Hamish Gill's Photos and Cameras

www.realphotographersforum.com

2010-07-14T07:36:00.001-07:00

This will be the last post in this blog as i will be carrying it on in my new photography forum.

www.realphotographersforum.com

feel free to come and join

No free time

2009-11-20T15:51:00.000-08:00

It occured to me i haven't posted for a long time on this blog, this is purely down to lack of time.
I am in the process of stting up a high street studio. i shall hopfully have time to post my progress at some point.

Spartus "35 F" Model 400

2009-07-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

The film used was ilford fp4 processed in ilfords cheapest chemicals ... badly as usual

Olympus Trip 35

2009-07-14T05:17:00.001-07:00

The Olympus trip began production in 1967 and ran until 1984. According to Olympus, they sold 10 million of this model in that 17 year period and very few changes were made to it's design! I guess if it aint broke, dont fix it! It really shows how much the world has changed in the last 25 years. Nowadays, cameras have a production run of usually less than a year! This could be put down to a technology moving on a lot quicker but personally I think this is a load of pap! The truth is, it's consumerism, we are bombarded with "new and improved technologies" that make us want to buy the latest thing! The fuji f30 compact digital camera is one of the best cameras of recent times but because it was 'only' 6mp it only lasted a year or so (including the f31fd - basically the same camera with "face detection"). It has been a few years since the f30 came out and even now manufactuers are struggling to beat it for image quality... what a barmy world we live in!
Anyway, enough of the ranting and back to the trip 35.
It's a very simple camera to use, it has a fixed 40mm 2.8 lens with a four position zone focus system. The lens is surrounded by a silenium light meter that, on mine at least, is as accurate as is needed for day to day snaps. It has user selectable iso ratings from 25-400 - allowing a small amount of manual control over exposure if you are that way inclined. It also has an adjustable aperture, single pin hot shoe and sync socket for flash use. Thats the lot! Put the camera on A on the aperture setting and set it to the little red zone focus setting and in good day light with 100-400 iso film it will do the rest, only stopping you from taking a photo when there isnt enough light.

This is my Trip 35
All of these images were taken on ilford hp5 400iso. The first four were taken using a Nikon sb-20 flash.

The Box Brownie

2009-07-11T04:14:00.000-07:00

The box brownie was first introduced in 1900 and was widely recognised as bringing photography to the masses. Because of its relatively low cost and ease of use, it was the first camera that took photography out of the hands of the trained photographer and into the hands of everyone else. The result of this was the idea of snapshot photography, anyone could now take a photo of anything! The 1900 brownie is the first incarnation of the camera phone (just without the phone bit)

This is my Box Brownie

As can be seen in this photo it is a No.2 Brownie, model f. Although I have no idea about the exact date this particular one was made, from the patent information it's easy enough to guess that this camera is approximately 80 years old.

This image shows just how simple these things are! The metal lever toward the bottom left is the shutter. For instant shooting the lever in the top right stays in the lowered position. When the shutter is flicked either up or down it pushes on the spring which in turn rotates the round disk. The jelly bean shaped cut out in the disk allows light to travel through it, then through the lens behind, and for what I am guessing to be a 50th of a second, exposes the 120 film within the camera. If the lever in the top right is pulled upward the shutter will stay open once the lever is flicked until it is flicked a second time. The lever top center when pulled up, changes the camera between its 3 apertures which I understand to be f.16 f.22 and f.32. The top left hand corner is the two view finders for portrait and landscape.

My particular camera isn't in the best condition, but for its age I'm very happy with it considering I paid £1 for it off of ebay! The little mirror in the portrait vf had come away and was rattling around in the front of the camera. Unfortunatly half of it had smashed into little bits but there was one large bit thatIi managed to glue back in place. Its fair to say its not the clearest of views through either vf, infact you can barely make out anything, just fuzzy shapes, but that just adds to the fun!

This is the first film I have put through it and without really thinking I put an ilford HP5 400 iso roll in, not perhaps the most sensible choice considering that in the days of this camera most film was either 25 or 50 iso. I also perhaps rather stupidly hadn't noticed when I shot the film that I could change the aperture, so shot all day with the largest one. After realising my mistake I decided it best to develop the film for less time than required for 400 iso hp5. The results were fairly over exposed and low in contrast. I then couldnt find the 120 film loader for my scanner so just had to place them on the flat bed and hope for the best. They weren't held flat in the scanner which has, i think, added to the bluryness of the images. It has though also meant that I have been able to scan the whole image right to the edge of the neg and this has framed the images nicely! Also lets face it, if you are going to use a camera from the 20's you aren't likely on the road to perfection!
These photos have been run through lightroom to bring back a bit of contrast, but are otherwise as the scanner scanned them.

This first shot is what you get if you leave the shutter open when you put the film in. Using any new (or very old) camera is a learning curve, I wont make that mistake again! (although i do think it is quite a nice image, and it does make you wonder in the 109 years since the "snap shot" camera first came about how many photos like this have been taken!!)

My house.

Some of the works they are doing down toward diglis.

Slightly wonky shot of the old keepers cottage(?) down at diglis. One of the only truly pretty buildings left down there in the mass of souless architecture that is there these days.

Old dear with stick walking down by the river.

This one I like as I think it's pretty difficult to date.

Older folks getting up off a bench as I pointed my camera at them.

And finally my good buddy Mr. Deacon on his ice cream bike. Damn good bit of mint choc chip available at remarkably good price!!

£1 for the camera £4.99 for the film a few pence on chemicals and a bloody lovely ice cream (Deaks you can buy me a pint or a free icecream for this advertising) a damn good way to spend a friday afternoon!

Also a quick thank you to James and Hannah for providing me with the impetus to get this camera out and run a film through it!

Sun Set / Sun Rise Kenya

2009-03-25T07:58:00.001-07:00

Sun Set (ish) over the Maasai Mara. The bird in the tree is an eagle. Please Scroll down for my images of the people and animals of kenya

Sun Rise over the Maasai Mara

Photo of the Locals in Kenya

2009-03-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

These first four images were taken at the The Akambaa Handicrafts Cooperative Society in Mombasa. A factory of sorts where all of the workers (aparently) belong to a single tribe. They are all tecnically self empolyed, carving work to be sold through the on site shop as well as being sold to other shops all over the country and even exported internationally. Some of the workers carve and some finish the carving with polish and animal bone.

As i was taking this photo, the people in the next hut starting calling out "Obama, Obama, Obama". Locally to the factory there is a road that has beeen named obama road.

The following three photos were taken whilst walking around Mombasa city.

Photos of the Wildlife in Kenya

2009-03-25T04:46:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the shots from my recent trip to Kenya
There are many more to follow, they are just taking a little time to get through!!

Lake Nakuru

Maasai Mara

Maasai Mara

Maasai Mara

Maasai Mara

Masai Mara

Masai Mara

Lake Nakuru

Lake Nakuru

Lake Nakuru

Lake Nakuru

Lake Nukuru

Lake Nakuru

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Photos of Dismantled Olympus Trip

2009-02-17T18:19:00.001-08:00

Vignetting

2008-12-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

Vignetting (pronounced vin-yet-ing), in photography at least, is the darkening of the perifery of the image. This is usually most pronounced in the corners but sometimes also follows the edge of the image.

Almost all lenses will cause vignetting to some extent and it is always most aparent at the lenses widest aperture. I'm fairly certain if you want to find out why this happens there will be something online somewhere that will tell you, but be warned it will likely contain many long words and talk about 'cos' something i didn't get when i was at school and something i certainly dont get now! This is why i'm not going to go into any more detail for it's happening than to say it's because of the body of the lens getting in the way of the light's path. It is also perhaps worth noting this is true of both the lenses you put on your camera or in the case of digital cameras the micro lenses on your sensor

Vignetting is on many occations an iritation and a few modern cameras are now equipt with a post process function for removing it. I certianly would not apreciate vignetting caused by my equipment if i was in a studio environment! Removing it in a post process can be detrimental to the final image as it is effectivly achived by increasing the gain in specific area, this will cause an increase in noise in those areas. Fortunately even the most basic modern lenses vignette only very slightly and it being removed by the camera or doing it yourself useing lightroom (or any other program with a vignette removal function) rarely causes to much of a problem

Conversly it can also be a good thing and if you are familiar with lightroom 2 or cs4 then you will have come accross the 'post crop' vignette function for darkening or indeed lightening the perifery of your images. I was really pleased when i came accross this feature as at the moment i find vignetting aesthitically very pleasing, it is very useful for focusing the attention to the centre of the image!

Here is an example of an image i have recently created useing the 'post crop vignette' feature:

This is the image without:

And here is the image with the vignette added

I hope you will agree that the darkening of the corners of this image adds a certain something, and if nothing else it does serve to focus the attention.

Here is another example with vignetting added

This would be little more than a photo of a page of the dictionary (well it still isn't) but it is certainly more aesthetically pleaseing due to the vignette!

It is very easy to do this useing software, but there a ways to do it with hardware

The first is to buy either a lens or a camera that is prone to it, there are many out there! It is most commonly asociated with toy or 'lomo' cameras such as the diane or holga but there are many cameras out there that do this! I have recently modifyed a lens from a russian camera known as the industar-69 to work on a more modern digital camera. Details of this modification and sample photos are also on my blog

The other way to create a vignette is to focus your lighting to the centre of the image this can be done fairly easily with various lighting equipment, but can also be done using many accessory flash units by setting the zoom of the flash to a greater focal length than the one you are using
Here is a photo taken at 45mm with the flash zoomed to 85mm

I hope this information has been useful to you.
Please feel free to let me know if you found this interesting or indeed if any of what i have said is nonsence!

Photos with Industar-69 on R-D1

2008-12-04T08:03:00.002-08:00

Getting a Pre-AI Nikkor 2.8 45mm gn Auto to work on a D300/D3

2008-12-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

This is a Nikkor 2.8 45mm GN lens:

This particular one has the Nippon Kogaku branding on it. It was designed to work with Nikon cameras like the 'F' and 'F2'. It has an aperture coupling prong adjacent to 5.6 on the aperture scale - i believe some people call it "bunny ears". Whatever you call it, its that little silver thing sticking out the side of the lens.
Older pre-ai cameras had a little pin that this engaged with, this allowed the meter to give you a read out that differed when changing the aperture without having to actually stop down the lens.

Below you can see my Nikon f2, and if you look closely at the bottom of the head you can see the little pin.

And here you can see that the prong engaged with the pin.

So this is how my 45mm lens works with the cameras of its generation, unfortunately this is not how a d3 works!

Modern lenses and d3s talk to each other with a lot of electronics that I don't fully understand, all I know is that with my camera in aperture priority or manual mode, I twizzle the dial under my forefinger and it changes the aperture that the camera will stop down to when i press the shutter button. Clever stuff! Not quite as satisfying as the older mechanical way of doing it but clever non the less.

This all said, all is not lost in attaching older manual lenses to a d3, as those clever folks at Nikon have, on their higher spec models at least, provided a little lever that ai/ais lenses can engage with. This means that as long as you provide the camera with the aperture of the lens you wish to attach, the camera can meter the exposure at whatever aperture you choose to set the lens too.

Apart from the fact that you don't have to tell the camera the max aperture of the lens, this is the same system that, as far as i know, was used on all ai/ais cameras and as such here is a picture of an ais lens attached to a Nikon FA. You can see the part of the lens that juts out adjacent to f16. This pushes the spring loaded lever on the camera and tells it how to meter depending on what aperture you set the lens to .

Its basically a neater and less clunky version of what came before .
My problem is that my pre-ai lens (obviously) pre dates this system and so I need to modify my lens in some way so that it can push this little lever...

...and this is how i did it

First remove the coupling prongs as they, on a 45mm pancake lens, interfere with with the little lever.

Keep these bits safe as you will be able to reattach them should you wish to use the lens on a camera where they are required.

Now it is nessasary to file a slot in the rim of the lens for it to engage to the lever
By looking at whereabouts the part of the lens that engages with the lever on another 2.8 lens is, I can determine where I need to file. In this case it is adjacent to f11.

Please be aware that this is not the case on all lenses, if you are trying to adapt a 1.2 lens for example, you would need to file a slot between 5.6 and 8 but I would seriously recommend looking at an ai/ais equivalent to find the exact spot.

Here is the slot I filed.

And here it is engaged to the lever on a d300.

When mounting a lens moified in this way you will need to stop the lens down to its minimum aperture to mount the lens on the camera!

I now have a fully functional 45mm mf lens for my d3 and d300.

And here are some (fairly dull) photos I took with it on my d3. I will put some better ones up when I get a chance. You can at least see that it works!

As I said on my modification of the industar 69, I'm no expert at this sort of thing so it is fairly easily done. That said, I take no responsibility if you follow my instructions and balls it up. You do this at your own risk

And for anyone who may quible with my desision to hack apart a nippon kogaku branded lens, its a damn slight cheaper than the 45mm 'p' lens and at least this way I get to appreciate a old bit of glass with the ease of use of putting it on my digital cameras. And if i want to use it on my f or f2 i can still reattach the coupling prong!

Please let me know if any of this info is wrong!

Modify Industar 69 for use on Epson R-D1

2008-11-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

We all like lomo cameras and we all like using film but wouldn't it be good if we could have a lomo digital camera?

I have spent a lot of time trawling the internet for how to adapt a lomo lens for a digital camera,

I have seen holga lenses adapted for digital slrs with success, but the aps-c/dx format of most digital slrs only uses the centre of the holgas 60mm lens which means you are left with a long focal length and no vignetting, the darkening of the corners, that is so indicative of lomo photography. Also, the process of conversion seems to me a little long-winded and difficult just to have to re-add the vignetting as a post process, I can do that with any lens!

I have also seen a very clever adaption of a front door peep hole into a fisheye lens for compact camera. This is something i intend to have a go at one day in the future.

The other adaption I came across on one forum was of a 28mm 2.8 lens from a half frame Russian camera called the chaika ('seagull' in english)

There are a few key factors thats got me interested in this little project;

1: The camera and its lens are Russian made in the "belomo" factory.

2: The lens has a relatively large aperture of 2.8, ie good for low light!

3: The focal length of the lens is 28mm or approximately 44mm on aps-c/dx cameras. 43.3mm is a perfectly normal lens on 35mm cameras so this 44mm focal length seems ideal.

4: Although this lens is desingned for half frame the image circle will be adequate for aps-c/dx

5: The shutter is in the camera, not the lens, making adaption less fuss.
6: Most importantly, this lens has a 39mm threaded mount. This means that it will attach directly to my Epson R-D1.

The problem:

The flange distance is shorter on the chiaka than on the epson. This means it will not focus to infinity and all the distances are all off on the scale. This means to get a sharp photo you need to stop down to at least f8 and focus the lens to infinity. This is by no means ideal.

The solution:

Adapt the lens in some way that allows the elements of the lens to be closer to the sensor to the extent that infinity can be achieved.

And this is how to do it:

Firstly, you will need a small flat-head screw driver, a small flat file and some type of grease to replace what will inevitably be removed during adaption. I got all these things from a toy shop that sells radio control cars that for me is conveniently located above the camera shop I help out in.

I don't know if "diff lube" is the ideal but i guess time will tell.

Remove lens from chaika

Unscrew three grub screws from around the cicumference of the lens .

Unscrew the bit of the lens with the elements in from the part that mounts to the camera.

Turn lens face down .

File where you can see that i have. This is what allows the part with the elements to screw further into the mount and thus closer to the sensor. this part is trial and error: file a bit, screw all the way back in to mount, attach to camera, take a photo of something 50m + away at 2.8 and check it's in focus. When it is, you have filed enough!

Make sure to clean filings off parts of lens before putting it anywhere near your camera!

File off the end of these little screw things. These are what stop you being able to focus less than 0.8m and more than infinity and so are very important but are a bit too long when you have filed enough. It's obvious why when you get there but too difficult to describe. Excuse the shoddy photo my lx3 wasn't loving focusing on that tiny screw

Now clean all filings off parts of lens, re-lube thread, re build the lens making sure to align the infinity mark with the red arrow whilst the part with the elemnts is screwed in to the mount as far as possible without being tight.

Attach to your epson r-d1.

Take some photos.

Done!

I have never done anything like this before and managed this with ease. That said, I do not accept any resposibility for the damage you might do to any of your equipment if you try this!

Thank you to the people in rangefinder forum who helped me with this project. Specifically Christian Fritze (cfritze) who clarified some information for me, enabling me to do this modification without to much hesitation!

Please let me know if i have made any mistakes in my description or if there any technical details i could add to make this description more usefull for those who wish to try this project

oh and by the way if you are going to do this please don't just buy a chaika camera and take the lens off it before using it, they are a great camera in their own right and definately deserve using and not just having the lens taken off and comited to the scrap heap! i have two of them, a 2m and a 3 and as such i can use my non modified lens on either!