The Online Photographer

Blog Notes: Shoot Out At the Fantasy Factory

Traffic, yageddit? Sorry, that's lame, but I've had classic rock on the brain since the Bron-Yr-Aur post.

TOP seems to have reached a certain stately maturity if our traffic is any indication. Take a look at the bar chart of our daily visitors over the past seven weeks or so:

Pretty consistent, eh? The flat patch on the left is when I was on vacation in August; the low point of each week is generally a Saturday, although a couple of them are Sundays; and the healthier bumps at the right represent the beginning of the school year, when summer's over, and Europe (20–30% of our readership) is back from holiday, and the world gets back to work again. We're slow in the summer and always ramp up again in the fall, although the last two weeks haven't yet reached the norm of last Spring. The lowest bar on this chart represents 10,008 visitors and the highest one 35,746.

By the way, these numbers are basically only relative. They tell me how I'm doing from day to day and week to week, but they really shouldn't be compared to anything else. I use two counting services, and the other one, which I pay for, is a good deal more subtle, although when all is said and done it agrees with this one to within a few hundreds. I have the metrics set to ignore visits of less than 30 seconds' duration (to avoid counting visits by avid readers who are just checking in to see if anything new has been posted), and it counts as a "new" visit anyone who hasn't visited in the past two hours. If that seems unfair, remember that some people check in only once every few days, or every week, or month, and scan down through lots of posts; they're under-counted, in the same way that a guy who visits three times a day is over-counted. Internet head counts are just very approximate, is all. The numbers are much less "reality-based" than magazine circulation numbers any way you cut it.

Also, I don't count views of separate pages on the site, only visits to the main page. Nor does the above chart include the ~15,000 or so people who have signed up to get full RSS feeds. Seems unfair to count them as readers—all of them, anyway—because some of them, I'm sure, click through to the site (where they'll be counted anew), and just because some others get the site via feed doesn't mean they actually read it.

I keep meaning to establish a habit of taking Saturdays off, given that Saturday is consistently our slowest day. But the darn thing is, I enjoy this.

Mike

Ruin: Five Books

By Geoff Wittig

The pictorial representation of ruins and abandoned structures has a long and honorable history in art. Europe and the near East are chock full of such things, and Renaissance painters commonly included Roman ruins in their landscapes to add a bit of class to their work. Here in the States things are a little different; we don't have grand 2,000 year old stone palaces or castles in genteel decline. Rotting farmsteads and decaying warehouses are more like it. Yet they still have something to offer the discerning eye. These old structures surely say more about the soul of a place than our contemporary architectural wasteland of strip malls and fast food joints. There are a number of photo books currently available that address the topic, and a few more that have recently gone out of print that might still be available.

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Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America
Brian Vanden Brink
Hardcover: 144 pages
Down East Books (June 25, 2009)
12 x 12 x 0.7 inches
U.K. link

Brian Vanden Brink is an architectural photographer based in Camden, Maine who pays the bills with the usual immaculate portraits of grand homes and commercial buildings. He also took photographs for the Historic American Engineering Record and the Historic American Building Survey, noble attempts to preserve something of this country's abbreviated architectural record. Between assignments and commercial jobs he also captured more personal images of derelict structures around the country.

Ruin is an interesting pastiche. All images are large format film capture, the majority in color but some black and white as well. There are a few well-known subjects such as the Windsor Ruins and "Mammy's Cupboard," both in Mississippi, and a handful of industrial structures or bridges. There are also some chilling photos of abandoned Cold War nuclear weapon storage bunkers; but the bulk of the subjects are nameless wooden farmhouses and quotidian shops. Most of Vanden Brink's black and white images have a delicate tonal scale. The color photographs likewise mostly display a restrained pastel palette and soft illumination. The absence of the neon Velvia æsthetic and "golden hour" lighting is refreshing. The little details in his photos are endlessly appealing; the fallen chimney bricks on the roof of a Maine home are magnetic to the eye.

The design of the book is spare. Vanden Brink's brief preface nicely explains his fascination with these bereft structures. Howard Mansfield's introduction frankly doesn't add much to the book. The limited text is carefully set in an attractive digital typeface. The photographs, many of them full bleed, are beautifully reproduced. A handful are defaced by printing them across the gutter, yet they don't seem to suffer too much for it.

If you have a soft spot in your heart for derelict buildings, you'll love this book. Vanden Brink obviously knows his craft.

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The Blue Room
Eugene Richards
Hardcover: 168 pages
Phaidon Press (December 3, 2008)
16.1 x 11.1 x 0.9 inches
U.K. link

Eugene Richards is widely admired for his pungent black and white photojournalism, addressing subjects ranging from the cocaine epidemic to urban emergency rooms to post-9/11 New York. The Blue Room is very  different from his usual work; it's shot in color, without a single human being visible in any frame. Richards indirectly addresses the collapse of America's rural family farm culture by examining the abandoned remnants. His visual æsthetic is poles apart from Vanden Brink's; grainy 35 mm frames, skewed horizons, close-ups of abandoned shoes and the corpses of insects lined up on a window ledge. The decay is a bit overwhelming in many images, yet others are pure visual poetry. Windblown snow from a broken window drifts across a bed; abandoned barns and windmill are glimpsed through a grime-encrusted screen. Probably not a book to peruse if you're already depressed, but Richards has a remarkable eye.

From The Blue Room

The book is physically large, the color images all printed on the right hand leaf full size with a small margin. Many are darkish and moody, and they tend toward a subdued color palette with reds standing out, which makes me think "Kodachrome." Text is limited to a series of brief vignettes, some hinting at Richards' contact with previous inhabitants of the homes, others "verbal pictures" of his first impression of a decaying building. The text is set in an imitation "typewriter" font, which I find a distracting affectation, but it's the author's prerogative; Richards designed the book himself.

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Time Wearing Out Memory: Schoharie County
Steve Gross and Susan Daley
Hardcover: 128 pages
W.W. Norton & Co. (May 17, 2008)
11.2 x 10.4 x 0.8 inches
U.K. link

Steve Gross and Susan Daley are photographers living in New York City who bought a "country home" in Schoharie County, three hours north, in 1987. Over the course of twenty years they took traditional large format black and white photographs of the rural vernacular architecture. A handful are still actively used, but most are abandoned, and more than a few have since been demolished. Farmhouses, barns, general stores, churches and meeting halls are all given the same careful attention. The resulting images are classic "zone system" products; every tone is carefully considered and placed for effect, the compositions carefully balanced, the skies often dramatic. The result is pictorially beautiful, even if it seems a bit odd to give an abandoned barn the "full Ansel Adams." The reproductions are excellent, duotones conveying good shadow detail and smooth tones.

If these books inspire you to go out and photograph a few sagging relics in your own backyard before they're gone forever, then they've done their job.

•   •   •

Two more books on the subject are worth looking for, though they're out of print. You may be able to find them at remaindered prices.

Ghosts in the Wilderness: Abandoned America
Tony and Eva Worobiec
Hardcover: 176 pages
Artist's and Photographers' Press Ltd. (October 28, 2003)
14.4 x 11.3 x 0.8 inches

This is a beautifully printed collection of essays and photographs by Tony and Eva Worobiec, a husband and wife team based in England. They're probably better known for their instructional books and articles, many on the subject of toning of black and white prints, both darkroom and digital. The couple made five separate journeys and spent many months wandering the American prairie states, photographing the ghost towns and abandoned farms. It won't be to everyone's taste; the images cover a wide range of styles, from straight color and black and white to heavily manipulated toned and hand-colored images. Some of the photographs look simply odd to my eye, yet others are striking, and many are quietly beautiful. the essays are thoughtful meditations on the rise and fall of the prairie farming culture at the hands of unscrupulous railroad promoters and a hostile climate, and the leathery toughness of those who have endured all the same.

Abandoned America
Steve Gottlieb
Hardcover: 175 pages
Sleeping Bear Press (December 15, 2002)
11 x 10.4 x 0.7 inches

Steve Gottlieb prospered as a lawyer, then launched a second career as a photographer. His photographs of ruined buidlings, rusting vehicles and decaying machinery are incongruously rendered in bright, Velvia style colors that make them seem almost festive. Ruins-as-cotton-candy is an unusual æsthetic choice, but it seems to work for many of the subjects.

Geoff

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "A wonderful collection of ruins books, Geoff. I'm going to make it a point to get a peek at at least two of these. May I add one other book to the collection? Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments by Michael Eastman and William Gass (pub: Rizzoli) is a work very much kindred to these books."

Geoff replies: Ken, Michael Eastman's Vanishing America is indeed another worthy effort, though a bit different from the other books here. Eastman concentrates on the tacky charm of diners, donut joints, storefronts, old theaters and bowling alleys, mostly using a wide-angle perspective. His images are all heavily Photoshop'd into a uniform 1950s æsthetic of bright pastel colors and crisp edges. It's an acquired taste, but the artistic consistency of it is appealing. Sort of the "anti-Plowden" look.

Featured Comment by Joe Reifer: "Thanks for the list on a topic that's dear to my heart. I'd add Camilo José Vergara's book American Ruins to the list if I may."

Featured Comment by Michael MacLean: "I am glad you included Ghosts in the Wilderness: Abandoned America by Tony and Eva Worobiec. I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Tony at the time of the book's publication and saw a number of these images as prints. It really did show that he is a master of the craft. Personally, I like the variation in the work and was very much inspired by his toned and hand-coloured images."

Featured Comment by Ludovic: "I saw 'The Blue Room' exhibited this summer at Les Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles, and I was blown over, completely. I cannot recommend enough that people get this."

Bright Spots

One of the many leitmotifs of my days is that readers send me tips about all sorts of things, and, not infrequently, every one or two days maybe, I'll get an excited message saying, in effect, "look at this! Isn't this cool? I know you'll be interested in this!" And it will be something I've known about forever, consider old hat, haven't thought about in years, or have long been jaded about. Or just something I'm...over.

Far from minding those emails, though, I get a particular sort of happiness from them. They remind me that anything can be new to someone who hasn't encountered it before, who is discovering it for the first time.

These events in our lives are occasions for us, no matter how blasé anyone else might be. Art itself is like that. You always have a right to respond to art as if your experience of it is a significant event for you. My friend Jim Schley taught me that, when he spoke once with his characteristic feeling and wisdom about how reading a book is an occasion. A book isn't a static thing, unchanging, that sits on a shelf, outside of time; it's a potential interaction, because the volatility between what's written and its reader can be a sort of alchemy under the right conditions. How good a book is for you depends on when you come to it, what you bring to it, whether it fits what you need or what you're ready for when you encounter it. Any "great" book can be dull and flat for us unless some or all of those conditions pertain.

Every day, someone discovers photography, or some new potential in it, or even just some bit of equipment, or an artist, or a body of work, or an idea that seems to them worth getting excited about. Every day, lots of things that are old hat to me are new to someone, and hold energy, and life, and promise, and newness for them. I like being reminded of that.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Robert Howell: "I was this morning reviewing Tsure-zure Gusa (Essays in Idleness) by the 14th century Yoshida Kenko-boshi, having discovered it last night while reading an Italian essay on post-war Japan! One of Kenko's observations: 'To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare.'"

Featured Comment by Catherine: "'In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (1905–1971). As a tonic for the jaded, I heartily recommend his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And, for visual accompaniment, John Daido Loori.

Mike replies: Catherine, I agree. I love that book. And it's amazing how much of the discussion in it, as well as the advice in Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery, applies to photographing.

Music Notes: Bron-Yr-Aur

Oh, all right, I'm just a child of my times. But check this out: the Led Zeppelin Box Set, all six-plus hours of the apex of folk metal, half off [link removed; sale's over], just for today. Although I probably only listen to it once every five years, Physical Grafitti is in my all-time top ten. Can't be dislodged, as I'll never be young again. I can't begin to guess how many trips in my youth this stuff was the soundtrack to. (Road trips, I mean, of course.) If this resonates for you, you might also like to read about It Might Get Loud, a quirky tribute to the electric guitar in the form of profiles of three very different electric guitarists. In theaters now, as they say.

About the film, Hugh Crawford writes, "It's really about the way artists relate to their tools. Jimmy Page is sort of the medium format, maybe-try-an-M9 guy, even though he has more guitars and records than god. The Edge is more DSLR of the week. Jack White is off using Russian leica copies, old folding cameras, Argus C3s, and maybe a wet plate camera. Diana cameras only if they are vintage.

"Best quote in the film, by Jack White: 'The instrument should get in the way. You have to pick a fight with the guitar.'"

Mike
(Thanks to Hugh Crawford. "Bron-Yr-Aur" is a track from Physical Grafitti. Picture is Jimmy Page.)

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Featured Comment by Chad Thompson: "Heck, Jack even has his own Holga model. [NLA —Ed.] It's not so vintage though."

Featured Comment by Ade: "Bron-Yr-Aur was, of course, named after the remote cottage near Machynlleth in Wales where it was written."

Featured Comment by Trevor Mitchell: "Hi there, just a quick update on the cottage. It is now fully kitted out with solar PV [photovoltaic —Ed.] and thermal, a wind turbine and a wood pellet boiler. The chap who owns it is apparently a vicar from South Wales. We had access to the cottage when undertaking a renewable energy course at the nearby Alternative Technology Centre last year."

Pentax K-7 Review, Part I

Part II is here.
Part III is here.

By Gordon Lewis

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Pentax cameras and lenses. The first decent SLR I bought when I was in college was a Pentax Spotmatic F. It had the classic M42 thread mount as well as full-aperture metering, which was cutting-edge technology at the time. Some of the best photos I’ve ever shot were done with that camera.

A decade later I bought a Pentax ME, renowned for its small size, huge viewfinder and aperture-preferred exposure automation. The ME is still sitting in my camera closet, seldom-used but still loved. I also owned the venerable Pentax 6x7 medium-format SLR. It was neither small nor lightweight and the mirror-slap could wake the dead. So what? It was (and still is) an amazing value for the money and its image quality can be stupefyingly excellent.

That said, it’s been a while since I’ve been excited about Pentax’s DSLR offerings. There was nothing wrong with them; in fact, the evidence shows that they were as capable of taking fine photographs as anything else. It’s just that as someone who now shoots with Canon equipment, Pentax didn’t offer enough reason to tempt me to switch.

That all changed a few months ago when Pentax announced the K-7. Here was a camera that was small yet sturdy and weather-sealed; full-featured and versatile, and with enough significant improvements over the previous top-of-the-line model, the K20D, that I wanted to give it a try.

Apparently I’m not the only one. From the moment it was announced K-7 has received positive comments on online photography forums and blogs. The positive impressions have been backed up by actual orders. By all accounts, the K-7 is the best seller Pentax has had in years, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The competition is heating up at the same as the economy is forcing photographers to tighten their purse strings. Camera companies have to offer something that distinguishes them from the pack and that offers photographers something they can’t just as easily find elsewhere. Is the Pentax K-7 such a camera? We shall see, my friends. We shall see…

Here’s the Deal…
In the interests of full disclosure, let me state outright that when I expressed an interest in reviewing the K-7 Mike readily agreed. He felt I would offer an alternative to what he described as his "quirky" preferences and attitudes. We all have our quirks of course, but it’s true that mine are enough different from his to matter. Wherever Mike feels the need to point out where his opinion differs from mine he's free to do so.

As for my own photographic predilections, I prefer street photography and color abstracts for my personal work. For examples feel free to visit my online gallery. My professional work, though infrequent, is mostly portraiture and event photography with the occasional product shot thrown in for variety. I prefer gear that is small yet durable, reliable, and simple to operate. I prefer direct control over full automation and prime lenses over zooms. I’m more interested in photography and photographs than equipment, so the less unnecessary effort it takes to get the results I want the happier I am. I’m also more interested in lenses than cameras, so the more I like the available lenses, the more I like the camera.

Finally, you should also know that Mike is not paying me and that even if he offered I would not accept. I did however agree to use equipment on loan from Pentax. "On loan" means I’ll return it once I’m done reviewing it*. What I gain from this is the opportunity to use a camera for a week or two in exchange for writing about it—that, and the chance that you might find my writing interesting enough to visit my blog from time to time. What you gain is an insight into how an experienced photographer with no particular bias for or against Pentax equipment regards the K-7 as a working tool.

First Impressions
So now that we’ve gotten these preliminaries out of the way, let me describe exactly what it is I’m reviewing. The K-7 arrived with three Pentax lenses: a 21mm ƒ/3.2 DA, a 35mm ƒ/2.8 DA Macro, and a 55–300mm ƒ/4.5–5.8 DA ED.

Had I funded this selection myself I might have replaced the 55–300mm with the Pentax 50–135mm ƒ/2.8 DA* ED (IF). Although the 50–135mm is larger and more expensive, there's no denying the utility of ƒ/2.8 for low light work, especially since the K-7 has shake reduction (a.k.a. image stabilization) built into the body. Better yet, because of the K-7’s 1.5X crop factor, a 50–135mm becomes the functional equivalent of a 70–200mm ƒ/2.8 on a full-frame camera, while being significantly smaller and less expensive. This is not to imply that I am disappointed with the 55–300mm f/4.5–5.8, however. It has many virtues of its own, which I will reveal later in this series.

As for the K-7 itself, I was pleased to discover that although I had never handled one before it had a familiar feel. Although smaller than medium-sized DSLRs such as the Canon 50D or Nikon D300, its weight (754g with battery and SD card) is similar. This gives it comparable heft but with less bulk. When it comes to handling, the hand grip is well contoured, front and back. It’s also large enough that anyone with small to average sized hands can get a secure grip with the first three fingers of the right hand and the pinky finger folded under for support. Those of you who like bulk have the option of adding the optional B-DG4 battery grip, which in addition to more gripping surface adds a vertical release button, depth-of-field preview switch, front and rear e-dials, and buttons for exposure lock, autofocus, and ISO.

The controls on the body itself are all in logical locations, within easy reach of the right thumb and index finger yet without getting in the way. I especially appreciated the non-modal nature of important controls such as front and rear "e-dials." One dial controls the aperture and the other controls the shutter, no matter which exposure mode you’re in. Better yet, the K-7 has a custom function that allows you to decide which dial controls what.

This is a common theme in other aspects as well: the basic design of the Pentax K-7 is fundamentally sound while allowing enough flexibility to adapt to individual preferences. In Part 2 of this review I’ll provide examples of how this makes the K-7 a pleasure to use and how it contributes to producing better photographs. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these examples of what the K-7 is capable of.

Gordon

Caption for the lead photograph I shot the big "K" on a rainy afternoon with the Pentax 55–300mm zoom. The exposure was ISO 400 at 1/60 second at ƒ/6.3, which was near maximum aperture for this lens. The lens was zoomed to 97mm (147mm-e). I wouldn’t ordinarily use such a slow shutter speed at this focal length, but as you can see, the K-7’s shake reduction eliminated any trace of camera shake.

This was a photographer’s nightmare: a dark-skinned subject in a white blouse, in a nightclub with dark walls, illuminated by a single, small tungsten spotlight. Nevertheless, the K-7 didn’t break a sweat. This shot is a JPEG straight out of the camera, with only a slight levels adjustment in Photoshop to lighten the blouse. The camera was set to the default tungsten white balance with no adjustment. This was shot handheld at ISO 800, 1/25 second at ƒ/2.8 with the Pentax 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro DA.

Here’s another shot on another rainy day. I felt as comfortable as one can when getting rained on while trying to protect the lens from getting wet. At least I didn’t have to worry about the camera: the Pentax K-7 is weather-sealed. Also note that this shot reflects the K-7’s default JPEG setting. I find this setting a tad too oversaturated for bright sunny days, but it’s just right for days like this.

Here’s more or less what you can expect on a sunny day when the K-7 is set to ISO 100. I reduced the saturation setting of the default JPEG “Image Finishing Tone” (Bright) by one click. As you can see, the color is still vibrant. In this case I used the JPEG settings only as a point of reference. The image you see here was derived from a Photoshop DCR conversion of the original DNG raw file. My only adjustment was minor sharpening. Other than that, what you see is what I got, within the limitations of the blog software and your monitor.

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)

*Or Gordon can buy it, for an "accommodation price"—roughly wholesale—if he so chooses—SOP and virtually universal with stock-on-memo for reviews. Don't forget that when Pentax gets it back, it's used gear and can't be sold as new. —Mike

Blog Note Update

I'm happy to say that Sean Reid of Reid Reviews and I have had an exchange of emails and have come to an understanding. He says I misunderstood him regarding the lawsuit issue. It's true that he never said "I intend to proceed with a lawsuit against TOP." What he said, specifically, was that he would consult with his attorney to see if what Howard French wrote on my site was "slander" (libel would really be the correct term) and actionable. I interpreted several such comments to be a threat of legal action against TOP. He says he never had any intention of suing TOP, which I accept.

We both regret the many misunderstandings and miscommunications that have characterized this disagreement from the start.

I still read and recommend Reid Reviews. Please note that at no time did I ever mean to impugn Sean's professional integrity, directly or indirectly.

TOP will continue to publish a variety of divergent viewpoints from a variety of guest authors and readers.

Mike

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[Disclosure, Dept.: I censored a few comments from this post. Not very many. A few critical of Sean, at least one critical of me, a few critical of the whole situation. But Free Speech today takes a back seat to No-Salt-in-Fresh-Wounds Day, y'know?—there's no Amendment for that, but I'm just tryin' to let this blow over. I read all the comments, and thanks to all who left one. —Ed.]

The Ethics of Reviewing

[Bloviation Alert: This might be the longest article I've ever posted on TOP.]

By Mike Johnston

When I was a teacher, I naturally had a wide variety of colleagues. There was one physics teacher who had a seemingly limitless appetite for work. She taught a formidably full load, yet she was known to be very thorough in her teaching, assigning and correcting huge amounts of homework and constantly working with kids individually. She also cheerfully accepted any other burden that was placed upon her by virtually anyone. She chaired, coordinated, facilitated, advised, etc. She showed up at all the meetings. She didn't coach a sport, but that was because she was a spindly thing with approximately the athletic ability of a sea sponge. She was the first one at school in the morning and the last one to leave at night, and I have no doubt that at home she worked late, and on weekends. Washington, D.C., is a workaholic town, and I have no doubt that this particular individual fit right in with the town norm of the 60-to-80-hour work-week.

At the same school there was a music teacher, an older gentleman, WASPy and patrician, supposedly a mountain climber by avocation, who was the opposite. He taught literally half of the nominally minimum teaching load, and some semesters he would be relieved of half of that. His only other responsibility was leading the Glee Club twice a week, and he kept no very firm hand on the tiller of that sprawling enterprise, for the most part flitting around and chatting with his charges and only occasionally waving a baton airily about. He was one of those characters at prep schools whom everyone is obliged to love because they have been there forever and everyone has always loved them. As I recall there were days that he didn't need to come to school at all, and when he was in attendance he was constantly to be found loitering in the teachers' lounge, complaining happily. He would adamantly resist any and all attempts by anyone to get him to lend a hand in any school undertaking or activity whatsoever, protesting with great feeling that he already had enough to do. My observation, from a distance, was that if this beloved personage worked any less he wouldn't have been employed at all; I think if he'd dropped into a mountain crevasse it would have been months before even the Glee Club would have noticed he was missing.

Rivendell Bikes and A. Homer Hilsen

I was surprised and pleased the other day to have a new ad arrive, over the transom*, from Rivendell Bicycle Works of California. TOP, of course, is a photography site, and we haven't gotten very many ads from companies that don't have much to do with photography. Rivendell sells handmade bicycles, made in America,...

...As well as a not-inconsiderable selection of clothing. Clothing with a difference, though. Take a look, for instance, at the "railroad shirt" and its write-up: "...This is the shirt that built the whole country, and you've seen them before, most often on railroad men (never railroad women), and all kinds of craftsmen. I've worn this shirt for about fifteen years, after pal Jeff reintroduced me to them. He's an ironworker, and this was the shirt of ironworkers...." It goes on to describe in detail all the hoops they had to jump through to get a functional replica of an authentic American workingman's shirt made in America, in this day and age. Hmm. Definitely something more going on here than pure profit motive.

Mr. and Mrs. Hill's hearth. (Note book on coffee table. The one on the right.)

I'm not a bicyclist myself, despite having tried to get into it several times. (My brother teases me about the fact that he inherited one of my disused bikes and my son inherited another. He told Zander, "So you got this one? I got the last one." My bikes never seem to fit me, although I am man enough to entertain the notion that maybe it's the other way around.) Can you get into biking at age 52? In Wisconsin, where the roads are covered with ice for, seems like, ten out of every 12 months? (You'd think, as a guy who likes to wander around taking pictures and wants to be both a golfer and a cyclist, I'd move somewhere where they have more sun and less snow. I digress.) Anyway, I contacted my friend Mr. Hill, who is a devoted, veteran bicyclist (as is his wife, Catherine), and he tells me that Rivendell bikes are "very high-class rides" and "have a reputation for craftsmanship." So I went off to read more, and ended up perusing the write-up about the A. Homer Hilsen. The essay—for that's what it is, not advertising copy—defines a "country bike," apparently a new category, then wends onward like a long country ride, finally settling like a bird on a description of the naming process: "We considered names from the usual sources—Middle Earth, geography, birds, fish, and mammals. The good ones were all taken, and besides, they all get lumped together. I never liked combo-computer names, like Lexuva&Futura&Diamante, that sound precise, smug, and high-tech. As bike names go, A. Homer Hilsen is their antithesis, and that's why it won. It's kind of a filter, actually. That may not be a great thing, but it's a useful thing."

I find I fall right through that filter with a hard plunk.

The Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen. Note helping hands.

Finally, as if just for me and the needs of this post, it turns out there is a Rivendell Bicycles group on flickr! And we wend back to photography again.

Mike

*A transom, in this case short for transom window, is a window, usually wide and not tall, set above a door. They were much more common in the days before air conditioning, when they were needed for ventilation when the door was closed. Since they were often open when the door wasn't, mail, gifts, borrowed items being returned, and other sundry deliveries might come sailing over at any time. So in editorial circles, something that arrives "over the transom" is a submission or anything else that arrives unexpectedly, without being commissioned or encouraged or sought.

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Blog Note

I'd like to apologize to Michael Reichmann and Sean Reid. Michael and Sean were upset that I "featured" Howard French's comment in the "Leica M9 Links" post.

The reason I linked to all of those reviews is that I was recommending them to our readers. If I personally believed that any of them were untrustworthy or compromised in any way, I wouldn't have mentioned them.

I shouldn't have made light of it, with that "Snidely Whiplash" bit (I was kind of on a comic "kick" that day, as you can see from Scrooge McDuck) and in my reply to Howard. I did feel the latter was a bit of a shot...but at Leica, not at Michael or Sean. Both of my actions seem inappropriate in retrospect. I can only say in self defense that I didn't anticipate what happened. Especially after receiving a cordial comment from Erwin Puts, whose review I also linked.

I'd like to thank both Howard and Erwin for their comments. Both have great expertise and knowledge and outstanding credentials, and I have great respect for them both. Newer readers might not know this, but Erwin and I have disagreed and argued in the past; that doesn't stop me from linking to his work or letting him have his say here.

For the record, I often publish comments, and "feature" comments, and publish whole posts that I don't necessarily agree with. Some I do, some I don't. But it doesn't matter. In all cases, when someone else is seen speaking on my site, they are speaking for themselves, not as some sort of sneaky simulacrum of my own views. If I have something to say, trust me, I'll say it myself.

Still, I'm the editor, and the buck stops here.

I'd also like to thank John Camp for his post. Obviously, as many of you pointed out, his post also directly disagrees with things I've written in the past. But, as with Howard, I felt his perspective and insights were interesting, and valid, and might be useful, and that you'd enjoy reading them.

My intent was never to make anyone angry, though, and I am sorry.

Sincerely,

Mike

UPDATE: Michael has accepted my apology and the two of us consider this matter between us closed. Sean and I have worked together to resolve our differences, so we're good.

Willy Ronis 1910-2009

 

Photographer unknown

The last of the great French mid-century photographers has died. Willy Ronis, who had been on dialysis and in a wheelchair for some time, entered a Paris hospital several days ago. Stephane Ledoux, head of Eyedea Presse, owner of Rapho agency, said he was "bright and spirited to the end." He was 99.

Ronis is best known for his pictures of everyday life in Provence and in Paris, in particular the working-class districts of Belleville and Montmartre. His most famous picture is "Le Nu Provencal," a nude of his wife, Marie-Anne Lansiaux, bending over a sink in a rustic bathroom.

His pictures are lyrical, humanistic, warm, respectful, the opposite of dry, often packed full of information and of the sense of life and the love of people, sometimes shading into the formally pictorialist or the sentimental. He was prolific. He published many books, had many exhibits, won many awards. He decided to become a photographer in 1937, and joined Rapho, the French photo agency founded by Charles Rado in 1933, when it was reopened in 1946 by Raymond Grosset. Other Rapho photographers central to postwar photography in Paris included Doisneau, Boubat, Brandt, Izis, Ylla, Sabine Weiss, Brassai, and Lartigue. Considered one of the greatest photographers during the postwar era, Ronis's influence waned somewhat during the photo boom as the prevailing style became more iconoclastic and distanced.

 

Place Vendome, Paris, 1947

Carrefour Sevres-Babylone, Paris, 1948

Obituary (in English)

Video interview (in French)

Purchase (U.S.): Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Artist's page)

Books: The German edition (bilingual text) of Willy Ronis: La Vie En Passant (life in passing) is still in print and available in the U.S. The Phaidon 55 is available for £4.49 in the U.K. 

Quote: "I never, ever went out without my camera, even to buy bread."

Mike

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Featured Comment by Robin P: "Sad news. Definitely my favourite of the great French photographers. His pictures have a way of renewing my love of the world and its inhabitants whenever I slip into despondant cynicism."

On Topic (Really!): Parrotspeak / Parrotvision

By Ctein

As I indicated in the comments to my last column, Elmo, my parrot, doesn't use words the way humans do. His listening comprehension is huge and grammatical, but his "speaking vocabulary" is only modestly more sophisticated than a cat's or a dog's. I'm not saying he couldn't learn to speak purposefully; we haven't tried to teach him to. I'm just saying he doesn't.

What I have noticed, though, is that his nonverbal communication is extensive, subtle, and very complex. It's not just about body postures and positions. He does a lot of very elaborate feather flicking and ruffling and repositioning that is clearly intended to convey information, most of which I don't understand. It's far, far more sophisticated than just fluffing oneself up or bristling like a cat does. It looks more like the way patterns change on cuttlefish. Paula and I both have a strong sense that Elmo is "saying" things that we don't understand.

I have a hypothesis why, and here is where it gets photographically interesting: Bird vision is very different from ours. Birds see in four frequency bands rather than three. The bands are more sharply defined than ours (so they can discriminate more distinct colors than we can), and one of the bands is in the near ultraviolet. As best as we can tell, birds process that information in ways similar to the way we do. For example, we confuse yellow with green plus red, because monochromatic yellow stimulates the long and medium wavelength cones the same way green plus red does. Birds have a second color, violet, where that should also occur: a proper mix of blue and ultraviolet should look the same to them as pure violet if they are visually interpreting color in an analogous way. Experiments show that, indeed, they can't tell the difference.

Consequently, birds don't look, to each other, the way they look to us. Budgies, for example, look to us to have dark blue cheek patches and pink feet. In the ultraviolet those are brilliant white (thank you, David Attenborough!), while the rest of the bird is very dark. In a few cases, researchers have UV-photographed wild species where they thought the male and females looked identical. In the ultraviolet they don't look anything alike; possibly all birds are sexually dimorphic, even if we can't see it.

Elmo's emotional state and what he's communicating is different in these three photos.
His "body language" looks very similar to us, but how does it look to him?

So, back to Elmo. Elmo looks uniformly neutral in color, save for a red tail. The "sunscreen" powder on the face is near white, the beak is near black, and the feathers are various shades of medium gray with silvery fringes. I have a strong hunch that's not at all the way Elmo looks in four-band "parrotvision."

More significantly, I have an intuition that the subtle changes in brightness I see when Elmo flicks and ruffles his feathers produce substantial brightness and color changes in parrotvision. I think there's communication going on there that I can't even perceive.

I could test this hypothesis with the right equipment. The Fuji UVIR camera, one of the UV-transmitting lenses, and a set of UV blocking and transmitting filters would certainly let me see what Elmo sees in the UV, and might even let me do a false-color simulation of what he sees full-spectrum.

I don't have that equipment, and I can't afford it. I used to have close enough friends at Fuji that I'd feel comfortable asking them for the loan of that kind of gear without an obvious review being in the offing, but I don't any longer; they've moved on or retired.

So, anyone here have an idea how I might get my hands on the gear? Somebody who knows somebody, perhaps? I figure it can't hurt to ask; you folks are collectively far more resourceful than me.

It might produce some interesting science. It might even produce some interesting art. It might produce nothing of note. Results are never certain, in art or science. It would be fun to find out.

Ctein
(Photos © 2009 by David Dyer-Bennet)

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Art Capital and Annie Leibovitz Reach Agreement

The "Arts Beat" of The New York Times is reporting today that Annie Leibovitz and Art Capital Group have reached an agreement that will prevent immediate foreclosure of the photographer's $24 million loan. She's gotten back the right to sell her own properties and to sell the rights to her pictures. The loan isn't settled—it will still have to be repaid—but crunch time's been put off to some unspecified future date.

The article isn't particularly in-depth and doesn't say much more than the preceding paragraph, but here's the link.

End news, begin opinionation: I've read a whole lot about this case now, and I must say that the more I read, the more I think Annie Leibovitz simply got caught in a bad place when the housing market crashed like a whole bunch of other people did. If the real estate market hadn't tanked in 2008 and taken big whacking chunks of the banking and financial systems down with it, we probably never would have heard about any of her travails because she wouldn't have been in any trouble. It's quite possible, even likely, that she was proceeding rationally based on the assumptions that prevailed at the time. But she didn't know what was coming any more than anyone else did.

In fact, I've begun to come around to the opinion that most of the breast-beating and cluck-clucking and tut-tutting in the press (okay, this site included, as far as it went) about how irresponsible she is and how she mismanaged her finances, etc., really amounts to nothing more than ordinary everyday sexism and, um, "artism"...okay, oww, sorry about that, but you might know what I mean—the prejudice that all artists are flaky and devoid of common sense. I'm not convinced, any more, that any of that is really warranted. A lot of people got caught in a bad place when the housing market crashed. Maybe Annie's problems were simply on a bigger scale—and a bigger stage.

Mike
(Thanks to Christopher Lause)

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A Leica Won't Improve Your Photography

By John Camp

I enjoyed the Veblen-value essay; a terrific piece of writing.

My problem with Leica has never been that the cameras are expensive, or that much of their cost is in Veblen value. Hey, it's your money, do with it what you wish. I don’t even have a problem with Veblen value. I drive a Mercedes-Benz, when I know perfectly well that I could buy three Toyotas for the same price. They’d be more reliable, and, for the way I drive, they’d move me around just as efficiently. But, I like the status.

My problem with Leica is that for the overwhelming number of photographers, they're not good value—not even good Veblen value. I worry that people who are serious about photography, in the earlier stages of their interest, can be led to believe that Leicas will improve their work, to their great cost and disappointment. There's a reason few professionals use Leicas, and that's that the Leicas are not as good at producing professional-level shots as a DSLR. Almost any DSLR.

In other words, if you must try a Leica, and you can easily afford it, go ahead. But don’t be a victim of cult-think: "What an unbelievably great camera; I could never do this with a DSLR." That’s what we call serious BS.

There have been a number of people in the last few days, commenting on TOP's Leica threads, saying they'd love to buy a Leica if they could afford one. Why? Your pictures almost certainly will be worse, and have less range. You won’t be able to do true telephoto work, or macro work. You will have to deal with constraints that you don't have with DSLRs—you won't have autofocus, image-stabilization, dust removal, weather proofing, precise framing, or even decent service. You name it, you probably won't get it. It's not that Leicas are simple, it's that they are in many ways archaic.

Take framing, for instance. People seem to think that the rangefinder frames are precise. They're not. Not only are they not precise, they are different for differing focus distances with the same lens. If you are one of those people annoyed by 98% coverage with a DSLR, a rangefinder will drive you nuts.

Tina Manley, an excellent professional photographer, was singing the praises of Leicas in the Comments section of another TOP thread a couple of days ago, and she says Leicas are much quicker to focus than autofocus cameras. Well, that's something that's certainly testable. Perhaps TOP should sponsor a competition. I tried it with my Nikon D3—and the camera can focus faster than I can recompose. Swinging back and forth between one target that was eight feet away and another that was about thirty feet away, 180 degrees apart, I could get off ten focused shots in approximately 13 seconds. I bet there's not a Leica user in the world who could do that; or damn few, anyway. And I'm not a hotshot DSLR shooter; I'm just a guy.

(There is one common situation in which Leicas may focus as fast or even faster than autofocus, and that’s probably the kind of shooting that Tina was referring to. That is, if you have your hand on the focusing ring and you're shooting almost continuous pictures of a relatively static subject—a child sitting in one place, where you are continuously refocusing to keep the eyes sharp. Those continuous tiny adjustments are probably best done in manual mode, if you have lots of practice doing it. But, top end DSLRs also have a manual mode, and I find it as easy to use as a Leica’s.)

So, do I think people shouldn’t buy Leicas? Not at all. I own two, an M7 and an M8, and ten Leica lenses. I enjoy Leicas. I don’t think there’s any harm trying them, but unless you are very well-off, I’d suggest borrowing, renting or buying an older film Leica just to see if you like it. I suspect you won’t—in the end, I believe most people don’t. They like the idea of the Leica; they like the mind’s-eye image of themselves carrying a Leica; they like the Veblen-value; but, if they’re serious about images, they prefer the function of a DSLR, and will feel seriously handicapped without it.*

The people most likely to really get into Leicas, IMHO, are people who love cameras as cameras, and love the process of shooting perhaps more than the images they get. Also, I think, some fine-art photographers, especially street photographers, may really enjoy an M9. And then there’s the guy who’s sort of bored with photography after doing it a long time. Shooting a Leica is so different, and pushes you so close to your subjects, that it might revive a dying interest. A Leica perhaps can be less clinical than a DSLR.

The M9 is not a magic wand. It won’t improve your photography. If you’re not happy with what’s coming out of your DSLR, you won’t be happy with comes out of your M9, because the problem isn’t the camera.

As for high-end sound equipment, well, I listen to country music on my Mac speakers, so I have, er, little to say about that.

John

Bestselling author John Camp writes thrillers, mysteries, and other novels under the nom de plume John Sandford.

*Please don’t comment that “I love my Leica, so you’re wrong.” There must be a name for this logical fallacy, but I don’t know what it is—in any case, I’m generalizing. I’m talking about most people. Some people love Leicas and shoot brilliantly with them. I know that. You may name your children Barnack and Wetzlar. Fine with me. But you’re not most people. [I believe what you're talking about would be the material fallacy a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, or the converse fallacy of accident—deriving a generality from a special case. "I like anchovies and I'm a human being, therefore all human beings like anchovies." —Mike]

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Featured Comment by Tina Manley: "I would never try to convince someone who does sports, wildlife, wedding, studio, or macro photography that a Leica is the perfect camera; but for my kind of work, documentary and editorial work, it is perfect. The cameras are unobtrusive, quiet, durable, easy to carry. But it's not just about the camera. It's the lenses. Leica lenses are the best and the best way to use them is on a Leica camera. I'm hoping the M9 will be the digital camera that I've been waiting for since I switched to digital from my film Leicas.

"P.S. I can focus my Leicas faster than I can my Canon 5DII or 1D Mark II.  :-)"

Featured Comment by Matt Needham: "I can't say whether a Leica will or won't influence anyone's photograph-creating ability, but I know one thing for sure: never tell the guy holding the $7,000 camera that the gear doesn't matter. ;)"

Featured Comment by David S.: "I find it interesting that there's all this focus on the M9. The far-more-important camera in Leica's line is the S2, because it represents a larger-than-'full-frame' sensor in what is essentially an SLR body. What is now a $20,000 camera for professionals and the superrich will be the standard SLR five years from now. Why is a 'full-frame' Leica important? What makes a sensor 'full-frame'? Because it roughly approximates the size of a piece of 35mm film that was itself considered small when it was introduced? Today's full-frame is tomorrow's 'small.' Sensors will keep getting larger, better, more efficient, and cheaper. High-ISO performance will continue to improve, until today's ultrafast and ultra-expensive lenses become meaningless. Today's $10,000 Noctilux will represent a very poor investment, because an ƒ/4 lens will be able to see in the dark just as easily. Something to keep in mind for those considering the M9."

Featured Comment by ronin: "Leicas are great and I've owned several Ms, but a lot of the supposed appeal is really a holdover list from years past.

"'Unobtrusive?' Probably a holdover from Cartier-Bresson in the '30s; 35mm cameras were new then, and replaced larger two-handed cameras that were held at waist-level. People did not expect to be photographed at eye-level with 35mm cameras.

"That would be like saying that 10 years ago people didn't expect to be photographed with cameras held at arm's length, but today it is the norm.

"In fact, read the literature of the '30s and '40s, and they referred to 35mm cameras generically as 'miniature cameras.' If eye-level 35mm SLRs were available in the 30s they would have been just as 'unobtrusive.'

"And Leica Ms are not particularly small or light. The Pentax ME, Nikon EM, Olympus OM1 were very near the same size and weight (give rangefinders props for small lenses,however).

"The Leica M is not particularly 'silent.' Its focal plane shutter is about the same loudness level of any 35mm focal plane shutter, although of course it benefits from the lack of a flipping mirror. But any of the hoards of lens-shutter compact 35mm rangefinders of the '60s could quietize rings around the Leica M.

"While we may romanticize the Leica, there were many makers of rangefinder 35s into the '50s, when the market collapsed. The market collapsed because people realized they could make better, easier, quicker pictures with SLRs.

"Of course, we (especially me) are superior to those simple masses, and realize they are deluded. And I am glad there is still a Leica to put out their wonderful archaic masterpieces."

9/11

Larry Davidson

When you get a moment, take a look at this simple but moving slide show, created by a son for a father whose life was cut short: "Artifacts," by Marc Davidson, from Burn Magazine. The photographic content of one life's detritus is nothing unusual or uncharacteristic of a man of his age and era, but it's poignant nonetheless.

When our father died in the Twin Towers attack on 9/11, my brother and I were left with the task of entering his apartment for the first time. Thinking practically, we were looking for things that would help us tie up all the loose ends of his life: a will, phone numbers, bank stuff, insurance stuff. We found much more. We found artifacts which showed us parts of our father we’d never seen before.

The inspiration for Artifacts came from a conversation I had with Bob Black while looking at my father’s ID card recovered from Ground Zero. We started talking about the powerful relationships between photographs and identity....

Mike
(Thanks to Ben Ng and Bob Black)

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Leica M9 Links

Commercial links
A few commercial links first, in case you are intending to pre-order three M9s (two for yourself and one for your spouse) and you want to shoot us a little lucre too! Woot-woot.

 

B&H Photo and Amazon.co.uk are not taking pre-orders yet, so these links are limited to Amazon.com.

Leica M9 black from Amazon.com
Leica M9 steel gray from Amazon.com

Published reviews so far
Links limited to sites and writers who have evidently seen, handled, and shot with the camera. One nice side effect of the camera's simplicity is that these "first looks" are mostly mercifully brief (with the exception of Sean Reid's).

• Michael Reichmann's Leica M9 Review on The Luminous-Landscape. Sample: "At about $6,000 the now discontinued M8.2 seemed very expensive. But, because the M9 is a higher resolution full frame camera, at about $7,000 it no longer is priced that far out of line with other top-of-the-line full-frame 35mm cameras such as the Nikon D3x at $8,000 and the Canon 1Ds MKIII at $6,500. One can argue that one gets 'more' camera for the money with these Nikon and Canon models, but does one get a 'better' camera or 'better' image quality? That's a question that only each photographer can decide based on his or her own needs and experience."

Michael's Leica S2 review will be posted on L-L tomorrow.

• Phil Askey''s Leica M9 and Hands-On Preview on DPReview. Sample: "Full disclosure—personal bias: Before the M8 review I had no experience of rangefinder photography, something I considered relegated to history. During the review process (and thanks to input from those who had used rangefinders before) I gradually began to ‘get’ the advantages, being better ‘connected’ to the subject thanks to the huge bright viewfinder, and being forced to focus manually, always select the aperture, and think more about the shot. Not to mention in the case of the M8, the look from those gorgeous prime lenses (amazingly sharp at the point of focus fading smoothly to silky bokeh). Hence not long after posting my review I bought an M8 for myself (along with a bunch of lenses), and ever since (and unconsciously) all of my personal favorite photographs have come from the M8."

Full props to Askey for being up-front with this, by the way. A mark of a mature reviewer, in my opinion. The audience needs to know where you stand in order to judge how you view things.

• Sean Reid's Leica M9: Part One on Reid Reviews. (Note that Reid Reviews is a pay site, so the review won't be available to you unless you already subscribe or are willing to start.) The longest of the initial reviews—Sean does go on (like I should talk)—but also has the best sample pictures and several comprehensive tests of things such as IR sensitivity the other reviewers only mention in passing or else put off for the future. Features a short section by Yale's Tod Papageorge at the end.

Sample: "...A camera exists to make photographs, and the most consistently available way of making strong and, possibly, remarkable photographs (at least for those interested in drawing a possible poetry out of the rush and pleasures of our daily lives) is with a Leica—which, as of today, effectively means the M9." (Tod Papageorge)

• Jono Slack's Leica M9 Words and Pictures. Starts off disclaiming that it's a review at all. Jono used an M9 disguised as an M8 all over Europe for a month prior to the launch, despite which, you might find his pictures quite uneven.

Sample: "I was in a shopping centre in Norwich, and a small but elegant elderly man came up to me and said 'I’ve never even held an M8, please could I?'—of course, I had to say yes, at which point he thrust out his wallet...'just in case I run off with it,' he said! It had a 35mm lens on. He held it to his eye, and immediately said 'but this seems to be full frame,' I had to tell him that it wasn’t, and he looked confused and a bit miffed. It turns out that he worked for many years taking measurably accurate large format shots of cathedrals and other public buildings marked up for stone masons to work from, so it was hardly surprising that he could recognise full frame when he saw it! At any rate, he fell in love with the camera, and said that he planned to buy one later in the year. If he ever reads this I’d like to send him my best wishes, and apologise for not telling him what he was holding on to!"

• Erwin Puts' Leica M9: the digital M7? Written with Erwin's usual deep insight into Leica history and the Leica line as a whole. Sample: "The M8 camera versions can be interpreted as a bridging act between the M7/MP and the future digital versions of the M line. In the evolution of the M line the M8 is a necessary step, and required for learning the engineering and software requirements for solid-state cameras. But as biology dictates the environment changes and then you have to adapt or die. Does this imply that the M8 buyer has been used as money and experience suppliers for the Leica R&D department. In a sense this question has to be answered affirmative, but we may with some justification also state that the Leica community is used to small evolutionary steps and is very quality conscious. In 2006 the M9 would be impossible to manufacture and to be honest I like the M8 sensor size as it forces me to be very critical about scene selection and composition."

• Focus Numerique's Leica M9: Catch in Hand. A hands-on in French, but with some illustrations including an ISO comparison.

None of the other usual suspects seem to have seen the camera yet, although I'm sure I'm missing a few who have.

A bit of an iconoclastic perspective from our friend John C. will be posted here tomorrow (...he mentions casually, twirling the ends of his Snidely Whiplash moustache and laughing his evil laugh...).

Mike

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Featured Comment by Andy: "Another review posted yesterday." [Note: The author of the linked review is a Leica dealer. Which doesn't make it uninteresting or not valid, but it's why I didn't post it with the journalistic reviews. —Ed.]

Featured Comment by Howard French: "What must said about this early group of 'reviews' is that the writers were all most assuredly very carefully selected by Leica, presumably on the assumption that they would write 'friendly' dispatches about the new camera. Leica will not have been disappointed by all of the present gushing, either.

"I do not say this out of churlishness. For better and worse, I am an M8 owner. I want very much for the M9 to be a success. I also, however, keenly remember how this murky business of what I'll call 'in-group' reviewers steered a lot of people badly wrong about the not-inexpensive M8.

"There were few if any adequate warnings and in most cases no warnings at all from this crowd about the very substantial shortcomings of the M8.

"When some of these very same reviewers were subsequently forced to acknowledge major issues, such as the handicapped IR design, requiring outboard filters for lenses, software issues, shutter noise, battery issues, frameline woes—and I could go on and on—they expended a great deal of energy on their sites and on other forums essentially making allowances for Leica and for the M8, judging that these problems were a small price to pay for this great new camera, with its great 'files quality.' Would that their readers have been placed in a position to make such judgments for themselves, fully armed with thorough and objective reviews prior to purchase. This should not be construed as an attack on Leica, on the M8 (or M9) or even on the reviewers, whom one deliberately leaves unnamed.

"It is, however, an attack on the troubling coziness that exists in this business that often passes off self-interested boosterism for journalism.

"As a start, one would like to see much greater disclosure about the relationships between these reviewers and their subjects, in this case, Leica."

Mike adds: I don't have much to add to what Howard has said, except to point out that a) I wrote a very skeptical review of the M8, and b) Leica didn't so much as email me a press release about any of the new products. Coincidence? Quite possibly....

By the way, Howard, whose work we have featured in the past, is a former Senior Editor of The New York Times and is now an Associate Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His weblog is here.

Featured Comment by Erwin Puts: "Howard French is indeed absolutely to the point with his comments. Truly independent reporting is a scarce element in the current internet information explosion.

"The M8 had and has its problems, but the current analysis is about the M9, where a number if problems (IR, frame lines, etc.) have been reduced or even eliminated. The M9 is a definite improvement in functionality and handling flexibility. As I received my M9 much later than the American/British delegation who were on that three-day visit, I had only limited time to assess the quality of the camera. As my report notes: the basic quality of the M8 and M9 sensors on axis is the same. I also note that the off-axis performance needs to be studied, and so do other characteristics of the sensor. A lab report is required; I will provide one in two weeks' time. In the short time I had, I can only reflect on the more philosophical aspects of the M9. That the IR problem is not fully resolved is no surprise to me, as several high-end DSLRs also exhibit this problem. I also have to note—and this is really an important issue—that is it quite easy nowadays to show defects of whatever order of magnitude without anyone posing the question of their relevance. In the old days of AgX photography, the same and even more severe problems went unnoticed, as you could not seen them in print.

"The main question now is: you can seen defects on the screen at 100% and higher magnifications, but do we really see this also in print? All testers I am aware of look at screen images, not print images. The focus on analysis of screen images at high magnification is not necessarily the best method of assessment of image qualites at the printing stage. Assuming that a print is the final stage of the photographic process! My experience shows that many defects visible on screen are not relevant when printing the image."

Canon S90 Sample Shots

Canon's Korean website has published some additional sample shots taken with the forthcoming S90 digicam. There's no direct link, but here are a couple of ISO 80 samples with corresponding details. At pixel-peeping magnifications the pictures do have that characteristic small-sensor "watercolor" look, but also show excellent detail, good corner performance, and virtually no purple fringing.

The S90, you'll remember, is Canon's answer to the popularity of the perpetually back-ordered LX3. It (the S90) has a lens that's ƒ/2 at the wide end, the same sensor as the G11, and simple and businesslike controls, including a new ring dial to which various functions can be assigned.

It ain't out just yet, but we think we approve.

Mike

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OT: On Sobriety

I mentioned a few days ago that I had a personal anniversary coming up today. September 10th is the date I got released from detox at Suburban Hospital in Maryland, and commenced a long journey of learning how to live.

When I was doing my "90 meetings in 90 days" in the (very rough) early going, I often went to the Westside Club meeting of AA in Georgetown. In those days, it was the meeting of choice for some of Washington's movers and shakers—Ted Kennedy came every now and then, and Jim Vance, anchorman of one of the local nightly news broadcasts, would show up on his blindingly chromed Harley dressed from head to foot in white fringed buckskin leathers. Those meetings could be crowded and loud. At one, a guy got up to speak who had been sober for 19 years. I had maybe eight or ten days at the time, and was really struggling with it, desperately, hour by hour—I remember sometimes having to go to three meetings in a day because I couldn't think of any other way to get through another six hour period. And I remember feeling completely, utterly incredulous at that guy's situation, for a whole jumbled mix of reasons—I couldn't believe anyone could do what I was doing for 19 years; I had no confidence at all that I wouldn't be dead by then; and I couldn't believe a guy who'd been sober for that long was still coming to meetings. That period of time just seemed so incomprehensibly immense—you might as well have told me I had to count all the grains of sand on a beach. I got so fixated on it that a few of the guys eventually had to sit me down and give me a good talking-to on the whole meaning of "one day at a time." "You worry about the next nineteen hours. That you can do."

That was true. The days do add up, though. Today, I've been clean and sober for 19 years. I'm still just a little bit incredulous at the whole preposterous idea—but here I am, alive, and still sober. And still going to meetings (whenever I get cocky, mainly).

Anyway, no need to comment on this. I don't need or want to start a discussion (and neither do you—go to your meeting to do your talking). I just wanted to give a word of encouragement to anyone who is struggling with staying clean or sober on this day, September 10th, 2009. I know you're out there. Solidarity, my brothers and sisters. Make it through today. It actually gets easier, little by little, one grain of sand at a time.

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Mike

The illustration shows "Temperance bearing an hourglass," a detail of a fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti at the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy.

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New Beginning for Hubble

Spectacular First Images from the Rejuvenated Hubble Space Telescope

September 9, 2009: Astronomers have declared NASA's Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory with the release of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland unveiled the images today at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

"This marks a new beginning for Hubble," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well equipped to last into the next decade."

 

Topping the list of new views are colorful, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula...

READ ON at Science@NASA

View the complete gallery at NASA.gov

Mike
(Thanks to Ken T.)

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Now this is an expensive camera upgrade!"

Leica's Back

Over the past handful of years we've reported that Leica has had its problems. Well, with a new team in place, a passel of smart new products, and (clearly) a dynamic intelligence behind its long-term strategic thinking, it's safe to say Leica's back.

In fact it may be in a better position now than it has been in twenty years. People forget that despite the strong brand identity of the M series legacy, the marque has been significantly at sea for a lot of years—rebranding this or that Japanese compact, struggling to bring out new but anachronistic products that turn out to be duds or dead-ends. Struggling with the great digital transition that killed Minolta, Konica, Contax, Bronica, Polaroid, and Rollei. 

Well, no more. That era appears to be over.

Leica AG President Rudi Spiller on the web podcast, which got underway at 9:15 in NYC

The big launch went well this morning. It was a few minutes late, but the technology worked. The presentation had some of the typical tiresomeness of its genre—the press function—but the execs and the celebrity presenter did a creditable job. Seal actually is a devoted Leica aficionado, too, for which I give Leica credit—his presence wasn't just ornamental.

Leica did a good job overall of leveraging this announcement for maximal coverage and buzz-generation. There's no question that interest over this launch was high and that lots of people got involved. Kudos to Leica for that, too.

More importantly, all three new products look well situated. I've written about my approval of the S System concept before, and the M9 seems like the full maturity of the digital M come round at last. (By the way, did you notice? There will be no "British Penalty" for the M9—at $6,995 and £4,850, according to dpreview, the US and UK prices are right in line with the exchange rate. Kudos again, Leica.)

The biggest surprise of this announcement week was the littlest camera—the $2,000 X1, due in early December. Perhaps predictably, I find myself drawn to it. It's a "right-sized" compact with what looks to be an intelligent layout. The mix of a 24mm (36mm-e) ƒ/2.8 lens and a 12-MP APS-C CMOS sensor seem "just right" in true Goldilocks fashion, and if the early reports of excellent speed and responsiveness turn out to be correct, the X1 just might turn out to be the best DMD yet, its lack of interchangeable lenses notwithstanding. (That choice makes sense in light of the M9, which is Leica's interchangeable lens offering.)

I like this view of the X1 the best. How nice to see such straightforward exposure controls, with P, A, S, and M so logically implemented. That alone makes me want to use this camera.

I won't keep you—I know you want to go off and read the reviews on the big camera-review sites. There will be M9, S2, and (I hope) X1 reviews and previews appearing all over the web all week long.

Leica's back. How about that?

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jean-Pierre Grüter: "I would like to contribute a technical dream which is certainly not only mine. When I saw that Leica is using an 18-MP Kodak sensor I thought that the high ISO performance will be a problem. And it looks like this is true. On the attached picture you see what probably many photographers wish. May be one should contribute the microlens shift of the Kodak sensor to the D3/D700 sensor and it would be a camera for which I would pay $6,000."

A Beef Pea

A brief plea to our readers who would comment: We very much appreciate hearing from you, but please read your comment over one time after you write it, to make sure it actually says what you think you wrote.

Thank you,

Signed,

The beleaguered Comment Triage Committee

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(P.S. I have to admit that I'm something of an aficionado of the finer examples of internet typos. Not just sloppiness, illiteracy, texting-speak (u r a mron 2), double double or extra words, but nice slips like this one, from a tennis site:

I would like to address the attention given to women’s verbalizations during their tennis matches by the commentators. There are several men players who also are noisy when playing their best competitive tennis. I can’t help thinking this is the one of the last bastions of discrimination against women in tennis to discuss this issue to such an extent and in particularly in relation to certain women players.

No one comments on the differences in the professional players’ tendencies to sweet. Perhaps vocalization should be seen as part of an individual’s make up and the problem that the viewer has with it is the personal problem of the viewer. Donna

Sweet? What?

It's possible that Donna couldn't have screwed up this comment more by getting any other single letter wrong. The principle there is, if you're going to make a typo, don't make it in the one word that makes your whole point make sense.

And this one, from a golf site:

I am sorry to be blunt, but I am so sick of the argument that Jack had greater competition than Tiger does currently. For anybody that believes that, you have an ignorant understanding of golf. Simple.

People compiled larger numbers of PGA Tour wins back then because there was far less parody in pro golf. Is that so difficult to understand?

Well, now that you mention it, that is rather difficult to understand....)

Mike

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Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "And the hardest thing to proofread (or poorfeed) is your own text, just written. The spillchucker only goes so far, and often misses the most egregious errors."

Featured Comment by Peter Robinson: "This post couldn't have come on a better (or worse) day for me as my wife today pointed out a typo on my Mother's gravestone. It's only taken six years for us to notice...."

Mike replies: Peter, that's really too bad. Although not something so personal, my prep school had a funding drive in which they allowed everyone to buy bricks for a new walk, engraved with the name and year (written: '75) of the donor. Each and every brick has the apostrophe in the year facing the wrong way, with the tail of the apostrophe facing the numeral, which is wrong, instead of facing away from it...I have no idea whether they realize the mistake. I haven't had the heart to point it out.