The Online Photographer

What Tests Don't Tell You

By Ctein

A few weeks back, a reader wrote to Mike comparing the sharpness of prints made with his 6-MP and 12-MP digital cameras. He put in some effort to compare apples and apples. Both cameras had the same format, and he used the same high quality prime lens on both cameras at the same ISO and aperture. He worked on a tripod, photographing the same target at the same distance under the same conditions, and he printed out the photos using the same workflow in several different sizes. He saw little difference in sharpness between the two cameras. Apparently, up to fairly large print sizes, it didn't matter whether he used a 6- or a 12-megapixel camera.

The reader had made an error. He'd stopped down the lens all the way to ƒ/11. That meant his likely blur circle was larger than the pixel size on either camera. I guesstimated that the most resolution difference between the two cameras he could hope to see was 10–15%, so small as to be nearly undetectable in real photographs.

A good equipment test is really a well-designed scientific experiment that measures the variables on which you want to collect high-quality data. Few people have the knowledge or skills to design such experiments. There's a reason people go to expensive schools for many years to learn how to do this. The majority of tests that I read about online are done incorrectly. When they produce unexpected results, as they did in the case of this reader, the first thing to investigate is the testing procedure.

I've written many columns and comments about print sharpness and what people can and can't see. There have been many comments from readers who couldn't verify my assertions, making comparison prints on their inkjet printers. The readers neglected to determine whether their printers were even capable of reproducing such fine detail before making the comparison prints; they weren't. Like Mike's correspondent, their experiments were too crude to measure what they were looking for.

That's why I was so happy with this column back in January: "How Sharp Is Your Printer; How Much Can You See?" It's not easy to come up with a robust test that a non-expert user could run that tells them something useful and meaningful about what kind of fine detail they're getting and seeing.

There's another way tests go wrong. Mike has described to me how tests of total harmonic distortion failed to tell us how audio equipment would sound, because it really matters to the human ear which harmonics get distorted. Once you know that, you can design an appropriate test, but the most competently-executed THD test won't tell you what you want to know.

I just ran into this with my Olympus Pen E-P1 (which I am very a very happy with, don't get me wrong.) Published tests report a pleasantly low level of noise with this camera. DxOMark is still my favorite for quantitative information, and they have comparison data for my old Fuji S100fs and the Olympus. My field tests pretty much agree—with a glaring exception. No one's noise tests distinguish between visually-random noise and noise that appears as a regular pattern. By the time electronic noise gets massaged into a photograph random electronic variations can turn into a very non-random artifacts.

I photographed a moonbow on New Year's Eve, handheld with the EP-1 (God, but I love an ƒ/1.7 lens and image stabilization!) The top image was taken at ISO 800, the lower one at ISO 1600. In these comparison illustrations I've cranked the chroma all the way up to "11" to make the noise readily visible; it's nowhere as obvious in the original photographs.

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ISO 800

ISO 1600 (click on either image to see it larger)

The increase in truly random noise between ISO 800 and 1600 wouldn't make the higher-speed photograph unusable, especially if I ran it through good noise reduction software. The color banding that you can see in the ISO 1600 shot does. That's a manifestation of noise that isn't reported in the published tests, and it's a real killer. At ISO 800, the nonrandom noise isn't a showstopper. At ISO 1600, it is unacceptably distracting to the viewer in the correctly-printed photograph, and it's not something I can filter with software.

Now, keep in mind that this is the kind of subject which is most likely to bring out such noise—broad uniform areas of low saturation in the dark part of the tonal scale. A more variegated scene would disguise this noise. What it means, though, is that I can't really count on this camera for quality results above ISO 800. That's about a half a stop faster than quality results out of the Fuji S100. The thing is, based on the simple noise data, I should get nearly two stops more usable speed out of the Olympics. Clearly, not gonna happen. That's a disappointment, and it's a failure of the testing protocols. The data being reported is technically, but not visually, accurate.

Tests. They don't always tell you what you need to know.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on TOP every Thursday morning.

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Harald Mante's 'Photography Unplugged'

A week and a day ago now, we published Jim Hughes' article "Fugitive Color," a meditation around Kodachrome. In the article, Jim talked about Harald Mante's new book from Rocky Nook, Photography Unplugged, which was published last September.

Here's the U.K. link. And of course it's available from Amazon Germany—it was originally published by dpunkt Verlag in Germany.

I was in the bookstore a couple of months ago and had just picked up, flipped through, and put back down yet another of those agglutinations of purty scenics, thinking sarcastically to myself (I'm often sarcastic with myself), "Sorry, but I need photographs to have a little more substance than that." Just as I was thinking that, I picked up Harald's book and thought, "Whoops! Well, maybe I don't, after all."

I flipped through it, then sat down and looked through the whole thing carefully, then came back the next day and looked through it again.

And then bought it.

The simple, straightforward layout serves the work.

It's true that Harald casts the book (in a brief note in the front matter) as a "Goodbye to Kodachrome," since most of the pictures were taken with Minolta cameras (as he told me in an email recently) and the famous Kodak film. But I really think that this book will appeal to anyone who works in color, whether film or digital.

Harald works in bold, elemental compositions, a strong and vivid sense of geometry and design, and, most of all, vivid and coordinated palettes of colors. This ain't Deep Stuff—the work really doesn't have a lot of "meaning" past the exaggerated sense it imparts of the joy of looking and seeing. There's a sense of playfulness, almost of fun. But I'm fascinated by the fact that the book doesn't seem to have any weak spots, and that, despite the photographer's relatively simple project, he doesn't repeat himself (much) or fall back on worn-out tricks and tropes. You won't come away thinking you've seen anything new, yet there's a lot of invention here and a surprising variety. It's consistent and strong.

The reproduction and book design are outstanding—I frankly wouldn't mind if every photographic book were laid out in a such a no-nonsense manner, one picture per page, no distractions; it simply serves the pictures. In fact, the only criticism I can muster of the book is its cover, which is somber and featureless. So many book covers are bright and inviting and promise more than the contents deliver. This cover is the opposite.

Harald Mante with his new book. Photo by Ralph Bodemer, derwesten.de

All in all, this is joyful and enjoyable. Harald Mante was unknown to me before I saw this—apparently he's well-known as a teacher and writer on photography in Germany. It's distinctive, individual, and just very, very well done (I'm avoiding the term "eye candy," but I can see how this would get to be a guilty pleasure for many). I suspect 90% of the people who read TOP would truly enjoy at least a single trip through this tour of Harald's work, and a strong majority would get a lot of enjoyment out of repeat visits. I have. Whatever kind of equipment you use, if you like strong design and clear, vibrant colors—and you don't mind optimism and an affirmative outlook—a sparkling surf without the undertow—you'll like this.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Chris Lucianu: "Harald Mante has arguably been one of the most influential public teachers on color, composition, and photography design in German-speaking countries for nearly forty years. His monthly contributions in popular photography magazines were a fixture: eagerly awaited, often dreaded. His terse style and luscious palette were often sensed as a silent rebuff: 'less is more.' A study of the width and depth of his influence would be rather revealing."

Peter Turnley: Saturday

I'm very pleased to announce that, this coming Saturday, TOP will present another new portfolio by our friend the photojournalist Peter Turnley. The subject is an extensive body of work from Rio's Carnaval. Like Peter's last portfolio on TOP, this will be the photographer's own edit of mostly new work, seen in its entirety for the first time.

Check back on Saturday!

Mike

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Vapor No More! The Pentax 645D Debuts in Japan

One of the most famous of vaporware products is vaporware no more. Originally announced in 2005, then again in 2007—failing to materialize on both occasions—the Pentax 645D is about to become a reality in Japan.

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Sample image by Tanji Toshiaki (from a reduced-size original)

The MSRP will initially be ¥850,000, which is currently less than $10k. The BJP is reporting that there are no plans to export the camera to other markets.

Based on the venerable Pentax 645, which was first a manual-focus and then an AF film camera, the 645D has a 40-megapixel Kodak-made CCD sensor that is 33x44 millimeters in size, or 1.7X what is called "full-frame" (i.e., 35mm film size), which allows for a still-generous 6 micron pixel pitch. Like most medium-format digital cameras and backs, the sensor will reportedly be optimized for extended dynamic range rather than high ISOs, and will have no anti-aliasing filters (the Leica M9's trick for increasing image sharpness).

The camera is weatherproof, and so is the initial offering in the new Pentax-D FA 645 lens line, a 55mm ƒ/2.8. This is the equivalent on the new format of Pentax's justly famous 43mm Limited lens on a 35mm. The newly-designed lens pulls out all the stops—it's a 9-element aspherical, with ultrasonic, internal focusing, and Pentax says, "all lens characteristics are optimized for digital photography." That means, among other things, that the rear elements will be coated like the front ones, a crucial modification for best performance with digital sensors, which reflect considerably more light back at the lens than film does.

The lensmount is called the 645 AF2 bayonet mount, which will accept 645AF2 (the new 55mm), 645AF (all older autofocus lenses for the 645N and 645NII), and 645A (wayback manual-focus) lenses.

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Sample image by Siratori Sintarou (from a reduced-size original)

I personally haven't used a Pentax 645 since the "N" version of the AF camera came out, but I found that one to be ergonomically a honey, with very sensible and intuitive control configurations and a satisfyingly grippy shape.

A few more high points from the press release (which I assume you're capable of reading for yourself if you're interested): 14-bit A/D conversion; dual card slots (it takes SD/SDHC cards); tempered glass protecting both viewing screens; a newly-designed 11-point AF system; an ISO-priority exposure mode; 77-segment multi-pattern metering; and a 98% finder with a huge –3.5 to +2 diopter correction range.

There's going to be a special website, but it's mostly still under construction and I assume it will be in Japanese.

Despite the Digital 645's longtime Lucy-with-the-football tease, this might well be the best time for this camera to come along. It would have been too primitive in 2005, and too expensive in 2007. It even makes sense—well, a little sense—for it to be Japan-only, since "645" (shouldn't it be called 3344?) was always much more popular in Japan than it was in the rest of the world even in the days of film, and the film versions always sold much better in the home market than anywhere else.

Anyway, it's probably a good thing for me they're not bringing this to the States. If they ever do, tie me to the mast, boys, tie me to the mast.

Mike

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Featured Comment by David: "'No burned highlights,' they coo. 'Look deep into the shadows,' they purr. The sirens are calling. Calling. Calling."

Featured Comment by Ned Bunnell, President of Pentax USA: "The 645D will initially be available only in Japan. Right now, we have no firm plans to bring this camera to the U.S. However, we are evaluating the type of sales and support program that would be required to ensure the 645D’s success in our market."

Featured Comment by Cateto/Jose: "Yesterday I did a quick search to compare the price of the new Pentax 645D to other peers in a similar league. Thus I found a recent comparison of medium format cameras, posted by The Luminous Landscape. Then I payed special attention to their 'Pricing' paragraph. Based on that information, and also after visiting some online photography stores, here you have a quick price comparison:

Hasselblad H4D (60 MP): $42,000
Phase One DF + P65 back (60 MP) + 80mm lens: $42,000
Leica S2 (37.5 MP) + 35 mm lens: $28,300
Pentax 645D (40 MP) + 55 mm lens: $10,500

Of course this is a very rough comparison, and the respective qualities/capabilities of each model are quite different. But going to the core reason to jump onto medium format (i.e., huge increase in resolution compared to full format), it seems that the 645D is starting its career at a very advantageous position. To oversimplify things, you can buy four 645D for the price of one Hasselblad H4D or one PhaseOne DF, or three 645D for the price of a Leica S2.

My budget will never reach those levels, but if I seriously considered that range of products, I think the conclusion is quite clear.

Featured Comment by Lindy: "Here's a link from the CP+ Show in Japan showing a see-through 645D and a  cutaway 645D."

Apropos of Nothing

I was originally going to include in the previous post a few paragraphs about Studebaker, a maker of carriages and wagons founded in the 1850s that eventually made a successful transition to making automobiles (the company lasted more than a century, until 1966). Although I let one reference in the last paragraph stand, I ultimately decided to cut the Studebaker bits from the post. However, there was one thing I came across in my research that's just too cool not to show you:

From Google Maps

This is a satellite picture of a public park called Bendix Woods in New Carlisle, Indiana, near South Bend. (The top of the picture is oriented west.) Built in 1926, it has the distinction of being the first* dedicated automobile test track in the world built and maintained by a car company. One of the features of the track is a "sign" composed of 5,000 pine trees spelling out the name of the company, which can be seen to the upper right of the track; while the South Bend automaker still existed, this was known as one of the largest advertisements in the world. Here's an aerial view, date unknown. Evidently the "sign" was damaged by a severe storm in 2004, so both pictures probably predate that.

And a detail.

Apropos of nothing—I just thought this was interesting.

Mike

*An assertion which has been disputed in our comments, for which see.

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The Future of Leica

Some while back, Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape posted "An Open Letter to Leica" subtitled "A Modest Proposal for Reinventing the M Series." Not long after, Michael published a response by Thom Hogan of ByThom.com under the title, "Thom Hogan Considers—What's Next for Leica." Both Michael and Thom speculated about what sort of products they think Leica needs to offer in the future—to quote Michael's article, he's answering the question, "what should the next M series Leica be like?" A perfectly sensible question.

Far be it from me to argue with either Thom or Michael. (And I'm not; their opinions stand for themselves.) But as Michael said, "the ideas that I'm putting forward are worth a public debate."

So here's my modest little contribution to the debate. I think the future of Leica is now.

As the great Inigo Montoya would say, 'let me 'splain'
I'm neither a Leica insider nor a Leica user (well, I've been using an M7 lately, but it's not mine, it's a loaner from a friend). And I'm only basing the following on logic, which can easily lead us astray. But here's where my logic takes me:

1. Old, traditional camera company falls on hard times, is sold by its founding owners (the Leitz family) who don't want to preside over its demise, changes hands several times, flirts dangerously with bankruptcy. 

2. Passionate and independently wealthy enthusiast buys company. 

3. New owner sinks big money into said company. I mean big—according to rumors, on the order of a hundred million euros or more. Again, I'm not an insider, so I don't know this for a fact, but that's the story.

4. After some rough water and a few mistakes along the way, the new owner's team comes up with an outstanding and highly sensible 3-tiered range of products. There is:

a. The Leica M9, a "full-frame" digital replica of the historical company's best-known and best-loved (and, yes, iconic) product. Also, it's exactly what most enthusiasts wanted. Also, it's the second iteration of the concept, fixing the flaws and addressing the drawbacks of the first generation.

b. Below that, the Leica X1, a premium semi-compact with a large APS-C-sized sensor and a beautiful fixed lens. Astutely judged as, if you'll forgive the phrase, a casual camera for the serious user. Or as a smart (in both senses) fashion accessory for the casual user. Just as astutely, positioned so as to complement but not compete with the main product. Affordably* priced at ~$2k.

c. Above the M9, the all-new Leica S2, a clean-sheet camera system conceived from first principles. Well positioned to appeal to not one but two markets: the type of pros who need to be concerned about their image, particularly fashion shooters of various descriptions, and very-well-heeled amateur enthusiasts who want the latest and the best and the most prestigious. (An S2 on your shoulder is the only thing guaranteed to make an M9 owner envious!)

'Psst, buddy, wanna buy a loss leader?'
It makes utterly no sense to me when I encounter various hosers on sundry forums opining that "Canon should buy Leica" or "Panasonic should buy Leica" or somesuch similar nonsense. What, do they mean with its angel? Leica lost four-point-something million euros last year. Should Canon say, "sure, we'll buy Leica, just as long as Herr Kaufmann is included in the deal, and he promises to continue sinking tens of millions of euros from his family's personal fortune into what will no longer be his company"? How does that make any sense at all, to anyone? The answer to "X should buy Leica" is not only "No—no, it shouldn't," and it's not even "Shut up," although both those responses are perfectly reasonable ones. It's that the perfect guy already bought Leica. Leica's owner is a seriously rich guy who loves the marque and is a passionate photography enthusiast and is willing and able to lose huge boatloads of money lovingly nurturing the company and grooming its product line. Nobody could fantasize a better owner for Leica than Leica already has.

And that's where I come down on this "future of Leica" thing. You're holding out for the future? The current cameras just aren't good enough? So, what, you're going to hold off and wait until the next time somebody sinks €100 million into a money-losing company and comes up with an ideal product lineup?!?

Really?

My opinion: the future is now. Right now. 2010 is 26 years past 1984 and nine years past 2001. For anybody who ever wanted a digital Leica, 2010 is the top of the bell curve; the best time for the company since 1958 (i.e., the year before Nikon introduced the F); the perfect time to jump on board.

The company has already given us more than anybody ever had a right to expect—more than reasonable people were even hoping for ten and twenty years ago. Leica can't make enough M9's and X1's to even keep up with demand. B&H won't even let you pre-order an X1 (I think that means their current pre-orders exceed the number of units they're expecting in their next shipment—I'll try to check on that). 

Finally, before anyone brings up the obvious: yeah, time will go on. History didn't end in 1992. Newer products will continue to replace older ones. Even Studebaker, once the largest maker of wheeled vehicles in the world, couldn't sell horse-drawn buggies past 1919. The years do keep coming. With luck, the current ownership of Leica will prosper, and its team will come up with products in the future that will be appropriate to future conditions. But...this is the golden hour. Where Leica is concerned, for all practical purposes, the future's here. 

Mike

*Money being relative. No one wants or needs a $35,000 Rolls-Royce. The people to whom a premium, high-prestige camera brand appeals are the kind of people who can easily afford $2k for a camera. If you think it's too expensive, then it's just not for you.

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JOBO Goes Belly-Up

Reader Chris Lucianu points out another pertinent news item from photoscala.de. Last Friday, insolvency proceedings were initiated against the assets of JOBO AG and JOBO Labortechnik GmbH, of Gummersbach, in the North Rhine-Westphalia area of Germany. JOBO made a wide range of darkroom devices, mainly color paper and film processors.

I haven't used a JOBO in many years, but the paper processors were a staple of home color printers, photo schools, and low-volume custom darkrooms. The devices were fairly Rube-Goldbergian, and not entirely in a good way—at the Corcoran, for example, where I did my brief turn as lab manager, the poxy magnets were forever falling off of the tubes, and there seemed to be no technology known to humankind that would stick them back on more than temporarily. This problem was reportedly later fixed.

JOBOs with Expert drums also made very good sheet film processors for either color or black-and-white.

The processors did a good job, but they weren't fun to use. They were basically glorified tanks of temperature-controlled water, and the rooms in which they resided were typically warm, humid, and usually more than a little smelly. To use one, what you did mainly was...wait.

JOBO was founded in 1923 and was a third-generation-owned family business.

By the way, if you're one of the those digital natives who think it's quaint how we're always going on about antediluvian technologies and their gradual expiry, I hope you're looking into the future too, because this is a constant—when I was a kid there were older guys who'd go on and on about how they did things in the old days (for one thing, photo papers were always better in the old days—now, then, and forever), and some day you'll be hearing about the last inkjet printer or the last digital camera with a reflex mirror being discontinued or whatever, and you'll be going on about how you remember when a million pixels was such a big deal it needed a new word, and the kids then will roll their eyes. Plus ça change....

Mike
(Thanks to Chris)

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Quote o' the Day

"If you want to be any kind of artist, you have to practice every day."

(Paraphrased—one of the awardees on last night's Oscar telecast—I didn't notice who—quoting their mother.)

Mike

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Featured Comment by Ed Kirkpatrick: "That would have been Sandra Bullock."

Mike replies: Thanks Ed. Speaking of SB, she's quite witty isn't she? I mentioned a while back that I've never seen one of her movies, but maybe I need to go see "The Blind Side."

I was rather shocked that they doubled the number of Best Picture nominees to ten and I still hadn't seen a single one of them. I do have the video for "Food Inc." here in the stack, if that counts—I think it was nominated for Best Documentary, although I think the guy who got censored for his save-the-dolphins sign was the winner in that category.

Featured Comment by Zlatko: "It was Sandra Bullock: 'So…if I can take this moment to thank Helga B. for not letting me ride in cars with boys until I was eighteen because she was right, I would’ve done what she said I was gonna do. For making me practice every day when I got home. Piano, ballet, whatever it is I wanted to be. She said to be an artist, you had to practice every day....'"

Featured Comment by Joe Cameron: "Mike, Don't know if I ever sent you this one, but a favorite quote (source unknown) follows: 'An artist can never fail. Just to be one is a success.'"

Canon Rebates

My friend at B&H Photo tells me that B&H is offering some fantastic rebates on some Canon products.

Mike

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Rollei to Survive

Photoscala is reporting this morning that Franke & Heidecke GmbH, of Braunschweig, Germany, will reorganize as DHW Photo Technik GmbH, initially with 30 employees, to sell products to both dealers and private consumers. Offerings will include three versions of the famous and historical TLR, several slide projectors, the Hy6, and bespoke versions of the Rollei 35 Classic in runs of one to five priced between €4,000 and €4,500 each. (Gulp. How's that for the economies of small scale?)

The three TLRs will be distinguished by their lenses. Available will be a 50mm ƒ/4 Super-Angulon wide angle, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar normal, and 135mm ƒ4 Tele-Xenar telephoto. (Kind of interesting to reconsider this old trio in light of the criticisms of Ricoh's lens-sensor modules, eh? The Rollei TLRs might be considered the granddaddies of lens-sensor redundancy.)

For a couple of nice samples of Rollei TLR pictures see here (by "clubgrit" from ClubSNAP) and here (by Christopher Schwer).

Mike
(Thanks to Dirk Rösler)

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Featured Comment by James McDermott: "Well, as much as my Rollei T still seduces me from her perch on my bookshelf, I feel that, if my forthcoming bank robbery/lottery win/rich chick seduction (I wish) pays off, I might just have to have one of these absolutely last wide TLRs. Nothing comes close—big boy DSLRs, DMDs, rangefinders, whatever. If you absolutely have to make a statement whilst insouciantly making a piccy, these are the beasts."

New Panasonic Cameras

Panasonic has announced the Lumix G2 and G10 cameras in the Micro 4/3 standard. The G2, which is a refresh of the popular G1 / GH1 and will presumably eventually replace them, has a touch-activated viewing screen, and the G10 is a stripper model with fewer features (mainly, it lacks the articulated screen) and a lower price. (It also offers name confusion with Canon's product, but that sort of thing appears to be popular in the camera market.)

The press release is here.*

Mike

*TOP reader Lynn B. points out that the press release doesn't mean "pallet" of options, unless you have to lift them with a forklift. Ah, Spell Checker.

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Featured Comment by Benjamin R. George: "It looks like the G2 only intended as a direct replacement for the G1, but not for the GH1, since the G2 lacks the GH1's distinctive multi-aspect sensor, and shoots lower-res video than the GH1 does. For all the talk of the G1 and the GH1 being twins, the fact that they have different effective imaging area diagonals when used at the 3:2 aspect ratio (and likewise at 16:9) strikes me as a pretty substantial difference—more of a difference than the video thing, anyway."

...All Right Then, YOU Pick Ten

I'm a little surprised that National Geographic's "Top 10 Photos of 2009" have come under such fire in our comments. Although to be honest, my first reaction, like that of several readers, was that the set was a little bland. (Actually, that's not quite accurate—my first reaction was "I could have found better ones." That was my arrogant inner editor speaking.)

It quickly occurred to me, however, that if you know in advance that you're going to do a television show about the 10 pictures you chose, that would influence your choices. You'd pick pictures that have interesting back-stories, wouldn't you? So I'm reserving judgment about the choices until I see the show, which airs here a couple of hours from now.

There are, of course, all sorts of reasons for making specific picks when you pick a list of anything. One of the major early projects I did on this blog was a top ten photographs list. When I did my own list, I was trying to cover most of the major genres of photography—portraits, pinups, landscapes, photojournalism, scientific photography, and so on. So naturally that "program" affected my choices. I was also picking pictures that "stood for" the best of each genre—when I picked a portrait, for instance, I picked an Alexander Gardner portrait of Abraham Lincoln, because it would be well-known to most American readers and because Lincoln was the first politician to realize the political advantages of using the then-new medium of photography to help craft a cult of personality. So I wasn't just saying "this is a great portrait," I was saying, "this is a famous and significant portrait, one that can 'stand in' for all portraits." The needs of the program I'd committed to came before other considerations; if I were just picking my own favorite portrait, it probably wouldn't have been that one.

Personal best
But that got me to thinking. How hard would it be to pick your own ten favorite pictures?

What each of us likes and doesn't like has a lot to do with our personal interests and tastes, of course. It also might have something to do with the kinds of pictures we take—we might tend to like photographers who do the same sort of thing we ourselves do, only better. Landscape photographers admire landscape photographers, and so forth. Color photographers like color photographs.

Our technical choices might have a lot to do with what we admire. I have a friend who's a great devotee of large format; he'd probably pick ten pictures that included mostly large format pictures. Maybe all ten would be. Personally, I realized about twelve years ago or so that most of the pictures that move me the most are naturalistic black-and-white photographs of "found" or encountered scenes, mostly with people in them; I dislike set-up shots and generic scenics. I have a weakness for pictures taken around water.

Our ten might include subjects we're interested in. A sports fan might pick sports photographs, a military enthusiast might pick great war photographs, a guy who's crazy about cars might pick some great car photographs.

Other people might go for variety, and pick "one of each" of many types of photography they like.

Connotation certainly plays a part. I've done a lot of hiking and photographing in the upper Midwest, and I find I tend to respond better to pictures of that general area than to landscapes of the Rocky Mountains or the desert Southwest, for instance. Even though the latter are usually more spectacular.

I know a guy who loves photographs of New York, and another who has a great passion for architectural photography.

John Szarkowski, the great curator and critic, reportedly had a weakness for pictures of apples. He was an apple grower and a great aficionado of apples, and it was known in certain circles that if you were dropping off a portfolio for review at the Museum of Modern Art during his long tenure there, it wasn't a bad idea to include an apple picture or two.

Depending on the ground rules, you might pick some of your own pictures, too. Or pictures that have personal meaning for you. For many people, photographs by others have a hard time competing with photographs of the things and people they love. 

A favorite of yours might be a "breakthrough" picture that was important to you in your own artistic growth. Ansel Adams had a lifelong affection for "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome," which was the first picture he used a red filter on and the key precursor, for him, of the heroic style of western landscape that he later developed into his mature style. He always honored that photograph's significance in his own artistic development.

Apropos my own ten best list that I mentioned earlier, it might be wise to separate our critical judgment from that which we love and respond to personally. There are plenty of photographs I would defend to the end as being indisputably great that I don't personally have much feeling for. (That old "head vs. heart" dichotomy.)

Or maybe not
I'm guessing this might not be an instructive exercise to actually do. That is, it might be pretty pointless to  make the hard choices and come up with ten specific photographs. After all, looking at photographs is an appetite and a pastime—it depends in part on a constant stream of new encounters, an ongoing adventure of new discovery. But it could be enlightening to at least think about it. It could tell you important things about who you are, where you stand. Maybe even things you don't consciously realize about yourself.

Could you at least think of three or four things that would have to be on your list, for instance?

I can think of a few that would be on mine.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Carl Dahlke: "And the answer is—it's very hard to pick a personal top 10 photos even if I narrow it down to the ones that I personally love and respond to.

"Part of the problem is that some photographers are easy to see in terms of individual images. Other photographers' images seem to live as an interconnected body of work.

"If I think of Edward Weston I think of individual pictures of things (Pepper #30) or people (Gualaloupe Marin de Rivera). Elliot Erwitt is another one of those photographers whose work it easy to see as individual images (one of his dog pictures has to be in my top 10).

"When I think of Emmit Gown I think of the whole extended family portrait he created in his first book. There are individual images in that book that I love—but they always are living in the good company of the other parts of the portrait. So I don't quite know how to pick a favorite—it almost feels like cutting up the book by picking a favorite is the wrong thing to do. And that book is certainly in my list of top 10 books. Ralph Gibson is like that too—his medium really is the book.

"So I think the whole question is biased towards the photographers whose style tends to produce individual iconic images.

"I think the other problem is that if you have a really broad taste for photography (and I do both in what I shoot and what I look at) then the top 10 becomes almost impossible to narrow down.

"If I have one each from Weston, Erwitt, Burtynsky, Meyerowitz, Bravo, Sanders, Giacomelli, Kenna, W. Eugene Smith, and Debbie Flemming Caffery what have I got? Well I've left out Diane Arbus, Lisette Model, Richard Misrach....

"I think it's probably more interesting to try to pick the top 10 Westons, or the top 10 portraits, or the top 10 dog pictures (where Jill Freedman and Elliot Erwitt battle it out). Working inside some sort of constraints is so very useful."

National Geographic's Top 10 Photos of 2009

Tomorrow, in many markets in the United States—and later in the week in other markets—Public Broadcasting will air "National Geographic Magazine's Top 10 Photos of the Year." You can see JPEGs of the ten pictures here.

Here are some excerpts from the official write-up:

In 2009, National Geographic’s photographers took more than one million images from which only 1,000 could be published in the magazine. From 1,000, these 10 were singled out for lasting significance.

National Geographic magazine's Top 10 Photos of the Year presents a countdown to the magazine’s best image from 2009, chosen by National Geographic magazine editor in chief Chris Johns from his list of the 10 best photographs published in the magazine last year. The photos cover a broad range of subject matter, from unexplored caves and endangered freshwater dolphins to the global food crisis and vanishing cultures.

[...]

The top 10 images were taken by:

Kevin Schafer, who struggled with the murky, tannic waters of the Amazon River for his first National Geographic magazine assignment.

Fritz Hoffman, who dangled from a cable over the raging Nu River in China as villagers crossed on a zip line to take animals to market on the other side.

Amy Toensing, who, documenting the drought in Southwestern Australia, describes how her picture came together almost by accident as she followed a family through the parched landscape of what had once been a thriving farm.

Stephen Alvarez, who explains how he illuminates pitch-black underground caves to expose them in a way that has truly never been seen before.

Martin Schoeller, who typically shoots portraits of celebrities like Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie, photographed the Hadza, a vanishing culture in Tanzania. He shipped a complete studio to the African bush with lights and generators to capture this series of intimate, searing portraits.

Randy Olson, who used a computer to control an underwater camera trained on a grizzly bear in Kamchatka, Russia.

John Stanmeyer, who usually covers wars, international conflict and social injustice, traveled to nine countries for a story about the global food crisis.

James Nachtwey, who has a similar beat to Stanmeyer’s, spent several months in Indonesia covering the many faces of Islam in a nation that is home to more Muslims than anywhere else in the world.

Len Jenshel and Diane Cook, a husband-and-wife photographer team, battled time and weather to make a photograph of a rooftop garden on Chicago’s City Hall.

Michael “Nick” Nichols, National Geographic magazine’s editor at large, was ranked No. 1 of the top 10 with his photograph of a giant redwood tree. He talks vividly on camera about how it took nearly a year to complete the photograph and how it almost drove him to the brink. Using gyroscopes, dollies and computers, Nichols and his team made a seamless top-to-bottom photograph of a 300-foot redwood tree, the first in history.

Sounds interesting—I'm going to try to catch it. If you've never seen Nick Nichols' redwood picture from the October, 2009 issue...well, you still won't, because even the fold-out in the magazine was but a small representation, and a JPEG or a TV image are going to be even more inadequate. But it's a remarkable project and one that I imagine is going to be well worth hearing about.

Check your local listings for scheduling in your area.

Mike
(Thanks to Dan Carnagey)

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Featured Comment by emptyspaces: "The redwood photo was reproduced three stories high and hung on a downtown building here in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a month—quite a nice way to view it. I count myself as lucky. It's impressive work, and an amazing print as well."

Featured Comment by Helcio J. Tagliolatto: "Two notes on the dolphin image:

1. That tea colored water is not from the Amazon River, but from Rio Negro (Black River);
2. The real color of those botos are not pale gray...but always pale red or pink. The pale gray are the very common  'gray botos,' a different shaped dolphin, more akin to ocean dolphins.

Anyone who have ever photographed those red botos in Rio Negro knows that the NG photo is a very hard image to make.

Random Excellence: Petrut Calinescu

Photo by Petrut Calinescu

Petrut is a 34-year-old Romanian photojournalist based in Bucharest.

Consider the above just a sample, although I think it's a great shot—I love that water-on-the-lens blur on the middle figures with the figures on either side still sharp, with the figure on the left in shadow and the one on the right in sunlight; note also how the picture seems to have more visual "weight" on the left side because of a subtle angle and the reinforcing reflections in the water. (Sometimes, pictures just work.)

...But I digress. As I was saying, in his case I think his whole website is of interest and is well worth exploring at leisure on a Saturday. Not overly much of the usual "dire distress and poverty porn" so beloved of picture editors (and hence p-j's) worldwide; he seems to have a nose for interesting places and a nice balance of humanity with honesty. Some lovely stuff. Too bad he can't stay home more—his work that's most interesting to me is of Romania.

Larger versions of a few of the pictures here.

Mike
(Thanks to Dan Matiesanu)

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Featured Comment by John Camp: "Two famous American paintings. The first, by George Bellows, is "Forty-Two Kids" (1907) in the Corcoran; the second by Thomas Eakins (1885) from the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth."

More Wild 'n' Wacky Micro 4/3 Lens Fun

As far as I can tell, some guy in Georgia is putting Micro 4/3 mounting plates on a Senko CCTV lens and adding some engraving and a cool (but possibly reflective?) day-glo lime green retaining ring. And why not? Sounds like you could have fun with that. Not sure if all this is a fair appraisal or not (they haven't answered my email). Anyway, officially, it's the Noctor HyperPrime 50mm ƒ/0.95 for $750, shipping in...April. Not April 1st. April...well, 15th. Ah, let's just say "spring."

Mike
(Thanks to Iñaki)

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Quote o' the Day: Taking Photos is a Nasty Thing to Do

"I’m not a great one for chatting people up, because it’s phony. I don’t want people to feel at ease. You want a bit of edge. There are quite long, agonised silences. I love it. Something strange might happen. I mean, taking photographs is a very nasty thing to do. It’s very cruel."

—Lord Snowdon

-

Mike
(Thanks to Paul Stent)

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Featured Comment by David Zivic: "I live in a resort town in Mexico and there are always tourists, especially off the cruise ships, that hand me some crappy little camera and say 'Would take our picture please,' usually with something mildly interesting in the background. I first get them all lined up, doing their interpretation of a pose, and then I take off running with their camera. I always stop after about three steps and say 'just kidding.' Now I've got them right where I want them. Terrified, feeling stupid, naive, and vulnerable. I line them up again and they follow my instructions implicitly. I now have them completely under my control. Then, instead of the normal 'say cheese,' I always calmly expound. 'okay, now everybody think about sex.' I then wait a second or two for it to sink in then their expressions are just priceless. I've never been offered a gratuity."

Featured Comment by Sean: "Here's naughty: 'I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it. And when I first did it, I felt very perverse.' Diane Arbus."

Mike Adds: There are some more great Diane Arbus quotes at this link.

Milton is 100!

Milton at work in the darkroom. Photo © Diane Bush, c. 1982

Well, I blew this. Last summer or fall I was going to do a post about Milton Rogovin, the social documentary portraitist from Buffalo, New York. But then I thought, wait a minute, he turns 100 on December 30th—why not wait until then? So I wrote myself a little note to help me remember the significance of the 30th of December.

And then I missed it.

Well, Happy Birthday Milton R., a little late. 

Milton was the subject of the film "The Rich Have Their Own Photographers," which was recently shown on PBS. (As far as I know, not available on DVD—please let me know if you know otherwise.) He has published numerous books, many of which are still in print; if you're new to his work, you might want to start with The Forgotten Ones. There's a small selection of Milton's recurring portraiture—he photographed a number of his subjects at different points in time—at Alec Soth's Archived Blog. (Do read the captions.)

He won the ICP's Cornell Capa Award in 2007, and was featured in the New York Times' Lens blog last summer, and of course has his own website.

All pretty cool for one of the youngest and newest centenarians.

Isn't that a wonderful portrait at the top of the page, by Diane Bush? I managed to find her, and I'm buying a small print of it for my now-growing collection. My kind of picture.

Some day I might even run across that note I wrote to myself last summer. Maybe in time to wish Milton Happy 102nd or 103rd.

Mike
(Thanks to Louis McCullagh)

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Featured Comment by Erlik: "And here's the trailer for the film on YouTube. Bigger than the dinky one on Telling Images. You can see the photographs better."

The Printer / Photoshop / Snow Leopard Hell

By Ctein

Everyone knows what happens to technological pioneers. Unfortunately, sometimes even prudence and caution won't save you.

The last generation of operating systems seemed designed to exterminate the pioneers. People pointed fingers and laughed at how many problems Windows Vista caused its adopters, until Mac OS 10.5 (a.k.a. Leopard) came along, and demonstrated that a major code rollout, no matter which team you played for, was going to cause no end of grief. (Yes, yes, all you UNIX users can feel smug about how you roll your own bug fixes out of string and sealing wax and twigs. Goody for you. Now go away.)

My MacBook Pro came shortly before Leopard was released, and when I heard about all the compatibility issues, I just decided to hell with it and wait for the "bug fix" release. Kind of the way a lot of PC users avoided Windows Vista and stuck with XP. We stayed with Win 2K. Ironically, we're now running Windows Vista on our iMac, and you know it's great. I don't see what everyone was complaining about—all it needed was a full set of patches, a totally pristine environment to run in, and a state-of-the-art 2010 computer with performance equivalent to a dozen supercomputers. Runs smooth as glass!

Ahem.

But back to the Mac side. Snow Leopard came along, the operating system that would fix Leopard. Well, kiddies, guess what? They broke printing. Really, really badly. It's weird that this hasn't received more widespread publicity outside of the geek lists, because if you're someone who cares at all about color management and having your prints look right, you're pretty much screwed. In particular, if you're someone who happens to use Snow Leopard, Photoshop CS4, and a high-quality Epson printer, right now you are in hell. That hardly describes anyone except...oh...maybe most of the serious graphics professionals out there.

Can you tell I haven't been a happy camper? That's right, I knew you could.

The problem isn't limited to that combination of components, but it's certainly the most notorious one. What makes the matter especially pernicious is that there are several things that are screwy, so that fixing one problem doesn't get you out of Hell, it just moves you into a different level.

Problems and workarounds
Here's my understanding of what's going wrong. Now, I need to preface this by saying that I am not a color management guru. Normally if I write an article about something technical, you can take it to the bank. In this case, you should deposit the check but not spend any of it until it's cleared (stretching a metaphor well beyond the breaking point). I'm 90% certain of what I'm talking about, but that's about it.

In any case, I'm indebted to a friend and reader at whom I was whining last weekend in serious frustration over these problems. Turns out his job is closely tied to this whole mess (I had no idea, I was just emotionally imposing), and so he could describe to me in simple terms what was going wrong. That let me get part of the way out of hell.

First, Snow Leopard has a bug in it that screws up rendering if you're using a version 4 ICC profile (this bug appeared in  MacOS 10.6.2; it didn't exist in 10.6.1). That's going to be any profile that's been generated recently. Color Utility will tell you information about your profiles. You might have some that go back to version 2. If you don't, you are hosed until the 10.6.3 release (we hope).

Doesn't matter what software you use, what printer you use, and what hoops you jump through: If you attempt to color manager output using a v.4 ICC profile, it is not going to work. The print is going to come out horribly wrong.

Some people figured that if they can generate new profiles from within the operating system, they can use those to undo the distortions the operating system is inducing (understand that such profiles would fail when the operating system gets fixed, but as a stopgap it's not an entirely bad idea). Now you run into the second problem, and this falls mostly on the heads of some printer manufacturers. If you're using a profiling system that expects you to print out targets using Photoshop, printing out targets that haven't been color managed has become somewhere between very difficult and impossible. (For those who haven't done this kind of thing, creating a profile requires printing out a test target that shows the printer's uncorrected output, so the software can figure out what it needs to correct). The reason for that is that printing with profiles entirely off under Mac Photoshop requires breaking some rules, and that's what the third-party software authors did. The rules changed with Snow Leopard—those who didn't pay attention (read: many of the printer driver authors) have left us with obsolete code running our printers.

As I said, there are some workarounds, sometimes. In fact, I do all my profiling using ColorMunki, which doesn't even go through Photoshop and can generate test targets just fine. But...

...The resulting profiles won't work! Why? Because, guess what, they are the latest v4 ICC profiles! Back to square one.

There's another gotcha, which may or may not be a bug, that needs mentioning. Your printer has a default profile assigned to it; ColorSync Utility can tell you what. If it's sRGB or no profile at all, you're going to have problems. Understand that this has nothing to do with whether you let Photoshop manage colors or let the printer manage colors; it's a system setting.

But that's just me
In my case, this story has a semi-happy ending. I checked all the profiles on my new iMac and, joy of joys, the profiles that Bill Atkinson provided me for my Epson 9800 printer are old enough that they are v2.x. I installed the latest Epson printer drivers, printed out my killer test targets under CS4, and they are 99.99% perfect. There's a truly minuscule difference between printing under Mac OS 10.4 and Mac OS 10.6, but it's pixel-peeping, it really is. My test targets ferret out things like that, and the differences are ones that will never be troublesome in a real print.

So, happy happy, joy joy, I at least have one professional printer that's running on my new iMac. After only four months!

I have no idea when I'll get the R2400 and R800 working properly. At least I can still run those off of my MacBook Pro, which, you may be sure, has not yet had its OS upgraded.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column is posted every Thursday morning.

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Featured Comment by Robert Roaldi: "I have no useful info to add to this, just a comment. I am just so sick and tired of the fact that the industries that make computers, screens, printers, cameras, scanners, and everything else, cannot get this colour matching thing easy and correct. If geeky experts want to live on the gamut fringe and worry about all sorts of exotic colour reproduction issues, well go ahead, the world needs people like you. But like 99% of the world, why can't I just buy some paper, and have some button to push on my printer that gets it 95% right. No museums want my prints yet, so why should I have to learn all this arcane detail just to put something on my wall, and that only after wasting untold dollars on ink and paper. They sell papers in boxes of 25 but all the trial and error sends the first 20 to the recycling bin.

"The instant you move away from sRGB, it's a minefield. But even restricting your entire workflow to sRGB, there is still no guarantee that your printer will spit out something acceptable on the paper you buy, never mind matching what the calibrated screen showed. Then every month, there are new papers and printers on the market.

"It's fun taking pictures but everything else about the hobby sucks. Frequent software and hardware upgrades, colour matching incompatibilities everywhere. Some applications use corrected colours, other don't. It's a crock. I wrote software for 25 years before being put out to pasture by the industry and in the old days they fired people who made products this lousy. Why do we put up with it?

"There's a lot written how people don't print anymore; they only show pictures on screens. That might be because most prints are ugly and dull. Maybe we need a printshop in every neighbourhood staffed by professionals who we can pay to do our printing for us. But hey no, let's all waste hours, paper and ink trying to do it ourselves using equipment built to standards that no one on earth observes.

"If our banks and car companies worked this badly, we'd put them all out of business, wouldn't we?

"Sorry, rant over. I'll calm down now."

Dpreview Posts Ricoh GXR / A12 Review

A couple of days ago the British camera review site dpreview.com posted its review of the radical Ricoh GXR, written by Lars Rehm, Simon Joinson, and Andy Westlake. Since this camera has interchangeable lens/sensor modules, they're going to review the body with different modules as different cameras, which is a sensible approach.

Mike

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The Great Costume

You've got to see this. Made me laugh. Clue for you: no Photoshop.

Previously, my all-time "best costume" award went to an actor in D.C. who dressed as a guy in the wind—he shellacked his hair as if it were being blown back and put wires in his tie to make it look like it was being blown out behind him, and then on request he'd do a perfect "wind in the face" expression. It was great.

This one's in that inspired category. The costume is by BrodyQat, who comments in the thread at the link.

Mike
(Thanks to B. J. Scharp)

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Fugitive Color

[Editor's note: I haven't been able to procure usable JPEGs of sample pictures from Photography Unplugged to use with this article. To give you an idea what the pictures in the book look like, there is a small selection of nine examples on the main page at www.harald-mante.de.]

By Jim Hughes

A while back, Mike asked people to talk about their favorite lenses. I was busy on a project at the time, so stayed silent. But I did think about it. And in the middle of the night I came up with an answer that surprised even me: over the course of many decades of photographing—generally carrying a camera wherever I go, not because I need to make a living or burnish a reputation but because I still love what it feels like to take pictures—my favorite lens turns out not to be a lens at all. The "optic" I feel most comfortable seeing my world through is actually a film. Kodachrome, to be precise.

Okay, if pressed, I could name a glass lens or three. At the top of my list would be the 50mm ƒ/2 Schneider Xenon fixed to my eminently pocketable Retina IIa folder. This 60-year old lens is really sharp yet still manages to render Kodachrome’s abundant tonalities with a soft brush. Then there’s my reliable "modern" antique, the minuscule 35mm ƒ/2 Canon that I regularly mount on my indestructible Canon 7s rangefinder (both circa 1968). Shooting color—all I do now—the Canon produces rich and deep transparencies that somehow possess the enduring look of old-time black and white. In fact, most of my compact Canon RF lenses perform similarly. Must have been a design philosophy back then. Many of today's lenses seem oddly cold and calculating by comparison.

Jim Hughes with his Retina IIa. Note the Leitz 1:1 bright frame finder. Blackberry photo by Peter Smith.

Brings to mind Ralph Gibson's comments the other day regarding books (which I agree with, no surprise). I've known Ralph since he arrived in my office at Camera 35 with a box full of prints under his arm and a plan to self-publish them in a book. He wanted a portfolio in the magazine to help make it happen, and I was more than happy to oblige (as I was later, with Larry Clark's Tulsa, at Ralph's suggestion). Ralph is, by the way, one of the smartest, most articulate photographers I've had the pleasure to work with. Even then, he thought of the photo book as a distinct art form; books offered the ability to pair images on facing pages, he said, expanding and deepening their meaning, which can't be done as effectively in exhibits (or today, on the web). "A less ephemeral experience," I think his words were regarding photographs in books.

I also agree with Ralph's comparison of digital versus film. When I did the Ernst Haas in Black and White book, the publisher, Bulfinch, wanted the reproductions be be made from digital tri-tone scans, the newest and "best" process in 1992 (these days, we would be talking Quad-tones, or maybe Octo-tones!). I wanted the reproductions to be made in old fashioned offset-lithography duo-tone, with the plates made from film produced optically in one of those giant room-sized repro cameras on tracks. I thought the look of the latter would be a better match for Ernst's B&W photographs, most of which were made in the '40s, '50s and '60s with Rolleis and Leicas. So the publisher—reluctantly and at no little expense—did a test, running both the old and new technologies on a sampling of prints. When we spread out the press proofs for comparison, the decision was clear: the digital scans seemed to cause ink to float more on the surface of the paper; done that way, Ernst’s images had less depth and were overly-sharp at the edges of things, imparting a harsh tonality he never envisioned. I wanted the ink to be absorbed by the paper more. The differences were subtle, but real. Low-tech won, expensive and labor-intensive though the production may have been. (Of course, this may go a long way toward explaining why the book has never been reissued, turning it into a hard-to-find collector’s item.)

Given digital's relatively rapid ascendancy, it can come as no surprise that today, virtually all books—pictures, words, whatever—are made using new technologies whose rough edges presumably have been mostly smoothed out since 1992. Scanning and the ability to create digital files can rightly be thought of as having brought about the democratization of publishing, a good thing if ever there was one.

And as Ralph noted in his email to TOP, "the book will surely prevail." Consider the volume currently in my hands. Photography Unplugged (2009: Rocky Nook, Santa Barbara, CA—here's the U.K. link), is its title—not a little ironic in the digital era. This handsome production, a 200-page, 50-year retrospective of German travel photographer and university professor Harald Mante, is a paean to Kodachrome, his film of choice for both personal and professional work. "Paean"—the word itself is ironic, considering that this first commercially viable color film was primarily developed by Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, an unlikely pair of classical musicians and amateur photographers, in the mid-1930s.

The two Leopolds—"Man and God," as they were called at Kodak—figured out how to incorporate RGB dye couplers into the processing chemicals, rather than the film itself as with the now far-simpler to process E-6 films, using a very complex infusion method that soon utilized an equally complex selective reexposure on what was essentially black-and-white film stock. From its beginning, Kodachrome has required very sophisticated processing at full-fledged labs. But the end result was spectacular: since the color was not built into the film but added later, actually displacing silver, emulsion layers could be significantly thinner, allowing for reduced light dispersion and superior sharpness. According to my 1939 edition of Color in Photography, by Ivan Dmitri, Kodachrome was manufactured in its early years with an ASA speed of 8. Not that long ago it was available in E.I.s of 25, 64 and 200. The slower versions offered a grain structure so fine as to be virtually invisible.

1932 Lincoln Cabriolet, Rockport, Me. Camera: Kodak Retina IIa. Film: Kodachrome 64. © 2001 by Jim Hughes.

Little wonder magazines such as National Geographic and Holiday for many years mandated its use by its photographers. Little wonder photographers such as Sam Abell, Costa Manos, Douglas Faulkner, Jay Maisel, Ernst Haas—not to mention Harald Mante, and yours truly—gravitated to it. But Kodachrome’s complexity was its undoing. Where once there were labs throughout the world working around the clock, slowly but surely the equipment wore out. In the face of a waning markets and disappearing profits, production lines were not rebuilt or replaced. Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, stands alone today as the processor of last resort. And when Kodak announced last year it was ceasing production of K-64, the venerable film’s last surviving embodiment, Dwayne's, with more than a little regret, said it would shut down its K-14 processing line at the end of this year.

I had never heard of Harald Mante, or seen any examples of his impressive body of work, until Mike, knowing my connection to Kodachrome, had Mante’s book sent to me. It was a revelation (and a little like looking in a mirror, despite some clear differences in the ways we see). His editor and publisher (and clearly old friend and admirer), Gerhard Rossbach, wrote in his forward: "The idea for this book developed during numerous conversations with Harald Mante about the need to set a counterpoint to the increasing 'homophony' that modern, digital photographic processes produce. Here, we want to show you Harald Mante's work in its purest form, without the aid of computers or Photoshop. In other words: what you see here is Harald Mante unplugged, with each original, unprocessed image showing the moment exactly as Harald Mante saw it through the viewfinder of his camera."

In a brief statement, "Goodbye Kodachrome," Mante himself says, "Kodachrome was the first slide film I ever used, and [has] remained my staple for decades." His book, he notes, is "...a perfect way for me to say 'Goodbye' and 'Thank You' to this famous film!"

1956 Red Chevrolet Convertible, Rockport, Me. Camera: Kodak Retina IIa. Film: Kodachrome 64. © 2006 by Jim Hughes.

I have just loaded my final roll into the Retina, appropriate since it was probably the Kodak camera line that benefitted most over the years from Kodachrome's original popularity. While I shoot, I will also be trying to figure out how I will ever match Kodachrome's qualities: that deep, liquid color, those cool, muted shadows, that wonderful sharpness, the absolute clarity, the three-dimensional look and feel I've learned to see and capture. For me, rating K-64 at 100 and exposing for the highlights has become second nature. Like Harald, for 50 years I have visualized my pictures in Kodachrome color. Now I’ll have to learn new ways to see.

Jim

Both Kodachrome illustrations are from Jim Hughes' American Classics Series.

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Readers' Rambles

Tyler Monson ran across this in the picture-frame aisle at Target. "Obviously a Nikon F (Photomic T) but note the position of the model's finger—on the top of the shutter advance lever and not the shutter release next to it! Thought it might amuse you." Always. Prop-meisters, do thy homework!

-

Mark Kinsman made it down to the opening of the big Eggleston show at the Art Institute of Chicago. While waiting in line to get his copy of William Eggleston's Guide autographed, he took this shot of Eggleston signing a picture. The show runs until May 23 in the new Modern Wing, and I will definitely be going.

If you don't have the Guide, you ought to. Love it or hate it (and I'll warn you, there are those who hate it), it's one of the two or three dozen most important and influential photography books of the past sixty years. When you limit the category to photography in color, it moves into the top dozen. Eggleston, the apotheosis of the snapshot, edited by Szarkowski, the most astute and astringent of art photography's connoisseurs. A happy confluence and one of those books I treasure. The original is worth $400 now, give or take, but the "facsimile" edition is just as good to look at, and you can buy yours clean and new and untouched, for now.

Mike
(Thanks to Tyler and Mark)

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Eh Canada

I spent the entire weekend watching the Olympics. I've got that kind of shell-shocked, glazed-eyed, outside-the-body feeling you get when you watch way too much TV—a feeling like you've just slept for 20 hours straight and simultaneously ate too much junk food.

I even watched the closing ceremonies. Had to, because I'm a Neil Young fan.

I try my best to go along and get along with all the rest of the humans, but I'm just not the guy for closing ceremonies. It's like being trapped in a Busby Berkeley hell. Big, glamorous gala spectacles always make me antsy for the exits even though I'm not actually there.

I know some people love that stuff...right? They do, don't they? We're not all just putting up with it, wishing we were someplace else, are we? Reassure me.

They did finally get down to the old folkie singing "Candle in the Wind"—er, sorry, "Long May You Run" (which was actually written as a paean to a car, but whatever), and then they extinguished the Olympic flames...and it's over, right? Done? No. Then they have to kill three more hours with "prominent" Canadians doing schtick about what it means to be Canadian.

Is Former Captain Kirk really one of the Most Famous Canadians? Really? They couldn't get Jane Siberry? Or Fawnia Mondey? Where the heck was Paul Schaeffer? He's from Thunder Bay.

It wasn't actually three more hours. Just felt like it.

I really like Canadians, though. Something about the north—people in Wisconsin are really nice, and people in Minnesota are really nice, but Canadians are the same way. In fact, maybe they're even nicer: did you catch Tom Brokaw's feature about the people of Gander taking care of the "plane people" after 9/11? That's Canada for you, right there.

That an an all-time Winter Olympics record 14 gold medals.

Tinker, tinker in my mind
I always have a lot of questions. Do you always have to root for your own country? I rooted for the Kostelics because of our friend Vlatko. I admit I was kind of rooting for the Canadian Hockey team, too. It's their sport, you know? It seemed fitting they should win. (I did feel guilty for rooting for them after seeing how crushed the American team was by losing, at least.) Great game, too—second best in Olympic history, maybe even. I love it when people say things like that. Like I would have any idea. I don't even watch hockey.

I have some problems watching sports, actually. For one thing, I have this tendency to start imagining how the sports could be improved. For instance, to depart from the Winter Olympics for a sec, I'm completely convinced that basketball should be played in 15 minute periods, with each game being best three out of five periods. Think about it—all the action and suspense in close basketball games is at the end. So, make more "ends." Blowouts could end early, after only 45 minutes, and in the case of closely matched teams, fans would get an extra 15 minutes for their money. Big improvement.

At least basketball has a decent amount of scoring, though. That's a problem for hockey. Where hockey is concerned, I think I have a fix: I think they should enlarge the goal just a little. Six inches, maybe. It's just too hard to score, so you have these amazing, physical, swirling, constant-action games...with all the scoring intensity of a 6-6 tie in a football game. It's just too hard to make a goal, too arbitrary, too low-scoring. (How can you even tell when a hockey game is low-scoring? When it's tied at zero? The scoring in curling is more scintillating.) I'm not saying make the goal into a soccer goal; I'm just saying make it a little harder to tend the goal, and a little easier to score. It would greatly improve the game. 

Of course, you can't actually change sports, even if it would improve them, because then it renders all the past statistics inconsistent with current statistics, and people who love statistics would lose their will to live.

You could do it in the Olympics, though. Maybe I'll start a movement toward "Olympic rules" in hockey—one tournament every four years with a six-inches-larger goal.

I'll give that one a '10'
The other problem I have with the winter Olympics is this. Some "sports" are dependent on some panel of anonymous experts sitting off to the side who get to decide who wins. Everybody says that. But I'll go one better and look at it from the other direction—why is it that some sports are so totally dependent on subjective judging, but, as soon as a contest has an objective measure to go by, all considerations of style get thrown out the window? In my opinion, there are lots of Olympic events that should have two gold medals—one for the objective measurement, whatever it is—speed, distance—and one for style. The big skiing contests should have two golds—one for who gets to the bottom first, the other one for who gets there the prettiest. Case in point: Lindsey Vonn won the downhill, but in my world, Julia Mancuso would have gotten a gold for style. Vonn uses men's skis and she's stronger, so she goes faster. Fair enough. Gold for her. But Mancuso's run was a thing of beauty—cleaner and more elegant, to my uneducated eye. Where are those darn figure skating judges when you need 'em?

Speaking of figure skating, that's one I missed—Kim Yu-Na. I saw her post-competition exhibition, and it was clearly special, but I haven't seen her medal-winning performance yet.

Speaking of curling, I demand a Curling-Snowboarding Super Combined.

Finally, every two years I need somebody to remind me of something: I like the Olympics. It appears that two years is always just long enough for me to completely forget that. It never fails—every time the Olympics comes up, I think, pfah, who cares, whatever—goodie for people who like that sort of stuff. Then, by the end, I'm totally addicted and I go into withdrawal after the closing ceremonies. I need to somehow remember that I'm one of those people who like the Olympics.

Maybe in 2014 I'll remember. I'll try.

Oh, and—Canada? Thank you!

Mike

P.S. I also got a lot of good work done on my book project. I put in only about ten hours between Thursday and Sunday, but I think it was a crucial ten hours—the project had been stalled and it needed a little kick-start. I got it reformatted, which I'd been procrastinating over, and I expanded the initial page count considerably. Once I get cruising on it it should just be a matter of sticking to it and putting in maybe an hour a day. I hope I'll be able to keep it going from now until it's finally finished.

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