The Online Photographer

How to Review (or Buy) a Lens (or Camera)

By Ctein

'Tis the "Season of Spending"—at least that's what the radio commercials tell me. They wouldn't lie to me, would they? I thought I might devote this column to some consumerist advice. What goes through my head when I think about reviewing a product isn't a lot different from when I think about buying one.

Once some shiny bauble has caught my eye, the very first thing I contemplate is what I might do with it. Just what kind of photographs do I envision making with said lens or camera? Understand that this is a rather different question from the one of what kind of photographs I make in general. The answers to both questions may be the same. Case in point being the Olympus 45 mm ƒ/1.8 lens, which matches so closely how I see the world photographically. I use it for indoor, outdoor, low-light candid, landscape, urban/architecture, and night photography. Where I goes, it goes.

More commonly, the answers are somewhat different, and it's that specificity that informs one's decision-making around a purchase. Particular tools for particular tasks. For example, I didn't envision using the Rokinon 85 mm ƒ/1.4 lens for anything else but available light "candid" photography. Given the range of my interests, that's a fairly small subset of my photographic activities.

Which gets to my next point; can I imagine I'll be getting appropriate value for my money? That involves comparing the goals for the product with what it costs. I didn't see the Rokinon lens being generally useful to me. Had it been a $1,000 or even $500 optic, I probably would have removed it from my list. I'm not that interested in supporting my candid proclivities. $250, though, fell within the range of my "whim" budget.

Now, I know plenty of people for whom $250 is a substantial sum to spend on a whim (truth be told, it pushes a bit beyond the top end of my "whim" range). I also know plenty who'll drop $500–$2000 on a lens and not blink. They can indulge a much more expensive level of whimsy than me.

Everyone has individual comfort levels for price vs. functionality. It's one of the major ways you can legitimately disagree with a reviewer without even testing a product yourself. For instance, I rarely agree with Michael Reichman or Lloyd Chambers on what is a worthwhile purchase. Their photography budgets far exceed mine. It doesn't mean that I think their reviews are in any way inaccurate, but they're willing to throw far larger sums of money at a photographic problem that I am. Conversely, their standards are sometimes higher than mine. It's easier to complain about the rattle in your Camry when you can afford (and have driven) a Bentley.

I made this photograph with a small, relatively inexpensive camera. I could have made it with a large camera...but I didn't need to.

Of course the reviewer's priorities may be different than yours, which is why it is so important to understand yours. After nearly four decades of carting around a Pentax 67, these days I put some premium on portability. Using cameras that I don't mind hauling everywhere changes what I do artistically, and I enjoy the freshness (see above).

I made this photograph with a large, very expensive camera. I could not have made it with a small one. But, is the high price and inconvenience of such a camera worth it to me to make more of these photographs?

At the beginning of the year I got to use a medium-format Contax with Zeiss optics and a Phase One back for several weeks. It was great fun, and I did some really good work with it, adding several extremely fine photographs to my portfolio.

Do I want to make it my standard go-to camera kit? Oh heavens, no! Can I afford such a rig? See previous answer. Still, it has had me thinking for the better part of a year on how I might review that medium format behemoth against my Olympus Pen. Yes, it sounds like the worst apples versus oranges comparison, but after some reflection you'll see it makes a lot of sense. There's a basic consumer question in there: "I am using X; what am I missing by not moving up to Y?" Specifically for me, given that I am a smallish-camera, smallish-budget photographer, what would I gain, photographically, if I could/would get one of those medium-format rigs?

Sometimes this just breeds dissatisfaction; other times it's genuinely revelatory. Harking back to the film days, I've known of more than one photographer who, upon using a 4x5 view camera for the first time, realized they had been making themselves crazy trying to exact almost-unreasonable levels of quality from their 35mm. Many others tried it and decided they had as little interest in routinely using such an ungainly contraption as I would have relying on the Contax boat anchor.

The question, "What should I buy?" has no answers. The questions, "What can I afford?" and "What do I want to photograph with it?" do. They are your friends. Remember, shop wisely, if not too well.

Ctein

(Entirely off-topic...Steven Halpern, if you're reading this, could you please email me? I have a question about a future column for you. Thanks)

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Featured Comment by Bob Rosinsky: "I use three cameras. Each camera is one magnitude cheaper than the next. Oly Pen EPL-1: cheapest; Sony a850: not cheap; Hasselblad H2f with 39 MP multi-shot back: expensive. As a pro and a hobbyist, each of these cameras serve a purpose. My favorite camera is the Oly Pen with the 14–42mm kit lens. It's a blast being able to have a camera with me in all situations. The Sony is great for photographing dogs and environmental portraits; the 'Blad is great for commercial product photography and fine art reproduction. Every time I pick up the Oly to take a snap, my blood pressure goes down. Picking it up and viewing the world through the nifty EVF is like taking a leisurely Sunday afternoon drive. It is fun."

Featured Comment by Jeff: "Another question I ask myself, which seems implicit in your post, is 'Will I see a difference in my prints?' For me, the benefits of a new tool may not relate to different types of photos, but rather to the quality of final product, which for me is the print. Generally speaking, I see greater gains from printing hardware and software than from any new camera and/or lens combination. (Perhaps use of Leica leaves little room for improvement, but I suspect the same would hold for most top end gear.) In my film days, the priorities seemed more on the 'front end' of the chain; now with digital there is increased emphasis on the 'back end' of the workflow. Testing new print solutions is unfortunately not as easy as renting cameras or lenses; one only knows through experimentation."

Featured Comment by Michael Bearman: "Your 'whim' budget is governed by Bearman's Laws. These may be stated as follows:

1. The amount you will spend on goods without considering the price or undertaking a cost benefit analysis is known as the spending pain threshold or 'SPT.'
2. The SPT applies to discretionary purchases.
3. The SPT level is proportionate to the unnecessary purchase desire or 'UPD.'
4. The greater the UPD the higher the SPT.
5. Importantly, the SPT is inversely proportional to absolutely necessary purchases of 'ANP.' Hence, the higher or greater the ANP the lower the SPT.
6. Finally, the SPT converges absolutely with the ability to pay for the purchase, or 'APP.' Hence, the less you can afford the purchase, the more likely its is you are to make it and vice versa. This is known as the likelihood of purchase or 'LOP.'

"Let us test these Laws by applying them to known two goods a) my wholly unnecessary new Zeiss lens or 'NZL' and b) my wife's badly needed new dress for a wedding or 'WND.' It is safe to assume that NZL has a high UPD and WND has a high ANP. Hence, NZL SPT is greater than WND SPT. It is known that in respect of discretionary goods in December my personal APP is A$1000. As SPT converges absolutely with APP, we can assume that the difference between NZL SPT and NZL APP (being infinitesimal) is zero. It follows that NZL LOP = 100%. And because UPD is inversely proportional to APP, it follows that WND SPT (being infinitesimally small) is also zero. Hence, WND LOP = 0%.

"Hence, assuming that the NZL price = $1000 and WND price = $500, I will necessarily purchase the lens because 100% LOP = ($1,000 SPT/$1000 price) and will necessarily not purchase the new dress because 0% LOP = (0$SPT/$500 price).

"And that, Darling, is why I didn't have any choice when I bought the lens I wanted instead of the clothes you needed. Really."

Mike replies: I assume she knew you were like this when she married you? [g]

Print Sale Update

For those of you who bought "Color Picture" in our last Print Offer, good news—the prints are all finished and were shipped from DSI in Boston yesterday. Zander and I have gathered all the packaging materials here, and we'll be working to get the prints packed and shipped off to everybody at the end of this week and into next. I'll post another update once everything has shipped.

Incidentally, the photograph is now a limited edition of 50, plus three artist's proofs (A/P)—the three that DSI actually sent me as proofs. So your print will be signed and numbered.

Mike

'The Leica Compendium' by Erwin Puts

Speaking of Leica, I'm afraid that one rare photography book I should have alerted you to has come and gone. It is Leica Compendium: The Company, the Camera, the Lenses, by Erwin Puts of Tao of Leica.

The 602-page tome is simply one of the most astonishing books on cameras I have ever encountered. Erwin is one of the most knowledgable and dedicated Leica scholars in the world. I use the word "tome" advisedly: it is not only 602 pages long (I have the original edition), but the book is large (8.5x12"), and the pages are dense with small type and plenitudinous illustrations. It contains a lifetime of information, experimentation, and investigation on Erwin's part.

The sections include a history of the company, which I found particularly detailed and valuable; "Construction and manufacture of precision cameras"; "The Leica Cameras"; "The quest for image quality"; "Optical aberrations and engineering"; "Image evaluation"; and—the crowning glory—"Leica lens reports." The lens report section is 221 pages long and includes, by rough count, detailed profiles of 150 lenses, modern and historical, with many more covered adequately but in groupings (such as "Early Zoom Lenses").

I cannot claim to have "read" this vast book (although readable and engaging, it's a reference work). It did strike me that several of the sections I did read could stand on their own as books by themselves.

Impressively, Erwin not only self-published but also set the book himself, on a MacBook Pro using InDesign. Yet the result doesn't look homemade—it's professional in appearance. Leica Camera AG did not sponsor the publication.

Unfortunately, two limited editions have so far come and gone, and I don't know whether Erwin is planning a third. You might still be able to find copies on eBay.

Altogether a most impressive and beautiful achievement, sure to be prized and greatly valued among Leica fans of all sorts for many years. It takes its place alongside things like Jim Lager's trilogy and Gunter Osterloh's practical guide as one of the great books about this legendary camera marque.

Mike

UPDATE: Stop presses! Erwin informs me that the first edition (labeled "Limited Edition" on the cover, the one I have) which was published in April 2011, was limited to 1250 copies, and sold out in three weeks. The demand was such that Erwin published a second edition of an additional 1000 copies in August 2011, which again sold out in a few weeks. A third and apparently final edition of another 700 copies has just been published! So there's one more chance for Leica fans.

UPDATE #2 (Tuesday morning): Erwin is now sold out of the third edition; he has been swamped with orders. The sellers who might have some unspoken for are Camerabooks in the U.S., Riceball in Singapore, and LFI-Online and Lindemanns Buchhandlung in Germany. (I haven't been able to find a website for Riceball and I didn't find the book at LFI-Online; they might be sold out—although I should stop making assumptions.)

Erwin tells me he has stuck to small editions because he has to pay for the printing himself, and also because his space for storage is limited. I wonder why an enterprising publisher doesn't pick this up and make a commercial reprint of it. The work is already done, and there's certainly a market for it.

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Instant Street Cred for Only Two House Payments

The title of the post is what Mike Plews commented when he sent me this link.

Seems pretty cool, and also pretty silly, in just about equal measure...but also cool...but also silly....

Mike

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Open Mike: Treasures of iTunes

In the Great Digitization, it's become commonplace for great treasures from the vinyl age to suddenly appear naked and vulnerable to purchase by the blithest neophyte. Scratching the surface, here are just a few little-acknowledged masterpieces that once were the venerated objects of search crusades by those deep in the know but can now be downloaded for a mere few bucks by anybody.

Feel free to add to the list if you have your own candidates.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Will the Circle Be Unbroken. A seminal masterpiece of country rock, the real thing compared to the bands that merely used country to inflect their pop-rock, "May The Circle Be Unbroken" is the document of a legitimate summit—an attempt at reconciliation between younger bluegrass and country musicians soaked in the revolutionary hippie ethos and older, more traditional musicians who were conservative by nature and deeply suspecious of anyone with long hair. Originally a triple album on vinyl, the record documents a week-long meeting to make music, and most of the tracks were recorded on the first or second take on two-track, with no overdubs or splices. The two "sides" never really get over their mistrust, but they make great music together. Featuring Merle Travis, Vassar Clements, Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin, Brother Oswald, Doc Watson, and Mother Maybelle Carter. The mountain inflections are real, and the music has an authenticity that "country" music (which now mainly means "whites-only pop") now sorely lacks. At a time when the deepest rifts in America were generational, it was the first real country music that many younger rock fans had ever heard. Just as the once-popular vinyl was becoming really rare, the album made its way on to CD in 2002. You can find it here. 

Track to sample: "Dark as a Dungeon" (Merle Travis).

Can, Tago Mago. Holger Czukay's experimental German avant-garde band Can was never easy to find "on this side of the pond" as they say. My friend Kim, a legendary late-night dj on D.C.'s once-underground WHFS, introduced to me to this as he has introduced me to so much else. "Tago Mago" is Can's third album and one of its most accessible. Uncomfortably pigeonholed as part of the "krautrock" genre exemplified by early electronica bands such as Kraftwerk and Amon Düül II, Can never really fit the slot: their music is improvisatory, hallucinatory, atmospheric, constructed, always adventurous and probing. "Tago Mago" was influential on a wide variety of bands from The Sex Pistols to Radiohead, and yet might be more listenable now than it was back when it was hard to find. Note that the 40th Anniversary Edition of the CD is a deluxe production with many extras (including, unfortunately, a poorly recorded live CD you should ignore).

Track to sample: "Bring Me Coffee or Tea."

Sonny Stitt with Barry Harris, Tune Up! + Constellation (okay, this one's not actually on iTunes—I just thought it was—but it's on CD, and can be purchased here. I have the Gambit / Fresh Sounds Records reissue). To be controversial, I sometimes rate Sonny Stitt higher than John Coltrane in the pantheon of jazz saxophonists. There's a glint of truth behind that. Coltrane's vaunted "sheets of sound" never particularly moved me (I know it thrills some people to the bone), and I've never been 100% convinced by his tone. Stitt has nowhere near the reputation and rates a weak flicker on the cool-O-meter by comparison, but to me he's the true heir of Charlie Parker. The two Cobblestone records, "Tune Up!" and "Constellation," recorded late in his life and career, were a refreshing blast of "roots" bebop from a time when most jazz musicians, drowning under the rock tsunami, were trying anything to accommodate. These were once so rare that aficionados would spend years tracking them down.

Track to sample: "A Ghost of a Chance."

Sviatoslav Richter in the 1950s, volume 1. The great Richter has always had an elusive, legendary numen, despite being a protean recording artist, probably because he made such an impression when his recordings first emerged into the West from behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s—and because he disliked to travel. At his death perhaps no pianist had more artistic authority associated to his name. I can't speak for real classical collectors here, but before the rare Parnassus set came out in the 1990s, it was difficult for civilians to find an early recording of Richter playing the Seventh Sonata of Sergei Prokofiev, which Prokofiev wrote for Richter. Now? Anybody can click on it in iTunes. It's not even expensive, which seems just...wrong, somehow. The CD costs two and a half times as much.

Track to sample: the first (the Quarrel from Cinderella).

Neil Young, On the Beach. Neil Young is nothing if not quirky. For reasons that as far as I know have never been explained, for many, many years he refused to release "On the Beach"—one of the greatest albums of his early, depressive period and possibly the best single album of his career (the album is the middle of the so-called "Ditch Trilogy")—on CD. Some people have forgotten (and younger people may not know) how conventional it was in the early days of digital music, when CDs were still scarce, for people to say they wouldn't switch to CDs because "most of the music I listen to will never be available on CD." The opposite has generally been closer to the truth—CD, and now downloads, have rescued from the fathomless depths of record company vaults tens of thousands of recordings that would have gone in and out of print on vinyl only to become rare and sought after and fought over for years by the indefatigable collector. In this one case, however, the early vinylist was right. For twenty years, collectors hoped in vain to get this in digital form, and furtively traded bootlegs recorded from vinyl and encoded on homemade CD-Rs. Now? Available at a click on iTunes for eight dollars. Not even full price. You can get the CD, too. Of course, don't go looking for "Time Fades Away," another Neil Young standout from the same period that will never make it into digital form—Neil has bad memories from the tour it originated from, and, yep, refuses to rerelease it.

Track to sample: "On the Beach."

Tortoise, A Lazarus Taxon. Sometimes tiny, gem-hard kernals of criticism can be so true that you can never forget them again. Aforementioned friend Kim once said in passing that a band was essentially done by the time the first "greatest hits" album came out. I've never been able to forget that whenever I see a greatest hits package. Well, "A Lazarus Taxon" is Tortoise-speak for "greatest hits"—except it all hangs together surprisingly well; nobody does jazz-inflected experimental soundscape instrumentals more gorgeously than the Chicago-based Tortoise. So why does it belong on this list? Because it contains the entire "Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters," the band's out-of-print and hard-to-find 1995 release. The CD box is superbly done, includes a DVD, and as a bonus features photographs by Arnold Odermatt, whose book Karambolage we featured in these pages a few years ago. Of course both of those are out of print now.

But you can still find the music on iTunes. Sort of takes the fun out of the hunt, dunnit?

Mike

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Featured Comment by Martin Sharman: "Not only are these once rare albums available for purchase on CD or download—all except Tortoise and some of the Richter are available for immediate stream on Spotify U.K.

"Despite a CD collection bordering on four figures, and less numerous but physically larger racks of vinyl, as soon as I took out a Spotify subscription, my listening and purchasing habits were changed forever. I haven’t bought a CD since. I really would never have believed it, but the whole concept of buying music to keep is starting to appear very old fashioned.

"The utter delight of being able to read a superbly-written article recommending great music (such as this one, or any quality printed music magazine), and be able to instantly stream it into my consciousness, even as I read, is unquantifiable. My listening has become far broader and my musical knowledge has never been increasing at such a rate.

"Given that one has access to a reasonably comprehensive streaming library, why would I wait a few days for my CD order from Amazon to ship when I can listen immediately? And paying for permanent downloads makes even less sense, given the inherently time-limited nature of digital formats and storage media.

"(The only format still worth bothering with is vinyl, especially now all switched-on labels offer free digital downloads with each vinyl purchase. A carefully-manufactured vinyl record can deliver a genuinely valuable ownership experience, and can increase in value in a way digital never will. It has to be admitted that the fact that entry into the vinyl-owning and -playing world is relatively inconvenient and expensive only increases its cachet as the format of choice for the serious collector.)

"However, I do sometimes worry about the transience of digital and its effect on my music consumption.

"Never again will I experience that thrill of Saturday afternoon record shopping; of having awaited a release from a favourite band and queueing to purchase; of having a shortlist of potential buying material in mind and browsing the racks, examining the cover, reading the liner notes, sometimes even asking for a sneak preview on the shop CD player before deciding, there and then in the shop, which to buy. How less romantic it seems to be able instantly to play each album in the comfort of one’s home; and when the decision has been made which of the shortlisted albums is the best—what then? No purchase necessary, just press play again.

"There is something about investing in a band with one’s own money that gives a psychological link; a virtual piece of ownership that a streaming service will never provide. And I do have qualms that my money isn’t being fairly distributed to the artists I listen to: the royalties per play are simply too small. But I won’t give it up. How else could I have drifted off to sleep last night with the dulcet tone of Stitt washing over me?"

Vivian Maier Book Is Published

I'll have more to say about it in due course, but I just thought you'd want to know that I received Vivian Maier: Street Photographer yesterday. (It's available for pre-order in the U.K. and it's not in stock at The Book Depository yet.)

As you probably already know, Vivian was a Franco-American nanny who photographed obsessively on the street in complete obscurity for many years. Her work was abandoned in a storage locker as she lay dying, only to be rescued by several adventitious purchasers, one of whom was a young man named John Maloof. John soon realized the significance of his acquisition and has been working to stabilize, publicize and disseminate the archive ever since.

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer is the first full-scale publication of her work apart from a show catalog. A special book, in many ways. More anon.

Mike

P.S. Incidentally, my book came well packed and well protected, attached with shrink-wrap to a piece of cardboard inside the shipping box.

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Featured Comment by Sherwood McLernon: "I received my copy yesterday as well and have to say it exceeded my expectations. I think of it as the book that I had hoped The Americans by Robert Frank would have been, but wasn't. I thought the reproductions were excellent and a lot of the subject matter fascinating. All in all a very satisfying book."

For The Camera Buff Who Has Everything

I'm still on break, so please pretend I'm not posting this, but, just in case you pine to be a viral sensation on YouTube or are dying to make a submission to America's Funniest Home Videos—or you just have a "jackass" streak—Amazon's Deal of the Day today is a helmet cam, the GoPro HD Helmet Hero. I think I actually linked to this the last time it was the deal of the day...but check out that crazy video at the link. My idea of a daring adventure far from home is to attempt to read Guillaume Apollinaire or go look at some Dadaist art, and I don't think I'd have the energy or the patience to attach a helmet cam to the dog. But you men and women of action out there might feel very differently....

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jim Richardson: "Actually, I think I'm going to do this, just because I am so sure that (with a live internet feed) everybody would be interested in seeing what I do sitting in my office all day. Fascinating stuff, really, sorting papers, throwing the empty bag of Gummi Bears in the trash, Googling myself about 83 times, stuff like that. But in my case I'm going to add a pulse monitor for those cases where the image doesn't move for a long time and people wonder if I'm still alive. Always thinking of my fans."

'Black Friday'

Shoppers in a frenzy over cool stripey pants. Photo by John Crosley.

I know I said I was taking the day off today (put down the mouse and step away from the computer!), but I can't resist passing this along while it's topical: Gary Brown pointed out an interesting article (in my own local paper no less) about the real origins of the term 'Black Friday' (that's today, if you're wondering—the Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S.). It also charts for us the rise of the term's usage.

Meanwhile, we often turn to Ctein for technical assistance around these parts, but after I saw a certain commercial yesterday I had to laugh—I would need Ctein's help to calculate how infinitesimal the chances are that I'd be showing up at K-Mart at five o'clock in the morning. It would have to involve something like a quantum teleporting of every atom in my body through a different dimension, randomly reconstituting me in the aisles of said K-Mart. Rather than, say, 900 nautical miles east-southeast of Melanesia or in the air two miles above Tobruk. I suppose kidnapping by a Colombian cocaine cartel might also have to be factored in: "Dear Zander, Thank you for tendering the entire $7,347.69 from your father's savings account along with the nine sundry film and digital cameras we demanded as ransom. You can find him tied up in the deserted garden products section of your local K-Mart at 5:00 a.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving."

Or maybe if they gave the first five shoppers free Audi S5's, say. I'd be pessimistic about my chances, but I might try.

I can't come up with any other plausible scenarios.

Now, if our retail establishments wanted to get me to shop, what they'd advertise is the least busy day of the year. "Attention! Almost no one shops on July 22nd! The stores are nearly deserted! Mosey through the doors at your own lackadaisical pace! Come after you've slept late and had three cups of coffee—it won't matter, everything will still be there!"

That might get me.

Enjoy your day!

Mike, back to vacation

UPDATE (Saturday): Seeing some of the reports yesterday evening I was genuinely repulsed by it all. Granted, the "news" is culling the worst incidents and the worst video clips from all over the country, but it makes us look bad to the rest of the world. (Sort of the way the British look when you see those compilations of the worst behavior by soccer fans.) I have to trust that most Black Friday sales were probably pretty orderly and dull, but the worst ones...ugh. I hope this is something on the order of a fad or a popular craze, and that it will pass.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Jennie A. Brownscombe's 1914 fantasy of "The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" has many inaccuracies—it shows only a small gathering (there would have been more than 300 people at the actual event, about two-thirds of them Pokonokets*), and details such as the frontier-style log cabin sitting out in the open and the plains Indian warbonnets are wildly out of place. The costumes of the Pilgrims (who would have called themselves Separatists, if they needed a name for themselves at all) are all wrong. The painting is more about an idea than it is a representation of history—the idea of people setting aside cultural differences, offering each other mutual aid and succor, and feasting together and giving thanks to God.

Harvest celebrations predate A.D. 1621 by thousands of years, of course, and both the Indians and the Europeans would have already been well familiar with their respective traditions of harvest feasts held in the fall of the year.

If you celebrate the day, wherever in the world you are, a good day to you and yours. And, whether you give particular thanks this day or not, may you and your family have much for which to be grateful in the coming year.

Mike

(P.S. TOP will be closed for a couple of days, but I'll probably be back by Sunday. I'm assuming I won't be able to stay away.)

*The natives at the first Thanksgiving were members of the Pokonoket tribe, of the Wampanoag confederacy or nation. Wampanoag means "people of the east." The leader and chronicler of the pilgrims, my ancestor William Bradford, was confused as to whether "Massasoit" was a title or a name, a confusion which persists right down to the present. It was a title; the Massasoit's name was Ousamequin, sachem (chief or leader) of the Pokonoket and massasoit (great sachem) of the Wampanoag.

It's interesting that Pokonoket means "people of the clearing." The Wampanoag had been decimated by European diseases in the years before 1620, and the area around Plymouth was largely deserted when the Mayflower arrived—but the English had little clearing of the land to do, because the Pokonoket had already cleared fields for crops.

Although the pilgrims, Thanksgiving, and Plymouth Colony are mostly considered fit for study only by schoolchildren in the U.S.—it's the national mythos aspect we really care about, not the actual history—we've been treated to a fine account of the era for general readers recently, in Nathaniel Philbrick's entertaining and readable book Mayflower.

Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2 Lens: Review

By Ctein

"You get what you pay for."

This bit of anti-consumerism is frequently trotted out as an excuse for high prices, as if it were some law of nature. It's not. Sometimes you get a lot more than what you pay for. Sometimes you get a lot less.

The Olympus 12mm Micro 4/3 lens, with the focus ring pulled down
to reveal the distance and depth of field scales.

At $800, the Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 12mm ƒ/2 lens is a case of getting less. A lens this pricey should be great; this 12mm (equivalent to 24mm in full frame format) has too many warts and weak spots to qualify as anything more than good. Its deficiencies are serious enough that I strongly considered returning it.

The main reason I didn't is that it occupies a unique spot in the lens selection for Micro 4/3. Fast wide angles are rare; the closest competitor I know of is the Panasonic 14mm ƒ/2.5. I have the Olympus 14–42 mm kit lens, and it's a better lens than most people give it credit for. I didn't need another 14mm lens just to gain a stop. I did hanker for something wider, but, because I'm not a major wide-angle fan, I didn't yearn for one of those small-aperture, large-size wide-angle zooms.

Truth is I was looking forward to this lens almost as much as the 45mm ƒ/1.8 I reviewed last week. It would fill a conspicuous hole at the end of my focal length range, and its fast aperture would let me use it for available light work as well as nature photography, my primary activity.

The first thing I did with the lens after I got it from B&H was take it out for some field tests. When I pulled the photographs up on my computer, I was sorely disappointed. On-axis sharpness was only adequate, even at ƒ/4.5–ƒ/8. Not good. Worse, edge quality stayed mediocre at all apertures (below). I don't expect great edge quality from a 24mm-equivalent at ƒ/2. I do when it's stopped down several stops, at least if it costs as much as this lens does.

This photo was made at ƒ/4.5 with my first sample of the lens. Shown below are the central and corner portions at 100% scale.

Click to open 100% sections of RAW files, converted using my ACR defaults. On the left is the central portion of a photograph made at ƒ/5.6 with the Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens for comparison. By comparison, the central portion of a photograph made at ƒ/4.5 with the 12mm lens looks very soft (middle). Corner performance (right) shows clear smearing. Stopping the 12mm lens down further did not significantly improve image quality.

Allowing for the possibility that my expectations were unrealistic, I ran this past TOP's panel of experts. There was a general agreement that this was not stellar performance and that there was a fair chance I had a defective lens. Jeff Goggin, who already owned a 12mm, sent me a JPEG of one of his photos that looked a lot better than any of mine.

I exchanged my lens for a new one. The new one was a lot better. Center sharpness was very good wide open, and became excellent stopped down. Edge quality? Well, it still wasn't particularly good wide open, but I would not expect that from a 12mm ƒ/2 lens at any price. It got a lot better stopped down than my first sample did, but it never got great. Most important for me, it was only marginally acceptable in 15x20" image area prints. That's my standard size for sale. It's pushing what this camera can do, but my other lenses perform well there. This lens makes the grade, but only barely, and you better not be looking too closely at those corners:

A second sample of the 12mm lens performed much better. Please note this is not a straight RAW conversion; this is a print-ready file I worked magic on in Photoshop. It illustrates the best sharpness and fine detail I can extract from this lens.

100% sections of the center and corner illustrate that central performance is excellent, but the corners still show some smear, even at ƒ/7.

$800 should get me better optical quality than that.

One much-touted feature of this lens is full manual focusing. Pull back on the knurled focusing ring and it reveals a distance and depth of field scale. The focusing ring no longer free-wheels as it does in normal manual focus mode; it locks into place so that you can manually focus this lens like an ordinary camera lens. A very nice idea when you need to focus quickly; scale focusing is a valuable technique with wide-angle lenses, which benefit from generous depth of field. Fixed-position focusing rings are also easier to use than the free-wheeling kind; you quickly develop tactile feedback that lets you focus very quickly in situations where autofocus won't cut it.

Olympus's implementation of this has three big problems:

1. The focusing ring focuses well past infinity. The end stop is at about +ƒ/4 (I'm using the depth of field marks as indicators). You can't blindly set the lens to infinity, or you'll actually be focused well beyond infinity. This kind of slop is often needed with telephoto lenses to allow for thermal expansion, but that shouldn't be an issue with a 12mm lens.
2. If you align the infinity mark with the focus line, you're still not in focus at infinity. True infinity focus is when the infinity mark is at about –ƒ/2.8. Consequently, scale focusing isn't going to be very accurate.
3. When you focus in this full manual mode you don't get continuous focusing, as you do in normal manual focusing where the ring free-wheels. The manual ring only provides coarse zone focusing. Focus snaps from zone to zone abruptly; the separation between zones is about the same as the separation between the focus line and the ƒ/5.6 mark. That huge jump makes it impossible to achieve either precise or accurate focus.

Full manual focus is poorly implemented. The top close-up shows the position of the distance scale when the focusing ring is turned to the full left; the lens is actually focused well beyond infinity. The middle illustration shows the ring's position at the point of best infinity focus; the infinity mark is well off the distance indicator. The lower illustration shows how much more the focusing ring needs to be rotated to change the focus by a single zone. That is a very large jump in focus.

I began to wonder if I might not have another defective lens. Jeff graciously loaned me his copy. The results are reminiscent of good news/bad news jokes:

Our two lenses perform essentially identically, so the good news is that I didn't get a second defective lens.

The bad news is that this isn't a defective lens. This seems to be as good as it gets.

Actual good news
Unexceptional image quality and an amazingly awful manual focus ring. Is there anything I can wholeheartedly praise in this lens? Yes: image stabilization.

This lens shines at available light work. I made this photograph handheld at ISO 100 at ƒ/2 with an exposure time of 2/3 second. There was no light on in the dining room; the only sources of illumination were lights in other rooms. It is actually much darker in there than normal dim indoor lighting. Note how little blur there is in the 100% section on the right.

This lens is so stable that I would swear the image stabilization system in the Olympus EP-1 had been designed around it. I can handhold this lens at 1/4th second and get photos that are sharp down to the single pixel level three-quarters of the time. At 1/2 second I'm good half to a third of the time. On rare occasion, when the gods smile, I can push even further (above), although a full second seems beyond my capabilities.

If I crank the ISO up to 800 (the maximum ISO for high quality with this camera), the results become amazing, as you can see below. If I can see it, I can photograph it (assuming, of course, that "it" is standing stock still).

ISO 800 at ƒ/2 and 1/2 second, handheld. It's the middle of the night; the only illumination is a street lamp up the road and the ubiquitous urban night sky illumination. The white spots in the sky aren't hot pixels, they are stars.

100% sections from the frame above, showing how rock-steady the image it is. The faint white dots on the right? Those are the Pleiades! They're just barely visible in the full frame, near the top center of the frame.

For available light work, this lens is a true champion, due to its combination of acceptable wide-open image quality and unbelievable stability. Under more normal conditions, the lens is less impressive. This is not a bad lens. But it is no better than merely good, and its performance doesn't come anywhere close to justifying an $800 price tag.

For the present time, I'm keeping it. If a better fast wide-angle comes along, I won't hesitate to replace this lens. It is only its uniqueness that makes it a keeper for me.

Ctein

Olympus 12mm ƒ/2 from B&H Photo

Olympus 12mm ƒ/2 from Amazon.com

Olympus 12mm ƒ/2 from Amazon U.K.

Ctein's regular weekly column appears every Wednesday on TOP.

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Featured Comment by Jeffrey Goggin: "While I agree with most of what Ctein says about this lens factually, I disagree with him a bit as to a few of his subjective statements of opinion.

"For a start, $800 doesn’t strike me as ridiculously expensive for a lens, at least not these days. I have paid quite a bit more than that for several of them over the past three years, including the Olympus 4/3-format 7–14mm and 14–35mm zooms I happily use with my E-P1 and other Micro 4/3 bodies, and I personally consider the 12mm ƒ/2 lens to offer good—but not great—value for the money.

"Second, the maximum size print that I can make from the average Micro 4/3 file is 12x16", slightly less than two-thirds the size of Ctein’s preferred 15x20" prints. At that larger size, I am not surprised that he is less than delighted with E-P1/12mm combo’s image quality overall, but at 12x16, I find that I am generally satisfied with the quality of the results that I achieve with it.

"Third, the various focusing quirks he cites, while definitely annoying in theory, don’t seem to be nearly so annoying in practice. At least not to me; your mileage may vary, of course.

"However, I do agree that the E-P1/12mm combo handles handheld, low-light photography with considerable aplomb. Last summer, I used mine to photograph handheld inside the underground parking garage at the office building where I work and was amazed to find I could consistently capture sharp photos using shutter speeds in the 1/8 to 1/2 second range, especially when I would hold the shutter button down and capture batches of three images consecutively, as the middle one almost always proved to be slightly sharper than the other two.

"Bottom line: If you’re considering purchasing this lens, I suggest that you check it out personally and decide for yourself whether it meets your needs and/or fits your budget, rather than rely solely upon the opinions of others. And I suspect Ctein will agree with me on this point."

Featured Comment by Christina Brandon: "For those of you who haven't tried the 12mm ƒ/2, don't put your wallets away too hastily. I have had every wide-angle lens for the 4/3 and m4/3 formats—the $1800 7–14mm ƒ/4 lens (for 4/3); the $890 7–14mm ƒ/4 lens (for m4/3); the $600 9–18mm ƒ/4–5.6 lens (for 4/3) and the $700 9–18mm ƒ/4–5.6 lens (for m4/3)—and this is hands-down my favorite of the bunch.

"I have had the 12mm ƒ/2 lens since July and to say I am blown away by it is an understatement. As somewhat out-of-control collectors of cameras and lenses, my husband and I have plenty of other gear for comparison, including a Nikon D3 setup, a Canon 5DMII, and lots of truly stellar manual focus legacy glass we use on the Sony NEX 5n. We both agree that this little 12mm is a gem on all fronts.

"Here's what's great about it:

1. Image quality—By far the most important aspect of a lens to me is its image quality. Over the four months or so I've been using this lens, it has delivered consistently sharp, contrasty images under a wide variety of shooting conditions and with an equally wide variety of subjects, from portraits to architectural interiors. It's one of those lenses I feel I can depend on to give me not just good images but truly special images.
2. Wide aperture—I love this lens for interiors in available light, and guess what—an ƒ/4 or ƒ/4–5.6 lens is not much fun to use in low light. An ƒ/2 lens makes all the difference, and it's so sharp wide open that I find myself using it at ƒ/2 for the majority of my shots.
3. Minimum focusing distance—It's closer-focusing than any of the other wide and ultra-wide angle lenses I listed above (20 cm vs. 25 cm). This is a big deal for me as I enjoy getting in close to many of my subjects. Not only that, but an added benefit of getting in so close is that at ƒ/2 the backgrounds can be thrown significantly out of focus.
4. Aesthetics and ergonomics—Nothing to forgive here, either! This is truly a beautiful lens to hold, use, and just gaze at.

"Do I think the $800 price tag is appropriate? You bet I do. The lenses I listed above range from $600 to $1800. The only cheaper lens is the $600 9–18mm for 4/3, and I really struggled to get sharp images with that lens, so much so that I sold it. And of course all of those other lenses are ƒ/4 or slower! I consider it a minor miracle to have such a beautiful, tiny, jewel of a lens that is both super sharp and super fast for less than $1000.

"I am scratching my head a bit about Ctein's experience with edge sharpness. I get consistent sharpness across the frame at all apertures with this lens. I can't speak to the manual focus issues he discusses, as I've only shot it in autofocus mode.

"By the way, I have the 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens as well, and while that lens is also excellent and the 'right' focal length for my way of seeing most of the time, I have to say that the 12mm would be the harder of the two to part with if I had to make a choice. It's that special."

OT: There's Ugly, There's Butt-Ugly, Then There's...

As regular readers know, I'm casually a car buff. Love beautiful cars. Occasionally am appalled by ugly ones.

Well, I think we have a new contender in the "ugliest car ever" contest. The Citroën Tubik MPV Concept. (I used a link to give you a choice—if you have delicate sensibilities you might not want to look.)

That thing makes an Edsel look elegant. A veritable silver turd. I am just sayin'.

Other car news
I probably should have saved this for an "Open Mike," but as long as I'm on the subject (cars), allow me to take another moment and fill you in on an unusual development in the automobile world, in case you're not yet aware.

Subaru BRZ Concept. Images courtesy of Subaru.

Meet the Subiyota. The long-rumored joint venture between Subaru and Toyota intended to fill out both companies' weak sports car portfolios. (Very long-rumored—both companies have been teasing this thing since 2007. Long enough for a man to grow a long gray beard literally, not just figuratively.) It's reportedly getting close to production now—Motor Trend even drove a prototype. (So did C&D.)

The picture shows Subie's near-production STI-style "concept" from the recent Los Angeles Auto Show. (More on that rear wing later.)

What is it? It's a front-engined, rear wheel drive 2+2 coupe that's small, light (~2,500 lbs. according to Subaru's estimate), and comes with a manual transmission. Optimized for balance and handling, not power. Mmmm.

Like simple, straightforward cameras and sealed box stereo speakers, it's a well-known formula...that virtually no one follows any more. (Find me a 2,500 lbs. car that isn't a tinny econobox with a toy motor.)

Toyota took the lead in the project and handled the design; Subaru will build the car, and did the engineering. It will be sold with different sheet metal as the Subaru BRZ and the Toyota FT-86 in most of the world. However, Toyota will badge its version as a Scion in the U.S., probably as an aspirational vehicle for the young, entry level buyers Toyota hopes Scions are appealing to.

Why's it different? It's an actual sports car, wonder of wonders, not an overpowered GT like everyone else builds these days. Not that those aren't nice; it's just that there are few places to wring out two-ton cars that have 450 horsepower V8s, and it's not that easy for most guys to find the 40–100 large those tend to cost. The BRZ's raison d'etre is handling, with an especially low center of gravity (it will have a purpose-built Subie Boxer flat four set five inches lower and more than nine inches farther back than in any other Subaru). It will reportedly come in at under $30,000. Although the price, along with a lot else (like confirmed horsepower) is not actually known yet.

As you might imagine, I have strong tastes in automobiles. As with virtually everything, my tastes are well defined—and more or less at odds with what the rest of the world wants. New cars that excite my enthusiasm don't come along very often. This is one.

But about that rear wing...
Not too sure about the styling, but then pretty is as pretty does. Sure about one thing—you can't see it in the picture, but that wing spoiler on the concept has the words

on it in day-glo paint. Just kidding, but let's just say I would not touch that honkin' wing with somebody else's ten-foot pole. (Hope I haven't just offended 100 guys with giants wings bolted on their trunklids. Forgive me. I did say I have strong tastes. But you cannot simultaneously like that thing and be older than 20.) I would wait for the convertible version anyway...yes, another rumor, supposedly to come along a year or so after the coupe.

The Subiyota will reportedly launch next Spring. Hope it fits lardasses. Now where is there a Subaru dealer near here?

Mike
(Thanks to Bryce Lee of Burlington, Ontario, Canada)

ADDENDUM: I'm sure most people got this, but I don't really care how the Subiyota is going to look. I care about how it's going to drive. My going-on-eleven-year-old Miata is still the most fun thing on four wheels, despite its obvious and increasing signs of aging. An 11-years-newer rethink of a sharp-handling lightweight RWD car with a 200hp+ 4-banger and a proper third-pedal shifter is what has me slavering, not the aesthetics of the thing...all I hope for regarding the looks is that they keep the stylists at bay with a whip and a chair so the thing doesn't end up looking too goony to be seen in. That's about all I ever hope for these days.

P.S. Oh, and I almost forgot—this pertains to both cars and photography. Spectators at the Baja 1000 are allowed to go wherever they want to take pictures. Check out the risk this guy took to get an unusual angle. The action's all in the first half of the video—the second driver sensibly refrains from heading straight toward the guy. (Wonder if the coroner would have had to put "alcohol involved" on the death certificate?)

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Featured Comment by Scott Baker: "The Flyin' Douchebags second album represents a real departure from the staid predictability of their first."

Featured Comment by guillaumee: It will not make it look better, but the Citroën Tubik is actually a reference, in name and design, to a very popular van that was extrremely commonplace in the '60s and '70s (Google "citroen tube" for pics). It was the default choice for a lot of small businesse, the police, and even ambulances, in France and a few other European countries. It is a background feature in many movies, and has high collector value today. Ugly, for sure, but not without its particular charm....

Mike replies: I got ya, but that thing was utilitarian, down to the corrugated steel sides...the whatever-it-is at the link is ugly by intention, which I think makes it worse.

Featured Comment by Ray: "The BRZ reminds me of my old S13-era Nissan 240SX. Light but "underpowered" (Nissan shipped it to the U.S. with a torquey truck motor rather than the turbo that they supplied to the Silvia platform everywhere else in the world. So I got destroyed in a straight line many a day. But it handled like it was on rails. A four wheel drift was a complete non-event. And while that rear wing is a bit over the top, my wingless and heavier 240 got very light and floaty as speeds approached triple digits; I'd wonder if some form of downforce at the rear of the BRZ isn't actually required."

Mike replies: God, I hope not!

Featured Comment by Paddy C: "Someone's really trying for a Darwin award."

Featured Comment by Matthew: "My 19 year old son loves the wing!"

Featured [partial] Comment by Paul Glover: "That's high on the weirdometer even by the impressive standards of Citroën."

Platinum Printing

Carl Weese, On Gaudineer Mountain, West Virginia

Carl Weese tells me there are still a few slots left in his upcoming Platinum Printing workshop at The Center for Alternative Photography (CAP) in New York City on the weekend of December 3rd and 4th. See the CAP website (it's the 13th one down) for more information.

Carl's a very experienced teacher of this process. He's good.

Mike

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The Five Finalists

We've concluded the first round of our Reader's Print Offer search. We have five finalists from this round; we'll do two more rounds at some point in the future, looking for four or five finalists from each, and then we'll evaluate prints to determine the pictures in the final sale. Before I present the finalists I'd just like to thank everybody who participated in the first round—the approximately 600 people who submitted pictures, and all 20 semifinalists. Their names have now all been added to their pictures in the original post, so you can now see who took what.

I asked each finalist to write a few words about their photographs. Without further ado, and in no particular order—

James C. Tiemann

Jim Tiemann of Denver, Colorado, is already known to TOP readers from this post (the little guy, if you're curious, is now two years old and thriving). Jim took this remarkable steam engine shot with a Leica M6 TTL and 50mm Summicron in North Platte, Nebraska, in February of 2004, on Ilford XP2 film.

Jim writes:

Union Pacific railroad's Challenger class (4-6-6-4) No. 3985 was built in 1943 by the American Locomotive Company (Alco). It measures, with tender, 121 ft. (36.8m) in length and weighs 1.07million lbs. (487,000 kg). She was retired from active use in 1957, and sat unused until 1981, when she was restored to working duty for both excursions and regular freight. Of the 105 Challengers built, there are only two remaining, so it is a small miracle that this one is in service.

The photo was taken on a clear and very cold day. The temperature was about 15°F (–9°C), and windless. The locomotive had a stuck-open cylinder cock, so it was limited in speed as it passed the camera. Also, due to the stuck valve, it was blowing lots and lots of clean steam off the cylinders, which gave a beautiful contrast to the dirtier smoke-filled steam coming off the stack that you see in the upper portion of the image. The still, cold air gave the etherial quality to the billowing steam, as it was not dissipating—it just hung there.

Several readers thought this must have been Photoshopped, and they're partly right—the negative has a small scratch in the area of the train's boiler that has to be fixed. Other than that, it's a natural photograph. I originally assumed the smoke in the upper right must have been burned it, but Jim assures me it's not, and offered to send me the proof sheet to prove it! I took his word for it, of course.

Jim, who is married, is a commercial pilot.

-

Kathleen Pickard

Canadian Kathy Pickard worked long and hard to get this shot, which she took with a Nikon D300 and 18–200mm lens.

"Mosaic" is one of a series of photographs I shot on the eastern shore of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, Canada. The waters of Georgian Bay are crystal clear, shockingly cold and, on a sunny day, remarkably animate. It took me a number of attempts over several years to make a photograph that I felt properly captured its spirit.

I shot with the Nikon tripod mounted and manually focused, while up to my knees in water. The challenge came in capturing a situation that was simultaneously stationary and dynamic while paring it down to three elements—rock, water, and light.

I'm one of those photographers who don’t feel that my work is done until I am holding the print in my hand. I've been working on improving my technique over the past ten years. I print with an Epson 3800 inkjet printer, with my preferred paper being Hahnemuhle German Etching, a textured matte paper. I've printed "Mosaic" at about 10.5 inches square on 13x19" paper, and it looks great at that size. I'm sure that it would look good in smaller sizes—say 7.5 inches square on 11x14 or 5.5 inches on 8.5x11. For that matter, the resolution would allow it to be printed larger too, though personally I prefer smaller prints.

Kathleen lives in Simcoe, Ontario. Here's her website.

-

Bernd Reinhardt

Bernd, a resident of Sherman Oaks, California, made his quiet but pleasing landscape with a Fuji GF670, on color negative film. It's part of a series he made this last summer on a road trip through California with a good friend—the full series is called "American Road Trip" and can be viewed on his website.

He writes:

I would like to say the following to my peers: I truly appreciate all the feedback my photograph has received in the Comments section on TOP. It is very valuable to see how people read my work and that some have such a positive emotional response to it, which is something that is difficult to know when you are making or submitting a photograph.

Some inspiration for this and a lot of my photographs comes from the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, which describes everyday things and places and reminds me to see and enjoy them more consciously. This particular photograph is untitled because I felt that any title I could give it would put too much emphasis on only one aspect of the composition rather than the photograph as a whole. That being said, Mike's descriptive title "Road with Telephone Pole" works just fine.

As far as a print is concerned, I would appreciate some input from others. I will probably print on 17x22 Baryta paper with archival ink if a smaller and more affordable size is the way to go. Otherwise I will experiment with some larger inkjet and lightjet prints with my local lab.

I hope that my photograph will prove to be one that grows on the viewer more as time passes.

-

Leigh Perry

Leigh, of Sydney, Australia, shot his minimalist masterpiece with an Ebony 45SU 4x5-inch view camera on Fuji Astia, his favorite transparency film, under "glorious fluorescent lighting."

The commenters who speculated that my photograph was a joke were right. It was conceived as a pun on the minimal seascapes I had taken before it. The idea gradually formed itself while I stood for a couple of minutes each day waiting for my car to come out of a car stacker. I eventually became aware that the carpark contained all the elements that would have attracted me to a composition on the coast in the early morning.

The photograph is typical and atypical of my work in equal measure. I've always been obsessed with symmetry (as a kid, if I stubbed a toe, I'd have to do the same on the other foot!), and this reveals itself in my compositions. You'll see from my other portfolios on my website a consistent obsession with geometric layers splitting the frame into halves or thirds. I can't ascribe any credit to Gursky, although I am a fan of the Düsseldorf School. Sugimoto, however, was an influence on the seascapes of mine that morphed into this.

Although most of my subject matter involves landscape, particularly on the coast, I don't particularly consider myself a landscape photographer. I just shoot what is to hand here in Sydney.

-

Roy Feldman

It's a little ironic that some commenters thought that "Barbershop, Detroit" was staged, given that Roy, who shot it with a Panasonic GF1 and Lumix 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens, was so worried about the possibility of being obtrusive that he shot from waist level! I'll let him tell it:

This picture was taken in the Russell Street industrial area of Detroit, an extremely "urban" area. I used the GF1 on shutter priority with multi-point focus chosen. I shot with the camera around my neck but not raised to my eye as that would have called attention to myself and destroyed the ebb and flow of the interaction in the picture. Exposure comp was –1 to avoid blowing out (overexposing) the windows. Some commenters asked if it was set up: trust me, a fat white guy is not going to set up anything with the folks in this neighborhood. Many times when shooting around this area of the city I praise myself for having the foresight to wear brown trousers. Remember we are #3 on the list of the world's most dangerous cities. (No. 1 is Cape Town, South Africa;  no. 2, Karachi, Pakistan; no. 3, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.)

As Cartier-Bresson suggests, I tip-toe around the picture and never intrude.

Roy, the only professional photographer among the finalists, says he intends to take Ctein up on his offer to print the picture for him. He envisions it looking best as an 11x14 with one- or two-inch borders, probably on Ilford Gold Fiber.

Here's a link to Roy's blog.

-

That's all for now
Congratulations to Jim, Kathy, Bernd, Leigh, and Roy, and thanks again to everyone who participated in this process—including all of you who commented and voted. I enjoyed it a lot, even though it was a lot of work. We'll do the other two rounds before too long—I'm thinking maybe one before Christmas and one after. We'll see.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Scott Kirkpatrick: "It's fascinating to note that four of the five finalists so far were shot on film, and mostly quite a few years ago. Does that say something about TOP's readers?"

Mike replies: Well, it might have been fascinating, but you've miscounted—two of the five are digital. And I don't know how you get to "mostly quite a few years ago." Roy's EXIF says 2010; Bernd states in his write-up that his picture was taken last summer; Kathy's can't have been taken earlier than the summer of 2007, because that's when the D300 came out; Jim's was taken in 2004, and Leigh's website dates his "Primitive Markings" portfolio, from which his picture here comes, from 2007 to the present.

Even without knowing more, I don't get "mostly quite a few years ago" from the available information.

In fact, the finalists accord pretty well with TOP's demographics, or as well as any five pictures can. One-fifth B&W, 4/5ths color—check. One woman, four men—check. (Our female audience is somewhat smaller than 20%, but that's as fine as you can dice a sample of five.) Three Americans, one Canadian, one from elsewhere in the English-speaking world—again, as close as you can get to actual site demographics with this sample size. One-fifth view camera, 1/5th Leica—not exact, but pretty fair. The three film shots are split nicely between 35mm, medium format, and large format. Even the split between a DSLR and a mirrorless digicam among the two digital shots is an adequate representation as far as it goes.

Note that I made no effort whatsoever to spread the results this way or any way. I wasn't paying any attention to it. The way it came out was just the way it came out.

In fact, the only stat here that doesn't accord with site demographics is the film/digital split. Our surveys would predict only one or two of the five using film, rather than three. But that, in turn, accords with the fact that a higher percentage of photographers who make and/or exhibit prints and/or who sell their work use film compared to amateur photographers in general.

Featured Comment by mbka: "Strangely, with the descriptions I enjoy and understand some of these pictures much better now. And even more strangely, Leigh Perry's garage picture that really didn't touch me otherwise, now makes complete sense in the light of his seascapes on his webpage. I find his seascapes absolutely marvelous. They are the kind of pictures I generally like making myself too—a little different in slant but somehow in that vein: smallness of people in the face of space, and space itself."

Featured Comment by Ed Hawco: "What a difference a bit of story makes. I too thought that Jim Tiemann had burned-in the steam in the upper-right quadrant. I have an aversion to the current trend of over-emphasizing billowing clouds that you see so often in over-processed HDR shots and other cases where people go overboard with the 'Clarity' tool and all that. It seemed odd to me that someone would do that on this, such an excellent photo, especially since the steam at the bottom is so clean. Now that I know the truth I can happily boot my prejudice out the window and appreciate the photo all the more for what it is."

Featured Comment by Brian Small: "It's a bit geeky but I think some clarification is in order. In Mr. Tiemann's photo the white billowy stuff near the ground is pure steam from the cylinder cock. The plume in the top of the frame that everyone is worried about is a combination of steam and oil smoke from the stack."

Pretty Please...

Time again for your friendly no-more-than-once-a-month reminder to please support TOP by ordering through our Amazon and B&H Photo links for your purchases.

This is really what keeps the site going, more than anything.

No need to order anything specially, but if you're going to be buying something from either one of those sites anyway, it helps TOP if you order through our links.

It doesn't cost you anything extra; the spiff we get comes out of Amazon's and B&H's profits. You pay the same amount for your purchases either way.

Here's a direct link to Amazon.com. Here's one to B&H Photo.

All our links can always be found on our Links Page, which can be accessed at any time from the right-hand sidebar. There are links there to other Amazons and to the Book Depository.

There's also always a link to our two main affiliates at the bottom of every post.

Doesn't hurt if you tell your friends, either.

And as always, THANKS for your help! Without affiliate income, TOP goes KAPUT.

Mike, Chief Fundraiser and Honorary Bob Cratchit

P.S. Only items chosen and purchased in the same visit are credited to us. Nothing already in your Shopping Cart or on your Wish List counts—even if you put them there on a visit that originated at TOP. (I know....) Amazon links can be bookmarked, but the B&H link cannot.

Readers' Prints: Mike's Picks

Photo by John MacKechnie.

I think I'm about to treat you to a different perspective on the 600 pictures submitted to us last Wednesday.

A couple of things to keep in mind about our recent experiment:

Selling prints is really a lot different than exhibiting photographs. Also than discussing photographs. The end-use of a print for sale—at least when there's no personal connection between the subject and the buyer—is presumably for it to be displayed. That is, it will be used as decor. And a picture most people will put up for display can be very different from a picture they'll enjoy looking at online or in a book. (Again, assuming the photographs or the photographers aren't recognizable or famous.) They're actually relatively specialized pictures.

And remember that the pictures in the "semifinals" post have been screened twice for their potential as decor—once by the photographer, once by me.

...With varying levels of understanding and varying levels of success. On all our parts, no doubt.

Many of the 600 submissions the other day were fine photographs. However (rightly or wrongly!), I simply felt that some of them might not have the broad appeal we want for a sale—the purpose of the sales being to make money and create satisfied customers, not necessarily in that order. Among the 600 submissions, I could sense that there were a number that probably have personal meaning for the photographer/submitter, as well as a number that were simply fine or interesting pictures that didn't seem to suit the end-use intended here.

Naturally, any large enough group of pictures can be "filtered" for various different purposes or tastes. When I'm looking for pictures that might make good sale prints, I'm not necessarily just picking things I like; it's not my taste I'm trying to satisfy, it's my conception of other peoples' taste in pictures for display, and hence, purchase. Those are very different things.

I'm quite comfortable with the disparities. To name just the most obvious one: most people are more attracted to color photographs; I'm more attracted to black-and-white ones. That makes me a sucker for lovely things like John MacKechnie's fine environmental portrait of Ms. Laura Swain at the top of this post.

Nice as John's portrait is, few people will hang a picture of an unrelated stranger on their wall when the picture appears to be a portrait, unless the print, the photograph, the photographer, or the subject has some other kind of appeal. I'd hang a portrait of a famous jazz musician, for instance, on my own wall. (Which reminds me, I have a few I need to get framed.) But I might not display this picture of an elderly lady in socks, sensible shoes, and scarf.

That doesn't mean I don't like it. I do. Very much.

By Tommy Brown.

If I were just indulging my own personal taste, Tommy Brown's "Boy on Fence" might have been a top pick. It's just the sort of thing I like: uncontrived documentary black and white, probably 35mm, probably "candid." For better or worse—child of my times though I might be—that's the style of photography that resonates most for me, when I'm not wearing my editor's hat.

Here are just a few more of the photographs that I liked of those submitted.

By Abdul Shaheeb.

Photography as an art form is full of echoes for me. Abdul Shaheeb's fine nighttime photo immediately put me in mind of John Gossage's Berlin work, which uses black forms on very dark gray backgrounds and vice versa, and/or small glimmers and hints of light.

John Gossage, Tiergarten, 1987.

John's pictures are very different from Abdul's—formalist and ambiguous, almost experiential (as well as more assured). Abdul's is prettier, almost pictorialist, by comparison—although I can understand if those terms aren't the first ones that come to most peoples' minds.

(Do note that John Gossage's picture above was not a submission! I'm just including here as an example of his work.)

By Luka Knezevic-Strika

Speaking of echoes, Luka Knezevic-Strika's striking stylized portrait has a distinct Philip-Lorca diCorcia vibe to it. It seems to imply a number of shadowy narratives, ultimately dead-ending in mystery.

By Michael Fioritto.

 For some reason, pictures of pigeons figured among my favorites this go-round. Not only Michael Fioritto's artfully arranged glimpse of this one making a getaway from pedestrians, with its rough but modern-arty massing of tones; Jeff Schimberg's also grew on me with successive viewings. Jeff's picture has what Henri Cartier-Bresson used to refer to as "geometry," with the radically foreshortened wall, the bisecting of the frame in two, and the complex form of the shadow. I like the echoing of the two couples, one close, one distant, light against dark and dark against light—but also, yes, that incongruous pigeon, just as big on the negative as the two living people, inserting itself like a critic in the middle of everything. It's a picture that plays with you (laughs at you, I almost wrote) on a number of levels.

By Jeff Schimberg.

By Bill Hanson.

Speaking of growing on you (I like photographs that unlock slowly), I blew right past Bill Hanson's abandoned interior on the first couple of editing passes. But it has quietly grown on me, with its gentle pastel earth tones, its enigmatic arrangement of spaces and distances, its elegiac emotional ennui. (Not to mention that it's a relief to be reminded that unsaturated reds can still exist, in these digitized times.) The real room in the back appears to be part of the reflected building across the street. This shot doesn't have the wow factor needed to make people anxious to part with their cash, but it has a contemplative quality that is precisely what some conventional "grab-you" pictures lack.

Veeeery interesting

By Jim Hamstra.

Then there were the photographs the main appeal of which was interest. There are always a number of those.

I'm not much for scenics, generally. They just don't have a lot to offer me—and seeing too many at once evokes a feeling akin to eating too much candy. Not long ago I wrote an article about scenics called "Dime a Dozen? You Wish," but I aborted publication—it came off as too snarky. (Funny, the way gently jibing good humor and cutting snark can shape-shift back and forth. I think it might even depend mainly on a reader's mood. Sometimes, when I'm trying to be funny, some readers think I'm being mean.)

I'm interested in pictures of unusual things I don't understand, though, pictures that make me want to know more about what I'm seeing. Jim says these trees were distorted by successive winter avalanches coming from both directions—from the mountainside above them, as well as avalanches from the mountainside opposite that carried across the valley and partway up the other side, to where these hardy survivors are.

The result is a scenic shot with a twist—literally.

By Lars Röglin.

Another of my many weaknesses is for pictures of photographers and people taking pictures. Lars Röglin's was, for me, the best of a number of those.

I take knee-jerk pictures of rainbows too, just like these motorcyclists.

Catnip, they can be, to cats like us.

I was determined to give the "flower pictures" a fair shake, despite my well-known aversion to them. This isn't quite a flower, but I liked this fellow (aloe, is it?), gussied up with a little color nature didn't intend.

By David Stock.

I'll stop now. As I often say, I do go on. But finally, for extra credit, an abstract reasoning test question:

A Tibetan Buddhist is to the Dalai Lama as Mike is to ______.

David Lykes Keenan provided a nice hint to the answer:

The Dalai...er, Elliott Erwitt. Photo by David Lykes Keenan.

Who doesn't love Erwitt? A thing impossible to comprehend.

Lazy Sunday
I seem to be on a roll with (American) football recently—I keep catching these just marvelous games entirely serendipitously. Last night I switched on the TV to find in progress a barnburner between USC and the Oregon Ducks (who have cool uniforms to make up for their very uncool name. Ducks? Of course, maybe a fan of a team named after meat packers shouldn't talk). Great game. I'll be tempting that lightning to strike again later today, but, if all goes well, I will announce the finalists in our contest tomorrow.

I'll just add, for those of you who saw the game last night, that, when it comes to American football, a kicker is the very last thing I would want to be.

A final note: you should check the "Beat the Vikes" post again, if you haven't caught up to David L's Featured Comment yet. I just love that heart-wrenching but hilarious sob at about the 14 second mark—that sound expresses every heartbroken sports fan, in any sport, ever. Poor baby!

Y'all had better win your next game, Vikings.

Hope you have a nice Sunday, however you spend yours.

Mike

ADDENDUM: This post seems to be drawing a lot of comments from people who were dissatisfied with the semifinalist group, but I will say that my #1 favorite shot of the entire 600 is in that group, not this one. I'm just sayin'. —MJ

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Featured Comment by Carl Blesch: "I was too busy Friday or Saturday to make thoughtful comments on your pick of twenty, let alone to vote (when I finally had a chance to drop by TOP on Saturday night, voting had closed). I too am struggling to think of which of these excellent photos I'd want to hang on my wall. In fact, I'm now struggling to articulate my criteria for display photography—mine or the work of others. One criterion is what visitors would think and say when viewing my photos. 'Did you take that picture?' 'Do you know the person in the picture?' 'Is that a place you've been?' Sometimes I'd' like to engage with those questions; other times, I'd rather not, as I sense the viewer is trying to say, 'Why did you ever buy that picture and put it on your wall?' Regardless, this process you are leading is fascinating. Even if it 'fails,' as a commenter or two and maybe even you have suggested, it has succeeded in engaging your audience (well, at least me...)."

Wishful Thinking

Note the first sentence (click to embiggen)—

The Revere Camera Co. of Chicago (I'd never heard of it before), originally founded in 1920 as a maker of radiators by an immigrant from Ukraine called Samuel Briskin, became mainly a manufacturer of movie cameras from 1939 onward. According to Wikipedia it was the second-largest manufacturer of small movie cameras in the USA in the 1950s. The company also made some upmarket still cameras, including stereo cameras and some 126 models.

8mm Revere Model 40 of 1952 cost $99.50 new.
Photo courtesy Mr. Martin's Camera Museum.

Samuel Briskin sold the company to 3M for $17 million in 1960, when he learned he had inoperable cancer.

Alas, even forever seldom lasts forever. A stalwart and forthright guarantee, though, you've got to give them that.

Mike
(Thanks to Robert Harshman)

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Which Pictures Do You Like Best? Please Vote!

(Voting poll removed late Saturday afternoon)

UPDATE (Saturday evening): Unfortunately, we had some vote padding in the afternoon on Saturday. One particular candidate improbably surged from back in the pack to almost double the previous leader's total in just a couple of hours. An overzealous fan or fans of the photographer, perhaps, engineering a little skullduggery?

No matter. The results are clear from the comments, echoed in the first day of voting, and I've made my choices. (Remember, the voting was only advisory, not binding.) The finalists from this round have been chosen and notified. They'll be announced on Monday. On Monday, also, I'll add the photographers' names under each of the 20 semifinalists, so they can all take a well-deserved bow.

Here's a snapshot of a more characteristic period of the voting, from before the, er, irregularities:

Tomorrow, I'll post a few personal favorites and some other pictures of interest from among the submissions not chosen.

Mike

UPDATE #2 (Sunday morning early): Werner J. Karl uncovered the source of the rigging of the vote. One of the photographers enlisted his fans and followers to skew the vote in his favor by means of an importuning via Twitter. Disappointing. I guess Yr. Hmbl. Host will have to be more explicit about the ethics of the voting next time.

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First Round Semifinalists—For Discussion

I'd like to solicit your advice and opinions.

My goal was to winnow the semi-finalists from this first round of submissions down to 12 or 15 photographs. This proved to be very difficult: virtually every photograph I received was excellent in some way. There were no duds. So, ever the consummate professional editor, I rose to the challenge...

...and, um, cheated. There are twenty candidates here.

I've identified the pictures only by number, to keep the photographers anonymous for now. (Naturally, semifinalists from the second and third round will be identified with 2xx and 3xx numbering.) [UPDATE: I added the photographers' names when the finalists were announced on Monday, Nov. 21.]

Remember, we're looking for pictures for a future print offer. So—anything here you would have to have if a print were offered at an accessible price?

Take your time. No need to make snap judgements. Look through them several times. Let them sink in for a while.

Don't feel you need to comment on every picture; please make an effort to make your comments succinct. Maybe just confine yourself to commenting about what you really like (or perhaps the opposite).

In a couple of cases I included titles because I felt they were needed. In one case I made the JPEG smaller because I felt it looked better than way.

Remember also that there's a person out there who took each picture, so be considerate even if you dislike something. (But that doesn't mean you have to say "nice capture" to everything.)

If we "vote" on these, it will be in a day or two—I don't want to introduce an objective measurement of popularity too soon.

So here for your delectation and discussion are the semi-finalists from the first round. Looking forward to hearing what you think....

Mike

101—by Roy Feldman (finalist)

102 (title: Carpark Wall and Floor) by Leigh Perry (finalist)

103 by David S. Rosen

104 by Simon Robinson

105 by Kathleen Pickard (finalist)

106 by Bob Blakley

107 by Howard Cubell

108 by Carson Harding

109 by Jonathan Barkat

110 by Richard Hinton

111 by Bernd Reinhardt (finalist)

112 by James C. Tiemann (finalist)

113 by Dave Reichert

114 (Title: Old Faithful Nighttime Eruption) by Alberto Bengoa

115 by David Jacobs

116 by Carl Siracusa

117 by Ed Cornachio

118 by Michael Sanders

119 by Steve Halpern

120 by Chris R. Morse

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UPDATE: The Day After

Photo by Paul Lalonde Stern

Well, when the dust settled I had 627 emails in the mailbox yesterday. A couple of dozen people submitted their photo twice, fearing it hadn't gone through the first time, so call it 600 entries, give or take a few.

Traffic on the site for the day set the high-water mark for 2011, by far.

I had zero stress keeping up; rather, it was simply a pleasure to see so much good work. As you might expect, the standard of quality and competence among the entries is high. I think the hard part will be whittling down the 600 to the 15 or so semi-finalists I intend to post for discussion—I'm sure if I pick a dozen there are another two or three dozen just as good.

In some cases we got very fine pictures that I don't think would make very good sale candidates (which is what we're looking for, after all). I might do a separate post of personal favorites, from among the shots not chosen for the print sale. Along those lines, I can't resist showing you, in this post, two of the best dog-and-cat pictures...from among many good shots that brightened my day yesterday. These aren't semifinalists, but they're wonderful all the same. The top one is by Paul Lalonde Stern and the one below by Chan H.

(That dog is either really happy or really unhappy, and I can't tell which.)

I was surprised to learn that some people had problems with the emailing instructions. I did not think that would be controversial. I think we can improve on that next time, though (this is the first time I've done this, remember, so I'm learning too). Also, to those who missed the tight schedule, yes, I'll vary the timing next time.

Photo by Chan H

Sincere thanks to everybody who submitted pictures yesterday. Edit to come soon.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Mike [not Mike J. —Mike J.]: "Sincere thanks to you. This was a really fun exercise, and was a great excuse to look again at my personal rather than paid work. The best part the 'contest' is how it changes how I look at my own photos. The process of selecting a photograph, to me, is akin to aesthetics calisthenics. My internal debate over which image to select helps me better articulate what I find beautiful, what makes a beautiful photograph, and whether beauty is enough to sustain my interest. I've also gotten to the point where some older work inspires me to explore ideas and techniques anew. That was unexpected, and I also have you to thank for that. Looking forward to seeing the edit. Good luck to all."

Mike J. replies: You're right, it's an important learning experience if you don't already do it regularly. It's also a good learning experience to have to judge a competition like this...it makes you realize that every generic shot has already been done a zillion times, and that new ones, to succeed, simply have to have been made with an awareness of all the others that already exist. New ones succeed by commenting on the genre, not just becoming a part of it.

Olympus M. Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f/1.8 Lens: Review

By Ctein

The Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens for Micro 4/3 is a moderately priced ($400) moderate telephoto, equivalent to 90mm in 35mm terms. I fell into lust with this lens as soon as Mike first described it last summer. It was exactly what I wanted. I decided then that if my TOP print sale did especially well, I would treat myself to some optical presents.

By the time the sale rolled around, I had decided to hell with the conditionals, I was going to buy it, regardless.

One reason is that it's a fast lens. I'm an available light photographer by inclination. Other people do great with strobes and the like; I never cottoned to them. Most of the time I don't need anything like ƒ/1.8; I'd rather be down somewhere around ƒ/4 or ƒ/5.6. But when I want it, I want it.

The other reason is that it's a longish lens. For many photographers, their focal "sweet spot" is in the 30–40mm (equivalent) range. Me, I've always been a telephoto kind of guy. When I bought my first Pentax 67, I didn't think twice about choosing the 105mm lens over the 90mm. I didn't even get a wide-angle lens for that camera until I'd been using it for well over a dozen years.

The Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens is superb, but it's wide for my tastes. I readily adapt, but when I put the 45mm Olympus on the camera, it's just like we were made for each other. It sees the way I do. I hardly ever have the experience of immediately feeling sympatico with a piece of equipment, but this is one of those times. It's compact and lightweight to boot. I can put my Olympus Pen with this lens in the same little padded stretchy pouch I use for carrying around the camera with the Panasonic 20mm.

Optical questions
So much for physical issues. How does the lens perform optically? The key questions for me are, how good do its images look wide open, when I am in one of those available-darkness situations? And, is it uniformly excellent across the field stopped down? My portfolio prints are large: 15x20" image area. I want a lens that can keep up. Issues that are not important to me are "color rendition" of the lens and bokeh. I'm not even convinced the former matters when one photographs in raw, as I always do, and I am sufficiently insensitive to bokeh that I only notice it when it is exceptionally awful. If you wish for an evaluation of that, wait for Mike's upcoming review.

This lens exceeded any expectations I had. It is so good that it's hard to tell what aperture I'm working at except by the amount of light falloff. Wide open, the lens exhibits a bit over half a stop of falloff from center to corner, but it's down to under one third of a stop at ƒ/2.2 and below a quarter stop by ƒ/2.8. There's no focus shift that I could detect going from ƒ/1.8 to ƒ/8.

At ƒ/1.8, central sharpness is close to the camera's limit, and corner resolution is only a little worse than that. The only hint that you're working wide open is a slight softness to the edges (acutance); they are just ever so slightly smeary. Other than that, the lens is already almost as good as it gets on this camera. There is no sudden jump in image quality as you stop down, like there was with the Rokinon 85mm. It just gradually creeps up from very, very good to excellent.

This lens is phenomenal wide open. Above is the full frame; below is a 100% section from this (after you click on the image). It's a little grainy 'cause it's ISO 800.

At ƒ/2.8, photographs are visibly crisper than wide open, especially at the corners; at ƒ/4 there is very little to complain about anywhere in the field. Continuing on down to ƒ/8, the corners to pick up a bit more contrast and sharpness along the way, but it takes some really serious pixel peeping to see any differences anywhere between ƒ/4 and ƒ/8. Acutance falls off a little from that optimum range at both ƒ/2.8 and ƒ/11 (diffraction has to dominate, eventually) but you can confidently use any aperture from ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/11 and be assured of excellent results. The differences are, frankly, subtle.

Above is the full frame of this test scene. Below, 100% sections from the centers and the corners of the frames. From top to bottom, ƒ/1.8, ƒ/2.8 and ƒ/5.6 (click on the image to see it 100%).

Correction for chromatic aberration is extremely good. There is maybe one pixel's worth of lateral chromatic aberration. I didn't notice any longitudinal chromatic aberration until I started pixel-peeping for this article; then I detected just a hint of magenta-foreground/green-background longitudinal color. It is small enough that I didn't notice it before this.

What all this tells me is that this lens is a lot better than the camera. If the Micro 4/3 format survives long enough for us to see a 25–30 megapixel body, I have no doubt that this lens will still be a strong performer. This is not one of those optics where a significantly better camera body will make you long for a significantly better lens.

When I'm looking for corner-to-corner uniform sharpness, this
is going to be my go-to lens.

Is there anything I can complain about in this lens? Well, I do wish it stabilized a little better. Sharpness is pretty reliable at 1/40th sec, but not so much at 1/20th. That's nice, but it's nothing to write home about. I've seen similar behavior with other lenses in this focal length range; I think maybe the image stabilization in the Olympus Pen EP-1 just doesn't optimize all that well for this focal length.

Verdict
All in all, I think this lens is worth every bit of the $400 price tag. Even if it weren't a fast lens, it would deserve accolades. It is that good.

Well, that's it for the 45mm lens (the Amazon link again—B&H is currently out of them). Next week I'll be reviewing the Olympus 12mm ƒ/2. If you've been thinking about buying one of those, you may want to hold off until you read my review (that's what English majors call foreshadowing). Until next time....

Ctein

ADDENDUM by Mike: Peter Vagt, in the Comments, asked to see a picture of the lens on a camera, so I made a quick snap of mine on a Panasonic G3. Subjectively speaking I'd say the 45mm is about the size of a 50mm Summicron, but quite a bit lighter.

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