OT: In case your Minolta camera quit

FILM? What's that ?:-)

I have an old Argus C4 in my artifact display ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Hello Jim,

We donated our really old ones and sold a few at a garage sale. But digital cameras aren't quite up to snuff for serious photography. Low sensitivity film still beats resolution and dynamic range, even versus the highest megapixel digital cameras. Ever seen an Ansel Adams B/W photography up close? Now go to Yosemite in winter and try to emulate one of those with a digital camera. There will be about 70 years of R&D between Adam's photo gear and yours.

The other downside is that on all but the extremely expensive digital cameras you cannot swap lenses. On the ones where you can they seem to have made sure that the lens mount is incompatible so you have to buy new lenses, can't use legacy stock. Why not use what works? After all, I am still operating the old Dolch 50MHz logic analyzer. Because it suffices in over 95% of cases.

The most important upside for wildlife photography is the immediate shutter action of film cameras. Digital doesn't have that. You can't tell a fox kit to hold still. At least not while there are other kits around.

Oh, and 3x digital zoom just ain't cutting it.

Regards, Joerg

Mine is part physical and part digital zoom.

My Sony has two power choices, on and ready, or power up on slight depression of "shutter" button.

For wildlife, particularly grandchildren, I always use "on and ready" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I still have a film camera - it was ten bucks at the drugstore, with free film for the rest of your life - just bring the camera in and pay for the processing, and they'll reload it for you with a new 24-shot roll. I realized that this kind of a deal is a HEXX of a lot cheaper than a newspaper coupon, and gets people into the store much more reliably. :-)

Took a BUNCH of pictures - a 24-shot roll is kind of inconvenient when you're anxious to see a particular shot. :-)

I set it aside when digital cameras hit $139.00. :-)

When I retired the film camera, I asked the guy, "So, when you process this, you reload a roll of film into the camera, right?" "Right." "So, what if, instead of putting the new roll of film into the camera, you just hand it to me?" "Uhh, yeah, I guess I can do that." I think I gave the roll of film away, and the cam is still in some box - "one of these days" I'm going to take it apart and dick around with the flash thingie. :-)

Cheers! Rich

Hello Jim,

Same here with the little Nikon. 3x optical and another 3x digital. But the old Minolta runs circles around it with a 500mm on there and it sure looks more intimidating. The quality of some of those aftermarket lenses is so superb, the little digicam lenses just can't do that. Take a shot of a structure with many vertical and horizontal lines plus sun reflections off of them. Then do the same with a film camera and a top notch architect's lens.

Ours can be kept in movie mode. Still doesn't react as fast as the Minolta but the main problem is that it'll eat batteries like chocolate cake.

Regards, Joerg

snip

Hi Joerg I can still get 25ASA BW AGFA 35mm stock around here. Them black and white pictures can be stunning. I just get the negs xfered to CD.

martin

Ansel Adams didn't use a 35mm film SLR either. He used an enormous view camera that exposed a single huge frame of film at a time and allowed manipulations obviously impossible in a typical SLR. Plus, and probably more important, he had more talent for photography than most of us. And patience.

In most cases they can make the lenses cheaper for the digital SLR cameras since the sensor size at the focal plane is much smaller than a frame of 35mm film. But the better ones are compatible with film cameras so you can leverage your existing investment, assuming you own a collection of good AF lenses (and if they're not AF you can use them, but you might not want to).

Modern digital SLRs have no perceptible shutter delay and almost no startup delay. You need to upgrade your system. ;-)

Seriously, next time you're in a decent camera store try out one or two of the newer models in the US ~$1.5K range, with a high performance flash card. You'll be surprised how really good they are. That sort of thing was $30K only a few years ago (and probably not as good). Sure, I'd like to see 10fps with a 25 frame buffer in RAW mode for super-clear sports action shots, but it's getting pretty close to perfection at a fraction of that, and available and quite affordable now.

"Digital" zoom is garbage.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Another reason to upgrade. Modern cameras are *much* better. I didn't even bother taking the charger for C.'s mini-snappy last trip I took, expecting to take fewer than 100 photos. And the Li-ion cells don't self discharge nearly as badly as the old heavy NiMH cells.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Hello Spehro,

IIRC there was no 35mm yet at his time. Mostly 60*60 and 60*90. I started out with 60*60mm. We had a voluntary afternoon class at school and there a professional showed us the tricks. Long exposure, waving and all that.

Our lenses are non-AF. The best performer is a super clean 250mm that doesn't even have a selectable f-stop. This is the lens we use for most of our wildlife photography. It was a present from my sister and she ought to know. She is the mathematician behind many of the lenses used by the real pros.

The investment isn't in the camera bodies. It's in the lenses and I'm not willing to give that up just because they decided to make the mounts incompatible. I am quite certain that the industry could have enjoyed much better revenue from high-end digital SLRs had they chosen not to force users to dump their lens investments.

Some day, maybe when I retire.

Yes. The only time I use it is when I find a bug in a client's system and have to send them a report right away. But I usually also snap a photo with the film camera if a formal report needs to be issued.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Martin,

25 ASA is the good stuff. CCD is still miles away from that (and this comes from a guy who designed a CCD camera from scratch).

Regards, Joerg

Dear Joerg,

I think your knowledge of digital cameras is about 5 years out of date

Ansel Adams was an inspired artist, not just a good technician. But let's do the math.

A 35-mm photo is considered sharp if it resolves 40 l/mm and the very best lenses hit 80 l/mm. Allowing 2 pixels per line per mm, that's 40 x 2 x 24 x

40 x 2 x 36 = 6 megapixels for "sharp" and 24 megapixels for "very best."

Current DSLRs, comparable in inflation-adjusted price to good film SLRs of

20 years ago, have 8 to 20 megapixels.

As for dynamic range, digital beats the socks off of film. Ask any astrophotographer. (I am one.) Until digital came along, we couldn't get pictures of globular clusters that showed stars from center to edge, the way the eye sees them; the center was always overexposed. Film has *much* less useful dynamic range than digital sensors. Also, film is nonlinear, so sky fog can't be subtracted out.

if $500 is "extremely expensive"...

Nikon AF lenses work on Nikon DSLRs. Canon EF lenses work on Canon DSLRs. Canon DSLRs will also take Nikon lenses (in manual mode) with an adapter, and Pentax screw mount lenses with another adapter. (I sometimes use a vintage Zeiss lens on mine.) Maxxum/Sony take the same lenses on DSLRs as on film SLRs. I don't know the status of Pentax or Olympus.

Eh? It seems to me the DSLR is, if anything, a tad faster than the film one; certainly not appreciably different. You can turn off autofocusing in order to avoid the autofocus delay.

Agreed!

Note that Agfa Photo is out of business. One of their fine-grain materials may, however, survive as a microfilm product (their printing-industry product line is still alive). Rollei, also, is or was going to market a super-fine-grain b&w film.

Nothing against film -- but only in very unusual situations is it still superior to digital. In particular, you'll have a hard time getting lenses that are good enough to reveal detail finer than an 8 MP sensor can record.

What lens is that? Sounds like it might be useful for astrophotography.

I'd have to look, it's not here in the office right now. Will post when I know.

Regards, Joerg

Lots of lines or whole companies are out of biz. When I found that busted capacitor my first thought was getting a spare through Minolta, since it was so freaking small and thus hard to find. Went to the Konica-Minolta site and was a bit non-plussed. It said "Konica Minolta Photo Imaging, Inc. ceased the camera business on March 31, 2006". Dang, a couple months too late.

The dynamic range of CCD can be a limiting factor in hard contrast situations, reflections etc.

Regards, Joerg

Congrats on breathing life into the old shutter-box (I assume "old"). I love to make stuff start a new life. "It's my way of sticking it to the man."

Several years ago I brought my circa 1968 Mamiya SLR back to life (crud growing on meter switch contacts). Didn't have any luck with a 2004 Nikon though (#&$%@ plastic lens body!).

--
Michael

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Sounds like the beginning of the digital/analog camera equivalent to the digital/analog audiofool debates.

RF Rokkor 250mm 1:5.6

Regards, Joerg

(snip)

(snip)

Adams hauled around a monster-format view camera. Contact sheets, framed, would look darn nice. And he probably needed a tripod for his tripod. ;-)

Yeah, don't you just love to sneer at [magnification] "(equivalent)" ad copy? :-) Sounds like getting something for nothing. It's actually getting less for something.

-- Michael