Re: [photo-3d] Re: Realist

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jack wrote:
> Has no one ever used a 1950s mono camera? They were all like that!
> 

Well they were not all like that, even if you limit yourself to 35mm
cameras.  I first learned photography with my father's Kowa Model E.
This camera is a 35mm SLR with a fixed (permanently attached) 50mm
lens and a honeycomb meter cell on the front face of the penta-prism.
It was the first 35mm camera to have a matched needle exposure
indicator in the viewfinder (although the meter did not read through
the lens).  Kowa received some award (mentioned in the instruction
manual) for the meter design on this camera in 1953 or 1954.

The only real difference between this camera and my Pentax K-1000SE
(introduced in the late 1970's) are the lens mount and through the
lens metering on the Pentax (the Spotmatic (1960's) introduced the
screw mount lens (used on some other cameras) and through the lens
metering).

> ALL, repeat ALL the Realist characteristics described on list were
> true of at least some of the Realist's mono contemporaries.

That I can agree with.

> Many mono cameras were simply adaptations of stereo cameras. (I have
> got that the right way round, haven't I?!)
> 

By the late 1940's I don't think there were many mono cameras that
were conversions from stereo.  My Criterion 5x7 camera (from the
1930's at the latest) is probably a simplified (no septum) stereo
camera, but 35mm cameras started mono and stereo came later.

> Mono photographers enthuse over the characteristics of a 1950s
> camera in the same way that stereo photographers do over the
> Realist. The big difference is that if you don't like a 1950s mono
> camera, you can just buy a cheap P&S compact. Not the case for the
> stereo photographer!
> 

Well you could buy two cheap P&S cameras.  :)

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Dee Dee!  Don't touch that button!"
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http://www.panix.com/~reynolds  |    -- Dexter and Dee Dee
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