My latest images are now being included in the main RSS feed. Otherwise they got a bit lost in the pure image blog. So for the first time there will be a small batch of images as new items, and after that of course only what I've newly created. And I don't add new images as often as I would like...
Dreadfully bad display, terribly slow, fuzzy operation and at best a joke. The image quality is accordingly poor. Well, at least you can swap the memory card. Still: a real reflex viewfinder wouldn't have shown the digital image, but would have had at least some style. Oh yes, and it promptly crashed during the presentation at Photokina.
At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.
I saw this demonstrated at the trade show. Brilliant. I wish it had existed when I bought my M6. On the other hand: if it had existed back then, I probably would have paid double for my M6. After all, the MP/M7 has now almost reached in euros what my M6 cost in marks.
That's quite interesting then - Hasselblad getting involved. According to the rumors, there's a Voigtlaender body behind it. However, the images look quite different - the usual remnants of the mirror box from the Bessas are missing (the Bessas are based on an old SLR housing from Nikon). So if this is actually a new body and Zeiss is really involved in the design and both Hasselblad and Zeiss want to stand by their names for quality - then this could become an interesting M-body. Especially since the M7 body doesn't really offer many advantages over the M6 body, an alternative body with automatic shutter speeds could be exciting.
At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.
A few more details. I think the price should be somewhat higher for 22 megapixels than for the usual KB digital SLRs.
At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.
Completely flew by me: Mamiya has a digital SLR for their 645 system in their lineup. Could be interesting.
Looks like a lighter
At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) you can find the original article.
Though the mini projectors are quite cute - somehow the Rollei medium format camera system around the 6008 appeals to me more. Or perhaps as an anachronism the twin-lens reflex.
At heise online news there's the original article.
I can't imagine that will catch on. After all, the special thing about RAW is that it usually (not always - some manufacturers are already playing games with the data here too) contains the raw data from the chips. And those are definitely not always identical. At least with high-end cameras. Just think of things like Foveon or Fuji CCDs.
But I've already experienced firsthand what joys RAW formats can bring with software: for exactly that reason, I still use an old version of iView Multimedia Pro, because the newer versions can no longer import CRW data. Ok, it's the fault of the software manufacturer, who is simply too incompetent to transfer bugfixes from one version to a new version, but it's already a hint at the fun that these wonderful digital negatives bring us. I can also only read my images from the Kodak DCS 520 with Kodak's own software; other software can indeed read Kodak RAWs from newer models, but not the old ones based on TIFF (where Kodak used proprietary TIFF extensions). As soon as the Kodak software no longer runs on my Mac, those digital negatives are worthless there.
So a common format wouldn't be bad at all. Maybe you could make it flexible enough to really represent all variants - TIFF at least offers the technical basis for this with its tag format. Whether all programs can then read all variants, or whether one or another variant will be omitted anyway (and you'll be lost again for that reason), remains to be seen.
At the moment, interestingly, a proprietary format is probably the best choice for archiving digital negatives: the Photoshop PSD format with embedded EktaSpace color space. After all, it can represent the full color space (and a bit more - it was originally intended for archiving scans of slides) and the format has so far been readable by all newer software versions. TIFF with appropriately embedded color space would probably work too - but the layers are not implemented as portably there - not every program reads them the same way. With PSD, you can nicely save some preprocessing of your digital negative that you can always discard later. And PSD can be decoded by far more programs than just Photoshop.
Ok, I'll probably get around to converting all my RAW files to PSD in the next few days.
By the way, what I would really prefer would be if the necessary extensions were made to the PNG format and it could be used. But unfortunately things still look pretty bleak there with software support for the extended features. And to my knowledge, there is still no usable standard for storing editing layers.
At heise online news there is the original article.
Not a watt is the ugly
At heise online news there is the original article.
Weird. Jenoptik is actually rather known for extremely cheap digital cameras that are preferably marketed through Aldi and similar retail chains. I associate high-end digital backs for medium format cameras much less with Jenoptik. But at least they love extremes
At PhotographyBLOG there's the original article.
Nice housing. Definitely a lot better than earlier Bessa versions - their rangefinder base (obviously excluding the Bessa T) was pretty much a joke, especially when you imagine it combined with the 1.2/35 ...
Does anyone have 7000-8000 euros for me (hey, I don't have an R-body and you want optics too)?
At heise online news there's the original article.
Flickr Services - Flickr API documentation
Nice. My Sony DSC-W12 is powered by 2100mA NiMH batteries - but nobody wants to pay for the original Sony ones. There were two sets of two batteries included, but eventually batteries give up the ghost and then it's practical to have replacements on hand.
At heise online news you can find the original article.
I think I had this one before, but the link is so great that it's worth showing more often. Slides. In color. From 1909 - 1915. Made from photographs taken with three color filters and reconstruction of the color slide from these three black and white negatives. Very beautiful images among them.
Following this thread, there's supposedly going to be a new Bessa R3A soon. With M-mount. And Zeiss is also building the G lenses for M-mount. If so, that would be amazing - the Hologon could look very nice on my M6. Also interesting is the image of the camera on the Zeiss server. Here's the original article.
Oops. 10000 Euros is hefty. But somehow still cool, the idea - and actually absolutely obvious. Just build a mini-projector into the enlarger head, done. So to speak. Although nothing for chemistry refusers like me
At heise online news there's the original article.
Such an ugly camera design that not even a mother could love it
So Minolta has finally managed it. Ok, they were already where others only got to in recent years, and they were even gone again, but a current digital SLR suits them quite well, doesn't it?
At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.
And once again, someone is ripping a CF hard drive out of an MP3 player. This time it's the Rio Carbon. This one is also cheaper than typical 4 or 5 GB CF hard drives - and inside the Carbon is a Seagate with 5 GB of storage. As usual with such instructions: don't try this at home. As the author so nicely puts it: In fact, you will probably end up with $249 worth of useless junk. - if you do try it anyway, you can report back Here's the original article.
The Leica and its history - Leica IIIg - Information about the Leica IIIg
I just noticed this today - but it's been around since mid last year. I think it would be an interesting addition to my M equipment - even though I'm actually aiming for maximum compactness. Because a 1.2/35 ultimately delivers more than a 1.0/50 - the shorter focal length allows for longer shutter speeds without camera shake. And the depth of field is greater, making it less critical than with the Noctilux. Besides, with available light, the angle of view of the 50mm is often already too narrow. So the 1.2/35 could be the ideal available light lens.
I'm playing around with photo-moblogging. The image quality from the Clie is pretty poor - but Bluetooth+GPRS is quite practical ... ![130-400-300.jpeg][P1]
Rolleiflex T - Information about the Rolleiflex T
Wow. Leica is ripping off collectors again. That's fine, they should bleed for their foolishness.
Sorry, but this is really absurd. I can still accept a replica of the prototype. But all the fuss around it sounds more like esotericism than photography. At least this 0-series edition finally has a rudimentary viewfinder - unlike the last version which was just a wire mess with a crosshair.
Somehow I find it fascinating how Leica products range from a digital module for the R9 to the M-system with high-performance optics, to compact cameras and digital compacts (usually a bit overpriced) to such crazy things as gold-lacquered and snakeskin-leather special editions and things like 0-series replicas.
I still prefer to stick with the M-system. Sure, I pay a lot of money for it, but at least I get decent MTF diagrams for my lenses and a really easy-to-use rangefinder camera. If I feel esoteric (and have too much money) I can always buy an MP.
Sounds quite nice and finally looks like a camera again and not like a spaceship - but I'm afraid the camera will have the same problems as other Sony cameras with high resolutions.
At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.
Wow, someone was really enthusiastic about landscape photography there: >Since most people have pretty bad taste, they easily mistake the cutesy postcards for good photography, especially if they are displayed as large, impeccably sharp prints. Hence the success of photographers like Alain Briot, Michael Reichmann, and Ken Rockwell. Their photography is pure Socialist Realism, only not as honest about its program -- relentlessly upbeat, eager to please, depicting the world not as it is, but as it surely should be ... and utterly devoid of power to evoke anything but the most trite and saccharine-sweet of emotions.
I must admit, though, that I do have a fondness for the postcard motifs he criticizes so harshly. I produce some of them myself for my own pleasure. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that — though one should keep it within limits (Velvia can sometimes really be too much of a good thing). However, for several years now I've mostly been shooting black and white film, because for me the interplay of light in landscapes is often the most interesting part — and that tends to get lost in color images. For me, color images have always had more of a documentary character.
By the way, the article is still worth reading (or perhaps especially because of this): it examines the context of a photograph and the possibilities of photography in a very interesting way. Photography rarely stands alone — there's always something accompanying it, even if it's just the title.
Not uninteresting. Ok, I would definitely prefer the CM ( Jutta has one, really a fine device), simply because I'm a fixed focal length fetishist, but if you want to have a zoom compact, the CM Zoom is certainly interesting. Ok, only if you're willing to pay the absurd price. But that's normal for Leica.
At PhotographyBLOG there's the original article.
Couldn't you not only rotate it, but also flip the part with the display in front of the optics, that would be really brilliant. Ok, I admit, I have no idea how you'd make something like that work, but still - that would be brilliant.
There's the original article at Engadget.
Oh shit. Now Ilford too.
You can find the original article at PhotographyBLOG.
Oops. So Leica's digital back will turn an ordinary Leica R9 into a Hasselblad R9D
At PhotographyBLOG you can find the original article.
Gross - plastic lenses you stick on your phone camera. Well, phone cameras are pretty crappy in quality anyway, so a plastic lens won't make much difference. Still - it's perverted to do something like that.
You can find the original article at Engadget.
His images will live on forever.
At tagesschau.de - Die Nachrichten der ARD you can find the original article.
Cool. Mike Johnston evaluates the application of various focal lengths. Worth reading
Ouch. A mini tripod made from a bottle cap. That really sounds very stable too.
classic camera - Structure and Operation of the Minox Shutter
A truly high-tech solution for cleaning chip surfaces of digital SLR cameras: statically charged brushes. One brush stroke, then recharge the brush with compressed air to build up static electricity for 5-10 seconds. That sounds like very time-consuming work for cleaning the chip. Somehow I would find it better if manufacturers finally tackled the problem directly in the camera, the way Canon does with apparently less electrostatically charged CMOS sensors or Olympus with their ultrasonic cleaning system.
No, that's not me. It's someone else with my name (or am I the other one with his name? Is this all confusing here). He has some really nice photos online, so I thought I'd pass some of my Google PageRank along to him (after all, I have 6/10 on the homepage)
The text is in Japanese, but fortunately the images speak internationally
One could almost weaken if it weren't for the gigantic acquisition resistance of an estimated 3500 euros ...
You can still teach old dogs new tricks.
At PhotographyBLOG you'll find the original article.
Oh man. What nonsense. Now I have to search around to see if I can still find a cheap old MuVo2 somewhere
At heise online news you can find the original article.
Since you don't see a flowering handkerchief tree very often, I put the remaining images online on my image server (no longer online since 2007).
That would be something for Jutta - after all, she's already thought about wanting to have a spotting scope with Digilux. There's the original article at PhotographyBLOG.
The prism of the EOS 10D protrudes beyond the bayonet. Completely without any useful function - merely an homage to older designs. Stupid. Because the EOS 10D cannot be connected directly to my bellows this way, as the prism collides with the camera standard. I need an extension ring as a spacer.
Classic case of design ignoring function...
The bellows announced in P2367 arrived today. I'm thrilled. Simply a fantastically well-crafted precision instrument. With all sorts of adjustment options, loads of control wheels, loads of applications. Wow. Simply fantastic. Oh, and it was one of my eBay bargains again - only 1/3 of the new price, but everything in fantastic condition as far as I can see. Runs smoothly, without noticeable scratches or dents. And everything included - not even the cable adapters are missing. Now I just need to figure out if there's possibly a way to trigger the Canon EOS 10D via the cable release with an adapter - with the Contax RTS III there are of course no problems due to the system. But both cameras have purely electronic shutters, so something should be feasible. If worst comes to worst, a second cable release will do, but the direct connection is more elegant.
The nice thing about the bellows is the wide range of adjustment options. Shift only horizontally, but nicely with detent. Tilt only around the vertical axis, but also with detent. At the camera mount, the bayonet can be tilted 90 degrees and thus the camera can be changed in format - by tilting the bellows on the tripod you can also get vertical shift or tilt around the horizontal axis this way without twisting yourself into a pretzel.
The lens standard can either be simply rotated (after loosening the bellows, the tilt goes 360 degrees - so simply rotate 180 degrees backwards), alternatively you can also mount the front standard in reverse on the bellows to get even further forward with the lens. Even in reverse position, the automatic diaphragm is retained.
And then there's the slide copying attachment: the slide holder has a vertical shift. Combined with the horizontal shift of the front standard and the freely adjustable magnification factors, you can create beautiful section magnifications with it.
Oh, and in a few days I'll get the macro stand for the system, then I'll have almost all the parts. I'm only missing the adapter for 67mm front lenses (I'll definitely get that since I can then use the nice Tokina again) and the adapter for Zeiss loupe lenses.
Ah. Simply wonderful all this equipment.
Could someone give me $4500 as a gift?
This camera would probably be the ideal Contax digital option for the MM system - with the 1D Mark II you can swap out the focusing screen and insert one with a split image. With the 10D, manual focusing is usually more of a gamble - at least in most situations.
At Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) there's the original article.
I now have an Auto Bellows PC for my Contax, so I did a bit of googling and came across this nice site that documents all the Contax tools for macro photography. Very interesting.
Contax RTS Series SLR Camera Models - Plenty of information about the Contax RTS system
