Difference between revisions of "User:Dustin McAmera"

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m (Soon!: deleted one job as done)
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===Soon!===
 
===Soon!===
*Find more biog of Magnus [[Niéll]] if poss. Who was Simons in Cologne? Who was Wallace in NY?
 
*Look for Niell's self-erecting camera (pat is while in London).
 
 
*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.
 
*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.
  

Revision as of 18:16, 29 September 2016

About me

Hello!

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

I was promoted to be one of the 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 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 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 Century Graphic, my 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 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 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.


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, 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.
  • I recently 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; quite new. I've registered but haven't posted anything yet.
  • 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.

A vague 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!

  • When I come across ISBNs in articles, I'm putting nowiki tags round them. By default the wiki turns an ISBN into a clickable link which sends you to a short list of searches on booksellers' websites.

Sometime

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

  • 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.