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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 16, 2011 17:23:47 GMT -5
Welcome and thank you for a thoughtful and insightful piece.
I recently got a disappointing roll from a 'new' camera (a mid-80s Chinese rangefinder). The disappointment stemmed not from the limitations of a flare-prone lens, but rather from my failure to adapt to its idiosyncratic characteristics and use the camera 'properly'.
Michael.
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 16, 2011 6:37:50 GMT -5
I'm afraid that my film attempts were mostly epic fails on a recent holiday 'up north'. On looking at this digitally made image makes me feel happy, and I think that some in the group will enjoy the subject matter: Since camera's now record all the stuff that I'm too lazy to, here's the relevant info, for what it's worth: Camera OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD Model C750UZ ISO 50 Exposure 1/650 sec Aperture 6.3 Focal Length 19mm Michael
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Winter!
Aug 16, 2011 6:06:44 GMT -5
Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 16, 2011 6:06:44 GMT -5
Dave, you are quite right that bungalow comes from the root baṅgalo in Hindi. I also know that those original Bengali bungalows featured large verandahs (or verandas) another hindi architectural feature widely used here in the colonies. Ironically, although some NZ 'hybrid' California bungalows wear verandahs, the verandah is a much more elemental feature of the circa 1900 New Zealand Villa. Here's an early, Victorian, one in Rotorua: And a later, Edwardian, one in Rangiora, Sort of a bungaloid villa or a villarized bungalow (classic camera info, this was taken with a Minolta Hi-Matic 7): And, because I'm gratuitously posting architecture photos, My favourite 'madder than Mad jack McMad' piece of extrovert architecture, the old Government bath house in the thermal rsort of Rotorua, complete with bowling green out front: Sort of a digital sight of the season - I took this whilst on a winter holiday back in June.
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Winter!
Aug 16, 2011 3:06:57 GMT -5
Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 16, 2011 3:06:57 GMT -5
Dave, the snow in our garden is officially unusual. This is now the biggest 'snow event' since the late 1950s. Yesterday, snow fell in downtown Auckland (our sub-tropical city) for the first time since 1939! I apologize for the miscreant 'n' on the back end of California bungalow, which refers to an architectural type rather than a geographic location. Poke an historian, and you'll risk being bored by a lengthy reply. I hunted out this little gem about the California bungalow in NZ (they were also very popular 'across the ditch' in the land of Aus). A secondary influence from California was to complete the change of appearance of the New Zealand house. This is a typical house of the California bungalow type. The origin of the design was not Europe but Asia, particularly Japan and China. The bungalow became popular with the speculative builder and was readily accepted by the public. This can be explained to a large degree by the similarity of climate, social and economic conditions and methods of building construction between California and New Zealand. The bungalow built of timber was characterised by an open plan, large windows and a Iow-pitched roof in contrast to the stone or brick cottage, tightly planned and with small windows and a high-pitched roof. During the first three decades of this century there was a sharp design conflict between the bungalow and the cottage. Most architects, and particularly those trained in Europe, were advocates of the cottage. This was unfortunate because the bungalow without skilled design direction degenerated into a type little better than the 1900 villa. Gordon F Wilson, 'A Pictorial Survey of Housing in New Zealand: Part Three', in Design Review: Volume 2, Issue 5 (February-March 1950). Ours was built in 1930, and is representative of the type. The worst feature? Painting all that wood. My wife and I painted the house ourselves last summer. Quite a job making all those arts and crafts features look just right! Next time I'm going to pay an expert and spend my spare time taking photos instead
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 15, 2011 3:31:06 GMT -5
Didon, I used Ektachrome and Elite Chrome (the amateur version of Ektachrome) as well as Velvia. I especially liked the price and performance of Elite Chrome Extra Colour, the amateur/consumer version of E100S. I used these films in Brisbane, Australia, which has a sub-tropical climate. I also used E100 and E200 in Thailand during the hot season. I was touring Thailand by bicycle, and so could not refrigerate the film. It performed flawlessly. I carried 30 plus rolls of E100 and E200 (exposed and unexposed) for two months in a bicycle pannier From my experience in Brisbane, which is extremely humid, both Fuji and Kodak E6 products will work just fine in hot and humid environments. The big problem comes with storage of the exposed slides. Treat them like you do your fine lenses, and you'll be fine. Jim Doty's site has some good advice on E6 film choice: jimdoty.com/learn/Tips/Film_Lite/film_lite.htmlMichael.
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Winter!
Aug 15, 2011 1:39:41 GMT -5
Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 15, 2011 1:39:41 GMT -5
Here's what you are all in for. The news is calling today's dump 'a polar blast'. This much snow is a real rarity in Masterton, so I dutifully trudged around the garden taking photos. Thanks for the positive comments on the Tararua photo. Didon, No special filters. I think I bumped up the saturation in-camera, then toned it down again post production. One of the characteristics of New Zealand is the 'hard light', which is especially obvious on clear days and with front-lit subjects. When returning from Asia to New Zealand, one is always struck by the bright colours and long views. When the wind blows from the nor-west, you feel as if you can reach out and touch mountains which are 20 or 30 kilometres away. The downside is sunburn and regular checks for melanoma (skin cancer). BTW, Peter Jackson (director of Lord of the Rings, etc. lives in a large house somewhere in the middle distance of the 1st photo. I bet his house is a bit warmer today than our humble Californian bungalow.
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 13, 2011 20:41:38 GMT -5
Whilst culling the camera collection prior to going overseas for work, I passed some of my favourites on to our daughter - an industrial design student in the final year of her degree. She and her boyfriend had already used some of my classics, and seemed to enjoy doing so. Her eyes lit up at a couple of shelf queens, a Ricoh and the 'baby' Yashica 44 which I gave to her as future office decorations. I was quite tickled because these are two of my favourite 'pretty wee cameras'. I know that the Yashi is a shameless crib of the baby Rollei, but it is beguiling nevertheless - and the Richo Auto-35 (little brother to the Richomatic 35 rangefinder) shows just how well-made a plastic point and shoot camera can be: Intersting that a young designer, born 25 years after the heyday of these cameras, should be so intrigued by them. By comparison, I was in a big box retailer the other day and, out of curiosity, picked up a low end-Canon DSLR. Now in terms of bang for buck image making ability, the Canon was probably great value for money. But in terms of build quality and design clarity - eugh! It is not a tool that anyone would have great faith in. My 50 dollar MP3 player feels better made, as does my eighty dollar mobile phone. And that isn't a very high bar to climb over. Some have questioned the wisdom of expensive digital cameras with high build quality and limited purpose - eg The Fuji X100 - (though I know the firmware design of that example leaves something to be desired) - writing them off as exercises in vanity in a technologically volatile market. Well, maybe. Yet watching my daughter and her boyfriend (another young designer) handle and use cameras built around 50 years ago and get a big kick out of doing so, makes me think that for those of us who take photos for fun, spending our money on design quality over features isn't really that bad after all. it is something which will dictate my next choice of camera.
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 13, 2011 18:14:33 GMT -5
I like the re-framed shot, and agree with your comments re cost of failure in digital.
A different perspective, which I got while listening to a judge's comments at a camera club competition is, 'is it still a photo, or is it graphic art?' The judge in question failed to award prizes to a number of obviously manipulated digital images because they had crossed the border between photography and graphic art. Yours is still a photo, despite the digital touching up.
Somehow related, about 30 years ago, I saw a B&W photo get criticized in a competition for too obvious dodging. Yet, if you still remember the days of B&W newspapers, heavy dodging and burning was almost a trait of 'on-the-ground' photojournalism.
'Cropping is for farmers' is yet another axiom which seems overly restrictive, though I used to repeat it ad-nausium when I worked exclusively in E6 colour reversal.
Which is my way of saying, the arguement is perpetual and predates digital by many years. I think it will go on forever.
At least your gull isn't as controversial (or costly) as the current legal debate over airbrushed models in cosmetics commercials. Now that IS ethically questionable IMHO.
BTW, my maternal ancestors (all Edwardses and Robertses, the lot of them) came from the ridiculously unpronounceable village of Dwgyfylchi (to the non-Welsh, I'm not making that up!) - not actually on Anglesey, I understand, but within sight of it. Hope to make the pilgrimage one day
Michael.
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Winter!
Aug 12, 2011 6:40:11 GMT -5
Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 12, 2011 6:40:11 GMT -5
While the North has been sweltering, we in New Zealand got a reminder that winter was really here late last month. Masterton rarely gets snow, but it got a good dusting that time. Within 24 hours of the storm's passing, the snow had all but gone from valley, but the hills still had a fair pasting. These are the Tararua ranges. Although not has tall as the mighty Southern Alps on the South Island, the Tararuas are a tough little range, and are the cradle of club tramping (hiking or bushwalking) in New Zealand, mainly due to their proximity to the capital, where the country's oldest tramping club - the Tararua Tramping Club - was founded in 1919. Though not high (the peaks - Holdsworth and Mitre - in the photo are about 1500 m ASL) these hills are tough and stormy, being obscured in cloud more often than not. A couple of years ago, the boss of our National museum was killed up there, along with his tramping companion. Ans almost 80 years ago, Land Search And Rescue formally organised in New Zealand after the Such Party got trapped in the hills for 15 days when out for a 'weekend trip'. Michael
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 8, 2011 18:50:18 GMT -5
Thanks for the positive feedback. The 'desert' in Desert Road, by the way, is not a 'real' desert, but a lava field from Mt Ruapehu. The mountain is, I think, the North Islands tallest, and is home to several skifields. A sophisticated warning system now enmeshes the Ruapehu, warning skiers, climbers and hikers of impending Lahars (volcanic mudflows), one of which was respnsible for the deadly tangiwai disaster in 1953: www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/the-tangiwai-railway-disaster
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Uang
Aug 8, 2011 18:43:21 GMT -5
Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 8, 2011 18:43:21 GMT -5
Hi Didon,
I'm really enjoying your posts, and am quite jealous of your skill with a camera.
This is superb use of a standard lens - I really like the way you've isolated the gate and the graffiti. An ordinary subject made special.
You have really made me determined to pack my own Minolta manual gear when I shift countries later this month.
Michael.
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 7, 2011 7:10:36 GMT -5
The use of complicated characters is not quite so unusual in a brand name, I guess. And perhaps the fact that Hua Xia is such a patriotic expression -l iterally taken to mean 'Chinese civilization' - that complicated characters were thought more appropriate. It is nice calligraphy anyhow, and IMHO adds to the camera's visual appeal.
MT
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 7, 2011 6:50:55 GMT -5
I took this last month from the side of the Desert Road. It was made 0n the 1st (and probably only) film I put through the Hua Xia 841 that I bought a couple of months back. I had to apply a digital ND grad filter to actually find the mountain, but otherwise the picture is digitally unmolested. The murky colours are all down to the Hua Xia's 40mm/f2 lens - a flare-prone wee beastie if ever there was one. Still, I think that the somber tones suit the subject - the Deser Road, Mt Ruapehu (an active volcano) and the snow flurries are all portentous subjects. Michael.
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Aug 7, 2011 6:23:37 GMT -5
very nice indeed. Near perfect, in fact.
I remember using Lucky film a few years back, and look forward to tracking some down when back in China at the end of the month.
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Post by nikkortorokkor on Jul 14, 2011 14:23:45 GMT -5
It's funny, I woke up this morning thinking I wasn't seeing the woods for the trees. Of course the tail and under belly air scoop don't belong to a P-40. All the above comments about P51/A36 are more accurate than my amateur ramblings. Looking up the serial number FD553 took me straight to the wiki-file mentioned by Alan. Peter, you spotted right with the civvies, but there is an answer (which I suspected), this is at the factory, not on a military base. Here is the answer, via Wikipedia: North American NA-91 Mustang fighters being serviced at North American Aviation at Inglewood, California (USA), in October 1942. After passing of the lend-lease act in March 1941, the USAAF ordered 150 NA-93 Mustang Mk IA fighters on 25 September 1941 for delivery to the United Kingdom. The RAF serial numbers assigned were FD418-FD567 (FD553 is visible on the left). For contractual purposes, these aircraft were assigned the U.S. designation of P-51 (USAAF serials 41-37320 to 41-37469). The Mustang IA differed from earlier versions in having the machine guns replaced by four 20 mm wing-mounted Hispano cannon. After December 1941 serials FD418-FD437, FD450-FD464, FD466-FD469, and FD510-FD527 were reposessed by the USAAF (and briefly named A-36A Apache).
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