Easy
As long as you remember that you are taking two exposures to make one picture, flash photography is easy.
Continue reading “Flash photography is easy and hard”Canon A1 – a fiddly festival of controls that’s surprisingly lovely to use
I wrote about my Canon SLR collection a while ago. The A1 was an obvious gap between the match-needles and dials of the Fs and the computers, buttons and LCDs of the Ts.
By the alchemy of eBay I transmuted three broken mobile phones into one very nice Canon A1. Gap filled.
Continue reading “Canon A1 – a fiddly festival of controls that’s surprisingly lovely to use”Bronica SQ-A – a satisfying but nonsensical use of money
One of the first cameras I owned was an Ensign Selfix 120. And I’ve tried lots of 120s since then; Rolleiflex, Hasselblad, Kodak autograph. None with much success.
Excuses:
- I’m no good at guessing exposures
- Turns out my old Weston light meter is unreliable
- Gummy shutters (my Rolleis are long overdue servicing)
- Light leaks (the Autograph, but then it is circa 1920)
I wanted a new toy, so I decided to give 120 another chance.
Continue reading “Bronica SQ-A – a satisfying but nonsensical use of money”Tunnel vision – photo stitching and stereographic projections
I’ve been on a photo stitching journey. (Why is everything a ‘journey’ or a ”story’; aren’t we just doing stuff? I blame adverts, specifically bank adverts. More specifically, the ones where the soundtrack is an ’80s song played at half speed on a ukulele and sung by some drippy hipster trying to be really, really sensitive.)
My journey doing stuff with photo stitching started out when I came across Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor (ICE) software. I’d seen ‘small planet’ projections, thought they looked like fun, so downloaded the software to see if I could make a small planet.
I stuck my GR on a small tripod using a ball head and rattled off some pics in the park. Churned them through ICE. And the results were really pretty good. And there’s the start of a slippery slope; ‘pretty good’ was certainly encouraging… but not good enough.
So… here’s what I’ve learned about stereographic projections (and other composite images).
Continue reading “Tunnel vision – photo stitching and stereographic projections”Agfamatic 2000
As well as a teeny little Pentax Auto 110, my brother gave me an Agfamatic 2000.
It’s a great example of ’70s futuristic design. Did they have cameras in Space 1999 (http://www.space1999.org )? If they did, they would have looked like this.
Agfamatic 2000 – Open
Agfamatic 2000 – Open
Agfamatic 2000 – Closed
Agfamatic 2000 – ClosedIt’s a super-basic camera. A setting for cloudy or sunny, and a big red shutter button. That’s it.
I think the word ‘sensor’ writ on the top just means that if you push the big red button, it senses that it has been pushed. There’s certainly nothing complicated relating to sensing light going on in there.
The camera closes up, covering the lens. It is opened using a switch on the bottom. Squishing the camera shut again winds the film on. It springs back open unless you lock it shut.
It’s a really nice camera to use.
It feels solid, it is friendly, the winding mechanism makes a satisfying noise, and the slinky metal wristband is a fine thing.
Results
Unfortunately, the pictures that come out of it ain’t no good.