Archive for the 'Odds and Ends' Category

Creeping featurism: SLR cameras, yesterday and today

Page from Kowa SE camera manual

The photographic camera is one of the great inventions of the 19th century, and is quite a simple idea: take  a light sensitive surface, put a lens in front of it, add the ability to control exposure time and aperture, and you’re all set. And for more than a century, that’s what cameras were all about. But not anymore.

During my life I’ve owned maybe a dozen cameras. The first (discounting a plastic Kodak Brownie I had as a child) was a Kowa SE SLR (Single Lens Reflex) I had in my teens. The latest is this Canon EOS 800D I recently bought. Both Japanese; both relatively inexpensive entry-level SLRs. But there the difference ends.

Both cameras have a light sensitive surface (film in the first, CCD in the latter), a lens, and controllable exposure time and aperture.

However:

  • The Kowa allowed you manage this setup with 8 physical controls (including the film advance lever), and its instruction manual was 26 pages long.
  • The Canon provides 27 physical controls and 14 screenfuls of menus (most of them with sub-menus), and its manual is 486 pages long.
  • The instruction manual of the Kowa devotes one page to focusing, where it says things like:

Image is focused by turning the lens barrel helicoid and looking in the focusing screen. For more precise and easier focusing, a split-image is provided in the center of the focusing screen. The lens is focused accurately when the two halves of the split-image are aligned.

  • The instruction manual of the Canon devotes 24 pages to focusing, and says things like:

In [7:Auto AF pt sel.:Color Tracking] under [4: Custom Functions (C.Fn)], you can set whether to perform AF by tracking colors. If [1:Disable] is set, focus is achieved based only on AF information (p.393).

Now, let me be clear: I am no luddite, and I realize that the modern camera has many advantages. Many of them are nice-to-haves, but some are significant, like shooting video and the vibration-cancelling lens, both unthinkable back in the day. And I’m sure today’s lenses, being computer-designed, are much better in terms of reducing optical aberrations. When I got this new camera I was full of admiration for the triumph of innovation and miniaturization it represents.

And then I started using it, and I realized that this triumph involves such a huge degree of overkill that the user experience is severely impacted.

Consider:

  • Having countless options leads to the “embarras de choix”, the mental information overload from too many choices.
  • A camera is for taking photos. Many of the features of this Canon camera are actually post-processing best left for Photoshop, where they can be done in the comfort of a large screen UI optimized for the task.
  • Most features in this camera will never be used by the average user (remember, it’s an entry level camera; someone who really needs to “disable AF by tracking colors” – and who is willing to flip to page 393 of a manual to figure this out – would buy a more expensive professional camera).

But most importantly: the experience of shooting with that Kowa SE was far superior, because although you could only control three parameters (focus, aperture and shutter speed), you  had direct control over them. You twisted the focus ring around the lens, and you had immediate feedback by seeing that split image come together into focus. You set your aperture and shutter speed, peeking at the light-meter needle in the viewfinder, and you knew exactly what effect that would have, because there weren’t dozens of other parameters being tweaked behind your back by algorithms in the camera’s “brain” – it had no brain, so you had to use yours. In fact you learned to use it well, because with a film camera any error would only be discovered days or weeks later when the prints were developed.

Incidentally, the Kowa SE was not my best SLR – in the 1980s I owned a Minolta X700 film camera. This had 17 physical controls  and a manual of 62 pages, and was at about the sweet spot in the features vs usability equation. It had added the automatic exposure mode that today’s cameras have, which was useful at times, but not being computerized, it was still a straightforward camera. And it had the split-image focusing screen that was effective and fun to use.

And then came Digital cameras, bless them, and the creeping featurism that today allows me to shoot images made to look like watercolor paintings, or like low-quality toy camera photographs. And a zillion other things (see pages 129–165, 311–337, and 426 – or whatever).

Oh well…

Genaille’s calculating rods

When my kids were at school they were taught addition with colored wooden rods. Well, a century earlier two innovative Frenchmen – Henri Genaille and Edouard Lucas – invented a system that does rapid multiplication and division using much more sophisticated rods, and I have in my collection a box of these ingenious calculation aids.

Genaille-Lucas rods

You can read all about them here!

A math table from Napoleon’s time

Monsieur C.-F. Martin was a retired naval clerk, and evidently he had developed a great love for painstaking calculation. Just see this 100×100 multiplication table and units conversion tables he published at the beginning of the 19th century, to help his countrymen deal with the switch from the old Empire weights and measures to the newfangled metric system introduced after the French revolution. This interesting document is described in full in my latest History-of-Computing article.

Martin's multiplication table

Enjoy!

The Data Scaler Proportional Rule

The Gerber Variable Scale, described here, is a thing of beauty and elegance, admirable for its ingenuity and craftsmanship. It is also a “one of a kind” device, or so I thought until my unexpected sighting on eBay of the “Proportional Rule” made by the Data Scaler corporation of Westfield, Massachusetts.

The Datascaler Proportional Rule and the Gerber Variable Scale

This device is a clone — a direct knock-off — of Gerber’s elegant invention. Close inspection shows the small differences in design and manufacturing quality that usually accompany such cloning.

This article examines the details, and uncovers who made this device and under what circumstances.

Check it out!

Pretty as a picture

The circular slide rule developed around 1920 by Jules Arnault and Louis Paineau comes in a wooden frame, to give it durability and ease of use; but it is so pretty you can – and I did – hang it on your wall!

Arnault-Paineau slide rule

Aside from being pretty, this is an ingeniously designed and very well-made calculator. You can find all the details in this new article on my History-of–Computing site.

Enjoy!

The spirit of a fractal!

Here is a photo of the Jerusalem central bus station, a large blocky building at the entrance to the city.

Jerusalem central bus station

So, maybe it’s just me, but whenever I see it I get reminded of a mathematical construct – the Menger Sponge, a three dimensional fractal. Judge for yourself:

Menger Sponge

OK, OK, the bus station is not a true Menger Sponge, but its structure definitely evokes the essence – the spirit, if you will – of that fractal.

And yes, I am a geek. Lucky me!

Photo credit for Menger sponge: David Rosser under CC license on Flickr.

A homebrew Single Sideband transmitter

This new article on my Possibly Interesting site is strictly for radio amateurs and other geeks: a photo-essay depicting circuit and construction details of the SSB transmitter I’d built a long time ago. What makes it interesting (other than the nostalgia of vacuum tubes, that is) is the prevalence of improvised, scavenged and military surplus components – necessitated by the paucity of the component supply (and funding) in the Israel of those pre-internet, pre-Startup Nation days.

Homebrew SSB transmitter

Enjoy!

The original Alice

Alice by John TennielSay “Alice in wonderland”, and the image that comes to mind (well, at least in the generations that used to read books) is a little girl in a tidy Victorian knee-length puffed sleeve dress with a pinafore, and long blond hair – the girl in the image at right. This comes from the famous illustrations by John Tenniel, a successful professional illustrator that Carroll retained to illustrate the book. The illustrations by Tenniel became iconic, although they bear no resemblance to Alice Liddell, the lead character’s namesake, who was not blonde in the least.

Alice by John TennielAnd then there is a different Alice altogether, the one envisioned by Carroll himself and found in the illustrations he drew by his own hand for the handwritten draft of the book, “Alice’s adventures underground”. I have a book showing these, and the comparison is interesting. Here, for example, is the same picture of Alice holding the golden key to the tiny door behind the curtain at the bottom of the rabbit hole. No blond hair, no fancy clothing.

So here, for your enjoyment, are some comparisons of the Carroll and Tenniel realizations of some scenes in the book:

Alice and Caterpillar

Alice and puppy

Gardener playing cards

As we can see, Tenniel was definitely a more capable illustrator; but he followed Carroll’s lead — indeed, Carroll supervised him closely, since he was paying him a hefty fee.

And although most of the Tenniel drawings are based on Carroll’s, there are some of the latter that did not make it into the printed book. Like these two:

Alice images from Carroll's original drawings

Another triumph of improvisation!

New on my Possibly Interesting web site: Cloning a Vibroplex bug, where I describe the venerable Vibroplex semi-automatic telegraph key – and the improvised clone I made as a young radio amateur.

Vibroplex "bug" semi-automatic telegraph key and its homemade clone

Enjoy!

My Dad’s tin suitcase

My father, God rest his soul, was a young physics student when Israel’s war of independence broke out, and he was among the defenders of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City. When the quarter fell to the superior forces of the Jordanian Legion, he was taken prisoner and spent 9 months in a POW camp near Mafraq in Transjordan.

When he came back he brought with him a humble but interesting artifact: a small suitcase, about the size of a modern carry-on, made entirely of tinplate. This survived to this day, and has an interesting story to tell.

Tinplate suitcase from POW camp

My father, it turns out, had ample time on his hands in that camp, and he devoted it to studying Physics (he was to become a Physics professor for the rest of his life) and to teaching it to any of the other prisoners who found it preferable to doing nothing. In return, one unnamed prisoner used his skill as a tinsmith to produce this suitcase for my Dad.

The source of the material is obvious if you turn the thing over:

Tinplate suitcase from POW camp

This was a standard tin of biscuits, provided to the camp’s residents either by the Jordanians or by some welfare organization. They must’ve been rather stale, as they date to 1945, but in war you aren’t choosy; meanwhile the empty tin was recycled into this suitcase.

The craftsmanship and attention to detail in this item is wonderful indeed, considering the difficult conditions of its manufacture. The potentially sharp edges are all doubled up for safety and convenience. There is a folding handle, hinges, even a hasp – and everything is made from tinplate and steel wire. Here are some photos of the details:

Tinplate suitcase from POW camp

Tinplate suitcase from POW camp

Tinplate suitcase from POW camp

Good job, unknown tinker!