rodeo_joe1

I think the lessons to be learned here are twofold: 1) If it ain't bust don't fix it. 2) Don't mess with a helicoid unless absolutely necessary. Not even a professional repairer takes a helicoid apart for the fun of it! Even if fully marked up and the alignment goes back together correctly, there's always a loss of grease in the process, together with the risk of 'grit' getting into the threads. Even normal house dust will degrade the smoothness of focus, let alone the danger of scratching or denting the fairly soft aluminium threads. The grease used is also a specialist product that has no common substitute. In short - leave helicoids severely alone! Also: A couple of specks of internal dust make absolutely no difference to a lens's image quality. And even if removed they'll probably be replaced with a couple more in a very short space of time.

Swap it for a white LED! My densitometer came free when it was upgraded at my place of work and was going to be thrown away! It doesn't have its own light source, but was meant to be used with a light-box. I built a little tri-colour LED light-box to use with it; effectively turning it into a colour densitometer - a feature I've never actually found a practical use for BTW. FWIW those colour-changing LED strips contain dozens of little tri-colour LED modules. One of which could easily replace a small densitometer bulb.

The ones to go first of mine were cheap off-brand CDs that cost maybe 8 quid for 50. The Kodak 'gold' CDs that cost about twice the price have all lasted well. Incidentally I stopped buying music on the Deutsche Grammophon label years ago when I discovered several of their factory-made CDs had become, first jittery and later unplayable, just a couple of years after being bought. They might have revised their manufacturing methods since, but I thought for a premium-price label that was pretty shoddy. OTOH the few vinyls I have of theirs still play as well as when new - which is to say as crackly and noisily as can be expected from a needle in a wavy groove.

I don't think you're looking in the right place then Mike. A few months back I picked up a no-brand (made in China obviously) USB connected external DVD/CD reader/writer for £2 at a boot fair. It was boxed and bagged and looked like it had never been used. And just a couple of weeks ago I found a SATA interface internal desktop multi-spin drive in a computer shop rummage bin for 5 quid. Works perfectly. It actually reads and writes quicker and more accurately than one I paid full price for. Some makers still supply their software on a CD, packed along with whatever hardware item. How quaint!

I wondered why the Vivitar 283 that I first tried gave me an electric shock before it burst into flames. Oh well, that piece of old junk was no great loss.

The wire carries almost no current, but does have to stand up to a few milliseconds of intense heat from the flash tube. I suspect ordinary tinned copper wire might melt under the intentisity of the heat. Tinned copper is only rated to 180 C. It might be Nickel wire or something like that. Maybe contact Bron (are they still in business?) and see if they'll sell you some trigger wire? Because I don't think there's anything totally suitable on open sale in small economical lengths. If you opt for tinned copper wire there may be a risk of the wire melting into a sputter and welding itself to the glass of the flash tube. Another thing to avoid is contaminating the glass with oily fingerprints, which might etch the tube when fired. Wear nitrile or similar gloves when working on the tube, and if you do handle it with bare fingers, then clean the tube with alcohol before firing it. Edit. I see nickel electrode wire on sale at ebay. It's not cheap, about £1.20 per metre and a minimum of 10m order.

Thanks Conrad. An interesting old publication. However, in practise the only thing a densitometer is needed for is to check printable highlight densities and the Dmax of a bit of fully fogged film. Just simple process control to make sure your development etc is staying within acceptable limits. The density of detail-retaining highlights in a B&W negative shouldn't be much above 1.8D (although edging 2.0D is still OK). While the fully-fogged Dmax should be somewhere in the range of 2.8D to 3.2D. It depends on the film and developer and your own printing/scanning preference of course, but in general a Dmax under 2.8D would be considered under-developed and anything in the region of 3.5D or above as over-developed. I really don't see the point in creating your own H&D curves with a stepwedge or whatever. It's already been done for you by the maker of the material. All you have to do is ensure that your processing is giving you a close approximation to what the maker's datasheets say you should be getting. My densitometer gets pulled down from the shelf and taken out of its box about twice a year. And then it usually only confirms what I can judge by eye. I will add that a common beginner mistake is to aim for a good 'thick' negative and err on the side of overdevelopment. This does you no favours when it comes to printing or scanning and vainly trying to get some detail out of blocked up highlights.

Burnable CDs/DVDs are light sensitive - that's how they work. So if you expose them to strong light after burning they'll deteriorate and become unreadable quite quickly. Conversely, keep them in the dark and they'll last 'indefinitely'. I (stupidly with hindsight) kept a few CD and DVD data disks just lying about on a desk in full window light. Within a couple of years they became unreadable. Luckily nothing I hadn't got backed-up elsewhere was on them. Lesson learned: CDs and DVDs got stored in a dark place from then on.

If you keep the subject distance and angle-of-view the same, then the lens focal length has to get shorter or longer in line with the format size. And depth-of-field is more dependent on focal length than it is on relative aperture - Consider; f/2.8 on a 20mm lens is physically a lot smaller than on a 200mm lens. Visual proof. All taken at the same aperture and from the same distance. Full frame - DX format - Tiny compact camera (sensor size about 6x8mm) - Same happens if you crop a wide angle shot to emulate a telephoto one. The D-o-F from the wideangle lens is much greater than that from a telephoto lens giving the same cropped field of view. This is depth-of-field 101 and must have been covered dozens of times before on PN alone.

That happened in my locality over 15 years ago. All the little independent photo retailers closed one after another like folding a pack of cards. Even a major retail chain went out of business. Just be thankful your local store held out for this long. Times change - fact of life.

Looks like all the focal lengths that nobody ever wanted are covered! 🙄 56mm? Why? Because 55mm is just too short and 58mm far too long? And everyone knows that focal lengths are nominal anyway (probably varying by up to +/- 2mm from what's marked). As anyone that's attempted to get an exact RR by calculating subject distance knows.

A milk container!? How dare you! I'll have you know that the contents were only the finest budget orange juice (made from concentrate). I call it the "Citra-light" diffuser - extra large 2 litre size. BTW. Here's a view of the Minolta srT101 'Hotshoe'.

So I seen this GREAT flash defuser on ebay. Only £19.99 + £4.99 p&p. Seller says it gives more softer affect than all others and so I get one. Wow! Was he RIGHT! Totally AWSOME and much more better defusion than what I get with my little Stowfin what cost the same money. So I show it my friend and they also wants one as well. BIG PROBLEM! There's no brand name on it and seller has now dispeared from eBay and don't answer my messages. So, big question, do anyone know what brand this fing is? Can't find no markings on it nowhere. Seller says it give softer flash if you turn it sideways like this. And he was right. Little tube on right is apparently 'light feedback pipe' according to seller its needed for some kinds of speedlite but mine works fine with it. Would love to get another for my freind but need to now what brand they is. Nother BIG ISSUE. I can't get the flash to fire when I fit it to my Menolta srt101 like above. Altho it works fine on my Nikon D6 no problem. Anyone know what's rung dudes?

Ah, OK. So the answer is simple: Don't buy Nikon's overpriced charger, but get a 3rd party one instead. I see that 39 quid will get you a reasonable brand of 100 Watt USB-C charger on Amazon, and lower wattage ones at a proportionally lower price. The USB-C protocol implements negotiation between device and PSU to ensure a safe voltage and current for the device being powered. 5 volts/3 Amps is a very minimum-spec USB-C charger. No better than its micro-USB predecessor. So it appears that Nikon, basically, could not be arsed to incorporate the USB-C voltage-negotiation protocol in its PSU, and instead opted for a non-negotiated and minimum-spec 5 volts only. A cheap out option obviously not reflected in the price! P. S. If you can return the EH-7p for a refund, that's what I'd do.

The days of the local newspaper snapper dragging a Rollei or other TLR around were well and truly over by the 1970s. PJs had definitely turned to 35mm as their day-to-day tool by that time. So I'm not sure why the military felt they needed the slight improvement in IQ of rollfilm, especially with its increased awkwardness of loading in the field. Plus the only sensible way to use a Rollei for capturing action is to ignore the viewing lens and use the 'sports finder' (ha ha) with guesswork focussing. Might as well just chop the top off the thing and use it as a glorified box camera. There was the rangefinder Mamiya press. A big and heavy thing, but since when has that worried the military? The folding Mamiya 6 springs to mind as being eminently suitable, but folders with bellows were seen as old fashioned at that time. However a rangefinder folder would definitely have been a far better choice. The Bronica S2 would have been a creditable alternative in 1970, and by 1975 the tank-like and totally reliable Mamiya 645 series were on the market. OTOH, it would have been a big mistake to go with the flakey Kowa 6 that had been introduced a few years earlier. The 1970s was the height of the cold war, and the military easily had the clout and budget to commission a new design; but they didn't, and instead wasted taxpayer's money on an eminently unsuitable-for-the-task camera. Otherwise we could have had something like a Fuji 6x7 years earlier. And where are all the pictures taken with those thousands of M.O.D Rolleis? Did none of them 'come out'?

Results definitely. Whatever works, and preferably most efficiently and economically. When film was all there was, I got sidetracked into the process. God, I wish I had that time back again to concentrate on the important stuff - like learning more about lighting, creating empathy with the subject, tips and tricks of composition, etc., etc. All stuff that digital shooting has now given me the time, instant feedback, and general freedom to work on improving. Stuff, incidentally you can learn about without touching a computer - except for the one embedded in the camera of course. The clue is in the name "photography", meaning drawing or writing with light. It's not called 'chemomicturation'. OK I just made that word up. I think it means p*ssing about with chemicals.

Keep the 50mm f/2 Nikkors and chuck the rest of that junk away!😀 Or sell some of 'em and get a 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor - you won't regret it. Here's my bit of memorabilia (I didn't have the space to lay out all of my 50mm-ish lenses - must get a wider angle lens and a bigger sheet of background material.) It's a page from "Ilford Formulae & Packed Chemicals"; 16th edition, publication date 1960*. Some of the emulsions listed were a bit old-fashioned even then. I thought it might be useful to those addicted to using (very) outdated film. *The book might be a bit rare. I've never seen another copy 'in the flesh', but I see a couple of copies offered online. You can also see a full PDF version here - an even earlier 1953 14th edition.

Have a look at this old thread. IMO the bottom of a milk container looks less ridiculous and more stylish than the overpriced 'Fong Dong'.

Whaaa? Can anyone imagine a more ridiculous camera design to take on a military operation? Wheel to the right. I said right! Oooops! My mistake... stupid viewfinder.. Makes you wonder what planet the string-pullers in the civil service live on.

I can show results from a 35mm Sekor on the Mamiya 645 if that helps. Too wide?

The low(er) charging current of the MH-33 is probably to keep its size down, or save the cost of a heatsink on the inverter chip, or maybe to recycle the inner design of another charger. Or even more cynically, perhaps to promote buying extra Enel18D batteries at 180 quid a go (What!? A new car battery doesn't cost that!). [And I wish PN's autocorrect knew the correct use of an apostrophe. I'm not a Greengrocer! Even though I come from a family of them.]

Only relevant with direct flash - Ugh! 😱 When bounced, or in a modifier, the light looks exactly the same from almost any speedlight.

That's not "all the hoopla"? With a decent rollfilm SLR, like a Mamiya, you just flip the 'Multi' lever and take a second (3rd, 4th, however many you like) exposure(s). Same with practically every Nikon SLR ever made. No back removal nonsense needed!

Not from this one - screenshot of Kodak Alaris's PDF datasheet for Tri-X - Read the small print below the table!

A word of advice for your friend: Chopping and changing developers, trying different fixers, etc., is possibly the worst thing you can do. Choose something well-tried and tested - like ID-11/D-76 and Ilfofix - and stick with them. There's very little difference in end result between any mainstream developer, and fixer is just fixer. With no practical advantage to so-called alkali fixers and the like. It's also a bit pointless trying to be ecologically responsible - you're using film! It wastes plastic, silver, animal gelatine and other resources, and adds to chemical pollution. No getting away from it I'm afraid. So replacing Hydroquinone with Sodium Ascorbate and avoiding using a tiny amount of Borax in a developer is like turning off the air-con in a 5 litre gas-guzzling car to get better mileage, and thinking you're doing the world a favour.