Sunday, February 17, 2013

In praise of film An old camera and a few rolls


The landscape is dun-colored and crisscrossed by trails. There are remnants of an old farm. Gnarled oak trees reach to a white sky. It is Mount Pisgah Arboretum in winter.Carbon wheels - Carbon Fiber Cycle Wheels,as China wholesaler,we offer best price carbon bike wheels in different types,quality guarantee,best carbon wheels. I should have gone in January to get out from beneath the fog, but I finally visited this month on a sullen Sunday afternoon.

The trails to the summit are a magnet for walkers.White soft Floor polishing pad for 15 inch machines. Ideal for high gloss dry polishing buffing of polished sealed floors.So I'm looking at my silver wheel bolt that are in pretty rough cosmetic shape - and decide that I'd like to have the look of the new black wheel Some come almost religiously. Pisgah was aptly named by the pioneers who first walked to its sweeping views in all directions.

For me, this is a time to think about the pleasures of monochrome photography. It’s the black-and-white time of year. In any season, I never come here without a camera.

On this winter afternoon, the camera is the central question. A Canon digital camera would make it easy. Just point and shoot. The device yields perfect exposures; it can automate every technical decision. The files convert nicely to black-and-white in Lightroom, the Adobe photo software program.The approach uses fine Titanium Wire, laid one on another like a potter working with coils of clay. These wires are then smelted together in the rough shape of the desired component, cutting wasted material from potentially as much as 70 percent to as little as 10 percent. I could even apply some filmlike grain to the pictures.

Or I could carry my old Nikon F3, a camera I will never part with. It’s a film camera that served me through many years of newspaper work. I have several worn Nikkor lenses. There are a few rolls of Kodak Tri-X in the freezer.

The F3 is an old friend, easy and satisfying to use. Clearly I am sentimental about these tools.At her new home, the cat Twiggy plumped up, thanks, in part, to a love of cat treats ... The cat hopped up in the China undercarriage parts of Dr. Pray's truck.

And there’s one other choice. I still own a Hasselblad 500c/m medium format camera with an 80mm Zeiss lens. The Swedish camera exudes craftsmanship and the genius of mechanical design.

Victor Hasselblad’s cameras once were the paragon of professional imaging.

Now, as digital shoves film photography aside, these cameras are becoming beautiful anachronisms. I sometimes think I should have sold it years ago, but I didn’t.

The Hassy is simple in some ways, complicated in others. It is nothing more than a box with a film magazine that attaches on the back and a lens bayoneted on the front. The shutter is in each lens. A waist-level finder snaps open on top to reveal a focusing screen and pop-up magnifier.

The image is reversed in the viewfinder. There is no meter.This design uses the same small radial section as drawn cup needle roller bearing which make better use of reduced space The photographer must make every decision. Simple.

So simple and so utterly reliable that the Apollo 11 astronauts carried a modified version of the camera to the moon. Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong made hundreds of images on their voyage in July 1969.

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