The Online Photographer

Ohmyeffingod

No. Just...no.

By Ctein

Okay, everybody, take a deep breath and sit back in your chairs. This is going to be a MOAR* of epic dimension.

Those of you who have been reading me over the years know that my tastes in photography are extremely broad. (Those who haven't? Well, I'm telling you now.) I like most all photography. The little photography that I don't like, I recognize is simply not to my taste, or that I am not the intended audience. I don't set myself up as an arbiter of what is or isn't "right and proper" photography, and I am mildly offended when others do. I wrote a column some years back called "Stifling Your Inner Yahoo" that I think should be required reading for anyone who has ever been inclined to dismiss art they don't understand or don't appreciate as worthwhile.

Having said that...

Even. I. Have. My. Limits.

This blows past them and leaves them in shards and shambles.

Caution—while all these photos are safe for work, they are not safe for your sanity nor peace of mind. You've been warned. See "A Vibrant Past: Colorizing the Archives of History" at Time LightBox. 

I am appalled. Maybe beyond appalled. Do look through the entire sequence—it just gets worse and worse, until it climaxes in a finale so stunning in its tastelessness that it is almost beyond description. In fact, I won't describe it. I'll let you have the pleasure (I am likely misusing this word) of discovering it yourself.

Hand-tinting of black-and-white photographs was common well into the twentieth century, especially for portraiture. These aren't tinted, they're atrociously colorized. Lest it be argued that this is only a matter of degree, that would be like arguing that stage makeup is no different in import and effect than putting on a clown face. Quantity counts towards quality: Vitamin A is necessary for life; an excess will kill you (avoid the polar bear liver entrée).

When I looked at the nineteenth century photographs, I thought they exhibited considerable hubris to be guessing at colors on which we had no record. It was beyond unlikely to me that Lincoln was anywhere as pink faced and pasty as in photograph #3, but I figured there was probably some record of him having blue eyes, although the degree and kind of blueness was a stretch.

Well, no. Here is Lincoln's own description of himself, in his 1859 biography: "...I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes..." (emphases mine).

It took me less than 30 seconds with Google to get to this information. The retoucher didn't even do the most basic research; this pink, blue-eyed Lincoln isn't artistic license in the absence of facts. It's just plain wrong.

What surprised me, though, was that I hated the mid-20th century colorizations even more. In good part I think that's because by then, black-and-white photography had become a medium that photographers had internalized, so lighting and composition were elements used much more effectively. A substantial part of what makes those news photographs so memorable is that they are inherently great photographs, and would be even if the subjects and events had been entirely mundane (as the bread line under the billboard is).

The colorizer has done such an awful artistic job that she has destroyed that. I doubt this could be done well, but she did it badly; her results are truly ineptly composed as color photographs. I'm impressed that the colorizer could have such technical skill and such an utterly lousy eye for photography (this is not the positive kind of impression). The Times Square kiss photograph becomes a jumbled unfocused mess. Ditto the burning monk, and the Vietnam murder. These make Ted Turner's colorizing of old black-and-white films, arguably a capital offense, look like high art.

The freshly-scrubbed migrant mother seems, well, unlikely, and diminishes the horror and despair of the situation that's conveyed in the original. The billboard and breadline photograph is simply screwed up; now the viewer's eye focuses on the billboard rather than the breadline.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

The least visually offensive is probably the Hitchcock portrait. It merely looks like a mediocre job of hand-tinting. Which doesn't make it at all better than the original, but it doesn't make me want to tear my eyeballs out.

I have avoided mentioning the colorizer's name, although the article features her. This is not because I am genteelly trying to avoid a direct attack. It's because I consider this work to be so abominable that I do not want to give her one bit of free publicity. Clueless and visually "tone deaf" as she may be, I am only half so annoyed at her as I am with the editors at Time-Life, who somehow fell into the psychotic delusion that it would actually be a good idea to encourage, commission, and promote this work.

Any number of suitable paired punishments come to mind for their transgressions:

Tarring and feathering.

Drawing and quartering.

Torches and pitchforks.

Take your choice; you can pick one or all. Just remember that it's important to get them in the right order.

Next week I will return to much, much more pleasant topics, I assure you.

Ctein

Note: superstorm Sandy permitting, I'll be on a plane to Toronto for two weeks starting today; if it turns out that I don't respond to your comments (of which I'm sure there will be many) promptly...or at all...it'll be from lack of connectivity, not appreciation.

*Mother Of All Rants

Ctein draws and quarters on TOP on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Morgan Consigny: "If you don't laugh, you'll cry."

The Lazy Aussie: "Is it a worse niche than HDR Street?"

cb: "It nicely proves that fancy postproduction can destroy every image."

Phillip E: "My godfather, Tony Maston, used to hand colour portraits in his work as a commercial photographer in the middle part of the twentieth century, so I appreciate that colouring black and white photographs has its place. That said: the colour versions shown juxtaposed with the originals in Ctein's link make the strongest possible case for the often superior emotional power of monochrome! (If one were needed.)"

fjf: "Is there any word on when Frank's The Americans will be reprinted using this technique?"

Mike responds: I know you're joking, but that comment actually shocked me when I read it, viscerally.

Paul: "Erm...I thought they were kind of interesting and reasonably well done. Not life changing either way."

Geoff Wittig: "Colorizing Ann Frank? Seriously? Simply beyond belief, a sign of smarmy corporate sugar-coating that has gone beyond the bounds of normal bad taste and malignant 'Disney-fication' into an entirely new realm of cultural whitewashing. What's next? Colorized Auschwitz? A smiling, avuncular colorized Hitler? Poking my mind's eye out with a fork here."

Martin: "I'm not bothered by these at all. In fact, I find it quite an interesting exercise, particularly so with photographs of pre-20th century figures. Colourising these images, regardless of how well you judge them to have been executed, somehow brings makes the figures and incidents more real. Lincoln lived not in a black and white, sepia toned world, but one filled with the same vibrancy of colours as the one we live in now. However, I have considerably more sympathy for your objection if you view the colourisation of these photographs as somehow vandalising a piece of art. But as an exercise in shifting one's perspective on the past, I rather like them."

Peter Cameron: "I wish I'd heeded the warning. I've now had my fill of horror for this Halloween."

Craig: "Some of these pictures don't look particularly bad, but not a single one of them actually improves the original in any way, so what's the point?

"One detail I find interesting is that the 'art' (if that's the word) of colorizing doesn't seem to have progressed at all in the 30 years since Ted Turner started applying his 'goddamn Crayolas' (as Orson Welles put it) to movies in the 1980s. Back then, I noticed that colorized movies always looked fake. Every leaf was the exact same shade of green, every Caucasian had exactly the same shade of skin, and so on. It always looked very lazy and unimaginative. And these pictures from Time show exactly the same defects.

"Time has never been a particularly high-class publication, but they did at least commit the occasional act of good photojournalism. This collection of vandalized historical images, little better than painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, is a blight on even their lame record."

Roger Moore: "Maybe you 'hated the mid-20th century colorizations even more' because color processes were already available by then. The Lincoln portraits were black and white by necessity. Lincoln, who knew the political value of a good photograph, probably would have wanted them to be in color had it been practical. The 20th Century documentary and news photographers had access to color film and could have been using it if they had wanted. Working in black-and-white was a decision for them, so colorizing their photographs is a much more serious attack on their artistic integrity."

Bill Bresler: "I'm taking this one step further. I'm instagramming her work:

robert e (partial comment): "Ted Turner and the colorization fad of the '80s is a more ambiguous case for me. Tasteless and shocking as it was, so much good came out of it that I can't muster up any of the outrage I felt at the time.

"Previously neglected prints and negatives were carefully restored, copied and preserved in preparation for those colorizing projects (and Turner wasn't the only one, just the most prominent). Much historical research was done on the productions. The controversy, inflamed by Turner's mischievous public remarks and irreverent attitude, led to the National Film Preservation Act, and to landmark court judgements.

"(Unfortunately, none of this could stop a director from mutilating his own property, like a certain trilogy of science fiction fantasy epics.)

"Perhaps not least, the controversy attracted new audiences to these old classics and raised public awareness about the existence and precarious state of a cultural legacy.

"Turner wasn't stupid. He likely foresaw that any controversy and publicity around colorization would benefit his TV station, that the promise of profit would actually benefit movie archives, some of which he owned and some that he wished to acquire. Whether he anticipated it or not, the publicity also helped prime TV audiences for a cable channel dedicated to the appreciation of cinema classics as they were intended to be seen. The Turner Classic Movies channel's mission statement was all about original artistic intent, and even specified 'non-colorized.'"

Bill Tyler: "There's a huge bit of cognitive dissonance here. These are mostly news photos. Time is ostensibly a news organization. But any contemporary news photographer who did this kind of photo manipulation would be fired."

Dave Reichert: "There are times when color adds to a photograph, and lack of color diminishes it.

"On Saturday, July 18, 1970, I was in Times Square, waiting to get together with a girl I had met at summer camp a couple of weeks earlier. Not twenty feet away from me, a fellow carrying two cans stopped, mumbled something to the effect of 'That's enough,' and proceeded to pour the contents of those cans on himself. Then he lit a match.

"I was was 14 years old at the time, and though I've probably seen Malcolm Browne's picture of the burning monk dozens of times over the past forty-some-odd years, I never connected with it on an emotional level until I saw the colorized version.

"Black and white separates a documentary image from the physical reality that it's intended to represent. Sometimes that separation allows an image to transcend its specific, pedestrian origins and rise to become a more meaningful representation of a universal condition—the Eisenstaedt and Bourke-White photos referenced are good examples of this. Other times, that separation can strip an image of some of its literal reality—for me, Browne's burning monk is a clear example of a(n iconic) photo that's less effective than it could be, due to its lack of color."

Sandy

NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite captured this visible image of Hurricane Sandy battering the U.S. East coast on Monday, October 29 at 9:10 a.m. EDT (13:10 UTC). Sandy’s center was about 310 miles south-southeast of New York City. Tropical Storm force winds are about 1,000 miles in diameter.
Image Credit: NASA GOES Project, via EarthSky.

As I look out my window now, it's storm-dark as evening falls. We've had blustery winds all day and the waves on Lake Michigan in Kenosha County have reached as high as 22 feet—people there are sandbagging lakefront homes. Incredibly, here in Wisconsin—a third of the way into the North American landmass—what we're experiencing is the very farthest edge of the massive storm system known as Sandy.

(In the NOAA photo above, we're just to the west and about a third of the way up the coast of Lake Michigan, visible to the left of the storm's western edge.)

It's impossible to say anything appropriately scaled to the extent of this huge storm or the damage already caused by it. While all of those affected directly by the storm should be in our thoughts, perhaps it's permissable to note that many of our TOP reader friends along the Eastern seaboard—especially in the Northeast—aren't with us today. They've got bigger worries and in many cases, no doubt, no power.

For those Americans with electricity, there's an NBC Special tonight at 10:00 p.m. (9:00 Central Time) about the storm and its aftermath. I'll be watching. There are some photojournalistic aspects of the storm coverage we might discuss, but...later. In the meantime, on behalf of all of us, our wishes, our concern, and our thoughts are with all our readers and friends under the pall of Sandy's far-reaching spiral.

—Mike

Diopters for the Fuji X-Pro1

Several readers have mentioned the Fuji X-Pro1's lack of built-in diopter correction. A commenter named peter [sic—I always reproduce commenter names just as they come in] mentioned this morning that Nikon FM-style diopters fit the Fuji's eyepiece. That's fortunate, because those are the most common aftermarket diopters (well, they're not aftermarket, but they might as well be), and they're widely available.

At B&H Photo, they'll be labeled "Diopter for FM3A, FM2, FM, FE2, FE & FA" and they cost $21.95 each. Admittedly, that doesn't help if you don't know what diopter you need, but maybe your optician could help you there. Or perhaps you have another camera on which the diopter correction dial or slider is marked with actual values.

No diopters possible with the Agfa Super Isolette. Photo by alf sigaro.

I need a –2 diopter and I like to use old cameras from time to time, so I'm very sensitive to the diopter issue. The biggest problem with add-on diopters is not the need to use them while the camera's still current, but rather the headache of finding them for older, discontinued cameras that have dedicated or proprietary eyepieces. Try finding a –2 diopter for a Spotmatic, for instance. In one case, I got rid of a beautiful old camera—an Agfa Super Isolette—because I really needed a diopter for it. I could have epoxied a plastic-framed diopter over the eyepiece easily enough, but in the end I decided I just didn't want to be responsible for vandalizing such a beautiful old camera in that way. I sold it on instead.

Incidentally, the Agfa Super Isolette, also called the Ansco Super Speedex (same camera, different marketing) is an awesomely overbuilt German mechanical camera capable of wonderful results. If you have young eyes and happen to have lusted after the Fuji GF670 (also called the Voigtländer Bessa III 667—same camera, different marketing), the Super Isolette is a great alternative for one-quarter to one-eighth the price. It's an easy camera to learn to use. (I'd buy mine from Jurgen Kreckl at Certo6.com—in fact, I did.)

To bring this post full circle, I believe the Fuji GF670 also accepts Nikon FM-style diopters...although you shouldn't take my word for that.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Doug: "Some technical notes on dioptric correction lenses.

"Nikon, like Canon and maybe other manufacturers, labels their correction lenses by the total effect when mounted on a camera with the standard –1 diopter viewfinder, so a '–2' lens has an additional –1. There is no '–1' correction lens, because that'd be plain glass. There is, however, a '0' (Nikon seems to call it 'neutral') correction lens that has a +1 correction.

"Dioptric numbers for viewfinders are straightforward. They determine the apparent distance (for eye-focusing) of the viewscreen. They're numbered in –1/meters.

0/neutral: infinity
–0.5: 2 meters
–1 (standard viewfinder): 1 meter
–2: 1/2 meter
–3: 1/3 meter
+anything: Buzz Lightyear territory (infinity and beyond)

Jim Gamblin: "B&H has the Fuji diopters for $14.95. also Voigtlander diopters will worko on the Fuji X-Pro1, maybe a little higher priced. [Stephen Gandy sells those—thanks to Bill Lewis for that. —Ed.] Look for 19mm thread. Unlike the Nikon diopters, buy the others to match your perscription. After putting a +2 (just like my reading glasses) on my X-Pro1 it felt like a new camera—worth the price and effort."

JonA: "You need to keep quiet about the Agfa cameras! Keeps the prices down while most people go for the famous-named Zeiss and Voigtlaender ones and they therefore keep the prices high on those. I like square format and Tessar lenses so I've been figuring I'd buy an Agfa Super Isolette from certo6 whenever I had the money to spend. (If you wait until you have the money to spend you'll never have it or you'll have already spent it on something else)."

John Robison: "I'm surprised modern, expensive cameras don't all have built in diopter correction. Of course if you have more than a minor astigmatism correction then it probably would not work very well. I have found that as I've aged it is harder to find the exact correction for my film SLR. I still prefer manual focus but my focus error rate is increasing."

Mike replies: Me too, and mine too. I'm smack in the middle of middle age (making me middle-middle-aged), and I guess autofocus was made for folks of my (our?) vintage.

Ctein replies: If you're using a rangefinder camera with superimposed-image focusing, it's important to correct your vision for both astigmatism and focus. If you have astigmatism and you do not correct for it with glasses or a prescription eyepiece, you will get an erroneous focus. Read my column (and the comments) on this. A simple diopter correction will not solve the problem.

Image Virtues

Robert Capa, Landing of the American troops on Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6th, 1944. A photograph with no image quality.

It was telling that with Saturday's poll, a number of people chose to assume that I was talking about conventional "image quality." I wasn't. I was talking about "the results you want." That could be anything.

I don't care about "image quality," anyway. I care more about image properties.

What does that mean?

When it comes to photographs, a "property" is what I call "quality" without the value judgment attached. And with a much broader range of possibilities.

Grainlessness might be an aspect of image quality. To me it's just a property—as is extreme graininess. Or anything in between. Accurate color might be another aspect of conventional "image quality." That's a property too—as is deliberately or adventitiously inaccurate color. And so on.

People suffer from very oppressive ideas about which properties of images are "good." Certain properties are said to be "good" and their absence "bad." I choose not to submit to that oppression. Shake loose your shackles, your bonds and fetters! Free yourself!

Ahem.

But really, photographers talking about "image quality" are like pious people talking about moral virtue. Certain image qualities have to be "good." Lack of those "good" qualities is a shortcoming...a failure...a sin. "Bad."

Sharpness is the most highly prized, the most widely accepted, image virtue. But who says an image has to be sharp? Some are, some aren't. Some sharp images look like crap and some sharp images look great. Unsharp images, ditto—sometimes that can look good, sometimes not. It depends.

Sharpness is a property that suits some pictures and not others. Some photographers treat it like a virtue, as if possessing more of it confers ever more glory and honor upon them.

They're wrong about that. What, you can't imagine a thoroughly bad photograph that's extremely sharp? Never seen one? I've seen thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions, even.

Consider that during the time of the pictorialist movement—and among the amateurs that kept its values alive in its aftermath—the same assumption held sway, except in the reverse. Image unsharpness was the virtue, the accepted convention.

I used to see a fair number of pictures that were ruined because they weren't sharp enough. Those days are mostly gone. Even modest cameras and lenses can take pictures that are plenty sharp these days.

Granted, it's somewhat more difficult to make a photograph work when it suffers from unvirtuous properties—you have to be sensitive to the effect those properties have, the way they function visually, and how well they suit a particular picture and its message, instead of being just plain clueless about all those things. And in order to achieve the virtuous properties, your equipment, materials, and techniques need to be capable of it. There is a certain—slight—honor in that, I suppose.

But in general we should stop being such image virtue bigots, and stop seeing "image quality" as this great big value judgement looming above everything. We're not talking about morality here. We're just talking about the properties of photographs. No property automatically makes a photograph better. No property automatically disqualifies a photograph from being good. Being bigoted just closes us off to a greater range of possibility in our own work, and to a greater and more subtle range of possibility in the accomplishments of others.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mike Plews: "Talking about properties vs. qualities got me thinking about a Ralph Steiner quote that popped up in a photo magazine back in the early 1980s. I can't remember it exactily. It was part of a series of critiques of reader photographs and it essentially said thay you need to photograph things you actually care about. Copying other peoples' stuff or worrying too much about who likes your work gets in the way.

"Anyway I couldn't find the quote iteslf but did run across this which is just about as good:

If I were to teach, I wouldn't teach a course in photography. I'd teach a course called 'What Matters.'

—Ralph Steiner

"So I suppose you could consider 'it matters' as a quality worth striving for as you take pictures."

Mike replies: I went to a lecture by Ralph at Dartmouth at which he said the same thing, so I approached him in the hallway afterward and told him that when he taught that course, I wanted to take it. He said he was never actually going to teach the course, but if I'd buy him lunch he'd give me the syllabus. I treated him to a nice lunch and although he really didn't touch on the contents of the mythical course, he treated me to a long, lively, challenging and very interesting conversation.

A fascinating guy and a natural teacher.

Bill Pierce responds: "Hooray for Ralph Steiner, the most generous of men who probably set a record for helping other photographers."

Jim Hughes responds: "I think the Photo Critique Mike P. is referring to appeared in the April, 1983, edition of the original Camera Arts. We had asked a panel consisting of Ralph Steiner, Cole Weston and George Tice to comment on prints submitted by seven readers. Ralph said about one image:

I think one thing a supposed critic should know is when to stop looking for ways to improve [the photograph being studied], and just say he is lying flat on the floor with amazement and admiration. This mixture of nature and the work of man is not my kind of subject, nor would I hang your print on my wall, but that in no way stands against what you wanted to do—you made the photograph for yourself, not for me.

"I hope this is the Steiner quote Mike Plews had in mind. If not, my apologies—but I was happy for the opportunity to go back and read Ralph's words again!"

Graham Dew: "Couldn't agree more. It's our job as photographers to know which quality is appropriate for the job. To illustrate your point, how about this fantastic unsharp picture by Josef Koudelka:

Mike replies: I do have to point out that many of Koudelka's prints have an almost supernatural sense of subjective sharpness, though.

I Get to See the Mahvelous Fuji X-Pro1

The outfit Art bought.

My old friend Arthur stopped by yesterday, and I got to see his new Fuji X-Pro1. (He had dropped his X-10 into a river—oops—and, like any good photo enthusiast, used the insurance check as an opportunity to rationalize a step-up purchase. Good show, Art.)

Short take
What a lovely, lovely camera. The people who get to use these are lucky b*stards indeed. The camera has an utterly marvelous feeling in the hand, and the quick presto-change-O between EVF and OVF is no gimmick—it's a seriously nice feature. We compared the X-Pro1 physically to a Leica M7 with a 35mm Summilux ASPH I have here, and they are very close to the same size—a bit different in this way or that, but as close as makes no difference. But the Fuji is so much lighter. In fact the weight of the Fuji relative to its size is one of its most impressive characteristics—it's just dense enough to feel solid, and yet it's light enough that it feels oh-so handy and fast.

Comparison courtesy of camerasize.com

I loved it. I weighed Art's X-Pro1 and 35mm ƒ/1.4 XF R lens on my coffee scale, and it tipped in at a little less than 23 ounces. We both guessed the Leica was twice as heavy. It wasn't, but the Fuji feels perfect. I mean perfect.

Of course, it seems a touch hesitant to focus now and then—it's not like it's bad, but Art had a spot of bother several times in my not-so-light but not-so-dark kitchen where we sat drinking fresh-roasted (well, roasted Friday evening) Nicaragua Dipilto Cielo Azul. Maybe that's a feature too—Fuji is wise enough to know it needs to give owners something to gripe about online, otherwise they wouldn't be completely happy. And besides, if somebody actually built a totally perfect camera, the world would have to explode.

But oh, yeah, I liked this. I liked the ergonomics, too—everything just seems to fall to hand just so, from the on/off switch onward. And the lens has (gasp!) an aperture ring, with third-of-a-stop click stops. There's a reason why classic design has evolved the way it has over the years. Obviously a lot of thought went into this.

All this camera needs is, I don't know, say a 23 or 24mm lens of ƒ/2 or faster, and this camera would be a giant-killer. Too bad the system doesn't have one. Eh, what's that you say?

And I wonder if this camera has decent ISO 1600 performance? Eh? Eh?

Just kidding. I know it does. And I've seen the roadmap.

This is the second nice surprise I've gotten recently when it comes to premium small cameras—the NEX-7, although quite a different beast from the Fuji, also struck me the same way, as a particularly successful design that would be a pleasure to use and an absolute treat to own.

Mike

P.S. I'll be gone today—GO BEARS!*—so comments won't be posted until tonight or tomorrow. Hope those of you in or near the storm path stay warm, dry, and powered.

*My second-favorite team, loyal cheesehead and former Chicagoan that I am.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Gene Lowinger: "My first outing with my X-Pro1 and 18mm lens was at the New York Easter Parade. When I loaded the raw files into my Lightroom catalog and began to review and keyword the images I had the wind knocked out of me. The image quality was superior to my D700/24–70mm ƒ/2.8 combo, about a quarter of the weight, and less than half the size. And for high ISO? What noise? Whatever there is, is very manageable. I'm so happy I splurged on this camera, and didn't wait for the X-E1. The optical viewfinder is a pleasure to use. Fuji has done a great job on these cameras!"

Barry Reid: "This column is truly the last thing I need to read...."

JRF: "Great Camera! But horrible to deal with RAW files. As of now you need to use Fuji's RAW converter. No Capture One or Lightroom RAW converter. This is awful for anyone that has a workflow based on Lightroom or Capture One."

Semilog: "My X-Pro1 was stolen a week ago—with a 21mm ƒ/2.8 ZM Biogon mounted. I'm now trying to figure out what will replace it. The kind folks at my local camera store let me borrow a NEX-7 and a Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 for a couple of hours yesterday, so I incremented the shutter count on the demo by a couple of hundred and spent this morning looking at the files.

"I am a Sony sensor partisan, and to my surprise, I like the output from the Fuji XTRANS sensor better. Yes, the workflow is not quite there yet, but I have never seen a sensor that delivers such film-like results. I also played with a D600. This is a 'small' DSLR? Bloated bastard of a camera. A small DSLR would be no larger than an F3 or a Pentax LX. I'll be getting another Fuji, then. Probably an X-E1...."

ashok (Mumbai, India): "I completely agree. Just got a X-Pro1 body from Adorama and tried to buy the announced 18–55mm zoom. Fuji India promised delivery of the first supplies this week, but so far no luck. I prefer to wait and get the zoom instead of the 60mm which is my next option. It's indeed a fantastic piece of engineering and from the reviews the picture quality is excellent. Pity about the eyesight correction not being included in the camera...can't wait to try it out...."

lith: "Quintessentially Japanese, no? Take the spirit of German camera making...and make it more practical, high-tech, and affordable."

Why Do You Choose Cameras?

Time for a poll. I had a friend, an accomplished photographer, who hated cameras. He had no end of trouble with them, and he only put up with them because of the results he got. If you'll grant me that many people choose cameras for reasons other than the results they yield—because of the system that's available for them, the selection of lenses and accessories that you might buy one day, the way they handle, their technology, their recency (they want the latest thing), their capabilities (for instance, they want a camera with a certain package of features), their prestige, their looks, their history, who else used them, how handy they are, how pocketable they are, how pleasant or easy they are to use, how much their friends admire them—what's most important to you? Just the results in the file or on the wall? Or other factors?

If you had to pick one or the other. (Which you do, in this poll at least.) I know many people consider both, so no need to scold on that account. I'm asking which overrides the other for you. (If they're in balance, I guess you just shouldn't answer the poll question at all.)

Another way to ask the question: would you put up with a camera you hated using because it was the only way to achieve the results you wanted?

Poll Results

"Results trump everything else"
46% (1,436 votes)

"Results are important, but other things are as important or more so"
54% (1,699 votes)

My own answer: I would kinda like to be the type who cares only about results and would do whatever is necessary to achieve them, but I'm not. I'm a camera aesthete, and I also count on the camera to help me get the shot. You know what they say: Oh well.

Mike

P.S. This is the first time I've used this type of poll widget. Anybody having any trouble seeing or using it? Let me know in a comment or by email. Thanks.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Colin Work: "Certainly since the advent (and cost!) of DSLRs my mantra has been 'and just how will this improve my images?' But I will confess that I can rather too easily make such a case!"

Softie: "I think Mike's poll hit it perfectly on the head for me, or, as Jeeves would say, rem acu tetisgisti.

"I both love and hate my 8x10. (To stay with the theme, as Catullus would say, odi et amo, Peter Gowland.) I do stupid things with it all the time to mess up photographs. But I shoot a ridiculous proportion of keepers with it, so I use it when feasible.

"Unfortunately, the 8x10 doesn't work very well on moveable objects, and film is now $9 a sheet. So I have other cameras. And despite my love of lovely mechanical dials and levers, I've learned from experience that cameras like that don't work for me, so I use electronic cameras. Ditto for rangefinders: they just don't produce the results for me (with the exception of an M3/90 Summicron that has made some worthwhile negs), so I don't use them.

"And I spend vastly more on printing than I do on taking equipment: I think I actually just spent more to print a picture from a GF3 than the camera and lens cost combined. (Odi et amo, Eric Luden.)

"It's about the results, frankly. No one cares how cool your camera looks when they're looking at a print."

Eolake Stobblehouse (partial comment): "To me, a Pentax Spotmatic is a sculpture."

Robert L.: "I don't know about anyone else, but I like the shots from the cameras I love more. A craftsperson is greater than their tools, but part of mastering a craft is finding what works best for you."

Caleb Courteau: "This is a topic that I've given much thought to ever since mirrorless cameras have reached maturity. I own an aging nikon D80. The rubber grip is peeling off the back, high ISO's aren't super clean, and Nikon has neglected their DX lens line (just ask Thom Hogan). I've held some of Olympus's new Pens and they're fine pieces of equipment, and the video function is something that I would actually use. Despite all that, the D80 fits my hand like a glove, I'm very familiar with its controls, and its image quality is good enough. With a nice ƒ/2.8 17–50 and the el cheapo 50mm ƒ/1.8 I'm good to go for the small photojournalism stories I like to work on.

"Last month I met a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who had a Tamron zoom attached to his 5D Mark II and it was working for him. In my opinion cameras and lenses of every brand are over-delivering these days. My needs are being met, and anything beyond that falls into the realm of want. What I need is the 500+ dollars that I'm saving by not gratuitously upgrading."

Bernard: "If results were the only thing that mattered, we would all be shooting 8x10 view cameras, at least for slow-moving subjects."

Mike replies: Why?!? You're about the fifth person to say something like that. I think you're conflating "the results you want" with conventional notions of image quality. 8x10 view camera results are not the results that everyone wants. They're not the results Daido Moriyama wants, for example.

Is it really true that everyone shooting digital really wants 8x10 film results, but are putting up with results they don't like as well for some reason? I very much doubt that. I think lots of digital photographers (and smaller-format film photographers, for that matter) are getting exactly the results they want.

Geoff Wittig: "Results certainly trump aesthetic and ergonomic perfection, at least for me. I'm willing to heave 40 lbs. of gear including a pair of full frame D-SLR bodies, multiple lenses and a big tripod, because I've used all of it at one time or another to capture a treasured image a half mile hike from the car. This is not to say I enjoy being a pack mule, but the results are well worth it. On the other hand, I confess an unseemly affection for the brutish weight and solidity of the Eos-1Ds Mark III. It fits my large hands, that huge bright viewfinder suits my middle-aged eyes, and the graceless lumpishness has grown on me. Those cute little mirror-less cameras seem too dainty."

Daniel S.: "Ergonomics above all. Most cameras (digital or otherwise) are more than capable of giving me acceptable results when it comes to the technical aspects; what's important to me is how well a camera fits with the way I see and work in order to make the process as enjoyable and natural as possible. Discomfort is, in my experience, the worst enemy of inspiration."

Rod Graham: "I just can't imagine using any camera for very long if I didn't like the images I was getting from it."

Bill Pearce: "I find that a camera with great ergonomocs gives me better pictures than one with poor ergonomics. Unfortunately, ergonomics is a word and study absent from digital camera designers. Oddly, my old Sony R1, my first digital camera, handled beter than my Nikons or Leica. None handled better than my Hasselblads."

The Panasonic G3 and the Olympus XZ-1

There are a couple of great closeout deals on Amazon right now—the Panasonic G3 for only $329.99, and the Olympus XZ-1 for only 199.99.

Just passing the news along.

Mike
(Thanks to Rob Morris and several other tipsters)

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Editorial Note

Ctein has had to reverse his assessment of the Electra MAX 3G 960GB SSD drive he wrote about on Wednesday. Please see his addendum at the bottom of his post for details.

—Mike the Ed.

Weston Book Update

Seems we crashed Lodima Press's bookstore last night for quite some time. It's back up and running now.

At this point it looks very likely that Edward Weston: Life Work will sell out entirely in this sale, and most likely well before Tuesday. So if you find yourself sitting on the fence about it, you may not want to hunker there too much longer.

UPDATE: The edition sold out at about 9:10 p.m. tonight (Friday). (There are a few copies of the deluxe edition still remaining.) Our thanks to everyone who participated—I really hope you enjoy the book!

And my sincere thanks to Michael and Paula for making this possible.

•     •     •

One of the treats of this book is "A Couple Collects Edward Weston," the brief joint essay by Judith G. Hochberg and Michael P. Mattis that introduces the magnificent plates. They manage to convey both personality and erudition, opening a well-lit window into the passion and enthusiasm collectors feel for the objects of their hunt. We're taken from their beginnings in collecting to their decision to concentrate on Weston...

Michael and I both consider Weston the "Picasso of Photography." One needs only to think of his mastery of past modalities and invention of new ones, his success in a variety of genres, his economy of line, his self-knowledge as an artist, his intense relationships with other artists—and with the women in his life.

...all the way to their debt to those charged with the care of the Weston archives and their friendships with the Weston family members who are alive today. Talk about economy of line, or of word...the essays are short and sweet, but insightful. 

I thought it was interesting that the idea of an exhibit of their Weston prints went from a "dream" to an "obligation," and that, by the time the exhibition became a reality, it was the only way they themselves could see all their own Weston prints on the wall at the same time.

Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceano, 1936. This is a JPEG of the Met's print.

My first encounter with Life Work was interesting. Art critics from Ruskin to Berger talk about the "aura" of original art-objects, and I'm sure you know the feeling yourself—the special qualities that convey when you're looking directly at the real thing on a museum or gallery wall. There's a sense of immediacy and connection—Goya touched that!—and a sense that the veil of intermediacy has been removed: you're face to face with the art itself, and all its secrets are there for you to see. It needs no "translation," requires no imaginative help.

I've of course seen many original Westons in my life, and got to know one of them—Dunes, Oceano, a.k.a. White Dunes—intimately, because one of the schools where I taught had an original print of it on the wall. The plates in Edward Weston: Life Work are the first time, I think, that I've ever felt, from a book, that feeling, that sense, you get when looking at the real thing. It's a feeling I know well, and I felt some of it—more than a glimmer—from looking at many of the later plates in the book. Remarkable. I'm not sure any book has ever done that for me before.

I mentioned "Red Ceiling" yesterday, which is apropos, because Eggleston is on record saying that reproductions have never captured it. (And he's right, at least in my limited experience.) He's quoted in this passage from Mark Holborn's introduction to Ancient and Modern:

The first [dye transfer prints Eggleston] had made were of the image of Greenwood Moose Lodge, a sombre, windowless edifice against a blue sky, and The Red Ceiling in 1973. He was so impressed with them that he knew dye transfers were going to provide him with his medium. He immediately sent [MoMA Photography Department Director John] Szarkowski a print of The Red Ceiling, which was to become one of his most famous images. The cross of white cable leading to the potent, central light bulb, was what he described as a "fly's eye view" in the guest room of his friend, a dentist in Greenwood, Mississippi, whose choice of decor included an adjacent blue room; he [that is, the friend] can be seen naked, his walls daubed with graffiti, in The Guide. The house with the red room was subsequently burned down and his friend murdered, yet far from having any sinister connotation, the red room was immensely pleasing to Eggleston. "The Red Ceiling is so powerful, that in fact I've never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction," Eggleston claimed. "When you look at the dye it is like red blood that's wet on the wall. The photograph was like a Bach exercise for me because I knew that red was the most difficult color to work with. A little red is usually enough, but to work with an entire red surface was a challenge. It was hard to do. I don't know of any totally red pictures, except in advertising. The photograph is still powerful. It shocks you every time."

Those of you who own a dye transfer print of your own from one of our two dye sales can probably well imagine what he means.

But I think that, for example, Weston's famous Pepper No. 30, plate 43 in the book, among others, really is reproduced satisfactorily on the page. Of course you're not fooled into thinking you're looking at a real print, but for me, at least, it imparts that same "direct" feeling, the feeling that you're seeing the picture itself, without translation into ink.

Michael A. Smith tells a story about this:

In Edward Weston: Life Work, there are a few photographs that have never been reproduced before, many that have been reproduced very seldomly, and a few that have often been reproduced. One of the latter is the famous Pepper No. 30. We know the collector who owns Edward’s own copy of Pepper No. 30. Edward considered it the best print he had ever made from that negative. Eventually, Edward gave the print to Brett. And Brett gave it to a friend whose father was Brett's closest friend and who had grown up around the Westons. The friend sold it to this collector in 1974. (Way too soon.)

When we showed the collector the book we published, he brought down this print of Pepper No. 30, which we had seen previously, and placed it next to the reproduction. We (me, Paula, the collector and the collector’s wife) looked very carefully at the print and at the reproduction, trying to find differences. There were a few, but they were virtually imperceptible without extremely close scrutiny, and even then, truly, there was hardly any difference between the print and the 600-line screen quadtone reproduction.

After about three minutes of this intense looking the collector's wife said, "You know, I think I like the reproduction better."

Bet her husband didn't like that.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Wee Jest

I trust that perspicacious polymaths, students of the art and its history, and others in the know got my little reference the other day:

The Red Ceiling: One of the most important photographs in the history of color photography in America

The Sorta Reddish Ceiling: Not one of the most important photographs in the history of color photography in America

A Craig Ferguson is fond of saying, "Made meself laugh, and that's half the battle."

(If you're curious about the Red Ceiling, start here or Google "Eggleston Red Ceiling." It's one of the few photographs with its own Wikipedia page, although the page is unfortunately just what Wikipedia calls a "stub.")

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kevin Purcell (partial comment): "For your next trick 'Boy carrying large bottle of Cola,' perhaps?"

Mike replies: Heh. Good idea. Nobody can hold a candle to Ken Schles on this front, though....

Dan: "You're not going to believe me, but that is exactly what I thought you were referencing when I saw your post the other day—glad to see confirmation!"

Jeff Glass: "What I find intriguing is that just about every web site that has the Eggleston light bulb and red ceiling has the ceiling a different shade of red. Often very different. Just compare your post and the one you linked to, which actually discusses the significance of the red shade vs. a Matisse. Reminds we are not looking at the Eggleston or the Matisse but at a (somewhat) arbitrary and inaccurate symbol of them."

Murray Lord: "I just thought 'why on earth would anyone have taken that photo, let alone put it on public display....'"

Mike replies: Murray, what Jeff said. Have you ever seen it? Seeing a miniaturized JPEG is not seeing the photograph.

Robert Roaldi: "Went way over my head."

larry dudley: "Over my head too!"

Mike replies: Brings up an interesting point about TOP: Not everything is for everybody. For instance, when I write about view cameras, I suspect it's of interest to no more than maybe 4% of the audience. But every 4% needs love....

Jim Dobbins: "Made my morning."

Edward Weston Book Offer

We've got a nice special offer for you this morning. I'm not great at tooting the horn on my own bridge, but this is absolutely exclusive to TOP—nobody gets this but you.

Edward Weston: Life Work was published by Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee of Lodima Press in 2004. The occasion was a major exhibition of Edward Weston prints from the collection of Michael P. Mattis and Judith G. Hochberg. Here's a snip from the book description:

Edward Weston: Life Work is a 110-photograph survey of this great American artist. Containing photographs from all phases of Weston’s long and varied career, from his first nude in 1909 to his final landscape at Point Lobos, California, in 1948, previously unpublished masterpieces are interspersed with his well-known signature images.

To create the book to accompany the exhibition, Lodima went "all in." There's no better way to put it. Michael simply decided to do whatever was required to make the reproductions as close to the originals as possible.

No expense was spared—the printing cost the better part of $170,000. The book reproductions are the same size as the originals, and Michael went to fanatical lengths to reproduce every detail of the originals, including color and surface. To give you an example, on several occasions they flew to the locations where the exhibit was showing in order to compare the printer's proofs directly to the originals on the wall. The printer was Salto of Belgium, the only printer in the world that works with 600-line screen quadtone (with a fifth ink—to match the print color on Weston's early prints—which had never been done before. And the book uses two different kinds of paper, with a softer matte paper used to match the papers Weston used early in his career). I haven't actually tried this myself, but Michael tells me you can't even see the printing dot pattern with a loupe. I can relay a couple of nice stories about the book's over-the-top printing quality, but I'll do that in a later post.

The book was a success, earning extravagant and widespread praise. It has now nearly sold out, and is no longer available from Amazon; only a few hundred copies remain, available only from the publisher.

As the supply of books dwindles, the price goes up...Lodima's standard practice. Published at $195, the book now costs $225. The final 80 to 100 copies have been set aside as "new old stock" to be sold in the future at $1,000 a copy.

But here's the thing—Michael and Paula are friends, and Michael's the guy who's going to be helping me publish TOP's own books. As we were chatting about how to introduce Lodima Press to TOP's readership, I asked if he'd be willing to offer one of Lodima's books to you for a reduced price, and Michael ("Why just 'a' book? Why not our Edward Weston book?") said he'd be willing to offer a limited number of copies of Edward Weston: Life Work to TOP readers for a discount. I asked how much a discount, and he said, "It's up to you. The book has already paid for itself." (Honest.)

So, for a limited time, and for a limited number of copies, you can order Edward Weston: Life Work for $140, plus only $12 shipping within the U.S.

(Michael later told me $150 was a low as he was willing to go, but that the number I picked was close enough.)

$140 is $85 off the current price, which I think is 37.7%. (You'll recall that I'm arithmetic-challenged.)

The book is available to international purchasers too, but it's big, and it's heavy—international shipping will be substantial. No help for it. At least you're not being left out....

So here's how to order—

[Information removed—books sold out on Friday, Oct. 26th at 9:10 p.m.]

•     •     •

Okay, now there's one more wrinkle to this deal. Lodima also published 100 slipcased deluxe editions of the book, each of which comes with a modern original print of Tina Modotti's famous portrait of Edward and costs $750. Fewer than 30 of these remain, and Michael has agreed to make up to ten of them available to interested TOP readers for $500. Email him for details about this, and be sure to mention that you came from TOP. On the checkout page, the code to enter is TOP250.

I'll write more later about my impressions of the book, and add some more comments about the superlative reproduction quality. But this is long enough for now. Suffice it to say, whether you're a longtime Weston book collector or you want one good Weston title in your library, you'll love this. Would I steer you wrong?

More anon—

Mike

UPDATE 9:05 a.m.: They're being swamped, so if you've written them an email inquiry and haven't gotten a reply, don't worry, your email will be answered eventually in the order it was received.

UPDATE #2 12:10 a.m. Friday: The publisher's site appears to be down. I'll look into it and let you know what's going on tomorrow morning.

UPDATE #3 2:30 p.m. Friday: The shopping cart was back up and working this morning. Several people have asked about the security of Lodima's online ordering—what I'm told is that they are currently in the process of applying for encryption certification, but that the site is secure—half of each credit card number is sent to them separately in a separate email. I'll see if I can get more specific information later, but I'm being assured there is no problem with security.

UPDATE #4 9:15 p.m. Friday: Sold out. There are still several copies of the deluxe edition available; if you're interested, please email Michael at [email protected].

Thanks to all, and we hope you enjoy your book!

 

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Lyle Allan: "I bought this book when it first came out. I also own a large number of other books about Weston as well and have seen many of his prints (I am still haunted by the gorgeous Weston platinum print shown by James Hyman at the last AIPAD). I can attest to everything that Michael said, this is absolutely, the best Weston book there is. If you don't have it, now is the time."

Nick: "I've been wanting (needing) a Weston book for some time. Giant gaping hole in my shelf without him since he's one of my favorite artists (in any media). Thanks for the recommendation and the deal. I don't normally impulse buy anything over $50 but this is a special exception."

John Sarsgard: "I also got it when first released. I was a student in Michael and Paula's first workshop. They do not have 'that's good enough' in their vocabulary. The reproduction is the finest I have ever seen in a book."

Fuji X100 Price Drop

Taken with the Fuji X100, in Madison with Ctein and Laura

Well, this is what a lot of people have been waiting for—the undyingly popular Fuji X100, with its super-duper lens and superlative image quality, not to mention Leica-like looks, for less than a grand. (You knew the day would get here, you just didn't know when.) The price drop takes it from $1,199 to $999, and is good until Nov. 3rd.

Jerry telling a story, taken with the Canon 5D Mark II (two-frame panorama)

And on the screaming bargain front, B&H is closing out the still very nice Canon 5D Mark II (in favor of the new 6D) with the kit to end all kits—the camera, the very nice 24–105mm image-stabilized all-purpose"L"  zoom lens, and a Pro 9000II printer, along with a few other goodies, all for $2,199. The page says the offer's good till the end of the year, but don't count on that—it's probably good for as long as Canon can supply the cameras. Of course you can buy just the camera and lens if you want to...for $300 more.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rob L: "I've seldom loved a camera more than my X100—sure, it's frustrating, but all great things are (try changing film on a Leica in a hurry). But the results outweigh the growls. And the looks honestly don't feel like a put-on, but an honest attempt to match form with function."

Mike Boudreaux: "Well, a $999 mistake would be better than the $1299 mistake I made when I bought one."

Bob (partial comment): "...Personally, I need much more for a massive ONE THOUSAND QUID!!!"

Robin Dreyer: "I'm so happy with my X100, I don't even resent this price drop. As others have said, it's worth taking the time to thoroughly learn this camera. Which isn't as daunting as learning a lot of other cameras because there are lots of (mostly silly) things that the X100 doesn't do, so there's not as much to learn."

The Ultimate Photoshop Enhancement: The Electra MAX 3G 960GB SSD

By Ctein

Over the past several years, I've written four columns about upgrading my computer hardware to make Photoshop run faster without having to buy an entire new system. My last upgrade was an Other World Computing Seagate Momentus XT 500GB drive with 4GB of flash RAM cache, reviewed here.

You can trace the links back from there to the three columns that preceded that one if you want to read the whole saga. That's probably a good idea before hitting me with questions about what works best and what is most cost-effective.

Well, now I'm replacing that hard drive with an OWC Electra MAX 3G 960GB SSD [Ed. Note: See important addendum below]. This is the end of the line, because I honestly can't figure out any further enhancements to this machine.

There's a more general question I'm investigating, too: How much do you gain by trying to soup up an elderly machine with an SSD? We all know they make state-of-the-art machines astonishingly fast. Maybe, though, drive speed isn't the bottleneck in an older system. I've already souped up my 2007 2.2 GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro to the point where it's more than twice as fast as it was originally on Photoshoppy stuff. It performs comparably to a fast 2009 or a slow 2010 machine. That's a nice return on my investment, but maybe I've pushed it as far as it can go.

Understand that for most of you the Electra MAX 3G 960GB, priced at a whopping $1,045, is severe overkill. I had several reasons for testing this model, not the least of which is that my current 500 GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive is almost full, and configuring a 480 GB SSD in exactly the same way (so I could get meaningful comparison runs) would be a considerable headache. Most of you won't need this capacity, or the nifty fact that the 960 GB drive is actually two 480 GB drives, so you can configure it as a single drive (as I have) or as a 480 GB RAID1 array.

Furthermore, 6G SSDs are now insignificantly more expensive than 3G's. The extra performance won't do you any good in an older system with a 3G bus, but if you later recycle that drive into a 6G system, you'll pick up a substantial performance boost for free.

Finally, if you configure your machine for two internal hard drives, you can get by with an OWC 120 GB SSD ($129) that holds your operating system, applications, and scratch space, and you'll see almost as much performance improvement as having everything on the SSD.

But if you want a really honkin' big and fast drive, this baby is it.

So, why go this upgrade route in the first place? Why not just get a new machine? One reason is cost. Incrementally improving my machine has cost me much less than half what a new machine would run (up until this extravagance, and it would still be true if I had gone with a smaller drive), and it has extended the life of the system by several years.

Another reason may be compatibility. This laptop still runs Snow Leopard, which means it runs my business-critical software that will die on a newer Rosetta-less machine. A new machine may also have different I/O ports, demanding expensive or possibly even unavailable adapters for your peripherals.

Under those circumstances, maximizing the performance of an old system makes a lot of sense. But, maybe I've already taken it as far as it'll go? We're about to find out.

Since I was testing an older machine, it made sense to also test older software, so I looked at performance with both Photoshop CS4 Mac (which was severely limited in how much memory it could use) as well as CS6. I also compared it to our high-end 2009 27-inch iMac, whose quad-core processor, faster and more efficient processors, faster data buses and 16 GB of RAM can trounce my laptop (which only supports 6 GB RAM).

For general purpose tasks, the Electra MAX made things a bit peppier, but not by a lot. The SSD'd MacBook Pro booted in 25% less time and launched Photoshop in 30% less time, but my mail client, word processor, and voice dictation programs were not noticeably faster. Somehow, I expected more.

Running Lloyd Chambers' DiskTester revealed that the SATA bus in this old machine simply isn't up to supporting full 3G performance. It's not uncommon in older machines for the manufacturer to save money on I/O by using slower components. The Electra MAX clocked in at 120–128 MB per second, only half of what this SSD is capable of in a more modern system. Keep that in mind if you're souping up an old machine; you may not need the very best-performing SSD.

Moving on to Photoshop, I ran Lloyd's Photoshop benchmarks. As expected, there was very little difference with the Small benchmark, which mostly exercises the processor; it ran at most 10% faster under CS4 and CS6 with the SSD. The iMac ran that benchmark in 2/3rds the time under CS4 and 1/6th the time under CS6, which took full advantage of the iMac's 16 GB of RAM.

The Medium benchmark was another matter. The Electra MAX speeded my laptop up by 50–100%. The iMac was now only three times faster than my venerable laptop.

The Huge benchmark is representative of what happens when you see Photoshop's progress bar creeping along at a snail's pace, because you've started swapping a lot to the scratch disk. Under CS4 the iMac and the Momentus-configured laptop turned in nearly identical times, because their internal drives had similar throughput. Under CS6 the iMac turned in a time that was 40% less than the MacBook Pro, because the extra RAM did help. But it didn't blow away the MacBook.

So, what did the Electra MAX drive do to that benchmark? It aced it. It cut the time for running the Huge benchmark on my MacBook Pro nearly in half! Under CS4, the 2007 MacBook Pro left the 2009 iMac in the dust. Under CS6, it still beat it by about 10%.

Wow.

Now, that's the most extreme case. In my typical Photoshop use, the Electra MAX gave me a boost somewhere between the Small and Medium benchmarks. That's nice; I won't complain about trimming 25–35% off of times. It's not like buying a whole new system, but it pleases.

(Oh, and in case you're wondering how this compares to the state-of-the-art, the latest MacBook Pro Retina runs the Medium benchmark six times faster than my SSD'd laptop.)

The conclusion? Even in a fairly ancient machine with its very limited I/O, an OWC SSD is a very worthwhile upgrade to your system.

Ctein

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM Fri. Oct. 26: Murphy's Law always wins. After turning in this review, I took off on a one-week trip. Almost immediately, I started having corruption problems with the Electra MAX, with half my applications unrunnable and Disk Utility reporting unrepairable node damage. As soon as I got home, I copied off the new files I'd created on the trip and successfully reformatted and repartitioned the Electra MAX.

I attempted to restore my system and data two different ways:

—booting from the OS install disks and using Time Machine.

—booting externally using my Momentus HD in an external case and using Carbon Copy Cloner to port the HD over to the Electra MAX.

Both methods failed repeatedly, with no consistent stopping point over many, many attempts. The SSD would spontaneously dismount itself from the system in the middle of the process and remain invisible to the OS even after a reboot. It would reappear if I shut the laptop down entirely and restarted it.

I'm going to run some further tests to tell me if the drive is being inherently unreliable or just unreliable as an internal drive in my system.

This is the second sample of this drive that has misbehaved for me. The first failed almost out of the box, so I ignored it and got a replacement. It happens to reviewers on occasion and it's properly ignored unless it points to a deeper problem.

At this point, I think there's a deeper problem. I don't know if it's an incompatibility with my system or a more inherent flaw, but I can no longer recommend the Electra MAX 3G 960GB SSD at this time [the links have been removed from the article —Ed.].

This doesn't change any of my performance measurements nor conclusions about the value of an SSD; they still hold. Just not this SSD, for me, anyway.

This also doesn't change my very high opinion of Other World Computing or the general quality and reliability of their products. I've been buying their stuff for as long as I've owned Macs, and they will continue to be my preferred vendor. Their service and support have been consistently exceptional, too; their people are just wonderful. (And that's not me getting favorable treatment—I was buying from them long before they had any idea who I was or what I do for a living.)

Computer geek Ctein enhances your drive, vim, and vigor on TOP on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Joe Kashi: "Some SSD drives are faster and more reliable because they use better internal controller circuitry. I've been using Crucial M4 series SSDs for some time now and they have proven very reliable with Windows 7 Pro. The same drives were less reliable under prior OS versions and required reformatting to the new OS after a failure like Ctein describes.

"Hence, part of the problem may be generally OS related, part may be due to controller incompatibility with the OS or related problems, and part may have to do with the increased internal waste heat and/or noise arising from the higher chip densities of very high capacity drives.

"There's one final reliability-degrading factor with very high densities: Each bit has a finite chance of failure and it's an additive effect. Twice as much capacity means twice as many individual bits, which in turn means that the chance of failure doubles (or perhaps even more due to increased internal heat). Ideally, the controller should be able to map, relocate, and block any bits that show signs of incipient failure, but a particular internal controller may not do this efficiently or reliably and the SSD then becomes unreliable."

A New 'King of Bokeh'?

The rather remarkable Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 EX DG HSM

Years ago, rather unfortunately in some ways, I named the 35mm Summicron-M v.4 as the "King of Bokeh" (bokeh—or boke or boke-aji—meaning out-of-focus [o-o-f] blur). The epithet has taken on a life of its own since then...especially when that lens is for sale somewhere. Erwin rightly scolds me for this (indirectly) in Leica Chronicle.

I was missing part of the story at the time (1997). You see I never shot the lens wide open and very seldomly as little as one stop down. It does have wonderfully coherent blur—from ƒ/5.6 and moderate distances. That brilliant but flawed lens doesn't look its best (in any respect) wide open, or close up. (Lots of falloff, too, which I kind of liked.)

Let's face it, bokeh is not a strong point of Leica lenses, in general*.

Bokeh is one of the few things you can meaningfully look at on the web...although you have to be careful what you're looking at, and you need a very large sample size. People do all sorts of nasty things to their files. Heavy-handed sharpening, for one thing, will step on nice blur.

I've just looked at hundreds and hundreds (I'm not going to 'fess to "thousands," although probably it was...) of pictures made with the Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 EX DG HSM, a large and heavy fast normal (or short tele**) prime available in five mounts (Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sony/Minolta Maxxum, and Sigma) that sells for $450. Maybe 2/3rds of the pictures were showing some degree of o-o-f blur, and in virtually not a single one of those images did I find blur that was anything short of good. Even when stressed—from close up, at every aperture, and with high contrast background objects. And in a great many cases it's outstanding—gentle and coherent.

Example from Argentina

Example from Indonesia

Full-frame example (those heels could hurt you)

Close-up and wide open example

Extreme isolation (narrow plane of focus) example (and he's right about cats)

Example with contrasty background

Example of foreground bokeh

"Smooth Bokeh Test Shot" by Blackriver Images

Remarkable. Surely this lens must have been designed with this quality firmly among the design objectives.

I've seen more interesting bokeh, but usually you pay the price of inconsistency for that. This lens seems like one for those who never want to be surprised by ugliness in the o-o-f. This lens also might be a good one to choose when getting creative about putting important subject information out of focus, as here.

Never seen the lens in person, never used it. And I note that some owners gripe about its AF speed (it's always something). But for gentle bokeh, is there perhaps a new King?

Mike

*...Except the ones you own. Don't kill me.

**On APS-C

P.S. In case you want to share an example of your own, here's the code to put a link or an image into the comments:

Note that the image has to be 470 pixels wide or it will be cut off.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Carsten Bockermann: "Over the years I have tried many 50mm lenses made by Leica, Nikon and Zeiss. In terms of bokeh the 50mm Sigma is clearly the winner, yet there are other 'features' that I don't enjoy that much. First, it's not a fifty. The field of view is noticeably wider than that of, say, a 50mm ƒ/1.4 AF-S Nikkor or the 50mm ƒ/1.4 ZF Zeiss. My guess is that the actual focal length is around 45 or 46mm. While performance at the wider apertures is very good it doesn't really improve when stopping down. At medium apertures the aforementioned lenses offer crisper images. And yet, as I tend to shoot a fifty close to wide open most of the time, this lens is my favorite in that focal length range."

Mark Walker: "Here in the shop where I work I very often show people the Sigma 50,, ƒ/1.4 as a great option over the Nikon or Canon equivalents largely for this reason: the nicer rendering of o-o-f areas, aswell as being a more than adequately sharp lens in the centre at ƒ/1.4. It is one of the few Sigma lenses that I like the look of, image wise, particularly on full frame. (Why do people moan so much about fast lenses being softer at the corners wide open ? You'd think they were going to use it to copy artwork or something)."

Daniel: "I'm sure to be not the only one to mention the Minolta/Sony STF 135mm ƒ/2.8 T4.5. There's even a website dedicated to the lens. It is specifically designed for good bokeh. Probably too good in fact, 'some reviews that hint that the 135 STF creates a slightly unnatural look, exaggerating subjects by rendering the defocusing effect too perfectly' (from the above website).

"I confess that being an owner of this lens I have not made proper use of it; maybe this is the excuse I need to take up more portraiture. On a film camera it was very hard to use owing to it being manual focus and conventional AF screens being rubbish for manual focus (I got an AF9000 with the split screen which works very well). On an SLT or NEX camera (using the LA-EA1), it's a doddle to focus now with magnified live view. You can see some samples on the aforementioned website."

Fletch: "It's an awesome lens... I just got a shock when I clicked on the example from Indonesia and came across my picture :-) "

Mike replies: Small world after all!

Diego: "Among us Sigma afflictionados, the 50mm f/1.4 is good, no question.

"But the lens in the iron mask, the true King of France...er...bokeh, is the Sigma 85mm ƒ/1.4.

"This lens puts the 50mm ƒ/1.4 to shame, in sharpness, focus accuracy, and importantly, quality of out-of-focus blur. Plus, backgrounds get more compressed at 85mm, which leads to more apparent blur. Check out some of the images in the Flickr group for this lens: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1464365@N22/pool/ . OK down off my Sigma pulpit.

"It pains me to admit it, but the honor of bokeh king should go to the Sony/Minolta 135 STF. It is probably the emperor, lord, and master of all things bokeh. This article really should have been about that lens, or at least, mentioned all of the contenders.

"The Nikon 105 ƒ/2 DC and Nikon 135 ƒ/2 DC lenses deserve a mention as well (DC = defocus control)."

Rita Leeds: "In case people are afraid that TOP has already forgotten about the beauty of large depths-of-field, here is a TOP post from just a few months ago: In Defense of Depth.

"I recall browsing the featured comments and reading about how many commenters also thought that bokeh was an annoying fad. I was taken aback at that. I guess it can be annoying if that's all people talk about (and that can certainly be the case a lot), but discounting something only because it happens to be popular doesn't seem like a good idea. Depth-of-field control is about control on both sides, and I don't think people on this site are apt to forget so."

Mike replies: Exactly right, and thanks for adding that, Rita. I personally actually seldom use lots of bokeh in my own photographs—I just like it to look nice when it does show up.

Leica Chronicle

Last month, Erwin Puts, the world's leading expert on all things Leica, published a new book entitled Leica Chronicle: an evolutionary history of the Leica camera and its lenses. The book is considerably smaller and handier to hold than the physical version (there was also an electronic version) of Erwin's recent sold-out Leica Compendium. There's a good reason for that: this is the first volume in a projected four-part series.

Here's the roadmap:

Volume One: Leica Chronicle: an evolutionary history of the Leica camera and its lenses, published in 2012;
Volume Two: Leica Practicum: the theory and practice of Leica rangefinder photography (analog and digital), planned for 2013;
Volume Three: Leica Optics: the design of Leica lenses, their selection and use, also planned for 2013;
Volume Four: Leica legend: an icon of modern times, planned for 2014.

Although primarily a reference work, with virtually all Leica cameras and lenses covered or at least mentioned, in many cases the entries are delightfully entertaining little mini-essays spiced with little-known facts, insights into performance, and corrections of incorrect conventional wisdom. For example, I never knew that the 1953 collapsible 50mm Summicron—Cartier-Bresson's favorite lens for decades—had not just a thorium radioactive element, but that the rear element was flint glass so the lead in it would protect the film from radiation.

The book offers many extras as well: a discussion of the most beautiful Leicas, samples of brochure covers, tables of special edition models, extensive information on serial number ranges, and so on. I get the impression that there are gems of insight and information lurking in every nook and cranny of the book's 298 pages.

The timing of publication was no accident: it contains full information about all the new developments announced and introduced at Photokina 2012. I was also intrigued to see the S lenses discussed and dissected. Erwin points out that the Summarit-S 70mm ƒ/2.5 normal lens performs best at its wider apertures, which makes it unfortunate that many owners stop the lens way down due to habits retained from using medium-format film cameras.

A remarkable fact about Leica Chronicle is that Erwin did everything himself: he researched it, wrote it, did the editing, layout, typesetting and design himself, self-published at his own expense—and he's doing the distribution: the book is available from his website. Erwin told me that he produced a large press run and that he expects his supply to last until sometime around Christmas.

I forgot to mention that the book is copiously illustrated. A must for fans of Leicaphilia.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

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'Mindflow'

I have a confession to make: I pine to coin neologisms. Useful terms that become part of the vocabulary. I'm jealous of my friend Michael Reichmann, who coined the term "pixel-peeping." I didn't like that term at first, but now I have as little objection to it as anyone else: it's useful, and it has become widely accepted and widely used. It's just part of the vocabulary.

So cool.

My attempts under this heading always come to nothing. I have to face the fact that I don't have the knack.

Despite this, it appears that I coined a[nother] term a few days ago: "mindflow."

Sounds like some bogus exercise at a New Age awareness seminar, doesn't it?

But it still might be a useful idea. Mindflow—related to workflow—the mental processes and process issues you go through when photographing.

I've claimed in the past, for instance, that when you have B&W film in a film camera, eventually you learn to "see" B&W and "ignore" color. Because that was true for me. (No longer.) But when the camera records color, I simply can't ignore color. I can't "see" with a "colors camera" (as Zander used to call it) the same way I do when my only option is B&W. This is why I've long wanted a B&W-only digital camera such as the new Leica M Monochrom. Even though other people refuse to even grasp the argument.

But this, to me, is a mindflow issue. Not a technical one.

I've claimed the same thing about prime (single-focal-length) lenses: that when you photograph for long enough with just one lens, eventually you can see the world—visualize—just how the lens will see, without trying. You can frame pictures by looking around with your eyes, without needing to look through the viewfinder. Another mindflow issue.

Also in the category: your ideas about what or why you're photographing. Might have to do with meaning (for instance, maybe you're documenting housing collapse or migratory butterflies) or it might have to do with visual passions (you love the idea of pristine untouched wilderness and seek that out to photograph) or subject obsessions (Joel Meyerowitz once did a whole project on redheads*).

If you accept the definition, you'll see that it's an essential but under-discussed topic. Or family of topics. Mindflow.

But the term is certain to not catch on, if my track record is anything to go by.

Maybe I should ask MR what he'd call it.

Mike

*Back when he was one. Maybe now he'd do a project on bald guys.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

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Featured Comments from:

Michael Stevens: "You write, '...when you photograph for long enough with just one lens, eventually you can see the world—visualize—just how the lens will see, without trying.' I found exactly that last weekend. After over a year of rarely using anything other than my M4-P with collapsible Summicron attached, I went out with my little Olympus XA (with its fixed 35mm lens). When I went to take my first shot of the day I lifted the camera to my eye and immediately had to take three steps forward."

gerry: "Mindflow = Stream of consciousness (psychology) 'refers to the flow of thoughts in the conscious mind.'"

Mike replies: So not really a good term for what I mean then. Told you I was no good at this.

Ben Rosengart: "Funny bit of synchronicity. I saw this blog post immediately after a phone call with a friend who appears in Redheads."

John Voorhees: "At my first job as a newspaper photographer we shot B&W and color and I had a camera body for each one. This let me see in color or B&W depending on which one I was using. (It also led to the best image being in the wrong camera.) I find now that I can 'see' in B&W if I visualize the image as a B&W print.

"As a side note, an image of my wife, then my 21-year-old girlfriend, appears in Redheads."

The Book Offer

We have a date certain for the beginning of that book offer that I keep talking about—two books at special prices offered exclusively to you here on TOP, and nowhere else. Very kind of the publishers to do this.

The sale offer will begin on Thursday morning, the 25th, and end the following Tuesday at midday. Both books are in limited supply and it'll be strictly first come, first served. Please stop in to see the announcement on Thursday at 7:00 a.m. Central. I'll also be a twee twit—a twitterer—(I'm sorry, I can't take those words seriously)—and send out a tweet the moment the offer goes up.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dennis: "How ironic—I won't be able to check in until night time because I'll be away all day at Photoplus Expo! I'll keep my fingers crossed that inventory holds out."

OT: Another Bloody Incident

We had too much excitement here yesterday. I was returning home from breakfast along the main road—a six-lane divided highway with stores and malls on either side, you know the sort—and an odd sort of police vehicle went careening past in the other direction: it was an armored car, but with police lights and sirens. Turns out it belongs to the FBI. Straggling behind, also with lights flashing and sirens wailing, were a black-and-white police cruiser and not one but two ambulances.

I learned later that they were among many more such vehicles converging from all directions—we'd had another of those deplorable "mass shooting" events, the sixth in Wisconsin since 2004. It happened right across from my local mall—one of those pathological ever-escalating wife-abuse incidents, except the malefactor not only killed his wife but also shot up everyone at her workplace (a beauty spa), killing two other people and injuring a number more. The killer was fleeing the building when he encountered two armed men coming toward him—hunters returning from up north who had grabbed their rifles and were going in to help. So he disappeared back into the building.

For hours, the police didn't know where the shooter was. The roads were blockaded, the mall was closed (although some of the shops stayed open, as apparently there was no coordinated effort to tell them what to do), and an entire enormous hospital complex was put on lockdown, lest the shooter try to get at the people he'd injured to finish the job. His own neighborhood, miles away, was flooded with SWAT and bomb squads. Later, he was found to have crept into an out-of-the-way office somewhere in the building where the beauty spa was, locked the door, and shot himself to death. (Apparently thinking very little of his two children from start to finish.)

All a little too close to home. The lot where I often park when I visit the bookstore was behind police lines, being used as a staging area for law enforcement operations. And an odd detail: I've snapped the very building where the shootings occurred. "Test shots" for a long-ago digicam...the Sony P150, if anyone remembers that one.

7.2 MP in a digicam was the latest thing in the summer of '04.

Pretty horrid.

It's a fad, these "mass shootings." Like nihilist assassins in Fin de siècle Europe, or suicide clusters, or copycat killers; a contagious idea. It is one infection that can't become a thing of the past too soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dennis Ng: "Heard about this even in Hong Kong. In fact you complete the story as the last I heard of it was when their priority was to find the gunman."

Craig: "It's hardly a fad; things like this have been happening for a long time. Surely you remember the source of the '80s expression 'going postal'? And before that there was Charles Whitman, the Texas Bell Tower Sniper...I don't think humans deal well with the pressure of living in a densely-packed society of millions. Things like this are one way the stress expresses itself from time to time."

Geoff Wittig: "These horrific events just make me crazy. As a physician, I see it as a public health calamity. Yet the NRA and its malevolent allies in Congress managed to de-fund and literally outlaw the CDC's efforts at collecting data and researching the plague of gun violence. Mission accomplished!"

Mike replies: I refrained from mentioning this in the post proper, but just before the news of the Azana shooting began saturating the airwaves, I saw the one and only TV ad I've seen from "the men and women of the NRA"—I could write a book about the little ironies like this that rain down on me constantly. Incidentally, the ad was anti-Obama, despite the fact that Obama has shown little discernible enthusiasm for any sort of gun control issues (or even discussion of them).

Quote o' the Day: Hin-mah-too-yah-la-kekt

-

"I saw a lot of white men almost fight today. I do not think this is good."

—Hin-mah-too-yah-la-kekt (Thunder Rolling Down the Mountains), also known as Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce tribe, after impassively watching a football game between the Universities of Washington and Nebraska in Seattle in 1903.

-

Edward Curtis, Joseph of the Nez Perce

Got this gem from Tim Egan's biography Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, which I'm thoroughly enjoying so far (I'm only on page 71). It's well written—briskly paced, evocative, almost poetic in places—and it seems to be a rich story capable of firing the imagination. I'm astonished at Curtis's energy—on the Harriman expedition to Alaska, he exposed five thousand glass plates, up to near mammoth size (can't find the reference now—I think it was 17x20 inches?). Almost inconceivably difficult. I don't know about you, but send me to Alaska today and I wouldn't take 5,000 exposures with a mirrorless digital.

By the way, Chief Joseph was unmoved by the football game except when they kicked the ball, which made him laugh. The great man died a year later, exiled still from his beloved homelands.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mark: "You clearly haven't been to Alaska. Five thousand exposures sounds easy to me. I didn't own a camera while I lived there for six months (a real tragedy), but I think I could hit that number on a two-week trip."

Mike replies: You're very right, I haven't been.

Lawrence Plummer: "Interesting. I had never heard the reference to the UW football game (go Huskies!). I have visited his gravesite in Nespelem, Washington, quite a few times for some photography:

Andrew Molitor: "A friend of mine has taken up wet plate in the last few years, and reports that 11x14 in a darkroom is fantastically difficult. Doing plates more than twice as big—in a tent in the wilderness makes his head hurt. He wailed, 'How do you keep the dust out?' and I could only speculate, 'Perhaps with the force of your indomitable will?'"

Derek L: "I'm with Mark...on a week long cruise a few years back, I took more than a thousand images without even particularly trying. That trip (and the Canon G10 that I bought for it) was what got me back into photography after a three decade hiatus.... Nowadays, I'd easily make two or three times as many images hunting for that elusive few. Alaska is an amazing place."

Whatever Is Best

In the "What MY Photography Costs ME (By Mike)" post the other day, I concluded that whatever "is best for your work is best for you."

But really, even that is a bit moralistic. Work—pictures—is just what's most important to me.

It doesn't have to be for everyone. However anyone wants to have fun with photography is fine so long as they're not hurting anybody. 

People do a whole lot of things within photography. Some people collect equipment, old or new. Some people like to chat (or argue) on forums. Some people are into surfing Flickr. Some people like to hire and photograph nude models. Some people like to have a function—a job to do, a role—at family gatherings and sporting and school events. Some people like an excuse to go hiking. Some people like to collect old postcards. Some people like to test lenses. Some are into toy cameras, or night photography, or photograms. And so on. Me, I like to write about it. There's a minority interest.

And I take pictures when I can. Like most of us.

Circa 1907 bedroom, Michigan

Most of us like to do some subset of all the fun things you can do in, and with, photography. So who's to say what's right and wrong?

Suit yourself, and don't judge others.

I try to encourage people to be clear about their desires, intentions, and goals, and not feel guilty or insecure or ashamed of whatever it is they enjoy. Who says it's not valid to master the arcana of antique Exaktas, or test RAW converters, or photograph churches? Who else knows better what gives you pleasure within the hobby?

I'm interested in people who are interested in their work, and I enjoy helping enable those people if I can. And I'm always hoping to help someone else to share some part of the great pleasure I myself get from photographs. But it's okay with me if someone else cares about something else.

•   •   •

A little story. Years ago, I taught a Photo 101/102/103 sequence at a community college. I loved it. I had people of all ages in my class, from many walks of life, both sexes, etc. One was a youngish lawyer (older than me at the time), always snappily dressed, skeptical, acerbic, whose hand would shoot up to challenge me about the details whenever I made a technical or factual claim. (I ended up persuading him that I knew my sh*t, which was cool.) He was clearly interested in mastering the mechanics and techniques of photography, as it existed then, in such a way that his mechanics and techniques and equipment would be the best.

And then there was an elderly, white-haired lady who one week actually (cliché incoming!) brought in home-baked cookies for the whole class. She was just the nicest lady—she fairly beamed grandmotherly approval at me from her seat no matter what I was saying. Even though, by her own admission, she understood about one-twelfth of everything I said. Her ambition? To learn how to work the controls on her camera so that she could take pictures of her grandchildren.

Finally, there was a young guy who was all washed-out colors—pale, washed-out skin, hair, eyes, clothing, affect. He was in his early to mid twenties but clearly a teenager in mind and heart, and committed to that. When I laughed at his Butthole Surfers T-shirt (I'd never heard of the band before), he gave me an intense, half-vacant stare: "Why are you laughing? It's their name, man," he said, as if that solved everything. Photographic ambition: totally opaque. None discernible. Worked just hard enough to earn a pale, washed-out C.

Lesson the teacher learned from the class: everyone's different. Deal with the person who's in front of you and meet them wherever they are.

•     •     •

However anyone wants to have fun with photography, power to 'em. Be clear, and go forth, and be as happy with what you're doing as you can be.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

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Featured Comments from:

darr: "What's the story behind Bedroom c. 1907?"

Mike replies: The proximate explanation is that I was getting tired of posts without pictures, and I couldn't clear a photo of the Butthole Surfers. Otherwise it has no purpose in the post except to add a touch of color.

There is one little story I can tell about that room, though. See that light fixture on the ceiling? The construction of the house was begun in 1907 and finished in 1912, and the area it's in was much more rural and remote back then than it is now. (The lumber for the house was dragged across the lake by horse-drawn sledge during the winter, and building commenced in the spring.) The lighting was installed in about 1915. It was not the first, but one of the first houses in the area to have electricity.

My grandmother told me that when she was young (she would have been 14 in 1915), the local children would come over to see that light. It wasn't that they had never seen electric lights before—some of them had—but none of them had ever seen an electric light with the switch on the wall, way over by the door—pushbuttons, that operate with firm resistance and a crisp snap. That's what was wondrous to them. She said little kids came from all around to venture timidly into the house via the back door, then stand there taking turns switching that light off and on over and over again.

Recalls Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."