The Online Photographer

Ansel Redux

 By Jim Hughes

One thing leads to another. My recent post on Ansel Adams got me thinking, and I dug into my collection of old photo magazines and found a "Proof Sheet" column I wrote for the January 1980 edition of Popular Photography. I had interviewed Ansel for a second time, this time in New York City in 1979.

This master of the optical/chemical darkroom and the silver print had an interesting, even prescient perspective on digital photography, which at that point in time was but a blip in anyone's consciousness.

As I wrote at the time: Few people realize that this titan of the straight and clear image (in his early days in photography, this represented a revolutionary concept) looks forward to the day when certain select students of his work will be able to interpret one of his negatives in new media, even using computer enhancement.

"I figured, what the hell is the use of having the negatives stored away in a trunk," Adams told me, explaining one of the motivating factors for his playing such a central role in the establishment of the [then new] Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which will house the Adams archive. "Stieglitz canceled every one of his negatives by putting a little 'x' in the corner. You can't print them. The only ones I've canceled are from Portfolio VI, which I withdrew from circulation in accordance with my agreements, and Portfolio V, which I actually canceled...and I'm sorry I did.

"I've always said that the negative is the score, and the print the performance. I want it to be possible for people in the future to perform my negatives. After all, when I was playing the piano, I was playing the music of people who had been dead for quite a few hundred years, and who had never heard the sounds of my modern piano -- they had written for the harpsichord, the clavichord. I actually feel that in the next few years—it won't be very long—the electronic image is really going to be the medium in photography."

Later in the piece, I wrote: No doubt there are photographers who don't like Adams' work, but they, too, must admit his importance. His intense and spirited presence through the years has helped make it possible for all photographers to enjoy the manifold rewards of legitimacy. Does Ansel have a philosophy of giving?

"If you're a professional, you contribute to the profession," he replies. "There is an underlying attitude for support, a pouring back of interest and thought. Musicians teach master classes. Doctors do research, write papers, give time to charity. The artist is a professional.

"If the art gives the artist life, then the artist in turn should give the art life. There has been a lack of understanding of this concept in photography. But you just can't live an independent, selfish existence. You lose on it."

Jim

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Check It Out!

We work in the coming new world.

(Taken surreptitiously at an Apple Store, where photography is not allowed, by a friend of the site who must remain nameless lest the Apple Anti-RPG Security Force descend on him and violently disable all his protocols and permissions....)

Mike

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ASMP Sues Google; Orphan Works Fails in Britain

• A battle joined on behalf of photographers: "This is a civil action that arises under the laws of the United States and is designed to redress the most widespread, well-publicized, and uncompensated infringement of exclusive rights in images in the history of book and periodical publishing." So says the photographers' trade association The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), in its lawsuit filed in New York Federal Court yesterday. At issue are the thousands of images contained in books scanned and indexed for Google Books that Google does not own the rights to.

READ MORE at The Register

• A battle won on behalf of photographers: "Photographers cemented a spectacular victory by crushing the orphan works clause," commented Andrew Orlowski at "The Register," after the British House of Commons removed the controversial Clause 43 from the Digital Economy Bill. "Photographers united under the Stop43 campaign argued that the proposed legislation would bring to an end a photographer's control over his images," said the BJP.

READ MORE at The British Journal of Photography

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko)

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Featured Comment by David Ramos: "In fairness, there's a good case for allowing easier use of orphaned works. The chilling effects of over-expansive copyright protections make it hard for archivists and librarians to preserve older documents, and nearly impossible for historians to use materials that are any younger than the early 20th century.

"Prue Adler, of the American Library Association (ALA), gave a talk in which she described Cornell University's efforts to digitize part of their collection. Cornell spent $50,000 trying to obtain permission to digitize 343 monographs in their collection. They couldn't even find owners for 58% of those works.

"An historian who wants to quote, say, a letter from a soldier named 'Bob' from Chicago, or to show an image from a family photo album of some unknown immigrant family sometime in the 1920s, probably won't be able to get permission."

Featured Comment by Olivier Laurent, News Editor, British Journal of Photography: "David, in most cases, at least in the UK, photographers and their representative organisations are not against cultural institutions and non-profit organisations such as schools, libraries and museums using orphan works. In effect, these institutions would be using these 'orphan works' for non-commercial goals.

"The problem, they argued, was that the legislation proposed, with its general terms and lack of details, would have also allowed commercial entities to use orphan works to make a profit, without properly remunerating photographers. That's the main problem with this legislation. Photographers would have lost control over their images....

"However, the most important point, I would say, is that instead of trying to deal with the consequences of a problem (i.e. how can you use orphan works?) I believe, and I know a lot of photographers do so too, that the government should deal with the causes of the problem—the creation of orphan works in the first place. It's too easy, in today's world, for a photograph to become orphan (removing metadata is simple, and despite being a crime in some countries, it's rarely enforced). What photographers need are unalienable moral rights."

Featured Comment by latent_image: "From the point of view of a working photographer, the discussion about archivists and orphan works seems mighty esoteric. Sure, I hope the matter gets worked out in a reasonable way, but the needs of archivists are way down my list of concerns. What I care about is working my tail off for a year and emptying my bank account while I put together a photography book, only to have Google Books grab it, scan it, and put a big chunk of it online. (I've never digitized a photo and put it online.) That's what I care about, and I call it theft. So I am extremely pleased ASMP and other American and British photographer groups are tackling this issue."

Featured Comment by Matthew Brown: "The problem is that Fair Use is a defense, not an indemnity, and the letter of the law is very vague. You can still be sued even if you have an ironclad Fair Use defense, which makes it financially unfeasible to rely upon given U.S. rules which rarely award costs to the winning side.

"This is one of the ways in which the previous U.S. copyright regime was preferable; things only stayed in copyright if someone cared enough to renew them, which generally meant there was someone who could be contacted.  It had plenty of other flaws, but it did not have an orphan works problem.

"A decent solution to the issue, I think, would be to have limits on recentness as proposed above (though I think you could easily extend that to thirty years or so; most of the problems are to do with works much older than that) and a requirement to place funds in escrow, at a rate equivalent to known creators and at least a statutory minimum rate of some kind.

"I think that would remove most of the temptation to use this as an excuse for piracy."

Statistics, Damned Statistics, and the 'Visio Populi'

By Ctein

I don't get much of an opportunity to find out which of my photos are most popular among my audience. The reason is that almost all my sales are high-end prints, so I rarely sell many of each. The "best sellers" sell a handful of copies; most sell just a few. It's not a good sample set, statistically.

I have sold scores, even hundreds of prints in the four special print sales I've run over the years through Photo Technique magazine and The Online Photographer. The selection set is so constrained, though, that it still doesn't tell me anything interesting.

Recently I got to have some fun with numbers. I put up a web page with 14 photographs for my Contributors to choose their prints from.

Almost none of the Contributors had seen any of these photographs in the flesh and nobody had seen all of them, so people really were picking based on the online images. The selections include a few photographs that Contributers suggested, but there were only a very few suggestions, so it doesn't much skew the results.

Forty-five of my Contributors selected their prints, which was a large enough sample to run some numbers with. The results entertained me. I am perhaps too easily entertained, but I hope you'll also get some entertainment value out of seeing how close your tastes are to my collective audience's. I don't know what you'll find. Even more interesting, I suppose, would be if any of you who aren't especially enamored of my work wind up ranking the photographs much as my audience does. That's a particular and most rare talent beneficial to curators, gallery owners and editors—being able to anticipate the taste of the visio populi, even when it isn't to your personal taste.

Including a dye transfer ("Sealing Wax Palm") throws off the results a bit, as I gave Contributors the choice of picking either the dye transfer or two digital prints; a bit of apples vs. oranges muddles the results. Fourteen dye transfer prints were chosen in lieu of two digital prints. Amazingly, that is about the percentage I would've guessed. A fluke.

The rest selected 100 digital prints; here they are listed in order of popularity:

Columbia at Dusk—15
Floodlit Colombia—13
Alcoa Building—12
Apollo-Soyuz in Floods—9
Reflections in Montreal Centre—8
Grasses in Liquid Sky—8
Weathered Sulfur Vents—8
Trojan Nuclear Plant—7
Buena Vista Park—7
Moon Bow and Blue Moon—5
Jazz Dinner—4
Christmas Oranges—3
Blue Forest—1

The two black-and-white photographs did better than I expected, seeing that's not what I'm known for. (The fact that I think they're really great photographs is, of course, irrelevant.)

Not counting the dye transfer, more than half the selections were for older photographs. I'm considering "Weathered Sulfur Vents" a "new" photograph, because it's part of the last decade, and all the other old stuff is really old. If one restricts "new" to the past year or so, barely more than a third of the selections were for new photos. I didn't particularly expect that, but seeing as the "new" work is having to compete with that culled from nearly 40 years of photography, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Were it to play out differently, it would suggest that my past taste wasn't anywhere close to as good as I thought it was, or that I had become incredibly better in just a few recent years. Anything's possible; not everything is likely. On the other hand, I'm disappointed the bottom three didn't do better. I really like them! I know, something has to be last, but still..

Make of it all what you will. As I said, for amusement value only. I hope you're appropriately amused.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears every Thursday morning.

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Featured Comment by - et -: "Just to throw a little more confusion into the discussion, I'll reply to the question by Marcus, in the comments, about the 'scientific bent' of contributors. I am an aerospace engineer who worked on the Apollo Program for the first eight years of my professional career. My print choices were 'Jazz Dinner' and 'Buena Vista Park.' However—if 'Apollo 17 at Dawn' had been one of the choices, that print would have been my preferred choice by far. Strictly a personal matter due to memories and my association of the image with a special part of my life—not directly due to either my scientific bent or the artistic value of the print. (Although I do love that image from an artistic viewpoint also.) How do we account for factors like that in looking at the statistics? I suggest that we get many, many more people to contribute to Ctein, so the sample size will become much larger and the results more statistically valid. :-)"

Tidbits

Tidbits: This makes me laugh, and I'm not even sure it's true, but it sure seems to me that dogs are more curious about the Panasonic GF1 than they are about DSLRs. Is it because it's a small box I'm holding out in front of me in both hands? They act like they think there might be something in it for them, like it's a box of treats or something. This (obviously failed) picture is Greta, the neighbors' new Rottie, who replaced the late and much-missed Guenter. My son used to be afraid of Guenter, a big male Rottie—the boys would sprint down the alley past his yard, especially after dark—but he was a big sweetheart, poor old fella. Greta is purebred, but a rescue. She was nearly starved when her new owners got her. Aside from some lingering stomach problems, she appears to be adapting wonderfully, a calm and affectionate puppy.

The interest of dogs in the GF1 kind of reminds me of something Richard Lynch mentioned to me last summer. He said when one of his kids does something adorable, he can usually only get off one shot of it, because immediately after he takes the picture the kids come running over wanting to see it! Maybe Greta just wanted to see herself on the viewing screen.

He's just sayin': George Schaub, in the current issue of Shutterbug, says that to get the full advantage of Sony's DRO (dynamic range optimizer) mode, which applies even to raw files, you need to first use the supplied Sony Image Data and Raw Converter software and then port the image over to Photoshop (or Lightroom or whatever you use) later. That's from his A550 review.

...And I'm just sayin': Frank McLaughlin of Kodak once famously pronounced that one lifetime is not long enough to master both photography and dye transfer printing. Is it possible that we're heading for a state in which one lifetime is not long enough to master both photography and all the features of any given  full-featured digital SLR? Or, more to the point, that the lifetime of the DSLR isn't long enough for anyone to truly master it? I didn't even try DRO mode when I had the A850 here. (Note to self: never try new cameras in wintertime.)

Free parking: Jon Sienkiewicz reminds us that "the National [U.S.] Park Service has announced that all 392 national parks will have free admission during National Park Week, April 17 to 25."

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Just added: Above is the newest addition to my fledgling photography collection. It's an original print of a picture by Peter Turnley, "Gare de Lyon, Paris, 1978." You can see a JPEG sans reflections at Peter's website, under "Fine Art Prints." Cost: nothing (or rather the cost of the frame), as it was a (generous) gift from Peter. (Thanks again, Peter.)

I've acquired about ten prints since I last talked about this, but I haven't made up my mind about any of the others. I'm having a hard time with some of the inkjets I've acquired. Just not sure I like some of them very well. The next official addition to the collection is an inkjet, though—it's at the framer's now. I'll write about that one in a few days.

Because of the Turnley "Gare de Lyon" picture's large size (image area approx. 12 x 18"), I assumed it would "carry the room," and originally placed it in an inaccessible position on a far wall. Wrong. Turns out that for this picture to communicate, you have to be able to easily see the train passenger's eyes, which are small in the print despite the large overall size. I've now relocated it to a corner of the living room right next to an entryway, where I naturally see it from much closer. Funny; even though it's a large print, it looks best from no more than 18 inches (45 cm) away. 

The print—which was made by the man who printed for Cartier-Bresson for more than three decades, by the way—more about him in a future post—had a lot of spotting on the train window. Interestingly, I think what was spotted out weren't actually spots, but the image of actual dirt on the train window. The spotting is visible on the print but invisible once it's under glass.

Upcoming on TOP: I can't give any details just yet, but behind the scenes here we're in the final stages of putting together a really outstanding print offer for later this month. (Nope, nothing to do with the item above, although that's a good guess.) It arose from some recent discussions here and, I think, will represent a truly golden opportunity. (Golden? No, even more precious than gold.) Stay tuned.

Mike

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Ansel Adams, a Gentle and Generous Man

By Jim Hughes

In response to Mike's recent post about The Portfolios of Ansel Adams, Carsten Bockermann commented: "I bought The Portfolios of Ansel Adams on my first visit to the U.S. It was back in 1982, I was 16 at the time. The lady in a little bookstore in Carmel said 'Oh, that's too bad, you just missed Mr. Adams. He left a few minutes ago and went to the barber shop.' Needless to say, I found out where the barber shop was and got my copy signed right there, in the barber's chair."

I first met Ansel many years ago, at his home in Carmel, an unimposing structure at the end of a winding path leading to a bluff overlooking the Pacific. The place was not easy to find, but Maggie Weston, whose gallery I had just visited, had given me excellent directions. I wanted to interview Ansel for a piece I was writing on the intersection of art and commerce in photography, and he had graciously agreed.

In the midst of our conversation, my tape already spinning, I heard a chime. I looked toward the front door to see two small figures silhouetted against the wavy glass. Ansel answered the door himself. A middle-aged couple, tourists recently arrived from Japan, I soon learned, stood in the doorway. They wore broad grins. The man held a copy of Ansel's latest book.

"Autograph, please," the man said, handing the book to its famous author.

"Of course, of course," Ansel responded in a gentle voice that belied his craggy, weathered visage. "Please come in. You are welcome in my home."

It was clear that Ansel had not expected more visitors, but neither did he seem to feel the least bit put upon by their unannounced arrival. He asked them to spell their names, slowly please, then carefully wrote a personalized inscription, complete with a flourish, in their book. They bowed. He bowed. I even bowed. Then the man pulled out a snapshot camera and photographed his wife with Ansel Adams, the world's most famous photographer. She in turn photographed her husband with Ansel. Finally, they handed me the camera and I photographed all three, arm in arm, posing in front of Ansel's magnificent fireplace, beneath a huge antique gong that hung suspended above the fireplace.

With another kind of flourish, Ansel gave the gong a rap with a four-foot padded mallet, and the house reverberated with ancient tones. I imagined that even the whales migrating just offshore must have heard that deep, booming sound. More smiling and bowing followed. More unspoken communication between disparate cultures.

Finally, Ansel motioned his new friends, myself included, toward the grand piano in an ell just off the living room. He sat down to play, something short and sweet. I don't remember what the piece was. But if it wasn't Mozart, it should have been.

Jim
(Inset photograph by Nancy Newhall)

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Featured Comment by R. Edelman: "In 1983 I took a weekend trip to Carmel from San Francisco. While I was walking in Carmel, a Cadillac pulled up to the curb and parked. I figured that it had to be Ansel Adams' car, as the license plate read: 'Zone V.' A young man was driving and Ansel Adams was the passenger. After Mr. Adams got out of the car, I walked up to him and said: 'Mr. Adams, your photography has given me great pleasure over the years.' Well, he acted as if he had never received a compliment before! He smiled, grabbed my hand and shook it, and thanked me. What a gentleman!"

Featured Comment by Nancy Ori: "I think that I know Jim from many years ago. Let me know if that is true. My memory seems to be so full of so many things that stuff seems to get pushed to the back somehow.

"Anyway, nice story.

"I visited with Ansel many times at the Carmel house...usually with a cocktail in hand...he loved his cocktails too. I was a teaching assistant at his workshop series for eight seasons, probably some of the most important and memorable formative years for me as a young photographer.

"I have had a lifetime now as a professional photographer and teach all over the place. I try to always bring forth what I learned at Ansel's workshops...patience, sharing, looking, thinking, caring.

"In my experience, he was like a Santa Claus. You just wanted to hug him...which he was not opposed to. He was truly larger than life...being a big person didn't hurt either. But it was his energy that was so impressive. Granted, when I knew him in the late '70s he had already been discovered and had a lot of people around him to help with everything, but he had so much energy and excitement for his craft.

"I try to think about and draw inspiration from my times spent standing next to him on Glacier Point in Yosemite. What an awesome view and experience. There will always be great photographers coming along but no one like Ansel."

Namir Noor-Eldeen, 1984-2007

Namir Noor-Eldeen (Reuters file photo)

War encourages casual murder and probably always has, but the most egregious examples are still dismaying. Thanks to whistle-blowers inside the American military and the under-funded wiki site Wikileaks, which anonymously publishes sensitive information "of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical interest," it's been all over the news in the past 36 hours that Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, his driver and assistant Saeed Chmagh, and 10 other people were senselessly murdered by soldiers from American Apache helicopter gunships in July of 2007—just as Reuters has long suspected.

The widely released 17:47 video, edited from a 39:17 original, clearly shows the "targets" wandering casually on the ground, not engaged in fighting, while the gunners impatiently sought any plausible excuse to open fire.

By all accounts cheerful, helpful and energetic, the then-22-year-old Namir Noor-Eldeen had been interested in photography since boyhood. He was one of the first Iraqis recruited by Retuers for a program intended to train photojournalists who had local ties and local knowledge. Chris Helgren, the former Reuters Chief of Photography who instituted the program, said of Noor-Eldeen before his death that he "started from nothing and is now the pre-eminent photographer in Northern Iraq."

Dean Yates, Baghdad Bureau Chief for Reuters, said "Namir and Saeed were much loved members of the Baghdad bureau. They were always smiling and cheerful despite the horror in their country and the risks they took in their work."

Chris Helgren again: "When he first came to my attention, Namir was an energetic teenager in the northern city of Mosul whose family was involved in photography and video. He took an interest in the trade, and with training, and a few critiques, it quickly became obvious he was going to become one of the new stars in Iraqi photojournalism. He had an urgency that suited the front pages of the news business but also a tender eye that brought humanity via quiet moments to a vicious war. One of the first pictures he sent me was of bewildered U.S. Army soldiers surrounded by a flock of sheep; another I remember was of a wounded Kurdish girl with her legs in bandages while wrapped in a faux fur coat, or one of a boy picking up shards of broken plates in the family dining room after an ammunition dump blast rocked their house."

"Namir was an editor's dream," former Reuters Chief Photographer Bob Strong said. "He was the best photographer in Mosul, he was on top of every story, and if he didn’t shoot the pictures himself, he knew where to find them. His nose had been broken more than once, he'd been shot in the leg, detained, harassed and threatened, but his quick smile and energy never faded. He lived more in 22 years than most people do in a lifetime and it’s very very sad to know I'll never get one of his bearhug greetings again."

You can see a slideshow of some of his work here.

Reuters has long sought the release of the helicopter video under the Freedom of Information act, but the military stonewalled for more than two years.

Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were the fifth and sixth Reuters employees killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion (there has since been a seventh.) All but one are believed to have been killed by Americans. They are among 139 journalists killed in Iraq between March 2003 and October 2009, 36 of whom were photojournalists. Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh are profiled in the multimedia presentation Bearing Witness: Five Years of the Iraq War (see profiles > Dean Yates) and the incident in which they were killed is covered in a 2009 book about the troop surge, The Good Soldiers by Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Gene Forsythe: "A most disturbing set of videos. Even more disturbing, but perhaps only to be expected, is the inflammatory nature of the editing of the 'short version' of the video. I understand that is considered 'freedom of speech.'

"My grandfather (I am 61, by the way) served in WWI. His opinion was that war, in general and in all specifics, was 'mass insanity and mass murder.' My father, who served in WWII and Korea and earned the Air Medal, encouraged my brother to move to Canada when his draft number was about to come up in 1970. He felt the only thing that he learned from his experiences was that war released the moral bindings of human beings and reduced them to the lowest behavioral level.

"I have to agree with both of them...and that insanity can also be defined as walking around in a combat zone with, or near someone with, weapons—either of which makes you a target and places your life in someone else's hands.

"The whole event was seemingly (since I don't know what else was going on in the near locales) without rationale. But I can't draw much else as a conclusion, much less blame a specific person for this specific event. It was madness in action."

Featured Comment by Pete Jackson: "This makes me sick and it is beyond me how anyone can defend it."

Featured Comment by Clinton Bersuch: "I am so angry at some of the outrageous things being said here about American military personnel that I'm not sure where to start. And yes, I watched the video. I guess this is my last day of reading TOP. All I'll say is I'm glad I never donated to Mr. Johnston nor used his Amazon or B&H links or bought anything from the businesses who advertise on this blog."

Featured Comment by HT: "I wonder what the reaction would be like if it was Iraqi aircraft firing down at American journalists and their medical support vehicle."

Featured Comment by G: "It's worthwhile to listen to the interview with Finkel on today's edition of NPR's 'Talk of the Nation.' [Direct link isn't possible; look down the list. —Ed.] The Pulitzer Prize winner, who has seen more of the actual war than the vast majority of civilians, and who was embedded that day, takes a very equivocal view, refusing to condemn or acquit the Apache pilots. As others have said, a lot isn't seen in 18 minutes of a 37 minute video, and as Finkle said today, 'there are no good days in war.' May all the casualties of these wars rest in peace."

Featured Comment by Doc: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have spent over 20 years serving working with and leading the young men and women who currently serve in our armed forces. They are not uneducated kids! They are the best trained and educated force to ever go afield.

"I have watched the entire clip and can say with a great deal of certainty that some of those individuals were armed.

"As to the sound of a helicopter making people run, if you hear a noise (even a loud one) often enough you tend to ignore it. Also, based on the clip the Apache was firing from a long distance. It’s only the magnification of the gun camera that makes it look like he’s close by. It is entirely possible that the people on the street didn’t know he was there until the rounds started hitting the street.

"Now to the folks who have taken offense to the language and the 'gallows humor' I would like to ask one question. Exactly how do you propose that we cope with what we do for a living? I can say for myself alone that when I was doing my job the only thing that was important to me was the safe return of my crew.

"I will not say that a mistake was made, nor will I defend the idiots who suppressed this information for over two years. However I would ask you to remember that it was only after the fact that it was found to be a 'friendly fire' incident (personally I hate the expression).

"Lastly, I would like to thank Mike for the site and for bringing this information to a very wide audience. Everyone killed in war deserves to be remembered."

David Guttenfelder's iPhone Photojournalism

Photo by David Guttenfelder, the Associated Press

Besides photographing with dedicated digital cameras like his peers do, David Guttenfelder of the Associated Press has created a portfolio of work from Afghanistan using an iPhone and a "Polaroid film" filter app. You can see the work at the Denver Post site.

War is hard on camera equipment....

Mike
(Thanks to Albano Garcia)

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Featured Comment by Kurt: "I liked the look of Guttenfeld's pictures. I absolutely hated the results my iPhone 3G camera gave me and had pretty much given up using it except for taking pictures of whiteboards for notes. I downloaded the Polarize app and ran some of my previous shots through it and voila—I actually really like some of my previous shots. I had tried using the iPhone Photoshop app and running my iPhone pictures through big Photoshop—my mistake was trying to make bad pictures look good. The genius of the Polarize app is making the bad look worse for the better. I am sold on this app. It's free and I would have gladly paid for it."

Mike replies: That's what I think. The app just makes the crappy iPhone pictures look more tolerable, more purposeful. It's just a way of getting around the weakness of the "camera." Doesn't matter beyond that.

To me these pictures are about the human condition in war, not necessarily about war. Can't you imagine looking in dismay at that hail- and water-filled cot and thinking, "that's where I've got to sleep"? The pictures are personal and they're about human experience, that's what I like about them.

Featured Comment by Hoainam: "I'm surprised by the negative reaction to these photos. Flea bites on a torso is sugar-coating war? Sleeping on the ground in open air and peeing in a funnel doesn't convey the hardship of soldiers? Images 1, 13, and 28 could be classified as pretty pictures but, to me, the rest are very powerful images. I can't imagine someone misting up with nostalgia after seeing these photos. I can easily see Guttenfelder turning this into a larger body of work.

"With the instantaneous nature of the internet, a good reminder is that a lot of what we see online is a work in progress."

Six-Tenths of a Second, Two Lives Forever Changed

By Michael Granberry, The Dallas Morning News

From the moment he lunged out of the shadows and pulled the trigger on his .38-caliber Colt Cobra, Jack Ruby did more than blast his way into history.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the man suspected of killing President John F. Kennedy two days earlier, suffered a single, fatal shot from Ruby's gun.

But other men standing in the basement of the Dallas police station on Sunday morning, Nov. 24, 1963, saw their own lives change, none more so than a pair of photojournalists who captured the moment in black and white.

For Robert H. "Bob" Jackson, then a 29-year-old photographer for the Dallas Times Herald, taking a picture of Oswald's murder meant winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1964.

"I was there. I was prepared. But I didn't get it." Photo by Jack Beers.

But for Ira Jefferson "Jack" Beers Jr., who worked for The Dallas Morning News—and who took an almost equally vivid picture—the basement events left an entirely different legacy.

Those who knew him say he never recovered from missing the Pulitzer by six-tenths of a second—the time between his photograph and Mr. Jackson's....

READ ON at dallasnews.com

-

Mike adds: This is a great and very poignant story that we've covered before, but I've never seen the story written up as well as Michael Granberry does in this classic 2004 article. Well worth a visit if you've never read it, and even a revisit if you already have. I enjoyed encountering it again this morning.

ADDENDA:
Side-by-side photos by Beers and Jackson (Jackson's is heavily cropped as per usual).

Uncropped (or less-cropped) version of Jackson's photo.

Mike
(Thanks to a "friend of the site" who prefers to remain anonymous)

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Featured Comment by Steven Alexander: "To the lower left of the Beers photo, but out of frame, was I. As a film cameraman for NBC I filmed the entire event, from Oswald entering the garage, through the chaos, to the subduing of Ruby. My film shows Ruby entering the scene, drawing the gun, and firing. The muzzle blast and a still flash overexpose one frame. It was then, and still is today, the most historic image I ever captured. People still ask me about it.

"Later that Sunday afternoon I went out to the large bus-like vehicle that was the NBC live television site to see if I could view the film on the air. When I stepped into the bus, my stomach turned over when I saw the can of unprocessed film sitting on a table in the bus. NBC had broadcast the shooting live and had recorded it on video tape.

"I guess I'm an early victim of the electronic revolution affecting the silver nitrate capture. Yet today I do see those frames of mine every year around the end of November. I got no credit or recognition for that effort, but went on to spend the next 25 years making motion pictures of many other important news stories—eighteen in Washington, D.C."

Featured Comment by Lou Spirito: "Interesting that this article fails to mention that there was a third still photographer in the basement that day. I've spent the last several months working on a project about the career of former UPI and Washington Post photographer Frank Johnston. He was on assignment for UPI in the basement positioned near Bob Jackson. While he also missed 'the shot,' he never once conveyed a sense of disappointment. Indeed, he seems astonished to recall the fact that he was witness to the event. The two frames he shot, in my opinion, complete the story of the fleeting event when presented along side Jackson's image. The two frames can be seen via Corbis here and here."

Whither Goest Thou, Big Digi?

So I was just wondering. What happens to the online end of the digital imaging hobby when new camera introductions slow to a crawl?

People love to read about new cameras, new technology, new ideas—"whatever's next," in the words of one commentator. According to 1001 Noisy Cameras' latest "Leaderboard," there were 123 new cameras introduced in the first quarter of 2010. Seems like a ton. So all is well then?

Herein lies the rub: of those 123, only eight were new interchangeable-lens types with 4/3-sized sensors or better. And of those eight, two (Panasonic G2, Canon T2i) were updates or modified versions of existing cameras; two were "stripper" or more basic versions of more fully-featured cameras (Sony A450, a bare-bones A550, and Panasonic G10); and one was a longtime vaporware camera that still hasn't actually materialized (that I know of—the Sigma SD15). Only three—the Samsung NX-10, Olympus E-PL1, and Pentax 645D—are significantly new models capable of generating any degree of real excitement among enthusiasts. And none of the three are mainstream APS-C or "full-frame" DLSRs. Two are mirrorless Micro-types, and only one—the big Pentax—is the kind of thing that used to keep the writers working late and the fires burning bright.

...And it might not even make it to the English-speaking countries at all. Hmm.

Sony has a rare recent hit on its hands with the popular new W290. But it's not the sort of camera that gets a veteran photo-dog's heart pumping hard.

Of course, new cameras will continue to be introduced, and we'll all continue to be interested in them. But most people reading this will remember the heady days of the "core" of the digital transition, maybe 1998–2005, when progress was rapid and we were spoiled for news. New things—new big things—new big exciting things—were coming down the pike one right after the other. One right on top of the other, sometimes.

This particular site—I mean TOP—reached the apex of its popularity (measured in traffic, at least) when I offered commentary on the Nikon D3 and D700, the Canon 5D Mark II, and the Sony A900 in the fall of 2008. The scene hasn't been nearly that exciting lately.

It's not like nothing's happened since then. But there's been a definite slowing of progress in the past year and a half (doubtless partly a consequence of the global financial crisis, as well as slowly saturating markets). And, on the digital camera sites, there's been a perceptible calming of the waters—even as competing sites spring up all the time, as Johnny-come-lately webpreneurs vie like neighborhood kids for their slices of the online profit pie. Also, most of the excitement seems to have been at the low and high ends of the scale, with mirrorless pocket cameras and the newest "645" big-sensor cameras, or in new features like the spreading-kudzu video convergence thing (which to me is........snuffurfllubub huuuuunh? What just happened? Sorry, musta put myself right to sleep there. Guess my snores woke me up*).

So I'm just wondering. What's going to happen when there's just not much news to report? Or when cameraphones siphon the juice off the point-and-shoot market and the mirrorless cameras kill the entry-level end of the DSLR market—and the mid-level DSLRs get so good that even some pros won't feel the need to justify the big rigs?

I'll still be over here off to the side happily blowsing about replica sailing ships, horse races, and whatever my current infatuation happens to be amongst photographers and their books (to paraphrase what Thomas Jefferson said of reading, I have a canine appetite for pictures). But whither the big digi sites? Occasional scintillating news of new firmware updates plus tips to deals on printer ink, before the chirping crickets recommence? Not prognosticating here; like I say, just wondering.

Mike

*Video isn't my thing, in other words.

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Featured Comment by Glenn Gordon: "I'm not a camera maven. Obsessing over gear and galloping technology makes me slightly nauseous, so I try to maintain a safe distance from the techno-commentariat, all the far-seeing Nostradamuses prognosticating on the future of photography and pronouncing on the fatal flaws of this or that camera or software or new holy wafer of silicon. Gear is seductive—I'm a sucker for it myself—but in the words of one who teaches by example, 'it's not about the bike.'

"I think it would be interesting if every comment offered to TOP were accompanied by a photograph—made by the commentator, so that we could not only read what the person thinks but could see how the writer sees. It would probably make for an editorial nightmare, but it would tether talk to vision, and possibly reduce the amount of methane released into the atmosphere."

Featured Comment by Shawn Barnett: "This is a Photokina year. Watch for more big news this Summer and Fall."

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all our friends!

Today, the city of Los Angeles turns 160 years old. Happy Birthday, L.A.

It's also the anniversary of the day Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded "Micro-Soft," in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They adapted John Kemeny's BASIC computer language for H. Edward Roberts' Altair 8800.

Dr. Kemeny was the President of Dartmouth when I was a student there, and I had several private meetings with him (I discovered that students seldom took advantage of his office hours, so I'd just go in to chat with him about various issues. His secretary did not like me, as we always ran long). The New Hampshire license plate on his car was "BASIC."

Three hundred Ritz Camera stores nationwide begin clearance sales today as part of the chain's bankruptcy proceeding.

It's poet Maya Angelou's birthday. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4th, 1968.

Muddy Waters would have been 96 today. (He died in 1983.)

This is the day three years ago that Don Imus made his "nappy headed hos" remark about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, which eventually resulted in his being fired by CBS.

On April 4th, 1964, the Beatles had the top five singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Senator H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania died on April 4th, 1991, when his private plane hit a helicopter. I had an encounter with him too, when he came to visit the owner of a B&B where I was staying on Nantucket. His widow later married Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

In 1581, Sir Francis Drake was knighted on the deck of his ship the Golden Hinde on April 4th by Queen Elizabeth I for circumnavigating the world. Never met him.

The Captain's Cabin of The Golden Hinde

Incidentally, Drake's plunder from his voyage was so great that the smallest share, which went to a cabin boy, was the equivalent of more than £1 million in today's money. A seaworthy and extensively sailed replica of The Golden Hinde, which can be visited in London today, can be rented as "an atmospheric maritime location for film or photography"—or for children's birthday parties (the website says, "Children may come dressed as pirates if they wish").

On this day in 1818, the U.S. Congress decided that the American flag should have a star added every time a new state was admitted to the union. The number of stripes was limited to 13, one for each of the original colonies.

In 1887, Susanna Medora Salter was elected Mayor of Argonia, Kansas, and became the first female mayor of an American town.

In Taiwan and Hong Kong, it's Children's Day.

And it's a beautiful cool sunny day here in Wisconsin. I hope you have a nice day.

Mike

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Quote o' the Day

"I began thinking, what if you gave everyone
a computer?"

—H. Edward Roberts, 1941-2010,
now acknowledged as one of the
fathers of the personal computer

-

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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Instant Collectible for Basketball Fans

This is holy week—as anyone who follows college basketball will confirm.

Today, the Butler Bulldogs a.k.a. "Dawgs" of tiny Butler University, in Indianapolis, take on mighty...well, not Duke. They're actually playing Michigan State. Duke is in the other half of the draw.

The friction with Duke arises because Butler—which is mainly famous, basketball-wise, for the fact that the movie "Hoosiers" was filmed in its historic Hinckle Fieldhouse, now an actual tourist attraction because of it—has never been to the Final Four before, whereas Duke, which is the New York Yankees of Men's college basketball, gets to go to the Final Four every other year on average, once every four years at an absolute minimum, according to NCAA bylaws.

So yesterday, the Sports Section of the Indianapolis Star ran a big picture of Duke coach Mike Krysherwesjkidgxjikyshrwski (pronounced "shhhh") with a mustache, a target on his forehead, and (allegedly) horns (I can't see the horns).

They were a bit into the press run when the grownups found out. Opinion was divided as to whether Coach K looked dashing or dastardly with the 'stache, but the target on the forehead was deemed to have been questionable—the United States, with its combination of low social cohesion and a heavily armed populace, is known to be a touch volatile, and anything that might be construed as inciting low-IQ individuals to actual violence tends to set sober adults a bit on edge.

Coach K called the picture "juvenile," but then, he's a poopy-head. The perpetrators were sent to their rooms. The newspaper apologized to Duke.

Anyway, the paper's editors decided to interrupt the press run and replace the drawn-on picture. The Star estimates that "only about 30,000" newspapers got out with the drawn-on picture state-wide—thus creating an instant collectible for Hoosier basketball fans.

(For those of you from foreign countries, a "Hoosier" is defined as anyone who was taught in grade school that James Whitcomb Riley was a major American poet, thinks high school basketball is objectively a more important sport than professional football or baseball, has known from birth what "brickyard" refers to, does not immediately think of a bird when encountering the word "Bird," and calls asphalt "SEE-ment.")

Go DAWGS.

Mike

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The Portfolios of Ansel Adams

You learn something new every day. Or, if you start out knowing very little, like me, you can learn two new things a day.

Two things I learned today: The New York Graphic Society (NYGS)'s Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs and Ansel Adams in Color are in fact companion volumes. The former is much thicker, but they're the same height and width, and have similar white dust jackets over white bindings decorated similarly with pictures. They go together. Make a matching pair. Didn't know.

I also completely missed the fact that my personal favorite Ansel Adams book, The Portfolios of Ansel Adams, was reissued in paperback in 2006. (I've had the book since forever, if that's any excuse.) And now the second edition of the reissue is out. I didn't notice when that happened either.

Now I know.

We've discussed in the past that different people work most comfortably in different forms; some people think in terms of books, some people think in terms of single images, others extended essays, or exhibits framed and hung in gallery spaces, or magazine features. (People will ask me what form I work in, and I'll be forced to say "great motley heaps of crap piled in odd and provisional corners of my house, such that I cannot find a single [expletive deleted] thing that I am looking for when I need it." That's the form I work in. Apparently.) Anyway I think Ansel worked most naturally in portfolios. He created and marketed portfolios all his life, and all his portfolios have a modulated quality, balancing variety and consistency. He seems (to my reading of his work anyway) to have been most comfortable with small sets of original works rendered elegantly and luxuriously. The Portfolios of... is not his most major book, but it's the one that gives us a window into his own thinking about his pictures through his personal editing of them, and it's his most interesting book in my view.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Carsten Bockermann: "I bought The Portfolios of Ansel Adams on my first visit to the U.S. It was back in 1982, I was 16 at the time. The lady in a little bookstore in Carmel said 'oh, that's too bad, you just missed Mr. Adams. He left a few minutes ago and went to the barber shop.' Needless to say I found out where the barber shop was and got my copy signed right there, in the barber's chair."

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Portfolios is a wonderful book for a number of reasons. It shows the text for each portfolio, including colophons, and even reproduces the actual typefaces used. This is great for 'type dorks' and book collectors like myself; you can see the exact presentation Adams was aiming for. Fortunately for him, San Francisco was (and still is) home to America's largest concentration of fine art book printers. The early portfolios were printed by the esteemed Grabhorn brothers; most of the later examples were designed and typeset by Adrian Wilson, another widely admired book printer.

"The evolution of Ansel Adams' portfolios as displayed in the book to some extent paralleled his artistic development over time. As John Szarkowski pointed out, the early portfolios contained mostly new work, while subsequent portfolios included an ever greater proportion of older images. Either teaching and writing left insufficient time or his muse had fled, but Adams' output of artistically worthy negatives declined precipitously after about 1950."

Facebook: Ripoff and Appropriation?

By Vlatko Juric-Kokic

Round and round and round
There are events occurring in cycles. Seasons, elections, forest fires. Just like forest fires, there are occasional waves of attempts on intellectual property rights of individuals on the Internet. For instance, there was a huge scandal nine years ago when Microsoft proposed terms of use for its Passport sites that would give Microsoft all the rights to all the users' bits, as Slashdot reported, even if said bits just passed through Passport sites. The resulting storm of complaints caused Microsoft to back off.

Last year, Facebook did something similar in its terms of service. It didn't "propose," though—it changed the terms of service to allow it to do absolutely whatever it want with the content (I'm starting to hate that word) that Facebook users uploaded to Facebook servers, forever. Chris Walters from The Consumerist noticed the changes, wrote about them on the blog, and the final result was that Facebook backed off.

As time goes by
A year has passed. Facebook has apparently learned something. This time it is proposing new changes to its terms of service. There is no evil stuff in there. No allowing Facebook to use your photos, videos and whatnot for commercial purposes. But it has apparently not learned enough. In the innocuous wording of the section about sharing your content and information, there is still one little word: use.

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Whoa! You can use anything anybody uploads? And you can transfer the license to whomever you please? You can sub-license the "content"? I don't think so. Granted, there's also the phrase "subject to your privacy and application settings." It does look like you can prevent anybody from taking your photos. It's not such a clear-cut limitation, though. Firstly, how many people really read terms of use? Not very many. I am somewhat sensitized to the matter but I don't consider myself to represent the majority, nor to be as privacy-conscious as it may seem. And even I noticed the proposal by accident. I was replying to a message and saw the proposal among the updates, which I usually just delete because the updates mostly appear in my News Feed anyway. Others won't even know the use of their photos is in question.

Secondly, take some very real cases into account. For example, I upload my snapshots to Facebook and send the link around. It's easier than uploading them to my site and it's easier to show them around. Everybody can see them. And I mean everybody. There are no restrictions to who can see the photos. Therefore, no privacy. Therefore, the license applies. Riiight.

Dubiosity
Even more dubious is the last sentence of the quoted text. At the moment, when you upload photos, you have to check a box confirming you're the owner and you have the right..., et cetera and so forth. If I took a portrait of my friend and uploaded it to their wall so they can use it as a profile photo, I shared it with them. If I delete my account later, the photo remains among my friend's profile photos. Let's say I didn't ask, nor did my friend think, about deleting the photo. According to the proposal, Facebook retains the license. But since the author has to check the box, and my friend was not the author, Facebook retaining the use is in direct conflict with Facebook's own policies. How about that?

An awful, awful thought occured to me. By allowing itself the use of photos by authors who are no longer on Facebook, is Facebook somehow creating orphan works? Nah, it's certainly just a dark figment of my imagination. Anyway, dear Facebook, Brad Templeton wrote down Ten Big Myths about Copyright so many years ago. Please do read them. The article does talk about writings and outmoded social networks like the Usenet, but the same things apply to photographs and everything else on the web as well as on the current social networking sites. It all boils down to one principle: you can't use a work without explicit permission from its author.

If the author puts her work on a site, the site can store it and display it, but the same site cannot give the work to other sites, organizations, or individuals. Again, you need explicit permission, one stating the purpose and the way of sharing. Even less can the site "use" the work, with everything such a broad verb can imply—from creating a banner or illustration for the site to licensing or selling the work to others to do the same. Members of social networking sites are not a source of free content for the sites to exploit.

Enough already. We don't want to live in a dystopian science fiction novel.

Vlatko

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Featured Comment by latent_image: "I eagerly await the day a major court decision knocks the stuffing out of one of the big internet companies on a copyright issue. Even though I formally opted out of Google Books, they grabbed one of my books and posted 20% of it online, including approximately 20 full-page photos. As of this weekend, my book has finally been removed, but let's just say that Google Books was less than cooperative about it, considering that my first request for removal was last October and that it took repeated efforts on my part to get them to comply.

"Google Books is a massive grab of copyrighted material. Now that the courts have forced them into an agreement with authors and publishers groups, Google Books tries to put a nice face on it. But they started out scanning and posting book pages without the slightest regard for copyright. (Google Books make a 'fair use' argument, but 20% of a book? I don't think so.) Copyright grabs are not okay with me...ever."

Sony's Mysteriously Missing Middle Model

I noticed that the not-yet-three-year-old Sony A700 has been definitely discontinued, distinctly dispensed with, definitively dropped, but that nothing has come along to replace it yet. Is there anything known to the cloud-mind about this? An A701 out there where the sky meets the earth? Do we have moles at Sony? Any loose-lipped pros under bendable NDAs? Is there a "Sony rumors" site? That's a pretty big hole between the $850 A550 and the $2k A850. Not to mention a gap of 300 A's...I'm just sayin'.

Mike, a-wonderin'

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Featured Comment by James McDermott: "Sony's ultimate aim is to have a bespoke DSLR model for every customer. There appear to be approximately two million A200, A300, A400 and A500 variants out there at the moment. The A700 was bought by a Mr. Wayne Kopalski of Akron, Ohio; having reached its production target of one, the model was discontinued immediately thereafter."

ADDENDUM: More seriously, I'd just like to say that I consider this a major stumble on Sony's part. Not a critical mistake—just a stumble, like a politician making a bad gaffe.

Sony is still new to this market—the DSLR end of the camera business—and for it to leave this critical segment of the product spectrum vacant is akin to a TV station broadcasting dead air. (I've never worked at a television station, but I imagine that few things set the crews scrambling like dead air.) It's not like an overdue update where the old model is getting long in the tooth and overly familiar (or simply obsolescent—Olympus's long E-1—>E-3 gap is still the paradigm stumble of that type). It's that the old one is gone, as in NLA, and if there are customers standing at the counter waving $1100-$1400 in cash in their hands, there's nothing there for them to buy. Not good. 

I can't imagine giant Sony would even hear what I have to say, much less pay any attention to it, but in my humble opinion it's time for a concrete announcement and a commitment to a firm release date, if possible.

I've been a fan of Sony cameras for a long time, and I'm a big cheerleader of the A850/A900 duo (see also here...and here, about three-quarters the way down). So I'm hardly anti-Sony. But I gotta call it like I see it. Amateur prognosticators all over the internet love to opine that "so-and-so is going to lose market share," and I hardly ever say that. But I know the enthusiast market if I know my name, and in this case my opinion is that Sony really is taking a chance on losing some customers. —MJ

The Problem of Microstock in a Nutshell

You've got to see this...Chris Barton's remarkable compilation of some of the uses of a particular image. For when you just have to say "perfect-people perfect-world lowest-common-denominator cookie-cutter pile-them-high sell-them-cheap."

Just scroll down and look at the pictures. Worth several thousand words! The "Business Image" one is especially hilarious, I thought.

Mike
(Thanks to Robert Roaldi)

ADDENDUM: People are reporting problems with the link. I've tested it on Firefox and Safari and it works for me. Here is the naked URL in case you can't get to it otherwise: http://fairtradephotographer.blogspot.com/2010/03/microstock-why-would-reputable-company.html

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Featured Comment by Spyro: "How much did the photographer make from that photo? Something like six bucks, two marbles and some pocket lint?"

Featured Comment by Don [in reply to Spyro]: "Well, since the photographer is exclusive to istock, and that image has had 6700 downloads, she's made something like $25,000 from that one picture alone. In trying to lambast microstock Chris Barton actually makes a good case for photographers doing it. Lise Gagné could have placed that image with Photographers Direct, and after a few years she'd have earned 80% of, well, probably nothing. Besides, doesn't everyone know that crass advertising actually works?"

Oddities of Image Stabilization

By Ctein

Two weeks ago I bought a Panasonic 45–200mm lens for my Olympus Pen EP-1. Along with my Panasonic 20mm and the Olympus 14–45mm zoom, that gives me a pretty complete kit (save for wide-angle and macro work). I have found the image stabilization in the Olympus worked very well with my other lenses; I've had utterly spectacular results when I've used shorter focal lengths handheld in the 1/8–1/15 second range. The first illustration here was photographed with the Panasonic 20 mm lens at ƒ/1.7 and 1/7th of a second, and the companion frames are similarly sharp.

Image stabilization works wonders...(go here for a larger, higher-quality JPEG)...

Consequently, I was hoping that I'd be able to handhold the new zoom down to some fairly low shutter speeds, especially with the choice of on-lens and in-body image stabilization. That would go some ways to compensate for its modest aperture (otherwise, it's a very nice lens). Well, that's not what I found. At low shutter speeds there was some benefit to image stabilization, but the higher the shutter speed went the less this was true.

At shutter speeds above 1/250 of a second, I am half-convinced that image stabilization produced less sharp results than no stabilization at all. At 1/125 of a second and above, image stabilization is not obviously better than no stabilization. It is most definitely not foolproof; I would say only half of the frames were pixel-level sharp, even at 1/250 of a second.

At 1/60 of a second and lower, image stabilization is clearly advantageous, although not by as much as one would think. It looks like the lower the shutter speed, the better image stabilization does relative to ordinary handholding; the problem is that with a 200mm lens, low shutter speeds are going to be problematical (that's an understatement).

...Except when it doesn't! 100% sections from some test photos. All photos made at ƒ/6.3, 1/250th sec., 200mm focal length. Photos 1–3 used Olympus in-body stabilization, 4–6 Panasonic in-lens stabilization, 7–9 both stabilization systems and 10–12 no stabilization. No series of three photos is entirely sharp.

Note: The poor showing by in-camera stabilization in this series was not replicated in other test series. Sometimes, in fact, it was better than in-lens stabilization. All test series, though, showed that having both systems on produced no additional problems, but that having no stabilization at all worked as well as or better at high shutter speeds than any combination of stabilizing systems.

Several hundred test photographs indicated that there was no clear-cut advantage to one stabilization system over the other. Interestingly, having both systems on didn't perform any worse (didn't perform any better, either). The manual says not to do that. Sometimes manuals are wrong. No doubt you are all shocked to hear that. What I have to conclude is that image stabilization is of modest benefit with this lens used at its longest focal length, but it's not really a game-changer. That's somewhat disappointing. Most notably, getting consistently tack-sharp photographs at 200mm is going to require me to use exposure times even shorter than 1/250 of a second, unless I can improve my handholding skills. The methods and stances I've used in the past worked extremely well, but they may not be optimal for this camera and lens combination.

I've never had a chance to do this kind of careful comparison before, and I'm a little surprised at these results. But, after discussing this with other folks it seems like my results aren't abnormal. I posted a query about this on the mu-4/3 forum and quickly got some very helpful and informative comments, as well as valuable links to relevant tests other people had done. For those of you with Micro 4/3 systems, I really have to recommend that user group. Most of the time, when I post a question about a technical problem on a user forum, all I hear is the faint susurration of chirping crickets. Not with that bunch!

Anyway, if there's a reader out there who's got some real expertise on the technical innards of these systems, I'd love to hear your comments. My hypothesis: the frequency response of these systems is limited, so when the exposure gets into the few millisecond range the system can't compensate for the dominant motion frequencies. With long exposures, those high frequency movements are less dominant and they tend to average out into a symmetric slight blur. With short exposures, there isn't enough time for random motion to average out; you get a smear. The problem's exaggerated by long focal length lenses, where a little bit of camera movement translates into a lot of image movement.

That's a wild-ass guess. I'd love to hear more educated opinions.

A cautionary note: if you want to chime in with your opinions about what's going on, it would be good to read the thread on the mu-4/3 forum first and follow the links there. Your thoughts may very well have been anticipated.

Whatever, it's looking like image stabilization is not a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. Dang.

Ctein

Ctein's weekly column on TOP is published every Thursday morning.

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Featured Comment by Thom Hogan: "All stabilization systems have a 'sampling and correction frequency.' On the Nikon VR systems, for instance, that frequency is a bit above 1/500, which is why I've long recommended that you turn VR off at 1/500 and above.

"As you get shutter speeds closer to the sampling frequency, you start to run into what I call 'stutter' problems. Basically, the system is still correcting for a -XY movement when a +XY movement is now needed, but the sampling/movement frequency isn't fast enough to compensate in time for the shutter speed (or only partially compensates).

"What the frequency is on the Micro 4/3 bodies is I don't know, but it seems lower than on the Canon/Nikon in-lens systems.

"Makers promote stabilization as a marketing checklist item. Users interpret that as meaning 'always use it.' Just the opposite. Stabilization should never be on unless you know you need it and know it will be effective."

April Fools

Well, Jeff Ascough has come clean that his elaborate (and very popular) rumor about testing a new rangefinder was an April 1 hoax, as many suspected. (Hey, saves me having to concoct my own April Fool's joke.)

The far-flung response and interest in his tantalizing fraud seem to reveal one thing for sure, though—there seems to be a massive pent-up desire for one of the bigs—or, at least, somebody other than Leica—to build a digital rangefinder.

I'm skeptical, myself. My thesis—empirical, as usual—is that the Leica rangefinder is popular because it's a Leica, not because it's a rangefinder. People don't actually like rangefinders much. (We will now here from many of those who do. Can we just stipulate that "we know you're out there"? We will also hear from everybody who thinks the Voigtländer Bessas have been "popular." Okay—but that's just relatively. In terms of hard numbers, no.)

Can I also just point out here that people often say they want something that they would not actually buy if indeed they could?

People say they want Canon or Nikon to make a digital rangefinder. I heard an insider rumor a year or two ago that a big manufacturer was fairly far along with plans for just such a camera, but that Leica went to them and begged them not to do it, saying it would be the death of Leica. Leica is revered in Japan, and, according to my source, this Japanese company acquiesced, and shelved its plans. What that means—if there's any truth to that story—is that if you really want a cheaper M-mount digital rangefinder, your best bet is to be rooting for Leica to go out of business, because that's what it would take to clear the way for the camera you say you want. Is that what you want?

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Voltz: "It wasn't a rumour; I tested an alpha prototype. I hadn't heard that it was Leica that killed it, only that development had been stopped. I blamed the global financial crisis."