by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 21, 2006 | Photography
I’ve recently blogged about my Kodak Retina Reflex camera and wanting to do some development etc.
I ordered all the needed goodies from http://www.firstcall-photographic.co.uk/ who I at first thought had a good service, I mailed them and they confirmed the order was shipped and should be with me today, at 4pm the ordered arrived incomplete! You’d think if you mail them asking for a update they would tell you they’d only ship half of it. Anyway, so I won’t be using them again in a hurry.
I rushed into London at the 5pm rush hour to the Jessops and spend another small fortune on tanks, measurement beakers, and all kinds of other crap to get this going and developed my first roll tonight.
There were some hiccups getting the film into the developer tank coil as you have to do this in total darkness inside a bag and it involves cutting bits etc, it really is not fun, so I managed to get some kinks into a frame here and there but I guess I’ll improve in time.
Overall I am very pleased with the first attempt you can see most of the roll here.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 20, 2006 | Uncategorized
A quick post to point out some Apple freebys that I’ve come across recently, first up is a replacement for the standard unzip tool that comes with OS X, it is called Unarchiver and adds support for a ton of new formats from inside Finder:
It is very simple to use and install – simply copy it into your Applications folder or
whereever you prefer, and then set archive filetypes to open using it. This can either
be done the usual way, or by double-clicking the icon to show The Unarchiver’s
preferences.
Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt
and many other more or less obscure formats. Support for so many formats is
achieved by using the libxad unarchiving library.
It’s opensource and unobtrusive, there really is no reason not to use it.
Second app is a replacement for the normal Flickr Uploader, this one is called Gleam, it is still early days for it but already it shows major potential, supports Geotagging, setting custom descriptions etc before uploading and some other nifty stuff, if you’re a Flickr person and you use a Mac you should check this out.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 20, 2006 | Photography Equipment
I recently posted about my circa 1966 Kodak Retina Reflex IV camera, it came with a manual and as you can imagine these manuals are very rare. I took my scanner and scanned in the manual, the result is available on my Flickr Stream.
I’ve already come across one very happy Flickr user who had the camera and no manual, I hope more people get some use out of this.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 18, 2006 | Photography Equipment
I’ve often wondered about doing my own development of black and white film and full manual cameras but never succumbed to the temptation, till now.
This weekend I picked up a Kodak Retina Reflex IV camera, it’s in mint condition, original box and manual included. It’s missing a lens cap which might pose to be a big hassle as they don’t have what we now consider standard threads on its lens.
The camera is really amazingly built, the full mechanical operation is really impressive and while the ergonomics of using it is totally dismal compared to my Nikon SLR’s I think it’s quite manageable.
I bought it spur of the moment for GBP50 and just popped a color 35mm roll into it for some testing, the results aren’t bad at all:
So my intention with this is to go down the route of black and white film and do my own development, I probably won’t do printing since we have a really good negative scanner here and the printing equipment requires lots of space and a dark room and all that, things I don’t have.
More information about this range of cameras can be found on Wikipedia. The stall I got this one from had one of each of the 4 models made.
by R.I. Pienaar | Sep 15, 2006 | Photography, Photography Equipment
My trusty Nikon D70 has been in for repairs for the best part of a month now, it is suffering from the Blinking Green Light Of Death which is a pretty common bug in the first batches of D70.
It’s now around 2.5 years old which is pretty good going for me with a camera, yet Nikon is still fixing the problem under terms of the warrenty, the only problem is it’s taking some time.
So I picked up a Nikon D80 2 days ago, the body cost me 600 pounds including delivery and a 2 year warrenty, I also got a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens. I am especially excited about the lens as it was promised to be in the shops last November already but it never made it, I’ve been obsessivly looking for one but no suppliers have been able to get stock, 3 weeks ago I found one just sitting on a desk in a shop and immediately picked it up.
I am very impressed with both, the combination together is a really good combination and I do not regret the ยฃ1100 the set put me back for 1 second.
I’ve only taken a few shots with the D80, you can see them here.
