A patent and the money would have been nice, but 35 years later, you can still take pride in your invention. That's some consolation
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for your kind remarks. I do feel satisfied with my achievement. Also, at my age, there are other things much more important than money.
It's actually 45 years since I made my pentamirror. Five years ago and 40 years after graduating, the task of tracking down my fellow mechanical engineers for a Class of 64 reunion fell to me.
As the 2004 event was successful, we agreed to hold another but debated whether it should be in 5 years or 10. In view of the possibility of our numbers dwindling, we decided on 5 years so I am again tasked with trying to contact my fellow 'mechanicals'.
Having dug out my old Praktica, thinking back to the way I used it in 1963 and comparing it with my FZ50 made me even more aware of just how spoilt we are with the cameras of today.
In the 1960's, for colour slides with reasonably fine grain and accurate colour, I generally used Agfa CT18, only 50 ISO. I also did my own B&W developing and printing using ilford Pan F, 50 ISO, or FP3, 125 ISO, in low light.
My Praktica has a Zeiss Tessar F2.8 50 mm manual lens. After using a hand held meter to assess the exposure, the shutter speed and aperture had to be set manually. Also after focussing at full aperture via the ground glass screen, the lens had to be stopped down manually before taking a shot.
At F16, that resulted in a very dim image. In addition when the shutter was released, the viewfinder went black as the mirror flipped up and it stayed that way until the film was wound on for the next frame.
That reminiscence has increased my appreciation of the tremendous advances that have been made since then, not only in the design and manufacture of cameras and lenses but also in image processing, much of it resulting from the digital revolution. I have a great deal of admiration for the designers of the FZ50.
Jimmy
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J C Brown
