The Online Photographer

Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

By Adam Harrison Levy, Design Observer

One rainy night eight years ago, in Watertown, Massachusetts, a man was taking his dog for a walk. On the curb, in front of a neighbor’s house, he spotted a pile of trash: old mattresses, cardboard boxes, a few broken lamps. Amidst the garbage he caught sight of a battered suitcase. He bent down, turned the case on its side and popped the clasps. 

He was surprised to discover that the suitcase was full of black-and-white photographs. He was even more astonished by their subject matter: devastated buildings, twisted girders, broken bridges—snapshots from an annihilated city. He quickly closed the case and made his way back home....

READ ON at designobserver.com

_____________________

Mike  (Thanks to Jeff MacMillan)

Featured Comment by Walt: "'Twice abandoned, twice rescued.' A tale of warning. That dragon still lives in several countries in this world. The photo of the bridge was the most interesting to me. Not only the chalk outlined footprints but the person's entire shadow is visible to the left of the foot prints. The shadow is a lighter color than the exposed concrete. You'll notice the very sharp shadows of the bridge standards...well the person's shadow is indistinct...because that person was in the process of becoming plasma. By calculating the angles of those shadows across Hiroshima it was determined that the weapon was at about 2,000 feet when detonated and formed a fireball about 300 feet in diameter. Hotter than the surface of the sun. Shame this collection can't be placed in its entirety on the web as a precautionary tale."

Featured Comment by Steve Rosenblum: "'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"—Physicist Robert Oppenheimer upon witnessing the detonation of the first atomic bomb. This famous quote is from the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, entitled Visva-Rupa-Darsana-yoga, or the 'Yoga of Theophany,' the chapter in which Krishna displays His Universal form—His divine Opulence—to Arjuna. In full, the verse is as follows: sri-bhagavan uvaca: kalo 'smi loka-ksaya-krt pravrddho lokan samahartum iha pravrttah / rte 'pi tvam na bhavisyanti sarve ye 'vasthitah pratyanikesu yodhah // The Lord said: 'Time [death] I am, the destroyer of the worlds, who has come to annihilate everyone. Even without your taking part all those arrayed in the [two] opposing ranks will be slain!' (Gita vs. 11.32 trans. after Swami Tripurari.)

Confirmation

Just a brief note—I received positive confirmation from Steidl in Germany this morning that there is no difference between the first and second printings of Saul Leiter: Early Color.

So, see Andy Moursund's last paragraph in the post "First Editions and Second Printings," below.

___________________

Mike

Featured Comment by Christopher Lane: "Frankly, I feel a bit troubled by all of the discussion here about the monetary value of Saul Leiter: Early Color regardless of which edition or printing we are discussing. The real value of this work is the images it contains, not the potential appreciation. In the end we are only caretakers of the objects that we possess. I acquired this photo book a few weeks ago after Mike’s first alert. Being a devotee of the Ansel Adams school, a friend of mine suggested that I wouldn’t like it. The night it arrived I spent some time paging through it. I found it to be a revelatory and instructional work. I was amazed at the creativity found in these pages and it has certainly changed my views on the nature of photography. This is a work that I will study and cherish for years to come."

Mike replies: I don't buy photobooks as investments and I almost never advise other people to do so (unless they have more expertise than I do—and more space). As I've mentioned before, where the price of a book really comes into play is that when books go out of print and then quickly appreciate on the used market, it can affect my ability to acquire the book, and I assume many others are the same way.

One example I've used in the past is The Book of 101 Books, which was too expensive for me when new at $100. Now, the cheapest you can get it for is $750 for the Deluxe Edition—used copies of the regular hardcover start at $825 and go up considerably from there. In other words, it's a book I'm never going to own. I had my chance—and missed it.

There are many books I would really love to have that have appreciated right out of my price range. So, as I've written before, it's becoming increasingly important to buy books you really want when they're available new, simply because that might be the best opportunity you have to buy them for a reasonable price. That's really what's behind any discussion of value and money on this site, rather than any consideration of buying and selling books purely for monetary gain (not that there's anything wrong with that).

The Sony A900: Sent Packing

Well, I packed up the Sony A900 and sent it back to Alpha Lens Rental on Friday, my short week with it over.

Before I wrap up my report, it appears (based on my email) that yet more moral clarification is in order.

As I stated at the outset, my several posts about the A900 do not constitute a real review. A reviewer has certain responsibilities when writing a formal review. My predilection is for all biases, interests, situations and conditions to be laid bare, which I always take pains to do; some reviewers are not so concerned with that, preferring that it all go unsaid but (presumably) taken for granted. I don't have that much faith in my ability to transcend my subjectivity, so I spell it out. For instance, to me it's important that you should know that I own a 7D and have never shot with a Canon DSLR, that I know almost nothing about using flash, because I virtually never use it, that I sell prints…and so forth. Those are things I would want to know about a reviewer whose articles I read. Other writers prefer the "omniscient reviewer" stance, as if their photographic skills were infinite and their familiarity with every other piece of equipment on the market absolute. Not me.

Then, I would say, at a minimum, it behooves the reviewer to a) use the equipment properly, b) understand all its features and functions, c) correctly appraise its strengths and weaknesses, and d) anticipate what questions readers might want answered, and answer them. (Or at least most of them.) "D" requires that the reviewer try to understand the uses to which other people will put the device, and not just use it to do whatever it is he does and ignore every other possibility. With such a complex and formidably capable device as the A900, one week is not long enough to get a firm grasp on all that.

Finally, there is one more provisional imperative, and that is to stick to the facts. Placing a high emphasis on factual objectivity with a concomitant mistrust of subjective impression leads to a sort of laundry-list review, with all the features cataloged, enumerated, and measured. As a reader, I don't like reading that type of review, because 1) I can usually get enough of that kind of information from the manufacturer's advertising materials, 2) it bores me, and 3) it doesn't answer my most basic question, which is, what's this thing like to use?

I'll get to my final write-up about the A900 later this week, but as a teaser, I'll answer that last question now: The A900 is just a blast. As in, fun. I don't know about you, but, personally, I like taking pictures. I like using cameras. They don't have to be great cameras, either—anyone who can't slum with a toy camera or a pinhole occasionally needs to loosen up. I still have fond memories of my very first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 105, with which I did my first "body of work": way too many snaps of the battlefield at Gettysburg taken on a 7th grade trip to Washington D.C. When my cousin got a Kodak disk camera for Christmas when we were young, I asked her if I could take a few pictures with it, and ended up using all her film before the day was out. She was shocked, but it was the sort of thing I would do. Taking pictures is one of the things I do for fun.

So I'll just say this, for starters: Anyone who wouldn't enjoy using the A900 for a week needs to look around for a new hobby, if not have his head examined. The thing is stunningly good: fast, responsive, highly capable. It feels great in the hand, offers a wonderfully clear and capacious means of viewing and framing the world, and gives results so good it's almost a little spooky. It settled right down into the role of boon companion. Like a woman who's a really good date—socially adept, a good conversationalist, at ease with herself, a pleasure to be with—it makes you seem, even to yourself, a little better than you really are.

Strengths? Weaknesses? Feature set? Yeah, we can haggle, and we will…later. Now, I'd just like to bask in the residual, fast-fading twilight glow.

It would be extremely tough for me to part with three thousand simoleons for a camera that's disposable (as all digital cameras ultimately are), and there are several important ways in which the A900 might not be the ideal choice for me. But it was great fun. A great box. I miss it already.

___________________

Mike

Featured Comment by Grega: "I must say that I am starting to lose the point of DSLR reviews. I think we've gotten to the point where it doesn't matter any more. Anything is good enough. I am happy with my Nikon, but I know I'd be happy with Canon or Sony too. And I can't say I see any meaningful advantage or disadvantage of one over the other. It is just a camera. Put the ones that are in your price range on a desk and pick up the one that smiles to you."

First Editions and Second Printings

Introduction: Many readers have asked me how to tell the difference between the first and second printings of Saul Leiter: Early Color. Others have asked if the first printing will be more valuable than the second. To help clarify these issues, I asked my old friend Andy Moursund if he would write a short piece about editions and printings. Andy was for many years the proprietor of Georgetown Bookshop, first in Georgetown, D.C. and later, for many years, located in Bethesda, Maryland. He is also a tremendously erudite photo book collector who owns a superb collection carefully put together over many years. Andy taught me a lot of what I know about books. —MJ

By Andy Moursund

A first edition, first printing is the first run of a book off the press. This, and this alone, is what collectors mean when they say "first edition." The operative words in "first edition, second printing" are "second printing," not "first edition."

When a second press run is made of the first edition, without any changes, it is either referred to as a "first edition, second printing," or simply as a "second printing." Both terms are often used, depending on the whims of the publisher, but the meaning—and what it means to a collector—is identical.

A "second edition" can mean one of two things. Usually it means that the text has been modified in any way:  revisions, additions, condensations, etc. This is the common understanding of the term. And the time that may have lapsed between the two editions is irrelevant.

But…sometimes it means that after a certain amount of time, the publisher (or sometimes a different publisher) decides to reprint the first edition without any changes at all. This is almost always labeled a "second edition," although it's really not the same thing. Here the reason for the label is simply to acknowledge the time lapse.

But often the dust jacket is completely different, so in that sense it is a true second edition.

There is usually a premium placed on "real" first editions, meaning "first edition, first printing." But when copies of the first several printings are equally scarce, sometimes the difference in price can almost disappear, especially when a dealer offering a second printing knows that "true" first editions aren't likely to come on the marketplace anytime soon.

One example of this from the photo world would be The Americans. The "true" first edition is the 1958 French edition, while the 1959 "first American edition" is strictly speaking not a first edition at all. But since both books are so scarce, there is little price distinction any more between the two. What price variation there is has far more to do with the condition of a particular copy (the binding on both versions is terrible) or with the pricing policy of a particular dealer, than anything else.

But of course under no circumstances would the 1969 Grossman version (which could be—and is—called the second American edition, since it adds text) be worth nearly as much as the Grove Press or French originals. Though by this time even the Grossman version runs from $350 all the way up to $2,500(!).

Signed and limited
Usually newer photo books don't have too much of a premium as first editions, unless they're deliberately printed in small print runs, the way some of the specialty publishers do. (Example: the book on lynching postcards, Without Sanctuary.) Or unless, of course, they're signed limited editions, in which case all bets are off, since, there, the secondary market price is purely a factor of supply and demand.

One thing worth mentioning about that last type of book is the way that the publishers have in recent years anticipated the future demand for the signed limited edition, and begun pricing them through the roof.  Looking at the difference between prices of trade editions and signed limited editions today, compared to what the difference was in the '60s and '70s, is like comparing CEO salaries to workers' salaries in the same two periods.

I remember when the second (Horizon, 1981) edition of A Way of Seeing was being sold in a 250 copy signed limited edition for a list price of only $45.  I should have snapped them all up at wholesale, but at the time I didn't have either a credit card or a checking account, and the opportunity passed me by. It now lists at $1,500 to $2,500. But I learned my lesson about Levitt, and bought multiple signed trade editions of all of her recent books at list price, just before she stopped signing. And that signed limited Horizon book, were it to be issued today in the print run of 250 that it was, would likely be priced a lot closer to $1,000 than to $45. Both the publishers and the photographer have long since wised up to the game.

The case at hand
As for how you'd tell the second printing in the case of Saul Leiter: Early Color, the only thing I can imagine (not having the two printings in front of me) would be that the indicated month of printing might be different, since the link at Steidl says that this second printing was in September 2008 [I can't find any indication of the month of printing, and my copy, which I believe is the second printing, says "First Edition 2006." —MJ]. Unless of course it actually states "second printing" either in the book or on the dust jacket flap; but that doesn't seem to be the case. So I'd look for the month in each of them, and compare.

But apart from that, if there's no visible difference, then I don't see how anyone would be able to tell the difference, and no, in that case I can't see how they'd differ in price on the resale market.

_____________________

Andy

The Cat-and-Mouse Game Continues

Saul Leiter: Early Color is once again available new on Amazon this morning, for$40.95. Last time it remained available for only a matter of hours.

I really have no idea what's causing the on-again, off-again availability of this book. Whether it's some real circumstance or whether the publisher is playing games with us, I have no clue. I'm just dutifully passing the news along.

_____________________

Mike

UPDATE: Well, it's gone again, as of 2:45 p.m., although there seem to be copies a-plenty available from third-party suppliers (at the link)—for the time being, anyway. I suppose what may be happening is that speculators buy up large numbers as soon as new copies become available, keeping the supply low and the price high. I don't know why the publisher wouldn't just print more, but maybe they're afraid of saturating the market and getting stuck with large numbers of copies. I'm curious enough that I might try to do a little investigating as to what's going on with this.

Featured Comment by Gabriele Harhoff: "I don't have a clue how this happens either. But to answer an earlier question: I compared Early Color and the self-titled book. Yes, they do share some pictures, but Early Color has so much more to offer that I am really glad I got it. Of course this is a personal decision but I find Early Color so beautiful that I'm happy to own both books. If I had to choose only one I would opt for Early Color."

Random Excellence: Tom Zimberoff

Tom Zimberoff, Indian Larry

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Enthusiasts have long enjoyed visiting so-called "bike shows," and many motorcycle shops compete for trophies—not necessarily for speed but for visual appeal. The idea of the motorcycle as art, however, is a more recent conceit, validated by prestigious museums worldwide. The idea of photographing the artists who create this art is new too.

To augment the high-octane popularity of custom motorcycles and Tom Zimberoff’s two best-selling books of the same title, Art of the Chopper is the first comprehensive collection of motorcycles explicitly created as contemporary art and, now, curated for exhibition. Ipso facto, Art of the Chopper and Art of the Chopper II (Bulfinch Press) are two of the best-selling photography books in recent years with 130,000 copies in print. The exhibition is further distinguished by its emphasis on the rôles of individual artists.

Tom Zimberoff, Alan Lee

By integrating Zimberoff's portraits and and documentary photographs of the artists with the actual motorcycles on display, Art of the Chopper offers a glimpse into a parallel universe populated by the high priests of horsepower, lane-splitting libertarians on the road to perdition with a lust for life and a consummate sense of style. It brings to life the legendary persona underlying each artist’s legerdemain with sheet metal, motors, and paint. As indigenous to America as jazz, rock 'n' roll, or the blues, their art balances the polarized dynamics of flamboyance and minimalism on two wheels. What makes them "cool" is getting something wrong just right. They have earned their pinstripes. This is their Hall of Fame.

Tom Zimberoff, Kirk Taylor

The exhibition, having premiered at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas on September 20, will run through February 8, 2009. It then travels to the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, Florida, opening February 20, 2009 and running through May 24, 2009.

Choppers/Artists Included:

• Holy Roller—Mike Brown
• Unicorn from Hell—Chica
• Cook Norton—Dave Cook
• Psychodelic (intended spelling)—Jerry Covington
• Curves  and Redneck Vincent—Vince Doll
• Swingshot—Christian Dotson
• Bettie and Six Pack—Rick Fairless

• Odin's Axle—Ron Finch
• Mad Rat—Jerry Graves
• Il Pazzo—Gard Hollinger
• El Guapo—Matt Hotch

• Chain of Mystery—Indian Larry
• Easyrider—Pat Kennedy

• Spike—Shinya Kimura
• Money Shot—Billy Lane
• Stingray—Scott Long
• Easyriders 30th Anniversary—Mondo
• Untitled (2)—Arlen Ness
• Knuckle Under—Mike Pugliese
• Widowmaker—Kirk Taylor
• El Peligroso—Trevelen
• Camel Three—Eddie Trotta
• Lucky—Greg Westbury
• Suzy-Q—Paul Yaffe
• Flying Pan and Disk Drive—Hank Young

___________________________

Mike

All photos © 2003–2008 by Tom Zimberoff

Featured Comment by Duke: "Zimberoff's reputation as a 'motorcycle photographer' is a relatively new one. You should look further into his career and you'll find a body of work that is without parallel. His works have been displayed from places like England's famed National Portrait Gallery to his most recent show at the Clinton Presidential Library. Name them, Yeager, Lennon, Rooney and now Lane and Indian Larry have all been captured in intimate detail. There are minstrels and troubadours and then there is Tom, writing his silent songs, using only a lens and paper. But if you listen to yourself as you look at his photos, you'll find that a song is playing somewhere in the back of your mind.

"By the way: Don't be mad about the picture of Indian Larry. I happen to know that that was one of his most favorite pictures of himself. He loved doing what he did and he died doing what he loved. He died early but he died well. How many of us will be lucky enough to say that we died that well?"

Cecil Stoughton

Cecil Stoughton, President John F. Kennedy viewing astronaut John Glenn's space capsule, Friendship 7, February 23, 1962.

White House photographer Cecil Stoughton, aboard the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., September, 1962. Photo by Chief Photographer's Mate Robert Knudsen, U.S. Navy.

Both pictures from the Kennedy Assassination Photo Gallery, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston.

(Just thought you might want to see another of the late Cecil Stoughton's pictures and what Capt. Stoughton looked like. He also appeared on the June 30th episode of the American "Antiques Roadshow," from Orlando, Florida.)

_____________________

Mike

Random Interest: Black Croix de Guerre Winners, 1919

Photographer Unknown. Left to right.  Front row: Pvt. Ed Williams, Herbert Taylor, Pvt. Leon Fraitor, Pvt. Ralph Hawkins. Back Row: Sgt. H. D. Prinas, Sgt. Dan Strorms, Pvt. Joe Williams, Pvt. Alfred Hanley, and Cpl. T. W. Taylor, 1919.

"Some of the colored men of the 369th (15th N.Y.) who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action."

 (From the Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs.)

____________________

Mike

Diffraction—Quantum Weirdness in Your Very Own Home

By Ctein

Eolake emailed me a good question:

"Logically it seems to me that diffraction should affect small formats much more than large ones. Since it's a physical interaction with the edge of the aperture, wouldn't the absolute amount of the diffraction be inverse with the size of the aperture in millimeters, not with the f-value?"

The absolute resolution is indeed inversely proportional to the absolute size of the aperture...but that resolution is measured as the angular separation of the subject details. Very approximately, the resolution in radians equals 1.3 times the wavelength divided by the diameter of the aperture. In other words,

r (in radians) = 1.3w/A.

To get the separation distance of details in a film/sensor plane, you multiply the angular separation by the focal length of the lens. In other words, the Circle of Confusion is:

C = F*r
= 1.3w*F/A.

And what is F/A? It's just the f-number! So there we are:

C = 1.3w * (f-number)

or

r (in line pairs (lp) per mm) = 1600/ (f-number) for green light.

This is the maximum resolution a lens can produce. Real world lenses can approach this limit but not exceed it.

Diffraction increases as a lens is stopped down. From left to right, these are magnified sections of digital photographs made at ƒ/4, ƒ/8 and ƒ/11. (Click to see larger.)

The term "diffraction-limited" gets used in two different ways when we're talking about lenses. We say that a lens is being diffraction limited when we reach the point where stopping the lens down further reduces resolution instead of improving it (in the absence of diffraction, resolution would always improve as we stopped down, because some aberrations diminish with reduced aperture).

We also talk about a lens exhibiting "diffraction-limited performance" when its resolution is near the diffraction limit. That's not the same thing, and it causes unavoidable confusion. Many lenses will become diffraction-limited before they're stopped down enough to exhibit diffraction-limited performance. In fact, if it's a poor lens, it may never achieve diffraction-limited performance.

On the other hand, really, really good 35mm-format lenses may become diffraction limited at apertures as large as ƒ/4–ƒ/4.7 and exhibit diffraction-limited performance at ƒ/4.7–ƒ/7.

The edge of the aperture doesn't directly produce diffraction. Diffraction isn't caused by photons scattering off of the edges of the aperture. If that were the case, we could markedly reduce diffraction by blackening the diaphragm blades so much that almost no photons were scattered off of them. That improves flare and micro-contrast, but it doesn't do a thing for diffraction.

It's the mere existence of the edge that causes diffraction. It's a quantum mechanical "spooky action at a distance" thing. The presence of aperture blades means the incoming photon is constrained to a particular region of space. That automatically means that the degree to which the photon is moving sideways isn't precisely defined. The diaphragm hasn't warped the paths of the light rays; its presence makes those paths less predictable. The closer together the aperture edges, the less predictable the sideways spreading. In English—as you stop down, diffraction increases.

See, even if you don't believe in quantum weirdness, you deal with it every day of your photographic life!

Next time: what's the practical import of this for photographers? Is diffraction the ultimate sharpness-killer?

______________________

Ctein

Featured Comment by Bernard: "Anybody who is really interested in knowing how quantum physics affects all aspects of photography should read Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, which could have been subtitled 'How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Quantum Electrodynamics.'"

Cecil Stoughton Dies at 88; Documented White House

By Margalit Fox, The New York Times

Cecil Stoughton, the chief photographer for the Kennedy White House, who documented its glittering public moments and its intimate private ones, and who captured its sudden end in one of the signal images of the 20th century—Lyndon B. Johnson’s swearing-in as president aboard Air Force One on Nov. 22, 1963—died on Monday. Mr. Stoughton, who died at his home on Merritt Island, Fla., was 88....

READ ON at nytimes.com

_____________________

Mike

Just Back

There was a death in our family last weekend, and I went to pay my last respects to my aunt and to support my cousins. Smack in the middle of it was the election.

I'm just back. Funerals are strangely bittersweet; sadness and loss permeates the day, but nothing else could get just that very group of people all together. You see relatives you love, old friends, and people who've basically been acquaintances for thirty years. My aunt was a woman of both warmth and dignity; she was unflappable and yet good humored. I always thought she was a real lady, in the very best sense of that term. And I have always loved my cousins.

I find myself behind the eight ball with stacks and stacks of emails and obligations backed up in a logjam. I took a very promising panorama on the drive home, but it's taxing my limited Photoshop skills and my little computer: the file is 173 megapixels and 889 MB! Hopefully I'll be able to show it to you in a couple of days.

More, as I catch up.

___________________

Mike

Lulu in the Park

It's "Indian Summer" here in Wisconsin. (Definition: mid to late Fall, much warmer than normal temperatures—it's been 70° here yesterday and today—and after the first killing frost.) Wisconsin isn't a dramatic state in terms of topography, with the exception of a small patch in the middle of the state that the glaciers missed, but it can be quietly beautiful, mainly because of its tawny golden greens and russet colors as the deciduous leaves desiccate.

You'll have to sort of imagine what these three pictures of Lulu in the park look like a lot larger; they're not really meant to be seen small.

______________________

Mike

Featured Comment by Julie Heyward: "Finally! It's Lulu x3! Always with the cameras, lenses, yada, yada, yada, when what I really want to see is the famous brown-brindle killer-of-garden-hoses. Thanks!"

OT: Voting Day in the USA

We vote on the first Tuesday in November in the United States for sensible but long-outdated reasons. A century and a half ago, we were overwhelmingly an agrarian nation. Early November is after the harvest but (generally) before the snows fly. And why Tuesday? Because America is a such a vast, far-flung land, and transportation methods were primitive before oil became king. Citizens would expect to go to church in their hometowns on Sunday. Many needed Monday to travel—by horse, or horse and buggy—to their polling places, usually the county seat. Then on Tuesday they'd vote and enjoy a day of electioneering, parades, songs, and patriotic frolic, and travel home again on Wednesday, for market day.

Made sense. In 1845, anyway.

A Brief Guide to Election-Watching for Interested Foreign Spectators (nobody in America needs election-watching tips from the likes o' me, and I realize that for those of you in Europe all the excitement happens literally in the middle of the night; but here goes): Turnout numbers (and breakdowns) will probably be interesting. The modern record is 64% in 1960 and the all-time record is 66% in 1908, when Republican William Howard Taft beat William Jennings Bryan, whom you might remember from the part he later played in the Scopes Monkey Trial, dramatized in the 1955 play and 1960 movie "Inherit the Wind." (That's Taft doffing his top hat in Denver in 1911, below right.)

Early voting has been heavy in the 30 or so States that have it. (I voted last Tuesday here in Wisconsin. Since then I've had a sign on my door that reads, "This household has ALREADY VOTED." It's kept the door-knockers at bay. There is unfortunately no similar way to discourage the robo-calls.) In Colorado, reportedly, a whopping 46% of the electorate have voted early! Heavy turnout might contribute to late counts and delayed "calls."

Polls close earliest in Indiana (leaning McCain), New Hampshire (leaning Obama), and Kentucky (solid for McCain), but generally, poll closings follow the setting sun from East to West, and the East Coast reports first. The bellwethers to watch are likely to be Virginia and North Carolina. Virginia (heartland of the old Confederacy) is formerly red (Republican) and trending blue in polls this time, but still essentially a toss-up. There are relatively few electoral-college pathways to victory for McCain, and most of them involve winning Virginia. So if Virginia is called for McCain, that could mean a tight race, a long evening, and a delayed result; but if Virginia goes to Obama fairly clearly early on, it probably signifies an Obama victory. North Carolina is a "next level" bellwether...it's a solidly red State that is polling anywhere from pale pink to a toss-up. If it goes for Obama early, it most probably signals a blowout nationwide in favor of the Democratic candidate.

Of the three big battleground States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, two, Ohio and Florida, are states that traditionally have lot of problems with voting and counting, and they're both tossups this time, so they could be late being called. To amuse yourself in the meantime, watch Indiana. Indiana is also historically Republican but has been polling too close to call. It's not an essential state for Obama, but if McCain loses it, it indicates weakness where he needs to be solid. Ergo, Indiana is a bellwether, but only if Obama wins it. As I say, the polls close early there, so it could be called early too.

If Pennsylvania goes red, then Obama could be in trouble. If Obama loses Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, he could still win, but probably won't. If those three states plus Virginia all go red, it's probably Obama = footnote of history and "President McCain." So keep an eye on those four if you're a McCain supporter.

But at the outset, watch Virginia and North Carolina. If they're both red, it's a good sign for McCain, although no sure thing; it more clearly signals that the decision will take a while. If Virginia turns blue and North Carolina is red, it portends an Obama victory overall, albeit possibly a modest one; if both are blue, look for a possible Obama landslide.

But then again, that's all according to the polls. And you know what they say about election polls: the last one is the only one that counts.

_____________________

Mike  (Hat tip to Cenk Uygur and whytuesday.org)

Featured Comment by Dave Kee: "Forty-five years ago in August, two young white men and two young black men rode in an old Volkswagen from Chicago to Washington D.C. to listen to a man talk about his dream. Today, in perfect weather, two old white men and two old black men rode their bikes together on the Old Plank Road Trail. As I drink my celebatory champagne tonight I am so proud to have been a member of both groups."

The Sony A900: Beauty Is As Beauty Does

I didn't get to do much shooting yesterday—an old friend was in town from Chicago for a visit, and the weather turned dull. You can make great pictures in dull weather, of course, but I just wasn't feelin' it. I have two more things to say about the Sony A900 this morning, with hopes that I'll get some more shooting in later today.

Is it ugly?
Coming so close on the heels of my "car aesthetics" post slamming Die Deutsche Rolle, several people felt moved to write to me excoriating the A900 for ugliness. Ironically, after saying in that post that I look at the world through an aesthetic prism, I have to admit that I don't really look at cameras as aesthetic objects any more. I used to be quite the aficionado of the camera-as-object: classic wooden and metal view cameras are often things of beauty (or can be, anyway), and Germany in the middle of the 20th century (say, the '20s until the '70s) was a locus of camera-as-art creativity. It's fun and gratifying to appreciate the industrial design and the exquisite machining of old Rolleis and Leicas and so forth, and to hold other cameras up to those standards to see how they compare. I like many of the metal Japanese cameras, too, with an especial fondness for the plain but pure design of the Spotmatic (despite its Achilles' heel, the stop-down metering switch, and the fact that its odd high-'60s nomenclature survived the removal of the spot metering function).

But I just haven't felt that way about polycarbonate cameras. To me they're not aesthetically pleasing objects, not objects to love. In the '90s, maybe as long ago as the '80s, Bill Pierce (who has a nifty new website, by the way) dubbed them "Wunderplastik": the lumpen black blob stuffed with electronics. They're better cameras, or at least different cameras, and there's nothing wrong with them. But I've seldom been satisfied with them as objects in themselves. The best ones are...okay. Are any of them beautiful? I guess I don't think so.

With modern cameras, beauty is as beauty does. If they work well and do what you want them to do, then they're "beautiful." But it's their tool-quality that you appreciate: they are devices for turning the look of the world into pictures, and if they do that competently, then they're fine, thanks. Object-quality doesn't really enter in.

The bottom line under this head is that I don't find the Sony A900 to be ugly at all. I think it's quite attractive, actually. Some people might not like the shape of the prism, but hey: any prism that wants to give me such a big, beautiful, uncluttered 100% view when I look through it is A-O.K. in my book. I couldn't care less what it looks like when I look at it.

Old home week
The A900 is the first full-frame DSLR I've used. I have no doubt that my reaction would be exactly the same if the first one I tried had been a 5D or a D700. The upshot is that for many years I shot with 35mm SLRs with a 35mm ƒ/2 or thereabouts as my main lens, and it's just nice to get back to that again. It feels like going home.

I've said before that I think there are a lot of advantages to the smaller APS-C or 4/3 sensor size, and I still think that's true. The conventional wisdom is that "full"-frame—24x36mm—is the coming thing, what with, what, a whopping five full frame cameras on the market now? But in the long run it's not clear whether the relatively smaller or the relatively larger sensors will win out. Full-frame has some momentum right now, but I think it's just as likely that APS-C and 4/3 will carry the day in the end.

Dennis Allshouse reminded me that in a column called "Thoughts About 'Full Frame,'" written several years ago, I said, "My bet is that whatever we end up thinking of as ideal in terms of pixel count and image quality in an SLR-style camera for sports, editorial, and news work is going to fit just fine on the 16x24mm, APS-sized sensor area. Gradually, lenses purpose-built for the format will replace 35mm lenses as the standard line, and 16x24mm will be full frame."

That's happened only more-or-less. If there's been one major failing of the smaller ~16x24mm format, it's that the cameramakers basically failed to come through on its behalf: stuck with an installed base of legacy lenses and (critically) a legacy flange-back distance, the anticipated miniaturization of the lenses never entirely took place, and now, a decade or so into the APS-C era, the cameras in general still suffer from two major faults: 1) a paucity of wide-angle lens options, and 2) poor viewfinders, which range from inadequate to adequate without aspiring to attain the heights of very good or better.

I don't want to be too doctrinaire about this. It's a known fact that we humans tend to like best what we're most used to. There's no question that I was most used to film cameras that were very similar to what this Sony give me in digital: a very clear, open view through the viewfinder, and a true 35mm angle of view (63° diagonal) with a "right-sized" ƒ/2 lens. I'm comfortable here; it's what I like, and it fits how I like to shoot. It's been surprisingly hard to replicate with smaller-format digital cameras, and this has been a source of considerable frustration for me over the past eight years or so. 

But—all that said—it's just a delight to get back to an outstanding viewfinder and my favorite angle of view, my favorite lens type. That I've missed it is no surprise—I was perfectly well aware that I missed it (in fact, my friends Carl and Oren and I had a long private conversation about it just recently)—but it's really nice to get it back. Again, I have no doubt that I would have the same reaction were I to use a Canon 5D with a 35mm ƒ/2 EF lens, or a Nikon D700 with an AF-Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2.

So this is not unique to the A900—it's a reaction to full-frame DSLRs in general. But it is certainly my overriding first impression of the A900.

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Mike

Featured Comment by Michael: "About beauty in a camera: it's not a visual thing so much as a tactile thing. When I pick up this Pentax K20D and it fits my hand so well, and then I manual-focus the Zeiss ZK lens, and it snaps into focus...oh yes, that is beauty! Same thing in a hammer: it can be beautiful, but only as it fits the hand and hits the nail."

Crowngate

The Queen by Annie Leibowitz

James Danzinger reports Annie Leibowitz's view of "Crowngate" at Year in Pictures.

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Mike  (Thanks to Kathleen)

Ain't Any '-mercial,' Just Info

One reader accused me yesterday of writing "infomercials," which I thought was a bit obnoxious. But it makes me think that I should spell out for everybody the conditions under which I'm writing about this Sony.

Matt Davids runs a company called Alpha Lens Rental that rents Sony, Minolta, and Zeiss lenses and cameras. He offered to loan me a rental A900 for a week in return for a month's advertising—more or less a one-to-one trade, retail. I took him up on the offer, and he sent me the camera and two lenses, a Minolta Maxxum 35mm ƒ/2 and a Sony STF 135mm ƒ/2.8.

I'm not testing the camera—I'm just trying it. I'm also not writing a "review" per se, but rather just reporting my thoughts, impressions, and personal experiences as I go along. If it's interesting to anybody, fine, and if it's not interesting to you, just wait a while, because the posts will stop soon. And if you think I'm getting it all wrong, well, it happens.

But I don't have any relationship with Sony. I haven't bought an A900 and am not currently planning to. They're not a prospective advertiser or anything like that (that I know of, at least). They haven't given me any sort of consideration—in fact, I tried to request an A900 for review and never even got a response. I don't even have a contact at Sony.

It's possible I could get a review camera from Sony in the future—if I do, I might write a "real" review, probably for Photo.net.

For the record, Photo.net tried to get me a D700 for me for this week so I could compare the two cameras, but Nikon wasn't able to free up a sample in time.

So, for now, it's just me getting my feet wet using somebody else's camera for a week, and musing about my impressions online. If they sound positive, it's just because I'm feeling positive...no other reason. Anybody who reads anything sinister into that, well, that's gotta be on them.

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Mike

JAlan's Question

Question from JAlan: "If you took two shots from a 12-MP DSLR (A700, D300, etc.) and stitched them together, would the end result be equivalent to the results from a single shot from the A900 (or the new Canon 5D Mark II), or is there something special about an image coming from a large megapixel single sensor?"

JAlan,
The answer is essentially yes to the first question. The sunrise panoramic I posted a few months ago is 14633 x 4323 pixels, or about 63 megapixels, two and a half times the resolution of the Sony sensor. As you say, there are some limitations to stitching, and naturally there are likely to be some camera-to-camera differences between any two given cameras in the quality of the pixels—you might call it "photosite quality"—so a stitched picture from one camera might not be precisely equivalent to a picture from another camera with a larger sensor. It might be a little better, or it might be a little worse. But close enough, at least in terms of resolution—especially if the pixel-pitch (i.e., photosite size) of the two cameras matches fairly closely.

Another thing not to forget is that digital generally only uses as many pixels as it "needs," and throws away the rest. That is, if you'll look at the small JPEG at the bottom of my post below—the park scene—it's downsized for the web to about 800x533 pixels. That's approx. 0.425 megapixels. Even though it was shot with the A900, that file in that form doesn't have any more resolution than a shot from a 1/2-megapixel camera would, provided the photosites and processing were of identical quality; the picture doesn't look any better in that application than a picture from a 3-MP or 5-MP or 6-MP camera would. Of course you couldn't blow up details to 200% to see more real information like I did with the distant doggie.

There is a limited range of uses where any sensor of any given size will "show its stuff," so to speak. If you start with a 24-MP file and throw away all but 6 MP—to make a small print, say—you're really not getting any advantage over the same small print made from a 6-MP camera.

Generally, as a standard seat-o'-the-pants formula, the way I think of it is that a camera will yield a close-to-optimum-sized print about as wide in inches as the number of megapixels it has, and it will up-rez very comfortably to about 1.5X that. You can certainly up-rez far past that, with very presentable, even excellent results, depending on subject matter as well as all sorts of subjective quality factors, down to your own taste in print quality; but you won't be seeing more real detail.

The megapixel race really came down to the fact that some photographers urgently needed to print bigger...and that included printing for reproduction. A handful of years ago, when the Nikon D1 was the default professional digital camera, I saw a sports magazine that was produced entirely digitially, and the double-trucks (full spread) pictures looked pretty bad, with lots of intrusive grain and noise and not enough detail for the repro size. Pros very urgently needed more pixels. Today's 10-, 12-, and 14-MP cameras look much better at that repro size.

A tiny fullback trick-or-treating my neighbors' house last night. A900, ISO 800.

So, these days, you can pick your sensor size based on the size of print you'll most usually be wanting to print with "best possible" quality. If you print 5x7's for putting in albums, a 6-MP camera will be fine. For most 13"-wide printers, the current crop of 12- and 14-MP cameras will be good matches.

I do always wonder about photographers who have to have the latest, biggest and mostest cameras, but who never print. That is, they store, view, and share their pictures digitally. I have a 20" monitor that displays 1680 x 1050 pixels, or about one and three-fourths megapixels. You might want to crop sometimes, so having a few extra megapixels might not hurt. But I keep trying to wrap my mind around why anyone who never prints their pictures would ever need a camera of more than 6 MP—really, 4 MP would be more than enough—and I can't come up with any rational reason—unless, of course, they just love to compare the resolution of their camera with other models in online forums!

By my formulas, the A900 is for people who want to print "best quality" up to 24 inches wide and up-rez occasionally to make prints up to a yard wide (or pros who need to shoot for repro much larger than that to will be viewed from various distances, like posters or billboards). If you never print as big as 24" wide, then you really don't need as much resolution as the A900 sensor gives you (although there still might be good reasons to buy such a camera—more about that tomorrow).

Personally, I love all sort of photographs, and get my head turned by good ones almost no matter what the format or final size, and I did become enamored two years ago of some wonderful big prints that master printer Paul Butzi made from some of my files. But traditionally I haven't worked in "wall pieces," and, really, the huge majority of the prints I've made in my lifetime are 10 to 12 inches wide, with the occasional "big" one going up to 15 inches wide. So, according to my own formula, a 12-MP camera would be the most sensible choice for me personally. Although the lure of the occasional really big print is still a Siren song.

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Mike

The Sony A900: Kang 200-20

This is Kang, one of Lulu's buddies at the dog park. Kang, like a lot of the people who hang out at the park at mid-day, is retired. He was a champion racing greyhound who ran more than 240 races. In other words, he was good. He doesn't run a lot any more, preferring to loaf around, most days. Can't say as I blame him. One day he's going to feel like doing a little sprinting, though, and I'm hoping not to miss it.

I guess you could see this coming. The picture above is just a detail from this one:

Two dogs and a lot of air in the frame, and you can virtually count Kang's whiskers. The Sony A900's files are 6000 x 4000—actually a little more—which is a full 300 ppi print at ~20 x 13.5 inches. If you want to make big prints, this is for you.

I know I should really go look this up, but I'm exhausted after hours of throwing candy at trick-or-treaters—I think that 20-20, as in 20-20 vision, means that you see an object at 20 feet that people with theoretically perfect eyesight can see at 20 feet. So if you're 20-40 or 20-60 it means you only see as well at 20 feet as people with good eyes do at 40 or 60 feet.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong about that, right?

Well, the point is, the A900 sees a lot better than I do. I think it's possible to have better vision than 20-20; if you see at 20 feet what other people do at 15, then you're 20-15 and you're ahead of the curve. You can be a fighter pilot.

The detail this camera has is massive. Torrential. Totally over the top. It's like Superman's X-Ray vision or something. It can render well-drawn, textured faraway objects—well, actually, well-drawn, textured faraway objects with their tongues hanging out—that to me and my trifling "naked eye" are just a distant blip, a brown and black smear, about like you're seeing in the lower illustration before you click on it to enlarge it. Quick, how many feet does he have on the ground? Just looking, I couldn't hope to know; the A900 sees. It extracts far more detail out of a scene than I can detect just by looking.

Admit it, you couldn't even find him right away.

This was taken with a 35mm lens. More about that tomorrow.

I'm half tempted to actually quantify this—do an experiment to see how much better the A900 sees than I do. Set up some visual targets 20 feet away that I can barely make out, and then back up to where the A900 can only barely make them out too. I have a feeling my vision would be about 20-200, comparatively. On second thought, I guess I won't do that experiment. Why make myself feel so inferior on purpose?

And before somebody asks, no, that's not the shadow of a dog humping my leg.

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Mike

P.S. All these shots are raw processed in ACR. The details are screen shots from ACR.