steve_gallimore1

It's worth taking a look at the (don't laugh) Tomy Kiipix - it's a toy designed to take a photo of a mobile phone screen, using Instax Mini film. It's entirely mechanical and sells for around €50 new, I paid €25 for mine, in Barbie pink. Houghton Butchery or Kiipix Killing? My project, which is currently on hold due to Covid, lack of time, a baby and general laziness, is to manufacture a custom wooden body to mate the lens & shutter from a folding camera to the Kiipix back. Hunter's conversion above is beautifully done and one of the examples that inspired me for my project.

Unless it has been modified, that is not an Instax back either, but a back for Polaroid/Fuji packfilm, which is discontinued.

It's bigger than it looks, the slots will take a 10x12 print, the base tray is 12x16 (30x40cm) - that's the 'print size', physical dimensions are larger. The date on the label on the box is 09/91, so early 90s. I don't think they made them for very long, it has a bit of a 'prototype' feel to it, the slots are made from two pieces of vacuum molded plastic glued together with the pivots glued on afterwards, not injection molded single pieces like the rest of JOBO's products. The stick consists of several pieces glued together. I get the feeling that these may have been molded and assembled 'in house' but never put into mass production? I had a brochure with the Prima, but can't find it at the moment. Thinking, I'm going to try a different configuration next time, if it will fit, with the processor sitting in it's tray and an 8x10 tray next to it for the wash.

Can add, that there is a benefit to the Prima design with inclined slots in a low reflectivity black plastic - it's fairly light resistant, at least when processing smaller paper sizes down the bottom of the slot. As I found out when I elbowed the light switch on the right of that photo, turning on the large and very bright LED panel directly above, for a good few seconds. Paper was in the developer slot, no apparent effect.

It is most definitely a JOBO. Thanks for the above though, it's useful. The Prima is a rather more basic bit of kit that the NOVA processors, though it's not a bad design - the tray catches most of the drips and, filled with water, makes a handy 'holding pond' for prints when your bathroom/darkroom is as small as mine and the prints are washed elsewhere. In theory, I suppose I could add a tray siphon draining into the sink below the board. JOBO kindly replied to my email, they no longer have the manual, but could tell me that the prints are placed on the stick (there is a little pin at the end, like the NOVA clips) face down, once in the tank, they float away from the stick. I used it for the first time last night. On the whole, it works as intended/imagined, with minimal mess and the advantages of a slot processor - less chemical smell and longer chemistry life. Pouring the chemistry back into the bottles after was a bit tricky, but I suspect there's a knack to it. (The slots take 1 litre) I was getting streaking on prints, always vertically (parallel to the stick) - I think (well, be honest, I know) that I need to clean and dry the stick between prints, just dunking it in the water bath was lazy and led to either fixer contamination or simply localised dilution of the developer. Will do better next time. So, my technique needs work... The Prima allows me to process bigger prints than I could with trays (I can't quite fit 3 8x10 trays side by side, one has to be raised above the others), the Jobo will do much bigger, 12x16 I think - BUT, this means nothing if the prints are streaked. Will be more through in cleaning between prints and let you know how I get on.

Windows (again): E-PM1, 27/2.8 RawTherapee on a Raspberry Pi

New Camera = reading an entire manual so that you can learn how to turn off all functions except for the three you actually use?

We're seeing little piles of stones on tree stumps here (Correze, France), I think I posted a photo of some a few months ago.

Acquired one of these last week - I've been looking for a slot processor for my tiny bathroom/darkroom for a while now. The Jobo is bigger than I expected, I think it's based on a 16x12 tray, for some reason I was thinking it was 10x8. Anyway, it just fits! Has anyone used one of these? Mine came without any instructions, so I only have the picture on the box to go by. It looks pretty straightforward, but any tips would be appreciated, particularly with regard to the paper clip/holder. I'll add some photos when I set it up for use.

When sorting through floppy disks at a factory I used to work in (floppy disks are also getting hard to find and were essential for two of our saws), I came across a disk full of photos of the factory taken some ten years previously (so early 2000s), on a Sony Mavica. I duly passed them on to the management, but they thought them of little value.

Continuing from the above, though perhaps far from photo.net's demographic, there is a large 'scene' surrounding classic video games. While most older games systems can be emulated on modern computers, there is both a certain 'status' associated with owning the original hardware and a desire for the 100% original experience. Enthusiasts will go to considerable lengths to restore older consoles to functional condition (aesthetics appear to be very much secondary) and, on the whole, the actual computer hardware has held up reasonably well, with most issues being confined to dry solder joints, blown capacitors and worn mechanical connections (cartridge to console). Ignoring the consoles post 2000, where overheating became much more of an issue, even new. What has not held up at all well, as any owner of Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP) will attest, is rechargable lithium batteries. In short, the actual computer hardware, unless designed for maximum performance and pushing the thermal limits of the design, tends to survive quite well. The software issues are eventually solved by determined people with the necessary skills and shared with the wider community (imagine if Canon sold a camera that only functioned with an active connection to their no-longer-existant cloud service). But the impossibility of obtaining essential components (some portable consoles will not boot without a battery present) is a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the situation with cameras is the same in 20 years. While it will be possible to reproduce anything digitally (photoshop), there will be some who want the 'genuine' experience of, for example, shooting JPEG with a Fuji Xpro, much as there are some today who swear by CCD colours, or, of course, those who use film...

Unique, quirky and first will always be of interest to some. By that measure, maybe the Fujifilm Xpro and X100 series with their hybrid viewfinders and manual controls? The Panasonic GF1 is becoming something of a cult classic. Leica's Q series, the new Zeiss fixed lens camera, likely to sell in very small numbers, rarity is of interest to collectors. As to whether any of these will be worth using in 20 years - while I agree with the general sentiment that finding a working camera and battery is likely to be difficult, anything in the 12-16 megapixel range is still very capable.

Emotionally correct for me, whatever that may mean. Maybe it comes from a film background, but I'm rather fond of leaving at least a suggestion of the 'warmth' of incandescent light on photos shot indoors. It's not what our eyes see, but it's what I 'expect' to see in a photograph taken under artificial light.

Very nice, perhaps more 'classic car' than classic camera, but that should be good for another half century of use! I love a good 'user' camera, one that's lived it's life with dings and scrapes, not sat in a display cabinet. Tools are made to be used :)

My 'first' rolls were almost certainly generic unbranded 35mm ISO 200 colour print film from one of those mail in processing labs, the sort that gave you a 'free' roll of film for every film you had processed. UK, late 80's, they had names like TruPrint, BonusPrint, DoublePrint (I think their gimmick was two sets of prints) etc. My first proper roll was either Ilford FP4+ or HP5+, given when I joined the university photo society. I don't remember which, but I think I then went out and bought the other, as whichever they had given me was inappropriate for what I wanted to do.

Another useful site: Learn Camera Repair: Home

No idea, but I reckon it'll turn out to be basically a passthrough, that identifies itself to the camera, with all the complex stuff handled in the camera firmware. That could be another reason why there isn't a third party version available, particularly if there's some cryptographic key exchange between the adaptor and the body. All just speculation on my part though.

Viltrox have Nikon F to m4/3 and Sony E with autofocus, they also have EOS to Z autofocus focal reducer, so they must have the protocols figured out. So that leaves the following: - They're working on it. - There's no demand. - Nikon's lawyers say they can't.

How do you view digital photos? Not editing, sorting or otherwise working on them, but just viewing for pleasure, what works best for you? Printing is one option that I've always favoured, as a 'finished' image, but it's not practical for every photo and even less an option where other people's photos are concerned, likewise digital editions of magazines. So what is your preferred option?

The optics are all pretty much the same, only the mounts change. Some of them have adjustment, allowing you to rack the optics backwards or forwards to tune infinity focus for a particular lens. As to adapting the FTZ to enable the use of electronic lenses, I'm not sure it'll work. When I looked into the Viltrox electronic adaptors, I discovered that they're not just a simple protocol translation, they inform the camera of the lenses 'new', modified characteristics, focal length and aperture. I imagine that not doing so may lead to problems with autofocus and metering, as the lens won't behave in the way the camera's autofocus algorithm expects. Contrast detection should work, but I could see phase detect being more problematic. Can't offer more advice than that I'm afraid, as my focal reducer is manual only. I looked at the electronic options, but after checking with Viltrox, they informed me that mounting a manual lens with no contacts would result in the camera reporting 'lens error' and not working, nor does their adaptor work with the 'fake' EOS chipped adaptors, it needs a real autofocus lens, which wasn't my intended use.

When you set the focus to the infinity stop (on the lens), does the rangefinder concur?

Not wanting to bash on any brand, but I wouldn't trust any online storage offered by a company whose primary business interests are elsewhere. Canon recently shut theirs down: Canon is shutting down its cloud-based photo platform Irista Clouds have a tendency to evaporate...

I really wouldn't worry about it. I work with large CNC machines. They contain a lot of machined aluminium parts to save weight, so there are a very large number of steel bolts into aluminium. Provided you don't over tighten, it is not an issue.

Mine is a later production Kiev (Contax) mount, I find it a good 'reportage' lens on the Kiev, small size and no real need for a lens hood are significant advantages. On the downside, the aperture is fiddly to set, less of an issue on a rangefinder though, as you can pretty much 'set and forget'. I tried with an adaptor on Fuji and micro 4/3, in neither case will it mount, as the rear element fouls the shutter housing. I forgot about the M8 being a crop sensor in my statement above, never been fortunate enough to handle one, but I suspect it has more in common with full frame cameras than other crop sensors? Definitely worth a try, but mount with caution!

I like it on film. It's reputedly not good on digital due to the extreme angle at which edge rays strike the sensor. It will not physically fit any crop sensor camera that I'm aware of, nor will it fit on a fair few film rangefinders (Canon, Leica CL and M5?), so check carefully.