Dustin McAmera

I scan my own film with an Epson 4870 flatbed. It's getting old (maybe 2003?) and the belt sometimes slips when it's hot, but at least that fault leads to getting no image, not a bad image, so when it works at all (which is most of the time) it's good. Dust is inevitable if you scan at home though. It's maximum resolution is 4800 dpi. It will give you an image with higher resolution, but the extra is by interpolation. So for 35mm, the long side would be 36/25.4*4800 = 6803 pixels; the short side would be near to 4800. The biggest I remember doing for 35mm is 4096 long (I like powers of 2). My Century Graphic gives me negatives 2¼x3¼ inches; at 4800 dpi that would be 10800x15600. But the work of spotting out dust with the clone tool would increase in proportion to the pixel size. I think I have done up to 8192 on the long side, a few times.

Here's the manual in English or German, at Mike Butkus' site: https://www.butkus.org/chinon/rollei/rolleiflex_sl2000f_german/rolleiflex_sl2000f.htm

It could have been sharper I guess. I'm pretty sure that will be f/3.5, and quite probably 1/25 second. But 'sharpness is a bourgeois concept'. I used to really enjoy taking out a 35mm camera in the dusk. It's an interesting time of day - some people are on the way home; some are on their way to the pub, or the theatre; the streets fill up with buses and bikes, and there's a mix of street lights, vehicle lamps, and the last daylight. It's satisfying to get hand-held pictures when it's only just possible to take them. My Canon A1 would make it easier than the Zenit: brighter finder and wider lenses. I got my EOS M50 just in time for the pandemic, and photographing in the evening is much easier now, and those pictures are more likely to be sharp. I think I've been robbed of some of my enjoyment. But I can always go out with the film cameras if I want: there's only my laziness stopping me. My Zenit 3 has a small fault. The advance lever sometimes loses its grip; it winds freely without doing anything. It connects again if I release it and try again. When it gets worse, I may open it up. I hope it isn't really badly worn inside. The 1953 Zenit had some holes in the shutter blinds. I painted them with fabric paint, and that repair has lasted some years (though I don't use the camera too much).

Fuji Pro 160S in my Super Sport Dolly. Cheating? It's a sewer/cellar pumper-outer:

More 35mm cameras with removable backs: The Ektra in 1941: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Kodak_Ektra The Adox 300, in 1956: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Adox_300 The Mamiya Magazine 35: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Mamiya_Magazine_35 The Contarex I: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Contarex_I Some but not all Contaflex SLRs: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Contaflex_(SLR) The Hologon Ultrawide: made purely as a vehicle for its lens: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Hologon_Ultrawide

I agree that it would be more productive to discuss current photography (if I actually knew much of it: shamefully, I'm not learning much of anything any more). I just saw the article and remembered how much talk this thread got.

I have a Sureshot Classic 120 that does DX codes; a nice little tourist compact that served me very well indeed. Most of these have some default speed if you use non-coded film. Or as Tony says, you could buy stickers to add the code yourself. That lets you push film! The 35mm Rolleiflex is the SL2000F; there are also a Rolleiflex 3001 and 3003. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Rolleiflex_SL2000F https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/02671/02671.pdf (pdf brochure for the 3001 at Pacific Rim). Not in 35mm (and way off topic) but someone designed a camera that lets you load two rolls at once; so you could have B&W and colour loaded, or ISO 100 and ISO 400, and switch between them. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Domnick His second attempt got as far as a prototype. It uses 127 film!

Reviving an old thread to point out a few more Egglestons in the Guardian today. It's from an exhibition of photos from 'Outlands', 1970-73, on now in New York, and which will be in Berlin in January. They (the Guardian) show thirteen pictures; I hadn't seen any of these. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/nov/22/cars-bars-and-burger-joints-william-egglestons-iconic-america-in-pictures The blurb gets quite interested in the role of the sky (as unblemished while the buildings are bold but decrepit). There's some of the usual art-speak: '..a sociological meditation on the typology of the built environment of the American South while also highlighting the presence and individuality of the people who inhabit these spaces'.

I didn't mean to dis the photo. My comment was about the technical stuff (with a side-swipe at the mutual-admiration culture in some parts of Flickr). Your praise seemed a bit over-the-top regarding simple depth of field. As far as I could see, it's sharp from about a metre from us, to a hundred metres or so. You can do that with aperture and a tripod. If he's used digital tech, good luck to him. It's a nice, atmospheric picture, but for me it doesn't need that. The largest I've scanned from film is 4096x3201, from 4x5 inch. Only done a handful of those. I really hate spotting scans for dust, and those took a while. I don't get fascinated by counting pixels or comparing histograms. Photography for me is about recording the mood of a scene; balance or imbalance in the composition; that stuff. So for what I do I don't need to be NASA; just enough tech for the job. I have a 1953 Zenit, and a Zenit 3, and a couple of 3Ms that I bought for the lenses they came with. A Lubitel 166B too, that I bought new in 1982 I think; haven't used that in years. Some FEDs as well: (🟦🟨 - there are no flag emoji here) Here's something I like from my Zenit. I don't set it up as a competitor to the one you like, or to any picture; I don't come here to compete or invite critique. It's with the Industar-22, 50mm f/3.5, physically the smallest lens I own, and Fuji Superia 400. Not much in the whole picture is sharp; not even sharp enough to judge where the depth of field might be. Impenetrable shadow is everywhere. But it catches the mood of an evening in the city, in the season when we were starting to see spring instead of winter. It does for me anyhow. One other thing - the site rules (which haven't yet been put up on photo.net's new platform - admins?) used to include that we only post pictures we took ourselves.

Nobody can comment with any confidence without more description of the problem. We need to know what model you have, and whether you use a power winder or hand-crank. I haven't had anything like this with mine, which is a 645 Pro. I read that they upgraded some of the gears between the Super and Pro. I have a pdf of a service manual: it's for the original metal-bodied camera. I think I got it from here: https://www.scribd.com/document/339714130/35453483-Mamiya-M645-Service-Manual-pdf This has some troubleshooting suggestions. Faults they allow for include the frame-counter not resetting, as Joe suggested. Also 'shutter runs but not exposed'; I guess this would give you missing frames in the middle; picture, picture, gap, picture, gap, picture... Good luck anyhow!

The guy says in the comments that it's a digital camera. Shame he didn't leave the EXIF visible. The original size, downloadable in Flickr is 7523x4841; 36.4 MP. I'm guessing he's cropped or something to arrive at those un-round numbers. My camera is a modest APS-C but still has 6000x4000, so this isn't amazing tech. I don't really see what the fuss is about. It's dark, and he wanted depth of field, so why wouldn't he just put the camera on a stand and stop down? The car with the leaves on it in the lamplight are nice, but he hasn't achieved anything out of the ordinary technically. The very nearest leaves on the pavement aren't completely sharp. And the numbers of views and faves are just Flickr mutual-grooming.

EOS M50, EF 50mm f/1.8.

The OP said he wasn't interested in DIY, but since it's been mentioned: https://mattsclassiccameras.com/how-to/industar-61-relubing/ I have my I-61 in my hand now. It's just like the one pictured - a bit cleaner. Straight out of the drawer it was slightly stiff to turn the first half of the focus range (long distances), then suddenly looser. Working it back and forth, it's evened up somewhat in a few minutes. The iris blades have a touch of oil visible, but it works ok. The detents are quite harsh and jumpy. At the back, I can't see where I'd try to introduce a lube without opening it up. I might try it on my mirrorless next time I'm out. I have already put my Industar 22 on there.

The backward-N is an I for Industar. Industars are Tessar-type lenses. I have one on my Fed 3. It's sharp enough. Haven't used it for a while, but I seem to remember I suspected it was giving a slight yellow colour (that or my cheap colour film was) - I mostly did black-and-white with it. If it really needs professional service to be usable, then I think it would be cheaper to buy another than get this one serviced. I would give it the chance to ease up with use before spending any money - looking a gift horse in the mouth, then paying for its dentistry 😉 http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Industar_61

I remember reading about photographs used for evidence in court. I understand they used to take a sworn statement from the photographer that (i) I made this photograph and (ii) the unretouched negative is still in my possession. With a film photograph, you can develop the film in such a way as to increase the contrast, but you can't develop it so as to change who was in the bank vault, or the wrong bed. So as long as its not retouched, it's definitive.

In threads that repeat weekly like Wide-angle Wednesday, whoever starts the thread for this week could post a message at the bottom of last week's: 'This week's thread is closed: don't post any more here.' and a link to the new week. It wouldn't have the force of moderator action, but someone would have to be careless to not see it. Some No Words themes come round again and again; 'Arches' has been done a few times; whereas over in Portrait and Fashion, 'Post your non-studio headshots' has been going for three and a half years in the same thread. I don't think that matters.

For Europe, Fotoimpex in Berlin list liquid emulsions made by Foma, Rollei and Tetenal: https://www.fotoimpex.com/chemistry/liquid-photographic-emulsions/ Because of lovely Brexit, they now have a minimum order before they'll ship to me in the uk.

The site cited seems to have been taken over to promote online gambling in Turkish. My first thought was Sutton's panoramic camera, but that made pictures on concave glass plates. I can imagine if you mounted an oval or circular print against the flat of a shallow condenser lens, that might look quite effective. You'd need a source of cheap condenser lenses, probably plastic, and glue that dries nice and clear and doesn't go yellow, at least for a long time. This doesn't need the original print to be anything special; it stays flat.

In my first post I suggested the Fuji GS645 rangefinder (and now I want one!) But I didn't know the GA645 cameras existed; they are autofocus instead of rangefinder. The standard camera has a 60mm lens and there's a GA645W with a 45mm; like having a 35 or 28mm lens on 35mm; and even the GA64Zi with a 55-90mm zoom (hardly worth having a zoom for such a short range, surely). They're from the mid-90s. Probably quite hard to find one for sale, and again they won't be cheap. They look like oversized tourist compacts; even a tiny built-in flash. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Fujifilm_GA645

In principle, there's a continuous scale of degrees of manipulation. Straight out of the camera, you might just decide to darken the whole image a little (obviously still a photograph); or you could darken it, increase the contrast, and reduce the colour saturation just of the sculpture itself; or you could do any amount of burning, dodging, adding blur and noise, painting in a unicorn in the background, and selectively recolouring with an airbrush tool. Somewhere along that scale, you could say the image crosses the line from a manipulated phtograph to an image derived from a photograph; but there's no ISO standard for where that line is. If the same person takes the photograph and then manipulates it, maybe it hardly matters. It matters more if you do something like that with someone else's photograph because of the copyright. I like that Creative Commons licences let us add a No-derived-works clause. I haven't ever used one, but I like that we can. The Hope poster was hugely removed from the photograph it was derived from, but the copyright still stood.

My nearest equivalent is a Mamiya 645 Pro. I don't think it's significantly smaller or lighter, unless you can live with a waist-level finder instead of a prism. Only the prism has the meter in it... http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Mamiya_M645_Super,_Pro,_Pro_TL_and_E The old metal-bodied M645 models are 10 to 20 mm smaller in each dimension; not significantly lighter. Again, you can lose some weight and your meter by using it with a WLF. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Mamiya_M645 I have taken my old (mid-1930s) folding Super Sport Dolly with me travelling. Mine has a coupled RF; not the easiest RF to use. You can always ignore the RF and use scale focus. It fits in my jacket pocket once folded. I paid 40 uk pounds for mine, I think. http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Super_Sport_Dolly If you wanted a new version of the same thing, consider the Fuji GS645. It's about the same age as your Pentax, folds up almost as small as my old Dolly, and has a meter (not through-the-lens). It's a fixed 75mm lens; there's a separate wide-angle version of the camera. Folded, it would go in a reasonably-big jacket pocket. It weighs 820g; maybe only half the weight of any of the SLRs. It won't be cheap... http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Fuji_GS645_Professional_series

I can't see that: must be for your eyes only. Maybe the custard round your beak? I have '0 warning points' on my profile. In the same place on your profile I see that you last 'Won the day' on 30 June. I never won the day.