michael_darnton1
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Posts posted by michael_darnton1
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The Nikon 50mm/1.8 is not particularly expensive, and you can get a used manual-focusing one from KEH.com for cheap. Curently they have an "ugly" Series E 50 for $19--I don't know what you can get for less than that.
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Thirty-five mm really isn't all that wide. In any other format a 50mm would be a short tele, "normal" being defined as a film format's diagonal, which is 42mm for 35mm. I think the origin of 50mm for 35mm was that the 24x36mm frame was twice a movie frame, and normal for a 35mm movie frame was 25mm, and 35mm still frames are 2X that, so. . .
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Here's something to look at:
http://cameraquest.com/254.htm
http://cameraquest.com/zeissbio.htm
You can find a lot of stuff on RF lenses (and high-end classic gear in general)on this site
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You need to look to rangefinders for the ultrawides, since in the 50s they hadn't figured out how to make ultrawide retrofocus lenses. Contax had a 28 in the mid 30s, and in the 50s had a 21, 25, and 28s. I believe both Nikon and Canon both had 25s around then, too--the Canon was introduced in 1956. By the end of the 50s, Canon had already made three different 28s.
http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/camera/lens/s/19-35.html
The first really wide lens I remember for through-the-lens viewing on an SLR was the 20mm/4 Flektagon, which came out around 1965 or so, if I remember right.
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It's a cheap tele with a 2x tele-converter. Nothing is automatic on this lens, not the focus, nor aperture, which is preset (you set one ring to the opening, and spin another next to it to open and close the lens--on this lens, the one with the numbers sets, and the larger, thinner, knurled one just behind it opens and closes.) That it's preset doesn't matter much, because you're going to want to use it wide open all the time.
They're cheap to build. Thirty years ago something similar, without the converter, was about $40 and I just gave that one of mine away a month ago to my nephew. It's a fun lens, but usually they aren't incredibly sharp. I've been thinking of buying a 500mm mirror lens, which is the same kind of mediocre quality + fun, but folded into a smaller tube and lighter.
This is the type of thing you buy for fun. There's a reason it costs a fraction of the manufacturer's own.
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Well that's an interesting question. When I look at your pictures, I see you have a foot in both times. This one just screams "MODERN", doesn't it? :-)
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I think that's an impossible question to answer. Some pictures are valuable as an expression of their time, and some are doomed for the same reason. And then there are the ones that are truely timeless, which may or may not have any value, in spite of that. So perhaps you're asking the wrong question?
I've been reading, this week, "People in Vogue--A Century of Portraits", and there's a lot of early stuff you definitely couldn't do now (a lot of what Cecil Beaton did, for instance) and some you could. Some of it, if it didn't have a date attached, I couldn't even guess a decade.
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For the record, I just shot some .nef/jpg photos in extreme contrast situations with my D300, with D-lighting off, and on "high". The exposure didn't change even the tiniest bit. This confirms what I've seen with D-lighting: the basic exposure isn't changed--what happens is that the D-lighting throws a slight s-curve on the exposure, without changing either the black or white points. All of the change happens between those points, among the shadow and highlight values. So, basically, I'm not sacrificing anything to shoot nef/jpg with D-lighting.
That's what *my* camera is doing, anyway. :-)
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Here's a different spin on the question. Right now the Art Institute of Chicago has a photography exhibition of Ed Ruscha's photos, and quite a few of them, too. I went to see it the other day, and frankly, it's garbage--a bunch of real travel snapshots, P&S shots, some of which were ideas for later paintings. Yet, because he did them, the AI is treating them like art. There's no justice in the world, obviously.
And they pulled a couple of real fine exhibitions off the walls to hang that crap, too. I'd argue that if the point of the exhibition was to show the relationship to his painting, and that's the only legitimate reason I can see, they should have taken down some paintings to hang the show, not devastated the photo gallery.
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beyond the original *agreement*, I meant to say . . .
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If the request goes beyond the original, let the client suffer the stroke. If they want free pictures, let them go to the "soccer moms" for that. It's their choice. :-)
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One other thing--cumulative changes as you make them are destructive--each time you do something you throw out some data to make the change. The next change throws out more. Nothing ever gets added, even if you do something that *appears* to counteract a previous decision, all you're doing is pushing around what data is available to cover the digital bald spot. Make enough changes, and nothing is left.
With layers, nothing is thrown out--the picture you see is a summation of all the layers as if the bottom layer is being viewed through a filter. If you have done the equivalent of subtracting something in one layer, and then adding it in another, the net effect is no change, not 2X lost data.
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In a nutshell, as you work on a picture you may decide that a previous step you took was not the right one. With layers, you can go back and edit the mistake, changing or removing the layer. You can also flip a layer on or off, to see if a change you made farther back is still relevant or desirable. If you don't use layers and you don't like something, you're stuck: you have to go back and start over.
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Moving to digital, finally, I just sold most of the last of my Leica stuff, a M4-2 and an M-2, and bought a Nikon D300. I have also had two M-3s, two IIIfs, and a whole mess of lenses over the years. I have kept a IIIa, just for film fun. My first five cameras were RFs--well not really, because three didn't even have RFs in them, just glass VFs. I also had a brief flirtation with Nikon RFs in the 60s, and owned a couple of Canon RFs. I used this stuff professionally for years, and I bet I started using it before some of you who are complaining so much were born. I also have a Fed 1 and three of its lenses, and a Kiev 4m with three lenses. If you look at my photos (follow my bio) you'll see that most of the older stuff was done completely with RF gear.
You guys can quibble all you want. Since you like to guess about me, I'm going to guess about you: you're not professional photographers. If you were, you'd know the difference between jawboning theory and getting a job done reliably because you can count on your equipment doing EXACTLY what it was designed to do.
The Russian stuff is fun to play with; what interests me is the effort you're expending to make excuses for it's known problems.
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I think the question is whether there's a self-contained attachment for the purpose. You may be able to fit film through the slide-copying attachment, or not, but I don't remember seeing a similar one-piece tool to handle negs.
Regardless, I don't believe that most of these things, which were quite cheap, have very good optics in them, and if you want to do a good job, you might wish to set up a more high-class rig, as people have outlined above. Nikon made an attachment for their bellows so that you could use a good lens on the bellows, then hang slides in front of the lens in a holder similar to what your one-piece device has, and the Nikon one would also take strips of film. This contained a diffusion screen for the light, too, so all you had to do was point it at a light source. In a pinch it could even be handheld. Here's a similar rig for Pentax, hotdogged to fit a Canon: http://www.pbase.com/dang/image/72967367
I've set up a device as Ronald suggests, using an enlarging lens on tubes instead of a macro, and a lightbox, and it does an exceptional job.
The main problem you will have with negs, after you solve the holding and lens issue, is getting the neg inverted in a way that's usable. If you just invert in Photoshop, you'll get a crummy-looking positive that will need some radical moves to get it looking like something nice. I've figured out an adjustment curve strategy that does a pretty good job, but I'd be interested in hearing what others are doing.
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Here's what you really need. It's a Mexican street photographer's setup. He shoots on B&W paper, then develops it within the "darkroom" box on the back of the camera, working through sleeves. When it's developed, he takes the paper neg, puts it in the frame on the front of the camera and racks the bellows out to a preset spot, shoots a copy of the neg on another piece of paper, and develops that in the box. (He let me look inside--there are a couple of small trays in there.) Then he swishes it around in a bucket of water, and mounts it in a paper folder. Extra prints are available on the spot, of course.
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Oskar's plan is the best, if you have a film camera rather than digital.
There's quite a bit of slop in hoods: currently I'm using a Nikon 35mm hood on my 28mm/2.8 + filter with not a bit of trouble. I can see by edging my finger over the rim of the hood in the corners, testing as Oskar suggests, that I'm about 1mm from having a problem, though.
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I keep my camera set for normal D-lighting because a lot of stuff I shoot goes up on the web nearly directly and temporarily, and I can get an OK image with lots of detail up fast that way, but I also am saving RAW, and with something important or final will use Photoshop's controls instead. It's sort of the best of both worlds because D-lighting does nice things when it works, and when it doesn't I have back-up from the RAW.
I did see a chart somewhere (can't remember where--maybe someone else knows) graphically showing the relative range of all the Nikon line including at different ISOs, and really, the differences weren't so greatthat I would make a buying decision based on that, alone.
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Yes, any lens set at 50mm will give you the same background size. Likewise, for any length you set on the 70-300, the same single-focal length lens will give the same perspective.
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I have several different generations of the smallest tablet. They're all the same, except for cosmetics, and the driver doesn't care which one I plug in. I suspect only the appearance has changed. They're very handy for photo editing.
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I think you need to cut loose just a bit. Looking at your portfolio, I feel like you're shooting things like you think pictures should look. You have the "pictures should look" thing down just fine, but the personal aspect is lacking. This isn't something to get upset about--it's just an opportunity to find a way to move on.
One direction this could go, given your subject matter, and I hope it does not, is that you move in the "calendars and postcards should look this way" direction. I see a lot of photos like that in portfolios here and on other sites. A better way is to experiment more and take more risks, by playing with how you see things. The next step is probably going to be something extreme like "off-center looks really neat", and I expect you'll go through a couple of other phases like that before you arrive at something that looks like you, alone, did it, and says that in a subtle way. I seem to be moving through a "contrived" phase right now, myself, after having done the same thing for years. :-)
One thing you might try is finding one single photographer whose work you really like a lot and trying to understand and replicate that work. Then move to another and try the same. It's fun, and it can jog you out of a rut into seeing something new. Looking at a lot of pictures and analyzing what you do and don't like about them is almost as good as shooting, too, and is a quick way to move along.
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Maybe your friend has discovered that the photographs he takes don't seem to know how much plastic is in the mount of the lens that took them.
$500 budget for a wide angle lens on a D40/D40X
in Nikon
Posted
Sigma 10-20--I love it. I don't think it's all that bad around the corners, given what it does, and what you do with it.
<a href="
title="violin workshop by Michael Darnton, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2204/2261388550_b11a19962b.jpg" width="500" height="332" alt="violin workshop" /></a>
If this links to my flickr site, you can take a look there at a larger version.