The Online Photographer

Small Joke

Q: A scenic overlook. A man with a large camera bag puts the bag down, sets up a tripod in a selected spot and attaches a large DSLR to it. He fiddles with the controls, peers through the camera, adjusts the lens, moves the tripod a little, peers through the camera again, fiddles some more, and, finally, takes a number of exposures. Then he removes a phone from his pocket and takes a picture in the same direction. What's he doing?

A: He's tweeting, "Look what I just took a picture of!"

Mike
(Thanks to Robert)

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 Roof: "I wish this were only a joke. This actually happens regularly in railroad photography fora on Facebook."

Jesse Colin Jackson: "I do one better: when on location, I frequently take an iPhone picture of the image on the screen of my 5DIII to send to clients and friends as a preview. 'Picture in picture.'"

Bruce Robbins: "I do this from time to time on my film blog as I think people enjoy seeing the context behind a photograph. Here's one of my Speed Graphic 'in the field.' And another of my Rollei SL66E about to photograph some wartime hangars in the mist:   

"Both taken with a humble iPhone 3GS."

More About Making the Mirrorless Choice

In one of the "Fuji X-T1: Size" posts last week, friend, frequent commenter, and occasional TOP contributing author Ken Tanaka wrote:

The simple fact is that one's choice of camera among this ever-widening belt of high-end "mirrorless" models from Fujifilm, Sony, and Olympus will have little impact of one's photographic results. We're in a hailstorm of outstanding products. Any of these cameras will be more than adequate for the vast majority of photographs that the vast majority of people will ever take with them.

I have to heartily second that hailstorm idea. In fact I was just about to write a post about it.

The task in camera choice is no longer finding something that is adequate—we passed that point in the early 2000s. The choice is no longer even between good-better-best, as it was at the end of the 2000s. The choice is now really a matter of "this flavor of best vs. that flavor of best."

It's still interesting to compare cameras, and people are still curious to read opinions from people who own and use various models. It's still fun to shop. But really, approximately since the E-M5 and X100 in the mirrorless sector, anything you're comfortable choosing will potentially give you great results*.

This is also the first time in my own personal history that the cameras have been so great that I've wanted to own more than one at a time. Not counting film cameras and my DP2M which I bought purely so I could learn about it, I currently own two mirrorless cameras, the Sony NEX-6 (which I love) and the Olympus E-M1 (which I love). And having just gotten the Fuji X-T1 in for review, I find that I really love that camera too.

This creates a different sort of dilemma. For most people it used to be, "Should I replace X with Y?" Now, for many, it's "Should I buy Z when I already own an X and a Y?"

Or—let's be honest—for some people it's "How in the world can I justify getting a Z when I already have a perfectly good X and Y?"

Mike
(Thanks to Ken)

*As with any generalization, caveats do exist. Some photographers have specific tasks to do that require specific features or capabilities that not all cameras have. Jeffrey Goggin recently mentioned that he needs a camera that can do exposures longer than 30 seconds, for his night photography. That's not a functionality that would even occur to me. Jack MacDonough needed a medium format digital camera because he routinely makes and sells prints that are six feet wide. So saying that most cameras will give most people perfectly good results naturally doesn't take all people or all cameras into account.

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:

Fred B.: "It's funny. As I began to pare down the number of cameras I used to a single one, I eventually decided on the E-M1. The only reason for choosing that camera over the X-T1 was the availability of a quality underwater housing. No other reason. It amazes me that we are at a point now where I was equally happy to purchase either camera (though I secretly wanted the Fujifilm), and my choice was narrowed to a single factor, and I did not feel like I was having to compromise."

stephen palmer: "It's not about the cameras any more, it's about what it's pretty much always been about...the lenses. The camera manufacturers keep pumping out slow zoom after slow zoom and the market seems to accept it. There are some good fast to moderately fast lenses available but compared to the number of top quality cameras, quality lens systems are thin on the ground."

Stephen: "Well, Ken is right from a technical perspective; these cameras can all do what needs to be done outside of specialist requirements. I sense though that his view is incomplete. There is more to the camera than specifications. You noted loving a camera (or two...). For me this is important. My current camera is in most respects no better than its peers on paper. For me, though, it is an entirely different beast than its peers. It flows in my hands. It is seamless for the way my tiny brain operates. I have tried the peers. Some of them I liked. None were loved.

"I like, and need, to feel good about the tools I use in an activity which is at the intersection of art and science. The others just don't cut it for me, and this shows in the results. I'm producing better stuff with this camera."

ShadZee: "The rule of thumb in choosing between X or Y cameras: always choose X (X-T1, GX7, X-E2, X-M1, X2, X Vario, or even Moto X)."

Camera Raw 8.4

Does anyone know how to download ACR 8.4 for CS6 on a Mac? I keep hearing it's available but all I can find is the download for DNG 8.4. Any help or elucidation appreciated!

Management

UPDATE: Success! Thanks. Dumb mistake on my part: under Help > Updates, I saw "Camera Raw 7," but I failed to realize that there was a drop-down menu under that, which was hiding v. 8.4. When I ran it, it updated.

ACR 8.4., of course, has RAW support for the Fuji X-T1. I've just opened the first few RAF files, of shots I took to deliberately torture the sensor, and I'm starting  see why Fujifans are so high on their Fujicams' IQ. More on this (and Sigma Photo Pro) next week.

Blog Notes

I've been persistently behind on moderating comments this past week, and I wanted to apologize for that. It's been a too-hectic week. My very capable H&R Block friend Jackie and I finally got the taxes done late last evening and I will get caught up on the comments today.

I've also been talking to contractors, real estate agents, an excellent banker, and sundry advisors all week. (And thanks to all.) I'll talk about the results of the recent Editor's Print Sale and fundraiser tomorrow, in the Sunday off-topic "Open Mike." [UPDATE: Turns out I wasn't ready to write about it yet. I'll keep you posted, though. Sorry.  —MJ.]

Hope you have yourself a fine Spring weekend!

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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Why Cellphone Cameras Are Awful

...Because smartphones and cellphone cameras are eating away at the camera industry from the underside. Like a rampaging cancer, they're relentlessly destroying the health and vitality of the photographic products and services industries—and anything that affects the health of popular consumer products from the companies we depend on also eventually affects us.

Mike

ADDENDUM: A number of commenters to these last two posts, on both sides of the issue that isn't there, seem to be under the impression that I've said cellphone pictures are not good or that cellphone cameras are inadequate for serious photography. Not the case.

You'll recall that one of our most prestigious Print Sales, by Paul and John Paul Caponigro, featured a beautiful collaborative composition that included an iPhone photograph. Also, my consistent, longtime position is that both good and bad photographs can be made with any kind of camera...and I mean any. There exist fine photographs taken with pinhole cameras made from cardboard oatmeal cannisters; with homemade cameras; and I wrote a cover feature for the old Camera & Darkroom magazine about a photographer (Mary Kocol) who, for one project, used a "Sunpet," which was a plastic camera she got by sending in $1.99 and five comics from Bazooka bubblegum. (Mary also has some Diana pictures on her website.) And anyone who uses the finest cameras ever made will of course have made some perfectly bad photographs with them. That's not hard.

So—some commenters on both these posts have made sweeping characterizations of the content and quality of cellphone images, which is of course their prerogative. Just please don't think I would. —MJ

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:

Stephen Schaub: "Kinda like what digital photography did to film!"

Mike replies: Kinda like that, yes. Or what Netflix did to Blockbuster and online streaming is doing to Netflix. Live by the tech, die by the tech, right?

Mitch Krupp: "It looks to me that cellphones are doing to photography what MP3s have done to music. We have a whole generation of people that don't really know what good music sounds like and we're going to end up with a generation of people that don't have a clue what a good photo looks like, let alone know what goes into creating one. It's just all being dumbed down for the sake of gizmo sales and convenience."

Malcolm Leader: "Maybe some phones are better but the images from mine are so poor that I usually don't bother if I don't have a real camera with me. In my opinion, digital was a huge step up from film. Not only is the image quality superior (to me) but I still shudder at all the chemicals I exposed myself to in the 'olden' days."

Paul De Zan (partial comment): "The image capture of my iPhone 5 is so good that I seriously doubt anyone currently under about 20 will ever be in the market for a point-and-shoot camera."

Robert: "And yet, the other day I saw a tourist take a photo with his smartphone. Nothing new, but he had big DSLR with big lens on one hip and a camera bag on the other."

Why Cellphone Cameras Are Great

...Because they are introducing photography to a whole new generation of future photographers. We might not reap the benefits immediately, but twenty, thirty, and forty years from now, many of the great photographers of that future era will describe how they got interested in the problems and the possibilities of photographic imagemaking after they started taking pictures with their smartphone cameras. Cellphones are a recruitment device—arguably the most democratic and widespread window to photography ever provided to the public.

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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psu: "This is not why cell phone cameras are great. Cell phone cameras (really only iPhone cameras) are great because at least some of them finally use to great advantage the fact that a digital camera is a computer with an image capture device in it. If the camera companies had any kind of real competence in building computing devices, they would have seen this 10 years ago and built something interesting instead of basically rehashing a 20-year-old design and putting a CCD in it. Now I'll go leave this same message in the next post.  :-) "

Nicholas Condon: "I don't know how probable this is. Did the advent of the word processor make more good writers than there were in the days of the typewriter? Or the quill?"

Mike replies: I don't know about "more," but the advent of the word processor made me a writer, literally. (And as I usually add, I know what "literally" means.) I'm heavily dependent on a rewriting-rearranging type of workflow, and I had difficulty in the days of the typewriter (which I experienced when I was young). The Macintosh liberated me and made a writer out of me.

Jayson Merryfield: "The increased sociality of photography platforms these days exposes more and more fresh, impressionable minds to great photography from great photographers across the globe. Instagram works as a communications platform, but also an educational tool as well."

David Miller: I'm sceptical. I am surrounded by people for whom cellphones are an integral and—in their view—essential part of daily life. Selfies and snapshots proliferate from them in an unending and apparently satisfying stream. Although I know people who use cellphones in addition to other types of cameras to make good photographs, I don't know anyone who has started out capturing images with a cellphone and who has subsequently made the switch to more thoughtful and demanding photography, be it with a cellphone or other form of camera. Do you?

Mike replies: That's like looking at a sea of 7-year-old Chinese gymnastics students and saying they're not great gymnasts. It's the pool that matters. Of course the great majority of cellphone users won't go one to become photographers. But by enlarging the pool you more effectively locate, identify, and encourage the always-rare talented individuals. What would the world think of Michael Jordan if he'd been born into a Georgia slave family in 1825? The more kids who grow up playing backyard and playground basketball as a matter of course, the more Michael Jordans there will be.

I do think it could be argued that another essential condition of encouraging talent is for society to value the activity; as an example, society in Vienna in 1820 greatly valued classical music composers and they're not much valued anywhere right now. The graph of society's valuing of photographers has gone up and down crazily since 1839, and it could be argued that society doesn't place much of a value on it now. But I still think that by broadening the pool you will at least increase the number of photographers and photo enthusiasts.

Stephen McCullough: "[I know a number of people who started on a cellphone and are moving on to more serious cameras.] My daughter is an example. She is 16. She has grown up aware of my photographic life, and enjoying the results but showing no interest. Her iPhone enabled photography anywhere, anytime, but also made her want to try things for which the iPhone is less than ideal. She asked questions. She borrowed my cameras. She inherited my beloved GF1. She now has a commercially successfully blog (Food and Fashion) for which her photography is a driving force."

a2b: "There is more to cellphone cameras than 'traditional' photography. Above all, it's an ultimate note taking device. I would never think of using a DSLR to take a photograph of a USPS shipping receipt, so I can record the tracking number, or to photograph a wine sticker label so next time I go for groceries I have an easy time remembering what wine I like."

Wjcstp: "Cell phones are great (at least in comparison to my current digital camera) in that they can email or post photos online immediately after taking them. That capability alone is my primary reason for taking pictures with my phone. I rarely edit photos at all on the phone, if the photo is important enough to need editing I'll wait until I can use LR at home. When I eventually upgrade my camera, the ability to at least use Wi-Fi will be high on the list."

Chad Thompson: "For me cellphones have resulted in another revenue stream. They allow me to live Tweet, Instagram, and/or Facebook a client's event in real time. At the end of a couple hours not only have I have photographed the event but I have also delivered product and billed the client with the same device that fits into my front skinny jean pocket."

Giant Camera, Giant Photograph

Giant Camera: This is no hoax—it's real. The Dreaming Camera Café is a coffee shop built by two retired South Korean Army Aviation pilots next to the bungalow where they live with their daughter in the YangPyung countryside east of Seoul.

The photographic theme is continued inside, where the telephone is also modeled on a red Rolleiflex and the toilet paper dispensers look like film cannisters!

Part café, part photographica museum

We like, we like. Here's the Café's Facebook page.

It's supposedly a big tourist attraction and popular with the locals. Anybody been there?

-

Giant Photograph: On a much more somber note, this art installation in the Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan is part of an effort called #NotABugSplat. The area has been heavily bombed by U.S. predator drones, where activists claim that 380 drone strikes have killed 3,500 adults and more than 200 children. A "bug splat" is allegedly military slang for a drone casualty, derived from the fact that people look like insects to drone cameras.

Giant photograph seen from the ground

The girl pictured is not identified, but according to the Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), one of the organizations that helped create the giant poster, the child lost both her parents and two young siblings in a drone attack.

The purpose of the giant photograph is to give a face to possible victims, from the air. More here.

Mike
(Thanks to Andrew and Stan B.)

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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Mandeno Moments: "The Dreaming Camera Café is what every wife fears when her husband develops GAS.  :-) "

Bliss

So have you ever had a photograph that's so valuable that FedEx and UPS won't accept it for shipping? Charles O'Rear did. He had to get on a plane and hand-deliver it.

A nice little video visit with the photographer of the famous Windows XP wallpaper shot. (How many other people are thinking "why don't I live in a place like that?")

Shot on Fuji Velvia with a Mamiya RZ67.

Mike
(Thanks to Hans Muus)

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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Eamon Hickey: "In somebody's vacation house somewhere in the late 1980s, I came across an old National Geographic issue from the 1970s, if memory serves, with a story called 'The Middle Kingdom' about California's Central Coast. I remember being knocked out by the stunning photography for that story, by a guy called Charles O'Rear. My understanding is that he shot quite a few stories for the Geographic over about 20 years or so. He was no lucky amateur when he shot 'Bliss.'

"I kept my eye out for his work, which I'd see fairly regularly in various magazines; he did a lot of superb editorial work around the West Coast of the U.S. for many, many years. I have great admiration for craftsman/artists like him—creating distinctive and artful work within the constraints of commercial/editorial assignments.

"I started my life in the camera business at the largest pro camera store (now long gone) in the Sonoma/Napa area where O'Rear lives. I never met him, but several other pros who regularly came into the store knew him and had only good things to say.

"'Tis indeed one of the world's charmed places. Many of those pros I knew made their living shooting for the wine industry—vineyards, wineries, wine bottles etc. Scenes like 'Bliss' are everywhere."

Dave: "I'm fortunate to live in the Bay Area, about 25 minutes from where the famous Windows photo was taken. After living most my life in the upper Midwest I don't take a moment of California living for granted. In early winter the hills turn green and the landscape looks other-worldly. By mid-May, the California sun turns the seasonal grass to toast. It's still beautiful out here during the summer but not magical like the spring. The best time to take photos is when the winter storms clear. The air in California is inherently dry and the rainy weather evaporates in spectacular fashion. One morning last week it was a raining and I was home taking care of our toddler. Sensing that the weather was about to break I took my boy up to the hills on the edge of our neighborhood. Soon enough the sun popped out and I got this photo."

A Night Photographer's Carry-Around Kit

Friend o' TOP Jeffrey Goggin sent along a picture of his current everyday outfit:

He comments, "If I ever had to pick one camera to use for a really long time (never say 'forever' when it comes to electronic devices!) then the X100S will be it...no hesitation, no regrets."

The companion WCL-X100 wide-angle converter, a lens hood, IR filter, and a slew of batteries are in the small belt pouch. Along with the compact tripod—which he needs because his major interest is long-exposure night photography—it all fits in a messenger bag. Fully loaded it weighs less than five pounds.

Lately he's been experimenting with high-speed flash work made possible by the Fuji's leaf shutter, such as this photo of his 78-year-old father doing his daily physical therapy walk (he broke his hip back in December and is still recovering. Right, they're already wearing shorts and T-shirts in Scottsdale, Arizona).

"I carry this camera with me pretty much every time I leave the house.  It's also my street photography camera of choice when I'm in NYC, and I photographed with it extensively on my Salton Sea outing last December despite having a couple of much bigger guns along as well.

"Honestly, I continue to be amazed by the performance of this camera in all respects."

Mike
(Thanks to Jeffrey)

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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David: "Jeffrey, I was just watching a video review of this camera.... What's the thingumajig thumb rest on yours? And what setup do you have for high-speed flash?"

Jeffrey Goggin replies: The thumb rest is a Thumbs Up EP-5S from Match Technical and it really improves the camera's ergonomics so far as my large hands are concerned. (Yes, there are many less expensive alternatives around, but this one fit my hand best, so was worth the money to me.) As for which flash I'm using, I have a Fuji EF-42, which I don't necessarily recommend, but am using because I already had it on hand because I bought it two years ago with my X Pro-1. For this photo of my father, though, I used the  built-in flash of the X100S...it's not powerful, as on-board flashes go, but I'm finding that it's often just powerful enough.

Shameless plug while I'm here: Feel free to check out my photo-blog and see some of the night (and other) photography I've been doing with this and my X-Pro 1 of late.

Elisabeth Spector: "Jeffrey—Thanks for providing the link to your blog. I'm normally not a huge fan of night photography, but I think that's because most night photography I’ve seen a.) is in color, with a very limited (and eventually tiresome IMO) palette, often with yellow casts from sodium vapor lights and b.) rarely seems able to display any conscious effort to capture, and capitalize on, light and form. Your night images don't suffer from either problem! Black and white certainly seems the way to go, and the tonality and processing style are both very much to my taste. Secondly, and more importantly, your images make fabulous use of light to accentuate the geometric forms of your subjects as well as to create compelling compositions (wonderful, balanced abstract areas of stark whites and inky blacks). To me, the images seem to be much less about the literal subject matter, and I think that’s the reason they are so successful.

"It's fascinating to me how these night photographs are the inverse in many ways of daytime images, with the negative space being dark instead of light, and with the light sources belonging to/emanating from the subjects themselves rather than coming from some remote source like the sun. I can't remember the last time I saw a group of images that made me see things in a whole new way—a way that made me really stop and think (and smile in appreciation of having discovered something new and beautiful). This really made my day."

Scott: "You know, all this hubbub about camera size is a bit overblown. I would love to have the image quality of my D800 in an easily pocketable camera, but there are times when it's nice to have a big, heavy camera, especially if you do long lens work. I'll probably feel differently when I'm older, but for now, I don't really mind carrying my D800 with 80–400mm when I'm chasing wildlife through the mountains, and I usually bring at least a few other lenses 'just in case.'"

Mike replies: Your view is a minority one, but it's worthwhile being reminded of it. I even knew a photographer who preferred big cameras—the bigger the better. He just liked 'em. He carried a Bronica GS-1 as a walk-around camera way back when—not the biggest of the medium-format beasts, but a big medium-format beast all the same.

Fuji X-T1: Size (A Few More Thoughts)

Fabio Riccardo (an important early advertiser of ours, and part of the reason TOP survived the aughts) wrote a nice comparison of the X-T1 and the Sony A7 that I added as a "Featured Comment" to the first "X-T1 Size" post, below.

It seems to me that the X-T1, X-Pro1, OM-D E-M5, and Sony A7 models are all close enough to "the same size" as really makes no difference unless you're being finicky and fastidious (which, of course, we all often are when we appraise cameras for fun, but never mind that for now).

The real difference, as Fabio points out, is the lenses. The larger the sensor, the larger the lenses, all else being equal. It's true that it's possible to design smaller lenses for larger sensors, but the designer is under heavier constraints, size and selling price being the top two (of many) constraints on the freedom of lens designers.

The third A7 camera, the just-announced A7s.

In this three-way comparison, Sony's tendency not to build up lens lines has to be brought into the equation. In fact, with the announcement yesterday of the A7s, a 12-MP variant with 4K video (read more about it here) and the third camera in the A7 line, Sony is actually close to making more cameras for the A7 lineup than lenses(!).

Of course you can still use adapted lenses. Part of the fun of mirrorless.

Micro 4/3 still really makes the most sense if you want the most flexible compact mirrorless system. But of course half the fun is the choice, and, as Fabio discusses in his comment, now we have three sensor sizes to choose from (four if you want to include 1"): Olympus and Panasonic in 4/3 sensor size, Fuji and Sony NEX (or ex-NEX, as I now call it) et al. in APS-C, and Sony in FF. If you're looking for a compact mirrorless system to commit to, you've got a lot of considerations to weigh, but it's a fun and interesting choice to be able to make.

Mike
(Thanks to Fabio)

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:

Glenn Brown: "Size matters. I have used the Fujifilm X cameras professionally since the X-Pro-1 came out, and love the system. Last week I had a tough very wide angle assignment and borrowed a friend's D4 with 14mm, and laughed on how big it is, and shake my head at the backbreaking heft of it. Ordered the Fuji new ultrawide zoom today."

Sixblockseast (partial comment): "Part of me thinks Sony comes out with all those A7s just to showcase their sensors which they then sell to other camera makers. Hence no need for lenses."

Thanks! (Update)

I'll let you know for sure in a couple of weeks, but we think the Print Sale / Capital Campaign that concluded last night reached, or came close to, Goal #4, which will allow me to move some walls, doors, and windows at the front of my existing house and more than double the size of TOP Global Headquarters, which will help hugely. I've got three contractors coming in to give me estimates. The new room will be designed to be the living room for future owners of the house, but double as office space for me, now. I've got some interesting ideas about the design of the space which I'll pass along in case anyone's interested. The ideas originated when I was designing a house for a divorced parent, and will work well for that application as well in case it applies to a future owner of the house.

I don't think I raised enough to buy the house down the street. But here's a nice thing about that: now at least I don't have to feel like a schmuck and a failure every time I drive by that house; I tried. Fell short, yes, but it was a stretch from the start, so falling short isn't so bad.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you just might find
You get what you need

I'll post numbers and amounts in due course, but in the meantime thanks very much for pitching in to help our little corner of the Web keep going—whether you bought a print or made a straight donation. I will put every dollar you gave me back into the business.

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:

Martin: "I'd like to make a cash donation. Can I still do that?"

Mike replies: Absolutely. There's a button in the right-hand sidebar. Thanks!

Andrew: "In my opinion, you should save the money, do another fundraiser in a month or two, and then buy the house. If you only remodel, I think you'll always be disappointed."

Mike replies: The problem is that I don't want the site to be all about raising money for the site. It's always discouraging when activist charities get to be that way, and I think it would be downright annoying here. It would be like PBS never ending their fund drives and getting back to programming. We need to raise a bit of funds every now and then, but we need to get back to life as normal too.

MM: "Count me in with all of those who say there should be a Part II to this effort. And if you're going to quote Stones lyrics, how about, 'If I don't get some shelter, oh yeah, I'm going to fade away.'"

Michel: "Congratulations. Having moved a few times and having sworn after the last that it would be the last I think Goal #4 is the best."

Fuji X-T1: Size

Just a few quick shots to give you an idea of the Fuji X-T1's size. I think it's quite possible to be misled by Internet pictures of the Fuji; seen alone, it look chunky and robust (kinda reminds me of the old Nikon EL, which was a brick) and it's easy to "see" it as being larger and heavier than it actually is. It's actually quite small.

Here it is next to the D800 with its 28mm ƒ/1.8G prime lens. (The Fuji has the 23mm/35mm-e ƒ/1.4 mounted.)

The X-T1 also seems a bit more delicate than you might expect. It's hardly fragile, but it's not particularly heavy even for its size, and in person it seems quite compact.

And here it is next to the Olympus OM-D E-M1. This would be a little bit more fair if the Fuji were sporting its own pancake lens, the XF 27mm, but I don't have one here. The Fuji's fast 23mm (35mm-e) lens is on the large side for the camera but it isn't large or heavy in any absolute sense. It only weighs in at a little over 10 ounces. Back in film SLR days, I used to consider that about average for an ordinary mainstream single-focal-length lens.

Both of these cameras strike me as being distinctly "right sized" for reduced-sensor mirrorless cameras (and, honestly, given my tastes, for cameras in general). Wouldn't be an improvement for them to be any smaller; wouldn't be an improvement for them to be any bigger. (Of course, tastes in that regard differ.) The Fuji is a little bigger than the Olympus, but both are notably comfortable, both in the hand and for carrying.

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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Fabio Riccardi: "It has been a while since I have made any contribution to TOP. I wanted to say something about the X-T1, since I just got one too.  :-)

"I sold all my Canon lenses and bodies (5D Mk[x]) a couple of years ago. They were just accumulating dust somewhere in a closet. All my recent photos were coming from my iPhone, which gets kind of limited after a while.

"I bought a Fuji X100s about a year ago, and I just got a X-T1. Life is fun again. I took countless really fun and interesting photos with the X100s, but I felt I wanted Big Lenses again in my life.

"The reason I'm writing this is that I also have recently bought a Sony A7, which in many regards is a very similar animal to the X-T1: similar size, weight, form factor, and IQ promises.

"Both cameras have very high quality EVF systems, which at this point I find more useful than the best OVFs: much better to use in low light, and much better focus accuracy (you can magnify the image, on the Sony the focus point magnification is specially impressive).

"The issue here is Full Frame versus APS-C: Which one makes sense for this camera size?

"To make a long story short, I find that the Sony body is better than the Fuji. The Sony is more polished and refined in many ways, the autofocus system and the metering just work better, and the viewfinder is actually better on the Sony.

"Fuji's viewfinder is optically superior, slightly larger and really crisp from corner to corner. The Sony is a little fuzzier in the corners, and a tad smaller. The actual 'view quality' of the EVF is better on the Sony though: the image is less contrasty, shadows are more open and highlights are never blown out (Sony's less aggressive metering system also makes quite a difference here). Fuji's EVF also becomes significantly more noisy in the shadows and in low light images, with a quality of noise that is more ugly and distracting.

"Where the Sony fails is on the lenses. There are only four lenses available at the moment for the A7, and I bought the 35mm ƒ/2.8, 55mm ƒ/1.8, and the 24–70mm ƒ/4. The 55mm ƒ/1.8 is pretty amazing, the 35mm ƒ/2.8 is OK, and the 24–70mm ƒ/4 is quite disappointing. The issue is really the size of the lenses: to cover a FF sensor and still keep the lenses small is not easy.

"In fact the Fuji 18–55/2.8–4 kit zoom lens is optically quite a bit better than the Sony's 24–70mm ƒ/4, at less than half the size, and half the price.

"As an advantage to the Sony, the sensor is just better: more resolution, comparable noise characteristics (with less color smudge), and better dynamic range (about 1 EV more headroom).

"I'm not sure which camera I will eventually keep, I've had the A7 for a few weeks already, and I just got the X-T1 a few days ago. I have the impression that I like the pictures coming from the Sony better, but it might just be a matter of getting to know the Fuji better. I really like them both for different reason, and they both have quirks that irritate me quite a bit.

"I'll keep you posted about which one I will eventually keep.  :-)

"Cheers, Fabio."

More About the Pictures: Bonus Print

This is the bonus print that we're including for anyone who buys a full suite of prints in the Print Sale that's now in its last day. It was taken while trying out equipment (are you sensing a theme in my life?)—in this case a Nikkor 58mm ƒ/1.4 lens, on the Nikon D800 (which I've just sold to help with the raising of funds). Yes, I was probably standing too close to the tracks when I took this, given what we've subsequently learned about staying off of railroad tracks.

That's not the only thing I was doing wrong. I was without gloves in seriously cold, windy weather, and that was not wise at all—my hands hurt a lot after I returned to the car and continued to hurt for many days after this experience. The D800, on the other hand, worked just fine.

The picture shows the old Soo Line Station here in Waukesha (now operated by Canadian National). It was taken at that nice moment that sometimes happens near sunset on overcast days, when the sun briefly appears near the horizon under the cloud cover. I hadn't meant to photograph the tracks or the train station—that's just what I happened to be driving by when the sun came out. That light doesn't last long, so you get what you can get.

This picture is only available as a free premium for those who buy the full set of prints, and I won't be printing this one again. The prints will be signed and numbered.

Mike

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More About the Pictures: Third Tier

This is perhaps the prettiest digital picture I've ever taken. It's a view of Burt Lake, Michigan, from the family summer house that was recently sold. We were on the lakeshore for exactly 100 years, from 1913 to 2013. A beautiful place.

That means the picture is, of course, a family photograph...but, as with many scenics, one that's generic enough to be universal. (I should have a poster made of this, to sell to Northern Michigan gift stores.) The manmade objects save it from idealization, which is something I always seek out—I really don't like the idea of "perfected" landscapes, in which all the "bad" things are excised and the views are isolated to look "unspoiled." Or whatever the motivation for that is...I've never quite understood it. When Robert Adams took the pictures in From the Missouri West, one of his principle personal guidelines was to make sure that all of the pictures contained at least some trace of the hand of man. That was to prevent himself from falling prey to that romanticizing, idealizing impulse that drove so many older landscapists. Anyway this is the shore as it looked at sunrise one morning, a picture both honest and beautiful.

(We did clone out a buoy that looked like a black dot on the water. So I ain't so pure.)

The print was difficult to get right; but Ctein got it right—just right. I can't imagine it looking better. Which makes it also the prettiest print of my digital work ever made.

It's one of those prints that's dependent on the viewing light of the print to get the proper sense of the light in the scene. We made it so that it benefits from good viewing light but doesn't require spotlighting.

And the bigger one is the largest print of my work ever made. We sized that one at 52 inches because the largest mat board that most frame shops can easily get is 40x60". A 52-inch print can be matted with 40x60" mat board.

The panorama was made by merging five exposures taken with a Pentax K20D and the excellent Pentax DA 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro Limited lens—it's roughly 64 megapixels. I was "testing" the camera and lens at the time, to review.

We're going to limit and number the large prints of this picture sold in this sale, just because would have been almost certain that I'd never be able to print it so large again anyway. Too much work to get everything right!

Mike

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More About the Pictures: Second Tier

This is the middle level of photographs in our current fundraising sale. Both are among my most popular pictures, and both are from TOP posts.

The one on the left is from a "Random Snap" post from last July, only this one was taken with the OM-D E-M5. I didn't get along with the E-M5 (lots of people do; I've explained very carefully elsewhere that my eventual rejection of it isn't a rap against the camera), but I really liked its results. (I'm hoping to learn this summer whether I like the E-M1's pictures as much.)

I have to note that I'm one of those photographers whose life's work in photography was interrupted by the onset of the digital era. I shot 35mm B&W for twenty years (1980–2000) and had amassed a pretty nice body of work. I've never quite been able to continue that body of work with digital—mainly because B&W is no longer "natural" to the medium of photography, and because it took a while for the technology to start yielding acceptable results (a point we're well past now, of course).

Along the way I've made various attempts to restart my old "way of working," without success. However, the "hands" picture is probably the single digital picture that comes closest, in subject and rendition, to my "real" work. It might also be the digital B&W print I'm personally happiest with—Ctein got it just right.

"Hands" was a pure snapshot (you can see the "proof sheet" at the link)—I was just goofin' around with the camera in a speedboat on Burt Lake in Michigan. It shows my son and his ex-girlfriend Kirsten, and his grandmother's hand is also visible.

The picture on the right is another pure snapshot—I was writing a post about the weather on December 1st, 2006, when TOP was still very new, and I was almost too lazy to go to the door and snap a quick picture of the snow to illustrate the post with. Good thing I made the effort—that picture has earned more than $20,000 over the years! It was taken with the K-M 7D and the Minolta 28–75mm lens made for Minolta by Tamron in China.

And you know how criminals always return to the scene of the crime? I've snapped that same scene, more or less, a number of times since then, even in snow. Nothing ever looks anything like this shot, of course. And now that big old elm tree is gone, too. The world is a river, and that goes for the visual world, too.

Mike

P.S. I'm not going to get to the other two prints tonight (Sunday). I haven't had a minute free all day and I'm running out of steam. But I'll write about them in the morning, before the sale ends, never fear.

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Featured Comments from:

Andrew Kirk: "How does one earn $20,000 from a single image?"

Mike replies: Selling prints. This is the second TOP sale I've had of this picture, and it has sold a number of times privately. Never for more than $300, but it adds up. This has never sold as stock or for advertising, but those are two more ways for a picture to earn income. Peter's Paris Rooftops picture has sold in the six figures as a poster, which is yet another way.

More About the Pictures: First Tier

Our current Mike the Ed. Print Sale, the first stage of TOP's Capital Campaign, ends tomorrow (Monday) at noon. I wanted to give you a few of the technical details of the pictures.

All the first-tier photographs are family pictures taken at various lakes in Wisconsin. The two color pictures were taken in the mid-2000s with my first digital SLR, the 6-MP Konica-Minolta 7D. The one on the left shows my son Z and his friend Steve Jozef jumping off my friend (and Steve's uncle) Dan's float boat—the whole gang often goes out on the lake for boat ride after dinner on the porch. Dan usually drops anchor somewhere on the lake, and some people (kids and adults both) take the opportunity to swim.

Those are both at Spring Lake, near Mukwonago, a tiny lake bounded mostly by undeveloped land which I believe belongs to the University of Wisconsin. There are a very small number of houses on the lake—I believe it's something like nine or 13.

You're never far from a lake in Wisconsin. "There are 15,074 documented lakes in Wisconsin. Of these, about 40 percent have been named. They range in size from small one-and two-acre ponds to 137,708-acre Lake Winnebago." (Wikipedia.)

The one on the right is a sad picture now, although it wasn't when it was taken. Ned Schley's great friend Bill Weh had a dog he deeply loved, a black Labrador retriever named Jake. Bill and his Jake were utterly sympatico in the way that old man and old dog sometimes can be—they understood each other completely. Jake died not long after. Bill got a new black Labrador, Wilson, but I'm sure he never stopped missing Jake. We lost Bill himself recently too, and he is sorely missed.

The picture tells a story very familiar to the Spring Lake crew—Bill would stand on the dock and toss the tennis ball for Jake, and Jakey would leap in after it and bring it back to Bill for another throw. Hard to say which one of them enjoyed it more.

The picture in the middle is my nephew David, now on full scholarship at the University of Texas, Dallas, fishing...or, more specifically, freeing the hook for his father, my bro, who'd gotten it snagged...um, again. (David and Z are the only fishermen in the family.) The picture was taken at Lake Koshkonong, southeast of Madison, last July 4th, with the Sony NEX-6, during the period of time when I was determined to use it only for B&W. That camera is just very easy and friendly to use—great for casual shooting—and the conversions look nice.

Mike

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Open Mike: What We Have To Look Forward To

Windsor Drive in Waukesha, in front of TOP Global HQ

...Things may be about to change for me here—they're "repaving" my little two-block-long road starting tomorrow. Think it needs it?  :-)  I took a bunch of "before" shots two days ago with the little Sigma.

They've done this to several roads in the area over the past two years—your Stimulus dollars at work—and it's a little more involved than a simple resurfacing. They dig great holes and replace giant concrete cisterns and so forth. Makes a fine big mess, and looks swell when they're all done. The project is slated to take five months.

I'm pretty sure this isn't going to be great for my peace and quiet (I'm unusually sensitive to noise and noise pollution, unfortunately). And as for what you have to look forward to, well, I guess you can expect a lot of road construction camera and lens test shots for the foreseeable.

But look at that from the bright side. TOP: More than cats and flowers!

Mike

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Herman Krieger: "You will likely end up with a lot of tarred images."

Mike replies: Herman, I heard a joke you might like. Man calls the local paper to place a classified ad for his not-quite classic old car. When the ad appears, it reads "Common gear, good condition, $900."

The car he was trying to sell was his Karmann Ghia.

The Fuji Has Landed

Thanks to your friends at B&H Photo, a camera somewhat incongruously labeled "FUJIFILM" has landed at crowded TOP World Headquarters. Yes, the Fuji X-T1 is here. Along with it came the Fujinon Super EBC XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 R aspherical lens, which turns out to be neither as big nor as heavy as I had feared from anecdotal reports.

And I promptly became confused, because I somehow got it into manual focus mode and, for a longish time, could not figure out how to get it back to AF.

They make "instruction books" for cameras, did you know that? I must have known that at one point. Well, I went scurrying for that.

Turns out there's one of those tricky focus rings on the lens that snaps in and out, and when the lens is in MF position that's all the camera will do, MF.

But that was a minor detour and I don't even know why I'm bothering to tell you about it.

Except possibly that I feel the need to temper my hugely favorable first impression. You like dials and knobs? Manual controls? You are going to love this. You think you want a Nikon Df? Hold off until you try one of these. This is the old-fashioned knobs-'n'-dials cam. What an absolute ergonomic masterp...no, no, Mike, no, stop gushing. Not time yet. You just got the thing. You are going to damage your reputation for uprightness and objectivity. Or rather, for not overly skewed and quirky yet transparent subjectivity.

I need to restrain my enthusiasm. Yes I do. And shut up. Right.

These Fujifilm gizmos have been very popular 'mongst our people (you know, incorrigible and inveterate Photo-Dawgs of all stripes, sexes, and types), but I've not had one myself before now. No gushing, but you have not heard the last of this, on that you can rely. I have the camera for thirty days. Thanks, B&H.

Although I will say that the engraving on the fauxprism should read "FUJIFILM [sic]."

Shutting up now.

More L8r,

Mike

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John Gibson: "Nikon D700—> Fuji X-E1—> Fuji X-T1.

"The D700 was a joy. It was the ultimate (for my needs)—enough dots to make good prints, great performance in natural/low light, all those beautiful Nikon lenses. A fav combination: D700 + AF-S 17–35mm ƒ/2.8, but who can convince one to leave all of the other beauties at home....

"Then at 55, lugging the Nikon kit around all day (whining alert) became challenging. Along comes the Fuji X-Pro1 shortly followed by X-E1. Wow. Beautiful images at a quarter of the weight. Done. Now, X-T1 addresses focus speed and viewfinder lag. Done + done. Not looking back...and my back is happier."

Benjamin Marks: "Definitely an appealing collection of bells and whistles. Any sense of whether there is a compelling argument for an XPro-1 owner to upgrade based on image quality? [This is the first Fuji I've used —Ed.] I went to dpreview and tried their A-B comparison tool at 100 and 1600 ISO, but the images of all the Fujifilm X-trans models looked identical to me on my cheap laptop screen. On a more philosophical note, are we now seeing the advantages between models being expressed in haptics/intellegence-of-interface rather than in model-to-model IQ gains? Sure seems like it."

Adam Lanigan: "You lucky Photo-Dawg, you. I'm just wrapping up my first month with the X-T1 and am in love. It is a joy to use and the results so far have been nothing short of stellar. I have nary but a handful of niggles with it, all of which can be either overlooked or hopefully corrected via Fujifilm's dogged attention to firmware updates. I also have hardly a regret to speak of in selling off my DSLR gear, which seems quite leaden and archaic to me now."

Scott Mackie: "If you're going to go old-school with the Fuji X-T1, you have to go all the way:

"Yes, that's a screw-mount Leitz Summaron on an M adapter and the Fuji M-mount. Works just fine. The X-T1 is a real joy with the M-mount adapter. The EVF compensates in brightness when stopped down so it's still usable for focus. In fact, the EVF on the X-T1 is a revelation to me. I've hated most of them I've used but this is the first EVF I've used that actually gets close to the promise. Works well with glasses on too, which you've got to love at my age. The different manual focus tools are pretty helpful. I've found it easier to focus the X-T1 in low light over my M9. If it wasn't for the smaller sensor, I'd probably shoot the X-T1 over the M9 most days. The X-T1 is quickly becoming the camera I grab to head out the door."

Why People Love Foveon Sensors: A WAG

'Kay, so this is just pure intution—what Ctein calls a WAG, which stands for wild-ass guess.

But I'm going to say that I think I know why people love the Foveon sensors. They just get addicted.

Never mind measured resolution or color fidelity or all the other things measurebators gas on about endlessly—Foveon Merrill images just look crisp-sharp, ultra pretty. And I can see how some people would come to find that deeply gratifying, like a long draught of sweet, clear mountain stream water when you're parched and dehydrated. I can see how, once you get used to that, you would just want to see it again and again. It would scratch an itch, satisfy a need.

I spent a very fun few hours yesterday diddling around with DP2M files. They really are pretty. I don't think Sigma sensor lovers care if they look better than X or as good as Y. They just want the look they get, and they can't get enough.

Of course, yesterday it was frigid and windy and we had sleet. Today is actually looking vaguely—dare I say it? Springlike, with the mercury soaring into the lower 40s (Fahrenheit) and no wind and clear skies.

That's all for now. Just wanted to register that WAG out loud. But stay tuned for the next post.

Mike

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Good News!

Great news—we've reached Goal #3 in the Print Sale / capital campaign!! I'm very excited about this and have already started shopping for flat files and sketching ideas for new cabinets and a table.

Also in the good news column, the sacrificial Miata was sold for the good of the cause on Thursday—to a TOP reader from New Hampshire named Larry G. He's sending a car transport firm to pick it up. I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute I owned that car—it was great fun and I'm very glad I got to experience it for three years. I loved the thing. I think Larry will be happy if he enjoys it half as much. (I'm not sure yet just how much I'm going to miss it yet. I hope not too much.) Next on the block—the D800 and 58mm ƒ/1.4 lens. Those will go on Ebay. Sandy R. is interested in the whole plate camera again, too. We go through this every so often. Maybe he likes to think about it more than he actually wants to buy it, and if so, I totally get that.

My friend Art Elkon, office manager for Culver Brands, passed along a tip about a good place to buy good ergonomic office chairs for less. Thanks Art.

Ctein wouldn't let me whine about this before, which was no doubt good advice, but I wanted to tell you about the desk I've been using for years. (Reason: it amuses me.) I almost take a sort of pride in how awful it is. Well, maybe "pride" isn't the right word. It's a hulking goverment surplus desk from at least the 1950s—more likely the '40s. I bought it from a junk dealer in Woodstock, Illinois, who had refinished half of it...and therefore offered it to me for half price! Which makes me laugh right there. Would you buy a meal in a restaurant that was half cooked if you could get it for half price? Such a deal. I guess I could have refinished the rest of it myself. Theoretically.

On one side you open the cabinet and behind it is a sturdy tray on a mechanism of articulated metal arms and heavy springs. Tug on the handle, and the tray pops out and up with surprising speed and force—it's a typewriter caddy, and it was meant to have a typewriter on it acting as a counterweight. A big, heavy typewriter. The stylish 1940s secretary could type when she needed to and then put the typewriter neatly away. Of course, now, the Rube Goldberg typewriter caddy makes half the desk more or less useless, because there's absolutely nothing to use the pop-out typewriter tray for. Except, possibly, launching small children a few feet into the air (those springs are strong). It's been a while since I needed a typewriter.

On the other side there's a slide-out writing surface with a tattered 1961 calendar stuck on it.

The typewriter that went with this desk probably looked something like this:

Those suckers were built to last till about...now. Like the desk.

I've modified it further—it has a power strip screwed to the back of the desktop, and I've nailed a board to the right hand side as a place to put my preamp, from which I control my computer sound, including music. (Listening to music as loud as you want to is one of the primary advantages of working at home.)

I will say one thing for this gross old desk—it is built like the proverbial brick outhouse. I'm going to need a lot of help to get it out to the curb for pickup. I'll take a picture of it by the curb so that those of you who contributed to this project can see the extent of the improvement you're enabling.  :-)  I am greatly looking forward to replacing the Hulk.

As happy as I am at the thought of being able to remodel, it would be better still if I just had a little more room. More space would just make things easier and much more effective.

On to Goal #4! Anybody need a D800?

I'll write about the pictures in the sale today or tomorrow. Lots of stuff going on today...which I will get to in a moment.

Mike

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toto: "Another option would be to save the money and pool it with money from subsequent fundraisers in order to buy the house across the street."

Mike replies: A good idea. After we started this sale we heard from a reader who is a professional fundraiser working at a high level. He did say that most fundraisers are not one-shot but multi-part, and that there's nothing wrong with having several facets to it. Gonna put my thinking cap on about that.

Jim Witkowski: "Had I known the type of desk you were using earlier, I would have recommended one of these."

Mike replies: That's hilarious. I especially like their tagline, "A groundbreaking advancement in the field of obsolescence!" Maybe they're the ones who should make the digital conversions for old mechanical cameras that the Internet has been begging for for the last 20 years. (<—Note: a group that doesn't include me).