The Online Photographer

A Challenge for the Commentariat

I have a slightly-more-formal-than-usual challenge for those of you who comment: Do you have a favorite photographer whose work you look at on his or her website?

If you'd like to play, please limit your nominations to people who have their own discrete websites (no flickr, etc.), and please write at least a couple of lines to a paragraph about why you like them or what they mean to you. And play fair: please don't "game the system" by nominating yourself or getting a friend to nominate you.

I'll feature a few of the ones I don't know below, but go to the comments to see all those mentioned.

As Scott Adams would say: go!

Mike

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UPDATE: I have closed the comments to this post temporarily only because I am being inundated. I will work at moderating the comments already received and then I'll reopen the post for more. Please stay tuned! —Mike the Ed.

UPDATE #2: On second thought, I've decided to leave the comments closed, as there are more than enough leads here for people to investigate for now. However, we will do this again. Thanks to everybody who contributed, and, if you wanted to contribute but weren't able to, "hold that thought."  —Mike

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Beth Dow, Three Rocks, from "Fieldwork"

From Dalton: "Wow, this is a real challenge. I'm afraid I have to give you at least two: 1. Beth Dow: I have been following her work for a couple of years, it knocks my socks off. My favorite series is probably 'Fieldwork.' All of her work is printed in platinum by her husband, master printer Keith Taylor. 2. Daniel Shea: His photos from Baltimore and his 'Moving Mountains' series are both incredibly well done and very powerful."

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Sam Javanrouh, Scott's bike on a rainy day

From Wil Macaulay: "Gotta nominate Sam Javanrouh, at [daily dose of imagery]. He's got an eye for this city (Toronto) and a style which reflects what I'd like to be able to do."

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Jens Olof Lasthein, Transylvania, Romania, 2001, from "White Sea Black Sea—Pictures from the Borderland"

From EP: "I'd like to mention Jens Olof Lasthein, a photographer in Stockholm who travels a lot in the former east block. I especially like his exhibition 'Black Sea White Sea,' which also can be viewed on his website. Panoramic pictures with a lot of life."

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Ciro Totku, Namib, Sihanoukville, 2007

From Franz: "Two photographers whose sites I regularly visit for inspiration are Ciro Totku and Oleg Kasko. Ciro is an abstract photographer while Oleg is a master of the 6x6 format (well, for me anyway). With his astounding eye for finding art in the ordinary, Ciro inspires me to be more aware of everyday things. With Oleg, he's why I am saving up for a Hassy system. His 6x6 photos are dreamlike and mindblowing to say the least....

I have no relation whatsoever to either photographer; in fact they have no idea I even exist. I just find their work inspiring, that's all."

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John Wolf

From Markus Spring: "John Wolf for sure presents a body of work that deserves some closer looks. I enjoy very much the dry, restrained way he composes without sacrificing to simplification."

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Sergio Mottola, from Weddings —> Exhibition Two

From Jayson Merryfield: "I'll play. I follow only a few photographers, but the one I love the most is a young guy shooting people & weddings out of the Pacific Northwest—Sergio Mottola. Website. Blog."

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Daniel Peebles

From Bob: "The Chinese landscape photographer Lehping Zha has the ability to take my mind when I look at his site...and the English landscape photographer Charlie Waite is a constant joy....

"However, for pure crafted photography with minute attention and the ability to strum your feelings while admiring the texture, I must direct you to the staged situations of the American photographer Dan Peebles."

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Mark Tucker, Sienna with the Wizard Head

From Erlik: "A couple of people....

"One is Mark Tucker, particularly his landscapey photos. They should tame the automatic slideshow, though. :)

"And the other is...James Nachtwey. :))) The second photo in Romania, for instance, is one of the most powerful photos I've seen."

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Camille Seaman, from "Big Cloud"

From Josh Wilson: "Camille Seaman. I discovered her work through Photolucida's annual Critical Mass, which published her book The Last Iceberg. Her new project, 'Big Cloud,' is really appealing to me with its dramatic lighting and wide open spaces."

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Shinya Arimoto

From Floyd Takeuchi: "The Japanese photographer Shinya Arimoto. He reduces the image to its essential elements. Arimoto-san works mostly in black and white, but also ventures into color."

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Struan Gray, Raspberry

From Gavin McLelland: "I really like Struan Gray's work. I like the Northern feel. It reminds me of home."

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Magdalena Sole, CocaCola Prayer, Oaxaca, Mexico

From Edi Weitz: "I hope it's okay if I name two. The first one is Magdalena Sole. I like her work because (IMHO) she's one of the few color photographers who really use color and pay attention to it (as opposed to taking color pictures just because they can or because everybody else does). I think she has an Alex Webb-like sensibility for 'street photography' in color. The second one is Chiru Andreea. I don't understand the text on the website, I don't even know if the photographer is a man or a woman, but I like the creamy/dreamy black-and-white style. Attention: Americans might be offended by this website as there's some nudity there."

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David J. Nightingale

From James Whitaker: "Possibly the only photographer's site I visit (nearly) every day just for the pictures is David Nightingale. I'm not one for extravagant photshoppery/processing, but the treatment he puts on his pictures is both subtle and evocative (figure that one out). I enjoy his images and how he makes both the ordnary and the dramatic into great images."

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Alexandre Buisse, Hidden

From Dave Sailer: "For someone who was born in 1985 and didn't begin photographing until 2005, Alexandre Buisse has done a lot—more than I ever will, including being published in National Geographic France. Besides being a climber and general outdoorsperson, he's also chasing down a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science, And then the photography. One of my favorite recent ones (fresh daily) is 'Hidden.'"

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Dalton Rooney, Sicily, 2008

From Chap Lovejoy: "I really enjoy Dalton Rooney's work. His landscapes capture magic in the chaos of nature and give me inspiration to keep trying to find the same.

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From Calvin Amari: "I see that this was mentioned, but the archive section of Ralph Gibson's site (which, as luck would have it, appears to be down today) is really one of the most rewarding things on the interweb. It appears to contain all the images, in their original groupings and sequence, from Gibson's self-published monographs over the years beginning, as I recall, with The Somnambulist.

"Gibson, a sort of street-formalist, has always been sort of an enigma to me. His influences always seem palpably obvious, and those from whom he has managed to absorb so much are among my favorites. Despite the obvious influences, Gibson also manages to be his own singular artist. A glance through that archive reveals just how many iconic images he has produced.

"Similarly, I'm not sure Gibson's contribution to the art of the photo-book are conceptually unique, but I am confident that his monographs stand as pure and rigorous examples of that form. His editing and sequencing create tensions that generate, like sparks, idea after idea about visual information. And this is precisely the value of the archive section of his website. I'm not sure whether the ideas come through more clearly on the website or whether it is just a matter of convenience. (I don't own all Gibson's books and, even if I did, I'm not sure if I would ever pull them all off the shelf to page through them, one after another.) I've mentioned this quite often even to those who are not photogeeks: if you have an hour or so to surf the web, I personally don't know a more valuable way to spend it than to carefully peruse Gibson's archive. Best of all, the experience only improves with repetition."

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Damon Winter

From Ken Bennett: "That's easy, Damon Winter."

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Philip Bebbington, A Chair, Two Bowls, A Bottle & Red. Vrahassi, Crete

From Michael MacLean: "I regularly follow lots of great photoblogs and would highly recommend Xavier Rey Photoblog by Xavier Rey and Terrorkitten by Philip Bebbington."

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Rinko Kawauchi, Untitled (from the AILA series), 2003

From Ivan: "Rinko Kawauchi, whose latest work I saw at Photo Miami 09. She shoots mainly 6x6 and is popular in Japan, but her books are hard to come by in the U.S. (I believe you can order them online through Mountain Fold Gallery). Another is Christoph Maout, particularly his Homelux and Spring projects. One thing I like about both is that they're unsentimental. And I would love to know what Maout is doing when he creates his JPEGs for the web; they're utterly perfect."

Random Excellence: Jeffrey Ladd

Jeffrey Ladd, Mrkonic Grad, Bosnia 2001

The heck with 5B4.

Well, no, I don't mean that. I don't mean that at all. 5B4 is a valuable and unique site, one I visit often (even though I actually get to see for myself barely one out of every twenty of the books mentioned. It's a drawback).

The thing is, Jeff Ladd is also just one hell of a photographer. He's really terrific, I think. And why isn't this fact known?

Take a look at the little mini-set of twelve color pictures presented at the top of this page. That's just a great tight little set. Loose, elegiac, allegorical, elliptical, evocative, informed. Love 'em.

Just chucked up there like an afterthought. Surplus prints.

Jeff writes eloquently and extensively about premium monographs from major publishers of other photographers' work. So why is there not a premium monograph from a major publisher of Jeff's work? There ought to be. I'm just sayin'.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Guy Batey: "Great stuff. A fuller version of the series here.

Featured Comment by El Inglés: "Many thanks for introducing me to Jeffrey's work. As a result, I have just donated to secure one of his B&W proofs for my wall at home, notable in that it is the first print I have bought from another photographer."

Larry Sultan, California Photographer, Dies at 63

Larry Sultan. Photo by Kelly Sultan

By Randy Kennedy, The New York Times

Larry Sultan, a highly influential California photographer whose 1977 collaboration, Evidence—a book made up solely of pictures culled from vast industrial and government archives—became a watershed in the history of art photography, died on Sunday at his home in Greenbrae, Calif. He was 63.

The cause was cancer, said his wife, Katherine, who is known as Kelly.

In the mid 1970s, using a grant and a letter of introduction from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mr. Sultan and Mike Mandel, who had met as students at the San Francisco Art Institute, somehow managed to persuade several large companies, agencies and research institutions like the Bechtel Corporation, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the San Jose Police Department and the United States Department of the Interior to let them rummage through their documentary photo files....

READ ON at nytimes.com

Mike
(Thanks to Mitch Cohen)

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Featured Comment by Rodger Kingston: "I am sorry to hear that Larry Sultan has died. His amazing book, Evidence, was great validation of my then-newborn decision to build a vernacular photographic collection. I suspect that it had a seminal effect on many others as well, and contributed significantly to the acceptance of vernacular images into the mainstream today."

Featured Comment by Adam Richardson: "I lucked out as the one and only photography class I took was while at California College of Arts and Crafts, right after Larry arrived. I learned things in that class with him that I still use every time I shoot. Probably the best thing he had us do was shoot most of the semester with only a 50mm lens. It taught us how to see photographically, and to this day I mostly shoot with primes rather than zooms, simply because of the ability that I learned in that class to pre-frame, and move me rather than the lens elements to get the framing I want. He also brought in some large scale color prints from his project about his parents, comparing ones that he'd done, and ones that he'd hired a professional printer to do after he was dissatisfied with his own printing, but couldn't figure out how to fix it. Very instructive as to the craft. Sad to hear about his passing."

Featured Comment by Richard Alan Fox: "I am so sorry to hear of Larry's death, at any age it is too young.

"In conversation on Saturday in New York City, I told a story of my first photography teacher at the University Extension in San Francisco. How he gave me my first photo show, also at that facility, and that it was the first college level class that he taught as well.

"I remember him as so young and fresh, and to catch a glimpse of the young man in maturity riding the rails as I opened the New York Times on my commuter bus brought tears to my eyes.

"Thirty five years gone so quickly. Thank you Larry for giving me a start."

Featured Comment by David Seelig: "Larry was my teacher at Lone Mt. College for a year. He had great energy and pushed us to see. Though I only saw him a few times since the '70s, he was a good influence on me. I was a difficult kid and he gave me his all and was a very good teacher. My condolences to his family for their huge loss."

I Hate Shopping!

By Ctein

Paula and I are going to have to buy a new car next year. My VW bus and her Toyota Corolla are nearing the ends of their lives. I don't drive a lot—less than 1500 miles a year; she, in turn, commutes 300 miles a week. We really need about 1.1 cars instead of two cars, but we do need that extra 0.1. And one of them needs to be really trustworthy. So one of the current cars needs to get replaced.

We went to the big West Coast auto show. I realized two things about myself. The first is that I truly couldn't care less about cars; they don't do anything for me. No aesthetic/emotional/visceral reaction whatsoever. I hadn't actually realize that before, but having all this supposedly delectable fruit dangled in front of me and not reacting to it made it pretty obvious. With very rare exceptions, it doesn't matter if it's standard or tricked out, sport or a sedan, $15,000 or $100,000. I truly don't care! It's like buying a nice hammer, to me. Does it work the way I want? That's it!

The second thing is that I hate shopping! Okay, that's not correct. I love getting cool stuff. What I hate is comparison shopping. Poring over specifications and alternatives and deciding just what the best thing to buy is. I know some people get off on that; me, I really don't like it. Gives me a headache. I just want to hand over the money for a toy and be done with it.

I probably should have known this pattern about myself years ago, but I'd not observed it cleanly. This is the first time I've gone looking for a new (or semi-new) car. Different enough in the specifics for me to see that pattern was the same, that being what this column's about. (It's not actually about cars. Oh, you figured that out, didn't you?)

Paula and I have several sanity-preserving strategies. We figure out exactly what we need (not what we want, what we need), and we make sure that list is a short one. Primarily it's good mileage, the gooder the better. Minimum capacity: Two adults with a full complement of luggage (what the Toyota was good for). We also have a secondary need to be able to carry large stuff, although that's not invoked frequently (what the VW bus was good for). We set firm price limits. If we can do much better than that, that's great! But we don't go higher than the limit without a very good reason (it's firm, not totally unyielding).

With that information in hand, we could go shopping. We did the car show in less than three hours and came out with a list of seven or eight candidates that filled various combinations of the aforementioned needs. As soon as we reached the point that we felt like we were nitpicking or going in circles, we left. It's way too easy to overthink this stuff.

The last sanity-preserving strategy is to realize there is no perfect toy. As I said, we can't quite make do with one car, (although it's close), so eventually we will be buying a secondary vehicle. Just not for a couple of more years. Be that as it may, all the vehicles we looked at were deficient in some way or another. So long as they didn't completely fail our "need" list, they didn't get rejected. Later we'll do test drives and probably winnow it down to two or three choices. Then we'll just make a decision. No buyer's remorse, no waffling, because we know we've already thought it through carefully. Trying to split hairs just causes ulcers and aggravation.

I still hate shopping. At least I know how to keep it from making me totally crazy or fall into purchase-dither deadlock.

That's it for this time.

If there's anyone who still don't see how this is on-topic, just pull out the word "car" and replace it with "camera" and substitute camera-specific features for car-specific ones. Works just as well. In fact, this is how I successfully shop for cameras.

Ctein

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Featured Comment by Photogorilla: "I was just at the dealership yesterday. Thanks for helping me keep perspective!"

Featured Comment by Paul: "Luckily the car that fulfills the needs of most of us just came out. You can watch a little demonstration here."

Mike adds: Funny. Excruciating, but funny.

Open Mike: The Superefficiency House

I don't hate shopping. I hate buying.

It's fun to shop—fun to have something to obsess over, something to anticipate, something to aspire to. It's fun deciding what defines me—what suits my tastes and requirements. Fun defining those requirements. Fun justifying my choices—if only to myself. Conversely, there is something hollow about not having anything to want. Frequently, for me, actually buying something is...a bit of a letdown.

I'm going to admit something very embarrassing here. A while back, there was something I really wanted. I loved to pore over the catalog, read reviews, look at pictures. Then I bought the item. After I bought it, I caught myself settling down in the...well, in the reading room, preparing to pore over the familiar item in the catalog yet again. 

You got that? I was still "shopping" for something I already owned. Sheesh!

I think one of the reasons actually buying something can be a letdown is that we don't actually "own" a lot of the things we buy. I've truly owned a number of my cameras over the years, but there have also been cameras I bought that didn't "take." I just possessed them for a while. I've actually purchased cameras I didn't take a single picture with. Those cameras might have been my property for a while, but they weren't really mine. Not in any significant sense.

There are all sorts of problems with actually buying things. One is that it closes down the possibility of buying something else ("opportunity cost," in econ-speak). Some people like coming to a final decision; not me. I hate giving up possibilities. Another is that there's shopping, and there's shopping—by which I mean, there's shopping for the hypothetical Mike, who has enough money to buy what he wants and a place to put it—and a whole lifestyle to match the item in question—and then there's shopping for the real Mike, who has to be sensible and frugal and for whom every actual choice is a compromise, and whose lifestyle just doesn't suit objects that are too, er, elegant, or luxurious. A final problem is the frustration of buying something that doesn't live up to its promise—that is, making the wrong choice, despite all the effort. 

I make up for these downsides, in part, by shopping for things I'm never going to actually buy.

Phantom rides
Unlike Ctein, I do like cars. And over the decades, I've successfully shopped for dozens of cars. I just never bought any of them, is all. I'm great at shopping for them. I choose cars that are not impractical and not inappropriate (even in my daydreams I do not buy supercars—I dislike ostentation, actual or fanciful). I've done this many times over the years. I've owned some great cars, in my dreams.

Another thing I like to shop for is houses. I enjoy imagining the house I'd build, if I could build a house. I'm never going to. But I enjoy looking at floor plans, investigating building methods, collecting ideas (if I had another life to live, I'd be a builder of efficient but elegant lowish-income housing, I think).

I have strong opinions about imaginary houses. My house, were I to build one, would be engineered—not designed, engineered—to be as efficient as possible. What does that mean? I mean it would be as maintenance-free as possible, and cost as little to run as possible. I've got lots of ideas along these lines.

I've also discovered (this probably won't surprise you, given my opinions about cameras) that I'm against almost every current fashion.

For instance, I think the houses we build today are way too big. I like small houses. Less to heat, less costly to fill with furniture. More efficient all around. Studies have shown that most people do most of their living in just 640 square feet, regardless of how big their houses are.

Because I like small houses, I hate two-story rooms, which are all the rage right now—every new house has to have "open to below" on the second floor plan. They're a waste of space in my opinion. With rare exceptions, I also dislike their cavernous, barn-like feel. I have no idea why these so-called "cathedral ceilings" are popular. Pure fashion.

I don't like lots of windows. (An excess of window area has been reflexively popular for a long time now.) Why, you might ask, if I like light, would I not like windows? Because I'm a book collector and and photographer—I need interior wall space! Walls to put bookshelves against, and walls to display art on. The more walls, the better. Some well-placed windows are essential, but needless windows are complications—they cost lost heat, require expensive window treatments, and ruin the utility of interior walls. In my current (very small) house I have at least two windows I'd get rid of if I could.

I also dislike open-plan houses. Partly for the wall-space reason, partly for reasons of privacy and purposing: separate rooms are more luxurious in my book. Big rooms are no better than small ones—they just contain more wasted space, and are draftier, harder to heat, and harder to furnish. People have this fantasy that big "open plan" rooms equates to family togetherness—nonsense. Overly large rooms just makes it harder for different people to do different things without bothering each other, is all.

Finally, I detest huge bathrooms. A bathroom is not a place where I want to go hang out. A bathroom is a utility room. No reason for them to be tiny, but 8x10' is overkill, and the current fashion for bathrooms the size of living rooms is absurd. 

Anyway, it's probably a good thing I'm not going to build a house—it would be so unfashionable that it would be hard to resell!

I don't spend a lot of time doing this. But it's been a source of recreation over the years. It's just shopping, really. But shopping the way it ought to be done—for fun. Without all the hassle and responsibility of actually buying.

Mike

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Featured Comment by nic: "I'll never forget one of my grandfather's favorite sayings...'Wantin' is better than gettin'."

Featured Comment by Chuck Albertson: "I wish I had an 8x10' bathroom. I could convert it to a darkroom."

A Small Controversy

A small controversy concerning a great photographer who apparently (if the stories are to be believed) quite often rubs people the wrong way.

I liked the comment by "John"—"It’s clear to me that unpaid internships function as affirmative action programs for the already privileged." Seems to me the decent thing to do would be to make sure your unpaid interns at least get some face time and a personal recommendation out of the gig. Especially if you're going to work 'em hard. Maybe that's just me.

Reminds me of this piece, from just about a year ago now. I'm not saying it pertains. I'm not saying it doesn't.

Mike
(Thanks to Stan Banos)

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Featured Comment by John Camp: "I think Nachtwey is a great photographer, maybe the best there is today. He might be a jerk, but maybe not—you really can't tell from this ad, because you don't know who wrote it, or exactly what their motives were. I can think of a lot of reasons the ad would have been written this way, that have nothing to do with Nachtwey's personality.

"In my experience, both from reading and from personal contact, there's a 'jerk' aspect to almost every famous artist, because famous artists are people who get their way. That's why they're famous: they actually do stuff, instead of sitting around complaining about why they couldn't do it. There's a certain necessary hardness of personality in people who insist on doing things.

"What, basically, is the difference between an unpaid internship with somebody like Nachtwey and going to college, except that you don't pay tuition? Does anybody think you'd learn more in college? Frankly, if I were a young photographer or post-processing specialist, I'd give my left nut for this internship, and I'd find a way to get it. Why would I care if Nachtwey is a jerk? The internship is about me, not about him.

"I don't know. This is starting to sound too defensive—by me, of Nachtwey, because I think his work is so good. But I really think these attacks on him are absurd. I can pretty much guarantee that the whiners on the other blog won't make it as photographers, because they are practicing what they do best—whining. Potentially good photographers would shrug and get on with it."

Mike replies: If whining and revenge actually helped anybody improve their own work or their standing, then there would be lots of people climbing that ladder. I have an "enemy" I made (inadvertently) through TOP. I have a policy that I don't allow people to propose themselves for my "Random Excellence" feature, for the good reason that too many people would propose themselves if word got around that I responded to that. Most people can take this in stride. So this one guy proposed himself, and I didn't feature his work. That apparently so grievously wounded his ego that he has engaged in an extended campaign to insult me in return—he has really worked very hard at it, for a long time (well over a year now).

After the most recent incident, I actually felt sorry for the guy. What I thought was, it's too bad for him that running me down doesn't help make him any better. He's just chosen a bad strategy, is all—a bad strategy for sticking up for himself and his work—and he doesn't seem to know it; he's expended a lot of time and energy on a project that doesn't benefit him even if it succeeds. Because no matter how well or often he insults me, he still sucks. Kinda sad for him, eh?

Featured Comment by Ken N: "Would I sign on as in intern under that criteria? Before doing so, I'd want to see a track record of all previous interns to see how successful they became as a result of the experience.

"I worked the recording industry for a number of years and internships are the norm there. Everybody starts out running the coffee pot and picking up the pizza. But fortunately, even the lowest of the low get opportunities to move up and establish relationships with the clients. If you aren't lazy or a jerk, you can usually move up the food chain pretty quickly.

"I have no sense that the same system would work for this particular photographic internship. This guy just comes across as a user.

"What I want to know is what labor and tax laws are being violated? Technically, the intern may be a contractor with an IRS-recognized 'day rate.' The 'employer' could possibly be on the hook for paying taxes on this unearned income.

"Can O' Worms?

Mike replies: I wish I'd taken your advice. The one assisting experience I had—working for a high-profile studio advertising photographer—was the result of sending the guy a letter, cold. I had no experience as an assistant, so I was surprised that this resulted in my getting hired full-time. I later learned why—the guy treated his assistants horribly, and none of the established assistants in the city would work for him!

Much later, I went to a party where a number of local assistants were also in attendance, and a number of them were wearing T-shirts that said, "I SURVIVED ------- --------" (the pro's name, which I'm not going to repeat). Turns out one assistant who'd been regularly ripped to shreds had made one for himself, and other assistants had requested their own, so he made a bunch of them and passed them out.

(I don't want to mention his name because he wasn't that bad a guy, he just had the unfortunate habit of venting his own stress during shoots by screaming at his assistants—for anything, or for nothing. It actually cost him business, too, because some art directors were made very uncomfortable by it and didn't like to work with him. I talked to one AD who mentioned that he never took clients to shoots at his studio.)

But even so, it was a great learning experience for me. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm glad I did it once.

Featured Comment by Brian White: "While I accept many of John Camp's points about the quality of Natchwey's work and the jealous complainers, I feel there is more here at stake. Mr. Natchwey has placed himself in a position of being more than just a talented artist. He has taken a social/political stand and has attained a level of influence as a result. I feel that this ad compromises him in my eyes. I don't expect anyone to agree with me. But I hold someone in this kind of role to a higher standard. You should live what you preach. If he was a fine art photographer, or a sports photographer, for example, I believe I would see this differently."

Featured Comment by Erlik: "I'd be more sympathetic with JN Studio if it wasn't for the requirements. 'Advanced Photoshop skills' with layers and masks. Right. Like the skills grow on trees. 'An understanding of film scanning preferably on Imacon scanners.' Right. Like people working on $10K-20K film scanners grow on trees. 'Daily workflow can range from assisting with printing/toning to studio managerial tasks.' Right. Managerial tasks. From an intern.

"This reminds me of a personal experience a couple of years ago. A girl was looking for a job and came to me for advice. There was this position with an NGO, had the glorious-sounding title of executive secretary. It would have included the regular secretary stuff. And working the accounts. And organising their projects. And translating. And working on building their website. And so on and so forth, I forgot all the details. AND all of that for about $400 per month.

"I told her not to drop it, but to kick it as far away as she could. She got in a huff cause, she said, not everybody can be picky about the jobs they take particularly if they don't have the experience.

"Fine, if you want to be exploited, be exploited. But at least find someone who will pay you enough money for that. Cause the only experience you'll get from a job like that is the experience of trying to soothe your nerves.

"JN Studio simply asks way, way, way...way too much for a non-paying intern job."

Mike adds: It's true what you say: traditional intern jobs are for people with no experience (I had none, when I started assisting), and certainly managing would never be one of the requirements to get the position!

On the other hand we might also need to consider the non-remunerative remuneration, if you will...because for someone, perhaps a resumé item from JN Studio with all of those tasks listed on it would be, as they say, priceless.

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "For what it's worth, in NYC there are hundreds if not thousands of public high school students who meet all those qualifications, not to mention all the students in art schools and college programs. I know some middle schoolers who are qualified. It almost sounds like the course description or even the prerequisites for a mid-level class. By New York standards, advertising a position like this is much more democratic than just using word of mouth among friends of friends or restricting applicants to a particular school's program. Remember, there are thousands of people who pay tuition for a pale approximation of this, probably within walking distance of his studio."

Featured Comment by swr: "Back in the 1990s, the magazine The Baffler ran a story on how unpaid internships are precisely what 'John' says they are, affirmative action for the rich. It's worth looking up and reading.

"The comparisons between the financial industry and the 'glamor industry' are illuminating and deceptive. The important thing isn't the money. It's the way both work as social filters to keep out the working class.

"To take Nachtway's job, you have to be able to support yourself in NYC without pay.

"You could live in NYC on the pay you get in a financial industry internship, but the financial industry won't hire you as an intern unless you've been to the 'right' college, and that means you've already shown your parents were able to support you for four years for $30,000 or $35,000 a year.

"But at least in the financial industry, you get a future. There are always going to be banks.

"If you work for Nachtway, you're working for free to get 'experience' in an industry that's dying. Print publications are closing down. Video and blogs are more important than still photography. Journalism is in transition.

"By far the most important photojournalism in the 2000s was the Abu Ghraib torture photographs. And they were done by a few working class soldiers with cell phones. No Nachtways and no Sarah Lawrence or Rhode Island School of Design grads in sight.

Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Jim can afford to pay minimum wage...and he should.

"Now on to 'John's' greater point: 'unpaid internships are affirmative action for the already privileged.' Exactly! Those of us who have been in the field for a long time can cite a number of examples of 'trust-fund babies,' photographers for whom photography need not be a paying career and can therefore afford to indulge their taste for the exotic world.

"Perhaps some of these younger trust-fund babies will apply for Nachtwey's internship. The young assistant who can afford to work for Nachtwey for free will get a great boost into the greater world of photography. If they can afford the luxury it will be part of their ticket into the inner sanctums of photojournalism. Some of the young assistants who apply for this job will probably save and scrape in order to take the unpaid position. But I suspect others will have the bill paid for them by wealthy parents anxious that their children have every opportunity to follow their dreams.

"But as 'John' implied, the poor kid with talent may not get to have dreams. For them 'dreams' are unaffordable luxuries."

Featured Comment by JonK: "Having known interns who have worked for Nachtwey, and having met him on several occasions in various hot spots, I think there are a few different sides to him. Both interns I'm familiar with worked with him for a period of time, then quit/were fired after his unreasonable demands about print quality, etc. And I mean unreasonable in the sense of unattainable results that he was looking for from a 35mm negative.

"One can look at "War Photographer" to see how one darkroom tech fared with him.

"On the other hand, there is not a more generous photographer in the field. He is more than willing to share information, food, or even just a ride. He has repeatedly put his own life on the line for other photographers and he is often there with a word of encouragement in some of the world's darkest places.

"How these two sides of him line up is for someone else to figure out, but I think there is some truth somewhere in the middle."

Featured Comment by Enrique: "I've occasionally worked for Jim. The hourly rate he paid me was about what I got working at my University Library 20 years ago. Although he's never been anything but professional and courteous to me, I do get the feeling he thinks I charge too much. I consider it karmic balance for for the time I've spent at ad agencies. His regular staff—young people dedicated to photojournalism—were paid about the same.

"The skills level he asks for is not unusual in NYC. I could throw a rock down the street and hit five guys who are 'Photoshop experts.' I may even have taught some of them. Film scanning is getting to be a lost art, but you don't need to know every trick in the book, just learn to scan Jim's film Jim's way. After all, it's not a wet-mount drum scanner, just an Imacon.

"Which should give people a hint: Hasselblad bought Imacon in 2004. The scanner is older than that. Nearly all the equipment was provided by sponsorship. My memory of Jim's studio is of a poorly heated flat filled with hard-working people, a tiny fridge, and a microwave. His ad should require applicants to have wool caps and fingerless gloves too. The bathroom was in the basement of the building next door. There just isn't a lot of spare money in Jim's work; it all goes into the assignment.

"Consider the cost of covering a global story like this.

"Jim shoots stories that have to be told because they are so often ignored.

"Have you seen many ads featuring Jim's work? Salgado has Illy coffee, McCurry is seen in Dow Chemical. Both have beautiful books and postcards and posters for sale. Any of you bought Deeds of War or Inferno for your loved ones this Christmas?

"Since he was injured in Iraq, he's moved away from front-line coverage to places where he won't have to run from flying bullets. Nice, comfy, easy gigs like African AIDS hospices, Siberian prisons, amputee wards in Kabul. Not to mention amputee wars at US Veterans hospitals.

"His ad for unpaid interns doesn't outrage me. It fill me with pity."

Just Right: The Voigtlander Ultron 40mm f/2 SL II Aspherical in Canon EF Mount

Voigtländer 40mm SL next to an EF 50mm ƒ/1.4. Note absence of aperture ring.

By James Leynse

The Voigtländer Ultron 40mm ƒ/2 SL II Aspherical (a long name for a small lens) is, to quote Mike quoting Sally Mann, "just about right." While Mike and Sally were referring in general to the 40mm focal length, the quote applies equally well to this little gem of a lens.

I recently acquired the newly released Ultron to use on my Canon 5D Mark II. The lens will work equally well on a cropped sensor camera, but it is particularly well suited to full frame. The lens is part of Voigtländer’s SLII series of lenses for Nikon, Pentax, and now Canon cameras. They come in three flavors: 20mm ƒ/3.5, 58mm ƒ/1.4, and 40mm ƒ/2. The 40 is what’s called a "pancake" (a lens type that's been missing from Canon’s lineup) as it's only about an inch long. It ships with a cute, stubby lens shade to which an included close-up filter can be attached. With filter on, the lens can focus down to less than 10 inches (.25m). The lens is chipped and couples seamlessly with Canon’s metering system but—and I will talk about this more in a moment—it's a manual focus lens.

Like many who read this site, I have long sought the elusive DMD. I‘ve given up on most point-and-shoots for anything other than party snaps and, while the new Micro 4/3 cameras seem promising, I’m not really looking to buy into a new system. What I really want is something I can slip into my bag with the cameras I'm already carrying.

The little Ultron meets this need nicely. The lens mounted on the 5D Mark II takes up only a little more room than the camera body alone. Hanging around my neck, the combination doesn’t seem much heavier or bulkier than my old Leica M6. Construction is solid, with none of the play found on many autofocus lenses. The rubberized focusing ring turns smoothly and precisely with nice "focus snap" when looking through the finder. Since the aperture on my Ultron is controlled electronically via the camera, my lens lacks the physical aperture ring found on the Nikon and Pentax versions.

Having cut my teeth as a photographer on a mechanical Nikon FM2, returning to a manual focus lens seems like coming home. I had forgotten the simple joy of watching the image come into focus in the finder. For some, learning how to quickly and accurately manually focus with the Ultron will take a little time. While with practice this does become easier, take it from someone who spent countless teenage hours perfecting his focusing on a bedroom wall; you will never best the speed and accuracy of a modern "USM" or "Silent Wave" lens.

However, speed isn’t really what the Ultron is all about. For my needs, manually focusing this lens is fast enough. If I really need to shoot fast, I can always use the nicely engraved depth-of-field scale to zone focus. As they used to say: "ƒ/8 and be there" is good enough.

To improve focus accuracy, I switched to Canon’s EG-S screen in my camera. As many of you might already know, camera manufacturers assume that most people only use autofocus. They put focusing screens into their DSLRs that favor finder brightness over finder "snap." Using a screen like the EG-S returns things to the old state of affairs but with the caveat that, when using lenses with maximum apertures slower than ƒ/4, the camera’s finder goes noticeably dark. This only effects the image you are seeing through the lens and not how the final picture looks, but it is something to be aware of before running out and purchasing the new screen.

Optically, there is very little to complain about with the Ultron. I am not really one for "pixel peeping." I have seen many great pictures taken with mediocre lenses and the inverse as well. That being said, I find this lens to be very sharp, with good contrast and pleasing bokeh. It suffers from slight corner softness wide open. It has mild barrel distortion (well controlled for this type of lens) easily fixed in Photoshop or some other program. To my eyes, it has a nice way of "drawing" and has good microcontrast.

Having now used a 40mm for the first time, I have to agree with Mike and Sally that this focal length does seem about right. It hits the sweet spot (on a full frame camera) between 35mm and 50mm. In the past, I have often gone back and forth between which of those I prefer as my walk around lens: 35mm is too wide to get an undistorted head shot, but a 50mm can be too tight for types of shooting where you want to emphasize more than one element. Forty millimeter seems like a good compromise: wider than a 50mm but not too distorted to get a flattering portrait. In other words…just right.

James

James Leynse is a professional photographer living and working in "the New York area." In other words…New Jersey.

His work can be seen on his website and his blog.

ADDENDUM: Wieland Willker has a more technical test of this lens here. —MJ

Random Excellence: Gianni Galassi

Electricity, Juan-les-Pins, 2008

Gianni Galassi works in a very consistent style, using black shadows and intense colors in the square. It's a style very far from my own, but I enjoy his inventiveness within the strictures he's chosen. I particularly like the way small and more tonally conventional elements play off the graphic quality that dominates the shots, as in the picture above. (The tonal merger with our background color here isn't ideal, though. Sorry 'bout that.)

I'm enjoying his new blog, too.

Apartment Building, Antibes, 2008

Mike

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DxO News

DxOMark.com has added a number of new cameras to its DxOMark Sensor database. Newly added are: the Canon PowerShot G11 (ranking 78th, with a score of 46.6); Canon S90 (79th, 46.5) (the close rankings confirming the belief that these two cameras use the same sensor); Canon EOS 7D (31st, 64.9); Sony A500 (34th,. 64.4) and Sony A550 (27th, 65.8); Pentax K-7 (52nd, 61); Nikon D300s (19th, 69.8), and Nikon D3000 (47th, 62.5).

Somewhat surprisingly, nothing has yet knocked the Nikon D90 (15th, 72.6) off its pedestal as the top-ranked APS-C sensor digital camera (all the cameras above it are either full-frame or medium format). 

In other news, a few days ago DxO announced DxO Optics Pro v6.1 for Windows, which adds RAW support for the Canon 7D and G11 and the Nikon D3000. For this new release, several bugs were fixed and some improvements were made to the user interface based on customer feedback and suggestions. Fifty-six new DxO Optics Modules are now available to DxO Optics Pro users, covering the Canon 7D, XTi, XSi, and T1i; Nikon D3, D300, D300s, D40x, and D3000; Olympus E-30, E-420, E-510, and E-620; and Sony A300, A850, and A900.

DxO Optics Pro 6 for Mac is expected in "early 2010." In the meantime, there's an intermediate release, v5.3.6, which is compatible with Snow Leopard.

Here's the DxO Image Science website.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Mark Probst: "I wouldn't take the DxOMark rankings too seriously. The DxOMark score is a composite of three sub-scores, only one of which (Low-Light ISO) is in any way indicative of performance at higher sensitivities.

"As an example, I mostly shoot black and white, rarely below ISO 400, but quite often up to 3200. Given that, I don't really care about the DxO dynamic range number, because it gives the dynamic range at whichever sensitivity it is maximized at, which is usually the lowest one. The Panasonic LX-3, for example, has a dynamic range number of 10.8, while the Canon 5D has 11.1. That would suggest that in terms of dynamic range their performance is comparable. The graphs however show that at ISO 400 the LX-3 is down to 8, while the 5D has barely fallen below 11, and the difference grows even more at higher ISOs.

"The third sub-score, Color Depth, is also mostly irrelevant to me, because I shoot black and white, but even if I shot color, it would only be meaningful if I shot at low sensitivities.

"So, don't look at the DxOMark score. If you must compare cameras via DxO, know what you need and look at the graphs! And don't forget to switch from 'Screen' to 'Print' mode!"

Mike replies: It's true—single-index scores, as I've ranted in the past, are of—ahem—limited usefulness. It's always better to dig deeper in the data and analyze according to your specific personal needs.

Olympus E-P1 Comments, Part III: Lost Pictures

Mulberry Street at Prince Street

By Eamon Hickey

I'm sure this would be true for millions of photographers, but somebody who's good at information design could draw a nice diagram that plots the history of my photographic interests against the size of the camera I want to carry. When I was fascinated by wildlife, I was happy to lug 20 lbs. of gear hither and yon. I once spent several successive days making pre-dawn hikes to a gray fox den with a 7-lb. 500mm ƒ/4 lens and a ridiculous camouflage blind. I never got more than a fleeting glimpse of the furry demons, who clearly knew exactly where I was and—this could be my imagination—amused themselves with jokes about my chiropractic bills. After three or four days of this, I complained to my then-wife that shore birds were so much easier to photograph, at which she noted, "Hence the phrase is not 'smart as an egret'" without even looking up from her book.

Years later, sans sarcastic sidekick, I moved to New York City and became mostly interested in shooting the people and things I see as I make my way around the city. I've missed a lot of amazing photographs because I didn't have a camera with me. Two twenty-something furniture delivery muscle-heads, feet on the bumper of their van, hands on the pavement, doing incline push-ups in jammed mid-morning traffic on Broadway. Ten thousand skateboarders streaming, like a river made of hipster sneakers and wispy facial hair, the wrong way up 2nd Ave., protesting new regulations and freezing traffic and street life as far as the eye could see. A bushy-mustachioed man in his 60s in well-worn brown oxfords and a puffy down jacket with the hood drawn, looking for all the world like somebody's kindly grandpa, mesmerizing a 1 a.m. crowd with a spontaneous jig, danced to the wild drumming of a subway platform busker. I don't have those pictures. I got a life to lead and a job to do, and carrying an obtrusive SLR over my shoulder everywhere I go just doesn't happen.

So for me, the essential question about the E-P1 was: is it really more portable, in a meaningful way, than other high-quality, responsive digital cameras? Could I carry it easily—and forget about it when not in use—for hours, and then get the shot when I needed it?

My approach was to use it as if the answer were 'yes' and see how it worked. I used only the 17mm lens and simply slipped the camera in my coat pocket or messenger bag whenever I left my apartment. I tried to make it an integral part of my everyday life, like my cell phone.

Unsurprisingly, it's not quite as unobtrusive as a cell phone or iPod. It's not so portable that you would slip it into the inside pocket of your tuxedo on your way to the symphony or into your hip pocket while you get your nightclub boogie on. But it's unquestionably a big step closer to the carry-everywhere ideal than any seriously capable digital camera I've used before. It does go easily in and out of a coat pocket in a way that no DSLR with moderate wide lens setup does. There were many times that I would forget it was in my pocket for several hours while I ran errands. It was an unnoticeable addition to my messenger bag on my way to and from my office.

Think Coffee, Bowery Street near Houston

My dream camera would have the E-P1's sufficiency in responsiveness and controllability (or better) but would be about 15% smaller and weigh, with lens, 5–6 ounces (140–170g) less than the E-P1 with 17mm. Although I often forgot it was in my coat pocket, after several hours the E-P1's weight could begin to be a modest bother. (For reference, I'm 6'2" (188cm) tall and about 170 lbs. (77kg).) I'd actually like to see a plastic-fantastic version of this camera—without compromising responsiveness or controllability, please, Olympus! That's right, bring on the plastic, I say, if it'll shave a few ounces.

Two years ago, I bought a used Pentax *ist DS and equipped it with the really lovely little Pentax 21mm ƒ/3.2 DA Limited pancake lens. I got it because, at the time, it was the smallest package available that combined good responsiveness, good image quality, and a moderately wide-angle focal length. I don't think there's a DSLR/moderate wide lens setup that's any smaller even now. The E-P1, with the 17mm lens, is without question a lot easier to carry around. Easily coat-pocketable is a different class of thing.

And on the unobtrusiveness topic, I'll add that like many others I found that, as with a point-and-shoot digicam, using the E-P1 doesn't intrude on your subjects' consciousness as much as an SLR, or even a rangefinder, held to the eye. This is a way in which LCD viewing and so-called "arm's length" framing can be an advantage. For unobtrusive shooting I find that holding the camera at chest level or close to waist-level (my elbows are bent, so it's not really "arm's length") and viewing with the LCD draws less attention from strangers than eye-level framing, especially with a big black SLR and zoom lens. Many folks claim that holding a camera at eye-level is more stable, and they tend to state the claim as if this were something that Newton proved along with the Law of Gravity. As I understand it, Newton didn't even address the issue. If you give it some attention, I think it's easy to hold a camera steady even when away from your eye. I am, in short, glad to frame with the LCD—I think it helps me more often than not.

You'll notice I've said nothing about image quality. That's intentional. The file quality of the E-P1's images is, as I knew it would be, easily sufficient—my favorite word again—for what I'm asking it to do. Which is, more or less, to make images of street and people subjects with reasonably good tonal range and quality at ISOs up to 800 or so that I can enlarge to 20 inches (50cm) wide at the most (very rarely), and images at ISO 1600 that I can enlarge to 12–14 inches (30–35cm) wide (again, rarely). Every point-and-shoot digicam I've used is not sufficient as one gets closer to the extremes of my parameters (ISO and enlargement). I also have not commented on the 17mm lens, which seems to have already acquired a mediocre reputation. It, again, is easily sufficient for me.

Chrystie Street at Grand Street

There definitely are types of photographs that gain meaningful artistic power from increasing technical perfection, but many, many, many pictures do not, or at least not much. The things I'm interested in making pictures of fall mostly into the latter category, and I simply don't care about 1 or 2% differences in distortion or 50 line pairs of resolution this way or that. The E-P1's file quality hits a good middle ground for me.

I also haven't mentioned the Panasonic GF-1. I haven't used it. I strongly suspect that it would please me quite sufficiently, too. It evidently possesses an at least equally nice combination of portability, responsiveness, controllability, and image quality.

Ultimately, this is all boils down to the wonderful, if inexplicably obscure science of measuring happiness minutes that I mentioned in my first E-P1 post. This camera is not perfect. Unquestionably, there will be later versions, from Olympus and others, that will be better. It's not quite a carry-everywhere camera. But it gives me something I couldn't get before—namely, it will significantly extend the times and places wherein I have a high quality camera with me. Because of that, it's the first camera I've used in quite some time that I'm very sure would significantly increase my happiness minute supply.

So now I just gotta figure out when and how to get one.

Eamon

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Featured Comment by Miłosz Bolechowski: "Very 'sufficient' review. :-)"

Featured Comment by Timo: "Guess I missed Eamon by just a few minutes; said golfer was down to his last juice box."

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End of Commercial Advertisement; we now return to our regular programming.

The TOP Keep-The-Lights-On Committee

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A Note on E-P1 vs. GF1 Focusing

Eamon said this morning that "the E-P1's autofocus has taken a lot of flak," which is true. I distinctly get the sense, though, that "web wisdom" has exaggerated the E-P1's alleged slowness of focusing. It's not superfast, but once I tried it for myself I thought, "Oh, well, that's not so bad." I was pleasantly surprised because, after all the teeth-gnashing and hair-tearing and garment-rending over this issue, I had expected so much worse. I don't think I'd find it annoying in the long term. Maybe once in a while.

Since I have both cameras and both lenses (i.e., the 17mm and the 20mm) here at the moment, last night I ran a bunch of seat-of-the-pants trials with both lenses on both cameras. My sense is that the Panasonic 20mm might be just a little faster focusing on the E-P1 than the M.Zuiko is; it's tough to tell without the means to measure it. It's not a dramatic difference, though.

The difference is a little more pronounced with the two lenses on the GF1, where the 20mm focuses just barely noticeably faster than the 17mm. Both are still in the same ballpark on that camera, though.

The most distinct difference is between the two cameras themselves. While the focus on the Olympus just plain isn't as bad as it's painted to be out on the pixel-peeping web, the GF1 is unmistakably better. It's faster and locks focus more positively. (The E-P1 seems to have as a default a little in-and-out move that it goes through on every focusing attempt, with either lens. It does it briskly enough, but it uses up a little time that the GF1 doesn't seem to need.)

What really impresses me about the GF1, though—and might be getting overlooked in the general tendency to compare these two cameras to each other—is how remarkable the GF1 is at focusing a) in very low light and b) on featureless surfaces. With the AF area on the smallest setting, the GF1 will lock focus immediately on a featureless white wall: 

This is the white wall immediately above my viewing board, at night, with the only light in the room being my 27-watt Verilux fluorescent, aimed at the corkboard below the framed picture seen at the bottom of this shot. With its AF area on the smallest setting, the GF1 repeatedly locks focus immediately on the plain white wall.

This is the texture of the drywall it's grabbing focus on. I can't make the E-P1 achieve focus at all in this situation.

With the same light as the only light in the mostly darkened room (I compared this JPEG with the actual scene to match its apparent brightness level, although bear in mind my night vision is not as good as a 20-year-old's), the GF1 repeatedly and immediately grabs focus on the darkened bookcase, just past the much brighter computer monitor—without using its focus-assist lamp (it pretty much has to be pitch dark before the AF-assist lamp will kick on). The E-P1 will focus here too, just not quite as quickly. (Metered exposure for the bookshelf area is 1 sec. @ ƒ/2, ISO 100.)

In fact I had a hard time finding situations in which the Sony A850 DSLR will focus where the GF1 won't. I did find a couple, but it wasn't easy.

The autofocusing ability of the GF1 is pretty remarkable, overall...compared to anything, not just compared to the E-P1.

Mike

P.S. You might be amused by the maxim I've had taped to my computer for the past couple of years... 

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ADDENDUM: With apologies for the slight off-kilterness of the setup (it's surprisingly difficult to get exactly square to a rectangular subject just by eye), here's a quick test of distortion correction with the two lenses, each of the top two shots using the E-P1:

As you can see, if the camera's JPEG engine is applying distortion correction to either of the lenses, it's applying it to both, although neither are quite perfect. The GF1, similarly, looks nearly the same with both lenses.

Best distortion correction of the four combinations, as far as I could see, is from the GF1 with the 20mm. —Although you'll note that I couldn't quite hold the camera steady in this shot! I don't know if you can see that in the small JPEG, but there's a little motion blur here. I could've tried again, but even though that has nothing to do with distortion, I figured it shows the main advantage of the E-P1 over the GF1 quite handily, so I should leave it alone....   —MJ

Dipping

Just curious—has anyone read Max Kozloff's The Theatre of the Face? I'd be interested to know what you think of it.

I found Kozloff too weighty and impenetrable when I first encountered him. Lost to memory is whether that was because of the particular piece I ran up against, or should be put down my own jejune unformed intellect of the time. More recently I've been enjoying dipping into my copy of Lone Visions, Crowded Frames, which is slowly winning me over to Mr. Max. (Mad Max? K? I daren't be too flippantly familiar, because he's out there, and he could find me....) Take this intro to one essay, for example:

By and large, artists aren't widely heard of in our culture unless their work is priced off the charts or they're censured for sexy subjects. War photographers don't typically enter the news unless they get shot. Hearing of such deaths, we may feel momentarily shocked, as if we had been impudently denied our natural right to reportage from dangerous areas....

How could anyone not keep reading that?

Dipping into PHOTO:BOX at random (and, as an aside, what do people think of that?) from time to time reminds me that it's been a long time since I really read much photography criticism for pleasure, or indeed for any other reason than self-improvement. I read out of duty, now, mostly.

Do people ever read about photography? That's another thing I wonder about. I mean criticism, history, or theory? Kozloff, Coleman, introductions to monographs, Geoff Dyer maybe? Time for a poll:

[UPDATE 11/19/12: Vizu Polls closed down, so I've taken a screen shot of the poll results and substituted it for the live poll. Best I could do to preserve the post. —Ed.]

I feel a distinctly old dog: most of the books that formed my own education are long out of print, dusty and uncontemporary. There are a number of books (such as The Theatre of the Face) that I'm curious about, but often not, it seems, quite curious enough to actually read them. I've reached that stage where I know enough to merely argue with authors I read, in my head. Maybe I should revisit some of the books that influenced me when I started out, and see what I think of them now.

Mike

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Mike adds: I'm very encouraged by this poll. I'm not really even sure why...I basically agree that you don't necessarily have to read about photography to be good at it. I guess it's just something I enjoy so I hope other people enjoy it too....

Featured Comment by Jez: "While I love reading about photography, I usually don't get much further than introductions to monographs as I find most writing on photography dry and humourless. Having said that, Dyer's Ongoing Moment that you linked to above is absolutely fantastic. I've read it twice already and find myself dipping back in from time to time. If only more people could write about photography like that. And don't get me started on Sontag. What a tedious little book that is...."

Featured Comment by Yuanchung Lee: "I love A.D. Coleman. He's among my favorite writers on photography, next to Robert Adams, Szarkowski, and Papageorge. Definitely my favorite non-photographer writer. (Coleman, by the way, shows up in that terrific documentary about Shelby Lee Adams which was recently shown on Ovation. Great film; made me love S.L.A. even more.)

"Geoff Dyer, not so much—a bit smarmy, not enough editing. But I have the book, and have been planning to re-read it, so may change my mind. Sontag, no. (Coleman's critique of On Photography is devastating, and right on). Barthes, a big fat no. (Though I confess that despite a master's in philosophy, i only understood about 35% of what he wrote)."

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "I want a book of photo criticism to make it worth my while to to read it closely. I lose interest if it doesn't quickly make a valid point or follow a logical thread.

Some have struck me as very worthwhile because they were brilliant, or perhaps reasonably perceptive—or at very least entertainingly catty. Geoffrey Dyer's The Ongoing Moment falls into the latter category; he's certainly not a member of the "academy", and some of his judgments are questionable. But he doesn't beat around the bush with his opinions, and sometimes says what the rest of us are thinking. (I chuckled at Dyer's analysis of Stieglitz's nudes of the much younger O'Keefe: hey, look who I get to sleep with.)

A.D. Coleman's books are wonderful; erudite, insightful, strong opinions backed by solid evidence. His brilliant essay on the very deliberate erasure of William Mortensen from photographic history by Beaumont Newhall et al. should be required reading. It sharply demonstrates how artificial and incomplete the 'canon' of photography-as-art really is. The late Bill Jay's collected musings are warmly entertaining, but really don't rise to the level of criticism. I'd much rather read a collection of David Vestal's pithy commentary, which sadly is not available in book form.

Among current photo criticism titles, Terry Barrett's Criticizing Photographs is a very approachable introduction to the conventions and jargon of criticism for interested amateurs, and it's often used as a college level text on the subject. After reading it at least you'll know what academics are talking about. Michael Fried's Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before is a turgid, tendentious book-length essay arguing that huge cinematically constructed photographs by Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson et al are the most significant art on the planet. Hookay.

Photography After Frank by Philip Gefter is a cut-and-paste collection of old articles and new essays that tries to connect Robert Frank's The Americans to subsequent "post modern thought" and confections like Jeff Wall's; the corpse doesn't quite fit into the coffin, but some sections are interesting. Ian Jeffrey's How to Read a Photograph: Lessons from Master Photographers turns out instead to be more like "how I personally read a photograph," wherein the author draws all sorts of unsustainable or frankly imaginary conclusions from "readings" of images famous and obscure.

I read 'em so you don't have to.

A few others: Frank Van Riper's Talking Photography (2002) is a bit dated now, but contains some very enjoyable essays on photographic craft and art. Vicki Goldberg's Light Matters is a collection of her essays across several decades; some are really good, others not so much. Overall they lack the elegance and coherence of A.D. Coleman or the deep thought behind Robert Adams' essays.

Olympus E-P1 Comments, Part II: Nice Little Concepts

Avenue A at 11th St.

By Eamon Hickey

So as stated yesterday in Part I of these comments on the Olympus E-P1, in my opinion the camera has excellent controllability—all important exposure and focus controls are directly accessible and configurable.

What about responsiveness? It's not perfect—I'll mention some suggested improvements below—but it's sufficient. I think "sufficient" is a very helpful concept to embrace for photographers who lack trust funds. It's an equally amiable notion for photographers who lack cast-iron spines.

The E-P1's autofocus has taken a lot of flak. I would characterize it as middling, not counting follow-focusing of moving subjects, which it's not much good for. In practice, this is a relatively small issue for me, given the types of shooting for which I would use a camera like the E-P1. Even when shooting street shots of the run of everyday life, I'm usually pre-focusing or anticipating a subject's future position or waiting a few seconds, camera at ready, for an interesting moment. Some of this is a kind of anticipatory shooting and focusing, and it can often be done very unobtrusively by targeting any handy object located at the proper distance, then recomposing. The E-P1's AF system, and its manual focus system, work fine for these various methods.

One caveat to the above: unless you're using older manual focus lenses on the camera via an adapter, there's no really good way to do zone (a.k.a. scale) focusing with the E-P1. That's a disappointment. As I said, you can pre-focus the lens at any distance by picking an object at that distance and focusing. I often did just that, following my usual habit of setting the focus for about 8–10 feet (~3m) as I walk around. That seems to me like the most likely distance at which I might ever get a good raise-the-camera-and-shoot-instantly grab shot. You can also set a custom function to disable the camera's default behavior of re-focusing to infinity every time the camera is turned off or on, which is a small help. But none of this is classic zone focusing where you can set the focus distance using a scale on the lens, which you do in the split second that it takes to raise the camera to your eye or aim it from your hip according to classical decisive-moment doctrine. It should be easy for Olympus to create a feature where the current lens focus distance is displayed on the LCD, along with a depth-of-field indication or scale. This would allow easy zone focusing in the classic style and should be a no-brainer on future cameras (or in future firmware updates).

If you pre-focus or focus manually, the shutter response is similar to an entry- or mid-level DSLR on manual or pre-focus. Again, quite sufficient—and notably better than most compact digicams I've used. This does, however, bring me to my one caveat about the desirability of the electronic viewing design. Judging the moment to trip the shutter by viewing through the LCD introduces a slight additional delay to the cycle that can roughly be described as decisive moment is seen > photographer pushes button > picture happens. In my timing tests, there's a slight delay added by the LCD—about 1/10th of a second compared to viewing through the optional optical viewfinder (or simply peering at the subject over the top of the camera). You can learn to compensate, at least partially, for any delay that's consistent—and this one seems consistent—but still, all things considered, shorter shutter lags are better than longer ones. I'm hoping to see LCD/EVF delay reduced further as these technologies develop.

I had no trouble with the E-P1's supposedly deficient LCD resolution (230,000 dots). I found it easy to compose my pictures and to judge manual focus. I do wish that the manual focus assist function, which magnifies the central part of the scene either 7X or 10X to help with focus judgment, had one additional setting. As it currently works, the entire LCD area is magnified, which helps with focusing but you lose your view of the overall composition. I'd like an additional option to have only the center portion of the LCD show a magnified view, while the rest of the LCD stays at normal magnification so you can still get a decent sense of your composition.

I was not shooting on any particularly sunny days, so I can't give an opinion on how well the LCD works in direct sun, but I've shot in those conditions with many, many compact digicams, so I know that, for me, it's not a deal-breaker either way. I'll say more about the issue of "arm's length" LCD shooting in Part III of this mishmash.

Control responsiveness is also perfectly sufficient—i.e. the speed with which the two thumbwheels and all the push-buttons do their thing is just fine. No complaints in use.

Avenue A at 10th St.

I will mention two other things I'd like to see improved. The camera's power-on-to-first-shot time is a fairly long 2.7 seconds. I imagine there's dust-shaking and who knows what else going on in that time, and it would not normally be much of a concern to me, if it weren't for my second complaint: you can't leave the camera powered on when it's going in and out of your coat pocket (or holster bag or whatever). Why? Because, as many others have noted, the cameras controls are very easy to inadvertently adjust. Olympus could solve this with a sliding lock switch that disables all the buttons and wheels. As it stands—at least as far as I can tell—you have to turn the camera off when you stow it in your pocket, which means you have to endure the 2.7 second delay when you yank it out to get that fleeting shot of Elvis ducking into a taxi on West 57th Street. If anyone has a solution for this that I overlooked, I'd be grateful to hear it.

Those complaints stated, in the real world of walking around and shooting, at least for me, it would be relatively rare to miss a shot because of them. They do not, in other words, destroy the camera's sufficiency.

In the third and final installment of my E-P1 comments, tomorrow, I'll talk, in the best self-help tradition, about my happiness and the history of my unmet needs. It'll be fun, at least for me.

Eamon

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Olympus E-P1 Comments, Part I: 'Happiness Minutes'

Moonstruck Diner at 2nd Ave.

By Eamon Hickey

I stole part of the title of this post from a magazine article* that I recently read about one of the founders of "scientific management" theory, Lillian Gilbreth, who once referred to a metric that she dubbed "happiness minutes." The point of her theories and methods, she explained, was to give people more of them. It's science, you see.

Gilbreth's tragically overlooked breakthrough will guide what follows, over three posts. I'd like to accumulate some additional happiness minutes; I emerged from the factory with a reasonably sensitive built-in meter to measure them; and I was really only interested in whether the Olympus E-P1 would increase my supply. So this won't be a formal, comparative review of the E-P1. Instead, it'll be a highly subjective, entirely random rundown of things I liked, disliked, or noticed while using it.

The camera was loaned to me by the PR folks at Olympus Imaging here in the U.S. (for three weeks; it's now back home in Pennsylvania) and came with the Olympus 14–42mm ƒ/3.5–ƒ/5.6 M.Zuiko lens, the 17mm ƒ/2.8 M.Zuiko pancake lens with its companion VF-1 optical viewfinder, and the FL-14 flash. I never used, and therefore having nothing useful to say about, the 14–42mm lens or the flash, and I barely tried the viewfinder because, well, I'm not interested in shooting with those gadgets. My interest in the E-P1 is centered on, in order of importance: portability, responsiveness, controllability, and image quality. Oh, and portability. All in the service of knockabout street, travel, and informal people photography.

The portability of the E-P1 did indeed please me, but I'll talk more about that in a later post. After the portability, the next biggest thing that stood out to me is the excellent usability of a camera that combines a live histogram with responsive advanced controls. It got me to switch from manual to automatic exposure control (after 25 years), and, for me, is a modest but important step forward in quick and accurate shooting. Here's the way I set it up:

Aperture-priority exposure mode with the main command dial set to control aperture. Sub-command dial set to enable instant exposure compensation. LCD set to display a live histogram. Manual focus but with the AEL button set to activate autofocus. Finally, auto ISO with a maximum limit of ISO 800, so the camera will freely adjust the ISO between 100 and 800, according to available light levels.

Why is this cool? Because I have the speed benefits of automatic exposure control, with, obviously, direct control of the aperture, which is critical to me. The live histogram gives me a deeply informative, real-time meter check of the camera's autoexposure decision that I can intelligently interpret much faster than any in-camera reflective metering system I've ever used, from multi-pattern to spot. And with the sub-command dial set for instant exposure compensation, I can override the automatic exposure instantly and quite precisely, from shot to shot, in even the most complex lighting. Then, for focus, I have simultaneous instant access to manual or auto, whichever is best suited to the shot. And—this is crucial—the camera will not refocus every time I press the shutter release. (Separating AF activation from the shutter release is the first thing I do on any camera that I'm using.)

For me, the live histogram is the key addition. It really improves the exposure part of this circus. Compared to analyzing a spot or center-weighted meter reading, using the live histogram lets me much more quickly see (don't have to think much) whether the autoexposure decision is a good one, and instantly override it if need be. I ended up concluding that an electronic viewing camera with the right controls and a live histogram option, compared to traditional optical viewfinder designs, makes it faster and easier to reliably find and set the best exposure. (I can hear the OVF-or-die crowd denouncing my heresy as I write.)

Bowery at Grand

Using the E-P1 this way, walking around New York City slipping it in and out of a coat pocket as needed, I could shoot very quickly, yet with exacting control of exposure and focus when I needed it (one doesn't always need it). Again, good responsiveness and the right camera controls are crucial—instantly accessible aperture (or shutter speed) and autoexposure comp control, plus AF activation separated from the shutter release, are mandatory. You need everything working together, which is where most (all?) point-and-shoot digicams—some of which have live histograms—fall short.

More on the experience of using the camera, and a caveat to my endorsement of EVIL** in Part II, which will appear tomorrow morning.

Eamon

A note on the illustrations: All were post-processed to one extent or another; please don't make any judgments about out-of-camera color, tonality etc. from them.  I'm leaving out technical and shooting details, but if you want to know, just ask in the comments. I will say that the "Moonstruck Diner" shot was done at ISO 1600, and I would happily print it up to 12 or 14 inches (30–35cm) wide.

*"Not So Fast," by Jill Lepore, from The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 2009

**Meaning, of course, "electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens," not that which gives rise to wickedness, which I do not endorse.

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Around the Web on a Monday

Colin Jago's self-portrait from Auspicious Dragon

Thanks for everything, Colin: Shades of Alec Soth. To the great dismay of his fans, Colin Jago recently brought his uniquely thoughtful, always enjoyable photography blog, the Photostream on Auspicious Dragon, to a close. Though we will mourn, we wish Colin all the best with all his newfound free time.

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(OT) On the other side of no tomorrow: So I wake up this morning with an old song in my head. I go to the closet and find the disk—a Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab "Original Master Recording" of Steely Dan's "Katy Lied," which I probably haven't listened to in fifteen years—and cue it up on the turntable. And then, when I settle down with some freshly brewed coffee, what do you know, there's this in the virtual morning paper.

Through late November, more than 2.1 million vinyl records had been sold in 2009, an increase of more than 35 percent in a year, according to Nielsen Soundscan. That total, though it represents less than 1 percent of all album sales, including CDs and digital downloads, is the highest for vinyl records in any year since Nielsen began tracking them in 1991....

Which is true, except, um, about a third of those sales were to me. Well, not really. (Daddy don't live in that New York City no more....)

In case you're a 1-percenter too, Mosaic's new four-disc limited-edition "Thelonious Monk at the It Club" is a religious experience. I'm just sayin'.

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Onion gets the gestalt of digital photography: New device desirable, old device undesirable.

...The new device is so advanced when compared to the old device that it makes the old device appear much older than it actually is. However, the new device is reportedly not so radically different as to cause confusion or unwanted anxiety among those familiar with the feel of the old device.

'Its higher price indicates to me that it is superior, and that not everyone will be able to afford it, which only makes me want to possess it more,' said Tim Sturges, owner of the old device, which he obtained 18 months ago when it was still the new device. 'I feel a strong urge to purchase the new device. Owning the new device will please me and improve my daily life.'

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Camera Collector's Corner: Here's one for the glass case that few will be able to match. Wow.

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Comic by Steve Bell, The Guardian

Police admonished: At least the British appear to be getting this matter sorted. The Independent reports that the Government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, Lord Carlile of Berriew, has warned the police about hassling photographers to no purpose. Says Lord Carlile, "The police have to be very careful about stopping people who are taking what I would call leisure photographs, and indeed professional photographers. The fact that someone is taking photographs is not prima facie a good reason for stop and search and is very far from raising suspicion." Hear, hear.

UPDATE to the above: See here. (Thanks to David Nicol)

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Weird and wacky cameras:

Kirin Beer cam (a real beer can in the background). Photo by Dirk Rösler.

It's real Lego. And a real camera.

Erin Fong's more ergonomic DSLR concept

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Rare in the wild: One of the most wonderful of classical photographical typos, seldom actually encountered. Observed on Ebay.

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Micro 4/3 in action: Reader Roy Feldman used the Panasonic GF1 and 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens to do a short feature on the painter Stephen Magsig for Michigan Radio Picture Project. Interesting, too, because, as you can see from the presentation, Mr. Magsig is a photographer of sorts, too.

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Your Facebook pictures say so much about you: A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on her Facebook page in which she appeared to be having fun. She had been diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife. But the payments dried up this fall when her insurance agent found pictures showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party, and on a sun holiday.

The woman said she was following her doctor's advice by trying to have fun as a way to forget her troubles.

(Associated Press)

And in an unrelated Facebook note, our friend Bob Burnett came across this on the social networking site:

Name: Petition to make bendy buses make accordion noises as they go round corners
Category: Common Interest—Beliefs & Causes
Description: A pressure group to increase the enjoyment of public transport.
Privacy Type: Open: All content is public.

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Adapters are getting popular, yes: But this is ridiculous / sublime.

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...The rosy glow of product placement. Billie Holiday, trains going through tunnels, that special fragrance, and...

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Photo: Nonja

So easy a caveman could do it? Photography's so easy an ape could do it.

Okay, so Nonja is...well, not that good. But since I mentioned Dr. Johnson the other day, recall what the good (albeit sexist*) lexicographer said about a dog walking on its hind legs: "...it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

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Thom's 2010: One of the regular high points of my web reading year has arrived: Thom Hogan's "2010 Nikon Predictions" arrived a couple of weeks ago. (Pity that word "Nikon" is in the title—although it's accurate—as the article, as usual, is a must-read for shudderbugs of any allegiance.) A snapshot of the industry and a bellwether—and entertainment in prose, to boot. Might need a refill on the coffee, but do not miss.

Mike
(Thanks to Brian Dickie, Ken Tanaka, Steven House, Jaladhi Pujara, Rod Purcell, Dean Forbes, Sandy Rothberg, Paul Parker, and Rob Atkins)

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*The full quote is, "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Featured Comment by Colin Jago: "Many thanks. And for the avoidance of doubt: that newly free time is going to be used for, you know, actually taking some photographs."

Featured Comment by robert e: "According to photographer Thorsten Overgaard, that is [Audrey] Tautou's own M8 in the Chanel ad. I've read that she photographs every journalist who interviews her."

Taking Small Format Seriously

By Ctein

At the end of Mitch Alland's article a couple of weeks back, he wrote, "Indeed the overall performance of the GRD III helps validate the idea of the small-sensor camera as a new, serious format, in the way that 35mm was a new format when the first Leica was introduced."

That got me thinking, and I realized that I simultaneously thought that Mitch was right, but wrong.

From a technical point of view, I think his comparison is apt. I've already worked with two small format digital cameras whose image quality (for some arbitrary aggregate definition of "image quality") was better than 35mm film at all ISOs, as I've written in several articles, including "Great Expectations." Undeniably, an awful lot of world-class photographers found 35mm film adequate for doing serious work. (Mind you I wasn't one of them...but that's about me.) Why can't the same be true for small format digital cameras? So, I think Mitch is right; people don't take small format digital camera as seriously as they should.

There's no question that small-format cameras can be used for serious (ahem!) photography...but will anybody care? (photograph made with a Fuji S100fs camera with a 1/4-scale sensor, and, yes, it looks great at 11x14)

But just because they should doesn't mean they ever will. I think Mitch is wrong for non-technical reasons: the stuff that Mike has talked about at some length about what format photography settles into—the way it settled into 35mm as the dominant form and the population didn't see a need to push to anything smaller. My guess is that something somewhere between Micro 4/3 and 35mm is going to wind up as the de facto standard in digital photography. Doesn't have to be bigger than 4/3, but there's a lot of "legacy hardware" for 35mm, so my crystal ball's murky.

There also seems to be this rising expectation thing going on, with the average serious photographer expecting better quality from a digital camera than I expect to get from my 6x7 Pentax. Nothing inherently wrong with that; I applaud high standards. But, it likely precludes everyone except eccentrics like me from doing much serious work with small sensor cameras.

In which case the historical judgment will turn against the small-format sensor camera as a "serious" tool.

Let me just make it clear that I am not saying that bigger isn't better. If big floats your boat, great! A big sensor will usually (not always) produce better quality than a small one. But, remember that 8x10 wasn't the "sweet spot" for film formats, although 8x10 film photographs usually had much better technical image qualities than medium format. Medium format usually trumped 35mm. Yet, 35mm wound up dominating the world of film.

Size matters...just not always the way we think.

Ctein

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Fun with Soft Focus

Yesterday's post about lenses that aren't terribly sharp might have made you think of premium soft-focus portrait lenses like the Cooke PS945 or the Rodenstock Imagon. Or, if you're not a large-format kinda person, maybe the Lensbaby or the Holga. As you probably know, there's a whole toy-camera aesthetic out there known by the general name of Lomography, after the website of that name and the Lomo camera. I've never liked diffusion filters—it's just a very false look, to my eye, especially the kind that selectively makes whites all glowy—but maybe you will.

Nothing wrong with playing with any of those options, of course. With many such options, people get into a "now I'm doing soft focus" mindset, and turn it up to 11 (moar cowbell)...they just go way over the top, and make pictures that are grossly smeary or fuzzy. We humans have a great fondness for excess.

Personally, I've always felt that if a viewer notices an effect, then it's been ladled on too heavily. That goes for the oversharpened eyes that Amin was complaining about (sharpening in general, actually); any of the standard tricks for making faces or bodies more appealing in Photoshop, like making the eyes bigger or the legs longer; soft focus; saturation...anything. The viewer should sense the aesthetic impression but not recognize immediately how it was achieved. That's just my opinion.

And to experiment with soft focus, you don't really need to buy anything. As long as you have a UV or clear protective filter for your lens, you can experiment.

Try putting "dots" on the filter with a black Sharpie. You can try even dots all over the filter, or leave the center clear and make the dots more dense toward the edges; then try shooting at different apertures. Don't like what you did? Just rub the dots off (or scrape them off with a single-sided razor blade) and start over again. More dots or fewer, larger or smaller, all creates different effects. You can use a hole punch and black construction paper cut in a ring shape to construct an Imagon-style "spherical" soft focus effect filter, mimicking the one in the picture at right. Too much? Too little? Try again. (Note that whenever you have any soft of center opening or gradation of effects on the filter, different apertures will yield different effects. If you're shooting digital, it's easy enough to try them all.)

Can't you just do it all in Photoshop? Maybe. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.

Using old or bad lenses is a useful trick, although you're dependent on the particular lens you find. Christopher Bailey used to use a Nikkormat with a cracked lens and stuck shutter (it only worked on "B") to make his night shots, and was out of luck when his car got broken into and the "special" broken lens got stolen! The irony is that it wasn't worth anything to the thief, even though it was worth a lot to Chris.

Everybody knows the trick of smearing vaseline on the filter (maybe just at the edges) or stretching a nylon stocking over the end of the lens. Again, too heavy-handed for my taste—what you usually create is not a subtle image modification but an EFFECT that shouts at people NOW I'M USING AN EFFECT!!! My advice—worth what you paid for it—is "think subtle." Just shade it one way or another. Tap your viewer on the shoulder rather than bashing them over the head with a brick. 

If nylon stocking material is too much, the fabric store is your friend. Find some loose netting to put over your filter. Note that white and black fishnet have different effects on the image. (Colors, too.) See what you can find. Try cutting a small hole in the center of the netting and just using it on the edge, then trying shots at different apertures. 

Once you get an effect you like, you can add it to your bag of tricks, and use it when you need it. For the most part, though, it costs very little to experiment. Even if you never use any of the effects again, you'll come out with a better understanding of visual effects and how images work.

Mike

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ADDENDUM: Oh, I almost forgot: you used to be able to make homemade diffusion filters by spraying hairspray on a plain glass or UV filter. Put the filter on the ground and spray the hairspray into the air and let the tiny droplets drift down on to the filter. Allow to dry, and use. More diffusion, more hairspray. When you're done, just wash off the filter.

This was a tip dating back to the era of beehive hairdos—it was hoary when I was a pup—and I'm not sure hairsprays are still the same kind of thing. Experiment.

A Little Guy Who Loves his Mom

I did this portrait recently for my next-door neighbor, of her with her middle child. His expression in that third frame really makes me smile. I think I'd title this "Now here's a guy who really loves his Mom."

The conversions were done to look better larger, and they do. The pictures were taken with the Pentax K20D and the splendid new DA* 55mm ƒ/1.4 SDM lens (yet another of the many gorgeous made-for-digital primes from Pentax). I had a few focusing issues with the lens—nothing too bad, but enough to notice—and, oddly, it's too sharp for portraits at most apertures; by ƒ/4 the sharpness is overwhelming. The beauty of an ƒ/1.4 medium-telephoto is that you have a certain narrow window for choosing your degree of unsharpness: the first few clicks of the aperture ring are subtly less sharp than the middle apertures, allowing you to pick the balance you like best. I learned this from a series of test portraits made with the Pentax 85mm ƒ/1.4 by Bruce Dayton. He showed an aperture-range set of pictures of taken of his young daughter. Some commenters, inevitably, liked the sharpest shots best, but I thought the perfect aperture was ƒ/2: it had just the right balance of detail without the harshness or hard-sharpness of the middle aperture. (My pictures here were made at ƒ/2.8.)

It's funny, but from the 1890s and until the First World War, photographers prized lenses for their unsharpness: when artists found the lenses that gave them just the right degree and quality of unsharpness, they treasured them like jewels. This attitude survived until the 1940s among portrait photographers. The unsharpness of their lenses of choice was considered by many portraitists an indivisible part of their aesthetic signature.

For the record, I've always believed that a somewhat unsharp portrait lens is actually more accurate than a clinically sharp one. Not more accurate to the forensic reality, perhaps, but truer to the way our brains perceive faces: we are very good indeed at seeing faces, and we tend to reflexively emphasize the enduring features that permit us to recognize individuals. The corollary is that we ignore those aspects that we know to be transient, impermanent, or trivial: oiliness, blemishes, and the very fine details such as skin pores or fine hairs that obscure rather than enhance recognition. We really do see these less readily than the camera does. So when you make a portrait somewhat less sharp, you are making it more true to way were perceive. This might seem counter-intuitive to the literal-minded, but remember, we don't see with our eyes—we see with our eyes and our brains. Perception is greatly in the mind.

Mike

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Blog Notes: Oh, Dear

I'm sorry to trouble you with self-serving administrative concerns so soon after the Birthday post, but I wanted to pass this along. I've just learned, definitively, that TOP does not get credit for any items you buy from Amazon that were previously placed in your cart, whether you linked from here when you placed them there or not. We only get credit for items you both select and buy after linking to Amazon from here.

I should have known this two years ago. I've been telling people the opposite, all this time. How discouraging.

Never did have much of a head for business.

Mike