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09-4-2016 17:31:14  #11


Re: Desk favourites

Beak, I have one similar to that but minus the leather surface. I find those Lap Desks to be pretty convenient for handwriting and also for ultra-portable typewriters, as long as you can sit with your forelegs level, they make for a comfortable writing surface.

~Joe

 

10-4-2016 05:11:11  #12


Re: Desk favourites

It's not that I'm shy, it's that I don't have fancy desk stuff! I have a gorgeous 1950s teak sideboard full of folders and so on, in my cunningly designed bedroom/office. But the G Plan dining table that was the desk element of the bedroom/office is now in the living room, and in its place is a displaced guinea pig (long story) called Chet Baker. On the table in the living room are a sweet old lamp with a burlap shade, in need of rewiring, and a 1978 SG3 with a broken feed roller. (Tom, I have not forgotten this! It's practically in the post.)

The little writing desk is ineffably pretty though!

 

10-4-2016 17:54:26  #13


Re: Desk favourites

beak wrote:

retro wrote:

This particular model has a design fault in the handset cradle; the receiver could easily slip forward and 'unhook' the phone.  The design was soon corrected in the replacement model which is superficially the same.  A nice vintage piece.

Yes it very easy to accidentally unhook the phone. They never replaced mine. Bit late to get one now I suppose.

 

11-4-2016 04:44:19  #14


Re: Desk favourites

Hang on to it - collectors will be paying good money for these in a few years.


Sincerely,
beak.
 
     Thread Starter
 

26-4-2016 08:54:45  #15


Re: Desk favourites

Uwe, I notice that all of your pictures have good depth and strong levelling - do you have a particular Photoshop sequence to give them this look? - come on, share your secrets...


Sincerely,
beak.
 
     Thread Starter
 

26-4-2016 09:26:53  #16


Re: Desk favourites

Beak, no secrets, honestly. I only use a photo editor to crop a photo and resize it. Actually, until very recently, I didn't even have software that mimics Photoshop's myriad adjustments. Photography was a serious hobby of mine when I was a teenager and even considered making it a career. Back then all photo retouching was done by a real artist with an airbrush. Back then everything was shot on film, and we developed our own; I was pretty good in the darkroom and there definitely were tricks involved there.

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't own decent digital gear. I sold most of my 35 mm equipment for pennies on the dollar, and just don't have the funds to buy the modern day equivalent. For years I owned cheap point-and-shoot models, and then a few years ago I bought a slightly upscale Olympus PEN model (what can I say, I love Olympus - I'm not one of those Canon/Nikon devotees) that offers some versatility with settings.

This is a rather long-winded explanation, I apologize. In short, I mostly just concentrate on getting the lighting right, and when I have the patience, I'll turn off the camera's stabilization options, set the ISO as low as possible, and use a tripod to get the focus as sharp as possible. I'm old school, so I work on getting the original shot right instead of what I assume is the trend now, which is to change the shot using software after the fact.


The pronoun has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
 

26-4-2016 19:26:20  #17


Re: Desk favourites

Universal Addler - the essential accessory.
The joke was kind of thin the first time: I'm afraid repetition does not improve it. :-/


"Damn the torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton".
 

27-4-2016 06:35:06  #18


Re: Desk favourites

Uwe wrote:

Beak, no secrets, honestly. I only use a photo editor ............

In that case, hearty congratulations on your efforts.

I too learned on film, but unlike you, after my first trip out with a digital camera, combined with Photoshop editing at home, I was utterly hooked, and all of that expensive Nikkor glass and those lovely Nikon F2ASs bodies lay dormant in their cases for years until sold.  A little Olympus C5050 (damn good little thing that it was) replaced it all.  I now run just a Panasonic/Leica DSLR; it has an amazing Leica standard zoom, and I keep just an Olympus close-up lens and an Olympus 22mm for capturing wide shots of the settings I work on.  Shooting raw files into Photoshop is an overwhelming experience for the film photographer.

I admire and respect still the policy of getting the shot as right as can be in the camera, but know that I have the flexibility of digital editing to fall back on.

Your pictures are a treat, and more so now that I understand more about how you work.


Sincerely,
beak.
 
     Thread Starter
 

27-4-2016 12:04:15  #19


Re: Desk favourites

Thanks, beak. It wasn't until I read your last post that I realized there are many parallels between typewriters and cameras, at least so far as using them to create something is concerned. Much like writing with a typewriter, a film camera required a great deal of forethought, in part because each shot cost money and you had to work from rolls with a very finite number of exposures (I still remember the horror of using a power winder for the first time).

Similar to a typewriter, creating art with a film camera forces you to consider everything in advance. The composition of the shot, its exposure, depth of field, and shutter speed all needed to be factored in if your goal was to be achieved. Conversely, writing with a computer (word processor) is very much like using a digital camera. It often employs the spray and pray approach - it's just as easy to shoot 100 photos as it is to shoot one - and there's a heavy reliance on editing after the fact.

There are of course situations when digital editing is the only option to achieve a desired look, and there's definitely far more flexibility now than we ever had during the heyday of film; it makes me laugh to think of what I used to have to do in the darkroom to create a dodge, mask, or solarisation effect on an enlargement when those techniques are now done with a few mouse clicks - and with far greater control.

I hope you don't think that I'm some purist in all of this. For example, I have fooled around with HDR techniques for a few typewriter photos, something that would be an onerous task if my camera couldn't bracket shoot using preset exposure compensation settings. I can only imagine what you would be able to do with a high end digital camera, and the temptations those settings would represent.

By the way, a hearty bravo for working with raw files. I fear them because of their sheer size; my aging computer is barely coping with the latest upgrade to Windows 10 (it crashes all the time now), and to ask it to deal with raw files feels akin to strapping a 90 pound man into a bireme on his own. I know the theory and benefits of working with raw files, and maybe some day I'll get there, but for know I'm stuck using the lowly jpeg format.


The pronoun has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
 

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