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<p>Hi Tracy,<br> Photographing things for eBay is not too difficult. From what you say, it would seem that your Canon A3100 IS is pretty beaten up and has come to the end of its working life. All modern digital cameras autofocus well, even at fairly low light levels, have efficient AWB (automatic white balance) to cope with different light sources and have quite effective automatic exposure, allowing them to deliver good colour. Many modern compact cameras would do what you ask, but if you can afford it, a Nikon D3300 would certainly be a good choice and offers good possibilities for expansion, mainly by adding additional lenses but also other accessories.<br> Nowadays, so-called “standard” zooms focus quite close (in the “macro” range), if you need to photograph very small objects for eBay, where the quality standard does not need to be super-critical, you can attach a close-up lens. The main thing is to use sympathetic lighting. Professionals would use large diffuse lights called soft-boxes, you can achieve surprisingly good results, certainly good enough for eBay, by interposing a sheet of white paper, possibly tissue paper, between the lights and the subject and lighting this by means of 2 desk lamps from above. If you have more powerful lights available, of course, use these, just make sure that any paper diffuser does not come too close to a hot light bulb. Make sure also that you set any camera you use to “Auto ISO”, this will avoid the camera setting itself to a low shutter speed and taking blurry pictures.</p>

<p>I just looked at your sketch - based on this, you need 10 cm of film to stretch from the mouth of the cassette to the camera take-up spool. If you take the wise precaution of winding one frame with the camera back open to check correct threading and then make two blank exposures with the back closed, you need to add another 3.6 x 3 cm for this. To find the length of trailer you need, you can easily measure from the spool in the cassette to the start of the film gate - this will probably be about 3 cm, ideally allow 5 or 6 cm. Allow 6 and add it all up and you come to 156.4 cm.</p>

<p>Standard length for 36 exposures is 1.64 meters. For 30 exp take off 6 x 36 mm = 216 mm.</p>

<p>To me the answer is to recognise that there are vast differences in the view of children and sexuality between the Anglo-American world and continental Europe (and even vaster differences between the Western world and Islam). This is illustrated quite well by the current Clement Freud scandal here in England, where CF (grandson of Sigmund) behaved in a way unremarkable by the standards of central European Bohemians but utterly scandalous by contemporary British standards. An earlier post mentions Lee Miller, who illustrates the dichotomy involved - she was brought up to regard nudity as normal but was then raped by a family "friend" at the age of 10 or so, acquiring in the process an STI which required, pre-penicillin, painful and protracted mercury treatment.<br> The law in England (recently revised) states that it is illegal to make sexual images (de facto defined defined as showing genitalia) of anyone younger than 18. Even then, photographers should proceed with caution - one step over a line which you may not know even exists and the puritans will be forming a lynch mob before you can blink!</p>

<p><em>Basically, is it possible for someone without his own darkroom to actually use his older cameras? </em><br> I have vast experience of developing my own film and a small darkroom in my home BUT I also have very little time these days and suffer from chronic rhinitis and an oversensitivity to photo chemicals. If I shoot b+w film (I think digital color is superior to film) I tend to have the film processed by a lab and have a contact sheet and 38 MB scans done at the same time. This costs £25 per 36 exposure roll, which sounds horrendous at first but is not so bad when I consider that this saves me 2 hours work or more for each roll and means that I actually produce some film images instead of shooting film and putting the exposed rolls in a drawer to develop "someday". </p>

<p>For landscape a simple program setting will be fine. For wildlife moving at speed, the best choice would be shutter priority at 1/500 or shorter (although you can of course experiment with creative blur and slower speeds). If you have a choice of AF areas, choose the smallest one and keep it on the subject. If you are photographing birds up in the sky, you are very likely to need an exposure correction of +1 to +2 stops. </p>

<p>Older versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Paintshop Pro are available very cheaply and work with Windows 8 (I have Elements 7.0 on one computer). These offer good editing functions, although you will have to do your own file management.</p>

<p>Agree with other posts. Your shutter consists essentially of 2 parts (curtains) which can move relative to each other to expose or close up a gap. When the shutter is wound (along with the film advance), the gap is closed, when the shutter is then fired, a gap opens up of a varying size according to your shutter speed setting. This is called "uncapping". I would bet your shutter is not uncapping until it has traveled over half the film. A rough way of checking this is to take the lens off the camera, place a piece of thin white cad where the film usually goes and fire the shutter off at different speeds while looking at the camera from the front. If you can see a full white rectangle at this time, the shutter is opening OK - if not, it may not be uncapping properly.</p>

<p>Note that Rodinal is essentially a non-fine-grain high acutance (edge sharpness) developer - note above all that Rodinal does not give full emulsion speed (it gives about 2/3 of a stop less than box speed). If you select a development time recommended for box speed, this is effectively push development and may result in excessive contrast. Some people use stand development regularly, for me it's an emergency rescue technique to get higher effective speed without excess contrast or to reduce contrast. In around 60 years of developing film, I have found no reason to depart from D-76/ID-11, mostly used 1+1. This is a good balance between fine grain and sharpness (true fine grain always involves a solvent action to reduce granularity, which also affects sharpness).</p>

<p><em>At one time I owned 5 of these, and never had a problem with flash sync and I used either studio flash or Vivitar 285's for most of the work that I did with them, so I am at a loss to explain your problem.</em><br> At one time (when they were new) 70s and 80s Pentaxes worked great. However, in my experience, the chances of finding one today with electronics working accurately are very low. I tried 4 examples of an ME Super, metering totally unreliable. Pentax for a very long time had a lack of product management, they didn't know who they were making cameras for and ended up making some great lenses, along with some quite awful zooms, while their camera bodies were under-specified and simply not tough or durable enough for professional use. </p>

<p>In a given price class the offerings by most reputable makers are very similar. You would not go wrong with any of the cameras you mention, but in terms of build quality and availability of a wide range of second-hand lenses, I would go for the Nikon FM2,</p>

<p>I have assumed that this<br> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=studio+54&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJ6JKataLNAhXqJsAKHSOlA0MQsAQIKQ&biw=1242&bih=585<br> is the kind of picture you want to do - the off-camera flash technique I have described is exactly the way to go.</p>

<p>If the situation is more or less under your control and you can use a speedlight without annoying people, I would work with the same gear as a 60s night club photographer - a rollfilm camera and a speedlight used directly BUT on a 2 meter extension cord. The camera should be one that you can focus easily in dim light and then support and fire with one hand while you hold the speedlight high and to one side with your other hand. This will give you an authentic look. Do NOT mount the speedlight on the camera or make any attempt to bounce off the ceiling, which may be high, painted a dark color and have lighting equipment mounted on it which may produce strange shadows. Of the gear you describe I would think the Pentax 645N would be your best bet, but a 35mm loaded with medium speed film would be fine too.<br /> If I think of nightclubs, I think of pix like this:<br /> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=dexter+gordon+photos&espv=2&biw=1242&bih=585&tbm=isch&imgil=VK8CXoDMpbVyiM%253A%253BQv_9h5T3oq-IIM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.openculture.com%25252F2013%25252F05%25252Fdexter_gordons_elegant_version_of_the_jazz_standard_whats_new_1964.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=VK8CXoDMpbVyiM%253A%252CQv_9h5T3oq-IIM%252C_&usg=__kFkrVUJdBS-MuSw-kAJ6M_K0QNU%3D&ved=0ahUKEwij0cSgyZ3NAhXsB8AKHWZWDRQQyjcIPQ&ei=kMFaV6PJJuyPgAbmrLWgAQ#imgrc=VK8CXoDMpbVyiM%3A<br /> This was of course taken during a special photosession and probably on 4x5, but there's no reason why you shouldn't get something of the same atmosphere with the technique I've described.</p>

<p>Wikipaedia tells us:<br> The word "photography" was created from the <a title="Greek language" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language">Greek</a> roots φωτός (<em>phōtos</em>), genitive of φῶς (<em>phōs</em>), "light"<sup id="cite_ref-2" ><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup> and γραφή (<em>graphé</em>) "representation by means of lines" or "drawing",<sup id="cite_ref-3" ><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> together meaning "drawing with light".<sup id="cite_ref-4" ><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup><br> According to this, the answer to your question strictly speaking is "No!" If no recording takes place, you are effectively using a camera as a viewing device, just like a telescope or a pair of binoculars.</p>

<p>A Nikon DK-20C correction lens<br> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151912364386?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT<br> fits a surprising number of cameras - just yesterday I popped the lens out of the frame of one example and inserted it in the eyepiece of a Leica R3, over which I fitted a rubber eyecup to keep the lens in place. If you have the patience, you can cut up cheap drugstore eyeglasses, but I would think the glass (or plastic) would be rather thick.</p>

<p>Focus pulling with Canon EOS 5D II<br> I have not shot any serious movie footage with this camera, partly because I did not want to work without a focus puller function (and did not want to use autofocus, since hunting backwards and forwards would look very messy).<br> I see there are focus puller gadgets around for not much money and would like to ask if anyone has experience of these for moving from one manual focus setting to another without overshoots and preferably while I am shooting with the camera to my eye on a tripod and without the need to actually look at a focus scale. Can all this be done by one person or is it better to recruit a separate focus puller?</p>

<p>I have no experience of this, but with any workshop the questions are: Is the price reasonable? Is the workshop long enough to be worthwhile, e.g with time for participants to work themselves with comments by the workshop leader? A further factor is your present level of experience - if you are a beginner, you may be wasting your money taking a masterclass immediately, if you are more experienced, you can learn an awful lot by buying a book by the master photographer in question and another on studio lighting (for example, the one by Roger Hicks). You can then put what you have learned into practice by getting use of (if necessary hiring) a studio well equipped with softboxes, flash head attachments etc. and working with a friend to experiment on lighting set-ups. Workshops vary widely (I've done quite a few) - some workshop leaders are generous in sharing their experience, others just want to get their hands on their fee with minimum effort and clearly don't want to give too much away.</p>

<p>Hi Valentin!<br /> Since the fisheye attachment fits onto a normal lens like a filter, it will fit any lens and any make, if necessary via stepping rings (adapters with a different filter thread on either side). This adapter will always make a circular image, the angle of view will depend on the normal lens to which you fit it.<br /> The use of a lens like this is rather limited - you will get more use out of a full-frame lens like this one:<br /> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opteka-Aspherical-Fisheye-Digital-Cameras/dp/B002MR0L9Y/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1465102102&sr=1-10&keywords=fisheye+lens<br /> This is not an attachment, it fits directly onto the camera body and works by itself. As far as I know, the Opteka brand lenses are quite good for the money, an OEM lens (Minolta in your case) would probably be better but harder to find and more expensive:<br> http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.XMinolta+fisheye.TRS0&_nkw=Minolta+fisheye&_sacat=625</p>

<p>I have been a fairly successful stills photographer. In my youth, I experimented with an 8 mm Bolex camera and had to recognise that the results were quite poor and that I seem to have no natural feeling for movie-making.<br /> A problem for me has always been the awareness that while world-class stills photography can be carried out by a single person working alone, professional-quality movies absolutely demand a crew, whose size seems incredible to the layman but all the members of which have a function and a contribution to make.<br /> Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, 2 1/2 minutes of finished screen-ready film is reckoned to be a good output at the highest level of movie-making, with a clear difference relative to B-movies completing 5 to 10 minutes a day (not to mention the filming of TV soaps, where the difference between high-end material and downmarket productions often filmed in a single take is extremely obvious). I have ended up feeling that producing a worthwhile movie is beyond the resources of the average amateur (which, these days, is what I am).<br /> I would imagine if I would try and learn filmmaking that it would be very valuable to think of a film that I liked, buy a copy of the script<br /> http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=film+script+books&sprefix=film+script%2Caps%2C141<br /> and also the film on video and go through the script marking up the different shots (crane, dolly, zoom, track, Steadicam) and their duration, i.e. the number of cuts (which takes real concentration, since a smoothly-made cut is virtually invisible).</p>

<p>Here's at least one price guide:<br> http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/salebrowse.aspx?entry=ektra&intsaleid=18587&lotviewtype=listview<br> You should sell the lens on e-bay but first have it appraised by someone who knows what they are doing. From your picture there seem to be speckles in or on the rear element - these may be dust but may also be mold, which would cut the value down from possibly $500 for mint condition to $250 for moldy but capable of being cleaned or even less for an unusable lens. As a rough guide hold the lens up to a light source and look through it, both straight and at a slight angle. If you see haze, a lot of speckles or, worst, ice-like patterns on the glass, this will greatly reduce the value, although the lens will always have some value because of its extreme rarity. It goes without saying that only a special microporous cloth should be used to clean the lens VERY lightly and caefully.</p>

<p><em>Is there anything i should know</em><br> Not really, just do what you did before. The meter will take into account the filter factor (typically 8 times or 3 stops), just be aware that the resulting shutter speed/aperture combination may call for a tripod. As I said before, doing the effect digitally allows the intensity to be controlled, a red filter can easily be too much for certain subjects.</p>

<p><em>I think anyone who uses a camera to take a picture is a photographer</em><br> I totally agree. I think any distinctions between types of photographer are perfectly well taken care of by an appropriate adjective in front of the word "photographer". Anyone who asks "Are you a photographer?" really means "Are you a professional?", which makes the question easy to answer. In my case, the answer is that I photograph for amusement - if the conversation continues for any length of time, I might mention that I am professionally trained, worked as a pro in my youth, etc., normally this is too much information. Similarly, "What do you do?" almost always means "How do you earn a living?" - if you do make a full-time living from photography (I don't), you can of course say so. Photography is a medium - if a photographer has sufficiently strong skill and vision, photography is strong enough to carry his/her message. In 99.99% of cases, photography does not have any strong personal vision behind and operates on the same level as the tweets, text messages, etc. which people throw off left and right without thinking.</p>

<p>Before you do anything else, shoot some pictures on your DSLR in full color and then during processing back off the G and B channels, if necessary down to zero. This has two advantages, firstly that you can shoot at a true ISO 400 with no filter factor and secondly you can experiment with different filitrations rather than doing this in an "all or nothing" way during image capture. The attached picture was done this way.</p><div></div>

<p>I should have kept quiet - I see a new wave of spam has started!</p>

<p>It would seem that (at least for now) the moderators have won their battle against the spammers - well done, it must have taken a lot of effort. I would be interested in reading any explanation which people may have as to what this spamming is all about - is it just stupid mischief-making or is there some deeper (crazy) rationale behind it?</p>