The Online Photographer

Chrome Hat

Chrome Hat

It occurred to me that actually the current situation is much simpler than maybe I'm taking it to be. Phones have simply replaced digicams, that's all—what were originally called digital point-and-shoots.

The biggest differences are a.) connectivity, and b.) penetration of the devices in the population. Just over a year ago, in April of '21, the Pew Research Center said, "The vast majority of Americans—97%—now own a cellphone of some kind. The share of Americans that own a smartphone is now 85%, up from just 35% in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011." (I presume they're talking about adults. census.gov says that 6.4% of the US population is age five and under, and I doubt that half of that demographic own cellphones.) I haven't been able to find a seemingly-reliable estimate of the number of people who owned digital point-and-shoots at the peak of that device's popularity, but I doubt it was 35% of the population, much less 85%.

And this is a good thing for photography; it dramatically fulfills photography's historical promise as a visual medium for everyone. What it's possibly a bad thing for is photo culture, because it essentially blasts it away. No longer is there any sense of coherent trends, standout practitioners, or shared experience of the medium's accomplishments. Far from shared experience, there is no chance that any human has seen more than an infinitesimally small fraction of all the photos now being made.

However, it's possible that the photo culture that's becoming less relevant—as embodied in museum and gallery shows; photography in newspapers, periodicals, and books; critical appraisal; and well-known names whose work is familiar to some significant subset of the volitional audience, etc.—was never much more than an illusion anyway, as it could only pretend to comprehensiveness in the best of times. There was always a sort of constructed, willed feel to photography's culture—that is, that it was not so much something that was as something we wanted. I felt it even in my youth. Case in point: the willful assertion that there were "schools" and traceable threads of influence like there are in painting. At best, the verdict on that was "sort of." The Düsseldorf School, okay, although I always got a sense that it got a lot of the attention it got simply because it was defensibly a "school," to the relief of art critics; but the so-called New York School, for example, was at best a back-formation.

Maybe someday I'll try to claim that there's a "Camera-Pointing School" that encompasses all the totally meaningless test-shot-type digital images of absolutely nothing that the web is awash with. As a sly joke. (By the way, camera-pointing is not my term, but I don't think the guy I heard it from wants to be associated with it.) Not that parked motorcycles are such exalted subjects. And of course most photographers' work didn't sort itself into neat groupings like that. More like the opposite. I'm just thinking out loud here.

One thing's for sure, there's no Smartphone School of Photography. Although consider this: there is probably a huge body of the greatest work ever created in photography that's out there somewhere, if it could only be found and collected—but it can't be and never can be. 

I always feel like I want to see everything. But of course I don't, do I?

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's our link to B&H Photo

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:

David Dyer-Bennet: "Science fiction fandom is experiencing something that seems similar to me; it used to be 'a proud and lonely thing' to be a fan, but now the majority of block-buster movies are in the science-fiction / fantasy genre; you can't get more mainstream than that. Which means the movies, and a lot of books too, are being made for mass-market tastes rather than the much more knowledgeable tastes of people already deeply into SF (as cameras or phone cameras are), and people aren't finding fandom as 'their home culture' so much any more (they find people who like SF everywhere). We can't seem to figure out anything to do about it either."

Speed: "Mike wrote, 'One thing's for sure, there's no Smartphone School of Photography.' But this being 2022 there is, of course, an iPhone Photography School. Online only of course."

TC: "The contrarian in me insists on noting, now that everyone is posting on social media every day, couldn't you say the same of writing? 'No longer is there any sense of coherent trends, standout practitioners, or shared experience of the medium's accomplishments. Far from shared experience, there is no chance that any human has seen more than an infinitesimally small fraction of all the words now being written.' Why would I want to buy a book or read an article when anyone can make a Facebook post?"

Mike replies: If you could see all the care that goes into a New Yorker article, that's all you'd want to read. Whew. It's awesome, and I use that word advisedly.

Dave Jenkins (partial comment): "I wrote about this in my blog two years ago. 'The subject of photography is not the subject of photography. At its basic level, photography is about pictures, not the tools and processes involved. (Although I'm a photographer, so I do love those tools and processes.) But in a way, those hordes taking pictures with their cell phone cameras have it right. They care nothing about the tools and techniques of photography; They’re only interested in getting a reasonably clear picture they can send to friends or family. They care about who or what they are photographing, not the act of photography itself. In other words, they are the direct descendants of all those who heard George Eastman's slogan "You push the button and we do the rest" and lined up to buy his pre-loaded, ready-to-shoot cameras.'

"Read more if you're interested at 'Cell Phone Cameras' and 'So, Why Not Just Shoot With Your Cell Phone?'"

Antony Shepherd: "Something I've often seen noted is that while on the one hand there are more photographs being taken than at any other time in human history, the vast majority are purely ephemeral files which exist so long as the server(s) they occupy exist. When the service closes down and the servers are destroyed their content will vanish with them. No chance of someone in the future coming across a hard drive of photos in a charity shop and being able to access them, the way people often make finds of old glass plates."

Zyni: "You say 'there is no chance that any human has seen more than an infinitesimally small fraction of all the photos now being made.' Well, this is why numeracy is important, though increasing rare. Let us say that there are 300 million Americans, but it is 1955 and they make one photograph per year, each. So if a person does nothing at all but look at photographs and they work 12 hours a day, every day, with no holidays or weekends, they would need to look at 300,000,000/(365 x 12 x 60 x 60) photographs per second to see all these. Which is about 20. Every second, 12 hours a day, every day. It is a very long time since any individual looked at more than a tiny fraction of the photographs being made. This is not an artifact of digital photography any more than counting the atoms in the Earth (about 10^50) is easier for a human than counting the atoms in the observable universe (about 10^80, so about 10^30 Earth's worth). Or even atoms in a grain of sand (perhaps 10^18). Or indeed the entire universe (we currently assume infinite). Beyond a certain point the limits of human capacity become so minute compared to things that it does not any more matter."

Mike replies: Hi Zyni. The population of the US was only 171 million in 1955, but I take your point. I still think it was quantifiably different, because in 1955 not everyone had a camera, not everyone who had a camera had a good camera, many people who had good cameras didn't really make pictures to speak of, and there was a more marked distinction between people who worked with thoughtfulness and intention and those who only made snapshots, because the practice and the craft made such a heavy demand in terms of time and dedication. There was a very high bar to be a serious photographer then—many photographers literally had to dedicate their lives to it, and very few people were willing to do that. And it was somewhat easier for those looking and appraising to believe that they were seeing or at least hearing about a meaningful subset of all those who were working persistently, meaning, over years. And it was difficult to accomplish anything if you didn't. A problem with your formulation, for instance, is that no one can make meaningful work taking one photograph a year, so only those people dedicating themselves to it really needed to be looked at at all. Instead of considering 300 million people and one photo each, we are starting with a subset of those who are willing to sacrifice a great part of their time and labor to the effort. It must have been a much, much smaller group.

Plus, there were far fewer ways for pictures to be public. Most of the images in your model would have been private then. Most of mine still are; but the public availability of formerly private pictures has certainly exploded in this century.

If a critic or curator thought he or she was aware of 5% or even 2% of the people in the country working as dedicated artists, they could be excused for thinking they had a finger on the pulse. But you help make my point that that was probably an illusion even then: the assumptions made by, for example, histories of photography, which listed major trends and major figures, and traced influences from one to to the next, were probably a bit too comfy and not truly justified.

But now no one even tries, I don't think. It's too obvious that it's hopeless.

I'm not an expert on this particular aspect of the subject, I will admit. And as for innumeracy: emphatically guilty!

The iPhone at 15: 'You Have to Adapt. What Else AreYou Going to Do?'

iPhone doodle

The first iPhones came on the market at about this time 15 years ago.

It's an era now. One that has hugely impacted our hobby. As Enric Martí puts it, "You go through life having to change. The world is moving quickly. You have to adapt. What else are you going to do?" That's from a nice article and portfolio called "The iPhone at 15" from the AP that has some interesting reflections on the iPhone and a diverse selection of photographers' personal pictures. Enric Martí, a native of Spain, is deputy director of photography for the AP.

Enric Martí

By the way, about the picture at the top: I'm sitting here drinking that mug of tea, which helped me discover that the iPhone has parallax! I was very self-indulgently taking a picture of the pretty light, as I often do, when I noticed a particular streak of light that was on the screen but that I wasn't seeing with my eyes. Turned out it was because the lens is offset up in the corner and the view is slightly different from what I typically see when from behind the screen. When I moved my head around, the little reflection showed up. I moved in on it to show it better. It's mild, and you'll only notice it doing closeups, but yeah, a sort of parallax.

I stopped off at the Verizon Store to look at the 13 Pro again. My old phone is starting to worry me, acting buggy. I do need a dependable phone...I think I bought my current phone right around this time six years ago, back when the iPhone itself was only nine.

Mike
(Thanks to Kenneth Tanaka)

Book o' the Week:

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's our link to B&H Photo

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:

Peter Komar: "I am not trying to spend your money but get that darn phone. I have the 12 Pro and for me it has brought back the joy of photography. I have mentioned this before but it is very easy to shoot IR with just a filter and shoot in night mode. The ease of use and editing on the phone adds huge bonus points."

Albert Erickson: "Mike, I haven't commented in awhile since I have been away, but I saw that you were looking at the iPhone 13 pro and will tell you it is truly an amazing piece of photo equipment. I used to say I would never use my phone for serious photography, but I have changed. I now use my phone much more than a real camera. Further, I can print nicely small 5x7 or 8.5 x11 prints from the 12 MP built into the phone. Just an observation. I think you would find the phone very useful from a photographic standpoint. All the best, Eric."

Joseph: "I'm overdue for a new iPhone too, but I can't bring myself to do it this late in the cycle. The new ones will likely be here in September. Especially when you skip several generations, iPhone camera improvement is really quite remarkable. I still use an OM-D E-M5 from 2012, but an iPhone 5 from that same era? No thanks."

Chris A Beloin: "Turns out that 92% of Apple products are made in China, and our trade relationship with them is very much in question with recent events. Better get that iPhone now in case it takes a couple of years for Apple to resource manufacturing to another location, should that supply chain get sanctions, etc."

Gavin Paterson: "I bought an iPhone 13 six months ago; it’s a revelation! I have Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Sony digital systems, as well as Nikon, Olympus, Leica, Ricoh and Voigtlander film equipment, but most of the time have just the iPhone in my pocket, so now (at last! says my wife), will cull what I have to be subject-specific, such as telephoto for wildlife, and enjoy a simpler life courtesy of Apple!"

V.I. Voltz: "You should see the parallax when the 13 Pro Max can't decide if something is macro or not and starts jumping between the 28mm-e lens and the 13mm-e lens. Hope you don't have a latent Brian malfunction. [I love that typo so I left it in. —Ed.] But, I must say, it's about the only flaw I can find with the camera, within its basic limitations."

Rich: "I went from an iPhone 6 to a 13 Pro and I can confirm that the cameras are amazing, considering their size. I use it a lot as a feed for Instagram and visual note-taking. Also only have to charge it every couple of days, although I don’t make a lot of calls, so YMMV."

Hugh: "Hmmm...you feel you need to change cameras frequently because of your job as a photography commentator? The most important photographic instrument of today is the phone—iPhone or Samsung—yet you are on a six year old iPhone? That's a bit like still shooting with a Canon 50D in DSLR terms.  :-)  There was a big jump in picture quality with the Samsung S10 (2019), and probably with the iPhone around that date. In this country one can get an immaculate refurbished S10 for £200 and a sim only contract."

This Time of Life

You know, apart from the fact that I'm growing old and the finish line is on the horizon (I'm coming up on my 65 1/2 half-birthday), this is actually a pretty great time of life. I'm still a very imperfect human, but I understand myself pretty well now. I'm more stable. I don't have significant health problems yet. I'm not rich, but I have only a couple of debts (what's left on my mortgage, plus $8,936.26 left to grind out on the pool table shed). I don't have day-to-day worries—none that are too pressing, at least. Work is still engaging, especially because of this wonderful new opportunity I've been given. And the best thing about that? I'm learning—learning a new way of writing, which is good for me, and interesting. I'm thankful for it. I've been observing the decline of my brain, but it's still hanging in there; with luck, older people actually do make up in wisdom and knowledge what we begin to lack in mental flexibility, agility, and stamina. I put things in context much better than I ever did before. I don't "live by hate" as some of my countrymen seem to do now.

Most notably, I'm happier now than I ever was before. Not for the reasons I once hoped, but still. I've come to terms with a lot, as they say. My appreciation for the little things in life has definitely increased. I appreciate the world more; I value my friends more. I'm more spiritual. I'm still self-centered, but I'm able to focus more on others. And I know a lot of little tricks to turn my setbacks, large and small, into learning experiences. My coping skills are better than ever.

I once read (appropriately, in a magazine in a psychologist's waiting room) a description of the mid-life crisis. It said that sometime in your forties you start to think, "is this all there is?" And it sets off a troubling decade or so. And then, sometime in your fifties, you begin to realize, "yeah, this is all there is, but it's pretty great!" I think that was true for me, although I came late to both stages. (I've always thought I'm developmentally about ten years retarded because of the decade I lost to the worst of my drinking.)

Like I say, apart from the whole getting old and gonna-die-one-day thing—which was never not the case, when you think of it—I like this time of life. It's good. It's a cliché, but I do kind of feel like I've finally learned how to live.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

Dillan: "I'm looking 50 in the face, so an article like this is very timely. Thank you Mike. "

Sumanta Mukherjee: "Mike, I just read it out loud to my wife. I am 54 now and have been reading your posts for 5–6 years now. You are my inspiration, you are my friend. Through your eyes I have learned many things in photography. Thank you for being there."

Aaron Cary Greenman: "I highly recommend the book The Happiness Curve by Jonathan Rauch. It really helped me to understand what I (and others) are going through in the 45–55 age period, and most importantly (hopefully) what there is to come thereafter."

Johan Grahn: "Good to hear Mike! I am all with you. First, hitting 50 was so much better than I thought. And then hitting 60. Even better. Yes, I am more tired than before. Yes, I don't have the stamina I used to. But I don't get so upset about all kinds of small stuff anymore. A big win in my book!"

robert e: "What a wonderful post. I'm glad to hear of your contentment, Mike, and pleased to recognize a couple of good things about my own aging self in your reflection. Thank you for sharing!"

Lesley T: "It's funny, 30, 40, 50. 60. 70, none of those supposed milestones had an impact on me. But 75, three quarters of a freaking century!!! That one kind of startled me and made me take stock. Of course the fact that it happened in the middle of a pandemic, when life contracted in so many ways, made it seem more momentous than it might have been otherwise. There are now more things that I won't do than I will, but even so, my husband (who is 81) and I will sit reading in the evening and one of us will look up, sigh, and say to the other, 'aren't we lucky!' And indeed we are."

Inappropriate Humor (OT)

A Sunday truffle:

(All of this should be considered NSSFW, not-so-safe for work. Although it's just naughty, not nasty.)

I noted to a group of former Corcoran Photo classmates that the 37th anniversary of our graduation just passed, an email I began by saying, "Prepare to feel ancient...." One of my classmates replied that his wife was 12 then, so he replied, "I feel dirty, not ancient."

That reminded me of one of the wickedest SNL skits. (No offense to my classmate, who's been happily married for years.)

When I look at video or film what I mostly think about is how well it's written. That one has Tina and Amy all over it—I'd bet a hundred dollars they wrote it, or most of it. Candy Kirby at The Jest called it the "most savage SNL skit ever made," adding, "also making an Emmy-worthy appearance: Leslie Jones’ death glare." The death glare is one of the few things on video that actually makes me "lol" every time I see it.

Hooker story
And speaking of wicked but hilarious, I ran across this a few days ago. I saw it when it originally aired, in the hazy, distant days of 1978—and probably haven't seen it since then. It's an appearance by the reformed con man Frank Abagnale, who passed millions of dollars in fake checks in his youth, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson*.

Pick it up at about the 7:45 mark for the story about the hooker.

What Johnny says at the end was "so you both got screwed!" although it's bleeped.

Who knows if it's true—Abagnale appears to be something of a compulsive liar, and/or a natural storyteller, however you prefer to look at it. His life story, or some version of it anyway, was the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can, with Leonardo DiCaprio, which further fictionalizes Abagnale's claims to have successfully impersonated a pilot and a medical doctor among other things, and to have passed all those millions in bad checks. It's possible that the only thing he really impersonated was a famous con man! That is, that his whole con man story is a schtick, and never happened. Which adds further convolutions to the story. The final hoax may be Abagnale's more recent depictions of himself as completely reformed criminal who has become a highly ethical man with a long FBI career. Fooled Google, if so.

Interesting. Personal honor gets almost zero mindshare today, but it's surprising how complicated things get when it's completely absent. In any event, I think we'd better accept the "hooking the hooker" story as nothing more than a well-told joke.

Associated rascality
By the way: apparently the word "hooker" came from Joseph ("Fighting Joe") Hooker, Lincoln's short-lived General in command of The Army of the Potomac who got thrashed by Lee at Chancellorsville. Apparently fighting was not all Joe was known for—he was an overenthusiastic patron of the army's camp followers, who came to be called "Hooker's brigade," a nickname that outlasted the General's tenure.

Joseph Hooker. I admit that I fixed up this JPEG
a bit, including separating the horse's neck from
the background, which you will no doubt notice
now that I've mentioned it.

That tale, like Abagnale's, might or might not survive the fact-checker.

Mike

*Carson was the host from 1962 to 1992. Those shows were much bigger then—Carson's peak viewership was 58 million in 1969, more than a quarter of the U.S. population then, for the wedding of an entertainer called Tiny Tim and his fiancée Miss Vicki. The current Tonight Show's best performance recently was 1.9 million, when President Joe Biden appeared. And that's against a population more than half again larger than it was in 1969.

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

QKA*

Our beautiful lake, from the head of the bluff. If you look on a map of Western New York, and find the Finger Lakes, mine is the one shaped like a "Y."  The lake is split by a high bluff that rises 700 feet above water level. (This is much lower than that.) This is only a small section of it. A century ago, there were lake views all over the place, because most of the land was cleared. Now it's shrouded in trees everywhere, and the places where you can get a view of the lake are limited. Even the "scenic overlooks" along my road are completely blocked by trees! Seems like a mistake from a Chamber of Commerce viewpoint, but unfortunately they have not put me in charge of anything yet. (I keep waiting.)

Mike

*The lake is called Keuka, and the bumper stickers say

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

Doug C: "A cousin of mine who lives in New Hampshire says that in 1860, 80% of that state was cleared land; now it's 80% forest. He says the Civil War opened the young men's eyes to what sort of farmland was available elsewhere in the country."

Mike replies: Yes, there used to be a lot of farming there. They isn't there any more. As a boy, riding horseback through the hills of Vermont, it was very common to come across stone fences running through the woods; made from the stones they cleared from the fields. I fell through a wooden bridge once that was so overgrown I didn't even know it was a bridge until the horse fell through it. (The horse didn't let himself be recaptured, and I walked all the way home.)

This is a minor issue in landscape photography. I saw an article once that gave examples of all the features that photographers think are "natural" that are actually the remains of manmade features in the land. It often takes an expert to recognize what they're actually looking at. Supposedly there's one tiny section of primeval forest left in America, and its location is a closely guarded secret because the people who study it don't want it to be ruined.

Should I...

...Review the Pixii rangefinder? They've offered.

Seems to me it might make sense while I have the M10 Reporter here and some M-mount lenses floating about. But it depends on whether you're interested or not.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

A Couple of Days Off (Blog Note)

I'm in the home stretch for my big piece for newyorker.com which will probably appear in July. Lots going on. We've been working on it for a couple of months now. I haven't time to attend to my regular duties today, so this week I'll write for TOP on the weekend. Sorry for the inconvenience!

—Mike, Chief writer, editor, housekeeper, and dogwalker

 

Implementation Would Be Everything

Yesterday, reader Bear wrote:

"I'd like Leica to get together with Apple and build an iPhone into a Q2 or 3 or whatever...that would give me both a reason and an excuse to cart a camera everywhere. I might look a bit silly holding a camera to my ear instead of my eye though...but I probably would still buy it!"

I've actually always wondered why Apple doesn't do this. I used to wish for an "Apple Camera," but that was before the smartphone era.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods." That's the original quote from his Journal, in 1855. Folk wisdom streamlined it to: "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

It might have been true in 1855. Not any more. For one thing, big companies don't take ideas from random citizens—there's way too much liability in it. Whatever they do, they get pestered by people claiming the idea was theirs, like a hiker in Maine in the summertime gets pestered by black flies. They'll not only not use your idea, they don't even want to hear about it—my father, who was a management consultant for 30 years, told me about one company that wouldn't even open letters if they had any idea that there was a product idea inside.

Of course, companies also do steal ideas all the time, but good luck getting them to admit it.

So, mental exercise only: picture some compact but good quality APS-C or Micro 4/3 ILC such as a Ricoh GRIII, a Sony A6[x]00, or (okay, Bear) a Leica Q2. If it had a phone touchscreen on the back of it, with all the functionality of an iPhone, would that be something that would appeal to you?

Implementation is everything
I doubt I'd like it, and here's the reason: it would entirely depend on implementation, and the chances they'd screw it up are exactly 92%.* My family had a little Boston Whaler once that was supposed to do everything: it had oarlocks and oars if you wanted to use it as a tender, a transom stern so you could mount a little outboard motor, and a mast well for a little sunfish-style sail (don't know what that rig is called) [UPDATE: It's called a lug rig, technically "balanced-lug rig,"and such boats are called luggers. So now we know.] Well, it was horrible at all three tasks.

Skerry with balanced-lug rig. Illustration thanks to
John C. Harris's The Life of Boats blog.

Of course, a phone itself replaces approximately a dumptruck's worth of traditional tools, objects, documents and implements, from maps to calculators to books, and does a lot of new stuff besides, so it's already a Swiss Army knife. So maybe it would accommodate being stuck to the back of a camera without issues.

Still, my opinion is that they seldom get cameras quite right, so I'm guessing that adding a phone would be more cooks than the broth could bear.

Would you buy such a thing?

Personally, my seven-year-old iPhone had a seizure over the weekend, which scared me, even though it seems to have recovered. I guess it's of the age that I should be thinking about a new one when Apple comes out with the iPhone 14 in September. I'll have to have a print sale before then, if I intend to be able to pay for the blasted thing.

Mike

*That's a "monkeybutt number." Pulled it out of a monkey's butt.

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Here's the link to B&H Photo

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:

Speed: "Statista tells us, 'In their 2018 fiscal year, Apple sold more than 217 million iPhones. After the release of the first-generation iPhone in 2007, the unit sales of the Apple mobile device saw rapid growth year after year, peaking at 231 million in 2015. iPhone sales have stayed relatively stable since then.' After completely re-engineering the iPhone into a Leica (a large and complex task), the incremental sales to apple would be vanishingly small—how many Leicas are sold today? Even a million could be mistaken by Apple as a rounding error. That isn't to say that owning such a thing would be interesting, useful and probably fun."

James: "Although I own both a Ricoh GR III and IIIx and absolutely love them (I also have a Leica Q2 Monochrom), I much prefer using a viewfinder. My favorite camera is the Fuji X100V. On the Q2 and X100 I never use the screen to compose. Focusing with a screen is a compromise I am willing to make with the GR series. I find phones difficult to take photos with. I am always accidentally touching the screen so that it suddenly doesn't allow me take the photo. I haven't mastered holding it by the edges.... :-)

"Additionally, the GR series has a handgrip and buttons which are very easy to use. It's even more remarkable given its size and the fact that it has a APS-C sensor. If I had to choose between the Leica and the GR, I would pick the GR every time. Is this hypothetical phone/camera going to have buttons/dials to change the aperture, exposure compensation, etc.? If it does then does it actually work as a phone with all these extra controls?"

Mike replies: Re holding a phone, you don't have to hold it by the edges. Just look on the back where the lens is, and wrap your hand around the back so that it doesn't cover the lens. Perfectly easy and natural. (But I still think the go buttons are in entirely the wrong places. And I hate the way its exposure adjustment works.)

KeithB: "Here is the somewhat cheeky user tip I wrote for the Apple Community Discussion board about submitting ideas to Apple."

Mike replies: That's very good. Tells it the way it is.

Mani Sitaraman: "What I really want is 1.) the digital interface on my Nikon DSLR to be as simple to use as the camera app on my iPhone and 2.) for my in-camera image files to be seamlessly transmitted without excessive fuss to my iphone/iphotos database so that I can forward them."

Omer: "Yeah, but no. I get enough stares when my camera is at my eye, what would those stares turn into if the camera were at my ear?"

Mike replies: Made me laugh. And that's the last word!

Central Camera Reopens on Chicago's Loop

Central Camera. Photo by Jen Sabella, courtesy Block Club Chicago.

You might remember that Central Camera, the old-fashioned, third-generation, more than century-old camera store on the Loop in downtown Chicago, was burned and looted in the rioting that took place after the death of George Floyd in 2020. The owner, Don Flesch, had no bitterness, and stood by the African-American community in solidarity at the time. However, the old store, which was founded in 1899 and moved to its current location in 1929, was a near-total loss.

I'm happy to pass along the news that, thanks to almost $230,000 in donations, Central Camera has reopened! We passed along the call for donations in 2020. If you helped back then, "you done good."

Block Club Chicago has the story here.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka)

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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:

Richard Man: "Great news! When I was in Chicago photographing at the Nebula Awards weekend in 2017, I was running out of 4x5 color film (I thought 70 sheets would be enough, ha!) and lo and behold, Central had boxes of Portra 160, and saved my having to ration the remaining stock. Central was also the place my father-in-law used to frequent, back in the '70s and '80s. So I will for sure pay them a visit again when I will be in Chicago this Summer."

Roger Bradbury: "Great to hear. I haven't done too badly for actual shops locally, here in Milton Keynes, England. There's a Wex Photographic shop just a couple of miles from me; it's only been there a couple of years. We've had a Jessops or two though I think they are just online now. Calumet had a small shop at their warehouse again just a couple of miles away, but that went a few years ago when they became part of Wex. Not so close but worth going to despite having to deal with the town's one way system, is SRS at Watford. They are Pentax specialists and I've bought most of my Pentax gear there over the years."

Kirk (partial comment): "My local camera store, Precision Camera and Video in Austin, Texas, has two bricks-and-mortar stores here in the city and just opened a store in Houston. They do a brisk business catering to people buying in person. However they also have a very efficient and highly profitable online sales team as well. Especially in used cameras and lenses, both sides of the operation work in close collaboration. I would conjecture that this combined model is the most prudent way forward for all camera retailers. And is more normal than novel."

Happy Father's Day! And, Juneteenth

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers and grandfathers out there.

And it's the real Juneteenth, too. (Tomorrow is the Federal holiday.) It celebrates the emancipation of the slaves. It's been an official holiday in Texas since 1980 but only became a Federal holiday last year.

A group photograph of thirty-one people at an 1880 Juneteenth
Celebration at Emancipation Park in Houston's Fourth Ward.

The best article I found on Juneteenth is "What is Juneteenth, and how is it celebrated?" at BBC History Magazine (requires signup for free trial). Did you know that there are Emancipation Parks in cities all over the U.S., on land originally purchased for Juneteenth celebrations? Seems some white people in certain cities tried to block Juneteenth gatherings. The original Emancipation Park, in Houston, now the oldest park in the city, was purchased with $1,000 raised by formerly enslaved people specifically for Juneteenth celebrations. Another thing I just learned: red food is a Juneteenth tradition.

I choose to not celebrate Juneteenth—but to celebrate Black people celebrating it. It's their holiday, not mine—but I hope everyone has a fine, and fun, and peaceful and satisfying day. And for Black fathers, it's a twofer.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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:

John Krill: "Every time I picked up a camera I have the ghost of my father standing behind me. Every time I work on a computer I have the ghost of my father standing behind me. My dad was an early photographer, the 1920s, he was also an early computer designer, the 1950s. I worked at fixing and repairing computers for 30 years. And I have been a serious amateur photographer since 1959. So, you see, everyday is Father's Day for me."

Sun and Clouds

A few recent iPhone snaps. I take pictures every day; just not that often with...well, a camera. (Frowny face emoji.)

The sun and clouds. There are several clues
here as to what kind of day it was.

The Penn Yan Diner, founded 1925. I've
never seen it empty before.

Patriotic field

I'll tell you what kind of smartphone I need: one with no camera in it. Because then I'd have to carry my camera again. Smartphone cameras are bad for lazy photographers....

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The Beatles: Get Back. The story of the band's last year, coinciding with the release of Peter Jackson's documentary Get Back.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Heeeeere's...B&H Photo

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:

Dave Levingston: "Smartphone cameras produce much, much better quality files than early 'professional' digital cameras. So what's the issue with using them to make photos? Plus, they always seem to nail the correct exposure, unlike my 'professional' cameras which frequently require exposure compensation."

Moose: "Message from the Other Side: I had a good bird photo op yesterday afternoon. Only iPhone 13 Pro at hand. I thought about it, then thought how I would spend time processing the Raw file—and end up with something short of my imagined photo. So, I just sat and enjoyed it."

Bear.: "I'd like Leica to get together with Apple and build an iPhone into a Q2 or 3 or whatever...that would give me both a reason and an excuse to cart a camera everywhere. I might look a bit silly holding a camera to my ear instead of my eye though...but I probably would still buy it!"

John Camp (partial comment): "It may seem a little odd, but one of the major playgrounds of the Miata is Beverly Hills, home of the Rolls, the Ferrari, the Bugatti, and all those other plutonium automobiles. You see them all the time in LA, often fire-engine red [actually it's called Soul Red Crystal, and there's quite a story behind it... —Ed.], with the top down; they have so little in the way of logos on them, that I think a lot of people don't know what they are. Might possibly say...'saw a nice little Ferrari roadster today on Santa Monica....'"

Ernest Zarate: "Happy Father’s Day, Michael. I’d suggest remembering that old adage: The best camera is the one you have with you. I find my iPhone a useful, handy tool. Not unlike a painter might carry a small sketch pad or a writer might carry a small notebook, it gives me a quick and easy way to make visual notes. Most of the photos I make with it will end up in the dustbin, a select few might be useful references or worthy additions to the family photo album, and that very rare one might even stand on its own. But the process of making them remains the same: choose both where I’m standing and when I push the button. Those are essential skills to keep sharp no matter what camera I’m using. Drop the baggage of 'should' from the phone. Just let it be what it is and use it to your own advantage."

Edward Fritzen: "Due to an ongoing 'relocation' I've had to pack my DSLR away in storage. I agree that today's smart phones take great images, and it's very convenient. I really need to force myself to use my iPhone. To me using an iPhone is not as much fun as a traditional camera."

John Abee: "It dawned on me as I read that I'm simply not very good at using my phone (Pixel 6) to take pics, and that's because I have never invested the time in learning how. I suspect I am not alone. I know the ins and outs of my G9 and GX8 but I'm clueless on the finer points of phone photography. There are all sorts of apps and tutorials for this phone but I need to set aside some time to optimize my phone workflow. And I will. Thanks for the prod. P.S. Drove my '90 Miata again yesterday. Even after 32 years it still plasters a smile on my face that requires a lemon to remove."

Mike replies: Lucky dog...! I'm jealous.

Creative Energy

marcin wuu wrote, in the comments to yesterday's post:

Hey Mike, did you notice how your articles come in phases, or waves, connected by subject? There's a Leica phase, Apple phase, Film phase, I Bought a New Camera phase, Pool phase etc? We're past the Leica, are we entering Camera Bags?  ;-)

It's true. That happens.

I believe it's mostly organic, though; for instance, after yesterday's post we were talking not so much about camera bags as stolen equipment, and a number of people have stories relating to that; those stories lead to other thoughts on the subject, which lead to more stories, and so on. The same post could have led in some other direction, perhaps assisting on jobs and not getting credit, or working for fathers or family members, or something like that. But that's not the direction it took.

I'm sure I direct it sometimes, emphasis intended, because it might be something I'm preoccupied with. The reason I claim it's organic, though, is that it happens the way it happens. That's what I've observed over many years of doing this. For instance, we could be talking about Kurt Markus right now and, let's say, what it means to photograph cowboys in the modern West, whether it's valid documentary or more like romantic nostalgia. But we're not. But there have been no comments on the Kurt Markus post, but a number of comments about my father's stolen bag.

Over the years, I've come to think of it as "energy." Some subjects have energy, others don't.

I do respond to the energy, too. Sometimes I'll wait to put up a new post because the last one is still getting a lot of response; the energy is there and I don't want to dampen it. Other times I'll work hard on a post but it doesn't get much of a response. In those cases I need to move on; no energy.

It's not 100% up to me. I try to create energy for pool, sometimes, hoping to do my little part to increase the fan base for my chosen sport, but my readers come here because of their interest in photography, and I don't have a godlike power to rewire their brains and redirect their interest. One way I got schooled about this was that, early on, when the audience was bigger, I had a great power to influence people buying books—did you know there were a number of books that we sold more than 500 copies of through our links? One surpassed 800 sales. That's influencing power! Especially considering that a full print run of a photography book might be 3,000 copies. But, when I've tried to recommend other books unrelated to photography, do you know how many we would sell? Six, maybe. Or 12, sometimes three, sometimes none. So it wasn't me...it was me + the predisposition of the self-selected audience, who were here because of their pre-existing and independent interest in photography. In short, Marcin's "phases and waves" are created by my energy plus your energy.

Heck, the site itself exists because it generated energy. I started this blog pretty convinced I would never have the discipline to write as much as one post a day, and my "stretch goal"—which seemed very unlikely to happen—was to keep it going for one full year (I had written a blog about politics prior to this one—it wasn't very good—that lasted about a year). Well, at its peak I was sustaining an average of something like 2.4 posts a day, and next November 28th we'll hit our 17th birthday, God willing. TOP has had energy.

Apply the concept to art
The idea of "energy" is significant because the same thing happens with creative work. You might have noticed it: sometimes you get what you think is a really good idea for a project, and and you strategize for it and gear up for it, but, when you get into it, it sputters...for some reason it doesn't "take." Like trying to start a fire and failing. How I experience it is that I don't have the energy for it. Literally, in that I feel logy and dispirited when I try to apply myself. Hence the term energy. Other times, you'll seize upon a subject and take off. Sometimes it might even surprise you, how much energy it has. Hard work doesn't seem like work, enthusiasm carries you along, and you might even take it further than you first intended. It can feel almost like it's not even up to you. If you read enough biographies of artists, you begin to notice how they find their energy as they work out what it is they're supposed to do in life, how they arrive at their mature styles and concerns. It might not be magical, but it sure is fascinating.

If you're creative, you have to be sensitive to the energy, I think*. And willing to have the courage to make changes based on it.

Maybe that's another topic; but let's see how much energy this post creates.  :-)

Mike

P.S. Does anyone remember a saying about how a plan is an ambition with a deadline or something like that? I can't remember it or find it.

*One of my personal foibles is that I'm too dogged. I keep trying to do things even after I've found out I'm no good at them. You wouldn't believe how long I thought I was going to make a living as a portrait photographer. I had some early successes doing that kind of work—I did a lot of it and made some good money—but I have very little knack for business, and as a main business I failed at it—not just failed, but failed blatantly, comically, decisively, over and over again. It was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not going to succeed as a portraitist full time. But somehow I continued to not get the picture. The Universe didn't just have to whack me with the "Get-a-Clue" stick; it had to beat me repeatedly with the Get-a-Clue 2x4. (I still think I'd like to be a portraitist sometimes. I carry around various pet schemes in my head. They've been there a long time and doubtless won't die until I do. Success at these schemes is certainly possible, with the caveat that I'd merely have to be a different person than the person I am. To be good at business you need to be not just realistic but boldly realistic, I suspect.)

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. It looks to me like this is going out of print soon, so act soon if you want one.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you choose to support the site.

Link to B&H Photo

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:

Grant (partial comment): "There is too much energy on the TOP site. My life is consumed by the articles that you post. There are too many fascinating links that I have not yet had the time to follow. I have three recommended books only partially read and two more still in the wrappers. Please, I need a break. The dandelions on my lawn are mocking me. Perhaps a food and diet phase would give me time to catch up on my life."

Mike replies: Dandelion greens are very healthy for you in salads.

Kirk: "I believe in the discipline of work. The more you work the more it flows."

Kenneth Brayton: "I have no energy for indoor photography. Just not there no matter how much I try. During COVID I have tried. But whenever I get outdoors it is a whole different level of energy. And much better results. Remember the days of 'Good Vibrations'? There is something to that."

 

The Stolen Camera Bag

An old story of my father's: he mentioned once that he had lost not one but two bags full of camera gear in his life, on separate occasions, both stolen out of locked cars. In the second case, the "put the word out on the street" that he would pay the equivalent of $100 (roughly $450 today) to get the empty bag back. He was later approached by a man who returned the bag claiming he "found" it. The camera equipment was gone, but the passport and $1,000 in traveler's checks ($4,500 today) were still there. The finder admitted he had tried to cash the checks but wasn't able to. Dad said the $100 was worth it and he paid the guy without complaint.

That must have happened in France. My father was an amateur photographer who liked to write and take pictures for articles for food and travel magazines—the catch being he usually spent more creating the articles than he earned from them. One trip that cost $3,500 yielded $650 for the article. But it offset the cost of the trips, and the trips were the main thing for him. He loved traveling to France, and at the end of his life estimated that he had spent a year and a half of his life in France, over 31 trips. (He once went for just a weekend, which I thought was kinda over the top).

I don't have any more details of the story about the camera bag. My first-ever published picture, when I was a teenager, was the lead illustration in an article of my father's in Holiday magazine* (I was "second camera" for the shoots, as a failsafe in case something went wrong), but, as was unfortunately rather characteristic of him, my father didn't give me credit for it. He said it would just "confuse things." I don't have the picture or the issue of the magazine. Oh well.

Mike

*I could be wrong about which magazine it was—there were a number of them, with titles like Travel and Gourmet, that all tended to blend together to me.

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. It looks to me like this is going out of print soon, so act soon if you want one.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you choose to support the site.

Link to B&H Photo

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:

John Nollendorfs: "Reminds me of the story Brett Weston used to tell. He was out shooting with his Dad, and was having trouble with a composition. Called his Dad over, who looked under the drop cloth, turned the 4x5 back 90 degrees, and claimed the shot as one of his own!!"

Herman Krieger: "Would a bag man in France be called a baguette man?"

Bob G.: "As an early settler in Boreum Hill, Brooklyn, the apartment of my future wife and I was broken into. What is probably a common occurrence today, could have been the disappearance of all my camera gear if placed in average locations throughout the apartment. It was saved by storing it under the kitchen sink."

Mike replies: Very smart. I used to keep my camera on the front seat of my rather messy car, in an old, soiled, tattered brown kraft paper grocery bag with the top rolled shut. It looked so unpromising nobody ever broke the window to check what might be inside.

Thomas Mc Cann: "Years back I had a camera bag stolen from the boot of a hire car in Dusseldorf. While I had the camera and one lens with me, my other equipment, lens, etc., was in the bag but even more important were my wife's and my airline tickets and passports. Didn't discover the loss till we were at the airport. Aer Lingus were excellent but the local police were called because of the missing passports. (They took my wife aside to have her confirm her status and that I was not a white slave trader.) Two weeks later I got a letter from the Dusseldorf police saying my bag had been handed in and if I paid €18 they would return it.It was a good Billingham bag so I gladly paid the €18. Imagine my surprise when the bag returned with its contents intact. Air line tickets, Passports, camera gear etc., the works."

Omer: "Forty years ago all my camera gear was stolen from an apartment I was living in. I knew it had been an acquaintance but wasn't sure which one. The odd thing about losing the gear was the feeling of having been set free."

Dogman: "Years ago, a friend got a job shooting for an annual report. His job was photos at a gas refining plant in a small town nearby. He wanted to borrow a lens and asked if I wanted to tag along. I sat in the car, waiting for him to finish, but I got bored. As the sun came up, I picked up one of his cameras with a 50mm lens and clicked off a couple of shots to occupy myself. The company used my photo. He got paid, I didn't. No matter...pretty good story."

Mike replies: Reminds me of a story (I hope I'm remembering it right) that Richard Avedon was once asked to snap a picture of some tourists with their camera. They had no idea who he was, and he didn't tell them. His comment—I think—was that if he told them who he was he would have to charge them $5,000. What struck me about it was that someone has an original Richard Avedon among their photos and they don't even know it.

Chester Williams: "Had all my equipment stolen while I was at home, at 9 a.m. Funny thing is that my neighbor called me when the thief was leaving my home and told that some guy was trying to break in. I rushed outside, machete in hand, and captured him. Not wanting to go through the police hassle of reporting an attempted break-in, I let him go...not realizing he had all my stuff in two backpacks!!"

Tom Burke: "Apropos insurance payouts following photographic equipment thefts, a friend of mine suffered a break-in of his flat (apartment) and his camera, etc., was stolen. He got the insurance cheque, replaced the equipment, and a month or so later suffered another burglary. The police officer told him that this was quite common—the thieves would know that there was likely to be a set of better, newer equipment at an address they knew how to get into….

"Another point: I don’t know how it works in the US, but here in the UK we no longer get cash settlements for insurance claims (or only rarely). About 13 years ago we suffered a burglary and about £8,000 of various stuff was stolen—cameras, lenses, laptops, and so on. We were insured, but instead of a payment we had a call from an adjuster who discussed and agreed with me suitable replacement equipment: so my Nikon D70 was replaced by a D80, my 12” MacBook Pro by a newer model, and so on. All of it came from a single company. None of it was current model, but it was all new, i.e. unsold. The D80 had recently been replaced by the D90, for example, and unsold examples of D80's had been bought by this company very cheaply, I expect, who then struck deals with the insurance companies to settle claims. I couldn’t object: I was being indemnified; indeed, the replacement was theoretically better than the stolen item—it just wasn’t the latest and greatest. And there was no chance to completely change photo supplier—I’d lost a couple of Nikon DSLRs and lenses so I would get Nikon replacements—no opportunity to say that I’d actually prefer to go back to Canon."

Pak-Ming Wan: "I live in Paris and where I've had my mobile phone stolen twice...and my Leicas, never. People think it is a film camera and wonder why I'm such a Luddite with such a lousy camera."

Mike replies: My teacher and mentor Steve Szabo lived on a houseboat on the Potomac in the 1970s, when two of the current photographic crazes were Deardorff 8x10 view cameras (Steve was at the forefront of that movement) and $5.95 plastic toy Diana cameras. When thieves broke in to the houseboat, they stole the dirt-cheap Dianas but left the much more expensive Deardorffs. Steve's guess was that they recognized the Dianas as cameras, but had no idea what the mysterious Deardorffs, folded flat, might be.

Kurt Markus 1947-2022

Kurt Markus in 2019. Portrait by Christopher Keels.

Kurt Markus has died, on June 12th, of Parkinson's disease and Lewy body disease. He was best known for his portraits of cowboys and the American West. He also did commercial work, mainly fashion, and is known for his photography of boxing. He was also one of a once common but now dying breed, a photographer who printed his own work in the darkroom and considered that side of the craft to be integral to his art.

Hampton Sides has written a beautiful essay about Kurt at Staley-Wise:

Markus, who lived much of his adult life in Kalispell, Montana, was a devoted husband and father, and a loyal friend known for his calm demeanor, his dry sense of humor, and his deep sense of personal honor. "When I think of Kurt," recalled one of his closest friends, Buzz Shiely, "I see a thoughtful, honest man, smiling at me from beneath a black Stetson." Suzy Moore, a longtime family friend who served as Markus’s studio manager, described him as "such a perfect human—kind, modest, a warm spirit. Wherever he went, he was always just Kurt: A regular guy happy with simple things."

The essay is excellent, a fine window into the life.

An example of Markus's fashion work

He went after a quality of "raw authenticity," of "unslickness," Sides tells us. You can see more of his work at the gallery, and in his books, including his three best-known, Cowpuncher, Buckaroo, and  After Barbed Wire, all of which are out of print. He was 75.

Mike
(Thanks to Chris Keels and Oren Grad)

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. It looks to me like this is going out of print soon, so act soon if you want one.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you choose to support the site.

Link to B&H Photo

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:

Great Expectations

Matt O'Brien wrote in response to yesterday's post:

"All of these reasons are why I am waiting for the [Leica] CL2."

The late Leica CL. It was Leica's me-too X100[x],
but failed to slay the dragon.

Alas, Fuji excepted, these are woeful times for people who like smaller-than-24x36mm sensors, and the Leica CL is one more reason. On May 17th, Leica Rumors published an internal document from Leica advising its dealers how to handle any questions they might get about the CL and TL from "distributors, customers, and the media." Essentially, the document says that sales of cameras with smaller sensors are in die Toilette (again, Fuji excepted, I would guess) but that the FF segment is still a bright spot, and that this state of affairs "has prompted Leica Camera AG to discontinue its CL-/TL2-system cameras." The company adds that it'll be concentrating on FF cameras going forward.

On the good side, the rumor filters through that Leica is surprised at the success of the Q series. (See Peter Wright's comment.)

Leica did affirm that it'll service any CL or TL2 for six years from date of purchase. B&H lists the CL as discontinued, but, in what is no doubt a glitch, lists the TL2 as being both available and discontinued. I have a feeling if you were to try ordering a TL2 with lens (same price as the TL2 without lens), your order would be cancelled.

Six years might be a good prediction for the extent of survival for "legacy" smaller-sensor ILCs. (The legacy is from the days when "chips," as they were called then, were exponentially more expensive the larger they were.) If I were to wax acerbic as is my wont betimes, I would fire off a snarky comment about how we'll soon all have to drive giant pickups like the GMC Deniali [sic] and take pictures with proper bricks and bags of giant lenses if we can't be satisfied, like good sheeple, with the phones Apple gives us. But I won't go there, and thou art welcome. You might think Fuji is also excepted from this six-year dire prediction, but they're only one decision away from it. Remember that Nikon was "committed" to APS-C in the early days of DSLRs, until it wasn't any more.

But, as Matt knows by now from other commenters, he's unlikely to get a CL2. But hey, Matt, join my club—I'm waiting for the Panasonic GX8 Mark II. Comma, dammit. Miss Havisham is still waiting for her bridegroom, too—we all have our great expectations!

Mike

P.S. Note the categories for this post. :-)

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. It looks to me like this is going out of print soon, so act soon if you want one.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you choose to support the site.

Link to B&H Photo

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:

xf mj: "I just upgraded to a used 'big dragoon' Olympus to pair with a new-to-me 80–300mm-e lens, but these last posts had me really thinking I should replace my ol' 2011 E-M5 + 20mm combo with a Fuji X100v. I still very much enjoy the digital equivalent of a walk-around, almost pocketable RF with a wide-normal, and those posts were a good reminder of that love. For a few years every other comment I made on TOP expressed my allegiance to that E-M5 combo.

"So I do a deep looking back at the image quality etc of all these guys. It's all good. Quite good. What the industry achieved with that Fuji, probably with this CL, with the E-M5 Mark III, etc., is more than good enough. They are all great. They are all capable cameras, some with IS, some with good weather sealing. All I ask of everyone who owns these cameras now is to treat them nice and sell 'em cheap to me someday on eBay!

"The market has briefly forgotten this segment for the time being. Hopefully it will twist back around. Some possible evidence in the vehicle realm: I live in a rural coast area, and all the big truck bros are now into buying used Minis to drive around these days. They want stick shifts, good gas mileage, and some fun handling. Gives me a weird kind of hope. Heck, maybe a fun-to-drive, compact, reliable, light-duty truck will be back in vogue soon too!"

Mike: Strange, I just noticed the other day that I'm seeing more Minis on the road around here. There's a Mini parked in a driveway that used to serve as parking for one of those 700-HP Dodge Challengers.

A mini point-counterpoint:

Kirk (partial comment): "As to the Leica CL, which I own. The images out of that small and agile system are extremely good. It's a product that required a better educated market, and the interchangeable lens capability makes it head and shoulders better than the Fuji X100V. I owned that camera as well—until I shot with the CL. Then it was 'Adios X100V.'"

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Re: the Leica CL, alas, 'tis fading to history. No surprise to me. I owned one for a couple of years. Yes it was kinda kute. Yes, it loved M lenses via an adapter. Yes its native lenses were nice. But the package, as a whole, was, typically for Leica, overpriced, outdated, quirky, and under-featured. I felt no sentimental pangs when UPS took mine away."

stmpjmpr: "Re 'Leica is surprised at the success of the Q series': I'm surprised that they're surprised: The Q gives a lot of the Leica feel and quality, but for those of us whose eyes aren't up to the manual focusing of the M. Its simplicity, quality, and M-inspired styling are alluring. To Yuan's point in the comments, it is EVF-based, but it's quite nice in manual focus mode."

darlene: "In 2010 I purchased my last DSLR, the D700 for an Iceland trip. My favorite Iceland photos were actually made with the smaller Canon G7 because it stayed in my pocket and was easily accessible, although the D700 images are 'prettier.' Not long after, I acquired my first mirrorless camera, an APS-C Sony NEX-7. The D700 was sold off after it slept for a year in my gear closet. I shoot tech cameras with digital backs in the studio, and Fuji APS-C cameras for all my other needs. No longer do I have a need for the 24x36 sensor. If I did not shoot medium format, that might be a different story, but medium format and tech cameras make me happy. The 4/3 system never interested me because I found APS-C good enough for my smaller format needs."

The Downsides of the Leica M10 Reporter

Having written about what I like best about it, here are the things that I've noticed that are, for me, the downsides of the Leica M10 Reporter (NLA new). But please, note those italics. I'm not a hater, and if you love your digital M, I get it and have no quarrel.

Cost: First is the elephant in the room, cost. I believe I read when I was a boy and still into military enthusiasms (ancient history now) that the German Tiger tank was superior to any armor the allies had, but that Soviet T-34 tanks were so much cheaper, and could be produced in such numbers, that a strategy developed whereby four T-34s would attack one Tiger. While a T-34 could never beat a Tiger one-on-one, at four-on-one it was no contest the other way around.

That metaphor might be brutal in light of the tank battles in Ukraine (sorry), but, very honestly, I think the excessive expense goes against Leica's stated intentions of providing a tough working tool for extreme conditions. To me, an important aspect of an all-the-time, on-the-go working tool is that it be replaceable. You either need to be able to buy a readily-available replacement quickly, or you have to have a second body already waiting in reserve. And the replacement/reserve obviously needs to be something you can afford, and cheap enough so that if you break or lose it, it's not a catastrophe.

Now, I know full well after having written this blog for 16.5 years that "price sensitivity" is an individual thing. We have everything from multi-millionaires to retirees on pensions reading this site (we used to have students, but I don't think so much any more). What is out of reach for some is a throwaway cost for others, and there's a whole range of people in between. Still, if you're doing weddings for pay with a Fuji X-T4, you probably have a backup body; yet I doubt that even millionaire owners of the M10 Reporter have a second one set aside and waiting in case they drop one into the punchbowl or set it on a concrete wall in a parking garage and accidentally knock it off and it falls four stories. (Both scenarios based on true stories!) I did meet a pro once who switched from a perfectly good main body to the more recent one because a replacement for the more recent one could be overnighted to him the next day, whereas the older body had been discontinued. But you might counter that the "tough working tool for extreme conditions" is actually just symbolic in the case of the Reporter—an homage to the concept, if you will. That's a valid point.

As you know if you read the comments to Friday's post, Jack Mac actually encouraged me to take the M10 R out for walks, and even said he wouldn't mind if I scratched it. Which is pretty generous of him. Still and all, cheapskate that I am, I must duly report that I find myself highly constrained by the preciousness of the M10 R. The most expensive camera I ever bought was an M6 c. 1990, $3k then and $6,700 in today's dollars. There were times when I felt uncomfortable carrying it around with me. I want a camera I can use up.

In any event we can no doubt natter amongst ourselves about the meaning and implications of a $10,000 camera body (the current going price for a Reporter) all day and all night, so let us move on.

No autofocus: To my mind, manual focus and autofocus are just options, and one is not better than the other. I'm pretty familiar and comfortable with rangefinder focusing, for at least the last 30 years anyway, and there are some advantages to manual rangefinder focusing: no clutter in the viewfinder; a direct view of the subtle intensities and colors of the real light because a rangefinder window is WYSIWYG in that respect; the infinity stop; and the focus stays where you place it until you change it. You hold focusing distance in your mind and can check on it with a glance if you forget. (Some of these can be simulated in various ways with some AF cameras.)

There are also some usability benefits that I pointed out in the previous post, for instance that it frees up a half-press of the shutter for AEL rather than AF-lock, and I like that.

However, I like AF too. Despite my transplanted cornea, my eyes aren't what they used to be. I'm not complaining at all; I don't wear glasses at age 65 except for computer use and reading, and I'm plenty thankful for that. But manual RF focusing requires some learning and practice, and I'm just as happy to let the camera focus itself, even though my use of AF is pretty limited. (I only use two modes, and don't begin to utilize all the Sony's capabilities).

No EVF: All you have to do is photograph with the Voigtländer 12mm (NLA) to have it blatantly pointed out to you that the field of view can be hard to see with an RF viewfinder. The M10's various framelines are approximate, and, despite Leica's clever perspective correction in the digital domain (called Perspective Control), there are still the usual headaches of parallax at closer focusing distances. An EVF is not WYSIWYG in terms of providing a window to the light and the color of the scene, but it's perfectly WYSIWYG with regard to perspective and the exact boundaries of the frame. Verdict? Six to one, half a dozen the other.

But the real gotcha with the viewfinder? It's that I've gotten into the habit of reviewing using the viewfinder! I love it, and I do it both while shooting, to check various parameters, and also while reviewing to see what I got. It takes ambient light, sunlight, out of the equation. Again and again with the Leica I would like to check what I just shot in the viewfinder, and of course can't—you can only review on the viewing screen on the back of the camera, which is hard to see in sunlight.

No image stabilization: It's been my observation that many times when you'd like to use something that's obsolescent, it would do fine in many respects, but there's often just one or two modern features that are so useful or sensible that it's hard to do without them. (I think of this every time I see Jay Leno tooling down the highway in an old car with no airbags. He's a head-on collision away from some fine old wooden Nardi steering wheel making contact with his spine from the wrong side. No thanks. I've watched "Idiots in Cars" vids. I'll take an airbag.) In the '90s I bought a Nikkormat FT-3 and considered using it as my main camera, and it would have been fine except that the 1977 groundglass was just very dark in comparison to more modern ones. If just that one thing could have been modernized, the older camera would have been fine. (At the time.)

Well, most old things have "just that one thing." In cars, backup cameras—stories of people backing SUVs over their own children deeply horrify me. You know where this is going: IS is one modern feature I happen to think is useful. Of course the M10 doesn't have it. Cartier-Bresson was rumored to go to bed early and abstain from coffee so he could handhold 1/4th sec., so there are workarounds.  :-)

Handling: The M10 was famously the first digital M to replicate the exact size and shape of the classic Leica, represented in Leica's literature by the M4. And of course the standard party line for half a century was that the Leica M was small and handy and "a camera you can get to grips with." It's received wisdom: i.e., you're supposed to believe it because everybody has always believed it. Yeah, but. The trouble is, the M10 is not small and handy by today's standards. It's handy compared to a 1930s folder and small compared to a TLR. It's not that they haven't done a great job replicating the original; it's that the world has changed. Today it's a little on the clunky and awkward side...

...Most particularly, the grip, or lack thereof. I'd consider a handgrip mandatory with this camera, although I don't have one here to try. The Sony A6600, which has the biggest grip of any of its ilk, makes that camera very handy and satisfying for a small camera. And I just handled a Nikon Z series (Dave Levingston's), which is excellent ergonomically, and it felt greatly more comfortable and secure in the hand than the 70-year-old design of the Leica.

Finally—and this is just a nitpick—I noticed that whenever I switched to vertical orientation (shutter release at the bottom and viewfinder window at the top right), my left thumb naturally hit the menu button. On the good side, even with the menu open on the viewing screen you can still press the shutter button and the camera will take a picture normally.

But you get used to handling. With a "you're in control" camera like the M10, you learn it. I'm sure I'd get used to the handling if it were mine.

Weight: The M10 Reporter is too heavy. With the 35mm Summilux especially. That combo tilts my scale at 972 g (34.3 oz.). That's not heavy for a camera, necessarily, but the smaller the camera the greater the subjective density and the more its weight is emphasized. My A6600 is also a bit on the porky side: with the 30mm ƒ/1.4 Contemporary it's 767 g. Like the handling, you'll get used to the M10 if you use it a lot. But it's too heavy. It can be lightened by using a lighter lens, but, like most of us, it would benefit from going on a diet. Weight loss of 15% or even 20% would benefit the body. (My body too. You?) You might say this is a matter of taste, and I'd have to grant you the point, but a cost-no-object camera should attain an ideal, and feeling like it's made of lead isn't ideal IMO. Note too that a handgrip would add yet more weight, putting this camera + prime combo at ~1150 g (over 40 oz.). Compare to the Nikon Z7 II and kit zoom at 1115 g.

Second car
What's the upshot here? Obviously, there is more than one reason to buy a Leica M. They're status symbols, very satisfying toys, cool body accessories, tickets of admission to various communities of geekery, and also, within their range, excellent working tools. Everyone's going to have his or her own mix of reasons for either wanting or buying one. As I made clear on Friday, it's a digital camera that goes most of the way to recovering/recreating the simple and secure experience of using a film camera. It fully realizes the promise of the early, imperfect first digital M, the M8. And it's a digital M that will be satisfyingly, gratifyingly familiar to those with histories as film M owners/users.

I do think its "beautiful simplicity" is plenty of reason for owning one. So is using it purely for serious photography. I see no impediment to that, if its natural limitations suit the kind of work you do or aspire to do.

Well, and if you have good insurance. (Consider a rider on your homeowner's insurance, or dedicated camera insurance.) 

However, even if money were no object, I would probably not be happy with an M10 as my only camera. (Although I think I'd like to do an OC/OL/OY with a Q2 Monochrom, which has AF and IS, and is weatherproof.) And I'll go out on a limb (way out on a limb) and guess that most M10 owners also own other cameras. I wasn't a pro for very long—only 6–7 years in the '80s–'90s—but during that (pre-digital) time I noticed that most pros I knew or met had pretty complete systems in at least one, more often two, and not infrequently all three major formats (35mm, 6x6 or 6x7, and large format); and then, many of them also owned a Leica M and a few lenses for "personal" work, as personal jewelry, and/or to tie in to the tradition of intrepid globetrotting photojournalists or committed art photographers such as Capa, Koudelka, Eisenstadt, Winogrand, and so many more great names from the olden days.

I also knew a few photographers who used only a film Leica M. I'm sure their "digital equivalents" are out there, and power to 'em. All I'm saying is that an M10 really is like a Miata*: you'll probably be happiest if it's your second car. Er, camera.

This ain't all. In our discussion of the M10, there's more yet to come.

Mike

*Steve Renwick said this.

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. It looks to me like this is going out of print soon, so act soon if you want one.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you choose to support the site.

Leica at B&H Photo

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:

Bryan Hansel: "On Friday, you gave me camera envy. Thankfully this posts brings me back down to Earth."

PWL: "Well, I have the M10 P, and to be honest, I don’t notice most of the difficulties you mentioned in your article, perhaps because I shot Leica M film cameras for years and are used to their idiosyncrasies. Where I will agree with you is that the price is a real issue. Makes it hard to use a very good camera in a lot of instances, because you’re afraid of destroying, damaging, or losing such an expensive item (although I should note that I do have it insured, but still…). And yes, I do have another camera system that gets a lot more use: Fuji X-Pro cameras. Pretty much my go-anywhere workhorse system."

Jeff: "I don’t mind the weight (provides stability for me), but the M11 black version, which is 20% lighter (530 g vs. 660 g for the M10, both with battery), provides an option for those who might. The EVF and hand grip issues can each be addressed via accessory add-ons, albeit at the expense of added bulk and weight. I don’t use either, but do use the accessory thumb rest (attached via hot shoe) for much better handling.

"My complementary system (for EVF, AF, IBIS, weather sealing, zooms, longer and wider focal lengths, etc) is the SL2. It has a virtually identical menu interface as the M, and seamlessly adapts M lenses. But I prefer keeping my M lenses (28mm/35mm/50mm) on my M."

Alex Mercado: "Pff…I always keep an M10 at easy access in the boot of my Morgan Plus Four. What is this 'My-At-Tah' you speak of?"

Bob G.: "Had to laugh (sort of) at your Nardi analogy…I had one on my '67 E-Type and it was scary to think about being in an accident with it. My mechanic said, the metal bends, but the wheel doesn’t. I felt 'better' with my single-spoke, downward-facing '71 Citroen Safari wheel…all this way before airbags for sure…."

Mike replies: Plus, you never wanted to go fast in a '71 Citroen.  :-)

Centeredlens: "+1 for camera insurance. I was afraid to take my M10 on vacation until I bought the peace of mind that I could replace it if it fell off a wall or got stolen. (Not that I’ve had to test the insurance yet, fingers crossed….)"

Jack Mac: "Mike, My explanations that if you ding it, it’s OK is partially based on my history of dropping cameras. Right after I wrote you that last week, I dropped an M 10 monochrome. It now has a loving ding in the upper corner. The digital M cameras are still robust. The Rangefinder patch was still in alignment and everything worked perfectly. Except I noticed that it doesn’t record color."

Mike replies: Heh. Reminds me of that old joke, 'Doctor, after my operation, will I be able to play piano?' Plus the fact that car repair shops occasionally car mechanics see cars towed in with the complaint that they will not start...and all that's wrong is that they're out of gas.

Dan Khong: "Twenty-five years back when the M6 and Rollies and Hassies were more seen and used side by side, the ownership of a Leica M stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Today, I am more likely to attract attention with a Rolleiflex TLR than—might I dare say—even the M10 Reporter (which I don't own so I am guessing). When I stroll around with a grey Rolleiflex T, I can almost always get a subject to agree to have their picture taken."

Pierre Charbonneau: "Digital M's are indeed a bit heavy in the hand. There are days when I prefer the Fujifilm x100 for walking around with friends.The autofocus is then a blessing. I guess it shows that I am then more casual and my subjects are appreciating this. And the pictures aren't bad either for all that."

Nicolas Woollaston: "the difficulty with wide angle lenses is also similar to the limitations in trying to use long lenses and in wanting to use any lens focused close, let alone macro."

Ben: "I just bought an M11. The cost is tough to swallow...I feel very lucky to be able to afford it now and able to use the lenses I've gathered over the years. And I definitely feel uncomfortable about the price/cost/value, so I always cover the silly dot. At least that's the only visible marking. The black M11 is, I think, pretty close to 25% lighter than the M10. So the weight is...perfect. It should've had IS, of course! But it's great to have really good high ISO performance in an M, so I can shoot at faster shutter speeds to avoid camera shake. Agreed about the hand grip...I added a stick-on one. We'll see how it goes, but the handling seems better. For whatever reason, I've always felt most comfortable with a rangefinder and OVF. I do also have a Micro 4/3 system (Panasonic GX8 forever! ;-) and a Fuji X100V...I quit Nikon some time ago. Have thought about a Sony system but the size of the lenses is off-putting."

Luke: "I'm so happy to see this post. Modern electronic gizmo cameras produce better pictures due to AF, EVF, IS, etc. If it's easier to use, yes, your pictures improve. IS or give up coffee?? Hah! Also, Mr. Mercado, does your Morgan even have a boot? Maybe you strap your Leica to the luggage rack?"

Kenneth Tanaka: "Chiming-in very late, sorry. But as a long-time and very current Leica owner here are my thoughts.

First, I agree with much of your earlier praise. Leica’s excision of video from the M cameras and converting the user control interface to the SL-style design greatly simplified the camera’s actual and apparent usage. Until last week I owned an M10-R and, previously, an M10-P, M240, and M9…so I’ve keenly observed and welcomed the camera’s evolutionary refinement. I am pleased to say that the new M11 maintains that design line and even extends it in new and useful ways.

"I also mostly concur with your 'downside' points of this post; cost, no autofocus, no image stabilization, awkward handling, and weight, although these have always been intrinsic characteristics of this type of camera. Your 'No EVF' point is not entirely accurate as the camera does offer an accessory EVF (Visoflex) that attaches to the hot shoe and articulates 90 degrees [$740. And more weight. —Ed.]. Regarding handling I would also add that an accessory grip has long been available for these M cameras giving the hand at least a better purchase on the camera. Regarding weight, as someone noted, the new black M11 with its aluminum top plate is significantly lighter than previous digital Ms. In fact, its weight is slightly less than that of the film M7!

"Beyond your downside points I would add three others that, in my experience, represent practical limitations of the M rangefinder that should be paramount to anyone considering using such a camera for particular jobs. I don’t think they’ve been noted yet:

Lack of weatherproofing: The Leica M is simply one of the least weather resistant cameras on the market. Lens mounts are metal-to-metal. Heck, the whole bottom of the camera must be removed just to change batteries and SD cards! I have never had an M camera fail from weather although I have never pressed the boundaries.

Metering: The nature of the M10’s design is such that center-weighted-average is what you’re going to get. (That has changed somewhat with the M11.) This is easy to manage but it’s important to understand that exposure precision will be entirely up to you.

Close focus range limitation: The nature of the M rangefinder’s optical design leaves most lenses with a closest focus distance of approximately 3 feet. There are accessories and at least one special macro lens that enable you to get closer to subjects but this has been a notable limitation of the camera’s design since its invention.

"But let's be honest: nobody buys an M with their head. Nobody needs one of these cameras for anything any more."

Josh: "As a Brit, talking about backup cameras (second cameras) and backup cameras (reversing cameras on a car) in the same post confused the hell out of me for a second!

Mike replies: Oh—sorry! That didn't even occur to me. But it should have.

Sroyon: "I enjoyed Josh's comment about backup cameras. Made me think about using a backup camera as a backup camera (forgot your Leica at home? Simply ask your subject to stand behind the car and record them on video) or alternatively, a backup camera as a backup camera (reversing camera on your car not working? Gaffer tape your spare Leica ME to the rear fender and stream video to your phone)."

The Leica M10 Reporter: Beautiful Simplicity

Recently I've been shooting a bit (not a lot) with a Leica M10 Reporter courtesy of a reader friend, Jack. I've been treating it with kid gloves and never taking it farther than the backyard. I literally can't afford to damage or lose it. Worry not, Jack!

Info: the 24-MP Reporter was a special edition limited to 450 pieces and is now scarce. The original 24-MP M10 is no longer available new, but survives in two versions, the 40-MP, $8,995 M10-R and the M10 Monochrom. The current model of the digital M is the 60-MP Leica M11. The Reporter, "inspired by Leica's history and connection with press and reportage photography" and intended to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Oskar Barnack Award for documentary photography, has minimal markings, olive green surfaces said to be scratch-resistant (I'm not going to put that to the test), and body covering made of Kevlar. It is also said to be quieter than the M10. I could have tried to confirm that when Pierre was here with his standard M10, but didn't think to. It's 20 grams heavier than a standard M10.

Scope of this post: There are three clusters of control considerations I think about on a camera: setup, shooting, and image review. (I ignore the parallel dimension, video, because I don't shoot video. This doesn't mean video shouldn't be reviewed, just that I am not the right guy to review it). I have a lot of things to say about the M10 Reporter, but today I'd like to comment on its shooting controls.

Danger, Will Robinson*: Part of this is going to sound cranky. But I'm not in a bad mood—I'm feeling fine, enjoying the season and the local asparagus, which is fantastic this year what with all the rain. The Finger Lakes are renowned for natural beauty and this is the peak time of year in the Finger Lakes. Our weather here recently has been apex. There was an hour and a half or so yesterday evening that was as gorgeous as I have ever seen Earth. Just glorious.

Two attempts to show today's weather. M10, Voigtlander 12mm.
Missing: the cool breeze; the delightful scent of the air.

I mention my non-crankiness because I have a somewhat notorious reputation reviewing Leicas, on account of I kinda called out the original M8 for being a half-baked beta-version piece of overpriced merde, which enraged devoted Leicaphiliacs who were at the time prostrate in front of the L-godlet with their arms outstretched and their voices raised in hosannas. (There was a lot of pent-up desire for a digital M at the time.) So some people with long memories are expecting a screed against the M10.

But I'm not cranky. What I am is mystified.

I shall 'splain. Eventually. Read on.

First, we need to distinguish what it means to "design" a camera. There are the technical experts who actually work out how the parts are going to work and fit together and be manufactured; and then there's the guiding intelligence that decides what the parts should do in the first place. Maybe we would call the former "engineering" and the latter "specifying."

I have the feeling that I can usually tell when a camera has been designed—meaning spec'd, its features and its parameters chosen with a practical, unified single vision imposed on the resulting product—by a photographer. A high official at Canon once told me that Canon cameras are not designed by photographers but by engineers. That was more than 20 years ago, though. Yoshihisu Maitani is one of the few Japanese camera designers we know about, because Olympus, uncharacteristically for a Japanese company, featured him in a series of its advertisements. Personally I think you can sort of intuit when one photographer gets to determine the look, feel, and operation of a camera, and the OM-1/2/3/4 series had that feel of someone with an opinion and a vision being in control and calling the shots. In his YouTube videos, Jay Leno sometimes talks about the same thing in car design, lauding the great marques of yesteryear that were guided by a unified vision—Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce, the Duesenberg brothers, Ettore Bugatti, Enzo's early Ferraris. The original Miata (the NA—I saw one just yesterday) is a more recent example. As Don Sherman wrote in 2017, "While it rarely happens in the car biz, the Miata is the brainchild of one person: Bob Hall." Engineers were involved too of course. But, "brainchild."

I have no knowledge of any specifics, no insider information of any sort (I'm an outsider for sure where Leica is concerned): but I think the "gestalt," as they say, of the Leica M10 was guided by a single person, a single vision. And from the evidence, it seems like that person must be a photographer. Regardless of who engineered it. That's just what it feels like.

Works a treat
The overriding impression I have of the M10: beautiful simplicity. Of course, it's a real mechanical rangefinder, meant to accept M lenses, meaning that focus is fully manual and stays where you set it until you change it. And the aperture is set manually via a ring on the lens. So that's two complications masterfully simplified in a way not open to any other company.

From there, a great deal of thought has gone into the simplicity of the controls. On and off is a collar for the index finger around the shutter release—second nature in no time. ISO is set very positively by a labeled dial where the film rewind used to be, on the left-hand side of the top plate; you pull it up to change it and it locks in place when you push it back down again. Very positive, impossible to change by accident, and easy to see where it is set with just a glance: ideal. The shutter speed dial has detents for specific speeds from eight seconds to 1/4000th, with a B setting that holds the shutter open for as long as the shutter is depressed (all right, it can also be set for a specific value greater than eight seconds) and an A setting for aperture-priority mode. In A mode, the camera selects the shutter speed, but AE is activated by a half-press of the shutter (admittedly, this is enabled by the manual focusing, because there's no need to lock focus with a shutter half-press). I love being able to so quickly and fluidly lock AE. A small thumb-wheel on the rear activates exposure compensation, which is visible in the finder.

Aside from the thumb wheel, there are only five controls on the back: a set of three buttons, one for live view, one for review, which Leica calls "Play," and one to call up the menu. There is the usual four-way pad, and a button in the middle of it, which most makers label "OK." On the M10 it's unlabeled. We can get into the menu and review (Play) controls another time, because I'm just talking about shooting controls here, but they are similarly sensible and similarly pared down: the menu opens to a "favorites" screen for your most-used options ("Favorites"), but even when the get into the full menu there are only four screens of options. And there's no video, at least that I can find, praise be.) And the "haptics," Erwin's word, are glorious—the responsive shutter that never has to wait for anything else to happen before it fires, the soft shutter sound, the feel and positivity of the dials and button-presses, the "always on," at-a-glance labeling of the settings.

As a whole: AWESOME. Shouting intended! I cannot tell you how I have pined for such logical, thoughtful, pared-to-essentials simplicity, all of it focused intently on doing only what the operator, the photographer, needs. It's what many cameras used to have that, now, almost none do.

Why not?
So my mystification is this: why can't any other camera manufacturer willing to sell a camera at a normal price do anything within a country mile of this? Why aren't there any "beautifully simple" cameras outside of Leicas? Is it that hard to do? Is it impossible for Canikon or Panasony to put one photographer in charge of just one project to design just one positively simple camera, instead of some mealy attempt that's just crippled or cheapened? I mean a camera with top capabilities, so that the quality of the results aren't compromised. Everybody else's half-arse attempts come across as decontenting, or else they simply can't bring themselves to do it. They have to heave in the whole overflowing junkbox of features like an addict has to have his fix.

Even with Leica showing the way no one else can do it? No one cares to try to mimic the most prestigious camera brand in the world? Not one company has the courage to leave video off just one model?

I shake my head in despair. I really do.

Or is it just that it really is too difficult to do, and all the companies apart from Leica just don't have the ability? Perhaps because all the other makers' products are all designed by committees, with bumpkin bean counters and fractious marketers squirming in their chairs, thence to be executed by teams of non-photographer engineers. Does only Leica have the courage—or is it that only Leica has the genius? Maybe other companies don't do it because they can't. Jobsian simplicity is hard.

Anyway, won't, can't, whatever, we know it will never happen. It's just the way it is, and there ain't no use in cryin'. At least we have the M10 like the 300 at Thermopylae. Beautiful simplicity's last stand.

Verdict
Anyway, the shooting experience with the M10: so simple, so pleasurable, so free, so freeing; so in control, so easy to trust, so plain, so clear. So purposeful and un-confusing. So responsive, positive, and at your service. So easy. And pleasurable and fun. A tool at the service of the operator. It's not the fastest camera to operate (I'll have more to say about ergonomics and operation in a future post), although it is one you'll improve with as you get more familiar and more fluent with it. But to use it is—what a strange thing to say in 2022!—relaxing. It's surefooted. You're in command and in control.

That's beautiful simplicity. Sorely, sorely lacking in today's tools for still photography, sad to say. And ahhh, such a relief to find, finally, in a modern camera, somewhere. It exists. Praise the lord. Beautiful simplicity is possible. Leica has done it.

To whoever might have been responsible, if indeed it is one person: thank you, I needed that.

Mike

[TOP will return on Monday, as I take the weekend to work on my upcoming article and my book. I am split three ways these days. But I will post all the comments today if it kills me. Have a great weekend!]

*Highly dated Boomer reference. Ah well, I yam what I yam. (That was also a highly dated Boomer reference.)

Book o' the Week:

Inspiration Leica Akademie (English and German Edition). A "group show" of 76 Leica Akademie photographers from 16 countries worldwide, curated by Heidi and Robert Mertens. Please tell us what you think if you have this book!

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP.

Leica is B&H and B&H is Leica

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:

Tony Roberts: "What a terrific rave. If Leica doesn’t give you an M10 on permanent loan, they’ve lost their minds."

Aaron: "There’s a new version of Lost In Space on one of the streaming services. We watched it with our kids. My short review: Don't watch it unless watching with kids."

Jack Mac: "Mike, Please take it out of your back yard; it’s OK if it gets dinged. A ding by the famous Online Photographer would only add to its value to me. Oh, and this wasn’t an investment, it’s a user and I’m not planning on ever selling it, just using it, once you get tired of it. The color of the camera has turned out to be quite appealing, and has been offered by Leica in their SL and Q line without a limit on numbers. For me, the color makes the camera attract even less attention than the usual Leica M. Unless it’s someone who has read your blog, and then they will ask, 'Ah! Is that a Mike Johnston Reporter?' I will proudly say, 'Yes, it’s the actual Reporter he used, see the ding right here?'"

Pierre Charbonneau: "About the M10, you have nailed it very well, thank you. I would just point out that the one you have photographed when we met last month is actually a Monochrom. Pretty close to the Reporter but not as gorgeous.... On the other hand, there is no white balance or color temp to adjust. Could it be simpler?"

Rob de Loë: "I am 100% not interested in Leica. I don't like rangefinders, and even if I could afford to buy Leica, which I cannot, I likely wouldn't because I find the whole Leicaphile routine so annoying. But I enjoyed this post thoroughly and will read the follow-ups. I may even come to appreciate Lecia a lot more based on your posts (even if I still won't want one!)

"Regarding simplicity and design, you're not wrong. However, I don't have any trouble ignoring the things I don't need or want on my non-Leica cameras. I know my Fuji cameras can do video, but it would take me a while to figure out how. I set them up to do what I want, and ignore the features and functions I don't need or want. Perhaps that's harder with other brands?"

William Cook: "Thanks Mike. Refreshing post. I felt as you do about your experience with this camera. I splurged—more than splurged (scrimped and saved)—to get the Leica Q2 Monochrom. I could never afford a real rangefinder Leica…more accurately, could never afford the lenses once purchasing the camera body. Then came the Q2M. Additional lenses aren’t required and it has image stabilization which is a must have for my shaky hands. It’s not as pared-down as the M10, but the monochrome nature really simplifies things. Once the Mono version came out, it seemed so right that it was now or never and I don’t regret sacrificing to get it. And how right I was—the black-and-white sensor is unbelievable and using yellow, orange, red, and CPL filters again is a manual joy. I know I’ll never realistically go back to black-and-white film and darkroom work again so this camera goes a long way to bringing that joy back again. Sorry to sound like such a fanboy, I’m really not; what with the whole Veblen aspect of Leicas, which I’m not fond of. But, like you mentioned, no other company has the ooomph to produce this sort of camera so we at least owe the devil his due."

scott kirkpatrick: "Who's the 'auteur photographer' at Leica? There are three candidates: Stefan Daniel (started at Leica as an apprentice at the repair bench, now VP for all product engineering); Jesko von Oeynhausen (joined Leica after university studies in optical engineering at Koeln, has been responsible for each of the M cameras, and has a larger role at the moment, reporting to Mr. Daniel); and Peter Karbe, head of lens design since the Mandler era, responsible for the tiny APO M Summicrons and the larger, more optimized APO SL Summicrons. And quite a few other lenses. He recently retired, and then returned a day later to take on a role as 'process quality coordinator' across all of Leica Camera's products. Karbe and Daniel are the guys who can tell you what the engineers were really trying to accomplish, and they do that on YouTube quite effectively. But I suspect Jesko's the real auteur, who has managed user interface simplification and unification across all of the several current lines."

Sam: "Re 'Why aren't there any "beautifully simple" cameras outside of Leicas?' Immediately thought of the Pixii (to be honest, I'm thinking of it almost every day)."

Kye Wood: "Decades of marketing have brainwashed the masses to see 'more' as the benchmark of both desirability and value. So simple solutions and elegant functional design are rarely commercially viable. First World problem."

JimK: "LOL...I get the feeling you think it's OK. I would have you speak to Kazuto Yamaki—see if he and Sigma could do something similar with a three-layer chip. That would bring me much joy!"

Dean Johnston: "Some have mentioned the Fuji X Series cameras, which is understandable. I agree in part, that they are quite simple.

"I own an X100s, and even though it’s a little old, and a little slow, I still love it. It was a fantastic release / relief when I first got it. Much simpler, or at least, able to be set and used much more simply than my other digital cameras. In particular, I loved (and still love) the aperture ring. The camera, in use, felt like being freed.

"Now I have an M10, and while I still think the Fuji is great, the M10 is, I think, on another level. Sure, it might be only a little simpler on spec (more along the lines of 'it doesn’t have the extras' vs. 'it can be made simple'), but in practice that tiny 'spec percentage' is really a giant 'use percentage.' For me anyways.

"The flip side is of course, true rangefinders like Ms are limited in many situations, and maybe an X-Pro3 would be the better choice for many who want a rangefinder-like experience (and even with three really good prime lenses added, about half the price of a current M body). I had to think long and hard over this.

"In the end I just went with my gut, and I’m pleased I did. But still, a tough choice. (But speaking of 'gut,' I literally could not sleep all night after I hit 'buy.' But, I’m over that now. Mostly....)"

'Napalm Girl' from Two Perspectives

This is an excellent pair of new articles that fairly treats the story of one of the most significant photographs of the 20th century, colloquially called "Napalm Girl":

"A single photo can change the world. I know, because I took one that did," by Nick Ut, from The Washington Post, June 2, 2022. Nick is a thoughtful guy and a good writer.

and

"It's Been 50 Years. I Am Not 'Napalm Girl' Anymore," by Kim Phuc Phan Thi, from The New York Times, June 6, 2022. The child who became a symbol is a woman whose life was deeply affected by her experience.

Together, very eloquent.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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:

Medium-Format Camera Tip

I have a small tip for you re medium-format film cameras. My second-ever magazine assignment was to attempt a survey of all the available medium format film cameras, which I did over many reviews. I've used a lot of those cameras over the years.

I also suspect that medium format will be the first style or type of film camera to fade from the scene entirely. Unlike 35mm, there were never lots of them; and they are mostly pretty complex devices, many with some weak point or another; and many of them are most useful with a range of accessories and add-ons, which are not kept together with the cameras and yet are useless without the cameras, meaning they get hard to find. Finally, the experienced repair-people are already aging out.

Why would you use medium-format film cameras? Well, with film, I always used to say, the smaller the camera, the easier it was to use in the field and the harder you had to work in the darkroom, and the larger the camera, the harder it was to work with in the field and the easier and more pleasurable it was in the darkroom. Medium format was either the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds, depending on whether your glass is half empty or half full.

Folders!
One of the most recent medium format film cameras, and hence among the newest used ones, is the beautiful folder made by Voigtlander (Cosina, headed by the great enthusiast Kobayashi-san). There are two versions, the Voigtlander Bessa III 667 (technically it should be either Voigtländer or Voigtlaender, but people write "Voigtlander") or the Fuji GF670*; it's the same camera but was marketed by both companies. There's a variant with a fixed 55mm wide-angle lens. Either type will be hella expensive in the used market.

But if you want to try that style of camera, a sleeper is the Agfa Super Isolette. It was among the last of a very long line of folding cameras that included many German makes and models. These folders are not ergonomic masterpieces, and take a little getting used to...and they're not fast. But the Super Isolette is still relatively on the cheap side, around a grand, and they can be repaired by Jurgen at Certo6.com, who is the man when it comes to folders.

There's only one gotcha, which is that the film advance can't be repaired by anyone. So always make sure what you buy has the film advance tested by the seller before you buy, and always advance the film gently and deliberately, as if the whole camera depending on its continued smooth functioning, because it does. And you have to be aware that yes, if it ever fails, it will "brick" the camera—the only solution is to find a donor camera and graft in the whole mechanism.

Super Isolettes were made in the mid-1950s and they are just superbly well built. (The film advance is delicate because it's gloriously complicated in the German way and as exquisite as a watch movement. Okay, almost).

I don't think a Super Isolette is necessarily the best or most practical option—it's just a workable substitute for a Bessa III. (Everyone I know who bought a Bessa III never got into using it...they all become shelf queens.) I personally like the Bronica SQ-A (it takes cheaper batteries than the later SQ-Ai). Still cheap-ish, and the system of interlocks saves me from making mistakes. The problem there is the backs, which fail at a pretty high rate. That's according to Helix's rental department in Chicago in the mid-'90s. So get at least two backs.

They are all awkward, kludgy, and lovable
It's unfortunate, but there just is no such thing as an ideal medium-format film camera. The market for the final 30 years was mainly pros, and the Hasselblad was the standard in North America (for all but portrait photographers, who typically used Mamiya RB67s), and the Rolleiflex SLRs were the standard in Europe. They kinda suffocated development of alternatives, although a variety of makers kept trying.

A Pentax 6x7 is also a great option. They go off with a great icky thump, and you just can't believe the flopping mirror doesn't degrade the image with vibration, but it doesn't. Add Tri-X and the results are very nice.

Base advice—when interviewing medium-format candidates, make sure you can focus the darn thing, whatever it is (I cannot focus Rolleiflex TLRs), and figure out how you're going to meter and whether you can live with that. Many cameras had those awful metering prisms as an add-on...studio pros never used in-camera metering and just didn't need it.

If wishes were horses, a frog wouldn't bump his ass so much...wait....
What I always wanted was a square camera (because you don't need to accommodate horizontal and vertical composing), with a waist-level-finder, that had in-body metering. They're out there, but they're all expensive. Currently I own not one but two Rolleiflex 6008AFs, pristine, and one 80mm AF lens which no longer autofocuses. Plus a 45-degree finder and the handgrip, two newly rebuilt batteries, three battery casings (they're what you need to get rebuilt to have a functioning battery, and they are rare), and three chargers including one new one and one old one which has never been opened. I really need to get the lens fixed so I can sell the lot, but...I always have lots on my plate, plus procrastination is a thing.

I have finally come 'round to the conviction that I will never shoot medium format black-and-white film again. This insight has come only after buying, I don't know, half a dozen medium-format cameras that I never used? Three of them are still upstairs (the Rolleis and my Exakta 66).

But for pure photographic beauty, I'll always be loyal to them.

Mike

*[CORRECTION: I'm sorry, my memory failed me as to the name of the Fuji version. I had it as the "667" when that is an alternate name for the Bessa III. I was confused by the naming when they came out and I guess I still am! I apologize for the error. Thanks to Ned B. for pointing it out.]

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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:

Hidden Glories of the Web

Bartosz Ciechanowski

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 and introduced it to the public in August 1991, less than 31 years ago. But already I've been on the alert for high points and masterpieces—because there are naturally going to be creations that fit the medium so well that they almost could not exist if it wasn't for the Web and the particular way that content creation for it has developed. For example, a one-minute, six-second video of a British young person sitting in his apartment demonstrating how to play the Seinfeld theme on his bass at five different levels of difficulty—quite a virtuoso minute!—or this explanation of a difficult musical concept that links the Coltrane Changes to M.C. Escher.

I wish there were a rich, overarching "Nobel/Pulitzer Prize" sort of award for the best accomplishments of the Web, either pages or video clips. The world clearly doesn't even think of it that way yet. We're in the "happily-taking-it-all-for-granted" stage still.

Anyway, "Mechanical Watch" by Bartosz Ciechanowski would win one of those awards. Nick, who brought it to our attention, said, "I can't resist giving a link to this amazing page, explaining through interactive animations how mechanical watches work. A pure wonder." Nailed it. Wow. Bartosz's incredible tutorial combines the written word with gorgeous and beautifully clear interactive graphic animations to explain something commonly assumed to be comprehensible only to engineers and experts. I'm only mildly a fan of mechanical watches, not deeply into them by any means, but I can get interested in many things if they're presented well enough. And I'm a teacher at heart, so I admire clear and communicative explanations of complex topics. This is flat-out great.

The Bugatti and Air Jordan
Every medium and category of creation eventually has its high points and masterpieces. These usually require a confluence of events, individuals, necessity and demand, and attention/prestige. Theater, for instance, enjoyed a massive craze in Elizabethan England; it was the entertainment of the age and the overwhelming preoccupation of the public. The era, the conditions, and the opportunities attracted and enabled an individual called Will Shakespeare, who mostly adapted older stories as stage plays for public entertainment. Something broadly similar can be understood of the Beatles or Mahatma Gandhi or Michael Jordan.

What is true of human activities and arts is generally no less true of human manufacture. Sometimes this is the result of individual genius (the light bulb, the Bugatti Type 35), but in many cases it's cooperative and additive over time—innovation, craft, and engineering is combined with long periods of refinement until we end up with something that appears to be truly miraculous: subtle, effective, and, surprisingly often, beautiful. The sailing sloop, for instance, a modest contrivance that is the culmination of millennia of experience, design, and refinement. The book on the bookshelf, which took centuries to evolve! (If you're a dilettante enamored of design and engineering and don't know Henry Petroski yet, do yourself a favor and pick the book of his that appeals to you most and read it. A warning, though—he picks simple subjects and then says everything it is possible to say about it. If that doesn't sound like your cuppa, then Henry P. ain't either.)

It's Sunday, and it's a good thing it's Sunday, because if you get into Bartosz Ciechanowski's beautiful Web page it's going to suck down a chunk of your spare time. But...well, wow. Thanks to Nick.

And as for Bartosz, can you please do one on Yoshihisa Maitani's Olympus OM-4?

Mike

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

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: