My most valued digital skill is the ability to use my thumb to match the needle...
Who else here used a slide ruler?
Not even the slightest effort to make a mock-up... Heck, an empty toilet paper roll colored with a Sharpie and attached with duct tape would look better.
It didn't occur to me but it's true: slide rule skills were really just preparation for one-handed match-needle metering. Calculating exposure or bellows extension is about the only math application I use these days. Don't even do my own taxes anymore. Somebody makes a bellows-extension calculator, don't they?
Yes, I punched a lot of cards learning Fortran and PL/I on an IBM 360 in the 1978-1980 time frame (we called the machine "the covered wagon", it was already obsolete, if a little less so than the 029 keypunches).
What this has to do with camera fails in movies, however, it's hard to fathom...
How does one get closer to the answer with a slide rule?
Get a shorter slide rule.
How does one get closer to the answer with a slide rule?
Get a shorter slide rule.
The canonical answer is to use a longer rule -- you can read four digits on a 14" in the 1-2 (even the 2-3, if you're myopic) mantissa range, but if you had a 28" with the same precision of ruling, you could read four digits up to 6-7 range.
The real answer (in my experience) was to do the multiplication and division on paper (like you'd do all the adding and subtracting anyway), and look up higher precision logs and trig functions in a table (which was commonly a book several times the size of a Bible, occasionally a full shelf of book).
I'm willing to bet that Sirius doesn't use a cel phone to access Photrio.
Of what stuff is this cell phone thou dost speak?
The progression seemed to be from a movie prop failure due to lack of historical knowledge (or more likely disinterest) to thoughts about growing up in a pre-digital culture (which presumably energizes our collective interest in film cameras). We seem to have migrated to something that belongs in the "random thoughts about life, philosophy and history" forum. In fact, a lot of what gets posted here rightly belongs there.What this has to do with camera fails in movies, however, it's hard to fathom...
In fact, a lot of what gets posted here rightly belongs there.
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