The Online Photographer

Blog Note

On Friday I said I'd have the X-H1 review posted this morning, but I don't have it ready. It's going to take a few more days.

This is one thing I've never been able to master about writing this site: Never promise anything. I've said it to myself a hundred times (or three hundred) and I keep doing it anyway. It's very frustrating, yet I have no one but myself to blame.

Sometimes things just have to percolate in my brain for a while before they get sorted out. I should know that by now.

Anyway, if you were waiting for the X-H1 review, I apologize for the delay.

Mike

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

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Featured Comments from:

John Krumm: "What? Where is your grit?  :-) 

"I've been enjoying that book on your recommendation, by the way. I had my doubts, thinking it might be another bootstrapper, individualistic, you-can-do-it book, but it's more interesting than that. Looking forward to the X-H1 review."

Joe B: "I like your process—letting things 'percolate in my brain.' I used to do that while in college when writing papers. After a day or two (or overnight) to let all the reading and my ideas 'percolate' or collate in my brain. All the reading fell into place and the results were usually very good when transferred to paper."

Mike replies: It works especially well with pictures. If I put up a dozen workprints and look at them repeatedly, at first all twelve seem about the same quality. But within 3–7 days, I'll like one or two even better than I did at first and be comletely over the rest and indifferent to them. I have no idea how this works. I suspect it's magic. But it happens, for me anyway.

Bear.: "I have always taken the approach of the late Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc. etc.) to deadlines: 'I love deadlines. I love the sound of them whooshing by.'"

Want to Try Full Frame? Sony A7II Blowout

Want to try full-frame for yourself? The last-generation Sony A7II, brand new, plus the FE 28–70mm ƒ/3.5–5.6 lens, plus an extra battery, charger, memory card and case, is on end-of-run sale for a mere $998.

Here are the main differences with the current model:

• BSI sensor in the III has more dynamic range.
• New one has the A9's autofocus (more or less), worth it if you do action or need tracking.
• Minimum sensitivity is –1 EV on the II and –3 EV on the III, if you commonly shoot in very low light.
• The III has silent electronic shutter, the II doesn't, and the III has a higher continuous shooting rate.
• The III features a new battery with better life, a joystick, and two cards slots. However both have IBIS (in-body image stabilization, dust and weather sealing, and 24 megapixels.

The III is a better camera. But the A7III, at $2,198 with the same lens, also costs well over double the blowout price on the A7II. If you're the kind of photographer who shoots mainly things like scenics, vacation pictures, landscapes, family and friends and personal daily life, and portraits (or if you're the kind of person who likes a steal of a deal), the A7II could serve you well.

Oh, and you might also like it if you've been in this game long enough to recall the excitement when a full-frame camera dipped below $2,000 for the first time! Such a good sale price protects you substantially from major resale loss.

Great deal. Check it out. It's available from Amazon with more extras too.

Mike

[CORRECTION: I mistyped "24–70mm" this morning. The lens is a 28–70mm. Sorry for the error. —Mike the Ed.]

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

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Featured Comments from:

Oskar Ojala: "$998 for a brand new A7II is a steal (never mind they even throw in a lens). There's just one big but with the Sony system: too many interesting lenses to covet!"

Quote o' the Day: Orhan Pamuk

"For those who, like me, have spent 65 years in the same city—sometimes without leaving it for years—the landscapes of the city eventually turn into a kind of index for our emotional life. A street might remind us of the sting of getting fired from a job; the sight of a particular bridge might bring back the loneliness of our youth. A city square might recall the bliss of a love affair; a dark alleyway might be a reminder of our political fears; an old coffeehouse might evoke the memory of our friends who have been jailed. And a sycamore tree might remind how we used to be poor."

—Orhan Pamuk, from "I Like Your
Photographs Because They Are Beautiful"

 

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.

Amazon

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

Ryan: "Great quote. So true for me too: 44th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. I've been there so long even the people and places long departed shimmer in the cracks, puddles, and shadows."

David Evans: "I have an almost opposite experience, walking the streets of Cardiff where I have lived for over 60 years. The places where I first experienced a:

Foreign language film
3D film
Science fiction film
Restaurant meal
Drink in a pub...

"...All are gone. As are the students' union where I met my future wife, the bus station where I waited daily on the way home from college, and too many second-hand book shops to count. Some of them have been replaced by better things, but many have not. I have shamefully few photos of those places. I assumed they would always be there."

Jeff: "And a bonus if your photos elicit some similar emotions for viewers."

Random Excellence: Beth Moon

Beth Moon, Rilke's Bayon

Longer pieces sap more time and effort out of me—for instance, "The Remarkable Persistence of 24x36" took four days to research and write. It wouldn't be a problem except it leaves the blog kind of quiet while I'm off working on something else. Anyway, I'm going to be working on the Fuji X-H1 review all weekend.

In the meantime, have a look at photographer Beth Moon's lovely extended portrait of the oldest trees in the world, some of which are older than Christianity. The picture above is just one—as a set they're more powerful than each alone, and yet each alone, like its subject, is brooding, majestic, and mysterious. Here's Beth's website, as well as her book of this work, which is called Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time.

Another thing you could check out is an article which many readers (such as Wes Cosand) have been telling me about—many loved it. It's a beautiful remembrance by Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk of his friend Ara Güler, the great Turkish photographer who died this past October 17th. It's at the New York Times, which will be behind a paywall for some people. But you get 10 free articles a month, and remember that we recommend a subscription to the Times for its photography content, which is worth it. This one is particularly lovely, a great sampling of Ara's work, and not to be missed whatever you have to do. The article is called "I Like Your Photographs Because They Are Beautiful." The subhead is "Orhan Pamuk remembers his friend Ara Güler, the great photographer, who lovingly captured Istanbul and its people."

Here's one of Ara's excellent books.

If neither of those appeal, talk amongst yourselves while I'm out of the room! Hopefully I'll post my X-H1 verdict by Sunday night or Monday morning.

Have a nice weekend—

Mike
(Thanks to Wes, David Dyer-Bennet, and others)

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

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

Richard Man: "I love Ms. Moon's images. I have a couple of her small platinum prints and they are lovely. She (used to) photograph with a Pentax 6x7 and makes her own Pt/Pd prints."

John Camp: "I have spent some time in Istanbul and it is a street photographer's dream. The reason, I think, is that it is such a striking combination of the new and the very, very old (the Hagia Sophia, once a mosque and before that an Orthodox cathedral, was built almost 1,500 years ago, and is still a centerpiece of the city). The city also has an amazing physical setting, the Bosporus and the Golden Horn and all that, with Asia looming right across the water. Don't even get me started on the history...."

Bob Johnston: "Some time ago I set out to photograph the oldest trees in Britain but after five or six in the bag I gave up thinking that the travelling was too much. Here is this lady who has travelled all over the world to harvest her great images. Respect."

SteveW: "One of the best books I've ever read is A Strangeness in my Mind by Oran Pamuk. Amazingly, when I read the NY Times article and saw some of Ara's beautiful photos, they were almost exactly how I pictured Istanbul while reading Pamuk's book."

Rod Sainty: "Beth Moon's book was reviewed by Australian large format photographer David Tatnall. The review incorporates a beautiful video by Beth Moon showing her platinum printing process. One moment in the video made me gasp. Check it out."

Peter Wright: "Those pictures of Istanbul by Ara Güler in the NYT article are truly extraordinary. Thanks for bringing them to our attention. One of the things that strike me most about this type of photography (Here Far Away by Pentti Sammallahti—another TOP recommendation—is another example) is how absolutely UN-extraodinary the people pictured would have thought the scenes and themselves to be at the time. If Güler could have shown the people the view from his camera, I'm sure they would have been completely mystified as to why anyone would want to spend money on such a thing. I can just picture the puzzled looks and shaking of heads.

"I'm always blown away by this aspect of photography when it is done so well: to make the utterly mundane utterly magical. I wonder, does the audience have to be of a different time and place for this magic to happen?"

Highly Recommended

I read a fair amount, fifty or sixty books a year, mostly non-fiction, a significant minority of them relating to life skills and self-improvement in some way

One of the grandaddies of all modern self-help books is Alcoholics Anonymous, written largely by William G. "Bill W." Wilson in 1939. With more than 30 million copies in print, it's the origin of the countless 12-step programs in the world and a classic of the genre*.

Angela Duckworth's Grit might be the second-best self-help book I've ever read.

The MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient has been studying the subject of success for years, and in her book she doggedly (grittily?) dismantles the essential elements of succeeding, all of it based on her research or the research of others. I love her ideas and concept. The simple morphology of job/career/calling is interesting if maybe not groundbreaking, but the sections on goal levels and "purpose" blew my mind. Simple, clear, but, in my opinion, correct.

There's a lot of power in just plain being right.

Think it's not relevant to photography? It's especially relevant to photography. Think flexibly, apply the ideas to your photography, and it might be the best and most relevant not-about-photography photography book you've ever read**. It's about the first principles photographers need to think a lot more about.

Dang
Unfortunately, I scored very low on the Grit Scale—a test you can take in the book—lower than 90% of the population.

You know what they say: Oh well.

On the other hand, I do very well on the concept of practice. I made up my mind to be a writer in the 9th grade (I remember where I was standing when I made the decision), and none other than Saul Bellow told me how to practice, in 1976. And I've been writing more or less every day ever since. I'll bet there have been whole years in which I didn't miss a day. I'm not the kind of writer I ever envisioned, but still, I am one. It's something.

What I've been missing, in Angela Duckworth's terms, is a top-level goal.

Not insignificantly, the book is also a bit of an upper. It's inspiring. It left me feeling energetic and hopeful, feeling good. It's not about talent after all, not about genius; it's about grit. 

I gave a copy of Grit to my son. (He likes audible books, so he'll listen to it.) I wish I could give out a dozen every month. Suck the good ideas out of this and it will stand you in good stead, I'll bet.

Highly recommended. Get Grit. You'll thank me.

Mike

* "The Big Book," as it's called, is brilliant and still useful, if also somewhat dated and showing its age—see the en passant review in The New Yorker, April 2, in the article "Whiskey and Ink" by Gary Greenburg, p. 84 (the article has a different title online, which seems to be a thing with The New Yorker).

** I want to thank Frank DiPerna for having us read Zen and the Art of Archery in my third year of photography school. "Read it as if it were about photography, as if it's about aiming a camera instead of aiming a bow and arrow," Frank advised us. I did. It works that way. Ever after, I've had the skill of reading books about disparate disciplines as if they applied to photography. It was a lesson that has kept on being useful.

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

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Emil Aaltonen: I can highly recommend mounting the Grit lens on a The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People camera body. It’s my go-to setup. The two are a perfect match. Or at least, as the saying goes, IMHO."

Photo[shop]-Specific Computers

I'm far from a computer expert, so take this with the appropriate chunk of salt. I'm just reading and reporting back.

A friend sent me this interesting short article about picking a computer for Photoshop and Lightroom. It's a product description page for a photo-specific computer built by a PC fabricator. It's on Punch and it's called "What kind of processor do I need for Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC in 2018?"

It starts with a brief description of cores and threads, then moves on to clock speed. Turns out multi-core CPUs aren't really that significant with photo processing: "...we have undertaken testing using a range of processors from dual core right through to the huge 18-core variants. We were quickly able to conclude that both Photoshop and Lightroom are not able to take advantage of a great number of processor cores." Two- and quad-core machines are fine, the authors say, with maybe an extra two cores for running background tasks at the same time.

The situation is the opposite with processor speed. Their conclusion is pretty stark: "Photoshop performance scales directly with processor clock speed."

This would seem to emphasize the importance of turbo boost, but the authors explain that turbo boost requires CPU cooling to avoid overheating the CPU and operate at good efficiency. It's good news that the new Mini has a redesigned fan—sorely needed, in my experience—but how does that relate to what they're talking about? Beats me.

I'm not sure all this helps me choose a Mac Mini model. But then, I don't really do massive Photoshop projects—I process relatively straight, don't do a lot of processor-intensive functions like panoramic photomerges, and print small. I should probably just make do with the most basic base Mini if I go that route.

Oops
But I did some configuring, and it turns out you can slam the budget pretty easily configuring a Mini. The Mini is not mini any more in terms of $. I guess you're getting a lot of computer, but you're certainly paying luxury prices. (And before the Apple-haters chime in, I'm in the Apple ecosystem and I'm not getting out. It's not a question of just one device—it's how all of them work together.) I suppose my next work computer will be a 21.5" iMac, which is what lordly Apple decrees customers like me shall buy. Who am I to argue with a trillion-dollar behemoth?

The first Mac I did my work on, Spring 1984.
Ten pages of text per floppy.  :-)

Still, interesting article. (I love primers.) I'll be interested to hear what some of you think who know much more about the subject than I do.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

P.S. And here's an interesting thought. It's finally at least conceivable that I could go with a highly configured iPad Pro and an iPhone, and dispense with everything else. No more desktop, no more laptop? Radical.

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

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

Thom Hogan: "As I outline in an article on my site: memory first, dedicated GPU second (if you can get one), CPU clock speed third. In broad strokes, that's where performance in Photoshop comes from. The thing you absolutely want to avoid is virtual memory or scratch disk spills out to a slow drive.

"To answer your question on the new Mini, it's unknown yet just how much heat dissipation the fan on it can manage long term. If it's efficient, then yes, the turbo boost speed is very important. If not, the base clock speed is probably more important."

[Here's that link —Ed.]

Vince: "If you’re going to get an iMac, you’ll be much happier with a 27". Especially since that’s the size screen you already have. But I don’t know why you would. A Mini with an i7 and 512GB SSD is $1,500. If you want 16GB of memory, give Apple $200 to upgrade it. (The memory is replacing the built-in, and 16GB is $170 from OWC; it’s worth the $30 not to mess with it.) If you want 32GB, give OWC $330 to upgrade it. Around $1,700–1,800 total. A comparably equipped iMac 27" is $2,500–2,600, and only has four cores instead of six. Why spend the $800–900 when you don’t have to? (Unless you also want a 5K monitor, in which case definitely get the iMac.) (Note: I own and love the iMac. But you have a Mini and a good monitor. It seems to make more sense to stay with the Mini.)

"Also, what that article really says is that Adobe apps are bloated and horribly performing. If you really want to improve the performance of your editing, get new software instead of beefing up your hardware to ridiculous heights."

Moose: "Likely not much factor for your use, but GPU is a significant factor for many Photoshop users. Your link mentions two reasons: 'The downside of utilising a processor with integrated graphics solution is that both the processor and GPU share the computers main system memory. Not only does this consume valuable memory for graphics use but it eats up memory performance bandwidth too.' A more powerful GPU also speeds up some display functions."

Joe Holmes: "After eight years with my elderly Mac Pro desktop machine I finally upgraded last year to the 27" iMac Retina 5K, with every available upgrade and 40GB of RAM. What an enormous difference, a huge amount due to moving a lot of my software to a superfast SSD. Everything is now just snappy. One thing I've long depended on for photo processing is two monitors—it's great having a full-screen image on one and all my Photoshop palettes and tools on the other. I know you love your existing monitor, but you might consider keeping it and using the iMac's (gorgeous) 27" Retina screen as a second monitor. All it takes is the right cable. Of course the iMac is much pricier than a Mac Mini, but if you, like me, expect to keep the machine for at least six or eight years, it's a very worthwhile investment."

Thomas Tveit Rosenlund: "That is not a photo specific computer. That is actually an Adobe specific computer. Because of Adobe's software architecture the applications can't utilize a lot of cores in an optimal way (only for some tasks like batch output/input). It is the same story with GPU. There exists other software solutions for photo processing and cataloging that actually manages to utilize the resources of a multi-core setup as well as the GPU capabilities in a much better way. Capture One is one, I am sure there are others as well (Capture One is reportedly better developing Fujifilm X-trans files also, so the switch should really be a no-brainer for the author of this site).

"What you really need is a Microsoft Surface pro and an upgrade to Capture One for Fuji.  :-)  "

Mike replies: I've been trying to make friends with Capture One for Fuji. The plugin I really want to keep is Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, and it looks like I should be able to learn how to integrate that. I just think I'm going to miss ACR. I've spent time and effort learning ACR and I'm attached to what I know how to do in ACR....

david stock: After decades of Mac use, I'm feeling stuck. With Apple's lack of desktop choices, iMacs are what many photographers seem to turn to. But I dislike the screens. They are pretty for viewing, and for web content. But for someone who prints photographs regularly, they are suboptimal. They are extremely bright and saturated (and too reflective). Because they are optimized for web and movie viewing impact, they are hard to profile accurately for printing. They have a history of problems with uneven illumination. And they are actually too high in resolution to allow conveniently judging critical sharpness (as Lloyd Chambers and others have pointed out). I had high hopes for the new Mini. It's powerful, with lots of good ports. Its only drawback for me is the lack of a dedicated graphics card; I can't wrap my mind around paying $700 for an external GPU box. Apple promises a new Mac Pro next year. But I'm sure it will be incredibly expensive...."

Mike replies: FWIW, I've felt that frustration. I invested in the NEC PA272W last year to have a more configurable, lower-glare display, but Apple's options of low end (Mini) and high end (Pro) desktops were both too extreme for me—no Goldilocks solution. I needed a box right in the middle. The new Minis are likely going to do the job when I upgrade next Spring, assuming I can afford to. 

But maybe the real problem is Photoshop. I just looked at Capture One's system requirements. It's a pretty basic, casual page, but they say minimum is 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 10 GB free hard drive space, and optimum is 4 cores "or better," 16 GB RAM "or more," 100 GB free hard drive space, and an SSD drive. Seems like the Core i3 Mini with extra RAM would serve. I just don't know about what you mentioned, which is how the lack of a dedicated GPU might affect anything. I just switched from coffee to tea; switching from ACR/Photoshop to Capture One should be easy, right?

But hey, I learned a lot today. I guess I'll just keep my ears open and read the real reviews when they start appearing, and just keep learning till I know enough.