Oh Noes---I been gelded!

Most of us have gotten used to the idea of 'fly by wire' in our automobiles. I do not think that there is a single, general production model of any major auto manufacturer that still hosts a mechanical linkage accelerator. Rather, our foot actions are translated through a rheostat to the central CPU board of our cars--there for our intent to be interpreted and adjusted accordingly before being sent off as a signal to a servomotor on the intake body and signals to the fuel injector rail. The old farts amongst us (myself in that august body) still miss the control afforded by the mechanical design and the responsiveness delivered.

 

Such it has been moving since cameras began to incorporate simple AE systems to 'decide for us.' Yet even with this, for a very long time we were still able to find mechanical aperture rings, and a true focus scale showing depth of field. The former I noticed disappearing some years back in favor of the 'fly by wire' aperture controls of the camera body. Now I see on a number of new lenses the lack of any DOF markings, and an unnaturally truncated manual focus throw. Almost to the point of uselessness... :oops:

 

Here comes the matter of my surprise--and I am astounded at my own ignorance for not taking any note of it before. Many lenses now have the capital letter G appended to their names. Clueless me, I rather thought this referenced some enhanced function or feature. Little did I understand that this means quite the opposite. GELDED! Oh wow, cutting the gonads off the beast! :eek: I have to take pause and think for a moment about the mental status of the engineer or marketing maven that thought this little bit of loaded nomenclature up.

 

I actually do not have a whole lot of issue with using one of the body wheels to change my f-stop. I am missing the DOF when running macro mode in manual or aperture priority. Oh well. In the technology fueled world of today I guess that we just do not need our gonads... :cool:

Edited September 9, 2017 by PapaTango

Geld - guilt - Gelt!

My Fuji has a graphic footage bar at the bottom of the EVF. A lighter box surrounding the chosen footage expands or contracts as the aperture is changed. That being said, I've never found the DOF scale to be particularly accurate either when on the lens or in the viewfinder.

I think that "gelded" is a Ken Rockwell term, but still it makes sense to me in this case.

 

The last few new designs that Nikon has introduced have not even had mechanical aperture linkages. These are called "E" lenses(different from the 80s Series E) and as far as I know don't work with ANY film cameras or any DSLR more than ~10 years old or so.

 

I don't think its a stretch to think that in the next few years, Nikon will remove the aperture lever from low end bodies. That will essentially end the last bit of continuity present in the F mount from its original design aside from the bayonet itself.

Fly be wire means do not fly by wire. Cables break and lose tension. Aircraft could not run their rudders and aelerons safely with cables. Once the fly by wire gets the tactical feel of focus by helicoid it will be accepted. As it is. Mechanical backup systems hav some charm and I still wind my ships bell clocks weekly. But they lose about 2 minutes whereas my electrically powered quartz model is spot on. We need our comfort feeling until we enter the brave new world. Who really needs columns in their homes or corniches. I think that brakes do have a backup linkeage to the rear drums or discs on cars. But once we have independently powered electric wheels, who knows? Gelded is a little strong for the march of automation don't you think? I will bet that old machine shops missed the belts and pulleys that they used to know and used poles to shift to different gears back in the turn of the 20th I century.. I never much used those depth of field scales, used the old seamans eye anyway. AE did not disturb my sense of control. Once I learned how to diddle with it. Edited September 10, 2017 by GerrySiegel

I find myself simply not bothering with it. Most of my lenses are manual focus and I use them on whatever body I am in the mood for. Autofocus has always at least annoyed me and often is more trouble than it is worth. Then again, I learned how to focus a camera when the F2 was state of the art. I'll stick to my manual controls and spend lttle money on G lenses, probably none at all on the E series. Stubborn? Probably but I use the tools I like and get good results with them.

 

Rick H.

Fly be wire means do not fly by wire. Cables break and lose tension. Aircraft could not run their rudders and aelerons safely with cables.

 

As a very much off topic aside, since the OP mentioned cars electronic throttles, I'll say that just this past week I had the first "stuck" accelerator I've encountered, and it was on a car with controls about as direct and basic as you can ask for.

 

I have a 1970 MGB, and recently had a bad tank of gas. It had an effect on everything, and I had to pull the carburetors off for a deep cleaning. The car has twin SU carburetors as are often associated with British sports cars, and of course part of reinstalling them after work is setting up the linkages correctly. I can do it virtually in my sleep, but didn't get a nut snugged down firmly enough this time. I pulled out onto the road and was hammering on the throttle pretty hard. After shifting into 4th(top gear) I let off the throttle and I knew immediately that there was an issue. Fortunately, the car wasn't continuing to accelerate, so I just went along until I got to a place to pull off, hit the clutch, and coasted into a gas station(I shut the engine off as it was racing with no load and I didn't want to start floating valves or cause other problems-I can keep control easily with the engine off since the car doesn't have brake assist or power steering). In any case, it was a couple of minutes to get the linkage reset correctly and then go around with a double check on every fastener to make sure it was tight, and then I was on my way.

 

Still, though, my single anecdotal experience is that I'm much less likely to encounter a stuck pedal on an electronic throttle than on a cable throttle. My much-beloved Lincoln LS(2004) would start shutting off cylinders if it detected a fault in the electronic throttle body-I found that out when an ignition coil that was on its way out threw stray RF that the ECM misunderstood and caused a power loss at some very inconvenient times.

There are a plethora of manual lenses and cameras to choose from, if that's what you need to feel relevant. After all, it's the camera not the photographer, right.

Just for the record I am also in the middle of a 79 Z-28 project. It will end up with a Holley carb, manual throttle linkage Now if I can just find a decent 68 Impala.....By the way Ed, I think you missed my point.

 

Rick H.

Just for the record I am also in the middle of a 79 Z-28 project. It will end up with a Holley carb, manual throttle linkage Now if I can just find a decent 68 Impala.....By the way Ed, I think you missed my point.

I was responding to the OP, Rick. You obviously found the solution you were seeking. There are some things more suitable for manual control than others. Landscapes, architecture, closeups and group photos are relatively stationary, and manual control lends to consistency. It is a liability for action photos, including children and mobile situations.

 

I take a more pragmatic approach. I have manual cameras and lenses, including Leica and Hasselblad systems and a couple of 4x5 cameras, Electronic viewfinders (view-by-wire) have proven a major asset for manual focusing by means of peaking and/or magnification. Some lenses let you take advantage of both worlds, reverting to manual mode once the initial AF lock is attained. AF is also something you can turn off if necessary.

 

I've seen a lot of improvements in focus-by-wire. While not suitable for zone focusing, it does give a good combination of speed and fine control, since it is velocity-dependent. It is particularly well-implemented in Zeiss Basis lenses for Sony E-mount cameras. It is even easy to find the infinity point with a Sony A7, with an indicator in the viewfinder and/or the lens itself (unique to Batis). A Sony 90/2.8 macro and several Olympus lenses go directly to direct-coupled focusing by sliding the focusing ring. Zeiss lenses for Nikon and Canon are strictly manual focus.

 

Nikon AF-S avoids the fly-by-wire option by using an inverted servo motor. The focusing ring is the stator, and remains stationary during auto focus, but is always coupled to the focusing mechanism magnetically. The downside is that arrangement is slow and heavy compared to modern mechanisms, and not particularly accurate.

 

For what it's worth, the throttle linkage on a 73 Buick once stuck on me. I had to keep it in gear to avoid blowing the engine, but it wouldn't stop when the ignition was off. I had to let it get into a higher gear (auto tx) before there was enough drag to make it stop.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Ed_Ingold

Since cars have been mentioned it's worth pointing out that cars have had automatic transmissions available for my entire 50+ years yet manual transmissions are still available and in some parts of the world still common.

 

We have two cars, one with an automatic and one with a manual. Most of the time the manual transmission is a joy to drive but in some situations (stop and go traffic), it is not so fun and an automatic is preferable. I look at modern cameras with automatic everything the same way. They do everything I could want them to do, but sometimes it's more fun doing it on my own. I get more joy out of a shot that turns out really well on a 30 year old film camera than I do from a pic taken from a digital camera that will deliver consistently good results time after time. But then I don't make a living as a sports photographer.

Ed I think it was actually me who was missing your point. Not the first time I've done that, probably not the last. I just grew up on manual cameras and learned that way. In those days auto whatever was not very good and I developed a dislike for it and didn't trust it. I still don't. Problem now is that as I update cameras I am finding them much more capable. If I don't learn to make use of these features I am missing out on over half of what it can do and often don't even know what those capabilities are. No excuse for that. I've always liked to think I know my equipment inside and out.

 

Rick H.

Most of us have gotten used to the idea of 'fly by wire' in our automobiles. I do not think that there is a single, general production model of any major auto manufacturer that still hosts a mechanical linkage accelerator. Rather, our foot actions are translated through a rheostat to the central CPU board of our cars--there for our intent to be interpreted and adjusted accordingly before being sent off as a signal to a servomotor on the intake body and signals to the fuel injector rail. The old farts amongst us (myself in that august body) still miss the control afforded by the mechanical design and the responsiveness delivered.

 

Such it has been moving since cameras began to incorporate simple AE systems to 'decide for us.' Yet even with this, for a very long time we were still able to find mechanical aperture rings, and a true focus scale showing depth of field. The former I noticed disappearing some years back in favor of the 'fly by wire' aperture controls of the camera body. Now I see on a number of new lenses the lack of any DOF markings, and an unnaturally truncated manual focus throw. Almost to the point of uselessness... :oops:

 

Here comes the matter of my surprise--and I am astounded at my own ignorance for not taking any note of it before. Many lenses now have the capital letter G appended to their names. Clueless me, I rather thought this referenced some enhanced function or feature. Little did I understand that this means quite the opposite. GELDED! Oh wow, cutting the gonads off the beast! :eek: I have to take pause and think for a moment about the mental status of the engineer or marketing maven that thought this little bit of loaded nomenclature up.

 

I actually do not have a whole lot of issue with using one of the body wheels to change my f-stop. I am missing the DOF when running macro mode in manual or aperture priority. Oh well. In the technology fueled world of today I guess that we just do not need our gonads... :cool:

Doing so to a rooster makes it grow faster. But if you didn't understand the meaning of the letter G you're too late. I thought everyone who own Nikon knew that.

Fly be wire means do not fly by wire. Cables break and lose tension.

 

That's not been my experience with the five or so cable driven cars I've owned, the last one, a '92 Nissan Sentra I spent $2000 to keep going at Express Lube Plus. It's passed inspection for the past 20 years I've owned it. I still refuse to buy newer models that come with electronic throttle.

 

 

As for my $30 Sigma 28-80mm "Plastic Fantastic" lens it broke yesterday from what I now understand to be its weakest link, the plastic seat assembly. I bumped the lens against a hard surface abruptly turning around with camera strapped to my shoulder which snapped the plastic fittings that hold the lens in the K-mount right off...plastic not so fantastic.

 

Minutes before this I managed to shoot some macro shots of some odd looking plants with great DOF at f/36 (electronic aperture) Found the exact same Sigma lens going for $50 on eBay from a reputable vendor. I think I might get it and just know now how to be careful with plastic lenses.

 

But if you didn't understand the meaning of the letter G you're too late. I thought everyone who own Nikon knew that.

As Ben pointed out already, the term was coined by Ken Rockwell. I don't know why Nikon picked "G" - possibly because it's the next letter in the alphabet after "F" that is used to indicate the mount? At least we are spared the additional alphabet soup Sony and Canon create with their G/G Master and L Series lenses, respectively.

 

I am not missing the aperture ring on the lens at all as I am no longer using cameras that require it. DOF indication is a different matter as it has its use in certain circumstances. But I rather have that info in the viewfinder than on the lens. Together with an option to, for example, tell the camera to focus the lens to its hyperfocal distance. The info is in the EXIF data, so why can't I use it in camera?

The concept of Depth of Field (DOF) has evolved significantly in the digital age. Technically, the limits are defined as a 0.2 mm uncertainty of edges in an 8x10" print, viewed from a distance of 10". From the start, it is mainly a subjective fiction, despite the numbers placed on it. Using DOF with a rangefinder camera relies on lines bracketing the focus point on the lens barrel. The little notches in a Leica viewfinder were less than useless. The main use of these markings were to set the hyperlocal distance, another myth which renders most important features in a landscape out of focus.

 

That changed only slightly with the advent of a DOF preview button on an SLR. Since the image darkened significantly, the best use I found was to see how distracting OOF objects were, not whether they were in focus. DOF lines on the lens barrel were useful for rangefinder cameras, which are limited (in a practical sense) to focal lengths between 35mm and 90mm. Even with SLR lenses, at 90 mm, there is only space for f/11-f/22 DOF markings, LOL.

 

The biggest change came with live view in general, and electronic finders in particular, and equally important, high resolution digital and lenses to match. A DOF preview is meaningful, in that the viewfinder keeps a relatively constant brightness, so you can see the effect clearly. However the concept of DOF is less significant when you realize and can see clearly that only one plane is in sharp focus. For me, this reverts to the principal that DOF is best used to control the distraction posed by OOF objects, not how well they are in focus.

 

Oddly, one fly-by-wire line of lenses, Zeiss Batis for Sony E-mount, has a DOF scale displayed in an OLED panel on the lens, along with the focal distance. The only way I use this display is to determine infinity focus. To this extent, it works better for astronomical photography than mechanical AF lenses, which overshoot infinity for several reasons. (Batis lenses have less coma than any other lens I own, which is also an advantage for astronomy.)

 

Will Rodgers had it right when he said, "Things ain't like they used to be, and never were."

I obtained a DOF calculator for my Android phone. I only use it when evaluating extreme circumstances, particularly when I need to pre-plan a shot to be made in low light, or long focal lengths. I rarely use it for normal shooting, since I can readily see the effects in-camera. I still wish every lens had a focus scale on it, though, since many of my cheaper, DX lenses do not.