peter_viitasaari

I was recently photographing with a Zeiss Ikonta C having a 105mm lens. Two the photos are tack sharp, the

remaining six other were blurred. After thinking about what I had been doing with the camera, I remembered that

the six blurred frames were taken with a shutter speed less than 1/100 sec. I am sure all recall the rule of

thumb that recommends a minimum shutter speed that is the reciprocal (meaning if the focal length of the lens in

use is 100mm the minimum shutter speed should be 1/125 sec.) of the focal length of the lens to avoid camera

shake when taking a handheld photo. I was arguing to a photographer friend that while this rule of thumb

originated with 35mm film it is equally applicable to medium format. He argued that it did not. Who is correct?

Thanks.

From lessons I learned from the shooting sports, image capture is a function of magnification not focal length.

With this in mind, the shutter speed = focal length rule of thumb is based on 35mm photography however it can easily be translated to medium format photography since focal length conversions between the 2 formats is well published.

By way of example:

3x magnification = 35mm with 105mm lense = Series V Hasselblad with 150mm lense shot at 1/125s is the baseline for a portrait lense

Some of you know me on here some of you don't you know the struggles I've gone through with my medium format camera finding focusing screens struggling to focus trying to find diopters for my camera to help me Focus.

 

I think I've come to a conclusion that film is no longer worth the trouble. Don't get me wrong I do love film I love processing film I love the look of film when it's printed in a dark room.

 

What I found out through all this experience is I do not like the look of film when it is scanned into Lightroom and then printed out on an inkjet printer it loses that film look.

 

I find the process of shooting the film developing the film and then scanning it and then printing it on an inkjet printer it comes up with a kind of a weird look to me that I don't like.

 

I don't have time nor the space to set up a dark room to print my film with and a enlarger and doing the whole darkroom scene it's just not going to happen.

 

Between the struggles of focusing the camera which I seem to have solved this problem with my focusing screen and I did find the correct diopter for my camera I seem to have pretty much fixed the focusing issue not 100% but pretty close.

 

I think the bottom line is you need to buy an $800 scanner you need to buy the wet mounting stuff and the film holders for the scanner you need the price of film the price of all the chemicals to develop the film and and in the the end you end up with this sort of half digital half film look that I just don't like.

 

I'm sure if I had the money and the time and the space I would love to set up a dark room and print with an enlarger with my negatives that I know would make me happy but that cannot happen I think it's time to move on to digital.

 

No rolls of film no chemicals to develop no scanner needed yes I won't get that film look that film look that I'm after. But then again the cost of film, chemicals, scanners if you want to print something really big and really nice you need to go Fork out $70 to have a drum scan done and what's the point.

 

To me old medium format and large format film don't mix well with the digital age if you have a drum scanner in your garage it could be a different story I'm not going to Fork out $50 every time I want to have something drum scanned to get some decent detail to make a large print.

 

It's been a painful expensive experience and I do love film I will always love film I love to process film I love shooting film but to me the end result of not being able to print in a darkroom just defeats the purpose I don't like scanners I don't like printing scanned images on a inkjet printer I just don't like the look.

 

I'm going to simplify my life and buy myself a Fuji xt2 and go digital.

 

I think the stubbornness of trying to hold on to film for the whole Nostalgia thing and the whole process it's just not worth it it's time to surrender and go digital and learn to like it.

 

Thank you everybody for your advice and your help to help me get through all of this it took some time some money and some effort but I think I'm going to be a lot happier buying myself a digital camera.

Been awhile since I have frequented these forums...nice to be back.

Film versus Digital is only one half of your conundrum...there is also the question of mechanical versus electronic.

Anyone who is into photography should be doing both film and digital by now...digital simply makes the learning process much easier since you get immediate results.

However, taking the lessons I have learned from wristwatches, one should not make the decision about mechanical cameras lightly.

Twisting a quote I have used many times on wristwatch forums "If you leave an electronic camera and a mechanical camera in a drawer for 100 years, which one will have a better chance of being operational when it gets picked up?"

With 3d printing systems still in their infancy it is possible that mechanical systems may be serviceable "forever" while electronic systems are not as simple to replicate. Not to mention the realities of cameras getting left somewhere with the batteries still in them.

In general, the inception of mechanical systems came before modern engineering techniques and thus don't suffer from built in obsolescence. In other words, electronic systems are meant to remain energized and used were as mechanical systems often do not have this requirement.

Just my 2 cents.

Hedghog

I am thinking of purchasing a used Hasselblad V series camera and was wondering what other peoples thoughts are on Age versus Condition.

In other words, what is better:

-An older camera that looks and works good

-A newer camera that may not look or work as good

Very similar to the used car question of year versus mileage.

Any feedback at all would be appreciated.

<p>I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with one of these on a Canon T3.<br>

Vivitar's site states that it is compatible however I am a little leary.<br>

Best Regards, Hedghog</p>

More data on manually focused shots.

I had a chance to borrow a colleagues Rebel XT and I put the 50 f/1.4 on it which yielded the exact same inconsistent focusing results when manually focusing.

Out of 10 photos 2 really bad, 5 so-so and 3 really good.

I decided to try my colleagues Rebel XT with the kit lens and shot at 18 f/3.5 which again yielded inconsistent results when manual focusing.

Out of 10 photos 0 really bad, 4 so-so and 6 good.

So, I am going to conclude that one should not get into the habit of running a Rebel XT at anything less than around f/4.0 and I would suggest f/5.6 just to be on the safe side.

One could probably run with slightly larger apertures if one was using AF however, this habit may provide inconsistent results if one needed to switch to manual focusing to expedite a shot.

I would like to see a new specification for digital cameras called "Focus Latitude" to indicate how well a digital camera should manually focus...but thats just me.

Best Regards, Hedghog

Alan:

Thanks for the response...even though some of the other posts aluded to it, your response really drove home the possible shortcomings in lower end DSLR cameras.

For the time being I will take your advice and stop down my lens.

If I chose to start relying on AF I will definitely keep CF4 in mind...I have some experience with this type of function from using point and shoot cameras.

Good call on the ISO1600 noise...I didn't want the flash bothing my testing so I changed my film to an ISO1600 (which I find rather convenient with digital cameras).

Thanks again for everyones help.

Best Regards, Hedghog

Roger Smith&Philip Kam - The focus test here http://www.photo.net/learn/focustest/ is what got me started on this in the first place. The AF shots seemed to be consistently a little fore-focused which is fine. As long as something is consistent I can deal with it. The manual focused shots however where all over the map...some as bad as 2-3 cm fore-focused to some as bad as 2-3cm back-focused and everything in between. This was at f/1.4 with the scale about 2 ft. from the film plane. I have taken an extensive number of shots using this focus test and can't find any consistency whatsoever in manual focus mode.

Mark U&Roger Smith - Thanks for the info on viewfinders and focusing screens.

Ken Thalheimer - I am not exactly sure what I am looking for in this test by G Dan Mitchell?

For some of you that are wondering why I am so caught up with manual focusing, it's quite simple. An out of focus picture cannot be fixed in the mix, making it the single most important element of taking a picture. With that being said and AF fails, I feel it is important to be confident in the manual focus system to be able to repeat the precise focusing possible with a manual focus film camera.

It's possible that I am just experiencing the reason why the Rebel XT is a $400 camera and the 1Ds III is a $7000+ camera.

It seems that if I run the camera at f/2.8 and above on AF and f/4.0 and above for MF the results are consistently nominal though definitely not the quality I am used to from film.

Thanks again for all the input.

Best Regards, Hedghog

Stanley - If AF requires me to jump through this many hoops to focus then I would rather just focus manually...its faster.

Besides, if you look at the pictures above, my manual focus shot is a much bigger problem than the AF one.

So...I am just trying to get this thing to focus manually.

Maybe I am just asking too much out of digital camera to be able to set the exposure, focus and press the shutter release like I do with a manual camera and expect the picture to be in focus.

If don't think this basic concept has changed.

Best Regards, Hedghog

1/500s should not need a tripod.

All the AF shots are single centre focus point, one shot AF mode.

Unless someone has a good reason not to, I am gonna call up Canon tomorrow and get the paperwork started for another warranty return.

The only thing I am unsure about is whether its the camera or the lens. With the cameras history I bet its the camera and not the lens.

Thanks for the help guys.

Best Regards, Hedghog

Does anyone else have a fast lens they can try this with?

Is it possible the focusing screen on the Rebel XT just has too much focus latitude for large apertures?

Is it possible the 50/f1.4 was never designed to work through it's full range of apertures on the Rebel XT?

Another thing I should mention is that this camera had a cooked shutter strait from the factory. I had to send it in for warranty the day I bought it.

I am starting to really wonder about digital photography...it is getting to the point where I am afraid to use my Rebel XT because when I get the pictures home a lot of them won't have turned out.

Hedghog

I have the ISO up at 1600 which gives a shutter speed of around 1/500s.

Hedgehog

All AF shots where only allowed to focus on the middle of the corn flakes box after turning the focus ring to one extreme or the other (infinity or 1.5 feet).

All manual focus shots where brought into focus in the same manner.

Every shot looked like the corn flakes box was in focus before firing the shutter.

Hedghog

Thanks for the info everyone.

John G. - I am working on getting some pictures up.

Bob O'Sullivan - The focus test here http://www.photo.net/learn/focustest/ is what got me started on this. It seemed

that the AF shots seemed to consistently be a little fore-focused which is fine. As long as something is

consistent I can deal with it. The manual focused shots however where all over the map...some as bad as 2-3 cm

fore-focused to some as bad as 2-3cm back-focused and everything in between. This was at f/1.4 with the scale

about 2 ft. from the film plane.

I am used to shooting FM cameras which never have focus problems unless shooting in low light. I recently shot 6

rolls of film with not a single picture out of focus. The Canon rig I am running now just does not seem to

provide focused shots consistently enough to what I am used to.

Best Regards, Hedghog<div></div>

I got a DSLR less than a year ago and have started noticing that lots of shots are out of focus when running at f/1.4

I am running a Rebel XT with a 50-f/1.4 lens.

I thought the problem was caused by the AF not being able to resolve some subjects properly which is probably

true however, it's actually worse when I try manually focusing.

I am thinking that the design of the focusing screen does not allow for precision focusing but I am not sure.

Any info on running DSLRs with wide apertures would be great.

Best Regards, Hedghog

I don't think the ready light setup is the same between the fm2 and the fm3 because my generic $30 sunpack flash triggers the ready light on my fn2 but not my fm3.

Hedghog

Ok Lex...thanks for the info.

I just compared the hot-shoe between my FM2 and my FM3a and there are 2 extra contacts on the FM3a. So ya...it looks like Nikon reconfigured the FM3a to trigger the ready light differently than the FM2.

Thanks again!!

Best Regards, Hedghog

I took over a $100 loss on the FM3a with the rough film advance and procured another one for $550.

As suspected the film advance on the new one is whole different animal. It is as smooth as I would like however it has a much more "mechanical" feel to it. Kind of like winding a mechanical watch...very interesting.

Now to go and shoot some film in cold weather and see how it holds up.

Thanks again for all your help everyone.

Best Regards, Hedghog

I am going to post this on a new thread but do any of you folks know if the FM3as ready light works with off the shelf flashes?

How about a full frame digital camera back for the FM cameras?

Now this I would drop a $1000 down on at the drop of a hat.

Just my 2 cents.

Hedghog.

These are all great cameras and still perfectly usable however, if I had to buy a camera for every day use I would choose a late model FM2n with aluminum shutter. Simple, reliable and cheap.

F2 - Pretty well just a collectors piece now

FM - Also starting to get long in the tooth

FM2 - Titanium shutter is inferior

FM3A - Low production numbers has also made this camera pretty well just a collectors piece.

By the way, I have found the FM series to perform flawlessly in -40C and below for 12 hours at a time...probably one of the greatest cold weather series of cameras ever made.

Yes...I tend to agree with Geoff Portas.

If it's not the battery terminals then I think the camera needs to be sent for repair.

Hedghog