The Transparent Work-Round - Part One - All Uphill

We are always being given ways of working-round things on computers.

Some times what we are working around is an old computer - sometimes an old program. Sometimes

it is money - we find that cutting our coats to suit our cloth means we are wearing Barbie-sized coats...

In the case of this dodge, it is not because I do not own other equipment - it is a case of the time required to let that other equipment do its thing. I've stopwatched the process I am undertaking and I can cut the time required in half.

The project is the digitizing and rehousing of colour transparencies - mostly 35mm slides from the last 50 years. It isn't like I am doing Time - Life's collection - I counted only 7800 transparencies - but the time needed to clean them, scan them, correct the colours, and write their information into a JPEG file is going to be significant.

Don't get me wrong about the Epson V700 - V850's. They are fantastic scanners that translate older works from print, transparency, negative, or book very well indeed. There is no other really good economical answer for good scans from 4 x 5 sheet film. For that alone, it is worth the money. It also has templates and holders to scan mounted 35mm slides in batches of 12 on a pretty automatic basis. The problem is the amount of time it takes to do so for each image; counting loading, scanning, unloading, and sorting, you spend 3.5 minutes per slide. That is without noticeable correction time. A great portion of that time is taken up with the scanner doing a preview, then having to specify what size you want the output, then doing the actual scan.

7800 slides x 3.5 minutes =  455 hours...or roughly the time it takes to get a teenager to clean up their room. To be fair to the Epson, there is an automatic colour restoration circuit that can really revitalise some of the faded transparencies.

Well, there had to be a better way. The key to it was the collection of gear that was lying unused in the cupboard - specifically a Tokina 30mm macro lens on an adapter and a very old Novoflex focusing track. That and a Metrolux light box left over from surgery days and a cut off bit of Bunnings 12mm MDF board.

Remember the old days of the Bowens and Illumitran slide duplicators? Those wonderful boxes that let you put colour corrected light behind a transparency and then held a lens, bellows, and 35mm camera body above it so that you could re-photograph the slide? They were great - why, I'll bet that are a few lurking around the old storage shelves of Camera Electronic still...

Well, I could make up an MDF stand with a cutout the size of a 35mm slide, mount my Fujifilm X-T10 camera and the Tokina lens above it, and adjust the assembly up and down until the image exactly filled the screen of the Fujifilm. A macro lens that focuses close enough to do 1:1 is what I needed, though due to the nature of the APS-C sensor it did not go out to full 1:1 - I stopped in focus at 1:1.25.

The second part of this posting - tomorrow, I hope - will take you further into the settings and experiments to get good reproduction. In the meantime  think about whether you would like to do the same - Camera Electronic has some goodies that might help you to do the trick.

Real Virtue For Virtual Reality - Cullmann Pano Parts

There are a number of manufacturers of panoramic accessories for modern digital cameras - Manfrotto, Novoflex, and Cullmann come quickly to mind. I'm sure there must be more, but as we have found these three to satisfy most of the requirements of the customers, these are the ones we have featured in the shop.

They all have their merits and charms - and in some cases mild drawbacks. Some designs suggest that the designers never actually carry their products themselves to do a job - at least not over a long distance. If they did they would reduce the weight, bulk, and complexity. There's probably a compelling argument for each additional feature that someone puts on the basic apparatus but unless you need that feature you are going to pay to haul it around...

Cullmann have adopted a different philosophy - their panoramic gear has been stripped down to basic form to follow basic function ( Say, that would make a good industrial movement. Must ring Weimar...). You can start with basics to just spin a camera round in one plane and then add standardised parts to bring different movements or camera positions into play.

Look at the basic L-set here - it's comprised of the Concept One OX369 panorama base. it screws onto a Cullmann Concept ball head - or to the ball head of another manufacturer - and clamps to an Arca-Swiss rail. Then it spins around on itself, much like a minor political party. Very well-built - very precise.

The A/S rails can be the sort of thing that is cast onto the bottom of a hand grip - Fujifilm does this for some of their X-Series cameras - or you can mate one of the Cullmann ones to your camera. These are available in various lengths. The L pair you see on the OX369 is the OX399 set.

Starts to look like you can mount the camera vertically as well as horizontally, doesn't it. Yes, you can, and you can do it straight or with another of the OX369 for a 360º virtual reality setup. Note the two unique Cullmann features; the clamping cross-bar to prevent camera twist and the clip-on socket at the end to take a Cullmann CX678 two-way spirit level.

This is good stuff on a technical level and also to a price point. The turntable is $199.95 (Available here) and the L bracket complete is $198 (Available here). Ten year warranty on both bits and in-store right now.

Round The Houses - The Panoramic Experiments

Did goe to take panoramic images yesterday and was greatley amused.

With the prospect of sun and a Sunday I decided to see what the current state of tourist pano might be. I am in the process of lightening up my outfit - courtesy of the Fujifilm series of X cameras - and I wanted to practise up for a trip later in the year.

I'm pretty well settled upon the new Cullmann 622T tripod for my field shots. It is small enough to fit in the roll-around bag and I suspect it will fly with ease. I am coming to grips with the ball head. Kudos the Cullmann for a good quick release mechanism this time.

Okay, I attached the Novoflex Panoramaplatte to the top of the ball head and put the Fujifilm X=E2 on top of that. Out in the little car to the edge of he Canning river. Note: the edge of rivers can be marshy, as the state of my shoes and trousers will attest.

Extend the tripod and center the bubble level on the Novoflex and track left and right to see if I can get what I want. The X-E2 has two settings for "internal" panorama - 120º and 180º that produce long skinny jpegs. Very good jpegs too - I frequently don't bother with RAW with the Fujifilms as their jpegs are so good. As long as I get my exposure right, I can just wipe them off and put them on the plate...

Well, anyway the motion panorama settings need a reasonably high shutter speed to work - you're better shooting at 1/125 - 1/500 as you get crisper images. If you get a hint of vertical banding, drop down a speed. It takes a little practise to swing the camera steadily when you are doing it freehand, but on a tripod it's a doddle.

Okay, next experiment was a group shot of the Grey Company warriors at training. Here I set the shot deliberately to get an even size for all the figures by grouping them in a semicircle around the tripod. The swing of the camera is the same - 120º.

And the last trials involved the river down by Trinity and the trotting ground. Taking care not to run over by cyclists ( always worth setting out the portable mine field when cyclists are about...) I shot the Burswood side using he motion panorama and then using the simple trick of two quick exposures side by side.

This was aided by an obliging  fish-trap that came paddling by - fortunately slow enough that I could capture him and then swivel past him to the casino shot. This is the same sort of thing that the Panomatic is suited to - a series of shots that stitch together in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. You can do 3 or more but I find I am most pleased with the proportions of a two-shot. The screen at the back of the Fujifilm X-2 can be set with a grid overlay that lets you accurately overlap the images. The PS or PSE program then has the best material to work with and avoids artifacts.

The last picture is the trotting ground, and here I learned what to do when the subject height exceeds what the camera lens can see.

I removed the Novoflex turntable from the stack and attached the X-E2 to the QR plate of the ball head. Then I carefully centered the bubble on the TRIPOD's yoke by adjusting the legs. Now the base of the head would act as the vertical pivot point for the shot. I was free to gently tilt the camera up until the clouds that I wanted to feature could be seen.

The X-E2 and the X-100 series have a little green artificial level in their screen that means you can do this tilt but still have the camera swivelling in an even horizontal plane. There will be a little curving of the subject due to the laws of optics but it will be even.

The real advantage of the stitched pano vs the motion pano comes with the increased quality of the jpeg or even RAW that you can put into the files. And you can be creative with lower shutter speeds.

Get out there and spin around until you're dizzy!

Round The Houses Again

Nothing like a fine spring day and a 40 year-old Novoflex accessory that has just turned up at the back of the shelf to get the blood singing. As I take aspirin, it sings in a thinner voice...boom,boom.

No, take a look at the rig. The bottom is a Novoflex turntable that you can still get and the top is a Novoflex focussing rack that was made in the 1960's . It would be unfair to show youthese xcept for the fact that you can get a modern version of this from Novoflex right now. The tripod is the Copter from Cullmann.

Why?

To take full advantage of the panoramic feature on my beloved Fuji X-10. This allows fast and dirty panos at 120º, 180º, or 360º but since it allows precise central rotation in the vertical axis, the panos stay quick but come up clean.

The Fuji has the tripod socket offset under the camera - the macro slider allows me to recenter it over the vertical axle. I levelled the rig on the top of a convenient rubbish bin ( Oh we are sophisticated in Stirling Street...) and spun the camera as directed by the internal program. Perfect pano.

Note that you can change the direction of rotation for the actual shooting. I realised this after the fact - look at the hideous distortion of the cars in the 180º shot.

Note also that you can do this sort of thing with the Panomatic but you might have to do a bit more setup.

Round The Houses With Cullmann

The panoramic photograph seems to have been to be the soupe du jour - or is that the suppe di anno? Whatever, everyone was doing them them last year. As a number of manufacturers make wonderful equipment for the specialty, we hope they do them next year as well.

The heavyweight star of the panoramic brackets is. of course, Manfrotto,. The MH057A5 head is magnificently equipped for horizontal or vertical panoramas with a great deal of precision and repeatability. It can accommodate the largest lenses that one might choose and has adjustable click stops to let you take your exposures rapidly. It is super-engineered and so heavy that if it fell on you from a tall shelf, it would kill you.

If you wish less risk but almost the same expense, I recommend Novoflex products. They are also engineered but with elegance and style. They are also lighter.

These used to be the two choices for the big player, but now Cullmann has come out with a design as well. The Concept One system from Cullmann has a similar precision turntable that bolts on to the stem of many Cullmann ball heads. I should mate it to the 6, 7, or 8 series - or onto the dedicated Concept One heads. The big ones are BIG, so do come in and find one that matches your equipment.

The Concept One mounting plates are Arca-sized and I note that they make a corner mount that allows you to mate up two of their longer plates to make an L-shaped bracket for vertical mounting. Neat use of the existing equipment.

One final note - for simple panos with little cameras try the Panomatic and for even simpler ones use the Fuji X-10 and X-20 in the SP mode - there are 120º, 180º, and 360º settings and all you do is spin around slowly. In the case of the 360º one you spin around until you fall down...