Episode 67: The Return of Rick Oleson

There's the old saying "If you're going to shoot the king, don't miss..." In a recent episode of a rival podcast, shots were fired at the Camerosity crew, especially Mike for a perceived slight given by us.  War was declared and many casualties were sure to ensue.  Would the world's first and only open source photography podcast respond?  Of course we would! In this, the 67th episode of the Camerosity Podcast, Anthony, Paul, Theo, and Mike have some good natured fun at the expense of Jeff Greenstein and Gabe Sachs of the I Dream of Cameras podcast.  Throughout the episode we make repeated jabs at them, some obvious, some very subtle, can you spot them all? Of course, this IS the number one open source film photography podcast, so we did eventually get on track with the exciting return of Mr. Rick Oleson, which we haven't seen since way back in Episode 2.  Rick is a master repair technician, who most recently became well known in the film community for a line of improved Bright Screens which can be adapted to a wide variety of medium format SLR and TLR cameras. Joining Rick and the Gang are returning callers, A.J Gentile, Eric Jason, Ray Nason, and Tim Peters.  During the show we spend a great deal of time learning about Rick and his history repairing cameras and how he got into making the Bright Screens.  If you thought you knew everything there was to know about focusing screens, you really need to listen to this episode as Rick puts on his cap and gown and schools us on how focusing screens work, why the Bright Screens are better than the stock screens, why you cannot simply cut down his screens to 35mm, and why focusing screens in the auto focus era were brighter than in the past.  We talk about Fresnel patterns and the advancements made throughout the 20th century to make your viewfinders brighter, and how to install a new screen in large format cameras. In addition to everything you didn't know you needed to know about focusing screens, Rick raves about a strange camera called the Continental TXL which he was amazed both at how simple it is, yet how good it is.  Paul and Mike talk more about the upcoming Cincinnati camera show and how Mike is bringing over 13 boxes of cameras to sell and Paul has at least another 10 or so more.  Mike talks about a recent trade with a UK camera blogger, and Rick talks about restoring a classic Mercedes Benz 450SL. This was definitely an odd episode, produced during the stress of an ongoing war with another podcast, yet we managed to squeeze in a huge amount of information you won't find on any other podcast out there!  Even if learning more about focusing screens doesn't sound like a great way to spend 90+ minutes, you'd be surprised at how interesting it all is. Meet Paul and Mike: If you are in the vicinity of Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturday, March 23rd, come to the Ohio Camera Swap at the Hilton Garden Inn Cincinnati/West Chester and say hi to Paul and Mike.  While you're there, maybe you can buy something from us! As always, the topics we discuss on the Camerosity Podcast are influenced by you! Please don’t feel like you have to be an expert on a specific type of camera, or have the level of knowledge on par with other people on the show. We LOVE people who are into shooting or collecting cameras, no matter how long you've been doing it, so please don’t consider your knowledge level to be a prerequisite for joining! The guys and I rarely know where each episode is going to go until it happens, so if you’d like to join us on a future episode, be sure to look out for our show announcements on our Camerosity Podcast Facebook page, the Camerosity Discord server, and right here on mikeeckman.com. We usually record every other Monday and announcements, along with the Zoom link are typically shared 2-3 days in advance. The next episode of the Camerosity Podcast will be recorded on April 1st, aka April Fool's Day, so if you thought episode 67 had a lot of silliness, wait until you se