Difference between revisions of "User:Dustin McAmera"

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==About me==
 
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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I live in England. I resist the idea that I'm a collector, but I have more cameras than I can do justice to as a user (a few dozen). 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.
  
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]]).
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My own cameras include several that I feel guilty for owning, because they're so good, and I use them so little: in no particular order, my [[Graflex_Speed_Graphic|Century Graphic]]; [[M645 Pro|Mamiya 645 Pro]] ; [[Ensign Reflex]]; [[Agfa Standard]] 208 (9x12 cm); [[Calumet CC-401]] 4x5-inch monorail; and quarter-plate [[Speed Ensign]].  
  
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.
+
An important one is a [[Canon EOS M50]]; life nowadays gets in the way of doing much with film, so got this, my first modern digital, to keep a toe-hold on some photography. It's not the same; but I have come to love it; particularly how it keeps going in the dark.  
  
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.
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The community of old-camera-owners on the web sometimes generates occasions for using them:
 +
*'''127 Days (12 July and 27 January)''' for cameras that use [[127 film]]. Summer 127 Day is also [[George Eastman]]'s birthday; I'm glad we mark that. We owe him a lot.
 +
*'''Take Your Box Camera to Work Day'''. I first spotted this at Flickr. It changes its name, and moves round the calendar a bit. The idea is great.
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*'''Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day''': look for pinholeday.org; usually falls in April.
  
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.
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==Being an admin==
 +
I was promoted to be one of the admins for the wiki ([[Camera-wiki.org:About#Active admins|list of admins]]: there are something like six of us: I'm only near the top of that list for alphabetical-order reasons). If you need 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.
  
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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A wiki is a kind of collective. The articles were written by many people, and if your question is about the content of an article ('how old is this camera?'), it's quite likely that we admins may not know; but feel free to ask. As admins, we are here to enforce rules (rules of conduct, rules of style, rules about copyright), on the rare occasions that's necessary.
 
 
I've had a bit of a lull in my own photography, but these are the latest uploads to my Flickr account:
 
 
 
{{#widget:FlickrUserH|user=54337958@N00}}
 
 
 
For all its faults, there isn't anything else as good as Flickr.
 
  
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==Camera-related websites I use==
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For all its faults, I don't know anything else as good as '''Flickr''' for hosting your pictures. It's where the wiki gets all its pictures. I have stayed there through several big changes. Nice little groups have formed (and disbanded). I'm still happy with what I get for what I pay. [https://www.flickr.com/photos/century_graphic/ This is the first page of my photos at Flickr]; all the photos I take for any reason, not just old-cameras stuff.
  
 
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. Discussion forum for a few dozen, mostly American, photographers.
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* [https://www.photrio.com/forum/ Photrio] is a big discussion forum. It has all the strengths and weaknesses that internet fora usually have. There are some opinionated fools with loud voices, and some cliques. There are also some people who know what they are talking about, and aren't too grand to help you. Photrio used to be APUG, which was very intolerant of digital-camera users. Photrio isn't quite like that, but those people are still there. It has For Sale and Wanted boards.
* The [http://nelsonfoto.com/SMF/index.php NelsonFoto] forum; the forerunner of the PhotographyToday.net site. Still going at the time of writing, but not so active since Mr Nelson died. It too has a mostly-American membership. It has boards for discussion of various aspects of photography, including tech stuff about the cameras, but is mostly a forum for people to show their pictures. I think it had its origins in a walkout-in-disgust from photo.net. Having not-too-many contributors gave it a strong personality and the feel of a club.
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* [http://photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/ Photo.net] ''was'' a big forum site, and good for informed discussion of old cameras. It is still a good place to search for old posts about your own current difficulty, or see who else has posted about the camera you've just bought. I have cited photo.net forum posts as sources of details in the wiki, once or twice. It's much-reduced in the level of ''current'' activity though, and the quality of that activity is pretty poor too. The site is clunky and primitive compared to Flickr. The site was sold to CreativeLive, and then CreativeLive was sold to Fiverr, and it's moved to new forum software both times. The last move (October '22) was chaotic; the new owners didn't know they owned it - its a minor, dormant asset of the company they meant to buy. So it has little support from the owners, but they haven't switched off the lights. They restricted the built-in search to just the last ten years, which isn't helpful.  
* [http://photo.net/classic-cameras-forum/ Photo.net], especially the 'classic manual cameras' board, but I also check the medium and large format boards, and a couple more. The site as a whole is dominated by digital users, some areas of it are sometimes argumentative and snobbish, and my ad-blocker has to work overtime. Nevertheless, it's a useful source of information.
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* I registered at the [http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/index.php Large Format Photography] forum. 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. I don't go there much, but it's good.
* I just registered at the [http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/index.php Large Format Photography] forum. It's quite big; more than 30,000 registered users; which isn't always a good sign, but I found some useful and interesting stuff posted.
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* There's a [http://www.5x4.co.uk/index.php UK Large Format Forum] too; not very active though.
* 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.
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* The listings for [https://www.leitz-auction.com/auction/en/pastauctions past auctions at Westlicht] (now '''Leitz''' Photographica Auction) in Vienna: a good place to see good pictures of some cameras that you may never see anywhere else, even unique ones. I have often used these pictures to check details of cameras for articles in the wiki. You can't embed these pictures in the wiki, but I cite them as references. New auctions happen twice every year. I was tickled one time, to find a line of text from the wiki used in one of the auction's descriptions! Yeah - we made the big time! The auctions got smaller during the pandemic. They change the format of their URL every now and then, to keep me busy.
 
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* For wiki articles, I often search for patents at [https://worldwide.espacenet.com Espacenet], the European Patent Office's patent-search site.
 
 
 
 
  
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==New to-do list==
 +
(there's also an ''old'' to-do list of ideas that will never get done, commented out here. It's not secret; you can read it in 'edit' mode; but don't expect me to ''do'' any of those ideas.)
  
 +
New ideas to do, sometime:
 +
*Keep an eye on Leitz Auction. They still haven't finished transferring to their new listing; Auctions 1 and 2/3, plusthe 10-Years auction are still on the old URL, and someof the auctions (20th) don't have all their pictures. Will they ever put this right? They seem to have gone to sleep until the next auction. It would be good to investigate automating link updating. I have gone through correcting every Westlicht/Leitz auction link twice now: it would be good to have a tool that made that quicker if it ever happens again, but I'm not sure I can program that sort of thing.
 +
* Look up Ross HK7 and later models. Find out about Ross AB. Who was this? Why called Ross? What was Hasselblad doing there? Did this company end up as H~? HK presumably Hand Kamera? Is there enough about each camera to make a separate page,or just one for Ross?
  
==A vague to-do list==
 
These are things I hope to do some work on. 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!===
 
* Continue blocking 'Silent Users': wiki accounts that have never made any edits:
 
** I could make the 'Silent User notice' text into a Template, which would make each page quite a lot smaller.
 
** Investigate these users: people I didn't block
 
*** [[User:Fastglassncars]] - might well be a real person, but has made no edits in a year
 
*** [[User:CalvinNAGz]] - made one edit; clearly a human typing, but just to drop a commercial link. Block, probably.
 
  
 
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<!--
* Find out more about Target of Paris. Coll App has catalogue pages from 1904. Their folding stereo camera (maybe the non-stereo equiv. too) is rebadged Ernemann. They have other cameras inc several called Favori. Try to identify these as rebadged; but the co may have made some of their own.
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==An old to-do list==
 
 
* Finish adding patents to the links at [[Autographic]]
 
* ''Start'' the list of patents at the (currently pretty pathetic) page on [[Carpentier]]
 
* 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.
 
* Not long 'til the next Westlicht auction - always good for some good pictures of examples of things we already have, useful for fleshing out some stub pages; and worth checking for cameras we haven't got yet.
 
 
 
===Sometime===
 
 
(realistically, this list hasn't changed in at least a year: if you feel like relieving me of one of these guilty burdens, please do!)
 
(realistically, this list hasn't changed in at least a year: if you feel like relieving me of one of these guilty burdens, please do!)
 
* Write the Century Graphic its own page (perhaps the Crown should also be separated from the Speed too: a focal plane shutter is quite a big deal, and the lens usage of the two is different too). The CG isn't a small Speed, it's more like a small Crown; and what the hell is a ''flexible wire viewfinder''?  ('''Ross: if you want to do this, go ahead. I know you have one of these too! :) ''')
 
* Write the Century Graphic its own page (perhaps the Crown should also be separated from the Speed too: a focal plane shutter is quite a big deal, and the lens usage of the two is different too). The CG isn't a small Speed, it's more like a small Crown; and what the hell is a ''flexible wire viewfinder''?  ('''Ross: if you want to do this, go ahead. I know you have one of these too! :) ''')
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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.
 +
-->

Latest revision as of 01:48, 26 March 2024

About me

Hello!

I live in England. I resist the idea that I'm a collector, but I have more cameras than I can do justice to as a user (a few dozen). 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.

My own cameras include several that I feel guilty for owning, because they're so good, and I use them so little: in no particular order, my Century Graphic; Mamiya 645 Pro ; Ensign Reflex; Agfa Standard 208 (9x12 cm); Calumet CC-401 4x5-inch monorail; and quarter-plate Speed Ensign.

An important one is a Canon EOS M50; life nowadays gets in the way of doing much with film, so got this, my first modern digital, to keep a toe-hold on some photography. It's not the same; but I have come to love it; particularly how it keeps going in the dark.

The community of old-camera-owners on the web sometimes generates occasions for using them:

  • 127 Days (12 July and 27 January) for cameras that use 127 film. Summer 127 Day is also George Eastman's birthday; I'm glad we mark that. We owe him a lot.
  • Take Your Box Camera to Work Day. I first spotted this at Flickr. It changes its name, and moves round the calendar a bit. The idea is great.
  • Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day: look for pinholeday.org; usually falls in April.

Being an admin

I was promoted to be one of the admins for the wiki (list of admins: there are something like six of us: I'm only near the top of that list for alphabetical-order reasons). If you need 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.

A wiki is a kind of collective. The articles were written by many people, and if your question is about the content of an article ('how old is this camera?'), it's quite likely that we admins may not know; but feel free to ask. As admins, we are here to enforce rules (rules of conduct, rules of style, rules about copyright), on the rare occasions that's necessary.

Camera-related websites I use

For all its faults, I don't know anything else as good as Flickr for hosting your pictures. It's where the wiki gets all its pictures. I have stayed there through several big changes. Nice little groups have formed (and disbanded). I'm still happy with what I get for what I pay. This is the first page of my photos at Flickr; all the photos I take for any reason, not just old-cameras stuff.

Other camera-related sites I go to include these:

  • Photrio is a big discussion forum. It has all the strengths and weaknesses that internet fora usually have. There are some opinionated fools with loud voices, and some cliques. There are also some people who know what they are talking about, and aren't too grand to help you. Photrio used to be APUG, which was very intolerant of digital-camera users. Photrio isn't quite like that, but those people are still there. It has For Sale and Wanted boards.
  • Photo.net was a big forum site, and good for informed discussion of old cameras. It is still a good place to search for old posts about your own current difficulty, or see who else has posted about the camera you've just bought. I have cited photo.net forum posts as sources of details in the wiki, once or twice. It's much-reduced in the level of current activity though, and the quality of that activity is pretty poor too. The site is clunky and primitive compared to Flickr. The site was sold to CreativeLive, and then CreativeLive was sold to Fiverr, and it's moved to new forum software both times. The last move (October '22) was chaotic; the new owners didn't know they owned it - its a minor, dormant asset of the company they meant to buy. So it has little support from the owners, but they haven't switched off the lights. They restricted the built-in search to just the last ten years, which isn't helpful.
  • I registered at the Large Format Photography forum. 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. I don't go there much, but it's good.
  • There's a UK Large Format Forum too; not very active though.
  • The listings for past auctions at Westlicht (now Leitz Photographica Auction) in Vienna: a good place to see good pictures of some cameras that you may never see anywhere else, even unique ones. I have often used these pictures to check details of cameras for articles in the wiki. You can't embed these pictures in the wiki, but I cite them as references. New auctions happen twice every year. I was tickled one time, to find a line of text from the wiki used in one of the auction's descriptions! Yeah - we made the big time! The auctions got smaller during the pandemic. They change the format of their URL every now and then, to keep me busy.
  • For wiki articles, I often search for patents at Espacenet, the European Patent Office's patent-search site.

New to-do list

(there's also an old to-do list of ideas that will never get done, commented out here. It's not secret; you can read it in 'edit' mode; but don't expect me to do any of those ideas.)

New ideas to do, sometime:

  • Keep an eye on Leitz Auction. They still haven't finished transferring to their new listing; Auctions 1 and 2/3, plusthe 10-Years auction are still on the old URL, and someof the auctions (20th) don't have all their pictures. Will they ever put this right? They seem to have gone to sleep until the next auction. It would be good to investigate automating link updating. I have gone through correcting every Westlicht/Leitz auction link twice now: it would be good to have a tool that made that quicker if it ever happens again, but I'm not sure I can program that sort of thing.
  • Look up Ross HK7 and later models. Find out about Ross AB. Who was this? Why called Ross? What was Hasselblad doing there? Did this company end up as H~? HK presumably Hand Kamera? Is there enough about each camera to make a separate page,or just one for Ross?