The Online Photographer

The Squid Speaks

I'm pleased to note that we have succeeded in luring the Squid from the depths—he has left a short comment on books about the artworld (as one word it reminds one of the word underworld) which I have added as an update at the Engagé post. Just didn't want you to miss it.

Despite his fondness for tight places, Cal hates being pigeonholed, yea even described at all, but at the risk or arousing his ire I would describe him as a mover and shaker in the art world, or artworld—albeit one who moves mostly beneath the waves, far from the red reach of the sun.

Mike

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To Talk of Many Things: Of Digital and Dye Transfer Prints

By Ctein

No cabbages and Kings, I'm afraid. That would be Off Topic. And besides, I am not The Walrus. Still, the question remains...what's the better printing medium for photographs, dye transfer or digital inkjet?

Many would think that putting digital prints and dye transfers into the same conversation (not to mention the same sentence) would be worse than comparing apples and oranges. More like comparing apples and sea anemones. I would disagree.

I wouldn't be alone in that. Talk to folks like Joe Holmes and Charlie Cramer, who gave up the most exalted of darkroom skills to take up digital printing. I'm on the same path; I just haven't quite gotten away from the darkroom entirely yet. If I wasn't still making money off of my dye transfer chops, I would've folded up that tent long ago.

Here's the thing: while dye transfer prints have an undeniable cachet, and so command exalted prices, they are not, artistically and aesthetically, obviously superior to digital inkjet prints (marketability and artistic superiority have at best a tenuous connection). There are distinct differences, and that's the subject of this column, but it doesn't denote clear superiority, any more than oil paintings are superior to watercolors.

I noodled around casually with digital printing for a long time (um, 30 years?) before I took it up seriously in the middle of the last decade. The first real challenge I gave myself was to duplicate my Scotland dye transfer portfolio (one of the photographs from which is being offered in the current sale) as digital prints. I was surprised—in about half the cases, I liked the digital prints as much as I liked the dye transfers. They didn't necessarily look exactly the same, but they made me equally happy. In about a third of the cases, the dye transfer prints were clearly superior. In the remaining one sixth, the digital prints were clearly superior. Understand, that's an entirely subjective judgment, made by yours truly. You might not feel the same way. But it's my art were talking about, so it is unlikely that anyone else is better qualified to decide.

The broad equivalency in quality surprised me, given my decades of serious experience with dye transfer printing, versus a handful of years with digital printing. The explanation, though, is pretty straightforward. When it comes to inherent qualities of the medium, such as density range and color gamut, there's little out there that can beat dye transfer. It can render up to a 3.0 density unit range in a print, with a correspondingly huge color space. It's got richness. What gives digital its edge is technique. It can't render as long a tonal range or as large a color space as dye transfer, but, within the range that it can portray, the skilled printer has much, much more control over the precise and exact rendering of tones and colors than is possible in the darkroom. Dye transfer gives the printer immensely more control over the appearance of the print that any other darkroom process, but it's positively crude next to Photoshop.

Medium matters
On average, it's a wash. What about when it's not? That's where the medium matters. That one third of my photographs that I thought looked distinctly better as dye transfer prints were ones that depended upon rich shadow detail with an exquisite rendering of dark tone and color. As an example, my Jewels of Kilauea series (starting here) has so far mostly resisted successful interpretation as digital prints. Too many of the photographs depend on shadow detail that goes on forever to give them a feeling of depth and three-dimensionality. I simply haven't yet figured out a way to work around that, artistically, in any other medium than dye transfer. I may eventually get there, but it's a tough nut to crack.

Conversely, photographs that depend on precise control of characteristic curve shapes, especially in the highlights, work better as digital prints. The reason is that it is extremely hard to control the shape of the toe and the shoulder in the characteristic curves of darkroom materials, although it's pretty easy to mess with the midrange. In particular, getting a clean, linear rendition of tone and color in highlights is nearly impossible. Consequently a photograph like this one looks much better as a digital print than a dye transfer and comes much closer to the look I hoped for in the photograph.

It's not just about obvious highlights, either. In color printing, any hue close to a primary has a "highlight" in one or more of the color channels. This photograph may lack an obvious white, but those delicate verdant greens have almost no magenta in them; we're up on the highlight portion of that channel's curve. It's the very slight differences in magenta tones that make a difference in the shades of green. The delicacy and accuracy of color separation I saw in the original scene is far better portrayed in a digital print than a dye transfer, as lovely as the dye transfer may be.

Painting this question in broad strokes, if I have a photograph where really rich separation in the deepest shadows is important, dye transfer is going to produce a better print. If I have a photograph where precise control and high accuracy in the highlights or very near the primary colors is most important, digital is going to produce a better print. Sometimes I can get them surprisingly close. Otherwise, they will be equally good, artistically, although not necessarily the same.

Ctein

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

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Apertures Made Simple (Part I)

"If it sounds good, it is good."

—Duke Ellington

I'll definitely defend anyone's right to complicate things as much as they care to. But it still amuses me, I have to admit, when people complicate something that's essentially so simple.

If you want to get reliably good optical quality out of your lens, here's what you do: determine the best aperture for your camera and lens. Use that and the aperture on either side of it freely. (Those are known as "the middle apertures.") Depart from that when you have to, need to, or want to.

Voilà. Done.

No further complication necessary. Unless, as I say, complication is fun for you.

For full frame format (a.k.a. 35mm or 24x36mm), for me, the best aperture is ƒ/8. Ninety percent of the time, for 90% of [single-focal-length or "prime"] lenses, ƒ/8 is the aperture that gives me the all-around best-looking pictures, optically speaking. As usual, I figured this out empirically, i.e., by taking pictures and looking at them carefully, not by feeling the elephant's leg or pulling his tail ("testing"). You look at the whole picture, not just one little stupid aspect of it*.

So, for full frame, I use ƒ/5.6, ƒ/8, or ƒ/11 when I can.

...Departing from those apertures when I have to, need to, or want to. (I have to add that again, for the very few people who will forget I just said it and hence will want to argue with me as if I never did say it.)

The middle aperture changes with format. For 6x7 (cm), my middle aperture is ƒ/11; for 4x5 (inches), it's ƒ/22. For APS-C, 4/3, and Micro 4/3, it's ƒ/5.6. Think I'm wrong? No problemo; take your own pick. I'm not standing next to you with a ruler threatening to rap your knuckles if you depart from the gospel of Mike.

So then, what is the middle aperture for fingernail sensors? Like the ones in, say, the Canon G11 or the Pentax Q? That I don't know.

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Baker)

* Someone, somewhere, is bound to howl that I have no idea what I'm talking about, because you "have to look at" this or that property of IQ or you "have to measure in order to know." Actually, I know exactly what I'm talking about: for every property that that person fixates on, he's missing others that are of equal or greater importance to pictures, whether it be microcontrast, shadow detail, edge effects, tonal gradation, flare suppression, color differentiation, etc., etc., etc. A lens image is always a balance of many properties. Always. Look at images; look at the whole image; look, in the image, at the objects you're trying to image. In photography you don't get extra credit for resolving infinitesimally greater detail under ideal conditions; you get points if your pictures look better. (And sometimes not even then. Heh heh.) So look at the pictures and use your holistic all-encompassing sense of aesthetic discrimination—you know what a picture is supposed to look like, because you look at a lot of pictures; if your picture looks right to you, it is right. Don't let anyone talk you out of that.

UPDATE: Several commenters so far have agreed about ƒ/4 being the general sweet spot for fingernail-sized sensors.

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Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Right on! 'Nuff said, as they say.

"And because I have some sort of perverse mean streak that comes out in the presence of camera brand orthodoxy, I have, over the years, engaged in a bit lens bashing. This usually occurs when someone insists (with reverent tones) that this or that particular lens is absolutely perfect, the greatest thing ever. Mostly they think this because it is a Nikon or Canon lens, sometimes because it is a Leica lens (more rare but also more virulent), and sometimes a Zeiss (rarer yet but the teutonic nasal overtones.)

"The gist is that the lens, in their view, is without faults. If the lens in question is a wide angle or a zoom of almost any focal length I know I've got them.

"So I then take them out do a very simple test (which works best in the autumn and winter, for reasons that will become apparent.) I point the camera up at a tree with bare branches agains the sky and take a picture. Then I reframe so that the same area of branches that was at the center of the frame is at the far corner of the frame. Then we go look at the pictures.

"Put side by side it is easy to see that the corner image sucks. The branches that had been nice and crisp in the center are now fuzzy with aberrations, fringed with color, weirdly stretched, or just otherwise crummy. Suddenly they can see that their prized perfect lens has feet of clay. (To be fair really good macros and long, expensive telephotos fare pretty well in this test.)

"Suddenly their world crumbles around them. And we can then start an honest conversation about working with real world lenses to get the best quality out of them that they have to offer.

"It's cruel, I know, but there it is. Sorry."

Featured Comment by John Camp: "I think I touched off Ctein's lecture on diffraction with a question I posed in an earlier blog entry. His answer was perfect: before, I had these vague worries about diffraction. Now I don't. Combined with today's column, I've dropped a lot of my photographic worries. To sum up: a guy like me, who doesn't really do art photography or super-high-res landscape photography, will be just fine if he sticks around ƒ/4, ƒ/5.6, or ƒ/8 with my Micro 4/3 gear, but if I need to go to ƒ/11 or ƒ/16 (or ƒ/2.8, for that matter), that's okay too, because I'm not the kind of person who'll be hurt by diffraction that can only be seen with a magnifying glass, or by a little corner distortion. Right? In other words, the fact that I hand-hold almost everything will cause me more (technical-photographic perfection) problems than diffraction or lack of edge sharpness ever will. Whew. Thanks."

Mike replies: Right. You got it.

Will the Sony NEX-7 Suffer Diffraction Effects?

By Ctein

The news of the NEX-7 has reignited some smoldering old arguments about diffraction effects with small sensors. My basic advice: you should ignore any and all discussions of how diffraction relates to image quality if they in any way imply that you have to be working diffraction-limited or you won't get acceptable results.

Example: In 35mm film photography, the optimum aperture in terms of peak sharpness for most good lenses was between ƒ/4  and ƒ/5.6. At apertures smaller than that, diffraction dominated. You used larger apertures than that when you needed more light-gathering ability; you used smaller apertures than that when you needed more depth of field (at some sacrifice of peak sharpness). And you certainly did stop down if you needed the additional depth of field.

It's really no more complicated than that. A lens will have one or two apertures where it is "best." Those are by no means its only "good" apertures. Diffraction is a detectable effect, but it's seldom a debilitating effect.

Once upon a time, everybody who was halfway decent at photography knew that. Nowadays I sometimes feel like hardly anyone knows that.

Now look at it from the other side: if you have two cameras with the same format sensor, one of which has 10 megapixels and the other of which has 40,  you are going to be "diffraction limited" two stops wider with the 40 megapixel camera than the 10.  That's because the 10 MP camera has already thrown away, at the sensor level, any sharpness benefit gained from those two extra stops! Just because you can stop down the 10 MP camera to, oh, say, ƒ/8 before you see any diffraction and you can only stop down the 40 MP camera to ƒ/4 before diffraction shows up, that in no way means that the 10 MP camera is going to produce sharper pictures at ƒ/8 than the 40 MP camera.

And, for more subtle and complicated reasons, more pixels will always be a win in terms of final image sharpness regardless of any other optical constraints (image noise and light sensitivity are another matter).

You can find plenty of people who make much of diffraction limits these days. Most (not all, but most) of them know a lot more about technological theory than practical photography. When in doubt, look at actual pictures and let your eyes be your guide—and don't let technical discussions of diffraction effects be a source of worry to you.

Ctein

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Featured Comment by Marc Rochkind: "Glad you made the point about why one would choose a particular aperture. I regularly use my Tamron 90mm macro at ƒ/32, which, of course, is wrong, wrong, wrong. But otherwise there's no depth-of-field with the subject nearly touching the lens, so it's really right, right, right.

Voigtlander Vito B lens taken at ƒ/32

"Bet you can't see the diffraction!"

Featured Comment by JohnMFlores: "Most cameras over $400 these days are talent-limited."

Warning! Conflict of Interest Alert!

This is a bit of a conflict of interest, because the admirable and ever-energetic Alain Briot is an advertiser here on TOP. That is, he pays me moolah, so I can't be expected to be objective.

However, it's an, er, objective fact that his three books have been remarkably popular among photographers: Marketing Fine Art Photography, for example, is currently ranked #3 on Amazon in the category of Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Professional.

So I just thought you'd want to know that for a short time only, Alain has made all three of his major books available as e-book downloads.

And now, back to being completely objective and unflaggingly unbiased...yeah....

Mike, TOP's Head of Moral Transparency
and All Things Having to do with Sunlight

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Engagé

I'm dying to ask...did anybody buy Kertesz, the book we were talking about back in July? If you did, I'd love to know what you think of it. Especially if you've actually read some of the text and not just paged idly through looking at the pics. (A few words about where you are and what stage you're in would also help—I mean, I would expect that an experienced ex-film-shooter would have a different perspective than a young recent convert who's always been digital-only.)

I've discussed before that Jean-Paul Sartre, who is actually a much more amenable philosopher than I used to think (I used to assume he'd gotten so famous by being deep and opaque, and he's really not that bad), has a principle he calls "engagé," or engagement. Cut to bone, his meaning is that you are who you are and where you are, so you might as well "own" your culture and your era and your government and do whatever you can to be forthright and committed with regard to living your values. (Traditional committed Christians shared this, although those types are thin on the ground now—these days, being Christian seems to mean what I was taught was "un-Christian." Which makes sense in a way, since being American now means what was traditionally considered to be un-American. I'll stop.) Although the concept is mainly applicable to politics, I find it easy to extrapolate the basic principle outward to what looks like a sort of zennish mishmash of self-improvement clichés: live your life, be in the world, stay in the moment, be clear about what you believe...most of all encapsulated in the old American macho code that seems to be extinct these days: "be a stand-up guy." (Where "guy" = person, of course.)

That quality is one that I used to admire in a lot of successful photographers. It still amazes me that Eliott Erwitt's commercial work is essentially indistinguishable from his personal work; some of the pictures can be mixed together and no one would be able to tell which was which. (His photojournalistic work is a little more obvious, in that Jackie Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev aren't likely to appear in random grab shots.) That ethos gradually went out of currency and favor, to the point that the more exalted of the jobber professionals are now the mainstream model of what photographers ought to be: able to make a slick picture to any purpose, for sale like a mercenary to anyone able to pay. Kertesz, on the other hand, was true to himself when it was very good for him and also when it was very bad for him. His life story was like a beacon to me when I first encountered it, and still stands out to me among the photographer biographies I know.

Should art be good to look at, or no?
Speaking of books, I'm finally catching up with The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, which certainly does seem to pull the curtain aside to reveal the little man at the levers. (Although to center the argument on Damien Hirst might be, ahem, shooting fish in a barrel. I'm only part way through the book.) You really can see the contemporary art market purely in economic terms, if you consider that displaying status is an essential human need.

I'm going to have to ask my friend the Squid, Calvin Amari, what he thinks of this book.

Anyway, I am wending toward a point here: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark makes the point that it's definitely no longer necessary for art to be good to look at in order to be successful (and expensive). In fact, being visually appealing has become passé. In this sense, Kertesz is distinctly old fashioned: his pictures are almost all not just good but great to look at. I can drink them in, lingering on virtually any of them, as if they satisfy a human appetite more basic and essential than the mere scramble for status.

And yet I still haven't bought the book. Maybe I just know enough about Kertesz that it's more fun to imagine it being good than to actually find out whether it is or not. For that matter, imagine being able to read a review of Kertesz written by Jim Hughes. Yum. I'd pay for that. Maybe I should.

Back to where we began: I'd love to know what you think.

(The link to Kertesz in the first para is to Amazon.com. Here's the U.K. link, and here's the link to The Book Depository.)

Mike

UPDATE: The Squid Speaks: "I see that Mike has summoned me, the creature with an ink sac six times the size of its brain. So, as is my wont, I mindlessly will spill some of that ink merely to note that there has been an near endless litany of nonfiction books along the lines of Stuffed Shark because the vast majority of the art of our time pretty much sucks. What is crucial to remember, however, is that the vast majority of the art of every era throughout history likewise sucked. A decent portion of contemporary art will be popular for the simple reason that at some level it reflects the times, and this has always been the case.

"I haven't yet read Stuffed Shark but I have read a good number of its predecessors. The problem, however, is that notwithstanding the plethora of valid targets, many of these efforts tip the balance towards anti-intellectual Philistinism which, if anything, is worse than an overindulgent attitude to the art of our time. I thought, for example, that Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton struck the nice balance, Painted Word reflected mere facile dismissiveness, and Pricing the Priceless: Art, Artists and Economics by William Dyer Grampp provided a good non-sensationalistic perspective from classical economics.

"But after you finish Stuffed Shark, Mike, I most highly recommend that you check out Charles Willeford's The Burnt Orange Heresy, a book which, to the extent it is known at all, is admired as a noir crime novel but deserves instead be recognized as brilliant commentary on the artworld." —Cal Amari

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Truer Words

Wise words observed on a plaque in a Maine gift emporium:

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for one day. Teach a man to fish...

Tasty New Sonys Are Just What We Needed

Monumentalized JPEG of Sony's nifty NEX-7. It's smaller than this looks.

I sometimes get accused of being too bored by certain things I'm supposed to be interested in, such as apps (if press releases for apps had weight and solidity, I would long since have had the breath crushed out of me and disappeared beneath the tide) or things like infrared remotes. I have trouble convincing people that what really interests me are pictures, to which my interest in camera gear is decidedly secondary.

But I also get bored when things are, well, boring. Because really, I'm just a hobbyist like everybody else. I've spent my life in photography and it's been my profession and I love it, but when it comes to my geeky side I yield to no man.

That's why I have trouble staying vitally interested in the ninth (or whatever) warmover of the undoubtedly excellent entry-level Nikon (it's currently called a D3000 and I admit I had to go look that up) or the undeniably outstanding umpteenth iteration of the capable but anodyne mid-level Canon (I know that one's called a 60D. I'm on top of that. Know little else about it aside from the fact that people love 'em.) And I gave up trying to keep track of point-and-shoots in about 2006. I'm surprised I stuck with it that long. My brain is not big enough to store that much minutiae.

But the two (+) introductions from Sony last week are, well, just what the doctor ordered. Both of these cameras hit our demographic (a fancy word for "me and you") squarely where we live. Both are sufficiently new that they inspire some geeky inquiry; both are sufficiently different that they are apt to trigger happy debate.

Finally, something for us to chew over. 

The grass sure looks green over there
I'm "invested" in the Micro 4/3 standard shared by Olympus and Panasonic and their sundry coalition partners (I really did pre-order the yummy Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8 we were talking about before I left on vacation. Two lenses, now that's an investment). So the NEX cameras have been a ship passing in the night. But Sony sure seems to be getting its act together. With the NEX-3 and NEX-5 I wondered a bit about the, well, balance of the package—the cameras seemed optimized for smallness, the sensor for bigness, both for bragging rights rather than to create a well-balanced, coherent package overall—the lenses thus missed the petite, right-sized aspect of their Micro 4/3 competitors (compare the new 24 with my fave Panny 20mm, both in length and price), and made the cameras look like a small person wearing an oversized hat. But I have to admit that, apart from embiggening the NEX-7 to give it a little more right-sized heft and hand-fit, Sony did the two things I would do if I were improving my GF1—they gave it both the ideal lens that I personally need (don't run away screaming, I'm not going to go into all that again) and a viewfinder. If there's one thing I've become convinced of after using a mirrorless camera for a year, it's that there are just times when you really do need a @#$!!^ viewfinder. I personally love the flip-up viewing screen, even though it's not new; I admired it on the NEX-5. Once a waistlevel guy, and all that.

From the wilderness
Then there's the A77. Let's be clear: I'd given up. My first DSLR was a Konica-Minolta 7D, bought used in 2006. My purchase immediately inspired Minolta to get out of the camera business altogether after 68 glorious years; evidently it reasoned that since its products appealed to a contrarian curmudgeon like me (it was my first Minolta) the company stood no chance at all in the marketplace and might as well fly the white flag. The DSLR department went to the wilderness and found shelter at Sony, and I looked long and longingly at the Sony A700, the 7D's successor and heir apparent. But by the time I was ready to buy it was a year or two into the A700's lifecycle, so I decided—fatefully—to simply wait a bit for the A700's successor, which logically couldn't come out any later than early to mid 2010. I'd just buy that.

I should have known; me wanting a not-yet-materialized camera is the Mike version of the umbrella rule. I waited, and waited, and waited. The A700 went away; I waited some more.

I wandered away and bought a Pentax.

Frankly, I never thought the A700 replacement would get here. It looked exactly like Sony had strategically and deliberately abandoned that segment of the marketplace, for whatever hard-hearted bean-counter rationale.

Resplendent Sony A77 with new (?) 16–50mm lens

But it's here. Post-tsunami, post-recession, and not just a refresh of the K-M 7D / A700 DNA. It's got a 24-MP APS-C sensor, a "translucent mirror" like the pellicle mirror in my old EOS RT, and a—what?—a 2.4-million dot OLED EVF. Cool beans.

That EVF is not at all out of place on the NEX-7, but on the A77, it's a bold and bound-to-be-controversial move.

(Cold water, Dept.: See that new 16–50mm "Sony" lens? Don't forget that Konica-Minolta ported the fine Tamron 17–35mm and 28–75mm lenses into K-M dress, and that Sony has changed the latter's clothes yet again to make it into a SAL lens. Tamron then introduced an SP version to cover APS-C. Despite the ever-so-slightly different spec, which looks like camouflage for me (given focal lengths for zooms are not precise or in any way certified), I'm going to guess that the Sony 16–50mm is a close relative of the Tamron 17–50 made in Tamron's Foshan, Guangdong, People's Republic of China factory. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Bottom line, I want to see both these new cameras. They both look tasty and cool, and they both excite my geek gene. And, unlike most of the electronic flotsam clogging my inbox, they both look perfectly mainstream for TOPpers to the manner born. More anon.

Mike

UPDATE: John Brewton just alerted me that Michael Reichmann has posted a First Impressions Report about the A77 at L-L, and John Roberts notes that Kirk Tuck has written about the A77 at Visual Science Lab.

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Featured Comment by David L.: "One of the most under-appreciated bits of photographic technology is the pellicle mirror. I don't know why more still cameras don't take advantage of them. Of course I felt the same way about Canon's eye control focus in the EOS A2e and EOS 3, and look how that tech took off...."

Mike replies: I'm showing my age, but I beat that horse thoroughly to death in the early '90s. Metaphorically speaking only, of course—I love horses. I loved the pellicle mirror, too. See above comments re "contrarian curmudgeon" etc.

Featured Comment by John Camp: "As about a million people will probably tell you, the entry level Nikon is now the D3100—which probably makes your point even stronger, if your point is, Who Cares?

"There's been a lot of churn on the photo forums about the new Sonys. Yawn. The good old exciting days of the digital revolution just aren't coming back, kids. Ctein has made the point that you aren't going to see much difference in image quality until you double the pixels, and there have been a lot of cameras floating around that have a lot more than half what the new Sonys have. And to make real use of 24mp, you'll have to upsize your printer, etc., because the 24mp will make no difference to people who look at photos on video screens, or any print smaller than about 13x19.

"So, yawn, really, you know, I mean, OMG, pass the joint."

Mike replies: When you say "pass the joint," do you mean "walk past the entertainment establishment"? Because I don't know what else that phrase could refer to, given that TOP would never advocate retrogressive degenerate behavior.

Featured Comment by Oskar Ojala: "As someone who owns both a GF1 and a NEX-3, I can say that the GF1 is more a photographer's camera and the NEX is more for the gadget buyer. The NEX has better image quality; it actually fits well in the hand; but the controls are slower to use than those of the GF1 and there are some fundamental limitations with it that make it bad for tripod work (with 24 MP a tripod is not a bad idea...). AF is also better on the GF1. Also, I do feel that the images from my Nikon D300 are cleaner than those from the NEX. Sony might have had to make compromises to fit everything in that very small body.

"But the NEX does make for a great infrared camera after some painful modification work. It's not a poor camera by any means, just something that I simply couldn't use as my only camera or main camera."

Featured Comment by Roger Bradbury: "Hey look, a camera with a real viewfinder! And at $1,200 I should b£@@dy well hope so! Sony seem to be doing what was commonplace twenty odd years ago; providing a viewfinder that's usable in most conditions. As for all those other compacts, if I wanted to struggle to see what I'm photographing in daylight I would just put a film in my 1917 No. 2 Brownie and use that."

Mike replies: John Camp probably thinks you're talking about a different kind of brownie.

Featured Comment by Moose: "What really interests me is taking pictures and the images that result. I'm only interested in those aspects of the gear that further the process and results.

"You saw the 60D as just another iteration of a line of competent, but boring, cameras. I saw it as a revelation. Live view with an articulated screen (for which I don't have to buy a bunch of new lenses)! Wow!

"The sensor from a higher end camera with fixed screen in a smaller, lighter body, with addition of the articulated screen. All I lose is faster burst mode, which I virtually never use, and a dedicated movie button, which I would like. All for much less money, too!

"I've had mine for several weeks now—and I think I'm in love. It's how the camera makes it easier to get the images I want that matters above all else. For me, the 60D delivers.

"IQ is in some ways a slight step below the 5D, but NR software and careful technique make that a non-issue, unless I take up monster prints. Even then, the extra pixels may even the playing field.

"We recently had a thread on the Oly list about camera/lens appearance aesthetics. I realized I had no opinion about the appearance of the 60D and my lenses on it. It looks just like what it is, a modest sized, black DSLR, just like a jillion others.

"Who cares what it looks like or that it's just one in a series of mid-priced cameras? It's how it works for my way of doing photography and what comes out that count. I suppose now I do need a real wide angle for APS, so I don't need to have the 5D and 17–35mm at hand, too. That's OK.

"All that, and I finally found a tripod that works with me, instead of against me—and devised a new way of carrying it that makes carrying easier and use quicker and easier.

"Life is good. Any camera that contributes to that ain't boring."

Mike replies: Shhhhh. I'm trying to limit my current GAS attack to two Sonys which, conveniently, I can't impulse-buy. I don't need your 60D giving me GAS too.

Off the Beach

Get the hell off the beach.

—New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Our thoughts go out today to all the people in the East who are dealing with Irene, the massive, slow-moving storm that is the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2008. Here's to the next time you see the sun, and may you and your loved ones be safe.

Mike

Summer Print Offer: Ctein's Big Digital Print Sale

Ctein, Apollo-Soyuz in Floodlights, Cape Canaveral, 1975

UPDATE, Sept. 2, 2011: Sale has ended.

Conclusion first: Our sales run for five days only, in this case starting now and ending on Friday at noon. Here's the direct link to the sale page [Link removed—sale ended 12 noon CST Friday, September 2, 2011]. Also as usual, the prices for these 17x22" Ultrachrome prints are low, barely more than you'd pay for a fine poster. The first print is only $140. (That's 1/2 the normal price Ctein charges.) The second print is $125, the third $110, and the fourth only $95. That goes for multiples of the same print, different prints, or any combination of the two.

More about our mad method later.

By popular demand: Like many of our sales, this one was essentially suggested by readers. Ctein, whose regular weekly column appears here on TOP on Wednesdays, wrote about one of the most difficult photographs he had ever made,"Apollo-Soyuz in Floodlights, Cape Canaveral, 1975" (above), in a column called No One Cares How Hard You Worked. Many readers asked for the opportunity to buy a print of this image. Good call, too: the print is stunning, with an impact only suggested by the on-screen JPEG.

Swamp with Lilypads Near Loch Sionascag, Scotland, 1995

More pictures: Ctein's previous sales have been among our most popular, but this one is the first one in which he hasn't offered prints made with the esoteric dye transfer method in which he is expert. Accordingly, I asked him if he could provide some additional pictures from his dye transfer portfolio crafted as inkjets. Of the three we chose, he picked one and I picked two.

Turns out the "translation" from dyes to inkjets led to some very interesting technical and aesthetic issues, which Ctein and I will be discussing a bit more here on TOP in the days before the sale ends.

Cinder Cone North Trail, Lassen Volcanic Park, California, 1985

Big 17 x 22" prints: The other opportunity that seemed obvious was to make these prints bigger (the dyes we had offered previously were on the small side, as large dye transfers are expensive to make). These prints are all on 17x22-inch paper with a minimum one-inch white border. They are Epson 3880 Ultrachrome prints on Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk paper. Ctein, of course, is making all the prints, and they're signed and titled on the front in ink and signed and dated on the back in graphite.

To order: If you'd like to order one or more of these prints, first, go to the sale page [Link removed—sale ended 12 noon CST Friday, September 2, 2011], and send Ctein an email following his instructions. Prices including any taxes or shipping charges are given on the PayPal buttons; you'll use those buttons to determine your price even if you're not paying by PayPal (we'd actually prefer payment by check, but either way is fine). Please note that a payment without an email will not work to reserve you a print; as he explains on the sale page, the email is the essential record he needs in order to reserve a print for you.

Shipping: Shipping charges and applicable taxes are included in the prices. All print will be shipped within 31 days, and are guaranteed/insured by us; if you don't like a print or if your prints are damaged in transit (or never arrive), don't worry: you're covered. We'll refund your purchase price if you don't want to keep the print, or send you a replacement print if yours was damaged or lost.

There's no number limit on this sale. All orders made before Friday at noon will be honored. The first orders will start shipping a week from tomorrow at the latest.

The anti-art-gallery: TOP print sales are democratic, meant to provide high-quality original work for prices that are far less than you could get them for otherwise. The way we do this is simply to collect the orders and the money in advance and then fulfill the orders afterward. This allows the photographer to "mass produce" the production of the prints knowing that each one is already sold. So even though the price is much less to you than you'd pay for a single print purchased individually through a conventional gallery, the photographer still makes a nice profit on the proceedings (TOP takes 20% for hosting the sale; the rest, the other 80%, goes to the photographer. Compare this to the 50-50 or, worse, 40-60 split commonplace with bricks-and-mortar galleries).

For real: But what that means (which you also might know from our previous sales) is that when we say we're closing the sale, we really have to. On Friday at noon, we'll have a final number, and Ctein will order materials and begin work on fulfilment. As you know if you've ever made and shipped large number of prints yourself, that work is arduous and immersive, and needs to be planned. So if you're coming here for the first time from an astronomy, space enthusiast, or science fiction site or forum, please don't assume that we'll make an exception for you if you miss the Friday deadline—we can't, and don't.

At least there's no number limit for this sale, as I mentioned earlier. All orders received by Friday will be fulfilled.

Crepuscular Rays, Clear Lake, California, 1992

Art collectors without limousines: One of the most rewarding things about our sales is how many people say that our prints are the first original artwork they've ever bought. Art collectors aren't just people who keep their limousines idling in the street outside a Christie's evening auction, where the bid increments are more than most blue-collar workers will earn over the course of a lifetime. No, our sales ain't haughty, snooty, or exclusive/exclusionary. But we like that about 'em.

"Crepuscular Rays" is one of my four or five personal favorites from Ctein's dye transfer portfolio. I first used it to illustrate a column way back in my Luminous-Landscape days, and it almost became a cover of Photo Techniques magazine once upon a time. We'll have more to say about its odyssey to digital inkjet form on, I think, Thursday.

Questions? If you have any questions about any of this, please ask in the comments, and one of us will answer.

One last time, here's the link to the Print Offer page [Link removed—sale ended 12 noon CST Friday, September 2, 2011]. Please do us a favor and tell your friends about the sale! And, as ever, thanks to one and all.

Mike

ADDENDUM: A few people have reported problems sending email directly to Ctein at [email protected], via the mail link on the order page. If your order email bounces or is reported as nondeliverable, please resend it using this email address: [email protected]

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Blackstrappers

This was kind of funny. I mentioned that when I took the bus from Portland, Maine, to Boston, Massachusetts, two days ago, I sat next to a woman from Coastal Maine who was trying to beat the hurricane and get to the Midwest.

She mentioned that the population of her town swells during the summer, when cottagers and vacationers come in from all over. She said there's a local term for the more transient of these: "Washashores." I loved that.

Then she said, "We used to call them 'blackstrappers,' because tourists would all have cameras on black straps hanging from their shoulders. That's ancient history now. Nobody carries a camera hanging from a strap any more! These days, they all keep their cameras in their pockets, of course."

Of course... :-/

...Not. :-)

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jim Hughes: "Although my wife and I now live full-time in Maine after 'summering' here for more than 30 years, we will always be regarded as 'people from away.' In the beginning, we also fit neatly into the category of 'Summer Complaints,' as hardy midcoast Maine winter folk called those who disappeared every fall with the coming of the first frost. We once even got tee-shirts made with 'Summer Complaint' proudly emblazoned across our chests!

"In the Camden-Rockport area, the throngs of camera-toting students from the Maine Photographic Workshops always used to be called 'Blue Dots' by the locals—after, of course, the Blue Dots for Sure Shots advertising slogan coined for Sylvania flash bulbs many moons ago by Tom Maloney, legendary publisher of U.S. Camera who supported that expensive hobby with his very lucrative public relations business.

"I still use thin black straps for my cameras. My favorite, made of leather, is an old prototype quick-release design using a dog-leash clip that was given to me by Bob Schwalberg—back in the day it was called, naturally enough, the Schwalberg strap, and it hung from the shoulder of many a well-known Leica shooter."

I'm Back

Back from my trip Down East...a relaxing and enjoyable four days at my stepfather's farmhouse in rural Maine.

Maine

My flight home was cancelled. It had nothing to do with the weather; United couldn't get its plane in the air in Chicago. (They originally wanted to reroute me through the Carolinas. Seriously. I would have arrived in Durham at about the same time as Irene.) I had to extemporize with a bus trip to Boston, a night in a hotel, and two more flights through a different city than originally planned, Detroit, arriving home just a couple of hours ago.

Make the best of what you get
Funny thing, though. I really couldn't have planned it to be any nicer if I'd done it on purpose. I sat next to a delightful conversationalist named Penny on the bus to Beantown, who was on her way from her seaside house on Penobscot Bay to her daughter's wedding in Minneapolis. We chatted away the hours and the trip went by quickly. Then the airline put me up at a wonderful hotel, the Hyatt Harborside, where I had a really outstanding dinner—again subsidized by the wayward UA—and a dramatic tenth-floor view of Boston Harbor. At Delta, very early this morning, I breezed through security. I was even able to find a seat with an outlet so I could give my iPad its first recharge of the entire week. (I had internet in Maine, but no email.)

Detroit

And who knew, but the Detroit Airport is lovely—beautiful morning light and a most excellent bagel and Nova smoked salmon. I kept seeing pictures all over the place. I wish I'd been working.

Milwaukee ("Sir, that device has a battery! You'll have to turn it off!")

It was a completely busted plan but all the travel arrangements last night and today worked exactly as they were supposed to, smooth as silk. I actually ended up having a most enjoyable little mini-vacation at the end of my trip.

Right now, however, I'm bushed—a wake-up call of 4:15 will do that to you after a late-ish night. At least at my age. So I'm off for a short nap with my also-tired-out doggie by my bedside. More anon.

The Print Sale starts tomorrow!

Mike

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Leaving (Attempt 2)

Okay, so I'm leaving for the airport for the second day in a row. If you hear from me again today we can all look up the work "disgruntled" together. Wish me luck....

As I said before, see you Saturday, and very sorry again for the interruption in services. If all goes well today, I'll get to see my brother and his family later today for the first time in more than a year, and my Mom and stepfather as well.

Cheerio,

Mike, TOP Chief Inmate and Asylum Travel Director

Featured Comment by Ben Rosengart: "Hoping you are gruntled, combobulated, heveled and kempt."

P.S. by Ben Rosengart: "...And plussed."

Random Excellence: Carli Davidson

Photo by Carli Davidson

Completely freaky. Stop-action photos of pets shaking their heads, by Carli Davidson. As Subtraction put it, "What I really like about these images is the way they capture something hidden but that’s been right out there in the open forever, until technology came along and allowed us to see it." Not exactly a new idea (cf. Harold Edgerton et al.), but then again, I've never seen any dog and cat photos like these before. Wonderful. Weird. And wonderful.

What these remind me of more than anything are the amazing boxing photos by the old New York Daily News sports photographer Charles Hoff, documented in the 1996 book The Fights (note that according to one Amazon reviewer, a lot of the identifications in the book are mistaken). A different era and a different subject, and different technique, but he often captured human faces frozen in similarly distorted and unfamiliar aspects.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave Sailer)

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Featured Comment by Eli Burakian: "I just got back from Armenia two days ago and happened to meet Carli in the Moscow airport. She had overheard me talking about a photo project I was working on and showed me her photos on her ipad.

"Just thought it was a funny coincidence.

"Although she wouldn't tell me her secret on how to get the dogs to shake their heads, she did relay an interesting story.

"She's been doing this photography for a little while and wasn't getting much traction. She won a PDN contest and that propelled her to the top instantly and now there's amazing amounts of interest in her photography.

"Just a little reminder that you should keep on working on what you love, and eventually if you persevere, your break will come."

'I Simply Don't Want to Photograph Ugly People'

And now for something completely different.

A photographer takes a stand against ugliness. She's gonna give us all a good name. Go, Jennifer McKendrick.

Mike
(Thanks to Catherine Barber)

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Featured Comment by Lynn: "I admire her ethics. Having a daughter recently targeted by Facebook bullying I can personally attest how devastating it can be for the victim. Denying the perpetrators of these nasty attacks an airbrushed public image for their senior portraits is a commendable step.

"It is a pity that Diane Arbus is not still with us. She would have been the logical choice to hold a mirror up to these bullies. Perhaps then they might reconsider their behaviour."

Featured Comment by Stan B.: "While I 'applaud' this particular action, where does it end and how will it be applied in an equal and nondiscriminatory manner—if it isn't, she sets herself up as a bully. What crimes and misdemeanors will she deem worthy to ignore, and which will she ordain suitable for punishment?

"If a student submits a plagiarized paper or cheats on an exam and thus beats out another honest, more deserving student for a top college or scholarship—shouldn't they be denied as well? I bet there were one or two of them. Is she not going to photograph adults who cheated on their spouses? What of all the 'upright' citizens of note and stature common to any town, anywhere who invest in and entertain questionable dealings with other seemingly 'upright' associates? She's walking a thin line if she's gonna play the photo chief of morals and integrity—who'll be left to photograph? I think I prefer the Newman/Krupp solution." [Link added by me —Ed.]

Dastardly Temptation!

Check out the spectacular deal on this, the Battlestar Galactica of desktop printers. Good till August 30th. I will have less than 24 hours when I return from my trip to decide whether to take this plunge. If I have a print sale of my own work someday, it will pay for itself, right? Right?

Right?

Anybody there?

Ach, they've all gone home, and I'm all alone in here.

I read recently a theory that people have a "well" of decision-making capacity, and if we have too many decisions to make it gets harder and harder to make more of them. If that's true, then my well has never been a very full one. Too many temptations, too many decisions...ach....

Mike

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Featured Comment by Tommy Williams: "About decision fatigue."

Featured Comment by Hans: "Right!!!!! :-)"

Recombobulation

Well, that was a bust. I got all the way to the gate at the airport this morning before learning that my flight was delayed (for unscheduled maintenance, I presume—the weather here is halcyon) and United Airlines with all its planes and people and corporate might could not get me to O'Hare in time to make my connection.

So I'm back home for another 24 hours. The trip to and fro' the airport, for naught but a sharp stab of disappointment, cost me $110. That's what I get for trying to save the cost of long-term parking for a week. Saving money usually costs me money; I tend to be star-crossed that way. This is far from the first time that's happened.

Two consolations: as a fan of entertaining writing—something I occasionally attempt to perpetrate myself—I discovered this lovely little takedown of the TV show "TMZ" by one James Parker, in the current issue of The Atlantic, née The Atlantic Monthly, which is what I will call it till I die (I suppose there is a possibility that it is no longer in fact a monthly, but I think a better guess is that some committee decided that a shorter, snappier name is more modish) which I bought at the airport newsstand for the flight that was not to be. I would have laughed out loud at James Parker's nimble skewering ("Harvey—a small man, but an enormous parasite") except that I had to observe standard public behavior because I was in the airport, eating the world's most expensive former bagel. I could tell from the shape that it was originally a bagel. I would have had some choice words for the fraudulent fellow who baked it, except that he's probably retired and moved to Florida by now. Four-dollar bagels are bad, and stale bagels are bad, but $4 stale bagels are bad x bad.

And the other consolation? Believe it or not, this was my first trip through post-9/11 airport security (I don't travel much), and, after having my hands swabbed (the only thing that showed up were traces of ancient, phthysic, fossilizing bagel), I put my belt and my shoes back on underneath a large sign that said RECOMBOBULATION AREA. I don't appreciate useless trips to the airport, but it was almost worth it to find the opposite of "discombobulation" doing normal everyday utilitarian duty. I was most pleased to reflect, as I recombobulated myself, that discombobulate was indeed exactly what had just been done to me as I made my way through security. Perfect fit.

So—a bit more TOP today, and the rest of the time I will spend watching iPad2 tutorials on Lynda.com and trying to figure out how to load some pictures on the thing to show to my relatives, when I get to where I should have been going today.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jeff: "You must not subscribe to the Journal Sentinel..."

TOP Going Dim; Print Sale Delayed

I'm very sorry to announce this, but I'm going away again for a few days, so TOP might be going a dark for the next few days. Hopefully it will be just a brownout this time, and not radio silence, but I have no idea if I'm going to be able to post anything from where I'm going. I'll try*. I'm just not sure yet.

I'll be back on Saturday.

Accordingly, Ctein's Print Offer will have to be postponed for a few days. It was originally scheduled to begin on Wednesday, but will be postponed for four days and will begin at high noon Central Time, Sunday the 28th.

Again, SORRY! Both for the interruption of services and the postponement of the sale. I hope you won't hold this against me and never visit again...please do come back next weekend. I will be on good behavior after that, and will never go away again**.

Mike, TOP Camp Counselor and Director of Activities

*I went to the Apple Store this afternoon fully intending to buy a MacBook Air, but I came home with an iPad2. I have no idea how to use it yet. I have high hopes that I'll learn enough about it soon enough to be able to write posts from the road, but Murphy's Law has been known to keep me firmly in its sights, so who knows.

**I suppose that is a rash promise. But not for a long, long time.

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 First Review

The Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8 at ISO 2000, ƒ/1.8, 1/80th. Photo by Robin Wong.

Robin Wong at Simply Robin has published an early review of the forthcoming Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 45mm ƒ/1.8, shot on Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur...a review which caused me to pre-order the lens.

The review provides copious examples of the lens's bokeh wide open which collectively give a good picture of how the lens behaves, but has no examples shot at any other aperture. Fortunately, though, if you look in the right-hand column at the site, a Part 2 of the review is coming. Hopefully it will have more examples that are just as good—at least a few, I hope, shot with the lens stopped down.

Mike
(Thanks to Simon)

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UPDATE from Mandeno Moments: "Part two of the review is up, including 100% crops at ƒ/5.6 (sensible and not far from the onset of diffraction at ƒ/6.8 [for 12 MP Micro 4/3 sensor]). I'd like to see a black version of this lens and the 12mm."

Pentax Q Beta Test!

A Pentax Q beta-tester from Australia in action. You've got to admit, both are plenty cute!

Mike
(Thanks to Richard P., London, a.k.a. richard plondon)

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