Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera • Hacker News Board

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#81

Post by notwhereyouare » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 12:57 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #29

renewiltord wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it's annoying because you'll have missed a semi-rapid and the next comparable train to Tsukuba will leave 9 minutes later and arrive 17 minutes later. It's not a 40 minute thing, this isn't Caltrain, but it's still annoying.

I loved (not really) how sometimes on Caltrain, if the trains were delayed, you could get on a delayed train after you had planned to travel, and get home sooner than if the trains had been running on time. (I'll let you think on that puzzle.)

could make different stops. Not stop as many times. I had to watch out for that when riding the commuter rail in boston. Make sure to get on the right train, or you won't get your stop

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#82

Post by johnwalkr » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #53

johnwalkr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Tokyo Narita airport, it is (well, was) running at capacity and if a flight is delayed, another flight may be rescheduled to an earlier time.

NRT... ugh, flights so stacked going in that a plane failing to clear the runway fast enough resulted in us having to go-around and re-enter the deep approach queue. A nice 30 minutes added to an already 12 hour flight...

Yeah, or you land and see the dreaded bus awaiting which means an extra 30 minutes to arrive at the airport itself. Or worse, you're departing and get through security and walk for ages to get to your gate, go through another security thing without thinking, and then realize

a) you're in some weird bus terminal and 60 minutes before the flight the bus is starting to board to take passengers to the plane which is not close b) you're a 15 minute walk and 15 minutes security line away from that cluster of restaurants you decided not to stop at

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#83

Post by gumby » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #29

renewiltord wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it's annoying because you'll have missed a semi-rapid and the next comparable train to Tsukuba will leave 9 minutes later and arrive 17 minutes later. It's not a 40 minute thing, this isn't Caltrain, but it's still annoying.

I loved (not really) how sometimes on Caltrain, if the trains were delayed, you could get on a delayed train after you had planned to travel, and get home sooner than if the trains had been running on time. (I'll let you think on that puzzle.)

I once changed trains to take an express (skipping stops), realized I’d left my laptop on the first train, got off at the next express stop and waited for the slowpoke, and got my laptop!

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#84

Post by formerly_proven » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 3:51 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #58

perardi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I’m always surprised the F6, to borrow a phrase from Apple, “remains a product in our lineup”. There’s so many used and seemingly indestructible film cameras floating around. I guess there’s some market for a factory-warranty film SLR, but I’m not sure what said market is. If I was going to shoot film, I’d find a Nikon F5, which would also double as a medieval flail for self-defense. (Or I’d pull my 1983…

The F6 is the most advanced and capable film DSLR ever built. If you want/need to shoot film and you shoot subjects that are commonly done with modern digital SLRs and considered out of reach of a film camera, the F6 is the best game in town. The fastest and lowest-light-capable autofocus, the best matrix metering, digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!), etc. It is a modern pro camera that…

Some films are really high resolution. Sure, the process is a lot more involved, but you could end up with images sporting the same resolution as today's top end full-frame cameras.

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#85

Post by paulmd » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

PetitPrince wrote: post #66

paulmd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F6 is the most advanced and capable film DSLR ever built. If you want/need to shoot film and you shoot subjects that are commonly done with modern digital SLRs and considered out of reach of a film camera, the F6 is the best game in town. The fastest and lowest-light-capable autofocus, the best matrix metering, digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!), etc. It is a modern pro camera that…

> digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film! Wait; how does that work ? Where is the camera writing the info and how do you retrieve it ?

It has an internal memory bank and you dump it to a compactflash card with the MV-1 accessory that the other person mentioned.

Personally I think that's a little clunky and it would be better to go with a little transflash card, but the F6 was designed in 2004 and I guess at that point it would have been a SD card and maybe even compactflash and they didn't want the size.

This approach is probably still preferable to direct USB connection though, because presumably that would require utility software that would now be incredibly out of date and tied to like Windows XP or something. If nobody bothered to write an open-source utility then that function would be unusable for modern PCs.

That's a problem on some hardware, I have a scanner where the only software that supports it is tied to Windows XP, or you can use third-party software (VueScan)_that talks to it directly and bypasses the official drivers. It is a scanner designed to do 4x5 film directly (not a flatbed) so replacements are thousands of dollars.

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#86

Post by paulmd » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #84

paulmd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F6 is the most advanced and capable film DSLR ever built. If you want/need to shoot film and you shoot subjects that are commonly done with modern digital SLRs and considered out of reach of a film camera, the F6 is the best game in town. The fastest and lowest-light-capable autofocus, the best matrix metering, digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!), etc. It is a modern pro camera that…

Some films are really high resolution. Sure, the process is a lot more involved, but you could end up with images sporting the same resolution as today's top end full-frame cameras.

Today's top-end full frame cameras have better resolution than 35mm film. Even with 4000 dpi drum scans it's hard to go much beyond like 25 megapixels of effective resolution. You can easily get 50 mp full frame digital nowadays - although the lenses to drive that are another problem.

Medium and large format can get more because it's more film area, albeit not as much as you think in practice. It takes specific equipment and good technique, and often you are limited by the shallower depth of field or diffraction. IMO however it is much easier to achieve "reasonable" results comparable with modern full frame digital on MF/LF, because you don't need everything to be insanely high-resolution and perfectly aligned, the larger film area means that you can get good resolution out of "basic" equipment that is doing 2000-3000 dpi compared to the 4000 dpi of a drum scan that is necessary to max out 35mm.

Film also has very different technical characteristics from digital. It has an exponential "shoulder" to the exposure curve that tends to make it resistant to over-exposure, where with digital if it's overexposed it's just gone, clipped to white. It also has very different aesthetics, it just looks different (because each film stock has different exposure characteristics).

Also, some film stocks have unique frequency response curves - the astrophotography community is mourning the loss of Technical Pan film because it was perfect for photographing the hydrogen-alpha emissions of stars. It turns out that this film was developed for the National Reconnaissance Office for satellite surveillance and since they've moved to digital it's no longer being produced.

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#87

Post by dkuntz2 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

perardi wrote: post #3

Nikon still sells the Nikon F6 film camera. All existing stock was probably manufactured a loooong time ago, but it is still technically a current product, so I imagine they’re obligated to provide support and government-mandated environmental fixes. https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/filmcamera/slr/f6/ (I’d love to see the sales numbers for the F6. I can’t even guess the order of magnitude of global sales per year. 1?…

Actually the implication from this recall is that they're manufacturing about 12 new F6 bodies per month.

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#88

Post by supernova87a » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #80

supernova87a wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tunneling in the US is massively expensive, which is a huge problem for infrastructure projects. There have been some previous posts on exactly this topic ("why do projects in the US cost so much?"). And we are out of money / unwilling to pay for such projects. Australia is still relatively swimming in its natural resource boom and has funds to do that. And political willingness to invest in public transportation tha…

> And we are out of money / unwilling to pay for such projects. Australia is still relatively swimming in its natural resource boom and has funds to do that. On a per capita basis, the US is richer than Australia. According to 2019 IMF estimates, US's nominal GDP per capita is US$65,111 (ranked 7th), Australia's nominal GDP per capita is only US$53,825 (ranked 10th) [1]. Similarly, the US's PPP GDP per capita (2020 I…

But the important other factor is government debt.

Australia's national debt is less than 1/2 of the US's in terms of % of GDP. (US has basically 100% of its annual GDP in debt). Australia has a lot more room to consider big projects as a result.

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#89

Post by perardi » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #86

formerly_proven wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some films are really high resolution. Sure, the process is a lot more involved, but you could end up with images sporting the same resolution as today's top end full-frame cameras.

Today's top-end full frame cameras have better resolution than 35mm film. Even with 4000 dpi drum scans it's hard to go much beyond like 25 megapixels of effective resolution. You can easily get 50 mp full frame digital nowadays - although the lenses to drive that are another problem. Medium and large format can get more because it's more film area, albeit not as much as you think in practice. It takes specific equip…

Yeah. I could get higher resolution out of 8×10 sheet film. If I have it perfectly flat. And if I nail my focus and have everything aligned properly. And if I get it into a scanner properly. A good scanner. That somehow doesn't get dust on it.

Or I can use live view on a 35mm digital camera and nail the focus and exposure exactly. Or if I’m really getting paid, I get a Fuji GFX 100, a 102MP medium-format camera, and get a ludicrous number of pixels.

Re: Nikon Issues Small Recall for a 16-Year-Old Film Camera

#90

Post by skissane » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #88

skissane wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we are out of money / unwilling to pay for such projects. Australia is still relatively swimming in its natural resource boom and has funds to do that. On a per capita basis, the US is richer than Australia. According to 2019 IMF estimates, US's nominal GDP per capita is US$65,111 (ranked 7th), Australia's nominal GDP per capita is only US$53,825 (ranked 10th) [1]. Similarly, the US's PPP GDP per capita (2020 I…

But the important other factor is government debt. Australia's national debt is less than 1/2 of the US's in terms of % of GDP. (US has basically 100% of its annual GDP in debt). Australia has a lot more room to consider big projects as a result.

I think a lot of people have an excessive fear of government debt, especially given how low interest rates are nowadays. Countries (including the US) should be borrowing more to stimulate their COVID-afflicted economies.

Putting that aside, a common trick used in countries like Australia and the UK is to keep big projects off the government's balance sheet through public-private partnerships – private corporations do most of the borrowing, not the government, and end up owning the infrastructure (often under some deal where it reverts to government ownership in 50 or 100 years time). But I get the impression that approach is far less common in the US. (Despite the fact that it is the more capitalist/free-market approach – allow private investors to own public infrastructure – and the US is generally thought of as a more capitalist/free-market country than the UK or Australia are.)

Public-private partnerships are often criticised as being inferior to government borrowing, due to higher private sector borrowing costs, and I agree with that criticism. But, even though I think it is best to build with government borrowing, if one has a government debt allergy preventing that, then building with private borrowing seems better than not building at all.