The Online Photographer

The Day for the Dead...

...And the living. "The Veteran" by Gary Voth for the San Bernardino Sun,
used with permission.

I think of many things on Memorial Day. One thing I'll remember every year on this day is John Moore's great photograph.

Mike

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

Featured Comment by Judith Wallerius: "In the original blog entry on John Moore's moving photograph of Mary McHugh is a now-defunct link to the article Moore wrote on the Getty blog about the day he took the picture. You can now find it here."

Open Mike: Blog Notes

We get traffic: On Sunday (it's still Sunday as I write this), TOP got 44,000+ visitors, which is our second-best traffic day in the past three months, and (I didn't actually check) almost certainly our best Sunday ever. And that's without a new post for Sunday—the excess is viral attention being paid to the "Letter for George" post, news of which appears to be wending its way through the tubes of the internets.

Unfortunately, a few people who aren't regular readers aren't grokking it. I've been called some names by people who don't come around here much. Occupational hazard, I guess. But 98% of readers seemed to understand.

We eat Himalayan: I'm happy to report that I got to eat lunch with my old friend, good friend, and very smart friend Ctein last Friday. He was in Madison for "WisCon," which sounds like Wisconsin without the sin but is actually a major feminist-themed science-fiction convention. We went out for Himalayan food at a Nepalese restaurant (a first for me—it was very good) with Ctein's friend Peggy, a mathematician and vocal artist. Believe it or not, it's been 13 years since Ctein and I have seen each other in person, so it was really a treat. Ctein is surely one of this particular galaxy's most interesting people.

We hit you up: It's that time of the month again. As I've mentioned before, hopefully not more than once a month, all this stuff doesn't write itself! If you want to help out, especially if you never have before, you can support TOP in one of three ways: make a direct donation, make a recurring donation—or just buy something for yourself from Amazon or B&H Photo using our links, which can always be found in the right-hand sidebar.

When you buy yourself something through our links, those two affiliates pay us a small commission out of their profits. You don't pay any more for your purchase, but everything you buy earns money for TOP, as long as you start from here when you actually make the purchase. (Items already in your Shopping Cart aren't counted—even if you linked from here when you put them in there.)

Of course, it would be nice if you bought yourself one of these (seriously, who buys those?), but, believe it or not, even buying something small helps out: the percentage we get for everything goes up as the item count goes up. A few notable anomalies on Amazon: we get a straight $25 for any computer purchase, no matter how large; MP3 songs do count; but Kindle books do not. Our highest commission, though—a whopping 10%—is on Kindle readers.

We find out fascinating facts about you: I have no idea how they know stuff like this, but at my friend Stephen Gandy's recommendation I went to one of those analytics sites today, and they say that, relative to the entire Universe of web users, TOP readers tend to be: 35 and older, male (that's photography in general—I believe TOP has more female readers than most photography sites), and—our strongest index—we have far more readers with post-graduate degrees than is average on the web.

We get the best comments: If you missed Jillian's poignant "Featured Comment" to the "P.S., but not to 'George'" post, be sure to go read it. I found it very touching, though tragic. What a thoughtful parting gift from her "camera hobbyist" husband, in several different ways.

Mike

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

Featured Comment by Tom Brenholts: "Regarding buying at B&H or Amazon through TOP; here's an easy way to do it without having to think. Enter the sites through TOP, then bookmark them. After that, any time you go to B&H or Amazon the link comes up as having entered through TOP. Here is what my browser shows: http://www.amazon.com/?tag=theonlinephot-20 Then, every time you buy anything from Amazon, the credit goes here. No fuss, no muss, no brain strain. Buy a book, credit here. Buy a gas grill, credit here. Buy the three howling wolves shirt, credit here. Buy a 7D (I did), credit here."

Mike replies: Thanks for that Tom. That does indeed work for Amazon, but I'm told it does not work for B&H Photo. With B&H, it's best to come here and click on the advertisement. That does the trick.

Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

Dennis Hopper with his 2009 book of his photographs. Photo courtesy Taschen

Dennis Hopper died today at his home in Venice, California, at the age of 74.

The actor was for many years also a prolific photographer. In the 1960s, when he believed he wasn't going to get future work from movie studios because of his wild-man reputation, he considered becoming a career photographer; he'd received his first camera as a gift from Brooke Hayward, his first wife (who also helped resuscitate his acting career), and had taken to it readily. Most of his better known photographic output coincided with the decade of the 1960s. "I was a compulsive shooter back then," he told Christopher Goodwin. "I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people."

The most recent book of his work, Dennis Hopper: Photographs 1961–1967, with multilingual text in English, French and German, was issued as a $1,000 limited edition by Taschen in 2009. Another book that covers the same period and includes some of the same work, 1712 North Crescent Heights: Dennis Hopper Photographs 1962–1968, is unfortunately out of print.

The movie "Easy Rider," which Hopper directed and co-wrote, and in which he co-starred, took in $50 million in 1969, when a typical movie ticket cost $1.25.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

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

Auction Records Set for Early Camera, Rare Leicas

The final hammer has just fallen at the 17th WestLicht Photographica Auction in Vienna, Austria, and there's a new "World's Most Expensive Camera"—an 1839 Daguerreotype Giroux (above) was sold for €732,000, premiums included (approximately $899,000 and £622,000 at today's exchange rates). It is the most ever paid for a camera. (Alphonse Giroux was the brother-in-law of Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, inventor of the Daguerreotype—and generally credited as the primary inventor of photography, although the full story is more interesting. Note Daguerre's signature on the camera's label—click on the image to see it larger.) WestLicht expert Michel Auer stated that all other Giroux cameras are in public museums.

Several rare Leicas also achieved good prices at the sale, including #15 of the "0 Series" M3 prototypes—a rare perfect survivor from among 65 M3 prototypes produced, many of which no longer exist—which sold for €130,000 ($160,000, £110,000) exclusive of premiums. (With the lens I just wrote about the other day.)

Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

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

Information at Your Fingertips

Our friend (and frequent TOP contributor) Gordon Lewis, of Shutterfinger fame, has authored, for Canon, a set of carry-along quick reference guides for your camera bag. Gordon refers to them as "cheatsheets" in his write-up about the project at Shutterfinger; Canon calls them "QuickGuides." They're free for download from the Canon Learning Center, and they're formatted so you can print them out, fold them up, and take them with you. If you shoot Canon, check 'em out.

Mike

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

P.S., but not to "George"

Well, that was fun. Amused myself, which is something.

Thanks for all the great comments.

Of course, "George" is fictitious. And I've never actually recommended that a beginner start with a D700 and two primes. Wouldn't be a bad idea, though. Especially if fictitious George could buy the camera used.

In real life, "buying and trying" is part of the fun. And there's no one right journey for everyone—just as there's no one correct destination.

The point of "Letter to George," of course, can actually be summed up in three words: "Sometimes, economizing isn't." You can do great work with very basic or inexpensive cameras, as I've said many times, but there's also no reason you have to start small. As long as you can afford it responsibly, I see nothing necessarily wrong with starting at the top. Assuming it's something you really do want.

This idea stems in part from an ancient ethos that I absorbed seemingly by osmosis when I got into photography. Basically, the idea was that you did what you had to do to get what you needed to do your work. That doesn't mean rob and steal. But...save up, sacrifice, seek bargains, even take out a bank loan if you need to. Get what you really need to do the work you want to do. Do it right the first time and then don't do it again...too soon. Granted, it's often expensive. But, as "Letter to George" indicates, sometimes it's more expensive not to do so, because instead of buying one expensive camera once, you end up buying five cheaper ones first...and then you still have to buy the expensive one you wanted all along in the end. 

This strategy didn't work very well during the Digital Transition—it worked better in film days, only because you could keep using a good film camera for decades if you wanted to—but things have settled down enough that I think it's starting to be good advice again. At least, it seems reasonable to expect five years of service out of a good digital camera of today without suffering undue obsolescence.

But if I were to sum up my actual, real buying advice in very short form, it would go something like this:

1. Do your level best to get something you really, really like.

2. Make a promise to yourself—set a time goal in order to limit the time you might waste shopping and the money you might waste buying successive iterations of the same item. The best experiences I've had with new cameras were when I invested in exactly what I wanted and promised myself in advance that I'm going to commit to it for a certain period of time. I committed to the M6 for one year, and used it for nearly three; the OM-4T for three years, and used it for nearly five. Both experiences were great—very focused on pictures as opposed to gear. It's fun to shop, but it's crucial to stop. 

3. While you own something, no matter what it is, use it as hard as you can and enjoy it.

Of course, that last bit of advice is redundant. You already do, I'm sure.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Tom Brenholts: "This reminds me of the Law of Tripods: Every beginning photographer has at least three tripods. 1) The cheapest one he could find, 2) The most expensive one at the Big Box Store, 3) The one he should have bought first."

Mike replies: Tripods are an excellent example. I still have, and still use, the first tripod I ever owned, a magnificent, sturdy 30-year-old Gitzo Studex I bought new. It's a bit the worse for wear but absolutely fully functional. It's true that more recently I've considered buying a carbon fiber model—those didn't exist when I bought the Studex, which is made of steel and anything but light—but I haven't wasted a lot of money on tripods over the years. I bought the best right from the start and have never really needed anything else. Far from being a symptom of profligacy, "buying the best from the outset" can be a money-saving strategy.

Featured Comment by Jillian: "Here's a random plug: I have the world's nicest and most expensive point-and-shoot camera. It is a D700 with a lovely lens that I can't describe because I don't know anything about cameras. It says 1:1.8G on it, is that a thing? When my husband the camera hobbyist had cancer, towards the end, he realized that whatever camera he left me with for taking pics of our toddler was going to be the camera I used for the next 20 years or so. So he quietly upgraded the D70 for a D700, and set it up for me. I haven't changed a single setting in nine months, and I take tons of truly gorgeous pictures, inside, outside, low light, sunlight, action, still, whatever. It doesn't zoom but that hasn't been a problem. I have no training or knowledge whatsoever, and I take amazing, artist-quality pictures. Seriously. I don't even post-process. They magically come out looking like that." 

Mike replies: That's a very touching story—thank you. So sorry about your husband. And what a nice gift from him, in many different ways.

Featured Comment by David in Sydney: "Early on when I was about 12 I was given something like a 110 film camera. It lasted about one roll of film. Then a second hand Nikon FM (being sold by a trustworthy shop) that had been sprayed internally with WD-40 was gifted me as a 15 year old. Both experiences and both cameras made me lose my faith in photography for a while until the Nikon was fixed.

"Since that first Nikon 25 years ago I've had nothing but good cameras—the top Nikon, Leica and Hasselblad bodies. The bad tools are very depressing and soul destroying. The best tools have allowed me to enjoy photography. Buying cheap and nasty means you've lost the opportunity to enjoy yourself. And if you decide that this new hobby isn't to be you really can't sell a bad camera!"

Mike replies: I've had that same experience, David—cameras I knew I couldn't sell in good conscience.

Talking about bad tools being depressing and "soul destroying," a few more thoughts I've remembered—I'm not a guitarist, but I've heard it said that it's easier to learn how to play on a good guitar than on a bad one. And I recall once talking to a clerk in a big, very old warehouse store. He was talking about fitted clubs, and his opinion was that the common perception is exactly backwards. He felt that beginners really needed fitted clubs so they didn't develop bad habits compensating for poorly-fitting clubs, whereas he himself, on the other hand, was a scratch golfer and could adjust to just about anything. His opinion was that the only people who bought fitted clubs were golfers who didn't really need them, and the people who really needed them would never even consider them.

Letter to George

Dear Mr. Johnston,

Thank you for your response attempting to assist me in my Nikon purchase. However, I find your recommendation preposterous and extremely strange coming from a so-called expert. First of all, the D700 at $2,450 is far beyond my budget, which I told you is $400, and way too much overkill for a photographer just setting out, and your suggestion that I purchase 35mm ƒ/2 and 85mm ƒ/1.8 lenses is strange. Those lenses don't even zoom? All of my friends use zoom lenses and that is all my local store carries. I am somewhat mystified by your note.

Sincerely,
George

-

Dear George,

Yes, you are absolutely right, and I apologize. Like many aficionados I am excessively affected by my own preferences and habits, and it leads me to give buying advice that is indeed idiosyncratic. The suggestion that you jump in from the get-go with an investment of $3,195 is indeed preposterous (good word).

I would like to make amends by suggesting an objectively more characteristic 25-step course of action for you. My experience in this field has demonstrated many times that this sequence is broadly very typical, and I think you will find that these new recommendations far more objectively trace the course of most serious photographers' investments in their gear.

I apologize again—in what follows, I have used some current model names and numbers as representative of product types, even though what I'm describing is usually a 3–5 year process and actual model numbers and prices will naturally change over that interval.

And I say the process as outlined contains 25 steps; but you might well find there will be more.

Step 1. Purchase a "digicam" or digital point-and-shoot, chiefly because that's what most human beings do first when it occurs to them that they want a camera. This will be preceded by approximately four months of troublesome and increasingly frustrating product research and shopping, during which time you will be learning how to shop but not how photograph. Also during that time, you will be limited to taking pictures with your iPhone. It gradually dawns on you that no one can give you perfectly satisfactory advice about buying a point-and-shoot, for the simple reason that there are roughly 13,796 of them on the market (note: estimate only) with dozens dropping off the cliff into discontinuation and dozens more being introduced all the time, making the search for "the best one" a shifting target even if you could tell them apart. Eventually, lose patience and buy what the local local store counterman recommends, even though in the backmost reaches of your almost-subconscious you suspect that his high level of confidence might be motivated by the fact that he gets a spiff for selling that model because it has a higher profit margin than most of the others, and his boss is pushing him to push it. With tax, it only comes in $30 over your absolute top budget number of $400. Belatedly, you will remember to check B&H Photo, which will be selling the same model, only with an extra card, for $236.

Step 2. Be perfectly happy with your new purchase...for about 2 1/2 months. After that, slowly discover its infuriating shutter lag, the alarming slowness of its lens at full telephoto, its wretched high-ISO performance, and its general frailty and operational quirkiness. Nevertheless, use said digicam for another 1.8 years as you doggedly and determinedly "get your money's worth out of it," even though you pretty much hate it the whole time. Still, it's always with you, you do a lot of snapping, photography's fun.

Step 3. After the digicam fails utterly on an expensive vacation—just when you most needed it to work—buy a Canon G10 premium fixed-lens camera. ($420.)

Step 4. Three weeks later, G11 comes out. Buy that ($470), sell G10 at $150 loss.

Step 5. Realize that G10 actually has more megapixels than the G11; sell G11 ($120 loss), buy another G10.

Step 6. Read about small vs. large sensors on the internet, realize you are not really very happy with the premium point-and-shoot category anyway, because it's still mostly a point-and-shoot and you've just kind of had it with point-and-shoots. Sell second G10 for a $175 loss this time and graduate to an $800 entry-level DSLR, purchased with a "kit zoom." Again, that little voice that is almost buried in your subconscious mentions to you fleetingly that the kit zoom is where the company is saving money on the package price, despite the fact that the lens is what determines the essential look of the pictures. The pictures look much better than the pictures from your now-dead p/s, though, and you're sure—almost—that they look better than the pictures from the G10/11, most of the time—so how bad could it be?

Step 7. Some months later, following the happy congruence of a number of occurrences, namely, 1) an unexpected cash windfall, 2) your wife's uncle's ridicule of your "cheap" camera at a family gathering, 3) your own rather acute embarrassment at having to bring your camera to a rare paying job, during which you were pretty sure you saw your client looking askance at it; 4) dozens more hours spent shopping, and 5) your reading of some 340,000 words on the internet (approximately 1/12th of which were at all useful)—purchase a D90. Sell the entry-level DSLR for 2/5ths of what you paid for it, but keep the lens for the D90. (By the way, you still have your digicam. It doesn't work, can't be fixed economically, and is worth next to nothing on Ebay anyway, but for some strange reason—or, rather, just over 400 strange reasons—you cannot actually bring yourself to physically toss it in the wastebasket. It sits in the closet now. Note: the closet of which I speak is a seldom-mentioned but deeply significant vector very near the beating heart of photographic equipment shopping.

Step 8. Almost immediately after buying the D90, begin dreaming of a D300s.

Step 9. Kit lens from entry-level DSLR seems a little forlorn on the D90, and you're wondering if it's "getting the most out of the sensor." Succumb to "metaphysical doubt" and insecurity, and purchase a magnificent do-everything, fast, premium normal zoom lens. $630.

Step 10. Because the camera is so awkward to carry with your new zoom—which you love, by the way—you inadvertently drop it. Just once. It survives, but the LCD is cracked, and you're not quite 100% certain, but you think some of the electronic menu settings have gone a bit wonky. These imperfections eat at you, just a tiny bit, every time you use the camera.

Step 11. Purchase camera insurance.

Step 12. Due a perception that no serious photographer has just one serious lens, purchase a second lens to "cover all the focal lengths" and "complement" your main lens—another magnificent do-everything, fast, premium zoom lens, but telephoto. $520.

Step 13. Add a macro; your zoom doesn't seem to do close-ups very well. Also $520.

Step 14. Spend several dozen hours proving to yourself by reading and rereading lens tests until you're bleary-eyed that your macro lens is as close to technically perfect as it is possible for a lens to be. It's super sharp! Right out to the corners! The tiny voice that won't shut up mentions to you that your macro pictures still kind of suck, and that there are approximately a Graham's number of macro pictures on the internet already, almost all of which look...well, more or less the same.

Step 15. Because you're not quite satisfied, in a way you can't quite put your finger on, with the output of the tele zoom—it just doesn't quite seem to satisfy you like the images from your main zoom does—you're not quite sure what it is—you again dive into an extended bout of internet research and shopping, and resurface from a long immersion only with the purchase a truly magnificent, professional 80–200mm, constant-aperture zoom. $1080. You give the old tele zoom to your wife's uncle's teenage son, who immediately begins doing fantastic work with it after having suddenly come to the stunning realization that you exist.

Step 16. Troublingly, you find yourself increasingly leaving the camera bag at home, as it now weighs approximately the same, and is roughly the same size, as a concrete block.

Step 17. Wife buys you D300s for birthday! Yay! Best birthday present ever! It's love, pure love—for the wife, not the camera. Sort of for the camera. $1530. You would sell the D90, but since it's broken.... You do mean to get it fixed. It goes in the closet.

Step 18. F**king blo*dy tiny voice begins just the faintest, most distant murmur about full frame.

Step 19. Decide you are not a macro type of photographer. In weak, trifling attempt to lighten bag, macro lens joins old entry-level kit zoom and broken point-and-shoot in closet. Hey, you can always go get it if you need it.

Step 20. Now that you have your beautiful constant aperture pro tele zoom, your old "prosumer" mid-level normal zoom doesn't seem to quite match any more. So you buy a 17–55mm ƒ/2.8 AF-S lens. Which is truly awesome. You totally love it. $1,385. Old zoom goes on Ebay, fetches $230 after shipping and fees. 

Step 21. You consider yourself completely set where equipment is concerned. Completely set. For all time. You will never need anything more, ever. Yet, for some reason, a nagging sense of ennui sets in where your photography hobby is concerned. You realize, in a moment of exquisite clarity which also elicits just a faint touch of existential panic, that you miss shopping. You find yourself diving into shopping for things you know you're not going to buy. Desultorily, you check prices, read reviews. You find yourself getting uncharacteristically snarky on forums you frequent. Then, wandering about in this strange wilderness where shopping is no longer called for, you read some idiot on the internet who maunders on an on about how fun it is to use just one small prime lens. Completely on impulse, then, you snag a copy of the recently introduced 35mm ƒ/1.8. ($200.) Amazingly, it is kind of nice—it makes the big D300 surprisingly handy, almost nimble. Cue metaphors of bare feet, let-down hair, Julie Andrews in various meadows with her angelic sky-facing pie-hole exuding glorious plainsong. You feel...free. Sure, it's not that exciting as a lens, and it's a little too long if you're being honest with yourself, but there's no big bag to carry around. It's easy to grab on the way out the door. To your surprise, your enjoyment ramps up again, much more than just noticeably. 

Step 22. Shut up, tiny voice, shut up, shut up, shut up.

Step 23. Your activity as a photographer re-ignited, you suddenly get religion: you are going to buy the best, the very best, to put the demons to rest. With a grim set to your mouth and a feeling of unstoppable determination, you purchase that D700. You hadn't even really been considering it; you weren't really that serious when you did all that research and read all those reviews. Elation vies with guilt as you write the check. $2,450. Little voice grumbles that your initial budget for this whole enterprise was $400, but you tell it to shut up: the D700 now seems almost cheap to you compared to the D3s and D3x. Wife is a tad cross and hurt: it's only been a year and four months since the D300 birthday present. Guiltily, you explain carefully that the D300 is a great backup and how you still really need it, really, how it's still the best present ever, etc. Of course, there's a slight drawback to this: having told her you still need the D300s as a backup, you can't immediately turn around and sell it to offset the cost of the D700 like you really ought to. Not right away, anyway. And of course you need a lens for it, so you keep that beautiful normal zoom. As a bright, shining symbol of your financial responsibility, you sell the macro lens on Ebay. It brings $380, of which $35 is shipping costs and Ebay fees. She goes, "It's your hobby. I just want you to have what you want." Then she adds, "Honey," giving you a look as if perhaps an incubus has invaded your body and taken over your soul.

Step 24. Slight problem with D700: only one of your lenses—the big 80–200mm, which, apart from the macro and the disused kit lens, is the one lens you own that you use the least—now works on your camera. The rest are all APS-C lenses. However, your spending has been out of control, you do have that slightly sick feeling of one who has indulged in something overmuch, your wife now looks somber and concerned whenever the subject of your hobby comes up, you've put black electrician's tape over the "D700" on your new camera in hopes that your wife's uncle won't notice the switch and tease you about it, and you're ever so slightly worried about...well, not your sanity, exactly—it's not that bad—let's just say, your previous reputation for level-headed practicality. So, in a continuation of the "one lens" notion combined with a certain feeling of penitence, you go on Ebay and purchase a very modest used 35mm ƒ/2 AF-Nikkor. $250.

Step 25. Although you're mostly happy with the 35mm, you do one simple head-and-shoulders portrait with the 80–200mm zoom and find it to be...well, preposterous (sorry!). So you add a simple 85mm ƒ/1.8. $425. You mean to get a full-frame replacement for your beloved normal zoom for APS-C—someday; you're toying with the idea of another macro, but one that works on full-frame; a wide zoom might be nice; you occasionally wonder about this or that other lens...but, really, when it gets right down to it, the lenses at either end of a postulated hypothetical 35–85mm zoom do well enough for you most of the time. And they're fast. And portable. And cheap. Besides, your files, while not perfect or automatically imbued with any special magic, are now about as good as it's reasonably possible for files to be, and you've learned by this time—finally—that photography is a matter of learning to shoot, having the camera with you, learning to handle it as if it were second nature, gradually increasing the sophistication of your taste by looking at great work that appeals to you, learning to edit, and discovering your own visual passions, rather than being a matter of equipment.

Total elapsed time: 3–5 years. Over most of that time, you haven't been terribly happy with what you were shooting with. (Remember that 1.8-year stint with the point-and-shoot.)

End-point: D700 and two basic lenses. Plus, that tele zoom that's too heavy to carry around (as well as a bunch of other things) in that closet.

Total major equipment expenditures: $9,770. Of course, you mean to sell the D300s and the AF-S normal zoom—someday—but in point of fact you will probably just basically forget they exist and end up procrastinating until such time in the distant future when the camera, at least, is not worth all that much any more. In the meantime, it's your...backup. Honey.

An investment of $3,195 would have meant you'd have been all set for 3–5 years, perfectly free to concentrate on taking pictures. The expenditure would have amounted to between $1,065 and $639 per year for a very rewarding and renewable hobby. It would have represented a savings of approximately 400 hours of shopping time, $6,575 in cash, and much needless agonizing over trivialities.

Anyway, George, I apologize again for recommending a D700 and two basic lenses even though you're just starting out. No doubt you will want to learn your own lessons, and make your own progress through a succession of gear, just as most photographers do. In my own defense, I can only say that it doesn't really matter anyway, since no one who asks me for purchasing advice ever actually follows that advice anyway! (Really.) But as you can probably deduce from the above, my initial recommendation to you possibly isn't quite as flat-out mad as it might on the surface appear.

But...$400? Please. No one gets away with that.

Cordially,
Mike

P.S. If I managed to do all the arithmetic in this post accurately, it will be a miracle.

UPDATE: Please also see the follow-up post, above this one.

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Featured Comment by Cameron: "It doesn't have to be that way, though. In six years of taking digital photographs, I've owned three point-n-shoots and two digital SLRs. The point-n-shoots were only replaced because they broke, not because I lusted after something better. I upgraded from a Nikon D50 to a D90 after three years; and then only because I got a chance to buy one second-hand for a price I couldn't refuse. As for the lenses, flashes, tripods, brief film phase and most recently a big Epson photo printer: guilty as charged! But the thing that I want most at the moment is not more gear, but more time to take photographs with what I already own."

Mike replies: Very smart, very...restrained. You're a better man than I! It's nice to know some people get out alive....

Query from Paul O'Mahony (Cork): "I guess my comment was not approved?"

Mike replies: It was. There are only 50 comments per page, so you have to click on "Next page of comments" at the bottom of each page to get to the next one. There are more than 200 comments to this post now, thus there are five pages of comments. It's easy to miss the link.

Do 'Real' Photographers Print?

By Ctein

I don't hold a lot of agreement with assertions about what photographers are obligated to do, as I've written in columns like "Channeling David Vestal" and "The Photo-Fetishist League." I think one of the more destructive mindsets in the arts accompanies a pronouncement to the effect that you are not a Proper Artist (or Practitioner, if you eschew the term "artist") unless you do such-and-such. We've all been fed them. Real Serious Photographers don't work in color. Or if they do, they only work in slide film. Or if they do that as well, they only work in large format. Or, absent that, at least they work in film, because we all know that it's not real and personal photography when you drag that durn, soulless computer stuff into it. Or, if they are so far gone and lost from The True Path (TTP [tm]) that they're committing digital photography, at least they work solely in RAW and never JPEG. Yup, we gotta maintain standards.

The reason why this is all nonsense is very simple: Every approach you take to photography will have its strengths and weaknesses, both artistically and technically. What's bad is when there's a mismatch between what you want to do and the advantages and disadvantages of how you're going about it. I rail against absolutism because it encourages that sort of mismatch by demanding TTP.

These pronouncements have been appearing my entire life. I don't expect them to stop. It's a game of whack a mole; when it pops up, you whack it. Sometimes the moles pop up where you don't expect them. I was stunned to read in a comment to my last column that, "...photographers who hand their images to someone else for printing are abdicating part of their artistic responsibility." Oh man, I can't let something that wrong pass*.

(Yes, there are certain arenas where prints don't matter one bit. That's obviously not the scope nor intent of the claim. Even absolutism has to be judged with a grain of relativism, so no fair shooting at the fish in the barrel.)

Failing the absolutism test is sufficient reason to damn it, as I've already argued in 2.5 columns. But worse, I think it's specifically bad advice. Printing takes a lot of time, money, and energy. No photographer is given an unlimited supply of any of those. Resources you devote to printing are ones you cannot devote to making more photographs, making more timely photographs (which may matter), learning and practicing how to make better photographs (which definitely matters), even traveling to more interesting locales to make photographs (travel being another one of those things that consumes time, money, and energy).

That's not to say that you shouldn't know what a good print looks like. That's very different from having to do it yourself, or ever having done it yourself. In fact, DIY can sometimes interfere with knowing what a good print looks like. Anyone in the biz has seen vast numbers of poorly printed portfolios, "wet" and "dry," where the photographer clearly had no idea that their printing sucked.

We can likely agree that understanding what a good print looks like is important. It's the main reason Mike started the low-cost print program at Photo Techniques magazine. We both think that's really important; it's hard for photographers to know what to aspire to without reference.

But, once you know that, is there an unavoidable need to be doing your own printing? No. Custom printers have existed since Day One and it's their business to understand what the photographer needs and to elicit the information from the photographer that will get them the print they need...even if the photographer doesn't know how to articulate that. It's part of the job. It's not even an especially rare skill; there used to be a zillion decent custom labs out there.

Many justly-famous photographers haven't done the majority of their own printing. In some subgenres like portraiture that is even the norm; the majority of great portrait photographers did not do their own printing; some never even learned to print. Among four photojournalists I have a fondness for, Pearce, Kennerly, Jarecke and Turnley, we have substantial talents with quite varying amounts of personal printing in their careers. Even in landscape photography, that bastion of fine printing, it's a mixed bunch. Eliot Porter was famous for doing dye transfers of his landscapes. Galen Rowell wasn't exactly well-known for his darkroom time.

Personal choice
Obviously I  made the "print your own" choice, even taking it to possibly unreasonable extremes. But it's never been clear that it was the only right choice for me. Some arguments to the contrary: I am a vastly better printer than I am photographer. Is that imbalance really good for one's art?  I don't think it is for mine.

It may not have even been the smartest career move. Frank McLaughlin, the patron saint of dye transfer, once asked me in all seriousness if I was really better off having  immersed myself in doing dye transfer printing. A good case could be made that I've spent as much money in the darkroom as it would've cost me to buy others' dye transfer printing services, and I would not have been out many thousands of hours of my time.  And I'm not sure I could even claim a net profit on printing my own work until the dye transfer print sales here on TOP. That's 30 years to financial break-even, again not counting the number of hours spent.

Understand that I am not expressing one bit of regret. I like my life. But I cannot logically defend it as the best choice, either artistically or professionally, for me. As for declaring what must work for others, oh, that is to laugh.

Ctein

*An afterthought to insure that we don't veer into the ad hominem...I didn't write this to defend my printing business; I did it because I have a deep knowledge of the subject. 99.9% of you could decide that having anyone else print your work would be abhorrent and it wouldn't affect me one bit nor in any way jeopardize my income; you're not my clientele.

Ctein's regular weekly column appears every Thursday morning on TOP.

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Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Ouch! Smacked down by Ctein!

"I probably deserve it for implying such an absolutist position. But I'd like to clarify a bit; I was paraphrasing a comment made by Richard Benson in an interview in Lenswork. [Issue 84 with audio on 84 Extended —Ed.] Benson is the author of The Printed Picture, former head of Yale's art department and an expert printer. (Okay, the academic credentials may be considered a negative here, but still.) Regarding the print as a physical artifact, as the final work of art resulting from the photographic process, I think the assertion still has merit. Delegating the actual process of crafting a print from your photograph does indeed relinquish some of your control over the image, and introduces at least a modicum of someone else's interpretation into the final print. David Plowden has described a conversation with a custom printer who boasted that he could make a better print from Plowden's negatives than Plowden could. 'No doubt you're right; but it would no longer be my photograph.' That's obviously a bit of hyperbole, but Plowden is emphasizing the importance of controlling every aspect of the photograph's interpretation. Certainly there have been countless fruitful collaborations between photographers and printers; not for one moment to I mean to denigrate the remarkable skills of fine printers like Ctein. Robert Glenn Ketchum's work for example is known largely through the spectacular Ilfochrome prints made by Michael Wilder. Obviously working closely with a skilled printer who follows your instructions (or who can educate you regarding where the image 'wants to go') can yield a superb result.

"There are also obviously large areas of photographic expression where finicky darkroom (wet or digital) interpretation and a physical print are irrelevant. The vast majority of snapshots and family photographs come to mind. Plenty of photojournalism finds its home as 2x3" halftone reproduction on newsprint, where careful attention to print quality seems beside the point. Then again, it's hard to imagine W. Eugene Smith's work having precisely the same feel or impact without his obsessive stylized darkroom interpretation.

"As always, YMMV. Like the old Ben & Jerry's bumper sticker says, 'If it's not fun, why do it?' For me, printing is easily half the fun. But if anyone finds it torturous and gets great results from Mpix or Costco, well, have fun!"

Ctein replies: Oh, absolutely not meant as a smack-down of you. (I'm sure you know that, but I want to make sure everyone else does, too.)

I think there are some interesting ideas worth exploring in more depth in the Plowden anecdote; there's a deep and fascinating question along the lines of "What does 'artistic ownership' mean and what compromises or enhances it?" It might even be the seed for a whole new column. But, I'm too blitzed after 13 hours of traveling to think deeply right now.

Featured Comment by Greg Smith: "Best thing you've posted I've seen. Good job. I do my own printing, because I haven't tried a pro shop yet. Economically, its cheaper for me to self-print. My work sells, so there is some validation for my efforts and I take a measure of satisfaction in being able to tell those curious that I do the entire process from camera to frame myself. Someday, when the funds present themselves I will try a custom house, see what's what. Talk of absolutism brings to mind a bumper sticker: 'Death to extremists!' Best wishes."

Around the Web on a Wednesday

We'd bet it was the guy front and right-center who turned her in. Doesn't he look like a math teacher who's thinking, "Is that gum?"

• "The ongoing clash between modern technology and old traditions": Newbie Member of Parliament for Leicester West Liz Kendall is in hot water for violating the no-photography rule in the House of Lords—for a picture she snapped with her iPhone, and immediately tweeted. At Enticing the Light, Miserere wonders whether she might be put to death like Thomas More. (Good on Leicester West; that post makes me rather like Liz Kendall.)

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• Location isn't everything: So you think unique access to a rare subject will save you from criticism? Think again. A humorous put-down of a certain accomplished robot photographer from Christopher Lane.

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• New portfolios: TOP Foreign Correspondent Peter Turnley has updated his web page with 12 new portfolios from recent times, including several bodies of work that had their world premieres right here on these virtual pages. Well worth an extended visit!

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• Portrait of a photographer: An astounding number of readers have sent us this link. "Photographer at Old Orchard House," Maine, circa 1904. Another curiosity from Shorpy.

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• Long-awaited: The next book by the Ornette Coleman of the camera (only his instrument is a Hasselblad Superwide instead of a white plastic sax), America by Car, by Lee Friedlander, is out. Almost. Sure to be quirky, real, and funky. Who else would take landscapes the way we mostly actually see them, with the car in the way?

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• Now you've gone and done it: A few of the comments yesterday got me interested in the Canon EF-S 17–55mm ƒ/2.8 IS USM zoom, and I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday researching it, reading reviews and looking at pictures. From what I can discern online (not everything), it indeed looks to be a very sound balancing of all the competing and conflicting parameters involved in designing a normal zoom: almost too big but not quite, almost too expensive but not quite, not too many foibles to remain aware of...and the picture quality looks generally luscious. The "perfect" contemporary all-purpose zoom? Could be. The only problem is that a "nested" fast prime would not have IS.

And it stands up pretty well to my mostly-tongue-in-cheek Handy TOP Guide to How to Buy a Zoom Lens:

1. The lower the range of the lens, expressed as a multiple, the better. To find this number, take the longest focal length and divide by the shortest focal length. Thus a 35–70mm is 2X, a 28–85mm is 3X, etc. 1X is best, up to 3X is okay, anything over 4X should be evaluated with caution.

2. The faster the maximum aperture (the lower the f-number), the better. (If the speed of the range is expressed as a range, e.g. ƒ/3.4–5.6, the first number is the lens's fastest speed.)

3. If the speed of the range is expressed as a range, the less difference between the maximum aperture at the widest focal-length setting and at the longest focal-length setting, the better. Constant aperture zooms are best; an ƒ/2.8–4 lens (one stop) is okay; if the difference is two stops or more, choose with caution.

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• And speaking of zooms, a vintage Herbert Keppler quotation: "I am fed up to the ears with all the guff about 35–70mm zoom lenses. I don't think they're great, I think they will assure you of fairly ordinary pictures and are apt to stunt your growth as a photographer." (Popular Photography, March 1988)

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• And speaking of Canons: Be sure not to miss Harold Merklinger's review of the Canon TS-E 24mm ƒ/3.5L Version II over at The Luminous Landscape.

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• Books by readers: Australian TOP reader Phil Aynsley's magnum opus on Ducati motocycles is now available from Amazon. The Amazon page says there is only one available, but Phil assures me that actually "they have heaps." So, no TOP effect.

Mike
(Thanks to José Luis Galanche and Rob Atkins)

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Featured Comment by Ed Kirkpatrick: "So I had to go look at 'Photographer at Old Orchard House, Maine, circa 1904,' and while it turns out I know this photograph, I noticed the link to another photo, 'Alpha Girls, 1912,' and in looking at that saw it was part of the Harris and Ewing Collection. If you are from Washington, D.C., you might remember that H & E was the go-to photographic studio in the early half of the 20th century. My great-grandparents and grandparents used them all the time.

"A Google search yielded a link to the Library of Congress, which houses the partially digitized collection of H & E's negatives that is searchable. So what do I find but two images of my family that have been lost to me for years, and are down-loadable for free (the images, not the family, although maybe that's next). Ain't the internet a great thing? Thanks for the link Mike!"

All Quiet

Things have been a little quiet here lately, but that's because I'm learning stuff. For instance, I think I've formulated a new standard recommendation: own as many lenses as you want at home, but take as few as you can with you for each shoot or trip. I'm really appreciating all the comments about lens kits.

When he shot primes, Dave Reichert was fond of the Dennis Hopper approach:

(Dave is one of the photographers whose work I've purchased for my budding photo collection.)

Another wrinkle in the two-lens kit idea occurred to me yesterday. From about 1983 to about 1988, I shot with a Contax SLR and two lenses, a 35mm and an 85mm. But yesterday I realized I never took both lenses with me at the same time. I used the 85mm for portraits, but when I shot a portrait, that's all I did. And when I went out to do general shooting, I'd just take the 35mm and leave the 85mm at home. Hmm. Wonder what species of oddball that is?

Next I was going to write next about three-lens kits, but I think I need a rest first. Maybe I'll save that for, like, a year from now.

I've been working on an "Around the Web on a Wednesday" today.

Mike

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A Few Oddball Two-Lens Outfits

Mostly but not entirely garnered from the comments:

• Two lenses extremely far apart in focal length, like a 21mm and a 180mm, or even a 21–35mm and a 400mm. (Not sure what formats were implied in those cases.)

• Two lenses, but on two separate cameras from two different systems. (One reader suggested a DSLR with one lens augmented by a fixed-megazoom digital point-and-shoot. This is somewhat similar to an article Carl wrote for Photo Techniques in about 1998 or so detailing how he used a digicam to "scout" locations for 8x10 work.)

• The exact same lens but on two different formats, resulting in different angles of view. (The example given was two Zeiss 50mm ƒ/1.5's, one on a Leica M9 and the other on an Olympus E-P1.)

• Two primes fairly close to each other—the example given was a 35mm and a 50mm. (Oh, gee, you know who you are.)

• Two lenses of the same focal length but different speeds.

• Owning lots and lots of lenses at home, but only choosing two at a time to take out or travel with.

• A lens with a teleconverter. A variation on this theme: "convertible" view camera lenses, where different combinations of the two lens cells (front, back, or both) result in different focal lengths.

• Two similar lenses, one kept in good shape for everyday shooting and a beater copy for taking into hazardous situations like muddy swamps or seashores with blowing sand and salt spray.

Does that cover the waterfront and then some, or what? Lastly, I have to give smile points to a reader named Adrian, who said that the perfect two-lens kit is... a TLR!

Clever.

Illustration from zeisscamera.com

Mike

Honorable Mention: One of the greatest books of photo reportage in history, David Douglas Duncan's War Without Heroes, was shot entirely with two custom-made Leica M3Ds he wore crossed "bandolier-style" across his chest, one with a Leitz 50mm Summilux-M, and the other with a Nikkor 28mm ƒ/2.8.

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Featured Comment by Dennis: "Mike, The 21–35 and 400 were used with 35mm film. Call it the 'National Park kit.' For when you want to shoot scenics and wildlife and not people. By the way, I like the bunch of lenses at home take on it, because that's my setup, but it didn't occur to me to consider it a 2-lens kit. About half a dozen lenses at home and usually carry one or two, rarely three.

The Two-Lens Kit: The Mike Version (Part II)

(...Continued from Part I)

...So anyway. I've been writing for photo enthusiasts for an amazing 22 years now, since Darkroom Photography accepted the very first article I wrote. And over the years, not being brain dead, I've naturally developed some personal opinions and theories about how photo enthusiasts tend to think and feel about a wide variety things—filtered, naturally, through my rather idiosyncratic conceptions. One of the more obvious things I've witnessed is that people have gradually had to make a switchover from buying things based on a brief hands-on impression to buying "on paper," by which I mean from research, most of which is done on the internet now. In days of yore, photo-writers like me tended to habitually and casually deride people who made their decisions "standing at the camera counter." Well, careful what you criticize. Nowadays, with traditional camera stores having been decimated at the same time that frequency of purchases has gone way up, most people don't have much choice but to buy things "sight unseen" at least occasionally. I've done it myself, believe it or not. I'm sure that early in my career I expressed the very mission of a camera reviewer as follows: the average buyer only gets to stand at the counter and play with the camera for fifteen minutes. What would he find out after three months that he can't learn in those fifteen minutes? I considered that my basic duty—to tell the prospective purchaser what he would find out for himself if he only had more time. But now...being able to stand at a camera counter and feel and hold whatever you're considering, and click the shutter and work the controls and the lens and see the viewfinder for yourself, well, that's actually something of a luxury now.

The necessity of shopping on paper has led to some curious obsessions. One of them that I became aware of in the early '90s was that some people, for some reason, really wanted to "have all the focal lengths covered." The way you saw this for a while was that good-quality normal zooms would be 35–70mm, or sometimes 28–70mm, and the better quality telephoto zooms were 80–200mms. And people would worry about the ten millimeters in the middle. That didn't make any sense to me then, and it still doesn't, but it was the way a lot of people thought—I heard it a lot. Of course, it only makes no sense if you come from the experience of actually using the lenses. It does make sense (well, a little) if you're just looking at things on paper. And of course some people, when they collected prime lenses, liked to "have everything covered"—they wanted a 20mm and a 24mm and a 28mm and a 35mm and a 50mm and an 85mm and a 105mm and a 135mm and so forth; I'm sure that, for those folks, that thinking carried over into their feelings about zooms.

In about 1993 I did a big survey on CompuServe and wrote up the results for Camera & Darkroom. I was trying to figure out how many lenses most people had and what sort of set was the most common. Without going into all the details blow-by-blow, what I found was that most people owned two or three lenses. Those who owned one prime almost always used a 50mm or a 35mm. Those who used two, as you'd expect, most commonly had a moderate wide-angle and a moderate telephoto. (That was the case with me. I learned on a 50mm, which I used exclusively for three years or so, and then I switched to a 35mm and an 85mm. I had a job for a while where I was supposed to use a 28–70mm zoom, but I'd switch back to my 35/85 combo whenever the boss wasn't looking.) For those who had three lenses, there was more variety—for a fair number of these people, although I think still a minority, one was a zoom, and some people skewed wide or long—one guy shot mainly airplanes in flight and had a 50mm, a 180mm, and a 300mm. Others would have a 20mm, a 28/35, and a 50/55/60. (That included Salgado for a while around that time—he was quoted in one article saying he used a 28mm and a 35mm on Leica M6 cameras and a 60mm macro on a Leica R. That changed in time, naturally.) But for the most part the three-lens kits broke down about how you'd expect—a normal or moderate wide and a short portrait lens, with an extra lens for whatever that person's specialty interest was.

For those who had four lenses, the results were still less conclusive. And when it came to the pros, the data got hard to interpret. Not only do pros have to cover more bases—they never know what they'll encounter—they also had to please art directors and clients (one of my studio partners hated 28mms but kept one around just for when the A.D. would say, "let's see that with a 28"). But a news photojournalist who had recently been written up in the magazine had a kit that was fairly representative at the time: a 20mm, a 35mm, a 105mm, and a 200mm. Even then, though, there were a couple of adventurous pros who were doing most of their work with just two zooms, despite owning a motley of other lenses. One guy was even doing 100% of his work with just two zooms, a 20-35mm and an 80-200mm. Pretty radical, in those days; more common, I'd guess, now.

(After writing this, I got a nice note from Jack Foley, the newsie we featured yesterday. He said that when the Herald News went digital, eight years ago, they issued him an AF-Nikkor 17–35mm ƒ/2.8 and an AF-Nikkor 80–200mm ƒ/2.8—both for use on APS-C cameras—and, according to Jack, "even eight years later, I say that these two are fabulous, wonderful, fantastic hunks of photo gear. Honestly, I cannot imagine a better brace of lenses.")

But getting back to that idea of having all the focal lengths "covered." At about the same time that idea was at its peak, I had a Zeiss Contax 28–85mm ƒ/3.3–4. This covers all the focal lengths I personally ever use. It was a magnificent lens, but very big and heavy (85 x 99.5mm, unextended, and 736g—and it's bigger than those specs imply because it extends quite a bit). At the same time, I was learning about the history of the Tessar, and one of the few remaining true Tessar-types at the time was the Zeiss Contax 45mm ƒ/2.8 (60 x 18mm, and 90g—or just slightly bigger than a body cap!).

So my reasoning was, why "cover" more focal lengths? That's just one sort of versatility. Why not "nest" focal lengths—a prime within the range of the zoom—and give yourself versatility in some other way?

And what are the ways? Well, it strikes me that there are two or three. Let's say your main lens is going to be a big, heavy, expensive, fast, all-purpose zoom with spectacular image quality, and it covers the range you need covered. This is the lens you'll use when you're shooting concertedly and seriously—when you have an assignment, when you've got an extended amount of time exclusively for shooting—when you're really working. Your second lens might serve one of three purposes: it might be small, so you could have something easily portable for going through life with, when you're just carrying your camera around; it could be fast, to make up for the fact that even fast zooms are slow; or it could be a closeup lens—a macro—in case you had a need and a use for that. (This last one made more sense back when most zooms did not focus close, a particular bugbear of the late Herbert Keppler of Popular Photography fame.)

Of course there's a fair amount of overlap between those three purposes. If your main lens is ƒ/3.3–4 like the big Zeiss Contax zoom, then an ƒ/1.7 50mm is pretty fast by comparison, but it's still a heck of a lot smaller and more portable. And many people like using macro lenses as "normals"—Leica even briefly recommended using its 60mm ƒ/2.8 macro R lens as a normal lens.

So, for a while, this was what I recommended as a "perfect two-lens kit." I'd say, sure, go ahead, knock yourself out, go ahead and get that multi-purpose zoom you're hankering after; but then augment it with a 50mm ƒ/1.4 or ƒ/1.7 as your second lens for low-light use.

This advice did not instantly become Universal standard practice amongst photographers seeking a two-lens kit. :-)

I did get the Zeiss Contax combo for myself for a while. The idea was that I'd put the 45mm on the camera for everyday carrying around—for grab shots and record shots, here and there—and switch to the big 28–85mm zoom when I was shooting more purposefully or concertedly, and needed more flexibility, and didn't mind the weight. (Basically, what that comes down to is this: one lens for when the camera is mainly hanging from your shoulder, one for when the camera is mainly in your hands.) The problem was that I couldn't focus the 45mm very well on the camera I had at the time (I probably already needed a bit of diopter correction, but hadn't realized it yet), so, although I got a few really superb shots from it, it went the way of all lenses soon enough.

I have another problem with my nested zoom/prime two-lens strategy...namely, if I equip myself with a superb zoom and a good prime in the right focal length, I will use the prime exclusively and never get the zoom out of the bag. That's just me. I could easily imagine the opposite—somebody using the zoom exclusively and never getting the prime out of the bag. (More about this in a minute.)

Meanwhile, something interesting has been happening. I talked in Part I about the switch from a 50mm normal to an inexpensive standard zoom as what we now refer to as the "kit" lens, the basic lens the camera comes with. But now, the two-lens kit is becoming increasingly common—look, for instance, at these examples from Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony. I don't have access to relative sales figures to quantify their popularity, and I doubt the popularity of two-zoom kits has surpassed the popularity of one-zoom kits, but there's little doubt that two-zoom kits are becoming more and more popular. And, clearly, the reasoning of these offerings is of the get-all-the-focal-lengths-covered variety.

Another digression. When I lived in Chicago, for a while I got in the habit of ending my epic morning commute with a trip through the drive-through at the local Dunkin' Donuts shop near the office. Each morning I'd buy the same thing: large coffee with all the additives, and three "long johns," which are oblong donutoid pastries with white icing on top. I would then munch on these throughout the morning at work. When the long johns were fresh, they were good. And every Dunkin' Donuts is supposed to discard day-old donuts so that everything they sell is always fresh. (Not hard since they only cost something like 3–7¢ each to make.) But this donut shop was owned by hard-working recent Asian immigrants, newly enough arrived so that only the matriarch of the family spoke a game but broken sort of English. They obviously considered that throwing away otherwise perfectly good donuts just because they were a day old was an intolerable waste, so, about one time out of three, my morning long johns would be stale, and I'd end up throwing them away once I got to the office.

So one day, I went to the donut store on my lunch break, parked the car, and went into the shop. I traded pleasantries with the proprietress, who knew who I was from my morning visits. Then I explained to her very carefully and politely that I did not want to buy stale donuts. If they were not fresh, I didn't want them. She seemed to understand. "Okay, only fresh, okay!" she said, very cheerfully.

This went fine for a few mornings. Then, one morning, when she was handing over the bag I'd purchased, she said, "I not forget! I remember what you say! I give extra! Four! Extra!"

I thanked her, but I didn't quite know what this meant. Until I got to the office. The donuts were stale, so she'd given me four instead of three.

Okay, now how does that reasoning work? If I don't want something at all, how does more of what I don't want make it better? If I don't want it, I don't want more of it. I stopped going to the donut shop, which was probably better for my health anyway.

In any event, that's kind of how a two-zoom kit strikes me. Kit lenses aren't actually that crappy these days—they're actually surprisingly okay. But still, having two slow, large-ish and not-very-well-built lenses instead of one doesn't seem like an unmitigated improvement to me—even if you like, and prefer, zooms to begin with.

Of course, that might be because when you get right down to it, I don't really care for zooms at all. That's a minority preference, these days.

Still, here's what I think of as the perfect two-lens kit these days: this lens for concerted shooting, and this one for carrying around.

The versatility offered by this two-lens kit is of a very specific nature: not speed, not additional focal-length range...just portability. But that's what would be important to me. Put the pancake on an E-30 and you'd have a very elegant, reasonably light, eminently carryable camera without an awkward big zoom swinging around and whacking into people on elevators and getting in the way in the car. The zoom, as a complementary lens, is of ungodly high optical quality, focuses very close, and is both fast and waterproof—and covers more focal lengths than I'd personally ever need.

I don't shoot Olympus, but if I did....

With Nikon's new 35mm ƒ/1.8 you could put a decent pair together in the Nikon range for an APS-C camera, too. The 35's faster than the Olympus pancake, and wide enough. Although perhaps still not ideal.

What's ideal? Well, for me, the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 that I do own and use. You could pair that with the slower but versatile zoom of your choice—normal, long, or wide. (Assuming you could actually get any of them.)

Of course, the problem there is it assumes you're on board with Micro 4/3, which most people aren't. For better or worse, most people are tied to their system choices, which they've already made.

If I were specifying "dream" or imaginary gear,  a perfect pair in my view would be, on an APS-C camera with body-integral IS, a 19–57mm ƒ/2.8 (that's approximately a 28–85mm-e 3x zoom), and a relatively compact 25mm ƒ1.7 with a closeup converter (that's approximately 38mm-e).

Of course we don't get to have the equipment we imagine.

In any event, I seldom recommend a two-lens kit of a zoom plus a fast normal any more. The reason is purely practical—there just aren't very many good fast normal primes for digital cameras in most makers' lens lineups. It's easy to recommend a 50mm ƒ/1.7 or ƒ/1.8 as an adjunct to a zoom for a film camera, because 50mm moderate-speed normals are thick on the ground and cheap as dirt (in fact, if you recall, I gave a nice one away the other day). They cause very little pain either to procure or to carry. But for reduced-format digital cameras, fast primes of normal focal length are a headache—there aren't very many non-legacy alternatives available, and those that are tend to be expensive and not quite the right focal lengths.

And, when you get right down to it, I'm not even totally convinced any more that the "nested" zoom/prime strategy for a two-lens kit is a very workable idea, as a practical matter. For instance, I would personally use a two-lens kit of the Panasonic 20mm and the Panasonic 14–45mm on my GF1, but then I'd streamline it by, um, getting rid of the 14–45mm because I would probably never use it. I just don't care for zooms, is all. That's not a value judgment, so please don't bust my chops, please. It's just my personal preference. I admit that it's possible that there is simply a natural bifurcation between zoom users and prime users, and that people might generally tend to fall into one or the other of the two camps and don't actually much like to switch off between them. That doesn't make one or the other preference "better," but it means that a two-lens kit of one prime and one zoom might be wrong for almost everybody.

This requires more research. I'm sure I'm about to hear opinions about all this from a lot of TOP readers, and that will make a good start!

Mike

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(P.S. I've assumed that it goes without saying throughout this two-part post that a) lens choice does depend on what your aims and needs are, b) there is no inherent reason why anyone has to have only two lenses, and c) lens choice is indeed purely personal and, in fact, part of the fun of photography. I personally have never stuck to the same one or two lenses for more than about five years at the very longest, and lots of my experiments have been...ahh, a whole lot shorter than that. Sometimes, though, it can be clarifying to hear others discuss the considerations involved, and relate their own experiences.  —MJ)

Featured Comment by Julian: "I'm lucky enough to take pictures for a living, and I typically use zooms for work and primes for fun. I shoot Canon full-frame, and on assignment I lug around a 16–35mm ƒ/2.8, 70–200mm ƒ/4 and often a 24–105mm ƒ/4 or 24mm shift lens too. But when I'm just out with a camera, I will take one or all of my fast lightweight primes—28mm ƒ/1.8, 50mm ƒ/1.4, and 85mm ƒ/1.8."

Featured Comment by Glenn Brown: "The lens choice thing is very personal and dependent on your work. For my corporate work, 90% of my stuff is on the Nikkor 85mm ƒ/1.4. But if I walk out the door for fun it's a 35mm ƒ/2."

Featured Comment by John Krumm: "As an Olympus E-620 user, the two-lens kit I find quite useful for people is the 12–60mm and the 50mm ƒ/2. The 50mm ƒ/2 is great for darker events and portraits and detail work, the 12–60mm for everything else. But I still would like that little pancake."

Featured Comment by mfbernstein: "Lens design can be counterintuitive sometimes. Until recently I shot with Olympus DSLRs, and the 12–60mm you mentioned was my main lens. Still, after a while I wanted something smaller and faster for certain occasions, and tried the pancake 25mm ƒ/2.8—but I missed the better image quality and faster focusing of the zoom!"

Featured Comment by V. I. Voltz: "Whenever anyone discusses lens or camera choice, I recall running across a field in Yugoslavia, with bullets flying everywhere and the spaces between the bullets mostly filled with explosions, while trying to carry a large bag containing two Nikon N90s bodies with MB-10 grips, a 28–70 and 80–200 zoom, two Nikon SB26 speedlights, and sundry cables, accessories and 40 or so rolls of film. I made it out without a scratch, although it still comes back to me at times. After that I started using a Leica M6 with a 35mm and a 75mm lens, no matter what anyone 'insisted' I use."

Featured Comment by Adrian: "Does a Rolleiflex 3.5F count as a two-lens kit?"

Featured Comment by Georg:  "It seems to me that the perfect two-lens kit consists of two identical Zeiss ZM Sonnar 50/1.4. One of them sitting on an M9, the other one on an Olympus E-P1."

Featured Comment by Tilman Paulin: "I basically had a 'two lens kit' on my last hiking holidays. A Sigma DP2 (41mm equiv.) in my pocket and my Nikon D80 with the 18–135mm kit lens in my backpack. Only got the D80 out of the backpack when I couldn't get the shot done with the DP2 (which didn't happen too often). This worked great since it kept me from opening and closing my backpack all the time. Enjoyed my trip quite a bit and got great pictures too.... :)"

Featured Comment by Wibbeler: "For Canon newbies, I often recommend getting the 50/1.8 even though that 'overlaps' the kit. The lens is by no means the perfect prime, but it it's an inexpensive way for people to try some of the many benefits of fast apertures and higher optical quality. I consider its existence and use on Canon's entry level SLRs an important differentiation over Nikon's entry level SLRs where the similar Nikkor 50/1.8 won't autofocus."

Kudos: The Herald News, Fall River, Massachusetts

Dear Mike,

I found your reference to Alex Garcia's opinion about using promos [last paragraph of this post  —Ed.] particularly interesting. My newspaper, The Herald News, in Fall River, Mass., currently has a branding campaign going. Originated by Publisher Sean Burke, our motto is: 'Reality. Delivered Daily.' The large house ads carry one of one of (mostly) my page one photos big, and a smaller file of the top half of that front page, along with the slogan. The back end of that campaign is a series of posters featuring Herald News employees, and a quote about their jobs at the paper. The headline for these is 'Our Reality. Delivered Daily.' The posters will replace the first set of house ads and run as a series.

At the outset of this campaign, my Editor In Chief asked if I would be a subject, and I agreed. The other photog, however, needed surgery and was out for six weeks. So, I asked my 'little' brother (he's 52), Jay Foley, to shoot me. He's an accomplished photographer and part-time pro. The poster is attached. I'm not sure it's about anything but me being old. But, after busting my chops long enough, all my colleagues admit that they like it. And no, I did not cover the Lizzie Borden trial.

Good shooting,

Jack Foley
The Herald News

(Click to see larger)

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The Two-Lens Kit: The Mike Version (Part I)

A long long time ago, and far away—not only before digital but before the era of the point-and-shoot—the SLR ruled. If you wanted a "serious" camera in 1965 or 1970 or 1975 or 1980, you bought a 35mm SLR. If you were prosperous (or ambitious) it said "Nikon" on it, and if you were in college, you accessorized it with a wide, colorfully embroidered strap. The cameras were good ones, sturdy and versatile, and the camera dealers were happy, because your SLR purchase led quite naturally to other purchases—mainly, a flash, and more lenses. But the lens the camera came with was a 50mm. Usually it was a "slow" 50mm, meaning it had a maximum aperture setting of ƒ/2 or ƒ/1.9 or ƒ/1.8 or ƒ/1.7. A generation earlier, these had been not slow but fast: when the Leica Summicron was first introduced, it was not a slow lens. It supplanted Leica's versions of the Zeiss Tessar-types, the fastest of which was ƒ/2.8.

Then, in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s, that situation began to change. That was the era of the ascendancy of the zoom lens—and of autofocus. Prior to roughly the mid-1980s everyone understood that zooms were for geeks, wannabes, and tyros. Innocent, airheaded amateur gearheads bought zooms. But there were a lot of them. (My first serious lens was a Konica Varifocal, an early tour-de-force of optical engineering that was also so big and heavy that it made every shot—not every shoot, every shot—a major production.) And, as more and more people bought them, zooms got better and better. It was when the Zeiss Contax 35–70mm ƒ/3.4 came along (anyone know when that was?) that I first heard the claim that a zoom was as good as the equivalent primes. (It was, too, or at least, it had its own charm—sweet lens.)

No one has really written about this (what I mean is, it is not received wisdom), but the parallel ascendancy of AF was important to the ascendancy of the zoom. Minolta was the first to implement AF widely, and rightly reaps the credit (except perhaps among blinkered Leicaphiles who feel that Leitz's dead-end experiments with Correfot somehow give it primacy here. Not. And for those who will say it was Honeywell, its part was in the technical development—I'm talking about public acceptance, in real products). But it was really Nikon—in those days indisputably #1 amongst camera manufacturers where serious 35mm photography was concerned—which tipped the scales in favor of it. When Nikon went to AF, it made AF respectable.

But I digress. What I was going to say is that zooms you had to focus yourself were inconvenient: instead of focus-and-shoot, you suddenly had to zoom, focus, and shoot. The coming of autoexposure a decade earlier had reduced the number of operations you had to make before shooting; this was a step in the other direction. The way around this inconvenience in the '70s and '80s was the so-called "one touch" (or "push-pull") zoom*, which had a broad single control ring that controlled both zooming (by moving it in and out) and focusing (by twisting it). These meant that, with practice, you could perform both functions reasonably quickly. It also meant that you couldn't set either focal length or focus on the lens and have it stay there, an early example of the camera getting in the way instead of getting out of the way. Autofocus to the rescue! With AF, all you had to do was zoom, and the camera, more or less, focused itself. AF helped make zooms tenable from an operability standpoint.  

Yet another parallel development that was important to the change was the adoption of bright viewing screens. Simple ground-glass screens were easy to focus on, but dark. Changing from an ƒ/1.7 50mm lens, say, to an ƒ/3.4 or slower zoom made the viewfinder image intolerably dim. Various parties innovated brighter screens, but there was usually a rough trade-off between ease of focus—what is sometimes called focus "snap"—and brightness. AF made it possible to use brighter screens to offset the modest maximum apertures of zooms without paying a price in focusability. With many of today's cameras, it's just not very easy to focus even fast lenses manually—even those that don't have the "tunnelvision" problem of reduced-sized digital formats.

I can't really say when it was that what we now call the "kit zoom"—then perhaps more commonly called a "normal" or "standard" zoom—replaced the 50mm (which had in the meantime transmogrified from "slow" to "fast" because it was much faster than the zoom) as the lens most cameras came with. I sort of wasn't paying attention. It happened before the digital era, though–sometime in the 1990s, I'd guess, although I can't really pinpoint it much better than that.

I'm going to digress again, if you'll pardon me. Where I live, between 95% and 98% of all automobiles sold are equipped with automatic transmissions. When asked to speculate as to why this is, most people will say it's because automatic gear changers are just as good and more convenient than manual ones. They think this conclusion is not only correct, but obvious. Nonsense, I say—I think it's because driving students aren't required to know how to drive manual transmissions, so most people aren't familiar with them. If they are familiar with them, they have an unpleasant memory of an alarming failed attempt to get a manual-transmission car started moving in first gear! I believe that in places in the world where citizens have to learn how to drive a stick shift as part of driver training, manual transmissions are more popular than they are here. (Which country has the best driver training in the world? Finland, I think? I wonder if Finns are required to know how to drive a stick shift in order to get their driver's licenses, and, if so, what the percentage of manual vs. automatic is in new-car purchases there.)

The situation is similar with regards to slow zooms and fast primes. It's quite possible to be an enthusiastic amateur photographer these days and never have used a fast single-focal-length lens. If cameras were still sold with fastish prime normals as standard kit, lots of people would still use zooms—but the percentage of people who use primes would be higher than it is, I think.

Well, now, this is already too long for a blog post, and I haven't even gotten around to my subject yet. I'll meander onward in the next post. (Hey, it's Saturday, right?) Longtime readers already know where I'm going with this, so it shouldn't be any hardship to have to wait.

Mike

*The lenticular equivalent of shag carpeting, mullet haircuts, and AMC Matadors and Javelins.

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Featured Comment by Nico Burns: "Well, here in the U.K., manual transmission cars are standard. I would say 99% of cars here are manual. The standard driving test here requires a manual car. There is a separate one for automatic cars, but then you get an automatic licence and are not allowed to drive manual cars, which would be annoying, as most cars are manual. I can't comment on which is better, as I'm not yet 17, and therefore cannot yet drive."

Sony NEX-5 Hands On

TOP's Man in Croatia, Editor-at-Large Vlatko Juric-Kokic, attends the Croatian press launch of the new Sony mirrorless cameras.

You really cannot go in depth about a camera if you had it in your hands for only a couple of hours, but you can tell what it is about. And Sony NEX cameras are all about consumer photography. I know that some might consider that term an oxymoron, but we are talking about the kind of photography that doesn't really care about capturing the perfect composition, that doesn't really care about technique, and even less about the intricate technical details of cameras. The people who commit consumer photography care about capturing the emotional content of their lives—the easier they can do that, the better.

Sony Alpha NEX-5

Sony is very clearly targeting just such people with NEX-3 and NEX-5. Even the presentation for journalists I attended was done like not a single one of us knows anything about cameras or photography. They talked about "creative defocusing," decreased noise, number of frames per second, the small size of the camera, the highness of its ISO and similar easily shown number-oriented features, as well as the ability to capture 3D pictures to display on Sony TV sets. In other words, typical consumer-marketing strategy, as if they were talking about a compact camera.

Buttoning up
Before you start thinking I'm seriously condemning both Sony and their new cameras, let's check how the camera operates. Note that I'm using singular: most of the journalists were handed the NEX-5. Sony positions it as the higher of the two models, but the differences are not big. The NEX-5 is slightly smaller, has magnesium alloy housing, and can capture video in 1080p resolution AVCHD. The rest is about the same. And the NEX-5 is really small, by the way. In spite of the size, it's quite comfortable to hold, due to its grip, but I would still recommend not holding it like a DSLR. On the other hand, the size meant that I accidentally pressed the menu button and dial quite often. (More often than on my Olympus Pen, which is bigger.)

Size comparison: Sony NEX-5 with 16mm pancake vs. Olympus E-P1 with OM Zuiko 28mm ƒ/2.8 via adapter. (Photo by Vlatko Juric-Kokic.)

The buttons are my main reason for irritation with the NEX cameras. They are designed like true compacts. That is, no direct fiddling with values. If you want to change the EV compensation, you have to go to the menu and then to Camera Settings. After you've done that, you have to stay with that value until you decide you want to change the EV compensation again. The same thing happens if you want to change ISO value—in that case you have to go to Brightness menu. I would say this different placing is just great for people who don't think that image parameters should be grouped together or don't care about it, but for photographers, at least, most of probably won't be welcome. Yes, I know you can adjust to the placement of the settings as well as to the work through the menus, but then, we can adjust to almost anything.

Seriously, though
In spite of the awkward way of working, NEX-5 is quite a nicely responsive little camera. Menus fairly zip by and the reviewing of captured photos goes quickly as well. Focusing also seems quite fast and the camera seems to lock on subjects properly. Provided, of course, you didn't let the camera decide where to focus, like your garden-variety compact user most probably would. Centre-point seems to be the most "serious" way of automatic focusing, but of course you have to recompose later. The only problem with the speed of the processor came after I shot an in-camera panorama or used the high-speed burst. The camera would obediently and quickly take the photos and then choke while writing them on the card. That might go better with a faster card (we had Group 4 SD cards), but given that the panorama is written only as JPEG, I'm inclined to doubt it. It takes time to process many photos.

The Slovene Miss Universe runner-up. Kit lens at 55mm, ƒ/5.6, ISO 1600.
(Photo by Vlatko Juric-Kokic.)

There is also a difference between the two lenses we could try—the 18–55mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 kit zoom and the 16mm ƒ/2.8 pancake. The kit zoom is a kit zoom. The photos taken with it look nicely sharp, although its slowness could be the main reason why more enthusiastic photographers won't warm to it.

The pancake
The pancake is yet another story. I'm not among those who think that ƒ/2.8 is a tragedy. Of course, something like ƒ/1.7 or even ƒ/2 would be more than welcome, but ƒ/2.8 is quite usable. The fact that it's wide-angle seems to be more problematic in use. Naturally, you can shoot with a wide-angle lens in lots of situations but it forces you to use a particular way of shooting. Sony recommends the use of digital zoom for those who are not familiar with wide angle lenses. One word: ewwww. Then there's typical wide-angle distortion when close to the subject which seems to be greater if the camera is in portrait orientation. On the other hand, I simply cannot decide what is the reason for softness on quite a lot of photos I took with the pancake—whether it was caused by the low shutter speed and camera shake, model movement, misfocus, the combination of any of the above...or that I say the lens is simply slightly soft wide open and be done with it. It would need more photos taken with the lens to be certain*.

A Slovene Playboy Playmate of the Month. 16mm pancake, wide open at ƒ/2.8, ISO 200. (Photo by Vlatko Juric-Kokic.)

Unlike the kit zoom, the pancake doesn't have the optical stabilisation. (And you turn the stabilisation for the zoom through the cumbersome menus.) When I asked why Sony abandoned their in-body stabilisation, I was told that it was because the stabilisation module from Alphas couldn't fit into such small bodies.

What certainly comes next is a super-zoom lens finely tuned for video work, with silent focusing. There apparently won't be an even wider lens than the pancake because Sony has already manufactured a fisheye converter for it.

A member of the Croatian National Swimming Team. 16mm pancake,
wide open at ƒ/2.8, ISO 200. (Photo by Vlatko Juric-Kokic.)

It's also certain that there will be new bodies, too. They didn't want to specify anything for the future bodies but I was told that they didn't just throw these two cameras in the market and that their engineers are already working on new models.

In the meantime, what we've got is two cameras firmly oriented towards consumers and people who want to step up from their compacts. For that part of the market the two NEX cameras seems to be very nice, but photography enthusiasts will probably have to either wait or take up with the competition.

Vlatko

*The softness of the 16mm is now a "known bug" and Sony has stated they didn't really mean it. That will give them a chance to figure out what's wrong and make it right.  —Ed.

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Returning to Hell: Color Management and Snow Leopard

By Ctein

About 11 weeks ago I wrote about the insanity-inducing problems I was having getting proper prints under MacOS X 10.6.2: "The Printer/Photoshop/Snow Leopard Hell." The OS update to 10.6.3 didn't change anything nor have I heard that the soon-to-be-released 10.6.4 will. It's still hell out there.

I learned how to live in hell. At this point I have all my printers working properly, with good profiles that behave correctly under Snow Leopard, and I've convinced myself that the prints I'm getting are nearly identical to what my MacBook Pro running OS 10.4.11 produced. It took several steps:

1) Making sure I had the absolutely most current drivers for all my printers.

2) Culling my existing profiles. ColorSync Utility identified which of my ICC profiles were v4.x, and those were banished, as Snow Leopard still will not play nicely with them. That wiped out most of my custom profiles. Happily, Bill Atkinson's profiles for my Epson 9800 were ICC v.2.x. That allowed me to compare prints made with Photoshop CS4 from both my laptop, under MacOS X 10.4.11, and our iMac running 10.6.3. They were very close to indistinguishable. Really, I expected bigger differences from changes in the print engine between the OS versions.

3) Generating new profiles for my Epson R2400 and R800. This is where things started to get "amusing." I set ColorMunki to produce version 2 printer profiles. The prints came out way too dark; my profile was clearly no good. I had something set wrong in the twisty little maze of printer controls that all looked the same. Huzzah, the X-Rite website had several helpful pages:

"Prints not matching either display or compared to canned profiles"

"Prints look too dark using printer driver with Leopard or Snow Leopard"

I needed to give control of color matching to "Epson Color Controls" rather than "ColorSync." I should have caught this; the first test chart just looked wrong. My profiling test chart should have had dark and saturated color patches (figure 1). When the software is massaging the data behind your back, you'll get a result that looks more like figure 2. Many patches are lighter and pastel. You need to find printer driver settings that get you a print that looks more like figure 1...usually. I'll get back to that.

Figure 1. A properly made profiling test chart is going to look something like this. Note that most of the color patches, especially the ones corresponding to primaries, are dark, saturated, and rich. It's the kind of output your printer will produce when it's just dumping ink on the paper, with no adjustments to get the most accurate color.

Figure 2. If a printer profile is sticking its nose into your profiling process, you get a print that looks more like this. Most of the colors have gotten lighter and many are pastel. If you see something like this you need to backtrack and figure out how to turn off color management, because a target like this is not going to produce a good profile...usually.

Well, once I got the driver settings right, everything went swimmingly. ColorMunki gave me a great looking profile. I don't think it's quite as good as the V.4 profile I generated under 10.4.11; the transitions between primaries are little harsher in my new V.2 profile (figure 3). But it is so very close that I doubt it will make a perceivable difference in any of my prints.

Figure 3. On the left is a print made using my ICC version 4 custom profile printed under MacOS X 10.4.11. On the right, the same test image printed using an ICC version 2 custom profile under Snow Leopard v 10.6.3. They are very close to identical, although I think the latter isn't quite as smooth in color gradations.

So much for the R2400 printer; on to the R800. Here's where things got weird. The very latest Epson driver software didn't present me with the same interface as the driver I had running under 10.4.11. When I tried the X-Rite recommendations, I didn't get a clean, un-massaged test chart; it looked a lot like figure 2. No combination of settings did any better. After wasting far too much paper, I decided what the hell, let's see what happens if I just go with this and generate a profile. I mean, if there's really, truly no way to turn off the driver's color massaging, it's a constant that the profile should be able to take into account, right?

A naïvely hopeful assumption, but in this case it worked! I wound up with a profile that looked just about as good as the ones I'd been running under 10.4.11. Equally significantly, the test prints I made with both the R2400 and R800 looked remarkably similar, which is no small achievement given the very large differences in the ink sets of the two printers.

I still don't understand why I couldn't entirely turn off color management, but the pragmatist in me doesn't really care. It worked.

So I'm good. Well, until Apple decides to finally fix the ICC bug and I decide I need to redo my profiles...or Epson updates their drivers and printer interfaces...or I get a new printer. But at least now I feel that whatever happens I'll be able to cope with it.

So, taking a deep breath and setting aside a good chunk of spare time, I just finished upgrading my MacBook Pro from MacOS X 10.4.11 to 10.6.3. An entirely straightforward 45 minute process, that ended up taking me 14 hours. Sigh, it's still business as usual when upgrading core software, and that business is most assuredly a sadistic one.

Ctein

Ctein's regular column appears weekly on Thursday mornings.

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Talk About Yer Bad Ideas

Don't use it to take pictures of the police...and when you go to that rally for the President or Prime Minister, better leave this at home!

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

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Pentax 645D Video

Video by Perpetual Radio Network, "your source for Canadian-made technology content."

Mike
(Thanks to Tom Kaszuba)

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Featured Comment by Sea Sun Wind: "And some images."

We Hear from Photographers

We've heard from a number of people we've written about recently.

• First of all, I was charmed to receive a gracious and warm note from Judith Fox, whose moving and beautiful book I Still Do: Loving and Living With Alzheimer's we reviewed in April. Judith sent her note as a comment, so I've simply added it to the original post, where you can read it.

• Next, I got a very nice email from Julian Sander, great-grandson of the great 20th Century photographer August Sander, in response to this post. He tells me that there have been three ranges of prints from August's plates and negatives—August's own, those made by his grandfather Gunther after WWII, and the modern prints made by his father, Gerd. He points out that although August's own prints have great depth, modern prints are more consistent, which is important because August's pictures were not intended to be seen as single images. For those who can attend, he recommends a visit to the show at the Tate Gallery in London, which he helped hang.

The magnificent 7-volume set of August Sander's work—still available at the same very advantageous clearance price—has been the surprise bestseller in the first half of the year among TOP readers. (Who would have guessed that a multi-volume set could out-sell everything else? Not me.) I've spent a lot of time now with my own set. It's a gorgeous production, and will probably stand for a very long time as the standard published source of Sander's work.

• Chicago Tribune photojournalist Alex Garcia wrote to thank us for linking to his article (here's his latest one, by the way: "7 Mistakes to Avoid as a Photographer"). He says he was "overwhelmed in a good way" by the traffic we sent his way, and that all the attention was welcomed by those "inside the building" (that is, at the Tribune) since the shooters there had just started their blogs the week before. 

Alex also mentioned an idea I think is very interesting. He thinks that "newspapers need to invest in their photographers more and to see them as brands to promote, just like their reporters and columnists." That makes almost too much sense. For example, I think of Stephen Crowley and Fred Conrad when I think of The New York Times. And now I'll think of Alex when I think of the Tribune. Anybody want to mention any favorite shooters—and what outlet they shoot for?

Mike

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Quote o' the Day

Hawthorne

-

"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."

—Nathaniel Hawthorne                  -

Sources: quotation: Perceptual Quotes for Photographers by Richard D. Zakia, Light Impressions Corporation, 1980; portrait: Library of Congress, attrib. to John Adams Whipple, Whipple & Black, c. 1850–55.

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