The Online Photographer

'Think a Moment About Me and My Crew in the Cab...'

This string of Featured Comments from the second post about railroad tracks as a setting for portraits was good enough that I thought I'd make them into a separate post.

My thanks to commenters John Day, Mark Roberts, Dop, Kathy, Anonymous, and especially Allen.

John Day: "A couple of the comments to the earlier railroad post irritate me. Don't try to make light of being on railroad tracks. Being a railroad worker, some of you have absolutely no idea how much training we go through annually to be able to safely work on or around railroad tracks. And even with all this training, we still lose too many of our own out on the rails. You may think you have it all figured out, but you don't. You may get away with it. But some won't. When you're dead, you're dead for a long, long time.

"I've seen firsthand what a train can do anything from a car to a semi truck. What it does to a human being walking across the tracks is even worse. You no longer look human. Picking up severed limbs and pieces of flesh is something you don't easily forget. It gets worse but I'm not going there. Don't put other people or yourself in harm's way."

Mark Roberts: "My significant other is a pathologist who, though she is now mostly concerned with cancer pathology, used to do forensic work. She's told me about more gruesome scenarios than I ever thought existed. But she says the autopsies she hates most are people who have been hit by trains. (I did not ask for further clarification.) Next time you're in Boston give me a shout and we can meet for coffee and I'll share some of her stories with you.

"Or not.... :-)"

Mike replies: Coffee, sure. Gruesome stories, no thanks.

Dop (partial comment): "I'm reminded of this video clip of a guy who was so caught up in filming a steam train that he was completely oblivious to the regular service train coming up fast.  Nobody gets hurt—but it would be a major shock for the guy who escapes death by an inch, the person filming him, and the train driver.

Kathy: "It's not the train you see that kills you. That's a truism I heard from my dad who was a railway signalman."

Anonymous: "And think about the poor engineer. Even if you are willing to accept the risk for yourself, railroad workers literally have nightmares and emotional problems from near misses and fatalities."

Allen: "Thank you for posting this story. As a working locomotive engineer, I can wholeheartedly say that there is nothing—nothing—I dread more than seeing someone on the track ahead. By the time I can make out what I'm looking at, be it a person, an animal, junk, or even a fallen tree, it's far too late to stop before I reach it. Physics is physics and momentum is the law.

"I have no way of knowing if someone on the track is a photographer, a suicide, someone playing chicken, a drunk or if they're just oblivious but I do know that if they don't move, I have to watch them go out of sight under the windshield and wait for the thump.

"Even the effort to slow down before impact by using emergency braking has the potential to derail the train and cause even more damage than just hitting someone.  Everyone who runs trains knows that...but you still almost always have to try.

"Thankfully, in all my years I've never run over anyone...yet. Vehicles, yes, pedestrians no. Lots of close calls but so far they all made it. The young lady pinned in her car with the fractured skull was really bad, I can tell you. Hell, I even get misty about hitting a dog...I don't know what'll happen when the day finally comes when someone takes the wrong step. But we all know that if you stay in the job long enough, it's almost inevitable.

"I've worked with many engineers who remembered every little detail about people they'd hit...what they looked like, what they were wearing, what happened to them. The memories haunted them the rest of their careers and believe me, they are not photographs. The common thread is that most of them said the person on the track looked up and looked them right in the eye as they went under the nose. It's terrifying.

"So when people say they're going to continue to get their shots on the tracks regardless of the risk because they are the ones taking that risk, I would ask them to think a moment about me and my crew in the cab. Think about the flashbacks and nightmares I'll have after I see you flying like a rag doll. Think about the second or two I have to make the decision to try to save your life by slamming on the brakes...and maybe consider the consequences to people all around if the worst happens and the train piles up because of it. We carry some hazardous stuff you know and derailing it in a populated area because you were willing to take the risk is a terrible choice for an engineer to have to make...especially when it's all for a photo. A senior picture that causes a catastrophe will be a memorable shot, all right...the question is, to whom?

"In reading the comments, it seems most everyone here gets the idea, but please, if you absolutely must have tracks for a shot...be a pro, do some research to find a small carrier or scenic/tourist railroad that will give you permission and protection to work on their property. I have to believe that getting a client killed during a shoot has to be bad for future references, so do the right thing and go where you're legal. It might be a little less convenient and it might take a little more work but I'll thank you for it in advance.

"And maybe I can make it a career without the inevitable."

(posted by) 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:

Sean: "A kid I grew up with was killed by a train when he took a short cut across the tracks after a night out. He knew those tracks well—we all did. We prided ourselves on the risks we'd take on those tracks and in the tunnels they ran through. He was 17 when the train hit him. His twin sister was in my class at school. He was from an Irish family much like my own. I'll never forget Mathew Clancey's wake. His casket was closed. We all knew why."

David L.: "I had an odd but enlightening experience with a train 40 years ago. I had a warehouse job and we were unloading a rail car in the back of the building. Running the forklift inside it caused the car to start rolling very slowly, maybe one mile per hour. We jumped to the ground and scratched our heads wondering what to do. The train crew that left the car obviously failed to set the brake. Being clever, I picked up a wooden pallet and pushed it onto the track figuring it would surely stop the box car. Wrong! In vivid slow motion the half-empty rail car slowly crunched and crushed the pallet under the steel wheels and continued on down the track as if nothing happened. If one rail car going one MPH could do that, imagine what a train going even 25 MPH could do? For engineer and physicist readers, kinetic energy = 1/2mv^2. If m is huge, the energy is proportionally huge. After my little education about trains and moving mass I'll never take a chance near RR tracks."

Last Chance!

No, TOP isn't turning into "all Turnley all the time." But you know how it is with blogs...one thing leads to another. A train post leads to more train posts. And so forth.

Anyway, just wanted to remind you that today is the last day to get the pre-order price on Peter's new book. All 3000 books just arrived in New York City from Hong Kong, and will be delivered to Peter's storage facility tomorrow, where he will begin signing them. They will begin shipping very soon, starting within the next two weeks at the latest.

So the regular price of $79 kicks in tomorrow. Which means today is the last day you can order it at the special pre-order price of $69...

...That I negotiated for you, remember? I talked Peter into offering it at a lower price for the month of October, prior to the arrival of the shipment.

Here's the link. (As usual, full disclosure: Peter's giving me a spiff for helping to promote his book. We're kinda in cahoots on this.)

This is for the deluxe first edition with the spiffy slipcase (the next edition won't have the slipcase).

The book will still be available after today, of course. But the regular price kicks in tomorrow.

Of course, you could get it for an even lower price (i.e., free) by just ordering all three of our sale prints....  :-)

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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The Leica M Monochrom

Everything went well yesterday, I'm happy to report. Apart from a few very minor hiccups, the shopping page seems to be working well. (Knock on wood—my wooden head will do.)

Here are the sales percentages so far:

The most popular print, "Couples along the Seine," happens to be the one taken with the Leica M Monochrom camera.

Peter's M Monochrom

I wish I'd been able to try out Peter's M Monochrom when he was here, but we didn't have the leisure for that—he was here photographing for Harley Davidson, and once the work started he was busy 12 hours a day. Actually it was probably more like 14.

I'm still of two minds about the M Monochrom. On the one hand, I'm really glad there's a B&W-only camera on the market and I salute Leica for having the courage and independence to produce it. Bravo to them.

On the other hand, I wish they weren't the ones who had done it. That might seem craven and ungrateful, so let me 'splain. I feel that way because the M Monochrom is at the wrong end of the market. It currently costs $7,950 for the body. That's not a lot if you earn a million dollars a year or if you're a full-time pro who depreciates your gear, but for most people, it's a lot. Price sensitivity and limitations of means will conspire to keep it out of most people's hands, even the people who want it.

I'm aware that most people don't want it, so please, no comments about that. Heard it all before, many times. My opinion, however, and it might be a minority opinion, is that photography isn't about how cameras see, and it isn't about how people see. It's about how people see with cameras. And I'm firmly of the opinion that a crucial step in learning to see with a camera is learning to see "luminances only"—lights and darks and the contrast between the two. And by far the easiest way to do this is to shoot "concertedly"—i.e., a lot, for some extended period of the calendar—with a camera that only records black and white.

What the market sorely needs is a digital K1000. Regardless of which company makes it. The Pentax K1000, for those who might not know it, was a very basic, no-frills SLR that was widely used for photography classes. Descended from the Asahi Pentax Spotmatic by way of the Pentax KM, the K1000 was so popular among photography teachers, as a recommendation for beginning students, that they literally prevented Pentax from discontinuing it, even long after Pentax obviously wanted to discontinue it. The reason was that it was needed. The camera helped people learn the basics of photography. Seeing black-and-white only also helps people learn the basics of seeing photographically. I think this is true even if you're going to end up as a color photographer and even if you end up shooting B&W with a full-color camera.

Well, I have to take back the first sentence in that last paragraph. This isn't what the market needs. The market is indifferent to anything but sales and profits. It's what photography needs—photo students, photo teachers, and anyone who wants to learn, most efficiently, how to see with a camera.

The M Monochrom would serve this purpose quite well...if it cost $395 and most photo students could afford one. And if every high school photography program could afford a dozen, to keep in the cabinet and loan out to photo students.

That is—well, not quite the case, eh? $7,950 is a ways from $395. For most of us.

Hence my ambivalence. Very happy the M Monochrom exists; very sorry there isn't—and probably never will be—a B&W-only digital "K1000" for learners. (If any camera company wants to build one, please come talk to me. I can tell you exactly what to do. I mean exactly.)

Meanwhile, you can buy a very nice example of what the M Monochrom can do, in our current sale, in a high-end hybrid print made on traditional silver-gelatin paper. Of course my subversive mindset would also like to see it printed digitally, to see how the two compare; but that isn't what this artist wants for his work (Peter doesn't print fine art in inkjet). 

An idea for some future time, maybe.

You can see more—okay, a lot more—M Monochrom pictures in the RFF M Monochrom thread, although it takes a bit of wading.

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:

John Krumm: "It's fun to flick through the M-Monochrome Flicker group as well."

Robert Roaldi: "Oh no! Pie charts!"

Mike replies: "Mmmm, pie." —Homer Simpson

MM: "I think the appeal of a B&W-only camera is precisely the reason it has so many detractors: it imposes what many see as a fairly severe limitation that is not, technically speaking, necessary. I've made this point here before: the more capabilities that digital cameras offer, the more meaningful it is to shoot with limits. This is true regardless of whether those limits are 'artificial' (e.g. shooting with a B&W-only digital camera when one could shoot in color and convert it later) or whether those limits are 'real' (e.g., film, which feels increasingly limited—and thus more appealing to me—in the face of digital's ever-increasing capabilities). In other words, it can be extremely meaningful to create a strong photograph without using all of the advantages digital has to offer. Those who don't understand the appeal of limits for some photographers will never understand the attraction of a B&W-only camera."

Mike (partial comment): "I agree with you that it would be good for photography if there was a reasonably-priced B&W digital camera [...] but I've just bought a secondhand M Monochrom and am completely enthused by it. I think you would greatly enjoy it Mike. It's still not as nice to use as a Zeiss Ikon, but I do like shooting in mono, and the files are great."

pierre charbonneau: "I do own the M Monochrom since almost a year. Expensive but I love it. The difference with the regular M9 or any other digital 'color' camera lies in its files' potential to have the shadow detail to be dogged to an incredible level. Some will point out rightly that any good photographer should know how to expose a file or piece of film. But I am talking here about the expressive potential of B&W photography. About dodging for instance. Burning is possible to a degree. Avoid overexposure. I would risk to say, that the purchase does't justify well if the photographer intend to see or show his pictures solely on the monitor. The files do shine splendidly when they are printed. And this potential brought me satisfaction that I did not get since the demise of my darkroom."

Mike replies: You get very nice tones out of the M Monochrom. More to my taste than most examples I've seen.

Paul: "It's absolutely amazing how few have actually understood or even paid attention to your reasons why a monochrome camera is important."

Mike replies: I'm used to it. On this subject. I almost wrote a rant about it, but it came out too ranty.

Need Your Help

Need a spot of advice—anybody know what the best type of pen to use to sign inkjet prints with is? I'm having trouble researching this. I'm interested in "best practices" in terms of permanence and archivalness. (Citations would be great.) In the old days I knew all the options for signing darkroom prints, but the times they have a-changed.

(This has nothing to do with our current print sale—completely different topic.)

TIA,

The Management

UPDATE: I contacted several image permanence organizations (not Wilhelm Imaging Research, because apparently they don't want to make themselves accessible to the public), and had a response from the Library of Congress Preservation Department. They cited ISO 18916 as a standard for marking pens, and named as an example the Kaiser-Schreiber film marking pen. They were careful to point out that their mention of this product is not an endorsement. 

However, the article "How to… Mark Objects in Museum Collections," Illinois Association of Museums, Summer 1997, #16, says, of the Kaiser-Schreiber, "This pen is designed for marking film. The ink fades dramatically under any light, on acrylic resins, and when immersed in water." Which is not encouraging, and leads me to believe that the L.o.C. and I might be talking at cross purposes. A quick scan of the ISO standard didn't shed much light, but I don't really have time to peruse it.

So I ordered a package of ten sheets of Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique inkjet paper (Ctein's standard paper) and the following pens, all but the first two based on readers' recommendations:

• Kaiser-Schreiber film marking pen
• Hollinger non-fading black Pigma pen
• Prismacolor Premier fine-line marker
• Sakura 30081 Pigma Micron
• Uni-ball Signo Broad UM-153 gel ink pen
• Pilot permanent ink marker
• Faber-Castell Pitt artist's pen

I have no idea yet how I'll test these pens on this paper for lightfastness or lengevity, or if I'll even try, but at the very least I can see how they look and figure out if they dry adequately and don't smudge. —MJ

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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Peter Turnley Paris Print Sale III Starts Now!

Peter Turnley, Couples along the Seine, Paris, 2013

A lot to talk about in a short space today.

First and most importantly, the announcement of our third sale of Paris prints—these three beautiful pictures taken by photographer Peter Turnley and printed by master printer Voja Mitrovic. The pictures are all from Peter's new book, French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, which starts shipping in one week (and is more than half sold out already). 

About our sales (I need to explain this again because many visitors drop by The Online Photographer for the first time just for our sales): We use an unusual marketing model that benefits both producers and purchasers. The sale lasts for a short "window" of time—just five days—during which we collect orders. Money in hand, the prints can then be made to fulfill the orders. Because the prints can be produced in volume—each already sold—the price can be kept low for the buyer but the photographer still makes money. Win-win.

Canal St. Martin Sailboat, Paris, 1982

And the 20% that is TOP's "gallery fee" helps keep TOP on the rails...so, win-win-win.

(Another nice side-effect of that is that fully 80% of the proceeds goes to the photographers, who, after all, deserve it. Compare that to the 30–40% photographers get to keep when selling through conventional galleries. Not that there's anything wrong with conventional galleries; I like them too.)

More about these pictures in a moment, but first, I also want to announce that TOP has a new storefront, or Web shop, or sales page, or e-commerce portal, or whatever you want to call it: www.topprintsandbooks.com. It's here, and this is where you go to place your order for these prints. Hopefully we've accommodated everyone's needs both externally and internally...you can pay by credit card (VISA, MasterCard, or Discover), by PayPal, or by sending a personal check or money order in the mail. PayPal offers standard currency conversion for the convenience of International customers (who—counting Canadians—make up 45 to 55% of TOP's regular audience). Please do bear in mind this is a new and as-yet untested system, so please have patience if we encounter any turbulence!

Eiffel Tour Tango, Paris, 2012

Now about these pictures.

The book French Kiss collects more than 40 years of pictures of "the love of life" in Paris, and is Peter's second book of Paris pictures (the first was Parisians).

He has used nearly every model of Leica film rangefinder for these pictures. But life moves on. In common with artists, photographers are most interested in the work they're doing now. And recently, Peter has been photographing more than ever in Paris, using modern digital rangefinder Leicas and sharing the results with his large followings on the Internet.

Two of these pictures are recent photographs made with the M9 and M Monochrom, which appear on the front and back cover of the new book ("Couples along the Seine" was taken just a few months ago, in August). To ensure consistency with his past work, they're printed on traditional fiber-base paper, from 4x5-inch internegatives, by Voja Mitrovic. Voja (pronounced "Voya") who printed the majority of Henri Cartier-Bresson's prints for three decades of Henri's life, still does a very limited amount of work for a select group of the world's top photographers.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka at Voja Mitrovic's retirement party, good-naturedly pleading with him not to go

The important thing to Peter is to maintain the continuity of his work in Paris, and its connection to the great French photographers of the city—many of whom he knew and were his friends. He also wants to keep intact the connection to the great tradition of the fine print indelibly associated with those legendary French photographers and the great Paris labs.

Pierre Gassmann in his famous Paris lab, with Peter Turnley

These prints normally sell for $1,200 each as 16x20's. Our TOP sale prints are smaller—12x16 inches (30.5x40.6cm), the traditional European collector print size—but sell for one-third as much. They are signed on the front by Peter and on the back by Peter and Voja. These prints will not be offered at this size or for our prices except in this sale.

Note that you will receive a small discount it you purchase two prints and a large discount for a third. These savings will be applied to your order at checkout. The price for one print is $395, two are $770, and all three prints are $995.

In addition, as a special thank-you for TOP readers who buy all three prints, Peter will include a free, signed copy of the new book French Kiss. (If you've already pre-ordered the book, you can email him and cancel your pre-order if you're getting the free copy.) The book you'll receive is the First Edition in the custom slipcase, which will cost $79 starting November 1st. (If you decide not to buy any prints but would like the book, you can click here.)

We hope you like our three choices. This sale ends in five days, at sunset next Monday. As soon as the sale ends, Voja will get to work making the prints. Early orders will be shipped first. We hope everyone's order will arrive before Christmas, but please order early if you want to make sure.

Click here to order

Vive Paris—Vive la Photographie!

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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We Hear from the UP

Photo by Sean Lamb

As a response to yesterday's post, I got an email from Mark W. Davis of the Union Pacific Railroad:

Mike,
A great safety reminder to the professional photographer community. Here is the link to our news release we sent out in April.

Thank you again for your efforts in letting those in your profession know of the dangers they put themselves and their clients in when they choose to take photographs on railroad tracks. 

Mark

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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Union Pacific to Photographers: Cut It Out

Sadly, I've lost the link in my huge email stack, but somebody the other day sent me a link to an article about photographers taking portraits on railroad tracks.

Photographers taking...um, what?

You know those times when you didn't know a thing was a thing? Well, I had no idea that taking portraits on railroad tracks was a thing. But just Google "portraits on railroad tracks" and hit "image," and you'll find out what I did:

There are thousands of 'em. It's a big thing. Portraits taken on railroad tracks.

Who knew? I didn't.

The article I can no longer locate quoted a Union Pacific representative, I believe, saying, in effect: stop that.

Several reasons: first, all train tracks, whether active or not, are private property. They can't even legally be crossed on foot except at designated crossings. Police officers can not only give you a ticket and a fine for doing so, but can actually arrest you and haul you in. And the railroads have their own police, who are authorized to do the same.

The fines can be stiff, too. One outraged blogger learned her $6,000 fine was part of a media event surrounding the little-known International Level Crossing Awareness Day, but even ordinary average run-of-the-mill fines can run up to $2,000. 

Second, it can be dangerous. In 2012, 52-year-old Sacramento, California high school photography teacher Kathy Carlisle was killed on the train tracks. She was photographing one train approaching her and was struck by another coming the other way. Kathy must have assumed that the horns and ground vibration she heard were coming from the train in front of her, not another one behind her.

While people evidently feel that a train is too big to miss and thus can't be a danger, an accident involving a train and a person or a vehicle happens every three hours in the United States. I was actually on board a train once that struck someone. The train blew its horn repeatedly, braking till it shuddered, then stopped on the tracks for a long time. Along with others, I got off to find out what was going on. It turned out the train had struck a teenager walking on the tracks. He was hard of hearing, and had been listening to earphones—turned up loud, the only way he could hear the music (I learned all this from a newspaper article a couple of days later). The accident happened very close to a station. Despite people screaming at him and the train sounding its horn, he had no warning when he was struck from behind. He later died.

Also, if you have the misfortune to be killed by a train, you'll be suspected of suicide. As many as 50% of them might be; the real number is probably closer to 30%, but no one knows for sure. Irish-born U.K. photographer Bob Carlos Clarke committed suicide by train in 2006. But many deaths that aren't suicides are assumed to be by members of the public hearing the news. It's the same problem that caused the accidents in the first place: people really don't believe that train-to-pedestrian accidents can happen accidentally.

But they do. Between four and five hundred U.S. Americans are killed every year by trains, almost double the number killed in train-vehicle collisions of all kinds. (Many vehicle deaths are the result of the car hitting the train rather than the other way around, another fact that seems counter-intutive to most. The great book illustrator N.C. Wyeth, father of the late artist Andrew, was killed when he ran into a train in his car. [UPDATE: At least the way I heard the story. Several commenters believe otherwise. —MJ]

Both outstrip the number of people killed while on trains, in accidents such as derailments. Train-pedestrian accidents are the leading cause of death involving trains.

The final reason not to use train tracks as a portrait setting is that it encourages the very problem that causes the accidents, by presenting the setting as benign—an appropriate place to put a child or to use as a footpath. You wouldn't pose a kid in the middle of a highway or perched on the ledge of a high building, would you?

So: if you take portraits on train tracks: better stop that. Not a good idea.

Mike
(Thanks to Andre Moreau)

UPDATE: The reader who sent the link was Mike Plews, and here is the link. Thanks Mike!

ADDENDUM: I'm not sure I made this clear enough. I'm not really talking about photographers being on railroad tracks...if you know it's against the law and you're aware of the dangers, then the dumb illegal things you do to get a picture are up to you. I've trespassed to get pictures a time or two. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned Kathy Carlisle, who was not shooting portraits as far as I know.

The post is really more about posing your clients, including minors, on railroad tracks. That's what got to me when I first saw that first link. It clearly sends the wrong message both to kids in the pictures and kids who look at the pictures. It's what seems really wrong to me. Sorry for not making that more upfront. —MJ

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:

Dmitriy Kostyuchenko: "For what it's worth, when I got ticketed for trespassing while taking photos near a rail line, the fine was only about $200.... No, the photos didn't turn out."

Oskar Ojala: "I've seen such photos, but always felt that the tracks as a setting were a bit of a cliché. The screen capture that illustrates this article doesn't make me think otherwise."

Mike replies: Right. Senior portraits, for instance...the graduate is "on the right track," headed off toward the horizon, etc., etc. You know.

Hugh Crawford: "When I was child this sort of thing happened all the time, or at least three or four times a summer. The brakes on the tomato and lettuce trucks were really bad, and The Western Pacific trains would take about a half mile to stop, and it was a real mess sometimes.

"I think that kid in the white sweatshirt is me. We had a slide tray of train wrecks from a grade crossing a mile down the road. In high school I knew a half dozen kids that got killed in train wrecks."

John Camp (partial comment): "When I was a newspaper columnist, I did a column about a Twin Cities lawyer who every summer would (illegally) hop a freight at the switchyards there and ride all over the country, jumping on and off trains, wherever he felt like it, and dodging the railroad cops. The column really upset the railroad people, and I went off to do a second column about how illegal and stupid train-hopping is.

"One thing they showed me is that often, in switchyards, you literally cannot hear a boxcar coming. That's because trains are (or were, anyway, and probably still are) made up with the least amount of power. They do that by having one powered engine push a line of boxcars, all going to a variety of destinations, up a rise in the track.  As each car gets to the top of the rise, it is cut loose and begins rolling on its own down the other side. A guy in a switch booth will throw switches to get that boxcar to the correct train to take the boxcar to its destination. Those cars are often moving quite some distance through the switchyard, and almost silently. If you're trespassing in the night (which is most often the case, because you're sneaking around a forbidden area, and in the daytime, the railroad cops will spot you and arrest you) you can be hit and killed by one of these silently moving box cars, which, since they're often dark colors, you can't either see or hear coming.

"On the other hand, life is too short not to shoot around cars and trains. You just have to take care."

Big Picture Guy

I've been working my butt off trying to get ready for tomorrow's sale. We have a spiffy new e-commerce site that's all ours, and I can't wait to show it off! (I figured we were going to need a Web shop eventually if we're going to publish books.) But of course I can't send you there and let you see it until the sale starts at noon tomorrow. But I'm very interested to (eventually) hear what people think.

Things are only easy for you if they are. Setting up this site would be child's play for some people—but for me it's very, very hard. It's like algebra. I'm not good at it. Don't have the gene.

I learned something from a friend a few years ago. She's great at organization and detail, and she told me she was in her late twenties before she finally realized those abilities were an asset. Prior to that, when she was younger, she thought she was picky, particular, and "obsessive-compulsive," and she considered it a character flaw. Finally she realized that being hyper-organized was an ability that not everybody possessed. Since then, she's looked for jobs that emphasize a need for organizational ability and detail management, and she's started at least one successful business deliberately based on those skills.

She's at the high end of organizational aptitude. I'm at the low end. The very low end.

On the other hand, I have an aptitude for seeing the big picture. I'm right at home  discerning overall patterns, getting to the root of things, and, especially, applying systematic fixes. I had a boss once whose ability in that area was very poor—when faced with any kind of global decision, his tendency was to zero in on a few manageable details and dive into those. Drove me crazy. Then again, when I had my second and final appointment with the counselor who's been helping me set up our e-commerce portal, I didn't even have a list prepared of things to ask her about. Really, Mike? Even I can see that that's incredibly lame. Then again, I try and fail to shop using a simple grocery list, so what would I expect?

But I think we're going to get there. Naturally, of course, the cultural backdrop at the moment would have to be the botched rollout of the healthcare.gov site. So I'm doubly worried about the rollout of our storefront tomorrow.

If you encounter any problems or get frustrated tomorrow, do me a favor, will you? Don't assume there are teams of experts who have neglected their responsibilities and ought to be castigated. It's just little old me. Ain't nobody here but us chickens, as the hoary old joke put it.

The sales site will accept credit cards (we have our own Merchant Account), PayPal (including currency conversion for International customers), and you'll be able to send a check in the mail if that's what you prefer.

I'm sure I'm not all of the way up the learning curve yet. I just hope I'm closer to the top than the bottom. Guess we'll find out soon enough....

Mike

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Patch: "Very best of luck Mike. Find myself nervous on your behalf."

Lou Reed 1942 - 2013

Lou Reed, who died yesterday, was an amateur photographer. Here he is photographing the people photographing him at the opening of the "Lou Reed's New York" exhibit at the Serieuze Zaken Studio in Amsterdam, October 10th, 2007. Photo by Corine van Mierlo, courtesy loureed.nl.

I've never seen the book.

-

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

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Michael Tapes: "I had the pleasure of producing a live radio concert with Lou Reed on Dec. 26, 1972. It was part of the WLIR Radio Concert Series which we broadcast live from the Ultra-Sonic Recording Studios once a week for several years. I believe it was the first show he did as a solo artist. Or perhaps the first broadcast as a solo artist. It was a great night. Here is a photo by Steve Orlando:

"A funny Lou Reed story...I was assisting on a session with the Chieftains in Nashville in the late '90s.  I had just come back from England where in the cab on the way to Heathrow I listened to the entire Lou Reed 'New York' album which had just been released. I was blown away by the live sound of the recording. Done in the studio, but with a sound and energy of a live performance. Talk about coincidence...the engineer I was assisting on the Chieftans' session was the engineer who did the Lou Reed recording! You can't get much different musically than the Chieftains and Lou Reed, so I asked the engineer how he came to work with Lou on that record. He told me, 'Lou is now drug free, and I was the only engineer he could find in NYC that didn't do drugs.'

"Rest in peace, Lou."

Ludovic: "do not have a single Lou Reed music file on my hard disk. It is, however, filled with several gigabytes of music by Laurie Anderson, whom he married, so at least people have a reference point when I try to explain my odd musical tastes."

Lynn: "On the news last night, a nice story about Lou Reed's most recent visit to Sydney. Early morning visitors to the Opera House were delighted to find Lou running a Tai Chi class on the grass nearby."

Paris Print Sale Starts WEDNESDAY (And Some Nice News)

I've been remiss in not announcing the date and time of the start of our next 5-day print sale—I've delayed because I've been working hard on a new TOP e-commerce portal and it's not quite ready for prime time yet. (No healthcare.gov jokes, please.)

But come rain or shine, hell or high water, the sale will start this Wednesday, October 30th, at noon Central Time, and end at sundown on Monday, November 4th.

The three beautiful Peter Turnley prints are all from his new book, French Kiss. All were taken with Leicas, one with an M4, one with an M9, and one with an M Monochrom—the latter two using the printing process Peter talked about in our short interview last week.

And there's a nice bit of news: Peter has also decided that as a special favor for TOP readers (that would be you), anyone who buys all three prints will get a free signed book. Ain't that nice?

Please stop by here on Wednesday to see the pictures! They're really beautiful. I'll give you a hint—the book's cover picture is one of the three.

Also, on Monday morning (it's Sunday night as I'm writing this), I'll post more of peoples' pictures of their "supertraditional lens sets." (We had a 5-star sports day here in the Midwest and I've been mighty distracted by it, and goldbricking, if anyone remembers that word.)

Mike

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Joseph Bayot: "What if we already ordered a book but want to get all three prints now?"

Mike replies: After you order your three prints, you can just send Peter an email and ask him to cancel your earlier order. I'll have this information in the sale announcement as well.

Open Mike: Fantasies (OT)

So here's an odd thing. I buy maybe two issues a year of Stereophile, and the last issue I bought had extensive reviews of not one but two components that cost $42,000. That's not for a whole music-playing stereo system, mind you—that's for one component, in a system that will need a bare minimum of four components—plus wires, which at that level will be a significant expense.

Then I bought an issue of Automobile, which I do probably six times a year (I enjoy Ezra Dyer's column). This issue had a comparison between the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta ($323,000) and the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series ($279,000).

I was really grateful for that. I've been just agonizing about which of those two cars to buy; I was so afraid of making the wrong choice and regretting it later that I thought I was going to have to break down and buy both of them! The article really let me rest my mind. They say to get the Ferrari, and that's good enough for me.

Leica S (this is the S2): The outlier.

Seriously, though, who cares about these things? I know several people who are (probably) wealthy enough to buy $300,000 cars, but I don't know a single person who would actually spend that much.

As far as stereo equipment is concerned, I have a basic rule: never buy anything with the words "Signature," "Reference," or the name of a precious metal or stone in the name.

I suppose people like reading about such things—$42,000 preamps and $323,000 cars. I don't. I agree that products tend to enter your interest range when they're at the top of or just barely beyond your ability to afford them, but there are some things I really believe I'd never buy even if I were a billionaire. When I read about fantasy cars, I might read about something that costs $90,000. But I don't even want to read about something that costs $900,000. It doesn't entertain me. I'm not interested. It's just ostentation, excess, and showing off, and I'm not susceptible to the allure of any of those things. Even in my daydreams.

The outside of my "fantasy" envelope where cameras are concerned is the Leica S. I'd never buy one, but I'm interested in reading about it. But that's as far as it goes. That's the edge. (My photographic daydreams revolve more around free time, and help.)

Daydreamin': hmm, that looks like a Mazda Miata. Hmm, that looks
like a Corvette LS7 V8. $35,000, not including the car.

So what's the most expensive car you'll daydream about?

Mike

"Open Mike" appears on TOP only, but not always, on Sundays.

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David Bostedo (partial comment): "...Price is only one factor that affects interest."

David Lonsdale (partial comment): "The main thing is [not to] disrupt the family finances."

Bryce Lee: "Motor vehicle? They are all too expensive in ways other than monetary. In my case, two strikes against me: close to seven feet tall and 400 pounds means nothing 'normal' will fit, although my Honda Ridgeline Truck with the driver's seat set four inches back is OK; my knees still hit the lower controls now and then. Long term? As I age I find the physical requirements of driving aany vehicle to be kind tiresome, and dangerous. So if I had my druthers, 1922 Rolls-Royce with seperate compartment for the chauffeur. It would mean paying somebody to drive, maintain and geneally keep the vehicle looking good. And it would be driven by somebody else rather than me being driven, if you catch my drift."

John Camp: "I don't dream of particular cars, but of particular performance. I want a car that handles well, is fast, and can take at least medium-rough off-road jaunts. (Remember the old saying: a really great 4x4 will get you stuck farther back in the wilderness.) After a lot of research, and looking at a lot of cars, I wound up with the Mercedes ML550. It has decent ground clearance and general off-road ability for the desert southwest, it's very comfortable for long trips, will haul a ton of stuff and a dog, and will do 0-60 in 4.8 seconds. For me, at this point, it's the perfect car. It's not cheap.

"On the other hand, I think the Ferraris, etc., have to be looked upon more as art works than as driving cars. Every once in a while, a Chinese princeling will kill himself in LA in one of them, but even in Beverly Hills, you don't see that many—and almost everyone in the upper parts of the Hills could afford one. But they just seem silly, unless perhaps you are very rich, and collect them very selectively, as art works.

"I think they're also less tenable in the U.S. Europeans, although a certain group of them would deny it, are much more class-ridden than the U.S. That's why even long-time democratic countries still have people called 'count' or 'duchess' or whatever, who are treated with undeserved deference, and a car like a Ferrari becomes a symbol not only of class, but also an object of envy for people who don't belong to that class. So if a middle-class guy gets rich in business, he might buy one to project an image of himself as belonging to that upper class....

"In the U.S., on the other hand, I think the sight of a Ferrari on the street less often brings up a surge of envy, than it does the thought, 'dipshit.'"

Mike replies: I hope no Ferrari drivers read this blog.

AL C.: "I own a Ferrari, an F430, and I enjoy reading TOP. The best description I've heard used re what makes driving a Ferrari such a surpassing experience is that the car literally fizzes. You feel the fizz through every part of your body. It's worth every penny. The only thing that compares is to play a Ken Wilkinson Decca recording through a pair of Genesis Ones. Same fizz."

John: "Back in the days I test drove a Porsche 911 and a Corvette, each for one week. After that I concluded that my own Mazda Miata delivered the most smiles per dollar and actual fun of driving on real roads. Sold the Miata after the second kid was born. One day, I will have one again."

Michael Matthews: "How about more info on that Mazda Miata? If it's a magazine article—what, where, when? I'm blissfully happy in the Miata on two-lane country roads, mild day, top down. But it is underpowered. The adaptation shown is way, way overpowered. But there may be a workable compromise someday. It's wonderful to have a brand new 50-year old two seat roadster, but the (necessary) automatic transmission means it does need a bit of a boost."

Mike replies: It's a conversion called a "Habu" by Flyin' Miata, a shop in Western Colorado. They even have "build diaries" at the website.

The hardnosed rec for a Miata with a useful power upgrade would be an NC Miata (2005–current) with a new suspension and a supercharger. Takes care of the power. (The stock suspension is squishy.) The sentimental recommendation, however, would be an NB, like I have, or an NA, if you are small enough to fit in one (I just barely fit into the NB, and as it is the crown of my head is out in the slipstream). Solution for more power is typically an aftermarket turbocharger, but that's not for me—the only place I miss the power is at low revs. At high revs the stock engine is very nice, at least on Uncle Sam's roads.

Patrick: "As a minimalist, I actually brag about what I do without in a car. I drive about as base a base model car as you can find—by desire—and still wish it had less. Ultimately, I am more impressed by solid engineering and decent craftsmanship in a minimalist design at an affordable price than all the expensive bells and whistles in the world. Any manufacturer can throw a bunch of excess into a car when they price it high enough, but the logistics required to make a good, well-engineered car at a low price are far more impressive to me."

Mike replies: I sympathize. Jay Leno talks about how he appreciates cars that were the product of a single individual's vision. The problem there is that there are no longer any such cars being made...virtually every car readily available to the public is the product of—in effect—a committee. So a car with a strong vision of what you're describing is unlikely to exist, because marketers tie "higher quality" and "more features" together. Cars that are basic in the sense of "no frills" are also likely to be cheap, with compromised materials and components.

MarkB: "In the late '80s, I lucked into a backstage pass for a Pink Floyd concert (long post-Roger Waters) and through some twists of circumstance, found myself talking to Nick Mason (the drummer, whom most backstage didn't recognize) about his '63 ('not '62!') Ferrari 250 GTO  and the annual 'GTO Owner's Club Rally' that many well-heeled (and a few less-heeled) enthusiasts participated in.

Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd, and his '63 Ferrari 250 GTO

"Mr. Mason is in the price-no-object category of 'car guys,' but he still wants to drive every single vehicle he owns, and drive it hard. He also said something incredible about his life in the band and their success which provided the money to buy all those cars (somewhat paraphrased by my muddy memory)—'The music and cars...it's all just wonderful stuff made by people who care, but it won't last beyond a single human lifetime...so why not play it loud and drive it to pieces? That's simple enough.'

"My 'dream car' is a 1970 Jaguar E-type convertible. Simple enough."

Dave Stewart: "Come now, Mike, don't be so modest. As I alluded to in reply to an earlier post, I took a recent film photo that was very relevant to you and the website. Now that an appropriate post has appeared, the true TOP-mobile can be revealed. Spied in Inverness (Scotland) on the 28th August. I dusted down the scanner today especially:

Jim G: "If they can't tow a boat or haul 4x8 sheets of plywood, then what good are they?"

Addendum to Yesterday

A danger in sharing "settled preferences" as I did yesterday relates to the status-anxiety most of us primates feel naturally. (Chimpanzees are the same as us in this respect, at least according to Frans de Waal's books.) When you say, "I do this," people tend to think you're saying not only "this is best" and also "you should do this too," but even "if you don't do this, then there might be something wrong with you." (This last is what provokes the anxiety.) It's natural to feel that way, and apparently innate.

Engaging with your own choices in photography (as in any other deep interest, I suppose) means not only arriving at your own personal convictions, but having the fortitude to courteously disagree with others...non-judgmentally.

Wandering around the house snapping whatever with the Sigma
60mm ƒ/2.8 DN, it took me a little while to readjust to the f-l.

But I'm not at all saying that "everyone should use" a super-traditional lens set of three primes. Not at all. Other people have engaged just as deeply as I have and come to quite different "settled preferences." I imagine some people (such as Moose, in his comment to yesterday's post) feel unacceptably constrained without the freedom of a zoom. Foreign to me, but I can imagine it. I have one friend who treats a 90mm angle-of-view equivalent as a "normal" lens, and another who does the same with a 21mm-equivalent!

I did use a zoom as my main lens in one two-year experiment. (I'm big on such experiments; I learn from them.) I managed to get used to it. However I've known of nature and fashion photographers who feel very much at home with a 300mm angle-of-view equivalent lens...and I can almost not think of anything to do with a lens like that: with a camera and a 300mm-e, for me it's almost like not having a camera.

Maybe I'd get used to it eventually. But I doubt it. I once took a 15mm lens for APS-C (about 22mm-e) on vacation to try to use it as my main lens, to see what I could learn from the attempt. Well, what I learned is that I really don't like using a lens that wide. I took almost no decent pictures in two weeks, and didn't enjoy trying. Just doesn't fit me.

Recently I've been trying out the Sigma 60mm ƒ/2.8 DN on my NEX-6. Even though that short tele f0cal length is quite familiar to me, each time I go back to it there's always a very short adjustment time...it always feels a bit awkward right at first and takes me five or ten minutes to recalibrate. I remember the exact same thing happening in the '80s with my Zeiss Contax 85mm ƒ/2.8. (So far I've just wandered around the house and outdoors with the Sigma, snapping away at this and that to start to get a handle on how the lens renders. By the way, does anyone happen to know where I can find some technical background on the focusing mechanism Sigma's using in this lens?)

Anyway if you felt the pinprick of criticism in yesterday's post, please don't. I'm just describing what I do. It might be what a lot of others do too, but there's no right and wrong.

Mike

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Richard Tugwell: "What! We photographers are all 'chimps'? I wondered where the phrase came from... 'Photographers, though well behaved, are nothing more than monkeys shaved'!"

Mike replies: Not monkey. Ape. And the evolutionary change that had the greatest effect on our differentiation from apes was the descent of the tongue into the pharynx and a "brain that can reiterate the phonetic contrasts apparent in its fixed vocalizations."* How else would we be able to squabble endlessly over sharpness? Chimps can't do that.

*Philip Lieberman, Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 1, February 2007.

Richard responds: "That's unfair! I was quoting W. S. Gilbert!"

John Roberts: "In my earliest days on the interwebs, I found I was often feeling personally criticized when somebody wrote about what they used, preferred, recommended, or didn't like. Why should I care what some complete stranger in Boise thought about what I shoot with? But I did. Thankfully, I got over that. Now I can read an article like yours and not feel like I have to defend my preference if it is different. People shouldn't see an article like yours on prime lenses as the opening salvo for a debate, but in online articles it seems they often do. Too bad. Good article, by the way."

The Super-Traditional Lens Set

Typical traditional lens kit for Leica M (see full caption below)

Last week (because it's currently on sale at a reduced price) I caught up with some photographers whose main lens is the extraordinary Canon EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II USM, which I agree is a superior and beautiful lens. I didn't tire of looking at images made with it, online. (If I were starting out as a pro right now, I'd probably get that lens and two 6Ds. Why the EOS 6D? Besides for the fact that it's unprecedentedly cheap right now? Because it's quiet. The last "job" I had to do was at a memorial service, and my Sony DSLR [A900] was too loud.)

As longtime readers won't need reminding, however, zooms aren't for me. I've never liked photographing with them and don't prefer them.

This is more or less natural for some photographers who cut their teeth in the film years. Medium-format film cameras used by almost all professionals (Hasselblads in this country, or Bronicas, or Mamiyas among portrait photographers) were largely used without zooms. A very few zooms existed, but they were preposterously large, expensive, and inconvenient, and you took an image-quality hit. And large-format cameras, used by many professionals and a number of artists, have never had zooms as an option. Thirty-five millimeter photography was where zooms made their early inroads, but even with 35mm, rangefinder cameras, which were a minority among 35mm cameras but had outsized "mindshare" mainly because of the Leica M, also couldn't be used with zooms, although both Leica and Konica made multi-focal-length lenses that were distant cousins of zooms.

So photographers who used any of these cameras got used to thinking—and seeing—in terms of single-focal-length lenses.

Furthermore, none of these camera types—Hasselblads, the ubiquitous 4x5s, or rangefinder Leicas—were suited to extreme focal lengths, whether extreme wide angle or extreme telephoto. (The suitability of 35mm SLRs to extremely long telephotos was part of what drove the growing acceptance of 35mm for professional work in the 1960s and '70s. For amateurs too: an impressive big long expensive telephoto was a significant status symbol for photographers when I was young, although I never aspired to own one myself.)

Finally, zooms were of much lower status in decades past. They were definitely the preference of amateurs and novices. The Leitz family, founding owners of the company that made Leicas, didn't even allow the company to make zooms for its SLRs until very late. The early zooms for the R cameras, if memory serves, were warmed-over Minoltas.

This old prejudice began to fade in the mid to late '90s, and is all but gone now.

And whether you shot Hasselblads, Leicas, or view cameras back then, by far the most typical lens complement was a trio of single-focal-length lenses. In the usual order of need, acquisition, and emphasis: a normal first, then a moderate tele, then a wide angle.

Caption to the top illustration:
Left: Seven-element "Rigid" Summicron. Although not great at its two widest apertures by today's standards, from ƒ/4 to ƒ/11 this classic lens will yield the quintessential "Leica look" that made the marque famous.
Middle: The "E46" 90mm Elmarit-M, like many short-tele Leica lenses, was particularly eye-pleasing and a great lens to use, very sharp even wide open. Visually, the Sigma 60mm ƒ/2.8 DN reminds me a lot of this lens (definitely not in build quality).
Right: A Canadian 28mm Elmarit.
Illustrations from KEH.com. These old lenses hold their value quite well today; this kit in Ex. condition from KEH would run $3,598.

All that's what formed my lens choices and my preferences, which exist to this day: a moderate-wide prime as a normal, a short tele, and a wide angle. That's all I ever need.

Of course, this "typical" median was influenced by what you did. Architectural photographers needed wide angle lenses, so a 90mm for your 4x5 was many architectural photographers' second or even first lens choice. Product and tabletop photographers as well as nature photographers often had at least one macro. And how many lenses you had for each of your formats depended not only on need, but on how heavily you used each particular format and what your budgetary constraints were. I have to say I knew relatively few pros who had all three options for a view camera, and none had as few as three options for a 35mm SLR. Most people I knew who owned Leicas had one or two lenses for them, not three. Artists might well own just one view camera lens, and, usually, just one lens for a medium-format camera if that's what they used. Medium-format cameras with single fixed taking lenses weren't uncommon, the most famous being the Rolleiflex.

I transitioned from a 50mm to a moderate wide angle 35mm in my second year of photo school. I had to shoot a lot in downtown Washington D.C.—the Corcoran, where I went to art school, is about a football field's distance from the White House—and 50mm is a little too tight for my way of seeing in the city. The 35mm had just a touch of "wide-angly" feel to it, though, which I didn't care for back then, so my favorite focal length became 40mm—a preference definitely helped along by the 40mm ƒ/2 M-Rokkor and the Olympus OM Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2, both of which I loved. Although I've definitely used more 35mms than 40mms overall. A number of 35mm photographers went the other way and settled on 28mm as a "normal." I've also come to like 28mm more and more as the years have passed.

By the way, all along the way in photography, my method has been to just try things and make decisions visually. For instance, when I was transitioning away from the 50mm, I simply took a bunch of pictures with a 35mm lens and a 28mm lens and looked at the pictures. I tended to like the 35mm pictures better, so I went with that.

But leaving the 50mm meant that I needed a separate lens for portraits, because the 35mm was too wide. So I added an 85mm.

Portrait of Hilary Liftin as a schoolgirl, at the National Cathedral. Zeiss 85mm. Hilary is now an author who ghost-writes and co-writes celebrity autobiographies; among many others, she's written books with Tatum O'Neal and Miley Cyrus. Some of her clients' names she is contractually
not allowed to reveal.

Those are still my favorite focal lengths, because I got so used to seeing with them. It's partly psychological: I've reinforced those choices by using lenses of those focal lengths in many different systems, which means I've gotten lots of nice pictures with such lenses, which in turn reinforces all the positive feelings I associate with them. It sort of builds on itself after a while.

Patterns and habits
In the '90s, I did a survey of my own shooting and found my usage broke down as follows: 80% normal lens, 15% short tele, and 5% wide angle.

There's always been a problem with the wide angle, in that it's usually the most expensive of the three types, but it's the one I least often use. So, having been relatively resource-free during most of my life as a photographer and a bit of a tightwad as a consequence, I've often just planned to buy, but not actually bought, the wide angle in any given lens set for any given camera. In practice I tend to get away with a ~35mm normal and a ~85mm short tele, more or less.

That's the situation in which I find myself now. I've lately really taken to the Sony NEX-6 ($648 now), which I really enjoy using and find to be competent in its results. I like it so much I often grab it when I really should be using something else. (I shot all of last Sunday's "Photo Essay" with it, for instance.) So a few weeks ago I decided to complete my lens set for the NEX-6. (Before that, I really thought it was likely I'd return to Micro 4/3—I haven't gotten rid of my Micro 4/3 lenses.)

Ctein's chosen super-traditional set for Micro 4/3: The Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7, the Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8, and the Panasonic 14mm ƒ/2.5. (He actually owns the Olympus 12mm ƒ/2, but doesn't care for it.) In his case, the 45mm is his most-used lens. This whole set as shown goes for $1,140 at B&H. Interestingly, this comes very close to the standard set for the old Leitz/Minolta CL.

I already have a good normal for the NEX-6—the Carl Zeiss Sonnar 24mm ƒ/1.8, an expensive lens that appears (visually) to be too large for the camera but that I find perfectly balanced and comfortable in actual use. And, optically, it suits my tastes, which isn't always easy to achieve.

The short tele choice seems obvious—the Sigma 60mm ƒ/2.8 DN. (I might have more to say about this lens in coming weeks.) In contrast to the Zeiss 24mm, it's cheaper than it should be, given its performance. (And, as always with Sigma, I'm suspicious of its build quality. I've had lots of bad experiences with Sigma—swore off the company's products for a time, even—but Lucy holds the football, and Charlie Brown can't resist.)

Choices, choices
The wide-angle is once again where I find myself stuck. (Same as always.) I just don't need a wide angle all that much. So should I get a wide to round out the super-traditional set of three, or just make do with the normal and short tele?

And if I do get a wide, which one? There are two main candidates—the Zeiss Touit 12mm, another very spendy lens but an optically pretty splendid one, or the much more practical Sony 16mm ƒ/2.8, another relative cheapie at $248, which moreover will add only 2.7 ounces to the camera bag—or slightly more than an extra lens cap. It's a decent but bland lens. It's not as wide as the Touit, but at 24mm angle-of-view equivalent, it's wide enough.

It doesn't help that Zeiss just announced a rebate on the Touits, bringing the price of the 12mm down by $251, to $999. Still an awful lot for a lens I might use only 5% of the time.

Well, I know which one I want. And I know which one I should get—to be practical. And what I'll probably do...well, one thing about getting older is that your learn your own patterns. Probably what I'll do is do what I always do, and just plan to get a wide angle for my NEX-6, without actually ever following through with actual cash.

Mike

Got a favorite "Supertraditional lens kit" of your own? Take a picture of them and send it to me! I'll publish a few of them. I need an 800-pixel-wide JPEG saved as sRGB. My email address is in the right-hand sidebar. Don't forget to tell me what the lenses are.

Alternately, you can put your image in the Comments using this code:

The image needs a URL and shouldn't exceed 470 pixels wide or it will be cut off. [Sorry! I had this number wrong at first.]

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Dave's 2-lens kit from the 1970 and '80s omits the traditional short tele. He now uses a D800e and normally works out of his car, where he keeps a variety of lenses—mostly zooms (the traitor). And by the way, Dave is on WIRED today.

Jack's M kit utilizes a Tri-Elmar as the WA, but he says it's set on 18mm almost all the time. Interestingly, his S set nearly duplicates his M set: 24mm super wide Elmar S is equivalent to 19.2mm, 35mm Summarit S is equivalent to 28mm, and 120mm Summarit S is equivalent to 96mm.

Arne shows three such sets for different cameras: top row, a particularly beautiful set for his manual-focus Olympus OM-4: Schneider 28mm ƒ/2.8mm shift lens for OM, and OM Zuiko Macro 50mm and 90mm ƒ/2's; middle row, for the Fuji X-Pro1: 18mm ƒ/2, 35mm ƒ/1.4, and 60mm ƒ/2.4; bottom row, for a 4x5 view camera: Schneider Super-Symmar XL 80mm ƒ/5.6, Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-S 150mm ƒ/5.6, and Docter Optic Apo-Germinar 300mm ƒ/9.

Moose (partial comment): "You prime shooters know I and my cohorts are out here.

"How well I remember the standard three focal lengths. Being older than Mike, they were at first 35mm, 50–58mm and 135mm for SLRs. When my Dad moved from Topcon Super D to Nikon Ftn, he went 35mm, 50mm ƒ/1.4, 55mm Micro Nikkor, 200mm.

"And how well I remember how frustrating I found them. I never have been one who 'sees' the world and potential images of it in fixed angles of view. I tend to see something I like and want my equipment to be capable of  adapting to my AOV, not to force my vision to its limitations."

[See the rest of Moose's comment in the Comments Section. —Ed.]

Bellwether of the Downturn

The Wall Street Journal (for those of you who might not know it, an otherwise fine newspaper* with a loopy and radical philosophical foundation, much like the Christian Science Monitor in that regard), reports that Canon Camera, considered "a bellwether for major Japanese exporters," has lowered its profit outlook and its sales projections for interchangeable-lens cameras. "The uncertain outlook for the year-end shopping season prompted Canon to again trim its outlook for sales of interchangeable-lens cameras to 8 million, or 44% of the global market, from 9 million in the July outlook. It originally foresaw sales of 9.2 million cameras at the beginning of this year."

Canon CFO Toshizo Tanaka feels the downturn is "only a temporary phenomenon."

(You did notice that market share number on the way by, didn't you? Wow.)

Mike
(Thanks to James Erlandson)

*And for those of you who might not know what a newspaper is, Craig Ferguson says it's "like a big papery blog filled with yesterday's news."

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:

Robert Roaldi: "I can't get my head around the notion that eight million cameras is not very good."

Ned Bunnell: "I was in my local Costco yesterday helping a neighbor buy a camera. I've always done my informal market research at this location. They just halved the camera display and moved it out of the high traffic location. My guy who manages the category said sales of SLR's are off 50% this year and he reduced the number of slots for compacts by half."

Thom Hogan: "In any given month this year, the U.S. cash register receipts for DSLR cameras have been down from –17% to –23% year-to-year, and the U.S. is the market showing the least drop in terms of unit shipments made from Japan. Interpretation: unsold inventory here.

"Canon's market share assertion still seems off: current CIPA numbers estimated forward show 15.9m interchangeable lens cameras shipping in 2013. Forty-four percent of that is 7m units. For Canon's assertion to be correct, the actual CIPA shipments would need to hit 18.2m units. So far this year (through August), only 10.6m units have been shipped—so Canon's projections indicate that they think that 7.6m units will be shipped in four months. That didn't even happen in the best four months of 2012.

"This is one of the things I don't like about the Japanese business press: they don't challenge assertions, nor do they seem to ask questions that would get to why there's a discrepancy in the numbers.

"The problem for the Japanese remains: they need to sell off increasing inventories in subsidiaries already booked as revenue, while they need to boost units sold to subsidiaries. Not going to happen. At least not easily. For Canon's assertion that this is just a temporary downturn to prove true (at least in the short term of 2013–14) they need to:

• Clear inventories out of subsidiaries
• Increase shipments to subsidiaries
• Sell the increased shipments with no inventory build up

"Otherwise they're just in the same position in 2014 as they are in 2013.

"Yes, Eamon's right, there is a downturn, and Canon is right about that, but the question at hand isn't the downturn but the length of it. 'Only temporary' doesn't put any bounds on the problem. It could be 'only temporary' for five years or for one. The length of 'temporary' may be the difference between the industry surviving as we known it or not."

Why You Don't Want a Sony A7r...

...Too sharp. Too detailed. Yuck.

Photo by ijsvogel (click to open)

Notice the reviewer isn't going to give his test camera back to Sony. [g]

Mike
(Thanks to Tom Kwas)

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:

Patrick Perez: "In the words of Homer Simpson, 'Sweet merciful crap!'"

Mike A: "Don't buy an A7R to use with legacy lenses because you'll lose resolution with adapters. It won't be sharp enough! Don't buy an A7R to use with native lenses because of all the resolution. It will be too sharp!"

Mike replies: I was speaking, as they say, "tongue in cheek." Of course people will want it more because it's so sharp and detailed, not less. Although some of the examples at the link are, as a couple of people have termed it, "over the top."

Peter Urban (partial comment): "Without exaggeration, I am positive that this is the camera that is going to change my life as a photographer forever—and that of many others too. It has the potential to usher in a new era in digital landscape, nature, architecture and product photography."

Mike replies: Well....

Mark L. Power: "I will be glad when the hyper-real era is over...."

Caponigro Father-Son Prints Are 100% Shipped

Just an update on our last Print Offer—Arduina Caponigro (Mrs. John Paul) and Caponigro Arts Executive Director Diane Walsh have informed me that all of the prints from our last print offer have now been shipped. If yours hasn't arrived by about ten days from now, you should contact Caponigro Arts, or me.

Has anyone gotten theirs? I'm curious to know what you think. I've gotten a number of glowing comments by private email...

Big thanks to everybody who participated. Our next sale starts one week from now!

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:

MarkB: "Received mine last week (up here in the Great White North), and was surprised by how deep the colors are, as well as how big the whole sheet is (my framing ideas are changing now that I have it in my hands). Compared to my expectations based on the little screen jpegs, the proximity of the two images is much more balanced in person. A wonderful print!"

Paul Bien: "Does anyone have any ideas about how best to frame the Caponigro print(s)? Specifically, would you have a mat cut to frame both prints together, or would you have a mat cut with 2 separate holes, thus having a bit of mat board separating the prints? What might be a good final frame size?"

Mike replies: I can tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to have my framer mount the whole sheet behind a spacer, so the frame is the same size as the sheet and all you see is the sheet. Probably with a dark and somewhat wider than usual metal frame, but I haven't picked that yet. I might have to rethink this plan if it requires the print to be mounted, because I wouldn't want to do that.

 

Photographing from Commercial Airplanes

This week's column by Ctein

Lately I've been having considerable success making portfolio-worthy photographs on my airline flights. I may not have any artistic control over the scenery I'm presented, but despite that, I'd have to say that nearly half my flights have produced at least one photograph I'm happy to add to my portfolio. I engaged in such photography back in my film/darkroom days but I rarely achieved success. These days I consider success the norm. So, what's different?

Where you sit
One change has nothing to do with the photographic technology. I'm sitting further forward in the airplane. There is less air turbulence in front of the wing than behind; the closer you can get to the nose, the better. The reason I'm sitting further forward is that the combined forces of rampant security paranoia and rampant airline greed have made economy-class flying increasingly intolerable to me. Most of my five to eight peregrinations each year are by air rather than ground. I like to go places. Increasingly, I'm disliking getting there.

Consequently, these days, I'm weighting my flight choices more heavily by whether I can get a cheap first class upgrade or choice of premium quality seats than by flight times and arrivals. I'll also throw frequent-flier miles and credit card points at an upgrade; it usually gets me more value both financially and comfort-wise than a free coach ticket would. I'm nowhere near the income level where I can afford to pay list for business or first class, but cheap upgrades? Oh, yeah!

Paradoxically, looking to the "discount" airlines often produces better results. Living on the West Coast and mostly traveling to the Midwest, I've got some good options. Southwest Airlines often has the lowest prices to where I want to go, when you take into account that they still allow two free pieces of checked luggage. Paying an additional sum for priority boarding (and buying and checking-in early) usually means I can grab whatever seat I want.

My favoritest airline, though, is Minneapolis-based Sun Country (half my trips are to Minneapolis). They fly direct to San Francisco, unlike Southwest. Not only are their fares low, but when I do my 24-hour online check-in, they'll allow me to upgrade to first class (which is never sold out) for $120 each way. For an average of $150–$200 more than I'd pay for a coach ticket on some other airline, I fly first class. If I want to take any checked bags with me, which I often do, knock $50–$100 off of that modest premium.

That's the nontechnological angle. Mostly, my success rate is way up because of both digital photography and digital printing. Digital cameras let me find the sweet spots in the airplane windows. Photographing through two panes of acrylic/glass doesn't degrade image quality anywhere as much as you'd think, unless you're photographing through a ripply spot in one of the panes or it's really badly scraped up. In the film days, I wouldn't know if I had picked a good spot until I developed the film. More often than not I hadn't.

Now what I do is make a test photograph and chimp it like mad at high magnification. I go over the entire frame to see if there are any sour spots in it. If there are, I move the camera over a bit and try again. Usually I can find a usable spot on the window. As long as I always photograph through that spot, photographs look consistently sharp from corner to corner.

Fig. 2.

Working with a longer lens also helps. Wider fields of view pull in more oblique rays and those cause more problems when photographing through two layers of window. I stick with something in the 75-100mm-equivalent range. The illustration at the top of this post shows the full frame of a recent addition to my portfolio that I made with the Olympus 45mm (90 mm-e) lens. It makes a critically tack-sharp 17x22-inch print. Figure 2 is a 100%-scale detail.

Color-crossover
Digital printing comes into play because aerial photography means photographing through a very long column of air. There's a huge amount of atmospheric scattering, and shorter wavelengths are scattered much more strongly than longer ones. That's what produces the blue shadows in long-distance photographs: green and especially blue wavelengths from all over the scene are scattered into the shadows, veiling them. It's not just a color shift, it's color-crossover. Even when you've overall color-balanced so that the whites are neutral, the shadows will be greenish-blue.

This was a nearly-impossible problem to address in the darkroom unless you did dye transfer, in which case it was merely annoyingly difficult. In image-processing software, it's readily addressed with a curves correction. Figure 3 shows a generic curve adjustment for dealing with this. Observe how far in I pulled the black point on the blue curve, a lesser amount on the green curve, and only a little bit on the red curve. I added control points up near 192, 192 so that the whites and highlights are little altered. This is just an approximation of what you'd need to do for any particular photograph, but it shows you the general idea.

Aerial B&W infrared photography is also turning out to be a big win. That'll be next week's column.

Ctein

Ctein's column appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

David: "Great post. I am an airline pilot and I have taken a DSLR along on every trip I've worked since 2004. Your tips are spot on, especially the part about finding a good piece of window to shot through. Even the flight-deck's windows have their flaws. It's important to find a spot with no ripples.

"The only point where I disagree with you is the use of long lenses. Yes, long lenses help you stay clear of some of the issues associated with shooting through a window, but when I use a long lens for aerials I feel like I am not able to produce a sense of height and my pictures look flat. I advise you to pull out the wide angle and deal with the consequences. You can mitigate a lot of the flare and reflection issues by pushing your lens hood right up against the window or carry a piece of black cloth to drape around your camera.

"Your curves solution to blue shadows is quite elegant. I'm going to add it to my bag of tricks. For those who are interested, I created a video tutorial on how to edit photos taken through an airliner's window. It's kind of rambling and poorly produced but I do give away many of my secrets so it might be worth watching.

"A big part of getting good photos from an airliner is being in the right place at the right time. The same rules of lighting apply to aerial photography as landscape photography. Plan your trip so you are airborne during early morning or late afternoon. My job keeps me airborne 700 to 1,000 hours per year, so my odds of seeing something spectacular are higher than the average air traveler. Here is a gallery of some of the best aerial photos I've acquired over the years.

"For more tips about aerial photography and lots of stories, see my 'Flying the Line' series at my blog.

"Sorry for the shameless self promotion.  Sometimes I can't help myself."

Dale: "Enjoyed the column very much. Another thing to consider is using the airline website to find out what equipment is being used. Newer planes tend to mean fewer scratched windows. And as a 40 week per year flyer, I can say Southwest seems to maintain windows more often. They often seem clearer."

VK: "One of my favorite landscape subjects! And technically it is much harder than people think it is when seeing the final product, because the list of things you have to worry about is huge: sun glare, far distance haze, clouds, scratches on the window, exhaust turbulence from the engines, and that your ground speed is 3 meters per 1/60 sec. Not to mention people in the aisle seat who insist in sleeping with windows down.

"Absolutely the best airline route for such photography is British Airways Flight 118. Leaves Bangalore, India, in the early a.m., and lands in London, UK, shortly after noon, and flies over some stunning places along the way."

Eli Burakian: "Folks should check out Julieanne Kost who has a great book called Window Seat with incredible photographs from commercial flights, as well as specific and general advice."

Robert Capa Centennial

Robert Capa by Ruth Orkin, 1952

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Endre Erno Friedmann in Hungary—the man who became Robert Capa, the grand old dean of combat photographers. And to celebrate, James Estrin at the Lens Blog has a wonderful little article that includes a rare find—new and unique recordings of Bob Capa's voice.

The recording, from October of 1947, was recently released by the International Center of Photography. Before it was found, even his major biographer had never heard his voice.

What a treat!

Mike
(Thanks to Bruce Rubenstein and Francisco Cubas)

P.S. And to try to forestall inevitable comments, yes, there has been controversy following accusations that Capa's most famous picture was a setup. There have also been comprehensive refutations of that charge, including in this newly rediscovered recording. Personally, I'm confident the picture is completely genuine. At any rate, I don't want to discuss that issue today.

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:

Gabor Gasztonyi: "Thanks for sharing this incredible voice recording of Robert Capa. I just returned today from Budapest and went to the fantastic and very moving Robert Capa Anniversary Exhibition at the Hungarian National Museum. Images were displayed from different time periods in his career including the very famous photograph of Leon Trotsky.

"Oddly, there was also a bathtub in the exhibit which attempted to symbolize the fact that he liked to take long baths in the morning, lasting up to an hour an a half. His Contax camera was also on display as well as notebooks from his childhood and a bank passbook from Budapest—with a very small balance as I recall. His mother and father ran a tailor shop in Budapest and from what I have seen he tended to wear very good quality suits. There was not however a recording of his voice, which I thought was strange."

Leigh Perry: "Which reminds me: his death (and Gerda Taro's) provide the unlikely subject matter for a wonderful song."

jean-louis salvignol: "This portrait of Capa by Ruth Orkin is disturbing in that it really gives the image that one has of him. And yet it is perfect without being a caricature. Incidentally Ruth Orkin is a tremendous photographer too forgotten today."

Vampire Cameras (Signs o' the Times)

Photo by Paul De Zan

Paul De Zan recently sent me this, with the subject heading "The vampire cameras come out at sunset." He called it "a view I stumbled upon while trying to shoot something else. This is ISO 25600, my new favorite integer. (Remember when we had something called night, during which you couldn't take pictures?)"

I recall that. Coming home from walking the dog the other night I was musing on my little pool-table-installation self-assignment, and running through, in my mind, just what would have been involved to do that project in, say, the 1980s. It would have been exponentially more difficult to shoot—possibly beyond my skills. As it was, I did it almost offhandedly, not even trying, really. Most of my light sources were LED, including the main ceiling lights, a little flashlight I used to light the inside of a pocket, and an LED panel for fill in the final shot—perched on the seat of a chair.

Then as Lulu and I approached the house I noticed a tripod in the neighbors' driveway—and two little kids crouched next to it intent upon something unseen. The neighbor kid is somewhere within shooting distance of ten years old, and his friend, a little girl, looked about the same.

"Whatcha doin'?" I said.

"We're making a movie!"

I love it when reality mirrors what's in my head.

"Cool," I said, "That would have been really hard to do when I was your age."

It would have been, too. I had one early experience with a Super-8 movie camera, and that was enough for me.

Then in that evening's email came this great shot, from Will von Dauster, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photographer in Colorado. He took it on the first day of the recent Colorado floods. The NOAA office was closed, but Will was out with his OM-D E-M5 and the "underrated" (Will's word) 14–150mm lens. He said he doesn't know the other pro, the one in the picture.

NOAA photo by Will von Dauster

Sign o' the times, eh? I do hope the people in those cars were okay.

I have to say the thought crossed my mind that the camera this fellow is using is the real vampire camera, sucking the blood out of the digicam market. But never mind.

Mike
(Thanks to Paul and Will)

[UPDATE: Andre writes, "Yes, they were all okay. The washed out section is Old Dillon Road (east of Boulder, somewhere around the Louisville/Broomfield border) and all three people involved were pulled out of their vehicles without major injuries." Thanks, Andre.]

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:

MikeR: "That has to be the funniest photog image I've seen in a long time."

Janne: "I do wonder if high ISO is not somewhat akin to fast lenses; most users will reach the practical limit of what they need or use well before the makers reach the true technical limits to sensitivity. I've had my Pentax K-5 II for almost a year now, and one thing I've loved about it is that it's nicely usable at least to ISO 12800 for me, and even 25600 is useful in a pinch. But when I look at the shots over last year, I almost never stray above 3200 in practice, and not once have I used 12800 in a 'real' picture. Turns out that for the places I typically shoot (nighttime streets, for instance), ISO3200 and decent SR [shake reduction, Pentax's name for its IS —Ed.] is plenty. No need for me to incur the extra expense of a camera with radically higher sensitivity. And I sort of wonder where that limit is for most hobbyists. Because shortly beyond that lies the financial limit for the manufacturers to improve it."

Paddy C: "That second photo is priceless! So good. I often think of how easier (and more amazing) it must be to be a 'creative youth' these days. A $300 camera and iMovie (or better) and you're off to the races."

Another Phil: "Phone cams are great when you need to send an image to the rest of the world immediately. That's where other cameras fall down in a lot of people's eyes."

Mike replies: Sure, he might even be messaging his editor, saying, "Do you want me to do more of this"? Carl Weese wrote an article for my magazine way back in the '90s about how he used little digital cameras to scout locations and standpoints for his ultra-large-format view cameras. There are lots of perfectly logical explanations for what this guy is doing.

But it still looks pretty funny.

Geoff Wittig: "Cell phone photos are great and all, what with always having it with you while that DSLR and all the spiffy lenses are back home in your closet. But there's a mind-numbing sameness to all those millions of ~28–35mm-equivalent cell phone images with endless depth of field and 'close enough' exposure. I invariably look at the ones I've taken and cringe, seeing instantly what I'd do with a real camera."

Michael Farrell: "I try not to be reliant on my phone for pictures, just because the image parameters are so limited. Sometimes, though, it gives me a very nice look.

"If I may, here's an Instagram of Calgary's Stanley Park from June 21, 2013, taken the morning our little urban stream, the Elbow River, decided it wanted to be the Mississippi."

Bruno Masset: "I'm not a news photographer, but I also sometimes take a picture of a scene both with my cell phone and my 'real' camera, as the latter, unlike the cell phone, doesn't have an in-built GPS receiver that records the precise coordinates where a picture was taken."

Greg Magruder: "The guy in the photo may be Cliff Grasmick, photog for Boulder Camera newspaper."

Mike replies: Anybody out there know Cliff who could check with him?

Jonathan Castner: "That is Cliff Grasmick from the Boulder Daily Camera that is in the second photo. The photogs of the paper used their phones' GPS to post constantly updating coverage of the floods and it would show up on a map indicating where the damage was. This let them have images up in seconds rather than minutes. Not 'good' images but something usable, and, in the case of the floods, telling and helpful, as the situation was constantly changing. The 'good' images were uploaded maybe hourly. Interesting to think that given our modern world that waiting 45 minutes after a major news event to see the photos online is our equivalent to 'Breaking news...film at 11.'"

Digital File to Silver Print

Introduction: As I've mentioned, our next Print Offer, which starts in less than two weeks, on October 30th, features some really fine and very recent Paris pictures by old friend Peter Turnley, from his marvelous new book French Kiss.

But an obvious question arose. Peter's been using a Leica M9 and an M Monochrom recently...and how does he get from there to the fine prints he's long been known for, and that so many of our readers have bought and enjoyed in the past?

So, I asked....

Mike: We're very much looking forward to your third TOP sale, just nine days from now, of several prints from your new book French Kiss. But one big question. How do you handle the mix of digital and traditional originals? You are known for the signed fine prints that Voja Mitrovic has made for you for many years. And any good printer is in part an artistic collaborator, not just a mechanic. Is Voja just out of the picture (no pun intended) when it comes to photographs you've made with the Leica M9 and M Monochrom?

Peter: Voja is still in the picture for all of my prints! The great news is that all of my Paris photographs, whether made by an analog or digital camera, are still printed as traditional silver gelatin prints by my friend Voja, who in my opinion is is one of the greatest black-and-white printers in the history of photography. Whether the photograph was made on film with a Leica M3, M4, M6, or M7, or made digitally by the Leica M8, M9 and M Monochrom digital cameras, they are all still printed by Voja Mitrovic as traditional silver-gelatin prints from a negative.

Mike: When you say "negative," what size negative?

Photo from French Kiss printed as a traditional gelatin-silver print from
a digital Leica M Monochrom original, using an internegative.
(This picture isn't part of our sale.)

Peter: We have taken the digital files and had 4x5-inch internegatives made, which Voja then prints traditionally on silver-gelatin fiber-base paper. I'm having an exhibition at the Leica Gallery in Salzberg, Austria starting on November 20th, and all 50 prints in the exhibit, covering a 40-year period of time, will be Voja's traditional silver gelatin prints.

Mike: And the obvious, if blunt, question...how good are they? Are they as good as prints made from in-camera negatives?

Peter: All I can say is that when I saw the silver prints made by Voja from these 4x5 internegatives from my original digital files, I was blown away. They are perfectly homogenous with the prints made from film. I've never seen these digital photographs look so beautiful on a computer screen.

For me, this new technique is life-changing. It allows me to finally have total continuity with the photography of my whole career, and to be proud of all of my signed prints for collection, whether they were made originally from film or by a digital camera.

Mike: I know that Voja doesn't print for anyone but a select handful of clients, but where do you get your digital-to-film internegatives made? And is this something that anyone can have done?

Peter: We use a terrific photography lab in Paris called Central DUPON Images. The process is called making a "shoot." That's what they call it in French—I don't know if there's an English equivalent, other than "internegative." We have spent time working with one their wonderful technicians calibrating a digital file with a standard set of curves so that when a 4x5 negative is made from a digital file, there is no excess gain in contrast or loss of detail.

Mike: Is there usually?

Peter: In general, the digital file that is projected onto a piece of 4x5 film has a bit less contrast than a digital file one would print from directly. We have studied this carefully and made many tests and arrived at a standard setting that enables us to have constant, excellent mid-tone values and levels of detail in the highlights and shadows in the 4x5 negative that the silver gelatin print is then made from.

Mike: And how about the "blackline"—will the digital prints have an integral black line around them like the prints from film? With 35mm it shows the film edge, but of course there's no equivalent in digital.

Peter: I grew up with the old traditions of great printing and have always used a black line around the edge of my prints, as did Henri, to indicate an uncropped print from a full negative. I also love the way the black line "closes" a print. So we also incorporate this black line—filet noir in French—on our digital files, in order to have it also in the 4x5 negative. For me it's a matter of consistency across my life's work.

Mike: And how widespread is this process that Central DUPON uses, do you know?

Peter: I'm sure that there are labs all over the world, and certainly in the U.S. that can make these internegatives, but I will say that the culture of attention to detail in the great Paris photography labs has always been outstanding.

Mike: Thanks Peter. Anything else you'd like to add?

Peter: I want to return to the most important point—the resulting silver prints made from these internegatives derived from digital files are undistinguishable from silver prints made straight from original negatives. Really sensational.

Mike: Thanks very much, Peter. I can't wait to see some examples.

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:

Tony Roberts: "Salgado has been employing the same process."

Roger Bradbury: "After seeing the Leica video where you can see Peter Turnley and Voja Mitrovic examining a large negative (on the French Kiss book web page), I had already thought as much. It is fascinating to discover the details, though."

Ed: "Man, what a headache and endless hoops to jump through; just shoot film in the first place."

Peter Turnley replies: I'd like to respond to that because I realize that at first glance your comment makes sense but actually the reality is exactly the opposite. To "just shoot film in the first place" is not the easier answer with less headache. (I shot film for 35 years with great pleasure). Shooting film means spending money for every roll of film, money and time developing the film, making contact sheets, archiving them. Having problems carrying film through any airport security system. And, maybe most importantly, some of the new cameras like the Leica Monochrom offer the opportunity to make photographs with amazing tones in low light conditions with high enough shutter speeds with no camera or subject movement/blur, and one can actually make photographs of authentic spontaneous moments in very low light that one can't do with decent grain films like Tri-X. Digital files are very fine as well for magazine publications, online publications, and even book publications.

The making of an internegative from a digital file happens in my case only for photographs that are going to be exhibited or offered as signed collector prints. I will be having an upcoming exhibition in Salzburg, Austria of 50 photographs representing 40 years of photographs in Paris. Of all of this work only 20 of the photographs were made with a digital camera so only 20 internegatives were necessary to make. At the end of the day, this was not a headache or even a great expense compared to what shooting film these past two years would have represented. I know it is tempting to say that shooting film seems like less of a headache, but I actually don't think it is. And, I can't believe I am writing all of this, because I have been for so long in the camp of people that really love film. But, that is why this is all worth discussing now, because the combination of being able to work with an amazing, game-changing digital camera, and making internegatives to be able to make gelatin silver collector prints by a master printer—this all really represents progress.

Stan B.: "There are now a variety of 'hybrid' solutions available, each negotiable to the particular shooter's needs and finances. Inkjet prints from silver neg scans can be downright spectacular when properly executed. It's a helluva lotta work in post, but well worth it when you get that big (up to 27in from 35mm), beautiful print that I would have felled an entire old growth forest to achieve in the darkroom. I've seen B&W digital work that has taken my breath away, and stuff that looks plastic, sterile and 'artificial.' I guess it's mostly determined in post, and what particular combination (of thousands) one uses. Shooting film makes sense financially if you don't shoot as often as pros are likely to. No doubt Mr. Turnley's results represent the zenith of what is currently possible."

Wayne Pearson: "I really do not care how Peter makes his images, whether they are film, digital, use internegatives, or not. His images are wonderful. That is all that matters, are the images good or not. His are. Thank you for sharing his work and the occasional interview on this site."