The Online Photographer

What MacArthur Said

TOP is down briefly for maintenance. We will return on June 1st.

Mike

Featured Comment by Sarge: "'I shall return.' Here's a photo of the MacArthur Landing Memorial at Red Beach, Palo, Leyte, taken at dawn by my friend Vey Telmo."

Final Salute

And speaking of Memorial Day, on topic this time, here are three eloquent photographs, from Todd Heisler's famous series "Final Salute."

Be sure to read the captions.

Mike
(Thanks to Sal Santamaura)

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Featured Comment by Yvan Sirois: "I got quite emotional about these pictures and the related captions. I'm Canadian, but I'm always touched when I read about people of any country making the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of others."

A Memorial Day Story (OT)

Today is Memorial Day, creating one of a number of a three-day weekend holidays in the U.S. Although the main purpose of the day is to remember and honor our war dead, the weekend also serves as the unofficial start of summer. Appropriately, yesterday was the first really hot day of the year here, with the mercury reaching into the 90s (we use Fahrenheit here).

In the morning, my computer mouse died. It had been acting wonky for a couple of weeks. So I had to drive to "the far-away mall," to the Apple Store, to get a new one. (Actually, two, so I have a spare.)

On the way back, I did something I almost never do, and left the top up on my aging little Miata and turned on the air conditioning. I made it about halfway home when, to my alarm, the car lurched several times and conked out, at a stop sign in a neighborhood called Elm Grove. I then noticed for the first time that the temp gauge was all the way over to "hot." So I pushed the car to the side of the road and opened the hood. Despite the hot day, I could feel the heat radiating from the engine bay. The homeowner from across the street happened to be out getting his mail, and he ambled over and inquired as to what was wrong.

So I informed him amiably that I had just discovered that my car's air conditioning presumably only works when it's cool out. Not when it's hot.

Do you happen to remember a post I wrote last December about a white Rolls-Royce I stumbled across by the side of the street with a "For Sale" sign on it? The relevant picture is at the bottom of that post. By coincidence, the intersection where my car died was that very same spot. And after some conversation, it transpired that my friendly interlocutor had been the owner and seller of that Rolls. His name was Scott.

Scott said he was very relieved to have gotten rid of the old car. The maintenance costs had been ferocious. A small bottle of lead additive had to be put into every tank of gas, and the car only averaged six to seven miles per gallon.

He sold it on Craigslist to a guy from Janesville, who arrived with $12,500 in hundred-dollar bills and a trailer. Scott said that when he eyed the car and the trailer, he didn't think it was going to fit. He was wrong—it did fit, it turned out, but just barely—but when the purchaser had driven it up on to the trailer, he couldn't open the doors, which were blocked by the trailer's wheels, so he couldn't get back out of the car.

Scott pointed out that if the guy turned the car around, and backed it on to the trailer, he'd be able to open the back doors and get out of the car that way.

But the car buyer said no, no, it's all right, I'll just climb out the window.

At which point it started to rain.

Scott gently asked the guy how, once he climbed out the window, he planned to get the window back up. Once again, his concern was waved off. "It'll be all right," said the guy. "I'll just reach in and get the window most of the way up." Scott pointed out that most of the way up wasn't going to quite do the trick, given that it was raining. The buyer snapped, "It'll be all right." Scott said he thought to himself, We've done the deal. I've got the cash. It's his car now.

The car buyer was very tall, and the only way he could climb out the window was to stick his butt out first and let the rest of his body follow.

The problem then was that the front window of the Rolls didn't retract all the way into the door. When it was all the way down, it still stuck up above the sill about three quarters of an inch. Scott pointed out this problem to the fellow, and reflexively went to help him so that he wouldn't sit down on the protruding window—at which point, from inside the car, the guy screamed, "DON'T TOUCH MY BUTT!"

So Scott of course backed off. At which point the buyer sat down on the door sill. Scott said he heard a crunching sound and some grinding, and the window disappeared into the door with a big thunk. Mentally, Scott began to calculate just how astronomical the price of that repair was going to be.

By this time it was raining hard. Aside from getting the idea that his help wasn't being appreciated, Scott was quickly getting wet, so he said goodbye to the guy and went inside.

He said he watched from the window as the guy more or less fell out of the car, and then struggled for a while to reach the electric window control, apparently not realizing that the window was now broken. After a while he got a plastic garbage bag and taped it over the window opening with duct tape, which didn't work very well because the plastic, the tape, and the car were all soaking wet. After a quarter of an hour or so, the guy drove off, and Scott saw the last of his beautiful old Rolls. He said he's never been so happy to get rid of a car.

He now drives an ordinary SUV, purchased new.

And after cooling down for twenty minutes or so, my car started right up and got me back home without incident—with the top down and the air conditioning off. I'll try to remember in the future never to use the air conditioning when it's hot outside.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bill Mitchell: "I had one of those 1969 Rolls-Royces, and it was the biggest money-pit I've ever seen (on the rare occasions when it was running, that is).

"I didn't buy the thing out of pretension, but because my father, who was a self-taught mechanic, told me the story of a Rolls which broke down in our little Tennessee town sometime in the 1920s. He was able to fix it for the 'rich tourists,' who paid him with a $100 bill and a quart of bonded bourbon (this was during prohibition, mind you). In retrospect he decided that they were probably Chicago gangsters carrying a load to Miami. He always told me that it was the finest piece of mechanical equipment that he could imagine, so to own a Rolls became a real goal in my life.

"BIG mistake! I know just how your guy felt.

"P.S., it sounds like your Miata has a bad thermostat."

Featured Comment by Tom Burke: "Here in the U.K. the only reason that anyone would have an old Silver Shadow like that would be to use in a wedding car business. In which case, a white Silver Shadow would be perfect, of course."

Featured Comment by David: "All I can think of is John Cleese playing the buyer of the Rolls."

Featured Comment by Debbie Poulin: "I don't know what I love more about this, the fact that you landed in the exact spot where that Rolls was, that you met they guy who sold it, or that you got this hilarious story out of him. So often we take photos without either having the chance or the nerve to speak to the subjects; this was some kind of karma."

Jack's Take with the Leica S2

A few posts below this one you read my account of shooting with Jack MacD. at the abandoned Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. After seeing a few of my pictures, I thought you might enjoy seeing a few from Jack's early edit. He's the only guy I know personally who shoots with a Leica S2.

You might recall that Jack prints his work anywhere from large to very large and sells the prints to corporate clients for decor in hotels and commercial buildings. Anyway, for this reason he is always looking for potential panoramas, diptychs like the one above, and triptychs.

In Jack's impromptu portrait of me looking out the window you can start to get a bit of a sense of what the S2's large sensor and spectacular lenses will do for you. The files are vivid and lifelike, full of fine detail and texture and subtlety of color. Showing S2 files on the internet, of course, is a little like driving a Ferrari in a school zone.

By the way the subjective contrast in the portrait scene was much greater, with deep shadow on the right side of the picture. I'm assuming that the Leica lets Jack dig into the shadows pretty much at will. I took a few pictures of him in the same place, and I was thinking a white reflector would be needed to pick up a little extra detail on the shadowed side of the face. Not so with the S2, which is essentially capable of mimicking a reflector virtually.

He has only two lenses, a 35mm and a 120mm (equivalent to 28mm and 96mm in 35mm format). The portrait was taken with the long lens. By the way, despite owning  other cameras, including an M9, Jack guesses that he does 90% of all his photography with the S2—even family snapshots. I've heard him call it "my point-and-shoot," only partly joking.

These last two are of the same motifs as the first two pictures in my post—proof of the old adage that two photographers can shoot the same thing standing alongside each other and not make the same picture.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Scott Kirkpatrick: "The informal portrait of you shows signs of its MF origins that are not wasted at internet size. Besides the 'virtual fill light' from a little extra dynamic range, look at how well-rendered the middle tones are in your shirt. I think the difference is obvious, so maybe it is time for some blind testing with best case comparisons.

"I tried one of these a while back, comparing images of the same distant village with my M9 and a 75mm against a P45+ MF back (on my Hassy 500C) with a Zeiss 120. Tripod, mirror up, all that stuff. I asked Carl Weese to be the 'golden eyes' judge. He could tell pretty easily, that the rendering of details in the middle tones was more complete and lifelike from the P45+. It was obvious while pixel-peeping, but you could also tell at 800 pixels width."

Featured Comment by CMS: "That is really a great portrait!"

Random Excellence: John Slaytor

Photograph by John Slaytor

John Slaytor mentioned his work almost in passing in a comment yesterday. To make this darkly emotional series of portraits, John says, "I photographed commuters in trains from the outside of the train as they passed me by, approximately one and a half meters away at forty kilometers an hour. I couldn't see the commuters and they couldn't see me."

To photograph them, he had to work at ISO 12,000 and 1/3000th sec.

Another reader, John Krumm, said of the subjects of these portraits, "So many look like they are being led to their deaths, or...just lost a loved one."

To look at these, I let my eyes linger on each shot for longer than usual before clicking on to the next one, thinking about the context, of a subway car full of strangers rushing past in a blur, returning from their obligations or destined for them.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Mahn England: "These extraordinary photos for me evoke a story that my Dad tells of his mother, Ella, who raised his two brothers and him single-handedly. Ella explained to Dad that, in her busy life working and raising her sons, the only time she had to worry about life was on the train going to and coming home from work."

Featured Comment by Kenneth Tanaka: "Now we're talkin' photography with creative vision! 'Lost in Transit' borders on the sublime. It's simply wonderful work. I bow.

"However, John's series is excellent but it's by no means new or made possible by digital cameras. The idea and its pursuits are very, very old.

"During the 1930s Walker Evans  covert created a remarkable body of covert images of fellow subway riders using a camera concealed under his coat.

"Ten years later Stanley Kubrick, the great film director before he was the great film director, was doing the same.  (Kubrick was a very accomplished and knowledgeable photo enthusiast.)

"Fast forward to the 1980s when Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson was snappin' away on the NYC subways, producing a fabulous book of the work.  (He was also lucky to have survived a few beatings and muggings in the process.)

"No, capturing people in-transit is as old as transit.  But John's still done a nice job with this small series."

Mike replies: I think I'll have to disagree with you insofar as you're implying that this is old hat. (Although your tour via links is wonderful.) Considering just Walker Evans's pictures, I think John's pictures are better than Walker's, and that technology is indeed the reason—he could presumably take hundreds or thousands of pictures from outside the subway cars as they hurtled past, whereas Evans was limited to photographing whoever he sat across from, until he got up and moved or until they got up and someone else sat down. It might not be different in terms of basic subject matter, but John's pictures are far more beautiful, and I find them far more moving too. Evans's subway pictures feel more like a willful gimmick to me. Although a few of them are quite beautiful, in general his artistic choices were very limited, and the pictures show it. John could capture true candids, with no intrusion on his subjects if he chose (I presume the one picture of the man looking at him was taken when a train was stopped?), whereas many of Walker's subjects were looking right at him and presumably knew or suspected what he was up to. Like this one:

What Evans got for the most part was people being wary toward a stranger; what John Slayton manages to convey in many of these portraits is a soul alone.

From the first time I saw them decades ago I've never found Evans's subway portraits convincing as a group. They always felt like a failed experiment to me. John, on the other hand, has succeeded in doing what one suspects Evans only wanted to do.

Just my own take, of course, my own guesses.

Featured Comment by John Camp: "I agree with Mike on this. I think that when the others were shooting, people still had on their wary (or social) faces. These people have turned away from the train into a private space—the emptiness outside the window—and so we see their private faces. I also love the moody, tonal effect brought by the lack of light. Good stuff.

"Also, now that I think about it, it's not really obvious to me that, if I'd thought of shooting subway riders, I would have thought about shooting them from outside a moving train. There's a pretty well-known landscape photo in a rather sere landscape of the Southwest somewhere, showing a train crawling across the vast  landscape from some distance (I can't put my finger on exactly who shot it.) But the fact is, I see such a thing almost every time I drive from L.A. to Santa Fe, and it just leaps out at you: here's a nice photo. All you have to do is see it, once, to have that thought. How many people have seen these portraits flashing by at night in a subway, and haven't thought to do this?"

Reply from Ken Tanaka: "Mike, Better? Worse? The works are not on the same basis for such absolute judgements. John's series is more emotionally evocative and seductive than Evans's. It poses more questions than it answers. But Evans's series is, I believe, quite valuable for its matter-of-fact documentary value. Which, come to think about it, is the what I see as the core value of most of Evans' work. Personally, I prefer looking at John's images, too."

Featured Comment by Don: "Wonderful series of portraits, but I found the sweeping statement alongside them detracted:

These portraits, which are not confined to any one ethnic, gender, social or age group show the universality of our society's resignation to its loss of freedom.

"The daily commute is grim, but everyone is there by free choice. I'd suggest we have more freedom now than ever before (well, for those in western democracies, where these were taken). Freedom from: disease, early death, starvation, aggressive 'tribes' (mobs are here still, but we can avoid them), religion, lack of education etc. Instead, we freely choose to give up laying in bed all day because we want to go earn more cash. That's the photographer interpreting his viewpoint onto the images, one which may well not exist. We are not forced to be slaves to consumerism. We may feel enslaved by circumstance, but actually we are not.

"What makes me despair is not a lack of freedom, but how we squander it.

"It also makes me consider how selective editing could produce a different set—smiling faces going on holiday, meeting a loved one, chatting with a friend etc.

"Definitely randomly excellent though."

Mike replies: It's interesting what you bring to the photos, but somewhat ironic that you object to the photographer's interpretation when you have such an involved interpretation of your own.

Reply to Don from Ed Hawco: "I don't think one has to look very far to find many social and artistic reactions to the kind of 'loss of freedom' that John Slaytor is talking about. It's not the kind of absolute loss you'd experience if you were thrown in jail (although arguably that would bring a kind of existential freedom as you are no longer required to work in order to be fed and sheltered).

"The 'rat race' can most definitely be oppressive, and many people have a lot less freedom to choose than you might think. I've been a victim of that rat race, and it can crush your will to live. I live modestly, don't over-spend, am not mortgaged to the eyeballs, etc., so it's not like it's 'my own fault.' But I must work, and there have been times when my choices have been very limited.

"Driving two or three hours a day through congested traffic, or riding two or three hours a day on crowded subways and commuter trains can really grind you down, especially if the job you finally get to is not one you enjoy but is the only one available for the time being.

"No, it's not like living in a concentration camp or in North Korea, which is why Slaytor qualifies is statement by referring to the loss of 'existential' freedom. But make no mistake; millions of people in the so-called 'free world' are miserable and feel trapped in their circumstances."

Featured Comment by John Slaytor (the featured photographer): "Many thanks, Mike, for allowing me to share my work with such an intelligent audience whose comments I have appreciated.

"Reader John Krumm stated:

So many look like they are being led to their deaths, or...just lost a loved one

"This comment for me is very pertinent since the documentary film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann was the major trigger for my project. I also photograph funerals and I have come to realise I do so for the same reason that I photographed the train commuters—I want to promote human dignity, and I've found, ironically, that this is best done when the subject is oblivious to my camera.

"At this point I should note that TOP also influenced my exhibition since it introduced me to Saul Leiter's masterpiece, Early Color, which has had a profound impact on my understanding of how colour can affect mood.

"Recent work similar to mine for me would be Michael Wolf's Tokyo Compression and Philip-Lorca diCorcia's Heads series.

"Like many others, I have experimented with photographing fellow passengers from within carriages but have come to realise that there are few unguarded moments.

"Referring to Don's comments, for my exhibition I photographed 4000 images of train commuters before settling on 19 to be exhibited. I was selective in my choice, but not one of the 4000 images caught anyone smiling or chatting. A lot of them caught people plugged into iPods or staring at their phones.

"All of my commuter images were technically flawed; however this seems to have maximised their emotional impact on viewers by allowing the viewer to focus on mood rather than the subject's imperfections.

"Incidentally, the vertical black stripes were caused by the refection of the railway fence on the train windows.

"What I don't understand is why the images are so timeless."

Featured Comment by Derby Chang: "We lucky Sydney-siders have a wonderful photo festival every year, Head-On, just drawing to a close now. John's 'Lost in Transit' was a highlight for me this year. His blog post about his experience at the show is very good reading."

Featured Comment by Ann Courtney: "A neat idea which has produced highly evocative images, people lost in thought and with their 'society' guard down. Every shot shouts loneliness and isolation. Sterling work!"

Mike replies: Those 27 words perhaps sum up this post the best.

New Contact Page

I've just added a new contact page in the right-hand sidebar, and removed the old email link. The purpose of the contact page is to save time...I hope. I hope it will answer some questions in advance that heretofore I have been obliged to answer manually in each individual case.

It might sound a little snotty, for which a thousand apologies, but as TOP has gotten gradually more successful, the administrative duties have made my job seem "like getting pecked to death by ducks" (in the memorable phrase of J. Gregory Morgan, describing his then-current job as Headmaster of the National Cathedral School for Girls). I especially hope that it answers the question of missing comments.

The page will actually get a little longer, because I have a few more things to add to it, but...well, I don't have time right now.

—Mike, One Man TOP Maintenance Crew and Grounds Custodian

The Abandoned Pabst Brewery

Inside the abandoned Pabst Brewery complex in downtown Milwaukee

As promised previously, a few snaps from this afternoon.

Pabst beer was brewed in Milwaukee for 152 years, and at its peak in 1978 was one of the largest labels in America. But by the 1990s the company had gone into steep decline and become a "virtual brewery" (contracting out the making of its beer). The company still exists today, but in 1996 the huge historic brewery complex in Milwaukee was closed. Abandoned since then, it's slated for urban renewal beginning very soon, although the final plans haven't been revealed to the public yet.

Paint peel porn was plentiful

Once renowned far and wide for its tours, the ruins are still toured by visitors...frequently including photographers. Our friend Jack MacDonough (you've crossed his path before in these pages) invited me to come with him today to photograph in the old bottling plant.

I noticed right away that we have different modus operandi. Jack sets right up and starts shooting—whereas I'd reconnoiter the whole joint first, then decide where I wanted to shoot. The scene at the top of the post is what meets the eye right inside the door where we entered the old building.

Jack was working—he'll sell pictures he made today. I, on the other hand, was just messin' around:

Jack, S2 in one hand, Gitzo tripod in the other, through a gap in the wall next to a door covered in (what else?) peeling paint.

Messing around or not, I should have brought my tripod along. Tactical error. The picture below probably comes off the worst of the four here on the blog page, because you're seeing it too small, but on my screen it's the one that interests me the most. (I suppose you have to like pictures of photographers working, which of course I do.)

Unfortunately I had to push the little GF1 to ISO 1600, which is beyond its limits. The file is pretty crungey close in. Maybe I'll send it to Ctein so he can work his industrial light and magic on the offending pixels; this one would be a challenge to print.

(By the way, see all that whitish cruft on the ground in front of the archway? Bird feathers.)

It was fun to get out from behind the computer and do some shooting today. I don't get around much anymore.

Mike

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Fewer (But Better)

I said yesterday that in nine years of shooting digital I might have gotten thirty or even forty pictures worth printing, and I admit I was being provocative when I said that.

First of all, I meant printing well, which for me is a very different proposition than "printing" per se.

Secondly, I was exaggerating. If I really searched and counted, I might have sixty or even eighty pictures I'd want to print, although I think in that case the quality would begin to fall off in the last ones.

Thirdly, I'm not talking about "good pictures"—competent, well-crafted, decently-seen photographs, such as, for instance, something like this:

Or a portrait like this one:

The top one is a snapshot of my mother's cousin and his now-deceased setter. It's fine as a family photo in my opinion, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing I haven't seen before or even taken in that same spot myself before. The portrait of Charlie W. was rejected by his mother because she thought he looked tired and that his hair hadn't been trimmed recently enough. (There's the life of a portraitist in a nutshell.) They're both adequate pictures, perfectly fine for sharing with the people in them and their loved ones. They're just not my best, is all.

I assume most photographers have a lot of those "second level" type of shots—well exposed, well composed, taken in nice light....

•     •     •

I have to leave for the Pabst Brewery tour now—I'll add to this post later if I can. But the point I wanted to make and the thought I'll leave you with is that more extreme editing seems to me to be a sensible response to the "digital tsunami"—the billions and billions of photographs we're being overwhelmed with these days. It's no longer worth anything just to have a competent shot of something. It's no longer interesting to wade through all the shots somebody took of something; photographs can't be treated as in any way rare any more. For every average, generic shot you take, it isn't just that there are a dozen shots just like it on the web...there are eight thousand shots just like it on the web. The only real chance you have to deserve some sort of notice, it seems to me—or, let's say, the only chance you have to not waste your viewer's time—is to only show as your "real" work the pictures that you really, truly consider your absolute best shots—the ones that speak to you, that have that special magic when everything comes together just right, that people respond to. (The one in the previous post is one of those for me, of my pictures.) In that sense it seems like a very sensible response to the hundreds of billions of photographs inundating the world to show only four a year. Or twelve. Or to work hard for fours years for a show of thirty pictures or for ten for a book with eighty pictures.

Of course, not everybody works the same way, and I'm only talking about the way I work. But now I've really got to get going.

Mike

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Updates

A few updates:

1. Carl Weese's great Kickstarter-fueled perambulation of the nation's western drive-in theaters is at mile 1,915 as of this morning. He's now in Houston, Missouri, having photographed 18 drive-ins. He's been pushing the pace, with, he says, "no time for anything but driving, shooting theaters, and finding a place to stay."

2. Tomorrow I get to photograph in the ruins of the old Pabst Brewery, during the last open tour before its reconstruction begins, compliments of a friend who used to be a beer salesman. Ruins are not my thing, but I will try to get at least a record shot to share with you.

3. The OM-D is still not here. Is anyone else getting cranky about the new trends in enthusiast camera marketing and purchasing? Roughly: announcement well before release; pre-order available before ship date; limited release, whether intentionally or due to initial demand. All of which means you have to wait and wait, and there's pressure on you to get your pre-order in early before you've even seen the damn things lest you be forced to wait even longer. So there's increased pressure to buy before you even know you want to. Bah. Not an ideal situation, but as impossible to reform as political ads, I suppose.

4. I spoke to Chuck Westfall an hour or two ago, and Canon will be doing its best to send me a Pixma Pro-1 printer just after July 4th. With luck and a little more discipline than usual, I'll be blogging about basic fine printing for a while, intermittently, thereafter.

This will probably annoy the expert printers in the audience, but I'm not really planning to write a conventional review. (I don't feel I have a broad enough experience of different printer models.) Rather, I thought I'd use the printer to actually make some prints, and write about that, covering my experiences setting up and using the printer as I go along.

I've been shooting digitally for nine years now, and may have as many as thirty or even forty pictures worthy of printing. We'll see.

An old picture I still like but have never printed.

Should be fun.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Miserere: "I received my E-M5 review unit from B&H last Friday. Just thought I'd rub it in ;-) It's really, really, REALLY small. It might even be too small. Nice EVF and incredibly fast AF. And by 'fast' I mean 'quasi-instantaneous.' If it were any faster, it might violate Einstein's Theory of Relativity."

Featured Comment by Liv: "This must be the first time in history that Australia gets something before America! I've had my OM-D for about three weeks now. Definitely worth it. And I don't think it is too small—although I'm a twentysomething female, for a big bloke it may be."

Featured Comment by garyi: "As regards waiting for your OM-D: I've had mine for close to a month now. I pre-ordered it through B&H the instant I saw the opportunity mentioned. That act of reflexively pre-ordering felt very spontaneous, even impulsive, to me, and somehow overshadowed my knowledge that it would of course be a 'limited' release, and that there were many, many people before me on the list. I felt like I should have been rewarded for my action, in a way that left me feeling frustrated almost immediately—things  got 'psychological.' The moment I jumped and pre-ordered, this invisible clock in my head started clicking and the time passed with what I would call an unreasonably exaggerated sense of 'entitlement,' fueled not only by  reports of others getting theirs but even by the weekly updates from B&H saying 'not yet'...it didn't matter that they don't charge your credit card until they ship; it felt like I had spent the money as soon as I pre-ordered, so where the hell was it? Wait, is that UPS? No;  dammit, where's my camera?... In my opinion 'pre-ordering' is the factor that challenges our patience the most...psychologically we confuse pre-ordering with ordering.

"As an aside, last sunday I met a friend for breakfast. He brought his X-Pro1 with the 35mm, and I had along a to-hell-and-back Oly E-P2 with an old Russian 20mm C-mount lens attached...it was the first time I'd gotten to handle the Fuji, and after more than an hour I would say the two things I liked about it best were its size (and yes, the OM-D is a bit small for my tastes) and its looks. I think it's a very beautiful object,   a real 'trophy'...obviously not in the same ballpark as a Summilux snug on an MP, which it sorta seems that it's going for, but it did look very very nice to me....

"For the record I was glad to leave with my E-P2...."

O.T.: Five Books that Will Drive You to Think

By Ctein

Introduction: Mike's recommendation of some philosophy books a few weeks back caught me by amused surprise. This seems to be yet another case of great minds lying in the same gutter, because while he was writing that column I was laying out this one.

I don't read anywhere as much as I'd like. I still buy a few more books each year than I find time to read. There are close to 600 unread books on my shelves, 400 of which fall into the "I really must read this" category. Consequently, I almost never go back and reread a book.

Mostly I read for entertainment, occasionally for factual education. On very, very rare occasions, a book comes along that actually makes me think. They are few and far between, and I'm recommending five to you. It happens that three were written by friends of mine. I won't tell you which ones. Don't ask. It doesn't really matter. I have hundreds of books written by friends on my shelves; I'm not recommending most of them.

If you read all of these, at least one of them will make you think very, very hard about stuff you thought you already knew. Probably, all of them will.

It's almost impossible for a thought-provoking book to be anything but controversial. We don't want to engage those controversies here. Were I to recommend a book on economics, that would not be a call to debate capitalism vs. communism. Not that Mike would allow it, but let's make his life easier and keep the conversation meta, okay? So, without further ado:

1

Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, by Bruce Schneier

Bruce is such a well-known security/computer security expert that XKCD makes jokes about him in its rollovers. The book's subtitle, "Thinking sensibly about security in an uncertain world," sums it up. It's a straightforward and common-sense discussion of real world matters, things that affect us every day. More important, it's a tutorial on how to think about security. That's its major value.

For example, there is threat vs. risk, concepts that people conflate. Threat is what might happen to you, risk is how likely it is to happen. Your security usually involves reducing risk to manageable levels, not necessarily eliminating threats. That's on page 20 of nearly 300. It just gets better and better.

2

God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion, by Bro. Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

Brother Guy is an MIT-trained astronomer who got the calling in midlife, became a Jesuit brother, and now works for the Vatican (his specialty is meteors and and other subplanetary bodies). He's a consummate techie who is also profoundly religious. This isn't as fringey as you might imagine; a substantial percentage of scientists and engineers are religious. He got curious about how other techies deal with their religious beliefs, so he studied them.

The first third of the book presents historical background on science and religion. He shows how good/bad theology has lead to good/bad science and vice versa. Did you know that Kepler came up with his famous laws of planetary motion because he believed that the Godhead physically resided in the Sun and so the Sun must be at the center of the motion of all stellar bodies? Great science but lousy theology. He also elegantly explains why trying to use science to validate theology is a terrible strategy.

The second third is a field study; Guy talked to about two dozen techies, questioning them on exactly how and why they were involved with religion and wrote up their case histories for our benefit. Fascinating stuff, and the truly original part of this book.

The last third homes in on Guy's relationship, as a techie, to Christianity and the Church. Roman Catholicism has less-than-zero appeal to me (yes, I am religious; no, it's none of your business) but when I was done reading this section I had a genuine appreciation and empathy for how it does work for Guy.

3

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

I'm not sure how to convince most of you to read this book: a collection of essays of radical feminist political theory by a trans woman. Very much my cup of tea, not most of yours. So, why do I imagine most of you would get anything out of this book? Because this book presents a brilliantly integrated and extensive model of gender and sexuality. It was recommended to me by a respected friend, Marlene Hoeber, and to steal some of her words, this is the unified field theory of sex and gender. Marlene wrote, "Serano is a scientist in her primary career and it shows in this work. Her suggested structure fits the available evidence without stretching or omitting data. It is a workable operational model that is not worried about unknown causes."

As such, it doesn't demand redefining who you are, as too much hortatory political theory does. Think of it like this: Newtonian physics works perfectly well for a lot of everyday things. But when you're stuck with puzzles and seeming paradoxes (the constancy of the speed of light, the ultraviolet catastrophe, etc.) then you bring in quantum mechanics and general relativity. An understanding of those gives you a comprehensive and practical insight into the world.

Similarly, Juliana replaces the simplistic one- and two-dimensional models of human gender with something that's much more complete and actually makes sense in light of the way humans act, instead of prescribing how they should act.

I thought I had a really good understanding of gender before I read this book. Boy, did it ever prove me wrong.

4

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex, by Olivia Judson

Now we turn to the lighter side of gender, namely sex! Humorous and entertaining, yet fact-filled, this book is cast in the form of an advice column to the lovelorn, viz.:

Dear Dr. Tatiana, we're sea hares. We've been having a fabulous orgy—being both male and female we all get to play both roles at once. [...] It's such a great system, so much better than being male or female, that we're mystified why everyone hasn't followed our lead. Why aren't all living things hermaphrodites?—(signed) Group Sexists in Santa Catalina

It's fun, it's funny, it's damned educational. Judson is an evolutionary biologist, a breed that has justifiably gotten a bit of a bad reputation. Too many of them took their marching orders from the Social Darwinists, picking and choosing their data and their logic to justify the status quo. The results were as reliably laughably idiotic as they were intellectually dishonest. (My favorite example from the seventies was a claim, made in all seriousness, that women had large breasts because that body type had been selected for by men. A theory that manages to ignore the huge variation in standards of beauty across space and time, as well as the undeniable fact that there is a more-than-sufficient subset of the male population who are simply horndogs and will, as the song lyrics say, "love the one they're with.")

Olivia is not of that ilk. She manages to explode, discredit and disprove so many prevalent myths about sex and sexuality across the animal kingdom, using established scientific information. It's a real hoot.

5

The Fortunate Fall, by Raphael Carter

This one is science fiction, unfortunately out-of-print, but readily available used from Amazon. [UPDATE 6:00 p.m.: The clean and reasonably priced ones seem to be gone now, apparently due to attention from TOP (there were plenty this morning when I checked). Sorry about that. Perhaps check abebooks.com or your local library system? —Ed.]

It's vaguely on-topic (and I do mean vaguely); the protagonist is a living camera, a journalist of the future when everyone and everything is wired. And like all good journalists in novels, she stumbles upon a conspiracy and cover-up and starts to pursue the truth behind it. I don't want to tell you any more. It would spoil the fun.

For one thing, I couldn't figure out what this book was up to until I was well over 100 pages into it. I can usually divine an author's broad intentions within a chapter or so. Not the plot details of course, but the broad thematic skeleton the author will flesh out with story. In this case, I just couldn't figure out Raphael's skeleton. The book was in no way obscure; it was so rich with possibilities and directions in which it could go that I really didn't know which way she was going.

That's high praise. This books deserves it; it is one of the very best first novels I've ever read.

Let me tell you something else about this book. When I got to the end, I said to myself, "Huh." And I turned back to page one and started reading it all over again, for the pleasure of truly appreciating and understanding all the details in the book in their larger context.

I have never, ever done that with any other book, fiction or nonfiction. As I said at the beginning, I rarely read anything more than once, ever, let alone twice in a row.

The book is that good.

Ctein

Ctein's columns, one out of four of which are off-topic, appear on TOP on Wednesdays.

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New Pentax 50mm Lens. What?

Here I go again. That guy won't shut up.

The weirdest thing about criticism, reviewing, and product journalism is that you do this weird warp back and forth from the objective hat to the subjective hat. One day you write perfectly objectively about a new camera like the K-30, thinking only thoughts about how it might appeal to the market as a whole—that is to say, everybody; and the next day you're writing so subjectively it's almost personal, about how some other new product—an economical 50mm lens, say—affects only you.

Afraid I personally find this one...mystifying, to put it mildly. I wanted to say "offensive," except I'm sure Pentax aren't thinking of me and it isn't personal, and I'd be wrong to take affront.

But let me quote a TOP commenter named Bob, from yesterday:

....STILL no pentax f2 moderate wide after 11 YEARS of making DSLR's!!!!

So what do we have here, as of a few days ago? A newly announced 50mm (75mm-e) ƒ/1.8...that happens to be almost completely redundant with the 55mm ƒ/1.4 DA* SDM lens (82.5mm-e) already in the catalog. Except that the new lens is probably not quite as good in terms of optical quality. (I can say that without trying the new lens only because the "older" 55mm DA*—it's only a few years old—is about as good as short tele lenses get.) Not to mention the older SMCP-FA 50mm ƒ/1.4 whose heritage stretches back all the way to Pentax's screwmount years and is (collectively speaking, throughout its many iterations) one of my all-time favorite lenses. It has a unique look that never fails to charm, in film or digital.

When what's really needed is, yes, still, an ƒ/2 moderate wide angle, ~35mm-e.

All right, all right...the one way in which the new lens is not redundant is a very important one: price. The several-years-old 55mm lens is $800, the heritage film lens is $350, the new lens is $250. The number of people who will pay $800 for a Pentax-labeled moderate telephoto prime is probably not large.

And don't forget Pentax makes a more mouth-watering collection of primes than most other cameramakers, so they don't deserve the diss from a more objective standpoint.

And Pentax is, after all, a business. Okay.

If you shoot Pentax and want a prime 75mm-e lens, though, I'd say shoot with the older 50mm ƒ/1.4. Assuming the focal length is right for you, it's one of the very best reasons to shoot Pentax, period. In my humble opinion. And used ones are out there. Saving that $100 would be a false economy to my way of thinking.

Although, of course, it's not actually all about me, and I should shut up. A 35mm-e lens just isn't coming; they've chosen not to make one. No doubt.

Of course I've largely switched to Micro 4/3 now—mainly because the system provides lenses of exactly the spec I need. So this isn't as frustrating as it used to be. I miss Pentax lenses, though. Its good ones are (subjectively) as appealing to me as any of the Zeiss and Leica glass I've shot with through the years.

The phantom pain of that frustration is still there...maybe you know how that is. I'd still be shooting _________ if only they had made a _________.

/Rant. We now return to regular programming.

...Slowly removing subjective hat and putting it back up on the shelf,

—Mike

N.B.: Several commenters have gotten this wrong already—we're talking about a 35mm equivalent, a moderate wide angle, not a 35mm lens, which is a long normal on APS-C.

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Featured Comment by Dan: "A few months ago I sold my K-5 and several lenses including the 21mm. My favorite focal length is in the range of 35mm-e to 38mm-e, although I can make do with a 40mm-e. Therefore, I found the Pentax 21mm a bit wide for my taste, but more importantly it provided image quality that was mediocre at best (in my opinion).

"In the past I've shot many different formats and I keep coming back to the 35mm-e focal length neighborhood (on 8x10" I liked the 240mm, 5x7" the 180mm, 6x9cm a 90mm, and in the 35mm film 'full frame' digital DSLR world, the 35mm focal length, even when using a zoom).

"If the Pentax 21mm was an optical gem I would have just gone with wider-than-desired view, but since it's nowhere near that level I decided to heck with it and the K-5 lot.

"Pentax should ditch the 21mm and replace it with a 24mm ƒ/2.8 (36mm-e). It might have less design challenges than the 21mm, could be made about the same size, and could and should be designed to provide a much better quality image than the 21mm. Cost should be a bit less than the 21mm.

"I think more people would prefer this focal length than than 21mm, and certainly would like the improved image quality. I doubt though that I should be so lucky that they'd do something as rational as that, which is why I got fed up and decided to go another route to attain my favorite focal length in a small package.

"Right now I have the 20mm ƒ/1.7 Panasonic on an Olympus E-PL1, and am waiting for the OM-D E-M5. The 40mm is a little long for my taste, and if the wait on the OM-D continues I might bite the bullet (or should I say, bite hard into my savings) and get the Sony Nex-7 and the 24mm Sony-Zeiss. Oh, wait, they too are still hard to get currently.

"Maybe I should forget going small and and shoot most of my savings to get a Nikon D800 and either the 35mm ƒ/2 mediocre-at-best old generation lens, or the new 35mm ƒ/1.4G (or Zeiss 35mm manual focus lens). Oh yeah, the D800 just a wee bit more than scarce. Oh, maybe just go back to 5x7" view camera with a 180mm. But I can't really take it anywhere very easily. Oh yes, I'm not very patient. But darn you Pentax, it's all your fault. :-)"

Cool New K-30 from Pentax

I had good luck recommending the 2010 Pentax K-r entry-level DSLR to people. A number of people I recommended them to actually bought one, which is a good thing right there, and all those who did buy them seemed to really like them—and, more importantly, do nice work with them.

But the K-r has been out of the catalog for some time now, and I'd been wondering what Pentax was up to.

The answer is the K-30—an entry-/mid-level DSLR with lots and lots of trickle-down technology. Add the legacy of the K-7's particuarly pleasing shape, and you've got a promising prospect for the $850 body-only retail asking price.

Here are a few of the basics: 16-MP, APS-C-sized CMOS sensor; 6 fps; 1/6000th top shutter speed; "state of the art" AF; weather-, dust-, and cold-resistant body for use with Pentax's WR (water-resistant) lenses; glass prism with 100% coverage; HD video recording; SR, for "shake reduction," Pentax's name for its IBIS (in-body image stabilization); and a soft rubber casing for a good grip.

Plus, I just like the way Pentaxes look.

It's interesting that, five or six years ago, entry-level DSLRs were more or less interchangeable—once you decided on that level, you could more or less choose your favorite brand name and get a reasonable example of the breed. Lately, there seems to be a lot more individuality in the various ranges. Some makers have split the categories into several models, others haven't. Sony gives you "SLT" pellicle mirrors, EVFs, and articulated viewing screens on cameras like its new A57; Nikon has lately gone with a whopping 24 MP with its new D3200; and Pentax has now gone with a relatively more upscale and sophisticated alternative, sort of mid-way between other brands' base and middle levels, that features IBIS and weatherproofing. Even the colors are different—Nikon's D3200 is available in red, where Pentax has chosen a sparkly metallic blue. (Also the customary Stormtrooper version in white.) (And Canon doesn't mess around with colors.)

Great care was taken with the weatherproofing on the K-30. John Carlson of Pentax Ricoh Imaging Americas Corporation (that's a mouthful) says, "No detail was overlooked when designing the dynamic new K-30 to be weather resistant. Every seam, every button, every hinge has been weather sealed for adventure-proof creative photography... photographers can stop worrying about weather conditions." It has 81 separate seals, and will work down to –10°F (–23°C).

Pentax might be Mazda to Canon and Nikon's Toyota and Honda, but with the K-30 it seems to be going its own way and providing an alternative that's both distinctively and usefully different.

Mike

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Panasonic Announces 12-35mm Lens (24-70mm equivalent)

Panasonic has launched a new Optical Image Stabilized 24–70mm-equivalent lens, the Lumix G X Vario 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 Aspherical, for Micro 4/3 (currently available for pre-order).

Although some are calling it pricey at $1,299, it's sure to become a bread-and-butter all-purpose middle-of-the-range lens for those who have switched to Micro 4/3 as their main camera system. And if the format is more or less half the size of "full" frame, consider that the new Canon EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II USM zoom costs $2,299—not double the cost, but the better part of it.

It seems to me that actual tests of non-specialized lenses are becoming less and less necessary as time goes by—the ethos is now something like "assumed to be of fine quality until proven otherwise." By the time pre-orders are filled, there will probably be plenty of tests on the 'Net, and I'd have some time to try it before my return privileges expired. I would have never said such a thing twenty years ago, but I'd probably buy this sight unseen if I'd been waiting for a lens of this spec.

Mike

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Music Notes: Smiffs!

Check out the daily deal at Popmarket today.

If you're a critic—especially an amateur critic—especially making "best of" or "ten best" lists—especially on the internet—you have to be consonant with what I call "the ludicrous intensifier." Human beings—big, dear apes—are much susceptible to intimations of glory, and ludicrous intensifiers can make us thrill to our master-species greatness like Taber, Christopher Lloyd's character in the movie version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, seized by a sudden rush of awe.

The most common ludicrous intensifiers are in recorded history, as in "the ten best symphonies in recorded history," or that money can buy, as in "currently the most awesome 911 that money can buy," or in the world (now more popularly on the planet), as in "the hottest new soap star on the planet." (Note that "star" itself is, or was originally, a ludicrous intensifier.) Ludicrous intensifiers are more nicely ludicrous when they're used with things that are by definition geographically or temporally limited. Take for instance "one of the most awesome dunks of all time." When you think of it, that doesn't quite make sense, does it, in that basketball has only been played for 121 years and dunking has only been popular for part of that time. And the writer can't possibly have seen all of the awesome dunk contenders. Or consider "the ten best Southern rock bands on the planet"—as if there were Southern rock bands in the Philippines or coastal Madagascar that, when stacked against the power of Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top, just plain don't make the cut.

I like ludicrous intensifiers—they seem so indicative of human nature. And writers tend to sprinkle them about indiscriminately, which can lead to some delightfully thoughtless constructions; a particularly nice one I ran across once was a list called "The best '70s sitcoms of all time." Yeah!

I also like it when somebody figures out that "on the planet" is needlessly limited, and works it out that a category could be extended to the rest of the Solar System without challenge, or indeed that nobody could prove them wrong if they claimed dominance of the entire Universe. That gives us gems such as "the best hair band in the known Universe." Although that last leaves a door open, you perceive—there might be a hair band way, way out there that we don't know about yet.

So: "The ultimate The Smiths remasters collection." ("Ultimate" as an intensifier has an edge of dismay: you sure there will never be a better one, at any point in the future? Before the sun expands and becomes a red giant? This is the peak? It's all downhill from here?) All eight CDs have "been taken back to original tape sources and remastered by master-engineer Frank Arkwright, assisted by Johnny Marr at the world famous Metropolis Studios in London. Each album packaged in a mini-LP replica sleeve complete with the original artwork, including gatefolds and inner sleeves where relevant."

And who were The Smiths? Only the best '80s alt band of all time, and the greatest indie pop band from Manchester U.K. in the entire Universe.

And that, my friends, is no exaggeration.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Mark Roberts: "I find 'ultimate' to be a particularly annoying intensifier when misused. Near where I lived in Pittsburgh there was a place that billed itself as 'the ultimate retirement home.' Every time I walked by I expected to see a funeral parlor...."

Mike replies: Yeowch! That's a good one. Or bad, depending on your perspective.

Random Excellence: Keith Barkley

One of the stranger sunset pictures you'll see—the sun doing its best moon impression. Keith Barkley says, "I lucked out that the eclipse was ending just at sunset." Also one of the few eclipse photos you'll see that was not shot through a filter.

Some pictures just make you think, "I wish I'd seen that."

Mike

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A Comment from Boz

I was a bit wounded Sunday when a comment came in complaining that, excepting a pointer to a camera on sale (and presumably Ctein's column), there hadn't been a single article about photography on TOP since last Monday, a week ago. That person apparently completely overlooked my article on Friday about learning to print.

Jeez. I put a lot of effort into these things. So, just in case it flew right past you without even registering on your radar, there was an article on Friday about learning to print.

Even several of the comments on that post were good, I thought. Another one came in this morning from Bojidar Dimitrov:

I've been doing this for a while. Not as rigorously as a print a day, but for about six months I printed almost every day and I kept evaluating the prints from the previous days.

In truth, this was the most significant step forward for my photography (not only printing)!

1. After I bought the printer I didn't print a single image for about six weeks. Instead, I started evaluating my digital archive, searching for images worthy of printing. In six weeks I deleted about 60% of my images, but did find about 10 that I wanted to have nice prints of.

2. After I found the 10 images I still didn't turn the printer on. Instead, I started editing them, bringing them into "final form." This way I learned a bit about Photoshop.

3. The editing (on screen) ran invariably like this: I'd work on a image until I thought "OK, it's finished." On the next day I'd look at it (on screen) and immediately notice 2–3 areas that were so obviously bad that I would ask myself why I hadn't seen them yesterday. After 3–4 iterations I wouldn't notice anything worth improving even on the following day.

4. So I'd make a print, and immediately (!) after picking the print up from the printer I'd notice a flaw or two. How could I have not noticed that on screen?! So I'd correct that and make another print.

5. On the following day I'd look at my print from yesterday and...see a glaring flaw. After 3–4 print iterations the prints would usually stand a very critical inspection.

6. That made for many boxes of 100 sheets of Ilford Pearl, but like I said in the beginning: best money I ever spent on improving my photography.

Boz Dimitrov is the guy who keeps up The Pentax K-Mount Pages, one of the (many) excellent resources online for Pentax shooters. The method he outlines isn't very much like what I suggested in some ways, but it contains a crucial similarity: what I'd call "engaging with the work." This is something I learned early on in photography, and it's something David Vestal is very good about reminding people about in his many writings: as David often puts it, "do your work."

"Doing your work" is almost a cure-all in this hobby. Not satisfied with your shooting? Spend more time shooting. Worried about your camera choices? Pick a project and start working on it. Almost like magic, your camera concerns will simply evaporate (really. This works. Try it and see). The important thing is to get over the humps—the impediments—whatever's stopping you from working—and just get to it. Once you unclog the pathways and get work flowing, all manner of things improve.

So, for my part, I got in touch with old CompuServe friend Chuck Westfall over the weekend, and he's going to pass along a request for a review unit of Canon's new Pixma Pro-1 printer. I actually haven't had a working printer since the HP B9180 died (the second of two), partly because I don't physically have room for one in my home office. (That's another problem.) (Unless the stereo goes.) (Gasp.) But if I can get one to try, I'll get to grips with a printer again and I'll see if I can figure out something intelligent to write about how to make photographs look good printed. I've always had a strong sense of how pictures ought to look, and what they need when they don't quite look right.

Mike

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Featured Comment by William Walker: "I agree with Boz—nothing has helped my picture-taking more than printing. It forces you to think...why? Because it costs money to print! Like when you had film in the camera."

Featured Comment by Stephen Best: "Printing is not photography, it's printing. Having to render a negative on paper was pretty much essential to bring a photograph to fruition in the day of the darkroom but not any more. Most people would be better off investing in a quality monitor and learning how to finesse their images instead of learning the craft of printing, something that can probably be done better by others. Not to say that anyone can't enjoy their hobby however they like but there are other ways to show off your images these days. Even though I have state-of-the-art printers available through my own printmaking business I rarely print my own work unless I'm going to exhibit it. Printing otherwise is just a waste of paper and ink. It also implies a lack of confidence in the whole process in that you have to actually print something to see how it will come out. Don't get me wrong, I love prints but I'm interested more in photography as a medium, creating and looking at images."

Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "What Boz said.

"I know this sounds completely backwards, but I truly learned photography when I started making digital prints. Prior to that I had amassed a rather large collection of 35 mm slides, some of which I was very proud of, and thought I was pretty good. But as soon as I started printing, all the flaws that were impossible to see in those jewel-like slides spread out on the light box abruptly hit me between the eyes. When I had them printed by a custom printer, I could blame him for the resulting visual atrocities. But printing my own stuff, it was all on me.

"And it wasn't just printing issues like blocked up shadows or poor contrast management. Once I started applying the kind of analytical thinking and aesthetic discrimination that printing requires, I realized that my compositional skills were mostly cringe-worthy. As I got better at printing, I noticed a 'virtuous feedback loop' whereby I worked harder at the capture stage to get files that were actually worth printing, and that expanded my options at the printing end.

"Nowadays I generally have a pretty good sense of what's going to be possible in a print even before I click the shutter. And it has greatly improved the kinds of images I'm capturing in the first place."

Featured Comment by Bojidar Dimitrov: "Mike, thanks a lot for the thumbs up! I'd like to suggest a book that helped me very much with the 'artistic vision': Larry Bartlett's Black and White Photographic Printing Workshop. At a first glance it appears to be a technical book about darkroom printing, but actually it is about seeing, 'reading an image,' getting at its core, identifying the visual aspects that 'make the image' and enhancing them."

Buyin' on the 'Bay

The Panny pancake (28mm equivalent) is cheap right now.

The Panasonic GF3 deal from Saturday is over now, but I was wrong this time—the deal actually did last all day. First time I can remember that happening with a camera. Thirty-six TOP readers bought themselves one.

And by the way, apologies to those who wanted to avail themselves of the deal but couldn't. I know nothing about where Amazon will ship and why, where the Gold Box Deal of the Day is available and where it isn't, and all the other internecine fine points involved in those special-price offers. I'm just an affiliate; I don't work for Amazon. I don't think I've ever spoken to anyone from Amazon, and wouldn't know how to do so if I had to.

As several commenters noted, there is a flood of "de-kitted" 14mm ƒ/2.5 Panasonic wide-angle lenses on eBay, for as little as $159.99. That compares very favorably with B&H's new price of $303.59. Dealers or individuals are buying the kits for the sake of the cameras and jettisoning the bundled lenses.

Mysteriously, there are Panasonic 14mm lenses listed on eBay priced as high as $599.50. (Plus forty-eight dollars shipping.) This, while typical, has always seemed very strange to me. Why are these listed? How can they hope to sell? Not only does the selling price make no sense compared to the best price for the same item on eBay; not only does it make no sense compared to the new price from B&H; it even makes no sense compared to the price from a front-line bricks 'n' mortar retailer. The "Completed Listings" show no 14mms selling for higher than $280—versus a whopping 26 listings currently offering new 14mm lenses for more than that. As soon as the de-kitted lenses from Panasonic's GF3 fire sale are gone, I'm sure those overpriced lenses will still be there.

Always check B&H!
The logical explanation is simple: potential buyers exist who won't check new prices elsewhere. There are other possible explanations too, of course—maybe there are people in the world who can't buy from a discounter, or from the U.S., and who live in the mountainous rainforest of Rongo-Rongo and don't have local retailers. Or whose religion forbids them from buying anything when the price begins in anything but a "5." Or something.

But it does underline a simple rule for most of us: always check the new B&H price for anything before buying something new or used on eBay. Always.

I always do. And consistently, over the years, I've seen used items offered and sold on eBay for supposedly "rock bottom prices" that cost more than B&H is selling them for new.

The difference is the price of ignorance, I guess. I don't mean "ignorance" as an insult; I mean it literally. The buyers didn't know.

Not throwing stones
I buy an embarrassing amount of stuff from eBay. What can I say? It's the virtual camera fair (real camera fairs are still fun, once in a while—although I haven't been to one in years) and pretty much anything you've got to have now if you can possibly find it are sitting there innocently awaiting your greedy clutches. Catnip. I'm a sucker, as much as anybody.

But really, it doesn't cost anything but a few moments to do a quick round of basic comparison shopping before you bid to win. Those de-kitted 14mms might really be a bargain, right now, but not everything on eBay is.

Mike

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Around the Web on a Monday

Does this mean mirrorless has made it to prime time? Andy Kowalczyk tells me that on the most recent episode of the TV show "Person of Interest," the (anti-?) hero is seen doing telephoto surveillance with what appears to be a NEX. (Could just be product placement, I suppose. Sony's reach is spidery.)

And you thought the M Monochrom was radical: Zeke P.E. [sic] of Spectral Instruments discusses the 1110s camera in a recent video. B&W only, 95 millimeter square sensor, 112 MP, "amazing" dynamic range. He wants your opinion as to which photographers they should give one to to test.

UPDATE: Ctein wants to be nominated. Who better? He has the technical chops, and, as he says, Zeke "looks and sounds just like my kind of guy." And then he can write all about it here on TOP. Let's email them and nominate him!

For the lens fanatic who has (almost) everything: Paul Hawkwood writes that there's a 6mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor fisheye for sale in England. Cost? A cool £100,000 ($161,000). There are probably cellphone cameras with 6mm lenses, but this has too much coverage and is a tad too big and—at 5200 grams (about eleven and a half pounds)—heavy for a cellphone. Too bad it won't cover 95x95mm.

UPDATE: Gordon Cahill tells me the lens already sold, at full price. (I know how bitterly disappointed you are....)

Perfectly natural thing for a guy to do: James Maher found himself with a dead X100 on his hands. So he did what anyone would do under the circumstances: he took it apart.

They don't need breaks and they're never late to work: Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Canon is moving toward full robotic assembly of cameras and could have automated production lines up and running within three years (cameras and lenses are still currently made by people).

Low-light lawyers: Scott Paris is enthusiastic about the high ISO performance of his new OM-D. He took this picture at the graduation ceremony of the Michigan State University College of Law. It's a straight out-of-camera JPEG, ISO 8000, 1/60th sec., 150mm.

Admit it, you knew this was coming: The TIME breastfeeding cover as a meme. Sigh. Lynn Burdekin passed this link along.

Proof that some people have too much money: A rare 1923 Leica 0-Series camera (that still works!) sold in Vienna for €2.16 million ($2.8 million). The buyer is anonymous (probably hiding from his wife).

This probably isn't related, it just seems that way: The lowdown on Leica pricing. This will interest a subset of those reading, but I confess I didn't read it! So I'm not really sure I'm allowed to recommend it. Caveat emptor.

Time machine: Silver & Light by Ian Ruhter. This is a Vimeo video that can also be seen at this link. Longish, but cool. Probably best watched late at night rather than at work when you have stuff to do. Carsten Bockermann gets the thanks for calling this to our attention first, but several others did too.

Might as well jump: John Hogg sent this. Clare Newton "has been photographing thousands of children and adults from all walks of life across London, then will creatively combine the images to make a giant panorama photograph over 1 kilometre in length, with everyone appearing to jump simultaneously. The photographic montage consists of over 109,000 images of people across jumping against scenic backdrops which have been seamlessly stitched together." It will be the world's longest-ever photograph, complete with the Guinness Book of World Records there to put their seal on it.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "I feel sad (I guess) about robots assembling cameras; I enjoyed the comforting illusion that skilled craftsmen wearing leather aprons and monocle loups were putting them together with loving care. As of a year or two ago there was a fascinating Canon video online demonstrating the assembly of their 500mm ƒ/4 IS lens. Yep, just one white-gloved craftsman, carefully fitting those immaculate jewel-like glass and fluorite elements into their seats and putting the whole thing together. I actually own that lens (please don't ask me how often I use it!) and, if possible, the video made me even more paranoid about dropping it."

Featured Comment by David L: "Mike, Zeke of Spectral Instruments said he's a mechanical engineer (like me). The P.E. after his name is for Professional Engineer, a legally recognized certification of engineering skills and knowledge based on passing a technical exam. It includes multiple disciplines in engineering."

Egg-On-Face Mike replies: Oops! Sorry. That's something any editor should know....

Featured Comment by Winsor: "That 'Person of Interest' camera sure looked like a Nikon 1 to me. It makes sense considering it has a 2.7 multiplier for the focal length."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "Regarding the OMD's high-ISO performance, I downloaded the ISO 2000 and 6400 RAW files from dpreview and ran out some 17x22 prints of them. The ISO 2000 photograph is extremely fine-grained as it is; I would be happy with it for portfolio quality work. I could make it essentially grainless with very little noise reduction applied. It looks considerably better at ISO 2000 than my Pen does at ISO 800.

"As for ISO 6400, it's actually good. It's grainy, but fine-grained, at least on the level of 35mm Tri-X with one-stop pulled development. Probably better than that. In other words, acceptable in even a 17x22 print so long as you don't mind seeing grain. With a moderately small amount of noise reduction applied, not enough to compromise subtle fine detail in the least, the visible grain drops down to about the level of the ISO 2000 file. It's quite extraordinary. I'm not sure if there would ever be a situation where I would be doing portfolio-relevant work at ISO 6400 (maybe if I chanced across another auroral display)  but if something really needed that treatment, I'd be willing to add it to my portfolio. And for more casual use, it's utterly acceptable.

"Most importantly, I'm seeing no evidence of large-scale, low spatial frequency mottling or variations in tone or color, which was the real killer trying to use the Pen above ISO 800. I am impressed."

Open Mike: A Mile and a Half to Go

Yesterday's Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, was one of the most outstanding horse races in recent memory, with Derby winner I'll Have Another laying well back until clear of the final turn, then storming up on the fleet sprinter Bodemeister to win by a neck in one of the great final eighths in Preakness history. Talk about an exciting race.

And it sets up yet another Triple Crown try.

Being an introvert, I like individual sports more than team sports. (Lots of extroverts feel the opposite. This is a completely unpedigreed theory—Wikipedia would say "needs citation.") Slamming all the major championships in individual sports is damnably difficult. In tennis, Don Budge won the Grand Slam in 1938 and the superlative Rod Laver did it twice, once in 1962 and once more when the Open Era started in 1969—he'd been closed out of amateur-only events in the interim, after turning pro. Laver is the most dominant player in tennis history even though he had six years in the prime of his career when he couldn't play in all the major tournaments. The achievement eluded Connors, Borg, Sampras, and Federer. On the women's side, three players have managed the feat—Maureen Connolly, Margaret Court, and Steffi Graf (Graf also won the Olympic Gold Medal during her Grand Slam year, 1988). It eluded King, Navratilova, Evert, Seles, and (so far) both Williams sisters.

Citation, winner of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in 1948

Common to all such "slams" is the difficulty not just of achieving the wins, but achieving them in sequence. In tennis, the short gap between the French Open on clay and Wimbledon on grass is a particular challenge. In thoroughbred racing, the Preakness comes two weeks after the Derby and the Belmont follows three weeks after that; thoroughbred racehorses are customarily rested for four or five weeks between races.

In golf the Grand Slam is even more difficult. No man has ever won the modern Grand Slam, consisting of the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship in the same calendar year. Tiger Woods has come the closest by holding all four titles concurrently, but across two different years. The classic Grand Slam consisted of the Open and Amateur championships of both the U.S. and Great Britain, back when gentleman sportsmen were amateurs and professionals had to eat with the help; Bobby Jones was the only man to win that, in 1930. (The Masters didn't exist when Jones won his Grand Slam, because he founded that tournament, later in his life.) No woman has ever won a four-major Slam, not even the great Mickey Wright, although Babe Zaharias won all three of the majors that were contested in 1950.

One after another
In 1979, it seemed like Triple Crowns in horse racing were going to become all but commonplace. The incomparable Secretariat had done it in 1973, breaking a 25-year drought, and Seattle Slew and Affirmed won Triple Crowns back-to-back in 1977 and '78, Affirmed with his sensational series of duels with the great Alydar. It seemed like an anomaly when Derby and Preakness champion Spectacular Bid failed in his Triple Crown bid in 1979, weakening over the final quarter mile to come in third in the Belmont. He had been the overwhelming favorite at 1-5.

Thirty-three years later, Affirmed is still the most recent winner of the Triple Crown.

There have been 11 Triple Crown winning thoroughbreds in all—and, coincidentally, there have been no fewer than 11 horses since Affirmed who had a shot at the Triple Crown going into the Belmont but were defeated by the long final race's gruelling mile-and-a-half length—which makes big-hearted* Secretariat's 31-length victory there in 1973 all the more astonishing. Here's the list.

The Belmont Stakes is run at Belmont Park in New York State on a Saturday in June, no earlier than the 5th and no later than the 11th. This year the race will be run on June 9th. There, I'll Have Another will either become the 12th horse to try and fail since 1978—or the 12th horse to win the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. Either way, a racehorse who has now proved himself a true champion—and a truly gutsy one—will face his sternest test.

Mike

*Literally. He had an exceptionally large heart, thought to be a genetic legacy of an ancestor called Eclipse.

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic posts that appears on TOP on Sundays.

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Featured Comment by John Buquoi: Well, there's never been a horse like Secretariat or a sweeter champion...here's a beautiful look at this horse at play in retirement. Important to remember that his Belmont victory of 31 lengths (and still going away!) was not against a weak field...what a race...there will never be another like him...."

Mike replies: It's true, he was the greatest racehorse in the short annals of known history. Here's a video compilation of his three Triple Crown races.

Micro 4/3 Blowout

Amazon's "Deal of the Day" today is the super-compact Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3 with a 14mm ƒ/2.5 ASPH pancake lens for only $314. That's another $80 off yesterday's already end-of-model-life bargain-basement price. It's not the best Micro 4/3 camera (12MP, last-gen sensor), but on the other hand it is a Micro 4/3 camera for the price of a decent point-and-shoot. And it's a good little 28mm-e moderate wide-angle lens, which all by itself sells for $275 to $325, depending on where you look.

Like Amazon's other camera sales, this is "good while supplies last," which won't be all day. (You have been warned.) If you want one, don't snooze lest ye lose.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Andy Munro: "I bought one of these when Panasonic were selling them off in the U.K. The lens is one of my favourites.

"Although it's an old sensor, Panasonic have made improvements over older gen cameras. The write speed is quick(ish) and doesn't hold you up. The camera has few physical controls, but access via the touch screen works really well. The colour rendition is much the best of the Panasonics I've used.

"It makes a great backup if you only have one Micro 4/3rds camera.

"I fully intended trying it, keeping the lens, and selling the body, but it's still in my bag."