TOP will be off tomorrow in honor of the holiday. With warm wishes to you and your family, whether you're celebrating or not, wherever in the world you are. And as always, thanks for reading!
All best,
Mike
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March 2013
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Sobel vs. Eggleston: The Decision
Fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, and promissory estoppel. Those are the bases upon which collector Jonathan Sobel sued photographer William Eggleston in April 2012.
Sobel had paid a reported $250,000 for a large (~17" wide) dye transfer print of "Memphis (Tricycle)," the famous picture that graces the cover of William Eggleston's Guide
Judge Deborah Batts of the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, however, dismissed the suit last Thursday, writes Julia Halperin at ArtInfo. Seems the Judge agreed with Eggleston, whose representatives said the larger inkjet prints in the Christie's sale are a new expression of the work.
Bill Eggleston*. Photo by Maude Schuyler Clay
That also seems reasonable, actually. Strictly, an "edition" is a multiple printing of a photograph at one time and using one method. "Limited edition" basically means that you're printing only so many and that's that. Saying it's a limited edition is just a formalization of that reality—you might give each print a number, announce the total number, and mark the prints with some sort of identifier that makes it easier for people to tell they're from that edition. This all comes from printmaking, where many techniques technically limit the number of good copies that can be made.
The art community has long frowned on artists confusing the issue, but at the same time has long been lenient about allowing other editions—as long as they're distinct from the limited one and not likely to be confused or conflated with it.
In that sense the Judge has gone along with standard practice (insofar as there is such a thing) in this case.
Sobel, who owns 190 Egglestons, still disagrees.
He's wrong about one thing, though—he claimed that the sale of the newer inkjet prints diluted the value of his holdings. Unlikely, in our humble opinion.
Mike
(Thanks to John S Krill)
*Anyone know who took this? I spent some time searching, but have not been able to identify the photographer.
UPDATE from Hugh Crawford: "Maudie Schuyler Clay took it way back when.
"Maudie in 1979—Polaroid diptych—edition of one."
Mike replies: Thanks Hugh (and the others who replied and correctly identified Maude). I did try to email her, but have gotten no reply thus far.
She's quoted in this article talking about the portrait. (Thanks to Rodger Dicks for the latter.)
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Alan: "Working in an art gallery that sells limited edition prints, it's a familiar problem. Whilst nominally legal to release new editions of pieces at a later date in different sizes or formats, it always feels a little dishonest. Similarly, many of my clients who bought a 'rare, sold out piece' often experience upset when they see it on the wall a few years later. For my money, make as many editions as one pleases, but I feel they should all be acknowledged on the provenance of every single piece from every edition (unless of course the piece is only ever an open edition and sold as such)."
Chaitanya Patel: "For the record, I am a lawyer, albeit not in New York, and I think that legally (and in my view morally) the decision was the right one because the fact that one edition is limited, does not preclude other editions being made from the same negative.
"However, some of the responses to this post have been not about the law, but about what people feel in their bones to be right and so I'm going to chip in with what I feel instinctively about this. I haven't spent a great deal of time thinking this through, so I would appreciate robust criticism of my position if anyone strongly disagrees.
"I think there's something inherently wrong about valuing a piece of art higher because fewer other people get to see it, or get to see it in the same form. I think as a collector, if you enjoy something and buy it on that basis, you ought to be glad that others will be able to enjoy it as you did, or in a slightly different format.
"If you don't, my view is that your position is selfish and narcissistic and is built upon a foundation of denying to others a pleasure that costs you nothing.
"If your response to this is to say that the collectors' pleasure is not merely one of aesthetic appreciation, but also that he made a financial investment based on the promise of limited supply, then all I can say is fine, but he or she does that within the legal system governing these contracts, and can't complain if they haven't fully understood for what that allows in terms of future editions.
"I also think that artists shouldn't issue limited editions, but somehow I'm less annoyed at them for doing that than I am at collectors for getting annoyed when it doesn't mean very much."
Mark Roberts: "I think Sobel's goal is...exactly what he's achieving now: Great awareness of the existence of a relatively small number Eggleston prints in a now-reproducible medium (dye transfer)...and a subsequent increase in their value. Production of new, expensive Eggleston prints in inkjet media will do nothing but increase the cachet (and price) of the old dye transfer prints. Whatever Sobel is spending on this lawsuit is an investment that will pay of handsomely should he ever sell his prints. And I think he knows this perfectly well."
Friday, 29 March 2013
Hamster Wheel
I was in Mike Crivello's Cameras in Brookfield, Wisconsin, a couple of days ago, chatting with the guys. If you live in Milwaukee, or anywhere near, you should make a trip out there. It's a good camera store, with good people. It's where I bought my D800 and one of my two Nikkors for it.
Don't forget to visit your own local camera store once in a while, if you're lucky enough to have one. I send local friends to Crivello's.
Driving home, it occurred to me that it's been more or less ten years even since I bought my first digital camera, from Crivello's. (Maybe it was 12 years. I have no "timeline memory.")
It was a three-megapixel Olympus C-3040z. My big concern when I bought it was responsiveness—digital cameras were slow. If you pre-focused it, it was okay, but if you didn't...well, I have a hilarious test shot of a tour boat moseying down the Milwaukee river. I pressed the shutter button when the boat occupied the middle of the frame. The picture is of the stern of the boat disappearing out of the frame to one side.
Olympus C3040z, introduced in 2001. Photo courtesy dpreview.com.
I no longer have it—it died. Posting a photo of the once-$750 camera (or was it $850? I have no memory for numbers, either) sitting on top of the trash in the wastebasket elicted from readers the recommendation to recycle my electronics, which I've been doing ever since. The camera is antiquated now. So is the memory media. Remember "Smart Media" cards? They were a '90s replacement for 3.5" floppies. Mine were 16 and 32 megabytes. I said mega, sonny.
In the ten or 12 years since then, I've spent more money on cameras than in all the rest of my life combined—and that includes my Leica M6 in 1991 and the new Mamiya RZ outfit I bought during my abortive studio career.
Part of that is because, during the past decade, I couldn't seem to keep my hands off all the splendid film cameras that were going begging.
But I've spent more just on digital cameras than I ever did on film ones. I should have kept a log. Yes, my friends make fun of me on account of all the cameras that go through the revolving door. I guess it's a hardened into a pathology at this point. Still, it's a fine merry-go-round they've got us on these days, isn't it?
Or perhaps the better analogy would be to a hamster wheel. The makers make, the buyers buy. The days of using one camera for ten years might return, but the years of the Digital Transition were not that time.
Rather worryingly, I can't find the pictures I took with that Olympus. They're supposed to be on the hard drive somewhere, but I'll be darned if I know where. Hmm.
And here's another little cool tidbit from Crivello's. They didn't have an RX1, but they did have a glossy, multi-page Sony brochure for it. (I said, "All right, but I am not going to buy one." Marty just looked at me. He was probably thinking, "Okay, but you might.") In it, there is an "actual size" illustration of the RX1, so we put an RX100 1" digicam next to it.
Pretty amazing. The RX100 is a very small camera, if you've never seen one.
It's no wonder we keep buyin' 'em.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2013 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 Muse: "My first digicam was the Olympus c8080, an 8-megapixel version of the one you show here. I recently dug it out, dusted it off, charged the original battery, and gave it to my 8 year old grandson, who is having a ball with it."
Paddy C: "The RX1 is shockingly small. I did a Camerasize comparison with the X100S and the NEX-5N (which I own). Sort of unbelievable. If I had more disposable income I would have bought an RX1 already."
Bill Crelin: "Mike, on your past recommendation, in these pages, I stopped in that camera store and they are heads and shoulders above any other brick and mortar retail outlet outside of Chicago. Thanks again for the heads up."
Doug: "It's always fun for me when these 'My first digital camera' conversations start. My first was a Logitech FotoMan from back in January of 1992. Grayscale only and tiny 376x284 pixel images. I bought the little Fotoman for work because I could see that in my world the immediacy of digital would eclipse film in short order. I took a shot of a failed test part, printed it on a laser printer, and faxed it to our engineering office back east. I got a call from my contact back there who told me, 'that new camera just paid for itself.' I continued to shoot film while upgrading through the Kodak 1mpx series and then on to Nikon CoolPix series. In 2000 I shot my last roll of film with a lovely Nikon F3HP. These days I shoot a Nikon D600."
eric peterson: "I have spent more money on digital Cameras since 1992 than I did in my whole life as well...times 5.... But I have paid practically nothing for film and developing. I have done the calculations and found that given the amount of images (340,000+) I have taken since then, I have more than saved my money. But would I have taken that many photos with film? No. Would I have missed some amazing shots with films because I was being more careful? Yes. Interesting."
BH: "The hamster wheel is real and ridiculous, and I wanna get off. Earlier this year I bought a 6x6 TLR [twin-lens reflex, like a Rolleiflex —Ed.], which led to a purchase of a 35mm body and equipment to develop and scan my own B&W negatives. Everybody said digital was so much better because you don't have the recurring film costs, but I'd need to shoot a lot of film to make up for the $1,000 in depreciation I've taken on my 5D Mark III in a years time. Of course I could keep my digital stuff for ten years, but it's too hard to resist the never ending cycle of enticing new products. I'm just tired of being marketed to every second of the day. Time to check out for a while. No new electronics, no more Facebook, no more unnecessary junk. Time to cut through the noise and live for a while."
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Ask Mike
Got any questions?
Mike
UPDATE 1 p.m.: Okay, I've got to cut this off now! I was literally laughing when I posted this...what a dumb idea for a post. At the same time, I thought it might be fun. And it was. Thanks for all the questions, including the ones I didn't answer.
Oh, and I knew right from the start that I was going to get that question about the velocity of the swallow. [g]
Original contents copyright 2013 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 Questions from:
Michael Roche: "Mike, whatever happened to the printer you took delivery of last year?"
Mike replies: It's still sitting in a large box in the middle of the living room floor, I'm sad (and a little ashamed) to say. The living room remodel has to get done before I'll have room to set it up, and that project is just grinding along with painful slowness.
I've hired an organizer, though, and she's coming every week, and she leaves me with "homework" to do on my own. So progress is being made. Just...slowly.
My biggest business problem (and I guess it's nice that I can say this) is that my home office is just critically undersized. I need three times as much room, and six times as much would be put to good use. I just don't know what to do about it...no room to relocate it, no room on the lot for an addition, no money/energy/time for a move. There is no easy solution, and believe me I've been putting my mind to it.
Will: "Why does a good file, shrunk, (almost always) look better than a file that starts that size?"
Mike replies: That answer's too long for this post, but I've got a splendid visual example of this and have been thinking about writing a post about it. I need Ctein to be less busy so that I can confer with him on it, though. Taken under advisement for the future.
Bob Keefer: "Yeah. What do you think the camera marketplace is going to look like in 10 years?"
Mike replies: I don't know. No crystal ball. But see previous post for pessimistic fatalistic angle on it.
Stephen Scharf: "Mike, Any plans to review the new Fuji X100S? Cheers, Stephen."
Mike replies: Yer makin' me feel bad. A reader just offered to let me use his new one for three weeks, and I turned him down. Just too much to do to do it justice. I really could use an assistant, but to hire an assistant I really would need a bigger office...(see above). Every problem is interrelated with every other problem!
Rob: "Can you (and are you willing to) describe your technique for your digital B&W conversions? I flail around trying different things but am rarely happy. Perhaps it's my choice of lighting more than anything else. The B&W photos you posted from the NEX 6 review are good examples of what I'd like to achieve but never seem to be able to to."
Mike replies: Right now I'm using Silver Efex Pro 2, part of the bundle Google just radically lowered the price on (see this post). I finally realized I just wasn't getting what I wanted easily enough with ACR's controls.
The problem with B&W conversion isn't the tools, though, really...it's judgment. That is, you have to know what to look for and what you're after. How to get there isn't as much of a difficulty.
It seems a rather specialized topic, because I'm not sure how many people do B&W conversions (except in the horrid, debased, lowest-common-denominator "let's try to save this frame that's not working out in color" populist way). But maybe I could concentrate on the aesthetic judgments rather than just the technique and make a post or two that are interesting that way. Again, I'll take this under advisement.
Tony Rowlett: "I want to know how your darkroom is going!"
Mike replies: It's nearly done and I've been using it...now and then. Again, my problem is that I have too much I could be doing and not nearly enough time to do it in. Or energy, in the evenings.
I've been remiss in not posting an update for too long. That's probably because I'd have to clean the darkroom up to take pictures of it, and the organizer and I are currently using it as a staging area for all the stuff I have to put on eBay. Comma, when I have time.
[Another] Mike: "Why is it so difficult for digital camera makers to design models with decent manual focusing?"
Mike replies: Probably because most people don't manually focus. DSLR viewfinders are often small mirror-boxes instead of glass prisms, the coverage area is smaller making the viewfinder image smaller and harder to see, and most viewing screens are of the "brightscreen" type to make up for the brightness shortage of the mirrorbox arrangement, and those don't have good "focus snap" (said of focusing screens on which it's easy to see when the image is in focus).
Two recommendations: find a full-frame DSLR that has interchangable focusing screens and research to see if people are liking one particular screen for manual focusing; or, use a Sony with focus-peaking like the NEX I'm in the process of reviewing. They're actually surprisingly good for manual focusing!
James: "What's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Mike replies: What do you mean, an African or European swallow?
Mark Sampson: "What's your photo project for spring/summer 2013? By which, of course, I mean 'What subject are you going to photograph with the intent to produce a small, finished project, by the end of the year?'"
Mike replies: I'm not sure if it's grand enough to qualify as a project, but I plan to rent the Zeiss 100mm Makro-Planar for the D800 and do some portraits with it and with the Nikkor 85mm ƒ/1.8G. I've been mulling over various ways of finding portrait subjects. Hey, at least I have a business card to approach people with now.
Sal Santamaura: "Yes, the question I already asked in a comment to your Day 1 Sony + Zeiss post: '...the test I'm hoping you can write up is of Hartblei's 40mm Superrotator on your Dragoon. LensRentals doesn't have it, but maybe TOP world headquarters can arrange for a loan from the manufacturer. At more than twice the Dragoon's cost, you probably wouldn't buy one even though it is your favorite focal length. Seriously, that combination, if it works well, could be what replaces a 4x5 for me as age diminishes my carrying capacity. Please consider trying it out.' So, have you considered it? ;-) "
Mike replies: Not really. What's wrong with the Lens Corrections > Manual controls in Adobe Camera Raw?
James Hildreth (partial comment) [Ed. Note: See the Comments section for the rest of James's comment. As well as for the questions I'm not going to answer mainly because I don't know the answers or have nothing to say]: "If prize-winning photographs can be taken with DX cameras and lenses (and beat out the FX shots), why does FX continue to be the holy grail? Seems like its just a case of 'bigger is better' and a lot of hype." [Ed Note #2: For anyone who doesn't know, DX is Nikon's term for the reduced APS-C sensor size, and FX is its term for full-frame, 24x36mm sensors.]
Mike replies: Well, I can't answer why other people consider them so, and I don't consider anything to be the "holy grail" myself, but I think there are three reasons to consider full-frame (FX) cameras: 1. Because the camera viewfinders are restored to traditional 35mm-camera sizes and are bigger and easier to see; 2. Because legacy focal lengths and actual legacy lenses (especially on the wide end) are restored to their traditional angles of view and (again, especially on the wide end) their coverage isn't wasted; and 3. Because it's easier to achieve the "shallow depth of field" look that is fashionable in many quarters right now, especially with fast lenses.
I guess a fourth reason is that some people do consider that they have, or potentially have, somewhat higher image quality. My opinion about that is that you generally need to skip a sensor size to see an appreciable difference that matters: that is, APS-C is better than 1", full-frame is an improvement on 4/3, medium format is a real improvement on APS-C; moving up or down just one sensor size really isn't enough of a difference to fire anybody up that much.
I personally think 4/3 or APS-C sensors are the best all-around compromise, all things considered. APS-C is certainly best if you do a lot of long tele work.
LJ Slater: "Hi Mike! Can I send you every photo I've ever taken and ask you to pick out the keepers for me? This is the worst part of photography. Every couple of months, I 'give up photography forever and this time I mean it.' Also, what's your favorite vintage Nikkor and what should I do with all my slides and should I switch from E6 to C41? Thanks!"
Mike replies: No; why would you do that?; the 45P, the old 55mm ƒ/3.5 Micro-Nikkor, or the 28mm ƒ/2.8 or 85mm ƒ/2 AIS's; put them in archival boxes at least; and, not enough information, but probably.
Kenneth Wajda: "Do you think we are too gear-oriented these days? Seems like gear is in our way, as we incrementally get better cameras, but there's nothing wrong with the ones we have. Does digital feed our gadget-lust, at the expense of making pictures? I feel like it does for me at times. Like this is all just a bunch of noise, the image quality is already great. But wait, there's a new announcement coming...."
Mike replies: Do you need me here? Seems like you answered your own question.
I'm too gear-oriented, but that's because writing about gear is an essential part of how I make my living. I do sometimes pine for life with one camera and a lot of time for shooting, but it's not in the cards for me personally.
Michel: "Hey Mike, when is the next installment of the TOP photo 'contest'? Unless I missed it there was only one round of the three that had been announced."
Mike replies: And we're back to answer #1...with me feeling sad and a little ashamed again. This is something I periodically revisit, and keep meaning to pick up again...it was so much fun and I would just love to do more with it.
To be honest, the original idea of making a print sale of reader pictures, which is essentially a good idea I think and one that appeals to me, ran into a significant snag. And that is this: with every sale I run, the #1 most important thing to me is whether the photographer is reliable and dependable. Just imagine the hassle and ill-will if we ran a sale, collected all the money, and the photographer failed to follow through with making and shipping the prints. It would be a disaster. And, since it would be a huge time-sink for me, it would also probably be a disaster for TOP, possibly even threatening its existence. I've been accused of only running sales of pictures by my friends, but that's because I'm picking people to work with who I am reasonably well assured are professional and dependable, and will come through for me.
So let's say we pick three great pictures from three different photographers and arrange a sale of all three. In all three cases the photographers would essentially be strangers to me. I wouldn't have as much assurance that they would come through with their end of the bargain. Mass producing and shipping large numbers of prints is a significantly difficult task; it takes a lot of time and effort over a short span of time (because the prints have to be delivered in a timely fashion). I'd be chancing it, hoping that each of the photographers are going to come through with their end of the bargain. But it's a significant risk, and a significant worry. And, with three prints by three different photographers in the sale, I'd be multiplying my risk by three! At least in the past when we offer two or three or four or six prints, they're all from the same photographer.
See the problem? It stopped me up, at the time.
Now I think I have a solution to the problem. What we'd do is just hire Ctein to make the prints and then do the fulfillment from here (I'd hire people to do it, I wouldn't do it myself). Ctein is a superb professional—he may be a hippie to the bone and be into alternative lifestyles et cet., but don't succumb to stereotyping—he is supremely organized and utterly dependable, as professional as any pro I've ever known. He's written 280 columns for this site (well, 281 if you count next week's), and I'm hard pressed to think if he's ever missed his deadline even once. If it was once it was only once. His columns have been late to go up a handful of times, but in each case it's been my fault, or the fault of circumstances beyond our control.
And there are two more problems with having Ctein make the prints and doing the fulfillment ourselves. First, what if the photographer is actually a fine printmaker? I've contacted a few people and sounded them out about the prospect of a print sale, and they've answered, "Cool, where should I get the prints made?" Mighty Ctein to the rescue there. But, for real printmakers, the printmaking is part of the art, and buyers would understandably want to purchase a print made by the artist.
And the second problem is that when you start talking about having Ctein make the prints and me do the bookkeeping, money collection, and fulfillment, what you're really talking about is me running an entire small business from here. Because that's what it would be. I'd have to get a shopping cart built, do all the customer service, purchase the packaging, keep the books, hire the people to pack and ship the prints Ctein makes...on and on.
Understand, I could spend an entire 40-hour work week just writing posts. Literally...just doing the writing for TOP could be a full-time job. (Of course, then the writing [and the research that goes into it] would be a lot better.) Never mind keeping up with emails, moderating all the comments, doing ad sales and administration, keeping the books, doing my own IT, et cetera ad infinitum. You see the problem. All of which works fine for very high-energy individuals like, say, David Pogue and Thom Hogan. But I am decidedly a low-energy individual!
However, I think I may have hit on a solution that's workable all around. Stay tuned for more at some point in the future. But don't hold me to a timeline...and you probably shouldn't hold your breath.
William Flowers: "Would love to hear you comment on photographs and photographers that have influenced you in some way. It would certainly be a great column or series of columns."
Mike replies: I've actually been thinking of this too. Will take it under advisement. Thanks.
Michael Farrell: "I'm fairly sure you use traditional Photoshop rather than Lightroom. Any reason? I found Lightroom, when I made the switch, to be more 'photographer-friendly' overall. Have you ever considered using it?"
Mike replies: Not really. I'm not good with computers, and distinctly poor at learning new software (I pick it up easily enough, I just don't retain it). I've been using Photoshop since about 1996 and I've achieved a reasonable degree of facility with it, and I just don't want to change. (Although in a sense I have changed, since I would say my main image editing program now is ACR.)
I do think the majority of photography enthusiasts are now using Lightroom.
mark: "Shooting any film these days?"
Mike replies: The last time was October or November, with the Rollei. I've been strenuously resisting splurging on the new Canon 35mm ƒ/2 IS, which I could use with a film Canon for shooting XP2. Must...not...succumb...must...not...succumb....
Ed Hawco: "Mike, does your Olympus OM-D seem to have a mind of its own? I just got back from a 10-day trip, much of which was spent with my OM-D around my neck (a departure; I generally use a wrist strap). Over the 10 days, the OM-D unilaterally decided to change focus points at least a dozen times. I prefer one focus point in the middle (old school; focus and recompose), but it was randomly assigning focus points in random places, and once or twice simply chose a different focus scheme entirely. One time it randomly threw itself into 'cloudy' white balance mode (I generally keep it on 'auto'). I also had two or three lock-ups (turn off, turn on to fix). Are you (or anyone else reading) experiencing this?"
Mike replies: YES, it does have a mind of its own, and it's a devious little bugger and not to be trusted. Just when you think you've got it doing one thing, you find out it's doing another.
I'm only half kidding....
Adrian: "What happened to your Mamiya 7?"
Mike replies: The lens died. Leaky oil from the aperture blades, which has vaporized and deposited itself on the inner elements of the lens. So, a question back to you: would you a) get a new lens; b) try to get the lens fixed; c) sell the camera body without the lens; or d) throw the camera in the back of the cabinet and worry about it some other day?
I chose "d."
Rob Atkins: "Mike, would you like to comment on the following quote of yours, made on TOP some time ago? 'I'm seriously considering a photo project on all the weird places you can buy unhealthy crap to stuff your face with in America—there is a candy aisle at the office supply store, fer chrissakes.'"
Mike replies: Sure. I mean this in the gentlest possible way: I think the food industry is trying to kill us.
They don't have anything against any of us personally, mind you. If a bunch of juvenile delinquents throw an old tire off a freeway overpass, and it happens to kill a driver passing down below, it doesn't necessarily mean they had any antipathy towards that particular person...specifically.
"Ground zero for fat, salt, and sugar as food groups": the Iowa State Fair.
Photo by Mike Plews.
But they've learned—following good sound economic principles to maximize their business, as outlined in Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson—that they can induce continual cravings in otherwise normal people by continually force-feeding us massive overdoses of salt, sugar, and fat, preferably all at once. Sugar in particular is the absolutely perfect industrial foodstuff: it's plentiful, it has a high perceived value so it can be priced high, it produces mild dependency and cravings in people who eat too much of it, and it doesn't spoil. Ideal!
Slight downside: laboratory rats, when given a choice of healthy food or sugar water, will consume sugar water until they die of malnutirition. This is apparently also true of human beings, although the ways in which we shorten our lives by this method are somewhat more complex.
This is a hot button topic for me, so I'd better stop before I get too far into it. But I recommend Michael Moss's Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
Oh, and I haven't gotten yelled at for taking a picture in a retail establishment yet, although the NEX-6 is much better for this than the D800.
psu (partial comment): "Hmmm. A question. How about this: Why prints? Why go through all the trouble when in a couple of years you'll be able to look at your picture at 300 dpi on a 27-inch LCD screen that has a wider brightness and color range than that printer can do anyway? What is it about the human psyche that makes us emotionally attach ourselves to processes versus results? How's that?"
Mike replies: Depends if you like prints better and appreciate them more. I tend to.
Also, a print is potentially a better or more stable record of what the artist/creator intended the picture to look like. I can't really insure that when you look at some screen somewhere, you're really seeing what I intend. But if I make a reasonably stable print, I don't need to be there to monitor it throughout its life: I've "published" it (in effect) as I want it to be, and future viewers can look at it and get a good idea of what I intended for it.
Further: you can trade in objects. You can't trade in electrons. There would be no art market for photographs if there were no objects.
Then try this: go to a good art museum and look carefully and closely at a number of oil paintings. Then go home and look up the same paintings in Google image search. Pay close attention to your feelings between the different experiences. That difference is usually there to some degree when looking at original artifacts or some remote representation of them. Whether this makes a difference to you is for you to decide.
Your choice, your call. But to me, the print is the thing. Of course, it's better that most photographs aren't prints (very few of mine are).
• • •
[That's all I have time for today. Gotta get back to the NEX-6 summary. Thanks for the questions! I've left the comments open but I don't think I'll be answering any more questions. Should we do this again sometime? Maybe I should get Ctein to do one some day. —Mike]
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
How to Minimize Folds and Cracks in Print Scans
Fig. 1. A scan of a cracked and crinkled photograph.
This week's column by Ctein
Here's a wonderful little trick I learned last year from one of my readers, Carl Kracht.
One of the difficulties that pops up with scanning prints is that if there are any creases, folds, ripples, tears or cracks in the paper, they catch the directional light in the scanner like you wouldn't believe. Figure 1 is a great example of it; notice how below the crack is darker than above it. It's not hard to use spot healing or cloning tools to get rid of the actual cracks, but what you do about the patches of different brightness? My old answer to that would be lots of tedious dodging and burning in in an adjustment layer. Carl gave me a much better one.
Fig. 2. Same photograph rotated 180° and scanned again.
Rotate the print 180° and make a second scan, as shown in figure 2. Reversing the direction the scanning light comes from reverses the pattern of shadowing and highlighting in the paper.
Then average those two scans together (figure 3). It eliminates that problem! It can even make some fine cracks and damage disappear.
Fig. 3. The Statistics/Mean blend of the two scans in figures 1 and 2.
In Photoshop CS6 Extended, this algorithm is buried under "File/Scripts/Statistics... ." Choose Stack Mode: Mean and point Photoshop at the two files you want Photoshop to combine. Make sure that the "Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images" box is checked. Click OK, and Photoshop generates an averaged blend of the two files.
Any image processing program that has a similar averaging function can do this. (Don't ask me which ones they are. Betcha our readers know, though.)
In theory you can get even better results by averaging scans in four directions at 90° to each other. In practice many scanners have a very slightly different pixel pitch across the sensor array than in the direction of carriage travel. Normally, the fraction of a percent distortion doesn't matter, but it may make a sharp blending of scans at right angles to each other impossible.
I make it easier for Photoshop to produce a sharp result by modifying my scans in Photoshop to bring them into very close alignment before blending them. I open both files, make a copy of "scan 2," and paste it into "scan 1," where it appears as a new layer. I set that layer's opacity to 50% to make that easier to see what's going on and rotate and translate that layer until I get a good match. I copy out the modified second layer, paste it into a new file, save it, and use that file to blend with the scan 1 file.
It takes longer to do a scan this way, but I save a whole lot more time by making a whole lot of crap disappear so that I don't have to clean it up later.
©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved
Ctein's weekly columns, which scan best from top to bottom, appear on Wednesdays on TOP. He is the author of Digital Restoration from Start to Finish: How to repair old and damaged photographs
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Matthew Miller: "This also works really well for scans of prints on textured paper."
Stan Greenberg: "As per Matthew's comment, this trick very often works for scanning textured photos. Always worth a try, because everything else essentially boils down to making the image selectively fuzzy. Yes, this trick can be done in Paint Shop Pro, using layers. One other additional trick: when aligning the two scans, use 'Difference' as the blending mode. When the blend is pure black (or as close as you can get to pure black) the two layers are aligned.
"Another maybe superfluous comment: you have to perform two physically different scans, you cannot simply tell the scanning software to rescan the second time with a 90 degree rotation. (May sound obvious, but I had to learn this the hard way.) This is a wonderful technique—I think I discovered it on a Retouch Pro web site forum. Stan Greenberg, Kibbutz Kabri, Western Galilee."
Ctein replies: Yeah, works well with textured papers. Doesn't always work with the embossed "honeycomb" portrait papers, because sometimes there's an actual difference in the density. But always worth a try. The difference trick for alignment sounds Fine. I knew that...but forgot it! Thanks. Yes, the print needs to be physically rotated on the scanner platen, so it's facing the opposite way during the second scan. Thanks for emphasizing that.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Wah
...I miss my camera. Sniff.
(However, I have a new rule in place...a camera I try as a rental cannot be purchased until at least a month after I rent it; and, I have to sell one of the cameras I have before I can buy another one. I'm still kind of shaken that I dropped all that money on the D800. It was probably because I missed the one I rented when I sent it back. But really, I'm too much of a cheapskate to do things like that.)
(And apropos of nothing, recently I considered selling the D800 and keeping the A900 instead of the other way around, because the A900 has IBIS. But then I did a bunch of tests and guess what? Even at much higher ISOs to overcome the advantage of IBIS, the D800 still wins an IQ comparison. The Dragoon be mighty, chilluns.)
And speaking of that, Frank Petronio is anxiously awaiting the arrival of his spanking new-in-the-box X100S
He's all ready.
Mike
(Thanks to Frank)
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Taran: "What kind of aftermarket shtuff for the X100s in the picture yo? It looks pretty pimp. This kind of swag is the real meaty part of mirrorless, if you ask me. The ability to make small cameras more ergonomic via third party grips, straps, and accessories. I am guilty of trolling Korean eBay stores well after midnight in search of the next new 'mod' for my NEX-7. Joy!"
Mike replies: ...And what are some of your favorite mods? I'm interested to know.
jim: "What's the little whip for?"
Rick: "That must be one of Frank's whips...."
Mike replies: I note from the Comments section that many people seem to be thinking along the same lines here. You guys looking forward to seeing Emma Watson in "Fifty Shades of Gray"? :-)
Chad Thompson: "Wait, Frank bought a new camera? And it doesn't shoot film? How many horsemen are there?"
Mike replies: Four. There are four horsemen.
brian: "I'm sorry that you miss your rented camera, but can I ask that you get ready to miss yet another camera, by reviewing the X100s? My wife would be pleased if you can find something terribly wrong with it, because I was actually disturbed by the 'usually ships' line that you noted, since I had my (read 'her') credit card out. Frankly, it seems to me that the X100s is close enough to the 'decisive moment digital' that you wrote of here."
Mike replies: It is the closest thing, isn't it? The viewfinder makes it so.
Frank adds: "Two aftermarket batteries. A rather wholesome Gordy's strap in leather, size large. Really Right Stuff grip and plate, sans 'L' piece. Knock-off Fuji hood and filter adapter. I've always used both digital and film; my first digicam was a Canon Xap Shot circa 1990 ;-p "
Mike replies: I also used the Xap Shot a few times! (A still video camera that stored its images on a 2x2" floppy, for those of you born too late.)
Smith-Chamlee Prints Update
I can't believe I forgot to mention this—my apologies to all the print purchasers from our last sale!
Michael completed the shipping more than a week ago. It's still possible your print might not have arrived yet, but if you don't receive it within the next ten days or so, please let him know.
And by the way, Michael and Paula have a workshop coming up at their home/studio in beautiful Bucks County, in far eastern Pennsylvania, from Friday evening, May 24th, through Sunday afternoon, May 26th.
They write, "Although we demonstrate with an 8x10-inch view camera, the workshop is not format specific. Even photographers who work digitally will benefit. Enrollment is limited to eight. There are still a few spots remaining. Should the workshop fill up and if there is sufficient demand, a second workshop will be held on the following weekend, May 31 to June 2."
And I've now reminded myself that I need to take my two acquisitions from the sale to the framer....
Mike
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Kenneth Tanaka: "This gives me a chance to remark on the packing of the prints. Mine arrived in 5+ lbs. of packaging that would be typical for shipment to a museum. Very impressive protection."
Happy Accidents
Every photographer knows—or soon learns—the "tree growing out of the head" phenomenon. You have to be mindful of your backgrounds, because things can look connected that aren't. (I play with it from time to time...although I can't find it right now, I have a picture of my Uncle with a fish balanced on his head, and one in which a museumgoer appears to be wearing an American Indian headdress.)
Juan Buhler has a picture (although I can't find that either) in which a child's eye is just barely visible past her parent's sleeve, and the weird juxtaposition makes the picture. [UPDATE: here it is, although I misremembered it—it's his hand, not his sleeve. Hey, it's been a year since I last saw it! Thanks to Juan. —Mike]
The Washington Post published a fabulous example by John McDonnell the other day—a baseball player with three arms! That weird, diminutive, slightly fuzzy third arm seems magically to be filling out the back of right fielder Jayson Werth's shirt.
You couldn't make that happen if you wanted to. Funny.
We seldom talk about it, but sometimes what "makes" a picture is just the result of happenstance. How do you make these fortuitous happenings happen? Just get out with the camera and see what happens. You never know.
Mike
(Thanks to Bob Burnett)
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Dennis: "I always liked Michael Reichman's happy accident."
Mike replies: That's amazing! What a wonderful example of ghosting flare.
William Schneider: "I can put my fingers on my most cringe-worthy accidental background...
"I had just been hired to teach basic photography by the man in the photo. He had been a picture editor at National Geographic before entering academia. His Pulitzer-prize-winning wife, also a photography professor here, was hugging a friend in the picture.
"I cringed at the irony of being newly selected as faculty in a photography school, and then making the basic beginner's mistake of not watching the background.
"Thankfully my embarassment has subsided over the 18 years that have passed by."
Tom Kwas: "...I actually went through about a ten-year period in the '90s where I tried to get as many weird things with foreground and background compression as I could. People balancing Union 76 Balls on their head, people holding up their hand with someone standing on it, the Trans-America building in SFO looking like a witches hat on someone in a office nearby...amused myself doing this with my 'snaps,' but you'd be surprised how concentrating on this stuff for a few months, all of a sudden you're making far less mistakes with compression, and paying much more attention to detail!"
Marek Fogiel: "I like this one of mine."
Mike replies: Made me laugh.
Monday, 25 March 2013
Saying Goodbye to the NEX-6
Well, the Sony NEX-6 has to go bye-bye today, back to Roger. I'm going to make this relatively short, because, even though the weather's not cooperating, I'd like to get out with the camera one more time before it's off to FedEx.
With the skies leaden and gray for most of the past three days, I needed to figure out some halfway constructive use of my time with the camera. (I wish I had a small studio space like they have down in the green valley so I could mess around with artificial lighting, but I don't.) On Saturday I pretty much tested apertures on the camera/lens combo. I can give you the executive summary on that pretty quickly.
The lens is plenty sharp enough to use wide open at ƒ/1.8, but I don't really like it wide open because it loses a portion of its "Zeiss magic" and becomes just a decently sharp lens. (For an example shot, see the picture of Zander and Lulu in yesterday's "Open Mike" post.) The lens's best stop is ƒ/4, but not by much—ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/11 is fine.
Full aperture (left) vs. ƒ/4 (right) at 100%. Our blogging software reduces apparent acuity somewhat.
There's noticeable but not critical lessening of sharpness in the corners wide open, but the corners are fine. Not enough problem to worry about.
Extreme corner wide open at ƒ/1.8, seen here at 100%.
If anything it's the out-of-focus corners that look worse...the bokeh gets a bit spherical-smeary and just a touch nasty. Just a touch. Remember that this is 100%, and the camera's files are large; ƒ/1.8 shots clean up in post to be eminently usable. Bottom line, I wouldn't hesitate to use the lens wide open but I'd also prefer stopping down just a tad, only because this lens is not at its prettiest at full stop.
I should mention that at 100% and larger, red-green fringing shows up in the corners with tree branches outdoors. It's subtle and not very evident at lower magnifications, but becomes pronounced at higher ones. I don't have time with the camera/lens combo to deconstruct this adequately (I also think this sample might be just a bit decentered), but it would be better for buyers of this camera and this lens to own software that does CA reduction. I've found the fringing I see to be completely remediable in Photoshop CS6.
Doggies
Then, yesterday, lacking good light in the great outdoors, I needed something to shoot. I joined two of my neighbors for a dog walk on Saturday, which was fun, so I asked them if I could do portraits of their dogs on Sunday. I figured I'd shoot on "P" and just see what the camera does in low light in terms of AF, AE, and auto-ISO and highlight detail, and so forth.
Stella
Answer? The NEX-6 acquitted itself admirably. It continued to cruise along imperturbably with exposure, nailed focus time after time, and it adjusted ISO as I went without fuss.
Diesel
This shot of Diesel reminds me of a Newt—a native Vermonter—I knew years ago named Bev. We were trailering a horse one time, and after a few miles she pulled off the road, got out, and went back to check on him. When she got back and I asked how the horse was doing, she said, "Sittin' up like a judge eatin' beans." That pretty well describes the way Diesel takes command of a couch, doesn't it?—he looks like an old sea captain waiting for his ship to come in.
Anyway both of the above shots, on auto-everything, were taken at ƒ/4 and 1/60th, but the ISO for the one of Stella is 125 and the one of Diesel is ISO 2000. The level of the afternoon winter light in the latter, from one large window looking out on a covered porch, was very low.
In the shot of Diesel, I can look at the wall and keep clicking the "plus" magnifier, and we go from wall texture right to pixels, with no stop en route for noise. Bottom line, I wouldn't worry about high ISOs, either. The camera can cope.
I lost me boyo again yesterday. Spring vacation over (I should put "spring" in quotation marks; it snowed again this morning), he and his girlfriend Jenna departed for UW Oshkosh yesterday afternoon. When he was young I used to make him stand for a portrait as he left for the first day of school every year, and out of habit I waylaid the two of them on their way out the front door for a quick record snap. This one turned out well.
In a few days, I'll write up my conclusions about my brief time with the Sony NEX-6 and the Zeiss 24mm E Sonnar ƒ/1.8. I'm going to miss it.
Mike
Products mentioned in this post:
Sony NEX-6
Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA lens
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Scott: "You should miss a borrowed $1,000 lens. Just sayin'."
Mike replies: Rented, not borrowed. But I take your point.
Paul Racecar: "This may be a bit off-topic, but I really like how you posed your dogs. The ubiquitous pose we see on the web is a pitiful pet looking upward at the camera, and only occupying a fraction of the the total frame. I've been collecting these 'pet portraits' for some time, and they amuse me to no end. One gentleman posted his beautiful pet portrait as an example of the great picture quality he gets from his new Canon 5D Mark III and 24–105mm L combo. There was his lovely hound dog with the pitiful look staring up at the camera and occupying a pretty good portion of the frame (I'll give him that)—his comment was something like: 'see the wonderful detail, sharp crisp distortion-free photo?' No. What I saw was a poorly posed pet done with a great camera."
Mike replies: Best basic tip with both kids and dogs: Start from their level.
And by the way, as you may know, kids and dogs are both difficult subjects to shoot. I'm amused by people who say things like, "I'm not really a photographer, I just shoot pictures of my kids." Well, you have to be a pretty good photographer to do that well. I even used to suggest shooting little kids as they play as a good exercise to sharpen students' shooting skills. The problem with that suggestion is that you either have access to kids or you don't. Parents tend to, others tend not to.
Wayne: "I own the lens and a NEX-7. Two weeks ago, while visiting my mother's house, I had an opportunity to get some candid shots of the gathering. The combination of the tilting LCD and the lens' low light capability turned the visit into a fun photography experience. Folks who normally protest having their photo taken lightened up when they viewed the quality of the images. Technical merits of the camera and lens aside, Sony and Zeiss have teamed up to create one fun system."
John Abee: "Apologies if this has been clarified elsewhere (I looked and couldn't see it) but why did you choose to evaluate the NEX-6 instead of the NEX-7? I feel certain there is a good reason and am curious."
Mike replies: I don't know, really. I'm sure the NEX-7 is a beaut—I certainly seem to know a lot of picky cameraphiles who swear by it, from Ken Tanaka to Kirk Tuck to my counterman friend Kevin Kallenbach at my local camera store.
I guess I recognize a general trend in modern products to ramp up features and quality in the same proportion. If you buy the car with the good engine, you have to take the sunroof and the nav. That sort of thing. And part of the "luxury" aspect of top models is that they include everything the maker can think to include—because if you're going to spend all that money, you should have a feature list that's full to bursting. And these days, that means electronics complexity, in everything from battery chargers to dishwashers.
And I tend to hate electronics complexity in products.
"Kitchen sink cameras" is what I call cameras that try to "get everything in." Every possible feature. (When someone told me that you could pre-flight a photo book from within the new Canon 5Ti—or is it the little one?—I thought they were pulling my leg.) With statement products, the makers seem to have to prove they can do it all. Simplicity, ergonomic efficiency, and directness of operation sometimes take a back seat.
This is a way in which my taste definitely diverges from the mainstream. I like simple and plainspoken design, but high quality. This is one of the reasons I admire the Leica S so much. Simplicty along with very high quality.
I'm not saying any of the above applies to the NEX-7. I honestly don't know if it does or not. I've just held one briefly, never used it.
But it might help to explain why I found the NEX-6 appealing from the day it was announced. It seems a simpler, plainer version of the NEX-7—one that incorporates the NEX-7's best features and basic layout—and presumably the lessons Sony learned in building that camera and bringing it to market—but in a trickle-down, nothing-left-to-prove version.
Does that help at all, or am I just confusing things further?
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Open Mike: Editions
Here's a list of the two kinds of people in the world:
- People who like lists
- People who don't
As a member of the first group, I'm continuing to putter away on my grand list project, my bite-off-almost-more-than-you-can-chew book recommendations list.
The list is now called "266 Books by Genre." The number keeps changing!
The list started when my son decided at age ten or 11 that he didn't like to read. As an inveterate reader and bibliophile, this consternated me deeply—how do you learn about the world if you don't read? Books are where you find most of what humans know, and have learned, and have thought; they are where, mostly, the great glorious life of the mind resides.
Zander yesterday. (And an example of the Zeiss 24mm Sonnar
wide open at ƒ/1.8, too.)
So, taking a cue from our epic read-aloud traversal of the Harry Potter series when my fine lad was in single digits, I got a bright idea. I figured I'd just pick a bunch of the best books I know for finding out about the world, and read them aloud to him. Who says you can only read aloud to little kids? I was influenced by my off-the-grid friends Jim and Becky, who continued to read aloud to their daughter Lillian until well after the time when she could just as easily read aloud to them. (Their family might still read aloud together when she's home from college, I don't know.)
Jim and I were in the same 5th grade class at Bayside Elementary School, where we "hated" our teacher, a certain Mrs. Memmel. (She had firm favorites, and fairness was not a big point with her). But nemesis Mrs. Memmel did me one big solid, I think. For an hour a day she would read aloud to the class and have us follow along in our own books. It was there I heard how all the punctuation marks sounded. I've been visual since birth, and all my life had loved books for pictures; but fifth grade was when books really came alive for me—when type began to speak.
My project of reading aloud to Zander didn't last very long...about three chapters into an ornate translation of The Three Musketeers, to be precise. That is one difficult book to read aloud, and neither one of us were enjoying it much. In any event he had already discovered video games, then, as now, his favorite pastime. My reading put him to sleep, but I wasn't sure how much he was getting out of it. It seemed tiresome to me too. We stopped.
But I'd already succumbed to the danger ahead: I had started thinking about which books would be worth reading aloud to him...and by extension which books would be worth reading if you could only read a few...
Saturday, 23 March 2013
The Out-the-Door Test
Those of you who own just one camera, or just one good camera, obviously don't have the following problem.
That's the way I used to be, and the way I like to think of myself still—even though it no longer applies. A one-camera kind of guy. Have axe, will chop wood.
An old fave. This one belonged to Kent Phelan when I made its portrait. One just like it was my only axe for a 14-month period in the '90s.
But now I have a number of cameras (collateral damage from running a photo website...that's my story and I'm stickin' to it). Lots of people have more than one camera—and a lot of enthusiasts have a lot more than that!
So here's the test. If you're just going out the door and you want to take a camera with you, what do you grab most often?
We all spend an awful lot of time and energy evaluating cameras, choosing what to buy, defending our choices, and worrying about the crushing opportunity cost ("I'm thinking about switching to..."). But if you have alternatives readily available, maybe the one you find yourself going for most often (assuming there is one) is a good indicator of what your needs/wants really are.
Mike
(Thanks to John Mitchell and Kent Phelan)
P.S. Funny story about the Leica in the picture, one I've told before. I eBay'd a few things for my friend Kent in my uh-oh years. Kent had gone to considerable lengths to duplicate the M4 outfit of his youth with a truly mint set—the camera and lens in the picture. I sold it to an Italian Leica dealer for what was then a good price.
But when it arrived, it appeared the buyer had found a problem. He said there was a blemish in the chrome finish on the back side of the top plate. He considered it for a while, as we exchanged emails, and finally decided he couldn't keep it. So he sent the camera and lens back to me for a refund.
But when the camera arrived back, I couldn't find the blemish he was talking about, a fact which of course I relayed back to him. "Use a magnifying glass," came the answer.
Sure enough, with a magnifying glass, I was able to locate a tiny pinpoint flaw in the chrome plating.
The buyer ruefully acknowledged that the camera had very likely come from the factory with that pinpoint flaw. But, he said, his buyers "could be picky."
Now how's that for an understatement!
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
~Alan Sailer: "Without a doubt, a Canon 5D Mark II that I bought used a year ago. And it nearly always has a 17–40mm ƒ/4 lens in front. What is disconcerting to me is that I own mostly Nikon bodies and lenses (by a factor of five to one), but there is something about that Canon that works for me. Go figure."
Ed: "Sony RX1 over the Fuji X-Pro 1 and the Oly OM-D EM-5. Love the size and portability. Love the full frame files and their flexibility."
Tommy F: "I would take the NEX-7 and the Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 or the 19mm Sigma."
Rolf Schmolling: "Well, nowadays I grab my Zenza Bronica ETRSi (645) with 75mm ƒ/2.8 PE usually. I can just take the magazine with the right film for the light and I'm off. Gossen Profisix too, of course.
"Then I am still tempted to take my Nikon F2 Photomic with Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2 (AIS) or Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm ƒ/1.4 (Non AI) most of the time loaded with Tri-X 400. And today when I went for a short (we still have winter here in Hamburg, Germany) Foto Safari with my son (age seven), I put Tri-X 400 into my Nikkormat FT-2 (with 50mm ƒ/2) to a) have a similar outfit to his Yashica FX-3 super 2000 with 50mm ƒ/2 and b) because my F2 was still full of Portra 400. Didn't finish the rolls; it was just too cold."
Dan Gorman: "Easy: Canon G10. Reasons: Good enough image quality; small/light/inconspicuous enough for pretty much any situation; a gas to use—the physical controls and instant feedback say 'Play with me!'"
Scott Price: "For me, it's my K-5 IIs with my FA* 24mm ƒ/2 attached (36mm equivalent). I haven't encountered many situations where I couldn't make this combo work well. Of course, my primary subjects are my children, and I'm generally trying to capture them and what they're doing. I've found this focal length range just about perfect for this purpose, because I don't have to take a step forward or back from a natural conversation distance to get the framing I want. That said, there are times when I need to mix things up and pick-off candid head shots with a longer lens, or really mess around by dangling an ultra-wide in front of them while they play/run/slide. Variety is the spice of life, but, for me, the meat and potatoes looks like a compact DSLR with a fast 35mm equivalent lens on it."
Howard: "Sitting on the table next to the door is a Nikon FG with a MD-14 motor drive and (believe it or not) a Tamron CF 35–70mm zoom on an Adaptall 2 lensmount. I bought it years ago from a coworker. I was embarrassed that she accepted the $25 offered and I upped it to $35 (body only. The rest was added over time). It goes with me everywhere and shoots everything; we have bonded."
Bill Langford: "There was a time when it was a Graflex XL with Polaroid back and a bucket of clearing solution for the negatives. (Did I hear someone say 'Old Timer'?) Now it's a Sigma DP2 Merrill. The fun is the same, the back is not."
David Paterson: I was once invited to a camera collector's home in Tokyo, where he opened several large walk-in cupboards to show me his collection. It consisted of boxed, unopened examples of every Leica, Hasselblad and Nikon camera, and most of the lenses, from the previous 20 years. None of the boxes had ever been opened. He never took any photographs. He didn't collect Canon or Olympus. I currently have two digital camera-bodies—a working camera and a back-up. Seems like enough."
Sherwood McLernon: "The camera's always the same, a Canon 7D. The lens is either a Canon 400mm ƒ/5.6 L if I'm shooting birds or other wildlife, or a Canon 18–200mm ƒ3.5–5.6 IS as a walk around lens. I have many other lenses, but the above combinations take care of 95% of my shooting. If I'm driving, I will take two 7D's with the above-mentioned lenses already mounted. If it's a quick walk from home it's the walkaround combination."
Gary Filkins: "Sony RX100 almost without exception. The exception would be if portraits are expected—then it's the Olympus EP-2 with the Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens."
Ed Grossman: "Toward the end of last year, I realized two things: 1) I was spending too much time choosing a camera before heading out the door. 2) The results I brought back in the door weren't really any different regardless of what I chose in '1' above. Since then, there's been a culling of the herd. I'm down to two. Most days, it's me and the Panasonic GH2. If the weather's inclement, I take my Olympus E-5. I'm spending less time deciding and more time shooting. The money I made from the gear sale will go toward photo experiences, not photo gear. That may not be the right choice for everyone, but it was for me!"
Chris Nicholls: "Beautiful M4! For me at the moment it's the M9 with 35mm ASPH Summicron. It's hard for me to imagine another camera that might suit me better, but I wouldn't mind a good pocket-size camera. Any recommendations?"
Mike replies: Always. The two truly pocketable cameras I seem to hear the most good things about are the Sony RX100
Note that in Amazon's unintentionally funny product description of the GRD IV, "1X Optical Zoom" means it's a fixed, single-focal-length lens.
Armand: "Mike, that's a beautiful camera. Most of the time, I grab either the M3 or one of my Leicaflexes :-) when I venture out in the urban wilderness. Main reason why my D800E stays in my Pelican case."
mcomfort: "I thought I'd try the smaller, carry-everywhere second camera approach for a while...but I keep coming back to the big D800. Too much IQ left on the table otherwise. My standards have crept upward to the point of no return now, which is in conflict with my usual gear lust (read: I want to find a reason to get the OM-D or something similar.)"
The two comments just above came in right next to each other. —Ed.
Claire: "My 5D Mark II replaced my worn-out Rebel XT. I used to go out everyday with that Rebel. It is not the case with the 5D. Great camera, but too heavy for my everyday walk. Two weeks ago, I bought the Fuji X-Pro. And...I think I'm in love again! :-) Right, it is not on par with the 5D. But at least, bringing it with me, I might have a chance to get one or two photos that I will be happy with one of these days...."
Friday, 22 March 2013
NEX-6 Review, Day 2: Exposure and Flare
Sony NEX-6, Zeiss ZA Sonnar E 24mm ƒ/1.8
To begin with, apropos of nothing, here's Daisy. She belongs to a neighbor I encounter occasionally on walks around the neighborhood.
At the close of our chat (with the neighbor, I mean, not the dog), I turned around and saw I was near the shadow of a tree.
Now, when I try out lenses, I have a whole range of semi-standard "information-gathering" shots I take. Just to put the lens through its paces and see how it does. These don't rise to the level of "tests," really; I just want to see. I've been doing this for a long time now, and I can deconstruct a lens's basic performance pretty rapidly without trying too hard.
Then, when I see an area of weakness or strength, I do some more shooting to "provoke" those qualities, to further suss out what's going on. It's not rocket science.
I need to digress and mention that these days, you aren't testing just a lens when you try it out this way. You're testing a lens/sensor combination. There are ways to evaluate lenses without connecting them to sensors, but I'm not sure why you would; what you want to know is how the lens performs on a camera, not how it performs without a camera attached (i.e., on the optical bench). I mean, the latter might be interesting, in a detached sort of way, and it might be good for future reference, but it's not terribly practical. What you want to know is how the sensor performs with the lens and the lens with the sensor.
So, anyway, one trial I do is to put the sun behind a tree trunk and make a series of shots with more and more of the sun in the frame. It gives me a quick read on the rendering of ghosts and veiling glare (both are types of flare), and...damn, I can't remember the word for it—the "rays" that appear to come from a bright light source. [UPDATE: Sun stars. Thanks, Dave. —Ed.]
Then I'll do a few shots with the full sun up in the corner of the frame, because with some lenses that provokes ghosts more readily. (Ghosts are the localized anomalies created on the image by flare. These are ghosts.)
So anyway, yesterday I shot this:
Fig. 1. Flare trial, frame 1
Then a series of three more shots moving slightly to my left, each one showing a bit more sun peeking out from behind the tree trunk, the last of which had the sun fully visible and not obscured by the tree at all:
Fig. 2. Flare trial, frame 4
Here's the same file as in figure 2, but with the exposure cranked down so you can clearly see the exact position of the sun:
Fig. 3. Sun position
Now, if you look at those two shots, figure 1 and figure 2, you can clearly see the effect of flare: there's a distinct 14-point starburst, a distinct ghost (close to the sun at about 5 o'clock), and, if you'll let your eyes go back and forth from one frame to the other in the areas away from the sun, you'll distinctly see the effects of veiling glare (the overall, contrast-reducing type of flare).
SNAFU!
Then I though, "Oh, crap, I screwed up." I had left the camera on Program Mode as I made the four successive flare trial exposures.
Obviously, when you're doing a test like this, you don't want the exposure changing as you go from frame to frame. You want any visual differences to be the effect of flare, not exposure change. So I changed the camera to Manual Mode, set the exposure based on the blue sky away from the sun, and repeated the four exposures.
It wasn't until I got back to the computer that I discovered something very strange. Take a look at figures 1 and 2 again. Both of those exposures were made on Program Mode. Figure 1 is ƒ/11 at 1/160th and figure 2 is ƒ/11 at 1/200th.
Huh? Left to its own devices, the camera only adjusted a third of a stop between the exposure with the sun hidden behind the tree and the sun in full view? Normally that will change the AE reading pretty radically.
Then I noticed something else. In my second series, I deliberately metered the open blue sky looking East, that is, opposite the sun...and came up with ƒ/8 at 1/32oth. Exactly the same exposure as the camera set for itself in figure 1!
So I learned a little bit about flare, yes. But I also inadvertently got thumped on the noggin with a clue about how the camera meters and exposes.
So then I went over all the rest of my exposures from that walk. Granted, the sun was low in the sky, but we're under an intense high pressure system and the sunlight was still very bright. And sure enough, in frame after frame, left to its own devices on Program Mode with Auto ISO, I notice two very definite tendencies:
- The camera seems to be exceptionally good at holding highlights; and
- It seems to be exceptionally good at nailing the proper exposure, even with predominantly bright image-objects (e.g., mounds of snow) or predominantly darker image-objects (e.g., spruce trees) dominating the frame.
That's just preliminary. Right now, with the sun high in the sky and the high pressure system still in full force, I'm heading out to deliberately torture the NEX-6 a bit and see how well those assumptions hold up.
Coda
Before I close for now, here's the last trial shot, with the full sun up in the corner of the frame:
Fig. 4. The sun in the corner of the frame
There's really only one faint ghost, just where the branches start on the bare tree near the middle of the frame. And it's not extreme.
Tentative conclusion: flare performance is only so-so by today's standards, meaning good by historical standards, but, on the other hand, the lens/sensor is pretty good at resisting ghosting with the sun in the corner of the frame. Good to know.
And here's friendly Daisy suffering the fortunately harmless effects of late-night experimentation with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2...an old-fashioned-y 1950s-ish Verichrome-Pan sort of vibe. Good doggie!
Mike
UPDATE, 9 p.m.: Well, I went out this afternoon with the best of intentions, but, as often happens, I got interested in photographing and forgot what I was supposed to be testing. I specifically meant to do some demo shots for CA, for instance, and I neglected to.
I think a confident verdict on my "two tendencies" listed above will have to await lots more accumulated shooting. But most of the "torture testing" I did today supported rather than contradicted the conclusion that the NEX-6 is particularly good at getting the exposure right and especially at protecting the highlights (the latter long a bugbear of mine with digital).
This shot, for example, naturally needed a bit of correction, but the exposure the camera chose by itself was, surprisingly, just about what I would have picked.
Maintaining usable detail in both the highlights and the shadows at the same time is the perennial challenge of outdoor natural light photography. This shot from yesterday, with a largish area of brightness away from the center of the frame, is an example of one of the kinds of pictures camera metering systems tend to have a hard time with, which is why it's so necessary to keep an eye on them. Here the tonality is quite good throughout the frame; the tan sunlit wall (which was visually far brighter than it looks here) has clipped just a bit, but only in the red channel. Our eyes get sensitive to the look of clipping, and a seasoned digital photographer might look at that area of the file with a touch of suspicion, but a civilian would never notice.
The detail in this shot is nice. It wouldn't surprise me if people lucky enough to own the NEX-7 are also liking the 24mm ƒ/1.8 Sonnar, because I would guess that this lens is even more rewarding with more resolution on tap.
I'm liking the combo's way with B&W quite a bit, too. (This looks a lot better bigger, but oh well.) The combination of lens contrast (not the same thing as contrast) and the camera's way with highlights is a nice one-two combination for B&W.
This idea that the Sony NEX-6 is unusually good at exposure—and with highlights—is something to keep in mind. It might prove to make it an excellent recommendation for the type of photographer who doesn't care to continually tweak (or worry about tweaking!) exposure, but just wants to set the camera on P and go.
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
John McMillin: "I can confirm what you're saying here. Both my Sonys, an a700 and a850, have shown excellent dynamic range. The highlight recovery capabilties of my a850 are especially good. Sony's DRO feature does the rest of the task, lifting the shadows as well as Lightroom, or better. Every time I try a different camera brand in harsh Western sunlight or high-DR interior shots, I miss that. When I use HDR, it's for an effect, not to extend dynamic range. That's rarely a problem.
"I'm looking hard for an alternative system, because I don't like EVFs and other recent Sony design directions. I just love the results from their sweet sensors. The closest I've come to the Sonys' long, forgiving tonal range was with my Fuji X10, whose EXR sensor does its own magic. Maybe I'll give the Pentax K-5 a try, as its prices fall. Isn't it rumored to pack a Sony sensor...like the OM-D, the first Olympus to garner praise for tonal range?
"Like 'em or not, Sony has some secret sauce. Now if their cameras didn't get in the way between those sensors and the Minolta lens collection, like some lump in the bed."
Andy Kochanowski: "Mike, I can spare you any suspense on this one, though you probably know it by now. For wandering-around photography, the Sony is pretty well perfect. I've been using the NEX-7 with the two Sigma lenses and the 18–55mm kit for the past six months, and sold all my Micro 4/3 stuff, including the GX1 which I also loved, because I wasn't using it at all. Balance, haptics, remarkably good sensor, fast enough AF, fine VF, cheap lenses (except the one you're testing), decent battery life—this thing's da bomb.
"About all that menu carping that the Interweb does: at least on the NEX-7 once you set it up you literally never look at the menu again. Every control you need can be hard-wired. Once I had it for a few days I got why Kirk Tuck's been all over this thing for the past year."
Sarge (partial comment—for the rest of Sarge's comment, please see the Comments section): "My first authoritative reading about flare was William Schneider's TOP article, 'One Photographer's Take on Flare,' which includes a link to Mike's LL article, 'The Filter Flare Factor.' I love sunstars captured without aid of special effects filters mainly because it isn't alien to our experience (as in 'seeing stars'). Likewise, 'sunstars' off a tulip glass or a polished car fender. I've always thought that the number of rays in a sunstar is determined by the number of aperture blades in a lens' diaphragm. How does the 7-blade Sonnar E 24mm ƒ/1.8 produce 14-ray sunstars? (Is it software?)"
Hugh Crawford replies to Sarge: "No, it's not software. Every blade of the aperture produces a 'ray' that crosses the light source. An even number of aperture blades makes rays that overlap, so an eight blade aperture makes 16 rays at intervals of 45 degrees which means that they overlap and you only see eight rays. An odd number of blades make rays that don't overlap, so a nine-blade aperture produces 18 rays, one every 40 degrees.
"Some people seem to like 'sun stars' but I think they are one of the most annoying things about automatic aperture SLRs which is about the only application where they (and the ugly polygons) can't be easily designed out of the lens."
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Day 1: Sony and Zeiss, Up In a Tree
Today (Wednesday, as I write) is the last day of Winter, so of course spring is about as much in evidence as Jimmy Hoffa down at Karl Ratzsch's having a second helping of Wiener Schnitzel. The mercury pegged a measly 7 on Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit's scale this morning (that's –14°C for you enlightened ones) and warmed to a relatively balmy 17° (–8°C) by the afternoon. But it was windy. Wisconsin is doing a darned good imitation of the dead of winter. The whole world is frozen solid.
Willing to brave anything for my beloved readers, and manly to the core, I girded for warmth, assembled the newly arrived Sony NEX-6 and Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 Sonnar E, and headed out into the howling cold. I laugh at frostbite when your entertainment is at stake.
Okay, I am lying.
What really happened is that I headed out in the SUV, and my bravery mainly consisted of lowering the window every now and then, making a few snaps, and then hastily putting the window up again. But hey, it was colder than a cootie's patootie out there, people. Whaddaya want from me? At least I was out there filling the little buckets with photons.
Normally the first thing I would do with a new camera is to give you my first impressions, but I think I'm going to wait a few days for that*. Above is the NEX-6 and its match-made-in-Oberkochen next to my nearly-new Panasonic GX1 which I love. (I've committed to add the words "which I love" every time I write "Panasonic GX1" as part of the effort to fend off temptation.)
Note that in the illustration, the Panasonic GX1 which I love has a Really Right Stuff tripod plate on the bottom of it.
The biggest difference between the two cameras in the picture above—besides the fairly radical difference in the relative size of their lenses, which is obvious—is that the GX1 which I love has a tilting electronic viewfinder (EVF) and a viewing screen on the back of the camera that doesn't tilt, and the Sony is the opposite.
Which is best? I'll be darned if I know. I like both, need neither, and, when it gets right down to it, don't know which I'd rather have. At the same time, I don't hanker to have both, although I might not mind.
Romance
So actually, you know what? I really love small cameras with big sensors. I do. I loved using the Ricoh GXR despite the monumental quirkiness of its concept, I sorta even kinda hafta love the OM-D even though its control system annoys me every single time, I loved the GF1 I used for three years. I even love the idea of DMD's I haven't even used yet, like the Fuji X-E1 and the Nikon Coolpix A.
I like the whole idea of them. They're just all really neat little things, and using them is as close to play as I need to get. They're just fun.
I'd probably own all of them if I could. Well, not all. Many. Six or seven, even.
I like the category so much I hardly think you can go all that wrong. Get a mirrorless, play, have fun, be happy.
And since the evolving theme of this post seems to be love, I have another lurid confession to make along those lines: I love Carl Zeiss lenses. I truly do. I always have. And still do. Yes, of course Zeiss makes (and labels) a wide variety of lenses, and not all of them are to the manor born. And yes, there is less difference between lenses now than there used to be. And lenses make somewhat less difference with digital pictures, which are more malleable. We're not so stuck with what the lenses give us as we were when the lens image got burned on to the transparency.
But—and I don't have any demonstrations of this yet, give me a day or three—Zeiss lenses just do it for me. They might not be the "sharpest" lenses in the world in terms of absolute ultimate resolution (although they ain't chopped liver in that department either), but the "Zeiss Look" has an overall integrity I really appreciate. The best Zeisses all share a common house characteristic that I can best describe with the words "microcolor" and "microcontrast." They discriminate very well between very close shades of color on a minute level, and they have very good large-structure (5 lp/mm or 10 lp/mm) contrast. They tend to even their sharpness out across the image height (i.e. the whole frame) and tend to be balanced for consistency up and down the aperture range. Add very good flare and veiling glare resistance and a warm bias, and you get an image morphology that goes far beyond simpleminded notions of sharpness.
It's very tempting to say something like "Zeiss looks at every image quality, not just sharpness." But that's over the top and kind of absurd, because of course other lensmakers look at other qualities too. But I get a bit sick of all the sharpness talk. Sharpness is like crack to photo enthusiasts. They just want more more more without limit and never mind that there are sixty other considerations that go into the integrity of a lens image. And once they're on that crack, in true addict fashion, they let everything else in their photographic lives fall by the wayside.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Part of the reason I love Zeiss lenses is simply personal attachment. The very first camera I got really attached to was a Zeiss Contaflex Super BC with a fixed 50mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar. The Tessar cross-section is part of TOP's new logo. (The picture shows an original Contaflex Super c. 1957, an earlier version of "my" camera. The Super BC, which got stolen, actually belonged to my father.)
Then, when I was in photo school, I used a Contax 139Q with a few Zeiss lenses. Naturally, all the lenses I coveted during those formative years were Zeiss Contax lenses.
Naturally I'm not blind about it. I've used many great lenses from many makers, and not every lens Zeiss ever put Carl's name on is a standout. But you can see the buttons they push for me: history, youthful aspirations, etc. Naturally I've used and tested and written about a broad spectrum of the marque's offerings over the years.
If you want to get a visual idea of the "Zeiss look," go to this page and poke around. It's not possible to really "see" a lens on the Web, but with that particular lens the look comes through pretty well even on the Web. Let the page load, then scroll down. Every now and then, when a picture grabs you, click on it, and look at it a little longer. Don't pixel peep; gaze upon it. Let it soak into your eyes. As you look, try to relax all your anxious "governors"—the voices of your inner gear nerd—that are telling you what you ought to be looking for and how you ought to be feeling about it. Look at the pictures holistically. Just take in an overall impression of their optical nature. Look for "quality, not qualities." Does the whole image have integrity? Coherence, cohesiveness, consistency? Does it have a good look or a bad look to you? What's your feeling about the whole picture you're seeing? Not just its isolated, compartmentalized "image qualities." You're always seeing more than you're aware that you're seeing.
(And please, not just "sharpness." Sharpness is actually well down on the list of things I look for in a lens. It's been a long time since I've used a lens that wasn't adequately sharp. And since you can modulate the impression of sharpness in software.... Get off that crack.)
I'm going to resist going on and on about this, unless it's already too late. Suffice to say that even after only a couple of hundred exposures, it's pretty clear to me that the 24mm ƒ/1.8 E-series Sonnar ZA is a true Zeiss. With everything that very loaded statement implies. At least, implies in my mind.
Exotic trio (for size comparison): Konica collapsible 50mm ƒ/2.4 in Leica thread mount (LTM) (this one has an M adaptor on it); Nikon PC Micro-Nikkor 85mm ƒ/2.8D; and the Zeiss 24mm E lens.
So, is it too big? Well, handling-wise, the biggest issue for me is the shutter-button placement on the NEX-6. Although the grip is generous and deep, the shutter is a bit too close-in for perfect comfort, with my man-hands. (Whoops, another Seinfeld reference.) It depends on whether you depress the shutter with the tip of your index finger or with the inside of the first knuckle on your index finger. In the latter case it's a bit more comfortable.
Both the NEX-6 as well as the Panasonic GX1 which I love are right on the verge of being too small for me. Neither crosses that line, but both of them come up right against it.
I don't think I mind the size of the lens in the least. But then, I don't carry my cameras in pockets, and...well, you can tell from the mass of verbiage above that I might be justifyin' a tad. I do notice that the camera is more awkward to carry than the Panasonic GX1 which I love, but in the hand it feels fine (the lens isn't heavy).
Scarecrow, presently unemployed. I actually got out of the car to take this. See what I do for you? Okay, not for very long.
So the big takeaway from Day 1 is I think I like this lens, with a lot of verbiage as exclamation points. Hopefully I'll be able to demonstrate why halfway adequately in the days to come. I'll give it a shot.
More soon, maybe after the weekend.
Mike
(Thanks to John Camp for the loan of the PC Micro-Nikkor)
*Which brings up an existential riddle. Will they still be first impressions?
Current products mentioned in this post:
Sony NEX-6
Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA lens
Panasonic GX1 which I love
Panasonic DMW-LVF2 accessory electronic viewfinder
Ricoh GXR
Olympus OM-D E-M5
Fujifilm X-E1
Nikon Coolpix A
Zeiss Makro Planar T* 100mm F/2 ZE
Zeiss Macro Planar T* 100mm ƒ/2 ZF.2
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
Manuel: "I'll never get to grips with those NEX-system lenses. Not just because they're big, but they look completely out of proportion on that tiny body. Like a well-endowed dwarf...."
Dennis Ng: "You should write Zeiss lens advertisements. Got a Hassey but try to resist adding Zeiss lens on my Sonys (A77 and NEX-5N). Please, no diabolic suggestion."
Drew: "The NEX-5R
Ken Ford: "I'm going to live vicariously through you on this one, Mike. I've come very close to buying a Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 for my NEX-7 several times, but I keep chickening out with worries of Sony pulling a Minidisc on the whole NEX mount and leaving me with an exceptional $1,000 paperweight. I'll keep soldiering on with my Sigma 30mm and a few OM and Nikkor manual focus lenses instead. (The OM 24mm ƒ/2.8 and 50mm ƒ/1.8 MIJ are particularly nice on an NEX-7.) But, I’d be lying if I said that I didn't want the Zeiss...."
Adam Maas: "For those complaining about the size of the NEX lenses, be aware that the only two large primes are in fact the ZA E 24mm ƒ/1.8 and the 50mm ƒ/1.8 OSS. The 35mm ƒ/1.8 OSS for example is just about exactly the same size as the Panasonic/Leica DG Summilux 25mm ƒ/1.4 for Micro 4/3rds, the 30mm ƒ/3.5 Macro is about the same size, and the 16mm and 20mm pancakes are diminutive.
"As a practical matter, the two large primes are just about exactly the same size as a a compact 35mm lens of comparable focal length on an adapter. That is to a great extent because that is exactly what they are. The 24mm ƒ/1.8 design is very much a retrofocus design with the rear element around 2 cm from the mount; the 50mm ƒ/1.8 combines unusual close focusing (0.39m for a 50mm), OSS and a very telecentric design for the large size.
"On the zoom side, the large lenses are the 18–200mm's (big for range reasons; the original and the PZ are also optically excellent designs, which increases size) and the 10–18mm ƒ/4. The 16–50mm is tiny and the 18–55mm and 55–210mm are in the middle, large but not abnormally so.
"Much hay has been made about the size of the NEX lenses, especially in comparison to the Micro 4/3 lenses. Micro 4/3 continues to retain a size advantage due to coverage and focal length choices, particularly in the normal and wide ranges, but the real matter is that NEX bodies are diminutive with average sized lenses while Micro 4/3 offers large (GH3) through tiny (GF5) bodies so that you can better match your body to your lens selection."
Barry Reid: "An ode to Zeiss indeed, Mike, but why not...I'm a relatively recent convert after picking up a Contax / Yashica (C/Y) 50mm ƒ/1.7 for £10 in a charity shop (U.S. translation: thrift store) a few years back. Before that I was aware of Zeiss but didn't really imagine their lenses could be so addictive. Since then I've gone through buying and selling a bunch of different Zeiss lenses and am also completely smitten with the rendering of some. Particularly the 18mm Distagon, which is flawed in modern terms but has a really special character about it.
"Ironically, I sold my Zeiss glass a few weeks back to fund my NEX-6, a camera chosen in the basis that there will shortly be a useful range of 'native' Zeiss lenses to choose from.... When I can afford them! In the mean time I've just picked up a bargain 45mm ƒ/2.8 Tessar to play with and await my C/Y > NEX adapter."
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
The Theory and Practice of Lens Design and Testing
This week's column by Ctein
For most photographers, lens designs are simply magic, and that's the way they should be. Knowing what goes into a lens design and what trade-offs have been made honestly won't do a single thing to improve your photographs. A side effect of this, though, is that some photographers become puzzled, even disturbed, by some of the choices lens designers make. Why isn't some new lens a stop faster, or smaller, or why did they "cheapen" the product by correcting some flaws in software instead of in glass?
A camera lens is a barrel of compromises. To appreciate this, think about the simplest lens—a cheap magnifying glass. It exhibits geometric distortion, spherical aberration, flare, astigmatism, coma, and lateral and longitudinal chromatic aberration up the wazoo. It's so bad that Newton was driven to reinvent the reflecting telescope, because he was convinced that lenses presented unsolvable optical problems.
Happily, he was wrong about that. You can combine single lenses to reduce aberrations. The groundbreaking two-element achromat proved that it was possible to reduce (but not eliminate) chromatic aberration. As a rule, you can't entirely erase an aberration, not over the entire field of view, over all apertures and working distances, and over the entire spectrum. Worse, reducing one aberration can increase another. Optimizing lens performance is a complicated balancing act.
Each time you add a new point of control to the lens design—a new optical glass, another lens element, an aspheric surface—you have another opportunity to improve the balancing act. Each time you add something new to the lens design, you increase its complexity, size, weight, and/or cost. "Optimize," though, is subjective; it depends on what you decide is most important. Also, if you don't test for the right things, you may not hit the optimal design. After all of that, you're still stuck with an imperfect compromise. Sometimes you just can't get there from here.
In practice...
That's what happened to me with one of the prescription lenses for my
new SuperFocus glasses (which I last wrote about a few weeks back). Eyeglass lenses are optimized for acuity—how much fine detail you can see. Sometimes, in the real world,
that's not, um, optimal.
In the doctor's office I could read text beautifully, but as soon as I got out of the office I noticed something odd. Bright lights, like stop lights or car's brake lights seemed slightly smeared. Ditto the LED lights on the various appliances at home. In the evening I stepped outside to look at the stars and distant city lights and there was very obviously a difference between the two eyes.
This is a sketch I made to show you what my left and right eyes saw when looking at pinpoint lights. The E is about the same size as the letters on the 20/20 line of an eye chart. The second illustration, below, shows what happens when looking at an extended bright object, where all those wispy comet tails get superimposed. It looks very much like what I saw looking at the LED and traffic lights.
Rotating the prescription lens rotated the tail about the light. OK, it's in that lens, not in the SuperFocus frame optics. When I put on my old glasses the lights were less sharp, but I didn't get the tail.
Back at the doctor's office, the refractometer showed that the lens matched the prescription. Dr. Kennedy ran me through a new eye exam and, in terms of visual acuity, a new prescription matched the original one. But, remember what I said about testing for the right things? I was now looking for something else. A normal eye chart, with dark letters on a white background, won't show this tailing; small dark objects on a light background will merely have a light wash of background light overlaying them. The contrast will be a bit lower, but there won't be any obvious artifacts.
I had modified an LED flashlight so it only emitted a half-millimeter beam. I rigged it up on top of the chest chart frame so that it was pointing at me. Now I could easily evaluate the tail. I also paid attention to the sharp edge of the white rectangle of the chart, to see how much it smeared out into the surrounding dark wall.
The problem I'd identified in the field was readily visible once I was running the right kind of tests. Dr. Kennedy adjusted the prescription to make the tail go away. Unexpectedly, the only way to make it disappear entirely drastically reduced visual acuity, to worse than 20/50 (my best left-eye acuity is 20/13). Fully correcting this one optical defect made others much worse.
How puzzling! My old glasses could eliminate the tailing with much less image degradation. So, Dr. Kennedy measured them on the refractometer and dialed that prescription into the phoropter.
It didn't work! The old glasses eliminated the tailing but the same prescription dialed into the phoropter didn't.
So, what was different? My old glasses had thick, low-refractive-index lenses. The new glasses require thin, very high-refractive-index lenses. Thick and thin lenses with the same surface curvatures don't behave the same way; there are different prismatic and second-order effects. It would appear that, by happy chance, the thickness of my old lenses just happened to correct the tailing well.
Unfortunately, that type of lens isn't an option within the physical constraints of the SuperFocus frames. I convinced Dr. Kennedy to let me look for a different optimum, one that didn't produce the highest visual acuity but was the best balance of acuity vs. the annoying tail. Eventually we settled on a prescription that was about a half diopter different from the original. It reduced the noticeability of the tailing by about two-thirds. It also degraded visual acuity in that eye by a third, taking it down to 20/20. I could live with that; it was a good compromise.
The new lens does work much better in the real world. The tailing is suppressed enough that I don't notice it unless I look for it. My overall vision is ever so slightly less sharp than it was prior to the re-optimization, but the overall image quality is so much better.
That's the way it is with lens design in the real world.
©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved
Original contents copyright 2013 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:
David Dyer-Bennet: "Don't forget price! I want camera lenses smaller, a couple of stops faster, twice the zoom range, and cheaper. But I'm a reasonable guy; I don't want a pony!"
Kingston Technology to the Rescue!
Following our multi-part discussion of flash memory cards for cameras kicked off by Ctein last Wednesday, I've been seeking a reasonably authoritative answer to the question "Should you 'Erase All' or should you reformat every time to clear old images and refresh a previously-used card?"
My feeling from surfing about is that there's a lot of opinion ricocheting around and not much from substantial sources.
I might have failed in my efforts to get in touch with SanDisk, whose cards I've used for years, but I got an answer from Kingston Technology, a U.S.-based multinational. Wikipedia says that according to Gartner Inc., the information technology research and advisory company, Kingston is the #1 manufacturer of USB drives and the #3 maker of flash memory cards (although a quick scan of our usual suppliers, Amazon and B&H Photo, indicates that Kingston's lower-level cards are more readily available than its premier products).
Kingston's premium memory card
I put the question like this: "Assuming a card (which has initially been properly formatted for the device) will be reused again and again in the same device (camera), what's the best way to erase the old images before reusing the card? [...] We're trying to establish 'best practices' that photographers should follow to optimize the reliability, dependability, and longevity of their flash memory cards."
This response came from Kingston Flash Engineer Tung Lam:
Most camera manufacturers follow the "Design rule for Camera File System" standard which specifies both directory and file structure for recording data to your device. Typically, when you format a card in your camera (or other device), it will follow this specification so that the file structure produced is exactly what the manufacturer expects. If you've seen a "DCIM" folder on your memory card before, this is the specification in action. Kingston always recommends that photographers format their memory cards within the device they intend to use the card in. This helps to ensure that the card is formatted correctly, will communicate with the device in the manner in which the manufacturer intended and helps prevent data corruption.
As a general rule, there are two options for formatting. A "format" is sufficient to clean the File Allocation Table (FAT) and refresh the card for subsequent use. A "low-level" format (not present on all devices) is designed to prevent users from recovering data in instances where one would want to dispose of the memory card. This approach could take a bit longer depending on the capacity of the card.
Followed by this from David Leong, Kingston's Public Relations Manager:
As a general best practice, Kingston recommends the user format the card.
When you select "erase," the data (e.g. an image) is still there. What is being deleted is the location of the photo stored in the File Allocation Table. "Erase All" deletes every single location in the File Allocation Table. Although the information in the FAT table has been erased, there can still be "residue" from the file. What can happen is the next time something is written in that spot, the controller on the card may decide to skip that spot or write a partial piece of data to it, while the rest of the data is stored elsewhere. This is called fragmentation. Similar to a hard-disk drive, fragmentation can cause performance issues. A "reformat" deletes the entire table and then creates a new one for the next use, meaning that as new information is written to the card, it is done sequentially in the FAT table.
So there's that. Looks like this one company's answer is that it's best to reformat every time. If I get answers from other companies I'll post them.
My thanks to Tung Lam and David Leong of Kingston Technology.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2013 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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