dave_powell2

Hi everyone,

When I bought my used DiMage A1 a year ago (at Hunt's in Melrose, MA), I also

bought the 1-year Used Camera Warrantee from Mack Insurance. And the EVF in

the camera started to fail 11 months later!

So I went through the web-filing process, received a service-approval number

from Mack, and sent the camera in. That was over a month ago, and the only

thing that appears on the service-tracking link they gave me, is that the

camera is "with Sony."

Has anyone had recent experience with Mack and/or Sony service? And if so, how

long did Sony have your camera? And were you ever able to discover its status?

(I've also emailed Mack, with no success.)

Many Thanks!

Dave

Or... mount a suitably sized pin-hole. With a snood like that puppy has, it will become fairly telephoto!

Dave

WOW...It's got decent edge-suck (like a Holgaroid), but lesser center-suck.

Dave

Good add, Stuart...Love that tough little Retina IIa!

Dave

Another lesser-known possibility is the Agfa Super Silette (or the American-market Ansco Super Memar), if you can find one on eBay with the extraordinary 50/f2 "Solagon" lens. It's not as small as the XA, Rollei 35, or even the Leica/Minolta CLE...but it is lightweight, and does a great job (as do the other cameras mentioned here). No meter though...have to use Sunny 16 or a hand-held classic meter.

Sincerely,

Dave

I think the hole is about half of the "optimum" size for a 35mm camera. If I remember correctly, the optimum hole diameter for a normal 35mm film camera (or a DSLR with the same film-registration distance) is somewhere around 0.25 mm. (Check some of the pinhole calculators on the Web for exact numbers.) That's the diameter that should produce the most image detail and the sharpest possible focus. A smaller diameter will increase diffraction and reduce sharpness, and a larger diameter will put points of light on the film that are wider than need be...and reduce image detail.

Dave

If your lens has distance marks on it, Google "hyperfocal focusing" (and search this site). It's a great trick to know with any camera.

Dave

Second Kelly last comment! My best-selling print is a dramatic 12x18 that was carefully upscaled form a 0.8MP camera file.

Dave

Hard to tell, but I once saw something that looked a bit like this...it was some kind of condensation inside the lens. (I didn't buy it!)

Dave

You can also buy new adapters at better photo stores (like Hunt's in Melrose, MA), but they aren't Pentax! I got mine there, and it has worked well. It's easy to differentiate between the versions that give you infinity focus and don't...the ones that do have an almost paper-thin ring of metal on the front.

Dave

I've used mypublisher.com to print gift books for myself, and a realtor for whom I shoot.

Dave

With the meter on, stop the lens way down. Does the needle move down into the normal area?

Dave

They are very good...and seem to offer more layout flexibility than www.mypublisher.com (which also produces very nice books).

Sincerely,

Dave

When driving around the coastal road, be sure to stop at any dairy farm that offers tea and scones (with clotted cream). Also park and hike up the moors. My wife and I did, and an hour later (after we passed and photographed the tin-mine ruins on the slope, and reached the huge, monolithic, piles of pancake stones at the top), had to heed nature.

We could see the zippered countryside all around us, and felt safe behind our respective trees. When, all of a sudden, a black, unmarked helicopter rose up from somewhere below, and hovered above. All we could do was wave and smile! We still wonder how it managed to sneak up on us, in that wide, wild, silent expanse.

Oh, and when driving those narrow roads, remember that the hedgerows beside you probably contain stone. Lots of scratched and dented rentals in Cornwall!

Dave

Me too!

Dave

Radio Shack also sells packs of protector film that statically cling!

Dave

Hi Emily,

Evan's comments are right on. I just bought the Epson scanner that came before the V700 (the 4990), which comes with the same 35mm, 120, 4x5, and 8x10 transparency holders. It cost me less than $500, and does a super job with 120, and a quite respectable job (for a flatbed) with 35mm. See the following two threads for other discussions about it (which show some of my sample scans):

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00JxV2

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00K0cm

The first describes a color 35mm neg scan and the second, a B/W 120.

The 4990 isn't equipped to handle the higher-quality "fluid mounted" scanning that the V700 can. But other than that, it is pretty much the same scanner (for slightly less)!

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,

Dave

Good one, Bruce!

Dave

It's also possible to use current 600 film in the SX-70. Since 600 is about 4x more sensitive than Time Zero, one or more ND filters need to be attached in front of the lens. And the little "nubs" at the center of the pack's leading botom edge need to be filed or trimmed away, before the pack will slide into the camera.

But the results are quite nice when you get everything working properly! (When 600 B/W was available, I took a lot of floral close-ups with it. Some of the flower petals even looked semi-transparent in the resulting prints!)

Sincerely,

Dave

You may be surprised how good that camera can be!

Dave

Yes, and Denis alluded to, the Hyperfocal trick (which I've been using for years, on a variety of cameras) only help you get all points from near to far "apparently" sharply focused. If you were to blow up the image by a huge factor, you might notice a difference in focusfrom front to back. But for most print sizes, Hyperfocal works wonders.

Sincerely,

Dave