Re: another round - OT
I'd like to ask those who have recently concluded travel if there have been changes to airport security since this summer? Are the screeners using more powerful xray machines? Is it safe to have film pass through the xray or should I ask for a handcheck? More importantly do they still do handchecks with a smile? If you're in the states, they have to do a handcheck with a smile. If you've got time, demand one. No sense worrying about being an ass when your film's on the line. If you could find the FAA regs on the net (and I'm sure they're out there), print them out and give them to the checker. With that in mind, I flew to Uzbekistan this June with about 30 rolls of film and 15 packs of Polaroid 667 and 669 film (for my Land Camera 101, I love that thing :). I used two lead bags to hold the 35mm film, and carried al the film on the plane with me. My film was checked in Denver, Newark and London, and I managed to get it hand-checked in denver and Newark (I don't remember about London). On the way back, my film was run through X-Ray machines in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, three times in Frankfurt Airport in Germany, and once more in Washington. And after all was said and done, I took it in and didn't see a single bit of X-Ray damage. I guess the lead bags worked.
Re: Pentax prifit/loss
Here's the web page for the financials on Pentax: http://profiles.wisi.com/profiles/scripts/corpinfo.asp?cusip=C392W0060curco nv=392 They have been losing money for years, inspite of what Pal says. ... and oddly enough, their money-losing coincides with a downturn in the world economy as a whole! GOSH!! Dumbass.
Sorry
Alright, I've calmed down a bit. Sorry about that little outlash in my email response to B. Rubenstein. It just rather annoys me to be on a mailing list with one who is basically against the idea of the mailing list, and brings very little that is constructive to the table. But that's okay, I've got procmail and /dev/null, and all is well with the world. Again, sorry about my loss of decorum there. :} Tom
Re: New Kodak slide films
New kodak films: http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/pressReleases/pr20020924-21.shtml Nice to see someone still investing in film RD! Cool beans. Though in regard to the idea of someone still investing in film RD, I think one thing most film is going to be gone next year!! type people forget is that for 80% of the world, computers are a luxury they can scarce afford, for personal use. Maybe there's one in the library, but not one at home. Heck, even for a lot of people in the States computers and digital cameras are a far-off cry. When the computer is dirt cheap, the camera is dirt cheap, and they hook up easily and quickly, then maybe they'll go to film. In the meanwhile, though, for the billions of people for whom a film camera is the only choice, and paying attention to the millions of existing film cameras out there, I think we'll see film for a long while to come. On the other hand, that new Kodak 16mp sure do sound sweet. :) Tom
Re[2]: New Kodak slide films
Tom, My biggest film concern is not that it will go away, but that the choices will continue to diminish. The more specialty/unique films will slowly go on the chopping block as more pros turn to digital. I would be far less happy about film if my only choices were Kodak Gold and Fuji Superia. :) touche. I agree with you there, though personally I'm betting on another 10 years or so of affordable, commonplace film availability. And I would hardly consider myself an anti-digital person, I abuse computers every day. Tom
Re: The great PDML Print-Off
I thought it might be cool to see how other photographers printed the same negative, so I churned out 18 identical (as close as I could anyway) negatives and sent them off to various like thinking people. The plan is for the participants to each print a half dozen prints from the negative, send them to me, and I will distribute portfolios by mail back to the participants. We settled on 6 so as to allow as few overseas mailings as possible. Anyway, this was back in May or June, and it is time to get it wrapped up. I would like to get em in the mail before the Christmas postal rush. Wow, sounds pretty cool. What are the odds of the results being posted on the web somewhere? Tom
RE: testing
I think I heard a 4, but I must have been mistaken ... no -Original Message- From: Feroze Kistan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 19 September 2002 15:31 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: testing testing 1...2...3, can you hear me
Re: Couple of eBay auctions just started
Motor Drive LX http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemitem=1382196827 Speaking of Motor Drive LX ... I was in a photo shop the other day and they had the Motor Drive setup for an LX. I had seen the rechargable battery packs for it before, but they had a mammoth beast of a battery grip which stood 6 or more inches tall and took 12 AA batteries. This things looked incredibly unwieldly. Anyone know Pentax's reasoning in building it like they did? Why not make it flat and fit to the bottom of the Motor Drive, instead of sticking out?
Re: Brown Spotmatic?
I once had a brown Spotmatic (SP 500, actually, I think), which slipped away from me in a bad camera swap. Are the brown ones rare? Please say they are common, so I won't feel so bad about losing it (and the nice Pentax 50/f4 Macro and Viv 200/3.5 and solidly built Soligor 105 and 135 lenses that went with the set.) Man, I haven't heard one person on this list say good things about trading/selling any of their old Pentax gear ... making a mental note to not make the same mistake.
Re: Who are you?
The Program Plus isn't a bad camera! It and the Super Program are the best, last of the manual focus line. (Except for the LX which is in a special class of it's own. g) You can spend more money for an autofocus model Pentax, but your pictures won't improve that much. Spend more on film. Shoot some slides. The folks processing your prints can make your results unpredictable. Regards, Bob S. Lots of interesting statements there, Bob. :) First off, I know the Program Plus isn't a bad camera -- it's jjust that I'd rather use a camera I paid for, not one I borrowed/inherited. I dunno, it's some pride thing, I guess! I'm a fan of the manual cameras -- I sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day writing code, the LAST thing I want to do when I get offf work is wrangle more electronics. Just give me a heavy all-manual camera and I'll be happy. I have actually been thinking about the LX. Removable finders, changeable screens, rewind frame counting, fast fast shutter speed, good metering, and all those other nifty things everyone knows about. I've read about the sticky mirror problem, and that seems to be the thing I'll have to look at. As far as slides go, I've recently been transitioning into them. After I shot my first batch I was simply blown away by how much better they look! So bright! Even though the first roll wasjust boring things around the house, I think my girlfriend must have heard Holy cow!! Look how THIS looks!! about 50 times when I brought the slides home. :) Tom
RE: Silicon Film is still alive... (??????)
I have just looked on their website and a few important details seem to be missing from the product info. How exactly does the 'film' insert communicate to the external viewer? In order for there to be no modifications required to the camera, presumably you need a wireless connection of some sort (bluetooth?). There is no sign of a cable connecting the devices, and that would make a mess of the camera seals if they had one, surely. That being the case, how is the internal unit powered? There is mention of 4*AA batteries but this is presumably for the viewer as they would not fit inside the internal unit. Yes, I wondered about how the connectivity from the inside to the outside works as well, but none of their tech sheets had info, nor did any other information on the web I could find. Also, how does the unit know when the shutter has fired and what shutter speed is to be used? Does it constantly 'look' for a light source and when one is found power up the CCD? or is the CCD permanently warmed ready for use? Does this represent a power drain of some sort? Presumably, if the internal bit can send information to the external bit, it can probably receive settings such as film speed and what-not, too. Older websites give more information: (May 2001) http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/989073052.html Describes a little box to which you offload images after shooting 24 shots. http://www.ideinc.com/silfilmright.html Talks about how it was designed specifically (at first, hopefully ...) to fit the top 5 amateur SLR cameras. http://www.idsa.org/whatis/seewhat/idea2001/winners/S8056.htm Here's a closeup of what they thought the box into which your dump your pictures was going to look like. http://www.imaging-resource.com/EVENTS/PMAS01/982172823.html Some example pictures taken with the silicon film. Sorry for the glut of links, but after hearing about this today I went looking for all the info I could find, and though some other might find it interesting.
Re: Film SLR's are dead - was: Pentax Folks
You can get 'em all sorts of ways 35mm or APS format, color at least 400 to 800 speed, with flash or without, waterproof or panoramic or plain, and BW, too. Prices seem to range from $2-3 up to $13 U.S. My son was carrying around a $3 Fuji 27 exposure 400 speed with flash Sat, Sun, and Monday (his kinder class had an animal handler bring some critters in and he got to take some shots of the animals). Great idea, really. The only thing that bothers me is the thought of all the plastic left over at the end. I hope it gets recycled at some point ... I think it pretty much gets recycled right away. At least, the impression I've been under is that after being developed, companies simply pop more film in the plastic shells and send 'em right back out on the market. Tom
