for rangefinder. The Leica M shined for street and unobtrusive photography. When you want to take great photos without having a hunking camera. Also compare only wide open 😉

No, not the R lenses. I’m talking M lenses, and yes, while there are much longer lenses in both the Leica screw mount and the M bayonet mount, but the 135 is longest lens that the M series could use with the built-in rangefinder graticule and parallax compensation. 

[gmgraves]

49 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Leica & Zeiss make a huge variety of cameras and lenses that I’ve used in both consumer/artistic as well as technical settings. Indeed the Leica camera division split from the technical division which incorporated Wild-Heerbrug — now Leica Geosystem (I have an Aviogon 6” that I removed from an old RC-8 camera — it’s a Bertele design and was the basis of his Biogon). Leica Microsystems is another division (where I first used R backs for recording purposes).

Similarly Zeiss, and I’ve used the Contax SLR in conjunction with Zeiss equipment. 

 

Back in the day there were a whole host of attachments to allow technical photographs to be used with the M such as bellows and this contraption called the Visoflex which — introduced in the 1930s! — converts the M into an SLR

 

In any case I loved using the M3 and M6 rangefinders with 21-90mm lenses, but now use these lenses on my Sony A7r-iii camera with adapters — it also takes my Canon 200/2.0 (sweetest portrait lens ever) 300/2.8 — as well as the awesome new Zeiss lenses, Hassy w adapters etc.

 

I never tried a 135mm lens on an M rangefinder because the region of interest gets tiny in the (optical viewfinder) — rangefinders work great with wide angle though.

I once had three Contaflex cameras, the earliest had a selenium light meter on the front of the prism housing, the second one had a battery powered meter behind the lens, and the third was a full auto. Contaflex cameras used lenses that replaced the front element of the Zeiss Tessar 50mm f2.8 with both wide angle and telephoto “Pro-Tessar” lenses. In this case the “Pro” meant ‘in front of...’ rather than professional. 

Leica once had a catalogue of accessories for the III series screw mount as well as the M series bayonet cameras that was as thick as a paperback edition of ‘Gone With The Wind’!  It had everything from lenses (how about a 300 mm Kilfit lens with the mirror adaptor to turn a IIIC or an M3 into an telephoto SLR!). Leica often named their accessories with nonsensical three, four  and five letter names like the “Sbloo” wide angle auxiliary rangefinder.

Leica also made an adapter ring that sat flush with the M bayonet mount in the camera, and let M. Series cameras use the older screw-mount lenses, just like they were native to each other. I thought that was cool. I had several Canon screw mount lenses from the 1950’s that I used with my M3 via such an adapter. They worked fine and took excellent pictures. I had a Canon 135 and a 35mm wide angle lens with the Leica-compatible screw mount.

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

Nice!

[gmgraves]

On 6/22/2019 at 6:53 PM, jabbr said:

 

Very nice. I’m curious — always respected Hassy but never owned — what is the difference between this vs H6D?

 

... vs digital back on 4x5 camera? 

Kind of a silly Q. A camera is merely a box to hold and transport film. Hasselblads were nicely made two-and-a-quarter format camera, but other than that, the quality of the photographs depends on four major qualities: (1) the flatness and registration of the film plane. (2) the quality of the lens optics. (3) the accuracy of the shutter and and aperture, and (4) the accuracy of focus.

The Hasselblad, is just the “box” that transports the film across the film-plane. It does a great job because it’s so well made that it allows film backs to be interchanged without leaking light. As good as it was (is) it would be wrong to think it was the only camera of that quality. First of all Hasselblad didn’t make the lenses, Zeiss-Ikon did. Hasselblad did not make the shutters, Compur did. The shutters and irises were inside the lenses, not the inside of the Hasselblad. 

Just as good as the Hasselblad was the Japanese Bronica. Unlike the Hasselblad 500 series, the Bronica had a focal-plane shutter, inside the camera body, and Bronica’s lenses were made by Nikon which compared well with Hasselblad’s Zeiss-Ikon lenses.  Mamiya made several two-and-a-quarter format camera styles. The excellent twin-lens system called the C33/330, (I once had one with all the lenses, but foolishly sold it) and there was the single lens format Mamiya 645 system (two-and-a-quarter X one-and-seven-eighths) As well as a two-and-a-quarter X two-and-three-quarter SLR. Also don’t forget that Asahi made a two-and-a-quarter X  two-and-three-quarter pentaprism camera that looked like an outsized 35 mm Pentax as did The East German company Practica with their PentaSix. Not to mention Russian knockoffs of both the pre-war Hasselblad and the PentaSix (indifferently) made by the Kiev Photographic Bureau in that Ukrainian city.

Of course, Hasselblads and other two-and-a-quarter format cameras have the advantage of larger film frame areas. Meaning that with the same film formulations, for any size enlargements, the larger format needs to be enlarged less than a smaller format such as 35mm, thus showing less grain and better resolution. The ultimate, of course, is the 8X10 view camera (and next to that, the 4X5) obviously, a digital back for any of these larger formats can have more pixels per square inch than does a smaller format digital sensor, and the increase in resolution allows these digital pictures to be enlarged many more times than the picture taken with a smaller format digital camera before said picture starts to “pixilate” (the equivalent of film grain).  

 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

well, there is also the mirror movement...

Yes, but mostly irrelevant to the main point.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

Reread the question — I was asking wrt digital backs — Hassy seems to have several different systems. Folks with digital experience know that a digital back for an 8x10 will not typically have an 8x10 CMOS sensor — I’ve heard of using scanners! 

 

In any case compact size, ability to use manual lenses and attractive price make sense. 

You are correct. Digital view camera sensors are “scanners”. No one could afford a 4X5 much less an 8X10 sized sensor (not to mention the trouble actually making one!), so they use merely a single line of high resolution sensors, and they scan that across the film plane area. The scanner is shaped like a regular film holder that fits in front of the glass viewing screen displacing it after the photographer has lined up his shot and focused. The ones I have seen are always connected to a laptop and the image is scanned to that. The resultant raw file is huge and the shutter is not used but left open throughout the entire process. Such shots are really only practical for landscapes and architectural photos. Because the scan is two slow for moving objects.

But I understand that a company called “LargeSense” makes a self-contained 8x10 camera, but it only has a resolution of 3888X3072 pixels (!?) with one enormous 9X11 inch, 32-bit sensor (probably a composite sensor). Unfortunately, the camera is monochrome only, but it has a facility to allow multi-exposure color pictures using filters (there’s an old saying: “Everything old becomes new again” - shades of three strip Technicolor!). The LargeSense LS911 is very expensive; I wonder if the model number is a clue that this camera at US$105,000 is about what an entry-level Porsche 911 would cost?

 

 

[gmgraves]

32 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

OTOH, I often see photographers insisting that measurements are not important...

 

 

Hmmm, do these photographers insist that certain camera straps result in better looking pictures? If not, then I wouldn’t worry about photographers becoming as neurotic as some audiophiles. 

[gmgraves]

On 6/27/2019 at 9:15 AM, Ralf11 said:

 

 

No, I don't know that.

 

First, is the issue of how different sensory modalities can even be compared.

 

Second, one valid answer is that one could compare how close they come (how close they have evolved) to a perfect sensor that is limited only by physics, no matter how constructed.

 

The human ear is so close that it is noise limited (by air molecules bouncing off the ear drum - according to some older research).

 

The human eye is also very close to a perfect quantum device (IIRC, I posted a cite to Albert Rose's book above or in another thread).  He considered film cameras, video cameras and the vertebrate eye, comparing them all as only a Bell labs research scientist could do.

 

So, this means they are quite close in sensitivity, using evolution to a limit of the physical universe as a metric.

Hearing and listening are two separate, though related, things. In hearing, people's frequency response differs according to age, sex, and environment. For example, a 12-year-old girl can likely hear 22kHz and perhaps a bit higher. OTOH, a 60 year old man (or perhaps a 30 year old who has been exposed to high SPLs such as a boiler factory at work, or too many live rock concerts) may have frequency extension only to 14kHz or even less. But this doesn't really alter most people's ability to hear and appreciate music. But trained listeners (such as "golden-eared" audiophiles) have trained his/her listening acumen to notice things in a musical presentation, that most ordinary listeners would not notice (nor care about, for that matter). 

Sight is different. Advancing age, of course, changes ones sight as well as one's hearing. The difference is that eyeglasses can correct many age-related sight problems such as near-sightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, close focusing, etc., and compound glasses can correct several of these things at once. However, there are no prosthetic devices such as hearing aids that can bring back one's lost high-frequency response, and the hearing aids that are available can only bring back some of one's failing ability to hear everyday sounds such as speech. From what people using hearing aids tell me, even the best, most expensive hearing aids have lousy frequency response and make music sound terrible.