Wallace Koopmans Artlog

The Canon Sure Shot Tele of 1986 was an attempt by Canon to make a fun camera.  And by fun I mean the ability to do multiple exposures and have a built in soft focus filter, what merriment.  OK that is more than just take pictures so they should be retro-plauded (Yes I just made that up, the fun is contagious).  When I think of soft focus filters I immediately think of the 1980′s so I suppose Canon was right on the money with this one. 

The camera has an interesting lens, primarily a 40mm f2.8 and rather than an actual zoom the tele function is a secondary element group that swings into place internally to provide a 70mm f4.9 arrangement.  When this happens the front of the camera extends in a manner more reminiscent of a travel trailer room expansion than a camera lens zooming (It’s also slightly noisier).   The multiple exposure is implemented by pressing the ME button beside the lens while half pressing the shutter, now when you take the picture the film will not advance. You can repeat this procedure to get multiple multiple exposures and then when you fire the shutter without pressing the ME button the film will advance after that exposure.  Did you get that, fun yes? 

Two image multiple exposure

Now for the  coup de grâce, the soft focus filter.  This requires even more dexterity as you need to fully deploy the filter against the spring who’s sole job is to swing it back on you.  Once you have fought the filter into place you are ready to permanently obscure your subject,  in that 80′s glow.  The camera also has back-light compensation and manual flash override and the images are OK but with quite a bit of vignetting.  It’s  also very noisy in all aspects, noisy like hey look out your about to be hit by a travel trailer!  However if soft focus filters and multiple exposures are your idea of fun then this camera is for you and your big hair.

Soft Focus filter

I’m writing this on an iPad that is using my Android phone for it’s Internet access. The image has been converted in camera from a DNG raw file to a jpeg and then loaded to the iPad using the camera connection kit’s SD card reader. The point of all this is really just to test out the usability of the iPad as a photographers tool. It does allow the importing and viewing of the RAW file but the camera provided the most convenient way to convert and resize the image. The key test for me though will be how easily I can import the files to my computer using iTunes as I use my own file locations and work flow.  

UPDATE  with windows 7 I am able to download my DNG raw files directly from the iPad through Lightroom and all the exif data remains untouched.  This is good news and means that in addition to being a great way to view images it can be used as field back up too.

One thing to note if you are importing to the iPad is that you will be prompted to delete the images from the card, personally I like to have a backup so I decline the delete.

For reference 31 RAW files from my Pentax K-7 took just over 3 minutes to import into the iPad.  This is from a 30Mb/sec Extreme III card and the “New” iPad.

The day after this shot all of these flowers were gone, as the maintenance crews cut them down.  “capto flores“

The Sillette Record is now almost 50 years old so it somewhat amazes to me that the selenium meter works as well as it does.  I kept comparing it’s measurements against my Nikon P7000 and it came to a point where I felt I could just trust the meter in this camera and dispense with the double check.  The meter itself  has no effect on the shutter speed or aperture but by centering the needle either on the top plate window or through the nice viewfinder display you will have a correct exposure. 

 The focus though is of the zone variety which requires too much thinking I think.  Zone focusing works to a degree when you use smaller apertures that give enough depth of field to hide errors in your ability to guess distances but when you use large apertures such as the cameras maximum f2.8 it is unforgiving.  Of course you can select distances other than the preset icon distances but it requires turning the camera over to look at the scale on the bottom of the lens, not a quick way to focus and this still relies on your ability to guess the actual distance.  The location of the shutter release is also unusual as it is on the side of the lens which forces a different grip compared to the more traditional top right location.

 The lens is not that great when shooting wide open but is adequate when stopped down to about f5.6.  The out of focus areas in images are rendered quite busily so I think this cameras greatest asset is its utilitarian design,  I do like the way it looks.  One final point is the film mask has rounded corners as you can see in this scan it’s one more thing that makes shooting with a camera like this so unique.

Just as I seem to be able to cause light leaks through mind power, I’m also able to cause double exposures.  This picture was taken with my Wester Autorol and even though it has a frame advance that “should” prevent double exposure it was no match for my powers.  OK what likely happened is that I forgot whether I had advanced the film or not and cocked the shutter again and the mechanism that is supposed to prevent the double exposure is simply over riden by knocking the small lever at the back which could happen in my camera bag or by me thinking I had already advanced the film.    Two frames wasted, or not, as I sort of like the effect that happened on the body of the car.   Other images didn’t pan out quite as I had hoped either one has some camera shake despite my use of a support, I blame that one on the security guard shouting at me (that’s loudly yelling not shooting).  Several others overlap at the edges but there are also images that did turn out thankfully and I am quite pleased with them. 

 I should also mention that when I use cameras like this I don’t mind the errors and accidents as I’m having fun, which is when photography is the best, oh and I most often have a digital camera with me too.

While I’m on the subject of double exposures I need to try out the Canon Sure Shot Tele from 1986 which actually has a provision for purposefully doing them.  It also has a built in soft focus filter, oh man I can just see the acid wash jeans and big hair already.

P.S. where is the spell check on this thing?

I’ve posted previously about creating infrared images with the Sony DSC-V3  but never shown the actual contrivance that I use to do it.  In an ideal world I wouldn’t need all the step rings but I’ve tried to use only what I have available to me and as the infrared filter is the most expensive item everything else must revolve around that, literally.

Starting at the camera side is what would appear to be an extraneous item a 48mm extension ring however what this does is, through having less threads than the extension tube, over ride the cameras sensor for detecting the extension tube.  This allows you a limited amount of zoom which would other wise be locked at its maximum.  The next thing is the extension tube itself which places the rest of the filters out of the way of the cameras lens.  Ignoring the step rings the next important item is the Rodenstock RG715 filter.  Within its name is a clue to its function, the 715 refers to the wavelength of light that it allows through.  The RG715 blocks light bellow 715nm and passes the near infrared above this.  As visible light is defined as between 390 and 750nm you can see that most of the light we see with our eyes is blocked.  After the IR filter I use neutral density filters to cut down the total amount of light coming in. When the camera is in “Night Shot” mode in daylight the sensor is overwhelmed and the image is completely washed out.  This happens because the camera locks out all user adjustment in this mode forcing the shutter speed to 1/30sec and bellow.

And of course the camera itself needs to be set to Night Shot mode.  What happens in this case is the camera flips it’s small internal infrared filter out of the way allowing those higher wavelengths of light to fall on the sensor.  Normally this extra light would be unwanted and be detrimental to the image but this is the light I am after.  The results are mixed, yes you get a near infrared image but the overall image quality is lower than the camera can produce in normal operation and without being able to control the exposure that too can be hit and miss.  I’m not aware of any current cameras that have provisions for IR photography without actually modifying the camera but a modified DSLR would give better results for sure.

There is no doubt that digital photography has killed film for the majority of people, making it really a niche for those wanting to do something different from the pack or create a certain look.  There are areas that digital technology needs to improve though.  Many people right now seem to be focused on the ability to capture images without noise in low light and manufacturers are obliging us by placing a lot of their engineering towards that.  For me personally I wish they would more directly address dynamic range instead of as a side effect of this noiseless pursuit.  What I mean is that with the chemical process of film it behaves differently around highlights and shadows.  Specifically film allows you to expose a scene with dark shadows and highlights without clipping the highlights into just pure white. This happens because of films non linear response to exposure.

The image here is a comparison of a film capture with Ektar 100 and my Pentax K-7.  What you can’t see is the fact that I needed to under expose the digital capture to preserve the highlights and then adjust the image post capture to try and brighten it overall, none of this was necessary with the film.   While I recognize that the sensor on my K-7 has a dynamic range of around 11 stops and newer models have improved on this they still behave in a linear way and clip highlights while the film trails off it’s response still recording detail far furthur into over exposure.

I’ve reached another milestone in my cell phone image postings. I have gone past 2000 images and have many more to go.  One unfortunate side effect of my work-flow is that it generates duplicates.  My solution to this was to export all the images to a thumb-drive and to then run a piece of software called Visipics.  What this software does is find all the duplicates and provide the option of deleting the second copy. The reason for the thumb-drive relates to my not wanting to run the software on the original files until I fully understood the software.   It did an amazing job as I ran it several times while adjusting settings, each time allowing the software to look deeper at the images for duplicates with minor variations.  You do need to use some caution as if you use too lenient a setting it can pair images that are very similar but still unique.  You can see the result of my cell phone image progress here. Cell zoom  I still need to add a few more to create an even 2400 and to replace some with better images.  The most difficult part will be locating any remaining duplicates as this is like a giant game of Memory, fortunately the cards are turned over.