Sky and Lens 

By Chris Gulker

The recent rainy spell we've had left a glorious sky this morning as I headed in to work. 

                                       When I was still lugging a Nikon around Los Angeles for a living, the few
                                       clear glorious winter days would inspire me. I'd hurry out of whatever press
                                       conference or other event a Herald Examiner editor had deemed worthy to
                                       cover and head for a few 'secret' vantage points. Out would come my
                                       cherished Leica 21mm wide-angle and its red filter (sample photo, here). 

                                       It's been a week since the Kaidan lenses for the QuickTake showed up.
                                       Kaidan makes a wide angle lens adaptor and a close-up lens holder for the
                                       Apple QuickTake 100. 

                                       The Kaidan lenses address the biggest problems with the Quicktake - the fixed
                                       "normal" angle of view and the fixed focus set somewhere around 8 feet. 

                                       John Hubbard's Voigtlander Bessa proved a worthy subject for the
                                       Kaidan/QuickTake close-up lenses. I put it on a table near the kitchen window
                                       late in the day - the sun was low, the light was warm (what they call 'golden
                                       light' in Hollywood). 

                                       I won't make too much of using a 90s digital camera to take a picture of a
                                       30's film camera, except to note (1) how similar the cameras are - they share a
                                       lens and shutter arrangement; (2) that the Voigtlander is capable of capturing
                                       much finer detail than the QuickTake. 

                                                                             Next subject is also a camera:
                                                                             the Connectix QuickCam
                                                                             which sits atop my Mac and
                                                                             takes a picture of its
                                                                             environment every 15
                                                                             minutes (see the current
                                                                             picture, here). 

                                                                             On the one hand the
                                                                             QuickCam is quite limited as
                                                                             a still camera - it's a NTSC
                                                                             video camera that produces a
                                                                             4-bit grayscale image running
                                                                             on a Mac serial port. On the
other hand, you can do full-motion video for $98, and rig up fun (if useless) exercises like the gulker-cam. 

The Connectix and even the QuickTake cameras are simple cameras, high-tech features aside. I learned the hard way that
simple tools are not bad tools. As a younger man I was a confirmed equipment junkie, who just knew that a Nikon or
Hasselblad were the answer to great photos. 

As I matured and saw great pictures, and great photographers , I began to realize that art and talent exist independently of
expensive cameras. Not that a Nikon isn't a great tool: it is! Sharp lenses are a great tool, and so are shutters that don't break.
Nevertheless greater pictures have been taken with lesser equipment. It is all a matter of putting the tool to its best use.