I’ve been using my little Pocket Spot Meter now for a few months and I really like it, except for when I am trying to read value next to another value with a huge different in brightness… think snow in the sun next to a deep shadow from a tree. The narrowness of the tree makes a perfect reading difficult if you follow the direction that came with the meter for normal operation (“hold the meter 12 inches from your eye and sight through the hole”)…
Today I came up with a better solution… just tip the meter up a bit and put more of the circle in the value you are trying to meter. Placing the 1 degree viewing sight exactly above or below the dividing line between to extremes values will result in a bad reading but doing what the photos below illustrate works perfect… note how in photo 2 the viewing hole is now somewhat elipical in nature… this is what you want. I checked this process out against my trusted Pentax Digital Spot Meter and my Sekonic L758DR Spot meter and in both cases all three meters were in agreement… yeah!
I’ve always been interested in the processes of resurrecting old cameras with new coverings… So when I discovered that www.cameraleather.com was here in Vermont and I had my new Cuboid camera just waiting for some luxurious material to cover its 4 sides I had to make the move. The Lizard skin I chose (yes!) is very durable, feels great and best of all helps keep this all-metal camera from getting too cold to hold in our Vermont climate…
Front View Cuboid Camera
Top View Cuboid Camera
Bottom View Cuboid Camera
Detail View Lizard Skin
The application process is very easy: the material has an adhesive backing and I found the detailed instructions provided on Camera Leather’s web site very helpful. The selection of materials available on their site is diverse and they offer coverings for many, many cameras… the Cuboid of course was a custom job.
One word of caution- Camera Leather is not flawless when it comes to returning phone messages, email questions, etc… so don’t hesitate in sending more than one email.
Am I glad to have it now though? Dude- check it out!
Viva la Revolution-
Stephen
For more information on the Cuboid Camera please visit: www.thecuboid.com
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of the highly aclaimed book: Eat, Pray, Love. As a totally tortured artist myself, I found this video very interesting and thought provoking.
So what is TED?
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year’s TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.
Here is an interesting side by side… shot within a few minutes of each other. The BW400CN is an EI of 200 (this film in my Caffenol C process has a very usable EI range from 50-800). The Fuji Acros is an EI of 100 (box speed… depending on processing time the Acros has a usable EI from 50-800). Both can go further in either direction but this range is the real sweet spot. The crops represent a 4″ x 4″ from a 20″ x 20″ image size… yes the BW400CN has more grain but it is much sharper and I am not sure the grain would even print at the 20″ x 20″ size. Both films have fantastic reciprocity characteristics with no adjustment required until 120 sec.
When you hover over the image it will give the description of the thumbnail.
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