Recommended reading

17 comments on Recommended reading
1 minute

💻 Nick Gerlich thinks about how companies have been slow to adopt sustainable packaging, and highlights one particular ramen noodle maker who is abandoning styrofoam for its cups. Read Nuke This

Rings
Canon Dial 35-2, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200, 2013

💻 Can you imagine a car with over 1,000 horsepower? It must be an uncontrollable monster, right? David Heinemeier Hansson owns one. It’s a Tesla, and he says that while it accelerates insanely fast, it handles like a kitten. Read That Model S Plaid

💻 Daylight Savings Time ends overnight tonight in North America. I find this to be a difficult milestone, as shortly the sun will begin to set at 4:30 in the afternoon here. It feels very heavy to me to finish work and find that it’s dark. Brandib has some useful mindset tips to help me (and you, if you’re like me) through. Read Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

📷 Last week I shared Mike Connealy’s photos from his Olympus Pen F FT. This week, Paul Lovell takes a quick look at his Pen F FT. Read Olympus Pen F FT

📷 Everybody’s talking about the half-frame Ektar H35N camera made by Reto but badged as a Kodak. Alan D has a good review of it. Read Half pint class with a Glass – Kodak Ektar H35N

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Comments

17 responses to “Recommended reading”

  1. Andy Umbo Avatar
    Andy Umbo

    I also look fondly on the Olympus half frame cameras from that era. I was around then, and transitioning from high school to photo college in those years. I knew a few people that had them, and want to second the idea that they were a precision mechanical item, and felt absolutely great in the hand, and in use. Alas, what probably killed them was that the half frame size was just one step too far! We’re talking about an era here where most commercial photography buyers wouldn’t even buy the output from 35mm cameras. The ad agencies in my town were only accepting 120 and above, and 35mm was considered a photo-journalist format only; even wedding people shot 120. The people I knew that had the half frame format, worked hard in the darkroom just to get an image near 35mm quality, and finally gave up! By mid 70’s, you could buy these items cheap on the used market, and a lot of used stuff was languishing in the used camera display cases of pro shops. You can’t really draw a correlation between this and modern digital technology. I have a pretty full Olympus M4/3rds set up today, and the image quality is far superior of anything half frame used to produce!

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Yeah, half frame is 110 territory in terms of image size on the negative. I owned one half-frame camera and I hated it for its weird usability. It’s made me shy away from trying more.

      1. adventurepdx Avatar

        “… half frame is 110 territory in terms of image size on the negative.”

        If you mean it’s in “territory” because it’s smaller than standard 35mm, sure. But if you are saying 110 and half-frame 35 is about the same size, that’s false. 110 is 13x17mm, half-frame 35 is 24x18mm. Half frame is twice the size of 110, and also has the benefit of a pressure plate. A graphic to help you think about the size comparison (if you mentally picture a vertical line running halfway through 35):
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Disc-110-135_Film_Comparison.jpg

        1. Tam Avatar
          Tam

          I still have bad memories of printing 110 at the one hour labs where I worked back in the day.

        2. Jim Grey Avatar

          Yeah, the word “territory” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

    2. adventurepdx Avatar

      I’ve gotten some great images out of my Pen EES-2, and yes, it’s a lesser camera than anything from the Pen F series, and yes, the image area is smaller. I haven’t tried to blow it up to a big size, but it does fine on a computer monitor or 4″x6″ print. I wouldn’t write off the format so easily.

  2. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Sounds like you got the wrong mid-life crisis vehicle. :) Though it doesn’t come with a stick shift so there is that. LOL

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      How would you manually shift an electric motor anyway? A Tesla is too rich for my blood.

      1. Michael Avatar
        Michael

        There’s no reason they couldn’t use a normal transmission but no reason to do so either.

        I’m certainly no fan of EVs and their typical price tag makes me even less so. To be fair all new and used vehicle prices still seem outrageously inflated to me. I’d like to get another vehicle in the next year but am not paying what they are asking.

        1. Jim Grey Avatar

          Yeah, the Jetta was the most expensive car I’ve ever purchased, but it is by far not the nicest (from a size/luxury perspective). Seems out of whack. But it was time to trade the Passat in, so I did it.

        2. Khürt L Williams Avatar

          An EV motor delivers constant and instant power. A manual transmission is pointless.

        3. Khürt Williams Avatar

          Electric motors possess a wide torque curve, eliminating the need for a complicated gearbox to efficiently transmit power to the wheels. An EV motor delivers constant and instant power. A manual transmission is pointless.

  3. brandib1977 Avatar

    Jim! Thanks for the mention! I hope my philosophies can help someone else as we begin this new season of life.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Here’s hoping!

  4. Khürt Williams Avatar

    When it comes to Winter, Jim, I’m like you except worse. I detest Winter.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      You sure live in a terrible place for that then!

      1. Jim Grey Avatar

        I mean, so do I, so we can both complain all we want.

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