Why No Bulb or Cable Release Socket?

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

The Nikon D40, which I count as a "real" dslr, has an accessory
electronic remote, but it only works from in front of the camera.
That, to me, is not a "real" remote.

it uses an infrared remote and putting the photocell on the back would
be worse than on the front. the typical use is so people can be in
their own photos. in any event, it works fairly well from the sides
and can even work from the back if there's something in front that
reflects the infrared signal, such as a wall. worst case, just tape
something shiny in front of the sensor and it will work from other
angles.

In article ,
TrentTarkins wrote:

"Bulb" refers to the "flashbulb" shutter speed. In the beginning days of
flash-photography with slow films and smaller available apertures the shutter
was manually triggered and held open until the flashbulb could also be fired
manually, independent of the camera's shutter.

completely wrong
The correct answer was given by Dave Cohen

In article , Dave Cohen
wrote:

1. Cable or Bulb release has nothing to do with dslr. The term bulb is
because that's what they once were, you squeezed the bulb, compressed
the air inside and that opened the shutter on your nicely finished plate
camera.

The next step used a steel wire inside a flexible cable that you used to hold
the shutter open. Good for up to about 10 sec before your thumb got tired. IIRC.

Later refinements included a "lock" for very long exposures.

If you go to http://www.fiberq.com/cam/century/cent2.htm and look at the front
view of the red camera, you'll see the bulb attachment point pointing to 4
o'clock. The air pressure in the rubber bulb was transfered to a piston in the
shutter.

Very early cameras had no preset shutter speed. They were measured by squeezing
the bulb and counting 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, etc. to
expose your film.

--

Dogs have owners, cats have staff.

Bob in Central California

J. Clarke wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:
Jim wrote:

By the way, the fine manual for the D90 says that you can leave the
camera at bulb for up to 35 minutes.

Exactly!

Try keeping a pneumatic bulb squeezed for 35 mins. And once you've
developed the muscular strength to do that, try and find someone who
makes camera pneumatic releases which can hold air pressure for 36
mins :-)

You've never used a cable release, have you?

What makes you say that? I've still got the cable releases and
pneumatic bulb releases I used to use, and at least two cameras that
they fit.

On most of them there's
a screw that locks the release for long exposures.

But you don't find that on pneumatic bulb releases for the very good
reason I mentioned.

Nonetheless a cable release should cost pretty much nothing to
add--it's just a screw thread on the shutter release that allows the
pin on the cable release to press down on the underlying mechanism.

I suspect that the real reason that the cable release was removed and
replaced with an electrical release is that nobody was willing to pay
45 bucks for a cable release with a "Nikon" or "Canon" sticker on it
when a perfectly adequate one could be obtained for 5 bucks as a
generic. But if the connector is proprietary then they can force
anyone needing a remote to pay 45 bucks for a switch and a wire that
if not for the proprietary connector could be cobbled up from Rat
Shack parts for that same 5 bucks.

But it hasn't worked for exacly the same reason it didn't work for
cable.

This is one area where I'm of the opinion "three cheers for the
Chinese".

Exactly. I can buy a remote cable release on a cable from the DSLR
manufacturer. There are two versions, a short cable and a long
cable. Or a I can buy a radio shutter release from Hong Kong which
works at up to 50 metres and has all the same functions at less cost
than the overpriced camera maker's long wire cable shutter release.

--
Chris Malcolm

jim evans wrote:

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:26:25 -0000, "Bruce"
wrote:

Look at Page 122 of your manual.

Yes, I understood you could buy a special accessory. Cable releases are
universal. I own 3 of different lengths and they worked on all my film
cameras.

However, I don't think even this camera-unique accessory will let you do a
bulb or time exposure.

B is native even on my entry-level DSLR Nikon D60. You are describing a
shortcoming of point-and-shoot cameras, not a shortcoming of digital
cameras.


--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups -
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org

Blinky the Shark wrote:
jim evans wrote:

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:26:25 -0000, "Bruce"
wrote:

Look at Page 122 of your manual.
Yes, I understood you could buy a special accessory. Cable releases are
universal. I own 3 of different lengths and they worked on all my film
cameras.

However, I don't think even this camera-unique accessory will let you do a
bulb or time exposure.

B is native even on my entry-level DSLR Nikon D60. You are describing a
shortcoming of point-and-shoot cameras, not a shortcoming of digital
cameras.



Sort of....

To be fair, the higher end p&s cameras often allow longish (eg 8 or 15
minutes on my last two) time exposures in Manual mode.

And I trust you are aware that your Nikon will stop B-ing after 30
minutes too...! so it's only a one or two stop advantage in that respect.

I don't know about you, but the number of times I have used exposures
longer than 8 minutes can be counted ..er... in the same way that I
would count my star-trails images, ie 5-10 in thirty years.

Kilometres may vary, of course.

In message , TrentTarkins
writes
On 18 Jan 2009 06:48:50 GMT, (Ray Fischer) wrote:

TrentTarkins wrote:
nospam wrote:
TrentTarkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_release


And the Wiki's are NEVER wrong! :-) After all, if it's printed on the internet
it MUST be true, right?

Wiki is a highly unreliable source. I Have seen reports where companies
and political parties have wiki teams to enhance their own entries and
play down the oppositions entries.

For some religious and some political groups the spin editing has got
quite viscous.

The other problem is the editors of a page will block any ideas that
the do not like. I have had personal experience of this on a technical
page. Some one with an axe to grind started a page for a a particular
technical standard and blocked any editing by members of that technical
panel because he had a personal problem with some of them!

So al in all Wiki is generally unreliable. Printed encyclopaedias
because of the cost of printing go to far more trouble to get
authoritative authors and also have them peer reviewed. This tends to
carry over to their web versions.

In various surveys it has been discovered that if you edit a wiki page
with incorrect data (for what ever reasons) and no one spots it in about
72 hours it is there permanently (or as permanently as it gets on Wiki)

Also of course Wikis are written by "anyone" even if they do not have a
clue about the subjct. Where it is the blind leading the blind the page
becomes the "truth" and it gets VERY difficult to change.




--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Mark Thomas wrote:
Blinky the Shark wrote:
jim evans wrote:

On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:26:25 -0000, "Bruce"

wrote:

Look at Page 122 of your manual.
Yes, I understood you could buy a special accessory. Cable releases are
universal. I own 3 of different lengths and they worked on all my film
cameras.

However, I don't think even this camera-unique accessory will let you
do a
bulb or time exposure.

B is native even on my entry-level DSLR Nikon D60. You are describing a
shortcoming of point-and-shoot cameras, not a shortcoming of digital
cameras.



Sort of....

To be fair, the higher end p&s cameras often allow longish (eg 8 or 15
minutes on my last two) time exposures in Manual mode.


Wow - Canon compacts have a max exposure of 15 seconds. Many digitals
don't like doing long exposure for noise reasons.

Of course, this doesn't matter. Simply program the camera
to take a sequence of maximum exposure frames (whatever max is),
and stack 'em.

Using this technique you can also retrospectively decide
how long your exposure should be, or even drop induividual
sub-exposures.

One shouldn't always look for a on-to-one mapping
from film camera features to digital camera features.

BugBear

"Matt Ion" wrote in message
...


Everyone's overlooking the obvious he electronic releases are needed
with the advent of autofocus and the standard half-press-to-focus,
full-press-to-shoot operation. It would be hard to get that "touch" with
a cable release,

I'm sure I managed it years ago with my canon A1 & AE1.

and would be damn near impossible with a bulb.
Probably, but B is all about manual operation, I doubt you'd want to refocus
during the exposure, or change aperture, or anything else.

It's nothing to do with digital vs. film, and not entirely to do with
money (although it would be nice if everyone could standardize on their
connectors and electronic-release designs).

I often wondered how 'pair' the remote cable releases are on digital
cameras,
I'd have lots of fun triggering other peoples cameras from afar ;-)

jim evans wrote:
Why do most digital cameras have no Bulb ability? Why no provision
for using a cable release?

I have a DSLR-like digital camera (Panasonic FZ50). It has a focusing
ring and a zoom ring on the lens. In essentially all ways except the
pentaprism it has the functions of a DSLR, but it's absent these
useful features. I've owned 5 digital cameras, none had these
features.

Simple film cameras had them. Why do most digital cameras not have
them?

Maybe because Bulb is impractical on these cameras? The noise on the
sensor becomes a major problem at long exposure times. One way to fix
this is to take a "black" picture with the same exposure duration(*),
and substract it form the real one to remove the "hot pixels". This is
doable if the camera controls exposure time, but not if you have the
random exposure time you get with Bulb.

(*) if your FZ-50 is like my FZ8, this is why the long exposure times
(=2seconds) are followed by an equal "wait..." time.
--
Bertrand

Jürgen Exner wrote:

What _I_ don't understand is why manufacturers are using proprietary
connectors for the remote controls instead of the already existing
USB-connector with ideally a standardized protocol.

The connector used on the low-end Canon DSLRs (1000/350/400/450) and the
Pentax is fairly standard (2.5mmm stereo jack) and one can hack a wired
remote for not much (but you find a remote for not that much either on
many web sites).

--
Bertrand