conrad_hoffman

Makes sense, though I wouldn't have called it a grip.

I don't understand the grip. So it mounts to almost anything but the camera itself?

The FG is a very underrated body, so still reasonably priced. It does have a quirk, and I don't remember the details. For the P-mode to work correctly, it needs an Ai spec lens (or AiS). Some aftermarket lenses, in spite of supposedly being Ai, don't expose quite right. I could have the details of this wrong, but do a bit of research before trusting the P-mode with every lens.

So pessimistic ;) Don't think in terms of the entire lens group shifting and tilting. There may be some interesting out-of-the-box things that can be done with the larger mount.

+1 on Kingslake.

Amazing! As for the real item, I use the non-UV "protector" on most of my lenses and they work well. A bit more than (£1) though.

This turns out to be a bit of a rabbit hole. I know mercury contamination will fog film easily, but that's a road you don't want to go down. Some color processes use a non-optical exposure. Some interesting but not terribly useful conversations here- Fogging Developer for Reversal I would have thought there would be various chemicals that instantly "exposed" film, but have yet to find any references. Maybe somebody else here will have something obvious.

I notice that Luminar just released some software updates. This wouldn't be so surprising except that they're based in Kiev. Some interesting stories on their website. It's incredible to me that people are able to work, though it might also be a way of retaining some sanity.

Not a clue what you want to do but I'd think India ink applied with a ruling pen or brushes might do what you want. Or, are you talking about a chemical method of "exposure" where you treat the paper and it develops black in those areas? That should also be possible, though I'd have to look up what might be used.

Yes and no. Some lenses, like the 55 Micro, are about as good as can be, limited by diffraction and user technique. It would be tough to find a purpose-built DX lens that was any better for real world images.

I'd buy a used 55mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor. They're usually cheap and optically excellent. Some think it's a bit short (I'm not one of them) but it seems perfect for a crop sensor body.

Way back, Ilford published their multiple water change method of washing that used very little water. Can't remember how many changes of water it took, but it wasn't that many.

I don't know if there's any old-school method for repairing blades that have been trashed that badly. Today I'd be thinking along the lines of drawing up the blades in CAD and having a sheet of them photo-etched. Or laser cut. Way expensive here, but not too bad if you find a Chinese vendor. Then you have to make and install pivots and blacken them. Only as a labor of love I'm afraid.

Alas, blades are synced together by virtue of pins running in holes and slots. Once something is amiss like that, crazy disassembly is usually the only way to fix it. Worse, it's likely to happen if a blade has a damaged pivot and parts are rarely available.

IMO, sheet film needs to be kept flat. IMO again, everybody has a darkroom. I've developed film in dorm rooms, bathrooms, basements and in the unheated back of an old farm house in the middle of the winter. Work at night and block off windows with some temporary arrangement. Or, use roll film!

Sold all my Nikon bodies and all but a couple F-mount lenses. You just can't (shouldn't?) keep everything. Bodies gum up with age and disuse. Lenses get oily diaphragms and grow fungus. I do my own service but it can become a time-consuming chore. Almost none of it was appreciating, in fact, the opposite. Until I did it, it was a huge mental hurdle. Some of my lenses went back to high school or college, being the first new ones I ever bought. I loved my FM and F3HP, but hadn't shot film in well over a decade. If I ever do decide to shoot film again, and I'd like to, large and medium format has way more appeal than 35mm. IMO, there isn't anything 35mm film does better than modern digital. With large format I can use swings and tilts and just enjoy a very leisurely process. Even coating my own film would be possible, if I had to. One place where I don't think digital prints are quite there is stereo cards. You can get an incredibly high resolution small print that can be viewed under magnification very easily with wet process, but I don't think a digital print will be as good. Not sure how to get from a digital image to a wet print (easily) but haven't really investigated it.

Famous transistors, Z6 & 105 MC

And I thought "fine" art just meant that it had nudes in it. Silly me.

The self-discharge of Eneloops is extremely low. Those are all I use.

I think the problem with the first image is the poor separation of tones in the highlights. It looks like fogged paper, but I've seen something similar with digital, so nobody's immune! You've improved that aspect with the second image, but it may not be the overall look you like. I've adjusted the highlight contrast- not perfect and still a bit foggy looking, but is this any better?

FWIW, I'll describe the various tools I use. Affinity Photo- My main editor. It's inexpensive and covers an amazing array of things. Focus stacking, HDR and other stacking are built in. It has all the usual editing tools for color and contrast, cloning and repair work. It manages color profiles correctly. It has a decent raw converter. It has a decent color-to-black & white converter with all the necessary sliders. Does stitching. It has a before/after slider. It uses the Lensfun database for lens corrections, or you can do it manually. And a bunch of other stuff. It's not Photoshop, but it's not subscription and does everything I've ever needed. Well, almost, thus I use several other tools. Qimage- This is fundamentally a printing tool. A very inexpensive one, considering what it can do. It does super job of arranging prints on a page and getting maximum quality data to the printer. It has superb color management. Yes, you can usually print from your main editor, but this is the icing on the cake. It also has a raw converter and editing capability. The converter does an excellent job of getting a raw mapped to a practical dynamic range, and with less time and trouble than most. The editor lets you fine tune color, contrast, cropping and some other things. It also has some very unusual tools for altering colors and doing selective enhancement. It has a unique sharpening tool that avoids edge effects. All that said, it's main thing is printing. Windows printer drivers are 8-bits and the programs focus is getting things perfectly mapped into that 8-bit range. It will convert files, but it can't output a 16-bit image. Nor does it have sophisticated noise reduction. It can do lens corrections for some lenses. If I'm going to print or if I'm going to the web, this may be the only program my images see. Nikon NX-D- IMO, nobody understands their sensors and camera processing like the people that designed it. I use NX-D when I want a huge16-bit tiff image from my raws. If I'm doing a full court press, this is the (free) tool I start with, followed by everything else. Luminar- The latest version is just Luminar, no number attached. This thing is a bit of a chameleon. It's very easy for a beginner to use. Maybe too easy. It does everything you might need in terms of color/contrast/tone. It uses some sort of AI and can wildly enhance an image with little effort. That's in fact the danger. If you take every image and crank up the saturation, enhance the skies and overly clarify things, all your images will look the same and a bit garish. This is a program where you need self-control. It's capable of outright image replacement, but that's not really my thing. I use it to spruce things up subtly and always carefully evaluate the results so as not to overdo it. It really shines when an image needs just an extra bit of something to make it stand out. It does have a raw converter. For many people it could be their only editor, but it doesn't have the broad features of Affinity. All inexpensive, no subscription pricing. There are certainly free solutions, but none have really pleased me. Nor have I found one program that does everything I want, though Affinity comes close.

I've never really understood HDR. One way or another you have to map a scene to the range of the display device. At the same time you have to keep the midtone contrast at an appropriate level or the image will be too dead or too contrasty. What you have above is basically two images, each correctly mapped for the scene, so it works perfectly. Though I've seen it done with HDR, I don't think the results are as good, and have to agree with Mike that a lot of HDR looks simply terrible, cartoon-line.

Nikon Z6, just stupidly cold this morning

Gone!

We like to have a glamorous idea of what a professional photographer is, but an awful lot of important images don't have great requirements that a good phone cam can't fill. I'm thinking of all the assembly manuals and internal engineering reports we do at work. They're essential documents and quite important, but as long as things are shown clearly, the need is met. In fact, phone DOF is often better suited to the purpose. Sometimes I use my Z6 & 105 MC, but nobody really cares or notices the quality improvement, if there is one. The only time I really have an edge is doing a focus stack on something near 1:1 and then processing to bring out color or finish differences. A lot of our advertising images are even taken with phone cams because they're mostly used on our website. Then, every couple years, we go to the opposite extreme, making 92" high show booth panels where 24 MP isn't enough unless stitched!