The Online Photographer

Tiered Archiving

As I've been thinking about this, it feels like the best archiving plan (for me) would be a tiered plan.

• At the base tier, keep everything, with an ordinary hard drive backup plus Cloud backup. Storage is cheap, and you never know what you might want or need in the future; your shooting is your working archive that you might continue to draw from as long as you're actively photographing.

• Segregate copies of the "good keepers" out to secondary folders, and keep additional backups of this much smaller archive. This would be, what, maybe 1/10th of all your shooting? 1/5th? Not a large percentage anyway. Go to extra lengths to keep these folders safe.

• For your very best shots, the irreplaceables—which might be 1/10th or 1/5th of your "good keepers," maybe?—do everything you can think of to preserve them. Multiple copies, prints, books, burn to archival disks, offsite storage, or all of the above. I probably have only a few hundred shots that fall into this category from when I started shooting digitally in 2003.

These two pictures of my son Zander, at ages 1 and 14, are among my "irreplaceables"—pictures it would really hurt me to lose. In a tiered archiving system, pictures like these would be worth extra efforts at redundancy.

A tiered system makes it much easier to go to extra measures for the pictures that are truly treasures to you...without creating onerous amounts of work.

Now...could I actually do this? That would remain to be seen. And as I say, a very good test of the efficacy of a backup plan is whether you actually do it. Just talking about it is not, by itself, enough.

Mike

P.S. The top picture was taken with my last film camera, an Olympus OM-4T, and the OM Zuiko 100mm ƒ/2 lens, on Tri-X. The bottom picture was taken with my first digital SLR (third digital camera), the Konica-Minolta 7D, and the Tamron-built Konica-Minolta 28–75mm ƒ/2.8 zoom lens. Originally an economy lens, the current Sony-branded version is quite expensive. But it's a lovely lens on reduced-sensor DSLRs (I haven't used it much on FF).

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

psu: "I do two tiers. Everything and the selects. The selects are a few hundred per year, which is more than is worth keeping but not enough more that it really matters. Many copies of the selects get copied to many devices in addition to the various backups both on site and off (backblaze is nice for off site, by the way).

"But, I don't make prints of anything (mostly). I'm just counting on there being so many copies of the selects that I'll have them in some form in general. Prints seem like a good idea to me in theory, but only in theory. In practice they seem like too much trouble and don't look as nice (in some ways) as high resolution screen images do (i.e. Retina iMac screens) I don't have a large archive of film pictures. Which makes this a bit easier. But I am still in the process of sending the film to scancafe.com to 'archive' it to digital files. I wonder what I will find."

Dean Silliman: "I've come to a similar conclusion about tiered archiving just in the last month. But I'll do just a second tier of selects.

"A huge bonus is that you can export the selects out to the Apple ecosystem and have them backed up and available everywhere for very little expense or hassle. So RAW pics are in Lightroom where they can be managed, then the optimized selects go out as full quality JPEGs into Apple Photos and therefore to iCloud where they then can be seen on the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, etc., and easy online sharing is accomplished. The selects are also there begging to be made into easy books."

Eli Burakian: "The 28–75mm Tamron lens is the best deal out there. I use it every day for at least 50% of my work. It's light, and it's very sharp from about ƒ/3.5 onward and best of all, it's $499 retail but you can get a refurbished or used version for about half of that price. I had the Sony version before an accident, and there's no difference in quality. Most underrated, best-value lens out there."

[Eli is the Official Photographer at Dartmouth College and the author-illustrator of the book Moosilauke: Portrait of a Mountain. —Ed.]

Lost...In Your Own Archives

So we ended up, as usual, talking about two different things recently.

Michael Perini's Thousand Picture Project post the other day was about segregating your best work from the rest of your archives, and taking special measures to protect and preserve those images. That kind of project makes sense regardless of whether you shoot film or digital.

The discussion quickly morphed into a discussion about digital archiving and backups. Which is an important topic; it just isn't what he and I wanted us to discuss.

This has long been a bugbear of mine. Long ago, I recommended simply doing your heirs a favor by putting your best, most meaningful prints in a box and labeling it "My Best Photographs." Then when your heirs clean out your belongings, they'll know what box to keep. Their only other choice is to make a binary decision: Keep Dad's (or Mom's) photographs, or throw them all out? If the great mass of work is too large and undifferentiated, the most expedient decision will be to throw it all away. They probably know there are some treasures in there, but they don't know where they are.

It would be a hard-hearted heir, on the other hand, who wouldn't keep one box of your best stuff.

You see, your best work could be hiding. It's hiding amongst all the rest of the drek you produced along the way. It's safely backed up, yes, but who knows where it is? Who knows what it is?

We all produce a lot of crap. That's how photography works: you eat a lot of Crackerjack, and every now and then you get a prize. You take 400 pictures, and one of them turns out to be great and/or especially appealing or meaningful to you. You prize that one; the rest of them are essentially just process, work-product that can be thrown away with no loss.

Michael's Thousand Picture Project is simply an editing recommendation. He's saying, in effect, you're the only one who knows which pictures, out of all of your pictures, you really like; don't forget to tell other people what those are.

The fact is, your best work could get lost right there at home...nestled in amongst the thousands of other shots you're carefully archiving and backing up every four years. Nobody else is going to take the time to carefully look through those megaterrabytes of data you've created and extract the gems. You're the one who has to do that.

It's very common for these discussions to devolve into just talking about backing up. We're all interested in backing up. Nor is it uncommon for discussions about backups to default to increasingly idealized—and impractical—solutions. Before you know it, people are recommending that you spend 40 hours a week treating the effluvium from your cameras like it's the Dead Sea Scrolls or the U.S. Declaration of Independence and needs to be protected from everything up to and including possible nuclear war.

Preserving your working archive is hard, whether it's film or digital. Preserving your "selects," your high points, your best successes, is much less hard, because there are far fewer of those. But can't just file them in your head. You have to find a way to let other people know which pictures you think are most worth preserving.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Tuomas: "Well said! The problem is, the task of going through all my photographs is staring to seem gargantuan, almost impossible.... Which only strengthens your argument: if I can't be bothered to look through my own photos, surely no one else will do it!"

Carl Blesch: "When my mother died, I had only a few days to close up her retirement community condo and decide how to handle all she left behind. I was in the midst of raising three kids and managing a job relocation, so I had no luxury of weeks or months to examine, ponder and triage. Early in the process, my wife and I found drawers full of formal dining tablecloths. Some appeared to be fine embroidered linen, but most were just casual needlepoint on ordinary cloth. In addition to the lack of time, neither of us had the skills to discern what was valuable and what wasn't, nor did we have the time or money to find and bring in an expert. It all went into the dumpster in one fell swoop. It still nags me to know there could have been a precious piece or two in the pile. This example isn't photography, but it was the first thing I thought of when I read your post!"

Ann: "My father in law was a shutterbug, and we got all of the thousands of slides when Mom died. My lovely spouse sorted through them, and narrowed it down to a few hundred, which I had scanned, then picked the best hundred, fixed color and contrast, and made a disk which got shared with the family.

"What was truly important to the family...every picture that got saved was a photo of family members doing something recognizable. Standing in front of the house on Elm Street. Opening presents in the house in Minnesota. Kids in Grandma's lap.

"The grand landscapes, or cityscapes, or indigenous tribesmen? All gone. None of the family cared about that stuff, regardless of quality. I like my images. I make books of the best and print and hang my favorites on the walls. But I have no illusions that any of the rest are going to survive me. So I don't worry about it. I just enjoy the process of making them."

Severian: "Well said. I wish my father-in-law had taken the trouble to do this. We are faced with thousands of slides—some of which we would likely really want—most of which we couldn't possibly care about. Whether we find the time and energy to find the former among the later remains to be seen."

Curt Gerston: "Without intending it as a 'best of' archive, I've been doing something for a decade now that I think will serve. During the year, as I take thousands of family and landscape pictures, I rate them in Lightroom. Then, as an end of year project which I always really enjoy, I go back and sift through just the few hundred that rated highest. For my wife for Christmas, she gets a book with the 75 best photos I've taken of our daughters, which I print on 8x8 Moab matte paper and put in a Moab Chinle book. It's meant to be a gift but serves as an archive too...neither she nor my daughters will ever want to go through my computer drives for this stuff, and won't have to.

"Second, I pick the 12 best landscape shots and, probably like thousands of other photographers, make a calendar. It may not be original, but again, it selects out my best stuff for keeping.

"Those Chinle books are great, and the paper makes the book as nice to hold and touch as to look at. And it gives me a manageable number of photos each year to really 'finish' and work hard on. So, while the primary purpose of these two highly anticipated (by me anyway) projects is gift-giving, it helps with the archive too."

The Demise of Reciprocity Failure

Longtime TOP reader and not-infrequent commenter Stan Banos has closed down his blog Reciprocity Failure—after discovering a catastrophe with his archive. The long and short of it is that Stan invested in a fireproof safe to protect his lifetime's worth of negatives, only to discover that the safe had trapped moisture inside which encouraged the growth of an unidentified mold or fungus that has attacked the negatives.

  Negative damage: mold or fungus shows up as a "craqueleur"
or crazing on stored negs

Stan is deeply anguished about the possible loss of, or damage to, decades of work.

On the good side, it looks like many negatives can be saved by being cleaned with Edwal film cleaner (isopropyl alcohol). But of course that is painstaking, time-consuming work.

Reciprocity Failure was both a photography blog and a place where Stan did his part to protest and push back against "life's seemingly endless supply of pernicious injustices." Stan acknowledges that, at age 60, maybe this is a good time to be redacting his photographic work...that task which most of us are always putting off till some unspecified future.

You can read the Farewell post at the site. Best of luck to Stan. (And don't be a stranger, man.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Richard Man: "Whoa, my 4TB drive just died after 14 months. I have full back up on the Drobo so it's not a huge problem and it's the drive that holds the scanned images so at worst, I can always rescan, but this story...ekkk...."

Stephen S.: "When I was researching a fire safe to protect documents, I found many online reviews of people complaining it destroyed their documents due to humidity and giving it low review scores. One lone review commented that the fire safe was designed to be humid, and is actually filled with a layer of liquid/gel in-between the layers of plastic, in order to provide longer insulation against rising temperatures.

"This reviewer stated that all you needed to do was put your documents in Ziploc bags. I ordered the fire safe, and when it arrived, I opened it to discover a large, bright red warning sheet, explaining the humidity and the need to store paper in airtight bags. I can only surmise that dozens of people who complained online didn't take the time to read the warning before discarding it."

Robert Hudyma: "Dark places, warmth and humidity provide a friendly environment for fungus. My heart goes out to Stan for his loss.

"But, how do you recover from this loss? Give up? Do something else? Or go forward? Each of us will respond individually, but, like it not, we cannot turn back the clock, and second guess ourselves with what-if questions. It takes time to heal from these wounds and sadly some of us never recover. In times like this it is important to grieve since that will enable to process to begin healing. I wish the best for Stan, and I hope that he will continue to contribute to the world of image making since I believe that is an essential part of his being."

Stan B. replies to everyone: Wow! They say any publicity is good publicity- but this is some I wish I could have well avoided. Hopefully, it may serve as some kind of warning to others, digital or analog. To those who'll say I should've used desiccant, I did at first, but then read that silica gel isn't meant for long time storage, and when it shriveled up my passport (that I also stored inside)—it scared the bejeezus outta me, so I took both out. And the rubber seals meant to keep water out- kept moisture in....

Irony is, I would've been fine had I just kept them in the proverbial shoebox. As always, Thank You, for the support and words of encouragement. Cleaning the negs was the easy part. If anyone out there can point me towards any info, tutorials, etc. on any restoration techniques (beyond simple cloning and healing brush—I've seen something about using the 'art history brush') that may be of consequence, and/or how to get full fledged PS at the best rate—please, let me know. And thank you in advance....

Can't Win for Losing

...I think that's the expression that applies here.

A reader wrote to me privately with a little story. Seems his stepdaughter saw a workprint he was working on—a picture of her husband and child. Rather than ask for a copy of the print, she snapped a picture of the print with her cellphone and posted it on Instagram!

The world turns.

Mike
(Thanks to B.W.)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

AaronL: "That's the norm now rather than the exception. As a professional portrait photographer, clients regularly go to my online preview galleries, take a photo of 'their' portrait as displayed on their screen(!) and post that to their Facebook page etc....copyright watermarks and all! Mention copyright and you'll be considered insane. If it's online it's free, that's the new world."

John Rothlisberger: "Over Christmas I spent time with my wife's family, and I took plenty of pictures with my D700. One of my wife's cousins loved one of the photos I took, so she pulled out her Blackberry (which has the most dreadful camera) and took a photo of the LCD screen on the back of the D700! The resulting blurry, crooked, moiré-ish pic was then dutifully posted to Facebook.

"People are definitely not all alike, that's all I have to say about that."

Speed: "What's an Instagram?"

Zlatko: "It's a new thing, but not completely new. I've seen a framed print of a family portrait, probably made in the 1940s, with the photographer's stamp boldly visible, advising it's a proof print that must be returned to the studio within two weeks."

How's This for a Preservation Scheme?

Buy three boxes.*

When you get a great portfolio-worthy shot, make three prints.

Put one in a box at your house.

Put the second in a box at your friend's house.

Send the third to a relative to put in a box in their house.

When the boxes fill up, buy three more boxes.

In the immortal words of the third fiddle, viola.

Of course, I don't do this, so I can't claim that this is a feasible backup system. (It seems to me that one of the crucial tests of a backup system is, does the person who's talking about it actually do it? If he doesn't, it's a black mark against the system right there.)

Mike

*I like 8x10x1 boxes because you can put them upright on a bookshelf like a book. And who doesn't have bookshelves somewhere in the house? Can't be said of any friend of mine. Plus, 8x10s are scan-able on flatbed scanners.

P.S. Here's what's wrong with this plan. You'd send your pictures to your friend and your relative, but 1) they'd show them to other people, eventually crimping and dog-earing them and getting them dirty; 2) they'd like some of them and want to frame them for the mountain cabin or Junior's dorm room, or they'd take a few of them out of the box to take over and show another friend or send to Aunt May, and the pictures would never find their way back to the box; or c) you'd get a call 11 years from now (which would also be 10 years and five months since you last added a print to their box) and it would be your friend or relative saying, "I've got this box with 23 of your pictures in it and I have no idea where it came from. So I'm sending it back to you. Here's the tracking number...."

Oh well, on second thought, never mind.

I tell ya, the only way to preserve your work is to be famous. Then everybody wants it, there will be plenty of copies around, and people who own the prints will take care of them. The rest of us are probably screwed.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Dave Levingston: "I've been working for more than three years on what I've been calling my 'Immortality Project.' It involves making sets of prints to be boxed and given to various friends and family for safekeeping.

"There's even one museum that has agreed to take a box.

"Originally the plan was for each box to hold about 300 prints of my best photos. After working on it for a while I realized that I would have to be immortal to complete the project. (About 20 boxes of various sizes from 17x22 to 8.5x11.) So, I've scaled it back to 100 prints. After three and a half years I've printed about 35 of them.

"I might get the 100 done before I die or, worse, go blind. And the hope is that someday 50 years after I've left this life, someone, somewhere will open one of those boxes and enjoy what I put in it. That's about as good as we can hope for, I think."

Shaun: "Printing up a self-published book is another way to go. Of course fine art print fidelity isn't in it, but it is an inexpensive way to put your best photographs in one place which can be easily distributed and passed down through a few generations. Leave a copy laying around and those photographs that are normally hiding in archival boxes will actually be seen."

Curious About the M Disk

I'm curious about the M Disk mentioned by Andrew in the Featured Comments to the previous post...does anyone out there use these? Has anyone researched the best read/write drive to use? Does anyone know of expert discussions about the veracity of the company's claims? Has anyone experimented and had problems? What pertains in a choice between DVD and Blu-Ray?

Thanks for any solid information!

Mike
(Thanks to Andrew)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Robert Hudyma: "I worked in optical disk R&D in the 1980s so I am familiar with the design of these products. An optical disk (one you can burn at home) has several layers (a bit simplified): a substrate (the base), a recording layer, a reflecting layer and a protective overcoat (that may have printing too).

"It is common to use an organic dye in the recording layer and aluminum for the reflecting layer. The organic dye is easily ablated by heat to record information and will fade with repeated reads or over a long period of time since these dyes are fugitive. The reflecting layer, if made from aluminum, will easily corrode if exposed to water and oxygen or will react to atmospheric pollutants (think car exhaust). The protective overcoat is supposed to prevent this from happening, but it is very thin, not perfect and may deteriorate from the marker that you use to write information. And so optical disks that have a gold coating instead of aluminum will be less prone to deterioration of the reflective layer over time.

"The big advance that the M-disk offers is that the recording layer is, according to their Patent disclosure, made from a 'glassy-carbon,' which should be inherently stable over a long period of time. There are experts that can offer an opinion to the longevity of images and image making technology such as Wilhelm Imaging Research. What is often missed in these sorts of analyses is the lifetime of the device that reads and writes the disk. These devices have exposed metal parts that will corrode and plastics (like Nylon) become brittle within a decade. I doubt very much that any of these DVD readers will be working 50 years from now, and that, I believe, is the much greater concern."

Ctein: "I, for one, would love some solid information on M disk lifetimes. I haven't been able to dig up any other than what is on the company's websites and links therefrom. That's not what I consider reliable source.

"I do have some answers to the lesser questions. Any drive whose specs assert that it is M-disc write-compatible is sufficient, so just check the technical specs. It's extremely common today—the supercheap LG USB external drive I bought does M discs. The discs are supposed to be readable on any drive, which is really the more important thing.

"Regarding DVD vs. Blu-ray (and even denser formats), I've seen little penetration of Blu-ray et al. into the data storage markets. Like CD (and JPEG and uncompressed TIF formats), DVD is robust against obsolescence—there is so much data stored in that form in so many different venues that devices/software to read it will be available for a considerable length of time. I don't see Blu-ray having shown that kind of universal adoption. The higher density formats that M disk is offering are so specialized that I wouldn't trust them at all for long-term archiving. The problem is not how long the disc lasts, but being able to get a device and driver software that can read it."

David Dyer-Bennet: "They seem just a little vague on storage conditions. One of the big questions is, do M Disks need a normal paper-grade fire safe to survive a fire (350°F and very high humidity), or do they need a media-grade safe (125°F, humidity limits). (Film negatives, and probably darkroom prints, need a media-grade safe, which is completely unfeasible for most of us.)"

John Krumm: "I was curious what the Library of Congress said about this issue (long term digital storage) and came across their preservation website."

Mark McCormick-Goodhart: "The M disk appears to solve only one issue, i.e. the degradation rate of the embedded data layer. While 'etching a mark into stone' may lead to a respectable longevity figure for that layer itself, it's no guarantee (check out some old graveyard markers to see how legible some of those 100+ year old grave markers are today)...and the other plastic layers in the laminated stack will have their own perhaps more rapid degradation pathways as well.

"Also, given the fact that one also has to have the decoding device handy at all times to retrieve the data, unless the manufacturer creates a significant trust fund or endowment that will ensure new read machines will be built well into the future, the whole optical disk archival storage concept is seriously flawed.

"Notwithstanding those issues, there are other really practical problems with write-once optical disk technology...4–25GB disk capacity is already impractical for many photographers given the fact that a single shooting session with a Nikon D810 can eat up that digital real estate very quickly. Who wants to curate a collection of hundreds of optical disks? Moreover, unless you are incredibly fastidious and add all metadata immediately after ingesting a new batch of images, then the process of record annotation often requires a step-wise process of human activity. This means that one will have to burn and reburn a disk every time just one file on that disk gets a slight update or change of any kind to the metadata. Metadata (e.g. keywords, descriptions, etc) are often just as important to the archival record as the source file itself.

"My two cents."

Herman: "I have had doubts about the durability of disks since my back operation."

Waqas Farid: "I work at a Museum and for us M-Disk made a lot of sense. It's too expensive to get the type of tape drives the Library of Congress specifies—specifically the type that James Snyder (one of the leaders in the field) lists. Obviously no storage medium is perfect, and one of the commentors is correct in assuming that our Blu-ray drives won't be working in the future, but if we can make a gramophone using modern parts and processes why can't we do that for a Blu-ray/DVD drive 100 or 1,000 years from now? Personally in the short term (i.e. our lifespans), something like the M-Disk makes sense. As long as you burn it properly and use CRCs to check for copy errors.

"To me, having a passive way to store a medium, something that doesn't require magnetic fields or electrons, makes sense. For our museum we have a lot of digital artwork, primarily video installation. These files come to us from the artist on flash drives or DVD discs. Both of which are incredibly unreliable. The M-disk is a good (not perfect) storage solution until something wonderful like holographic storage comes out."

Open Mike: Thousand Picture Project

A Guest Post by Michael J. Perini

About ten years ago we had a fire. The Fire Marshall said that had my son David not had the presence of mind to shut all interior doors and windows, we would have lost the house. We only lost a third of it.

Ever since then I've thought about archiving our family memories. Lately I've also been thinking about various ways to better safeguard my personal picture archive.

For most families there are probably somewhere from a few hundred to a thousand or so "Desert island" pictures which define the family's memories. Of course there are more pictures, videos and other stuff we hold dear, but if all were lost in a fire or flood or earthquake, having those thousand pictures would be a treasure.

I pick that number not because it's the right number for everyone, but because it's manageable. It's a number big enough to be a treasure, and small enough to organize and collect in a short period of time.

It is also small enough to fit on "ruggedized" solid-state storage like this. These are now cheap enough to be easily used in this way by almost everyone who reads this; 16GB costs $25; 256GB costs $150.

I do not know if there are better flash options, but it's the concept I'm talking about.

By using a universal format like a TIFF you extend the digital life expectancy as well. Extended families could exchange Survivor drives.

The nice part is, that once done, you can copy it and give one to each member of the family. You can then start to work on Volume Two if you need to.

Caveat
I completely understand that there is no such thing as permanent digital storage. So the best you can do is have a series of 5- or 10-year plans. But because the archive is relatively small, and in one place, and in a known format, it will be relatively easy to update to a better storage medium in the future.

This is not a substitute for your regular backup and archiving procedure. The central driver for me is creating a blueprint for an easy and reliable method for safeguarding cherished images—not replacing anyone's proper archiving procedures. It's not foolproof, but a very helpful step.

If folks have a better way, that's great. The object is to safeguard pictures that are dear to you. You might even find and rescue some early digital pictures or scans that already need to be moved to a better format.

Mike P.

"Open Mike" is the Sunday Editorial Page of TOP. It might or might not be written by a Mike.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Bruce Mc: "Another option is regular off site backup. Crashplan is one company that offers this, there are others as well. Some companies charge a monthly fee to back up to their servers, other companies let you send your back up anywhere, say to a spare hard drive at a relative's house."

Mike J. replies: Michael Perini's plan really isn't a backup plan, and it's not a substitute for a backup plan. It's also not adequately replaced by a traditional backup plan. It's an archive and legacy scheme; a way to segregate out from the great mass of your raw material the few pictures which are precious and have special meaning, and then to take extra steps to preserve those from destruction or loss.

Segregating the important pictures from all the rest is just as important a part of a Thousand Picture Project as redundancy and protection, and will do just as much—or more!—to preserve your family's history.

Michael Bearman: "I have family with data 'preserved' on paper tape and mark sense cards for long-gone computer systems. I have manuscript files 'preserved' on cassette tapes written in a defunct language for a defunct operating system for a defunct computer.

"Unless you are committed to continuing updates as and when the computing world moves on, make a couple of archival prints, put one in a safety deposit box and the other with family offsite. The only records from our long-gone soft copies are the printouts."

Andrew: "There are far better options for cold storage than a flash drive. USB flash drives are suitable for data transfer, but not for long term archiving. I've seen too many flash drives fail to recommend them as a viable option. Optical disks are a safer bet. Check out the M Disk.

"The comment by Bruce Mc is not off point. You can get a crash plan account and only use it to back up specific folders. Data centers take redundancy and backing up very seriously. Important data belongs in a data center where the pros can look after it. Facebook is probably the safest/cheapest long term storage space for your 1,000 most important family photos."

Olympus a 'Hobby Business'?

"Hobby business" is a term that derives from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which distinguishes between hobbies and businesses for tax requirements (says one site, "If the IRS decides that you are indulging a hobby rather than trying to earn a profit, it won't allow you to deduct your business losses.")

(There's one other kind of Hobby business [sic] that photographers probably know about. But this isn't about that.)

"Hobby business" has come to mean, more generally (and as a put-down), a business that's subsidized by other profits or by exogenous wealth and doesn't necessarily have to pay its own way in the normal fashion.

Thom Hogan has just posted a typically trenchant analysis of Olympus Corporation's fiscal year-end report over at his site Sans Mirror.

He says the company keeps making optimistic predictions...and not really coming anywhere close. "Olympus has been repeating the same chant for years now: 'yes, we did poorly, but we’ll hit breakeven soon, maybe even next year.' This year is no different. They did poorly, they expect to manage break even during the year. The problem is that there's nothing in the actual financial information they’ve posted that would give that any credibility."

On the other hand, this situation, dire on the surface, might not be as bad as it sounds...because Olympus's camera division might essentially be a hobby business, in the derogatory sense of the term. "...The bottom line" writes Thom, "is still that the main medical business is subsidizing the imaging business at Olympus, as it has for all of this decade."

The situation isn't unknown. At Brunswick Corporation, for instance, now mainly a maker of recreational watercraft and fitness equipment, the pool table business (a single-digit percentage of the company's business) is kept alive because it's the "legacy" business. Billiards was company's core historical product, the product most closely associated with the famous name. Like cameras are at Olympus. Brunswick tables are made in China now, and the division might or might not return a profit. But it's kept going for global image...

...For pride, in a word. Which might not be the worst reason to keep going...even in a business sense.

Mike
(Thanks to Michael J. Perini)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Ned Bunnell: "No comment on Thom's typical authoritative opinion. His implication that 'hobby businesses' should be viewed negatively might drive traffic to his site, but it's a fairly common practice for many companies.

"For example, Ricoh ran their camera business as a hobby for many years. This allowed the group to act as an incubator for new ideas in cameras and optics  without pressure to meet any hard and fast sales goals. It's very similar to an R&D lab whose funding is measured by development goals for a range of projects each year.

"Being a hobby business allowed Ricoh's camera group to develop some critically acclaimed products that were never intended for mass distribution, such as the original GR film camera series and special lenses like the stellar 21mm lens designed for Leica thread mount cameras. Sales of these products in limited quantities helped offset some of the development costs, and gave them time to evolve and refine their concepts.

"Another benefit of a hobby business is applying expertise that you've gained in the lab to enter new emerging markets. Not widely known, but I'm sure some of the optics knowledge developed by the Ricoh camera group has been leveraged in the new automobile visual navigation systems that Ricoh quietly OEM's to major car companies in Europe.

"By purchasing Pentax, it's evident Ricoh has started to shift their camera business from a hobby to a profit center as they assimilate all of Pentax's products and future cameras into a more typical business model.

"Another positive example of a company using a hobby business model is how Apple is handling their work in both the TV space as well as automotive design.

"While Thom intended his comment that Olympus' main medical business was subsidizing the imaging business as criticism, I'm sure there are benefits to this structure that he, in his infinite wisdom, can't see. Smart companies will always invest profits from their core business to fund research in technologies that spawn products we can't even contemplate today."

[Ned was formerly President of Pentax USA. —Ed.]

sneye: "Thom Hogan insists on looking at business from the American point of view, where long-term losses are not sustainable. Japanese business culture is quite different though. It values tradition, good engineering and innovation at the same level it values profit. Olympus justifies the existence of the imaging branch by stressing its role in medical R&D, but I suspect that it's pride and brand recognition that fuel it. Oly's Japanese shareholders would hate it if the company stopped making cameras even though this business erodes the overall profitability by 10–15%. Olympus has been known to the public as a camera manufacturer, not as a producer of endoscopes.

"As for myself, I like buying stuff made by hobby businesses. Feels like a larger proportion of my money is invested in innovation and a smaller one in corporate administration."

Thom Hogan replies to Ned and sneye: "Actually, I insist on looking at business from an economic perspective. In Olympus' case, we have 72b yen in just the last five years that have left the building. That's a lot of money for which the rest of the company must get a significant benefit for in order to justify. Ned says we can't see what that benefit is, and he's right, we can't. Olympus has been asked many times about what the benefit is, and their answer is extremely vague, at best.

"Large companies often mislead themselves on this 'cross benefit' thing, too. To admit that there isn't much of a cross benefit means they'd have to admit that they are making mistakes and bleeding money intentionally.

"Which brings me to the 'Japan is different' thing. Well, yes and no. Japan as a country is far more in debt than any other G10 entity, and their demographics make it nearly impossible to get out of that problem. The consumer electronics business in Japan is somewhat of a mirror of that. A lot of the money that is sustaining the remaining CE industry in Japan is coming from low-interest debt. Nikon is even using low-interest debt to try to get into a new business (medical), which wouldn't be necessary if their CE side were entirely healthy.

"Implied in sneye's comment is that 'Japanese business culture' is the correct one. I, and I suspect a lot of economics professors as well, would disagree with that. Yes, it is what it is and shows no real sign of changing any time soon, but that doesn't make it right. Nor is it sustainable. ROI is ROI.

"I should also point out that negative ROI is what Olympus tried to hide when they committed their US$1.5b fraud against shareholders. Again, just because things are 'done that way in Japan' doesn't mean it is the right way to do it."

Ned replies to Thom: "Valid points on the Japanese business culture supporting somewhat non-transparent hobby businesses. Fortunately, I'm retired and don't have to worry about the business anymore, and am simply enjoying photography. My only observation is that the way things are going, the entire photo industry is starting to look like a hobby business  :-) ."

Christian Beck: "Ah, so on what other site would you read an informed comment on an informed article, discussed by informed people, the former President of Pentax USA and the author himself?

"(Homer Simpson voice) Must...buy...something...on Amazon.

"(Well, actually, Amazon.de, as I'm from Germany ;-) ."

Eamon Hickey: "As this thread shows, issues like this have a lot of nuances—and every company and situation is unique. That said, if you're heavily invested in one camera brand's future (I am not), I think it's worth being careful not to overestimate how 'different' Japanese companies really are, or how impervious to market forces a particular company or management team can afford to be. (Note that I am talking here about how the world is, not how it should be.)

"So, first, several Japanese companies have pulled the plug on legendary camera divisions that were consistently losing money. Here's a random assortment:

1. Konica (Now a copier company, this was Japan's oldest camera maker, in the business since 1902, decades before the other Japanese brands we know)
2. Yashica/Contax (closed by Kyocera after 50+ years of camera-making)
3. Topcon (now strictly an opthalmic and surveying company)
4. (Perhaps Minolta [now the copier company, Konica/Minolta], depending on how you count—the Maxxum/A-mount lives on at Sony but for how long, now that Sony is clearly concentrating on the FE/E-mount?)
5. Even Olympus themselves recently dropped its money-losing regular 4/3rds mount E system, to much gnashing of teeth among dedicated users.

"In other words, yes, the Japanese often close money-losing businesses, too, just like the rest of the world.

"Then secondly, the forces of capitalism—for better or worse—are what they are. In other words, Thom Hogan is not a voice in the wilderness—Olympus management has been under pressure from factions among its own shareholders to fix or drop the camera division for many years. This is why they are at pains to offer so many rationales for continuing it. Olympus management doesn't have to listen to Thom, but large shareholders are a different matter.

"Also, while I don't have a dog in this fight (and generally really like Olympus cameras, past and present), I share what I think is Thom's concern about (scorn for?) the repeated significant inaccuracies, to use a carefully chosen neutral word, of Olympus's projections for the camera division over the past few years. If I owned Olympus shares (as opposed to cameras), that would give me great pause."

[A former Nikon rep, Eamon has written for The British Journal of Photography among other publications. —Ed.]

The Perfect Leica

[UPDATE: Camera is sold; lens is available at $3,100.]

Want John Sandford's Leica?

I'm selling this Leica M7 and 35mm Summilux ASPH. for our friend John Camp, who writes thriller novels under the name John Sandford. He's a superstar author, whose books can be seen at virtually any airport and most supermarkets. I could live for the rest of my life on one of his advances. Not that I'm jealous. (Okay, I'm jealous.)

I would argue that this is the perfect Leica.

Of all. Of every Leica ever made.

The price is $4,800, which might seem high until you realize that the finder is the .58X magnification type that's perfect for the 35mm lens...the 35mm lens being the perfect focal length for a Leica M (and preferred by more Leica RF shooters than a 50mm, the only other close contender).

This camera, while lacking the patina of brand new, has absolutely no issues and no blemishes that you can see with the naked eye. It's in essentially perfect condition as long as you're a user who's willing to actually utilize the extraordinary physical robustness you're paying for and not an anal-retentive collector who examines every camera with a magnifying glass and white cotton gloves. I mean, to each his own, but film Leicas are built for wars, not for glass cases. It's why they got famous in the first place. Why not use the ruggedness you've paid for? Just try to use it up; go ahead, make its day.

Here's why this one's the perfect Leica:

First, if you're going to have a Leica, you want an M Leica. The M Leica is to the manner born. I know, I know, Leica is a company, and companies make a range of products, and yadda yadda yadda. I'm not saying anything against your favorite Leica product, so calm down. But the M Leica is the core of the legend, full stop. Can't be argued, really.

Second, the film M's are best M's. I don't need to start an argument: the current digital "M" is a fine camera that gives excellent results...but the M was designed for film; it was a film camera for 53 years. Everything about it is right for film. The digital M is a replica, in my opinion...it's a digital camera specifically made to harken back to the form factor of a camera designed for film, like a replica old-fashioned car or a modern house made to look Victorian. Am I being controversial? If you want a digital M I have no quarrel with you at all. But if I wanted a digital Leica I'd personally prefer the S, which was designed to be digital just as intelligently as the M3 was designed to be a film camera back in 1953.

Now that we've established that (ignore that noise on the horizon...it's not a noisy freeway, it's the distant howling of outraged Leicaphiles  :-), why is the M7 and 35mm Summilux perfect as a Leica kit?

Because to a user, the M7's AE option adds a crucial feature that makes the camera better. And that trumps all the fastidious notions of classicism that might otherwise make me prefer the best-built Leica, the M4. For those who claim that the M isn't an AE camera, well, it wasn't a metered camera either until the M6 came along, and the M6 was by far the most popular Leica of the part of the 20th century that came after the SLR took over. That is, post-1962 more or less.

Everything about this kit is right for a user. Perfect lens for a Leica. Perfect finder for that lens. The lens is fast and shows every quality in pictures that made Leica lenses renowned. The focusing tab is in just the right position and has just the right amount of throw. It has the larger shutter-speed dial that can be changed with one finger. The aperture changes easily with one thumb. It has the right rewind knob (not the slower M3 type). It has the AE you will want if you actually take lots of pictures. And it's built ten times as well as a brick sh*thouse, with the shutter than won't quit and just the right feel to everything, from the buttery advance lever to the proper "snick" on exposure to the absolute ideal damping of the focusing helical.

Perfect.

There are Leicas that are more fun (a IIIg with a collapsible lens, for instance); there are Leicas that are prettier; there are Leicas that make digital files. But if you want to get right to the heart of what made Leica Leica in the first place, and have a camera to grow old with and expose 200,000 photos with and then leave to your child, this is now and forever shall be "the best user."

(All just my opinion of course! And please bear in mind that our Comment Guidelines do not allow personal insults. :-)

And it's fun to own a camera with provenance. Did I tell you I owned Jack Lemmon's M6 once? True story.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Marek Fogiel: "You need to remember that the M7 at a certain point upgraded the VF to the MP style, and this modification alone is worth about 500USD. Apparently it happened around a 3.100.000 serial number. A plain 0.72x M7 in good conditions is changing hands around 1.500 USD nowadays, but if you add the 0.58 VF and the upgraded VF style (if this copy has one), this price could look like a bargain. (I won't be buying, because I have the exact same camera already, and I can confirm it is great)."

Mike replies: This camera is 2,943,xxx.

Randy: "Best info is that the MP finder was installed on M7's from: #2,885,000. Between 2,85x,xxx and 2,88x,xxx there could be some that had it, but it was probably an upgrade."

Dan: "Did Virgil Flowers use it to illustrate some of his fishing articles? Did Lucas Davenport beat a suspect with it? Either will make it worth more."

Ken Tanaka: "You would argue that this is the perfect Leica. And as an owner of the same model M7 (0.58 finder) and an MP ('modern' version) I would agree, Mike, for most* of the reasons you cite! Although I've no plans to ever again shoot film on a regular, or even a frequent, basis, these two cameras will be mine for life. 'Cuz when I do want to shoot-like-it's-1980-again I'm going to first grab that M7...and it had better be at the ready! Your pricing is very fair for this kit!—

"*Plus one somewhat sentimental reason. My M7 was the first Leica I had ever even touched. The sharpness and clarity of the very first frame I ever shot with it simply took my breath away. Darn, it made me look good! In fact a large print of that same frame, and one other from that same first roll, hangs in the lobby of a large law firm's offices. The first roll paid for the camera and lens! What's not to love about a camera that can do that?!"

Hugh Smith: "My favorite Leica was a IIIf red dial with an ƒ/3.5 collapsible Elmar. It was so sweet and tiny. Even after I acquired an M2 (which I consider superior to the M3) I still have that IIIf and still take it out and stroke it now and again, even if I don't turn the film winder. Will I ever use it again? Doubtful. But I feel like Robert Capa every time I pick it up. Just my two pesos, amigo."

Need Your Opinion

In the newest addition to the "Items for Sale (Con't.)," the Leica M7 and lens, there are two pictures of the camera from slightly different angles. As a quick-and-dirty test of two different cameras for web use, which picture do you like better, top or bottom?

Thanks,

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Peter Wright: "On my 13" MacBook Air, the top shot is definitely better (sharper, more contrast, and more dof). However, you could really use either camera for on-line sales. (By the way. Does John know you are selling his M7 and 35mm?  ;-)  If I didn't already have an MP I would be buying!)"

Mike replies: Yes, I'm selling it on consignment for him. The camera and lens have resided on my shelf for the past four years.

Most people preferred the top shot. So the lesson is, people like a bit more contrast. To end the suspense: The bottom picture was taken with the Fuji X-t1 and 23mm ƒ/1.4 lens, and the top one was taken with the iPhone 6+. Not a controlled comparison, and not rigged; I simply shot each as I have all the other product shots, hurriedly and with no particular care, and then gave each one minimal processing to 800 pixels wide. The Leica M7 (you have to specify...I agree with Ned W that "M7" means Mamiya 7!) was in the same place for both shots but, as several people noticed, the camera position is not exactly the same for both, which has various effects, not least of which is that the iPhone 6+ shot needed more vertical correction. Several people saw the resulting distortion.

But it's surprising that overall, more people preferred the top (iPhone) shot, which does have a little more contrast.

I don't know though...should a guy who writes a photo blog be taking equipment shots with an iPhone 6+?!? Doesn't seem...seemly. I'd like a little more control than that...over focal length and aperture particularly, and I'd like to be able to shoot RAW to give me more dynamic range when I need it. In studio settings, classically, photographers control dynamic range with lighting, and can match any material. But these are quick-and-dirty shots taken with overhead lights.

"Existing" light...the light that exists in my basement.  :-)

I'm leaning toward the Panasonic LX7 at the moment. It's got a (very) fast lens, a small sensor, and good IS, and it's quite cheap right now at $328. (The world changes so fast...remember when the LX3 was the hot ticket and Panasonic couldn't keep the pipeline filled? People agonized and complained, aching to buy one at $600 or more.)

Oops! And, Hmbl. Ed. Needs Advice

The Single Use Device; a not-very-good product shot under the fluorescents.

So I made one big mistake in the last two days. I had a Pentax 31mm Limited lens here that I listed for sale. Turns out that was a loan from a reader, Yoshi C. Yes, years ago, and I had lost track of where it had come from...and just assumed that it was mine to do with what I pleased. Fortunately, Yoshi contacted me before I made the mistake of selling his lens to someone else! It's now slated to go home again, so all is well.

Whew. Dodged that bullet. (Don't worry, John, I know the Leica M7 and 35mm Apo-Summilux belong to you.)

People aren't supposed to admit it when they do stupid things like that. But, to quote David Vestal, "I'm in the disclosure business." (That's what he would tell manufacturers as he refused to sign non-disclosure agreements. I miss David.)

End of another era
The fabled and fabulous Single Use Device sold this morning, to Tim B. in Devon, Blessed Plot/Sceptered Isle. (Closer to Ilford.) Godspeed, and I hope Tim exercises it properly. And with all this stuff going out the door, I feel my "camera accumulator" period is drawing to an end. No more happy imagining that I'm going to become a film photographer once again; no more indulging of gearhead fancies. From now on, I'm thinking I will just own the tools I need to do the work I want to do, as I used to do. (I always sensed that camera accumulation—I can't glorify myself with the term "collecting"—would be dangerous for me, not to mention hazardous for my bank account.)

But speaking of working tools, I need a little advice. Bridge cameras and small-sensor cameras are a blind spot for me, because I haven't had much use for them and don't keep up with that parish of the camera world. But I think I need some buying advice. I'm looking for a small-sensor camera that I can do product shots and closeups of small objects with, for web publishing only. Note, for instance...

...that the end of the 135mm ƒ/4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar (this big beauty now belongs to Ned B.) is a bit out of the d-o-f. A tiny sensor would make it that much easier to get everything in focus in shots like this.

Anybody have any advice? It should have a 1/2.3", 1/1.7", or 2/3" sensor, IS, and hopefully not too slow a lens. I was looking at something like the Olympus Stylus 1. Or some flavor of Nikon 1? If anybody knows what macro and web-product shooters like, I'd be happy to get some pointers.

Re a camera reviewer not knowing about cameras, I'm reminded of a professional studio advertising photographer I once worked for. He told an amusing story about being asked, at a party, for advice about a flash. Meaning, of course, what Nikon calls "Speedlights"—a Strobist strobe, an on-camera flash unit that attaches to the hot shoe. And he had to admit to his social acquaintance that he didn't own one and had no idea how they worked, much less what to buy. His interlocutor was astonished that a professional photographer of his caliber wouldn't know about something so simple and common as an on-camera flash unit. What Peter didn't bother to explain was that he worked with flash every day and was a master of artificial light, but his tools of choice consisted of $70,000 worth of Speedotron Black Line pack-and-head equipment—what were at that time (this was the mid-'80s) known as "studio strobes"—and hundreds of pieces of light-shaping equipment, from an enormous softbox for the Quad Head to stacks of Mathews C-stands.

One day not too long from now my camera arsenal will consist of my Fuji X-T1 and three or four lenses, the iPhone for visual note-taking, and some camera as yet unnamed that stays in the basement to do TOP tabletop shots with.

My favorite camera for such product shots? You won't believe it: the Nikon D800 and 28mm ƒ/1.8G! I'd just take a picture standing way back, and crop to a tiny center section to get the subject. Even cropping radically there were still enough pixels there for the Web. But it's a little too expensive to keep a D800 around just for that!

Tabletop shot taken with the D800 and 28mm lens...

Crop way down and you've still got plenty o' pixels for the Web.  :-)

Mike
(Thanks to Yoshi)

ADDENDUM: Thanks for all the excellent suggestions, which I will start posting soon. I really should have mentioned that I don't want to use the Fuji XT-1 for tabletop because I don't want to be changing settings and lenses back and forth all the time. The "real" camera needs to be upstairs and ready to go outside; the "Web" camera needs to live downstairs and be set up to do that at a moment's notice. Of course I could use the same camera for everything if pressed, but it would be kind of a hassle just given the way I tend to work.

UPDATE: I ended up buying a used Panasonic LX7 compact, for $150, from the same reader who just bought the Konica 35mm ƒ/2 M-Hexanon from me. I'll use that for some tabletop shots and let you know how it does.

Thanks again for all the help!

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Ray Bullen: "Unless size is an issue, I'd suggest a Panasonic FZ200 as a solution to your small sensor problem. I'll point you to Graham Houghton's blog. He could almost be called Mr. FZ200!"

Mike replies: Very impressive samples. Thanks.

Jock Elliott: "Panasonic FZ200 is astonishingly versatile. Constant ƒ/2.8 from 24mm-e to 600mm-e. I have used it professionally for both web and magazine work. The pix in this article and this article were taken with its cousin, the FZ150. If you want a bigger sensor, the Panasonic Lumix LX100 works very well and sees in the dark. I carry both the FZ200 and LX100 in a shoulder bag, and I never have to change lenses."

Dana Thomas: "...Hilarious on the Pentax 31mm lens. A friend...still is...tried to sell a Nikon FM and a 50mm lens to me that he had borrowed a year earlier. 'Dude...I gave you this while yours was in repair.' 'OH!...well I guess I will have to sell it to someone else.' What are friends for if not a bit of fun?"

Dan MacDonald: "I do eBay sales of camera gear at a shop here in Seattle and we use an older Canon G10 and I've been impressed by the image quality it achieves with our small tabletop studio, as well as the small 1/1.7" sensor allowing for the kind of depth of field you're looking for. The newest version of this camera also has an ƒ/1.8–2.8 lens which is nice.

"Most of the images on this blog I shot with the G10."

Items for Sale (Con't.)

...So I really think I should push through and get this done, with large apologies to anyone who isn't interested in reading about this. It's about all I've been doing for the last 24 hours anyway. [Note: Sorry, but I'm not ready to list any darkroom equipment yet. It's all packed away, and I will have to inventory it before I know what I have to sell and what condition it's in.]

I don't know why I feel rich when I sell things for big losses. Still, this is kinda fun. I got all the shipping materials this morning and have heard from lots and lots of people.

A number of things have been sold. I will list items with pictures as I can get the pictures done. Please check back during the day for more items.

Leica M7 .58 finder and 35mm ƒ/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH. (version II), both Ex+/near mint. $2,100/$3,100, will sell as a kit for $4,800. [Camera body SOLD; lens still for sale.]

'

...And suddenly we switch to B&W illustrations, for which I apologize. For some unknown reason my X-T1 decided to reset itself this morning, and I found myself suddenly shooting in JPEG-only "Toy Camera" mode, in color, when I had set it on B&W and RAW. I don't know what happened. (And to think, that's the camera I'm keeping.)

Sheesh. 'Lectronics.

Anyway, here's an Olympus OM-D E-M1 body in Ex condition with a slightly damaged box. I don't have the IB, but you can get it online. $750. [SOLD]

That's all for now; I have to get started boxing stuff up.

Arcam rDAC digital-to-analog converter for computer audio, new in box (unit was a warranty replacement). $225 OBO. [SOLD]

Voigtlander 35mm OVF (optical viewfinder) for camera shoe, Ex+ with box, $209 new. $135. [SOLD]

Nikon Nikkor 58mm ƒ/1.4G, Like New in box. $1,295. [SOLD]

Rollei Rolleiflex 6008AF body, waist-level finder, handle with hand strap, 120 back, charger, and battery, mint, never used, $1,495.

(Most 6000-series lenses will work, and if needed the camera can be serviced by Rollei & Hensel in Fairfield, NJ.)

Filco Majestouch 2 Tenkeyless "clicky" computer keyboard, never used, $139 new, $75.

Konica M-Hexanon 35mm ƒ/2 Leica M-mount lens, Ex+/near mint, both proper caps, no box, focus and aperture action very smooth, $995. [SOLD]

Sony Zeiss E-mount 24mm ƒ/1.8 lens for NEX cameras, Ex condition, pouch, cards, the proper caps, and box, no hood. $675. [SOLD]

(Man, am I going to miss this one. I love this lens.) More soon, please check back....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Peter Barnes: "What happened to your XT-1 is probably the same as happened to mine a few weeks ago. As I increased the ISO I inadvertently pushed the switch that sits under the ISO dial two clicks to ADV. (for Advanced Filter). Toy Camera is the first option for that setting. In my case, I had previously fiddled in that area, and the camera went to the Advanced miniature filter, which is an imitation of a lens tilted to decrease depth of field. Took me ages to work out what was wrong. I was sure a complex repair was going to be required. Hopefully it is one of those things I will only do once."

Mike replies: Looks like that's what I did all right. Electronic cameras means there is always a discovery still waiting to be made.

David Goldenberg: "Will the fabled Nikon Bokeh Meter be included in the darkroom stuff?"

Mike replies: Matt Laur already snagged that from me.

Christian Beck: "How did you get a mechanical keyboard and not use it? Too much clicky or just not your thing? (Thinking about getting a 'real' keyboard for some time, might be the wrong wish....)"

Mike replies: I settled on the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, and have run through about six of them. To the point that I have trouble typing on anything else. What's totally annoying is their main failure mode, which is that the letters rub off of the keys—a stupid fail.

Upcoming: Kate Kirkwood Print Sale

We are working behind the scenes to get ready for our sale of Kate Kirkwood's unique, wonderful, and indeed well-nigh magical photographs of the English Lake District. After much discussion we have settled on prices for the prints which should make the work accessible to most buyers. And after a great deal of thought (really, it's been tremendously difficult, and I've been torturing myself), we've finally agreed on which four pictures to offer in the sale.

Lots of animated discussion lately. All three of us (Ctein is making the prints) are excited about this.

Here's Kate's website. Three of the prints in our sale are from the "Light, landscape, lives" section, and the fourth has never been published or seen before—and it's stunning, a rare beauty of a picture. It has no dark edge—it's whimsical, delightful, like something from a fairy tale. Happy, even. People are going to be blown away, I promise you—it's so great it might well get some attention beyond the miniverse of photographic websites.

As you might know—or might not—our sales are different. We have a five-day period during which people can pre-order prints. Then we close the order window, and only then get started making and shipping the prints. Because all the prints are pre-sold, we can offer them for a much lower price than gallery prices, and yet, still, because we sell in volume, everyone involved can make some money. And it's a way for you, as a buyer, to get a print for 1/2 or 1/4 or even 1/8 of what a bricks 'n' mortar gallery would have to charge in the old one-every-so-often shopkeeper model. It all adds up, as I'm fond of saying, to a win-win-win.

Well, as long as you don't miss the sale window. So maybe win-win-win-lose?

Ctein will be making the prints from Kate's guide prints, with her collaboration. That's where we are now—they're getting started on that process. All the prints will be on 17x22" paper, with margins.

As for the "when?" question, I really don't have an answer quite yet. But I'll try to give you plenty of notice.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Print Presentation: Larry Jasper Shows Us How It's Done

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post referred to "poly" as being short for "polyethylene." That's wrong—it's polypropylene. I never could keep the polys straight.

Come to think of it, my neice used to have a squadron of dolls named Holly, Lolly, Polly, Molly, etc., etc., collectively called "the 'ollys." And I never could keep them straight either.

Thanks to Michael Wall for this—the Polly Propylene correction I mean—and sorry for the error. —Mike the Ed.]

TOP reader Larry Jasper recently sent me some prints and I was impressed by the craftsmanship of his presentation. Thought I'd share.

The key protection is provided by the so-called "poly bag" (poly being short for polpropylene), which is extremely transparent and offers easy viewing plus great protection for repeated handling without dirtying the overmat.

Archival Methods poly bags, sold in boxes of 100, run about 60¢ each for 17x22" size and 33¢ each for 13x19" bags.

I deliberately caught a reflection here so you can see the bag. Except for reflections, polyethylene is crystal clear.

Larry's mat is "floated," meaning the edge of the overmat is set back from the edge of the picture. This demands precision in the cutting of the mat, because the gap should be equal all around (it doesn't look so below because of a trick in perspective, but it is), and it also demands that care be taken in matching the color of the printing paper and the color of the mat. But it looks more elegant and relaxed than an overmat that covers the edges of the print.

The latter has another disadvantage in that it can't show the exact edges of the print as the photographer intended.

Overmat, closed. Note the good match between the shade of white in the printing paper and the mat.

An overmat is created when two pieces of identically-sized mat board are hinged in the middle like the spine of a book. The print is mounted to the solid piece, and the piece with the cutout folds down on top of the print.

Overmat, open. The hinge is usually linen tape, a high-quality cloth tape.

The print is centered into the mat and then attached with a "T-hinge" of linen tape. One piece is attached to the edge of the print from the back, left partially sticking out; the part that sticks out is then taped down to the mat board from above.

T-hinge from above. A second piece of tape, sticky side up, is attached half to the underside of the print and half to the piece of tape you see.

Larry gilds the lily with a transparent photo corner on the bottom two corners; you really don't need to do this, though, except perhaps with very large pieces of paper.

Photo corner

A final touch is a studio emblem and a signature in pencil on the back:

Seal and signature

Signatures can go wherever you please; on the back of the print is the usual place, or on the front of the print visible in the lower right. It's up to you. The signature is sometimes placed on the mat board, either on the front on the lower right or on the back as Larry has done. The disadvantage of signing the mat is that if the mat board is ever replaced the signature is lost, so conservators don't like that practice. The most accepted practice is to sign on the back of the actual print, but behind the margin rather than behind the image area. Signing inside the actual image area on the front is considered poor practice by most, though I've seen it done.

This method of "bagging" or sleeving a matted print is ideal—and most common—for ready-to-frame prints stacked in bins allowing people to browse. Classically, matted prints in portfolio boxes are not bagged if they're intended to be viewed by curators. In that case, sometimes white cotton gloves are provided in the portfolio case to encourage the curators not to get fingerprints on the mats. Portfolios which make the rounds, however, are sure to get dirty and will need to be rematted eventually.

I suspect bags were frowned upon historically only because the plastic used to not be perfectly transparent. Curators hated to have to take prints out of sleeves just to view them. I don't know if poly sleeves have made that practice more common at museums, but I don't see why protected prints like this couldn't be used in a portfolio for more utilitarian presentations.

For storing prints privately, another great method that I like a lot—and that requires far less work—is to take a piece of archival mat board the same size as the print and the bag and place the print and board in the poly bag together. The board doesn't need to be attached to the print at all. The board protects the print from being bent or crimped, and the poly bag protects it from handling, pests, and atmospheric pollutants. It's not as elegant as Larry's presentation but it's simple and clean and it works.

The benefit of Larry's method for buyers is that the print is matted and ready to be framed—and is protected in the meantime. And the benefit of Larry's method for us (photographers, I mean) is that we get to control how we want our prints to be matted. I suppose a few buyers might re-mat an already-matted print, but I don't think very many would.

Mike
(Thanks to Larry)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Oskar Ojala: "Thanks for the presentation, I enjoyed reading. Couldn't be quite sure how the tape was supposed to be attached. I guess I need to get back to it tomorrow."

Mike replies: Does this help? The dotted line shows the bottom piece of tape, which is sticky side UP. It adheres to the back of the print, and leaves a tab sticking up. The second piece of tape (visible in the picture), sticky side down, crosses the top of the tab like a "T," hence the name T-hinge. Together they keep the print in position without obscuring any part of the front of the print.

The print is positioned in the window with the window closed, then weighted to keep it in position. Then the window mat is opened and the T hinge is made.

Much easier to show than to explain in words.

Ken Tanaka: "Nicely done. This is very similar to the standard storage format used for photographs in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and every other museum with which I'm familiar. The core purpose of the hinged mat in an archival collection is to enable a print to be handled without being touched. May I add three suggestions?

1. For long-term storage and handling I recommend placing a piece of glassine or other acid-free archival tissue paper over the print and under the over-mat. This is inexpensive surface protection and is also very standard procedure in museum collections.
2. Consider skipping using photo corners. They represent more long-term hazard than benefit. They often dry out, fall loose, and can end up sticking to a print's surface. They can also cause wrinkling by constraining the moisture expansion of some papers in non-controlled storage environments.
3. Skip the sticker. Yea, I know it's a branding thing. But anything stuck to a print is ultimately trouble and gives conservators chills. Your verso inscription is enough to authenticate the print."

TOP's Latest Product Test

Result: SanDisk SD cards are not Butters-proof. No further tests will be conducted on this sample.

Mike
(Thanks to Overenthusiastic Product Tester Butters)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Stefan Laarm: "Do you have any camera equipement that passed the Butters-test?"

Mike replies: Nothing passes the Butters test, except Kongs and racquetballs.

Here he is with a fleece jacket I owned for 25 years, which he completely ruined in approximately eight minutes. Note tip of tail wagging nervously.

 

Items for Sale

Here's just a taste, because so many people are e-mailing me. Please don't contact me about these items yet; wait till I list prices.

[UPDATE: I guess I need to take that back and throw this open for dibs, because too many people are contacting me and asking for things. I'm working on prices now and will post an updated list soon. —M.]

Here's an incomplete list of some of the items I will be listing for sale: pristine Chamonix whole-plate view camera with three dedicated holders, in fitted bags (will trade for Deardorff 5x7 in good condition—"good" meaning, wear and age okay, crud and damage not. It will be for static display). Olympus E-M1 with very low use. This could be spoken for; I need to check with my friend John D. to see if he still wants it. Micro 4/3 Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm ƒ/2.8 lens with hood; Sony NEX-6 body; Sony 24mm ƒ/1.8 lens; Minolta 35mm ƒ/2 AF RS lens for Sony Alpha SLRs or Minolta film cameras; Pentax 6x7 with metered finder; Pentax 135mm ƒ/4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens, in extremely good condition; a jewel of a Zeiss Contessa; Canon Canonet QL17 rangefinder; Sony A900 24-MP full-frame digital camera with very low usage and in essentially new condition; Sony 85mm ƒ/2.8 AF lens; Pentax 645NII; Rolleiflex 6008AF body with handle, back, charger and two batteries; two clean, working Maxxum 7's; Rolleiflex 6008AF body with handle, back, charger, two batteries, 45° finder, and 80mm ƒ/2.8 AF-Xenotar lens; Panasonic GX7 silver body; rare Konica Hexanon 50mm ƒ/2.4 collapsible L-mount type lens for Leica mount (screwmount with M adapter); Konica M-Hexanon 35mm ƒ/2 Leica M-mount lens in perfect condition with both caps plus hood; Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 Lumix G AF lens, first type, with fitted aftermarket hood; Canon EOS-1v film camera; Pentax FA 31mm ƒ1.8 lens; Nikon Nikkor 58mm ƒ1.4G lens; Nikon Nikkor 28mm ƒ/1.8G; Nikon HP high-eyepoint finder for F3; and a Mamiya 7 with 80mm ƒ/4 lens, black.

There's more but that's all I can remember at the moment and I think that covers the high points, mostly. I need to move this stuff out the door so prices will be designed to tempt. I'll also have a lot of nice darkroom equipment to list, including: the best densitometer; a Peak/Micromega Type 1 designed by Professor F. Koana and made by the Tohkai Sangyo Company of Japan; a Vintage Kodak Process Thermometer; an antique printing frame; a now-rare SaltHill print washer (probably for pickup only, just so you're warned); my "sleeper" Omega Omicron-El 4x5 enlarging lens which is a relabeled El-Nikkor and one of Nikon's best (it'll be very cheap though); lots of the best film reels ever made, which are to garden variety spirals as a Ferrari is to a Fiat; and what I consider to be the best enlarging timer...and believe me, I gave the matter considerable thought and research, back in the day. (Darkroom was not fun for everyone, but for those of us to whom it was fun, it was lots of fun.)

I think my one remaining modest Saunders/LPL enlarger will be free to a good home, to whomever is willing to come pick it up. The big AF Durst, the truly awesome Leitz Focomat IIc, and the big Saunders/LPL 4500II with its workhorse Apo-Rodagon 80mm ƒ/4 that paid for itself many many times over are all gone now. Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Luis Aribe: "Just out of curiosity, which are 'the best film reels ever made'? I had always thought that, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, reel is a reel is a reel, but it seems to have been just one of many gaps in my photographic culture."

Mike replies: They are made by Hewes in the U.K. and were sometimes marketed under the name "King Concept" in the U.S. Years ago they were about 4X as expensive as regular reels; current B&H price for a 35mm reel is $30.

They are heavy duty, beautifully fabricated, and have a welded plate with prongs in the center instead of the usual spring clip—much easier to load and much more foolproof—virtually impossible to "start" the film wrong.

Random Excellence: David Aschkenas

Photo by David Aschkenas

David Aschkenas is about to begin working on a book of jazz musicians in Pittsburgh with Abby Mendelson, so he's put up a few vintage photos of blues greats from the '70s and '80s on his website to get the juices flowing.

I conceive of David Aschkenas as a "David Douglas Duncan type" of photographer: "shoot anything but keep shooting." He's surprisingly successful at genre-jumping, usually a hazard for photographers. Some of his portraits are especially wonderful. ...Although I really feel the lack of captions! I want to know who all those people are, and I only recognize a few.

The picture above is Texas blues guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was killed in a helicopter crash in 1990 not far from where I live in Wisconsin.

A nice quote from David A.: "I consider all work personal; after all, I'm the one who gets to press the shutter."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

R. A. Krajnyak: "Thanks for the heads up. Nice images. As for the folks in the blues pics, I'm sure you recognize B.B. and Albert King. The woman accordion player is Zydeco musician Queen Ida. The bearded guitarist is Dr. John and the guitarist playing the resonator is a young John Hammond Jr. Thanks again."

Mike replies: John Hammond! That was driving me crazy. Thanks.

Open Mike: Hate Apple? You'll Love This

I've been impressed by the degree to which smartphones are making inroads on the camera business. Sales of digital point-and-shoots are plummeting like nothing we've seen since...well, since film took a nosedive to make way for digital point-and-shoots.

I've also been impressed that Apple has actually gotten me taking pictures with a phone. Granted, not entirely happily, but I never thought it would happen at all. I guess I'm not immune to the trump-all of convenience that's driving the broader public.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. Guess what the world's leading maker of smartphones is up to now?

Apple wants to make electric cars.

Those who are aware of the "Project Titan" rumors will probably know more about this than I do, but it came as a surprise to me. Evidently there have been signs for some time that Apple wants to get into the car business, and various industry watchers and pundits have been busy speculating.

The interesting part about this are the subset of rumors that claim that Apple wants to build electric cars, but doesn't necessarily want to sell you one.

Rather, the plan is to make cars into an app.

I don't know how it would work exactly...but apparently you'd use your smartphone to reserve a shared car or order it for delivery, use it for what you needed it for, and then drop it off again. Drivers wouldn't own their own cars; they'd just use them as needed. Apple would maintain the fleet and charge the batteries (and the customers too, I'm sure).

I imagine the revolution would start in a place like Portland. Or is that just the influence of Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein?

In any event, don't write them off. Apple doesn't know anything about making cars, but then, as recently as 2008 it kinda looked like GM didn't know all that much about it either. But other people do, and don't forget: "With a market cap of $750 billion," writes Arthur St. Antoine in this month's Automobile, "Apple is worth more than Ford, GM, Daimler, Peugeot, Fiat Chrysler, Renault, and VW combined." And Apple's been furiously (if only semi-secretly) hiring the requisite talent by throwing armloads of dollars around.

One thing we can probably count on: the goal would be to make driving more convenient, and eliminate most of the hassles of individual car ownership.

Could be worth it, for some people.

The history of photography could be written as a march of convenience, too. Tintypes, or ferrotypes, were more convenient than Daguerreotypes; hand cameras were more convenient than stand cameras; folders and TLRs with rollfilm were more convenient than press cameras with sheet film; screwmount rangefinders were more convenient than folders and TLRs, and 35mm film with 36 exposures was more convenient than rollfilm with 12 (give or take); SLRs are more convenient and flexible than rangefinders; point-and-shoots are more convenient and easier to use than SLRs; digital is more convenient than any kind of film; smartphones are more convenient than hauling out the DSLR.

I keep thinking that the way this is going, pretty soon people are going to decide that it's really most convenient just not to take photographs at all.

And at that point, the only people making photographs will once again be a select few diehards making Daguerreotypes. Well, okay, maybe a slightly larger group using view cameras on tripods shooting sheet film.

Anyway, it looks like people who love to hate Apple (you know who you are) are going to have a lot more to happily gripe about pretty soon.

Me, I want my manual stick shift, and I haven't even warmed up to turbochargers yet. And I hate the rubber-band-on-wagon-wheel big wheel / skinny tire look, too. (I might not be a BOGG any more—beardy old grumpy guy—but I still harbor the gene. The development of the automobile could have stopped with the E21 Series 3 as far as I'm concerned.)

Then again, in 1996 I was fully planning on one day being the last of the last of the film holdouts, too.My inspiration, or so I thought, was Eugène Atget, still shooting glass dry plates as late as the 1920s.

We all know how that went.

I do think (and hope) that the world is waiting on a great big paradigm shift away from fossil-fuel-powered cars. It's inevitable; it just depends on how much we're going to hurt ourselves before it happens. And of course, one very big thing remains to be seen: who's going to make make the big money off that change.

Oh, no, actually one very interesting thing remains to be seen before that: what does a car designed by Sir Jony Ive look like?!?

The next decade and a half is going to be interesting.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the Sunday editorial page of TOP, which sometimes looks suspiciously like the ordinary everyday pages of TOP. Or the other way around.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

John Gordon: "Re what a car designed by Sir Jony Ive looks like, Apple hired noted Australian designer Marc Newson last year. Newson did a concept car for Ford in 2009, so that design may be a clue to a future Apple car. Google Marc Newson Ford to find images of it. He is perhaps better known to photographers for his design of the Pentax K-01 and co-design with Ive of a one-off Leica for a charity auction. I bought the K-01 because I loved the way it looks. Very nice camera, though not exactly photographer-friendly."

Bill Tyler: "Apple's late to the game. Check out BMW's DriveNow program."

Oldsweng: "You are probably right about the revolution starting in Portland. The electric car infrastructure is here with charging available across most of the state and the city government has already dealt with car sharing companies like Cars2Go. Apple has a data center in the state because electricity is relatively inexpensive so charging the cars when returned to their base station would be a drop in the bucket. It would just make sense to have pilot project in the Portland area."

Rusty: "A Calgary developer is proposing to build a downtown condo tower with no parking spaces, include a membership in a car share service and a $500 credit for car share with each condo sold. At $75k a parking space they can reduce the cost of the condos which are marketed to Millennials, many of whom are not interested in car ownership."

Bob Blakley: "Thanks for the rant, Mike.  :-)  One question for you and the readers; the trailer for Artists and Alchemists piqued my interest but I can find no evidence that the full film was ever released—certainly it's not available on Netflix, iTunes, or Amazon. Anyone know if it was finished and if it's available?"

Luke: "The amount of coal-generated electricity my BMW i3 uses is less than the amount needed just to refine enough gasoline to go the same distance, let alone burn it. My skinny low-profile large-diameter tires look really goofy, but the contact patch is the same size as typical smaller, wider tires. It is always in the right gear, with instant torque out the wazoo. It weighs the same as a Miata, but has a lower center of gravity.

"And about that stick-shift myth: a modern, shiftable twin-clutch auto gearbox is far, far more fun than any stick shift. After owning two Caymans, a stick and then a PDK, a stick is horribly frustrating and slow. But then, any multi-speed gearbox seems awfully crude after driving a one-speed that's always in the right gear. Now, move!"

The Lens Hunter

"The lens is very important, it is basically the engine of photography.”

—Geoffrey Berliner

Read more at Popphoto.com. (Go full screen to see the video best.)

Mike
(Thanks to Michael J. Perini)

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Photo by Peter

Peter: "Geoffrey is a great guy. I took a wet plate class at Penumbra (then known as the Center for Alternative Photography) and got the bug. I bought a few old lenses and brought them to Geoffrey and he was able to tell me their focal length and aperture and give me an idea of the plate coverage they'd provide. It's taken me a couple years to assemble the 4x5 camera and lenses and get one of the lenses mounted. Just last week I took my first shot (above)—not wet plate but on old expired Polaroid 55 film. Wet plate and New55 (when it's ready) is next. So excited!"

Michael Cytrynowicz: "Wonderful video, thanks Mike! And a learning experience. He talks about his fascination with how the lens were made, but especially, what did the lens makers get wrong—and how this creates opportunities for artists! Paraphrasing him, 'you can't know, you have to shoot with it.' Maybe it is why some cheap lenses I bought off eBay and KEH (bargain-meister), satisfy me more than some more expensive ones I got (and later sold)? And possibly would satisfy me more than a lusted-for Zeiss Touit, Leica Apo Macro or Sigma Art. I feel more comforted now. It is not necessarily all about mortgaging your house to get the finest mechanics and apo-low-dispersion-aspherical optics. It won't necessarily help my photography. But you have been sayin' that, dontcha?"

Mike replies: Yes, and it's true.

Camera Blowout Coming Up!

TOP needs to make room and free up some discretionary funds, so I'll be doing a major "closet dump" sometime very soon. We'll be offering late-model, low-use digital cameras at substantial savings, lenses (including a few rare exotics), and film cameras (some fine, some funky) as well as my extensive collection of darkroom equipment. (Please, somebody report this on the APUG and the LFF!) For local buyers, some books and prints will also be on the block.

Please keep an eye out if you're interested.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Ann: "I just finished my own closet clear-out a couple of weeks ago. It was liberating, and I feel lighter seeing the empty shelves. The pile of cash in the desk drawer (I used Craigslist) ain't bad, either."