Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/08/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]http://www.boulder.net/~4season/images/se30.jpg http://www.boulder.net/~4season/images/leica_m3.gif Background info: I was feeling kind of yucky for the past few weeks (West Nile Fever perhaps?) and wasn't up to my usual hikes and photo outings. But I was mostly too restless just to lie around. Fortunately, I had something to tinker with: Someone on the next block had a bunch of Macintosh computers out by the dumpster, free for the taking. The Mac SE/30 depicted had been rained on at least once, was filthy, and had video problems. I have since done a thorough cleaning, some resoldering, installed a new CRT and realigned the video, and located a mouse of the correct era. It now works perfectly. Yes, the fat black borders are correct-that's the only way to get the aspect ratio exactly right. Slight tilt and off-centeredness were typical-can be tweaked, but I'm not sure I'll bother. Back in 1988, you'd have had to trade a lot of Leica gear for one: List price for the basic SE/30 was over $4K, and this one is "loaded" with 8 megabytes of RAM and a Micron Xceed video card. The lighting of the Mac photo is crap, but it's an idea in progress, so bear with me. Anyone got Leather Goddess of Phobos for the Mac? Photographed with a 4x5 camera. It's a double exposure: First exposure was with the video off, and with the Mac's cabinet exposed around Zone 5.5 or so. Second was with the video cranked up, and the white areas of the screen exposed around Zone VII. Exposure was deliberately longish to eliminate artifacts of the video sweep. The 1-bit photo of the M3 was actually done by placing camera onto a flatbed scanner. Scanned in with Xsane software as 1-bit, with all brightness/contrast being adjusted prior to the scan. Needed reflectors on the left and righthand sides to pick up some of the details on the curved ends of the body. For some reason, I like this 1-bit image a lot, and may experiment with higher-res versions suitable for printing. I'm thinking of somehow taking it to sheet film or transparency and maybe eventually trying a platinum print of it, for the sheer irony. Sobering thought: When the Mac SE/30 was new, the Leica M6 had already been on the market for a number of years, and so had William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. Jeff __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html