The Online Photographer

What Does It Take to Be a Good Printer?

By Ctein

One of the interesting (because it was unexpected) results of the educational print offer of a few weeks back was that people thought I invoked extraordinary measures to come up with a good print of that photograph. Not even close. I worked with a level of care and attention to detail and meticulousness that most people wouldn't muster, but that's a different thing. In that respect, I am unusual, and that's why I get paid for what I do.

But the measures themselves had nothing extraordinary about them. They're just the kind of things that any more-than-routine printer should be doing.

Good printing is not accomplished merely by getting curves and color balance and saturation correct. That's basic, like figuring out the right exposure and paper grade (or filter pack) in the darkroom.

One step above that is local tone correction—dodging and burning in. It's always amazed me (not in a good way) how many printers don't do that, in the darkroom or out. The majority of photographs I've printed over the past 40 years, and that's many thousands, have been improved by some amount of local correction. Frequently, it's very slight and very subtle. But it's not the norm for a print to be better with none at all.

If you don't have that under your control, you're not even a competent printer. If you are, you're competent. You can be trusted to turn out a good journeyman print.

Note: In each of the following pairs of photographs, the "before" version is what I get from my default settings for Adobe Camera Raw prior to making any adjustments to the photograph. The "after" version is what I use to make my finished prints; it isn't optimized for viewing at small resolution on a screen, but you'll get the idea. To put it another way, the "before version" is what the camera saw, and the "after" version is what I saw when I made the photograph—and what I wanted in a print.

Before (above) and after (below): The most important change to this photograph was a lot of dodging and burning in. Human beings are really good at ignoring large-scale variations in brightness that cameras see all too clearly.

What is it take to move beyond that level? Just as in the darkroom, it requires some real understanding of the limitations and quirks of the media (both film/sensor and print) you're working with. That leads me to three tools that are part of my standard printmaking toolkit. Some variation on these ought to be part of yours.

1. Local contrast enhancement. Simply, you can do it with a mild dose of unsharp masking or you can do it in a much more sophisticated way with plug-ins like Photo Wiz's ContrastMaster. What you can't get away with is not doing it. Digital prints tend to come out flat, with poor separation of fine and subtle tonal differences. I don't know why, but I've observed it to be broadly true. The delicate nuances that are there in the original file, whether it comes from a digital camera or a film scan, don't get rendered well in the print. You need to make that tonal separation stronger in the file or the print will look duller than it should.

Before (above) and after (below): The near-setting sun produced a grazing light that brought out wonderful textures in the building and provided great contrast in tone and color between the building in the sky. I made adjustments that emphasized sharpness and fine tonal detail.

2. Deconvolution sharpening. Simply, there's Smart Sharpen in Photoshop, with a radius of a few tenths of the pixel and the percentage set to taste. Complexly, any of several plug-ins, like Topaz Lab's InFocus. If you're trying to produce a digital photograph with the best and most nicely-rendered fine detail, and you're using a Bayer array camera, this is pretty much a must. (Can't speak to non-Bayer array cameras; never printed from them.) There is a genuine improvement in sharpness and fine detail buried in those Raw files that deconvolution sharpening can dig out.

3. Noise reduction. It's the counterbalance to the previous two tools. Both local enhancement and sharpening increase noise at the same time they improve fine detail, gradation, and texture. Noise reduction, on the other hand, tends to suppress precisely those image attributes. Many digital files (and film scans) are improved by just a whisper of noise reduction, no matter how great the camera is. A lot more digital files need it when local enhancement or sharpening are coming into play.

Before (above) and after (below): To turn this photograph from what the camera saw into what I saw, I needed a certain amount of dodging and burning in but far more important was bringing up the large-scale tonal variations so that they would separate and print well.

Combining all three of these in different measures gives you broad control over the characteristics image. You can get reduced noise with no visible sacrifice of fine detail and texture. Or, you can get substantially improved sharpness and detail with no significant increase in noise. Or, you can split the difference and get a photograph that has lower noise and better sharpness at the same time.

Before (above) and after (below): This photograph got "the works"; everything in my basic toolkit was important to making this photograph work as a print: Proper dodging and burning in, local contrast enhancement to bring out the gorgeous ripples in the water I had seen, proper sharpening to bring out the details in the seals and make them stand out against the water, and noise reduction to get rid of the increased noise from the previous operations.

None of this is heroic; none of it is exceptional. It's the norm for good digital printing.

No mincing of words: this is what it takes to be better than run-of-the-mill.

Ctein

Ctein's weekly column, which usually appears on Wednesdays, is a day late this week through no fault of his own.

[Note that the illustrations are only approximations. Real corrections would have to take size into account, as well as the big jump between screen and paper, and the TypePad blogging software has an effect on how illustrations look that is impossible to compensate for precisely. Finally, your monitor and its calibration might change what you're seeing relative to what Ctein—or anyone else—is seeing. —MJ]

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Featured Comment by Richard Tugwell: "I bought one of Charlie Cramer's prints from TOP a while back—quite beautiful. I see he has an interesting and in-depth article on tonal adjustments using Lightroom 4 over at The Luminous-Landscape."

Featured Comment by Ned: "In my opinion this is an area where books, videos and other training techniques just don't cut it. I don't even know what a good print looks like, which is why I purchased Ctien's Micro 4/3 print. I don't like to print because I know it will be a piece of crap."

Mike replies: Sounds like you might be a candidte to become a client of a custom printer. Don't forget that there are numerous photographers, now and in history—including some of the greats—who let other people print their pictures for them. It's how Ctein makes his living. Perhaps his best-known client was the late rock-and-roll photographer Jim Marshall, but he prints for many other clients as well, some of whom are quite famous. Years ago I made my living as a custom printer too—and many of my clients at the time never made their own prints.

Remember this picture?

It was taken by Peter Turnley at Voja Mitrovic's retirement party, and shows Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka good-naturedly begging Voja not to retire.

Battle Royale (But It's Not What You Think)

Special effects c. 1954

Yep, it's yet another film vs. digital brouhaha—but not in the way we're used to. The Atlantic (née The Atlantic Monthly) has published an excellent article by Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo called "At the Summer Box Office, a Battle Between Two Ways of Filming." In the words of my director friend Bob Burnettt, it's a "very interesting look at the feature world's inner turmoil."

Of course, I see it a little more globally—as just one facet of a broader sea-change in movies that's been ongoing for a couple of decades now. When I think of movies, I have in mind a very classic notion of what that means—live actors, in costumes, on sets, performing written screenplays, being lit by lighting directors and filmed with cameras by cinematographers. I saw John Patrick Shanley's film Doubt last night, and it was just the sort of movie I like—a coherent drama with some actual intellectual content centered around not just one but four superb acting performances. If you wonder why Meryl Streep is one of the cinema's greatest actresses—I mean in its entire history—see Doubt. And yet, for her 11 minutes or so of screen time, Viola Davis more than matches her. As a bonus, it turns out it was photographed by my favorite current cinematographer, Roger Deakins. I've actually actually bought certain DVDs, such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, just because he was the cinematographer; and I got Doubt not even knowing. As I say, a bonus.

It did cross my mind that many movies no longer rely on, or even require, performances by actors—and many more don't require their actors to be playing believable human beings. They might be playing characters adapted from cartoons or old TV series, or aliens, or exaggerated clichés, or that most celebrated denizen of our culture's many highly mannered favored plot devices, the serial killer. (I am eye-rollingly fed up with serial killers.) And we live in the age of special effects. Many movies are almost entirely special effects now, or special effects plus fighting, killing, shooting, explosions, or various other species of violence or sadism. In the era prior to my childhood, say the 1950s, special effects were crude and limited, and often campy or ludicrous because of it. I can't help but see them that way still: I can't watch any of the Batman films, for instance, with any greater "willing suspension of disbelief" than I experience watching a cartoon. Maybe a little less, even. Current special-effects-based cinema strikes me as being as mannered, ritualistic and codified as, say, Noh theater, and public favorites at the movies seem to occupy some space on a spectrum between juvenile and puerile. It's made me suspicious and wary even of fantastical elements in films I should accept.

Without going into it any further (and risking pissing people off), I'll just say I think the film vs. digital situation in feature films is part of a larger cultural battle—that neither side really needs to "win." I don't mind that other people get Avatar and The Avengers; do they really need to mind that I get The King's Speech and Winter's Bone? (You can thank me for not making a bad pun just there about throwing us traditionalists a bone.)

A worthwhile article, in any case. Might even have something to do with still photography, on some tangent or other, although I'm not going to stretch it that far myself.

Mike

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Featured [partial] Comment by CK Dexter Haven: "You seem to be at the far end of a 'fantasy<—>reality' scale. I'm glad to be more in the center of that scale, but my lines of demarcation don't seem to be so solidly set. I agree, to use your examples, that Winter's Bone is a far more compelling film than The Avengers. I have zero interest in seeing The Avengers. My reason, when recently asked, was that I just don't like 'all those digital effects.' Yet, at the same time, I couldn't be more excited to see Prometheus. I'm fully aware that it will be no less effects-laden than The Avengers. But, somehow, sci-fi, for me, is a different animal, when done right, and the details and nuance make the difference.

"The other thing is that I seemed to have embraced 'effects' more back in 'the day,' when the starships and planets and explosions were real. Real models, rather than digital renderings. There's nothing less involving than seeing computer images fight and explode. It is, as you said, and as I've been used to saying, like watching a cartoon. Which brings me back again to the exceptions. When they're done right, by people with that sort of sensitivity, they work."

Featured Comment by Ross Chambers: "I've been out of the motion picture industry for too long to really comment on current technologies, but even 15–20 years ago CGI was used on probably every film where it could extend the toolbox of the director/cinematographer or save money. The 'glass shot' and the travelling matte were history (thank goodness) and enormous budgetary savings were made. And I doubt very much that any film stalwart noticed. Unfortunately some motion picture creators have overused the possibilities of digital technology, but that type of exploitation was ever so—the medium did start in sideshow alley, not the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Fortunately some reined in the razzle dazzle beast and managed to make some genuine works of art, even using CGI artistically."

Featured Comment by richardplondon: "'Oscar-worthiness' often turns out just as formulaic as the most face-palmingly derivative and incoherent summer blockbuster—which at least has some enthusiasm going for it. But the last Oscar panel did well to select the film A Separation in its foreign category. Recommended—its poetry and feeling are, refreshingly, those of life as lived: not, those of the scriptwriting correspondence course. Another nod for the films of Mike Leigh; they can sometimes seem contrived in their surface impression, but with such a powerful, unexpected undertow.... The film-making approach is quite unusual, too."

Featured Comment by Andrew Molitor: "As a side note, something that interests me is that while we're very very close to being able to simply delete physical actors and render them convincingly in digital, we cannot do the same with voices. A synthetic, animated, and credible image of an actor is doable. A synthetic, credible, voice seems to not be at this point."

Mike replies: I've been making your first point for some time, and everybody always pooh-poohs me. But I think it's inevitable. There was a TV series on in the U.S. called "King of the Hill" that basically used animation to replace actors, but the action and story lines were naturalistic enough that it could have been a conventional sitcom with human actors—it was not cartoonish in that sense. The animations juse moved around in coherent space and spoke to each other and did entirely the kinds of things that real humans do. When you think of it, most actors on the screen are symbols, and audiences don't demand that the symbols be purely convincing to be meaningful to them. How else could audiences care about E.T. or Shrek?

And, even in films with human actors, they often aren't purely convincing as humans. Not only is there a wide gap between actors acting a part and real people photographed in documentaries—is there anyone who doesn't know within about five seconds which they're watching?—I also have a particular problem in that I tend to see actors and not characters. Even good actors sometimes don't get around this for me. One of the great things about Doubt was that I was seeing Sister Aloysius, not Meryl Streep. (Usually, I see Meryl Streep.)

Just look at how wonderful the sophisticated Pixar animantions are. Then look at the costs and limitations of human actors...they can charge lots of money, they have to be insured, they can get ill or injured during filming, they have their own ideas about how they want the part to be played, and they can be prima donnas and be late to the set and so forth. (On the good side, they can be dispatched to the talk show circuit to talk up the movie.) When computer rendering becomes easy, it will have none of those downsides. I think it's just inevitable that we'll see more and more screen entertainment with non-human actors. Of course, real acting performances—like Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius in Doubt—can never be replaced, because they require acting genius.

Featured Comment by Jeffrey Lee: "It's strange that in a medium that is so visually oriented, there seems to be such widespread failure to appreciate how much a story can be told through the photography of the story. My two favorites of late in this regard are Steven Soderbergh and Chris Manley. They go beyond just simply presenting the action in front of the camera. They are able to construct images using composition, colour, and tone that speak to the written storyline."

Mike replies: That's a fascinating issue, isn't it? And very deep, I think. The great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa credited his early fascination with silent films with his lifelong ability to convey significant story meaning without words. Many of his movies have very emotional scenes without any form of speech.

Featured Comment by John Banister: "I'm reminded of some words written by Asimov, recounting an old story about Beethoven and Goethe. They were walking along together and frequently encountering expressions of praise from those passing by. Goethe expressed discomfort at this, and Beethoven told him not to worry because—"I am sure that all the accolades are for me." Asimov told a friend that he thought Beethoven was correct to think he was the greater artist because one has to translate Goethe.

"I encountered somewhere the notion that the lack of necessity of the dialogue in many movies relates to international sales. There are more viewers around the world who appreciate not needing the words than there are here who are tired of disposable dialog. I've watched a fair number of movies in the company of people who didn't speak the language and seen them encourage their friends to watch the ones where the story could be followed without needing an understanding of what was spoken.

"While I see action movies with disposable dialog, I have a hard time considering them to be greater art. But I do cut them some extra slack when I consider that the disposable nature of the dialog may well be by design."

Featured Comment by Avi Joshi: "I work in visual effects and so in a way I enjoy watching some of the ridiculous fx-laden summer blockbusters. But only if it's accompanied by a half-decent story. Ultimately that is king. If there's no story, I'm not parting with my money.

"Vfx artists slog to make that movie magic happen. To put things in perspective, I worked on a show last year where a 15-minute intro sequence to a summer movie took a team of 75 artists over 100,000 hours clocked in. So I hate it when so much effort is put into a movie with not much else to prop it up. Hence I tend to avoid movies by Michael Bay.

"Black Swan was a great example of some wickedly cool effects, seamlessly blended in. A great story, fantastic performances, 16mm film and a little CG to help sell it all.
With regards to a shooting film or digital, I know of a few filmmakers who have chosen to shoot film recently mainly because they were uncertain whether film would be around much longer. Also the Arri Alexa seems to have won over a lot of DoP's who were against digital (Deakins included).

"I hope it continues with an even divide of people shooting film and digital. Both have their merits and both have their pitfalls. And I can hope that there will continue to be good use of Vfx in well written/executed dramas. In either case it keeps me employed."

Olympus E-M5 First Notes (vs. NEX-7 and E-P3)

Here's a Canon TLb next to the Olympus E-M5. I didn't have an Olympus OM body handy, but I think this still gives a good estimate of how relatively
small everyday SLR bodies used to be.

By Ken Tanaka

So you own (or want) a Sony NEX-7 or an Olympus Pen E-P3 but your eye has begun wandering over to that cute little Olympus OM-D E-M5 that's just come onto the market? I think you're in good company.

Mike is planning a more comprehensive article on the Olympus E-M5 in the future. But meanwhile I thought some TOP readers might appreciate notes comparing the E-M5 to the NEX-7 and E-P3. Mind you, these are just notes—not a comprehensive review or an analysis. Just a list of my own early comparative observations that I've not found elsewhere and that you might find interesting. So here goes.

Feeling and size
Honestly, right out of the box the E-P3 reminded me a bit of the little Olympus E-420 which I owned briefly. It's about the same size, although of different proportions.

The E-M5 has a very solidly-built feeling very similar to the E-P3. The NEX-7's in-hand feeling is not really comparable due to its rather minimalist, low-mass design. Although the E-M5 not heavy, it has a nice in-hand heft.

As you can see, the three cameras are quite close in size. The E-P3 and E-M5 are closest in profile, although the latter is just a bit thicker. With its integrated electronic viewfinder (EVF), the E-M5 is shorter and sleeker than the E-P3 plus VF-2 electronic viewfinder configuration. The NEX-7 is certainly the sleekest completely integrated design among the three cameras.

Shutter
I'm not a shutter sound fetishist. But the E-M5 shutter's lovely, soft, quiet thunk is really worth noting. (Kirk Tuck suggested that it may be similar to the sound/feel of a Bentley's door closing. Yup, that's close!) Much softer and quieter than the E-P3's clack. Also softer than the NEX-7's (different) clack. Very gentle but reassuring vibration in-hand. Very discreet sound. Love it.

Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) and LCD
Olympus's VF-2 viewfinder, offered as an accessory on the E-P2/P3, has been my favorite EVF to date. It's bright and presents a tonally rich image. Sony's NEX viewfinder is bright and detailed but is very harsh and contrasty. So I was delighted to find that the E-M5's EVF has the same characteristics as the VF-2. It's excellent.

It's also worth noting that the E-M5's viewfinder is much easier to use when wearing eyeglasses. The NEX-7's viewfinder disengages unless you keep your eye nearly pressed to the cup. The E-M5's viewfinder sensor is much more lenient and a joy to use with glasses. Well done Oly!

The LCD panels of the NEX-7 and E-M5 are basically identical in operational performance and function. Both are about the same size, both tilt up 90 degrees and down approximately 45 degrees, with similar hinge designs. The NEX-7's LCD is thinner and easier to manipulate quickly with just a finger. The E-M5's LCD is much stiffer and wants you to first flip the top edge out before lifting the bottom edge. Some might prefer the E-M5's LCD for being a design less prone to accidental pop-outs.

The E-M5's LCD in "faux Rolleiflex" position versus the
NEX-7 in the same position.

But one area in which the two LCDs differ is touch-sensitive operation. The E-M5 shares the E-P3's iPhone-like touch-sensitive screen. When enabled, it lets you select focus point, swipe through image previews, and even focus and shoot with just a tap. With the E-M5's tilting screen you can basically keep the camera at waist level and merely glance/tap to shoot. It's an addictive and effective 21st-century design feature.

Although the NEX-5n featured a similar touch-sensitive LCD, the NEX-7 does not. I was disappointed by this omission, even though it was never as widely functional as Olympus's design.

Nits
Power switch: The E-M5's power switch is a mechanical lever similar to the design found on Canon's 1D series, rather than the E-P3's electronic button. Frankly I've found it to be an awkward design choice.

The rubber thumb bumper (say that three times fast) is an excellent design detail for secure grip, not found on the other cameras.

The E-M5's "Super Control Panel" (SCP) consolidates the most often needed settings into a single lcd screen matrix enabling you to quickly find basic settings.

Spongy buttons: The E-M5's control buttons are small and spongy, lacking tactile feedback. This is rather disappointing design choice. While no cameras have large buttons today, they do generally offer tactile feedback when pressed.

The E-M5 features a new battery, the BLN-1. Really? Why couldn't it have used the same battery as the E-P3? Of course, as I write this, extra BLN-1 batteries are nowhere to be found.

While I'm talking about power, why in the world does Olympus continue to offer a corded-only battery charger?

Image quality
I'll leave this to real reviewers. But I have been extremely impressed with the first images coming out of this camera. A bit more detailed and refined than the E-P3 but perhaps not in quite the same league with the larger sensor of the NEX-7. Neutral JPEGs have somewhat the same warm, magenta appearance as those from the E-P3 (and E-P2) but perhaps a bit less so to my eye.

Ken

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Featured Comment by Ken White: "The more I use the E-M5, the more impressed I am with how competent it is as a complete package. This weekend being Mothers Day, I had several relatives over who turned out to be perfect victims for some Strobist-style portraits.

"I shot the EM-5 45mm side-by-side with my Canon 60D 85mm ƒ/1.8. Both did very well in terms of image output, with the 60D being slightly better. The big difference for me came down to handling and focusing. Here the EM-5 clearly won the day. It is light and responsive. A real joy to use.

"By comparison the 60D was heavy and hard to handle. It was not bad, but definitely not as easy to use or responsive as the little Olympus. Sometimes a piece of equipment just feels right in your hand. For me the EM-5 is right."

Featured Comment by GH: "Thanks for the insights, Ken. For what it's worth, a little tip with the NEX-7's EVF is to set your Creative Style to Neutral or Portrait and set contrast to –3, and it'll open up the EVF's contrast quite a bit. Of course, this will affect your JPEG output, but, assuming you're a Raw shooter, this won't matter."

[The following two comments came in right next to each other. Click the image for a somewhat larger (more readable) version. The screenshot is from the comment moderation pane. I just thought it was kinda funny that they both opened with the exact same expression but had opposite opinions. —MJ]

Featured Comment by Doug Reilly: "Finally, after all these years, the potential of 4/3 and Micro 4/3 has been realized. That's the way I feel when I pick up the E-M5 with the Panasonic 14mm and 20mm lenses."

Featured Comment by almostinfamous: "Image stabilization is among the best I have used, and it positively shines while shooting videos. Panning, especially, is smooth as silk. Oh, but the buttons—more like foam than sponge methinks—really cheesed me off and made it feel more like a toy than the otherwise solid camera it is."

Featured Comment by Liv: "I got one for my birthday last week. I was really excited to learn to use it in manual. (I had an entry level Nikon DSLR—I think it was a D3000 but I can't really remember—which was stolen when I was overseas before I got to learning much about it. I've been hanging out for something like this to be invented because I always felt that the Nikon was too big).

"My problem is this—when you change the settings, it shows up straight away on the screen and in the viewfinder. So while my photos are coming out great I don't think I'm learning anything, just twisting dials until it looks how I want it to.

"So probably not an issue for most people here but as a 20-year-old just starting out, this has been my only disappointment.

"I still love it though!"

Featured Comment by Dan: "Wondering if the button tactility was compromised by the weatherproofing—rubber gaskets, after all...."

Featured [partial] Comment by Gaspar Heurtley: "Some want bigger sensors, some want more DR, some want B&W only—all I want is a camera with technology from the future and handling from the past."

(Weekend) Update

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Open Mike: Nefarious Blogger Confesses

I get accused a lot.

So I think I should probably confess.

As a blogger whose sole reason for existence is to entertain a far-flung and widely divergent audience of individuals, not every one of whom agrees with everything I say in every particular, I regularly get accused of having distorted views. I get accused of having a male perspective, or a white perspective, or an American perspective, or a Western perspective, or a liberal perspective, or a Midwestern perspective, or the perspective of a person whose youth is a fond and receding image in an ever-increasingly rose-tinted rearview mirror. Usually, such accusations are couched in terms of extreme umbrage, as if it is obvious that I would seize every effort to avoid appearing to be those things if only my accusers could somehow make me realize that I was coming across that way.

But it's really no use trying to hide: it's true—all true. I am all those things. I am a male American Caucasian, smack-dab in the middle of middle age*, entirely or almost entirely of Western European descent. Religiously, I'm a nonbeliever, although my heritage is Protestant Christian. I was born in Indiana and live in Wisconsin, so I'm a Midwesterner. Personally, i.e. in terms of my style and behavior, I'm quite conservative, although politically I'm a little to the left of liberal—even though I come from a long line of Republicans. I'm middle-class, although I'm descended from upper-class forebears and have relatives who either belong to that class or stoutly sympathize with its interests. I'm am somewhat bigoted against people who can't or won't use English well, but probably only because I overvalue what I myself am good at and care about (a common human trait). On the other hand, I am jealous of those who are bilingual or better. Oddly, given my predilections and inclinations, I am not well educated—I do not hold an academic Bachelor's degree (my highest degree is a BFA in Photography). I am a persistent autodidact, however, if I may immodestly say so (albeit with some of the shortcomings that that implies), and consider myself fairly well read, compared to the general population.

Not all of these things are immutable, being variously rather more or rather less fixed, but they all are the case.

For these reasons, it's really quite unreasonable for people to expect me to have the perspective of, say, an impoverished, religiously devout, right-wing female Ph.D. of color from the Third World who would sooner trod hot coals than crack a book. Or some other type of person that I don't happen to be. If that is intolerable to anyone, I can only remind them that they are the masters of their own courses and captains of their own browsers; the 'Net is broad, and contains multitudes.

Toleration
The word "intolerable," reminds me that I also got accused recently of being intolerant. That is a grave charge in today's world, where toleration is considered a cardinal virtue, and when the charge was hurled in my face I took exception, at first; but then I examined it, and concluded that it, too, sadly, is true: I'm intolerant of greed, cruelty (cruelty especially), selfishness, unkindness, narcissism, brutality, immorality, Ford Expeditions, noise pollution, Sarah Palin, and superstition and willful ignorance, to name just a few of many things. I am quite an intolerant fellow, when you look at it that way.

And speaking of "fellow"—this is true—I once angered a reader by calling him a "fellow," which he was dead certain was an insult. (It's not, actually; but he was having no part of that.) The list of my offenses lengthens.

It's possible I am not who I would choose to be, if unlimited alternatives were merely up for choosing. I would choose to be richer, and fifteen years younger, and to have married young, and to be a writer of books. But such is life, and there are certain things that by accident or design I happen to be. I am largely stuck with them. I don't even much mind; I find myself...curiously sanguine about the situation. Perhaps I am used to myself, and accustomed to being me. Perhaps my situation could be better; then again, I'm sure it could be worse. I prefer to see it from the good side.

Or, to quote once again the hero of my extreme youth, the immortal Popeye:

I yam what I yam.

And there's an end on't.

Mike

*The DSM-IV-TR defines middle age as 45 to 65, revised upwards from the traditional definition by five years to accommodate the fact that people are now living and retaining their vigor for longer. It remains to be seen whether either of these trends will manifest in me, but I'm going with it.

"Open Mike" is a series of miscellaneous off-topic ramblings that trundle into view on Sundays.

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Featured Comment by Ed Grossman: "Each of us is unique...just like everybody else! I don't know if thinking about that makes me more tolerant, but it helps me 'let it go' when somebody's broadcasting on the crazy channel."

Featured Comment by Auntipode: "Wow! I'll be of middle age for another year. Feelin' younger than I did a few moments ago. Thanks, Mike.  :-)"

Featured Comment by Rob Graves: "You are what you are. And I prefer honesty to political correctness any day. Please keep up the honest, male, Midwestern, grammatically correct insights into your world and your views on photography and life. I may not always agree, but that is what keeps it interesting. (Aside—my father adored Popeye, and I inherited a 3' Popeye 'doll,' complete with pipe and hat. Popeye also resulted in me, aged 7, declaring that I loved spinach. Unfortunately the reality of spinach did not match my imagination.)"

Mike replies: I actually do love Spinach, and blame Popeye.

Featured Comment by Ruby: "Excellent post, clear and to the point and the sort of thing people need reminding of from time to time. Brings to mind the one you wrote about how there is such imbalance in a system where some people can afford to spend millions of dollars on a single piece of art while others can't afford food, and that offends you. That captured my feelings better than anything else ever had, until possibly today (although I am female and not a Midwesterner)."

Featured Comment by Dan: "I think it's good to explicitly acknowledge one's privilege, social background, etc., and how it affects one's perspective on the world. No suppression is required; self-awareness will do."

Featured Comment by Paul Crouse: "But have you been accused of being a Cheesehead, when you are clearly a Hoosier.  :-) "

Featured Comment by Bob Rosinsky: "My sentiments exactly. Although,I may be a shade crankier than you."

Featured Comment by Mark Walker: "Mike, your trouble is you just fly off the handle, write ill concepted, porrly grammatically uncorrected, subversive opinions that just tick the vast majority of us right off. Jeez, Mike, just calm down, I've never seen anyone get so upset over misjudged comments. Give them a break, the authors are more sensitive than you might think. Your humble and devoted audience. PS I skipped your really overlong paragraphs, but I kind of understood everything you said anyway. Bark Walker."

Featured Comment by Ann: "Am now reading Wittengstein because of your blog! Have been a fan of TOP for several years and read it most days. Not a middle aged, middle class male and don't feel an outsider at all!"

Quote o' the Day

"The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'"

—Unknown

-

(Made me laugh.)

Mike

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Featured Comment by Carsten S.

Featured Comment by Eric: "One good anecdote is worth a thousand poor experiments, though."

Featured Comment by Ben Syverson: "Check out this extensive blog post about that quote!"

Mike replies: That blog post also speaks volumes about the problems of attribution in general—attribution being something that most editors spend a lot of time on. Consider that when I post a photograph here on TOP, just to find out who it really should be credited to can occasionally be a half hour's worth of research.

MM: "As the famous inventor Thomas Edison said, 'The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you can't track down who actually said them.'"

Mike: I thought Albert Einstein said that.

Martin Schoeller for TIME

I feel just a little soiled, a little used. As we all know, the newsmagazine business isn't what it once was, and it appears likely that TIME's new cover was deliberately designed from the get-go to—forgive me—titillate.

The cover bespeaks the fecundity of woman, the sacred bond between parent and child, and a refreshing frankness about natural functions. Plus, apparently even mature adult males can't help but feel just a tad jealous of the lucky tyke.

Martin Schoeller took the cover image last weekend in a one-day shoot in which he photographed four families. The cover story is about something called "attachment parenting," about which I know nothing, except that it obviously involves not weaning babies.

Martin's agency, Vaughan Hannigan, helpfully supplied some outtakes from the sessions...

...And I, like the biologically preprogrammed entity I no doubt am, am dutifully stepping into their snare.

At least I'm not alone. Others have been writing about the attention-getting cover (I'll avoid the culture's default term, "controversial," since the controversy here is no doubt fully intended). The Chicago Tribune notes that "the cover photo has been rocketing through social media circles for more than a day, with screeds, pleas and jokes in tow. Commenters are weighing in on all sides of related issues—parental rights, child advocacy and media sensationalism, to name a few." The Los Angeles Times quotes Samir Husni, a professor at the Magazine Innovation Center of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, who says, "It's just a story about breastfeeding. Yet it stops you. It shocks you. This is in your face. And that, of course, is an editor's dream come true. Lots of people may be shocked with this cover. We live in a society that says, 'If I don't shock you, you won't pay attention to me.'"

That's their theory, anyway. Who knows if it will move magazines? (I do sort of want to buy one, just to encourage them.) And Mother's Day is Sunday, which is timely.

The cover subject is Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, of Los Angeles, and her now nearly 4-year-old son, who (just taking a wild guess) is going to be hearing about this when he's older.

Mike

(P.S. Just for the record, I personally don't think the cover picture is even the slightest bit shocking or inappropriate. As far as its subject is concerned I have no real opinion—seems to me it's up to the individual parent or parents how long to breastfeed, and even if I don't agree with their decision or wouldn't wish the same for my own child, what others decide to do is none of my business. I raised my son by myself from the time he was five days old, and I wish he could have been breastfed, at least for a while. One of my standard jokes when he was a baby was that although I'd give myself an "A" as father, I only rated a "C" as a mother—but I got marked down a whole grade point for lack of breasts. Rimshot.)

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Featured Comment by KeithB: "I preferred this slight re-wording of the cover:

[Here's the link.]

Why the M Monochrom?

Why would a digital camera have a B&W-only sensor?

Since I've already given my answer to that question, I figured the least I could do in light of Thursday's Leica news is link back to it.

And by the way, I do applaud Leica for having the courage to make this product. It has done photography a service. I wish the company success.

Mike

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At Last, A Monochrome Camera

"As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment."

—Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos

Regular readers will know that I've been calling for a monochrome digital camera since forever. Historically, there have been a few—an early one from Kodak, a monochrome medium format scientific back. Today, another one has been announced.

I figured this was coming. Evidently, God ignores my importunings but Satan attends. I'm just bitterly disappointed that it's Leica which has heard this call. Why, Lord, why? Why couldn't it have been Pentax or Canon or Nikon or Olympus or Panasonic? It's a bit like wishing for a modern Shelby Cobra-style roadster and learning that you (for only a theoretical value of "you," i.e., not I) can purchase a superb replica from Superformance in South Africa...for $80,000 sans engine.

Leica, of course (as I've also said before), is photography's "Veblen good," defined as a commodity "for which people's preference for buying them increases as their price increases, as greater price confers greater status, instead of decreasing according to the law of demand" (Wikipedia). It is absolutely the last cameramaker that I would have wanted a monochrome digital camera from. Which, of course, by the umbrella axiom, probably guaranteed that Leica would be the first company to come through.

Is it better or worse to not have something available at all, or have it "available" but out of reach?

And, is there any difference?

So today's a bad day. Of course, as Ctein failed to prove yesterday, I am (probably) not the center of the Universe. Which would mean I should shut up with my caviling and kvetching and leave others to their affairs, which do not concern me.

It is possible, after all, that some good might come of today's news. The new camera might excite discussion; those who do use the Leica M-Monochom might usefully elucidate some of its actual, non-theoretical advantages and uses compared to conversions from Bayer-array sensors, which might make its qualities and properties more clear to photographers in general; it might stimulate increased interest in the idea; and...and...

...And, of course, it's always possible that Leica's foray into the segment will inspire some more ordinary company to follow suit and offer a practical monochrome digital camera, as I've been wishing for all these years.

Oh, all right then: I still suffer from that peculiar human affliction, hope.

Mike

Here are the links for today's new Leica cameras:

Black X2
Silver X2
M-Monochrom (black only)
V-Lux 40

ADDENDUM: Obviously, I'm not being entirely serious in this post. However, here's one serious concern: it always worries me when proof of concept depends on a product that's an outlier in some other way.

For instance, I began calling for what became the mirrorless segment (large-sensor non-SLR compacts) in about 2004.  So I was greatly worried when the very first one that reached the market turned out to be the Sigma DP1. The reason was that it was an outlier product in several ways that had nothing to do with its being a large-sensor compact: it had an atypical sensor, and it was made by a company that was somewhat behind the then-current standard in terms of operability.

The problem is that if the proof-of-concept product fails, then that can count against the concept. Let's imagine that the M-Monochrom fails in the market...nobody buys it. Then any other cameramaker might say, "Well, Leica tried it, and it failed. That means it's not viable, so we're not going to try it." The problem, of course, is that the Leica monochrome might fail because it's an ~$8,000 camera, not because it's a monochrome camera. Maybe there's a market for monochrome cameras, just not for monochrome high-priced cameras. It does stand to reason that someone spending that much for a camera will want it to do what most people want their cameras to do, i.e., shoot in color. It's not the sort of expense that most people can bear for a second body, or for occasional use, or to experiment with.

As Matt notes in the Featured Comment below, a monochrome camera would be an excellent learning tool for students, too. (A case I made in my "Leica Year" posts.) But certainly not at this Leica's price.

If Nikon, say, put out a monochrome version of the D5100, for the same price as a regular D5100, and it failed in the marketplace, then, fine, it would be reasonable to conclude that no one wants a monochrome camera. But the danger is that the Leica will fail because of its price, and yet people will ascribe the failure to the wrong cause and be led to the wrong conclusion.

Thankfully, the mirrorless segment survived the danger posed by the "contaminated" proof of concept embodied by the first product to reach the market. I can only hope (seriously) that monochrome-sensor cameras will also.

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Featured Comment by Matt: "So frustrating…I feel your pain too, Mike. A commodity monochrome should be the new student camera for learning composition, tonality, and technique apart from the worries of color management. At 8000 USD for the body only, this is about as far from a student camera as one can get."

Featured Comment by Robart Roaldi: "OK, Cosina, now's the time."

Featured Comment by Harry Lime: "As usual all the talk is about resolution and sharpness, when black and white really is about exposure range and tonality. I sure hope this camera has a serious increase in dynamic range compared to the M9. Twelve to fourteen stops better be in the cards.

"But in the end it's a moot point. The camera is $8,000 and out of the reach of all but the very wealthy, or well established photographers who can recoup an investment for such a specialized tool.

"The great irony of course is that nearly all of Leica's beloved Magnum photographers could not have afforded an M9 for most of their careers, and even today, buying the minimum of two bodies for serious work would be a financial challenge for most of them.

"People will counter that Leica has always been expensive, and of course this is very true. But that gap has widened to the same proportion that nowadays separate the 99% from the 1%. When I bought my first Leica and lens almost 15 years ago, it did not cost as much as a new compact car."

Mike replies: "...Black and white really is about exposure range and tonality." Amen. That's another risk of a vanguard product: that it will not provide what it ought to provide, which also skews analysis of the concept's viability. That has happened many times in industrial history. Of course it's too early to evaluate the M-Monochrom.

As far as prices are concerned, I would like to see an actual comparison of equivalent Nikons or Canons and Leicas in, say, 1955, 1965, and 1975. I remember hearing that in the 1970s Leicas cost about 150% of the competition, but I don't have chapter and verse on that.

The Irving Penn Archives

By Ken Tanaka

One of the unfortunate consequences of today's noisy age of communication is the deflation of "great." It seems that to grab any attention in the daily cacophony anything passable, or even momentarily competent, must now be called not "fair" or "good" but immediately declaimed as "great."

But genuine greatness can neither be achieved nor assessed so casually. Within the worlds of art and photography, greatness lands slowly and is gradually acknowledged through the lens of time. Irving Penn was indisputably one of the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th century, with a career that spanned nearly seventy percent of that century and a body of work that's astonishing for its variety and quality. Although best known for his fashion and portrait photography, Penn's artistic interests and accomplishments meandered to other genres of photography and even occasionally into non-photographic art forms.

In 1995 Irving Penn donated his archives to the Art Institute of Chicago. His transparencies, contact sheets, prints, drawings, notes, correspondence, even some of his cameras are all housed at the Museum. It's an enormous body of material which, although well-organized upon intake, has occupied man-years of work by a devoted research team, with the support of the Irving Penn Foundation, to sculpt into the recently-opened Irving Penn Archives site.

I really think that most TOP readers will love this. A warning, though: don't expect to casually jump in if you only have a few minutes to spare. Grab a beverage, sit down at a cozy spot and just enjoy immersing yourself in all things Penn.

If you’re not very familiar with Irving Penn, I envy you: you’re in for quite a new treat. I also envy you if you are familiar with Penn: I can virtually guarantee that you'll delight in learning something new about him or his work.

Regardless of your Penn-savviness, spending study time in the Penn Archives may, at the very least, recalibrate your working concept of what qualifies as a "great photographer."

Ken
(Illustration: Irving Penn, Large Sleeve, 1951)

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Turnley Prints Have All Shipped!

I've never done an "N/t" post on TOP, but this could almost be one. The news is in the title—Peter, his hardworking assistant James McLendon, and the shipping department at Duggal have completed shipping all of the prints from our recent Peter Turnley sale no. 2.

You might still need to allow up to 10 days for delivery to the U.S. and up to three weeks for delivery to non-U.S. addresses, but they're a-comin'.

Mike

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Art is a Popularity Contest, Not a Democracy

By Ctein

I'd planned on writing a technical column this week, but my brain is still too fried from handling the print sale to organize such lofty thoughts. Instead, I'm going to visit a topic I've been writing notes about for some time (which will eventually become several columns, although maybe not right now). That is the perpetually confounding question of the relationship between artist and audience. It's a topic I have visited in the past; it's not close to being exhausted.

Let me start out by pointing out something that is both obvious and often overlooked about the way the world of art works. There is no photograph out there that is loved by the majority of the photographic audience. Not a single one. Genres and tastes are too fragmented for that.

I imagine that's sort of self-evident if you think about it: B&W vs. color, landscape vs. urban, people vs. things, formalist vs. casual composition, staged vs. candid. The list goes on. I don't mean that people are antagonistic towards the subgenres they don't fall in love with, but that they just don't care. It's entirely possible there isn't a photograph that is even liked by the majority of the audience, but I'm not sure I want to stick my neck out that far. It surely is true for the vast majority of good photographs.

Were any of you left cold by the photograph I put up for sale, to such a degree that you couldn't imagine why we even offered it? Well, guess what? You're not the center of the universe. Neither am I. Nobody is. You can say with utter assuredness that it doesn't appeal to you, but that's about the limit.

But before you start to get bristly, here's the really important thing: you are the norm! Most people agree with you. About any photograph. Most certainly about mine.

Some numbers: TOP currently has over 30,000 physical readers [on a good day —Ed.]. By the time the sale ended we'd sold close to 800 prints of a photograph that a few people can't figure out why anyone would buy. That's a fabulous number of prints to sell of any photograph.

But the more important thing, the big picture, is that it's also only about one in 40 readers. So, if you didn't see $20 worth of merit in that photo, 39 out of 40 people agree with you. You are the 97.5%!

Thank heavens for that. Imagine what would happen if the majority of people actually loved that photograph. We'd have had more than 15,000 people clamoring for a thousand prints, the sale would have shut down in three hours, and nearly half of Mike's readership would now be really pissed at me. So, you know, I'm kind of happy with only a 2.5% share.

This is the reality of the world of art and the business of being an artist: Art is a popularity contest, but it's not a democracy. It doesn't require a majority vote for you to be successful—just enough people have to like what you do to pay the bills.

If you can do that, then it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. So don't sweat it.

And be kind, or at least polite, to the ones who don't like you, because, you know, they far outnumber your fans. And you never know, some of them might change their minds.

So, do you like this photograph?

Well then, how about this one?

Maybe this one?

Aw, c'mon, it's a cat! Who doesn't love cat photos? Really!

Ctein

Weekly columnist Ctein pleases a changing minority of TOP's audience every Wednesday.

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Featured Comment by Simon Robinson: "Well said Ctein. I am one of the majority—in fact I haven't liked any of your photographs that have been offered in TOP's print sales. It's not that they aren't good photographs, it's just that they are so far away from the type of photographs that I like (and make).

"The world would be a terrible (and depressing) place if I loved every photograph by every photographer—where would that leave my photography?

"Truth be told—I like seeing photographs that I don't like. It makes me question why I don't like them, which in turn makes me question why I like the pictures I do like!

"But hey, tastes change—when I was younger I never liked country music. Now I love it. So maybe, in the distant future, my taste in photographs will shift and I will be kicking myself that I passed on an original Ctein for $20!! Keep up the good work. While (at the moment) you are not pleasing me, you are pleasing some people—and that pleases me!"

The Creepy Box

Don't run away screaming...it's just that Adobe Photoshop CS6 has arrived at B&H Photo. With the creepiest box illustration yet. It looks like something from some sort of futuristic horror movie to me. (Of course, I don't watch futuristic horror movies, so my creepy-meter might be badly calibrated. Still, I think I might not like having that box in the house.)

Here's their link for Photoshop CS6, and the one for all other CS6 products.

Mike

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Featured Comment by David Mayer: "Glad I'm not the only one to be creeped out by this. I know it's a matter of taste, and I also know it's just a box, so it probably doesn't matter, but still. When I overcome my initial repulsion and look closely, I see the scalloping which I assume are supposed to be scales. I guess I've seen too many bad 'shop jobs but this reminds me of really bad use of cloning tool. Maybe they want to sell some Photoshop (TM) courses."

Featured Comment by Chris Crawford: "The Lightroom 4 box is pretty freakish looking too."

Featured Comment by Ivan: "Weird, fantastic, cinematic, imaginative—and best of all, not corporate. Kudos to whomever had the guts to go with this."

Featured Comment by Andrew Kelley: "People still buy software in boxes?"

Our 100,000th Comment

Note the number

TOP—or rather the new (TypePad) TOP blog—reached Comment #100,000 at 5:43 this afternoon. When it happened, sirens went off and balloons fell from the ceiling here at TOP World HQ, scaring the dog.

The lucky 100,000th commenter, known as "Q," is by his own admission 144 years old, which I assume means he was in fact the Quartermaster for Her Majesty's Secret Service, supplying Bond with Q-devices. (I say "he" only because I actually do know his name.) For his services here, I was going to pick out and buy him a nice photobook, but then I decided I'd better get a grip and let him buy a photobook of his own choice. (It's still essentially a mystery to me, but I realize empirically that not everyone shares my taste.) So he's getting a $100 Gift Certificate from Amazon.

Q's prize is a way of symbolically recognizing the contributions of all the many wonderful commenters who participate here on TOP, enriching and amplifying so many discussions. It is, for one thing, how I continue to constantly learn things here, and how I keep myself entertained and amused. Thanks to one and (almost) all.

If you're curious, Jim Henry was commenter #99,999, and Ken Tanaka #100,001. So close!

Congratulations (and thanks) to Q. He hasn't stepped forward yet to claim his prize, but maybe we'll hear from him. (Who knows, maybe he'll leave a comment.)

—Mike, On the Velvet Rope

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Featured Comment by Ken: "And yet you did not even make Q's comment a featured comment? Wow, what does one have to do for a featured comment around here, anyways? [With tongue firmly in cheek.]"  

Featured Comment by Q: "Yikes! Really? Wow! I feel like one of those stunned actors you see in TV commercials who just look about wide-eyed when the sirens sound and the balloons envelop them at the checkout counter or some such place—except of course I'm not acting. [Looks about nervously.]

"I'm afraid I don't have a speech ready...

"Thank you for this very generous book-by-proxy gift! I think I know already where it's going to go. (Hmm; is The Empirical Photographer available on Amazon?)

"More, though, thank you for the years of posts, yours and your guest writers', and the comments. Everyone here seems to have a well-reasoned point of view, and the great majority of them know considerably more about the craft and the art of photography than I do; I learn more from TOP than from any of the other photography sites I read. I daily look forward to refreshing the TOP page and seeing what pearls appear, and I'll keep reading well past the 200,000th comment (which I'll make sure won't be mine).

"And—my sincere apologies to Lulu. I hope she got over her fright quickly.

"Thank you again!

"(Wow.)"  

Mike adds: Q, whose real name is Damon C., tells me he actually took his handle from "silent Q" in Monty Python's Bookshop sketch (originally from At Last the 1948 Show—here's a version with Marty Feldman):

Supermoon Photos

Huffpo has a large (224 pictures so far), apparently user-generated set of pictures of the "supermoon." The shot above was taken by someone named Lillian in central Florida, and has a cheerfully horrendous pun as a title: "Moon Over My-Mami." (Ouch.)

As I looked through these pictures I was musing that, collectively, this set shows generically "what photographs look like today"—all kinds of photographs by all kinds of photographers using a jumble of characteristic equipment. Every age has its generic "look," its base technique, its demotic technical signature. This set, more or less, is a pretty good demonstration of ours, now.

Mike

ADDENDUM: I guess the second paragraph above is a bit too Delphic to be useful. All I mean is that if you first set aside the outliers—the distinctive artists, the master craftsmen and -women, those who deliberately try to be different or who mimic the styles of other time periods, and so forth—and then look at hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of pictures from any particular era, certain commonalities will start to emerge and become apparent. It's not just the subject matter, the hair and clothing styles, the look of the building and the automobiles. It's also that every era has certain types of equipment and materials that are most readily available to the majority of the people, and that equipment will be good for some things, not so good for others, and just overall have a distinctive "look" that's characteristic of it. A lot of this has to do with the characteristic way those materials fail—for instance, in the supermoon set you see a lot of blown highlights, purple fringing, pixelation, and so forth. These "failures" are typical of our equipment and materials now—you'd never have seen them on pictures of fifty or a hundred years ago. But you'd see other failures on those pictures that might be uncommon now.

Then there's the issue of fashion—how people expect pictures to look, the "archetype" they're consciously or even unconsciously trying to mimic.

There are social conventions, which tend to be particularly invisible to people in their own era. For instance, we now fully expect people to give a big on-demand smile when having their pictures taken. It looks utterly natural to us. But if an average person from, say, 1890 could look at a bunch of typical pictures from now, he or she might find all the grinning utterly bizarre. People just didn't do that as much then. Well, except Teddy Roosevelt.

Socially acceptable portrait expressions, 1890s and 2010s. (The one on the right is by Colorado photographer Jason Noffsinger. On the left, unknown.)

There are even economic issues to consider. When photography was expensive, each exposure had to "tell"—you waited to take a picture until you had something to take a picture of. Now, especially, that imperative has been subsumed in the ease and absence of cost of each exposure.

In any event, all I'm saying is that as you look at huge amounts of pictures, gradually a sort of semi-intentional, real-world, democratic mean reveals itself. Sorry if this explanation is too far to go for too little, but since people were asking what I meant....

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Featured Comment by pxpaulx: "Seems to me about 5% of the 'photographers' went out and said to themselves, I'm going to go out and compose a nice photo with the supermoon in the background. Another 5% said to themselves, I'm going to go out, take a technically accurate photo of the supermoon, another technically accurate photo of something interesting, and digitally merge the two. The remaining 90% said to themselves, I heard there is a supermoon tonight, so I'm going to take whatever appliance I have that also has a camera attached to it and press a button! In that respect, perhaps it is truly a representation of the photographic world of today."

Featured Comment by Paul Glover: "The 'look' of the era isn't the first thing which I thought of reading this. Instead I thought of how willing people today are to give their photos away for nothing but 'exposure,' even those few percent who put in some reasonable effort to make it look good."

Random Excellence: Erich Hartmann

Erich Hartmann, Maine, 1987

"Patterns on the Wall"—It's Slate's Magnum theme for today. (Produced by Kate Phillips. Too bad you can't see these full screen, unless I'm missing a tab somewhere.) Here, our title—"random"—really is apropos. I find it curious that Magnum photographs are now so often compiled into random sets, even in books, when one of the reasons for Magnum's founding was so the photographers could control the presentation of their pictures and make sure they were always presented in the proper context. Magnum photographs now most often seem to be seen out of the context of photojournalistic stories. And sometimes in the context of truly random groupings—such as pictures that include wallpaper.

I was pleased to see so many pictures in today's Slate set by my late friend Erich Hartmann, father of my good pal Nick. Erich, a past President of the agency and by that time an éminence grise, was the one who gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of Magnum New York, one of my better photographic memories.

There's a really very interesting book of Magnum photographs—a treasury, in the sense that it's full of treasures—called In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers. It's still available. I used to really love that book, and paged through it, lovingly, many times, but then I learned that Nick has a rather low opinion of it, to the point that I think he might have gotten rid of his copy. (Or maybe he was just considering it). I hope he'll chime in here and speak for himself, but as I recall he felt the book really wasn't true to the aspect of Magnum I mentioned above. I have a poor mind for recalling quotations verbatim, but he said something to the effect that Magnum photographs really weren't meant to be seen in compendiums—even, I suppose, "greatest hits" compendiums with running commentary such as In Our Time.

I'd say more about the book but oddly, I can't find my copy. It doesn't seem to be on my shelves anywhere. I wonder if it's hiding in the house somewhere, or if I loaned it out. I don't think I'd be so influenced by Nick's opinion that I'd have gotten rid of my own copy—the book really is enjoyable, even if you consider its program suspicious.

At any rate, it was good to see a few of Erich's pictures on Slate this morning...even out of context.

Mike
(Thanks to Kent Phelan)

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Featured Comment by Nicholas Hartmann: "Mike, thanks for the shoutout to Dad. I just checked, and the In Our Time book is still on the shelf; it will probably stay there, despite my philosophical objections.

"Further to your first paragraph: Bear in mind that while in the heyday of the cooperative, many Magnum photographers did shoot stories—sequences of pictures that were intended to be seen in a print medium as a group and together with text—others, like Cartier-Bresson, explicitly went hunting for pictures, for individual images that would have power and meaning in isolation. Dad did both: in his industrial and commercial essays, almost always in color, he was very good at creating a coherent narrative that served a client's needs, with the result that he was much in demand and was able to make a living and send his kids to college. What shows up on the Magnum site in these often-silly daily compilations, however, is always a black-and-white picture of his. That body of work, generated with whatever little stealth camera he happened to be carrying with him along with a couple rolls of Tri-X, constituted his 'personal' pictures, a term of art I heard used by his Magnum colleagues as well. By that criterion, maybe all of HC-B's work could be considered 'personal'; his genius was such that he became rich and famous from that alone.

"Magnum is vigorously mining its archives these days, and putting up, I assume, sets of pictures that it thinks will attract attention and keep its name alive. That being the case, I guess I should be happy to see an occasional Erich Hartmann personal picture show up. But wallpaper?! Gimme a break...."

Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Mike, I'd like Nick to know that I had one very pleasant encounter with his father some 35 years ago. As it turned out he and I both were shooting assignments for IBM and their editor asked us both to come participate in a internal office seminar he put together for their publications editors. I, being all of about 28 years old, was quite in awe even being in the presence of a Magnum photographer, let alone on the same program.

"I needn't have worried. In person Erich was kind and gracious, a generous teacher willing to humor the young buck with the grandiose ideas. And his presentation was all about practical work, making images that worked for the client, that subtly yet effectively told their story. From such a famous photographer it was pleasure to see and learn that a real pro attends to business and needs—and leaves the ego at home. Thanks for this reminder from another day."

Mike replies: Erich was a gentleman. Nick takes after his father in that way.

Kirk's Take: Electronic Viewfinders

Going cold turkey on optical finders: My experiences with EVFs

By Kirk Tuck

(Please understand that this post is meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Few new tech innovations are without their faults, just as many mature viewing implementations have on their side decades and decades of familiarity.)

You can look high and low in my studio these days but the only optical finders you'll uncover are those in old film cameras or the ones in digital cameras now considered too eccentric to be sold (the Kodak SLR/n and the Kodak DCS 760C). All of my current digital cameras feature electronic viewfinders. I am now working without a safety net. Really.

It all started with that Olympus EP2 and its little friend, the VF-2 finder. A gorgeously designed camera and one that works well within its file size limitations. And a finder that set the standard for resolution and clarity upon its introduction.

But after working with several generations of mirrorless cameras such as the Olympus E-P3, both the Panasonic GH2 and G3, and most recently the Sony a77 and a57, I became completely addicted to the lure of the mini-TV screen in the eyepieces of my cameras. Here is my list of reasons why:

1. Pre-Chimping(tm). Post-shot chimping, as it is done with current, EVF-deprived cameras, is an iterative process. You can really only compose with an OVF (optical viewfinder)—you can’t see any of the other parameters that the camera will impose on your final image until you actually take the image and then review it on the back screen of your camera. How primitive! So you shoot a test frame and then you evaluate it. Then you change a few things and you shoot again to test. It's a process that, in the hands of a rank amateur, can last a long time. Pre-chimping (tm) with an EVF means that the second you bring the camera to your waiting eye you'll see the composition of your intended image and the way the white balance will handle the scene as well as any sort of digital adaptations you've made to your in-camera shooting parameters such as contrast, saturation, sharpness, or art filters. You can correct as you watch and then shoot. No post chimping required. Once you've pre-chimped(tm) I'm not sure you'll ever want to go back.
2. Have you heard about focus peaking? It's not available in your OVF. You'll need to upgrade if you want this feature. Lots of people like to use older, manual focus lenses on their brand new digital cameras and all too likely they end their experiments in sadness and misery because the focusing screens in the OVFs destined for digital work aren't at all optimized for manual focusing. And all of us over forty years of age seem to have a hell of a time achieving critical focus on our older technology cameras unless we put the camera on a tripod and engage (semi) Live View. At that point we can fine focus our fine old glass using a small portion of the image. It's not so much fun, especially if you are in an area with lots of bright light around you, bouncing off the LCD screen on the back of your camera. If you have a camera with an EVF that includes focus peaking, you'll have a nearly foolproof focusing method that works by showing you color outlines of the things you've gotten in sharp focus. With EVF cameras you can use this method while shooting stills or while shooting videos. You can do it handheld, in bright light and without cropping down to 10% of your image. Very nice.
3. How about a super quick check on an image just to make sure your subject didn't blink during your exposure? Sure, with old tech you could take the camera away from your eye, find the review button, shield the screen on the back from glancing and image degrading ambient illumination and then review, or—you could take advantage of new tech by setting a short duration image review that works in your finder while it's still at your eye. Most of the new cameras will show you a preview and you can go back to a live image with a soft touch on the shutter button. How nice. And if you need to review a shot while on the deck of a boat in tropical sunlight or in a giant field of white sand you'll be able to do it with no more effort than bringing the finder up to your eye and looking. Pity the poor OVF owner, chained to their massive Zacuto and Hoodman chimney finders, awkwardly holding their cameras up with one hand while trying to keep their finder-assisting-extra-accessory from sliding around with the other hand....

There are just a few niggling issues that still need to be perfected for EVFs; but we can't be more than half a generation away. At least when we consider the EVFs in the Sony NEX-7 and the Sony Alpha a77 and a65 cameras as current benchmarks. But I would be remiss not to mention them.

1. Since the camera is continuously taking a sensor image and running it through the processing pipeline before feeding it into the eyepiece monitor there is a statistically relevant time lag. You'll need to learn how to "lead" a fast moving subject. It takes practice but it is do-able. I've practiced on my kid when he runs competitively. I'm not perfect at tracking him yet but I wasn't perfect with an OVF-hampered camera either.
2. Since you are getting a video feed you'll have to change the way you shoot with flash. With an OVF you get the same light level through the finder with any exposure setting. If you set a high flash sync it doesn’t affect the image in the finder. With an EVF enable camera if you set a high shutter speed and medium aperture in a room with low light (as you might when working with a studio flash) you'll no longer be able to see a bright (or any) finder image with the setting most people use for the EVF, which shows what a scene will look like using the inputs and exposure controls you have set. You'll need to set the camera to "gain up" the finder image so you can see your subject and work with them. The darker the environment the more noise in the finder image you'll get. If you work a lot with flash inside you'll want to test out an EVF camera before you trade your hard won Imperial Credits for one.
3. The EVF shows you the approximate gamut of the color space you have set in the camera. This is good because you see how stuff might render in print or on the screen of your computer at home. This is now known as real time visualization (a nod to Ansel Adams's pre-visualization practice). This should be considered a positive, but most people look in the finder and see an image that looks "too contrasty" with blocked up shadows. There are one or two workarounds, depending on how you shoot and what kinds of files you like. If you're a died-in-the-wool Raw file shooter you can go into your parameters and set the contrast on your default JPEG style/setting to a lower value (less contrast). This will add detail to your shadows and highlights. If you are a JPEG shooter you can always set your color space to AdobeRGB instead of sRGB but it won't buy you quite as much correction. There are also brightness control settings for the EVFs and you might want to experiment with them as well. I'm sure we'll have a wider gamut on future screens, but as I stated before, it is an effective pre-visualization for many styles of shooting. But high contrast lighting is the EVF's Achilles heel.

After assessing the pros and cons of the different finders and weighting in my own quirks and my seeming need for novelty on a regular basis, I dumped an enviable accumulation of Canon EOS cameras, lens and flashes and bought into the Sony SLT camera system. I was drawn in by the EVF (really) and the stationary mirror (kinda) and not in the least by the fast 12fps shutter. I've used the Sony a77's now for the better part of a month and recently added their newest camera, the Sony a57. I also bought a mix of both super G lenses and cheap lenses. The two I love the most are the ultra cheap 30mm ƒ/2.8 DT Macro and the 85mm ƒ/2.8 SAM lens. They feel cheap in your hands but the quality of the imaging is superior. (All the pictures in this post were taken with the Sony a57 and the little 85mm lens.)

So, how have I fared in the post optical imaging universe? I am serious about this: When I shoot with continuous lights (like my favorite LEDs) or by modified window light, I am very, very happy. I can control my shoots while rarely taking my eye off the finder. I was shooting food for a new Austin restaurant, handheld, last Saturday, and getting a level of fluidity in my shooting that I've never experienced before. I could look at the food and turn a knob to adjust exposure while I watched the effect in psuedo real time. It's a great way to shoot food.

I'm now so used to the pre-chimping method I described above that I rarely find myself lowering the camera anymore to post-chimp. (The rear screen seems to exist now as a conduit for showing my results to my clients.) While not necessarily directly related to the EVF, I have found that with the stationary mirror and the electronic first shutter curtain, coupled with in body stabilization, I am able to perform magic tricks with blur-free slow shutter speeds. The different systems all work together to yield a final result that seems very, very sharp.

I have been shooting video for years now and I can't tell you how much more efficient a camera becomes if it can do full time phase detection autofocus while shooting video. And being able to see it in a light-protected finder is such an operational plus. When you add in focus peaking, you are getting close to the wish list for many videographers. (The only two video features I want to see in the next Sony camera are manual level controls for the audio in video and a headphone jack, à la Nikon and Canon's latest cameras.)

The one place where I know the EVF is less effective than OVF is in the use of studio flash. If you are working with powerful modeling lights it won't bother you as much, but if you are working with little 60-watt peanut modeling lights stuck in big lighting modifiers, you won't be as happy with the speckles and pixie dust that dances across the screen while you view.

I'm not suggesting that anyone abandon a system and an approach to still photography that they love and are wedded to, but the EVF is something that I think will filter down into most cameras because, as the price of sensors continues to fall, the single most expensive part of every SLR camera out will be the semi-silvered glass pentaprism and mirror assembly. As consumers demand more for less, and as OLED screens become more ubiquitous and hence less expensive, it doesn't take a telescope to see big changes coming in viewfinders.

EVFs and LEDs are a great combination. Add in a great, low noise sensor and you're in the sweet spot. I always hear that "it's not the arrow, it's the Indian." I think we're switching from the long bow to the cross bow, though. The endless march of progress.

Kirk

Kirk Tuck is a monthly contributor to the Online Photographer. He is the author of five books on photography and lighting including his most recent, LED Lighting: Professional Techniques for Digital Photographers. He makes his living photographing for corporations and advertising agencies in and around Austin, Texas. He is also a masters swimmer and spends far too much time in the pool.

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Featured Comment by Don: "Kirk, the English longbow was a vastly superior weapon to the crossbow. It's why the French were defeated at Agincourt. The English (and Welsh) archers whipped off the strings and stuck them under their caps when it rained. The French archer's crossbow strings got wet and stopped working. Crossbows take time to reload—in that time an English longbow will have fired multiple arrows. On Sundays every Englishman was required to practise archery with a longbow after church. The French so feared our bowmen they used to cut off their fingers when caught so they could no longer draw a bow. Hence the origin of the two-fingered salute—given by English archers to the French to let them know what was about to come down on their heads.

"The English/Welsh archers using the longbow completely outclassed the French with their crossbows."

Featured Comment by John Ashbourne: "Don's featured comment only refers to part of the reason for the outcome at Agincourt. Another major reason was the French emphasis on dated technology—elaborate and cumbersome armoured cavalry which bogged down in the clinging mud due to exceptionally heavy rain. there is an obvious parallel here—of which I am uncomfortably aware when I take out my 1Ds3 and 70-200mm rather than the X-Pro1—but then had circumstances been different at Agincourt the heavy cavalry would have come into their own just as in some circumstances there is nothing so good as the 'mighty Canon.'"

Featured Comment by Roger Bradbury: "The idea with the longbow was to get as many arrows into the air as possible; you are bound to hit something. Are you sure you weren't interested in the Sony's 12 fps Kirk?"

Mike replies: First of all, the topic was viewfinders yet here we find ourselves arguing about weapons technology at Agincourt—yet another demonstration of why I love this blog.

Just wanted to point out in relation to Roger's comment that in my recent book rec Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, author S.C. Gwynne goes into considerable detail about weapons technology on the Southern Plains and how it affected the struggles between the main players. He points out that until the advent of the six-shooter—the main purpose of which was to be used on horseback, not in duels as in the movies—Comanches' bows and arrows were actually superior as weapons to the slow muzzle-loading rifles originally used by the Mexicans and the Texans, and gave them an advantage.

The various analogies to cameras seem perilous to me, albeit admittedly tempting.

Featured Comment by Rodolfo Canet: "Given the path the discussion has taken, never has the tag 'shooting techniques' been more appropriate!