A few years ago when I started shooting film I decided to digitize the negatives using a light box and an old 2011 Canon EOS Rebel T3i. This digitizing process worked great for 35mm and was decent for 120. But, once I began shooting a 4x5 view camera, I needed a different way to digitize the larger negatives. I found an old Epson Perfection V700 for a reasonable price and was ready to begin scanning negatives.
Scanned negatives still need to be inverted and color corrected. I assumed that since the V700 was designed with negative scanning it mind the stock scanning software would be more than adequate. I quickly found my assumption to be incorrect. Not only were the drivers lacking functionality, the color conversions were wildly off. This sent me on a journey to find the least costly way to scan my film negatives with a decent amount of quality.
I did not set out to compare the functionality or design of the various scanning softwares. My main concern was whether or not they could simply invert a color film negative properly. If they could not convert colors correctly then a nice interface would matter little. Fortunately, none of them have nice user interfaces, they are all horrendous in their own way.
This roll of Fuji Super HQ 200 is probably the best roll of expired film I have ever shot. I really love how the photos turned out. The grain is amazing and the colors have a contrasty, vintage look that is not skewed too far towards one color. The 2000 Canon EOS ELAN 7e (and the FPP C-41) paired nicely with the Super HQ 200.
The film was shot at ISO 80, as per my rules of thumbs for shooting expired film.
Just twelve photos taken with the Hasselblad 503cx on Kodak Vericolor III which expired in 1990. The images were metered according to the rules of thumbs for shooting expired film.
A few photos taken with the Hasselblad 503cx on Kodak Ektar which expired in 1991. The photos are not great, but the film turned out better than I imagined it would. The images were mostly shot metering for ISO 8, or +1⅔ stops of exposure compensation from box speed. This was done according to the rules of thumbs for shooting expired film.
In graduate school I took a software engineering class which was essentially a colloquium. The professor would select relevant topics, provide suggested reading materials, and then the class would meet to discuss. Through the semester long class a broad range of software engineering topics were discussed, but one topic has come back to mind many times through my professional career.
As I remember it, we discussed the conservation of organizational momentum. However, I cannot find any material which references this topic. The fourth of Lehman’s laws covers the conservation of organizational stability, which is semantically similar yet conceptually different. Perhaps through discussion our class conceived of the conservation of organizational momentum, or perhaps I am simply misremembering. Regardless of how I came to think of this subject, it is a topic which I have considered on more than one occasion, and it is a topic which deserves further consideration.
Some more photos taken with a Hasselblad 503cx on a roll of Kodak Vericolor 400 which expired in 1990. These are some of the best results I have gotten from expired Vericolor 400. The images were shot metering for ISO 25, or +4 stop of exposure compensation from box speed. This was done according to the rules of thumbs for shooting expired film.
Just some mediocre photos taken with the Hasselblad 503cx on Kodak Plus-X Pan which expired in 1999. The images were shot metering for ISO 64, or +1 stop of exposure compensation from box speed. This was done according to the rules of thumbs for shooting expired film.
On a family trip a few summers back I found a box of expired Fujicolor Super HQ 200 with 3 rolls in it. It was at a roadside flea market and the vendor was packing up for the day. I asked what they wanted for the box. They seemed unsure, but replied, “five dollars.” I paused to consider the price, tentatively waiting for a better offer as is usual for this type of venue. Hearing none, I handed over a five dollar bill and walked away with the film. Three rolls of expired film for less than the price of a new roll seemed like a good deal.
The box was a three pack of Fujicolor Super HQ 200, but it also contained a bonus roll of Fujicolor Superia X-TRA 400. So, I received two rolls of Super HQ and one roll of Superia. I shot the roll of Superia in my Minolta Hi-Matic 7s. The results were hit-and-miss, so I tossed the other two rolls in the freezer.
Wanting to see how the Nikon 35Ti would treat expired film, I thawed a roll of Fujicolor Super HQ. The 35Ti does not have an ISO override, so I had to use exposure compensation to adjust for the age of the film. The rules for shooting expired film suggested the film would need 1⅓ stops of additional light, so that is what I dialed in. The results from the Super HQ in the Nikon were much better than the results from the Superia in the Minolta. The photos from the expired Super HQ turned out great. If I knew the photos were going to turn out so well I would have spent more time considering the subjects and composition.
A year and a half after I arrived back stateside from my expedition to Iraq I was asked about my deployment experience. The child of a friend of a friend needed to interview veterans for a project they were working on, so I agreed. The thing I remembered about my response, and what made me think of this questionnaire many years latter, was my memory of how Iraq smelled. Usually memories are visual, but these memories had an olfactory component to them. This was brought back to mind by Jon Stewart’s recent efforts to highlight the ill effects veterans are suffering from burning shit in Iraq.
At our first forward operating base we had burn toilets prior to receiving chemical toilets, but I think the rear elements had to burn the waste while we were out running missions. The thing people probably don’t realize though is that the baseline pollution level in Iraq, the baseline in combat zones, is considerably higher than what we enjoy here in the United States. Perhaps urban air quality in the late 60s, prior to the EPA, was similar to what I experienced in Iraq.
Of course it may have been worse in Iraq due to the dusty, arid environment. There was always something in the air. We lived in an old government building which perhaps contained asbestos, who knows, I doubt anyone tested for that. What we do know is that the building was famously bombed by Tomahawk missiles on the first night of the war. Those missiles were probably tipped with depleted uranium. We would laugh every time a mortar bounced off of the sturdy building. But, the so-called insurgents might get the last laugh; each of those mortar hits would stir up dust in the unventilated building. The Army should have given us N95 masks rather than gas masks which literally went unused, because, you know, there were in fact no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Recent break throughs in neural networks have made the use of computer vision technologies available to a wider audience, and many businesses are looking for ways to apply those technologies. To address the demand, large cloud service providers now providing basic turn-key computer vision services. Computer vision solutions currently perform best when they are asked to do tasks which are limited in scope. So, unless pre-trained models are already available for the task at hand, there could be a steep cost to implementing computer vision.
To make things worse, there are relatively few people who understand computer vision technologies from a wholistic perspective. This dearth of experience is not due to lack of educational resources, rather it is due to the steep learning curve and the inverse distribution of educational materials. There are many ways to learn how to get started with a computer vision project, but there are fewer resources explaining how to apply those initial learnings to harder real world problems.
Due to those challenges, it can be hard for technology managers get the information they need to make informed decision about the implementation of computer vision systems. In this post I will discuss ways to avoid some of the common problems encountered when non-tech companies attempt to implement custom computer vision solutions.
The Appalachian Trail is sometimes referred to as the green tunnel. The truth is that many of the backpacking trails on the East Coast run under the cover of deciduous forests and have few scenic overlooks. One backpacking area within driving distance of Northeastern Ohio which breaks out of the green tunnel is the Dolly Sods Wilderness. Dolly Sods has a rough, barren appearance which is partially the result of its unique ecology and partially the result of a long history of exploitation and abuse by European settlers.
Prior to civilization creeping up to it’s borders, Dolly Sods was an inaccessible region covered with spruce, hemlock, and mountain laurel. The expansion of the railroads brought the lumber industry into the area. As the lumber industry clear cut the forests they left behind a landscape barren of trees yet fertile for fires. Fires destroyed vegetation which survived the lumber companies. By the late 1920s little of value was left and the companies moved on. The Civilian Conservation Corps started planting spruce in the 1930s, but in 1940s the US Army rolled in. They were preparing for war in Europe and needed a place to practice destroying things with artillery shells.
On this site I write about, what I like to believe is, a diverse set of topics. The normal way of presenting posts using a sequential list does nothing to help people discover other material on the site which they may also be interested in. I wanted to provide visitors with a list of links to content which is similar to the page they are currently viewing. However, due to limitations in the platform I’m using, there was no option to simply turn this on. So, I wrote some code and implemented an algorithm to solve this problem.
Christopher
