The Online Photographer

We're Back (9:25 p.m. Monday) (Blog Notes)

Very sorry for the interruption in service! And, Happy Halloween.

Typepad had planned on a 12-hour outage for maintenance. Obviously something went wrong, and the outage approached 48 hours. Evidently the planned maintenance project had to be abandoned. And then, this afternoon, after the blog went back up, I wasn't able to add new posts right away. TOP still isn't loading some images and some links don't work, but we've been told those will be restored in due course.

I'll resume posting new content tomorrow morning as usual (including a funny image I had been saving for Halloween). Later in the month that starts tomorrow TOP will celebrate 17 years of existence, 15 of those on Typepad; it's been our happy home for a long time. They have great customer service for us bloggers and have always addressed questions and difficulties with dispatch. This outage was a bit nerve-wracking for Yr. Hmbl. Ed., but "this too shall pass," in the famous words of the medieval Sufi poets, and we'll be back to normal. The eternal promise of the weblog, a word that made its first appearance in the language in 1997: "More soon!"

Thanks for your patience.

—Mike

P.S. And I hope the Comments work too, but I don't know if they do! If not, they should be working again soon. Would someone please leave a comment as a test? UPDATE: Comments are working.

Scheduled Maintenance Planned For Saturday Night, All Night (Blog Notes)

Scheduled maintenance coming: Lots of problems lately. I'm happy to report that Typepad (TOP's host) has successfully migrated to a new data center. More maintenance is planned, and you might have trouble logging on from Saturday night to Sunday morning, Eastern U.S. Time: "During a window from 9:30 pm U.S. Eastern Time on Saturday, October 29 (01:30 UTC on Sunday, October 30) to 9:30 am U.S. Eastern Time on Sunday, October 30 (13:30 UTC on Sunday, October 30), there may be periods where Typepad blogs are down." That's TOP's least-trafficked time of the week, so it might not be a problem for you, but be prepared for it.

Everyone should be seeing the header again.

In a separate matter, Norton assures me that TOP has officially been declared "Safe" and that its (Norton's) customers will no longer receive a danger warning from them (Norton) when trying to log on to TOP.

All is well. [UPDATE Saturday morning early: I spoke too soon. Typepad suffered DDoS attacks on Friday and was intermittently down. Every time this happens—there have been a few instances over the years—they manage to get it sorted out, so I'm hoping that with the maintenance tonight will solve the various issues. Sorry again if you've experienced any trouble.] Please remember that TOP might be down over Saturday night.

Mike

Scott: "Got the Cloudflare message a few minutes ago."

Mike replies: Apparently you'll have to contact them yourself, because as far as I can tell there's no mechanism for people like me to get in touch with them.

John Krumm: "The Cloudflare thing is likely just the new servers being cautious. I’ve seen it before after DOS attacks. Likely TypePad will have to fix."

Sony A7R V: Taking Bets

The newest high-resolution Sony is here. It's the A7R Mark V, and is STBI™ ("said to be improved"). I'm sure it's a very good camera for $3,898. The last one was, and that one got a price increase too. The cynical might wonder—do they jack up the price to cover the improvements, or do they contrive the improvements to justify jacking up the price? Maybe a little of each.

V is the roman numeral for five, of course, and I find myself wondering how high the iteration number will eventually go. Things like this usually settle into patterns, sooner or later. The average automotive model cycle, for instance, lasts four to six years, with a "mid-cycle refresh"—meaning, they change a few things that are obvious to the eye, to expose earlier ones as out of style; fix any glaring problems from the original if they haven't already; and add a little dosh to the pricetag.

With cameras, repetitive iteration seems to be the norm. It happened before the "mark [x]" trend, too. I remember reading long ago that when a camera company hits on a model that's particularly successful, that model tends to sprout variants and updates. The camera being talked about at that time was the Canon EOS 620 (1987), so that goes back a ways. I owned one of its variants, the EOS RT.

I'm simply not enough of a gearhead to know this off the top of my head, but my intuitive impression is that most successful camera "lineages" tend to last for five to seven iterations. At least, a few of the ones I remember do. For example, the Nikon F lasted for six...there was never an F7. How about the Sony F-505? I can't track them one by one, but DPReview called the F-717 the "fourth generation" and later noted that the F-828, the last of the line, was "clearly" descended from the F-717. Then it went kaput. So, five. How about the Olympus OM-1 film cameras? I count the OM-1, OM-1N, OM-2, OM-2N, OM-3 (the mechanical model that worked without a battery, once highly prized and very highly priced on the used market, but now affordable again), and finally the OM-4 and OM-2S. That's seven, although it includes the "N" updates—questionable—and leaves out a few variants that had top and bottom plates made of titanium.

How many iterations were there of the original Canon 10D? I'm not sure. How about the Olympus XA pocket point-and-shoot, which evolved into the Stylus? Can anyone help us out here and count out the lineage of any particular model lineages that they're personally familiar with? I tended to pay attention only to the makes-'n'-models I was personally interested in or owned.

Leica headache
Count on the Germans to throw a wrench into the generalization. Try counting the lineage of, say, the Porsche 911. It's like the old Philosophy 101 problem of the Ship of Theseus—the newest one has almost nothing in common with the first one except the name and, very vaguely, the shape. The Leica M lineage might have a few more than seven, but it depends on how you count. I wouldn't count the one-off models, and I wouldn't count the M5, because it wasn't really the same camera as the rest of them. And how would you count the new M6 and old M6? One model or two? Here's how I'd count them, in order: M3, M2, M4, M6 early and late, M7, MP/M-A. So, six. But that might be too convenient, counted in such a way that it fits into my predetermined scheme. If you count all the variants and include the M5 and M1, then the M is an outlier. Either way I certainly would not group the digital M models with the film lineup—those are stylistically replicants, but fundamentally different. That lineage started with the M8 and extends, so far, to the M11.

How about the Olympus C-2000Z lineage? How many cameras were included in that before it fizzled? Or the Nikon Coolpix 900/950 lineage with the famous swivel body? My brother had one of those, and that was really a fun camera to use.

Is there any digital camera that has reached Mark VIII—eight? The indefatigable Sony RX100 has reached Mark VII status, despite the blitz of the iPhone/Android locust swarm. The celebrated Fuji X100 is up to Mark V and still going strong. How would you count the Ricoh GR models, film and then digital?

So then, how many iterations do you guess will the venerable A7R eventually rack up, before Sony finally overhauls its position in the lineup and makes an all-new model? It can't go on forever.

I have no crystal ball. But then, I've never been a betting man.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Kenneth Tanaka: "The apparent invisible boundary on model sequences is based solely on marketing psychology rather than technological incrementalization. (Sony’s A7R V offers the same resolution with a new processor and AI-based AF enhancements.) But, yes, I’d bet that an 'A8' or similar marketing reboot will come next, if the line continues."

Joseph T: "Olympus E-PL1 through 10, skipping 4."

SteveW: "iPhone 14."

Robert Roaldi: "There was no Canon G8, I don't believe, and they skipped G13 and G14 to go straight to G15 and then G16. (The G7 did not support RAW, an anomaly.) So, not counting the G7 because of the RAW omission, there were 12 iterations."

Dan Montgomery: "The 'Grand Tour' guys (formerly the 'Top Gear' guys) report that Subaru has sold 212 versions of the Impreza, grouped into five 'generations.' Impressive—and impressive cars, though I don't think I'd like to actually meet anyone who can talk about all 212 variants."

Søren Engelbrecht: "Time for my old Leica joke, it seems:

Q: 'How do the locals count to ten in the city of Wetzlar?'
A: "3, 2, 1, 4, 5, 4.2, 6, 7, 8, 8.2, 9, 240, 10.'"

Mike replies: Made me laugh anyway!

Michael McCulloch: "Ship of Theseus? I prefer Trigger's Broom:

Mike replies: Love it. Nice skit. That's like Howard Mansfield's book about restoring things, The Same Ax, Twice.

HDR Merge in ACR

Contrail Above Farm

Calm Hazy Day, Seneca Lake

A couple more new shots. I hope my new camera is not overstaying its welcome. If you look at the second one on Flickr, you can see some nice detail in the boat.

This last one is just a test shot. It was blazingly bright, with the sun glaring off the walk and the shadows all but black to the eye. I took three quick frames, one at metered exposure, one greatly overexposed, and the last greatly underexposed, and did an HDR merge in Adobe Camera Raw. It's very easy to do—you just open all three pictures at once, right click on any one of them and select "HDR Merge." The interesting thing about this is that I made all three pictures handheld rather than on the tripod. The dialogue box has a box to tick that tells the program to automatically align the images. I did get a few artifacts in this, and, also, when I took the metered exposure and simply processed that, it came pretty close to this result. So the jury's still out on whether that's a technique I'll use occasionally (when called for) or just ignore it and make do with one exposure in high-contrast situations. We'll see. It's at least another option as a backup for a picture I really want.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Michael Matthews: "Is it a lens effect—or has the pool shed developed a list to the right?"

Mike replies: 'Tis a little wopplejawed, yes. (Wopplejawed: Hoosier variant of whomperjawed, hillbilly/Southern for "askew.")

John McMillan: "My very Southern Ma loved the word, but pronounced it 'whoppyjawed.'"

Jim: "For years I shot landscapes only with 8x10" or 4x5" view cameras. Often I would encounter a scene where the range of brightness was too great to reveal texture in both the highlight and shadow areas. Then I would make a pre-exposure through a piece of frosted plexiglass, followed by a regular exposure. Here is one example, taken in bright morning light with deep shadows."

Mike replies: As you know, Jim, but others might not, that's a technique called pre-exposure, meant to counteract the fact that B&W film has an exposure threshold—that is, it has to receive a small amount of image-forming light before it starts forming a latent image. Pre-exposure is meant to get the sheet of film into the reciprocity range so that shadows begin building immediately, allowing you, in theory, to give less exposure, and thus restrain the highlights, for contrast control. (And dappled sunlight in the woods is indeed surprisingly contrasty.) Pre-exposure is described by Ansel Adams in his photography series. I once built a pre-exposure box out of plexi—a black cube, open at opposing ends, with a sheet of translucent white in the middle. You put this over the lens and gave the film a predetermined small shot of non-image-forming light prior to taking the picture.

Personally, when comparing pre-exposed negatives with the same scene that was not pre-exposed, I couldn't reliably tell the difference, so I just dispensed with using the method. I imagined that maybe the film in Ansel's day behaved differently, and the corrective effect was more pronounced. Although it's possible my technique was simply not rigorous enough to achieve the intended effects, or I screwed up somewhere in the implementation, who knows. 

Rob Campbell: "Something that I think I notice: in the last picture, there seems as if something is missing in the tonality of the buildings’ walls. I can’t put my finger on what it is, exactly, more a vague sense of missing contrast than just due to the quality of light on the planks? I have sometimes found this very same thing on some of my own pictures, too. I don’t remember it from my film days. Any ideas?"

Mike replies: Probably just that we're looking at an 800-pixel-wide JPEG in which a whole lot of information has to be thrown away—including, perhaps, the texture cues for the walls. It's also possible that certain tones get compressed too much in the process of adjusting the sliders, with some "micro ranges" of tones becoming a bit too flat or too harsh. Another way of saying this is that the curve becomes discontinuous, with jagged peaks and dropouts. But I don't know for sure. Where I see it most is in the fact that digital just doesn't have enough information in the highlights. It's one of the main reasons (IMO) for using a high-resolution, high-megapixel camera—the highlights can have more information in them, and thus can look more natural.

Eric Brody: "Whether the merge to HDR works well seems to depend a lot on the scene. I often shoot five-shot HDR's at 1–2 stop intervals and combine them. When I look later at the original images, often one of them is quite adequate, so I toss the others along with the HDR. With the dynamic range of today's cameras—mine is pretty good—HDR is often not needed. When it's noticeable, it's UGLY!"

Fishing for Pictures

I had to go to the doctor this morning to get my head examined. Er, ears. He told me cheerfully that I have "eustachian tube dysfunction," and that there are lots of treatments for it but that none of them work. That information cost me a $45 copay, but I got this nice picture afterwards.

(larger version)

One of the fellows told me they get lake trout and northern pike. I go fishing a lot too, but always for pictures.

One of my favorite essays of my own is "Key Thoughts and the Zen of Fishing," although I don't think that one is any more or less popular with readers than many others. Here's a quote:

Oh, and there’s one more nice correspondence between photography and fishing: the more time you spend, the more inevitable success becomes. You can’t catch a fish without having your line in the water, and you won’t take good pictures without your camera in your hand. Photography is comforting that way. Spend the time, and you’ll get results.

Color filters and white balance
I'm now fascinated by the color filter issue. I can't imagine that white balance (WB) matters with a stripped sensor, but maybe it does. I just don't know enough about it. I've ordered a few more filters, including a stronger yellow filter (more $$$ out the door) and I'll run some experiments with the WB when I continue to investigate the color filters. The picture above was taken with no filter.

You know what else costs a lot when photographing up here? Gas! At least this morning I had to drive to Geneva anyway, so it didn't cost anything extra to get this shot. 

The picture was taken out at the end of the appropriately named Long Pier, in Geneva, New York.

Mike

Learning the fp(m)

(Ed. note: Before we get going here, I know that very few people are directly interested in my explorations of the fp(m). It's a quirky, offbeat camera, not a mainstream choice, and few people will ever see one much less own one. But I'm recounting some of my experiences with it to convey a sense of what I go through when I familiarize myself with a new camera and get set up to use it. You don't have to be familiar with every camera to be a good photographer...you just have to be thoroughly familiar with yours.)

So here's one thing I worked out last night: I've been griping about the lack of an ISO dial on the fp(m). I can assign ISO to the rear wheel—you know, the four-way pad made into a dial? But I hate fiddling with those. I'm too clumsy and my fingers are too big, and I'm forever activating one of the buttons when all I want to do is spin the dial. But I figured out a different way. If I leave the Quick Menu set on ISO, it will stay there. I did not know that. And then the top dial, which is comfortable and unambiguous, will change ISO. So I have the fast ISO change dial I wanted; I just didn't know it. All I have to do for my (relatively infrequent) ISO changes is hit the QM button (which Sigma labels "QS," for "quick set") and use the top dial. Viola, as the guy in the string quartet used to say. There's nothing else in the QS menu I'll be wanting to reset with any regularity.

ISO tests
Speaking of ISO, here's another thing about the stripped sensor that my tests last night made clear. Since I had the tripod set up and a test scene (a.k.a. my kitchen cooktop) ready, I did an ISO series, from 100 to 6400. Take a look at these 100% details (they'll be at 100% after you click on them, and you can pull both up at the same time to compare them side-by-side):

ISO 200 (100% after you click on it)

ISO 3200 (100% after you click on it)

Since a lot of digital camera noise at high ISOs is chroma noise, the monochrome sensor is relatively insensitive to changes in ISO. ISO 6400 is perfectly usable, and I can honestly hardly tell the difference between ISO 200 and ISO 800. Not sure I could pick out which is which in a blind test. I plan to do one more series outdoors with full-spectrum midday sunlight today to confirm.

Oh, and I discovered that colored filters on the lens make virtually no difference. They should, if my obviously incomplete understanding of the physics had been correct—but they don't. So, despite my historical fondness for yellow filters with B&W, I'm going to stop using them. At least that will restore the native sensitivity of the monochrome sensor. Depending on the light, the mono sensor is up to two stops more sensitive than a sensor with a color filter array (CFA).

Mike

Featured Comments:

Jason Melancon: "Well I'm glad I'm not the only one. First thing I did when I was initially testing the fp(m) was put yellow and red filters on the lens and then be puzzled for a while. (And I did well in my physics courses way back in yesteryear, so I didn't have an excuse.) But I quickly became so enamored with the fp(m) mono images that my chagrin was mollified."

MikeR: "I may never buy one, but I'm still interested in what you're doing with that unique camera."

Ken Tanaka: "Your higher-ISO observation with this fp(m) seems perfectly consistent with Leica's M10 Monochrome, as reported by David Farkas of Leica Store Miami in 2020."

Ken James: "I am loving your explorations of the Sigma even though I have zero chance of ever owning one. Keep it up. Thanks."

MHMG: "Mike wrote: 'Oh, and I discovered that colored filters on the lens make virtually no difference. They should, if my obviously incomplete understanding of the physics had been correct—but they don't. So, despite my historical fondness for yellow filters with B&W, I'm going to stop using them.'

"That's a rather sobering conclusion in one's quest for the 'ideal' monochromatic camera sensor!

"Perhaps Ctein or some other qualified expert can weigh in on this, so correct me if I'm wrong because it's not my area of expertise, but I recall that the native spectral sensitivity of silver halide emulsions is in the the UV/blue spectrum. It took decades of research to push that sensitivity further (using chemical sensitizing dyes) into the green for 'orthochromatic' spectral response and then finally into the red for 'panchromatic' spectral response, whereas the native spectral response of silicon sensors is almost the inverse, i.e., high native sensitivity in the red/infrared, lower in the green, and lowest in the UV/blue portion of the spectrum. This spectral imbalance gets corrected when the sensor is designed to deliver accurate/pleasing color response from, for example, a Bayer patterned array, i.e., amplifying the red, green, and blue filtered pixels to different levels. This native sensor response would also account for why the blue channel tends to show the most noise in modern digital cameras because it needs the greatest sensitivity/gain correction. Lastly, it may explain why traditional red and yellow filters used so successfully with B&W films have so much less effect (hard to believe it's zero, but still logically much less) when a modern silicon sensor designed for color imaging gets stripped of its bayer color pattern array and reverted to a 'naked' silicon sensor.

"Anyway, it would be interesting to learn what the true spectral response of your converted-to-monochrome digital camera is really like, but from what you say, it sounds like it cannot be expected to match output tonal rendering similar to traditional B&W film stocks. Seems a deal-breaker to me if that was the goal. However, Mike's recent monochrome imaging results are impressive on their own merits, so perhaps I should just 'get over it.'  :-) "

Jon Maxim: "Looking at the side-by-side 100% images I believe I can see the difference quite clearly in the midtones, like a kind of 'grain.' Look at the salt shaker and I think you will see what I mean—even in the shaded part of the white background. However, it is not unpleasant—kind of like comparing Tri-X to Plus-X."

Christer Almqvist: "Film photography was a great learning experience, but through it I also acquired a bad habit; thinking that shooting at low ISO was a good thing in itself. Perhaps it was—then. But now I shoot digital. It has been really difficult to get rid of this low-ISO-is-good habit. Now I shoot at all sorts of ISO, sometimes at incredibly high numbers for a film user. Working to get rid of that old habit has paid off. It broadened my scope."

Jason's Camera Changed My Life

And this is it! This is the last picture with Jason's monochrome fp(m), and the last picture in the Flickr album of test shots. A BIG thanks to Jason for the loan of the camera.

My own fp(m) came home yesterday. Since I now have both cameras here, I spent the evening making a series of comparison shots to make sure the new camera is working as expected (it is), comparing the various menu settings so I can start where I left off, and doing a few boring tests. Oh, and I also thoroughly perfluxed and bedaddled my decrepit old brain by spending a solid hour turning the house, grounds, drawers, and dog upside down looking for the new fp's battery charger! Sure, I had Jason's attached to an outlet in the kitchen, where I've been charging the battery for weeks now, but what in the world did I do with mine? I must have looked through the box three times, as if I couldn't believe it wasn't there, and searched high and low for the thing, wondering all the while why I had removed it from the box and what I possibly could have done with it.

You're ahead of me, aren't you? I finally thought to check the "in the box" list at Adorama, where I bought the kit...and...there's no charger included. And the proper USB charger of Jason's I've been using costs ninety-five dollars. NINETY-FIVE DOLLARS. And it's nothing special, just a regular old garden-variety charger. Cheap little bits o' plastic 'n' wire. So that's one way they get you. Sheesh.

Don't run out of 'film'
While I'm confessing my peccadilloes, I guess I have to admit that I drove to Geneva three nights ago and on the way home saw a wonderful scene with roiling clouds and the sun struggling to peep through. I screeched to a halt, backtracked, grabbed the camera and jumped out of the car, and..."No Media." Fer Pete's sake, Mike, really?

Well, that won't happen again. With the new camera, a new card goes in whenever the old one comes out, no exceptions. Sheesh!

Mike

Featured Comments:

Albert Smith: "I was in the Air Force and whenever a major (or even minor) component was removed from an aircraft, besides the usual documentation in the aircraft forms, a tag was put on to let others know that things were removed and to not try to use as normal. In my own life I do continue with this practice. I made up several tags: 'NO BATT' and 'NO CARD' and I tie them to the camera strap with bread twist ties any time that I remove either the battery (for charging) or the card (for direct uploading). I have several cameras, and this practice has absolutely saved me from grabbing an inoperable camera for what would be a disappointing outing."

Grant: "On behalf of the TOP readers, I would like to nominate Jason for the Nobel, or Pulitzer, or something that's worthy of his contribution to TOP. This series of posts have been among the best ever seen here. Thank you Jason."

Not THAT Ross Cameron: "LOL—you’re not the only one. I have a nice little kit for a Nikon 1 V2 and a few lenses. If the family is going for a bushwalk somewhere, I like to bring it along. If I’m planning for it, I’ll get things organised the night before, and all goes well. If I think to myself 'I’ll grab it in the morning,' then I’ll quickly grab the bag on the way out of the house, and once we get to the start of the walk I invariably face one of these three things: flat battery, no battery, or no card. You’d think I’d learn…."

2022 Leica M6 Price

Rob Campbell writes: "Film only makes sense if it returns to pre-digital price levels."

Actually, in the case of the 2022 M6, it did.

The new Leica M6 costs $5,295. That's virtually the same as it was in 1992, which was pre-digital for almost all of us.

I found this at Photo.net, posted by "JDMvW." He reports that it's from Popular Photography in July of 1992:

And I ran that through the U.S. Inflation Calculator maintained by CoinNews, and got this:

Q.E.D.

I'm not trying to help you rationalize a purchase, mind you. Film still costs a lot, in money, time, and effort, and it's a PITA, and there are tons of other options for those who want to shoot "miniature format," as it was sometimes called way back in the 1930s and '40s. I mean 135, a.k.a. 35mm. (What's in a name? We now call it "full frame.") And make no mistake, the Leica M6 was extravagantly expensive in 1992. That was the year I bought mine. I paid $2,000 for a used one, saving ~$500, along with another $1k for a 35mm Summicron, which was roughly 3–4X what you'd pay for the equivalent Canon or Nikon lens then. But you can't deny that the 2022 M6 costs the same as it did in 1992, adjusted for inflation. I love to complain about Leica prices, and don't worry, I'll continue to be all sour-grapey. But ya gotta give credit where credit is due.

A fortune hanging from a strap
I had a couple of problems with my M6 that were related to price. First, I felt exposed carrying around $3k on a strap on my shoulder. It was too much for me to lose, and I was often conscious of it. It felt a little like holding someone else's infant. Second, I couldn't justify keeping the M6 after I switched to Olympus and bought an OM-4T, a camera that suited me much better and that I did better work with. It was too much money to keep tied up in a camera I wasn't using, at that time. I was "forced" to sell it. I subsequently owned two other M6's, including actor Jack Lemmon's. I sold Jack's M6 to Art Elkon, who passed away a few years ago. Don't know what happened to the camera.

But I did shoot with the M6 for a solid year, in '91–92, and did a lot of shooting, carrying it with me every day ("I put my camera on in the morning and take it off in the evening, like my shirt" —David Vestal) and it's an experience I'm very glad I have under my belt. Remember "The Leica as Teacher"? One of my more popular essays here.

Now if someone would just create an updated and upgraded new version of the OM-2N—and sell it for the same price as one cost in 1984, adjusted for inflation—then you'd really have something!*

That is all,

Mike

*If you ask me, one bargain 35mm film camera to check out these days if you want to shoot FFF (full frame film, guffaw) is the little-known and even less appreciated Olympus OM-2S. It had the simplicity of the OM-2 and OM-2N, but with weather sealing, and much of the guts, including the same shutter, of the fancier OM-4T, the flagship at the time. (Using the flash drained the battery, which explains some of the market's aversion—so then, just don't use it with the flash.) The OM-4T is also a great camera, but its fancy metering features, though deeply beloved of gearheads (including Yr. Hmbl. Ed.) when it was current, were actually of pretty limited usefulness practically speaking. Today, OM-4T prices are higher, as they are for all "apex" models, no matter how old. It still costs more to buy a Leica IIIg than a Leica IIIf! People want the latest model even when the latest model is 65 years old. Makes no sense to me. It's that MMB complex I mentioned the other day.

So get an OM-2S and then spring for a thorough CLA (clean lube adjust) by a reputable repair-person—John Hermanson might be at the top of that heap for old OM film cameras. It will give you a lot of what you can get from a brand-spanking new 2022 M6, minus the status of the latter among the limited coterie of the cognoscenti of course.

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, Second Edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. UPDATE: When I posted this "Book of the Week" two days ago, Amazon said it had ten copies left at a reasonable price. Well, look at the price now! Guess I'd better go find a new book of the week. Timing is everything.  :-)

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Lothar Adler: "I am always surprised that the Zeiss Ikon ZI rangefinder camera is almost never mentioned, although it is a really very good camera and has everything you need. Including a very good viewfinder with a much larger measuring base for better focusing than with a Leica—I had tested both in parallel with the same lenses and finally bought the ZI, with which I am very satisfied. Unfortunately not digital, which I am almost embarrassed to confess."

Mike replies: I certainly mentioned it!

Peter Tutt: "I am with you Mike with the OM2S. I bought one new back whenever for the spot metering. Great for the street too, hold it upside down, 28mm lens, and nobody knows. I put a heap of T-Max 100 through it and it's still going strong. Gem of a camera!"

The Ultimate Icon: Leica Re-Introduces the M6

Even the box is an homage

"Iconic" is a buzzword that is heavily overused now—everything mildly familiar, no matter how trivial, is called "iconic"—but, today, Leica re-introduced the, yes, iconic M6 film camera.

The new version is highly respectful of the 1984–2002 original, down to having "Leitz" on the red dot. Which might have taken some doing—the founding Leitz family sold Leica in 1986 and originally forbade the new owners from using the cherished family name. However, the new one's not an out-and-out replica. There are a number of technical updates and luxurious touches.

• All optical surfaces will be coated. At one point, under earlier owners, Leica tried to cut corners with coatings in the rangefinder optics. Users for a spell complained of spurious reflections in the finder, a problem Leica hastily fixed without admitting there was a problem.
• The top plate will be made of brass with a tough black lacquer. (Black paint is—all right—iconic.)
• The original M6 (basically the Canadian M4-P with an uncoupled light meter cleverly added) just had two little arrows that told you which way to turn the aperture ring to get proper exposure. Later models added a red dot in between the two arrows as confirmation of correct exposure; the new M6 has the red confirmation dot.
• The shutter speed dial is the right size and turns the right way! A victory for the way things are supposed to be.
• A low battery warning has been added. All right, but it took more than a year to run down the battery in an original M6. The quaint but pleasing custom was to replace the battery every year on your birthday, whether it needed replacing or not. You apparently need a newfangled nagging nanny warning. Okay, we're good with that. Me, I hate the tire pressure warning system in my Honda. The old tire pressure warning system was me with a pressure gauge, and it worked much better. Am I digressing again?

There is also a new and (gasp!) tiny (another win for the way things are supposed to be) 35mm Summilux V1 Steel Rim, which Jono Slack has been using for months now.

Cue gushy happy YouTubby comparos between vintage Leitz-labeled '80s M6's and the gleaming new one in 3, 2....

Mike

P.S. If you're buying one, a plea to wait until B&H has 'em for preorder so you can use my links...okay, you're probably not that patient. I understand. Go ahead, I'll eat cat food.  :-]

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, second edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. And they are legion. You will actually learn practical stuff from this one. Used, but this is the latest edition from 2011.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Rob L: "Cool! My M6 is again a current model!  :-)  It's really the best M, so glad they brought her back."

John Krill: "I guess if I have to ask the price I can't afford it."

Mike replies: $5,295 body only. Bear in mind there are lots of choices for lenses that don't have to cost an arm and a leg and an arm. Especially from Voigtlaender and Zeiss.

Albert Smith: "Maybe this old-school lens might be a good compliment to the new M6. Leica is reissuing the first generation pre-aspheric 35mm ƒ/1.4 Summilux, same optics in modern body. You could drop 10 grand for the camera and lens. So glad the I bought my M6 when it only cost $2,000 in the late '80s."

Mike replies: Not that it matters, but I myself coined the term "king of bokeh," way back in '97. But not about the original of that lens.

Ned Bunnell: "Mike, regarding your B&H link, I was told the M6 will only be sold through Leica stores and Leica direct here in the U.S. And in very small quantities. So it’ll be interesting to see if B&H gets them."

Mike replies: Figures. So it's just another special edition after all, for collectors.

Ned: "Mike, this is not a special edition just for collectors. By 'small quantities,' I simply meant they’re being made by hand in Germany so production yields will obviously be much smaller than a company who builds a large production run at the start of a new model release. Depending on the response Leica gets, it could be awhile before you get your camera. I also am guessing that Leica knows what used M6’s are going for these days, so they decided they could capture a good percent of this money by offering a new model. I actually think this is a smart move on their part. Since they still have all the tooling for the M6, development costs are much less than designing and building a brand new model."

Rob Campbell (partial comment): "Film only makes sense if it returns to pre-digital price levels. Other than that, it’s just a silly conceit."

Luke: "Wait...you have to buy a whole new sensor after every few shots? How 'iconic.'"

Ernest Zarate: "Shortly after I got the settlement for the motorcycle accident in which I nearly lost my lower left leg, I bought myself a new M6. Looked just like this, presentation box and all. I got the Leica 35mm ƒ/2 lens, too. Terrific camera. So precise and extremely well engineered. Very…German. But it got sold a few years later so I could get the Mamiya 6.

"Now, that camera was a masterpiece. But I do think of my M6 now and then. I don’t regret selling it. And I’m not laying down the thousands of dollars for this brand new re-intro version (though if I had the do re mi…hmmm…). But I do think of it now and then. That Leica *snick* shutter mechanism was and is intoxicating. In the end, it wasn’t the right camera for me. We never really clicked, it and me. I never did any memorable or really meaningful work with it. Maybe in a sense it was too much camera, or, rather, it was too freighted with the Leica Legacy for me. It was too much a hurdle to get over. A camera (for me) has to be a tool, form following function, that gets me results. That just never happened with this camera. Anyway, it’s a very nice memory I have and I’m happy to see the M6 back."

Alan King: "It’s interesting that they re-issued the original 35mm Summilux. I owned one of the originals, made in Germany, from the second-to-last batch. For myself the lens was unusable wide open, though it was fine stopped down. It was my primary lens for 12 years or so because it was so small and light. When its value hit $3,000 it finally became too expensive to keep. I ended up buying three brand new Voigtländer lenses, and a certain peace of mind, with the money."

Peak Color

We've had a picture-perfect Fall season here in the Finger Lakes, with lots of cool weather to cue the leaves to change. This past weekend was probably peak color. Both days were beautiful, sunny and clear. I had to reluctantly set Jason's fp(m) aside and get my color camera out (of my pocket).

"Peak color" is a strange notion. Human beings are generally subject to the MBB complex—"mostest biggest bestest." If somebody builds a ginormous house, the next person wants a bigger one. If somebody drives a humongous pickup truck, the next guy wants a better one. The changing of the leaves is an odd thing to want to max out, but we're humans—we want there to be a peak!

And what's "peak" supposed to be, anyway? Is it a single day? An hour? A minute, maybe?

I don't think there is a "peak." The changing and falling of the leaves in Autumn is a shifting, changing show that doesn't have any absolute climax. From beginning to end it's lovely. Phase shifts into phase and stage slides into stage and then changes again. My observation is that the most beautiful time in a beautiful place lasts a while, each day being a little different. The top of the bell curve is a flat stretch of days that are wonderful if the light cooperates.

I guess that's the peak, then. Anyway, if there is a peak, we're in it. And is it ever pretty to look at.

By the way, these pictures are just illustrations, meant to show you what the area looked like over the weekend. Taken with the note-taking camera. I don't take real pictures of fall foliage.  :-)

May I have my B&W back now, pretty please?

Mike

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, second edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. And they are legion. You will actually learn practical stuff from this one. Used, but this is the latest edition from 2011.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

The Piano Man (OT)

Just thought I'd share this.

If the old adage "99% of everything is crap" is true, it that means a whopping 1% of everything is not crap. Which would mean that you can find gems among all kinds of human endeavor, creation, or expression.

Occasionally I run across something lovely in an online comment. This is an example. I encountered this little story in the comment stack under a video comparing different pianos. It's by one Stephen Ryder, and was written about two years ago. I hope it's okay to quote it—it's a little long for "Fair Use," but I'll chance it. I've edited it as I would a TOP comment, i.e., a little, but not much.

Stephen Ryder: "I was born to a poor family that didn't own a piano but I somehow developed a love for the sound of piano music. In the early 1950s, when I was ten years old, my older sister somehow wound up with an upright piano. It was in her room and I was not allowed in there. But like any self-respecting ten-year-old boy I sneaked in when no one was home, and over the next four or five years I taught myself to play—by ear of course. My sister never did pick it up and never played it, so there were never any fakebooks or sheet music in the house.

"As a teenager, girls suddenly got interesting, and there was sports—and one day on a clandestine mission to the room I discovered the piano was gone. For the next twenty years, still poor, I never saw or touched a piano again. Too busy trying to put food in my mouth and keep some kind of a roof over my head.

"In my travels—usually looking for work—I would encounter a piano in a hotel lobby, or a school where I was working temporarily as a janitor. Or in a house I was cleaning. I would play any and every chance I got. I learned to read music. I became acquainted with Mozart and Franz Liszt—and the music filled a certain ache in an otherwise empty life. In my thirties, I played a Steinway Concert D at Steinway hall on 57th street in New York. It was magical. The piano actually helped me play—as if it knew I had never played so fine a piano before. In Sydney Australia once, I got to play an old Baldwin S10 with its sweet sentimental sensuality in the action. Played a proud old Bluthner in Berlin in the 'sixties.

"Now that I'm pushing 80 my vagabond days are over, and I survive on Veteran's benefits. I'll never have the opportunity to play a fine piano again. I hope you know you are blessed by God to be able to play these masterpieces—and I can see by the smile on your face when you got up from that Fazioli that you play with your heart, not your hands. Thank you for the sharing the joy with me."

(posted by)  Mike

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, second edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. And they are legion. You will actually learn practical stuff from this one. Used, but this is the latest edition from 2011.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Albert Smith: "This is where technology has really made a significant leap. Today, compact yet capable electric keyboards allow those with limited funds or restrictive space to have they ability to own and play this instrument. These use to be a significant piece of furniture which also required routine maintenance in the form of tuning to keep operating. How many potential Elton Johns never had the opportunity to play?"

Andrew: "Forgive my cynicism. A lovely sentimental (perhaps overwrought) story, with more than a couple of red flags. A poor family in the '50s with a child's bedroom large enough for a piano? Young Mr. Ryder learns to play the piano by ear over 4–5 years with no one in the family noticing? Then the piano is moved out of the house without him noticing? He doesn't touch a piano again until his mid-30s (presumably serving in the military during that time)? Following which, his vagabond travels take him to NYC, Sydney and Berlin? I don't typically read the comments (other than on TOP of course), but I've seen similar dewy-eyed tall tales posted below YouTube videos. A touching story, but I have my doubts." 

Mike replies: It could well be that it was written by a 15-year-old with imagination, but if it's fiction it works for me!

GMSU*

My converted Sigma fp is finished and on its way home! By the bye, Daniel, who does the conversions, prefers that the converted camera be known as the Sigma fp(m)**. So that's how I'll refer to it from now on.

I'm still behind on getting new images up on the Flickr page, but I'll get to that soon.

By the way, it was interesting hearing peoples' opinions about what prints to offer. As always, I learned something—multiple people liked "Corn at the Harvest," which is not one of my favorites, and my own favorite picture, "Sun After Rain," only got two mentions. The sample was small, but I'm rethinking whether to include "Sun After Rain." Thanks for your help.

Mike

*Great Monochrome Safari Update

**Actually he wrote "FP(m)" but Sigma styles the model name with lowercase letters, and site style is to follow the official manufacturer names for products. So I'll let Sigma dictate how to write the "fp," and let Daniel dictate how to write the "(m)."

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, second edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. And they are legion. You will actually learn practical stuff from this one. Used, but this is the latest edition from 2011.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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 Stubbs: "Along the lines of which of your photos drew the most mentions compared to your favorites, I can share an experience. I was for ten years a staff photographer with a big, regional magazine. At the end of every year, our Art Director would pin up that year’s twelve covers and all the editorial staff were invited to rank them from high to low in newsstand sales. As a group, we were never more than 50% accurate. You never can tell."

Coming Fuji X-T5 to Have 3-Way Tilt Screen

Fujirumors is predicting that the tilting viewing screen will be restored to the upcoming Fuji X-T5, due to be announced and shipped in November. It claims that the likelihood of this happening is "100%."

The new camera is also rumored to have 40 MP, and no vertical grip is planned. I've owned a vertical grip for my X-T1 for years and have yet to use it a second time, so I guess this doesn't alarm me personally.

Given that I still own an X-T1 and haven't really "taken" to the X-H1 for whatever reason, I ought to begin saving up for an X-T5. I have a lot of Fujinon X lenses.

More holistically, I hope that the existence of the X-H2[s] will mean that Fuji feels okay about not stuffing the X-T5 to the gills with gee-whiz features. Fujis were always fun to use, and that was arguably their best "feature."

Mike

Book o' the Week

Annie Leibovitz. At long last, the unlimited trade edition of the humongous, limited Sumo edition by Taschen. Mind you, this is still a huge book—15.4 inches high, 556 pages, and almost 13 pounds. And the price! (But that's nothing—the Sumo weighed 57 pounds and cost $7,500.) This is the closest ordinary folks (with ordinary shelves) will get to the ultimate Annie.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Nico.: "According to the Fuji lens roadmap there’s also a 30mm (45mm eq.) macro lens due this year. With Fujicron form factor(?) Wasn’t ~40–45mm your favourite focal length, Mike?"

Mike replies: Yes, and both my current Sigma lenses are 45mm or the equivalent angle of view. There's nothing special about 45mm, it's just that many of us (not all!) have focal lengths with which we feel at home.

Update

Norton has informed me that it will "whitelist" my site within 48 hours and that I will receive confirmation via phone...and those of you who have gotten warnings will stop getting them. I'll let you know. Sorry again for any inconvenience.

—Mike with IT hat on. I still don't know anything, I just have the hat.

Picking Pictures for a Sigma fp-M Print Sale

Well this should be great fun for a Sunday!

Ctein and I have agreed in principle on having a print sale of the Sigma fp-M test shots, so you can see for yourself what prints from a full-frame sensor converted to monochrome look like.

Car Coming

They will be rather large—what Ctein considers full size for his own work, on premium 17x22" paper with generous borders. There will be three, plus a premium. One of the prints will be "Car Coming," which you can see here. Another will be an 8x10 of "Wet Asphalt," which will be a free premium for anyone who orders the set of three.

But what should the other two be? Here's the folder.

I have a few more to upload, which I'll do this week, but nothing special enough to think it would be a pick.

Some history
I started this idea way back in the '90s at Photo Techniques magazine, as the "Collector Print" series. The idea was to give people excellent examples of various techniques, so people could see for themselves what the techniques looked like. One of the earliest sales at PT was of prints made from the first affordable digital camera, the Canon D30 (no, not the 30D!), a 3-MP(!) digital SLR that cost "only" $3,000. It was the Canon of the Millennium, announced in very early 2000, and people were very excited about the possibilities it offered going on 23 years ago now. Those prints were by a Canadian fellow named Michael Reichmann, who later became famous as "MR" of The Luminous-Landscape, one of the most important enthusiast websites of digital's early years. I'm sure many of you remember him with fondness, as do I.

Over the years we offered a great variety of prints: examples of true darkroom unsharp masking (it took a whole day just to make the mask); Cibachromes; real dye transfers; Peter Turnley prints made by Voja Mitrovic, the master printer who at one time made all of Henri Cartier-Bresson's and Josef Koudelka's and Sebastiao Salgado's prints; contact prints from large- and ultra-large-format negatives on true contact printing paper; real platinum-palladium prints; a super-large print made with the medium-format digital Leica S; the "father and son" diptychs by Paul and John Paul Caponigro, the former a master of older traditional techniques and the latter one of the very earliest artists to commit to digital means and methods, long before most others did; and many more. Even, most lately, prints from iPhone pictures, of all things. Apart from being technical examples, many of the prints we offered in the past were beautiful and unique in their own right.

As we always try to do if we can, we'll ship to anywhere in the world and all the shipping will be the same (reasonable) price. So as not to exclude anyone on account of logistics.

There's a lot of preparation that goes into a print offer, and we're just getting started. I just asked him yesterday and heard back from him this morning. But you'll be kept apprised as we make progress.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Annie Leibovitz. At long last, the unlimited trade edition of the humongous, limited Sumo edition by Taschen. Mind you, this is still a huge book—15.4 inches high, 556 pages, and almost 13 pounds. And the price! (But that's nothing—the Sumo weighed 57 pounds and cost $7,500.) This is the closest ordinary folks (with ordinary shelves) will get to the ultimate Annie.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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 Drake: "Hi Mike I initially quite liked the image 'Corn at Harvest' for its simplicity of subject and tonal range, but it doesn’t really have lasting appeal. I think I would go for 'Vultures Eating' (though it’s unfortunate that a vulture is flying out of the frame—though it does add some tension to the image perhaps?), as the drama and tonal range of the scene is fantastic! Or the 'Rain Across the Valley,' as the lighting is beautiful especially on the foreground corn."

Geoff Wittig: "Thanks, Mike! I have been slowly accumulating a small but lovely collection of photographic prints spanning the range of available printing technologies, including platinum/Palladium and dye transfer, almost all courtesy of TOP and for very reasonable prices. We have you to thank for this opportunity. I'm a landscape guy, but I'd have to cast my vote for 'Interior.' The palpable sense of space and light is wonderful."

The Norton Problem (Blog Note)

We recently had a spate of readers who were getting a warning from Norton saying TOP is not a safe site and that they should keep away. While it might sometimes put your discretionary cash in danger by encouraging you to buy a new lens, TOP is not otherwise dangerous.

(Somewhat suspiciously, all this happened right after an old subscription to Norton's services expired, and I declined to renew.)

If you had that problem, here's the rundown: TypePad tells me you're probably getting that warning because I linked to a site that is considered unsafe. First of all, sorry. Second, I don't know which link caused / is causing the problem, so if you could follow the "full report" link in your warning and let me know if there's any indication of which post is causing the trouble, I'd be grateful.

Third, I went to Google's Safe Browsing site status at Google Transparency Report and ran my URL, and TOP got the little green checkmark: "No unsafe content found." Then I went to Norton Safe Web, and requested a report for TOP, and got the green box with a big "OK" in it and the word "Safe" below it. So as far as I can tell both Google and Norton are now giving TOP the all clear.

So hopefully that means you are not getting the "danger / keep away" warnings from Norton any more. If you are, please let me know. And thanks to those who reported the problem the first time around! I'll try to do better about being careful what I link to.

—Mike, ABSCW (At Best Semi-Competent Webmaster)

The Three Main Aspects of Your Working Style

A number of readers have suggested that maybe Foveon sensors might be particularly suited to black and white.

It's true, they are. I was going to show you a picture of my DP-2 sitting on a shelf in my camera closet, but I'm having problems uploading images this morning. Sorry. (By the way, one of my pictures got chosen for Flickr's "Explore" feature again. This time it's "Wet Asphalt" that got chosen. Being picked for that feature sure does drive a lot of interest to a picture.)

But while the B&W results with the Foveon sensor were very good, the DP-2 lasted only one trial outing for me. The reason is that results aren't everything. There isn't just one reason to choose a particular method of working in photography. There are two other things to think about.

What are the three basic things?

1. Results
2. Operability (camera handling, controls, haptics, the viewfinder, etc.)
3. Workflow

• The quality of your results is, possibly, the most important thing. We want our pictures to look good. We want them to look the way we want them to look. (It's good to be particular when you're an artist.) Not only is it an individual choice, but the importance placed on this aspect is variable too: some people are extremely fastidious and demanding and are willing to get way into the weeds of "image quality"; others couldn't care less, or find it challenging to deal with any old camera. Some people emphasize the qualities of the equipment and properties of the materials, some people believe that skill and craft and familiarity are more important. And so on.
• "Operability" is an all-purpose umbrella word for what a camera is like to use. All sorts of things fall under this heading, from how it feels in your hand, how easy it is to carry and store, how pleasing it is to use and how much you like and enjoy it*, how adaptable it is to different tasks, even how it makes your subjects feel**. These aspects don't lie entirely with the device; how adept you become with your camera and how familiar it becomes to you—even what kind of work you do and how much work you do with it—are also considerations that pertain. It's an observable fact that if you do a lot of work with a particular camera, you're more likely to bond with it. If you bond with it, you feel affectionately toward it, and become more likely to forgive its foibles and shortcomings.
•  The third aspect is workflow. How do you get the image from exposure to its final form? What processes, methods, and tools do you need to use? How much mastery of these things do you need to acquire? How much will you do yourself and how much will you have done for you? At one point, my workflow included having color negative film commercially processed, but then exposing color paper under an enlarger with a color head in a completely dark room, then loading the paper into a cylindrical tube for wet processing in a machine called a JOBO. It's been a while now since then. Lately, my workflow starts with a software utility called Monochrome2DNG that eliminates artifacts and loss of resolution caused by color demosaicking that is no longer needed because monochrome-sensor digital files don't have any color information. This all falls under the heading of workflow.

Any one of these three aspects of working can make your life miserable, and yet a large amount of frustration can be tolerated in one aspect if it's balanced out by improvements in another. It all depends on your priorities. I suspect, though, that if one of these three aspects is too lacking or too much of a headache or a hassle, you're not likely to be happy enough in the long run.

Foveon and on
Foveon for B&W...been there, done that. Results: A. Operability: D+. Workflow: D–. As opposed to the converted Sigma I'm currently using, which I would rate B+, B+, B. I'll take the latter. Despite one big sore point—the lack of a positive and easy-to-access ISO control—I really enjoy using the modified fp. I love the viewfinder, love the manual focus. Love the lens, its controls, and the way the controls feel. I find the camera very handy, very involving in terms of interacting with the subject and helpful to visualizing, and quick and simple to use. That's just me—Ken tried one and didn't like it. We're all different. As for workflow, also easy. I import the files from the cards using the Monochrome2DNG utility and do 90% of everything else in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw, which is built into both Photoshop and Lightroom), same as always.

Lots of people put up with very involved workflows and I respect that. They go to great lengths to try to identify the best raw conversion software for each camera they own and even learn and master whole new raster image processors. Me, I've been using Photoshop since 1994, and that hasn't been long enough for me to learn much about it. I cling to ACR like a man overboard clings to a life raft. I don't know all there is to know about it. But I know enough. It's keeping me afloat. Not gonna change, because I can't swim. (I sometimes get into trouble with my metaphors! But you get the gist.)

Anyway, the point is, I'm only willing to put up with so much deficiency in any of these three basic areas. A lot of people are willing to go to great lengths; that's one of the things I admire about photographers. Me, I'm only willing to go so far, and I know that about myself.

Want my DP-2? Make me an offer. It's seen very little use.

Mike

*Lee Friedlander used to say he would sometimes start photographing because he just got the urge to get his Leica out and play with it.

**When I did some senior portraits years ago I discovered that high school girls were noticeably less comfortable when I switched from a slow 85mm lens with a small front element to a fast 85mm lens with a huge front element. One of them told me the big lens element was "like an eye" that was "staring" at her, and another told me that my camera, with the bigger lens, made her feel intimidated.

Book o' the Week

Annie Leibovitz. At long last, the unlimited trade edition of the humongous, limited Sumo edition by Taschen. Mind you, this is still a huge book—15.4 inches high, 556 pages, and almost 13 pounds. And the price! (But that's nothing—the Sumo weighed 57 pounds and cost $7,500.) This is the closest ordinary folks (with ordinary shelves) will get to the ultimate Annie.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Lex: "Nice article Mike. One might also add a fourth reason to choose a particular method of working in photography—financial cost. While arguably not strictly photo-related, in actual practice, for most of us, it is an integral part of the process. Thus, one might choose to sacrifice some aspect of one’s desired result quality, operability or workflow, in order to meet either a self-imposed or mandatory budget restraint."

Mike replies: I think you're right, I ought to have added that.

Daniele Chiesa: "I got lost somewhere: weren't you going to get your DP2 converted to B&W? Are you keeping the 'loaner' and selling the one to be converted?

"I have seen some of the best work of yours recently (according to me), and in good quantity too; it'd be good if you could keep it up, one way or another."

Mike replies: First I was going to get my old Sony NEX-6 converted, then it was going to be the Sony A6600. Then I decided to buy a Sigma fp with the 45mm Contemporary lens and LVF-11 finder, and that's what's off in Washington state being converted as we speak. Meanwhile, I've got both a monochrome-converted Sigma fp and a Leica Monochrom here on loan from (very kind) readers. I'll be doing a comparison test between my own fp and the Monochrom.

Rube: "My Sigma DP2 rocks, in color and in B&W. Have had it for years, but hardly touched it until I got two tips: 1: don't use auto white balance, and 2: import the files into the terribly slow and clunky Sigma PhotoPro, select your downloaded files, then select Extract JPEG File, export then import into whatever processor you want. Super fast, great files, and Bob's your uncle!"

Jeff: "Leica M10 Monochrom: A– (no digital camera matches film highlights); B+ (needs the accessory thumb grip, best suited for 28/35/50mm); A– (no color channels in post)."

Olybacker: "I know what you mean about manufacturers going primarily after video makers as customers. I blame it on TikTok and various Pandemic Lockdowns around the world.

"However, an articulated screen, fully articulated that is, is a good thing in my view. My first digital camera, an Olympus Camedia C5060, had one. When I passed that camera on to a friend of friends, the rear screen/viewfinder was in mint condition. Being able to fold it away meant that it was less vulnerable to damage from zips in winter, shirt buttons in summer and anything sharp-edged in the camera bag.

"Am delighted with a secondhand Olympus E-600 DSLR acquired recently for not a lot of money. It has a fully articulated rear screen, unlike my E-520, that can be folded away for protection or used for selfies, etc."

Mike replies: Oh, yes, I know a lot of people prefer them. I'm just one who doesn't. And some people don't care. There's no right or wrong answer, it's just preference.

Blog Note

More problems this morning—some images are not loading. Also, I am aware of the Norton antivirus problem. We are working on both of these problems and hope to have them resolved soon. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I'm about to upload a new post and will not include any images in it.

Mike

A Service to the Art

ChrisC wrote: "Now that you have ordered a [monochrome] conversion [for your Sigma fp], Fuji will announce a monochrome model within the next month.  :-)  "

Let me just admit...that I'm actually afraid of this! That shows how hypersensitive I have become after being a camera-maven most of my life. There have been various rumors that Pentax in particular will finally introduce an affordable monochrome model. You'd think that after waiting since at least 2006, I'd be pretty well convinced that such a thing will never happen. But Chris is right: the only thing that would be worse than it never happening would be that it will happen right after I order a sensor conversion! And karma being karma....

I'm kidding. Kind of.

Actually, not really. I still do hope Pentax or some other maker will come out with an affordable dedicated mono camera. Because it will be good for everyone, not just me. It will be a good thing to have available for those who want it. Even if they are few.

Because we must not lose sight of the essential incompatibility between the interests of the camera companies and our interests. In many ways we're aligned. But what they want is to make money. What I have always hoped for is for all photographers to have whatever they need to do their work. That's the important thing to me. Those two principles have a lot of overlap, but they diverge at the fundamental level.

I probably got conditioned to this by the Great Yellow Father—the old blue-chip Kodak of days gone by. There used to be a tradition in American business that profitable areas of a company's portfolio would be used to subsidize unprofitable services for customers. With Kodak, the mighty profit centers—color negative film and long rolls of paper for automated processors—subsidized a huge range of other products and services from which the company earned little, from B&W papers to the Kodak Process Thermometer Type 3 to a range of instructional books to the poison hotline. The overarching principle was that the company wanted to make plenty of money and it wanted photographers to have whatever they needed to do their work. But as American business schools turned ruthless, the latter goals increasingly got thrown out the window across the board. In the '70s and '80s it was an article of faith that the mass market in cameras subsidized the professional lines for the small minority of photographers who needed serious gear. No longer. The "mass market" these days is made up of cameras in smartphones provided by computer companies. And those companies could not care less whether serious photographers have what they need to do their work or not. They leave that entirely to the cameramaking companies, which are foundering*.

It's still what I care about. I still hope all photographers have what they need to do the work they want to do. Even if they are a small minority. Make no mistake: the first company that makes a good but affordable monochrome-sensor camera might not make money. But I will honor them for doing it. Because they will be doing a service to the community of dedicated photographers and to the art of photography. It will mean that another small subset of us will have what we need to be free to work, and that's always good.

Mike

*"The English language does not care if you are happy or sad. It is oblivious to your shrill entreaties for an orderly and sensible vocabulary. As proof of this supreme indifference we need look no further than the words founder and flounder, for no language that cares about its speakers would ever allow this kind of semantic cruelty to exist." (Merriam-Webster, "Can a Ship 'Flounder'? The difference between 'flounder' and 'founder.'")

Book o' the Week

Annie Leibovitz. At long last, the unlimited trade edition of the humongous, limited Sumo edition by Taschen. Mind you, this is still a huge book—15.4 inches high, 556 pages, and almost 13 pounds. And the price! (But that's nothing—the Sumo weighed 57 pounds and cost $7,500.) This is the closest ordinary folks (with ordinary shelves) will get to the ultimate Annie.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as 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:

Randall Teasley: "The thing I tell myself whenever a new camera appears is this: There's nothing about this new camera that makes my current camera any less capable of producing good work. That sentence has saved me thousands of dollars and a great deal of angst over the years."

Markus replies to Randall: "It took me a long time and many €uros to come to that conclusion...."

Did I Leave Fuji, or Did Fuji Leave Me?

Several readers have noted that I've kind of drifted away from Fuji in the past couple of years. I don't shoot with mine very much any more.

But did I leave Fuji, or did Fuji leave me? I sometimes think it's the latter. There have been plenty of signs recently that Fuji, like other manufacturers, is changing its products to go after videocentric shooters. The switch to a "flippy" screen with the X-T4, although perhaps not a deal-breaker for a sensible person, was at least a tell-tale. The change left me cold. I don't like that style of viewing screen. And it was especially disappointing because I always thought the viewing screen of the X-T2 and X-T3 is the best implementation of that feature anybody ever designed*. Anybody. Ever. And they threw that away. Recent X-H[x] cameras are larger and/or heavier than the original X-T1, more oriented toward extreme performance and either professional users or users whose deepest engagement with photography takes the form of comparison shopping for specs. Not impressed. Lastly, recent lenses have been tending toward larger, more expensive "statement" types rather than the small primes we originally liked.

Note that I'm not setting out a case against Fuji. I like Fuji. I still like Fuji. And since I still have two bodies and a more extensive set of lenses than I've ever owned for any digital camera, nobody can say I've left Fuji behind. But on the other hand, the things I liked Fuji for were:

• The handy, portable bodies for "AdAms" (advanced amateurs) and enthusiasts;
• The classic pseudo-retro dials 'n' buttons gestalt;
• The compact primes;
• The unapologetic emphasis on stills.

Now they seem to care about video shooters more, they're making lenses more like the newer 33mm ƒ/1.4 rather than the characterful, old-school 35mm ƒ/1.4 I love (360 vs. 187 grams, bah!), and the X series has joined the megapixel wars. And starting now they're apparently going to be in a dither about which of their X lenses are 40-MP ready. (:Eyeroll: along with the "bah humbug.") They seem overly anxious to compete with all the FF cameras that dominate mindshare now. Maybe they need to remember Mitch Hedberg's turkey joke.

I'm not saying Fuji shouldn't do what they're doing. And of course a lot of that original goodness is still in there. But it seems to be a subtly different company than they were eight and a half years ago when the X-T1 came out. On the one hand, Fuji went its own way by sticking to APS-C and medium format and skipping over 24x36 (a.k.a. "full frame"). But then, it also has seemed very insecure in that it's been trying to create APS-C cameras that can sorta-kinda compete with FF. The latest move, aping Nikon and Sony, of splitting "high speed" and "high resolution" versions of the same body, is in that spirit. I mean really, 40 MP? Why, when you already offer 100 MP in a larger-than-FF sensor?! Stop racing. You already won.

I never thought I'd say this, about this company in particular, but what Fuji needs is a clearer internal mission statement.

"Somebody needs to tell the turkeys, 'man, just be yourself. I already like you, little brother! You do not need to emulate the other animals. You got your own thing going.'" —Mitch Hedberg

Mike

*Herbert ("Burt") Keppler, the longtime editorial director of Modern Photography magazine whose monthly column was essential reading for photo dawgs and gear geeks in the pre-internet era, warned people like me about this, in an article I searched for in vain for many years and could never find again. He pointed out that the more cameras you review, the more times you will encounter cameras that got one particular feature perfectly right...and then you'll have to watch that perfect implementation vanish beneath the waves again, because everyone (well, except Leica—you can still buy an MP brand new, to this day) moves on no matter what. He's right, it's true. (And don't be a nit, don't buy an M-A.)

My memory is that the article featured a drawing of a "Frankencamera" that incorporated all of the features Burt had loved from many different cameras he had tried over the years. I think I'd have to hire a researcher to find the darn article again.

-

Book o' the Week

Annie Leibovitz. At long last, the unlimited trade edition of the humongous, limited Sumo edition by Taschen. Mind you, this is still a huge book—15.4 inches high, 556 pages, and almost 13 pounds. And the price! (But that's nothing—the Sumo weighed 57 pounds and cost $7,500.) This is the closest ordinary folks (with ordinary shelves) will get to the ultimate Annie.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

Affiliate 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:

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "I'm with you on some respects, Mike. Specifically, about putting the flippy screen on both X-H2's. My hope was one of these bodies would keep the three-way articulating screen of the X-T2/XT-3/X-H1. Anyone who has ever tried to use a flippy screen when shooting Architecture or real estate with the camera mounted on an L-bracket on a tripod knows that the L-bracket prevents the flippy screen from being able to 'flip outwards' in landscape orientation, or upwards when shooting in portrait orientation. My guess is Fuji caved to all the 'online reviewers' who kept slagging them for not having a flippy screen. The same applies for the orientation toward shooting video now rather than stills. That being said, I personally really like the somewhat larger, more robust camera bodies of the X-H series. It makes it easier handling the camera when shooting a large tele, e.g. the Fujinon 200mm ƒ/2, especially for motor racing, sports, etc. As I know, and several of your other TOP readers who are working pros and shoot with the X-H1 know, its a very good body for pro work. Rugged, robust, reliable and durable."

[Ed. note: for the full text of "partial" comments, see the full Comments Section by clicking on "Comments (#)" at the very bottom of every post. You can also click on the post title, which has the same effect of adding all the comments to the bottom of the post.]

Dogman: "Somebody once said, 'If it's good, really, really good...they'll stop making it.' What attracted me to Fuji was the Leica-like handling of the X-Pro and X100 models along with their relative simplicity. Gone. At least the X100V hasn't completely gone to hell, but the X-Pro3 is a travesty. I hope my X-Pro2 bodies last forever. I've given up hope that Fuji will ever again make anything for me."

Alberto Bengoa: "I disagree with this take that Fuji is leaving behind their original philosophy. In my opinion they are expanding it, though; with the new X-H2/s they have higher performance/megapixel cameras, and their latest set of lenses are truly great optics. But they have not stopped making the smaller double-digit X-T's, they still have the E line of cameras, they still have the Fujicrons, they very recently updated their excellent and tiny 27mm ƒ/2.8 . None of that has gone away.

"Yes, I lament the flippy screens, but apart from that there's no other brand (I'd wager that there has never been any other brand in the history of photography) that provides such a configurable system—you can use the same excellent optics in a very small package, a rangefinder-like optical-viewfindered body, an old-style SLR-like body, or a high performance modern DSLR-like body. Or a combination of those. It's unparalleled variety, quality and configurability.

"I went with Fuji a decade ago (a Canon expatriate) and I have never regretted my decision—I just got an X-H2s and it's an astounding camera, that works wonders with the same lenses I have been using since my first X-M1 (and that was a small camera, speaking of portability and variety)."

Stan B.: "Most car companies that introduce a nice compact will always spoil it by making each successive model progressively larger. Fuji should have concentrated on getting their autofocus down before adding size and features. They are now larger than many FF mirrorless bodies and making larger, more expensive lenses to very questionably compete with their larger sensor rivals."

Chris Kern (partial comment): "Seems to me Fuji is expanding its product line in an attempt to expand its market—i.e., in order to appeal to people who are trying to make a living from photography. I don’t envy the surviving pros, but from everything I’ve been reading many of them need high-speed autofocus and frame rate as well as video. As an amateur who was drawn to the “old Fuji” for precisely the reasons you mention, as well as for their compact zooms with excellent image stabilization, I don’t get the impression the company has abandoned me at all."

Jim Arthur: "I found a trove of Keppler articles at mikeeckman.com. If you can remember an exact phrase from the article it might help with your quest.

Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
Arthur: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What...is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Bridgekeeper: Huh? I—I don't know that. Auuuuuuuugh!

Mike replies: A great scene. Pity there are whole new generations who don't know Monty Python.

By the way, a small claim to fame: I took an English course called "Epic and Romance" at Reed college, and actually managed to convince the professor to take the whole class on a field trip to see "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." There are some accomplishments in life of which one remains lastingly proud.

Rand Adams: "You hit a nerve. Fujifilm’s pandering to the vlogger crowd with the implementation of the 'flippy screen' chaps my hide. I agree 100% that the original tilt screen implementation is brilliant. In fact, the X-T3 is the 'end of the line' for Fuji for me for exactly that reason. I bought the little X-10 and in many respects it is a wonderful little camera, but the screen implementation is so off putting that I have to 'get over myself' every time I pick it up."

Mike replies: That was about the way I felt. The flippy screen and also the demise of the EC dial on the X-H1. I was crestfallen (what is a crest and how does it fall, anyhow?) when the X-T4 came out. I knew it was the inflection point that marked the parting of the ways. Ah, Fuji,

How [did] I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43)

And yet,

Thou hast prevaricated with thy friend,
By underhand contrivances undone me:
And while my open nature trusted in thee,
Thou hast slept in between me and my hopes,
And ravish'd from me all my soul held dear.
Thou hast betray'd me. (Nicholas Rowe, Lady Jane Grey (1715), Act II, scene 1, line 235 ff.)

Some might think that hyperbolic. (Comedian on XM Radio the other day: "I got a massage and a pedicure. And I got to spend some time in the hyperbolic chamber—and it was A-MAZ-ING!!" The audience didn't laugh, but I did.)

Patrick Pope: "Now that Fuji has split the lineup into the X-T and X-H series it would be nice to see the X-T series return to its roots of a stills-oriented shooting experience while the X-H becomes the modern, hybrid option. Unfortunately rumors of the X-T5 don't seem to imply that will be the case. We should know in the next couple days."

Zave Shapiro: "You're so right. For me it was the exposure compensation dial. Shooting in the gloom of dusk? No Problem. Shooting high-key? No Problem. I now have X-H1's (old guy needs IBIS) and can set up a mediocre equivalent. But you know, Mike, the latest Miata has no glove box, no spare tire and it takes six entries to erase a radio station from memory. The feature explosion is infecting many products."

Mike replies: Yes, you are so right, the ND "MX-5" falls somewhat short of pure, alas. A sports car should have no radio. Anyone knows you're supposed to listen to the sound of the engine.  [:Laughing emoji with crying eyes:]

Kenneth Tanaka: "I hear ya, Mike. Over the past 10-ish years I’ve become broadly invested in Fujifilm’s terrific camera systems. My X100V remains among my favorite and most enjoyable to use fixed-lens cameras, beating even the Leica Q2 in my book. My little X-T30 is perhaps my favorite 'street' camera. Coupled with the little kit 18–55mm or the fast 23mm there’s little it can’t catch. My X-T3 is perhaps Fuji’s best APS-C still camera but the more video-centric X-T4 is a bit of a disappointment to me, even with its IBIS. (I’m also not a fan of the fully-articulating narcissism screens.) My GFX100s is a marvel, but it’s in a different conversation.

"Admittedly my own photographic interests and needs have meandered from Fuji's X system since the pandemic. I'm spending more time making fewer, but more deliberate, more complex, and larger images now. I've no interest in video although I can clearly see that video is where Fuji and others needed to go for any growth. The digital still photo market is mature and saturated. So I’ve no real interest in any new X-bodies or lenses. In fact, just last month I sold four Fuji X lenses that I just wasn’t using. Like you, I wish Fujifilm well. But I have all their products that I need or want for the foreseeable future."