Recent content by Mike_9000

Back in the day, Soviet Cameras were imported into the UK as a cheap option. There was a UK company (Technical and Optical Equipment) that inspected and repaired faulty cameras before they were sold. This was the era of rushed work to get the current economic plan finished on time. My father...

My first camera was a Zorki 4. I traded it in for a variant of the Canon FTb. Years later, when nostalgia struck, I found that both were expensive used. This is because my Zorki was the model imported by Dixons, with custom engraving, which is now rare, and the Canon just wasn't made for very...

Somebody recently gave me a virtually unused Fuji X-T20 (yes - I know :) ). There's a (small) jack socket in the side. Looking online, I can't decide if this is for a remote release, or an external mic. I don't think it takes external mics, and Google's awful AI summations just don't pick up on...

It's certainly more complicated :) I might go for it tomorrow, and we can either celebrate or commiserate together.

Me - but my last GoPro was a Session, and I'm seriously puzzled by the reviews of the 12 - there has been some progress :) I want to use it in conjunction with a Panasonic MFT camera that does 4K video. However, the specs seem to indicate that the GP12 can only do 2.7K in a 4:3 aspect ratio...

These programs can make images look clearer and do the job, if that's all you want. However, they can't produce data that was never recorded in the first place. Consequently, if you take a picture of (say) a book from such a distance that the text isn't readable, it looks sharper if you up-rez...

Still camera lenses are typically varifocal. They require you to refocus every time you zoom, or the picture won't be optimally sharp. Good depth of field might result in acceptable sharpness, but not optimal. Cine lenses are parfocal - focus stays the same as the lens is zoomed. Parfocal...

In tribute to the original Bond, "James Bond" becomes the codename for the double-0 agent tasked with the most demanding missions. Nobody knows he's dead except the people who were there, after all... Job done. Moving on...

Both. Sometimes I need to get pictures online in a great hurry, so I can use the jpgs. On other occasions I have time to process RAW files. If you are going to do any processing at all it's worth remembering that the modifications made on a RAW image are saved in another file. The image file...

In my case, it wasn't sawing too hard but beding it too tightly around a 15mm pipe. They only bend so far, then they snap.If you ae sawing though a large object, that's not a problem.

Raw Therapee is a free Lightroom equivalent (minus the catalogue functions) that works with the GIMP. However they both have a steep learning curve...

I used a cheap wire saw to cut off a seized pipe fitting in a place inacessible to a hacksaw. It worked, and the one thing I learned is to keep the curve as gentle as possible. The more acute the curve you make at the cutting suface th more stress you place it under. I overdid and snapped my...

For some reason all of the people he photographs look like they they have never seen someone wearing a novelty helmet modified to carry two flashguns. His first book of portraits was entitled "Wot?!"

Always have... first with a bulb flashgun on a film camera, now with an electronic flash on a digitial camera. I have both a TTL estension cable and a gadget that ssits in the hotshoe and wirelessly links camera and flash. I did it initially because it got rid of red-eye and those hard shadows...

Bad developer can give you all kinds of problems - but blank film is not one of them in my experience. If ithe film is completely dark, to the extent that there's no image, then it's been exposed to light, and you need a changing bag as well as a darkroom. Where do you load your film into the...