Origin of the keris

[Rick]

Jeepers !

I go off to bed here in New England and I wake up to a photo equipment discussion!

Might as well throw my two cents in here also; I like others here have a pair of early 1960's F's they; are unmetered old beasts and I have a hand held light meter . I've also got the large prism sports finder which some people I guess are willing to kill for . Also got that lovely micro-NIKKOR-P 3.5 lens that A.M. was raving about . Also got a N90s with a very large zoom for surf photography and an S just for sentimental reasons .

I guess I'll just have to keep practicing on my digi; I've read better instruction books though; it's just that it gives such immediate gratification when you want to throw a picture up on the forum . It seems mostly to be the mid range pictures that give me trouble with sharpness. Maybe I'll try upping my file size and see if that helps .

I wonder when they'll be coming to take away our film; most stuff for publication is digi these days.

[David]

OK, i was thinking about starting a brand new thread on this subject, but since Pusaka has also joined in with the camera talk i guess i'll just post here. Photography has been my profession for more nearly 25 yrs. now, so hopefully i know a fair bit about the subject. I sympathize with all those frustrated with digital technlogy. I was personally brought kicking and screaming into the digital world,but if i hadn't made the switch about 4 yrs. ago i wouldn't be working today, plain and simple. Like any new technology, digital has had it's problems, but i will say that it has come a long way in the past couple of years. One of my major frustrations is just how fast the technology is improving. The camera i bought 4 yrs. ago is obsolete already! Like Alan i shot for years on the same old Nikons and Leicas. I went through college using two old Leicas that were as old as i am and still work to this day. I love old manual cameras and the days when i would just LOOK at the light through a meterless camera and say,"Oh, that's f8 @ 1/60 ".
Ah, but the times they are achangin'. Like any new technology you need to really learn it to make it work for you. I am still learning quite a lot about digi every day. I tend to figure things out on a need to know basis, so i don't know as much as i probably should, but do know enough to get by on a professional level. Part of my job as a staff shooter for a weekly paper is that i am the one who does all the "toning" for the images that go to print. Digital images are not the same as film in that ALL digi images need post shooting work. Well, film does too, but most people don't really take this into account. They drop the film for others to process where a lab tech develops your film and then prints it. These machine prints arec rarely acceptable by pro standards, so prints would then be hand done, with bthe tech adjusting color and contrast levels to produce the correct print for the job. With digi, you are the "processer". To do this well you need to have good programs and you need to learn how to use them. Once you do you can do the job faster and more efficiently than any lab tech could have with film, in the light of day and without dangerous chemicals.
Alan, to address a few of your concerns more directly:
1. Digital is here to stay, and unfortuately it does require some serious expenses. Bottom line to your lens issues is that you need to buy new lenses that will get you off the paint tins when you take your photos. You can only do so much trying to get by with your old lenses.
2. I am not sure what you mean by "indefinite" focus.
3. I work with photoshop everyday and find it fast and efficient. It has some amazing features that allow you to do things you never could do in the darkroom. I would recommend the lastest editions for the best and most complete features. Frankly, i don't even know what half the program will actually do, but if you learn what you need it shouldn't eat up too much of your time in the operation.
4.Dust IS a major factor with digitals. The best thing to do when changing lenes is to not only turn off the camera, but also remove the battery, as even when off there can still be a charge on the CCD that attracts dust. Most of the time though, i just turn the camera off and switch lenses as fast as i can. I probably do this a whole lot more than most of you and only rarely get dust on my CCD. When i do i blow it out.
5. Remember that even though it wasn't cheap, the D70 is NOT a professional camera. The F series Nikons were made for professionals which is why they are so tough. My D2X is similarly built to last, though with all the technology there is certtainly more that can go wrong. Did once drop my D1X two feet onto the concrete with no problem. Your D70 is more akin to something like the old Nikon FM. Those cameras didn't hold up anywhere near as well as the Fs did. The real problem though is that in 5 yrs. your D70 may well be working, but it will be far outdone by the newest and cheaper cameras.

Pusaka, even with film cameras it would be a good idea to put the camera on a tripod. Close-up work limits you depth of field (DOF is the zone of sharp focus in any given image). You would therefore want to use the smallest lens opening (which is the largest number) as that increases DOF. But that also means slower shutter speeds so you would want to steady the camera with a tripod. Yes, "older" digitals do tend to eat battery power, but this has been GREATLY improved in later models. As for going back to "primitive" optics, the optics haven't changed all that much, it's the rest of the camera. The technology isn't "junk", it just needs to be used properly. Never use a digital zoom BTW, unless you want crappy images. A DIGITAL zoom merely crops the image to make it larger. That means that it is just an enlargement and a great deal of quality is lost. 4 MP should indeed be enough to make quality images, especial for the internet, but if you then crop those images with digital zoom it is no longer a 4MP image. The more you zoom, the worse it gets. When buying point-and-shoot digicams, always look for the ones that offer an OPTICAL zoom.
As for sharpness issues, i have found my photos to be incredibly sharp, but NO IMAGE COMES DIRECTLY OUT OF A DIGITAL CAMERA SHARP. ALL digital images need to be sharpened ( and probably have their levels tweaked and color slightly adjusted) through a program similar to Photo Shop's Unsharp Mask. This is a program which also must me applied properly for optimum effect. Many people tend to vastly over-sharpen their images and the effect looks very unnatural. Experiment with your programs and you will find what looks best for you camera and different shooting situations.
Lastly Rick, i highly doubt they will be coming anytime soon to take your film away. Video did not eliminate motion picture film. Film itself did not eliminate oil paints and pastels. Films, as a medium for artistic expression is here to stay. Unfortunately, with less use of film we will see some of our favorite types fade away and i am afraid that the cost of them will probably rise. But for those who wish to keep shooting the stuff, i think it will be around.

[Pusaka]

Thanks for the info David, I had noticed that the digital zoom produced poor images in close up photos so I tend not to use that feature and instead try to get closer to the object. Well I’m going to start looking for a digital with optical zoom as you suggested. With my digital camera it’s obviously a focal problem i.e. the image has sufficient resolution (@ 4 mega pixels) but lacks focus so everything is blurred. Perhaps it a fault in the camera.

[Rick]

Not to change the subject; but to change the subject ; Alan , that is a nice keris budha; was it cast and then finished by hand?

[A. G. Maisey]

Rick, that keris budha is archaic. It was found in fields south of Solo in Central Jawa about 20 years ago. I tried to buy it, along with half a dozen other people, but the seller refused to sell into the local community because he reckoned he`d be making too many enemies, so he sold it to a collector in the USA. I love that keris. If it was a woman, I`d leave my wife for it.

Yes, it was cast, and then sculpted and polished.

Getting back to black boxes.
Yeah, I know the D70 is not a top pro camera, and I discussed this with Nikon techos before I bought it. What I was told was that the actual guts of the thing were the same, and that the ---whatever it is that is at the heart of it---chip?----were the same as the pro model, but that the way in which it had been engineered was to a price, so it would not be as robust, or take as much punishment as a pro model.
Since I only bought this camera to do photos at home, off a tripod, and then pack it back into the camera bag, I figured that the extra couple of grand for a pro model would not be money well spent, particularly when, at the time I bought it, models were in the process of change.
I believe that I will continue to use the film cameras for photos taken when moving around, and the D70 for stuff done at home.

Yep, I know that digital is here forever, and, although I hate many things about it, I also realise that there is an up side. Its great for allowing quick sharing of images. There are a lot of good things about it, and I freely admit that a lot of my problems with digital are simply that anything that came along after the horse and cart, I find to be very challenging on a technological level. Bicycles are OK, but automobiles really should be outlawed.

What I mean by "indefinite focus" is that in the old F's you had a split image focus, that is great for precision, especially on closeups. With the D70 you have these gimpy focus zones, which means that effectively you are forced to use the ground glass all the time. Not fast. Not good.In fact, I find the designated focus zones a hinderance rather than a help. Now I mostly ignore them. If I do a cat I take something like 200+ photos, all in one session, all as fast as I can, so the light remains more or less constant. By the time I get to the end of it, my eyes are watering and tired. Never happened with the F's.

I agree:- I should buy new lenses.
However, since I only use the D70 for selling keris pics, and since there`s no real money in this, buying new lens just so I don`t have to stand on a paint tin once in while I see as a waste of money.

I don`t use the D70's metering function, as I prefer incident light readings taken with a Gosson.

With the photoshop work, yeah, I understand what I need to do with the pics I take now, and I can do it pretty quick, and reasonably well, but that time----and its a lot of time when you are processing +200 images---I used to pay a girl to do in the photolab. She earnt about $12 an hour. My time is worth a wee bit more than that.

I woke up to the "remove battery" trick pretty early in the piece. I returned the first D70 I bought, because the first time I changed lens, it got full of dust that showed up in the images.The replacement D70 I have removed the battery each time I change lens, and I no longer have this problem, but the very fact that you need to do this, I find plain ridiculous.

I do realise that some of the things I don`t like about the D70 could be fixed by the spending of money.However, if I subject this expenditure to a cost/benefit analysis, the benefit is not there, for the cost.

Agree that digital is here to stay. I agree there are many pluses to it.I understand that I must continue to use it.

But all this does not mean that I have to like it.

[David]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

I don`t use the D70's metering function, as I prefer incident light readings taken with a Gosson.

Ah...the Gosson Luna Pro light meter...now that takes me back!
I think we are of the same mind Alan in our appreciation of the solid and practical workings of good mechanical camera equiptment. I must admit a fondness for the automobile, however (my Hot Wheels collection is probably up to about 600 cars ).
I understand what you mean about "indefinite" focus, but i am not sure why the lack of the split screen focus circle should cause you trouble. In a sense that is just like a focus zone, but you only have one in the center of the frame. I believe your D70 has 9 focus zones (the D2X has 11) which are easily switched from one to another with the multi-selector on the back of the camera. If you put the camera on manual focus a little light comes on when that focus zone is in focus. If the part of the keris your are trying to focus on does not fall into one of your focus zones you merely need to adjust framing until it does, focus till the light comes on, and re-frame. Theoretically there should be less re-framing than with your split screen focus system since there are more focus zones therefore requiring less re-framing. In a sense the focussing should be quicker. When that light comes on the zone IS in focus. With the split screen you have to make the call. Trust the machine Alan.
I certainly understand your reluctance to sit down to process 200 images, especially when it was work done for you by photolabs in the past. I can easliy tone a hundred pics or more in a week, but it is my job and i am getting a fair bit more than your $12 an hout lab girl for it. Certainly when we compare the amount of time film takes to fully process and print to digital, digital comes out as faster, cheaper and cleaner. But if the work is suddenly on you when it was once done by others i can see your complaint.
I also understand your reluctance to invest too much money in more equipment if the return is not there. Just be careful up there on those paint tins, eh?
Alam makes a good point about making sure you use the proper settings on your camera to do close-up work. You will get the most out of your camera this way. However, even though these settings exist it is just a fact that these types of digital cameras are just not properly suited to do a good job with this type of photograph. They are made to take pics of the family outings and friends at parties, not record the fine detail of pamor on a nice old keris blade. As Alan pointed out early, nothing beats a fine macro lens for this work which means moving up into the realms of digital SLRs with inter-changable lenses if the quality of this type of work really matters to you. My wife, who loves to take close-ups of flowers, struggled for a good while with a Nikon 5700 and found the that close-up work with it was very frustrating. She is very happy, though, with her new D50.

[A. G. Maisey]

Its actually a Gossen Lunasix 3. Had a couple of others before that, but this is the latest one.

I cannot use the autofocus, because I`m using my old macro lens for everything. The lens that came with the camera is a piece of garbage. I didn`t want it, but the way the price was structured it cost me something like $50, so I took it anyway, because I figured if I ever wanted to do some happysnaps, it would be perfect and I would have an upmarket point and push camera. For all the serious pics I do I use the macro and do it totally manual.
There`s another consideration with focus too:- I shoot from a tripod, so everything is a static setup. I also use remote release. If you change focus zones, you then need to reset your remote release---not a big deal, but just one more thing that can be overlooked when you`re working as fast as you can. Also, with keris, and especially with closeups taken at less than about 15 inches, I do not always want to get a precise focus on just one part of the subject, often I will move focus a little from the apparently obvious place, to another place in order to redistribute clarity over an entire subject.

With a complete keris, focus can present a different problem. Usually I focus onto the pattern on the pendok, or a particular single line in a bare blade, but when a pendok is smooth, or when a blade does not present a suitable feature, it can be very stressful on the eyes to get something just as you want it; in these circumstances I often do a set of bracketted focuses---like you do bracketted exposures.With the F's, you could put the split screen on any line, and just bring it together. Beautiful! Now I need to use ground glass the whole time. I use Murine like other people scratch.

If I were to buy a new macro lens, this would certainly overcome many of my problems---but I`ve already been down that road.

The adjustments that I do on an image are:- light balance (I shoot raw), crop, curves, resize, unsharp mask. More than 90% of what I shoot are done exactly the same way. The ten percent I might have to fiddle with a bit.I need to set aside the best part of a week to do this processing, including the sorting and sequencing and so on.Its no wonder I`m slowly going blind.

Careful on the paint tins?

Yep----they`re big tins.

[Alam Shah]

Originally Posted by Pusaka

...With my digital camera it’s obviously a focal problem i.e. the image has sufficient resolution (@ 4 mega pixels) but lacks focus so everything is blurred. Perhaps it a fault in the camera.

What's the model of your camera? Have you tried using the 'macro mode' of the camera to take close-up?
Below is the symbol of the 'macro mode' for close-up photography. Locate it and try taking close-up pictures with it. Hope it helps.