The Online Photographer

My 6x9 Story

[Comments have been added.]

Photo of a Fuji GW690III by Benjamin Balasz

Every now and again someone mentions the "Texas Leica"—the nickname for the oversized Fuji 6x9. It and several other medium-format rangefinders once made by Fuji were the ancestors of the current GFX 50R. I'm too lazy to go research the various versions, but I think there were three of them, the GW690III being the last. They were rangefinders that took 6x9 cm negatives on 120 or 220 film. The GW690III wasn't really very Leica-like, since it had a fixed 90mm lens and no built-in light meter. (The Leica of the time, the M6, had a non-AE light meter and of course allowed for interchangeable lenses.)

I used a Fuji 6x9 once, although I don't recall the circumstances now—I probably had it on loan, or deposit, you might say, from Josh Hawkins at Oak Park Camera in Oak Park, Illinois. I lived over and down six or eight blocks, in Forest Park.

My overriding memory of the camera was that it drew attention like a flashing red light. For some reason, whenever I had the thing in my hands, people would react like I was waving a gun around, staring at me and giving me a wide berth, hiding their faces if I pointed it in their direction.

Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it felt like it. I felt totally exposed when I was using it.

I think part of this is me—I'm not particularly "invisible" when I shoot. I guess I get anxious or something, and people pick up on it. I'm never up to no good, but people are suspicious anyway. I'm a bad "candid" photographer. I do better when I have permission. Inevitably, if I point a camera anywhere, whoever is in the frame, whatever they are doing and no matter how far away they are, will look at me. Usually with a glare.

Maybe I just remember the occasions when they do, I don't know. That could be it.

I wrote about this on the old site, telling a story about how, when I got the Panasonic GF1, I was driving down the road pointing the camera out the window at a motorcycle rider I was passing. Of course I was watching the road and shooting blind, not the other way around. Surely, in that situation, the motorcyclist wouldn't notice me?  The camera was inside the car. And he'd have his eye on the road too, presumably. But when I got back to the computer, the one picture that almost included him in the frame and happened to be in focus showed him looking right at me! With a narrowed, suspicious glare. Funny.

Don't look
Anyway, I made several sorties out and about with the Texas Leica, molesting passers-by, invading peoples' privacy, and flustering innocent pedestrians. It was feather-ruffling for all concerned, me included. A few days later, having let the big beast rest for a day or two on the shelf, where it was harmless, I found myself contemplating it and thinking, well, there has to be something I can shoot with this dang thing. I concluded that maybe I just needed to be farther away from people.

So I performed a little experiment. I was living at the time in a loft in a former warehouse in West Chicago, a beautiful and impractical home that was one of the most interesting places I ever lived. I was on the fourth floor, higher than most of the surrounding buildings. When it was being built, the contractor put in a sliding glass door. The idea was that buyers would pay $5,000 extra to have a small metal balcony installed outside the door. Since I suffer from acrophobia, and would have gotten the heebie-jeebies suspended in the airspace above the alley, I declined to buy a balcony, so my sliding glass door just had bars on the other side of it so I wouldn't, you know, mosey out of it by mistake and plummet four stories to the concrete.

They were building new condos across the street, and I had occasionally been observing the construction, opening the sliding glass door and leaning with my elbows on the top bar of the barrier. Never once had I noticed any of the workers looking at me; they were quite a distance away—I would estimate 200 feet or so—that's two-thirds of an American football field—and of course they were always going about their business. And it was Chicagoland. The Chicago metropolitan area—Chicagoland—is now getting close to having twice the population of the entire State of Wisconsin. So there were cars going by, airplanes in the sky, pedestrians. Trains passing on the nearby L. I had a great view of the L tracks from my front windows.

I put the Fuji around my neck and watched the workers for a few minutes. Casually, I slowly brought the Texas Leica to my eye.

And as soon as I looked through the viewfinder, the construction worker in the center of the composition turned around, stared right at me, and glared.

How had he noticed me? It's almost uncanny, as if I radiate some telepathic signal or something. I've never understood this. I took the picture anyway, but, as always, I felt awkward, as if I had imposed on the guy and annoyed him.

I recall thinking, gee, if I ever took this thing to the beach, I'd probably get arrested.

Anyway, that was it for me and the Texas Leica! If OPC was where I got it, back it went.

Mike

Book o' the Week

This is the book that sold 1,100 copies through our links, back when it first came out in 2007. It's essentially a catalogue raisonné of the work of the iconic American landscapist. I suppose it won't sell any more, since everyone already has a copy, but the link can be a portal to Amazon for your holiday shopping. Thank you kindly for helping to support The Online Photographer!

The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Tex Andrews: "Oh, be still my heart! My favorite film camera of all—the GSW690II. It was with this camera that I started to consistently shoot better, and oddly fell into my current and long time project, going on about 15 years now. To get my current camera that owns my heart, my 645Z, I had to trade in a bunch of gear to get the price down to 'only excruciating.' Almost all of the trade-ins hurt, but this one was by far the one that really made me sad, and does to this day. I'll get another one one day, but when I traded it in it actually felt like a betrayal, that camera had been so good to me. I felt faithless."

John Hufnagel: "If I recall correctly, the Graflex Combat Graphic was the first camera colloquially known as the Texas Leica. It even looks like a Leica."

Tom Duffy: "I really like my Fuji GW690III. The loud 'Ping!' when the leaf shutter goes off is about as un-Leica as you can get. 23 years ago, I brought it with me to Disney World on a family vacation and shot many rolls of Kodak 400 speed color negative film in 220 format. I came back with a large number of good pictures. My hit rate was actually way higher than my average. I've heard it described as 'everyone's second favorite camera.' Except yours, evidently.  :-) "

Steve C: "I watch Joel Meyrowitz's Masters of Photography course (which is excellent by the way), and he walks around shooting in the street looking like a seven-foot-tall Star Wars villain and nobody seems to notice. Ashley Gilbertson is the same, looking like a rock'n'roll guitar tech or perm'd biker, but gets the most incredible, up close, essence of humanity pictures."

Mike replies: Yeah, I really think it's a matter of personality and social adeptness. It's what you project to other people. And how you feel about yourself.

s.wolters: "It’s not only the camera, it’s the camera in combination with you. With my Pentax 67 I had the same kind of experience as you had with that Texas Leica. With my Rolleiflex people always reacted positively and sometimes tried to make contact or even wanted to pose.

"I envy some female photographers. A few months ago I was at a tourist hotspot where fifty people tried to photograph an overwhelming landscape with their smartphone in vertical mode. Only three or four had a proper camera. One of them, a pretty girl with very short pants and very long legs drew all the attention. Her rucksack full of equipment would have made any paparazzo jealous. As it happens when traveling around I also saw her at some other places. Because of her appearance she always made contact with anyone within minutes, using her bulky Canon 7D combination as a conversation piece. A Texas Leica would probably worked for her as well, but a phone camera or point and shoot not because those aren’t special enough to start a chat. One of the reasons I’m using Micro 4/3 is that think I look rather harmless with it. With a FF DSLR I feel that one day I will get lynched by an angry mob."

Robert: "I have almost the exact opposite experience. I‘ve taken thousands of pictures of strangers and hardly any of them have bothered to look. Most were taken with Leica rangefinders rather than a Texas Leica, admittedly, but many were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24–105mm on it, some even with a Rolleiflex. I remember one day in London where even when getting very close no one seemed to be bothered, and another in a small town in Germany, and the same thing. Same with all over Asia, except there people often do look then smile widely after the picture is taken. I am not usually furtive. So maybe it's the U.S.—I've never shot there."

Ilkka: "Maybe the problem was that you thought of it as Texas Leica instead of New York Linhof. A big handheld camera instead of a more convenient and faster 4x5 replacement."

John Krumm: "I have similar results shooting strangers, at least in the Midwest. Here in Duluth people see you coming from a mile off. They don't usually think you are actually taking a photo of them. What usually happens is they stop walking or even stop their car so that you can take your shot without them in the way. Nowadays I pretty much never see anyone else with a camera around the neck. I'm the only weirdo in a town of 85,000 who does that, it seems (I know there are a few others, just not when I am out and about). That's why so many of my people shots are from a distance...."

Hugh: "It’s a person thing, not a camera thing. Not a criticism really. I never had any problem doing street photography with a Pentax 67. Same size, much more noise. Speed, confidence, and a friendly smile when people notice."

Stan B.: "Come to think of it, Tod Papageorge did some exemplary B&W street with it...."

Mike replies: He certainly did.

David L.: "Regardless of the comments, putting a 6x7 or 6x9 negative in an enlarger and printing it on fiber-base paper is a sublime experience. I had Fuji 6x7 and 6x9 cameras and regret letting them go."

Martin D: "I loved l, loved, loved that camera. Had both the 90mm and the 65mm 6x9 versions. For me, the very size and monstrosity of the thing made me invisible, like wearing a hi-viz jacket and helmet—people just took me for someone from a different world and ignored me. This is the camera to take Walker Evans-style shots of everyday life. I used Agfa Scala B&W transparency film—wow, how those massive transparencies came to life on the lightbox. Took the best portrait of my father with it. One roll of 120 only gives eight shots, I metered carefully and used only one shot for my father, it was perfect. Boy, I miss this camera."

Mike replies: Did you know that film was just plain old Agfa APX 100 with reversal processing? True.

Eric Brody: "The closest I ever came to the 'Texas Leica' was the Mamiya 7II, a fabulous lightweight rangefinder with some of the sharpest lenses I've ever used, and I've used a lot of lenses. Even though each lens had its own, almost silent, leaf shutter, I never used it for people, so I never got to scare anyone. What interests me about this conversation is how people seem to sort to two groups, those with the 'courage' to do street work and those, like me, who are irrationally afraid of it."

The Fotomat

[Comments have been added.]

-

(Does anyone have a picture I could publish of a Fotomat kiosk back when it was open for business? Something you own the rights to. Apparently that was something almost nobody took a picture of. UPDATE: See this post.)

Only I would start an article with a paragraph in parentheses.

You won't remember Fotomats if you aren't of a certain age. They were small drive-up kiosks in the middle of suburban parking lots where you could drop off exposed film, buy new film (or sometimes get a new roll for free), and pick up your 3R prints 24 hours later—without getting out of your car. Picture a toll booth and you won't be too far off.

The bad old days
It was a good business model, at first: the kiosks took up minimal real estate, required only one on-site employee (apparently called Foto-Mates, although I'm not sure if that was a corporate term or not), and offered a service for which there was consistent demand. Wikipedia tell us the company reached its high-water mark in 1980, when there were 4,000 Fotomats in the USA. Not all that many, considering there are currently 33,295 Starbucks locations.

Fotomat Corporation lasted until 2009, but "One-Hour Photo" minilabs basically killed them off before the 1990s arrived. There was a time, though, when getting your film back in just 24 hours was cutting-edge convenience that beat the competition.

The primary driver of technological progress in consumer photography is largely convenience. I say "largely," because sometimes status/prestige are what drive certain trends. But it's mainly convenience. Fotomat's 24-hour turnaround time was fast when it was new, appropriating business from local drugstores and camera stores where you might have had to wait four days to a week for your prints to be "done." It lasted for a while into the era of the minilab only because one-hour processing was expensive at first. The early minilab machines were extremely costly and owners needed to charge more to make their money back—many of them didn't get it, because the machines quickly became cheaper and competition for the business grew fierce. There was a window of time in there when people got upside-down on their investment in minilab machines and never got right-side-up again. But I digress.

Basically the Fotomat gave way to the one-hour minilab for the same reason that the glass-plate stand cameras of the 1880s ("stand" in that term meaning tripod, mostly) gave way to the box Brownie, and that a perfectly good Canon "digicam" (digital point-and-shoot) of, say, 2005 has lost out to a miniaturized mass-produced module in a smartphone. Convenience conquers.

Not for us
Despite being self-identified as a photographer, I always felt separate and apart from popular trends in consumer photography. I did take six full rolls of 36-exposure color film with me when I went to Europe for four weeks when I was 14, on an inter-school trip (and bought two more rolls while I was there—wow, 288 exposures in only four weeks! That was heavy shooting). I got 4x6 prints back when I came home. And when I was very young I owned a Kodak Instamatic and got back the ubiquitous square prints with the date printed in the border.

But in between the Instamatic and the trip to Europe, most of the work I had done was to get black-and-white prints made from black-and-white film at the Bay Point Pharmacy, where I also eventually worked as a clerk and delivery driver. As with color prints, if a picture didn't "come out" you could request a do-over, for free, and I asked for so many do-overs that eventually the Pharmacy instituted a special rule just for me: only one re-do for B&W. I later learned, to my astonishment, that the Pharmacy's B&W prints were made not in some industrial high-volume facility somewhere (as was the case with the Fotomats), which is what I always assumed, but by a local guy with a darkroom in his basement who was doing a little extra work on the side. I wish they had told me that; I would have just cut out the middleman and gone over to his house so I could tell him what to do in real time. I'm sure he would have loved taking directions from a 12-year-old. On the other hand, I might have learned darkroom work a lot earlier than I did.

Back in those days, my memory is that hobbyist photographers and up—artists, pros, etc.—anyone more involved than family snapshooters—thought of themselves as separate and apart from the normal ordinary consumers. We didn't practice photography like everybody else. I never once had a roll of film developed at a Fotomat. I just didn't think of things like that as being for me.

Wrong envelope
When I was poking around the Web looking for Fotomat pictures, I came across a number of stories. One woman who worked as a Foto-Mate said that whenever anyone asked her where the film was developed, she would tell them that there was an underground photo lab right under the kiosk, under the parking lot, and she claimed most people believed her. (Actually the film was processed and printed offsite.) One person had a startling tale that somehow I can't quite see as funny: apparently a woman dropped off a negative to have an enlargement made (a "big" print in those days would have been 8x10), and she left the order in her husband's name. Apparently, unbeknownst to each other, her husband also dropped off a negative for enlargement at the same Fotomat around the same time, and also used his own name. When the poor woman returned and opened her package fully intending to see a group picture of her happy family, she was confronted instead with a pornographic photo of her husband with another woman. Wrong envelope.

That must have been in the '70s. By the '80s, photo processors were cracking down on dirty pictures and people had to be careful what they turned in for processing.

Left over
Parking lot Fotomat kiosks were later repurposed for a wide range of uses. One I saw a picture of became the tiny storefront for a fortune teller; others sold cigarettes or coffee. I saw a picture of one that became a watch repair shop (sort of doubly anachronistic, right?). I also saw a picture of one painted pink and white with a sign that said "Condom Hut." Is that really a purchase you want to drive up and make right out in plain view? Not if you were the guy in the incriminating 8x10, I would guess.

Here's an old ad for the company on YouTube. Digital is really much—much—more convenient.

Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

craig: "The store I used from to time was lifted up out the parking lot by a tornado."

Mike replies: Ah, but I want to know where it landed, and whether it killed a witch.

Lawrence Plummer: "My one (sad) memory of Fotomat was the day I eagerly picked up a roll of slides that I had wanted in a hurry. Each mounted slide consisted of half of one frame, followed by the half frame of the next shot!"

Nick Reith: "A really great post Mike. Nostalgia, humor and photo history all combined to put a smile on my face. As the British would say, 'Well played!'

"P.S. I wonder if the marriage survived?"

Mike replies: History does not record....

Roger Bradbury: "No Fotomats in England, but I used to get my films done at the local photographer's shop in Buckingham, where I worked. That business had been established in 1863 though it's gone now, and the building still has its North light skylight and window below it for the upstairs studio."

H Bernstein: "This post is The Online Photographer at its most online photographic. Congratulations, Mike, on TOP’s anniversary and for the distinctive blogging voice that you provide the online photographic community. I say community because this blog fosters that feeling of togetherness and conversation. It being too scarce nowadays makes your blog even more appreciated."

Andy Munro: "Wow. Nostalgia. That made me think of Truprint (postal prints UK based so not sure if they were a thing elsewhere). Ah, the anticipation of the prints arriving in the post was a really lovely memory. All gone now. Thanks for that diversion."

Centeredlens: "I grew up near the Fotomat/Condom Hut in Knightsville, Rhode Island. It's no longer there. I remember as a kid the parish priest making a thunderous condemnation of it from the pulpit, saying the Condom Hut was an abomination. (He was later defrocked for abusing his nephew.)"

Thomas Basista: "Back in the day I used Fotohut so much I was on a first name basis with the young woman clerk. She later modeled for me when I tried to do 'serious' portrait work. That kiosk is still there 50 years later, now selling coffee. Now that I think of it, I am surprised that the little building still is standing."

Bob Rosinsky: "There was a Fotomat a couple blocks away from my high school. A popular and pretty blond senior worked there on weekends and after school. As it turned out, she was selling bags of marijuana on the side. She eventually lost her job. I don't remember seeing her at school after that."

Dave: "What a 'blast from the past.' We usually just dropped our film at the drugstore because it was less expensive than Fotomat. Our parents grew up during the Depression, so the extra cost of Fotomat wasn't worth saving a few days."

Jim Palmer: "Today, after having read this yesterday, I noticed that the drive-up coffee shop in town was, in fact, a former Fotomat. I have driven by it for two years and it hadn't occurred to me it's origin. Thank you."

Sean: "A drive-up condom kiosk. Where the road meets the rubber."

Ed. adds: *Rimshot*

Jim Arthur: "I worked at a Fotomat in college but never heard the term Foto-Mate. It was a great gig because my booth was in an odd location in a fairly small town so I rarely saw a customer. I got paid to sit and study. I never had any film developed by Fotomat (which seems crazy now), and looking back I wish I had taken more photos during my college days. I’m sure they would be entertaining today. The haircuts alone would be hilarious. Back then, everyone’s hair made them look like a street punk from an episode of 'Starsky and Hutch.' Here’s Tommy Chong on That 70s Show referring to a picture of a Photo Hut as art. Tommy Chong’s performance here also reminds me of college.  :-) "

Mike replies: I really wish I had taken pictures in college.

Patrick Perez: "I used to work at a Fotomat in the 1900s and it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. In a five-hour shift, I'd interact with people for ~15 minutes. I brought in a stereo receiver and bookshelf speakers and listened to music all day while I read for pleasure. It was a time in my life where I frequently would find myself saying 'I read this really good book yesterday' meaning cover-to-cover."

Forgot Our Birthday!

The Online Photographer turned 16 this past November 28th.

Kept alive first by ads, then by affiliate income, then by affiliate income plus print sales, and now by much less affiliate income plus direct reader contributions via Patreon.

Best year: 2013

Most-viewed post: 74,000 views (happened in 2008, when the Web was younger and there was much less competition!)

Post with most comments: I don't remember, but I think the number was 205 or thereabouts.

Best print sale (numbers): 736 sold

Best print sale (dollars): $136,000, 80% of which went to the photographer

Best book sale: more than 1,100 sold*

Those were the days!

 

A great big huge THANK YOU to everyone who helps keep TOP alive here at the start of Year 17! Whether by reading, or by reading and using our links, or by reading and contributing through Patreon.

Mike

*Meaning, a single title sold through our Amazon links based on my recommendation.

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Days of Darkness (OT)

[An unscheduled post in honor of the occasion,
the day with the earliest sunset of the year.]

-

Do you have a least favorite thing about this season, the season of long nights?

We're still 17 days away from the shortest day of the year, but, as near as I can tell, today begins the days with the earliest sunsets, here where I live in the tiny hamlet of Penn Yan, New York (population 4,893 and falling). Our sunset is at 4:34 today, and will stay that way until the 13th.

The days with the earliest sunset are a little earlier than the shortest day of the year. I don't know why that is, but I don't need to.

The thing that annoys me about Winter days is that something in my brain tells me that once it gets dark, it's time to knock off work! That might be sensible in the Summer, when there can still be light left in the sky after 9:30. But it's ridiculous at this time of the year—Civil Twilight, so-called, ends at 5:07, and I still have six hours before I go to bed. I could get a lot of work done in six hours.

But do I? Sometimes. It gets dark and my brain still tells me it's time to relax, watch a few videos, and go to bed.

Perfect movie for a Winter evening
Speaking of both these things, if you've never watched the film Alone in the Wilderness by Dick Proenneke (pronounced PRENN-uh-kee), you should. It's fascinating watching him build his little cabin. Dick did all the cinematography as well—that was how he earned money, by making films of wilderness wildlife with a wind-up 16mm Bolex. The film was narrated by Dick's friend and the producer of the film, Bob Swerer, adapted from Dick's detailed journal. The two of them decided that Dick's own voice was too high and unpleasant for him to do his own narration.

The thing that brought this to mind is that I recall from the film that he slept extremely long hours in the Winter and extremely little in the Summers, his life synchronized with the daylight. There's a sample of the video on YouTube. But it's best to watch the whole thing. Kind of a basic must-watch, in my opinion—a true classic. Most of us would not have the skills and the work ethic to survive so easily in the wild, but Dick Proenneke embodies the idealized back-to-nature life that many city dwellers fantasize about at one time or another.

Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Josh Hawkins: "On the upside I can get my sunset shots done and still be home in time for dinner."

The Troubles With Film

[Comments have been added, Saturday 8:50 a.m.]

-

Disclaimer: This post is for people who for whatever reason want to shoot with film or are interested in it. It's all just my opinion. You're the boss of you, and you do what you want to do, and power to you.

My opinion is a version of something Carl Weese once said: digital imaging was the Coming of Age of color photography; black-and-white was already perfect.

A corollary is that black-and-white is neither native, nor particularly natural, nor done very well (except by a dedicated and skilled few) in digital. With film, color methods and materials were difficult and complicated, and, with the exceptions perhaps of Kodachrome (no longer available) and dye-transfer printing (no longer practical) also never terribly attractive. (And both Kodachrome and dye transfer were certainly difficult and complicated—end-users just didn't see the difficulty and complexity.) Many people had aversions to one color process or another: I thought Cibachromes were garish and more or less the opposite of the qualities I appreciated; John Szarkowski reportedly refused to acquire carbro prints for MoMA because he thought the process was so alarmingly ugly. Well, now, in digital, it's black-and-white methods and materials are difficult and complicated! I just received some prints in the mail from Richard Man, a wonderfully skilled B&W printer, and he has been working for a long time to perfect his digital and hybrid B&W. To be honest, I don't know why people would go to the trouble of shooting color film with old cameras, especially 35mm cameras. Why would they do that—because they want to spend more on something that's less practical and looks worse? If you're going to work in color, digital imaging is for you. If you're going to shoot film, work in black-and-white. Those conclusions just seem logical and sensible to me. Of course, if you don't agree, like if you want to shoot bushels of color neg film in old Leicas like Bill Eggleston, or if you like the look of some particular color film, you do you. This is just my 2¢, like I said. But when I say "film" I'm talking mainly about B&W.

High ISOs
Assuming you want to shoot film (this is not the old film vs. digital debate), what are the actual problems with it?

I'm going to set aside expense, because different people have different price sensitivity. A lot of people have lots of money, and some people don't have much at all. So talking about expense really has nothing to do with the activity; it has everything to do with individuals' own circumstances, to which I cannot speak meaningfully when talking to a room.

As I see it there are three main problems with film these days.

One is that film isn't fast enough.

I remember a period in the growth of digital when digital cameras couldn't do high ISOs. My Sony F-707 (2001) could barely provide a usable result at ISO 400, and 200 was a lot better. I recall hearing seasoned professionals opining online that they would consider switching to digital "as soon as digital does high ISOs as well as film." (Italics mine.)

Well, that's solved now. Larger sensors do higher ISOs better, but you can get mainstream APS-C cameras that will provide excellent results at ISO 1600, and some legacy-size sensors ("full" frame, a ridiculous name) will yield good results up to ISO 6400. (Most sensors, however, yield optimum results in a range of lower ISOs, usually from base to about 800.) If you think my numbers here are too low, well, I have high standards.

Film can't keep up. Digital is several stops better in most cases. Since film speed was always a headache in the old days, the advent of a solution has just made the headache that much worse.

I can remember when art photographers (well, in the D.C. area anyway) started feeling like they could depart from the old trusty Kodak VPS (ASA/ISO 100) and start using ASA 400 color films. Until T-Max P3200 came along in the mid to late '80s, Tri-X and HP5+, both 400 ASA films, were the best you could do for speed, and photographers swanned around with all sorts of generally self-defeating schemes to "push" them to be able to shoot at higher shutter speeds. The highest ISO I ever shot with film was 1000, with P3200. (The "P" in P3200 stood for "push.") If it had been ISO certified, it would have been an ISO 800 film, pushable to two stops. I pushed it a third of a stop. I got excellent results with it that way, but then I was kind of a virtuoso.

Lens speed
A second problem with film is that, apart from 35mm (and why would you want to use miniature format now?*), the camera lenses aren't fast enough. Although there are exceptions, most medium format lenses top out at ƒ/2.8, and most view camera lenses at ƒ/5.6. In addition, older film lenses weren't as good wide open as modern lenses are. Consider for example the Fuji GS645s 6x4.5 cm camera that Ben Marks mentioned the other day. That "wide" version of the GS645 folder had a 60mm ƒ/4 lens that was really good...as long as you didn't shoot it wide open, where it was pretty useless. So what that meant was that the camera, which was designed to be small, light, and portable, effectively had an ƒ/5.6 lens! So, bring your tripod along. Which kinda defeated the point.

Tone über alles
A third problem is that people scan film now. It's not inherently a bad idea, but it's usually badly done. It's badly done in the great majority of cases. It's not that peoples' scanning skills are poor. They will proudly tell you that scanning captures exactly the information in the negative, all of the information. And that's true. So what's the problem?

Taken from an article about the pioneer of sensitometry Loyd Ancile Jones

The problem is the film curve. Originally called the H&D curve, for Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield (a short but nice biography can be found here); Kodak assigned an angle to the straight-line section of the curve in the '30s and called it Contrast Index; later it was known as the characteristic curve. It plots density against exposure. And the problem is that it is not linear! Nor does it account for human perception. To correct it, it needs to be counteracted by the paper curve, which is also not linear. The matching of the film curve to the paper curve is essential to get the best results from film because that's how it was designed to be used. So to reproduce exactly the information on the film is a bollix; it is a tragedy; a mistake; it misrepresents the tones; it is ugly; it sucks.

A few film photographers now understand how to introduce the counteracting paper curve to the scanned negative file (I explained a basic method here and boy, am I prolix. Sorry). Most camera pointers out there on the wilds of the Internet don't. There are actually two reasons why the typical scanned film photography commonly seen online is ugly, and this is the main one. The other is that it takes some experience to come up to speed with exposure and development, and it was well known in the film days that newbies were often not up to speed yet. This is of course still true of people trying film today. I often see, for instance (accompanying bad-looking B&W JPEGs supposedly representing film photographs), reports of truly dubious film-developer combinations ("stand developed in Rodinal" seems to be a popular crime). Newbies. Led down the garden path. Not enough experience yet.

What's worse—the icing on the fallen cake—scanned B&W negatives tend to have compressed highlights. Since highlights are the single worse feature of digital capture (now thankfully being ameliorated by the high-megapixel FF and large- [AKA "medium"] format sensor cameras), this just makes a known problem worse.

+   =   +   =   +   =   +   =   +   =   +

So those are the problems with film circa 2021, as I see it. Of course that's not to say that there aren't people out there doing very fine work with film; there are. There are also people doing perfectly fine work scanning. (You don't have to protest. I know you're out there.) They're in the minority, is all I'm saying. Just because there are problems doesn't mean everyone is affected by the problems.

Of course, I suppose good workers in any craft have always been in the minority, and traditional photography is a beautiful craft. And an ancient one, dating back to just before 1839 (our Year Zero).

Eye and heart
So now let me say a few more words about this, under the principle that once you are up on your horse you might as well ride it. (Here it might be a good idea to return to the top of this post and read that first sentence again).

There is no longer ANY need to be practical with film photography. That is, you do not need to have a handy, portable camera; digital cameras can be as portable as your pocketable phone. You do not need to "push" film to achieve higher ISO speeds, at the lamentable expense of the beauty of the image; just look at DxOMark's "Sports" rankings (which, by the way, have nothing to do with how useful a camera is for shooting sports; it's just what they choose to call low-light capability) for the leading high-ISO contenders**. And please, don't try to mimic the look of digital images using film. Film photography has its own beauty. Go for that.

I would suggest, if you choose to master film, that you shift your priorities to go for the maximum beauty of the medium. Don't try for fine grain; just use a bigger negative and enlarge less (nobody cares about film grain in 8x10 sheet film, n.b.); grain is a concern with high enlargements. If you don't like it, just enlarge less. Don't push it; give the film all the exposure it needs to look best. And so forth. Ignore all the tweaks and strivings and conceits we applied when film was all we had.

Trying to achieve the maximum beauty of the medium is the only thing that makes sense to me today, in 2021. Do it however you see fit, though, for your definition of beauty...Carleton Watkins'  pictures are beautiful but so are George Krause's.

George Krause, Fountainhead.
Original prints for sale at his website, at the link.

Finally, don't be afraid to settle on your own style. That's one of the big advantages of black-and-white film photography—it has a very broad range of interpretative and expressive possibilities. This encompasses both techniques and also concerns. Don't mimic. Be yourself. Go for what satisfies your own eye and heart. Be as quirky and weird, or as classic and formal, as you wish to be.

I could go into that all that at great length, but it's already almost 1:00 p.m., so it'll have to be a different day.

Have a nice weekend! I'll be back here on Monday, and here's hoping you will be.

Mike

*I'm joking. Don't kill me.

**Note that DxOMark leaves Fuji out of its rankings—calumny by omission!

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Andrew: "Re 'If you're going to work in color, digital imaging is for you. If you're going to shoot film, work in black-and-white': I couldn't agree more. That's my current approach to photography and I've never been happier!"

Leonard Metcalf: "I hope you do come back to this and go into it in great length…I still see them as two different mediums. Film / digital. It helps me separate out their differences and celebrate the strengths of each."

Stan B.: "Wouldn't disagree with anything stated, although for what it's worth, for someone (like me) who uses wide angles and can have such a wide variety of minute details and various lighting scenarios all in one image, a hybrid B&W film and digital printing workflow provides a more than acceptable compromise balancing image quality and ease/superiority of image manipulation/editing that analog only yields to the absolute masters of darkroom printing.

"Speaking of B&W mastery, Mimi Plumb's 'The White Sky' is on exhibit at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco. If anyone wants to experience the absolute beauty that is traditional black-and-white photography, aesthetically and technically (35mm B&W analog, far as I can tell)—I urge you to see these prints first hand whenever possible...one visit is the equivalent of 9,000 YouTube videos on how to do B&W right."

Mike replies: The White Sky is yet another photobook I will never own, and I'm unhappy about that. It sold out very quickly. By the way the prints at Koch are inkjets from vintage negatives, looks like. When done well, these can be even a little better than darkroom prints.

John Sparks: "I have recently been playing around with film.

"In the pre-digital days, I was trying to get the best, most perfect, most beautiful print I could and went from 35mm to 645 to 4x5 to 8x10 and finally settled on 6x7 as the best compromise between quality and the kinds of photographs I wanted to make. I have printed for professional photographers, had prints in museum shows, and sold prints.

"Then came digital. At first it really wasn't good enough for me, but replaced the snapshots in color that I had been doing in 35mm. Then in 2008, I got a Sony A900 and it became good enough for just about everything. I stopped using film. I have better cameras now (even my Panasonic G9 is better than the A900). The photographs are technically great and easy to print. I have some B&W prints that I like as well as some of my prints from 8x10.

"The current digital cameras do everything that I was trying to do when film was the only choice.

"Now, I playing with film again. I'm not trying to do what I did in the past. I don't want to make the most perfect prints that I tried to make with 8x10 or 6x7. I can do that with digital with ease. I want to make the prints that Mike calls ugly, some of which actually work and look beautiful. I want to see tons of grain. I want to see the warts that were hard to work around in the old film days. I want to have to work hard again. I don't want the film prints to look the way the digital prints look. I also don't want to make them look the way I wanted to make my film prints look in the days before digital."

Mike replies: This has a parallel in the history of furniture making, as recounted by Prof. David Pye in The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Apparently surface perfection was once highly valued until machine finishing, which could be more perfect much more easily, came along. Then, handwork that showed roughness, variability, and the inherent nature of the materials began to be treasured above smooth perfection and high finish.

Bob G.: "I going to have to comment and put my two cents out there for whatever it’s worth. I’d like to agree with most everything you say on this comparison, but like to add that the end result of the archival medium of having a film negative seems to me better than having a digital file. I have over a hundred years of old negatives by my grandfather and his camera to copy and print; the tones are wonderful. Digital files are a pain to keep copying onto the most recent media or method in vogue. But, I follow your argument that color is now in the digital world and black-and-white makes better images in film, by shooting color with my digital cameras and shooting and developing B&W with an array of vintage and modern ones. I always have the two when I’m out shooting. As long as the final result is a print, the plan works. Film negatives and color digital files hopefully will back these up for the future."

Mark: "Well you said all that much better than I ever could. I get a lot of enjoyment out of BW film photography and darkroom printing, and will most likely continue. Hobbiests/amateurs do all sorts of things with less-than-optimal gear. My steel-framed bicycle doesn't match up against the latest carbon fiber machines by any measure, but it didn't detract in the least from my ride this morning."

Ray Foxlee: "An interesting post, especially to those of us wholly or partly wedded to film photography. My journey with film is now in about its 60th year and despite that many years, I certainly don't count myself an expert at dealing with film. I shoot digital as well as film (scanned and printed digitally!), and in many respects I agree that digital is the way forward for colour, but the fact remains that I still can't replicate the colour palette of Kodak Portra through the digital process, at least to my satisfaction. That film, especially shot on my Rolleiflex, is just beautiful—at least to my old eyes. I don't doubt that a darkroom print would look even better than the hybrid process that has to do the job these days.

"Film for black and white?—absolutely, especially medium format and larger. Old style films like FP4+ still have a magic that is both hard to beat and also define, especially when using some of the fine older lenses, such as the Zeiss Planars.

"But it is not just a 'film' issue to many who stay with film, as the simplicity of using film cameras comes as a relief, when compared to the increasingly complex digital camera experience.

"The 'price' paid for using film is often a steeper learning curve in achieving a satisfactory result. A case of 'no gain without pain'?—perhaps!"

My Own Favorite Format...

[Comments have been added, 1:02 a.m. Friday.]

-

...Is 645. Loaded with B&W film. Ha!

I'm kind of being funny. But it's also sort of true.

Curiously, I've never shot 645. Well, I have, but only briefly and sporadically, with borrowed cameras, rented cameras, loaner cameras for review, or friends' cameras. And once when I asked at a camera store if I could wander around the neighborhood with their store demo and shoot a couple of rolls. They let me.

Mamiya 645 Super System

The reason I've never shot it is that I could never quite find a 645 camera and lens I liked. I tried them all, though.

A couple of years ago I almost took the plunge and switched: I borrowed a Pentax 645 from John Sarsgard (thanks again, John) and, using an adapter, mounted my Schneider-Kreuznach Xenotar MF 80mm ƒ/2.8 on it (picture in this post). The lens was made for the Schneider Exakta 66. Focus confirmation worked with the manual-focus lens, and I came within millimeters of pulling the trigger and going ahead...but the cost of film and common sense prevailed! I recovered my sanity just in time to prevent yet more needless expenditure. (I spend too much money not going back to film.)

The closest I ever came to 645 was my year with the Exakta 66. It's a square format SLR that had a waist-level finder, but for some reason I always cropped my pictures to a 645...vertical. It wasn't really a conscious decision, it's just the way I saw with that camera. Then, once I had a bunch of pictures in that orientation, I wanted the future pictures to match, so I just kept shooting that way.

645 cameras were klunky and big and not much fun to use. The fun came in the darkroom, where those big negatives sure were a pleasure to print.

Pretty sure I'll never shoot film again. But there's one way I'll shoot 645 as I disappear into the sunset: If I were rich, and I could pay someone else to develop the film and make the workprints! Then I might. But that won't happen.

...Except in my imagination, where I enjoy the process.

Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Niels: "I seem to recall that you once wrote favourably of the Bronica RF645? It must have been short lived. I don't encounter many, if any, users in the film forums I frequently visit."

Thom Hogan: "'Format' is a terrible word, because it's a stand-in for multiple things. First, there's sensor size, where biggest you can afford and will use should always win, and then there's aspect ratio, for which the camera makers have always taken shortcuts. I want a 2:1 aspect ratio, minimum. Closest I can get on anything I'd use is 16:9, because that's what the digital TV negotiations produced. Of course, now I'm paying for pixels I don't use, because the die size dictates 3:2 or 4:3."

Kirk Decker: "I got a Mamiya 645 1000s my second year of college. It was an early model that didn't have interchangeable backs, but it was a non factor as I was coming from 35mm. I loved that camera. I had it for a very long time, shot a ton of weddings with it. Eventually I succumbed to the lure of the Hasselblad, but I still occasionally cruise up and down eBay gazing longing at the 645's."

William Cowan: "You are, of course quite right about the 645 film format. Since I first had my hands on one 20 years ago, I have always felt that the Contax 645 represents the peak of film camera development. (YMMV.) Zeiss lenses, autofocus, flash exposure evaluation, removable back and easy choice of portrait or landscape, but most importantly Contax handling. It is just a pleasure to use. So, until I cannot carry it any more...."

Stephen Cowdery: "Nice to see the Mamiya M645 system pictured. It was one of my favorites except (as you noted) for shooting verticals, with the WL finder on it was almost impossible, and the prism finder was awkward and bulky. "

Chris Kern: "I recently acquired a sample of the first 'serious' camera I used as a teenager, my father’s prewar Zeiss Contax rangefinder, and I have been shooting black-and-white film after a hiatus of half a century (sic). I pay a local lab to develop the negatives—I don’t have the patience to start developing film again—which I scan at 3600 dpi and post-process in Adobe Lightroom. I find I can make 12x18-inch prints from the scans with excellent results. Film has its own esthetic: a combination of texture and tonality that I’ve found challenging to replicate in an all-digital workflow. A couple of samples: a recent view of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington and a United States Park Service crew winterizing the C&O Canal tour boat at Great Falls Park in Potomac, Maryland."

Tom Duffy: "I was a longtime owner of a Contax 645. I bought it when it first came out and kept it and my three lenses until last year when I traded it all in on a Canon R5. I thought it was the best camera system that I ever owned except for the very slow autofocus, the horrible battery life (10 rolls of 120 per battery), the weight with the battery grip and prism, and constant depth of field limitations handheld. :) If not mounted on a tripod, I could always get better, i.e., sharper results with a 35mm camera. I tried to use it as a 'grownup' 35mm camera and as a 'baby' view camera. It didn't work well as either. A medium format SLR's strength is in studio portrait work. I still use a Fuji 6x9 rangefinder which has much to recommend it."

John Sarsgard: "You're welcome. Last time I used it was for black-and-white portraits for a woman who worked at MoMA and had fond memories of the darkroom from art school. She wanted portraits with her fiancé made on film. I used Tri-X 400 and developed it in XTOL, Kodak's last, and in my opinion, best film developer. It was great fun on a splendid day in Central Park, and almost as much fun later in my darkroom. However, I did scan the negatives of choice and made the prints digitally. There was a weird shortage of 120 Tri-X at the time, and I had to pay $15 per roll!"

Daniel M.: "The best and satisfied experience I got in using the 645 film format is with the Fujica GS645 Pro (EBC 75mm), a small folding camera, very compact and lightweight that worked nicely with Fujichrome slide films. The rangefinder was precise and I brough the camera even for motorsport reportages. Only good memories! (Although I must add that you had to be careful with the Fujica GS645 since the folding mechanism has appeared to me a bit fragile.)"

Richard Skoonberg: "I used a GS645 for many years for weddings and portrait work. It was a love affair with its big bright viewfinder/rangefinder and 220 film, and it folded into a clamshell that could fit into a coat pocket. So easy to use. Later when I was no longer doing weddings, I sold it on eBay for more than I paid for it. I needed the money to pay tuition for my daughter's first year of college. Such is life."

Mark Sampson: "In 1979 I was hired as a yearbook portrait photographer, and the studio issued me a 645-format Bronica ETR-S, for shooting group photos and 'candids.' I worked with that camera for the two years I had that job, and enjoyed it; handled well, didn't break under hard use, and provided fine image quality. I was unable to shoot much with it for myself, and that job didn't pay enough to buy one of my own, but I always liked the format and the camera."

Hugh: "4x5 film shot vertically is now the perfect format. I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed. Put the processed B&W negative on your iPad, snap it with your phone, invert the photo so it’s a positive. Exactly the right format to upload to Instagram at 1080x1350 pixels, complete with the black border, notches, and TXP320 in the margin. Instant artistic credibility.  ;-)  "

Les Myers: "Your 645 Mamiya system gracing this column is exactly like the one I have. I love it!"

The Ideal Format, Continued

Oh, ouch. Ain't that just the way it goes? There I was, gassing on about how I moderate comments, and...then I realized that the Featured Comments for the "Ideal Format" post never got posted.

Or rather, they did get posted, but then I probably saved the wrong version of the page and "disappeared" them again. [Inarticulate frustrated strangling gurgling noise.] I hate it when that happens. Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is plagued with a disorganized mind.

Since they would just be buried if I published them underneath the older post, here are the Featured Comments for the "Ideal Format" post, with my apologies to their authors for the delay. Here is a link to the original post.

+    =    +    =    +    =    +    =    +

darlene: "The square is ideal. You get three formats in one: square, portrait and landscape. I started my career as a comp artist working in advertising then later became a commercial photographer, so my creativity is accustomed to the perspective of the page or print. When I shot events with a Speedlight next to a Hasselblad on a bracket for handheld shooting, no need to turn the camera sideways and screw up the flash direction. In-camera cropping is easy as pre-visualizing (designing) as I shoot, so for me there is nothing not to like about the square format. Just wish we had a square sensor."

Mark Roberts: "I'm more than happy with my full-frame camera but it's not my ideal. I really dislike the 2:3 aspect ratio and I don't like 3:4 any better. My favorite ratio by far is 5:7, but no one makes a camera that shoots that way natively. It's odd because 2:3 prints out to 5 x 7.5 inches and you wouldn't think trimming a quarter of an inch off each end would make much of a difference. But, for me at least, it really does. So for now I'll just keep shooting with what I have and trimming most of my shots just a wee bit."

Mike replies: During my time with the view camera—my first 4x5, a Wista—I actually attached a bar to the inside of the back standard that cropped each image as I took it to 5x7 proportions. So as far as aspect ratio was concerned it was a mini-5x7. (I had really wanted a Deardorff 5x7 but couldn't afford one.)

Tom Burke: "For me, it's APS-C, and Canon APS-C at that. I've had a couple of full-frame DSLRs, and ultimately found the outfit that collected around them just too big and too heavy. I've briefly tried Micro 4/3—I bought a secondhand Olympus E-M10 from a local photo dealer—but perversely found it too small and light—the controls were too small and too close together. So for me the ideal size is a well-spec'd Canon APS-C DSLR. It might also be significant that my current such camera, a 90D, has a very similar size and weight to the first Canon film SLR that I ever owned, an EOS 650. I used that camera (and an almost identical successor, the EOS 600) for years, and perhaps that size and heft are burned into my brain as 'what a proper camera should feel like in my hand.' If I was just looking at lens choices, however, I'd be very tempted by a Fujifilm X camera."

Dan Khong: "Ideal format? It's a no-brainer: 35mm of course. I'm partly biased because I shoot film plus digital, soup and print the film in my darkroom, smelling fixer in the process. My B&W negatives are as archival as one can get nowadays. So when I bought an affordable FF Canon RP, I could not ask for anything more."

Gordon: "5x7. Back in the 1980s I met a guy taking photos with a 5x7 Deardorff. Before then I’d never heard of the format and thought it peculiar. It produced a negative too large for an affordable commercially available enlarger and a tad small for contact prints, though doable. But today I find it suits my 3:2 images, which otherwise seem too elongated. It comes pretty close to 4x3, but not quite as fat."

Stephen S.: "The E-1 was my first DSLR, and one of the main reasons was the 14–54mm (28–104mm-e) kit lens. Other camera companies were still just offering lenses from their film cameras, which meant a pair of 17–35mm (27–56mm-e) and 28–70mm (45–112mm-e) which did not appeal to me, especially considering the problems with dust getting on the sensor when changing lenses. That the E-1 was the first camera (that I know of) to offer a built-in sensor cleaner just helped seal the deal. The 'designed for digital from the ground up' strategy really was unique at the time, and had very real benefits."

Joseph: "There was a time when Micro 4/3 made sense to me. I used both a E-M5 and a E-M5 II extensively for a number of years and liked both cameras very much. But I look back at the files and wish I had lugged my D800 along with me instead. Now that something like the Nikon Z7 with the 24–70 ƒ/4 lens exists, I just don't see the advantage of Micro 4/3 for my needs. The Z7 isn't quite as small as the E-M5 but has much better image quality. A good compromise."

SteveW: "APS-C seems the optimal sensor size for me. I've used Nikon FF and APS-C cameras, and a year or so ago changed to a Fuji X-T4 primarily to use the small ƒ/2 primes. For the way I shoot, and I'm a hobbyist, APS-C is sufficient. That said, I prefer the 4:3 aspect ratio, and I frequently crop to 4:3. If the Fuji X-T4 had a 4:3 aspect ratio APS-C sensor, that might be the ideal for me. But cropping is no big deal."

Roger Bradbury: "I bought my first DSLR in 2009. It was an APS-C camera, because that's what was within my budget, both for the price of the camera and because its well established mount meant there were plenty of used lenses around. This format turned out to have the depth of field I need; enough when I want a lot, but not so much that I can't control it enough to throw a background enough out of focus. The 35mm format I was used to before I bought the DSLR sometimes didn't quite have enough depth of field for me."

(Posted belatedly by)
Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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: