best looking camera ever?

JamesBlonde333 · 2012-05-26T03:57:33.312603+00:00

Me too.

The other reason is of course that gold-finished anniversary models of cameras are as uncommon as a lite beer. Every manufacturer has at one oint or the other throughout its history released a gold version of its top model and they are all equally tasteless and retarded.

I even doubt they hold their value particularly well because there are so many of them by now. In fact, I just snuck a peak: There's right now half a dozen golden Leica R bodies alone available on ebay, each hovering somewhere around $5000 BIN. It's slightly pathetic.

JamesBlonde333 · 2012-05-25T23:05:59.186595+00:00

I prefer the plain chrome model. It's the lack of pretentiousness and the functional Bauhaus-style design that makes a Hasselblad. It's one of the very rare examples of industrial design that cannot be improved.

LucilleDeux · 2012-05-25T17:07:03.490848+00:00

How to resize photos in Photoshop Elements

Crab_Cake · 1 day

I have both an OM-2n and an OM-4. There's a few problems with the OM-4 which for me make it less enjoyable to use: its viewfinder is noticeably dimmer than that of the OM-2 due to the second (transparent) mirror it has fitted inside to accommodate for the multi spot metering. I find it's a questionable feature in the first place for a small-format camera and I never use it.

The shutter action is subsequently much less smooth and more noisy than that of the OM-2.

The OM-4 just has too many features which complicate its operations and I really dislike the way it displays exposure information in the viewfinder. The uncluttered finder of the OM-2 on the other hand is almost perfect. The only issue I have with it is that the match needle indicator occasionally becomes invisible when it blends into the image in the viewfinder.

I've also heard some reports that the OM-4's shutter will not stay open beyond 3 minutes when doing off-the-film metering. I've never verified this myself but I certainly know that it will stay open as long as is needed with the OM-2n.

SithLordHuggles · 3 days

Watch those newton rings which are noticeable when viewing at the largest size. If you are using glass plates to hold down the film strip, make sure the correct side is facing the film (assuming your glass plates are anti-newton).

backstab · 3 days

It's actually quite easy. Extension tubes effectively increase the focal length of your lens while its maximum physical aperture remains the same. In that respect, extension tubes behave like teleconverters.

So if you had an 80mm f/2.8 lens (diameter of the aperture therefore ~28.6mm) and you added, say, 21mm of extension tubes, you now have a 101mm lens, still with the same 28.6mm aperture. That means that wide open your lens is no longer an f/2.8 but rather an f/3.5. You may have to do some rounding there since it's likely that won't wind up on a full stop.

dreDREb13 · 9 days

That actually strikes me as having pretty low contrast, in line with what I would expect from HP5. It is however a tad over-exposed or -developed, but not by much.

frogjelly · 11 days

I should have known with my family it wouldn't be a brand like Kodak :) this was probably half price right lol.

I wouldn't feel too bad. I believe the Buster Brown No 2 was $2 in 1906. Twice as much as the original Brownie six years earlier. :-)

frogjelly · 11 days

I don't think yours is a Brownie. My guess would be on an Ansco Buster Brown, perhaps the No 2A which unlike the No 2 had its strap straight and parallel along the edges and not on a diagonal across the top.

Not sure when the 2A was made. The Buster Brown No 2 came out in 1906.

EDIT: Apparently it was made from 1910 onward up until 1924.

mr_pantz · 11 days

Do I spend the money on Lee filters or see if Cokin works for me? I've read a lot of conflicting reviews of Cokin holder and filter quality in the past.

What you do is get the Cokin holders (you need at least the P series to cover 80mm) but use Hitech 85mm filters with it. Those filters are almost as good as Lee filters at a fraction of the cost.

villson · 14 days

You won't need an adapter with the Spotmatic since all of them have circuitry that will adjust for batteries with higher voltage.

This is quite unlike most if not all other cameras from the days of 1.35V mercury cells. Those will work with higher voltage cells but the meter will produce results that are somewhat underexposed. This can be compensated for by setting a lower ASA although to what extent it needs to be lowered would depend on the specific camera.

cinemakyle · 14 days

$34 million dollars profit a year is tiny compared to the likes of Nikon or Canon, which have profits in the billions.

Irrelevant. Leica and Canon have a much higher revenue. Leica's operating margin is a bit over 12%. Those are phenomenal figures that no other company in this segment can match. Nikon's operating margin by the way is a moderate 1.7% (a revenue of under ¥400 billion with a profit of just under ¥14 billion); Canon's is around 7% which happens to be very decent.

My point is that Leica is a small company that is doing extremely well and not at all on the brink of going out of business.

W357Y · 14 days

I've always had the highest appreciation for the oft-overlooked Hummel. If there's one composer who showcased a nearly infallible sense of taste and elegance, it would be him.

I particularly love his piano trios. There is a certain long-windedness to them, particularly to their opening movements because he loved to stack musically unrelated ideas and melodies on top of each other. Conciseness was not his thing, but melodies were.

To get an idea of the qualities of his melodies listen to the poco larghetto of his later E-flat trio. The first part will remotely remind you of the slow movement of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto.

cinemakyle · 14 days

Because Leica are a tiny, ghetto camera company and are perpetually on the brink of going out of business.

So much cluelessness, bummer. Leica is a cooperation which reported a per-stock earning of $2.15. There are 16.1 million stocks overall (with one institutional owner). That makes a profit of $34.6 million (between June 2010 and May 2011). The most recent revenue figures are $279.65 million (as of Sept 2011).

It's a small yet highly profitable company.

larsga · 18 days

Agreed. I've yet to come across any image of mine that would have been spoiled by diffraction and I am someone who likes to stop down a lot.

Another thing that I do not find mentioned on the page linked above: Diffraction is in fact not dependent on the f-stop but rather the physical size of the lens's iris. An 800mm lens can safely be stopped down way beyond f/22 which corresponds to an iris comparable of a 50mm f/1.4 wide-open. So the shorter the lens the earlier these effects will be observable. Your ultra-wide will suffer when you go beyond f/11 or even less than that but then again, you may not have to since you naturally get a larger depth-of-field already.

Another thing to keep in mind: Diffraction is always going to be less bad than areas that are outside of the depth-of-field when too large an aperture was used. When a large depth-of-field is required, just stop down the lens. The little bit of diffraction you get is a much smaller price to pay than insufficient DoF.

PentaxianForHire · 18 days

Others seem to prefer the LX and so would I. It was at the time the most advanced SLR on the market and in many ways still is due to its metering system, the wonderful TTL flash system and the largest viewfinder ever to be put into an SLR.

The flash system obviously isn't going to be P-TTL but it doesn't need to be with the LX's off-the-film metering. Get one of the supported flashes off ebay. They will be available for very little.

The MZ-S was Pentax's professional body in the autofocus era. I don't find it's a particularly handsome camera and its feature set is what one would expect from a DSLR. Its viewfinder however is quite ordinary, certainly compared with that of the LX, and while it offers spot-metering, the LX's ability to meter in pitch darkness and keep the shutter open for as long as is required makes it a great camera for nighttime photography.

As others have pointed out, you will run into the sticky-mirror problem unless you are very lucky. This wouldn't be a problem if it didn't also affect the focus which will be misaligned on such a body.

Qwertyrocks7 · 18 days

What a strange question. All three of them are working and you have them at your disposal. Why not run a roll of film through each of them to see which one you like best?

My preference would be the Minolta. Note that not all SR-T 201s are equal. Later ones had a slit-image rangefinder but also did away with a metering system that automatically compensated for back-lit subjects. If yours has a CLC engraving above the lens mount, you have one with that feature still present. It's useful and works very well.

And obviously, neither the Minolta nor the Nikkormat offer anything other than manual mode although the AE-1's shutter priority isn't terribly more convenient.

xrousti · 18 days

Having been a Pentax-shooter most of my life, I would nonetheless go for the NEX.

It's true that their lens lineup currently is atrocious with the exception of the big and expensive Zeiss 24 and I am not a fan either of their inconsistent lens finish (some only available in black, others only in chrome).

However, the NEX is on the long run going to be more fun than a traditional SLR like the K-5. Sony's lens lineup is going to improve with time but more importantly, adapters exist for virtually any type of mount already. This is decisively not true for the Pentax which will never be able to mount short-registration lenses as can be found on rangefinder systems.

Notbythehairofmychyn points out that you will lose autofocus with those but that's alright unless your shooting style requires it. In all other cases, manual focus is perfectly fine and has been used by every photographer up until the mid-80s. The NEX-7 makes this particularly rewarding due to its brilliant electronic viewfinder which offers many other advantages over optical ones.

AwesomeDay · 19 days

The actual scanning is actually the least of my grievances. It scans while I do other things. It's when I have inspected a small subset of the current roll of film and determined that they are all junk that I have to put on the nylon gloves, transfer the strip into an archival sheet and then get up to get the next strip which is currently resting under a stack of heavy books to get flat.

There is no joy to be had from this. Once I have a scan of a negative that I deem usable in PS I am fine. I don't mind the post-processing itself which rarely consists more of a bit of dust spotting, cropping away the excess edges, applying curves, resizing and sharpening.

It's the stupid scanning which can't be automated that gets me.

FearTheHump · 20 days

photosites != pixels and calling them that only serves to confuse the issue more. ;)

So why don't you just explain what you mean in layman terms? If it's not the pixel density that could account for the difference between two sensors in the context of this discussion, what does this mysterious lightwell pitch refer to and why should I care when talking about different sensors?

FearTheHump · 20 days

I just googled "lightwell". It does appear to be a common term in World of Warcraft. "Lightwell is a healing spell that can be acquired from the Holy talent tree"

Those were the ones I have found, too. I've given up after the first three pages of hits. :-)

frostickle · 20 days

Ah, yes, I first came across Nick Brandt a few years ago and was immediately drawn in by the fact that he exclusively uses wide-angle lenses. The resulting images have a sense of scale that no other wildlife photographer has achieved to my knowledge.

FearTheHump · 20 days

So this was simply talking about pixel density then? Maybe you should have called it that.

I still maintain lightwell pitch doesn't exist. I can't even find a photography-related document anywhere that mentions just lightwell.

FearTheHump · 20 days

Lightwell pitch. You made that word up, right?

lilgreenrosetta · 21 days

So how have they produced their images so far without the D800E?

I am always amused when a new camera comes out that is at best slightly better under lab conditions than its predecessor or, in this case, its sibling model and people go apeshit over it.

As far as I see it, the E model is a noticeably more expensive version of the same camera that produces slightly sharper images when viewed at 100%, however with a real and not only perceived chance of producing moire effects. I certainly would take a pass.

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