The Online Photographer

Open Mike: That's Proof

A few notes in passing, in no particular order.

• I'm lying when I say that: I would like to disclose that my current net worth is two billion dollars. I am worth two billion dollars because I value my brand at two billion dollars. My other assets are intangible. Yes, of course I am aware that TOP Editors for the past 40 years have all released their tax returns to you, the readers of TOP, as a gesture of accountability and transparency. I'd like to release my tax returns too, and I might do so in the future, except for one thing, which is that I'm lying whenever I say "I'd like to release my tax returns" and "I might do so in the future." And to all those people who ask why I have 80% of the value of my home mortgaged and a car payment when I'm worth billions, it's because I care about and approve of kittens and puppies.

• Testing, testing: In car news, the top-secret, not-yet-released prototype 2017 Camaro, heavily disguised, was spotted at the Burgerkingring in Germany (it's a famous racetrack). It had been sent there for testing. (The reason cars are now tested on racetracks is because most consumers do their driving, almost all the time, on long, twisty, roads with no stop signs or stop lights, no speed limits, and no right-angle turns. The reason American cars are sent overseas to the Burgerkingring is because we have no racetracks in America.) Later, the top-secret, not-yet-released prototype 2017 Camaro crashed. But no one reporting this exotic fact bothers to answer the burning question I had: does that mean it flunked the test? (Note: nothing was damaged except the 2017 Camaro prototype itself and the 2017 Camaro's reputation, and no one was hurt except for some stoogelings and underlackeys in the PR Department back at Chevrolet headquarters in Detroit.)

• Chimps Editors needed everywhere, Dept.: From an online audio equipment review encountered entirely too late at night:

The Phantom is an improvement over the 2.2 because it is more dynamic, has more bass power and somewhat smoother highs. Sound staging is also improved to a noticeable degree. Comparing the two arms is like comparing a chimpanzee to one of Dian Fossey’s silverback gorillas. Sure, they are both members of the Great Ape family, but the gorilla is more powerful, stronger, and heavier. It can make a forest home with large branches and break small trees. In contrast, a chimp uses leaves and twigs. The sound of the Phantom is more grounded and better able to communicate the power of music.

Okay, this is my fault for reading tonearm reviews online before going to bed. Doing such a thing felt like a waste of the limited time the Lord blessed me with, even to me, even as I was doing it.

• Why? Here's why: Nope, sorry, still not releasing those tax returns. Why? Because you're not interested, which is why you keep asking.

• Weather news: Either this Spring is very unusual, or I have inadvertently (well, half-vertently) landed in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The changing light-and-cloud show of the weather has been amazingly gorgeous.

Chlorophyll production began in earnest here about six days ago, when the biggest trees acquired a barely visible rime of spring-green frosting. Since the go-ahead signal, budding and blooming has been proceeding apace. I have to admit, however, that I am somewhat scared of plants. The painter Edgar Degas was said to have been disturbed by plants, by their chaotic flourishing, fractal variety, and chromatic perfusion. Personally I'm not frightened of them in an "omigod run away" panic-mode way—they are, after all, tethered by their roots, and not likely to chase me, as I remind myself on occasion, anxiously—but they're fundamentally mysterious to me and I never know what they're up to. I find them difficult to demystify because I can never identify them reliably. They are hard to trust. Some people claim to know what is safe to eat; I don't know what is safe to touch. Bringing plants into the house seems rash.

When you buy a new house, you inherit the plants that adorn the property. I discovered last fall that I have an apple tree, for instance. This Spring I girded my courage by watching several tutorials on YouTube, and pruned it. I am hoping the apples are edible, or at least juiceable.

But I am in a new area, and I don't recognize many of the plants. Even some of the weeds are so unfamiliar that I had to ask the previous owners whether one particular type was, in fact, considered a weed. (It is.)

Many of the unknown plants seem benign. Some, however, seem suspicious.

For example, consider this alarming fellow. I have no idea at all what he is. All I know is that he's twice as big as he was last year, and he's sending tendrils both into the sky and snaking along the ground at a frantic rate. When I garden nearby the little tendrils do seem to reach and grab for me. My impulse is to swat them away like bugs. Yes, I know he is rooted, but he seems capable of rather flagrant, and also somewhat sneaky growth, and my bedroom window on the second story is only about 40 feet away....

I know it’s banal to talk about the weather, but the day we had two days ago was amazing. It was raining steadily when I woke up and I thought okay, rainy day. But no, halfway through the morning a classic high pressure system moved in and dried everything out—beautiful sweet clean pure cool air and brilliant billowing clouds, cool and windy. After lunch I drove to the grocery store and it was still gorgeous when I went in, and I bought no more than a couple of dozen things, and remarked to the checkout clerk, "beautiful day out there," and she said, "sure is"...but no! When I stepped outside again the sky had abruptly clouded over again and was completely overcast, with a churn of high clouds of variegated mottled grays with ragged edges like torn paper. Once I got home the sky wetted the ground again, gently.

Later still I looked up from my computer and saw a fairytale sky…clean cerulean blue, with a touch of deep cobalt as if deep space were faintly showing through, and processions of cottonball white clouds scudding swiftly along in the atmosphere. Near "Bluff sunset" (when the sun descends behind the high Bluff across the lake to the West), Butters and I went out to fling the ball (which we do four times a day, and he’s always lobbying to make that five). The sky by that time was a clear, cloudless, unblemished blue from horizon to horizon, and the razor clear yellow light of the setting sun on the budding trees, slanting in nearly sideways, was so lovely I couldn’t take my eyes off the land. Finally the Bluff covered the sun and shrouded the whole outdoors in somber blue-gray, and the moon was high in the sky just beginning to brighten.

• Positive confirmation via independent corroboration: "I can certify that Mr. Michael Johnston is absolutely and unequivocally worth two billion dollars. At least two billion dollars. I have seen the financials myself. All sorts of financials. The best financials." —TOP spokesman John Barren, sitting in Mike's chair on Mike's porch typing on Mike's computer

And there you have it, from an independent source. That's proof.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the anything-goes editorial page of TOP, often off-topic, which appears on Sundays.

UPDATE Monday: With the possibility that my plant is an invasive species, I've contacted the Cornell University Cooperative Extension of Yates County and left a message for the Invasive Species Specialist, whose name is Emily. This is a world I know very little about, so it's just the sort of thing I would investigate, because I stand a good chance of learning something. I'll keep you posted. ...Well, assuming there's anything at least moderately interesting to keep you posted about. —MJ

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

(If you enjoyed this post, please use TOP's links for your shopping)

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

John Hufnagel: "That plant you've pictured is indeed a weed "Oriental Bittersweet," and it's common on the East Coast. It will produce tiny odorless flowers and will take over your entire yard given enough time. It grows ferociously fast and will climb any tree, fence or deck. Unless you have a need of such qualities (such as a living barrier), you'd be better off getting rid of it. You'll have to be very persistent to do so."

Mike replies: Eeek!

robert e: "There's a great deal we don't yet know about plants, because we have only asked a limited set of questions about them. In part because they're too familiar. Maybe if more of us were weirded out by plants (which is to say, recognize their mystery) we'd pay more attention, and learn a lot thereby, because they're clearly up to lots of things that we just haven't noticed before."

Alan Carmody: "Re 'I have inadvertently...landed in one of the most beautiful places on the planet': You have. The play of light can be amazing, especially in these months, as the cold front moves back and forth and is broken up into swirls and eddies by the landscape and the local lake effects. It doesn't hurt that it all happens in picturesque hilly farmland. Visually and topographically speaking, the Finger Lakes can be more like England than New England is." 

Paul Van: "Is it sad that my first thought was 'Graham arm...'?"

Mike replies: The tonearm that makes its forest home of leaves and twigs, yes.

Wise Words from the 'Eminence Grise'

TOP is off on Saturday. (I actually do take the day off now, although I'll try to keep up with the comments.) But I've enjoyed the past three days and want to thank everyone who contributed to the (ongoing) discussion. I've always been fascinated by ideas about what photographs are and when exactly it is that what started out as a photograph becomes something else.

I thought this might be a good time to revisit a 2007 post from TOP and the wise words of Elliott Erwitt, who I would say is one of the 25 or so greatest photographers since 1839 (there being very little competition for the title before that). I apologize if you've seen this before; however many current TOP readers weren't with us in 2007. The snapshot is by Alec Soth. Wise words to the wise worn by a revered éminence grise:

And then of course, TOP reader Stephen Gillette's commentary, more apropos today than ever:

A Very Important Distinction in Post-Processing

Here's a bit of food for thought. I'd argue that there's a crucial distinction in post-processing between two type of decisions that, although similar superficially, spans a divide like opposite slopes of the same mountain. Namely, the difference between changes you make to make the picture more true to the scene the way it was, and changes you make to make the picture less like the original scene.

I would argue that most routine post-processing corrections are of the former type. We change density and exposure, color balance, local contrast and sharpness, perhaps correct image geometry, not to depart from reality but to represent it more closely.

I constantly do this. I have a mental visual memory of the scene and I try to make the picture look more like the scene. A lot of post-processing falls into this category. It's not deceptive at all—it's corrective.

Even one of the very few pictures I've deliberately "Photoshopped" falls into this category. (I wish I could find it to show you but I've looked and looked and can't come up with it.) I re-shot the moon and inserted into a different picture. But the reason was because the moon in the original picture was blown out and grossly overexposed. I put the "new" moon exactly where the moon actually was in the picture, the same size. So it wasn't embellishment, it was simply a technical means of getting the picture to look the way the scene looked.

Warts and all?
Next comes a category of corrections I'll call "transitory anomalies." I was a portrait photographer in D.C., and I've always argued that a certain amount of "correction" is necessary to match the way our brains process images of faces. We're very, very good at recognizing and reading human faces—the more so the more they look related to our own. But we "see" certain things and not others. For instance, our brains are very good at distinguishing persistent characteristics from transitory characteristics. We are great at reading subtleties that pertain to persistent recognition—and we overlook features we know are undependable as markers of recognition. It's as if the brain "throws those out." It knows they're not reliable. A piece of jewelry or a headband, the way a person's hair looks that day, a pimple, stubble on a male. By removing those things from a picture, or de-emphasizing them, I don't think we're necessarily violating the literalness of the picture—we're just making it conform more closely to the way the brain actually sees.

Same thing with little bits of trash in a landscape. They're not persistent, they're transitory.

Of course you perceive that the ice is getting thinner here.  :-)  How much trash to you get to remove before misrepresentation sets in? Judgment call.

Looks like...
Next in the litany come things that mimic errors. When I was a magazine editor I always evaluated the seriousness of errors and typos in the finished, printed magazine based on how likely the reader was to be able to recover the intended sense or meaning. A gap         in a line is unsightly, but it doesn't impose on the reader's recovery of meaning. But a word that's grlsdgfb is more serious, especially if the missing or garbled word is needed to parse the sentence. There was a song long ago that used synth noises that at one point mimicked what telephones then sounded like. I thought that was a mistake even though it wasn't, because it always made me stop paying attention to the song and wonder if the phone was ringing.

An example of this: I remember a landscape I took where a few of the fallen leaves were turned a certain way to the light and looked like litter. I toned those down with the spotting brush even though they were accurately rendered by the camera. The reason was that they were actually leaves but they looked like something else.

To a certain extent I even think this is permissible when a visual element looks anomalous when frozen by camera perspective. If a person is standing behind another person, and the camera catches, say, just one finger poking out from the main subject's cheek, I think it's permissible to remove that. The reason is, again, to refer back to your brain's perception at the scene: you know there's a second person standing behind the first one a little ways back; both are moving, and visually they overlap. The details of how the images of the two people get confused is easily and effortlessly sorted by your brain. But the camera can catch a detail wrong, and the viewer of the picture doesn't have the whole perception to go on. So suddenly it looks glaringly odd.

An example of this is the famous "pole growing from someone's head" phenomenon. The classic example of that is John Paul Filo's photograph of the Kent State shooting that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1971:

The anomaly happens because the brain is so adept at sorting such confusion in real life, and much less so in photographs. (A more seasoned news photographer might have taken a quick juke to the left before pressing the shutter—it's a bit of a rookie mistake—but Filo was a 22-year-old student at the time, and of course the scene itself must have been extraordinarily upsetting.) This change would not be permissible in photojournalism today, but for all other kinds of photographs I think that when you weigh one kind of misrepresentation against another kind of misrepresentation—which, when post-processing, you often have to do—it makes sense to make changes like this.

Of course you perceive we are now merrily sliding on the slippery slope. We're now extremely close to making mere cosmetic changes, the kind that sanitize and idealize pictures and make them more pictorial and illustrative. You really have to judge just how far you want to go with this.

What was done to the rickshaw picture in the two representations of it we have goes way, way over the line, so that's clear. If this had been my photograph, apart from color balancing and getting the density and sharpness right I would have only made three changes. I would have removed the black line labeled 1; I would have knocked down the value of the apple cart at 2 a little bit, without moving or removing it, probably to about the same value as the shirt of the man standing behind it or just a little less; and I might have considered eliminating the little white square at 3, but I think I would probably have decided against that. (It's a bit like a typo that a reader can easily figure out...and the world in photographs is like that, a bit messy.) Of course it's not my picture so I'm not the one who gets to decide.

But if we know that a line was crossed here, knowing where the line was is a more delicate matter.

But really, aren't all post-processing decisions like that? It's just like "going heavy on the sliders." It's easy to overdo any effect, not just "cleanup and removal." You can overdo cropping, or saturation, or contrast; in the same way, you can go overboard with cleaning up elements that are "distracting." Until, perhaps, you find yourself making wholesale changes in the look and the meaning of the photograph. In which case it has become a photo-illustration.

Where that line is is different for each of us—and it's our work, so we get to decide. But I think this idea of "more true to the scene" vs. "less true to the scene"—correcting the "mindless" camera image vs. tampering heavy-handedly with what you know full well was actually there—is an important distinction, and one that you might want to keep in mind to help guide your decisions.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Bill Shannon: "What I see in the original rickshaw image is four riders packed onto the back seat of the bike and the driver working hard to move them through the rain storm. This is probably his livelihood. To me the lie in the 'fixed' version, amongst other things, is that the two surviving riders are postured for a tight fit but there is only a phony blank space behind them and a missing glimpse of the fourth person.The exertion of the driver has lost its reason."

Jim Richardson: "I find quite interesting just how ham-handed the printer was in the use of the potassium ferricyanide in the 'straight' version of John Filo's Kent State picture. The neckerchief, the paving behind and around the woman student, the pants of the victim, and a few other places were hit pretty heavy with the bleach. To my eye (having been printing in much the same way in that era) the bleaching was meant to overcome the clutter, part of which came from the unfortunately positioned pole. I'm just wanting to point out in what ways the 'straight' print isn't totally straight either. But this manipulation is clear to be seen, while the rickshaw cloning is really meant to deceive. Intent matters.

"Also, if these are true crops of the various versions of the print, then it is interesting that the man on the left was cropped out, for much the same reason as McCurry's technician cloned out the third man on the rickshaw—because he's looking at the camera, which betrayed the photographer's presence. I find this to be a kind of fetish among us photojournalists, the wished-for fiction that we weren't really there, not actually part of the events of that day. We manufacture the myth of the disembodied observer, a myth that weighs heavy on us, in order to distance ourselves from involvement in the event."

[Jim, like Steve McCurry, is a National Geographic photographer. —Ed.]

Gordon Lewis: "I find it fascinating how flexible so many of the commenters are about the difference between truth and fiction in photography. Writing seems so much more clearcut by comparison. One is either writing a work of fiction or non-fiction. This doesn't necessary mean that works of non-fiction are 100% factual—human beings do, after all, differ on what constitutes fact vs. interpretation—but if the author claims a book is non-fiction then he or she has to be careful not to make --it up.

"McCurry, in my opinion, ventured too far into the Hollywood writing conceit of creating something 'based on a true story.' In other words, 'This is not what really happened, but in our opinion it makes for a much more marketable story.'"

[Gordon is a former Hollywood writer. —Ed.]

David L.: "For photojournalism I think nothing should be retouched or omitted. The pole in the Kent State photo is an example of a detail that can help triangulate the exact location. If the pole is removed, that could put doubt into the process. No Parking signs, advertising, etc. all should be preserved. 32 cents per gallon gasoline signs in old photos reveal the time period. Background menus and prices in photos also place the photo's era. For personal and private photos, no rules apply."

Tom Halfhill (B.S. Journalism, Kent State, 1977): "Although removing the background pole from John Filo's Kent State photo would be forbidden under today's photojournalism rules, it might be argued that removing it actually improves the photo's veracity—because, as Mike says, it's corrective. Those of us who have seen the retouched version a zillion times know that the girl is screaming over a dead body. But someone viewing the photo for the very first time might think she is screaming because her head has been impaled by a spear or rod. Only upon a closer look might a new viewer see the prone body. And even then, the viewer might still wonder if the girl has been hit by something, too. Try looking at the photo again with a fresh eye, and not with a photographer's eye. The first thing you notice is a screaming girl with something sticking out of her head!"

Bob Rosinsky: "I've had more than a few conversations with photo journalists about Filo's photograph. The consensus is that the the picture should not have been retouched. Sure, a more experienced photographer would have framed the scene differently. But the photo was not taken by a seasoned photographer. It was taken by a kid—a peer of the victim. It's luck that the young photographer was there and it's to his credit that he had the composure to take the picture. Photojournalism need not be aesthetically pleasing."

chris_scl: "This animated GIF I made out of your screenshots shows that many more objects were cloned, muted or even colorized in the rickshaw picture."

Faked-up Photos

Apropos yesterday, I'll just personally say that I'm not too interested in faked-up photographs. Photography works best for me when it respects the lens image.

My main objection to manipulating and "enhancing" photographs is that it makes photography into something less interesting than it is naturally. But, secondarily, I find surreptitious photo-illustration (what Steve McCurry or his anonymous now-fired assistant are in essence accused of practicing) to be just sort of, well, low. It strikes me as a shabby kind of dishonesty. If you're going to Photoshop sh*t, then do it, but do it boldly! If you're going to stage pictures, then really stage them! But to prettify pictures on the sly while pretending they're honest, that's what I don't like.

I personally often feel that overly idealized, overly prettified pictures are in bad taste. That's just my reaction to them. But I don't actually mind heavily edited or Photoshopped pictures. Maybe it's in bad taste when it's done on the sly, when it intends its shabby, mousey little deceptions. Like Jon Lovitz's famous pathological liar from long ago..."Yeah, yeah...there was no light pole there. That street was deserted, except for the thing I wanted to make a picture of. Sure it was! And that rickshaw had only two people in it...there was nobody in it who was laughing and looking at me. Yeah, that's the ticket!"

This is just my take on it, and in photography's house are many mansions. (John 14:2, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." I.e., there's room for everybody which means there's room for you.) If you want to Photoshop two people out of your rickshaw, don't feel constrained by me. Nobody owns photography, so I don't either.

If I were accused of Photoshoppery most foul, I'd use the Popeye Defense*. Put up ten of my most-manipulated photographs on my web page, showing all the edits and giving reasons for them, and say "this is how I work." No excuses. Anybody who doesn't like it can go, er...fly a kite. (Yeah, that's it.)

I say if you're gonna be a photo-illustrator and go nuts with Photoshop, go ahead—just don't slink around in the ethical shadows about it. Do it strong and bold, and up front.

Mike

* "I yam what I yam."

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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The Ugliness of Beautification

First Teju Cole and now this—when it rains it pours for a guy.

You've probably heard by now that Steve McCurry is the latest to be caught up in a manipulation scandal. PetaPixel has reported that several examples of excessive Photoshopping of McCurry photos have come to light. A Facebook user named Gianmarco Maraviglia found this example:

Study that for a couple of minutes and you can see how deep the changes go. Not as bad, arguably, as the example of the soccer-playing boys on PetaPixel where a whole person was removed. A photograph is in part a witness, and that's part of what makes it unique: At that moment, that boy was there. He might not have been, but he was. The look of the world is inconvenient to our picture-contriving intent. But that's part of what makes it so mysterious and rich.

By the late 1970s, the fundamental difference between photography and all the other methods of creating visual art had been worked out more or less completely. Photography was a matter of "hand and eye," in the words of John Szarkowski, of recognition followed by the recording of the lens image more or less in an instant, and more or less as the lens saw it. Painting and other "plastic" (i.e., malleable) arts involved a back-and-forth over time: look, contemplate, evaluate, make changes; look, contemplate, evaluate, make more changes; and so on over and over, a process that could continue for days or weeks or even years.

Something like the example above is way beyond the pale for photojournalism, but we now accept that photojournalism sets itself apart with higher standards than most less rigorous photographic pursuits care to hold themselves to. But it's a good example both of the slippery slope—once you start cleaning up the messy little details, where do you stop?—as well as the reason why I initially advocated, in the late '90s and early 2000s, that the new medium be called digital imaging rather than photography because the two were essentially different media. (I still think they are, but that battle is lost of course. Although we do refer to "images" now, not "pictures" as we used to, and that change paralleled the rise of digital imaging.) The "matter of hand and eye" has taken three steps towards painting. The example above is unquestionably now a photo illustration, not a photograph.

I'm almost certain that someone will chime in with the usual knee-jerk response that pictures could be manipulated in the darkroom as well, and of course they could. But wholesale changes—the photojournalistic baseline sanction against adding or subtracting objects and elements—was much more difficult to do in the darkroom, and much less likely to leave no trace. And I mean by orders of magnitude, not merely by degrees. It wasn't just that National Geographic photographers turned over their film to the labs and the editors saw the original transparencies.

The first illustration on the PetaPixel page is essential a "Photoshop disaster," albeit a modest one, and when PetaPixel reached out to Steve McCurry for a statement they got back several paragraphs that seemed very close to boilerplate in tone, which concluded with the kind of thing a politician might say when caught red-handed: mistakes were made, the person responsible will no longer be working for us, etc. Mr. McCurry hasn't responded about the above image yet.

So my question here is, is this just the new norm? Should we just give up on the idea of the photograph as a report of what was in front of the lens when the picture was made?

I clean up my pictures too. Sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—I do more. For instance, take a look at this recent illustration to a TOP post:

Here's the OOC JPEG:

You probably can't see the main change in that, so here's a hint:

Just a little joke (that quite a few people did get, by the way). So would I have done that if I were a working photojournalist? No way. Wouldn't have considered it.

But does it make the picture into a photo illustration and not a photograph?

It might, and here's why. Even though it's a small change, it's also distinctly an editorial or authorial comment added by me, and makes a point in relation to meaning...to wit, I'm likening John Coffer—tintype evangelist—to an Old Testament prophet by giving him a "halo." It's a very small change in the picture—just move a light fixture a bit—but you might even argue that my change is more substantive than the changes in the McCurry example above. He (or his minions) just cleaned up the background, made the picture more pictorial and painterly. I, on the other hand, added an implied meaning. So it's not the amount of change in an image that's probative.

And then there's the even thornier matter of processing decisions and how they change the "feel" of an image. For that matter, does the fact that I turned the photograph into black-and-white make it a photo illustration and not a photograph? It's not the way the X-T1 "sees." If it had been made with a Leica M-Monochrom, you couldn't argue that the change to B&W was deliberate. But the camera industry doesn't make the cameras I need to do the work I want to do, so I'm forced to adapt and use the tools that are available. But does that make me into an illustrator rather than a photographer? Color to B&W is a pretty big change, and a departure from observable reality.

No doubt Steve McCurry's reputation is going to take a hit over this (and it certainly underlines some of the things Teju Cole was claiming about his work). And that's too bad. But while I support news organizations in their efforts to maintain the "witnessing" property of photographs, I suspect it's a rear-guard fight and that we're just in a new era now. Photography used to have an irrepressible strain of subversiveness, persistently trying to insist on the look of the world even when it was chaotic and inconvenient, even when it didn't fit what we wanted to see. That has changed. We have the upper hand now.

Mike
(A number of readers sent links to this)

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

david stock: "Re 'By the late 1970s, the fundamental difference between photography and all the other methods of creating visual art had been worked out more or less completely.' Completely perhaps, but temporarily. Photography was never automatically truthful; it always relied for its power on a culturally-mediated tension between the objective and the subjective. The medium is all about editing the visual world to make a statement or evoke emotion. In doing so, it often relies on an implicit 'deal' between the photographer and the viewer about how the things depicted by the photographer are 'truthfully' (or at least convincingly) represented. That deal is changing rapidly because the medium is changing rapidly. It was never set in stone. Eventually we may reach a new normal, with new conventions, where photographers and viewers know more or less where we stand once again.

"In the meantime, things are messy, and viewers who are used to the old conventions sometimes feel cheated out of our expectations. (Myself included.) Still, it's probably healthy to challenge photography's 'truthfulness' every generation or so."

David (partial comment): "As someone who has spent the better part of a decade working in the news industry, I find it absolutely shocking when the World Press Photo organisation reveals that more than 20% of submissions in the 2015 contest were manipulated beyond widely accepted norms. That someone like McCurry should find himself in such a situation is disheartening."

Jacques Leonard: "Ah, do I miss the good old times when Bolsheviks where the only ones manipulating photographs!"

Michael: "Interesting, very interesting. It was you, Mike, who first alerted me to the fact that RAW files are quite muddy looking, sort of like life. The first photo of the guys and the rickshaw is to my eye very like life, in that it is the monsoon and everything does get muddy and sodden, downbeat, including the light—until the sun comes out, and then the greens knock your eyes out, as do the signs, the shirts, and the saris. So I'm less displeased by the hypersaturation as a lack of fidelity to journalistic standards than as a lack of fidelity to a kind of light. It's as if the photographer has seen, not what was in front of the camera, but what was on every glossy ad page. Who knows, maybe it could be a professional deformation: if you depend on a public at that level and to that extent, you may end up following the public rather than leading it."

Andy DeBruyn: "I went to photography school back in 1975, the Art Institute of Boston. We had a very good photojournalism class. This question of manipulating images, including physically moving something in the scene came up quite a bit. If I remember correctly, the consensus was, including the instructor, that once you bring a camera up to your eye and you're looking through the viewfinder and selecting the frame, all bets are off. You're already manipulating reality. You can frame selected people in or out, you can use a telephoto to compress and make it look like they are more people at the event, dutch the camera a bit to make it more chaotic, etc. Burning and dodging can add or subtract drama. Heavy burning on the edges did get rid of a lot of 'distracting' items. Photojournalists are not exempt from these practices. They ask people to move, they re-position a visual item, flag, briefcase, etc. It's done all the time. The great photographer Eugene Smith in his photos of Minamata (not to take anything away at from the horror of the issue) darkened some of the images drastically to add the yoke of gravitas. I'm sure if Photoshop was around at the time he would have manipulated the images the same, perhaps even removing some background elements.

"It's all about selling the frame."

Stephen J: "This stuff is only important if you have a predisposition to want to change things to fit your reality map. I mentioned this the last time this subject came up... If you have an agenda about war and peace, about green nonsense, about leftyism, about civil strife... You want to be able to rely on what you are looking at. You want to be able to show this to the world and say, 'look what those people have done to us,' or something of that kind. Ask a dozen witnesses, what they saw when the bank was robbed, and every one of them saw something different, but broadly the same. Well Steve McCurry saw what he saw, but wanted to see something slightly different, in order to sell his art... So what? His pictures are just fine. Read the newspaper, do you believe what the journalist wrote, or was it just his opinion, or more likely, his reworking of a press agency's report? Truth is very different to everyone, and impossible to pin down."

Mike replies: Really? Is it? So before you sit down in a chair, you're uncertain if the chair is really there? Look at those two pictures by McCurry again. Do you believe the laughing man in the rickshaw was there in the rickshaw during the fraction of a second when Steve McCurry took the photograph, or do you believe he wasn't there? How much certainty do you have of your answer—none? Do you have to throw up your hands and give up on the question? Do you find it impossible to pin down the truth?

Graham Byrnes: "I really don't care much, but I find it amusing that in almost all regards, I prefer the first version."

shelley Stallings: "I have no problem stating that I prefer the second print and so no issue with the 'manipulation' of the original image. I do not see how the photographer changed the basic story the first image was telling the viewer. Removing distraction which do not change 'the story' is fine with me. Changing exposure, saturation, contrast to have the image 'look' like what the photographer 'saw' in his/her mind when the image was captured is also fine with me. In journalistic photography, the photographer should not manipulate the image so the story is so changed the meaning is lost."

Florian Kleinefenn: "I think the first original picture was very good, imperfect, with lots of 'subject noise' (things disturbing the initial picturing intention). Perfection seems to me most of the times boring. When a picture transports only intention, we don't get the world, which is much more complex than human will. I prefer by far the first unretouched (?) picture of the rickshaw because of its relationship between intention and accident. The alterations just made it academic."

John Camp: "I'm an absolutist when it comes to photojournalism: don't mess with the picture. If you're using photography for another purpose, then I don't mind the manipulation, and in fact, I expect it. I can promise you that ninety percent of the houses you see in real estate photos don't look like the photographs in the brochure; and that ninety percent of the actresses you see in publicly shots don't look like that.

"But the lie is never in the photo—the lie is in the presentation by the photographer. If the photo is presented implicitly or explicitly as the unvarnished truth, and its been varnished, so to speak, then somebody's lying. It's not the photo, which can't lie, because it's just paper and ink. It's the photographer.

"In regard to the [McCurry] photos, it seems to me that somebody was making some pretty good aesthetic judgments. That cart full of apples or whatever they are, on the right, really pulls your eye in that direction and away from what should be the center of interest. Getting rid of it brings you back to the main focus of the photo, and the red shirt, with the legs removed, does the same thing—pulls your eye right to the center. I'd have to say, by the way, that this story does not particularly surprise me. McCurry's photos, and indeed many National Geographic photos, have always looked 'processed' to me. And, of course, NatGeo has been caught at it before, as in the famous photo in which they moved the pyramids to improve the composition of a photo (a cover shot, I believe.)"

Steve L.: "It's anyone who says McCurry shouldn't be allowed to make personal artistic photographs because Wikipedia says he's a 'photojournalist' that I find ridiculous. The rickshaw in the rain image is wonderful, I would have made most of the same changes. I have no problem with anything he's done. He says right in his response to Petapixel that he allows himself more freedom in his personal photography. That's exactly as it should be. And as far as National Geographic goes, I've been involved in photography for over forty years, and subscribed to the magazine for about the same amount of time. Not once have I considered it a 'news source.' It wouldn't bother me a bit if it turns out many of the photos from its pages have been 'manipulated.' That magazine is all about beautiful photography, and those kinds of photographs don't just fall out of the camera the way you purists seem to think they should. It'd be an ugly magazine otherwise."

Daniel: "Pixelography is a term I coined for the digital manipulation, usually far beyond most darkroom dodging and burning. If the image above(and others) are journalism—this is a major breach of ethics. Even though Eugene Smith did it—it is still a major breach of ethics. If it is art it does not matter. Not until you try passing it off as the truth. Lying in images is like everything else; it may be acceptable but it is still lying. 'Artistic license' is a whole different animal as it is interpretation and creation, not reporting reality in images."

Ken: "This situation reminds me of the changes that once got Art Wolfe in trouble. Like Wolfe, Steve McCurry was also rumored to manipulate and pose his subjects. But as with the Wolfe case, this crosses a different line.

"Having previously defended Steve McCurry's work—and having long enjoyed it—I am rather disappointed to see this. I most certainly don't agree with removing people who are in the middle of the picture, but I am not opposed to cropping out someone entering the frame from the edge who is half-visible. I also would not hesitate to remove a beer can from an otherwise very nice landscape photo. For me, cropping a photo and deleting minor pieces of trash/distracting elements are acceptable changes, while removing an entire person from the key part of the image that you display is not. Does that make me a hypocrite, because after all I am altering the picture too, even if only just a little? And where do we draw the line?"

"As for McCurry and Wolfe, I still like their work, but would never again consider either's work as anything but photographic art—with an emphasis on art."

Mike replies: Re "where do we draw the line?"—that is the question, for sure.

John Seidel: "Interesting. When I first saw this post, it took me a while to see the missing guy. Then I forgot about it. Coming back to it a few days later, I find, beyond the obvious contrast and color enhancements, an amazing number of changes. Starting from the left side:

1. An awning is gone.
2. Most but not all of another rickshaw behind the front rickshaw is gone.
3. White area in background over left passenger's head is gone.
4. Smiling guy is gone.
5. Another guy peering past blue guy is gone.
6. Blue guy's foot is deformed and something has been taken out between his feet.
7. The telephone pole behind blue guy is gone.
8. Green sign has had the color muted.
9. Something on the ground next to the missing pole is gone.
10. Person in red shirt in background is gone.
11. Part of the shirt of that missing person is now something on the counter.
12. Stuff that was on the ground around red shirt is gone.
13. Stuff on the right side of shop counter is gone.
14. Lights in the shop in the background are gone.
15. Telephone pole on the right side is gone.
16. Stuff behind the missing pole in front of shop counter is gone.
17. The guy in white is partly missing, partly transformed.
18. The cart on the right side of the photo is gone.

"I am surprised that I saw little of this at first glance. Photographers' choice, of course. Not something I would choose to do, though. Partly inclination, partly lack of skill with Photoshop. Mostly inclination. All photography is manipulation. We all choose where to stop altering reality to fit what we see in our mind's eye. And for those who think that there is a thing called 'straight' photography, eschewing manipulation for reality, read The Negative and The Print by Ansel Adams."

That's a Big Printer

This is a real thing...in case you thought it was tough fitting a printer in your office. (I've been feeling guilty about not having enough room for a P800.)

It's the new Epson SureColor S60600. Epson's new large printers are on sale right now, in case you need an extra one of these for your bedroom. The price of this model is reduced by roughly the cost of two P800's. (Also on sale, for $250 off.) Final price after rebate $18,995. (The S60600, not the P800.)

I'm just happy I'm not tasked with keeping one of these on song. When I remember how hard it was to keep my B9180 going....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 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:

Brian Woolf: "I recently purchased an Epson P6000 24"-wide printer from B&H, they had a special that I could not believe—free shipping. Since shipping that monster was about $500, couldn't pass it up. It is less wide than your illustration photo but it is still large for only a 24" wide printer. It's a beautiful machine and, so far, looks after itself, doing nozzle checks randomly. I print every other day to keep it going."

Geoff Wittig: "For what it's worth, large format inkjets are generally a lot more trouble-free than their smaller desktop cousins. I presume that's a consequence of the quality engineering and better parts you get for the higher price of entry. I've been using a Canon iPF6300 for years, and it's been a paragon of reliability. If I leave it idle for a few weeks it has to run a cleaning cycle, but it then resumes cranking out prints without complaint. I find myself trying to resist the siren's song of deeper blacks from the latest generation of printers; I simply can't justify it when this printer just keeps going and going."

Ned Bunnell: "We're renovating our new house, and I'm adding a fourth bedroom/office to accommodate the P800. Can't imagine the space I'd need for this beast."

Keith B.: "It would be wise to find space for a P800, since the gouge-factor of the ink costs for any of the smaller units will eat away at your soul. Ask me how I know."

Meeting the Man

Guest report by Roger Bradbury; photos by John Cross

-

I’m Roger Bradbury, from Milton Keynes in England. I volunteered to organise a get-together for TOP readers to meet Ctein while he was on holiday in London. Ten of us met Ctein and his partner Paula on a sunny May Saturday afternoon at the Photographer’s Gallery Cafe, just off Oxford Street.

I’d made a table sign with ‘Ctein’ written upon it in big red letters to distinguish us from all the other photographers there and when our man had arrived a bit before our 2:30 start time, there was already a crowd waiting for him.

I think that everyone who had emailed me to say that they were coming was there, plus one chap who read about it and just turned up. I made him welcome. We happily chatted about Photography. Some of us brought our own work and passed it round. I had brought to show a 1962 Ilford Sportsman given to me by a relative, and we explained to Ctein the hire purchase agreement that was still with it.

L. to R.: Paul Parkinson, Ctein, Paula (partially hidden behind Ctein), [unidentified], Vid Stojevic, Chris -----, Steve Jacob, Mike Farley, Roger Bradbury

We all stood up to look at the pictures that Ctein had brought to show, many of which we had already seen online. But as has been said here before on TOP, there’s a big difference between looking at a JPEG on a screen, and looking at a print. He had also brought some of his dye transfer prints to show us. He had a lot to say about various aspects of photography and printing, and I tried to remember it all.

Paul Parkinson, Ctein, and Paula

It all went very well, and the meeting broke up at about 5:30, when Ctein and Paula had to leave to catch a train.

A few of us went for a pint afterwards. We talked about meeting up again in London, perhaps to see exhibitions. I went home a contented man.

Roger

©2016 by Roger Bradbury and John Cross, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2016 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:

Chris: "I very much enjoyed that story, and I'm now kicking myself for not going (although we are 100 miles outside London). I would have loved to see those prints up close and personal, and to hear what the printer has to say about them!

"One thing that would have slightly increased my enjoyment would have been some photo captions that identified the people in the images (other than Ctein, of course). Is that me just being nosy?"

Mike replies: If people will please identify themselves, I'll add the info as captions to the pictures.

Jed Soane: "If I ever open a pub it's going to be called The Dodge & Burn."

SeanG: "For me, these get-togethers are a significant part of photography. I've had the pleasure/fortune of meeting and chatting with Ctein, and other fans/enthusiasts, at the Minneapolis Photo Center and I can't express how pleasurable it is to be in the company of such pleasant, curious and knowledgeable people. Thanks for the story. Cheers!"

Paul Parkinson: "That'll be me in the Dodge and Burn t-shirt! I, too, thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and wished I could have stayed longer. A memorable afternoon for sure. As to where you get it—try here."

A Clarification of the Vivian Maier Case

Guest post by Kevin Purcell

Regarding the Vivian Maier lawsuit settlement, I think Mike went hyperbolic on this one in his post last Friday. The fact that the owners of the prints and negatives and the estate have come to an agreement is good news for everyone.

The law is quite simple and, no, this case is not a distortion of copyright law. It's straightforward probate law and copyright law. The difficult bit was the genealogy. I explained that (accurately, even though I am not a lawyer) in this previous comment.

The simple version is that Vivian Maier's prints and negatives were sold before she died to clear a storage debt (that's contract law). The prints and negatives were never part of the estate and are clearly owned by John Maloof (and others who sold them on). But buying prints and negatives doesn't mean the buyer owns the copyright to them. The copyrights stayed with Vivian (whilst alive) and then with her estate (once she had died), which is administered by Cook County, Illinois, where she died. Vivian died intestate (i.e., without a will) and it's the Cook County Probate Department's duty to find her closest heirs and to transfer the property (the copyright, in this case) to them. As detailed in the New York Times article "The Heir's Not Apparent," David Deal just pointed out to Cook County that there's another heir lurking in the family tree that John Maloof didn't have a copyright agreement with.

Neither Cook County nor David Deal are the bad guys here. They are the good guys: they are finding the rightful owners of the copyright and putting them in contact with the owners of the copyrighted objects. The rest is business negotiation over filing copyright registration (which needs copies of the images).

One statement in the article goes against previous reporting: "At the center of the case is an unusual situation: A woman who died virtually penniless and without any clear heirs now has an estate potentially worth millions of dollars." They seem to take the witty title of the New York Times article cited above too literally. She apparently does have clear heirs (and there may be two first cousins once removed). The problem was they weren't clear at the beginning due to faulty genealogy. That they're "laughing heirs"—i.e., they didn't know they were heirs—doesn't make them any less heirs to the estate.

John Maloof, we now know, did violate copyright in publishing her images without a license from all the heirs; but he made a deal with the one heir he found so he did attempt to clear the copyright before publication. David Deal pointed out that this wasn't the only heir (and that Maloof's genealogy had been mistaken). There was also a bit of cage rattling from Deal over "copyright infringement" to get Maloof's attention and to set the scene for negotiation. I suspect that all that this means is he pays royalties to use the images he used in his books and film under the deal which gives the estate access to the negatives and prints to allow copyright registration of all the images and films.

Everybody wins (the heirs; Maloof; and the photography establishment, for finding a new photographer) if the settlement is finalized, because we will see more of her photos being reproduced. It would be nice to see what the agreement is, but we have to wait for it to be unsealed after May 10.

Crazy copyright law? Not in this case
People who are placing the blame on the deficiencies in copyright law here aren't understanding the law. There are problems with current copyright law, but this case doesn't exhibit any of them.

The status of copyright on this work and who it resides with is unambiguous. The Estate of Vivian Maier holds the copyright on this work as it passed to it when the original copyright holder, Vivian Maier, died. She didn't publish during her lifetime so there is no chance that copyright expired earlier; only current copyright law applies.

That's the one thing that's clear about this case.

The fundamental problem is the tangible objects (the negatives, the prints and the movies) aren't owned by the estate. They were purchased by other people when Vivian Maier was alive so they aren't part of the estate created at her death.

The owners of these objects don't have to give them to the estate. They bought them when the storage facility sold them off (following the contract at the storage facility to sell items when the fees weren't paid). So the owners of the objects own them like you own your car or camera. But the owners of the objects can't make commercial use of them by making copies (i.e. prints, books, films) because they don't own the copyright. That right resides with the estate.

Cook County won't get to register copyright for the estate until an agreement is made with the people who hold the objects unless as an act of goodwill those people provide low-res copies of the images. But without the prospect of an agreement, the owners of the objects have no incentive to cooperate.

It was clear how to resolve this problem. All sides needed to negotiate a commercial contract between the estate and the owners of the objects. Then, both can make money by publishing the images and dividing the proceeds. This seems to have been done—we'll find out the details tomorrow, when the terms of the agreement are unsealed by the judge.

Copyright law isn't broken. It's working here as intended: copyrights go to the estate and will last for 70 years after Maier's death (as the current law stands).

Probate law isn't broken either. It's Cook County's job to go to bat for the estate until an heir is found or the estate ends up with the State (as do all unclaimed estates). That's what probate law does. If you don't like it, make a will, or your estate will end up in probate.

Contract law isn't broken either. That's how the objects were sold initially. If you have a storage unit you have the same sort of contract.

Moral of the story: make a will. And pay your storage fees to avoid this problem happening to you.

Kevin

©2016 by Kevin Purcell, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2016 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:

Manuel: "Allow me to put my cold lawyer's eye to this issue.

"It is important, previous to entering any discussion on copyright law, to understand the nature of the author's right as established by international agreements such as the Bern Convention. Copyright—or, more precisely, the rights that emanate from creating a legally protected work—bears an important divide: there's a monetary content on one side, and on the other a moral content. So, even if the word 'copyright' is primarily used to refer to the former sense, copyright is actually two separate rights under the same umbrella. The monetary aspect includes the author's right to sell the work—in which case all future profits from publishing, exhibiting or any other form of commercial exploration of the work belong to the purchaser, unless legally or contractually stated otherwise. Even in this case, though, the author keeps what is known in Rule of Law systems as the moral right over the work. This means that Mr. Maloof, by purchasing Vivian Maier's negatives, may have become the legal holder of the monetary rights, but he holds no moral rights over Vivian Maier's photographs. The latter are held by the authors themselves or their heirs. (In Vivian Maier's case, the moral rights belong to her estate until her heirs claim the heritage.)

"So, one thing is to have possession of the physical consubstantiation of the work, another is to hold authorial rights over it. They may coincide under the same holder, but not when the work is traded in any way. Let me exemplify: If I sell a photograph, I pass the physical content of my work to the purchaser, but unless agreed otherwise I am still its author and as such the purchaser needs my permission to publish, exhibit, sell prints or whatever.

"That's what this litigation is about: Vivian Maier's estate is rightfully claiming moral rights over her body of work. As Mr. Purcell correctly stated, 'Neither Cook County nor David Deal are the bad guys here.' I agree.

"I hope this casts further light on this subject brilliantly developed by Kevin Purcell. Law—under any form and any system—is founded on general principles. The separation between monetary and moral rights is one that has been at the inception of modern copyright laws, therefore knowing this fact is essential to understand what this discussion is all about."

John Camp: "There is, of course, a difference between the administration of the law (the discovery of the heirs, the proper application of the current copyright law, the determination of who owns the physical property) and the content of the law. A lot of people think that the copyright law, as it is now, was designed by indebted politicians to protect Disney copyrights to Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters, and not in any way to really protect authors of original material or to promote publication, as the copyright law supposedly is intended to do. How does delivering money to a large corporation for seventy years after the death of the creator really serve the public interest?"

Mike replies: The opposite situation is instructive. Ulysses S. Grant worked assiduously on his memoirs at the end of his life, despite being grievously ill with cancer and unable to walk, because he had been bilked out of his fortune by a 19th-century Bernie Madoff and he was concerned that his wife would fall into poverty after his death. After Herculean effort and great determination, he died five days after the book was completed.

It became a bestseller, and by all accounts was quite a good book to boot (I haven't read it). The Grant family made $450,000 on it—more than $10 million in today's dollars—and his widow was able to live out her life comfortably on the proceeds. 

Crabby Umbo: "I don't understand why anyone thinks that the originator of intellectual property and their heirs shouldn't have the ability to earn an income off what they've created (and in fact, in 'perpetuity' as far as I'm concerned). Why is this 'insane' or 'ridiculous'?

"The only reason someone would be against this is if they are a 'stealer' of work and want the ability to profit from someones else's intellectual property solely because they bought the physical object. Moose [in the full Comments section —Ed.], I think, has it exactly wrong: when you buy any physical manifestation that constitutes intellectual property, you should never think you've bought anything other than the opportunity to look at it, listen to it, or read it. And what makes you think you should have more...?

"This is where the recording industry went wrong years ago by not making it crystal clear to people that they weren't buying anything but the ability to listen to music for their own enjoyment. The industry didn't worry about it because it was a self-destructive delivery vehicle of less quality than the original.

"I've also said repeatedly that I attended and graduated from an intellectual property rights and copyright course at the dawn of digital, and the class was virtually filled with people asking to what extent they could steal items off the internet to repackage or reuse to make money on, without getting caught or prosecuted; to the total exasperation of the attorney teaching the class. I found it interesting that the class wasn't filled with creatives trying to figure out how to safeguard their work, but 'suits' trying to figure out how to steal and repackage it! Keith above says that copyright law exists to encourage publishing, but I believe this to be incorrect. It exists to keep charlatans from stealing others work and profiting from it, and it exists to safeguard the originators of intellectual property. The written word (or a photograph) is much easier to steal than your car.

"Maloof is a hero for finding and preserving the work, and for searching, within his limited abilities, to find and make a deal with an heir. He's did all he could do or afford at the time. He's not in the wrong, it just needed to hit another level of research."

adamct: "Two comments: 1. I've been waiting for the day that lawyers get to shine on T.O.P. (however briefly)! Kudos to Kevin and Manuel. 2. My company has hired a 1st year law student as an intern for this summer. I sent her an e-mail today, in advance of her 1st year law school exams, in an attempt to reduce the related levels of absurd anxiety. With regard to Property (a subject that includes rules as incomprehensible and irrational as the 'life plus 70' rule in copyright—ask any lawyer about the Rule Against Perpetuities and they will run away screaming), I wrote: 'If Property doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because it isn't a real subject. Property is just a perennial prank that law school professors like to pull on naïve young 1st years.'"

Mike replies: Maybe TOP should have a legal editor. As I did this time, I often get legal matters wrong, at least at first. At least I'm willing to stand corrected, as I was by Kevin this time....[sigh]

Open Mike II: Go, Bernie, Go!

There was a car show yesterday at The Windmill, a crafts bazar a few miles up Welker road from where I live now (and I do mean up—Welker road is steep). I went, to meet some car folks and also to give the Panasonic GX8 a bit more of a test drive.

Our theme for today: red. First the red turntable, and now this scarlet Impala. Its delighted owner has only owned it for a few months.

Here's the car that won Best In Show, a red-and-white Buick. The owner and restorer is Bob Warner of Warner's Auto Body in Marcellus, New York, near Syracuse. Bob is famous in these parts for auto restoration, hot rodding, and custom paint. The Buick (I didn't catch the year) was gorgeous, and deserved the plaudits and the palm.

...But my best of show—based on the scientific analysis of strolling around to see what caught my fancy—was this delightful 1935 Ford Cabriolet created by Bernard G. ("Bernie") Struble of Rochester, New York. Looks historically correct from the outside, doesn't it? That was the idea. But it's pure hot rod. Read on.

"Cabriolet means convertible," Bernie said, mildly, as he introduced himself and the car. He certainly "converted" his car. Can you read this list? Click on the image to embiggen:

He bought the car way back in 1958 but didn't start the restoration/conversion until just before the turn of the last century. By that time he had four kids, and he and his son John did most of the work on the '35 together. They did everything but the paint, the upholstery, and (I think he said...) the convertible top, all of which are jobs better left to specialists who do it all the time. (Note the subtle initials on the door in the picture above.)

Don't think the car lacks nice touches, though. It's stuffed with nice details. For instance, the original window crank handles are still there, but now they function as large switches for the electric windows! Press upward, window goes up. Press downward, window goes down.

The front turn signals and hazard lights are hidden inside the horns!

This was cool. The wind wing is articulated, and swings out of the way when the door opens. (The original car didn't have quarter windows, but they help in a convertible with the top down.)

Leather-wrapped steering wheel. Note the over-and-under modern gauges, and, in the background, the window handle that works the electric windows. The hot rod even has a suite of warning lights, behind a panel of dark smoked plastic that integrates into the dashboard. The upholstery was really well done. It came out of a Buick but was custom-fitted to the Ford.

As an aside, I'm pretty large, but I fit in the Ford just fine. Bernie says the seats are set way back from where they were in the original car.

Here's a nifty thing. This is the rumble seat in the open position—a series of drilled holes filled with red LEDs (red again—we're staying on theme) serves as the third brake light.

And with the rumble seat closed, there are more LEDs so you won't lose your third brake light.

But here's the kicker. There's a contact switch in the rumble seat hinge that turns one set of LEDs on and the other off when you open and close the rumble seat. Why? So the occupants riding in the rumble seat won't have the bright brake light LEDs hitting them in the eyes when the driver hits the brakes.  :-) 

There was a lot more. This thing would make anybody smile.

A lightweight 1935 two-seater with a modern V8 in it can really scoot, too. When the awards were over, the cars steamed out of the field next to the Windmill as the owner/drivers scattered for home. When Bernie and the '35 hit the main road I was standing there talking to another car owner watching him go. As the guy watched he said, "that's not an original engine. Did you see that thing accelerate? He's really moving."

And he sure was. Go, Bernie, go!

Mike

P.S. Here's a website for Bernie Struble's 1935 Ford Cabriolet.

"Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP. It appears on Sundays, even when Ed. doesn't go do something on Saturdays.

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Featured Comments from:

Anthony Collins: "There is a town in UK called Redcar."

Geoffrey Heard: "What happened to the happy snap of the winner? It looks like crap, as we technical experts say. The Ford looks like fun and the reds look really nice."

Mike replies: The tidier snap featured an unfortunate juxtaposition of man and trophy that I just didn't notice when I took it. I was mainly paying attention to shooting through the milling people without being blocked—there were six or eight people around the car at the time—and I didn't look carefully enough at the composition. My bad.

No jokes, now:

John Struble: "Mike, thank you for taking the time to talk to my father and post this article! It means a lot! Regarding the comments above on the '35 Ford, thank you very much! It does have a Mustang II front suspension, disc brakes, front and rear sway bars and a GM 10 bolt differential. It does have seat belts—lap belts—including in the rumble seat.

"I very much enjoyed building this with my father and I'm even happier to say he's driven 60k trouble-free miles since completion!"

Open Mike I: The Last Post About Turntables

Okay, so this is not today's post. That one's going to be long and it's going to take me a long time to put together, so I might not be finished with it any time soon. To tide you over, this is the last time I'll mention turntables. I realize vinyl is a niche even within the audio hobby, and the audio hobby itself is small...not to mention that it's not what TOP is about. So we are not going to turn into a part-time turntable blog. Don't bother communicating your sigh of relief; I can hear it from here.

Had to show you this, though:

I've gotten way into restored turntables and turntable restorers. This is a full auto* Pioneer PL-630 from 1978–9 that was completely restored and anodized red by an eBayer known to me only as kshimel, of Mesa, Arizona. (With laser-etched white lettering. The original chassis color was silver-gray.) I was half-glad, half-sad when this was sold out from under me, because I'd love to have it in my family room a.k.a. The Lightbox...but I don't even have enough money for photography toys, and (rationally speaking) need a second turntable like I need a bigger tax bill. So I guess I'm glad, even though this would have, for me, a very high toy factor...TF9 on the Official 1–10 Toy Factor scale, I'd put it.

I did contact kshimel to see if he might perchance make another one, and he told me that he does turntable restoration just as a hobby. It pays for itself but he doesn't make any money at it. He estimates that he earned $1 an hour for the red Pioneer, for instance. Still, he's not doing half badly—how many of us earn enough from photography to pay for our photography hobby?

My own turntable, a $250 eBay special.
Came with a Shure M97xe, and I know you care.

As a last word before we leave turntables, a famous cartoon by Alex Gregory. He got the details too right: note the can of "air" and the record brush next to the turntable, the tube amp, the ribbon tweeters, the equipment atop the record rack (looks like my setup). Methinks either Mr. Gregory does his research, or he knows whereof he draws. The cartoon speaker (the guy talking, I mean) even looks like a guy you'd see at a high-end show in a Las Vegas hotel.

Says it all, really.  :-)

Mike

*Disdained by real audiophiles, who demand full manual.

"Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, where Yr. Hmbl. Ed. indulges himself while exasperating everyone else.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Robbie Corrigan: "Running a humble Pro-jet Debut III with an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge. Biggest and best upgrade I have given it is a Graham Slee phono amp. Fantastic warmth now."

Svein-Frode (partial comment): "To me photography and music is part of the same hobby: escape from everyday chores and life's unpleasantries.

"Sadly they both require investing in expensive tools and equipment. I still use my 1981 Technics SL-10 fully automatic turntable, although I've replaced every other component in my hi-fi system. I've never undesrstood why direct drive isn't as 'audophile' as a belt-driven turntable, but I'm really not wealthy enough to care, as high end gear is out of my price range, in music as in photography. I know I'd love to own Wilson Audio speakers and Leica cameras, but I also know that the improvement in quality over what I've got is marginal. In the end content is king, and the technical excellence of the equipment doesn't trump the artistic qualities of the pictures and music. Son House and Robert Johnson can still make my jaw drop to the floor, even though the sound quality of their recordings are abysmal."

Wes: "I don't have the patience or the space in the house for vinyl but that Pioneer turntable is beautiful and I want one. It can sit unused, looking cool, right next to the Stratocaster I never learned to play."

The Best Two Minutes in Sports

TOP is off on Saturdays, but don't forget today is Kentucky Derby day. Sample the favorite, Nyquist. But keep your eye on Whitmore and Mor Spirit. Best horse name this year*: Suddenbreakingnews.

I can't watch it because I don't have a TV. But I'll be there in spirit.

Mike

*Thoroughbred names have to be unique, and they're darn hard to come up with. That's why they tend to be so weird, like Mohaymen, Shagaf, and Danzing Candy in this year's race. I got to name a racehorse once, thanks to my uncle Smokie, who was a thoroughbred breeder for many years. He made an offhand comment that coming up with names for foals was difficult, so I offered to give it a try. Coming to it cold, I gave him ten name prospects, and only three had never been used! The prospective name I thought was the most obscure turned out to be a relatively famous horse. I don't remember now what it was.

Re Danzing Candy, there was already a "Dancing" Candy, b. 1986, a grandson of the great Northern Dancer. Danzing Candy is also descended from Northern Dancer, on both sides, but not through Dancing Candy—he gets his name from his grandmother, House of Danzing, and her mother, Danzing Crown.

Original contents copyright 2016 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:

Tom Noto: "Apparently you can stream the derby on your computer at  NBCSports.com and also on the NBC Sports Live Extra app."

Mike replies: Only if you already pay your cable provider for NBC content, which I don't. CBS wised up for the Super Bowl and streamed it for free, reasoning (sensibly) that if people watched paid ads online it was no different than watching the same paid ads on free TV. But NBC has not seen that light, I guess.

Jack: "I live in central Kentucky surrounded by thoroughbred and, to a lesser extent, standardbred (harness racing) farms. The Kentucky Derby is held 90 miles away, but many of the celebrity-saturated Derby parties are held around here.

"Despite the proximity of the industry and events, I don't get worked up by the glitz and glamor. I think more about those living and laboring on 'backside' (i.e., dark side) of the track. These people work long hours for little money, staying among the stables 24 hours a day. While the situation is much better than it used to be (e.g., education opportunities the workers' kids) there's still much room for improvement."

Random Excellence: Neil Selkirk

Neil Selkirk, G. Gordon Liddy and Dr. Timothy Leary

Possibly one of the oddest couples ever photographed. For those of you under about 35 who might not know, G. Gordon Liddy (now 85) was the ultraconservative, hawkish operative who organized and directed the break-in at the Watergate Hotel that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. Timothy Leary (d. 1996), fired from Harvard University in 1963, was a psychiatrist and philosopher who advocated experimentation with LSD and psilocybin (back when they were legal) and other psychotropic drugs, allegedly to explore their therapeutic potential. He became a guru of the psychedelic movement in the 1960s.

Liddy at one time reportedly carried out a drug raid on Leary's residence, a mansion bought for him by several Mellon heirs. Both men spent time in prison.

Neil Selkirk's deadpan portrait is perfect—by placing the two close together and in the same pose, he created an almost humorous but still unsettling juxtaposition of sameness and difference.

British-born Neil Selkirk (now 68) was an assistant to some of the biggest name photographers in the 1960s, and later became renowned for his own portraiture. He was also the "the only person ever authorized to make posthumous prints of the work of Diane Arbus," according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Virtually every reproduction in every Arbus book you might have seen is of a print made by him.

This photograph was taken for Interview magazine. Liddy and Leary were at the time on a speaking tour of American college campuses, staging debates which by all accounts were extremely popular and that generated massive amounts of publicity—one of the fruits of which is this mild yet startling photograph.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Steven Willard: "Selkirk may have suggested the pose with tongue in cheek, but Liddy and Leary clearly show they enjoyed the joke, too. Great picture, thanks for sharing it."

Stan B.: "Or...one was crazy sans drugs, the other via."

John Camp: "I first saw that photo years ago, made me laugh, and made me laugh again today."

Chuck Albertson: "I remember seeing those two on tour, after Liddy got out of stir. Definitely one of the strangest evenings I can remember, topped only by the Leary / Hunter Thompson / Abbie Hoffman trifecta a couple of years later."

F. Adams: "My father-in-law carpooled to D.C. with G. Gordon Liddy and a couple other spooks. On the radio one day was a story about someone who jumped out of a car at 30 mph and survived. While they were debating whether to believe the story, Liddy says there's only one way to find out, and before much more was said, he tumbles out of the car at about 30 mph. They stop the car, he brushes off his suit, gets in, and says 'I guess it can be done' before continuing their commute into D.C."

Mike replies: ...Sounds like Col. Flagg, the character on the TV show M*A*S*H allegedly inspired in part by Liddy.

Vivian Maier Comes Back from the Dead

Er, well, sorry for the tasteless headline. But there's news: evidently a reasonable (?) settlement is in the offing in the lawsuit over Vivian Maier's legacy.

As the Chicago Tribune article that is the source for this news blip puts it:

The probate case that has played out in Chicago has added another layer of intrigue to Maier's story. At the center of the case is an unusual situation: A woman who died virtually penniless and without any clear heirs now has an estate potentially worth millions of dollars. But while the estate has the copyrights to Maier's work, others legally own the film itself.

Personally, I'm a fan of John Maloof. He's Vivian's collaborator, and he's done an amazing job of bringing her work to life. People who think "those publishing Maier's work [are] profiteers who circumvented well-established copyright law and manipulated Maier's story for their own gain" are idiots—what would they rather, that the raw material just go from the storage locker to the landfill? Would justice be better served that way, for the woman or her work? Bah.

The art world can't wrap its tiny pointed encephalitic head around this story, because it doesn't fit their ruling ideologies. Vivian didn't redact her own work; she had no influence on her contemporaries; therefore she's beyond the pale. Not important. Not an artist.

Double bah. She is who she is and no one else is. It's a unique story, and perfectly amazing, and the book some literate scholar eventually writes about the whole thing will be a unique and wonderful chapter in the history of photography...21st-century photography. (In fact, there is a book to be written about rediscovered and "rescued" photographers in general, starting with Eugene Atget and including people like Vivian Maier and Robert Bergman.) And trying to detect distant, tenuous heirs that have even less right to the work than its rescuers is a ridiculous travesty of the principles behind the concept of inheritance. We're not talking about the crown of a realm.

Vivian's done her part. It's easy to feel she didn't get justice but she was effectively a recluse; she didn't want attention. She's gone and her wishes can't be known.

TOP says: FREE JOHN MALOOF. (And the Goldstein/Bulger holders of Maieriana.) Paint it on a protest sign. Let the work live; let the work breathe. Like VM herself, it belongs to the Universe now.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 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:

Chris Y.: "I was just talking to a friend about VM at lunch. To me, Maloof’s work is not academic enough. His movie deals with her basic bio and what kind of person she was, yes, disturbed, lonely, paranoid, hostile, strongly independent, indecipherable, whatever. But that describes many people, artists particularly. The movie doesn’t really talk about her as an artist enough- we saw her early pictures of the French countryside, and her later pictures of Chicago and New York, but how did she get from the former to the later? They very first time I saw VMs pictures, the first year she was 'out,' my eyes told me 'there’s Walker Evans, there’s Berenice Abbott, there’s Robert Frank, there’s Aaron Siskind'…you could see an influence study in almost every shot. You could see someone striving for perfection, someone trying to learn the photographic language of the times at the highest level.

"I am not saying she copied people, I am saying that she experimented with styles that she saw and admired, the same as we all do. As a result, she did so much work on her own style and taste that  you can pretty much pick out a VM picture from a lineup of period or genre photographs.

"I am more thankful for the work of Pamela Bannos from Northwestern University, another independent researcher fascinated by Maier. I hope someday that she finds the wherewithal to create an 'American Masters' type of documentary about the artistic development of VM, rather than one focused on her as a 'gifted oddball'….

"Bannos’s work is called 'Vivian Maier’s Fractured Archive,' and it’s kind of fractured itself but well worth clicking around."

What's the Best Lens Line?

Not looking to start any arguments, but interested in opinions. I've been using the Panasonic GX8 recently and have discovered—big surprise to me—that I'm actually a huge fan of Panasonic lenses.

Micro 4/3 wins the war when it comes to lens size—a whole kit is lovely and compact, easily portable. For all the popularity of Sony's A7 cameras, some of the new lenses are monsters and a kit doesn't really look to offer much "schlepping" advantage over full-frame DSLRs. The Panasonic 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 has been thoroughly overshadowed by Olympus's better-on-paper variant of the same idea, but the 12–35mm is a truly fine lens by all the measures I personally care about. Just a really great all-rounder that scores highly in every way, from its lovely image quality to focal-length flexibility to its constant maximum aperture to size, weight, and operability. If I shot Micro 4/3 you'd have to use a crowbar to pry that lens out of my hands.

Love it.

If I were going to build a lens kit in the Panasonic lineup, I'd choose four: the 20mm ƒ/1.7 II, ; the aforementioned 12–35mm ƒ/2.8; the "King of Bokeh" 42.5mm ƒ/1.7; and the 35–100mm long zoom, which would be useful in the landscape I currently live in but which I know only by reputation. That would cover all the bases for me.

And that whole kit weighs in at a grand total of 31.12 ounces (882 grams).

Compare that to just the new single normal zoom for the A7 cameras, the Sony FE 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 GM, and you can see where the real advantage of Micro 4/3 over FF lies:

Entire 4-lens Panasonic kit: 882 grams
Single Sony FE zoom: 886 grams

This is not to say there aren't still excellent reasons for going with Sony's full-frame mirrorless offerings, but there's going to be a bit of a portability hit. (Somehow, though, I don't see anyone choosing Sony FE quite yet, much less Sony APS-C E-mount, as the best lens line.)

Here's a size comparison between the Canon D80 and the marvelous EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II and the Panasonic GX8 with its 12–35mm (24–70mm angle of view equivalent) ƒ/2.8. Graphic courtesy CameraSize.com.

Or is it Nikon or Canon? When I wrote a magnum opus magazine article called "The EOS Revolution" for Camera & Darkroom magazine in 1991 or so, Canon was flying high as an innovator. Now, it has the reputation of being complacent and hidebound, a broody hen sitting on its eggs. (That's probably just that "don't mess with success" phase that corporations go through when they insist that the handwriting on the wall isn't actually on the wall.) But its lens lineup is huge and has many high points, including what might be the prettiest normal zoom optically of any, the EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II. Beautiful lens, and it's hardly Canon's only great one. So does Canon get your nod?

The Leica M-mount has as many fun options as Micro 4/3 and likely more, depending on what you count. Of course, many of the tastier of those options have a very high price bar—like a big bouncer at the club door who won't let anyone in. And they lack certain features the market cares for, like, well, that little alleged convenience called "autofocus." Still, I can see Leica M lenses winning the palm for the right person.

I suppose I voted with my wallet when I bought the Fuji X-T1 review sample and 23mm ƒ/1.4 lens two years ago. Fuji's lens line just makes great sense for me. Although so far my investment has lagged—I now own the 23mm and only one additional lens, the XF 14mm ƒ/2.8. The other day Ctein, Moose and I were discussing the Olympus 12mm ƒ/2 that Ctein still doesn't like very much, which allowed me to sing the praises of the XF 14mm. Yeah, I know they make a two-stops faster 16mm, but in my view the 14mm is one of the reasons to shoot Fuji in the first place. (Thanks again to Stephen Scharf, who originally recommended it to me.)

But I still haven't plunked down for the 56mm I need or the longer tele zoom I think might be useful for the hills and lakes of Western New York. (It's the only place I've lived where I consistently see small pictures that are far away!) I suspect my commitment to Fuji might be...weak. Too many good alternatives out there I guess. Or maybe it's a knee-jerk frugality that makes me balk at the combined expense.

But what do you think? All things considered, what gets your vote (even if it's not what you shoot with)?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Frank Grygier: "Despite a recent dalliance with a Sony A6000 I have been a dedicated Micro 4/3 user. I happen to have all the lenses that you listed except my 42.5mm is of the ƒ/1.2 Nocton variety. I also have many of the Olympus prime lenses. I do find myself gravitating toward the Panny lenses lately and travel mostly with the two zooms you mention. I also pick up the Panny GX8 over the E-M1. I continue to struggle with the selection of Sony lenses for the A6000 and will probably stay with Micro 4/3 because of portability and the investment I have made in the system."

Tom Hassler (partial comment): "...I'm going to cast my vote for the Zeiss Batis line for the Sony FE mount...."

[Please see the Comments Section for the full text of "Featured" comments, where Tom makes some good points about plastics. The Featured Comments are just meant to be samplings of the Comments for people who only have time to read a few. —Ed.]

Craig (partial comment): "I strongly dislike the MIcro 4/3 lens lineups from both Olympus and Panasonic because they seem to have decided that since software can correct for geometrical distortion, there's no need for the lenses to do it. Raw files from most of these lens show really bad distortion. While software can straighten the images out, this unavoidably reduces sharpness toward the corners."

Technical Editor Ctein replies: I have to disagree that raw files from most Micro 4/3 lenses show really bad distortion. Apropos the email conversation Mike and I have been having, I've been looking at a lot of uncorrected distortion figures (because it's the fastest way for me to filter out a whole bunch of unacceptable candidates). Some Micro 4/3 lenses have unacceptable levels of geometric distortion. Most don't. I think you're running into sample bias—the focal lengths that you're interested in don't have good performers.

Note that correcting modest amounts of barrel distortion in software (under ~2%) produces no visible degradation in edge/corner image quality at all. It's an entirely useful tool for designers. It's when you correct large amounts in software that you screw things up, because the degradation goes up with the square or cube of the distortion (not sure which—haven't played with the maths).

Numbers up over 5% are very, very bad, and if you're looking for something in the 24mm-equivalent range in Micro 4/3, you're pretty well out of luck. (I also looked at the various APS-C options. No joy there, either.) Nothing is particularly better than my much-maligned Olympus 12mm, and some are worse. So, no alternative for me, yet (there might be a new Leica 12mm lens coming down the pike, but I ain't getting my hopes up).

But...looking at the same vaguely equivalent-focal-length for the Fuji X cameras, every single lens also has unacceptable levels of distortion. There's nothing in that regard that makes them superior to the Micro 4/3 line.

Except...

The 14mm (21mm-equivalent) Fujinon XF ƒ/2.8 has insignificant distortion—0.4%. That's ridiculously good for any ultrawide in any format. It's the sole exception to the pattern. So, what did the designers sacrifice to get that good distortion correction? Vignetting is serious—something like –2.5 stops wide open. That's not a good number. But you can deal with that.

UPDATE: Ctein amends: I have just become aware that DxO and Photozone (where I usually go for lens tests) do the math differently when calculating distortion. Both sites have good and reliable data, but DxO's distortion numbers are precisely half of Photozone's. So...

When I said under 2% distortion's okay and over 5%'s trouble, those are Photozone numbers. Divide by 2 (i.e., under 1% and over 2.5%) if you're looking at DxO's reports.

It's never simple, sigh.

Ryan Cousineau (partial comment): "A very brief, self-deceiving bid for Pentax, as the best value in lenses. The Micro 4/3 stuff is smaller (and the best stuff is very good), and Canikon do Canikon surpassingly well, but if you're a cheapskate like me, the 'obsolete' 50mm ƒ/1.4 from Pentax is still the best value around, and you can find fantastic old lenses for no money at all...."

Ken: "What's the Best Lens Line? Well, that depends on what you shoot, doesn't it? For wildlife, which is my primary interest, I am not aware of any line that tops the Nikon and Canon telephotos."

Jeff: "Well, since the 'best' camera is the Leica S, a lot of its appeal comes from the equally superb S lenses. Not small, and perhaps not the state of the art AF, but all have outstanding IQ and weather sealing, and are pretty, too, on that camera. The weakness is that there aren't enough of them...only 24mm to 180mm (equivalent 19–144 in 35mm terms), and no wide tilt/shift. Oh, and they're expensive."

Stephen Scharf: "I have the Olympus OM-D E-M1 (terrific camera) and some of the Olympus primes for it, but the two lenses that go with me everywhere with that kit are that sweet, sweet Panny 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 and 35–100mm ƒ/2.8. I love 'em. I can fit the entire kit into a small ThinkTank Mirrorless Mover 20 bag, and it is small (8.9” W x 6.1” H x 4.5” D), compact and light, so the entire kit is highly schlepp-able. A truly superb and very versatile kit for travel with literally pro level quality.

"My heart really belongs to Fuji X, though. I know you don't use or have shot with the 18–55mm ƒ/2.8–4 zoom, but it is a really good pro-level zoom (David Allen Harvey of National Geographic says is it the first zoom he has ever liked), plus I love, love, love the Fuji 14mm. X-T1, 18–55mm, and the fabulous Fuji Fourteen and color me done...."

sneye: "To me Micro 4/3 strikes the best compromise between size, optical quality and equivalent speed. It has a vast collection of native lenses to choose from. I currently own an Olympus 12mm, a Voigtlander 17.5mm and a Panasonic 25mm (among others—I'm embarrassed to mention them all. Anyway, those three see the most use). Each has its own drawing style.

"That said, Fuji's selection of primes looks excellent too. I only wish they made some more ƒ/2 lenses like the new 35mm. A maximum aperture of ƒ/1.4 seems a bit over the top these days. Pentax offers a few unique small primes I must try one day. Leica? Of course. I keep admiring the subtle transitions which characterize those jewels, but owning one is way beyond my means."

David (partial comment): "Canon lenses are excellent and they have a fantastic array from which to chose. I've used a huge selection of their lenses over the years and they can always be relied upon. The latest 24–70mm is really an amazing performer. Many photographers I know have ditched primes in its favor."

hugh crawford: "Re 'For all the popularity of Sony's A7 cameras, some of the new lenses are monsters': Putting on my pedantic hat:) It's simple math. For a given size Micro 4/3 camera or lens, to scale it up to full frame it will be twice as long and have eight times the bulk and weight. The Sony A7 weighs 27.1 oz. with batteries and the kit lens. The Panasonic G7 weighs 19.1 oz. with batteries and its kit lens, but if it were as compact as the Sony A7 it would weigh less than 3.5 oz. So the real question is, why are Micro 4/3 cameras so darn big?

"By the way, did you know that the Crown Graphic is one of the most compact cameras ever? If it was as compact as a Minox it would be 40 inches wide and weigh around 400 pounds, and if a Minox was as compact as a Crown Graphic it would be smaller than a dime and weigh about as much as a cornflake. Back on topic, the Zeiss/Sony 55mm ƒ/1.8 may be my favorite lens ever. It's certainly the sharpest lens I've ever used."

Peter Filtness: "Best lens line (and value) for me...Canon FD series. Lasted 20 years+ on a Canon F1/F1n and still going strong on my Sony A7. But you gotta love that manual focus ring...."

Only If Mom Has One Heck of a Day Rate

Gentlemen, husbands who are fathers, sons and daughters: here is your annual public service warning. Mother's Day is next Sunday, May 8th. It's coming up. Be forewarned.

Subject line of a recent email from B&H Photo:

Deals for Mom 💐 Canon 1D X  Mark II Now Shipping

Made me laugh. I'd say Moms must have a four-figure day rate to be rockin' an axe like the 1D X Mark II. Hope I don't have to bid a job against her.

Also shipping very soon: the Zeiss Batis 18mm ƒ/2.8, "optimized for the Sony A7 series." Zeiss says it's shipping now, B&H says not quite yet.

And if you want to get something nice for your mother? (C'mon, she doesn't really need another pro-level body.) How about this:

That is one girly-looking computer. I mean that in a nice way. It's the 12" Macbook in gold, on sale for $300 off for Mother's Day. Still might be a little too dear for the occasion, unless maybe you're married to the mother in question. Stylish, though.

Speaking of stylishness, the Hasselblad lunacy came in for a lot of snark-slinging amongst photographers, but the two remaining flavors of the Stellar, including this nice walnut and champagne model, are on end-of-run closeout for $649. For that price, it's much prettier than it was at the original $2,195, don't you think? (Just make sure your mom doesn't hang out on camera forums.)

(Ethical question: does your mother really need to know it didn't cost $2,195? I'm kidding, I'm kidding.)

I know:

...A camera bag. A company called Jo Totes makes a number of ladies' camera bags...that is unless your mom needs a backpack for all her LF gear when she goes mountaineering in Yosemite. (Don't laugh. My cousin Christine climbs mountains in Colorado and she's almost 60.)

Here's a camera that actual photographer moms might like. She can take it to the beach and not worry. Fifty dollars off for the occasion.

You might also want to know that the Pentax K-1 is just beginning to ship now too.

...That one's not for your mother, though. We've already established that she shoots Canon.  :-)

Mike

P.S. Here's a single link to all of B&H's Mother's Day specials.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Gordon Lewis: "This is more my mom's speed." 

Mike replies: Ha! Excellent. Yes, perfect.

Dave Jenkins: "Mom's taking pictures with her cellphone these days, in case you missed it. The other part of your advice is actually quite good. After witnessing my wife's endless frustrations with Windows 8 and 8.1, I finally took pity on her and gave her an 11-inch Macbook Air for Christmas. Things are much more peaceful around here. It is definitely the gift that keeps on giving."

Tom Duffy: "My wife and I got a good laugh at the B&H email as well. As I was writing our quarterly property tax check, I said, 'Sorry, there goes your $6,000 Canon for Mother's Day.'"

RubyT: "This mom would love to get a K-1. However, that hiking trip in Wyoming in July has dibs on the funds."

Soeren Englebrecht: "Well, my mother recently celebrated the occasion of her 70th birthday by getting herself a Nikon D7000 and a nice Nikkor 18–70mm lens, all lightly used. Her previous Nikon DSLR was worn to bits from heavy use."

Stuart: "Blimey Mike! I wish you wouldn't do that! I panicked there for a minute, but then realised that the USA Mother's Day is different from the UK one. It's true what that article says though—I remember yomping (schlepping!) home in my youth, just like my offspring, who work away from home, do now. What goes around comes around eh?"

Marcelo Guarini: "I always gave my mom a bouquet of roses, she was very happy with that. I still do at her place in the graveyard. She was the one that taught me to see details in nature, things and people. She may have been a good photographer."

Mysteries of The King of Bokeh

Words and pictures by Eamon Hickey

This post is going to sound like it’s about photography, lenses, and real estate. It is not; it’s about something entirely different. The story begins yesterday when I read Mike’s post about the King of Bokeh (the Panasonic 42.5mm ƒ/1.7 lens), in which he footnoted a link to a real estate listing for “The Estate at King’s Point.” (This post won’t make much sense if you haven’t read that earlier post.) Mike’s story started some sleepy synapses firing in my increasingly creaky brain.

You see, my girlfriend, Donna, happens to own a seaside estate of her own in the form of an apartment in The Bronx, on the shore of Eastchester Bay. (Born and raised in New York City, she has never learned to drive, so when she decided to get a “beach house” for summer getaways it had to be located on a subway line!) Anyway, from Donna’s beach house in The Bronx, otherwise known as Apartment 2C, the easily visible shore about three miles across Eastchester Bay/Long Island Sound is…King’s Point. Two shores, visible to each other but widely separated. Wealth gaps. I won’t belabor the symbolism.

Huh, my sleepy synapses seemed to say. Wonder if “The Estate” can be seen from my girlfriend’s apartment? Given The Estate’s generous dimensions and lively architecture and landscaping, I was not surprised that I could find the place on Google Earth in about 30 seconds. Yep, pretty much straight across the bay from Donna’s apartment.

Wait. Didn’t I have The King of Bokeh for a month or two last year, when I was reviewing a Panasonic GF7 for the estimable fellows at Imaging Resource? And didn’t I use The King of Bokeh to take a picture I sorta’ liked of a Blue Moon rising over the bay one night that summer, when Donna and I were at the beach house? Search through Lightroom. There it is, big Blue Moon. Is The Estate somewhere in the picture? English major with evermore creaky brain now attempts very risky move: deploying trigonometry, however rudimentary, on a satellite image of Eastchester Bay. Known location of camera. Known horizontal field of view. Known object in photograph (Stepping Stone Lighthouse). Draw an angle in Photoshop. Holy smokes. I have taken a picture of The Estate at King’s Point using the King of Bokeh! Alas, the estate itself is obscured by trees, but the neighbor’s shack, a mere 15 bedrooms by the look of it, is clearly visible in both my picture and in the pictures from the real estate listing. Confirmed! (The houses are too small to see in this downsized JPEG, so you'll have to trust me.) 

Now, let’s get to what this post is really about. How does a fellow born and raised in California end up in a Bronx (Bronx!) apartment one lovely but random summer eve, taking a picture of a Long Island mansion without even knowing it, with a lens he possesses temporarily and accidentally, but which will be the subject of a single posting that also mentions the Long Island mansion in a stunningly unlikely aside, and which was written by the editor/publisher of a blog to which the California boy is also a Contributing Editor? Coincidence? The work of the supernatural? Some kind of as-yet-unexplained spooky action at a distance? Or just another example of the wonderful, ineffable mystery of this weird ride we’re all on? I dunno, but it tickles me fancy.

As a bonus, I also have a picture of Donna (on the right) that I took with the King of Bokeh (at ƒ/2.5) when she and a lifelong friend showed up at a party in dresses that suggested some kind of telepathic connection. It’s ineffable, that’s what it is.

Eamon

Eamon Hickey is...well, he already told you, a Contributing Editor of TOP.

©2016 by Eamon Hickey, all rights reserved

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I'm Just Sayin'...

...If you really want the simplified, traditional Leica experience, what you need is something like this...

...and this...

No light meter in the camera, roll your own film. Done and done.

Costs less than $6k, too. At least at first.  :-)

Mike

UPDATE: It turns out the Leica and 1957 7-element 50mm collapsible Summicron lens (Henri Cartier-Bresson's favorite and most-used lens, by the way) in the top photo is for sale. It is museum-quality—its only flaw is a tiny pinhole (almost too small to see) in the chrome plating on the back left of the top plate, which is however very probably how it came from the factory. The lens comes with box and papers and has a completely clear front element. Probably shouldn't be a user...it's too good to spoil now that it's nearly sixty years old yet still in ideal condition. Contact me if you're interested and I'll put you in touch with the owner. —Mike the Ed.

Original contents copyright 2016 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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George Feucht: "I did the math and bulk loading doesn't save money, for some reason. A roll of Tri-X is $5. The 100' bulk roll is over $100. For the 18–19 36-exposure rolls you get, it actually costs more to load yourself. Weird, right?"

Mike replies: But rolling your own is more of a pain in the you-know-where, so it would be more in the spirit of an M-D, right?

Gordon Cahill: "Does it do video? Kinda pointless if it doesn't shoot 4K, isn't it?"

Leica M-D: Is a Digital Camera for 'Manual Purists' Even Possible?

The new Leica M-D

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Leica M9 shooter and TOP reader Benjamin Marks thinks about the new M-D

The short announcement at Engadget got me thinking. Hmmm. Would have to think hard about this. I see the logic of keeping it simple. But how do you do firmware updates with no way to interact with the camera? Maybe you have no firmware updates. Or maybe the interface is all on my computer?

I am thinking about how I actually use my M9. For all of its flexibility, I actually keep the thing on a set of settings and do most of my manipulation after the fact. For me:

• RAW only
• ISO 400, unless circumstances dictate otherwise
• Color space set to...I can't even remember. Adobe RGB?
• Image size: Set to max
• Motor drive: 3 fps

So, OK. As far as it goes, Leica has more or less standardized my choices as the only choices on this new machine.

This raises the question: So what do I actually use the screen for? Well, I do have some lenses that back-focus, or for which the DOF changes unevenly as they are stopped down. The 50mm ƒ/1.5 Sonnar comes to mind. Checking focus is easy and has eliminated the little note cards I used to keep with each problematic lens back in my film days.

Also, I use some lenses—like my 15mm and 21mm's without an auxiliary finder, and have been checking what is actually in the frame using the M9's screen. So I'd have to change that part of the workflow.

I also tend to share the best of a series with the subject in real time...sort of like: look how good you (or your child or your pet or whatever) look. Without the screen, the camera is less of a social device. It would be OK for street photography, maybe. Say goodbye to the whole "but you weren't even in the picture..." tension-diffuser with a mad member of the public, or a cop, or whatever. Also, the "is that a digital camera?" question/answer gets a little more nuanced. "Yeah, it is digital, but you'll have to trust me...."

Ironically—and maybe this is why I have devoted any thought to a camera I can't afford and won't consider purchasing until I am looking at a used one in seven years—this camera, in terms of workflow, is more or less what I imagined I would be using back in 2000. I thought—insanely incorrectly, as it turns out—that for our Manual M's we would have a drop in focal-plane sensor with the "cassette" space taken up with a small battery, storage, and associated electronics. Ironically, the battery and storage pieces of my cockamamie future-proof idea are "there" (have you seen the size of the storage chips most phones take? Sixteen MB on a chip the size of my little fingernail...and this is the "old" tech). I just never imagined how quickly film would go poof as the medium of choice. Shows what I know/knew.

I also imagine that by cutting out the screen and its battery requirements, all firmware except one preset set of settings, etc. that Leica may actually have a better profit margin on the M-D as a unit than their current M-of-the-year that has to have a team of engineers thinking about how all those pieces fit together, and how they will be upgraded, and supported etc. I will be listening for sales reports with a bemused sense of detachment.

Ben

©2016 by Benjamin Marks, all rights reserved

Originally published at Rangefinder Forum (RFF).

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Mark Roberts: "If you shoot strictly raw you are quite right to have ignored the color space setting: It affects only in-camera JPEG."

Wolfgang Lonien: "Mike, 'Zahnwalt' would come to mind—a made-up word out of 'Zahnarzt' (dentist) and 'Anwalt' (lawyer). That is also the group which is usually getting the biggest and baddest Harleys—they can't really ride them; it's more about the possession (and on Germany's roads at least, a small Ninja-like fighter motorcycle would drive circles around them anyway)...." 

Kenneth Tanaka: "No camera company indulges in past-tense pretense more devotedly than Leica. 'Step back to the future.' 'Focusing on the essential.' 'The joy of anticipation.' Who gets up, eats breakfast, and goes to work to write this stuff?!

"Of course the central thesis at the core of this facility deprivation design is that your pictures are lame because you spend too much time fiddling with your camera's nasty digital digital controls and looking at that new-fangled peep show screen on the back of cam as these days.

"Raise your hand (or open your wallet widely) if you really subscribe to this thesis. No, my hand is not up. In fact I'm thrilled that Leica recently converted to those new-fangled CMOS sensors, thus enabling live-view in that peep-show screen on my M-P (240)! It has eliminated the need for old-fangled special viewfinders for wide lenses.

"The Leica M-D was inevitable after the model 262 which kept, but severely censored, the camera's peep-show. It's a digital film camera. It's a camera designed around a strict fundamentalist philosophy of photography. If 'great' photographers of yore didn't need 'it' you shouldn't need 'it,' either.

"Leica is just about the only camera company on Earth that could, and does, indulge such deprivation whiffs*. My initial reaction is that the M-D is the most ridiculous such indulgence yet. But that's badly misguided. Leica has long realized that amateur photography among its clientele is 90% about the experience of photographing. As an admittedly weak analogy someone flying an Airbus A380 all day might feel more 'connected' flying something like an old 1930s Fokker on weekends. So for an earnest price, in this case six thousand dollars, Leica will give you that Fokker experience in the age of the Airbus. There's nothing wrong with that.

"Now if they follow-up with an M-D that limits you to just 36 shots per memory card...."

*[Not quite—Porsche sold a 911 that was lightened by taking lots of non-essential stuff out of it. For instance, removing the door handles and replacing them with leather straps. Of course, the lightened Porsche cost more.

Lightness does have a positive virtue in sports cars, and making one-offs can be more expensive because it departs from the main production run. —Ed.]

Stephen McCullough: "Well I like it. I rarely use the screen on my cameras. This has the controls I need and nothing more. Oh, and one small point: this Leica shoots DNG only. No JPEGs. Nice."

Gordon Cahill (partial comment): "Like the Monochrom, Leica have identified a tiny customer group that no one else caters for and made them a camera. Certainly it's a small group and the cost of entry is high, compared to some others. And a camera like the M-D won't make sense to many. But lots of people said Leica were crazy to make a camera that shoots only in black and white and yet here we are on the second version because the first was so successful. What Leica are becoming, once again (finally) is the camera company not afraid to take a risk."

Gaspar Heurtley: "I'm part of that 'bridge generation' between film and digital as a mainstream (I'm 34), so I've always had a film approach to photography. I shoot with an Olympus E-M5 full of features I couldn't care less about (went through the menu once, set it the way I like and never looked back) but I rarely look at the screen and I use buttons instead of the touchscreen. I always thought that Leicas where made just to show off (you know, 'look at me, I have a Leica'), but this is the first time they have something I really long for: pure simplicity. No other company is ever going to do something like that, unfortunately."

Ed Hawco (partial comment): "We're witnessing extremes. Most digital cameras have mind-boggling sets of options, beyond the point of distraction, but this Leica M-D is too far in the other direction."

Open Mike: New King of Bokeh

[Do I need to mention that these posts are copyrighted? People are not allowed, legally or ethically, to grab great swaths of text written by other people and "re-post" them wherever they want to. My readers don't do this on my site, even in the Comments section, and it really annoys me when I see things like whole reviews pirated on some gnarly little backwater forum somewhere. Don't the moderators, at least, know their legal obligations any better than that?  /rant  —Ed.]

This cracked me up. A few years ago, late at night (after the self-regarding superego goes to bed and the id-iot is free to roam—when I do stupid-crazy $#!t like binge-watch Bill Burr clips on YouTube and critique the bad taste of Long Island mansions on Zillow*), I found myself reading a long disquisition that went into great detail about an ancient and rare brand of broadcast idler-drive turntables called Russco**. The writer was clearly a deep expert on the subject yet in several places limned the sore places of his ignorance that he still intended to explore. Then at the end of the piece he said, "Oh and by the way, my wife says I should mention I'm nuts."

If you're nuts in that gentle good geeky way, one way to tell is when you know way, way too much about something...yet you don't make any money from that knowledge. (Expertise which earns income is excused from charges of geekery.) So if you know all the fine points about, say, Alfa Romeo carburetors of the 1970s, or you find a cruddy old electric guitar on eBay and ask the seller to remove the neck so you can see the factory stamp on the joint, or you know just when a certain esoteric Japanese maker of chef's knives switched from one kind of steel to another and how to tell...it's usually a telltale sign that you're that kind of nuts.

So let me just say from the outset that bokeh (or boke-aji, a Japanese term that roughly translates to "the taste of out-of-focus blur") is not important. It's really not. Next year will mark two decades that I've been to greater or lesser degrees obsessed with it, but that's just because I'm nuts. It's not that important. In current lens-geek culture I'm annoyed by the practice of minimizing depth of field regardless of what the image calls for, and especially annoyed with the brain-dead practice—entirely post-digital, by the way—of people insisting on aperture equivalencies based on d-o-f. That's so stupid I have a bald spot on my head where I tore my hair out over it. (Well, that's my explanation for that, and I'm sticking to it.) It's not the amount of o-o-f blur that matters; if you want more, just use a longer lens and/or move closer. It's the quality of the blur.

Those two decades ago, I called the Leica pre-ASPH 35mm Summicron "the King of bokeh" in a caption in a magazine, and the phrase still pops up from time to time. Well, it ain't. That lens has very coherent, very pleasing near-o-o-f blur at smaller apertures and middle distances, but at large apertures close-in it sucks.

But there's now a lens that really is the King of Bokeh. It's a modest lens, one that almost anyone can afford. Here it is:

  All $347.99 worth. (B&H Photo, Amazon, Amazon UK.) Yes, a lowly near-budget lens from an electronics giant with no particular pedigree as a lensmaker. But all the aristocrats—the Leicas and Zeisses and Canons and Fujis—can fight for second place, and all the pretenders can go home; this little lens gets the o-o-f blur, the bokeh, just right, I think. This is the blur every other lens can strive to emulate. According to me and my taste. Coherent, just a little characterful with a touch of bite, not fuzzy at all. Beautiful. This is the portrait lens I'd use if I were a portraitist. The world's prettiest, the King of Bokeh.

Who says? Well, I do, and [:eyeroll] on this subject, I am happily crazy and the nuttiest of nutcases. So there. :-)

Here's a nice review, and some samples.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, where the Ed. goes a little bit nuts every Sunday.

*And by the way if you think wealth inequality is not a problem, look at properties for sale on Long Island near the sea. For example, who did the guy who built this think he is, Louis XIV?

**Named for founder Russell C. Friend, and yes, I know a little too much about that.

Original contents copyright 2016 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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Tom Hassler: "'The Estate at King's Point' made me laugh, Mike. In the '80s (when wealth inequality was present but not as overt as it is today) I shot on location in several palatial homes on Long Island. They were all beautifully landscaped and very grand on the outside, but each had a common characteristic inside: most of the rooms were closed off, never used by the occupants. Great for photography (less stuff to move) but telling in another way. I believe this is known in psychological circles as 'compensation....'"

Mike replies: I can't remember where I read it, but I read a study once that said most people live mainly in 640 square feet, even if their homes are much larger. Even I, with my 1400-sq.-ft. home (not excessive by American suburban/exurban/rural standards) have a room I seldom visit. Paul McCartney once said that he preferred small houses to large ones because he wanted to be near his family. He said something to the effect that he didn't want his kids off knocking around in their own wing where he'd never see them.

Chris Lopez: "Speaking of wealth inequality, I have the Nocticron, which is this lens's older, richer brother? Anyway it works for me, an outstanding lens."

Mike replies: Almost as good! (Just kidding.)

John Krumm (partial comment): "Since we know that Ctein is a fan of the Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8 perhaps a bokeh-battle is in order."

Ctein replies: That'd be a wonderful idea. Except... 1.) I've never used the Panasonic lens, so I have no opinion about it. I'm not the champion for the Olympus 45mm, it just happens to be, by far, the favorite lens that I have. In fact, I've heard such good things about the Panasonic's edge sharpness at large apertures that I'm thinking about trying one out. 2.) I don't give a flying fig about bokeh. In fact I am close to bokeh-blind.

Otherwise, a fine plan [vbg].

Mike replies to John: Nuthin' wrong with that Olympus. It's no peasant. It's just not the King. :-)

hugh crawford: "I'm waiting for the Laowa 105mm ƒ/2 STF lens with high hopes for bokeh."

Venus Optics Laowa 105mm ƒ/2 STF

Don Parsons: "I also would like to see how it compares to the Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8. I know both you and Kirk (Tuck) prefer this lens, but having not used either, can't understand why."

Trecento: "Ha! I have one! I was into it before it was cool! Finally! More temperately, I've had it since Christmas, and it's a perfectly fine lens, gives me no trouble at all, small, light, fast to focus, pleasing in it's rendering, etc.,etc. The worst I can say about it is that I seldom have reason to shoot that focal lenth, so I'm not as familiar with it as I ought to be. Certainly, it has extinguished any desire for a 'better' short tele prime. It's not as though I'd be able to better it on any system for any practical purpose I have."

Mike replies: And, it marks you as a fellow of fine discrimination and superb taste—there's that.

Dave Wilson: "Wholeheartedly agree. Only had my copy a few weeks and find it very satisfactory. This image of mine on flickr shows some pleasant qualities in the background."

Joe Kashi (partial comment): "The Panasonic 42.5mm ƒ/1.7 is an excellent all-around lens. In addition to the bokeh, it exhibits exceptional color, contrast, and corner-to-corner resolution. It's one of the smallest, yet best Micro 4/3 lenses that I've ever used, on par with the Olympus 75mm ƒ/1.8 at less than half the price."

Moose (partial comment): "Tastes vary. I do not consider most of what I see in the samples to be excellent bokeh. I generally don't like hard, visible edges in out-of-focus parts of images. I particularly dislike it when lines of tiny specular highlights are turned into lines of overlapping rings of light."

[See the rest of Moose's comment (and other "partial" comments) in the Comments section. —Ed.]

Mike replies: "When lines of tiny specular highlights are turned into lines of overlapping rings of light" is called ni-sen or "double-line" bokeh. I share your view, but some Japanese connoisseurs prize it.

Mao: "Being very, very myopic, I can say with absolute certainty that the lenses with the best bokeh are the ones in my eyeballs."