There are tons of excellent written guides about how to work in a photographic darkroom. There are even a few videos, but because digital cameras don’t really work well in almost total darkness, the videos are usually a bit rubbish. However, I have a DSLR which has been converted for full spectrum photography (infra-red and […]
Read more "Making a darkroom print"I recently picked up a De Vere 54 enlarger for a bargain price. It’s a 1950s machine, designed to take 5×4″ negatives. In order to use the light most efficiently when making large prints, the enlarger is fitted with a condenser to give parallel illumination to the negative. However, the flip side of a condenser […]
Read more "Converting a De Vere 54 condenser enlarger to diffusion"[toc] Over the past few weeks I’ve made digital copies of quite a few Super 8 films. The proper way of doing it is by scanning each frame individually but this involves expensive and hard-to-find equipment. You can send films away to various companies to be digitised properly for not too much money, but that […]
Read more "Digitising a Super 8 film"Background I have a Celestron NexStar SLT 127 telescope. For those who don’t know, it’s a battery-powered telescope which has a small computer to navigate around the skies and steer the telescope. It’s quite hungry for power – the telescope takes 8 AA batteries. Depending on the type of batteries you use and the temperature, […]
Read more "Making a battery box for my Celestron telescope"I shoot a lot with my vintage cameras. Many date from the 1950s and have probably never been serviced. I’ve no idea how accurate the shutter speeds on them are. For the mostpart, they are probably acceptably accurate, since they seem to produce reasonably well-exposed negatives. Except for my newest lens, a Horseman 65mm f/5.6 […]
Read more "Using a microphone to test your shutter speed"I’ve often thought about making my own lenses, but unfortunately I’m so bad at making things I’ve always avoided it (apart from making a pinhole “lens”). But this week I was fortunate enough to be left with a broken 35mm slide projector, a Braun Novamat 515 AF-I, to be specific. It had a Braun Color-Paxon […]
Read more "Homemade lens"I wanted a solar filter for my camera, for safe observation and photography of the sun. Typically these filters have an optical density of OD 5.0, which for photographers is ND 100,000. This means that only 0.001% of light is allowed through the filter. You can buy pre-made solar filters, but they are expensive and […]
Read more "Making a solar filter"I have worked with film for some time now. From day one I developed my own black & white film at home. This doesn’t take up too much room, so I was able to do it in the bathroom (which is completely internal, with no window). More recently, I got into printing my negatives rather […]
Read more "Building a home darkroom"Most of the photography articles on this site are about advanced cameras and techniques. But recently someone asked me for advice on buying a compact camera for a holiday, so I decided to write this guide. Hopefully it will be useful. Lens There’s a lot to know about lenses, and they have a huge impact […]
Read more "Your guide to buying a digital compact camera"I’ve had a server at home for years now, and I’ve also been a professional sysadmin for at least three years. I know my way around Linux pretty well and for some time I’ve run my own web server and also other services. But one thing I’ve steered clear of until now is running my […]
Read more "Building an email server using ClearOS"