The Online Photographer

How to Cure the Digital B&W Nasties

The biggest change in film > digital from a visual, artistic, results standpoint* is the wholesale changeover from B&W to color. When I got into photography in 1980, almost all serious photography was B&W. Color was considered "literal" and "decorative" and widely denigrated as being the province of commercial photography on the one hand and amateur snapshooters with their machine-made 31/2 x 5-inch prints on the other. There were a few serious color photographers, but they were token. When serious photographers began committing to color in the '80s, it took some courage.

That's been turned on its head. Carl Weese opined way back in the 1990s that "digital is the coming of age of color photography," and the years since then have borne out the truth of his words. Cameras shoot color now. People shoot color now. Color is ubiquitous. B&W has become as quaint as an old-fashioned wooden boat.

(...Also as beautiful, but if you don't feel that, you don't, and if you do, you already know what I mean. This is a 1941 Chris-Craft barrel back, photographer unknown.)

And here's one reason why: most digital B&W is nasty. I mean NASTY. I'm going to give you the simplest recipe to cure that.

There are two reasons why almost all digital B&W is like drinking rotten pond scum:

1. The first is that B&W film is biased toward richness and detail in the highlights and lacks information in the shadows (hence the old adage "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights," because if you didn't get the shadows right in camera you weren't going to be able to get them by prestidigitation later), and this happens to match how our eyes see. Digital does the opposite: it has a low amount of detail in the highlights and has vast reserves of information in the shadows. Ever taken a raw file with a camera high in DR and tried to dig the shadows in a good raw converter? It's amazing. This does not match how our eyes see. Bad highlight detail isn't just a problem with digital B&W: it plagues all digital. We're getting used to digital highlights now, thanks to the habituation of constant bombardment, but that's like learning to love an ugly dog. It still doesn't make it pretty.

2. The second reason why almost all digital B&W is slathered with pasty poodle excrement is that digital depresses the middle values. Compared to a scale of theoretically ideal tones, Zone VII is rendered as Zone VI if not Zone V, Zone V is rendered as Zone IV if not Zone III. It looks terrible. Rodinal used to have this effect on film. Mildly, not as bad as a lot of digital. Okay, okay, granted, it's a "look," and a few photographers have done it on purpose and can make it look aesthetically coherent. Emphasis on "few." Especially if their subjects are dark and airless. But most digital B&W is that way by default and it looks awful.

The combination is a one-two punch of harsh grating ickyness. Vacant highlights as stupid as a lobotomized lobster, and all the grays crushed toward black like the Devil's own fog of depression. Shoot me now!

It's no wonder most people prefer digital color.

(May I just point out here in passing that most scanned film also looks terrible? It's because the film's characteristic curve was designed to be counteracted by the paper curve. Virtually everyone scans film and reproduces the film tones exactly—literally—which is why scanned negatives also look harsh and tonally wrong, and nothing like the same negative printed on an appropriate photo paper. Here's the best way to scan B&W film: 1. Take the negative. 2. Make an 8x10 print on a suitable photo paper. 3. Scan that.)

So here are three simple steps if you want to make oh-so-nice black-and-white in digital:

1. NOT MANDATORY: Use a Fuji X-Trans sensor. They just yield better B&W. I won't go in to the reasons why here.
2. Underexpose everything by 2/3rds of a stop for headroom. You'll want to be be able to place your highlights "just so" in post, and this will give you more information to work with. If you are using a high-DR camera (look at DxOMark Sensor and click "landscape" for a ranked list of these, if you don't use a Fuji. They don't rank Fuji). Shadows? You don't hafta worry about no steenkeeng shadows. Digital will let you dig out dark-value information to your heart's content in B&W.
3. Correct the tonality by lifting the midtones.

Here's how to lift the midtones: in whatever editing program or you use for post processing or conversion, find the curves function. Grab the middle and move it up, to taste. Viz.:

That's the simplest formula. However you do it, a) get enough highlight detail and b) restore the midtones to their proper values and relieve them of their horrible depression, and you'll be way ahead of 94% of the digital B&W out there.

DISCLAIMER: I know there are dedicated practitioners out there who do very nice digital B&W and I don't mean to "damn them by generalization" with my playful rhetorical hyperbole about pond scum and poodle poop. I'm just slagging the typical desultory, rote B&W conversions you run across here, there and all over everywhere. Nothing personal, fellow B&W mavens. I don't mean you.

Most digital B&W is never going to quite match film B&W, for the simple reason that it is no longer the era of the classic wooden boat. But that doesn't mean dedicated workers can't make perfectly nice, non-atrocious B&W files and prints in this, the Era of Color.

Mike

P.S. Two hot equipment tips: the original Sony A7, now available used for $700–$1,000, is a great camera for B&W because of its very high DR. And the new Fuji 23mm ƒ/2 lens is well matched to B&W because it's biased toward high lens contrast like a classic Leica or Kodak Commercial Ektar lens.

*The changes to the industry and in convenience might be larger but are already well parsed.

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.

It's a gray area
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Featured Comments from:

Bill Wheeler: "Thanks for the informative article, Mike. As a rule, I prefer black-and-white photography, so I have been working on improving my digital technique. Thanks again for the tips. By the way, I love hyperbole."

greg brophy: "Ha, that's funny. I once asked Carl to help me with a B&W photo and he basically lifted the midtones."

Andre Y: "Interesting thoughts. A while back, wasn't there going to be a post with annotated examples of good B&W photos? I might have missed it though...

"Two random thoughts:

1. I just started reading Keith A. Smith's Structure of the Visual Book, and he rails against color photography as it was practiced when the book was written (maybe 20 years before digital became popular), by saying, among other things, that people think it's literal, when that's the worse thing color does.
2. And underexposing to save highlights is an interesting topic, which on the face of it seems to contradict ETTR practices (it doesn't), but there are a few cameras which do that automatically now, including your Fujis with their DR modes, and the current Hasselblad and Fuji medium format digital cameras.

"What they do is that above a certain ISO (1600 is common), they no longer brighten the images in the camera, i.e., apply digital gain. Instead the files are exposed for metering at ISO 1600, even if you're using IS0 6400, and as a consequence they get increased dynamic range at high ISOs. You can see the measurements on photonstophotos.net, for example, of how the dynamic range curve flattens out above ISO1600 for the two mirrorless medium format cameras instead of decreasing like say on a Nikon D810.

"The RAW converter on your computer then automatically applies the correct brightening when the RAW conversion is done so that the photos appear to have been exposed at the intended ISO. The noise in the raised photo is basically identical to a shot that was metered and exposed at the intended ISO because of the way the sensor works. It's too complicated to explain here, but look up on DPreview, for example, ISO-invariant or ISO-less sensors. Basically for those types of sensors, there is no difference between exposing at ISO 6400, or using ISO 1600 and raising the brightness two stops afterwards: the noise is identical.

"There are cameras without these kinds of sensors, and some sensors have regions of ISO-invariance separated by sensor gain bumps at some ISOs. The Nikon D5 is sort of an example of the first kind, and some of the Sonys have a dual-gain structure that are an example of the second kind. So do your research first, and experiment!

"What you gain is an increase in dynamic range at high ISOs, which is especially useful for situations where you might like to use high ISOs in the first place, like night shooting or theater stage shooting where the brightness range of the scene can be huge due to individual lights being very bright against a dark background, and it's easy to blow out your highlights.

"The great thing about this practice is that it can be applied, somewhat inconveniently, to any camera that has an ISO-invariant sensor, like the Nikon D810 and D500 that I use. Of course, my camera previews will be dark (unlike the Fuji and Hassie images), and I need to manually raise the exposure slider in Lightroom, but it's more than compensated by the fact that I now have at least three more stops of dynamic range in my camera at high ISO than before (my ISO is set to 200 and I expose as if I was shooting at 1600), and that helps quite a bit with post-processing. I was also going to get a D4S, and I don't think that's necessary anymore, at least for high ISO dynamic range reasons when I use this trick."

Andrew McFaul: "Any experience or comments regarding the use/benefits of using Foveon sensors (either Merrill or Quattro) for B&W photography?"

Mike replies: My experiments with the Merrill were extremely lovely but I found the camera I tried (not a current one) and its workflow pretty difficult to use.

Al C.: "Agree: most digital B&Ws are ugly, unless their 'digital hardness' serves an artistic purpose. But Merrill Foveon B&Ws are gorgeous. The transparency and smooth tonality cannot be achieved by any amount of post of a Bayer file. Have not used the Monochrom, but people I trust say the Merrill is almost as good."

mike: "I'm going to have nightmares about that dog. And maybe the Omega too!"

Stan B.: "Sorry, Sternfield's American Prospects was published in '87 (could've sworn sooner), Meyerowitz's Cape Light in '78, and Shore's Uncommon Places in '82. Soon photojournalists like Paul Graham got into the color mix with smaller formats in essays like Beyond Caring [the link is to Jeff Ladd's book on the book —Ed.] and the incredible Troubled Land, and the rest as they say is...."

Ken Ford: "Very timely post for me, Mike—I have a new X-Pro2 and 23mm ƒ/2 and have been starting to create a B&W workflow for them. Thank you! "

Douglas Chadwick: "I would advise one modification from your advice, 'the best way to scan B&W film: 1. Take the negative. 2. Make an 8x10 print on a suitable photo paper. 3. Scan that.' Change step 3 to 'match that.' And match it from a scan of the negative, not the print. I spend a lot of time matching digital files to darkroom prints and have learned a lot from doing that."

Mike replies: That's a great idea. Wish I'd thought of it.

Jeff: "On the other hand, I've seen a lot of mediocre silver prints, and a fair amount of gorgeous inkjet prints. While tools, techniques and materials help (e.g., large sensors, all B&W inksets, fine papers. etc), the most important tools remain between the ears. Nothing substitutes for a good eye and good judgment, film or digital."

Oskar Ojala (partial comment): "I'm not 100% sure what exactly is referred to in this article; examples would help a lot to clarify!"

Mike replies: It's a problem. Probably the biggest problem, historically, with this website, as a format. I could find hundreds of examples of what I consider "bad" B&W, easily, but how could I present them? If another person's  picture is used as a subject of a critique, it's legal under Fair Use (probably—Fair Use is never 100% certain), but I'd have to be taking someone's work and holding it up as a negative example. As a normally courteous person I have trouble with that idea. I certainly wouldn't like it if it were done to me, so how can I do it to someone else? What if I were to use as an example of "bad" tonality something someone did very deliberately, because they like it that way?

Over the years I would have loved it if I could have put up pictures I find on the Web to discuss—many pictures of many kinds, to discuss in all kinds of ways. But I just don't think it's polite to do that to the people the pictures belong to.

It's a big difference between the Web and a classroom. In the privacy of a classroom you can use specific pictures as examples, easily. But I have a problem with doing the same thing here.

Quick Math(s) Question

A quick question for the non-math-challenged amongst ye: Re Gary's question in the Comments to the "Telephoto Reach" post, how many pixels would a full-frame sensor have to have to have the same pixel density as a 20-MP Micro 4/3 sensor?

Mike
(Thanks to Gary)

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.

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William Schneider: "It boils down to a problem of comparing sensor areas between the two chips. A full-frame chip has dimensions of 36x24mm. Multiplying these numbers together provides a sensor area of 864 square millimeters. A Micro 4/3 sensor has dimensions of 17.3x13mm. This provides 224.9 square millimeters of area. Dividing 864 by 224.9 shows that the bigger chip is 3.84 times the area of the smaller chip. With the same pixel density (pixels per square millimeter), the full frame sensor would then be 76.8 MP (3.84 times 20MP)."

Mike replies: Lots of different answers, no doubt because people adopt somewhat different premises rather than because of any deficiency in their math. But most of the answers are running in the range of 76–80 MP. I don't know if this gets us any closer to the question of whether a smaller sensor overcomes its deficiencies to be better for long-telephoto work or not; because certainly the greater pixel density also comes with disadvantages as well as advantages. But I think if I were photographing birds in trees I'd rather have a smaller-sensor camera.

Eliot Porter, the great nature photographer, shot mostly with an 8x10 but did his bird photography with 35mm. So there's one vote, at least, for a smaller sensor for distant small subjects like birds! Heh.

Bruce Rubenstein: "Pixel pitch is linear value, such as pixels/mm. It establishes the spatial frequency, from which the Nyquist frequency of the sensor. (This sets the smallest detail the sensor can record.) Anyone latching on to area, e.g. mm², should stick to whatever it is they do for their day job."

Mike replies: ...Which still leaves me on the hot seat, because this is my day job. I will admit that I only understand such differences in terms of visual results, and I have no data bank in terms of visual results when it comes to long teles, never have had....

Michael Perini replies to Bruce: "You are correct that pixel pitch is a linear value and determines resolution. But the question was, How many pixels would fit on a FF sensor with pixels the same size as a 20-MP Micro 4/3? Since the formats have different aspect ratios, it becomes an area question. (Which is separate from resolution.) So the area is 3.82 times greater, but the resolution is about 2X greater. He didn't ask about resolution, so using area was correct in this case."

John Merlin Williams: "Sounds like a great question for Roger Cicala."

Roger Cicala: "Well, I'm told the meaning of sensors is 42.

"My math says a 20.3-MP Micro 4/3 camera has pixels of with 3.34 micron edges. If you line up 3.34 micron pixels to fill a 36mm by 24mm sensor, you get a resolution of 10,900 x 6500 pixels, or 79 megapixels, give or take a few chopped off for edging and a few more for an on-sensor phase detection array. But I'm old enough to have once used a slide rule, so all my math answers start with 'about.'

"As an aside that might strike fear into everyone, I'm doing some research for a company with a working 150-MP sensor. Better buy some more RAM, everyone."

Open Mike: The Rolling Stones, and Why I Probably Won't Be Getting a New Camera

Section I
You're going to have to forgive me in advance. This post is self-indulgent, and might even qualify as "whining"—a word (like "silly") that I almost never allow commenters to apply to each other.

But I don't mind applying it to myself. Y'know...if the shoe fits.

My very perceptive and wise youngest brother (he's a Ph.D. psychologist and a gifted couples counselor, and he's in the right business) once said that I was great at giving other people purchase advice but terrible at knowing what to do for myself. And sure enough: I find myself not very happy with my cameras right now. Of all things.

I need IS, and I have IS—but only if I use a Fuji zoom I don't particularly care for. (It doesn't even have an aperture ring. And I might have lucked—bad-lucked—into a non-optimal sample.) So I got into Fuji for their lenses and I'm relegated to using one I don't like. Bah #1. Tried to switch back to Panasonic but got bitten when the body and lens I bought wouldn't play nice with each other. Figures the Dual IS wouldn't work, because I bought it for the Dual IS. Bah #2.

Section II: Long, meandering digression about cars; skip to Section III if car stuff is tl;dr for you
I have a non-ideal history with cars. (There's a point to this, so bear with me.) My parents bought my middle brother a little Mazda GLC when he graduated from college, but I didn't get a chance to graduate from college. Years later I graduated from Photo School, and my generous mother paid for half of a little Mazda for me—I paid for the other half. It was a 1987 323 DX sedan very similar to this one.

Like many people do who don't have adequate amounts of money, I failed to maintain it properly in the middle of its first hundred thousand miles, and was rewarded, as it neared the end of that period, by a series of serious repair bills that nearly broke me. But I kept that Mazda for eleven years. Still liked it when I had to say goodbye.

Once bitten, my next strategy was to avoid repair bills by leasing a car only for the duration of its warranty period. Sound concept. But right out of the gate I chose badly. Thanks to the legendary David E. Davis Jr., whom I had met, I picked a Dodge Neon Sport on account of it was Automobile magazine's "Car of the Year." How could David E., who was the editor who brought Car & Driver back from the dead and founded Automobile, steer me wrong?

The Rolling Stones. Photo by Philip Townsend via Paul Townsend.

Well, have you ever noticed how you hardly ever see a Neon on the roads any more? That's because very few of them are still running, despite a relatively recent lifespan from 1995 to 2005. They were dreadfully poorly built cars. (Mine was built in Illinois, which was a plus to me at the time because I lived there.) My Neon Sport was indeed quite sporty...for about eight months, when the engine commenced to lose compression and all the tolerances began to go out of whack. That car deteriorated faster than I had previously believed was possible. By the time it was two years old, it felt weak, creaky, and older than my Mazda had felt at age ten.

In fairness to David E., that's an Achilles heel of reviews—durability, repairability, and reliability. Reviewers are usually testing new equipment and giving their impressions. They don't get a feel for the products over the long term. This is true of most camera reviewers too. It's why Roger Cicala and LensRentals is such a priceless resource.

But back to the saga. You would think I would have sworn off American cars after the Neon misadventure, but I didn't. Next I bought a Ford ZX2. I was cash-strapped again at that point, so my plan of leasing a car and sticking with it for the duration of its warranty period flew out the window. I kept the ZX2 for nine years. Thankfully, mine was a wonderful car (some of them weren't, as I discovered from talking to other owners). It never gave me a moment's trouble, survived an accident that bent the frame with no issues past the repair, and was still running like a top when I foolishly sold it. Foolishly, because Xander was fourteen at the time and it would have made a great, and cheap, first car for him. But he ended up not getting his license until he was 18, so the Ford would have slumbered in the garage for a while.

Section III: less about cars, back to cameras
The point of all this is that sometimes you stick with things for a long time (Mazda 323 for 11 years, Ford ZX2 for nine) not because you necessarily want to, but because it's prudent. Well, let's not mince words...you do it because you can't afford to do otherwise. And I think that's where I am with cameras now. I like to switch cameras every three years too. But my current three-year-old Fuji X-T1 kit lacks only a short telephoto portrait lens to be complete, and I'm used to it, and it works fine. It just doesn't have IBIS. Bah #3, but oh well.

So what to do? Probably the best thing to do would be to wait for the X-T3, or the GX9. Wait to see what happens, in other words.

The camera I probably should buy if I bought one right now is a Sony A7II. It makes the most sense as a complement to the iPhone, and for landscapes around the Finger Lakes. The camera I probably would buy at this point is a Sony A6500. That camera has come down in price since its introduction, currently selling for a still-pricey $1,398. But what trips me up each time I think about it is that the three prime lenses I would want for it are the Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8, the Zeiss Touit 12mm, and the Zeiss FE 55mm ƒ/1.8 (a full-frame lens, but ideal as a short tele on the APS-C A6500). That's what used to be known as a basic kit of prime lenses—normal, wide, and portrait tele. And those three lenses together retail new for a whopping $3,095. That's $4,493 for the kit! Compact camera and three basic lenses. Shades of the Leica CL of my teenage years. Even with the offset of selling the Fuji stuff and a few other things I could dispense with, that's still a heck of a lot of money to get IBIS. And it's not like there's anything Zeiss can do with a lens that Fuji can't. Except maybe get away with charging more.

Okay, enough with the whining. (What was that old Rolling Stones song?)

Code E30 BMWs were made from 1982 to 1994. This is a 1990 318i. I really wanted an E30 back in the day, but oh well.

I still love boxy '80s sedans with low waistlines and big greenhouses. The cooler, better-built version of my 323 would have been a BMW E30 (second generation, not that I wouldn't have liked an E21) 3-Series. More than any other single person, it was David E. Davis who put what became the BMW 3-Series on the map, with his epochal review of the 2002, one of the most famous and influential car reviews in automotive history. But I had to just keep that in my head as the car I would have gotten back in the day...if I had been able to get what I wanted. Maybe that Sony A6500 and those three lenses will just have to live in the same place in my head, that's all.

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you just might find...that you already have what you need. Or all you're gonna get.

(Goes something like that.) 

So tell me I'm not alone here. Anything you've been jonesing for, but can't have? Doesn't have to be a camera or a car.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the anything-or-everything, open-topic Editorial page of The Online Photographer. It's supposed to appear on Wednesdays, but very seldom does.

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.

I can't get no satisfaction
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Featured Comments from:

Charles Rozier: "I think that Stones song must have been 'You Can't Always Tell What You Want.'"

William: "The BMW 2002 is one of those rare cars that got everything right. Most of all it's fun to drive. The 1967 BMW 1602 invented the sport sedan concept that just about every other brand eventually copied. The switch to a 2 liter engine in 1968 inspired Davis' review. After reading 'Turn Your Hymnals to 2002' in college, I decided someday I would own a 2002. About 7 years later I bought a low milage 1973 2002. I was able to do all the routine maintenance myself (plugs, points,valve adjustment, oil, filters, etc). The car never needed major repairs. Back then BMWs were somewhat rare. When you passed one you exchanged a headlight flash.

"Some friends mocked the 2002's boxy styling. One by one I took them for fast rides along twisty rural roads. They quit mocking my 2002.

"I think of my first Fujifilm X100 the same way...a game changer. This was the first digital camera I enjoyed using. The X100 catalyzed the sale of my film photography gear. The X-Pro1 completed my transition from film to digital media. I only used film cameras (Zeiss Ikon M and Nikon F3) because I enjoyed using them. The two Fujifilm X-series cameras made them redundant. Shortly after buying a X-T1, I sold all my Nikon DSLR bodies and F mount lenses. Now the X-T1, a X100T and half a dozen XF lenses meet my needs."

Mark Kinsman: "To directly answer your question, I'm jonesing for the GFX with lenses, but it will never happen. My resolve is to spend more time with what I do have, the X-Pro2 and XT-2 and some excellent Fuji glass."

Peter Wright: "That's a great picture of the Stones, and one I hadn't seen before. Among my friends of the day, the Stones were our all time favourite band. (I was eleven when the '60s began and lived in the UK for the duration.) In the picture they look like they are trying to be a knock-off of the Beatles, but in the early '60s that was how all British groups dressed; changed soon enough of course. Brings it all back. Thanks.

"My camera of the time was quite unusual: a British-made 35mm uncoupled rangefinder with interchangeable lenses (although I only had one), built by AGI of Croydon, London. Interestingly, AGI made the entire camera, including the shutter and lenses, and it was very compact and reliable. In 1970, I sold it for about $10. The folly of youth.

"If I had those years over again, I would take that camera, my girlfriend(s) of the time, and visit as many Stones gigs I could get to, and photograph the daylights out of everything. But what did I know?"

"I don't need IBIS. I might buy an X-Pro 2 some day. I might not."

Fred Fowler: "I too read the David E. Davis BMW 2002 review in 1968 and managed to buy a new one in 1976...only to make the mistake of trading it on a 630 CSi a few years later. That mistake was rectified by buying a 911SC a few years after that. Upon buying my first house I managed to get all my worldly possessions including my stereo in the Porsche, which mostly consisted of a pair of Levis, some underwear and a Nikkormat. Many decades, several houses, three wonderful children and much unwavering effort later I've never managed to get in a position to acquire another 911 new or old, much as I'd like to. I don't know exactly where this is going, but maybe you should just be happy with your X-T1."

Scott: "Yes. The latest iteration of the Klipsch Heresy in cherry :-) . Beautiful old-school speakers."

Mani Sitaraman: "That photograph was taken by Philip Townsend, and is incorrectly attributed to Paul Townsend, who posted that picture on Flickr. Philip was a noted British photographer of the 'sixties scene and had special access to the Rolling Stones in the early days. He died in 2016. I do not know if Paul Townsend is related. Philip Townsend was survived only by his two sisters."

Mike replies: Thank you Mani. I have made the correction in the caption.

Ron Zack: "Just a quick note to say that I can relate to everything you are talking about in this post. Literally everything. Cars, cameras, stereo equipment, homes, computers...the list is far too long for me. The issue of cars is far too depressing, as my taste in vehicles has always been far beyond my means to obtain what I would like. So let's talk about cameras and audio.

"Even though I have a perfectly good little Olympus E-P5 with the absolute best IS I have ever used, I keep having this unnatural desire for the new Panasonic G85. What does the G85 have that the Olympus does not? Well, several things: a tough, weather-resistant body, an extremely advanced electromagnetic shutter, and a fairly decent kit 12–60mm zoom lens that is also weather resistant, with an option of someday getting the zoom lens I've always wanted in Micro 4/3: the Leica 12–60mm ƒ/2.8–4. The one thing the G85 does not have that I really would like is that nice 20MP sensor. While I have always loved my Olympus lenses, the Panasonic/Leica branded optics really do a much better job of meeting my needs, and I would love to use them on a Panasonic camera. But it's very hard to justify spending $1,000 on yet another 16MP camera whose IQ and IS will most likely be no better than what I have now. (Sigh.)

"In terms of audio, I again have this irrational desire for a pair of Klipsch Heresy III speakers, and perhaps a 'good enough' Harman/Kardon electronic stereo receiver to power them. That's a $2,500 'investment' just to listen to music. Probably be better to spend the money on live shows instead, but yet the desire for those Klipsches will not go away....

"It's bad trying to deal with gear lust with cameras, but when you want all your belongings to be better than what you have, it can get to be rather depressing."

Paulo Bizarro: "Just get one of the Sonys and be done with it.  :-)  You don't have to buy all at once, do you? With the money you already spent in the Fujis and Panasonics, you would have bought the small Sony kit already.  :-)  Don't Sigma make the DN 19mm and DN 60mm for Sony E-mount too?"

kirk tuck: "Mike, trust me. I can fix the camera side of the equation for you. Here's what you do: Buy a Sony A7II. Get the Sony 24–70mm ƒ/4 because it covers all those focal lengths you normally love and does so pretty well in a light weight, weather-sealed package. The body has I.S. and the lens has I.S. Now top it off with the outrageously good Sony 85mm ƒ/1.8. Buy a couple of extra batteries. It's all the resolution you could want. The two lenses are very, very good and the overall 'shootability' is wonderful.

"Total cost? So, $1500 for the body (new), the 24–70mm is about $1,000 and the 85mm is $600. That's right around $3k. Sell the Fuji stuff and you're almost there....

"I know it all works because I'm shooting with the same system right now. Today. And the results are perfect. Well, as perfect as they can be with a Texan at the controls...."

John Camp: "I somehow missed the equipment bug. I'm a writer, and I'll use about any keyboard. As a photographer, I like Nikon equipment because I've used it forever, and it somehow feels the same between generations, even if there are substantial changes. But I've got no problem with Canon or Sony, and if I had to use those, I wouldn't obsess about it, because the photos would be just fine (fine for my level ability.) I now use Panasonic, which doesn't feel as good as Nikon, but makes a much more compact package, which is the only reason I use it. But tools are just tools; if I were in the house-building business, I doubt I'd have to find the perfect hammer before I could work.

"That's pretty much how I feel about cameras and cars and musical instruments and so on—I don't want a camera, I want something that takes pictures; I'm not focused on a car, I want to go somewhere. I don't particularly need a Gibson or a Fender, I just want to play a tune."

Today Is the Day

I've been very negligent not to mention this until now, but today is "Prime Day" at Amazon.com. It's for Prime members only, but there are lots of deals (including this very non-photographic item which I can heartily recommend—I love mine), and of course there are various inducements to join Prime.

Seagate hard drives are Prime Day specials. Time for more backup storage? Although unlimited free photo storage is also free with Prime.

Amazon Prime gives you free shipping year-round and access to all sorts of free media. Amazon Prime Video is my main source of movies these days, for instance—I've let Netflix lapse. I watched "The 24-Hour War" two nights ago, a documentary about the Ford-Ferrari rivalry at LeMans in the 1960s.

There's more, of course—a lot more. Very sorry for not being more on top of this—apparently I have a lazy assistant. ;-P

Mike
(Thanks to Kent)

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.

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Telephoto Reach and OIS vs. IBIS

So we were talking about IS—image stabilization. The reason I like IS in the body rather than the lens is probably pretty personal. It comes down to two things: a) I use mostly wide to normal lenses, and b) I'm unreasonably picky about which lenses I want to use.

Obviously, we all choose equipment to suit our own uses. It was quite natural ten and twenty years ago that the two companies that made a generous selection of long AF telephotos, and therefore chose to use in-lens IS, would also be preferred by people who needed long telephotos!

The ultra-amazing science-fiction 100–400mm

That has changed quite a bit now, of course. The killer app when it comes to telephoto reach these days is a smaller sensor. If you need a 400mm-equivalent lens or even longer, I don't know why you wouldn't choose Micro 4/3—the quality is good enough for almost everything (certainly distant shots of airplanes and birds and critters and distant sports competitors) and the cost and convenience improvements of letting the sensor function as an automatic 2X doubler are huge. I'm not a telephoto lens user, so I'm kinda speaking out of my hat, but if you legitimately need a lot of telephoto reach, how could you not go crazy over something like the Panasonic-Leica 100–400mm? That's 800mm-e out of a lens that's not even seven inches long and weighs barely more than two pounds, and costs well under two grand. That would have absolutely been the stuff of science-fiction fantasy when I was auditing optics courses at the University of Maryland and stopping on the way home every afternoon to chat cameras with the counter guys at the old Industrial Photo. They would have laughed and rolled their eyes.

Compare it—please—to the Canon 800mm ƒ/5.6L IS, which is more than eighteen inches long, weighs just under ten pounds, and costs $13,000! Oh yeah, and is one-third stop faster, so there's that big advantage.

To date, Canon has sold eleven of them.*

Of course it isn't a zoom. Zooms make the most sense to me in telephoto focal lengths (from here behind my hat) because the farther you are away from what you're photographing, the less control you generally have over your standpoint.

At the very least, if you were into teles you'd pick a D500 over a D750, any day of the week and twice on Sundays. I mean APS-C over FF.

And 1" sensors could help your lenses reach even farther. If you just like to dabble in long-lensdom, what's not to like about the Sony RX10 III, with 600mm-e of effective reach in what amounts to a deluxe bridge camera? Yowza.

Of course, the fabulous 100–400mm has Panasonic's O.I.S. As a commenter here pointed out a week or two ago, in-lens IS actually does work a little better for longer teles, and, since many of the newest lenses for Micro 4/3 are designed to enable some form of dual-IS—that is, both OIS and IBIS, working together—the newest long teles usually do offer in-lens IS...even if they go on bodies that have IBIS.

...But I digress. Anyway, inasmuch as it remains a binary choice, in-body IS makes much more sense for me. I say for me, though, not to me, because which you prefer really depends on what you want to do with the tech and how you like to get it done. If you prefer in-lens OIS, then you prefer it. No arguments.

It would drive me crazy to be stuck with a system that uses in-lens IS, though, simply because I know—in the same way you know it's going to rain if you don't take your umbrella—that the system would inevitably offer a lens I don't like that has IS, and a lens that I do like that doesn't have it. Because camera systems are designed to frustrate me personally, of course.

I kid.

Kinda.

Mike

*Just joking. I have no idea how many 800mm ƒ/5.6L's Canon has sold. But it's not in the millions, let's just say that.

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Gordon Lewis: "The irony of using any type of image stabilization with a Canon 800mm ƒ/5.6L lens is that it's so friggin' big and heavy you'd have to have it mounted on a sturdy tripod anyway. IS might be helpful if the camera and lens were mounted to a monopod though."

Tom Duffy: "One big advantage of in lens stabilization is that it works well with Canon film cameras, which many of us still own and use. Given the relatively limited EIs of film, in lens stabilization is a great EI multiplier."

Mike replies: Great point, and that's something I haven't mentioned yet but probably should have. In the early years of the digital transition, OIS did have a big advantage in that lenses that had it could be used on new digital bodies or older film bodies, back and forth. For those like you who still do use film bodies, this remains an advantage, although I'm guessing it's not relevant for very many photographers today.

Phil Stiles: "I shoot a lot of field sports, and the Panny 100–400mm on an Olympus E-M1 Mark II is a fantastic setup. With another body sporting the 12–100mm ƒ/4, one is ready for anything (except available light at low levels)."

Michael Perini (partial comment): "Re how many 800mm lenses Canon sells, it is not 11, but neither is it a very high number. Personally I think we should be grateful when companies make low volume specialty lenses that some photographers really need. (Whether or not we personally use them.)"

Mike replies: True dat. Sorry if I sounded ungrateful.

Richard Jones: "The 'fabulous' Panasonic-Leica 100–400mm lens? Indeed! Paired with the GX8, the system is under four pounds. What technology has achieved.

"The lens has OIS which works in conjunction with the IBIS in Panasonic's GX8 (Dual IS). I would never have predicted that I could easily handhold a lens steady with an effective focal length of 800mm. The camera's IBIS has made life easier when using my other lenses that do not have lens OIS, so I vote for IBIS over lens OIS if there is a choice.

"Sony's A7RII has IBIS (Steady Shot) and if used with a lens with IS (OSS) acts like a Dual IS system. I don't have any lenses with OSS, but can say that the Sony IBIS is wonderful with the non-OSS lenses."

Manuel: "I know why Canon doesn't have IBIS. They hate silly acronyms."

Mike replies: At least it isn't EVIL (electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens).

Why Canon Uses In-Lens IS

Image stabilization in the lens, sometimes called optical image stabilization or OIS, is one application of the feature. The other—more common more recently it would seem—is in-body stabilization, or IBIS.

Various arguments are put forth touting one over the other. The biggest difference is that OIS works better for longer telephoto lenses, needing smaller movement for correction, and IBIS works for all the lenses that fit on a body. That's been part of the fun with mirrorless cameras, many of which can use all sorts of different kinds of old and different lenses via adapters.

But here's the likely reason Canon uses in-lens IS and not IBIS: because the company developed the technology for binoculars.

Current Canon 10x30 IS II image-stabilized binoculars

And then it made the next logical step—it incorporated the same technology into a camera lens. But a lens for film cameras—which virtually all serious consumer cameras were in 1995, when the first real IS lens, the Canon EF 75–300mm ƒ/4–5.6 IS USM, was introduced.

(By the way, the claim that Nikon "invented" IS because it incorporated crude vibration-reduction in a 1994 film point-and-shoot, the Zoom 700VR, is pretty specious. Canon was so far ahead of Nikon where in-lens IS is concerned that Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry [MITI], which essentially ran most of the country's industrial policy during Japan's dominant years, had to pressure Canon to share it with Nikon for the good of the mother country. According to some insider rumors at the time.)

Makes sense that a film camera would have to use in-lens IS, doesn't it? Hard to shift a sensor when there's no sensor to shift.

The only mainstream film camera I know of from that era that could actually move the film plane around was the Contax AX (1996), a "Frankencamera" of sorts born of Yashica's frustration with Zeiss. Yashica had partnered with Zeiss since Zeiss stopped making cameras in 1972, the two companies taking the old Zeiss model name "Contax" as a brand name, but Zeiss was reportedly a cantankerous partner in those days. According to mumbled asides from my contacts at Contax back then, I gathered that Zeiss didn't bend over backwards to cooperate with Yashica and Yashica wasn't in the driver's seat in the relationship, despite supplying most of the technology (and money). Zeiss decided what it would build and Yashica had to order runs of lenses and pay for them pretty much like Zeiss was an OEM and Yashica was any old outside customer. Anyway, when autofocus came along, Yashica asked Zeiss to build autofocus lenses, and Zeiss said nope, ain't gonna do it. Or the German equivalent. There was too much slop in AF mechanisms at the time, and Zeiss was unwilling to compromise film-plane parallelism and mechanical integrity. But Yashica had some pretty serious engineering chops, and, because it was so eager to build an AF Contax anyway, it engineered the AX to move the film plane up and back as an end-around means of achieving AF with manual-focus lenses! Weird, but then camera history is full of weirdness. The few people who actually used it tended to like the AX, but even though it moved the whole film transport mechanism it wasn't "sensor shift" in any way that had anything to do with image stabilization.

Anyway, the fact that it was developed in the film era via binoculars, along with its continuing suitability to long teles, is no doubt why Canon sticks with in-lens IS today. That is, it's due to the historical circumstances and timing of its development as much as to the superiority of the one strategy over the other. I'm sure the sensor-shift IS patents mostly belong to others, too, although I can't back that up. (the Internet seems woefully deficient in industrial history generally, and I don't find much about the history of image stabilization; for some of the information in this post I'm just relying on my potentially fallible memory.)

Where Canon (and Nikon) seem to be exposed these days is not precisely in the lack of IBIS as in dual-IS technology, where in-lens and in-body stabilization work together in concert. This area of camera tech isn't quite up to speed yet, from what I've seen of it so far, but it likely will be soon.

Meanwhile, Olympus leads with IBIS, probably with Sony in second place; people are taking sharp pictures at exposure times up to several seconds with the "overdeveloped" E-M1 Mark II, and Olympus claims that IS technology is limited by the movement of the earth, which doesn't make much sense to my small brain but sure sounds impressive.

It's pretty astonishing that IS works at all, much less that it works so well. I remember the first time I ever experienced it...with some then-brand-new Canon binoculars that my late uncle Cam purchased for watching sailboat races. The steadying effect on the image, handheld on a moving boat, was wondrous. All these years later, IS still seems like a pretty wonderful feature to me—but then, I've always been a handheld photographer, and one who likes to shoot in low light.

Mike
(Thanks to John McMillin)

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William Schneider: "Oh, a binocular post! I use a pair of Canon 10x42 L IS WP binoculars for astronomy and the IS feature is outstanding beyond words. The Canon optics are first rate, so even if the IS feature fails someday, they are still sharper and provide a wider view than my other binoculars.

"You mention having used a pair on a boat. Shown below is a page from the user's manual giving one reason why the 10x42 L IS WP binoculars may be a top choice for people who use binoculars around water."

Scott Kirkpatrick (partial comment): "The multi-seconds hand-held exposures with Olympus E-M1 Mark II are real—I've done it, and you can read about it by others in various places. But it requires combining IBIS and OIS in one special  lens, the Olympus 12–100mm ƒ/4 IS PRO."

Richard Skoonberg: "Leaders in IBIS? Mike, you are a former Pentaxian! You forgot to mention the Pentax K-1, which uses its IBIS for its Pixel Shift Resolution, which is utterly amazing with still subjects—rivaling medium format; its Astrotrace technology, which allows it to take up to five minute exposures by moving the sensor in concert with its GPS; and the K-1 also provides modest level and perspective correction in-camera.

"Plus the K-1 offers 4–5 stops of image stabilization."

Bob Johnston: "I suspect that the use of IBIS vs. OIS has more to do with patent ownership than anything else. As far as I can remember Minolta were the first to have IBIS. According to Wikipedia they used it in the Dimage A1 in 2003. They certainly were the first to use it in a DSLR—the Dynax 7D (Maxxum 7D) in 2004 or 2005. They called it AS—Anti Shake. Of course Sony inherited the patents and have a large share in Olympus."

Mike replies: I owned a Konica-Minolta 7D that I bought used in 2006. It was really one of my favorite cameras ever. The AS on mine seemed to work wonders—it sold me on the feature, and I wouldn't swear that any of the cameras I've tried since then that had some form of IS have worked as well...I'm quite sure a few of them didn't. The color accuracy was also excellent. I would have used mine far longer than I did, but I started experiencing electronic glitches and Sony wouldn't repair it. I still have the old K-M 7D somewhere.

John McMillin: "Another historic factor favoring Canon's allegiance to OIS—it was the only way to stabilize the image in an OVF, which was the universal standard. A stable VF image is especially important in telephoto work, which lines right up with Canon's market niche. Today, with EVFs feeding live images from the sensor, IBIS stabilizes the observed image, too, negating this advantage.

"The third advantage of OIS for Canon and Nikon is how it boosts consumer interest in buying new OEM lenses. If you lived through the first OIS revolution, you probably replaced most of your EF lenses (which you'd bought a decade before to replace your MF lenses). Then, when improved generations of OIS arrived, that was another reason to trade up again. What would it cost to upgrade a standard set of pro zooms and long primes? Plenty, and Canon likes it that way. Meanwhile, owners of Minolta, then Sony, and now Pentax DSLRs are content to know that each new camera body will probably improve the IBIS performance of all our current lenses.

"But you know that, Mike—that was your advice, IIRC, about the first two. (And thanks for the credit, too! I've made the same point on various forums to tepid response, so I'm happy that you could run with it here.)"

Sid: "Having used my Canon 10x42 L IS binoculars for birding for more than a decade, I am still delighted by their performance, optically, electronically, and mechanically. Now and then I use my Canon 10x30 IS binoculars, the original version, because they're lighter and more compact, though they're no match for the excellence of the 10x42. If Canon should offer a Mark II upgrade of the 10x42, I'd likely be a buyer."

Last Day, Last Chance! Our Book Sale Is Ending Today

Our current book sale ends at close of business on the East Coast today, for the matched pair of Lee Friedlander's life work and the beautiful Paul Strand title. You can still make a last-minute order during the day today, but then they go back to regular price.

It has been extremely popular and very successful, with many hundreds of books successfully homed. I'll have final numbers for you in a week or so. Yale has been excellent about taking care of problems, of which (after an initial glitch, corrected within hours) there have been only a few.

There are two ways to order:

[UPDATE: Sale ended on Friday evening. Please check back for future book sales!]

Big thanks
Our thanks to everyone who bought one, two, or all three of these books. I hope you get a lot of pleasure out of them.

I'd have a book sale every month if I could. We have more from Yale University Press (yup, YUP) and a gorgeous volume of 19th century landscape photography coming up this Fall. Watch this space!

Mike
(Many thanks to Jim and our friends at YUP)

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.

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hugh crawford: "I got both Lee Friedlander books, a few days ago I went through In the Picture and it was so emotionally devastating* that I couldn't do any work on my project for the rest of the day, except for looking at paper samples and researching international postal rates. That's how good it was. I wasn't really expecting a memento mori and haven't opened the other Friedlander book yet since I'm running behind schedule already. TLDR: Wow!"

*not somthing I expect from Lee Friedlander, I don't know whether it was seeing what I had always thought of of as individual photographs set as a narrative or if it's the unexpected cognitive overlap of that work seeping into what I'm editing and vice versa. —Hugh

Benjamin Marks: "I have been enjoying the Friedlander books extensively. I have a couple of 'longitudinal' projects myself (originally inspired by Nicholas Nixon), and the sheer depth of Friedlander's documentary effort is awe-inspiring.

"Mike: Your making these book offers happen is really such a gift to the community you have created. And there is such a natural (I almost hesitate to use the word) synergy between publishers or wholesalers who have reached saturation in their markets and a group of pretty sophisticated consumers (if I may pat all of the TOP readership, myself included, on the back) who are otherwise unaware of the volumes on offer. Win-win-win, if TOP gets a little something for the effort. Well done!"

The Watkins Glen Exam

I wanted to add something to Euan's comments yesterday about Watkins Glen: namely, that Watkins Glen is a nice test for a photographer. If I taught photography in this area, an assignment to come back with three good pictures from Watkins Glen might be a good final exam. It's a test both of vision—somehow cramming the 360-degree drama of the spaces around you into a bounded rectangle, and adequately avoiding standard naturey clichés while doing it; but also a test of technique. There are so many bright, sunlit areas right next to deep shadows that it's a constant challenge to meter well and fit the subject brightness range optimally into the sensor's exposure range AKA dynamic range. People who just put the camera on go and swing it around in devil-may-care fashion letting the camera technology take care of the details are bound to lose a good number of shots to poor exposure.

It's a test of a camera's dynamic range, too. Here's an out-of-camera JPEG that gives you an idea of the basic lighting problems of the place:

I've lost the highlights rimming the pair at the top of the steps, and wouldn't want to lose any more, but you can see how dark and empty the shadows look down where Xander is.

Here's a variant I like better that required a radical amount of HDR shenanigans in Photoshop just to get it to look like a normal out-of-camera snap:

Gradients, local color correction, the works. (There's a lot of green light in the shadows down there.) And of course you have to leave in a lot of contrast, or you'll miss the light-and-shadow feel of the place.

As an example of that, here a beam of sunlight happened to hit the froth at the bottom of a waterfall:

It would be very easy to overcorrect this—but if you did you'd lose the dappled-sunlight, deep-woodsy feel of what you were looking at. The light and dark is the point, with just enough detail to imply what's in the shadows. (I don't like this picture particularly, but it's good as an example.)

Photographer at work in the upper reaches of Watkins Glen. See him up there on the bridge with his tripod? He probably didn't want me in his picture, but I wanted him in mine.

Anyway, if you ever visit Watkins Glen, take along your widest-angle lenses and your best chops, and watch yer highlights! The place well worth seeing without having a camera along at all, but it's also a fun challenge for a photographer.

 

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.

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Bird After Bird (Not Actually OT)

In back of the house I have a covered patio—it's a "pavilion," in this case meaning a freestanding roof with open sides. The builder was going to make an extra Summer bedroom out there, separate from the house, but after building a sturdy timber-frame structure he liked it so well as an outdoor space (they lived in the place initially) that he never enclosed it.

Lulu, me, and the covered patio or pavilion

Fortunately or unfortunately, the birds like to nest under its roof. At first I tried to shoo them away, but American robins (a different bird altogether than the English robin) are surprisingly bloody-minded about building their nests wherever they dang well want to build them. So I switched tactics, and decided to just enjoy the birds. So I now call the pavilion "The Aviary." I don't use it much, but it's being put to use.

I'm happy to report that Mother Robin's second clutch of eggs has recently hatched. After seeing three new birds into the world earlier in the Spring, she's now launching three more.

And—fun for me—I chanced to see the quintessential Robin tableaux the other day: baby bird craning its neck skyward, mouth open wide, waiting for food; mother bird perched on the side of the nest dangling a worm over the waiting beak of the youngster and then dropping it. And the little guy promptly gulping it down.

Fun. I'd never seen that before. Didn't get a picture of it, of course.

I've generally not been trying to get pictures, because basically you want to leave the birds alone and not stress them. But I did want to get a shot of the little ones this time. Here you can see two of the current three hatchlings. (The nest on the left was occupied last year but has been sitting vacant this year. Maybe it got foreclosed.)

Dad has come back around too, after the eggs hatched, to care for the babies; he's a scrappy, runty little guy, noticeably smaller than the female, so I can tell them apart. Sometimes he's there alone guarding the young.

Here's an odd thing. Until someone mentioned it the other day, I didn't even realize I could shoot my Fuji X-T1 on electronic shutter. I've even read a whole book about that camera! (There's one for the X-T2 now too.) I like Rico Pfirstinger's books, although my ignorance is possibly not the best advertisement for this book in this case. Ahem. Sorry about that, Rico.

Or maybe I just skipped that page.

It's not like I didn't know about electronic shutter. I've been very aware of it on various Panasonics, especially because of the "shutter shock" controversies with the GX8. It just hadn't occurred to me that the Fuji would have it too.

Oh well. Live and learn. Anyway I shot this silently, with the camera set to electronic shutter.

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.

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(Ends TODAY!)

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Ken Ford: "Maybe take up falconry?  :-)  "

Stephen Scharf: "Loved the shots of the birds, Mike. I think you should photograph them more frequently. Personally I love seeing 'slice of life' photos like this (and pics of Butters, of course).

"Personally, I love photographing birds, but I find that I don't get much opportunity to do so. I did get really lucky once when I was on a business trip to the UK and there was a "raptor sanctuary" literally next door to my hotel (Gauntlet Birds of Prey, Knutsford, Chelsea, UK).

"They very kindly brought out some raptors for me to visit with and I felt very fortunate to get these photos (BTW, these were some of the very first photos I ever took with my just-purchased X100T):

"A beautiful female Red-Tailed Hawk that they had in for rehab from Califonia:

"By the way, if you look carefully, you can see how the brown leather lanyard on the hawk's right foot goes under the thumb of the falconer's glove, through the middle of his hand, and the end of the lanyard is ultimately wrapped around his little finger. The falconer mentioned this method of securing a raptor is the origin of the terms under my thumb and wrapped around my little finger."

A Visit to the TOP Corner of the World

Words by Euan Forrester
Pictures by Euan Forrester and Kathryn Toews

We stayed at La Belle Vie (photo by Euan)

Mike wrote a post recently hectoring his readers to come visit him at TOP World Headquarters in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. While his post listed many interesting museums and wineries, those weren’t the aspects of the area that got us the most excited on our recent trip to visit him. And when I mentioned to people at home that I was going to upstate New York, all I got was blank stares. So we wanted to share a few of the things we saw in the hopes of cajoling a few more readers to come out and see this perhaps-underappreciated part of the world.

Howe Cavern (photo by Euan)

My favourite non-Mike part of the trip was visiting Howe Cavern. The "traditional tour" of the cave is along well-built walkways amongst well-lit rock features, but we booked the "adventure tour" which involved a special suit (it's muddy), headlamps, and a guide. I would be too scared to explore a cave like this on my own, but our guide was fun and interesting and took our minds off how frightening it was to wiggle through Fat Man’s Misery.

Sampling the waters at Saratoga Springs (photo by Katie)

Katie’s favourite non-Mike part of the trip was Saratoga Springs State Park. She stumbled onto it randomly while Googling around for how to spend an afternoon one day, and we found a short walk where you can sample water from five different springs. I was skeptical, but they all taste different. We didn’t plan this day at all, but I get the feeling from the maps of the area that there’s lots of little random gems like this to discover.

We got "spectacular fatigue" at Watkins Glen. Note the relative size of the people on the bridge. (Photo by Euan)

Mike did mention Watkins Glen, as did a reader, but it only got a sentence and it deserves much more. If we could do it again we’d put this last because it set the standard for beauty everywhere else we went, and nothing quite matched up. It’s a long gorge, and around every corner was another beautiful waterfall. We eventually got “spectacular fatigue” from the constant bombardment of beauty.

At the Watkins Glen International raceway it seems there are often amateur events that aren’t advertised but are inexpensive to attend. And being amateur events, I expect it’s easy to get up close to the race—and even to the pits. It can be a little tricky to find out when events are happening, but we chatted up a security guard for information.

The Grand Canyon of the East (photo by Katie)

Letchworth State Park is home to “the Grand Canyon of the East.” Never having been to the Grand Canyon of Everywhere Else, I was intrigued. We initially planned to hike along it, but it turns out to be better (or at least easier) to see by it car. There’s plenty of viewpoints, a nature centre that’s quite interesting, and three large waterfalls that are easy to get to.

Katie pausing at an overlook (photo by Euan)

There’s plenty of hiking in the area: whenever we were off the main Interstates we could see small parking areas with cars indicating one hike after another. We did a short hike called Vroman’s Nose, which is an interesting glacial formation with a moderate slope up one side and steep cliffs on the other.

A private showing of Winogrand prints, just for us! (Photo by Katie)

Mike wrote about the George Eastman Museum recently and his “one more thing” at the end made me really excited to visit: the chance to put on white cotton gloves and see prints up close and without glass in front. My only problem was that I didn’t know what photos to ask to see, and I didn’t know they have their collection online to browse.

So when I called and they asked, I blurted out the first name that came to mind: Garry Winogrand. But then they asked “Which project?” and I was stumped again. The gentleman kindly said that they’d arrange for an overview, and we we arrived we saw that he’d selected some matted prints and then a collection from Women Are Beautiful. It was the perfect choice: I have most of Winogrand’s books but not that one, and Katie wasn’t familiar with his work at all and this provided an excellent entry point. It was a magical experience that left me tingling with excitement.

Playing at the Museum of Play (photo by Euan)

Also in Rochester is the Museum of Play, which was also recommended by a reader. It’s excellent. I was expected a stuffy, dusty, collection of toys behind glass and instead we found a Sesame Street neighbourhood to walk through (complete with a cab to drive Elmo wherever he wants to go), a scaled down grocery store to practice our cashier skills, an automatic Etch-a-Sketch that took our picture, videogames to play, dance moves to show off, and a giant Mr. Potato Head to play with.

The mists of Niagara (photo by Katie)

Niagara Falls didn’t disappoint. We saw them from every conceivable angle: standing right beside the top as they plunge over, looking up from the bottom on Maid of the Mist, feeling their power on the Journey Behind the Falls, and from our restaurants and hotel room high above. Despite all this time staring at them over the course of two days, I still felt that I had not fully appreciated them: they’re too big to fully comprehend.

Mike and friends (photo by Euan)

When I met Mike, it was easy to get over the asymmetrical nature of our relationship (I’ve been a reader for about a decade, and he of course knew nothing about me), and we talked about plenty of things that involved photography and plenty of things that didn’t. I showed him some prints and we talked about the work I’d done and the difficulties I was having. Our breakfast at La Belle Vie the next day was delicious and the conversation was similarly wide-ranging. Despite Mike’s admonition that “people meet writers hoping for a special extra something, but our best selves are already in our writing,” I respectfully disagree and I left feeling energized and happy.

Buttermilk Falls (photo by Euan)

If you’ve been thinking of a trip to visit Mike, I highly recommend it.

Euan

©2017 by Euan Forrester and Kathryn Toews, all rights reserved

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Frank Petronio: "Looking for that thumbs up button...."

Terry Burnes: "Our California-raised son attended college at Colgate University in Hamilton New York not far from the Finger Lakes. We visited that area at least twice a year while he was there. I must say the Winters, and even Fall and Spring, can have daunting weather. Almost every visit ran the gamut from sun to snow. But what a beautiful area with a huge amount of history. We visited many of the places mentioned in this post and more. Even took a week long cruise on the Erie Canal in a little rented boat.

"On an RV trip around the perimeter of the USA in 2006 our three favorite states were Texas, Florida and New York. Why? It was the diversity of each and the way they contradicted stereotypes. New York State is so much more than New York City. Go!"

Jackson Bart: "Upstate New York is such an underrated place. I was in Cazenovia last summer, so beautiful there."

Happy 4th!

Photo by Dave Reichert

Happy Independence Day to all yous Murrkins who are celebrating. Don't mix booze and firecrackers, and keep your distance from those who do!

If you're looking for a good read that will immerse you in the subject, I can recommend Alan Taylor's masterful and engrossing American Revolutions: A Continental History 1750-1804, a followup to his wonderful American Colonies. A cut above. Americans need to know more American history.

Hope you all enjoy yourselves and have a lovely day.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave for permission to use his picture)

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Speed: "I hated history classes in school (U.S. grades one through twelve). We had to memorize names and dates and who did what—never why. In college, history was taught as a story that flowed, filled with interesting characters, heroes and villains. I've been hooked ever since."

Bill Bresler: "Great pic."

Ken Tanaka (partial comment): "My life-long belief in the value of historical knowledge is largely in ruins now in the third act of life. As I look back I see all the major events during my life—financial, cultural, political—taking place either uninformed by, or with complete disregard for, history. I am reluctantly convinced that it's a waste of time studying human history with any predictive expectations. It's still good entertainment but otherwise trivial."

Mike replies: "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." —Friedrich Hegel.

Here's what Dave's  picture connotes to me: La Liberté éclairant le monde (Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty) was a gift from the French when the United States was about a century old. It has a rich constellation of meanings. What became known as the American Revolutionary War could not possibly have been won without the help of the French, who were helping us in order to hurt England, under the same principle of "the enemy of my enemies is my friend" that has motivated a lot of political activity in world history; for instance, more recently it led us to surreptitiously aid the Afghans during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. But the effort helped impoverish the French monarchy, weakening it and making it more vulnerable when the French emulated our rebellion with their own revolution, adopting similar enlightenment ideals.

Nowadays, of course, despite their historic friendship to us and the crucial participation in our freedom and independence, the French have, highly ironically, become an easy target for xenophobes and reactionary nationalists—largely because, unlike the English, Irish and Germans for example, there are only a small number of Americans with French heritage in this country; the major French ethnic enclave in North America is the Province of Quebec in Canada, itself formerly mostly British territory.

And then, of course, there's the meaning of the Statue of Liberty as the symbol of the freedom and promise of the United States for arriving immigrants, being literally one of the first sights of their new home seen by generations of Europeans arriving by boat. The contrast between the spirit of la liberté éclairant le monde with Trump's "wall," and by extension our politics and values traditionally with what our politics and values have been transmogrifying into since 1980, could not be more acute.

That's what it brings up in my head; others' mileage may vary. I concede that the picture is made or broken by the guy in the shades eating the ice cream cone, but, whatever it might mean to you, I don't see how this picture on this occasion could have very much resonance without knowing a little history.

Ken Tanaka responds: "By the way...I completely neglected to comment that I agree that Dave Reichert's image is wonderful. Many of the best images are seasoned with mystery, ambiguity, and references to memes and lore. This has it all. Yum!

"Also, that statue is something, ain't it? I doubt that even 1% of Americans can accurately recite its history (you're a 1-precenter, Mike) but that doesn't diminish its symbolic power a bit. There just aren't many symbols in the world as powerful as that statue.

"Finally, Brad's comment reminded me that 'history' is a tale, not a statue. Its telling is very analogous to making photographs. Historians choose the central subject, the focal length, their depth-of-field, and their selective focus just as any photographer. And with such choices they can...lie, just like any photographer, eh?"

Is Fuji the New Leica? Or More Correctly the Old Leica?

Written by Mike Plews

It certainly looks like Fuji is on the way to become what Leica used to be. From out here in the cheap seats I can see three clear indicators.

For the first, we need to jump into the wayback machine to the days of pre-digital photojournalism. I’m talking local photojournalism here, not at the national level. Back in the day, a well turned out "local cheesehead" had a bag full of Nikons and at least one M-series Leica, usually with a 35mm ƒ/2 attached, for those chores that only a Leica could do.

(By the way, in this case "cheesehead" does not refer to people from Wisconsin. It is a term of endearment reserved for the local press by the nationals when they think we are out of earshot.)

Since digital took over I have never seen a local sporting a digital Leica, but I am now seeing a lot of Fuji gear tucked away in amongst the Canon artillery. The Fujis are now being called upon to do what Leicas once did. No doubt there are people at the national level shooting digital Leicas but not out here in the provinces.

The second indicator is that at least two Fujis look like Leicas, and people love them like Leicas.

The third indicator is the uptick in Fuji lens voodoo. I am starting to hear Fuji glass being described in highly subjective glowing terms not unlike those formerly reserved for Dagors and Rodenstock enlarging lenses. (I read once that Leica glass exhibited "a sort of roundness" that no other lenses had. I have no idea what "roundness" means in this context. I hope it isn’t spherical aberration.)

Fuji is clearly on its game. The best still PJ I know raves about his Fuji cameras, and it's not about romance, it's about performance.

If I was starting from scratch and had the scratch I suspect a Fuji and few snout-nosed primes would do me just fine.

Mike P.

©2017 by Michael Plews, all rights reserved

Mike Plews is a TV news photographer and a lifelong still photographer who has been taking pictures since 1963. He says he is a "longtime TOP fan." He lives on a farm in the American Midwest.

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Patrick: "You make an excellent point. I've recently finalized my transition from Nikon to Fuji for my documentary wedding work. For a while I shot both side by side while working. I remember one quiet ceremony where I put the Fuji X-T2 on silent electronic shutter, shooting unnoticed. Then I pulled out the Nikon D800E (my long-lens camera at the time) and the sound of the shutter in comparison was so loud that half the guests turned to see what was going on. I quickly switched back to the Fuji for the remainder of the ceremony and made it a point to replace the Nikon as quickly as I could. The DSLR shutter never bothered me in the years I shot weddings up to that point, but suddenly it was embarrassingly noisy when put against the silence of the Fuji."

Stephen Scharf: "Just one more comment regarding Mike P.'s really nice article: here's a nice example demonstrating how Fujis are 'now being called on to do what Leicas once did.'

"One of my photo assignments at the NASCAR SaveMart 350 for Sonoma Raceway last weekend was to cover the NASCAR Euro Whelen Series driver, Alon Day, from Israel. The PR Director for the NASCAR Euro Whelen series wanted coverage of Alon as a guest driver in the 'big USA race.'

"Here's a photo I took of Alon during his press conference with the wonderful little Fuji X100F, which was perfect for this shooting scenario as it just 'gets out tof the way.'

"By the way, this photo was taken the X100F’s little in-camera flash which I find to be very 'intelligent' and provides just the right amount of fill to look natural."

Simon Robinson: "Funny—I've just gone the other way and sold my Fuji X100F and got a Leica. The problem with the Fuji was the out-of-focus areas: sometimes they looked terrible—terrible enough to ruin a photo. Even if Fuji stopped using X-Trans sensors in their ASP-C cameras I wouldn't be tempted to go back, as I'm loving using the Leica and find it the perfect camera for me."

Ken Ford: "I know that I'm impressed enough with the 'training wheels' X-Pro1 / 35mm WR combo I picked up last year that I'm almost certainly going to offload my M-P 240 (and a whole bunch of other stuff) and pick up an X-Pro2 with 23mm ƒ/2 and 50mmƒ/2 as a Leica M replacement."

Jackson Bart: "The Leica M10 is the new Leica."

Paulo Bizarro: "No doubt Fujis look good, they look the part, you can even mount M glass via adapters. But...you can also mount M glass on a Sony A7, and keep the focal length as intended. Just saying...."

Andre Y: "I still stand by my claim that the iPhone is the new old Leica."

Alex: I think of my X-T1 as a Nikon SLR. In use it's basically a FE2. I keep it on aperture priority, shoot manual lenses about half the time, and make frequent use of exposure compensation."

Mike replies: Y'know, this wasn't my post, but I really like your idea. Possibly because I've been hearing people clamor for a digital Nikon FM/FE/FE2/FM2/FM3a since just about the time of the 6-MP Nikon D100 (that was 15 years ago, which is 105 in dog years and about 45 in digital camera years). The X-T1 is much more complicated, of course, but in many other ways, you may just have hit the nail on the head.

IBIS Coming to Fujifilm Cameras?

Speaking about shutting up, as I was in the last post, this is the second-to-last post I have planned about Fuji for a while. I see I have lingered on them too lovingly lately. One more post after this and then we'll move on.

But I thought this was worth a separate mention—Patrick at Fujirumors says he is "100% certain" that adding in-body image stabilization (IBIS) to its cameras is part of "Fujifilm's (current) plans." Yes, despite the fact that the company has said in the past that it will not do so. Check out his article at the link.

IBIS is one of those things that either is or is not important to people. Some (incl. yours truly) like and appreciate it; some (more, perhaps?) don't care. But it does seem to be becoming standard in the mirrorless universe. Everything from the Sony A7RII ($2,700) to the Olympus E-M5 Mark II ($900) has it. Fuji is quickly becoming an island in that regard.

One thing seems likely: we probably won't have to wait three years to find out. Fujifilm moves fast.

Mike
(Thanks to several commenters in the previous post)

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Stephen Scharf: "My guess is we'll see it. Primarily for the same reason that Fuji was an island when it came to video, let alone 4K video. Then they saw the writing on the wall, and not only upped their game with the X-T2's video, but did an excellent 4K implementation, so much so that serious videographers are now using this system.

"One of the things I've learned about Fuji is they tend to really think things through. Like any company, Fuji doesn't always get it right the first time, or get it perfect, but they really do actively think about things, even what appear to be the little things.

"This thoughtful approach was apparent to me the first time I shot the new GFX at a camera store. it was very clear they did a lot of engineering to ensure the shutter mechanism was well very damped so as not to induce any shutter shock (sidebar: damping is what engineers do to minimize or attenuate vibration or oscillation; dampening is to moisten something). The other thing they did (and actually wrote a 'white paper' about, which virtually no one talks about or discusses in reviews), was the considerable engineering that went into making the GFX lens mount stiff enough and rigid enough to maximize optical quality from larger and longer medium-format lenses.

"There are sound engineering reasons why Canikon implemented optical image stabilization (OIS) rather than in-body image stabilization (IBIS), reasons that Fuji agrees with. One of the reasons is that it is considerably more difficult to control lens vibration on long, heavy, telephotos (like a 300mm ƒ/2.8 or 500mmƒ/4 or 600mm ƒ/5.6) with IBIS than with OIS. Think about it. A 500mm ƒ/4 is a pretty damn long lens with a pretty damn narrow field of view. Very small movements at the body result in a much larger movement at the front of the lens. This why OIS is a more effective engineering solution for controlling vibration at the front of a big, long, heavy lens than IBIS. One of the reasons Olympus had been so successful with IBIS is because the majority of their first series of Micro 4/3 lens were, by comparison, short (in absolute length), small, and light.

"However, now that Olympus getting serious about penetrating the pro/sports PJ ranks with the E-M1 Mark II, they are also using OIS for their big, fast, telephoto primes (like the wonderful Olympus 300mm ƒ/4). Hmm....

"Olympus is utilizing OIS in their big long telephoto lenses for the very same reasons that Canikon and Fuji did: because it's best engineering solution for long lenses. What Olympus did that was innovative was to design the E-M1 Mark II to use OIS and IBIS synergistically. Pretty cool.

"If Fuji does decide to implement IBIS, my expectation is they will do so for the reasons Mike P. points out above and why they implemented 4K video: to remain competitive, and to not be an island of 'no video and no IBIS' in a sea of competitive offerings that offer these features. But my guess is that they will be thoughtful, in their typical Fuji fashion, and engineer IBIS to mitigate any instrinsic 'downsides' they thinks it causes, and work hard to synergistically integrate IBIS with the stabilization of their existing OIS lenses."

Henning Wulff: "In the mid '90s I had been using Nikons for my SLR work and play for a couple of decades, but Nikon seemed to be lacking innovation and Canon was on the rise. I had been waiting a while for Nikon to introduce a 24mm or wider shift lens, but although the Nikon rep said one was coming, it never did. And then, Canon came out with the 28–135mm optically stabilized lens and shortly thereafter with the lens I really wanted, the 100–400mm. Between the 100–400 IS and the 24mm TS-E I decided to switch systems. I stayed with Canon until a year ago.

"When Micro 4/3 came out, I got a Panasonic with three lenses, two of which were stabilized. Then, when Olympus introduced the E-M5, I started to get Olympus cameras at any renewal cycle. IBIS is great because it works with all lenses, and Olympus' system is outstanding, in part because the sensor is small and IBIS is easier to implement at a high level of performance with smaller sensors. I don't use Canon bodies anymore, but a number of my Canon lenses, including the TS-E lenses, continue to live on a Sony A7RII which convinced me in good part because of IBIS.

"Recently I took a series of pictures of fireworks, handheld and freestanding on a beach, at speeds between two and five seconds using an E-M1 Mark II and 17mm lens. All 60 shots were what I would term 'sharp.'

"After I got my first stabilized lens, I told people that in my opinion stabilization was one of the greatest advances in general photography, equivalent or maybe greater than autofocus or through-the-lens metering. It allows you to get shots you otherwise couldn't."

I'm Going to Shut Up

The very camera that in 2005 I said
"they" should build. Fuji built it in 2010.

A leitmotif—a.k.a. meme, hackneyed saying, cliché—of the Internet photography forum world is: "If only they would make [blank] I would buy it."

I think I'm going to stop saying that.

We're big on it. The implication is they don't make exactly what I want. If they would only provide me with exactly what I want then they would be blessed with my cash.

The thing is, each time I say that, apparently I don't mean it.

Way back when I decided against the Olympus E-M5, I said I was sticking with the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens forever (which I did not do), and, well, if only they would make a professional-level Micro 4/3 camera I would buy it.

Well, they did, and I am not using it.

While waiting for the E-M1 to come along, I switched to the Sony NEX system. Some time thereafter I found myself holding back from the A6000 update, lamenting that I would buy such a camera if only they would make one with in-body image stabilization (IBIS). This one seemed pretty safe; I figured they'd never do that. Certainly not right after coming out with the A6300 update.

But they did (which still kinda surprises and amazes me, if I'm honest).

But do I own it? I do not.

Granted, I've moved on from Sony and it would cost $$$ to move back.

And then there's this. For quite a while I proclaimed (um, loudly) that if anyone ever made a dedicated black-and-white digital camera, I would be forced to buy it.

Forced. Put ketchup on that word, please—it will make it more palatable as I am, um, forced to eat it.

Because alas, someone did do that, and the rest is history...namely, that I never bought it.

Of course it's from a brand that's irrevocably and irretrievably above my wallet's weight class. Did you notice the price at that link? For a manual-focus camera? I use that as my "out."

But still. While we are here, I should bring it up that a lot of "if only they would make [blank] I would buy it" is just another way of saying "I want [blank] but I can't afford it, so I'm going to make it their fault. The product is flawed. There's something wrong with it. It isn't exactly right or exactly what I want. They have not pleased me. Otherwise I would buy it." Yeah, right—sure you would, you skinny-wallet, no-money-having dog-on-the-Internet.

All right. Guilty.

Icing...er, ketchup...on the cake
The biggest one of all—don't bleat at me, I already feel sheepish—is that in 2005 I essentially spec'd out the mirrorless camera segment in my head, calling for it in an article that got a lot of attention. It took a long time for what I described to arrive on the scene...four years at least. And I did use an early iteration of the idea. But, right this second, a company makes a camera that is almost scarily close to what I originally called for...except it's even better than what I imagined.

Am I satisfied? Evidently not. Never laid out the long green for one of those. (Although I have one in the house, thanks to a friend.)

They—a different "they"—even built a full-frame version! With, to rub salt in the wound, a lens by the lensmaker I've frequently named as my favorite. No, no, I don't use that either.

At least I didn't join the worldwide chorus of people crying out that if only Fuji would make an interchangeable-lens version of the sensational X100, then they would buy that. As we all know, Fuji did exactly that, and they didn't waste any time about it, either. Apparently a lot of people did buy the X-Pro1, too. So maybe other people aren't like me.

Do I need to mention that I once proclaimed that I would never, ever again buy a camera that didn't have IBIS? You know, IBIS, like the trusty Fuji X-T1 sitting on the desk right next to me as I write this does not have.

Anyway, next time I say anything like if only they would make [blank] I would buy it, please call me on it, please.

I should be mindful of the past, and stop saying that.

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.

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Ranjit Grover: "Mike, You do not have to feel guilty on that. That is human nature. It only tells us you are human too. The funny part is the camera makers know that and that is their trump card. It is the carrot hanging on a stick in front of the donkey that goes by the name 'the consumer.'"

Dave in NM: "Re 'I'm going to shut up.' Don't worry, Mike. We won't hold our breath.  ;-) "

Christopher May: "You're not alone, Mike. I've been itching to get back into 8x10 but always used the lack of a cheap and lightweight camera as one of the reasons I would pass on it. Lo and behold, 'they' (the fine folks at Intrepid) just ran a Kickstarter for a small and lightweight 8x10. Alas, I was not one of the backers of the project. So I understand how that works."

Ernie Van Veen: "If only they would make something like this for photography:

"I would definitely buy it! (Although the guitar version I use seems to be faulty.)"

Rfeg: "I have a slightly evolved version of your saying: 'if they make that camera they would sell a lot and maybe even I would buy it.' I try to be honest as much as I can. This is the case of Fuji B&W: if they make a X-T20BW, they would gather almost all the dedicated B&W 'low end' (read cheaper) market. It is a niche market but globally should be many cameras and they have everything developed save (part of) the software. (And they'd also push the X-Trans naysayers to Fuji lenses and bodies). Looks like a win-win. And even I might buy it."

Stephen Scharf: "Well, I know you don't put much stock in rumor sites, but FujiRumors, which has had a >95% accuracy this year (as well as last year), has an article today that there will be IBIS in future Fuji X-cams. FujiRumors founder Patrick does say that this is a from a 'trusted source,' so it might be worth putting your plan of skipping upgrades and wait to see what the X-T3 might be.

"Rumors aside, Fuji does a very good track record of listening to customers, and more importantly, acting on them."

John Shriver: "Well, I lived up to my commitment. I said if Pentax made a full-frame DSLR, I'd buy it. When they came out with the K-1, I put my money where my mouth was. I had already bought the appropriate lenses before used prices zoomed. Love the pictures, but boy is it heavy. But I'm not ready to pay the new prices for an Leica digital rangefinder. Waiting for decent used M9 under $2,000."

Andy Kowalczyk: "I think your experience just reflects the underlying reality of two quotes from Steve Jobs: 'You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.' '...it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.'"

A.B. Normal: "For your snoutnosed Fuji lens post, I commented that if only those lenses had IS, I'd buy an X-Pro2. Now I'm hearing about IBIS coming to Fuji...even better! That was fast.

"Now, if only...FF Pentax and Olympus mirrorless, a mid-range headless Mac, an electric VW GTI, a way to lose 25 pounds without quitting red wine, an end to cable monopolies, the arrival of advanced extraterrestrials who decide to put things right on earth...I'll just stop there."

Mike replies: I see what you mean...all preposterous. By the way, extraterrestrials have visited, many times, but Earth is marked down in the interstellar ledgers as a jungle planet populated by giant lizards, since that's what we were for eons upon eons.  Boy, are they ever going to be surprised the next time they come by. The catch is, we won't still be around for that, since they only check up on us every couple of million years, and we are an evolutionary dead end, a brief flash in the pan in terms of geologic time. We'll go by too quickly to be noticed.