Suggestions for mild torture...

[gnarayan]

.
I'm planning on copying a LOT of old (1950s) Kodachromes and other slides, using my Bowens Illumitran slide copier and a Nikon D70 with 90/2.5 Vivitar Series 1 macro on a Kaiser copy stand, AND THERE'S NO STANDARDISED CABLE RELEASE FITTING ON THE CAMERA (as with all too many electronic wonders of the last 20 years).

USB cable into computer with Nikon Capture.

Cheers,
-Gautham

 

[-doomed-]

How about boiling in oil? Nobody speaks well of that.

Or, keelhauling, maybe?😛

With best regards.

Stephen

Boiling oil seems like you mean to kill them, keel hauling will most assuredly kill them.

Force feed them mcdonalds and direct them to a bathroom that is conveniently out of order.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Use the self timer, what's the big deal?

Time. I get REALLY BORED waiting for the camera to go off. In the right circustances I can get very bored, very quickly. Other times, I'm not worried by much longer delays. It's all a question of context.

Believe me, I am familiar with the self-timer trick. I've been using it for over four decades. Which is how I know it annoys me so much. I am, to be frank, astonished that others do not find it tiresome; as astonished, it seems, as others are that I do find it tiresome.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Why machine code? make them code in either binary or hex.

And if you want REAL torture, make them use Octal...

I hated Octal. Much prefer HEX. Octal makes sense on the PDP-11. HEX for the VAX.

But the EDSAC was unique...

http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/edsac.html

 

[dee]

See thread ' If you were only to have one [ Leica ] lens ' Torture enough ?
Why can't I take anything seriously ?

 

[gnarayan]

USB cable into computer with Nikon Capture.

I should not post things at 12AM without previewing - what I was trying to get at was that you can control the D70 tethered to a laptop over USB with Nikon Capture. There is a section in the manual about this but I never read those things anyway. I'm pretty sure you can get the images to download directly to hard disk with Nikon Capture - I'm certain you can with gphoto2 on linux.

Granted this means having a laptop next to your slide copier setup, but if the final goal is to get them on a computer anyway... It isn't a cable release, but a single mouse-click several times and there isn't the delay associated with the self-timer method.

There are also knockoff wireless remotes but I've seen the original Nikon one on ebay for all of 1 GBP so I don't think there is any particular reasons for even mild torture.

re: digital cameras not maintaining old standards - USB is a much more powerful standard than the old cable release. Perhaps this is a case where us youngins tease you a little for "getting along there" Roger 😀

Cheers,
-Gautham

 

[Roger Hicks]

I should not post things at 12AM without previewing - what I was trying to get at was that you can control the D70 tethered to a laptop over USB with Nikon Capture. There is a section in the manual about this but I never read those things anyway. I'm pretty sure you can get the images to download directly to hard disk with Nikon Capture - I'm certain you can with gphoto2 on linux.

Granted this means having a laptop next to your slide copier setup, but if the final goal is to get them on a computer anyway... It isn't a cable release, but a single mouse-click several times and there isn't the delay associated with the self-timer method.

There are also knockoff wireless remotes but I've seen the original Nikon one on ebay for all of 1 GBP so I don't think there is any particular reasons for even mild torture.

re: digital cameras not maintaining old standards - USB is a much more powerful standard than the old cable release. Perhaps this is a case where us youngins tease you a little for "getting along there" Roger 😀

Cheers,
-Gautham

Dear Gautham,

If someone made a standardized USB cable release I'd probably buy one. But hell, never mind the software, even USB itself isn't fully standardized! How many sizes are there? I think I have three. And USB and mechanical releases are not exactly incompatible. It's a nasty, penny-pinching idea; as I said, like using a 5mm tripod socket because the designer is too mean/ stupid/ arrogant to realize that there are standards out there. THAT is what deserves the torture.

The idea of a tethered D70 running straight to the computer is attractive, though, and I thank you for the suggestion. Maybe I'll look closer into that.

Cheers,

R.

 

[gnarayan]

If someone made a standardized USB cable release I'd probably buy one. But hell, never mind the software, even USB itself isn't fully standardized! How many sizes are there? I think I have three.

At least 12 (including ones from manufacturers who have a standard USB A at one end and some proprietary thing on the other) around me right now. The nice thing about the standard is that I can take a digital camera (say my Olympus E510 with its proprietary contact) and my MP3 player (an Archos 5 )with its proprietary contact and since the other end of these silly dongles is a bog standard USB port and they can both talk to each other, I can connect the two and view my Olympus RAWs on my mp3 player with its much bigger and better screen. The same port to trip the shutter. Occasionally to power the camera even.

Its a lot more flexible than a steel cable with a button press and a piston at the end I think. Just an opinion 🙂

Hopefully the USB cable thing works. I did something similar for macro work a while ago - lots of hitting spacebar but it got the job done.

Cheers,
-Gautham

 

[rxmd]

But hell, never mind the software, even USB itself isn't fully standardized! How many sizes are there?

Then again, I have here a whole bunch of cable releases and on one end they're all different (which stops me from doing neat things like replacing the broken built-in cable release on that Kiev pistol grip without major mechanicla modifications). However, as with USB, it's the other end that counts.

Incidentally the D70 uses a standard USB Mini B plug as per the USB 2.0 specification.