The Online Photographer

Your Advice Needed

Here's the question: young photographer (~20), in college, wants/needs DSLR. Money is somewhere between tight and very tight. Will be doing photojournalism for college classes and action photography. Seeks: best balance of used but not too obsolete, inexpensive but not too shoddy, and as responsive as possible. Also wants to play around with fisheye lenses. (I thought this last might be a stumbling point, but then I don't really know.) Would like to keep the camera he gets for as long as possible.

Nate is a friend of my son's, and has actually done a pretty extensive apprenticeship with film, sort of surprising for someone his age.

Anyone have thoughts or advice for him?

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

hannes: "As much as I like and use Micro 4/3 today, with sports in mind these are no viable option (on a budget at least). I would recommend a Canon 40D. Very cheap nowadays; as responsive as it gets in this class/budget, fast enough for sports; reliable autofocus (only nine points though); 10mp should be enough for his planned uses (with consequently better noise than 50d, 60d and maybe even 7D—on a per pixel level—even though the sensor tech is a few years behind); great battery life, and it is tough—very tough. Great selection of lenses (as has Nikon too, of course) with cheap third party fisheye option from Samyang/Rokinin/Bower/Walimex.I  still love mine :-) .

"If sports is very important and budget not as tight, maybe a Nikon D7000. Great autofocus, but notably more expensive. As I prefer canon ergonomics, I probably would still choose the 40D over the Nikon."

Adam R: "I got into photography as a broke college student a few years ago. I had the same tight budget (nearly non-existent) and ended up going with a Nikon D40. What pushed me towards the Nikon was the ability to use manual focus F-mount lenses. I went into the venture knowing there was no way I'd be able to afford autofocus lenses (even used ones) for a long time. Being able to get things like a 50mm ƒ/1.8, 24mm ƒ/2.8, and 105mm ƒ/2.5 for under $150 each was a big selling point. If he's got experience with film, I'm assuming he would be comfortable with manual focus and using a handheld meter or guessing exposure (low end Nikon DSLRs won't meter with non-autofocus lenses).

"The other system I looked at was Pentax because you can use K-mount manual focus glass on the DLRS. At the time I couldn't find any used Pentax cameras in my price range so I ended up with the Nikon.

"If I were doing it today, I'd probably look more closely at some used Micro 4/3 cameras, even though they aren't SLRs. You can get a Panasonic G3 with kit lens for under $250 if you keep your eyes open. And then you have a whole host of inexpensive, high quality glass at your disposal via adapters."

Ranjit Grover: "The logic of choosing a digital camera is different from that of a film camera. In a film camera, both the sensor (that is, the film) and the lens are interchangeable. In a digital camera, the sensor-electronics complex is fixed for the life of the camera. Bottom-of-the-heap digital cameras can be thoroughly disappointing when it comes to the sensor part. Instead of spending on a fisheye lens, that much more money should go towards a better camera body. No one has made more than two good photographs with a fisheye lens in one lifetime. Practically no one needs anything wider that 28mm or longer than 100mm; in other words a kit lens is what most photographers need most of the time. Anything that cannot be shot within that range is not worth shooting!"

Dave: "As someone who buys used gear exclusively (who has the money for the newest?), the best advice I could give is look one to two generations behind the current new release model of prosumer DSLRs. I shoot on a Canon 50D I bought not long after the 60D came on the market. (I recommend prosumer lines, not entry levels—better reliability.) The same applies to Nikon, Pentax, Sony. Honestly, I recommend going Canon or Nikon because they are so popular; bodies and lenses are cheaper and widely available on the used market. Buy bodies on KEH, but Ebay often results in better deals on lenses, and lenses don't have a half life like the shutters on used bodies."

Kay-Chr. Heine: "My advice as a freelancing photojournalist: Nikon D200, D300 or Fujifilm S5 Pro and some nice, fast manual Nikkor AI-lenses like the 24mm ƒ/2 or 24mm ƒ/2.8, 35mm ƒ/2, 50mm ƒ/1.4 and 85mm ƒ/2, or, when it comes to responsive AF-lenses for action scenes, 18–70mm ƒ/3.5–4.5 AF-S G DX, 70–300mm ƒ/4.5–5.6 AF-S G VR + AF-S G, 35mm ƒ/1.8 and/or 28mm ƒ/1.8, 50mm ƒ/1.8, 85mm ƒ/1.8. I work with each of these cameras and lenses for many years now to my (and my clients') full satisfaction. It's reliable, capable and affordable gear."

christian kurmann: "I think he's already doing exactly the right thing. He's spreading word and will undoubtedly find someone who provides the required material. I like it when people should voice their wishes. I feel we live in an altruistic society and giving is usually easier then taking. I wish him all the best with finding a fisheye that matches the DSLR he gets."

UPDATE: You've got that right. As of 6 p.m. Sunday, Nate's been offered a Fuji FinePix S2 Pro, a Pentax K-5 with 16–50mm ƒ/4 lens, a Panasonic G3, a Nikon D200, a Canon Rebel XT with Sigma 18x-50 ƒ/2.8, and an Olympus E-420 with kit lens, as well as a Canon 1D for a low price. (And one more I can't find right now...my spologies.)

TOP readers being both kind and generous, I thought something like this might happen...Nate's going to catch up on reading tonight. I'll let you know what he ends up doing. —Mike

Random Excellence: Christopher Gibbs

Photo by Chris Gibbs, from the series "Dog Musher." See the whole set—some good stuff there. The interface is a little hinky—if you're seeing an image fill up your whole screen, click the little circle in the upper-right-hand corner. To see the whole images the page should look like this:

I've always thought it was kind of funny how some things push our buttons and some don't. If we're smart, it can help determine what we choose to photograph. But it even sometimes determines—partly, at least—what kind of photographs we look at. I personally have a very hard time getting into pictures of bugs, a subject of intense interest for a lot of people. I've tried repeatedly, but I've found there's just very little fascination there for me. But I love dogs, and get a lot of enjoyment out of pictures of them. There's no right or wrong, of course—only what's good or not-so-good for you.

I first learned about this when I took over Photo Techniques from the wonderful Editor David Alan Jay. David said that when he first got the job he thought, "Finally, there's going to be photo magazine with no pictures of children." He really didn't care for pictures of kids. I've always liked kids as a photographic subject, so his statements about it started me thinking.

"Dog Musher" came up as a topic when we announced Google's great deal on Nik software the other day. Chris tells me most of the B&W shots in the series were processed with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

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

Tom Basista: "About Dogs and Kids: I worked as a photojournalist for nearly 20 years. My first editor told me that if you want to sell newspapers, put a photo of a dog or a kid on the front page. To sell a lot of papers, put a photo of a kid with a dog on the front page."

Mike replies: I think TV has taken a page out of that book. My smart dog Lulu has learned to recognize dogs on TV, and she's extremely good at detecting their presence...which happens constantly. She will leap at the TV when there are radically cropped dogs, very distant dogs, and very fast, fleeting cuts of dog images. She recognizes and will bark at cartoon dogs. Cartoon dogs that aren't moving are about the only representation that can fool her. She's like an alarm that sounds whenever a dog is used on TV....

Anthony Bridges: "The best movie I've seen for awhile is watching this slideshow. There is a lot said in these photos and a lot that is implied and some real emotional character. Thanks for sharing this link."

A Followup: Office Space

The other day I went on at some length (too much?) in this post about my office space problem, and the interesting way in which it thoroughly resists every potential solution. My enthusiasm at the time was for adding a second story to the garage, even if it would be expensive.

Well. I had a builder here yesterday (I'm getting two old windows replaced), and since he was here anyway I spoke to him about it. He said there's no way the city would issue a building permit for a two-story garage next to a one-story house. Not a question...no way. His rough estimate for the project as I outlined it to him was fifty to a hundred thousand dollars anyway. The estimate I got for adding a second story to the house was eighty. These are numbers way out in the wispy realm of the theoretical for Yr. Hmbl. Ed., even for TOP World Headquarters.

But maybe that's for the best. Think of what happens to many other mighty enterprises when they build vast gleaming headquarters buildings. A few years pass, and Chrysler is no longer headquartered in the Chrysler Building, the Sears Tower is no longer the Sears Tower, and Hasselblad has to vamoose from its ultramodern HQ. And come to think of it, my mentor at the publishing company I used to work for got let go not long after she bought herself a proper set of office furniture. So maybe a larger office would be a signal of hubris that would bode ill for the fortunes of the Internet juggernaut that is TOP, which, let's face it, does not actually yet have a very robust history of stability and prosperity.

In other words, looks like I am going to have to muddle along with what I have. Well, it's been workin' so far.

Mike

CODA: I do thank everyone for all the suggestions, but, honestly, I really have considered and rejected every alternative. I have no room for an outdoor shed, cannot afford to waterproof the basement (I've gotten estimates), know myself well enough to know I just wouldn't visit an offsite office often enough, absolutely cannot reconfigure the room arrangement of the house, cannot use the garage, etc., etc. I'm stuck with my 11x11" space, and that's that. Lucky to have that much I guess.

Fortunately, new cabinets, tables, and shelving should help a lot, and I can write off the cost.

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.

TOP links

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

JackS: "I have always found it cheaper to buy an existing house with the configuration you want rather than altering the house you are in—even after including the cost of moving. The cost of most home alterations is very difficult to recover when reselling, unless you do all the work and place very little value on your time. Of course, variables such as loving your location, not caring about resale values, and having piles and piles of picayunes can alter the home-alteration decision-making process. (YMMV)."

Marshall: "For what it's worth, that switch to new furniture and significant rearrangement can create enough change to be truly reinvigorating. I hope that is the experience you have with the project."

Sony NEX-6 Review: Conclusion, Part I

Recently, I rented a Sony NEX-6 camera and Carl Zeiss ZA 24mm ƒ/1.8 Sonnar E lens for five days, from Lensrentals. These are my impressions of the camera from that experience.

Five days is not long enough to really get to know a camera. It's long enough to get enamored of a camera (as we shall see), but not long enough for all of its "warts," so to speak, to fully emerge. When I used to write reviews for Camera & Darkroom my personal standard was to use the review camera for "real work" for no less than three months. I was an outlier among camera reviewers in that respect I'm sure. Five days falls far short of that exalted standard.

So this is a report, not a review per se. (The title says "review" because nobody's going to Google "Sony NEX-6 report.") So before we start, here are a few real limitations you should know about:

• I'm a still photographer. The NEX-6 does videos; it's me who doesn't.
• I shoot RAW* and then process my pictures in Photoshop, so I'm not interested in the camera's onboard JPEG conversion and processing features. I did shoot RAW+JPEG during my five days with the camera, but if I owned it I'd set it on RAW only.
• The camera has Wi-Fi and apps. Didn't check out these features; wasn't interested. Your mileage may vary (YMMV).
• I don't shoot with on-camera flash. I tried it, yes, and it worked, but I just hate the look and always have. If I need flash I use off-camera studio-type strobes (I prefer monoblocks); otherwise, I use available light.

Onward, Rocinante!
My general conclusion about it now that it's been gone for a few days: The Sony NEX-6 is an unusually sweet camera—even by today's high stardards, and even considering the stiff competition in the mirrorless camera category. I really enjoyed using it, and I liked it a lot.

There's no "but" to add to that. I liked it a lot, full stop.

It's a better camera than its category would imply too. I snitched this idea from Kirk, who wrote privately to me that the NEX cameras (he's got a NEX-7) reveal their capabilities in layers, "like peeling an onion." That is, the more seriously you use them, the more they rise to the challenge. We tend to think of little mirrorless cameras as happy snappers—high quality ones, but less than completely serious. But the bigger NEXes, the 6 and 7, are not just portable have-it-with-you pocketable digicam replacements, useful only for quick handheld snapshots. They are serious cameras capable of top-quality results.

When I use my Nikon D800, I love the results but I'm not so happy with the weight, bulk, and the imposing presence of the camera (although I understand how that last can come in handy sometimes, for instance when impressing clients), and my unhappiness with the expense is persisting. When I use my Panasonic GX1, I love the handy form factor, lightness, and egonomics, but I'm not as often completely happy with the image quality. The NEX-6 achieves a sweet spot nicely in the middle—I got uncommonly good results with it, and it was also easy to use and friendly to handle.

Looks and handling
Looks: Several people have requested that I opine on the NEX-6's controversial looks with the biggish 24mm on it—mainly the ungainly, unbalanced-looking, undersized body / oversized lens look.

Well, there's a lot of history there. You might remember the Sony F-717 and its brethren:

So if you think about it that way, the tiny-body/big-lens vibe is hardly a new thing for Sony. The NEX-6 differs considerably in the way it's set up, of course: on the old F-xxx series the entire body swiveled up and down, and the lens was fixed; on the NEX-6, just the viewing screen flips up and down, and you can interchange lenses.

I owned an F-717, in what now seems, in camera eras, almost like prehistory. Eons ago. It was an uncommonly fun and comfortable camera to use. And I got lots of good shots with it, despite its oversaturated reds and visible noise at ISO 400.

I didn't try any of the much smaller pancakes and other lenses on the NEX-6, which would change the look'n'feel of the overall package considerably. Partly that's because, given the way I think, the 24mm Zeiss lens is the killer app. All my life I've tended to use cameras in order to use certain lenses, not the other way around. I would personally be getting a NEX, if I got one, in order to use the Zeiss lens; I wouldn't get a NEX and then be casting about for a smaller lens that didn't look so dorky on the camera. I've never understood people who buy nice cameras and then cheap out on a less than good lens as an afterthought. This lens is one of the big reasons to shoot NEX, and certainly should be a part of any decision to switch to Sony.

Handling: the body/lens combo can be a bit awkward in all the non-shooting aspects: hanging from your shoulder, carrying it around (although it still fits in the glovebox of the Toyota). But that downside is decidedly mild. When shooting, with the combo in hand, it feels very comfortable and natural, easy to hold and (given the lightness of the lens) well-balanced, even. What? Well, it just doesn't look well-balanced, is all; but it's quite friendly to hold when you're shooting.

Note that the NEX-6 and NEX-7 are different beasts than the little NEX-3's and NEX-5's, which are considerably smaller and have a lighter, cheaper feel.

The camera itself is sort of plain-jane but stout and no-nonsense, a look I prefer above most others. Aptly judged and quite handsome as far as it goes, in my opinion. It seems "well sorted," to use one of dpreview's favorite phrases. I mentioned that my first impression of the body was that the placement of the shutter button was too close-in, but I found I adapted to that completely in short order. As an issue, it disappeared.

Anyway, pretty is as pretty does. I liked the handing fine; I wasn't bothered by the way the combo looks. In fact I kinda liked it. YMMV.

Results
I was quite impressed with the camera/lens combo's overall competence. It doesn't fluster easily at all. The hybrid contrast detect / phase detect autofocus is fast and sure, and actually does nail the correct focus properly almost all the time, something I can't even say of the D800 /28mmG.

I didn't track down the exact ISO that I would consider an upper limit for good-quality files, but it's comfortably high—my longtime personal standard has been that a camera needs to give me a no-reservations ISO 1600 and a usable 3200, and, in the limited tryout I was able to give it, the NEX-6 passes muster.

ISO 1000. The camera no doubt has upper limits for ISO, but (unlike the GF1!) they exceed my own.

100% out-of-camera detail from the above. What noise I see from the NEX-6 looks grainlike and didn't bother me at all; again, YMMV.

I also didn't explore the upper boundary of print size, mainly because I don't have a printer set up right now. My historical preferred print sizes for 3:2 were 6x9 inches, 7x10.5 inches, and 8x12 inches, depending on the image; with digital I print bigger, up to maybe 15 or 16 inches in the long dimension. Somewhere above that, the NEX-6 sensor would begin to yield ground to bigger ones—bigger ones, I mean, both in pixel count and physical size. I'm confident from what I see onscreen that I'd personally be happy this camera's sensor. People who print big will need to explore this area on their own more carefully.

As I mentioned the other day, the camera is very good at hitting the right exposure and protecting the highlights. My old Mazda Miata makes me look like a better driver than I really am; the NEX-6 will make its users look like better technical photographers than they really are.

Controls
Never cracked the manual. Doubtless there are still a few surprises awaiting me. (Every surprise within my short trial period was a good one, however.)

I keep yammering about how I never cottoned to the Olympus OM-D E-M5's controls (henceforth, OM-D), and I feel guilty about that. The damn thing just confuses me, I'll admit it. I know I could sort it all out if I had to, and it's embarrassing that I haven't bothered, but I just can't seem to get to grips with the task. I'm sorry. I don't think like it thinks, or vice-versa. Really, I'm just lazy.

The Sony, on the other hand, sorted itself out nicely, and sort of naturally. Every time I wanted it to do something, I poked around a bit and there it was. Everything was pretty straightforward, at least to my brain. A day or two and I felt I knew the camera, felt like I was using the controls surely and confidently. Nothing frustrated me. Nothing bit me in the arse. Everything worked fine.

It's like an anti-OM-D in that respect. The buttons fell to hand much more readily (the review button on the OM-D is hard to reach with my ham hands, and what's with that crazy button on the side of the fake prism housing? That's wack), and once I figured something out I remembered it.

I'm not saying I mastered it; but I was having no issues. Inside of 48 hours, the NEX-6 felt like an old friend. And it was giving me results that stoked my enthusiasm.

Addressing a specific failure of the OM-D: I almost always felt confident I knew what the NEX-6 was doing at any given time, and that it was dutifully doing what I told it to. It's trustworthy. I never know with 100% certainty quite what the OM-D is up to. Well, maybe I do, but I'm not confident about it. There have been numerous occasions when I thought it was doing one thing only to find later that it was doing another. Rude.

To be honest, part of my problem with the Olympus is that it just pisses me off. I don't feel the designers did a good job on its controls and menus, and I resent being victimized by their incompetence every time I use my expensive device. I love the results the camera gives me, which are stellar for Micro 4/3, but I feel like there's a price to pay. (As I admitted above, this is all partly my own fault.)

The best description of the OM-D's menus I've heard came from a reader—I think he was a pro, I don't remember—who said it normally takes him three hours to set up and completely learn the menus on a new camera, but with the OM-D it took him three days. That's about right. The NEX-6's menus by comparison are clearly designed to be simplified and user-friendly, and, even when they're not immediately understandable, they're at least reasonably easy to figure out. You can easily get going with no problem well within three hours, and by three days you feel like you're getting pretty close to the bottom of the well. I'm much happier with the usability, handling, and especially the controls and menus of the NEX-6. Much.

[Continued in Part II]

Mike

*We here at TOP—and be "we" I mean me—just made a site style change, to write "raw" in all caps. This is non-consistent, because the term isn't an acronym, and doesn't need capitalization any more than when you're talking about feeding tigers RAW meat. However, common usage exerts its hegemony, and we are acceding to it. The world writes it "RAW," so, henceforth, TOP will too.

Current products mentioned in this post:

Sony NEX-6 body ($748—the price has dropped $100 since last week)

Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm ƒ/1.8 ZA lens ($1,098)

Nikon D800 ($2,797)

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 28mm ƒ/1.8G ($697)

Panasonic GX1 (a steal right now at $275)

Sony NEX-3N (with 16–50mm lens for $498)**

Sony NEX-5R (body only $548)

Sony NEX-7 (body only $998)

Olympus OM-D E-M5 ($930)

**Whoops, I originally said this was "on end-of-life closeout." That's wrong. Sorry! Can't keep up with the alphanumeric onslaught.

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:

jim: "For once you cant agitate me into buying a camera with your review because I allready own a NEX-6! Unfortunately I don't own the Zeiss 24mm so I really wish you'd quit being so eloquently pleased with it!"

Andreas: "Funny, I feel similar about the OM-D (which I borrowed from a friend for a few weeks now). On the one hand it is greatly customizable—more than a 5D Mark III, but on the other hand there are weird dependencies between settings that shouldn't be related. I don't have an example at the moment, probably because these things twist my brain so I prefer not to remember them.

"But then, picking up the OM-D feels really good; it fits me like a glove and it feels very reliable. What I also like is the EVF, the first I saw that works for me, somehow. They got the brightness and contrast right, and—very importantly—the refresh-rate, which is still good at low light!

"This bothered me with the GX1 and its EVF, which is decent in good light, but breaks apart in low light, especially in the refresh department. I never ever read about such things in reviews, but these aspects are very important IMHO. Because due to the EVF, the OM-D feels like a real camera compared the GX1, which would be quite perfect if it only had a proper viewfinder, a better dial and smoother shutter sound.

"So, Mike, I would be very happy if you speak about the Sony's EVF (in low light). Thanks."

Mike replies: I will, in Part II.

Kirk Tuck: "I actually have a NEX-6 and three NEX-7's. Since I bought these little Sonys I've never had a moment of camera lust for any other small camera. I play with friends' EM-5's, say something nice about the sweet sound the shutter makes and then hand 'em back. I've never had the compulsion to push through to the transaction and actually own one.

"Why three NEX-7's? I've learned that as soon as I find a camera I like it gets discontinued and whatever replaces it generally sounds like the next coming on paper but falls short of the model I liked because of one 'improvement' or another. I found the NEX-7 so alluring to shoot with I wanted to make sure I always had two working bodies.

"When I go out to shoot a job I put a different lens on each body and set them all the same. Just like we used to do in the film days.

"I know I am an anomaly because I am the one person who gets along well with the strap.

"So, with three NEX-7's why did I bother to get a NEX-6? Simple, I wanted a camera I could use a small, cheap, conventional flash on. At least that was my rationale. I've never put a flash on the top but I do use it when I want smaller (but still very, very good) raw files to play with.

"These two NEX cameras are my favorite cameras of the digital age so far. I own the Sony a99 but my brain always seems to direct my hands to pick up the NEX cameras first.

"I've never been disappointed."

He Shoots He SCORES!!

Hey, remember Nick Laham? We wrote about him when he was forced to turn a Tampa restroom into a studio and shoot some portraits with his Apple iPhone. Well, his picture of A-Rod (the one we featured) made Page One of The New York Times on Sunday.

There's been a lot of teeth-gnashing, hair-tearing, and garment-rending about how publications no longer care about professional-quality work from pro cameras, but you could look at it from the opposite perspective too—you could claim pro photographers aren't on the hook to keep contantly upgrading to the latest and best professional DSLRs any more. They can just use their iPhones like "everybody"* else.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

*Except us. We'll use good-quality point-and-shoots or better, thanks.

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.

Click here, dammit Gumby.

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

Mark: "I haven't seen a copy of the actual newspaper myself, but I can't help but think that this is an entirely appropriate usage of a camera and technology and a testament to the skills of a professional photographer. Eyeballing the size of the photo relative to the size of the page, it can't be more than about 6x6" (or 15x15 cm). Even if it were printed at 300 DPI, that would only be a bit more than 3 MP for the image—and newsprint was almost never a medium for high-resolution photography in the first place.

"Furthermore, if any story allowed for the use of a nostalgic instagram aesthetic, I would have to see it as a story about an aging baseball star.

"Lastly, I know that I couldn't have improvised a studio in a bathroom and captured those expressions no matter what camera I was using. So doesn't that argue in favor of professional photographers rather than professional cameras? In terms of resolution, even a two-page spread in Time, National Geographic, or Elle could easily be handled by the previous generation of full-frame cameras. There's something liberating in that, if only we could remember and pay attention to it."

Henry Rogers: "I like that picture! I wouldn't like it any more if it had been taken with much more precise equipment."

Of Photographers, Writers and Trademarks

This week's column by Ctein

Three years ago, I wrote an introductory column on the subject of trademarks. It's time to hit that subject again, especially in light of a recent kerfuffle between DigitalRev and Woodman Labs.

I strongly recommend readers review my previous column and the comments therein for a more complete take on the nature of trademark than I'm presenting here.

It's important to understand the trademarks and copyrights are very different entities. A trademark doesn't have to be creative or novel or any kind of intellectual invention. It's just something that uniquely identifies your business and allows you to distinguish it from competitors. That's why there are registered trademarks for Apple (Computers) and Music, Windows operating systems, and McDonald's hamburgers. (You don't have to register a trademark, although that affords additional protections.) You can even register your own name as a trademark, within the scope of your business. Some famous artists and photographers have done so.

(No, I have not registered Ctein. Although the name is close to unique, it's just not all that valuable.)

The same word can be used as a trademark by a bunch of different businesses or products, so long as they are not competing in the same arena. Example—Apple (Computers) and Apple Music. Even trademarked logos can be similar, so long as there's no chance of confusion.

There are the inevitable gray areas in anything involving intellectual property. There's no obstacle to me opening up a portrait studio called McDonald's Portraits. If I name it McDonald's Kids Portraits and adopt a clown as my corporate mascot, I'm pushing my luck. I definitely better not paint the studio red and yellow and put a golden arch over the door!

It's not that the Burger Meister (I was going to say King, but, well, you know...) is in the portrait business. But I'm starting to create the misimpression that my business is part of their empire, and that's a no-no. If your actions sow confusion about who's in what business, you're into infringement territory.

A trademark is very specific. You can't trademark a concept, even a physical one. The Rock 'n Roll Hall Of Fame lost their lawsuit against the photographer in good part because they tried to claim that any photograph of their building violated the trademarked images they used. That's a no-go. The Transamerica Corp. has trademarks on certain portrayals of their signature building. My photograph...

Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco, CA—1976. Photo by Ctein.

...doesn't violate those. (Unless I start using it to advertise a real estate/financial business, and then we're back to sowing confusion. Don't go there.)

Similarly, the owners of Lone Cypress can't prevent you from making and using photographs of that tree anyway you want, so long as they're made from public property and so long as they're not close to specific renditions that they've trademarked (or you're using them in a business entirely separate from theirs and not likely to be confused with it).

A copyright lets me restrict and control reproduction of my words and photographs, except for some very narrow exceptions that are carved out by the Fair Use doctrine. A trademark, broadly speaking, does not. You can refer to trademarks in any way you like, so long as you're not sowing confusion or leveraging off of their business.

Remember the column I wrote some months back lambasting Apple for killing off Rosetta in Mac OSX 10.7 (a.k.a. Lion)? Do you think I needed Apple's permission before using any of those trademarked words? Technically speaking, they can require me to put the appropriate trademark symbol after each and every use (although that seems to be falling out of common practice), but they can't stop me from using them in my writings. If this weren't the case, it would be just about impossible to write any kind of article that referred to any products or companies without letters of permission from each and every one. Every single piece of writing you see, anywhere, that referred to a business or product would be a trademark violation.

They're not. The law simply does not allow for that kind of restriction on referring to a trademark. (But, again distinguishing between copyright and trademark, they can refuse me permission to use product photographs from their website, if they so choose.)

Now that said...
It's always worth remembering that a lot of people out there are bullies, thugs, or jerks. Some businesses out there will try to strong-arm you into doing things their way. They'll threaten you with lawsuits or worse. That's nothing new for writers or photographers. [Amen —Ed.] I've written in the past about how various manufacturers and individuals have gone ballistic over articles they didn't like, and it has nothing to do with the Internet, digital rights, or anything else. Trust me, those folks will always find something to threaten you with.

Understand that if you decide to give into them (and who would blame you), it's because you know they can beat the crap out of you. It's not because they have the law on their side.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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Doug: "A nasty trap that many people innocently stumble into: properly used, a trademark can be an adjective. Why does that matter? Consider these two possible names for a web site that isn't run by Nikon:

nikonsupplies.com
suppliesfornikon.com

Most people wouldn't think there is any real difference between those two names. But legally, there is a huge difference. The first name is trademark infringement. It uses 'Nikon' as an adjective for 'supplies,' and thereby implies that the site is run by Nikon. The latter name does not suggest that Nikon runs the site."

Limited Edition Photographs

The whole Eggleston-Sobel imbroglio is, to my mind, simply another reason why photographers should never limit their editions. 

Imbroglio is a word I like: it's pronounced im-BRO-lee-oh, and it means "a confused heap." It's what Oliver Hardy means when he says, in no fewer than 15 Laurel and Hardy films, "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!" (He never actually says "another fine mess"—that was the title of a 1930 film.)

Whenever the subject of limited editions comes up, I'm quickly admonished that "you have to limit your editions" because dealers want you to and the art market expects you to. Well, of course they do: it's to their advantage. The practice of limiting editions exists almost exclusively to benefit the secondary market.

Actually, you don't have to do anything. You have a spine, and it's a free country. Do what you want, not what some art-world autocrat demands that you do. Act in your own best interests instead of someone else's.

Another brief digression, for a few definitions: the primary market is when the creator—the photographer who took the photograph—sells a print of it to someone. The secondary market is when that other person re-sells it to someone else.

At this point in the discussion, someone always says, "Limited editions only benefit the secondary market? No they don't. Limiting your editions helps you sell more prints, because collectors are more likely to buy prints from limited editions."

That's right. Limiting the edition size does help you sell a few more photographs—except in the case of your most popular photographs. Which are the ones that will make the lion's share of whatever money you'll ever earn from print sales. And as every photographer knows, those most popular photographs are few and rare. In those few, rare cases—when you've actually created a desirable picture lots of people want to buy—you don't need any "help" selling out the edition. People will buy them because they want them. And then they will want some more.

And therein—there in those words "and then they will want some more"—lies the rub.  The demand goes on—sustained, even after the edition has run out. It might even go up. The demand is greater than the supply. 

This is what the secondary market prizes, and why it cares. High demand + low supply = higher prices. The secondary market only profits if the prices go up as work is resold again and again.

To help this to happen, the secondary market has to make sure the supply is controlled—even if it has to be done artificially. Dead artists are mighty tractable in this way; they don't make any more prints and they don't sign any more prints. But living photographers are loose cannons. Never know what they're going to do. So living photographers are bullied into limiting their editions.

All this means to the photographer is that he or she is going to be prevented from profiting from his or her desirable photographs. His or her few, rare desirable photographs, mind you...the ones he or she doesn't have many of.

So here's how it goes. Luck, skill, and hard work pay off, and you get a really outstanding shot that lots of people might want to buy. And what happens? You're enjoined to only sell a few of them, for the sake of the secondary market. Your ability to profit from sales of prints of your photograph is limited right along with the "edition."

Why would photographers want to do this? Because they're told they have to.

Photographers should want the primary market to profit, not the secondary market. The reason is simple: that's you. You are the primary supplier for your own photographs. If you sell a print for $350 and 10 years later it sells for $10,000 on the secondary market, you don't get a piece of that $10,000*.

At this point in the discussion, somebody always says, "Wrong. Because if the prices for your older work goes up on the secondary market, it will increase the prices you can charge for your newer work." Right again. That works...for about seventy people alive in the world today. Maybe fifty. Or maybe thirty.

It doesn't work that way for most of us.

For most of us, you have to look at it from the opposite perspective. Some while ago I mentioned a classmate who took a popular photo of a couple of white cows in the fog on a country road when we were in photo school in the early '80s. She told me she's still selling prints of that picture, 30 years later! I always trot out this next fact in this argument, but that doesn't make it any less true: Ansel Adams printed more than 800 copies of "Moonrise, Hernandez," in his life, his best-selling photograph. That didn't stop it from holding the auction record for a photograph at one time.

Then consider the handful of photojournalists I've heard from in my tenure as an editor, who took one or two famous pictures in their career, but who can't profit from them because the pictures are owned by the publication they took them for. Even some of those who do own their (remember, few, rare) most desirable pictures end up fighting with their former employers over the rights.

Lee Friedlander refuses to limit his editions. Why? You'd have to ask him, but I presume it's because it's anti-democratic and inorganic, not in keeping with the true nature of the medium. And he does as well as anybody in terms of print sales, among photographers of his (considerable) stature.

I'm not objective about this subject. I resent the whole idea of limited editions. It's corrupt, and exploitative of photographers. It's also false—the grafting of a sensible idea from one medium (printmaking) on to a medium to which it does not apply.

First editions
Forget printmaking, from whence the idea of "limited editions" comes. Photographic prints are more like printed books.

Here's my suggestion: go back to first principles. An "edition" is a printing...an occasion on which a work is published in multiple. It is in that sense necessarily limited, because you don't print an unlimited number of photographs or print an unlimited run of books when you make up a batch of 'em. You don't create unlimited numbers of whatever it is you're publishing, even if you can.

If David Vestal went down to his darkroom in 1986 and printed five copies of a picture he took in Mexico and put them in a box, where they sit for decades, that's a de facto edition. The 1986 printing of that photographs is limited to five. But maybe that picture gets published in a book and suddenly becomes famous, and he quickly sells all his 1986 prints, and he prints 25 more in 2013. He sells nineteen of them and puts the other six in a box, where they will sit for some unspecified period of time. That's the 2013 edition, and it's limited to 25 prints.

Why not just formalize this? Call the 1986 prints "the first edition" and the 2013 prints "the second edition"?

Works for books.

Would Jonathan Sobel be so aggrieved in the current imbroglio if he had bought a print of "Memphis (Tricycle)" that was part of a 25-print** first edition instead of a 25-print limited edition? Would he care so much that the Egglestons decided to raise some cash years later by selling a few big inkjets as a "second edition, 2012"?

I don't think so.

So that's my recommendation. Limit your editions, sure, but do it by being rigorous about it. Print all the prints in the edition at the same time so they're identical and they can all be legitimately identified by a date or a year. Mark them as being part of that edition. Give each edition clear identifiers—size, materials, technique. Don't add any more to that edition after the fact—respect the edition's integrity. Then, if you want to, or if you ever have reason to, do another edition...in which the prints are identifiably different from those of the first edition. Call that other edition the second edition, and mark it as such, and respect its integrity as well.

Problem solved, if you ask me.

Of course, no one asks me. But you can't blame me for trying.

Mike

*Unless you live in France, if memory serves.

**I don't actually know the real number. I made up "25."

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[Another] Mike: "As a book collector and hobbyist photographer, all of this seem to me to be completely obvious. Most of the time, in publishing, 'limted editions' are little more than a gimmick to get people to spend more money. I'll keep my first edition of The Grapes of Wrath, thank you, no matter how fancy your leather bound, smyth-sewn limited edition is."

Marco: "In Italian, imbroglio refers to a mess made on purpose to obtain something dishonestly. Like selling the Coliseum to an American tourist.  ;-) "

Alexandre Buisse: "Talk about being bullied: in France, where I am a pro, it is a legal requirement to edition your prints to 25 copies or less if you want to be considered an 'artist,' which comes with all sorts of benefits and drawbacks, like the ability to license a photograph to a client. If you refuse to, that makes you a craftsman, you have a higher sales tax, and you're only allowed to shoot weddings and sell images as physical objects to the general public. I wish I was kidding."

Geoff Wittig: "I'm not sure if the analogy with book 'editions' is quite right. Photographic prints can be produced basically on-demand, while book editions really have to be printed all at once due to the economics of a press run. Yes, there is frequently a steep price premium for older 'first editions' of books that become popular, just like there is for older photographic prints. But I regard the obsession with collecting 'first editions' of trade hardcovers completely absurd. There is generally nothing objectively special about such first editions; they're often printed on low quality (i.e., not archival or acid free) paper. The typography is generally ordinary, which is to say dreadful. The 'value' of a first edition, then, is entirely a matter of contrived scarcity rather than artistic merit. I honestly just don't understand this.

"A book that is printed as an actual, honest to goodness limited edition is a very different beast. It generally has been printed on acid-free paper chosen for very specific æsthetic goals, with typopraphy and page design intended to honor and illuminate the text. Such books are often exquisite examples of the very best the bookbinder, paper-maker, typographer and illustrator are capable of. They're actually worth owning for æsthetic, rather than pecuniary, reasons. And because of the labor-intense nature of such books, they're by definition produced in very small numbers. I guess one could regard them as the bibliographic equivalent of a hand-made dye transfer print as opposed to an offset press poster."

Nick Moore: "Don't you think most photographs sold (in the primary market) today are essentially editions of one—printed on demand rather than in a batch (or edition)? Your print sales would be notable exceptions and, of course, are predicated on the benefits of dealing with a batch run. If true, does this change your thinking about what would constitute an edition?"

Mike replies: I'm only suggesting this as a rational alternative for those who insist on editioning in the first place. Of course the sensible solution is not to edition at all; see the first paragraph.

tex andrews (partial comment): "...Although Mike makes some excellent points about who benefits in these 'limited' situations, limiting an edition is not altogether illegitimate—because the dealers actually have a legitimate stake in this.  They are after all bearing the financial burdens of their businesses, from staffing and rents to utilities, and are indeed giving the artist a value add of marketing, if they are worth their salt. Getting with a good gallery is a very important part of the making of a career—which is very different than the making of the work or developing a vision, etc."

Brief Updates

1. I got an email from Maude Schuyler Clay, who confirmed that the Eggleston portrait is hers. She's traveling, though, so her note was brief.

2. I hope to write the NEX-6 wrapup on Wednesday. It might have flaws, but it won't be fiction.

3. So here's what I'm jazzed up about at the moment. I mentioned in the "Ask Mike" post my difficulties with the size of my home office. It's as near as makes no difference to 11 feet square, making a grand total of 121 square feet of floor space. I'm so jammed in I literally can't buy a flatbed scanner because I have no place to put it. It really has been a problem, although I understand completely if nobody cares but me. :-)

In the Comments, reader Thomas Turnbull suggested adding a second story to the house. I've actually already looked in to that, and the bottom line is that any way I slice it, it would cost about twice the value it would add to the house. No can do.

But then I got a related bright idea...I have a detached two-car garage. I wonder how much it would cost to add a second story to that?

I was just out there in the dark with the measuring tape. The garage is 20.5 by 22.5 feet, making about 440 square feet after subtracting the thickness of the walls. That would be more than twice as much floor space*! If I'm careful with the design, I could have a scanner and a little studio space, and I wouldn't have to site the printer in the living room. Woo-hoo. Luxury. It would require no plumbing, and the stairs could be outdoor, patio-style stairs leading up to a door. If I did some of the work myself and don't get too carried away with details, it might even be possible.

It'll probably still be too expensive, but I'm going to look into this. Hope!

Mike

*Innumeracy joke. It's ~3.6 times as much.

UPDATE by the cold light of dawn: I don't think this would work. Now that I look at it more carefully, the garage is just sticks on a slab.  And the roof structure, which I was thinking could simply be raised, doesn't allow for any clearance at all, so the second story would have to a be a full seven or eight feet. Actually, to get a usable second story, the whole shebang would probably need to be rebuilt from the foundation, all new. I'd probably be into the project $50k if I was into it a dime. Too rich for the likes o' me.

Plus, the resulting hulk would blot out of the sky, and would overpower the scale of the house and the lot, which is adequate but modest. And the next occupant of the house would be left wondering what in the world to do with the space...they'd probably find themselves with one very fancy attic.

We translate it to "The best-laid plans of mice and men / often go awry," but don't forget that the original Scots is "The best laid schemes o' Mikes an' Men, / Gang aft agley."

Well, maybe that's not quite right!

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dwross: "As the saying goes: I feel your pain. That was my situation for years, except the dedicated small bedroom was an improvement! Before that, I had a corner of every room in the house staked out. Then...I don't know how much of a lot you have, or your setback requirements, but I was able to remodel my detached garage into a studio/darkroom and attach it to the house with a pretty foyer, and then build a new detached garage. Heaven (except the long walk with the groceries!)"

Mike replies: Good for you. Glad it worked out.

As I've replied to various commenters, the situation really is a puzzle. Here's the lowdown:

• Can't move. I can barely afford this place, don't have time to do all the work of moving house, and besides, if I were going to move anyway, would I really want to live in Waukesha?
• Can't add a second floor to the house. It's the best solution physically, but it would cost $80k and add only $40k to the value of the property.
  
• Can't use the garage itself. It's not winterizable because it's on a slab (and in Wisconsin, you don't get away with partial winterization). Plus it would leave the house with no garage, affecting resale adversely, plus there then wouldn't be enough room for the cars.
• Can't build on top of the garage for the reasons listed above.
• Can't use the basement. It floods.
• Can't apportion additional space inside the house because of the layout. It would require major remodeling and still not be ideal.
• Can't expand into the yard because of setback laws and lack of room. It's a very small lot.
• Can't rent office space elsewhere because then I'd never get the work done. It's not only convenient but necessary to work from home.

I've thought and thought about this, but there really does appear to be no possible solution except the current one: deal with the 11x11-foot office!

Lynn: "Have you looked at creative ways to maximise the small space—for example, look at the way boat cabins, camper vans, and even some clever kitchens are fitted out. Lots of innovative ideas. Maybe the scanner can be on a spring-loaded high shelf that comes out and down on cantilevered arms by just pulling on a handle...or modify the idea of a slide-out pantry so the stuff you need is neatly tucked away until you need it. Can you use parts of the wall cavity to increase the depth of cupboards?"

Mike replies: You know, that really might be the most sensible idea of all. Just resign myself to the fact that this space is all I get, and make the best of it. I could have cabinets and shelving built in on three walls and parts of a fourth, and then just commit to staying neat and organized. It would be the cheapest option—I could probably get it all done for six or eight thousand dollars—it would negatively impact the value of the house the least (for the next owner, it would just be the home office, plain and simple), and you're right, if I'm smart and plan carefully I could probably give myself all the space I need.

Well, not enough space for a tabletop to take illustration pictures. But most of what I need.

Rick: "Mike here is an ides of sorts to give you some ideas maybe."

Mike replies: Wow. That is really cool stuff.

Oh Well

Most lives include at least a few stories of missed opportunities. Someday I'll tell the whole story of "The Ponton in the Weeds," about a glorious old Mercedes that should have been my first car. Alas.

John Hufnagel, in a Featured Comment to the previous post, mentioned that his brother's associates in Military Intelligence several decades ago bought cheap Polaroids because "government-issued Leicas were 'too hard to use.'"

Reminds me of a little story. (Sorry if I've told this before. I've told all my stories before, I just can't keep track of to whom.)

I went to photography school in Washington, D.C., at the Corcoran School of Art (now called The Corcoran College of Art and Design). The school is right next to the Old Executive Office Building, which is right next to the White House. My schoolwork required me to photograph frequently, and I loved to walk, so naturally I walked all over the city taking pictures.

One day I found myself moseying past the huge Department of Agriculture building on Independence Avenue, on the south side of the Mall, and, as was my wont, I went poking around a bit. Somewhere, somehow, I ran across one of those bulletin boards in a locked glass case. In it was a sheet of paper that said "Public Notice—Surplus Auction." I was a poor photo student at the time, so I thought, hmm, maybe I can score something for cheap that I can use.

So I asked, and was directed to a room somewhere off in the nether reaches of the vast building.

In the room was a paltry collection of the sorriest looking old crap you ever saw. Ancient desks and broken-down desk chairs, heaps of old forms and stationary supplies—I remember a mechanical calculator sitting on a pile of cardboard boxes that looked like it dated from FDR's Administration—and various contraptions and gizmos...spectography plotters, soil sample testers and whatnot. It looked like one of the most unpromising abandoned storage lockers on that show "Storage Wars," only a little neater.

Then I noticed a kind of crisply-made wooden crate barely visible beneath various other crap. It was about the size of a big footlocker.

"What's that over there?" I asked.

The fellow who had let me in shuffled through his papers. "Cameras of some sort," he said. "Navy stuff. There are a bunch of numbers here."

Could I see?

The manifest was marked:

US NAVY CAMERA STILL PICTURE KE7A 30 CT NEW, ELCAN f/2 66MM 30 CT NEW

After which was scrawled: "Outmoded, deaccession."

Know what those were?

I did.

Leicas.

KE7 was the designation for military M4's. And Leitz lenses—Elcan was Leitz's Canadian facility (they still make Leica lenses there, although now it's owned by Raytheon). Why U.S. Navy? No clue. 66mm? Never heard of that. Why were they at the Department of Ag? Also no clue. The ways of the Federal Government are mysterious.

Could I look? The fellow was amenable to the idea, but when we uncovered the crate a little more, it became apparent that it was screwed together. This discouraged him, and he decided we wouldn't look inside after all. It's funny—the visual of the crate with its top off revealing neat rows of pristine boxes is burned on my brain, but it's a sight I never actually saw. That picture exists just in my imagination.

Curiously, I was excited about my find, but only moderately. I really wasn't into old cameras all that much at the time...I was mostly interested in what I could do with cameras. But I'd seen old Leicas on the used shelves at Penn Camera, where we all bought our supplies, and I thought, well, I wouldn't mind using an old Leica. Especially if it was painted army green. Or navy blue. Or camo!

And if "30 CT" meant "thirty count," as I was pretty sure it did, I thought it would be a hoot, if I actually won the auction, to pass out Navy-surplus Leicas to my classmates for free! I was sure I could keep a few, give a few away, and sell the rest to Penn Camera, and come out the other side with a handy profit in my pocket.

I scraped together every dime I could put together and showed up for the auction.

It was a Thursday, as I recall. The place was dead—there were all of maybe seven citizens in the room. And virtually all of them were interested in the furniture or one of the pieces of technical equipment. (Afterwards, one guy, dressed in 1970s plaid pants, was very excited to tell me all about the great deal he'd scored on a perfectly good whatchamacallit. Did I have any idea what whatchamamcallits were worth? He was very enthusiastic, and told me much more than I needed to know about it. Nice guy, although maybe just a tad off.)

I won the crate of KE7's for $180. I think two other people made tepid bids, just on principle, but their hearts weren't in it.

But then when we were herded down what seemed like a football field's worth of endless corridor to another office to make payment, I ran into a little snag. I was told that my crate had been assigned a minimum of $300. My $180 wasn't good enough; I'd have to pay $300.

Which was fine, except I didn't have $300. I fell about $40 or $50 short of that.

So I commenced one of those exercises in futility with which you might be familiar...trying to reason with a bureaucracy. I had $260, more or less; would that do? No, sir, it says $300, and I don't have the authority—. Could I buy half the contents of the crate for half the $300? No. For the whole $260? No. Who decided on the 300 number? Could I talk to that person? (Right, like that person would be easier to reason with.)

Could I pay what I had and come back later with the balance? Sorry, sir, but the United States Department of Agriculture Requisition and Supply (or whatever it is; I don't remember) is not set up to accommodate layaway shopping for the convenience of citizens.

And so forth, and so on.

So could I just come back later with all the money? She didn't see why not.

Eight days later, I got my paycheck from my part time job, and I showed up back at the Ag Department with $300 in my hot little hand, and high hopes. I had won the auction, after all, and bureaucracies remember details like that.

I got shuffled from one room to the next, one functionary to another. Finally someone found the papers.

The verdict? Failed to sell at public auction. Discarded.  

What? Discarded?!? As in, thrown away? When?

Yesterday. I.e., one week from the auction date.

Where?

Well, you know how that goes, too. I couldn't quite give up on it right away, but I had to face facts eventually. My crate of Leicas had gone to oblivion.

More's the pity.

Ever since then, from time to time, I think about them. Somewhere, buried deep in one of the landfills around Washington, D.C., there is a well-made, screwed-together wooden crate of brand new, never-used Leica M4's with matching 66mm lenses—poor virgin cameras that never got to take a picture. Slumbering, they are, deep in the Earth.

Another one that got away. To quote my old friend Paul Kennedy, who was a teacher at the Corcoran at the time: "You know what they say: Oh well."

Mike

UPDATE from Michael Perini: "Elcan designed the Leica Elcan 66mm ƒ/2 ultra-high resolution lens for U.S. Navy. According to some literature, the lenses were used by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the Cold War."

More from Japan Camera Hunter. (Thanks to Michael.)

UPDATE #2, April 2: Okay, I admit it—this post is almost entirely fiction. April Fool. Hey, I can't take the day off on two holidays in a row, can I?

I did hear a rumor of a guy scoring some used military Leicas at an Ag Department auction when I was in photo school, but that's as far as the facts go.

How did I do, though? This was my biggest fiction project in a while!

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LJ Slater: "That's one of the most gut-wrenching stories I've ever heard, and that's no joke! Too bad about the date today, though."

Mike replies: What, are you referring to the fact that it's Otto von Bismarck's birthday?

Dennis: "66mm ƒ/2...the missing portrait lens for APS-C! I can see why you'd still remember that story so vividly. My stories run more along the lines of opportunities that I should have passed up."

Hugh Crawford: "You know that 70mm Combat Graphic I keep going on about? That came from the Department of Federal Property Disposal Assistance at a Signal Corps base that closed in N.Y. in the '70s. I bought that and a 4x5 olive drab Speed Graphic, both in fitted Halliburton cases, plus a Leica M3 with a 50mm Summicron, for six dollars apiece. They had huge piles of them (I later was told that most of the Combat Graphics in existance, 2,000 or so, were in that pile), not to mention 4x5 and 8x10 enlargers in fitted suitcases and so on.

"The only problem was that I could only buy as much as I could carry because I had hitched a ride with a volunteer fire company, and two suitcases plus a Leica was about it. Still have both the Graphics. The Leica got stolen, but I never really liked it. Not bad for $12 though. I went back a couple weeks later with a friend who had a 501c(3) tax exempt organization to do a little more shopping, but they had cleared out the 'camera junk' to make room for thousands of hospital beds."

Mike replies: And you know who designed the Combat Graphic? Hubert Nerwin. No kidding.

Rick Wilcox: "Mike, I was a U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate back in the early '60s stationed in Naha, Okinawa. The base lab had a pretty good compliment of Leica M3's, 4x5 Speed Graphics, and Rolleiflexes. Not a bad lot.

"But one day I discovered, on a back shelf, during a pre-inspection cleanup, the find of the century. A 4x5 Graflex Super D,  the original single lens reflex. I was elated. When I looked at it in the light, I noticed a 'F.U.R.' tag on it. That was Navy supply jargon for 'Failure and Unsatisfactory Report.' The tag included a checked box indicating it was earmarked for destruction. This was nuts, I thought. I went to the CPO (Chief Petty Officer) and asked if I could have it. Short answer: no. Fine. Could I buy it from the Navy? No. I was livid. Even then, at 20 years old, I knew this was a collector's item. Still is, or could have been. I went round and round with the powers that be, but to no avail. I watched on the appointed day when that camera, along with several others, were summarily smashed and destroyed with repeated blows from sledge hammers. The hammers were (purposely, I'm sure) yielded by Navy supply depot personnel, who could have cared less about any, and all, old cameras. I ranted and raved about the stupidity of the process and got put on report. I was later scheduled to  have a Captain's Mast. I would have ended up spending most of the rest of my enlistment in the brig, had I not come to my senses and 'seen the error of my ways.' I recanted my opinion of my section leaders, was forgiven and sent on my way. That single experience killed whatever thought I had entertained about a military career.

"To this day, I still find it hard to get rid of a camera. All my old, unused cameras are stored inside a built-in bench seat under an upstairs bedroom window in their original boxes with original documents. Not one of them has a tag or sticker resembling a dreaded 'F.U.R.' tag. I guess this could be considered hoarding."

Mike replies: Let's call it "preservation" and call it even, Rick!

Bahi: "Yours was the only April Fool I've fallen for in years. Not only did I believe it, it didn't even cross my mind that it was anything but true. And I read it twice. Shocking."

Mike replies: (*chuckle*)

Chris W: "I was taken in by your tale partly because of a story told to me by a former boss. He was a radio operator in Lancaster bombers during WWII. When hostilities had just ceased, his plane was ferrying supplies across Northern Europe and they got ordered to accept the surrender of a German airbase in Norway. The plane landed at the airbase and the German commanding officer formally surrendered to the skipper. The Germans noticed that the plane crew were smoking and lamented the fact that they had run out of cigarettes weeks ago. It just so happened that the plane was carrying crates of cigarettes as part of its cargo and they agreed to a swap. And what did the Germans have to exchange? You guessed it—a crate of Leicas!"

Hubert Nerwin's Brilliant Idea

Zeiss camera designer Hubert Nerwin and family shortly after their arrival in the U.S. following WWII. Nerwin was instrumental in the development of the dominant American consumer camera of the 1960s, the Kodak Instamatic. Photo courtesy Zeiss Historical Society.

I'm a day late with this. Last month (March) marked the 50th anniversary of the camera that ruined Kodak—the Instamatic.

Designed around Hubert Nerwin's drop-in, "foolproof" film cassette (a picture of which can be seen here), the Instamatic was both the true descendent of George Eastman's $1 box Brownie of c. 1900 and the transformative consumer camera of its own era. It sold seven and a half million cameras in its first two years and 50 million in the decade of the 1960s. It remains one of the most successful and profitable consumer products in the history of photography; it introduced baby-boomers to picture-taking.

...Me, too (although I'm technically Generation Jones). It was my first camera, and the camera I did my first "project" with: six entire rolls on a 7th-grade trip to the battlefield at Gettysburg, Penn., the site of the turning point of the American Civil War.

Somewhere around here, I still have an Instamatic.

The reason I say it ruined Kodak is that it convinced Kodak that it could dictate the market rather than follow it. And Kodak tried again and again over the years to dominate the consumer market by deciding a priori what people would buy and then attempting to overwhelm them with it via marketing and sheer scale.

(I think this reflects human nature. In high school, I sat on a hillside watching a soccer game, and saw a classmate named Doug make a remarkable goal. He made a high, arcing kick from almost the corner of the field, and, improbably, it cleared the leaping goalie's hands and entered the goal, even though the angle was exceedingly narrow, as he was not far from being lined up with the goalposts at the spot of the kick. As I watched the rest of the game, I noticed that Doug tried to recreate his success by repeating the same kick twice more during the game. Both kicks were surprisingly good; but the first attempt had been both good and lucky, and the subsequent attempts failed.)

Kodak made numerous attempts to recreate the Instamatic success in some form or other. The Disc camera was the most obvious one; the Instamatic cast its formidable shadow all over that doomed project. The last two major attempts were Photo CD and APS. With Photo CD, everyone was supposed to turn their film into the processors, pay $50(!), and receive the roll of pictures as digital scans on a compact disk in return. You were then supposed to look at your pictures on your TV set, using a player that Kodak was going to sell to you. Kodak decreed at the outset of this program that it was going to sell 250,000 consumer Photo CD players every year. Over the product's pathetic lifespan, the company allegedly sold about 25,000 of them—total. And even that was a bit of a feat (I think I referred to Photo CD at the time of its introduction as "three times the expense of prints with all the viewing convenience of a living room slide show"). Photo CD did turn out to be an important method for getting film images on to computers for a number of years, a usage Kodak initially wasn't especially concerned with or interested in.

The next "Instamatic-style success" was intended to be APS, the Advanced Photo System, a thoroughly engineered and exhaustively marketed from-the-ground-up system that gave consumers about what they were already getting, but with more profit and convenience for Kodak and the other film and camera manufacturers built in. The huge investment in APS, which fizzled before it faded, was one of the reasons Kodak was so cash-strapped and ill-prepared to respond when digital began its march to the sea.

Tragic
But I was speaking of the Instamatic. It was actually an atrocious little camera, the Lomo of its day only without the quirky contriarian charm. The lens was horrible and the easy-to-load negative wasn't big enough. But it was meant to be cheap to buy and easy to use, and it was both those things in spades (the "Flashcube," like the film cartridge, was a stroke of genius in that respect—four small flashbulbs in an automatically rotating clear plastic box). The pictures, unfortunately, were an accurate reflection of what you saw through the minuscule, smeary viewfinder. (And by the way, poor, low-contrast lenses like the Instamatic's were the reason why consumer color negative films were typically oversaturated and too contrasty.)

I did a project with the old Instamatic in photography school, making B&W prints from the color negatives. (I think the instructor who assigned it was trying to break me of perfectionism.)

It's a bit tragic, actually. Some of the snapshots I inherited from my family from 20 or 30 years prior to the era of the Instamatic were taken with a Zeiss folder that we found in my grandfather's house when he died but which I have since lost track of. It might have been a 6x9 Super Ikonta. The store-processed black-and-white snapshots from it are contact prints. Their quality and longevity is striking compared to Instamatic prints. Of course, the ease-of-use of 1930s folders was diametrically opposed to that of the Instamatic as well, which is why the latter came into being.

The lead designer for the Instamatic program was the protean Dean Peterson. And Hubert Nerwin, whose name is on the patent for the 126 cartridge, was a fascinating character too. (It's rather elitist and exclusionary that the "history of photography" leaves aside the technical history and its major figures—they ought to be at least as famous as people like lesser-known but important photographers, major curators, and so forth.) One of the 20th century's great camera designers, Nerwin worked for Zeiss before WWII and was involved in the design of many famous Zeiss Ikons, including the Contina and the exquisite Contessa 35. He came to America—literally on the same ship with rocket scientist Werner von Braun!—under Harry Truman's "Operation Paperclip," the OSS program designed to bring prominent German scientists and engineers to America (and keep them out of the clutches of the Russians). Moving his family to Rochester, Nerwin initially worked for Graflex, owned by Kodak, and then for Kodak itself. He retired in 1971.

I have lots of snapshots in my collection, and many of them have great charm. But few of the charming ones were taken with Instamatics. Many of my childhood memories were taken with an Instamatic, and I still have all those pictures, fading now. In the case of the ones I prize, I dearly wish they had been taken with a better camera.

...But then, without the Instamatic, they might never have been taken at all.

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

Stan B.: "The Instamatic was the Mustang of photography in the mid 'sixties—cute, small, fast, cheap. They were ubiquitous in the '64–'65 NYC World's Fair, another sign of 'the future' compared to their considerably clumsier counterparts."

John Hufnagel: "I still curse the Kodak Instamatic.

"I have restored, documented, digitized, and archived the many hundreds of photographs of my and my wife's families from the 1880s to the present.  What was a treasure lode of memories and family histories collapsed, seemingly inspired by the song 'New York Mining Disaster 1941,' with the introduction of the hated Instamatic.

"Within just a few years Kodak had convinced most of our family that photography was not a skill worth learning, and lousy, blurry, washed-out pictures were actually good.

"Even my oldest brother, a U.S. Army intelligence agent in Europe during the Viet Nam era, reported that most of the agents preferred cheap plastic Polaroid cameras (purchased out of petty cash) as G2's government-issued Leicas were 'too hard to use.'

"The result is a real dearth of documentary photographs from the early to mid 1960s until the advent of decent P&S cameras beginning around 1980. If it wasn't for the very few (three out of dozens) who owned Mamiya, Canon, and Pentax SLRs, our family would have very little from that period.  On the other hand, it made the collecting and archiving effort a lot smaller than it otherwise might have been...."

Steve Mason: "I started my photo career as a camera salesman. Every person I have ever had this conversation agrees, Kodak was its own worst enemy. I often had customers ask for an American-made 35mm camera; of course there were none since Kodak quit. As sales people we often got the skinny on new products and we were told of a new product coming soon. The rumors were of a sprocketless 35mm camera to take full advantage of the film size, we got the Disc camera. Kodak promised better B&W paper, we got plastic RC paper with very little silver. The list goes on and on, even when Fuji came into the picture and started offering better choices, Kodak knew best. As a car guy you can see the same story with GM, Ford and Chrysler during the '60s and '70s. We make it, you buy it."

Mike replies: Steve, that was my impression of Kodak for years: Wrong move, bad move, dumb move, repeat.