The Online Photographer

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 überkamera (is that a word?) 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

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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.

TechRestore Matte Screens for Macs

By Steve Rosenblum

I've used Macs since 1985 or so and have long valued their intelligent design, thoughtful software integration, advanced OS, instant color management, and ease of use for photo editing. I even raised an Apple computer engineer! I am very knowledgeable about Windows-based computers, which I use extensively at work, but once I get home and turn on my Mac I heave a heartfelt sigh of relief.

In my humble opinion, Apple's one major misfire from a hardware standpoint in recent years has been their near-universal adoption of shiny, reflective monitor screens on both their laptop and iMac computer lines. These displays are absolute glare kings, so high in contrast and brightness that they are difficult to use for even semi-serious photo editing. I think Apple went to these screens because they make video and photos "pop," which probably helps them move computers in their brightly lit Apple Stores. However, they've been a disaster for us photographers.

I solved this problem for my desktop computer by buying a Mac Mini and the last-generation matte Apple Cinema Display. The Mini has plenty of horsepower for my style of photo editing, and the display is accurate and beautiful. Last year when I finally handed my trusty 13-inch G4 Powerbook over to my wife, I purchased one of the the 13-inch plastic-bodied Intel-based MacBooks. This computer does everything that I want it to do with speed and aplomb. But it has that cursed shiny screen! I put up with it for a year—not working on any photo files until I got home from vacation and could transfer files to my Mini—trying to find the one seat in a cafe without tremendous screen glare—scrunching down in my chair to find the one angle without reflections, etc. But last month I finally reached the end of my rope. I was going to sell the MacBook at a loss and buy a new 15-inch MacBook Pro, the one Apple laptop that you can order with an anti-glare screen from the online Apple Store.

Then, I came across an online story about a company called TechRestore that offers a service whereby you send them your shiny-screen laptop and they replace it with a matte screen display of equal specification and ship it back to you.

Otherwise identical MacBooks with and without the TechRestore matte screen

Intrigued, I Googled this and found that it won "Best in Show" at the 2009 Macworld Expo. Satisfied by what I found, I backed up my hard drive and shipped the MacBook off the TechRestore.

The cost for doing this swap for my Macbook was $169 with free ground shipping. They have a number of shipping options, all with a fair pricing structure.

I got the computer back a few weeks ago and it is exactly what I had hoped for: the MacBook that I wanted in the first place. The screen displays an accurate, beautiful image. I had no trouble calibrating it with my ColorEyes Display Pro. It displays a very usable range of grays for photo editing. Two thumbs up from me!

Before people start chiming in on this one, several observations:

1. Yes, Apple should just make this option available on all of its laptops.

2. If you are shopping for a new computer and want a Mac, you should just order the 15-inch MacBook Pro with a Matte screen—the TechRestore swap is mostly worth considering if you already have a shiny-screen MacBook or MacBook Pro.

3. TechRestore claims that this modification will not nullify your AppleCare warranty except on the new screen, which they warranty themselves. They say they are a certified Apple repair shop and will handle it for you with Apple. I have not tried that out myself and cannot testify to its legitimacy.

4. Last, but not least, I have no connection, financial or otherwise, with these guys. Just a satisfied customer!

Steve

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Solar Photography with a Coronado PST

By Ctein

Last column, I told you how much fun Paula and I were having with our new Coronado PST solar telescope and some of the tricks I've come up with to squeeze even more enjoyment out of it. Well, within a few days, I figured out that it was really easy to make solar photographs through the PST! I really do mean easy, not just "easy for Ctein."

You need a digital camera that has raw mode and manual focus and exposure settings; your camera is not likely to be able to focus on the monochromatic red light and relatively featureless disc of the sun, nor is it likely to accurately meter. Use an eyepiece with a rubberized eyecup, common on shorter focal length eyepieces, so that you can press the lens up against the eyecup and keep out stray light (Fig 1).

Figure 1

Set the camera on manual and focus the lens at infinity. ISO 800 and 1/125th sec seem to work well with my 5mm (shown in figure 1) and 3.2 mm eyepieces. Your mileage may differ. Leave the aperture wide open. If your camera has a burst mode, turn it on. Focus the telescope so the image looks sharp to you. Center the features you want to photograph in the eyepiece. Press the camera lens against the eyepiece and hold down the shutter release to fire off a burst of photographs; the Olympus Pen will do 10–12 raw photos before it starts to slow down.

Make a whole lot of photographs! You'll see why.

Figure 2

Okay, that was the easy part. Now it's a little more work. Don't try to evaluate the photographs in the screen on the back of the camera; the deep red light falls well outside the gamut of the display, and they're going to look featureless, a lot like figure 2, top. This is also how they'll look with the default settings in ACR (figure 3, left). Settings more like on figure 3, right, will give you an image like the one at the bottom of figure 2. Eliminating most of the color cast and increasing contrast lets you see a lot more of the detail in the prominences and what's on the surface of the sun.

Figure 3

Experiment! This column is not a tutorial and I'm not explaining exactly what the settings mean nor which ones will work best for you. Play around for yourself! I use different settings for bringing out detail in the prominences and in the surface of the sun. I usually kick the contrast way up to see solar detail, and that pushes prominences into black (figure 4). Not shown in this screenshot is that I also made the curves a lot steeper to increase contrast. Nice thing about raw; you can process photos any way you want.

Figure 4

Figure 4 shows one of the November 17 photographs I referred to in my comments to the previous column. After massaging the photo like this, I could see much, much more detail in the sun than I could through the telescope. This is a much better "view" that I could get with the naked eye. Notice all the "floaters! Almost all those dark spots and clouds are bits of dust and dirt and smudges in the eyepiece. You need to clean your eyepiece scrupulously or your photographs will be filled with these. Even Thierry's photographs aren't spotless. But, the narrow U-shaped cloud near the limb of the sun, lower right, is real. I could tell because from frame to frame it moved with the sun; floaters stay in the same place in the field.

So, why make a lot of photographs? Atmospheric turbulence! From frame to frame, the heat ripples in the air will make big changes in the sharpness of your photographs. 1/125th sec is enough to freeze those ripples, but it won't make them go away. Some frames will be extremely blurry; only a few will be maximally sharp. You will need to look through dozens of frames to find the best one.

Figure 5

Figure 5 shows one of the best frames on November 18. This was a very nice small prominence, but the seeing was really awful. I could barely make out the thin "rind" of darker spicules along the edge of the sun. Normally that rind would be very clear, even though this scope is too small to resolve individual spicules. I picked that frame out of about 200 photographs I made, and it's still not very sharp. Yes, searching is very tedious. Professional solar astronomers have the same problem—that's what students are for.

While you can expect photographs to show you a lot more detail than you can see in plages, granulation, and sunspot groups, you'll see less in prominence photographs. Our brains are really good at picking out fleeting fine detail in a wavering image; much better than the camera.

Can we do anything about that? Yes, but now it's no longer easy. You'll need a good image sharpening program, such as FocusFixer and a user-controllable noise reduction program such as Noise Ninja. (Again, I'm not going to tell you how to use these—not enough time, not enough space. I repeat, experiment!)

I took figure 5 and applied FocusFixer to it with a 16 pixel radius. This gave me the best sharpness with the fewest artifacts, but the photo was covered with "orange peel" texture; an artifact of the extreme enhancement. I used Noise Ninja with a manual selection of areas in the sky and the surface of the sun to eliminate most of the orange peel. Figure 6 shows me as much detail as I could ever hope to get under the really awful seeing conditions. Notice how ragged the limb of the sun is and the "rind" is almost invisible. But it's almost (not quite) as much detail as I could see with the naked eye.

Figure 6

I'm waiting for a day with good seeing and a great prominence. It'll happen; every day is different. That's also part and parcel of real solar astronomy.

Ctein

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ARSENAL Closes its Doors

Дорогие друзья и киеваголики.

Очень жаль информировать, что после 245 лет существования, завод Арсенал окончательно закрылся и канул в историю. После многочисленных судебных процессов, вместо "Государственного Предприятия Завод Арсенал" появилась новая структура "СКТБ" (Специальное Кострукторско-Техническое Бюро), руководство завода упразднено, рабочие места кардинально сокращены, цеха закрыты, оборудование распродается, производство остановлено, склады опустошены.

Хорошая новость заключается в том, что мы выкупили камеры среднего формата, запчасти к ним и обеспечены материалом как минимум еще на 4-5 лет работы.   Поэтому, Вы как и прежде будете иметь возможность приобрести камеры АРАКС с включенной годичной полной гарантией. В любом случае, Вы никогда не останетесь наедине с техническими проблемами еще много много много лет.

С уважением,

Геворг Вартанян
http://araxfoto.com/

Arax translation:

Dear friends and kievaholiks.

It is pity to inform that after 245 year the ARSENAL factory (Zavod ARSENAL in Russian) is lost. After many judicial proceedings now we have the Special Construction Department (SKTB in Russian) instead of ARSENAL factory. The factory management, including the director of factory, are totally changed. The workers are discharges, all manufacturing is stopped, the factory storehouse is empty.

The good news is that we have bought the medium format cameras and parts for several years of works and we'll keep our business running at least 4–5 years more. So, you'll have ability to buy ARAX cameras as usually with our one year worldwide warranty. In any case, you will never be left alone with a problem from your ARAX cameras many many many years.

Sincerely,
Gevorg Vartanyan,
http://araxfoto.com/

Mike
(Thanks to Paulo Rodrigues)

ADDENDUM: Could this finally be the end of the line for the ancient breechmount Pentacon Six / Practisix design? I used Heinrich Mandermann's Exakta 66 variant for a couple of years in the '90s. I wish I had the expertise to write a brief history of that camera design—surely one of the longest-lived in photographic history.  —MJ

Last of a long line: The Arax-60. (Arax Photo)

Great Photographers on the Internet, Part II

(Robert Capa)

Dear Bob, As I always tell people the single Most Important purchase I ever made for my photographic endeavors was my tripod. You certainly needed one here didn't you?  ;-)  You might object that you were standing in the surf to take this, but you could have merely stood on the beach and used a longer lens.

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(Frederick Sommer)

Sorry but there is a reason why they call it "portrait" orientation. Are you too lazy to turn your camera vertical? Thumbs down

Although your daughter is cute

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(Philippe Halsman)

Nice capture!

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(Henri Cartier-Bresson)

In response to your request for a critique (which I assume you wanted because I have found your photo uploaded on the internet) I have been thinking about your picture for a long time and have concluded that your problem is you don't really know which your subject is. Are you trying to take a picture of the kids? In that case you have failed miserably because the kids are around the edge, almost an afterthought. Are you trying to take a picture of the walking man? Then perhaps you should of considered formal portraiture, at least gotten him to stop, if you ask for permission to take his picture you will be surprised how many people will stop and help you out. 

And here is what I would of done, I would of made an abstract study of the windows, which is the strongest element of what you encountered here. It is the most unusual aspect of your scene and yet you have not drawn sufficient attention to it, a more abstract treatment can be achieved by cropping out and cloning out some of the distractions. Oh well that is my 2 cents I could be wrong, hope it helps you, I have done my best for you, Sincerely Dennis G.

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(Gertrude Kasebier)

SHOW ME HER BOOBS!!!!!!! WOOT-WOOT!!  —seahawksdood90

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(Pete Turner)

Comment from Phil: Excuse me, can someone please tell me why the color balance is so blue on this? Am I missing something? Because if this guy is trying to come off like some kind of expert, I think he should at least know how to SET COLOR BALANCE. I may not be some kind of famous big shot, but at least I know how to use the color sliders and set neutral balance in the raw converter, which is something this guy obviously doesn't know.

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(Sally Mann)

Please don't get me wrong, I totally love this as it is an awesome picture, and I have total respect for your photographic vision. I only wish my photographic vision were half as good. However there is one thing, which is that I see in color. Do you not? I hear dogs see in black and white are you a dog? When I look at this I see a totally unrealistic representation of reality as I see it. Why don't people understand that human beings see in color and black and white far from being artistic is just a depature from reality as bad as anything you could do in PhotoShop? That's my only comment otherwise I love this. I just really wish it had been in color as it would have been double awesome. dmofong999 please see my photostream

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(Andrei Tarkovsky)

I am one who loves this effect, which I have seen before. Do you have an action for this and could you share it with me please? Thanks and love, Gloria from Topeka

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Mike
(Happy Birthday TOP)

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Featured Comment by Chris: "I really love that HCB, at least in the top five of his. It almost surprises me that not everyone gets what I do out of it. But of course, why would they? When different people look at the world, they see very different places. Which is scary. Or sometimes wonderful. But keeps surprising me. Photography sometimes seems like a way to sort out how we do see the world, and share it with people...but then it turns out that a photo is also another part of that mercurial world."

Featured Comment by William Sawalich:

Dear Ansel:

You're making such progress! I really like the simplicity of this composition, but there's so much "detail" missing from the finished image. Have you considered HDR? I've taken the liberty of fixing your photo to show you what I mean.

Keep snapping,
Bill

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Featured Comment by Damon Schreiber: "Another fine parody. What we are witnessing, though, is something that I think is great. It's the democratizing of photo-exhibition and criticism. In the days when HCB et al were 'big,' it really was something to show one's work publicly, to mount an exhibition or publish a book, and to receive written criticism of one's work from strangers.

"Today, both the exhibition of one's work and the criticism of others' work can be made without removing one's ass from the comfy confines of the computer chair. And this is both terrible and wonderful.

"The terrible is that with so many million photos on display, the online critic will spend no more than three seconds deciding that something is saveme or deleteme, thumbs up or down, one star or four. And that the less insightful among us rely on pat prescriptions and descriptions like 'use a tripod' 'crop' 'rule of thirds' 'nice capture' 'great DOF,' etc.

"The wonderful is that those of us who would never dream of getting as far off our asses as a gallery or publishing house are still able to find ways to display our work and receive something like valid criticism. Also, one finds every once in a while a truly great unsung photographer. And in the absence of curators and editors telling us how 'important' one person's work is, we are able to respond more authentically to what moves us as opposed to what is supposed to move us.

"Actually I have to say that contrary to most of your examples, much of the online commentary I see at places like Aminus3.com (and I'm equally guilty) is generic praise and logrolling (praising those who have praised us) rather than truly close reading and trenchant criticism.

"On balance, things haven't probably changed all that much in that there have always been less-than-insightful critics as well as those who baffled with bullshit and used tortured rhetoric to camouflage that fact that they had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. The pointedly ignorant drive-by put-downs were mostly unpublished until recently, though. Ultimately, I do always have to come down on the side of giving more voice to more people, even if some of those voices remind me of people I thought I'd never have to hear from again after high school."

ADDENDUM: A poor digisnap of Mark Klett's "Man Behind Creosote Bush," which I mentioned in the comments. From MK's lovely little book Traces of Eden, which is an old fave, one of those books I treasure. (Long out of print. Looks like there are some used copies available for reasonable prices, however.) —MJ

Blog Notes: TOP Turns Four

Rather incredibly (and by incredible, I mean difficult to believe), TOP turns four years old on Saturday. I think I've mentioned before that when I started doing this in 2005, my ambition was to keep it going for a year, and, frankly, at the start, I wouldn't have given a farthing for the chances of that. And yet here we are, still chasing the great white squirrel.

To date, there have been a few dozen shy of 3,000 posts, well over 21 million visits to the main page, and very close to 50,000 comments.

Now, I hate to do this to you, I really do, but you know what's coming: as I always say, it's time to buy yourself our birthday present. If there's something you want from either Amazon or B&H Photo, you must* buy it for yourself. Look, you have to do something to support TOP and help pay for all the good free stuff you enjoy, right? So if there's a book you want, or a lens, or a CD, anything, I'm sorry, but it's your duty; you really have no choice—your hands are tied—your obligation as clear as...optical glass. And if your spouse or partner, child or parent complains about you spending money, well, you can tell him or her in good conscience that you didn't want to buy yourself a present, but you had to, Mike forced you to.

Mike with hottie and tool of trade in front of TOP World Headquarters

Meanwhile, I'm going to take a couple of days off. I won't be slacking, however: I plan to use the time to finish up this year's "TOP Ten Cameras" list. This time, though, I'm trying something different. I know we all just love the cute way that the "top" in "top ten" matches the site's acronym, but let's face it, the concept of the "best" cameras is incredible (and by incredible, I mean lacking in credibility. Kinda silly, in other words). I'm planning to try a new format for it, too. Hope you'll be entertained, and possibly even enlightened.

Okay, mostly entertained.

And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it—what the heck, even if you don't.

Cheers,

Mike, TOP's Chief Artificial Coffee Creamer Officer**

*(I kid, of course. As I also always say, you're always welcome here whether you buy anything through our links or not. Especially if you are un- or under-employed, my thoughts are with you this Thanksgiving, and please keep your money for more important things. You can catch us when prosperity smiles on you again, as surely it will.

I'm very grateful for all the support we get from so many people. TOP has felt the economic downturn but is still surviving. More than 270 people "subscribe," i.e., give a recurring donation of at least 25 cents a month; a number of people have sent cash "tips"; somewhere between 1% and 4% of our readers have bought things though our links at least once; and various "Friends of the Site" have made donations in kind of everything from professional advice to equipment loans. Plus, we have some great advertisers. And let's not forget the many individuals who have written the guest posts or the great comments that add so much to the conversation. I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.)

**

ADDENDA:

 

Out-of-camera JPEG version

 

Mike K2 filter version

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(P.S. There are sometimes some hidden jokes on the site that I put in just to amuse myself. People hardly ever notice. Hit the permalink for this post and check out the URL....)

OT: On the Origin of Species

Darn, missed it—I meant to mention that yesterday (Tuesday) was the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, surely the most important book of the 19th century. Although this is one of those important classics, like Smith's The Wealth of Nations, that is seldom read even by its admirers, I have a pretty strongly-held opinion that the version to read, if you want to read it, is the first. Later editions contained considerable new matter by Darwin, but in essence he was, in those later editions, addressing points raised by the debate that followed the book's publication—joining the argument as it were, like a blog post that gets continually revised in response to the comments it raises...and in my opinion those revisions dilute the impact and impede the flow of thought and language that defines the character of the original book as a reading experience. 

There's a Kindle version of the first edition available for 99¢.

Mike

Featured Comment by Ronny A. Nilsen: "The first edition is available free from the Gutenberg project. The copyright on this book has expired so it's in the public domain."

Featured Comment by BrianW: "Like a lot of people right now, I expect, I'm part-way though actually reading it for the first time. I'm finding it less tough going than I had anticipated. Darwin's writing is very lucid. I'm reading the Everyman hardback edition, which is the first edition along with The Voyage of the Beagle, plus an introduction by Dawkins. Maybe Mike can provide the Amazon links for that? It is really nicely printed and bound—the kind of book I didn't think you could buy new any more (I have no affiliation, etc....)."

U.S. link to the Everyman's Library edition

U.K. link to the Everyman's Library edition (temporarily out of stock)

Charis Wilson, a Link to Another Era

Charis Wilson died last Friday. She was first the model, then the lover, and finally the wife of photographer Edward Weston, who was 28 years her senior.

When I came of age in photography, it was just past the time when reading Weston's Daybooks (in the then-ubiquitous two-volume Aperture set, now long out of print) was almost a rite of passage among photographers of a certain ambition. I remember reasoning during my penurious student years that I didn't need to own my own copy because the two volumes would always be available in libraries; and now all I remember about them are his accounts of his love affairs. Chiefly, Charis. Edward was a man much swayed by his passions for his lovers.

Wilson is often referred to as Weston's "muse," and the description for once isn't inapt. She was the subject of half of his nudes, many of them among his most famous pictures. And, according to some, she was the better writer and wrote the application for the Guggenheim—the first ever awarded to a photographer—that cemented Weston's national fame. She helped support them, helped him in the darkroom, even helped generate ideas for his pictures.

Weston died more than fifty years ago, and even his most famous photographer son, Brett, has been gone for more than decade and a half. I hadn't actually realized Charis Wilson was still alive. Weston distinctly belongs to an earlier time, a different era. Charis was long-lived. She was ninety-five.

Photographs by Edward Weston

I remember, from the Daybooks, Weston's palpable grief when they divorced—he wrote to a friend something like "Edward and Charis are no more!" —But don't take that as an accurate quote. Yet, although she left him and remarried immediately after their divorce, they remained friends, and she spent much of the latter part of her life talking and writing about her association with him—including in her autobiographical book Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston, and in a film, made five years ago, called Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson. (Anyone seen that?)

I'd love to own The Daybooks now, but can't afford a set. Hard to believe they're rare now. I wonder if Weston's work and the arc of his life are as familiar to photographers now as they once were. Amy Conger's book is still in print (although Amazon doesn't seem to have it in stock), as is the earlier Aperture monograph.

I have a feeling the definitive story of Edward and Charis is still to be written.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Chris Y.: "Thank you for this blog, I can't tell you what it means to me sometimes. I took all of Newhall's classes at the University of New Mexico in the late '70s. He made these people real to us, and we felt as if we'd known them personally, because he had. The news about Charis reached me via The Online Photographer as I was leaving my office for the weekend, like a faint radio signal from a distant, distant star. I thought about it all day yesterday, but who could I tell, that it wasn't just a dream after all...."

Quote o' the Day

"I'm an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I'll bring you something out of it."

—John Lennon

Featured Comment by DZ:

Edward Burtynsky's Oil

Edward Burtynsky et al., Burtynsky: Oil
Hardcover; 140 pages
Steidl Photography International
Published October 31, 2009
14.4 x 11.5 x 1.1 inches
(U.K. link )

Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Many of the 20th century's greatest landscape photographers consciously embraced an environmentalist ethic in their work. Ansel Adams's long association with the Sierra Club and his tireless devotion to conservation is of course well known. Eliot Porter, Ray Atkinson, Robert Glenn Ketchum and many others pictured the dwindling remnants of pristine landscape as a redemptive Eden, worth preserving before it was all paved over.

While many folks have continued pursuing this idiom, in a world with six billion people and relentlessly increasing pressure on the environment it's harder to find unique corners of wilderness that haven't been photographed already. Confrontational images illustrating environmental degradation have been a feature of work by photographers such as Richard Misrach, Ed Kashi and Robert Glenn Ketchum. (Ketchum seems to slyly insert a few shocking images between more traditional pretty landscapes.) There can be a kind of formalist beauty to such photographs, but it's obviously a much tougher challenge than rendering a snow-capped mountain or forest waterfall attractively.

Edward Burtynsky has built a career in fine art photography meeting this challenge. He began photographing conventionally beautiful landscapes in large format. As he relates in the video Manufactured Landscapes, he had an epiphany while attempting to photograph in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania. He realized that every bit of landscape within sight had been completely reshaped by coal mining. Nothing was "natural." The landscape as reshaped by man instead became his subject.

Oil is Burtynsky's latest book. The extraction, distribution, consumption, and declining availability of petroleum are all explored through his large-format photographs.

The opening section examines extraction and refinement. The immense size, geometric order and rectilinear shapes of production fields and refineries make for images of striking formal beauty despite the subject matter, all rendered in fine-grained detail. The cover image, reproduced inside, is a vast diptych of a California production field with endless ranks of derricks, shot in warm late-day light. Another image shot from the air reveals the colossal scale of tar sands extraction.

Next is "Motor Culture," images of the world oil has made. Aerial shots of geometric highway interchanges, the immensity of exurban sprawl, endless rows of new cars awaiting shipment—even Bike Week in Sturgis, South Dakota, gets the same monumental treatment.

Last, and darkest, is "The End of Oil." In this section Burtynsky shows us the final result of the process: rusted out, oozing abandoned oil fields, endless ranks of junked cars and airplanes. Some of the most affecting images show unbelievably vast piles of discarded tires, or the grim oil-soaked reality of recycling in the developing world.

Following the images are essays by curator Paul Roth, writer/photographer Michael Mitchell, and economist/ecologist William E. Rees. Their essays provide a sobering perspective on what the extraction of petroleum, the consequences of its exploitation, and the predicted decline in production mean to civilization and the planet. The essays bracket a short, ironic postscript group of photographs of Detroit's decaying abandoned auto factories.

Oil is a remarkable book for those concerned about where, as an industrial civilization, we are headed in the future. The beautiful photographs of nominally unappealing subjects may cause a bit of cognitive dissonance compared to photographs of a pristine mountain lake; but they're beautiful just the same.

For those interested in Edward Burtynsky's work, there is an embarrassment of riches currently available in book form. Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky, catalog to the 2003 exhibition, is still available, though its reproductions are marred by poor shadow detail (U.K. link). China (Steidl, 2006) has very good reproductions, which beautifully depict the country's vast factories and frenzied urban construction, together with older coal and steel facilities (U.K. link). Finally, Quarries (Steidl, 2009) (U.K. link) applies the same immaculate large format photography to the mining of marble, granite and limestone. Reproductions are again excellent; large vehicles look like Matchbox toys inside gleaming marble pits in the earth. Great stuff if you like this kind of photography.

Geoff

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Featured Comment by Gavin: "I work in the oil industry, mostly installing offshore platforms and laying pipes, not something Mr Burtynsky has photographed, but it is nice to see some really good, truthful pictures of any kind of industry. The manufactured landscape is all around us; most of the 'wild' landscapes here in the U.K. are anything but. I used to live down in the SW of England and Dartmoor, a popular haunt of landscape photographers, was once one of the most industrialized areas of the World (probably) as tin and lead etc. were mined. It doesn't take much effort to find the remains of the mines and smelters if you know where to look."

Featured Comment by Moose [responding to Gavin]: "From a broader perspective: 'Southern England, for example, is one of the largest structures ever made by man. We think of it as nature: the beautiful expanse of towns, villages, forests and moors that extends from Cornwall to Kent and from the south coast to the Midlands. We think of it as natural, but of course it is man-made, almost all of it. It wasn't there three thousand years ago. It is a consciously created structure, perhaps 300 miles by 100 miles, and it has been created slowly, patiently, over a period of about a thousand years.' Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order, Book One, 'The Phenomenon of Life,' pp. 28-29."

It Wasn't a Referendum on the Work

A number of issues have come up in the last few days as a result of recent posts that I haven't done a very good job of following up on. However, I'd like to address a couple of issues that arose from Mitch Alland's post yesterday.

First, a technical one: curiously, none of TOP's brain trust, including me, knew what should happen in theory to the maximum aperture of a fixed lens when a wide-angle converter is screwed on to the end of it. It's always fascinating to discover the extent of one's own ignorance! However, experimentally we've determined that the maximum aperture of the GRD III's fixed 6mm (28mm equivalent) ƒ/1.9 lens doesn't change when the GW-2 wide-angle converter is used. It does indeed become a 21mm-equivalent ƒ/1.9. With a constantly-lit subject and the lens set at ƒ/1.9 in Aperture-priority mode, the shutter speeds are the same with and without the converter. Whether the same would hold true for all add-on wide-angle converters—don't know.

Secondly, I was surprised (and disappointed) that several commenters seemed to have trouble with the premise of Mitch's post, which is clearly stated in its first sentence: "...for my work, the new Ricoh GR Digital III produces ISO 1600 files that are greatly improved over those of the GR Digital II." What could possibly be controversial about that? What he's saying, for those of you who didn't get it, is that, for his work, the new GR Digital III produces ISO 1600 files that are greatly improved over those of the GR Digital II. I hope that explanation makes everything more clear.

The key phrase is "for my work." And why would anyone approach someone else's work with the implicit expectation that they have to like it? Does anyone approach all photographic work that way? All plastic art*?

I find that idea both alien and absurd. You can respond to work however you want to, but what anyone's work looks like, or ought to look like, is up to the artist. With a mature practicing artist or photographer (i.e., not a newcomer or student), we respect the fact that their work looks the way it does because that's the way they want it to look. You have to take it at face value and accept it or reject it for yourself based on what you see.

Mitch is going for a very particular look with his pictures; I've been looking at his work for at least a dozen years, and, although he's changed and evolved over that time, he's never strayed from his basic aesthetic goals and preferences. The fact that you don't share those goals, or that you might use different equipment or materials if you were to do that kind of work yourself, is meaningless. All Mitch is telling you in his post is how his new camera works for the uses he needs it for. It's an admittedly limited data point, of relative interest to various readers based on how it relates to what they like and what they might want to do, or what kinds of pictures they want to look at. (It wasn't a referendum on the work. Also, it was only a small portion of his overall review of the camera, the other parts of which were published on the Rangefinder Forum.)

It's futile to approach art by saying, in effect, "if only." If only Mark Rothko had done sunsets, if only Picasso had liked pink instead of blue, if only Norman Rockwell had been an anarchist nihilist. Like this? If only Mitch Alland took the kind of pictures you take, then maybe he would prefer the camera you use? That makes no sense.

If only Winogrand's horizons were straight. If only Witkin wasn't such a necrophiliac. If only Juan Buehler would shoot Tri-X. (This could get fun.)

How you respond is up to you. What they present is up to them.

Mike

*Glossary Dept.: "Plastic art" means painting, drawing, sculpture, etc., not artworks made out of plastics.

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Using the Ricoh GR Digital III at ISO 1600 for B&W

By Mitch Alland

The Ricoh GR Digital III

Let's start with the bottom line: for my work, the new Ricoh GR Digital III produces ISO 1600 files that are greatly improved over those of the GR Digital II. The GRD III files have much better image quality in terms of noise and dynamic range, improvements that are revealed dramatically when processing to achieve the high contrast look that I like. GRD III raw files (DNG) can be substantially "roughed up" while maintaing a longer and more attractive mid-tone range. With the GRD II I could only rarely achieve the look that I wanted without the files falling apart: my experience was that only a small proportion of ISO 1600 files shot with the GRD II were usable. Similarly, the image quality of the original GRD, which could produce only JPEG files at ISO 1600, was also much inferior to the image quality of the GRD III's raw files.

GRD III, 21mm converter, ISO 1600, ƒ/1.9

GRD III, ISO 1600, ƒ/1.9

Ricoh has made a huge step forward in the GRD III. The improvement in ISO 1600 files parallels the improvement in lower-lower ISO files that if wrote about in my review of the camera on the Rangefinder Forum.

However, with the GRD III's fast ƒ/1.9 lens there is also less need to shoot at ISO 1600 than there was with the earlier versions of this camera (the GRD II had an ƒ/2.4 lens). The following picture, taken in dark lighting, I would previously have shot at ISO 1600, but the faster ƒ/1.9 lens of the GRD III encouraged me to try ISO 400: the slight motion blur (1/55 sec. shutter speed), for me, does not detract from the mood of the photograph.

GRD III, ISO 400, ƒ/1.9

Exposure for night shots is another issue, as one usually faces a high contrast situation. With street lighting the tendency is often to overexpose, particularly using high-ISO on a digital camera whose files usually don't take well to lightening (dodging). When I started shooting with the GRD III I discovered that using manual spot exposure, rather than aperture priority multi exposure, I generally got better exposures.

Manual exposure on the GRD III uses the same method as the GRD II: by pressing the "rocker button" the camera immediately centers the needle on the suggested exposure, and one can then use the ADJ lever to increase or decrease the shutter speed. Viewing the LCD allows you to select the best exposure for the subject that can been seen easily and accurately when using the LCD for framing, which is what I do in any case.

Using manual spot exposure I find that my shots are more correctly exposed and the exposure is generally less than I was getting by using aperture priority multi exposure together with an EV adjustment. The fact  that the manual exposure method leads to less overexposure for night scenes is important because these are shot at high ISO, which has less dynamic range than lower ISO shots. My feeling is that people generally tend to overexpose night shots by letting the exposure meter do its 18% gray thing, without adjusting sufficiently for the reality that the night is not 18% gray. The following picture is, in my view, a reasonable representation of the the general darkness of the actual street scene.

GRD III, ISO 1600, ƒ/1.9

Fast and wide
You will note that the first photograph in this post was shot with the 21mm wide converter. In my RFF post on the 21mm converter, I wrote that this was an excellent lens and a cheap way of getting an effective field of view of 21mm with ƒ/1.9. Fast 21mm lenses are not common and are expensive: for example, it's only recently that Leica has gone beyond ƒ/2.8 for its 21mm lenses, and its current 21mm ƒ/1.4 lens costs US$6,000.

Here is another picture that benefits from the 21mm FOV, complete with some motion blur that I feel adds to its expressiveness:

GRD III, 21mm converter, ISO 1600, ƒ/1.9

You will note a good amount of grain in most of the pictures above. When contrast is enhanced, just as with film, digital photographs increase "grain." From the following photograph you can can an idea of how ISO 1600 from the GRD III can look if contrast is not increased strongly.

GRD III, ISO 1600, ƒ/1.9

Finally, unlike most digital cameras, the Ricoh GR Digital III might under-rate ISO somewhat, which means that the performance of this camera set at ISO 1600 is actually higher than 1600, which would make it even more impressive. Indeed the overall performance of the GRD III helps validate the idea of the small-sensor camera as a new, serious format, in the way that 35mm was a new format when the first Leica was introduced.

Mitch

U.K. links:
Ricoh GR Digital III Digital Camera
Ricoh GW-2 wide converter

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Where Was the Photographer Standing?

I had a brief conversation with Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai the other day about how bad many people (even photographers) seem to be at reading facial expressions in pictures. We both agreed it's something a lot of viewers seem remarkably blind to. Another thing people seem especially bad at reading in photographs is the participation of the photographer in the scene and the implications of where exactly he or she had to have been when the picture was taken.

The exception seems to be photographs taken from tall buildings or from flying machines, looking down. "Now where were you when you took that?" is the usual response to the only aerial shot in the portfolio I show most often. Otherwise, it doesn't seem to be something most people concern themselves with*—the common assumption seems to be that the camera is an omniscient eye and it's perfectly explicable, if not natural, for it to have been where it was.

I thought about this again yesterday when reading about Elliott Erwitt and encountering again his once-famous picture of the laughing lovers in the rear-view side-mirror. (I say "once famous" because I don't think it's particularly well known any more, except perhaps among older photographers—even though it's on the cover of his Personal Exposures.) I've never liked that one, particularly. The first time I saw it, many years ago now, I blurted out something like "who is he, the hook?"

My friend who showed me the picture said, "what?"

Photo by Elliott Erwitt

I was referring to an old campfire story that circulated widely when I was a boy (and may still, I don't know) about a pair of lovers in a car in the woods where an axe-murderer with a hook for a hand is known to be roaming. In one variant of the story, they end up falling asleep in the car and, in the morning, awake to find the hook hanging from the door-handle. (I guess you know this is an older story, because only old-fashioned car door handles would have a place for the hook to hang.)

Anyway, that's why this picture has always struck me as unsatisfying—because I instinctively place the photographer in it. He'd have to have been virtually a stalker in order to take such a picture naturally. The picture was a setup, not a candid. That seems obvious to me at a glance.

If it's not a setup, then it's disturbing, rather than all happy, sunsetty and romantic.

Eyes, balls, and a camera
One of the funniest—and most cogent—answers to my question the other day about the three things you most need to practice your photography was provided by a reader named Nick, who said "eyes, balls, and a camera." Amen, brother Nick. A little crude, but that nails it.

My teacher and mentor Steve Szabo, who had been a top photojournalist for The Washington Post before retiring to become an art photographer with a view camera, once showed us a photograph of a Central or South American peasant wedding that amazed me. Nobody else in our class responded the way I did, but all I could think of when I saw it was "where were you when you took that?" The picture was taken during the ceremony from directly over the priest's shoulder, with the bride and groom and all the guests in attendance. When I put Steve in the scene it just stunned me. Steve answered my question by saying he'd just walked right to the altar as if he had every right in the world to be there, and started photographing. He said it almost with a shrug: "It's just what you have to do." I've mentioned before that I could never have been a photojournalist because I would never have the stones to do things like that. Or, more accurately, the confidence to pull it off without creating an unpleasant spectacle. Some people can; not I.

A lot of the work of photographing is getting yourself to where the picture was taken—whether that's Simon Roberts setting up his tripod on top of his strategically-parked motor home, or Jim Nachtwey wandering the scene of 9/11, or the indefatigable Robert Cameron, who died last November 10th at the age of 98, up in a helicopter above a big city in good light. But most viewers, most of the time, are perfectly happy to collude in the illusion of the omniscient camera, and simply ignore the implications of the photographer as a presence in the scene.

Candid photography as misdemeanor
Another story I think about in this context is one I had occasion to tell the other day when I had a lunch with a local reader, Jack McD. (Jack also let me "unbox" his new gray Leica M9—way cool—but that's another story.) It was a picture taken with a wide-angle lens, looking directly down on two sunbathing young women dressed in bikinis. The women were both asleep on the grass, and they each had the back strap of their bikini tops open so as not to ruin their tans. The picture was taken by a woman I taught with briefly many years ago. She was small, quiet, and unprepossessing in her manner, even though she was actually quite assertive in terms of how she actually acted. Here's more or less how that conversation went:

Me: Do you know these girls?"

She: No. They were just sunbathing in the park.

Me: Were they really alseep?

She: Yes.

Me: So how did you take this?

She: I just walked over and put one foot in between the two of them, and leaned in.

(In other words, she was straddling one of the sleeping young girls in order to get herself in position to take the picture.)

Me (laughing): Do you realize how fast I'd be arrested if I tried to do that?

I'm 6'2", and I weighed 200 lbs. at the time, and if it's been a while since I've had a haircut I somewhat resemble Ted Kaczynski's post-capture mugshots. If I tried to take a picture like that of two sleeping teenage girls who were strangers to me, it would practically constitute assault. All I could picture was one of them waking up to find me hulking over her, and the scream she would have let out as a result!

No credit
As photographers, we're preoccupied with where we were and how we felt when we took our pictures. In fact, I think a lot of photographers often allow their memories of how hard the picture was to get to affect their editorial judgment about how good a picture it is. (A clue: it has nothing to do with it. A great picture can be a toss-off, and one you work and work to get can still suck. You've got to detach yourself from all that when you edit.) But it's not something you get much credit for from viewers. They take it for granted—if they even think about it at all.

Mike

*There's one other exception—the moralistic and unreasonable one that we discussed recently about the common kneejerk reaction to a photograph of a crime or atrocity in progress—"how could he (or she, or you) just stand there?" In a sense, though, that also assumes a sort of omniscience—it assumes the photographer as omniscient actor, as if anyone who could intervene in a scene enough to photograph it should also have the power to alter the event, whatever it was—even though that's seldom the case.

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ADDENDUM: Doug Boller sent me this, an outtake from a late '70s project of his, calling it "a confluence of reflections"...the man in the mirror is Steve Szabo! Quite a coincidence considering the contents of this post....

Featured Comment by Ben Rosengart: "Movies and television have trained us not to ask about the camera-wielder. IMHO."

Featured Comment by Ed Nixon: "I always thought that Erwitt picture was a self-portrait (with friend). Still do, even after reading this post. My interpretation does a better job of explaining where he was than a 'stalker' theory. Why would he have to be looking through a camera, particularly given the obvious attributes of the lady in question?"

Featured Comment by David Lykes Keenan: "Elliott told me that this particular picture was not immediately seen as he reviewed his contact sheets. He 'found' it some time (years?) later. He also told me that he knew the couple in the car."

Featured Comment by David Brookes: "I like your Steve Szabo story, Mike. Before I retired I was an Anglican priest, and I was taking a wedding service one day in a small church in the North of England where I was Vicar. It was a small church with no side aisles, so it was impossible for a photographer to move to the east end unseen: for that reason no photographs were ever taken from behind where I was officiating.

"One day, however, a vestry door had been inadvertently left unlocked, and the wedding photographer sneaked his way in. Unfortunately this particular fellow had a bad limp and walked with a stick: he also used a Mamiya RB67. You can imagine my surprise when I heard this three-legged creature clumping across the church behind me, followed by the crash of the Mamiya's shutter (which, for your younger readers, sounded like someone dropping a tray of cutlery).

"Needless to say this particular photographer was banned from my church after that!"

Featured Comment by Andreas Manessinger: "The image is also on the cover of one of the best albums ever made, Fairground Attraction's glorious 1988 debut 'The First of a Million Kisses.' I knew the image long before I knew the photographer."

Featured Comment by Robert: "This is a quote from a recent Erwitt lecture I attended, regarding said photo: 'The story about this picture is that I discovered it 25 years after I took it. I happened to be looking through my contact sheets and thought that it might make a nice print. I advise everyone to look through their contact sheets.' Later he related how the couple were friends of his, and someone tried to sue him claiming to be one of the subjects. He produced the contact sheet with the rest of the photos and never heard from the person again."