Gear Theory

Kodak Vision3 250D

My First Time using Kodak Motion Picture Film – ENC-2 vs. C41.

Nowadays, I use analogue photography for 90% of my Street Photography, with the only exception being when it’s raining outside and I don’t want to get my analogue camera wet, so I use my digital one. Usually, I use black and white film stock, but this summer I really felt the urge to shoot some …

My First Time using Kodak Motion Picture Film – ENC-2 vs. C41. Read More

A Cautionary Tale about Scanning Negs with a Digital Camera

While there is much interest in scanning with a digital camera, there are other ways of scanning negatives: using a lab or home-scanning with a dedicated scanner. Scanning with a digital camera sounds appealing: “I’ll save money and get better results.” But… There’s always a but. There is a downside – cost in space, $ € ¥ £, time. Lots of time. It’s a bit like the home-brew PC culture of yore. Before it was ubiquitous. Bespoke computers, just like suits. But DIY.

“Digitalitis” and the Folly of the Pursuit for Perfection

Whenever we use a camera to record a scene, we are transforming  analog signals. Each element introduces yet another error, albeit small.

The perfect is the enemy of the good

It’s an apt saying. The followup is

What is good enough in a complex system?

Errors propagate in complex systems. Redundancy has its benefits. It’s natural. And there are optimal settings to achieve reasonably accurate results.

Of Camera Sensors and Mega-Pixels – A Screen Play

The following is in the style/format of a screenplay. Ok, let’s face it. Not the sort of thing that would be picked up by Netflix. But… there are precedents. Consider the oyster… Lewis Carroll [aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] wrote Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He was a polymath – author, poet and mathematician. While ostensibly written for children, his books also include philosophical discussions on such topics as logic, philosophy and the ambiguity of language. And they delight people of all ages.

A Leica family

The (my) Best Leica

Leica rather missed the boat when digital came along so of course I’m talking about the best film Leica. And no, its not another “the M3 is the best camera ever made” review. But to begin, a bit of background.

My first ‘camera’ was a 4×5 I made with my father’s help, and a loaned lens from my uncle who worked at Taylor Hobson in Leicester, UK. The wooden box camera used glass plate negatives – remember those? Focusing was hit and miss, manually sliding the fat projector lens in and out until infinity seemed as good as it could get – then stopping down with a cardboard cut-out sleeve over the lens. I was a teenager and was making the camera for a single purpose – to photograph a comet which was easily visible stretching across the sky.

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