Get A Grip Week - Day One - The Murky Past

 

This is the week when you get a firm grasp of getting a firm grip - when you go from the ridiculous to the sublime and then back again.

We promise ridiculous, and the heading image might suggest it, but if you were shooting a medium format TLR camera 20 years ago, you would have a different opinion. Because TLR cameras were made to be particularly hard to operate...and that was deliberate.

Think I'm joking? Pick up a Rolleiflex and hold it in your left hand. See how your finger falls on the shutter button? And your right hand holds the film winding handle? All good? Now focus the camera...

Yeah. Gotcha...

You might just get away with a Minolta Autocord or Flexaret with the focusing lever under the lens stage, but you're still going to be juggling things and I'll bet you'll eventually drop it in the mud...

Now try attaching it the camera to this ( no-name ) grip from the 70's. The big base takes the square base of the camera. The big hand grip lets you hold it firmly and the hand strap firther re-inforces the steadiness. There's a flash shoe - admittedly plain but then the flashes of those days used PC synch cords. Unfortunately the cable release that feeds out from the bottom of the grip is missing but that was the ideal way to trigger the camera - from a mechanical trigger under your finger. Focus, wind with one hand, shoot with the other. Then take your films to the chemist and wait a fortnight...

Oh, and look at how neatly the thing folds into itself for storage in the big leather camera case -the one with the paisley strap. 1970 was good.

 

Okay, joking aside, this grip is well thought-out. Like the Hasselblad grips of the same period - and the equally smart right-handed Bronica winding handles - it balances the camera function wisely between two hands and lets the shooter function far better than with a bare camera. And that is what the digital grips you'll see later in the week do for modern times.

Side note: The Rollei TLRs only made ergonomic sense when you did as Mr. Franke, the owner of the Franke and Heidecke company, did. He suspended the TLR from a neck strap off substantial lugs on the side of the camera, held it out in front of himself with his stomach, and then had both hands free to twiddle the focus and winding controls.

Next post: Olympus grips everything in sight!

Tilting The Screen

Older members of the readership will remember the 1980 movie " Flash Gordon " with the fight between Flash and the hawk men on a tilting tabletop. It was a pivotal point in my life...pun intended... as it was the first concrete illustration of the university education system I had ever seen. I still have Flash backs...

Well, university aside, the tilting tabletop is the best way to understand the new LCD screen mechanism on the Pentax K-1.

We've seen LCD screens in various forms since the inception of digital photography and they have gotten bigger, brighter, more detailed, and more useful all along. A few years ago they started to move - makers attached them to panels that swung out to the side of the camera. Then the panels were made to swivel at the same time and eventually they got to the point where they could go from being turned into the body of the camera to pointing straight forward.

Not content with this, other makers made the screens tilt - up, down, and eventually right forward again. It was all very good, but it really was only a help when the care was held in the landscape orientation - if you went to portrait position you still had to peer sideways and wonder.

An aside. Old Hasselblad and Rollei photographers like me can peer sideways like owls. We had to do it with the waist level finders on the old film cameras and we've developed the knack. Still makes us look silly, though.

Okay. Pentax have taken a leaf from the makers of some monitor screens and attached the LCD assembly to the back of the new K-1 camera with four struts. This means it can go in far more positions for viewing without being stuck out of the side of the camera on a flimsy plastic swivel. You can sight through it in portrait mode without twisting your neck off. No small advantage in candid photography and an absolute godsend in tripod work in a studio. Note: once it goes to the end of he swivel arms it tilts up even further.

I get the feeling that Pentax designers are human beings who take their own pictures in real life with their own design of cameras. And they pay attention to how their own hands work and how they feel. Let us all applaud them with our hands.

Then let us dive this hands into our pockets and fish up a wallet. This camera is in the shop right now - come play with it or order it on-line.

The Folding Viewfinder Hood - A Tale Of Digital Wonder - Hoodman Loupes

Those of you who have used, or do use, a 500-series Hasselblad, or a Rolleiflex, or a dear old Bronica S2* will be perfectly familiar with the folding viewfinder hood. You have been unfolding it regularly for years to let you see the viewfinder screen while out in the sunlight. It keeps the glare off the screen as you peer downwards.

You are people of surprising facility - your minds have long since mastered the art of seeing things reversed in the horizontal mode and then tracking your subject. You can probably write your name backward in a mirror at parties. But you are in dead trouble when you try to see the screen of your new digital camera in that same sunlight.

The screen whites out - and the manufacturers have not thought to include the dear old waist-level folding hood to help. Too old-school? Grrrrrrr...

Ingenious users will rig up cardboard and gaffer tape hoods and then Blu-Tac them to the LCD screen. Gadget geeks will search the internet for strange little plastic folding hoods that were current about 8 years ago - they were made for smaller screens so it will be anyone's guess how to stick it on.

We've found the Hoodman 3.0 and 3.2 Loupe products and their associated accessory holders to be the best compromise right now. Each case is an individual experiment, so anyone contemplating it would do well to bring the camera in and fiddle. Blu-Tac is not unknown...

We can arrange the sunlight.

* Bronica S2 users are recognisable by their massive forearms and deafness - caused by holding the things and firing the shutter in confined spaces.

Still Very Much Alive

On my private Facebook page I sometimes read positive assertions from friends that they don't make film any more. Then I come to work and look at the fridge full of different varieties of fresh 135, 120, and 4 x 5 film. Colour neg, colour transparency, black and white, infra red, instant peel-apart...if they are not making it, where does it all come from month after month?

I have stopped believing in the supernatural, so that rules out film fairies. I suspect that the factories that coat the emulsions are still going and the business is very much alive - good news for users of older analog cameras. Depending upon which camera you have, you should be able to shoot film long into the future.

Note: if you are using Leica or Hasselblad cameras they will last four years longer than forever anyway...

Note also that the pro labs are still going strong and can cope with ( nearly ) anything you can load into your camera. The lab techs might shake their heads but they soldier on anyway.

The Commemorative Issue

The mind is a funny thing. We tend to forget things until we remember them. Stomachs are also odd - you get all hungry and faint until you eat dinner and then you are not. These two principles have guided many camera manufacturers to release commemorative camera models - they remind you of something, you think about buying it, they get your money, and then they buy dinner.

The recent release of a special model of a camera to commemorate their awards for that camera model seemed to be a new departure. Nice camera, works superbly, interesting colour, tortured premise.

No more so, though, than the ones that have been issued to commemorate the lapse of a 99-year political treaty, the four-year Olympic show, or the name of a famously reclusive photographer. Or you can ask for your own name to be engraved somewhere. Users of Minx B cameras would be well advised to have a name like " Bob " or " Sam " to have this idea succeed...

At least the camera makers have not given in to the " Special Edition " fever of the automotive manufacturers of the 1980's...those lame swooping graphics plastered on the sides of humble passenger cars and vans to make them desirable. In some cases the stickers lasted longer than the cars. They were also the sort of designs that first-year graphics art students tend to do. ( Once they get better they tend to burn their first-year designs...) With the possible exception of Lomo, most commemorative camera paint or chrome jobs are at least explainable.

Flapoflex also are planning to issue their commemorative camera - it shows an engraving of an old fashioned brass merchant's scales. It celebrates the first time their books have balanced in 100 years. Accountants are studying this camera closely.

Students of history will note that we are about to have a set of big 100-year anniversaries occur over the next four years. Let us hope that the commemorative issues from Krupp, Vickers, Skoda, and such are intended merely for display, and not use. Or at least if they are making 420mm howitzers, we can get them in pastel colours.

Tio Dick's Feijoada

Look it up, look it up...

This tasty stew of assorted ingredients has something for every taste. As it is a cold day, we will start with a hot item:

1. Rollei 35 RF camera fitted with a Sonnar 40mm f:2.8 lens

This has just come into the s/h department and is pretty darn rare. It is a modern 35mm rangefinder camera made to Rollei specifications by Cosina in Japan. Some people will recognise the shape as being similar to Voigtländer cameras from the same stable. Similar, but that Sonnar lens will spell the difference for the user. This is a chance for traditionalists to do the 35mm RF in style.

2. Promaster 2500 EDF flash

Cheap as chips, and you can get these with either Nikon or Canon dedication. For cameras with just a plain hot shoe they'll work in auto mode so if your flash shots from the in-built flash are just not cutting it, this is a very good buy.

3. Honl Lens Wrap

Ballistic nylon on the outside and fleece on the inside with two velcro fasteners. Wrap your precious up in this and pop it in the camera bag or suitcase for travel.

4. B+W 1000x neutral density filter

For all those people who want to clean city streets of passers-by or to smooth out waterfalls and seas - this is a screw-in answer. Like the big rectangular stopper filters, but you can get this one in regular round shape for 62mm, 72mm, and 77mm. The heading image is a picture of a black cat taken in a coal bin at midnight with one of these filters. Notice the smooth fur tones on the back of the animal.