The Online Photographer

The World's Best Job, Con't.

[This week is Off-Topic Week at TOP. This is just a temporary interlude, not a permanent change of direction. Please join us next Monday morning when we'll resume normal programming. —Ed.]

You might remember a former post about the world's best jobs. According to a report I read once that evaluated jobs by a number of basic parameters, including how many people had the ability to do the same job and work time spent outdoors, the world's best job is left fielder for a professional baseball team. I thought that was greatly eclipsed by Dan Castellaneta, who currently earns $300,000 per episode for providing the voice of Homer Simpson and several other characters on the Fox TV show "The Simpsons." Vanna White, the mostly silent woman who touches the letters on the game show "Wheel of Fortune," ranks way up there too. (Oddly enough, both Castellaneta and White are my age, White to within a few days; maybe I'm just considering my own age group?)

But this ain't a bad gig either—this woman is paid $500,000 a year to be the television spokesperson for Progressive Insurance. She plays a character named "Flo." Her real name is Stephanie Courtney. She's a standup comedian and comic actor.

Now that's "nice work if you can get it," as the old* saying goes.

Actually, these might not be the best jobs, just the easiest ones. But then, I've never done well with the question, "What job would you want if you could have any job you wanted?" I think my true answer would be, the job I have now...but maybe with Flo's salary!  :-)

Mike

*Depression era, I think. It's a Billie Holiday song, that much I know (written by the Gershwins).

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

David Miller: "There's another old song with the line, 'When I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near.' With that in mind, most of the 29 different jobs (including three major careers of 10 to 25 years) I've had have been the ones I've wanted most…at the time. Life is too short to spend doing anything else. Bringing enthusiasm to the job is my responsibility and when I can't do the task with my whole heart it's time to move on. (This was a bit of a challenge during the summer I spent cleaning hog barns, but it was only a summer job and I was able to keep the attitude going until going back to school in the fall.) If you're just in it for the money…well look for the best financial return you can get and take pleasure in your bank account. But if you work for the pleasure of the work, you'll be the envy of the world, and you'll know when it's time to move on to something else. (I'm 65. So far it's working for me.)"

Mike replies: Americans know that lyric as "When you can't be / With the one you love / Love the one you're with," from the song "Love the One You're With" from Stephen Stills' eponymous 1970 album.

And more to the point, what you're describing about jobs takes a lot of courage, and, I would imagine, a fair amount of ability (ability, because otherwise people just wash up on the rocks of unemployment, a fearsome place where I've spent too much time). It's not something everyone can manage, so you should be proud of yourself that you were able to accomplish it.

Chris Pisarra: "The best job in the world is lead driver for the Ferrari F1 team."

Rod Graham: "In defense of 'Flo,' maybe her job looks easy because she's good at it? Full disclosure: I'm kind of smitten by her. Lol. But I think there's a kernel of truth in there."

Mike replies: Are you smitten by the character, or the actress? In other instances, I keep getting smitten by characters. Currently I'm smitten with the woman in the recent "Chevy Connected" commercial. That actress plays that part to perfection, even in the space of a few brief shots.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Of course there is no such thing as 'The World's Best Job.' There is only 'YOUR World's Best Job,' defined loosely as something you absolutely love and live to do every day.

"Yes, money can be a distracting factor on both sides. Being richly rewarded to do something that's killing you is no good; I have known my share of these folks. But nor is being impoverished by work you love. I've known some of these, too. Surveys suggest that sweet spots are rare. I am certain that you have more than a few readers who sit at their office computers each day occasionally fantasizing about writing TOP for a living."

Mike replies: And I try to feel grateful every day that I get to do that, my recent difficulties aside.

Tim Fitzwater (partial comment): "Easy jobs are far too boring for me."

Bob Burnett: "But...as actor/writer friends have told me, Stephanie gets $500,000 a year to be Flo—now. Her bio says she's been an actor since 1992. She's been a secretary, caterer, etc. over the years while honing her craft, going to auditions and all the challenges a $10,000-a-year lifestyle that brings. It is nice work if you can get it but it's also only fair to take into account the many, many lean years most actors-writers go through to get to the 'Flo moment' that few get."

Mike replies: True dat. Could be said of many successful photographers, too. Oops—gotta stay off-topic.

On Assignment with my iPad Air

This week's column by Ctein

Those of you who've been following my peripatetic photographic exploits know that my computer of choice has been a 15-inch MacBook Pro, now of advanced age in computer years. It's allowed me to do the same kind of extensive and serious photographic editing, adjustment, and manipulation that I would do at home. With the addition of a first-generation iPad, I could even work on a portable studio quality monitor, which was exceedingly difficult to come by just a few years back. (Today, a retina-screen-equipped MacBook will provide that quality of display.)

What I've discovered, though, is that while it's awfully cool to be able to do fullbore image work on the road, I hardly ever do. Simply put, I don't have enough time when I'm traveling. I barely find time to do a serious edit on the photographs I've made. At most, I'll set up some ACR conversion adjustments for when I get home and am ready to start the seriously-time-consuming work in Photoshop.

While I most definitely needed that studio quality display, 90% of the computing power (and storage and memory and weight, etc.) of my laptop proves to be wasted on my away-from-home photographic work. This has started me pondering how much of this I could accomplish on my iPad. It's one of the reasons I sprang for the 128 GB model this last time around and also bought the SD card reader (a.k.a. Camera Connection Kit).

My trip to Minneapolis in January overlapped one of the Chippawa Valley Roller Girls' matches, of which I have written previously. DDB and I went out to photograph the match. He's been doing this regularly, of course, and has gotten absurdly adept at putting together instant slideshows of the matches for the Girls to see at the after-match party.

Okay, not exactly instant, but it seems that way to me. He has lots of experience very quickly editing event photography on his laptop for posting to websites or creating presentations. He's got 100 times as much experience at this as I do and he's about 1,000 times faster. That's not hyperbole; his turnaround time is measured in minutes to hours; mine is usually months.

Last year I tried putting together a slideshow of my photographs on the MacBook Pro for an after-match party. It was pretty much a fail. My workflow and my machine just weren't up to the task. By the time my laptop could import 500–1000 photographs and bring them up for me to edit, an hour had passed (DDB's laptop is many times faster). I finally punted and just let Preview cycle through the JPEGs from the RAW files on the SD card, unedited and unsorted. The Girls were happy enough, but it wasn't professional and it sure didn't satisfy me.

Now, that's with my normal workflow. If I put some serious thought and effort into the problem, I likely could have worked out a new workflow that would demand substantially less from my computer and from me. But, for something I was doing only once or twice a year, it wasn't high on my list to get around to that.

Come last month, I still hadn't gotten around to that. Three days before the match, though, I started noodling around with the Connection Kit. I wanted to show my Olympus's cold-weather tests to Dave Polaschek, who I was having lunch with less than an hour later. What better way than to load them into the iPad?

  Fig. 1. Photos, an app that's part of iOS, reads the RAW files from my Olympus via the Camera Connection Kit and displays thumbnails for me to select from.

For this first attempt, I went the very dumbest (minimal learning curve) route and used Photos, the app bundled into iOS 7. It took only 0.8 sec per photograph to load the previews from the SD card (figure 1) and just twice that long to import the full RAW file. It was a matter of minutes to get everything from the camera into the iPad. And I started to think, maybe this was the answer to my roller derby slideshow problem.

Fig. 2. Once I've selected the photographs I want to import by tapping on the thumbnails, "Import Selected" pulls the RAW files into the iPad.

Not having the time nor inclination to climb a particularly steep learning curve nor throw money at the problem in the following three days, I continued on the simplest and dumbest path. That Saturday evening, post-match, found DDB and I sitting in the after-party bar, him with his laptop and me with my iPad. I had some 500 photographs to work through. As Photos was loading the thumbnails, I started going through them selecting the ones I wanted to import to the iPad (figure 2). Those one-inch thumbnails weren't clear enough to do a critical edit on, but they were good enough for weeding out the obvious failures. A third of the photographs went away that way.

Fig. 3. The "Photos" screen in the Photos app shows the photographs I've imported, sorted by date. Tapping on one of those photos brings up
the editing screen.

Fig. 4. The editing screen shows me a full-screen rendering that lets me make my final selections. Tapping the trashcan icon (barely visible here in light blue) in the lower right corner deletes the photograph.

When I was finished making my choices, I tapped "Import Selected" and returned to the "photos" screen (figure 3). Importing continued in the background as the selected photos appeared as thumbnails on this screen. I clicked the first thumbnail and a full-screen version popped up (figure 4). Now I could see what the photograph really looked like. If I liked what I saw I swiped sideways with my finger and brought up the next photo. If I didn't I tapped the trashcan icon in the corner and the photograph went away.

Fig. 5. The export screen is where I select which photos will go into the slideshow.

When I was done with that I had about 250 photographs left out of the original 500. I tapped the export icon in the lower left corner of the screen and that brought up figure 5. I tapped each of those 250 photographs to select it, a lot of repetitive tapping. There may very well have been a way to batch-select, but as I said, I didn't do any homework. It didn't really take all that long.

Fig. 6. Tapping the slideshow button on the export screen brings up the slideshow options and the button to start running the slideshow.

Now I had my slideshow. I tapped the slideshow button at lower screen left, kept the "Slideshow Options" at the defaults (figure 6), and tapped "Start Slideshow." There it was! I propped the iPad up on its smart-cover stand and let it run.

The whole job took me just about an hour from start to finish. I actually beat DDB by maybe 15 minutes (of course, when he was done, his edit was more polished and sophisticated than mine).

I'm not remotely suggesting this was the best possible way to create a slideshow on the iPad. In fact, since then I've downloaded iPhoto (now a free program). It's a lot more flexible than Photos with a lot more controls and editing capability, and it gives me more control over the slideshow, e.g., whether or not it runs continuously on a repeat cycle and how long each photograph is up for. There are likely even better tools out there—no doubt readers will suggest some. The important thing, though, is that it worked! Quickly, and with little effort on my part, I was able to learn how to accomplish a (self-imposed) assignment that previously I'd been trying to do much less well on my laptop.

Photos and iPhoto have an important limitation—although they understand RAW files, all they are displaying is the attached JPEG. That's entirely good enough for a slideshow like this and it's sufficient for a first, crude editing pass on my more serious work. It doesn't let me see the full quality or tonal range in the RAW photographs, let alone usefully manipulate it. Two apps that will work on RAW data are PiRAWnha and PhotoRaw. I plan to look into them but haven't tried either out, yet. I solicit comments from any readers who have used either of these as well as suggestions for other RAW-processing apps for the iPad.

There's still too much stuff I do while traveling, like writing and e-mail, that I haven't figured out how to do efficiently on an iPad. Yet. But, depending on how those RAW processing apps work out for me, I may pretty quickly find myself doing almost no photo processing on my laptop while traveling. It's likely I'll wind up buying one more laptop—a MacBook Pro Retina, natch. It won't surprise me if that turns out to be my last one.

Or...maybe it'll turn out that I give up the desktop machine and run solely with a laptop at home. That whole convergence business I wrote about a few columns back. What I do know, though, is that the iPad is continually encouraging me to reevaluate how I do things computerish.

Ctein

Columnist Ctein usually appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

Ben: "Simple and nice workflow...thanks!

"For writing and email on and iPad, I like the Incase Origami Workstation, which is basically a case for the Apple bluetooth keyboard, but it folds open to support the iPad above the keyboard. I don't mind the Apple keyboard and I much prefer having a case for the keyboard than an iPad keyboard case, as it offers me a lot more flexibility. I've found I can do a lot of email correspondence with this setup. It even works on an airplane by writing emails, saving them as drafts, then just sending when I have an Internet connection again.

"I did give up my desktop; I balked at the new Mac Pro, so I sold my Macbook Air and bought a 15" Macbook Pro with retina display, and I've been very happy with my new setup. I can do a lot on my iPad mini, and everything else on the retina Pro. Perfect!!!"

Huw Morgan: "Sounds pretty painful compared to getting the right tools for the job (e.g. Surface Pro and Lightroom). Kinda like using a hammer and nails to assemble Ikea furniture."

Chris Exum: "Your article has changed my workflow. I just successfully imported my X-Pro1 raw file into iPhoto, which did not work the last time I tried. I am now able to import a Fuji RAW file into the Photosmith app (I previously had to shoot RAW + JPEG for this to work) from the iPhoto album. I use Photosmith to tag and rate my photos. Photosmith then syncs my photos to Lightroom along with my tags, ratings, and IPTC info.

"The above workflow is my 'on the road' workflow. Then when I get home, I use LR/PS for editing, using my rating system to identify the photos that I actually want to edit. If I want to do any editing on the iPad, I have been using Snapseed. It's easy, fast, and does a respectable job. Not up to pro standards, but makes a decent image to upload to facebook or email to friends/family. Thanks for making me rethink my workflow!"

Alun J. Carr: "n addition to iPhoto, you really should install Snapseed. This was developed by Nik Software (the Viveza and Silver FX plugin, and Nikon's Capture NX people), who also made desktop (Mac and Windows) versions. Nik was swallowed by Google who killed the desktop versions, and made the iOS and Android versions free. Snapseed is an amazing piece of software, using Nik's U-Point technology for localised adjustments in an incredibly tactile fashion on the iPad; in fact, there are aspects of U-Point in Snapseed that are far superior to the implementation in the plugins for Aperture/Photoshop/Lightroom. Working with Snapseed on an iPad is such an immersive, tactile experience that it feels like an artist working in oil or acrylics (I have experience of acrylics, but not oils).

"Anyhow, it won't break the bank to try it."

The iPad Air for Reading

[This week is Off-Topic Week at TOP—Ctein's forthcoming column (the post above this one) excepted. This is just a temporary interlude, not a permanent change of direction. Please join us next Monday morning when we'll resume normal programming. —Ed.]

Despite owning a Kindle Paperwhite, which I do like, in recent months I've taken to doing almost all of my book reading (and a little more—see below) on my iPad Air. I have the basic 16 GB Wi-Fi model (in white), which currently costs $493.94. Unlike Ctein I am not a power user: I use the iPad Air for reading and surfing and little else, so 16 GB is plenty. I also have the Smart Cover in black (it comes in a number of colors as well). Some people hate the Smart Cover but I like it a lot. The new one has three sections, so, unlike the older one, it doesn't overlap when it's configured in a triangular shape to use as a stand, but I don't have any trouble with that or any objection to it.

I find the iPad Air to be an immensely pleasing device, but not necessarily actively so—for the most part, for me, it has simply become transparent. I take it with me when I might need something to read (in doctors' waiting rooms or when I'm dining in restaurants alone) and I read with it in my armchair and in bed. I also use it for surfing the Web when I'm watching TV. Battery life is excellent and never an issue for my uses, although charging time is relatively slow. The size and weight are just about perfect—I wouldn't want it any smaller or larger and I don't even think I'd prefer it to be lighter—it has a nice heft and is light and easily hand-holdable as it is. As I say, it disappears for me.

The only time when this transparency in use fails is in particularly bright light or outdoors, when the screen becomes dark, sometimes even too dark to read. If you read outdoors or on the beach, the Paperwhite pulls ahead. I seldom read in bright light so this is rarely an issue for me.

Both devices have illuminated screens, which is much more of a factor for me—my favorite Japanese restaurant is usually too dimly lit to comfortably read print magazines, and I read in bed in the dark. Which screen you will prefer is a matter of taste—the conventional wisdom is that iPads cause "eyestrain" and that the Kindle is better, but the conventional wisdom is not true for me. I'm continually conscious of both the grayish look of the Paperwhite screen and its unevenness, and find the exceptionally clean, bright, crisp look of the iPad Air screen to be much more pleasing. "Eyestrain" is not an issue.

The best thing about an e-reader, apart from the illuminated screen and the absence of physical bulk of files as opposed to stacks of bound paper, is that every book has variable type size. You can make every book a "large print" book or, in my case, a "right-sized print" book, adjusting the font size to taste for any file and reading situation. Very nice.

I still do think that e-readers are best for "read straight through" books of text, but publishers are getting better about illustrations. The last book I finished, Charles C. Mann's 1491, Second Edition (an excellent and fascinating layperson's survey of the current state of pre-Columbian archaeology, a gift from my friend Steve Rosenblum), has a number of black-and-white illustrations. Enlarging the illustrations to full page size is easy and makes them adequately legible, but throughout the book the captions for each illustration appeared on the screen following the image, often above the next image. They'll get it right eventually. Illustrations fare much better on the iPad Air than on the Paperwhite.

I do my reading with the Kindle app and use my computer or the Kindle Paperwhite for purchases from Amazon.

Recently, I've been experimenting with reading magazines on the iPad Air as well. I subscribed to the late David E. Davis's Automobile magazine and have been reading the electronic version. Magazines are a different kettle of fish, because they're so much more illustration-intensive, and I would imagine that each one is different, depending on how good each publisher is at setting up the files. I haven't investigated magazines on the iPad deeply enough yet to know. I'll find out, because based on my good experience with Automobile I'll be reading more magazines on the iPad Air in the future.

E-readers have changed my book buying habits. I now seldom buy reading material in print form, although in certain rare cases I will buy a hardcover version of a book I particularly love after reading it on the e-reader, just because I want to have it. My book buying has thus shifted almost competely to the purchase of photographic books. I have one photographic book in electronic format and actually didn't mind reading it and looking at the pictures on the iPad Air at all—I wouldn't hesitate to buy another—but I prefer ink on paper with photographs.

The bottom line is that I now prefer to do my reading on e-readers, and I prefer the iPad Air above all the other e-readers I've owned (it's my fourth one) or seen. My current book is How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It, Arthur Herman's classic (and wonderful) account of the Scottish Enlightenment, which I'm reading for the second time. Even though I have the print version already, I bought the Kindle version this time around, and am reading it on the iPad.

Highly recommended.

Mike

UPDATE: Kindly commenters have reminded me of three important things I left out of this article. First, that the magazine on the iPad allows for links and multimedia presentations—the current issue of Automobile has two or three videos inline with the contents, which is really pretty great.

Secondly, price: the iPad is overkill as an e-reader, whether compared to the Kindle Paperwhite or to competing tablets. The Barnes and Noble Nook (which might not be around much longer) is dirt cheap by comparison, and the Kindle itself is a fraction of the cost of the Apple product (although as you can see from Ctein's post above this one, the iPad Air is useful for a lot more things, too, including editing pictures, and displaying pictures—not to mention taking pictures! As an e-reader it's expensive, but as an auxiliary computer it's quite reasonable).

And thirdly, the Kindle app allows for syncing between the Kindle Paperwhite and the iPad (and, presumably, other devices). Regardless of which one I pick up or take along, each device remembers what page I'm on even if I'm switching from the other one. Very convenient.

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

Rob (partial comment): "As far as I am concerned, the Smart Cover is a work of genius. I cannot understand how anyone could think otherwise."

Rowan: "Interesting article. I still far prefer reading paper books over e-books, but well over half my magazine consumption is now done through my iPad, and I read a lot of magazines. I think I see books as possessions, but magazines as consumables."

Moose (partial comment): "You...don't mention the cost differences. I recently bought a backup Nook for our two on sale for $39, less than 1/10 the cost of the iPad Air. That makes a really big difference in how casually one may treat it, more like a book. If it gets lost or broken, it's no big deal, so I'll take and use it anywhere.

Dennis Mook: "To surreptitiously bring in a photographic reference to this non-photographic week, I download and keep a PDF copy of all my cameras' user manuals on my iPad for instant reference. Very handy when you can't quite remember how to get from here to there on our electronic marvels."

Pat Trent: "Mike, reading your column is always a rewarding experience, but especially so today. Thanks to you I learned of two books, 1491 and the companion volume, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, both of which I just purchased for our Kindle Fires. My husband and I will thoroughly enjoy them over this coming rainy weekend while my cameras sit on the shelf awaiting drier weather."

Yr. Hmbl. Ed. Goes to the Car Show

[This week is Off-Topic Week at TOP. This is just a temporary interlude, not a permanent change of direction. Please join us next Monday morning when we'll resume normal programming. —Ed.]

Continuing "Off-Topic Week" here at TOP, yesterday I unchained my leg from the leg of the desk, popped a new batt into the trusty NEX-6, and hied meself down to the Milwaukee Auto Show.

I really should make the effort to drive down to the Chicago show, which is bigger. The Milwaukee show is something like 70% of Chicago's. In addition, a number of the national brands don't bother to show up here—the BMW and Porsche exhibits, for example, and several others, are stocked and staffed entirely by local dealerships.

I play "eccentric beardy guy" at the car show, wandering around and striking up conversations with strangers. The only other time I do that is when I am out walking the dog—other pet owners being susceptible to random conversation. At the car show, the cars function as pets.

Even given our smallish city's lower status, this year's show seemed a bit depleted compared to past ones, with less on display. Maybe that's because Harry's Toy Store (above left) had fewer cars that appealed to me this year. (No link, and that's deliberate. Not that you'd visit TOP from work, but if you do, and you Google ol' Harry, be sure to turn your sound down first unless you're in a private office with the door closed. Harry's site will make noises that others will identify pretty easily as not being work related.) Harry had some Bentleys and a few 911s and a couple of Excaliburs. The latter are the precise opposite of the kind of car that appeals to me. And Harry himself was not there.

I thought the new Mustang would be thronged with crowds, and evidently it was on the weekend, but on Monday just after the show opened there wasn't a soul around.

American muscle cars are not my thing, personally—they're generally all about twenty to thirty percent too big and fat. The friendly Ford guy I talked to said the new one, like the old one, is sized for "regular guys," which I translated as "obese males." Although the styling of the new one is the definition of conservative (frankly, I have a bit of trouble telling the two apart), it's handsomer than the old one, and Ford is indicating that the improvements under the skin are more extensive. Nobody knows because no one has driven one yet.

Murcun musclecars are not my thing. The only time I'm interested in a Corvette V8 (this is the GM LT1 in the new 2014 Stingray) is when it's in a Miata.

Personal favorites
So I'll get right to my favorite cars from the show, starting with...

...The Mazda 6, which I think is the best midsized sedan right now. I'd buy one over an Accord, Camry, Legacy, Verano, Fusion, or the recently Americanized Passat. The car you see here has but one engine option—a 184 HP I-4—but you can get it with a proper manual transmission if you want.

Incidentally, the guy you see polishing the handsome Mazda 6 in this pic gets the nod as the most interesting guy I talked to at this year's show. He has a detailing business in Miami and works for Mazda during show season. Fascinatingly, he subcontracts for a company that supplies test cars to automotive journalists—they have a warehouse full of the latest models that they deliver to journalists all over the Southeast. I'd never before heard about this aspect of magazine journalism straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. He said he can always tell how well a particular journalist liked a particular car based on the mileage when he goes to pick it up and how much detailing it needs before it's ready to go out to the next guy. 

Oh, and he drove one of these from Atlanta to Miami—on one tank of gas. Mazda, whose products historically have a reputation for poor gas mileage, has been busy optimizing its engines for mileage lately, the so-called "Skyactiv" technology, currently applied to three of its vehicles, the Mazda 3, the Mazda 6, and the CX-5, a small SUV. He said he got very close to 40 miles per gallon in one of these on his trip.

He says I'm in the wrong business, by the way—he regaled me with tales of some of the quite considerable perks enjoyed by automotive journalists.

Next in the favorites parade is the only BMW that interests me any more, the littlest coupe, which will henceforth be called the 2 series. This is the M235i with the proper and necessary I-6, which in this case comes with an unnecessary turbocharger (I like naturally aspirated engines. SOL these days). The 1-series, which I've driven several times, was as odd-looking and frumpy as bowler hat—it had melted side slabs, among other egregious visual faults—but the 2 series fixes the car's appearance adequately. As I've (somewhat snarkily) opined before, BMW aspires to make all its cars look like Pontiacs now—the company turned its back on it iconic design language in the woeful (IMO) and still-controversial Chris Bangle era—but that tendency is minimized in the 2-series too.

I would have to become an actual Internet tycoon before I could afford one of these, but I like 'em.

Being of a photographic mindset even when acting the snapshotting tourist, I always appreciate it when manufacturers bother to light their cars nicely. And as I am secretly European at heart, how could I fail to like the Golf, which is the bestselling car in Europe year after year? This is the first time I've laid eyes on the new gen 7, which has not arrived in North America yet.

The interior struck me as "optimally contented"—i.e., what you get when a very large, very capable car company works very, very hard to maximize the appearance of value and quality while minimizing actual cost. On the evidence of this car, Europeans are very practical (inexplicably, Murcuns don't like hatchbacks) and also have good taste.

I can't wait to see the better versions, mainly the GTI. The ultimate Golf will be the gen 7 Golf R, which should be something really special...except that it will cost roughly as much as the base version of the car pictured just above this one, which would make for a dilemma of the first order were I shopping in that price class. The gen 7 Golf R won't arrive here until the Spring of 2015. Maybe I'll see it at next year's show.

The surprise Best of Show for me—with one big fat caveat, namely that I haven't driven one yet—was the 2014 Acura ILX. Fit me like a glove, and I loved the plain but very nice interior. And it struck me as a very right-sized car.

It's essentially the opposite of the high-value base Golf. Generally, I tend to like cars that are simple and straightforward in design, but that have higher-than-necessary build and materials quality. Which goes directly against the grain of almost all industrial consumer product these days.

Including most cars. With very few exceptions, high build and materials quality comes only hand-in-hand with electronic frippery and unecessary luxo feature-creep. It's very unusual to see a relatively simple car that's built considerably better than it has to be. The ILX is essentially an overbuilt, higher-quality Honda Civic. And God bless Honda—with the ILX, it has mated the slower, smaller engine to the slushbox, and paired the faster, higher-horsepower engine (the same one found in the Civic Si) with the stick shift. That is the proper order of the Universe, so thank you, Acura.

Would that Mazda could get with that program. In the new Skyactiv Mazda 3, Mazda continues its brainless historical practice of pairing the stick shift with the worse engine, and not offering a stick with the better engine. Which, for enthusiasts, is backwards. The old Mazda 6 came with an underpowered 4 that you could buy with a stick, and a great 6 that was a much better motor for the car but that was only available with an automatic. When I informed the rather officious Mazda product rep factotum person that if I could have gotten an '07 Mazda 6 with both the 6-cylinder engine and the stick shift I would have bought one (true), he said, dismissively, "You and three other people."

Oooh, wrong answer, Mazda man! Very wrong. You need to pander to me even if I'm an idiot, and pretend I'm right even if you think I'm wrong—it's an auto show, and those are the rules.

Meanwhile, I'm almost scared to drive an ILX. I really would like to like it, and I'm more than a little afraid I won't. I think I'll hold off on that, and just continue to imagine, for a while, that it's as good as I think it might be.

Finally, my sentimental favorite of the show—but one I couldn't get a halfway decent picture of because of the cramped space and the barricades in front of it that ruined the view. A proper "chairs and flares" (i.e., the desired seats and fender flares) Dino 246 from the early '70s. I was a good student in high school and was rewarded with unsupervised study halls, most of which I spent in the library reading car magazines. The Dino was one of the cars I daydreamed about from the printed page in those days. A small, low car with a midships-mounted 6-cylinder engine (the reason it wasn't called a Ferrari—to Enzo, Ferraris were 12-cylinder cars), it was intended to serve as a low-cost entry into the Ferrari marque. Kind of ironic, given that they are currently collectors' darlings and go for between $300,000 and $600,000. It actually looked a bit odd in the '70s but has aged very well. They seem to get prettier with every year that passes.

Really nice to see.

Mike

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Colin Dixon: "I think I always knew you were a secret European. Here's a link to something that probably wasn't at the show but which, since I read a review of it, has seriously affected my ability to be rational about any other car. Fortunately the price is too silly even to start saving for it."

Mike replies: Didn't Jeremy fall for the open-top version of that on "Top Gear"? Me, I just think of how hard it would be to get something like that serviced.

Luke Smith: "I'm really enjoying OT Week. I mostly agree with your general car philosophies, but...modern (twin-clutch, not slushbox) manually shiftable automatic transmissions have become far, far better, more enjoyable, and yes, more 'involving' than stickshifts. Turbo motors have likewise improved. A very small, lightweight motor with a ton of torque is just fun. And coupled with nearly instant shifting, really fun."

Jim: "Will keep my '82 VW diesel Rabbit. Fifty-four miles per gallon on the highway, 46 mpg on the back roads as I am out photographing in the Utah and surrounding desert areas. Paid for more than 25 years ago; 450,000 miles and still going strong."

Scoring System Idea for the Olympics

[This week is Off-Topic Week at TOP. This is just a temporary interlude, not a permanent change of direction. Please join us next Monday morning when we'll resume normal programming. —Ed.]

Sorry to go on about this, but I've had a brilliant idea and I just have to put it forward where it will doubtless get shot down from every angle—because that is the sort of thing I do.

Here's how figure skating (and other subjective sports) should be scored at the Olympics. First, the judges watch everyone perform. Once everyone has had a turn, everyone gets a medal of some metal or another—all the performances that are very good would get silver, all the performances that were particularly outstanding would get a gold, and all the performances that were not quite as good or that contained faults or mishaps would get a bronze. A version of the old 1-2-3 sorting method.

The "big reveal" comes at the end of each contest.

At the end of the entire proceedings the person with the most gold medals in the various programs would be the overall gold medal winner. And if there are ties, so be it—don't ties make sense when two or more competitors do particularly well?

Same for high diving and gymnastics in the Summer games—anything with a subjective component and without a hard measure of ordering. Yes, it would make for more medals passed out in subjective pursuits, but since when has that been an issue at the Olympics, where there are more medals available for ping-pong than for the decathlon?

That seems to me a much more accurate, and sensible, not to mention humane method of subjective judging. If you think of it, the whole notion of awarding arcane numeric scores down to tiny fractions and insisting of rigid rankings is utterly absurd in an activity with so much subjective individuality. As if figure skating were a bobsled race. It's not.

Because, really, why should we have to decide whether Adelina Sotnikova is a tick better than Kim Yu-na or the other way around? Weren't they both excellent? Our insistence on pretending it's a straight contest with an absolute measurement of victory is untrue to the reality of the activity.

Somebody needs to start a movement.  :-)

Okay, fire away, flak gunners.

Mike

P.S. For some reason I have a particular fascination for fresh rethinkings of existing sports. There was a recent attempt to create a new pool game to address some of the competitive deficiencies in existing games. It's called "American Rotation." (You can look it up yourself if you happen to be interested.)

P.P.S. I'm off to the Milwaukee Auto Show after my doctor's appointment this afternoon, so next up in OT Week will be a rundown of my fave cars from the show.

Mike

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richardplondon: "One of the BBC commentators a few days ago, was talking very... hopefully about one British competitor as 'a concrete medal contender'—upon which a colleague quipped, to the effect: 'Is that what the Russians make the medal out of, when you are delighted to come in fifth?'"

Nick Cutler: "That's a very sound approach to scoring activities that have a component of 'style,' subjectivity, or arcane rules. How will you apply this to an exhibition of prints? or a photo contest?"

Russ: "Nope, sorry. All 'sports' that need to be judged should not be at the Olympics fullstop. Highest, fastest, longest I believe is the way to go."

Off-Topic Week at TOP

Time for another strange experiment that I've been mulling over for some time now...an OFF-TOPIC WEEK. All week this week, through Sunday, I'll be not writing about photography.

This is just a temporary interlude, not a permanent change of direction.

I must recharge my photo-enthusiast batteries. They are depleted. This relentless cold weather has limited my photographic activity and made it go temporarily dormant, which is damping down my feeling of involvement. (And before you lecture me about getting out and shooting anyway, I just don't want to. I am thoroughly, thoroughly sick of Winter, more so than I have ever been in my life. I just want it to go away.) My medical woes have depleted my vigor. My interest in photography is nearly bottomless, but my energy has temporarily gone dry. I need a little break.

Moreover, the thought of writing about several of my sundry other enthusiasms seems like it would be welcome. My birthday is this week, so I'll try this as a little present to myself, and we'll see how it goes. As I say, it'll be an experiment. Maybe I'll do it every year on my birthday week. As consolation*.

(Among other things like cars, books, coffee, pool and stereo, one of the things I'll write about is the the Secret of Happiness. I've figured it out. I still don't know the meaning of life, though, so no pronouncements on that.)

Come back next week at just this time (Monday morning), when we'll go "Around the Web" again and take the pulse of what's up in the online photo world. There is a lot happening. After that it'll be back to business as usual, with vim, vigor, and verve.

Yr. hmbl. host,

Mike

P.S. Ctein will write about the iPad this Wednesday, as will I.

*My age is "OTD," according to my not-very-much younger brother: older than dirt. But not really. As an old person, I'm very young. But as I sometimes say, things are very different from in here where I am: for one thing, I'm thin from in here, and for another, I'm about 35. Compared to that, I'm OTD.

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

Michael Martin-Morgan: "Must be the Nickel-Cadmium in our photographer veins—our batteries work much worse in cold temperatures...."

Nicholas Condon: "If you publish photos of the cars from the auto show, you won't be off topic! That will make you off-topic for Off Topic Week, though...."

ann: "Mike you need a holiday, a real holiday! To recuperate from your recent illness and to celebrate your birthday. Somewhere in the sun, take some books and just relax. And I agree about the inside/outside thing. I am alaways surprised when I catch a glimpse of my real self in a shop window...can't be me, surely; I feel about 20. Happy Birthday."

Chico Ruger: "Methinks OT Week is a bad idea. Sympathize with the problem of you having to come up with content 365 days a year and writer's block, but I come to your site for photographic stuff. Better solution IMHO is more 'best of.' (Occasional OT is OK with me. Maybe a couple of times a month.)"

Open Mike: Site Style

"Open Mike" is this site's editorial page, which frequently wanders off topic. It appears only, but not always, on Sundays.

-

Every responsible publication has a style sheet.

What's a style sheet? It's a set of institutional guidelines for the presentation of formatted material—mainly, the verbal material. Every time a consistency issue comes up, an editorial decision as to how to handle it is made, and then, assuming all goes smoothly to plan, that's the way it's done from then on.

Some such decisions that need to be made, for example:

Are italics or quotation marks used for movie titles?

Is "ƒ/11" written thusly, or F11, f/11, f11, ƒ/11.0, or some other way?

Is it "12 mm" or "12mm"?

Is it "RAW," "Raw," or "raw"?

Are you going to use periods after initial letters, for instance in "U.S." and "U.K.," or not?

And so on. And on and on—there are literally hundreds of items on any given publication's stylesheet. (Even if most of them reside in one person's head—e.g., mine—and aren't actually written down.)

A publication's style doesn't have to accord to one of the standards such as the Chicago Manual of Style. They can, or they can devise their own. Some use a standard but with certain deviations.

Different publications have different rules about conformity. At one publication I worked at, an editor could override the style sheet if he or she deemed it advisable. At another, the rules were very rigid and could not be broken by anybody for any reason (for example, one rule there was that a widow line—the last partial line of a typeset paragraph—had to contain at least two words. Never mind if the one word was a long word like "disproportionate" or the two words were short ones such as "it is," the two-word rule was inviolable).

Note that style is not the same as copyediting, although the two are related. Copyediting just cleans up written language and makes it conform, more or less, to standard grammar. And both are different from proofreading, which refers to going over the material to make sure there are no typos, misspellings, or typesetting mistakes. TOP has no copyeditor and no proofreader, although helpful readers sometimes alert Yr. Hmbl. Ed. to errors.

Some publications have notoriously quirky style points. For instance, the New York Times still uses titles and surnames (Mr. Smith, Ms. Jones) rather than first names or unadorned last names for named persons, which has not been common elsewhere in America for decades. The New Yorker uses quotation marks for book titles, which is wrong, but it has done it for many decades and it continues to observe its own tradition. (The current editor, David Remnick, got rid of many of that magazine's quirky style points along with its delightful old-fashioned font, but maintains that one.)

(Referring to a company or a publication as "it," as I just did, was also old-fashioned editorial practice, one that TOP adheres to because the opposite sounds fey and puerile to the ear of Yr. Hmbl. Ed. There is no monolithic "they" at a place like Canon Inc.; everyone answers to someone and no one is making decisions alone, much less all together. But I'm unusual in this regard.)

The Atlantic divide
A frequent cause of confusion and error is the many differences between British and American typography. A few examples:

"Mrs Smith" is proper in the U.K., while in the U.S. it would be "Mrs. Smith."

Commas are placed within the quotation marks when a quote is contained in a sentence in the U.S., "like this," but outside of the quotation marks in Britain.

A long dash is set as an em dash with no spaces in America—like this—but in Jolly Olde it's typeset as a half space, an en dash, and then another half space. Since half spaces aren't common or easy on computer keyboards, this gives rise to the use of full space / hyphen / full space "dash," like this - which is both wrong and ugly on both sides of the Atlantic. At the very least, those aping British typesetting should use full space / en dash / full space – like this, even though that's not quite correct.

There are many differences between British and American typesetting. It's good to stick to one or the other and not mix them up randomly.

It used to be that the Internet held itself above such details, but I notice lately that more and more sites are using conventional editing practices and fewer and, thus, fewer and fewer of them read like they were written by high school sophomores.

Conforming to a stylesheet isn't a requirement. It simply makes the publication easier and smoother to read for those loyal readers who regularly peruse it—it's a courtesy to readers. That's a good enough reason to make the attempt in my book.

Mike the Ed.

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Joe Holmes: "Oh man. You think Mac vs. Windows was an ugly debate, or Nikon vs. Canon? Start asking people to weigh in on the serial comma, or whether a question mark belongs inside the quotation marks!"

Mike replies: There are no arguments when it comes to site style. As Michael Reichmann once memorably said about running one's own website, "It's good to be the King." Of course the kingdom is small and its borders inflexible....

cfw: "'High School Sophomores'? You are too kind. More like 7th graders with a solid 'C' average."

David Miller: "Your intentions are honourable, sir. (My spelling gives away my English heritage—and the em dash reveals the linguistic schizophrenia which is the Canadian's lot in life.) I think standardization of style is essential within any publication…if only for the pleasure of tossing it to the four winds and shocking or irritating your readers from time to time. As a copyeditor and former proofreader—and hand type setter, if you can believe it—I find TOP to be admirably consistent and usually quite free of typos. Bravo!"

Mike replies: Thank you! I am a terrible proofreader, so I put in a lot of time hunting down those typos.

You might be interested to know that I had an opportunity to photograph the last hot lead press in Washington, D.C., and missed it—by three weeks. Before that happened, I did get 500 letterpress business cards for $50, however, which was cool.

Hugh Crawford: "Mike, you are remiss in not mentioning this [we use 'em —Mike] or on the other hand more to the point when discussing a publication's house style there is this example.

"According to ASA standard PH2.12-1961 'The symbol for relative apertures shall be ƒ/ or ƒ: followed by the effective f-number.' ƒ/11.0 or ƒ:11.0 with the hooked italic f. [We always use ƒ/, but I never use .0. —Mike]

"As for capitalization of file formats, if you want to make sense it is TIFF or TIFFs, when talking about .tif files but never TIFF files and JPEG or .jpg files but never JPEGs because you should always capitalize acronyms. Americans never seem to capitalize FIAT or SAAB for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino and Svenska Aeroplan AktieBolaget respectively. The usage of all caps RAW for raw files is truly WTF IMHO."

JK: "The problem when you become professionally involved with style sheets is that you (by which I mean 'me') can easily become a total bore on your choice of pet peeves. One of mine happens to be that 'f/' for aperture. I used to do work for a few camera companies in Japan, where the rather odd convention is to use an upper-case F, e.g. 'F2.' Now I suppose that's fine if you're writing in Japanese, but if you're creating materials in English for the international market, it just looks bizarre and wrong. Most of the clients I dealt with eventually came around to understand that. But there was one that never did, instead always insisting on changing every 'f/' to 'F.' And now, years later, I see they're still doing it. Sigh...."

Mike replies: Barbarity.  :-)

Sven W: "Whether it's writing a blog, taking a photograph or skiing down a slope, a lot of technical details need to be addressed to make it look effortless!"

Music Notes (OT): Rootsy Gumbo

Small Town Heroes album cover

Okay, normally it's easy to get overfed on irony, but a little of it here and there can be a treat. How ironic is it that the best review of the new Hurray for the Riff Raff album is in the Wall Street Journal?

Written by Steve Dougherty. I don't know if the link will work for you. I think the WSJ is normally behind a firewall which only Republicans, financiers, heirs, and people with investment portfolios are allowed past*. Something like that. If you have trouble, just type "Alynda Lee Segarra Hurray Riff Raff site:wsj.com" (without the quotation marks) in Google.

Anyway. Hurray for the Riff Raff's new album, Small Town Heroes, was released a few days ago. On February 11th. As far as I can tell it's that rarest of productions: plain old music. That is, people playing plain old instruments and one of 'em singing, recorded well. How crazy is that? What kind of radical exotica are they going to think up next?

It's a folk record, with touches of bluegrass, country, blues, cowboy plaints, even a hint of pop. A "rootsy gumbo," Steve Dougherty calls it. In the Wall Street Journal.

Alynda Lee Segarra was on the radio the other night talking about the song "The Body Electric." She wrote it as a curative for the traditional murder ballad (there are hundreds of 'em, from "Stagger Lee" to Jimi's "Hey Joe"). Her idea was that most—not all—of the victims in such songs are female, and she wanted to indicate the perspective of the victims. Along with a dark little threat there at the end.

I think it's my favorite country song since "Look at Miss Ohio" (well, not counting Hugo's country-blues rendition of Jay-Z's "99 Problems": see the first sentence of this post, above.)

And for now anyway, thanks to NPR, you can listen to the whole record for free.

Mike

*Calm down, I'm kidding.

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Quote o' the Day: Canon Doesn't Do Retro

"Currently there is a trend towards designing premium compact cameras like classic cameras. However, Canon has kept its distance from this trend."

—Canon Inc. of Tokyo, from the PDF brochure Story of the PowerShot G1 X Mark II Development

Mike
(Thanks to Photo Rumors)

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Jayson Merryfield: "Of course Canon does retro: every recent Canon camera I’ve ever seen looks just like this relic from 1989."

Rob L: "Canon created a really solid design language with the T90 and then EOS. It's a real tribute to them that a 1989 EOS user can pick up a current camera and set the important things without a manual—or relearning muscle memory. They may have made a dramatic, break-all-compatibility move with the EOS line, but they have stayed true to it ever since."

GH: "I'm not currently shooting any of their cameras, but Sony seems to do a nice job of combining 'retro' control sensibility with modern designs with the likes of the NEX-6.

"On a side note, I see the word hipster being thrown around as a denigrating term, as in some of the comments below, and I can't help but wonder why photographers, as aspiring visual artists themselves, would care to make fun of people who care about style, design and art. I wouldn't be considered a hipster, at least not by someone from the city, but, as a visual artist, I certainly care about the look and design of everything around me...although, like the rest of my non-hipster brethren, I could probably learn how to dress."

'Kiev's Fatigue' by Eric Bouvet

Photo by Eric Bouvet, from the essay "Kiev's Fatigue"

Take a look at "Kiev's Fatigue" by Eric Bouvet. Really takes you there. Outstanding photography of a heartbreaking situation.

Mike
(Thanks to Norm Nicholson and Ken Bennett)

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David: "Wow. I'm up here in Michigan in the trees and snow, happily working away, thinking about much different stuff than what these humans are enduring. Once again, science fiction trumps itself and comes to be. Road Warrior images that make Road Warrior look like child's play. Very scary to know that all over the world there are people who are embroiled in situations that defy imagination. Very powerful images and extremely disturbing."

Kim Yu-na Wins Gold (OT)

So I watched figure skating this year. There was a judging controversy; I gather this has never happened before. (Sarcasm.)

Any South Korean readers out there? It's incomprehensible that Kim Yu-na's masterpiece of a final performance didn't sweep everything before it. Amazing artistry, on a different level than what we had seen before it, including the athletic but workmanlike performance of the hometown-favorite gold medal winner. (No offense, Russian readers.)

Then again, in 1956, when Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai was in worldwide release, Around the World in 80 Days won the Oscar for Best Picture. That's sort of equivalent to the figure skating competition last night.

And speaking of dubious judgment, what's with this "medal count"? Take a look at what I found at a U.S.-centric news outlet:

(As of 2/20 in the U.S.)

How does it make any sense to count a gold, silver, and bronze medals as being equal in the medal counts? The above data shows that Norway is first, not fourth. And Germany is tied for second. The U.S. is only first in one thing: third-place finishes.

I'd be interested to know how the standings are being reported in Norway. I'll bet they're not all bowing and scraping to the U.S.'s obvious superiority in bronzes.

It's all suspicious, if you ask me. You might as well count per-capita medals relative to the number of athletes on any nation's team. 

When they put me in charge, golds get five points each, silver three points, bronzes one point. Why hasn't the Olympic Committee worked this out?

...Although I notice to my own amusement that this little system, which I just thought up on the spot right this second, puts the U.S., Germany, and Norway into a dead tie...! Maybe I don't know best, as I kibitz from my armchair. Maybe golds should trump everything in the standings and the next tier down should break ties.

Then again, haven't I just been complaining that not all gold medals are well deserved?

Because I don't know skating. But I know art. Surely it's not always clear who skates best. Last night, though, it certainly was.

Mike

UPDATE Sat. 2/22: See Mani Sitaraman's analysis in the Comments section for the best analysis of how to present the medal count. An excerpt: "The logic of counting gold, then silver, and then bronze is unassailable. Just to refresh our memories, competitors don't 'win' medals. They win events. [The medal count] first measure[s] which country's athletes have won the most events."

And the nation-against-nation enterprise is essentially jingoistic anyway, because, as Scotto points out, the Olympic Charter says that it's the athletes who should be emphasized, not the countries they represent.

Obviously U.S. outlets are pandering to U.S. readers with their "totals first" medal count presentation, and as a dutiful U.S. citizen I resent it. I don't need to be pandered to.

I'm happy to root for other countries who are competing in sports their populations care about and have a tradition with. I root for Austria in skiing, for example, absent a U.S. kid competing who has a chance. And although I root for our hockey teams, I'm quite happy when Canadia* wins. I mean, it's their thing, you know? And we like Canadia:

(Source. Thanks to Dennis Fallon for the link.)

Similarly, I'm not quite sure how I could be accused of pro- South Korean prejudice, especially in a sport I don't know anything about and don't follow. I hadn't ever heard of Kim Yu-na before about a week ago. This is the first year I've ever paid attention to figure skating. (Next Winter Olympics, if I live that long, I'm going to follow curling. You have been warned).

*I think that's the name of the place where Canadians come from—it's up by the North Pole somewhere**.

**We like you, but we still like to twist yer tails.  :-)

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David: "The official medal count is from the IOC."

(IOC medal count, Sochi 2014, as of the morning of 2/21 in the U.S.)

Hans-Olav Andersen: The Norwegian view."

Dennis Fallon: "The graphic ('How Sotnikova Beat Kim, Move by Move') and this comment...

"Yu-na Kim outskated her, but it’s not just a skating competition anymore—it's math,' Browning said, explaining that Sotnikova racked up little points here and there to move ahead of Kim.

...were very enlightening. Corruption aside, people were always uncomfortable with subjective judging. But the points system leads to skating to math. Teaching to the test. Designing lenses to DxOmark. At least Dpreview awards a gold or silver award subjectively based on the experience of shooting with the camera, rather than based on the (useless IMO) numeric rating it gives.

"I enjoyed watching the skaters, but I treat it more as a show than a competition. And I feel bad that they spend all those years training so hard just to put on a show. Overall, the placements weren't bad, I don't think. I think Ashley Wagner's scores were unreasonably low (loved that short program to Pink Floyd), yet there were at least four skaters who were better. Gracie Gold was excellent, yet the medal winners were probably all just a tad better. Mostly, it's the gold medal award to the home country skater that smells a little foul. She skated well, no doubt. And maybe the judges car argue that she racked up points. But she wasn't the best skater out there (and I enjoyed the Italian skater better, too).

"Maybe they should drop all pretense of artistry if they're going to score based on technical points. They have ice dancing. Maybe create a solo ice dancing category. Why waste the choreographers time? Skip the music and just skate around doing jumps. The Russians clearly know how to work the system. The 15-year-old who had top marks in the team competition said all her focus is on the components and not artistry because without the components, you have nothing.

"At least the fans appreciate good skating, and the uproar should bring some consolation to the other skaters."

Marcin: "Mike, I think you are a bit biased here. I watched the skating competition, too, and afterwards I honestly couldn't tell whether Sotnikova beat Kim or vice versa, but it turns out (look at NYT's move-by-move)that the Russian chose more difficult moves and jumps, she took more risks and succeeded so why shouldn't she win the gold? She was a better athlete. Competitive skating isn't just about grace. If you are interested in pure ice entertainment, there are dedicated shows for that, but the Olympic Games is about sport. Also, look at the scores, Kim did get more points in the 'Skating skill and artistry' category, but it wasn't enough to beat her rival."

Mike replies: Maybe I am not sufficiently appreciating Adelina Sotnikova's accomplishment. She certainly has a winning personality, and her joy after winning was a pleasure to watch. She did skate beautifully. Still, if you Google "figure skating gold," you arrive at a number of articles about the scoring—with titles such as, "Did the Right Female Skater Win Gold, or Was the Competition Rigged?" on Slate, "Russia's figure skating gold was surprising, not shady," on USAToday, "Gold for Russia, silver for Yuna Kim, and controversy ensues" from CNN, "Figure skating fans outraged over Adelina Sotnikova's gold medal win over Yuna Kim" on sports.yahoo.com, and so forth. So I'm not the only one.

John Camp: "Trying to figure out 'national' scoring in Olympic games is not rationally possible. You suggest that perhaps Norway should lead...well, why not, there are (I think) 33 medals available in biathlon, but only 30 in alpine skiing. Really? Lots of big temperate countries have snowy mountains, even India and China, but the tradition and terrain for the biathlon? Thirty-three medals? It's sort of like how in the summer Olympics, there are 30 medals available for fencing. Really? Support your local fencer. Did you know that there are 48 medals available in various forms of...canoeing?"

Mike replies: And still not even one for cue sports. I'm with Efren Reyes, who thinks pool should be in the Olympics just so the Philippines can get a gold medal!

Dennis Ng: "Korean are not fair when they host the Olympic. So, it is fair to be unfair!"

Mike replies: You make a good point. A certain "home country advantage" is indeed taken for granted by most. In part because of the crowd, in part because of the judges, and in part because athletes seem to be somewhat more inspired when competing on their home turf—witness Britain's extraordinary achievements in 2012.

Classic Mike: Only an Illustration

So are you of the opinion that advertisements should be honest? So was the Federal Government, once upon a time, when it innocently passed its truth in advertising laws. But truth is fugitive, confusion contagious; tiny prevarications become small fibs, small fibs become big lies, and, gradually, "misleading" becomes normal.

A nagging problem I had as a photo magazine editor was one particular kind of truth in advertising. Advertisers pay for space, and the publisher and the ad sales department want them to pay for space—in fact work very hard to get them to pay for space—and they do not want the raggedy ol' editorial department stepping in and interfering in any way. According to "the business side," as my publisher used to call it, the contents of ads are not any of the editorial side's business. I was encouraged to mind my p's and q's, as well as the other twenty-four letters of the alphabet, and to remain hands-off as far as the contents of ads were concerned. One time, this led to a potentially embarrassing problem.

You would think that advertisers wouldn't lie when it's not even to their advantage. Yet what I found was that it wasn't uncommon for the photographs used in camera or lens ads to have been taken with some other kind of camera or lens than the one being advertised.

A long time ago, an employee of Canon who shall remain unnamed (forever, because I can't remember his name), told me a story about how the young André Agassi was originally recruited to star in Canon Rebel ads. According to him, it seems that Canon execs were getting sick and tired of the fact that the photographers hired by their ad agencies to shoot Canon ads were using Nikon cameras to shoot them with. A prominent Canon-using photographer was proposed for the new Rebel campaign, and that shooter happened to have a great working relationship with Agassi, and a large stock of pictures of Agassi taken with Canon equipment.

Apocryphal? Perhaps. Other sources at Canon have since then categorically denied this story in all its particulars. Despite which, it still seems kinda plausible to me. But then, what do I know?

Robert Monaghan, somewhere on his immense medium format site, reports an example of a Bronica ad that was actually shot with a Hasselblad. Seems the photographer—or more accurately the advertising agency's art director, probably—forgot to hide the telltale frame-edge marks that betrayed the truth, probably because he or she had no idea what the little marks on the frame-edge meant. Oops.

I don't think this is uncommon by any means. According to the ad agencies I talked to and a certain company marketing director who shall also remain unnamed (see above), pictures in ads are "illustrations," and are not meant to be "literal." (Cough.) Besides, if an advertisement is touting a particular lens and has one photograph prominently placed in the ad, it's only implied that the picture was taken with that lens, right? Usually, it’s not explicitly stated. So if you, the viewer/consumer, want to draw the wrong conclusion, well, that’s up to you. (Cough, cough.)

The problem this caused for me happened shortly after the launch of the ill-fated APS film format. An ad for an APS camera began appearing in other magazines that touted the quality of APS pictures. The ads featured a nice, dramatic picture of a swimmer at sunset. Clearly implied (but not explicitly stated!) was that the picture was an example of the kind of quality consumers could expect from the then-new APS format.

The problem was, the picture had been taken with a 35mm Nikon F4s on 35mm film.

How did I know? Because I had run the very same picture on the cover of a magazine two years earlier!

I originally found the picture in a Communication Arts photography special that had been published substantially earlier than our cover had been. So the picture had obviously been made long before APS existed. Our common practice in those days was to contact the cover photographer and ask for the details of how our cover pictures were shot, which we then dutifully recorded in a blurb on the table of contents page.

Fortunately, that particular ad showing our former cover photo had not been submitted to our magazine yet, which helped me when I tried to put my foot down. I merely explained the siuation to the publisher and made it clear that I couldn't publish that ad if it came in. So, did the ad sales person ever have to gently suggest to his contact that that particular ad wouldn't be the best one to submit? I have no idea, and I'm glad I didn’t have to find out. What would have happened if that advertisement had already been submitted, its space bought and paid for? That might not have been so easy. I'm not sure I would have won that battle.

And now for the kicker. (This makes me look bad, but that's never stopped me before.) That cover on which we used the Nikon F4 shot featured the picture right above a blurb that read, "The Leica Mystique."*

Cover photo taken by Lonnie Duka with a 35mm Nikon F4s. The same picture was later used in print advertisements for the APS film format. Cover design by Lynne Anderson (then called Lynne Surma).

False advertising?!? Well, no, I didn't think so, because we clearly stated on the table of contents page that the photographer had used a Nikon to make the picture. A few readers didn't agree with me, however. (And a few of the guys at the Nikon booth at the New York show were tickled pink, which seemed to confirm that I'd made a mistake.) But it looked good. And, if memory serves, it sold well. And hey, it was only an illustration!

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad and William Schneider)

*The cover article was written by Carl Weese.

This post is a rerun. It was originally published in "The 37th Frame" in September 2004.

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Featured Comments from:

Mike Stone: "I remember a fabulous week spent scouting locations in the Mojave desert and then assisting on the shoot for a Canon ad back in the early 'nineties. Dramatic B&W shots. All shot on a Hasselblad SWC."

Damien: "Target rich, and depressing, environment, really. Hair product companies use models with hair extensions to infer this is what their product does. Virtually all magazine covers are Photoshopped. All this and so much more is fair game, and legal, where any sort of nonsense can be shouted from the heavens, as long as a disclaimer for all the blatant falsehoods is whispered somewhere also.

"Often no disclaimers are required, the Photoshopped magazine covers being a prime example, which should all be regulated, and carry warnings if excessively Photoshopped. There is a middle ground between false and truthful advertising however, and I would label it 'misleading advertising.' Your magazine cover is a prime example of that. Of course, I see nothing changing, aside from all of us mistrusting advertising even more as time goes on. If the advertising industry had any sense, they would regulate this sort of stuff themselves, as they are letting their product be eroded and destroyed slowly from within."

Mark Hobson: "I remember well the day I walked—though some would say 'paraded'—through the Kodak corporate lobby on my way to deliver the finished results of an ad shoot.

"This was something I did on a regular basis. The ad assignment was, uncharacteristically, for B&W pictures—color was the usual norm. No big deal. I was very proficient in B&W and chosen for the assignment based on that expertise.

"However...the prints in my sample portfolio were made using my B&W standard operating procedure of Kodak B&W film printed on an Ifford B&W fiber-based paper. Consequently, that's the manner in which the assignment was completed. On hindsight, doing so was a brain cramp of major proportions. I should have found and used a suitable B&W Kodak paper for the work.

"But not doing so was the least of my sins. Walking (parading?) through the Kodak lobby and hallways with a 16x20 Iford paper box—it's amazing how a white box with black typography stands out in a sea of yellow boxes with red typography—was indeed the Mother of All Brain Cramps.

"Fortunately, after reprinting the pictures on Kodak paper, I remained in good standing with Kodak and its agency."

Quote o' the Day: Gato

"Nobody expects my brother-in-law to make money from fishing. Nobody expects my neighbor to make money from golf. Nobody expects the guy down the street to make money from picking guitar. So how come so many people think it's strange that I don't care about making money from photography?"

—Gato

©2014 by Gato, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

McD: "Rest assured, your expectations will be met."

Gato: "WOW—I finally got my 15 minutes. Thanks, Mike."

Steve Jacob: "Good quote. My dad was a fanatical golfer with a scratch handicap throughout most of his youth. He was once asked why he never turned pro, and his response was also interesting: 'Now I play when I want to, compete with myself and make a lot of friends. If I have a bad round, only I am disappointed. To be a pro, I would have to play when I didn't want to, compete with my friends and create a lot of rivals. If I had a bad day, my sponsors, my family and all those depending on me would be disappointed. I would have to be crazy!' I feel much the same way about photography."

Dennis Fallon (partial comment): "I will say, though, that photographers have company. Woodworkers are often expected to make some side money with their hobby."

My Cold-Weather Camera Test

This week's column by Ctein

[Temperatures given in Celsius —Ed.]

As you may recall, I'm going to be going to Yellowknife in two weeks to (hopefully) see and photograph aurora borealis. Pretty cool. 'Cept that the problem is it's likely to be more than just pretty cool. It could well be hell-freezing-over cold. Mean lows at that time of year are –25° Celsius, but 10° swings from that aren't uncommon.

Luckily, I was in Minneapolis in the latter part of January when it got hit by several (more) nasty cold snaps. A perfect opportunity to field-test my Olympus E-M5 and its lenses.

Wednesday night was predicted to hit –27° Celsius, not getting above –25° until 10 a.m. Thursday morning. Wednesday evening I had a date, so I stuck the camera kit on the floor of the car in a plastic bag and left it to soak in the cold. When I left my girlfriend's apartment around midnight the outside temperature was down to –20°. I figure the camera had probably equilibrated at –15° inside the car, so it was a good time to run a preliminary test.

The Olympus made several proper exposures with the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens, focusing and changing aperture as it was supposed to. The battery indicator for the cold-soaked battery was indeed in the red "I'm empty" zone, but the camera still worked. The OELD (organic electroluminescent display) [Note: Not OLED, which stands for organic light-emitting diode —Ed.) viewing screen and eye level viewfinder were fully responsive and didn't look different from normal use. A promising start. I popped the gear back into the plastic baggie, put it back on the floor of the car, and let it cold-soak overnight.

Fig. 1. At –25° Celsius, the Olympus E-M5 with 45mm lens performed just fine. ISO 200, ƒ/5.6 @ 1/160th sec.

The following morning, when the temperature was down around –25°, I tested all my gear in earnest. The cold-soaked battery was dead, but it revived in a few minutes in my pocket. My 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens also worked perfectly, as figure 1 shows. Exposure and focus did what they were supposed to. Figure 2 shows a 100% section of the part of the frame where the camera was auto-focusing. On the nose!

Fig. 2. A 100% section of figure 1, showing that the camera system was focusing accurately.

The 14–42mm kit lens was also unfazed by the chilly weather. So far so good. Only one lens gave me problems—that so-so 12mm ƒ/2 Olympus lens. It wouldn't focus reliably (figure 3). It was because of the triply-damned (literally, in my review) manual focus ring. That was a uselessly inept implementation to begin with. Now it was an actual handicap. The ring's lubricant became too stiff at –25°, hampering the movement of the focusing mechanism.

Fig. 3. The 12mm ƒ/2 Olympus lens had focusing problems in cold weather.

Understand that this lens always does electronically-controlled focusing: The focusing ring does not mechanically couple to the lens—it just sends a signal to the camera that then instructs the lens to change focus. Consequently, the poorly-operating focus system wasn't any more reliable in manual mode than autofocus mode. I discovered if I racked the focusing ring back and forth several times, the innards would loosen up enough that focusing became semi-functional. Most of the time, then, it worked (figure 4); occasionally it didn't.

Fig. 4. Running the manual focus ring back and forth several times made the 12mm's autofocus work most of the time (ƒ/5.6 @ 1/640th sec.).

I may still try to use the lens in Yellowknife. Its optical shortcomings wouldn't impact my aurora photography, and it would be nice to have a fast, wide lens. I just won't rely on it heavily.

I decided to try and catch some action photos of the crazy dogs romping in the snow. Man, those Bernese mountain dogs can really move when they want to, and they sure do love cold (Tara is happily eating snow in figure 1). I opened up the 45mm lens to get the shutter speed nice and short, around 1/2500 sec, and what do I get? Figure 5. Aw, hell—I was sure I'd broken something in the camera or the lens. I popped the lens off and made a couple of bare-body snaps. Similar results. It wasn't the lens; it had to be the camera.

Fig. 5. Really short exposures don't work at –25°! At 1/2500 sec, most of the frame is unexposed.

I fiddled around and managed to figure it out before total panic set in. The camera's shutter curtains weren't actuating quite as fast in the extreme cold. I was fine with exposures longer than a millisecond. The frame progressively darkened with shorter exposures. Whew! Nothing broken—all I needed to do was avoid exposures less than 1/1000 of a second.

I think I can do that.

The next night when it got down to "only" –20°, I ran some nighttime tests, to make sure that longer exposures and high ISO settings worked fine. No problems, as the ISO 800 photographs in figure 6 shows. Made, not so by the way, with that 12mm lens after racking the focus ring back and forth several times to shake things loose.

Fig. 6. Long, high-ISO nighttime exposures aren't a problem at low temperatures (ƒ/5.6, ISO 800 @ 1.3 sec.).

Interestingly, and disappointingly, the cold weather didn't make any difference in the noise characteristics of the camera so far as I could see. Initially, I had the impression that I was seeing about a 2/3 stop improvement in noise at –25° Celsius. But, when I did a really careful analysis, making sure to match regions of comparable exposure in the comparison photographs, I couldn't see any obvious difference. Not that I'm complaining about the noise characteristics of the E-M5, but I wouldn't have minded squeezing out a little more speed. Aurora is tough stuff.

What's important, though, is that my camera gear checks out. The camera and most of the lenses will perform just fine. The 12mm is questionable, but it might work. And, oh yeah, I'll have plenty of battery packs to swap, so that when one gets chilled a warmer one can take its place.

I've got my winter clothing. Fifteen days will see me in Yellowknife, and I'll find out if all this prep pays off.

Ctein

Ctein's column appears on Wednesdays on TOP.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Rob Smith: "I regularly shoot in cold weather, down to –30°C, and have never had an issues with any equipment. Using a D300 and various Nikon lenses. I also have used battery powered strobes in the field too, they were fine, my fingers were bloody freezing though. I generally ignore temp ratings in instruction manuals as I assume some level of Winter testing is done by manufacturers. The main thing is to keep any spare batteries near your body. And if possible, wear a thin pair of running gloves, and then mitts over the top. Then you don't have to expose your hands completely when you want to change settings."

Ctein replies: Yes, I spent about an hour at REI trying out different pairs of thin gloves with woolen flip-top overmittens to find the heaviest pair that would still let me manipulate the controls on my Olympus. The buttons aren't actually the limiting factor; turns out it's the catch on the battery. I expect this will do okay, but I'm taking along a set of hand warmers that I can slip inside the mittens, just in case. I'm kind of skinny, so my feet and hands get cold pretty easily. (Yes, toe warmers for the winter boots, too…just in case.)

Craig: "A friend took a external battery pack that he kept under his coat with the lead exposed [i.e., the cable attached —Ed.] to the camera; worked faultlessly and they were working further north at the temperature –40°F and C."

Ctein replies: I thought about that, but there was no chance to rig it up and try it out in cold conditions, and I'm not going with untried gear. I just bought two more third-party battery packs. All of 25 bucks, and now I've got four. That'll do.

Gordon Lewis adds: Craig, with all due respect to your friend's approach, I would avoid attaching any cables between the camera and yourself, especially if the camera is tripod-mounted. All it takes is one careless or accidental tug on the cable and your camera and lens will plunge towards the cold, cold ground.

Ctein adds: That worried me too.

Ask Mike

Well, this is interesting. For the first time in a long time I have near-total writer's block. Just can't think of a thing to say.

Anyone got a question? Maybe I can be reactive, since I can't seem to be creative.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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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Reader Question from:

David: "Do you ever feel the need to walk down to the store wearing nothing but a pair of boots and a towel around your waist? My next move hinges on your answer."

Mike replies: I always drive to the store.

John Hagen: "I am submitting a couple of my digital fine art photographs for artist grants. Maybe I am over thinking it this, but what is the best way to describe a digital photograph printed on fine art paper with an archival inkjet printer? Is there a fancy 'gelatin silver' name that describes the process? I bounce around between archival inkjet print, digital photograph, digital photograph or inkjet print. Maybe I am over thinking this. I am trying to figure out the best, artsy fartsy term that would describe a fine art digital print. Maybe I just need to describe my process and let the viewer decide whether it is fine art or not. Is that too long-winded a question?"

Mike replies: Well, to start with, never use the term "artsy fartsy," even among friends. It doesn't have even a whisper of irony and immediately pegs you as a barbarian.

And as to your question, I'd call them "archival inkjet prints"—but maybe someone who has been on the receiving end of grant proposals has a better suggestion?

Joe Holmes: "I'd like to second Mike's preference for 'archival inkjet print.' That's the most honest and accurate description, and I think the time has passed that 'inkjet' scares most people. I also sometimes see 'archival pigment print,' but that feels like you're ashamed to use 'inkjet.' It's 2014—embrace it! Just be sure to avoid the euphemism 'giclée,' a word coined in 1991 to avoid the early stigma of inkjet prints."

Eric Brody: "I use the term 'archival pigment prints' in the hope that everyone with a desktop all in one printer fax copier will realize they probably cannot make a print of equal technical quality. 'Inkjet,' while honest, sounds...not fancy enough, while the old 'giclée' sounds hopelessly pretentious. 'Pigment' is at least honest also. The archival part is as much hope as anything else but I'm not sure anyone will want my prints in one hundred years."

Michael Perini: "'Archival inkjet prints' is honest but not completely descriptive, as there are dye prints that have good longevity and are referred to as archival. Michael Reichman (I believe) uses 'pigment on paper.' If you are using pigment inks, I would get that in there somehow. You don't want to sound pretentious but you do want to be completely descriptive. Pigment on paper inkjet prints (I use this one). Archival pigment inkjet prints works too."

Mike replies: I think I like "pigment inkjet print" for the reasons you mention. Maybe even "pigment inkjet print on archival paper" if the paper is sold as being archival. That sidesteps the issue of an implicit warranty for the print's life expectancy.

HT: "Do you have even a perfunctory interest in this year's Oscars or are you in curmudgeon mode?"

Mike replies: Lots of interest theoretically, but I need to make an effort to see some of the movies. Which ones do you think I should see?

Manuel: "Sorry, Mike. My mind is blocked. I can't think of a single question to ask you. I'm embarrassed."

Mike replies: At least you see what I'm up against.

Andre: "How about: Most landscape/cityscape photography advice really pushes the 'wait for golden hour' approach. As I do the bulk of my photography when traveling, and as photography isn't the main purpose of the trips, waiting at a site until dusk (or getting up and out early enough to catch the dawn) often isn't an option. Also, to me, endless parades of 'golden hour' shots get pretty tedious even if each of the individual images are quite good. So the question is: Are you aware of resources that are aimed at helping you get the most out of the lighting conditions you find rather than waiting around for them to become optimal?"

Mike replies: No. Just as there are no meaningful guides to composition aside from (maybe) looking at successful work. I'd tend to argue the opposite of the "golden hour" approach—the lighting is always optimal and also, it never is. That is, certain pictures work in certain lighting. It's not the lighting and it's not the picture, it's how the two work together. In most kinds of lighting you can find something to photograph; the lighting might tend to dictate what it is, but you find it by looking with your eyes, not following little aphorisms that can be put into a sentence.

Consider:

By Rui Palha

By Bernd and Hilla Becher

By "wenzday01" on flickr

By Scott Stulberg

In which one is the light best? Maybe you could argue, but I would say the light is "right" in all four cases for the picture each photographer found...and I'd also venture to say that the light in any one of these pictures wouldn't have worked very well for each of the other three scenes. (For example, the last picture in full sunlight wouldn't be the same picture at all, would it?)

The number of possible pictures is infinite. In every light, there are some that work. The trick is not finding the "right" light. The trick is finding the right picture in the light you're in.

zaan: "I'd love to see your best jazz albums of 2013 list. I greatly enjoyed last year's list for 2012."

Mike replies: Enticing notion, and it would be fun for me, but it wouldn't draw in the eyes. I need to write about photography or visitors go elsewhere.

John Krumm: "Why do I take fewer photos the longer I participate in the hobby? I still read about it as much, I listen to the same number of photography podcasts, and when I do go out I always enjoy it. But something is making me less likely to run out the door in search of photos as time goes on.... And can I replace 'I' with 'we,' making it a general tendency?"

Mike replies: Sure, everybody narrows down as time goes by. Strand did, Adams did. You take fewer pictures because you've taken them all before...why repeat your old hits, play your familiar tricks again? There's nothing wrong with working less. You're probably working smarter and more deeply too.

Dave Kosiur: "And why do you feel you need to write something every day?"

Mike replies: Same reason most people keep working. Because it's what I do for a living and I need the money.

Arg: "How did you first meet Ctein?"

Mike replies: I was in San Francisco representing Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques at the Photo West show and Ctein, who I knew from his photo-writing of course, had invited me to dinner. We were scheduled to meet near the Convention Center on the street at a particular time, and I asked Ctein how I'd recognize him. Ctein said, "I look like a radical gay Jewish hippie cross between Rasputin and Jesus Christ." And I thought, hmm, and what does that look like? But when I saw him walking down the sidewalk, I thought, "Well, that's got to be Ctein"—and sure enough, it was.

Ben: "What is/was your favorite camera store, ever in the history of ever, and why?"

Mike replies: I have lots of good memories of camera stores. Baker's and Penn Camera in D.C., Ferrante Dege in Boston, Industrial Photo in Maryland, Central Camera in Chicago, Mike Crivello's here in Wisconsin. Never really walked into an old-style camera store I didn't like. But my favorite would have to be Gene Fara's old Oak Park Camera in Oak Park, Illinois. I liked a lot of the people there, although I never knew Gene very well. They let Zander zoom around behind the counters when he was little, and when they had a raffle for a giant stuffed bear, surprise, Zander won. The bear was as tall as he was and he used to box with it, with me providing the animation behind the bear. Zander took the bouts very seriously and always won, but the bear sometimes beat him around a bit with its big stuffed paws. And they were a revolving door of lots of used gear—continual entertainment for a camera geek like me.

Trecento: "Can you tell me what's going on with how the lens is drawing in this photo? It's hosted by Shorpy. What I see is that the foreground, in-focus area has great local contrast (acutance?), and the background, while not softened to a complete blur, has very little, causing the motorcycle cop to "pop" forward. How is the lens doing this, and more importantly, how can I do this?"

Mike replies: That's lovely, isn't it? Looks to me like it's more the tonality and the negative size that are creating the effects you're responding to. Get yourself an old Crown or Speed Graphic with one of those 127mm lenses and use a medium yellow filter, some Ilford FP-4, and a compensating or soft-working developer like D-23. With some experimentation, I'll bet you could come pretty close to that look.

Daniel Evan Rodriguez: "Considering your history with Contax, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Leica R range of cameras and lenses."

Mike replies: I made many attempts with the R series, starting with a used R3 and then a rented R4. I bought two R4s's and both were faulty. I bought a 35mm Summicron-R (a Mandler design) from Michael Hintlian (a very good photographer) and then years later sold it back to him! I got some wonderful results with that lens and a 90mm Summicron-R and the R4, and Tri-X. I used the R8 for one afternoon at a camera show and while I didn't care for the odd body shape, I certainly couldn't complain about the results. For years afterwards I looked at R7's but could never quite afford the camera and lens at the same time.

My biggest beef with the R cameras is that the viewfinders have 93% coverage which is supposed to show the area of a slide in a cardboard mount. As I printed B&W full-frame, it was a bit of a headache for me. It wouldn't have been a deal-breaker; it was just an annoyance.

Rory O'Toole: "As a penniless student, in the early '90s, I bought three books secondhand—Time-Life's The Camera, The Art of Photography and The Great Themes. These were the bedrock of my photography knowledge, and I love them still. Have you an opinion of them?"

Mike replies: Absolutely, I loved the Time-Life Library of Photography and read every word of every volume. A product flowering from the years of the "Photo Boom," so dubbed by A.D. Coleman. There were 17 books in the series, published from 1970 to 1972. The titles were The Camera, Light and Film, The Print, Color, Photography as a Tool, The Great Themes, Photojournalism, Special Problems, The Studio, The Art of Photography, Great Photographers, Photographing Nature, Photographing Children, Documentary Photography, Frontiers of Photography, Travel Photography, and Caring for Photographs. And there was an Index. That was the original set with the silver covers and black cloth spines. The set was revised and republished from 1981 to 1983, with black buckram covers, but I think there were fewer volumes in the second set.

Jayson Merryfield: "Quickly: what was your worst photography gig ever. Define 'worst' however you please."

Mike replies: I had a girlfriend who knew I liked Miatas when they came out, around 1990, and she took me car shopping with her so I could drive one. The car was bright red so I threw some color film in the camera and took ten or twelve shots of it. But because I didn't care for color and hated it when I had color film "clogging up the camera" (which made me feel like I couldn't shoot for real), I rewound the partial roll leaving the leader sticking out and stuck it back in the camera bag.

A year or so later my mother's whole family was gathered and I had a chance to do a family portrait. It was spur of the moment and I was extemporizing anyway—I had to perch the camera on a bookshelf and use the timer, and the lighting was iffy so it might not have been much anyway. Everyone said they wanted color rather than my usual B&W so I rummaged around in my camera bag to see what I had and found that roll of color film. I hadn't marked the roll and I thought it was a fresh roll. So I shot the family pictures over the exposures of the damn car without realizing what I was doing. Dumb, dumb mistake, and one that counted—within a couple of years, several family members present for that failed group portrait attempt had died. I felt ashamed of that for years afterwards, and to be honest still do. Probably shouldn't even admit to it—but hey, in the words of David Vestal, I'm in the disclosure business.

And I even had some personal rules to prevent that kind of thing—never let anyone else touch your camera, and never change your regular method when it counts. I was very careful about keeping my B&W film organized and I don't think in 20 years I ever double-exposed a single frame of B&W accidentally. But I just didn't care about color so I was much more casual about it.

Richard Swearinger: "Do you consider what you do a blog? If not, what is it?"

Mike replies: The nicest description I've heard was provided by my friend Jim Schley: it's a "vertical photography magazine." (Um, in blog format.)

Jim Schley: "Here's a question, Mike: Have you ever seen Chris Marker's film La Jetée, a cinematic work but made entirely of still photographs? I'd heard about this for many years and finally watched it. This work has clearly affected other filmmakers (and probably photographers) profoundly."

Mike replies: Never even heard of it, but I will put it on my list. (Jim introduced me to Tarkovsky's The Mirror, an important milestone for me with movies. He also got me to see Groundhog Day, by telling me he thought it was one of the ten best movies ever made, an astonishing statement from him about a rom-com...but now I agree.)

Random Snaps: Heeeeeere's Jimmy

Y'all know how much I like old B&W pictures. Here's Johnny Carson on the day he first hosted the tonight show in 1962, courtesy of the Library of Congress via The New York Times.

So did you see the first "Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," and if so, what did you think?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

Jon Orchard: "I'm sure I can't be the only one who finds it hard to believe that Jimmy is older now than Johnny was then. Perhaps it's because, being in my mid 30s, I remember Johnny as old and surely 39 can't be 'old'...can it?"

Around the Web on a Monday

Last chance! Don't forget that today is the last day of Ctein's Matrix Sale. There are still excellent sets left, but they won't be available after midnight tonight when the sale ends. (Beware the witching hour....)

The 8%: The Lens Blog examines the rampant Photoshopping of the World Press Photo Award entries this year. "'...8 percent of the finalists' images were disqualified because information had been removed after processing. An outside expert studied the raw and jpeg [sic] files and found evidence indicating that information had been removed through cloning or extreme toning,' said Gary Knight, the jury chairman. Knight called the changes 'materially trivial but...ethically significant.'"

Meanwhile, back at the Awards: Serious charges of conflict of interest have been leveled at the Awards. Duckrabbit explains: "The chair of this year’s jury is Gary Knight [...]. He is a founder and shareholder of the limited company VII photo. The winner, John Stanmeyer, is also a founder and shareholder of the limited company VII photo. Knight and Stanmeyer are business partners. A clear conflict of interest compounded by the fact that their business stands to profit from the decision of the jury led by Knight."

I swear I'm just going to have to give up on Awards altogether. Can't any of them just keep the proceedings ethically clean? Sorry, rhetorical question.

Tim Davis and Tipper Gore: Blogger extraordinaire Blake Andrews has another quirky idea—this time, he reviews a bunch of used photo books. It's either an interesting idea, or a good demonstration of why people don't normally do this, or somewhere in between. I found his take on some of these titles interesting, especially his dismissal of Gary Stochl.

Photo by Garry Winogrand, from the book Women Are Beautiful

Women are beautiful: Speaking of used books, abebooks.com, the clearinghouse megawebsite for used bookstores all across America, recently posted its list of the most-searched-for out-of-print titles of 2013. Foremost among photobooks on the list was Garry Winogrand's second book, Women Are Beautiful.

Arguably one of the oddest projects in American photography from the second half of the 20th century, the 1975 book consists of 85 snapshots of fully clothed women, mostly on the street, who Winogrand (1928–1984) apparently found attractive. It somehow managed to be prurient and sexist all the same, and continues to be fodder for academic feminism to this day.

His least popular project, he struggled to find a publisher for it, and it sold poorly. Today a copy of the small, indifferently-produced book can sell for anywhere from $245 to $3,000. (Harper's books in East Hampton, New York, is offering an association copy inscribed by Winogrand to Augusta and Arnold Newman for $6,000.) In light of the book's weak sales and the bafflement of both critics and the public at the time, Winogrand threatened to do a sequel and joked that he would title it "Son of Women Are Beautiful."

Sigma interview: Barney Britton over at Dpreview has posted a most interesting interview with Kazuto Yamaki, CEO of Sigma. Among the many interesting tidbits and insights: "My first priority is to make sure that the business continues to develop as a going concern, to protect our employees. We don't need to grow enormously, we just need a slight growth to continue the business. Assuming we're doing OK, I'd like to do something amazing. Something to make customers say 'wow.' That’s my real motivation. I'd rather do that than make our company bigger."

So sad: The eBay listing was just very sad, that's all. For sale were the contents of our recently deceased friend David Vestal's darkroom. David was a direct and indirect mentor and teacher to several generations of photographers, and the author of several once-influential books about craft.

On the other hand, David himself would probably be the last person to be sentimental about this sort of thing, so maybe we shouldn't be either.

Cause: camera? One of the shocking events in motorsport recently is the severe injury suffered by retired seven-time Formula One World Champion Michael Schumacher, who suffered severe head trauma in a skiing accident and has not regained consciousness. Now the suggestion has been raised that maybe the injury was caused by a POV camera mounted to his helmet.

Time chart: A history of Nikon in pictures, from 1948 to 2005. At NikonRumors. (Above is just a segment of it.)

George Tice film: I mentioned just about exactly a year ago that Bruce Wodder, Peter Bosco and Douglas Underdahl were making a movie that I wanted to see. Now we can: George Tice: Seeing Beyond the Moment is available in its entirety on IMDB. It's one hour and twelve minutes long.

I haven't watched it yet, but I think I'll go do that now.

Mike
(Thanks to Kevin Purcell, Clay Olmstead, Oren Grad, Michael Tapes, and Bill Mitchell)

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

Mike: "That Tice film is great. Thanks for the link. Really inspiring."

John Camp (partial comment): "About Schumacher's helmet cam—I think those things are terribly dangerous. Skiiers and snowboarders are using them a lot, and some of the weird helmet mounts are just begging for disaster. Some of them mount right out in front of your jaw, and given the leverages involved, I'm astonished nobody has suffered a broken neck after falling (maybe somebody has, and I haven't heard about it.) Others have multiple screws going through the helmet itself—there's a smart way to guarantee helmet integrity."

Jeff: "Women are Beautiful originally sold for $15; my mint copy has $85 penciled in the front, and my most recent appraisal in 2008 by Swann lists $400. I'll make a note based on this post. Of course, the actual sales price of any book is subject to all sorts of variables, as your dollar range suggests, not the least of which are timing and the chosen sales venue. This post reminds me that I should start thinking about those issues as part of a plan to generate some additional retirement funds. Photo books are beautiful."

blake (partial comment): "Thanks for mentioning my post, Mike...the used book reviews were a response to the sometimes frothy climate surrounding new photo books, which resembles a gold rush in its cut-throat and jostling nature. I want to remind people that you needn't get caught up in that. You can find great titles from just a few years ago that are just as good or better than any new book and often for very little money. It requires a keen eye to weed through the crap, but if you know what you're looking for this is an underappreciated way to build a good photo library."

Bill Tyler: "How do you put together a history of Nikon without the original F?"

Mike replies: Well, you can if your idiot editor forgets to put in the link and uses just a section of the chart as an illustration. Sorry. I'm still a bit fuzzy from my medical problems.

Carl Weese: "Vestal wouldn't want his tools to be treated as relics, but I sure hope someone is making good decisions about the archive. Those books? Even someone who never has or will use film would do well to study them, to come to an understanding of the roots of the photographic medium. Understanding what David was saying about photographic technique will still inform in the post-film world. It informs me every time I make a digital print, or a digital negative from which to make a platinum print."

Sydney based photographer: "I was watching an Australian judging session last year when a print turned around and I knew it and who the photographer was. The judges marked [i.e., graded —Ed.] the print reasonably well, but undoubtedly not what the photographer was wanting or expecting.

"One of the judges was a personal friend of the photographer and was the only person to mark the print exceptionally well. Because his mark was scored so high there then had to be an automatic challenge and all the photographers had to re-score it. The pause for re-scoring gives opportunity for the person who scored high to state the case for the print. Anyone else on the panel may respond. It happens fairly regularly and print scores can come up to the benefit of the photographer.

"In this case, due to the arguing of the judge (the friend), the score came up a long way. Now I'm not suggesting that my fellow photographers are gullible or stupid or corruptible but there was something inherently and deeply flawed in the process of judging this image (in these circumstances I was aware of). Conflicts of interest can and will occur. And while I might not think you are out to benefit anyone hundreds more might. Judges need to go with the benefit of doubt every single time. And the doubt in this case is that if you recognise the work, and have the influence to make it more that it is worth, get off the judging or jury. No excuses. Never ever."

Grumpy: "I thought I'd add a short comment about David Vestal. Having been acquainted with David since 1992 when he and I became 'pen pals' I would agree that David was not sentimental. He asked me to be the trustee of his photographic archive and I spent a week with the executor of his will at his house trying to make heads or tails of what we found there.

"David was devoted to his work and it seems he spent most if not all of his time making photographs. Actually to the exclusion of other tasks most of us would consider essential. I learned a great deal from David, both what to do and what not to do as a photographer. We were lucky to have him for as long as we did and we will benefit from the fact that he wrote down much of what he had learned as a photographer. I think it's fair to say that David would not want us to mourn his passing but rather celebrate what he taught us."

New Favorite Sport: BX (OT)

I sometimes call the Winter Olympics the "fall down Olympics," because it seems like that's what everybody is either doing or trying not to do. Most everyone is skidding or sliding or skating or skiing or sledding over ice and snow and—oh no! Sometimes falling down.

But have you seen this sport called boardercross? A.k.a. snowboard cross or boarder X or BX. It's like a surfboard race over frozen waves and jumps, with wipeouts. I never could see what the big deal was with the "halfpipe," whatever that one's called (or the original skateboard version), but I think I love boardercross, which I'd never seen before this very day. Not least because the best boarder usually wins big...sorry, but I just can't see how a speed skater or a two-man bobsled team that edges its rival by a couple of hundredths of a second qualifies for a gold rather than a silver. That's just too close to "they went the same speed" to me. Snowboard cross is awesome. I gotta get cable.

This would greatly improve downhill ski racing too...send a half dozen of 'em down the mountain at once. Now that would be cool.

Mike
(Thanks to NBC)

ADDENDUM: I'm not serious about simultaneous downhill ski races. Obviously that would not be prudent. Simultaneous racers makes snowboard cross much more interesting, though. And come to think of it, I enjoyed the BMX bicycle version of the same idea at the last Summer Games, too. —Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

Michel: "Just seconds before I clicked over to TOP, I was telling my wife that this was really exciting. We had just watched the women's final last night (go Canada). This is crazy, but crazy fun."

Speed: "Wintersports: The orthopedists' full employment scheme."

So Far

So far the Matrix Set sale has been going well, with a strong first day especially. (It ends tomorrow.) This is really Ctein's personal sale and not a regular TOP offering, but, before every sale we're associated with, I ask the artists how many sales it would take for them to feel: a) bitterly disappointed, b) adequately satisfied, and c) over-the-moon happy. Then I ask them to make a prediction—and I make mine. One thing I've learned: different artists have very different expectations!

It's always a guess—this time especially. At any rate, the number of Matrix Sets sold is already just short of my own prediction for the whole sale, despite the very unusual and specialized nature of what's being offered. There are still many excellent sets available.

I still plan to buy a set to donate to my local museum, pending hearing from the curator, which should happen tomorrow. Posterity will reward you if you do the same...this is just the kind of thing that will disappear from the planet unless someone has the foresight to set a few aside.

Meanwhile, plans for our next sale have still not yet gelled, despite several possibilities. One thought is that I might have a sale of my own work to try to help fund a move to better office space...so I can hire a temp to help me with the sales. (Life's a circle, you see.)

I have some nice things planned for this week. For one thing, we'll catch up with some of the other cool photography-related stuff that has appeared elsewhere on the Web recently. There seem to be more good sites now than ever, even though a fair number of them just exist to sell gear. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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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John Stanmeyer Wins World Press Photo of the Year

John Stanmeyer of VII photo agency has won the World Press Photo Photo of the Year (Contemporary Issues, 1st prize singles) for this photograph taken on February 26th, 2013, for National Geographic. The picture, titled "Signal," shows "African migrants on the shore of Djibouti city at night, raising their phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighboring Somalia—a tenuous link to relatives abroad. Djibouti is a common stop-off point for migrants in transit from such countries as Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, seeking a better life in Europe and the Middle East." Here is his website if you'd like to see more of his work.

Congratulations to John!

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

Original contents copyright 2014 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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Stan B.: "One subtle but oh so dramatic composition without the direct aid of war, blood, or catastrophe that still addresses the current world situation, both directly (immigration) and at large (technology). Stunning in its simplicity, relevance and beauty."

Dennis Ng: "It is very other-worldly. They looked like ETs calling home when I first saw it. Then the explanation...great photo. Just great!"