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So I’ve recently started teaching myself photography and I’m using a 35mm film camera (pentax k1000), and i’m looking into a negative scanner. I currently don’t have the resources available to do my own printing, and i’d like to get these pics digitized. What are some negative scanners I should look into?
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Jul 15, 2018 02:40
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Head Bee Guy posted:So I’ve recently started teaching myself photography and I’m using a 35mm film camera (pentax k1000), and i’m looking into a negative scanner. I currently don’t have the resources available to do my own printing, and i’d like to get these pics digitized. What are some negative scanners I should look into? I've heard good things about the Plustek 8100 but I haven't personally used it yet. I'd also like to know though, for when I inevitably start developing my own film.
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Jul 15, 2018 04:39
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If you want to do it on the cheap(ish), a flatbed scanner with a toplight will do you well enough. The quality won't be great with 35mm film, but it will be fine for web publishing and if you ever decide to shoot medium format. You won't want to print huge versions of those 35mm scans though. I use an Epson Perfection V600, the V550 is fine too and both will handle 35mm and medium format negatives. Expect to drop $200 or so new and maybe half that for a used one. The V800 is beaucoup bucks but will handle large format negatives as well as providing a significant increase in quality. If you have a digital camera, a macro lens, a backlight and don't mind MacGuyvering together a rig to hold the various elements in place, you can also scan with your camera. The advantages are that you can get a RAW of your negative instead of a TIFF and have a lot more control over the image. You need a daylight balanced diffused light source and something to hold the film parallel with your camera's sensor plane while keeping the camera steady at critical focus, which if you are reasonably handy is a problem that can be solved with good tripod plus a quick trip to your home improvement store of choice.
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Jul 15, 2018 06:13
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Anyone got any recommendations for a light tent for occasional product shots? I sell a few things on ebay and want a simple solution. Think of packaged food in 12" big packets of shiny plastic Plastic ones like this seem to have a poo poo reputation for build quality:  A much more expensive (£25) one looks like it will give better quality at the expense of being a pain the arse to collapse https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Hot-40CM-Photo-Studio-Photography-Kit-Portable-LED-Light-Room-Box-Cube-Tent/113001011372  How about the shiny plastic product wrapping (think a bag of M&Ms) - would the simply diffused little LEDs work well for this?
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Jul 16, 2018 14:04
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The amazon cheapie I got seems good for the weekend warrior. It's the "fold and twist to stow" type design and is pretty quick to get out and put away. https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Shooting-Diffusion-Backdrops-Photography/dp/B00GKGGICC It's a little bigger than I would have preferred but I guess that's better than being too small. Only complaint I have is the curtains are quite cheap and have a lot of creases. It was suggested I expose long enough to obliterate the lines but I'd still prefer to have it smooth from the start.
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Jul 16, 2018 14:22
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xzzy posted:The amazon cheapie I got seems good for the weekend warrior. It's the "fold and twist to stow" type design and is pretty quick to get out and put away. Thanks. What are you doing for lighting? I don't have any external light sources, so one of the appeals of these kits was that they included little LEDS
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Jul 16, 2018 15:21
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I got some cheap aluminum shop lamps with clamps on them from Home Depot along with some 100W equivalent led bulbs. I can't say this is a good solution for photography, it required a lot of fussing, but the only thing that that matches my stupidity is my stubbornness. The 100W's are borderline too much but 60's felt too dim.
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Jul 16, 2018 17:10
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spog posted:Thanks. I had a folding setup at one time for photographing Warhams. I got from eBay for about $25 and it came with two lamps and a bunch of different backdrops, It all folded down into a flat square about 40cm on a side. My feeling was that it was fine for very small items (anything smaller than, say a hardback book) and, because you are going to be using a tripod on a static scene, you can use as slow a shutter speed as you need to to compensate for the relatively meagre output of the continuous lighting. The lamps in mine were 150W bulbs that got the lamp holders super hot. I was reasonably sure that they would catch fire if you used them for longer than about 30 minutes at a time.
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Jul 16, 2018 17:32
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spog posted:Thanks. The included LED will probably be just a bulb and a cord. If you want something dim-able and more easily diffused look into the small cheap LED panels. They are usually powered by Sony Camcorder batteries but you can buy a couple of them cheaply. Yongnuo makes a very good bare bones option http://a.co/iDhNU1N, I had two of the older versions of this and they were plenty bright for tabletop work and light portrait work. EDIT: I had YN300 lights which are apparently the same thing but brighter since this has a built in diffuser. My version also didn't have selectable color temp. 8th-snype fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jul 16, 2018 |
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Jul 16, 2018 20:21
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At the risk of sounding ungrateful (which I am not) - that's getting more expensive than I am willing to spend. Simply because the aim is to stick stuff on ebay and look better than the competition, rather than being brochure-quality, so I don't want to throw good money at it. I;m hovering around the idea of a just a white backdrop and LEDs behind some baking paper, all held in place with rubber bands and sticky tape - but if there's something cheap and cheerful, I will save the time,
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Jul 16, 2018 21:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G142gEFLzDY
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Jul 16, 2018 23:06
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This is the thing that I used. The components are exactly the same, you can find many different offers for identical systems at slightly variable price points.
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Jul 17, 2018 05:17
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Possibly a crazy question, but has anyone ever tried putting a Minolta SRT 202 film door on the back of an SRT 102? Do they have the same measurements? Would be nice to have a memo holder on the back of my 102.
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Jul 19, 2018 19:22
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Memo holders are all garbage; your memo is going to fall out of it. Just write on a piece of tape or use your phone.
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Jul 21, 2018 23:58
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Eh fair. Just figured it might be fun to Frankenstein a camera together.
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Jul 22, 2018 01:01
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I’ll just stick to making abominations with my camera.
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Jul 22, 2018 01:10
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As far as I know, all the backs for the SRT series are interchangeable. Wouldn't hurt to try.
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Jul 22, 2018 01:59
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President Beep posted:I’ll just stick to making abominations with my camera. 
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Jul 22, 2018 04:03
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If you ever find yourself in a surplus store and you see random lenses, buy some and make your own lens out of pvc tubes. Results are lovely but it is fun to read up on lens design and play with the details. Get a lot more appreciation for what goes into them.
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Jul 22, 2018 10:30
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Ooh, that’s a fun idea. I’ve got some crappy, old Focal MC 135mm I could try that with.
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Jul 22, 2018 11:44
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What do you all know about optics and lens construction? When looking at lens element diagrams, I think I can identify basic lens types and kinda-sorta know why certain arrangements have certain effects... High-magnification long lenses, symmetrical wide-angles, retrofocus wide angles, basic normal lens designs like tessar and double-gauss, etc. But I recently picked up a Pentax 6x7 with a 90mm lens that's kind of weird; the rear element is appreciably larger than the front. 90mm in that format has the horizontal angle of view that a 48mm lens would have on FF digital. It also had a wider maximum aperture than most 6x7 lenses (2.8), so it's basically a fast normal lens that's very slightly wider than usual. Seems like a pretty basic lens type. Anyone have an idea why Pentax designers would decide to go with a larger rear element for a lens of this focal length? The only other lens with this characteristic that I've come across is the 35mm on the Olympus XA, and I've read that it was designed as such so that it could sit closer to the film plane than a regular 'symmetrical' 35mm lens to accommodate it on the tiny XA. But the P67 has a huge mirror box and the 90 sits well away from the film plane.
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Jul 24, 2018 04:13
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I don't know much useful or any specifics but my understanding is the main purpose of the rear element is to properly scale and focus the image to fill the film/sensor. So if the front element is real small, maybe they needed a large rear element to fix things up.
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Jul 24, 2018 09:25
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I've been trying to find a good softbox setup for a while and you really do kinda have to build your own for any type of quality. Not being able to control the light is a huge issue for me. Definitely get your own lamps.
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Jul 24, 2018 19:24
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I think I may be in the market for a new laptop soon, wanted to get recommendations. I've been using an early 2011 MBP (13") since... mid-2011. I seldom use it now as I've purchased a desktop PC with more horsepower which I use for pretty much everything at home, and now have a work laptop for work instead of having to provide my own. The MBP recently had some kind of issue with recognising the HD (I can probably fix it), but I think it's well past time I replaced it as it's relatively heavy and underpowered for what I want it for, plus lacks a Retina display. It'll be used for processing photos, browsing the internet, and writing while on the road. I actually haven't had much time/money for travelling lately, but will be in New Zealand for 2 weeks in October and have a bunch of weekend road trips locally on the horizon. I'm pretty over Apple as a hardware company, no chance I'd want anything from their current lineup. Size/weight is pretty important as I have a pretty crap back, though OTOH most of my travelling nowadays takes the form of a roadtrip, so maybe this isn't as huge a deal as I think. Definitely don't want anything larger than 13". Have thought about a Surface Pro 4 (have had the Surface series on my radar for a while), but since my workflow has shifted to LR rather than PS I'm not sure the pen input is as important to me as it once was. I'm not wild about the single USB port - recently ordered a small USB midi controller to see how that fits into my workflow, so I'd need to use a hub while travelling if I wanted to connect an external SSD. Are there any other laptops to look at for the travel photographer? Budget is probably around AU$1500 or so but I can probably stretch it a bit if there's a compelling option.
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Jul 24, 2018 21:55
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I bought an i7+16gb yoga a couple years ago thinking an ssd and a bunch of ram would be nice for on the road Lightroom and I completely hate it. It runs dog slow because the integrated video chip is garbage and can barely render the 4K it displays at. My current vacation I left it behind. I import the raw files onto my phone (there's more than one way to do this, my current solution is a ravpower filehub plus), do basic edits in LR mobile, push to a cloud album, and share the link with my wife so she can spam her friends. I'll almost certainly be re-editing them when I get home because I find it hard to properly pixel peep on a phone, but this workflow is very compact and way faster than the laptop. I have this new scheme I think I want to try where I get an airplay receiver and plug it into hotel room televisions and edit photos on that by mirroring my phone. Might hate it but it sounds like a fun nerd project.
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Jul 24, 2018 22:31
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I really like LR mobile for making quick edits too. I also like getting poo poo off of my CF card and up into the cloud ASAP because I’m always worried about some freak hardware failure.
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Jul 25, 2018 01:48
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I got a midrange Dell XPS 13 9370 earlier this year for maybe slightly more than your budget and I love it. It's enough to work on 4x5 scans in Photoshop. USB-C only suits me but may not suit you.
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Jul 25, 2018 06:42
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I guess this is already old news but Nikon announced a full-frame mirrorless body. Apparently it will use a new mount that will need an adaptor to fit F mount lenses. It makes sense, there's no way to make a mirrorless camera with an F mount unless you are happy to trade away all of the benefits of the mirrorless format, but it'll be interesting to see 1: if Canon follow suit and 2: how much of a dent it makes in the legacy Nikon shooter market.
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Jul 25, 2018 07:49
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Helen Highwater posted:there's no way to make a mirrorless camera with an F mount unless you are happy to trade away all of the benefits of the mirrorless format, That is quite the statement. Mirrorless offers EVF, silent shutter and EYE AF to name a few advantages over DSLRs. In fact, weight/size is not really one of the mirrorless benefits at all. A canon DSLR with a 24-70 is the same length as a Sony A-series camera with their 24-70 for example, and roughly the same weight. If you look at the Canon lens with an FE mount adapter on it looks virtually identical to the native Sony lens. It almost looks like Sony just took Canons design, slapped the adapter on and merged the 2 products and rebranded the lens as Sony. The first area where we see some massive weight savings in the Sony world is with their newly announced 400 F2.8 which is a whopping 3 pounds lighter than its CaNikon counterparts.
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Jul 25, 2018 10:27
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The F Mount is such a mess of variants plus with it having a small diameter, a new shorter flange distance mount is a no brainier. In an interview with dpreview, a Sigma engineer confirmed that short flange only benefits size reductions at 35mm and less (ie when the flange distance is a significant fraction of focal length). So going mirrorless only let's you lose a bit of body weight plus lens weight on wire angles.
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Jul 25, 2018 12:32
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Ineptitude posted:In fact, weight/size is not really one of the mirrorless benefits at all. A canon DSLR with a 24-70 is the same length as a Sony A-series camera with their 24-70 for example, and roughly the same weight. If you look at the Canon lens with an FE mount adapter on it looks virtually identical to the native Sony lens. It almost looks like Sony just took Canons design, slapped the adapter on and merged the 2 products and rebranded the lens as Sony. This is not the case with that lens, the rear element of the 24-70 GM is right by the end of the lens mount. There's no air gap in it. The advantage of a short registration distance is that it gives you the option of making "small n light" or going all out for image quality. With some options you can't get away from the fact that it'll need a lot of glass (like a 16-35 f/2.8) but even in the sense of a large lens like the new 400 f/2.8 they managed to cut size and weight of it significantly compared to the DSLR options. GM lenses are supposed to be IQ uber alles, they sacrifice size and weight for IQ. There's plenty of smaller and lighter options. It does enable some lenses that you can't do on an SLR, like the 12-24 f/4 which is a tiny, tiny lens in comparison to a DSLR 12-24 f/4.
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Jul 25, 2018 13:27
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xzzy posted:I bought an i7+16gb yoga a couple years ago thinking an ssd and a bunch of ram would be nice for on the road Lightroom and I completely hate it. It runs dog slow because the integrated video chip is garbage and can barely render the 4K it displays at. President Beep posted:I really like LR mobile for making quick edits too. I also like getting poo poo off of my CF card and up into the cloud ASAP because I’m always worried about some freak hardware failure. That is a good point about graphics - I am actually now eyeing getting a lightly used Surface Book (the first gen) with the dedicated GPU. Heavier than many of the other 13" ultrabooks (still lighter than my MBP) but I think the form factor would work well for me. Phone/tablet and cloud-based stuff are definitely out - internet's far from assured when I'm on the road, and at least the last time I looked into them, they didn't look like they suited my workflow well at all. Physical keyboard of some kind is also a must. MrBlandAverage posted:I got a midrange Dell XPS 13 9370 earlier this year for maybe slightly more than your budget and I love it. It's enough to work on 4x5 scans in Photoshop. USB-C only suits me but may not suit you. This looks good but yeah, a bit beyond my price range.
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Jul 29, 2018 08:45
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Anyone got opinions on a good table tripod? On my recent trip my travel tripod got pretty annoying.. a full size tripod is nice when you have a car and lots of room to toss, but stowing them for plane or mass transit was a hassle. I'm leaning towards the gorillapod 5k, it reviews pretty well and the bendy legs may have worked really well for the spots I was shooting.. there was always a pole or a rock or a barrier to wrap it around. But there are other options out there that seem interesting, such as the novoflex basicball or one of the zillions of tiny traditional design tripods. Lose the bendy legs but maybe a more traditional design is better? 
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Aug 9, 2018 03:55
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If you’re literally looking for a table tripod I can recommend (to the exclusion of literally everything else) the Feisol table tripod. Unlike all other mini tripods it’s not a plasticky gimmick, it’s actually a miniature version of a regular rock-solid tripod. You‘ll need to buy a small ball head for it though. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Aug 9, 2018 |
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Aug 9, 2018 07:45
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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When I went to Europe I bought a Gorillapod Focus (looks like the predecessor of the 5K maybe?) and it worked really well. Used it for a few night long exposures and to wrap around poles and whatnot for taking a bunch of images and removing tourists. The camera I brought was pretty light, too, though: 6D and a 17-35 2.8-4 and 50 1.8.
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Aug 9, 2018 14:53
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One of the legs broke on my gorillapod within a week or so of getting it, hadn’t put anything heavy on it or misused at all. Emailed the company and they were very good about sending me a replacement for it. So that was something.
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Aug 9, 2018 15:06
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I have the Gorillapod focus too and it's been awesome the few times I've needed it
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Aug 9, 2018 15:10
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I hope (and assume) that Gorillapod has improved things since I had one. I bought mine in 2010, a "SLR-Zoom" that was one step down from their largest and most expensive model at the time. It held my Pentax K-10D and any lens I had at the time (i.e. prior to my purchase of my 500mm f/4.5, which is obviously too big for anything like that).  Gorillapod on fence by Martin Brummell, on FlickrBut! It failed after about a year. Several of the joints on the legs froze up and became exceptionally stiff. Others went the other way and became hopelessly floppy. The quick-release plate was disappointing, too, it's impossible to tighten the nut enough to prevent twisting of the plate against the camera body from even fairly modest handling, like if I try to move the camera on the ballhead without loosening the ballhead friction pin enough.
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Aug 9, 2018 15:46
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Yeah, I got one of the early revisions of the gorillapod many years ago. It was hard to get the camera level because it didn't have an actual tripod head, it was just more of their flexy links with a proprietary mounting plate on it. I was still generally pleased with it but quickly outgrew it because of its weight limit and the stupid head that forced me to switch plates on the bottom of my camera. I figure with a proper ball head and arca-swiss plates it should be way better, but I didn't want to rush off and buy one because there are a lot of tripod companies out there and wanted to give them a fair shake (that feisol one is interesting to me, simple and sturdy). The 5k says it can hold 11 pounds/5kg which is the same as the focus so it sounds like they just rebadged the product. That's not herculean weight capacity but it's enough for a body and a sub-55 mm lens.
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Aug 9, 2018 16:07
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Anyone have experience with a Canon P? I've been eyeing it as a more affordable alternative to a Leica iii / M3 for a light travel and street shooter. Also, what's the consensus on the P vs 7/7s?
CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Aug 22, 2018 |
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Aug 22, 2018 06:56
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