Yearly Archives: 2012

SX-70

Cameras

The invention of an American genius.

This wonderful advertisement for Edwin Land’s Polaroid SX-70 instant camera is thrilling to watch.

Click to play. Refresh browser if not visible.

Almost eleven minutes long, and reveling for a considerable part in the fabulous technology of the machine, there is no better way, other than using one, of appreciating what Dr. Land had accomplished with his magic machine. The sheer simplicity of the SX-70’s user interface would not be rivaled until the iPad came along forty years later, and having used both, I can assure you only one is magic, and it’s not the product designed in Cupertino.

The film was made by Charles and Ray Eames, whose other accomplishments include architectural and furniture design. Talent is seldom evenly distributed.

Film for the SX-70:

A bunch of criminally insane people in Holland got together, bought out the old Polaroid film making hardware and got down to making film for the SX-70, and you can still buy it here. Bless them!

Hubble

Paintings, Photographs

Beautiful images.

Needless to say, once America comes up with an invention of genius, the small minds pervading the corridors of Congress see to it that the modest cost – and hang the benefits – becomes a political football and the project is mothballed.

I’m talking about the Hubble space telescope of course, perhaps the costliest camera ever made. Look at this image of the red spot(s) on Jupiter:

Jupiter from Hubble. Early 21st Century.

Vincent Van Gogh would be proud.

Van Gogh. Starry Night. June 1889.

The Hubble book is from National Geographic and you can buy it from Amazon by clicking the picture below. I get no click-through dollars if you do that; it will be a cold day in hell before I resort to that disingenuous and pathetic ‘business’ model.

Click the picture to go to Amazon US.

I bought the paper copy as no one at National Geographic has yet realized that interactive iPad books are what the consumer wants. Al Gore’s outstanding Our Choice is the standard here.

A quick Facebook rant:

Sadly, PushPop Press, the maker of the app for Gore’s book, has been acquired by Facebook, sponsor of the largest crime against privacy and the individual in the history of the world. In totalitarian Russia the KGB at least had to search you out. With Facebook, the innocent masses volunteer their most private information at no cost, no threats, no torture, no truth serum, whereupon it is resold, without their knowledge, to law enforcement, prospective and current employers and any advertiser with a check book. Careers are ruined by a single, childhood indiscretion, in a medium that can never be erased, but can most certainly be subpoenaed.

Meanwhile Facebook pays ever-increasing amounts for inventions which threaten its very existence – like the $1 billion just paid for the nonsensical Instagram – in an attempt to maintain its hegemony. A business doomed to fail as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, with minimal barriers to entry and subject to the whims and wants of a fickle, youthful consumer. Too bad PushPop Press will likely go down with it. Why Apple did not acquire this business beats me – the book publishing app, like the Hubble, has been mothballed.

Fotopedia

iPad, Photographs

How a picture book should be done.

Our son was doing a homework project on the Spanish Missions in California and the one assigned, which he had to profile, was Mission San Gabriel. In contrast to the others whose roofs rest on adobe walls, San Gabriel has the roof resting within the walls, the latter reinforced by over a dozen vertical buttresses – large stone columns to bear the side load of the roof on the walls. It was an interesting project and we both learned a lot doing it, but at the conclusion I had to put the boy to right.

“Winston, old man”, said I, taking the lad aside, “when it comes to roof supports, there are buttresses and there is Notre Dame.”

And this is the picture I showed him.

Notre Dame, ÃŽle de France, Paris. Flying buttresses.

Seldom has there been a more perfect marriage of form and function than in these flying buttresses, light and airy, as befits the City of Light. Gazing at this of course made me long for Paris, and there is no better way of seeing that gorgeous city through photographs than by downloading the free Fotopedia – Paris app to your iPad. The app is custom designed for the iPad, and will not run on laptops, desktops or Zunes.

The design is a masterpiece, as you might expect from the former chief technology officer of applications at Apple, Jean-Marie Hullot. There’s an interesting piece on the man in the NY Times Blog. The app is not about hotels, or sightseeing or boat trips or restaurants. It’s about showing the most beautiful city in the world on the best display device in existence. I have run it on both the iPad1 and iPad3 and it works well on both.

The photo below is from Fotopedia – Paris by Magnum photographer Jacques Bravo and is of the roofs of Rue Mouffetard in Montparnasse, a particularly pleasant reminiscence for me as it was a snap of that very street which saw me first published in Leica Fotografie in 1974. On an iPad, touch the picture for the Fotopedia app. On a laptop or desktop, you can save by clicking on the picture and then syncing your iPad using iTunes.

Touch the picture on your iPad to download Fotopedia – Paris.

There are several other Fotopedias, but after this one, who cares? Oh yes, there’s one about the US National Parks for all those who believe landscapes start and end in Yosemite. Good for the Saint Ansel set, I suppose. And there’s one on North Korea (what?) for manic depressives. But Paris is the one to get for this street snapper.

Nikon Magnifying Eyepiece

Nikon bodies

I can see!

The Nikon Magnifying Eyepiece, DK-17M, is one of those “Why didn’t I think of this before?” accessories for the D700 and similar bodies.

DK-17M top, and stock eyepiece, bottom.

The stock viewfinder magnification of the D700 is 0.72x, identical to the fabulous range/viewfinder in the Leica M2 which I used for many years. That’s OK, and a whole lot better than the ‘tunnel vision’ you tend to get with APS-C mirror reflex DSLRs (MFT EVFs are far superior in this regard) but it could be better. With lenses up to 90mm and f/2 or smaller the Leica is far easier to focus manually than the D700, thanks to the finest rangefinder focusing device conceived by man.

The DK-17M is a 1.2x magnifier, so the 0.72x stock magnification rises to 0.86x with this eyepiece fitted, which is close to the 0.91x Leica users enjoy with the Leica M3 body, one I used for over three decades. And that one, predating the M2 by some 5 years (1954), was even better than the one in the M2 (1959). It seems the intervening half century has seen little improvement in manual focusing aids.

Some user comments at B&H and Amazon state that the corners of the finder view are vignetted and that the data display at the base is obscured when the DK-17M is installed. I wear vision glasses (I have astigmatism and modest near sightedness) yet suffer neither problem. While not cheap at $38, there’s no way I’m removing this from my D700. It’s well made, uses glass not plastic, and the only thing you have to remember is that the eyepiece shutter must be closed for removal/installation. As you can see the DK-17M protrudes a little further from the body than the stock eyepiece, but that has no negative effect in practice. I have no need for a rubber eyecup as those interfere with viewfinding for spectacle wearers in my experience.

Like magnifiers exists for APS-C bodies, though I believe the model number is different. The DK-17M fits the D1, D2, D3 and D700 DSLRs and the F3HP, F4, F5 and F6 film bodies according to B&H. I am not sure but would be prepared to bet it fits the D4, D800 and D800E also.

To put the difference in perspective, the hardest to focus MF lens I own is the 500/8N Ai-S Nikkor Reflex. With the DK-17M fitted I can nail focus 7 times out of ten when focusing by eye then looking to the focus confirmation LED as a cross check. Without the DK-17M my success rate is at best 3 out of 10 with final focus dependent on the LED.

One alternative is to have an aftermarket focusing screen fitted but that does not pass the smell test for me. First, why would Nikon fit anything substandard to their best bodies, with years of experience in optical design? Second, many of the aftermarket screens use a split image center focusing device. The effective base length (a measure of sensitivity) of these, compared to the finders in rangefinder Leicas, is pathetic and falls as the aperture falls. Further, the split image prisms (or microprisms in variants) tend to black out at smaller apertures and will not work with a 500mm Reflex lens with its modest f/8 fixed aperture. Finally, aftermarket screens cost over $100, typically, for an uncertain outcome, plus cost of installation. DIY is for the brave only.

The DK-17M works, being in equal parts a focus and compositional aid. Even with AF lenses where no focus assistance is required, the enhanced view is a revelation. This accessory is highly recommended as long as you have no finder vignetting issues. The view through the eyepiece reminds me of nothing so much as my Leicaflex SL, which also happened to have the best microprism ever devised. But that’s another story.

T. Brannan Street, SF yesterday. D700, 50mm f/2 Nikkor-H, DK-17 eyepiece. Click the picture.

The beautiful color rendering of this 40+ year old MF Nikon optic has to be seen to be believed. And you would have to try really hard to spend more than $50 on one, plus $30 for a CPU.

And, yes, look hard and that’s my ghostly reflection in the door ….

Me and T.