PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 12, 2011 9:02:12 GMT -5
Sid,
In the words of the immortal Fats Waller:
"Yo feet's too big!"
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 11, 2011 15:59:41 GMT -5
Someone is, how shall I put it, a little over-enthusiastic about this £5,400 two day flying course.
I know the RAF was desperately short of trained fighter pilots by the end of August 1940, but the times given here are ridiculous. 80 minutes is barely enough to teach someone who has never flown a plane before how to handle a Tiger Moth well enough to keep it flying straight and level, plus maybe a gentle bank and turn or two.
It would certainly not be long enough to include engine starting techniques, let alone take-off and landing, or "circuits and bumps"
When I was posted to a Primary Flying Training School in 1948, engine starting procedures were taught by senior ground crew because of the shortage of primary flying instructors. I would estimate that we spent at least two hours on starting procedures for Tiger Moths, and probably another two to two and a half hours on starting a Harvard.
I have no doubt that when they got to Scotland for conversion to Seafires they spent about the same amount of time on engine starting.
Trouble was that if the engine fired but didn't pick-up, novice pilots would insist on jiggling the throttle lever, a technique they probably learned on 1930s cars. All this did was flood the plugs. On the Tiger Moth, which was started by swinging the prop, there was a procedure known as blow-out whereby the magneto switches were kept off, the throttle open wide and the engine turned backwards to clear the combustion chambers. Usually the engine would start first time after this.
I don't know how many hours were spent on basic flying before they went on to take-off and landing before they were allowed to fly solo.
Then the whole thing was gone through again on Harvards, except that if a pupil buggered-up the starting and flooded the plugs there was a 10 minute wait for them to dry. Useless on an operational scramble where the average time to get a Spitfire or Hurricane in the air was two minutes.
At the height of the pilot shortage, pilots were sent on operations with only 7 or 8 hours solo on a Spitfire or Hurricane. They learned their fighting and evasive manoeuvres "on the job" - if they lasted that long.
This is why experienced pilots from the Commonwealth, from the United States and from France, Poand and other European countries who had managed to get to England were so valuable in 1940.
Women pilots were used to deliver new aircraft from the factories to the airfields, but they were forbidden to engage in combat.
As for a 30 minute lesson in a converted two-seater Spitfire, ... All I can say is "Don't make me larf, it hurts my bruised chest!!"
BTW, someone commented that the Tiger Moth engine runs backwards. This was for the benefit of the ground crew member starting it. He could use his normal right hand to swing the prop. Don't ask me what left handed people did. I never met anyone on a ground crew who was left handed, though many were ambidextrous using tools.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 10, 2011 10:01:06 GMT -5
Hi all, I said that when I could get around to it I would post a picture of the little analog Canon Ixus APS film camera I picked up recently. It came complete with user’s manual and original box, and I was offered it at a silly price at a boot sale because the owner said: “I took one roll of film with it when I first got it, and the pictures were quite good, but it’s difficult to get the film, it’s expensive to run and it’s a job to find anyone to process it. I’ve gone over to a digital point and shoot”. I paid his moderate asking price and brought it home. There was still life in the battery but I’ve taken that out as I don’t intend to use the camera. It will make quite a nice shelf queen. Canon Ixus APS film camera PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 6, 2011 16:03:53 GMT -5
Randy,
It's amazing how long the remnants of our original accent stay with us.
I thought that after 70 years I'd completely lost my original South London accent and spoke what is generally called "Standard Southern English"
But about a year ago I was at a camera fair and got talking with another collector who was born and bred in North London. I had no trouble placing his accent fairly closely.
After a while he said "You're originally from over the other side, aren't you?"
"Over the other side" is the general North London term for south of the River Thames.
I said I was, many years ago, and asked what gave it away.
"Can't really place it," he said. "Just odd touches here and there. I was right, though!"
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 5, 2011 7:36:55 GMT -5
Mickey,
In reply to something Dave wrote about "if I were you" being preferable to "if I was you" you said you agreed but would like to know why.
The best I can do is to say that this is an example of the past subjunctive mood of a verb
Having said that I suppose I should define subjunctive. Here I'm going to enlist the help of a manual on English grammar which defines subjunctive as:
The mood of a verb expressing wishes, stipulating demands, or making statements contrary to fact.
The "present" subjunctive is the bare form of a verb (that is, a verb with no ending). It does not show agreement with its subject. (Example: "I strongly recommend that he retire.")
The only distinctive form of the "past" subjunctive is the word were. It is used with singular subjects in conditional sentences and with the subordinating conjunctions as if and as though. (Example: "I love him as if he were my son.")
There were suggestions among grammarians in the mid 20th century that, in the interests of more simple grammar, the subjunctive mood be dropped from teaching grammar in schools.
I'm so glad it wasn't, but I may be in a minority. I'm told teaching the subjunctive mood has already been dropped from the National Curriculum for State-controlled schools.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 3, 2011 17:49:06 GMT -5
Didon,
You wrote:
Do I take it that you keep notes of what camera, film and developer were used to produce other peoples' pictures?
This, if I may say so, isn't the way to go about improving your black and white photography. You will never develop your own personal style until you are able to put thoughts of film, equipment and developer out of your mind and concentrate on the picture.
The only way to do this is to choose a camera, pick a film, choose a developer and processing time and stay with them for at least six months until the technical side of your photography becomes second nature.
Back in the 1960s when I was a raw technical and industrial journalist rather than a photojournalist, I learned all I could from my more experienced colleagues. All of them were very willing to help and advise. I learned how to put a story together: open with a striking premise to catch the reader's attention, develop that premise and then wind it up with a conclusion - all within the space alloted to you by the layout sub editor, maybe 1,000 words, maybe 1500.
In particular I owe debt of gratitude to to Cliff Web, at that time industrial correspondent of the Guardian, for teaching me the technique of interviewing (he called it polite interrogation), and to Wally Little, a very experienced Australian journalist who later taught journalism at Manchester University for showing me how to tighten up my writing to fit an alloted space.
In those days I always worked with a staff photographer. In the last six months of my employment, once I had made up my mind to go freelance, I studied the way these photographers worked. They all gave me the same advice: pick a camera with either a short range zoom or with three lenses - 35mm, 50mm and 90-135mm. Choose a film and a developer and stay with that combination until the technical side is second nature.
The make of camera doesn't matter a lot as long as it's utterly reliable and the lenses are good quality. I chose Canon, first an A1 and then an F. I practiced with them until I could load and use them almost without looking. I had other lenses, but my most used was Canon's "short zoom", 35 - 70mm. This covered almost everything I wanted it to. "If you can't get what you want with a 70mm lens, you aren't close enough", as one experienced photographer once said.
Then concentrate on the picture.
Try to anticipate the right time to shoot (Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment).
If necessary shoot several frames of the same subject.
Try to get human interest of some sort into the picture. Never look through the viewfinder or you see only the middle of the picture.
Always look into it so you know what's in the frame and don't get un-noticed intrusions.
Learn the traditonal "rules" of composition, and then think more about lines of sight: what first catches and holds the reader's attention, and where does his eye go from there?
Try to make every picture tell its own story (who did what, where, when, how and, if possible, to whom?)
Above all, don't copy what we do. Develop your own style or you'll always be a "secondhand" photographer.
That's the way I learned, and it stood me in good stead for more than 25 years freelancing.
It may or may not work for you, but think about it and at least give it a try.
Apologies for rambling on so long.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Aug 3, 2011 7:03:16 GMT -5
Wishing you all the best for your birthday, Bob.
Hope you get your problems sorted out really soon.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 28, 2011 18:41:33 GMT -5
Hi Jamie, Sorry to hear you’ve got fungus in the Sportsman’s lens. Nasty stuff! I wrote a piece here some years ago about getting into the lens and shutter on a Sportsman. It’s still in the archives somewhere but to save you searching for it here’s a direct link cameracollector.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=repair&action=display&thread=2371If the fungus is only on the rear element you won’t have to reset the lens at infinity, but if you have to take out the front element you will. The best and easiest method I know of is the two-camera method (the camera you’re working on and a film SLR. The SLR doesn’t have to working as long as it will focus). Rick Olsen shows how to do it on his excellent website where he calls it Bringing Infinity Indoors. If you have any problems, say so and I’ll run through the method I use. With regard to cleaning the fungus out, I like Pond’s Cold Cream the best. It lifts off the fungus and, being a cream, the spores stay in it and don’t float about as they might with a liquid cleaner. Remember to clean round the housing as well as the glass itself, and wash off afterwards with a lighter fluid like Ronsonol (actually naptha). Ideally you should use lens tissue, but I have used cotton buds (Q-Tips) and soft toilet tissue with no ill effects. Work on a piece of newspaper, wrap the tissue up in this, put it all in a plastic bag and dispose of it. If the camera came in a case I would advise throwing this away. There’s bound to be fungus spores in it, and sooner or later they’ll find their way back into the lens, or even into other lenses. Sorry to sound over cautious, but IMHO you can’t be too careful when dealing with something as nasty as fungus. PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 28, 2011 5:19:39 GMT -5
Hi, I have an almost identical Agfa Bily Clack which you can read about on my website www.peterwallage.comGo to My cameras-> Agfa-> Billy Clack. As you say, it's a simple camera. But IMO it's very well made. I ran one roll of FP4 through it when I first got it, about 20 years ago. The results were better than the average box camera of the time. It will be interesting to see how your pictures turn out. PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 26, 2011 16:39:44 GMT -5
Hi all, I recently acquired a DVD of scans of Photocrom (sometimes spelled Photochrome) postcards. They seem to have been scanned from undamaged original postcards Some of the scans are higher resolution than others, but they are all sharp up to postcard size or a little larger. The process was quite involved. It was invented in the 1880s by a Swiss chemist and involved first hand colouring the black and white negatives. The rest of the process was basically lithograph printing, and the following description of it is from Wikipedia. “A tablet of lithographic limestone, known as a litho stone, is coated with a light-sensitive coating, comprising a thin layer of purified bitumen dissolved in benzene. A reversed half-tone negative is then pressed against the coating and exposed to daylight for a period of 10 to 30 minutes in summer, up to several hours in winter. The image on the negative allows varying amounts of light to fall on different areas of the coating, causing the bitumen to harden and become resistant to normal solvents in proportion to the amount of light that falls on it. The coating is then washed in turpentine solutions to remove the unhardened bitumen and retouched in the tonal scale of the chosen color to strengthen or soften the tones as required. Each tint is applied using a separate stone bearing the appropriate retouched image. The finished print is produced using at least six, but more commonly from 10 to 15, tint stones.” The result was a full-colour postcard years before the development of proper colour photography. They were produced in their hundreds, probably thousands, in both Europe and the US.. Their heyday seems to have been between 1890 and 1905 when there was something of a mania for collecting them. Here’s a sample: This is of Portsmouth Harbour, about 1903-05 The Victorians were certainly resourceful and go-ahead. PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 23, 2011 7:12:44 GMT -5
Welcome home, Wayne. Glad you had an enjoyable and safe trip.
You brought back some lovely pictures.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 22, 2011 7:47:58 GMT -5
Best wishes for your birthday Daniel
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 17, 2011 15:13:34 GMT -5
Hi everyone. I know I've said on a couple of occasions that I couln't see myself buying a point and shoot digital camera without a viewfinder. Well, I've got to eat my words because in the words of the Victorian London Musical Hall, I bin and gorn and done it! I didn't buy it on ebay, too chancey for this sort of camera. I was browsing round a local shop that deals in DVD games and the equipment like X-Boxes and Playstations and the like on which to play them. They also take stuff in part exchange including, on quite rare occasions, a camera. My eye was caught by a little Pentax Optio W30, 7.1 Megapixels. It looked like new in the showcase, even though it's four years old, so I asked to see it. As I said, it's 7.1 Megapixels, built-in flash, 3x optical zoom, waterproof Class 8, dustproof Class 5, anti-shake and, somewhat unusual for a digi P&S, it's got a tripod bush. I wouldn't want to trust it underwater, I reckon if light seals can leak, waterproof seals can. But at least I won't be over concerned if it comes on to rain when I'm out with it. I thought the price, which I thought was for the camera only, was quite reasonable. Then I learned that it came with a soft case, a battery, a charger and a new 4Gigabite memory card. Also included was a 12-month warranty (repair, replace or an equivalent camera) and a promise that, for full deposit I could try it for a week and if I didn't like the results or just didn't get on with it I could take it back and have my money back. Customer service does still exist in some smaller shops. All this was at a price just over half what identical models are priced on Amazon. In short, I bought it, and tried it out a couple of days later on a trip with John and Luke to the Historic Dockyard at Chatham, about 40 minutes drive away. I couldn't take my electric buggy because it won't fit in the back of our little Renault Clio so I took an ordinary arm-propelled wheelchair. One of the exhibits there is a diesel-powered submarine HMS Ocelot. With the advent of nuclear-powered subs she was decommissioned and bought and restored by the dockyard where she was originally built. You can go on a conducted tour inside - at least you can if you can walk! But no way could I get my wheelchair inside a sub where space is at a premium, and I could definitely never get throuh the tiny hatches between compartments. So while John and Luke had the tour I trundled around taking a few pictures with the Optio. After about half an hour my arms were aching! After the sub, we all went over the Sloop HMS Gannet. Again it was originally built at Chatham and bought back for restoration. This was easier for my wheelchair but once again I couldn't get everywhere. Some areas involved going up or down flights of stairs. Even so, we all enjoyed the day - or afternoon by the time we got there and had lunch. Here are some pictures I took during my trundle round while John and Luke were in the sub. HMS Gannet, built in 1878. Restoration is almost finished except for new masts and a new bowspit. The diesel powered sub HMS Ocelot, originally built at Chatham, bought back and restored when she was decommissioned. The day was fine, with light overcast, so I set the Pentax at 400 ISO, and left it to do everything else - real indolent photography The pictures are straight from the memory card with no Photoshopping apart from resizing for posting here. All in all, I'm pleased with the little Pentax. I've got to get used to composing on a screen instead of in a viewfinder, but I expect I'll get the hang of it. PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 16, 2011 10:18:17 GMT -5
Hi,
The picture reminds me vaguely of some of the scenes in the classic German film of 1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, said to be the first true horror film.
A few of you may have heard of it, or even seen it.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Jul 15, 2011 19:46:56 GMT -5
Col,
I think your out-dated (very) Russian film really failed to let the little Kiev do itself justice. I've had very sharp results from mine.
I've never liked even in-date Russian film. The few Russian and Polish photojournalists I've met on my travels into Eastern Europe didn't like it either. They would pay a premium for Ilford or Kodak film.
If I remember rightly the Kiev 30 takes the same cassettes as the Minolta sub-min, and there used to be a chap on the sub-miniature collectors (or users) website that sold cassettes of this film very reasonably in packs of about 10. Not genuine Minolta-packaged film but quite good stuff.
I don't know if he still does, but it's worth asking Google to find it.
PeterW
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