Without Prejudice

[feppe]

P.S. Had yet another blinding flash: why not make a box-like thing out of cardboard and stick it to the back of the cell, just like the hood on a camera? Of course, it would make touching the screen button a little difficult, but at least you'd then be able to see the subject that you couldn't shoot...

Something like this?

[Rob C]

Something like this?

Now that's cool, feppe!

I still have a Schneider loupe for looking at transparencies - I'll dig it out and see if it works, hand-held, against the cellphone. That'll be two things going on at a time... any woman could handle that (possibly even with her eyes closed ;-) ), but I'm not sure about myself. Certainly a fun  project - if a little bit masochistical. Won't cover much of the screen though, but it might scratch it, somewhat.

Rob C

[EduPerez]

Just a couple of days ago I saw somebody taking photographs with an iPad / Samsung Galaxy; I was quite shocking to see somebody hold something that large, trying to compose while chasing a child. Now that I think about it, that screen was probably larger than the print size (if any of those photographs ever gets printed, that is)... mind blowing.

[Rob C]

Lying in bed last night, my mind going over the cellphone thing, I thought I might try to make a collapsible cardboard thing like a box with no top or bottom. Then, with two rubber bands, it could be held onto the cell and when finished, folded and put away in the pocket. It wouold have to be just a little bit shorter than the image, because otherwise you couldn't touch the release. Alternatively, the focussing hood from an old Rollei or Mamiya might be suitably inexpensive and worth messing with in this context.

However, theoretical games aside, I've just tried the Samsung with my Schneider transparency lupe X4 and though it works, it's still a waste of time. Moving anything around on that screen brings up different and unexpected menu things. Frankly, if you have to touch the screen to expose, anything is a compromise after that.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Am I alone in thinking that this time, the Christmas/New Year thing has passed very quickly indeed? Seems like ages ago.

Voici a little memento of how it was.

Rob C

[WalterEG]

I have just been through an interesting exercise Rob,

I purchased a Panasonic Lumix GF 2 with 14mm lens.  Something somewhere with the little sucker ain't right and images are not sharp corner-to-corner at any aperture so the auction closes on Ebay today at noon.  Did I tell you, I hate digital!

Having had a load of fun with it (and a Canon G10 predecessor) it dawned on me that there was nothing I was using it for that the iPhone could not do as well or better.

Meanwhile, herewith a couple of the very few Lumix pics I made.

Cheers,

W

[Rob C]

Hi Walter

Now that's a funny thing: if you have a look back at my car shot, five or so posts back, you'll see the curvature/bending of the subject that I now see happening also in your shot of the truck wheels.

I thought that in my case it was a product of the wide angle of the 'phone camera's lens, even though I am, in fact, using a small section of the frame, having stepped back to avoid distortion that I thought I saw on the screen in the first place. I understand how wides have a shell-like plane of focus, but there must be a difference between the points on a shell being sharp, and distortion that looks like the subject is wrapped around a sphere. Maps come to mind.

Waddya think?

Rob C

[pegelli]

Rob, I think you're describing "barrel" distortion.
Can happen with any focal length (for instance my 50 mm lens shows it a lot) and is easily corrected with photo processing software.
The opposite (pincushion distortion) can also happen, and with zoom lenses both can happen depending on whether you're at the short or long side of it.

[WalterEG]

Rob,

It just convinces me that I am right.  For me it is a view camera or nuttin'!!  The little bastard did not sell on Ebay so it is relisted.  What possessed me to buy it in the first place?  Nobody kicks us in the head like we kick ourselves in the head.

Cheers,

[Mjollnir]

Powerplant in Haze, Huron, CA by tanngrisnir3, on Flickr

[EduPerez]

Powerplant in Haze, Huron, CA by tanngrisnir3, on Flickr

Interesting... intriguing... I like it!

[Mjollnir]

Interesting... intriguing... I like it!

Thanks! It was the first shot I ever took w/a Panny GH2, under the strangest atmospheric conditions I've ever been in the CA's Central Valley.

[Rob C]

Rob, I think you're describing "barrel" distortion.
Can happen with any focal length (for instance my 50 mm lens shows it a lot) and is easily corrected with photo processing software.
The opposite (pincushion distortion) can also happen, and with zoom lenses both can happen depending on whether you're at the short or long side of it.

Never thought of it in those terms: barrel, to me, was only something that one saw at the far edges of the frame, and as a sort of flat distortion - in one dimension, as it were, whereas this seems to be almost a depth thing. But as I have seldom even seen it with my real lenses, I suppose I might just scrape a 'forgiveness' point on this occasion...? Please

The other thing that's distressing me about the mobile is the inability to control over-exposure. I enclose this frame, untouched other than to trim off some sea in the foreground (there was probably as much sky to eff up exposure as dark sea) and a minor sharpening. There's no point in doing anything else with the image - it's waste.

As you can see, the boats are bleached white, beyond recall. The same happened in a sunny shot (same sort of late afternoon light) that I made of my black car - hopeless. Perhaps the poor camera was attempting to compensate for the black paint... However, I've been shooting some abstracts with it today of paint and surface damage on boats - in shade, mostly, and the metering works far better without the contrast.

High frustration value, however.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Thanks! It was the first shot I ever took w/a Panny GH2, under the strangest atmospheric conditions I've ever been in the CA's Central Valley.

Very nice image - fits my idea of simple art being stronger than complex imagery.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Rob,

It just convinces me that I am right.  For me it is a view camera or nuttin'!!  The little bastard did not sell on Ebay so it is relisted.  What possessed me to buy it in the first place?  Nobody kicks us in the head like we kick ourselves in the head.
Cheers,

In the head, already! And everywhere else, too.

The one, single, unique (is tautology an endearing symptom?) thing that I think makes the cellphone a winner is that it's there.

How I wish I could justify that M9!

Rob C

[Rob C]

Shiverrrrring with cold this evening, but anyway, one for Fred.


Rob C

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Rob, have you considered NEX-7? Isn't it supposed to be the poor man's Leica? Wait, scratch that... that phrase was just the usual pandering to the slow-dying myth... how about: Leica, the rich man's NEX-7?

[Rob C]

Rob, have you considered NEX-7? Isn't it supposed to be the poor man's Leica? Wait, scratch that... that phrase was just the usual pandering to the slow-dying myth... how about: Leica, the rich man's NEX-7?

Slobodan -

No, I'm not really in the camera market at all - I already have three Nikons - the M9 remains a sort of mythical beast of fantasy for me, that fixit masterpiece that held me spellbound whilst I watched Michael's video long ago, the one shot in the Leica Works with the camera sitting on a table in front of a man who rambled on and on... I couldn't get my eys off the thing: a perfect sex symbol with whom I could play all day without causing disappointment. Which wouldn't always be the case with other types of symbol, I have to admit. I blame beta-blockers, I blame them for everything. Even the state of the economy, at least, of my own.

As a consequence, I know nothing about the 'poor man's Leica' at all. I'm suffering from techno overload as it is!

Rob C

[pegelli]

Here's one with the poor man's Leica predecessor, a lowly Nex 5 (even without the N).
Still I like it a lot and yesterday tried a "sweep panorama" from a 4th floor balcony.
With this tech gizmo setting you just "sweep" the camera from left to right while keeping the release down. The cam takes a quick succession of shots and stitches them together to one panorama. No operator interference needed, it does so all by itself.

Talk about distortion, still the overall effect isn't bad, but the street at the bottom is straight in real life. If you look carefully near the street crossing on the left it even converts a lone cyclist to an identical twin on a tandem, technology these days has no hurdles anymore  

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Maybe the solution is a Nex 5 plus a sticker to paste on it that says "Leica."

Come to think of it, maybe I'll stick one on my S95.

Eric