The Online Photographer

A Guide to Optical Magnifiers

Dealing with batteries the other day—and battery packaging—I came up again against an age-related annoyance—it's getting harder and harder for me to read small print.

So I looked into getting a magnifier.

Turns out it's one of those things where there's just too much choice. A plethora of different types and hundreds of different options. The many different powers of magnification, simple lenses, doublets and triplets. Coatings usually aren't mentioned. And there's such an avalanche of really cheap, mass-produced options that it can be hard to find anything else because it all gets lost in that vast seething stew of cheap stuff.

And as you might expect, unlike most casual consumers in this category, I'm not that interested in cheap. I'm more interested in good.

Here are a few common magnifier types:

Your basic classic magnifying glass. Used for reading and to kill ants.

Magnifying glass. The "iconic" (sorry, but think Sherlock Holmes) single-element, large field simple lens on a handle, usually 2X, that police inspectors in old movies and cartoons use to signify that they're busy inspecting. In real life, however, the classic magnifying glass is mainly used for reading. And killing ants on the sidewalk, an activity that's fun exactly once if you're not older than six (or are going to grow up to be a serial killer).

The problem with magnifying glasses, these days, seems to be that there's no money in them. The lowest-common-demominator model is practical—it incorporates a light and two lenses of two different powers—but it costs basically as much as two cups of coffee, so how good could it be? My guess is, just short of almost adequate, like most such barely-good-enough but super-cheap-so-they'll-sell types of products. Maybe I shouldn't judge.

As far as the classic types like the one pictured above, I've found that 2X isn't very useful—too close to no magnification at all. I'd consider 3X to be the baseline for a reading glass. Here's a decent one of those for $11.50.

If you live in a home, however, not a third-grade classroom, meaning you want to leave it out and you want it to look nice, try the Celestron Ambassador set pictured above. $50.

Common stand loupe

Loupe. A "loupe" can be any eyepiece magnifier, but in photography and editing the baseline is a loupe like the dreaded Kalt 8X (above), a super-cheap plastic simple lens on a clear stand that is only sharp in the middle of its field. These were all over the place back in my student/teacher days, because they're cheap as chocolates and they serve, sorta kinda, for seeing if a B&W negative is sharp or if you've got the grain focused in a B&W print. They cost $9.50 so it doesn't matter too much if one falls behind the sink or wanders off in a student's backpack. I kinda have a genial low-lying loathing for these overly-familiar cheap-crap knuckles of plastic, so I'm not going to link to it. There are already enough of them in the world. We don't want to encourage their further proliferation.

There's actually a good version, the Peak 8X stand loupe, for $49. If you want one, get that instead. I had a professor who wore one around his neck on a string.

If you want a very high-quality pocket loupe, there's a "Leica option" (I mean that like "a Rolls-Royce option," not something actually made by Leica): the lovely 7X Hastings Triplet (coated) made by Edmund Optics. Flat-field, corrected for three colors, and mm-mm good. $99. There are higher-power options available too.

Linen tester. A variation on the stand loupe is the linen tester, which I'm including here mainly because I like that name. It's a folding, open-sided stand loupe meant to inspect the thread-count of fabric. Most are of slightly lower magnification but better quality than a plastic-fantastic Kalt-type loupe. $9.

Dome magnifier

Globe (or dome) magnifier. These are intended to be placed on a flat surface to magnify whatever's underneath them. They look nice—like glass paperweights—but it's hard to get the light just right and I don't think they work very well. A good way to put it is that they're 50% useful and 50% annoying. I'll link to it because I used the image and fair's fair, but I can't quite imagine someone buying one and then being happy with me for getting them into it. As an alternative action plan, try this: first, put off buying it till tomorrow, and after that, forget about it altogether.  :-)

The Donegan OptiVisor, a widely used headband magnifier

Headband magnifier. Used by jewelers and modelers—these are what we used most in the modeling room at Model Railroader magazine. Obviously, the main draw is that they're hands-free, comfortable (the lenses flip up to get them out of the way when you don't need them), and nice for their intended purpose. They'll take up a fair amount of room in a kitchen odds 'n' ends drawer, though, and, for general here-and-there use like reading the small print on medicine bottles, they might be overkill. Here's another good one.

A desktop magnifying lamp

Desktop magnifying lamp. There are about a zillion variations on this theme—remembering what I said above about high quality, this Brightech model is one of the very best and, at $70, much more expensive than even good-quality garden-variety options. Desktop magnifying lamps are widely useful for many things, especially because they are lighted so well. Most can double as plain old clamp-lamps as well, quite aside from the magnifying function—this one even features a little cover for the lens to help make it look like a normal lamp. [UPDATE: Michael Matthews points out that this is also a safety feature. Just as a magnifying glass can be used by small kinds to fry ants, it's also at least possible for it to catch stray sunlight and wreak mischief unintentionally. Unlikely that everything would align properly at random, but when the downside is your house burning down, it's worth thinking about. —Ed.]

Only possible problem? Appearance. This would look fine in a utility room, on a garage or basement workbench, in a student dorm or study room, or any kind of workroom (or room at work); it's just that it might not be perfectly at home in the perfect home. You might not like this at the other end of the table from your reproduction Louis Tiffany, or clamped to the edge of your beautiful solid walnut leather-top desk.

The Brightech LightView pictured has an unusually high rating on Amazon, with 609 five-star and another 39 four star reviews out of 670 total. It has a 2.25X magnifier that's five inches in diameter, and the light is dimmable and features adjustable color temperature. The light is LED, not fluorescent, and is claimed to last for 20 years. The lamp also comes in white. Brightech is a U.S.-based, family-owned business, if that matters to you.

What Mike bought: Since I just need a decent-quality general-purpose magnifier to help me with the fine print on small objects, I thought I'd try this Levenhuk Zeno 500 from B&H Photo.

Why? Well, it seems well made, it has eight LEDs in a ring around the lower side so it should be able to throw some light on the subject, and the 3.5X magnification is probably enough for most tasks while not having too narrow a field. And it takes the selfsame rechargeable AAs that started all this.

Judging by the case, it's probably made in the same Pacific-rim factory where all the other magnifiers are made. Not that that's a bad thing.

Is it good? Don't know. But I'll revisit it after I've had a chance to try it.

Have a nice weekend!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

robert e: "May I point out that your iPhone is a handy magnifier as well? Just call up the camera. Even my ancient 5c is around 2X at a couple of inches, I'd say, and of course you can snap a photo and zoom in and scroll around at your leisure. It also has a big advantage over old fashioned optics-only magnifiers in that, thanks to its picture-taking ability, it can see around corners, in crevices, and even behind things. And of course you can save the image for future reference. Other tricks: you can enhance the image for easier reading, do OCR, and translate text. I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking of. Of course, it's just plain fun to hold up a magnifying glass, and they do go better with pipes (the smoking kind)."

Mike replies: Thanks for the reminder. To enable the magnifier app on the iPhone, go to Settings > General > Accessibility, then toggle "Magnifier" to "On." to access it, triple-click the home button.

I should have remembered that! (Also, I added "Optical" to the post title.)

Allan Ostling: "The Hastings 7X Triplet looks like a fine product. Most magnifiers in that range are two-element lenses, which provide a good view with little fall-off of sharpness at the edges. The Hastings, with three elements, should be even better. The focal length of the Hastings is 40mm, and the objective diameter is listed as 0.875", or 22mm—it is therefore a 40mm ƒ/1.8 lens. You probably don't have one of these in your collection of unused lenses. But if you have a 50mm ƒ/1.4 laying around somewhere, you can use this as a 6X loupe, of very high quality. It would not be as convenient (or as powerful) as the Hastings, but for some, it will suffice."

Tim Bradshaw: "I have the Peak 8x loupe which I can vouch for. I got it specifically for looking at 35mm negs and contact sheets, and it is ideal for both. I also have a linen tester, which I use to focus a large format camera: it's not better than the Peak loupe, except that it folds flat, which is quite nice."

Larry Gebhardt: "My favorite loupe is the Mamiya 3X for 6x7. Seems it's now out of production. I bought it for darkroom work, but find I use it for a lot around the house. I like the OptiVisor if I need to manipulate a small object. Finally, a regular pair reading glasses is my most used magnifying solution."

Mike replies: Was the Mamiya originally made by a company called "Cabin"? That's how the boxes were marked anyway, once upon a time. The earlier version was 3X and the later, 3.5X. Like the Pentax 5.5X, you can still find these on eBay.

Adam Richardson: "I have a Mamiya 3.5X loupe that I originally got for looking at 645 transparencies. It's absolutely gorgeous—visually, optically, haptically. But a bit large and cumbersome for your average grab-and-read need. It's a shame I don't shoot transparency film any more as I rarely have a need to use such a wonderful object."

William Schneider: "I have many of the magnifiers that you mentioned, but my favorite one dates back to my darkroom days. I continue to use it now for things requiring a bit more magnification than most magnifiers. It is an Edmund Deluxe 6X Wide Field Magnifier with two achromatic groups, and AR coated. It has a wide field of view and decent eye relief. I just looked on the Edmund Optics website and it is still available. It's hands-down my favorite, and I often wondered why I didn't see more of them around."

Mike replies: That one's another classic, but expensive enough that it was predominantly used when somebody else was paying for it, e.g. in graphic arts departments.

Tom Hassler: "This post made me grin. In 25+ years of large-format studio photography, we used magnifiers of all types for everything from close inspection of chromes and negs to verifying focus on 8x10 ground glasses. I still have a drawer full of them. The expensive ones were not always the best either. In the end my personal favorite was a small magnifying glass which (wait for it...) I wore on a string around my neck!

"Here's a little trick to make the 'plastic knuckle' loupe more usable: flip it around and put the 'wrong' end up to your eye. Move your subject closer or farther away until it appears sharp. Now, by moving around your head and/or the object being viewed, you can get sharp focus almost anywhere."

Bahi (partial comment): "I have a (cheaper, fluorescent) version of the desktop light and it has been phenomenally useful for fixing stuff. Back when I used a DSLR, it needed occasional focus adjustment and without this lamp, I'm not sure I'd have managed it."

MikeR: "What about just plain readers? Over-the-counter reading glasses from your local drugstore."

Herman: "If you wear glasses, the clip-on flip-up magnifying glasses work well. They generally come in strengths of 1.5 to 3 diopters."

Tom: "Deserving of an honourable mention is the Nikon magnifier, the staple of picture editors until the arrival of digital. It came complete with lanyard and the wise wore it around their neck to stop it walking. Mine also had my name painted on it in a belt and braces measure. It was properly 35mm shaped, unlike the linen tester. My personal watershed came when I found myself on the telephone to Apple support pointing out to the help that the engraved serial number on the back of my iPod, without which he would not help me, was too small to be visible to my then 40 year old eyes. Tail between my legs, I used a magnifying glass to read it over."

Mike replies: I do vaguely remember that Nikon magnifier, but I can't find a picture of it online. Was it just like a linen tester, but with a 24x36mm opening?

hugh crawford (partial comment): "If you want the finest possible loupe, and happen to have an old 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens sitting around, and boy do I ever, congratulations, you already own it."

Mike replies: I used to keep a 50mm ƒ/1.4 Pentax Super-Multi-Coated Takumar (screwmount) around for that purpose. Wonder where that went? Pretty narrow field, though.

Bill Tyler: "Did you happen to notice that the name on your magnifier, 'Levenhuk,' echoes 'Leeuwenhoek,' the early Dutch microscopist?"

Mike replies: Good call. Does make you wonder.

Eolake: "Yes! Thanks for this, for years ago I tried to find a really good magnifier, and I was never satisfied with any of those I did find, not really. Usually I manage to sniff out the quality stuff, but not that time."

Mike replies: Yeah, this category is tough. And complicated by the fact that most magnifiers are tailored to various different purposes and uses. One that's perfect for one task might be fairly useless for another.

Michael Matthews: "Another purpose for the lens cover on that desktop magnifying lamp is to block sunlight. If you leave one uncovered in the path of direct sunlight and it happens to be in just the right spot you may be frying more than ants. I found that an old, circular Tupperware container top serves admirably for the magnifying lamp on my wife’s drafting table."

Mike replies: Good point. I should add that to the text of the post.

Imre Karafiath: "Did you look in your camera bag? Nikon and Canon offer two-element close up lenses. My Nikon 6T is a better magnifier than any other that I have tried."

Mike replies: These two-element close-up "filters" (as you say, they're really lenses) are also discontinued, but still find-able. I always thought they were admirably useful for people who understood what they were good for and how to use them (and had only a small penalty in the camera bag), but long experience as a teacher and writer taught me that most people would just decline to buy one. You're right about them though.

GKFroehlich: "Very useful post, Mike, thanks! Of course, this one’s likely to cost me! If you find yourself needing higher magnification, you might consider this BelOMO 10x triplet. I’ve had mine for several years now, and have yet to see its equal. The field of view is pretty wide considering the magnification, there’s no perceptible distortion, and the image is sharp from edge to edge. In fact, I keep one in my car, one at my desk, and I carry one in the field."

Mike replies: That's very much like the Edmund Optic version but for a fraction of the price. Thanks.

Woo Hoo! Deal of the Day (OT)

You might remember my enthusiasm for the Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner. At the time, many people said they thought it was nice but too expensive. Well, today Amazon has refurbished units on sale. [UPDATE: sold out now.] New price: $630. Refurbished price, today only, until they're gone: $230. That's 41% off the regular refurbished price, and the cheapest price as you're likely to find on this excellent vacuum. (Just used it this afternoon.)

Here's my old post about this. I'm a fan.

I would have posted this earlier but I just saw it. We now return to regular programming....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Why Do I Like This So Much?

Endorphins. That's the only explanation I can think of. Endorphins.

The new Fuji X-T100 is shipping. You can get it in black plus two nifty colors, both of them nice, or in various kits.

Why do I want this? I already have a better version of the same thing.

Without looking it up, I have only a vague idea what "endorphins" even means. Turns out it means "a chemical naturally released in the brain to reduce pain that in large amounts can make you feel relaxed or full of energy," according to the Cambridge Dictionary (which puts commas in the wrong places in the definition—editors needed everywhere).

Isn't it true that when we settle on "interests," there's some reward mechanism in the brain that keeps us focusing on that thing? What keeps John Flores interested in motorcycles and Steve Rosenblum interested in fly-fishing? Some of us like guitars, some of us like cars*. Why, for instance, do I like turntables so much, when I've never in my life owned a good one? I guess I got imprinted on the association between flat black disks of vinyl and the pleasures of discovering music when I was a kid, and never got over it. (Doesn't always work like that: my friend Kim hated the random noise of vinyl and got rid of his record collection, even though it was highly curated, contained many rarities, and would have been very valuable one day. It was valuable enough when he sold it off. On the other hand, various artists have incorporated the rush of a needle in a groove into their work digitally—for instance in Sublime's "Summertime.")

Maybe it's because the X-T100 seems like the essence of retro digital ILC. The perfect plain camera. Those snout-nosed Fujicrons, the perfect companions for it, don't hurt.

Obviously, the pleasure of cameras for me goes beyond their function as tools. Every camera to me seems to contain such promise. What could I do with this, those triggering endorphins cause me to think, what could others do with this? The potential seems limitless, and wonderful.

Of course it's just a camera.

Mike

*Of course, an exception is cue sports—pool and snooker—which everyone likes.

P.S. This post is an example of why I don't make money. It should have gone up yesterday, and it should have contained all the links to the various versions and kits, and left out all the extraneous thoughts and verbiage. And not contained a song link, fer heaven's sake. You know what they say: Oh well! Mike be Mike. The beat is rhythm.

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Peter Wright: "You may be onto something here! I love rangefinders but can't explain why. My first decent camera was a cheap non-coupled ILC rangefinder in the '60s, and I used it extensively. Today I can gaze endlessly (and lovingly?) at one of my Leicas, even though my Micro 4/3 camera is considerably more versatile and practical in every way."

Jim Arthur: "I think you nailed it when you said, 'essence of retro.' If you put the X-T100 next to a K1000 they would be hard to tell apart when viewed from the front."

Mike replies: Yes, there is something very K1000-ish about it. I wonder if that was by design.

The Best and Most Beautiful 8x10 Sensor

Here, according to a quick small-sample survey of my friends, is TOP's candidate for what is actually the best, most beautiful, and/or most practical 8x10 sensor:

click here

And here is the true digital equivalent of a film 8x10 or ULF* camera:

click here

And there you have it.

Spinning yarns
But before we leave the subject, may I just say that that 9x11" B&W digital view camera might rank as the "hardest sell" among all the cameras I've ever known of in life or in history. And that's quite a few cameras.

I know absolutely nothing—really—but allow me to indulge in a (humorous) speculative guess: a.) the sensor was fabbed for some other purpose entirely and already existed; b.) some rich dude got the idea of using it for a digital view camera; c.) he found somebody who could do the work and was quoted a price of $35k, had to think about it for a while, and said, "oh, what the hell, go ahead"; d.) it took far longer and was much more complicated than anticipated, and, by the time the dust settled, the cost had soared to $58k; but e.) whoever was doing the actual fabrication said they'd make extra units for only an additional $16k each; so f.) the guy ordered four, and g.) is hoping to sell one of them, so his costs are covered and he's left with a camera and one or two spares for himself, or h.) if he really gets lucky, he'll sell three of them and make a handsome profit—and still have his own camera besides.

I know nothing. Just talkin' off the tippy-top of my pointy little head.

But there's gotta be some story, wouldn't you think?

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad, Carl Weese, and Ben Marks)

*ULF stands for ultra-large format, and means any view camera with a film size larger than 8x10 inches.

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Ed Kirkpatrick: "Re 'And here is the true digital equivalent of a film 8x10 or ULF* camera:' Fun and true, but I do this every day by hand with nearly 100% success. I have become very good at knowing the natural horizontal and by using the guidelines in the viewfinder I allow a one-third and two-thirds overlap. The trick is knowing what focal length to select for a particular scene. Only experience or $479 for the gizmo will tell you that."

Ross Attix: "I usually really enjoy following your writing, but I have to disagree here with the 'true digital equivalent' part. That thing is just a landscape rig. Having spent many years working with 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras, your characterization misses the mark. The landscape rig doesn’t have any of the capabilities to work with focus and or perspective, and aren’t in the same league capability wise. There are many younger photographers who have never experienced what a true view camera can do. Let’s not muddy it up for them, OK? Thanks for usually great writing."

Mike replies: My position is actually that anyone who wants to use a view camera should use...a view camera. With Good Old HP5+.  :-)

Ken James: "Quite amazing, I could have written this myself, based on the subject not writing ability. I have been a user of rechargeables for quite a while too, and have worked up to better chargers. and...my absolute favorite flashlight is the Thrunite series. I have half a dozen of them, one in every camera bag, one on my desk, one by the bed. I like the Archers because they can be set to start up in low power mode, which for most cases is sufficient. Best flashlights I have ever encountered, and I am a flashlight junky (obviously)."

Don Craig: "Actually, in recent memory the Lytro Cinema Light Field Camera was probably a harder sell. Announced in April 2016 as a 'pivot' from their consumer Illum model, the mammoth million-dollar baby (but rental only) was pitched at movie and virtual reality production. By April 2018 it, and the company it rode in on, had vanished beneath the waves of commerce to a watery grave somewhere east of the Mariana Islands. Sic Transit Gloria Focus-In-Post."

Mike replies: The paradigm for these lost technologies for me (as a member of my generation) is the Walsh driver. [Note: At the link, see paragraph 2.] In photography it's the Foveon sensor. Both are technologies that should have ruled the world but got shunted off into little proprietary backwaters and became essentially irrelevant.

Someone with a better work ethic and more of an aptitude for organization than me ought to write a book about these ought-to-have-been technologies and products....

The Wills Sainte Claire Company also comes to mind. Childe Harold Wills (love that name) was Henry Ford's Chief Engineer, who quit Ford because Ford unreasonably capped his salary at $1 million a year (about $13 million today). He left (with $1.5 million in severance pay) to design his own car and start his own company. He designed a dazzling car that was five to 10 years ahead of its time—the Gray Goose, which, among other innovations such as the use of molybdenum steel, featured the first SOHC V-8 engine in production in America—but on the eve of its launch his investors, to reassure themselves that their money was safe, hired an outside consulting firm to review the business plan. The startling conclusion of those geniuses? Get this—that there were four million cars on the roads of America already and the market was saturated(!!!). (Today there are about 250 million.) The investors pulled the plug, Wills Sainte Clair struggled and failed, and history took a different turn than it might have.

Those kinds of stories fascinate me. There have been lots of them.

Open Mike: Personal Non-Pollution

Without getting into the argument of whether batteries really are safe to discard with the regular trash or whether industry simply insists that we be told that, you can save the cost (and pollution) of hundreds and hundreds of single-use batteries by using rechargables. When they're used up, find a recycling location by using the huge ZIP Code based recycling database at Earth911.com, and recycle them.

They also save money. Whether you switch to rechargeables out of environmental consciousness or to save money doesn't really matter; either way makes sense.

For me, the key to happiness with rechargeables was to invest in an excellent charger. Most chargers suck, and they make using rechargeable AA's a pain in the keester to at least some degree. A good charger is expensive—the Powerex WizardOne I use and recommend costs a whopping sixty bucks—but, at the risk of being obvious, it pays for itself relatively quickly. It's also safer, more convenient, yields a better charge in most cases, and prolongs the life of the batteries. You can just leave charged batteries sitting in the charger—it will stop charging them when they're done. (The word "DONE" will appear in the readout.) And it will handle any brand or type of NiMH rechargeable. Mine's been serving me problem-free for more than five years now.

The batteries I use come in two types. The Powerex Precharged AA's come ready for immediate use and have low self-discharge, meaning they will hold their charge in storage (up to a year) and remain ready to use much longer than normal rechargeables, which need a fresh charge after sitting around for more than three months even when you haven't been using them. Powerex Pros are fine for batteries you have in constant rotation, like the ones in my mouse or my kitchen clock.

With small things like this I tend to like to buy the best, but the truth is that there isn't much performance difference between different brands of rechargeable NiMH batteries, as long as they're of the same spec. The number you're looking for is mAh, which mean milliamp hours and is the measure of capacity and battery life. The higher the number, the better the battery. Powerex Precharged AA's are 2600 mAh and Pros are 2700 mAh, both excellent ratings. Cheaper rechargeables that cost half as much can have as little as 850 mAh, which is sort of a false economy because you'll be charging them three times as often.

Here are the storage cases I use for batteries I'm not using.

If all that is just too much money for you, try this charger, which comes with four batteries. It's worse in many ways than what you ought to get, but it's still better than using single-use batteries.

In my house (sprawling TOP Rural World Headquarters) I've been getting by on the same eight AA batteries for about eight years now, and I'm beginning to notice that they're holding a charge for a shorter time than they used to. [Note: see the second P.S. below.] So I'm about to suck on the world's resources to replace them with eight more.

(If you're in the habit of using non-rechargable AA's, how many do you guess you've bought in the last eight years?)

But the key is the charger, in my humble opinion. Splurge from the start and get the good one, and you shall live happily ever after.

Mike

P.S. And by the way, here's the battery-powered thing I like best. LED flashlights are so much better than the heavy, cheap, dim, clunky things I recall from moonless nights in Michigan as a boy. (You might wonder why I'd link to a two-battery flashlight rather than the handier-sized one-battery ones...it's because low-level night-lighting duties have been taken over by, what else, the smartphone, and this has more brightness and reach than a one-AA flashlight.) Don't forget also the handiness of red LED flashlights, which allow you to see in the night without compromising your night vision.

"Open Mike" is the often 0ff-topic editorial page of TOP, in which your dear Ed. ventures off the reservation. This morning's post was going to be about three essential '90s alternative rock albums, but then the kitchen clock stopped and I thought "huh, I just replaced that battery. Maybe it's time to get new ones."

P.P.S. The WizardOne, I just learned, will also analyze specific batteries to determine how much charge they can hold. So I'm now running the analyze function on the battery I just took out of the clock. Writing a blog means learning something new every day, and I mean something every single day.

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Q: "I agree completely with your point: From either the environmental or the financial perspective, rechargeables make much more sense than single-use alkalines.

"But, what's wrong with the Eneloops? I've had about a score of them floating around the house with the included four-slot charger since shortly after they were released (and were branded as Sanyo), and I long ago lost count of how many times I've recharged them. Which is often, because I use them (here's the photography connection) in my old old digicam, in the vertical grips for my film cameras, and in my flashes. Still, after about a decade of deplete / recharge cycles, in all those devices they last noticeably longer than the standard alkaline AAs they replaced, even though they're rated at only 2000 mAh (there are higher-capacity versions available, but I don't have them). So I'm happy.

"It was only a while ago that I realized (smack self on forehead) that I could use them in non-photography things, too, so now anything that takes two AAs runs on Eneloops. (The charger works with two or four batteries at once and doesn't like one or three, so I prefer to have a pair of them run out at the same time. It has some intelligent features, such as a 'store only' mode, but it's not nearly as smart as the Powerex.)

"Thank you for this post; now, when I try to convince people that they should buy a few rechargeables instead of a pack of 40-odd single-use batteries, I can just point them to your explanation."

Mike replies: As I mentioned, there's really not a lot of difference between brands of NiMH rechargeables of similar spec, and there's nothing wrong with Eneloops except they are limited to a max power rating of 2000 mAh, although that isn't bad. I used 1800 mAh batteries for years.

So You Say You Want a Digital View Camera?

LargeSense LS911

So are you one of those people who say they want a digital view camera? Then it's time to put up of shut up. Only $106,000, you piker.  :-)

That's more than Ken Tanaka spent on his car*.

The LargeSense LS911, a single-shot 9x11-inch digital view camera, is "Ready for Sale/Demo."

Can't say I'll be interested personally until I pay off my house and fund my retirement, but hey, fun is fun!

Mike

*Ken doesn't own a car.

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Robert Harshman: "This is simply crazy."

The End of Yellow

Richard Gonet wrote,

"I really enjoyed viewing this collection. Thank you for initiating this project and curating it. Since we all have different tastes in art, I suspect there are some hidden gems in the ones that were not selected. Is there a way to present the 'runners up' so we can see more of the entries? Even a collection of stripes and rubber duckies would be fun to see."

Do people want to see the "yellow" pictures from the "It Must Be Color" entries? Those are what inspired the yellow idea, and I ended up using none of them in the Yellow post. After that we must move off of yellow, though, because I'm getting a reputation. (For being yellow.)

Mike

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Comments About the 'Yellow' Pictures

Photo by David Stock

I want to thank everybody who participated in the latest "Baker's Dozen" call for work—we received a large-ish number of submissions (about a hundred and sixty) and there were a lot more good ones than were included in the final set.

As usual I could have gone any number of ways with the edit. For example, the three most common subjects among the submissions were road stripes and markings (a number of great ones, but David Stock's simple and whimsical design above won by a whisker for me), flowers, and...little yellow rubber duckie bath toys. At first I thought I would pick a "winner" in all three of those subject-matter categories, but ended up jettisoning that idea in the end as being too programmatic.

The reason was that I was paying attention to sequence. To my mind, the yellows either needed to harmonize or contrast from image to image as you scroll down. The Pressman-Vincent-Poole-Smith sequence (3–6) was decided on pretty early on because they make such a nice progression to the eye, and they're all such super examples of mainstream strategies* that I thought people would identify with. From there we segue to Rich Reusser's picture of daughter Molly—she was a beautiful child and you can almost feel the fatherly adoration emanating from Rich behind the camera, but to me the punctum of that picture is the alarming whatever-you'd-call-it blue of those garish clashing gloves—it took me a long time to acclimate to that! (Additive secondary cyan or aqua is as close as I can come to naming it; the color manages to clash with both Molly's raincoat and Molly.) In Kurt's bathroom picture below Molly, there's a subtle echo of the blue gloves in the not-quite-matching blue of the towel on the rack. I don't think you see that consciously, but try to unsee it now that I've mentioned it.  :-)

As always in editing a set, the problem is flow vs. variety. The cop-out temptation is to pick a set of pictures that are all stylistically similar, but that's almost an affront to the great variety of approaches and subjects you get in any randomly-gathered "group show" (which is really what this amounts to).

And related to that heading, just so you know how much I care about your experience (and my responsibilities), let me just mention as an aside that I received exactly 13 of the aforementioned rubber ducky pictures. [Inset photo by James Hengst.] Do you even know how tempted I was to present all 13 rubber ducky pictures as the entirety of the final 'Yellow' set—as a joke? A joke that would have appealed greatly to the devilish part of my subversive B&W-maven heart. I thought about that idea for three days before I was able to get rid of it. Still kinda makes me chuckle.

Anyway, sequence, and the eye's pleasure in going from one picture to the next with minimal interruption, is why I put the emailed comments from the photographers (if there were any) at the end. I like looking at pictures next to each other, seeing how they play off their neighbors, and to me that's worth the modest inconvenience of separating the texts from the pictures.

Thanks again to everyone who sent work. Honorable mentions include, but are not limited to, Larry Angler, Mike Peters, Bob Gary, Craig Stocks, Marcelo Guarini (loved that one), Scott Campbell, Steve Goldenberg, Cathal Gantly (liked that too), Ricardo Cordeiro, Rod Locket, John Tellaisha, Al DaValle, Douglas Houk, Collin Orthner, Mark E. Johnson, Chris Kern, Ron Mayhew (don't think bringing Ernest Withers into it didn't catch my attention, Ron), Anurag Agnihotri, Animesh Ray, B.D. Parks, Terry Burnes, Randall Teasley, Richard Fox, and Harry Weide. All of their pictures were in the running to the end. There were many more nice ones than that, too.

All much fun for me, so thank you for that.

Finally, in David Stock's picture at the top of this page, do you see the faint faded remnant of an earlier yellow line on the manhole cover? Photographs often show us details we would not have thought to invent.

Mike

* Faux abstract, centered subject, woodsy landscape, critter pic

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Lois Elling: "I was a kid when I saw my first manhole cover with the painted stripe in the wrong position and got such a kick out of it. I still do!"

Matthew O'Brien: "First of all I am not a pixel peeper. I like the Bakers Dozen concept…other than I lose interest between its inception and realisation.

"Aside from that I am curious. I was about to admire the subtle extra line (1<–>1) when I suddenly noticed. The main yellow paint on the manhole cover has a remarkable physical property. It is capable of painting the empty spaces within the grating as well as the cast iron structure. The only elements which should be yellow in the white box below should be cast iron. The gaps should be dark and may contain a few splashes, but should not be the full colour. Maybe there is an interesting explanation. I never would have noticed this if I had not first spotted the 1<–>1 diagonal."

Mike replies: I thought about that too at first (wondering with my reflexive suspicion if there might have been a little Photoshop going on there) but I've observed a road-striping machine in action, and the line, which according to Wikipedia is a sort of thermoplastic resin that has to be pre-heated, goes down onto the road in a thick sort of ribbon, sort of like wet tape. Having seen it, it makes sense to me that it might have enough body when it's new to span small gaps in a grate. If the manhole cover actually is a grate, which I suppose the photo doesn't actually prove. We're getting very geeky here!

Another phil: "Re the manhole, it is unlikely to be a grate, more likely to be indentations to provide a bit of grip for tyres, rather than flat metal which is very slippery when wet. The yellow paint is (as you say) a resin which arrives in blocks and is melted, poured into a 'box' on wheels with a slot on the underside through which the resin flows.(I was a highways civil engineering tech). Longer lines are normally nowadays done with a vehicle which does all the above in one operation. That's also why the original paint still shows in the indentations."

Richard Gonet: "I really enjoyed viewing this collection. Thank you for initiating this project and curating it. Since we all have different tastes in art, I suspect there are some hidden gems in the ones that were not selected. Is there a way to present the 'runners up' so we can see more of the entries? Even a collection of stripes and rubber duckies would be fun to see."

Mike replies: Here are the submissions by Marcelo and Cathal that I mentioned above.

By Marcelo Guarini

By Cathal Gantly

Philomaphos: "Thank you, Mike, for the Baker's Dozen and for your commentary on how you arranged your final choices. I now can't unsee the blue gloves in Richard Reusser's photograph, and I agree with the comments praising Melissa O'Shaughnessy's photograph. I really like the bonus picture by Marcelo Guarini for its quiet, contemplative colour and the mystery it suggests. I agree with Dave Jenkins' comment regarding the photograph by Darren Livingston—it is a striking, unsettling picture. It's been a pleasure to see them all."

Baker's Dozen: Yellow

-

"There is a sun, a light that for want of a better word
I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden
citron. How lovely yellow is!"

—Vincent Van Gogh

-

By Darren Livingston ¹

By Jim Arthur ²

By Jeff Pressman ³

By Nicolas Vincent ⁴

By Keith Poole ⁵

By Marshall Smith ⁶

By Richard Reusser ⁷

By Kurt Kramer ⁸

By Mark Kinsman ⁹

By Melissa O'Shaughnessy ¹⁰

By Mark Sirota ¹¹

By Gilson Topfstedt ¹²

-

And one more for good measure....

By Rodger Kingston ¹³

-

(Thanks to Jim Arthur for the Vincent Van Gogh quote. —MJ)

Notes

1. Darren Livingston: "This photo was made 40 years ago when I was in Art/Photo school. Tech info: Mamiya 330f with 80mm ƒ/2.8, Ektachrome 200."

2. Jim Arthur: "From last year's office Halloween costume contest. I found this crop in a crowd scene where all the contestants were standing around watching and waiting to be judged. I like the juxtaposition of the happier looking Day of the Dead face with the ceramic tragedy face, and the fact that both chose to line their eyes in yellow. FYI, the mask is mounted on a large cardboard disk that is held up to the face using straps glued to the back. I used a Canon 6D and a Canon 135mm ƒ/2 at ƒ/6.3.

3. Jeff Pressman: "A number of years ago I was in Melbourne, Australia with my family for a wedding. We were just walking around and near the rail station we passed a painted weathered wall when the Aaron Siskind in me screamed out to take a photo. The colors and patterns to my eye worked perfectly as a kind of impressionist work, and this is still one of my favorite 'still life' photos. I had my trusty Fuji X100 with me at the time, which is still a great carrying-around camera for traveling."

4. Nick Vincent: "A straightforward, no-fuss photograph I took last October. Every year, there is a quinta (vineyard) celebrating the end of the harvest season not far from where we live in Portugal. It usually coincides with the most astonishing weather and beautiful autumnal colours in the countryside. This is the first year our hosts had prepared these decorations for the celebration. I could have have gone for more contrast and saturation in the leaves and flowers but I thought I’d let the yellow paint take over the whole of the composition."

5. Keith Poole, Glendale, Arizona: "This was taken at the base of the mountains behind Flagstaff, Arizona (Weatherford Trail), maybe a half mile from the parking area. This was my first real outing with my first real DSLR (Canon 20D) back in 2004. It was a really nice shooting day, I just remember being caught up for hours shooting away at amazing scenery, completely thrilled seeing the photos right away on the screen (film shooter since the '90s), thinking 'these frames are costing me nothing' (ha ha, how little did I know how much I'd spend after that on gear), but in the moment such freedom. I don't even completely recall taking the photo. It's one of those shots that jumped out at me afterwards when viewing on my computer, like 'I TOOK THIS?!?'"

6. Marshall Smith from Stamping Ground, Kentucky: "Northern Flickers are beautiful birds at any time, but a backlit wing is something special...in yellow. Taken over our local park pond with a Canon 5D Mark IV, 1/2000th sec., ƒ/8, ISO 640."

7. Richard Reusser: "Buried among all the yellow taxis and daffodils I found a picture of my daughter, Molly, hamming it up in the leaves. My stalwart Canon 5D Mark I would've only been a few months old back in 2006—and Molly half of her twenty two laps around the sun."

8. Kurt Kramer: "I have a friend in his mid-70s. He lives in the same six-flat building in which his parents lived when he was born. His apartment is a time capsule. When you enter, you feel as if you are going back in time by 50–60 years. This is the bathroom in the apartment. Data: Olympus E-M5 Mark II, M.Zuiko Olympus 12–40mm lens, 1/125th sec., ƒ/3.5, ISO 2500."

9. Mark Kinsman: "I took this on while at the local mall with my family. As we entered a new addition to the mall I noticed the escalator had yellow outlines steps and then noticed the women on the down ramp wearing a purple coat. Only had time to shoot two frames, this one in focus. Shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and 24–105 ƒ/4 lens."

10. Melissa O'Shaughnessy: "This yellow revolving door at the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District in New York City is a spot I frequented many times several years ago in an attempt to make something even more interesting out of an already eye-catching architectural detail. I have pictures of people coming and going in this spot in many configurations, but it was in this split second, when the morning light was ideal and a man of exactly the right height pushed his way through the door, that I knew I had my shot. I've returned to the locale several times since, but so far have not improved upon this simple—but to me delightful—moment."

11. Mark Sirota: "I photograph fireworks, generally large commercial displays like you see on the Fourth of July. Given that it's coming up, it seems apropos. I usually use a wide angle and try hard to include the crowd in the foreground, because the crowd is why we have fireworks displays, but sometimes for a change of pace I try something a little different. This is a photo of an aerial firework, shot at 180 mm-e with a focus pull during the 1.4 second hand-timed exposure (focused near at the beginning, shifting towards infinity at the end). Adjusting the focus by hand causes camera shake, which is what causes the wavy lines at the ends. I come away from a typical 20 minute fireworks show with about 100 exposures, of which maybe 20 will be salable and two will be great. I often sell as triptychs by color—for example, one that’s primarily red, one primarily green, one primarily blue. Or three purples. You get the idea. This is one of my favorite yellow ones. Normally yellow doesn’t stand alone well as a primary color in a firework photograph; it’s not bold enough. A big yellow burst over a great foreground often looks a little weak…. But thanks to the focus pull and the fortunate timing, the yellow is quite powerful in this one."

12. Gilson Topfstedt contributed from Germany. "Shot taken in January 2018 in Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) on an evening with nice sunlight, highlights, and shadows, and nice colors. All we need for a nice picture. Camera: Fuji X-T1."

13. Rodger Kingston: "Empty Gallery, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Massachusetts, 2018. The color here is strictly from the warm lights on the neutral white walls. I suspect that work of Edward Hopper may have taught me to see this scene."

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Excellent. Simply excellent."

Nature Lover: "They just made me smile. Blue, green, red, they just will not make me as happy."

Ken Owen: "Kurt Kramer's photo of his friend's bathroom is my favourite. The details are fun."

Charlie Didrickson: "Very nice set of photos. I'm partial to #10—Melissa O'Shaughnessy."

Dave Jenkins: "The leadoff picture by Darren Livingston is the most striking photograph I've seen in a long, long time."

Songs That Remind You of Other Songs (Music Notes) (OT)

A few songs that have been in rotation here at TOP World Headquarters lately—

• "Bad Bad News" by Leon Bridges. The video mucks the song up, so listen to it straight on iTunes or Spotify.
• "The Other Woman" by Caro Emerald
• "Sativa" by Jhené Aiko featuring Rae Sremmurd

I've been on sort of a jag for slow-drag R&B with a hip-hop or World flavor lately. Caro Emerald (Caroline Esmeralda van der Leeuw) is a Dutch torch/pop singer with a touch of retro campiness.

Caro Emerald

The lyrics of her song "A Night Like This," for instance (which sounds for all the world like a pre-existing standard, but isn't), were "based on a specific scene in the 1967 Bond movie Casino Royale." [Wikipedia]. And sounds like it. Both songs come from her 2015 debut, Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor.

Jhené Aiko's "Sativa" sounds like a cross between Sade and Tom Waits to me.  :-)

Mike

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$1000 Off!

$1,000 off!

Big two-day Fujifilm sale! Not too much more to add.

Mike

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Open Mike: King of Nuthin'

I wish I had some actual power in the world. I wish I was in charge of something I knew something about. I think I'd be good at it—I have lots of ideas, and I'm good at thinking in terms of systems, the so-called "big picture," rather than just details.

I found myself musing after yesterday's post how I'd set up a graduate program in studio art for photography. To begin with, I'd make it a two-year program (working through the Summer in the middle), because three years is just excessive given the unlikely prospects of a practical job after it's over [wry, even sheepish, grin].

The time would be divided into three units or segments. I'd have students begin by shooting intensively with a film Leica and one 50mm lens in B&W for the first eight months (Sept.–April)—but I wouldn't have them learn darkroom work beyond having it demonstrated to them. They'd use Ilford XP2 with lab support, receiving enlarged proofs of their developed film. In February they'd be asked to add a wide-angle and a moderate telephoto lens to their equipment and spend the last three months of the unit shooting with all three lenses. During this segment we'd concentrate on meaning, and on reportage/documentary approaches, and the main technique emphasis would be on editing skills.

Then we'd switch to...smartphones. From May through the following September, they'd be required to shoot with one of a limited selection of high-end phone cameras. During this unit we'd minimize discussions of technique and review pictures only on screens. This unit would lean heavily on the traditional critique and group discussion method of teaching, and concentrate on personal expression and aesthetic experimentation, with the emphasis placed on visualizing, inventiveness, and creative failure.

In October of the second year, we'd switch to medium-format digital cameras, again with a choice of three or four types, using up to three lenses of the student's choice. For the first half of this unit, we'd concentrate on learning post-processing skills, workflow, and asset management, with the overarching goal of intensively learning printing technique; the concentration until March would be on learning to make prints. During this time we would work intensively on viewing and deconstructing historical photographs, both important and demotic. (Washington D.C. would be a good locale for this program because of its museum and archive resources.) In the last few weeks of that time, working with faculty advisors, students would design a thesis project.

Finally, in March-April-May, still using their medium-format digital cameras, the students would be freed to pursue their vision for their thesis, including, if warranted, traveling to locations of their choice several times for several weeks each time, returning intermittently to edit and print finished prints of their work. The goal would be to produce a portfolio project in the form of 15 to 40 sequenced fine prints in an archival box, along with a custom book of the same pictures in the same sequence.

That's just off the top of my head. Give me a year and I'd refine that brief sketch into a syllabus that would hit on all cylinders.

Like all my other pie-in-the-sky ideas, this stands zero chance of ever happening. But oh boy, it would be effective...and a whole lot of fun. I'd see to both, baby.  :-)

Mike

"Open Mike" is the often off-topic editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays, if I think of it.

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Dan Khong: "In Singapore, at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), all students studying photography for a career go through a darkroom module. These students shoot in B&W film and process all the way to print their pictures out in the traditional darkroom. Of course 99.99% of graduating students will shoot with digital for a living but the school reckons that a basic and hands-on knowledge of traditional photography will enrich their understanding of photography."

Manuel: "With the exception of the smartphone part, the structure and timeline of your graduation programme are not too different from the professional photography courses held by the Portuguese Institute of Photography, but I can see a problem with your daydream programme—cost. Tuition fees would have to be insanely high to cover all expenses. (Unless students brought their own equipment, which would mean they would be millionaires who could afford Leica and Phase One cameras.) I will leave aside my prejudice about smartphones because your idea is a rather clever one. Forgetting about technique to concentrate on expression would be smart. To my knowledge, professional courses don't tend to evaluate subjectivity and expression. They prepare students to master technique, but are oblivious to originality and creativity. So I'd say 'go for it', or 'chase your dream,' but it would be a rather expensive dream. While we're at it, did you think of a scholarship plan? If so, how do I apply?"

Mike replies: You see, the program exists only in my imagination. Therefore cost is not an issue, because in my imagination it never is. It's kind of like television sitcoms, where almost everyone always has enough money or more than enough money (e.g. the spacious NYC apartments on the old show "Friends," or their famous "magic couch," which was somehow always available for them to sit on in the otherwise crowded city café where they liked to hang out), or the movies, where "policemen" can go about leaving trails of bodies in their wake not only with no consequences, but not even any inconvenience to themselves either—that is, it's just one of those things we don't worry about, but dismiss with a wave of the hand.

I have an embarrassing number of projects in my daydreams. For instance, I have a quite detailed fantasy about a County Community Center; I've designed houses; I've devised a clever plan to save the game of pool in America; I'm a camera manufacturer, as you might expect, and the cameras are unlike anything on the market; I've solved the obesity epidemic; and I've got a detailed plan for a new basketball league called "The Six-Foot League" in which, among many other shall we say "innovative" rules, all the players must be under 6'1" tall.

I've written many screenplays. In my head.

Those are just a few of many.

And in all of these plans, amazingly enough, funding is never an issue. In fact, the only thing I cannot apply any imagination or creativity to, for some reason, are plans the purpose of which would be making money for myself! More's the pity pour moi.

Michael Perini: "I’m sure some of your ideas would be helpful. We all have those 'if I were the boss' thoughts and desires. But for better or worse those jobs get filled by people who have spent a career preparing and 'growing into' such positions at that or similar institutions—whatever the field. Once you have the top job , the landscape rarely looks the same as it did from outside. Your ideas might be very good but still face tough sledding. People who are charging/paying $20k/semester might raise eyebrows at spending one shooting on an iPhone...even if it proved to be a good idea...."

Dave Van de Mark: "I’m ready—what is the cost of enrollment? Leicas! Medium Format! Travel! Too much to pass up and I’ll take my chances regarding no job at the end.  :-)  "

John Krill: "Yes, I know smartphones are the future. But that doesn't mean I have to accept that future. I love to make prints. 13x19 prints of my best stuff. On paper that costs me about $5 a sheet. Make prints from a smartphone files? I think not. So I guess I would be sick or, better yet, in Paris when you have your smartphone section. Also, I don't even have a smartphone and considering what they bite you for each month I probably never will."

Mike replies: I felt just that way until my readers challenged me to get to grips with iPhonography about five years ago. In the spirit of experimentation (or open-mindedness) I reluctantly decided to embrace it for three months or so, which was the period of time I chose in the '80s to use a camera I was reviewing. At first I couldn't wait for that three months to end. Five years later I have to say the iPhone is a constant photographic delight, and one I've even managed to do some serious work with—my most recent project was a 15-picture portfolio of iPhone pictures. I admit the prints are miniatures, smaller than your standard—the largest one is not quite 11 inches in the longest dimension, and most of the others are considerably smaller than that.

iPhone snap taken on the way home from the Spiritual
Center of the Universe last night. Kinda typical. I just play with the thing.

Spencer H: "I like it. My school went like this: B&W digital only for the first year, no color assignments. We had a simple B&W conversion workflow, starting simple and adding complexity of the course of the year. Second year, we introduced color, and medium format digital, in the form of Leaf Aptus backs attached to view cameras, and those stayed in the studio where we learned lighting. I remember hating some of the restrictions we had (not being able to use Lighroom chief among them, then a brand-new program, and instead using some archaic DAM platform, long defunct), but looking back, the restrictions like B&W, studio only, or whatever it was forced my creativity and problem solving to high gear."

Kenneth Tanaka: "My own curriculum would be (surprise!) diametrically opposite yours. The overall philosophy of the program would be to first help students learn to see and to get in touch with what they’re seeing. Throughout the first term students would be studying/critiquing imagery across many media and many ages, from last week's New York Times to Carleton Watkins's landscapes.

"Next, they'd apply that awareness by learning to assemble coherent frames (with any digital camera/lens) that accomplish predetermined objectives. One of the most stark differences between amateurs and trained photographers is this ability to compose a coherent, sophisticated frame.

"Then on to specific areas of professional practice applications such as portraiture, documentary, etc. I would offer exposure to the basic camera technologies of the day, as well as a solid grounding in digital processing and printing...but only at the end of the curriculum.

"I would not offer any classes in chemical photography or other techniques of yesteryear. If a kid’s paying me $25–30k/year for photographic training s/he should expect to at least gain skills that will prospectively endure for a lifetime. If someone wants to learn how to make a platinum print or daguerreotype they should attend some weekend workshop."

Mike replies: I disagree with you and could make a comprehensive response, but I don't have the time to write it out. In a (very tiny) nutshell, I went to art school, and my opinion is that any attempt to "teach people how to see" amounts, in practice, to an effort (however subtle) to inculcate them into an academic/doctrinaire acceptance of whatever is fashionable to or approved by the institution and the faculty of the institution and the prevailing aesthetic milieu in which the institution exists. I could write this argument in detail and with concrete examples going back at least to the Salon and the Royal Academy in the 19th century and the waves of avant-garde movements they eventually inspired...if I had a week and didn't have a job. My opinion is that what people eventually choose to do with their photography should be up to them, and that an ideal educational program would fit them with the means and skills to do their work and then stand back.

This might seem dull and uncool. But it's actually radical. Radically uncool, one might even say. :-)

As for gaining skills that prospectively will endure for a lifetime, what do you imagine my darkroom training was in 1982–5? It was necessary, accepted, and fully expected to endure into the foreseeable future....

Ilkka: "A 50mm is a good way to start but I wouldn't insist on Leica. Old Pentax or Nikon or Minolta would do just as well. After that, I would add one lens. And I would let the student decide whether s(he) wants to add wide, say 24/28mm or long, 85/90/100mm."

Mike replies: Fair enough, but in my opinion it has to be a Leica (provided by the school). There are technical reasons for this that I've elaborated in the past, but also status reasons. Students are touchy about their poverty, and about their self-image and identity, and there is nothing else in photography like the lore and legend of Leica; getting to grips with classic 20th-century photography and getting to know the "Leica mystique" up close and personal is a "feather in one's cap" that will tie a young newcomer to essential aspects of the medium's history, and make him or her feel special and feel proud in the process. And that's by design.

This is also part of the reason for using a medium-format digital camera in the third unit. It's partially for technical reasons, but also partly to allow students to experience the "best" at the time, or what's imagined to be the best, while they're being subsidized by their tuition. It's partly a matter of what Oren Grad calls "demystification," designed to partly free them from future GAS. —Sincerely, a formerly penniless art student who dressed in raggedy clothes and ate ramen noodles and very much didn't want to be stuck with any old crappy castoff eBay leftover.

Should Every Photographer Try Film Once?

A few comments on all the comments from yesterday...

First of all, I recommended the "Leica as Teacher" exercise for a specific kind of student, namely, the young beginner who is serious and ambitious, as well as willing and able to put a large amount of time and effort into learning photography for a period of at least a year. That's a tiny, tiny minority of all photographers. Secondly, I recommended it as a learning experience—part of that theoretical cohort's education, not a recommendation for ongoing practice. So no one need get in a bother about whether it's "the right tool for the job" or whether there are other ways to accomplish the same results, etc. Those things weren't, and aren't, the point.

But here's the reason for the recommendation: first, because using a manual, mechanical camera with a few simple controls and immediate responsiveness (such as minimal shutter lag with no optical viewfinder blackout) will teach the basics of camera controls and essential shooting skills like no modern electronic camera possibly can. The student would learn things like placing plane of focus and aperture and shutter speed choice rigorously and well. He or she would also be "taught" by the camera to time the exact moment of exposure without viewfinder blackout. Again, it doesn't matter that modern technology can take thirty exposures before the press of the shutter. The point, first, is learning the skill.

Thirdly, I specified B&W film for a specific and considered didactic rationale, and I meant it and I still mean it. It's because intensive drilling in learning to see luminances only—tone, or values, only—with the distraction and decorativeness of color temporarily but absolutely removed, will help most people to see better. And, with the aforementioned manual, mechanical rangefinder, B&W film is the only way to make such seeing the only option, which is essential for the learning process as I've conceived and described it. The fact that you "can" convert a color file to B&W in post is absolutely immaterial in this case: that just means you won't absolutely have to learn how to see in B&W. Again, I'm asserting that it's valuable for learning and I believe that. I believe it would pay permanent dividends for the rest of the photographer's working life.

These are visualizing skills and drills in fundamentals, invaluable for education. Naturally they do not need to be permanent choices, and no one's claiming they should be.

Here's my answer
But then, on to the question—should every photographer try film once?

Considering the educational experience of trying older methods (i.e., film), in my opinion it comes down to two things that experience tells me most students would enjoy and be interested in. One is looking through a view camera. There is no better way to comprehend what a lens is doing, and to understand, viscerally and with immediacy, what photography is capturing. The world seen on a groundglass is captivating, and enchanting. The other is seeing a print come up in the developer, an experience that a wide range of photographers remember as, if not formative, then at least a meaningful landmark of their introductions to the mystery and wonder of the art*.

Both of these experiences can be provided merely in an educational context. There's no need to make every student buy a view camera, and certainly no sense in recommending that every student learn darkroom printing. And of course, it should go without saying that it makes zero sense to suggest that anyone should build their own darkroom in this day and age. (Unless they're doing the "Leica as Teacher" year, but not necessarily even then—Ilford XP2 in an M camera, commercially processed and proofed and occasionally printed, would work fine for that.)

When I was a photography teacher (in the '80s), I provided both these experiences to my students. I brought my own view camera to school and let the students look at each other through it—it was unfailingly an excited, animated class that was memorable for most students, even casual ones who didn't have any real or abiding interest in becoming photographers. I also made a set of "perfect" negatives and, as a class, we went into the darkroom on the very first day of class and everyone made a test strip and a print—that was also a day that made students happy and "nourished their enthusiasm" in Ansel Adams's phrase.

These days, I might have students look through a 4x5 or 5x7 view camera in several settings indoors and then out, and then make a contact print from a pre-made "perfect" 4x5 or 5x7 negative. Depending on the facilities, that could take as little as two class periods.

Beyond that, though, for those not doing the "Leica as Teacher" year, I wouldn't see much need to do more than that with film. Unless of course you want to.

But those things are just cool, and would be fun and informative for most any younger photographer to experience (and it's too bad most of them will never be able to). That's not "just me"—I've heard variations on these themes from hundreds, maybe even thousands of photographers, across many years.

Mike

*We might add to this the experience of seeing a well-made large negative on a light box before making a positive of it (seeing Paul Strand's negatives was where Ansel had his own epiphany). A further exercise might be making and using a pinhole camera, as several readers suggested.

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Piotr B.: "Looks like I got pulled into shooting film, and I blame you.  :-)

"Your most recent post about rangefinder cameras (the one that featured the Mamiya 6 among others) sparked a new flame of interest in me. I always kinda wanted to try film and was always a bit intrigued by the mysterious beast that is a rangefinder. Why mysterious? I never used one. I even had no idea how the viewfinder works until very recently.

"And once I started reading more, I knew I'm in trouble. That Mamiya triggered my GAS and happens to be a killer combo. Film? Check. Rangefinder? Check. Medium format? Check. Wept a bit when I found out how much it costs. Found some other cool cameras and wept some more. After more digging and research, found that Fujica can be had for reasonable lump of money. So I'll settle for that.

"For the time being, I just bought an old, low end TLR (never used one before, BTW) on the cheap and just took out my first roll of film. What a weird experience, looking through that 'viewfinder.' And needing to wait to see my photos, even weirder.

"I liked what my failed attempt at OC/OL/OY challenge did to my skills, but I noticed I fell back to bad habits with the convenience of modern digital cameras (I did the challenge with Sigma DP2M, which, while digital, imposes limitations that are draconian for someone used to modern cameras). So I'm hoping that going film will do me more good.

"And since I decided to torture myself with clunky mechanical contraptions, I also thought it would be a good idea to come up with some kind of a project to give this whole experiment some meaning. I'm kinda sick of shooting just to try to take some pretty pictures.

"But in the end, I consider the whole affair to be a learning experience. I just hope I will actually learn something, as opposed to realizing this whole photography thing was just a meaningless pastime of a bored man who really just wanted to play with some toys.  :-)

"So in time, I will either thank you or curse you.  :-)  "

Michael Ferron: "Though I started with digital I kept bumping into these B&W film forums. The talk of chemistry, technique, exposure and times fascinated me so in 2004 I bought a beautiful Nikon FM2 and gave film a try.

"Never looked back. I just recently purchased a Toyo Field 45 and am really enjoying the experience. Oh, the question? No, I would not recommend shooting film to anyone. It's very time consuming. But If the calling is heard the film will find them, says the 'on occasion' wise man (me)."

Paul De Zan: "Due to all of the rangefinder and film blather on this very fine free website recently, I've just loaded my M4 with Tri-X for the first time in about nine years. On one level: what a drag! I could have taken 36 pictures with any digital camera in the time it took to put film in this relic. On a different level: what a treat to handle this magnificent hunk of metal, like traveling back to the pre-electronic era, to the way the world once was. Pleasant as it is, this has zip to do with actually taking pictures and only half-zip to do with conventional film photography. Without the chemical darkroom process, which is absolutely going to be a bridge too far for most people these days, there isn't any real connection to the traditional silver halide-based experience. I'll shoot a roll, get it processed and scan to Lightroom; anything good will end up on the Internet somewhere. Beyond the experience of working with a mechanical camera and its manual focus and exposure control (which you can do with a digital camera if you're so inclined), it's very nearly the same thing as digital workflow, just with added cost and some (possibly gratifying) delay before seeing your results. Lovely as the relics are, especially to those of a certain age, it doesn't take a lot of Aristotelian pondering to understand why film was swept away as quickly as it was."

David Aiken: "The 'every' in the question mandates that the answer be 'no.' If the answer were 'yes' the statement being questioned would be a rule and as we all know, rules are made to be broken.

"The question is really how useful is it to shoot film as one element in your learning process. I started out shooting black-and-white film in the days before digital, and then I dropped photography for a long period. When I came back to it I bought a digital camera and discovered two things. First, I could no longer 'see' in black and white. Seeing luminance is an acquired skill as you point out, but it's one you lose if you don't keep using it, and I wonder how long you would retain it if you just shot black-and-white film for a year as a learning experience. Second, that I had to unlearn a lot of things which had become ingrained and which I found myself doing automatically. For example it took time to get out of the habit of exposing for the shadows and to start exposing for the highlights instead, to learn to stop worrying about crushing the shadows and to worry instead about preserving highlights. If you're going to end up shooting digital, then learning to shoot by shooting film teaches some wrong lessons as well as teaching some good lessons.

"I have to admit that much of my photographic 'taste' was formed by my experience shooting black-and-white film. Even though I now shoot digital colour, I still find myself processing for the mid tones and shadow detail with good overall contrast, and less saturation than many people seem to go for. But that sometimes makes me wonder whether I'm trying to recapture the look of film rather than trying to get the best that I could from digital. Film and digital have different strengths and weaknesses and I don't think that trying to get the best of one of them from the other is the way to get the best result that the other has to offer. Are the people who eventually get the best out of digital going to be those who have no experience of film? All of the photographers I regard as really getting the results I most admire from film had experience with film only (OK, Cartier-Bresson and maybe some others had experience with painting and drawing but no other photographic medium than film).

"Can experience shooting film be detrimental to getting the best results from digital? If it can, then how much experience with film is too much experience with film? Should it be avoided entirely or, for example, should those who do try shooting film shoot colour slide stock where they would have to learn to preserve the highlights rather than exposing for the shadows as you learn with black-and-white film? What is the best film experience for those who are going to shoot digital?

"I have no answers, just a lot of 'what if' questions. The best advice I can offer to anyone wanting to learn how to photograph is to try what interests you and to see what you learn from the experience but stay open to the opportunities that present themselves. You don't have to take advantage of every unanticipated opportunity but unanticipated opportunities that you do take up can become some of the most important steps in your life."

Don't 'Should' All Over Me

I've been following a thread over at DPReview that asks, "Should every photographer try shooting film at least once in their life?"

I'm on record saying that I think one of the best ways to learn photography is to shoot B&W film in a classic rangefinder Leica with one lens for a year, as an exercise. But that recommendation (despite the fact that a surprising number of people did it) is increasingly impractical.

So is there any reason to try film once, if you never have?

Looked at one way, my entire history in photography consists of trying stuff—all kinds of stuff—just to experience it, to demystify it for myself, broadening my horizons. Call it "deliberate dilettantism." It's been the way I've learned about the art of photography, rummaging around in the many rooms of its rambling mansion. So if I had never tried film, I'd try it just to try it.

I'll add a twist to it. I think the one thing everyone should try just once—if you're going to shoot film just once for the experience—is to shoot film with a view camera. If I were teaching photography today, I'd have every student spend a few hours with a view camera and make one successful shot with it so they could experience that. That would clean a broad window with a view into photography's origins, and into the experience of early photographers. (Of course I'd help them with technique, to help ensure success.) That would be worth the experience.

What's your take? Be sure to mention whether you actually have ever shot film before or not—a necessary context for your opinion!

Mike

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Mike Plews: "Right on. Digital photography is wonderful and I don't want to go back but I also feel sorry for photographers who have never stood over a tray and watched an image come up. It's what hooked me back in 1962 and it still gives me a thrill.

"Try taking a view camera somewhere photographers gather, like a national park. When you come out from under the dark cloth don't be surprised if there are folks waiting to politely ask if they can take a look.

"Thanks for the prod Mike. I may just have to dust off the family Toyo."

Nathan DeGargoyle: "'Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest.' —Thomas Beecham."

William Schneider: "Once upon a time at Ohio University, a regular assignment in beginning darkroom classes required usage of a view camera instead of what most students already owned—film SLRs. The purpose was to teach them the basics of photography, and to open aesthetic doors by using a slow approach. One person that I know confessed hatred for those assignments. To avoid using a view camera, he used slow, grainless film in his 35mm SLR on a tripod, developed carefully, and made enlarged 'contact sheets' that included darkroom-created sheet-film borders to fool the professor. He might have learned as much with this labor-intensive workaround as he would have by just using the view camera. In that case, the assignment still worked."

Mark Cotter: "As an English teacher who has also taught photography to 16–18 year olds in the UK, I agree that shooting film at least once is a good idea. It's instructional about the history of the medium, makes students appreciate what they can do in Photoshop, and makes some good links to those PS skills and the darkroom. A colleague of mine (who also taught the same students) was all for experimentation in PS. I took the line: can it be done in the darkroom? Students did more of the latter and less of the weird and wonderful after developing and learning to print their own film.

"As for using a view camera? It's one thing I haven't done and I have always wanted to learn how one worked. I see it as a gap in my knowledge of how the medium works."

Steve Jacob: "Life is short, and there are so many things I should do (apparently). So I have decided to prioritise them. This one is now penciled in for June 2036."

Ed Kirkpatrick: "Building and using pinhole cameras ranging in size from large garbage cans to 35mm film canisters using both photo paper and film taught me more about optics, light, and composition than all the years of using various 'real' cameras combined. I agree, those new to photography should explore film as well but the act of designing and building and using a basic pinhole camera teaches from a different and really hands-on perspective."

Tom Bell: "Well, in this, as with music, I am being led back to the future by my children aged 20 and 25...they both have Pentax ME Supers and now the lovely little Olympus 35 RC rangefinders. They are more patient than their father...and they are making good use of all those lovely Pentax K primes!"

Rod S.: "I shot 35mm film for 20 years, then 6x7cm medium format film for 15 years. For the last six or seven years, I've shot mainly 4x5-inch large format for ancient architecture, my serious subject matter. Over the same time period, I've used digital Fuji (X100, X-Pro1 and X-T1) for perfunctory and non-serious photography.

"With that perspective, here's my take:

"I don't think it's very useful trying film 'just once in your life.' For someone who knows only digital photography, the single experience, or even a few, even under guidance, is likely to be dominated by uncomfortableness at best and inferior results or failure at worst. And they will feel justified in dismissing film photography thereafter because they can now say truthfully that they tried it.

"The big problem with the question is that 'film' and 'film photography' for the vast majority of people consists of shooting rolls of 35mm, or rolls of 120 in the manner of 35mm. Which is, essentially, hand-held point and shoot. In that context, 'film' is just too much like digital with inconvenience added for no substantive benefit.

"Using 4x5 inch large format film for the last six years has transformed my practice and my appreciation of photography. I now routinely achieve results deserving of exhibition. Large format requires a particular focus, a particular discipline, a particular intent. The result itself, with practice, can be a particular look, a combination of formality, resolution, richness of tone. To not experience all that is to a photographer's loss.

"I am disappointed that most photographers are reluctant to swim out beyond the shallow end of the pool and experience a weightless tumble in the deep water. I understand that reluctance because I used to be one of those people. I was wrong.

"Somewhat concerned that my dedication to large format is somehow limiting me, some time ago I bought a used Phase One P45+ digital back and two Schneider Digitar lenses for my Cambo technical camera body. But life since then has been busy, and I'm yet to overcome the technical complexities (digital sensors cannot accept light incident from low angles, so the newer lenses have much smaller useful image circles). It's been easier to buy more large format lenses."

Steve Smith: "There is a similar argument with live sound engineering. I started on analogue mixers and learned digital fairly late in life (50). I'm happy with both. I know a few engineers who have never used analogue and would be confused by it. There is no need for them to use it, but I think it would help with their understanding of how both types work—same with film and digital."

Steve Caddy: "I did the OCOLOY exercise as prescribed, with an M6 and a 35mm ƒ/2, and it really was a great teacher.

"There are a certain lessons that are brought home by being forced to work slow—with a very simple, very manual, very direct camera (a view camera just takes it to the logical end).

"The first three months of that year produced many of the worst pictures I've ever taken, and it was particularly cruel to look forward to a shot that I thought would be great only to find out I'd screwed it up somehow (or the subject had blinked) days later, but toward the end I had learned to be one with that little camera and was consistently producing the best stuff that I'd ever shot. You ruined me for other cameras that year, Mike, and I've been condemned to the M system (now digital) ever since.

"There are other lessons that are learned much faster by working fast and being able to think, try, see and repeat—that build the experience of cause and effect. Estimating exposure by eye, then checking the meter, then checking a test shot (and seeing a histogram) a few times a day is much more instructive than estimating the exposure, checking the meter and waiting days to seeing the test image and comparing it to some abstract notes. It's just torturous.

"I never fell in love with the darkroom process in the way that many people talk about—the magic of seeing the image appear was nice, but never compelled me—but do remember feeling that the physical presence of photographs and film, and being able to 'make' them, had a certain slightly awesome power in it. I felt that long before digital hit the scene.

"I'm on the fence as to whether everyone should shoot film at least once, but I feel very strongly that everyone should make their artistic practice a physical one, at least for a while. I don't think you can really make a book without making a physical dummy, or a physical flat plan. And I suspect that physical editing, with little prints on a wall, is superior in many many many ways to the digital version. The digital way is faster, but I'm not sure it's more efficient in terms of a time/quality equation.

"Print. Print. Print."

Never Mind All That

Well, back from my day of doctors. One thing I learned—my hearing is no longer perfect! I scored at the upper limit in all the tests except I was one tone down in the highest frequencies in my left ear. (I do think I heard it, I just wasn't sure.) I've always had very good hearing.

I blame Butters. He sticks his head right next to my left ear in the car, and then when he thinks I might be preparing to get out, he barks frantically, right in my ear. There's nothing I can do about it.

Maybe I could wear industrial earmuffs when I drive with him. (Geeky note: when I had my pool table, whenever I broke the balls I'd put on earmuffs. Too loud otherwise—I can tell when something's not good for my ears. I do take as much care as I can to protect my hearing. Short of getting rid of the dog of course.)

Anyway, back to the GX8. Mike N. wrote yesterday:

"The Internet's most anticipated (camera-based) will-they-won't-they finally ends in full-blown romance. It's nice to see someone who really knows cameras and photography look down the barrel of full-frame temptation and plump for an out-of-date small-sensor device on closeout. Especially amidst the endless heat generated by supposedly better cameras, and all because he actually just likes the way it works and looks. Common sense breaks out...."

Heh. Made me smile.

I went to "Cruisin' Night" in Penn Yan last night and took a gazillion pictures of all the cool cars and all the other great things on display. I sure made the right camera choice for me, that's all I can say. There's something I love about the IQ of the current 20.3-MP Micro 4/3 sensor. It has such a crisp-but-clean look, and such a "film grain" look to its noise, that I just love wading around in the images at 100%. I find it very gratifying. The D-o-F is just right for my taste, neither too much nor too little. And I'm a big fan of the bokeh of Panasonic lenses.

Naturally there are some limitations.

This one's an iPhone pic, taken in between doctor's appointments.

We have clear days in the Finger Lakes, and then we have really clear days, when the air is clean and things far away look close and the sunlight is so strong it feels like you're on a different planet. We had a day like that two days ago, so I took the GX8 out at midday and took a number of different torture-test exposures of the white shed with the doors open to the darkened interior. (Essentially a "black box" test like we used to do with B&W film.) I found that on the exposure with the sunlit white cladding barely holding, the interior still dipped too far into ugly noise—and with the interior just barely holding, I couldn't recover quite enough highlight detail. So I agree that the proper exposure is important with the GX8, and when the subject brightness range (SBR) is as high as you'll encounter in daylight, a single exposure won't quite hold all parts of the range.

And then there's ISO 1600...looks fine, prints well, but...not quite there for pixel-peeping. Just kinda takes the shine off the IQ. I don't mind using it, but it's not going to show off the sensor at its beautiful wonderful best. But for most picturetaking, staying within the generous sweet spot of the camera and sensor, well, I love the 20.3-MP sensor's look.

It gives me what I want to see, is all. It's good, and—even better—good enough.

Needed doing
But never mind all that. Here's the important info you need to know:

The 85-year-old guy in the tractor picture used that Farmall "M" to farm 2,000 acres. He had 240 milk cows. Even with eight kids—four boys and four girls—he worked 20 hours a day for years. "It needed doing, and I just kept going," he told me. Finally the engine block cracked, so he put the tractor in the barn.

Some time later, he was buying a snowplow attachment that happened to be attached to an old, worn-out truck, and for a few extra dollars the seller threw truck into the deal. The farmer's son suggested that it would be fun to do an engine swap and put the Chrysler V8 into the old Farmall. So they did. 

They eventually sold the tractor, and the new owner used it for a number of years. But that second owner used hired farmhands (the man in the picture never did), and he discovered that his hired men were taking that V8 tractor out on the highway and running it up to 50 miles per hour. He didn't want them doing that, so he took the battery out of it and locked it in the shed.

Some years later, the original owner (I didn't get his name, sorry to say) ran across the new owner, and he and his son got to see their old tractor again. As they were driving away, both men agreed that they never should have sold it and that it would be great to have it back. So they turned around, drove back, and asked the guy what he might be willing to take for it. The guy said he wasn't using it. So their old tractor came home again.

After a restoration that put it into County Fair and town-parade condition, the old fellow told me that it'll never find its way into a museum because it's not stock, but that the crowds love it for that very reason. "An M is an M, and after you see ten of 'em go by it's not very exciting. But then this one comes along with its chrome pipes stickin' up and the crowd claps and hollers."

He sorely misses his late wife of nearly 60 years. "I was married at 19. We had hard times, she and I. But the harder the times you go through," he said, making a twisting motion with his fist, "the tighter you pull together."

He no longer farms—sold the 2,000 acres and the 240 milk cows in the '80s. But he still has the old tractor that he bought new in '54. Oh, and he has 54 great-grandchildren, too.

As for the picture? It's not perfect. But it's good enough.

Mike

UPDATE: I might have been a little too hard on the GX8's ISO 1600. Here's a sample—the detail will be at 100% after you double-click it. We would've been ecstatic to have an ISO 400 color neg film this good back in, say, 1985.

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Severian: "Cool story you provided there, thanks. I've driven tractors like that, with row crop front end (very narrow front wheels, close together). Anybody driving something like that at 50 mph has a serious death wish. Our old IH Farmall 'H' was scary enough at 30 MPH."

David L.: "Anyone would need industrial strength ear muffs to be around that tractor running a V8 with straight exhaust stacks."

Mike replies: Now that you mention it, it made quite a racket when he left.

Mike Plews: "Good news on your hearing. Wish I could say the same but four years as a Morse interceptor in the Army pretty much roached my hearing. Finally got some hearing aids this year and lo and behold I don't need to recap the family Sansui or look for fresh tweeters. Interesting to learn that I could still detect high frequencies but my hearing above 2000 Hz was so so low it was effectively gone. Fortunately it was entirely correctable with hearing aids. Went home, fired up the hi-fi and it completely blew me away. Almost afraid to put the Casals Bach Orchestral Suites on the TT. I might start bawling over what I've been missing.

"Hearing loss is insidious and TOP readers over a certain age would be well served by following your lead and getting their hearing checked."

Mike Plews adds: "A little something I should have mentioned in my comment is that a comprehensive hearing exam should include a Maryland hearing test, not just a test of frequency response. The Maryland test checks your ability to understand normal conversation. I flunked like a champ. Now I can hear my grandkids clear as a bell, sweet. My hearing loss was starting to make me become isolated and that's not good."

Mike replies: As far as I can tell with a little spot research, in the Maryland consonant-vowel nucleus-consonant (CNC) test they play static into one ear while saying "say the word 'odd' [or whatever]" into the other ear, testing your ability to distinguish vowels when preceded or followed by various consonants. Happy to say I scored 100% on that.

The hearing loss I'm aware of is spatial focus, which they don't test for. From an article in The Hearing Review: "Spatial information is conveyed by subtle acoustic cues that can indicate the origin of sound with regard to three-dimensional space. Therefore, spatial perception contributes to a listener’s ability to navigate her physical surroundings. In addition, in situations where there are multiple competing signals, such as at a cocktail party, spatial information effectively allows people to 'zoom in' on a particular signal of interest. This has been demonstrated in a multitude of studies." I used to be very good at that "zooming in" ability, but it deteriorates with age and I'm conscious of being much worse at it than I used to be. I used to have a seemingly freaky ability at restaurants to focus on one conversation across the room, then focus on a different one—and while focused on one I couldn't decipher the other. It made eavesdropping in public pretty entertaining. I essentially can't do it any more.

Speed: "Wikipedia on Farmall:

'Farmall was a model name and later a brand name for tractors manufactured by the American company International Harvester (IH). The Farmall name was usually presented as McCormick-Deering Farmall and later McCormick Farmall in the evolving brand architecture of IH.'

"A few years ago I attended the annual Red Power Round Up—a county-fair-like event without the animals. If you like old iron or seeing how your camera reproduces red tones, it is worth a day or two. This year's 29th annual Roundup will be held in Montgomery, Alabama, June 13th to 16th. Oops, maybe next year."

UPDATE: And how's this for a nice coincidence? I'm not sure I'd ever heard the word "Farmall" before two days ago, but coming home from Waterloo yesterday evening I had to stop to take a shot of this mailbox. Another Farmall fan!

Obviously the stylist was asleep on the job for this shoot. Sorry about that. Oh well, into every rural Upstate New York life a little birdshit must fall. —MJ

Mark: "'Round here they have vintage tractor plowing competitions where the old-timers on the tractors are often older than the old-time tractors themselves. Lovely people full of stories, like your farming friend.

"A camera is such a good way to get out, do things, meet people—all just as or more rewarding than the photography. It’s the experience, not the camera."

Mike replies: Amen.

MHMG: "I Googled it and found the McCormick Farmall mailbox you photographed available on both eBay and Amazon. Thanks, Mike, I should order one myself! The history books all say my great-granduncle Cyrus singlehandedly invented the McCormick Reaper, but I have to say the invention was very much a family affair with my great-great-grandfather, Robert McCormick, setting up all the critical conditions whereupon his son, Cyrus, would be able to go on to make a commercial success of the McCormick Reaper with the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago, Illinois.... This in turn leading to contentious business mergers and acquisitions culminating in International Harvester and the legendary McCormick Farmall tractors so popularly restored and collected today. Thank you, Mike, for a trip down memory lane. Kind regards, Mark McCormick-Goodhart."

John Camp: "About that spatial focus business—when I got my first hearing aids probably ten or twelve years ago, I put them on and went out to the golf course. I immediately noticed that I couldn't tell where birds were. They'd be chirping from trees along the fairway, but I couldn't tell from where, since the information I was getting was from a multi-directional microphone that sat behind my ear. It was disorienting and a bit disappointing, since I like to look at birds; but at least I could hear them.

"My decline in hearing is mostly attributable to age and genetics, but in my right ear, which is worse than my left, a good part of it was due to once (and only once) firing a .44 magnum Ruger auto-loading carbine without ear protection. It was like being slapped hard on the side of the head; I had immediate tinnitus, and it has never gone away."

Mike replies: You occasionally see evidence of idiots (and I use the term advisedly here) playing a "joke" by sneaking up on their friends and giving them a blast right in the ear with one of those compressed-air horns. I've wondered how many peoples' hearing has been permanently damaged by that asinine "prank." In my (yes, liberal, regulation- and big-government-approving) opinion, those compressed air horns should be vigorously banned and that particular kind of attack should be classified a felony assault and battery. But then, as you might have noticed, I have stronger than average opinions about noise pollution.

What I Bought

I bought a Panasonic GX8 and a brand new 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 II. I really like the look of those 20-MP-sensor Micro 4/3 files, and, in the end, I guess I'd rather have a camera that's fun to use for me than the one with the cuttingest-edgiest IQ.

But I kept my X-T1 and Fuji lenses. So I guess I'm officially standing with a leg in two camps.

Sorry to interrupt the conversation, but I have doctor's appointments all day...you know what Mark Twain said, "aging is not for the faint of heart." (He said "old age," but I'm not counting myself as old yet.)

More anon.

Yr. Hmbl. Host,

Mike

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A Few Sony Samples (Sony A7III)

[Note: the A7III body only is currently back-ordered. —MJ]

Mind you, I'm not trying to get into any arguments. We're all friends here. I just do my thing, run some trials, do a lot of looking, get a feel for things, and render my personal opinion. That's all. I'm not even saying I'm right. If your opinion differs, I have absolutely no problem with that. If you refuse to shoot with anything smaller than medium format or anything bigger than 1", that's completely cool with me.

But...

(There's always a "but" when a blog post starts out like that, isn't there?)

Here are a few Sony A7III samples at 100%. Or rather, if you double-click on them on a computer, they will open and you'll be able to see the full 800-pixel-wide size.

They're all smaller sections of larger frames, and I'll give just one example of that as it's not a difficult concept. Like, for instance, if this is the the full frame:

...Here's the "detail." Note that the blog software, for some unknown reason, does soften the image slightly. Probably some sort of auto-compression. The files opened in Photoshop CC look just a bit more crisp than the popup. But you can get the gestalt from the images as they appear on the blog page.

So here are some more small details of larger test shots:

As with the first one these are all just details of larger whole frames. For instance the test shot of the flowers looks like this:

But it's not just the detail and "sharpness" that impresses me about the Sony A7III's files, not just the accuracy of the colors and the impressively easy way it has with dynamic range. Just as nice is the flexibility of the files and their responsiveness to corrections in ACR and Photoshop. There's no strain. It's like the opposite of the iPhone, where noise proliferates quickly and highlight detail can be like walking a knife's edge, often spilling over into the ugliness of a blown channel. The Sony sensor gives you such flexibility that you're not wedded to the narrow way the capture "wants" to look; it admits of various interpretations.

What I like about this is that as I do my corrections I find the file kind of "snaps" into my recollection of how the scene looked. As you get the HDR balance right, or as you recover the color of the real light, the file kind of arrives at a feeling of visual rightness.

It's funny—I used to say that the bigger the negative, the harder it was in the field and the easier it was in the darkroom, and the smaller the negative, the easier it was in the field but the harder it was in the darkroom. That's why I always shot 35mm, because my chops were never the strongest with the camera in my hand but I was a darkroom ninja. Well, the Sony A7III reminds me that there is still some truth to that old adage even in the digital imaging age. It's a more demanding camera when the camera is in your hands, but then once you get those scrumptious files into post, that's when it takes it easy on you. It locates a lot of the fun of photography to in front of the computer. Too subtle a point? Maybe I'm just musing, I don't know.

David Brown said yesterday, "I think we're to the point where all cameras are 'good enough,' as in, if the photographer gets the basics right...the person viewing the photos won't be complaining about any obvious deficiencies." Phil Service's fastidious comparison of the Sony A7RIII and iPhone 8 (in good light) that he shared with us also reinforces this. I agree that we're to the point that all cameras are good enough, but with one important caveat: as long as we ourselves like the camera we're using and are happy using it!

At any rate, it just sure is nice to have those gorgeous, forgiving A7III files to work with, that's all I'm saying.

Mike
(Thanks to B&H Photo for the loan of the A7III and Zeiss 55mm.)

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Ernest Zarate: "I've been fortunate enough (or cursed enough) to have largish hands. Little things have never felt 'right' in my hands, including cameras. When I've used smaller cameras, my hands have felt cramped as they try to conform to ergonomics not designed for them. When I read people raving about the joy of their small camera and its light weight, tiny dimensions, ease-of-carry, etc., I am very happy for them, but I know that would not be me. I've held and used enough of these mini-marvels to validate that belief as well.

"Long way of getting around to say I've always found the dimensions of FF cameras comfortable in my hands. The added benefits of the FF format (including those your article points out) have increased the pleasure of these cameras. I also find a certain level of reassurance with the heft of this format (or, as Boris the Blade says, 'Heavy is good. Heavy is reliable'). Of course, like all things, one does reach a point of diminishing returns, and camera size is the same for me. I find FF cameras have that very nice balance, the Goldilocks balance of 'just right.' For me, FF works on many levels."

Dennis: "I really like that way of looking at sensor size. I think I'm going to remember it and let it guide me going forward. (Of course, knowing it doesn't lead to a decision—we still have to choose the compromise!) One thing that's kind of interesting is that smaller sensors are ridiculously capable (I now shoot with two Sony RX models with 1" sensors), the cameras that let them sing are pretty pricey, and at the other extreme, FF kits that give you those malleable files are within reach—more or less, depending on what you need for lenses, but certainly more than most of us ever felt medium format was. So what we have today is a set of harder choices, I think—a wider range of compromises that are more acceptable than in film days, from crazy capable fixed lens cameras offer 24–600mm equivalent range with an ƒ/4 lens that you can shoot at ISOs that beat slide film up to FF that lets you print bigger than you'll ever print, but is more reasonable to buy and carry than medium format ever was."

Eric Rose: "I sold my Nikon FF pro series camera over a year ago and went to Panasonic Micro 4/3. I have not regretted it one little bit. The only camera that might interest me in the future will be a Nikon mirrorless."

David Raboin: "I'm enjoying these last few posts about FF files vs. smaller cameras. After shooting exclusively FF and cell phones for a decade I bought a Micro 4/3 last November. Between my phone, aging Canon 5D Mark III, and my new Panasonic GX85, I shoot somewhere north of 3,000 pictures a month and edit (with the intent to display) about 100 of those photos each month. Here are my observations.

"The phone inspires the most creative and powerful compositions of any of my cameras. Part of that is because I don't think about settings with the phone, but I think I get better compositions with the phone mostly because of its superior screen. I love getting the camera away from my face and forcing unique perspectives. With the phone that's super easy. I can see the screen in the harshest light. The problem with my phone is the files fall apart in post. With many of my phone pics I must embrace the gritty, over-processed look.

"I've found that my Micro 4/3 Panasonic GX85 produces acceptable files, but not especially lovely files. The photos have ample detail and stand up to moderate to major edits. And, like a phone, I can get the GX85 away from my face and take pictures from the best angles, but unlike a phone, the GX85's screen stinks, especially in bright sun.

"And then there's my well-worn Canon 5D Mark III. That camera is old, I got it two days before my son was born. That means I've been shooting with it for five and a half years now. The 5D Mark III is hands-down still my best camera. The files are head and shoulders above my Panasonic Micro 4/3. There's more dynamic range, more editing latitude, better colors, and better realism. What a treat it is to view a card full of Canon images after spending time with the smaller cameras. I can only imagine how pleasing it must be to work with a newer Sony sensor.

"I don't know the science behind it to explain my findings, but FF photos look nicer. I dream of a mirrorless FF camera with a large cellphone-sized display."

Marcelo Guarini: "The camera is sharp (and the lens) indeed, and it has tons of dynamic range. I think it's superb for photographers who want to reproduce reality as much as possible, which is not my case. I seek more of a subtle graphic results, mostly B&W. To me, even the iPhone is OK, although just one lens is not enough.

"Micro 4/3 is my choice because of size, weight and excellent small lenses (12mm ƒ/2, 35mm ƒ/1.8, 50mm ƒ/1.8, 45mm ƒ/1.8, 75mm ƒ/1.8) and then the beautiful ƒ/0.95 Voigtländers that produce that dream look at ƒ/0.95. I can walk for hours with a couple cameras and four or five lenses. Micro 4/3 is just so fun for me.

"I agree, we have arrived to the point that all cameras are good enough, and you can choose whichever is up to your wealth and meets your taste and style."

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Delighted to see you taking that loaner Sony A7III for a walk, Mike. I’ve not used one myself but I did end up adopting the Sony A7 line as my primary platform shortly after the first A7R was introduced. (Not an easy decision after being a Canon man since college days.) Having used the A7RIII for about a year I cannot imagine wanting or needing anything more in a 35mm-class camera. That sensor combined with Sony’s finest FE lenses is simply unbeatable in most dimensions for producing the (technically) best imagery. Yes, I use other cameras but my Sony A7RIII is the 'big gun' in this format.

"As an aside, illustrating the relative quality of that Sony on any Internet venue is nearly impossible. We reached the level of presentable sufficiency for this medium quite some years ago. It’s really in print where the men get separated from the boys, so to speak. I spent much of this past winter making reference proof prints of a decade-long body of work that employed many cameras in many situations. The A7R[x] images were, indeed, usually the most robust and easiest to tune."

Mike replies: Re "illustrating the relative quality of that Sony on any Internet venue is nearly impossible," true dat. As for the A7RIII, I couldn't afford one even if I could afford one. But I'm happy to take your word for it (and John Lehet's, although I think his is an A7RII).

Oh Deer

Close call last night! Driving home from a gathering, a doe leapt the guardrail in front of me and sprinted into the path of the car. At 60 miles per hour I slammed into full ABS mode and took extreme evasive action, using all of the opposite lane (no oncoming traffic, fortunately) and going into a four-wheel skid first in one direction in the other—and then neatly recovered. I essentially drove around where the deer was about to be, at sixty miles an hour.

I felt pretty proud of myself afterward. I didn't panic, I reacted instantly, the car performed well, and I performed well. I didn't touch the deer, which was fairly amazing considering she leapt directly into the car's path and left very little room to maneuver.

I've learned to be alert for deer on the road at dusk and twilight.

And you know what I was thinking? That the image of the deer suspended in midair above the guardrail in the light of the brights over the right front fender of the car was a picture. It looked really neat. I can see it right now in my mind's eye.

Mike

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Bill McFadden: "Nice job driving. My uncle who was encyclopedic about 'the outdoors' taught me that where there is one deer, there will almost always be more following. His lesson paid off one night on my way from Wilkes-Barre to Elmira. I slowed for a deer crossing ahead and the impatient driver who passed me hit the second deer at 60 mph. That picture is still in my neural archives 65 years later."

Nick Van Zanten: "In Michigan, it's always a good idea to drive with a doe permit handy, that way, if you were careful you can eat her. Odds are pretty good (one in 80) that you will collide with one. I got mine a couple of years ago, but the guys in the truck behind me had the doe tag. Sheesh! I got the $1,500 body shop bill."

Mike replies: I don't want a body shop bill, and bully for the dudes in the pickup, but, speaking just for myself, tick-infested roadkill does not appeal as dinner!  :-)

Steve Rosenblum: "I'm very glad that you and the deer ended up unhurt. However, despite your pride in your reactions and response, what you did was unwise. According to law enforcement and natural resources folks, swerving to avoid hitting a deer is much more dangerous than hitting the deer if you can't stop in time. If you swerve the chances that you will lose control of your car and hit a tree, another car, or end up upside down in a ditch are higher than if you hit the deer and stay in your lane. If you Google 'What to do if you're about to hit a deer with your car' you will find numerous postings from official sources supporting this approach.

"A relative of mine was driving home at dusk from fishing on the Madison River in Montana when an elk jumped up on the road in front of his car and he did what you did. He ended up swerving off the road, rolling down an embankment, and hanging by his seatbelt upside down in his (now completely totaled) rental car. Fortunately, outside of having to extract some pieces of shattered windshield glass from his skin he was OK. He doesn't do that anymore."

Mike replies: Thanks for the information, but—well, it was a reaction, not a thoughtful, considered strategy. And being who I am, I'm also thinking about the deer, not just myself, and I doubt I can relearn that. At least not on the gut-reaction level.

However, thinking back on it, I think I applied pressure to the brakes incrementally (though quickly), because my long-ago driver's training was to not slam on the brakes because of the risk of going into a skid. So one thing I'm going to do is practice panic stops a few times. The local speed limit is 55 MPH, even on winding, hilly two-lane roads, and most people drive 60–65 MPH or even faster. I usually set the cruise control for roughly 62 or 63 MPH. Driving that speed, when no one's in sight, I'm going to practice slamming on the brakes a few times. I need to retrain myself to let ABS keep me from skidding and stop the car as quickly as possible.

And by the way, last night the wildlife I encountered was a fox kit that was checking out some roadkill on the centerline. I saw the reflections of his eyes from far away, and was driving slowly by the time I came up on him.

Jim A.: "This is one of the few concerns I have when riding my beloved motorcycle. Even though I live in a state where this sort of accident is a rarity, I always keep an eye peeled. Here are some interesting insurance stats on the likelihood of collision with deer for each state."

Image Quality (My Updated Opinion) (Sony A7III)

Mike Johnston, Excusado, 2018. Like a lot of my pictures this one's a little photo-historical joke. The reference is to Edward Weston's Excusado, his famous faux-abstract exploration of form from 1925. (The title means "excused," slang for toilet.) Sony A7III.

I've just updated my personal experience of the ever-changing state of the tech. I compared, directly, images from four solidly good-quality mainstream cameras: a 24-MP full-frame camera (the Sony A7III), a 24-MP ASP-C camera (albeit one with the still-controversial X-Trans sensor, the Fuji X-T2), a Micro 4/3 camera with the latest 20 MP sensor (the Panasonic GX8), and the dual-module 12-MP camera in the iPhone 7+.

You'll have to accept that the Sony A7III picture up top isn't proof, it's just an illustration. You'll have to take my word for my conclusion below, as it's based on looking at a lot of full files in ACR at 100%. (As Ctein used to say—I'm paraphrasing—believe what I say, not what you see in the magazine.)

I've said before that I'm pretty much "over" full-frame cameras, having satisfied myself that they don't really offer that much advantage in return for their disadvantages (such as shallower depth-of-field and larger lenses, and greater expense). In this recent round of comparisons I "expected" to find myself relatively unimpressed with FF vs. APS-C, and personally I remain able to be completely satisfied with Micro 4/3.

Christian Cross. iPhone 7+. That little bright dot on the right-hand edge is Venus in the Western sky.

And I will say in my own defense that the differences between these four cameras are pretty impressively compressed, bunched together, as it were, on the graph: they're differences not of kind but of degree. Only the phone has much separation from the others, lagging behind in both image quality when "stressed" and in flexibility of operation as a camera. But it doesn't do badly at all, for instance in "Christian Cross." None are obviously inferior and none instantly recognizable as "better" in all cases, and all four (even the smartphone) are capable of impressive results that are potentially more than acceptable for various kinds of work. I can't envision any of the interchangeable-lens cameras holding anyone back from realizing their accomplishments.

However. The pictures don't lie, and if I'm honest I have to admit that the Sony A7III is a cut above the others. To me, the GX8 is the most flexible and fun to use and shoot with, the X-T2 offers the best all-around balance between all the opposing and conflicting parameters, while the Sony doesn't make you take too much of a size or convenience hit but convinces mainly with its results. The beautiful clarity of detail, the naturalness of the dynamic range, and the ease with which it renders a sense of real light, a feeling of atmosphere, and of the volume of real spaces is gratifying. It's only my third favorite of the cameras (although I like it), but as far as the results are concerned, in this comparison, it does win. The image files are beautiful, and have an effortlessness, elegance and sense of real light that the other cameras come close to but can't equal.

Mike

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David L.: "Your descriptions of the Sony A7III results mirror my feelings about my A7II. I went from DX and CX Nikons to the Sony A7II full frame and it was a big step ahead. Processing the raw files is such a joy. And some of my old manual focus Leica lenses and Nikkors (with adapters and with IBIS) sing beautifully on the Sony sensor. And the B&W mode produces great photos with excellent lenses. It's caused me to look for a bag for the camera, with another lens or two, so as to carry it everywhere."

brian: "I think that I understand what you are saying. Although I ordered a Sony A7RIII minutes after it became available, I’m still coming to terms with it. After decades with more approachable cameras from Contax, Pentax, and Mamiya, the Sony was something of a challenge—but the results are worth it. I think that the files that camera can produce, like the smaller files from the similar A7III, are beautiful, and now, after investing the months necessary to get to know it, the Sony is a real pleasure to use."

Working On It (Blog Notes)

I've received an unprecedented amount of requests for comments about David Douglas Duncan, 1916–2018, who died at age 102 on June 7th, in Grasse, France. Like many of us I have a lot of "off the top of my head" anecdotes swimming in my thoughts, but I don't feel I have a very good handle on him. He's important for a number of different, disparate accomplishments and he isn't easy to categorize. Just wanted to mention that I'm working on an obituary and my temporary silence isn't neglect or disrespect. Here's one of several obituaries published elsewhere.

Mike the Ed.

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