Sunday, October 15, 2006

Simple German Engineering

Well the above statement is a bit of an enigma... in as much what appears to be simple at first glance turns out to have a GREAT deal of thought behind it.That's why it's deceptively simple. On the other hand there are complex solution and in this instance i thought i mention German cameras from the early part of last century..yes anything before 1961!
I own a Clack..Made by Agfa and as far as a shutter camera as far as i am concerned i don't believe there is anything simpler.
On the other side of the Spectrum there is the Kodak Retina, of wich i happen to stumble upon in a second hand store. The more i look at it the more i am amazed at the complexities of the thing. It's a rangefinder, with a light meter, timer,viable shutter and aperture,leaf shutter lens basically everything you would find in a decent SLR. Everything is interlocked and codependant. In 1959 this was around 300 Deutsche Marks.
considering the average monthly wage back then was only about 600 marks this makes it a very expensive camera. That would make it in todays terms somewhere in the order of 2000-3000 Marks....and it's only for the amateur market. While it's not a Leica or Rollei it does have some brilliant design work and the engineering is to die for. I was going to sell it...but i think i'll hang on to it for a while and experiment whith it. it is actually quite a NICE CAMERA TO USE once you figured out HOW to use and then its an absolut dream

Sunday, October 01, 2006

I'm Singing in the Grain, just singing in the Grain...

Well it's interesting theSpudguns Images were ...well ...Grained . I was considering up until then to submit photos meself. I usually scan my images at what i had considered a High Resolution up until i started using on of the labs here locally to develop and scan my pictures. I get my pictures scanned at 'hi' definition and that gets me an image size in terms of MB at around 15MB per image. It would take me Hours to do that on me home scanner. But the results speak for themselves, i guess. Plus as a Value added service the Images are Optimised for Printing. Well Back to the drawing board and reconsider this whole Grain vs quality vs time & effort

Grain? What Grain?

A little while back, Mad Owl and I were discussing the possibilities of turning what was a hobby for both of us (i.e. photography), into something a little more serious. Mad Owl had the bright idea that, seeing as we both have a bunch of photos, and are taking more all the time, we should submit them to some of the stock photography sites on the 'Net. The theory was that we could earn a bit of money from what we both do for fun.

So, with that idea in mind, I found a few stock photography websites around, and looked at how they operated. The majority of them charge nothing for you to sign up and submit photos, but they do screen submitted photos, and reject ones which don't meet their rather strict standards. Having read through the guidelines, I felt that I was fairly certain to have a few images which would be accepted.

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather, when every single photo I submitted was rejected. Why? Too much noise or grain in the photos. But, I thought, film has grain, it's one of those facts of life, and surely there are times when grain in a photo can actually enhance it? That may be the case, but the stock photography sites don't see it that way.

It didn't help that most sites have a minimum size for submitted photos, and that I was having to scan my little 35mm negatives at a fairly high resolution to match that size. Having switched to medium format, I have been very pleasantly surprised at how little grain is noticeable in the first roll of transparency film I've shot. So now it's time to resubmit some photos, and the way I see it, if I get knocked back again, it's not going to be because there was too much grain in the photo...