Cool Photography

[Andy44]

My favorite camera was made in the 1950s and it's the one I use most often, a Minolta Autcord twin-lens reflex. It's Minolta's response to the Rolliflex, and has an improved film feed system and a light-powered selenium meter which gives me accurate readings in daylight with no need for any batteries. I have shot a lot of cool photos with this.

While I am aware of some of the cool stuff you can do with smartphone cameras, I have little interest in digital photography (not while I still have access to a darkroom, anyway), so my smartphone camera is for convenient snapshots pretty much.

 

[Eccentrus]

That last one andy, was that on a kodak tmax? I have recently acquired 2 rolls of its 135 cut, am waiting for a vacation or event to try and burn that roll inside my canonet's q17-3 chamber.

Btw all my smartphone's cam use is left to photographing patient's data from the hospital's central computer because the bureaucrats here are too lazy to repair their printer or to put in proper internet connection :lol:

---------- Post added at 08:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:40 AM ----------

There is definitely a place for DSLRs, but most people don't require that kind of performance.

Indeed, for most applications even the middle tier dslrs are overkill, not to mention that they are cheaply built! Large sensor advanced compacts are generally so well made these days I always recommend them to friends and families who are starting their forray into photography, these will serve them well for a considerable time and more portable in every way imaginable and they will carry it more. Although admittedly toddlers are still fooling the hell out of cdaf cams lol.

For what I use, the classic fuji x100 fulfill my digital photography needs adequately and some. I just need to have the teleconverter for closer portraits and thinner dof and I'll be done. Then plus size of large sensors in this size is that because we all carry tablets and iPads these days, these type of compacts still fit snuggly into the side pouch together.

 

[Andy44]

That last one andy, was that on a kodak tmax? I have recently acquired 2 rolls of its 135 cut, am waiting for a vacation or event to try and burn that roll inside my canonet's q17-3 chamber.

I can't remember which film I shot that with; it's might be Kodak 400TriX or Fujifilm 100 speed film. I'd have to look at the negative in my binder somewhere. I also use some other lesser well-known brands, but I haven't used Tmax yet.

It's printed on Arista EDU glossy paper. Shooting the photo is half the battle; the other half is making a good print.

 

[Ghostrider]

Can't remember if I had already posted this..

Taken with my Samsung NX300 camera.

 

[Andy44]

D-Day, Then and Now:

http://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/2014/apr/image-opacity-slider-master/index.html?ww2-dday

Interesting photos shot from the same locations and angles in 1944 and today.

 

[Kirkon]

A question to all you guys? How can I make the most close photos of the moon surface? How can I make the moon volcano's photo?

 

[Andy44]

A question to all you guys? How can I make the most close photos of the moon surface? How can I make the moon volcano's photo?

Missed this question when you posted it...

For shooting the moon you need a good quality long lens, a very steady tripod, and use either a release cable or your camera's timer, if it has one.

You're also going to have to set your exposure manually. If you use your camera's auto features it will meter for the dark sky and the moon will be a blown out blob of blurry light. I had to do a lot of experimenting to find the right shutter speed. If you're shooting digital, you have the luxury of just shooting, looking at the result, and adjusting on the spot.

 

[Ripley]

I once read, on some well-known photo webages (I don't remember exactly) that the Moon must be shot as if you were on a sunny day, because of its very strong light...

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looney_11_rule"]Looney 11 rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_16_rule"]Sunny 16 rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

What's your equipment?

 

[Andy44]

I found a Holga 3D stereo pinhole camera on sale a few weeks ago, so I've been playing with it lately. It looks just like this:

A few years back I remember we had a thread where we were discussing Orbiter in 3D, and how easy it is to take a stereo pair of screenshots from a paused Orbiter sim run, then put them together in Paint for viewing.

This is essentially the same idea. I've taken the pair of negatives and printed both onto one sheet of photo paper at the same time. To get the 3D effect without any special equipment, you want to bring it up full screen and cross your eyes, right eye, left image, left eye, right image. Focus on an object in the middle to far distance and once your eyes kind of "lock on" to it you can relax a little and look around the photo, as long as you don't move your head too much.

The first three shots are from Rosslyn, VA, across the river from Washington DC. The last two are photos of 30th Street Train Station in Philadelphia. The last photo features the skyscrapers of Philly's Center City in the distance.

 

[Andy44]

Hey, anyone remember this thread?

Lately my photography has taken a turn towards something new for me. I've developed an interest in suburban...blandness? Not sure what to call it. Photographing kind of glum-looking scenes of mild hopelessness. Grey skies and cold, damp weather, love it. I've always shot and printed black and white, which I think lends itself to this sort of thing. Gotta love that silver grain.

With a photo like this, where the subject is not what most people would find interesting to look at in real life, the trick is to compose it well and print it well, so it draws the viewer in. Of all the ones I've been shooting, this one is one of my favorites. The detail in the grass and on the telephone pole, the composition with the power lines and sidewalk and distant buildings, and the contrast and grain are interesting to me. Click on it for full size.

 

[MikeB]

I've never seen this thread before - very interesting.

The photo below is not mine, but was made in 1931. The original print is in my possession and is about 34 inches wide (over 87 cm). I scanned it at 300 pixels/inch, but downscaled it by 10x to keep it a manageable size for this post. The print shows amazing detail when magnified. They knew how to do photography in those days. The second image is a full-scale detail from the center, and shows my great-grandfather. He organized the gathering, and was a silent-film cameraman between about 1912 and 1928. He knew something about photography, too.

The gathering is all men who were cowboys in the 19th century. Contact me if you want to know more about the backstory.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzvn8dvc9jo5oiv/CWT_Members_1931_10percent.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3x5y659w6b7wfgx/Gant_1931.png?dl=0

 

[Andy44]

I've never seen this thread before - very interesting.

The photo below is not mine, but was made in 1931. The original print is in my possession and is about 34 inches wide (over 87 cm). I scanned it at 300 pixels/inch, but downscaled it by 10x to keep it a manageable size for this post. The print shows amazing detail when magnified. They knew how to do photography in those days. The second image is a full-scale detail from the center, and shows my great-grandfather. He organized the gathering, and was a silent-film cameraman between about 1912 and 1928. He knew something about photography, too.

The gathering is all men who were cowboys in the 19th century. Contact me if you want to know more about the backstory.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzvn8dvc9jo5oiv/CWT_Members_1931_10percent.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3x5y659w6b7wfgx/Gant_1931.png?dl=0

That looks like it was shot on a panoramic camera, very cool.

The guy who taught me how to print has a collection of old cameras including a panoramic one. It works by having a moving slit scan across the scene while the film is pulled through as the camera body is rotated. Hard to describe, but very clever mechanical device.

 

[Artlav]

Lately i've been interested in making space selfies - take a weather satellite, look at it and receive the picture it transmits.

Usually it's something boring, like a 1km/pixel view of the coast of Brazil and clouds over it (i'm under the cloud stuff on the coast in the middle. Yes, it was raining. Yes, it was fun).

Or, an even more boring view of the eastern Europe.
That's what a raw image looks like, with all the signal reception issues (noise, buildings in the way, etc). The channels are 0.5-0.7, 0.7-1.1 and 10.5-11.5 um.
I'm roughly in the middle. From that altitude discerning cities is kinda hard, they look like slight discolorations in the terrain.

But occasionally you get something interesting.
It seems that the game of "spot shapes in the clouds" can be played from space as well (10.5um, just north of Norway, i'm not in the frame).

And in the evening you can see something that is rarely posted in the official sources with earth imaging pictures - night and a sliver of evening as the satellite passes over the arctic.
It's another near-horizon pass, so i'm probably not in frame.

 

[Orville]

I built a simple antenna and downloaded some software to capture and process signals from US (NOAA) and Russian (METEOR) weather satellites passing overhead. A couple of samples of what I captured are shown below.

The METEOR satellite provides about 1 km/pixel resolution. The older NOAA satellite provides around 4 km/pixel resolution I think.

Yes, I live in South Korea.