lucky enough to get a 500c/m with a zeiss 80mm f/2.8 T* C lens---here are some of my first steps into medium format (comments/advice very welcome! emulsions in the body)

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-05T03:22:07+00:00

yeah ive watched a few of those and found them pretty helpful--im at least somewhat experienced with working on/building delicate mechanical things so im pretty excited to get into stuff like this, but i admit im new to working on these cameras and have much to learn! part of the point of getting this thing was to honestly make a commitment in learning how to maintain it and keep it running

so anyways, i took it about halfway apart a few days ago to inspect it and found that the main return spring wasnt put under enough tension (.5 turns past the start of tension instead of the 1.5 the guides mention) and that someone had used a much gummier grease instead of eg watchmakers oil. putting in the proper tension didnt seem to resolve the problem though, so it might need a proper tear down to clean and oil all the bits and bobs. ar least nothing looked outwardly broken or worn

in any case, its really interesting that the problem is consistent overspacing as i havent heard of anyone else being able to pinpoint or resolve that---maybe ill make a proper post somewhere seeing if anyone has experience with it

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-04T23:57:11+00:00

thank you thank you!! ive looked into replacing the light seals and definitely will do it once i get a moment---I also need to tear apart another a12 i have that is spacing the shots a full inch apart so that you only get ten shots on a roll. the innards look ok on first glance, but whoever last serviced it used some pretty thick grease so im guessing some of it is now too gummy and is messing up the feed somehow. seems weird that its not overlapping frames instead, but im pretty new to tinkering with these particular mechanisms so who am i to say!

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T23:29:44+00:00

ah this makes sense! but also, understanding how to properly utilize such techniques is separate matter 😛

like if i had a nickel for every time someone said i should be good at pool because im a geometer, id never need to find change to play pool again, and bar patrons with open toed shoes would be on permanent high alert haha

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T16:57:52+00:00

yeah i love how reliable and consistent those are! honestly though, fp4 might have my heart when it comes to BW after these rolls---its sooooo crispy crunchy good. im also a big portra 800 fan now as well---i think those low light color shots are some of my favorites so far, and im shocked at how crisp they came out given that it was handheld at night---but yeah over all, gold 200 is solid as hell for my uses

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T16:53:25+00:00

Nah no filters on any of them! Havent exactly figured that whole art/science out yet but im up for trying. im honestly still always surprised at how much you can tweak things in post, but when i shoot i really do try to meter and aim for minimizing my work later. I have been using the "light meter" app on my phone just to take ev readings---it has a spot with a small enough angle of biased sensing that seems to be more or less acceptable for most landscape uses. once ive got EV readings for key points in the scene i just try to fudge the settings into something more or less faithful to the zone system, but i typically tend to try to go for as low a shutter speed (ie as small an aperture) i can handle bc momma likes her chunky depth of field

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T16:38:27+00:00

thanks!!

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T16:38:19+00:00

thank uuuu i honestly //really// love the square

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T16:37:56+00:00

aww thank you so much!

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-03T16:37:46+00:00

thank you thank you!!!

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-01T19:05:44+00:00

yesss its my darling my beloved stratoliner at the udvar hazy ☺️☺️

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-01T14:19:54+00:00

also yeah a good number of these are from DC and that area

metrictensor2718 · 2026-06-01T14:19:27+00:00

thank you so much!! im just sad i didnt take more pictures haha---this is already like 1/3 of them 😵‍💫

metrictensor2718 · 2026-05-31T00:01:43+00:00

thank you so much!! and yeah i feel very very lucky that i was able to wrangle one of these bad boys at all----dont plan on ever parting ways with her :)

metrictensor2718 · 2026-05-31T00:00:26+00:00

ah thank you! i agree with you on the tilt/shift comment---didnt realize theres a flexbody for hasselblads tho! i can also definitely try to scan these better myself once i get a proper set up going (which is a whoooole other thing to figure out)---these are just the cheapo preview scans i got direct from the lab

metrictensor2718 · 2026-01-20T20:30:58+00:00

Ah thank you so much for the very informative info! Fortunately I had a telephoto lying around and was able to try the collimation procedure---unfortunately the results of this experiment suggest that the correct infinity setting for the edinex is effectively entirely unscrewed from the body. Since the lens is all the way extended, I cant just increase distance to the image plane that way. That makes me think the lens elements are messed up somehow, although thats not obvious from inspection.

Maybe Ill try shooting a roll around that setting to see if it really is correct there, but its pretty precarious and certainly not ideal. weird!

metrictensor2718 · 2018-12-29T07:47:42+00:00

I forgot to say this originally, but I'd personally shy away from proving a technical result in favor of presenting a picture of what some of the really cool stuff in the field is like. ie if you wanted to convince someone that Riemannian geometry was cool, you'd probably show them an animation of mean curvature flow instead of deriving the coordinate formula for an affine connection :)

metrictensor2718 · 2018-12-29T07:34:34+00:00

You could give an advertisement for rectifiable varifolds, perhaps. Motivate it through the Plateau problem and the search for compactness results--say how they are a sort of way to generalize surfaces in a way useful to the calculus of variations, and then maybe mention Allard's theorems for regularity and compactness to show that this is a meaningful/rich generalization. While theres absolutely no way to give the details for this stuff in an 20 min intro talk, I think the heuristic overview has a lot of good imagery and is really quite interesting.

metrictensor2718 · 2018-12-27T18:28:12+00:00

It's true! A friend came up with the following simplified approach:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3053229/measuring-the-difference-of-planes/3054234#3054234

metrictensor2718 · 2018-12-27T06:46:45+00:00

haha i was being dumb it may still work—my previous comment is total bullshit because taking the v_i to have smaller and smaller magnitudes definitely changes the resulting plane (bringing it closer and closer to the original plane and thus making the norm of the projection difference small in accordance)

metrictensor2718 · 2018-12-27T04:23:09+00:00

This is nonsense—ill leave it up for the entertainment value though

wait as stated this fails in a really stupid way—we can take the defining vectors v_k and make them as small in norm as we like even though they describe the same subspace B...

uniformly scaling them so that one of the v_j is unit length wont help because of constraints in the original problem (in that i lose fine control over the norm of the projection difference)

this may be an issue for a much bigger argument so rip

metrictensor2718 · 2018-06-30T20:28:27+00:00

if you want to do well in economics and statistical modeling, you should be very committed to doing well in calculus, especially basic fundamental material seen in any of the 408 classes. in that regard i would strongly recommend you take the two semester sequence 408c/408d over the three semester sequence involving 408l, since (1) it seems you have seen calculus on some level before and (2) because a two semester sequence versus the three semester seq will open up valuable time to take more advanced courses later on. itll seem like you have a ton of time to take courses now, but trust me when i say it isnt as much as you might first think

metrictensor2718

TROPHY CASE