Our planet Earth is NOT round--not perfectly round, anyway-- it is what the scientist people call an "Oblate Spheriod." That means that it's NEARLY round, but flattened very slightly at the poles, preventing perfectly spherical shape. This is your useless fact for today.

TSA actually stands for "Thousands, Standing Around."

I was a Marine photographer in Vietnam, starting in March 1965. I was issued a Nikon F with 35mm fixed-focal length lens for photographing Marine Corps activities in the I Corps area. Sometimes I used a 58mm f/1.8 'normal' lens. Rarely, in base camp settings, I used an 85mm fixed focal length lens. We developed the film (almost always Kodak Tri-X panchromatic B&W 400 ISO) locally in makeshift darkrooms & sent the negatives Stateside to Marine Corps Headquarters. We rarely used Kodachrome (25 ISO). Rarely because we had to send it Stateside for processing, and never saw the slides produced, which went straight to HQMC in D.C.

Yes, I've used an 8x10 Deardorff view camera, a 4x5 Graphic View camera, and 4x5 Speed Graphic and Crown Graphic cameras--even though technically the Speed and Crown Graphics were not view cameras but "Press Cameras." I taught at the Navy's Photo "A" School at NAS Pensacola, FL in 1966, where I taught students how to use the Speed and Crown Graphics and the Graphic View camera.

I found that using the 8x10 Deardorff required a change in my photography. I routinely used 35mm Nikon F cameras (with film of course, in those days), and would generally point, focus, and shoot, squeezing off maybe two or three frames. With the Deardorff, thing were more deliberate. First, selection of a viewpoint. Then set up the wooden tripod. Next, attach the camera to the tripod. Then focus carefully, using the ground glass to bring the upside-down image into proper clarity on the ground glass, under the great black focusing cloth--a shroud that enveloped me and the camera. Then close the shutter, set the f/stop, insert the great double-sided film holder (2 sheets of film each), pull the dark slide, and use the cable release to make the exposure. I found I had to use a deliberate routine in operating the 8x10 equipment; deciding that a scene was worth the effort was only the beginnng.

Then process the sheets of film in the darkroom. I usually developed the large, floppy 8x10 sheets in trays, using a combination of time and temperature and a very short inspection of the developing image using a very dim green light on the developing panchromatic sheet film. We developed 4x5 sheet film using hangers and square, gallon tanks of the required chemicals.

8x10 black and white negatives were generally printed as contact prints, although we had a VERY large enlarger that would handle the 8x10 negatives. We could product black and white prints of up to 20x24 inches on cut sheets of B&W double-weight printing paper. Processing sheets of photo paper that size was an adventure, requiring re-configuration of the print darkroom for half a day.

Today, I simply point my Nikon D-810, my grandchildren smile, and I'm generally please with the results.

For years, common wisdom has held that DELTA actually stands for "Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive."

GOOD LUCK with having a camera (or other valuables) in the luggage compartment. Not only is checked luggage subjected to the tender mercies of the ramp monkeys handling the cargo, we must remember that DELTA really stands for "Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive."

You're absolutely right that there's really little worth watching on cable beyond the vomitous chronicles of the arrogantly over-privileged Kardashians. But what prompted me to dump our Charter cable here in Reno, NV was the obvious biases present in the cable news channels; MSNBC, Fox, CNN (short for "Certainly Not News"), and even the business news channels. Saving a few $$ now, but the house is quiet, we catch up on local news once a day, and the jabbering presence of the flickering color images in the corner are hardly missed.

A photograph is a transient moment in time, made special by someone placing the frame of the picture format around that arrangement within the frame. The fleeting moment so captured is thus made special for the person who takes the picture. Most photography captures moments special to only a few--a new dress, a holiday recorded for family history, a birthday marked in passing, or a bird in colorful plumage. These are all good photos, in that they mean something to the people who take and view the. That being said, some photographs appeal to and are meaningful to a wider range of people, or capture a moment of humanity shared more widely. Examples of this could be the Flag raising by the Marines in 1945 on Iwo Jima, photographed by Joe Rosenthal, or the photo of Josef Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, by Alfred Eisenstadt, or many of the photos of Parisian life by Henri Cartier-Bresson. A photograph is great when it speaks to the hearts and minds of many people, on several levels, about shared meanings or beliefs, about our common human existence. I believe a photograph can do this, and that a photograph CAN be art.

Don't miss the RAMBLAS- the great street where the people of Barcelona stroll every day / evening. It's great to get a sense of the people of Barcelona; young and old. Also there are a number of fantastically designed buildings and apartment blocks, designed by Antonio Gaudi, the architect of La Sagrada Familia.

Some years ago, there used to be a Web site called Untied Airlines.com, which listed all the various indignities to customers and mishandling of flyer issues by United airlines. I looked for it, but it's gone. Delta is only a little better; DELTA really means "Don't Expect Luggage To Arrive." Im firmly convinced that if the FAA would let them, ALL airlines would put subway straps in the coach section of airliners, and force us to sit on orange crates as we flew to Florida. Passengers are just cattle to the airlines. "Coach cooties."
AJ

When I served as a Marine photographer in Vietnam in 1965-66, we needed a "dry box" to keep our photo equipment from fungus. We took an old wooden box, about 2x4x2 feet, that we "found" unattended on the Air Force side of the Danang Air Base, and installed a 60 watt light bulb in it, plugged it in, and had no difficulties with fungus in / on our Nikon F cameras or lenses.

Perhaps your choice would be aperture-priority when you need maximum depth-of-field; the range of distances in the subject area in front of and behind the point of primary focus that are rendered sharply.

The perfect camera is the one you use to take your best photograph. Dorothea Lange used a Folmer-Graflex Super D 4x5 single-lens reflex camera with sheets of black and white film to make some of the most moving, meaningful photos of the people during the American South and West during the Great Depression. Walker Evans used an 8 x 10 view camera on a tripod to shoot other black and white documentation of the same period for the FSA. His photos were used to illustrate the book, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The best camera is the one you are able to afford. I used a 1961 Nikon F in Vietnam to shoot some images of Marines in combat that were used--and are still used, though more infrequently--to document that tragic time in our history. Joe Rosenthal used a 4 x 5 Speed Graphic to document the flag raising on Iwo Jima. Eugene Atget used an old Leica to photograph Paris in the 20s and 30s to document a way of life. Alfred Eisenstadt documented the world for LIFE magazine in unmatched images of the times and of life. Old, clunky, clumsy cameras can capture wonderful images that speak to us across decades.

Today, our new cameras do wonderful things, help make images interesting and able to record a passing moment--but that's all any camera does; record a fleeting moment in time 1/200th of a second of time that is special, somehow; meaningful and maybe memorable.

IMHO, it's great to keep up with the times, but whether you use a camera to photograph babies or battles, birds, bees, or fashion, it's YOUR eye, YOUR knowledge of technology of that machine in your hands, YOUR connection to and compassion with the subject or object or landscape that makes the photograph meaningful and memorable.

In 1956 at the Navy's School of Photography in Pensacola, FL, we referred to 'Depth of Focus' as "depth of field." This term referred to the range of distances, near to far, in the field of view of the lens used that were rendered in sharp detail. Depth of field could be seen on the glass of the 4x5 Graphic View Cameras we used, and was controlled generally by the focal length of the lens being used (shorter focal lengths had inherently greater depth of field at all apertures), the point of prime focus, and the f/stop or aperture. When the old view camera was used, of course, there were adjustments (swings and tilts of the lens board and camera back) we used to control distortions in the subject image. When the point of prime focus was nearer to the camera, depth of field was less. This was of particular concern when the object being photographed was close to the camera, as in studio work on small electronic parts. The smaller the lens aperture, the greater the depth of field. I've seen in more recent years that the blur of out-of-focus objects in the distance behind a sharply-focused subject (as in a portrait in which the person is in sharp focus but objects behing are blurred) referred to as "bokeh." This term sounds as though it's maybe from the French, and seems much more elegant than simply calling the background out of focus.

Hey, good luck with your studies! --Best, AJ