Short Takes

Everybody's a comedian photographer: Comedian Louis CK says, "I take a lot of pictures. I am very, very into photography...I'm going to show you all the equipment I brought with me. I'm not showing off here. I'm not rich. I just spend all my money on cameras. It's important to me." Read about his "main dude" (favorite camera). (Hint: "It's not even an SLR. you have to line up images in the rangefinder and hope for the best.")

Thieves with very good taste in lenses: Thieves broke into the headquarters of the high-end cameramaker Alpa in Switzerland on Wednesday night and made off with dozens of Rodenstock, Schneider, and Alpa/Zeiss lenses. If you come across any offers for Alpa lenses for sale, be sure to check the serial number against Alpa's stolen merchandise list. We hope Alpa gets its lenses back, in which case a Swiss jail will soon be hosting some discerning optical connoisseurs.

Gottlieb online: The Library of Congress has posted a large number of historical jazz photographs by the late William P. Gottlieb on its Flickr pages. We linked to Adam Bernstein's NPR obituary when Bill died in '06.

Cab Calloway by Bill Gottlieb

DxOmark likes what it sees: DxOmark has evaluated the new Nikon J1's sensor and compares it favorably (all things considered) with larger ones.

Looking up from lamentations, or why my Canon printer sucks: The Inky Fool traces the ancient origins of the Canon name, and uncovers its connections to his balky printer. We liked this.

Canon's next killer cam: You've probably seen this, with some of the details of the upcoming 5D refresh:

If you can't see the video, try this link. A shame it's a fake! If there's one single camera that is the most loved by passionate photographers, it's probably the 5D in whatever its current iteration is, so the ground-tremors of the coming Mark III are already generating huge interest.

Mike
(Thanks to Sandy Rothberg, Vlatko Juric-Kokic, Pascal Sauvé, Lynn Burdekin, and Rob Young)

ADDENDUM: Almost forgot this one—it now appears there are two famous vampires in our midst—John Travolta's doppelganger has been found as well, in an old photo described as a ruby glass ambrotype. I don't think the similarity in this case is quite so strong—apparently the seller doesn't either, since he'll let his treasure go for $50,000 instead of the $100,000 the guy with Nicolas Cage's vampire wanted. (Thanks to James for this.)

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

Featured Comment by Jeff Glass: "Uh-oh, gush warning. Oh for crying out loud, Louis CK is one of, if not the, best comedians around and now I find out he's also into photography, which is my passion, and shoots film only, as I do, and shoots a Leica, which I do too (M4)! For christ's sake, I LOVE YOU, Louie! A stalker is born...."

Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "The Cab Calloway portrait it just a classic, capturing all the joyfulness and vivacity of his music. Hi de ho.

"P.S. Cab is obviously thinking about the 5D Mk III."

Featured Comment by John: "Thanks for the link on the origins of the name Canon—made me laugh.  :-)"

Featured Comment by Matt: "Since you've been posting links to photos of strangely familiar looking faces, I thought I'd send you doppelganger #3 from the USC Digital Library: Sean Penn as a bunny hunter."

Comments

[ed g.]

I enjoyed reading the Louis CK link. "But the harder way is more fun and the pics are better." Excellent.

[Dave]

Why did you have to torture me with that 5D video? I was only 1/4 of the way into my morning cup of coffee when I clicked on it. With the gain turned down on my BS meter the fake commercial really got my hopes up. I'll be checking canonrumors.com every 5 minutes until the big announcement.

[Bill Rogers]

Louis CK shoots film? Now, THAT made me laugh. I guess he really is a comedian.

[Speed]

I like my 5d. I love my lenses.

[James]

Mike,

having sent you the Travolta vampire article, I thought I'd better look up ruby glass ambrotypes as to me they were a completely new concept. For those who like me hadn't ever heard of them, there is more detail than we could possibly wish to know at http://lisaduncanllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/duncan_technical_study_ambrotype1.pdf

Lisa Duncan clearly is an expert!

[D.C. Wells]

It's a good thing that Louis CK is a comedian. He might have some difficulty as a copy editor.
I like his enthusiasm.

[Bill Poole]

"But the harder way is more fun and the pics are better."

Cheesh, I wish I'd said that.

[Jeff]

I looked up Yoshida, mentioned in the short take on Canon origins, and found this article, which provides additional interesting background...

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/history/canon_story/1933_1936/1933_1936.html

[erlik]

Grease star? Grease? Daily Mail apparently has got something against Travolta.

[James]

Erlik,

The Daily Mail is about 30 years behind the times on a good day. Grease is recent news to them. It only comes into my RSS feed as it is my mother's choice of paper, and she'll often ring me up to opine on some event that strangely completely corroborates with the lead editorial. Forewarned is forearmed.

[James]

Vampire Face/Off!

[The Lazy Aussie]

Must be the comedians light meter. I have that one!
He is a wonderful comedian.

[James B]

One of those James above is not me... this is awfully confusing! I've added a B to my name to aid future differentiation.

[Ron W]

Wow, the link to the Gottlieb photos is mind-blowing. Some incredible shots. Basie at the Howard Theater with Herschel Evans!!!

[The Lazy Aussie]

I think Grease star is about right.

[Bruno Masset]

> DxOmark likes what it sees:
> DxOmark has evaluated the new Nikon J1's sensor and compares it
> favorably (all things considered) with larger ones.

Not entirely unexpected, I suppose.

Still, in addition to the objective metrics provided by DxOmark, cameras are also a complex and multi-dimensional combination of more abstract product attributes — e.g. usability, reliability, versatility, aura etc.

One can thus draw parallels between cameras and other products with multi-dimensional attributes — e.g. cars.
One, for example, certainly doesn't expect a strict dependency to exist between engine displacement and car's price tag. Similarly, it would be simplistic to expect or demand that a small-sensor camera — e.g. the Nikon V1 or J1 — be always priced below a "higher-rank" camera — e.g. an entry-level DSLR like the Nikon D3100 or the Canon Kiss, or to decree e.g. that the fact that the Leica M9-P is priced above the Pentax 645D defies marketing "logic".

Stretching the analogy to its limit, an obviously totally subjective market positioning "equivalence" example could look something like this:

• Nikon D3 series — Hummer H1
• Canon 1D series — Toyota Mega Cruiser
• Nikon D700 — Mercedes E-class
• Canon 5D & 5D2 — BMW 5 series
• Nikon D3100, Canon Kiss - solid, thrifty but fairly unexciting people movers of Asian manufacture
• Sony A900 — Jaguar XJ
• Sony SLT-A77 — Lexus GS Hybrid
• Sony NEX-7 — BMW X3
• M4/3 — Volkswagen Golf / Audi A3
• Nikon V1 - Mini Cooper S
• Nikon D7000 — Ford Taurus
• Canon 7D — Buick Lacrosse
• Pentax K-5 — Acura TSX
• Pentax 645D — Range Rover
• Leica S2 — Lamborghini LM002
• Leica M9-P — Morgan Plus 4
• Phase One IQ180 — Rolls Royce Phantom
• 8x10 view camera — semi-trailer truck
• Compact digital cameras — Kei cars

The Nikon V1 has:

• a magnesium body shell with presumably good haptics, including a solid feel and a nice surface finish. Entry-level DSLRs like the Nikon D3100, OTOH, tend to have plasticky bodies
• hi-res 921K-dot LCD with tempered glass cover — just like the Nikon D3 series. Entry-level DSLRs tend to have lower-resolution LCDs with easier to scratch plastic cover panels
• an Expeed 3 image processing engine that is more powerful than any other current Nikon camera's, D3 series included
• autofocus that is at least as fast, if not faster than any Nikon DSLR
• one 2-Gbit Samsung and two 4Gbit Elpida memory chips, for a total RAM capacity exceeding 1GByte, and thus more capacious than the Nikon D3 with the buffer upgrade or the D3S
• a hi-res LCD EVF that is at least as good as any available on a M4/3 camera, and possibly nicer than Panasonic's "sequential" LCD EVF that can suffer from DLP-like "color breaking" with mobile subjects
• advanced CMOS image sensor with built-in phase detection AF, hi-speed on-chip A/D converters, fast and wide fully digital output channels.

I'm thus classifying the Nikon V1 — and to some extent, the J1 — as a "small, but premium" product targeting a market segment that is less price-sensitive, hence the likening to a Mini. Those wedded to SUVs or big sedans need not apply — they aren't the target market.