The Online Photographer

Whaddaya Mean, 'Not Here'?

You got to hope Bruce Gilden will be there tonight in Time Square. If he's not, he's there in spirit.

_______________________

Mike  (Thanks to Tom Kaszuba)

P.S. I could never do this. Not even once.

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Featured Comment by Bruce Appelbaum: "It takes a particular type of New York 'stones' to be able to do what Gilden does and not get beaten up on a regular basis. Or an immediate intuition about who to shoot and who not to. You have to be a New Yawka (as I am, accent and all) to appreciate this. There could be serious consequences of firing a flash in the wrong person's face.

"The other day I was shooting in NYC in the Chinatown/Little Italy area. I don't generally shoot people. But there was a group of Chinese men with their caged birds in Sara Roosevelt Park, and one let me take his picture. Hey, says I to myself, maybe I can make a go of this.

"I turned around and there were three older Chinese gentlemen sitting on a park bench. I gestured with my camera to the men, and one says (really!), 'Not here.' It wasn't the words, it was the ominous tone that went with it. Unlike Gilden, I didn't talk back, just smiled and walked away. Having had my balloon burst, I  didn't take any more people pictures."

Featured Comment by Gordon Lewis: "To Gilden's critics, before passing judgement on Bruce Gilden and his style of photography based on a 4-minute video clip, I suggest you visit his web site. I'm not saying it will change your mind, but at least you'll have more substantial evidence on which to base your opinion."

Mike comments: Some great stuff in that slideshow. I have to say, God knows I love Magnum photographers and their work, but I'm really growing to hate Magnum's website. The minuscule JPEGs are bad enough, but then to have those copyright notices sprinkled all over every damn picture...it's very distracting. Who's going to be able to use a teeny JPEG even if they do steal it? Well, besides me, I mean? Magnum should relax and get with web culture.

Featured Comment by Stan B.: "A couple of thoughts. If you grow up in NYC, want to photograph, don't have tons of money for a studio or to get outta the city—you photograph the streets. You may love Ansel Adams, but you ain't gonna commune with the grandeur of nature in the five boroughs. Don't judge Gilden by a short video and a half dozen shots, look at his books. Is the art he produces worth the split second of his sidewalk interruption? It's not every person's cup of tea, but I think the work phenomenal. He captures the very vitality and showtime atmosphere that is New York, each and every day where every corner is both stage and refuge. And he does it with a surreal balancing act of light, form, and yes, sometimes even a passing insight into what makes up his anonymous fellow denizens. What's more ethical, sneaking a shot with a telephoto, or acknowledging up close and personal that you're taking the person's photo? I abhor exploitative tourist photography of 'third world' countries—look at Gilden's work in Haiti for a a brutally honest, respectful and at times even beautiful presentation of it's people. If it's one thing I've learned, take a good look at the results, before you criticize."

Featured Comment by Ben Russell: "Bruce Gilden is amazing. Everyone should check out his latest Magnum In Motion segment on foreclosures. One of the best essays I've seen detailing the mess this country is in at this moment in time."

Featured Comment by pcb: "He’s got some good stuff…seems to me much of what he is trying to do is get in there before his subjects (characters) react. Breaking the 'personal space' barrier was always my biggest struggle…photography is invasive, whether we like it or not. Sure, some of us try to make it as polite an invasion as possible, but who are we kidding? Shoot first, apologize later."

Clarity of Mission in Pictures and Words

Eric Meola contacted me yesterday to say he'd seen our Photo Book of the Year nominations and to alert me to his own latest book, India: In Word and Image. I haven't seen it—I'm guessing because my bookstore has it hidden in the "Travel" section or something like that. So I went to his website to check out some of the India pictures.

A spread from India

When I replied to him I added a P.S. as a spontaneous afterthought: "You must be a happy guy—you seem to have developed a strong style and you seem to really love it. There's nothing better than that." Later I fretted that that might have come across as condescending (he didn't take it that way), but I meant it 100% sincerely: you can see it in the pictures, and then there it is, writ bold in 28 words: "Most photographs are in color, but color has, for me, become its own subject, so that my images are simply abstract studies of the interplay of color itself." Just what the pictures project.

Finding your own distinctive concerns in photography—a rich enough vein where you're happy enough to stay—is hard, and rare. His style might not be my own exact cup of tea (call me hidebound, but my allegiances with this subject matter remain stuck on the late Raghubir Singh), but the important thing is that it's his and he's really good at it. And from here, it's refreshing to see such clarity of mission, expressed equally well visually and verbally. I envy that, sometimes. And I'm not even the envious sort.

Even if one of Eric's best-known shots is actually in black-and-white!

_____________________

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bruce Appelbaum: "Eric did a workshop one night earlier this year at Adorama. I already had a copy of his previous book (Last Places on Earth), love it, so I signed up. Loved him and what he had to say about photography and his way of doing it. When I saw that India was coming out, I pre-ordered it from Amazon sight-unseen. What a great book!

"For those of you in the NYC area, Adorama runs a series of workshops weeknights and Sundays. The best of them are those sponsored by Canon and Nikon, featuring great photographers showing their work, discussing their style, and giving away their secrets. And even better—these 2.5–3 hour workshops cost $25, which is refunded in the form of a $25 gift certificate. I've attended the $25 special workshops given by Meola, Joe McNally, and Seth Resnick in the last year, and have signed up for a few more for 2009. Even better: these are not shill sessions for Canon and Nikon, they are great learning experiences."

A Note From Underground

For some reason our post "The Worst Photograph Ever Made" is getting pinged around the 'Net today, and it's bringing in both a lot of viewers from hither and yon and also some new comments. Here's one of the latter I thought was particularly interesting:

I have worked on at least three images for Ms. Leibovitz since the early part of this century, all Vanity Fair covers. What I can say is that while it's an honor to work on such a prominent photographer's work, it is also your worst nightmare every time.

On shots such as this one [the Lavazza calendar shot featured in the post linked above —Ed.], you are provided usually dozens of shots for disassembled parts of the image, and in all cases I've worked on, the models are also in pieces that you have to Frankenstein together. You would think when someone presents you with this type of image, that all those pieces are executed by a master's hand, with every detail thought out and done perfectly, taking into consideration all aspects of lighting, focus, parallax issues...not at all.

I've had to turn a bunch of photos that had no sense of anything technical in to an image worthy of the brand name Leibovitz. Pieces that were supposed to fit had to be horribly distorted to match her post-shoot preproduction mockup made by a low res retoucher on her staff; many times she needed to use a tripod and did not; I also had to match images from different cameras and films together as well. Bottom line is, what is handed to the retoucher is a big pile of doo-doo handled by dozens of her staff—then have to produce images that look impeccable.

To me, her earliest photography is where her mastery shines through; she is one of the great candid portrait photographers there ever was. Her shots were usually planned from what I can tell, but there is an ease in the models that transcends the set, the props, the film itself. Now what she produces are overdone monstrosities befitting a Dolce & Gabanna ad or an Elle editorial.

I've heard stories of assistants really being the ones who control everything, setting it all up without her even in the studio, then she appears, shoots and leaves. This explains why you get a pile of mish-mashed images with very little technical ability or planning, seeming very amateurish in its execution and planning. Then she directs the show post production, but at that point it's too late—the cameras are all put away, the models went home, and you're the poor shmuck with dozens of images you need to make shine.

Signed "Anonymous Retoucher"

The more things change, the more they stay the same—when I was doing custom black-and-white printing, some big-name, high-dollar pros made me jump through similar hoops—although with much more modest expectations on an absolute scale, since so much less was possible in the wet darkroom. The commonality is that a few clients expected miracles on your end to make up for deficits on theirs! Pity the poor post-production minions, folks—get it at least close to right in camera. It's called "craft."

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Mike

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Freddie Hubbard, 1938-2008

Sorrow indeed to hear of the passing of Frederick Dewayne (Freddie) Hubbard yesterday, at the age of 70, after a month in a coma following a heart attack. Mr. Hubbard had never really quite recovered from a 1992 injury that sidelined him, although he had been playing more frequently recently. He got to record one last album, that I have not heard.

Signed glossy of Freddie Hubbard from Stein on Vine's history wall

If you don't know Freddie Hubbard's music, his most famous records were probably "Open Sesame" (which also features Tina Brooks in fine form) and "Ready for Freddie." My personal favorite is "Hub-Tones," from 1962, probably because I've owned it the longest. A gem to have is "The Trumpet Summit Meets the Oscar Peterson Big Four," on Pablo, from 1980. And his swan song, issued just last summer, was "On the Real Side," which was featured on the covers of both Jazz Times and Down Beat.

A live experience that's much overlooked these days is 1977's "VSOP: The Quintet" (which you'll find listed under Herbie Hancock's name on iTunes, although it's really a confederation of equals—aficionados will recognize the lineup as Miles Davis's second quintet, with Hubbard, whose virtuosity better matches that of the others, replacing Miles). It's a live double album featuring Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums, Herbie Hancock on keyboards, and Wayne Shorter on saxophone. A worthy addition to any post-bop jazz collection (the album is the one that starts with "One of a Kind" and features the debut of Ron Carter's famous "Third Plane").

Freddie Hubbard in Rochester, N.Y. in 1976 by Tom Marcello

_______________________

Mike

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Featured Comment by Doug Howk: "'Red Clay' is my personal favorite of Freddie's. Along with Miles, he was a true innovator with his trumpet playing, as leader & composer. Its another sad day for lovers of the music that is Jazz."

Featured Comment by Howard French: "Another vote here for 'Red Clay.' Not only is FH in amazing form, as is Joe Henderson, maintaining a fantastic groove throughout, but Freddie somehow even manages to overcome Creed Taylor's production. The mere mention of this recording for me conjures long, hazy, head-nodding car rides with friends in the '70s."

Featured Comment by Huw: "Can I add Herbie Hancock's 'Maiden Voyage' to the list as one of Freddie's best recordings? And on a more straight-ahead note, 'The Body and the Soul' and 'The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard,' both on Impulse. Freddie Hubbard was one of those rare musicians who could make you laugh out loud with the sheer force of his playing. Fabulous."

Featured Comment by Ann Patterson: "I saw Freddie in the mid '80s on a VSOP reunion tour. I still remember it as one of the best concerts I've ever been to. An amazing artist."

Camera of the Year 2008

Canon 5D Mark II

In its current (January 2009) issue, Car & Driver magazine runs one of its standard "Comparison Tests." This one, called "Dirty Speed, Done Dirt Cheap" (p. 34), pits seven hotted-up econocars against each other and ranks them in order. In the test, the Volkswagen GTI comes in second. First place goes to the Mazdaspeed 3 Grand Touring.

Later in the same issue, the magazine presents its annual "10Best" list, naming what it thinks are the ten best cars in the world. And the GTI makes the list—the only one of the seven cars in the earlier comparo to do so. "So, you ask," explains the author of the comparo, "why did a 10Best winner come in second best? The 10Best award is about the overall feel of a car, and our jury found the smooth GTI to be more pleasing than the hairier Mazda."

In other words: different criteria.

In my recent survey of four 35mm-frame (~24x36mm sensor) cameras, the Canon 5D Mark II came in…third, and, in T.O.P.'s upcoming "Recommended Cameras" list for Winter 2008-2009, the 5D Mark II won't be found. So, huh?

Different criteria.

The Canon 5D Mark II was the most eagerly-awaited new camera of 2008. For Canon shooters, who are legion, it will become for many the tool of choice (or the tool to aspire to) for certain kinds of work—very generally speaking, the kinds of work this site cares most about.

It's also a fine device, offering a very usable balance of form, features, and image quality for a competitive price. You won't hold a more comfortable camera, even if we think Canon should rethink a few of its ergonomics choices. And for image quality it strikes a balance that many shooters will approve of. Plus, it offers a new feature: top-quality video capability, which will make it appealing to wedding shooters and photojournalists who need to do both stills and video and can't (or choose not to) run a dedicated video camera.   

Moreover, it earns a certain amount of credit by dint of its "Mark II" status. There isn't a one-to-one correspondence between the camera market and the community of serious photographers. Some cameras get more than their share of the market and do less than their share of great work. Some (the classic examples are the Leica M4 and M6) are used to create far more great work than their sales numbers alone would predict. Briefly put, those are cameras we care about. And the original 5D proved itself as one of those. Such a camera would never outsell a basic entry-level DSLR or any of the top point-and-shoots. But it was and is used by a disproportionate number of real shooters—professionals, artists, and dedicated amateurs—who are using it to create a large body of great work. That earns its successor some credit that the newcomers in its category don't have: the Mark II has lineage. 

And early 5D Mark II adopters are already taking up right where 5D photographers left off. The camera has some flaws (what camera doesn't?), and it remains to be seen whether it will dominate what's coming to be called "mindshare" among dedicated shooters in a way that's truly reminiscent of the original, now that it has competition.

But it bids fair.

And for that reason—wrap it all up under the rubric of "significance"—the Canon 5D Mark II is the Camera of the Year, 2008.

____________________

Mike

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Camera of the Year 2008: Runner-Up

Panasonic Lumix G1

"Convergence," Micro 4/3, "Full" Frame...2008 could be considered the year of any of the three. All three have been called "the future of digital photography" in various quarters. All three are so far only represented by a very limited number of products. No one's got a crystal ball, but with the arrival of global recession perhaps casting a pall over product development in the near future (and consumer purchasing starting a little while back), our bet's on Micro 4/3 to be significant over the next 1–3 years.

But that's not why we've chosen it. We've taken a real interest in the last few years over a modern iteration of what might be called Oskar Barnack's ideal...a small, portable "stealth" camera but with results good enough to stand side-by-side with those made with larger cameras. Micro 4/3 eliminates the mirror box and reduces the flange distance (the distance between the lens mounting flange and the imager plane) by half, allowing the whole system to be much smaller while still using a sensor that's much larger than those in conventional compacts.

Stanley Kubrick, self-portrait with a Leica III "Barnack camera."

There's nothing magic about the the Micro 4/3 standard, because there's nothing stopping other companies from making mirrorless cameras with APS-C sensors (indeed, Sigma was the first to this particular bar with its DP1, soon to be joined by a follow-up)—although the slightly smaller, less oblong rectangle of the 4/3 format does seem especially well suited to the task. And there's no telling (absent that crystal ball) whether Micro 4/3 will take off. It's likely to encounter some resistance from both above and below—that is, from enthusiasts who don't see why a small DSLR isn't preferable, as well as from compact digicam customers who don't understand the advantages of the larger sensor.

However, the new standard seems like a good idea to us, and the Lumix DMC-G1 seems like a smart, well-judged initial foray. It's a conservative application of the principles of the standard, and it's smart, well-made, usable, and has a fine brace of lenses. And, perhaps most importantly, it signals that Micro 4/3 is full of promise for the future.

Wherever he is, Oskar should be smiling.

____________________

Mike

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Photo Book of the Year 2008: The Nominees

The Life of a Photograph, Sam Abell (National Geographic Focal Point, October) (U.K. link)

The Printed Picture, Richard Benson (Museum of Modern Art, November) (U.K. link)

The Creative Digital Darkroom, Katrin Eismann and Seán Duggan (O'Reilly, January) (U.K. link)

The Americans, Robert Frank (reissue) (Steidl, May) (U.K. link)

101 Billionaires, Rob Hornstra (self-published by the photographer, no month of publication given)

Athlete, Walter Iooss (Sports Illustrated, May) (U.K. link)

Asakusa Portraits, Hiroh Kikai (Steidl, May) (U.K. link) (hat tip to Conscientious)

Invasion 68: Prague, Josef Koudelka (Aperture, August) (U.K. link) (hat tip to 5B4)

Annie Leibovitz at Work (Random House, November) (U.K. link)

Helen Levitt, (powerHouse, March) (U.K. link)

Conversations with the Mob, Megan Lewis (University of Western Australia Press, 2008, no month given)

The Moment It Clicks, Joe McNally (New Riders Press, February) (U.K. link)

The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy, (W.W. Norton and Co., November) (U.K. link)

America, Zoe Strauss (AMMO, November) (U.K. link)

The World From My Front Porch, Larry Towell (Chris Boot, April) (U.K. link)

Minimalist Lighting, Kirk Tuck (Amherst Media, May) (U.K. link)

Front Street, Kotzebue, Dennis Witmer (Far to the North Press, October) (U.K. link)

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Notes: This year I've decided to be strict and limit the list to books actually published in 2008. This eliminates some books we featured and discussed in the past year such as Saul Leiter's Early Color. I think next year I'll loosen the criteria somewhat, to include slightly earlier publishing dates and books we either reviewed or featured on TOP within the year in question. But not this time. (But look for a "2007 Books We Missed" post in the next month or two. Or three.) If you're wondering about books that appear on everybody else's list but not on ours (such as Beaufort West): I haven't seen 'em, and I haven't seen enough of the work to be willing to wing a nomination (as I did above with Conversations with the Mob, for instance, brought to our attention by Paul Amyes). Because TOP might be thought of as a "educational" site rather than a purely art site, I have included selected technical books. I have also limited the list to books that cost $100 or less. Links are to the U.S. Amazon, with U.K. links in parentheses, or to the best source. Finally, I would have nominated The Oxford Project (published September 2008) but it appears to be already out of print.

________________________

Mike

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Featured Comment by Katrina Fried, Associate Publisher, Welcome Books: "Hi Mike, I'm the publisher of The Oxford Project and I just wanted to let you know that the book is definitely still in print and easily available through Amazon, bn.com, most independent booksellers, or directly from us through our online store. I wonder where you saw or heard that it was out of print? Thank you sincerely for all the kind words you've posted about the book—it's voices like yours that have made it possible for The Oxford Project to find such a wide and embracing audience.

Mike replies: Thanks Katrina. I think that was my mistake—without realizing it, I must have been looking at Amazon U.K. where it is not listed as being available. Sorry!

Nominations?

As I contemplate ways to commemorate the changing of the year, and continue plugging away on the latest "Recommended Cameras" list (which are getting harder and harder to write, and I wonder if anyone even cares), I think I won't try to name a "Photographer of the Year" this year. It seems pretentious of me to do so...and pointless, too. It makes me feel like Peter Henry Emerson, who, late in life, would send out "medals" for accomplishments in photography to younger photographers who had never heard of his medals and had not a clue who he was. (Reminds me of an ultimate image of pointless human hubris, Klaus Kinski as Aguirre on a ruined raft spinning down a South American river "claiming" the passing landscape in the name of his King. Naming a Photographer of the Year doesn't make me feel that pointless, but it doesn't seem like something that's really up to me, either. Lots of photographers did good work this year, just like every other. Of course, saying so doesn't help give any of them extra attention, which is what awards are meant to do.)

Kinski as Aguirre and the real Don Lope de Aguirre, mad Basque conquistador

But now, Photo Book of the Year...that I can handle. So I've been poring over a) lists, b) the books I've bought, and c) the books you've bought (I get an accounting from Amazon of the things readers buy through our links) for ideas. In 2007 I'm not sure I named one, although for me McClellan Street and Vancouver Photographs (the latter now out of print, sadly) tied for the honor.

How about some nominations? What would you say is the Photo Book of the Year, 2008?

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Mike

OT: Doilies Everywhere

I hope you had a nice Christmas, if you celebrate it. We usually go to my sister-in-law's parents' house in Illinois. I missed being with that group this year, but, in the snowstorms leading up to the day, thoughts of the perils of winter travel were making me anxious. I have many fine memories of Wigilia at the Noyszewski's house. I must say that the Polish traditions of Christmas Eve are the most satisfying Christmas traditions I've known as an adult...the Oplatek, the extra place setting at the table in case an unexpected guest should arrive, the meatless feast.  Of course it helps when you have great hosts, especially if one of them is a great cook!

Still, Christmas in general seems weirder to me the older I get. It's not really a Christian holiday—it easily predates Christ (it was the birthday of Mithras before it became the birthday of Jesus), and the early Christian church tried to stamp it out before adopting a sensible "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" policy and appropriating it. More than anything, though, it's a Victorian holiday—most of our traditions date from the Victorian era. (I love the fact that the flying sleigh was invented by Washington Irving, more famous for his Headless Horseman and for a village ne'er-do-well who fell into a twenty-year trance state. I think I identify with Rip even more than I do with old Ebenezer's existential crisis.) In the early and middle years of the 19th century, coal and industrialization created an explosion in wealth that reached well into the middle and merchant classes, and the prosperous vied with each other to see who could add more gingerbread to his house, more ornately carved furniture to her sitting room. The more expensive handwork could be showed off, the better. It was an era of doilies everywhere. The heavily festooned tree, the cornucopia of gifts wrapped in expensive printed paper, the sheer exuberance (and, one has to say, wastefulness) of our current holiday dates from that time.

All that was left was the evolution of the traditional garb of Santa Claus (the name a bastardized transliteration of "Saint Niklaus"), which really didn't settle down until well into the modern era, when commercial advertising gave him his stable appearance—it's still a little disconcerting to see the Bishop's robes of purple or green on the Victorian St. Nicks. And of course there was one thing left to invent to bring the holiday into its proper modern form: the electric light bulb, which enabled us to string colored ones all over our houses. There's a certain satisfaction in that, too—the "festivals of light" on the shortest days of the year in the Northern hemishpere is a tradition that stretches back literally to the dawn of recorded time. And what could be nicer for dark days than festive lights?

Still...when I was young I re-read A Christmas Carol every December (or watched the peerless 1951 film version, with Alastair Sim in the title role—please, do me a favor and ignore the Bowdler...er, colorized variant). Now that I'm a middle-aged humbug, I think I'll start a "new tradition" (an oxymoron I just love, since it comes so close to making sense without quite doing so) and re-read Alain de Botton's lovely Status Anxiety every year. Ah, Christmas.

_____________________

Mike

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Need Snow? 'Cause We Got Extra

It's starting to be a tradition around here—Yr. Humbl. Editor takes Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. Unfortunately the weather has put the stone on our travel plans this year, but we'll be thinking warm thoughts and sending good cheer to all our friends wherever you are in the world (and whether you celebrate these particular two days or no). T.O.P. will be back after Christmas.

'Til then, Happy Happy, and Ho, Ho, Ho!

—Mike

WhiBal Shipping

Just a note in response to several commenters who believe they can't order WhiBal cards from other countries...actually you can. Carl has received confirmation from WhiBal that they ship 30% of their orders overseas. They'll be posting clarification about this at their website soon.

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Mike  (Thanks to Carl)

Featured Comment by Michael Tapes of rawworkflow.com (WhiBal): "Hi Mike and Carl and TOP readers. As I discussed with Carl in email, we ship daily to virtually all parts of the world, with the bulk of international sales going to Europe and Australia. Shipments are via the U.S. Postal system. Rates for 1 WhiBal are as follows: First Class International: ~$2–$3 (2–3 weeks) Priority Mail International: $11–$13 (1–3 weeks) The delivery times are generally on the low side of the above scale, but any individual package can wind up in the ozone in customs, or in the system in general. The Priority method has so-called "tracking" but it works only some of the time based on the destination country and the phase of the moon. Thanks to Carl for a fine article and of course to our photo guru, Mr. Johnston. I am proud to be associated with TOP. Happy holidays to all."

The Full-Frame Dilemma...and a Cure

The 5D Mark II went home today...so no more tests. The weather certainly hasn't been co-operating anyway. I'm sorry to see it go; it's an appealing little beast, and it sure was fun to use. After Christmas I hope to post a couple of "second opinions" about it from others.

Meanwhile, I've been barraged (not inundated, but barraged) by a steady stream of emails from people who are clearly agonizing over the full-frame (FF) dilemma. Some in a good way, some in a not-so-healthy, obsessive way.

Is FF for you?

In comparing shots made with APS-C cameras and FF cameras, whether you're going to see any difference will depend on a lot of things. Are you making prints or are you pixel-peeping? (And if you're pixel-peeping, why?) And which parameter of performance are you pushing? And are you pushing it because you need to, for the sake of the picture, or are you inventing difficulties for yourself just to show off what the camera can do? ( I remember a scene, long ago, from a college classroom, waiting for a lecture to start: two photo buffs had their nice SLRs with them, and both had recently bought motor drives, which at that time (early '80s) were still fairly exotic, used mainly by pros. They got into a discussion about whose was faster, and both guys energetically took out their drives and attached them to their cameras. One said, "Ready? Set, go!" and they both began firing off "dry shots" to see whose drive was faster. After a few rounds of this, one guy had "won" and the other guy had been shamed. I silently wondered whether either of them actually ever encountered situations where they really needed a motor drive to get a shot. Maybe.)

Full-frame isn't a magic bullet. The pictures aren't so much better that people are going to look at your pictures and go, "Wow! That looks so good it must have been shot with a full-frame camera!" No. I don't imagine that happening. Gentle daylight scenes with lots of light, with the lenses at optimum aperture, I doubt anybody would see any difference. In most cases.

At the risk of repeating myself, here's a shot with the K20D I've posted before, along with a detail. I believe I first posted this after I read a forumer somewhere opining that the Pentax 35 DA Macro lens "couldn't be used" for landscapes because it "isn't corrected for infinity," or sentiments to that effect. I know the therapy that guy needs: he needs to stop thinking so much and go shoot some pictures! (As do I, most of the time, but that's neither here nor there.)

Here's a little detail from the shot, with foliage looking like something Fragonard might paint. I'd put the little red square on the big picture, but you can do the Where's Waldo thing yourself.

When is enough detail enough? I'd say that's enough. As you can see, it's quite a nice sensor, despite not being full-frame. And pretty good for a lens that's no good at far focusing distances. (And please, please, Forumers From Other Places, be sensible: the only reason I've posted an example from the K20D is that it's the current APS-C sensor camera I happen to have been shooting with, on extended loan from Pentax. I could just as easily have used an example from the 50D or D90 or whatever your favorite happens to be, but I don't have those cameras. I also wanted to post this picture again because right now I'm pining for June weather.) I grant you that I've had a little trouble opening up those shadows on the left, having set the exposure "to the right" of the brilliant clouds. So does that mean I "need" an FX Nikon or the Sony A900, to give me a little more DR?

And that brings me to what full-frame cameras are all about: they push various performance edges here and there.

In general the full-frame cameras aren't different in kind than the smaller-sensor cameras when it comes to results. It's just that you can push them a little harder in certain parameters. The 5D Mark II and the FX Nikons have one to two stops more high-ISO capability; bravo, but then lots of people don't really need high ISO capability, especially given how good most DSLRs already are. (Pictures taken in good light are usually better than pictures taken in bad light.) The Nikons and the Sony A900 can recover a stop or two more dynamic range in the crucial highlights, depending on the image. And the 5D Mark II and the Sony can print bigger.* Which is great if you print big. If you don't print big, not necessary.

The biggest difference I notice with the full-frame cameras is not the results they yield but the cameras themselves! The viewfinders are really nice compared to APS-C and 4/3 cameras—especially the Sony's. (The Sony is the first digital camera I've used or seen that has a good dose of the "fine object" quality of premium cameras of days gone by.) And it's nice to "come home" to my favorite lens again. There are some real advantages to the APS-C and 4/3 sensor size, and I think I'd like the smaller size better if the cameras were just as good and I could get the lenses I want. They're not, quite. And I can't. The camera manufacturers have let us down a bit with the design and execution of the reduced-sensor-size cameras. I think their hands were tied in certain ways, especially with legacy flange distances. As a result, the smaller format DSLRs have never really been anything but hybrids. Nobody ever really made a good viewfinder for any of them. (I use something called the "Pentax Magnifying Eyepiece" on the K20D (they now appear to be calling it the "Viewfinder Loupe"), and I recommend it. It magnifies and improves the view in the viewfinder, to almost-as-good-as FF levels. Emphasis on "almost.")

I liked all three full-frame cameras I tried, but it's not like somebody's going to look at your print and go, "Ooh, you must have shot that with a full-frame DSLR!" It's not that obvious, I'm afraid. It's really just a matter of degree.

And the cure
What's the cure for camera agony of any sort? Just work. Shoot. Get interested in something. Take stock of what equipment you already have, and figure out what it can be used for. Go shoot. Get involved in the pictures. If your camera isn't the last word in high ISOs, then find a little more light and shoot at lower ISOs. You'll live. If your camera doesn't have the best dynamic range, then avoid high-contrast scenes (there are scenes the A900 won't handle, either). If your camera won't print really, really big, then make your prints a little smaller. It won't kill you, I promise. It ain't the camera.

The more that people get interested in the pictures they're making, the less they obsess about equipment. Try it. It's really true—it really works.

____________________

Mike

*My HP printer is "native" at 300 ppi, which means a non-interpolated print from the Sony A900 is 20" wide, and from the Pentax K20D, 15 and a half inches wide. Let's chart that:

Camera that makes 20" wide prints: $3,000
Camera that makes 15.5" wide prints: $800

Both can be uprezzed considerably, and the more pixels, the better they will look at even larger sizes. But how big do you really need to print? Ansel Adams once made some very large exhibition prints, and John Szarkowski's slightly catty comment was something like, "With virtuoso technique, large prints can look almost as good as small ones." If you have to have really big prints, the more expensive camera might be necessary. The largest size paper my printer will handle is 13 x 19", and that's plenty big enough for me. In fact, the biggest problem I have in trying to justify the Sony is that I just plain don't need all those nice pixels. And I know it. Dammit.

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Featured Comment by Shaun: "I went out shooting with my new 5D Mark II last night in the dark; very nice result @ 3200, lovely images I couldn't do with my 5D. But my point is, to my surprise, the files in Photoshop are over 120 megabytes in 16 bit. Before adding any layers. Run Photokit capture sharpener and the file size jumps to over 400 megs! So add that into the cost calculation of a high megapixel camera—lots more storage space required, much faster processor, lots more ram. 64 bit photoshop seems to chew through these larger photos pretty quickly with 8 gigs of ram, but it is slower than my work flow last week."

Featured Comment by John A. Stovall: "As soon as the 5D was out I went to it and dumped my 20D. Why? Because with full frame my ultra wides once more became ultra wides. My C/Y 21mm ƒ/2.8 was once more a 21mm not a thing with a 33mm FOV."

White Balance Part II: Accurate, or Convincing?

By Carl Weese

The first part of this series described what constitutes an accurate white balance, and how to get there with a digital camera. Part II will deal more with visual judgment and the idea of "convincing color." Here are a pair of files, a test and a picture, shot under winter overcast morning light, viewed together in an ACR filmstrip window:

There's a big white balance error here (the overexposure and even the burned out red channel, which is actually caused in part by the white balance error, don't matter because the gray area of the card has plenty of tone). A number of digital cameras I've used get confused by a subject with a lot of green, especially under cool lighting. At risk of anthropomorphizing, it seems like the AWB software says "Wow! look at all that green, we must be in fluorescent light, better crank up the magenta on the Tint slider." This is usually accompanied by a Temp setting that is lower than normal daylight, when it ought to be higher. The WB here is 4800/+19. That's actually a setting you might find correct for a mix of fluorescent light with cool daylight. Shooting on a rainy day in an evergreen forest I've seen AWB go for color that reads out 4100/+35, which actually is about right for warm-white fluorescent tubes.

The "real picture" was shot on AWB as well, but the software has done much better. The numbers are 5000/+1. The grass and the winter forested hillside in the background strike me as quite convincing. The AWB had much less green subject area to deal with and the slice of overcast sky gave it something to grab onto. It "feels" about right for the cold winter light, but there's a problem. What drew me to the subject was the stone of the monument, which has very unusual colors, at least for around here. So let's select both files, click the eyedropper on the WhiBal card and then switch the main view to this picture again.

This nails the unusual colors of the monument, though it has lost the sense of cold winter overcast. Still, for this picture, I'll take accurate presentation of the stone over a more convincing rendition of the light. The numbers are 5500/-7, which is in the expected range for overcast light recorded with this camera.

One of the first things you should do to begin using WB calibration is to shoot multiple tests with your equipment in standard situations like clear sunlight, and overcast light. Be sure to do these tests out in the open where there is no reflected light from bright colored objects (including your clothes!) to contaminate the reading. While in theory sunlight should be 5000/0, the raw development software is seldom that perfectly calibrated to the camera. The Pentax K20D used here gives neutral color under clear sun at 5300/-6 in ACR, while an Olympus E-1 I've used for years comes in at 5400/+14. It can be interesting to know how far from standard the color of the light is in a given situation, and for that you have to know what your camera's "standard" numbers are.

Another pair of pictures, this time shot in pretty weird conditions. It was a dark day, light rain falling, and the sidewalk and street were heavily overhung by a green canopy of leaves—there's a row of trees growing at the top of the retaining wall. AWB has made a valiant effort to cope, turning in numbers of 6750/+2. AWB has compensated +1450 temp and +8 tint compared to where it would set for ordinary sunlight, because it knows this sure ain't clear sunlight. Actually, it really felt that cold and blue standing there in the rain, but these colors are pretty livid and I know that they'll look even stranger printed than they do on the monitor.

So here's the test frame after clicking the card with the eyedropper. Look at those numbers, 8800/+4. That's very weird light indeed. The card and the hand look good. However...

This is all wrong. The test card reading has been applied to the picture file. Okay, those are accurate renditions of the subject colors, but it totally misrepresents the scene. Everything seems bathed in a glow of clean sunshine. The color of the light (sunny) is totally at odds with the tonal quality of the light (heavy, soft overcast). The whole point of the shot is lost. How to get back the feel of the day and the strange location?

Some time back I was working on a set of pictures made in overcast light and through tedious trial and error finally arrived at white balance settings that seemed convincing to me. Some of the takes included WhiBal test shots so I reverse-engineered things a bit. I applied the adjusted Temp/Tint settings from the good-looking files to the test card files, then used the eyedropper to measure the r/g/b readings on the test card. It turned out that the white balance that gave convincing portrayals of overcast light had r/g/b values where the g was a couple points higher than the r, and the b was about five points higher than the g. Then I went looking through my archive folders of raw files for pictures that, after laboring over, did a good job of presenting really dark, stormy light—pouring down rain or threatening snow. Repeating as above, I found that for these g ran about five points over r, and b about ten points over g, instead of the dead-even numbers of an accurate gray card calibration.

Right after I'd finished doing this, Oren Grad asked me to look at some snow scenes under overcast skies he'd struggled over to get the color just right before putting them up on his website. I thought they looked perfect on screen, so I pulled them down to my desktop and tossed them into Photoshop so I could get the eyedropper on them. The light gray snow showed r/g/b values such that g was a couple points higher than r, and b was about 5 points higher than g. To have a colleague confirm your results by request is nice, but to find him doing it by independent discovery means you might actually be on to something.

So, I selected the test file again from this screen, then hit "Select All," then clicked the Temperature slider to activate it, and placed the cursor on the test card. Next I used the keyboard down arrow to tweak the temp setting lower, watching the numerical rgb readout of the card and the thumbnail of the other file. When the temp setting got down to 7250, the color of the thumbnail was starting to look pretty good and, sure enough, the r/g/b numbers for the test card were 174/179/188. I switched the main view to the picture file and got this:

Much more like it. So here are three white balance versions, one set by the camera's software, one set as accurately as possible using the test card, and one set to what strikes me as a convincing interpretation of the scene as I experienced it. None of them is "correct." You don't have to agree with my choice. You might think the scene works best at another intermediate balance, or even farther to either end of the scale.

In Part I, I mentioned that portraits probably ought to have accurate color, but I'll modify that to say that I suspect a commercial portrait photographer won't get any complaints if she routinely tests for accurate white balance and then bumps the temperature up 300 or 500 degrees. Warm is happy and friendly.

Household tungsten lamps have really low color temperature. Even though our eyes adapt to this so that we don't generally perceive household lighting as yellow or amber, pictures in living room lighting often don't look right when the color is fully corrected for accuracy. It's the other side of the coin from my rainy day under the trees picture. Maybe this is because somewhere in the back of our heads we think, or feel emotionally, that indoor light should be warm. Paintings from hundreds of years before the invention of color photography often depict fireside and candlelight scenes with a really warm amber palette far removed from an accurate presentation of subject colors. As with the previous example, a test exposure that tells you what white balance is accurate is a helpful reference even if you decide that a warmer rendition will make a more convincing presentation.

If you are in light that is likely to fool the camera's AWB and you plan to use the camera's histogram for exposure evaluation, it's a good idea to select a manual balance or attempt a custom white balance to get the color closer. Even though you can correct the raw file for white balance based on your exposure of a test target, the camera histogram, based on a badly color-balanced camera JPEG, may be so far off that color correction will end up clipping one or more channels. If the WB is set close to accurate color, the histogram will be a much more accurate exposure indicator, and you can still fine-tune the raw files for color using the test card exposures. Note, changing the white balance setting in-camera doesn't have any effect on the raw data, but making the JPEG-based histogram more honest can avoid mistakes based on a faulty histogram.

You can also save specific white balance settings that you find recurring in your work, like those clear sunlight numbers I mentioned earlier. With PS, you can save a white balance setting in ACR as a "custom subset." You can then apply it to new files either in ACR or Bridge. It can be informative to toggle between what the camera's auto white balance came up with and your standard daylight or overcast settings, for example. If you do a shoot in a place with weird light, you can save a custom setting for that, and it will prove useful during your editing. You can always delete the setting to keep the panel less cluttered, after you're done with that shoot.

White balance is both a technical tool and an aide to expressive printing. Use of a neutral test target makes quick work of getting the most accurate color your camera can come up with in a given situation. At the same time an accurately corrected test file gives you a helpful visual reference point for expressive use of color that gets across your personal interpretation of a scene.

________________________

Carl

See more examples at Working Pictures

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Nikon D700 Sample Print

UPDATE: The sale is now closed. Thanks very much to everybody who ordered one! The print will be limited to 45 signed and numbered copies in this size. I'm about halfway done with the printing as of midnight Sunday, Dec. 21, so these will be mailed by early January. 

______________________

Mike

(P.S. Sorry this post is out of order—I messed up and now I can't fix it. You know what they say: Oh well.)

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Is 'Serious Phone Camera' an Oxymoron?

By Mahesh Venkitachalam

Is there a "serious" mobile phone camera out there?

Before you discard the notion of a serious mobile camera as frivolous and of limited use, let me tell you a small story: My mother had an open heart surgery (aortic valve replacement) last year. The photo is that of her, the day after the surgery. Her health was in poor condition before the surgery, and she made a full recovery since then. The only reason that I could capture this significant moment in my life was because I had my mobile phone (with camera) with me. Yes, the image is of poor technical quality, but it is better than having none.

I constantly find myself in situations where I wish I had my camera gear with me. My "gear" is very simple—just a Pentax K10D with a 31mm lens—but even this setup is too much to lug around in many situations. But I never find myself anywhere without my mobile phone, and this seem to be the case with most folks in India these days. The mobile phone camera seems to be the perfect solution to capture the "in between" moments of one's life.

What I find in India is that camera usage is polarizing in two opposite directions. The young ones are all now using mobile phones to take and share photos—most never print any photos. On the other hand, the more serious photographers are moving to digital SLRs since they are getting cheaper. I think this will lead to a decline in use of compact digital cameras.

A similar "in-between" phenomenon is happening in the software world. The (recent) huge popularity of the "twitter" software, which tries to capture life in between emails and blog posting, is an example.

But the current crop of mobile phone cameras are lacking in many technical aspects. Perhaps a call from the consumer, especially the photography enthusiasts among them, will prompt cell phone manufacturers to improve their cameras. I am especially looking forward to one with a fast lens and a raw mode.

____________________

Mahesh

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Featured Comment by Gen Kanai: "Absolutely. Japan's had 5 megapixel camera phones out for two years or more. The new models have 8 megapixels, mechanical zooms, etc. This is taken from my 5MP Casio set to 4MP. More here."

Featured Comment by Janne: "You see this in Japan too. Go to any large event with lots of people and look at what people use to photograph with. For every DSLR you have ten people with a compact digicam. But for every one of those, you have ten or twenty people snapping away with their phones, holding them up as if in supplication to some wireless deity.

"And for most of those people, the phone cam is not a second choice or a miserable compromise. It's their only camera, they print from them or send them on directly to their friends and they're quite happy with the results they get. Most of them not want the burden and hassle of a separate camera and see no reason to buy one.

"This is the future of mass-market photography. The DSLR and even the compact camera are sideshows, relative niche products for hobbyists. If you want to be the Kodak of the next decade you will be making phones, not cameras.

(Still) Keeping the 'X' in 'Xmas'

 

By Ctein

Once again, a Salubrious Solstice to one and all, and my best wishes to you and hopes that you are enjoying this holiday season, for whatever definition of "holiday" works for you.

Last year, I described the wonders of "X" in a somewhat rarefied way. This year I'm going to be more down-to-Earth in my talk of the unknown. Namely, what sorts of digital camera improvements you may expect to find the [semi-mythical gift-giver of choice] putting in your [personal gift receptacle of choice] in the next double-handful of years.

This is not a wish list. Every one of these goodies is sufficiently mainline and part of the normal manufacturing track that I am certain they will all show up in your digital camera...unless current technology improves so much that it makes some of them unnecessary. That's the unknown part—either you'll get these goodies or you'll get something even better. It's horrible living with uncertainty, isn't it?

Here's the shape of shinies to come:

Back-illuminated thinned sensors: These have twice the collection efficiency of standard sensors, and they've been in common use in scientific instruments for many years. You haven't seen them in commercial cameras because thinning the substrate has been expensive. New manufacturing patents show how to do this on a production basis. It gets you a factor of two improvement in ISO, across-the-board, but it's especially important for small-pixel sensors.

Deep well insulating sensors: A problem with sensor arrays is electron leakage between the pixels. All sensors suffer from this. It reduces low-light sensitivity, decreases sharpness, and degrades color rendition. A new design adds a secondary well layer beneath the pixels that insulates them. Hard to estimate exactly how much this will improve things, but I would guess about half a stop in low light performance, plus better sharpness and color.

Non-Bayer filter arrays: Bayer filters are a good compromise when you have a moderate number of pixels. There are efficient at capturing spatial detail, and computationally simple. They have many disadvantages: poor overall light collection, horrid aliasing problems, and they shortchange blue sensitivity, especially bad for available-light work under normal indoor lights.

Other filter arrays solve all these problems. This is nothing new; Kodak and other companies have been doing this since the early days of high-quality digital cameras. As pixels approach the micron size (and there are very good reasons for them to do so, despite some of the naysaying you've read) quasi—random filter arrangements will improve sensitivity, sharpness, and reduce noise.

Adaptive pixels: Good digital cameras already capture an 11–12 stop luminance range, but there would be some real advantages to capturing a 20-stop range (total exposure freedom, for one thing). Adaptive pixels that alter their response depending on the intensity of light that hits them exist in laboratory sensors; they'll hit the mainstream within a decade, unless conventional designs get so much better that nobody cares.

GRIN optics: "GRadient INdex (of refraction)" lenses have an index of refraction that changes as you move out from the center of the lens. Scanners already use GRIN lens arrays to relay the image from the platen to the sensor. A few commercial camera lenses have already been designed with GRIN elements, but there are problems still to be solved in making large elements cheaply and characterizing them well in production. But, as with aspheric surfaces, which were similarly exotic decades ago, these will gradually penetrate optical designs.

Diffractive optics: Gratings embossed onto the surface of the lens can radically alter things like chromatic and spherical aberration, which are otherwise difficult to correct well. We already have limited diffractive optics. Like GRIN, this is going to improve a lot over the next decade and we're going to get very innovative designs.

Combination optics: What happens if you combine GRIN, diffractive gratings, and lens surfaces of arbitrary curvature? You get single lens elements that perform as well or better as your typical triplet. Imagine what you could do, in terms of lens weight, aperture, and size, if you could cut the number of lens elements by a factor of two or three and make each element thinner and lighter to boot.

This is all off-the-shelf in the next few-to-ten years. I didn't even get into the edgy stuff, like quasi-particle single photon spectral detection, metamaterials, and other exotica, whose future is entirely unknown.

Anyone who tells you that camera image quality is near to topping out simply has no idea of what's waiting in the wings. Salubrious Solstice!

______________________

Ctein

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Further Adventures in Reviewing

Reader Graydon, in the comments yesterday:

How the camera interacts with the raw converter and other software you're already used to matters, and it is, up to a point, an issue with the camera design. A camera with utterly splendid image characteristics so long as it is only used with the proprietary converter shipped with it is a different camera from one with equivalently splendid image characteristics when used with any old image converter. (Presumably the makers of the second camera are much more open with their raw image specifications.) So I think Mike is right to test cameras with whatever raw converter he is in the existing habit of using; where the camera is on the spectrum between 'works only with the proprietary software' and 'works with anything' is an important thing to know. Since the converter he's using is the one with the lion's share of the market, especially so.

Graydon has an excellent point, but it does bring up an issue for reviewers (and, for readers, an issue with reading reviews): how much are we reviewers justified in only using a test camera like we usually use cameras?

My habitual stance is that I can only use test cameras like I normally use my own, and then report on that. For instance, I don't use flash. I have a vague idea that people tend to like Nikon's flash implementation better than Canon's, but beyond that I have no idea which camera is better for flash users. So, when I "test" (I prefer the word "try") a camera, how much obligation do I have to check out and report on the flash functions?

Ideally, a "real" (i.e. complete, publishable) review would speak to all the ways everyone uses a camera, including flash. But that brings up another problem with reviews: to what extent do you want a reviewer to be "faking it" when he pontificates on a specific topic? What I mean is, I never use on-camera flash with any camera, therefore I have neither a "deep" knowledge of the technical and operation issues involved with on-camera flash nor a breadth of experience with different flash systems and implementations. I don't have well-formed opinions about flash. So which would you prefer: would you like me to take a dozen pictures with the flash on and bullshit my way through a couple of paragraphs about how it works, or would you rather just have me tell you up front that I don't know anything about flash and leave it at that?

My preference, as a review reader, is for the latter. What it tells me is just that I need to go somewhere else for the missing information, that's all. That strikes me as both honest and reasonable. If you read one of my reviews and then assume you'd better head over to Strobist for David Hobby's views on a camera's flash functionality, what's wrong with that? David's forgotten more than I ever knew about in-camera and on-camera flash. Who would you rather listen to on that score? I'd rather listen to David, myself.

Festive House, Canon 5D Mark II and 35mm ƒ/1.4L, ISO 3200, flash off

Iridient, nacreous, shimmering, glittering, sparkling
What I'd probably do if I took the issue of raw converters seriously would be to maybe pick three and quietly begin using them. I'd wait until I had gained some experience with them all, till I felt I had a solid handle on their similarities and differences and how they worked in a variety of situations, and then I'd begin introducing them into my reviews.

Here's what I wouldn't do: I wouldn't use ACR with everything, all the time, and then publish a review of a specific camera C, and then have people complain that C works a lot better with raw converter XYZ, and then go download a copy of XYZ and try it (only with C files) and then start talking about it like I knew what I was talking about. That's disreputable, in my view.

And, as several people have pointed out in the comments, it gives rise to another problem, which is that you can never please everybody anyway, and successive layers of technical niceties only give rise to further levels of complaint. That is, if I were to write a review which said, in effect, "I did all my tests with ACR but anecdotal evidence on the forums suggested that XYZ is better, so I tried that," then I'd get 19 people expounding about what an idiot Johnston is because doesn't he understand that XYZ is a flibbertegibbet app and he needs to use a whapdoodle app such as the raw converter LMNO; at which point the conversation explodes into a flibbertegibbet vs. whapdoodle controversy, with XYZ vs. LMNO overtones.

Believe me, I know. I've been doing this for a while.*

And even then we haven't really gotten anywhere. Because even if I try the C with LMNO, there will be a guy somewhere who has devoted his free time for a year to comparing all the raw converters extant with C cameras, and he'll be absolutely convinced that the best way to convert raw files is to start with C's bundled coverter, save to RIFF, apply the Magic Dust plugin, spin around three times, open the image in Picture Whizz and shout at the monitor, then use his proprietary Action sharpening filters which he will sell you for $9.

What's the solution? Honesty, folks, just honesty. I've reviewed a lot of lenses over the years, for instance, but I'm almost always careful to remind people that for my own work I've always used lenses between 28mm (or equivalent) and 90mm (or equivalent), with 24mm and 105mm (and equivalent) outliers. Within those boundaries I have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge. So if you come across me writing about a 12mm or a 400mm, you should realize that I don't have a deep basis of comparison. Because I don't use those focal lengths. And how will you know? Because I'll tell you. Simple honesty can overcome any deficiency. Just don't pretend you know more than you know and you'll be fine. That's my turtle-shell, and I'm stayin' in here.

The bottom line: I use ACR and Photoshop. If a camera doesn't perform well with those tools, then it won't perform well for me. It's not the end of the world. The internet is broad and wide, and there are other people out there also writing about the same cameras I write about—or so I hear.

(On the other hand, after some on-the-fly online research, I have just downloaded a trial version of Raw Developer 1.8.2 from Iridient Digital. So in the future you might or might not be reading a comparison between that and ACR. I'd promise to work on it, but, as I'm fond of saying, I have enough things to promise to work on.)

_______________________

Mike

*The 19 people in question would all be veterans of the flibbertegibbet vs. whapdoodle flames on various forums, so they'd be properly radicalized and polarized on the issue, and all their arguments would be fully developed and, probably, long. I call these "imported arguments" when they show up in our comments section, where I usually cheerfully zap them. As with many such blogosphere-related issues, I've developed a sixth sense for knowing what I'm looking at when I see something like this.

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Just to slightly garnish the dish you've already cooked...I, too, am very much of the mindset that if a camera's files can't be well-processed by Lightroom/Photoshop/ACR (my main platform) it's not my problem.

"During a period of idle curiosity and insecurity a cople of years ago I ended up licensing and testing a basket-full of these independent raw converters (examples: Capture One, Raw Developer, Bibble, LighZone, et al.). I—really—wanted to find advantages over ACR (of that day) that could consistently justify using these products. But while I could find some occasional benefits on certain types of image files I could find nothing that would warrant the inconvenience of permanently implanting any of these products into my processing and cataloging flow.

"I would reach that same conclusion today, perhaps more than ever. Adobe's Camera Raw facility, both as an extension to CS4 and as part of Lightroom, can be adapted to painlessly custom-process raw files from specific cameras through its new profiling facility. But more significantly it has been given the tweak-tools with which one can achieve virtually any result desired. Blaming ACR for conversion disappointment is very, very hard to support today.

"Of course there are, and will continue to be, enthusiasts who swear that some other raw converter is giving them results 'far superior' to ACR. Rather than pointlessly argue with them I simply tip my hat and wish them well. If they've found a digital elixir that they believe makes their images sing sweeter, more power to them. Perhaps they have. But from my seat, perhaps a seat shared by the majority, Adobe has produced stunning gains in its raw image processing facilities over the past years. (I've actually begun re-processing some of old raw images with the newer ACR to great advantage.) That's why it's my horse and I'm continuing to ride 'im!"

Featured Comment by Dale Moreau: "Okay, I was willing to let it go, but since you brought it back up...I do not think that it is unreasonable to expect that a manufacturer's raw converter would provide results that are superior to a 'generic' application. I would think that it would be very reasonable that a specific camera's dedicated software designed by the same team that designed the in camera processing would be able to optimize that same data to output.

"With that said, an argument between generic converters is futile and, of course, simply sticking to the one that serves your workflow is consistent with what one would expect any professional to do. So when one is 'trying' cameras and not suggesting a bench test outcome but simply providing personal observations that suit one's personal style, I see no reason to introduce unnecessary complexity into an otherwise very enjoyable review."

Featured Comment by Robert Noble: "We old-timers can't help but think of the age-old arguments about how photos should be processed. The technical words used in the discussions may have changed, but the tenor of the arguments has not.

"See, for example, this 1999 thread from photo.net on processing photos or this 1999 thread from the LF.info site. (I would quote similar debates from the 1940s and 1950s, but they're not online!)

"SUMMARY: There seem to be two main camps when it comes to processing photos: Those who seem to enjoy the never-ending quest for the magic formula (and who champion the superiority of whatever method they've decided on for now) vs. those who say 'It's not a big deal. Just pick a reasonable, mainstream solution and go with it, learning its limitations and capabilities and changing it only if you're convinced it's lacking.'

"In a sense, both camps play an important role (promoting innovation vs. keeping perspective, respectively). Which philosophy is right for each photographer is a matter of personal disposition."

Soft-Spoken Deal

Plug warning: I don't usually do this—point out bargains—because where would you stop? And I know most of our readers are interested in higher-level cameras than this. (Although readers have been buying lots of these recently). But this seems like a notably good bargain. I recommended a D40x to my next-door neighbor—the predecessor to this camera—and she loves it. The current camera is the 10-MP D60, and in this B&H kit, on sale for $200 off right now, it comes with a decent VR (image stabilizing) normal zoom and a telephoto zoom (although the quality of the latter is unknown to me)—all for $589.

And before you scorn, consider that this camera exceeds the specification of a camera that 10 or 12 years ago would have been about the size of a phone book and cost six months to a year of the average American's salary.

Not a screaming bargain, possibly, but still talkin' loud enough to listen to.

___________________

Mike

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 Featured Comment by Paul De Zan: "For me, the D40/D60 cameras are really the only DSLRs, because I just won't carry anything bigger or heavier. Despite the small sensor and low-end geegaws, a D40 will turn night into day in a way I've never been able to consistently achieve with 35mm film. It's also a far better action camera than the specs would suggest. If you're not a serious print maker, you really don't need anything else."

Featured Comment by Ed Richards: "If you are looking for a second camera for family outings and carrying around when you do not feel like a pack mule, do not miss the deals on the D40 with the 18–55 [currently $450 after rebate —MJ]. I bought one and carried it on outings on a recent vacation, rather than the D700. It was great, and a $39 8 gig card gives you 1000 RAW images. Nothing like not having to mess with downloading for a whole trip, or just buy two cards and be good for weeks. :-)"

Big Sticks

I think it's important at this point to reiterate some of the points that Jeff Baker and others made in the comments to the "Sony vs. Nikon vs. Canon" review.

For anybody with aspirations of being a photographer, picking a camera and working out what we now call a "workflow" is only the tip of the iceberg. The much more important questions are, what kind of pictures can you take? What do you care about enough to sustain a long-term visual interest in? How can you develop a "style" that is expressive of your unique outlook? How do you differentiate a picture that's somehow yours from a picture anyone else might make? And finally, how are you going to figure out what you want to end up with—and how are you going to end up there? (By this I mean a show, a book, a portfolio, a poster, a magazine article, a personal photo album, whatever the "final form" of a group of your pictures might be.) All of this can be enormously engrossing—and for most photographers I think it (rightly) sucks up the lion's share of their time, attention, and effort.

But let's forget about all that for a moment and get back to the workflow question. Various people have suggested that I should try certain other workflow parameters with the various cameras I've recently reviewed, especially the Canon, suggesting that I'd get different results if, say, I a) used a different raw converter and b) set the camera to a lower resolution. They're probably right.

When I review a camera, though, what I like to do is shoot with it for a while and get an overall feel for it (I use the jargon word "holistic" sometimes). Then, I like to discuss my impressions with whoever's reading my articles as if I were conversing with an intelligent and experienced friend. The reason I do it this way is because it's the style of reviewing that I'm good at, for one thing—if I had to write more than a couple of reviews in the style of the giant digital camera review sites I would drive myself absolutely crazy in short order. But there's another reason: it's that, usually, I have a short amount of time to spend with the cameras, and if I get "distracted" (that's what I'd call it, but just for me) by technical minutiae, then I'm not going to have enough time to find out what I'm more interested in finding out, which is that overall feel of what it's like to use the thing for a while as if it were mine.

Obviously, this means that my reviews are only one certain kind or style of review, and don't cover every aspect of the camera's performance—especially their technical performance. In the few weeks I have with the Canon 5D Mark II, for example, it's probably beyond my capabilities to try every raw converter option with it to find out what works best. The way I get around such weaknesses is by just being upfront about them—that is, I 'fess up to it with my intelligent and experienced friend (you, that would be), who can then take it into account. (Although Ctein has suggested adopting a second raw converter and trying it whenever there's a question of compatibility with ACR, which would be a sensible compromise.)

Of course,what all this elides or subsumes is the assumption that whoever buys a camera is going to get to know it better than any of its reviewers knew it. At least potentially.

And in some cases, radically better. As I mentioned below, you can keep getting to know your equipment indefinitely—keep improving your workflow indefinitely—sometimes even to the extreme of distracting you fatally from the more important aspects of photography that I mentioned above. But that aside, technical skills can really be developed to an impressive degree as we learn how to use our tools.

For example, a reader named Stephen Scharf not long ago objected to some things I said about the size of prints you can make from various size sensors. He claimed that he could make an excellent 13 x 19" (Super B/A3) print from 4-megapixel image files, which I certainly can't do. As proof of concept, he sent me a print of the following picture:

Stephen Scharf, Chris the V.

Stephen (whose name you might recognize from the comments) is Track Photographer for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, in Monterey, and Infineon Raceway, in Sonoma, in California; his work has been published in numerous Bay Area newspapers and in RoadRacer X, Intense Sport Magazine, and on SuperbikePlanet.com. The picture is of Chris Vermeulen riding a Honda RC211V at Siberia Corner, Philip Island Grand Prix Circuit, in the Australian MotoGP, Victoria, Australia, in October 2005. Chris is known as "Chris the V."

The picture was taken with a Canon 1D, 70–200mm ƒ/2.8L non-IS lens with Canon 1.4X tele-extender II, for a combined focal length of 280mm, at 1/400 sec. and ƒ/13, handheld, at ISO 200.

As Stephen describes it, "This rider was going about 75 mph when the photo was taken, and you can see every stitch, vent perforation, and the pebble texture of the leather with excellent detail and clarity."

And sure enough. So how did he do it, with the only 4-megapixel 1D? Well, take a look at his workflow:

1. Each image is sharpened upon import into Photoshop using the Photokit Sharpener "Capture Sharpen" macro to recover detail lost by the sensor (effectively infinite number of photons, finite number of pixels).

2. Each image is then upressed using Bicubic Smoother in PS to give the pixel dimensions at 360 ppi.

3. The image is then sharpened for printing using Photokit Sharpener using the Inkjet, 360 dpi, Glossy sharpening macro.

4. The image is then exported to ImagePrint, a RIP, and printed on Stephen's old warhorse Epson 2400 using the appropriate color profile and ImagePrint to drive the printer.

5. The photo is then printed on InkJet Art Microceramic Lustre.

Well, okay then. Stephen gets the prize for eking the most print quality out of 4 MP, that's for sure. My broader point here is that he knows more about printing 1D files than any reviewer was ever going to figure out how to do in the first few months after that camera came out.

So my feeling is that trying to have the "final say" on image quality in a camera review is a fool's errand to start with. It's an impossible task; not just unlikely, not just difficult, but impossible. Some reviewers like to take a shot at it; some concentrate on it; some, like me, prefer to downplay it in favor of "softer" or more subjective impressions. Yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.

There's a lot more that can be said on this subject. But note well, too, that with any camera, from the worst to the best, there will be people who use it well and people who use it poorly. Buyers of a camera aren't buying expertise along with it. That's something they have to earn. As with most things, it's not how big a stick you have, it's how hard you swing it.

____________________

Mike  (Thanks to Stephen Scharf)

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Featured Comment by Tom: "As an aside I'd like to mention that the Inkjet Art Micro Ceramic Lustre paper that Stephen mentions is one of the great cheap inkjet papers out there. Inexpensive and prints wonderfully."

The Worst Photograph Ever Made

One thing there has unfortunately never been a shortage of is bad photographs, and collectively they parade a grand variety of shortcomings: there is unremitting blandness; poor taste; lack of taste; utter ignorance of taste; dullness (oh, much, much dullness); ostentation; unintentional humor; imitation; dishonesty; misguided attempts at aestheticism, and a great panoply of technical mistakes and missteps; the list goes on and on. But for inspired badness, this recent "photograph"* by Annie Leibovitz for the Lavazza calendar has it all: a pandering (unto capitulation) to empty style; excessive color which is nevertheless unattractive; an attractive model who is also unattractive (though she got legs! But what the hell is with that expression?); a really woeful idea (Romulus and Remus and their wolf-mother—oh, please) that nevertheless doesn't even work; heavyhanded overproduction; no trace of irony; a blatantly fake background that doesn't even try to match the studio-shot foreground; a baby butt, for that touch of smack-you-with-a-dead-fish cuteness; campy makeup, kitschy hair; and, to top it all off, a hilariously incongruous product placement like an embarrassing pimple. Ms. Leibovitz has made some great photographs in her time, and she's very far from the worst photographer ever, but she's also one of the most inconsistent of top photographers and her latest excesses of "stylyness"** are such a relentlessly wrong direction it's almost impossible to overstate, pretentious and vulgar in balanced measure. This picture as a whole has absolutely zero connection to reality or honest depiction, but is unredeemed by any countervailing expressive or artistic purpose. And (and this puts it out in front of many other contenders) it was all done intentionally, front to back, top to bottom, money-no-object, by an army of the most talented professionals, from art director to stylists to make-up artists to baby-wranglers to lighting assistants to photographer to digital retoucher, all working assiduously in concert in pursuit of the utterly pointless. You can name other contenders, but I think you have your work cut out for you. This is it.

_____________________

Mike

*Really a pastiche, of mainly photographic elements. Those babies, for instance, were not shot at the same time as each other, nor were they shot with the model.
**With apologies to Stephen Colbert.

ADDENDUM: See also this newer comment posted separately. —MJ

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Featured Comment by Kent: "But what if it is actually photographic genius? What if Ms. Leibovitz is actually making a statement about her own personal hell, and/or consumerism? What if she's saying 'My job sucks, but I can't see a way out! Look at the utterly vapid concepts I get paid huge sums of money to execute! Can you believe the client actually PAID ME A FORTUNE FOR THIS?!?' Yeah, I kind of doubt it too, but it's a thought. Trying to be optimistic in a trying time...."

Featured Comment by Jay Moynihan: "Ah, found it. Here is the 'original,' so to speak, that she based her photo on."

The Capitoline she-wolf with the boys Romulus and Remus. Museo Nuovo in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. 13th century A.D. with figures of Romulus and Remus added in the 15th century.

Featured Comment by Barry Myers: "Gosh Mike! Turn it down on Annie Leibovitz and by extension, commercial photography. I'm almost certain that Leibovitz didn't dream up the concept for Lavazza (a coffee company, I believe)—she was hired to do a job. Probably had a layout to work from and some specifications as to image quality (PPI etc.), may have had some choice in talent—frequently, photographers present their choices to the client, but in the end, it's the client who chooses. The mood, lighting, even pose were most likely worked out by or with the client. She was a hired gun and she might even agree with you that it's not the greatest photo, but it may have been and I hope it was, a great assignment for her. Maybe she got to go to Rome, eat some great food, meet some interesting people, etc. and get paid.

"It's as though you're saying that if a client says to a photographer that they want you to photograph X, you
can come back at them with 'Why, I don't think X is the right person for me to shoot, how about Y or Z?'  Photographers working on assignment just don't make their living that way.

"Annie Leibovitz is at the top of our profession. She does great work and judging by a recent radio interview I heard on the Kojo Nnamdi show (WAMU, Washington D.C.) and your review of her book, she's pretty damn articulate. It may be sad, as you, or perhaps someone else on your blog pointed out, that young photographers admire her more than say, young photographers in my day (the 'sixties) admired Cartier-Bresson or Eugene Smith (who were also working on assignment), but that doesn't take away any of her talent or success at what she does. Many, maybe most commercial photographers would love to have the opportunity to do the type of assignments she does so well.

"When I hear your criticism of certain images done on assignment, I cringe. All of us, I think, have done work on some lunatic concepts and even have done less than our best on others. You seem to think that we have a choice—and I guess we do: eat or starve. I think a more generous way to look at it, is that the customer is always right and to assume that the photographer can try to persuade a client in a different direction but usually, like in most retail transactions, it's futile.

"For personal work, the photographer gets to choose, otherwise, when there's a client, I think the object is to please the client. You can always shoot it your way if there's time and budget and it's something many of us ask our clients to do if we're not happy with the outcome of the client's ideas."

Mike replies: Fair points all, Barry, but I'm not criticizing the photographer or what anyone does for a living; I'm criticizing the result. The corollary to what you're saying would be that I should admire or tolerate an advertising photograph because everybody's doing their job and getting paid—you wouldn't say that, would you? It's like saying I should admire a work of art because the artist is sincere and works hard and has a family to feed. Besides, if nobody turns up the heat on clients for perpetrating horrible crap, then we deserve it when we get more and more visual pollution on our billboards, busses, and everywhere else we turn.