The Online Photographer

The Nerve of Some People

Observed on Craigslist:

Sheesh!

Mike
(Thanks to Rob Atkins)

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Featured Comment by Mike Hess: "Do you think they asked the photographer if they charge to remove the watermark? The rates might not be bad...."

Tintype Restoration

Bob Rosinsky restored an 1870s tintype. Wow, that's quite a before and after pair, isn't it?

I'd definitely display the original alongside the restored version, myself.

Mike

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What I Would Get If I Were Starting Now

I had several bouts of photographing as a kid, and had my first show in the lunchroom of the University School of Milwaukee (despite the confusing name, a prep school). But I didn't really become a photographer until 1980, when I was 23. That was 31 years ago.

Yesterday I was asked what I'd do if I were 23 and just starting out now.

That's impossible to answer, because I'm being asked to assume the perspective of a 23-year-old with 31 years of experience. If I were actually 23 right now I'd be a bright idiot just like I actually was when I was 23, who believed time was limitless and success was destiny, and I'd have to grope around and try all sorts of things and learn things slowly and painfully and suffer setbacks and inconstancy and see my ambitions go up and down like a yo-yo. And, just like then, I'd have to somehow get by—how to earn a living along the way is a big part of the puzzle.

But here's the answer I'd give now. First, I'd buy two identical, common, and not-too-precious camera bodies—either entry-level or mid-level APS-C DSLRs. The brand doesn't matter, but I'd put considerable effort into holding the available options in my hands. I'd get whatever seemed most comfortable to me.

Not too precious, because my intention would be to not baby them, and not worry too much if they got wet or hurt or stolen. I'd intend to use 'em up. If one broke, I'd use the other one while I sent the broken one in for servicing; if one got lost or stolen or ruined, I'd replace it with another one just like it.

I'd get two lenses, a moderate wide and a moderate telephoto. Small and portable.

I'd only allow myself to shop for cameras once every five years. And I'd give myself some clearly delineated time period to complete the shopping even then—say, three months. Shop, then stop. The stopping of shopping is the hardest thing for photographers to do.

Next, I'd make sure I had a good monitor, and a way to calibrate it (that's just the one I actually use; there are a number of others). Photographers are visual people; we need to see what we're doing. Not just some crappy half-assed simulacrum of it.

I'd get a copy of whatever the standard, common processing software is, probably Lightroom 3. Add a small handful of plugins as needed—emphasis on as needed.

I'd definitely, absolutely, unquestionably get a printer—any 13" pigment-ink model. I'd start printing from day one. I'd spend all my money on ink and paper. What else do you need?

And then I'd get down to the real work.

And what's the real work? Well, there are two parts to it. One is to hone your craft. Learn how to shoot, learn how to expose, learn how to print. Learn the cameras, get to know the lenses, master the software, learn to keep the printer "on song," strive always to make better and better prints. If I were 23, I'd have a lot of energy, so I'd print every day. I'd show only the very best ones, and every few months I'd go back and print one of the best of my old files just to see if I could do it any better. I'd learn to shoot more than I thought I needed to and edit much more ruthlessly.

We're talking about me here, and I'd definitely practice photography and not "digital imaging"—that is, I'd make pictures that respected the lens image, that were intended to be true to the world, to reality. Whatever Photoshop skills I learned would be in the service of that principle.

I'd work hard at staying organized and keeping to a very practical workflow.

The other part of mastery is learning what kind of pictures you like to look at, figuring out what you care about, gaining access to whatever your subject is, learning how pictures function. The how is always so much easier to grab hold of than the what. You've got to make it all about the pictures, all about the pictures.

I'd never get distracted looking for a magic bullet. The name for that is "insecurity."

And one last thing: I'd both commit to being a photographer as a serious avocation—one I could dedicate myself to, one I was willing to sacrifice for—but I'd also make sure I did something else for a living. No offense to anyone (god knows...I mean, look at me—I blog for a living. Far be it from me to criticize anyone else for how they turn a buck). But I'd want to stay free, above all else.

I'd do my level best to be true to myself. I'd take myself seriously. I don't mean in the sense of being humorless or self-important; I mean I'd believe in myself. That's a really hard thing for most people to do. If 23-year-old me knew how hard that part was going to be, I might be doing something entirely different with my life by now.

Of course, there's no such thing as a 23-year-old with 31 years of experience. Too bad about that.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Craig Norris: "Nice piece, Mike. It reminds me of a Frank & Ernest comic strip I saw once. It showed two old guys on a park bench and one says: 'I wish I knew now what I thought I knew twenty years ago.'"

Featured Comment by yunfat: "Sound advice Mike, unless of course you believe DSLR's will go the way of the Dodo in less than 5 years....[big snip, of a long discussion of camera technology...you can read yunfat's entire comment in the Comments section —Ed.]

Mike replies: See how dangerous that is? The long version of your comment is all part of what I'm calling "shopping." You're making your analysis of camera technology into your hobby, and making it into the focus of your expertise. I eventually did the same (the worst "shoppers" become "reviewers") but that's not photography. It's photo-tech. It's true that I wanted to be a writer more than I wanted to be a photographer, and today I am a writer of sorts, so maybe I should let myself off the hook. But I'm suggesting that, assuming I wanted to be a photographer, I would have been better off concentrating on taking pictures and making prints rather than becoming an opinion-expert on imaging technology and the camera industry.

What I said, what I'm saying, very deliberately, is that I'd buy two T3i's (or whatever) and forget about camera technology for five years. I'd be fine in those five years. I'd get to shop again, and when that time came I'd know I could wallow in photo-tech all I wanted. Until then, you should use what you bought.

And, incidentally, I'm speaking from actual experience. I tend to be obsessive, especially under stress, and I did make my living for a lot of years writing for magazines, which meant I had to keep current with photo-tech issues. Right after my son was born, I was the single parent of an infant, had moved to a new city, didn't have a job, didn't have many friends, was suffering serious sleep deprivation, serious money worries, etc., etc. Talk about stress. I found my obsessiveness getting out of control. So, as a "cure," I chose one camera, two lenses, and one film, and decided, willfully, to "stop shopping" for three years. The "three years" ended up lasting for four and a half, and I did some of my best work in that four-and-a-half-year period...and was the happiest I've ever been with my photography avocation. So I'm not making that advice lightly; it's something I've actually lived.

Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "Recalling your "Leica for a year" idea from a while back, I expected this post to suggest film. Has anything changed in your thinking?"

Mike replies: The two do seem contradictory. Maybe they are. I'll weasel and wiggle a little with Whitman's lines from Leaves of Grass, a book no one now ever reads outside of the classroom but that everyone knows of and quotes from:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

It's not actually that grand, though. I'd say the "Leica Year" is properly part of one's education, not part of "getting started" on an ongoing life as a photographer. Does that work—will you let me off with that distinction? It's a little specious, I know.

Featured Comment by Preston Earle: "Mike, can you speak to the difference in prime vs. zoom lenses? With your recommended moderate wide and moderate telephoto (I presume both are primes), it's going to be hard to 'fill the frame' on lots of shots. Do you think modern hi-res (large pixel count) cameras have made it less important to photograph the scene with the full image and allow more cropping? It seems like there is a lot of range between moderate wide (35mm-e?) and moderate telephoto (135mm-e?)."

Mike replies: I don't generally like zooms (see "The Case Against Zooms")—in fact I'm a bit notorious for it—because you don't learn a focal length with them, and learning how the lens sees is an important part of training the eye/mind IMHO. But do what you want—I'm only saying what I would do, not what anyone else should. What's right for me would surely be wrong for someone else. In any event, the more important takeaway from my advice is that the equipment doesn't really matter. Choose wisely, yes; get what you want, yes; but then move on and stop worrying about where the green of the grass might possibly be one or two points more saturated. In fact for this post I almost said I'd get a D700, 5D Mark II, or A900 (for the nice big full-frame viewfinders—the better to see you with, my dear—that bit about photographers being visual people again). Just...keep it simple, keep it basic, and work on mastering what you have.

Featured Comment by Tom Kwas: "The most important thing you've mentioned here Mike, is to practice photography as an avocation, not a career.

"I almost wrote a 90-page diatribe on why it isn't feasible to make photography a career, but figured no one would read it and it would just make me more angry. But, regardless of all the digital/analog quality/craft arguments, digital has truly changed almost all factors associated with trying to eke out a living in imaging. Digital has made it far easier for a person with a decent 'eye' to deliver a far more technically acceptable image to professional users, with less education and practice.

"This, coupled with the inability of untrained and marginally trained end-users to recognize, much less demand, the in-camera quality of an educated professional photographer, has done more to accelerate the end of the professional photography career than almost any other single change in the industry.

"The disappearance of the small photography job, which most professionals and studios relied on to keep their doors open in smaller markets, ceded to the casual shooter who does not charge the needed rate to cover liability insurance, equipment replacement and repair, health insurance, and all other aspects of professional business overhead; while the casual shooter depends on their 'real' job and usually their spouse to fill in these needed expenses, has sounded the death knell for people seriously considering photography as a career.

"Love photography, shoot pictures to your hearts content, do a few small jobs to massage your ego; but avoid spending 40–80 thousand dollars on a college photographic education, and the years of little financial reward and long work hours annoying and avoiding your family, to try and become professional in a field that doesn't respect or pay for the experience and knowledge."

Free Memory Card and Ferrari

I really should have posted this earlier...the sale's almost over. B&H is having a giveaway on SanDisk Memory Cards. A free card when you buy another. Hurry—and I'm not just saying that. (Sorry I didn't post it in time.)

Also almost over, a hefty rebate on the Canon 9500II printer as well as the 9000II. (As you probably know, pigment- and dye-based respectively.)

Also, John Lennon's Ferrari is for sale*.

Finally, it being smack dab in the middle of matrimony season, B&H have created a comprehensive guide to Wedding Photography. I haven't reviewed much of it (just thinking about shooting a wedding makes me want to lie down and rest), but my friend at B&H tells me they put in a lot of work on it.

I'm still working on my replacement post for Ctein's column. It should be ready for posting by, I don't know, Friday, or August.

Mike

*Just checking if you're paying attention. Okay, okay, so it was last January—you weren't really going to buy it, were you?

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Blog Notes, Wednesday

Well, this doesn't happen often, but I bit off more today than I can chew. Too large a subject to write about in one day. (I was asked yesterday what I would do if I were starting in photography right now. I know exactly what I want to say, but it's a big river with lots of turnings and tributaries.)

But I need to mention that Ctein is on vacation this week and next. His regular column will resume on July 13th.

Mike

Classic Printmaking for Fun, Part I

Waukesha*, Wisconsin, June 2011 — I'm 54 this year, and film photography has certainly come a long way since I first seriously caught the photography bug in 1980. It used to be all there was. Up until the 1990s, the technology of photography hadn't really changed in its essence in a century and a half—although of course there had been a lot of improvements and refinements, mostly, although not exclusively, for the sake of convenience.

For the past ten or fifteen years, a period of time known as the Digital Transition, there's been a great deal of status anxiety among photographers. Early on—and sometimes lingering still—digital proponents were touchy about the initially inferior status of digital imaging—or simply the fact that it was the newcomer on the scene. Next, in the early aughts, came a phase in which many people were obsessed with comparing film to digital and arguing about the results. During this phase we saw a lot of grand pronouncements as people recounted their investigations and their reasoning and proclaimed they were sticking with film or switching to digital. Lately, it's been film (a.k.a. "analog") aficionados who have been on the defensive, as digital has decisively taken over the market and removed just about any real practical necessity to use film at all.

Although a lot of film is still sold on an absolute basis, sales are constricting all the time, and the new camera market has shifted over almost entirely to digital. As of this writing there are only a relative handful of film cameras available new, and many of those are essentially vestigial. Some are being sold out of what's called "New Old Stock" (NOS), meaning product already manufactured which is being sold out of existing inventory. When that inventory's gone, a number of those cameras won't be manufactured again. You can still buy the Canon EOS 1v and the Nikon F6 new, for instance, but it's highly unlikely that either company will manufacture another run of either of those cameras, and there certainly won't be successors. (At the moment there are clear signs, including the ever-rising price**, that Nikon is reaching the end of its stock of the F6.)

Also, the quality of digital has now in some ways greatly eclipsed film. I distinctly remember in about 2001 or 2002 talking to a professional photographer who said he was happy with digital at base sensitivity (widely, but incorrectly, called "ISO"), but that he wasn't going to switch until digital could at least match the sensitivity of higher-ISO films. Obviously, digital has now gone so far past film in this regard that digital photographers regularly complain about sensitivities that were never anything but pipe dreams to film users.

Cuyahoga, from a print made on a now-extinct Kodak paper

There are still a few actual, real advantages to film, which we'll get to eventually. But, for the most part, digital has it all over film—it's greatly more convenient, much more widespread, and for the most part, looks as good or better, especially in color.

My first suggestion is going to be that you completely ignore status issues. We primates just love to split up into groups and compete—it's just how we're wired—but there's no reason for it where photography is concerned. I'm a digital photographer, and you probably are too. There's nothing wrong with that. Similarly, there's absolutely no reason you "have" to get into film, now or ever, for any reason. If you don't want to, don't, and don't worry about it for a second. There's absolutely no reason to.

Crafts are fun
So why would you get into film photography, then? I think there's one basic reason: because it's a highly developed, beautiful craft, and crafts can be fun.

People love all sorts of crafts that are absolutely not necessary for their security or prosperity. Some people buy old cars and restore them to better-than-original condition or cobble together their own hot-rod creations. Some people love to build plastic models. People knit their own scarfs and sweaters and sew their own clothes. There's no reason you have to stencil borders on your walls, make jewelery, tie flies, or build your own furniture (is woodworking the king of crafts?). Yet people do all these things. Some people build their own electronics, soldering parts on circuit boards. Speaker-building is a thriving subculture in audio circles, even though 95% of the home-built (well, let's say owner-designed) speakers I've heard don't sound quite as good as the better store-bought ones. A photographer I know of in Kentucky teaches at a craft center where they also teach glass-blowing, which is not a skill that's of much practical use in modern life. My aunt Mary, in her basement workshop, used to make the most beautiful rustic chairs from branches she collected in the forest. I have a friend who designs and makes stained glass panels for windows and doors and such. She has recently moved over into making "pictures" by quilting together pieces made of all sorts of different fabrics. Gardening is another activity I'd put into this general broad category. Although in some sense practical, it's a hobby, an enthusiasm, and it can be very creative—although, since you're dealing with living things, it has a nurturing component that is pretty unique. You might not agree that it's strictly a craft. Still, what it has in common with all these other things is that people do it because they love it, not because they have to.

Practiced at the highest level by the very best craftspeople, almost all crafts can become art. But that's seldom the point for the majority of people.

With all crafts, there are practical byproducts. You do make things. Sometimes you can sell them. Often you can use the things you make yourself, in your own home and in your own life. But the real reward is in the doing. We do most crafts because we love the process—it's gratifying. We get satisfaction from it.

That's the extent of what I'm going to claim for classic photographic printmaking. It's a craft—still viable, lately becoming much more esoteric than previously—and, practiced as such, it can be fun and gratifying...its own reward.

Who needs to throw a pot?
In a sense, this restores photographic printmaking to a place where it ought to have been all along. When I taught photography in the 1980s, there was this pervasive sense in the air that the kids were learning skills that could well lead to paying work later on. I was asked to speak at a high school recently, and the teacher asked that I talk to the kids about careers. This, despite the fact that even many well-established photographers have trouble making significant incomes and that the supply of skilled and often inspired photographers already greatly exceeds the demand. (I once knew a professional studio advertising photographer named Toby who devised his own personal rules for living. Toby's Commandments were: "Do good, be kind, have courage, and don't be a goddamned professional photographer.") When I taught high school, I was once grilled about whether the skills I was teaching would be useful to professionals...by the ceramics instructor! What? My feeling then as now was, why should photographic printmaking be any different than learning how to throw pots? When was the last time a high school student desperately needed to be able to make her own coffee mug in order to succeed in life? Well, photographic printmaking is really no different.

So, over the next several months, very occasionally and in no great hurry, I'm planning to write a few articles about the craft of classic photographic printmaking***. (I can't believe it's already been a whole year since I first started thinking about doing this.) With any luck, I will get my act together sufficiently to make a few videos, although that's asking a lot of my currently nonexistent videomaking skills (anyone want to help?). I hasten to add, to forestall the inevitable jumped-to conclusions, that no, I am not "returning" to film. Unlike some (and no disrespect to them), I don't happen to see film and digital as an either/or proposition. I shoot digital. Just not exclusively. And no, TOP is not becoming a film-only site (I'm sure somebody's going to say that, somewhere). Our coverage by and large will not change.

So—why do this? Well, I'm hoping it will be fun for me, educational for some of you who have grown up with digital, gratifying for those who already love printmaking, and historical for those in the future who might be curious as to the state and changing nature of classic optical-chemical photography in the 'teens.

Mike

* It's pronounced "WALK-uh-shaw," or sometimes something a little closer to WALKIE-shaw." Although it's widely believed locally to mean "Little Foxes"—to the point that there are statues of foxes sprinkled around town (that might also be because of the Fox River, which runs through the middle of town)—it is actually a sort of bastardized or transmogrified version of the name of the leader of the local native tribe when the area was first settled by Europeans.

It's also a very good web name, because there is only one Waukesha in the world. Google it, and you get us.

**Cameramakers control the outflow of NOS by carefully manipulating the price. As the stock dwindles, the price rises, slowing sales. This enables the camera to remain "in production" for longer. This is typically done with higher-end cameras when the manufacturer knows that there is no longer demand sufficient to justify either another run or a replacement model.

***I've encouraged Ctein to write a bit about digital printmaking. He's thinking about it.

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Featured Comment by Carl Weese: "If anything, interest in traditional photographic print making seems to be on the rise. It looks as though we will fill three 'Introduction to Platinum' workshops this year at The Center for Alternative Photography. It's a very craft-oriented weekend course, starting by making ten pictures targeted for platinum printing, developing the film, and then making Pt/Pd prints on hand-coated paper.

"In the past the students have mainly been advanced large format photographers with lots of experience at silver printing. But that's changed. Recently, a lot of the participants have never used a view camera, never developed sheet film (or any film) and never made a silver print, much less a platinum one. It's all new to them, and they seem to love it.

"Practical benefit? Well, a couple participants have been photography teachers who want to be able to teach the medium, a few are professional photographers trying to transition into the Fine Art Market who wonder if Pt/Pd will give them an edge, but most simply have seen and admired platinum prints and want to see if they can manage to do the craft themselves."

Featured [partial] Comment by Lynn: "I haven't printed in a darkroom for 35 years—and I miss the fun of it, and the excitement of watching an image appear in the developer tray. Watching an inkjet incrementally spit out a print just isn't the same. However, my digital darkroom just astounds me with its capabilities, and the fact I can work in colour—an impossible dream 35 years ago—and that I can produce better quality prints now than I did back then is just wonderful."

Mike replies: I agree. Master printers in the medium are still relatively rare, but the digital medium itself indeed can't be beat for color printing. The only traditional color printing process I truly loved was dye transfer, and both of the best dye transfer printers I knew (Charlie Cramer and Ctein) now print their current work with inkjet printers.

Featured Comment by mark lacey: "I'm so looking forward to this. I teach darkroom work and am constantly amazed how many young people get the craft element and see it as a fun recreational activity, as a polar opposite to sitting in front of a computer all day which so many people do nowadays. I'm probably an extreme example because I'm the only person I know who even loves developing film, I get so excited looking at the negs as they come out of the tank, for me that's the magic moment. It takes all sorts I suppose."

Featured Comment by Steve Jacob: "Oddly enough, although I don't propose to use film again for any reason, I find the comparison quite interesting.

"With film, it was developing that put me off. I was impatient to get to the print stage, so it always seemed like a chore. There was always the risk that you could mess up a whole roll, and I sometimes did. A waste of both film and chemicals.

"Printing on the other hand was actually good fun because it was where you got final control over contrast. It was a creative process, you could see what you were doing and you finally got something to hang on the wall.

"By comparison, digital processing is a breeze, whether from a RAW file or a scanned negative. In this case, all the creative control is exercised during the processing, not the printing, so it is the creative part of the whole process. But the last step, pressing the print button, can be the most frustrating part of it.

"Calibrating and 'dialing in' a new printer and paper combination inevitably turns out to be a process of trial and error, which would be OK were it not for the cost of ink. It would also help if the documentation for most printer drivers was less opaque.

"Of course you can go mail order, but even so I think people who find digital printing a pain are excused. If Ctein can lend us poor suckers a hand (and save us some ink) it would be much appreciated."

Oh, and BY THE WAY

One thing I left out of the "Let's Fight About Copyright!" post from yesterday: I believe TOP readers are the best group of people on the entire far-flung World Wide Web. Yeah, I'm prejudiced, but that's what I believe.

Even people who get full-on pissed off—a rarity—will usually turn friendly and nice if I remember to keep my own calm. And our commenters, who are only a small subset of the audience—well, they're the people who keep me interested. They educate me every day, contribute to every discussion, lend credibility to abstract discussions with firsthand knowledge and experience, help me write the material for the website, tip me off to things I had no clue existed, and make me laugh with their wit, drollery, or singular skill in self-expression.

No one who writes for the web would mind more readers, but the ones I've got are the best there are, and please, never let my occasional kvetching imply otherwise.

Cheers,

Mike the Moderator

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Mean Mike

Yes, I know I can be a jerk, hectoring and nagging you and prodding you to do your bit. But it's that time again...if you haven't done so any time recently, it's time to buy yourself something nice. I know, I'm mean. Mean Mike.

It's a tough obligation, I know. But it's your duty, and I need you to suck it up. Look, we put up all this material for you to read. So every now and then we have to force you to pay us back. By buying something. For yourself.

It's a hard job, but you've got to do it.

Why? It's because whenever you buy something from B&H Photo or Amazon.com—and now The Book Depository too—through our links, we get a little kickback called an "affiliate fee." It's a small percentage of the sale price of the item. It comes out of their profit—you don't have to pay an extra cent.

My view of TOP. This is what I look at all day.

And even small items help a lot. The reason is because the percentage of the affiliate fee is on a sliding scale based on the number of items sold. The more total items, the bigger a percentage we rake in on everything. So even if you only buy some printer inks or an SD card or a microfiber cloth from B&H (and look at all the great Canon stuff they've got on sale), or a set of rechargeable AA's or a book about cameras (or maybe one about food) or some basic software from Amazon, it all helps out—more than you'd think. Honest. The little things are important.

Of course, if you want to buy yourself an attractive compact camera or a practical professional lens for your Canon or something to help with video editing, I wouldn't object to that either.

Everything Amazon sells counts (it doesn't have to be related to photography), but not anything that's already in your cart. You have to go there from here and select it and purchase it on the same visit for it to count.

Everything from B&H counts too.

You can bookmark the Amazon links but not the B&H link—for that to work you have to start your shopping trip from our site or one of our links.

Okay, now I'll stop being a jerk and leave you alone for another month. But not before reminding you that our links page, including links to Amazon in the U.K., Germany, and Canada, is here.

And, thanks very much!

Mike

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Let's Fight About Copyright!

The work I do—what I spend most of my day doing—is moderating comments. That is, I read the comments, decide which ones to highlight or "Feature," sometimes (not always) do a little basic editing triage, check the links, and post them.

When someone gets mad, or there's a dispute, or I need to "disallow" (not publish) a comment, I usually—not always—contact the commenter privately.

It's important to note that I can't contact people who don't leave an email address. If you've ever had a comment that you've written not appear on the site and you got nuthin' but silence from me, it might be because you failed to disclose your contact information and I can't get in touch with you.

To proceed. Sometimes, comment moderation is easy...

Open Mike: Wild, Wild West

Photo credit: AP

Sold, yesterday, for $2,300,000, the most famous authentic portrait of one William Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, at Brian Lebel's 22nd Annual Old West Show and Auction in the Denver Merchandise Mart in Denver, Colorado.

Long one of the most celebrated outlaws of the American frontier, McCarty was chiefly famous because he managed a spectacular and bloody escape (killing one of his guards with the guard's own shotgun) after being captured and sentenced to hang. As with most Wild West archetypes, his story has been told and re-told again and again with varying levels of historical fidelity (and, it must be said, varying levels of attempts at historical fidelity) in popular media from pulps to movies. (The movie I recommend—from the era of my youth, like most peoples' favorite movies—would be Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, with country singer Kris Kristofferson as the Kid and James Coburn as the Lincoln County Sheriff who finally did him in. The film features a twitchy performance by Bob Dylan, who also wrote the memorable if somewhat overemphasized soundtrack. Dylan's famous "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" was written for this film. The movie also plays up the supposed friendship between McCarty and Garrett, which is traditional but is without much historical foundation.)

The picture that sold yesterday is a tintype, a misnomer because "tintypes" were usually printed on enameled iron sheet. It's tiny—the image above, on your monitor, might be somewhat larger than life size. Tintypes—somewhat ironically, given the price reached at yesterday's auction—were originally a cheap, downmarket image medium popular with people who couldn't afford Daguerreotypes. You can still make them today, if you have a 4x5.

For a long time, Billy the Kid was believed to be left-handed because of this picture, but that's because people seeing the picture didn't realize that tintype is a direct-positive medium and the image is laterally reversed, as in a mirror—in the picture above, he's actually holding the carbine in his left hand and has his (barely visible) pistol at his right side.

Tintypes are dearly beloved of Western theme attractions all over the West. Somewhere, I have a tintype of myself, aged 13, dressed in a frock coat, flat-crowned hat, and holding a six-gun, taken at Virginia City, Montana.

The wildest and most warlike
In other Western news...just out in paperback is S.C. Gwynne's wonderful book Empire of the Summer Moon. The actual history of the west is almost fugitive at this point, because the myths and the legends are just so strong and so alluring to so many, and the truth has been so thoroughly eclipsed by the myths and mannerisms beloved of pop culture. And pop culture just gets so much of the actual history wrong. For instance, the Apache are conventionally considered the quintessential southwestern desert tribe, the wildest and most warlike, mainly because Geronimo was one of the last Indian holdouts to be brought to heel (and because he survived to go on tour back East—he rode in Teddy Roosevelt's inaugural parade, for instance). But that's not even close. By far the most powerful tribe of the West—the best horsemen (and women) and the most vicious fighters—were the Comanche, who stopped Spanish expansion northward and, for many years, American expansion into Texas and the Southern Plains.

In the eighteenth century, 20,000 Comanche controlled an area the size of France. The Apache were terrified of them, and were at one point virtually enslaved by the more powerful tribe.

Empire of the Summer Moon covers the known history of the Comanche from Indian military tactics to frontier weapons technology (the six-gun wasn't important because of street duels, but because it was the first firearm for Indian fighters on horseback that was superior to the bow and arrow) to the reason why the Texas Rangers were founded (it was a paramilitary organization which would trap and slaughter small bands of Comanche in retribution for attacks on white settlers). Gwynne's gripping account of the incredible and tragic story of Cynthia Ann Parker, a white girl kidnapped by the Comanche at age nine, is alone worth the price of the book.

It's the best book about the West I've ever read, at least*. It's also probably the most entertaining book I've read in the past year. If you have any predilection at all for reading history or for stories about the Wild West, this will be the best nine dollars you'll spend on paper and ink this month, I guarantee it. Highly recommended.

Mike

*Whoops, sorry, misspoke. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is nonpareil in my opinion, a category of one. (The link is to the illustrated edtion; there's an inexpensive paperback as well.) But Empire of the Summer Moon is at the top of the rest.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is not a book from my youth, despite the fact that it was published in 1970; I first read it in 1998 after I'd turned 40. I'm sure my personal reaction to it was informed in part by a bad loss I had recently suffered when I read it—it's an epic story of tragedy, loss, betrayal, disinheritance, and genocide, and for me it tied into personal emotions which amplified my reactions. Still and all, for whatever reason, it's the single most emotional experience I've ever had reading a book.

For the record, I find the standard criticisms of it nonsensical. Dee Brown set out to write the history of the American West from the perspective of the Native Americans...and his book gets criticized (by white American critics, mostly) for being too sympathetic to Indians, too critical of European-Americans, and not balanced enough. Well, it's not intended to be balanced—it's intended to be counterbalancing. It doesn't make sense to me to criticize an author for succeeding at what he deliberately set out to do.

"Open Mike," which appears on TOP on Sundays, is having a hard time staying off-topic these days. Sorry about that.

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Featured Comment by Chad Thompson: "Rather apropos. I just returned from a wet plate workshop hosted by Will Dunniway. Today's news was quite the topic of discussion. So in the spirit of the day we spent it creating tintypes. Well, these were on aluminum but hey—japanning iron plates is still beyond me for the moment. Since Will knows my dad has a thing for flintlocks he suggested I brandish one and gift the photo to him. Here's the result (half frame by the way). For the record I am left handed. But it's a right-handed gun."

Paso del Rio Trail, Palo Duro Canyon, Texas. This was a favorite home of the Comanches led by Quanah Parker. Photo by DC Wells

Featured Comment by DC Wells: "Empire of the Summer Moon inspired my cousin and me to make a camping trip to Palo Duro Canyon in the panhandle of Texas earlier this summer. The Canyon was a stronghold of the Comanches until Quanah struck his deal for peace. Stumbling into the Palo Duro must have been a great surprise for those traveling across the Staked Plain without a map to tip them off. Its cool stream (Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River) and shade trees would have offered relief and sanctuary from the unrelenting plain. Of course, the Comanches might have offered yet a bigger surprise to European travelers.

Lighthouse Rock, Palo Duro Canyon, Texas. Photo by DC Wells

"In a book of remarkable stories, one of the most remarkable is the transition Quanah Parker made from Commanche leader to business leader and social advisor."

Two Funny Videos

First, Charlotte Young's "Artist's Statement." That only works for younger artists; older ones learn to make their statements so opaque that they can't even be subtitled.

Next, a brief crime video proving that it's possible for cameras to be too small. I love the brief inadvertent portrait of the gimlet-eyed thief near the end.

Mike
(Thanks to Jay Townsend and Ed Kuipers)

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'What's the Point of Even Having Copyright?'

Copyright law is not, fundamentally, about financial damage. It is about giving the creator of the work the right to decide how it is used. They can sell it, they can give it away for free, they can enjoin others from selling it, they can do what they want. But the decision is theirs. Outside of the very limited provisions for Fair Use and Work for Hire, you need permission from the creator of a work to use it for your own ends. That's the whole thing in a nutshell.

—Ctein, in the comments to yesterday's post

So it's one thing if somebody who is apparently well-intentioned and sympathetic messes with a famous photographer's best-known, most iconic, but half-century-old image. What about if some big corporation takes an unknown recent (2009) image from a little-known photographer and uses it without permission?

That's what happened to Chris Devers. On the left, below, is his photo "Old Jaguar E-type sports car: front view (close)." The Gap apparently used the photo on the gray pumice versions of the "Thermal body double" onesie (SKU #785589) and the 2-in-1 moto one-piece (SKU #785593) (shown on the right) at gap.com. Chris was never contacted.

Chris's interest, as you can tell from his Flickr page, is the car itself, not the photograph's potential commercial use. The original photo was posted to Flickr under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). The license used requires attribution, and forbids commercial use and derivative works. The Gap's use of the image violates all three clauses.

He asked for a response but never got one, although the items were removed from gap.com. The story got picked up by a large number of online sources (as one iWag quipped, "Internets are angry!")—there's a list of them all at Chris's Flickr page (to which Chris can now add TOP).

One commenter said that all Chris probably did was to get some poor low-level graphic designer fired. But a site called Styleite even suggested that this might have been among the many reasons why former Gap President Marka Hansen left the company early this year.

So here's a situation most readers can probably more easily identify with, as well as an infringer that isn't cast as inherently sympathetic (unlike Andy Baio). Are your feelings about the issue still the same after reading this as they were yesterday? 

Note, too, what one Flickr commenter called "TRAH X3IA" found: that there are numerous other very similar pictures available on Flickr with licenses that do allow derivative versions and commercial use. The Gap designer could simply have used one of those.

Lawyers, as Chris says, are talking, and the outcome of the case is still pending. As Chris wrote to me yesterday, though, "I really am interested in where the legal boundaries lie. I'm sympathetic with the point of view that re-use in some form should be possible, but I'm also sympathetic with the point of view that the original copyright owner should have some control over how material can be used—otherwise, what's the point of even having copyright?"

Mike

ADDENDUM: There's a bit of confusion about this in a few of the early comments: Chris did indeed prove it's his specific photograph the Gap used, and you can tell at a glance—just look at the matching reflections in the windshield.

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Featured Comment by Brigitte: "I work in the fashion industry as a textile designer and I am very familiar with this issue. (And might I add quite touchy about it, being a photographer myself.)

"The reality is that the internet has become the number one resource for many textile studios. There is a strong demand for photographic prints nowadays and it is certainly easier, faster to search for what you need on the net rather to go out and photograph it yourself.

"Typically though, the images are manipulated beyond recognition and become part of an all-over print, making them nearly impossible to spot. If we want something very specific that will be used as a single image, and therefore easily recognizable, we do purchase it from a photo library like Shutterstock.

"So I am very surprised that someone working in a company as well distributed as Gap thought he can get away with this. (It is also very possible that Gap did purchase this print from another studio. Not everything is produced in-house. It would make that company, which would have sold the image with a full copyright, accountable for this, not Gap.)

"The other thing I want to point out is that some well known brand like say Volkswagen do not allow their cars or logo to be reproduced freely. I wonder what the policy is with the folks at Jaguar?

"Anyway, the only way to protect yourself against this kind of theft is to watermark everything you do post on the 'net. No one will touch your images then."

Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop, Kind of Screwed

Sometimes, I decide what to write about on TOP. Sometimes, my readers decide—I get so many "tips" about one item that I almost have to link to it—in self-defense, just to stop the avalanche. (Note that I do appreciate such tips; those tipsters, especially en masse, are seldom wrong.)

The latest item that my readers collectively want me to link to is a blog post by Kickstarter founder Andy Baio called "Kind of Screwed." Seems Andy created a quirky/amusing 8-bit (electronica) tribute/cover to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue a while back. He called it Kind of Bloop (samples here), and he carefully cleared the rights to all the songs and conscientiously paid his musicians.

He just forgot to clear the rights to the cover. Which happens to be one of Jay Maisel's most famous pictures and one of the few instantly recognizable images in music publishing.

Long story short, Jay's lawyers came after him, and he had to settle out of court for $32,500.

Andy thinks his use was Fair Use and that he would have won the case if it had gone to trial. "Kind of Screwed" is cast as an eloquent appeal for sympathy by a nice, well-meaning guy (which Andy certainly seems to be), and several commentaries on the web (I'm not going to link to any) have cast this as a case of big, bad lawyers screwing the little guy out of his legal rights.

Trouble is, both Ctein and I think that's wrong.

I side with Jay in this one. That is, I think the Kind of Bloop cover is indeed a case of infringement and does not qualify as Fair Use. I'll let Ctein expain it in more detail if he cares to, since he knows more about copyright law than I do, but the issue hinges on "derivative" vs. "transformative" works of art. You're allowed to transform (create something new on the shoulders of the old); you're not allowed to derive (copy, even loosely—even in another medium).

Sometimes it does take a jury to decide which is which. Sad but true.

I'm very sorry Andy had to pay so ridiculously much money for the simple sin of forgetting to clear the rights to an image—and the money does indeed have a tendency to get stupid once the lawyers have to get involved—but I'm afraid that's what he should have done; only a jury could decide definitively, but I believe he would have lost his case purely on its merits.

And Jay might have let it slide (we haven't heard his side of the story, n.b.). But as the aggrieved party, he gets to decide.

Mike

ADDENDUM by Ctein: Personally, I think Andy's wrong, and his big tactical mistake was being so firmly convinced he was right that he decided to fight instead of begging forgiveness.

He doesn't seem to understand that the specific major compositional and design elements in a photograph are protected, not just the fine details. There's solid case law backing that up. His work is only minimally transformative—there's also solid case law that converting a photograph to another medium, such as drawing, painting or serigraph, is not inherently a transformative act.

To my eye, his conversion is far too faithful to the original, and doesn't come close to evoking the minimalist nature of 8-bit game console graphics. If I were on a jury, it wouldn't take me more than a minute to decide, "Derivative, not transformative."

Now, if he'd really gone for minimalist, he might have a good case. Artistically, I'd have opted for third or fourth from the last of his variations, at the bottom of the page. There he really is abstracting key elements in a way that could plausibly be argued to be transformative. But his original? Just the same photo, seen through a glass, darkly.

There are lots of grey area in Fair Use. (I really wish the Obama Hope case had gone to trial—it fell smack dab in the middle of the legal playing field and would have made GREAT case law, clarifying a lot of points.) Andy's case, I'm afraid, isn't one of them.

Anyway, that's how I'd come down on this one, were I the adjudicator. I'm really sorry he got kinda screwed over it; he seems like a nice and well-meaning chap. But I think he really got it wrong.

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Featured Comment by Jordan: "In the 'Kind of Screwed' blog post you linked to, Mike, Jay Maisel's lawyer is quoted as saying '[Maisel] would never have granted a license for the pixel art' and that 'he felt violated to find his image of Miles Davis, one of his most well-known and highly-regarded images, had been pixellated.' So while we haven't heard directly from Maisel, it's fairly clear what 'his side of the story' is (or at least his lawyer's interpretation of his side of the story)."

Featured Comment by Rodolfo Canet: "As Jay Maisel gets to decide, he must also assume the public impact of his decision, something very important in this case. Law technicalities and lawyer greed aside, I think the money Andy had to pay is outrageously high for the damage supposedly done, and Jay had to be aware of that. If he thinks his rights are so important to make a guy pay a one-year salary for that, it's OK, but I'm not feeling too much sympathy for him. It would be nice to hear his take of the matter, indeed. By the way, I too see the cover as 'derivative.'"

Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "Good for Jay; he won one for all professionals. Too often 'fair use' has become 'fair excuse.'"

Featured Comment by John Camp: "As somebody else suggested, the decent thing to have done would have been to settle it with a phone call. I agree with Ctein and Mike that using the cover without explicit permission was incorrect, and with everybody else who suggested that the award was disproportionate to the crime. But, Maisel was not trying to be decent, he was trying to collect some money. This is a new crop on the Internet, and the harvests have been good. I don't want to hear about how Maisel was deprived of something—if Andy had asked for permission, and it had been refused (or if payment had been sought, and Andy decided he didn't need the art work) there would have been nothing to get. Instead, he gets quite a lot, because somebody made a mistake, and because he knows a bunch of lawyers who are willing to hurt people to make a living."

Mike replies: The story at your link is very much an evolving one, and it's evolving right now. Righthaven was dealt a substantial setback on June 14th, and the State Bar of Nevada has even gotten involved.

Featured Comment by William: "In my opinion, this case is clearly an infringement.

"In general, and not specific to the 'Kind of Bloop' case, we are still in the early stages of a new content production paradigm. Anyone can create and distribute content. This sort of freedom is unprecedented. Is anyone surprised a huge increase in freedom is accompanied by an equal increase in risk, which in turn increases responsibility? But how are on-line content providers to know it is prudent to purchase liability insurance in case they are sued? Practically no one has any sort of internal peer review or mentoring to help them get things right.

"Specific to the case, I believe that Mr. Maisel did exactly the right thing. The only thing photographers create and own is intellectual property. Mr. Maisel had no choice but to defend his livelihood. Otherwise he is effectively doing a disservice to the clients who license his work.

"Based on the statutes, the settlement amount seems fair to me. One may feel the statutes are unfair, but that's a different issue. I was wondering: how much value did the 'Kind of Blue' album cover generate over the years? Was it 5% of the gross sales? What about 1%, or even 0.1%? By the way, over 20 million copies of 'Kind of Blue' have been sold. Would it be difficult to convince a judge or jury the 'Kind of Blue' cover was responsible for 0.1% of the sales?

"Finally, once the legal system is invoked, there is no such thing as 'piling on.' For centuries the legal system was designed and intended to be an adversarial system. An attorney who is not aggressive and does not take every argument to the extreme will starve to death. I realize this aspect of the legal system is offensive to some. However, for better or worse, this is how western civilization operates."

Mike replies: William, why do I suspect I know what you do for a living? ;-)

I'm Just Sayin'

Sometimes, our feelings of affront at prices are not only not justified—they're downright stupid.

I remember looking at a nice clean copy of Ed Ruscha's classic Twentysix Gasoline Stations in a bookstore a long time ago, mulling it over, then flipping to the front endpaper where the dealer had penciled the price, and thinking, "A hundred and twenty-five dollars? Are they nuts?"

Turns out I was. I last saw one of these a few weeks ago, reverently displayed in a glass case at a major public museum. A tatty third edition will now set you back $1,200 (a clean third more like $1,500), and Matthew Raptis, of Raptis Rare Books, in Brattleboro, Vermont, has a fine signed copy (signed twice, in fact) of the numbered, limited first edition offered for sale at (gulp!) $37,500.

I hope somebody out there just thought, "Hey, I have that book somewhere in the attic...."

Mike

P.S. If you're interested, Paul Trevor left a comment on my review of his book, defending his publisher. It's featured at the end of the review if you want to read it.

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Featured Comment by Burnblue: "What a coincidence…I was just talking to my father (a photo historian at UCSB) and it turns out he bought Twentysix Gasoline Stations and every other one of Ruscha's booklets for $2 each back in the '60s—and still has them. Not that he ever mentioned this to me, mind you! He tells me now, as he's preparing to sell them (along with an original Baldessari book and others). And of course, I'm living across the Pacific ocean at the moment so I won't ever get to see them *facepalm*."

Featured Comment by Joe Reifer: "Ed Ruscha And Photography provides a great overview of all of his books for $50–60."

The Pentax Q System

 
It's really difficult to show in a picture just how tiny the new Q really is.

I hardly know where to begin. But, since I've gotten pretty good over the years at anticipating typical web reactions to new products, I guess I'll start by saying this isn't "the Pentax mirrorless." No. Get that idea out of your brain. What it is is a premium point-and-shoot. A wee mini-digicam. You know, like the Olympus XZ-1, the Panasonic LX-5, and the Canon S95.

But it is different. It's the first mini system digicam. It has interchangeable lenses.

The sensor is not APS-C or 4/3rds size. It's a 1/2.3" digicam-sized sensor (6.16x4.62mm). So who in the world would design an interchangeable-lens premium point-and-shoot for such a small format?

Well, let me answer that rhetorical question with another question: does the Q system remind you of anything?

The Pentax Auto 110 system of 1978, world's only interchangeable-lens 110 camera. The 110 negative was 13x17mm and the film came in a cassette.

(The picture is a hint.)

So what does "Q" stand for, anyway? Quirky? Qute? (More on that in a moment.) There are a couple of trends that seem on the rise in Japan. One is, well, tininess, and the other is...let's call it "playfulness." Almost as if we are all starting to get just a bit tired of serious, utilitarian, cookie-cutter black-blob DSLRs and the everlasting pursuit of clinical perfection, and just want to have a little fun. So take a look at the system photo below:

(That clip-on optical finder, by the way, is for the standard prime lens.) So can you read the word engraved on those two lenses in the front? Here it is a little bigger in case you lost your reading glasses when you were out on the Bay in your cigarette boat today:

"Toy" lens? Whaaa?

Never fear, the standard prime lens (47mm-equivalent) and the standard zoom (27.5–83mm-e) are both top quality, highly corrected lenses. A third is a fisheye (!). The "Toy Lens Wide" (35mm-e) and "Toy Lens Telephoto" (100mm-e) are both designed with aberrations deliberately left in, like a toy camera, or a Lensbaby, or a Lomo. Each is only going to cost $79.95 (!!).

They're just for fun, in other words.

That can't possibly be for us.

Well, speaking of that, you might have noticed that in most of North America, it's the middle of the night as the embargo ends and this post goes up. Not a terribly logical time for a product introduction. You can probably guess where it's the middle of the day: Tokyo. The Q system might or might not be popular in the rest of the world, but I get the feeling it's basically a Japanese product for the Japanese market. It's all between Japan and Japan. So natter all you want about the concept: if you're not Japanese, you most likely weren't the immediate target. So chill out. You're invited to the party, you just don't happen to be the guest of honor this time around is all.

Littlest for now
I never put much store in smallest or "biggest" or "this-est" or "that-est." It doesn't seem like a real distinction. It's always provisional. Somebody can always out-do you later. Neverthless, the Q will be the smallest interchangeable-lens camera system on the market when it ships. Take that, other tiny cameras!

In any event, if I'm right and "tiny" and "fun" are both hot in Japan at the moment, then the Q system hits both objectives at least as hard as anything else out there. I don't know who can beat interchangeable $80 lomo-esque lenses and The Tiniest crown. Maybe if the camera came in paisley.

It doesn't, just black and white (both with the silver lens).

As you might expect from the foregoing, the camera will be available in Japan well in advance of shipping to the rest of the world. When it finally gets to North America next fall, it will be sold as a kit with the standard prime for somewhere in the neighborhood of $800.

So here's a few more points about the Q. As for what the Q stands for, I'll bet you've never heard this before: The original Pentax bayonet lens mount, the venerable K-mount, was called "K" because it was supposed to stand for for "king." As in, king of the lensmounts. Very early promotional material and advertisements actually featured a king playing card to play up the association. Well, so now you know what historical well they drew from to get the "Q" name:

Here's another fun fact about the Q system: Pentax engineers have actually been working on it for five years. They started the project before there was a sensor good enough for it, apparently trusting that, given the known pace of development, a good enough sensor would be along eventually. Only when Sony's latest back-illuminated CMOS sensor become available did Pentax finish the project and bring the product to completion.

I'm not going to run down all the features and settings, as there are a zillion places on the internet you can get all that. But I will just note that the camera has built-in sensor-shift image stabilization. And, I will note that I haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about with all that stuff about the in-camera "bokeh control," so don't ask me! (In fact, I'm not even sure I want to know.)

We'll definitely get one of these to test once they wend their way to these shores.

Mike 

ADDENDUM by Ctein: No doubt there will be many folks upset with the small size of the sensor, but as one who did a reasonable amount of photography with a camera of very similar sensor size and pixel count (the Fuji S100), I can testify that entirely professional results are possible from that size and pixel count. By way of example, I'm selling 17x22" prints of the following photographs, and most folks do not consider my standards to be low:

Grasses in Liquid Sky
Reflections in Montreal Centre
Stairs in Montreal Centre
Mall of America Rooftop

and here are a couple of three-frame stitched panoramas:

Dam Falls
Lock and Falls

No, I don't expect the available light performance to be sterling. There's a lot of things I don't expect this camera to do. Only trying to preempt remarks of the "why waste a semi-professional design on such an amateur format" type.

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Featured Comment by Julian: "Hah! I just knew the big announcement would concern a Pentax product. My money was on a 'full-frame' DSLR to fill an obvious gap in the lineup, though."

Featured Comment by cgrab: "Great that the people at Pentax seem to have ideas of their own. First the 645 and now the Q-system. These cameras might not be for everyone, but certainly some people will want exactly that. Much better than another me-too product."

Featured Comment by John Roberts: "The price is indeed high, but kudos to Pentax for trying to keep the fun in photography (or maybe to put it back in). Does everything we do with a camera have to be 'professional grade'? Didn't we buy our first camera because we thought it would be fun to take pictures? It was only later that many of us got enslaved to the obsessive and unattainable pursuit of perfection. I'm for anything that shakes up the stuffiness of the photography world!"

Featured Comment by Aquemarropa: "No, thanks. An $800 camera with a sensor smaller than the one in the G12 or LX5? With Apple putting an 8MP camera in the next iPhone and having 1,000+ apps to customize your shooting, editing, post-production and (especially) sharing, it's clear that people can live with small sensor cameras if done right. Unfortunately for Pentax 'done right' really involves lower cost and more flexibility, not merely interchangeable toy lenses at the price of a Canon T3i. I suspect that after an initial sales flurry this system will be only slightly more popular than the niche Ricoh GXR system; and if I remember right Ricoh said they were aiming for 5,000 unit sales per month on that. I just cannot see people spending that kind of money on a camera merely for the pocketability factor considering the competition."

Featured Comment by T: "So many digital cameras, so few with a sensor the size of a piece of film."

Featured Comment by peter.gilbert: "Warning: Lenses may be a choking hazard for small children!"

Featured Comment by David H.: "The kit here in Japan (don't know which lens [kits will be sold with the standard prime —Ed.]) will be at about ¥70,000, which is might be a bit steep except for nuttier (?) enthusiasts who wouldn't mind paying that much for a halfway decent camera that is smaller than their car. Unfortunately, that price will likely never come down here, nor will much discount be found. At ¥40,000, I'd be tempted. At ¥70,000, it will need to be able to do things I know it can't. But I do know guys who might just pay that much....

"Small has always been big here, I just wonder why it has taken so long for companies to start to move to smaller digital cameras of decent quality. The vast majority of normal sane people I see taking photos are using cell/smart phones. Only old guys (and a few young women) are running around with huge Nikon D300s and such."

Featured Comment by Dave Luttmann: "$800? Dead in the water. Sorry, it's a cute idea, but overpriced. Come back at $500 and maybe we'll talk."

Featured Comment by John Eriksson: "This camera is quite capable of single-handedly murdering the premium compact segment (Canon G12), I think. I'm quite intrigued at this moment in time and might get one as soon as they are released here in Sweden."

Featured Comment by Amin: "When the rumors first emerged, I was as skeptical as anyone else. When the confirmation first came, I was as puzzled. Yet I find myself quickly warming to the idea. I like small gadgets, and this seems like good fun to me."

Featured Comment by Peter: "In sensors that small, a BSI [back-side illuminated —Ed.] sensor makes a big difference. Even though I recently got a smartphone, I still take along a Sony TX5 as my everyday camera, and it has probably the best low-light pictures out of any small-sensor digicam that I've ever used. Especially if you cheat and use the neat mode where the camera combines multiple frames to make a composite image in low-light. The technology is trickling down very quickly to the smartphone space as well.

"One odd observation: with all the talk about how the most recent Pentax DSLR's images are incredibly clean because of all the know-how they developed working around that Samsung sensor's noise a couple of generations back, you'd think they'd get more of the benefit of the doubt on their decision to finally bring this to market.

"As for the price, as many people have already mentioned, it's too rich for my blood. But that's just because I need a new camera system like I need a new hole in the head. I think when you consider the implications of interchangeable lenses, there will be a fair number of people who are willing to pay the $300 premium over a high-end, enthusiast compact. It'll depend greatly on what level of support Pentax brings to the table. Also unless demand is really high, or supply is really low, street prices will probably be lower."

Featured Comment by JohnMFlores: "In 2007 I purchased a Ricoh GX100 at a 50% premium over competing cameras from Canon, Panasonic, et al. Why? For the feel of it in my hands, the way the controls seemed to be directly connected to my mind's eye, and the way it disappeared when I tried to capture decisive moments. Connectivity—the organic kind—is important too, and if the Q offers that same feeling I'll happily pay the premium."

Featured Comment by John Robison: "What do these lenses use for light control? Rotating variable ND disc? I mean, at 8.5mm you sure couldn't afford to stop down very much before resolution suffers, a lot. I dunno, mayhaps there has been much progress in optical design for ultra short FL lenses lately. Clever idea though. I wonder if anyone else will jump on this concept.

"As for the 'toy' lenses. Well, a few years back Nikon sold (only in Japan I think) three or four lenses named 'Amusing Lenses.' If I recall correctly they were a fisheye, a 120mm that was macro or soft focus depending on how you configured the lens cells, and a 400mm ƒ/8. These were in the Nikon F mount, of course, and a full set today would probably go for one to two grand to a collector."

Ctein replies: John, first point: Focal length has nothing, directly, to do with resolution.  Doesn't matter if it's an 8.5 mm lens or an 85 mm lens, it's the f-number (relative aperture) that limits resolution…if you have a diffraction limited lens. Big assumption, there.

Second point: you've never been able to stop down very far before resolution suffered, unless you were using large-format film. In a good 35mm system, with a top-quality lens and modern high-resolving films, stopping down below ƒ/4.8 sacrificed resolution. No joke. Most photographers never knew nor paid attention because they were incapable of testing this. It was my job to test for stuff like this.

Now that every semi-knowledgeable shutterbug with a large computer monitor can  obsessively pixel-peep until their eyeballs bleed, you're seeing all sorts of panicky postings about how resolution degrades when you stop down too far.

Yawn. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Bottom line: you want to stop down very far to get increased depth of field or slow shutter speeds? Then you're going to sacrifice peak resolution.

Incidentally, for a system with the form factor of the new Pentax, the 'limiting aperture' isn't much different than it was for 35mm cameras. Somewhere between ƒ/4 and ƒ/5 .6. Stop down to ƒ/8 and you'll see a slight degradation in peak resolution. Stop down to ƒ/11 and you'll see a noticeable one. Stop down to ƒ/16 and it will be substantial.

As I said, same as the old boss.

Third point: short focal length lenses have been exceptionally good for many, many years. You can thank the motion picture industry for that. What's hard is making really good lenses with a wide field of coverage. But a short focal length lens for a smaller format, so that the field of coverage is the usual? Those lenses are really, really good.

Minority Report

By Ctein

Amidst the discussions a few weeks back of film and digital photographic practices, it occurred to me that it's much harder for me to get numbers today on the kinds of photographs photographers are making than it used to be.

In the film era, having friends and informants at the Big Three in filmmaking was entirely sufficient. Those companies accounted for over 90% of all photographs being made, and they could readily tell me what percentage of photographs were slides, B&W negatives, color negatives, 35mm, 8x10, you name it.

Understand that they were not always inclined to do so. Mostly I do not have detailed information. But I had a few data points and I could be confident of their accuracy. That's more than I can say now.

For example, between 1980 and 2000 almost every photograph made was on color negative film. In the early 1980s, Kodak told me that 90% of its still film sales were for a single emulsion in a single size: Kodacolor II, 35mm. This was shortly before the huge explosion in film varieties brought on by novel silver halide structures such as T-grain and new chemical tricks like DIR couplers. The market then fragmented into many subcategories. In the early 1980s, each film manufacturer made only a few emulsions of each subtype of film, and so it was possible for one single film to completely dominate a company's sales.

Altogether, all kinds and all formats, color negative photography accounted for perhaps 97–98% of photography during a 20-year span. That's pretty astonishing. I didn't get clarification on whether "film sales" meant dollar volumes, number of rolls, or number of photographs. Doesn't much matter. No matter how you parse it, the evidence is overwhelming that everything besides small format color negative had to be counted in the single-digit percentages. All the slide film in use? One percent. Give or take. All the black-and-white film in use? Ditto.

That says nothing about either the commercial or aesthetic import of the photographs made on those materials. That turns out to be important.

As I mentioned in a previous comment, the medium format film market collapsed well before the rest of the film business. The bulk of medium format film went into portraiture, with the second most popular use being weddings. Thirty-five millimeter had seriously eroded the medium-format wedding market by the end of the '90s. The major portrait makers jumped onto the digital bandwagon in the 1990s, because they could make effective use of the ultra-expensive cameras of the era. Were it not for the prestige of medium format it simply would have disappeared from the marketplace. Much for the same reasons that, based on market considerations, Kodachrome should have disappeared 15 years ago—there were an insignificant number of Kodachrome users in the total scheme of things. Fortunately, for the lovers of those particular media, those were users that the film and camera manufacturers courted assiduously. But, again, that wasn't about the sales numbers.

Today, it's much harder to make assertive statements about what kind of photographs photographers are making or would like to make in the future. Digital photography doesn't leave tracks in the snow. Once the camera and memory card makers have sold their wares, there's no way to easily track what photographers are doing with them. One can try to apply guesswork and intuition to the problem, but I'll wager that most of you readers were surprised by the film statistics I just ran out. Reality is not obligated to conform to intuition, no matter how well educated that intution may be.

Even Mike's TOP polls are not particularly helpful. In the best of those, maybe 10% of the readership responds, a phenomenal response rate but no indicator of whether or not it's representative of the silent 90% majority. It's especially difficult to extrapolate from that when you're concerned with the important minorities: those still using film, those working in black-and-white, etc. Even in this abnormal assemblage, those percentages will be small enough that separating them out from the noise is tricky and assuring that your polling is representative even trickier. Sociologists long time ago worked out ways to ensure the accuracy of self-reporting polls, but it's not easy.

With the 40-fold shrinkage in the film business, it would be most interesting to learn if the aforedescribed pattern of film usage has changed much. Is it still 95+ percent color negative, with all subcategories equally diminished in absolute number? Or has the very flavor of the use changed? Are film photographers now the cream skimmed off the top of the milk...or the sedimentary dregs at the bottom of the wine bottle? Or do they distribute themselves pretty much as they always did but in fractional numbers of old? I'd love to know.

Unfortunately my inside contacts in the film manufacturers have long moved on and I haven't bothered to cultivate new ones. If any of you have real insider information on how the film market currently breaks down, and wouldn't mind discussing that in public, please write.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

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Featured Comment by Tom Kwas: "Interesting to note, and I've posted this before, in the mid-1970s, our studio Kodak TSR was trying to get us to shoot 8x10 and 4x5 color neg, because we were 'just lucky' Kodak still made transparency and could pull production any day. Of course, the pre-press and separation houses didn't like it and everything they separated from it looked flat, soft (as in film sharpness), and soft (as in color reproduction); plus, they had to make too many color decisions, whereas with transparency, they just had to match the film (which they had trouble doing anyway).

"...We never seriously considered it, but it's notable that Kodak was already acknowledging back then that they made far more color neg than transparency and it seemed that they were trying to set the stage for reducing production of certain lines. Guess they were just asking for Fuji to come in and hand them their hats by pushing their color transparency, and at the time, a far more stable emulsion that didn't have to be tested batch to batch either....

"Sorry to hear that 120 is practically a ghost town. When I look back on years of shooting, if I had to keep one film format that I've done the best work with overall, it would be 120. While I think 4x5 has the best overage usage by discipline (you can use it for product/people/architecture), the 120 format certainly excels when it comes to getting the right look, feeling, and expression in portraiture combined with having the best film size for quality while getting those expressions.

"After I got into photo management, I thought I could do everything I wanted to do from an 'artistic' standpoint by just shooting 8x10 film. Arguably it could do everything from portraiture to architecture, and I could actually ditch the darkroom and do everything with a few trays, a printing frame, and an overhead light. Trying to take pictures quickly 'on-the-fly' outdoors, cured me of that thinking pronto.

"What I've realized, is that their are two levels of hell for film users: will my preferred film format and preferred films still be made (and for how long)? ...And, will the ancillary services associated with film shooting be available to me in my town? ...Or, at a reasonable rate/time? I live in a city of a million in the metro area, and I can't even get same day E-6 processing done on a professional level, much less the old 90 minute 'usual.'

"What will be the last standing film format? Or at least, the last film format with the most options?"

The Next Big Thing in Camera Technology?

The news in the photosphere this morning is a New York Times article that has hit our little world like a bombshell. It's been five years or so since I last had occasion to mention the plenoptic camera of Ren Ng (right) in these precincts, and he and his associates have been plenty busy in the meantime, raising $50 million in venture capital and readying a commercial product! That was fast. The brand name is to be Lytro, and with five years' worth of Moore's Law since it was invented, it's getting more and more feasible all the time.

You know how you don't have to set white balance on the camera when you use RAW? You do it later, of course, in your photo editing program. Well, the Lytro does the same thing for focus and depth of field—shoot first, and select your desired plane of focus and desired depth of field later, at your leisure, on your computer. Here's the intro page to the original Stanford University paper (the .avi video at this link takes a while to load, I presume because of heavy demand, but it's pretty cool). Here's a brief Lytro promo video, and here's Lytro's website. (I'd recommend reading the Times article (first link) first.)

Back in 2006 I scribbled, "I'm no Nostradamus, but it's probably likely that this fascinating development will figure in the photography of the future." They're certainly getting closer. It could well be that discussions of "autofocus" and "manual focus" (and focus lag and everything else related to mechanical before-the-shot focus) are soon to be as quaint and old-fashioned as kerosene lamps. And without the need to allow us to find and set focus as we shoot, camera design will be greatly freed from one of its principle constraints, so camera designs would be likely to change radically, too.

Things like this can go either way, of course—there are plenty of examples in history of great ideas getting buried in the backwaters of proprietary protection, public uninterest, or predatory suppression by more powerful competitors, and withering away there. I have a feeling this isn't going to be one of them, but who knows? It's certainly going to be interesting to watch the progress of Lytro's "Light Field Photography" from here on in.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren and many others)

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "I've no doubt that this technology will find its way into every little camera by 2020. It will be right there with the various 'detection' features (i.e., face, smile, blink, ugly), many of which were also probably brought to photography by computer science doctoral candidates.

"This past weekend I read an extensive article on just how far drone technology has been developed for war and surveillance. Surely it won't be long before we can just type GPS coordinates into a camera, open a window, and send our solar-powered cameras off to take pictures for us while we watch TV. The most popular snapshot sites will never be the same. Tourism will be down at places like Paris and the Grand Canyon. Instead, it will look like they are constantly plagued by swarms of flying drone cams. The whole idea of 'street photography' will also be revolutionized.

"Of course the cams will upload everything directly to Flickr and Facebook unedited. (Not much change there.)"

Mike replies: Ken, like me sometimes these days, you are sounding a touch cranky.... ;-)

Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "I am trying to catch up as quickly as I can. Today, for my camera history work, I spent the entire morning researching the motivations behind Kodak's replacing Instamatic (126) with Pocket Instamatic (110). Tomorrow I plan to start on Disc, and then by Sat. I should be ready for Dr. Ng."

Mike replies: Cranky...cranky....

Featured Comment by SRay: "Remember when the Segway was supposed to revolutionize the way people get around? Well, I've never seen an actual Segway, but I sure do see a lot of bikes. Lytro...another Segway? Or a step in a whole new direction for photography? One thing is for sure, imagemaking is evolving. If Lytro becomes a movement, so to speak, it'll be interesting to see what Canon and Nikon will do next. Meanwhile, play with the Lytro. Looks like it might be fun."

More Camera Not-Yet-News

Since this is a day of no posts (first, a post about something I can't talk about, then a post about a lost post) I figured I should post a post about something that's still in the future: I just got confirmation from Japan that Ricoh is sending me a GXR and three lens units.

So that's one more thing I can't write about now, and one more nothing post for today.

...And, my mouse just stopped working. I think maybe Voldemort is in the area.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jeff: "I'm not going to comment today."

Ya Hate That

Normally I like thunderstorms. We just had a doozy pass through here. The thunder was right on top of us—no time lapse between the lightning and the (very loud) thunderclaps.

It must have caused some problems once it got to Milwaukee, though, because a few minutes after the rain stopped I lost the internet...and today's post. I guess it happens to everybody every now and then. The funny thing was, I saved the post before I closed it. The save just didn't work, is all.

Oh well. Fotrunately I can reconstruct the post (it's a camera review by TOP's Croatian Editor-at-Large, Vlatko Juric-Kokic).

Should be easier to do the second time, though. I don't have any more time today, but it will be along on Thursday or Friday.

One of my friend and former studio partner Paul Kennedy's favorite sayings was, "You know what they say: Oh well." I can often hear him saying it, in my mind's ear.

Mike

Cool New Camera

Check back here at 11:00 tomorrow (Wednesday) night (CT) for the details on an exciting all-new camera (i.e., not just a warm-over of an existing model).

Mike

P.S. Spoilers in Comments won't be posted, so don't try!

P.P.S. Kinda makes you nostalgic, doesn't it? Remember what it was like a decade or so ago, when significant all-new cameras were coming down the pipeline thick and fast, one after the other? That was a fun time.

P.P.P.S. The Leica M9-P (or M9P—Leica itself writes it both ways), introduced today, turns out to be a total non-event. It has a "sapphire glass" LCD cover, no red dot, and is available in silver. As Archie Bunker used to say, whoop-de-do, whoop-de-do.

UPDATE: It's actually not an all-new camera...it's an all new camera system. Really, no joke.

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