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Minox B

Cameras

For the spy in you.


Minox B and 36 exposure film cassette.

Having made 150,941 of its various predecessors, with production starting in Riga, Latvia in 1936, Minox had refined their spy camera to the extent that a dual range, coupled selenium meter was included in the ‘B’ model, first made in 1956. Production totaled a startling 384,328 through 1972, suggesting there were either more Russkie spies than even the CIA counted, or that there were some 300,000 plus twits who thought they could get decent sized prints from the 8 x 11 mm negative the camera produced. They couldn’t.

That’s not to denigrate the ingenuity of the design which includes neutral density and green filters, shutter speeds from 1/2 second to 1/1000, B and T, and focusing to a scant 8″ using the included lanyard as a distance scale. Film cassettes held up to 50 exposures and the very decent viewfinder has a suspended, illuminated frame. The lens has a fixed f/3.5 aperture and with a focal length of 15mm the depth of field is large.

The Minox was part of a complete camera system which included a binocular attachment for the super spook, a projector, an enlarger, a tripod holder and tripod, and a flash attachment for AG1 peanut flash bulbs for midnight spookery.


Minox B with flashbulb attachment. The reflector retracts.

This is the latest addition to the Home Theater photographic hardware display and dates from 1962. Believe it or not, it has a properly functioning exposure meter, activated with the button at right. By the time the B was made production had moved to Wetzlar in Germany and the camera is quite beautifully made, just like the Leica M3 next door. But now that everyone on earth has a spy camera – it’s called a cell phone – the Minox is no more than a charming period piece on display with a variety of other classics, and it is most assuredly a classic piece. However, if you need huge prints, stick with that iPhone.


Michael Caine has at it in The Ipcress File, 1965.

Train movies

Movies

A wonderful genre.

As a kid I well remember taking the Flying Scotsman from London to Dundee to both visit my sister, then a student at St. Andrew’s, and to pick up her gift of a Scottish Terrier. This was in 1960 and the trip inculcated in me a love of all things Scottish – terriers not the least of them – and of steam trains. Yes, you arrived grimy and smelly (my opening the window in a tunnel did not help matters) but the journey was truly greater than the arrival. The Scotsman was finally retired from long distance service in 1963 after a long and distinguished life.


The Flying Scotsman. Power, majesty and beauty.

So it’s little wonder that my burgeoning movie collection contains no less than 29 films where the train is mostly the star:


Train movies.

There are probably more, which I may have missed, but this is a decent start. The other day my son and I watched the latest ‘Mission Impossible” offering, part VII, and on our 123″ screen with a killer sound system it was a thrilling experience. Forget plot and dialog, the stunts and special effects were the best we have seen, with the last 40 minutes or so showcasing a thrilling train disaster.

Yet …. all the technology apart, this is far from the best train movie made as none compares with Buster Keaton’s ‘The General’ made in …. 1926. You not only disregard the script – there is none in this silent movie which makes it better than the asinine one in MI Part VII – it’s not widescreen this and seven channel that, but the strength of the story line, the timing of Keaton’s acting and the sheer hilarity of some of the set pieces beats anything made since.


Buster Keaton sacrifies a perfectly good real train.

So encomiums to Mr. Cruise for his death defying stunts but if you want to see the real thing, go no further than The General.

Saul Leiter revisited

Book reviews

Now famous.

While I was an early aficionado of Saul Leiter’s (1923-2013) work – see Early Color – he has since become renowned and there are now several books of his work in print.

Christmas saw one of those join the library and it’s named The Unseen Saul Leiter. As ‘Early Color’ is now high priced ‘unobtainium’ this is as good an introduction to Leiter’s work as there is, at a modest price.


Click the image for Amazon US.

Leiter’s vision is as fresh today as when he made these images and the book is highly recommended.

Framing really big prints – an update

Technique

New supply sources.

I last addressed this topic in 2006 and the only things changed since then include the usual bankruptcies and disappearances of vendors.

With a new batch of mounted prints ready for framing (you can read about dry mounting here), courtesy of the fine Epson ET-8550 printer, it was time to procure mats, mounting boards, frames and glass, and some research disclosed two vendors with good quality and affordable products:

  • Mat Board Center. Ten 18″ x 24″black mats cut for 13″ x 19″ prints, along with 1/8″ thick mounting boards and glassine sleeves ran me $126.20. This vendor has frequent special offers and I got free shipping, so check before you order. The mats are perfectly sized, the boards were 1/16″ too wide for my frames of choice, easily remedied after a few minutes with a sharp Stanley knife. Avoid their Plexiglass frames – Plexiglass is awful, a dust magnet and scratches as soon as you clean it.
  • Four 18″ x 24″ wooden frames with glass (yes, not the awful plexiglass alternative) with a backboard came from The Display Guys at Amazon at just $104.99 for four. Packaging could not be better and the frames and glass arrived in perfect condition. All you need add is some wire and hooks or use the attached saw tooth hangers.

That figures to a total of $38.87 per mounted and framed print compared with $75 back in 2006 ($145 in today’s money!) with no need to clean the glass and no need for a framing points driver as the backboard supplied has latches. Given that the frame and glass are encased in Saran Wrap, the best way to unpack this is to slit the clear wrap from the back, inside the frame. That will give you free access to insert the mat and mounted print with the front glass still protected by clear wrap. Insert your picture hanging wire, hang the mounted and framed print and remove the wrap as a last step. You never risk touching/fingerprinting the glass.

Because the foam mounting board I use is 1/8″ thick, the swivel locks for the backboard cannot engage, so you may still have to invest in a framing points driver to retain the backboard with this combination. It’s a modest one-off cost which will repay over many years.

I attach the mat to the mounting board with a couple of strips of 3M double sided mounting tape. Alignment can be critical and you do not want white borders showing in the event that the mat shifts relative to the print during the process of inserting the ‘sandwich’ in the frame.


Frames unpacked and ready for insertion of mounted prints.

So price inflation is not all you would expect and I have found the above supplies to be indistinguishable in quality from the ones used 17 years ago, and I did not even have to assemble and glue the frames.

A note on the Seal/Bienfang (now D&K) 160M mounting press I use: these retail for $2200 new, which is a ridiculous sum for so simple a piece of hardware. They are regularly available on eBay for $500. Don’t waste money on a new one. Repair parts remain easily available. Replacement thermostats are here. Other than that there’s not much to go wrong here.

Epson ET-8550 – monochrome printing

Epson ET8550, Printing

Not at all bad.

For an index of all articles about the Epson ET8550 printer, click here.

Keith Cooper of Northlight Images has an excellent video about monochrome print making on the Epson ET-8550 here. He knows better than to obfuscate with fancy words but his opening dissertation on the issue with many dye ink jet printers reflecting color casts under artificial lighting is important. That behavior is known as ‘metamerism’, and you really do not want it. Suffice it to say that using HP Premium Gloss paper there is no evidence of metamerism and Cooper reports that all is also well with Epson Premium Luster paper.

What is intriguing about the design of the Epson ET-8550 is that it uses no fewer than three monochrome inks:


Pigment Black, Photo Black Dye and Photo Grey Dye Epson ET-8550 inks

Because the ET-8550 doubles as an office printer, printing on regular paper, it includes pigment ink for that purpose. Pigment ink, like wall paint, dries on the surface and is not absorbed into the substrate, whereas dye ink must be absorbed and the paper chosen in photographic applications must be capable of absorbing ink. Not all photo papers will do that.

Whereas you might think that that no pigment ink would be used in making monochrome photo prints in the ET-8550 Cooper avers this is not the case and it appears that Epson is using some clever combination of the PB Photo Black Dye ink and the BK black pigment ink in printing monochrome images. Do we care? Well, the only thing that matters is the result, so to test things I made two 13″ x 19″ monochrome prints:


Nikon D3x, 35mm f/1.4 Sigma, color original converted to B&W in Lightroom


Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, TriX, scanned in a Canon 4000 film scanner, monochrome original.

In both cases I used the Freestyle custom profile described here. Both prints are drop dead gorgeous – no color cast, no metamerism, just pure monochrome tones.

So it appears that the ET-8550 does a fine job of monochrome printing, but take heed of Cooper’s warning that papers differ, so experiment, and use the right color profile. Epson Premium Luster appears to be a safe bet, based on his experiments, or HP Premium Gloss, based on mine. The Epson printing utility Cooper refers to in the video linked above is not to be found in the US and I much prefer using Lightroom as it simplifies work flow – one tool for all prints. I suggest you adopt a similar philosophy.

Paper jams:

Confirming that with photo printers “It’s always something”, I find that if more than 5 sheets of paper are loaded into the rear paper feeder, the printer will jam. This is for relatively thick paper. The HP Premium Gloss I use weighs in at 280 g/sq. m. So keep it to 5 sheets or less, or be prepared to try and decipher Epson’s arcane un-jamming instructions, invoking garage language and generally wasting time in the process.