Photo News

—> From The Virginian-Pilot: "Longtime Virginian-Pilot freelance photographer dies after fall from parking garage." No foul play is suspected in the death of freelance photographer of Jason Hirschfeld, 48. His editor at the paper said, "He had a loud laugh and he definitely had a big personality. He just exuded positivity and enthusiasm."

—> From The New York Times: "The Risks That Define New York Times Magazine Photography: In her own words, Kathy Ryan, the director of photography for The New York Times Magazine, unpacks some of the biggest challenges of the last year."

—> From PetaPixel: "Nikon is Doing Everything Right." Jaron Schneider didn't think Nikon would recover from its financial woes. Now, he argues it has come back from the brink the old-fashioned way: with superior products.

—> From Visual Science Lab: Kirk Tuck is "Reporting in from the Central Texas Ice Storm. Nasty out there." It doesn't stop him from exercising, even though it closes the pool. At the end he gets down to the real peril: "Sadly, when the weather gets really bad my resistance to shopping for photo gear goes down. I've found several items online that are battering my will to resist." You can go find out what those are; I need to not look.

—> From Fstoppers: "An Effective, Professional One-Light Portrait Photography Setup." Alex Cooke highlights a video by Jiggie Alejandrino. Portraits indoors are a great winter pastime.

—> From DPReview: Richard Butler thinks Sony's new A7R V excels at still photography in his in-depth review.

—> From lensculture: In The Editorial Portrait, Lucy Conticello, Director of Photography at M, the weekend magazine of the French newspaper Le Monde, is interviewed by Sophie Wright and shares some of her insights. This republication of a 2019 article is part of a recent slew of articles on lensculture about photographic portraiture.

—> From Thom Hogan: "Why Do We Speculate About Future Products?" Thom says he has to, because his readers all do.

—> From NPPA: "University of Missouri announces the 77th College Photographer of the Year competition winners." Congratulations to Vincent Alban of RIT. "Judges viewed nearly 10,000 images submitted by 570 students from a record-setting 127 colleges and universities in 47 countries."

—> From LensRentals: "How Front Element Scratches Affect Your Images." Spoiler: they don't, much. But these guys are among the few who can show you. If you want to test the general principle yourself, without scratching your lens, tear off a bit of a Post-It about the size of a small pea and stick it to the front of your lens. Compare the result to a frame shot without it. Interesting, no?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 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 or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Speed: "From PetaPixel: 'Nikon is Doing Everything Right.' But...Nikon's biggest competitors in the camera business, Canon and Sony, are very much in the amateur/commercial/professional video business...and Nikon is not. Big moves in our lifetime: Film to Digital to DSLR; DSLR to Mirrorless; Still to Video. It looks like Nikon won't be making that last move."

Tam: "There is nothing wrong with what one of my blogfathers referred to as an 'All Linky, No Thinky' piece. All blogs are, at heart, a LOG of things we’ve found on the WEB…A WEB LOG, if you will.  ;-)  "

Andrew Bearman: "Love these curated links; thanks!"

Mike Ferron: "The little city I live in borders Austin, Texas, to the northeast. It looks like a powerful hurricane came through with amount of tree limbs that came down. The last night of the storm was the worst. You could hear one crash after another all night long as the big limbs fell. Crazy. The local weather said it was the worst ice storm in 60 years. Two and a half days of rain with the temps just below freezing."

Comments

[Keith Cartmell]

Re: front element scratches. I once thought camera gear was delicate, to be handled with the utmost care, prone to breakage at a cross look. That the slightest deviation from pristine glass would destroy any possibility of getting a good image. Then two things happened.

I read a Lens Rentals article about taking apart a 70-200mm lens because there was a fly deep inside it. You've probably read that article. There was a fly inside the lens, and it mostly didn't affect image quality, and in fact they had a tough time getting a photo of the fly.

Then I saw both the images taken by a working pro photographer, and the gear he used. It looked like it had been through the wars. He stuffed lenses back in the bag with no lens caps. He put the camera in a puddle to capture reflections, took it out in the rain and snow. Then I got my own gear, and while I try to take care of it, $#@! happens. My main working camera was on a succession of salt water beaches for a month, day in and day out, and no problems. I don't think I've ever cleaned the sensor, and swab the front elements only if I remember and think I'll be shooting into the sun.

I am now amused by some photographers and their lenses. Taking them off camera, both lens caps on, into the lens bag, into the camera bag, next lens onto the camera and delicately dusting the front element with a dedicated camel hair brush, after cleaning their sensor before every session.

[Richard Tugwell]

Re From LensRentals: "How Front Element Scratches Affect Your Images."

Of course they don't... but they sure as hell affect the ability to flog the stuff on eBay, or wherever

[Weekes James]

Check today’s New York Times. A good review of an Avedon show.

[Kodachrome]

No, minor scratches don't matter? Quelle horreur! How will the camera stores continue to flog those multi-coated "protective" filters to "protect your valuable lens." They have pushed this scam for 50+ years. Of course, on the internet, you can always find some camera guy who will proclaim how he dropped his xyz DSLR onto concrete and only his protective filter protected the lens. Must happen millions of times per year......

[Barry Reid]

About front element scratches…

Try doing interiors (ie focussed well short of infinity) with a 17mm stopped down to f11 and tell me you still think it doesn’t matter.

[hugh crawford]

Kodak brushing lacquer would make really big deep scratches pretty much disappear as far as effecting the image.
Putting black paint on the lens as a repair probably would not fly today.

Remember when all the cool lenses had bubbles in them?

[I do! --Mike]

[Michael Fewster]

The article by Jaron Schneider "Nikon Is Doing Everything Right" is partly right. His claim that the Z9 blew the doors off the competition is laughable. The Z9 is a good camera and competitive with the opposition.
Using a Sony sensor, it got Nikon back into the game. That's about it.

[Bob Johnston]

Re Hugh's comment about bubbles. Several years ago I had the good fortune to be shown around Cooke's factory in Leicester, England. They make no compromise, hugely expensive lenses for cinemaphotography. They source the rough glass from Germany and Japan and none of the manufacturers would guarantee a blank without bubbles. Cooke said that bubbles didn't make any difference, but of course, the buyers wouldn't accept them. The problem was that you couldn't see them in the blanks. They had to make a polished lens first, and if it had a bubble they just threw it away.

[Tristan Tripp]

The article from PetaPixel, unfortunately, gets it's first point about "the start of Nikons fall" rather wrong in my opinion. The Keymission 170 was, and still is, the best "action camera" I have ever used, especially in terms of user control's. The design was a masterwork in simplicity, two shutter buttons, one for video, one for stills, no changing modes or fiddling around underwater, it was incredibly easy to use. One could also argue that this was not a new area for Nikon, but the logical development of the Nikonos line.

Nikons mistake was in not having the confidence to develop this line further, as well as it's abandonment of the 1" DL series they also announced in 2016. An updated Coolpix A would also have been welcome!

I guess this just shows how people can have very different experiences with cameras, maybe they were just misunderstood!

[Not THAT Ross Cameron]

Hi Mike,

Something to add to the photo news - this article in The Conversation.
“This year marks 50 years since Susan Sontag’s essay Photography was published in the New York Review of Books.”

https://theconversation.com/tourists-in-our-own-reality-susan-sontags-photography-at-50-197615

[Ger Lawlor]

Oh man.... What a selection of great reads. Farewell to the next few hours! Nevertheless, thanks Mike for the great links.