One of my favorite series of detective novels are the Bernie Gunther stories written by Philip Kerr. Bernie is a policeman in Berlin and the central character in these film noir-like novels. In the early novels he's solving murders while coming to grips with the rise of the Nazis whom he absolutely loathes in pre-war Germany. Mid-series novels have him actually conscripted into the SS that he hates so much because the SS absorbed the Berlin criminal police deprtment. Later novels have him living in Argentina or France dealing with the aftermath of the war, but feature flashbacks to earlier cases not previously described. A great series that I heartily recommend, although I'm saddened to h
I've done a bit of stereo photography, both digital with a Fuji W3, as well as film-based with a 35mm David White Realist and a medium format Sputnik. But I had always pondered on building my own stereo camera. When thinking about how to do this project, I had several parameters that needed to be considered: Build it out of components or cameras I had readily available and at low cost Build it for the optimal stereo inter-ocular distance of around 65mm (the distance a human's eyes are spaced apart) Be able to trigger both shutters at roughly the same time Minimizing the effort by not have to do a lot of machining, cutting, welding, etc. For all these reasons I settled on building this from
Browsing the internet for photography related DIY projects, I found some articles on making your own lens, so I decided to try it. I had an old magnifying glass sitting around with a lens that was about 50mm in diameter. I cut off the plastic handle of the magnifying glass with a hack saw and filed off the rough edge. Now I needed a way to mount it to a camera (first project was a Fuji X-E2) and some sort of tube that would extend it to the right focal length. Maybe a tube with a helicoid in it so I could focus at different distances. And maybe something to control the aperture, as a single lens element was not going to give me very sharp pictures wide open. I found an iris diaphragm on eBay
April 30 is Pinhole Camera Day across the globe. Being a member of the Argus Collectors Group, I wanted to make myself an Argus-based pinhole camera. See my previous post on my semi-successful attempt at an Argus A2B-based pinhole camera last year. This year, I started with an attempt to use an Argus C3 Matchmatic as the base for my pinhole camera. On all attempts I used a .4mm pinhole I got from Skink which yields an optimal focus length of 90mm and speed of f/256. This is really designed for large format. Skink mounted the pinhole in a way that can screw into a Copal 0 shutter. My first try was with a Matchmatic C3 with the pinhole put directly over the lens opening and held on with rubbe
