Pentax Digital Spot Meter

davidkachel · Nov 10, 2008

Just need a suggestion or two as to where I can put this online to sell it. Ebay is something I don't want to do with it, photoforum isn't getting anywhere. I don't want to have to pay for a membership somewhere I am not going to participate on a regular basis.

TIA

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 10, 2008

Given that you don't want to join anything or use eBay, you're screwed. Maybe Craigslist if you live in a big enough city, you might get a sale.

davidkachel · Nov 10, 2008

chriscrawfordphoto said:
Given that you don't want to join anything or use eBay, you're screwed...

Well, if you are correct then that would be my answer.

BTW, I love "and other places no one else photographs".

df cardwell · Nov 10, 2008

Since you're here, David, may I tell you
how much you've helped my work ?

Well, I guess I just did !

Thanks,

don

Larry Bullis · Nov 10, 2008

If it weren't digital, I might buy it. But...

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 10, 2008

davidkachel said:
Well, if you are correct then that would be my answer.

BTW, I love "and other places no one else photographs".

I actually found out someone else photographs some of the things I do. Met a guy from southern Indiana a couple weeks ago who is exploring and documenting southern Indiana the way I am the northern part of the state! I thought that was cool because so many photographers (actually nearly all of them) that I meet here say that Indiana is boring and ugly and there's NOTHING here worth photographing. I lived in Santa Fe for 2 years. Preferred the people of New Mexico (My father's family came from Spain...I learned to speak Spanish in Santa Fe!) but I think New Mexico is an ugly depressing place. Here in Indiana we have fog and rain and color...flowers and green and TALL trees and rivers with water in them and NATURAL lakes...hundreds of them! New Mexico is very dirty and brown. 5 people died of the Bubonic Plague there last year! Yeah, the BLACK DEATH...in the United States!

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 10, 2008

bowzart said:
If it weren't digital, I might buy it. But...

Whats wrong with it being digital? Virtually all meters made today have digital readouts and to be honest, they're better. You can drop a digital meter without killing it. I know, I've dropped my Gossen Ultra-Spot II a number of times and it still works perfectly. I doubt many 'moving needle' meters could survive much of that. The mechanism is delicate, and digital meters have no moving parts. Regarding the Pentax meters, the digital version is MUCH smaller than the older analogue one. I'd buy David's meter if I had the money....my girlfriend wants a spotmeter.

Larry Bullis · Nov 10, 2008

chriscrawfordphoto said:
Whats wrong with it being digital?

I have no desire to discuss this. You have your preference, I have mine. That's all there is to it.

jeroldharter · Nov 11, 2008

chriscrawfordphoto said:
I actually found out someone else photographs some of the things I do. Met a guy from southern Indiana a couple weeks ago who is exploring and documenting southern Indiana the way I am the northern part of the state! I thought that was cool because so many photographers (actually nearly all of them) that I meet here say that Indiana is boring and ugly and there's NOTHING here worth photographing. I lived in Santa Fe for 2 years. Preferred the people of New Mexico (My father's family came from Spain...I learned to speak Spanish in Santa Fe!) but I think New Mexico is an ugly depressing place. Here in Indiana we have fog and rain and color...flowers and green and TALL trees and rivers with water in them and NATURAL lakes...hundreds of them! New Mexico is very dirty and brown. 5 people died of the Bubonic Plague there last year! Yeah, the BLACK DEATH...in the United States!

Chris,

I was born and raised in Fort Wayne, IN. I can attest that it is boring, ugly, etc. But you are right in the end. Like anywhere I think it is what you make of it and interesting light and things to photograph can be found anywhere. It is more the photographer than the location. Now, when I go back to Fort Wayne I enjoy taking pictures but while I lived there I struggled.

Now you could take photos of the hideous, needless stadium downtown!

I'm half kidding about the bad things of Ft. Wayne but I do believe it is a better place to be an adult than a child. My in-laws still live there. I graduated from Homestead and my wife from Elmhurst. Amazing what a small world this is.

MurrayMinchin · Nov 11, 2008

davidkachel said:
I don't want to have to pay for a membership somewhere I am not going to participate on a regular basis.

Well David, with 14 posts this last month here on APUG me-thinks you're pretty close to being a regular contributor

Here's how much it is to subscribe to APUG which would allow you to list things in the classifieds;

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Murray

jovo · Nov 11, 2008

I took a workshop at the Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY a bunch of years ago with Mark Citret, and another with Mark Klett. At one of them, and I can't remember which, there was a guy from Indiana who was working as a curator and making wonderful images with his Hassie. In fact, he had work that was to be shown at AIPAD that year. He explained that when he had first moved there he had been really, really discouraged at the notion that "...so many photographers (actually nearly all of them) that I meet here say that Indiana is boring and ugly and there's NOTHING here worth photographing."
But, he came to see things very differently and had an absolutely stunning portfolio of really interesting work that had a strongly graphic element that simply transcended whatever might have been boring about the scenery, and made it compelling.

It was a great lesson for me that visiting the photographic icons for worthy subjects isn't necessary at all. Honing one's eye, and opening one's imagination is all that needs to happen wherever you are.

davidkachel · Nov 11, 2008

df cardwell said:
Since you're here, David, may I tell you
how much you've helped my work ?

Well, I guess I just did !

Thanks,

don

Thank you Don. That is very kind of you to say.

dk

jmcd · Nov 11, 2008

Indiana

chriscrawfordphoto wrote "I actually found out someone else photographs some of the things I do."

Chris,

Jack Welpott worked on documenting Indiana in the 1950s. You might find something of this searching online, if interested. Once he was discussing how he "saw" differently from the West Coast practitioners. He said they were looker outers, and he was a looker downer, the latter having much to do with where he grew up photographing, Indiana. You are in fine company!

davidkachel · Nov 11, 2008

MurrayMinchin said:
Well David, with 14 posts this last month here on APUG me-thinks you're pretty close to being a regular contributor

Here's how much it is to subscribe to APUG which would allow you to list things in the classifieds;

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Murray

Thanks for the invitation Murray. But I have had to make some decisions and am going to stick to them. I will be 60 in a year and have allowed far too much to get in the way of making photographs. It seems the more badly one needs to photograph, the more people there are who don't want you to do it. So I have stripped my life of luxuries and also of a few people, and have decided to limit myself to digital photography (sorry for what no doubt amounts to profanity here), do no more research of any kind (hence my recent attempt to pass the baton here; a fellow in Germany may be picking it up, but not sure) and focus only on my work.

Although I certainly will not be so rude as to decline a request for help with understanding or using techniques I have developed, I am done with them for good in every other respect.

My posts here have strictly to do with cleaning up the remaining detritus from past work and moving on. I know there will be some things I will miss about analog photography (I must admit I love the smell of a freshly cracked roll of 120 Tri-X) but I have a very short time in which to make a lot of photographs and must concentrate on only that.

dk

davidkachel · Nov 11, 2008

chriscrawfordphoto said:
I actually found out someone else photographs some of the things I do. Met a guy from southern Indiana a couple weeks ago who is exploring and documenting southern Indiana the way I am the northern part of the state! I thought that was cool because so many photographers (actually nearly all of them) that I meet here say that Indiana is boring and ugly and there's NOTHING here worth photographing. I lived in Santa Fe for 2 years. Preferred the people of New Mexico (My father's family came from Spain...I learned to speak Spanish in Santa Fe!) but I think New Mexico is an ugly depressing place. Here in Indiana we have fog and rain and color...flowers and green and TALL trees and rivers with water in them and NATURAL lakes...hundreds of them! New Mexico is very dirty and brown. 5 people died of the Bubonic Plague there last year! Yeah, the BLACK DEATH...in the United States!

Chris,
i'd love to see some of your work; give me a URL.

If you get enough drinks in me at a party (about two), I will sometimes expound on the great lack of respect I have for photographers standing in line next to the take-a-number machine at Yosemite waiting their turn to take the same landscape everyone else has.

Traveling to national parks and shooting sweeping landscapes is the best way I know to never become a good photographer.

Don't misunderstand, I'm just as much a sucker for a good Adams-esque sky as the next guy, have several on my walls and won't ever pass one up. But there is more to photography than breathtaking landscapes and we need more photographers who can go to the polluted river at the edge of town and find a photograph with more depth and meaning than the same old trite landscape.

My general rule for determining if I am on the right path is to look around. If there are more than a tiny handful of others on the same path, I conclude it must be wrong.

On the other hand, unless I am stepping on a rattlesnake, shooting at a jackrabbit and having a stare-down contest with a coyote all at one and the same time, I'm not at home. So I don't agree with your take on New Mexico. And the plague is just something we keep handy out here in the West just to send you greenhorns scurrying home! <grin>

dk

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 11, 2008

davidkachel said:
Chris,
i'd love to see some of your work; give me a URL.

If you get enough drinks in me at a party (about two), I will sometimes expound on the great lack of respect I have for photographers standing in line next to the take-a-number machine at Yosemite waiting their turn to take the same landscape everyone else has.

Traveling to national parks and shooting sweeping landscapes is the best way I know to never become a good photographer.

Don't misunderstand, I'm just as much a sucker for a good Adams-esque sky as the next guy, have several on my walls and won't ever pass one up. But there is more to photography than breathtaking landscapes and we need more photographers who can go to the polluted river at the edge of town and find a photograph with more depth and meaning than the same old trite landscape.

My general rule for determining if I am on the right path is to look around. If there are more than a tiny handful of others on the same path, I conclude it must be wrong.

On the other hand, unless I am stepping on a rattlesnake, shooting at a jackrabbit and having a stare-down contest with a coyote all at one and the same time, I'm not at home. So I don't agree with your take on New Mexico. And the plague is just something we keep handy out here in the West just to send you greenhorns scurrying home! <grin>

dk

LOL @ the take a number machine at Yosemite. I was dissapointed that in the 2 yrs I spent in Santa Fe I never once saw a Rattlesnake or a scorpion! On the other hand, my grandfather's evil old cat, Molly, has killed two rattlesnakes here in Indiana (that we know of..she brought their heads home).

I know a lot of wealthy old men here in Fort Wayne who travel to national parks and make large format landscape photos. To me, its about documenting the people and places that I have known through the experience of actually living there. If I lived near Yosemite, I'd do a lot of work there because it would be home. I think thats why Ansel Adams did so well there...for him it really was home.

My website is Dead Link Removed

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 11, 2008

jmcd said:
chriscrawfordphoto wrote "I actually found out someone else photographs some of the things I do."

Chris,

Jack Welpott worked on documenting Indiana in the 1950s. You might find something of this searching online, if interested. Once he was discussing how he "saw" differently from the West Coast practitioners. He said they were looker outers, and he was a looker downer, the latter having much to do with where he grew up photographing, Indiana. You are in fine company!

Thanks for the tip. i'll look him up. Do you know if he published any books?

davidkachel · Nov 11, 2008

chriscrawfordphoto said:
I know a lot of wealthy old men here in Fort Wayne who travel to national parks and make large format landscape photos.

That's how you tell the real photographers from the dilettantes, the wedding photographers out for a weekend and the postcard photographers. The real photographers have the nasty old beat up equipment with the leaky bellows and the light meter that's so old it requires winding. And they replenish their developer until they have to hammer the film holders into it. (Stole that last one from somebody. Included it just because I love it.)

Looked at your web site. Nice simple, honest unpretentious photographs. Refreshing. If you entertain doubts about your work you shouldn't. Just look up David Vestal's work. If his is good, and it is, then yours is good too. (And he is a very nice down-to-earth fellow who will write to anyone, even me.)

dk

chriscrawfordphoto · Nov 11, 2008

davidkachel said:
That's how you tell the real photographers from the dilettantes, the wedding photographers out for a weekend and the postcard photographers. The real photographers have the nasty old beat up equipment with the leaky bellows and the light meter that's so old it requires winding. And they replenish their developer until they have to hammer the film holders into it. (Stole that last one from somebody. Included it just because I love it.)

Looked at your web site. Nice simple, honest unpretentious photographs. Refreshing. If you entertain doubts about your work you shouldn't. Just look up David Vestal's work. If his is good, and it is, then yours is good too. (And he is a very nice down-to-earth fellow who will write to anyone, even me.)

dk

David,

Thanks for the compliments. I know about David Vestal, I have read his columns in Photo Techniques for many years. I wish i could find a book of his photographs. The ones i've seen in the magazine were magnificent.

The kind of photos you and I and Mr. Vestal like are not in favor in the art world nowadays. I have been in a lot of exhibits in Indiana because I am a native Hoosier doing work about Indiana...and the art world here is "behind the times" in its tastes. Outside Indiana I have tried with no success to get shown. In Santa Fe the galleries won't show work like mine unless the artist is dead or very old and famous. What's in favor today is heavily manipulated images, or images that are out of focus, or that depict nothing, or that are designed to offend someone (photos of naked preteens, etc). When I go to exhibits (of any type of art, not just photography), I cannot help but wonder at how disconnected art today is from the real world. Our history, culture, religion, everyday life....the subjects of art for thousands of years are ignored. Historians use art from the past to see how people lived, what they believed, who their rulers were, how they dressed, where they lived. What will they think of OUR civilization 500 years from now?

About old beat up cameras and real photographers: Until recently I used the same two cameras that my father bought new for me when I was a senior in high school 15 years ago. An Olympus OM-4T and a Mamiya 645 Super. I already had a collection of OM lenses then, the OM-4T replaced an older OM body that got broken in a car accident. I gradually added lenses to the Mamiya over the years but still used the body. Neither are really beat up badly, they aren't that old yet, but they are not in mint condition either...I use them! I still use both of them to this day, but a few months ago I came into some money and bought myself a little gift...a Hasselblad and 3 lenses! Been using it a lot lately. I always liked Square photos. I doubt I'll ever need or want another camera for my fine art work. I use digital for my commercial work and have owned 3 different D-SLRs (still have 2 of them, sold one). I imagine I'll eventually upgrade those to something better if I ever have the $$$. Digital is still evolving and improving and I need those to be relatively up to date to keep clients happy. But for my real work, the work I live for, I've got all I need....two 15 yr old cameras my dad bought me and that Hasselblad.

davidkachel · Nov 11, 2008

chriscrawfordphoto said:
David,
...The kind of photos you and I and Mr. Vestal like are not in favor in the art world nowadays..

The older I get the less respect I have for the 'art world'. Mostly arrogant snobbery, smoke, mirrors and lots and lots of new clothes for emperors.

Remember, this is the exact same art world that praises a fishbowl full of urine with a plastic Jesus floating in it, awards first prize in a photography show to a (supposed) photograph that is 100% covered with fully opaque paint and therefore cannot be identified even by forensic scientists as a photograph, and rejects any work they don't believe is "new", whatever the hell that might mean.

They are also the same people who laugh at a one man band but think that multimedia is somehow exalted art. (Don't misunderstand, I believe BOTH deserve derision.)

You have only two options; do your work your way and at least be accepted by yourself, or give in and do what they think you should do, probably be ignored anyway and not even be accepted by yourself. The bottom line is that they are just as full of crap when they say your work is GOOD as when they say it is BAD. Believe only your own opinion.

dk

Larry Bullis · Nov 12, 2008

jmcd said:
Jack Welpott worked on documenting Indiana in the 1950s. You might find something of this searching online, if interested. Once he was discussing how he "saw" differently from the West Coast practitioners. He said they were looker outers, and he was a looker downer, the latter having much to do with where he grew up photographing, Indiana. You are in fine company!

He also teased us students at SF State as belonging to the "Wet Rock School of Photography". I loved Jack's Indiana stuff. Of course, once on the west coast, he became one of us, but we got to see the old stuff too.

Larry Bullis · Nov 12, 2008

davidkachel said:
Believe only your own opinion.
dk

I don't believe in my opinions. They are opinions. I don't believe in yours either.

I want OUT of opinions, thank you very much.

edit: I don't want to be mean. I just don't care for "good" "bad" etc. I try hard not to use the words or their many surrogates. Let's talk about what's there, not ourselves. Opinions are just like our other body parts. There is a lot more to say about this, and maybe this is not the place to say it. How did we get here from "digital spot meter"?

I'm older than you are, if that means anything. My day job is to critique student work. I believe it to be important that I do so without opinions. Observations. That's what is important.

luxikon · Nov 13, 2008

baton

Hi David,

may be I'm the German guy you referred to in your post from 11/11.
The SLIMT project is still on my mind but unfortunately the dull autumn weather of Northern Europe does not provide many opportunities to take high contrast pictures. I am looking forward for snow.

It seems to me that SLIMT is not well known over here (yet). I will let you know my results if I have got some.

Thanks

Klaus

df cardwell · Nov 13, 2008

The confluence of the Internet and Digital Imaging had the remarkable effect of flushing away much of the best of photo technique, and leaving the rest. David's work in the 80s and 90s was, and is, remarkable.

http://www.davidkachel.com/history.html

MurrayMinchin · Nov 13, 2008

Using SLIMT and developing Normal, -1, -2, and -3 sheets of film for the same length of time in normal strength developer, or even together at the same time always seems magical to me. (Minus negatives get a simple pre-development treatment - see df's link above).

THANKS!

Murray

Pentax Digital Spot Meter

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