Camera-wiki.org:Community discussions/Archive02

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Old discussions

Please do not edit this page. If you wish to continue any of these discussions, or to argue against any of their conclusions, please restart the discussion at the foot of Camera-wiki.org:Community discussions or in some other appropriate (non-archive) talk page.


"Category:Viewfinder"

I think we've used this to mean a camera that doesn't show you when you've focused right: with "scale-focused" (guess focused, separate-rangefinder focused, zone-focused) cameras principally in mind. But how about fix-focused cameras? Should they be a subcategory of "Viewfinder"? -- Hoary 20:03, 1 July 2006 (EDT)

What does "Classic" mean?

What does "classic" mean here? ("Old"? "Famous"? "Surprisingly expensive on the used market"? "Liked by the person who added it to this template"? Some combination of these? Something else?) -- Hoary 22:20, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

"Classic camera collection", nearly everybody in the web likes to appraise his collection of cameras as classic. At camerapedia the term should better be used for superb designs of a certain camera class, like in Template:Compact classic, or milestones in camera design and technology achieved by a certain manufacturer, like in Template:Minolta classic. (U. Kulick)

The former description raises the question of what "superb" is. The Zunow looks great on paper but in actual use it's the complete reverse of superb because of a very small number of fatal design flaws. A classic or not a classic? Near the other end of the 35mm SLR price scale, how about the Pentax K1000? To judge by its pricing, just an uninteresting old camera; to judge by the comments of its users, a superbly reliable camera and an underappreciated classic. As for the latter description, it would certainly cover the Zunow but I don't see how it would cover such different "classics" as the Canon P or Nikon F2. I'm still sure that "classic" as a factor in categories and templates here is completely unhelpful. -- Hoary 18:18, 3 December 2006 (EST)

Not printable

I have created a CSS class named "noprint" in Mediawiki:Common.css. When you put some text between <div class="noprint"> and </div> tags, it should not appear in the printable version. Please could some people test this? --Rebollo fr 16:19, 25 July 2006 (EDT)

Well, er, maybe. But it all takes paper. Sensible use of paper is one thing, mindless waste another. So tell us first: with which browsers have you already tested this? Then I'll avoid any of those. Though come to think of it I anyway have only two CSS-capable browsers (a recent Mozilla and an oldish Konqueror) in the single machine that's connected to a printer. -- Hoary 03:58, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
I was not speaking about actually printing pages, only about testing the aspect of the "Printable version" that appears when you click on the corresponding link at the left of each page. This is because I have also fiddled with my own user CSS sheets, and I am not sure if the trick works for everyone. --Rebollo fr 04:21, 29 July 2006 (EDT)
Speaking of this, if you understand which CSS sheets are used by mediawiki and when, please explain. I reasonably understand the contents, but I don't understand why there are two stylesheets, common.css and mediawiki.css. --Rebollo fr 04:28, 29 July 2006 (EDT)

Pages Needing Cleanup

I just created a Template:Cleanup. You can add this to any page that requires cleanup and it will be automatically added to Category:Pages_Needing_Cleanup. --Lbstone 13:08, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

OK we will work a bit on the standards pages then use it. --Rebollo fr 05:42, 7 August 2006 (EDT)

Parser extension

I think that it would be good to have the ParserFunctions mediawiki extension. I have a few template ideas that could be set up that way:

  • an all-in-one camera specs template, without the 'battery' entry for a prewar folder and without the 'film advance' entry for a digicam
  • convenient pages for sources that are often cited, with a page that is at the time a descriptive page like Sources: Japanese language and a template that only inserts the needed book reference when some parameter is passed

Do you like these ideas, and is there some security concern with this extension? --Rebollo fr 05:42, 7 August 2006 (EDT)

I'll look into it. I think the cite extension was a really good idea, so I'm apt to trust your opinion on things like this. --Lbstone 10:33, 11 August 2006 (EDT)

Cuteness

I keep reading, e.g. here, of how this or that camera is "cute". I think "cute" here means "pretty" rather than "irritatingly intelligent"; pity, as the latter would make more sense.

You're entirely within your rights to regard that camera as pretty. I don't think it's pretty. (I think my Opema is pretty; I realize that you may disagree.)

Would anyone mind if I simply zapped such words as "cute"? -- Hoary 06:55, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Why not. It depends a bit on how these affirmations are expressed, if there is a context, if the aesthetics of the camera explains the way it was accepted at the time it was sold, etc.
Each time a camerapedian feels like writing his personal feelings about a camera, in some sort of user's review, I think he can do it in his own personal namespace, with a link from the camera's page. For example I wrote the section A user's point of view in the Contax S page, that would probably be better placed at User:Rebollo_fr/Contax S.
--Rebollo fr 11:08, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Antique units

This is not a message about frame size ("2¼×2¼", etc.).

Minolta Vectis 3000 tells me that the camera's dimensions are "102 x 58 x 29,5 mm (4 x 2,3 x 1,2 inch)". I think readers of Camerapedia will be acquainted with the metric system, and I'm inclined to delete (or, elsewhere, to "translate" from and then delete) stuff about inches, ounces, etc. But maybe this is because I'm European. Would any Americans (or others) object? -- Hoary 06:59, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

I think the dimensions should mainly be given in metric units, but that it doesn't harm if someone has added the foot/inch equivalent because he feels more comfortable with them. --Rebollo fr 10:53, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

I feel comfortable with the metric units too. But computers and digital cameras have brought back the inch to Germany. Especially disk size, chip size and display diameter are expressed in Zoll(=inch). I may have used inches and ounces as the only units to describe one or two cameras. The metric dimensions were not available for those cameras. Maybe most people who read camerapedia are from America, UK, and Commonwealth countries. They all are accustomed to inch and ounce, despite of the international standard: the metric units.

Why should't we describe antique cameras with antique units? U. Kulick, Aug 23rd '6

Yes, computers and digital cameras and so on have similarly brought back the inch (inchi) to Japan. I find this very silly and a bit depressing. I'm from Britain and I'm accustomed to millimetres! -- Hoary 19:27, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

camera nationalities

Hi Hoary I feel not comfortable when you're categorizing cameras made in Malaysia or China as Japanese ... . We distinguish between American, German and British Kodaks, so we should do with other brands. If the brand is Japanese you can't expect that all cameras of that camera maker from elsewhere are Japanese developments. Since Minolta has had a great diversity of products several of these may have been developed in China or Malaysia. I hope you categorize a camera with its type, and only as nationality-with-type when you know where the special camera originates from. Best regards, Uwe Uwe Kulick, Aug 23rd '6

You certainly have a good point there. When I categorized made-in-China Minolta cameras as Japanese, I wondered if I was doing the right thing. However, I hadn't heard that Minolta (or other "Japanese") cameras were designed outside Japan. (I may be wrong here.) As long as they were designed in Japan, I thought that they were (to a significant extent) "Japanese". Meanwhile I do realize that a huge percentage of "Japanese" products are manufactured outside Japan. (You'll notice that when I categorized made-in-China Minolta cameras as Japanese, I left the "China" category.)
Frankly, I don't know what to do here. I'd welcome your (and others') further comments and information. -- Hoary 19:24, 23 August 2006 (EDT)
I think that the country of a camera is the country where it was engineered.
You are right to say that it does not necessarily correspond with the brand: everybody agrees that a Nicca rebadged as "Sears Tower" is not an American camera.
But it does not always correspond to the country where it was manufactured. Let's make a comparison with cars: for some decades, the car makers manufacture their models in plants located outshore. It does not mean that the 'country' of the car has changed. This situation is different from the companies installed by big American groups in Europe, like Opel belonging to General Motors, or the Ford. As far as I know, the Opel cars are designed in Germany with German specifications, and everybody consider them as German. At some time, Ford UK produced cars specifically designed in UK to British specifications, and today they are considered as British cars, unlike the cars that happen to be produced today in the Ford plants located in Britain. This is the same thing for the Kodak AG, Kodak Ltd of Kodak Pathé divisions of Kodak, that made cameras with their own specifications. These national particularities probaly existed because the communication between the owning company in US and the engineering and manufacturing country in Europe was slower than it is today.
For recent cameras, it is possible that some part of the engineering process is outsourced to some company in China or Taiwan, but I think that in most of the cases, the specifications are still defined by the Japanese company owning the brand. However maybe some products are bought off-the-shelf to a foreign subcontractor. In these cases, we can probably consider that the camera belongs to the country of the engineering subcontractor. They are more likely to be the most inexpensive ones, with the most non-photographic brands (brands originally associated in electronics, apposed to digicams). It is likely that you (U. kulick) have more information than me about these outsourcing contracts.
Of course, all these country distinctions are beginning harder and harder to make. Once again, it is probably due to the acceleration of the ways of communication (allowing the discussion we are having today), and to the easiness and (temporarily?) low cost of the transport of parts and assembled products from one corner of the world to the next. Some case studies:
  1. Are the current Zeiss Ikon cameras German or Japanese? It seems that they are designed in Germany, but to what extent?
  2. What is the nationality of the Samsung clones of the Pentax DSLRs? Or are they Pentax clones of Samsung DSLRs?
  3. What is the nationality of the Seagull clones of Minolta SLRs? The earliest ones are Chinese: it seems that they copied the Minolta SLRs in the 60s without Minolta's help. But what about the later ones, after they cooperated with Minolta to produce the X-300?
  4. What is the nationality of the Vivitar brand???
  5. Is Camerapedia an American site, the four most frequent contributors being British, German, Dutch and French?
--Rebollo fr 06:23, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

Interesting.

I don't think we know the extent to which the "Zeiss Ikon" is designed by Cosina. I think that the number of people who would pay more money for (a) a Zeiss Ikon made to German order in Japan than for (b) a Japanese "Zeiss Ikon" made with the consent of Zeiss is so high that neither Zeiss nor Cosina would suggest much Japanese input. (In addition, Cosina may be prevented from doing so.)

However, just today I was reading about the Contax RTS, and how Yashica engineers worked hard to come up with designs that met Zeiss's demands. I haven't read so much about it yet, but I have read that for example it has a shutter designed as well as built by Yashica. -- Hoary 06:52, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

Categorization of digital cameras

First, a preamble. As more and more cameras that have Japanese brand names are actually made outside Japan, the issues raised immediately above, within "camera nationalities", also arise here. But for now, I'm going to ignore them.

Let's go back fifty years. A few freaks designed for plates aside, cameras all took film. They were made in different nations (and there was rarely any ambiguity about the nation), they took different sizes of film, and they had different viewers. Then it was, and now it is, easy to categorize these cameras in ways that are useful and perhaps interesting.

Of course most new cameras are now digital, and most are made in east Asia. For some people, the size of the CCD is very important but for most people it isn't. The most conspicuously advertised "statistic" is the number of pixels -- but while "6×6" has an unambiguous meaning (it's a conventionalized exaggeration), I don't think that "6 megapixels" does.

What do we have now? Category:Digital includes Category:Digital SLR (which may be subdivided by lens mount), Category: Digital rangefinder (which I don't expect will ever have more than half a dozen members), and what threatens to be a huge number of digital cameras that aren't SLR and don't focus by rangefinder. I suppose they could be divided into fixed-focus, zone-focus and autofocus, but the huge and increasing majority seem to be autofocus.

Can/should Category:Digital be split up in any other way? (My own gut feeling tells me Digital cameras that have usable alternatives to the LCD screen or similar, but it's not so good (the optical finder in an old Nikon Coolpix is only marginally usable, etc etc).

Ideas? -- Hoary 06:52, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

Is the number of pixels that much exaggerated? Something like Category:Digital between 2 and 3 megapixels (or Category:Digital 2–3 MP) is perhaps viable. The classification I tend to see in photo magazines is something like "ultra-thin cameras", "compact cameras", "bridge cameras", but for some reason I'm sure you won't like it. --Rebollo fr 18:19, 24 August 2006 (EDT)

No I don't, because they seem either fluid terms or marketing gimmickry or both. As for numbers of pixels, I thought that some companies added the number of interpolated pixels, etc etc. -- Hoary 08:33, 26 August 2006 (EDT)

Index of companies

There is already an index of camera models, maybe we could consider creating an index for companies, that would be accessible from the main page. Some will object that there is already the Category: Camera makers, but it does not cover all the companies (lens makers, distributors, film makers, etc.). Moreover the Japanese companies are in a separate sub-category, and it is likely that other separations by country will be made in the future. --Rebollo fr 05:21, 26 August 2006 (EDT)

How do I remove a #redirect ?

At the moment Rollop is redirected immediately to Roll-Op. Actually, the first camera was a TLR made by Lipca and the second was a RF by Plaubel. I'd like to undo this redirect. How do I do that?--driesvandenelzen 16:48, 27 August 2006 (EDT)

Click on Rollop. Yes, you'll be redirected to Roll-Op. However, there'll be an inconspicuous link at the top, saying that you were redirected from Rollop. Click this link. Now you'll see, and be able to edit, the redirect page. -- Hoary 19:00, 27 August 2006 (EDT)

Beginners Doubts!

Have just joined and thought I'd like to add a few paragraphs to two makers that I know a bit about - Iloca & Montanus.

Iloca was easier in one sense - I just had to add to a list of models. Snag A - each one was an active link that led to a page that had no information on it. I just followed suit, but I feel that this is incorrect, as I would never make such a "dead link" on my own website. Once there is information, fine but I don't really think it helps the browser to end up at a page title!

The second one I modified was Rocca 35. I had the cameras in front of me, so could add a detailed specification for each.

This made the original brief summary look unnecessary as I had covered all the points, but in more detail. So I simply deleted it, bar one line. I have never been used to deleting other people's work and I almost feel I should apologise!

The urls I added were at the bottom of the text it referred to, but I see that these are now being gathered together in a section of their own. Is my method frowned on?

Paul

Hello and welcome here!
You are right about the red links (links to a page that does not exist) in the camera lists: while we are not ready to fill the corresponding pages, it is preferable not to put a link. It will be up to the person who creates a new camera page to add the link in the maker's camera list. However, it is sometimes useful to put red links inside textual paragraphs and inside other pages, because the person who adds a new page will probably not search the whole site to add each and every possible link to his new page.
It is usual to group the external links in a section of their own at the bottom of the page, except if there is some special reason to have them inside the text. There is a powerful system of footnotes to cite sources (web pages or books), it is explained in the Citing sources page.
We should not add links to commercial sites, like the sites selling cameras or user manuals. It would create a precedent that would rapidly be exploited by some unscrupulous shop owners to use Camerapedia as a free advertising support.
You may delete what other people and rewrite it, for example if you know that it is wrong, if you feel that it is badly written or if you intend to present it in a broader perspective. The important point is not to delete information. When you think there can be an ambiguity in your change, for example because you deleted information that you know to be false, you can explain this in the talk page (Talk:Rocca 35). For heavy changes involving much deletion, it is advised to leave a message on the talk page first to see if there is a reaction of the person who wrote the page in the first place.
A remark about Iloca is that we are trying hard not to confuse the makers (companies) and the brands. I'm not sure if Iloca is just a brand of Witt or if the company was named Iloca at some time. If it is just a brand, we should have a Witt page with a history of the company and a list of models, and the Iloca page should be either a mere redirect to Witt or a page about the Iloca family if the cameras have enough common features.
I hope you will enjoy your experience here.
--Rebollo fr 15:01, 29 August 2006 (EDT)
Thank you for your welcome. I have now used one of the "redundant" Iloca links to write a page about the Iloca electric. I have tried to write it uniquely for Camerapedia, so that it does not duplicate the content of my own web site page. I have tried to make more of the Electric's position within the contemporary marketplace. Do you think it is of the standard you require or is it too long?
For some time now I have been compiling links on my own web site for interesting cameras. The problem does really seem to be the fact that a lot of these private individuals abandon after a little while and you are left with a collection of dead links:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200424074748/http://www.ukcamera.com/collect/history1.htm (archived)
Also, though I agree with you in principle, some commercial organisations produce interesting and unique information of value to all camera collectors.
Every one of these has unique information - in my case Irregular Regulas has been the most help:
http://www.mwclassic.com/articles/informa.htm
Another one that comes to mind is:
http://www.marriottworld.com/index_articles.htm
Both of these are "Commercial organisations" in every sense of the word.
Then what about Stephen Gandy? - His criticism of the Retina IIIC started me collecting Retinas!
I fear that much of what I write is confined to my experience of handling the cameras. What I lack is the background to the industry. There are several books in German dealing with this issue and I only wish more German collectors would write a contribution here, else the whole history of makers such as Iloca, Montanus, Braun, Lordomat etc will pass into the mists of time.
Paul (Paulatukcamera)
Hello Paul! Welcome. I had just started the Rocca 35 page today and the alterations you made were great improvements. You said you had a Rocca 35 in front of you while writing the article. Any chance of putting pictures of the camera in the article? --driesvandenelzen 16:17, 29 August 2006 (EDT)
I have four of them. I will put up pictures soon - I was going to do an article on them for my web site entitled "A rose tinted view on life" I have a Rocca 35, a Rocca 3 and a Roccamatic plus a Hanimex version. Seems I am alone in the world with my collection! Sylvain has one and I did him a similar review. I have found one advert detailing the models. They seemed to have vanished about 1960. I have the original announcement in the UK of the model in 1959 and I always thought that was when they were launched. You seem to think 1958. Any evidence for that?
Have you run your professional eye over the Iloca Electric article - it is not in the format you recommend, which is really a specification list. Should I add one?
On another tack - should there be an article on the Deckel Mount?
I had this published earlier and could rehash it:
http://cameracollector.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=range&action=display&thread=1128391994
What do you think? This was the common link between so many mid-priced rangefinders.
Three points. No mention of Robot anywhere - I was going to link my references in the Iloca article. Camera models E - need to pick up my electric page, yet seems uneditable so I couldn't add it! Zunow pages exist, but aren't on the front page index.
Paul (Paulatukcamera)
I completely agree with what you say about articles hosted by a "commercial" website, or written by a shop owner, and I have no problem with such links. What I want to avoid is the links directly pointing to an object (camera, book or whatever) offered for sale.
I read the Iloca Electric article and I like it, I think comments about the market acceptance (or not) of a camera are as important as the specs. Personnally I don't like the spec lists and I prefer to include them in the main article, but tastes differ. You can have a look at the Quality Standards page to have an idea of what is expected. Don't be afraid to write something that would be too long, just visit the list of long pages to see that long pages are good.
However I would change the title to a simpler Iloca Electric and make a redirect from Graphic 35 Electric.
An article about the Deckel mount would be interesting. Indeed we have nothing about Robot, that's a major lack. I have just added a link to Zunow in the main page.
Lastly the "E" index page is not an ordinary page but a category. To see the Iloca Electric appear in this page you have to add [[Category: E|Electric]] at the bottom of the Iloca's page. You can read the Indexing a page help page to learn more about the category system.
--Rebollo fr 17:44, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

Thought I'd try and remedy the lack of Robot information. Literally "cobbled" a page up from the only catalogue I have of the make. Can add more information once I start looking at my various period camera guides. This will have to suffice for tonight. I can probably photocopy it for illustrations. Not in correct format yet - will depend on what other information I can unearth.

Another favourite camera of mine is the Beauty and I think I now have an example of every model from 1958 on, so could illustrate an article.

PaulPaulatukcamera 18:34, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

And a welcome from me too. I've just been tinkering with the Robot page and hope I haven't messed it up.
A word about your suggestion: I can probably photocopy it for illustrations. These illustrations will be copyright. I don't suppose that Berning (or whatever the company is called these days) would mind such a use of its own illustrations, but they'd still be copyright. And if the illustrations were to come from some other source (the editorial staff of some camera magazine, for example), the copyright holder might mind a lot. Be very cautious. Further, even if you determined that such recycling of the illustrations would be trouble free, there's the matter of hosting. Most, perhaps all of the camera photos here now are hosted by Flickr, in full accordance (we believe and hope) with Flickr's own requirements. If I remember right, one of these requirements is that the images are your own photographs. Your own photograph of a camera is of course your own photograph; your own scan of somebody else's illustration or photograph of course is not.
This is all very irritating as I too have a variety of illustrations that would benefit Camerapedia. But let's be patient. -- Hoary 19:26, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

On the subject of illustrations - I try and take my own and that has been the "holdup" as I haven't really established a "studio" to take photos of camera. I have bought a large transparency viewer on Erik's (Tigin) suggestion as it gives shadow free backgrounds. On top of that I use a couple of spots. Every inch of my office is covered in "stuff" so I have to exit to the bedroom! My better half objects to it being left up, so I have to be well motivated to get things going. I will set it up and take Rocca pictures - I promise.

What I will try and do is be an occasional contributing visitor, not an editing one. In a sense you all have a firm grasp of the shape & direction and I think that what is needed is more "seed capital" something that was demonstrated yesterday with Hoary's editing of my original notes on Robot. I tend to do things in "unedited" stages. I normally start articles and then complete them much later (grasshopper mind?):

e.g https://web.archive.org/web/20060712223949/http://www.ukcamera.com/zunow/ (archived)

This is a bad case, for it is now a year later and I still haven't made time to scan the original catalogue I was sent. Also with subjects like this correspondents pop up and give you information.

I also don't want to have a conflict of interest. I feel that UKcamera should be the first to benefit from my researches and have a full blown article (as with the Iloca) and then I use the information and try and do a shortened version for here - not a precis, but giving the information a different slant, so people have an incentive to come to my website if they discover camerapedia first. The Zunow article is an example of this - I hope it will be a source of information for the camerapedia when complete.

I have this interest in the "obscure" and ordinary from the 50s & 60s, so will not be adding much to say the history of say Minolta!


As to hosting of pictures, owning a large website does give me unlimited image hosting, so I don't have to rely on flikr. If I might add, I think this is the "Achilles" heel of this project, for your hosting is not an integrated whole. If the project is to survive and thrive, it has to have control of all its resources in my opinion.

If it is to be a permanent historical resource I can see no alternative to public hosting rather than private. I know the owner has dealt with this point, but like me, we are not eternal! I have been trying to get my son interested in UKcamera, but in this case I would think that institutes like the Bradford's National Museum of the Media would be the ones to approach.

Paul

I'll copy the remarks concerning the Rocca 35 to the Talk:Rocca 35 page. Let's continue our discussion there.--driesvandenelzen 03:23, 30 August 2006 (EDT)
I understand that there can be conflicts of interest if you're already running another website. It's nice from you to contribute with content, not simply adding links to your site like some people do. I think that the people regularly contributing content to Camerapedia don't have any other site.
I like your Zunow article, that I had already visited before. Believe me or not, I have seen a Malik at least once or twice in a French camera fair some years ago. The zoom lens was different from the picture you are reproducing, it had a big knob on one side to change the focal length. If I remember well, the price asked was FF50,000 (it was before the euro), that is about £5,000.
I agree with your remarks about image hosting and public hosting, but Camerapedia first needs more quality content to be recognized as a viable and credible project. Maybe there will be a Camerapedia fundation in the future, with fund-raising campaigns and so on, but it won't happen this soon.
About Flickr, I know that their rules and guidelines state that you must only host pictures that you took yourself. I also know that some people are breaking this rule by hosting pictures given to them by eBayers. I think that, while we don't abuse, Flickr won't give us too much trouble with this because Camerapedia gives them some publicity, scrupulously linking every page to their website. For example, I discovered Flickr through Camerapedia.
About the reproduction of old advertising material, I'm really wondering. I notice that Camerapedia is probably the only camera site that takes care of not publishing +20 year old advertisements because they are under copyright. If the companies and editorial staffs cared that much, many collectors' websites would have closed their door or removed their images. I understand that it is not possible to publish recent pictures of equipment scanned in a magazine, or brochure of the Nikon D200, but I really wonder who would feel offended by an Iloca or Malik ad, or even a Nikon S one. I think we just need to add a mention stating that the image is under copyright, is not released under the GFDL and is only inserted for non-commercial information purpose. But I also understand that the rules at Camerapedia rules need to be a bit tougher than elsewhere, because everybody can add things that would put us into trouble if we don't state somewhere that they're forbidden.
--Rebollo fr 07:06, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

The subject of copyright does trouble me - I have now collected hundreds of old catalogues and they could be used for serious research. Yesterday's "quick lets do a Robot page" was based on such a catalogue.

I have tried to get a definitive answer, but have failed. This is what I think:

  • Manufacturer's Catalogue - originator's copyright
  • Magazine Ad - Manufacturer's copyright?
  • Photograph used in catalogue (i.e. Leica uses more than most) - Photographer -until 70 years after his death.
  • Photograph taken by employee of manufacturer and used in catalogue - Manufacturer.

Nobody has yet defined to me when a manufacturer's copyright expires. 70 years after closure? 70 years after publication? In which case everything prior to 1936 is now in the public domain. (Some eBay sellers are assuming this and publishing CDs of old catalogues)

Any further thoughts?

paul

I think you are right. For an advertisement I think the copyright holder is whoever made the ad, it was frequently the company itself in ancient times but today it is more likely to be an external advertising company. I would be interested to know when the manufacturer's copyright expires too, and would appreciate the help of those who understand these matters well.
However we're only discussing the right to reproduce a copy of the ad, or a picture, or to copy verbatim. Of course, everyone is allowed to use the information contained in a catalogue. If not, no research would be possible.
--Rebollo fr 08:20, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

New main page

I intend to replace soon the current main page by Main Page/Draft2. I have a problem with spurious "edit" links in that work version. A radical way to overcome it would be to protect the new mainpage, making it editable only by admins, but it is maybe not what we want. Could somebody please help with this?

Could you also please participate in the choice of the articles of the month?

--Rebollo fr 07:16, 31 August 2006 (EDT)

I have just looked at the front page - what a great improvement. Clear, concise and a model of "how it should be done" Well Done! (I earn my living by appraising business web sites, so that is is a semi-professional opinion!) So many web designers are unable to be concise.

I hope you will consider a few modifications to the introductory paragraph to "tighten it up a bit".

"This site is a free-content encyclopedia of camera information, meant to be a repository for information and links to information about all still camera brands and models."

I'd delete the "meant to be" and the "brands" "This site is a free-content encyclopedia of camera information, a repository for information and links to information about all still camera makers and models."

As brands are the trade names of manufacturers, they are really secondary in the scheme of things - even though, in most cases, they are better known than the makers name!

Alternatively, if you don't like that, perhaps add "still camera makers, brand names and models"

"free-content encyclopedia". I know what you mean, but that concept will be foreign to many visitors. Perhaps take it out of the first line and insert it afterwards - something on the lines of:

Camerapedia is an encyclopedia of camera information, a repository for information and links to information about all still camera makers, brand names and models. It is based on the "wiki" concept and everyone can contribute freely to its construction. (something on those lines)


"You may know your camera equipment as well as anyone. Please share that knowledge with everyone and contribute." I think the word "may" in this context is superfluous.

OK, OK, I know this may be viewed as being a bit "pedantic", but the point of "fiddling" with the first para is that really this is the "headline ad" Given the brief attention span of most browsers, it is important that it gets their attention immediately.

Paul

Your suggestions are most welcome. I just copied and pasted the current introductory paragraph, and a clean-up is a good thing indeed.
Re-reading the first sentence, I see that the word "information" appears three times. :I suggest: "This site is a free camera encyclopedia, a repository for information and links and that should cover all the still camera models and companies. It is based on the "wiki" concept and everyone can contribute freely to its construction."
I'll continue to work about it in the next days. --Rebollo fr 05:56, 2 September 2006 (EDT)

Use of old advertising materials

This is a part of a message whose rest was transfered at User talk:Paulatukcamera by Rebollo_fr.

I personally think taking catalogue pictures of cameras & posting them here as being legally acceptable. In my opinion, the most a maker can do is ask us to to take them down.

I think any claim for "damages" would not succeed for we are: 1. Not using them for a commercial purpose, but for historical research. 2. They gave them away in the first place to make sales! (this excludes, for obvious reasons, photos taken with the cameras used in say Leica catalogues)

For example, Nikon or Canon do not object to anyone taking a picture off their web site of a Nikon D200/Canon 30d and using it to sell cameras now, so why should they do so retrospectively?

If in doubt, I can host the catalogue pictures, so you can have the cover of "not us, we found`them on the web!"

Paul

The fact that you are hosting the catalogue pictures only resolves the problem with Flickr. Camerapedia is responsible of the content it displays, whether hosted in Flickr or anywhere else.
I personally think that it is not a problem to publish catalogues and ads that are more than twenty or thirty years old, if and only if we mention under each such image that it belongs to its copyright owner, that it is not released under the GFDL unlike the rest of the site and that it is used for non-commercial information purpose.
It would also need to trace a well-defined white line not to be trespassed. For example we could allow catalogues and advertisements older than XX years old, scanned from an original example, not from a modern reprint and not taken from someone else's website. We would exclude the sample pictures, any magazine article and any picture used to illustrate an article.
If we decide to allow this, it can only be a collective decision and it would need the approval of Lbstone, the founder of this site.
--Rebollo fr 15:14, 2 September 2006 (EDT)

Editing conflicts

A problem emerged this afternoon and I have written the following in the Konica C35 discussion section:

"This page has given rise to an editing conflict with Hoary and I lost half my work as he was editing it at the same time! I suggest respectfully, that in future we do not attempt to edit each other's pages until a reasonable period has elapsed - 1 day?

The problem with the Wiki system is that it can so easily degenerate into a series of conflicting edits. With so few contributors to this project, it seems best that we each "just get on with it" and make helpful comments on the discussion pages for each article.

I have no wish to make minor corrections to other people's pages and I am certain that this would discourage a lot of newcomers (I am not so easily suppresssed!)

I agree that there should be a place for corrections and actually I think Hoary's annotated comments did induce a re-write sooner than I intended which made the description a lot better.

Paul

Editing conflicts do not necessarily mean that you are losing your work, here I cut and paste what I added to Talk:Konica C35 because it can help other people later:
"To avoid editing conflicts, I sometimes add Work in Progress at the top of the page when I am heavily editing a long article. However, even when an editing conflict occurs, you don't lose your article completely: two windows appear, one with the text newly edited by the other contributor and another one (that appears only if you scroll down) with your text. You can cut and paste your text (second window) into the page (first window) and click "Apply"."
--Rebollo fr 13:38, 2 September 2006 (EDT)
I disagree about minor corrections. I think that they are useful and necessary to have a website that is minimally coherent. For example I have already applied hundreds of minor corrections to write the model names in bold, to add the name of the maker with a link to its page, to index the page in the categories, and so on. It is also a way to show some syntax tricks to the newcomers. If someone feels offended that another person is applying corrections to his page, I guess he won't stay very long among the contributors of a wiki site. Of course I understand that editing conflicts are annoying, it is indeed good to wait a couple of hours before editing a page where someone else has worked. --Rebollo fr 13:50, 2 September 2006 (EDT)

Copyright Issues

The following is probably a matter that should be brought to the notice of Mr Stone.

I have added three illustrations from the Konica catalogue to the Konica Hexar stub and acknowledged that copyright belongs to Konica.

This catalogue was given away free to potential customers. The illustrations were freely available at the time to camera shops selling this camera.

This use is for legitimate research, so I feel that as we have only copied a small fraction of the document and this is normally allowed for "research purposes" we should be OK.

If you feel this reasoning is not adequate in itself, then I am quite willing to write and ask Konica-Minolta for permission, though this might carry more authority if it were from the owner or an administrator, explaining the purpose behind the site.

I thought it better to leave it up as an example of what we intend, so they can see the context.

If this sort of thing cannot be permitted, then it restricts the illustrations and confines them purely to cameras we own. With so few contributors, this will make progress painfully slow. Besides a lot of people might not be very interested in my Roccas & Retinas! The obvious, but not so easy, alternative is to recruit contributors who own moadern cameras like the Hexar.

I feel there is an advantage to seeking permission from the manufacturers - I am certain they will see the value of this project and it may be possible to get funding.

Paul

New main page applied

That's it, I applied the new main page, as you obviously all noticed. There is still the problem of bogus edit links, though. --Rebollo fr 18:35, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

Camerapedia pages copied to Wikipedia

I have noticed that some of Camerapedia's pages have been copied to Wikipedia. See for example WP's List of Fujifilm products, Goerz (company), Nicca and Fujimoto. All these WP edits were made by one contributor.

I have no problem with cutting and pasting Camerapedia's GFDL content to Wikipedia, as we have done the reverse in a couple of examples. However when we did this we mentioned on the page that it was based on a WP page. This is not what the WP contributor did and I don't find this very fair.

I think that we should add to the WP pages a link redirecting to our page, notifying that it is the original page. I'll think about the formulation, to state it clearly but not offensively. I hesitate between the following:

If someone comes up with a better idea, he can apply it.

--Rebollo fr 17:16, 10 September 2006 (EDT)

The third version has the absolute clarity the others lack. I think that "copy & pasting" of this sort is not on. If somebody did it to my additions, I would take grave exception unless they made its origins crystal clear. The idea of this type of website is that everybody adds something to the common good of their own. Copy & pasting is not part of the remit.

Personally, I'd tell him so directly, ask him to to remove them and contribute something that was original.

Paulatukcamera 17:40, 10 September 2006 (EDT)

Yes, I'm puzzled too. It seems that the Wikipedia "contributor" had a troublesome behaviour in Wikipedia, and that he is no longer active. I note your preference for the third version, it remains the question of where to put it, at the top or at the bottom of the page.
All in all, I think that I will wait until Hoary is back, he is also admin at Wikipedia and will have more credibility there to clear up that mess.
--Rebollo fr 17:52, 10 September 2006 (EDT)

Sorry, for some reason it's only now that I notice this conversation here. I had previously noticed a list on Rebollo fr's own page of these "borrowings". I started to go through these on WP a week or two ago; but I soon became very busy with entirely unrelated affairs, paused, and during this pause forgot all about the issue. I hope to resume soon. (If I don't, complain, loudly!)

Incidentally, if we look at the way the pages were first slapped on to WP, we can see that their "contributor" did so without even token concern for WP. Aside from the matter of crediting CP, the need for certain changes to the material was blazingly obvious; the contributor didn't make any of them and so showed a similar degree of contempt for CP and WP. -- Hoary 02:19, 7 October 2006 (EDT)

I am working on this right now. What I'd like to do is to provide for "[[Camerapedia:ARTICLE]]". (Please examine this template.) I can't, because Camerapedia is not registered in the Interwiki map. On balance, I think that registering it would be a good idea -- although of course it would make CP a lot more conspicuous to people interested in wikis (as opposed to photography), for example, those interested in vandalizing wikis. So I'm not rushing to have CP registered (even if I'm eligible to do so). -- Hoary 02:55, 7 October 2006 (EDT)

Done. The articles that were grabbed from CP and dumped into WP were -- How should I put this? -- not obviously samples of CP at its finest. I therefore did some editing. I'm now tempted to copy back: Wikipedia's "Fixed focus" (as I've renamed it) already credits CP's oddly named "Fixed focusing"; after copying back, CP's "Fixed focus" (as I'd rename it) would credit WP's "Fixed focus", and .... urgh, it would all look like some kind of inside joke or something. So I shan't copy back after all. -- Hoary 04:03, 7 October 2006 (EDT)

Thank you for your reaction. I have no enthusiasm for the idea of adding Camerapedia to the "interwiki database". I cannot see what good it can do to CP, the people visiting the site most probably come from a Google search, and having it in some obscure interwiki page (whose existence I didn't know) wouldn't attract anybody in my opinion. By contrast, it would attract some vandals, as you have said, and it would probably increase the number of WP pseudo-contributors acting like the one we've just dealt with. --Rebollo fr 07:41, 7 October 2006 (EDT)

Big problem with the copyright rules

I think that we are having a really big problem with licensing and copyright rules. The copyright notice at the bottom of each page states that "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2." Compare with Wikipedia: "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.)"

Our sentence is bad. First it does not point to Camera-wiki.org:Copyrights and anyway this page is bad too. Second and more important, the word "content" includes the images. Thus absolutely every image that we're posting is illegitimately licensed under the GFDL. This is really bad because most of the images we are using have been licensed under Creative Commons by their owner (if he is license-minded) or has no clear license status (case of the images wishfully hosted and posted here by site owners).

The images at Wikipedia are not licensed under the GFDL, only the text is. It happens that the Wikipedia community is trying hard to publish only images with a "free" license, and this includes Creative Commons, but they do not forcefully release the images under the GFDL.

I strongly suggest that we replace our current sentence by the sentence used at Wikipedia. Then we will have to work on the Copyrights page to clarify some points. We need to explain to the potential "re-users" what is allowed and what is not. Especially we need to explain what is verbatim copying, like Wikipedia does here: is Camerapedia licensed as one single document or a collection of documents (pages)? We need to clarify the status of images too. At Wikipedia an image is considered to be "aggregated with the document". It is out of question for each image published here to be considered as a document on its own, released under the GFDL. We must respect the copyright/licence status of each image, leaving up to the potential copiers to check if they can re-use the images published here or not, and what are their obligations according to their licence status (attributing the picture, etc.)

This is something that really needs an answer.

--Rebollo fr 06:31, 17 September 2006 (EDT)

I took the decision to rework the Copyrights page myself. I hope that my new version is acceptable. The problem of the licensing sentence at the bottom of each page still remains. --Rebollo fr 16:25, 17 September 2006 (EDT)

Plagiarism

Not for the first time, I noticed that the current version of a page (Jupiter-8) had sentences and phrases left intact from an earlier version (in this case this one) that were taken from another page (this one by Alfred Klomp). I'm sleepy now and about to go to bed; perhaps others could check the other four articles with contributions by this IP. -- Hoary 11:44, 10 October 2006 (EDT)

There is probable plagiarism for the first sentence of the Viewfinder page, that has now been merged into the Camera page. The sentence seems to come from SkySgt's Astronomical Lexicon, that itself admits to have copied many definitions from "The American Heritage Dictionary - Second College Edition".
The picture inserted by this IP address into the Canon EF page is not linked back to Flickr. I can't find it in the Camerapedia pool and I commented out. (By the way, I can't find it in Flickr either and I had the occasion to notice that Flickr's search tool is poor, to say the least.)
The other contris of this IP are harmless.
I also found that the definition of a shutter in the Camera page is the same as in the Digital photography glossary by Cnet.com. However the Camerapedia edit is dated 25 July 2005 and made by Randem, a serious contributor with a clean contrib log, while the article is dated 29/8/2005: this is maybe a case of reverse plagiarism.
--Rebollo fr 15:01, 10 October 2006 (EDT)
Thank you for your continuing efforts, Rebollo fr. I shouldn't have done this chore myself at that time, because really I was so sleepy that I was almost falling off my chair, but now that I'm less sleepy I realize that I should have just shut up about it for 12 hours or so and then done the cleaning up myself. -- Hoary 22:33, 10 October 2006 (EDT)

Good external links

Currently Camerapedia is fixing nearly no limit to the introduction of external links, and I think that it is a good thing. However as a result, some pages end up with zillions of external links, some of them just showing a not so pretty picture of the camera, or a couple of sample pictures. I propose that we make a small template that would be added to the really good links to emphasize them, for example a small gold star or something like that. How do you like this idea? --Rebollo fr 18:08, 13 October 2006 (EDT)

Not very much, I must say. Let's face it, a certain amount of linkspamming and of manic completism ("Surely I can find one more link!") goes on. (At times I may have been guilty of the latter myself.) Links should be described honestly, or where appropriate (take a deep breath) cut. With the introduction of a system of gold stars (or whatever), linkspam will be routinely accompanied by gold stars, rendering the latter worthless. -- Hoary 20:21, 13 October 2006 (EDT)
You are right, a gold star is an invitation to spammers: "Hey, let's put this site here with a gold star".
I think that for some types of cameras, it is marginally useful to have a link to each and every page presenting a picture of the camera. It can be helpful for people to check the contents of the article about minor variations and so on. Of course this can be discussed too.
It is probably good to describe the links, like you did for most Japanese links in Olympus folders for example. It is also possible to alter the link ordering to emphasize some specially good one, instead of systematically ordering them in the chronological order of the variant presented. There must surely be a way to distinguish for example this ultra-complete Foca site (Roland Weber) or this other one (Gilles Delahaye) from this page, that is by no means bad, and deserves a link, but is obviously not as informative as the other two.
But I understand that this may not work in the context of a wiki site, where everyone has his own idea about what is a good external link.
--Rebollo fr 05:03, 14 October 2006 (EDT)

French language section

I think that it would be possible to translate some of Camerapedia articles to other languages. Of course some restrictions are needed.

First the language must be understood by at least two of the regular contributors, including one admin, so that we can have some control of what is written.

Second the translation effort should concern only a well-delimited area. In the current state of things, it would be totally unmaintainable to have an alternate language version of the whole site. We can first restrict the translation effort to the cameras made in a country where this language is spoken. That way the translated pages could attract contributors that have good knowledge of these cameras but can't read or write in English.

I can translate the articles of the Category: France to French, and I think that Hoary can check that I'm not writing insanities. The category is not enormous and the articles are not modified that often, so I think it is possible to maintain two language versions. The page titles would have the suffix "/fr" or "_fr", for ex. Cyclope/fr.

Somehow I guess that the answer to this suggestion will be no, but at least I wanted to expose the idea.

--Rebollo fr 06:43, 22 October 2006 (EDT)

While the ubiquity (hegemony) of English is a great personal convenience for me, I also find it sad, embarrassing, etc. I'm very much in favor of alternatives to English. Indeed, it occurs to me that if Camerapedia were in French and not English I'd have spent a lot more time reading French, I'd probably understand all I wanted to understand, and my French would be a lot better. So in principle, and/or temperamentally, I'm strongly in favor of this idea.
I might later (mis)translate from French or Japanese into English, but I'm not going to translate out of English. (You'd have to pay me. And then when you saw the quality of the work done, you'd want your money back.)
But let's not rush. Let's think it through. For example: The page titles would have the suffix "/fr" or "_fr", for ex. Cyclope/fr. There's a huge difference between those two. The former ("/") seems OK, the latter ("_") seems a terrible idea.
Also, wouldn't this become a burden? Suppose Cyclope and Cyclope/fr are similar to each other and pretty good, and then a monolingual editor adds a substantial section to one of them. Will you then feel obligated to translate it for the other? If so, with a single pair of articles, fine; but will you cope (or will you want to cope) with fifty or a hundred? -- Hoary 11:02, 22 October 2006 (EDT)
I agree with the superiority of "/fr" over "_fr", I had forgotten that the wiki's URLs use "_" for the spaces.
I think that I could cope with keeping the two versions synchronized if the scope is limited enough, like Category:France. If an enthusiastic contributor begins to add things at a fast pace, it will become impossible though, and we could end up with two different variants, but I don't think it would be too difficult to re-merge later if needed.
One problem I see is that maybe some potential contributors would be discouraged because they feel that they need to add their info in both versions. This would need some explanation somewhere, and indeed we have to think it carefully.
--Rebollo fr 05:03, 23 October 2006 (EDT)
I think that xxxx/fr would be autoconverted to xxxx/Fr, but I don't suppose that this would be an issue.
Well, if you think this might attract more info, and if you're willing to do all the work, why not? (Though since it looks as if you're already putting 20 hours' work into CP every day, I don't know how you'd find any more time.) -- Hoary 05:35, 24 October 2006 (EDT)
Thank you for the thumbs up. However, I'm not sure that I will begin this soon. As you said, this can be a burden. Moreover some articles in the Category:France are not bad, but they are not good either. And one excuse I find myself for spending so much time in CP is that it is vastly improving my ability to read Japanese and write English. I wonder which excuse I could find to write in French... --Rebollo fr 09:19, 25 October 2006 (EDT)
I teach French for a living so I applaud the Idea.--driesvandenelzen 07:47, 2 November 2006 (EST)
That is good news! I am not able to start this for the moment (other Camerapedia priorities involving Japanese cameras and other real-life priorities). I noticed that you are starting a page about the Dauphin. I'm interested by Alsaphot too, and I think that we could begin by translating the Category:Alsaphot in some mid-term future. --Rebollo fr 06:51, 9 December 2006 (EST)
I have reconsidered the title question, and I now think that "Fr/" as a prefix would be a far better idea. This way all the French pages would be subpages of the same "Fr" root. --Rebollo fr 06:51, 9 December 2006 (EST)

Adding copyrighted images

I've just noticed that copyrighted images have been added to Konica Hexar. I don't think Konica Minolta (Sony) would mind all that much, but I have no reason to assume this. Comments? -- Hoary 19:26, 29 October 2006 (EST)

This would probably fall under fair use but I would rather remove them: the camera is too recent and the company still exists so we cannot argue that we were unable to find the copyright owner. If we were to use these images this would be after obtaining Konica's permission, and I'm not volunteering to ask now. --Rebollo fr 19:39, 29 October 2006 (EST)

Silvergrain wiki

Get an eyeful of this. Healthy competition (or rather, it seems, healthy complement), and a splendid new resource. Or perhaps it isn't new and I'm late to discover it. Anyway, there is some very interesting (and refreshingly opinionated) material here. -- Hoary 19:26, 29 October 2006 (EST)

Interesting contents. It is there since March and seems to be a one-man project (as opposed to CP, a four- or five-man project...) See the list of users. This explains why all the contents is licensed under Creative Commons with Attribution, Non Commercial and No Derivative tags. (It would not be possible to make a cooperative wiki with a No Derivative license, you couldn't even modify a paragraph written by someone else.) --Rebollo fr 19:53, 29 October 2006 (EST)

Image rights again

I have built a set of pages about image rights along with the corresponding set of templates. The idea is to put a small link under each image pointing to a page where its image rights status is explained. This way we can more easily check the status of our images and potential Camerapedia "re-users" will know what they can do and what they can't. By the way, we will need to attribute the Creative Commons images in the pages that use them (images coming from the Flickr pool), unless they were willfully inserted by the author itself without crediting him/herself.

The pages are:

and the templates are:

Could some of you please review this and 1) tell me if you agree with the contents, 2) check that it is easily understood and maybe correct my syntax?

--Rebollo fr 08:05, 10 November 2006 (EST)

A french Wikibook about Photography

I am a new member of Camerapedia, coming from France, and an "old" member of the french Wikipédia and Wikibooks (Wikilivres in french). Please forgive my bad english ... I am also an administrator of the french WB.

Since some months I am writing a complete WB about photography [1] in which one may found a lot of data concerning this subject. It remains a lot of work to do ...

The chapter [2] is dedicated to all makers of photographic products, chemicals, papers, cameras, etc. and you will find there many pictures all available on Wikimedia Commons. These pictures may contribute to the improvement of Camepedia and also I would be happy if some Camerapedia contributors wish to improve the french WB !

Jean-Jacques MILAN 06:11, 11 November 2006 (EST)

Thoughts about this wiki

"I will take a little break in working on this site. On my personal todo list are 3 articles about 3 old consumer rangefinders, and between the years, maybe ...

Thanks to Hoary, the may corrector of this site, having helped me a lot. Also thanks to Rebollo who did some corrections in texts from me too. Thanks to Dries van De Nelzen giving our best examples for illustrated articles. Thanks to the image contributors creating a unique camera image pool. Thanks to anybody else who contributed any useful content to this site. See you later, I'll enjoy it.

Hope that Mr. Stone does his quiet work for the site in the background, ensuring its backup and availability. Thanks for his initiative.

I think the project has been coming forward quite far this year (See also section 'project status' on the TODO list and make your amendments)." (U. Kulick, 3 December 2006)

I'm sorry to read that you're leaving but happy to read that you'll be coming back. Enjoy the break! -- Hoary 18:18, 3 December 2006 (EST)
We will miss you and your edits. Thank you for all the efforts that you have put to make this place enjoyable, and to transform the project from a near-desert to a credible source of information. I hope that you'll come back or make occasional edits from time and time. --Rebollo fr 19:15, 3 December 2006 (EST)
U. Kulick, Thanks for your contributions. I've really enjoyed your "classic cameras on a field trip" pictures. --driesvandenelzen 16:52, 17 December 2006 (EST)

Replacement of an image and image links: rules needed

I have just noticed this old diff in the Olympus Pen article. Two things are worrying me:

  1. the new picture is nice but not significantly better than the previous one, and it depicts the exact same model;
  2. the new picture acts as a link to an external website that is not Flickr.

These two points need discussion in my opinion. I don't think it is constructive to replace someone's image by an image that is not significantly better and does not show any new information. In that particular case, one can argue that the previous image was duplicated in a series of smaller images near the bottom of the page, and thus it did not disappear from the page altogether.

Moreover, I don't like having an image linked to an external website that is not Flickr. I think we should state this somewhere, for example in Help:Adding_images. --Rebollo fr 11:26, 3 February 2007 (EST)

Category:Famous photographers

I'm puzzled by Category:Famous photographers. What are photographers doing here, when they're already catered for in Wikipedia? The title of the category seems bizarre for an encyclopedia, but I suppose it has its benefits. Wikipedia has a steady influx of promotional and vanity articles about obscure photographers. "Notability" is (improbably) claimed for many of these; fame cannot be. (On the other hand, a figure such as Pierre Rossier is not even slightly famous but is definitely worth writing up.)

I'm not happy with the Wikipedia article on Annie Leibovitz: it seems less interested in her photography than in her personal life. (But as WP is a reflection of mid-American obsessions; what can one expect?) Still, it's not all bad. I'd have thought that it would be better to improve that article than to create a second article about her here. -- Hoary 21:55, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Answer: Nobody complained about this category which was created by Rebollo. So I've added some important names to this category. What should be wrong about writing about people related to cameras? Famous single celebrities of that kind are not the only topic desirable for a camera encyclopedia. A sociological study about the average camera consumer or the ambititious amateurs, why not? If anybody is able to write one.
Please improve that wikipedia article. But what has that to do with our own article. Of course I hope that someone improves it. The best way to improve the articles of that category would be to write more about the cameras which were/are used by the great ones, and the way they used these cameras (very brief example: article about Erich Salomon). (U. Kulick)

Tips for Photographing Cameras

I see many beautiful pictures of cameras in these pages (compared to eBay where half the pictures are beautiful and half are hideous). Share your secrets on capturing these images.

Lighting, backgrounds, exposure settings (and tricking the automation), post processing, even using film?

--BirdieGalyan 16:48, 8 March 2007 (EST)

The secret of half of that beautiful half at eBay is: They're stolen. But of course we don't do that here.
I'm sorry, I can't find the thread now, but perhaps a couple of weeks ago somebody popped the same question at Nelson Foto, primarily to one particular person who'd made beautiful photos. As I remember, the answer was that he simply set up a white card out somewhere in his yard on a bright day (but not in direct sunshine) and plonked the camera (or whatever) on that. No worries about white balance, flash, tripod, anything. -- Hoary 05:56, 9 March 2007 (EST)

Film, Meters, Lighting, etc...

There was a note on the discussion page about starting a film root category and a "go for it," but this begs the question of whether there should be other photographic but non camera type items in categories. I.E. should Sekonic have a page describing their meters. Should there be a page for C-41 process description and perhaps a page for 127 film that gives sizes. How far beyond "camera" should this wiki go? --added by Searust

Pages about accessories, films and film processes are welcome. For example there is already a page about 127 film. In my opinion, anything about the photographic industry has its place here. Some technical articles about picture taking may have their place too if their title is objective enough (e.g. not "How to take a good picture?")
As for the other side of the limit, I don't think that pages about photography as an art form or about individual photographers belong to this wiki, and I think that the general Wikipedia is a more appropriate place for these. I'm not saying that there is nothing interesting to tell about the relationship between some famous photographers and some camera models but this could be treated in the articles about the cameras themselves, probably not in biographical articles about the photographers. --Rebollo fr 14:30, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
For lenses we have lists of lenses designed for certain lens mounts and made by different manufacturers. But there are also pages describing lens brands of certain manufacturers. Maybe meters, CCDs and other main electronic camera parts can be handled the same way. Maybe as well flashes, self-timers and external rangefinders? We already have images of such devices, but not enough writers.
How much beyond (still) cameras? "a repository of information about all still camera brands and models" has been written by the Site's editor onto the main page. Some still camera manufacturers were so much associated with movie cameras that a few single examples of their movie cameras should be described here. Of course that would be beyond but acceptable. Meters are external or internal devices. The CCD can only be an internal part. Film was the predecessor of this internal part, in the Kodak No. 1 it was built-in alike a CCD today. In the image pool we have already disposable cameras, which are film, flash and camera as one part. So there is no question that the categories meter, CCD and film all deserve articles in a camera encyclopedia. Other subjects around the camera? my vote: photographers yes, but only a few historically exceptional ones, for example William Henry Fox Talbot, by the way inventor of modern film photography (Hey, the man's listed on our todo list! Come on and write ...); tripods, studio lamps, etc. no, not necessary. (U. kulick)

How to define film types.

There are two main seperations I can see in a film category. 1 is size, and 2 is emulsion. Currently there are film sizes that point to cameras, this I think should be undone, or at least very unimportant. I also find the film categories as they are currently set up VERY difficult to fathom. As an example there seems to be a 4x5 stub listed under "plate film"? and no just everyday 4x5 film page.

I suggest laying out film in these two main directions, tying them together and pointing at specific cameras when necessary, but mainly allowing the camera pages to point to their specific film types rather than only having film type pages to point to specific cameras. The size information pages should include at a minimum a box on the page with the actual size of the frame. The emulsion pages should include manufacturers and where possible an example of the emulsion.

The scattered current film pages could be brought into this framework and used where possible and the information placed where required.---Searust

I think I understand the general point that you are making, but I have to say that I suspect certain misunderstandings.
You didn't say this, but if you'd said that it's ridiculous to write all this stuff about cameras that consume film and then say next to nothing about the film (other than its dimensions), I'd have agreed with you. But (as far as I know) this was not done deliberately. There's no article on Kodachrome II (an emulsion) or Kodachrome (a kind of emulsion) or color negative (or colour negative) or orthochromatic not because anyone decided that there shouldn't be articles but because nobody's bothered to write them.
You're welcome to try to make a start at writing them. If you do so, take a look at Wikipedia in the language of your choice (so for example "Orthochromatic" in en:WP and consider attempting something that will soon become better, either because you are better informed for a fresh start or because you can recycle the WP article and improve on it. (MPP is not a particularly good article, but it is an example of a minor improvement on what is acknowledged to have come -- entirely legally -- from en:WP.)
(Of course you mustn't take material from any source neither is in the public domain -- and very little is in the public domain -- nor has been released under the GFDL.)
Another point. You seem to think that it would be an innovation [to allow] the camera pages to point to their specific film types. But they already do. Or most of them do, and a mechanism exist for the few that don't. "Newpages" tells me that the newest page about a camera is Stereo Realist. We read: Camera Type 35 mm viewfinder stereo camera / Film 135 cartridge. (I don't know why this in the form of a list.) Until moments ago, it wasn't in any film-related category. I've just stuck it into one, Category:35mm stereo. (Camerapedia uses "35mm" to mean 135 or any predecessor.) Category:35mm stereo is a subcategory of Category:35mm film; to look for 35mm cameras in general, see the latter (which includes 828, Bolta, and the rest).
If I've misunderstood your objection/suggestion, do please put me right. Happy editing! -- Hoary 06:23, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

Image file size.

First, this a not discussion, but a question.

I got a new Camera, Sony DSLR-A100, and it works perfect for me, but i wonder abount the file size. When i look at the properties for a picture, it tells me, it's 3872 by 2592 pixel, and color dept is 24 ok my calculation is now 3872 * 2592 * 24 / 8 = 30.108.672 bytes, but on the disk, this picture is only 3.785.114 bytes, a factor 10 in diff. how can that be? .... posted at 14:03, 24 March 2007 by Iisager

Hello Iisager, this is no camera discussion, this is a discussion about the further development of this encyclopedia. For eating up your camera memory faster you have to use the RAW-format, for your questions you need a newsgroup like http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Minolta.
Best regards, Uwe (U. kulick, 24 March 2007)
P.S.: greet them Minoltans / Sony-alpha-fans from camerapedia, they shall visit this site, and if they are good writers they can add missing infos to the pages about the Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 or other Minolta cameras.

Stop automatic User creation !

Actual wiki destruction attempts make change of user policy necessary. The configuration of the wiki should be changed, allowing no more automatic user approval.

New Users should write a word about who they are and should never use cryptical Names. Otherwise the wish to become author should be rejected. New users should get an user approval mail and should answer to it before they can start to write into the wiki!

Added by User:U. kulick, 10 April 2007.

Halina DV3000F DigiPix Manual

Help!

I would like to give a Halina DV3000F DigiPix, that I have but have never used, to a friend but can not find the users manual. In this day and age of internet I just assumed that I would easily find a manual on-line but no. Does anyone know where I could DL a user manual or if someone has a manual I would gladly pay for a photocopy of it.

Thanks Steve

This page is not a general camera forum. Please re-read the sentence at the top of the page: "Welcome to the community's discussion page, the place where you can discuss any subject related to this wiki, or simply ask for help about wiki editing."
Thanks for your understanding.
--Rebollo fr 11:10, 14 April 2007 (EDT)

Commercial links

Someone just added a commercial link to a repair service on the Olympus OM-1/2/3/4 page. This link points to the site of a repairman who is specialized in the OM system and who offers spare parts and rare services (such as reconditioning original battery packs). On the one hand it seems an interesting resource for any OM user, on the other this is a purely commercial site, only containing information about the repairman's activity, not giving other free tips or information. What is your opinion? --Rebollo fr 04:30, 29 April 2007 (EDT)

on Camera links I've made a section for commercial links after somebody put such a link there. On Minolta I once threw out a general link about a very special optics topic because the article was very long and I couldn't overlook whether this very special topic is a commercial PR article or not. And there was no relationship visible to Minolta. If we would have a general optics links page it could have fit.
There are several collector's pages giving interesting informations but also prices on items. That means in many cases that these collectors want to sell items, for example ozcamera. Other's sell copies of manuals. What we should not allow are links to pages of auction houses - despite of the excellent photos they make of their items.
Above by U. Kulick.
U. Kulick, could you please sign your posts? It's pretty easy: four hits in a row on the "~" key.
I know next to nothing about the OM system. If a conscientious editor of CP says that a link is to an "interesting resource", that's good enough for me.
On the other hand, the link was added in a way that was blatant advertising. Entire microseconds ticked by while I wondered whether I should cut the man's email address, etc. Tough decision (not). Moreover, if the same links pop up on the pages about specific OM models, I shan't hesitate to zap them.
I'm also getting pretty tired of "Photobloggers who use a {xyz}". Since I don't much care what Inha, Cartier Bresson, Erwitt, Izis, Takanashi or others used, I can't even imagine caring about what some self-described photoblogger uses. And most of these links are inserted by special-purpose accounts: I think they're just trying to become more visible to Google. -- Hoary 08:20, 30 April 2007 (EDT)
I said that the link is interesting because the guy seems serious and I have myself considered sending my cameras to him. In that sense I'm happy to know that this website exists. On the other hand, the link does not really contain information, and it is merely an interesting advertisement. Moreover it is indeed in the specific page about the OM-1/2/3/4, not in the OM system page.
By the way, I share your disinterest in the "Photobloggers using blabla" and I am seriously thinking of getting rid of all them.
To U. kulick: I understand that some informative links to collectors who offer some of their cameras for sale are ok, but I don't understand why we shouldn't make links to auction houses when the auction is over: the pages describing past auctions are there for information purpose only, not commercial. On the contrary, I wouldn't link sites offering user manuals for sale: many sites offer scans of user manuals at no fee and there is no reason to make free advertising for ephemera shops.
--Rebollo fr 09:37, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

Images for use, but no other content to offer

I own a number of older rangefinder cameras and have good images of them that I would be happy to donate to the cause. Unfortunately, I don't have the time, or the confidence in my knowlege of these cameras to create entries about them. Is anyone interested in having the images?

Looks like I could supply images and model number/lens specs for 6 models of Balda rangefinder and a WerraMatic.

Thanks

Added by Smaniscalco on May 2, 2007.

Thank you for the offer, I see that you added the pictures to the Camerapedia pool where they are now available for insertion in the articles. --Rebollo fr 17:06, 2 May 2007 (EDT)

Posting images from flickr/ Creating new page about unlisted camera?

A flickr user has linked one of my images of the GOMZ Leningrad camera to this site, and following this I have added more text information about this camera. That was the easy bit! What I'd like to do is A) Create a new page for an unlisted camera (Ricoh 800EES), B) Upload an image of it from my flickr page and C) edit text with it. I'm not great at creating web content so if someone could dumb it down for me, I'd appreciate it! Thanks. Mark.

I'm not sure that I understand all of the double-barreled question. I'll ignore the flickr question and concentrate on the creating-new-page question. Ricoh 800EES is probably a red link. If so, click on it and create the article. If it's instead a blue link, somebody has already started it; again click on it and edit away. Ricoh Six is a (very different) Ricoh camera; I suggest that you open that article in a second browser window and make as if to edit it in a third browser window while you edit Ricoh 800EES in the first window: this will give you an idea of how the editing markup works. However, I also suggest that you're not too adventurous the first time around: you're likely just to confuse yourself. Concentrate on getting the text right: Marking up the text with italics, bold, links, photos, source notes, categories etc etc can come gradually, over the next few days. And don't forget the "Show preview" button! -- Hoary 21:17, 11 May 2007 (EDT)
Hello Mark and welcome here.
A) There are two easy ways to create a new page. The first method has already been explained: you start by creating a link to that page; to create a link, you must type the page name between bracket pairs: [[ and ]]. For example add [[Ricoh 800EES]] at the appropriate place in the Ricoh page. The link will appear in red if the page does not already exist, all you have to do then is to follow this red link. The other way is yet simpler: just type the intended page title in the search box: if the page does not exist, you will have a link to "create this page".
B) You can read this help page about image insertion: Help:Adding images. Or you can copy and paste the image part of the Leningrad article (or any other) and change the two URLs, of the image itself and of the link going back to Flickr.
C) Once the text is written, you can take inspiration from other existing pages to add some layout tags, as Hoary suggests you above.
Have fun editing. --Rebollo fr 06:09, 12 May 2007 (EDT)

Why is my search keywords get prefixed with a semi-colon?

I just submitted an article, when I tried to find the article, I typed its title (also the camera name), and the search engine can't find it, stating that ":(camera name)" doesn't exist. What's that semi-colon in front? wouldn't it alter the search keyword?

The semi-colon is only added in the page displaying the results. The search engine is quite picky, if you typed "Olympus 35DC" or "Olympus 35 dc" instead of "Olympus 35 DC" he won't find your article. It is often useful to add a couple redirect pages so that most people looking for the article will find it. --Rebollo fr 19:10, 8 June 2007 (EDT)

Dallmeyer objectives

In the Portuguese institute of Geography there are some objectives and chambers, that I would like to be able to register. - Dallmeyer Objectives: number 2500, number 6936 and number 24001. - Lerebours Objective et Secretan: number 3679. - Camera without objective with the inscription “G. Hare/Manufacturer /24 Caltorpe - S.I. London”. We have a information of an objective of Steinhel with number 13506.

They must have been bought for return 1870.

I would like to know where I can find catalogs of these manufacturers or some information about this manufacturers, camera and objectives.

Many thanks

Marília Peres (University of Lisbon)

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