December 2022

From time to time we all meak typographical errors. I do it to attract the attention of one particular reader - he doesn't get out much these days and it is nice to be able to do something for him. It is harder to do than you'd think, however, as the Wordpress mechanism has a spell-checking feature that underlines the errors as they are typed. You can see and correct as you go - however, when you deliberately add clangers you have to put up with the red light all the time you're typing. But it is something you can cope with. On the less-than-copable list is the performance of the touch and swipe screens that now infest the digital world. Adapted from mobile telephone design, the screens respond to minute pressures to change settings. The computer that this blog is typed on is too old for this, I am happy to say, but the wife's Windows machine has a full-blown touchscreen...

That's not philosophy talking - that's commerce. Today and tomorrow are the last shopping days until Christmas 2022. If you have sorted out all the photographers on your list already - ordered new cameras and lenses for them months ago and have all the new equipment safely wrapped and under the tree - well good for you. You can pop the top on a can of soda water and celebrate sensibly. If you are just coming to realise that you need to get something for the photographers and today might be a good idea, we are here to help. The just-released 200 megapixel Flapoflex Extravaganza X camera that you saw on the internet last night might be a bit ambitious but there are still a lot of more modest choices in the shop. a. Memory cards. Big, little, inexpensive, eye-wateringly dear...

Get out a few items from your kitchen drawer and play along with me here. You'll need the following: A yellow drawing pad and a pencil. A small plastic or wooden school ruler. A small plastic drawing triangle. A Hasselblad 500 C/M camera with 80mm Zeiss Planar lens. Your current mirror-less or DSLR camera. Seven envelopes and seven stamps. First, put your digital camera to your eye and take a picture while looking though the viewfinder - lens on auto-focus, aperture on f:11, and shutter speed on auto. Review it - looks good, eh? Now hold the camera at arm's length and sight through the LCD for the same shot. Look a bit shaky on the screen when you play it back? That's you shaking. For another $ 3600 you can have the next model camera that will remove that shake. Third experiment - hold the camera close to your body at waist height and shoot the shot. Looks a bit less shaky on playback, eh? Just as good as the eye-level one? But you had to guess the framing? No tilt screen? Now pick...

Never mind the idea of omelettes - look up the process of albumen paper printing that was dominant in the latter half of the 19th century. Any self-sufficient photographer would have kept a hen coop and been collecting the cackleberries before starting the darkroom work. Indeed, the really dedicated worker might have been busy boiling a number of the chemicals needed - and equally busy avoiding the effects of the caustics, acids, and poisons that made up the rest of the ingredients. At the end of the day they then had a jug of leftover egg yolks to deal with - and there are only so many dishes that use hollandaise sauce...

Speaking with a well-known photographer at a Camera Electronic new product night I wasn't surprised to hear  he had been revising some of his older images, but I was intrigued when he pointed out their flaws. They were panoramic images taken on a film camera - made by the same firm that was debuting the new digital body. The two designs were worlds apart - the new 40+ megapixel mirror-less vs the old wide-format analogue camera. Of course we were nostalgic for the design of the older camera - an impressive beast - and compared it to other famous equipment of its period. We both decided that the Japanese firm showing the latest digital mirror-less had it all over the European factory that also made those older pano cameras. Not sure we could have persuaded people at the time, but we can now see it as the truth. His time spent dealing with the big transparencies sounded tedious - they had been scanned and he was engaged in spotting them - forever. And not white spots either - transparencies with dirt show...

That age-old question - debated around every bohemian café table since 1839; can people who are using pencils and brushes really call themselves photographers? Emotions run high on both sides of the question. I would normally not risk criticism by taking a side - not since the advent of the digital image and the programs for manipulating it. Once I saw the first Wacom tablet I knew controversy would hot up - then came the advent of programs that made "oil paintings " out of digital files and then the AI inroads of late...

So much of the last two years has been spent mourning the dearth of stock that it comes as a bit of a shock to discover that there are full shelves of lenses at Stirling Street. No greater joy than looking at a line of the new Nikon Z series and wondering if it is time to break out the credit card and put some new glass on the front of the mirror-less. You have been frugal for as long as you have had to - now is the opportunity to see if the decision to go to the newer body was justified ( It was...