little critters

I just got the call "hey, there's a hedgehog down here! Come as quick as you can"

He was crunched into a little ball of spikes, and didn't want to move. So after Anita went to work, I popped back upstairs and put my lens onto my camera. I didn't know if it'd still be there when I got down, but and got down there to find it still wandering around; although further up the hedge (who'd have thought).

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It froze as soon as I got there, but after I sat down it was quickly on the move again. So I grabbed a few 'hurried escape shots' ..

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and waited around. Sure enough someone else came back down, but headed over towards where he was and sortof 'flushed him out' towards me.
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"yes, its looking clearer ..."

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So with a sniffing of the air it seems it was going to head my way. But after I took this shot it seems that it didn't like the sound of the shutter on the camera and turned around again.

So I thought I'd let it have breakfast undisturbed and headed back up here for a coffee and to publish this.

size matters (what film looks like)

I was just talking with a friend who wasn't sure of the differences in size between 120 roll film and 35mm. It occured to me that fewer and fewer people seem to know just what a negative or a slide is any more. Today in the digital age people seem to not know what film even is.

So, I thought I'd put a comparison of the basic formats up here. Most people still know 35mm film (you can still find it at the supermarket), but good old box brownie 120 film seems to be forgotten. To rectify that here is an image below with a strip of 35mm and 120 side by side on the glass of my flat bed scanner.




the 120 film is much wider, allowing the camera to 'record' a bigger image on it. These images are from a 6x9 camera (meaning its supposed to be 6cm X 9cm in size). Actually they're from my nearly antique Voigtlander Bessa camera. If you click on the image, you'll notice that there are frame numbers along the bottom of the 120 film too. These are actually printed on the film at manufacture, and are only guides for using other formats (like the much smaller 6 x 4.5cm)

I like 6x9 the most because as you can see you get a much bigger film area than 35mm recorded onto the film.

This essentially means that you don't need to 'enlarge' or (magnify) the image as much when making a print.

This means that if you're making a typical small print of 10x13 cm the negative of the 6x9 camera really only needs to be made a little bigger, while the 24x36mm image needs to be nearly 4 times wider.

Now, if your lens is less than perfect this will mean your pictures will be less than clear.

Remember all those blury awful 35mm pictures from the 70's? Its interesting that the pictures taken back in the 50's (or even in the 1900's) are often sharper. Well its all down to the size of the negative. So, you see size maters!

Certainly newer cameras are improving, and the latest in multi thousand dollar camera and lens will make very sharp pictures indeed. Even better yet, digital SLR cameras make the best possible use out of that good lens and allow very good prints. But after you've spend thousands of dollars its still only just as good as an old 1950's 6x9 camera.

Click on this image to see a bigger version, its been sized down for the web, to just 1600 x 1012. However the original size is 5799 x 3667 and that's 21.26 MPixels.



Look around the image, but keep in mind, this is from a less than $200 camera :-) See if you can do better with a more expensive one ;-)

enjoy

rear window

I was walking through Lappeenranta the other day and came across this American car. It had Rambler written on the front grill, so I'm not entirely sure who made it.

Anyway, the owner (clearly some kind of fan of American cars to own one here in Finland) seems to have been having some problems with reliability.

Well at least that's how I read the rear window sticker

:-)

Bessa useful lens limits

To add a little more to flesh out this camera to a potential buyer (for using not for those who simply collect), I thought I'd explain that this camera will simply not give sharp images from edge to edge at less than f11.

There is debate about the Vaskar lens on the camera, and while some say that the lens isn't sharp other swear that it is. Here I'll say that it can be and that it depends on the photographers choices.

Here's why.

For large format camera users looking at the film plane with ground glass is a normal and even essential thing to do. Large format cameras even have the corners cut off on the ground glass, making it easier to actually do this.

The reason you'd want to look here is to see if you've moved your lens too far, and run out of the area where the image from the lens actually falls (you see, large format cameras move the lens around to give control over focus and perspective see this explanation). So I popped open the back of the Bessa early on in the piece to see what I can see. I've done it again here to explain my assertion above.

In this image, I've taped a bit of translucent (foggy) plastic sheet to allow you to see the image formed by the lens, and the lens through the corner of the frame.



You can just see the lens through the torn off corner of the palastic and you can see its not quite perfectly round. Looking at the image below, taken at f4.5, you can see that the shape made by lens is not perfectly round. This will mean that less light will fall on the edges of the film than in the middle. This will make the image darker at the edges (vignetting) and will also reduce the image quality too.



This image is taken at f8 and you can just see that the the lens is still slightly obscured in the bottom third at the left.


its not until you get to f11 that the lens circle is now nice and round


So basically this means that the lens needs to be stopped down to about f11 or lower if you want edge to edge uniform lighting, or even edge to edge sharpness. You'll notice we're not right at the corner of the film plane here, so to be on the safe side stopping down a little more is needed. In practice I've found that you need to stop down at least f16. So, essentially this means that this is a "sunny 16" kind of camera or use a stable support (Eg tripod or solid base) and then use f16 (preferably smaller) and 1 second or longer so you can get reasonably accurate exposures.

Further, there is no accurate markers in setting the aperture (no dent to feel the position of the aperture setting as in more modern cameras) and no 1/2 or /1/3 stop markers. Meaning you've got to 'guess' the adjustment and being more accurate than full f-stop is challenging (meaning that trying to set 1/2 or 1/3 stops is guess work). This is ok with black and white, and possibly colour negative, but I think it makes a challenge for slide or 'positive' film.

However, if you can set it at f16 or f22 (and use a tripod) it gives very nice results. Like this close focus example at f11:


You can see (if you click on the image) that the edges are starting to fuzz ... this was exposed at f11. Below is and a segment from the center of the negative. Please click on either to see larger versions.


So, if you can put up with the difficulties of using this camera:

• limited useful f-stop range
• single focal length
• no light meter
• focus by number (needing some way to correctly pick the distance)
• no 'dent' to be reliably sure of f-stop selected
• no partial f-stop marks

then it can provide you with excellent images.