Trust (and Aggravation)

I mentioned in the previous post that when a camera feature works inconsistently it inspires the opposite of trust.

Trust is the most important thing about any camera to me. Mostly, you gain trust in a tool by using it a lot and learning it well enough to demystify its quirks and foibles. You figure out what's happening and come up with a workaround, and then you're fine. But consistent performance is almost equally important to trust. Once I can't trust a camera, it's outta here.

I had a camera briefly that had inconsistent apertures. Really mystified me until I figured it out; you could stop it down to ƒ/8 and sometimes the hole would be a little bigger, sometimes a little smaller. An acquaintance who used the same lens patiently explained that he always moved the aperture ring at the same deliberate speed and in the same direction and as long as he did that the aperture would be pretty consistent. Well, I wasn't going to do that. Away it went.

A talented friend many years ago shot with a camera the design of which seemed nearly perfect for him, a rare bird called the Plaubel Makina 670. It was a compact 6x7 camera with an extensible bellows and a Nikkor lens. My friend, however, was bedeviled with problems with the film advance. I might be half-remembering and half-inventing this story, but, as I recall it, he first assumed he had a bad sample and bought a second copy of the camera; then, on the second one, he decided to be patient and get it serviced. Next, what happened either two or three times was that he sent it off for repair and got it back only to have it break again. As this process went along his frustration and irritation levels went up and up, and of course his trust in the camera as a tool went in the other direction. How can you get immersed in photographing when you always have it in the back of your mind that your camera might randomly stop working?

Having heard his tales about these trials and tribulations as they happened, one day I realized I hadn't heard an update in a while and remembered to ask, "so what's the status of the Plaubel?" He seemed perfectly calm about it. He explained that after the last time it broke he decided he was done with it. Didn't want to put up with the problems, didn't want to deal with selling it, just wanted it out of his head. So what became of it? "I put it in the back of the closet," he said, "and I'm pretending it's not there." Made me laugh.

...But it's a trick I adopted. I've had a couple of monumentally frustrating possessions that I did the same thing with. Just put them in the closet and commenced pretending they weren't there. Not worth the aggravation.

For all I know my friend's old Plaubel is still sitting there! I'll ask him and report back if I get an answer.

Anyway, trust is not on any feature list. And you can have trust in any camera you know well, old or new, full of features or not, pro or am, big or small. If you know what it can do and what it does and you know you can count on that, that's worth a lot.

Mike

UPDATE Wednesday: My friend no longer has the Plaubel. He also once had a collection of thousands of rare vinyl records, many very rare, and got rid of them all once CDs came along. He acknowledges that the vinyl collection would have been very valuable now, but says "you know me, move on and don't look back." It's true, it's the way he's always been.

Book o' the Week:

The second edition of old friend Bruce Barnbaum's The Essence of Photography is just out. Bruce wrote for Photo Techniques when I was Editor. I always enjoy his insights into the art and craft, even if his technique isn't the same as mine. I still learn. Mastery is fun to read about.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of The Essence of Photography at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Michael Perini: "I remember when I got my first job in a real, established photo studio, the thing that surprised me the most was the amount of 'testing' we did. No new equipment ever went on a live shoot until we 'trusted' that we understood it, and that it worked as expected in a consistent manner. Film was bought by the case from the same emulsion batch and kept cold in the film fridge. Each emulsion batch was tested on standardized targets and the same few people as models. Some batches needed 05M or 05Y and the batch was marked. We would test possible lighting setups for the kind of job we were about to do. Cameras and lenses tended to be slightly old but very well maintained. Every year we would send them to Marty Forscher's Professional Camera Repair for a CLA.

"To this day once I am comfortable with a camera, I find it hard to buy a new one without a compelling reason, and even then the old one stays as backup.

"Although that was Film, I think the lesson applies even more to the digital era. A camera that is known, trusted, and familiar enough in operation to just disappear, is usually a greater benefit to pictures than the latest technology. That is not to say that I don't enjoy the benefits technology has brought—I do—but I am never in a rush to have it, and I test it until I trust it."

David Dyer-Bennet: "Oh! And this exactly explains my relationship with face detection (in real cameras, point-and-shoot cameras, and camera phones. Every time I try to use it, it fails to lock on just when things are time-critical—and then, of course, it's not focused, either. So I hear so much about how it's a great feature, and I absolutely believe it—but when I'm in a hurry I can't afford to have it fail, and when I'm not in a hurry I don't need the help. If it's not rock-solid reliable it's not useful. So it remains turned off in my cameras.

"In fact this explains a lot about real photographers' interactions with cellphone cameras, I think. They do so much—a lot of the time. But they're not consistent, not reliable."

Stephen Scharf: "Actually, what you've described as 'trust' may not be on a feature list, but it is actionable and measurable from an engineering perspective. The examples you've given of sketchy, inconsistent, or unpredictable performance or operation is managed by a type of engineering called 'Robust Engineering.' 'Robustness' from a Design for Six Sigma perspective means that key functional responses or attributes (whatever they might be, accurate aperture or reproducible film advance in the examples you've given) perform to specification...in the presence of noise factors. A 'noise factor' is anything that takes a functional response off-target, adds variance, or both. For example, missing or incomplete functionality to due to say, humidity or temperature changes is a lack of robustness due to environmental noise factors.

"Fortunately, there are very effective ways to deal with this. A specific type of Design of Experiments (DOE's) known as Taguchi Robust Design DOE's can be performed to make functional responses robust to the effects and impact of noise factors. A classic approach are to use the Taguchi Robust DOE L12 or L16 designs.

"Good thing is, mature and sophisticated companies like Fujifilm already use these powerful statistical techniques during development. So...I don't think you need to worry about the new medium-format GFX50S II from a 'robustness' perspective."

"Cheers, Stephen, your friendly neighborhood Six Sigma Master Black Belt."

hugh crawford: "The Plaubel Makina 670 had a horrid reputation for breaking. I am amazed how many 'mint condition' examples are for sale at ridiculously high prices. Probably because they never worked long enough to get wear marks. I almost bought a used one once but when the owner of the camera store saw that I was looking at it he refused to sell it to me because he knew I’d break it. And then two customers started telling how awful their own experiences with them were. When they worked they were wonderful, beautiful cameras.

"Pre-1975 Plaubel cameras are pretty wonderful; always wanted to try a Pecoflex but was told that the spare parts were in some sort of limbo after the Japanese bought Plaubel. Camera Barn in NYC apparently bought all the stock in the late '70s and dumped it cheap."

Simon: "Trust in tools! So, so important. Thank you for writing this. I became aggravated with digital Leica M's after too many problems, especially Leica batteries losing their charge not long after purchasing original ones for $150 each. My Fuji X100S keeps going after many years, and I plan to upgrade to the latest model soon. I am not surprised Koudelka raves about these tough little cameras! If only the focus ring stopped at each end (macro and infinity), like on a mechanical rangefinder, so we could focus without looking through the viewfinder."

Howard Sandler: "On the other hand, when you shoot old vintage film cameras with all their quirks and sticky shutters and light leaks, you don't have to be a good photographer. If anything turns out at all, you impress yourself."

s.wolters: "In the 'eighties there was a group of British photographers that inspired me to buy a Plaubel Makina 670. Among them Martin Parr, Chris Killip, Paul Graham and Anna Fox. Most of them used that camera and their gallery prints were really stunning for that time. A friend in Singapore helped me to get one for an acceptable price, but after 10 rolls the mechanism got broke and the camera had to be send back to the factory. After they repaired it, it still made an awkward sound when transporting the film. The best thing about this camera was that I made a good profit when I sold it. By that time it was already out of production but somehow it was still very popular amongst connoisseurs."

Comments

[Bruce Bordner]

You made me realize that I'm on my fourth Nikon, so far as "real shooting cameras". In, uh, 50-ish years? Ftn for many years, N8008, F100 when they got cheap, and now a D800 that was a retirement present from me. I just reset my filenames to start "BB2" for my third 10,000... I buy good stuff and use it up. Obviously I trust high-end Nikon and my fingers know the way around. The Z7 did feel good BUT I have 5-6 lenses to feed already. Luckily, it's still hard to beat a D800. Spend wisely and very infrequently.

[JoeB]

Trust, as it is with cameras is so with humans.

[Phil]

I can remember when I wanted a Plaubel Makina so bad. I think I saw it in a Montgomery Ward Photo catalog. It was all silver, and sort of looked like the front of my Crown Graphic 2 1/4 x 3 1/4" film camera, but without the drop down focusing rack. I think that was right after WWII ended, and items were becoming available again. It might have been around $500 at that time, out of my range.

[robert e]

The flip side of trust is reliability, no? And that at least seemed to be on just about every camera feature list in the old film days. Makers made a big deal about shutters, especially (still do, I guess), and I suppose it was the most intricate, specialized and critical moving part (system, really), and they could fail in a number of different ways. Personally, though, I always had more trouble with film advances than with shutters.

I have to admit that cameras these days seem far more reliable than their all-mechanical ancestors were. Neglect of the maintenance those old cameras required had a little to do with that, and much of today's junk got flushed out in the market contraction. But I think it's something fundamental to design and technology, not unlike the way quartz watches by their nature are better at keeping time than mechanical ones.

Anyway, while I never thought about it like this, not having to worry about the film advance slipping, jamming or chewing my film is kind of nice!

[Joe]

I've had cameras that gave me that same kind of mistrust experience. I never realized how much that affected me until I would upgrade to a new camera and feel such a sense of relief.

I had a similar experience when I moved up from the early digital cameras that were unpleasantly noisy at ISO 800. The day I moved up to Nikon's D700, with its much improved ISO performance, I left behind that constant juggling of the shutter-speed/ISO balance. (Current noise-reduction software also helps make this issue almost completely disappear.) These days I think nothing of shooting at ISO 3200.

[darlene]

I shoot expensive ALPA medium format camera bodies with an innovated V lens adapter (hacked from a Hasselblad V lens bellows adapter mated to an ALPA lens board) because my trusted set of lenses for decades has been a select group of V lenses. The Hasselblad V system is a well designed system that consistently performs well with film or digital.

Fuji is my go to for smaller format and hands-down they won me over after other camera manufacturers either fell short in quality or did that irritating over-engineering thing. K.I.S.S.

[Patrick Dodds]

Trust is vital with any technical equipment. Which is why you should never buy an inkjet printer - not only don't they work consistently, they can't work consistently. Sure, get a laserjet if you must, (though it won't do justice to your photographs), but avoid inkjets like the plague.

[Mark Sampson]

Those who used Makina 67 or 670 cameras (an expensive cult camera in the early '80s) probably moved on to the later Mamiya 6 or 7 roll-film cameras.
For being a film camera, the Mamiya 7 has a great reputation (and prices for used ones are still quite high).
But yes, trust in your tools is important.

[Stan B.]

I remember having the hots for a Plaubel Makina W67 a good while ago before you set me straight- thanks again!

Two of my fave photobooks were made with it:
Beyond Caring and Troubled Land (Paul Graham).

[Luke]

So don't call it Pixel Peeping!
I'm Testing to see what the camera actually DOES.

[Kenneth Wajda]

I know I can trust a Nikon D610 DSLR and a 50mm f1.4D (or 20mm f2.8D, 28mm f1.8G or 35mm f1.8DX lens--it works on FX!) with back button focus to get anything in an instant. It's what I trust to get the shot.

Exposure is preset. On the street or even out the car window, 1/4000 at f8 at ISO 800, focus set for 15 feet--with the lens gaffer taped so as not to move off that focus mark--guarantees me everything is sharp and in focus.

Leicas are fine for composing and making portraits and taking my time. When I need the shot on the quick, at the flick of a wrist like Robert Frank or Henri Cartier-Bresson did with their Leicas, for me it's the Nikon.

For film, it's the F100, same setup.

[David Bennett]

On his FAQ page, Martin Parr says "For the 35mm it is a Nikon 60mm macro lens combined with a SB29 ring flash. This gives a shadow on both sides of the lens and is like a portable studio light. For the early black and white work it was a Leica M3 with a 35mm lens. When I moved to 6/7cm in The Last Resort it was a Makina Plaubel with a 55mm lens. I later bought a standard lens Plaubel and more recently Mamiya 7’s"

I feel so at home to read that others here wanted a Plaubel -