The Online Photographer

Rare Rings and Big Prints

Here's me with a souvenir from my playing days. Ah, whenever this time of year rolls around, I miss playing pro football.

I'm full of it and fooling no one, of course. The big bling—it's a gen-yoo-wine Super Bowl ring—belongs to my friend Jack, who got it because he's on the Board of Directors of the current World Champion Green Bay Packers. This ring, though, is from Super Bowl XXXI, in 1996. (If you look closely you can make out his name on the ring.)

The last time I played football was in seventh grade. I will say I was a very good cornerback in seventh grade—I was fast, so I could always catch up to the guy trying to catch the ball. Given my skills, my football-playing career might have extended as far as freshman year—ninth grade, I mean—but, alas, I lacked ambition.

And by the way, when I tried the ring on, I had trouble getting it off.

Me: It won't come off.

Jack: Yeah, right!

Me: No, seriously, I can't get it off.

Jack: Oh, it'll come off...

[I'm thinking: meat cleaver?]

...with dishwashing liquid.

I did eventually coax it back off, without either lubricants or more radical methods injurious to my digit.

Before we go on, here are a couple of examples of that small but honorable genre of portraiture I've talked about before, a genre that you probably have examples of yourself on your hard drive: the "photo-friend across the lunch-table" genre. This is Jack's portrait of me, taken with his point-and-shoot (the Leica S2, and it's a radical crop from the file):

...And this is my picture of him, complete with ring and Leica, taken with my point-and-shoot (the Panasonic GF1 and 20/1.7 lens):

He wore the ring just to show me. He says he doesn't wear the ring from last year very often, because it's even bigger:

2010 on the left, 1996 on the right.

...But enough fun sports stuff that European readers won't understand. On to photography:

Jack does very well in what's called the "corporate art" market, meaning, he sells pictures to professional decorators for the public spaces of things like hotels and office buildings. Here he is shown with two of his creations (in this case, hanging in a country club).

This makes it perfectly clear why Jack can use all the megapixels he can get, and why he was able to justify his S2 as a business expense. Sure, it's fun to use as a point-and-shoot at lunch, but with prints this size he actually needs the resolution. The picture on the right in the shot above was taken with a 1Ds, and in the case of that picture he had enough resolution to print on canvas; the picture doesn't depend on fine detail. Another scene of the same size on the far wall (you can't see it here), taken with the same equipment, had more detail in the scene, and the print didn't quite have enough resolution, to my eye, even on canvas.

Jack says that with the S2, he can print on paper at these sizes.

Here's a shot of Jack's we published here on TOP right after the Packers' Super Bowl win last year. A 9-foot by 5-foot print of this picture now hangs in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. It's a merge of three frames from the S2 with the 35mm lens (wide-angle on the large sensor).

As Jack says, "that's when you need medium-format digital files."

Mike

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Featured (partial) Comment by Anthony: "I don't know, calling the GF1 and S2 point-and-shoots is a big no-no. Just 'cause you were using them on autofocus doesn't mean they're not manually capable cameras."

Featured Comment by Bob Dales: "How do you print 9x5 feet? Asked from the environs of 1.6x1.1 feet."

Jack MacDonough replies: Regarding calling very capable cameras point-and-shoots: Just because they are super-capable doesn't mean you can't shoot them casually. And even when shooting casually, I am not on auto-focus. Had it been on auto-focus for the first shot of Mike I would not have captured the ring in focus.

I had not imagined I would want to use the S2 for everything, but I have. It's small enough, and water resistant. Here is a link to another S2 shooter who also uses it for serious as well as less-serious work.

Regarding how to print 9 feet by 5 feet: Thanks to huge digital printers it can be done. My business plan could not work without them. However, any error gets expensive.

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Q: How do you prevent someone from noticing that you're shooting with a Leica S2? A: Wear a Super Bowl ring on your shutter hand while shooting. Geez, Jack, nice bling! And nice photo work.

"@ Bob Dales: Printing at such large sizes is a whole different world. There are several technologies available for such sizes today, nearly all of which live mainly in the advertising display world. Of course I don't know how Jack's were produced (but would also be interested in learning). Here in Chicago Gamma Lab's Durst Lambda 130 can produce a single sheet (digital C-print) of up to 49.5″ x 240". As another example, back in 2006 Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario printed some of my work on vinyl film for backgrounds in an exhibition. This comes straight out of the billboard production world.

Sony's Big Mistake

In the Comments yesterday, Thom Hogan, one of the most knowledgable gadflies* of the camera industry there is, said, "...while I like the NEX, so far Sony hasn't delivered on lenses, and I don't see how going to 24 MP is going to help."

Like going to 24 MP in the A900 in 2008 didn't help.

Just to put an underline on this point: this is why Sony now runs neck-and-neck with Canon and Nikon in the compact camera arena but doesn't come anywhere close in SLRs. The company doesn't pay enough attention to lenses. Not for nothing were most of the traditional cameramakers optical companies first and foremost. Sony doesn't get that the lens lines are what sells interchangeable-lens cameras. It's quite apparent from the product lineup and the pace of product introductions that to Sony's way of thinking, lenses are an afterthought, and a limited hodgepodge that includes a few standard zooms and a few premium examples is all you need. Wrong.

Prediction: Sony will never rival Canon and Nikon in SLR (or, let's say, SLR-type) sales** unless and until Sony has a full, complete, and up-to-date lens line for whatever cameras it wants to sell.

Mike

*I use the term as a high compliment. Cf. Wikipedia on Socrates: "Plato refers to Socrates as the 'gadfly' of the state (as the gadfly stings the horse into action, so Socrates stung various Athenians), insofar as he irritated some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness."

**and NEX will never catch Micro 4/3

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Featured Comment by Michael Trupiano: "The A900 was the first DSLR I purchased after not using a 35mm for many, many years (exclusively used view camera). I chose the A900 over Canon and Nikon for specific reasons (mostly to do with UI). While I am happy with the camera I frequently wonder if I made the right decision, precisely due to lack of a complete lens family.

"And what Sony perhaps does not understand or perhaps refuses to accept (or perhaps they just don't care) is that photographers invest in a system. And that once they have a significant investment in glass they tend to stick with the same body manufacturer for years to come (all other things being equal)."

Mike replies: I hear ya. I would have bought an A900 but for the lack of lenses. See also SeanG's much harsher comment in the Comments section.

In some ways, Sony parallels in the digital world my favorite cameras from the film era: Contax. Whenever people would ask me about getting into the Contax system, I'd tell them the very same thing you and SeanG are suggesting with Sony: just make sure the lenses you want already exist and that you can afford them, because waiting for new lens introductions—or for prices to come down—would be an exercise in frustration. I knew whereof I spoke.

Significantly, Sony is probably dealing with some of the very same frustrations Contax had to, in that some of the lenses of each were and are made by the same make-haste-slowly company, Carl Zeiss.

That said, I will give Sony credit for introducing one of the lenses I actually wanted, the 85mm ƒ/2.8 (and, completely as an aside, does anybody know where there's a cross section of that lens on the web? I haven't been able to find it). That happened after the advent of the A900. Of course the Sony Alpha mount system is not as complete yet as the Zeiss Contax/Yashica mount system was, either, so they've got more gaps to fill. Still, gotta give credit where it's due.

Featured Comment by mbka: "I think the bigger problem at-large is not confidence in the present (lens lineup, technology) but confidence in the future: credibility that a product line will be supported, expanded, etc. Just as in the larger economy, trust in the future. In this light, Sony's problem is a lack of consistency. First the DSLR line was introduced and heavily advertised as a future complete system. Then NEX as a mirrorless. Then the 33/55 as a mirror-bearing mirrorless. No one knows if NEX is going to get finders or if the A33/55/77 will get smaller. The NEX is an odd product in itself for the reasons you said—odd lens lineup, unclear future, and especially, the lenses are huge compared to the body. It doesn't look very useable to me at all as a setup.

"For all its faults and some slowness in the lens line buildup, Micro 4/3 looks by far the best and most flexible and most 'modern,' truly contemporary, system right now. Yes, some brighter zooms would be nice, probably prevented by the CDAF that needs light lens elements. Yes, sensors have a handicap. But the Pana/Oly systems are remarkable complete compared to NEX, say, never mind the other brands. And I have much higher confidence that at least Panasonic and Olympus will stay the course with m4/3."

Featured Comment by Pascal Jappy: "The infuriating thing, with the (likely) new A77 and NEX-7 is that they seem very good with manual focus lenses but Sony, who seem to have a strong partnership with Zeiss, have no access to the current ZE/ZF lenses that might be well suited to the densely packed pixels of the new cameras. What a shame. Leitax to the rescue (or adapters for the NEX), possibly, but still it's not the same."

Mike replies: I agree, that's positively bewildering.

Featured Comment by Harry Lew: "I have more than enough Alpha mount lenses (Sony/Minolta)...35 at last count for my a700, a850, and several legacy Minolta bodies. (OK, I'm a collector.) But what I'm most excited about is how the NEX cameras open the door to countless manual-focus lenses in whatever brand you crave. Right now, I'm savoring my OM Zuiko 50mm ƒ/1.2 on a cheap (purchased at a ridiculous close-out discount) NEX 3. A $30 adapter lets me use a killer lens that had been languishing in my closet. The lens is a dream to fondle and operate, produces luscious images with incredible bokeh. With a lens like this, who needs native-mount NEX lenses? Having said this, I will be at the head of the order window when the NEX 7 becomes available. And the Zeiss 24 1.8 will be hard to resist."

Featured Comment by Bob Rosinsky: "I purchased a Sony a850 and the CZ 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 alpha mount lens to complement the camera. I love the combo. I primarily photograph dogs in a studio environment with this kit. I set the lens to ƒ/13 to ƒ/16 most of the time. To this day, I am continually amazed by the amount of detail and contrast the lens is able to draw onto the sensor. As for the Sony, I am continually amazed by its dynamic range. I generally shoot at base ISO and use strobes. I've used the Canon 1DS III with the 24–105mm lens too. The Sony/Zeiss combo knocks the socks off of the Canon setup. Fortunately, my lens requirements are rather modest. If I shot architecture, sports, and low-light subjects, my opinion would differ. I am eagerly awaiting the next iteration of a Sony FF camera. I may even consider the a77 as a backup. As with any craft, there is always the right tool for the right job."

Congratulations Jim Davis

Kudos and three attaboys to Boston Globe photographer Jim Davis, left, who says he's been prepared for more than 20 years just in case he ever got a chance to photograph a triple play. His chance finally came in the Red Sox game against the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday—and he was ready. Got the shots, all three of them. Boston.com has a short video of Jim describing how he did it.

Strong work. That'll make a nice triptych for the wall.

Mike
(Thanks to Chris Yeager and Robert B)

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Featured Comment by John St. Onge: "Mike, On Monday night the Brewers performed a rare 4-6-3-2 triple play against the L.A. Dodgers at Miller park. I saw it on TV and it was amazing. Here's an analysis of the play."

Mike replies: That video is great. Thanks.

Featured Comment by John Bohn: "I had the pleasure of working alongside Jim Davis for nearly 20 years at the Boston Globe. Jim is never not prepared to successfully photograph a possible triple play! This goes along the thought process of a photographer keeping his head in the game at all times."

The Big Sony Announcement: End of the World?

There's been a roiling on the rumor sites saying that on August 24th, Sony will introduce several new cameras. One will supposedly be the A77, allegedly the long-awaited replacement for the long-discontinued A700.

Note that an A700 replacement, like the end of the world, has been predicted many times before. Most recently, the August 24th annoucements were supposed to have come in July. Last July, that would be. The month that recently ended without any such announcement.

But remember, just because everyone who has foretold the end of the world has been wrong so far doesn't mean everyone who ever does will always be. If ye parse me.

The Sony A900, one of my half-dozen favorite cameras of the digital era

Another camera rumored to be coming in the Big World-Ending Announcement is an A920, a replacement for the A900. The rumor—Dilbert might call this a "hallucination"—is that the A920 will feature a 36-MP sensor.

Really? Didn't the market pretty much send a message that 24 megapixels was enough, already? Or have A900s, A850s, and Nikon D3x's been selling strongly without me being aware of it?

Of course, the 36-MP meme might be something somebody invented. That's the nice thing about rumors—because they don't have to be attributed, and they can't be proven wrong (for the time being, anyway) in that they concern things that will supposedly happen in the future, anyone can pretty much claim anything they want to. For instance, I heard a rumor that all cars will be solar-powered by 2016.

So, do we really need FF sensors with 36 MP? Would the advantage of having 36 MP vs. 24 MP tilt you into making a purchase? Has the limitation of having no more than 24 MP been holding you back? I've used the A900 and A850, and, much as I love the cameras, I'd say the high megapixel count was actually a mild liability in my book.

But tomorrow's post will concern somebody who indeed needs more megapixels. Or, I should say, needed, past tense. He uses what he calls a "point-and-shoot" that has 37.5 MP. Stay tuned for that; it'll be fun.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Peter: "Actually I'm less enthused about any of these possibilities and really looking forward to a potential announcement about the NEX-7."

Featured Comment by GH: "Coming from an A900 myself, 24mp seems to be the sweet-spot for my usual print size. I'm most excited about a relatively tiny, NEX-7 with 24 MP. The NEX-7 plus a few rangefinder lenses will be a fantastically small, yet capable, platform."

Mike replies: So what you guys are telling me is that a rumored NEX-7 is part of the rumored announcement? Got ya. Here's hoping.

Featured Comment by William Porter: "I for one am very eager to get the announcement of the A77 out of the way and then get my hands on one. C'mon Sony! Show me the camera and I'll show you the money!"

Every Day Is Photography Day

Today, August 19th, is "World Photography Day"...according to a website called worldphotoday.org. First I've heard.

Besides, as with the old joke about why there's a Mothers Day and not a Kids Day, isn't every day Photography Day? I'm just sayin'.

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko)

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Featured Comment by John Beal: "Isn't every day Photography Day? Apparently, not July 17."

Little-Camera News

Anyone interested in Micro 4/3 cameras will want to know that the delicious little Olympus 45mm (90mm-e) ƒ/1.8 is just about to commence shipping from B&H. I can only hope that it's softer at its widest one or two apertures than it is stopped down, to give some useful "sharpness control" for portraits. Portraits being what I, personally, need short telephotos for.

The last short tele I tested (i.e., tried) was the superb Pentax DA 55mm ƒ/1.4. It gave me some gifts, like every lens I've ever used—I took this sequence with it, of my friendly ex-neighbor and her charismatic middle kid—

—but, for my purposes anyway, the DA 55mm is too good a lens. It's blazingly, blisteringly, ruthlessly sharp; unsharpening actually became a part of my Photoshop protocol during the short time I used it. If you like or need your short teles to be sharp sharp sharp, here's your lens.

Caja Erik by Alfred Cheney Johnston (no relation), c. 1935.
Courtesy doctormacro.com.

The old timer portrait, glamour and Hollywood people (can't say "guys" because they were men and women—Doris Ulmann being an example of the latter) were nuts about finding lenses with just the right degree of unsharpness. Everyone had their particular tastes; some even went to great lengths to hide the make and model of their lens of choice from their competitors.

Complex 9/8 construction indicates a premium design that belies the lens's bargain price. The company says the design is intended to minimize vignetting and optimize "defocusing" (bokeh).

Anyway, I have high hopes for the Olympus 45mm to be an ideal complement to the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7.

Cutest toy
This is a cute little toy (Jay Frew posted a link in the Comments—thanks, Jay), but the Pentax Q System is also about to ship from B&H (all but the 6.3mm), and it might be the cutest-ever toy. Yeah, I know a) the Ricoh purchase makes the future of new Pentax products iffy, b) this is unabashedly aimed at the home (Japanese) market, and c) the internet commentariat has by and large taken up skeptical, not to say scornful, positions on the battlefield for the sniping to come—but I think I like it anyway. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm still hoping Pentax will send me one to try. Er, test.

Mike

P.S. And don't come knock on my door if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that the Q System might become collectible one day. Especially if they don't sell very many of them. It might not even be a terrible idea to have the complete set, if you've a mind and such things appeal.

If I'm wrong, though, then please forget where you heard this.

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Featured Comment by Peter Vuksanovich: "I have the 12mm ƒ/2 version of this lens that mounts directly on my GF1 (thank you Oly) and it is such an astounding lens that I am at a loss for words. I might buy another and keep it in a bank vault."

Eisie in Print

I've just added a bit of interesting stuff to the "Victory Kiss" post below. It's always fun to compare well-known pictures to little-known variants. (Shades of Bob Jackson and Jack Beers.)

If Alfred Eisenstaedt—for several decades one of the most prominent and well-known photographers in the world, and originally the quintessential Leica photographer (a position he seems to have lost in more recent times)—is getting far enough removed in history that he's less than comfortably familiar to you, you might want to seek out a copy of Witness to Our Time, first published in 1966 by Viking Press, reissued 1980*. It features a foreword by no less than Henry Luce, and is about as deluxe a production as mainstream photography books got in '66: gravure black-and-white printing, color plates generously interspersed. It's not easy to find anymore, exactly, but it's not hard to find either: they printed scads of them at the time, so it's quite possible you could still run across a copy in a garden-variety used book store. Many libraries will still have copies. It's almost quaint, but this was considered a big "coffee-table" book at the time. In the '80s, more or less, books this size became more the rule than the exception, and "big" books now have to be much bigger.

Check abebooks.com.

It's still a pleasure to look through. If you're not up to a search for the 1966 gold standard, check out a much more modest but somehow equally pleasing book called Remembrances from Little, Brown's Bulfinch imprint that came out a dozen years ago or so. Although not remotely a special, fancy, or arty book, Remembrances has very solid reproduction quality (it has a less cropped version of the V-J sailor's kiss than Witness), is very much a pleasure to peruse, and can serve as an ideal introduction to the wonderful Eisie.

Mike

*I haven't seen the reissue, so no thoughts about its adequacy.

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Ctein's 200th Column: Reality is Overrated (OT)

Ctein (it's pronounced "kuh-TINE") with some of his photographs

By Ctein

Welcome to the Bicentennial Celebration: This Is Ctein Column Number 200*! I felt like I needed to do something really special with this column. So, I'm going to mess with your heads. Lots.

Really.

If you thought my columns last Christmas were messing with your heads...

The Unseen World

The Unseen Universe Gets Much Weirder (Very OT!) 

...this time it's going to be a lot, lot worse.

Let me begin by explaining to you the idea of "local reality," a term used by physicists.

The first word is "local": in physics, this is actually a very strong word. For example, I can say the moon is globally a sphere, and you can confirm that for yourself just by looking at it. "Global" means that it's true taking the broad viewpoint. If I were to say the moon was "locally" a sphere, it would mean that it looks spherical at every size; no matter how close I got it would remain a perfectly shiny, perfectly spherical marble. "Local" means that we consider something to hold true everywhere, all the time, on all scales.

"Reality" means something very specific, but it's fairly commonsensical. Local reality has three characteristics:

• Causality: things happen for a reason. We may not know what the reason is, but still.... If my teacup suddenly takes off and starts flying around the room, I assume it happens for a reason. Maybe it's alien influence, maybe it's because someone put drugs in my teacup (I'll get back to that), maybe it's because I have poltergeists, maybe it's a miracle delivered to me personally by God. Something made it happen. It's hard to object to that.

• Objectivity: the things that we measure that we think are real really do have an existence independent of our imaginings. That teacup flying around the room? Unless someone has drugged my tea or I've gone insane, I assume it is there. If I make a photograph of it, I assume the photograph is real and what was photographed is real. If the tree falls in the forest, it does make the air move in a way we would hear as sound if we were there, even when no one is there.

(Lots of aspects of the world are subjective. If I ask you if you like pepperoni pizza, your answer is an objectively observable utterance, but your like or dislike of it is not.)

Like causality, objectivity is hard to disagree with. You can construct all kinds of philosophies where we are all living inside our own dreams or someone else's simulation, etc. But how many of us really believe that?

• Induction: this is a little more subtle, but we take it for granted. It's the belief that there is basically a logic to things. If we say that A always causes B and B always causes C, then A always causes C. Induction implies repeatability, which is at the heart of making any kind of an observation. I push the teacup off the table, and it falls to the floor. If I do it again (causality), and the teacup is really there and I really did push it (objectivity), then it should fall to the floor again...unless something has changed that causes it to fly around the room (back to causality).

That's what physicists mean when they talk about local reality, and it would be very hard for most of us to disagree that this is a quite sensible description of our basic experience with the world.

There's a slight problem. It's wrong. We can prove that the universe does not obey local reality and that at least one of our three assumptions has to be in error. We can do experiments in which things happen that are simply impossible according to local reality. I shall explain:

Simple logic can tell you how certain kinds of experiments will come out. Suppose I want to do a survey of cereal boxes in the supermarket. I'm going to count the total number of cereal boxes. Then I'm going to count the number of boxes that have sugar added. Finally I'm going to count the number of boxes that have no added sweeteners of any kind (those could be artificial sweeteners, sweet bits of candy or fruit, etc.; they might not be sugar). What can you tell me about the results?

It should be obvious that number of boxes that have added sugar plus the number of boxes that have no additional sweeteners of any kind must be no more than the total number of boxes of cereal on the shelf.

In general terms, Ctein's Inequality: [total items] is greater than or equal to [items with A] + [items without A thru Z]

This statement is not bulletproof. It does require some basic logic—those postulates of local reality. If the cereal boxes aren't really there or if counting them does not produce a predictable, reliable, and reproducible result, then my inequality can fail. But we would expect that in a normal, sane world, it will work.

Houston, we have a problem
Now, back to the world of physics labs rather than supermarkets.

Half a century ago, an amazing physicist named John Bell did this kind of logical analysis, figuring out what sorts of results we could expect from experiments. He came up with one called Bell's Inequality, a more sophisticated and useful version of my cereal box inequality. You can look up the details on the web. Its underlying logic demands nothing more than local reality; if that holds, Bell's Inequality applies.

In the late 1970s, a couple of physicists came up with a design for a quantum mechanics experiment that had an odd characteristic. They could calculate, using QM, what the results of the experiment should be. That prediction was in conflict with Bell's Inequality. So, of course, they ran the experiment! I do not know, but I strongly suspect that they were expecting to find a subtle flaw in quantum mechanics this way. No one thinks quantum mechanics is the be-all and end-all of physics, while local reality is awfully fundamental. So I imagine they believed the experiment would show some problem with their calculations which would lead to new, more interesting physics.

The universe threw them (and us) a curveball. Their experimental results matched their quantum mechanical calculations. The results were in violation of Bell's Inequality. In other words, the results were impossible if local reality were true.

Understand the import of that. This is not about whether or not quantum mechanics is right or wrong; quantum mechanics might very well be wrong in some way, although this experiment didn't find it. What this experiment said, though, was that local reality was unquestionably wrong.

Essentially, it was as if I had gone into the supermarket, did my cereal thing and counted that there were 38 boxes of cereal total, 23 of which had added sugar and 19 of which had no added sweeteners of any kind.

Houston, we have a problem.

First and most reasonable hypothesis: their experiment was flawed. Either their measurements were in error in some way, they were not measuring exactly what they thought they were measuring, or other factors they hadn't accounted for were intruding and messing up the experiment. That reasonable assumption hasn't panned out. In the intervening 30 years, the experiment has been refined dozens of times, and run by many different researchers.

With the advances in electronics and measuring devices, it's really at no more advanced a level today than college physics; it it might even be doable in a good high school physics lab. The results are pretty much bulletproof now—and they consistently violate local reality. Furthermore, people have come up with other experiments that measure different kinds of things that also violate Bell's Inequality.

So, it's not just one isolated case where local reality fails, although most of the time it works just fine. Regardless, reality is not supposed to be a sometimes thing. It means that we really don't understand what's going on, that our conceptual model is somehow fundamentally flawed.

So, which of our assumptions is wrong? Objectivity? Causality? Induction? Throwing out any of those makes reality a peculiar, disturbing, and very unfamiliar place. Yet we know that one of those (maybe more than one) isn't always true, it's just usually true.

Wild-ass guess
Physicists lean towards throwing out objectivity; there's already been some thought for doing that in both philosophy and quantum mechanics. But that's entirely an emotional preference born of familiarity; we really don't know. Besides which, throwing out objectivity raises those deep and nasty philosophical questions like Schrödinger's cat, and what effect does an observer have on the whole universe, and what does observer really mean when we are all part of one universe, and even more tie-your-head-in-knots conundrums.

Remarkably, physicists are starting to come up with experiments that can test which of those assumptions is wrong. That work is still in its early phases, and there is not entire agreement on the results, although it is looking like objectivity may be down for the count. Which, even if that's true, doesn't mean it's the only one of our assumptions that falls. If one of them is wrong, maybe all of them are wrong. Mildly scary thought.

What's truly astonishing, though, is that we are entering an era of experimental philosophy. Understanding the fundamental nature of experience and reality used to be limited to the great armchair theorists of our philosophy classes. Now people are actually figuring out physical experiments that may illuminate matters that we thought were entirely beyond the realm of experimentation.

Want to know my utterly wild-ass guess? I think, philosophically, we just plain have it wrong. I think we're in a stage akin to alchemy: we talk about things like "observers," "events," "measurements," and "objects" believing that these are fundamental components of reality. I think we're going to find out that they are philosophical Elementals, the equivalents of earth, air, fire, and water. They are undoubtedly real, but they'll turn out to not be fundamental building blocks of reality.

Like I said, wild-ass. And I wouldn't even try to guess what real philosophical "elements" might look like.

In 50 years, though, I think we will know something. Experimentation proceeds.

Ctein

*(There is a bit of ambiguity in the data; technically this could be construed as anywhere between Column 198 and Column 202. By my arbitrary numbering system, it is 200. It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to....)

Ctein, a physicist by training, is a photographer, parrot aficionado, sci-fi fan, and—as the author of well over 500 articles published in photography magazines over five different decades—perhaps the most experienced phototechnical writer in America. His regular weekly column on TOP, not always confined to matters photographic but usually conventionally reality-based, appears on Wednesdays.

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Featured Comment by Melv: "Eh?"

Ctein replies: I think "Whaaaaa???" might be more appropriate (g).

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "I like the many-worlds interpretation with no wavefunction collapse , and not just because it was thought up by some other guy named Hugh (Everet). Flip a coin, create a universe unless it turns out that time is running backwards and you are consolidating two possible 'futures' into one 'now' I'm just glad to be in the universe where Ctein writes his off topic pieces about quantum mechanics and not golf. I just don't get golf at all."

Mike replies: It's harder than physics.

A Victory Kiss

If it seems vaguely that an American holiday went by yesterday without you realizing quite what it was, well, it was the anniversary of the day this famous picture was taken....

What I want to know is more about this statue. Is that a permanent thing? Is it still there? Not many photographs have been turned into public sculpture—at least, not when the purpose of the sculpture was inspired in part by the fame of the photograph.

Eisie, fully armed for peacetime

Mike
(Thanks to Vlatko Juric-Kokic)

UPDATE: It turns out there's a Wikipedia page about the statues—there are several of them, and they apparently travel. (Thanks to Bob Blakley for this.) They're called "Unconditional Surrender," and the sculptor's name is Seward Johnson.

Perhaps because of a copyright dispute over the famous Eisenstaedt photo, sculptor Johnson has claimed that his statues were based on a less-well-known photograph of the same kissing couple taken by a Lt. Victor Jorgensen. Jorgensen's photo is in the public domain.

Photo by Victor Jogensen

News to me; I hadn't known a variant existed. For our purposes, what's probably most interesting is the differences in skill between the two photographers. Same couple, same place, same moment (or very, very close to it—note the position of the walking sailor in the background in both photos), but very different photographs.

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt

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Three Pictures

First of all, a great example of a "tonal merger" where the photographer is using the property to great (comedic) effect, very deliberately. Imagine how dull this shot would be in color if the human's shirt had been, say, green, or pink. (Thanks to John Camp for this.)

Second, in looking around for some pictures that illustrate tonal properties in black-and-white, I've gotten fascinated with this shot by Stan Banos:

Certainly nondescript and uninteresting subject matter. But consider how very different the graphic stucture of this picture is compared to its physical structure (to see the former, squint at the picture and pay attention only to the shape of the shadow and the horizontal line through the center; to see the latter, imagine the picture without any shadows). They really play off each other dramatically.

Tonally, here's the basic relationship:

Putting two tones adjacent to each other is like putting two musical notes adjacent to each other; they have a certain feeling. And then I get interested in all the slight outlinings and underlinings of tone, the details in the shadows, the delineating of the windows, the accents of black.

Of course, photographers (especially ones I see too much of these days, wading through endless seas of the online photo sites) always hope that pictures of nothing can elicit an interest or fascination by the mere act of drawing attention to something we might not otherwise pay attention to. But although this is its basic strategy, Stan's picture really works for me.

This Earth
The last picture I've been looking at is one of the most interesting, and I have to say, strangest color pictures I can remember seeing. It's one of the four pictures we'll be offering as prints in Ctein's print sale next week. It also has the distinction of being the subject of the only truly bad print of Ctein's I've ever seen—when he showed me his work print of it in Madison, he hadn't gotten close to where he wanted it yet. It was not good at that point. (I'm sure Ctein doesn't like me going on about this, but hey, when Tiger Woods misses the cut at a major, people talk.)

When he sent me the master guide prints for the sale—I got them day before yesterday—I half expected not to like the print I'm talking about. But he'd finished it, of course, and gotten it right. It's really fascinating. For one thing, it absolutely has to be a color picture—I've seen few pictures that are more "about" color. The color palette borders on bizarre. I'm not sure if the pictures falls more toward beautiful or surreal. I'm not even entirely sure it looks like the world—maybe, given Ctein's suspiciously intense interest in science fiction, it was taken on a different, but similar, planet. In fact, it is a naturalistic photograph of, yes, this Earth. And that's what makes it so amazing.

I'll have more to say about it when we do the "reveal" of the pics for the sale. Maybe by then I'll have lived with it long enough to have gotten it sorted out in my mind. In the meantime, it's pinned to my board. I'll keep looking at it.

Mike

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The Tonal Merger

Just a small point of black-and-white technique in passing: this shot is an excellent example of what's called a "tonal merger." [Note: See update below.] If you look carefully, you can see that the cat in fact has an intact left ear. But the tone of gray and the texture of the ear (at these sizes anyway) very nearly matches the tone and texture of the background, making it look like someone has taken a swipe with a machete at the side of the poor animal's head.

The obverse of the problem of the tonal merger indicates one of the skills involved in good black-and-white photography that doesn't necessarily pertain to color photography (because color provides contrast). Looking for an example in the recent book Ansel Adams in the National Parks, "Mount Wynne, Kings Canyon National Park, California, c. 1932" on page 79. Here, he's gotten the mountain in shadow, waited until the bright clouds backstopped the entire line of the mountain ridges, and darkened the sky with a filter. It's not his most successful picture, but it demonstrates handily just how much managing tonal contrasts came as second nature to him.

Ansel Adams, Mount Wynne, p. 79 in Ansel Adams in the National Parks

Tonal contrast that either reveals and clarifies form or intentionally obscures it for expressive reasons is at the heart of black-and-white "seeing." It's why "hail Mary" conversions to "save" a digital color picture in which the colors don't work are often no more successful in black-and-white than they were in color; they weren't well seen in terms of monochrome tonality in the first place.

Mike

UPDATE: Ah well, I'm wrong. The photographer of the linked cat photo, Gabriele Lei, a.k.a. Gafo, has confirmed that the ear I "saw" in the JPEG was a phantom extremity: "His left ear was completely cutted off," he says on his flickr page (English not being his first language). Of course, in general the comments about tonal mergers still stand, but obviously I should begin with a true example....

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What a Way to Have a Bad Day

If you like golf, I hope you didn't miss the finish of the PGA Championship. Spectacular play all day—just some unbelievable shots—and a thrilling finish. Best golf tournament I've seen in a long time.

You have to wonder about sports, though. Previously little-known Jason Dufner had the best tournament of his career, played like Ben Hogan for 68 holes, got more TV face time in the last two days than he's had in his whole career, earned $865,000 for four days' work—and has to be feeling awfully bad tonight.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Pierre Munson: "Mike, I returned last week from participating in an international championship. I did well enough to compete again in the high sixteen competition after the main match. I lost in the first round. It was impossible for me to win the match or the high sixteen competition. The other competitors were just too skilled. I didn't feel bad. I was pleased with the results even though my performance left room for improvement. I don't think that Mr. Dufner should hang his head.

"I also watched the tournament and was thrilled by the level of competition. I always find that the commentators emphasize the winners to the exclusion of the other positions. When I'm not competing, I spend most of my time photographing professional sports. The back stories of those both on and off the podium are often more interesting than the brief summaries which are offered by most of the larger news services.

"The best competitors learn to quickly put any disappointments behind them in order to focus on the next event."

Factoring Value

There have been a lot of great comments to yesterday's question, but it's been tough to "Feature" many of the interesting ideas because they occurred in the context of longer (and sometimes, ah, meandering) comments. I thought I'd take a minute to summarize a few ideas about value that work for me.

• Use—obviously, something you use a lot is a better value than something you buy but don't use.

• Results—a piece of equipment that allows you to do something good that you couldn't do without it is proving its value every time it yields that desirable result.

• Longevity—the standard idea is that the longer something lasts, the better—but this is really two ideas. The first is durability, meaning how long something works until it breaks or becomes obsolete. The second is how long it stays in your regular rotation. I'm sure most of us have favorite old cameras that we used hard for some period a long time ago, and that we've hung on to out of sentimental attachment to that era in our lives or in gratefulness for the service we got out of the device. They've technically lasted all that time, but we don't use them any more. In that case durability doesn't really matter. So for a piece of equipment to give true value through longevity, it has to continue to function over a long period of time and we have to continue to use it over that period of time.

• Payback—I agonized and agonized over my first DSLR, which I bought used and would still be using if it met the conditions specified in the paragraph above. (It didn't—it broke.) I paid $1,600 for it, used, with a lens. A year or two later, I took a picture with it I couldn't have taken without it, had a print sale, and earned $3,000. I immediately considered that the camera had paid for itself and yielded a dividend of $1,400. I never worried after that about the money I had spent for it: the camera had earned its keep. This, obviously, is how most pros think about their equipment: will it bring in more than it cost? If so, it's a good value even if it was very expensive.

• Pleasure of ownership—let's face it, this is worth something. The opposite is called "a fool's economy"—you buy something cheaper than you wanted because it's more "responsible" or a better deal, but you don't get any pleasure out of owning or using it. In that way, a smaller, less costly, more "sensible" purchase can actually be more of a waste of money.

• Resale value—I've made this argument in depth before, but a purchase can be considered a "rental" of sorts if the resale value is subtracted from the purchase price and amortized over the time differential. That is, buy a camera for $1,500, use it extensively for a year, resell it for $1,200, and the equipment cost to you was $300 for the year, or $25 a month. This idea is fraught with several perils: you can't predict the future value of your equipment on the used market, and you have to be disciplined and go ahead and resell it. But, clearly, a piece of equipment that retains a larger fraction of its purchase price is fairly said to "hold its value."

• The deal—how good a price you got when you bought the thing. People pay way too much attention to this, in my opinion—sometimes even making their choice of what to buy based on what's on sale for the biggest discount. In fact, if you pay the most attention to optimizing value with all the items listed above, this one hardly even matters. Where it does matter is if a good deal allows you buy something you otherwise couldn't or wouldn't. It doesn't matter how good a deal I could get on a new Ferrari, for instance—even at half price it would still be way out of my reach. But the difference between $950 and $450 for a set of golf clubs would make the difference between something I'd never buy and something I might buy, so a discount makes a difference in that respect. Otherwise, "good deals" are highly overrated.

I think if you can hit three or more of these seven value targets, it would add up to a sane and sensible purchase over the long run.

Mike

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How Much Would You Spend?

Just wondering...do you have any sort of inbuilt limit for how much you'll spend on a major photography purchase, such as a camera, lens, or printer?

I recently got the idea to buy a new lens (this one) because I was fascinated by what I could detect of its performance from online samples. I even went so far as to ask my salesman friend at my local camera store to order one in for me. I figured I could run it through the wringer, write about it, and "sell it on." I'd lose a few hundred bucks, which seemed reasonable considering what I'd get out of the experience. Made sense to me. But I found I was constitutionally unable to fork over the cash for it...I've just spent too much of my life living too close to budgetary peril. It's a psychological issue, not a rational one. But I couldn't give up my grip on a whopping $1600+ for one single-focal-length 24x36 lens. Just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I do owe my salesman friend an apology. (Kevin, are you reading?) [UPDATE: See below.]

I have a local reader friend who shoots with an S2*. He actually makes a very good living as a photographer—he makes more money selling prints than almost anyone I know, in fact—and that camera makes perfect sense for his work. His earnings more than justify the camera's cost. But it almost gives me the willies to handle it. I mean, I could drop it. In fact, this was the chief issue for me during my "Leica period" circa 1991–3. I just never got used to having $3k hanging from my shoulder. It was insured—I was all right—but from first to last I just never could get comfortable.

So how about you? Do you have an upper limit? A comfort zone? Is it just me? Just wondering.

Mike

*I used to have a rule of thumb as an audiophile—your stereo should never cost more than your music collection. Maybe there's a similar rule for cameras—your camera should never cost more than your car. The S2 would violate such a rule in my case—and that's just the body, never mind the lenses.

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Featured (partial) Comment by Tom Clifton: " I am thinking that you shouldn't spend more on your camera/lens than you spend on your computer."

Featured Comment by Andrew Karre: "Amusing. I have two semi-expensive hobbies: cycling (I have a Rivendell, coincidentally) and photography. I am never troubled when the value of the tools I use to practice either exceed the value of my car—but I take no particular pleasure in driving. My limit formula goes like this. Never own a bike or a camera that's so expensive that you couldn't replace it basically immediately if it were lost or stolen with another that would replace the quality of the experience. To me, that's the point at which the cost of the tool infringes on the enjoyment of the activity."

Featured Comment by Jay Frew: "By the time this round of comments is published on your blog, I'm sure I won't be the only one to suggest this: Insured rental for 21 days is $11/day (plus shipping). Three weeks should be enough time for your 35/1.4 bee to find its way out of your bonnet ;~))

"I often rent a super telephoto for two weeks in the Spring (Red Tail Hawks) and I have rented lenses to help with lens purchase decisions. It works for me. Since photography does not contribute to my 'bottom line' (and I like it that way), I don't 'need' any equipment. I am quite happy with what I have (save for the lack of the aforementioned super telephoto—the price of which is out of my orbit). So, I definitely have limits and those limits are trending downwards. Cheers!"

Featured Comment by Kevin: "Apology accepted. ;) Don't let it keep you away Mike. I do enjoy our occasional chats. I understand the comfort zone issue. I have them myself, for camera gear, and other things too. I start to get edgy when I even get close to them. Sometimes even purchases that I rationally know make good practical sense for me require a lot of self-convincing if they bump up against those comfort zones."

Handle

Handle tag seen on Miata.net...

"We're all here because we're not all there."

Sort of works for any enthusiast forum, doesn't it?

Mike

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Golf Clubs (Not Actually Off-Topic)

I have a pattern. (The young are so intense because they think everything that happens to them is unique, singular in their lives and in the history of the world. Us old goats—er, rather, us fit, dynamic, virile, sharp-as-a-tack middle-aged goats—know better. We realize that most everything is something we've done before and will do again. But I digress. Digression being another of my unshakeable longstanding habits.) To resume: I was talking about a pattern. Every year in August I play between two and five very enjoyable rounds of golf with some combination of brothers and cousins and husbands of cousins. I come home all fired up to get better at golf (this happens every year; the Wisconsin winter eventually stops it, er, cold). I play a few rounds locally (usually alone, not much fun), or take a few lessons (I get all enthused about what I learn, until I discover that it has done absolutely nothing to redress my lack of skill and talent). Or else I look into buying new clubs.

What I'd like: elegant, classic forged blades like Sam Snead might have used

Every time I do the latter, I come down to the same little dilemma: I find I'm a golf-club connoisseur. I like the idea of classic, elegant forged blades, with Rifle steel shafts and plain leather grips. Of course, there is a small problem, which is that I suck at golf. It's not technically hopeless: there is nothing wrong with my golf game that constant practice, dozens if not hundreds of lessons, better eyesight, improved hand-eye coordination, and a level of natural athleticism I wasn't born with couldn't cure. It would also help if I could go back in time and start playing the game at a younger age (I started when I was 40).

What I deserve: alarmingly ugly design and an adolescent name

The clubs I would play better with would be atrocious-looking oversized cavity-back "game improvement" irons with a huge offset and graphite shafts slathered with silly decals. The kind that look like they were designed in the '70s as a final exam in a high school mechanical drawing course. They will have some sort of ludicrous over-the-top pseudo-macho marketing name like "Afterburner" or "Powerstrike," perhaps with the name of a precious metal or a predatory animal tacked on for good measure. (Golf club marketing is an object lesson in just how horribly you can complicate and uglify essentially very simple tools, larding them up with excessive, pointless conceits. "Super power tungsten pellets give the hybrid GZ-3R 7z Platinum F-Formation clubs an extremely low center of gravity to make the ball jump off the clubface for surprising distance, without sacrificing the enhanced feel that higher handicap players prefer," etc., etc. Right—if Poindexter had been taught how to hold the wretched thing properly in the first place, and had enough atheletic ability to actually cause the clubface to meet the ball in the middle of a swing. Incompetence at feats of coordination is largely technology-resistant; marketing-speak to the contrary can only go so far.)

So what I'm getting around to (another pattern—I often enjoy taking the long way around to get to my points) is that there is an aesthetics of equipment that sometimes actually conflicts with the essential practical imperative: namely, working effectively, appropriately, and efficiently. I could buy the aesthetically perfect set of golf clubs; it's just that I'd never be able to play with them. I'd have to set them in the corner and just look at them. Forged muscleback blades have a sweet spot the size of a dime and require great skill and long practice to master. I, on the other hand, play the game four times a year, and I have detected that I am getting older (read "even less athletic") with every passing year.

I'm not talking about you
I see the same sort of the problem among photography enthusiasts all the time—they spend a great deal of time, effort, research, and money building an aesthetically perfect equipment kit, neglecting to figure out what it is they want to shoot or learning how to shoot it. Little things. So if you gently criticize their pictures, you'll be met with a serene shrug—"just a test shot"—but god forbid you criticize their equipment, because, if you do, then you shall be met with fierce arguments and strenuous counterattacks.

I hope you are not seeing yourself in that last description. Just in case, "present company excluded." ...Except that I fear I do the exact thing I'm talking about myself, sometimes. I seem, for example, to have acquired The Perfect View Camera—aided by temporary amnesia, in that I neglected to remember that I am not a natural, or very good, view camera photographer. Damn, I annoy myself sometimes. (Maybe I should set it in the corner and just look at it.)

I dream about sailboats occasionally, too. Fortunately, I also manage periodically to recall that I don't know how to sail.

Anyway, I enjoyed using the Mamiya 7II this summer at the lake. The 50 exposures I had to work with lasted from the first to the last day. I think I enjoyed the camera partly because it is not even remotely perfect, which helped it become "just a tool." It's the equivalent of that cavity-back game-improvement iron. I don't like rangefinders, I don't like color film, I don't like slow ƒ/4 lenses, and, when you have to use a clunky tripod because of the silly slow lens, you have to take the silly camera off the tripod just to focus it, because the rangefinder patch limits to you to focusing on the very center of the frame, which is often not the thing you want to focus on. The camera is not even pretty. Even the name is not pretty (who vetted the name "Mamiya" for the American market, anyway? Sounds like a cross between "Mama" and "ya-ya"). And it was all just fine. I actually enjoy making do.

Well, I think I did just fine. We'll see when I get the results back. I opted to try Dwayne's Photo—which is not closing—in Parsons, Kansas, for the developing and proofing, partly as props for their part in keeping Kodachrome alive for so long. I get to see how they do with 6x7 film, but I am also wondering how well I did with an unfamiliar camera and rusty chops. When the film comes back I'll show you a few, good or bad.

I hope I didn't just make a rash promise.

Fortunately, I continue to sensibly resist the lure of golf club marketing. My clubs cost me $100, on closeout, well over a dozen years ago now. Are they the best ones for me? I have no idea how anyone would know. I'd get better ones, but I don't know how to find good clubs for bad players.

I don't know how to use the @#$! things anyway, so it's all good.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Chad Thompson: "May I humbly suggest to you the Hickory. It's the Chamonix Whole Plate of the golf world."

Mike replies: Damn you, Thompson! That is just the sort of thing that I would spend my money on, to no practical purpose whatsover. [g]

Featured Comment by Chuck Holst: "Totally off the main point, but I used to work for a photographer who would deliberately mispronounce 'Mamiya' as 'Mama mia!' I'm afraid I still occasionally fall into that bad habit."

August Print Offer

Hard to believe, but it's been a long time since we did a print offer—and 18 months since Ctein's last sale.

So, coming up in less than two weeks, Ctein will be having a dog-days-of-August "Big Print" inkjet sale here on TOP—three classic landscapes and the Apollo / Saturn 1 launchpad shot that you've already seen. Ironically, given that the title of that post was "No One Cares How Hard You Worked," Ctein had to work really hard to make a stunner of a print of that image. Know any Space Program buffs? Be sure to alert them.

Big prints
I chose three of the four selections. At 17 x 22", all four prints are much larger than the dye transfer prints Ctein has offered here in the past; all four are inkjet prints made from scans of medium-format negatives; and all four are exemplars of just how good inkjet prints can be, circa 2011 A.D. Oh, and all four will be very affordably priced in absolute dollar terms, more so than several of our recent sales.

Tune in on Wednesday August 24th for the sale announcement and to see the images. I've also asked Ctein to write a bit about the differences between inkjet and dye transfer printing—he's printed for several clients, including the rock'n'roll photographer Jim Marshall, in both media, so he has a lot of experience with the visual and technical differences.

Five days and a fraction of the price
As usual, the sale will last for five days only. If you're unfamiliar with our sales, we keep the cost way down by taking orders in advance during a specified period of time. Then we close the orders, and the photographer gets to work. The photographer can production-line the printing knowing that each one is already sold. We earn much less per print that way than a traditional gallery sale would bring in, but we make it up in volume, and we can sell the prints for a fraction of gallery prices.

Everybody ends up happy. And that's a good thing.

Mike

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The M Module: Zero Percent and 100 Percent

The following is not a critical appraisal, merely a statement of personal preference.

Personally, I have zero interest in adapters—broadly stated, anything designed to let you use lenses designed for one type of camera on another type of camera.

I went through a period in the '90s when I was mildly obsessed with mixing and matching cameras and lenses. I had a marvelous medium-format lens—still one of the best lenses I've ever used—but it was a breechlock, and I had endless trouble with several samples of the camera it was made for (the Exakta 66 Mod 2 and 3). So I got the idea in my head to mate it to another camera. I tried adapters and even talked to Ken Ruth of Photography on Bald Mountain (a wizard of a camera repairman) about permanently modifying the functionality of either the camera or the lens so I could put in on a Pentax 645. There turned out to be an adaptor—not as functional, but much, much cheaper. I looked into other combinations, too—I was going to get some Zeiss Contax lenses converted to Nikon mount (an easy conversion since the mounts are similar to each other). 

Then one morning I just woke up and I was done with all that. Ever since then, I've only used—only thought about using—cameras and lenses specifically designed for each other. My feeling is that adapted lenses are always going to be a kludge in some way or another. Every one I've ever tried has been. Stop-down metering, blind, or scale, or inconvenient focusing, annoying mismatches in flange distance or mysterious flaring or whatever. It's almost never a totally convenient or totally satisfactory way of working. So, personally, I have no interest in the forthcoming M Module for the GXR.

But—and, if you'll pardon the expression, it's a big but—I know that many other people have lots of fun with adapters, and with mixing and matching cameras and lenses. Just look at all the people who have had a lot of fun putting Leica and other lenses on Micro 4/3 cameras so far. I even know a few photographers who have done serious work with such pairings. And some people just love adapters. And I approve of that 100%. I have no objection to anyone having fun with their cameras however they wish to—that's something I'm completely in favor of. I would never assume that because I've decided on a course of action or a personal philosophy or whatever, others must do the same. Quite the contrary. I know some people are going to love the M Module and get a great deal of satisfaction from it. It's not for me; but it's still possible for it to be the coolest "adapter" ever invented.

Mike

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Featured Comment by latent_image: "I could happily do without the adapter craze for a different reason. Lenses I want for the cameras they were originally meant for (in my case Pentax K, M, and A series) have become much scarcer and more expensive thanks to the adapto-nuts. Worse are the cases where lenses have been permanently altered for the purposes of some half-baked kludge. I thought the whole point of digital was so that folks could buy NEW toys, thereby letting us film dinosaurs finally get bargains on gear we've lusted after for decades. Hrrmph!"

Interlude

It was really beautiful here yesterday.

I've been going on drives in the evenings.

The moon's not quite full.

When summer days in the upper Midwest are nice, they're really nice.

The second and third of these were taken a few miles west of where I live, at a place called Bryn Road. The first one's off Maple Road. I think there was a hawk chasing the crows—notice him?

Back in town again on the way home. I guess I'm a lunatic. Always trying snaps of the moon.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Ray Hudson: "Very nice, the first in particular. Wyeth landscapes come to mind. However, if that hawk is chasing crows, that's a first. Crows chase hawks. In fact, it's one of their favorite things. Along with owls if they can find one. They call out and bring in crows from all over to harass the hawk. I've watched it many times, usually end up feeling sorry for the poor hawk, who is invariably driven off."

Introduction to Digital Printing

By Ctein

This is the first of several aperiodic [i.e., discontinuous —Ed.] columns on getting started in digital printing. Mike asked me if I would do some articles geared toward people who are just getting into it, and I agreed that was a good idea, so here we go. The intended audience is folks who haven't done any serious digital printing but would like to. It doesn't matter if you have wet darkroom experience or not. You're starting anew, regardless. Folks with considerable darkroom experience will have a leg up artistically and aesthetically, but, technique-wise, they're in the same boat as everyone else. It's a brand new learning curve.

In truth, one of the ways experienced darkroom printers get themselves in trouble is not realizing that. When they dive into digital printing expecting it to be the same, they frequently become frustrated or disillusioned with the mediocre quality of their prints. Don't let that happen to you. Accept that no matter how proficient you are in the darkroom, it will take you months to years to become really good at digital printing.

Your very first task is going to be choosing a printer. Pretty much anything made by the four major players—Epson, HP, Canon, or Kodak—will produce decent-looking color prints, as good or better as you could have made in the darkroom. Doesn't matter whether they're four-ink, six-ink, eight-ink, or ten ink; they can all produce very good results. It's all in how you use them. Most printers made by these four companies will also offer decent print permanence (to check for certain, go to the Wilhelm Research site) with some cautions that I will get to in the next column; it doesn't matter whether they use pigment-based or dye-based inks.

I'm not saying there aren't differences. I am saying that you have to be a sophisticated printer for the differences to matter. Otherwise it's like being a beginning photographer and fretting about whether you should be settling on Nikon, Canon, or Leica lenses.

If you're one of the small minority whose primary interest is black-and-white printing, you'll need to be pickier in your choices. You'll want a printer with at least two levels of black ink (normal and light) and three is even better. Your basic four-color printer or, really, any printer with only one black/gray color of ink in it is not likely to make you black and white prints you'll be happy with.

If you don't know how to research printers really carefully, stay away from the second tier companies such as Brother and Lexmark. Some of their printers are great. Some are garbage. Some produce really permanent prints. Some produce prints as ephemeral as tissue paper.

Something else to stay away from: the so-called "aftermarket" inks and papers: the stuff you see advertised that costs a fraction of what the printer manufacturers' inks and papers cost. Many of them will produce significantly poorer-looking prints. And just about every single one of them, in any combination, will produce prints that are 10 to 100 times less permanent than the manufacturers' goods.

Yes, the printer manufacturers are going to charge you an arm and a leg for print supplies. You're just going to have to learn to live with that.

There are good third-party inks and papers out there. They aren't cheap, either. Especially the papers.

My advice? Stick with the manufacturers inks, beyond question. Try the manufacturers' highest-grade photographic papers first. If you find one of them that you like pretty well, stick with it. Only look into third-party premium-quality papers if you can't find a manufacturer's paper you like.

Once you become a really good printer, then you can become a fine connoisseur of inks and papers. When you're beginning, it's like fretting about which fine wine goes best with a Happy Meal.

Does that mean I think you should just pin all the printer names on a corkboard and throw darts at them? No, but to decide what printer you should buy, you'll need to take other factors into account. That'll be the topic of my next column in this subject.

That column won't appear for several weeks, however. Next week is the occasion of my 200th TOP Column (canyabelieveit?) and I have something special planned for that one. And the week following, my next Grand TOP Print Sale begins! Stay tuned—Mike will give you the details.

Ctein

If it's Wednesday, it must be Ctein—back on schedule. Long known as an expert in fine printing, Ctein was one of the last masters of the esoteric and difficult dye transfer process, and now makes part of his living as a custom printer making inkjet prints. —MJ

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.