The Online Photographer

Looking for the Photographer

I've spent a very enjoyable couple of days looking at two-and-a-quarter square pictures by searching for various TLRs in flickr's "Hive Mind" feature (which also, incidentally, finally gives me a way to use flickr that I can tolerate). I tried to contact some of the photographers, thinking that I might post a few of the pictures I particularly liked here on TOP, but it seems few people answer their flickr mail, or whatever it is that's taking my messages to them. Or maybe they just don't want to be bothered, I don't know. Too bad, anyway.

The Hive Mind (a random partial page with "Mamiya C330" as a filter)

There's a certain junky quality to looking at semi-random collections of pictures by different photographers. It makes me realize that when I look at collections of pictures, I am typically seeking the personality or the sensibility behind the pictures. I'm looking for the photographer: trying to see what subject-matter passions he or she might have, trying to detect, over the course of many pictures as a body of work, what his or her taste and visual sensibility is.

Obviously, one must consciously not do that when looking at aggregations of work by many photographers. The upside is that such collections have a dynamism and a vitality that is often missing—or more subdued—in more self-conscious portfolios by single photographers. A Robert Adams book or a Daido Moriyama book is all Adams, all Moriyama; the sensibility is much stronger. But the variety is much less. A "hived" group has everything all together in a jumble: all sorts of styles, all sorts of subjects, all sorts of ways of seeing, black and white and color side-by-side. With TLR shots, even different time periods are represented as well, as people upload work they did ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years ago. Even some of the obvious failures as single images have something to contribute when they're looked at in the context of a much larger whole. It makes me think of what Dr. Johnson said of the Metaphysical Poets, that famous first phrase much loved by Eliot: "The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased."

It makes me want to edit a book of selects. The imposition of an overarching editorial sensibility, even in the absence of a guiding artistic one, along with (of necessity) a much tighter edit, could make for a dynamic and enriching aesthetic experience indeed, for the viewer of such a book. It would please. There's no market for that, I suppose.

Self portrait, poring over pictures. The time stamp reads 2:26 a.m.

Two thoughts occur. One, trivial, is that looking at work like this tends to emphasize the coherence provided by the use of the same camera throughout. The other, more profound, is something I think I see and might just be imagining: the work done with the cheaper cameras seems more interesting, less conventional. I fantasize that that's because the cheaper cameras are being used by younger people who are newer to photography. There's an exuberance there, a sense of real exploration. They're pictures made by people who haven't yet learned what you're not supposed to take pictures of. The pictures made with very expensive cameras show a more staid, conventional, less exploratory, more technically perfectionist mindset, like a sixty-year-old driving a Ferrari cautiously. There's a higher boredom quotient. It's a premise that would be hard to prove, but it's the sense I get, anyway.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Olympus E-P2 Review

By Vlatko Juric-Kokic

It's generally accepted that the best camera is the one you have with you. It's hard to have a decisive moment digital if the digital is not with you. On the other hand, everybody has their own idea of what they find acceptable in such a camera. There are those satisfied with a phone cam, while others couldn't be happier that the "micro" train is accelerating. As I said earlier, I'm firmly in the second camp. I'm particularly happy that Olympus decided to produce Micro Four-Thirds cameras. I'm a long-time Olympus digital user and I don't see a pressing reason to switch. I'm used to the way their cameras work. I don't have a long period of adjusting to different menus and camera adjustments. Accordingly, I've been watching Olympus development closely in order to see what happens with its second Micro 4/3 camera, the E-P2.

Zuiko 7–14mm @ 10mm, ƒ/5.6, 1/100th sec., ISO 200

Non-destructive geekery

Before I start, a bit of messing with the files. At the moment of writing, Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS4 (I suppose Lightroom, too) do not recognize the files from the E-P2. Try opening a photo and you'll get a message that it's not the right kind of document. Balderdash. Olympus didn't update Studio when E-P2 appeared; Studio normally opens the photos, so why would Photoshop not recognize them? The only thing Olympus apparently changed in E-P2 files was the camera identification. Instead of "E-P1," it says "E-P2"—and it was enough to stump Photoshop. But if you still want to open E-P2 photos in Photoshop before the official support, there is a way.

Open the photo in a proper text editor. Not Windows Notepad or a Mac equivalent. Something like TextPad, NoteTab or BBEdit. Possibly even the ancient vi would work. Find where it says "E-P2" at the beginning of the file and simply change the digit to "1". Do not touch anything else. Save under a different name. (Under a different name, I say.) Voilá. The file is visible and editable in Photoshop. 

 

M.Zuiko 17mm, ƒ/4.0, 1/320th sec., –0.3EV, ISO 200

Furthermore, I cannot see any difference between E-P2 and E-P1 files in image quality, color rendering or anything like that.

What the eye sees
The lack of difference stretches to the way E-P2 operates. Dials in the same places as in E-P1, the same way of operating the camera, the same focusing speed and responsiveness.... Fortunately, there are some differences (otherwise there would be absolutely no point either in the camera or in this post) which might be welcome to photographers.

One of the objections to E-P1 was the lack of a proper viewfinder. E-P2 certainly remedies that with its electronic viewfinder, the VF-2. Specification-wise, the viewfinder has the resolution of 1.44 MP, a refresh rate of 60 fps and a magnification of 1.15x. To the eye, the viewfinder is as good as the viewfinder on my E-3. While the E-3 might not have as big a viewfinder as full-frame offerings from other manufacturers, its viewfinder is nice and bright, and good for manual focusing. It's exactly the same with the VF-2: Nice, bright and good for manual focusing.

 

Contax 50mm ƒ/1.4 @ ƒ/1.4, 1/80th sec., –0.3EV, ISO 1600

I used the EP-2 at a conference, and you know how lighting is at conferences…for those who're not in the habit of attending conferences: ƒ/1.4, 1/80th sec., –0.3EV, ISO 1600. Those are the typical numbers, but it can go as low as 1/25th sec. with –0.3 EV. Absolutely no problems in focusing through the viewfinder. Yes, noise appears in the viewfinder in dim light, but the light has to be quite dim for the noise to prevent you from focusing manually. The dim light I tried, no problems.

During the day, you'll be hard pressed to notice any difference between VF-2 and an optical viewfinder. You use it the same way as you would an optical viewfinder as you have the same shooting info at the bottom of the viewfinder.

Zuiko 50–200mm @ 123mm, ƒ/4.5, 1/320th sec., –0.7EV, ISO 200

One more good point: when you press the button at the back of the viewfinder, you not only turn the screen off for shooting, you also turn the screen off for adjustments, chimping and photo viewing. The signal obviously completely switches to the viewfinder. Great thing for those who complained about the viewing scrren glowing in the dark.

On the negative side, once you plug the viewfinder into the camera, you cannot use either the port or the hot shoe to connect anything else. So if you want the viewfinder constantly on your camera, say goodbye to the flash or the external microphone. Also on the negative side—albeit only slightly—is the fact that if you keep E-P2 in a non-dedicated bag, expect the viewfinder to occasionally slide out of the hot shoe and the port due to the movement in the bag. It would be nice if Olympus came up with a way to fasten the viewfinder to the camera. For instance, like you fasten the flashes.

Zuiko 7–14mm @ 14mm, ƒ/5.6, 1/125th sec., –1.7EV, ISO 1600

One more potentially problematic thing is that the viewfinder shortens the battery life. As I was told, instead of 300+ photos that you can take with E-P1 on one charge, the E-P2 can nominally take a bit more than 200 photos with the viewfinder attached. I haven't succeeded in draining the battery, but I didn't do extensive shoots with the camera. On the other hand, I also used stabilization and reviewed photos without trying to squeeze the last electron from the battery. Nevertheless, if you plan on carrying the camera around all day, a spare battery might be a good idea. That said, I've always casually wondered why Olympus doesn't supply a battery with a bigger capacity than the 1500 mAh of the BLM-1 or 1150 mAh for the BLS-1 you find in the Pens. I've seen replacement BLS-1 batteries of 1500 and 1800 mAh. I own two replacement 2200 mAh BLM-1 batteries for the E-series and they've been working fine for the last three years. There must be a reason....

Change in focus
The Olympus E-P2 also comes with a new focusing mode, AF Tracking. Let me describe it this way...when you use Continuous AF, you select a focus point (or points) and follow your subject with the camera which keeps it in the selected point(s). When you choose AF Tracking, you select a subject and then camera follows it through all of its focus points. Do not expect results in the terrific-sports-camera kind of way, though, because fast-moving subjects will confuse the mechanism. However, if you want to photograph a moving person or recompose your photo without fiddling about changing your focus points or without fearing the subject will go out of the focusing plane, AF Tracking is quite a good thing. And I'd also say it's good for shooting video. The only problem with AF Tracking is that at greater distances it sometimes gets confused about what it should focus on. I would say it has much more to do with the sensitivity of the focusing areas than with the AF Tracking itself. Still, as a useful—even a moderately useful—new feature, it is welcome.

Finally, there are two new Art Filters in E-P2. I've been avoiding the Art Filters ever since they appeared on E-30, and I still avoid them. If I want effects, there's Photoshop. I couldn't resist trying the new Diorama filter, though. It's cute. That about sums up the positive things I can say about it. On the other hand, it's hugely slow. Enormously slow. Geologically slow. Not only you wait ages for the camera to process the photo, the filter also slows the viewfinder almost to unusability. Avoid, unless you simply have to use it.

What now?
I don't pretend to know the exact reasons why Olympus does things the way it does them. Therefore, I don't know why an electronic viewfinder didn't come with E-P1. Judging by the Photokina interview over at dpreview, there apparently were some issues between Olympus and Panasonic on the matter of the viewfinder. I don't know whether some statute of limitations expired so Olympus got a viewfinder from Panasonic or Olympus developed its own. (I think the latter would be good for Olympus.)

The LCDs on the E-P1 and E-P2 are perfectly usable; however, I'm used to viewfinders. And therefore, the E-P2 is simply a better camera for me. I would buy it. And in fact, I plan on buying it as soon as the finances allow. Unfortunately, it may be some time....

Vlatko

Disclaimer: I received a test specimen of E-P2 from Olympus Croatia before the camera was available to the general public. It's one of the good sides of being a reviewer, or possibly the good side of being a reviewer—you get toys before anybody else. I also returned the camera after I was done playing, alas.

Send this post to a friend

Editor's Note: It's rather curious—an accident of their close intro dates—but we're publishing this review of the E-P2 and its VF-2 electronic viewfinder in advance of a series of articles about the E-P1, written by Eamon Hickey, which will appear next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. However, when we get that far, you'll see why—a lot of what Eamon has to say applies equally to the E-P2 and the E-P1. —MJ

The Eaglet has Landed

The UPS man just came. I mentioned to him that it's supposed to snow tonight—but only two inches. "Oh, that's two inches too much!" he shot back, as he raced away. UPS men move fast, I've noticed. Maybe they're just scared of Lulu. She tends to have that effect on delivery people.

Anyway, I'm very pleased to report that my Panasonic GF1 has finally arrived! It's been just a day short of one month since I ordered it. It's the first new digital camera I've bought for myself in a long time.

From what I've heard—this is just scuttlebutt—Panasonic is favoring the Japanese home market with early deliveries, and the GF1 has been very popular in Japan. It's been very popular all over the world, actually. Wherever cameras are sold. Supplies have been arriving, they're just very intermittent.

If you've been waiting, Amazon lists one GF1 with the kit zoom in stock now, from Wall Street Photo, at a $100 price premium, and is expecting a shipment of the GF1 and 20mm ƒ/1.7 (the lens I bought) on the 13th of this month; according to them you can pre-order one from this page, although it's possible you still might not get one from that shipment, I imagine. (At least, you shouldn't blame me if you don't—I had to wait too, don't forget.) You can pre-order a GF1 with the kit zoom from the December 13th shipment from this page, with no price premium (other than having to pay early list price, which is usually a sort effectively a "premium" in itself, although not technically). 

A veritable DMD! In my hot little hands at last.

Mike

Featured Comment by Jeff Goggin: "I hope you enjoy yours as much as...well, as much as you enjoyed mine. :-)"

Format Size vs. Print Size in Film and Digital

As long as I'm retelling old stories, and since Howard Cornelsen brought it up in the comments to the previous post—and while there's still a bit of rosy afterglow to the "Fun with Medium Format" post left in the Western sky—I thought I might share again an account of some historical investigations into format and enlargement sizes, one an experiment done by a friend and one done by me.

Every photo writer, and most every serious photographer, has at one time or another exhaustively tested one or another aspect of photography. Real, comprehensive experiments, I mean, rather than the usual gambit of doing some reading, collecting some anecdotes, putting a wet finger to the wind of popular consensus, and adding enough personal trials to simulate comfort. None of us can test everything ourselves, however, so we rely on each other. I first realized this when I read a now-very-old article by George Post in Darkroom Photography magazine (which I later wrote for myself) called "Shake It Up!" The article was about agitating film. At the time, I was big into doing my own experiments and seeing for myself, but after reading George's article, I realized, in one of those little epiphanies we all have every so often (in cartoons, the light bulb lighting up above the character's head), that George had done more work investigating agitation methods than I would ever duplicate if I had nine lifetimes, and that I would be better off "evaluating the evaluator" and accepting their conclusions if I thought they were trustworthy. I adapted George's conclusions to my own needs, and never looked back. I remain grateful to all such investigators, from Richard J. Henry to Ansel Adams to Ctein, from all of whom I learned much.

Two tales told by actual prints
The first of these two tests was carried out by my friend Jim Sherwood, with whom I've lost touch. Jim's work at the time (he photographed dense, busy, chaotic scenes, often of the aftermath of natural disasters) was made with color negative film in a Pentax 6x7, and he made 16x20-inch Type C prints. That's the same basic process drugstores used to make 3R and 4x6" prints from snapshot cameras, except that Jim used a $10,000 Hope processor and made his prints himself. His question was simply whether he might be able to get away with using 35mm instead of 6x7. He conducted these tests sometime around the beginning of the 1990s.

What he did was to optimize his 35mm technique, remain casual with his 6x7 technique, and compare the two. For the 35mm, he used the best camera and lens he could find—his Leica; the slowest, sharpest, most saturated color negative film he could find at the time; and he used a tripod. For the 6x7 he used VPS, a 100-speed (i.e., medium speed at the time) color negative film of good color and what we now call "dynamic range" but only so-so sharpness and saturation, and he hand-held the 6x7 SLR camera.

What he found was...

Lenses by the Label

A brief story somewhat related to the previous post (and this is basically all hearsay, so don't take these facts as gospel): The Exakta 66 Model 1 was instigated, according to what I heard at the time, by a German industrialist named Heinrich Mandermann, who in the 1980s had added to his considerable portfolio of companies both Rollei and Schneider-Kreuznach. His modernized Pentacon Six, the Exakta 66, began shipping in about 1986; I believe I reviewed it in 1988. He saved Pentacon from liquidation in 1991 and owned Rollei until, I believe, 1996.

I'm afraid I don't know Herr Mandermann, don't know if he's still with us, or still unretired; don't know if he still owns Schneider, although I think not—if I recall it was sold in 2000 to an American Company (and I don't know if that arrangement still holds, either). So I can't really tell you much about the connection between the East German Pentacon and the Exakta 66. Did the Pentacon factory in Dresden make the Exakta 66, or parts of it? Did Herr Mandermann buy Pentacon in part to preserve Exakta 66 production? That seems unlikely. It also seems unlikely the Exakta 66 was made to use up old parts, because the Model III was still being sold new as late as 1996. The last new products were cleared out, again if memory serves, by Baier Fototechnik. [This is wrong; it was Foto Walser. Thanks to Ralf for the correction.]

Here's the story that impressed me at the time, though. What I heard was that Herr Mandermann, on purchasing Rollei, sought to improve the marque by commissioning Schneider-Kreuznach to create a whole new line of state-of-the-art lenses for the Rollei 6000 series (the original 6006, budget 6002 lacking the interchangeable back, and überdrüberkamera 6008 "Integral"). These lenses were better in pretty much every way than some of the Zeiss lenses that had served the Rolleis up until that point: they were newer designs, sharper, performed better, and were smaller and lighter, as well as being consistently designed across the range—and handsomer, with their chrome filter bayonets. There were a couple of showoff lenses in the line, too, like the superfast 80mm ƒ/2 normal and the 90mm ƒ/4 macro, which one magazine proclaimed as the sharpest lens it had ever tested. I believe they were less expensive, even, although I couldn't swear to that.

Yet here's the thing: consumers snubbed them. Nobody bought 'em. Schneider might have had the better performing lenses, but Zeiss had the better performing name: Hasselblads used Zeisses, aficionados took it as an article of faith at the time that Zeiss Planars and Tessars were superior to Schneider Xenotars and Xenars on Rolleiflex TLRs, and by Joseph (or, more accurately, "by Carl"), people wanted Zeisses on their Rollei 6000s—even if they weren't actually quite as good! (Not that there's anything wrong with a Zeiss.) The smart, slick new Schneiders went begging.

It was an early object lesson about the camera market for me: people buy lenses by the name, like buying wine by the label. (Not that there's anything wrong with the Schneider name.)

Anyway, I agree with robert e that the larger negative size of medium format takes the heat off the lenses somewhat (even poorish lenses can look very nice in front of a large enough piece of film), but if you want a sleeper lens for 2 1/4 square, one of those rare lenses that seems to do everything right, keep half an eye out for a normal Schneider Xenotar PQ HFT 80mm ƒ/2.8 for the Rollei 6000 series. (The later AF—pictured here—note that it lacks the chromed filter bayonet—is reputedly the same design.) Killer. Here's another. (Linked pics by Oleg Moiseyenko.)

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Featured Comment by Aizan: "That may have been the case when they were initially made, but not any more! The Schneider lenses for the 6000 series cameras are now more expensive and harder to find; they're much more desirable than the plain-Jane Zeisses."

Featured Comment by fotoralf: "A few short remarks on the topic: The Exakta 66 was first marketed by Mandermann's original company, Beroflex of Berlin. Early product packing states 'Beroflex, Nurnberg' as the manufacturer. That was still well before the demise of the GDR.

"Apparently, they bought Pentacon Six cameras as parts or as complete bodies and 'refined' them in West Germany.

"After the fall of the Berlin wall, Mandermann acquired a large part of Pentacon, but for reasons only known to the Treuhand—the state organisation founded for transferring the East German industry into the capitalist system—they didn't let him have the name Pentacon until years later. So, the former Pentacon operated under the name  'Josef Schneider Feinwerktechnik' (Joseph Schneider Fine Mechanics) for a few years making mostly plastic moldings of all kinds for other industries—and a few cameras on the side. From this time on, the Exakta 66 cameras were made and serviced by Schneider/Pentacon in Dresden.

"Contrary to all claims, the Exakta 66 was just as unreliable as the original Pentacon Six and it suffered from exactly the same problems: transport, shutter, film counter. I've had two of them and they've spent more time at the Dresden customer service than in my camera bag. More often than not, I got them back either unrepaired or with a new problem freshly built-in. During the same period, I had a Kiev 60 which, by comparison, was a model of reliability as it worked for years without the slightest hitch.

"Well into the new millenium, Exakta 66 cameras and service suffered from the old-style socialist nonchalance that had brought down their whole economy.

"After the end of Exakta 66 production, the remaining stocks were not taken over  by Foto Baier (the suppliers of the well-known anti-glare kits) as you suggest, but by Foto Walser of Burgheim."

Fun with Medium Format

A Minolta Autocord currently for sale on Ebay* by seller w911jan

Here's my sense of the ten-year trend in medium format:

As the world rushed to digital, medium-format camera sales, always extremely modest as a percentage of camera sales in general, diminished a lot further. Several medium-format cameramakers went out of business; a couple of others stopped making medium-format cameras. Here on TOP, we linked to a sobering set of pictures of Hasselblad's abandoned headquarters building.

On the world's virtual flea markets, the bottom dropped out of used equipment values. There was an interlude of a few years' duration during which bargains abounded.

Buggy whips. Nobody wanted the stuff.

Recently, however, a small, steady undercurrent of demand has begun to reassert itself. Not all photographers and hobbyists want to own and use medium-format film gear...but some do. The demand never disappeared; it's just that it's beginning to catch up to the supply again. A number of people, perhaps limited in means or driven by enthusiasm, had snapped up some nice bargains and found medium format to be a fun and rewarding way to practice their photography. A thriving sub-sub-culture was...well, not born, because it has always been there. Revived, let's say. Revivified.

And so prices have just barely begun to rise again. People are realizing that much less medium-format gear is coming to market as new product now, and that they might want it...someday; if not now, then later. And the best bargains are receding, as people begin to compete for the best stuff that's left.

Does that sound about right?

It's not a huge change, mind you. Just a barely perceptible trend. But I see medium-format making what could actually be called a comeback.