What do you want?

[peterm1]

That reminded me, years ago the lovely Leica Digilux 2 had an extra lead with it that I've never seen on another camera. It enabled you to use the battery charger as an AC powered supply. All it took was that extra lead and an extra socket in the battery charger...

Regards, David

I recall the Digilux device - my Panasonic L1 had the same device. I happened to have stumbled upon something recently which provides a way of doing this - some claim for "any" camera (at least any that has a suitable power adapter made for it in the 3rd party market). You can do this with for example a Sony NEX camera (at least some of them - the NEX 7 for example). The NEX 7 has a tiny flap in the battery door which is almost invisible till you look for it, which can be opened to admit a lead going into the battery compartment. Today's solution is even better since you can achieve it using an external battery - you do not need to be plugged into a wall socket.

You can buy on eBay, a small and relatively cheap power adapter which on one end has something that looks like an NEX battery which of course simply goes into the battery compartment and is connected by the cable to a small device which in turn connects to a 5 volt battery power bank of the type used to provide backup power for mobile phones, tablets etc. That small power adapter device converts 5 volts output from the power bank to 7.5 volts (or whatever other voltage is needed for your specific camera). As long as you buy a large external power bank battery of say 10000 amp capacity that gives you heaps of power for things like video and time interval shooting - which is how this kit is most commonly used as time lapse shooting apparently chews up power fiercely. I know you can get these adapters for Panasonic Lumix GH5 etc too as these are much loved by videographers where this solution is needed. The supplementary battery can be put into the photographer's pocket provided the cable is long enough but most seem to also buy a device to allow it to be mounted on the top of the camera.

Here is one such device on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NP-FW50-dc...572722?hash=item4652b917f2:g:iTUAAOSw1xhZn5Z8

and a video about how to set them up and use them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJKcR9LiB4

 

[michaelwj]

The auto-flash color temperature idea is interesting. This would be great anytime a scene's illumination is dominated by a single color temperature.

I don't think you can record data before you press the shutter button. But minimum shutter delay and fast auto-bursts are valuable without significant buffer delays are valuable.

First point: Imagine if the flash could match its colour temp to the main colour temp at the focal point, then you could have different colour temps in the scene, but the flash is always enhancing the subjects lighting.

Second point: Easy. The point from when the shutter button is first depressed is one way to do it, then you get a short bust before the traditional shutter point. Another way to do it is just to continuously record images while the camera is on, or from when the camera is bought to eye level. They can be stored in RAM until the shutter is actually pressed and then the frames immediately before the shutter press get saved. The additional battery drain is not much, the (mirrorless) camera is already reading the data to get the live view image anyway.

 

[mrmeadows]

Autofocus and DOF marks don't play well together

Autofocus and DOF marks don't play well together

I am surprised at how little response has been given to Bill's wish for depth-of-field marks on autofocus lenses ... only a wish expressed for an "H" button setting a lens to hyperfocal distance. I am a heavy user of depth-of-field marks and also decry the lack of them in otherwise good and useful lenses. That is one fact that has deterred me from buying into the Fuji system. Even on the lenses that have them, they don't seem to be very functional. As I thought about it, however, I realized that there is a trade-off between fast autofocus and useful depth-of-field markings. The depth-of-field marks are useful only when they are sufficiently far apart as to make accurate setting possible. That also requires that the distance marks on the rotating barrel need also to be far apart. But autofocus speed is greater when the barrel rotation is small and enables the autofocus "motor" to quickly move to the proper focus setting. So the demand for fast autofocus causes designers to make the total rotation so small that any distance markings are so close together as to make the corresponding depth-of-field marking also close. That makes for a system that is difficult or impossible for practical manual use. This situation is presumably the reason that most autofocus lenses lack useful depth-of-field control. If the autofocus motor provides fine-enough increments in its action, it might be possible to implement the "H" button, because some motors can deal with very fine rotational adjustments that would be impossible for us to achieve visually with the usual distance and depth-of-field marks.

 

[Pioneer]

You know. I'm pretty happy with my current film cameras. They do pretty much what I need without having to worry much about battery life or the like.

What I really would like is an affordable scanner that could do a decent job of batch scanning 35mm and 120 roll films.

 

[BillBingham2]

Another thing I was reminded about last night, more control/backup to a PC/Mac/Linux box.

I'd like to have the ability to backup the settings to a PC and then modify them on the PC. I think the industry has missed the boat on not leveraging PCs as a management station. They deal with image, but camera configuration on some systems is complex.

B2 (;->