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This is about writing rather than photographing, but there is similarity in the desire to express oneself. Writing is perhaps nearer to art than photography, because it depends on imagination rather than description. That may only be true for fiction though, as non-fiction is more akin to description. Anyhow, ignoring the high-faluting artspeak, the matter is that I’ve been working on a novel.

I have written a book previously, but it was a non-fiction technical guide, so the only really creative aspect was its structure. This time is different, because I’m doing every part of it myself. The reason why I chose to walk over hot coals carrying a piano is something I’ll get to later, but the drive to do this is my curiosity: I want to know how things work.

What has this to do with photography? Well, imagine you wanted to put on an exhibition of your work. What size should the pictures be? How should they be framed? In what order should they appear? Should they be arranged chronologically or thematically? Do they need to have a similar tone or colour, or is there a progression? How many pictures, and which ones? Do they need titles? Where can I find a space to hang them? What will people want to know about the work? How do I tell people the exhibition exists? What if someone wants to buy a picture?

If you are established or famous, a gallery and curator will do these things for you. If you can find an agent and a publisher, they will do the same with your book. But, for various reasons, I’m going-it alone, so I’m having to learn something of the crafts that make art possible. The biggest lesson for me is that the smooth progress of a swan across a lake is supported by frantic, clever and detailed paddling below the surface. The gallery exhibition that delights didn’t just happen with a few picture hooks and some frames from IKEA. A book that takes you off into a new world is cleverly-constructed to be readable, and takes more than stapling some photocopied pages together.

What this means is that, when you try to DIY, you have to find and do all the invisible things that you took for granted (and were built to be invisible and not detract from the work). Books have a structure: if you pick a new one up, you know how to use it. So if you build your own book, you need to learn those settings so that the ‘swan’s legs’ remain invisible and your reader sees the picture and not the frame.

If I may make another aside – writing is becoming a growing interest for more photographers, as they are rediscovering blogging and personal websites. Blogging, like what I done here, is an easy type of writing in some ways, as it is generally short-form and informal. There is the pressure to maintain, of course: if I commit to update my blog weekly, then I have to do it every week. But the underlying mechanics are invisible- WordPress handles the formatting, the webby stuff and the subscribers. The joy of t’interweb is that publishing and distribution are free, which is why I have a global audience (cough).

Not so much with physical books, though, especially if you choose to do it yourself. And long before you sully paper with ink, you need to get the ‘legs’ right. This is when you find that the things you thought you knew, you don’t. Books are so well-constructed that you don’t notice how they work. Not until you try to make one, that is. There is a generally-standard structure to a book – the picture framing and presentation, if you will – and you should follow it. It’s like the best of industrial design, where the item shows you how to use it.

The content of a book also follows conventions in the way it is presented. My Gracious Half spent an academic career reading critically, and tells me that while we speak free-form, we need to write with grammar. The grammar and punctuation are there to guide the reader, and avoid them crashing out of the story when they hit something they don’t instantly understand. So, suddenly, the words that flow so fluently from your lips need commas, or semicolons, or even the dreaded em-dash. And these gadgets have to be in the correct places and doing the right job. It’s like the ant that asked the millipede how they synchronised their legs. The millipede thought about it, then tripped and fell over. (Don’t worry – the ant tried the same trick on a spider, and now there’s one less ant.) So as a self-publisher, I feel like the millipede: I have to look at my work on several levels to ensure that I tell the story, and I also tell it in a way that is readable and understandable. I have tripped repeatedly.

I like to think it’s like looking at art – you know the stuff where you say “my five-year-old could do that”. OK then, you try. Or when some people see photographs, and complain that “anyone could do that”. Again, show me. You don’t know how hard those legs are paddling until you try to propel your own swan. George Orwell knew this, because he said that “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” Of course, he also had a mind to the desired result, when he said “Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

Would I have it any other way? Of course I would: I’m lazy. I’d love to have people polish my prose, primp my punctuation and perfect my plotting, but I don’t have them to hand. So it’s a combination of my best efforts and the support of multiple style-guides, grammaries and the high priests of punctuation, combined with reading books for structure rather than content. But the result is my own best understanding and effort, with a journey that has taught me more than I learned (or perhaps, remembered) from school. To stretch the simily, (isn’t that a monkey?) I  didn’t just take pictures – I built my own camera, ground my own lenses and made my own film. Why? Because I wanted to create an actual book, identical to a commercial paperback, that was all my own. And also because my particular opus would never convince an agent or publisher to pony-up, so this was the only way it was going to happen. So there will be one copy for me and a couple for the friends who took an interest (or wondered why I’d started asking odd and worrying questions about guns and poisons), and that’s it. Until the sequel, of course.

Another similarity I’ve found between writing and photography is the power of the pause. When you think there is nothing more to be done, that the work has reached perfection, you move it to the back burner and wait. And then will come the dog-walking moment, when your subconscious gives a timid cough and asks if you could spare a minute. Which is when you realise that you were only half way to good, but you can save it with another rewrite/ reprint/ rehash. In truth it was said, that books are not written, they are rewritten. (I kept my first draft so that I can go back and wince at it. How else would you measure progress?)

Print on demand is wonderful for little vanity projects like this, so even creating an actual physical book is not out of reach, providing I’ve done all of the design and layout. Speaking of which, the work is not done when the words are typed: that’s when you put them in that clever layout. So as well as learning how to spell, I’ve also been learning about page bleed and trim allowance, and converting my cover artwork to CMYK. My old copy of PhotoShop Elements can’t produce CMYK, but the wonderful world of Linux applications provided a copy of Krita, which does the job perfectly.

So there it is – writing a book is like creating an exhibition, and both are harder than they look.

PS – the reason this book will never be published is that it’s fan-fiction: I spotted an event in a series of novels that I could use to take-off in a different direction. In tech-speak, I forked it, which is probably what I also did if you say that aloud. And if anyone litigious is listening, I didn’t use any of the series characters: I spotted an event that let me make up some new ones and run off with a new story line. So there. Anyhow, it’s been the learning that I have enjoyed, not any thoughts of success or adding to the total of human knowledge. Curiosity made me do it. I’ve also put on two (shared) exhibitions of photography, and those were also a big learning opportunity. There will be no sequel to those.

What is a real photographer? What do real photographers do? I take pictures, but am I  a real photographer? We’ve all heard the term and the definitions  – you know the ones…

• Real Photographers (RPs) shoot on manual
• RPs shoot film
• RPs shoot rangefinders
• RPs can eyeball the exposure
• RPs use prime lenses
• RPs shoot full-frame
• RPs shoot RAW (not just raw)
• RPs list their shooting settings with their pictures.

And then there’s the whole merch thing of which camera bag or tripod a Real Photographer uses, which probably goes down to the detail of things like their choice of memory card or underpants (on sale, and cotton, if you need to know).

So let’s deal with these assertions.

Some cameras are manual, and some photographers will sometimes make manual adjustments to their automated camera. Choosing to shoot in manual mode all the time is not a badge of merit, just a choice. You may also hear that Real Photographers shoot in manual or use film, to ‘slow them down’, as if there was a risk otherwise they’d go so fast their camera might catch fire. So shoot manual if you want to, or need to – what matters are your results, not how you got them.

You are required to shoot film to be Real? Bollocks (technical term). Film is a medium, not a certificate. Do real artists use oil paints, so that watercolour is the mark of a newbie? A Real Artist is someone who produces art, whatever medium they work in. So go right ahead and use whatever shakes your muse.

Rangefinders are a relic from when cameras and lenses were difficult to make. Any argument for their alleged benefits of small size, clear viewfinder, good lenses and so on is easily beaten by a mirrorless camera. And you don’t need one of those to be Real, either. Telling people what camera you used is like listing the camera settings – see below.

You want to guess the exposure? Go ahead, but you’ll be shooting in clear sunshine, as it will be the only exposure you’ll get right. Successful photographers, meaning the ones whose pictures are usable, use a light meter. There is often one built-into that expensive camera you’re using. The strength of this mythology of being able to guess the exposure is shown in the existence of exposure guides, which cost as much as an actual working light meter (secondhand). Of the two, the actual light meter will be more accurate, more often, than a list of estimates.

Prime lenses used to be sharper than zooms, so photographers who aspired to sharpness preferred them. But zooms offer better framing and reduce the need to swap lenses or carry a second camera, making it more likely you’ll get the shot. Prime lenses still have the advantage of usually having a wider aperture, but you should be choosing the tool to suit the job, not to impress others.

Full-frame digital cameras used to be expensive, so we all shot APS-C. So full-frame used to be the mark of a professional, which may be why it became associated with Real Photography. Then APS-C got better, with more pixels and better high-ISO performance. Full-frame sensors also improved. Now there’s nothing to choose between them in most situations. Full-frame can make better use of old lenses, particularly wide-angles, while APS-C makes long lenses usefully longer. Just like prime lenses, which one you choose should depend on your budget or your requirements, not your need for validation.

People who talk about RAW seem to think it’s an acronym. It’s not – it’s raw, as in uncooked or unprocessed. There should be no mystique to saving your images in raw – it just allows you to make corrections later more easily. Raw files make sense if you want to work on an image later or you may have used the wrong settings; they make less sense if you need to handle lots of images quickly. This is why sports and wedding photographers (and others) will often shoot in jpeg format. It’s just as real.

What is the point of adding technical shooting information to a displayed image? There is a risk that it could lead to people arguing about your settings, rather than looking at your image. They may be able to tell by looking that the photographer used a long or wide lens, with a slow or fast shutter (which are only relevant if they are curious about why the picture looks that way). If they can’t tell, then the information is worthless, or even confusing. I suppose it can have a use in the ‘comparison’ competitions that often arise, but who’s to say I didn’t just make up some numbers? What, you can’t afford a 1500mm f2 lens? I have them in different colours for each day of the week. In truth, I couldn’t tell you what settings I used when shooting film, because the only time I took notes was when I was doing some specific testing. It’s much easier with digital, as the information is usually captured in the EXIF data. Of course, I have been known to change the data in pictures I submit to club competitions, to see if anyone peeks. But that’s just Really Annoying. Seriously though, the only use for these data is in learning, when you reflect on what you did and what worked best. The rest of the time, seeing the numbers presented should be the mark of a photographer who is more interested in their numbers than their images (or whose publisher thinks they add value).

So based on these thoughts, the question is: do you take pictures? Then you are already a real photographer. I confess that I have become an accidental photographer many times recently, when I squeezed my new mobile phone inappropriately. But when I meant to take a picture I really meant it. That’s real, that is: taking intentional pictures makes you a Real Photographer. And logically, what would a pretend photographer be? Are there people who carry a camera with no intention of using it? Is there a photographic equivalent of wearing gym clothing to the pub, or mountaineering kit on the bus? Those actually make more sense, because they at least have some functionality and you don’t have to carry them. So if there is such a thing as fake photography, it must be a very niche niche. As for the rest of us, we’re already real photographers; so don’t worry, be happy.

I was given a roll of FPP‘s x-ray film in 120 format. Now, I believe that x-ray film has extra silver content to make it as sensitive as possible (because you want to minimise the dose of x-rays). I also believe it can sometimes be coated with emulsion on both sides of the backing, to again get as much sensitivity as possible. I do know from FPP’s notes that this film has no anti-halation layer, so highlights in the picture may bloom. It is also orthochromatic, being sensitive to green and blue but not red. So I’ve got an ortho film that’s likely to be good on landscapes but not skies and will show flaring around the highlights. What’s not to like?

There’s not much information on developing the film though, just a fairly basic “6 mins in D76”. Now, I use 510-Pyro rather than D76 so I wondered what the times might be. There are times on the Massive Dev Chart for the 4×5 sheet film, but that is 10 ISO rather than the 100 ISO of the 120 film I have. So I had a look for other films that take 6 minutes in D76, and found that both Adox CHS25 and Efke 25 do. Looking these up on the 510-Pyro data sheet says they both take 6.5 mins at the standard 1:100 dilution. So my best guess was to give the x-ray film the same 6.5 minutes. Then I found a review by Alex Luyckx who reckoned to give it a bit less than FP4. Now FP4 in 510-Pyro takes ten minutes, so I’ll try it on nine.

So then: what to shoot and which camera to shoot it with? Because I’m going to be guessing a bit on the development, I should at least try to get the exposure correct: it will remove one variable from the results. So that means the Kiev 60, as it has proper controls for aperture and shutter. As to the what, I’m going to want some leaves and grass, preferably backlit. A clear blue sky would be interesting for at least one shot, to see if I get the effect I’ve seen before of the film gaining extra exposure from the blue shadows. A male portrait would be good too, as the ortho sensitivity should give a rugged skin effect. A night scene would also be good, to see how much the highlights bloom. So that’s the plan; but as we know, plans seldom survive contact with the enemy, the enemy in this case being the weather, because blue skies being rarer than good news right now.

And then Spring done sprung and the world got brighter, even if the news didn’t. So load the camera, fill the bag with lenses, and off to work we go. My, but the Kiev 60 is a big camera. Luckily I bought a new (to me) camera rucksack recently – a Lowepro Orion Trekker. This has an upper section for the usual essentials, and a padded lower section for the camera. It’s not quick-access, but it beats carrying the camera round my neck.

Then the scenes were shot, the film was developed and I removed it from the tank for that hopeful first look. The good news is that nine minutes looks about right. The other good news is that the Kiev did its trick of squeezing thirteen frames onto the film. This is my second Kiev, and this one is better at spacing the frames evenly but still gives me a baker’s dozen. As an adopted Yorkshireman, I appreciate making the best use of my silver halides. The other thing to note is that the film is very curly.

The first shot is a bush that has red and green leaves. This should give the maximum visible difference due to the ortho sensitivity, and indeed it does.

Next was a landscape under open sunlight. The sky has gone pretty much white, but the grass is pale. There is a tiny bit of cloud detail if I burn the sky in a bit.

Male portrait in sunlight. You can see how the crockery has flared in the light. The jacket was black, but has rendered paler than it appears to the eye.

Male portrait in shade, with a blue sky. The jacket was blue, so has rendered much paler than it appears to the eye.

A backlit window, taken to see how much it would flare. Not a great shot, as it was taken at an angle to avoid my reflection. The answer is that it does flare.

The other thing to note is that this film will light-pipe, so needs to be handled with care. Even though I loaded and unloaded this in dim light, there was some leakage at the edges of the roll. The FPP site recommends loading and unloading in a dark bag or darkroom. I was mostly OK with the 120 film, but I certainly would with 35mm.

So, an interesting film. I think that if I used this again, it would be for portraits as the slight flare would be a good effect to work with.

I was tidying a bunch of old files and found a diagram by Alain Briot of the development of photographic skills. It must date from a while ago, as I can’t find it on his website, so let me describe it.

It’s the usual pyramid shape (as seen in multiple presentation slides), with ten layers or levels. Ascending to the peak is labelled as ‘personal style growth, increased achievement and increased praise’. The bottom layer of the pyramid is ‘acquiring equipment and learning how to use it’ and the pinnacle is ‘unique body of work that inspires and delights your audience’. This is quite aspirational, although my experience of pyramids is more akin to the company hierarchy here, and my experience of photography more like the learning curve here. Even so, I would be delighted to inspire an audience with my unique body of work, but I don’t have an audience, I’m not unique, and the only people I have ever inspired are the teachers and managers who wanted to kill me (Joke. Mostly.).

One thing I should clarify though, is that I have no opinion for or against Mr Briot. I’m definitely not criticising him, just reflecting on his structure in general.

So, is a vision a recognisable style, or something you want to say about the world? And what about people whose style changes, or who deliberately change their style as soon as they realise they have one? I also have questions about the idea of a body of work. The definition is the entire output of an artist, which may be divided into periods or themes as the artist developed or changed. I think it must need to be the entire published output, as I’ve got loads of derivative and fumbled pictures that I would not want seen by others. So, if we are thinking about bodies of work, think of a commercial photographer, who will have a quantity of pictures they have produced, but at the request of their clients. This may mean that they have a visual style, which is what the client wanted, but this body of work would be more of a catalogue than an exhibition. At the other end of the scale would be an amateur, who would also have a quantity of pictures. They may even have a consistent style. But again, I’m not sure that qualifies as a body of work.

Perhaps what Mr Briot means with his pinnacle of perfection is that the photographer has depth and history: they have produced a quantity of well-regarded pictures over a span of time. Their vision would be their pictorial style – you could probably tell a Bailey from a McCullin or a Parr, for example. Is their work unique? That’s a good question.

Many musicians will openly credit their inspirations, or in some cases who they actually copied things from. Sampling was, maybe still is, fair game. I’m not sure I’ve seen photographers refer to their sources though. Maybe it’s because of the difference between art and photography: a photographer has to work with what is present in the world, so what they add to it is their interpretation. If they got their interpretation from someone else, they might feel they are not adding much. Perhaps we treat music and photography differently? We might be happy to listen to something that is similar to what we already like, but unwilling to look at a picture that is similar to ones we have already seen. But perhaps that is the measure of vision – that the photographer’s intention is strong and evident enough that they are the thing we have seen before? And if they continue to do this over a period, they develop a body of work.

So where does this leave me and my pyramids in the sand? I definitely draw inspiration from others, and even try to recreate their look so that I can learn how to use it. I’m not famous and my pictures are of no consequence, so I can happily reveal my sources. Nobody is going to accuse me of plagiarism (I hope), because I am openly copying, or at least echoing, for a reason. I do try to apply my own vision to my pictures, by asking myself what it is that I see, rather than just snapping what is there. I don’t have a story to tell though, and nor do I  havebody of work, just a back-catalogue. This is because I have never focused on a particular theme or project. But I can still aspire to be better than I am, and perhaps something like this pyramid or progression provides me with a path?

What about you? What do you think is your inspiration or path to improvement?

PS – Grant Scott has a definition of body of work.

It started with a comment, that someone “liked art but didn’t understand photography”. Now, I’ve argued about the difference between photography and say, painting, before. My view is that photography shows what exists, while painting shows what was in the artist’s mind. But it was the “don’t understand” bit that got me thinking.

So let me start with my conclusion, like a proper business presentation. I believe photography holds-up a mirror to the world.

A photograph shows an event: something that existed for a brief time. A selfie of me in front of an ancient monument (difficult to tell us apart) demonstrates that I was there. A sweeping landscape of the Dales shows that it does sometimes stop raining. An athlete caught at a moment of extreme exertion shows us mortals what that looks like. I know that it’s possible to make photographs of things that never existed – PhotoShop and collage can do that – but I believe that is where the results stop being photography and start becoming art (without judging the aesthetic quality of the results).

I don’t think that any art has been described as capturing the decisive moment. The artist makes the moment. Think of the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel: God’s finger is almost touching Adam’s, but Michaelangelo didn’t have to get the paint on rapidly while his models posed – the picture was in his mind. Compare that with say, McCabe’s picture of a table tennis serve. McCabe seized a moment in time, to show us something that happened in the world.

So I think the key to ‘understanding’ photography is to recognise that art is imagination, while photography is description: my pictures show what I saw, and what it want to say about it. Another analogy could be that art is fiction and photography non-fiction. Or perhaps that art is created, while photography is extracted?

Phew! A bit heavy for a Thursday. So go on then – what do you think?

PS – if you want to hear what a mirror for the day sounds like.

I made a few small modifications to a Kiev 60 to turn it into a panoramic 35mm camera. [At this point go and read about the conversion, as the ‘obvious’ way to do it risks breaking the camera.] So, with some 35mm film loaded, a few lenses in my bag and a song in my heart I set off to see what this baby could do.

The camera now shoots a 60x24mm frame but uses the original medium format lenses. The lenses I have available are 45mm, 50mm, 80mm, 180mm and 250mm. They will have the same horizontal angle of view as they have with 120 film, as all I’m doing is cropping off the top and bottom of the frame. The lenses will also have the same angle of view as their 35mm equivalents on the smaller film, as what I’m doing is the equivalent of the panoramic feature that some cameras offered, that cropped the top and bottom of the frame. So why bother? Mostly because the negative will be larger than a cropped 35mm frame, so should be better. A cropped 35mm frame was what, about 14x36mm? So the Kievpan version at 24×60 is nearly three times the area.

Having said “it’s the same as 35mm panoramic” I needed to check. My thinking is that the horizontal field of view of the frame is set by the angle of view of the lens, so a 60 degree lens on a medium format camera would give the same span as a 60 degree lens on 35mm. My widest lens for medium format is 45mm, so it will give almost the same view as a panoramic crop in a 35mm camera using a 28mm lens. So far, so mathematically consistent.

So the plan is to shoot a series of panoramas, using a range of focal lengths, partly to see what they look like and partly to find out if this bodge works.

The first thing I noticed was how large and heavy a Kiev outfit is. I took only the 45, 50 and 180 lenses, but they filled my bag and bent my shoulder. The guidelines I’d made on the focusing screen were visible, which was useful. I’ll see when I develop the film how accurate they are.

And the second thing I noticed was the negative spacing. It starts out fine, then becomes overlapping. There is also a good length of unexposed film at the end, because I stopping taking pictures when the wind-on became stiffer. I think what has happened is that the 35mm film builds-up on the take-up reel and doesn’t advance as far as it should. Some of the frames were also aslant, so the film cannot be pulling tight, or is slipping to one side as it builds-up on the take-up spool. So it looks like the Kievpan is a bad idea, unless I limit it to 24 exposure films. So, with all the faff of loading 35mm film, plus the bigger faff of unloading the camera in a dark-bag, I would be better off shooting ordinary roll film and cropping it to a letterbox.

Ah well, curiosity is satisfied.

Or why some things last, and some don’t. This has nothing to do with mechanical fragility or the tricks that some manufacturers play to prevent repair – this is about the design decisions involved in building cameras and lenses that make something continue to be useful in future. Since most forecasts might as well be studying sheep entrails, this should probably be titled longevity by accident.

One design decision of consequence  was the diameter of the lens mounting on the camera body. It constrains the maximum diameter of the lens that can be used, but that wouldn’t have been a big problem back when f2.8 was a fast lens. Choosing a wide lens mount would have meant that the lenses also had to be wider to fit onto it. For manual lenses, this means bigger – so heavier, more difficult to carry, and so on. When clever lenses were invented later it turned out to be a good decision, as it provides room for focusing motors and extra connections to the camera. I was playing with an old Topcon SLR recently, and their use of a narrow lens mount (because they had a shutter inside it), compromised their ability to offer faster lenses.

Another lens mount decision that had a long-term effect was the flange distance: the distance between the back of the lens and the film or sensor. When Pentax changed from M42 screw to their K mount, they kept the same distance (and made the new K mount slightly wider than the old M42 screw diameter). This meant that their customers’ investment in M42 lenses was preserved – a simple adapter fits inside the throat of the K mount and converts it back to M42. Canon chose a slightly smaller flange distance, so Canon cameras can also re-use M42 lenses. Nikon chose a larger flange distance, meaning that M42 lenses could be fitted (if you could find an adapter) but wouldn’t focus out to infinity.

The flange distance had an additional effect though, in the ability to use that manufacturer’s lenses on other cameras. Because Canon’s flange distance was smaller, it’s possible to use M42 lenses on a Canon body, as there is room to fit an adapter, but not the other way round, as the Canon lens would not fit close enough to focus out to infinity. Nikon lenses are made for a longer flange distance, so they can (theoretically) be used on any camera that has a smaller flange distance. The ultimate example of this is medium format lenses, as they have large flange distances to allow for the large camera body. This provides plenty of room to fit an adapter to almost any smaller-format camera.

The current best expression of this are the mirrorless cameras. Eliminating the swinging mirror allows the camera body to be thinner, so the flange distance can be smaller. Providing the diameter of the lens mount is large enough, you should be able to use any lens that was built for a larger flange distance by filling the gap with an adapter. Time will tell if removing all the mechanical parts involved in the mirror and shutter of an SLR made the camera more or less useful.

Getting back to lens design, there was one other design decision that affects how easily a lens can be reused, and that’s the aperture mechanism. SLRs focus best with the lens aperture wide open, so there is usually a mechanism that closes the aperture at the point of exposure. One option is to have the aperture closed by a spring, so the camera just has to release whatever mechanism it was using to hold it open. Because these ‘default closed’ lenses will always stop-down, they can be used on any camera that can mount them: the camera doesn’t need to control the aperture. The alternative is a ‘default open’ lens, where the camera has to make an action to close the lens’s aperture. M42 lenses are like this, because the camera has to push a pin in the base of the lens to stop-down the aperture. This feature evolved over time though, so early M42 lenses might have a manual/auto switch that lets the aperture be controlled directly by the ring on the lens, or the lens may have a second ring the photographer turns to stop the lens down to the set aperture. This is why some M42 lenses are more useful than others: because they will work on cameras that don’t have a method for pushing the lens’s aperture pin. It also makes some branded lenses more useful than others. For example, I believe that Olympus lenses are ‘default open’, which would make them less easy to use on a different camera. On the other hand, my medium format Kiev lenses are ‘default closed’, so they can be adapted to work with many other cameras and retain full control of the aperture.

Perhaps the best example of deliberately designing for re-use would be Tamron’s Adaptall system. They built a range of lenses with a large flange distance, and a range of adapters that fitted into that space to make the lens fit multiple makes of camera. You can still buy an Adaptall lens and use it on any camera for which an adapter exists. A pal of mine has a Tamron lens for his old breech-lock Canon, and the adapter mechanism is a thing of beauty.

This has so far ignored deliberate design decisions to prevent alternative uses. One obvious example was Kodak’s use of smaller spools on their 620 film. Because other manufacturers were making 120 film, Kodak built their cameras to use the same film, but on a smaller spool, that you could only buy from Kodak. Despite Kodak’s one-time dominance, 120 film was more widely used and outlived 620 (and Kodak). You can still use a camera that takes 120 film (I have one that’s around 90 years old), but Kodak’s 620 cameras are either a pain in the aperture to use or are kept as shelf-ornaments.

There are also legal cases intended to prevent re-use: look at Canon’s defence of its RF mount and Nikon’s of their Z mount. These are meant to prevent any third party making a lens that fits them. I expect you can still use manual lenses that would fit, just not lenses that can connect to the camera’s electronics. I hear that they both make their profit on the lenses rather than the cameras, so that could be why they are locking out any competition. This makes them like printers, so I hate them already. Ironically, Nikon used to make lenses for other camera-makers, but that was under contract rather than as alternatives.

There are also design decisions that changed. Think of Canon (again), who went from breech-lock to bayonets, or Nikon (again) changing their aperture-indexing system. This can affect the future use of older lenses within the same camera system, but doesn’t stop an old lens being adapted for a mirrorless cameras, for example. Unless you wanted it to link to the camera’s electronics.

And then there’s large format, which continues to work with anything that can be made to fit, because it started out that way. The back of the camera will take any film or sensor that the lens can cover, and the front of the camera will take any lens that can be made to attach. The result is the longest-running camera design of all.

So what do you think? Where are the current evolutionary dead-ends, and what will we still be using when our robot overlords allow us some time off?

This was a new word for me. It means radical repurposing, or using something in a manner or for a job that it was not intended. In evolutionary terms it means when an organ or feature changes function, such as when feathers changed from a warm overcoat to wings. (I didn’t realise that we only stopped creationism being taught in state schools in 2014.)

What’s that got to do with photography? Have you ever repurposed anything? I do, but it’s usually because I decline to pay big money for a small thing that I won’t use a lot. You may have heard of the Yorkshireman’s war-cry of ‘how much?’ – which often drives the great cross-cultural initiative of a redneck engineering solution. That’s me all over, that is: RNE. Although, being Yorkshire, I suppose we should call it a ‘by ‘eck engineering’ solution.

One of the first drivers for my RNE/BEE was scuba diving. It’s an expensive hobby, made more so by a multitude of costly gadgets. A lot of these have ordinary-world equivalents that do the same job but don’t carry the price tag. Corrective vision lenses to fit inside a diving mask? The lenses for welding masks do the same job if you shape them with a hacksaw. Underwater flashing safety marker? A squid-fishing lure works too. Stainless snap-links and bungee cords? Get thee to a chandlery. Although, strictly, those are all examples of adapting something to do a similar job in a different environment.

And then came the photography… I think my first exaptation was using bottle and jar tops as lens hoods. The top from a milk carton fits my Industar 50mm lens, and a coffee jar top works on my Helios 58mm. Need a small gold-toned reflector to put some warm light into a shadow? The shiny card that smoked salmon comes on does the job nicely (after a wash). Indeed, light modifiers are the playground of the RNE. Old net curtains, cardboard and foil can bodge a scrim or reflector quicker than you can say Amazon.

Set up a fluorescent tube hung vertically, prop-up a black-painted board, stand your model between them and shoot in mono. Instant David Bailey lighting. That last one isn’t really exaptation though, because it’s not repurposing the light. Cardboard boxes though – they get repurposed all the time. Glueing kitchen foil to a cardboard panel makes a great reflector, with the amount of crinkle in the foil controlling the quality of the reflection. A stand to hold a mobile phone over a light box? Sorted. I even made a large format camera (of which, more anon). I also took the lens and bellows off an old folding roll-film camera to make a Lensbaby-equivalent lens for film or digital. Does that count?

So, out of curiosity, have you radically repurposed anything?

Why are printers so rubbish to use and so expensive? OK, the expense I can understand: the people using them are a captive audience  that can be milked of money. That’s why printers appear cheap to buy: they are the means to lock you into buying an endless supply of expensive cartridges. The cartridges and the printer are, of course, built to exclude other suppliers’ cartridges and any attempt to refill rather than replace. The frosting on the cherry on that cake must be the ink programmes where you buy a monthly output and the printer orders its own refills.

I worked at a trading bank way back when the mortgage-backed securities business was just starting. The idea then was to make a parcel of people who paid a regular amount each month, and turn that income into a bond that the bank could sell (and didn’t that turn out well?). It all went wrong when the bond-sellers took too many risks, and the people selling the original mortgages started pushing them to people who couldn’t maintain the payments. But what’s that got to do with printers?

The income stream isn’t the printer itself, it’s what the printer does. And what it does is to consume goods and services that provide a regular income. The manufacturers have learned that they can charge rent forever, rather than sell something once. Similarly with printer cartridges and paper: once you charge rent for them you have all sorts of games to increase your profits. You could raise the rent (charge more), reduce the offer (smaller cartridges, less ink, stop working before empty), block alternatives (exclude competitors or DIY) or add conditions (minimum spend required, printer to be replaced bi-annually). And a steady income stream is catnip for any business – banks will lend against it or you can bundle it and sell it to someone else. So there are strong incentives to extract rent and few for selling outright. But that’s all to do with the printer manufacturers and less about the printers themselves.

I find most printers to be fragile and temperamental. I should explain: I was an IT Support person for many years, so printers and I go way back. The office laser printers would choke with paper-jams if we used paper they didn’t like. The feed rollers that picked up the paper from the tray would wear smooth and stop working (and were not a replaceable part). Putting a new toner cartridge in was literally a black art, because that’s what colour it left your hands or clothes. But at least they had some useful management facilities and could handle large volumes of work – the amusing feature of an inkjet printer was how they would print half a page before running out of ink, increasing your costs and frustration in one go. We did buy one sensible inkjet though, which used a roll of paper and bottles of ink rather than sealed cartridges. That shock of the practical must have stayed with me, because I’m looking at the Openprinter as a sensible alternative to my clunky old Canon inkjet. My one concern is that I haven’t seen any movement on their funding page for a while. I dearly hope they succeed, because a printer that ignores the games that the main manufacturers play would be ideal.

And now it’s time for my confession- I rarely print my own stuff. No doubt that if I sold ‘art‘ prints, I would make the effort to create something of quality, but I don’t: I make prints when I need them, to fit a particular space, so I don’t print enough to make the overhead costs of a printer worthwhile. This is especially true when I consider the general buggeration that the printer makers add to the mix. Instead, I use a commercial printer that I’ve been using for years. They do good work and a quick turnaround, and I am happy to pay their profit margin and postage to avoid faffing with a printer of my own. As just one example, I recently ordered a set of mono and colour prints in sizes from A4 to A3 in the surface finish I wanted. They arrived in less time than I expect it would have taken me to organise and print them, even if I had all the right paper (and enough ink) to hand. Painless printing.

So why am I looking at the OpenPrinter? Because I do print pages of text, and I’m fed-up with my inkjet’s games of cartridge roulette. That, and the joy of de-enshittification. Viva la revolución!

I should know better at my age, but there was an odd SLR for sale with an interesting lens. It was cheap, which is always attractive, especially since I’d recently been to a camera fair. Some of the traders there were punting broken cameras for working-camera money because they were rare or looked nice. Hmm.

Anyway, back to the Topcon. This was a rather advanced camera, launched in 1964. It had shutter-priority automatic exposure, plus manual, and centre-weighted TTL metering. Mine came with a 53mm f2 lens, and other focal lengths were available. That’s a decent spec. The weird aspect is that it has a diaphragm shutter behind the lens, much like the Contaflex I found. This means it has to do lots of synchronised tricks to take pictures.

This example is in nice cosmetic condition externally, so would have been much more expensive at the camera fair </snark>. It’s a chunky lad – it weighs in at 860g with the lens. So it feels solid, and it also feels like it’s not about to explode in a shower of springs and cogs, unlike the Fujicarex I tried. Topcon as a brand and camera had quite a history, and were once considered better than Nikon. All well and good, but have the years been kind to it? Maybe not. The first thing I noticed was that the shutter was running very slow  – like self-timer slow. But winding and firing it a few times seemed to speed things up a bit. I also left it in a warm place for a couple of days and that seemed to loosen it up.

There appeared to be a patch of haze in the centre of the lens. The joy of old lenses is that they generally come apart easily, so it was simple enough to take out the front element, wipe the back of it and reassemble. It may have been condensation, as it just wiped off. (This was before giving it a sauna.)

The next job was the light seals, which had crumbled. Luckily they hadn’t turned into the tacky mess that some foam ones do, so these were also an easy job.

The focusing screen was a bit of a mess, being covered in black flecks. They didn’t move with a gentle clean, so I’m leaving it alone.

The manual (all praise to Mike Butkus) lists the battery as a mercury 1.3v PX-625. I tried a zinc/air cell first, wrapped in foil to make it fit. The meter needle moved, but was under-reading. Then I remembered I had some modern P-625a cells, so I tried one of those. The meter gave about the right reading, or certainly close enough to try using the camera. So if the shutter livens-up, we could be in business.

The first day out with the camera was… interesting. It sounds like the shutter is running very slow, but also varying in speed so that there doesn’t seem to be a consistent ‘operating time’ at each speed. Anyhow, I  made notes as I went along for when I developed the film later. The camera’s meter seemed to compare well with a hand-held one, so that’s an unexpected bonus.

The first piece of good news is that the frames are evenly-spaced, so the film transport is working. There don’t appear to be any light leaks, so the new light seals are working too. The negatives also seem to be evenly exposed and roughly the right density, even on the auto setting, so the shutter speeds might be better than I thought. The camera has to take a complex series of actions to expose the film, so it’s possible that what I thought was the shutter running slow was just the camera doing all its clever mechanical magic.

On scanning the negatives, there was some variation in exposure. Luckily 510-Pyro is quite forgiving, so the full roll is usable. Not bad for what appeared to be a knackered old relic (the camera, obviously). Overall, an interesting camera. This would probably have been a top-spec consumer marvel when it was released, and it’s still a bit of a marvel that it appears to be working sixty years later.

PS – ignore this link: it’s for web-crawlers.