The Online Photographer

New From Leica: Lenses and So Forth...er, Sofort

Announced by Leica at Photokina is the new Summilux-SL 50mm ƒ/1.4 ASPH. lens for the beautiful full-frame SL mirrorless camera. Hey, you didn't think Leica was going to take challenges from Zeiss and Sigma lying down, did you?

The new design features internal focusing, weather sealing, and 11 elements in 9 groups including two aspherical and four anomalous partial dispersion glass elements. Price is $5,295.

And speak of the devil—we were just talking about this the other day—the Leica Sofort is a Leica-branded $299 Instax camera! I'd almost buy one for the "Automatik-Hektor" lens name alone. I haven't heard that name since Uncle Arthur Kramer, lens guru of the old Modern Photography magazine of revered memory, used to build delightfully bad Leica jokes around the phrase "when Hektor was a pup." (Hektor was the name of Max Berek's dog. Max Berek was an early lens designer for Leica who gave the Hektor lens its name.)

There's a nice review at Engadget called "Leica's Sofort instant camera is better than it looks." But any $299 Leica meant for having fun looks pretty good from here.

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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Chuck Albertson: "At $300, it's Automatik For the People!"

Correction: The Meaning of 'Reflex'

I stand corrected. The question came up the other day (in the discussion of the new A99II) as to what "reflex" means in camera terms. I always thought it meant a mirror that moved out of the way—that is, that flipped up out of the light path of the lens. Several readers disagreed.

They're right and I'm wrong. I contacted our friend Todd Gustavson, Curator of the Technology Collection at George Eastman Museum in Rochester (you've met Todd before). He says it's simple: "If it uses a mirror for image preview, composing, and or focusing, it’s a reflex camera." It doesn't matter how many lenses are involved or whether the mirror moves or stays put.

So, technically, Sony's "SLTs" (SLT stands for single lens translucent) are still SLRs. Furthermore—how cool is this—the first camera, the Giroux daguerreotype camera, used a mirror for focusing, so it's a reflex camera too.

Todd is one of the pre-eminent experts on cameras in the world, the author of many books including the must-have Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital. He shoots with a Nikon Dƒ himself.

Mike
(Thanks to Todd)

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SanDisk Breaks the 1TB Barrier

I'm going to have to write a real essay sometime about the impact of videography with digital cameras on this here ol' blog. Not to start now, but I'm not very interested in videography—ain't good at it, don't practice it, and nobody would really want to read what I would write about it. (Still pictures are more moving to me, ha ha.) This puts a bit of a shadow over certain aspects of the blog, because still and video have tilted in toward each other and run together in what the late Michael Reichmann termed a "convergence."

But back to the news. Another "development announcement" from Photokina is that SanDisk is readying a one-terabyte SDXC card for market. A TB, as you might know, is 1,000 GB.

...And this is really for video. Granted, given that we're all minions of Moore and subject to his famous law, someday in the not-too-distant future we'll doubtless be storing still photographs on 1TB and larger cards (the first 1GB card boggled my mind, and not that long ago). But for the moment, the product is really for people who want to record long segments of uninterrupted video.

Which takes nothing away from how amazing it is as an accomplishment.

Still, probably of more significance for us still photographers is that more new cameras such as the upcoming Olympus E-M1 Mark II and the existing Fujifilm X-Pro2 (but only in its first card slot) can use the new UHS-II standard. A few 32GB or 64GB UHS-II SD cards is probably much closer to ideal for still photographers if your camera accepts UHS-II cards; we need faster and not so big.

SanDisk is owned by Western Digital, which also makes the "My Passport" bus-powered hard drives I'm so crazy about. I have a bunch of 'em (the picture above might be deceiving...they're a little bigger than a pack of cards).

Mike

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Stephen Scharf: "The newly released Fuji X-T2 supports UHS-II, but unlike the X-Pro2, both slots are UHS-II. When shooting peak racing action at the Indy Car races last week, I configured the camera to use slot 1 first, then slot 2, and the camera transitioned to the second card slot absolutely seamlessly and effectively instantaneously. The EVF also shows you which card is being used. Excellent implementation by Fuji."

mike plews: "I've been at the same TV station since 1980. I helped stand down the ME4 16mm processor when we went to analog tape and was in the thick of it when we went totally digital in the early 1990s. Our first serious video server was from HP. It was a bank of 9GB drives the size of a walk-in closet, just tickled one TB and cost six figures. Yikes."

 

Wednesday Open Mike: Eggsactly

I mentioned the other day that I now use the iPhone a lot for "note taking." This is a good example of a note-taking kind of photograph.

I've always wondered about mankind's ability to judge change over time. We're very good within "human scale" time periods—say, a few seconds to the duration of one or one-and-a-half lifetimes—and sometimes a much narrower range than that. We're not good at judging change outside of human scale—we can't detect the speed of a bullet, or the changes in a mountain range over five millennia.

The way I used to express this idea was by asking: how do we know that eggs taste the same now as they did in, say, the year 1500?

What this picture shows is the difference between a "free range" or "cage free" egg purchased from the supermarket and an egg from a real free range* hen. The egg with the darker orange yolk came from a local Old Order Mennonite farm, where the hens live outdoors on a large pasture and roost in a hen house at night, and eat what they want to eat. My local farmer has a flock of 200 hens which he considers very large. An industrial egg-production facility usually has 10,000 hens per barn** and may have multiple barns. I don't know the age of these particular eggs, but typically the Mennonite-farmed eggs I buy are usually no more than a few days old at most whereas grocery store eggs can be up to several weeks old.

Just as we're not good at detecting change over time periods that are outside of human scale, most people are poor at judging absolute illuminance across a field, even a limited one. For instance, in this picture, the amount of  illumination variation between the inner wall of the bowl at the top and the inner wall of the bowl at the bottom. Many laypeople's eye/brains would read it as being fairly evenly illuminated when they were just looking at it. Their brains know the bowl is white so that's how they see it. The illumination difference is trivial and that information is downplayed or discarded. (Of course you, as a photographer, probably also noticed, approximately at least, the color of the outside of the bowl—you saw it as a color-cast on the side of the bowl toward the light.)

It's easier to compare the color differences between these yolks when they're next to each other like this. I'm not good at tasting or smelling, so I'm worse than average at detecting the flavor differences. It's a lot easier for most people (including me) to detect the differences in flavor between farm-fresh eggs and eggs from the supermarket if you eat them one after the other. But I'm much better than the average person at detecting illumination change or color differences. That just comes from years of practice, mostly from making and looking at photographs.

As a species we're essentially blind when it comes to gradual changes in the look of the world. Ansel Adams spoke at the end of his life about the change in the clarity of the air around San Francisco Bay during his lifetime. He said that the air in the 1970s was almost never as clear as it frequently was in the 1930s. He was one of the few people in a position to detect such a thing. He started out with a more acute eye than most people and then he honed his seeing skills by practicing photography. Or consider that the Milky Way is now invisible to about 80% of the population of North America, masked by light pollution. A visitor from 1700 would find many things to distract and amaze him, but he might be startled as well by the differences in the sky and the atmosphere.

Human knowledge of gradual change and of subtle differences is frail, if you ask me.

Mike

*The real term is "pasture raised" or "pastured." Thanks to Scott for this.

**I don't actually know the correct term for the building where they keep all the laying hens.

"Open Mike" is the off-topic editorial page of TOP. It appears on most Wednesdays.

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Dave Van de Mark: "That dark orange colored yolk from the 'real' free range chicken is just so beautiful and is exactly like some eggs I can get from a neighbor who has a few chickens running around her yard. I'll be totally honest in saying that, after uniting the egg to a slice of buttered toast with crispy bacon on the side, I'm not ready to describe a taste difference between it and a 'quality' organic one. But I'll take that dark orange yolk over the yellow one anytime, thank you!"

Moose: "Re '...Most people are poor at judging absolute illuminance across a field, even a limited one': One of the points in the movie 'Tim's Vermeer' that helped convince me that he is correct that Vermeer used an apparatus and technique very like what Tim devised was accuracy of subtle illumination differences across large areas of (close to) the same color illuminated by the same source. That seems to be one important reason that so many people say of Vermeer's work that it seems 'photographic.' There's a statement in the movie similar to yours, without the 'most people' caveat, and some good examples from other Old Masters."

robert e: "For those concerned about the source of their eggs and who don't have convenient access to a farm they trust, the Cornucopia Institute maintains a database of egg brands, rated according to numerous farming and business practices. And the 'Certified Humane' program's website lets you look up participating retailers and producers. I don't know much about either organization, but I'm impressed by the thoroughness, transparency and ease of use of Cornucopia's list."

Flurry of Fun From Photokina

Awesome descendant of my A900, Sony has at long last updated its DSLR flagship. Well, sort of a DSLR: like some other Sonys, the new A99II has what Canon used to call a pellicle mirror, i.e. a beam splitter. The image-forming light goes through the mirror, eliminating the need for the mirror to flip out of the way—as well as eliminating the "reflex" part of the term "digital single lens reflex." The EOS RT, a vivid story in the annals of camera marketing, put Canon off the idea for the long haul. But I really like pellicle mirrors, or "SLTs" as Sony styles theirs. They work a treat. And the less vibration, the better.

I can't wait to read more about this baby—this 42-MP, $3,200 baby—which will doubtless be all kinds of awesome. It will probably reign for the foreseeable as the very best camera that nobody will be buying. Which is cool as long as Sony's selling A7-series and A6000-series cameras by the boatload.

I have to add that when this came out, I looked through all 82 A-mount lenses listed on B&H Photo's website. Collectively, that is just the sorriest ragtag salmagundi of this 'n' that and one thing 'n' another that ever passed for a lens line. I've seen more lens lineups that make more sense in cardboard trays on tables at swap meets.

Pentaxiana: Legions of longtime Pentaxians, having patiently waited for years, are saving up their pennies, rubles and farthings for the bargain-priced but deluxe K-1 and loving what they buy. I know, not relevant to Photokina announcements, except you can no doubt see this at the Ricoh booth. I just wanted to stick in a plug for Pentax, which shouldn't be forgotten just because it intro'd the K-1 a distant seven months ago. Hey, it's almost new, and the love flows between Pentax and its fans in a heartwarming way. (The people who are loving this camera includes reviewers.) And note that Sharkey James at the PetaPixel Podcast said the K-1 "smokes" the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. (Canon fans are incapable of grokking such an absurd statement, so they will pass right on by without comment.) For only $1,796.95!

Panasonic DSLR-style: Okay, back to Cologne. Also not a DSLR—rather, a Micro 4/3 mirrorless, but "DSLR style" as opposed to "rangefinder style" in body shape (I know, categories are almost terminally confusing these days)—we have the Panasonic G85. Although I've given up keeping this company's nomenclature straight—the G85 is in a different segment than the GX85—I kinda like what Panasonic is doing, splitting its line into cameras tilted towards videography (GH4 and the pre-announced GH5, this G7 replacement), and those that are tilted toward still photography (GX85, and the GX8 which I recently tried and really liked). It makes sense because I just don't think photography and videography are very closely related, and it's unlikely that a lot of customers will be equally enthusiastic about both. Anyway, the G85 is aimed at videographers who also shoot stills, but who can't afford a GH4 or -5.

They're just not that into it: I never thought I'd feel sorry for Canon, but that's the feeling its tepid, me-too mirrorless offerings elicit. Said offerings practically radiate a lack of enthusiasm for the concept. What's a poor industry-dominating juggernaut to do? Canon has one of the strongest images of all cameramakers, but that image is of a DSLR-maker par excellence, with a full range of offerings and a broad and deep system. So a few upstarts come along with a disruptive idea and start doing pretty well with it, and Big Corp. then says, sure, we might as well snarf a little of that profit. But their hearts aren't in it. It's just not where they live. The EOS M5 looks to be a nice little camera, but what kind of shopper puts the formidable mirrorless ecosystems of Fuji, Sony, and the Micro 4/3 consortium on one side of a balance and this M5 on the other, and says, "I think I'll go with the Canon"? Only diehard Canon fans (whose hearts probably aren't in mirrorless either), or (strange thought) nonconformists. The most telling reaction to this one runs along the lines of, "I'll wait till it's on closeout 18 months from now and then I might pick one up."

That's it for now. More soon.

Mike

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Life Is an Adventure

Peter Turnley with some other famous guy in Cuba.
Photo by Noah Friedman-Rudovsky.

A psychologist friend recently mentioned that a great many people in the indeterminate, vaguely unspecified more-or-less mid-life age-range share a common wish—they wish they could break out of their settled precincts and scheduled routines for once, and go on a bonafide adventure. Even if—perhaps especially if—they lead fulfilling, accomplished, prosperous lives with which they're very satisfied.

If that description applies to you, or appeals to you, I have a modest suggestion.

My great and good friend the inimitable Peter Turnley would like to extend a cordial early invitation to you as a TOP reader to join him for one of his photographers' workshops in Cuba. There are several coming up. These will fill up—they always fill up—but he wanted to give us an early heads-up, knowing that a lot of people here have supported him and his work in the past. Many of you own one of his books or one of his signed original prints.

There are times in the shifting life of the world when windows open, and now is one of those times in Cuba. With international relations relaxing, it's easier and safer than ever to travel there, yet the inexorable changes that will surely overtake Cuba soon have barely begun. It still looks largely as it has since the mid-20th century.

Now is the time to visit. Especially with a camera. And especially in the company of an ideal photographic mentor like Peter. Peter has successfully straddled the worlds of photojournalism and fine art. As a photojournalist, he's been featured with his twin brother David on "60 Minutes," and his long list of credits leads off with more than 40 NEWSWEEK covers. As an artist, he has published many books, and was recently honored with a full career retrospective at Havana's leading art museum. He's a guy of uncommon energy who has enthusiastically engaged with the history and lore of photography since he and his brother worked on their first major project as teenagers. He has met and befriended an endless who's-who of important people in our field. And he's a veteran workshop teacher who has inspired groups all over the world.

And really—seriously, now, and pay attention to what I say, I know what I'm talking about here—the guy has stories. Man.

So if you could use a little adventure in your life, this could be one opportunity. Maybe an opportunity whose time has not only come, but is just right. These windows come and go.

Check it out. And think it over. (As you can probably tell, I am.) Who knows? Could be the time of your life. Go for it! Nothing like an adventure. :-)

Mike
(Back to all the new products in the morning.)

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Jose Antonio Rosas: "I joined Peter's workshop in New York last August, and I am going to Cuba with him next year. His workshops are about much more than improving your photography. They are about establishing stronger connections with people everywhere. Great photographs are the result of that connection."

George Andros: "Agree on all counts. Have the books and prints; taken a workshop and no doubt about it, Peter has stories. Over the last ten years I have taken at least 10 workshops of various sorts and Peter's street photography workshop in Paris was unquestionably the best. A generous and affable spirit to be sure." 

jim: "I went last February for ten days. Havana was so full of life and the most enthusiastic people that I never left to see any of the rest of Cuba. I just hope the enthusiasm of the people doesn't change as the presence of more US tourists increases."

Two 'In Development' Announcements

So, a bit of a disappointment on the Olympus front: the announcement is not a conventional announcement, but the announcement of a future announcement. All Olympus has said is that the E-M1 Mark II is "in development" for delivery...later.

Some goes for Panasonic, which announced that the GH5 is in development.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with this trend, although it highlights what must be a severe dilemma for the camera company marketers: do you withhold information in order to create maximum excitement when customers can actually place an order? Or do you "pre-announce" it to confirm what's coming, and thereby prevent defections of loyal customers?

I feel their pain, because I myself have been their problem customer. I was waiting and waiting for the original E-M1, but it took too long to arrive and, before it finally did, I jumped ship. I owned one briefly later, but by then it was too late...I haven't been back to Micro 4/3 in a serious way since then (although I still love, and admire, and approve of, Micro 4/3).

I admit it was a mistake—I should have waited—but yup, I did that.

Above are the differences between the new upcoming E-M1 Mark II and the old...er, "old" (it's been around for three years) model. As Olympus said, "Probably the most important innovation tonight: speed."

Well, yeah, except....

Mike

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Will: "In keeping with the GH series' history as more video camera than stills camera, the announcements today regarding the GH5 are pretty huge. Panasonic's promise of delivering 4:2:2 color sampling and 10-bit color depth in 4k, recorded straight to SD card in camera, is a proper game changer. These features have no easy analogue in still photography to illustrate this fact, but trust me when I say that this is huge, it leaves Sony in a delicate position, and it puts Canon even further behind in the video market that they basically created.

"(Sony's primary pain point here is that they have a professional video camera market. When it created the 'Mini-F5' that is the FS7, they saw fit to give the cheaper camera ($8,500 currently for the FS7 vs. $13,000 currently for the F5 similarly capable) 4:2:2 and 10-bit. Later, the $5,750 FS5 was distinguished from its big brother in part by not offering internal 4:2:2 or 10-bit. Panasonic's cinema camera offerings have a huge gap between the GH series and the $20,000+ Varicam offerings. Moving these big pro features downmarket does little to cannibalize Panasonic's sales of more expensive pro cameras, but Sony's situation is rather different and now they must choose between ceding much of the sizable low budget pro market to Panasonic or risk cannibalizing their own lineup. It will be fun to watch this develop.)

"All of which is to say: Panasonic did right with their pre-announcement. We're paying attention, and I imagine no one is buying a (video) camera in this price range, unless absolutely necessary, between now and the GH5 launch."

Mike replies: So one thing you're saying is that an "in development" announcement might be a better thing in some specific cases than in others—which makes sense, but is something I didn't think of.

David Burren: "Presumably the marketers are aware of the Osborne effect. Ideally they want the lead time from announcement to availability to be minimal: Canon has been doing well on this recently. The longer the lead time the more chances that people will give and up go elsewhere (or be enticed by new offerings that appear in the meantime). Also if the lead time is too long the "new" features may seem old by the time people get access to them. It would seem short-sighted to make an announcement without an estimate of delivery. Presumably they're confident the lead time will be not-unreasonable, but uncertainty is rarely a good thing in terms of keeping customers."

Tom Simonsen: "I suspect that we see so many pre-releases this year because of the earthquake that stopped sensor production for so long. Probably they were going to release the cameras now, but, because of the delay in sensor delivery, they won't be available until after Christmas. On the other hand, we have seen pre-releases of lenses for some years now. So it might just be a trend...."

Fujifilm G-Mount: It's Official!

Dpreview is reporting from Photokina that Fuji has announced it will launch an all-new medium-format mirrorless line with a full range of lenses. The new GFX series with its all-new G mount will kick off with the handsome and compact GFX 50S, which has a 51.4-megapixel sensor that is 1.7X the area of full-frame and 4X the size of Fuji's existing APS-C X-series cameras.

This is just an exceptionally smart move from a system and marketing standpoint, I think. It doesn't in any way pirate the existing X line, which is well differentiated in terms of size, price and convenience, but it will provide formidable competition to Sony, Nikon and Canon's full-frame offerings. It's also differentiated from existing medium-format DSLRs and will likely be far more flexible and convenient to use than standard medium-format backs. As Fuji says, "X and GFX: two systems that complement each other." Yup, true dat.

The initial three GF lenses for the new G mount include
the 63mm normal lens (50mm-e)

Six lenses are on the initial lens roadmap, both zooms and primes, but as we have observed since 2010, Fuji moves fast with things like that. The initial lineup will include the following six Fujinon lenses:

Available early next year along with the camera:

1. Standard prime GF 63mm ƒ/2.8 R WR (equivalent to 50mm in the 35mm/FF format)

2. Wide-angle standard zoom GF 32–64mm ƒ/4 R LM WR (25–51mm-e)

3. Mid-telephoto macro 1:0.5 GF 120mm ƒ/4 Macro R LM OIS WR (95mm-e)

Available later in 2017:

4. Fast aperture mid-telephoto GF 110mm ƒ/2 R LM WR (87mm-e)

5. Ultra-wide GF23mm ƒ/4 R LM WR (18mm-e)

6. Wide GF 45mm ƒ/2.8 R WR (35mm-e)

All the lenses will be dust and weather resistant and will feature aperture rings, but with a "C" position for controlling the aperture from the command dial on the camera.

An interesting feature of the camera: the aspect ratio will be selectable, and will include 4:3 (the default), 3:2, 1:1, 4:5, 6:7 and 6:17.

Like all the other medium-format digital systems (which are the largest digital formats), the GFX system won't come cheap: Fuji only says the GFX 50S body and 63mm ƒ2/8 R WR normal lens (50mm equivalent angle of view) will initially sell for "well under $10,000."

Here's the brochure PDF.

Mike
(via dpreview)

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Del Bomberger: "Truly exciting. Not the Digital XPan I continually pine for, but I just can't wait to get one. This will not be much more than I paid for the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III I purchased eight or nine years ago. I've been waiting for something like this for a few years—exciting times from my perspective."

marcin wuu: "Now this made my salivary glands go into instant overdrive...."

$200 Off Today Only

Just for the next 13 hours (or until supplies run out), you can get a serviceable 400 watt-second monolight, the easiest kind of off-camera flash to use, for a mere $190. Generically these are rather common, with variants under many brand names. This one is inexpensive even at the regular price of $390.

Not the last word in color consistency or exact repeatability (for that, you'll pay much more), a 400 w/s flash is nevertheless highly useful for all kinds of ordinary lighting tasks. Be the beneficiary of my experience: don't let yours tip over and crash on the floor, because it'll smash to smithereens. Otherwise, a nice thing, for a very nice price.

Note too that off-camera "strobe" has benefited from high digital ISOs...a 400 w/s light is arguably just as useful as a 1600 w/s unit would have been a quarter century ago.

Mike

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Steve Walker: "That's a good price. Flash gets better and less expensive, perhaps due to the strobist movement. I have been using old Speedotron packs and heads to learn. Along with ND filters, scrims and a new love for the inverse square of light. Who needs automation?"

Seeing With a 'New' Camera and Lens

To "test" the idea in the previous post, as well as the idea that pictures in my newfound home are "farther away," as I talked about previously here—I improvised the closest I could come to a "big" camera and a long lens: my Sony A900 and its 85mm ƒ/2.8 lens, which is what most of the recent pictures you've seen here were shot with (the church steeple, for example). I'm just experimenting...trying to see if a bigger sensor actually means anything to me, and if I really am seeing the landscape around here at a narrower angle. Here's a sample:

Keuka Lake and the Bluff, from the hills

I dunno, but to me this looks like the work of a guy who hasn't quite got the hang of using a short tele for landscapes yet.  :-)  Give me time.

The Bluff, by the way, is the steep ridge that forms the infill of Keuka's famous "Y" shape. Here's a topographical map of Keuka from 1903, on which you can see Bluff Point marked:

The land around here is quite dramatically corrugated, and although nothing's terribly high—there are no real mountains—the hills and ridges can be steep.

Like a lot of my "color" pictures, it's possible that this one is really a black-and-white picture at heart. I still see B&W.

Or...
I don't know if this happens to you, but I shoot a lot of "almost but not quite" shots. They're 90% of the way to being pictures but they don't quite make it. This one's probably a good example. I often find that I still kind of like them at first, even to the point that I'll spend time futzing with them in Photoshop for a while. (The chief pleasure I get is in converting things to B&W.)

Usually, what shows them up as also-rans is the passage of a few weeks' time. By that time I wonder what I saw in it. Or, if a few months passes, I'll simply forget about it. With me, it's "staying power" that ultimately makes it clear which pictures are hits and which are ABNQs. Somehow it always becomes painfully obvious in time.

I'll probably have to shoot with the FF and 85mm a few more times before I start seeing with it. It always takes a while to start "seeing" with a new camera or lens. You have to be patient with yourself, and keep using it.

I've been at it a few weeks now, and it's been an interesting experiment. I suppose a 24-MP FF sensor with 2008 limitations is not really a fair substitute for one of today's big cameras, and certainly not for one of today's big medium-format cameras. But it's the nearest I can come using what's in the camera closet.

Here's one I shot just this very night. I might like this one better, but as I say, only time will tell. (This works well in color too.)

Mike
(I guess you can tell I didn't work on my book today.)

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Fuji Medium Format and an Argument for Going Big

Another announcement that's possible this coming week is that there might be a medium-format Fuji on the way—something possibly similar to the Hasselblad X1D (which, as an aside, has suffered multiple shipping delays and isn't being delivered yet).

I hate to say this (I ain't lyin', I do), but my thinking about cameras has been changing a bit lately, and it's because of the iPhone. Previously what I always aspired to was to have one camera system that provides an optimum balance between quality and convenience, which to me right now means Micro 4/3 or APS-C ILCs.

But I've always been well aware that I like to use cameras as a "notepad," a way to "jot down" something I've seen that I want to remember or share. Social media is this impulse raised to a high level of efficiency. My 12-year-old niece uses photography as an integral part of her life—yet she isn't interested in "photography" per se in the old-fashioned way most of us would more easily recognize.

And, much as I've resisted it, I have to admit that I adore my iPhone 6+. It bugs me to admit it, but I've got to be honest—something like 30 to 40% of the best pictures I've taken since I got it were taken with it. By "best" I mean most pleasing or meaningful, and therefore most prized or valued. And I'm thinking about changing to an iPhone 7+ just for the camera. Not because I need to, just because I want to.

(With my plan, the hardware isn't a very significant part of the expense of the phone...

...Theoretically. I just got off an long and pretty impressively confusing conference call with Jasmine at Verizon and Kylia at Apple, trying to dredge up an actual number for this post, and we determined that we are unable to determine what it would cost for me to upgrade. We did learn that I'm not eligible for an upgrade till March in any case. So the bad news is that I don't know what it would cost but the good news is that I don't need to know.)

Much as I like the iPhone, the idea of being a smartphoner—using it exclusively, for everything—is a non-starter. Poor low light capability, limited controls, blown-out highlights à la c. 2007 or so, no interchangeable lenses, etc. They're good cameras, but they're not that good.

So since I'm using the phone as a "note-taking" camera now, it seems like it would make sense to have a bigger camera to differentiate more decisively from the iPhone.

This could also be TR (tortured rationalizing). Maybe I've just got a bout of the old itch to upgrade. You know how that goes.

But wouldn't it be nice to have a smartphone as one camera and a medium-format camera or high-megapixel FF camera as the other? Seems like that would cover all the bases in interesting ways.

More soon on this, probably—depending on what Fuji has waiting for us at Photokina.

Mike

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marcin wuu: "This is exactly what I am doing and it works quite well—I am using a phone camera much in the way of your niece, for my social networking needs, and digital FF + film medium format combo for 'real' photography. Works pretty well, so long as you know the limitation of each of those. It's also worth noting that the 'real' cameras are getting more and more web-friendly. I can upload images directly from my camera to my Facebook page with some basic adjustments. It's nowhere near a smartphone in terms of workflow smoothness (quite the contrary actually, it's a big PITA), but it'll do in a pinch."

Geoff Wittig: "My thinking partly matches yours. I always carry an iPhone 6s, mostly as a small computer for medical apps. Photo note-taking is exactly how I use it as a camera. Its limitations are just too frustrating for anything else. 'The best camera is the one you have with you' and all that, but mostly that's not good enough. I suspect it partly reflects the way I see things; a quick gander at my favorite photos shows I shoot a lot between 70 and 150mm (35mm format) and considerably less at wider focal lengths. Cell phone cameras are pretty much all wide angle devices. My main photo toolkit since 2012 has been a full frame DSLR and a full complement of lenses in a large backpack with a solid tripod. I shoot mostly landscapes and often print large.

"If I'm going out intentionally to photograph, I want to do justice to the subject, and I'm willing to carry a heavy kit to do that. For me point 'n shoot cameras just seem to fall between two stools; not small enough to carry everywhere, but not good enough for serious work." 

Moose (partial comment): "You might consider the possibility that the yearning for medium format  or high-resolution FF may be rooted more in GAS than reality. Big gear with big numbers is definitely cool, but does it add any practical capabilities? One of my touchstones is the $19.95 print by Ctein that TOP sold in 2012 With a 15x20" image area (29x) from a 12-MP Olympus E-P1, the first Micro 4/3 camera. It's a pretty spectacular example of how much clear detail is actually available from a modestly sized sensor and a moderate number of MPs."

Mike replies: Good point. I guess most of why I think a big camera is an advantage is not resolution but the "malleability" of the files. But I hear you.

Olympus E-M1 Mark II Live Stream (and the Photokina)

As you might know, the Photokina 2016, the world's largest trade fair for the photographic and imaging industries, takes place this coming week, in Cologne, Germany, as usual. It runs from Tuesday the 20th through Sunday the 25th.

The Photokina is held in September of even-numbered years at Kölnmesse Trade Fair and Exhibition Center (once every two years, or biennially, a word which is nearly useless since it confuses so readily with biannually, which means twice a year).

One announcement that many photographers have been waiting for is for the Olympus E-M1 replacement. The outgoing camera has been reduced to $899.

If you're interested, Olympus will live stream the press conference—a countdown is now featured on the web page in case you want to plan ahead.

And there will be three new lenses, which are leaked at digicame-info.

Mike

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First Color!

This is the very first hint of Fall color I've seen this year—a fallen maple leaf from my neighbors Pete and Sandy's yard, found by Sandy.

September and October are the best months of the year here in the wonderful Finger Lakes. I'm just in love with this whole area—I see pictures when I'm not photographing, and when I go out photographing I don't even care if I actually find anything. Just driving around and looking at things, or taking short walks away from the car, improves my mood and my sense of inner relaxation and peace. (Well, at least at this time of year! September and October are our grateful compensation for January and February, which are, shall we say, not as enriching.)

Have a great weekend in your home in the world. We have some wild, wacky, and weird cameras to palaver over next week, including Canon's first high-end mirrorless and Leica's first Instax(?!). As usual, I'll have a thing or two to say.

Mike
(Thanks to Sandy)

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Pt/Pd Tech Part II: A Little Help From Your Friends

By Carl Weese

[Part I is here]

Some people claim platinum printing involves black magic. I won’t go that far, but it’s certainly as much art as science. That’s partly because it’s just plain complicated. The ideal of testing one variable at a time is nice, but it just doesn’t happen in the platinum darkroom. You’re always juggling multiple factors.

This past March, Hahnemühle sent me some sample packs of its not-yet-released Platinum Rag paper (HPR). I did a couple quick tests and liked it so much I requested more for my “Digital Platinum” workshop at CAP/Penumbra in New York. (Disclosure: Hahnemühle is now a partial sponsor—donated paper—for my CAP workshop, which is entirely appropriate because CAP is a non-profit educational institution. For my current print offer I’m buying my paper from B&H, just like anybody else.)

The paper behaved about as you’d expect if one of the oldest and most respected paper makers in the world put their mind to the task of creating a paper from scratch for the process. The surface is so easy to work with that students, absolute beginners, were getting nice smooth coatings right away when we opened the samples on the second day of the workshop.

HPR and humidity
A sheet coated with Pt/Pd solution needs to be carefully prepared for printing. You have to dry it off, but you need to leave enough moisture in the paper to support the exposure process. Just how much humidity you need depends on the particular paper. I knew from beta-tester reports that the new material thrived in lower humidity environments than most other papers, which was great because the CAP workspace tends to be dryer than most papers like. The students’ prints showed that the paper is faster (shorter printing exposures) than the old standby, Platine, and had significantly more contrast. I’d need later on to do some tests to modify my negative preparation to compensate for the higher contrast. Meanwhile the workshop participants were delighted to be getting nice prints in their first experience with the process, and to see the fascinating differences between the prints on Platine and HPR.

Back in my darkroom I did precise tests with a file that combines an abstract step tablet and a small real-world picture. This let me find the shortest printing exposure that gives a maximum black, and then let me dial back one of my print driver settings (for outputting the digital negative) to keep the higher contrast from burning out the whites.

Then I did other stuff for most of the summer. When Mike and I had gotten our possible Print Offer selections down to four or five, working from on-screen files from scans, I decided it was time to test print them. As much as I like Fabriano, I didn’t want to do a volume run of printing with a paper that needs pretreatment, and anyway, I thought these pictures would look better on the brighter, cooler-toned HPR. So I got a package of 22x30 (which cuts down efficiently to 10x19.5) and immediately ran into a sticky situation. Literally. When a coated sheet that seemed to be perfectly prepared was printed with my large UV light source and vacuum frame, the edges of the coated area stuck to the negative film. This is not a complete surprise. These films are made super-absorbent so they can handle extreme ink loads, which is why we can make digital negatives for platinum with them, but absorbent is more or less a synonym for sticky. So I tried again and dried the next sheet enough that it would not be successful on Platine or Fabriano. The picture printed fine, but the edges of the coating stuck. This was strange. I’ve never before had this issue relate to scaling up the size of the print.

I coated a small sheet for my standard test negative, dried it totally with a hair dryer, and printed it right away. No sticking, but no Dmax. That’s no surprise, and most of the tones looked amazingly good for a bone-dry sheet. I coated and totally dried another one, then let it rest for ten minutes in 60% humidity, then printed it. It stuck. Just at the edges. I developed it anyway, and the print looked great, but the negative was toast from sensitizer transfer at the edges.

Community
The small community of platinum printers is very collegial and generous. I quickly found out that people working with HPR over the past few months liked to use the additive Tween20 with it. About Tween, there are people who swear by it, and people who swear at it. I’ve always been in the “at” group. I hate the way the solution “works” during the coating process with the additive, on most papers. (It’s a surfactant. For those familiar with the silver darkroom, think Photo-Flo on steroids.)

Well, if HPR came with an instruction sheet (it doesn’t) I think it would recommend the use of a surfactant. The action of coating was not badly impacted—the coating distributed and worked in more quickly. Most important, given fan-but-no-heat drying in a 45% humidity environment, it showed no sticking at all even in the hard pressure of the vac frame, and delivered a beautiful print. OK, problem solved.

That’s how you figure things out for platinum printing: experiments, limiting the variables as much as feasible, and a little help from your friends.

Carl

Carl Weese, who lives in rural Connecticut with his artist wife Tina, has been teaching the esoteric art of fine platinum printing in group workshops and private tutoring sessions since the 1990s.

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Andrea B.: "Carl, can you tell me a bit about Pt/Pd archival properties? Any particular framing or hanging suggestions? Thanks!"

Carl replies: Andrea, Pt/Pd is the most archival of photographic media (well, carbon transfer may tie for that honor). The print consists of microscopic particles of non-reactive Pt/Pd metals embedded in fine, 100% cotton paper. Standard archival matting and framing materials are fine. Avoid dry-mounting; the print will lie perfectly flat positioned with corners or a paper hinge. UV-blocking glazing is a good idea to protect the paper, and avoid display where it will get direct sunlight.

Subdued or special lighting is not needed. In fact, it makes me a little crazy when I go to a museum show of wonderfully archival platinum prints and find the curators have set the lighting so low I can’t see the pictures properly!

A Note on Digital Internegatives

[Note: Mike here. I just thought I'd pluck these two comments from the mass of materials we've presented so far, to address the question of Pt/Pd printing direct from camera negatives vs. from internegs. —MJ the Ed.]

Clyde Rogers: "Platinum/palladium (Pt/Pd) printing does risk the negative if you're going for the best possible result. Pt/Pd is a contact process on hand-coated paper, and the paper needs a moderately high humidity level. If humidity is too low, you get uneven, spotty blacks. If you run the moisture too high, the best case is a muddy gray black. In the worst case some part of the negative sticks to the paper, is baked on by the UV exposure unit, and the pair is tossed in the trash.

"I have several of Carl's prints from the last sale, and they have an outstanding Pt/Pd black, so he is running at humidity levels that require a great deal of care. If his darkroom is off by 10% humidity, or he coats too heavily (or even just unevenly) one time, he very well could ruin his negative. You can put a thin sheet of acetate between the negative and the paper to protect the neg, but then you have two more dust-gathering surfaces, and have moved the neg a bit away from the paper, visibly reducing sharpness. I love the very slight softening provided by Pt/Pd interacting with a handmade paper surface, but find the additional softening of the acetate to be too much. Add to this zapping the negative with somewhere from six to 10 minutes of high-intensity UV for each print. Some folks who print one negative many times have reported some degree of either fogging or fading from all this UV. Finally, you're handling a large bare negative at least twice for each print. So, yes, Pt/Pd definitely does put the negative at greater risk than typical silver printing."

Carl replies: Clyde, thanks for that great explanation of the dangers (to the negative) of platinum printing. Watch for some interesting news about humidity issues in the next technical post [coming up next —Ed.]. I only use the term "contact print" to refer to something made directly from the in-camera negative. There are a few photographers who work this way exclusively. Kenro Izu with his 14x20 (that's not a typo) Deardorff comes to mind, and, well, me until two years ago. However, platinum prints from internegatives are more the norm than the exception. The platinum printers to the stars like Martin Axon and Sal Lopes work from internegs. Paul Strand made most of his platinum prints from enlarged negs, and so did Richard Benson when he printed for Strand at the end of his life. Most of the George Tice Pt/Pd prints I've seen at AIPAD booths were enlarged (I could only tell because they were bigger than 8x10). Expert printers using analog internegs often made multiple masks to gain extreme control of the tonal scale. Now of course we can get the same kind of control with even more precision in Photoshop.

Mike adds: When I was a student I wanted to buy examples of each of my teachers' work—a plan which faded quickly when I realized I would need stuff called "money" to carry it out—but I started by asking Frank DiPerna if I could buy a particular 8x10 platinum print from a series of portraits he made. He said I would have to make another choice. He had made one print of the picture I wanted, but, while making the second, the phone rang. When he got back to the easel, the "sun lamp" (meant for home suntanning, heavy in UV, also in heat) he was using to expose his prints had burned a hole in his negative. So the single print that existed of the picture I liked was unique and couldn't be replaced. I did buy an alternative—for $100, which was half off his regular studio-sale price, which I remember because it was a lot of money for the time—but I never liked it as much as the one I had originally chosen.

A quick snapshot of my Frank DiPerna. Sorry about the reflections. The frame is a bubinga moulding with an unusual "arrow" profile I copied from the frames at a Timothy O'Sullivan exhibit I saw in Philadelphia.

As far as internegs are concerned, Carl said "I’ll take a current state-of-the-art digital negative over a traditional internegative any day."

Mike
(Thanks to Clyde, Carl, and Frank)

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'A Banner Year for Platinum Printers'

By Carl Weese

It might be surprising, but I consider the most important variable in platinum printing, both technically and aesthetically, to be the paper, not the chemicals. The chemicals—double salts of platinum and palladium combined with ferric oxalate to make a coating solution—are pretty much the same as when the process was invented in the 1870s. You can modify the appearance of the print by changing the proportions of platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd), or by using additives to increase the contrast or shift the color, but the biggest changes, and so the most important creative decisions, come from choice of paper.

In the heyday of platinum printing, manufactured, store-bought papers were the norm. Kodak alone made thirty different platinum papers around 1900. Warm and cool, thick and tissue-thin, smooth and rough—a vast array of choices, all of which disappeared around WWI when the noble metals because precious wartime commodities. The revival of Pt/Pd printing in the 1970s didn’t attract any manufacturers and to this day Pt/Pd prints are all prepared by hand, mixing the coating solution for each print and applying it to the paper with a brush or glass tube.

The weight (thickness), texture, and color of the paper all affect the appearance of the final print. However, it’s more complicated than that. The coating and eventually the image area of the print aren’t just applied to the paper like a crayon or charcoal; the coating solution interacts chemically with the sizing of the paper, and those reactions affect many aspects of the print, including color and contrast. Or, they make the paper useless for the process. Most papers are in that category, because manufacturers seeking the “archival” label for their products load them up with alkaline buffering agents. The coating needs a neutral or slightly acidic environment, so coating on a buffered paper results in dismal failure. Some papers with too much buffering can be rescued by treating them in a bath of highly dilute oxalic acid. Three-minute soak, hang up to dry, and the sheets are ready to print on in the morning. Fabriano Artistico is a paper that responds well to this treatment and the natural white version is one of my favorites.

2016 has been a banner year for platinum printers. Arches Platine, which has been around for years as the only paper manufactured and expressly intended for platinum printing, was revised with a new and improved version. Magnani Platinum, an excellent paper for platinum printing that was introduced a few years ago, then disappeared, is now available again, though I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Most important, this spring, the venerable Hahnemühle company developed and introduced a new paper built from the ground up especially for Pt/Pd printing, though it is also proving to be excellent for many other alternate photographic processes. There are also several Japanese exotic-fiber papers specially prepared for Pt/Pd; they’re lovely, as well as stunningly expensive. I chose to use Hahnemühle Platinum Rag for this print offer because the characteristics of the paper are perfect for the two selected pictures.

Tomorrow I’ll describe the testing/experimenting process I went through to learn how to work with a newly introduced paper.

Carl

©2016 by Carl Weese, all rights reserved

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Random Excellence: Nico Young

Watching a skate video during lunch. From left: Addison, 16;
Logan, 16; Kalani, 16. Photo by Nico Young.

Nico Young made this picture (and 28 others) on assignment for Kathy Ryan at the New York Times Magazine. The interesting thing about that is, Nico is an 11th grader. It was his first professional assignment.

An interesting window—and possibly one that someone older, or an outsider, couldn't have shot.

Both this and David Raboin's pictures from the pilot's chair illustrate the essential issue of access, which is always an interesting issue in photography, often in curiously different ways. I wrote a post about that once, which began like this:

"One of the fundamental problems of photography not necessarily encountered by any other type of artist is the problem of access: to photograph something, you ordinarily have to be in proximity to it, or in a position to see it, or at least at the proper standpoint—and being there is not always easy or safe. The ultimate example of the exclusivity of access is probably pictures taken on the surface of the moon, but Danny Lyons' insider photographs of a motorcycle gang in The Bikeriders and Larry Clark's documentation of a violent drug subculture in Tulsa are good examples as well—and there are others, of course. (One of my own mentors in photography, the late Steve Szabo, once answered a student's question 'What should I photograph?' by asking back, 'What can you photograph?')"

Mike

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Peter Wright: "Looking back on my life, I notice that in several periods, I failed to be aware of how photographically interesting, unusual, and ephemeral, my day to day environment actually was. I was too immersed in it. At the time, I was busy wishing I could go to some far off, 'exotic' place to take pictures, all the while ignoring the unique feast to which I had ready and unusual access. Now, much later, I look back I wish I had photographed that!

"To a young photographer, I would suggest that they photograph the ordinary life they inhabit. Sooner or later, someone will find it fascinating. And it could be sooner rather than later, and the 'someone' could include themselves."

Dennis: "After my daughter was born, my wife joined a 'mom's group' and we became friends with several families who got together frequently for a variety of occasions.  Over quite a few years, I accumulated a wonderful collection of pictures of kids who grew up expecting to see me behind a camera. As they went to different schools and then became self-conscious teenagers, the magic faded. I was never able to get nearly as good photos of any other kids. I miss it and need a new, accessible subject.

Mike replies: This is a common one, I think. Sally Mann for instance became famous for pictures of her kids, but there comes that time when they're too old to want to be models any more. For most people, pictures of kids doing things that are cute when they're small can have a different meaning or feel when the kids become adolescents. Mainly, they just don't want to spend time around their parents.

My son Xander informed me when he was about 12 that he didn't want me to take pictures of him any more. I told him that photography was my "thing," and that I really wanted to have a record of what he looked like as he was growing up, so we sat down and negotiated a deal. He agreed to cooperate for two minutes three times a year, for a total of six minutes and three pictures. It worked fine—he didn't feel like I was always bugging him or preying on him with the camera, and I got at least a few nice shots of him at various teen ages.

Of course when he got to college he relaxed about it again, and now doesn't much mind when I take pictures. But now I hardly ever see him!

Ed Hawco: "At first I found the images a bit flat (in terms of processing) but on the other hand they're refreshingly free of the overcooked 'Instagrammy' look that we so often see from younger photographers. And there is a remarkable consistency in the overall visual palette for the series, which grows on you.

"Also, I find this series fascinating and visually compelling as a set. As you say, it's a 'window' in which each image lends context and tone to its neighbors, elevating the entire body of work."

David Zalaznik: "I would also like to give an immense amount of credit to and an immense appreciation for Nico's photography teacher. He first recognized Nico's promising talent and no doubt nurtured that talent. Kathy Ryan, who I respect immensely, would never have seen Nico's work had it not been for Martin Ledford. Photography was not available when I was in high school and it wasn't until almost a decade after high school that a leap of faith set me on a path to a 30-year career. There needs to be more Martin Ledfords to aid more Nico Youngs. Much admiration for and congratulations to them both."

My Nightmare

"Shot on iPhone 6+ by Mike J."

Some days things just don't go good.

Last night I had a nightmare. I had been re-hired by a magazine I used to work for. The publisher had decreed that our next cover would feature a certain smartphone with a double camera module on the back of it, which had a name similar to "iPhone" but wasn't, quite; and that we would, from that point onward, be making a giant push to enlist the smartphone maker as a sponsor; a direction I was distinctly not quite comfortable with even in my dream. Our next magazine cover would feature a picture of said smartphone. (In real life, I got to pick the covers, except when the publisher decided he wanted to.)

In my dream I'm taking a call from the President of the advertising agency for the smartphone company, during which I have to convince him that we are, um, experts, and know all about his client's product, and of course care very much about it. I introduce myself, but in the middle of the introduction I realize I don't know the name of the magazine I work for. Which is highly embarrassing, and from which faux pas I do not recover well.

So then I start roaming the publication's offices looking for a copy of the magazine so I can figure out what the name of it is. The offices, of course, are exotic and fantastical, according to the visual language of nightmares, and feature a jumble of co-workers from my past who are nightmarishly imbued with a variety of grudges and agendas and gossip concerning me, none of which I can figure out.

At the same time, I have forgotten the name of the smartphone, too, although I had just spoken it. Knowing I will probably have to refer to that again, too, before the end of the conversation, I start looking for my phone, too, so I can see what it's called.

Meanwhile, it turns out the smartphone under discussion has all the features of the Canon 5D Make IV. (Let me just admit right here that, in real life, the Canon 5D Mark IV will do things that I don't even understand yet.) So I have to remember what all these features are so I can casually discuss them with the guy on the phone as if I cared about them. I know that I can't possibly do this, but I have to keep trying. Have you ever groped to remember things you know you just cannot? It does not go well.

Finally I find a stack of magazines. But, like the real Black-and-White Photography does, or used to do, there's just a picture on the cover and no blurbs. And, in my dream, no name, either. Looking through the magazine I notice that it's now a quarterly, no doubt because business has not been good. (In real life, the magazine stopped publishing altogether some time ago.) All this time I am struggling, laboriously, to keep up the supplicating and fawning to the lord high mugwump on the other end of the phone.

Then, suddenly, I realize that I haven't edited any of the articles in the printed magazine I'm holding. The production and graphics departments has robotically processed and printed every raw manuscript—even the one by Bob Mitchell!. (There appears to be an extra period there, but there isn't, because Bob Mitchell! formally added the exclamation point to his name for a while. Bob was a great guy, and a knowledgeable guy, but let's just say he needed editing.)

At that point I woke up, screaming.

Well, not screaming. But, as soon as I woke up, I realized that the smartphone I had been searching high and low for in my nightmare had probably been in my hand the whole time, since I was on a phone call throughout my dream and, in real life, my iPhone is the only phone I have.

Now, I'm no psychologist, but it appears there's some degree of likelihood that my psyche is not entirely comfortable with the whole smartphone-as-camera era in photography that we are now well into...wouldn't you say?

Oh, poop
And then, to cap it all off, when I stumbled downstairs, feeling exhausted, what did I find, but that the ghostly white dog in the picture at the top of this post had experienced some sort of gastrointestinal distress and had pooped on the office carpet not once, not twice, but three times during the night.

Have you ever just had one of those mornings? Gaaaah!

Mike

P.S. This isn't satire. This was what I dreamed as best as I can reconstruct it. And the poop mishap, sad to say, was all too real.

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.

More ghoulish goulash
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Bryce Lee: "Dog Gone It! Maybe Butters was trying to tell you something in your dream, that everying had turned to poop!"

About the Pictures

By Carl Weese

There are places, locations, that strike me as simply magical. One that I’ve returned to many times is a five or six mile stretch of dirt road along a ridge line, a point, in central West Virginia. Most of the hollows on either side are farmed, and no matter what the weather conditions might be like nearby, somehow the light when I get there is always fantastic.

Another magical place is a farm in far western Virginia that happens to belong to an old friend. I made “August Morning Fog” at the farm in 2001. I’d driven at dawn from the farmhouse in the valley up to the highest hayfield. There was ground fog (I think there always is on summer mornings there) and the views back into the valley were spectacular. In short order I made several pictures with my 7x17 and one with my 12x20-inch camera. When I turned around to take the 12x20 back to my truck, I saw, more or less, this picture. The 7x17 came out again and I made several variations of this as the light brightened and the the array of spider webs in the tree branches glowed.

I made the second picture in the spring of 2000 in the town of Easley, South Carolina. One of the facades has a large sign with the name “Dixie Milling.” It was morning again, but this time in clear sunlight an hour or so after dawn.

For those interested in technical details, both pictures were made with a Korona Panoramic View Camera (it says "Panoramic" right on the nameplate on the front standard). The lens used for both is a 305mm Schneider G-Claron. As far as camera adjustments go, the tree picture was pretty much, “ƒ/45 and be there.” I metered the darker trees and gave an exposure of several seconds to retain detail in the shadows. For the mill, I took advantage of the fact that the G-Claron design provides a large circle of coverage that grows dramatically as the lens is stopped down. At ƒ/64 I was able to use almost all of the camera’s front rise capability in order to take in the top of the mill with the camera perfectly plumb to avoid convergence in the lines of the building.

Both of these prints are made from digital negatives slightly larger than the image area of the in-camera negative. I’ll have more about the printing process in another post.

Carl

Carl Weese, a former Contributing Editor of Photo Techniques magazine and occasional contributor to TOP, is the co-author of The New Platinum Print (1998). He has been teaching the art of platinum printing for nearly twenty years. He uses large and ultra-large format cameras extensively and has been an enthusiastic advocate of the use of digital internegatives for platinum printing. He has put many hundreds of thousands of miles on a succession of trucks photographing vernacular scenes all over North America. His work is in many private collections.

©2016 by Carl Weese, 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:

Doug Howk: "Carl, I believe you've said elsewhere that you do not adjust contrast when Pt/Pd printing. Since these are from digital negatives, do you still try to retain the contrast from the original scene?"

Carl replies: Doug, yes, I make the prints using a mix with about 20% Pt and no contrast agent. Getting that long a scale in the digital negative was the primary challenge.

John Sarsgard: "Carl's photographs celebrate the world around us in perfectly composed images of the extraordinary ordinary. They reach full realization in his beautifully made platinum/palladium prints with the characteristic Pt/Pd delicacy in the midtones. I take issue with some of the earlier comments about his choice of subject matter. There is much that is interesting about our world on its own...without concepts that feed commentary by art critics. I also enjoy some of the conceptual photography that I see, but not more than Carl's work. I own several of his prints...you need to see them to fully appreciate."

Carl replies: John, your check is in the mail.  :-)

CharlieH: "Curious whether Carl likes to see these framed so that the black irregular borders are not covered?"

Carl replies: I leave that up to you. If I were matting one for myself I would probably include a thin black line with either of these pictures. That could be my Leica roots showing, though.  

toto: "Is 7x17 the size of the paper or of the image?"

Mike replies: I make the image area 6 3/4ths by 17 inches, give or take a sixteenth or so. The paper is several inches bigger.

Flying With a Camera (Part II)

Guest post by David Raboin

Part I is here

Long Shadows Cast on the Great Basin… The primary challenge of editing photos taken from an airliner is correcting the contrast. Straight out of the camera my aerial photos are flat with all the vital information packed into a small hump in the middle of the histogram. My usual editing process starts with two steep curve adjustments layers, one layer for color and another for luminosity adjustments. On top of those layers I sometimes need to do multiple local adjustments using luminosity masks, gradient masks, or soft edged brushes. I consider the above photo a triumph of my process. For years I struggled to create accurate shadows in my aerial photos. Then, on an uneventful flight last spring, while looking down on the shadows of houses in the Los Angeles suburbs in late afternoon, I got to thinking about how shadows look from the air: they’re dark, low contrast on the inside, and sharp edged. How do you lower contrast and at the same time darken in photoshop? Decrease the pitch of a curve! I cracked it. Now, to darken shadows without exaggerating the contrast throughout the entire image, I use a curves adjustment layer with a luminosity mask to isolate the darkest tones. Then, I pull the upper right curve’s anchor point straight down until the shadows are suitably dark. It’s a simple,noise-free solution and I think it looks great.      

Without making a conscious decision, my dissatisfaction with that first online gallery set me on a path to becoming a serious photographer. Within a few years I was carrying a bag full of DSLR kit on every trip. My home library swelled with Photoshop manuals. And, most importantly, I became fascinated with photography as an art. I devoured all things photo related: books on composition, photography history, photo blogs, and endless image browsing on the web. By 2006, three years into photography, I was beginning to feel confident in my growing skills. I could capture the glow of sunset on a wall of thunderstorms and correct the contrast in a photo that peered through six miles of hazy atmosphere.

Thunderstorm Over Nebraska and the North Platte River The biggest challenge when composing aerial photos is portraying the sky’s volume. Airliners cruise roughly six miles above the earth and it’s difficult to impart that depth in a two dimensional image. Often I find myself flying near a massive thunderstorm, some of them reaching 50,000 feet, taller than two Mount Everests or six El Capitans; but, without a visual size reference in the frame, the size of the storm is lost in a photo. While dodging some heavy weather on our way from Chicago to San Francisco a couple of summers ago, I was fortunate to get a chance to photograph this monster cell floating above the Platte River Valley in Nebraska. The backlighting makes the storm look suitably dark (severe thunderstorms are puffy white billows when viewed from the sunny side) and, the North Platte River sparkles for a hundred miles towards the horizon. I couldn’t have planned this, it’s too perfect. Finally, a photo that shows the true size of a thunderstorm.     

Today, my bag is packed with a Canon 5D Mark III and an assortment of Canon lenses, both zoom and prime. I travel half a million miles every year. My job is flying planes, so I don’t have time to baby my gear. My camera bag gets bashed through security, crunched into overhead bins, rained on, and left unguarded in public places for long periods. Over the years I’ve only had one major mishap. Once, after a particularly difficult trip, I drove out of the airport parking lot with my camera bag still on top of my car. That’s one way to justify an equipment upgrade, and I love to upgrade....

Over the decade that I’ve been flying with a camera, technological improvements in both cameras and post processing software have made previously impossible shots ordinary. Now days, with improved high ISO performance, I can take aerial photos of city lights at dusk while also preserving the details of the landscape and sky, something I wouldn’t have dreamed of in 2010. I imagine that not too far in the future I’ll be able to photograph noise-free moonlight on cloud tops while screaming along at Mach .78.

Moonlight Ride Above Denver Taken with my Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 16–35mm image-stabilized lens, this photo pushes the limits of current technology. I used ISO 8000 at ⅛th second and ƒ/4. There’s a little more noise than I’d like in this photo and the lights of Denver aren’t as sharp they could be, but we’re getting there. I’m excited for the future of night photography. (Full disclosure: this image falls into Mike’s new “Photo Art” category due to some heavy Content Aware Fill to remove reflections from the windshield)

Although it took a lot longer to get here than I’d originally planned, my career (thanks to low oil prices and industry consolidation) is now that of a gentleman aviator. I’m fortunate to fly beautiful modern jets between America’s major cities, stay in posh downtown hotels, and live the life of a flaneur and street photographer during my overnights. I hesitate before complaining. However, any job that requires strict adherence to procedure can become brutally routine. A sense of loneliness creeps in while spending half the month flying around with strangers, and doing a job that, when done right, leaves no trace and little memory. The camera helps turn that around. With a camera, airline flying becomes a scenic cruise, an adventure, a story waiting to be told. As we track down the lonely corridors of vapor, I’m looking for something beautiful that I can share when I get back down to earth.

My Current Ride: Airbus 320 Getting ready to push back from the gate at San Francisco International Airport

To see a collection of my best flying images please visit my website: www.photos4u2c.com

You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook.

Dave

Note: All photos were taken in accordance with federal aviation regulations and company policies. Safety of flight is every pilot’s primary concern and the camera only comes out in low workload situations.  

Words and images ©2016 by David Raboin, all rights reserved

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

Warren Jones: "Wow, Dave, nicely done sir. Thank you for sharing your images and story with us. I very much enjoyed it."

Dave Van de Mark: "I have thoroughly enjoyed this guest post. Would love to see a more detailed view of the processing carried out for the some of the photos. As a 'ground' landscape photographer, rendering the proper degree of contrast relative to other (tonal and color) variables in pursuit of a satisfying and realistic print, is the hardest thing I typically encounter. And rarely have I been totally satisfied. And as David demonstrates so clearly with his stunning photos, that journey has been challenging, but with new possibilities always appearing on the horizon (pun intended). It's the same story for me and I'm sure glad he shared his. Thanks to you Mike for this guest post."