That Swiveling Noblex 175
Friday, August 24, 2018
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| Lauren at the Santa Fe Ranch, Texas |
I will not deny the awesome capability of the modern digital
camera. It can, within reason, do anything. But to me it fails in one (not to
me) unexpected way.
You would never think of unscrewing a Phillips screw with a
hammer or hammering a nail with the handle of a Phillips screw driver. Each
tool has its principal use.
In the photographs that I took of Texas cowboys in 2011 that
are
here and in the panoramic photographs in this blog which I took on the
way to Texas in our 2007 Chevrolet Malibu I think they are special because I
used the right tool. It is a German-made Noblex 175. It has a swivel lens and
the 120 film that I load it with will shoot a negative (or transparency) that
is 2ΒΌ by 7 inches.
In that trip I took the Noblex, two Nikon FM-2s, one Pentax
MX, and one Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD.
Picking up any of these cameras transported me
(via a gentle suggestion by the camera in question) to do this but not that.
And that but not this with another camera.
While it is possible to take b+w and colour pictures and,
panoramics with my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3 (I did not own a digital camera then but
did use my iPhone 3G with some interesting results) the variety of the
photographs that I came back with could not have really been done with one
camera. Switching cameras, not using zoom lenses, forced me to pause and think.
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| Gallup, New Mexico, iPhone3G , 2011 |
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| Bryce Canyon |
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| Near Gallup, New Mexico |
