Thin Blue Line

Saturday, 22 March 2014

Monday, 31 December 2012

Open up the back of the camera and you’ll see this long pathway leading to the lens. This is the bellows for the camera which is controlled by various cranks and knobs along the body of the 20×24. When the cranks and knobs are manipulated, magnification and focusing can be controlled from the backside of the camera. Like some old medium format and large format bodies, the user looks into the viewfinder and sees an upside down image; more on that in a second. A technician runs the camera for anyone that rents it to handle the calculations of bellows factor, lighting, and to control the processing of the film. The studio works with student interns to help out on set as shoots go quicker with an assistant running the front of lens while the technician runs the back. This is a very critical piece of the camera and Jen stated that when out on location it needs to be well protected against the elements like rain.

Poloroid Camera

35mm Film Camera

A couple of weeks back I made note of a survey that indicated, among other things, that 70% of those working in the web development field felt that there was definitely no gender bias in their workplace. The irony being that the sample audience responding to that question was 84% percent male. Rich Bowen points out today an ongoing uproar in the Ruby community about sexism and a general lack of professionalism at a technical conference and the community as a whole. So much for that lack of gender bias.Here's the thing, this isn't about some hippy pie-in-the-sky can't-we-all-just-get-along. As I mentioned previously this is about the strength of an industry as a whole, "groupthink can lead to the lost of .creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking." As J Aaron Farr says in his own commentary, "in the long run, a large, diverse community of contributors provides .stability and quality."

35mm Film Camera

Antique Cameras

Do you like to take pictures? How does your family capture those special moments that you want to remember forever?Many of us today use digital cameras. Sometimes they’re part of our smartphones or a regular digital camera. They allow us to capture images and see them immediately on a screen.Photography hasn’t always been so quick and easy, though. Once upon a time, cameras were quite large (compared to today’s tiny cameras), expensive and a bit complicated. After taking a picture, you couldn’t see what it looked like until you removed film from the camera and had it developed.Non-digital cameras are sometimes called film cameras. Camera film was invented by George Eastman in the late 1800s. Camera film was made of a plastic substance called celluloid, which captured photographic images.To get pictures from camera film, the film must be cut into separate pieces, called negatives. The negatives are then used to project the photographic image stored on them onto special photographic paper.Photographic paper reacts to light to produce the image taken by a camera and stored on film. Since photographic paper reacts to light, pictures using camera film need to be produced (a process called developing) in a room that is completely dark.

Antique Cameras

Rokinon 8mm

All focusing with this lens is done manually via the very large and well built focusing ring. Unfortunately, there is no depth of field preview scale but there is a distance scale. However, I tried focusing all with Sony’s peaking function, which seemed to work fairly well but still not the best from my initial tests.After lots of use, I found that it is because the lens is a bit soft wide open. Once stopped down to F5.6 or F4, you’ll have no problems at all. Additionally, to get the best results you’ll need to use Sony’s peaking function and the magnification function together.Image QualityOf any lens I’ve used for the NEX system, I have to say that I think Rokinon nailed the sharpness and color rendering better than anything I’ve previously seen. However, the lens needs to be stopped down to F5.6 in order to get these results. Otherwise, you won’t necessarily see the same magic that I did.We posted some of the results on our Facebook page before, and you readers seemed to really like the images. Additionally, Rokinon themselves posted images.