markwilkins

This can be one of a few problems:<P>

 

* Fungal growth on the lens. This can be solved by having the lens professionally disassembled and cleaned, but the coatings might have been slightly damaged.<P>

 

* Oil condensation on a lens element from the shutter mechanism. My Rolleicord III suffered from this and a cleaning cleared it right up with no lasting effects, but a severe case might damage the coatings as well over time.<P>

 

* Development of flaws in cement between cemented elements. This is not easy to fix and it is cheaper generally to buy a new lens.<P>

 

Neither of the fixable problems should be left as they are, because they are likely to get worse and might permanently damage the lens coatings, resulting in overall reduced contrast and flare when you're shooting toward a light source. A cleaning, lubrication, and adjustment for the lens is likely to cost between $50 and $100 U.S.<P>

 

For most Rollei repair and cleaning I recommend Harry Fleenor, at Oceanside Camera Repair, if you're in the U.S., although I do not know if he'll work on the 6008. His site is:<P>

 

<A HREF="http://www.jps.net/hfleenor/">http://www.jps.net/hfleenor/</A>

* Don't handhold the camera.

 

* Focus in advance, and stop down as far as you can so that

everyone's in focus. This means you need plenty of light.

Natural light and reflectors indoors will not get you the light you

need, particularly at f/8.

 

* Remember to keep the horizon level... my Rolleicord came with

a line drawn in ink on the focusing screen that I can use as a

reference and it's been very useful.

 

A Rolleicord in good condition can produce beautiful images.

Don't worry about the negs turning out gray, that's perfectly normal.

The purple color is a coating that will come off with enough washing.

Probably the pro lab didn't wash the negs as long as recommended, or

they skipped a hypo clear step, either of which could result in the

purple color remaining. However, it makes no difference in printing

or in negative longevity.

I've found the other thought process I go through, though, is that

once I notice some kind of systematic distortion it becomes all I see

in the photos I take. :-) So it cuts both ways.

When I say "widest aperture smaller than f/5.6" I mean a widest

aperture like f/8 or f/11 -- a smaller aperture, not a smaller

f-number.

Autofocus will work as long as the WIDEST aperture you can achieve is

5.6 or wider. When you use a teleconverter, the widest you can go may

be f/8, in your example.

 

<p>

 

Modern cameras autofocus and meter with the lens wide open, then stop

down the iris to your selected aperture after you press the shutter

release and before opening the shutter.

 

<p>

 

The reason for this is that metering and AF can be more accurate with

more light. The camera adjusts the meter reading accordingly by

taking into account the difference between the lens's widest aperture

and what you've selected.

 

<p>

 

If you use a lens with a widest aperture smaller than f/5.6, enough

light won't get to the AF sensors. Higher-end cameras can do slightly

better by having larger or more sensitive sensors that cost more, but

even some high-end cameras have this limitation.

To make a long story short, exposure compensation wouldn't do much

good if it were only available in manual mode, because it's so easy to

compensate by hand.

I have had no trouble at all using my Olympus Stylus Epic (MJU II)

with slide film.

Hi Kevin!

 

<p>

 

There's substantial sample variation in lenses from many of the

companies out there making them. I'd suggest exchanging it for

another as long as you can get a commitment that you can return it if

you aren't satisfied.

Is that like putting "GT" on a car?

I thought the "L" meant "Low-dispersion."

Well, speaking from the perspective of someone who makes his living in professional digital imaging and whose livelihood is not dependent on the presence of film technology at all...

 

The methodology of the Luminous Landscape comparison could not possibly be more screwed up.

 

Because of the lack of universal color standards and the absolute universality of _hidden_ color processing steps in scanners and cameras, it's meaningless to compare the color fidelity of so-called "raw" images from a camera or a scanner. Just about every digital imaging system that exists today applies various enhancements to the image it creates, whether to correct inherent errors in registration between color channels or to create a qualitatively more pleasing image.

 

The real standard has to be what the image looks like with the optimal scan settings and an arbitrary amount of post-processing for either image. The author of that article is judging the quality of the images on a monitor of unknowable calibration and quality. Furthermore, the D30 is probably designed to yield generally acceptable results without manipulation while a $10,000 scanner is more likely to presume that the photographer will postprocess their images manually or at least heavily tweak the scan settings.

 

Color issues aside, I'm not sure what the author is getting at when he says there's more detail in the D30 image. Since the unprocessed Provia 100 scan is less contrasty, it's exceptionally difficult to hold the two images up side-by-side and make that call. Besides which, there are regions of the Provia image which (in the crappy JPEG of the web page) appear more detailed, such as the lines in the brown building's masonry.

 

As for the dynamic range issue, that may or may not have to do with the choice of scanner or how it's operated on the film side. Having never used that model of scanner I can't guess whether there's a solution available that would yield more shadow detail.

 

My take on that whole discussion is that nobody serious uses digital images without color correction for the same reason that nobody ever prints analog photos without color correction -- because there's no default color standard. A completely qualitative methodology for comparing image acquisition techniques which ignores the color correction step entirely has too many places it can go wrong and doesn't resemble real use of these technologies one bit.

By the way, I didn't mean to suggest that consumer digital cameras were the competition for MF that we were talking about, just that it's not that big a deal to design a lens specifically for a CCD camera -- about the only reason you'd want to do so though is to go wider, because photographic lenses don't have any problem accommodating the smallest CCDs in resolution.

Many CCD-based cameras today (including lens systems) are being designed from scratch to suit the purpose... look at any consumer analog or digital camcorder being made by any manufacturer. They ALL use CCDs as imaging detectors, whether the cameras are digital or not, and the lens systems are designed specifically for the application.

 

Looking at my Sony TRV-11 digital camcorder, the lens system is a zoom that has a focal length of 3.3 mm on the short end!!! However, going smaller with CCDs actually hurts your signal-to-noise, up to a point, but it makes them easier to manufacture.

 

The big limitations in digital cameras, whether high-end digital SLRs or low-end consumer digital cameras with custom-designed lenses, really are the imaging detectors and storage requirements, not the lenses. The problems with digital tend to be limited dynamic range, wacky color processing, high noise floor, and having to live with a quality/compression tradeoff, not lens-related problems.

Mr. Albert:

 

Do you have any references that discuss in more detail the "bucket" description of CCDs? I ask because in years of working with CCD imaging arrays in astronomical research we had to do all kinds of computations about many mechanisms that tended to diminish the signal-to-noise of our CCD detectors (such as detector quantum efficiency, dark current noise, thermal noise, shot noise, readout noise, etc.) but that issue never came up.

 

In fact, now that I think about it, if CCD pixels were shaped like buckets, they could not read out the images. CCDs rely on having several (flat) electrodes per pixel that are held at different electric potentials, and those electric potentials are raised and lowered in such a way as to push the electrons that have collected in the pixel toward a circuit that measures, one at a time, the intensities of all the pixels in a row.

 

A physical structure like you describe would probably prevent a CCD's readout mechanism from working.

 

Diagrams that show each pixel as a well that collects electrons generally are depicting the electric potential that holds the electrons in place, not some physical structure of the CCD.

 

However, I could be missing something about how CCDs for consumer cameras have to be designed... can't imagine what it is though.

On the issue of whether doing it in Photoshop takes the fun out of it, perhaps. However, from the way Lance worded the question ("I need to photograph a fisherman etc.") I inferred that it was a paying job, presumably editorial or advertising. If that were the case, efficiency and quality would override the element of fun in shooting the photo.

You'll get a _much_ better result by doing a digital composite in Photoshop. Shoot the fisherman and the waterline without worrying about properly exposing below the water, making sure that your lens axis is just above the waterline (so you see the surface in the above-water photo.) Get a good shot just below the surface with fish. Scan both, then use the path tool to give you a matte edge for the water's surface in the first photo. Superimpose it on the second, color correct and output to taste, and you're done.

<BLOCKQUOTE>

>Nikon seems to have made a policy of omitting very simple and

>cheap features that could not possibly make a significant impact on

>the overall cost of the product.

</BLOCKQUOTE>

 

That tells me that you've never worked in the consumer electronics

industry. Over a large production run the _tiniest_ cost savings are

pursued and the specs are always gone over with a fine-tooth comb with

manufacturing cost in mind because per-unit costs multiply with the

popularity of your product.<P>

 

An extra shutter button or getting rid of stop-down metering are

_exactly_ the kinds of things that can make a difference between a

product being financially viable and not -- and while Canon does

include certain features Nikon does not, they're giving something up

in order to do so. Maybe Canon is giving up profit per-unit for the

higher volume of a bigger feature set, I don't know. However, these

decisions are ALWAYS made with manufacturing costs firmly in mind, at

every company.<P>

Get the lens... (assuming you haven't by now!)

 

<p>

 

The 2020 is a fine camera aside from the poor autofocus (although at

the time, long ago, when I was shooting with a 2020 I had no idea how

to even turn AF on -- probably for the better!)

Comment for the last poster: Take into account that what makes an

appealing looking negative may, for example, be too contrasty to print

easily, etc. You need to practice printing your negatives!