The Online Photographer

Black Friday and Jefferson's Dozen Canons

Jefferson's Decalogue of Canons, in his own
hand, from the Library of Congress

Benjamin Franklin, renowned for the pithiness of his sayings, wrote a whole book about virtue. The most useful modern equivalent term for the quaint word "virtue," which is no longer fashionable, might be "self-improvement." The beacons of the Enlightenment were always trying to better themselves; Franklin's Autobiography is not only an early self-help book, but also a prototype of the "how to succeed in business" genre. Thomas Jefferson, with a reputation for magisterial eloquence but not pithiness, several times wrote privately to various individuals, lastly to his progeny, putting his own advice about personal conduct into a list. The list variously had ten (the "Decalogue") or twelve items on it. The most complete and polished version of the list appears to be this one (note that I've modernized the punctuation in a couple of cases):

Thomas Jefferson's Dozen Canons of Conduct in Life

1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy a thing you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves.
6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
7. We never repent of having eaten too little.
8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.
9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
10. Take things always by their smooth handle.
11. Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.
12. When angry, count 10 before you speak; if very angry, 100.

Sorry if you thought this post was about T3i's and 5D Mark III's—"canon" in this sense means "a secular rule, code, or law," deriving from the ecclesiastical antecedent: church councils often applied the word canon to codes of conduct or rules of church law.

Some of Jefferson's canons are familiar: several are traditional and a few derive from classical sources (Jefferson was a big reader: he donated his 6,487-volume personal library—huge for the time—to the fledgling Library of Congress after the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812). Number nine could be better phrased for today, as something like "Worrying is wasted energy." One or two seem copped from Franklin's populist alter ego Poor Richard.

It's not a bad list. The one that might give us trouble is the counsel to "take things always by their smooth handle." It descends from Epictetus, the Greek Stoic aphorist born in the year 55, who says, "Everything has two handles, one by which it can be borne; another by which it cannot." Julian Boyd wrote in 1957 that what Jefferson meant by this canon was that political discourse should always be civil, but Jefferson never clarified his meaning, so T.J. fans have been happily arguing about it more or less ever since he wrote it.

The pseudoholiday today
"Black Friday"—which is today, as I know most Americans are all too aware—always puts me in mind of Jefferson's fourth canon. A thing is truly cheap only if you really want it and only if you will use it. Acquiring something we neither want nor need, and thus won't use, is a fool's economy, and nothing we put to constant and long-term use can really be thought of as expensive, as it repays its cost and then some. You yourself, by your actions, can make an expensive thing cheap or a cheap thing expensive.

Retailers in general love Black Friday because they believe (on good evidence) that if they can get people started on their shopping early, they'll end up spending more. It's become an important sub-holiday of Christmas, that secular high holiday of our culture's everlasting worship of Mammon.

So go forth today, but be careful. It's easy to get carried away. Remember that Black Friday isn't actually the biggest shopping day of the season, mythmaking to the contrary (usually, several of the days in the week just prior to Christmas beat it),  and it's perfectly justifiable to spend a quiet day digesting turkey and meditating further on all the things we have to be thankful for.

Mike
(Main source: monticello.org)

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:

g carvajal: "American has lost the true meaning of the Christmas holiday. This is sad."

Mike replies: A gentle warning, my friend: you probably don't want to get me started! Once you push that button it can be difficult to shut me up.

However, apropos of yesterday, I will say that none of the Pilgrims would have celebrated Christmas. Being devoted Christians, they considered it a pagan holiday, an indulgence, and immoral. I can't tell you the time period when Christmas began to be acceptable in America, but it wasn't in Puritan New England in the 17th century.

Ed Grossman: "Is anybody else taken by the irony of Black Friday being the day after Thanksgiving? One day of contented thankfulness followed by something very different. To be honest, I think that our 'simple and useful holiday' (well put, Mike) is being clouded by it's calendar neighbor. Quoting Charlie Brown: 'Good Grief!'"

Dave: "It's so fun and easy to point out the hypocrisies of our founding fathers...'Never spend your money before you have it.' After his death, Jefferson's family had to sell Monticello to pay down the debts he left behind. 'Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.' I wonder how Jefferson's slaves would feel about that one."

Shop Till You Drop Day

Oh boy. We're shopping today.

Thanksgiving—yesterday—is my favorite holiday of the year, not only because of my personal connection to it (as Steve R. mentioned in the comments yesterday) but because it seems like such a simple and useful holiday. You gather with friends or loved ones and have a feast, and hopefully spend at least a few minutes meditating on what you have to be thankful for. Clean. Modest. Continent. You're not required to haul a tree indoors or infect your mind with ditties that will get stuck in your head and drive you crazy. You don't have to suspend disbelief over a confusing welter of nonsensical beliefs and belief-constructs, like what in the world a giant bunny has to do with eggs. Thanksgiving is sensible. It doesn't make demands.

Well, except on the person who's doing the cooking.

The one problem with Thanksgiving is that the concept of a "feast" no longer has much meaning—we feast all the time now, eating whatever we want whenever we want. It's not like we subsist on a paltry gruel for most of the year and cut loose on Thanksgiving. Or maybe I'm just speaking for myself.

Similarly with Black Friday. A special shopping day. Yeah, like we need a special day for that: we shop constantly anyway. It's like serving a feast to people who overeat regularly.

Shut up already and post the links, Johnston
Too much preamble? Sorry. I do go on. (And don't always get with the program.)

Anyway, here are a few great Black Friday deals for photographers:

Canon's superlative S100 shirt-pocket camera for a paltry $229

Best current deal anywhere on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III (with 24–105mm lens)

Nikon D7000 Basic Kit and Deluxe Kit ($500 off or more)

B&H Photo's Six Best Black Friday Photography Bargains

One-Day Only Deals on Memory Cards (this one makes me cranky—I just bought memory cards for Y^e Dragoon, for like twice what these cost. Those high-speed Lexar Professional 800X cards are supposed to be particularly good)

Apple 15" MacBook Pro Notebook Computer (and other computers and accessories)

Hope this helps, and happy shopping! But remember what Tom Jefferson said.

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:

Suggested links from Kevin Purcell:

Sigma 19mm ƒ/2.8 at B&H Photo / at Amazon, only $149

Sigma 30mm ƒ/2.8 at B&H Photo, only $149

Olympus VF-2 electronic viewfinder, $169 at Amazon

Olympus VF-3 electronic viewfinder, only $99 at Amazon

(Note that TOP doesn't get credited for things you put in your cart and buy later. B&H reopens at sundown Saturday.)

James Sinks: "Personally, the only B&H Black Friday deal that had me reaching for my credit card were the 7200 RPM 4TB drives for $80 off (meaning only about $60–80 more than a top of the line consumer HD should be at this point in its life cycle). I've been holding off on HD purchases since the Thailand floods, and things have been getting tight, so it was a wise purchase."

Jack: "Timely article as I had just received an email from Amazon's Deal of the Day offering a Canon S100 for peanuts. I almost ordered it, but recalled that I should respond through your Amazon link so you could collect $9. Alas, your site told me I shouldn't buy something just because it is cheap. So I didn't. I saved $245, but your advice cost you. Sorry Mike, I will buy you a drink when we meet."

Mike replies: And I don't drink! A fine mess we've gotten ourselves into this time, Stanl...er, Jack. [g]

MJFerron: "I work retail (company is Fortune 500) and I am a lowly Dept. manager for said company. Today was our biggest day of the year. Not arguing about traditional statistics of who makes what and when by the way, just sayin' I was in at 4:00 a.m. and we killed it today. $70,000+ for my dept alone. Only wish I sold cameras instead of refrigerators. :-) I'd have an even better time!"

Happy Thanksgiving!

...To all those who celebrate it. I won't be posting any Black Friday specials until it's actually Black Friday.

Today's picture: trussed-up Christmas trees off the truck, stacked and waiting to be put out for sale on Black Friday. Taken at Bill's Trees in Brookfield. Believe it or not, the fellow working there told me that all these trees had been shipped to Wisconsin from the Carolinas. That was a surprise: we're importing conifers.

I used a tripod for this one. Just kidding.

Also a surprise: the tree lot is set up on the grounds of a farmhouse and barn on the main drag through Brookfield, Bluemound Road, a sprawling divided six-lane highway that runs straight as an arrow through a hell of strip malls, chain restaurants, gas stations, car dealerships and big box stores that goes on for miles. A vestige of fifty years ago and more. Not the only one in the area, but an obvious one. I always thought the property was owned by a holdout, too stubborn to sell: turns out the town of Brookfield itself owns the old house and barn and preserves it as an historic site. But the rumor is they're going to tear the old farmhouse down soon. They plan to leave the barn. I guess a town doesn't need but so much history. In any event, the barn and silo are going to have to be enough of it for this part of Brookfield.

Best wishes to you and your family. I'm thankful for you coming by, whether you're giving thanks today for anything or not. See you tomorrow.

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:

John Holland: "Happy Thanksgiving to Mike, Xander, Lulu, Ctein and his psittacine menagerie, The Mighty Dragoon™ and all my favourite commenters at TOP."

Mike replies: Thanks John—nice of you to mention our commenters, a.k.a. the co-author corps. I'll second that.

Digital Photography Pioneer

R.I.P.

-

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:

David Ralph: "A search of the Rochester newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, reveals that Bryce Bayer's passing eluded their attention. Not that much different than Kodak's own appreciation for the import of the invention."

4 a.m.

Streetlights in Fog, 4:00 a.m.

ISO 6400, comp. –3, and I almost hate to say it, handheld. Taken this morning.

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:

David Bostedo: "Looks like you could use more exposure range...the bulb filaments are blown out and not visible."

Mike replies: True, but I can recover the shape of the glass globe:

Did the mighty dragoon just swat you down with its awesomeness? [g]

Nicholas Condon: "Okay, that recovered image of the globe made me laugh. It's also amusing that you used a camera capable of ridiculous resolution and dynamic range to take a picture of a foggy day where the highlights are completely blown and the shadows are almost completely stopped. On the other hand, it's a really nice picture."

Ernest Theisen: "I sometimes get up at 4:00 in the morning but I don't take my camera to the bathroom with me."

Mike replies: I wasn't going to the bathroom outside, I promise.

Jeff: "Photo for your book Waukesha de Nuit, I suppose."

[In case you didn't get Jeff's reference: perhaps the most famous early book of night photography is Brassaï's Paris de Nuit, or Paris by Night. —Mike]

Impressions of the Olympus OM-D, Part II

[Part I is here]

By Ctein

While I was satisfied with my Olympus Pen E-P1, there were two areas where I felt it could use improvement. The most important was exposure range, which was down in the 10+ stop region. That was just barely acceptable for me. The Olympus OM-D E-M5 (henceforth to be referred to simply as the OM-D) got me over 1.5 stops more exposure range, which made me happy.

The other was speed. Up through ISO 400 was great on the E-P1, and ISO 800 was usable, although it was pushing the limit for my really serious work (i.e., being able to make 17 x 22" portfolio-quality prints). Above that I ran into problems with large-scale chroma noise, related in this column. In a few situations where image quality wasn't the paramount concern, like roller derby photography, I could get away with ISO 1600, but mostly not.

The technical noise measurements do not hint at how much better the OM-D is. As I explained in the aforementioned column, it's not just about the quantity but quality of noise. The OM-D noise is extremely uniform and fine-grained. Up to ISO 800, it's essentially ignorable. When it becomes bothersome, the faintest whiff of noise reduction will take care of it.

Fig 1. ISO 1600 with the OM-D looks very, very good. I would not hesitate to use it for my portfolio work.

Fig. 2. This 100% section of the photograph shows the very fine and tight pattern of the noise at ISO 1600.

At ISO 1600, noise becomes visible, but the image quality is still excellent. Figure 1 includes the full frame width and figure 2 is a 100% crop from that frame. Yes, you can see the noise, but there's no hint of large-scale patterning. It's very fine and even. The "grain" in a 17x22" print looks very much like what I'd expect from high quality 6x7 cm negatives. It's distinctly better-looking than the Pen at ISO 800. If the subject matter demands a truly grainless look, I can achieve that with an amount of grain reduction (figure 3) that is so modest that it doesn't visibly compromise real subject detail or texture.

Fig. 3. That noise can be almost completely eliminated with a modest degree
of noise reduction filtering.

At ISO 3200, the overall noise level is still acceptable, but very faint pattern noise appears in the values just above zero. I've brightened and exaggerated a 100% section of an ISO 3200 photographs in figure 4 to make this more visible. If you look carefully, you can see faint horizontal lines in the darkest tones, as if alternating rows of pixels are slightly lighter than their neighbors. Even a modest amount of shadow clipping to get solid blacks renders them invisible. It's not observable with the default settings in Adobe Camera RAW; I can only see it when I've extracted the maximum amount of shadow detail from the file.

Fig. 4. At ISO 3200, the faintest hints of pattern noise appear in the very darkest areas. I've brightened and contrast-enhanced this 100% section to make that more visible.

With that caveat, it's still portfolio quality. Prints look like very fine-grained 35mm enlargements or moderate-grained 6x7cm enlargements. In practice, what's more likely to inhibit me working at ISO 3200 is the diminished exposure range rather than noise. I'll always keep the ISO as low as I can, but I'm not even going to think twice about cranking it anywhere between 200 and 1000, and I'm not going to think all that long if I need to push threefold beyond.

That's not my limit, although it is nearing the camera's. ISO 6400 and above is what's called "extended ISO." Really, it's just 3200 scratched out and 6400 written in crayon on the dial. Ditto 13K or the ultimate 26K. What the camera's doing is making underexposed photographs that get automatically brightened during processing to look normal.

To put it another way, if you make a photograph at ISO 3200 that's underexposed by two stops and render it with +2 stops exposure adjustment in ACR, it's going to look remarkably like one made at ISO 13K. Why even bother with such faux-ISOs? Because then the compensation's handled for you automatically and the review image you'll see on the camera's display will look normal instead of drastically underexposed.

Fig. 5. ISO 6400 is usable! I wouldn't go there often, but it ain't half bad.

Fig. 6. The noise is pretty obvious in this 100% section, but it's no worse than good ISO 400 35mm film grain.

Given that, is ISO 6400 usable? Surprisingly, yes. It even looks pretty good, if you don't go digging into the darkest shadows for that linear noise pattern. And, it's useful. Figure 5 was made under heavy overcast, and the mischievous lynx cub was moving mighty fast while trying to precariously balance on some too-thin branches. Submillisecond exposures were where I wanted to be.

Figure 6 is a 100% section of the photograph. The slight haloing and lack of sharpness is because I was shooting obliquely through thick glass; it's not inherent in the camera performance. I'm surprised it turned out as crisp as it did. Grain is now clearly evident, but remember that the on-screen image is much like looking at a section of a 30x40" print. I've dropped below medium format quality, in my judgement, but it's not dissimilar to a 35mm print from pull processed Tri-X. Ignoring the color business.

Fig. 7. Noise reduction filtering can significantly improve ISO 6400, although it can't eliminate it without trashing fine, subtle detail.

This is more noise than I can safely eliminate with filters, but I can suppress it. Figure 7 is about as far as I'd want to push without compromising subtle subject detail. It's still noisier than unfiltered ISO 3200, but I could go there. If I had to, that is, not really by choice.

But, wow—usable, halfway decent ISO 6400 that's better than the ISO 1600 I got out of my old camera? I'm okay with this.

What if you really need to pull out all the stops? 26K, anyone? You will get a usable photograph; see the 100% section in figure 8. It's not going to have much to recommend it: drastically reduced exposure range and very high noise levels, along with the now-omnipresent linear pattern and large-scale chroma noise (the blotchy color in the neutral gray car). There are two situations in which I could imagine using this setting: either I've stumbled across a First Contact or the Second Coming. Short of that, I can't think of anything that would make me go there. But it is there.

Fig 8. Want to pull out all the stops? ISO 26K is available, so long as you keep your expectations as low as your ISO is high (100% section).

Summary? This is so much better than my old camera that I've retired the Pen. I don't even care about it as a second body. If I want a spare, I'll buy another OM-D.

What will I do with the Olympus Pen? Well, I've been toying with the idea of seeing if I can talk someone into hard-converting it for monochrome work. That would be a whole 'nother adventure, doncha think?

Ctein

Ctein pushes the limits every week on TOP. His column appears on Wednesday.

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 product of interest today:

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

Patrick Perez: "Am I correct in assuming that 'hard-converting it for monochrome work' would require not only removing the color array, but also rewriting the Raw software to remove de-mosaicing? I'm just trying to wrap my brain around the problem."

Dennis: "I have had the same experience with the OM-D vs. the E-P1 I've had for three years. I put the E-P1 up for sale on Amazon, but when you can buy relatively new Micro 4/3 bodies at steep discounts all the time, it wasn't going anywhere. So I'm just going to give it to a cousin who's looking to get into digital photography."

Mark Kinsman: "Thanks for a great hands-on real-world impression of the OM-D. I've had mine for a few months now, debating whether to go deeper into better glass. The Olympus 45mm and the Pany 25mm really reinforce what good glass on this body can deliver. Your bridge print is what convinced me to try Micro 4/3. Now, if only you would test the Panasonic 12–35 ƒ/2.8...."

Colin Work: "Although I still have some niggles with the EM-5, high ISO performance is not one of them—especially when converted to B&W. Twenty-five years ago I used to roam the streets of Dublin shooting Ilford's FP-4 and HP-5. The other weekend I went back with my EM-5 and went walk about. I was more than delighted to find the 'look' of the images was very similar to my old film work. But I also discovered this is a camera I can safely trust to use auto-ISO...in the 200–1600 range, it doesn't really matter what ISO the camera picks—it all works beautifully. That, coupled with the discreet size and tilt screen, may make this the best street camera ever."

Meet Harry Taylor (and Matt Morris)

Photo by Harry Taylor, from "American Tintype"

Matt Morris has created a slight but beautiful film about Harry Taylor, a photographer fromWilmington, North Carolina. Following the death of his mother, Harry turned to the ancient medium to tintype to help "take away the static." The film is less than four minutes long but serves up a remarkably clear window into Harry's journey to where he is now, and does a good job of sampling, or implying, the richness and depth of his methods and concerns, and his photographs.

This is an example of what used to be called "alternative process" photography—the deliberate use of an offbeat or antiquated process for expression. Of course, nowadays all optical/chemical processes are "alternative," so it remains to be seen what name the old alternatives will acquire in the new age.

Filmmaker Matt Morris has promised to stop by TOP later today to answer questions and field comments, so if there's something you'd like to ask him, please do. I can't promise he'll address every comment but at least you'll hear directly from him about his work.

You'll like this, I think—

American Tintype from Matt Morris Films on Vimeo.

Mike
(Thanks to Matt Morris Films)

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:

Matthew Miller: "Mike, Harry actually gives an answer to your question in the film: antique process."

Eric Rose: "I tend to like these tintypes better than some I have seen. The ghoulish portraits made by some tintype practitioners leave me quite cold."

Howard Sandler: "Really enjoyed Matt's film. I appreciated the variety of close detail shots interspersed with the wider views, and the slow rotating zooms on the tin types was an effective use of the Ken Burns effect. Loved the way the credits 'developed' too."

Colleen Leonard: "My first contemporary tintype experience was Joni Sternbach's surfer series and then had the pleasure to see Quinn Jacobson at work at the Foire de la Photo in Bièvres, France. Tintypes are going strong in Paris thanks to him I would say. Soho Photo Gallery has a tintype exhibition on in NYC right now—Masterplaters collective. I really think tintypes are the thing to do right now. Everything digital is not."

Robin Dreyer: "I'm also happy to report, having met him a couple of times, that Harry is a really good guy."

John Sarsgard: "It's all about giving yourself permission to do the work you love, whether it be tintypes, photograms, photoshop, or whatever, then finding the elbow room in your life to do it. Film, digital, large format, manipulated, wet plate, and all those choices ain't the issue. You don't have to argue with the world about what's best. You just have to do what you love and also make a living."

Attack of the Photo Ninja!*

*Or, How I Spent My Weekend Vacation

Testing Raw converters: this is ACR 7 with Process Version 2012

So I didn't actually get a lot of work done on the weekend. I spent my extra time happily playing with Raw converters and B&W conversions. (My current take on D800 black-and-white in a nutshell, for you current or former Dektol-breathers: the D800 is a 4x5 in an F100 body. I might be honeymooning a little.)

I've both been doing more experimenting with (and a bit more purchasing for—gak!—) the D800. Following the advice of several commenters, I bought both ACR 7, with the all-important Process Version 2012 RAW converter, as well as PictureCode's Photo Ninja. (Note: Process Version 2012 is included in Photoshop Elements 11, but the version of ACR in Elements is severely crippled. That sentence cost me $89 to write, so I hope you appreciate it.) And I've also been reading Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D800 and D800E, and, following his advice to buy fast UDMA cards, I also bought two SanDisk UDMA-6 cards.

As for a thumbnail review of the Guide itself...well, Thom Hogan is the best independent brand-specific technical analyst in the photographic cyberuniverse. Not only is Nikon lucky he exists, but his existence is among the good reasons to shoot Nikon. However, if this weekend is any indication, this particular 851(!)-page tome might be defeating me. It's superb, but suffers a bit from Tolstoy syndrome. I'm fascinated by insights into why Nikon sources its sensors from different fabricators and which subcategory of noise it is up with which astrophotographers must put, but I'm a slow reader and I just want to know how to get the bad boy off AF-C, which is how it came out of the box, and into AF-S....
(Answer: there's a command button hiding in plain sight. D'oh!) So I switched to Ben Long's "Shooting With the Nikon D800" video tutorial set on Lynda.com. More my speed; no offense to Thom. I'll study his [extremely] Complete Guide with pleasure, but at greater leisure.

Editation
Photo Ninja (hereafter, PN—a Raw converter and photo editor) is awesome. I like the way you toggle back and forth from the Browser to the Editor, and, in the Editor, from whole image view to 100%. And the quality of the conversions is fantastic. Especially in color.

The Illumination and Detail sliders in PictureCode's Photo Ninja make it particularly easy to get tasty detail in deep shadow areas

Supposedly PN is somewhat Nikon-centric, in that it reputedly does a particularly good job with Nikon cameras (although I don't know that it does any worse with any other brand). It's becoming known as something of a standard for the D800, anyway. I can see why.

But I'm pretty sure I'll end up using good old ACR. Confession: I love ACR. I consider "ACR for global, Photoshop for local" my home of homes in editing software. (Anyone remember who originated that mantra? 'Twasn't me.) All the controls make so much sense to me, and I like everything it does and the relatively simple way it does it, too. It doesn't hurt that two of the lead Adobe engineers for ACR are at least occasional readers of TOP, too.

Everyone who urged me to get the latest version with the Process Version 2012 converter was right, though: it's distinctly superior, more natural-looking and more capable. Worth seeking out. It's available in both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6.

I identified the answers to a few more mysteries over the weekend, too: the origin of the idea that you have to use a tripod and good lenses with the D800/E, for one. It comes from Nikon itself, in its "D800 Technical Guide" PDF. And, reading Thom's Guide, I think I've identified an important conceptual split:

Some people feel that the better their equipment, the more obligated they are to optimize their result. My approach tends to be the opposite: I feel it's more necessary to optimize my results when I'm using inferior equipment...to overcome its deficiencies. (For instance, I know how to get the best out of bad lenses. With great lenses I'm much more casual—why? Because they free me of the responsibility and the restrictions of being so careful.) The D800 is such overkill to begin with that there's no need to be terribly careful, in my view. It's going to bring home the bacon if you simply use it halfway conscientiously. I'd rather have the freedom that affords, than further burden myself with restrictions in the service of perfection.

In other words: just because that mountain is there doesn't mean I have to climb it.

Thom's approach is the opposite: as he says in his Guide, "I'm pretty anal about getting 'optimal results' from my equipment." Not me—which is why, c. 1980–2000, I shot 35mm instead of medium or large format, and Tri-X instead of Pan-X (or Tech Pan). I like getting good, consistent, repeatable, controllable results robustly, and good craftsmanship is very satisfying, but I've never been terribly interested in optimizing everything out to the nth degree. The test shot at the top of this post is a good example. (Keep in mind you're looking at a tiny, barely representational JPEG of a much larger file.) It's shot without a tripod and with Nikon's "prosumer" 28mm ƒ/1.8G—explicitly not on Nikon's list of D800-safe lenses**. Is it "optimized"? No. It doesn't show the quality of which the D800 is capable...

~100% (after you click on it), unsharpened.

...But I'm not worried. It's going to look more than fine in the prints on 13x19" paper that I'm going to use the D800 for.

Same deal with the notion that you "can't" use the D800 with your lens stopped down past ƒ/8, a bromide whose arteries are hardening already on the 'Net. It is not optimal, doncha know. Dare to delve past ƒ/8 and all definition will be dashed to death on the rocks of diffraction. But have you seen the difference between ƒ/8 and ƒ/11?

ƒ/8

ƒ/11

(To eliminate variables, I shot these much more carefully for you. Here, I did use a sturdy tripod, all locked down, with the camera on manual focus, mirror locked up, and with the lights exactly in the center of the frame. These are screen shots of the Raw files as they opened in ACR, converted to sRGB because that's all I can publish. They should be 100% after you click on them, or in your feed reader. ISO 100. I set the aperture, with the camera in aperture-priority [A mode], and let the camera set the exposure. I adjust the exposure of one slightly to get them to match.)

If you look carefully, you'll see that there is a difference. The people who claim there is aren't making it up.

But then consider that you're looking at this detail unsharpened and unprepared for printing, and about eight times larger than the maximum size I'd print it.

So is it really true that you can't use ƒ/11? I think I'd chance it. Suboptimal though it may be. Bring that bacon home to Papa, Dragoon.

An actual Colt Dragoon, c. 1860. Photo courtesy J. Christopher Mitchell.

And that's also why I've generally been happy to use ACR and not go questing after the absolute ideal Raw converter for every single camera I use. (Although as usual I have no objection at all to anyone who enjoys that or sees an advantage in it.) Even if something else out there is a tad better for a particular camera, ACR is very, very good, and—well, as I said, I love it.

But although I'm staying loyal to ACR, I was delighted by Photo Ninja. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ctein will try it out and write about it for you. I kept gravitating to it; can't keep my hands off it. It was like I was having a Photo Ninja attack. (Heh.) It's just too cool. To anyone with a technical or scientific cast of mind who has a sufficiently turbocharged computer, I heartily recommend giving it a careful tryout.

Especially if you own a D800 or D600.

Mike

Our other posts on the D800/E can be found here.

**Nikon's own list of D800/E-approved lenses:

AF-S Nikkor 14–24mm ƒ/2.8G ED
AF-S Nikkor 24–70mm ƒ/2.8G ED
AF-S Nikkor 70–200mm ƒ/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 16–35mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 24–120mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 200–400mm ƒ/4G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 24mm ƒ/1.4G ED
AF-S Nikkor 35mm ƒ/1.4G
AF-S Nikkor 85mm ƒ/1.4G
AF-S Nikkor 200mm ƒ/2G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 300mm ƒ/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 400mm ƒ/2.8G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 500mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 600mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm ƒ/2.8G ED
AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8G IF-ED

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:

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "I handled a D800 for the first time Saturday (a local friend has one now), and went through exactly the same thing you did with the AF controls. My D700 has a three-position AF control on the front plus another three-position AF control on the back, plus several menu entries; the D800 does this IMHO better, by having a control only for AF vs. MF, plus a button that enable the wheels to quickly cycle through the AF choices. Not what I'm used to, but better. But my friend had to point out the center button in the AF control to me."

Mike Anderson: "Nikon recommends no lens for the D800 for less than $1000? Hmm."

A. Dias: "Photo Ninja (PN) is a breakthrough in many areas. Well worth the small effort to learn its GUI and editing controls. I use it with Canon DSLRs and the images look real. B&W is easy to use with its simple-to-control color filters."

Ctein (partial comment): I see exactly where Nikon's recommendations for equipment and practices come from. There's no doubt in my mind that they got many critical comments from photographers who bought these new cameras and then complained that their photographs weren't pixel-sharp. They weren't sharp for all the known usual reasons: they didn't know how to pick a decent lens, they didn't know how to hold the camera steady, they didn't know how to use a short enough shutter speed, it never occurred to them to use a tripod…the usual stuff.  None of which is the camera's fault, it's the photographer's  fault.

"So, Nikon did exactly what I would've done: wrote up some webpages describing best practices and suitable hardware. It's good to educate photographers, and it preempts a zillion more damning e-mails.

"But no good deed goes unpunished, so a bunch of binary thinkers decided that if this is what Nikon considered recommended practices and gear, it was the only way. Which, of course, it ain't. And Nikon never suggested it was."

robert harshman: "I think the reason Mike keeps coming back to Photo Ninja is that it just gets it right with one click most of the time. It is the best Raw converter today, bar none. I've recently tested its smart lighting vs. DXO vs. ACR, all current versions as of November 12, 2012, and neither product comes close with one click.

"I tend to buy a lot of software and believe in supporting what I think are good developers. Hence I buy products I might only review and not even use much. It's an old habit, I've alpha/beta tested and purchased thousands of imaging products over the years and now have a iCloud license with Adobe—one of the best deals around. And yet today for standard commercial work I still use ACR, as PN does not yet have a batch mode, and I sometimes need to convert thousands of images for a single project.

"ACR is a great converter, but one of the biggest issues with it today for computational photographers like me is the per image adjustment. All of the adjustments that you make in ACR are relative to each image. So if you are stitching or focus stacking or bracketing, or doing lenticular work, making any adjustment in ACR is perhaps an issue. When I discussed this issue with the developer of PN, he had a solution within a week: Absolute mode. (For those of you using PN for this type of work, yeah, you can thank me for the benefit of Absolute mode. :-) And batch mode is coming at some point for PN. Once it's here, goodbye ACR, for the most part. DXO may stay around for its wonderful FilmPack."

Tasty Panasonic Lumix Blowout!

Amazon's Deal of the Day today consists of a selection of newly discontinued Panasonic mirrorless cameras for more or less half price.

Click here to check out the selection.

Just passin' the news along, as I do when Amazon's Gold Box deals concern photographic yummies; this is not a recommendation for these specific cameras per se (even though I own two Panasonic mirrorless cameras currently, one of which has been my main camera for the past three years).

Note that Amazon's camera deals are "while stock lasts" and generally don't last all day.

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:

Manish: "I wish such deals were available in India. Sigh!"

This is the Pentax K-5 Post

Every time I write about cameras I persistently get asked why I haven't written more about the Pentax K-5, despite having bought one some while ago. I thought I should 'splain, once and for all*.

The reason I haven't written about it is that I seldom use it.

It ain't the camera. The reason I seldom use it is that Pentax doesn't happen to make the lens I would most like to have for it, a 35mm- or 40mm-equivalent. Which is, yes, quite ironic given that one of the main reasons to use Pentax is its selection of beautiful lenses nobody else makes.

Yeah, there's an older option, the full-frame 1991–2004 FA 24mm ƒ/2; yeah, Pentax brackets the focal length with current products, the 21mm ƒ/3.2 Limited pancake (31.5mm-e) crop-sensor lens and the 31mm ƒ/1.8 Limited (46.5mm-e) for FF; yeah, you can use older manual-focus lenses. And yeah, I'm too damn finicky about lenses and too settled in my preferences and I'm being all Goldilocks-y. What can I say? It's my hobby and I reserve the right. I like 35s and 40s** and Pentax doesn't have one. That's all.

I thought I could learn to love the K-5 with the magnificent DA 35mm Macro—a combo made in Elysium—but it proved just too long for me to get along with as a regular thing. More's the pity. I love that lens.

View of heaven taken with a camera/lens combination made there.

As far as the ergonomics and the look'n'feel of the basic design are concerned, the K-5 is in the same Zip Code as perfect. Just the right size, just the right weight, a good, solid, blocky, muscular yet conservative no-nonsense style, a great hand grip, excellent control placements, a good enough viewfinder considering it's an APS-C camera, and a great-sounding, quiet shutter. For a small and handy but full-featured DSLR it's a particularly successful design. I think Pentax made a smart move in keeping the basic design intact for the new K-5 II. 

K-5 II: muscular yet conservative style

And keep in mind that the K-5 II and the Nikon D7000 have maybe 90% of the sensor-y goodness of the D600 and D800, in a more sensible package. There are advantages to full frame, sure, but they don't hold the upper hand in all ways: there are advantages to "crop sensors," too.

Anyway, I'm sorry K-5 fans aren't going to get more of a review of the camera from me. But th-th-th-th-th-that's all***, folks.

Mike

P.S. Note that Pentax is an advertiser on TOP. Also note that I was a Pentax fan long before that.

*I have hopes.

**Yeah, I know I just bought a 28mm for the D800, but please don't throw that back at me. It's most likely temporary, until one of two things happens: either Nikon fills out its new FX prime line with a 35mm ƒ/1.8G for FX, or I suck it up and get over the deep-seated psychological barrier I have against spending $1,619 for a lens.

***Meanwhile, if anyone wants a very pretty, near-new, little-used K-5 in the box for $695, let me know. [UPDATE: Sold]

-

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:

JVA: "Lucky for me that Pentax does cover my favorite focal lengths with the FA 43mm and FA 31mm! I agree that it would be good for Pentax to add a 35mm equivalent."

Steve Biro: "Mike speaks the truth. Pentax still needs more lenses. I'm on my fourth Pentax digital body. I have most of the DA Limiteds (just not the 40mm) plus the DA 50mm ƒ/1.8. I wouldn't rule out an FA 43mm Limited.

"But the lack of a 24 to 28mm fast prime (that I can afford) forced me to buy my first Sigma lens a few months ago: a 28mm ƒ/1.8 that was on sale new with warranty for $329. It's not a bad lens at all but it's big and heavy, and I would have bought a Pentax if they made one in that focal range.

"The FA 31 Limited? I missed my chance with that one when it cost hundreds of dollars less. It's out of my league now and, besides, it's not what one would call 'diminutive,' either.

"I'm not a professional photographer, only a long-time enthusiast. So any desire I might have for a more complete system isn't as urgent as it might be for many. But Mike speaks the truth. We can only hope we'll see changes in the next year or two."

Mike replies: Given how long we had to wait for a FF AF 35mm prime for the last film cameras—almost until it didn't matter any more—I wouldn't count on it. For whatever reason, Pentax historically does not support the 35mm (and equivalent) angle of view well at all.

Quote o' the Day

-

"I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you."

—Bill Withers, singer-songwriter

-

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 Atkins: "Would love to hear Szarkowski's comment on this."

[In case you don't recognize Rob's reference: one of John Szarkowski's famous and influential books about photography was called Mirrors and Windows. —Ed.]

Nikon D800 and D800E Review

Mike's-eye view

I thought it would be a good idea to collate our various articles about the Nikon D800 and D800E in one place, to make things easier to find and so I don't have to get a headache whenever anyone asks where something is. (I'd ask my assistant, but my assistant is me and he's notoriously absentminded.)

If anyone is arriving at this page from the wilds of the Internets and just wants to know what I think, jump to Part 7. You can probably perceive from the titles that these were ongoing blog posts and not (ahem!) a formal review.

Here are my peregrinations on the subject so far:

Part 1: The Big Dragoon Arriveth; I Take to the Night
Part 2: More Experiments on the Virgin Mary
Part 3: D800E Haptics
Part 4: Day Three: A Bust
Part 5: D800E Day 4: ER a.k.a. DR
Part 6: D800E Day 6: Moiré
Part 7: Final Verdict: the Nikon D800E and AF-S 35mm ƒ/1.4G
Part 8: Attack of the Photo Ninja!

I know I said the "Final Verdict" post was the last post on the subject, but hey, I bought the thing—no doubt I'll have more to say about it as my life with it progresses. I'll add to this list if/when I post anything new that's directly on topic.

And by the way, my advice to anyone with the misfortune to be sane is to buy the D600. Or keep your D700.

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:

Kent: "As a D700 user since the thing came out (two of 'em, actually), I'd be interested in more of your thoughts on 'or keep your D700.' The whole 'the D800/E is amazing!' thing is causing me to treat my D700's with less love than they probably deserve."

Mike replies: I have a lot of respect for the D700, which I also tried out when it was new. It was the camera that I got the best digital B&W out of prior to the D800. It also marks the only time in history that the thing I wanted a camera company to do, before it did it, was exactly what it eventually did. (A prosumer variant of the D3 in a smaller body—the D700.) I'm grateful that it happened that one time. Finally, in my judgement it's one of those cameras that Nikon makes from time to time that stands head and shoulders above its normal procession of models. When everything comes together. Like the N8008, which was also a landmark in its day. Or the F3. Or....

As for what you should do, may I recommend Lensrentals? I had a great first experience with them, and got everything I wanted out of my 5-day rental period, despite persistent bad weather. It was enough for a fair trial. Some things you just have to see for yourself. And as a Nikon shooter already, you wouldn't have to rent a lens.

Gone Fishin'

As I warned a month ago, I have to take some personal time.

I plan to do some digital photography housekeeping (updating to CS6, downloading Thom's D800 Guide, setting up the Canon printer if I can possibly make room for it, reading about black-and-white conversion methods, experimenting with Photo Ninja, and actually making photographs with Y^e Fearsome Dragoon), and...er...well, actual housekeeping. TOP will return next Monday, Nov. 19th, a.m., or possibly Sunday if I can't keep my hands off it, or possibly as late as Wednesday if my vacation proves too exhausting.

(New comments will continue to be moderated.)

—Mike, Emperor of TOP but unfortunately the only minion

New '35mm' (Equivalent) for OM-D (and Micro 4/3)

Those of you who (like me) feel at home with the ~35mm-e angle of view and who (unlike me) need or want an alternative to the Panasonic Lumix G 20mm ƒ/1.7 will be happy to learn that Olympus will be shipping a fast, premium-quality (metal bodied!) 34mm-e lens in December.

The new lens, which can be pre-ordered now, appears to be intended to be a match with the high-end OM-D E-M5 and its even newer, even smaller stablemate with the same sensor, the E-PL5. It's more or less a stop faster than the older 17mm pancake, and has higher aspirations. Olympus is one of the premier lensmakers in the world, superior to most and the equal of any, and it seems to have energetically thrown all of its expertise and technology at this one—as many elements as the designers wanted (I'm guessing), nine (which is a lot for a lens of this spec); three aspherical elements including one "Super Dual Aspherical" element (which is also a lot for a lens of this spec); a high-refractive-index element (which is unusual for a lens this wide); and Olympus's new ZERO (Zuiko Extra-low Reflection Optical) coating. The press release even touts extreme precision of construction*, which is something you don't see very often. And, of course, it also comes with a premium price (remember, some people like that): $499.

It's the same focal length as the older pancake so that it can use the same VF-1 optical viewfinder. That's extra, as is the metal hood, but the lens does come with a metal lenscap.

Final judgement depends on performance, of course, but when Olympus does well it tends to do very well indeed. See it on the new E-PL5 here, starting at 1:35.

Mike
(Thanks to Eolake)

*"Each lens element is polished to an ultra-high level of working precision only possible with the progressive techniques developed by Olympus master craftsmen, and carefully assembled to ensure maximum accuracy and reliability."

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:

Nicholas Condon: "As much as I love the 20mm ƒ/1.7 (and I've taken thousands and thousands of frames with it), I think I'm going to buy one of these. I'm not sure whether I'll prefer the 35mm-e FOV to the 40mm-e, but I know that I'll appreciate the quieter autofocus when taking movies of my kids. I'm also excited about the possibility of faster autofocus; my Oly 45mm ƒ/1.8 will lock on my toddler pretty well, but he often outruns the 20mm. And, of course, I'll be buying the E-PL5 and/or E-PM2 on which to fasten it...."

Ed: "That really read like a puff piece press release. Esp. the * part which sounds like complete BS. Looks like a decent lens but I also doubt it's 'all metal.' Maybe vapor depositied metal over plastic...a la SX-70."

Mike replies: No, here's the press release. That was is my restating of the press release. The footnote was a quote from the press release.

John Krumm: "Pekka Potka has a nice write-up of his experience with the lens, comparing it to his copy of the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7."

Dennis Ng: "I do not agree that $500 is a premium price for a 35mm lens.

"By the way, I was surprise you can get ebook from Thom as I assumed (after so many purchase in the past that they come with CD, has to ship bra la bra la...). It is ebook! Shocking. Should have bring these long time ago as I read his site in parallel to yours. Thanks for information to update my old assumption."

Mike replies: Thom's great, isn't he? I calculated it, and he has 11.2X as much energy as I do. It would take me the rest of this year and all of 2013 to write a 'Guide' like that one. Well, assuming I could, which is assuming too much.

Impressions of the Olympus OM-D, Part I

A silver OM-D (it also comes in black) with the
standard 12–50mm zoom lens.

By Ctein

Most of you will be unsurprised to learn that I took the path of least resistance and bought the Olympus OM-D E-M5 (henceforth to be referred to simply as the OM-D).

I'd already decided that the Fuji X-Pro1 was not going to be the camera for me. That experience made it especially unlikely that I was going to buy any camera I couldn't work with first. Then Keeble and Shuchat in Palo Alto, a great full-service camera store that understands folks like me who want to spend an inordinate amount of time handling equipment, got a new shipment of OM-D's. After an hour handling it and checking out test photos on my laptop, I bought it. I haven't experienced one bit of buyer's remorse.

(In case folks are wondering, I didn't explicitly reject the Sony NEX-7. For all I know it would suit me even better, but if I waited around for the opportunity to test out the camera with an appropriate kit of lenses, it was going turn into of those cases of better being the enemy of good.)

The OM-D user interface sucks, but I've said that about every digital camera I've worked with. At least the UI in the OM-D is very similar to the Olympus Pen's, which I learned to live with. In contrast, the UI in the Fuji was never going to be compatible with my work style. Fortunately, the OM-D UI is sufficiently customizable that I can circumvent many of its irritations, but it is a daunting camera to learn. I spent most of a full evening studying the 133(!) page manual, and a copy lives in my iPad.

Mostly I reconfigured the controls. By default, the INFO button brings up the "super control panel" (SCP). It's a good place to do initial setup and change the color space setting from sRGB to the much higher quality Adobe RGB; which is otherwise hidden in the menus. Beyond that I don't use it. Either I'm looking at settings I never want to change again or ones I change frequently enough that I want more speedy access. So, under Custom Menu D ("Disp/PC")/Control Settings, I changed the INFO button so that it brings up the Live Controls, not the SCP. (It took me over five minutes to find that again, so I could point you to it. %&^# menus.)

The OM-D has five customizable buttons, even more with some lenses and the auxiliary battery pack. I can do a lot with five buttons. See Custom Menu B/Button Function. The fn2 button, right next to the shutter release, became a manual/autofocus toggle. The record button, right behind it, now zooms the viewfinder for more accurate focusing. I changed the compass arrows to Direct Function and assigned the down arrow to bring up the ISO settings and the right arrow to bring up the exposure mode (single frame, high-speed burst, self timer, etc).

What to do with the one remaining button, fn1? I'll get to that.

Fig. 1. The OM-D's reasonably long exposure range, in combination with low highlight contrast, makes blown-out highlights much less objectionable.

The OM-D has an excellent 12-stop (give or take) exposure range, with a very attractive rolloff in the characteristic curve highlights. That's Raw of course, but I only do Raw photography, so that's all I'm gonna be writing about in these two posts. In Figure 1 the direct reflections of the sun in the glass of the greenhouse and the cars of the Ferris wheel are far beyond the exposure range of any medium, silver or silicon, but they fade out gracefully without looking artificially clipped.

Still, given the uncontrolled lighting situations I photograph under, there are often times when I want to bracket exposures to hedge my bets or to be able to merge frames later for an extended exposure range. The Olympus UI includes a substantially useless exposure bracketing function. It's buried in the menus with no easy way to toggle it on or off. Once it's turned on, every exposure you make (single frame or burst mode) from then on is part of the repeating bracketing sequence. To get back to normal mode, you need to dig through the menus. A useful auto bracketing function would be one that I'd call up for one-time use to fire off a single sequence of bracketed exposures. Is that so hard? Apparently it is for this UI.

Ah, but I can program it! The UI lets me create five custom sets of settings (called "Mysets"). First, I saved my normal configuration as Myset1. Then I set the camera for slow burst mode with image stabilization and autofocus on, ISO 400, ƒ/4.5, and a 5-frame 2/3-stop-increment auto exposure sequence. I saved that as Myset2 and assigned Myset2 to the fn1 button. Then I reverted to Myset1.

Fig. 2. This is an HDR merge from a handheld bracketed sequence using the programmed controls I describe in the text.

Now, if I want a bracketed sequence, I hold down fn1 with my thumb and press the shutter release. The camera starts firing off the auto exposure sequence at four frames a second. When I've counted off five frames, I release the shutter release. Voilà, it's done! I let go of fn1 and my camera is back in normal operating mode. I can even do this handheld, because modern HDR programs are good enough to compensate for modest differences in framing between exposures. I generated Figure 2 from such a handheld sequence.

Whew! That was a lot of work. What it's got me, though, is a camera that fits my working style much better than the out-of-the-box interface.

Now to put this to use.

Unlike with the Fuji X-Pro, I can use the OM-D's eye level viewfinder! It has built-in diopter correction, but more importantly the eyecup is centered over the LCD screen and a full centimeter back from it. Between that and my glasses, my nose doesn't even touch the LCD glass unless I mash my face against the camera. Even then I leave a nose print only on the extreme edge of the screen, outside the image area.

Fig. 3. These two eagles were way up there, engaged in courtship or combat. Photographed with the Panasonic Lumix 45–200 mm lens at 200mm. The eye level viewfinder was critical to me being able to track the subjects.

Most of the time I'm entirely satisfied with the LCD back screen, even in bright daylight. The eye level viewfinder's important when I'm working with a long lens. Four decades of practice have given me a near-instinctive ability to raise an SLR to my eye and center it on the subject. I haven't developed that skill with back-screen viewing. Eye-level viewing was invaluable in catching figure 3 with the Panasonic 45-200mm Lumix zoom at the 200mm setting. The two bald eagles were swooping all over the place as they engaged in aerial battle or courtship (with eagles it can be hard to tell).

Fig. 4. A 150% enlargement from figure 3 shows
remarkable detail in the birds.

Figure 4 is a 150% blowup from that frame. High art it ain't, but it's a birdwatcher's delight. We couldn't see anywhere that much detail even with binoculars. The enlargement in figure 5 shows enough detail in the feathers to tell us that these were juveniles and the aerobatics were play, although whether playing at love or combat is something we'll never know.

Fig. 5. Well, what do you know? The wing markings say they're
juveniles. So it was all play.

As a pertinent aside, I can't figure out why so many reviewers are lukewarm about this lens. Maybe I just got a cherry sample, but it's always been a great performer for me.

As another pertinent aside, the improved image stabilization in the OM-D works. I couldn't handhold at 200mm with the Olympus Pen unless the shutter speed hit a millisecond. Now I'm pixel-sharp at 1/400th of a second. The OM-D stabilizes beautifully even when tracking fast-moving "birds," as in figure 6. This is full frame, so you can't really see how sharp the original is, but I tell you it looks like those planes are frozen in solid glass.

Fig. 6. With an eye level viewfinder, I can track even fast-moving "birds" at 200mm, and the OM-D's image stabilization gave me tack-sharp results.

Next week I'll start pushing the camera's limits.

[Continue to Part II]

Ctein

Ctein—yes, he has just the one name, and it's pronounced "kuh-TINE"—writes weekly for TOP. His column appears on Wednesday.

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:

Neil: "Had this camera for a while. Read a lot of reviews: some good, some indifferent. It just makes me smile when I pick it up!"

Ken White: "I was just looking at an architectural shot I made last weekend at the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Antonio. The image was made with a 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens handheld at 1/13 sec. @ ƒ/3.5 ISO 400. When viewed at 100% in Photoshop there is no motion blur. The detail in the image is remarkable.

"The E-M5 has plenty of user interface quirks. It took me some time to get everything set for my purposes. I also added an RRS L plate/grip to improve handling. Now I have a small, light and extremely responsive camera that works well for me. Makes me smile every time I use it."

Roy: "Since buying the OM-D (that's what I call it too) my D700 hasn't had a lot of work. Much of what's been said about the UI I'd endorse.

"One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the fact that the extremely small buttons are very easy to disturb inadvertently whilst handling the camera if it's powered up. I've actually had it erase the card accidentally by this means.

"Additionally the eyepiece plastic/rubber whatsit slides off very easily. It had detached itself and been retrieved many times before I eventually lost it. Amazingly Olympus U.K. sent a replacement (the wrong, deep, non-standard one, admittedly) within 24 hours. It's now taped on with insulating tape. In its absence wearers of spectacles can expect scratched lenses. The horrible, cheap plastic doodads that plug the flash shoe are likely to vanish pretty swiftly too if you're in the habit of using flash.

"Whilst not a show-stopper, it's a noisy little beast after using a D700 for years, too."

FW Scharpf: "It has taken me a while to be comfortable with the UI. I love the DR (ER), the detail and the lower weight (compared to my 5DII) And I am particularly happy with two features:

"One, the fact that I can now visually judge and control exposure when shooting (in the EVF or on the LCD). I only wish over/underexposure warnings (the 'blinkies') would also be available when selecting small AF areas on the touchscreen.

"Two, the fact that face recognition works perfectly when shooting portraits. In a session a few days ago, perfect focus on the eye lashes on the model's nearest eye was achieved in 90 percent of the shots taken with the Olympus 75mm at ƒ/2. A similar hit rate  had seemed utopian when I was doing portraits with my 5DII. But you need to have face recognition turned off when not doing portraits. Otherwise the focus area will jump all over the screen in the search of faces.

"And since A3+ prints from the OM-D and from the 5DII are indistinguishable, I am now about to sell all my Canon gear."

Nikon Old, Nikon New

So this is a pretty decent eBay product shot, isn't it? Camera's a bit dirty. Close enough for government work, as we used to say in D.C. You can read the serial number.

I have a bunch of schtuff to list (schtuff—that's a technical term) on eBay, and I wanted to shoot it with the D800. But I don't have a macro or a long lens for it.

So check out what I did...

...Just shot it with the 28mm and cropped. Instant digital zoom.

And the crop was too big—I had to reduce the image size. I could have stood twice as far away.

Hehe. Whee!

(Lighting is one umbrella at camera left.)

Mike

ADDENDUM: The camera is a Nikkormat (a.k.a. "Nikkomat," in Japan) FT3, manufactured for just a short period of time in 1977 while the then-new FM was being readied for sale. It was thus the last of the Nikkormats, Nikon's traditional (but always somewhat confusing to the public) name for its sturdy no-nonsense workhorse cameras just below the F line. (Many pros, especially beginning pros, preferred two Nikkormats to one F.) The FT3 was the only Nikkormat that accepted Auto-Indexing (AI) lenses. As with many old Nikkormats, the meter on this one no longer works. Otherwise it's still fully functional. The FT3 also has the distinction of having the shortest production run of any Nikon SLR (I believe—I'd have to ask Stephen Gandy to be sure).

It's actually fairly analogous to the D800/E—it was the top of Nikon's amateur camera line, but one tier below its flagship pro cameras, just like the D800 is.

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A book of interest today:

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Featured Comments from:

Pascal Jappy: "I am sooo jealous, I'm never reading your blog again. Not until tomorrow at least!"

Manuel: "Amazing shot. No moiré whatsoever ;-) "

ault: "Camera's a bit dirty??? I had thought that mine were moderately clean. It appears they are not."

Mike replies: Well, it's clean for real life. But look at the right-hand side of the top plate and you'll see what I mean. That's a light coating of grime that could easily be spruced up a bit.

As any tabletop photographer can tell you, lots of things show up in a product shot that sometimes aren't even visible to the eye unless you look carefully. Small-object photographers spend a lot of time getting things scrupulously clean in order to photograph them.

This used to be a lot more of a problem before you could spot with a click of the mouse. Of course, in eBay product shots, you have to be very careful what you spot out—you have to make sure it's something that's actually removable from the camera. There are times when I'm about to spot a white mark off a camera when I have to go back down to the basement and check that the white spot is actually a speck of dust that can be brushed off the camera itself. Cleaning up a photo of a object for sale if the object  itself can't be cleaned would be deceptive. It's usually a lot easier—still—just to make sure the thing is clean before you take its picture.

David Aspinall: "Congrats on your purchase but it just reinforces what for me is one of the problems of the digital age...Too much choice Too much money Too much in-built redundancy. The old Nikon will still be going long after the D800 is in a recycling bin."

Mike replies: Gasp.

Pavel: "That old Nikon is as beautiful as any sculpture and always potentially more useful too. If only to sit on a shelf that faithful servant should not be cast down like this, publicly and on fleabay of all fates, in the heat of your infatuation with the new. You will be sorry Mike! And I will use my 'toldyouso' emoticon on you, mercilessly, when you soon realize your terrible mistake! (As a man of your passion, intellect, good taste and good grammar undoubtedly will.) I know you would not sell a good book once you've thumbed through it! You've upended my faith in the known universe! By the way...umm ....how much ya askin'?"

Soeren Engelbrecht: "Nice, Mike. I'm constantly bewondered by seeing people—or even camera shops—trying to sell very expensive camera stuff and not being able to make a decent picture of it :-) They put their double-digit MP compact into 'macro mode' (which is often optimised for wide angle), move within two inches of the object, and then downsample to 0.8 MP or whatever they need. The result: weird perspective distortion—and often heavy barrel distortion, too. I'd definitely buy something from you, though :-) "

Mike replies: As the kids say now, "I know, right?"

The other thing that used to "bewonder" me is how often camera companies will put example photos in their brochures that either don't show off the qualities of the equipment or that have some obvious flaw. An old Contax brochure had an example picture, made with a Zeiss lens, that had obvious camera shake...and the caption talked about the sharpness of the lens.

It was later explained to me that often the U.S. importing arm of the camera company is responsible for the brochure, and just sends one of its tech reps out to snag a few sample pictures—and some of them just aren't terribly good photographers. You can see the same distinctions sometimes in digital review sites—the "sample" pictures from site to site, or even among different reviewers on the same site, can vary pretty widely in style and skill.

Final Verdict: The Nikon D800E and AF-S 35mm f/1.4G Lens

Last post in this saga.

I ain't the biggest gearhead in the sandbox, but I do know the territory pretty well. For 25 years I've deliberately made it a point to experience a wide variety of cameras of most types: I've tested dozens of cameras, owned dozens of cameras, and seen and handled literally hundreds more. I wrote the first of my many published camera reviews in 1989, in Darkroom Photography magazine. I was East Coast Editor of Camera & Darkroom magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Photo Techniques. Among the 150 or so published articles I have to my credit are more than 80 columns for the British Black & White Photography magazine and a number of the annual "World's 25 Best Cameras" features written for Photo Techniques.

My concerns and concentrations have sort of shimmied and segued back and forth between professional reviewing and my needs and enthusiasms in my own work. My weaknesses: I have relatively limited experience with toy cameras, underwater cameras, specialty aerial cameras, subminiature cameras, medium-format digital backs and pinhole cameras, infrared shooting, Foveon sensors, and extreme telephoto lenses.

Most other things I have at least a passing familiarity with. I've used many cameras on loan for periods ranging from a number of days to more than a year, and at least snapped a few frames with a wide variety of cameras ranging from a plastic Diana to a Deardorff 8x10*. I've tried literally hundreds of lenses. The first digital camera I used was the .7-MP Agfa ePhoto 1280 in 1997, and currently I own five of them, including an Olympus OM-D and a Sony A900. I also own eight film cameras including a whole plate Chamonix and two Rolleiflex 6008AFs.

There are of course a whole lot of cameras I haven't used, or tried, or seen.

Cutting to the chase: all things considered, the Nikon D800E and Nikkor AF-S 35mm ƒ/1.4G lens is the best overall photographic device of any description I have used thus far in my life.

•     •     •

That said, I'm not entirely certain that it's the best camera out there now, or even that it's actually appreciably better than the Olympus OM-D E-M5 for image quality in the small to medium-sized prints I make. My intuition—and that's all it is—is that digital technology has recently rounded another curve in its ongoing technological development, in that the engineers at the camera manufacturers are actively responding to the photographic community's concerns about dynamic range. This is leading to a new class of sensor and new emphases of implementation—and a new, higher level of image quality that is exciting and gratifying. These new FF Nikons; the D7000 and the Pentax K-5II; the newest rangefinder-style Fujis, starting with the X100 and definitely including the great X-Pro1; the current best Micro 4/3 camera, the OM-D; the NEX-7 and even the supersweet little Sony RX100 all seem to belong to this movement. There may be more. The Canon 5D Mark III, for one, might also belong in this group, though I don't know a lot about that one.

Although evolutionary in nature, this trend feels like a breakthrough to me. (The next breakthrough—currently still hull down on the horizon—will be when we're able to comfortably keep our digital cameras for seven to ten years instead of two to five. But that's a post for another day.)

•     •     •

Now then...people ask. But I don't usually see why it should be interesting to others what I actually do. As a photographer, I'm just another photography-phile, just like almost all of you. I don't see why my decisions amount to a bigger hill of beans than anyone else's.

But here's what I did. I dropped the rental camera off at UPS, and turned right around and drove to Mike Crivello's Cameras, my local camera store, and bought a D800.

I opted for the plain-jane version as opposed to the hot-rodded "E." For one thing, they had it in stock. The one I bought happens to be the very same one I handled the other day.

This is my first snap with the new camera, taken this morning. My dear doggie, a quarter-pit named Lulu. Ain't she handsome? Best-natured animal of any species I ever met. (At least towards me. She gets after some other critters pretty good, including my son's friend A.J. whom she doesn't cotton to for some reason. His friend Caleb is wary of her too. And she routinely scares the crap out of delivery people....)

The process I've been going through recently grew out of one central insight. I realized I was wasting a whole lot of emotional energy on the idea that I'm still going to be a B&W film photographer. Realistically, I have to give that idea up. That's a big step; black and white film photography and its entire culture was a huge part of my life for better than twenty years. And I loved it dearly. Still do.

But for me it's like resolving to walk everywhere when you have a car in the garage: you'll do it for a while, but the car is just too damn much easier. I wish I wasn't so lazy, but I am. I have to learn how to do exactly what I want to do with modern tools.

I really will have to sell most of my other cameras—along with the lens I bought, this is a very expensive camera. I've decided to keep just two digital cameras (one DSLR and one mirrorless) and one film camera**. For the DSLR, the D600 would have been a more sensible choice. Twenty-four megapixels is enough, and the D600's lighter build quality suits my usage level: I'm not hard on my cameras these days. But for some reason I just wanted the higher level model this time.

As for the D800, Nikon just seems to do this every once in a while: they hit a balance that seems clearly to exceed the sum of the specs. The image quality of this camera is truly exciting even for a jaded old photo-dawg like me. It sees in the dark, it's got oceans of pixels, and the highlight rendering seems to me like a long-simmering problem solved. And I find the camera itself marvelously comfortable and transparent to use, a highly refined design that falls to hand just right.

Lest you think that my purchase constitutes some sort of ringing, clarion endorsement of Nikon, though, let me bring you back to earth by pointing out that my last two major camera purchases were singularly, even rather inspiredly, unwise. I bought an A900 at the very end of its product run, for instance, paying full price for a camera that was just about to go past its sell-by date, that had been augmented by a significantly less expensive but nearly-as-good little brother (the A850), and that hadn't been terribly popular to begin with—certainly less popular overall than it deserved to be. It was a poor move on my part from a practical standpoint, and I will lose a significant amount of money on that one, as well as on the Don Quixote view camera. So, another facet of my ambition for the D800 is the hope that it will turn out to be a sensible, practical, and wise move. But, really, what I do is not necessarily any less dumb than the happy dumbass things most cameraholics do from time to time.

And I'm happy.

So that's it.

Mike

*For a while it was my ambition to collect a set of good or decent pictures taken with as broad a range as possible of different cameras and techniques. I gave this up as being sort of senseless, as well as too dorky by about a factor of two.

**Or possibly two, should the whole plate view camera prove unsalable. As one reader suggested, though, if I can't sell that on, I can always set it up in the corner of the living room as a superlative piece of decor and a conversation starter. That'll work. It's a true beauty.

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Featured Comments from:

Omer: "Nice image of Lulu, who definitely appears to have some opinions."

Dave: "As a very satisfied D800 user, I'm curious how much difference (if any) you see between the 'E' and standard model in real-world shooting. Maybe a quick follow-up post after you've used the new body for a few weeks?"

Mike replies: Okay.

Robert Harshman: "Congrats Mike, it's a great system, I ordered a D800 today as a backup to a D800E and primary if shooting products/people. Like you say, I think it's the best SLR I've ever held in my hands/used and I do have access to a Canon 5D3, a great camera too, but not quite a D800/E.

"A couple of notes on the D800/E use. Keep the ISO as low as possible cause you lose DR with every push up and it's not small. By the time you get to ISO 1600 or 3200 you have lost 4 stops of DR. And based on my own test and others reviews, don't push the ISO beyond 1600. You are better off beyond that under exposing and pushing the shadows up in PS.

"And lastly, but perhaps most useful is try Photo Ninja RAW converter, it's automatic smart lighting adjustment should blow your mind vs. ACR and you actually get a few more pixels as if that matters here. Seems most DSLR's actually capture more pixels than the stated dimension and what all other RAW converters produce.

"Enjoy the current top of the hill :-) "

Riley: "It's good to be happy."

Jeff Smith: "Enjoyed the posts on the 800E and hope you thoroughly enjoy the camera too. I sometimes think that coveting new gear is a sickness, but you like what you like and new gear is nifty. I bought two new cameras this year—well, three if you count the used Nikon 35Ti film camera, which is a jewel of an old semi-compact film camera, but by golly is it slow in operation to today's gear.... And as I tell my wife I sold two cameras this year too, so all-in-all not too bad. Heck I even sold the old Yashica T4 for more than I paid for ages ago. And now I can't stop thinking of the Fuji X-E1 and that wonderful little Sony RX1. I guess it never ends, does it. But really do we want it to?"

Mike replies: Not me. It's fun!

 

 

An Example of Real Aliasing

By Carl Weese

I bet the resolution of the D800, E or not, would dramatically change this situation. Here's a screen grab of the ACR window in 100% view looking at a file including a corrugated screen in glancing afternoon sunlight. I think that the distance/focal-length was such that the corrugation in flat light could have been at the limit of resolution, but adding a shadow from raking light for each "stripe" dropped it below pixel size so [in Carl's original —Ed.] we've got true sensor/subject pixel-level moiré interference:

(click to open)

The patterns on screen change at different magnifications, but they never go away. Based on the 100% view, I don't see how it can go away in a print—the basic structure of the subject has not been imaged, it's replaced by a bunch of false data—but I'll do a test.

The other side of this, however, is that I can easily see how more-than-doubling the sensor resolution could blow right by the problem, though of course the G3 does in fact have an AA filter, however weak.

It does make me wonder what else could set things off—not set off the annoying screen-only stuff, but actual pixel/detail interference, even with 36MP. Rows of windows of buildings on the Manhattan skyline from Hoboken? Cable bridge at just the right/wrong distance? Somebody's Harris tweed jacket in a street scene? Building in background with contrasty brick and mortar pattern?

Carl

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Veterans Day

President Obama with Marti Kirkpatrick
yesterday in Section 60. Photo by Ed.

As you may know, it was Veterans Day in the U.S.A. yesterday.

In other years on this day, we've mentioned Sgt. Scott Kirkpatrick, because his father Ed is a longtime TOP reader. Scott got a special honor yesterday, on what would have been his birthday, had he lived. Ed's wife Marti tells the story:

Today, November 11, Scott would have been 32 years old. As always we went to Arlington to share a wee dram of the Glenfarclas 21 with him and celebrate and honor our boy. We always go early when it is still fairly quiet. A young man approached us at once, identifying himself as a photographer with The Washington Post and asked if he could photograph us and ask about Scott and we said of course, we always (well almost always) like to have any recognition/remembrance of our son. So, some of Scott's story may be in the Post.

The highlight of the day however is pictured above. As they have done so often, President and Mrs. Obama and Vice President and Dr. Biden came to section 60 to honor our loved ones. Ed and I had the great privilege to shake hands with, be hugged by and briefly chat with both the President and First Lady. When I told President Obama today was Scott's 32nd birthday he turned to an aid for a split second calling them by name and asked for a coin. It is a challenge coin and has the Presidential Seal on the front, the White House on the back with his number, name and signature. He placed it on Scott’s stone. It's a very special birthday present and unlike everything else folks leave at his stone, this one came home to live with Scott's flag, medals, and family pictures.

It was a nice day, and Scott would have had fun.

—Marti Kirkpatrick

As Marti mentions, she and Ed were pictured on the Post site, drinking a toast to Scott as they do every year.

The Post photographer was Matt McClain, whose work Ed wanted to bring to your attention. Ed says, "We had a really nice chat with him yesterday and I think his work is quite good. He is a freelance photojournalist and his sense of perspective, design and light is very interesting. His shots of us and others made the Post’s online gallery as well as the back page of today's Metro section."

Matt's website is here.

Mike
(Thanks to Ed and Marti Kirkpatrick)

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D800E Day 6: Moiré

I really did luck out on Saturday afternoon. Sunday was a total bust for shooting: dark and rainy. (If you watched Sunday Night Football last night, that was the weather we were getting here, too—I'm a hundred miles from Chicago.)

I did something marginally useful with the camera yesterday, at least.

I futzed with it.

On the old CompuServe Photo Forum back at the dawn of Time, it was called camera-fondling. I just fiddled with the thing in my armchair (yes, I have an armchair) while suffering from Packer withdrawal (bye week this week). Worked out all the buttons, explored the menus, practiced various ways of holding it, "tested" a few things." Heh.

There's very little remarkable about the D800/E in this respect except how utterly comfortable it is. It's not even all that complicated unless you want it to be. The full-sized, 100% viewfinder is great, even with my glasses on; I can make it do pretty much everything I want it to do without much problem; and it fits my hands just fine. As I said before, various individuals might have one or two niggles based on the way they personally like things to be laid out, but longtime Nikon shooters are likely to have zero problems adapting to this one.

What's more, The weight and bulk of the camera with the 35mm ƒ/1.4G makes it easier for me to hold the camera steady. I compared shots taken of the bookshelf at various shutter speeds with the same shots by flash, and I can handhold this pretty low for me. I do better with it than I do with, say, the K-5 or the G3.

I use a wrist strap with it. When I transport an SLR, it hangs from my right shoulder via a small-pad UpStrap, by far my favorite camera strap because it doesn't slip off my shoulder. (I can't hang a camera from my neck for more than a few minutes). When I shoot I carry the camera in my right hand and let the strap dangle. The wrist strap is for insurance. The one I use is the OpTech Cam Strap QD, an $8.95 special for small digicams that comes in a wide variety of colors (mine's black; I linked to the blue one because the picture's better). I wouldn't want to let a heavy DSLR like the D800 ever dangle from such a lightweight wrist strap, but it's enough to catch it if I ever lose my grip. (I tested it, ten inches above the cushions of the dog's bed just in case of failure.) The Nikon is comfortable to grip and hold, and I find it comfortable to carry.

-

[Ed. Note: I removed the original section about moiré from this post, because I think I messed up.

I can say for sure that I looked closely at a large number of the photographs I took with the D800E over the fivc-day rental period, and I could find no evidence of anything that looked like moiré or false color or interference patterns. That's not definitive evidence of anything except that I didn't happen to observe any problems during this trial.

My apologies to a number of commenters, whose comments are now "orphaned"—that is, they respond to something that's not there any more. Apologies as well for any additional discomfort, inconvenience, disappointment, etc. this late change might cause anyone.]

-

Mike

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