Shaun Johnston's blog

I just made my first RedBubble sale - a laminated print of Apostles:

Apostles

I got the Mamiya M645 1000s working last night.  I thought it may have been broken because the winder was essentially rigid and the curtain inside the body was half up.  I ended up being able to (with some effort and care) rotate the winder and cock the shutter, and the curtain raised properly.  I then fired the shutter and the winder was then no longer stiff.  It is a little tough to cock the shutter after advancing but otherwise it seems happy.

I bought a battery ($16 from Rainer's!  I'm sure I can get a better deal), and the prism seems to work.  I suspect its metering may be a bit off though.  Not that it matters, I'm happy to do manual exposure.

Ordered a grip and film magazine from KEH.com last week, and they should arrive soon.  Then I'll be able to test it properly :)

I've set up a domain for the mobile exposure calculator:

exposurecalc.mobi/

I've also added an EV chart.

I've put together a simple mobile compatible web app that calculates exposure from a light reading (Light Candles, Lux or EV).   It would be ideal to use with a memorised EV table (ala Sunny 16) or a cheap light meter without built-in exposure calculation.  It does require a browser with JavaScript support (eg. Opera Mini Beta 4, IE Mobile).

It can be found at shift3.net/exp-calc/

Picked up this guy on eBay. It's ready to roll, just need to get some film for it. Will probably test it out on the weekend.

flexaret case

flexaret case embossing

flexaret open case

flexaret front

flexaret viewfinder

flexaret viewfinder magnifier

flexaret open

Picked this up at cash converters. All it appears to need is a film magazine, battery and a lens clean.

mamiya front

mamiya model

mamiya top

Horizon 202

Received the Horizon 202 on Monday, going up the Glasshouse Mountains on Sunday to test it out if all goes to plan!

There were men in fur and skull helmets with oversized cardboard / plastic fantasy weapons. And they garnered lots of attention, more it appeared than the legitimate medieval reenactors. I hereby brand them World of Warcraft reenactors. Disappointing.

Dusty, gimmicky, queue laden ... perhaps I am becoming jaded, perhaps I don't input enough imagination to enjoy the goings-on ... but my second year at Abbey was decidedly less interesting than my first. Last year it was less bustling, everything seemed more authentic (for the most part). I think they're becoming lax.

I will probably check it out again next year regardless.

The general trend is to go from film to digital. Less hassle, you can do it all yourself as long as you have a computer and a decent piece of editing software.

If you're interested in high resolution panography however, the story is a little bit different. I'm about to delve into film for the first time (yes, my first film camera), an Horizon 202 panoramic swing lens camera. It has a 120° horizontal and 45° vertical field of view, and while it shoots to 35mm, it in fact exposes to a 58 x 24mm rectangle.

Currently, in order to achieve a 50 megapixel panorama, I need to take approximately 12 overlapping exposures on my Canon 400D, swivelling the camera bit by bit on the panoramic head. Prior to this I need to measure the correct nodal point of the camera / lens / focal length combination so that I don't produce parallax in the overlapping shots. Time consuming, and because it is time consuming, the overall scene is going to be that much different with each constituent exposure due to movement. Then, once the shooting is done, it's back to the computer and stitching software, praying that I can make a decent panorama out of the constituent images.

With a 4800dpi film scanner and the Horizon, I will be able to reduce 12 or more exposures to one exposure. Something of a time saver. The real comedic part is, if I up that scan res to 7200dpi, I will get a 120 megapixel image. The nearest equivalent in the digital world is the 160 megapixel Seitz 6x17 Digital coming in at about 30,000 euros. I'm buying the Horizon for $AUD470.

Hopefully the quality of those 50 megapixels will match or exceed what I can attain with my current digital setup. Obviously the flickr and ipernity crowd will be the first to know ;)