365cameras.com

I was looking around for replacement focusing screens and ran into KatzEye Optics. Everything I’ve seen has been positive so far. So I thought I’d pass this along.

Their replacement screens cover many different DSLRs from several manufacturers including Leica, Pentax, Olympus, Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Panasonic and Samsung.

The attraction for me is the enhanced focusing ability when using manual focus lenses. DSLR focusing screens are sub-optimal for manual focusing.

One nice thing about them is that they have a service to replace the screen for you. This is wonderful news for those that might be a wee bit nervous about accidentally damaging the sensitive parts of the camera.

I have not used their product yet, but do intend to.

Here is a review I found on the KatzEye focusing screen for a Canon DSLR.

Here’s a video of a KatzEye Focusing Screen on a Nikon D7000

Today’s Photography Site of the Day (which, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t published daily) is photoethnography.com. This site is the work of Karen Nakamura, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies at Yale.

On her site, Ms. Nakamura says “Photoethnography can be considered both an applied methodology of an academic social science discipline (Visual Anthropology) as well as a form of artistic expression and social critique, akin to street photography or documentary photography.”

While not necessarily always dealing with photography, you will get a good sense of the person and photoethnography by reading her blog. As would be expected, she has photography and covers social justice issues. This is the part of the site that continues to be actively updated. The rest seems to not be updated often, unfortunately that includes the gallery. That’s OK though. There’s still some great info here.

She has a good, though short, links page.

I like her Equipment page. In it she recommends inexpensive equipment, mostly film based cameras, to get into photoethnography. There are some great recommendations here. I’d give you direct links, but the site is frame based so I’ll just mention some of the content available here.

-Buying classic cameras
-Recommendations
-SLR vs Rangefinder
-35mm vs. MF
-Instruction Manuals
-Batteries / Books
-Camera Bags / Tripods
-Light Meters / Finders
-Repairs / Humidity & Fungus

A few of the links are broken and most of the content is a few years old. But I think it’s still valid. There is a lot of information on this site.

She has a set of pages devoted to her camera collection. These include pictures and text describing the camera. Very nice work. Again, this is a link on the equipment page.

She talks about her favorite street cameras:
Canon P
Yashica Electro 35 GX
Olympus XA
Nikon FE
Nikon S2
Leica M3
Leica M7

and her favorite cameras overall:
Bolsey C22
Canon P
Canonet GIII QL17
Kodak Retina
Leica M3
Leica lenses
Nikon S3
Olympus XA
Pentax 6×7
Spotmatic II
Yashica GSN

While she lists these as her favorites, she has information on about a hundred cameras.

One thing that I wish she would promote more, is her video work. She has films available on Amazon that she mentions in her blog, but she doesn’t seem to have good pages devoted to them on her site. She might get more sales and bring more attention to the issues she has covered with some better marketing.

Her videos are:
Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan
and
A Japanese Funeral

I’ve spent hours here and will spend some more. I’ve only touched on a bit of the site. I recommend that you check it out.

I found a very nice photography site, www.suaudeau.eu. The only stumbling point for me is that it’s in French. My knowledge of French is not so good. Wait a minute. Don’t leave yet. Google makes it easy to see a translated copy of a site.

The translated www.suaudeau.eu home page.

There is some really excellent content here, such as this guide to Minolta cameras

That page has individual pages for particular Minolta models. It has history of Minolta SLR and rangefinder cameras. It also has repair tips, lens disassembly instructions, and finder changing instructions for the SRT 101.

The histories are excellent. I like the Minolta Manual SLR history.

Check out these Camera, Shutter and Flash Service Manuals
There are service or user manuals for Leica 2M, Leica 3f, Minolta Himatic 7Sii, Minolta XD-11, Minolta X-700, Minolta X300, Minolta X500, Minolta XE, Minolta 360XP, Minolta SRT 101, Nikon F3, Compur, Pentax K1000, Pentax Spotmatic, Pentax Spotmatic II, Canon EF, Canon EOS 30, Canon EOS 500, Canon F1, Canon Canonet GIII QL 17, Obturateur Prontor 1, Obturateur Prontor 2, Olympus XA, Yashica D, Yashica Mat 124 G, Yashica Electro 35
The caveat is that not all of the manuals have English translations in them.

Along with the manuals, there is a very nice Repair page

This site is well worth checking out, especially for the service manuals and repair section. If you’re a Minolta person especially, there is some great stuff here. Highly recommended.

Please note that if google comes back and says a page is too big to translate, such as the manuals, then just view the page without the translator. Most of the links I provided are for the translations by google.