roger krueger

January 29, 2007

Hmm, lost part of that post, the list of devs I tried should be X-tol, dilute X-tol stand,

Acufine, T-Max-RS, Microphen, Speedibrews.

January 29, 2007

I tested several developers for shadow speed a few years ago--X-TOL, dilute X-TOL

sanand didn't find much difference. T-Max-RS was just a hair faster than anything else,

but it's a rotten push developer--zero compensating action=massive highlights blowouts

when pushed.

I like stand development in dilute X-TOL, good grain, sharpness and compensating action,

Microphen is the tiniest bit less sharp, but it has the same shadow speed, and

considerably more compensating action.

One interesting thing I found was that D3200 is very sensitive to temperature--even 72F

lost a little bit of shadow detail into fog vs. 68F, and it got ugly over 72F. TMZ in dilute X-

TOL worked fine all the way up to 90F, a temp at which the D3200 was almost solid.

January 28, 2007

A Mamiya Press/Universal/Super 23 with a 50/6.3 would work, dead sharp, probably get

away not much over $500. It's exactly 21mm equiv. if you get the (less common) 6x9

back.

January 28, 2007

Not quite all--only reverse curl backs have this issue.

Any back that, like the Mamiya Universal "M" backs, runs the film straight through

shouldn't have a problem. But I can't think of a single MF TLR with a straight film path--

just RFs, folders, the Pentax 67, and the Toyo 120-on-4x5 backs..

January 28, 2007

Anything with a sync cord will work. Not precisely sure about the Polaroid, but its sister,

the Mamiya Universal, uses a metal cold shoe (both on top and on the grip) that needs to

be insulated before it can be used with a flash. Failing that you need a bracket.

January 27, 2007

a thread from a couple of weeks ago:

<a href=

"http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00JRx4&tag=200701120501">

ZM Lenses</a>

And these are "Biogon" designs, "Distagon" is for Zeiss retrofocus SLR wides.

January 24, 2007

Sorry, hadn't seen the listing. The premium is just for the rarity of an "M" mount version,

the "G" mount version is about $1500.

January 23, 2007

No, it's a completely different design. That's why it has a fixed aperture--there's a big

element right where the variable aperture should be. So the outer dimension of this

element defines the aperture.

And at $1500 it's not really very expensive--a lot more than the nice but not as good

Voigtl;ander 15, maybe, but that last 10% of performance is always expensive. And it's

very price competitive with SLR ultrawides that aren't remotely as good. (yeah, yeah,

except maybe Leica's 15/2.8, but at well over $5,000 even for a demo, that's really gold

plated.)

January 19, 2007

The line about "throwing away 80-90%" with compression tells me all I need to know about

this goofball.

Besides, I already own a single-pixel imager--my drum scanner. Comparing its size, cost

and speed to my desktop scanner leaves me little doubt Dr. Dufus here is headed full

speed in the wrong direction.

January 14, 2007

You kinda have to thicken your skin if you're going to do street. People will get upset.

They'll call you names. You can either deal with it or you can't. It gets easier, but it doesn't

get easy.

Don't give your full name to anyone who isn't a real cop. You can never tell when some

psycho is going to decide to "do something" about the "insult" they've received. If her

husband really is a cop that makes her especially dangerous. Even good departments have

instances of officers using their position to settle personal scores.

January 14, 2007

I'll vote for the Mamiya Universal/Super 23.

There are the outstanding 50/6.3 and 75/5.6 Biogon designs, and a quite good 100/2.8

Planar. The 80-equivalent the news isn't so good though, the 150/5.6 is just a Tessar, and

while perfectly nice by Tessar standards, isn't anything earthshaking, ditto the 127/4.7,

100/3.5 and 90/3.5 as well as the 65/6.3 Topogon design. The 250/8 is long enough the

Tessar formula works quite well, but it's not rangefinder-coupled. The RF-coupled 250/5

is a huge beast, again, decent but not great.

These cameras also have the bonus of very good film flatness, the film path is straight

through rather than the reverse-curl everyone else uses for compactness.

January 14, 2007

Oh, there are so many...

Trying to repair a Sunpak flash, have voltmeter attached to capacitor w/alligator clips to

see why it's overcharging, voltmeter falls off table, I manage to grab junction where the

alligator leads are attached to the voltmeter probes. Took over 400v thumb to forefinger.

Knuckle could predict weather for years.

Got 250/5 for my Mamiya Universal, my first lens with a tripod collar. Went through

standard rangefinder calibration procedure, right up to "grasp lens firmly and twist ring to

release". Since it was the lens that was attached to the tripod, not the camera, the (heavy,

sharp-cornered, all metal) Mamiya Universal fell corner first onto my bare foot. I yelp in

pain, hop around holding foot, wife laughing hysterically. Ten minutes later I do it again.

Shooting a wedding in a tiny historical chapel, only place to shoot the procession from is

elevated lectern. While waiting for guests to be seated I turn camera to recheck front

element for smudges, tilt camera backwards, flash sails out of shoe on bracket. Luckily I

have a springy coiled sync cord, taped to flash because it's fallen out one too many times.

Flash swings to and fro a foot over grandmas head. I carefully haul it back in. Grandma

never notices.

Don't realize the signifigance of my Minolta finder magnifier being smaller than my

eyesocket. Makes focus in the dark at a nightclub so much easier. Until someone bumps

my lens and the #$%^ thing jabs me in the eye, hard. Spent a minute or so seeing double

wondering if I'd done permanent damage.

Pop my souped-up lead-cell-powered 283 a few too many times in a row. Client asks "Is

there supposed to be smoke coming off your flash?". Uh, no, it's on fire, thanks. I think I'll

be going outside now before the Halon system kicks in. (Which, mercifully, it didn't).

January 12, 2007

I missed one around 2003--KEH apparently hadn't had one in a while and didn't realize

how much the value had gone up, they had an ex- for $1500. But in the 15 minutes it

took me to get the money into an account with a card that could do that much at once, it

was gone.

If you're ever in the L.A. area, Samy's rental department has one.

There's even less reason for this lens now--the 1.2 takes care of the desire for "L" build

quality and focus speed, all that's left is a half stop. Haven't seen a direct 1.0 vs. 1.2 test,

but by 2.8 the f1.0 can't even beat the 1.4, can't imagine it can touch the 1.2 except

maybe at 1.2.

January 9, 2007

The 5d doesn't write fast enough to take advantage of the Extreme III/IV cards, an Ultra II

is fast enough.

I've found Transcend CF cards to be the same speed as my SanDisk Ultra II/Lexar cards.

I've also found that PQI cards, no matter what their rating, are dirt slow.

Be aware that there is a fake issue. Lots of fast SanDisk cards on ebay are really slow cards

with counterfeit labels. Buy from someplace reputable--it's not worth saving a couple

bucks only to find out you got screwed.

2G is a good size to stick with. The extra overhead of FAT32 imposes a speed penalty on

larger cards no matter how fast they are.

January 3, 2007

For whatever it's worth, I've read that the majority of Hasidic no longer have issues with

having their picture taken. I even saw an article about the diCorcia case that said the

Klauseneberg sect in particular had mostly abandoned the prohibition. Now, certainly the

idea of old folks clinging to old traditions makes some sense, the guy suing diCorcia does

look to be as old as the hills, but in general Hasidim aren't a big problem.

Heck, I even had a Lubavitch Hasidic coworker, someone whose faith is so strict she can't

shake my hand, ask me to shoot a Hanukah outreach event they were having at the local

mall last year. None of the (presumably also mostly Lubavitvh Hasidic) people at the event

had any problems with me shooting, plenty of them had cameras of their own, one even

had a dRebel.

I think this is far, far more likely to be about him worrying that you want to copy his

painting, since that isn't your intent, you have no cause for guilt.

January 2, 2007

People angry for no reason don't get much sympathy from me. If you're a tourist, don't

sweat it. If you actually live in France, be careful, my understanding is that French photo

law is draconian enough he might have a case against you.

January 1, 2007

The very, very important thing left off the flash refrence page listed above is that modern

Canon DSLRs are all rated for 250V sync. Only the d30, d60, 10d, 300d, and maybe 350d

have Canon's silly 6v sync limit. (Most/all of the non-single-digit film EOS's are 6v too.)

The off-camera cord won't officially help, although it might mitigate with some of Nikon's

first generation of film cameras with TTL flash--these cameras could handle high sync

voltage in the right place, but if you took the flash off while charged, and twisted it such

that the camera took high voltage on a TTL pin--poof!

December 28, 2006

Our local Container Store has accessorized a shelf unit display with some cheap classics--a Yashica EZ-

Matic (with the space-age ring of metering elements around the lens), a Kodak 616, a Kodak Duoflex,

and some little viewfinder-on-top Argus. Anybody else see this sort of thing going on?

December 27, 2006

It's worth noting that two of the three manufacturers who have brought digital full-frame

35mm systems to market created such monumental disasters that their company never

built a professional camera again. Leica's in enough trouble, thanks. "Technically feasible"

and "capable of surviving in the marketplace" are rather different things

Part of me thinks addressing angle-of-incidence directly might not be how this is

eventually resolved. Enough of an increase in dynamic range, or an ability to vary analog

gain on different parts of the sensor would do the trick too, and do it in a way that

wouldn't be as handicapped by the need to optimize for only one of a variety of angles of

incidence the way offset microlenses alone do.

Of course, if you can say "everyone needs an IR block filter", why not "everyone needs a

center ND" as well.

The angle of incidence thing is not fatal, there's a great test where a Voigtlander 15 (in

mirror-up Nikon mount) was mounted to a 5d (which amazingly tolerated its mirror not

being allowed to return, wish my 1dsII could do that) and tested against a Sigma 12-24,

which it smoked in the corners, although at the expense of fairly serious falloff. Before you

dismiss the Sigma zoom as inferior competition, another test showed the Sigma standing

toe-to-toe with the expensive Canon 14/2.8--beating it handily in CA--and humiliating

the pathetic Nikon 14/2.8.

<a href="http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/15mm_test1.html">15mm Voigtlander on 5d

</a>

December 26, 2006

I know Texas nailed Dale Witenhafer, an Arizona tourist, for "improper photography" at

Hippie Hollow, a clothing optional swimming hole. A place that had a few months

previously had an excursion boat going down the river capsize because everyone ran to

the rail on one side to see all the nekkid people.

Even without the badly-worded Texas law you can absolutely get nailed on kiddie porn

charges for pictures of clothed minors if there is obvious sexual intent--see the Stephen

Knox case.

December 22, 2006

Offset microlenses could be used to even better effect on a fixed lens camera, where you

absolutely know the angle of incidence. The M8 was much harder because they had to deal

with a wide range of angles-of-incidence.

The problem is, while you can make a reasonable small, fast fixed-focal length lens that

covers FF, you can't come anywhre close to offering a high-x zoom that isn't huge. Joe P&S

consumer see MP, Zoom-X, and price. A P&S not built to optimize these three factors

doesn't appear to be a place mainstream manufacturers want to go.

Re: Sigma, most of the Foveon's resolution advantage over Bayer is solely about their

decision to not use an AA filter. Granted, aliasing is a lot less problematic without the

complication of Bayer, but if you look at a Foveon res test, it goes on generating all kinds

of spurious resolution well past what it can really accurately resolve.

December 21, 2006

Pete Flanagan , dec 21, 2006; 03:31 p.m.

According to an associate of mine who is an engineer who works in the optics field, the

problem with 24x36 sensors in 135 format bodies is edge to edge sharpness.

What problem? Yeah, FF is less forgiving of crummy lenses, but there's no more problem

with corner sharpness than there is with film. My Leica 19, Canon 50, 135, 200 and 400

are all quite sharp right out to the corner on my 1dsII. Only my 24/1.4 never really gets

great corners, but that fast and wide there are compromises.

He explained that edge to edge sharpness is not a problem with film because the

emulsion is pretty much on the surface of the film base.

However, the design of digicam sensors places the photosites embedded slightly below

the surface of the sensor.

Therefore, the angle of attack of light rays at the edges of the short sides of the frame of a

24x36 sensor would be too shallow to provide for sharpness at those edges.

Nonsense. People keep repeating this urban legend, but no one ever has any tests that

verify it. You would need to have light ending up in the wrong pixel to lose sharpness, and

that isn't happening. You do lose some light to this effect, and to microlenses being less

efficient off their optimized angle, but this solely affects corner brightness, NOT sharpness

My favorite proof of this is where a guy tested a Voigtlander 15 vs. a Sigma 12-24 on a

5D. The Voigtlander, a non-retrofocus design that protrudes deep into the body way, too

far to let the mirror function, has a vastly greater angle of incidence than any normal SLR

lens that clears the mirror. Yet it beats the snot out of the Sigma in the corners. And the

Sigma is no slouch either, it stood up quite nicely to the Nikon 15 prime.

Voigtlander 15 vs. Sigma 12-24</a>

Of course, a 24x36 sensor is technically feasible. However, to get acceptable edge to

edge sharpness, the sensor would have to be in a body large enough to accept lenses

having the barrel diameter of an RB67 or RZ67 lens.

Hogwash on several levels. Plenty of lenses already have great edge sharpness on FF. But

you're never going to get a lens as sharp in the corners as it is in the center, no matter

how much it covers.

The extra coverage of an MF lens does absolutely nothing to address the angle-of-

incidence issues. The fact that shorter MF lenses are going to be a lot more retrofocus

than their 35mm cousins--because they have a bigger mirror to clear--does address the

angle-of-incidence problem, but there's nothing about 35mm mounts that precludes the

making of 35mm format wides that are more retrofocus than necessary to clear the mirror.

It's just that no one (besides maybe Oly) has seen fit to actually do this. The real advantage

to MF lenses might be that no one makes crummy MF lenses, any modern MF lens is pretty

much "L" quality.

But even more blatently wrong, you don't need a bigger body or mount to use larger-

coverage lenses. You build the right adapter (including a helical and means of holding the

shutter open in the case of RB/RZ lenses) and the vast majority of MF lenses will function

just fine on any 35mm SLR mount. Any lens that can clear an MF SLR mirror is

exceptionally unlikely to get elements anywhere near the 35mm mount ring. The only

possible catch might be a long fast lens that has its principal point too far forward--that

is, it's "less telephoto"--might get vignetted by the mount. But long lenses are where you

see the least edge degradation anyway.

Folks I know who have 5Ds have remarked about their disappointment in the edge

sharpness, but overlook it in light of other positive characteristics of the camera.

Then they need to buy better glass, and be realistic about wide-open corner

performance.

If the day comes that edge to edge sharpness can be maintained with a 135 format

lens,

It came about 40 years ago for normals, 30 years ago for teles and non-retro wides, and

maybe 20 years ago for retrofocus wides. Although the only really edge-to-edge sharp

retrofocus ultrawides are German

then you will probalby see more 24x36 sensors in 135 sized bodies.

You're not going to see many FF bodies anytime soon, because the large chunk of silicon

is going to be much more expensive, and have much worse yield for the forseeable

future. And for a lot of shooters, FF doesn't offer anything special. Anything over about

100mm equiv. the faster, shorter lens you can use on a crop camera exactly compensates

for the high-ISO-noise advantage of FF. But APS has no answer for the fast+wide of the

Canon 24/1.4 or the fast+dead sharp of the Contax 21 or the latest Leica 19. The latter

APS can have if someone wants to, but they'd need a 16/1.0 to equal FOV and light

gathering of the 24/1.4.

However, based on Nikon's heavy investment in the "DX" format lenses, that probably

ain't going to happen for a while, if ever.

While they've poured plenty of money into DX recently, they've still got a much larger

investment in FF designs.

So, to address a comment earlier in this thread, the guy was absolutely correct when

he said Nikon F mount lenses would not work well with a 24x36 sensor.

No, he was absolutely wrong. Zero reason for Nikon F-mount to have any more trouble

with FF than Canon EF. Remember, they made sucessful FF film cameras for decades?

Someone owes him an apology.

Someone--YOU in fact--are the one owing an apology here for spreading this nonsense

as if it were fact.

December 19, 2006

A good discussion of how the exceptions to the misappropriations statute work in

California::

<a href="http://www.beachlaw.info/mcle/

photo_3344/">www.beachlaw.info</a>

A list of important cases for California

http://www.rcfp.org/photoguide/states/california.html</a>

And an index to the other states. While they're not guaranteed applicable to California law

they can still help illuminate basic principles. NY especially is worthwhile.

<a href="http://www.rcfp.org/photoguide/stateindex.html">http://www.rcfp.org/

photoguide/stateindex.html</a>

Also useful: <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?

WAISdocID=50853124292+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve">California Misappropriation

Code</a>

More discussion of important cases at:

<a href="http://library.findlaw.com/1998/Feb/1/130405.html">Practitioner's Guide to

California Publicity Law"</a>

The real problem is that for a lot of expressive conduct, the 1st Amendment trumps

misappropriation statutes--see especially the diCorcia case--but often these issues are

settled rather than litigated, leaving no precedent, no clear guideline of what does and

doesn't fall under the 1st's umbrella in a given state. Precedent only flows downward, a NY

court's decision means nothing in California, so as encouraging as diCorcia seems it

doesn't really help at all. At least California has some relevant decisions, especially Dora v.

Frontline, a lot of states have nothing in unusual niches of law like this.

December 5, 2006

I'm with Jeff on 1, 3, 4 and 5, but I try not to shoot wide open. Especially, don't shoot wide

open with a lens that you haven't checked the focus calibration on, way too many Canon

lenses are off just enough to have a problem wide open. But even if they're spot on, very

few lenses perform well wide open. Being a stop down gives you better quality and a lot

less sensitivity to focus errors. I only budge from "at least a stop down" if it's needed to

keep the shutter speed over 1/100.

The kit lens is really, really the wrong lens for this--slow and not very good wide open. A

50/1.8 is a good cheap place to start, or maybe a Sigma 30/1.4. Rent if you have to. IS is

mostly useless here, the performers move a lot more than the camera.

Make sure you get there early enough to shoot the openers. Getting warmed up helps, and

you get at least a vague feel for what the lighting will be like, although it's not unheard of

for the headliners to be lit totally different. Do this even if you don't have enough memory

to keep the shots.

Be sure you know the rules, specifically, many shows that require a pass for access also

limit you to the first three songs--but sometimes it's assumed you know that, no one will

tell you.

Bring lots of memory cards, take lots of shots. Having a bunch of throwaways is the nature

of the game--as long as you get some keepers the rest don't matter.

Try to avoid the up-the-nose shot. If you've got a really high stage you're best chance is to

shoot accross the stage with a longer lens.

Be constantly aware of microphones and microphone stands. No one wants to see a shot

where the singer's face is mostly obscured by the mic. A good way to avoid this is--like

avoiding up-the-nose--to shoot from the side, cross-stage. Again with the mics, another

one to avoid is where a distant musician is cut in half by an intervening mic stand.

Camera settings depend on how the lighting is being run. For fairly static lighting I prefer

to go full manual, and dial in the exposure using the histogram and the general look of

the playback. But some venues change the light literally every few seconds. Here you have

no choice but to go for AV and as tight a metering pattern as your camera has.

Casey Royer of DI (but using CH3's drums)

Tony Reflex of the Adolescents

Roger Krueger

<a href="http://www.punktures.com">www.punktures.com</a>

December 4, 2006

Sorry for the typo, should've been "--it falls OFF very fast"

Here's the original posted inline for easier comparison:

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