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Post by cooltouch on Aug 28, 2016 21:37:46 GMT -5
Not all survived, unfortunately. A Canon EF sustained heavy damage to its top plate -- enough to kill the electronics. A Nikon FE's top plate was bent pretty badly, but I found a replacement for it. A Canon Winder F's shutter button was knocked off and ruined. And a Tamron 17mm, that I had bought just a few days before, picked up a very small ding in its front element. All things considered, though, I got off lucky. And I suspect I did because almost all those cameras and lenses date back to the era when they were made out of metal and glass.
I'm convinced my cat did it. He liked to jump on top of that cabinet, but he's a clumsy cat and sometimes he misses what he's aiming for. I figure that's what happened and he caused the case to rock slightly. Just enough to tip over a heavy lens on the top shelf. Which broke that pane, causing all the gear on that shelf to fall down onto the shelf beneath it, shattering it. And so things went.
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 25, 2016 2:18:10 GMT -5
I doubt you'd have anything to worry about. I did just the lightest dusting of my hands with flour before handling the cameras and then wiped off the excess. So it is a very small amount that actually gets used.
But if mice remain a concern, I guess if it were me, I'd lay out some rat poison in well traveled areas (by the mice, that is). We used to live in a heavily wooded area -- almost a rural section of the suburbs and we had a variety of critters -- good and bad. Rats and mice were periodic problems where we lived. I think they were attracted to the dog's' food. Only problem with rat poison I've found is that the rats don't always make it outside to die. Sometimes they'll die in a wall and then for a month or so, every time I'd walk past that area in the house, it smelled like a dead rat.
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 25, 2016 1:59:29 GMT -5
Just don't let your glass shelves get too overcrowded, or this might happen:
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 15, 2016 12:32:03 GMT -5
I thought I'd resurrect this thread because I have something to add. My brother-in-law is an executive with Igloo Corp and has told me that this phenomenon is known as plasticizer migration. I have an old Metz 60 CT-1 and its cables have gotten all sticky, which I haven't treated yet. I also own a Nikon N80 -- actually I've owned several, I buy and sell 'em if I can get them cheap enough cuz they're great little cameras -- that had become sticky.
I tried using acetone on it at first and it didn't do any good. I was surprised, since acetone will cut through most stuff. Then I decided to get creative. I tried some flour -- just regular all-purpose flour -- on a small area of the camera, and it got rid of the stickiness. Best of all, it became translucent when it hit the camera body, so there was no visible residue. So I dusted my hands in all-purpose flour and, well, "handled" the camera. All over. This completely neutralized the stickiness.
That was over a year ago and the camera remains non-sticky. Now, whenever I pick up a cheap N80 for resale, I give it the flour treatment. Since the flour absorbs this stickiness and stays on the camera, it seems to me that it is most likely a permanent fix. Well, I dunno, if you wash the camera or something otherwise not recommended, you might remove the flour and it would become sticky again. But I don't wash my cameras, so I think this treatment should last quite a while.
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 11, 2016 11:02:59 GMT -5
I never buy anything at full price. My last "almost new" camera purchase was a Sony NEX7. Bought a clean barely used example and saved a lot of money. I guess some might regard it as "old" but i don't. I find its features and 24.3 mp make it a very capable tool. Plus the fact that it's mirrorless means that i can at last use ALL my mf lenses with it. And that alone makes it easily worth the price i paid.
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 10, 2016 18:52:37 GMT -5
Man-o-man, I thought I had it bad with my 50 or so camera collection!
I have one display case that I can just barely fit all my cameras and lenses into. But it won't take too many more pieces to have me looking for more space.
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 10, 2016 18:48:26 GMT -5
Neither of the above for me either. By the time I got involved in photography, auto technology was well established. My first camera was a Canon AE-1. I continued on that road for a while, buying an A-1 about a year later, but found I wasn't enjoying the lack of control I had with these cameras. So I took a step backward and bought an FTb. And I LOVED it. Simple, yet highly effective. Shortly after that I learned of the original F-1 and soon added a well-used copy to my growing collection of Canon FD gear. About a year later, just for safe measure, I added a second rather beat-up, but perfectly functioning F-1.
In the subsequent years I have had the opportunity to own and to use a great many 35mm cameras. And of all the ones I've used, I've developed a few favorites. Including the Nikon F2, Pentax KX and LX, and Minolta XD11. But the one camera I keep coming back to for its look and feel and its accuracy and ruggedness and just its general layout, is the original Canon F-1. Well, F-1n to be specific.
I owned a Minolta XM (XK here in the States) for a while, and I was rather impressed with the camera. By the time I acquired it, which was in the early 90s, it was definitely old tech. But I could still appreciate it for what it must have been in its heyday. I realized the leap of faith it must have required, switching to a battery-dependent camera back in the early 70s, but it wasn't an unsurmountable obstcacle. So I've wondered why Minolta didn't stick it out with that camera. But it seems that they did make a few tactical errors with it, probably the biggest being the XK Motor with its dedicated, but gorgeous integral motor drive. They should have been thinking about modularity a bit more. It never made sense to me why they would produce a modular camera like the XK, but with a non-moular motor drive option. Oh well, now clean XK's are worth a fair chunk of change and XK motors are worth some serious coin.
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Post by cooltouch on Aug 9, 2016 16:48:25 GMT -5
Sorry, I'm just getting back to you on this. Yes, I love wide angles. I prefer the 24mm over the 28mm. To me there isn't anything a 28 will do that a 24 won't do better. I also have a couple of 17mm lenses too. A Tokina-made Vivitar 17mm f/3.5 and a Tamron 17mm f/3.5. Nothing between the 17s and the 24s, though. I'd like to get a Nikon 20mm one of these days.
I like really long telephotos too, btw.
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 20, 2015 16:16:47 GMT -5
This first pic is mostly about the lens, which is one of my all-time favorites, the Canon FD 85mm f/1.2 SSC Aspherical. This is the forerunner to the famed 85/1.2 L lenses that Canon has made over the years, and considered the best of the lot by some. That FTb is a pretty sweet camera, too. But my all-time Favorite 35mm is the original Canon F-1. Here it is with a Booster T Finder and that 85/1.2: And here it is with the standard prism and that 85mm once again. One of my Nikon F2s -- I like the F2 almost as much as the original Canon F-1. It is just a great camera. Here's another one of my favorites, the original Nikon F with the non-TTL metered finder, complete with the angle of acceptance restrictor. The above are just a few of my favorites, but that's enough for now.
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 12, 2015 10:42:59 GMT -5
Yes, pricey and such a system would be limited to a fairly narrow selection of cameras. Which is why I would prefer something self-contained that could be inserted into most any SLR's film chamber.
As for other technical issues, well, not being an engineer who could design something like this, I can only hazard a guess as to where problems may lie. And I've pointed out those areas where possible problems might be evident, but ways around them that I can envision. I think that people who've tried to design something like this in the past have tried to assign too much control to the digital module, when the primary controls should be left up to the camera. The digital module would behave much like film would. You set the ISO on the cassette to agree with that set on the camera (no dx coding because it has variable ISO capability). Switch it on and it becomes active. Insert it into the camera. When the door is closed, it resets and advances to the "next" frame. From then on until the session concludes, when the shutter is tripped, the sensor records the image, and after the shutter closes, the sensor resets and is ready for the next "frame." Since it will still be in Active mode when the session is finished, opening the back will cause the module to record another image. So, when downloading the images from the module's micro-USB card, or via the mini-USB cord, the first and last "images" will be wasted shots, since they occurred when the module was being inserted and removed, so they're tossed.
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 12, 2015 10:13:31 GMT -5
Yikes! Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Selective dyslexia strikes again!
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 12, 2015 10:10:17 GMT -5
Yes, the QL feature worked surprisingly well, and I loved my old FTb. I still have a soft spot for them, in fact. I think I own three or four of 'em. But the reasons why the old F-1 got the nod from me over the FTb was primarily two areas: the F-1 has interchangeable focusing screens and it has a motor/winder option. Back then I had a couple long telephotos that were on the slow side, which rendered the FTb's focusing aids not only useless, but annoying because they were in the way. I used plain ground glass screens in my F-1s and got used to focusing without aids. And I've always liked having a motor or winder option because that way I don't have to remove my eye from the finder to advance the film.
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 12, 2015 9:54:16 GMT -5
Hey Mickey and Wayne, I too don't miss the darkroom. Never cared much for it. But I have what I'd guess you'd call a hybrid darkroom these days. I use a changing bag or a dark closet to spool my film into the tank and then develop the film in ambient light. Once the negatives or slides are dried, I either scan them with my Epson 4990 or duplicate them with my NEX 7 hooked up to a slide/roll film dupe rig I cobbled together. My dupe rig works very well. At the heart of it is my 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor, an amazingly sharp macro lens. Because of the NEX 7's 24.3 mp sensor, I can scan my 35mm slides or film strips at 6000 x 4000 pixels of resolution, which is what a Nikon CoolScan provides.
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 10, 2015 5:44:53 GMT -5
Well, my all-time favorite camera is definitely not a digital, even though I own four, the best of which is a fairly new acquisition for me -- a NEX 7.
No, my favorite camera is the camera that has been my favorite for over 30 years -- the Canon Original F-1, specifically the second version, often referred to as the F-1n. I've come to rely on and deeply appreciate its metering pattern, its dead-nuts accurate meter and its versatility. But what I appreciate about it the most is it just keeps going and going and going . . . a never say die camera. I finally bought a New F-1 a couple of years ago and I can now see for myself why the pros liked it so much. It is at least as rugged as the original and it has many nice improvements. But as cool as it is, I still prefer the original.
The New F-1 probably ties with my second most favorite camera -- the Nikon F2. With a 72xxxx serial number, I've owned mine for almost 25 years. I love its bullet-proof reliability and superb craftsmanship. And the MD-2/MB-1 motor drive is hands-down, one of the coolest around.
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Post by cooltouch on Jun 10, 2015 5:06:22 GMT -5
It's always nice to see comparisons like this. I would have liked to see more than just one shot of one subject, but what you show is illustrative enough.
I've recently conducted some mirror tests as well. I compared the Tamron SP 55BB 500mm f/8 mirror to the Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror. The Tamron came out on top handily. I was a bit disappointed. The Sigma is a recent acquisition. It has an EOS mount, which indicates to me that it was probably built late in Sigma's production run of the 600/8. I used to own one that I bought in 1984 in Canon FD mount, and it was considerably sharper than this EOS-mount one. I suspect that if I could have compared that early Sigma with my Tamron, things would probably have been much closer.
Because of this, I've done some investigating of Sigma's 600mm mirror. As it turns out, Sigma made a few changes to it over its rather long production span. Most all of them appear to be cosmetic, but it could be that the lenses were being assembled on newer equipment that held tighter tolerances during its early years, whereas as the years progressed, the manufacturing equipment began to wear, resulting in looser tolerances and thus lenses being assembled with more slop than they should have had.
That's one explanation, at any rate. Another is just looser quality control or, as Stephen mentioned, lenses having collimation that's off. Whatever the cause, it makes me wish that I'd never sold my original Sigma.
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