Focal Plane Mark Revisited

As my online petition to Canon, Nikon and other manufacturers of interchangeable lens cameras to rename the inappropriately monikered "Focal Plane Mark" gains steam (as many as two people have now signed), I figured it was time I went ahead and blogged the issue.

The Issue?
That little circle with a line through it on top of the camera body next to the pentaprism, which indicates the location of the film or image sensor, according to Canon and Nikon, is called the "Focal Plane Mark".

See!

It is not sufficient to call this misleading. It is blatantly incorrect. As I'm sure you're all aware, the focal plane, or more accurately the rear focal plane, is a theoretical flat surface positioned relative to the rear nodal point of a lens. More specifically, the plane represents the surface upon which rays of light reflected from a point of infinite distance and entering the lens converge back to a single point. (The distance between the focal plane and the rear nodal point of the lens is equal to the lens's focal length. ) Rays of light reflected from points of less than infinite distance converge to a single point behind the focal plane.

As such, the position of the focal plane coincides with the film or image sensor only when the lens is focussed to infinite – as the focal distance decreases into the finite, the position of the focal plane correspondingly moves forwards.

So "focal plane" clearly does not describe the static location of the film or image sensor in anything but the most tenuous way, making the term "focal plane mark" a fallacy. Luckily however, there does exist a term that describes the position exactly – it's called the "image plane". It therefore makes sense that the mark indicating its location also be renamed the "Image Plane Mark", as that's precisely what it is.

So next time you're thinking of purchasing an interchangeable lens camera, why not badger the staff who have absolutely no authority on the issue over why it should be renamed. If we make enough noise, maybe one day the fat cats upstairs will hear us and get onto doing something about it.

Who's using my pictures?

Thanks to the wonders of Creative Commons, a number of my pictures are being used in a variety of unforeseen contexts. Naturally many of these are automatically generated pages where people have simply bookmarked the image, or Google Image style automated cataloguing. A large number can also be found in places like Facebook where people have opted to use one of my images for their profile picture – last count somewhere in the region of 20. But then there are those unexpected ones where people have really gone out of their way to specifically choose one of my images. Here are but a few:

1. 10 Ways To Make Your Freelance Business Fail

2. toma love (12/22 now gone)

3. 外国人労働者を襲う雇用不安　日本の移民政策の方向は？

4. 篤姫 と 情熱大陸 の女性たち

5. キヤノンの地産地消

6. Where Does Chicken Come From?

7. Good Question: Indian Food Without the Heat?

8. Dieta Japonesa para adelgazar

9. Redes 3.9G para finales de año en Japón

10. Canon ST-E2, Great Auto Focus Assist But Worthless Otherwise (12/22)

Actually that was all I could find. Though I did get an honorary mention as a cameraman here.

Libation Kowloon – Now Affiliated

For those of you that noticed the conspicuous banner appearing on the right of the page lately, here's a closer view of a similar but slightly different one.

Yes, I finally sold out, and would have done so quicker if the opportunity had arisen. In short, staff at Japanesepod101.com contacted me and asked me consider an affiliate arrangement with their Japanese language learning site, and after careful review I must say I am most impressed by the sheer quantity not to mention quality of the learning materials that they provide, and believe this to be excellent tool in acquiring the language. If you're serious about your Japanese studies, I would seriously consider taking out a subscription.

If you're not convinced, or are uncertain as to what on earth I'd know about learning the language, there is plenty of content available for free so you can try before you buy.

And with that said, I shall return in due course to talk about photographic techniques, travesties of justice, strange findings in the supermarket, shameless self-promotion and why I still think the PlayStation®3 was a horrible horrible idea.

Kirin Akiaji – Now in Bottles

It Exists!!
Originally uploaded by Coal Miki

If you've been in Japan for more than one Autumn and haven't tried Kirin's seasonal "Akiaji" beer, get yourself down to your nearest purveyor of fine liquor, or wherever you see the 酒 mark and get some in before they sell out for the year. It is thought by many to be the greatest production beer in the country, and we'd all be a lot happier if it was available all year round.

As I'm now enjoying my 11th annual Akiaji carnival, I was pleased to finally find the elusive bottled variety hidden away in a corner fridge in my local Ozeki. The commercials always show bottles but one can only ever find them in cans. That is until now.

A word of warning though – take care not to confuse Akiaji with the cheaper Akinama. The labels look very similar, but while the Akiaji contains 330ml (or 500ml) of autumn themed refreshness, the Akinama contains a sickly bile that will rot your insides, bleach your soul, and make you very very unpopular if you bring it to a party and then proceed to drink everybody else's drinks (unless everybody else is doing the same thing – I don't go to those sorts of parties though).

Now to continue my search for the other holy grail, the elusive Yebisu bottle with two fish on it.

365 Project

Partly due to the general lack of inspiration over the past couple of months, I decided to focus my efforts on a 365 project; one photo per day over the course of a year. The aim is to develop technique and vision, so even if the pictures themselves are largely meaningless they should each represent a progression of style and part of the learning process.

Picture number 1 (above) has already been posted to the dedicated site. This was experimentation with fill flash using an off-camera unit. Although I normally use all manual settings, I only had a limited time frame to set up so I left the flash unit set to auto, and under-exposed by one stop. Camera was on a tripod at knee height, flash unit was off to the left (my right) at neck height and diffused through a standard plastic diffuser. Colour balance was set using the same custom setting grey card setting I use for indoor bounce flash, which gave the picture a slightly colder impression as my wallpaper has a hint of beige.

Please bookmark the site below, and feel free to comment on technique and composition.

http://365.restall.org

PUDDLE of LUST / 緋色の陰

Premium art performance

Exploring an ecology of the modern Japanese artistic expression.
A blend of visuals, sound & movement designed to stimulate the senses, while at the same time explore the boundaries of art and performance. Bringing together top international and local performers for the first time.
Featuring Koto, Shamisen, Industrial Noise, Butoh dancing and Video art, with body painting.

このプロジェクトは日本独自の現代芸術である舞踏、琴、三味線、書道を今の日本に暮らしてる人達、海外の人達に見て、体験して欲しいです。それは一見アバンギャルドかもしれないけど実は今の私たちにとって自然に出てくるもので提示する必要があります。素晴しい感性をもったアーティストたちと濃厚な作品を創りたいと思っています。
ただの`アート`っぽいビデオではなく 五感を刺激するミュージックビデオ作品を様々な表現者と製作。


Online booking for advance tickets - http://www.super-deluxe.com/2009/6/18

Details

* Thursday, June 18 19:00 to 22:00
* At Super Deluxe
* Price ¥2000 in advance, ¥2500 at the door
* Homepage: http://www.image-mill.com/lust/

Chaos

Chaos
Originally uploaded by 神酒 Coal

I originally had much more serene piece of music in mind from the Mishima soundtrack by Philip Glass, but as I searched for it in my music library I came across this much more chaotic piece which I felt really complemented the visuals.

This was shot as a series of timelapsed 2 second exposures in JPEG with the white balance set to 4500 Kelvins and a custom picture style. With exposures that long, there was no danger of the buffer filling up, so I put it in burst mode and locked the cable release. This meant there was only a split second delay between each exposure, allowing me to compress 15 minutes of action into just 30 seconds.