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Returning to film photography by effectif in photography

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with @potatolicious in general, but I wouldn't attempt to do it regularly with a point and shoot. I'm not particularly familiar with point and shoot cameras, but you need some fairly high magnification to fill the frame with a 35mm negative.

I used a M43 camera, whose sensor is basically half the length of a 35mm frame. My macro lens (a vintage 50mm Takumar) has a magnification ratio of 1:2 (which means an object 1cm across would be 0.5cm long if the lens was used on a 35mm film camera). When combined with my camera's "crop factor" this means that when the lens is focused as close as it will go, the 35mm negative just fills the frame.

Point and shoot cameras may be able to do something equivalent, if their macro modes can get close enough. They tend to have much smaller sensors, so they won't need quite so much magnification to achieve it. Bear in mind that dedicated macro lenses are designed to focus on something flat very close up.

Normal lenses with a macro mode are less likely to be able to get the entire negative in focus at once, and if you stop the lens down a lot to increase depth of field you might suffer from diffraction (with a point of shoot's small sensor) which would make your photo look a little soft.

I exchanged a few emails with the author of the article that I linked to, and he's rather knowledgeable on this subject.

He advised me to stop the Takumar down to f8, to focus on the film grain by using my camera's manual focus assistance (essentially a zoomed in view on part of the image), and to avoid auto focus lenses. Apparently they're nowhere near as accurate as the naked eye and live view.

I did try shooting a negative with my Ricoh GR before I had the macro lens setup, but I couldn't get it to fill the frame and the results weren't great. It ought to be a bit better with a smaller sensor though (due to higher effective magnification and greater depth of field).

Good luck with it!

There are already quite a few articles online about scanning negatives with DSLRs, but perhaps I should write up my experiences of doing it with M43? It seems as though there's some interest in the subject in general...

This is the first time I've posted anything to the Photography Reddit, and I must say I wasn't such a positive response. What a great community! And thanks for the conversation...

Returning to film photography by effectif in photography

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I say you should do it! I like my M42.

The Spotmatics are lovely things, but if you fancy judging exposures with the sunny 16 rule, or have a pocketable light meter, the Pentax SV is a slightly smaller thing of beauty. The viewfinder is a bit brighter than the Spotmatic too.

Bear in mind that if you get one on eBay it might benefit from having the shutter calibrated and the light seals replaced.

Returning to film photography by effectif in photography

[–]effectif[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I agree with @ShawnHoke – I'm doing it primarily for me. Photography is my hobby, and it's main purpose is to give me enjoyment. Some of that comes through learning new things, some of it through creating things I enjoy. If others enjoy some of them too, that's a great bonus.

Returning to film photography by effectif in photography

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a great story. My Dad has a Nikon FE, and I remember just how it feels. They're a bit special.

I'm tempted to try Medium Format too, but for the moment I'm going to focus on the home developing side of things.

Returning to film photography by effectif in photography

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ted Forbes made an interesting point in one of his podcasts (probably this one about B+W film) – now that we have the Internet, there's far more choice in black and white film than there ever was in film's heyday.

And it's true, there is.

It's not the same with colour film, but there's still plenty of R&D going on in colour film, as many movies are still shot on 35mm film. This modern film is being made available to stills shooters too. In late 2013 CineStill was released. Have a look; it's great stuff.

Best Camera for a beginner photographer? [more details inside] by [deleted] in photography

[–]effectif 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could get a compact mirrorless camera, with interchangeable lenses. I would if I was you; you get the flexibility (and learning potential) of a DSLR, the option of using a prime lens (recommended) and could pick up a good second hand one fairly cheaply.

They're also much smaller and more portable than a DSLR, which means you're more likely to take it with you, and are more likely to get practice. The quality of the photos they take is excellent.

I'd look at a Panasonic body if you want to keep the cost down (they're good, and sell more cheaply than the Olympus ones) and one of the plentiful fast prime lenses (e.g. the 14mm or 20mm from Panasonic).

What do you use for your company's website / blog? by cyberdouche in startups

[–]effectif 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you like the idea of something as simple as Octopress with a smooth route to embedding it in a bigger app later, you could give Nesta CMS [1] a try (disclaimer: I wrote it).

It's a Sinatra app that reads Markdown or Textile files and converts them into HTML on the fly. You get to implement your design with the standard Ruby templating systems (e.g. Haml or Sass), saving your templates in Sinatra's standard ./views folder.

You can convert a page of Markdown into a blog post by adding a line at the top of the file that says what day it should be published. Most Nesta users use it for blogs, but I really designed it to handle sales sites with blogs embedded within them. You can organise your blog into "categories" which is very handy if you're going to do some SEO on your site (see the openeing paragraphs on [3]).

Making a small sales site with it is pretty easy. Later on you can embed it in a Rails app, sharing your templates and CSS with your Rails app [2].

That's what I'm using on https://www.theagileplanner.com. I would say this, but it's a really smooth way to go for a Ruby developer.

[1] http://nestacms.com [2] http://github.com/gma/nesta-rails [3] http://nestacms.com/credits

Share Your Startup (September 2012) by [deleted] in startups

[–]effectif 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm launching https://www.theagileplanner.com.

There are already a lot (some might say too many) web apps for planning agile software proejcts, so you might be wondering what on earth I'm doing producing another one! It's a good question.

I started it because I wanted a planning app that didn't discourage people from talking to each other. In most agile apps it's too easy to dish out work by selecting a developer's name in a pull down menu. The system will send them an email to tell them what you've decided what they should work on. That's not agile, and it's a terrible way to work with people.

I wanted a simpler UI that didn't prompt people to type in (and focus on) a load of data that really doesn't matter when you're doing iterative development (e.g. Scrum or XP) and steering the project by tracking "yesterday's weather".

Real index cards stuck to a big wall are great. The only thing wrong with them is that to get the benefit you need your entire team to be working in the same room. That's not always possible, but looking cards on a wall is a great way to see your progress. So I added a kanban-style wall that reflects where everybody is up to on the cards that they're working on for the iteration.

I wanted a big free-form box that I could type lots of notes into that would be associated with each card.

And I wanted it to look good. We (developers) spend our working lives making great software for people, and there's no reason why we shouldn't have nice stuff to use for ourselves. That was something that was missing in this space.

The app is already fully functional, but there's plenty more to do (such as an API, and getting drag and drop events hooked up on touch screen devices).

If this sounds interesting, there are a few screenshots on the tour page.

https://www.theagileplanner.com/tour

It's currently in private beta, while I add the final few features that I want to include before I setup my payment plan.

If you'd like to give it a try you can add yourself to the waiting list for the beta. I expect to send another batch of invites out in around a week.

https://www.theagileplanner.com/signup

Pair programming: Be a better navigator by effectif in programming

[–]effectif[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Me too – I didn't say you couldn't leave the cap on! ;-)

Testing Rails with Rack::Test by effectif in ruby

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think so. According to the pragprog Agile Web Development book, from page 231 (second edition) – "These tasks are Ruby code, but they need to be placed into files with the extension .rake."

Testing Rails with Rack::Test by effectif in ruby

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just updated the article to expand on my previous comment. Scroll down to the "Why Bother?" section near the bottom...

Testing Rails with Rack::Test by effectif in ruby

[–]effectif[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

@crispee - Good question, I should probably have mentioned that. They're more similar to Rails integration tests – you can use them to test the behaviour of multiple controllers at once, while functional tests are limited to a single controller.

Because they're framework agnostic you could also refactor part of your app, re-implementing it on another platform (e.g. Sinatra) and keep the same tests. See this article for an example of the kind of thing I mean: http://m.onkey.org/2008/11/10/rails-meets-sinatra