The Online Photographer

Two Stories About Collecting

I like collecting, and collectors, and collections. One of my personal favorite books is Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness, an entertaining tome about book collecting that deserves to be a classic. I wish I knew of a similar book about photo collecting, but I don't think there is one. There might not even be as good a single book about art collecting, but I don't know.

Anyway there are lots and lots of good collecting stories, and I thought I'd share a couple of my own, while the sale is still going on and we're on the subject.

It must have been in the 1990s when I went up to New York City one year for the AIPAD show. (AIPAD: Association of International Photography Art Dealers.) I knew Kathleen Ewing, who was the founder or maybe one of the founders of AIPAD, and who was involved early on in the show. Anyway at one booth there was some excitement over new prints by Josef Koudelka, who is one of my personal favorite photographers—Exiles might be my favorite photo book of all the ones I own. There was talk that the famously nomadic Koudelka was actually settling down, and had conceived a novel need in his life for something called money for which he had previously had little use, so he had enlisted a shadowy fine printer in Paris to make prints of his work for sale. The printer was the same man who made all of Cartier-Bresson's prints, people were saying. That marked the first time I had ever heard of Voja Mitrovic, Peter Tunrley's great and good friend who also printed his film negatives for years, although I didn't know Voja's name at the time.

I almost bought this. Key word "almost."
Still gives me a pang when I see it....

Anyway there were these beautiful, vivid, stunning prints of my favorite Koudelka pictures—not one but several of them—that I could hold in my hands. They cost $1,200, and I resolved to buy one. It was more than a lot of money for me at the time—it was a reckless amount of money. Buying two prints was out of the question, but I couldn't decide between two particular pictures, so I forced myself away from the booth to wander the floor and think over my decision. By the time I returned, "good" sense had gained the upper hand in my mind, dagnabbit, and I back out—chickened out? Anyway, I didn't buy one.

So guess what those very same '90s Koudelka prints go for now, at auction? $15,000 minimum. Most, more like $25,000.

I'm not saying that because of the investment implications, but because of the "replacement" cost—what it would cost me now to rectify my mistake of back then.

The not-a-collector collector
Investment implications lead me nicely into the second story, though, which concerns my friend Jim Sherwood, a very fine photographer in his own right who has done extensive projects over many years. Jim has grit—he's smart and also dogged. He decided early in his life that he couldn't be a collector—his day job was as the school system photographer for the public school system in Prince Georges County, Maryland—but he reasoned that he could buy one print every year. So every year he would save his money and buy himself one nice print for his birthday. Different photographer every year. Had to be something he could afford, of course.

But you know what? The years go by, and years turn into decades, and decades pile on top of each other—and Jim, who might not be a collector, has a collection—and a very nice one, too. He got priced out of many of the photographers he bought early on; he can no longer afford an Ansel Adams, for example. But that's okay, because he already owns one, bought years ago when he could afford it. When I saw the collection, it adorned most of the walls of his house, and it was stunning—it had real presence, real power. Some wonderful pictures by some resonant names.

At that time, he had two young daughters. Well, eventually those daughters grew up, and guess what Jim told me the last time we communicated? He needed to pay college tuition for one of his daughters, so he sold one of the prints from his collection...and it covered a pricey college education.

Ya love that.

There's no lesson here, no message. It's possible Jim just got in at the right time, and has a good eye and good taste and a photographer's knowledge of other photographers. He bought well. The collector—the person—counts. Mostly, I think what he likes is just living with all those pictures. That they turned out to be his retirement, and a better retirement than he could have gotten any other way, was serendipitous, just gravy. And of course, his consistent interest and devotion to photography over many years was crucial. (I really should see if I can do an interview with Jim—that would be interesting, for all of us. Wonder if he owns a Koudelka. Probably. Oy.)

Okay, there is one message—don't think you can't collect. It's a pastime that's infinitely variable and conceptually fluid. Anybody can be one.

All you have to do is want to.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

An "Eye-Muscle" Photography Collection Game

Here's how to make a photography collection for zero money that will exercise your taste, your discrimination, and your eye.

The Objective: Collect a cogent and coherent set of 35 photographic images from anywhere on the Internet by making screen grabs. Because you will only look at them yourself on your own computer, and not republish, exhibit, sell, or claim credit for them, you don't need to worry about rights—you can use anything you find. This is just an exercise, and just for your own edification.

The Rules:

1. The only thing that is off-limits are pictures already recognized as artistic, valuable, well-known, or otherwise recognized or sanctioned by others as "good" in some way. It takes no stretching whatsoever to screen-grab a JPEG of Weston's Pepper and Adams's Moonrise and say you're building an imaginary collection. Rather, you have to find out-of-the-way photographs that embody your themes and recognize their unique value for yourself. You might give yourself extra points for pictures that are purely utilitarian, such as pictures harvested from Google Street View, pictures from ads or eBay auctions, real-estate photos, catalogue photos of objects, screen grabs from YouTube videos, stock photos (but be careful not to republish these), Facebook photos meant for friendly communication, etc. Even porn if that's the way you roll—no one will see this unless you show it to them individually on your own monitor, so harvest from whatever sources you decide to allow.
2. You must be able to articulate your "principles of collection" and all the photographs must adhere to it in some way. Pay special attention to how the photographs work together—the sequencing, and how each relates to the whole. Hint 1: be flexible about your principles of collection and don't be afraid to change horses in midstream—follow your interest and the "energy" of the project. If you lose impetus or enthusiasm or find yourself bogging down, chances are you haven't hit on the idea that's really right for you, that energize you and nourish your real interest. Hint 2: Follow a visual interest more than a conceptual one. Something that satisfies a gut response, that gives you a feeling of gratification or satisfaction when you look at it with your eyes.
3. You must "love" (for your own definition of love!) every one of the 35!

As far as corrections are concerned, suit yourself, but I'd say you can crop and color-correct your finds; but don't "transform" them (to use the term from copyright law).

As far as what 'Principles of Collection' might mean, this might be a very fecund topic of conversation in a few days' time, but look to history or what you know of history. Joel Meyerowitz did a project called "Redheads," Karl Blossfeldt made analytical closeups of plant parts, or just look at one of the very basic themes of one of our Baker's Dozen posts, for example, "Yellow." Your collection idea could be centered around a place, an emotion, a genre, a type of equipment or media, a mood, a type of photographer—only you know what kinds of image most satisfy you in your gut and would therefore be fun to gather and sequence. Peter, for another example, did a book called French Kiss, and most of the pictures in the book featured couples or people kissing. Andre Kertesz did a book on reading. Take Peter's "Venice" picture from this sale for another example: legs. There's a principle of collection, if it resonates for you. Can you find 35 pictures of legs that form a balanced, coherent collection? If Peter's "Venice" picture was the first one in your collection, does the first photograph in the "Yellow" portfolio I just linked to work for you, or is it too similar or too different in some way that creates dissonance?

Pictures with dogs in them. Redneck vehicles. Pictures that include spheres. Old press photos. Pictures that include ice. Musical instruments made of metal. Forgotten photographers (MoMA did a show of this title in 1951). Rediscovered photographers. Snapshots. Pictures taken in the 1910s. Asian people. Black-and-white pictures taken on or in an ocean. Really, any interest, any source of satisfaction for your eye, is fair game. The sky's the limit. Pictures of sky, for that matter.

Brief example, which I found very quickly on the Web. Imagine your idea is something very simple like "symmetry":

You'd have to ask yourself, does the picture fit with the others in your Symmetry collection? Does it work strengthen the other pictures or clash with them? Do the slight asymmetries in the picture create pleasing tension, or detract from its symmetry? Do you actually love this after looking at it for three days? Maybe it will fit less well as you add more pictures and go in a different direction, and you like it now but you'll have to discard it later. Maybe it will shift the direction of your collection slightly and render several other pictures superfluous. You never know. Gotta stay flexible, keep the collection dynamic.

It's a picture I found quickly on eBay, illustrating an auction for the antique angle brackets. I liked the distressed wood.

Tip: Pick a simple theme and do one of these quickly to start with—dash it off, so to speak. All the while pondering what really interests you, what really grabs you, before you start a more serious collection. Or maybe do another quick one. Or just wait until a picture you stumble across in your Web-travels grabs you so hard that you just feel compelled to make a capture of it so you can look at it again and you think, Aha! This is something I could collect! And build from there.

I think if you do this exercise a couple of times, you'll have a pretty fair idea of what the practice of collecting—the nuts and bolts of it—is really all about. It's a rich subfield within the broader medium we call "photography," and it's one of the ways you can get, and be, involved. (Consider all the people who collect cameras.)

And for this, you don't need money. Because you see, in collecting, really, money is optional. What's required is your seriousness about it, your focus, your insight. Your organization and discipline. And, of course, whether you're able to find, and mine, the fun in it!

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Open Mike: Life Without TV

I've just passed four years without a television. It's the longest time I've ever gone without one.

I've had several stints in my life without a TV, starting in about 1982 when I went for a a little over a year without one. I ended up hastily buying one a few days before the local-to-me Washington Redskins made their first appearance in the Super Bowl. It was worth it—Joe Gibbs, Art Monk, Joe Theismann, Big Dave Butz, John Riggins, and and "the Hogs" and the rest of them routed the Miami Dolphins for their first Super Bowl win.

The trouble with television was highlighted for me two weeks after the Super Bowl, when I found myself mindlessly watching reruns of "Bewitched" at two o'clock in the morning. (I admit I was rather bewitched by Elizabeth Montgomery.) Samantha wiggled her nose and Aunt Clara disappeared and the spell wore off me suddenly; I "came to" and marveled that the little black magic box could be causing me to waste my time on Earth so profligately.

I do miss television occasionally, I can't lie. I would like to watch some of the sporting events, and I do admit I'm less in touch with the news than I was when I watched network news every evening (tip for sleep improvement: watch the early news, never the late news). And when something really momentous happens, like the awful California wildfires, television is still where people like to turn for the latest.

The existential oddity of television sets is a leitmotif in the
work of Lee Friedlander, one of my photographic touchstones.

But there are a lot of things I hate about TV, too. The incubated culture of commercialism, very little of which I actually agree with; the constant hectoring yammer of false cheeriness; the torrent of ads and the increasing brevity and mannerism of the bits in between the ads; the glossy surface, seldom with any substance or soul beyond or beneath it; and the unceasing spellbinding distraction it encourages from the life I actually live.

And I see a little TV...just not on TV. Four or five years ago I binge-watched The Wire (which is the legendary Great American Novel in my opinion), and a year or two ago I did the same with the maddeningly inconsistent Downton Abbey, which I understand is being rejuvenated for the big screen next year. With Maggie Smith.

But most of my attempts to ignite an interest in popular series splutter, fizzle, and fade out. I tried, but I couldn't get into Breaking Bad or The Sopranos.

Besides, if you're a snooker fan like I am, there isn't time for watching much else.

I'm used to life without TV now, and I doubt I could go back. My friend Jim, whom I've known since we were seven, hasn't watched TV since the 1970s. It is possible. (They keep a TV and a DVD player in the closet and bring it out occasionally to watch a movie.) Anyway, I prefer to listen to music, or the waterfall, or the silence, and to read rather than watch. Most of all, I think I like being here, as opposed to letting myself be transported to some Wizard of Oz fake world where there's no there there*.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Editor contemplates life. It appears on Wednesdays.

*"There is no there there" is the best-known quote of Gertrude Stein's; she was referring to her childhood home in Oakland, California, when it no longer existed. The line appears in Chapter Four of her book Everybody's Autobiography, which continues her most famous book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Stein, like Samuel Johnson and Oscar Wilde among others, was one of those authors who suffer the bittersweet fate of being more interesting than their works.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Khürt Williams: "If Netflix is TV then...I am lost. But Jim [in another comment —Ed.] has a point that 'computers, cell phones and similar devices' are just as effective time-wasters."

Mike replies: I certainly didn't mean to claim that I don't waste time!! Just that I don't own a television set, that's all.

I have two computers (one is reserved entirely for writing, and is only online so I can do quick research as I write), an iPhone, a laptop I never use except on my infrequent travels, and an iPad. I read on my phone and tablet. I watch shows and movies occasionally on the 27" computer (not as often as once a week, although sometimes I rise to that—I let my Netflix subscription lapse a few years ago), and I watch an awful lot of YouTube—most of it snooker matches from around the world. I can't watch them in real time, but since I'm very far removed from the world in which snooker is a "thing," I don't run much risk of hearing the outcomes beforehand. Being a British sport, snooker matches can go on for hours—I mean as much as six or eight hours over multiple days—so to watch even a fraction of a tournament can be a very significant time commitment. I would file that under "entertainment" rather than wasted time, like other people watch football or soccer, but that might be rationalizing!

A Few Musings About Collecting

I've always wanted to be a collector. I have the gene. (Although I don't have quite enough organizing ability.) But I've never had the means, or the space (which are two aspects of the same thing).

I've told this story on myself before, and it's embarrassing to me now, but it's also instructive.

When I was young I was very interested in books. In Washington D.C. I befriended Bill Hale of William F. Hale books and his mentor across the street, the novelist Larry McMurtry. Larry was first a reader, second a bookman, and third a writer of novels—he won the Pulitzer Prize for his epic Western Lonesome Dove in 1985 (it was also a series of made-for-TV movies). Larry once quit a teaching post at Yale because it interfered too much with his reading time—he said, "instead of spending time talking about reading, I would rather read."

Among other things, I read—voraciously at first—about reading, bookmaking, and book collecting. I decided I might collect fine press books, and an early if obvious enthusiasm along these lines was the book designer Bruce Rogers. So from Larry's tiny little Shangri-la of a bookshop on 31st Street in Georgetown I purchased a three-volume set of John Florio's translation of Montaigne, designed by Rogers. It was a magnificently well made set of books, and I swelled with pride to own it. Admiring it on my shelf, I considered that I was on my way.

There was only one little problem: the set had cost $800 or so, which at the time was a very large subset of "all the money I had." It had failed to occur to my evidently very small brain that to collect books, or at any rate books that other people already valued, required something called resources, which I did not have.

This may be why I'm such an enthusiast of putting nice things in peoples' hands for relatively little dough (is dough still slang for money, or is that just too Edward G. Robinson now? Translated into English: dosh). I always try to make sure that the things we bring you here are bargains.

My "book collection" stood at one title for some number of months while the truth wormed its way laboriously through the thick plate of my skull. Finally, when no others could join it and it began to look lonely, and then accusatory, and finally pathetic there on the shelf all alone, a large tripartite monument to my folly, I sold it back to Larry, who generously gave me all my money back. Larry was very kind—he also gave me a binder's copy of the first Irish edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which someday I will have rebound...probably just before I head for the George.

Not cheap, inexpensive
I wonder if people appreciate being able to buy top-flight signed collector prints for a mere $350, which was the amount I was instructed in photography school to sell my student prints for...way back in the 1980s.

It's not always the right move. In one long-ago print sale here on top, we were selling a print for something like $100, and I got a call from a man who really wanted one. But he had a big problem. He said he lived in a $3 million house, and he didn't have a single piece of art on his walls that cost less than $5,000, and he was very reluctant to hang a $100 print in his home. Of course I quickly offered to sell him the same print for $5,000, but, while that seemed a perfect solution to me, it did not seem so to him. We both ended up deprived on that occasion.

And another story on the same lines—when I taught high school in the '80s, I took portraits of some of my students for the yearbook, charging only $100 for expenses, which I thought was a nominal fee. But there was one girl whose mother wouldn't let her hire me. Her father was famous—if you're anywhere near my generation, you would know who he is—and the family was very wealthy. The mother simply refused to let her daughter pay $100 for her yearbook portrait. It just wasn't enough. So they hired the most fashionable society photographer in Georgetown at the time, and the girl asked me for a bunch of samples of my work, and she took my samples to the other photographer and asked her to make a portrait in the same style. So they got a portrait pretty much like one of mine, but they got to pay $1,200 for it, which was much more satisfactory to them.

So I just wanted to say, if anyone would feel more comfortable paying $1,200 for one of our current Turnley prints—more in line with what they go for in galleries—I will be most happy to try to talk Peter into accommodating you. That's how cooperative a fellow I am.

For everyone else, I hope the nice accommodating price will help you to have more than one single solitary print in your photography collection.  :-)

Mike

P.S. Regarding Bruce Rogers, Paragraphs on Printing is a fascinating window into the world of type design and book design. But it's a book I love, so I can't be objective about it.

P.P.S. Regarding Edward G. Robinson, it's not widely remembered now, but he was among Hollywood's first major art collectors. If you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, search for an article called "Hollywood's First Great Art Collector."

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Stephen Scharf: "My advice: stay away from collecting watches (if you think camera-owners suffer from GAS...). Particularly the exceptionally well-regarded-by-watchonistas German brand, Sinn (pronounced "Zinn"). Superb German quality and execution with functionally beautiful, legible design at a fraction of Swiss watch prices.

"It's very easy to become a Sinner; you've been warned!  ;-)"Picture here: my beloved Sinn 104i (photo by yours truly)."

Geoff Wittig: "I went through a phase of diligent book collecting centered on exactly the same kind of thing you did, Mike. Bruce Rogers was by common consent the most brilliant book designer in American history. He designed exquisite books ranging from very expensive limited editions to trade hardcovers that were nearly as beautiful. His goal was to carefully tailor the typeface, typesetting, page design, even the paper and the smell of the ink, to echo the message of the text, without overpowering it. I probably have about 20 Rogers-designed books in my collection.

"But it's not nearly as much fun collecting books as it used to be. Circa 1990, this meant combing through shelved and piled up books in musty little 'used and rare' bookstores, preferably in remote locations. My best finds were in small bookstores in Vermont, and they were quite affordable. All this changed when the Internet arrived. Overnight, bookstores listed their best fine books on-line; prices skyrocketed and serendipitous finds disappeared. Now it's all about the Benjamins."

David Brown: "Your story about the school portraits reminds me of trying to sell my wife's car about 10 years ago. There was really nothing wrong with it, but the dealer didn't want it, so they only offered $1,000 on trade in. Low book value was $3,500, so I decided to sell it myself. I listed it on Craigslist for $3,200, hoping for a quick sale. The only responses I got were people asking if I would take $500. I took down the ad, and drove the car myself for the summer. Then one day, on a whim, I listed it on Craigslist for $5,000. I immediately had several positive inquiries. The car was sold within hours, at full asking price. Apparently the low initial asking price had put people off. The Turnley prints are beautiful. I'm running out of wall space, but I may bite anyway. Thank you for these print sales, they are a great service to the community."

TOP Print Sale: Paris, Venice, Havana

This Cyber-Monday morning I'm happy to announce The Online Photographer's exclusive seasonal print sale for this year: three beautiful prints of recent new photographs taken by Peter Turnley in three countries.

France, 2018

Italy, 2018

Cuba, 2018

Proceed to the order page now [Sale ended 10 p.m. 11/30/2018]

Orders will be accepted from now through Friday evening at 10 p.m. Eastern U.S. time. If you're not familiar with our print sales, we do things a little differently. First, we collect paid orders for only a limited time—in this case, five days. The photographer can then make the prints to order and do everything in one large batch, knowing the prints are already sold. What that means is that we can sell fine art prints for prices way below what galleries would have to charge, but the photographer still makes money because what we lack in profit per piece we make up in volume. It's a nice model because everyone wins.

However, you have to order now. Once the sale is over, it's over. We can't take orders past the deadline.

These prints are on the European collector size 12x16 inch (roughly 30x40 cm) paper, with an image area of approximately 9.5x14 inches. As seen in these JPEGs, the prints are signed on the front outside the image area. They match the size and quality as the prints we’ve offered in our very successful previous TOP sales of Peter’s photographs; I assume some buyers will be adding to their already existing collections. Peter says, "I photograph currently using a Leica M10 camera with a Summilux 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens. The files from the M10 are among the best files I have ever seen in digital photography, and the conversions to black-and-white offer an amazing range of tone and detail in both highlights and shadows." The prints are traditional silver gelatin fiber prints made from the digital files.

We can ship both domestically and internationally. All orders will arrive before Christmas. Purchases can be made with PayPal or credit or debit card.

This offer is being made exclusively through The Online Photographer and a portion of every sale goes to benefit yer favorite blog. We know you care! And thanks.

Paris, 1991

As an added value, a FREE bonus print of Paris, 1991 (arguably Peter's most famous photograph) will be included as a gift to anyone who orders three or more prints. This print isn't available separately.

To me, Peter's personal black-and-white work shows the life of the world in a gentle, romantic spirit. There's an immediacy and an honesty to the personal connection that always seems to show through, no matter what the subject matter. It's an indelible marker of Peter's style, which at this point I feel I can always recognize. I really hope you like these latest pictures as much as I do and I hope they'll continue to enrich your visual life as you live with them.

Here, again, is how to order. [Sale ended 10 p.m. 11/30/2018]

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Paulo Bizarro: "I think it is an appropriate choice: Paris—a shot depicting love; Italy—a shot that reminds me of fashion; Cuba—a shot illustrative of music and joie de vivre."

bourquek: "Re 'The prints are traditional silver gelatin fiber prints made from the digital files.' Have you covered this before? How do you make a traditional wet print from a digital source? I can think of a couple of ways but I wonder about the particulars."

Mike replies: I don't know if we've "covered" it per se but I offered an example quite a while back (in 2011). Conventional printing paper is exposed by laser light and developed normally. Digital Silver Imaging was the company I used for my "Color Picture" print back then. That type of print is generically known a "lightjet" print after the LightJet company, which introduced the first LightJet laser printer at PMA in 1995 (it cost $200k and made prints 11x14 or smaller). LightJet printers are no longer made but there are many still in service and there are (or were) several other brands such as Chromira by ZBE and Lambda by Durst. It's a digital printing method but it offers two advantages, one being that it's true continuous tone and the other that it allows the use of fully archival traditional fiber printing papers, the same papers used for enlarger prints.

Speed: "Turnleys on '60 Minutes.'"

Mike replies: I always enjoy watching that. Remember that book I recommended a few weeks ago, Grit? David and Peter practically define the term.

Peter Wright: "You made a great choice here! I just need to work out what I can afford and my order will be in (I’m tempted to get the lot!). These pictures demonstrate that photography is both utterly simple, and extraordinarily difficult. All that is needed is a bone simple rangefinder type camera (even a film one will do, as ‘Paris, 1991’ shows), and one basic fixed focal length lens. No need for auto focus, zoom lenses, multiple fps, etc. Oh, and being at just the right place, at the right time and seeing the shot! No problem!

"I very much like Peter’s style of photography. When I took a course with him in New York a few years back, I was taken aback when he started by stating gently but firmly that we keep it simple and use just one moderate length non-zoom lens for the whole week. But in fact I got many of my all-time favorite pictures that week, even when I was entirely on my own. As you say happens on his courses, and as others have pointed out—it was the most educational week of my photographic life."

Dave Karp: "Even though I have not participated in all of your sales, I do appreciate each one of them."

(Re)Introducing Peter Turnley

We're starting our Fall print sale tomorrow morning at 6:00. It's an official TOP sale this year, and every purchase will help benefit this site, as well as, of course, the photographer. We're offering three collector prints of new work by my good friend Peter Turnley.

This might sound hard to believe if you've been reading this site for a while, but some readers will need an introduction to Peter. Much as I'd like to keep every reader forever (and do have some readers who have been with me for nearly that long), there's a lot of turnover in this biz, and I get new readers here all the time. And we haven't done anything with Peter in a while.

For those of your who don't know Peter, he's a very unusual photographer. He was at the very top of the photojournalism field for decades—Peter and his twin brother David were featured on the CBS News show "60 Minutes" (a fact he doesn't even mention in his official bio!) and, back when Newsweek was one of the top two weekly newsmagazines in the U.S., he shot many features for them, including 43 covers. He estimates he was on the scene of almost every major world conflict and major world news story for a period of more than thirty years. Apart from Newsweek, his work has been featured in Paris Match, The New York Times, Stern, Harper’s Magazine, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and many other leading magazines all over the world.

Peter Turnley, Paris, 1991

Yet he's also been an art photographer virtually from the very beginning, befriending many of older generation of French humanist photographers in his adopted city of Paris and producing lyrical work that builds on theirs. He has published seven books of his work, both personal and photojournalistic, both alone and in tandem with David: Beijing Spring, Moments of Revolution, In Times of War and Peace, Parisians, McClellan Street, French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, and Cuba: A Grace of Spirit. In 2016, he was honored with a major retrospective at Cuba's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the country's leading art museum.

Peter's picture "Paris, 1991," of the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and the rooftops of Paris, became one of the top-selling posters of all time. Signed original fine art prints of the photograph have been highly sought after as well, and, as the result of earlier sales, many TOP readers now own fine prints of "Paris, 1991" too.

(True story—years ago, when I was talking to Peter about having our first sale of his work, I happened to be in a Crate and Barrel store in Mayfair Mall in Wisconsin. As we were talking about "Paris, 1991," I turned the corner, and there in front of me was was a huge framed poster of the very photograph we were talking about on the wall of the store.)

More than anything, though, Peter is a genuine, down-to-earth guy. He continues to work on projects and teaches workshops in Paris, New York, Havana and elsewhere, and many TOP readers who have attended his workshops can attest to his generosity and warmth as a teacher. Workshops in street photography can be extremely dynamic and challenging for amateurs and enthusiasts, and Peter's are known as some of the most exciting; readers often tell me their week with Peter expanded their outlook and improved their skills dramatically.

It's really all about the human connection for him. He values his photographs of quiet, personal moments in the lives of ordinary people all over the world as much as he values his news photographs of cataclysmic world events.

Please come back in the morning to see the new pictures for this year's exclusive TOP print sale.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

The Best Camera is Your Axe

Recently, a commenter here said he liked his Olympus E-PL6 with the 17mm ƒ/1.8. "Tried other lenses," he added, "but that's the one I like."

Another said he liked his Leica M6 and Summilux-M lens.

Another, his 4x5. ("So guess it's a horse buggy for me?" he asked.)

One likes his Nikon D700 a lot; another owns a Sony RX10 Mark III.

One just bought a new Nikon Z7, and another has a Fuji GX50R on order.

Yet another named a number of different cameras he owns and says he likes shooting all of them at different times for different reasons.

The point is, whatever you like best, or enjoy using the most, or trust, or are familiar with, or that gives you the results you like, or any combination of those...well then that's the best camera for you.

It could be this,

Or this,

Or this,

Or this,

Or this.

If it's what you like to use and gives you the results you like, it ain't nobody's business but your own.

Mike
(Pictured, top to bottom: Arca-Swiss F-Field C 4x5 view camera, Leica M10P in black chrome, Olympus E-PL9 kit with 14–42mm lens, Sony RX10 IV, Huawei P20 Pro)

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Jeff Smidt: "Three queens and a King also have something to say about your own business."

Tim Bradshaw (partial comment): "I agree, cameras should be like that other axe: in particular it should be possible to make the sort of investment of time that a guitarist might make in their chosen weapon, secure in the knowledge that, theft and accident aside, that guitar will serve them for decades."

Rick Denney: "Taking from my music experience, I have owned and used perhaps 12 tubas over the last half century. I classify them this way:

1. Tubas that make me sound better than I am, even if they make me work for it. (I thank myself for buying these.)

2. Tubas that aren't worth the struggle, either because I'm not good enough to make them work or because making them work takes too much effort. (I wonder why I bought them.)

"I have found no correlation between that classification and price, popularity, type, age, maker, country of origin, or anything else. Of course, any tuba may fall into one category of the other depending on the music I'm playing, which dimension I'm measuring at the moment, or my mood and abilities that day. It's not about being forgiving, unless I'm out of practice and need forgiveness.

"I've owned many camera systems, and they can be categorized the same way. Some are unforgiving but get results like no other. Some try to be so easy that they don't do what I want them to do.

"But I still either thank myself for buying them, or I don't. The Sinar view camera is forbidding, but I thank myself for buying it in ways I never did with my previous Cambo, which always put up a fight for no apparent reason. My Pentax 645z is a beast, but I'm still thanking myself for buying it--it rewards the sore biceps with sheer joy in both using it and seeing the results. My Canon 5D and 5DII get the results I want but sometimes fight me, and I have 15 years of learning their interfaces.

"One truth I have learned about both tubas and cameras: None is perfect, and each fulfills a different set of requirements related to what I'm trying to do. Trying to find the one camera that fulfills all requirements may be a fool's errand."

Quote o' the Day: Lee

-

"I've always said that the really intuitive interface is the one you've been using for five years."

—A reader named Lee, in a comment from this morning

-

The quote goes for computers, but cameras too!

(posted by) 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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

PaulW: "Five years sounds about right. That's about how long it took me to become really comfortable with the Olympus menu system.  :-)  "

Which SUV...Er, Sorry, FFM Would You Choose?

The new Lumix—er, Panasonic—er, Lumix by Panasonic—S1R
full-frame mirrorless. It's not actually out yet.

Everyone in America must buy an SUV now. It's a new law that was passed some while back when I wasn't looking. SUVs or pickup trucks—they're what Amurricans drive now.

It isn't actually a law. But I'm starting to feel like I'm being pushed into it. It's almost like there's an unspoken pressure to conform. I mean, is it still okay to drive a little sedan? Can I drive a little sedan and still be an Amurrican? And not a subversive? I mean, I am a liberal.

The new standard(?)
Do you ever get that slightly uncomfortable feeling that that's what's happening in the camera world, too? I mean, what's going on? There's been this high-profile tide of new camera systems, all jumping on the Sony/Leica bandwagon of full-frame mirrorless (FFM). It seems painfully plain that we're all supposed to be excited about FFM now. Are we kinda being pushed into it? Does anyone else get that "any color so long as it's black" feeling about FFM, or is that just me? What's your choice: this SUV or this SUV? What's your choice: Nikon Z7 and Z6, Canon EOS R, Leica SL, Panasonic—er, Lumix—S1 and S1R, or Sony A7 III, A7S II, A7R III, or A9? Are those going to be real cameras, going forward? Micro 4/3 is piddling and paltry and nobody even likes APS-C any more even though we all shot that for years. And floppy mirrors are so 2010.

FFM is set to be the SUV of the camera world, looks like. Ford has even announced that it's not going to make cars any more (except the Mustang). The whole company is going to go with SUVs and pickup trucks. Wow.

I don't know. I don't have anything against full-frame mirrorless, by the way. I liked the Sony A7 III when I shot with it—beautiful files, although I didn't really warm to the user experience. And I'm as interested in the comparos and feature lists as anybody—it's all fun to read about. (Whoops, I shouldn't admit that I don't watch review videos. You're supposed to, I think.)

If you're chuffed about FFM—and I can certainly see why you would be—I'm glad for you, because you've got a lot of happy shopping to do. Hypothetical question: if you had your cameras stolen and had a big wad of insurance money burning a hole in your pocket (because, ahem, you've got your cameras insured, naturally)—which of the Big Five FFM system brands would you buy into? (I know, two of the brands are in the same system, but you know what I mean. And don't forget that Sigma will probably come out with a Foveon-sensor FFM in a year or two.)

If I were forced to choose, I know which one I'd get...

A Panasonic G9.

Wait, that's not one of the choices. A Fuji X-H1?

Okay, I'm confused. Or there's something wrong with me....  :-)

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Larry Gebhardt: "I really consider the professional sized DSLRs the SUV/pickup trucks of the camera world. The mirrorless FF cameras are much closer to sports sedans. I'd rebuy the same Sony A7R III, at least until Nikon gets a full lens lineup, that I find desirable, for the Z7."

Joe Holmes: "I've been left cold by the mirrorless systems for the past few years, but at the PhotoPlus Expo last month I had a chance to handle Nikon's Z7, and for the first time I thought, hey, maybe I could actually warm up to this mirrorless thing. I'm sure I was influenced by the fact that its controls were very familiar to a long-time Nikon DSLR user. But if all my gear disappeared and I had to start from scratch, that's the first camera I'd check out."

Rip Smith: "With all the new toys coming out, my GAS is flaring up but I'm bummed out because there is nothing I feel I have to have. I am quite content with my Olympus E-M1 II plus Pen-F and some really nice lenses. Whatever can I do to relieve my GAS?"

Mike replies: How about a beautiful original print from our Peter Turnley TOP Print Sale on Monday? The sale will be going on all next week, until Friday. And boy, do I ever hope it will be successful.

James Bullard: "In my entire driving life I have owned only one sedan. My first car was a convertible but I don't think that counts. It has to have a solid roof to be a sedan. I traded that for an Opel Cadet which was like a forerunner of today's small SUVs and, except for that Subaru four-door sedan and an XT Coupe, I have always driven an SUV or a pickup truck. Why? Because they fulfilled my need for hauling stuff and going places that challenge a sedan.

"As for FFM, assuming I could afford whatever I wanted, I would probably go with the Canon EOS R because it fits in with lenses and accessories I already own. I'm sure any of the FFM offerings would be more than adequate for my needs and I don't see the point of completely changing systems over some feature that I have gotten along fine without thus far and probably wouldn't use much if I got it.

"Reality: I can't afford any of them so it doesn't matter. If they are the future and every new camera is going to cost that much, I'll take up drawing again."

kirk Tuck: "Loving the G9. And the Olympus Pro lenses. Match made in heaven. Two camera bodies, two lenses and we're ready to head out and shoot for our commercial clients. They love it. And I can fit the whole set under the seat in front of me; even on smaller, regional jets. Nice."

Mike replies: I really want to try a G9.

Lunatic

One thing I've noticed about the Finger Lakes...many times things only happen for a very short time. When I took this I saw the moon for about ninety seconds. The other day I took a picture of sunlight on the new-fallen snow on three pine trees, and the light only lasted for about five minutes...of the entire day. The sun never reappeared.

They're only scenics, which usually cooperate by holding still or changing at a languid pace. Not so up here. Things change fast.

On the good side, sometimes I go down to the lake to photograph the sky, and the kaleidoscope changes so fast it's like photographing different skies altogether. If you don't like one, you can wait a few minutes and get something completely different.

In the space of about 35 minutes, this enormous mass of black cloud appeared, filled the entire Western sky, and moved completely off. It was like it got dark early, and then got light again before sunset. Entertaining, and to take very different pictures all I had to do was stand there.

If you like taking pictures of the moon, does that mean you're a lunatic? Wait, don't answer that.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Apple Needs to Think Different, G'dangit

Ars Technica has reviewed the new 2018 Mac Mini. A few quotes:

"The Mac mini represents an enormous compromise. It's rarely, if ever, going to be the best form factor for any given role. Hell, it doesn't even have 'cheap' going for it this time around, really...."

"Why was size the most important design criterion? Overall, the mac Mini gives me the feeling that it [...] has been designed for its size. It's small not because that makes it do its job any better—quite the reverse, in fact. It's designed as such simply for the sake of being small. Why Apple's engineers should optimize for size as opposed to any other design parameter, I don't know."

Here's the review.

Bottom line? Same as it's been for a while now. If you want to land between the too-much Mac Pro and the too-little Mac Mini, Apple stubbornly insists you're a user who wants to buy a new monitor every time you buy a new computer (not me), and that you want to use its choice of monitor instead of your own choice (not me). Before you say anything, I cannot switch to PC. Don't suggest it, please. But that doesn't mean I'm happy with Apple pushing me around and not giving me what I want, either. Just because I want a different Honda doesn't mean I have to buy a Dodge.

But C'mon. It's not like Apple is a poor company and can't afford to develop a capable, practical, reasonably-priced mid-sized desktop that's not crippled in any way.

Mike
(Thanks to John)

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Steve Rosenblum: "I bought one of the new Mac Mini's and I disagree. It may not work for everyone, but for someone like me (my main interest is photo editing) it's perfect. I bought the six-core eighth-generation i7 version which is way faster than my last computer and plenty powerful enough for photo work. Benchmark tests show that for many tasks it runs as fast as a Mac Pro. It has a fast 500 GB SSD drive, and I upgraded the memory (myself) to 32 GB, again plenty for PS work. It drives my NEC Spetraview multisync monitor without blinking an eye, and can actually drive two much higher rez monitors. It has four Thunderbolt 3 ports, two USB 3 type A ports, an an ethernet jack that you can order as Gigabit, but I don't need the speed. I already own an OWC Thunderbolt hub that provides all the extra ports I need, and the T3 ports can be adapted to almost anything. It has a much better fan/cooling system and heat is not a problem so far.

"Despite having six cores, most PS tasks do not benefit from lots of cores, so I have them if I need them but I'm not sure how much I need them.

"Bottom line—if you do very processor intensive video rendering or are a hardcore gamer, this is probably not for you because it doesn't have a separate video card, but for photo enthusiasts like us who want to use a separate monitor, this is an excellent solution and I am very pleased with it so far. From what I know of what you do with your computer, Mike, I think you would also be very pleased with it."

Bill La Via: "Actually, I ordered one and I gotta say, I love it. Unlike the author, I do have a use for the small form factor; it tucks in between the two monitors I use for work and I can switch between my work machine and personal computer seamlessly by toggling the monitor input. Although it may not be as powerful as the power-user/gamer (Peter Bright—who wrote the Ars Technica article) needs, it blazes for my purposes and gave Lightroom a new life. It is so much faster (at least an order of magnitude) than my 2011 iMac that it just gets out of the way. I agree with him that I would prefer a more spacious form factor, dedicated graphics card and more upgradeability, but I still love it and am going to keep it."

Rick Baumhauer: "Others have mentioned the real reasons that Apple didn't change the mini more—major bulk buyers have racks for them with power and network connections in particular spots, so keeping the same size with those ports in the same place makes it easy for them to immediately and cheaply swap in the new machines. Also, it should be noted that the new Mini is decidedly not a laptop without the keyboard and screen now—the new CPUs are desktop parts, and the internals and power supply had to be heavily revised to power and cool the new components.

"While I was hoping for one of the interesting Intel G-series processors (which come wedded to an AMD Vega GPU), those top out at four cores, and much of the target market doesn't need the GPU (as much as I'd like one). So, Apple is continuing to pursue what John Siracusa calls the 'naked robotic core,' producing computers that offer everything the target market needs, and no more. If that fits your needs, you'll be happy.

"The good thing is, with Thunderbolt 3, there are now viable options to turn the Mini into something close to an iMac Pro, but without being wedded to the iMac screen, and without having to spend the $5k cost of entry. For people who are only doing photo processing or music, a hot, expensive GPU isn't needed, and any of the basic configurations can be plugged into the monitor of your choice (which I know Mike already has) and you're golden. For anyone who works with video on a regular basis, an eGPU is probably a good idea, and can be had for a good bit less than $1k+. I found an OWC enclosure (a relabeled Sonnet eGFX Breakaway Box 550, which was what Apple sold to developers to start working with eGPUs) for less than $250, and picked up an ASRock Vega 56 GPU for $350. This essentially matches the specs of the (designed in cooperation with Apple) BlackMagic eGPU Pro for ½ the price (Apple going with standards like Thunderbolt 3 definitely helps here). So, I basically bought a computer for my computer, and the mini sits on top of a breadbox-size box that exists only to house, power, and cool a GPU that only rarely kicks on when an application needs it.

"Here's the thing: if Apple had gone larger or smaller with the new mini, a large portion of the target market would have been angry. Adding a so-so GPU (at the cost of CPU performance) would have left those that really need a GPU wanting more and buying an eGPU anyways, and Apple were never going to make a big enough box to house a truly state-of-the-art GPU when most customers would never install a card in it, leaving them with a box of air. If they had gone smaller, they would have lost the huge performance gains they made by keeping the size the same but enhancing the cooling and power to allow for much more potent CPUs.

"Peter Bright and the rest of PC land are never going to understand why the Mac Mini works as well as it does for the target market, and Ars letting him do the review of the new mini was pretty pointless. The Mini is a desktop computer for people who have no interest in even a small PC tower with its plethora of fans and loud spinning hard disks. The only moving part in the new Mini is the (solitary) fan, and it does a good job of cooling it while staying very quiet (the fan on my OWC Express 4M2 SSD enclosure is far louder). For people who want a computer to be something that they set up and then don't have to think about, the new Mini is pretty ideal (if a bit pricey once you option it out). For edge cases like me, there are extremely viable options that address whatever shortcomings the basic configurations might lack. If you don't want to be stuck with an iMac (and I know Mike doesn't), it works very well."

Northrup vs. Thorpe

It's kinda funny...we tend not to remember the recent past.

Ten years ago, the photo-blogosphere was full of prognostications that Micro 4/3 was on the way out, on its last legs. About to die.

Now, when Micro 4/3 is better than ever (better than FF was in 2008, as I've demonstrated in the past), the vlogosphere is...well, prognosticating that Micro 4/3 is about to die.

The only difference is the mode o' communication, which has been modernized. Blogs are now obsolete and video is the in thing, as we all know. Ah, progress! (Gulp.)

Tony Northrup, in particular, has the little format all loaded into its coffin and ready to go into the ground. I hope he's equipped it with one of those little bells like the Victorians put on their coffins, in case the coroner was mistaken and the corpse comes to after being shut inside. (The Victorians were terrified of being buried alive, a theme Michael Crichton wrote about to great effect in The Great Train Robbery.)

Getting fewer views but sounding more sensible to me is David Thorpe, who made an answering video called "Why I (Still) Use Micro 4/3."

Me, I'll take Team Thorpe. I say Micro 4/3 ain't going anywhere, and will continue to thrive for years to come. But what's your prognostication? None of us have actually got a working crystal ball, as far as I know.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Daniel M: "As long as the MFT digital camera system stays on its original concept of offering a compact camera (and lenses) system, there is no doubt about its pertinence on the market. So I hope the message will get to the manufacturers."

PaulW: "I'm a huge fan of Micro 4/3 and I'll continue to support the system, but Tony Northrup made some very good points. I hope that Olympus and Panasonic are paying attention as I believe they can change the perception that Micro 4/3 is on its way out by focusing on the core strengths of the system: size and weight. For me portability is the main draw of Micro 4/3. My E-M10 and GX7 along with a couple of primes is a gem of a system. The balance of size and weight vs. image quality is unmatched by any other format. In my opinion of course."

Mike: "I'm 'all in' on Micro 4/3! Been using it full time since 2013 to make my living and it hasn't failed me. Even ditched my Hasselblads in favor of the tiny format for my personal work. I can still make squares with it, but they're sharper and less 'noisy' than the color film I was shooting. Go figure. Of the many upsides to the miniature format, when I get home from a day of carrying all of my gear on my shoulders for hours on end, it no longer feels as if there's been a spike driven into the base of my spine. The only one who complains is my chiropractor who no longer gets to bill me anymore. And yeah, the image quality is all you need. Really."

MrALLCAPS: "I had a two-system setup, my Canon 6D and my Micro 4/3 kit, with two bodies and around five lenses. The 6D—loved the image quality, hated the size for my daily NYC transit commute, but my Micro 4/3 kit, though light, had to be put away once the sun went down. I then got rid of my 6D for a Fujifilm X-E2. So even though I had my Micro 4/3 kit, the Fuji took over as my primary go-to kit. Now, I'm three bodies, three lenses in Fujifilm, with the latest being a X-E3, and I'm a new owner of a Nikon Z6.

"So what do I think? I think Micro 4/3 will slowly die, with Fujifilm taking Micro 4/3's spot as the best size/IQ compromise system, with that PanaLeica zoom lens as Panasonic's last Micro 4/3 lens."

Bruce McL: "In war, beginners think about weapons, amateurs think about tactics, and professionals think about logistics. Napoleon was thinking about logistics when he said, 'An army travels on its stomach.' Let’s pretend that camera makers are at war with each other economically. Panasonic has a budget to spend on the logistics of making cameras and lenses. Right now, logistics money spent on Micro 4/3 generates more profits than money spent on full frame. I’m sure Panasonic hopes this will change. As this change happens, Panasonic will shift more logistics money to full frame in order to make more profits. If, at some future point, Panasonic can make more money using their entire logistics budget on full frame, then they will pull the plug on Micro 4/3. I’d say it will take about five years for Panasonic’s L mount system to reach this point. Note that Panasonic saved a lot of logistics time and money by choosing a lens mount that already existed, and that they already have plans, tooling, and production lines for—if they are currently making L mount cameras and lenses for Leica."

Thom Hogan: "Businesses tend to follow consumer tastes. If customers don't buy the cars you make but buy the SUVs and pickups, what would you do as an auto company CEO? The same thing has happened in cameras. Quite frankly, full frame saved Nikon and full frame mirrorless saved Sony. It shouldn't surprise us that if people are voting with their dollars, the companies will pick that up and follow it."

Mike replies: It's that tyranny of the majority again. Whether with cars or cameras, there are always segments of the public who want/need something different from what's popular and fashionable in the mass market. I have a lot of sympathy for those left-behinders.

...Oh, and don't forget the recent report that concluded that the "average" American can no longer afford the "average" new car. So many people aren't buying new vehicles at all. That might be part of the context for expensive SUVs...and expensive FF cameras.

Steve Jacob: "I can see reasons for Panasonic to go full frame, which is their focus on professional video. All the arguments for FF in video are much the same as they are in stills—better DR, better tonality, better low-light performance. Panasonic sees Canon and Sony as its peers in the video world, so this move was inevitable.

"Having said that, having a companion format for amateurs or more journalistic pros who don't like a big beast of a camera is entirely viable. FF and Micro 4/3 are differentiated enough for the smaller format to major on it's main advantage—size. Panasonic don't need to make bulky expensive Micro 4/3 cameras if they have FF.

"One could argue that FF and APS-C was a historical accident, and there wasn't enough real-world advantage to separate them once FF became viable.

"The Micro 4/3 sales figures are not stellar, but that's simply because Nikon, Canon and Sony don't make them—and they sell the most cameras. Whether Olympus sell enough to be viable is a question none of us can answer.

"For me, APS-C is the best compromise format, but a really compact Micro 4/3 camera does have a lot of appeal. If Fuji was not so peculiarly unique, I might well own an Olympus at this point."

Cold!

I had a pretty good Thanksgiving despite being mostly alone. I treated myself to some smoked salmon, which I love and seldom eat any more, and bought a ready-made dinner from our esteemed local supermarket chain, Wegmans, the best grocery store in the U.S. (it really is, too). Turkey, squash, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry jam, and stuffing, $13. It tasted...a little lonely! I'm kidding. It was delicious.

As it happened, Thanksgiving yesterday was the first cold day of the Winter here, too. It was 11°F (–11°C) when I woke up at 7:00 and got down to 7°F (–14°C). So it was nice and crisp.

I much prefer freezing cold—for several weeks it's been hovering right around the freezing mark (zero degrees Celsius) which I find uncomfortable. There's something inhospitable about wet cold that goes away when the mercury dips. The air dries out and your metabolism kicks in to help you stay warm. Butters and I went for a long walk. I really need some warm mittens, if there is any such thing.

Falling leaves on top of the snow cover. This morning the
waterfall was silent—a sign of the freeze.

The air was vividly clear, and last evening the almost full moon (it's full tonight—"the Beaver moon") was dazzling in the freezing air, lighting up the countryside with a ghostly light on the blanket of snow. The oak leaves are finally releasing their hold—oaks really hold on to their leaves in the Fall. Still plenty of leaves left on the two majestic sycamores, too.

The two sycamores with the sun behind them—photo
taken before last Thurday's big snow

It's unsatisfying to take pictures of the sycamores. They're towering in person, but every photo that gets all of the two trees in the frame just seems to miniaturize them. They're nearly 12 feet in circumference at the base! Butters and I just went out and measured. (See what we do for you?) I've always been frustrated trying to show scale in photographs. Bugs look as big as flowers which look as big as mountains. The medium seems to fit normal human-sized subjects best, and equalizes everything else. It's almost more fun to play with scale in photographs than try to soberly show it. Timothy O-Sullivan would insert his darkroom wagon or himself into his early photographs of the West to indicate scale.

But that's a different topic. Now I'm off to...well, fake up a composite image. Me?! Really. I'll tell you about it if I manage to pull it off. (One problem about never faking up images is that my faking-up skills are poor.)

Anyway, you'll just have to take my word for it, those sycamores touch the sky.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Andrea B.: "The leaves-on-snow scene is wonderful."

Mike replies: Thanks! And you know, apropos the "Lunatic" post, even that scene went past pretty quickly. The day prior, there weren't many leaves on the snow; the day after, the stream was frozen; and now, it's raining. Granted, the window in which I could have taken that picture lasted hours, not minutes, but one day in either direction and it wouldn't have been the same picture.

Seems to be just what this area is like.

Happy Thanksgiving

So here's a little conundrum. You could be forgiven for thinking that the big holiday this week is a thing called "Black Friday," and that we're in the middle of something incongruously called "Black Friday Week." (What?) But the holiday is actually Thanksgiving. Yet one of the things I'll be thankful for is if some of you use my links for, well...your black friday shopping tomorrow. Kinda circular, then—you see how that goes? On the one hand I'm critical of the confusing of greed with gratitude, and on the other hand I'm just like everybody else, in that I need to make a little money too. It's not like it used to be way back in 2010. There's so much competition now.

But I'm definitely still celebrating the secular holiday (quaint little old-fashioned Thursday Thanksgiving) in the middle of the other, bigger secular holiday (sprawling, modern, big-shouldered and brawny Black Friday). I hope those of you among my countrymen are with your families—my son was at my brother's house last night and I very dearly wish I could have been with them or with other family today. I did get to have breakfast with the family of some younger friends this morning, and that was a treat. Kinda made my day.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. All that's demanded of us is that we gather, eat a good meal together, and be mindful all day of our gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. And, in spirit, to all you non-celebrants outside the United States, too.

Mike

P.S. The engraving was made after a painting by one Charles Lucy, a native of Hereford in Britain, as published in Dibby's Annual in the Summer of 1911. His obituary states that "through life [he] devoted himself, at the sacrifice of many opportunities of immediate gain, and despite much unmerited discouragement, to the higher branches of historical painting." He died at age 59 in 1873. The phrase "Pilgrim Fathers" could not be more apt; estimates vary, but worldwide there are thought to be at least 7 million and as many as 35 million people alive today who are descended from that tiny band of immigrants.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Tim Farnham: "Mike, you may be interested to know that here in the UK the retail industry has adopted Black Friday with enthusiasm and it looks like becoming Black Friday fortnight. And we don't even celebrate Thanksgiving. Best wishes, Tim."

Terry Letton: "Looks like dropping in background from another image is nothing new.  :-)  That darn sure isn’t Plymouth MA or Cape Cod behind those folks."

Mike replies: See, now isn't that annoying? Exactly what we've been talking about these last few days.

Fred Haynes: "We will know ‘the end is here’ when we start greeting each other with 'happy Black Friday!' My iPad said that should be initial caps! But this comment is more about saying Happy Thanksgiving to you Mike, and all you readers!"

Mike replies: Like this email I got this morning....

What It Comes Down to For Me

The discussion in the previous post was certainly interesting, but sometimes I wonder if we're not getting lost in the minutiae. I thought I should just say what I think as plainly as possible to cut through all the specifics and get to a clear "global" overview of the issue:

Mathew B. Brady, Abraham Lincoln, 1864

For me—just for me, I'm not telling you what to think or do—the power of photographs comes from their connection to the real world. That's where their magic resides, and what gives them their power. A photograph of Lincoln required Lincoln to be sitting in front of the camera. He's not just a meme. The man was there.

(As an aside, Monday was the 155th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.)

The greater that connection, the more direct the connection, the more interested I tend to be, and the stronger my responses. The weaker or more suspicious that connection, the less interested I am. If I'm looking at something obviously created or invented—fabricated—then I'd rather look at paintings or other kinds of art.

The question is, can I retrieve from the picture something true about the appearances of real things, real people, real places, or actual events? That's what cuts to my heart. YMMV, as Internet says.

Of course, we can all argue from now to Kingdom Come about the details, from whether you should crop or not to whether B&W is realistic all the way up to relativistic ramblings about the nature of truth and the im/possibility of honesty.

If you look at the extremes it makes the distinction clearest. Rod Sainty's comment (the last Featured Comment in the previous post) tries manfully to summarize the mechanics of how pictures might hold some truth. On the other extreme, we've all seen "photos" that amount to manipulated, highly unrealistic "fantasy" digital photo-illustrations. Not that there's anything wrong with that if it's what you want to do. But it's not the middle of that range we should be looking for, because that way lies hair-splitting and disputation: there isn't a dividing line waiting to be discovered. Understand the extremes, though, and you can sense what the whole issue is about—and make some inroads as to where on the spectrum you yourself might want to land.

And it's up to you where you land, of course. Your photography belongs to you. Although I think it's better if you do it consciously...but maybe that's just my teacherish nature speakin'.

Not everyone sees it as I do, and that's fine, but that's how I see it.

Mike
(Thanks to all the commenters from yesterday. Very interesting!)

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Dan Homan: "I find myself fascinated by this topic. I might be kidding myself, but I’ve always viewed the goal of my photography as the capturing of a moment or a scene in a way that reveals something ‘true’ about my subject. If I’m taking an image of something large (landscape, building, etc…), that sometimes involves a two- or three-frame panorama to include all the elements I think are important. If it is something very small (snowflakes, spiders, etc…), I may need several images to combine in a focus stack in order to get what I judge to be sufficient depth of field. For macro objects, I often carry my own lighting rather than rely on ambient. For portraits, I will position people in good lighting, gently ask that they change their posture, and try to get them to laugh and smile. In the rare instances that I am trying street photography, I still pick my moments carefully and frame the scene to include just what I want to communicate. All of these things are manipulations of various types, and I am pretty comfortable with all of them; however, I find myself sometimes wondering whether I should crop an image as much as I do, or make a local adjustment for emphasis, or (rarely) clone out an unwanted element from a photo. I list those last three manipulations from most to least comfortable for me personally, and I’ve really struggled on occasion with the notion of what is the ‘true’ thing I am trying to reveal. My personal favorite snowflake photo has a thread propping up the snowflake on one side. It is distracting, but it was there and part of the reason the flake was at such an interesting angle. I’ve shown the image online both with and without the thread, but after a year I still can’t decide which version is the right one.

"Ironically, I’ve been playing recently with ‘still life’ photography where the elements are more deliberately arranged…I am not sure anything will come of it, and I’m still trying to fit this into my previous notion of revealing something ‘true’ about the subject."

Charles Lanteigne: "I find your position wholly understandable and reasonable, even though I don't feel the same way about it. The thing I'd want to resist is the attempt to define photography as a whole around how one feels about this, instead of merely specifying that it's a genre/type/style/approach to photography that one prefers. In other words, I can appreciate that one might prefer images that have not been significantly altered/composited, but I don't care much for the idea that other kinds of photography 'aren't really photography, they're digital art of sorts' or something along those dismissing lines. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go listen to some 'electronic audible art' (which is not really music because it's not a straight recording of musical instruments)."

Mike replies: There is indeed an interesting parallel with recorded sound here. I read a book a while back called Perfecting Sound Forever, basically a history of music recording techniques. I thought the progress of technology was deeply exciting as it raced toward better and more accurate recording of the sounds musicians were already making, but then at some point a line was crossed and it transmuted into the pursuit of better and better fakery, ending up with creating things that never existed in the world...and in that part of the book I was initially dismayed and ended up just plain uninterested. Yet that view is limited too, because in some sense the synthesizing of sounds is just a different form of creativity, new tools that can be used skillfully or ineptly just like old-fashioned instruments can.

I recommend the book. I enjoyed it.

David Comdico: "Agree. Photography's power lies in its ability to describe the particular. This is why 19th Century allegorical Pictorialism has such an odd quality and why photography was for so long dismissed as an art: it was too real. Barthes' punctum is such an example: the ragged sleeve the photo reveals is unintentional but defining. Or more prosaically, witness the high-rez digital portrait that shows every nook and cranny to such a degree that it is unflattering for the vast majority of subjects.

"As a means to gain scientific objectivity, photography has been wildly successful. Think Muybridge or, more recently, the super collider at CERN. We have become so accustomed to the gift photography has bequeathed us that we take it for granted (a problem in itself).

"To deny that objective reality (a nominal one, not a Family of Man platonism) is at the heart of photography is just a rhetorical stunt. That photos can be fakes is actually dependent on this foundation, not vice versa. To claim otherwise is like taking the position that money has no real value because some of it may be counterfeit.

"The naive and propagandistic use of the photographic image is an interesting question, but, mostly, a totally separate domain of inquiry. The conflation of this with some deep artificiality that taints photography is seen as a useful way to gain authority for certain conclusions but this is not only disingenuous, it's unnecessary."

Joe's Version

Commenting on the two "Still Pond" images (above) in the "Editing Headaches" post, Joe Holmes wrote:

"That's a tough edit. I like each image for a different, simple reason. I like the round clump of trees in the upper left in the first image, and it's a shame to cut it off. But I like the foreground framing grass in the second image.

Composite image by Joe Holmes from files by Mike J.

"So here's what I would do, and, in fact, did with your two examples: In Photoshop, I brought both images together as layers in one file, manually lining them up and then using a mask to combine the two (which is easy in this case because the pond water disguises the line where they join). It took me less than three minutes. This results in an image that's not going to fit any stock frame or mat because the aspect ratio is now odd, but who cares? It combines the best of both originals.

"Now let me say that I'm not addressing your concern about editing, taking multiple shots, etc. That's a different issue, and my Photoshop solution would not work for most issues, like your wrestlers. But still."

Joe's version is better (in that it's likely to be more pleasing to more people) than either of my two alternatives. I confess I chose these shots because I thought they'd make good fodder for discussion, which they did, but I also confess I didn't anticipate this refinement—which also means I didn't see the possibility Joe saw. This neatly illustrates one of the ways in which the process of editing has changed conceptually. These days we can effortlessly construct digital images according to our desires (limited, as Joe mentions, by the opportunities afforded by the specifics of the images—and, I would add, by the skills of the post-processor person—this, for instance, is beyond my Photoshop skills), without leaving any telltales behind. It complicates the process, because editing is no longer a binary choice, a choice between "all yes" (warts and all) or "all no," between "print it!" and "rejected." Now we can say, in effect, "yes, if this is added or changed."

Where photography started for me conceptually was with the primacy of the lens image—what you saw on the groundglass of the view camera, for example. The integrity of the image cast by the lens was paramount. The print was just trying to "fix the shadow," i.e., provide a record or report of the lens image. Attempts to combine or blend different exposures were illegitimate on their face, although it was done throughout history here and there—the Baltimore pictorialist A. Aubrey Bodine used the same sky negative in different prints, for example. But in Joe's example above it's just a fix, a post-hoc creation of a more thoughtful composition than I managed to see at the scene in real time.  

Mike
(Thanks to Joe)

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Curt Gerston: "This topic creates some interesting conflicts in my brain. I think if I made an image from a composite like yours above, I'd have a hard time framing it on my wall...I would always look at it as inauthentic somehow. It would bother me. It wouldn't last long on that wall. I don't think I could give it as a gift, put it in a book etc. And yet, I think if it was a single image, but there was a can of Coke floating in the middle of that pond, I'd have no problem cloning it out. I can't explain why I draw that line, it's just a feeling I have about what's okay and what isn't for my own work.

"I have nothing against what Joe did, by the way...looks great, and if he or you are happy with it on your wall, all the better. It's really interesting to see where people land on image manipulation. As I point out to my students, photography isn't truth, but I think we all try to express some kind of truth in our art. What feels true to us is personal."

Doug Thacker: "Re 'Where photography started for me conceptually was with the primacy of the lens image—what you saw on the groundglass of the view camera, for example. The integrity of the image cast by the lens was paramount.'

"The key words here are 'lens image' and 'integrity.' Photography, up until recently, at least, is about the capture of something from life, that something being the lens image. Having captured it, we may dodge here and burn there, but it remains an image cast at a given moment onto your recording substrate by the world at large. It was you, the photographer, who isolated this moment from the endless flow of time by fixing it as an image, you who chose the framing, deciding what to leave out and what to include, and you, lastly, who selected this particular image to show versus all those you don't show. Implicit in this image was its integrity: the viewer relied on the fact that you saw this moment and isolated it as a picture. This is what it meant to be a photographer, and what it meant to be the viewer of a photograph. The integrity of the image was, as you say, paramount, and pity the poor charlatan who was found to have violated it. (Case in point: Steve McCurry.)

"But now comes digital imaging, which is something altogether different. Here, the captured image is merely raw material, elements of which are combined with other raw material to create an image that the 'photographer' sees only in his mind's eye; the image capture is merely a preparatory step, with all the action taking place in so-called post production.

"This can only mean that photography as most of us understand it is dead, to put it bluntly, and those who still practice it in the former way are merely indulging an anachronism—one for which we must take them at their word, for what that's worth.

"'Photo-based illustration' might best describe where the technology has led us. That's not better or worse, necessarily, than what we call photography, but it's definitely not the same thing, and more akin to painting. Painting with light, in this case."

Mike replies: Okay, but then how do you and Curt feel about this?

It's a stitched pano made from five vertical shots of the view from my family's former lake house. Is what Joe did really any different, or do stitched panoramas also make you uneasy? By the way I'm just asking, not challenging.

Rob de Loe: "I too started with the 'primacy of the lens image.' I'm becoming less conservative about this as time goes by, but cautiously. For a recent project I finally broke down and used focus stacking because tilt and depth of field alone were not giving me the results I needed. I like the results, a lot, but it bothers me deep down that the final picture is not traceable back to a single exposure. It's not rational. But I feel like I've passed through a portal and can't go back. Is this what it feels like to become a 'made man' in the Mafia?  ;-)  That which I have done cannot be undone.

"Anyway, I predict that in a few years—once we've moved fully into the realm of computational photography—this whole conversation we like to have about 'how much manipulation is OK?' will seem ridiculously quaint!"

Joe Holmes: "Re '...a more thoughtful composition than I managed to see at the scene in real time.' Or than was possible with your lens and where you could stand. It may have been physically impossible to frame the image as in the composite. So there's another wrinkle in this discussion: creating a new image that was impossible to shoot in a single frame. That kind of compositing was being done long before digital photography, but now it can done so easily and quickly that we can perform these tricks routinely."

Mike replies: No, I can't claim I couldn't have gotten what you've created. I just liked the second of my two shots better when I was at the scene. It wasn't a matter of not being able to get something close to your composite in one shot, it was that that wasn't what I arrived at when I worked the scene. I checked, and I shot 11 pictures at the scene, all quite different, and I figured I'd gotten what I wanted with the second shot I presented here.

Here are two more of the rejects from the 11:

As you know there are an infinite number of pictures even within a very limited subject or scene. It's not like there's ever just one picture there and our job is just to find it.

Henning Wulff: "I'm definitely in two minds about this stuff.

"For many years I worked as an architectural/construction/commercial photographer. The final image and what it represented were all that mattered and had to suit the requirements of the client. I did all sorts of manipulations, editing and rephotographing as required (and as was possible with film and masking). When Photoshop came out, I did whole projects with version 0.72 or so, as I recall from numerous crashes. For nearly 10 years I was the best in my area and specialty, and made lots of money. Photoshop was just the digital perfection of what I had been doing for decades.

"For my personal photography, it's been more the opposite, with 'honesty' and 'integrity' throughout. It's in quotations because there really is very little true integrity and honesty in all of this, as so many artistic decisions override the integrity and honesty. However, I try to be true to the found image. Maybe that's why I shot most of my commercial stuff with SLR's and view cameras and most of my personal stuff with rangefinders. The 'seeing' is essentially different between the two camps.

"As for the panos; again, if I was shooting for work, stitched photos with massaging would have been ideal if available. As it was I shot Horizon 150's, possibly stitched and Roundshot 120's, because that was what was available, and then worked hard to 'fix' things after the negative was produced. Now for any intense personal purpose I still shoot those, even though the iPhone or even any digital stitched can get you panos with a lot less hassle, and you can always 'fix' things. The Horizon and Roundshot images I don't fix, and don't think about fixing while producing them.

"In the end, if you're doing it for money you have to produce the images your client likes. If you're doing it for yourself, that's the person you have to satisfy. There are no other rules.

"By the by, the 'aspect' intolerance thing is one area I'm gobsmacked about. The square format was invented so that cameras you couldn't turn on their side were usable. I've shot 17x6 vertical to square to 6 cm high and about 40cm horizontal on my Roundshot, and they're all reasonable formats. Different images need different formats. Shoot what makes sense. They're all good."

Rod S.: "Historically, a photograph has always meant a single exposure.

"That definition embodies a critical aspect of photography: That the photographer was right there at that spot and succeeded in overcoming the technical hurdles of making the exposure successfully, and did both in that moment.

"It's these momentary aspects of photography that makes photography special. And challenging. The photographer has had to capture the image in that moment. The photograph is painted with light, not painted with software. Consequently, it's 'accurate'—and widely acknowledged as such—in terms of the appearance of objects within the frame.

"It's these momentary aspects of photography that separates photography from, say, painting, or digital illustration, because those other art forms involve a lengthy process of creation or manipulation, and we intuitively understand that the appearances of objects in the image has changed.

"So Joe's composite pond image and Mike's stitched pano are not 'photographs.' Each image is a 'composite image.'

"Why is this unambiguous terminology resisted so much by some digital practitioners?

"Digital practitioners who continue using the word 'photograph' to describe their composite or manipulated images are trading on the public's regard for photographs (sadly, now damaged) as single images made in the moment, which reliably show how things looked at that moment."

One Week Till Our Latest Print Sale Starts!

Peter at work

The beginning of this season's print sale is only a week away—it starts next Monday before work (6 a.m. Eastern U.S. time).

On the theme of "Paris, Venice, Havana," we'll be offering traditional silver gelatin prints of three new, recent photographs by my good friend Peter Turnley, plus a very nice free bonus. The sale is crucial to the health of The Online Photographer, so if you like the site, I really hope you'll make a point to stop in during the week and look at the pictures being offered.

These are original, individually signed fine art prints.

If you're a newcomer to TOP, I should explain that we do things a little differently. To expedite the process and in turn keep the prices very low—in this case less than one-third what Peter sells full-sized prints for in bricks-and-mortar galleries—we take orders during a short window and then close the orders. At that point, the photographers whose work we feature know how many prints they need to provide and are able to produce them as efficiently as possible.

Next week the ordering period will be from the morning of Monday the 26th until Friday evening (the time has yet to be determined, but we'll be sure to let you know). The deadline is a hard one—we don't take late orders. Once the ordering closes, that's it.

The new pictures are beautiful, and I think you'll like them. Please come back next Monday, a week from today, to see what we have for you this year!

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Michael Stevens: "Until I saw the picture I hadn't appreciated how Mr. Turnley's height must be a distinct advantage in his profession."

Mike replies: Peter stands above the crowd.  :-)

Brandon J Scott: "In February, when I attended one of Peter's workshops in Havana, he was photographing with an M10 and a 35mm Summilux. I believe his only requirement for equipment is that it does not impede his ability to record what he's feeling and experiencing. Peter's photographs come from his heart and its connection with his subjects. If you ever have the opportunity to spend time with Peter, don't hesitate. I am definitely a better person (and photographer) for my time with him."

Fanman*

Workhorse

So the other day I got accused of having personal biases about certain camera brands. Maybe, but what else? Doesn't everyone?

But it got me to thinking.

Here are some (most, I hope!) of the brands of camera I've used over the years. Seems like a lot, but in my defense, it's been a long time—roughly half a century, since I was nine or 10.

• Kodak (an Instamatic—did my first project with it in 7th grade at the Gettysburg battlefield. Did another project with it in art school called "The Great Pigeon Safari"—I shot color negative film in it and made large B&W prints on Panalure paper. The only rule was that every selection had to have a pigeon in it.)
• Zeiss (a Contaflex B SLR with a fixed 50mm Tessar that wasn't mine—it belonged to my father)
• Minox (a "spy" camera—again, dad's)
• Konica (my dad got me a T3 for my 16th birthday. Much later I used a Konica Hexar for a while.)
• Minolta (CLE)
• Konica-Minolta (my first DSLR)
• Diana (the toy plastic camera that was a fad among art photographers in the 1970s—similar to Holga)
• Leica (both RF and SLR, but I've never owned a digital Leica)
• Contax (went most of the way through photography school with one on my shoulder; owned several others)
• Nikon (I've owned at least seven Nikons over the years, starting with two N8008's that I used to make a living with, and including an F4, a D700 that was a gift from a reader, and most recently a D800 I didn't warm up to)
• Olympus (both film and digital)
• Exakta by Schneider (my first medium format camera)
• Plaubel (a Makina 6x7)
• Mamiya (RZ67 and Mamiya 6)
• Wista (first 4x5 and the only LF I've done concerted work with—I had a Rodenstock lens)
• Rollei (TLR and SLR)
• Canon (but just one, the pellicle-mirror RT of 1989—I have less experience with Canon than with most other brands)
• Bronica (645, 6x6, and 645RF)
• Hasselblad (only one, very briefly)
• Agfa (a beautiful antique Super Isolette I bought from Jurgen at Certo6)
• Fuji (the GS645s film camera—loved it, but with a fixed ƒ/4 lens it ended up being too slow—and several digital ones Including my X-T1 that I still have)
• Sigma (bought a DP2 just to try the Foveon sensor)
• Pentax (several, both film and digital)
• Chamonix (search "single use device" on the site)
• Sony (including an A900, the best of the best in 2008; an F-707; and a NEX-6)
• Panasonic (currently)

I left off the list a few things I owned but never shot with, like a Graflex Crown Graphic I bought in order to modify according to a how-to article I had accepted for the magazine. Had fun taking it apart and putting it back together, but I never shot a single sheet of film with it. I also left off many cameras I reviewed, and cameras I borrowed for extended periods of time, although some of those are covered anyway. I did a virtual OC/OL/OY with my friend Nick's Leica M4 and a recoated collapsible 50mm Summicron, for instance. "OC/OL/OY" wasn't a thing then, but I only used that one camera and lens for a little over a year, so it qualifies.

So tell me again how I'm a brand zealot or bigot, or a fanboy? I don't know, but it feels more like I'm a brand nomad. Fickle and faithless!

If anything, you should accuse me of being biased against, say, Linhof, or Phase One, or Polaroid, or Samsung. Never owned even one example of any of those brands. And given that I only ever owned one Canon, a long time ago, but have owned many Nikons in both film and digital over many years, wouldn't you think people would accuse me of being anti-Canon more than anti-Nikon? But no.

A few personal opinions or observations:

Best built / best quality: Contax, Chamonix

Brand I've owned the most of: probably Nikon; Pentax comes close

Camera I was proudest to own: Nikon F4

Camera I had the most fun with: Sony F-707—early-days digital was like getting set free

Weirdest: Ricoh GXR

Cameras that took the best pictures: Exakta 66; Minolta CLE with 40mm ƒ/2 M-Rokkor lens. The latter is purely empirical: it was the camera I owned that drew the most compliments from non-photographer viewers about how nice the prints looked

Curious fact: I've done a lot of my best work with cameras that had no meters

Cameras I liked best: that's another post!

 Mike

*Never liked the term "fanboy." It's usually derogatory. I seldom allow it in the comments and seldom use it myself. Some people use it like it's a fun word, but to me there's too much shaming intention in it.

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Patrick Dodds: "How many of those have you still got Mike?"

Mike replies: One reason I've owned so many is that I've lived hand-to-mouth most of my life (still do, when it comes down to it, although the piper is here to be paid), and when times got tough I'd have to sell off my cameras to get the money back out of them. Like a junkie jazzman pawning his saxophone and then having to get it back out of hock again to play a gig. Unfortunately you can't do that as effectively with digital cameras because they lose their value too quickly. In film days I could use a camera for a year or three and get most (sometimes even more) of my money back out of it. Those days are history now. Anyway, I retain very few of the cameras on this list. Keeping old cameras was a luxury I couldn't afford. Most got sold to raise cash for the next camera, or to raise cash for something else.

Lowest Prices Ever

...Should there be eight exclamation points at the end of that title?

But my contacts at B&H Photo tell me these actually are the lowest prices on these items they've ever offered. (It's possible you might be able to find them advertised for even less, but then you wouldn't be dealing with B&H Photo. They clearly label anything that's gray market ("Imported"), they never bait-and-switch, they never sell open-box as new, their delivery is quick and efficient, and they offer generous, no-hassle returns. Dealing with B&H is as safe as mail-order gets.)

I think these deals are just for today? Not sure. On to the news:

Sony A9 body, ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS OFF (lowest price ever)

Canon 6D Mark II, $500 off and a grip for free (lowest price ever)

Canon EF 16–35mm ƒ/2.8 III wide angle zoom, $300 off. This deal ends at the end of the day (11:59 p.m. EST) on Wednesday.

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, $500 off (lowest price ever)

Sony A7RIII, $400 off (lowest price ever)

Older Sony A7RII, only $1,598, (lowest price ever) (42 MP and IBIS...no, Mike. Down boy.)

Canon 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 II normal zoom (if you haven't seen Roger's teardown of this lens, check it out. He concluded, "Would I get one? Of course—I’m a resolution freak, a gear-head, and I don’t have a 24–70. I’ve just examined the highest resolving zoom lens I’ve ever tested and found it’s also built and designed superbly. I can’t walk away from that combination.")

Canon 100–400mm ƒ/4.5–5.6 IS II, $400 off

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV with 24–70mm ƒ/4, $650 off (lowest price ever. Also comes with an extra battery, the BG-E20 battery grip, a SanDisk 64 GB Extreme Pro memory card, and a shoulder bag, all thrown in to sweeten the deal.)

A few other things are on sale, but those are the big deals. Go nuts! (But careful, don't spend the rent money.)

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Geoff Wittig: "If you've ever lusted after Canon's 16–35mm ƒ/2.8L III, just buy it. I can't praise it highly enough. I wasn't much of a wide angle user previously, tending to favor ~70–120 mm equivalent or so, but this lens has changed the way I see. Build quality is fabulous, handling is impeccable, and it's sharp edge to edge even wide open. Distortion is trivial, especially for this focal length range. It's much, much better than versions I and II."

Michael Perini: "I would second Geoff's comment about Canon's 16–35mm ƒ/2.8 III. I bought it and the new 24–70 ƒ/2.8—they are about as good as lenses get. Not only are they dead sharp, they both focus nearly instantly. But more than that, they create images that have a 'rightness' and depth about them. They are both better than most primes. I also own the 17mm T/S which I thought was in a league of its own—it now has company."

Oskar Ojala: "I paid nearly a grand more for my Sony A7RII when I bought it. Tells a lot about the camera market today. I still use it as my main camera, several times a week, and it was the mirrorless that made me completely give up on DSLRs. Yes, it has some quirks, but so do all cameras, and I get results consistently, so I'm not looking for a new camera right now (although the raw speed of the A9 is tempting...). And 42 megapixels might be too much, but it still looks stunning even if I need to crop."

Everything Went WHAT For a Minute?!

All right, all right, settle down, Doonesbury.

Slaggin' my beloved B&W!

Mike
(Thanks to Scott Kirkpatrick)

P.S. My iPhone now tells me how many minutes I used it the day before. Twenty-seven minutes yesterday, probably because I used the GPS to find my way from Geneva to Dundee....

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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

SteveW: "No comment."