Some links I have collected recently on the topic of full manual photography. No autofocus and no light meters here.

• BLACK CAT Extended Range
  Exposure Guide
• Andrew Lawn’s Exposure Calculator
• Human Rangefinder Card Generator

• The New Yashica TLR FAQ: Yashica TLRs seem to be a popular choice for getting into medium format photography, and this seems like a good breakdown of the various models.
• Hasselblad Historical: Hasselblad cameras are known as some of the better medium format cameras. This site has more information about them than any one person could possibly need.
• Color Film Chart: A brief summary of the properties of various color films.
• Really Right Stuff: Tripods, Ball Heads, and Panorama Gear.
• The Ultimate Exposure Computer: An invaluable resource when using cameras without meters.
• Exposure Calculator: A quick, simple tool for exposure calculations.

Ansco Pix Panorama
Originally uploaded by SqueakyMarmot.

Lately I have been spending less time gazing at digital cameras and the resulting pictures and instead have been more interested in the analog counterparts. In my hours of browsing through flickr, I continuously notice that a lot of people are creating beautiful images with toy cameras. Last night, I remembered that several years ago, I was given the camera pictured here. It’s an Ansco Pix Panorama. It’s 100% plastic and is completely fixed — fixed focal length, fixed focus, fixed shutter speed, fixed aperture. There is no way to make any sort of adjustment other than the placement of the camera.

Here are the specs:

• 28mm lens
• fixed focus
• 1/125
• f/11
• 35mm film
• 13x36mm panorama mask

This camera was new when I received it, and I think I have only run one roll of film through it since. I just wasn’t that interested in it when I received it. Things are different today. I’m hoping to grab a roll of film on the way home from work today to try it out.

Some Ansco Pix Panorama photos on flickr:

• Ansco Pix Panorama by That was my foot.
• Ansco Pix Panorama by escapo
• Ansco Pix Panorama – flipped lens by QsySue
• ansco pix panorama by mey0r
• Ansco Pix Panorama by Alex Hills

Welcome Strobist readers!

Lighting 101 is the foundation on which Strobist is built, and is the best place to start. The PDF version of the tutorials is mirrored here as a service to the Strobist community.

Strobist Lighting 101 (pdf)

Ring Light Setup

Originally uploaded by snapify.

From what I have been seeing in the DIY Ring Light arena lately, it doesn’t get any cheaper than this.

Banksy: Throw Away Your Television

Originally uploaded by m1l35.

I think this photo speaks for itself. Banksy does it again.

Google Reader Keyboard

Originally uploaded by paolovalde.

Chris posted this recently, and I just had to share it. For my use, however, I’d like to see the space bar be a little taller.

From Christmas

A few days ago, I had not ever heard of High Dynamic Range Imaging, or HDR for short. When I saw an example, I knew I had to try it out. I first found out that the file format for these special images is wide open. It seems that Industrial Light & Magic created this format and open sourced the code to work with it. I found two excellent resources for studying up on HDR. And most importantly, I found Photomatix, which is the software for creating HDR images. I have barely scraped the surface of HDR, but I do have a sample image ready to go. I’m seeing the potential for a lot of fun photos with HDR. And apparently, there are a lot of great examples out on Flickr.

Spiral Jetty (@ dawn) Desktop

Originally uploaded by whileseated.

Flickr’s geotagging combined with unique geographic features makes for some interesting exploration. The Spiral Jetty has its own website.

MI fall

Originally uploaded by pockett.

The Flickr blog gave a nice showing of fall colors today. I’m not seeing that type of thing around here yet, so I suppose the Flickr collection will have to suffice.