The Online Photographer

How Long Is a Lifetime?

By Ctein

The camera-maker spats that periodically appear in this and other venues often concern themselves with build quality. Certain partisans praise (or damn) certain manufacturers for the superior (or execrable) quality and durability of the goods they produce. Many mourn for the days when one could buy a camera that would last a lifetime.

Pentax 67 with waist-level finder and 90mm lens. Photo by Janne Moren.

I could sympathize. I've used the Pentax 67 system for my entire career; nearly 40 years now. Even as recently as a month ago, I was mentioning to a friend how the new Leica S2 could well be a camera that would serve me the rest of my life (putting aside the minor fact that I will never be able to afford one).

Sometime in the last month, I realized I was entirely mistaken in this notion. I will never have a camera that lasts a lifetime. Well, not my lifetime; tautologically, a camera will always last its lifetime. Reviewing the cameras I've owned for the past four decades, the average lifetime of a camera for me is about 10 years. At that point, I have beaten it to death. I am not one of those people who takes good care of his equipment. I don't intentionally abuse it, it just seems to happen. Even review equipment I get rarely survives the month in my hands without some kind of minor scuff or scratch. After that, it's all downhill.

I do own cameras that are entirely functional after considerably more than 10 years. But they're not cameras I used very frequently. Any piece of equipment I use regularly has an appallingly modest operational life.

I know there are folks out there who manage to use their gear for years without it suffering the crippling fate that mine does. In fact, I've purchased quite a bit of equipment from such people. The last Pentax 67 body I bought, from Jonathan Sachs, arrived in such perfect, pristine condition that I inquired of him if he'd either had it cleaned before sending it to me or if possibly it was a spare body that he had never used. No, it was just as he'd left it, after several years of proper use.

I hate people like that! They possess some sort of magical aura that I lack, and I resent them their good fortune (he said childishly).

Well, whatever. I've realized I can stop worrying about "lifetime" quality or usability. At least, if lifetime is defined as more than 10 years. Because, given my track record, no matter how exquisitely a camera is built nor how long a manufacturer supports it, film or digital, it's not likely to be functional in my hands for any longer than that.

Ctein

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OT: WTTW

Sorry about this morning's post. I was still a little traumatized by something that happened last night. (You have no idea how many babbling-brook/stream-of-consciousness vamps I write and don't post...I'll get done with one, sit back, and think, nah, I can't inflict that on people.)

Last night I had hopped into the car, late for an appointment, and the garage door was opening when it made a loud "SPROING!" sound and essentially disintegrated. The rollers came off their tracks, the cables jammed, and the appearance of the panels became the reason why the word "wopplejawed" was invented (it's sort of like "akimbo" only worse).

Zander called the garage-door repairman, Stu, who was here until well after 9 p.m. despite the fact that it was his wedding anniversary(!).

I need to try to remember every now and then that garage doors are expensive, and that they need maintenance. We use our garage door several times a day, and the wear-and-tear adds up. Assuming you live in a house and have a garage door, here's what, according to Stu, you should do: every year or so, look it over and tighten up all the many bolts and screws you can find. Use silicone spray lubricant on the metal hinges between the panels and on the chain and chain-rail. About every three years, call a garage-door repair outfit (find 'em on Angie's List) and have them come out and give your door a checkup. That still doesn't guarantee you won't experience a catastrophic failure, but it betters your odds. And it will cost you about fifty dollars, as opposed to, oh, let's say $790.80, which is what you might be charged if the garage repairman has to come, let's say, in the evening, after business hours, all the way from Milwaukee, and leaves his missus stewing at home about him being late for their anniversary dinner.

And by the way, if you live in a condo or an apartment with indoor parking, don't assume you'll never be the victim of a malfunctioning garage door. I used to live in a condo with a huge commercial overhead door on the garage, and one day the spring broke and the door jammed shut; it was ten hours before it could be fixed, my car was trapped inside, and I missed a job and lost a client. Best not to assume that routine maintenance is being performed on a communal door. As for me, you'd think I'd learn.

(I gave Stu a Chet Baker CD to give to his wife. Nobody can stay mad listening to Chet.)

Anyway, I'm not the least bit thrown by a broken garage door; it was that $790.80 that had me traumatized.

Mike

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "True garage door follies:

"We live out in the boondocks at the end of a winding 250 yard driveway. We haul our trash to the road in the trunk of the car, seeing as how 250 yds. is a bit far to carry it on your shoulder. About 15 years ago I hit the door opener and backed out like usual, with the trunk so packed with trash it wasn't closed. Unfortunately I was about 10 milliseconds too fast; the raised trunk lid caught the lower edge of the rising garage door, with hideous consequences for both. It sounded like a beagle caught in the trash compactor. Total repair costs were about $1,500.

"About five years ago, my daughter hit the door opener button inside the garage and then hopped into the car. She unfortunately then absent-mindedly hit the remote button in the car to 'open' the door, which of course promptly began to close again. Which she failed to notice, so she backed into the door at high speed. Crushed two panels and the bumper of the car. That was also about $1,500, if I recall.

"Two years after that, my son did exactly the same thing. My wife and I were sitting in the kitchen over coffee; we looked at each other as we heard the garage door cycling down again (waaaaay too soon) and we both jumped up just in time to hear the 'crunch.' Sigh. Fortunately my son was slower than his sister; we were able to bend the kinked door panels back into semi-functional shape.

"The door screeches like a banshee every trip up and down since then. We're leaving it like that as a daily reminder to our youngest son, who still lives at home. We're hoping maybe the the unpleasant din will stick in his head if he's tempted to back into the door."

Anyone Can Learn to Knit

I contacted Jeff Schewe yesterday to pass along some questions from readers about his update of Bruce Fraser's book Image Sharpening.

First of all, he confirmed that there will be future updates to PhotoKit Sharpener, but declined to give me any details. I also asked him if he would speak to some of the differences between the first edition of Image Sharpening, which I have, and the second edition, which I haven't seen. And, specifically, whether people (such as, er, me) who already have the first edition should consider getting the second.

Here's what he said:

Well, the industry changed between the first edition and the second. The first thing is of course, we lost Bruce. But what really changed is the fact that Adobe incorporated a lot of what was in the book into Camera Raw and Lightroom. So, all of the capture sharpening in ACR & LR is based on Bruce's work. Additionally, Adobe incorporated the PhotoKit Sharpener output sharpening directly into Camera Raw and Lightroom.

So, the fundamental differences in the two editions is the fact that Photoshop is really only a portion of the creative sharpening and much more is written about Camera Raw and Lightroom–which wasn't released when the first edition was published. So, anybody with the old book will seriously want to update to the new edition.

Just my humble opinion. :~)

A couple of readers asked whether they really needed a whole book about sharpening. The answer is, no, of course you don't. Some people aren't interested in photographic craft at all. A few of those people are even photographers. I remember reading in Ralph Gibson's Darkroom—it might have been Darkroom 2, rather than the original—about a photographer who agitated his film by rolling the tank around on the floor with his foot while he smoked a cigarette. When the cigarette was done, it was time for the stop bath. Who needs anything so bourgeois as a timer? You could be the digital equivalent of that—snap the pic and however it looks is however it looks. Why sweat details?

And of course there's no reason to be a photographer at all. Other activities are healthy. I've just taken up cycling, for instance, and that's fun, except when it rains. You could be an audiophile. Being an audiophile means you don't have to do anything except spend money and listen to your stereo, and that's easy—no one knows if you're good at it or bad at it, at least not if you learn how to maintain a properly inscrutable silence and not gush on about things like $2,700 power cords and how freaking wonderful they "sound." (To answer Martin Doonan's question, you can make fun of $2,700 power cords for stereo components. That's safe. Now about that link, note that $2,700 is the price for a 1-meter power cord. The 2-meter version—under the pull-down menu—is $3,000. Does that mean the cable itself costs $300 per meter? That would mean the two plug doohickeys cost $1,200 each. That seems a little fishy to me. But maybe I'm just cheap, and don't appreciate how much a proper plug doohickey can cost.) Turning to alternative hobbies, there's always fabric arts. But that might take some skill and knowledge as well, I'm afraid. Is it true what they say, that anyone can learn to knit?

Stay away from woodworking. Knowledge and skill are requirements. Getting back to photography, it's probably a good thing, considering some of the photographers I know, that cameras don't involve high-powered motors combined with sharp cutting edges, although I heard once of a studio assistant who plugged his PC cable into the wrong outlet on the power pack and knocked himself unconscious with a giant electrical shock when he picked up the camera.

If you're interested in the craft of digital photography, I recommend Image Sharpening. But there's no requirement attached. You can do as you wish. You can make fun of it, like Brooks did. You can pass on it: I'll still like you, and you can still come around here every day, or three times a day, or once a week, whatever's convenient. You could do what I do with a lot of technical books, which would be to buy it and rummage around in it briefly and then ignore it completely for months on end. That is unfortunately what I've done with Matt Kloskowski's Layers, despite the fact that I really, really mean to read and study it, on account of I suck with layers, on account of I'm lazy and have poor mental habits when it comes to orderliness, as anyone reading this post has noticed by now. (Only a lazy, disorderly person would make all the changes to the base layer.) Owning a book you don't read and then continue to not read is useless, but hopeful. More hopeful than deciding not to buy it, and much more hopeful than making fun of it based on the title. Buying it and keeping it handy bespeaks intention, willingness in a general sense, and aspiration. The intention is just open-ended, is all. You intend to get to grips with the subject—just...later. Later, I'm gonna crack open my copy of Layers and read the whole first chapter. If I don't get to it, then I'll do it later. Or, if I have to, later. I own the book, so I'm good. But making fun of something before you know what it's all about, however, closes you to it. Brooks can't buy Image Sharpening now, can he? He's already ridiculed it in public, which is to declare it outside the pale.

And I will, I'm afraid, never know the sonic nirvana of a $2,700 power cord.

Come to think of it, Brooks is probably open-minded enough to have his mind changed about Image Sharpening. But I'm pretty hardened about the power cord thing, I'm afraid.

Image Sharpening is good. Maybe not as good as Bruce's first book, which was, at the time I read it, the best technical book about digital photography I ever read, and which has also been updated by Jeff. But good. You should buy it. But you don't have to.

Mike

P.S. Image Sharpening is good in the U.K., too.

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Featured Comment by John Taylor: "Oh by the bye I'm a woodworker and a photographer and I have to say that sharpness is far more important in woodworking than in photography when it comes to the quality of the final results."

Featured Comment by Brooks Jensen, Editor, LensWork Publishing: Okay, I apologize. I am contrite. I will buy the book. I will read it. I will learn. I suspect my photographs will, indeed, improve. And, I will do my best to curb my occasional snarkiness. I guess I just not-so-secretly long for simpler days when sharpness meant 'use a tripod.' But, as the cliché advises, we can't go back. So, on to the newer and better—and perhaps even sharper—future! Thanks for the nudge, Mike."

Featured [Partial] Comment by Mike in Montreal: "Just wanted to lay down some pro-sharpening advocacy because the anti side [in the comments] seems to be missing an important point. Digital sharpening is only initially about making pictures sharper or crisper. After posting hundreds of photos to my blog since last November, putting each and every one through Lightroom and then Photoshop, I've come to realize textural subtlety is the main benefit of a well-honed sharpening regime.

"Say you have concrete, skin, leaves, water and glass in the same photograph. Do you want them all to look as if they're made from the same material? Or would you like each element and edge to exist separately within the picture in a natural manner?

"Please don't think I'm speaking as an adept. Far, far from it. I'm more of a rookie-for-life kind of guy. I'm lucky if I can barely grasp scientific concepts. Any technical know-how I might have has been gleaned from sneak-a-peeks in bookstore photo sections or what I see here on the internet. But I've had a lot of practice in the last year and I can now say, at the very least, that sharpening, contrary to the common sneer, is what will prevent your photos from 'looking digital,' properly handled."

Pentax K-7 Review, Part III

Part I is here.
Part II is here.

By Gordon Lewis

White balance
In the previous installment of this review I mentioned the Pentax K-7’s autofocus- and exposure-related capabilities. Both are essential to getting a usable photograph. A third essential is white balance: the ability to produce color photographs that look "normal" to our eyes, even when the light source differs from standard daylight. Some cameras have trouble producing an acceptable white balance under tungsten or fluorescent light sources. Fortunately, the Pentax K-7 is not one of them. With the camera set to Automatic White Balance (AWB), I could get well-balanced photos even under quartz-halogen lighting. The Tungsten setting also produced an excellent balance for quartz-halogen, as well as standard household lighting. Even under mixed lighting the K-7 produced a balance that was acceptable, if not perfect.

According to Pentax, this is because the K-7 automatically "tweaks" the white balance, even when it's preset to a specific light source. The K-7 also allows you to perform a custom white balance, but better yet, it has a "digital preview" feature that lets you previsualize any white balance in real time. The four-way controller on the back of the camera lets you use an on-screen grid to shift the center point of the balance anywhere between a green/magenta (vertical) and blue/amber (horizontal axis) and to see the result before you take a picture.  Again, this may be overly sophisticated for some, but for photographers who thrive on control and getting it right the first time, it’s a godsend.

How low/high can you go?
Another feature I grew to appreciate was the K-7’s shake reduction (a.k.a. image stabilization) system. It’s built into the body, so every lens I used was image-stabilized—even a 20 year-old 50mm ƒ/1.7 Pentax-M I had sitting around the house. Because of SR I felt comfortable shooting at shutter speeds that were at least two stops slower than I would use with my non-IS cameras. Another result was that I rarely felt the need to shoot at high ISOs as a way to get shutter speeds fast enough to minimize camera movement in low light.

Subject movement is, of course, a different matter, so I tried shooting at ISO 1600 just to see how good an image I could get. I’ve presented a couple of examples and will let you draw your own conclusions. Keep in mind that the  K-7 allows you to control the amount of noise reduction (from none to high) and the ISO at which NR kicks in. The default is medium NR at ISOs above 800, which is how I had my camera set.

The one aspect of noise reduction you can’t control is shadow NR at shutter speeds longer than 30 seconds. The K-7 will automatically create a dark frame exposure equal to the length of the original exposure. This means that if you keep the shutter open for two minutes, which is not unusual for people who photograph stars, lightning, fireworks and other low-light phenomena, you’ll have to wait four minutes before you can take another picture.

In my opinion the noise at ISO 1600 is certainly noticeable but not significantly worse than other DSLRs in this price range. It also has a grain-like character that makes it look a bit more organic than speckled chroma noise. That said, I would use ISO 3200, the highest available ISO setting on the K-7, only if the choice was either that or no image at all.

ISO 1600, full frame and crop

Finally, keep in mind that a 100% view of a full-resolution, 4672 x 3104 pixel image from the K-7 equates to an 11 x 14 print at 300 dpi. Regardless of how these ISO 1600 images may look on screen, they produce high-quality prints. Shift down to ISO 800 and below and the print quality is nothing short of excellent. Let me put it another way: If you like what you see in these small JPEGs sized for your monitor, you’ll love what you see in a good print.

A look at lenses
A lot of the K-7’s excellent image quality has to do with its 14.6MP sensor, SR, autofocus, exposure and white balance systems, but I credit just as much to the lenses I was using. As Mike Johnston and Carl Weese have explored at some length elsewhere, the Pentax 35mm ƒ/2.8 DA Macro is not only one of Pentax’s best lenses, it's one of the best lenses available, period. There was practically no situation where I could get it to exhibit a serious flaw, even at maximum aperture.

The 55–300mm ƒ/4–5.8 ED was another pleasant surprise. If you’re looking for a relatively compact, lightweight, moderately priced tele-zoom that's great for outdoor sports and nature photography, you need look no further. Just be aware that major focus and focal length changes result in a lot of whirring as the camera's focusing motor races to keep up.

The 21mm ƒ/3.2 DA Limited was also a good performer—just not quite as good in the corners as I hoped. I had to stop down to ƒ/5.6 or ƒ/8 before the corners approached the excellent resolution of the center. On the other hand, there aren’t many lenses of similar focal length and aperture that are significantly better. At least the 21mm ƒ/3.2 has amazingly compact size (63 x 25mm) and light weight (155g with hood) going for it.

Pentax arcana
A common thread throughout this review is that the Pentax K-7 comes with an amazing choice of features and options. There are so many different ways to set it up, it's unlikely that any two users would do it the same way—yet all of them could feel as if their set-up was "just right."

There is a downside to the K-7’s wealth of capabilities, however: many of them are poorly documented in the owner’s manual. For example, although the manual does explain that you have to set a custom function a certain way if you want to use lenses that have an aperture ring, this information is under the general heading of "Functions Available with Various Lens Combinations," which you will find only in the Appendix, not the index. If you look in the index for this information under something more obvious, such as "Use With Pre-DA/FA Lenses" or "Lens Mount Compatibility," you won’t find it.

The same is true of the Green Button, a feature unique to Pentax. The index cites only two pages that reference it and both references are perfunctory. In fact, the Green Button has multiple uses that change depending on what exposure mode you're in. These uses are explained throughout the manual, but again, you'd have to read every exposure mode-related page to find them; they’re not referenced in the index.

Users who have experience with previous Pentax DSLRs will likely be familiar with such arcane information and will be up to speed with the K-7 no time. Users who are new to Pentax will find the learning curve steep for the first week or two. Some may tire and give up, but for those who persevere, the rewards are ample.

So, should you buy one?
If you’re a Pentax owner looking for an upgrade or for a high-quality entrée into digital photography, the K-7 is a no-brainer. It’s simply the best Pentax has to offer, and a definite improvement over prior models. Not only that, it’s a strong competitor to similarly priced offerings from Canon, Nikon, Sony and Olympus. The K-7 is a purchase you’re not likely to regret.

If you’re already invested in a different camera system it’s a different story. The K-7 has sufficient charms some might consider buying one with a prime lens or two as their “small but rugged” travel kit.

Those whose needs are more extensive would have to decide whether Pentax has the lenses, flash units, and other accessories they need to get the job done. A plus is that the Pentax lens system has a selection of top-quality, compact prime lenses and zooms you won’t find anywhere else. A minus is that their selection of autofocus lenses is literally more “limited” than Canon and Nikon and, depending on the lens, the prices are often significantly higher. There are also fewer third-party lenses available in Pentax mount. However, if you’re interested in older, manual-focus lenses in all variations of the Pentax mount, your choices expand in inverse proportion to the price you pay for them.

Personally, the K-7 is the first Pentax DSLR that has made me sit up and take notice of what Pentax has to offer in digital. It’s not for everyone (what camera is?), but for those who "get it," it's a welcome alternative both to small cameras that are under-built and under-featured and large cameras that are overly heavy and over-priced.

Gordon

Gordon Lewis's pictures at Zenfolio
The Shutterfinger blog

Buy the Pentax K-7 at Amazon (currently available only as a kit from Amazon U.K.)
Buy the Pentax K-7 at B&H Photo

(Ed. Note: Be sure to compare prices between B&H Photo and Amazon [or Amazon U.K.] before buying lenses! In some cases the prices are nearly the same, but in some cases B&H has a much cheaper price, for example in the case of the 21mm Limited. However, Amazon's price is cheaper for the camera as of this writing. B&H is closed from Oct. 2 to Oct. 11th.)

Pentax's "DA star" (DA*) weather-sealed lenses (for the weather-sealed K-7):
DA Star 16–50mm ƒ/2.8 ED AL (IF) SDM
DA Star 200mm ƒ/2.8 ED (IF) SDM
DA Star 300mm ƒ/4 ED(IF) SDM
DA Star 50–135mm ƒ2.8 ED (IF) SDM
DA Star 55mm ƒ/1.4 SDM
DA Star 60–250mm ƒ/4 ED (IF) SDM

Pentax DA Limited lenses:
DA 15mm ƒ/4 ED AL Limited
DA 21mm ƒ/3.2 AL Limited
DA 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro Limited
DA 40mm ƒ/2.8 Limited
DA 70mm ƒ/2.4 Limited

(Ed. Note: Pentax has three other lens series: the DA lenses for digital cameras, and the D FA and FA series for film cameras, the latter two also usable on digital bodies. The D FA series now consists of only two macro lenses, a 50mm and 100mm. The FA series includes several Limited lenses. Finally, note that "Limited" is just a marketing term, and does not mean that the lenses are limited in production or availability.)

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B&H Closing for Succos

B&H Photo-Video in New York City will be closing on Friday for the religious holiday of Succos, the "sweetest festival." They will not be accepting orders from Friday, October 2nd through Sunday, October 11th. If you need anything, best get your order in by Thursday.

Mike

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New Edition of 'Image Sharpening' is Out

The Second Edition of Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom has just been published (U.K. link). Originally written by the late Bruce Fraser, the book has been updated by Jeff Schewe. It remains of the few "must have" technical books for digital photographers...all digital photographers, whether you work with an iPhone or a medium-format digital back. You might not think you need a whole book on sharpening, but take my word for it—you do. If you don't have this yet, do not hesitate, "buy it now." Winter's coming*, and you'll need something to read.

Mike

*In the Northern Hemisphere. If you live Down Under, summer's coming, then winter's coming.

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Featured Comment by Moose: "I would go further and say this book is not just for 'all digital photographers, whether you work with an iPhone or a medium-format digital back,' but for all those who work with any images that enter a digital form, including those that are scanned from film or prints. I suppose nothing is indispensable, but this book is as close as possible. I found the first edition revelatory, both in explaining why some things I had discovered worked and introducing me to other techniques."

Zeiss ZE 21mm for Canon

Zeiss has introduced its fourth premium manual-focus lens in the ZE series, the Zeiss Distagon T* 21mm ƒ/2.8 ZE, fully compatible with Canon EF mount. (The 18mm ƒ/3.5 was introduced two weeks ago. The other two are the 50mm and 85mm ƒ/1.4's.) The new lens covers 24x36mm "full frame." The street price has not yet been determined, but the Nikon and Pentax versions each sell for $1,490.

Zeiss USA's Rich Schleuning has posted a flickr page of sample pictures taken with the new lens.

Mike

UPDATE: In response to a reader's question, I asked Rich about upcoming ZE Zeiss lenses for Canon EF mount. He tells me that although the four listed above are the only ones officially announced so far, "additional lenses will be announced over the next two months, including the 2/28, 2/35 and the 2/50 and 2/100 macros." —Mike

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Remember Willi Stein!

In the comments to Ken's nifty post below about the Olympus Pen, a reader named Antony Sheperd asked, parenthetically, "how many camera designers can people name? I can think of Barnack and Maitani."

Barnack...that got me to thinking. Barnack is well known, and always gets the credit for the Leica. Rightly so, of course. But no one ever mentions Willi Stein.

Barnack's line of Leicas was long-lasting and had many offshoots, ending with the magnificent IIIg (designed by Adam Wagner) which stayed in production until 1960 and has never been anything but prized.

So who was Willi Stein? He was the designer of the M3. To be more precise, Stein designed the camera; he and Ludwig Leitz designed the rangefinder; Heinrich Schneider and Willi Keiner engineered the finder optics; and Hugo Wehrenfennig was responsible for the M bayonet. (This information comes from Erwin Puts.)

Photo by Rama

The M3 was the noble progenitor of most of the Leica M rangefinders that came after it, with the exception of the M5 and the CL, or "compact Leica," which spun off the mysterious probably-Japanese, maybe-a-little-bit-German CLE (compact Leica electronic). I don't know who was responsible for the M5 (I'm sure I'm about to find out), but Stein designed the CL too. Willi Stein's M3 design is still very much in evidence in the M8 and the new M9. They are very different cameras, of course, but they pay homage every which way to Herr Stein's design. His line of Leicas has lasted longer even than Barnack's. They've been around for more than 55 years now.

And apart from that, the M3 has only the classic folding wooden-and-brass field view camera to compete with it for the title of the prettiest camera ever made. And quite possibly the title of most significant, too.

Let's not forget Herr Barnack. But when the subject of camera designers comes up, perhaps we should spare a thought for the oft-overlooked Willi Stein once in a while, too.

Mike
(Thanks to Erwin Puts)

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Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "And, of course, Masahiko Fuketa, designer of the Nikon F."

Featured Comment by Chris Lucianu: "What about the most obvious name: Victor Hasselblad? By the way, this page shows Victor Hasselblad and Reinhold Heidecke (of Franke & Heidecke, makers of the legendary Rollei) taking pictures of each other."

Reinhold Heidecke and Victor Hasselblad taking pictures of each other, from hasselbladhistorical.eu

Featured Comment by Eamon Hickey: "Lots of really significant camera and lens designers aren't well known to the public because, beginning in the 1950s especially, so many of them were Japanese. And aside from Olympus's promotion of Maitani, the Japanese optics and camera companies generally follow traditional Japanese cultural norms and do not single individuals out for special recognition.

"One such person who, if he were German or American, would be known worldwide is Nikon's Zenji Wakimoto, who has to rank as one of history's great lens designers. (A Google search will turn up a little bit of info about him.) He was the lead designer on many of Nikon's most famous camera lenses from the 1950s and 1960s, but he also designed the Ultra Micro-Nikkors of the 1960s and '70s, which were industrial process lenses that were the highest resolution lenses ever made at that time.

"The Ultra Micro Nikkors evolved into today's lenses for steppers, which are without question the highest precision optics ever put into regular production. A modern top-end stepper lens can resolve a line about 1/1000th the width of a human hair; they can weigh a ton or more and can be 5 ft. long by 2 ft. in diameter, and cost several million dollars apiece."

Featured Comment by David Goldenberg: "A remarkable camera designer who hasn't been mentioned here so far is Emanuel Goldberg (no relation, so far as I know). Goldberg was the head of Zeiss Ikon in the early 1930s, before escaping from the Nazis and making his way to what was then Palestine. At Zeiss Ikon, he designed the original Contax, elements of which were copied in the Nikon rangefinder cameras of the 1950s, and eventually wound up in the Nikon F (such as the removable back).

"But, the Contax was only a very small part of his career.  He worked on sensitometry and aspects of cinematography, including sound tracks.

"One of the most interesting things that he did was to devise, in the 1931, a scheme for indexing microfilm data with marks on the film edges that could be read by a photosensor.  This may have been the earliest implementation of electronic indexing. In 1945, the American scientist Vanevar Bush published a very influential article, entitled 'How we may think,' that described a very similar, but hypothetical, data retrieval machine, which many people consider the conceptual ancestor of hypertext. But, Goldberg's much earlier version has never received much attention.

"Information about Goldberg can be found at a web page maintained by Michael Buckland, who has studied his work and written a book about it."

Blog Notes: The Umbrella Lady

Gordon's "Umbrella Lady" picture taken with the K-7

We're planning to post the third and final installment of the Pentax K-7 review by Gordon Lewis either tonight or tomorrow.

In a related matter, I want to alert you to a plot that's a-planning. There was a great deal of positive response to the picture of Gordon's that we've informally dubbed "The Umbrella Lady," from Part I of the review. So much so that Gordon has agreed to do a TOP print offer. We're trying to announce it within the next week or two—basically as soon as we can work out all the details and he can get the master prints made at his preferred custom lab.

As usual, we'll take orders only during a short window of time—five days this time—and then the prints will all be made in one run to fulfill however the orders. This enables us to sell prints for radically lower prices than would be possible in a traditional gallery setting, where the prints are sold one at a time and the prices have to be many times higher—it'll be a lot closer to $80 than $800. However, it means you have to be on the lookout, because once the window closes, that's it.

At least one of Gordon's prints—the umbrella lady—will serve double duty as a Pentax K-7 sample. With my didactic side showing, I might add that having a print of a picture that's been featured on the website is a good way of "calibrating" your sense of the difference between looking at a real print vs. a small online JPEG. I'm just sayin'.

More anon; stay tuned.

Mike

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The Original Olympus Pen Half-Frame Camera

By Ken Tanaka

Two thousand and nine thus far has seen some interesting and exciting new developments in camera design. Leica’s S2 perhaps shines brightest for the boldness of its new sensor format. But for those of us outside the investment banking and hedge-fund-management worlds, Olympus's E-P1 digital Pen represents a far more accessible and encouraging development. A small interchangeable-lens camera with good performance at a reasonable price: just what a big slice of the enthusiast market wants.

As it turns out, this is such an old tune that Frank Sinatra could have recorded it. So what's the root of the history that Olympus commemorates with the E-P1?

I knew nothing of the heritage of the Olympus Pen before the E-P1’s introduction. But as I nosed into the Pen’s history I found it to be a delightfully human story of ingenuity and perseverance in a culture that simultaneously celebrated and discouraged both.

The young Maitani
The year was 1956. Japan was well in its stride toward its post-war industrial swagger. The camera industry was doing well but looking to do much better as peacetime and brightening economies encouraged travel. The big Japanese optical companies, now deeply invested in camera manufacturing, were busy trying to knock off the industry’s prestige brand, Leica. Eiichi Sakurai, the head of Olympus’s camera division, became intrigued by a very clever rangefinder patent that a young student had filed. Breaking form from Japanese corporate protocol, Sakurai personally invited the student, Yoshihisa Maitani, to join Olympus in 1956 when he finished his university studies.

Maitani had loved cameras and photography since he was a boy. His family owned a Leica which he would often use on the sneak. He built his first camera when he was 10 and was fascinated by camera design.

But he never dreamed of trying to build a career from this interest. He was studying automotive engineering and, in fact, had already been offered a post-graduate position with an auto manufacturer when Sakurai approached him. But he eagerly joined Olympus where he was fast-tracked into camera design.

Maitani’s first big project was to design a small, precise, but easy-to-use consumer camera. The target price point was established as a meager 6,000 yen, roughly a third the price of Olympus’ least expensive cameras of that day. (Leicas were selling in the 200,000-yen range.) This low target price, plus Maitani’s decision to use a half-frame format to make the camera even more economically attractive to consumers, presented him with some formidable technical hurdles. But it was the organizational hurdles that proved to be far higher*. Basically Maitani had a very hard time getting anyone in Olympus to take the project seriously. A cheap half-frame camera was considered an unworthy junk project. The Olympus factory management even refused to build the cameras, forcing Maitani to outsource the Pen’s initial manufacturing.

But the smart and ambitious Maitani persevered. In October of 1959 the first Olympus Pen hit the market and became an instant bestseller in Japan. It also spawned a bit of a half-frame camera craze for the next decade and beyond.

Prototype of the original Pen, internally named the "Olympus 18" during development

The first Pen models were rather like squarish point-and-shoots, bearing little resemblance to the Leica-like form most commonly associated with the Pens (and which the E-P1’s design echoes). The design emphasis for these early Pens was quality, simplicity of use, and compactness. During the next nine years Olympus would introduce eleven models of these compact, fixed-lens Pen cameras to an eager worldwide market.

The Pens were a big hit with casual snappers but not as much with the burgeoning amateur enthusiast market. So in 1963 Olympus once again enlisted Maitani’s design talents, this time to create a Pen aimed at both serious amateurs as well as casual snappers; a Leica for the average Joe. This meant not only opening the Pen to interchangeable lenses but also maintaining a 35mm rangefinder-size body while using a reflex design. It also meant keeping the camera’s operation simple. These were formidable technical challenges for Maitani; fortunately, the record-breaking sales success of his first Pen designs had earned the young engineer significant stature within Olympus. He was even permitted to hire an assistant for this project! The result was the Pen F, the first and only single-lens reflex half-frame camera.**

The Pen FT with 38mm ƒ/1.8 Zuiko lens

Fast-forwarding to the 1966 Pen FT, the second and final F model**, we can see the culmination of Maitani’s design solutions. One of the main challenges in maintaining a small body was creating a through-the-lens viewfinder without the bulk of large Porro prisms to right the lens image. The solution was to create an elaborate system of tiny prisms and mirrors that compactly delivers a true image to the eyepiece. The compromise of the design was a somewhat dimmer viewfinder. This was not the big issue it would be today, since the camera could not even handle emulsion ASAs (ISOs) higher than 400. Few Pen owners were shooting in the dark.

Looking through the Pen F’s viewfinder can initially be a bit jolting. Since the camera uses a half-frame format it splits the normal 35mm frame horizontally in half. So rather than  36mm x 24mm you get an 18mm x 24mm frame oriented vertically. That is, holding the camera in a normal landscape orientation produces a portrait-oriented frame. (This actually turned out to be easy for me to get used to.)

Of course the Pen F predated the introduction of electronic exposure control by many years.  But it did feature a rather clever through-the-lens (TTL) metering system. Like most metered cameras of the day, the Pen F was basically what we would now call a "shutter-priority" exposure system. You first set a ballpark shutter speed between "Bulb," which keeps the shutter open for as long as you hold the shutter button down, and 1/500th of a second. As you look through the viewfinder you see a floating photometer needle point to a number on the left. You then turn the lens’s aperture ring to index at that number to produce a "correct" or metered exposure! What could be simpler?

The Pen F's unique vertical mirror

Strip of 35mm film shot with the Pen FT

Exposures
Olympus knew that getting good exposures was the primary challenge of using cameras of the day. They also knew that the average camera owner had no interest in dealing with those f-numbers. They demanded (and still demand) maximum simplicity. 

But the shutterbugs love "those f-numbers."

Maitani’s solution to draw both types of customers was remarkably simple and effective. Pen F lenses featured an aperture ring that had two sets of indexes, one corresponding to the viewfinder’s simple 0-1-2-3 etc. meter indications, the other showing the actual f-stops (1.8, 2, 2.8, etc.). These indexes were engraved 180 degrees opposite each other on a floating outer ring which could be read from either the top or bottom of the lens barrel. If you were a "sophisticated" owner you could even rotate this index ring to show f-stops on top. (You would have to count stops to correspond to the meter numbers but, hey.) Problem solved!

Aperture ring indexes in the standard position

Aperture ring indexes in the advanced user position

Olympus took a new marketing tack to sell the Pen F. They very much wanted a piece of that Leica trade, particularly from the U.S.. The camera had a similar size and feel to a Leica but for a price of $140–$170 it was a much cheaper thrill. They enlisted photojournalist Eugene Smith to endorse the Pen F, giving it a certain "Marlboro Man" panache. (Can you imagine such an ad these days?!) Instead of calling the Pen F a "half-frame" camera, which sounded wimpy and discounted, Olympus called it a "single-frame" camera. Isn’t advertising fascinating?

It worked.  Although they were nearly forgotten today, Olympus’ Pen cameras became one of the most successful lines of cameras in history, selling over 17 million units in just over ten years.

Maitani after the Pen
Following his work on the Pen Yoshihisa Maitani designed many other Olympus cameras such as the iconic OM-1, the OM-4, and the XA. Maitani actually became a celebrity for Olympus after being featured in a famous series of ads, something quite rare within the whack-a-mole conformity of 20th century Japanese business. (He even has a fan site!) Maitani retired as a managing director of Olympus in 1996 following an extremely successful 40-year career.

Sadly, Maitani passed away this past July at the age of 76. I hope he was able to see the digital incarnation of his Pen. Warts and all, I think it would have made him smile.

Ken

P.S. I did not receive any form of compensation or cooperation from Olympus for writing this article. I researched it myself and I own all of the equipment used and/or illustrated.

Related References:
The World of the Pen
YouTube Pen Channel

*Yoshihisa Maitani’s account of the Pen’s development is a fascinating story of problem-solving and of mid-20th century Japanese industrial culture. You can read his first-hand account in this English translation of a speech he delivered in 2005.

**See Hugh Crawford's and Dwig's comments in the Comments section.

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Featured Comment by Skip Williams: "If anyone is looking for more detailed information on the history of the system, I have 14 scanned vintage advertising and editorial pieces on my site. There are a few more that I have, but have not had a chance to scan."

Out and About with a 'Bent and a Box

Herman Krieger on his 'bent

TOP reader Herman Krieger recently took a tour on his Bike Friday recumbent of the Ruth Bascom Riverbank Trail System along the Willamette River near Eugene, Oregon. Of course, being a photographer, Herman took his latest camera along: a modified Ansco box camera with what he thinks might possibly be the world's thinnest prime lens! Here it is:

In order to make use of TMax 400 film, he didn't want to be stuck with the camera's native 1/25th shutter speed and aperture of about ƒ/16, so he used black electrical tape to decrease the size of the circular shutter slit and and reduced the size of the aperture behind the shutter with a taped-on washer. The changes hot-rodded the camera's performance to about 1/125th at ƒ/22.

How'd the pictures "come out"? Well, see for yourself, although if you're a fan of Herman's work the captions might seem shocking (there isn't a pun anywhere). There are three sets of photographs. In all three, the river, skies, clouds, trees, and what looks to be splendid weather figure prominently—as do bicycles, which appear in a preponderance of the pictures.

Herman Krieger, Mile Post Two, East Bank Path

The box camera negatives were scanned and sepia-toned in Photoshop. "Other than that," Herman says, "there was minimal sharpening or manipulation of the images."

As for me, I'm taking Saturday off again, and I hope to emulate Herman on a section of the Fox River Trail if the weather's nice. Hope you have a great weekend, wherever in the world you are. See you on Sunday.

Mike
(Thanks to Herman)

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Distortion is a Constant: Taryn Simon at TED

Taryn Simon speaking, Oxford, England

This month, from what must be the best lecture series on the planet—the TED Talks—comes "Taryn Simon photographs secret sites." You might already know that Taryn's book An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar is one of the better-selling and certainly more significant books of photography of the past two years (U.K. link), at least among fine-art (as opposed to pop and how-to) titles.

I have to say I sometimes have a hard time recommending long videos—this one runs seventeen and a half minutes—because I know you're busy. I often don't have the patience myself to sit through longer videos unless I have some assurance that they're worthwhile. (Video is just not my preferred way of ingesting information generally.) However, this one's worth the time and then some, I think. I started watching it thinking I'd give it two or three minutes. By the time it was over it seemed short...even too short.

In the talk, she shows and speaks about images from her American Index, as well as some from her book The Innocents—here's the U.K. link—which is an extended investigation into how photographs can be used in subliminally suggestive ways to influence and in some cases replace memory, even in matters that are literally "life or death."

Especially if you're unlikely to ever see the books, watch the talk—you'll get the gist of what Taryn Simon's about, and some of the ways in which she uses photography in the service of her ideas, and why "ninety percent of her photographic process is not photographic." Fascinating stuff. Recommended, all seventeen and a half minutes' worth.

Mike
(Thanks to Ed Buziak)

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Featured Comment by Craig Arnold: "I saw her exhibition at the Photographer's Gallery in London a while ago. The prints are quite large and although not particularly aesthetically pleasing they certainly work very well in an exhibition. The impact is immediate and strong. The images themselves are very unsettling to see, and once one starts reading the text it all becomes extremely fascinating and suddenly an hour has passed and the gallery is closing. Not all photography is 'art' and not all art is meant to be beautiful. I certainly wouldn't buy a print to hang on my wall, but I would definitely go to an exhibition again, and may get the book."

Tips for Finding '1000 True Fans'

By Ctein

It's a few days past my birthday (74th (octal) if anyone cares), the autumnal equinox is just went by, and it's been almost 6 months since I started the "1000 true fans" experiment. Getting it up and running proved educational.

Now, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist again (a few did, last time), well, as I've said before, every column of mine isn't for everybody. Skip this and read the next article. Some of our readers are interested in this subject (we've heard from them), and other artists might want to try it for themselves—if not now, someday. I'm writing about it periodically as I develop useful information about doing it.

Now then. While I'm nowhere near supporting myself off of the donations of patrons, they are providing about a third of what I need to live on each month. That's amazingly good for this early in the project (though I still haven't figured out how to expand those numbers). It could have gone better had I understood three things ahead of time:

1. This is an impulse purchase.

People don't make modest donations or purchases after deep and careful deliberation. This is why charities make such a concerted effort to sign you up on the spot and not give you a form or phone number to respond to later. If they don't get you now, there's a good chance they won't ever.

Asking people before the launch if they'd be interested proved a mistake. Something like 120 people said they'd sign up. Only 60% signed up two weeks later. I should've dived right in and if I didn't get enough subscribers just refunded the other peoples' money.

2. People don't like billing.

Just over one third of the people who signed up wanted to pay the entire sum up front. Mind you, the low monthly fee was the "gateway drug." Many of the people who preferred to pay $108 in a lump sum instead of being billed under $9.50 a month would not have signed up if I had asked directly for $108. That low, low, rate created the impulse.

This has huge ramifications for running a project like this. The reason I went the donation/pick-your-prints-at-the-end route because I didn't think I'd have the net positive cash flow to do it any other way. Had I known better, I could have set it up as upfront-purchase/pay-in-installments and sent people art immediately. That would've avoided having to tiptoe through the PayPal minefield, and pushing some people's buttons about "donating" money.

When renewals come up next year, I'm going to change the system. People will get a print with their first payment. That'll be a different experiment; I know there are a few people who like the idea of gambling on what I might produce in the way of new art. We'll see if they outnumber the ones who are reticent to pay for an unknown pig in a future poke.

3. People will pay you more money.

A standard charitable approach is to have tiers of membership. The top tier is a decoy. When you get the letter that asks for $100, $200, $500, $1,000 or $10,000, the solicitor doesn't really expect anyone is going to give $10,000 that way. $10,000, though, sets a subconscious price level in the reader's head. A certain percentage of contributors will donate $500 or $1000, because it looks like a bargain in comparison. Without that $10,000 decoy hardly anyone would contribute $1,000; the "bargain" level would drop another notch.

I set up $9.50, $16, and $25 a month tiers. There are worthwhile benefits for signing up at the higher levels, but I created the highest tier mostly to subconsciously encourage people to sign up at the $16 level. Indeed, 20% of the sign-ups were at the $16 level, but 10% of them were at the $25 a month level!

Maybe I should create a $100 a month level? Hmmm....

Okay, that's it for this progress report. At the end of the calendar year, I'll tell you what I've learned about "taking care of 1000 true fans" and as the first year wraps up next spring, I'll talk to you about "retaining 1000 true fans."

Ctein

Ed. Note: Ctein (which by the way is pronounced "kuh-TINE," as I don't think I've mentioned recently) didn't include this, but I will: If you'd like to participate in collect-a-Ctein, here's how. I did, personally.  —Mike

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Turkish Photojournalist is 2009 'Genius'

Lynsey Addario, a Turkish-American photojournalist based in Istanbul, has won a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Grant for 2009, the Foundation announced yesterday.

The grant, which is made secretly, is popularly known as the "Genius Award." There is no public nomination process and no one knows they're being considered until they win. Winners receive $500,000 over five years. There are no strings attached, but the award is given with the understanding that it will help foster independence and freedom from financial worry for work yet to be done.

East Bhutan. Zangmo, about 85, waits for hand-outs of extra potatoes from two young men preparing their potato harvest for sale in the village of Zhangkhar, on the road to Dramatse, in eastern Bhutan, August 8, 2007. Though there are no traditional homes for the elderly in Bhutan, most Bhutanese naturally help their neighbors and elders in need as an intrinsic part of Bhuddist culture. Roughly 80% of Bhutanese rely on subsistence farming for survival. Photo by Lynsey Addario.

Addario, 35, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1995, was cited for "Creating a visual record of major conflicts and humanitarian crisis of the 21st century." She photographs regularly for The New York Times and National Geographic. She is one of 24 Genius Award recipients in 2009 and is the only photographer to win this year. You can see her work at lynseyaddario.com.

Congratulations to Lynsey!

Mike

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UPDATE: I heard from Lynsey Addario on Thursday morning, who writes, "Michael, Thank you so much for posting the article...I hope this fellowship brings more attention to photojournalists as a whole! Warm regards, Lynsey." 

Featured Comment by CK Dexter Haven: "I was prepared to look at the link and have the response: 'this person deserves the title "genius" and all that money?' Well, I don't know what a genius is any more, but I'm glad Lynsey won this award. I'm going to have to visit the site in pieces, because it's too much to take in all at once. There's a lot of courage there, both in the photographer and the subjects. Stunning work, and it's given me needed perspective. I hope, now, to spend a lot less time dealing with the meaningless minutiae I too often discuss in web photo forums."

Random Excellence: Richard Renaldi

Richard Renaldi, Celestino (Portrait of Celestino chopping away, at the
Wailea Agricultural Group in Honomu, Hawaii)

Richard Renaldi's Photostream
Richard Renaldi's website
Richard Renaldi's second book, Fall River Boys, is available exclusively from Charles Lane press, $85 unsigned, $90 signed, in a limited edition of 1200 copies.

Mike
(Thanks to ?)

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Featured [partial] Comment by richardplondon: "Funny thing about people photographed with large format, they often have a look of someone 'participating' in something. Ready steady go, this is your moment, show us your stuff...."

Mike replies: Funny, I was looking at this more from a coloristic standpoint, and at the way the flyaway hat brim plays off the plant fronds in the near bokeh....

Pentax K-7 Review, Part II

Part I is here.
Part III is here.

By Gordon Lewis

Getting Acquainted
One of the major challenges of reviewing any DSLR these days is simply getting familiar with what it can do. Consider the fact that the Pentax K-7’s operating manual measures 14 x 19.5 x 1.5 cm (approximately 5" x 7" x 1/2") and has 328 pages, all in English. I’ve read novels with fewer pages than this. To think that anyone could read every page and absorb every iota of information, along with every possible permutation and then test every feature is, shall we say, unrealistic.

So let me state outright that I’m still getting familiar with the K-7. As evidenced by its manual, there’s plenty to get familiar with. The following is a list of discoveries I’ve had in the course of shooting with the K-7, with an emphasis on which I think are most pertinent to the K-7's suitability as a tool for advanced photographers.

Empire State Building. This was shot from the corner of 43th Street and Avenue of the Americas. I used the Pentax 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro with the camera set to ISO 800, 1/10 second at ƒ/2.8, automatic white balance. (Is digital noise clearly visible in the dark tones when this image viewed at 100 percent? Yes. Do I care when the tones are as nicely balanced as this? No.)

Focus
A camera with limited ability to focus quickly and accurately is no fun at all. I’m happy to say that the K-7's autofocus is impressively quick and accurate even in low light. Of course, like any automated system it has its limitations. As I got to know where it excelled and where it struggled, I learned when I could shoot with complete confidence and when I had to lend a helping hand. Fortunately, the latter moments were infrequent and relatively easy to compensate for.

Let’s start with the basics: The K-7 has 11 autofocus points. Nine have cross-sensors and are arranged in a 3x3 rectangle in the center of the viewfinder. The other two are "wide-area" sensors and are to the left and right of the center rectangle. Together they cover enough area that you can focus most off-center subjects without having to shift the frame. This doesn’t mean the K-7 always knows exactly what it is you’re trying to focus on. Like any automated system it will occasionally focus on the foreground when you want to focus on the background and vice-versa. In these situations the answer is to select a single focus point and place it over your subject.

It's easy to see what's going on. The viewfinder magnification is a comfortable .92X. The K-7 is also one of the few cameras in this price range that has a 100% viewfinder, so what you see is exactly what you get. When the K-7 is in its default mode the active AF point will flash in red for a half-second or so to indicate where the camera is focusing. Better yet, the focusing screen is not only bright but "snappy." In good light it’s possible to see for yourself whether the image is in focus or not. This doesn't mean the K-7’s focusing screen is ideal for manual focus, but at least it's usable, which is rare with most DSLRs.

When I combined manual focus with the K-7’s electronic focusing aids I could get consistently sharp results. This is a boon for photographers who want to use older, manual-focus Pentax lenses. (And speaking of manual focus, the focusing rings on the two prime AF lenses I was using were uncommonly smooth and well-damped. Even the focusing ring on the zoom was decent.) Manual focus is by no means as fast as the K-7's AF system and I certainly wouldn't want to use it with fast-moving subjects. That said, it's no slower or less accurate than using a split-image rangefinder or microprism and it allows you to use manual focus lenses that would otherwise be gathering dust on a shelf.

When it came to low-light, I had little trouble achieving accurate focus even with the 55–300mm ƒ/4–5.8 zoom I was using. In general, I found that the K-7 was a second or so slower than the EOS 30D I normally use but more consistently accurate. This was only in low light, however. In medium-to-bright light there was no noticeable difference.

The one area where I did notice a significant difference was in the movement of the focusing ring. Most (but not all) Pentax lens focusing mechanisms are driven by a motor in the body. This means that the focusing ring will turn during autofocus and that you’ll hear a whirring sound until the lens locks focus. The movement and the noise weren’t as annoying as I thought they’d be—I seldom need to operate in stealth mode—but given a choice I’d prefer quieter focusing mechanisms with no external movement. Fortunately, Pentax does offer a choice: All six of their premium DA-Star lenses and one of their DA zooms (the 17–70mm ƒ/4) have Pentax’s Supersonic Drive Motor (SDM) built into the lens instead of the body. SDM lenses focus quietly and the focusing ring stays still during AF.

Exposure
Left to its own devices, the K-7’s multi-segment metering system will rarely blow out highlights. If anything, it tends to underexpose by a third of a stop or so. This is good news for JPEG shooters because although it’s easy to lighten an image by a third of a stop, there’s no way to regain lost highlight detail. Raw shooters who believe in "exposing to the right" can use exposure compensation to dial in an extra third as they see fit. By default the multi-segment metering sets its exposures independently of the focusing point, but you have the option to link it to focus points if you prefer. The K-7 also provides center-weighted and spot metering, each accessible via a small lever located under the exposure mode dial on the top left of the camera.

Do you prefer to separate AF actuation from the shutter button? No problem, the K-7 provides an independent AF button on the back of the camera. Do you prefer having a separate button for locking in an exposure reading? The K-7 has an AE-lock button as well. If, like me, you prefer to shoot JPEGs and to switch to raw only when necessary, Pentax even provides a RAW button accessible to the left thumb. Press it in and you’re instantly in raw mode.

This was shot handheld with the Pentax 55–300mm ƒ/4-5.8 set to 135mm (200mm-e). The camera was set to ISO 400, 1/160 second at ƒ/5.6, automatic white balance. This is a straight JPEG, reduced in size for the web. It looks flat because it was shot on an overcast afternoon.

This is the same photo as the first, but derived from the original raw file. I adjusted the brightness a half-stop, added some sharpening and reduced it for the web. As you can see, these changes give the image more snap.

Here’s a 100 percent crop of the immediately preceding image. I cropped in on my son’s shoe because that’s the point of sharpest focus. Notice the texture and detail. Not bad for a consumer tele-zoom shot handheld at close to maximum aperture at a moderate shutter speed and with the camera set two stops above minimum ISO.

Pentax shooters will take comfort in the knowledge that the K-7 also has the ever-so-useful "Green Button," a feature exclusive to Pentax. For those who want a detailed description of how it works I’ve provided a link to "The Usage of Green Button" on the Pentax Forums. For the rest of you, suffice it to say that the Green Button basically acts as a multi-functional shortcut that allows you to switch from a one-time adjustment, such as exposure compensation or a higher ISO, back to the default or original setting.

There’s more. A lot more.

As I hinted in Part 1 of this review, the Pentax K-7 is overflowing with features and customizations like these. I’ve only just scratched the surface. There are custom image modes and digital filters that control how the JPEG engine processes images. The K-7 can process raw images in-camera and convert them to JPEGs. It also offers HDR image capture, HD movie capture, and dynamic range adjustment. The list goes on and on. This makes reviewing every available feature a formidable task; one I’m frankly not up to. Suffice it to say that the K-7 seems adaptable to all but the most extreme shooting styles and preferences.

In the third and final segment of this review I’ll turn my attention the K-7’s high ISO performance, lens performance, and the oh-so-subjective topic of image quality. Meanwhile, this part of the review has a few more photo samples for you to digest. Enjoy!

Gordon

Gordon Lewis's pictures at Zenfolio
The Shutterfinger blog

Pentax K-7 body at B&H Photo ($1,259.95)
Pentax DA 21mm ƒ/3.2 AL Limited Series lens at B&H Photo ($499.95)
Pentax DA 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro Limited Series lens at B&H Photo ($529.95)
Pentax DA* (weatherproof) 50-135mm ƒ/2.8 ED (IF) SDM zoom lens at B&H Photo ($799.95)
Pentax DA 55-300mm ƒ/4-5.8 ED lens at B&H Photo ($349.95)

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Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Pentax in my humble opinion still has the best exposure controls of any 35mm format SLR system, if your most important criterion is quick and accurate manual exposure. I thought the Pentax system was great when I shot slide film, and this is still true with digital capture. Both media penalize overexposure severely.

"Call me a Luddite, but I still like to expose manually. I pick an aperture based on the depth of field I want, followed by the shutter speed that provides an appropriate overall exposure. Most all camera systems provide two input dials or wheels so you can independently select aperture and shutter speed, while you look at the little bar graph in the viewfinder to see where you need to go. With my Canon DSLRs, not infrequently I find myself fumbling with the controls when the exposure is way off, and the moment may be gone by the time I figure it out. But that little Pentax green button is magic in this situation. In manual metering mode, you just touch the green button and the camera instantly gives you an aperture/exposure combination that centers your histogram. You're still in manual mode, so you can touch this up with either the aperture or shutter speed dial, which takes about a millisecond. I find it far slicker and more intuitive than Canon's system."

Featured Comment by Doug Brewer: "I believe Mike knows I have a thing for Pentax.... But I gotta tell you, the K-7 is the closest of their DSLRs to the feel of my beloved LX, and I consider that very high praise indeed."

Observations

Wimp bikes: Trek Pure Sport and Globe Carmel (not to exact scale)

I mentioned in the previous post that I spent yesterday bike-shopping (not today. Many stores in Wisconsin are closed on Sundays, in historical commemoration of the no longer in force blue laws). A few random notes, some of them photography-related:

How it hangs: A Leica M is the perfect weight and shape to hang from your shoulder while riding a bike. Unlike smaller and lighter cameras it doesn't flop or fly around, and unlike larger cameras with snoutier lenses it doesn't get in the way. It just hangs happily from its UpStrap staying in place ready to go when wanted.

The indication is: On the basis of an admittedly small sample, it appears that bike people are just as cra... um, "zealous" as camera people.

Unsaid line: A pretty young woman, talking to a friend about what they were going to do that night as she put on her bike helmet. "...I don't know if I've had enough rest. Pub-crawling takes stamina. It can go on for a while." And I think: right, from about the age of seventeen until you get married.

Sign o' the times: As I toodled down various residential streets and bike paths on the East Side of Milwaukee I naturally overheard bits and snippets of conversation from here and there as I passed people. An old man asking a passerby for a light; two college students yelling happy practiced insults at one another; two men in heavy conversation while walking on the footpath, when one of them reaches for a cellphone, saying, "Oh, excuse me, I've got to take this." Best one, in the Some Things Never Change Dept.: I was rolling on a tree-shaded sidewalk and heard a twentysomething woman say to her friend, "...Omigod did I tell you? You will not believe what I saw yesterday, but I just could not get my cellphone out in time to take a picture of it for you..!"

Bagel man: The guy at Bruegger's Bagels who sold me my lunch was interested in bikes, but more interested in my camera. He told me he still does a little medium-format black-and-white, still has a darkroom in his apartment, and had just accepted his first two paying (digital) jobs, a wedding and a baby portrait. Got a card? No. Got a website? No. My distilled advice: get yourself a business card and hand it out whenever the subject of photography comes up with anybody. Put some of your work online even if it's only on SmugMug or something and put the link on your card. And even if it's not all your best work, make sure it's all exactly the kind of work you want to do. Not the kind you have done, the kind you want to do.

At least his name, and maybe one of his pictures, would have appeared right here right now if he had already done one or both of those things.

Bike shopping resumes tomorrow. Knowing me, I will make a final decision just about when it snows.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Kurt Shoens: "Today's lunchtime epiphany: Leicas are to cameras what fixies are to bicycles.

"I'm probably the millionth person to reach this conclusion."

[Note: A fixie is a fixed-gear bike, i.e., no derailleur and no brakes, used by very skilled and experienced cyclists such as bike messengers. And cloned by hipsters. —Ed.]

[And speaking of fixies, you really should check out Carla und Henriette Hochdorfer, suggested by Hugh Crawford...not really pertinent to anything, but...amazing. —Ed.]

Featured Comment by Sandy: "I love cameras and I love bikes and I've long made a camera/fixie analogy. To me, the 50mm ƒ/1.8 prime lens is the fixie of the camera world. Cheap and simple, no bells or whistles, and it brings you back to the very basics of what the activity is all about."

Featured Comment by Tina Manley: "Re 'Put some of your work online even if it's only on SmugMug or something.' Only on SmugMug!! SmugMug is the best—best service, best rates. If you're looking for a great deal and a place to post your photos, you can get unlimited storage with the pro account. I couldn't be happier. Check them out! Great advice to the bagel guy, by the way."

Featured [partial] Comment by Stan B.: "Do not, do not, do not carry your camera on a strap while riding! No matter how comfortable it felt during your test ride, things will get considerably hairier during real life conditions...." [Read Stan's full comment in the Comments section. —Ed.]

Featured Comment by James McDermott: "I ceased to combine photography and cycling due to trauma. In 1988, on my first day's holiday at Zakynthos, I blithely (dumb, dumb, dumbly) placed my Contax RTSII in a hire-cycle's front basket and almost immediately went into one of the island's trademark 'potholes' (read: mine-shaft opening). The Contax skips merrily down the road ahead of me, staying in one piece, amazingly (small dents in the pentaprism and the lens filter ring), but requiring major surgery before it worked once more. Twelve camera-less days followed in one of the more photogenic Mediterranean islands. Then we had an earthquake."

Featured [partial] Comment by Hugh Crawford:

Scan: M. Butkus

The Coffee-Table Book of Camera Porn

Omigod (as my students used to say nonstop). How did I ever resist this? Stumbled across it at the bookstore yesterday. Had to set anti-impulse-purchase shields on high. A gorgeous, dazzling, and actually pretty darn good coffee table book of camera porn, it's a big, sumptuously-produced, lavishly illustrated book of pictures of cameras. (U.K. link.) The book's own subtitle gets it quite wrong: it's not a history of photography at all, it's a history of cameras—a splendid, broad parade, hitting all the high points, covering the peaks from the earliest pre-1839 beginnings to the Leica M8. In many cases, the pictures of cameras are shown next to photographs taken with them or that might have been taken with something very similar: for instance, Joe Rosenthal's own Speed Graphic is shown next to his photograph of the raising of Old Glory at Iwo Jima. If your photography hobby leans toward an interest in cameras—or, equally, if you actually have an empty space on your coffee table (and if that's true I have not been doing my job)—then this might be for you.

It has a bit of scholarly weight behind it, too, since it's a production of the George Eastman House, one of the best photography museums in the United States and one of the few that has assiduously collected cameras.

One I could not resist is Danny Lyon's Memories of Myself, which I finally bought. Not yesterday; ten days ago, from Amazon. Regular readers of this site are well aware that I'm constantly going on about how you can support the site by buying stuff from Amazon through our links—baby buggies, Weber grills, power drills, doesn't matter what—but what you might not know is that, with very few exceptions, I almost never earn enough from the sales of any particular book to actually pay for a copy of that book. For example, I wrote about Eugen Herrigel's book Zen in the Art of Archery the other day, and readers bought 14 copies of it through the link, actually quite good for a non-photography title, but the proceeds on my end don't amount to what the book costs (I already own that one, though). The point is simply that I still have to watch my book purchases carefully, and buy only what I really want. Alas, TOP World Headquarters is not awash in a sea of the latest books, implications to the contrary notwithstanding.

I've mentioned Memories of Myself several times, but I didn't own it when I mentioned it. A used bookstore near where I live had a copy, and I first saw it there and subsequently stopped in several times to "visit" it—i.e., page through it while sitting on one of those funky little rolling stools that you find in bookstore and libraries. (Don't worry about whether browsing the merchandise is ethical or not—believe me, I do my part to support that store.) Anyway, on my fourth time through, the book was gone—somebody had bought it. After another week or two had passed, I decided I was still thinking about it and that this was another one I couldn't live without, so to speak. So I dropped the bucks for my very own copy. (And no, to answer another common question, I can't order from Amazon through my own links.)

So how is it, now that I own it? Well, I don't know. It came five days ago, but I've left it in its shrink wrap. Why? Partly because I like confluence. There's a right time for everything—I spent my day off yesterday shopping for a bicycle, which seemed to make it a good time to watch The Bicycle Thief on DVD last night. And partly just to savor that peculiar but familiar mix of anticipation and feared disappointment...sometimes it's happened that I enjoy exploring a book by paging through it a few times, but find on closer study that it's really not quite as good as it seemed. (That happened with this book, for one. I initially thought it was wonderful, but as I began to deconstruct my reaction for a potential review and "look at it through other peoples' eyes," I realized that much of its richness was coming from what I was bringing to it—that is, from the fact that I knew the work of many of the "heroes" covered in it deeply and intimately before I ever turned the first page. What the book was doing was reminding me of all that, not necessarily providing enough evidence of it for people who would come to the book's subjects cold.) On the other hand, once you get to know a book it can seem even richer and more wonderful when you finally sit down and get to grips with it. You know, like the way you sometimes hear a cut of music five or six times and then, a few weeks or months later, encounter it again and really listen to it, and really hear it, for the first time. I strongly suspect that will happen with Memories of Myself.

I think the reason I like the book so much is that it gave me a clearer picture of Lyon as an artist and photographer than I'd had before. I have The Bikeriders, and I knew of one or two of his other projects, but I really didn't know much about the broader reach of his work. What Memories of Myself did was to give me a more democratic overview, and it raises him in my esteem—he's better than I knew previously.

I'll keep you posted on Danny. So far this is one of the books of the season for me, but I'll know more when the plastic comes off.

Mike

P.S. As I mentioned before, this is another book with a misleading-verging-on-wrong subtitle. They're photo-essays (with little written introductions), not essays. Two different things.

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She Comes in Colors Everywhere

Check out the Pentax K-x color simulator at the Japanese website (it can be slow to load but responds reasonably quickly once you're up and running). If you're going to offer colors, might as well go all the way....

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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ADDENDUM: Dirk at Japan Exposures confirms that he can arrange purchase of Japan-only colors for those in other parts of the world as part of the Japan Exposures Equipment Sourcing service. Not that it won't cost you....  —Mike

Featured Comment by Stan B.: "Vomit inducing."

Featured Comment by Marlon: "I absolutely love this idea. Lemon Lime flavor."

Featured Comment by Chris: "'She Comes In Colors Everywhere'...except here! I have an 11-year-old who wants a purple one and I would certainly orderly a fun-colored one for myself. Pentax lost two sales, as this option isn't offered to the U.S. (I would have placed an order yes!)"

Featured Comment by Miserere: "When I first heard about the colour plan I thought 'hmmmm...,' but given that it's seriously spec'd for an entry-level, $650-launch-price camera, I think the colours are a fantastic add-on (icing on the cake, as someone already put it). The Navy colour turns out to be slightly metallic (or reflective) in real life and I'm finding it very attractive. Furthermore, it's available for preorder in the US right now and can be bought at B&H."

Featured Comment by Ed Buziak: "I think Pentax are serious about this color program, and for good reason. I read the following on the OK1000 Pentax Blog whose owner (Michael) attended the Pentax Special Launch in New York on the 16th. He wrote '...Pentax received strong demographic numbers that showed that women bought more colored cameras than they would have bought black models. The numbers jumped from a skew of 20% female and 80% male buyers to 50%–50%. Something worth doing on a larger scale.'"

Featured Comment by [another] mike: "Yuck."

Eugen Herrigel and the Subversiveness of the Bruces

A comment to the "Bright Spots" post from a reader named Catherine reminded me of a book I recommended several years ago in an Amazon "Listmania" list I put together one evening when I was bored* called "Readings for Practicing Photographers." The book is Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, and what I said about it then was "Make the mental leap from shooting arrows to shooting pictures, and this becomes virtually an instruction manual for camera handling and shooting skills."

Okay, now, cut it out—I can hear the scoffing from here. I know some people are going to dismiss out of hand the idea that a book like this could be useful, because the title has the word "zen" in it and they'll assume I'm being a navel-gazing lefty pinko arty-farty type again. Well, okay. But, still.

This idea—applying Herrigel on archery to shooting with a camera—isn't mine. The book was assigned to my third-year class in photo school by Frank Diperna (another one of my many friends and mentors whose websites don't adequately reflect the richness and diversity of their work). I have a DiPerna—an 8x10" platinum print—hanging in my house.

I still find it apropos, lo these many years later. Although it might be one of those books which, if it appeals to you, you don't need. And the people who could really use it, it won't appeal to. To quote another friend and teacher, Paul Kennedy, "You know what they say...'oh well.'"

As far as Catherine's purpose in quoting Shunryu Suzuki—"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few"—is concerned, sympathizers with that view might be interested in reading about the anonymous "Bruces," who are mounting a small guerrilla struggle against the juggernaut of the University takeover of art practice (as opposed to art scholarship, which does belong in Universities). The article, written by Roberta Smith, begins as follows:

IN an often quoted remark the Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman once said, “Aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds.” I wonder what Newman would make of the overflow of M.F.A.-bearing would-be artists pouring out of art schools and universities these days. Maybe he’d say, “An artist without a graduate degree is like a fish without a bicycle.”

I could segue from there to talking about how my bicycle shopping is going (hint—okay, and another hint), but that would be free-associating, and those who appreciate a semblance of order in their blog reading might object. To get back to the subject, I recommend you check out Eugen Herrigel, especially if the idea of doing so does not appeal to you.

Mike

*That was before I started The Online Photographer.

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Featured Comment by fotorr: "A Minor White favorite."

Featured Comment by Carl Weese: "Marksmanship training western style, without a Zen component, can be a great physical and mental aid to the physical aspects of shooting pictures. Things like squeezing off smooth exposures at slow speeds, or waiting for the perfect moment and then responding suddenly but smoothly, or following action, etc. By the way, Zen archery and western target archery have more in common than you might guess. For one thing, even when competing in tournaments for score, the well-trained marksman concentrates entirely on form, not scoring, while shooting. Really a very close parallel to the mental discipline of Zen archery."

Featured Comment by Vinegar Tom: "Interesting, the way the appropriation of the word "zen" by the Beat Generation has skewed our perception. Herrigel was, quite literally, a Nazi. The skills, mental attitudes and intense self-discipline of an aristocratic Japanese warrior caste may indeed help us hold a camera steady, but there's nothing inherently lefty pinko about them. Quite the reverse."

Featured Comment by Kirk Thompson: "According to Clement Cheroux, in his little book Henri Cartier-Bresson, NY: Abrams, n.d.: 'After the war and his long stay in Asia, during which he discovered Eastern religions, Cartier-Bresson made far less use of the hunting and firearms metaphor in describing his work. He preferred instead to compare it to archery. In the early 1950s, Georges Braque gave him a little book entitled Zen in the Art of Archery (1948), which was to have a major influence on his concept of photography, or at least on his way of describing it.... In this tiny work [by Eugen Herrigel], and particularly in its description of satori, a state of spiritual enlightenment, Cartier-Bresson found a notion of concentration that was astonishingly similar to his own practice: forgetting oneself, and putting all one's senses on alert in order to be able to seize on whatever offered itself.' (P. 108.)"

Featured Comment by Michael W: "The first paragraph of that Roberta Smith article was enough to put me off clicking through to read the full thing. First she refers to MFA grads as 'would-be artists' and that is patently inaccurate. There are many good artists with MFAs & it's unfair for her to insult all of them while trying to attack some. Secondly she re-uses the old feminist quote about fish and bicycle & sort of puts the words into Banett Newman's voice, 'Maybe he'd say' as if she can use a little of his authority to prop up her argument. Barnett Newman didn't say anything about MFA grads & it's dishonest to imply that she'd know what his opinion about it would be. So based on that I think I've saved myself from wasting my time reading any further. There may even be some important points to be made about the academisation of art study, but it doesn't seem that she is the writer who'll be making them."

Featured [partial] Comment by Alex Vesey: "...is [Zen in the Art of Archery] 'wrong' or 'false' as a spiritual guide? I would say 'not necessarily' to that question. One can accept the story's ideas as expressions of faith, and as an inspirational model. It is more like a hagiography (the tale of a saint or religious figure) than a biography (ostensibly a verifiable historical narrative), and should be read and used as such. How does this relate to photography? Zen training requires years of mental discipline to teach the mind to engage the the world and its transient dualities directly, yet without attachment. We are speaking of decades of effort. But anyone, including photographers, can receive inspiration from accounts of such training." [See Alex's entire comment in the Comments section.]