The Online Photographer

The Tail that Wags the Dog

We got some very interesting and perceptive comments around here yesterday, for which thanks.

The trouble with focus groups
Phil Thomas wrote:

I keep hearing about people who want to upgrade from compacts to interchangeable lens cameras without DSLR bulk but I have never actually met one. They must exist, in focus groups at least, though whether their stated desires translate to real world purchases I do wonder. I know several people with Micro 4/3 cameras and a couple of people with Sony NEX cameras but all of them have DSLRs (except one who sold his DSLR to get a NEX). All of them are photography enthusiasts who wanted something smaller for when they didn't feel like carrying a DSLR with them. I also know a few people with DSLRs who are not photography enthusiasts at all. They bought DSLRs as they associated them with professional photography and therefore expected to get better photographs than they did with their compacts or phones.

Here's the problem with focus groups: it turns out that when you can get a bunch of people together and get their undivided attention, and have an extended period of time in which to explain your product and its rationale to them while they're feeling attentive and receptive, you get different reactions than when your product is just sitting there unexplained in a bubbling cauldron of hundreds of other similar products all competing for the harried consumer's attention. (Bubbling cauldron metaphor: surfaces briefly every so often and then sinks out of sight again.)

One of the most consumer-researched product introductions of all time in this industry was also one of the biggest flops: APS, the Advanced Photo System, which was an attempt to create a better standard than the then-standard 35mm color negative film with one-hour processing. The engineers got a chance to back-engineer the product the market had already decided it wanted. They created a new standard that did everything the old standard did but had better efficiency and better profitability along with a few added technical advantages, such as built-in multi-format capability. When they had a chance to explain it carefully to attentive consumers, the attentive consumers liked it.

Masahiro Suzuki, the Nikon R&D Manager in charge of the Nikon 1 project
Photo by Shawn Barnett (used with permission)

Trouble was, the product didn't have much natural appeal to people unless it was explained carefully to them. As far as most people could see from the "normal viewing distance," APS didn't offer any advantages over what they already had, plus it had the disadvantage of being new and unestablished—and it wasn't any cheaper. The "it's more efficient" argument turns out to be weak when the savings are going into suppliers' pockets as profits rather than translating to savings for the consumer.

In fairness, APS never really had a chance. If digital hadn't appeared on the horizon just after APS's 1996 introduction, it's possible that it would eventually have caught on. As it was, it lasted eight years. That's before it sunk beneath the waves; the ship was listing and doomed long before that.

Significantly, one of the APS consortium's big mistakes (the consortium: Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, and Konica, all film makers, with cameras from Minolta, Canon, and Nikon as well as Kodak and Fuji) was that the system had no appeal to pros and advanced amateurs. Like it or not, the small core of enthusists and pros are the tail that wags the dog in the photo market. They (I should say "we," of course, since that's us) have an outsized influence on the purchases our friends, relatives, and neighbors make.

Of course, we don't control anything; we just contribute. But the fact that APS had nothing to offer the enthusiast or pro, and garnered no enthusiasm from those quarters, added to its miseries.

A reader signing himself "david" wrote: "If Nikon had done the same thing [with the Nikon 1 System] as they did except based around an APS-C sensor, I think the reaction would have been 100% the other way. Every enthusiast Nikon DX owner would have been falling all over themselves to pre-order one." Possibly true; it's also possibly true that manufacturers need to throw us enthusiasts our bones, not because the product needs the features that appeal to us but just because the we're the ones who are going to explain the appeal of the product to the non-enthusiasts who are supposed to buy it.

The better Nikon communicates to us the advantages of the Nikon 1, the better it will sell to the market it's intended for. And that's why things like Imaging-Resource's exclusive interview with Nikon's Masahiro Suzuki (suggested by "beuler" in the Comments) are going to be important.

A quick sample, which will bring me to my last point:

MS: We are quite confident that we achieved almost exactly the same quality as our DSLR.

DE [Dave Etchells, publisher of Imaging-Resource]: (surprised) The same quality as DSLRs.

MS: Yes...Please evaluate! (laughs)

DE: Yes, obviously, we'll test and we'll hold you to that! That's very interesting, because this is a much smaller sensor, but you say the same quality.

MS: Mm-hmm.

The final component? Trial by firing, you might say—actual trials, tests, and reviews. As Dave says.

And that relates back to enthusiast appeal, too, because products that consumers use but that don't draw any interest from enthusiasts tend not to get reviewed. Even the comprehensive review sites don't review all the point-and-shoots on the market, for instance, and you'll notice that when Imaging-Resource actually reviewed a camera phone recently, it was an unusual enough occurrence that we noted it here.

That might be one area where being a Nikon really does help. It will belp ensure reviews, which will help communicate the product's virtues to enthusiasts...who will then help educate and inform the elusive non-camera-customer market that's supposedly out there waiting for these new products made especially for them.

Mike

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Featured Comment by KeithB: "I think one telling point about the new Nikon system is that Luminous-Landscape—which usually pounces on anything new, and dare I say exciting—has so far had not a peep to say about the new system on the main page."

Featured Comment by Nick: "This analysis seems spot-on to me, but I am not a marketing professional. I can say that my friends do come to me to ask for camera recommendations. So far, I believe I have helped several people settle on good sub-$300 pocket superzooms, one person settle on a very inexpensive Canon compact, and one person settle on an E-P3. Perhaps I'm not explaining the advantages of larger, more expensive cameras well enough. Of course, I am one of the apparently rare enthusiasts who uses nothing but Micro 4/3 gear and does not own a DSLR...."

Featured Comment by K. Harrington: "A very interesting interview with Mister Suzuki...I said it yesterday on here and I'll say it again, this camera will be a run away hit!"

Featured Comment by Gerry Morgan: "I'm under no illusions about my power of influence over friends seeking camera purchase advice. I'm always scrupulously careful not to unduly favour the brand or format that I happen to use. Typically, the person then talks to someone else with no such qualms, and buys the camera the other photographer enthuses about. Not that this undermines Mike's argument in any way. It just means that I personally have not the slightest influence on the market, except when I'm buying."

Featured [partial] Comment by Speed: "Focus Groups: Imagine leading a focus group 15 years ago and asking, 'Who wants a camera in their phone?'"

Featured Comment by Peter Rees: "My wife has an Olympus E-P1. I call it her 'photographer's wife's camera.'"

Featured Comment by latent_image: "Just for the record, my wife loved—I should say LOVED—her APS Nikon Nuvis S. As a non-photographer, it delivered everything she wanted from a camera: foolproof film loading, auto-everything operation, and a very clever system for image storage and retrieval. The Nuvis S was sandwiched by a Canonet QL19 and a Canon digicam, both which she hated.

"I personally think digital cameras will—over time—prove to be disastrous when it comes to family photos. Many ordinary folks will end up losing their image files. Even my very bright son-in-law, with a master's degree in computer science, managed to lose a large batch of his first child's baby pictures. Shoe boxes are dead simple. Digital image management is more than most want to think about."

Mike replies: I've lost digital images I really wanted to keep. I have to admit. But then, I've lost precious negatives, too.

Micro 4/3 is the Big Kahuna

The Micro 4/3 sensor: small, yet big. Big, yet small.

-

"Kahuna is a Hawaiian word, defined in the Pukui & Elbert (1986) as a 'Priest, sorcerer, magician, wizard, minister, expert in any profession.' [...] The term [was] commonplace in Beach Party films of the 1960s such as 'Beach Blanket Bingo,' where the 'Big Kahuna' was the best surfer on the beach." (Wikipedia)

The Nikon 1 certainly caused a stir yesterday. Most of it, unfortunately, negative. Thom Hogan of ByThom.com referred to the reaction variously as "anger, anger, anger," and an "uproar."

Me, I spent a fascinating couple of hours yesterday reading up on the IBM PCjr, the Edsel, and Kodak's Photo CD.

Did you know, for instance, that IBM spent $40 million just on pre-launch advertising for the PCjr, and never made it up over the life of the product? And did you know that Edsel was not just a car, but was supposed to be an entire Ford division, like Buick was at GM? It's just too bad that it was also the ultimate ignominy for Edsel Ford, who despite being a really good guy seemed to get the shaft at every turn—he even died before his time (of stomach cancer, at 49). As for Photo CD, I could tell you stories. For many years, Kodak was just so big that it assumed it could create the very markets it expected to supply. It tried that trick over and over—early on with success; later, not so much. For those whose memory may be hazy, I'll just note that, once upon a time, Kodak's concept of the future was that everyone was going to be looking at their pictures on their TV sets, using purpose-specific components that looked like stereo music CD players (because they basically were). Kodak expected to sell 250,000 of these a year. When the dust finally settled on the interminable closeouts six or eight years later, sales were something like a tenth of that. Not for one year; for the entire life of the product.

People, Americans especially, seem to give enormous weight and respect to bigness. IBM was the big dog in computers in the early '80s, with 70% of the mainframe market locked up. It was assumed that IBM could do no wrong and would win every battle. By the way, did I tell you that my shuttle driver to the airport when I went to Maine used to be an IT guy? For mainframes. He never worried about PCs because he figured the PC would never catch on and the mainframe would never go away. He said he had to go back to school to learn how to drive a truck.

But I digress.

Anyway, another thing I learned yesterday was that IBM actually timed its pre-launch announcements and advertising specifically to interfere with competitors' sales. It worked. People held off buying the PCjr's competitors because they expected big-dog IBM to automatically prevail.

It's not how big a stick you have, it's how hard you swing it
Similarly, lots of photographers have taken a wait-and-see attitude towards mirrorless because the biggies (Canikon, who together control, oh, something like 117% of the camera market) hadn't signed on yet. Surely when Canon and Nikon came into mirrorless they would blow the little guys away with their...their...bigness.

Just like in the '70s in the U.S. auto market when imports were growing like crazy. All sorts of people were just waiting for things to get serious. For Detroit to enter the fray. What they turned out to be waiting for were the Pinto and the Vega.

Turned out Detroit didn't take small cars seriously.

The outrage and anger anger anger in our little corner of the photographic firmament is not so much over Nikon's mirrorless offering as that—in our terms, this would be—we found out yesterday that Nikon isn't taking mirrorless seriously. I cannot speak for the pink-camera-wielding Asian female "what does 'megapixel' mean anyway?" crowd. All I can talk about are all the photo-dawgs who expected the arriving half of the Canikon juggernaut to blitz the weak, wimpling little Oly-Panaleica snivelers with its glorious big Nikon Kahunishness. We expected a photographer's tool that would take on Micro 4/3 and NEX on their own terms, head-to-head, and smash into them rugby-style. Instead, Nikon created a targeted consumer product aimed at people not serious enough about photography to own a D5100. That has spray-and-pray built in. That is interesting mainly because it has some of what we hope will be trickle-up deep technology.

(Canon, for its part, must be a little like a guy who has been following another guy across a minefield—right after the first guy got blown up. Hmm, what's the next step now?)

The apparent market leader really is leading the market
My suspicion is that what yesterday really proves is that Micro 4/3 really is the real deal, the sweet spot, the best option—the real Kahuna.

APS-C sensors work fine in fixed-lens mirrorless cameras, such as the Leica X1* and the Fujifilm X100. And while NEX is making its own splash and winning its own adherents, many have pointed out that the over-large sensor is distorting the size of the lenses, preventing them from being miniaturized in proportion to the cameras. On the other hand, Micro 4/3 really does seem to have it right: the sensor is big enough, but not too big; small enough, but not too small. The cameras are right-sized, the lenses are right-sized. Everything's in balance. Everything fits.

Not only that, but there are choices everywhere. Choices, which buyers like to have. Choices not just of bodies (how many are there now?) but of body styles. And having two-slash-three companies (Olympus, Panasonic, and Leica-branded Panasonic) making the same system is reaping obvious rewards in one very important area: lenses. The latest sweet little morsel is due to ship this very month: the tasty Leica DG Summilux 25mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH.

I'll just wait here while you go look up that 18.5mm ƒ/1.4 for the Nikon 1. Dump-de-dum.

Take a look at this page—looking like a system, isn't it gang? A pretty generous one. You can get a fisheye. And a superfast premium ultrawide. And a choice of eight standard zooms (although I don't quite grok why they're all different, but then I'm zoom-impaired). And a 3D lens. And not one but a choice of three pancakes.

Let's take bets on on how long you'll have to wait for this many lenses for the NEX or the Nikon 1. (And don't give me that adaptor crap—not that Micro 4/3 doesn't have plenty of those. I mean fully functioning auto-coupled lenses designed for the system.) Even if Micro 4/3 stands still, which it won't, you're still talking years for Sony and Nikon to fill all their lineup holes.

Canon kingdom come
Acolytes of bigness will not be swayed, I'm sure. They'll just say, serenely, sure, but wait till Canon comes. Just you wait. 

Wait.

Thing is, I'm not sure we have to do any more waiting. Yesterday seemed like a milestone to me. It was a couple of Nikons that arrived, I know that. But somehow it seemed like what really arrived was Micro 4/3.

Mike

*Which doesn't seem to be getting much mindshare these days, or is that just in my little backwater Parish?

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Featured Comment by Joseph: "Does my having purchased the DMC-GF1 just two months after its arrival offset the 1972 Pinto I bought new at age 19?

Featured Comment by Robert Roaldi: "And I'm still shooting non-Micro 4/3 Olympus DSLRs. Man, do I feel old or what.

Featured Comment by Ivan: "Americans like bigness, yet we hate carrying big cameras. I suspect it's because there's little prestige in it, unlike showing up in a new black 'Slade. As for Canon mirrorless, the mystery is over—it will be, point for point, like Nikon's. In the same colors, too, I predict. Long live Micro 4/3."

Featured Comment by Malcolm S: "I'm not sure that you quite 'get it.' Whether the Nikon 1 succeeds or not, it heralds the beginning of a new paradigm in still photography. No longer will photographers able to afford only a cheaper camera have to compose a single scenario for the 'perfect' picture. They will extract that picture from within a rapidly taken sequence. For that you need fast autofocus and processing speed, with the Nikon 1 claimed to have those in spades (faster even than the D3s). The size of the sensor and number of pixels are largely irrelevant with reasonable lighting and print sizes to 11x17. The age of the slow plodding dinosaur may be coming to a close, with faster and more agile species overtaking it in the evolutionary race."

Featured Comment by Mark Crabtree: "I thought that Micro 4/3 was the big winner yesterday. That sensor seems bigger than it did two days ago, doesn't it?

"The Nikon is cute and does some interesting and amazing (and sometimes annoying) things. I can see it thriving as a fun and fashionable amateur camera, but it is hard to imagine that the current price structure isn't going to be a problem in that market.

"I keep obsessively reading camera reviews and always end up back at the Panasonic G3 (or GH2). Nevertheless, I'm happy enough with the Sony Alpha 100 that I've ended up with sort of by accident (a throw-in on a camera trade). For now I can make the pictures I want to with the gear I have, and just sit back and watch the parade of amazing new cameras."

Featured Comment by Johan: "The guy in the minefield following the other guy would at least know to follow him to the exact spot where he exploded. Whereto from there, however, is the big question.

"There are still a few things that need to click for me with regards to Micro 4/3, but it is pretty much getting there. I just need to find a body that is affordable and fast enough and it would, along with that Panasonic 20/1.7 pancake, probably never leave my hands.

"But I don't need one now, so I can wait and see if Canon will make a move. Mostly because I might want to be able to use the EF glass and flash I already own on a mirrorless as well."

Featured Comment by Don Craig: "The bottom of the market is a dangerous place to be, as mobile phones are just about to pass eight megapixels. Phones include lots of funky apps for canned post-processing of snaps of me and my friends, and everyone carries one all the time. Pretty soon, the only market for camera cameras will be for those serious photographers Nikon has just ignored."

Featured Comment by Craig: "While Kodak's Photo CD may have been a market failure, it was a great solution for many of us involved in color print publication back in the day."

Featured Comment by Will Frostmill: "Can I get an A-men?"

Featured Comment by John Krumm: "I think there's truth to what you say, Mike, and if you add in the third party lenses coming even more so (Sigma is rumored to be working on Micro 4/3 lenses). But give the new systems a few years to catch up on their own terms. Nikon displayed a slew of mock-up lenses it plans to release. And the phase/cdaf combo AF sounds like a breakthrough, and might be easily used on a DX version of this camera. What if the D400 or later D500 looks somewhat like an upsized version of the V1? That might be interesting."

Featured Comment by Michael: "Impeccably logical conclusion...but I'm buying a NEX 7 anyway. :)"

Featured Comment by Nick: "A look at the specs on the NEX 7 makes me want to abandon my bag of Micro 4/3 gear and buy one; a look at the NEX lens options makes me want to cuddle my bag of Micro 4/3 gear to my chest like it was an an adorable little puppy.

"At this point, I'm not sure what Canon could introduce that would woo people away from what's already out there. The APS mirrorless field is badly overcrowded (and Canon might not want to risk its Rebel sales); Micro 4/3 would be hard to dislodge from its perch on the half-sized sensor market; and Nikon has beaten them to the market in the last remaining sensible size category for system cameras. Maybe if Canon had a six-lens system (bright primes and dim zooms in each of wide, normal, and tele) ready to ship on release day?"

Featured Comment by Pavel Urusov: "I think you should pay some attention to Samsung. Their lens line-up is very promising, their roadmap even more so. And they have pancakes, too! Tweny millimeter and 30mm NX pancakes are very good, and the upcoming 16mm pancake also looks attractive. In my opinion, Samsung NX system shows that APS-C lenses can be made sufficiently small."

Featured Comment by Steve Jacob: "Actually, everyone has it backwards—the real problem with MFT is that it is basically a high end netbook for people that actually want a laptop, but are happy to lose performance because its a bit lighter and smaller. The N1 is more like an iPad - a computer for people that dont pretend they want to WORK on the darn thing, they just want to surf and play and read newspapers. An iPad does not replace a laptop - its for people that never actually wanted or needed a laptop in the first place, they just wanted to do some of the fun things a laptop did without all the hassle of learning to use one. Nikon 1 is the camera Apple would make, (though theirs would look nicer). Nice pictures without that pesky manual."

Mike replies: I was following your argument up until that last sentence. That still kinda remains to be seen, no?

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "Mike is definitely on to something with the Nikon-as-Kodak analogy. Big and successful companies notoriously tend to ossify and become fatally conservative in their thinking. The path to managerial advancement becomes ever more conformist when the profits keep rolling in. Here in the Rochester N.Y. area it's been agonizing to witness the slow motion suicide of the company once known as "the Great Yellow Father." Their latest act of desperation: selling off their priceless collection of patents for pennies on the dollar, just to stave off bankruptcy for another year or two. The vultures are circling.

"Kodak's Photo CD was certainly a disappointment to the company. However, I believe the fatal wound was inflicted by their huge investment in the launch of a brand new film format (APS) at the worst possible moment in history. Kodak sank literally billions into the new system, bleeding them dry of development funds just as the digital tsunami began to rise."

Featured Comment by Sergio Muscat: "I am a Nikon guy and was very curious about the new mirrorless system (I also have an EPL2 which I love, meaning there was no waiting for me, because I knew that anyway it would take at least a year or two for a new format to settle, and I knew Nikon would want to do it 'their way'). Anyway, my point is that at face value, the new format is disappointing. However, what is interesting is the fantastic technology which is under the hood. What Nikon have done is used the 1 series to create a new, solid basis for their new DSLR lineup, which I am pretty sure remains their primary focus. Now I am really curious to see the new DSLR upgrades."

Nothing Like a Big Announcement

Big new camera announcements do bring in the people. TOP pegged just under 30,000 direct visitors today, which is above average for a Wednesday. There are also currently 24,300 people subscribed to the full feed; the two groups do overlap.

So my only complaint is, why can't major camera companies announce entire new systems every day?  :-)

By the way, interesting advertisement:

It seems to make a case for the V1's "special features" that isn't quite apparent from the spec list. Given that I know I'm not the target market, it helps me see a little more easily what they're up to. Thanks to Bruno Masset for this.

If you can't see the video, click here.

Mike

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Size Doesn't / Does Matter

By Ctein

The recent spate of camera announcements has brought forth many half-informed comments about sensor sizes and pixel counts. Let's clear some stuff up.

You can make great, as in fully professional quality, photographs with small sensors. I'm not talking about artistic subjectivity, I'm talking about objective technical quality. Now, just as with small-format film cameras (read: 35mm) they're not going to be the best choice under every single circumstance. Some subjects or working styles simply demand a camera with humongous real estate. No argument. My disagreement is with those who say it's not possible to do professional work with small sensors, stating it like some law of nature rather than their personal preference. Plainly and simply wrong.

Update: Sony A900 Disaster!

Sorry to say that careful testing has revealed a fatal flaw in my (new) sample of the Sony A900: At normal shutter speeds in normal light, pictures are routinely less sharp with SteadyShot turned on than off.

This is similar to an effect Carl Weese uncovered with an early Pentax (K20? Memory does not serve*), and it was not true of the earlier A900 I used, so it is not an inherent flaw of the camera—it's a sample variation.

I will be attempting to call B&H Photo's Customer Service today to see about returning this unit for exchange. If I have missed that window, then I'm thrown to the vagaries of Sony's warranty repair.

Given the cost of the camera, I'm feeling a little freaked out about this.

Mike

*I had the identical Pentax camera body at that time and could not duplicate Carl's results—my camera was fine. Again, I believe that was a case of sample variation.

UPDATE: B&H's Customer Service was great—they were very helpful and have issued a mailing label for the return, and will be exchanging the camera for another one. Further posts about the A900 will be slightly delayed, however.

In the meantime, a Panasonic G3 is en route to TOP World Headquarters, so we might have some postings about that camera coming up.

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Featured Comment by Brad Nichol: "Mike, sorry to hear you got a dud. I would like to add to perhaps clear things up for those who seem to have some doubts about the sensor stabilization on the Sony...yes, it absolutely works as intended.

"I have carried out several exhaustive tests on the A900, with all sorts of lenses, shutter speeds, with stabilization on and off and the camera both on and off the tripod. Despite Sony's warnings, and accepted wisdom, it even works well when the camera is tripod mounted; it does not seem to degrade the image at all.

"Once you have used the Sony with stabilization turned on you will find it very hard to justify not having it on a camera. It is very very rare to get blurry shots due to movement.

"So to all those who doubt Mike's technical skill, if there is in issue it is real and nothing to do with settings, lenses, method, and it is definitely not typical of how the A900 performs."

Mike replies: Indeed. I did all those tests the first time I used the A900 back in 2008, because I needed to be sure of what I was saying. I can state categorically that, working properly, the A900's SteadyShot doesn't degrade resolution. Really! After I ran my own tests back then, I was sufficiently impressed that I simply left SteadyShot on all the time.

I also did the tests by the book with my original Konica-Minolta 7D, the camera that originally sold me on this feature. Again, it acquitted itself with flying colors—the sample I owned, anyway. The 7D has since gone considerably wonky, such that I hardly ever use it any more, but its Anti-Shake still works fine.

Mighty Nikon Joins Mirrorless Revolution

Sample ISO 100 Nikon V1 image. Giant version here, more samples here.

Surprise! Mighty giant Nikon has landed with fanfare in the mirrorless market pioneered by Olympus and Panasonic and Micro 4/3. As expected, Nikon opted to create its own proprietary system rather than join the Micro 4/3 standard*.

The new system is called "Nikon 1" and initially consists of two cameras, four lenses, and many accesories, including an F-lens-to-Nikon-1 adaptor.

Nikon V1. Bigger picture here.

Surprise! The sensor size Nikon has chosen is considerably smaller than 4/3 and Micro 4/3 (13.2x8.8mm vs. 18x13.5mm). Doubtless to differentiate it clearly and cleanly from Nikon's popular and profitable APS-C-sensor DSLRs.

...No, seriously, that one really is a surprise. I didn't see it coming, anyway. (I don't pay enough attention to rumor sites, I guess**.) Nikon is calling it the CX format, and it has a focal length multiplier of 2.7x, vs. (of course) 2x for Micro 4/3 and 1.5x and 1.6x for APS-C.

Surprise! The new camera type has a new "class" name, at least according to Nikon's dictates/wishes: ACIL, which stands for "Advanced Camera [with] Interchangeable Lens." Okay, we'll be the judge of that, thanks—"Nikon mirrorless" 'twill also be, fer now. (Can't blame them for wanting to sidestep the term "EVIL," though.)

No surprise that the better of the two new cameras, the V1, has a built-in 1,440,000-dot EVF viewfinder. Smart move. There's a smaller viewfinderless version called the J1, which is available in overtly female-consumer targeted colors (white, red, pink, etc.). The V1 is just black or white for now. Both cameras have 10.1-MP CMOS sensors.

Nikon of course makes several other claims for the new Nikon 1 System in the basic press release, including fast AF, 10 fps, i-TTL flash, and full HD 1080p movies. Here's the scoop on the lenses.

Prices: not cheap—$650 for the J1 and $900 for the V1. That's in a kit with the standard 10–30mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 normal zoom lens (lessee, that's 27–81mm equivalent, right? I hope I'm not gonna have to do a lot of that. Multiplying things on the fly by 2.7 might prove to exceed the processing capacity of the onboard computer).

So what do you think? Overall I think I really am kinda surprised, given that this looks strongly targeted more at the consumer end of the market and I see Nikon as being basically stronger at the pro /advanced amateur end of things. The Nikon 1 System heads in the opposite direction from Sony's NEX, for one thing, with its much larger APS-C sensor. ("Opposite direction" relative to Micro 4/3, I mean. Which I still think hits the sweet spot for mirrorless bang on.) Too early to make this judgment, I guess, but the new Nikons maybe seem a little more targeted or tailored to a predetermined place in Nikon's existing product lineup than to being the best cameras of their kind they can be—?

For more, see dpreview.com, Imaging-Resource, and Nikon's own presentations. Thom Hogan has two articles, "Meet the One" and "Reaction to Reactions" that provide unique analysis going far beyond rehashes of the press release. Strobist has given it a double facepalm.

In stores October 20th.

Mike

*I'm a little grumpy about this. Ignore me, I'll get over it. It wasn't going to happen.

**Rumors, nothin'. I need to pay more attention to Thom. He (accurately) predicted this back on July 25th, writing, "Nikon's upcoming mirrorless camera is rumored to be a 2.7x crop...Do I believe that rumor? Basically. I'm not sure if the exact final measurement is 2.6x or 2.7x or 2.8x, but I'm pretty sure it's in that range. Yet I'm seeing a lot of people just dismiss that notion out of hand." Thanks to Bernard Scharp for pointing this out to me.

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Featured Comment by K. Harrington: "I'm reading on various photo sites about the sensor being to small, but to me the example images look pretty good."

Featured Comment by Daniel Owen: "The V1 camera looks great but the photo sample is disappointing. I see purple fringing and blown out highlights in the wave on the bottom right and look at the smudgy noise reduction on the grass on the mid left...."

Featured Comment by Harrison Cronbi: "Mild to medium disappointment is my sentiment. The cameras look like a cross between something from the Samsung NX series and the Pentax Q series, but with an elevated paint-by-numbers quotient. And the launch lens choice is a bit of a joke—slow, chunky zooms. I can't think of a good reason to buy into this system over any of the other choices right now.

"I'm sure it will do fine, fitting into the one boom sector in the digicam spectrum, but it's certainly no Micro Four-Thirds killer. And it's quite annoying to think of all the R&D devoted to this system that could have been spent on more pro-targeted equipment. Oh well.

"As for 'an F-lens-to-Nikon-1 adaptor'...On a 2.7x crop? Yay, I'll be able to pick up a cheap Nikon 13mm ƒ/5.6 (look it up) and use that as a nice compact classy 35mm-equivalent.

"Starting from scratch, with a large fanbase and proven technical and optical excellence, Nikon had a massive opportunity to create a real photographer's camera—valuing ergonomics, build quality, optical quality and manual control. Instead they've come up with a real management consultant's camera—ticks boxes, panders to trends, attracts demographics and looks friendly."

Featured [partial] Comment by Andrew: "As a design engineer I hate it when marketing trumps engineering—but it does, most of the time." [Read the rest of Andrew's comment—and any other "partial" comment you see here—in the Comments Section.  —Ed.]

Featured [partial] Comment by Erlik: "What irritates me: Dear Nikon, couldn't you have spared us the marketing hyperbole? This is not revolutionary." [Ben also comments about this in the Comments Section, giving specifics. —Ed.]

Featured Comment by Chris Crowe: "Looks nice, but tiny sensor and a price that overlaps with the bottom two DSLR models. That doesn't make sense to me."

Featured [partial] Comment by Dennis: "I'm dismissing it out of hand (personally, for me only), not for its sensor size (it could provide an interesting compromise between size and performance), but for the slow lenses. An ƒ/2.8 pancake and ƒ/5.6 zooms on a 2.7x crop sensor are just very slow lenses."

Featured Comment by pepeye: "It seems fairly obvious that Nikon has tried very hard not to create a product that any potential buyer would chose over one of their conventional DSLRs. The classic 'protect our cash cow' mistake. They've ceded the market for the DSLR alternative cameras to everyone else while eliminating the 'let's see what Nikon's going to do' question that might have caused hesitation for some looking at Olympus, etc.

"Only the Pentax Q will seriously get hurt by this system."

Featured [partial] Comment by sneye: "Today may be remembered as the beginning of the end of the SLR era."

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "Ewww! Is that a production model? It looks like something chopped out of a block of wood."

Featured Comment by Ken White: "Nice and clean layout. If nothing else, the EVF will make the upscale model a popular choice. The 10-MP sensor seems right for the chip size to give good performance. Hope it handles and shoots well."

Featured Comment by Christer: "Looks like the digital viewfinder isn't articulate. Thus a no go for me."

Featured Comment by Jae Yoon: "This camera isn't for people who read this blog. If you look at Nikon's home market and where MFT and even NEX is winning, it's essentially for women who are looking for something better than a Canon SDxxxx Powershot. If you're in Japan or much of east Asia, it's mostly women carrying a GF2 or Oly around who aren't Alt Gear photographers but are enthusiasts. Why do you think Olympus and Panasonic release those cameras in feminine colors?"

Featured Comment by Thom Hogan of ByThom.com: "Someone already pointed out to me that I seem to be the only Nikon user that's not grumpy this morning. Perhaps knowing what this was before it was announced helped me be calmer ;~).

"The only eye-raiser in my mind is the price: it's too high and not sustainable. I predict we'll see Instant Rebates on this in the US before Christmas.

"Other than that, it's a very nice step up from any Coolpix. Indeed, it ought to be the top of the Coolpix line, IMHO. That Nikon thinks they have the marketing muscle to distinguish three lines of cameras is, well, self-delusion. (Technically, four lines of cameras if you separate DX and FX.) And dealers are already complaining about the zillions of stocking units on this new system (colors for everything).

"Bottom line: Nikon 1 isn't going to revolutionize the camera market, but it'll make a decent addition to the Nikon lineup."

Mike replies: I don't know. I keep thinking of the word "Pronea" for some reason. :-)

Featured Comment by Ciaran: "From the Nikon site: 'Nikon 1 J1 for the freedom to capture, communicate and connect to life. Bring quality, depth and passion to visual storytelling and spark conversations through photos, movies and multimedia.'

"Fine prose, but just another camera. When will someone give us a compact camera that can really 'communicate and connect,' as in connect and communicate to the internet?

"A camera with the Nikon 1 optics and sensors, coupled with a large touch screen, WiFi and 3G, and the Android or iOS operating system that could run all the social media, photosharing, and blogging apps would be a game changer. Meanwhile many of us are using our Androids or iPhones to 'communicate and connect,' despite the limited cameras in these gadgets.

"If Apple were to make an iCamera, they would put these Japanese camera companies out of business in the consumer sector."

Featured [partial] Comment by Ken S: "[Nikon] are about to give Canon a ton of free market research."

Featured Comment by Manish Bansal: "I think I'll buy a few units. This is going to be a collectible item soon."

Random Excellence: Alfred Palmer

Looking almost surreal today, this carefully posed couple could be cutting a wedding cake rather than working on a bomber engine, even down to the "stars in night sky" background. Photo by Alfred Palmer, OWI/LoC, via The Atlantic.

When men were men and women manned the factories: Alfred Palmer and a few colleagues made Kodachrome color PR/propaganda pictures for the Office of War Information after the U.S. engagement in WWII. In that era, color pictures were of limited usefulness in PR (only books could reproduce them, with few exceptions). Most OWI photographs were in B&W.

Their intention is clear: this shot, for example, features the vintage caption, "Hitler would like this man to go home and forget about the war. A good American non-com at the side machine gun of a huge YB-17 bomber is a man who knows his business and works hard at it. Photographed in May, 1942."

The Atlantic In Focus has a selection of OWI photographs in color in a picture show.

Mike
(Thanks to M McAuliff)

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Tip for Micro 4/3 Shooters

Incidentally, Carl had a tip for Micro 4/3 shooters: the B+W 46mm Screw-In Folding Rubber Lens Hood #900, a rubber lens hood for normal lenses, works with both the Panasonic Lumix 20mm ƒ/1.7 (40mm equivalent) and the Panasonic 14mm ƒ/2.5 (28mm equivalent) lenses. The objective elements are physically so small that there's no vignetting from the B+W hood with either lens.

Just thought I'd pass that along—but thank Carl, not me.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Roger Suppona: "I laugh at your puny little rubber lens hood!"

Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "I got the lens hood religion back...not sure; college maybe? A while ago. Definitely with a preference for rubber lens hoods, because they provide a shock absorber for frontal impacts. Here's another rubber lens hood trick: To shoot through glass, press the hood to the glass to exclude most sources of reflections—and, with a rubber hood, you can still vary the angle some to aim exactly where you want."

Weese in Wisconsin, Part Deux

I got to have breakfast with my friend Carl Weese this morning, which was great. He's on another of his photography odysseys, the maiden long voyage in his new Chevy HHR—his old truck finally gave up the ghost after a moon trip. (He thought a shock had gone out, but the mechanic told him, "the shock's fine—there's just no frame left for it to attach to." Time for a new truck.) He's photographing for his drive-in theater project, and stopped by Waukesha between a morning shoot at the Highway 18 Theater in Jefferson and the Keno Family Drive-In in Kenosha.

Carl and I only see each other occasionally, but keep in touch by email. It was really nice to get a chance to see him.

He had the 8x10 and the 7x17 loaded in the HHR—and a Panasonic G3, first time I've seen one. Neat little camera. He uses it in an unusual way—he's long been used to documenting his shooting locations by digicam, but now, with the G3, he does it using the video function—it allows him to speak his notes into the video file instead of having to write them down.

Carl wrote on his Working Pictures blog the other day about the way he packs the truck. "Decades ago, commercial work as a location specialist taught me to have absolutely rigid rules about packing," he wrote—"where everything goes in each case, where each case goes in a vehicle—in order to keep track of all the equipment." The idea is to be able to get a quick visual read on each case, so if something's not there it's immediately apparent. Same deal for the way the equipment is packed inside each case. Everything in its place, so if something's not there it jumps out at you.

Nice tripod, too, huh? A big Ries. Carl's 6'6" or thereabouts, for scale.

Curses, blown highlights
Oh, and, apropos of nothing, the above picture illustrates nicely the bane of my digital existence:

—the histogram is just for the selected bit. Illustrated another way:

This is the same bit with the exposure slider thrown all the way to the left. Curses! Blown highlights! The snapshooter's curse in digital. Drives me crazy. Even when it doesn't happen, I'm still worrying about it.

If I ever see Elvis getting into a flying saucer, I'll get the shot all right—but it'll have blown highlights. I'm just sayin'.

Mike

UPDATE: Following Ricardo's suggestion (in the comments), I downloaded RPP and have been playing with the image in it. First of all, I am not claiming to have even risen to the level of basic competence in this somewhat complex raw converter and its more-than-somewhat opaque UI, and I certainly am not claiming that I have used the available tools even properly, much less optimally; but here's the best I could do at first blush, following the instructions in the operating manual:

I appear to have plastered the side of Carl's noggin with some sort of scabrous liquid material akin to paint. Sorry, dude. I gather this is because RPP's conditions for highlight recovery—that at least one channel be blown and at least one channel not be blown—are not met by my file.

Let's face it, I should have just taken a reading off Carl's shirt. I mean, the guy's a black-and-white large-format photographer—he had the courtesy to wear a near-neutral gray shirt. The least I could have done was make proper use of it.  :-)

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Featured Comment by tal: "Quick fix: set a 10% opacity brush on multiply mode, point sample skin tone, select highlights and apply some density to the clipped area. Then, you can add some texture with a 20–50% opacity stamping. It works fine for small prints. :-) Blown digital highlights, what a pain in the argh!"

Yes, Nicholas Cage is a Vampire

I know, I spend way too much time on the internet—hey, somebody has to do it so you don't have to—but sometimes I run across something that really makes me laugh.

The story here is that an Ebay seller apparently found this old carte-de-visite showing a Nicholas Cage lookalike—and reached what is surely the only reasonable explanation, which is that the photo proves Nicholas Cage is a vampire.

I love that. "Personally, I believe it's him and that he is some sort of walking undead vampire, et cetera, who quickens/reinvents himself once every 75 years or so," wrote the seller. Logic inaction, as Jon Stewart might put it.

eonline.com reports that "the collector revealed that the antique memorial photo is a portrait of Lieutenant G. B. Smith, a Confederate prisoner, that was taken in 1864 at Johnson's Island prison camp in Ohio."

The auction has either ended or been taken down. The asking price for the proof of actor Cage's undeadness was $1 million. I secretly hope the end of the auction means that somebody paid it! That would be an impressive sucking of blood.

Mike

UPDATE: Turns out there is much more photographic interest to this story than meets the eye. If this is indeed Lt. G. B. Smith, a.k.a. Lt. Robert M. Smith, Confederate prisoner at Johnson's Island, then he might be the man who apparently set up a clandestine photo studio and darkroom while in prison! The fascinating story was featured on the PBS show "History Detectives" and can be found at timesnews.net, the website of the Kingsport, Tenn., Times-News. Thanks to D. C. Wells for this.

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Featured Comment by TBannor: "Yep. And Rob Lowe hasn't aged a bit during his career. Coincidence? I think not."

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "Aren't vampires unphotographable? On that basis alone I have to doubt this."

Featured Comment by Eli Burakian: "Interestingly, my uncle produced a film in 1988 called 'Vampire's Kiss,' in which the main character, played by none other than Nicolas Cage, thought he was bitten by a vampire and consequently believed that he was turning into one. I'll ask my uncle whether the fact that he was actually a true vampire had anything to do with his getting the part."

Do You Suck at Photoshop?

By the way, even though I've been using Photoshop since about 1994, I still kind of suck at it. Well, that's not quite true: I have better-than-average judgment, just worse-than-average skills. What I really enjoy is "messing about" with it, as our U.K. friends might put it—I tend to imagine what I want to do and then muck around until I figure out how to get it done.

I've learned a fair amount over the years, and I do have fun, but...I really need to take a class.

Along that line of thinking—and because I just got Photoshop CS5 (upgraded from CS, if you can believe that)—I've decided to follow along with the video course at Lynda.com called Photoshop CS5 for Photographers. (Note that some of the segments can be viewed for free without signing up, as samples.) So far so good, although I don't know how long I'll be able to stick with it. Constancy is my worst thing.

Well, that last isn't really true either—I've been pretty constant about keeping TOP going. I guess I should give myself a little more credit.

Mike

P.S. This post was originally going to be titled "I Suck at Photoshop," but I chickened out—I realized that would probably come back to haunt me.

P.P.S. I should thank my buddy Steve Rosenblum for introducing me to Lynda.com, some time ago. Thanks, Steve.

 

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Featured Comment by fjf: "Just want to provide a second recommendation for Lynda.com.

"I would hate to have to tell you the number of expensive doorstops I have acquired in the guise of 'How to Learn Photoshop' books. I am sure the total dollar value is somewhere up around the Nikon D3S level.

"About a year ago I discovered Lynda.com and it is a great way to learn a visual tool such as Photoshop and/or any other visual technique.

"I spent hours reading books putting myself to sleep in an attempt to come to grips with PS. Viewing the application of the various tools in a Lynda.com task oriented lesson is a far superior way of gaining proficiency. And Lynda.com offers a very wide range of courseware that extends well beyond PS and Lightroom. Highly recommended and well worth a peek if not a membership."

Featured Comment by Zalman Stern: "I may be biased, but my main piece of advice for photographers is to do most adjustments in Camera Raw and only use the full glory of Photoshop as needed. It is easier to do the work one would have done in a darkroom in Camera Raw."

Editorial note: Why Zalman says he might be biased:

@ ZS: I spend 80% of my time in ACR. It's home for me, for photo editing. The advice I like is "ACR for global, Photoshop for local." When I use the term "Photoshop" I actually mean "Bridge, ACR, and Photoshop."

Controversial List of Influential Cameras

Jason Schneider, former longtime editor of Popular Photography magazine and well known as a camera collector, has written an intriguing list of "The 14 Most Influential Cameras of All Time" at Adorama's site.

As you can see from a glance or two at the comments, the list has been controversial. Although no one will argue with the Kodak Brownie, the last half of Jason's list is taken up with precursors to, and early examples of, the digital wave. His last choice, a current camera, has proven especially contentious.

But that's always true of such lists. The passage of time is required to judge influence, and appraising recent products in that context is purely an educated guess. Nothing to get one's knickers in a twist about.

As one commenter wrote, "Anything Jason S. has to say about influential cameras is going to be interesting, intelligent, and deeply informed, and this certainly was. I'd quibble with some of his later choices but I think the interesting thing is to follow his thinking—he's obviously decided to consider early digital precursors as influential on the current market, which is certainly a defensible tack, and he makes some very interesting picks following this line of argument."

That was one "Mike J. in Wisconsin."

Other commenters have not been so generous, so you should avoid this link if you dislike ugly sights such as genteel editors being dragged over coals.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Tom Kwas: "...gotta say, I think the list is pretty right on; shy on the larger format end, but basically correct when you consider all of photography as a whole market and it's influence on the 'art' of taking pictures.

"I remember when I was managing a big studio for an in-house retail catalog place, I was in a constant battle to keep the VP of advertising from driving us into making too early a decision on jumping into digital, especially from a 'return on investment' standpoint. We finally had to make the jump when cameras were about $50K, but I was warning them that film, Polaroid, processing, etc., was still cheaper than buying six digital set ups at $50K+ apiece (plus computers and storage!) that would last for a few years before needed replacement. (I mean, I was being pressed hard by people selling Sony systems that were the size and weight of old video cameras, and came with their own tripods on rollers, cost $200K, and had half catalog page printouts that were soft, but as the salesmen would say, '...doesn't look bad when it's screened and printed....')

"After I left, and was working at a place in in D.C., bingo, the Digital Rebel hit the market. The staff in D.C. went out 'en-masse' and all bought Digital Rebels, and started testing them against our high end 4x5 digital scan backs. By the time the result were compared in printed form at catalog size, there was virtually no difference! That was the big game changer! That's when I started to see 4x5 film guys start putting little DSLRs on a tripod in a studio.

"It was also around that time that multi-item, highly styled catalog photography seemed to change over to 'drop-and-pops' on white or gray seamless. Of course, no one needed to do any perspective changes with single item 'drop-and-pops' (although it could be easily fixed in Photoshop), and the stuff was infinitely and immediately usable for e-tail.

"That was the biggest game-changer ever in my end of the business, all launched by the Digital Rebel!"

Unsharp Mask vs. FocusFixer

This is going to sound a little sad, but quite frequently I fire up Photoshop just to have some fun.

I know. But I love to fiddle with pictures. Loved it in der Dunkelkammer, love it in P'shop.

Here's the shot I was working on last night. It's a picture of gallerist Debra Brehmer of the Portrait Society Gallery talking to some young artists, taken with an E-P1 and 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens.

For the most part, files from this lens look quite wonderful. They have a little something extra, a special quality that I don't see very often in digital. I think it's the lens, but I might be underestimating the sensors. I guess I can't really put my finger on it. But the files are often really nice.

Of course this is just the tiny little JPEG, sized for TOP. The full file is what's so pretty.

I hope this picture looks like I haven't done anything to it. My standard when working on images is never to make anything obvious—a picture should never look "Photoshopped." Work on it all you want—I've actually worked on this quite a bit—but it should look like it just fell out of the camera the way you see it. Totally natural.

As I was working, I looked at Deb's face in the full file and it suddenly occurred to me that this might be a good example to show off the abilities of one of my regular tools that I use, FocusFixer from FixerLabs. First, here's what the FocusFixer dialogue box looks like:

Bone simple—you just move the "Deblur" slider until the image is at peak sharpness. (If you move it too far, believe me, you'll know. It's pretty alarming when you overdo it.)

I showed you the dialogue box out of sequence so you could compare the next three images more easily.

Here's an unsharpened detail at 100%:

(All these percentages will hold either in your feed reader or, if you're here at the site when you read this, after you click on the image.) You can see this looks pretty soft.

And here's after FocusFixer has been applied:

Of course, none of these have had any noise reduction yet, so you can see the differences more clearly.

Quite an improvement.

But then, something occurred to me—it's been forever since I compared FocusFixer to plain old Unsharp Masking in Photoshop. And, since I just got a new version of Photoshop recently, I figured that maybe they've improved the Unsharp Masking function. So I ported the image over to that and tried my best to match the FocusFixer-sharpened image above using just Unsharp Masking. Here's what I came up with:

This was with Radius 1.2 and Amount 148. Hmm...looks pretty close, doesn't it? Maybe my old fave, FocusFixer, isn't such a secret weapon after all.

Then I decided to look at the "image morphology" (a fancy term for the structure of the image). Here it is at 300% with FocusFixer:

And with Unsharp Masking:

(Again, if you click on these images they should come up pretty close to 300% on your screen.) You can see the differences a little more clearly now. I still think the FocusFixer version is a little better—softer, cleaner. With Unsharp Masking I've had to kick the contrast up a little too much to match the apparent detail in the FocusFixer version, and there are more color artifacts, and the noise isn't quite as even. But they're very close. (When I tried this five or six years ago or whenever it was, FocusFixer won much more handily. Photoshop has caught up.)

It's worth noting that my friend Carl won't look at files at 300%. He thinks it's basically misleading. He looks at them and works on them at 100% and resists the urge to pixel-peep further.

Now it's gotten late, and I'm tired. And I didn't finish working on the picture, after all that.

I think I'll continue to use FocusFixer, but I'm not going to worry about it. Plain old Unsharp Masking looks pretty good now too.

Mike

P.S. The big problem of all of this kind of stuff is that it sucks you in. All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here! It appears that now I am practically obligated to compare FocusFixer V2 with Photoshop CS5 Smart Sharpen, am I not? Woe.

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Featured Comment by Richard Howe: "I'm Richard and I'm a recovering pixel-peeper (though I must admit that I have a hard time staying on this particular wagon). I have FocusFixer, Focus Magic, and Topaz, as well as the sharpening facilities in Photoshop, Lightroom—aren't these shared with Photoshop?—and CaptureOne, and at times I still find the temptation to compare what each of them can do on a difficult image irresistible: just plain fascinating (and more fun than getting on with the job at hand). Ditto for all the other manipulations that PhotoShop and other tools provide.

"But gradually, over the past few years, I've come to the conclusion not only that what counts is what the print looks like but also that—oy!—more often than not, especially with regard to sharpness, less is usually—not always!—more, and the image straight from the camera is—again more often than not—about as good as it's going to get.

"These days I find it helpful to make a print of the unmanipulated image—or part of it, if the print is to be a large one—before I undertake any image enhancements. If the print of the unmanipulated image looks good enough to me, I try to resist the temptation to see how much 'better' I can make. Of course I often can't resist trying anyway….

"But I loved your post anyway, Mike, just as, 21 years after I quit smoking, I still occasionally enjoy second hand cigarette smoke."

Mike replies: Richard, with me it was because I couldn't sleep last night. :-)

Featured Comment by Mark Roberts: "Those of us using 64-bit operating systems have no choice in the matter. FocusFixer (and the competing Focus Magic) only work in 32-bit systems. Neither has seen an update in at least three years and it's starting to look as if these are dead products."

Featured Comment by John Brewton: ""Mike, you're doomed. The can of worms is officially opened."

Mike replies: John, I open worm cans for a living.  :-)

Featured Comment by Ken N: "For whatever reason, I find Olympus and Panasonic files need different sharpening settings than what typically is required. A setting of 1.2 and 148 on the USM settings will bring out those textures which can be quite disconcerting. You might want to try a two-pass setting of 0.5 width for the first one and 1.2 for the second. As to the specific amount, adjust till you notice it and then back off a third. Your mileage may vary depending on other factors, but this is a start point for countering the AA filter and four-pixel merge aspect of Olympus/Panasonic cameras."

Featured Comment by Frank P.: "Why don't you shoot it in focus to begin with?"

Mike replies: Wise guy.

Featured Comment by Dave: "I switched from using Photoshop's USM filter to Topaz lab's 'Detail' plugin. The Topaz product works great and offers a lot more control than USM. Also, it is easy to avoid visible sharpening artifacts when using Topaz Detail.

"Topaz has an infocus plugin that I used for the 30-day free trial period. It seemed to work well, but it wasn't a tool I thought I'd have much use for so I didn't purchase it after the trial ran out.

"I submit a lot of photos to istockphoto.com and they have a brutal inspection process. Anyone who has much experience with istock is familiar with istock's insanely low tolerance for artifacts. Since switching to Topaz Lab's 'Detail' and 'DeNoise' filters my istock acceptance rate has skyrocketed. I don't think I've gotten a single rejection for artifacts since making the switch back in December.

"I suppose I sound like a paid Topaz Labs spokesman, but I am not.  I just really like some of their PS plugins and they are way cheaper than the competition." 

Open Mike: Fun Facts

Think there's no obesity epidemic? Colorado, currently the skinniest State in America, would have been the fattest had they reported this year's figures just 20 years ago. Heard that one on the evening news.

Awesome infographics: Look, ye mighty, and tremble—at how, when it comes to the size of their photo assets, Flickr dwarfs the Library of Congress—and Facebook dwarfs Flickr. (Check "The World's Largest Photo Libraries.")

What country springs to mind when you think about child exploitation? Probably not Canada—but British Columbia has the most permissive child labor laws in the world, says Joel Bakan in The Globe and Mail. Children as young as 12 can work any job except in a mine or a bar, at any time except during school hours. That's worse than Afganistan or Haiti, says Bakan. Most at risk: children of recent immigrants.

Super Canon rumor: We're only three days from Nikon Day (big announcement expected on Wednesday) but the Canon 1Ds Mark 4 (question: will it or won't it be "IV"?) might be announced in October—with (or so the rumors have it) a full-frame 56 million pixel sensor. Also coming, the 5D Mark III, and possibly a cheaper full-frame DSLR with a lower pixel count than the new 5D3.

It ain't the '90s anymore: The once-hip Raiders have lost their mojo, along with the status of their swag as pop fashion, but the major U.S. sports team losing fans the fastest, according to 24/7 Wall Street, is the Cleveland Indians baseball team, which has lost 56% of its fans since 2000 (measured by attendance). But even that pales next to the once-popular beer people no longer drink: Michelob, sales of which are down 72% just since 2006.

Who'd a' Thunk? Two things you'd never guess are good to buy from Amazon: diapers and auto parts. No kidding, Amazon's deals on both are top-rated, according to CBS Money Watch. Amazon sells more than four million auto parts, most through third-party vendors, many of which are cheaper than they are anyplace else. And, with a "subscription," diapers from Amazon are less expensive than they are at Wal-Mart. Things to avoid buying at Amazon: groceries, home furnishings, and household cleaners.

The fastest car you can buy is a...Nissan: Yup. In case you've been wondering, the 2012 Nissan GT-R Black Edition is the fastest production car you can buy new in the U.S.*, faster than any Ferrari, Porsche, or Lamborghini: zero to sixty in 3.1 seconds. A 2012 model, it's been available for most of 2011—for a mere $91,000, far below the cost of many "name" supercars. Got this from Yahoo!, if I recall.

Blink and miss it: Leica Camera can't keep the M9-P in stock. B&H got a small shipment in on Wednesday, and they were gone by Saturday.

You know what they say: Oh well.

Mike
(Thanks to Adam, Vlatko, and The Week.
Photo from an Ebay auction.)

*There has been dispute over this in the comments, as I knew there would be. I don't buy it. It's too much of a stretch to call either the SSC or the Veyron "production cars." The SSC is hand-built in the dozens and at full throttle sucks down a gallon of fuel every fifteen seconds. And according to Wikipedia, the total output of Veyrons was 300, which you just might be able to call "production" volume...except that was over six years. Total sales in 2011? Nine. And according to Jeff they cost 2.7 million dollars each.

Not production cars, sez me. There are always going to be one-offs, race cars, engineering daydreams, the toys of the überrich. The list I read included only real cars that mortal people actually buy to use as cars.

But you can have the asterisk if you want it, s'okay with me...(but before you go away, have a look at this—thanks to Tee for the link. Note that that wasn't even the Black Edition.)

"Open Mike" is a series of (mostly) off-topic posts by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that appears now and again on Sunday.

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Weese in Wisconsin

If you just go out into the world, you encounter
strange and wonderful things.

—Carl Weese

Old friend and former TOP contributor Carl Weese is on one of his epic photographing perambulations again, documenting more drive-in theaters, and this trip is taking him around Lake Michigan. He was in Door County today and is headed for the Dells tomorrow. Hopefully I'll see him on Tuesday, and if I can go a-shooting with him I'll try to post a snap with him in it—as opposed to the Carl-less setup shots with the view cameras alone that you see on Working Pictures.

He says he's having a charmed trip so far, with everything working out well. I liked the story (at the link) about the motel in Traverse City.

Mike

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Loose Ends

A few followups from this past week.

Chuck Holst updates us about the fire:

The Pagami Creek fire is especially poignant for me. Seventeen years ago next week my wife and I honeymooned in the Boundary Waters, canoeing and portaging a 60-mile loop just north of the current fire area, and exiting at Lake One. Most of our route was devastated in 1999 by a windstorm that blew down many if not most of the trees, and now the fire is threatening the southern part of our route that was not affected. Only a week or two ago we were talking about returning to Lake One this month if we could get away.

In reply to some of the other comments, so far the fire has not consumed any buildings that I know of. Most of the fire has remained within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Area, where no roads or buildings are permitted, except for a few ranger cabins. Though there are many lakes in the area, which provide a source of water with which to fight the fire, the northeastern corner of Minnesota, known as the Arrowhead, has suffered a drought this summer, which has dried out the vegetation. With the wind shifting to the south today, there is concern that the fire will explode into new life if it reaches the dried-out tinder in the 1999 blowdown area. Then it may indeed threaten the resorts and other private property along the Gunfint Trail. 

Access to the affected area is difficult. Transportation into the area for most of the firefighters and their gear is by boot and canoe.

Response curves at the extremes: Dave Polaschek, who Ctein described as "the printing engineer on Photoshop," wrote to say that he thought Royce Howland's comment about the Printer Mystery was on the mark.

First, what Royce wrote:

I wonder if this situation could be debugged a bit further by working through some analysis similar to what Norman Koren describes here.

Using Koren's Gamutvision tool, I took a look at the generic profile for Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk (as I read it, Ctein's paper for larger printers), specifically the version for my Epson 4880 printer. There are some things about this profile that look odd to me. For example the B&W density response visualization shows a noticeable flattening of L* in the bottom few tones which could reduce contrast down there. The same visualization also shows some very sharp discontinuities in the a*, b* and c* curves, again in the bottom tones where L* < 6 or so. This is true for both perceptual and relative colorimetric rendering intents, though RC is marginally less skewed.

In comparison, the generic 4880 profile for one of my favorite Harman papers shows nothing similar to these effects.

Now, Ctein certainly isn't using the generic Ilford profile for a 4880. But potentially there is something funky going on in the bottom tones / greatest densities with this paper, even with custom profiles. Gamutvision may be able to show it, if so. Besides the density response curves display, there are many other profile visualizations. Plus there's a useful false-color soft-proofing display, more comprehensive than what soft-proofing in Photoshop shows....

And then Dave's response:

Royce, you've hit on exactly what I think is the problem.

When I was working on printers back in the day, one of the toughest nuts for us to crack was the way the response curve of the ink got highly non-linear near the ends of the curve. It's almost the inverse of the typical film response curve, getting steeper at the ends until it slams into either paper white or ink running off the print and suddenly makes a right-angle-turn and goes flat.

The typical ICC profile has a bunch of curve points, and the CMM interpolates between those points. That's all well and good when you're in the smooth part of the response curve for each ink, but when the curve changes slope abruptly (as it does when you hit the ends), where your points are relative to that abrupt change in the curve becomes critically important. Pick the wrong points, and the (usually linear) interpolation will miss the abrupt change, and you start getting problems.

The software inside the printer (or driver) knows better the shape of the response curve for the printer, sometimes even knowing about that specific printer in printers that monitor themselves, and it can shape the curve to play tricks to extend the apparent gamut a little outside the actual gamut of the printer. It also can speak to the printer in its native color-space of CCYMMMKKKRGBASDF or whatever inks the printer has, rather than being forced to express the colors in an RGB space (all inkjet drivers I'm aware of today take RGB input).

Having seen the software inside the various pieces involved, it doesn't surprise me at all that the printer can sometimes do a better job than any application software does. If anything, I'm more surprised by how frequently application-managed color can "beat" the printer's internal color-matching which has something of an unfair advantage.

tl;dr: This stuff is hard, and the physical world is messy.

(Yr. Hmbl. Ed. had to go look up "tl;dr"—it means "too long; didn't read," which, according to the Urban Dictionary, is "said whenever a nerd makes a post that is too long to bother reading." Not so in this case, or else maybe I'm a nerd too.)

The Milwaukee Job: Six TOP readers responded to the ad for my interior designer neighbor (in the post "Jobs") who needs help. Three of them have professional websites (shown in the order in which I received their emails):

Brad Bell Architectural Photography

Brian Fussell, Rangeline Real Estate Photography

(Brian has an extensive selection of pictures on his site, although there's no navigation. I think I looked at hundreds.)

John Herbst, Arch Photography

Of course I passed all six along to my neighbor, who says she is grateful. Our thanks to all of you.

Mike

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How to 'Temper' a New Photobook

Just thought I'd mention this.

As you might know, photobook bindings can actually be quite fragile things.

The first thing I do when I get a new book is to open it gently from the front. Depending on how stiff the binding is you might not want to open it all the way. Then I go through the entire book taking a bunch of pages at at time—five, ten, or 20 depending on the size of the book and the feel of the binding. I open the book at each point and gently press open the binding—not hard enough to stress or crack it and often not as wide as you will eventually want to open it when reading or looking at the book, but enough to flex it and get it to start to relax. This helps keep the binding from "cracking" at some later point.

When taking the pages in bunches, it's preferable to open them in between signatures rather than at signature breaks (the book tends to want to fall open at signature breaks so just part the pages where they seem to want to stay together).

Then I turn the book upside-down and go through it again from the back, doing the same thing again. This helps keep the binding square and prevents it from getting cocked.

A cocked or "slant" binding is when the spine doesn't want to
stay square with the boards.

When you go through only part of a photobook, you might want to open it in a few places in the part of the text block you didn't go through. The binding will naturally get progressively looser with use, and it helps keep the book sound if this process is evened out throughout the volume.

If you notice a spine starting to become cocked, turn the book upside down and page through it from the back, smoothing the fold or break down as you go.

Careful handling of the binding at all times is important to keep the binding from becoming shaken, but the habit of going through the book front-to-back and then back-to-front a few pages at a time when it's brand new does a lot to help keep the binding healthy for the rest of the book's life.

A shaken binding or spine is when the text block becomes quite loose and unstable in the binding case but hasn't fully detached.

Note that the terms "cocked" and "shaken" are technical bookseller's terms, not just random descriptive words. Traditionally, most of the terms booksellers use to describe condition have been carefully worked out by tradition and common agreement.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Tom Passin: "As a former hand bookbinder, I applaud your care. The only change I'd suggest is to alternate bunches from front and back, working your way to the middle, as Phil Cook mentioned in the Comments Section. Also, with a fragile book, you might want to not open it all the way for each batch the first time through, but go through it twice before really flattening the pages."

'Gypsies' Arrives Chez TOP

Friends, the new edition of Gypsies from Aperture is a flat-out masterpiece of photography and bookmaking. I received mine yesterday and it is even better than I'd hoped. With the picture selection restored to the original intentions of the photographer and the original book designer, Milan Kopriva, and the reproduction quality raised to the best of modern standards by Gerhard Steidl, the work is made new.

Considered one of the photobook high points of the 20th century, the Robert Delpire edit still has its charms. But far from diluting the impact of the pictures in the older book, the opposite happens: if some of the older pictures are too well known, like great music that's been heard too many times, the new pictures add richness and context and both enliven and renew the better-known ones.

Many of the horizontals are two-page spreads, but few seem diminished by it in this case. And a number of horizontals are fold-outs, making the interruption a crease rather than a gather. The reproductions are large despite the modest size of the book. The paper is matt and the repro resembles photogravure in style and feel—quite different from the earlier book, yet even more appealing in my opinion.

For anyone interested in social documentary, an absolute must-have, and I can't see how any photographic library wouldn't be enriched by this. This edition will surely remain prized both by the market and by lovers of photography long after the new copies are gone. A superlative presentation of important work and a magnificent and wonderful achievement by all concerned. Very highly recommended.

Mike

Again:

Amazon link
Amazon U.K.
Our page for other links
Book Depository

P.S. Just as a point of interest, the repro prints for the book were made by our friend Voja Mitrovic.

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Jobs

A couple of potential jobs—

Milwaukee: My next-door neighbor is a high-end interior designer, and is looking for someone to provide photographs of her work for her new website on an ongoing basis. She doesn't need each shot to be Architectural Digest magazine quality—she wants a variety of shots of each project, in web resolution, that are more competent than typical real-estate snaps or the "in-progess" snaps she makes herself. She expects to pay professional rates, but doesn't need the services of the people at the very top of the specialty. She's looking for a more mid-level pro with appropriate skills and equipment who she can afford to hire regularly going forward. If you're in Chicago or Southeastern Wisconsin and you or someone you know might be interested, please contact me at the "email me" link in the right-hand sidebar and I'll put you in touch with her.

New York: The Documentary Photography Project of the Open Society Institute is looking for an Exhibition Coordinator. More information at the job posting here. This looks like it could be a fun and influential job for the right person. Don't contact me about this; I'm just passing it along.

Mike
(Thanks to Gabi)

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We Hear from Linda Isabella

We've heard from Linda Isabella, wife of Sal, the fireman in Peter Turnley's famous 9/11 photograph. I've added her note (and poem) as a "Featured Comment" to Peter's "The Thousand-Yard Stare" post if you want to read it. Our thanks to Linda.

Mike

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