OT: Auto OBD not ready?

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As for the Loony 11 rule, the moon is in full daylight but it looks odd if you expose it properly.

Indoors I used 1/60 at f/4 for Tri-X in typical 500 lux office lighting, or on stage with all the lights on as for the curtain call, unless the meter said otherwise.

I've gotten good hand-held shots as slow as 1/15 by holding the camera upside down, braced against my forehead instead of my nose. I was a student filmmaker's technician in college and had some practical experience with difficult conditions.

I did run the post photo lab, which at least had no windows, a safelight, running water and ten times the cabinet storage it needed for photo supplies. When I was alone with the lights off I tried not to imagine what might have happened in the dungeon-like cellar of a WW2 German army barracks.

Not really. I found a wide-angle in Munich and a portrait-length telephoto in Zurich, that's all. The US is MUCH better for collecting old goodies.

The lens that came with the enlarger was good enough for ordinary prints. I did publicity shots for the USO theater productions and dunking-booth target portraits of all the officers for a carnival they put on. The Colonel was the most requested and I had to print several extra batches. We troopies couldn't get into the throwing line because the officers bent it into a closed circle. We satisfied our frustrations with tickets to sledge-hammer an old car.

Leitz was trying to retire the old III series by buying them up. They were good about reconditioning mine, though, and I got to tour the Wetzlar factory.

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They aren't all that valuable:

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Their streets don't accommodate cars; their cars and trucks fit the narrow streets wherever we didn't initiate mandatory urban renewal. American vehicles didn't fit.

Rothenburg retained its condition because its economy declined and renovation stopped, 400 years ago. Many smaller towns looked similar, the slightly larger ones were bombed.

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The road on the left is the main route through town that follows the top edge of the river valley. The right-hand one slants down to the river. I suspect the Romans might have first paved them over prehistoric footpaths.

All the buildings probably have that timber-frame (Fachwerk) construction but after the war covering it with beige or pastel stucco became the fashion. Look at the upper floors above the white bench. jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
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"Jim Wilkins" on Fri, 2 Aug 2013 09:29:38 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

I knew a guy who volunteered for Nam, from Germany. Figured they'd send him eventually, so he went.

OTOH, I was in Turkey and Spain before the end of the draft, Germany after the draftees should have finished their 2 years and got out.

That is a "problem". Coming from Turkey - Spain was the land of the Big BX, coming from Spain, Germany was "Little America".

Not unusual, regardless of the language. One has to remember as well, the Kaserne had been there a long while, first with soldiers who could speak the language, then with soldiers who couldn't. And they all wanted the same things. At least the Deutscher Soldaten had some cooths.

When I was there, that was me. Understood it better than I spoke it - which is still not saying a great deal.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

No one I've talked to thought much of Turkey. Did you have the opportunity to sightsee in Spain?

The electronic techs I worked and partied with were well-behaved Latinos. It was almost exclusively the uneducated black GIs, the truck drivers, who caused trouble with the Germans and with the black NCOs who were left to deal with them, as any white attempt to discipline them exploded into a racial discrimination incident. This is why the Army had to overlook drug use, which then lost its allure as rebellion against authority. I saw the 80/20 rule in action, 20% of the people do 80% of the work and support the useless, whining, drug-addled remainder.

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We made friends with the bar girls and the bouncer and sometimes were invited to their apartments to chat after the bar closed at 3AM. I won a bet with the bouncer by memorizing and reciting a long German poem similar to Poe's "The Raven". While I was practicing it in another restaurant a Swiss professor noticed the oddity of an American soldier (short haircut) reading a German poetry book and came over to talk. Heidelberg was fun.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

"Jim Wilkins" on Sun, 4 Aug 2013 14:25:40 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

I enjoyed it. OTOH, I was a high school sophomore, first time out of the States, the downstairs neighbors were an Army Colonel, and I dated his daughter three months. Such a deal!

A "bit" - I saw a lot of the sights in and around Madrid - I could take the subway. My being a high school student kind of limited my other options. At least for me. I had friends who would bum nickels and dimes - or Peseta equivalents, on a Friday, then after classes hitch hike for the coast with two mille (2,000 Pesetas~$25). Which in those days, was enough for dinner for four at a good (4 fork) restaurant. Or a weekend on the coast, if you weren't too picky about sleeping inside.

My experience, such as it was, showed that an honest attempt to be friendly, and recognize you are the auslander, goes a long way.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

Right -- something which I tend to forget. My first serious camera was a Zeiss Ikon "Ikonta 520" (16 exposures on either 120 or 620 roll film, and I carried an exposure meter on a leash around my neck, because I tended to take shots in uncertain light indoors.

The Contaflex II (my first new camera) had built-in metering, as did some of the later ones, but until I started using the Nikon-F with the Photomic head, I depended on carrying a meter. (Much of that time, it was two Mirandas -- the 'F' with the separate meter, and the "Sensormat" with the built-in meter. Sometimes I would transfer metering info between the two except when one was loaded with Tri-X and the other with Ektrachrome-X. :-)

Too high an albedo, I think.

Hmm ... with movie film, that would require a bit of tricky handling, because if projected as shot (but rotated so the images would be right-site up), the motion would be backwards. :-)

My own preference with 35mm is left hand cradling the barrel of the lens, right hand holding the body against my cheek and nose with eye at the finder, and left elbow tucked into my stomach.

And -- I was thinking in terms of the portable photo lab you mentioned earlier.

I guess that it could have been spooky. Then again, they may have simply tried to find places hidden enough to enjoy a drink or two. :-)

O.K.

:-)

That one looks post-WW-II to me. (But then, I didn't ask when you were there. :-)

I'll stay clear of that page. I already have a Zeiss Contax-IIa and a Russian Kiev clone of it with somewhat less range of shutter speeds. Lenses interchage between them, though. :-)

[ ... ]

:-)

There are advantages to not being big enough to be industrial in wartime. :-)

It really hurts to see that damage. But then I think of the buzz-bombs hitting London and don't feel quite as bad.

:-)

Different name for it in old England, but same principle.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

He liked to tightly control the shooting environment and had me to hold the lights. We made a music video of Peter, Paul and Mary and had some conflict with Peter's scriptless 'fly-on-the-wall' stylistic preference. Yarrow's film project was to released a white rat and then record its random explorations.

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That applied to some of my work, for reasons other than artistic opinion.

The Agfa Brovira paper I was using had a speed around ASA 1, based on my experiments with making a view camera for it. It wasn't excessively sensitive to tiny light leaks in a makeshift darkroom.

Mine is a IIIc from 1936 or 37, converted to a IIIf like that one.

Visible damage remains from the wars of the 1600's.

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At the start of the war both sides were very careful to avoid bombing civilians, but as the war became a fight for survival most of the rules disappeared and the limits of technology drove events.

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"The British changed their bombing policy as a consequence, having previously avoided civilian industrial targets.." Heinz Guderian claimed that fog above the German river position blocked the bombers' view of the wave-off flares, and they couldn't be recalled by radio since they had reeled in their trailing-wire antennas. jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
[ ... ]

That would have been rather unscripted -- and very short if the white rat was not accustomed to people -- as soon as it could find a hinding place, end of movie. :-) How did it work into their music? Or was that a separate project?

I'm running too short on time to visit the URLs right now. Too much work during the day, and too little evening time left for all that I want to do. (And I *should* be up scanning more negatives, too, but I'm too tired to do that tonight.

O.K. Done that, but still possible to get a bit of light-strike on the paper.

I usually used Kodak papers, but the Brovira was the only one I could find in a contrast grade 6 -- before the variable-contrast papers came out. And since I was usually pushing my Tri-X, there wasn't much contrast available in the negatives. (One of the benefits of scanning them now -- I can get good enough (e.g. recognizable) images from almost impossible negatives. :-)

When I made a darkroom for the school I was at in the very early

1960s, it included painting the windows black, followed with a flat black on the walls.

O.K.

Again -- skipping the URLs -- sorry.

But the limitations of the technology of the 1600s meant that you had to take a lot longer to accomplish the same level of destruction.

Hmm ... trailing-wire antennas -- even when deployed -- would be rather poor at communicating with the base from which they flew, unless they made a turn to come from an unexpected direction -- or to adjust to the wind direction to maximize the accuracy of the bomb drops.

After all -- an end-fire antenna is at its lowest signal strength.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Thanks.

Hogan's Heroes will be in the 9:00 PM EST slot on ME TV starting Sept. 2nd.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I'd never seen Star Trek TOS in color until Me TV began showing it. I couldn't tell who was a doomed Red Shirt. The space ships and planets look good in the remastered CGI. jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I had it in color at the AFRTS TV station I worked at, but our film chain was B&W, so I rigged up a viewer with a piece of glass and some tissue paper to watch it in color. The image focused at about five inches from the projector and gave about a 2" high image. I'm not aware of any CGI, since it was filmed in the '60s and used all optical effects of the day. The transporter effect took the lab a full day's work, every time they used it.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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"Could this be the first time anybody has used CGI with restraint?" jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Now I'm glad I didn't buy the overpriced DVDs. Star Trek was the best of low budget Science Fiction movies & TV of its day, and CGI destroys that.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

"Michael A. Terrell" on Thu, 22 Aug 2013

12:26:30 -0400 typed >> "Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

The serious question asked is not "how much can we do?" but "how little need we do?" "An engineer knows he is done, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove."

CGI is like car chase and explosions - if you don't know what to do, throw in a [ fill in the blank]. If done "well" the audience doesn't notice that the other character is a puppet, a guy in a rubber suit, or a live capture CGI, or a complete creation - ala Snow White and the seven dwarves. Or even if it is a guy in street clothes "pretending" to be the King of the Scots in 11th century Scotland. If done "badly - you notice. "They're out of ideas, now they'll jump in the car and drive across town." Blow something up. Have some more CGI aliens.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

Early Science Fiction required a mind to enjoy. Too much CGI requires you to have no mind. :(

It's a wonder they don't CGI more stunts into the 'Dukes of Hazard'.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

+1

Like bra fasteners melting and...

Reply to
Larry Jaques

"Michael A. Terrell" on Thu, 22 Aug 2013

18:54:10 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

As Douglas Adams said of Hitchhikers - it had to go on Radio. How else could you have a million robots all singing?

I loved the TV show, but the Movie - them provincial Hollyweirdos can't tell the difference between Good Old Boys, and Rednecks. The Dukes were Good Old Boys - not idiots!

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

The CGI changes to Star Trek are minimal and not offensive. They merely improve the worst of the budget-constrained production values of the original.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

"Jim Wilkins" on Fri, 23 Aug 2013 08:55:45

-0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

They asked "now how much can we do?" but "How little must we do?"

Two different questions.

I can see using CGI in a remastering to fill out crowd scenes, or making something "more spectacular" (e.g. the blowing up of the Death Star). But sometimes - leave it alone. E.g. when David Bowman goes inside the monolith in the movie "2001". Leave it.

I would also argue against removing an anachronistic element from a movie - e.g. an automobile in the background of a western. Really it would depend on whether the anachronism has become an "Easter Egg" or not.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Reply to
pyotr filipivich

I just watched a Western in which horses charging across a river toward the camera splash water on the lens. jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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