watcha doin’ Sport?

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Robert

Russian SPORT Camera c1930 with rudimentary pentaprism finder. courtesy of  Siim Vahur

Toronto. Growing up, camera innovation seemed to be mostly German with a dash of other European and American tossed in. But Russian? Really?

According to this article from BBC’s Future site, dated 18th May 2016, by Stephen Dowling, “How this odd-looking camera changed how we take photos“, a Russian Photography Museum says the first SLR with a mirror version of a pentaprism was designed in 1930 for a Russian Camera called “Cnopm” a name that translates as SPORT in English.

Prior to pentaprisms, SLRs used waist level viewers and flip up mirrors giving an upright image reversed left to right for viewing and focussing. My Exakta used both a waist level viewer with a condenser for greater brightness, and an exchangeable pentaprism that allowed eye level viewing with the image both upright and correct right to left. Both had a ground glass bottom for focussing. The Pentaprism’s ground glass was removable too and could be swapped for a tiny dual prism rangefinder in the centre of the ground glass.

Thanks to fellow PHSC member, photo history buff, and good friend, George Dunbar, for this unusual find. Russian? Sure – shades of my Exakta!

Posted in camera | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on watcha doin’ Sport?

a hidden ‘fingerprint’ in digital photos

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Robert

Sensor luminance pattern is like a fingerprint – courtesy Getty Images

Toronto. For years professional photographers devised various means to identify date, subject, etc., data for each negative and print.  Amateurs were far less consistent, rarely ever marking negatives. Occasionally amateurs would use pencil or pen to annotate the back of their prints.  Often the location, names, etc., were simply lost unless a living person had a good memory. Kodak tried to solve this lapse with their ‘autographic’ camera line that allowed a brief message to be added to each negative with a metal scribe.

When digital technology arrived and became common place, everything changed. Jerone Andrews on the 24th March 2021 via the website  BBC Future has this article called “The hidden fingerprint inside your photos“. Many of us who have used Lightroom or Photos or any other program to organize digital photos, knows that standards like EXIF ‘metadata’  can add key words, descriptions, captions, camera type, exposure details, location, date and time when taken, etc. to the digital image file allowing a simple way to easily group and find images later on. Some of the data are automatic, other data can be added by the photographer. Posting images without scraping off metadata can reveal more than the uploader intended!

However, this article also identifies a far more sinister ‘fingerprint’ – the slight variance in luminosity per pixel across the sensor. This ‘map’ is unique to every sensor – just like people and their very personal fingerprints. Since sensors, unlike film, generally remain constant for a given camera, the pattern allows forensic analysts to not only identify which camera took the image, but whether the image was manipulated once saved.

Read the above article to see just how such metadata and patterns can reveal far more than was intended. A big thank you to my good friend and fellow PHSC member, George Dunbar, for spotting this timely article in his pursuit of photographic history.

N.B. The title reminds me of the Leonard Cohen poem and song called “fingerprints“. I first read the poem many decades ago and later on picked up the CD with him singing the words.

Posted in photos | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on a hidden ‘fingerprint’ in digital photos

click, clack, clunk

Posted on March 27, 2021 by Robert

A Nikon F cut away showing the mirror box and 45 degree mirror to reflect light from the subject onto the ground glass

Toronto. The most important part of any single lens reflex (SLR) camera design is its mirror box. This amazing idea allows the rays from the subject, through the lens, redirected, and focussed on a ground glass at full aperture. With the lens stopped down as necessary, the mirror could be flipped out of the way so the rays would hit the shutter and then the glass plate, or film.

The upside was a sharp view through the lens for telephoto lenses, crisp focussing of the narrow depth of field, and accurate subject framing. The down side was that the film to lens mount distance exceeded the focal length of traditionally designed normal to wide angle lenses; the lenses had to be ‘wide open’ to maximize brightness and minimize depth of field, then stopped down and (along with shutter speed) adjust the light intensity to match the needs of the plate/film making camera operation slow compared to a rangefinder (e.g. a Leica or Contax).

The lens design for many normal lenses and most wide-angle lenses was ‘retrofocus’ (lens mount to film distance greater than the lens’s focal length) resulting in various degrees of geometric distortion and less than the best resolution. Some normal lenses used a slightly longer focal length to allow traditional lens designs to be used and lessen geometric distortion.

When sensor technology allowed sensors to increase in size, eventually becoming ‘full frame’, digital took over the professional market and cameras became digital SLRs (DSLRs) with same mirror box and lens mount to sensor distance so film lenses intended for SLRs could be used on DSLRs and focussed to infinity.

The introduction of interchangeable lens mirrorless designs like the Micro 4/3 cameras and Sony’s NEX line made the camera body thin enough that an adaptor could allow many rangefinder film lenses to be mounted and focused to infinity or closer. Recently the mirrorless designs have even had full frame sensors!

Posted in camera | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on click, clack, clunk

don’t give me the gears

Posted on March 26, 2021 by Robert

Some gears in my Exakta VXIIa

Toronto. A short time after moving back to Montreal, I joined the company Camera Club and offered a shutter and lens test. This was with good reason. My trusty Exakta VXIIa had shown a wavy anomaly in my fast shutter tests in the late 1960s.

To be safe, I bought an older Exakta Varex before carefully taking apart my VXIIa. Photographs like the one at left helped me reassemble the camera so it still worked. Looking at its innards, I saw that one brass shutter stop was nearly severed with a pile of brass shavings nearby. Looking more closely, I was appalled at how thin the large gears were. Sadly, I carefully reassembled it and set it aside – my first collectible camera (I still have it today).

A few years later, in the summer of 1972, I bought my first Leica – a model M4. Years later in Toronto I had the opportunity to see the shutter assembly of my M4. A hole burnt in a shutter curtain in Montreal (my fault) was to be repaired by Wild-Leitz in Toronto. Instead, unbeknownst to me, the Montreal Leica dealer sent my camera to another less expensive repair facility in Toronto (Swiss Cross).

While on a visit home, the camera failed again. This time, I took it directly to Wild-Leitz to complain. There, I was shown the difference between their repair and one by Swiss-Cross: Disassembly requires the lens mount to be removed and to do so means the black wax-like material in the top lens mount screw socket has to be removed and replaced. The tiny stamp embossing the material is a cross like a plus sign for Swiss Cross, and an upside down £ symbol for Wild-Leitz.

Factory fresh unassembled Leicas are embossed with an upright £ symbol. Wild-Leitz graciously repaired my shutter at their cost of parts and labour and gave me the removed shutter drum which has a pin that had been previously bent by a clumsy technician. The camera has been fine ever since.

Note: The name of the post stems from a typically Canadian expression which I used from time to time.

Posted in camera | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on don’t give me the gears

deep thoughts developing

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Robert

Roll film courtesy of Annex Photo

Toronto. My thanks to Annex Photo here in the big smoke for the image illustrating today’s post. Give them a try if you are one of those folk determined to use film and film cameras. Ever since I was a kid  during WW2 various drums and tanks have been around for film development. Prior to the war, a see-saw technique was usually used to develop  roll film in a tray of solution.

Around 1960, I happened to be in Collingwood when the telephone exchange was being upgraded (I still have the massive old Weston meter used to test the telephone lines damaged by inclement weather). Having recently built a darkroom at home, I searched for a drug store to see how they handled film and printing for customers.

As it turned out, the local druggist did his own processing and printing. He was so pleased with his film developing set-up that he took me in to see it. Suspended in a long, narrow,  deep trough were strips of black and white film – 120, 620, and 127. The room was almost totally dark (later I realized the films must have been orthochromatic). Weighted clips held the film strips in the solution while similar clips with short arms rested on the top edge of the trough. Periodic lifting of each strip circulated the developer. Once developed, a film strip was lifted out and dunked in a similar trough full of fixer.

Years later, I realized that vertical troughs were very unusual – most non tray vessels used aprons and/or special reels to minimize the volume of liquid needed to submerge the film.  A British website called Photo Memorabilia has a wealth of information on its pages including a brief history of developing trays and tanks. The site looks very old but can be read with a modern browser (the browser window may need to be made a bit wider as the site uses fixed width lines of text).

Posted in history | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on deep thoughts developing

it doesn’t matter anymore

Posted on March 24, 2021 by Robert

Lens and keys photo courtesy of How to Geek article

Toronto. In the early days of digital photography, the size of the sensor was very important. The larger the sensor, the lower the noise and the higher the sensitivity.

This led to compact digital cameras and then digital SLR cameras (DSLR) with cropped and full frame sensors. In this case ‘full frame’ was equated to a 35mm film frame so lenses were 1:1 (a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens). Cropped sensors when used with 35mm lenses meant an increase in equivalent focal length. I.E. a 50mm lenses may take an image equivalent to a 75mm lens or even longer. The blog How-to-Geek recently published this article on sensors. The less expensive mirrorless cameras, like DSLR cameras, have full frame or cropped sensors allowing adaptors for film-based lenses enabling them to focus to infinity in use.

Today, modern smartphone cameras use tiny sensors with such immense technical improvements that their low noise and high sensitivity performance approaches that of DSLR cameras when the smartphone camera is used in room light or brighter. Only in very low light situations does the DSLR excel. As mentioned in a recent post (yesterday), the compact digital market has been all but destroyed by smartphones and computational photography.

NB. The title of this post is a riff on a line in New York singer Suzanne Vega‘s haunting 1984 song, Luka. The song is on her second CD (I have her first three CDs).

 

Posted in camera | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on it doesn’t matter anymore

you know the end is near when …

Posted on March 23, 2021 by Robert

iPhone pet photo with artificial depth of field – courtesy TapSmart article

Toronto. All good things must come to an end as they say. And that is the case for the compact digital camera industry. I have been saying as much for a while now.

The WCPHA said the same way back in the summer of 2019 with this story, “Member Marc Kramer passes on this report of continuing declines in digital camera sales. The compact business is dead and the high-end stuff seriously declining as the cell/mobile cameras take over. Shades of the decline in film cameras and the German industry described below. The Japanese Government usually forces companies to merge to save ‘face’. Interesting times.”

Now the web site TapSmart offers ways to replicate professional DSLR results using the high-end iPhone cameras. The use of computational photography already makes for far better quality amateur efforts. Now apps and the ever present smartphone make compact digital cameras an unnecessary purchase and are even affecting DSLR sales!

Posted in camera | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on you know the end is near when …

photos submitted for prestige

Posted on March 22, 2021 by Robert

babies in Winnipeg hospital in the 1940s by George Hunter, courtesy of the CHPF

Toronto. PHSC president and my good friend Clint Hryhorijiw passed along this note from recent panellist Nicole Plaskett of the Canadian Heritage Photography Foundation (CHPF).

Nicole writes, “I was speaking to Clint last week and let him know that CHPF has launched an on-line photography contest which starts today.

“The photo contest is for students as well as non-students.  You can find details here: https://www.thechpf.com/photography-contest if you would like to share the link with your membership.”

You may remember that the prestigious CHPF is home to the negatives taken by the late George Hunter, the iconic Canadian photographer who we have enjoyed in past as a guest speaker. The babies photograph above is one of Mr Hunter’s photos. His amazing aerial images have even graced our paper currency! I saw one of his exhibitions at the Mississauga City Hall where he used scanned film negatives to create the large digital prints on display. Breath taking!

Those of us who actively use our collections (or modern digital gear) should consider this contest. A new monthly theme will be posted – with the beginning theme of Landscape. The award is the potential pleasure and recognition plus giving a helping hand to a very worthy Canadian foundation.

Posted in activities-other | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on photos submitted for prestige

Mark Twain on Photography

Posted on March 22, 2021 by Robert

Sam Clemens as shown in LIFE article. Original photographer unkown

Toronto. Mark Twain is a pseudonym used by American Sam Clemens in writing his books. As Mark Twain, he wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, books commonly read last century by children everywhere including me. The stories were also turned in to movies. When I was a bit older, I bought and read a couple of other books by Mark Twain – Innocents Abroad, and, Puddin’head Wilson as well as a short story about “The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County”. Puddin’head Wilson was a mystery that revolved around fingerprints.

Clemens felt free to give his opinion on many subject. On July, 1, 1866 in a letter to the Sacramento Daily Union, he said (about portraits),”No photograph ever was good, yet, of anybody–hunger and thirst and utter wretchedness overtake the outlaw who invented it! It transforms into desperadoes the meekest of men; depicts sinless innocence upon the pictured faces of ruffians; gives the wise man the stupid leer of a fool, and a fool an expression of more than earthly wisdom. If a man tries to look serious when he sits for his picture the photograph makes him look as solemn as an owl; if he smiles, the photograph smirks repulsively; if he tries to look pleasant, the photograph looks silly; if he makes the fatal mistake of attempting to seem pensive, the camera will surely write him down as an ass. The sun never looks through the photographic instrument that it does not print a lie. The piece of glass it prints it on is well named a “negative”–a contradiction–a misrepresentation–a falsehood. I speak feeling of this matter, because by turns the instrument has represented me to be a lunatic, a Soloman, a missionary, a burglar and an abject idiot, and I am neither.”

And in her 1913 book, Mark Twain and the Happy Island, Elizabeth Wallace quoted the late Twain as commenting, “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.”

A big thank you to George Dunbar for discovering and sharing these quotes by Mark Twain.

Posted in history | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Mark Twain on Photography

keeping an eye out

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Robert

LIFE ad in October 1971 for Kodak’s X-30 camera

Toronto. As this late 1971 LIFE ad for Kodak illustrates, marketeers had to be creative and inspired to create new copy far faster than the engineers and designers could make new cameras with new features.

This version of Kodak’s relatively cheap Instamatic line includes its drop in film and magicube flash bulb socket and adds an electronic shutter controlled by a CdS cell – the camera’s eye. Kodak pushed these (basically box cameras with a few added features) so they could sell film and related supplies which were the real money makers for the great yellow father.

A thank you to my good friend and fellow PHSC member, George Dunbar, for finding and sharing this October 8, 1971 LIFE ad for the Kodak X-30 camera.

Posted in history | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on keeping an eye out