The Online Photographer

Elizabeth II 1926-2022

Max Mumby, Queen Elizabeth II attends an Armed Forces Act of Loyalty Parade in the gardens of the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland, 2022

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Her Majesty Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other realms and territories, has died at Balmoral Castle, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, at the age of 96. She reigned as Queen of the United Kingdom for 70 years and 214 days, the longest-serving monarch in British history, exceeded in world history only by Louis XIV of France, the longest-ruling sovereign monarch whose reign is verifiable by exact date. She is succeeded by her son King Charles III. She has reigned as Queen for longer than 90% of the world's population have been alive.

Here's a presentation of her life in pictures posted by the BBC.

Mike

David Saxe: "I grew up in Montreal a long time ago. In 1951 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited. It was a year before she became Queen. I was in grade three at the time at Lord Willingdon School, in the neighborhood of Notre Dame de Grace, and I remember the whole school being let out early that day to 'see the Princess.' We all lined up outside the school, buses were waiting, and the whole class got on one of them and we were driven to somewhere. When we arrived (wherever it was), we were assembled along the side of the street and we were all given little paper Union Jacks glued to wooden sticks and told to wave them when the procession passed. The procession arrived. The Princess and Philip were seated in the back of a black Cadillac convertible and they waved to us as they sped past. We waved back with our Union Jacks on wooden sticks. It was all over in seven seconds. The funny thing is that after all those years, I still have the image of them speeding past—etched in my memory. It only lasts for a brief moment or so but it's always there whenever I think of it. It's my first photograph."

Scott Paris: "I am so old that I actually remember watching her coronation in 1953, on a wooden TV almost the size of a refrigerator, with a mostly round screen about eight inches across. Grainy, scratchy black-and-white, of course. I was six, and I think I only remember it because my WWII-generation parents thought it was magical that we could see events in London as they happened. I think I thought it was pretty normal."

Sean: "Even as an anti-monarchist, I have always respected the dignity and grace demonstrated by Elizabeth in her role as Monarch. Not an easy role for a shy young woman to play, but she played it well to the very end. RIP."

Tom Burke: "Her Majesty has been a presence in my life as far back as I can remember. In my early 70s, I am a member of the oldest group of British people who, although born in the previous reign (George VI) have no memories of it; for us, there has always 'The Queen.'

"Of course, when I say 'a presence in my life' I don't mean personally. Like almost all British people I've never met her. No, what I mean is that she was constantly being mentioned. There were formal occasions such as the State Opening of Parliament which includes the Queen's (or King's) Speech, in which the monarch appears to give Parliament their instructions (in fact, the Speech is written by the Prime Minister); solemn occasions such as Remembrance Day—'Her Majesty will lead the nation in a ceremony of remembrance'; more relaxed occasions such as attendance at sporting and other public events; and wherever I went, in cities, towns and villages all over the country, I might find a plaque or notice saying that this particular school/hospital/public building had been officially opened/inaugurated/dedicated by Her Majesty. She put herself about over the years; in her own phrase 'I have to be seen to be believed.'

"There's a deeper importance to her long reign. The UK is a fairly conservative (small 'c') nation, but we are prepared to give new things a go and if we like them, carry on with them. The result has been that we have changed almost beyond recognition since the end of the Second World War. Against those changes we have also sought stability by trying to create a synthesis of change and tradition. Her Majesty's long reign has been a huge factor in that, and goes a long way to explaining how we have accepted so much social change (especially) while remaining, I think, true to our traditions."

Thomas Mc Cann: "I'm from Northern Ireland. Before the coronation came along home televisions we rare. The protestant population invested heavily in them to be able to watch the ceremony. Six years late the Catholics got their chance with the inauguration of a new Pope. Those were the days."

Jayanand Govindaraj: "Let me give you an Indian's view on the queen. Why eulogize a woman who did nothing particular but live in luxury for a long time, funded liberally by her subjects? In her public life, throughout her reign, her country has been on one long constant decline—socially, politically and economically within, and in the matter of global influence without. In her private life, she had a husband who was probably a closet racist, whom, nevertheless, she seems to have adored, and together they raised one of the most dysfunctional families on earth, hounding a daughter-in-law to death, and pushing a grandson to run away, probably on racist grounds. What is there to glorify? Nevertheless the myth-making machine is in overdrive right now!"

Rob Campbell (partial comment): "Yes, a sad but inevitable day. I was sailing back to Britain from India, and I guess I was sixteen years of age as she was being crowned. Many years later, I photographed her and the Duke of Edinburgh on behalf of the then Scottish Design Centre, in Glasgow. Officialdom almost frustrated the gig: as I moved from shooting their arrival inside the building, onwards to the next 'station' of that shoot, which was her signing of the visitors book, the police barred me from entry to the room, so I just returned to the PR office and sat down to see what next. In moments, another official came rushing in to usher me through security, and I got my shots, a couple of which are somewhere on my website. I say somewhere, because the other pro work gallery there is pretty much all calendar pix, and it always felt it would be disrespectful to place those royals shots amongst the girls. As Jay Maisel says, who the hell knows where anything is anymore?"

Albert Smith: "Maybe of interest among photo enthusiasts: Popular Photography, 'A closer look at some of Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite cameras.'"

Pi Manson: "I’m British. I find it incredibly depressing how sycophantic, weepy coverage has sprawled across the entire BBC. The monarchy seems to nothing but infantilise us: The Guardian had a headlining article about rainbows spotted at Balmoral!

"The Queen avoided tax while claiming millions of pounds of public money. She had the privilege to see laws that affected her 'interests,' and amend them as necessary, allowing her to avoid environmental, employment and tax regulations. The monarchy are not even allowed to be mentioned in the House of Commons (except in gushing terms), so our elected representatives may never bring up constitutional ideas that would make our country more egalitarian, democratic and, frankly, less medieval.

"It’s sad in that a human has died. But in all honesty, this Brit would see her family yanked from their palaces by thorough constitutional reform."

Mike replies: I'm not British of course, and am only observing from an armchair far away, and my opinion is worth exactly zero, but...it will be interesting to see what William will do when he becomes King. I think he is of a mind to de-emphasize the monarchy somewhat, along Scandinavian lines, although less thoroughly. Ironically that might be the best way to preserve the institution. I suspect Charles III is bound to be somewhat of a challenge for the institution, never mind his spotted past which I personally cannot blame him for, at least in its "broad brushstrokes" version. Married the wrong partner, eventually wised up and married the right one—that's hardly an uncommon course for a human being of either sex. I don't know much of the details of how he behaved in the particulars. However: he's an old man, lacking the vitality of youth and relevance to younger people; unlike his mother he's opinionated and meddlesome, mildly so perhaps, but not likely to take to the high road with gravitas and discipline like his mother did; he's a thoroughly known quantity to the British people, lacking any sort of mystery; and he doesn't seem to have the inspirational qualities of a natural figurehead—seems only a workmanlike public speaker for one thing. Is it certain Charles even really desires his new job? He seems a thoroughly decent fellow to me and I've always rather liked him. But on the other hand my pie-in-the-sky take on the situation is that the best thing he could do would be to save the cost of an extra coronation and step aside in favor of his son. I know that's not going to happen, because it doesn't fit traditions, but might not a young man in the prime of life with a beautiful wife and little kids might make for a better King in uncertain times?

The Lowdown on the New iPhone

It looks like both iPhone 14 "Pro" models—the Pro and Pro Max—will feature one camera with 48 MP. This can be used two ways—for expanded cropping options, or for pixel-binning down to 12-MP in low light. The sensor on the wide module is still 12 MP, but it's physically bigger. And multi-exposure computational photography isn't just for Night Mode any more—you can use it for normal shots as well, to get better quality. The range of focal lengths is also changed, to four: .5X, 1X, 2X, and 3X. How that works out is that the three modules are 13mm-equivalent (12-MP), 24mm-e (48-MP in Pro Raw), and 77mm-e (12-MP). The "2X" option is 48mm-e and uses a cropped section from the 48-MP module.

DPReview points out a very interesting little fact: that iPhones, in sensor size and number of megapixels, have now caught up to the old all-in-one small-sensor digicams such as the Canon Powershot G15 of ten years ago. Albeit with far more capability thanks to processing, binning, and image combining.

Check out Tom Burke's comment from the other day (you might remember Tom—scroll down a bit at that link):

TB: This summer I decided to be honest with myself and recognise that I was simply no longer using my DSLR and lenses. When we went to Dubai in late winter they never left the hotel room; I used the iPhone instead. So during the summer I sold all my photo equipment and I've been waiting for Apple's announcement. I like the hardware improvements in the iPhone camera system, such the bigger sensors, improved apertures, and the increased resolution of the main camera sensor which it seems can be used in either full resolution mode or in binned 12 mp mode. And of course the continued improvements in the software are also attractive.

But the camera and its surrounding system are just part of the story. What I've come to understand is that good technique is as important with an iPhone as it is with any system. Night mode, for example, works pretty well however you use it, but with the phone on a tripod and exposure triggered remotely (via my Apple Watch, for example), the results can be stunning. So I'm pretty sure I can see an iPhone 14 Pro in my future. Mastering it is going to be my next photographic journey, and I'm looking forward to it.

It's a perfectly legit approach, and I'll be interested to hear how he gets along with the new iPhone 14.

Mike

Peter Wright: "I watched the presentation today. Very slick! Looking at the camera section made we wonder why I even think of getting another camera any more. I doubt if anything I want to photograph can’t be done with the 14 pro. Seriously, isn’t buying a dedicated camera a waste of money for almost all of us? The only exceptions could be if you have some very special needs like professional wildlife, or some strange proclivities like the desire to photograph with a 'greys' camera."

Blog Note: Mike Has COVID

I've got the dread disease I guess. I tried three different home tests, all of different brands; two were slightly past the use-by dates. One showed no trace of a positive line; the fresh test kit from the pharmacy seemed to show a line but so faint it was barely on the threshold of perception; and on the third it was even fainter—there might have been a line or there might not have been.

The doctor's office, though, says any kind of line, however faint, means a positive test, so I guess that means me.

You count the first day of symptoms as Day 0, so I'm in Day 3. The symptoms keep moving around and changing. I had a toothache for the first three days, of all things—and late last night it departed. But last night I developed a wicked sore throat, the kind where you dread having to swallow; but my fever went down. My blood oxygen level is fine but my heart rate has been considerably elevated, by about 20 beats per minute. On the good side, I sleep through the night, so that's nice.

It's been good for pool. Something about being sick makes it easier to get into the "flow state." I play this practice game called "1-2-3" where you throw all 15 balls out on the table, and you only score the last three if you make all of the first 12 with no misses. The third-to-last ball is one point, second-to-last is two points, and the last ball is three points. So the possible scores are zero, one, three, and six. I did three total clearances yesterday—three sixes—and three threes, which is better than usual. On a normal day I'll score several ones and threes and maybe one six or maybe not. And a lot of zeros, meaning I failed to make it to the final three. (I'm trying to learn position play. I'm getting much better at it than I was, but still have a long way to go.)

[UPDATE: After writing this I was so concerned about having bragged on myself that my pool game went all to pieces. Or maybe I should blame that on being sick, too. —MJ]

The doctor's office says on Day 6 I can resume normal activities...even if I still have symptoms. According to the ever-changing guidelines, vaccinated people are presumed to be contagious for no longer than five days from the onset of symptoms. Fortunately I wasn't around people much at all before the symptoms appeared.

I went back on my plant-based diet two weeks ago, and as of this morning I've lost 16 lbs. in 12 days. Too fast. But how much of that is the food and how much the illness? A little of both I guess. On a plant-based diet you aim to lose about a pound a week. You have to eat a lot to keep the weight loss that low, and I just haven't had sufficient appetite.

Anyway, you don't need to hear the blow-by-blow. Things happen to all of us, and they seem important to us while we're in them. The bottom line is that things might be a little sparse around here for a few days while I deal with this. Being sick is never easy when you live alone; everything that needs doing still needs doing. And all I want to do is go lie down.

...Which I guess I will go do right now.

Mike

Herman Krieger: "Sounds like you got the bug!"

Skip Davis: "I am so glad that I have been wearing my face mask when I visit your website.... Get well soon."

Bob Feugate: "I’m very sorry to hear that you’ve got COVID. On the other hand, I was delighted to see from these comments that Herman Krieger is still as sharp as ever. His website is packed with visual puns and always rewards a return visit." [Ed. note: Herman, 95, is TOP's honorary oldest reader.]

Jim Arthur: "I stumbled across a quote recently which seems to apply to your predicament so I thought I’d share. Feel better, try not to work too hard, and maybe enjoy some lotus tea.  :-)  "

For my own part I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better...to lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind...to watch the soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling...not only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-eater.

—Samuel Butler

New Apples

Apple's big presentation is today, labeled "Far Out." The new iPhone, watches, and possibly more. Since a lot of the product differentiation in phones is the camera(s) now, it will be interesting to see how the new phones' cameras differ from the current ones.

It will be academic for me—my iPhone 7 Plus gave up the ghost this past Summer, and I had to buy a new 13—as I'm sure it will be academic for many of you. But it can fun to hear the news anyway. The presentation starts at 1 p.m. US Eastern Time, 10 a.m. on the West Coast, and 1 a.m. tomorrow morning in Ulaanbaator, Mongolia. (Never let it be said that TOP doesn't serve its Mongolian audience*.)

Mike

*Seriously, there used to be two readers in Ulaanbaator. Although it was probably one reader using two different devices.

 

Get a Grip, Mike

Thanks to the cooperation of B&H Photo in New York, I will soon be receiving all of the available new grip options for the Sigma fp. Although this is estimated to be directly relevant to the shopping needs of .0001 of you, it might be entertaining to watch me try to choose. (My fp did arrive, but the LVF-11 is backordered, and I haven't sent the camera in for conversion yet. I feel like I should try it as a "colors camera" first. Small problem: I don't want to.)

(If you don't want to follow the link, here's what "colors camera" refers to:

"My little boy startled me at age five when he offered his first critique of Daddy's artwork. He had asked me to take a picture of how small his watermelon hard candy had gotten in his mouth, opening his mouth wide and presenting the remarkably diminished candy on his tongue. Never one to refuse a proffered photo opportunity, I took the picture. Later, though, when I showed the print to him, he launched into a tirade that I still think is wonderful: 'Daddy, you need a new camera. Your camera is a grays camera. You need a colors camera. When you buy another camera next time you should make sure it has colors in it.' And so forth. It was a pure critique, succinct and pointed—art criticism direct from a five-year-old heart.")

In case you're wondering why there have been no new photos in the Sigma fp-M test shot file, we have been under the gray blanket for three days here—flat, leaden skies, intermittent rain. Damp and dark. And dull. We do need the moisture, but, for pictures, it's gray, bleak, grim, and depressing. (Cue the eight guys who will tell me they like all kinds of weather and I should get out and photograph.)

Also, I'm sick. Fortunately, COVID tests are negative so far. Another one today.

Mike

RubyT: "When my grandson was a similar age he stayed with me for a few days while his mother went out of state for a (successful) job interview. While we were shopping I got him a single-use film camera. He immediately asked if his camera would have colorful pictures or just gray ones. I have made it a point ever since to create color versions for the photobooks I send him. Rarely has anyone been so delighted by a single-use camera. Thanks for sparking this memory."

Random Excellence: Photographer Unknown

Credit: Huntington Ingalls Industries

Photographer unknown: the future USS Jack H. Lucas

On the internet, one thing leads to another.

I was poking around on the various websites of Raytheon Technologies Corporation, an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, because I have reason to believe that the loaner Leica 50mm Summilux-M I have here was largely designed and built for Leica, as many of its lenses have been, by Raytheon's ELCAN Optical Technologies subsidiary (formerly Ernst Leitz Canada) in Midland, Ontario. At some point I ran across a small JPEG of this image, sort of a large thumbnail. I thought it looked pretty dramatic, and I was curious as to what it shows, as I often am with photographs, so I started poking around trying to find a larger version.

It took time. It turns out that it's a small crop from a much larger picture that can be seen here on the Huntington Ingalls Industries website. HII, a Fortune 500 company, is the largest shipbuilding company in the USA. My family has a minor connection to shipbuilding; my father was charged by Congoleum Corporation with returning the Bath Iron Works, a shipyard in Maine, to profitability when Congoleum owned BIW. BIW is currently owned by General Dynamics Corporation.

The picture shows the then-future USS Jack H. Lucas, a Navy guided-missile destroyer, before its launch. I haven't been able to find out much about this ship-launching method; apparently the ship was built on level ground, moved on rails to the large apparatus [UPDATE: it's a dry dock! See Omer's comment below. —Ed.] you see it sitting on here (a process called "translation"), and then the entire apparatus is simply sunk, which lowers the ship calmly into the water, where tugs move it away. Construction continues after the ship is afloat.

Medal of Honor
That's how I came across the rather astonishing story of one Jacklyn Harold Lucas, of North Carolina, the sports-obsessed son of a tobacco farmer.

Jack Lucas enlisted in the US Marines at the age of 14 during WWII so he could fight in the war. The Marines eventually discovered his deception and moved him to non-combat duty, but, for another chance at combat, he stowed away on a transport ship bound for Iwo Jima, thus technically becoming a deserter. He turned 17 during the voyage. Before the invasion of Iwo Jima, Lucas presented himself to command and expressed his willingness to fight, and was accepted into service, presumably because he had legitimately reached the minimum age requirement. During the fighting on Iwo Jima, when his unit was being fired on in a ravine, Lucas threw his body on two live grenades to save his comrades. One of the grenades exploded. The comrades he intended to protect left him for dead. The Veterans Administration says, "Another unit discovered Lucas and tended to his injuries before carrying him to medics in a safer location. Lucas was treated on the USS Samaritan hospital ship, in multiple field hospitals and ultimately at a hospital in San Francisco, California. The grenades [sic] left over 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body and he underwent 26 operations in the following months."

Photographer unknown: President Truman and PFC Lucas

While still in a hospital in North Carolina, in 1945, the desertion charge was rescinded and Lucas was reinstated as a Private First Class in the Marines. In October of 1945, President Harry S. Truman bestowed the Medal of Honor on him, and Jack Lucas became the youngest Medal of Honor recipient in the Marine Corps as well as the youngest from any branch of the services since William "Willie" Johnston, a drummer boy, earned the medal at age 13 during the American Civil War. Lucas remains the youngest MoH recipient of the 20th century and of the 21st century so far.

Don't tempt fate
The story doesn't end there. In 1960, reportedly because he wanted to master his fear of heights, Jack Lucas enlisted in the paratroopers. On a training jump, both his main parachute and his backup parachute failed to deploy—and he survived that, too. (I presume one of the parachutes must have partially deployed, but I don't know that whole story—I haven't read his autobiography, which is appropriately entitled Indestructible.) Lucas was finally felled by cancer in 2008 at the age of 80.

Getting back to the ship, it was named in 2016 by Secretary of the Navy Raymond E. Mabus of Mississippi, who served in that capacity until 2017. Apparently naming fashions have changed; it used to be that a ship named for an individual would use the surname only, e.g., "USS Lucas." Full names are apparently now more often used. The US Department of Defense says, "The DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer (DDG 51) is a multi-mission ship designed to operate offensively and defensively, independently, or part of Carrier Strike Groups, Expeditionary Strike Groups, and Surface Action Groups in multi-threat environments that include air, surface and subsurface threats. These ships will respond to Low Intensity Conflict/Coastal and Littoral Offshore Warfare scenarios, and open ocean conflict, providing or augmenting power projection, forward presence requirements and escort operations at sea." Here's a picture of the ship just after her (hey, gotta respect pronouns) launch. USS Jack H. Lucas was christened on March 22 of this year, and will enter service in 2023.

I still don't know who the photographer of the ship picture was, but I'll ask. [UPDATE: Huntington Ingalls no longer credits specific photographers; see Dennis Mook's comment below. —Ed.] I guess it can stand for the work of photographers who, generally in anonymity, take record and publicity pictures for companies and corporations.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use our links; they help support the site.

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:

Omer: "The 'apparatus' is a dry dock. It lowers and raises boats and ships in and out of water by means of flotation. When a partially completed ship is pushed on to the dry dock, that vertical side of the dry dock is removed allowing the ship access to the dock.

"I worked at Avondale Shipyards in the early 1980s which at the time had one of the largest dry docks in the country, located in the Mississippi River believe it or not. The USS Iowa battleship was partly modernized there, all the while out of the water on the dry dock. Photography in the yard was of course forbidden but I still managed a few pics of coworkers, now passed." [Ed. note: Link is NSFW.]

Mike replies: Thanks Omer. I was searching for "ship launching methods," and the term "dry dock" didn't occur to me. My bad.

Dennis Mook: "Mike, that is a floating dry dock. We have several here in Southeast Virginia. As you assumed, the dry dock is flooded with water and 'sinks.' The ship is then floated on (or off). The water then is pumped out which raises the ship out of the water. There are pre-positioned blocks set to tightly fit the ship’s hull so when lifted out of the water, the ship remains level, stable and secure.

"My daughter-in-law was a photographer for Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding and my son is employed by them. She told me the company stopped crediting individual photographers and now just lists the company for photographic credit. At the Newport News Shipbuilding facility, their main business is the design and build of aircraft carriers and submarines. It is an amazing process to see how ships of that size and complexity are put together."

The Material World Is a River of Change

The great departure starts today—soon, the Labor Day crowds will depart, and people will begin closing up their lake houses for the year. The people at the camp* across the street have two more months before their water is cut off for the Winter, and most of them will be gone by then.

But my, were there a lot of people in these parts over the weekend. Even people who barely ever use their lake houses must've been here. I got caught in a traffic jam in Penn Yan—so many cars lined up in front of a traffic light that I thought it better to detour around it. I could count on one hand the number of times that happens in a year.

There have been lots of changes around here since I moved here seven years and 17 days ago. The neighborhood is coming up in the world—many new houses have been built and a number of older ones remodeled and restored.

And here's another interesting change. Do you remember this picture?

It's a picture I took with my iPhone that we included in the "Mike's Miniatures" print sale, which consisted of prints from iPhone files, for those who were curious about that. At the time I encountered it, I wished I'd had a bigger camera and a tripod with me, but all I had was my iPhone, so I made do. (And by the way, as you're seeing it here is how it's best.)

This year I've been planning to look for the full moon nearest to Thanksgiving and be back at the same spot around moonrise, hoping to take a similar picture. But look what's just happened:

 Not only is there no cornfield there at the corner on the right, but they cut down the woods! The older woman who owned those woods sold them to the farmer next to her (he's letting her stay in the house for the rest of her life), and the new owner's judgment was that the land should be restored to its "original" state—original meaning the 1940s—namely, it should go back to being cornfield. There won't be cornstalks there till 2023, of course. But in November most of the trees will be gone.

Mulligans
The older I get, the more I think that It's Not About the F-Stop by Jay Maisel is the most important instructional book for photographers published in English. (Followed by On Being a Photographer, by Bill Jay and David Hurn.) It's all about how to be a shooter, and it covers pretty much everything important. "Shoot It Now" is something Jay thought was so important it's the second thing he says in the book. "Never come back," Jay says. "Shoot it now. When you come back, it will always be different."

Sometimes, though, you want it to be different. There are times when you know there's a picture there but you can't get it for some reason. The light is wrong, it's the wrong season, something needs to move out of the way—lots of times, photographers have "spots" where they sense a photograph is lurking, and they go back from time to time to see what things look like. And sometimes that does work. I've also gone back to try again when I blew it the first time—I messed up and didn't get the picture. For example, I took a photograph with the monochrome camera the other day of what has got to be one of the prettiest houses in Ontario County. And as a nice added touch, the owner was out front on a riding lawnmower. Well, the picture I took features a blown-out sky—very little recoverable detail—and there's motion blur in the lawnmower. So, a failure. It's okay; I have a feeling that one's a color picture anyway. I'll go back there again, though. To take a mulligan.

It's when you see the exact photograph you want and want the exact photograph you see that Jay's advice applies.

The farmer clearing the land did tell me that he intends to let that old oak at the corner of the field stand. There might still be a picture there when the full Beaver Moon rises at the end of the road this year; it won't be much like last year's picture, is all. I'll try to be there when that day comes, if I can, just so I can give you a report.

Mike

*"Camps" around here are neat little collections of well-kept mobile homes, stacked up in rows. It's a sweet deal—my neighbors pay ~$2k dues a year for a comfy 7-month abode with shared lake access. Many of them bought their places years ago for what are now great bargain prices, in the $50–100k range. You can't do this on many lakes in the Midwest, which have lake frontage requirements and limitations on building houses in back of other houses on lakes.

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use our links; they help support the site.

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:

Geoff Wittig: "Change is the only constant.

"I've been doing a deep dive into the landscape where I live, and in particular the area around the Genesee River that includes Letchworth State Park. I've hiked the park and surroundings for more than 40 years, and despite the 'preserved in amber' nature of a park, the forests and fields are constantly evolving. This year they took a big hit from very dry weather and a massive infestation of spongy moth (previously known as gypsy moth) caterpillars, so the woods are looking a little threadbare.

"A geography professor at SUNY Geneseo just self-published a book on the park with numerous maps and aerial survey photos dating back to the 1930s. It's astonishing how rapidly new forests overtook the previously cleared agricultural land making up much of the park acreage. And how quickly bustling small farm villages disappeared without a trace."

Albert Smith: "I really like It's Not About The F-Stop. I pick it up often for the little micro lessons that are easily digested.

"Regarding 'Shoot It Now' I was able to attend a lecture at a local College by Henry Diltz, a photographer that was in the epicenter of the Laurel Canyon scene in the late '60s and beyond, documenting the music scene and shooting many famous album covers from that era.

"He went out in his car with Crosby, Stills and Nash driving around to find a location for a shoot. They saw a well-worn house with a front porch. They ran onto the porch, the three musicians formed up and Diltz fired of a few frames. When the film was developed the photo was fine except that the three guys were not in the order that corresponded to the name of the group (CSN) which would be on the cover over the picture. They decided that since it was their first album and they might not be known, they should be in the correct sequence so people could identify the band members.

Nash, Stills and Crosby

"A couple days later, they got back in the car, went to the house to find... it had been completely razed. Everything was gone and they were gearing up to construct a shopping center. The first CSN album has the 'wrong' photo and people were mixing up the band members because of that inability to redo the error.

"Shoot it now, absolutely."

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Focus* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)

And if you want to go deep on focus, here's how.

My old colleague Harold Merklinger's book The Ins and Outs of Focus is available as shareware. You can read it online or download it and look it over, and he asks for a voluntary donation of $5 if you like it and find it useful. It's a short manual, not quite 100 pages.

Harold was Chief Scientist of the Canadian Defence Research Establishment Atlantic and retired as that agency's Director-General. He lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

By the way, Harold's opinion is that manufacturers should just give us small, high-quality ƒ/4 lenses and we'd all be better off as far as recording sharpness and detail are concerned. (The reason they don't is that those don't sell.)

Mike
(Thanks to Viktor)

P.S. The title of the post is a reference to this 1969 book by California psychiatrist David Reuben, M.D., the first sex manual to enter mainstream culture in the USA and "among the top 20 all-time best sellers of the 20th century in the United States" (Wikipedia). Focusing isn't sexy, though.

P.S. I thought I might answer a few questions from the Comments to the previous post here:

Christer Almqvist: "All [Zeiss] Batis lenses have a display that can show d-o-f. It was of no relevance to me when I bought my Batises. The d-o-f shown on the Batis lenses is much narrower that the d-o-f shown on my old Leica M lenses or indeed in the Leitz printed d-o-f tables from the film days. These were based on circle-of-confusion measurements and calculations. In the film days the minimum shutter speed rule followed by many photographers was to shoot at a shutter speed of 1/n where n was the focal length in mm of the lens used. This is not really practicable today (unless you have IBIS) as sensors are much more unforgiving for camera shake than film was. The same (sensor unforgiveness) is even more true for d-o-f where IBIS does not lend a helping hand. Does this mean that my Batis lens display should take into account the number of pixels on the sensor? And of course, the distance at which the print in viewed. Please advise."

Mike replies: The allowable circle of confusion depends only on the photographer's judgement. It depends how sharp you want things to look and how much blur you can tolerate before you consider something to be unacceptably unsharp. However, it's true that the higher the resolution of the plane of best focus, the smaller the circle of confusion needs to be to come close to matching it. A mental exercise: consider a very grainy film of low resolution. In this case, quite a lot of the d-o-f might have the same resolution as the plane of best focus. If imaged objects 7, 10, and 15 feet from camera position are all recorded with the same resolution, such that you can't even distinguish where the plane of best focus was placed, then all of that is "in focus." The d-o-f appears large. With a very high-resolution camera system on the other hand, used with good technique, lowered resolution quite close to the plane of best focus can be detected. So the d-o-f is effectively less. It isn't imaginary. It's a real effect. So it makes perfect sense that your Batis lenses, made for digital cameras with high-resolution sensors, would advise a narrower zone of d-o-f for any given aperture than an old Leica rangefinder lens made for film.

Degree of enlargement also changes the d-o-f. We can see this easily on our own computers with our own files. Just take a large, high-resolution file with a lot of front-to-back information. At large sizes ("pixel peeping," in Michael Reichmann's memorable phrase), its easy to see exactly where the plane of best focus is and that objects near, but not on, that plane of focus are slightly unsharp. Now reduce that same image to small web sizes. So much information has to be "thrown away" that areas that were clearly unsharp at the larger magnification are now just as sharp as the plane of best focus. The viewer can't tell the difference. And I think everybody old enough to have worked in 35mm film can remember instances where he or she got excited about the prospects of an image on the contact sheet only to discover that too much

Printing might also change the d-o-f. The reason is that the printer resolution has entered the imaging system, and might become a limiting factor.

This is also why it's not necessarily bad to use very small apertures that lower overall resolution. Not only is the d-o-f increased because of the small aperture, it's also increased because of the lowered resolution of the plane of best focus. And some pictures work better if everything appears to be of roughly equivalent sharpness, rather than having some parts sharper and others noticeably out of the d-o-f. (There was a great illustration of this in an old Nikon manual years ago—I think it was Nikon—and I might even still have that somewhere out in the barn.)

Bob Johnston: "The decision on where to focus is, or should be, part of the artistic process. It seems to be assumed in all those YouTube videos that every landscape should have a near infinite depth of field. This just isn't so. It depends on the relative importance of the elements in the picture. If you have the most important subject in the foreground or middle ground it can sometimes look better if the background is a little soft. Therefore, sometimes the thing to do is to focus on the object that is the main subject and not on the hyperfocal distance."

Mike replies: Very true. The ultimate arbiter is what the photographer thinks looks best. An extreme example of what you're talking about might be some of Ray K. Metzker's pictures from his Aperture book Landscapes, many of which purposefully use radical out-of-focus to create visual elements in the compositions.

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

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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:

Steve Rosenblum: "Thanks for the links to Harold Merklinger's books. I haven't read his focus book in years, so it is great to have it again. I've always been impressed and amazed by the number of photographers with technical knowledge who have self-published helpful high-quality books like this through the years."

The Very Basics of Focus

Doubtless most TOP readers already know all this, and more besides. But it might be of use to newcomers to photography, whom we of course wish to encourage! With the great avalanche of new photographers joining the throng by way of those clever little smartphones, I wonder how many of them know these two very basic things about focus. This short explanation is simplified somewhat for clarity.

Thing One
I was taught geometry by the memorable Mrs. Marianne Otto at the University School of Milwaukee, and received the highest grade she ever gave to any student over her long career—how I got it is a good story, but has to be left for another day. (I also should have flunked Algebra II, but Mrs. Otto let me squeak by purely out of the kindness of her heart and also some concern for my college prospects.) If you recall your own high school geometry class, you know a plane is "a flat surface on which a straight line joining any two points on it would wholly lie." The first important thing about focus is that the way a fixed-lensmount camera focuses is that the plane of best focus is a plane parallel to the plane of the sensor*. As the lens focuses, this plane of best focus is effectively moved closer to and farther away from the sensor or film. So you don't focus "on" an object or an area; you push the plane of focus back and forth as the lens changes focus, and that plane moves around as you move the camera around.

The zone of acceptable sharpness in front of and behind that plane of best focus is called the depth of field, sometimes written with hyphens even when it's not an adjective, and conventionally abbreviated d-o-f. Depth of field is influenced (not controlled) by the aperture you select on the lens; I used to have my students memorize the phrase "the higher the number / the smaller the hole / the greater the depth of field" (say it in singsong fashion).

Depth of field will always be greater behind the plane of best focus (i.e., farther away from the camera) than in front of it (closer to the camera). Because imaged objects nearer camera position are more prominent to the eye in photographs, it's more important to get those sharp if you want them to be sharp or if you don't want them to be distracting with their unsharpness; the ancient and honorable rule of thumb therefore is to focus "one-third of the way into the scene," i.e., into the zone of what you want to look sharp.

Thing Two
The second basic thing everybody should know and doubtless a lot of people now don't know is that the zone of the d-o-f is proportionate to the focus distance.

Let me 'splain. Let's say the d-o-f extends one-third of the focus distance in front of the plane of focus and two-thirds in back of it. So if you focus on an object ten feet from the camera, you'll get everything from about 6.7 feet (10 minus 3.3 feet or a third, rounded) to 16.6 feet (10 plus 6.6 feet or two-thirds, rounded) to be acceptably sharp. BUT, and yes, that's the Big But: If, without changing any other setting, you focus on something 100 feet away, then everything from 67 feet to 166 feet will be in the d-o-f and will appear sharp. And so on. So you've changed the zone of apparent sharpness from a depth of 9.9 feet total to a depth of 99 feet total...just by changing focus. It's the same aperture, but its effect is proportionate to how far away you're focusing.

That's why, when you focus close up, so little appears to be in focus, and if you focus far away, so much does.

In this example (you can see an enlargeable version on Flickr), ƒ/11 with this lens has gotten the mailbox on the right sharp enough, and the houses on the opposite shore sharp enough. That's called "pan focus"—no relation to "panning," which is a different thing altogether. Pan focus is defined  as follows:

Pan Focus refers to where everything in an image, from the foreground to the background, is in focus. As a technique, it refers to how a photographer would set a sufficiently wide depth of field to make sure foreground as well as background objects are in focus. (Canon Australia)

For the seminal 1930s American West Coast art photography movement that counted Edward Weston and Ansel Adams among its membership, Group ƒ/64, pan focus was one of it aesthetic principles. That was in opposition to Pictorialism, which favored a dreamy softness throughout the image. An aperture of ƒ/64 is one that on an 8x10-inch view camera gives good depth of field.

There's much more to focus than this, and much more that could be said. But these two things are a good place to start.

Mike

*A fixed-lens camera is one that has a single lens permanently attached to it. A fixed-lensmount camera can also include cameras with interchangeable lenses but where the mount is rigidly fixed in relation to the plane of the film or sensor. And, the plane of focus is a plane only ideally. In actuality, it doesn't always achieve flatness. But it comes close enough for it to be useful to conceive of it that way.

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use our links; they help support the site.

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:

DavidB: "About pan focus...the magazine Arizona Highways prints photos shot with great depth of field. EXIF data is often included with the photos and many photographers routinely shoot ƒ/16 and ƒ/22 to get these images. Our fear of diffraction has limited our photography."

Tim Page 1944-2022, Fred Lyon 1924-2022

The inspiration for the Dennis Hopper photojournalist character in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, British combat photographer Tim Page, has died. Page led a very adventurous life. Among many other things, he was declared dead in Vietnam until a mortuary attendant(!) realized he wasn't; his best friend was Errol Flynn's son Sean, who disappeared while on assignment and has never been seen since; and he was at the infamous Doors concert in New Haven when Jim Morrison was arrested for obscenity. If you'd like to read about the whole Vietnam scene, check out Dispatches by Mike Herr—that is, if you can't find Page's own out-of-print memoir, Page After Page. (Page is first mentioned on p. 7 of Dispatches.)

There is a good and thorough obituary of Tim Page at The Guardian, which reports that he was open about his struggles with PTSD and was an activist against the use of landmines, which would make perfect sense even if one of them didn't nearly kill him. He spent his later life in Australia. Tim Page was 78. 

+=+=+=+=+

San Francisco photographer Fred Lyon, whose book San Francisco Noir has been our Book o' the Week for a bit now, also died recently. For many years he was a "first call" photographer when one was needed in San Francisco, and he energetically documented the city as an art photographer in addition to his fashion and professional work. There is a fine obituary of Fred at SFGate. He was 97.

Mike
(Thanks to Andy Wilkes, Kenneth Tanaka, and Robert Edelman)

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use these links; they help support the site.

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 Alton: "Fred Lyon? Never heard of him. What a revelation though—thanks for bringing him to my notice."

Dan Khong: "I met Tim when he visited Singapore at the invitation of Leica Asia Pacific. He showed a series of his 'Nam pictures. He was living in Australia. Quite sad to see such an illustrious war photographer slowing drifting into the sunset."

Martin Pallett: "Nottingham, April 1995. Tim Page was promoting his new book Derailed in Uncle Ho's Victory Garden at Waterstones book shop. My mate, Nige, worked there, and I attended Tim Page's talk; Nige said to stick around so that we could have drinks with him after the shop closed, so I tagged along with the shop folk. Not long after sitting down, Mr. Page lit up a 'cigarette' (it was still OK to smoke in pubs back then) and it was a moment later that the odour of burning rope permeated the back room and we noticed the oily smoke rising: he had a licence to smoke marijuana due to the injuries sustained over the years: it was an 'interesting' pub session to say the least! If there is afterlife, I hope he meets up with Flynn, Stone, and the rest of his folk: peace be upon him."

Funny Things

I've added a few more shots to the fp sample album. I spent well over three hours out shooting yesterday. I got five keepers, although I only posted three of them. I'm holding a few back so I have something to post in case I don't get anything today. (I always worry about where the next picture is coming from.)

To me, using the fp-M is like walking around with a medium-format camera that shoots 4x5. Here's a funny thing: I've always said I want a camera with IS and my new camera doesn't have IS; I've always said I like small cameras and my new camera (as I'll configure it) isn't small; I've always said I don't care for high resolution and my new camera has high resolution; I always said I don't need full frame and my new camera is full frame; I've always said I didn't mind 3:2 and I've decided to shoot the new camera in 4:3 (for the most part). I guess I'll add that I've never done video and the camera was meant primarily for video.

And, when I first started writing about photography almost 40 years ago, the one brand I knew I didn't like was Sigma, which at the time made very inexpensive commodity lenses for people (and there turned out to be many of them) who couldn't afford better. And now I'm a Sigma shooter.

Goes to show you, you never know what's going to click.

As for the OC/OL/OY idea, here's another funny thing: you don't actually want me out photographing all the time. The more time I spend out photographing, the less time I spend writing about photography, and the latter is what I'm really good for.

The same thing has usually been the case when people make other suggestions to me, like, that I should teach workshops. The problem is the same: the more I do of other things, the less I'd write.

How It Works
By the way, here's how I'd do a portfolio, or a body of work, or a book:

• Start with a defined idea.
• Shoot every day.
• Distill the day's shooting down to that day's keepers. Aiming for between one and five.
• Do provisional post-processing on them so they can stand on their own well enough to be well seen (and so I know the files will work.)
• Do that for a year, or some other defined but extended period of time.
• End up with 400–1,500 keepers.
• Make a quick pass and throw out all the "what was I thinking" or "I don't even remember that one" or "I'm repeating myself" duds.
• Resulting in 100–400 strong pictures.
• Get down to serious editing/sequencing.
• End up with 40–60 pictures that work together in sequence and express my take on my idea.

Only then could I begin to think about the logistics and financing of a show and a book. Which is why I'm so impressed with people who have a show and create a book!

Over the past week or two you've watched me do steps 1–4 with the borrowed Sigma fp Monochrome. The keeper rate would go way down during the long Winter months, but in a year, maybe two, I could be ready for the next eight steps.

Of course, no one really needs me to do that. I think people would rather I write.

Mike

P.S. Oh, I forgot one! This is pretty funny. I used to have to wait till after sunset to do darkroom work, because my various darkrooms were seldom light-tight enough during broad daylight. And now, I have to wait till after sundown to process the day's shooting, because the glare out on the porch where I work makes it too difficult to judge values of gray during the daytime. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Book o' the Week

Fred Lyon, San Francisco Noir. "The version [of San Francisco] that Fred Lyon celebrates in his new book is a classic San Francisco full of smoky jazz clubs, neon lights in the fog and sharply dressed men and women stepping on and off of trolley cars. Made mostly during the 1950s and '60s, Lyon's images are big on atmosphere and style, and hit many parts of the city that visitors love." (PDN)

These book links are your portal to Amazon. Please use these links; they help support the site.

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, in Boulder: "I don’t know who to put this into words Mike, other than to say this post makes it very clear how much you’ve enjoyed taking pictures this past week. I’m smiling reading it."

robert e: "I've always enjoyed your writing and looked forward to your posts, Mike, but the fp-M saga really has me on the edge of my seat anticipating the next post and uploads. Your excitement is contagious. I'm still flabbergasted by what seems to me extreme depth of field. I'm wondering what the trick is, but maybe it's not a trick at all—maybe it's just been a really long time since anyone on the internet has stopped down. We do want you writing, sure, but I think all of us would prefer you writing about having fun. We just need to figure out how to make that practicable."

Mike replies: In a short while I'll upload to Flickr an example of what the Ancients called "pan-focus" or front-to-back focus...the world of today has forgotten that this was the manifesto of the then-revolutionary Group ƒ/64, to have everything in focus front to back, ƒ/64 being a stopped-down aperture that gave good depth-of-field on an 8x10 view camera. [UPDATE: Here it is.]

Stephen McCullough: "Although you’re making photographs, this is creating material for the writing. And you ‘sound’ happy. I’m enjoying this series."

Mark: "Finally a Speed Graphic replacement…."

Tom Duffy: "I really like this picture. The tones on the shady side of the barn are perfect. I'm not sure I could have resisted making the sky a little more dramatic. Good restraint on your part. I remember when digital started becoming a thing for Leica and people were commenting on the great image resolution. A naysayer commented, 'Since when did the Leica become a view camera?' Since digital, almost every camera has become a view camera. This is why I own two tilt-shift lenses for my Canon."