Silverbased

Welcome! You can use the search box at the right to look for a particular topic. But unfortunately WordPress’s search function does something lame—showing the full text of matching articles, not just excerpts. Sorry about that.

Instead I’d suggest a Google search using the delimiter site:silverbased.org to find relevant posts here.

I apologize to IE 6 users that the format of the site looks so screwy (with the sidebar shoved all the way to the bottom)—Firefox, Safari and IE 7 seem to work OK. Eventually I hope to roll up my sleeves make some tweaks to the page template—but that will have to wait until I get some help in understanding CSS.

To get you started, here’s a few topics from the archives you might be interested in:

Do It Yourself Photography Projects

• Make a pinhole camera from a plastic focus-free 35mm, Part 1 and Part 2
• Build a flash diffuser from a plastic food tub
• Adapt a hearing-aid battery to replace mercury cells
• Make a panoramic 35mm pinhole camera
• Build a chimney hood for your TLR viewfinder
• Adapt a pack-film Polaroid camera into a pinhole

Why Film Still Matters in a Digital World

• The amazing longevity of 120 film
• The trouble with lithium-ion camera batteries
• Why a small sensor chip screws up depth of field
• Why diffraction limits aperture choice in digital compacts

Background About Optics

• The “anastigmat” (and other simple lenses)
• Why I think it’s politically correct to say “telephoto”
• What to do if you want the least depth of field?

Chemistry and Processing

• What supplies do you need to develop black & white film?
• How to develop really ancient Verichrome Pan
• A new film washing method

Classic Cameras

• A 21st-Century “vintage camera,” the Voigtländer Bessa R
• The beastly Mamiya/Sekor 1000 DTL
• The cute 1955 Minolta ‘A’
• The excellent but quirky 1958 Konica III A
• A classic 120 folder, the 1958 Mamiya-6 Automat 2
• What makes certain cameras enduring classics?

Other Random Opinions

• Can the name “Lomo” be rescued from misuse?
• Does 127 film count as “medium format”?
• Albert Einstein’s strange 1936 auto-exposure patent
• Is a Wein cell a different voltage from a hearing-aid battery?
• Some light meters I like
• Why old-school “Series” filters are still useful
• Are some beloved vintage econo-cameras over-rated?

…And thanks for visiting.