The Online Photographer

Ctein's Big Deal

It's been very interesting to read the responses to Ctein's little experiment... everything from "I'm in," to "it's worth a try," to "you can't do that," and at least one inadvertent insult (a "hobby"? What, is a professional athlete out there for a little recreation and exercise? Just because something's a hobby to one person doesn't mean it is for everyone else too).

And there's been a fair amount of skepticism, as if the idea were somehow disreputable. I really don't see it as any different than any number of other investment or pay-for-work arrangements. I'm especially surprised at the notion, variously expressed, that there might be something vaguely dishonest about asking payment for work that hasn't been done yet. There are plenty of financial arrangements where payment is made in advance of the work being done, from a down payment on a kitchen remodeling to a lawyer's retainer to a publisher's advance on royalties to an author. All such arrangements contain various mixtures of trust and risk for the buyer: you have to trust that the person you're paying in advance is competent to do the work, and will actually do it, and that the work will be worth its cost once it's finished. In some cases (the remodeler, for instance), past work might be considered a reliable guide to future performance; in the case of the author's advance, the publisher knows it's a crapshoot and that the finished book might not make its advance back (from what I hear, only about one in ten books does—but the profit on that one-in-ten bestseller more than makes up for the publisher's losses on the other nine).

From the artist's perspective, the arrangement is simply meant to smooth out the income stream. Regardless of how you feel about this, it's undeniable that artists have to "front-load" their investments in their careers to sometimes incredible degrees, sometimes working "on speculation" as it were for years with an eventual payoff far from certain—

Does Ctein Have 100 'True Fans'?

By Ctein

Last fall's print offering taught me that I had a lot more fans (note the lower-case "f") than I realized. My friend Peter Hentges suggested I take a look at "1000 True Fans" as a model that might turn this into some sort of long-term benefit to my career, instead of just a one-shot windfall. I decided it was a plausible experiment. What I hope to get out of this is a more stable and secure source of income that will let me devote much more time to creating new art.

Here's what I'm offering:

1) You, the subscriber, agree to give me $9.50 a month for a year, to support my art. This is a donation that supports my work, not the purchase of a particular piece of art.

2) At the end of that year, I'll put up a webpage with a selection of digital prints (at least 6 pieces, maybe a lot more). You can choose any two prints. There are no additional costs, not even shipping. Effectively, two prints cost you less than half what you would normally pay for one ($125+shipping). That's your reward for investing in me.

If you don't care for any of those select works, I'll let you apply what you've donated to any photograph at ctein.com, dollar for dollar. (You'll have banked most of the regular cost of a digital print, for example.) There's no way you can lose.

(Fine print: monthly donations will have to go through PayPal. The $9.50/month is only for U.S. addresses. If you hate PayPal or live elsewhere, see the FAQs below.)

Mike commented that he thought that whether or not I did something like this wouldn't affect me creating new art. Wrong. My art brings in a small fraction of my income, so I can only devote 1–2 days a month to making new art. At even the 100-subscriber level, I'd spend a lot more time making art. That's the minimum number I need to try this; the money isn't worth the effort for fewer. If 100 of my "fans" email me expressing interest in signing up for this by the end of the month, I'll give it a go. Please email me rather than posting your interest as a general comment. I'll send the folks who emailed me a link to a webpage which will spell out all the details and options and where they can sign up for real.

I'm still working out some details. Should I make everything a standard 11x14-inch print size, or should I go as large as 13x19"? How much of what I offer in the selection should be new digital prints as opposed to existing favorites from my portfolio? I'll be guided by the subscribers' preferences on these matters, so email me with your thoughts, please.

FAQs after the break....

Random Excellence: Giuseppe Pasquali

Every now and then, don't you just see a picture that makes you go, "Man, I wish I'd taken that"? At this point I feel like I've seen most pictures before—in the sense that most pictures belong to genres of many similarly-seen pictures (even if the photographers aren't aware of it)—but here's one I never saw before. (Although it reminds me slightly of this one.) Unfortunately I've lost track of who suggested Giuseppe to me. Whoever it was, thanks.

You can see more of his work here.

Mike

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UPDATE: It was Dale Moreau. Thanks Dale!

Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes

Yousuf Karsh, Self-Portrait

By Ken Tanaka

Once upon a time in the last century the world had "heroes." The 20th century was a period of turbulence, of innovation, and of jarring technical and social changes. Photography, principally via photo essay periodicals, became the primary medium by which the world recognized and lionized people whose extraordinary abilities and achievements led, informed, and entertained us through these times. Several photographers achieved renown creating images of  20th century heroes. But no photographer came close to creating as many iconic portraits of such figures as Yousuf Karsh. (Perspective: during his 60-year career Karsh had more than 15,000 portrait sittings and produced more than 150,000 negatives.)

Albert Schweitzer

A monumental exhibition now at the Art Institute of Chicago celebrates Karsh’s enormous body of work by displaying 100 of his portraits drawn from the more than 200 master prints gifted to the museum by Karsh’s widow. Timed to coincide with the centenary of Karsh’s birth on December 23rd of last year (although also very fitting to current political changes and economic conditions), the exhibit was two years in the planning.

Walking through this exhibit, which fills all four of the museum’s photo galleries, can best be described as a surreal experience. The prints are simply sublime. Karsh became a master of  the "inspection" technique for developing his negatives. That is, he would develop his negatives by hand under a safe light to produce optimal shadows in specific areas of the image. In Karsh’s skilled hands this technique created a negative that embodied all of the significant tonality decisions and could consistently produce excellent prints with little coaxing. Although I had seen many of these portraits in various publications, nothing prepared me for seeing the actual master prints in person. The pitch blacks, the luscious mid-tones, and the precise highlights make it seem as though I was milling through an impossible cocktail party with some of history’s most notable figures. I expected Albert Schweitzer to lift his head as I passed, to overhear Muhammad Ali telling someone, "I am the greatest!",  and to see Audrey Hepburn’s ponytail wiggle. This is photographic portraiture craftsmanship practiced at a level far above anything done today. 

The catalogue
I encourage you to see the "Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes" show if you have any interest in photographic portraiture or even in 20th century history, and if you have any excuse for visiting Chicago by the end of April. It’s unlikely that you will have another opportunity to see such a large collection of Karsh’s work exhibited again in your lifetime. But if a visit to Chicago is just not in your plans, the exhibit’s catalogue is the next best thing and, in fact, could be considered an essential part of the exhibit.

Published for this event by David R. Godine, and titled identically to the exhibit, the gorgeous catalogue was designed by Sara Eisenman, who organized it into three sections. The first section features an essay by David Travis, the recently retired founding head of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Photography and the curator of this exhibit. This is not a dry, academic essay; far from it. David is a very good writer. Here he blends more than two years of research into this exhibit with his 35+ years as one of the country’s preeminent curators of photographic art to create a lively work that smoothly mixes reminiscences with technical and historical context for Karsh’s work. 

The second section is devoted to the images. Reproduction quality is excellent. Although the paper selection gives the images a slightly warmer tone than the actual prints, the tonal range is perfectly reproduced. Some images are presented as full-bleed, some not. Captioning identifies only the subjects and the year of the sitting.

 The third section presents biographical profiles for each subject meticulously written by Patricia Kouba.  (That in itself must have been a daunting task!) Accompanying most of these profiles are Karsh’s personal recollections of the subjects and their sittings. These are priceless little notes that are guaranteed to completely absorb you. What really made Karsh such an incomparable master, beyond his technical skills, was his genuine interest in his subjects and his ability to make them feel completely secure and at ease during a sitting. Both of these traits are abundantly evident in these notes. Jerry Fielding, Karsh’s primary assistant for more than 20 years, remarked that many subjects would feel comfortable enough to tell Karsh some of their most personal thoughts. Karsh took all such secrets to the grave, but his notes still often reveal the people behind these formidable portraits.

Our world today is short on genuine heroes, but long on celebrities and celebrity photographers. Neither can hold a candle to Yousuf Karsh or his subjects. To see this work in such an exhibition is to glimpse true greatness once upon a time, long ago.

Karsh Exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, January 22–April 26, 2009

Catalogue at the Art Institute of Chicago’s online shop (not available through Amazon at this time)

Yousuf Karsh website (highly recommended)

Ken

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Featured Comment by matt: "I happened to catch this show while in Chicago a few weeks back. Unlike many more recent portraitist, Karsh manages to exhibit a high level of virtuosity without being cruel to his subjects. He isn't handling them with kid gloves, but he isn't imposing on them either. You get a sense of cooperation and empathy between subject and photographer."

Featured Comment by Michael A. Smith: "Developing by inspection is not done 'to produce optimal shadows in specific areas of the image.' It is done to produce optimal highlights. It is, for those who know what they are doing, the most precise way to develop negatives and is practiced today by many photographers. Edward Weston always developed his negatives by inspection. Ansel Adams, with his 'Zone System' did not. Weston rarely had much dodging and burning to do on his prints. Adams, on the other hand, did more dodging and burning than any other large-format photographer. Developing film by time and temperature is hit or miss. Developing by inspection is not."

Mike adds: Michael A. Smith is a leading large-format photographer with many books and exhibitions to his credit. He's also a book publisher (Lodima Press) and has almost singlehandedly revived an Azo-type printing paper. I think perhaps the phrase "many photographers develop by inspection" is relative as to the meaning of "many"—I'd be surprised if one in 100 large-format photographers use this technique, and large format itself is an increasingly tiny niche amongst photographers in general. Still, it's an historically important technique for those interested in how early masters worked, and Michael has written a very articulate and descriptive article about the technique that you might find interesting even if you never intend to shoot a sheet of film in your life.

Incidentally, Michael's wife Paula Chamlee is also a gifted large-format photographer. Her limited edition 1997 book High Plains Farm—a loving look at the homestead of the sprawling and lonely farm in the Texas Panhandle where she grew up—is one of my personal favorites, a slice of true old-fashioned Americana in the tradition of Wright Morris. You can see some of the pictures online, and, like many of their other books, the book is still available directly from Michael and Paula. (As with all large format work, the original prints are better than the book reproductions, and the book reproductions are much better than the online JPEG-viewing experience.)

Paula Chamlee, from High Plains Farm

James Ravilious

James Ravilious's great arcadian elegy of Devon is surely one of photography's great accomplishments, a monument like August Sander's People of the 20th Century or Eugene Atget's Paris streets. It stands as a collective masterpiece and a high water mark, like the string quartets of Haydn or Ella Fitzgerald's songbooks in music.

The only problem I have with Ravilious is that he's difficult to see. What we need is a master set of monographs of "the work of," compiled by a conscientious curator and given the best, most responsible reproduction possible. Is anyone looking after this man's archive, I wonder? Where is the archive? Does the widow still hold it? I certainly hope she hasn't turned over the negatives to Corbis or some other agency. What is the British scholarly-curatorial photography community doing about this?

I haven't seen Ravilious's major out-of-print book, An English Eye, although I suspect I know the type of book it is...nondescript duotones and a "layout": that is, the pictures cropped, and bled, and sized according to the designer's interest, now and then falling across the gutter. (Am I wrong? Somebody who has the book could tell us.) [Update: Okay, I am wrong—see Andy's comment below.]

At any rate, you can see the biggest selection of Ravilious's work online by going to Corbis and typing "Ravilious" in the search box. The pictures there aren't mean for viewing, they're meant for selling; you have to click on each thumbnail to see a somewhat larger, watermarked version as a so-so JPEG (some good, some not so).

I want to see James Ravilious's pictures better. I suspect the only way to do so might be a museum show, in person. It's high time to modify the standard story of Ravilious being "great but little known."

Mike

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ADDENDUM: I apologize—I thought I had put a link to the photographer's own website in the previous post, but I see that I didn't. It's good enough, just a bit scant. Also, there are some much better JPEGS (although again only a few) at the Beaford Arts site. (Thanks to bobdales for that tip.)

Featured Comment by Andy: "I'm fortunate to have a copy of An English Eye and his much earlier monograph The Heart of the Country.

"Both books have generally one picture per page, full image with a thin black neg border. They are not cropped at all and the printing quality of An English Eye is very good.

"Mike, seek out a copy of An English Eye, you will not be disappointed, well that's if you can find a copy!"

Featured Comment by Mark Wallace: "I'm the current director of Beaford Arts, so I hope I can answer a few of your questions.

"There'll be an exhibition of James' prints at London's National Theatre from April 6th–May 16th. It then goes to the Burton Gallery in Bideford, north Devon, from May 26th.

"We're currently reprinting An English Eye using the same specialist printers as for the recently-sold-out second edition. We hope to have it in print to coincide with the National Theatre exhibition.

"James' final work, Down The Deep Lanes, which he authored with English Heritage's Peter Beacham OBE, is in print and can be ordered from the Beaford Arts website.

"As to your biggest question—the Beaford Archive comprises 80,000 images. Making all of these generally available is a big project which has had some knock-backs, but we're actively working on it."

I'm Just Sayin'

Apropos the previous post, I think I can say very briefly why I have a problem with composited and heavily manipulated images—it's simply because I don't like looking at them. They don't offer me anything. The more fake a photograph becomes, the more it gives up its potential to tell me something interesting, real, or true, and the less involvement I can muster. Wax fruit, as Gordon says.

It's fine for other people. I have no problem with anyone having an interest in highly stylized or perfected images, any more than I have a problem with other people liking macramé or shoes or pork futures.

I'm only interested in fashion after it's not fashionable any more.

Martin Munkacsi, Katherine Hepburn

Mike

Featured Comment by Melvin Sokolsky: "All photographs of people, whether wearing clothes or nude are fashion pictures. One can date a nude based on, hair style, makeup, palette and gesture.

"Some of the greatest fashion pictures were made by Cartier Bresson. The decision to retouch or use photoshop is the decision of the photographer. In my opinion the new trendy tools have become more important than content.

"I was a friend of Martin Munkacsi. Martin was most interested in ideas, palette, and content; he did very little retouching. Bad pictures are bad pictures whether fashions of the times or street photography.

"Photoshop is a wonderful tool when used properly. When used poorly the images are no longer photography. Overly retouched images in my view are delegated to the word Illustography."

"I retouch my pictures with the lighting."

Sex, Lies, and Photoshop

The fine line between "you too could look like this (if you just buy our product)" and "you don't look like this (and you never will)." Must viewing.

Mike
(Thanks to David A. Goldfarb)

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Featured Comment by beuler: "The biggest problem I see is attribution.

"I don't really have any objection to images being 'worked on' after the fact. I do object to the fact that every photograph published fails to attribute credit to the Photoshop artist that made it all happen.

"If all images published were required to attribute credit to the PS artist, then problem solved. Not only is due credit given, but the viewer will know whether or not the image has been 'worked on.' "

Mike replies: I agree.

Featured Comment by Gordon Lewis: "This applies to more than photos of models. The knowledge that most of the photos we see in magazines and the web these days have been digitally altered makes me feel less connected, less interested, less moved. It's like looking at bowl after bowl of wax fruit. No matter how realistic the fruit may be, it won't make your mouth water and if you're hungry it's useless."

Featured Comment by Steve Rosenblum: "I viewed this video when it was first posted. I believe that the damage that this sort of thing does to women's body image and self esteem is real and disturbing. I have actually sat down with my own daughter with a stack of women's magazines and 'unmasked' the photoshop manipulations for her and her friends in order to decrease their power. My favorite was a cover photo in which the model's arm had been reattached at an anatomically impossible angle in order to allow for the cover text to appear in the right spot.

"What is interesting to me is that the master photo retouchers that were interviewed for this piece state that they are well aware of the damage that their work may be causing, but view it as a societal rather than a personal issue. They appear uncomfortable, but not quite uncomfortable enough to modify what they are doing. A few years ago I took a Photoshop workshop from Katrin Eismann, clearly a master photo retoucher and teacher. She mentioned that she was troubled enough by the potential negative effects of this kind of work that she regularly gives lectures to high school girls in which she uses her own work to demonstrate how far from reality these sorts of photographs actually are. Sort of trying to prevent some of the damage that the work she does in her profession may be doing.

"I'm not sure that Americans would tolerate or desire the heavy handed sort of regulation being proposed in France. But it seems to me that even the retouching artists themselves are asking the rest of us in society for some kind of guidance. I suspect the best solution is the kind of education I described above. Perhaps those of us with this sort of Photoshop knowledge should share it with our wives and daughters either informally at home, or by giving educational sessions at schools, churches, etc...."

Mike adds: Reasonably speaking, "laws" to control this sort of thing would never work, and they would so obviously never work I'm sort of surprised that anyone (um, anywhere...je ne veux pas dire pour offenser) would even bother to propose such a thing. However, I think beuler and Steve Rosenblum, in their comments above, have the right solutions. For instance, when an image is retouched, the retoucher could be credited right along with the photographer (the problem with this is that advertising photographs are often not credited at all). When an image is a pastiche, perhaps the "compositor" should be credited above the photographer(s). I once proposed different names altogether for unretouched digital photographs (i.e., current photojournalistic standards), retouched images, and composited images. These ideas would be the sort of thing that the French could pass laws about, because they're clear and they're simple—and not restrictive of expressive freedom. They would be labeling laws, essentially.

Raising consciousness would be a good thing too. Someone should make a really hot, fun, fast-paced 50-minute movie about fashion, Photoshop, and body image—just the right length to show in middle- and high-school assemblies and classes.

P.S. This isn't about "digital vs. traditional," and it's not "anti-digital," either. No one's saying nobody ever manipulated images prior to the advent of digital imaging. It's simply more pervasive now, and, as the retoucher in the video says, much easier for the retoucher to cover his or her tracks.

Featured Comment by David A. Goldfarb: "I also liked the suggestion that the retoucher should be credited. The old idea was that the retoucher and the lab weren't credited, because they were merely serving the vision of the photographer, but it seems that in advertising the situation is really that the photographer and retoucher are serving the vision of the Art Director, so why not give credit where credit is due?

"Here's an old school example of hand retouching on the negative.

"The images are most likely taken from Mark Vieira's Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits, and Vieira's source (if I remember correctly, because I don't have the book handy) is Hurrell's retoucher's portfolio.

"I suppose they could have also combined photographs of different models, as described in the video, using analogue techniques (stripping-in, masking, duping to scale, etc.), and we might think today that that would be so labor intensive that it would be easier just to reshoot, but was it? After all, they were using dye transfer for advertising, which was labor intensive to begin with, and one of the advantages of the process was the possibility of undetectable hand retouching.

"Any old-time fashion shooters out there who can recall an instance of Frankenstein's model made the old fashioned way?"

Bad News, Worse News, and Blind News

Well, I'm very disappointed to learn that, no doubt due to the economy, the Museum of Modern Art will evidently not be issuing the expected reprint of John Szarkowski's Looking At Photographs, one of my very favorite books about the art of photography and photography as an art. It was supposed to be available on March 1st, then the date was put off till "mid-March," and now the whole thing has apparently been scrubbed. I was really looking forward to browbeating you into buying this book, which has long been at the very top of my recommended reading list for anyone who's interested in photography and has any ambition at all of understanding it. It's...well, I had a whole encomium ready to launch at you, but there isn't much point now.

Don't get excited.

...Although I guess it doesn't matter anyway, because people have evidently pretty much stopped buying stuff through my links anyway, as the global downturn finally reaches the bunkered bulwarks of TOP. Far be it from me to encourage profligacy in hard times—I ought to encourage my readers not to spend money, right? But let's put it this way: be frugal, yes, but if you're going to be buying something through Amazon, B&H Photo, or Adorama Camera anyway, please remember your old friends at The Online Photographer, will you, and buy through our links? Pretty please? It doesn't cost you anything extra, and thus does not constitute a bailout. We need the pfennigs to keep the fire in the furnace. Scraps, is what it is, but you do not want to see me beg. (I have my pride. It's around here someplace.)

Finally, a bit of blind news: I can't see this BBC video on the fabulous work of the late, great James Ravilious, but if you're lucky enough to live in the United Kingdom you can, allegedly. There are only four days left for viewing it for free online. I've heard it's good. I wish I could tell you based on personal experience, but I live in a wretched, remote, underprivileged and underserved area of the world as far as the BBC is concerned, and curse the luck.

All that, and it's been raining for three days.

As you can probably tell I'm feeling sorry for myself this morning. I'll get over it. Just gotta slap myself and yell at the mirror a little and I'll be fine. Hmmph. Can't even watch the @#$@%! Ravilious video. Grumble, grump, mulligrub and collywobble.

Mike
(Thanks to Eolake and Robert Lee)

P.S. Especial thanks to those who have used our links recently. Or ever, actually. I hope what I said did not sound ungrateful...quite the opposite is the case.

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Featured Comment by John Driscoll: "Cheer up, the Ravilious video is on YouTube."

Mike replies: Thanks very much John! Also, it hasn't actually been raining for three days—there was a brief interlude during which it snowed and everything froze. Ah, Spring.

Featured Comment by Carl Weese: "The [Ravilious] work is wonderful and the documentary is generally good (I didn't find the accents all that hard to parse for some reason) but can we please form a pact to break the hands of any documentary director who insists on cropping all the pictures he's supposed to be showing us! In this case there was even a full sequence with the wife explaining how terribly important exact framing was to this photographer. But the director crops everything into an incorrect letterbox extreme rectangle with no way for us viewers to even know how much of the original picture he's cropping away. BAH!!"

Red One Primes

Jarred Land posted this photo of the first lenses in the Red prime lens set, in this post on reduser.net. Jim Jannard, Red Capo, says "Our Professional series lenses and accessories should begin rolling out in force the next few months in support of the RED ONE and in anticipation of Scarlet & EPIC." Of the lenses, he adds, "These are incredible. The bench testing is beyond our widest dreams. As you know, we have lots of lenses here for testing. These new primes outperform them all...especially wide open...and it isn't close." Pictured above, in what order we aren't exactly sure, are the 18–85mm zoom T2.9 (far right?), 300mm T2.9 (far left?), 100mm T1.9, 85mm T1.9, 50mm T1.9, 35mm T1.9, and 25mm T1.9. (T-stops are an alternative to f-numbers that use total transmittance as a basis, since f-numbers don't take into account variations in absorbtion and reflectance of light within the elements and mounts of actual lenses. T-stops are more widely used in the film industry than in still photography, because professional movie camera lenses typically are more complex and often lost more light due to these factors.)

I didn't read the whole thread, as it goes on for more than 63 pages!

Mike

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Lensbaby Composer Review

By Joe Reifer

Lensbaby Choices: Paintbrush and Palette
I've been shooting with various Lensbabies for the last five years, and previously reviewed the Lensbaby 3G on this site. The current Lensbaby product line features three different lens bodies and four choices of optics: the Muse replaces the 2.0 as the simple bellows option; the 3G is now called the Control Freak; and the Lensbaby Composer is the latest design evolution.

All three lenses are compatible with the Optic Swap System, which allows you to select from plastic, single-element glass, or double-element glass lenses, or a pinhole/zone plate. The lens is your brush, the optic choice your palette. The ability to quickly change the look of your Lensbaby by switching optics opens up a lot of creative possibilities.

The Lensbaby website has a great optic comparison page that compares all of the lens choices. All three lenses are available with the sharp double glass optic, and the Muse is also available with the plastic optic. You can buy additional lenses individually, or get the plastic, single glass, and pinhole/zone plate optics as a package. Each optic is color coded for easy identification in your camera bag.

Extra optics are stored in a small protective case that includes a mini lens cloth. The lid of the case is also the key to the Optic Swap System—insert the lid into the front of the Composer to unlock and remove the current optic. Drop another optic into place, and use the lid to lock it in place. Locking and unlocking the optic takes about a 1/8th turn, and the process is easy once you've done it a few times. Changing optics in the field can lead to a dirty sensor—make sure to turn off your camera, and point the lens and camera  down to minimize exposure to dust.

Alcatraz Guard—Lensbaby Composer with Zone Plate Optic on Canon 5D, ƒ/19, 4 seconds, ISO 200

Getting Twisted with the Composer
Weighing in at under 6 oz., the Composer is a small, well-built addition to the Lensbaby family. The manual focusing ring works smoothly and has nice ergonomics. I'm getting more shots focused right the first time with the Composer as compared to the multiple tries that were sometimes necessary with the bellows focusing on older models.

The Composer is built on a ball and socket platform that allows you to easily tilt the sweet spot of focus in any direction. The resistance of the ballhead-like design has a nice feel. The lens stays in place when tilted, and the resistance is adjustable.

As with previous models, the aperture is adjusted using interchangeable magnetic discs. The Composer has a maximum aperture of ƒ/2 with no disc installed, and ships with discs in whole stops from ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/22.

The Composer is great for street photography because you can preset your focus—just bring the camera to your eye and shoot. Having a focus ring and shiftable sweet spot that stay in place are also a boon for tripod-based macro, HDR, or long exposure shooting. The Composer may also prove to be an interesting tool for time lapse work, or for shooting video on new hybrid cameras like the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mark II.

What are you lookin' at? (Cabazon dinosaur)—Lensbaby Composer with Zone Plate Optic on Canon 5D, ƒ/19, 1/100, ISO 320

I'm in the Zone
Lensbabies can be a great tool for looking at familiar subjects in a new way. As a fan of many types of toy and pinhole cameras, I was really looking forward to using the pinhole optic in the Composer. What happened when I put the pinhole/zone plate optic on the camera took me by surprise—I toggled the lens to the zone plate setting, and fell in love with the dreamy halos.

A cousin of the pinhole, the zone plate consists of concentric circles that alternate between opaque and transparent. The way light is transmitted through the zone plate gives the resulting images a very unique look, with a signature glowing diffraction halo surrounding any bright edges.

Pinhole cameras typically require a tripod even in bright sunlight—at ƒ/177 typical daytime exposures are 2–4 seconds long. A big advantage of the Lensbaby zone plate is the ƒ/19 aperture, making it easy to use hand held. Lower light situations are more challenging due to viewfinder brightness, but with a little practice the zone plate optic still looks great at high ISOs.

From the super-sharp double glass optic to the blurry abstract glow of the zone plate, the Optic Swap System gives you a wide range of choices to make unique images. The Lensbaby Composer is an excellent design update, and a recommended entry point or upgrade for those interested in exploring the world of creative blur!

You can view more of my Lensbaby and toy camera images at my website. [Don't miss Joe's night shots when you visit his website.  —MJ]

Visit the Lensbaby website for product information, user guides, video demos, photos, and a forum. Lensbaby Composer lenses and optics (and other Lensbabies) are also available through B&H Photo.

Joe

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Featured Comment by Dwight: "I had looked at Lensbabies in the past and decided they were not for me. I still feel that way, but I was really impressed with Kathleen Clemons, the 'Featured Artist' on the Lensbaby web site. The photos are definitely worth looking at.

"Unfortunately, a new lens would not give me that kind of talent. If it would, I'd get one."

Carleton Watkins and the Getty

By John Camp

Of the major art museums in the United States, few could possibly be as big a pain in the butt to get to as the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Built on a mountainside over a screaming freeway, you plunge down the exit, circle around and under the freeway, pay the $10 parking fee, lose your car in a gargantuan underground garage (write the parking level on the palm of your hand, or you may never see your Camaro again) and then wait in a Disney World-style line for a tram that runs up and down the mountain. Slowly, up and down the mountain.

The latter part of this journey is accompanied by shoals of rugrats on school excursions who, upon inspection, seem to be learning nothing whatever about art, or anything else, while efficiently preventing any possibility of quiet contemplation of the museum’s paintings, prints and photographs. (Yes, I have not only children, but grandchildren, God bless them all, and keep the little ones out of the art museums until they’re at least eleven, is what I say; and for those twelve- to sixteen-year-old hormonal cases, a carefully chosen display of Helmut Newton prints should keep them occupied, quiet, and possibly even inspired.)

Over the years, I’ve been to the Getty a dozen times, and it never seems to get better. I wouldn’t even go, except for the glorious “Young Italian Woman at a Table,” by Paul Cezanne and an excellent sea painting (Van Tromp, Going About to Please His Masters, Ships a Sea, Getting a Good Wetting, by J.M.W. Turner, above), and a few others.

On Friday, I visited a dozen or so paintings and then went down in the basement to look at the “Dialogue Among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California.” For lack of a better phrase, Watkins was a man-and-nature photographer working generally out of the San Francisco area from the 1850s through the 1890s.

Much to my amazement—and I can’t guarantee this was true—it seemed to me that the Watkins galleries were as crowded as the European painting galleries, possibly because the show was to end a couple of days later. As is the case with many photography shows, there were too many photographs on display, not all of them in pristine condition, well-printed, or well-photographed.

But that’s a quibble: they were fascinating. (And large: Watkins worked mostly with mammoth plates, up to 18x22 inches.)

Carleton Watkins, Primitive Mining. The Old Rocker (self-portrait as a miner), c. 1876.
Collection of the Society of California Pioneers, The National Gallery of Art

Watkins seems to have anticipated several strands of documentary photography, such as the early workman/industrial photography by Lewis Hine or August Sander, with his photos of lumberjacks and miners, taken on location, with their tools. The brutality of their labor is clearly written on their faces and in their bodies: you could throw Jacob Riis and the WPA photographers in the influence-mix, as well. Watkins even anticipated contemporary environmental photography, with his images of the tremendous damage done by hydraulic gold mining in the California mountains.

'Adams was a trained and self-conscious artist, while Watkins was more akin to a reporter'

Most notably, though, he took pictures of the wilderness, and especially Yosemite. I knew that Yosemite had been extensively photographed before Ansel Adams, of course, but wasn’t aware to the extent that Watkins had anticipated all of Adams’ great themes—the high walls, the waterfalls, the serpentine rivers with the light playing across them.

Adams had better equipment, of course, and, I think, a better eye. Watkins (who worked first with daguerreotypes and later with glass plates, out of a darkroom built into a wagon) tended to go for an almost academic, or just simple, composition—the river leading into the distance, the carefully placed foreground/background items to define a scenic view, the high viewpoint looking across the deep valley. It seemed to me that he “went there and took the picture,” whatever the picture was when he got there.
Adams, on the other hand, apparently had an idea of what the photograph should look like, and then went back repeatedly to the same places, until nature cooperated and provided him with that image. The two approaches are quite different, probably because Adams was a trained and self-conscious artist, while Watkins was more akin to a reporter.

One especially interesting aspect of the show was a 360-degree panorama (I believe of San Francisco), by Eadweard Muybridge, who later became famous for his stop-action photos of horses and then human beings. The literature provided by the Getty suggests that Watkins was Muybridge’s mentor; and Watkins took a photograph of Muybridge seated beneath a Giant Redwood. Watkins also began shooting panoramas before Muybridge, and may have taught something of the technique to the younger man.

The Muybridge panorama especially caught my eye because it was an example of an early multiple (13 separately-framed shots) that seemed to anticipate his later multiple studies, which were done in time, rather than space—but you can see the idea forming on the wall. Muybridge’s biggest failing, of course, was that he had too many vowels in his first name.

The Watkins show is over, but if you’re in L.A. and want to go to the Getty, there’s no admission charge to the museum. However, parking is pretty much mandatory—Daniel Boone couldn’t walk into the place—and costs $10 per car.

The museum website is here.

Carleton Watkins in Yosemite is available in hardcover through Amazon. Here's the U.K. link.

John

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Featured Comment by Daniel Jansenson: "Regarding parking: you can also take the Metro Rapid bus (line 761), for $1.25. More info here." [WARNING: link is a .PDF download.  —Ed.]

Featured Comment by thompsonkirk: "On the theme of Watkins: Don't miss Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957 by Terry Toedtemeier (the late curator of photography at the Portland Art Museum) and John Laursen. Beautiful reproductions of Watkins' and later photographers' work in Oregon's Columbia Gorge."

1000 Photographic Fans...Maybe?

By Ctein

Some folks have become interested in the problem of how artists can make money in the Age of Downloads. For example, if someone records a really popular piece of music, how do they make a living if a zillion people will be bit-torrenting it within days of its release?

John Kelsey and Bruce Schneier made an early effort at tackling this problem back in 1999 with "The Street Performer Protocol."

Last year, Kevin Kelly made a stir by extending the brainstorming to the idea of "1000 True Fans."

For a good look at the other side of the coin, read "The Case Against 1000 True Fans" and John Scalzi's extremely intelligent critique.

I'm not going to go into the detailed pros and cons of these ideas. You can pick those up by reading the aforementioned papers. Before posting comments here, please read at least Scalzi's piece and comments to make sure that you're not repeating the well-known and obvious. Many of the arguments have been reiterated ad nauseum.

"1000 True Fans" goes like this:

Fans subscribe to an artist. Instead of buying a particular existing work, they put their faith in the idea that if they liked work the artist has created in the past, they'll probably like the artist's work in the future. They each pay the artist a small monthly sum, who then makes new work available as it's created.

The benefits to the artist are obvious: they get paid up front to create new art, which is where almost all their time and energy and money goes, and they do not have to fret as much about how next month's bills will get paid or whether their creativity will be ripped off.

The benefits to the audience are not so obvious, and that's why these schemes usually fail. You've got to be selling something that customers want and giving them a reason to buy it from you on your terms. It's even tougher when you're selling people future (translation: nonexistent) art.

That's the killer. The notion is that if only X people would pay the modest sum Y dollars a month, the artist could live comfortably. But the reality is that X people simply never pay Y dollars without a very good reason. The artist needs to give them a reason to do so and to keep doing so.

Photographers trying to sell their work have creative constraints not unlike writers and composers. Our production and distribution costs aren't zero, but they are such a small fraction of the selling price that for all practical purposes the model works. The time, energy (and money) required to create a great new print is often considerable, but it takes very little of those to make additional prints, whether you're in the darkroom or on the computer. If I know ahead of time that I need to make 30 or 40 prints of the same photograph, I can turn out that many prints in a day easily. Black and white or color, wet or dry (though not dye transfer!), it doesn't matter.

I have an idea about how I can make this work for me. Not at the 1000 Fan level, but maybe at the 100 Fan level. Next column I'll describe how I'm hoping to sell work on the installment plan.

Ctein

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ADDENDUM: "Let me address a lot of comments by laying out a simple business analysis for people who might be considering this. On the most fundamental level, regardless of whether or not you can get people to sign up, for this to work it has to satisfy two criteria:

First, it has to make a profit.

Second, it has to make you no less than a living wage (unless you have a bunch of truly free time and you're just doing it for the pin money).

Most folks understand the first, intuitively. A lot slip up on the second.

There are two cases you'd be considering. The optimistic one is where you have enough Fans that you can live off them entirely. The realistic one is where they're paying just a portion of your living expenses, freeing up enough ime and energy for you to create work. The realistic one is a little harder to analyze, so that's what I'll talk about first:

You work the problem backwards. The first thing you need to do is figure out what your living wage is. At a very minimum, that's the amount of money you need to earn each year to cover your bills, obligations, and taxes, divided by the number of hours you want to work each year. It may be more than that: you may want to include allowances for vacations, frivolities, and a retirement fund. Whatever your druthers, be brutally honest with yourself. If you're unrealistic about these estimates because you really want the numbers to come out in your favor, all you're going to do is screw yourself.

Let's say it's $20 an hour.

Now you need to estimate about how many hours it takes you to create a new artwork. That's not just the time at the computer or in the darkroom to get the first print right, it also includes some idea of how much time you spend out photographing to get that one photograph (if that's a significant part of your time budget; if it's not, then never mind). Multiply that by $20, and that's how much you need to be earning, sooner or later, from that artwork. If you don't clear that much, the business will fail.

Let's call that $1,000. So how many subscribers is that per new work?

If your production/distribution costs (time and money) are essentially zero, as they are for digitally-delivered work (music, photographs, e-books, whatever) it's simple. How much are your Fans paying per month for the privilege of getting access to your art? $9, say? That's about $100 a year, net (it's got to take you at least a little time to administer those accounts). So, for each 10 Fans you have signed up, you can afford to create one new work.

You'll need to decide how much new work you need to make each year to keep the Fans happy, and what's the least amount of money coming in that makes you feel like it's worth your time and hassle to set the whole thing up and administer it. Those are entirely personal judgment calls. They're not really about a budget, but they do set a lower threshold on the minimum number of subscribers you'll need to consider it worthwhile to do this.

If your production/distribution costs are not $0, you need to figure out what they are per copy (for some reasonable volume of copies). That's the cost in dollars plus your living wage multiplied by the amount of time it takes you to deliver one work to one Fan. In other words, if it costs you $10 to make a finished print and mail it to a Fan, and it takes half an hour of your time to print it out, package it, and ship it, then your unit cost is $20.

Subtract what it costs to provide the Fan with whatever you're promising them from the amount of money they're paying you annually. In this example, that net-income-per-Fan would be $80. Divide that into $1000 (in our example) and you know how many Fans (about 13) you'll need to support creating and delivering one new work a year.

If you've decided to be an optimist and want the Fans to support you entirely, the math is simpler. Divide your annual Living Income by the net-income-per-Fan. That's the number you need to sign up. Good luck with that!  —Ctein

On Lenses for Portraits

As a perfessional pontificator, I seldom find myself in synchronous agreement with other pontificators, but Andy Westlake at dpreview.com has written an excellent little essay about lenses, portraits, and focal lengths that I think is spot on, as the British say. As an old fan of newthink, I agree in pretty much every particular with what he says, with one small exception: he neglects to mention how wonderfully useful body-integral IS is when shooting portraits at wide apertures with the type of fast prime lens he's describing. Otherwise (as they say), I couldn't have said it better myself.

Mike
(Thanks to Albano Garcia)

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And Let's Not Forget the DP2!

Sometimes I suspect that one reason companies announce things so far in advance of their actual release is because it means they get to show the product at more than one photo show. I noticed (with a certain bemusement) that Pentax is announcing its medium-format digital camera yet again. This thing has been doing duty as an upcoming product at photo shows for so many years now that I wonder if it qualifies as some sort of Orwellian perma-vaporware, as unending as the distant wars in 1984 (or Afghanistan). I'll probably have snow-white hair and not be able to remember the way to my rocker and I'll still be reading about the Pentax medium-format digital camera that's just about to be released. Generally, it seems a condition of the New World: seasons flash past with a cloud of promised products always hovering tantalizingly just out of view. Imagine the money our strapped car companies could save if they could keep showing the same new models and the same concept cars at show after show, year after year. It would sure beat the challenge of having to come up with something new for every exhibition.

Sigma has renewed its promissory note for its upcoming DP2 large-sensor compact at Las Vegas, by unveiling a flashy website (the adjective is chosen advisedly) with some impressive new samples, one of which is above. Sigma can take its time with the DP2 as far as I'm concerned, though, as long as it gets the details right when the product finally gets here. The first iteration of the concept—the DP1—was fascinating, but some of its highlights were, um, lowlights, mainly having to do with several kinds of speed—lens speed, for one, and raw throughput speed if I remember correctly. Many wholly-new products are vastly improved by their second major iteration, however, after the product's public has time to sort out its pecadilloes and the project engineers have time to respond.

You can't really tell a whole lot from a website that moves slowly from scenic to scenic with soporific Satie in the background, or from a handful of online samples. But one thing I could tell from the samples is that ƒ/2.8 is likely to be a fully usable aperture on the DP2. Remember, with lenses—especially fixed ones—especially slowish fixed ones—it's not only important what the widest aperture is, it's also important that the widest aperture be fully usable. Meaning, the performance wide open can't exact too much of an optical penalty, something wide-open apertures often do. Long ago I had a camera that I really liked that had a fixed ƒ/4 lens, but the lens ended up limiting the camera too much: ƒ/4 was a useless aperture. Performance was so bad at that setting that you had to stop down at least to ƒ/5.6 to get it to behave. And that was just too slow in those days, pretty much limiting shooting to broad daylight. I lugged around a tripod with that camera for a while, and did take some very nice pictures with it, but what the experience mainly taught me was that I do not want to lug around a tripod.

But I digress. The point is that five of Sigma's 17 sample DP2 images were shot wide open, enough to make it easy to see that the DP2's faster ƒ/2.8 lens's ƒ/2.8 aperture is plenty sharp enough to make it a fully usable setting (the earring is a tiny detail of the second-to-last sample—sharp enough for me). So, then, good news—so far. Let's hope that that langorous Satie is not a reflection on the new camera's responsiveness in other respects. Now we resume waiting, patiently, still with our fingers crossed and our eyes on the prize, hoping not too many more shows go past before this interesting camera actually appears.

 

Mike

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UPDATE: The U.K. magazine Amateur Photographer is reporting that the DP2 is due in the U.S. later this month, with U.K. availability still several months away. Thanks to William Wragg for this intelligence.

Olympus Declares 12 Megapixels is Enough

By Stephen Shankland, cnet news

Las Vegas—Olympus has declared an end to the megapixel race.

"Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need," said Akira Watanabe, manager of Olympus Imaging's SLR planning department, in an interview here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA). "We have no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System," Olympus' line of SLR cameras, he said.

Instead, Olympus will focus on other characteristics such as dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting...

READ ON at news.cnet.com

Photo: Akira Watanabe, leader of Olympus' SLR planning department (Credit: Olympus)

Mike
(Thanks to Jayson Merryfield)

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Featured Comment by Ctein: "I'm not sure where the comments about Olympus hitting some kind of technological wall are getting their information from. Four-Thirds format is certainly not limited to 12 MP for good quality, and even if it were today, steady improvements in sensor quality would mean it wouldn't be tomorrow. We have not hit real physical limits yet, no matter what some folks have written on other websites.

"Olympus may or may not be making a smart marketing move, but they're not being forced into it by technological limits."

Leica Appoints New Chairman of the Board

Solms [Germany], March 5, 2009—The Supervisory Bord [sic] of Leica Camera AG today unanimously appointed Rudolf Spiller new Chairman of the Board of Management with effect from April 1, 2009. Rudolf Spiller will succeed Dr. Andreas Kaufmann who had assumed office as member and Chairman of the Board of Management for an interim period until February 28, 2009 only.

Rudolf Spiller was previously active as an independent management consultant. Before that he held executive positions with various optical industry companies.

Mike
Source: Equity Analyst.de
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka)

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End of the Line for the Leica R System?

Andreas Jürgensen of the L-Camera Forum and Newsletter is reporting this morning that "Leica yesterday informed their sales agencies, that Leica has no more stock of Leica R9 cameras and Leica R Lenses. A new production is not planned either."

The additional verbiage is enigmatic at best—I would urge you to make your own estimation if you're interested. Apparently either Leica is working on a replacement for the R system, or intends to have the upcoming digital S system replace the R system, or something else. Evidently a dealer, SH Photo, has bought out Leica's remaining stock of R9 cameras and R lenses.

Looking backward
The R system is Leica's 35mm film SLR line. It was born as the Leicaflex in 1964 as a response to the runaway popularity of Japanese SLRs from Canon, Nikon, Pentax and others. The "R" appellation appeared as of the R3 of 1976, a camera based on Minolta's XE-7. In 1980, the R4 appeared, based on the Minolta XD-11. Subsequently, Leica's relationship with Minolta cooled, so the same body style remained, with successive updates, modifications, and refinements, until the introduction of the R8, designed by Manfred Meinzer, in 1996. Although Leica had floated a public stock offering to fund its development, the R8, one of the very last all-new manual focus SLRs at least among higher-end cameras, was a commercial failure.

Exception to the rule: wildlife and bird photographer Doug Herr is a longtime Leicaflex fan. Photo by Kelsey Herr.

Leica's SLRs were virtually always conservative to the point of anachronism even when new, and although they had their adherents, even diehard Leicaphiles never quite gave the line their wholehearted allegiance, especially after the Minolta influence appeared. However, the point was really always the lenses, the finest of which were arguably among the best ever made for 35mm photography. An entire (long!) article could be written on the lens line, chronicling the various lensmakers who contributed R lenses (Zeiss, Schneider, and Minolta at least), the Leitz family's inital adamant resistance to zooms, the Mandler designs, and the standouts in the line. Used Leica R equipment, which never held its value like the M cameras and lenses did, remains the best way for 35mm film enthusiasts to achieve Leica quality on a budget.

Mike

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ADDENDUM: Erwin Puts has written a beautiful brief obituary for the R9, from the heart.

Featured Comment by Rubén: "Leica is developing a R10 camera with autofocus lenses. Leica has stated this many times. The basic electronic design of the S2 will be shared with the R10 and the M9: processor, motherboard, interface...this is not a secret.

"Why is Leica terminating its stocks of R lenses?

"I think Leica stopped R production time ago, and now only a few items remain unsold in Solms warehouses...Leica is announcing no more manual focus R lenses will be produced...that's all. So, if you plan to buy new R gear, buy it now.

"I am sure the future R10 camera will have a R mount, with additional ROM contacts for AF control. Simple and direct compatibility with manual focus R lenses."

Mike replies: Of course you might be right, Rubén, but I'm not seein' it, I have to say. The global economic situation has changed quite a bit recently, which might have an impact on past plans. Just because something is said to be "in development" doesn't necessarily mean it has to become a product or a product line people can buy. Also, as stated, your assumptions don't make much sense to me. I would rate the chances of a new film AF camera to be something close to zilch. If you accept this, then you accept that the "R10" will also be a digital SLR. If that's the case, sticking with the R mount doesn't make sense to me except in terms of backward compatibility—backward compatibility with the manual-focus R lenses that Leica just dumped and is not going to continue to make.

Leica's principal innovation recently is the S-sized 30x45mm sensor—which I think is a very good idea, by the way. A digital "R10" with a 24x36mm sensor would compete with all the other FF cameras, exactly what the S system is intended to avoid; a full-frame R10 would also probably poach sales from the S2. But if the R10 is to use a smaller sensor, and as long as Leica is designing all-new lenses anyway, then why not design it from the ground up and really do it right?

I'll tell you what I think, and this is purely a guess—I'm going to bet that any future "R10" (or non-S-system digital SLR) will be a Four-Thirds standard camera. That would allow Leica's DSLR offerings to be tiered into small and large sensors; it would allow the camera's buyers to use existing 4/3 lenses from other manufacturers, meaning Leica could make a few key lenses itself but not have to start from scratch and develop an entire new self-contained line, an enormously investment-intensive proposition (especially when it's just done that very thing with the S-system lenses!); and it would address what will be the key shortcoming of the S system, which will be its lack of long telephoto lenses. It makes more sense all around—and, if the S-system move is any indication, Leica is making a lot of sense lately.

Of course, I've got no crystal ball.

Pentax 15mm: Rara Avis

 
Pentax has announced what is a rare bird indeed soaring in the the skies of digital: a truly compact, true ultra-wide-angle prime (single-focal-length) made-for-digital lens. The new SMC-Pentax DA 15mm ƒ/4 ED AL Limited (note that Pentax Limiteds are not limited production products) features metal (aluminum) construction, has an angle of view of 86 degrees (about the same as a 23mm lens on 35mm), is less than two inches (39.5mm) long, and weighs a mere 7.5 ounces (212g). It features super-hard SP coating, Quick-Shift manual focus on demand, and ED glass and a hybrid aspherical element.

Pentax continues to lead the way with primes. Live long and prosper, Pentax! With so little in the way of a weight and space penalty, this useful beast will find a place in lots of camera bags, I'm guessing.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jerred Zegelis: "I teach high school photography, and one of the reasons I purchased a whole classroom set of Pentax cameras was because of their fantastic lens selection—both new and old. There are many other reasons, of course, but the staggeringly high variety of stuff that's out there for Pentax is just way too cool!"

Rollei R.I.P.

I'm only speculating here, but I suspect that the global recession probably had as much immediately to do with Rollei's demise as digital did.

 Franke & Heidecke, a.k.a. Rollei...it had a variety of owners and formal names over the years. Paul Franke and Reinhold Heidecke were the founders, and Rollei always the flagship product name and at times the corporate name too—indeed, one of the great names in cameradom. It had an 80-year run, which is more than respectable for a camera company. Its longevity puts it in a very exclusive club of the world's longest-running camera manufacturers.

During that time it faced down many challenges. It survived the burgeoning popularity of 35mm in the late '40s and 1950s, including the heyday of the Leica rangefinder in the 1950s. And it was supposed to be killed off by the advent of the interchangeable-lens Mamiya TLRs starting with the C3 and C33, but Rollei eventually outlasted that line's entire long run.

 
By Ralph Eugene Meatyard

For a company to last that long, it has to significantly re-invent itself at least once, and Rollei did so, successfully, with the introduction of the SLX in 1976. Although the original was balky and had a poor reputation for reliability, all of the many 6000-series cameras were the SLX's direct descendants, and later models were refined to a very high degree; the line saw the world's first autofocus 6x6cm camera. I reveiwed the 6008 for Camera & Darkroom in the '90s and although it was too much camera for my note-taking style of photography, I was impressed with it during my time with it. 

 
By Diane Arbus

The major market for Rollei from the '80s to the early 2000s was European studio pros, who tended to standardize on Rollei 6000-series cameras the way that American studio pros tended to use Hasselblads; it was as though the two major makes split the market between them. (I don't know what studio pros in Asia tended to prefer.) The Hy6 system was struggling to serve that market—and might have reinvented Rollei yet again—but the market was too volatile, with too many complicating factors, perhaps with low sales numbers and lowish profit margins (I'm just guessing here) together conspiring against it being a king-post for a whole company's fortunes.

 
By Fritz Henle

I also tried one of the modern iterations of the TLR once—the one with the onboard light meter—and loved it, but it was far too expensive for me to actually own. I ended up not reviewing that one for the same reason my take on the Panasonic G1 has been slow in coming—too d*mn cold to get out photographing during the time I had it.

The classic Rolleis I like the best (and they'll all be around for a long time to come) are the ones with four-element Tessars, called Xenar if manufactured by Schneider. There's no difference between a Tessar and a Xenar in a Rollei model, although there are differences in lens performance across models, and across time. I've never run across a bad lens in a Rollei, although of course I have my preferences. The Schneider equivalent of the Zeiss Planar was called Xenotar.

 
By Helmut Newton

The TLRs have always been available new in one form or another, but they've been vestigial for years, priced stratospherically and selling in very low volume—essentially, and sometimes actually, commemorative models.

The immediate question about the current product line is, what happens to the Hy6 body and system? It serves as the all-purpose mule for various companies' digital backs. This is little talked-about on photography and camera forums, since amateurs tend to ignore medium-format digital, but the growing paucity of medium-format camera systems to accept medium-format backs is putting considerable pressure on the latter's marketing and use. The Hy6 is still a viable product line and hopefully it's a corporate asset that will be sold off to another supplier, one that will keep it alive. Perhaps The Luminous Landscape will keep us apprised about this.

By Werner Bischof

I give Herr Schmid high marks for his bold attempt to become Rollei's savior. Possibly he could have made a go of it if the timing hadn't been so bad relative to the worldwide recession. Given Rollei's long and undeniably august history, it's a shame and a loss to see it go, even if it perhaps will seem inevitable in retrospect.

There isn't a good current book on the history, products, and lore of Rollei, and perhaps now would be a good time for such a book. My library features titles on the marque by Fritz Henle, Jacob Deschin, and of course Ian Parker, all currently out of print.

Mike

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Panasonic Lumix GH1 with Video

As promised, Panasonic introduced the GH1 at the PMA Show in Las Vegas today. The GH1 builds on the success of the hot-selling G1 by adding HD 1080p/24p video capability. A new Lumix G Vario HD 14–140mm (28–280mm-e) ƒ/4–5.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. lens (shown), specifically designed for use with video capture, has been added to the lens lineup, along with a new wide-angle 7–14mm (14–28mm-e) ƒ/4 ASPH. zoom lens. (Sure, zoom-zoom. Hope they haven't forgotten about that 20 they promised me!)

Mike

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