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Articles and Reviews
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Bronica 45-Degree Prism Finder Way
back in 1998 when I was researching medium format systems and putting
together my shopping list of items towards the eventual early 1999
purchase of my Bronica SQ-Ai kit, I placed the SQ-i 90-Degree Prism
Finder on the list as a must purchase. Not only because it would
apply towards a free lens offered by the distributor, but also because
I was coming from 35mm and I wanted the medium format experience
to be as much like the small format experience as possible.
Ah,
how naïve I was then. The SQ-i prism is/was Bronica’s best for the
SQ-Ai camera, but for some reason, I didn’t take to it and found
too high a percentage of my photos taken with it were out of focus.
My eyes aren’t perfect but I don’t think they’re that bad; however,
maybe some judicious use of the dioptre adjustment might have helped,
if I had even thought of it back then.
Anyway,
after a few off focus shots, I resorted to using the waist level
finder which reduced my off focus shots to nil thanks to the 3.5X
magnifier available. After years of using the waist level finder,
I got use to the reverse lateral image which turned right to left
and left to right. So if someone moved right in the finder view,
I had to turn left to compensate for the movement. Clear as mud?
No worries, a lot of people got messed up with the reverse view
too. Think how hard it must be to have a reversed and an upside
down view as large format photographers have to deal with.
Using
a waist level finder means being stooped over the camera and less
interaction with the subjects. You’re looking down, focusing and
adjusting and telling the subjects to move here or there without
looking at them. A 90-degree prism finder isn’t too much better
because I’m still a bit stooped to get a good angle or height for
the subjects (I usually shoot from a bit below eyelevel) and since
I’m left eye dominant, I don’t see the subjects at all except through
the viewfinder.
But
I bought the 90-degree SQ-i instead and frankly, I regret the purchase
because it’s a big chunk of coin that sits uselessly in my cabinet.
Spending CAN $800 for a new 45-degree finder wasn’t financially
palatable to me, so I settled on the waist level finder instead.
The only thing I could think of that would make the 90-degree finder
useful again would have been a viewfinder magnifier.
I
have a Nikon DG-2, which is a 2X magnifier for Nikon cameras. The
thread mount is meant for the FM series of Nikon cameras, but various
adapter pieces allows you to mate it to any other Nikon camera,
from the F6 down to the F55 and everything in between. I had a specific
use in mind for the DG-2, macro work with the D100, but I had also
hoped that by some little coincidence, the DG-2 could be mated to
the Bronica prism. No such luck though.
Fast-forward
to October 2004 and news of Bronica’s demise by parent company Tamron.
A shame that a company around for so long should be killed off,
but Tamron missed the digital boat for medium format and has to
pay the price now. I looked at it, as an opportunity to pick up
some more kit, because I figured the prices would fall even further
than they were. Thus it was that I purchased the used 45-degree
finder from KEH Camera Broker. I also bought a lens hood for the
Bronica 50mm lens and the Brightscreen AccurFocus magnifier described
further down.
In
my rather irrational exuberance, I downplayed the total cost to
me due to exchange conversion, S&H, and taxes payable to our
dear governments in Ottawa and Victoria. Despite the Canadian dollar
coming on strong, it still wasn’t enough and in the end my good
deal purchase ended being about 50% more expensive than I expected.
So much for the deal. Canada Customs rubbed some more salt into
the financial wound by double-billing me on the taxes because they
thought I bought two prisms. Thankfully, I was able to obtain a
refund by filling out forms in quadruplicate, signing my name with
my own blood, and promising to name my next born Pierre Elliot Jean
Mackenzie King Martin. I plan to file an appeal on that last point
and hope to get away with just Robert (&) Douglas Mackenzie
(inside Canadian joke, eh).
I can place the camera position higher up for a more pleasing shot instead of lower down as required of the waist level finder. The 90-degree prism is better for some higher positions, but I don’t expect to be in such situations very often if at all.
One
of the few times I’ve ever had any envy towards Hasselblad users
was when I was flipping through a large print catalogue of Hasselblad
equipment and spied a magnifier available for its prisms. I don’t
know how much it costs, but I appreciated that Hasselblad at least
had such a specialized accessory available for its users.
After
I purchased my Bronica kit, I took to heart comments from some medium
format users about lousy focusing screens and sought a replacement
for the stock screen that came with my camera. My research led me
to Brightscreen, which had garnered good comments on the Photo.net
Medium Format forum. Beattie was another option, but the general
comments seemed to be that while Beattie screens indeed gave a brighter
view, brighter did not necessarily mean better for focusing. Brightscreen’s
approach is to improve the contrast of the focus screen, which they
claim is superior to just a straight brighter view. Whatever the
merits, I took the bait and bought a Brightscreen.
While
the Brightscreen focus screen was nothing special, I did notice
another accessory offered by Brightscreen that seemed promising,
the AccurFocus magnifier. At the time that I bought the focus screen,
I blanched at the high cost of the magnifier, which would have cost
me CAN $600 after everything was said and done. Consider that the
Nikon DG-2 magnifier cost just over $100; the AccurFocus is pretty
big bucks.
I
left it out of my mind until October 2004 when I was cruising through
KEH’s web site for deals. I saw a couple of AccurFocus magnifiers
available for sale for around US $100, which is a lot better than
the US $400 cost for a new unit. This time I bit and ordered one
with my 45-degree prism.
I
still managed to give the AccurFocus a tryout by using some double-sided
foam tape to hold the magnifier in place. It seemed to work relatively
well, but continued testing by placing and removing the full camera
in and out of my Pro Roller 3 revealed the lack of stability and
security using the tape.
In
actual use though, the magnifier did exactly what I wanted it to
do, magnify the subject enough for me to focus accurately, especially
with wide-angle lenses. With a correct adapter mount for my prism
of choice, I can flip the AccurFocus out of the way if I don’t want
to use the magnifier and get the whole scene view through the prism.
The magnifier has diopter adjustments that can be manually locked
in place with a little screw. It’s a nice touch and good idea to
ensure that your settings won’t change just because an errant finger
or other piece of equipment has brushed against it.
The AccurFocus looks a lot like that Hasselblad magnifier, so I assume that’s where Brightscreen got its inspiration from. Brand new, the AccurFocus is far too expensive for me to contemplate, but at ¼ the price, I bit. The rub is I have to spend a bit more to get a proper fitting adapter piece for the other prism, but I’m still coming out way ahead of buying new. It does make you wonder how much of a hit the original owners must have taken to have spent US $400 on it new and then sell to KEH for a price low enough to sell to me for just over US $100.
Ancient
does mean a non-current means of connecting to the computer though
and I had to scrounge for a SCSI card compatible with this scanner.
Thankfully I was able to get an Adaptec card and cable from my usual
source and once plugged in, I was able to get the scanner up and
running without problems. SCSI devices can be a bit tricky if you’ve
used it and then turned it off while still working on other stuff
in the computer. A little Windows ritual is required to get the
SCSI device recognized and running again without a warm boot or
restart.
Ah,
the joys of USB plug-and-play compatibility. SCSI to USB adapters
are available, but they cost so much with no guarantee of working
correctly that I see little point in them.
Why
would I want to buy a scanner that’s now five-years old? Well, it
was cheap at CAN $200 when I spied it at Camera Canada’s web site
last year and more importantly, it has Digital ICE. I was resigned
to the fact that I would sooner or later have to spend at least
$1000 for an ICE capable film scanner if I wanted to save myself
the tedious aggravation of spotting dust from my film scans. While
$1000 quid isn’t that much per se for a great scanner like the Minolta
Elite 5400 or the slightly less well specified Nikon Coolscan V,
I’m also a medium format owner (less of a user these days) and whatever
top level film scanner I want to buy should also be capable of scanning
120 film.
But
for $300 and change (Elite Scan cost plus SCSI card and cord), I
figure I couldn’t lose much out of the purchase. I didn’t have the
CAN $3000 needed for the Pro Scan Multi and what I’ve wanted to
scan in recent times is more 35mm anyway.
Anyway,
relatively minor grousing on my part. The more important factor
for me is how well does this ancient scanner fare to more recent
scanners. As regular readers would know, I do have a more recent
Minolta scanner in the Dual Scan III. This is an entry-level scanner
that garnered very good reviews for providing a lot of scan quality
for the buck. It’s only omission is the lack of Kodak’s Digital
ICE technology (formerly Applied Science Fiction) that incorporates
hardware and software dust removal.
Minolta
offers a software-only base dust removal in the SD III and its successor
SD IV scanners, reserving Digital ICE only for its best scanners.
The dust brush is not that effective and because it is software
based, can negatively affect the scan quality. One is almost better
off to scan with the dust brush off for the sharpest scan and then
manually spot the dust for best quality. But as mentioned already,
this can be a lengthy and tedious process involving hours of work,
depending on how meticulous one is with the process.
I
was happy to see that the old Elite Scan provided a scan quality
as good as the SD III, but the advantage of Digital ICE made it
a far easier and quicker task to spot the scan file afterwards.
The Elite Scan uses the first generation Digital ICE, so it has
limitations with B&W films due to the higher silver content
of the film, and for similar reasons, with Kodachrome.
While the Elite Scan’s Digital ICE wasn’t 100 percent perfect, it did enough to have made its modest cost worthwhile to me. Below are some sample scans of comparing the Elite Scan to the Scan Dual III and with Digital ICE turned off and on - it has been sometime since I did these scans, but I believe I gave the slide the blower bulb treatment before scanning with the Elite Scan, hence the lesser amount of dust seen going from the SD III to the Elite Scan. Note that the film below was Kodachrome 64.
NikonView I’ve
tried most of the well-known RAW file converters available, from
Bibble, to Capture One, to Adobe Camera RAW and while all offered
some interesting functionality, in recent times, I’ve gone with
using the freebie NikonView, which comes with a very basic RAW converter.
I
didn’t take to NikonView other than as a RAW browser because its
workflow didn’t seem very good. There are three parts to NikonView,
the browser, which is obvious in that it offers scalable thumbnail
views of your JPEG or Nikon RAW files; a viewer to see the thumbnail
at a larger size; and the already mentioned basic editor to convert
the RAW file to JPEG or TIFF for editing and/or printing.
All
three separate parts of NikonView come up in their own window, which
means going back and forth between essentially, three different
programs, even if they’re related applications. Compare this to
Capture One in which everything is done in one window, with a browser
at left, middle larger view, and right side editing parameters.
One stop shopping, er, converting, has made Capture One a very popular
piece of software for many digital photographers.
However,
no matter how good, or speedy some third-party converters are, I
found that I didn’t enjoy the color rendition as much as what I
got from the lowly NikonView. Is it any surprise that Mother Nikon
would know best in extracting the most pleasing color from its own
proprietary files? Keep in mind that color is subjective and maybe
my tastes won’t coincide with yours, but thankfully, most of the
major converters offer try-before-you-buy periods of time.
Since
adding a second monitor to my desktop, I’ve found NikonView to be
less of a workflow dog. I have the browser window opened to full
on the smaller, un-calibrated monitor with the Viewer open to full
on the larger, calibrated monitor. As I click on a browser thumbnail,
the Viewer automatically loads that image and on my 21-inch CRT,
that results in a large 50 percent size view of my 6 MP D100 files.
I
bring up the NikonView Editor from the Viewer window and the editor
takes over the screen real estate on the larger monitor with the
Viewer continuing to be open in the background. From here, I can
do some minor editing of exposure value, white balance, color tints,
and sharpening.
It
isn’t perfect and NikonView could be faster for loading the image
in the Viewer and Editor, so it likely won’t satisfy those that
are much more prolific than I am in shooting images. However, it
held enough promise when used in a dual-monitor configuration that
I’ll likely invest in the full NikonCapture software that offers
many more RAW editing capabilities than the NikonView Editor.
There was some concern by Nikon using pros that Nikon appeared to want to kill NikonView in favour of PictureProject, a consumer oriented application. Thankfully, Nikon appears to have heard the voices in the wilderness and will not leave them stranded by continuing to improve NikonView. Windows XP Since
I talked a bit about software, I’m going to expand on it a bit more.
A lot of people slag Microsoft and their flagship Windows OS. Since
I’m not much of a tech geek that understands the nuances of operating
systems, I can dig it and let the critics voice out as much as they
want. A lot of people will also suggest that Windows XP is a piece
of crappo compared to Windows 2000, with the big beef being that
XP is just 2000 all dressed up for the consumer.
Probably
true, but as an end user, I have to say I like XP a lot more than
2000. 2000 is suppose to be more robust than XP because it doesn’t
have XP’s bloat that appeal to regular consumers, but 2000 is as
slow as a stegosaurus mired in some primeval mud, waiting to become
extinct and fossilized, or turned into the goo that will eventually
power my minivan.
Win
2000 doesn’t offer XP’s forgiveness in being able to truly hot-swap
plug-in-play devices. Case in point, if you have a USB card reader,
you can pull the plug on it and then later pop it back in and XP
will sit there like a prim, proper and unflustered Victorian woman.
2000 will meanwhile nag you like a Victorian governess that you
didn’t stop the device first and then pull the plug. But even if
you did stop the device and then log out of the computer and then
come back to it again, plug in the USB device, it will be recognized,
but you get no access.
Similarly,
use 2000 on a notebook with a PC Card wireless adapter and closing
the lid to put the computer on standby will often deaden your wireless
Internet access like an Edgar Allan Poe victim encased in a wall,
the next time you open the lid to start work again.
I see and use these advantages whether it’s XP Pro or XP Home, as I use both in my day-to-day Toshiba P4 notebook computer and my desktop used for editing photos or slideshows. My ancient PII notebook wheezed and whined like a mule trying to haul the Budweiser wagon on its own when I had XP on it, but it’s on a geologic timescale trying to boot up 2000, but granted, I shouldn’t be using big OS’ on such an old computer meant for Windows 98. |
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Edwin's
Vignettes -
Catching Up On Some Misc. Gear
Enter
the 45-degree finder that offers a middle ground between the straight
down view of the waist level finder and the straight back view of
the 90-degree prism. I first encountered a 45-degree view when my
wife and I were having our wedding photos taken by a Hasselblad
using pro. He let me look through the 45-degree finder and it was
impressive to see such a large and clear view without having to
stoop down, just a slight downward tilt of the head was required.
In
use, I like the 45-degree finder quite a lot. A biased opinion for
sure since the blasted thing ended up costing me so much, but really,
it is nice not having to stoop anymore. I look down, focus, then
look back up at the subjects and take the shot. My first actual
use was with a 50mm wide-angle lens and I had some concerns about
being able to focus accurately without a magnifier, but I did okay
and I was able to tell when the subjects came in and out of focus.
A 50mm lens stopped down also helps to mask focusing errors.
Due
to my past experiences with off focus photos using the prism for
my Bronica (as described earlier above), I desired some kind of
magnification attachment to increase my percentage of in focus shots
using the prism.
CAN
$400 and a few years later and somewhat wiser for the experience
I’m not enamored with my purchase. The original Bronica screens
are actually not bad at all and I found little difference between
a screen that can be replaced for under CAN $100 to one that cost
me 4X as much. That’s my experience, but there are plenty of others
on the ‘net that claim big improvements from the Brightscreen products.
Unfortunately, these are not products that you can try before you
buy, so caveat emptor.
KEH
indicated that the AccurFocus was for a Bronica prism, but didn’t
indicate which prism. I bought it anyway and as I discovered, the
prism mount on the magnifier is likely for the older standard 90-degree
prism. It didn’t fit either the 45-degree prism or my SQ-i prism.
Bummer, but Brightscreen sells replacement adapter mounts for US
$75, so I’ll need to get one of those later on. I’ll likely just
buy one adapter given how pricey they are.
I
originally intended to write a standalone review, but after some
thought, I didn’t see the point. The Minolta Scan Elite that I purchased
used from Camera Canada last year is a circa 2000 model that is
ancient by digital standards. It is no longer available new, although
used ones are available from various sources. However, ancient does
not mean useless and as I found from some quick scans, the Elite
Scan is still capable of producing good scans from 35mm slides.
For
scanners that I have a hope in hell of buying, that leaves only
two choices, the Minolta Pro Scan Multi (my personal preference),
or the Nikon Super Coolscan 9000. The Nikon 9000 is newer, has more
resolution and looks pretty damn good, but pretty much every serious
user has recommended the purchase of an expensive glass carrier
to get sharp scans from medium format film, whereas the Minolta
Pro Scan Multi already comes with a glass carrier. It’s the relatively
small things that can sway a person’s purchasing decision.
The
old Elite Scan is not quite an ergonomic joy with no door to cover
the film carrier slot, so a piece of masking tape is used to stop
dust from getting in. It’s also quirky in that it can only scan
two slides at a time despite the carrier holding four slides. The
rub is that two are upside down, so once you’ve scanned the first
two, you have to flip the carrier end over end to scan the other
two. Same thing with the negative carrier, which is a real odd ball
because you can fit six frames, except that three have to upside
down, but most negatives come cut in strips of four…
