gregory_gardner

<p>A less dramatic, but more plausible scenario is a non-chemical, run-of-the-mill accident that could happen in any room, or especially one that is dark. e.g. slip on a wet floor, and bonk your head on something.</p>

<p><em>The job of carefully scanning all the 35-millimeter images could not begin in earnest until several months after their arrival in New York, when Grant Romer, a conservation specialist from George Eastman House in Rochester, helped develop a special holder through which to run the negatives for digital scanning without damaging them</em> .</p>

<p>Can someone explain the above quote to me? What's different about these 35mm negatives that requires a bespoke holder?</p>

1) Don't take a new camera on a one-time trip before becomming really familiar with it.<p>

2) Don't take pictures inside museums, it's tacky. Just enjoy the art fully while you are there. If you want a keepsake of the museums contents, buy a book.<p>

3) Paris looks better in black and white. Why? I don't know, it just does -- so be sure at the very least to get some B&W prints if you are shooting color negatives. Also, B&W avoids the nasty issues with color balance.<p>

4) Paris has a lot of small streets and tight areas, so be sure to have the wide angles covered.<p>

5) Have fun!<p>

I assume that you just got 4x6 prints? If so, maybe the lesson is that for small prints, many of the things we obsess over don't really matter that much. It might be interesting to blow up one of these images from the fantastic plastic camera, to see how well they hold up. 30x40 seems like a lot to me, but I guess the viewing distance is important.

I recently had Harry work on my Rollei, and I found his work to be an incredible value. Consider the brand new TLRs selling for $2k and up -- these prices are roughly equivalent, adjusted for inflation, as our 20 to 50 year old TLRs were new. So, a couple hundred bucks for a used camera plus a couple hundred for CLA is a screaming deal.

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And if these prices are expensive, I would like to know how much y'all pay for film, processing, and the big enlargements that are the main reason to buy into medium format?

Does anyone know of any further information about these remoted Hasselblad's? For example, sample images, how often they are reloaded, how they are focused, where the strobes are, etc?

Two of my favorite sites for finding used books, are www.abebooks.com and www.bibliofind.com (which has been acquired by amazon). Both are clearing houses for independent used book dealers, and make it very easy to find out of print books, and support small independent business. Both sites have several copies of Eyes of Nikon listed. I feel much more comfortable buying through these sites that through the big auction house, because you can call the bookseller directly, and run the transaction just through that merchant.

I know you said that you'll be bringing slide film, but I'd strongly recommend also shooting black & white. There's something about Paris which makes anyone using B&W a photographic superhero.

<i>I'd wager than NO other basic camera type aside from a Rollei TLR has actually seen it's new price out-pace inflation over the past 30-50 years. That would be akin to a Nikon F5 selling for around $6000-8000, even neglecting the numerous fundamental advances that an F5 has over an F or an F2.</i>

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Interesting statement. The Malaysian site lists a 1964 Nikon F with Photomic finder and 50mm lens at $478. eh.net claims this $478 is worth $2,770 in today's dollars. photo.net claims that a new F5 with 50mm f/1.4 lens runs about $2200. I'd call that "roughly equivalent", for I bet that I could pick different dates, and get the new camera to outplace inflation by a little bit.

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I hear a lot of people complain that they don't make cameras like they used to. It seems like there are some cameras that are still made "like they used to", but you have to be willing to pay what you used to, adjusted for inflation, to get them. Myself, I'm quite happy that both the new plastic wonder cameras and 40 year old used cameras built like tanks allow me entry to this hobby on my budget.

Thanks for the data, Harvey. At this site: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-020.pdf we see that in 1965, the pound was worth .547 of a 1970 pound, and in 1998 it was worth 5.92 times that in 1970. So, with a bit more inflation to take us through today, we need to multiple the 1965 prices by about 11. With this, the current prices are a little higher than inflation, but not tremendously so - Robert White lists the FW for 3019, and inflation would put the 1965 model at 2464.

The sticker shock on the new Rollei's is pretty extreme. I'm curious what the price of 40 year old TLRs would be in today's money -- does anyone know?

Could be a hot or stuck pixel in the camera. Are they always in the same place? Do they go away when you turn on Noise Reduction -- NR?

This brings up a question I have about the DC lenses. Nikon says that the DC effect cannot be seen in the viewfinder. Why is this? I thought that the big advantage of SLR cameras is that they are what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Are there other optical effects like defocus control which aren't visible in the viewfinder? Is the effect too subtle to be seen in the small viewfinder? What about with digital cameras? Can the DC effect be seen on the LCD?

I would be interested to see a similar test with a cheap, 1 hour lab, and crops of scans from both negatives and from both prints. I would have thought that, barring scratches, abuse and mishandling, that cheap minilabs would do a reasonable job developing C-41. Printing, I would think, would be a completely different story.

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As I become more worried about airport x-rays, handlers and other damage to my film when traveling, I'm considering using 1 hour labs to develop-only my film when I travel, and my trusted local lab to print. This shouldn't lose much, if any resolution or color fidelity, right?

The cleaner new look looks great, IMHO. On the subject of clean web design, how about removing all the bullets from the various lists? Like the underlines, they just seem to detract from the text.

Thanks for the new content -- this is good stuff! I do notice, that there is no discussion link on that page, which may be a first for photo.net. Is this intentional?

First off, most of the "prosumer" digital cameras don't really offer that much control, even when they have Manual modes, or Shutter or Aperture priority modes. The CoolPix 995 lens, at full zoom, goes from f/5 wide open to f/10. That's, what, 2 stops? There's just not much to control there. The DSLRs give you the full range, but at a pretty hefty price.

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I don't understand the conventional wisdom that beginners should start with manual cameras. I'm a beginner, and for me, composition is much, much, harder to get "right" than exposure. The programmed exposure modes are right for me most of the time, letting me think more about composition.

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As I critique my photos, I try to think about the one thing I could have done to improve each of them. Only 15% of the time, I wish that I could have changed the exposure. The rest of the time, I figure the photo could have been improved by putting the camera somewhere else.