The Online Photographer

Lisitsa (Music Notes) (OT)

Do you know Valentina Lisitsa? If you don't, a brief introduction:

A force of nature. Largely a YouTube phenomenon, she plays somewhat mechanically but ferociously and at breakneck speed, which is exciting and amazing. Set this at full screen and gaze intently at her hands.

She seems Gouldian to me, not in her musical choices so much as her intensity of focus and idiosyncrasy. There's something almost savant-like about her, hunched over the keyboard, neck forward, fingers flying. Echoes of the younger Horowitz as well—he also used to thrill audiences in a similar way, so they say.

She's unconventional in her ways—one video shows her playing Liszt on an old upright on a public street dressed in an old army jacket. Sort of a Vivian Maier of classical piano?

It might actually be a little closer to the way Beethoven himself played—there's some argument that he might have played at somewhat faster tempos and with more ferocity than the way interpreters today reverentially and lovingly caress his phrases.

(But I'm no expert, just an average listener who reads.)

Enjoy this, and have a very pleasant Spring weekend! See you Monday.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Presto
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

ADDENDUM, Sunday: For those of you who don't listen to classical music, I should point out that among aficionados, it's conventional to either flagrantly love something or flagrantly hate it...even between performances most people can't tell apart. Beethoven is tough anyway; not only is he a "sacred cow" (a bovine epithet for Beethoven?!—sacré bleu!) but his music is "better than it can be played."

I don't think Lisitsa is a paragon of a Beethoven interpreter by any means. Exciting and interesting, though. If you want paragons, well, as I say I'm no expert, and I have different favorites in a number of sonatas, as I think no one pianist really "gets" all the different sonatas, but if you want to try a few great performances with modern sound you might start with Brendel's Pathetique on Phillips (here's the first movement), Gilels' Waldstein on Deutsche Grammophon, and Murray Perahia's Les Adieux on CBS Masterworks.

And while we're still on YouTube and classical pianists, I found this very nice thing the other day. These are students, or at least young musicians (at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011), but I think the playing is beautiful and the sound, on my setup anyway, is excellent. Yeol Eum Son of South Korea at the piano.

Note that the conductor's baton is a pencil. There even seems to be a bit of personal dynamics discernible in the young orchestra, but you be the judge! 

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

robert e: "Remarkable. I'm not sure yet whether I like the hyper-precision. I believe Gould was criticized for ignoring Beethoven's tempo markings in both directions, playing some movements too slow and others too fast. (But of course he would.) Radiolab did a fascinating piece on Beethoven's tempos. The metronome was invented toward the end of his career, and he retroactively added metronome tempos to many pieces, most notably the symphonies. They discuss the theories casting doubt on his numbers. One of my favorite YouTube finds: The wonderful Benjamin Zander makes an exhilarating, and typically humorous, case for Beethoven's marked tempo in the Fifth Symphony (wish the audio was better)."

Del Bomberger: "Made it to the 48 second mark. Then went back inside from the veranda and turned on the Dead to heal myself."

Yonatan K: "Thank you for that! It was a bit tension-inducing at first, but I think that this was due in large part to my expectations (having listened to the Moonlight Sonata many times). I very much enjoyed it once I got used to the tempo. I would be curious to hear her play Mozart (I'll have to look around for that). Listening to Gould play Mozart was...not fun. But he was amazing when playing Bach. Watching her hands was also fascinating—they are a bit Rachmaninov-like. And the look on her face...I can imagine her early piano teacher(s) trying to slow her down, and her responding with one of those looks."

Mike replies: Haydn isn't Mozart, but a pianist who has successfully played Haydn sonatas at much faster than conventional tempi is Leif Ove Andsnes. Try his Haydn Sonata in D, No. 33 for example. It's not my favorite way to hear Haydn (I like fortepiano performances), but I think he makes it work well and his playing justifies his choices.

The great Martha Argerich of Argentina as a young woman.
Photo by Lise Buhs.

Nic M: "Yes, VL is a YouTube phenom. Arguably, the finest living female pianist of our times is Martha Argerich. Have fun listening to some favorites on youtube. First example, with fine company. Cheers."

Mike replies: I agree she's wonderful, but I'm not sure superlatives entirely work with pianists. Many have gifts to give. Pires and Uchida are alive, among others. Consider Artur Rubinstein's comments on the issue....

Pak Ming Wan: "Most people think that the Moonlight is hard to play, but it isn't. The arpeggios are written to sit nicely under the hand, so it sounds a lot more difficult than it is to play. (I play piano to a quite a high level and can play this piece—probably would need to practice again to get up to level though).

"Firstly, the technical side. That wasn't a bad interpretation—but it wasn't flawless. There were technical mistakes (e.g. around 0:47 on her trills and her scales). She doesn't use much pedal but the acoustic helps her a lot (this is a good thing).

"On interpretation. there's more there than you think. There's two areas where I think she misses a little: her tempo (in-) stability and her line phrasing. She tends to pull and push the tempi a little too much and it seems too unnatural (it sometimes doesn't follow the phrasing). Her line phrasing is just missing—especially her left hand. There's a lot of lines and counterpoint that Beethoven wrote in there, it's mostly missing (although this could be the recording). A shame.

"I still think on balance Wilhelm Kempff's recordings are the best Beethoven recordings out there. His early ones that he had to cross the wall to make in 3–4 day stints, and his late ones (when he was pushing 60–70 years old) are just gems."

Mike replies: Thanks for adding some musical expertise here, Pak.

Business Note (OT)

You probably don't know this but Amazon is having a big month for people like me. They're giving us a much higher percentage than usual this month on every sale that comes through ads like the ones below. So I should really be running these ads on every post.

But the ads don't play nice with TypePad's software. The way it all works out, I can't display the ads in a way that doesn't violate my "don't annoy the visitors" rule, and I can't customize them, which I would much prefer to do. Mind you, Amazon does make these options available, but the needed code doesn't work with TypePad's template. At least as I utilize it here.

So I'm a bit stuck in what I can do. Sigh, sigh, double-sigh and oh well.

Just for your information, anything you choose and buy at an affiliate's site once you get there is credited to TOP. So, hoping you don't mind, I'm going to run the ads I can run just once a week, at the end of every week, for this month of April. Just keepin' the lights on.

Do as you like and as you will!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Brian: Thanks for giving us the background info on this. They keep showing me the same three items that I will never buy (two tote bags and a set of very cheap camera filters). I'll keep in mind that I can click on those links, get what really I want, and you still get a bit extra."

Friday Open Mike: iPhoneitis

First of all, new camera!

Er, well, sorta. I might have mentioned last September or so that come March, I'd be eligible for a phone upgrade. I was perfectly happy with my old phone—loved it, in fact—but I got a new iPhone 7 Plus so I could try out the camera. It's got a significantly serious processor, the quad-core A10 Fusion image signal processor (ISP), said to be capable of 100 billion operations used to process the images quickly and in all kinds of ways, and capable of some serious speed. You might recall that the iPhone 7 has a two-module camera, one 12MP with a 28mm-e ƒ/1.8 lens and another with a 56mm-e ƒ/2.8 lens. You can of course simply switch from one to the other, but the ISP puts the dual images together in several inventive ways. My feeling is that multiple-module cameras with serious intraprocessing is going to be one wave of the near future in camera development, so I wanted to get in on this. I think it's a milestone of sorts.

Plus, I confess, since the 1980s I've liked the idea of two- (or three-) position varifocal lenses on point-and-shoot cameras. Mavens might remember the Leica Tri-Elmar as well, along with Konica's 21/35mm two-position lens—both were fixed-position multiple-focal-length lenses for M-mount rangefinders.

And the recent Lightroom Mobile app allows access to raw versions of the images. I might futz with that too, to check it out.

That said, I keep having an irritating problem with my iPhone, to wit:

iPhoneitis, n., a recurring mild affliction no more harmful than a common cold virus but nearly as miserable, which causes sufferers to take pictures with iPhones that they would rather have taken with cameras.

It's been driving me a little crazy. (Sniffle.)

But I always see too much. There are times, for instance, when I'm doing something totally non-photographic and just happen to see something that strikes me as funny or odd. For instance, somewhere recently I was driving along in the middle of absolutely nowhere, a country road with empty fallow fields on either side, and I encountered two telephone poles—just two—about forty feet apart, with a single strand of wire running from the top of one to the top of the other. Nothing else. The wire didn't run down the poles or go anywhere. Who knows why that was there? Just a little bit of random weirdness in the countryside.

Or this. Which would have to be titled "Just In Case." A fire hydrant by the side of a country road surrounded by a whole lot of nuthin'. There's a string of them along Pre-Emption Road south of Geneva. Evidently someone expects or intends the city to spread out in that direction, and for something to eventually be built in those fields...something which might possibly catch on fire. Oh no! Which, when and if it happens, they're ready for.

Meanwhile, seems a tad incongruous. Made me chuckle.

Both shot with my older iPhone 6+, and dammit. I wish I wouldn't do that.

It wasn't three years ago that I wrote about how I never took any pictures with my phone and didn't like to do so even when I remembered it was there, which I often didn't. Various readers claimed it was fun and challenged me to come up to speed with it, so I committed, reluctantly, to doing some shooting with the phone for a couple of months.

Well, be careful what you wish for—because now I can't stop. I still take far more pictures with my camera than I do with my phone, but the ratio is down to maybe five to one. One-sixth of all my pictures using a phone is a lot, I think.

Granted, most phone snaps are just note-taking, like these from when the roofers were here. Then again, when the tree service was here, I used the Fuji and got some good shots. (The top one and the one of the three guys by the truck are both pictures I like.)

I'm not saying any of the four pictures here are masterpieces, but you gotta be careful about stuff like this. Photography is mysteriously random...good pictures are always out there lurking, waiting for you, and it's only a matter of time before another great picture will come together and present itself. When it happens, an iPhone is better than nothing at all, of course, but you're probably going to wish you had a camera with you. All four of these pictures are fine for social media. None of them are anywhere near as process-able or as printable as they would have been if I had taken them with my Fuji.

Worse: the fact that I have the iPhone as a fallback is something I sometimes use as an excuse to not bother with the camera. Lazy-ass iPhoneitis-afflicted...it's getting to be kind of a fustercluck. As a very young old man, I don't need yet one more thing to have to be disciplined about.

I self-identify as a photographer; I should carry a camera. That's all there is to it. Taking too many pictures with a phone is just a bad habit.

But sometimes you just see stuff.

Anyway, eventually I'll review the camera in the iPhone 7 Plus.

In the meantime I'll be trying not to use it too much!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Habits!
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Roy Feldman: "I recently had a nice gallery show in which 4 out of 11 pictures were from my phone (Pixel) many of the attendees pointed out their relief that I was still shooting with film and mentioned they could tell it was shot with my leica. Far be it for me to correct them."

Tim McGowan: "And there's that Red Chair."

Mike replies: And Butters. A twofer today!

Kenneth Tanaka: "I am really delighted that you finally got the 7 Plus! I was hoping you would. Its dual cameras have made a world of difference in my use of the phone camera. You can meld the two via computational zooms, which is cool. But I prefer to simply switch between the focal lengths much as I would with primes. (See that 1x / 2x spot.) I've found that I often get a cleaner image. For a regular camera I've most often been using an app called ProCamera which also lets you record images in DNG. I find its basic camera functions to be perfect for the iPhone device. I think you'll like it, too. But do try the standard Camera app for 'Portrait' effects. It's fun!

"One last comment. Self-identifying as a photographer does not require you to have a traditional camera hanging from your neck. Anything that shortens the see/capture cycle is good in my book. Using your phone camera is, at the very least, visual exercise. Like a singer working the scales. Like a basketball player doing a warm-up shoot-around. Like a painter making sketches. 'iPhoneitis' is one of the healthiest maladies you can have as a photographer. Just look at your wonderful snaps! I rest my case.

"But it can also be something much better, and more substantial thanks to the quality of that 7+ camera and the recent improvements in phone imaging technology and integration with other methods and workflows.

"At the risk of sounding angry I say that anyone who defines 'photography' or 'photographer' according to technologies or techniques is out to sea. They just don't understand what photography's real nature is. No 'buts' about it."

hugh crawford: "There are a string of fire hydrants along an undeveloped stretch of road named 'Pre-Emption Road'? Sounds like a setup for a short story at the very least. I'm kind of curious about how Pre-Emption Road got named that way in the first place. I am imagining the aftermath of the Retaliation Roundabout and Spite Path debacle at the county roads commission meeting. I'm reminded of the story about the town board member that missed too many meetings and got the road between the sewer plant and the dump named after him. 'Pre-Emption Road' would make a great title for something in any case."

Mike replies: Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction Dept.: Pre-Emption Road roughly traces the old Pre-Emption Line, established by treaty in 1786 as part of a resolution of disputes involving New York, Massachusetts, and the Iroquois Nations. As I understand it, the English Kings granted certain colonies their charter not only to the lands they occupied along the coast, but in a corridor at the same latitude stretching Westward either to the Pacific Ocean or to the Mississippi, depending on who's telling the story. After the Revolution, New York wanted lands that Massachusetts traditionally had claim to through those colonial charters. Individuals had to get permission from State legislatures to negotiate with the Indians to buy land. The Pre-Emption Line was agreed upon at the Treaty of Hartford as the outer boundary of Massachusett's claims; East of the line, Massachusetts "pre-empted" the rights of other legislatures to grant permission to negotiate with the Indians. West of it, New York State could grant that permission. How New York got all the land anyway, such that the old Pre-Emption Line is now buried deep in New York State, is an even more complicated story. To understand it you would need to do a fair mile of reading, with an expert in historical law sitting by your elbow to answer your questions as you went along.

As if that weren't enough, the Pre-Emption Line is, by folklore, supposed to be the dividing line between Buffalo Bills fans and New York Giants fans, which is more a matter of tradition than actuality. However it actually does pretty accurately demarcate the "soda/pop divide," with people West of it referring to soft drinks as "pop" and East of it as "soda." You can see a map here that clearly shows the divide in Western New York.

The Pre-Emption Line is also on the same line of longitude as Washington, D.C., but that is coincidental, as the capital city was mainly but a gleam in L'Enfant's eye in 1786.

Personally, although I am not far at all from the old Pre-Emption Line, I inhabit a tiny 1.678-acre enclave where only sparkling and plain water is drunk, where all the dogs are above average, and where all the people—incongruously, perhaps—root for the NFC North.

Christopher May: "As someone who has used an awful lot of camera formats, I used to suffer a similar affliction to iPhoneitis. It usually revolved around wishing that I had used some other format for whatever shot I was taking. Back when I was shooting 4x5 and 8x10 a lot, I'd feel sick to my stomach if I came across a grand scene and only had a 35mm camera with me. If I was shooting large format, inevitably, I'd come across some distant wildlife for which I'd wish that I had my DSLR with a 500mm lens.

"Lately, when I walk out the door, I just accept that whatever I have with me will have to suffice since it's really impractical to bring all my gear everywhere. There will always be missed opportunities because of lack of gear. But I think that when I just accept that what I have with me is what I have with me, it helps me concentrate on the strengths of whatever format it is. This even applies to the iPhone. I enjoy the simple operation and the near invisibility the iPhone offers. Pull an iPhone out in a crowd and start shooting and not one person will notice you. Bring an 8x10 on a heavy tripod and everyone will.

"Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I still toy with the idea of trying the Leica year project. Committing to a single format and its associated strengths for a day has helped me focus. I imagine this benefit is magnified quite a bit when the gear is limited to a simple but very capable camera with a single lens for an entire year. Someday."

Mike replies: I think you've put your finger on it, even better than I did. It's really the feeling of being caught out without what you need for a particular shot. I'm sure if I were to commit to a project with just the iPhone I'd have no qualms about it. It's when I feel I "ought" to have my other camera and am "making do" with the phone—out of laziness, usually—that makes me unhappy with myself. It's not the equipment, just my attitude.

No Turkey

Center section detail of a sample picture made with the forthcoming Zeiss Batis 135mm ƒ/2.8 for Sony E-mount.

I get it that "full frame" cameras and premium lenses aren't necessary to participate fully in photography c. 2017, but I'm jealous of people who get to collect and use lenses like the Zeiss Batis series all the same. Just sayin'.

A bit much
...On the other hand, two grand for a 135mm ƒ/2.8? Back in the day, those were moderately-priced, borderline cheap bread-and-butter lenses that nobody would think to make much of a fuss over. How much did an Olympus OM-Zuiko or AIS Nikkor 135mm ƒ/2.8 cost in, say, 1985? Never mind a Nikon E-Series? Maybe somebody has an old Pop or Modern from approximately that era and can look up the prices for us. Once we have a number or two we can adjust for inflation and compare.

UPDATE: J Mellody (many thanks!) looked it up: "Popular Photography from July 1985 has a B&H ad that has a Nikon 135mm ƒ/2.8 for $149. The E-series sells for $68. An Olympus 135mm ƒ/2.8 sells for $98.90." So according to a site called "U.S. Inflation Calculator," that's $337, $154, and $224 respectively in 2017 dollars. As I suspected...a pretty far cry from $1,999.

...On the other other hand...even though I've already run out of hands...in 1985 you couldn't put one of those in front of a rectangle of recording medium that would give you anything like what you get today with, say, 42.4 megapixels at ISO 3200. And over-the-top quality is fun and gratifying, let's face it. 'S all good.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Batis about the head and shoulders
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Alex P. Schorsch: "You've got me drooling in the morning...again! This Batis 135mmm weighs less than my Canon 35mm L. I know most people seem to think that a 135mm lens will go unused, but I like this focal length for landscapes and people shots."

João Medeiros: "I think you're not evaluating this lens properly. You should compare to other APO lenses coming from Zeiss or Leica. The lenses you mention never had IS, AF, LED panel, APO or the performance to complement 50+ MP sensors. Just saying. The price is actually quite reasonable when you compare to other combo in the market what you get with the A7RII + Zeiss APO 135mm ƒ/2.8. The market is shrinking and the future for any brand is high value and extreme quality. Mobile photography is going to change everything. It's already doing that."

Kent Phelan: "Or, you can have the same quality with an extra stop to boot for your Fuji X-T1, with the Fuji 90mm ƒ/2 lens—for less than half the price. It is one of Fuji's top performers, which is saying something. It compares favorably with the Leica 135mm APO Telyt M lens. Absolutely stellar lens."

The Great 'Decisive Moment' Photographer...Charles Hoff?!?

Talking about 'the decisive moment' yesterday reminded me of a few things.

Mainly, it brought old Charlie Hoff to mind. (This is as close as I can come to showing you what he looked like; sorry.) Charles Hoff was a quintessential old-timer "ƒ/8 and be there" photojournalist who was active from the 1930s to the '60s and died in 1975. He worked for the New York Daily News for many years. He was one of the 22 photographers who were waiting for the Hindenburg when it approached its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937 and burst into flames. You can bet Charlie Hoff got the shot. (This is as close as I can come to showing it to you; sorry again.)

Ezzard Charles and Rocky Marciano, 1954.
Photo by Charles Hoff, The New York Daily News.

I mostly know him from an out-of-print book called The Fights, which in my opinion is collectively one of the great virtuoso performances in the history of photography. Photographing with a large-format camera at ringside, he had a preternatural ability to anticipate the action and extract a marvelous moment—I use that adjective advisedly, meaning something to marvel at—from the fast-paced flurry arms, legs, and motion, many times capturing the instant of a heavy blow or a falling fighter just before he hit the canvas.

As photographers know, and can appreciate, a view camera gives you just one chance—just one shot at a time. (Hoff even had permission to set up lights at ringside—most of the conditions under which he worked in his prime were unreproducible in later decades.) Hoff's fight pictures were thus the very antithesis, the diametric opposite, of "spray and pray."

My reference library is in storage (I'm probably going to work all my life and finally be able to afford a proper office at the very end of it) so I can't even refer to the one book I have. But one thing I remember from the book is that Charlie Hoff said he would intently watch the fighters' feet—the set of their feet was the way he could tell they were about to throw a haymaker.

I'd love to see a collection of the best of all his work, not just the boxing photographs, but it doesn't exist. I look forward to the day when the culture of the Internet matures to the point where the work of many photographers will be accessible online in more than a random motley way. But you can Google him and hopefully find a few more examples, at least.

Action
And what Charlie Hoff reminds me of is that, still, today, one of the best tools we photographers have got is to constantly work on the skill of hitting the shutter button at exactly the right time—not a split-second early or a split-second late. I don't think any really good photographer of any kind of moving subject (all the way down to moving clouds) fails to ever be conscious of this. Nor do I think any good photographer ever stops working on it. It was one of the reasons I suggested "the Leica year" as a good learning experience...the old film Ms, with no finder blackout and very little shutter lag and a cost for every shot, were great for learning how to look for that just-exactly-right moment to expose the picture. Even if you're triggering 30 FPS, you still need to know exactly when to do it.

And even with the GH5 or some other variant of the very latest thing, I'll bet old Charlie Hoff could teach us all a thing or two.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Any time
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Photojournalists To Get a Pay Hike?

PetaPixel reported on Tuesday that the New York Times—doubtless understanding its increased importance as a "survivor" traditional news source in a contracting and consolidating market—will "more than double" its day rate for original photography, basically from $200 to $450 with some exceptions and special conditions.

The Times itself has not confirmed this yet, but PetaPixel has indicated it will follow up on the story. If true, this is some rare good news in a field that has seen far too much bad news in recent years.

Mike
(Thanks to Aaron Greenman)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

$1 a month?
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Michael Perini: "If true, I think it was the right thing to do, and I'm happy for the photographers who work for them. (They have some great ones.) But given that they probably rarely get a full week of full day rates, it's still a tough way to make a living if you aspire to have a normal life with a family and a house, and maybe send the kids to college. I admire the folks who do it."

glenn brown: "Robbery. A plumber gets more than that."

Mike replies: Hmm, maybe, but it doesn't seem that bad to me. Standard full-time work is 250 days a year, which at $450 a day amounts to a gross salary of $112,500. Considering that only about 20% of American households earn more than $100,000 (according to Census Bureau figures via Bankrate.com), that's far from horrible.

I know that many photographers have to supply their own equipment and have additional overhead costs—the necessity of paying for some of their travel, perhaps—and many do not work every day. But even working two days a week, that's still $45,000 a year gross pay, which isn't shabby considering half of all working Americans earn less than $30k a year.  No, it wouldn't make you rich, but you'd have three days free per week by definition, and if you could find other ways to augment your income in your free time (as many photojournalists and indeed freelancers and sole proprietors of all sorts do), then it seems like a reasonable living.

6K Photo and the Decisive Moment

A week ago, responding to the post about the Panasonic GH5 event, Dick Nugent commented, "Be interested in your take on whether 6K Photo foreshadows the end of still photography. And/or makes the 'decisive moment' concept obsolete."

The upcoming GH5

First, what is "6K Photo"? As I understand it, 6K Photo on the GH5 is a burst mode for photo only, capturing 18-MP images in 4:3 ratio at 30 frames per second (FPS). It's not the same as 6K video, which the GH5 doesn't offer.

Now on to the tasty part of the question.  ;-) 

To begin with, I'm not actually sure "the decisive moment" refers to a real thing.

(As Jeremy Clarkson would say, "...and on that bombshell...!")

Don't get me wrong. The phrase is a beautiful, pithy formulation of an important philosophical concept, namely the art of plucking a bounded two-dimensional still image that has some sort of grace, coherence, appeal, or meaning out of the constantly shifting, moving and changing kaleidoscope of objects, actions, light, and perspective that is the visual world. Despite the notably reiterative aesthetic of photographs (that is, there being a great many pictures which, even upon first viewing, you feel you have seen "a million times" before), there's still an essential mystery surrounding why one picture "works" and another very similar picture doesn't.

But there are a huge number of moments in the flow of the visual world (an infinite number, realistically), and all sorts of strategies to "capture" them. I suppose the classic model of "the decisive moment" is that the photographer is in complete control of his or her concept, knows exactly what he wants to achieve, adroitly "manages" all of the dozens or hundreds or thousands of factors influencing the visual aspects of whatever creates the picture, and then decisively chooses just the right moment—out of a possible total of one—to make a single exposure, manually, while looking through the viewfinder.

Of course that's never how it works. Or very, very seldom how it does. Setting aside all the mechanical and remote ways of making exposures, consider that you can "work" a scene or "work" a subject you think has promise and interest, trying different things, moving around, watching, reacting; or you can find a "setting" you like and hunker down and wait for something to happen within it; or you can stage the action to any of a variety of degrees, or try to influence the subject, even if it's only to say "hold still" or "smile" or "tilt your head a little." You can take advantage of people who are reacting to your presence, or try to shoot them unawares; or you can go somewhere to find whatever you might find, take a whole bunch of pictures of whatever you can think of in whatever way you can think to do it, then come back and look at them all and see if any of them in your opinion made a picture. (As I've mentioned before, I've had the privilege of looking through some of Henri Cartier-Bresson's own contact books, thanks to the late Erich Hartmann, and I can testify that they contain many, many thousands of non-decisive moments!)

This is of course a very partial list. There are many more ways to get a shot.

Wind on
"Motor drives" have been around for years. In my salad days I used a "motor winder," which were slower but more compact than a given company's flagship motor drive. The one I had then was a little faster than 2 FPS, which meant that it could cock the shutter and advance the film a little faster than I could do manually, which meant I was ready for the next shot a little sooner.

Like many other aspects of digital camera tech, a 30-FPS mode is just better. Better, faster, and more convenient than what we used to have. It stands to reason that in the right hands, it will solve a few problems more easily and it will make a few things possible that weren't possible before. Then again, it's not that much better for most things than the 8 FPS CH (continuous high) mode of my current camera. To use a lately fashionable locution, 6K Photo ups the game, it doesn't change it. On its own it's like buying a hundred Lotto tickets instead of ten. It doesn't change anything fundamentally. The odds are still against you and there's still an awful lot left to the photographer to do.

There are still vastly more ways to miss a moment than there are to not miss it, in other words.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Be decisive
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Michael McKee: "I can see where this might be useful, and 30 frames a second at 1/250 covers just 12% of action time. At 1/1000 its just 3%. That leaves a lot of potential 'decisive moment' time uncovered.

"I know two people who were shooting in New Orleans and tried for the same photo. One used a D4s, which I think has 11 FPS, on machine gun mode. The other used an Olympus OM-1 taking single shots. The single shot photographer came up with a brilliant photo. The machine gunner had several nice shots, but not the great one. I think we are not yet at the point where a fast frame rate will do better than a skilled photographer who has good camera skills."

Larry Gebhardt: "On the RX100V you can use the high speed drive mode at 24 frames per second with full resolution. It's impressive. It's not a nice way to shoot. Culling the crap is now mandatory, and there are now a lot of bad shots to go through. It doesn't fit my desired workflow. I still keep the camera in single shot mode 95% of the time. But the 24-FPS mode is nice to have in a pinch."

Jim Richardson: "Like you, I find the concept of the Decisive Moment more mystical than practical. My own photographic practice seems to depend less on the Decisive Moment than on Decisive Editing, Decisive Mulling, Decisive Dithering, and the all important, ego-battering Decisive Self-Recrimination."

Bill Pearce: "What a wonderful way of saying something I've been saying for years. I have always said that 'The Decisive Moment is a brilliant example of what now is called branding, decades ahead of its time.' I usually follow that statement with the comment, 'There is no such thing.' That's when I usually lose my audience."

MM: "For me, it helps to think of the word 'decisive' to refer to the action being depicted, not to the photographer's mindset. For example, there will be a 'decisive moment' when a car teetering on the edge of a cliff will transition from staying to falling—and that decisive moment will be there regardless of whether anyone is there to photograph it. That perspective means one can legitimately identify the 'decisive moment' from a series of photos after they were taken (as even the greatest photographers have often done) rather than only identifying that moment before the photo is taken (which, as you note, has always been extremely rare)."

Thomas Rink: "I would rather consider the 'decisive moment' as something that happens inside the photographer—it is the instant in which we recognize something as a 'picture,' a potential photograph."

Moose: "I generally agree with your philosophical thoughts about decisive moments. On the other hand, '6K Photo on the GH5 is a burst mode for photo only, capturing 18-MP images in 4:3 ratio at 30 frames per second (FPS)' isn't even class-leading. The Olympus E-M1 II is bigger/faster, 20-MP images @ 60 FPS fixed focus, 18 FPS continuous focus. GH5 continuous focus is 9 FPS, again half the Oly rate. Oly also has full mechanical rates of 15 and 10 FPS. I don't know what the Panny capability there is. And the E-M1 II has the ability to maintain a cache of images before the shutter is pressed fully. So when one misses that elusive 'decisive moment,' it's possible to go back and recover it. DPR's review has a good summary of the details, including limitations, with a shot of a dog catching a tennis ball you will like. Seems to me that the GH5, especially with the announced future firmware improvements, is the Micro 4/3 video camera and the E-M1 II is the still camera, at present."

Manuel (partial comment): "I think the 'decisive moment' refers to that elusive instant in which all the elements inside the viewfinder's lines fall into place and form a significant photographic composition."

MikeR (partial comment): "I think we make too much of the 'decisive moment.' 'Lucky moment' may be a more fitting descriptor."

Mike Plews: "Standby for a direct experience alert. When we got HD digital cameras a few years back our browser allowed easy frame grabs. I figured one still masterpiece after another would flow from this source. In fact much of the time it produces one frame just before the ideal shot and one just after and that is blasting away at 60 frames per. Sometimes they are very close but don't count on it happening all the time. No free lunch folks, just move on and hone your shooting reflexes."

Adrian Malloch: "The argument 'high frame rates make decisive-moment photography obsolete,' pops up every time a faster stills camera is announced. I remember years ago reading about Sports Illustrated photography legend John Zimmerman's quest to photograph the impact of a boot with a football at the moment of contact. He did the first attempt with a standard 4 FPS motor-driven Nikon of the day, holding the shutter down as the the footballer kicked. Over and over, but no frames were even close. He started experimenting—it was in the 1960s, with specialist motor-driven Hulcher cameras which increasingly got faster with each generation. Whenever Zimmerman got his hands on a new Hulcher he would go out and attempt the same shot, but without success. Years passed, the frame-rates were now in the hundreds on 250-exposure rolls of film, yet the shot still eluded him. Then a colleague suggested he lose the motor drive and just time the shot. On one 36-exposure film, using his honed instincts of anticipation and timing, Zimmerman achieved several examples of the photograph he had been failing to get for years from the high frame-rate camera approach.

"Lesson: The photographer makes the photograph, not the camera."

David W. Scott: "In my years of making and editing films, the one thing I dreaded most was pulling a 'usable' still image from a motion picture stream. Inevitably, the frame you really want is the one you imagine exists between frame X and frame Y. Motion pictures look amazing in part because our brains extrapolate an infinite number of frames from the slices in time that are actually photographed and shown to us. When the pictures are moving, our perception is of an unbroken image, and we imagine being able to stop at an arbitrary place and have that as a still image. In practise, each of the 30 frames per second are punctuated by blackness, 30 times per second. Ironically, it was the frustrating experience of trying to pull usable stills from a motion stream that convinced me of the wisdom of 'the decisive moment' in still photography. An attentive eye, and a deft hand, of a photographer who knows her particular camera/shutter, can absolutely capture 'the' moment."

Barking

No comment.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike Plews)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Woof
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Bill Tyler: "Meta?"

Mark: "I know blogging is a ruff way to make a living, but arf you serious about this? Quit dogging it and get back to work. Too much coffee. Time for my 'walk.'"

 

The Mac Isn't Dead Yet

Big (big) news in the computer world is that a trio of Apple execs led by Phil Schiller, the world's highest-paid CMO, held a highly unusual and atypical gathering, with, in Schiller's words, "no black cloth that’s going to come off something right now." An interim, between-product-announcements update press meeting. The context, according to a long but interesting article by Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch, "is that Apple’s dedication to the Mac has taken a bit of a philosophical beating lately among its core professional customers." And the upshot is: a) yes, Apple still cares about the Mac and its many users; and, b) they're sorry(!) they haven't updated the Mac Pro like they should have.

(Er, Apple's apologizing. You got that.)

Phil Schiller said they would "talk about what’s going on and frankly be a little more transparent with some of the things we’re doing, some of the places we’re going, because our pro users desire that and we care deeply about them and we’re dedicated to communicating well with them and helping them understand what we’re doing and what we’re up to."

(Apple is concerned about transparency(!!). You picked that up too.)

The specific news is that Apple is going to rethink the Mac Pro completely, but it won't be ready this year. (Note that that is not the same as saying it will be ready next year.) This is believed to be the first official confirmation that the Mac Pro will be updated and continued.

Along the way, Apple provided some interesting figures about Macs. The Mac user base is approaching 100 million; Mac sales have a $25 billion run rate and almost qualifies as a Fortune 100 company all by itself; the current percentage of laptop/desktop sales is 80/20; and MacBook Pro sales are up 20% for the first quarter year-over-year.

You can see from those numbers both a) why they don't want to blow it, and b) why they might have been complacent. 

The meeting happened yesterday in Apple's Product Realization Lab at its Cupertino office campus. There were four people from Apple there: Schiller, whose title is Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing; John Ternus, who's in charge of Mac hardware; Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi; and, to moderate and watch the clock (the meeting ran for 90 minutes), Bill Evans of Apple PR. There were only five writers at the table: John Gruber of Daring Fireball; Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch; Lance Ulanoff from Mashable; Ina Fried of Axios; and John Paczkowski from BuzzFeed.

So that chorus of critiques we were referencing and linking to a few weeks ago was being listened to. Check out the articles if you're interested.

Mike
(Thanks to Gordon Lewis and others)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Like what you read?
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Gordon Lewis: "I find it hard to believe that Apple has suddenly become infected with humility and transparency. It's more like embarrassment. They haven't upgraded the Mac Pro since 2013. That's a long time to sit still in the IT world. Expecting their pro customers to wait another year or more for an upgrade or other new pro-market products is asking a lot, to say the least. My concern is that by this point, whatever they eventually come out with will be too little, too late."

Jim in Denver: "It's too late. I'm going to buy two PCs in the next week or so. It's been 18 years since I've had a PC, but the Mac product is just not getting things done anymore. Hopefully they hit the ball out of the park and give me a reason to buy another Mac in a couple years."

PaddyC: "It's very good news. And as [John] Gruber reported, they also mentioned they have new iMacs (including a pro-ish one) coming up. I mention the iMacs because I do have some concern over the price of the new Mac Pros whenever they arrive.

"All around great news for this late 2010 Mac Pro user."

Speed: "A competitor has surfaced."

faberryman: "So they will do something sometime unless they change their mind."

psu: "I sort of object to the framing of your headline...the Mac was never dead. Far from it. People were just unhappy that the one they thought they wanted updated was not living a fuller life."

Mike replies: Remember that I'm not a subject-matter expert in this area, I'm just reporting. Or, in this case, not even reporting, just linking to the five articles written by the writers who were at the meeting. The longer version of the quote in my first paragraph, written by Matthew Panzarino, is as follows:

"The context, of course, is that Apple’s dedication to the Mac has taken a bit of a philosophical beating lately among its core professional customers. The narrative is that Apple has not put the resources needed into making the Mac work for pros, has neglected updates and could even be working toward a future where there are no Macs, just iOS devices. That’s the picture you’d get from the think pieces, anyway."

"A future where there are no Macs, just iOS devices" is a future in which the Mac would be dead, right? Maybe I should have used the full quote in order to support the headline.

Michael Perini: "It is interesting and a little sad to note that in Phil Shiller's description of pro users, photographers never enter his mind: 'There’s [sic] music creators, there’s video editors, there’s graphic designers—a really great segment with the Mac. There’s scientists, engineers, architects, software programmers....'"

Getting Glorious

I looked at a lot of work over the weekend. It struck me that digital photography has really come of age in the past few years.

It's true that photography seems to have gotten much worse over the past decade or two. But I blame that on culture; the traditional supports for serious work have withered or been blasted away, and although "sharing" is of course much more ubiquitous, social media is by definition atomized, or at least decentralized. Nothing structural has emerged yet to give form to photographic accomplishment, or give support to serious and ambitious workers in the medium. The old culture has been partly or mostly cleared away and nothing has taken its place. It's several magnitudes tougher now to make a splash, become known, or create work that will get widely noticed. I would argue that it was never easy to tame and tether the essentially subversive and unruly nature of the medium, but now we're back to a sort of Babel. It's all iconoclasm and chatter, not to mention inundation.

But at the same time, photographs seem to have gotten better and better. There was a time when a large part of professional photography revolved around the problem of creating a clear, plainly seen, well crafted photograph of a desired subject or event, and putting it into a form that could be used for an intended purpose. In that sense, photography has improved by leaps and bounds. It's become hugely easier for less and less skilled camera operators to come away with clear, sharp, color-balanced photographs of subjects that once were difficult but now no longer are, whether it's photographing far-off critters or photographing in the near-dark or up close, or photographing things that move.

For quite a while, I just didn't like digital photographs very much. The reason was simple. They were ugly. Not ugly in a characterful way like ugly analog things are ugly; just inherently ugly. Digital photographs started out with deficits and were further distorted by people anxious to over-exaggerate popular properties such as "sharpness" or "bright colors." The results were often mildly sickening. Too much at once was like eating too much cotton candy at a fair. It's partly why we were always looking for something a little better during the Transition years.

And it's true that photographs now don't look like they did twenty, thirty, and forty years ago. Digital images don't look like film photographs. A new aesthetic has emerged. There's really nothing new about that; every era and every stage of technical development has had its characteristic "looks." If you know enough about photography, many photographs telegraph their age and their era. It's no different now. A sense of hyperreality, clarity above and beyond what the eye can see, and a certain gloss of fictionalization—or formalization—a polishing-away of the visual chaos of life—is characteristic of the look of the best photographs today. But while they have their own characteristics and style, digital photographs no longer look bad. Quite the opposite. They can look fantastic. The tech has evolved, and with evolution has come maturity. Three-dimensional, exact in description, rich in color and dynamic range. Culture may be keeping photography from meaning as much or mattering as much, but photographs themselves are getting glorious.

Of course there's no milestone for something like this—no demarcation point at which you can point in one direction and say "not quite there" and point in the other and say "we're there." But I really am starting to think that digital photography is of age, finally—realizing its promise and confidently looking like what it was always hoped it would one day be.

Just thinking out loud.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Like what you read?
Give Mike a “Like” or Buy yourself something nice

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

Anthony Shaughnessy: "I've got quite a few hiking/walking/climbing books illustrated with photos shot on film. We're talking 1980s and 1990s. Compared to today, they don't look quite up to the mark. I think now I expect more."

Svein-Frode: "It just struck me that photography and music have shared parallel developments in the past couple of decades. When music recording and instrumentation became increasingly digitalized in the 1980s things started going downhill. You could hear a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer in almost every pop album. It was an inflation in cheap sound, and later cheap technology (mp3 files), which in turn made music worthless—in a monetary sense. Much like the saturation controls of Photoshop made digital photography boring and predictable.

"But as I sit here listening to the latest Radiohead album I feel, much like you feel about digital photography, that things have matured and that digital music has finally come of age. And just as I would never go back to photographing with film, I’m not going to throw away my CDs and trade them in for noisy vinyl albums.

"That being said, some music is better on vinyl, and when I listen to '50s or '60s jazz records the pops and crackles doesn’t bother me at all, it actually enhances the experience. I could say that about photography too. When looking at prints from the old masters, a bit of blurriness and film grain doesn’t bother me at all, but a digital print of a digital image with Photoshopped grain just looks awful…."

Ramón Acosta: "Is it better because the technology got better, or is it better because we learned how to extract better images from it? It reminds me of the sample picture threads on photography-on-the.net, when someone is trying to decide which version of the 50mm for Canon is better, and when you look at the examples of the Canon 50L versus the non-L, or even versus the Sigma, you find that the 50L thread does have (in my opinion) better images. But is it because the lens is better? Or is it because the 50L with all of its quirks, is often used by more experienced (and economically stable) photographers?"

Mike replies: Good point Ramón. I realized years ago that some people thought Leica rangefinders were better cameras simply because a higher percentage of skilled and dedicated photographers used Leica rangefinders. The pictures were better. It just wasn't necessarily because of the cameras or lenses. The same idea translates to picture websites that have sorting mechanisms, such that you see all the most-liked or highest-rated pictures first. This can lead to subtle misimpressions of whatever you might be looking for.

mark I: "I just checked my photo monograph collection, all 800 books, and not one is taken on digital, not because I actively choose film photographers, but those photographers take the pictures I like. Never yet found a digital photographer I could be bothered to buy a book from. Pentti Sammallahti is still my favourite. After you insisted we learn HTML to post pics on the Camera Porn posting (humour alert). I did actually sell all my Nikon digital and stick to film, wet darkroom and all, and I still love the results and I've printed more in a month than I had in two years with digital. I loath digital prints, regardless of how good they are on screen, and I had a pro lab of my own for twelve years so I know how to print. I've decided to retire early at 57 and devote my last years to perfecting the silver print which I've been practicing since I was 14. May even get into platinum/palladium printing. So I don't actively dislike digital, just don't like it either. It may have matured, but maybe I haven't...."

Manuel (partial comment): "So, when you state 'photographs seem to have gotten better and better,' you're referring to aesthetics only. I agree. On the other hand, though, the creative side has receded. One aspect which surface you've only scratched in your otherwise interesting and thoughtful text is that people imitate each other like there's no tomorrow. All photographs look pretty much the same nowadays. And what's the use of all that clarity if it serves poor, uninteresting images?"

Mike replies: That's the cultural problem I referred to. It takes time to develop a culture of appreciating what matters. We'll get there, though, I think.

April Fool (and Thoughts About Ads)

So did anyone find any nice April Fools jokes over the weekend? Did anyone get suckered?

I liked Thom Hogan's nice list of the additional products Nikon is un-announcing—I'm still chuckling over the name "Takehiko Go." Go-san must have been the same fellow who made the decision not to advertise the D3 on TOP in 2007, a mini-disaster of this site's rocky early years*. Thanks to Pete for pointing out Thom's article.

Oh, and another question, about your experience of TOP—regarding the post below this one, did those of you who read TOP through feed readers see the break to the second half of the post? The post listed seven things that were supposedly not true, and then, in the second half, itemized them again noting that all seven were true. But I got quite a few responses helpfully informing me that one item or another was true, which seems to indicate that those people might have missed the second part of the post, the part past the break. Just wondering if maybe people don't see page breaks in feed readers.

On the site, a page break link looks like this:

There are so many feed readers out there, I can't possibly optimize the appearance of the posts for all of them. So I'm wondering how you saw this. (At the very least, though, the phrase "click past the break" should have alerted even people on feed readers that there was more to come.)

Mike

*Nikon's ad agency contacted me in 2007 wanting to run a big D3 ad, which would have been a godsend for me at the time. Unfortunately, they wanted it to be one of those flashing GIFs that were popular at the time, and I had already set the policy that I wasn't going to annoy readers with ads that flashed or moved or otherwise intruded on your visual peace and quiet. So I turned them down, which was rather excruciatingly difficult because I badly needed the dough. This evidently disqualified me from any future consideration as an advertising venue, as I've heard nary another peep from them down to this very day. It was probably Takehiko Go who told me to go take a hike, don't you think?

Speaking of ads, which I wasn't until now, does anyone agree with me that those new ads that pop up in your face right in the middle of a page you're trying to access might be counter-productive? They're so intrinsically annoying that I can't see how they could possibly convey a positive impression of the company or product they're supposedly trying to advertise.

Okay, another thought about online ads...because I write this site, I have peculiar browsing habits. When I research a post, the algorithms that control Internet advertising seem to "read" a suddenly flurry of interest on my part in products related to the research I've done. Of course it doesn't actually mean I want to buy that thing...I was just researching it. But, inevitably, for the next week or two, ads for that particular item will pop up in all sorts of places as I wend my way about the Web. Now, granted, I'm short-circuiting the way that's supposed to work—customized ads aren't actually showing me things I want to buy. But does anyone agree with me that customized ads are not always exactly what we want to see? I don't really want to see ads for things I'm already interested in. I'd rather see ads for things I don't know about yet that someone is trying to inform me about. I'd rather see the ads everyone else is seeing, not ones customized to me.

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

Alex: "The trouble with targeted ads is that frequently they're for products that I recently bought. Just above this comment window ere are ads for digital projectors because I bought one yesterday."

Don Craig: "For days when I want to feel like a master of the Universe, I browse equipment online that I cannot afford. Shortly thereafter targeted advertising offers me a 100-megapixel IQ1 back, an M 679CS body, lenses with names like Kreuznach, APO-Sironar, and Super Angulon XL, and the always out-of-stock RRS Versa 3 sticks. Oh yes, and an Arca Swiss Cube. I decline these offers, but they are an improvement on the medical opportunities I might otherwise receive. Breakfast at Tiffany's in the Internet era."

Michael Perini: "The ads that pop up in the middle of a story you are reading (often shifting the paragraph you were reading off the screen are true abominations. Aggressive , intrusive, and obnoxious. I place any such products on my active do not buy list. I also visit the sites that allow them far less. Re the spooky 'we're tracking your every move' ads that show you anything you may have looked for weeks , those are nearly as bad. I will never click through on one of those.

"On the other hand, Amazon's' we thought you might like' emails are thoughtful and often get me to purchase something, especially books that I hadn't seen but are related to topics of previous interest."

John Krill: "It's not just the pop-up ads but the way pages get loaded. You'll be reading an article and suddenly some ads gets loaded onto the page and now you've lost your place. They do this as you're reading so you never know when it will happen. As far as pop-ups go I generally close out the whole damn thing."

Mike replies: Yes. I find "page disrupter" ads really irritating.

Duncan: "I bought my wife a camisole she wanted for Christmas, and I'm still getting ads for intimate apparel."

Mike replies: A few years ago I bought some dolls and doll toys for my then-nine-year-old niece. For months thereafter I got catalogs in the mail for things targeted at little girls. One was so persistent I had to contact them and ask them to call it off. Now I can't turn off the decorator and furniture catalogs, after buying a few things online for the new-to-me house. One nice thing about buying through Amazon: your address isn't sold to catalog companies.

Open Mike: News of the Day

Well, you'll never believe this! "Open Mike" is a day late. That never happens.

Here are a few more things you might find it hard to believe. These things are as improbable as Ronald MacDonald getting arrested for robbing a Wendy's!

• In the future, lenses might be flat. No, not flat like a fresnel. Flat as a piece of paper.

• Department of Advice Most of Us Don't Need: "Definitely do not spend your money thinking asteroids are coming." That's a quote from a fellow who, with his wife, squandered their entire $10 million fortune in anticipation of the Mayan apocalypse in 2012. 

• Sony will be soon be developing a 150-megapixel camera sensor. All right then, that one's a bit rote. You'd never fall for a fake story that's as obvious as this, right?

• "Froot Loops," the kids' breakfast cereal, are all different colors, but all exactly the same flavor.

• A photography blogger has been named to a high-level post at Hasselblad!

  The German arm wrestling champion?!? Wink, wink

• Unhappy with declining profits, Panasonic is scaling back its camera divisions.

Okay, okay. For the real stories, click past the break.