One of the last small collateral projects I participated in during my time at HIIT has now been released.
It’s a video.
More precisely a small demo video showing a usage scenario for a small demo application (yes, the keywords are small and demo) tying together some of the technologies we’ve used in a bigger project. The technologies include a speech synthesizer, a 2D bar code reader and something under the hood that I can’t remember.
Why bother? Because I play one of the leading parts in this blockbuster. View it here. Oh, and have a look at the project page here.
I’ve taken a leap backwards in time, about 70 years. During the yearly summer festival in my home town I stumbled upon this 1937 bellow camera which I got for only 10€. After shooting with my fully automatic digital Canon D30 (released year 2000) for some years, I’m up for a real challenge.
This baby doesn’t have any of the photographic aids I’m used to. No light meter and no way of adjusting focus by looking through the lens (as is the case with SLR cameras). Instead, focus have to be adjusted by estimating the distance to the subject, and aperture and shutter time have to be adjusted by estimating the available light together with the speed of the film. The principles are simple, but I definitely have to say goodbye to my point-and-shoot practice. Taking a picture with this one takes at least five minutes…
The size of the negative is 6×9 cm, it has a popup viewfinder and shutter trigger on top (although there are pieces missing from the shutter release mechanism on this one, making triggering the shutter a bit awkward). The Telma shutter has speeds ranging from 1/25 to 1/125 and B and T settings. B is the usual Bulb setting found also on modern SLR cameras, but the T setting is new for me. Apparently, it opens the shutter when the trigger is pressed once, and closes it when pressed once more. The shutter also has a timer which runs for about 10 seconds maximum. The aperture ranges from f/6.3 to f/22. The Novar lens has a focal length of 105mm and focal range of 2m to infinity.
My local photo shop luckily had the right film (120 roll film) for this one, so I’m currently trying it out with the first roll of black and white ISO 400 film. Since I don’t know anything about estimating light conditions or distances, I got some great help from Matt’s Classic Cameras and related links. It’s probably going to take a few rolls before I get the hang of it. Check back for the first photos in a couple of days (if I even dare showing them).
Since I can’t continue as an Assistant Researcher at HIIT after I graduate as Master, I had to find myself a new job. As it turned out, this process took only a month, from submitting the application to signing the contract. So, from August 1st, I’ll be working as Front-end UI Designer at Roottori.
Now I can really start enjoying what’s left of my 7 weeks of holiday.
As I mentioned earlier, my MacBook broke down and went for surgery. It has now been discharged to my workplace with a clean install, but since I’m currently enjoying my last 1.5 months of vacation before I quit the job, I can’t be bothered to start using it again before I definitely have to hand it over to my successor.
The unclean exit of my Mac usage process has resulted in at least one problem so far. I was happily using iCal to schedule events and remember what has happened and what is going to happen (my calendar has always been an extension of my own memory). Before I sent my Mac away, I wasn’t so smart as to export all events into calendar-specific .ics files. On the other hand, I wasn’t even able to do so since the only backups I got was through single user mode. So I decided to export my calendar events myself and start using Google Calendar instead.
Continue reading ‘Exporting iCal events from the Library to Google Calendar’
I just upgraded my Wordpress along with all my active plugins, and apparently the WPG2 plugin has broken my blog. When trying to read a full blog post, you are instead redirected to my gallery’s front page.
I’ll try to fix the problem asap.
