jon w.

<p>Thanks Matthew. The writing on mine is engraved too, although the template is perhaps slightly different. It does sound like it might be a genuine B+W - but pretty old.</p>

<p>Thanks for the info Jochen. Does the writing on your old filter look like the writing in the photo?</p>

<p>Indeed. I think I had drawn my own conclusion before posting, but one lives in hope. Thanks anyway.</p>

<p>Hi Photo.net people,<br>

<br />I recently bought a second-hand B+W yellow 8 filter from a reputable seller in Germany. However, because it is second-hand, it obviously comes with no supporting documentation (or even a case). It also lacks any of the usual text printed on the mount: recent examples usually have one or more of 'F-Pro', 'Made in Germany' and the B+W logo. Moreover, the writing inside the mount is in a peculiar typeface, almost as if handwritten (I attach a jpeg), whereas recent B+W filters use a different, and quite distinctive, Sans Serif. I have found one other example of this 'handwritten' typeface on ebay, but it is also second-hand, from a private seller, so doesn't prove much either way.<br>

<img src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanwalkervenice/22613932855/in/dateposted-public/" alt="" /><br>

I don't have the facilities to test the optical qualities of the filter within the relevant timeframe, so I have to make a decision on whether or not to return it based on what evidence I have available.<br>

Has anyone seen this kind of text on a B+W filter before? I am wondering if it is perhaps an older style no longer in use.<br>

If anyone can confirm this was an older style of filter marking, hopefully that information might come in useful for others in future.<br>

<br />Thanks for you help.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks a lot Dave, very helpful, though I feel it may be too late to save my eBay auction, and I'm not sure it's worth generating the bad feeling of cancelling and relisting, saying, 'No, no, the shutter's fine after all!'</p>

<p>There are a lot of pdf copies of old camera manuals at http://www.butkus.org/chinon/fujica/fujica_gw690_iii/fujifilm_gw690_iii.htm (this one for the Fuji).<br>

Give him a PayPal donation for the trouble.</p>

<p>If you try to fire the camera with the side dial set at 'Unlock', with the lower lens aperture closed (a feature intended to enable you to change the lens, which I'm explaining for others), the shutter won't fire at all, an automatic feature that stops you from photographing when there's no lens fitted, but I WANT to fire the shutter with no lens fitted, to test its functionality.<br>

But you could be referring to something entirely different, because (unless you mean the safety catch, an entirely different feature on the other side of the camera) 'there is a guard that slides to unlock it' doesn't make any sense to me.</p>

<p>Thanks for the response Dan, but not sure which 'knob' you mean (I have already consulted the manual, and used the camera successfully previously on several occasions btw).<br>

If you mean the dial that turns from 'Lock' to 'Unlock', etc. to seal the lower lens aperture, I'm firing the shutter with it set at 'Lock', as if there was a lens fitted and it was taking an exposure. If you mean the safety catch with the red 'L', obviously that's off because otherwise nothing would move on the camera at all.<br>

There is a lever that locks bellows movement too, but obviously that has nothing to do with the shutter. Exposure is set to 'single'.<br>

Any further clarification would be appreciated.</p>

<p>There are tons of Fuji 6x9s available on eBay, many from Japan, where I presume they sold a lot more of them originally. The wide angle version costs a lot more than the normal. Beware VAT charges from customs, which caught me by surprise.</p>

<p>Left-handed, shoot with left eye to the viewfinder. I wear glasses, but my vision is noticeably better, and not only better but sharper and with more acute peripheral vision in the left eye too.</p>

<p>There will surely be someone who wants old Hasselblad spare parts, even if they don't sell for very much.</p>

<p>(See photo.) It's the metal bit in the groove by the lower lens aperture that doesn't move during shutter release. It should move, because it's what presses the trigger on the shutter.</p>

<p>Hi guys,<br>

<br />I haven't posted on here for a long time, but at one time I was an active member of the community, responding to many questions by others, so I hpe you will forgive this urgent query after a long silence.<br>

I am currently selling a Mamiya C330 camera body, and I don't have any lenses to check its functions on (the only one I ever had was a 180mm, which has a funny interface with the shutter anyway).<br>

There appears to be something wrong with the firing mechanism on the shutter. The lever reloads, advances and cocks the shutter fine, and the piece of metal fitted into the semi-circular groove by the lower lens aperture moves as it should during this procedure (that bit of metal is the thing that actually recocks the shutter, which is fitted to the lens). When you then press the shutter release button, it depresses, as does the alternate release on the side of the camera, but the semi-circular bit of metal in the groove doesn't move at all (though any shutter could still be triggered manually by performing the same motion this thing is meant to do, i.e. just pressing down on the trigger mechanism with your finger).<br>

It's difficult to be sure if it's an actual fault because I don't have a lens to test it on, but the upshot is that the camera COULD POSSIBLY require a repair to the shutter mechanism, and I want to specify that clearly in my description to sellers.<br>

Is this something obvious I'm not understanding or seeing, or does the camera shutter mechanism have an actual fault / jam?<br>

Any advice from those familiar with the C330's idiosyncracies would be much appreciated, and I'll try to reciprocate by answering a spare question or two where I have the requisite technical knowledge. Will look around now for one.<br>

<br />Thanks, Jon</p>

Clive, I sent you an e-mail. Thanks for your interest.

Let's try that again with a hyperlink:

<p>

<a href="http://www.letusburnthegondolas.com">www.letusburnthegondolas.com</a>

Hello everyone. I haven't been posting here for a while, but some of you may

remember me. Those who do might like to see what I've been up to at

www.letusburnthegondolas.com.

 

This is part of a larger site. You can see the rest of it by clicking

on 'Home', and you can return from the homepage to the photography section by

clicking on the camera icon.

 

The photography section is a complement to an exhibition and catalogue on the

same theme of 'Venice as a Modern City', although the layout and text of the

online version is different to that of the hard copy.

It's very difficult to AVOID getting a defocused background on a portrait shot on a view camera with a standard (i.e. a portrait) lens. Now you come to mention it though, I can't think of any 19th C studio images that employ the effect (Nadar, Brady, etc.). They must have taken great pains to deploy their lighting. However, it's clearly nonsense to suggest that it was an innovation related to 35mm SLRs - not least because the default cameras for studio photography after the decline of widespread use of view camera were medium format, which also use ground glass screens.

Lesy proves once again that he is a great - because impassioned and involved - historian of photography. Wisconsin Death Trip is a radical book, brilliantly edited, so I'm sure he'll do justice to Rizzuto's work.

I photograph in one city, and often in the same bars. I'm often alone when I do so. I KNOW that a lot of the regulars consider me to be a weirdo. On principle, I do not use images that make the subjects look foolish or ugly, and I do not usually photograph vulnerable people (homeless, unconscious, etc.), but of course my subjects don't know that. If anyone is clearly sending out vibes of 'Don't photograph me' then I don't. However, I have always assumed that incurring other people's contempt and being considered a weirdo is inevitable if you want to work effectively. That applies to architectural shots on LF as much as to candid street work on 35mm. Both attract equal degrees of derision or hostility. I could go the empathetic route, and talk to all my subjects - which works very well if you can do it (though it has little effect on buildings) - but it's just not 'me'. I like being anonymous, shooting other anonymous people.

 

My point? Maybe someone has looked at me and thought some of the things that Bruno did. I'm sure my body language is sometimes awkward (if I'm nervous for example), and some people may choose to interpret that as 'creepy'. Being aware of this, I'm not inclined to judge others quickly unless they are obviously 'upskirting' or something like that. There is a code of propriety, however, which responsible people observe. For example, I generally avoid photographing subjects in their teens, however visually interesting they might be, just because it feels a bit inappropriate at my age (mid-thirties). Others manage this issue fine though, and it's obviously different if you know your subjects.

 

I don't drool, but I have been interrupted by drooling people, who have a tendency to kick tripods, I find.

As my previous post on this topic suggests, I more or less agree with Eugene. As a professional historian, the word 'timeless' always makes me froth at the mouth, though I don't think it is accurate to refer to alleged 'timelessness' as a 'style': rather the term tends to be triggered by certain positive features (mist, fog, 'emotive' facial expressions or postures that are emphatic and easy to decipher, decontextualised and deeroticised nudes, nature w/out any obvious signs of human intervention) and certain absences (anything that is too obviously culturally specific or obsolete). The notion is definitely connected to Romanticism. Might be interesting to consider the relation between 'timelessness' and 'progress' (as applied to art rather than science), since the two are presumably antithetical. Also worth noting that photographic technology is not 'timeless'. To use black and white chemical photography now (as I do) is to be consciously obsolete, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Depends what you do with that knowledge.

Eugene: you are now beginning to understand what it feels like to bang your head against a brick wall.

I am sure you already know this - a quotation from Julian Green used in the preface to Brassai's Paris After Dark.

 

"In all great cities there are zones which reveal their true character only after dusk. By day they wear a mask, assume a look of amiable good-fellowship that hoodwinks even the astute. ?. But when the nightmists rise, such places wake to life that is a parody of death; the smiling banks turn livid, dark surfaces grow pale and flicker with funereal gleams, coming with evil glee into their own again. It is the street-lamp that works the transformation. Under the first ray of this nocturnal sun, the nightscape dons its panoply of shadows and a malefic alchemy transforms the textures of the visible world. The smooth, sleek trunks of the plane-trees seem suddenly transformed to leprous stone, the cobbled pavement grows darkly mottled like the skin of a drowned man, even the river-water burns with a metallic sheen. ?. it is as if the stage were set in preparation for some furtive drama. Under the broken gleams of the lamplight buffeted by the wind, amid the odour of death that hovers on the water, this dark domain of silence and the rats is hospitable only to the thief counting his plunder".

I started working at night because I wanted to slow the process down, and make it more laborious and self-conscious. Pretty much the first photographic term I learned was 'reciprocity failure'. I was also working on a place that is crowded with photographers - Venice - and I wanted to clear out some space of my own. Quite simply, the numbers thinned out a lot at night. It was also a way of defamiliarising the subject matter, and getting around certain cliches about the way water is usually represented in shots of Venice. I shoot hand-held at night on 35mm as well as large-format on a tripod. With the former technique, the challenge is quite different to the latter. The trick is to assemble a coherent statement when the subject is constantly threatening to disappear in a blizzard of noise (massive grain, blur, minimal depth of field, etc.).

 

I would have thought that digital will radically transform night photography, for simple practical reasons. It's my understanding that digital is much, much more efficient at coping with higher ISO settings than traditional film. Even the simple P+S digital cameras used by my friends can function without flash in bars and yield a much better technical result than I can get on Delta 3200 pushed three stops. In other words, night photography will more or less cease to exist as a distinct genre as a result of digital, because working at night will cease to be 'difficult'.

 

Someone has already done something similar to my project, as I discovered recently: a very good Venetian photographer called Luca Campigotto, who put out a book called Venezia Oscura (or Venice Night in the English edition). A critical study worth a look is M. Warehime, Brassa�: Images of Culture and the Surrealist Observer, Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. It's not specifically about Brassai as a night photographer, but does say some interesting things about how that aspect of his work relates to Surrealism.

Martin Parr is appearing next Saturday, 8 October, in Sydney at 3 p.m.

Paddington & Woollahra RSL. It is near to the Australian Centre for

Photography in Paddington, and they are organising it. Attendees need

to book tickets through the ACP in advance: e-mail program@acp.au.com

to reserve one (assuming there are any tickets left by now). It is, I

think, his only public appearance in Australia, and it's free.

Thanks for the recommendation. I know of Bill Owens a little, but had not heard of Hare. It sounds a very interesting book, and I shall try to find a library copy.