rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Hi folks,
when we talk about Soviet photo gear, we normally think about cameras and lenses. However the Soviet Union produced a whole lot of other equipment that covered the whole photographic workflow from film to final print. So as part of another foray into Soviet photo gear, here I present you the Mig-2:
The name of course has nothing to do with the Mikoyan-Gurevich aviation construction bureau. In other words: in spite of the name this is not a fighter plane. The word "миг" simply means "moment", "instant".
The Mig-2 is a button-operated darkroom timer. At 90 x 140 x 40 mm it's a small device that cost 18 roubles. From the construction this looks like a device from the late 70s and early 80s. There is an electrical outlet at the back for connecting the enlarger.
Apart from the excellent industrial design, it's somewhat remarkable for its quirky exposure time selection mechanism. Apart from the two large buttons marked "Start" (пуск, in red) and "Continuous" (постоянно), there is a set of five buttons marked 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16. These form a binary interface based on powers of two. Durations of powers of two seconds can be selected directly; intermediate times are selected by pressing several buttons at once which then are are added up. For 3 seconds you'd select 1 + 2, for 7 seconds you'd select 1 + 2 + 4, and for 21 seconds you'd press 1 + 4 + 16.
It follows that the 5 buttons on the Mig-2 give us 5 f-stops worth of exposure time range, or 1 to 31 seconds. If you need more than this, just open the aperture on your enlarging lens one stop.
On my Mig-2, the exposure times all run with reasonable accuracy.
With the Mig-2, you end up juggling powers of 2 in your head all the time. In the darkroom this is actually rather intuitive, since a lot of darkroom work is based on powers of 2 anyway. Suppose you are exposing at f/5.6 and you find that you need 12 seconds of exposure (8+4). Now you decide that you'd better expose at f/8 to have more time to play around. For one stop you need twice the exposure time, hence 12 seconds (16 + 8). If you look at the scale, this change becomes a very simple operation: from 1-2-4-8-16 you get 1-2-4-8-16 - in other words, just take all the pushed-down buttons and shift them one position to the right. The Soviet Union was famed for its mathematicians; evidently this pertained to the darkroom as well!
when we talk about Soviet photo gear, we normally think about cameras and lenses. However the Soviet Union produced a whole lot of other equipment that covered the whole photographic workflow from film to final print. So as part of another foray into Soviet photo gear, here I present you the Mig-2:
The name of course has nothing to do with the Mikoyan-Gurevich aviation construction bureau. In other words: in spite of the name this is not a fighter plane. The word "миг" simply means "moment", "instant".
The Mig-2 is a button-operated darkroom timer. At 90 x 140 x 40 mm it's a small device that cost 18 roubles. From the construction this looks like a device from the late 70s and early 80s. There is an electrical outlet at the back for connecting the enlarger.
Apart from the excellent industrial design, it's somewhat remarkable for its quirky exposure time selection mechanism. Apart from the two large buttons marked "Start" (пуск, in red) and "Continuous" (постоянно), there is a set of five buttons marked 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16. These form a binary interface based on powers of two. Durations of powers of two seconds can be selected directly; intermediate times are selected by pressing several buttons at once which then are are added up. For 3 seconds you'd select 1 + 2, for 7 seconds you'd select 1 + 2 + 4, and for 21 seconds you'd press 1 + 4 + 16.
It follows that the 5 buttons on the Mig-2 give us 5 f-stops worth of exposure time range, or 1 to 31 seconds. If you need more than this, just open the aperture on your enlarging lens one stop.
On my Mig-2, the exposure times all run with reasonable accuracy.With the Mig-2, you end up juggling powers of 2 in your head all the time. In the darkroom this is actually rather intuitive, since a lot of darkroom work is based on powers of 2 anyway. Suppose you are exposing at f/5.6 and you find that you need 12 seconds of exposure (8+4). Now you decide that you'd better expose at f/8 to have more time to play around. For one stop you need twice the exposure time, hence 12 seconds (16 + 8). If you look at the scale, this change becomes a very simple operation: from 1-2-4-8-16 you get 1-2-4-8-16 - in other words, just take all the pushed-down buttons and shift them one position to the right. The Soviet Union was famed for its mathematicians; evidently this pertained to the darkroom as well!
Attachments
Last edited:
Spider67
Well-known
Great piece of equipment!
Really Excellent design. The guys who made the first brestplate for Darth Veder simply ripped it off!
On the other side let's face it: Eastern design was quintessential. A hammer was a Hammer and toothpaste was for cleaning teeth and not for sparkling your way through the world with your teeth.
Yes it has another FSU gear feature: When somebody complains about the complicated use, the expalnation will start with the sentence "You just have to...."
Really Excellent design. The guys who made the first brestplate for Darth Veder simply ripped it off!
On the other side let's face it: Eastern design was quintessential. A hammer was a Hammer and toothpaste was for cleaning teeth and not for sparkling your way through the world with your teeth.
Yes it has another FSU gear feature: When somebody complains about the complicated use, the expalnation will start with the sentence "You just have to...."
ErnestoJL
Well-known
Never seen it before! Great!
Never knew anything about it, but just for a few analog timers from the late ´70s (Copied from a Philips unit).
It´s obviously a nice piece, congratulations!
Ernesto
Never knew anything about it, but just for a few analog timers from the late ´70s (Copied from a Philips unit).
It´s obviously a nice piece, congratulations!
Ernesto