Best of 2020: Top 60+ Photographs From Around the World

Modern Met Team has published what they consider the Top 60 photos from this year (2020) which has been exceedingly unusual.  As a former photo contest jurist I’m always curious to see what other groups deem as top imagery.     I’m somewhat surprised to see so few images with people and/or connected to the Covid.  I guess maybe we are all over the Covid, don’t want to see any more about it right now?  That perhaps explains all the animalsRead more

Russian Camera and Lens Maker Logo’s Reference page

I’m importing Zenit Lenses since 2019 to the US and I have been studying the different makers.  I found some useful info on Logos and Factories on the Alfred Klomp website and wanted to save it here.  Maybe someone else out there is also a fan of Russian lenses?   I mean they are great tools for making creative images. Some are sharp but sharpness isn’t the point – the way a lens renders colors and the OOF areas can beRead more

Flange to Sensor Distance table for modern digital cameras.

Source: Guide to Understanding Flange Focal Distance from BrianSmith Pictures Understanding flange focal distance is really simple, so the reason why I’m sharing this page is because it has a really great table with flange to sensor distance for a lot of modern cameras.  Having this info at hand can tell you if a lens can be adapted to another camera and still focus to infinity. Some quick takeaways – Shortest flange to sensor full frame camera right now isRead more

Low contrast developing for high contrast scenes: D-23

  Source: D-23 One of the facets about analog photography that I really enjoy is the huge amount of ways to change or influence the look of an image.   Developing chemistry is such a huge topic and I’ve barely scratched the surface on this. I’ve been reading about two bath processing that supposedly reduces contrast and holds shadow tones and highlights well.  Here’s a few reasons why it might be useful: Low contrast negatives scan very well Low contrast negativesRead more

Comparison of 35mm and Medium format negative sizes

http://photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/filmformats.html I found this page while looking for a list of which medium format cameras shoot 6×7 … not exactly what I was originally looking for but wanted to make a note since this is useful information.  Photoethnography.com has a lot of other interesting stuff worth checking out. 120 film: Kodak numbered all of its film types, starting with 100 (I think). So 120 roll film is actually a rather early format. It was used in the Kodak Brownie cameras. TheRead more

MTF – The English Translation

This post contains absolutely no mathematics. Explaining MTF without math is sort of like doing a high-wire act without a net. It’s dangerous, but for any number of reasons is more likely to keep the audience interested. Why Am I Doing This Again? I wrote an article on reading MTF charts several years ago. It […] Source: MTF – The English TranslationRead more

Developing 120-Year-Old Photos found in a Time Capsule — Mathieu Stern

Recently I picked up this thread about finding some 120 year old glass plates in a time capsule and watched the video on YouTube which was pretty fascinating and worth the watch them printed with Cyanotype.  Honestly I’m pretty amazed that glass plate negatives from 120 years ago could print so well, and not at all surprised the that image was of the family pet, but pretty impressed with the craft employed by the photographer… getting correct exposure and compositionRead more

Flash Bulbs – The Lowdown! – The Film Photography Project

Many of the older flash bulbs had more power than electronic camera mounted flash units and some argue better quality of light.  I’ve not used them much, but am really curious. Here’s an article on the Film Photography Project page that I read recently after a customer asked me about where to find flash bulbs. The Lowdown on Flash Bulbs Guest blog by Steve Ringrose Editor’s Notes: Millions of vintage cameras (especially the Kodak Instamatic cameras here in the USRead more

F-stop, T-stops and even H-stops

I’ve been reading about the differences between T-stops which are based on the measured amount of light as opposed to a calculated f/stop, and I’ve found this wikipedia page to be super useful.  Wikipedia.org page on F-numbers Check it out as it has lots of great information including all the math formulas and other useful information  – and btw   T-stops take in account the efficiency of the lens and can be different from a calculated f/stop because most lesses only transmitRead more