Difference between revisions of "User:Dustin McAmera"

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(Camera-related websites I use: Update re photo.net)
m (A vague to-do list: This is now just an old list of jobs, mostly never done at all, and commented-out to be invisible unless you edit.)
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Hello!  
 
Hello!  
  
My real name is Pete; on here and on Flickr I'm Dustin McAmera. I live in Leeds, in England.
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My real name is Pete; on here and [https://www.flickr.com/photos/century_graphic/ on Flickr] I'm Dustin McAmera. I live in Leeds, in England.
  
I was promoted to be one of the [[Camera-wiki.org:About#Active admins|admins]] here. If you're here in search of an admin, to ask something about CW, or complain about something, feel free to talk to me about it (best to do it next door on [[User_talk:Dustin McAmera|my Talk page]]).
+
I have more cameras than I can do justice to as a user (a few dozen), but I resist the idea that I'm a collector. That said, the pleasure of using my cameras is sometimes just as important to me as the photographs. My oldest cameras are from the 1920s, but I like to try to write about earlier stuff, just because it's under-represented here.
  
I have more cameras than I can do justice to as a user (a few dozen), but I resist the idea that I'm a collector. That said, the pleasure of using the cameras is sometimes just as important to me as the photographs. My oldest cameras are from the 1920s, but I like to try to write about earlier stuff, just because it's under-represented here.
+
My own cameras include several that I feel guilty for owning, because they're so good, and I use them so little: in particular my [[Graflex_Speed_Graphic|Century Graphic]], my [[M645 Pro|Mamiya 645 Pro]] and my [[Ensign Reflex]]. I notice that since I started writing for the wiki, that problem has got worse. Recent new purchases are an [[Agfa Standard]] 208 (9x12 cm) and a [[Calumet CC-401]] 4x5-inch monorail.
  
My own cameras include several that I feel guilty for owning, because they're so good, and I use them so little: in particular my [[Graflex_Speed_Graphic|Century Graphic]], my [[M645 Pro|Mamiya 645 Pro]] and my [[Ensign Reflex]]. I notice that since I started editing on here, that problem is worse. This year's new purchases are an [[Agfa Standard]] 208 (9x12 cm) and a [[Calumet CC-401]] 4x5-inch monorail.
+
On the other hand, the community of old-camera-owners on the web sometimes generates excuses for using them. Quite a few of my cameras are for [[127 film]], and I usually do something for 127 Days (12 July and 27 January). 2012 was the centenary year of Kodak's introduction of the 127 film size, and I think I did quite a good effort for the summer day that year. Although I've taken pictures for 127 Day since about 2005, I didn't know until 2012 that Summer 127 Day is also [[George Eastman]]'s birthday; I'm glad we mark that. We owe him a lot.
  
On the other hand, the community of old-camera-owners on the web generates excuses for using them. Quite a few of my cameras are for [[127 film]], and I usually do something for 127 Days (12 July and 27 January). 2012 was the centenary year of Kodak's introduction of the 127 film size, and I think I did quite a good effort for the summer day. Although I've taken pictures for 127 Day since about 2005, I didn't know until 2012 that Summer 127 Day is also [[George Eastman]]'s birthday; I'm glad we mark that.
+
I try to observe '''Take Your Box Camera to Work Day''' in February. Taking my box camera ''to work'' isn't strictly possible since I changed my job (or it was changed for me) to one which doesn't tolerate such eccentricities. Instead, I take my cameras around town outside of work. I usually go out for Pinhole Day (Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day: look for pinholeday.org) a little later in the spring, and try to do something with Light Night in the autumn.
  
I usually observe '''Take Your Box Camera to Work Day''' in February and Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day in April, too. Taking my box camera ''to work'' wasn't strictly possible this year - I've changed my job (reluctantly) to one which doesn't really tolerate such eccentricities. Instead, I took my cameras around town after work, and again the following day to get some proper daylight. A good session, but I made pictures of street corners, not of a workplace. I usually go out for Pinhole Day too, a little later in the spring.
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==Being an admin==
 +
I was promoted to be one of the [[Camera-wiki.org:About#Active admins|admins]] for the wiki. There are something like six of us. If you're here in search of an admin, to ask something about CW, or complain about something, feel free to talk to me about it. If you're a registered wiki user, and logged in, then you can either write me a note here in the wiki (do it next door on [[User_talk:Dustin McAmera|my Talk page]]) or you can send a message using the 'Email this user' link at the bottom of the links on the left of the page. If you're not yet a registered wiki user you can still contact me at my Flickr account, linked above. In particular, we switched off the facility for people to register new user accounts for themselves, because we got large numbers of spammers; so if you want to register, you need to get an admin to do that for you.
  
 +
Although a wiki is a kind of collective, it still has some rules (rules of conduct, rules of style, rules about copyright), and it's the job of the admins to enforce them when necessary. Please try not to take it personally if one of us changed what you wrote; but of course, feel free to ask for an explanation.
  
 
==Camera-related websites I use==
 
==Camera-related websites I use==
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Other camera-related sites I go to include these:
 
Other camera-related sites I go to include these:
 
* [http://photographytoday.net/forums/index.php PhotographyToday.net]; set up as a replacement for the NelsonFoto forum after Craig Nelson died, and the future of that site looked uncertain (it's gone now). NelsonFoto itself had its origins in a walkout-in-disgust from photo.net. Discussion forum with a few dozen, mostly American, photographers. Having not-too-many contributors gives it a strong personality and the feel of a club.
 
* [http://photographytoday.net/forums/index.php PhotographyToday.net]; set up as a replacement for the NelsonFoto forum after Craig Nelson died, and the future of that site looked uncertain (it's gone now). NelsonFoto itself had its origins in a walkout-in-disgust from photo.net. Discussion forum with a few dozen, mostly American, photographers. Having not-too-many contributors gives it a strong personality and the feel of a club.
* ... and there is still [http://photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/ Photo.net], though the site has just adopted a new software which makes it big, colourful and much less useful than previously. I ''used to'' visit it daily to read the 'classic manual cameras' board, and I'd check the medium and large format boards, and a couple more. It was a good place to search for old posts about your own current difficulty, or see who else had posted about a camera you'd just bought. Now, it takes several extra clicks to see posts older than this week, and posts older than two years can't be viewed at all.
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* ... and there is still [http://photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/ Photo.net]. It's a huge forum site, and you can upload pictures. It's been sold, and moved to new software, and the amount and quality of new activity has been affected. It's still a good place to search for old posts about your own current difficulty, or see who else had posted about a camera you'd just bought. I usually search it with google (add "site:photo.net" to your search terms).
* I recently registered at the [http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/index.php Large Format Photography] forum. It's quite big and active; more than 30,000 registered users; which isn't always a good sign, but I found some useful and interesting stuff posted. Until you register, the site is a bit awkward, and my registration hung up for several days (perhaps waiting to be signed off by a human admin). There are For Sale and Wanted boards, and fora for not-large format stuff too.
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* I registered at the [http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/index.php Large Format Photography] forum. It's quite big and active; more than 30,000 registered users; which isn't always a good sign, but I found some useful and interesting stuff posted. Until you register, the site is a bit awkward, and my registration hung up for several days (perhaps waiting to be signed off by a human admin). There are For Sale and Wanted boards, and fora for not-large format stuff too.
* There's a [http://www.5x4.co.uk/index.php UK Large Format Forum] too; quite new. I've registered but haven't posted anything yet.
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* There's a [http://www.5x4.co.uk/index.php UK Large Format Forum] too; not very active.
 
* The listings for [http://www.westlicht-auction.com/index.php?id=62&L=1 past auctions at Westlicht] in Vienna: a good place to see good pictures of some cameras that you may never see anywhere else. I have often used these pictures to check details of cameras for articles in the wiki. New auctions happen twice every year.
 
* The listings for [http://www.westlicht-auction.com/index.php?id=62&L=1 past auctions at Westlicht] in Vienna: a good place to see good pictures of some cameras that you may never see anywhere else. I have often used these pictures to check details of cameras for articles in the wiki. New auctions happen twice every year.
  
==A vague to-do list==
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==An old to-do list==
These are things I hope to do some work on. I see this has turned into a list of routine maintenance jobs, rather than than exciting camera articles to write. Feel free to comment on these, especially if you think any of them is a really bad idea. (This isn't an invitation for anyone to insert jobs for me to do: I hate that! .. If you know enough to write one of these ideas up before I get to it, go ahead, of course.)
 
 
 
===Soon!===
 
 
 
*I'm ''very'' slowly going through the 'A' category, adding year-categories where I can. When I finish those, I guess I'll move on to 'B'...
 
*When I come across <nowiki>ISBNs</nowiki> in articles, I'm putting nowiki tags round them. By default the wiki turns an <nowiki>ISBN</nowiki> into a clickable link which sends you to a short list of searches on booksellers' websites.
 
 
 
* Follow through with my threat to re-structure the categories to do with plates, and get rid of the ugly phrase 'film plate'; I note that some plate sizes (and probably film sizes) are not served by cats: 8x10in for example.
 
 
 
===Sometime===
 
 
''There is an old list of jobs that were never done, commented out here''.
 
''There is an old list of jobs that were never done, commented out here''.
 
<!-- commenting out old to-do list, replacing it with new jobs
 
<!-- commenting out old to-do list, replacing it with new jobs
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*Look at the Canon A-series SLRs: I think the AE1 page needs rewriting, and the AE1 Prog page actually says very little about the camera.  
 
*Look at the Canon A-series SLRs: I think the AE1 page needs rewriting, and the AE1 Prog page actually says very little about the camera.  
 
* I have added links to related patents to some articles, especially ones on early and innnovative cameras. Patents may be available as PDF at Google Patents or [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP Espacenet]. Here's stuff to do: find out how we stand on using the diagrams from Patents. Some of these would be excellent illustrations.
 
  
 
* Search the wiki for any existing page referring to the origins of automatic exposure. There are already [[aperture priority]], [[shutter priority]] and [[exposure]]; of these, only aperture priority comes close to what I'm thinking of. Useful links include [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=GB&NR=190305608A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19040204&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP British Patent 5608] of 1903 which describes an invention by a Max J Richter (not Max A Richter of Ernemann). It comprises a mechanical shutter, with electrical timing (the mechanical system is restrained by an electromagnet) and depending on the variable resistance of a selenium crystal to affect the time of exposure. Need to do a bit more searching to see if this patent was ever exploited, and look for other early designs. The first commercial one I know of is patented by [[Durst]] and used fairly soon after by [[Agfa]], using Durst's mechanism.
 
* Search the wiki for any existing page referring to the origins of automatic exposure. There are already [[aperture priority]], [[shutter priority]] and [[exposure]]; of these, only aperture priority comes close to what I'm thinking of. Useful links include [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=GB&NR=190305608A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19040204&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP British Patent 5608] of 1903 which describes an invention by a Max J Richter (not Max A Richter of Ernemann). It comprises a mechanical shutter, with electrical timing (the mechanical system is restrained by an electromagnet) and depending on the variable resistance of a selenium crystal to affect the time of exposure. Need to do a bit more searching to see if this patent was ever exploited, and look for other early designs. The first commercial one I know of is patented by [[Durst]] and used fairly soon after by [[Agfa]], using Durst's mechanism.
 
Another relevant patent: [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=GB&NR=190504020A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19051214&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP British Pat 4020] of 1905 describes a selenium-resistance circuit as part of a photometer (they don't mention photography as an application). Here, they note that the resistance of the selenium upon a change from dark to light starts fairly linear, then flattens out. They base the reading on the short-term change in resistance, to avoid the complication of a non-linear relationship, so they use the reaction of the selenium to operate a blind shading the cell after a short exposure. It's not much like Richter's design, but shows that more than one set of people thought the selenium cell was a workable idea at about this time. Search for selenium next.
 
Another relevant patent: [http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=GB&NR=190504020A&KC=A&FT=D&ND=3&date=19051214&DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&locale=en_EP British Pat 4020] of 1905 describes a selenium-resistance circuit as part of a photometer (they don't mention photography as an application). Here, they note that the resistance of the selenium upon a change from dark to light starts fairly linear, then flattens out. They base the reading on the short-term change in resistance, to avoid the complication of a non-linear relationship, so they use the reaction of the selenium to operate a blind shading the cell after a short exposure. It's not much like Richter's design, but shows that more than one set of people thought the selenium cell was a workable idea at about this time. Search for selenium next.
 
-->
 
-->
*Look up the Minolta A5, and try to add to its page. McK says two Japanese versions and one American one. Examples we show have either a simple folding rewind crank and 1/1000 sec shutter, or a more finished crank and only a 1/500 sec shutter. There's also one (at Flickr I think) with the advance lever coming out of the back, and a transparent widnow for the frame-counter, instead of the open dial. McK also shows a 1966 model.
 

Revision as of 15:55, 21 September 2017

About me

Hello!

My real name is Pete; on here and on Flickr I'm Dustin McAmera. I live in Leeds, in England.

I have more cameras than I can do justice to as a user (a few dozen), but I resist the idea that I'm a collector. That said, the pleasure of using my cameras is sometimes just as important to me as the photographs. My oldest cameras are from the 1920s, but I like to try to write about earlier stuff, just because it's under-represented here.

My own cameras include several that I feel guilty for owning, because they're so good, and I use them so little: in particular my Century Graphic, my Mamiya 645 Pro and my Ensign Reflex. I notice that since I started writing for the wiki, that problem has got worse. Recent new purchases are an Agfa Standard 208 (9x12 cm) and a Calumet CC-401 4x5-inch monorail.

On the other hand, the community of old-camera-owners on the web sometimes generates excuses for using them. Quite a few of my cameras are for 127 film, and I usually do something for 127 Days (12 July and 27 January). 2012 was the centenary year of Kodak's introduction of the 127 film size, and I think I did quite a good effort for the summer day that year. Although I've taken pictures for 127 Day since about 2005, I didn't know until 2012 that Summer 127 Day is also George Eastman's birthday; I'm glad we mark that. We owe him a lot.

I try to observe Take Your Box Camera to Work Day in February. Taking my box camera to work isn't strictly possible since I changed my job (or it was changed for me) to one which doesn't tolerate such eccentricities. Instead, I take my cameras around town outside of work. I usually go out for Pinhole Day (Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day: look for pinholeday.org) a little later in the spring, and try to do something with Light Night in the autumn.

Being an admin

I was promoted to be one of the admins for the wiki. There are something like six of us. If you're here in search of an admin, to ask something about CW, or complain about something, feel free to talk to me about it. If you're a registered wiki user, and logged in, then you can either write me a note here in the wiki (do it next door on my Talk page) or you can send a message using the 'Email this user' link at the bottom of the links on the left of the page. If you're not yet a registered wiki user you can still contact me at my Flickr account, linked above. In particular, we switched off the facility for people to register new user accounts for themselves, because we got large numbers of spammers; so if you want to register, you need to get an admin to do that for you.

Although a wiki is a kind of collective, it still has some rules (rules of conduct, rules of style, rules about copyright), and it's the job of the admins to enforce them when necessary. Please try not to take it personally if one of us changed what you wrote; but of course, feel free to ask for an explanation.

Camera-related websites I use

For all its faults, I don't know anything else as good as Flickr for hosting your pictures. I've had a bit of a lull in my own photography, but these are the latest uploads to my Flickr account:

Other camera-related sites I go to include these:

  • PhotographyToday.net; set up as a replacement for the NelsonFoto forum after Craig Nelson died, and the future of that site looked uncertain (it's gone now). NelsonFoto itself had its origins in a walkout-in-disgust from photo.net. Discussion forum with a few dozen, mostly American, photographers. Having not-too-many contributors gives it a strong personality and the feel of a club.
  • ... and there is still Photo.net. It's a huge forum site, and you can upload pictures. It's been sold, and moved to new software, and the amount and quality of new activity has been affected. It's still a good place to search for old posts about your own current difficulty, or see who else had posted about a camera you'd just bought. I usually search it with google (add "site:photo.net" to your search terms).
  • I registered at the Large Format Photography forum. It's quite big and active; more than 30,000 registered users; which isn't always a good sign, but I found some useful and interesting stuff posted. Until you register, the site is a bit awkward, and my registration hung up for several days (perhaps waiting to be signed off by a human admin). There are For Sale and Wanted boards, and fora for not-large format stuff too.
  • There's a UK Large Format Forum too; not very active.
  • The listings for past auctions at Westlicht in Vienna: a good place to see good pictures of some cameras that you may never see anywhere else. I have often used these pictures to check details of cameras for articles in the wiki. New auctions happen twice every year.

An old to-do list

There is an old list of jobs that were never done, commented out here.