The Online Photographer

Best Website has a Birthday

May has zipped past for me with amazing swiftness—it seems like the month was beginning about four days ago. But before it's over entirely, I'd like to wish a very happy birthday to The Luminous-Landscape, which turned ten this month.

In the decade of its existence, L-L has become arguably the leading independent voice on the web on the subject of digital photography in all its many morphing forms and guises. Host and proprietor Michael Reichmann is uniquely well situated to offer valuable commentary on everything from the best inkjet printers to the best time of year to visit Iceland. In addition to the wide variety of information and activities on offer, he's also provided a valuable venue for many other people to share their knowledge and expertise (including moi). New or old, there is always something interesting on L-L.

Congratulations to Michael and Chris and everyone associated with The Luminous-Landscape. Here's to another ten years even better than the last.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Eolake Stobblehouse: "Couldn't agree more.

"Just for instance, like you said yourself once, and incredible as it sounds, there really isn't another web site covering medium format digital photography."

Random Excellence: Tod Papageorge

One of my photo teachers at the Corcoran, Frank DiPerna, owned a print of this photograph. If I recall correctly, Frank felt that everybody who loved photography should have at least a couple of original prints of favorite pictures framed and hanging on their walls, and he brought this in, in its frame, to show to us. He loved it because he liked to go to the ballpark, and for him this shot had all the feeling of a summer day at the ball game.

It will be in Tod's upcoming show in NYC.

Mike

N.b.: As always, "random" as used here means randomly encountered.

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Variations on a Theme

I'm really rather exhausted...lots of comments to the two previous posts, plus, many people have sent me private emails, many of them long and involved.

Some of the comments got pretty far off track. I was pretty sure they would. I'd remind some of y'all that this is just one possible learning exercise I've proposed, and I proposed it explicitly for beginners (remember?). It's not the secret of happiness or the One True Path, and I'm not Sir Dektolius, Keeper of the Grail.

All this stuff...it's really all about what happens in the mind. The didactic strategies are just ways of opening up the pathways of thinking—which, since this is photography we're talking about, means visual intelligence—seeing photographically. How you train your mind to see is the whole puzzle.

Some people are very eager for the camera not to matter, but like it or not, the camera can help. Cameras don't take pictures, true; but then, people don't take pictures either. People with cameras take pictures.

And you're unlikely to be able to train your mind to hit an exact moment if you have a camera that can't respond immediately. You can't learn how the lens sees if you're constantly switching lenses. You can't learn how to operate the camera without thinking if the camera requires too much thinking to operate. It's just a question of deciding which lessons might be worth learning and how best to get them into your brain. Don't make too much of it.

Now then, a few variations on the theme from the previous posts.

Variation #1: Substitute a simple "MMM" (metal, manual, mechanical) SLR for the Leica. Maybe you have one in the closet.

Variation #2: Substitute a different rangefinder for the Leica.

Variation #3: Substitute a medium-format rangefinder for the 35mm Leica. Easier to scan the filmstrips on a flatbed, for one thing—this is the way I'd go if I were doing that.

Variation #4: Substitute color negative film for the black-and-white negative film. There's just no way other than using black-and-white film any more to reach that state where you learn to "see" luminances and ignore color, and I really do think it's an interesting and instructive way to see the world, even if you only do it temporarily. But let's face it, darkroom work is too much for most people these days (even me, and I never thought I'd say such a thing), and finding good black-and-white processing is tough. Even with photo processing contracting as a business, it's still a lot easier to get color neg film processed and proofed. So, if you must, okay.

I'm probably just getting my head turned by those 50-100 people who say they intend to actually take my advice and do the "TOP training" thing for a year...I know most people who are all fired up now will probably not stick with it for long. But let's make a date for next May. If anyone actually manages to follow through, I'd love to hear how it went. 

Variation #5: Do it for 4–6 weeks instead of a year. It's not total immersion, and not long enough to get "the feel of the wheel." But you'll know a lot more about how the water is if you get your sock off and stick your toe in.

A short primer on black-and-white films
• Tri-X. Tri-X (say "try ex") is made by Eastman Kodak. The code is "TX" and it's ISO 400 speed. There's another film called Tri-X that's a totally different film, Tri-X Professional (TXP rollfilm and TXT sheet film); the way to tell them apart is the nominal speed: the Pro film is labelled 320 and the regular Tri-X is 400. Stick with the 400 stuff. But I recommend not pushing it: it's actually closer to a 250-speed film than 400, so shoot it at 200 or 250.

• HP-5 Plus. Ilford's 400-speed film is sharper than Tri-X but not as forgiving and (IMO) not quite as nice tonally. On the other hand, it matches better to Ilford's papers.

• 400 Delta. A thin-emulsion, fine-grain 400-speed film from Ilford that's a bit touchier and tougher to master the the two above. Better for scanning, though, if you're going to go that route.

• Fuji Neopan 400. Fuji's competitor to Tri-X and HP-5 Plus; I like it marginally less well than the other two. In D-76, at least, its grain is a bit mealy and the upper part of the curve seems a bit exaggerated.
But basically I'd use whichever of these films is easiest to get wherever you are.

• Ilford XP-2 Super and Kodak BW400CN. So-called "chromogenic" films that use color negative technology to yield a monochrome negative. Require C-41 (color negative) processing, the advantage being that most labs and some drugstores will process it along with regular color neg film. Two possible downsides are that the negatives aren't as permanent as silver negs (at least, that was true ten years ago), and drugstore-made proof prints often have a color cast. Printed well by a good custom printer, the prints can be very beautiful. The chromogenic films have a different look than regular B&W films; when heavily-exposed areas are replaced by dye clouds, the result is very grainless and smooth, meaning that the films handle highlights well, especially things like clear skies.

Mike

NOTE: If you're looking for good black-and-white processing, I can recommend my friend Bob Meier. Bob charges $12.50 to develop a roll of B&W film and proof it by contact, plus $2.00 return postage for any number of processed rolls of film. He does good work.

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Featured Comment by Jonathon Delacour: "Mike, the only thing that could have been more dispiriting than the carping and/or hostile responses to your last two generous and insightful posts is what has transpired: that, under the onslaught of ill-considered nitpicking, you've felt compelled to water down your original suggestion.

"Hopefully, three out of your 30,000 daily visitors will have the courage and humility to do the exercise, exactly as you prescribed. No ifs or buts, just buy the Leica and a single lens and spend a year shooting. For me, it was an M2 plus a 35mm Summicron using Tri-X developed in D-76. Where did the money come from? Like you, from part-time jobs. (At what point in our lives do we begin to echo our parents?)

"Consider the (ultimately reimbursable) cost of the Leica as representing a kind of challenge, similar to those encountered and overcome in any hero's journey. In other words, someone says he or she is serious about learning to take good photographs, let's see how serious. (A friend who taught printmaking in an art school was stunned when a student told her he couldn't afford the materials needed to complete an assignment. She said to me in exasperation: 'So why doesn't he give up smoking?')

"I suspect that much of the resistance is prompted by the fact that, as eloquently as you explained it in your second post, unless one has actually shot with a Leica, it's truly difficult to understand why a Leica is the only tool for this particular job.

"Not a metal, manual, mechanical SLR. Not a different brand of 35mm rangefinder. Not a medium-format rangefinder. Not color negative film. And not for 4–6 weeks.

"A Leica. One lens. Black-and-white negative film. For a year. Report back at the end of May, 2010.

"As the Zen master said, 'The further you travel along a narrow path, the wider it becomes.'"

Mike adds: Really, the only reason I suggested the original exercise is empirical. I've been a nut about photography for many years. It's true that I'm more of a writer and teacher than a photographer, but I've been enthusiastically learning and experimenting in all manner of ways since about 1980. Timewise, that puts me ahead of some people and behind some others. The quality of my effort has been sporadically very good; I've read a lot and looked at a lot of original work, listened to a lot of people, deliberately chased a lot of experiences. Again, that puts me behind some people (especially those who have chosen different tangents to their journeys, or more specialization) but ahead of...and here I will say most others. As a photographer, I've been interested in didactics as much as accomplishment. What's valuable and what's not? What's interesting and what's not? Which lessons are worth pursuing? And there I can't say for certain what every practitioner will experience—people are, after all, different. 

The exercise that I suggested was just one of the ones that helped me the most over those years, and that I found the most informative and interesting.

Frankly, I've noticed that viewfinders that do more for me help me more—that is, viewfinders that go more of the way towards suggesting what a scene will look like reduced to two dimensions bounded by distinct borders. Digital viewing screens are probably the best for this. I had a minor personal Renaissance—and a blast—when I acquired my first "live view" digicam. I suspect the EVF in the Panasonic G1 would also make it easier to "translate" pictures. Its viewfinder looks like a tiny TV, that strongly reduces every view to two dimensions. But handy as they are, they're not challenging. The rangefinder window, on the other hand, doesn't help you at all. It leaves the visualization entirely up to you. 

Why is this valuable? Well, only because the rangefinder view is very close to how we see with the naked eye. The more you are forced to learn to visualize a picture through a rangefinder window, and accommodate to that, the easier it becomes to see pictures just by looking at the world without using a camera at all.

Naturally, there are a thousand ways to learn most things, and, just as naturally, most people will never learn most things there are to know. But the premise of my original tossed-off post is that the Leica, specifically, is itself a kind of teacher, in that it lays bare the need for certain skills and abilities that really have to be provided by its user. I can't say that's something that I would like to be stuck with permanently...I'm not sure I'm talented enough to cope with it. But engaging with it for a year was an experience that I valued at the time, and find that I value even more now, almost fifteen years later.

I was shocked to learn, the other day, from that little "Do they still make the M7?" video, that Leica is only selling 100 to 150 film cameras a month, mostly to Asians, for whom camera collecting is a more prestigious and popular pasttime than it is elsewhere. Probably, few of those cameras end up being used hard, even for a year. What it made me realize is that this very fecund strain of influence is sifting inexorably out of currency: it's absolutely on the way out. For 55 years, the strange little device that is the Leica M has had an incalculable influence on many of the world's most talented and accomplished photographers. It suggested ways of working, encouraged certain skills and mental abilities and habits, that helped many people create a huge body of work that is valuable in very many ways, in its corpus and its typical characteristics and its influences, and will continue to be. Some of the "nitpickers" as you call them choose to emphasize that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new era in photography. Which is true. But just as surely, everyone reading this also finds themselves at the end of an era that is not quite yet gone. Embracing the future certainly has value. But taking hold of the best of the recent past while it still retains a little currency and viability might be valuable too. Especially for the young, whose life journeys will take them farther away from it than us "old guys" will ever get. Specifically, from the not-so-lofty perch of my modest 52 years, I'm convinced that any 20-year-old who spends a year shooting Tri-X with a Leica now will value that photographic experience more and more as the years of their own lives slip past, and as that method, and the possibility of that experience, slips ever more irretrievably into obscurity. I just can't imagine them regretting it, thirty years from now.

Featured Comment by Bernd Reinhardt: "I want to plug a custom lab in Los Angeles for Black and White. It's called Schulman Photo Lab. They are a small custom black and white lab, and the owner is a master printer in his forties. I think the price for processing and proof sheet is in the twelve dollar range, and they are very good. He is one of the few master printers left that do real darkroom work and I know that this economy can be rough on a place like this. I have no affiliation to them other than being a happy customer."

Featured Comment by Chris Bertram: "I appreciated the advice Mike, even though I'm not going to take it...I'm not a 20-year-old with a possible life as a photographer in front of me, but a 50-year-old with a demanding non-photographic job. I've got a keen interest in the medium (and its history) but I'm never going to follow the zen path you suggest. For those of us in the middle-aged amateur enthusiast category, I thought this post over at Shutterfinger was very useful."

Why It Has To Be a Leica

I honestly didn't mean this to be a big thing on the blog this week, but I guess, by popular demand, I have to elaborate. But please see the note at the very end of this post.

First of all, what I'm suggesting is an exercise. Young people think a year is a very long time. All us older people know it isn't. A year spent learning several important aspects of photography at once, in a concerted way, will pay off for many years after that, regardless of where you take it later. That's assuming you really want to be a photographer in the first place, of course.

Why using a Leica for a year doesn't cost anything, as several commenters have correctly guessed: a used M6 goes for between $1000 to $1200, give or take, and won't depreciate much (if at all) in a year. How much interest would your bank give you right now for keeping that grand parked in a savings account for that period of time? I don't know if you've checked interest rates recently, but the answer is "not very much." At the end of the year you'll lose maybe $100, counting shipping and Ebay fees and lost bank interest, maybe $200 if you're unlucky and/or impatient. Dave Terrell recounts, in the comments to the previous post, how he used some Leica gear for four years and came out $140 ahead. The same has been true for me. I've owned three Leicas at various times over the years, and I made money on two of them. Not much, but the upshot was that the three together ended up not costing me a dime to own and shoot with for a while. Not a dime. (Wish I could say the same for my digital cameras, which have collectively depreciated more than enough to cover a nice Leica and a good lens.) If you do what I suggest, film and paper, or outside processing and printing, will cost much more than the camera will—and both will be dwarfed by the value of the time you'll put in.

And in case you're feeling all whiney about not being able to come up with a grand for the camera: you're young. Work. Save up. Get an extra job. Sacrifice a little. Drink less. Get motivated and go find the damn money, for chrissake. (Malcolm Forbes used to say that no motorcycle enthusiast should be jealous of his motorcycle collection, because any working stiff could afford one motorcycle, and one is all anybody really needs.) Even if you don't have enough credit with anyone on Earth to borrow a grand for a year, it's still not impossible. When I wanted my first camera, I worked two jobs, seven days and 70 hours a week. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to do that for the rest of my life, but after a few months of that grind I had my camera and lens. In any event, if you're not committed to being out of pocket to the tune of $100 or $200 for a camera you're going to use every day for a year, well, then maybe you aren't committed enough for this exercise, is all. No penalty, no prison time. But don't complain.

Why it has to be a Leica: well, other cameras can be good teachers too. But the Leica is the best teacher, and here's why you should pick it and not a substitute:

1. It's no fun to look through. Totally boring, in fact. Just a window. The framelines aren't even accurate, so you you can't get all prissy about edges and exact framing. And about that "what you see is what you get" with an SLR, digital or otherwise? Not so, because you're always seeing through the lens at its maximum aperture, meaning its minimum d.o.f., aberrations maximized. That particular distortion is just as distracting as parallax and the other flaws of rangefinder viewing, just different. The RF camera sees like you should during this year: at a glance, taking everything in at once. A few months of shooting with a Leica and you'll start to get a feel for what aperture you need for what depth of field. (Mostly I think you'll learn it's not as all-fired important as the SLRs—and the online forums—would lead you to believe.)

2. The Leica is really simple—truly, "as simple as possible, and no simpler." (Well, except for that frameline-preview lever.) You know what "the feel of the wheel" is? It's when you've been driving for a few months and suddenly you realize you don't have to think about anything consciously any more. When you first got behind the wheel of a car, you had to think about everything. After a while it becomes second nature. You think what you want to happen, and it happens. I'm not saying this is some deep spiritual thing. I'm reminded of the old joke—what did the guru say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything." But "becoming one" with the camera is a cool thing, and a good lesson. It is really, really hard to achieve on a modern DSLR, because they're not built for that. I'm not saying it's necessary to learn to handle the camera this way to do good work or anything like that, but it is really cool, cool enough that it's worthwhile experiencing at least once in your life with cameras.

3. The Leica is quiet. Not super quiet, any more, but quiet enough. It changes how you can shoot compared to most SLRs. You'll see.

4. The Leica is really responsive. First of all, it doesn't ever do one damn thing you don't tell it to do. Modern cameras are your servants: always stepping in trying to help, always trying to take things out of your hands and do the work for you. Which is fine. But we're talking about learning here, and you will learn more if you have to do everything yourself for a while. Think of the difference: who is better off, the rich man who has servants doing everything for him, but who is fully capable of taking care of himself if he has to, or the rich man who is helplessly dependent on his servants to take care of him, and would perish without them? Learn to pull your own weight, then go back to all the helper-cameras. You'll be infinitely better off. Forever, not just for the time being.

And the shutter lag is 18 milliseconds, with a very positive mechanical shutter feel. That, coupled with the total absence of blackout in the viewfinder window, will teach you to take the picture at the exact right moment, not some vague approximation of it. All good pros know how to do this, regardless of how they learned it.

5. A Leica is cool to wear in any language, in any country. You don't need to make excuses, feel sheepish, wish you had something else, worry about your image, etc. If you can't get better, then you never have to fret about not having good enough.

6. Finally, and just as importantly as any other reason here: a Leica is a Leica. The icon, the legend, all that, yatta yatta. It has been responsible for far more than its share of great work; more great photographers used it in the second half of the twentieth century than any other camera, at least part of the time. You can see even in the comments to the previous post that the camera provokes strong emotions and opinions; no other 35mm excites nearly the same passions nearly as universally in our little craft. Until you get to grips with a Leica, you haven't gotten to grips with a Leica. So, do it. Then you'll know firsthand what everyone is bloviating about, and need never suffer a scintilla more angst on that account.

Do this while you're young, and have time in your life. Do it while you have the energy to commit, while all your possibilities are still open, while you still have the motivation to stay in training. Because make no mistake, photographing the way I suggested in the previous post is the photographic equivalent of being a top athlete: it takes dedication and coordination and talent and time and sacrifice and lots of training. Not everybody can do it. (I can't, these days. Too old, slow, stiff and lazy.) This whole idea works better—it's simply more possible for most of us—when we're young and have energy to throw away. You can tell from the comments that a lot of our readers have done something similar to this at some point in their lives, and only a few don't agree it was a good thing for them.

So what I'm suggesting is that you devote a year and some cash and work your butt off and learn some lessons about photographing that will stick in your brain pan throughout the rest of your life. It's not a film vs. digital thing; you can go back to digital and never look back and it will still never stop helping you. It's not a black-and-white vs. color thing; a year of seeing "luminances only" will help your color photography too, even if you never shoot another "capture" of B&W in your life. It's not a rangefinder vs. any-other-kind-of-camera thing; I think you'll find that the lessons the rangefinder will teach you are exportable. And it's not even a Leica vs. other-rangefinder thing, either. But until you've gotten to know life with Leica, you don't know about life with Leica, and it's just going to keep on being one more thing you don't know. So why not get to know it, firsthand and for yourself?

I don't even really like rangefinders. Most other people don't either. (What they like is Leicas, not rangefinders, for many reasons, some sensible, some stupid.) If they did, there would be more people buying them, and there would be a few viable digital rangefinders on offer. The reason there aren't is that only a few people really like the damn things.

They still have a lot to teach you, though, in my humble opinion. Most people will never get to, but a year with a Leica as a teacher is something every passionate photographer would experience once in their lifetimes if they were really lucky.

Mike

P.S. A year with a view camera, too. But, as Ctein would say, "Put down the can opener and step slowly away from the worms...."

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N.b.: Again, remember, nobody's going to actually do what I'm suggesting. It's an historical moment whose time has passed. I'm glad I got my year in, but the experience is going to be extremely rare in the future. So if you're tempted to get your bonnet all askew over this, please don't bother.

As to why then I bothered to spell all this out, people asked, that's all.

UPDATE (5/6/10): Two illustrations were removed from this post at the photographer's request.

Featured Comment by Tod Papageorge: "Two great posts, I think, and not only because they echo a sweet tirade I've been abusing my graduate students with for the last several years (none of whom has used any kind of 35mm camera over that period). I resist getting mystical about the Leica, as the fact that I earned my great friend Garry Winogrand's less-than-benign puzzlement when I gave it up for a medium-format Fujica should testify. But, sorry everyone, or some of you, there really is nothing else remotely like a Leica for in-the-hand picture-making, and the only reason I could consider setting it aside for the clumsy Fujica was precisely because I'd put in a decade of steady practice using it and was ready to apply what I'd learned to a more ponderous kind of process.

"Also great to see Garry and his between-the-legs method. In all the years I knew him, never once, not once, did I observe him resort to this particular shooting style. He must have been inspired by Arnold."

Featured Comment by Paul Amyes: "I teach photography at an art school and we are just starting to get the first totally digital generation of students coming through—they have never used anything but digital. The first year of the three year program has them shooting monochrome, developing and printing. We recommend totally manual cameras with a 50mm prime. They all bitch about this and say they know all there is to know about exposure and composition. Second semester tranny [transparencies] is introduced to teach them a little more about exposure and composition. The rate of improvement is considerable as they learn that they have to work for an image. At the end of the first year they have to produce a portfolio of 16 B&W prints of professional standard. It is at this stage the penny drops and they realise what we h ave been on about.

"Oh, and second year it's all 5x4 transparency in the studio and on location.

"As to Mike's suggestion about the Leica, yes I would tend to agree with him, only because the depreciation is very small. Any rangefinder would do, and a few of the students who really catch on buy Bessas. But I think most people would benefit from doing this exercise using an OM-1, a K1000 or an FM, as long as they used just one prime. when I first started I had an old Praktica Super TL and a 50mm ƒ/2.8 Zeiss. It was truly an agricultural experience but I have still got a couple of the photos from those days which have stood up rather well to the test of time. So just get a mechanical 35mm camera and just one lens—35–50mm is probably best—and shoot away."

The Leica as Teacher

Apropos the video we linked the other day, I would just like to throw this out there for what little it's worth...if any young or beginning photographer of real ambition within the sound of my voice would like to radically improve his or her photography quickly and efficiently, I suggest shooting with nothing but a Leica and one lens for a year. Shoot one type of black-and-white film (yes, even if you're completely devoted to color and digital, and hate film and everything it stands for. You don't have to commit to this forever; it's an exercise). Pick a single-focal-length 50mm, or 35mm, or 28mm. It doesn't have to be a "good" lens—anything that appeals to you and that fits the camera will do. Carry the camera with you all day, every day. Shoot at least two films a week. Four or six is better (or shoot more in the spring and fall and less in the dead of summer and winter). The more time you spend shooting, the better. The amount of film you shoot is related but not so important. (Photographing is like jogging: benefit accrues to time spent doing it, not how fast you go or how much ground you cover.)

Proof the rolls of film by contact and file them sequentially in a notebook. Get or make between one and six workprints per roll, however you choose to do it (even if you scan your picks and look at the pictures on a computer screen), and, every five or ten rolls or so, have one nice print made, or make it yourself. Craft well, but don't crop and don't fuss; just take what the camera gives you.

If you don't like this idea, no need to get all scornful or whimpery with me. If there are, say, 30,000 people reading this (approximately our average daily readership, an astounding fact that still mystifies me), a couple of thousand might think this suggestion is a sound one; 50 to 100 might read this and sincerely intend to follow the suggestion; and, maybe, one, two, or three people will actually follow through and do it. So if you're among the other 28,000, no need to bother defending or rationalizing your opposition. You're solidly in the majority as it is.

But I'll say this: A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist.

At the end of your year, sell the Leica and go back to doing whatever you really want to do, whether it's full-frame digital or a digicam and Potatochopping or whatever it is. I guarantee you will be a much better photographer after you finish the year than you were before you started. You just will be. It's a promise.

I'm not trying to be didactic or contrarian or provocative here. What I say is simply true.

Mike

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Mike adds: In response to many of the comments, no, it doesn't have to be a Leica—except if you want to take my advice, in which case it does have to be. Must be, in fact. There are half a dozen excellent reasons why. I'll try not to get my feelings hurt that people would think I'd specify something like that (in the title of the post no less) without good reason. Of course, no one is under the slightest obligation to take my advice, and many people would want to modify my suggestions to suit their own taste: a different mechanical rangefinder is next best, a "manual, mechanical, metal" 35mm SLR next after that.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Leicas for projects such as this are not costly; they're free. Or very close to it. Although, if you find yourself suddenly interested in buying a Leica from Ebay, I'd suggest waiting a few weeks so you won't be bidding against other people who have also just read this post.

DP2 ≠ DMD

I just wanted to mention in passing that I might still buy a DP2, despite Ken's review. No, I guess it's not the DMD, and that's too bad—but then, nothing else is, either; the DMD appears to be beyond the range of the technically feasible for the world's otherwise demonstrably competent cameramakers, for what reasons I know not.

One of my favorite cameras, one that I used only for a year or so in about 1986 or '87, was an Exakta 66 Model II. It had a fascinating backstory, but it was a real clunker—no light meter, a wildly inaccurate finder, and film advance as touchy as a sadistic dictator with a migraine. It could really barely perform basic camera functions adequately. But it had one of the best lenses I've ever used, and the results I got with it were just outstanding. I have some framed in my house to this day. Of all the cameras and lenses that have passed through my hands over the years, that's one I wish I'd kept.

The thing that appeals to me about the DP2 despite the proliferating accounts of its various and sundry shortcomings is that it seems to get two things very right—the lens, and the related perplex of image quality. It seems to me that over the years, a great many photographers have put up with all manner of inconvenience to get the results they crave. If you've ever lugged around an 8x10 on a tripod, even briefly, I'm sure you know what I mean. So which would you rather have: a beautifully built, ergonomically perfect camera that gives you so-so image quality at best, or a hunk of antediluvian junk held together with baling wire and chewing gum that yields image quality that's really outstanding? Given that choice—putting it that way—in my view it's not even a question; the conclusion's foregone.

The DP2 seems to do some things wrong, but the really important things right. As I read more and more about it, and see more results from it, the more the feeling sneaks up on me that I could do good things with it.

Maybe not, but I might want to see for myself. I could chalk it up to a learning experience. That's how I justify most everything I want to do, even when doing it doesn't make perfect sense.

Mike

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Sigma DP2 Review

By Ken Tanaka

Few cameras have faced the great expectations that Sigma’s DP1, and now the DP2, compact cameras have faced. Sigma’s own marketing tag line certainly fuels these expectations: "A Full-Spec Compact Digital Camera With All The Power of DSLR." I never touched a DP1, turned away by widespread stories of poor usability. But I was eager to take a look at its successor, the DP2.

What follows are my impressions of the Sigma DP2. Note that my evaluation of the DP2 took place within the context of my existing compact cameras; a Canon Powershot G10 and a Leica D-Lux 4 (a chichi version of the the Panasonic DMC-LX3), hence the references to these other cameras.

In brief
True to Sigma’s marketing claims the DP2 is capable of producing a high-quality low-to-moderate-ISO image file very comparable to that of a DSLR with an APS-C sensor. Indeed the DP2’s images can often best those of other cameras in the DP2’s size/price class. I must qualify this claim, however, by noting that obtaining optimal image quality from the DP2 is not always a predictable proposition.

What I found most surprising and disappointing was the DP2’s flimsy build and feel. The camera does not feel at all like a $650 camera marketed in 2009. (Sigma’s list price on the DP2 is actually a whopping $870.) It feels like a somewhat cheaply produced product below the industrial design standards of today’s higher-end compact cameras.   

Image quality
The Sigma DP2’s primary marketing claim is anchored in the performance of its 20.7mm x 13.8mm Foveon X3 sensor. (That sensor is approximately 6 to 7 times larger than the sensors in the Canon G10 and the Leica D-Lux 4.) Indeed, as some of the out-of-the-camera samples shown here suggest, the DP2 can do a nice job in this department. Images tend to be very crisp, extraordinarily noiseless at ISOs up to 800, and rich with detail.

The most significant DP2 image issues I encountered related to color casts and vignettes. The Foveon sensor seems to have a strong green bias. Raw images captured with auto white balance and the camera’s "standard" color profile are generally very cool and often show a slightly green overcast. They are also somewhat flat and undersaturated, contrary to the over-saturated Velvia-style samples that Sigma presents in its promotional brochure and website. While this is a relatively easily correctable characteristic, the DP2's tendency to also render greenish vignettes, or edge tints, is not so simple to correct. (See the Picasso sculpture image below for an example.) This quirk is rather unpredictable, although it seems more frequent at wider apertures.

Note the slight greenish cast in the far corners.

As a side note, I was struck by how similar these DP2’s image quirks can be to those of the Leica M8 rangefinder, which can often produce cyan edge tints on images captured with uncoded wide-angle lenses.

Build
Having been a long-time Canon G7, G9, and now G10 user, I have come to expect a very solid build in my compact cameras. Those cameras feel as if they’ve been hewn from solid blocks of aluminum. Even my Leica D-Lux 4 feels quite substantial. So I was surprised and disappointed with the DP2’s tinny, hollow build quality. I fully expect that a 3-foot fall to the pavement would instantly disintegrate a DP2 into a parts list. The DP2 just does not feel like a substantial camera.

Lens and focusing
The DP2’s 41mm single-focal length lens is the camera’s true star. Its sharpness, contrast, and nearly non-existent distortion are very reminiscent of some M-mount rangefinder lenses. The DP2’s terrific lens performance is one Sigma marketing claim that I can wholeheartedly confirm.

Unfortunately the DP2’s auto-focus performance is quite slow and weak. I would have expected the DP2’s fixed-focal length lens to be snappy in this department. But it can spend seconds hunting, even in well-lit scenes, and often completely wanders away in dimmer scenes. The DP2‘s manual focusing system is actually pretty good due mainly to a dedicated focus wheel. It would be much better, however, if the camera’s LCD screen was up to current-day specs.

It’s also worth noting, and warning prospective owners about, that the DP2’s focusing mechanism is loud...actually, very loud. The camera croaks, wheezes, and groans as the lens is focused either automatically or manually. I was startled by this noise when I shot the first frame. Who would expect this little camera to be as obtrusive as a growling stomach in quiet settings?

LCD screen
The past one or two generations of cameras have featured some gorgeous, large, high-resolution LCD screens. The Leica D-Lux 4 and Canon G10 both feature 3-inch 460K screens. But the DP2’s screen is only a 2.5" 230K LCD. It’s almost impossible to become comfortable with such a small, coarse screen after using one of these other cameras. Making this worse, however, is the fact that the DP2’s screen evidently has little in the way of optical coatings to improve visibility in bright conditions.

Menus
The DP2's menu features 21 settings provided in an old-style single list (but thankfully with circular navigation). The combination of button presses required to navigate and manipulate these settings takes some time to learn; it’s not exactly intuitive. The camera does feature a dedicated button for quickly changing frequently needed settings such as ISO. A completely separate "Setup" menu, which includes the memory card formatting function, is accessed somewhat oddly via the exposure program control dial.

Lock-ups and black-outs
Just 33 frames into the camera’s life it completely froze after recording an image to a 4Gb Sandisk Extreme III memory card. The status data remained displayed on the screen but the image was black and the camera would not respond to any button presses. Only removal of the battery cured this electronic catatonia. These seizures became so common that after the seventh occurrence, at around 245 frames, I stopped counting them.

At around the 200th frame, however, the DP2 developed a new malady. As with lock-ups, the status data remained on screen but the image went black. Unlike the full lock-ups, however, the camera remained responsive to button presses. The camera is clearly unusable in such a state, but cycling the power brought it back to normal.

Battery life
Sigma claims that the average battery life for the DP2 is 250 shots. My own experience, in very moderate temperature conditions, is closer to 150–175.

Software
At this writing the Sigma Photo Pro software provided with the camera is the only tool available for processing the DP2’s raw image files. To my surprise this software is really not bad at all. The Mac version was pretty snappy with a reasonably full complement of tonality adjustments. Sigma Photo Pro made working with the DP2’s X3F files relatively painless.

(N.b.: By the time you read this, Adobe will have issued a pre-release of the Camera Raw 5.4, which features support for the Sigma DP2.)

Closing thoughts
When Sigma finally introduced the long-awaited DP1 in 2008, many people rightly saluted the company for innovation. Innovations, however, must ultimately be integrated into products that represent genuine practical advancement. This is where I feel Sigma has failed thus far. The DP2 is simply not a competitive product with today’s other premium-priced compact digital cameras. I did not see any conspicuous persistent advantages from the Foveon sensor that would come close to counterbalancing the camera’s practical shortcomings. Frankly, I was not as impressed with the DP2’s Foveon technology as I was with its lens and the fact that it has such a relatively large sensor in such a small camera.

After using the DP2 daily for over a week I found it to be a sluggish, noisy, unreliable, and generally charmless device which I ultimately decided to return for a refund. That’s the bottom line of my opinion.

Given the recent advancements of the Micro Four-Thirds sensor format I expect several new compact cameras sporting these larger-than-standard-point-and-shoot sensors from Olympus and Panasonic in the near future. It will be a shame if Sigma is unable to leverage its investment in the Foveon X3 (which it now owns) in time to gain leadership in compact cameras. To do so, however, it will need to build better cameras around its sensors and lenses.

Ken

Sustain The Online Photographer

Featured Comment by Chris: "Being a happy owner of a DP2, I would agree with many of the points made here—the menus are a bit clunky, the focusing is noisy and slow, there is some weird WB out of camera. But after a few tweaks in Sigma Photo Pro the images simply sing. The amount of detail, quality of color and dynamic range are far more robust and professional than files generated by my Nikon D40. These qualities also translate well to black-and-white conversions. I love the minimalist, old-school, controls and simplicity and plan on getting the slightly over-priced viewfinder. But, the big thing for me is the fast ƒ/2.8 lens. Being able to shoot with a shallow depth of field with a compact digital is what I've been waiting for and is a big part of my photographic style."

Featured Comment by Andrew: "Sad but true. I bought one only because I had been anticipating it for so long, and I loved yet hated my DP1. Too late to return it. So much potential squandered."

Featured Comment by mcananeya: "How's this for a quirk of timing? Sigma just released a firmware update (http://www.sigma-dp.com/DP2/firmware.html) that supposedly improves autofocus performance and eliminates the camera lock-ups Ken described above. That obviously wouldn't change the noise and build-quality issues, but it's still unfortunate that Ken didn't get a chance to test a camera with the new firmware.

"I suppose that's the price you pay for being one of the first to review a camera...."

Featured Comment by Thomas Risberg: "That was a pretty poor review in my opinion. Not that I disagree with what you write, you seem to have uncovered some usability problems that exists for the DP1 as well. Nothing new here. You should however have tried a little harder to make use of the defining features of the camera which in my opinion are the sensor and a high quality lens on a pocket sized body. Looking around the web it doesn’t take long to find some excellent pictures taken with both the DP1 and DP2, so for you not even trying to produce some magic with this camera is disappointing and I expected a lot more from a review on TOP."

Featured Comment by Edward Taylor: "After my TOP review of the Sigma DP1, I used the camera for another few months. During that time I found that it did not give me reliable results. I occasionally got remarkable, "better than expected" images, but usually got images that could not measure up to my G9 or G10. Not to mention, the camera was so clunky to use. As a result, I missed so many shots that I stopped using it.

"Also, though I am not impressed with megapixel counts, I began to get annoyed with the claim that the camera was almost 15 megapixels. At times the resolution seemed limited to the 4–5 megapixels that it actually had. Under ideal conditions, the camera seemed to excel beyond its specs, but when do we ever have ideal conditions?

"Anyway, I was optimistic that Sigma would fix all these bugs with the DP2. They didn't. I had the camera for a brief time and returned it just as Ken did.

"My advice for a pocketable camera—go with the Canon G-10 or the Panasonic LX3 until Micro 4/3rds is a reality. Then re-evaluate the situation.

"Thanks Ken for an informative real-world review."

On Simplicity

If my email correspondence is any indication, there's still a good deal of confusion among some readers as to what I mean by a "simple DSLR." I've been asked how a camera can be highly specified (i.e., very well built, with excellent performance) and also be simple.

Of course the two aren't mutually exclusive. I'll give just a few concrete examples.

• A simple camera might have a single AF point in the middle of the viewfinder view. A highly specified camera would have very good autofocus: sensitive, fast, and able to work in very low light. In this sense a simple camera could have high or low quality AF, and a complicated camera (one with, say, 18 focus points, algorithms for switching automatically between one and another focus point automatically, provisions for tying the metering to the focus point in use, focus tracking, etc.) could also be of high quality or low quality.

• A simple camera might shoot only raw. That would eliminate all of the in-camera image processing features that are better accomplished on a computer anyway, for those who will do all their post processing on a computer anyway.

• A simple camera might eliminate features currently expected by tyros and occasional shooters coming from digicams, like the Sony A900 does by not having pop-up flash, live view, or video. The standard example of this is the "green square" default mode and all the rest of the "scene modes" that can be found on amateur cameras. While these might make it "easier" for people who don't understand how cameras work to get a higher percentage of successful exposures in certain situations, they also increase opacity—that is, they make it harder for those users to learn how cameras work.

• A highly spec'd camera might have a shutter that is designed to have a useful life of 150,000 actuations, vs. 5,000 actuations for an entry-level model. This has nothing to do with simplicity as it is perceived by the operator, as either shutter could be just as easy to use and understand.

• A highly spec'd camera would also be precise: the viewfinder would show the actual field of view of the capture, accurately; there would be less slop in the AF; the exposure would never "wander"; etc.

Understand, too, that I'm not arguing that every camera should be simple. I'm not even arguing that every camera should be well made. After all, some people just want to take a few pictures at birthday parties and on vacation every year. There's nothing at all wrong with that, and no reason for those people to spend money on build-quality they don't need. Current entry-level cameras are very good, and quite suitable for most of the people who buy them. I'm also not arguing that it's "wrong" for a top professional camera to have tons of features: those cameras also suit their users, who both understand their cameras' features and will learn how to use them. In advocating simplicity I'm merely observing that it would be nice to have a few cameras that are radically simple, for those who like to be in control of the device they're using, instead of the other way around, without having an onerous number of configurations to master. Just so there's that option. For those who prefer it. (As I explained below, this will never happen, but it would still be nice.)

The same thing goes for having a camera or two available that is small and light but not intended for rank amateurs, like the new K-7: it would simply be nice to have a couple of choices along those lines. That doesn't mean all cameras have to be that way.

I also feel obliged to mention, for those who don't quite believe it, that there is absolutely no technological obstacle for a reasonably well-built and highly specified modern DSLR to be relatively small and light. It's true, such a camera would not be the smallest and lightest there is; and it's true, such a camera would not have every single feature of the absolute top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art cameras that exist. But the current fashion that ties complexity successively better levels of build quality is simply that: a fashion. It certainly exists in other fields besides cameras, too.

Probably the ultimate example of a "simple" but "highly specified" camera are the ones featured in the post just below this one. If you discount what's needed to do to load and unload film (and I'll lump the ISO dial in with that set of capabilities, since on a film camera you only set the ISO once, when you load the film), there are only six controls on a Leica MP:

1. a lever to simultanously wind the film and cock the shutter for the next exposure.
2. a focus ring or knob, to set the focus.
3. an aperture ring, to set the aperture.
4. a shutter-speed dial, to set the shutter speed.
5. the shutter release button, to take the picture.

And that's all it needs. And no one can argue that Leicas aren't useful for making good pictures. Granted, I doubt that a DSLR would be feasible with just six controls. But it would be interesting to count up just how many controls that, say, a Nikon D3 or a Canon 1D Mark III offers; I'll bet the number is well up into the three figures. And it might also be interesting to consider how few controls an optimally simplified DSLR would really need. I don't know, but I'm guessing it would be in the low two figures.

Oh, that sixth control on a Leica: there's a lever that allows you to preview different framelines than you currently have showing. In two decades of intermittently owning and shooting Leicas, I've never once used that.

Mike

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Does Leica Still Make MP and M7?

Thanks to L•Camera TV.

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko)

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'I Heard...'

A few years back, Harley-Davidson, the venerable motorcycle manufacturer headquartered in my corner of Wisconsin (we even have a Harley-Davidson Museum not far from where I live) had an anniversary. I wasn't paying attention, but if memory serves it was its 105th. Bikers came from all over the world—you have to go to Sturgis to see more motorcycles at once, or in a day; they're like locusts. The rumble of big V-twin engines with no mufflers gets into your brain. As part of the celebration, the company threw a big concert. But its spokesmen got coy about who the main act would be—all they did was imply that it would be somebody really, really big.

With the performer's identity a secret, the rumor started getting around that it would be the Rolling Stones. So many people repeated this, so many times, that it was taken for granted by many that the rumors had to be true. The Stones concert was the talk of every street corner. News of where the Stones were and what they were doing became daily banter. The more talk there was, the more people believed it. The more people believed it, the more talk there was.

Come the night of the big concert, and who bestrode the stage but...well, Elton John. That was a surprise, all right, but not in the manner intended. People were so angry and disappointed that they left the concert in droves, thronging the exits before Elton had finished his first song.

It's probably true that Harley-Davidson management should have realized that a gay Brit pop crooner known for flamboyant eyeglasses didn't quite fit the corporate image (then again, my son thinks Harleys are "for really old, fat guys with gray beards"), but that can't have accounted for all the defections. What did it was confused expectations. Sometimes we want something to be true so badly that we feel let down when it turns out not to be the case. But who's to blame for that? Harley-Davidson never told anyone the Stones would perform. All they did was keep the performer's real identity a secret. It was a good illustration that wishful thinking—even en masse—doesn't make a belief true.

What got me started thinking about this is that I've actually stated in public that this site is a teaser campaign for the new Micro 4/3 Olympus. But I don't know that. All it says is that it's a celebration of the 50th Birthday of the Olympus Pen.

Maybe that's exactly what it is. Nothing more. It's possible I'm loading it with my own expectations, just because other people are. There appear to be three more spaces for "updates," but, as this page shows, there are actually five more Pen models.

Who's to blame for my disappointment if the last update is a hand drawing a camera from 1966?

Mike

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UPDATE: It was the 100th Anniversary celebration, in 2003, that featured Elton John. Thanks to Charles Veit for this information.

Why There Will Never Be a Simple DSLR

Many photographers—many of us—would like it if there were a radically simplified DSLR. There never will be, however.

I have had some conversations with readers indicating that many people don't have a very clear idea of what's technologically possible or plausible in camera design. Some of those people feel that what's on offer is pretty much all it's possible for the camera companies to make, and if they could do anything differently, they would. Without paddling too far up that particular tributary, it should at least be obvious to everyone that a simplified DSLR is a valid possibility—all the would be required would be to start with a complicated one and take stuff out.

Others will argue that technological plausibility and market viability are two different things. And they're right. It's entirely possible that a simple DSLR would appeal to such a small subset of the buying public that its development would never pay for itself. Too small a niche, in other words.

But let's put aside those objections too, and stipulate that the majority of camera buyers would like, appreciate, and wish to buy a simple camera (that's assuming facts not in evidence, I realize. Follow the logic). There still would never be a radically simplified DSLR.

Why? Simply because none of us could ever agree how to define "simple." What's extraneous to you is essential to me, and what's essential to me is extraneous to the next guy. If you started with one of today's radically over-featured electronic wonders and deleted 90% of all the fripperies that weren't absolutely necessary, here's what the camera companies would hear, over and over again, from everybody: "I absolutely love the idea of your new Nonetax ABC, and I had been planning to buy one—until I found out that it doesn't have [feature x]. Why oh why couldn't you have built the Nonetax exactly like it is, but with [x]?"

"I absolutely need hot pixel mapping because I do astrophotography. How could you have left that out?"

"I absolutely must have mirror lockup because the shutter noise scares praying mantises. What were you thinking? There are thousands of us mantis photographers, as you can see if you go to alt.binaries.insectivore."

"Sensor cleaning is not optional for me because I do all my photographing in a drywall factory."

"Multi-point focusing is a must when photographing flocks of budgerigars in the wilds of Busta Rotton."

Everybody's "must have" would be slightly different from the next person's, because we all have different needs and we all have gotten used to having certain things from past cameras we've owned and loved.

So we'd all like a camera that was stipped to just the essentials. The problem is that everybody's essentials are different. In light of that reality, the best a camera designer can do is to lard on the features with a spatula—and even then, people come up with things they wish were there, but aren't.

Same as it ever was.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Adam Richardson: "I work at frog design, one of the world's largest product design consultancies, and so am intimately familiar with the challenges posed by the paradoxes described here. It doesn't just apply to SLRs, but virtually every kind of category: consumer, industrial, services, software, hardware, you name it.

"Unfortunately there aren't easy answers. There is a lot of truth that people buy on features, but then often come to regret the plenitude of features once they later live with the product. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent them from re-requesting more features the next time they buy. So-called opportunity costs are the problem.

"For this side of problem, I refer you to this excellent article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki about why feature creep occurs (answer: customers).

"On the other side, Rob Haitani, who was the software architect for the original Palm Pilot, says that companies not making considered edits of features is a cop-out. I blogged some quotes from him from an interview he did years ago.

"In the camera realm, the closest to the Palm is probably Pure Digital, who make the Flip and Minio super-cheap digital cameras and camcorders. Unlike the large Japanese corporations they compete against, who are primarily hardware companies pursuing specifications and feature bragging rights, Pure sees itself as a software company who happens to make hardware. They have a very different perspective that focuses on fun, simplicity, and the equipment getting out of the way. As a result they are #2 behind Sony in the camcorder market, after three years of being in it, and achieved something like 14,000% growth (not a typo). Of course, they are not competing with SLRs.

"But we have seen this play before: The first mass adoption of film SLRs in the '70s and '80s, which led to giant zoom lenses being carried around to snap vacation pics. People got fed up with it and realized that small cameras did just fine. The same thing will happen today—a lot of people who are today using SLRs will eventually 'give up' and shift to point-and-shoots or camera phones. But for the time being, SLRs will continue to be the biggest-growing area."

Now That's An Adapter

A couple of weeks ago, in response to a post about an apochromat enlarging lens, Tyler Monson linked to a picture of an apochromat of his own—a 4-inch Göerz Red-Dot Artar, c. 1960.

In passing, he threatened to find a way to mount it to a DSLR and actually take a picture with it.

As you can see, and as he documents in a recent blog post of his own, he succeeded—shown above is his steampunk lensmount, allowing focusing of the Göerz process lens all the way from infinity down to one foot.

And here's one of the pictures taken with the Artar, stopped down to ƒ/45. And you thought a 50mm Summicron on a G1 was out there?

Nice, eh?

Mike
(Thanks to Tyler)

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Colorless Green Photographs

By John Bates

Noam Chomsky has infamously stated, "There is no such thing as the probability of a sentence." For that, he is roundly mocked by computational linguists everywhere, whose statistical models have delivered tremendous development in the practical analysis of spoken and written speech.

His argument, though, is worth considering, and it is much more subtle than it sounds. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is only the starting point of his critique: a sentence that is syntactically correct, and which can be assigned a (low) probability under statistical models, but which is semantically meaningless. (Of course, by virtue of its becoming a standard example in linguistics, it has become both more probable and more meaningful, although not in a way that is easily amenable to standard analysis.) Some computational linguists will argue that because that string of words is clearly possible, it is open to consideration, and that various approaches will weed out semantically meaningless cruft, much as the human mind, fundamentally a statistical engine, will puzzle over and then discard nonsense.

Chomsky's argument goes beyond the mere syntactic/semantic split, though. Computational linguists generally start with a set of utterances, text, or whole corpora, examining word and feature frequencies. By using these starting points, they build after-the-fact models of language. They can map those models to search for or summarize both syntactic and semantic features, e.g. named entity recognition, topic selection, or bias detection. They regard words and combinations of words as mere (ha!) random events, sequences of which can be assigned specific meanings. Chomsky dismisses that randomness. In his view, words have meaning. Words and sentences are created by people.

That's not to say that Noam Chomsky is some kind of starry-eyed mystic claiming special status for the human soul. Instead, his point (or rather, my interpretation of his point) is that words are objects of communication between two deliberative entities, and that the meaning of a sentence is therefore only interpretable taken in that context. As I write this sentence, it is the product of the sum total of all of my experiences and decisions up to this point, as well as the physical apparatus that I am using to deliver it. As you read it, I am making physical changes in your brain. Right now! You can't stop me! Ha!

Statistical models tend to strip away this context. His point might be better taken as something closer to: you can't predict what I'm going to say next, and I can't predict how you'll interpret what I say. Except, of course, for the context that we share. If I stand on the corner and talk about the coming apocalypse, you can probably guess quite a bit about me and my current mental state. If I babble instead about colorless green ideas, you're bound to be lost, and I cease to be communicating. Regardless, the likelihood of the words that I use has little bearing on the act of communication.

As someone who dabbles in both computational linguistics and statistical processes, I can take issue with this argument. I can point to numerous techniques that incorporate broader contexts into analyses. I can illustrate problem after problem that has fallen to our tools, and I cannot disparage anybody for attempting new challenges. But ACQUINE clearly demonstrates the shortcomings articulated by Chomsky. Photography, like writing, is fundamentally an act of communication, requiring the full context of a human's knowledge to go beyond the shallowest parse.

The frame is a perfect example. Subconsciously, we clearly do prefer images with boundaries. Consciously, or possibly semantically, we are able to eliminate them from our consideration of an image, or to view them as an extraneous feature. ACQUINE's developers must have forgotten about that, probably because they are so easily elided from our perception. But on the social networks, people posting simple snapshots rarely frame, while people who are trying to be "artists" do. Artists post in black-and-white (why? context, again...) but parents dump their flash memory cards to the web.

Obviously (at least, to me) the ACQUINE developers are not idiots. They know all this better than I do. They are attempting a grand thing: analyzing the affective perception of visual content. And there are some pretty cool refinements that are clearly possible: for example, clustering the responses of the raters can lead to social filtering, so that all of us who are Callahan fans can be distinguished from the infrared HDR cat lovers.

But "collective intelligence" and social filtering is at best a highly refined popularity contest, and fails at the one task that is most interesting: finding and evaluating truly original content. For, if it is original, it is, by definition, low probability, and also incomparable. How can you rate that which has never before been seen, if you can't understand it?

John

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Featured Comment by Seinberg: "Johns Hopkins had natural language processing (i.e. computational linguistics) talks every Tuesday this past semester. I attended many of them, as someone whose research is not in natural language processing but who takes a serious interest in it and have dabbled with it in the past. The first guest lecturer was Martin Kay, one of the fathers of computational linguistics. Someone asked him point-blank whether the standard approach taken today by the Big Names like Google and the professors at the most celebrated computational linguistics university on the planet (Hopkins) is enough to eventually pass the Turing Test. The standard approach is statistical analysis. His response was immediate and he said, 'No. I think it will be a new method not in use today.'

He did eventually back-track a bit and admit that statistical analysis is helpful for several very specifics processes. For instance, part of speech tagging, for which statistical analysis is 97 or 98% accurate given a good training corpus (far better than the majority of humans do).

Where statistical analysis falls down, however, tends to be precisely where Chomsky seems to be going with Green Photographs: understanding context. Reference resolution is still a wide open problem. If several people are discussed in previous sentences, resolving pronouns like 'he,' 'she,' 'it,' etc. are very difficult. In parsing the semantic content of sentences, these pronouns should be linked to the entities to which they refer. Humans do this automatically, but current computational methods do it poorly. Statistical analysis does this very very poorly, particularly with complicated language. The current best we can do (more or less) is 'sentiment extraction,' where analysis tries to extract small parts of the meaning to get the general idea of what people are saying e.g. in blogs. For instance, 'does this blogger support Obama or McCain?' But that's easy.

"Then there's the problem of the pink elephant in the room. Imagine the date is September 12th in 2001. Everyone who talks to each other says things like, 'How could it have happened?' 'Isn't it terrible?' 'How are you and your family?' Every person in the US—and probably most in the world—knew precisely what had happened. But a statistical parser would be at a complete loss, because it wouldn't have any context in which to understand the Pink Elephant of 9/11 that was in the air.

"So statistical analysis needs to be augmented (or: should be used to augment) some other method, and that other method needs to include knowledge in its analysis. Then, of course, statistics might be used to determine with 95% probability that on 9/12 the Pink Elephant is the events collectively known as 9/11 (or 'the terrorist attacks' or whatever).

"One final link. A professor at my university is trying to incorporate knowledge into natural language processing, although perhaps to his detriment: he uses very little statistical processing, claiming the whole venture is for the birds."

Mike comments: Where I come down on ACQUINE is that it wouldn't work even if it worked.

One thing I've been threatening to do for a while now is to take a single photograph and map different "modes of approach" to it—that is, specify some of the various ways (formalistic, coloristic, epistemological, factual, connotational, emotional, etc., etc.) different viewers might choose to think about it, giving concrete examples of each mode of approach so people might actually understand what the heck I was talking about. I might still do it, too...another of those "one day" projects. At the very least I think it might help illuminate why there can't be a single standard for aesthetics, even if we don't define aesthetics as personal to begin with—which, incidentally, I do.

Featured Comment by Paul Pomeroy: "In Claude Shannon's seminal 1948 paper, 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication,' he says up front that, 'The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.'

I think most people overlook the full significance of what he was saying. In part, he was saying that 'information' doesn't exist in the middle. What goes across the wire is without meaning and 'meaningless information' is an oxymoron. Information, true to its -ation suffix, is a process. It's not a noun, it's a happening and for people it happens mostly under the level of consciousness.

"The history of computational intelligence is riddled with examples of seemingly brilliant people who have made the mistake of thinking the meaning was in the message. This has lead to all sorts of naive optimism and costly errors. As an example of the later, consider the 1999 Mars probe that crashed because one device was 'sending information' using imperial units (pounds) to a device that was 'receiving information' in metric units.

"My favorite example of naive optimism involves an Artificial Intelligence project funded by the military. The goal was a machine that could look at a photograph (or real-time image) and locate any hidden enemy tanks. This was to be done using neural networks which were 'trained' by showing them thousands of actual photographs some including tanks that were hidden (some not very well, others so well that experts couldn't find them) and others with no tanks at all.

"After a surprisingly short training period the neural networks suddenly started getting really good at indicating which photos had the hidden tanks. In fact, they were perfect. So the military started trying them out in real life situations and...wait for it...they were completely useless (actually worse than purely random guessing).

"It took quite awhile to finally figure out what had happened. It turns out that the original set of photos had been taken over a two day period. They first photographed locations without any tanks and then they brought in the tanks, hid them and took another set of photographs. No one took notice of the fact that on the second day the sky was overcast while it had been sunny during the first shoot. No one, that is, except for the trained neural network. So, for about a million dollars the military got a device that could tell them whether or not a photo was taken on a sunny day.

"There hasn't really been a whole lot of advances since then. And maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that finding aesthetic quality in a photograph is a bit tougher. Unless, of course, it turns out that aesthetics is just a fancy word for tanks on an overcast day."

Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!

By Ctein

Okay, now there's one thing you have to keep in mind. These folks are trying to do something fabulously difficult: write a computer program that can develop a sense of aesthetic judgment. That's so hard that humans can't even do it right or consistently. Read any sample of back columns on TOP and see how often there's unanimity on the aesthetic merit of a particular photograph, let alone any kind of cogent or coherent explanation of why it has merit. We humans don't agree and we're largely inarticulate on the subject. We certainly can't expect much from a machine.

Still, it's hard not to be amused by its efforts, the same way we're amused by inept computer language translation. That's not unrighteous, so long as we stifle the snarkiness. And not take it too seriously.

The program's called ACQUINE, short for "Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine."

Go here and you can enter URLs for (or upload) your photos. How could I resist? I picked a sampling from my website of my favorites (and my audience's, I must emphasize).

For the sake of calibration, there's a reference photo of the Macbeth chart from my website. ACQUINE rated it a 10 on a scale of 100, 50 being "a typical average-quality professional photograph" according to the programmers. Okay, so far so good.

This rates only a 10, but it's not supposed to be art.

Next I handed it my photograph of Castle Eileen Donan, and that garnered an amazing 98.5! "Wow, that computer has excellent taste!" I thought objectively.

It's a 98.5! Do I rock, or what!?

So I fed it a bunch more stuff, and while one picture garnered a mere 34 (obviously a computer error), the average score for the rest was over 80. Insert artist smugness here.

It bothered me to be using URLs for photos directly from my website. As I present them, they're all encumbered with dark gray "frames," grayscales, and title information. That has to be detracting (aesthetically) from the photograph. I figured the smart and sensible thing to do would be to strip off that extraneous matter and present ACQUINE with the photographs in a clean form.

So I did—and my scores plummeted! A few stayed respectable; the Castle photo only declined to 86.5. But two thirds of the photos dropped into the teens and the one below came back with an appalling 6.2.

In other words, ACQUINE thought it was lousy even in comparison to a Macbeth chart!

6.2...6.2??? I am being dissed by silicon.

I guess it's like they say: It's all in the presentation.

For those who like to wallow in data here are the URL's to the photos I tested, along with the scores in their presentation form and the scores after I stripped off the "frames."

"Macbeth Chart," rating with frame: n.a.; "bare": 10.5
"Scotland 1," with frame: 82.3; "bare": 15.9
"Scotland 2," with frame: 67.1; "bare": 6.2
"Scotland 14," with frame: 56.5; "bare": 14
"Scotland 15," with frame: 98.5; "bare": 86.5
"Scotland 16," with frame: 71.1; "bare": 15.2
"Scotland 17," with frame: 34; "bare": 12.3
"VAB Bay," with frame: 87.8; "bare": 58.1
"Rose," with frame: 91.6; "bare": 15.1
"Rushes," with frame: 94.1; "bare": 71.5

Ctein

"Danger, Will Robinson!"

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Featured Comment by Chuck Kimmerle: "That software's hard to please. After my third photo evaluation, it suggested I sell my camera and take up plumbing."

Featured Comment by Adam McAnaney: "For the record, the above picture of The Robot rated a 64.7."

Olympus's Teaser Campaign

Olympus has [apparently] started a teaser campaign linking the [alleged] upcoming Micro 4/3 camera with the 50th anniversary of Maitani-san's famous half-frame Pen camera. It looks like it's going to be a long, hard slog before we get to real information, so just keep telling yourself "they could be telling us nothing, they could be telling us nothing..." as we go along, and try to enjoy it....

Mike
(Thanks to Adam McA.)

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Featured Comment by Ray Bullen (Ow, Dept.): "Surely it's an Olympus Pen-Ding for now...."

Blog Notes

In case anybody has had trouble lately with the site loading slowly, I think I've figured out why that might be happening. It has to do with how I've been loading illustrations. It will take a few days for the old method to clear off the front page, but things should improve after that.

Also, yesterday we passed 30,000 comments on the new site (you might remember the original site was over on Blogger.) The author of the 30,000th comment was Arghya Mukherjee.

Mike

Featured Comment by Arghya Mukherjee: "That is serendipity for you—that was only my second comment on the site in two years.

"Thanks, though, for a superb blog—a daily dose of photographic sanity and balance that I would find it hard to do without."

Featured Comment by Adam McAnaney: "I'd like to thank Mike, but I have already thanked him enough. So here is a big THANK YOU to everyone who comments here. I just read all 107 (and counting) comments on the Pentax K-7, and I assure you that there are very few (if any) websites out there where I would be willing to read more than 20 comments at most. There certainly aren't any where I read all of the comments with any regularity. I really appreciate the intelligence, knowledge and wit that the T.O.P. commenters share here and hope that you will all continue to make T.O.P. such an inviting and informative place.

"Thanks, y'all!"

Mike adds: I'll second that. And I read all 30,000+.

The Story About #2

A month or so ago, I was finishing up our most recent "T.O.P. Ten Recommended Cameras" list, and I had to put off revealing #2. Here's the story:

Number 2 was originally intended to be the Pentax K20D. The entry I wrote began, "This one rightly belongs lumped in with the cameras under # 3, but for one thing: value. Primarily, the Pentax has a superb sensor that is capable of a very high level of detail and image quality; weather-sealing; peerless lens backwards-compatibility; and in-body SR (shake reduction, a.k.a. image stabilization). We’re not saying the Pentax is a 'better' camera than its able competitors below, necessarily, but those are features said competitors mostly don’t have...and for significantly less money."

And so on. The K20D was selling for about $775 at the time, and as it left the supply pipeline I saw prices as low as $670. For a camera as able as the K20D, those were outstanding bargains—basically a mid-level advanced-amateur DSLR with some high-value features for the price of an entry-level camera. Can't beat it with a stick.

The trouble was that literally mid-way through the list, Pentax contacted me and asked if I'd like to take a look at the new K-7, confirming that the K20D was at the end of its lifespan. This is always a danger when "recommending" cameras; nobody likes to be told to buy something only to have it be discontinued shortly after they purchase it. So, recommending the K20D was out. Of course, since I had signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), I couldn't explain any of this to you at the time.

So anyway, that was #2. As for plugging in a last-minute substitution, nope, not going to. Tell you what—if you have a strong opinion about it, insert your own choice. Think it should be the 5D Mark II? Okay with me. (I liked both the A900 and D700 better, but that's just me. Then again, it was my list.) Does the DP2 deserve the nod, as the closest thing yet to a DMD? Okay. I haven't seen one yet. Like the looks of the K-7? Well, maybe the K-7 will be on the next T.O.P. Ten list. But not this time around. I like the K-7, but it's too new, and I haven't even seen a production camera yet, or done any image-quality trials.

Finally, I have to say that although leaving the #2 slot blank was entirely unintended, I rather like the concept. It's a tacit acknowledgment of the vagaries of personal taste, the ever-changing firmament of the market, and the essential futility of ordinal lists. A nice enigmatic existential flourish—even if I can't take any credit for doing it on purpose.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "Here's my #2: Last weekend my young daughter and I made a pinhole camera, partly because she wouldn't believe me when I said we could make a camera, and partly to contribute to her education, as all she knows is digital.

"We used a corn meal (similar to oatmeal) box (after pouring its contents into a plastic bag), painted the inside flat black, pushed a needle through the cap from a can of tennis balls for the pinhole, glued the lens board onto the end, and put some photo paper in the other end. Under a red safelight in the otherwise dark basement, of course. That pinhole was too big, so I replaced it with some aluminum foil with a smaller hole in it.

"We processed the paper normally (well, normally for those who still have a wet darkroom). This is our shot, after scanning, reversing, and bit of tuning up in Lightroom."

Featured Comment by Alistair Williamson: "A suggestion. Number 2 is 'last generation value.' It is any digital SLR camera that has just been replaced and hence is great value. The Canon 40D, the Pentax K20D etc."

Mike replies: Nice idea, Alistair. We might even be able to concoct a whole list that is essentially conceptual: a few items on this list more or less already qualify, and #1 could be "the camera you have with you" as numerous people have suggested.

Panasonic Gets In On Adapter Action

This morning Panasonic has released official versions of Leica lens adapters for its Lumix G cameras (G1 and GH1). The M Mount Adaptor (DMW-MA2M, left) and R Mount Adaptor (DMW-MA3R, right) for Leica manual-focus rangefinder (M) and manual-focus SLR (R) lenses were developed with the full c0-operation  of Leica Camera AG. Various third-party providers have previously marketed M adapters for the Micro 4/3 system. The rundown on compatibilities of specific lenses will eventually be found on this page, although nothing's been posted yet. No word yet on pricing or availability.

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko)

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New Pentax Flagship, the K-7

Fast, compact, and quiet—that's the gestalt of the K-7, which is a perfect match to Pentax's beautiful Limited prime lenses.

Finally, finally, finally, a Japanese camera manufacturer has broken with the size/quality lockstep that has been like a hard-and-fast, albeit unspoken rule among Japanese cameramakers throughout most of the digital era. I've long noticed it and bemoaned it many times...better cameras always have to be bigger, and smaller cameras are always aimed at lower levels of the market, typically the undemanding "entry level" that doesn't mind the inevitable cut corners. The new K-7 supersedes the K20D as Pentax's top-of-the-line offering, and it's higher spec'd in almost every way, but it's appreciably smaller than even the smallish K20D...and much smaller than something like the Nikon D700.

Well, all right.

K-7 vs. K20D size comparison. 756g vs. 815g as shown here, with batteries.

Features (some of 'em)
Okay, now, as you might expect, the new camera, which will list for $1,299, has video. But since that's not my thing, I won't say much about it—I'm sure you're capable of reading the spec sheet for yourself. But here's a rundown of the features you probably expect, followed by a few you don't:

• Has the by-now-standard 3-inch, 920k-dot viewing screen.
• Although not recommendably dunkable, the camera is rain- and spray-proof with the DA Star lenses. And it'll probably be okay if you drop it in the pool by mistake. It's also dust-proof—and cold-proof, too, to –10°C/14°F.
• "New 14.6 megapixel CMOS sensor rebuilt from the ground up to minimize noise." But they won't let me show you pictures yet (both the K-7's I have are pre-production). More on that when I get a production camera with the final firmware.
• Faster throughput and faster autofocusing
• Live View
• Shake Reduction (i.e., body-integral image stabilization)
• New 77-segment metering system
• HD movie capture; built-in microphone (although an external microphone is recommended)
• Optional ($230) battery grip

New stuff:

• With JPEGs, the camera will automatically correct for distortion and CA for every specific DA lens.
• Programmable embedded copyright function
• For tripod work, the camera uses the motors that effect the Shake Reduction to allow you to touch up your framing using the 4-way pad. Nice touch, and one I imagine will soon become standard across the industry for cameras that have body-integral image stabilization.

Big honkin' Nikon next to the cruiser-class Pentax. AF-Nikkor 28mm ƒ/2.8 on the left and DA 15mm ƒ/4 on the right. As shown, 1,306g vs. 937g on the ol' Pelouze scale.

Shutter noise
One of the big deals about the K-7 to me is the shutter noise. It's very quiet. The main point of having a smallish camera is so that it's easy to carry it around with you wherever you go; and if you're using it as a visual notepad, you might call it, then quite often it's useful not to call attention to yourself by clacking away piercingly and drawing stares from anyone nearby. The K-7's shutter is quiet for an SLR by any standard, both in the level and the type of noise it makes. The AF noise is actually louder than the shutter.

Handling
Although I'm sure Pentax has worked very hard on the many improvements embodied in the K-7, to some extent we take these incremental improvements for granted (fairly or not): it's faster, it meters better, it's got more features (I like the way it automatically corrects image orientation, for example). Etc. But really, the big deal about the K-7 is handling. It's a carry-around style of camera, and feels good in your hand and on your shoulder. In case you can't quite read the picture above, my son is holding the camera up in the air; the point is that the handgrip is beefy and deep enough that you can easily hold the camera with just your four fingers stuck in the grip while you change cards with the other hand. (The card compartment, despite being weatherproof, is the new style that opens with thumb pressure, too, like the D700 and other newer cameras. It's an improvement on the overly fussy latch on the K20D.)

A brace of K-7's...on the left with the DA Limited 15mm ƒ/4, on the right with the DA Star 55mm ƒ/1.4.

I'll have more to say about the K-7, I'm sure, in the weeks to come, especially if and when Pentax sends me a final production version with no restrictions on image publication.

So, more anon.

Oh, and one more trivial point: it's handsomer than the K20D, too.

Mike

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Voigtlaender Nokton 50mm f/1.1 in Leica M Mount

 
The word out of Japan today is that Voigtländer is introducing a premium, superfast 50mm ƒ/1.1 lens with ultra-high refractive index glass to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Cosina's Bessa series of rangefinder cameras (sorry I don't have a bigger picture of the lens). The 7-element lens in Leica M mount is 69.6mm long by 57.2mm diameter (2.74 x 2.25 in.), takes 58mm filters, and and weighs 428g (15 oz.). (The Google English translation of the Japanese page is a little rough...it says the lens weighs 15 oz. "food included." It should be "hood not included." Also note the charming translation of "bokeh" as "mild dementia"!) Significantly, the announced Japanese price of ¥125,000 is 1/5th the (Japanese) price of the Leica Noctilux ƒ/0.95, and 1/10th that of the "Last 100" Leica Noctilux ƒ/1. (¥125,000 is equivalent to $1,300, £840, and €954 at current exchange rates, although that does not mean those will be the lens's eventual export prices.) The focal length would be 65mm-e on the Leica M8.2. No word yet on whether the lens will be for export or Japan only.

Mike
(Thanks to Thien Onn Ming)

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ADDENDUM:

The great photo enthusiast Tom Abrahamsson. Photo by Kobayashi-san, President of Cosina and the mastermind behind the Voigtländer Bessa line of cameras, lenses and accessories, taken with the new lens.

A set of test pictures taken by Tom and Tuulikki Abrahamsson with the new lens. (Thanks to Simon Mitternacht for this.)

ADDENDUM II:

(Thanks to Amin and chanpei for this.)

Just to be clear, the camera apparently comes with the solid, screw-in hood pictured above; a clip on, ventilated hood is an optional accessory that costs ¥12,000 in Japan.

Featured Comment by Tom Abrahamsson: "I have heard a tentative price in the U.S. of $1149 with the stock hood. The LH7 hood is slightly larger, clamp type.

"I did have a chance to shoot half a dozen rolls with this lens in Japan in March. I am impressed! Not only is it good at ƒ/1.1—but it is also very sharp and has nice contrast at mid- apertures. It is slightly smaller than the Noctilux (58mm filter size) and combined with the performance wide open and at mid apertures, it will make a really attractive all-'round 50mm lens. I don't know what it is like fully stopped down—didn't shoot at ƒ/16—but I suspect it is just as good there."