The Online Photographer

Sitegeist

Yesterday's post elicited a number of ungracious or ungentlemanly comments that I had to disallow or edit, which always makes me feel uncomfortable—as though guests have come over and the children incomprehensibly chose just that moment to particularly misbehave. I have absolutely no right to feel that way, yet I guess it's natural for the host of a website to feel a certain pride about the genius and geniality of his commenters, and to be disappointed on those (rare, I think) occasions when those qualities are found wanting.

The post in general made me feel quite strongly that I simply don't feature enough challenging photography on this site. So, for one thing, I've asked Andrew if he'd write for us in the future about what would be called on the Internet "the street photography community." Meaning, the self-identified subset of photographers who care about that genre and communicate about it online.

It used to annoy me when I encountered people who simply hadn't engaged with certain figures (or genres, or schools, etc.) who were well known to be polarizing, enough to have come to some kind of intelligent accommodation with them. Certain kneejerk reactions were themselves clichés...like saying that Picasso can't draw or Dylan can't sing. You just had to roll your eyes. It's much harder to be critical of that these days, because now there really is much less of a comprehensible tradition in photography, much less of a shared experience. It was never monolithic, but now it's positively atomized. Thirty years ago it would be tough to imagine any photographer or photography enthusiast who hadn't heard of Gene Smith (although it wasn't so tough to find Americans who hadn't heard of Eikoh Hosoe). But now you can mention Ara Güler or Paul Caponigro or Raghu Rai and get blank stares—like "what forum does he hang out on?"

Street Signs 7 by Felix Lupa

I'm aware that a lot of people just don't "get" street photography, and even that some people have decided consciously to dismiss all of it—although that seems like cutting an awful lot out of the corpus of photography, like saying you love painting but won't look at anything if it contains any blue.

So anyway, I guess a lot of people hadn't heard of Andrew. And couldn't be bothered to check out his website. Or aren't impressed with his affiliations. And don't know that he's a very accomplished and widely admired street photographer, and/or don't think that status means they should cut him an inch of slack if he casually disses their camera in passing. Or....

Maybe it's not that no one on the Internet knows if you're a dog; its that everyone assumes that everyone is a dog.

In any event, this has been instructive for me. It always helps to get a new read on the sitegeist.*

Mike

*I honestly thought I had just coined a clever new term there. Google is hard on the ego that way.

ADDENDUM: Now I'm ashamed of myself for not thinking to mention this earlier: when I privately contacted several of the people who had made less-than-gracious comments, they were very gracious about it, in several cases admitting that they'd simply had a hard day, or were dealing with other, unrelated problems. We all have bad days sometimes. I can cast no stones there.

The people who hang around here really are very nice, even when they're not being nice.

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Featured Comment by Karl: "I have a close friend and mentor who is one of the great Chicago street shooters, beginning in the late '50s and still at it today. His work is in permanent collections, he's had one man shows and representation at big time galleries, and museums including MOMA and the Art Institute have purchased his prints. Had he run the same route in NYC...but he became a father later in life and tried to instill his love of photography into his now teenaged daughter, but to no avail. He told me that the other day as he was out with his family, ready to visually pounce, he heard her say 'Why is Daddy always sneaking pictures of strangers?'"

Out and About with the Pentax K-01

By Andrew Kochanowski

English gloom lifted for a few moments of sunshine, so Belgian and English soccer—er, football—fans hurl invective at each other. Lime-vested bobbies appear in moments. Surely, something good must happen. It's a fine thing I have a camera with me. I turn it on shutter priority, 1/500 second, and wait. The fingers of my left hand fall loosely around a small, metal lens. I take a peek at the engraved distance scale; a flick to the right and I find infinity, a few millimeters to the left and I'm focused a few feet in front of me. I know where my focus plane will be, but just in case, I take a quick look at my viewfinder. A tiny adjustment and the figure in front of me is in focus. Snap.

London 2012

A cab squeezes by, and there, two girls, one wearing a fur. Whump, whump, I keep snapping; no shutter lag to speak of. Move in, move out, cross the lane, back up, avoid getting pushed by the cop line separating the English and Belgians. Yes, the girls are now together, maybe there'll be something good out of this.

London 2012

The sun is strong now, time to switch to aperture-priority. I flick the command dial—what a positive click—and set it to ƒ/8. I think I'll walk over to Regent Street, maybe Knightsbridge, and see how things look there. Plenty of space on my card, the battery still full, it will be a good day's shooting. I don't yet know what I got, maybe nothing, but if the photos fail—as almost all street photos do of course—the fault will be solely mine. I've been using an odd-looking thing to snap with: the Pentax K-01. And a delightful little camera it is.

London 2012

A little background. Though pretty much anything will do for candid photography, I do like my cameras small(ish), unobtrusive, quick, and controllable largely by feel. A Leica M9 is, of course, grossly overpriced for what you need and get, the older M8 hopeless at any ISO over 640. DSLRs are, well, DSLRs. The Micro 4/3's system sensors are meh, their manual focus crude. Gimme some dynamic range, and at 3200 ISO while you're at it. Throw in good battery life, please, I like to shoot for several hours. And may I please have a set of good, small lenses to put on it? Now, not on the five-year roadmap, Sony?

New York 2012

Though I had never owned a Pentax in my life, when the K-01 was previewed in March, I was intrigued. The Pentax K-5 DSLR with essentially the same APS-C Sony sensor has nearly peerless DR. I don't want a DSLR for the street, and, like a fixed dog, the K-01 has no hump. It was starting to sound pretty good. What's this? No adapters? It takes every K-mount lens ever made—wait, don't Pentax make a bunch of tiny, metal primes? With smooth, damped focus rings, and built-in hoods? Yes, they seem to. B&H is my friend; better yet they have a generous return policy. A black and aluminum K-01 with a Pentax DA 21mm ƒ/3.2 (32mm equivalent) is on my front porch in a couple of days. The Oly OM-D, a faux SLR with probably the same Panasonic sensor as is in my GX1 will have to wait.

London 2012

The K-01 looks the biz. It’s a chunky-feeling, solid thing, all modern, angular, with brushed aluminum controls, and a thick, ribbed rubber coating. On the bottom there is a signature of the guy who designed it for Pentax (Marc Newsom, who I admit I had never heard of). The controls feel fast, positive, and intuitive. Dedicated buttons for pretty much everything, a fat control wheel for my thumb. An Info button brings up pretty much everything else. On a single screen. No menus to look at while shooting. Who would have thought? A soft, almost inaudible shutter sound. Nice heft without feeling heavy. Perfect balance with the DA 21mm. Hmm. There is no external viewfinder, not even an EVF, and you can't add one. The forums are all a twitter, it's a dealbreaker, indeed. What I see is a beautiful, fixed-position, 3-inch, 900K-dot screen. Well, I think, I bet I could take a photo or two with this setup.

London 2012

Here's my studied advice after about 3,000 exposures: having no external VF makes no difference at all. While I admire a good optical viewfinder second to none (and admit to loathing EVFs, even the one on a Sony NEX-7), for the street, for this type of shooting, OVFs and EVFs offer little real utility. Yes, I know strong sunlight washes out a screen, and polarized sunglasses make a vertical frame impossible. Surely a bit of ingenuity can compensate. In real life, shooting in the middle of everything, I can glance at the screen while turning the focus ring on the lens. Or I can let the AF work and override it when I want. In dim light, where many a DSLR starts to hunt around, focus peaking with manual focus work perfectly. It all works, in fact, especially the interface between AF and manual focus. I can switch on the fly with a sturdy switch right where my left thumb would fall without looking up from the action.

South Beach 2012

Proof of the pudding is in the eating, they say, and this pudding's files are flat out fantastic. Clean, detailed shooting up to 3200 ISO, with 6400 certainly useable for decent-size prints. Noticeably nicer tonality than the best I was able to get from Micro 4/3 sensors. Pentax did it right dispensing with a proprietary format, giving RAW files in DNG, so they load right up into Aperture. Color balance is very, very good right out of the box. Battery life over 500 shots, more if you use less AF. Decent buffer in JPEG, a little slow in RAW but overall pretty responsive. I'm sold. Time for a wide and a normal, for the perfect set of lenses. A Pentax DA15mm ƒ/4 (24mm equivalent) and 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro (52mm) are on the doorstep in short order.

Kentucky 2012

Is it perfect? No, of course not. A photographer friend took one look and called it a biscuit tin that takes pictures. Hard to argue with that, really. But it's a pretty good picture-taker, even without a biscuit inside.

Andrew

Andrew Kochanowski is a member of candid and street photography collectives Burn My Eye and Un-Posed. His work with Burn My Eye is on display now at the London Festival of Photography, and with Un-Posed later this year in Berlin. All photos copyright of the author, all taken with the Pentax K-01 with DA21 and DA15 lenses.

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Random Excellence: Ralf Dujmovits

Photo by Ralf Dujmovits

Every now and again some remarkable picture, eloquent and unusual, makes its way around the world. One of the latest is this one, showing human overcrowding on Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. It was taken by Ralf Dujmovits, an experienced mountaineer who had turned back from the summit of Everest because of dangerous conditions, only to be "astounded and horrified" by the site of this long queue of tourist or hobby climbers trudging upwards.

He says the sight gave him the "oppressive feeling that some of the people in the picture would soon be dead." Four of them were. Others ended up crowding the hospitals of Kathmandu being treated for hypothermia and frostbite.

Dujmovits describes the craze to ascend Everest at any cost a "mass hysteria," and has pleaded with the Nepalese government for stricter regulations.

Kate Connolly wrote about the picture and the photographer at The Guardian.

Mike

P.S. As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of outstanding nonfiction writing. Mountaineering boasts an extensive literature, the excellence of which might account in part for those long lines on Everest (although most of us are content to remain armchair adventurers). Two of the very best books of the genre that I can heartily recommend are British climber Joe Simpson's 1988 book Touching the Void, an absolutely gripping biographical account of a near-disaster that will have you on the edge of your aforementioned armchair; I'll just warn you, don't start this one unless you have time to finish it. It was an extraordinary worldwide bestseller (here's the U.K. link). More pertinent to this photograph is of course Jon Krakauer's extraordinary Into Thin Air, a first-person account of the events of May 1996 on Everest by a man who started out as a journalist (for Outside magazine) who meant to write an article about an ascent, and who ended up being one of the primary participants in an appalling disaster that made news all over the globe. The book has one of the most disturbingly unsettled endings in literature, which is of course very appropriate; the new edition linked here contains an account of the ongoing controversy and Krakauer's continued struggles with the ghosts of his past. Undoubtedly one of the greatest mountaineering books ever, and among the true masterpieces of nonfiction literature of recent decades. Not to be missed (although Touching the Void is a shorter, easier, and, in terms of its ending, more satisfying read).

At least read the short book description of Into Thin Air at Amazon.

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Featured Comment by John Nollendorfs: "This picture from the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike gold rush is much more interesting! At least those fools were after something tangible, like gold!"

Featured Comment by Darin Boville: "Tilted image? Sure looks like it to me."

Featured Comment by expiring_frog: "To address the question of 'why,' I strongly recommend Rob Macfarlane's book Mountains of the Mind, an eminently readable cultural history of how climbing mountains captured the public imagination. Two other classics worth mentioning are Maurice Herzog's Annapurna, possibly the most famous mountaineering book ever (about the first ascent of an 8000m peak and subsequent horrific retreat), and Reinhold Messner's The Crystal Horizon (first solo Everest climb, without oxygen). Messner's climb is particularly pertinent because he was the only person on the mountain that day, with only his girlfriend and a liaison officer at base camp, the polar opposite of the current tourist logjam."

Featured Comment by Peter: "As a climber myself I have always advocated that Everest should have the top 500 meters blown off by a big bomb. Then K2 would be the highest mountain in the world and you cannot drag tourists up there!"

Featured Comment by Avi Joshi: "Being a Nepalese, this makes me sad. Sadder still to think that no regulation change is likely to happen when the country is in such a political disarray."

Question from Alan Farthing: "Mike, what's your view on the tilted image?"

Mike replies: I searched for the picture and was not able to find a larger JPEG online; it doesn't appear to be on Ralf's website. Virtually all the instances I was able to find (500+, only four pages of which I looked at) reproduce the same angle as the one at the top of this post. The image appears to originate from an Outside magazine article that also shows the same angle of tilt. At least, they seem to be the most reputable publication publishing it. If that's the case, then they should be the ones taking editorial responsibility for the photograph (As you probably know, the web is not good at determining primacy of publication.) I haven't had much luck asking publications questions like this, because often the people who know the answers are tough to locate, and then once you locate them they're not sure if they have permission to speak to you or not. This makes some sense if you consider that you're essentially asking them if their publication misrepresented the facts, which is not an easy question to get a straight answer to (although a strong denial can be worth something).

Enlarging the image as best I can, it appears from the degree of uprightness of the climbers that the slope shown in the picture is indeed somewhat exaggerated—not as much as Darin suggests (they're clearly not on a flat plain or they'd all be pitching over forwards), but maybe eight or 10 degrees. The figures are just not quite distinct enough to tell for sure. However, our perception might be skewed somewhat by the fact that they would all be carrying large, bulky packs.

The picture rotated 10 degrees counterclockwise looks subjectively about right to my eye when I enlarge it to enough to see the climbers better; possibly a little less might be better, and I can't really tell what's most accurate.

Enlarged detail at CCW 10 degrees. Look at the figures in the middle, remembering that they have bulky packs on their backs.
Click on the image to see it larger.

As several people have suggested, he might simply have tilted the camera to get the greatest number of people in. If his point was that there are too many people on the mountain, showing more of them would be more important information that showing the angle rectified. I'd guess it's possible he was using a very small fixed-lens camera; we know he's not going to be carrying a DSLR and a zoom lens on the way back from a summit attempt. According to reports there were 300 people on the mountain that day, and there aren't 300 people in the picture.

If someone who speaks German would like to try to contact Ralf and ask him, that would probably be the best way to get to the bottom of it. As someone who does this kind of research all the time I'd guess our chances of getting a substantive answer would be on the low side—Ralf appears to be a busy man of action who probably has better things to do and probably doesn't spend a lot of his hours at the computer—but it might be worth a shot. To avoid peppering him with many questions, why doesn't someone volunteer to me? We'll delegate one TOP translator. He might be more likely to answer if he gets one query as opposed to twenty or whatever.

Darin adds: After further research it appears that the original image that Mike posted isn't a still image per se but a still frame of a video. In the link they show the line of climbers in two cuts. The first part looks right in terms of tilt. However, the second part starts off right but then rotates—at least that is my judgement. This can be seen most easily if you grab the video and advance it frame by frame—about halfway in the rotation is most obvious. I tried to use stitching software to position but not distort a selection of screen grabs from the video but my software insists on stretching parts of the image. Maybe someone else has the skills to make a few measurements or to use stitching software more to this purpose.

"My take home points so far on this are: 1) The image is tilted to a pronounced degree. More, I think than Mike's version but less than mine. 2) Given the sweep of the video--the arc of his arm had to travel—this is probably nothing more than heavy clothing getting in the way and pulling the camera out of level at the right extreme. 3) However, the chosen still frame is still misleading—and at the same time not misleading. The ground was nowhere near as tilted at the spot where the hikers were packed most dramatically—misleading—but there were indeed many, many hikers coming up the steeper parts of the trail and on the mountain in general, as the rest of the video shows. I'll leave it to others to debate the ethics here."

Mike replies: I think I'll have to disagree with you here. I don't think the picture is a frame grab; at least, I can't find the exact same pattern of climbers in the video that I see in the still. And, without going into forensics, the video makes the frame grab seem essentially accurate to my eye. My 10°-corrected detail again:

Versus a frame grab from the video:

That's looking pretty close to me. (Of course, I do get that you're saying the video camera itself is tilted; it's just that it doesn't look that way to me, so we can disagree there.)

But now others can judge for themselves...good find!

Peanuts for an Elph

Amazon's Gold Box "Deal of the Day" today is the Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS, billed as the "world's thinnest camera with 28mm wide-angle lens, 12x optical zoom, and optical image stabilizer," for $159. In "black, raspberry, or teal."

I know nothing about this camera but pass along the news whenever the deal o' the day is photo-related.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Emily Cartier: "The main 'drawback' of the Elphs vs. the S90/95/100 is the Elphs are JPEG only. If you pay close attention to your white balance and your subject, you can get really nice results with them. I also spent a fair bit of time with mine experimenting with the different baked-in color settings to find the one that matched up best with how I see the world. That way I have done a lot of the stuff I'd otherwise do in editing beforehand. If you expect to do heavy editing, they're a bad camera choice.

"I actually use one for 'wildlife' photography. Nothing seriously exotic, just the urban wildlife in Madison, but that includes several woodpecker species, eagles, redtail hawks, a couple kinds of cranes, wild turkeys, muskrat and beavers. Being patient and hanging out to really watch how the animals behave and move means you can see interesting things.

"You don't get direct control of the shutter and aperture, but if you do some diligent practicing, you'll learn how Canon's software tends to set things at various ISOs and exposure compensation settings. The software is not out to screw you up, and the defaults it uses are good and sensible defaults. Eventually, you learn to change the ISO setting to get the right sort of shutter and aperture for your subject and lighting.

"The one thing Canon could do to improve the Elphs is to make the zoom a 'stepped' zoom, so the user gets a feel for the focal lengths. Otherwise, it tends to be very much like carrying a two-lens kit with a modest wide angle and a modest telephoto."

The Inconstant Eye

By Ctein

Paula and I went off to see the annular solar eclipse three weeks ago. By the time the moon was covering barely 25% of the sun, she, I, and the friends we were hanging out with all noticed that the landscape had gotten distinctly darker. That's at less than a half stop down from full sunlight.

Our eyes are usually very insensitive to gradual changes in illuminance; they have what's called "brightness constancy." We have very adaptable visual systems that allow us to see over a brightness range of greater than a billion to one. Apparently, though, we have a reference point wired into our brains for how bright normal sunlight should be. I hadn't noticed that before. Interesting! Also, it led me directly to this week's little lesson.

Visual constancy isn't perfect. Our ability to distinguish different tones diminishes under very bright or very dim light. There's a sweet spot around several hundred footcandles—the equivalent of a heavily overcast day or very bright indoor lighting—where we have a maximum ability to distinguish tones. In brighter light than that, we lose the ability to separate tones near white. In the other direction, we lose the ability to separate tones in the shadows.

The total number of tonal steps we can see a surprisingly small, about 650 for the average eye over that entire billion-to-one brightness range. Under optimal viewing conditions, in a typical photographic print, we can distinguish about 250 tones. If the light is significantly brighter or dimmer than that, we not only lose tonal discrimination but we lose it disproportionately at one end of the brightness scale or the other. That's why it's so easy to see "into the shadows" in a print when it's in direct sunlight and so hard under dim indoor light. More broadly, it's why we try to make our prints under conditions vaguely like the way we expect an audience to be viewing them. If our viewing lights are significantly brighter or dimmer than our audience's, they will perceive the prints as being too dark or too light (compared to what we intended them to see).

Third contact in the annular eclipse, as seen in H-alpha light, photographed through my Coronado PST. A few prominences are licking around the edge of the sun, even past the disk of the moon at the bottom of the photograph.

Our vision also has what's called "color constancy." You can vary the color temperature of the illumination over a considerable range, and colors appear approximately the same. We take all of this for granted; it only comes to our attention because our cameras and films aren't this adaptable. If they were, we'd hardly ever have to make an adjustment for exposure or color balance.

"Approximate," though, does not mean "exact." I'm not talking about metamerism, the apparent color shifts that some dyes undergo when viewed under different kinds of illumination. That's a different problem. I'm talking about the color interpretation by our eyes. A nice silver gelatin black-and-white print, which has a pretty flat spectral reflectance and exhibits very little metamerism, still tends to look cool-toned under skylight (10,000 kelvins) and warm-toned under a 60W incandescent bulb (2,600 kelvins). It's not a big shift in apparent hue, but fussy photographers and printers are well aware of it. Of course, this affects color prints as well, metamerism or no. It's doubly important to view your color prints under illumination similar to what your audience will be using, if you have any say or knowledge in the matter.

There's another deviation from color constancy: below 4000 kelvins or so the total range of colors we can see, our visual gamut, starts to shrink. Even with illumination of sufficient brightness, we start to lose parts of the spectrum, especially towards the cool end. By the time you get down to normal incandescent lighting, our visual gamut is substantially diminished. This is why even a slight improvement in color temperature, as when going from 100W incandescent bulbs (2800 kelvins) to quartz-halogen bulbs (3200–3400 kelvins) makes the colors look so much more vivid in a photograph, even if the brightness level of the light isn't any greater.

There's yet another deviation from color constancy. It takes our eyes time to adapt to changes in the illumination's color temperature. It used to be thought that this happened fairly quickly, in a matter of minutes. Half an hour at the most. More careful experiments and research showed that along the yellow-blue axis, in particular, it can take several hours for the eye to fully adapt! During that time, our perception of the overall color balance of the photograph is slightly but perceptably shifting.

This is just the way our eyes work. There's nothing you can do about it except to be aware of it and pay attention to it, so that it doesn't compromise you too badly.

Ctein

Ctein's weekly column appears with approximate constancy on Wednesdays.

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Featured Comment by Yves Papillon: "My left eye is dominant. I recently compared looking trough the viewfinder of a rangefinder camera with my left and then right eye. I noticed a clear difference in image tint. One eye showed a cooler image and the other a noticeable yellow one. My two eyes are inconstant."

Quote o' the Day: Stanley Greene

"I honestly believe photography is 75 percent chance and 25 percent skill. In accidents, we really discover the magic of photography."

—Stanley Greene, as quoted at PDN Pulse

-

(Consider reading the whole article; it's good.)

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Featured [partial] Comment by John Edwin Mason: "I was there when Greene made the remark at the Look3 Photo Festival, and I can tell you that the 1,000 photographers in the theater cheered with approval when he said it."

Shiny New Apples

Just FYI, B&H now has all the new Apple gear: the MacBooks with Retina displays, desktops, the new MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, and even some deals on previous models.

Mike

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Closing the Barn Door

It's no use closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.

—Old saying

Do you do this?

On Saturday, I went to my son's girlfriend's graduation, and for the second time in two years needed a telephoto lens. I should explain that I almost never need a telephoto lens. They don't suit the subjects I like to shoot or the way I tend to see (no h8 for telephoto fans, though, of course). I took the longest lens I have for the Micro 4/3 camera, the Olympus 45mm. It worked out okay; I took a lot of portraits outside after the ceremony and I made the Photoshopped concoction below, compensating for the high school gym lighting, which must be close to the ugliest available light you'll encounter in the wild. It records the occasion, that's all I can say for it.

This was as close as I could get to the stage. And even so—O, sweet nostalgia!—I got yelled at by a teacher. For being in peoples' way. I dutifully kneeled down, just getting up to take this snap and two or three more.

As you perceive, I needed a longer lens.

So what do I do? I come straight home and go immediately to the computer and go immediately to B&H Photo and start poring over telephoto lenses for Micro 4/3 cameras, thinking: which one shall I get? Like an eager dog. Which one would have been perfect for the shooting I just did?

Emphasis on that last. "For the shooting I just did." Cut to bolting horse, rapidly getting smaller in size as it heads for the horizon.

I thought I needed something on the order of an 80–200mm equivalent. There's nothing like that, but there are several alternatives. Panasonic makes a 90–350mm equivalent that's not too expensive. Olympus makes a 40-150mm. But the killer app seems to be Panasonic's Lumix G Vario 100–300mm ƒ/4.0–5.6 OIS lens. Yum tasty.

And I think, "I need that. I'll get that."

But no. No, I don't. I don't need that. And I shouldn't get it. I have literally needed a longer telephoto lens two times in the last two years—at the last two high school graduations. And now our graduations are over, so that frequency might diminish from here on out. If I bought a longer telephoto than my 45mm I would use it maybe once every year. Probably more like once every two years. IOW, I don't really need it at all.

This happens a lot with me: I encounter a situation while shooting; I don't have exactly the right piece of equipment I might ideally need; so I get all fired up and hot with GAS, and have to engage—indulge—in a long flurry of shopping, as if there is some law from on high that states that I must be equipped with every scrap of equipment I've ever felt the glimmer of a need for.

I've been doing that same thing over and over again for a long time now, too.

You'd think someday I'd learn.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Ben Rosengart: "Sounds to me like you ought to bookmark lensrentals.com."

Featured Comment by Kaemu: "Dood! You are probably in the same situation as me: people around you think of you as the 'photo guy' so (unfairly?) expect you to deliver great pictures whatever the occasion, which, I have come to accept, means that one has to be equipped with a good flash unit and a lens with at least a clean 200mm or equivalent focal length. For a guy who likes to shoot landscapes and architecture, not something I used much. But honestly, seeing peoples' face light up when they see the results is reward enough. Plus, I've experimented with teles and have gotten some nice seascapes and architectural shots with them. Some of my favorites in fact. So, all in all, getting these long lenses has beem 'all good.'"

Featured [partial] Comment by Richard Alexander: "Isn't this situation exactly what legacy lens adapters are for?"

Featured Comment by Walter Glover: "To hell with rental and purchase purely to meet clichéd expectations—do what you did, Mike, and go for the contextual shot that is imbued with all the stuff that memory is made of."

Featured [partial] Comment by bahi: "...The feeling of being one lens short never quite goes away."

Featured Comment by Chris Crowe: "Whilst it seems to be looked down on for those with small cameras (where it is called digital zoom), those with higher end cameras go for higher pixel density and then crop."

Mike replies: That's what my friend Jack does with his Leica S2 and two primes. And from what little I've seen, you'd never know.

That's also the principle of the coming super Nokia, the 41-MP PureView 808.

Featured Comment by Ed Buziak: "Two quotes come to mind...the first by photojournalist David Douglas Duncan, 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough,' which I would have fired back at the teacher. And to dispel cravings for more equipment (which you—and I—rarely have, but is a subject which pollutes most photography forum talk)...from Will Smith in the film Bagger Vance, 'I do the best with what I got to work with.'"

Featured [partial] Comment by Andrew Kowalczyk: "I like the picture better this way. If you had the lens you wanted you would have ended up with a so-so portrait under odd light (that you could have taken in the backyard to better effect). But this is sweet: the light hits her in a chiaroscuro way. The overarching heater blowers puts you in a place (this is Wisconsin, after all). Even the use of the library book cart to hold the diplomas attest to the frugal quirkiness of the school. I think you would have missed this if you had the 'right' lens."

Featured [partial] Comment by Philip Storry: "I gave in to that indulgence a long time ago. Which is why my camera bag has nine lenses in it. I can, of course, make do with far fewer. There's considerable overlap that would allow me to ditch half of them in theory. But there's a wonderful shift in thinking when using a different focal length (or range of lengths)....

Featured Comment by david: "You (and I) definitely need the Olympus 75mm. Definitely."

Mike replies: Go away, I'm not listening to you! (Sticking fingers in ears.)  :-)

Featured Comment by Paul Pickard: "Wow does this strike a chord with me! I have been doing this forever, with photography and many other things in life too. I just got the OMD with the 12–50mm and keep thinking, I need to get another lens...what I should really do is work with this and get comfortable with it, then maybe get something else. Thanks for giving me a pause to reflect."

Featured Comment by Keith I: "I've been there and have several lenses that spend most of their time just sitting on the shelf that I 'needed' for an event or opportunity that had passed. Maybe next time I'll have it ready...."

Featured [partial] Comment by by Andy Sheppard: "Funny, a little while ago you wrote an article advising 'buy just a D700, a 35, and an 85'—cool, calm, rationalised, minimal. And it transpires you're as much a turgid mess of 'I [might] need that!!' as the best of us...."

Mike replies: I am. Guilty.

I really do admire the (few) guys who have the discipline buy a minimalist kit and then use it for years. My excuse is that I need to write about cameras, but deep in my soul I know it's just an excuse.

Featured [partial] Comment by by KeithB: "When you have a telephoto, you will probably find times to use it."

Featured Comment by John Baker: "You never mentioned whether they're planning to go to university. The size of the telephoto you'll require is in direct proportion to the size of the university they attend."

Featured Comment by Speed: "You need to cultivate more useful friends."

Featured Comment by SteveO: "I'm an old carpenter and sometime photographer. I've got all sorts of woodworking tools that seldom get used but when I need 'em it's sure nice to know they're there. Same with my photo gear (tools), even if used only occasionally it's nice to have it handy."

Featured Comment by James Rhem: "At least you are focused on the equipment of today. My basement is filled with the equipment of the past as I have been unable to resist buying it bit by bit on eBay, seemingly unable to accept the devolution of photography into labyrinth of ones and zeros. I seem to feel that I must be the guardian of the past, keeping it somehow valued and alive at least potentially, like a cryogenic corpse."

Mike replies: You think you're bad, check out this Craigslist ad from the San Francisco Bay Area (thanks to Bob Lai for this):

Featured Comment by Josh Hawkins: "You have learned. You didn't buy anything."

Mike adds: Lest others miss the significance of this, Josh used to be the manager at Oak Park Camera, my then-local all-purpose camera store, which had a big selection of used gear. His comment is, shall we say, freighted with meaning.   :-)

Featured [partial] Comment by Tom Judd: "...Giving in to an occasional want can brighten your life."

Featured Comment by Nick: "That is the best shopping you can do; all the fun and no expenses!"

Pogue's Teaser: Mystery Solved

Looks like my readers are smarter than I am:

Everyone (there were many) who guessed "Sony RX100" were right. No deep secret in the offing weeks down the road.

"See-through" view of the Sony RX100, showing its major feature:
the much larger than usual (for a compact digicam) ~21-MP sensor.

So what's with the Sony RX100? Primarily, it's an advanced "compact digicam" (and these days, those are really tiny) with ~21 million pixels and an extra-large sensor for its class. It has a 1"-size sensor (8.8x13.2 mm), which is the same as Nikon's "CX" size as found in the recent Nikon 1 series cameras. Nikon's 1-series is its much ballyhooed attempt to woo non-enthusiast (mostly, read "female") consumer/photographers who want to step up from a small-sensor compact without going "all the way" to an entry-level DSLR such as the Nikon D5100 or the just-released Canon 4Ti. The 1" / CX sensors are "tweeners"—larger than most compact digicams but smaller than Micro 4/3 and the similar APS-C. Yet it (talking about the Sony again) has a fixed lens (28–100mm-e), unlike the Nikon 1 cameras. In that sense it's more like the Canon G1X, another large-sensor fixed-lens digicam (which however has a still larger sensor).

Downsides? I've never seen the camera, and haven't used it, but it will have no EVF available (significant because viewing-screen-only viewfinding can be tough in bright sunlight).

I presume the secret about David's post was that he's used the RX100 and likes it a lot—enough, as he says, to switch allegiances from the excellent Canon S100, which for this last stretch of digital time has taken pride of place as the most popular of the small-sensor compacts.

Mike
(Thanks to Miemo)

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Open Mike: The Life of an Artist / Artisan / Photographer

Ctein mentioned the other day that his work for his best and steadiest client was what helped him buy a house years ago. That happens to be what I've been trying to do lately. For the likes of us, it's not easy.

My house is inexpensive in most markets, in the U.S. at least. And a mortgage will actually save money over the rent I'm paying. I've been saving up a down payment for three years. I've finally got two successive tax returns that will reassure a lender that I can afford the monthly mortgage payment. So my financial position is sufficient.

I hit a snag this spring, though. A bunch of old medical bills (several for less than $100, several completely unidentified) and almost no borrowing on my credit report gave me a low credit score. That mortgage was still out of reach.

My elusive mortgage underscores a constant in "the artistic life": if that's the path you choose, you're most likely not going to be prosperous. Most of us go through "lean times" periodically when assets and equity leak away like water from a rusty bucket. Forward planning is tough. And the Masters of the Universe—the financial people who actually own the country and the world—take a dim view of one's prospects as a dutiful sharecropping citizen. Until last month, when Capital One magnanimously gave me a $300 line of credit on a special type of card designed for the credit-impaired, I hadn't had a credit card since 1986. People without W-2s* look suspicious to the Monopoly Bankers and Henry F. Potters of the world.

You've heard that before, right? Trying to make it in the arts is tough.

Plus, you're constantly scrambling, extemporizing, making do. Performing triage after financial implosions of one sort and another. Needing help from relatives or spouses or friends. And enduring risk—even those with the most conventional sorts of jobs can suffer the very substantial blow of unemployment, and I certainly don't mean to downplay that; I sympathize sincerely. But "artistic" types also typically suffer chronic underemployment. We do well, but too rarely. If only we could just reproduce our best successes more often.

I don't know what I'd have been like if I'd lived a parallel life as a wealthy professional—maybe I'd have expensive habits. But I don't. I don't travel. I'm not a clothes-horse—I'm fond of saying I went through the entire eight years of the G.W. Bush Administration wearing the same four pairs of black jeans (true**). I'm not a foodie—if anything, I don't spend enough on food. I don't drink, or smoke, or use drugs (all costly habits), or go to strip clubs or worse. I don't have cable. I need enough money to pay the rent and the household bills, and then I like to have a few things on top of that: a few thousand dollars a year to waste on photography, which has been consistent since about 1987 (except during the aforementioned lean times), money for books, money for music. That's really about it.

And I have all that. What more could a guy want?

If ever you come across anyone in any sort of artsy-craftsy seat-of-the-pants scrabble-it-out-of-the-dirt job who's actually making it, you're probably in the presence of a pretty contented person.

If you're a regular reader of TOP you hear me complain every now and then. But don't let me mislead you: I have the best job in the Universe. It's an incredible privilege to do nothing but write and edit this site and—this still surprises me—make enough to live on. I love that. I love the work, I am incredibly fortunate in my readers, I love being able to "dick around on the Internet all day for food," in the words of a recent New Yorker cartoon. Not everybody could do what I do—not everybody would want to—but it seems to suit my talents, such as they are, to the proverbial T. It might not last forever, but I hope to ride this horse until I get bucked into the mud.

And that's probably the best thing about the artistic life. After you struggle for enough years, modest success feels like winning the lottery! It's the contrast that does it. Once you figure out how to keep the bills paid and finagle a little security, it's like you've died and gone to heaven. I mean, I am livin' the life of Riley here***—I've got a fine kid, and he's got a nice girl, and we've got a good dog; we have a house to live in, I've got not one but two cars (okay, that really is profligate); I work when I want to, I can listen to music out loud all day at my desk, I have no boss (no offense to you bosses out there, but that's huge for me), and my commute is about fifteen feet—the distance from the bed to the computer in the next room. And I get to chat about my hobby all day with people from all over the world. I might piss and moan here and there, but—dead earnest now—the day almost never goes by when I don't feel like I'm just one of the most improbably lucky guys there are.

The life of the artist/artisan/photographer/writer/whatever? It can be hard, but it's the life. I am one happy guy.

And just think—by this time next year I might even have a mortgage, just like a real person. My cup runneth over!

Mike

* For you non-Americans, a W-2 is the report of your wages or salary that an employer gives you to give to the government at the end of the tax year.

**I've come up in the world now that Obama's President—now I get custom-sized, 100% American-made jeans from Diamond Gusset in Lynchburg, Tennessee. The best money can buy. I might be a simple guy, but once a connoisseur....

***

"Open Mike," consisting of rambling ruminations by yrs. trly., is usually off-topic, but not always entirely.

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Featured Comment by Robert: "You realize that you've written the perfect post for readers to link to when you do piss and moan, right?"

Featured Comment by Hugh: One of the best things you can do for Zander is get him a credit card now, and get him to make regular small purchases and repay regularly on time. Also a few small bank loans for things, which get paid back on time. Work the credit rating system from the earliest possible age."

Featured Comment by Steve Jacob: "I guess I am in a similar position. Not as an artisan but as a director of my own company. I never borrow money if I can help it. I still spend most of my time plying the same trade I have been in since 1985. No complaints—it pays the bills and it's nice to be good at something. Still have a lousy credit rating though. But think on this—barely a day goes by that I don't wish I was doing something different. Bet you don't have that problem :-)"

Mike replies: I don't any more...but I did twelve years ago, when I had the highest-paying job I'd ever had from the biggest and best corporation I'd ever worked for. Hated every day, if not every minute. Getting fired from that job turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me...I might honestly still be there otherwise.

Doesn't sound like that's parallel to your situation, though.

Featured Comment by Jeffrey Goggin: "While it would be nice to make a little bit of money from my (cough, choke) 'art' and I've been happy enough when I've been self-employed, I certainly can't imagine that I would enjoy living the life of an artist very much. After dipping my toe into those waters briefly, I got cold feet and decided I would keep photography strictly as a hobby. As the saying goes, once your hobby becomes your profession, it's time to find yourself a new hobby, and as costly as photography has become these days, one can wreak quite a bit more havoc upon one's budget by choosing poorly among the alternatives! I know this to be true firsthand, because I have been there and done that...."

Featured Comment by Riley: "You should try being Riley!"

Featured Comment by Stephen F Faust: "As a guy with a 'real' job making a depndable salary, reading paragraphs 3–6 made me feel incredibly sorry for you. Then reading the rest of the article made me feel incredibly jealous of you! Bravo for having the guts to believe in the power of 'dicking around on the internet all day'! The world would be a better place if more people would quit their jobs and follow their dreams."

Mike replies: I can't actually take credit for any dream-chasing. In my case it was more like desperation, after an increasingly futile 2-3 year job search to which I was increasingly more resistant as I went along. Things got pretty dire. The operative principle was probably more like, "gotta do something." But the sweet irony is that where I ended up is better than any place I could have gotten to any other way."

Featured Comment by Patrick: "I actually don't think I could function without a credit card; don't know how you do it."

Mike replies: Again, something I can't take credit for. It was simple self-defense—from my own immaturity. When I got my first credit card out of art school while working my first salaried job, I ran it up to the limit buying classical music CDs (CDs were new at the time). It took me two years to pay it off (during which time I did not have a working credit card) and when I toted up the damage, I found I'd paid $700 for the privilege of using the bank's money for that time. While not by any stretch a financial genius, even I was able to see that this would not make a good pattern for my life.

Featured [partial] Comment by John Camp: "'Contented'? That's not been my experience. Actually making it means that the guy is a small businessman, just like the insurance agent down the block, and making it as a small businessman takes quite a bit of drive and ambition, even if that ambition is somewhat hidden.

"In my experience, those people want more. Not necessarily Porsches or homes in La Jolla, but they want more time, so they can do what they do better. They don't want to mess around with the troublesome part of their business, so they'd like to be able to hire people to do that (agents, accountants). Even artists find it nice if they can have somebody come in for a couple hours a week to keep the house clean and do the wash, and they often want a certain kind of good reliable car so they don't have the hassles of driving a wreck...and so on. And on.

"It's always seemed to me that the better people do in their chosen field, the better they want to do. For the kind of person who thinks and works that way, I'm not sure that contentment is within reach."

Featured Comment by David: "Speaking as someone who works in the arts and makes a very good living at what I do, I can assure you I do not feel 'contented.' I feel fortunate (as someone who lived hand to mouth for years I know how lucky I am not to have to worry about money anymore), but I am constantly frustrated by the restrictions imposed on me by the very business that pays me so well. I would gladly trade some prosperity for a little more creative satisfaction, and I know a lot of people who make vastly more than I do who feel the same way."

Featured Comment by Maryna Ozuna: "This blog really cuts close to the bone. Lived on the edge of the wave my whole life, but now as I'm getting older, I find little shreds of fear creeping in. Ten years under a mesquite tree in Mexico, getting paid in cheese and squash did not build a 401(k)...oh well it was a good run...hopefully to continue."

Lookin' Good Later in Life

(I'm just sayin'.) A random snap encountered surfing—Georgia Holt, 86, and her daughter Cher, 66 (and the photographer, unidentified). The picture was tweeted by Cher after she and her Mom visited with the Obamas.

Mike

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There Will Be No Triple Crown This Year

Well, as you might have heard, Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another has been scratched from the Belmont tomorrow. Tendonitis. The Preakness will be his last race.

What a pity.

Mike

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Pogue's Teaser

David Pogue, the multitalented and endlessly accomplished Technology columnist for the New York Times (I sometimes say that David Pogue has more energy in any given day than I have in the average year), last evening blogged a post called "What Pogue Actually Bought," detailing his choices of computer, phone, software, etc.—and what cameras he owns. In the Cameras section, there's this:

So what does this refer to? Beats the heck out of me. But my ears are as perked as Lulu's when she hears one of the dogs down the alley bark, brother.

Mike
(Thanks to Debbie Poulin)

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Canon Serves Pancakes Too!

Grand Canon has got a new act. Mindful that the tiny, near-flat lenses called "pancakes" have been popular for other brands, Canon has released an EF autofocus 40mm ƒ/2.8 pancake lens, its first pancake...ever, if I'm not mistaken. The new lens covers full-frame as well as APS-C.

Appropriately, it's tiny. Its overall length is only .9 inches (22.8 millimeters), and it weighs only 4.9 ounces (130g). Filter size is 52mm*.

In common with a great many pancakes, it's on the slow side, at ƒ/2.8. Of course with today's super-high ISOs that's not much of a problem ("ƒ/2.8 is the new ƒ/2," as they say)—and many people are well used to ƒ/2.8 maximum apertures from using fast zooms.

People might not be as accustomed to the 64mm focal-length equivalent on APS-C sensor cameras. It's one I never had occasion to get used to myself (although it's close to the 58mm longer-normal focal length that wasn't uncommon in the early days of fast and super-fast planar-types**).

Optically, it consists of 6 elements in 4 groups. Canon has published an MTF chart but not a block diagram.

What's it for?
I believe the most sensible use for a pancake of this type is as an auxiliary lens to use in conjunction with a standard zoom that already covers the same focal length. A zoom is conventionally as large as the largest lens it replaces, yet there are times when you just don't feel like carrying the big, heavy zoom. Users of full-frame Canon cameras whose main lens is the 24–105mm or either the new or old 24–70mm will especially appreciate the new pancake—it will be the lens to take along when photographing isn't going to be the main activity and you don't want to lug the full rig, yet would still like your "real" camera with you just in case. Users of 5D-series cameras especially will be surprised how light on the shoulder and handy in their hands their cameras can become.

It's a marvel to see stately Canon releasing such interesting new prime lenses—this is the third one announced in just the past few months. This new one does make the hope of an image-stabilized 35mm lens to go with the new 24mm and 28mm IS primes much more dim, I suppose, but there are always tradeoffs...it's great that Canon, too, now has a true pancake prime of its own.

Mike

* Traditionally a Nikon filter size, but shhh.

** I had a 58mm ƒ/1.2 Rokkor lens briefly, and Cosina/Voigtländer makes a modern homage to the type that's still available in Nikon F mount.

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Featured Comment by Karl: "Just pre-ordered this lens from my local shop. Can't wait to use it! I'll slot nicely in my lineup of 24mm ƒ/2.8, 30mm ƒ/1.4, and 50mm ƒ/1.4. Have absolutely no need for it, and ƒ/2.8 is really slow, but for the low price why not?"

Mike replies: Whoops! I forgot to mention the low price—$199.

Featured Comment by John Hufnagel: "This may well be technical nit-picking, but though not labled as such, I feel that Canon's 38mm FLP and 19mm FL both could be considered pancake lenses. Both require the use of mirror lockup on normal SLRs, though the Canon Pellix can use the FLP (but not the 19mm). Nonetheless, this is Canon's first general-purpose pancake SLR lens."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "I was actually quite excited to see this unexpected news. So much so that I pre-ordered one at 2 a.m. when I saw the announcement! I occasionally enjoy the Voigtländer 40mm manual lens (that Dave mentioned) but, ooh-la-la, I'd much rather have autofocus (and indoor plumbin' and electric lightin') in the 21st Century! I'll gladly donate a sliver of brightness (ƒ/2.8 vs. ƒ/2.0)."

Featured Comment by Mike: "During my deployment to Kosovo, I used a Pentax K10D with 40mm pancake, which I carried with me in a pouch on my belt. You can easily get used to 40mm on APS-C when it allows you to always have your DSLR on your person. That was my one camera year."

Time for a Poll: Cameras

Online Surveys & Market Research

If you can't see the poll here, it's available online.

Mike

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Anniversary Report

Yesterday was the 79th anniversary of the opening of the first drive-in theater, in 1933, which Google commemorated on its main page with one of its Google doodles (in the shape of a ticket, notice). Also to mark the occasion, Chicago's WGN Radio 720 conducted an interview with our friend Carl ("Odysseus") Weese from the road somewhere in the southern Great Plains. The interview's fun: the interviewer is intelligent, Carl articulate; both did a good job, methought.

Odysseus—er, Carl—had a hard couple of days: there's an oil boom in the panhandles, and the opportunistic labor force is sucking up all the available housing, including motel rooms, shutting him out. He had to drive hundreds of miles just to find a place to lay his head.

Mike

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Sic Transit

By Nicholas Hartmann

This was taken around 6:30 p.m. on June 5th during the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Not NASA quality, I know, but not bad for a backyard lashup with lots of "legacy" elements! Venus is the big round spot at the top right, the linear features are guy wires and antenna components of the TV transmission towers located just west of us, and the spots on the sun are...sunspots! (Sunspots! from my backyard!)

Tech notes: Panasonic G1 digital camera, Olympus OM 200mm ƒ/4 lens with 2x teleconverter (thanks, Dad) mounted with an OM-to-Micro-Four-Thirds adapter, supported on a Gitzo carbon-fiber tripod with a Leitz ball head (thanks again, Dad). The crucial component was one half of a pair of $2 "eclipse glasses" from the Milwaukee Public Museum taped to the front of the lens. Although the camera was pointed directly into the sun, the combination of a very dense filter plus a long lens plus a teleconverter led to high ISOs (800 or 1600), wide apertures, and slow shutter speeds. The best exposures were about one stop down from indicated.

The weather late yesterday in Milwaukee was perfect: warm enough to sit outside, literally not a cloud in the sky, no wind to jostle the tripod. We made this astronomical event the focus of a very pleasant evening: some pistachios, a glass or two of wine, a good dinner, and that little spot on the sun that is a fer-cryin'-out-loud actual planet silhouetted against our friendly local star.

Only 105 years until the next one.

Nick

ADDENDUM: And if you want a less appealingly seat-of-the-pants and more amazingly virtuosic visual account of the event, check out master-of-the-transit Thierry Legault's version...for a big surprise. Read the text to discover just how amazing the capture of the interloper is. (Thanks to robert p for this.) —Ed.

ADDENDUM #2: And Taran Morgan suggested this:

"The videos and images displayed here are constructed from several wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light and a portion of the visible spectrum. The red colored sun is the 304 angstrom ultraviolet, the golden colored sun is 171 angstrom, the magenta sun is 1700 angstrom, and the orange sun is filtered visible light. 304 and 171 show the atmosphere of the sun, which does not appear in the visible part of the spectrum."

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Featured Comment by Ctein: "Thierry is my hero. The guy makes wonderful and amazing photographs regularly, and his technical papers on telescopy and astrophotography are invaluable. It's also worth noting that much (possibly all) of his gear costs in the thousands of dollars, not substantially different from what people pay for the better DSLRs. Astrophotography is not a rich person's game, it's a dedicated person's game. As always, it's the person behind the gear, not the gear, that makes the difference."

Featured Comment by steve: "Shooting the sun isn't just a matter of blocking visible light, its the IR/UV etc. that gets focused through onto your sensor bounced through the eye viewer into your eye that's a worry. So make sure you take precautions, use proper filters (Baader film is very cheap) and limit your eyes' exposure.

"I was (very) lucky to capture the entire transit. It's winter here in Australia and for three days we had solid cloud cover, almost constant drizzle and 50kph winds. I'd prepared for a few months planning a suitable shooting location that gave me unobstructed views for the entire event (you never really notice just how many trees and power lines are in the way until you need them not to be!).

"On the day I got up at 5 a.m. to the sound of silence...no wind and no rain. Looking out the window I saw stars. I went outside and saw nothing but dark sky and stars...not a single cloud anywhere! For me the transit started just after 8 a.m., and 1,440 shots later it was over. My Nikon with a 500mm Sigma and 2x teleconverter did the trick nicely.

"The sun put on a great show with lots of sunspots and I can see a few dozen in my shots so I'm looking forward to processing them all, making my own 'string of pearls' shots etc. I'd love to have lucked out and caught a satellite or Hubble in some of my bursts but I'm so overjoyed at being able to capture the whole event.

"I completely agree with Nick...Sunspots! from my backyard!"

'Done Done Done Done Done Done Done!'

Ctein has shipped the last of the $19.95 prints! By now everyone should have received either their print or an e-mail telling them that the print is on the way. If you have not gotten either print or e-mail (check your spam folder too) from Ctein, please e-mail him immediately (ctein@pobox.com).

The prints are shipping via first-class mail; normally this only takes a few days, but three tubes took as long as 15 days to arrive, so be patient. If you haven't gotten your print by the 23rd, let Ctein know—but not before then, please.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Bruce Bodine: "I received my print Tuesday afternoon in the mail and all I can say is...WOW! This is the first time I have seen a print by a master of the art and it is just stunning.

"Ctein deserves all the accolades he receives and it justifies the saying that the proof is in the print. I will be sharing this with some of my photography friends at work so they can also appreciate the art of the master. Thanks to both you and Ctein for giving so many of us the exposure to the best of our craft be it amateur or professional. And thanks for this follow-up post on TOP so we can all publicly give Ctein the credit he truly deserves and thank you for making it possible on TOP."

The Echo Box

In a rather annoying trend, discrepancy seems sometimes to be widening into direct contradiction in the news. In our recent gubernatorial recall election, one side was trumpeting that Wisconsin had added 30,000 jobs, and the other side was advertising that Wisconsin had lost 30,000 jobs. Which was it? The "traditional" media, which is growing increasingly scarce here and increasingly biased, were not much help.

So here's the news: either Panasonic will be investing 30 to 50 billion yen in Olympus, or it won't be!

Isn't that exciting?

Of course, I don't know. I haven't done any original reporting, personally. I'm just a guy sitting in a little house in Wisconsin. I don't speak Japanese, and I don't have the phone numbers of the CEOs of Olympus or Panasonic in my "Rolodex" (I assume "Rolodex" is now a vestigial term, like "dialing" a phone). As we usually do with such industry news, I reported a report, namely, I parrotted what the Japan Times said. Imaging-Resource repeated a different report, from the subscription-only Kyodo News Agency. Well, I think it's a different report, unless the the Japan Times got the report from Kyodo News Agency too, which might be what the word "Kyodo" in small type under the title of the article indicates. So who's echoing whom? Who got the news, and from where, and who (else) is just repeating something they heard?

Olympus immediately issued a very vaguely-worded denial, which might or might not be referring to the reports about Panasonic. But then, they're doing that a lot these days. If someone issued a report that clear skies above Tokyo appear blue, Olympus would issue a statement that said "Certain sections of the media have reported today that the skies over Olympus Corporation (the 'Company') are blue. This is not announced by the Company. The Company will immediately disclose any further important information when it comes to light."*

Reuters, which seconded the "yes" side on Tuesday, yesterday contradicted the report, saying the President of Panasonic was overheard by a waiter at dinner saying nope, 'tain't true (except in Japanese). Okay, not at dinner, and it wasn't a waiter:

"I don't know where that information came from, not from us," [Panasonic President Fumio] Ohtsubo said on the sidelines of a meeting of the Japan Electrical Manufacturers' Association. "There isn't any," he said when asked if Panasonic had a plan to invest in Olympus.

So there you have it. Might be news, might not be; might be true, might not be; might be announced later this week, when Olympus issues an expected report; might prove to have been a rumor. The world continues to need more reporters and fewer echo boxes, and I'm not chuffed that I'm part of the problem. At least when I want to know what color the clear sky is, I can look out the window and give my own report. (Blue.)

Mike

*Note that that last sentence actually means, "The Company will not disclose any further important information when it comes to light." I'm just sayin'.

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Francis Harrison: "I'm in Tokyo and yes, the story is accepted as fact here. Remember also that Fuji was at one point considering buying either Leica or Olympus. (Outright...?) Heady times. The takeaway for me: in spite of some horrendous corporate behavior going back at least two decades, Olympus technology and products, whether they be consumer cameras or endoscopes, are highly regarded, making Olympus a very valuable entity regardless...."

A Toast to Ray Bradbury (OT)

Ray Bradbury. Portrait by Michel Fainsilber.

By Steve Rosenblum

Ray Bradbury has passed away at age 91.

I attribute my love of reading to Mr. Bradbury. Every summer of my childhood my sisters and I spent much of each summer at the small cottage my mother's parents had built during the late 1940s in Petoskey, on Little Traverse Bay in the "Tip of the Mitt" region of Michigan. At the time (late '50s and '60s), our father was a builder and later a real estate developer, and his busiest working season was during the hot Michigan summers. Our mother took us up to Petoskey where we stayed either with our immediate family or with various permutations and combinations of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. We (thankfully) had no television and were expected to generate our own entertainment. At the beginning of each summer we were marched over to the Petoskey Public Library and were issued library cards. The library was one of those old buildings that had been built due to the largess of the Carnegie family throughout the country in the 1930s. It was cool and quiet in there and had that distinctive musty smell of aging books. I learned to love that smell and would take a few books out, devour them, and then go get some more. Many a long summer afternoon was spent under the shade of a tree or on the front porch of the cottage reading a book.

The first books that really caught my attention and got me hooked for life on reading were by Ray Bradbury. I was probably 11 or 12 at the time. It was easy to get entranced by the worlds he created out of words. The country was in the midst of the "Space Race," and new, seemingly impossible achievements were in the headlines every week. In just a few more years we would walk on the moon! Reading stories about the future and what it might bring and about the conquest of Mars and other celestial places seemed very much within the realm of possibility. But the main thing that hooked me about Bradbury's work was his exploration of inner space—our humanity was the unifying theme of all of his work. Most amazing was that most of those stories were written in the early '50s, long before any real space race. And yet he foresaw everything, from space travel to flat screens. He wrote about three dimensional screens that could turn a room into the projection of one's own imagination including sound, smell, and emotion. In Fahrenheit 451, he warned us about the consequences of the technological, totalitarian state. In Dandelion Wine he wrote the best description of childhood I have ever read.

So, today I toast Ray Bradbury and beam him my lifelong admiration. If you have not already done so, I strongly suggest that you pick up a copy of The Illustrated Man, find a shady tree, and disappear into the book.

Steve

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Featured Comment by Johan Grahn: "The name Ray Bradbury also reminds me of my youth when I read loads of SF. The novel Something Wicked This Way Comes is on my list of recommended works by Mr. Bradbury."

Featured Comment by Steve Jacob: "Indeed, a long and illustrious career. I have read everything he wrote. He was the Nabokov of his genre. A serious writer of immense quality and imagination."

Featured Comment by Peter Hovmand: "Yeah, he led to my first interest in reading...which made me a writer (in Danish)...I owe him big time. Thanks, and rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury."