Initially, most used the Canon FD 35-105mm f3.5 zoom, but more recently mostly with Canon FD prime lenses. All equipment was bought second-hand, based on invaluable advice from the Canon FD pages.
| 35-105mm f3.5 Bayonet | Two touch zoom which handles well, and is extremely versatile, but large and heavy even by the standards of the day. This is my default lens for normal everyday use. The main constraints are that it provides insufficient aperture for interiors, and has limitations in close focus. |
| 80-200mm f4 Breechlock SSC | Another two touch zoom which handles well, but again heavy. Used here for some distant shots. |
| 24mm f2.8 Bayonet | This is the widest angle I have available in a decent lens. Rarely used. |
| 28mm f2 Breechlock SSC
28mm f2.8 Bayonet |
The f2.8 is a good budget lens, but now set aside for the increased quality and crispness of the f2. |
| 35mm f2 Bayonet | A lovely lens, which I am using more as my default prime lens. |
| 50mm f1.4 Breechlock SSC | The widest aperture I have available, and used mainly for lower light levels. The 28mm f2, 35mm f2 and 50mm f1,4 seem to make a good, well match mid-to-wide angle set. |
| 85mm f1.8 Bayonet | My widest aperture long lens - I find myself using this, and the 35mm more and more. |
| 135 f3.5 Breechlock SC | When I bought this I assumed it was SSC, and was annoyed with myself for not checking. In practice it is a fine lens for compressing street-scapes. |
| 200mm f2.8 Bayonet | My longest prime lens - has a good reputation in general, but mine was bought cheap and in poor condition - probably a mistake. Nevertheless, after some drastic fiddling with the infinity focus, it seems to work well optically. |
The Canon Camera Museum describes the history of Canon cameras in general, and the specifications of the FD system in particular.
All pictures (so far) have been hand held, and with natural light
A few early pictures were taken on Kodachrome, but most with Elite Chrome 200ASA (formerly Ektachrome), and a few with Elite Chrome 400.
The slides were digitised by scanning on a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual.
I used Photo Paint (part of Corel Draw) to crop and clean up the images. Mostly this has consisted of cropping, adjustung Gamma, and a limited aomunt of enhancement where the original was poorly exposed. Frames are added to present the results at their best.
Initially I used heavy compression for fast loading, but now sacrifice speed for better quality. All are stored in progressive JPEG format because personally I prefer to see the gradual emergence of a picture rather than a gradual reveal.
The maps and diagrams were developed in Corel Draw.
The text was prepared in GNU EMACS. I do not use any of the HTML extensions because I find it easier to remember HTML grammar than extensions to the EMACS command set.
The style (such as it is) is loosely based on Philip Greenspun's suggestions, various style guides on the web and HTML: The definitive guide, by Chuck Musciano & Bill Kennedy, published by O'Reilly.
To speed loading of the pages I added image height and width using the perl program WWIS, which an be downloaded at http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~ark/wwwis/.
The pages are hosted by Clara.Net who were chosen on the basis that they offered a choice of Email addresses for different members of the family, a generous allocation of space for web pages, and a competitive price. Subsequently I also have experience of their excellent standard of support.
I have used various web based tools to monitor and improve the pages, for examples try The Web Site Garage and The link exchange.
I also do my own log file analysis, using Perl routines. (See here)
