Dustin McAmera

It has been said many times before: if someone can see your photo on their screen, then it is already in their cache. Nothing the forum can do will stop people getting your image file. They can only make it a little more awkward. If you don't want your pictures reused, don't upload them in best resolution; add a watermark or signature; add a fierce statement about copyright in your caption. I completely support a time-limit on editing forum posts. Otherwise, I could post some nonsense during a senior moment, and after someone had put me right ('I have my EOS R in my hand, and I'm telling you straight it isn't made of cheese.'), I could sneak back and correct my original post, leaving the other guy looking a fool. As far as I know they are not taking anyone's money now. When they were, the system had to make a distinction, at least internally. I remember years ago, people having a different icon next to their name showing how many years they had been paid up. I'm a Pro at Flickr. I don't mind what they call it; the better service is worth paying for. Here I have always been a cheapskate parasite freeloader.

I have one Aldis, an Aldis-Butcher Anastigmat, 6-inch f/4.5 like yours, on my Ensign Reflex. A tie-up with Houghton-Butcher must have been quite good business. The Ross lens would have been a step up. I have an Agiflex. I think the lens is adequate, though that's based on only a couple of outings; it's a triplet with a rather blue coating. The only Wray I have is an eight-inch f/8 Apo Process Lustrar. That came fitted on my Calumet monorail, but screws straight on the Ensign.

If the OP couldn't find something this basic out by their own effort, it seems to me they may not be the best person to design a camera. 😼

Maybe Grey Street ? 🎶😁

That was quick!😁

You could just click on 'Forums' at the top, and bookmark the page that takes you to. You still see a little of the spam, but not much. This is what I have done: Under 'Forums' in the top line, click on 'My Activity Streams', then 'Create New Stream' (green, at the bottom of the list). That opens a big box of options. I chose these: 'Show me': Content items only 'Read status': Content I haven't read 'Content type': Topics Then at the right of 'Topics' there's a cog-wheel which you can click to set 'more options'; the only option is choosing which forums to include. Click on the forums you want to see. I have left out everything under General Photo Discussions because half the spam is going there. I have also left out Travel, in the Practice and Technique Discussion section; that's where the airline rubbish is going. You need to type a name for the edited view you have created. Mine is just called Less Stuff; I don't plan on using it for long. When you're ready, click Save changes. Then bookmark the view that gives you. The system's not very good; once you have set one of these up, you can't edit it; only delete it or create another one. These airline phoneline spammers will probably go away for today once there's a moderator online; but I think they'll keep coming back until there's some automated anti-spam action.

For now, I made a new 'Activity stream' that doesn't show me the fora they seem to use most, and also switched to the No Sidebars theme.

The spam is beyond a joke this morning. At Camera-wiki, spammers' registrations got so fast (many per minute) that a single admin couldn't keep up with banning them and undoing their edits. I'd say it's almost that bad here today. The oldest post on the first screen of 'All activity' is three minutes old, and that whole screen is spam. I don't think deleting the spam discourages them. Even if the spammed business is Allied Shelving in Mumbai, it's not Allied Shelving that's doing the spam; they have signed up to a 'low-cost advertising' deal and probably don't know that it meant forum spam. The spammer is either a roomful of idiots paid a few cents per operation, or a computer program doing most of the operation on its own. I think they get paid once the spam is there; us deleting it afterward makes no difference to them. At Camera-wiki we stopped the problem by stopping people from registering themselves; people who want to join in editing now have to contact us via Flickr and an admin creates their account. That's a minor job for an admin, and (we're a small group) rarely more than once a week. For us, it's little hardship: people wanting to edit the wiki ought to be serious enough about it to wait for an email exchange.

On the new platform, you can just post the Flickr page url, and the software converts it to an embedded image with a link. No need for any effort to format it.

Yes; right above my post flagging it. I sort of expected my post would be deleted with it; sorry! 😳 It was a short announcement of a sale, followed by a paragraph of random nonsense text about an exploding glass sphere.

Crouching tiger, hidden Spam.

At Flickr, if a user closes their account, any text they posted as comments on photos and in discussions is retained. Otherwise conversations would become nonsensical. The deleted user's name is replaced by a random one (they're quite funny: I have old comments from 'disastrous hands (deleted)' and 'imported stew (deleted)' ). There's no profile page for 'imported stew'. I'd have to go and search to find out if anything like 'attachments' even exists at Flickr, let alone what happens to them... Another thing about the Terms of Service (sorry for the thread-drift): I don't see anything in the Terms that forbids forbidden uses of the site (hate speech, harrassment, porn, spam, criminal plotting, political campaigning, ...)

🌫️ They just started a thread called Fog in the 'No words' forum, if you're interested: https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/538038-fog/ (Rules are that each person can post one photo in any 'No words' thread, without any accompanying text. Minimal details of the camera or how you took the photo are accepted if unusual or interesting. No comments on others' photos, beyond the built-in 'like' function. You can start one new 'No words' thread a day; there's usually a handful of them going at any time.)

I like mist in landscapes. I have taken quite a few misty pictures especially on theriver or the canal towpath. This is quite close to symmetrical: the horizon is about halfway up. If I were taking it, I'd be tempted to angle the camera up a little, losing some of the foreground and filling maybe two-thirds of the frame with blank sky. That's what I would do; not saying it's what you should do. On technical stuff; this is digital? Only it's quite 'noisy'; almost like film grain. What ISO speed did you have set? I only get this from digital if I set a really high ISO value. The grey spot near the middle; is that a thing, or a spot of dirt on the sensor?

..as I said when I fell in the septic tank.😼

Sorry Jean - ew.

Some of my old Ensigns (1930s folding cameras and boxes) have a cover on the red window, which also retracts the pressure plate a little while you wind the film. Thus the channel is nice and open while the film is moving, but when you close the cover the pressure plate is put firmly back on the film. If you started winding without opening the cover, you'd damage the film. Ensign Carbine No. 6, for 120 film.

Stay out of my Agfa treehouse.

You're talking about a problem that might occur, sometimes, and to a variable extent. If you offset your focus by a fixed amount based on some estimate of how big the problem might be, it will be out by a little every time the film sits correctly. I have heard people talk about the roll fim backs for Graflex cameras, saying that some hold the film more reliably flat than others - different rollers or something. That's with a 2¼x3¼ inch frame, with more length for the problem to occur. Also a detachable back, with a removable insert, and with the film wrapping 'inside out' round that insert. There is a back for 70mm film for the Rolleiflex 6006 SLR with a tiny vacuum pump to hold the film against the plate. I guess that wouldn't work on film with a backing paper. Overall, I think if what you have is a Rolleiflex, it's probably good enough. People have taken quite good pictures with them, I understand! 😁

I guess you've seen the exhibition book 'Picasso and the Camera' by John Richardson (2014). I haven't; but there is this blog post about it: https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2014/picasso-the-camera-curated-by-john-richardson/ Most of the few photographs shown there are of Picasso, and mostly of him as the later, famous bloke. But there is one photo attributed to him from 1909, 'Le réservoir (Horta de Ebro), 1909'. It's a view looking toward the small town Horta de Sant Joan, a hill covered with crowded buildings, which later became a painting, also reproduced in the post. Anyhow, I mention it because the aspect ratio of the photograph is very close to 1.25 to 1. That would make sense if he was using a 4x5-inch camera; and I'm sure he could get one in Paris (or Barcelona or Madrid), but it wouldn't be very usual: 9x12 cm would be much more usual for a French camera-maker (or German). Of course, it's possible that a 9x12-cm image was cropped to fit a paper size; but it suggests a British or American camera, I think. 4x5-inch existed as either plates or roll film. The No. 4 Bull's-Eye in that 1903 Kodak advert takes the roll film, for example.

Check out 1903: https://archive.org/details/britishjournalph1903unse/page/230/mode/2up p231- Kodak has one more Paris address, and places in Lyon, Vienna, Brussels, St Petersburg, Milan, ...

Here is the British Journal Almanac for 1898, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/1898britishjourn00londuoft/page/318/mode/2up Pages 319-326 and 990-1017 have Kodak advertisements. In fact, this is striking: Eastman isn't very prominent. Ross, just for example, occupies more space. There's no mention of a service as you describe it, where the customer returns the full camera to Kodak. In fact the advertisement starts with film, and boasts of how easy it is to load. Mind, few of those reading the BJ Almanac, who would be serious photographers probably with expensive and delicate cameras, would be likely to want such a service. Page 31 gives two central London addresses: 115-117 Oxford St and 60 Cheapside. These are stores: the factory was further out of town. It also gives two in Paris: 5 Avenue de l'Opéra and 4 Place Vendôme, and one in Berlin: 91 Markgrafenstrasse. You can find later years' Almanacs at the Internet Archive.

The page at Camera-wiki shows an advert giving the London and Paris addresses: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Kodak_Ltd.