The Online Photographer

Mike's Back (Blog Note)

I'm back. Had a very nice weekend. If you're in recovery (I've been sober for 33 years, seven months, and 20 days), I recommend looking into whether there is a recovery convention anywhere near you. They're lots of fun and very inspiring. I heard about ours for years back when it was in a different town, and didn't have a very clear idea of what it was or what it was like, so I never went. Big mistake. I finally attended when it moved to my own town just up the road from where I live.

There's no master list of such events that I can find, probably because there are so many kinds of organizations. These include AA, Al-Anon and Alateen for people whose lives have been affected by alcoholism in a relative or friend, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Marijuana Anonymous, and many more. Other groups help with behaviors rather than substances. Within each category there are many kinds of events. In AA, for example, there are conventions/conferences, roundups, workshops, retreats, cruises, and so on. Local recovery groups in your area should have information about the range of opportunities near you.

Next year I'm considering getting on the committee (basically just helping in some way), and the thought also occurred to me that I could travel to other such events elsewhere in the country. There's a conference in Rochester, for example. Any way you cut it, though, the Conference of the Lakes, which is what our convention is called, has become one of the high points of my year. I had been looking forward to this one since the last one! And will do the same again.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History by Jennifer Dasal (Penguin, 2020. Adapted from the popular podcast.)

The link above is a portal to Amazon, through which most anything you purchase will be credited to TOP. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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Open Mike: Off-Topic Blips

Mike is on "Staycation" today, yesterday and tomorrow. Our regional recovery convention, The Conference of the Lakes, is taking place this weekend right in my backyard in the hamlet of Penn Yan. It's a large gathering with people coming from far and wide, some of whom are personal friends, many of whom are known to me, and all of whom are friends and fellow travelers even if I never saw them before.

A few bits 'n' pieces:

McCartney in Brooklyn: The Paul McCartney show is due to come to Brooklyn, New York, near Manhattan. Details here. (Thanks to Lex Stewart for this.) I have a feeling it might be more interesting to ordinary people than most photography shows, because he was an ordinary photographer, even if he was privileged to photograph extraordinary things. I'm toying with the idea of a road trip to see it.

Horrifying but...reassuring?! I mentioned aviation videos a few weeks ago, and a reader referred me to the Mentour Pilot channel. There, I saw this gripping account of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303 (the illustrations are computer-generated). Captain Sajjad Gul and first officer Usman Azam, apparently at odds with each other in the cockpit (with FO Azam being the more reasonable of the two) and ignoring commands from ATC, turned what should have been an utterly routine landing into a catastrophe, doing almost everything wrong that could possibly be done wrong. We can only shake our heads.

Part of the reason I was attracted to photography, long ago, after a start as a visual artist, is that I find great portent and richness in "the slap of truth." I tend to feel a great deal more drama in accounts of true events rather than from constructed fictional dramas. I'm aware that other people differ from me in this. I first learned that way back in 1979, when I almost fell asleep in a movie called Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, that was obviously greatly exciting many of the theater-goers all around me. For one thing, true stories say much more about real human nature and real human behavior than most fictional dramas do. I tend to get bored at movies that friends find absolutely thrilling and involving, and then I find deep drama and high suspense in videos like this one. 

A special thing about this video is a comment from viewer @ScottGibbs, who wrote: "I want to pay you the highest compliment: I've been a very nervous flyer for most of my adult life (I require some liquid courage at the airport bar before every flight) and I genuinely believe your videos have helped me. I had to fly recently and it was the first time I can remember that I wasn't white-knuckle the entire time. Yes, I did enjoy some liquid courage beforehand, lol, but this time felt different. I was more at ease. Your videos are amazing and they've actually helped me understand how safe air travel really is and to understand things as simple as bumps in the air [and] what sounds the plane makes. Thank you!"

Interesting, isn't it? The story of a crash reassures a timid passenger, by showing him how unlikely it is for things to go wrong. Airliners, it turns out, are not on the verge of crashing all the time; in fact it takes persistent willfulness and incompetence to get them to do so.

Twister: The tornado in this photo, by @adamorgler on X, missed the home of Mike and Mrs. Plews by only about four miles. Mike is a longtime reader whose bouts with weather have been featured herein before. Weather in Iowa is an adventure.

Slow learner: I'm making good progress in learning how to touch-type. Yes, it's slow, but because of productivity issues I can't go whole-hog into the new method and do it 100% of the time. After 53 years of three-finger typing, without using my ring finger or pinkies* or my left middle finger, I notice that most of my confusions arise somewhere between my brain and those fingers. Even so, I've already gotten farther than I did the first time I tried this—and I'm enjoying it a lot more. It's almost like a soothing video game, diverting and strangely soothing. I like doing it while I listen to YouTube videos or music. The process of learning has been interesting for me.

Last time I did this, in 2021, I tried to learn Dvorak. This time around it's Colemak, which I'm liking a lot better. And it's more convenient: Macs, which I use, can be switched to Colemak at the click of the mouse. I find it most effective to switch between a number of different learning programs. I practice for anywhere from 15 minutes to three hours a day, averaging maybe half an hour. My biggest weakness is rushing—trying for speed—so I do best when I try to slow down rather than speed up, striving for maximum accuracy rather than speed. Counterintuitively, my speed when I try to type slowly for maximum accuracy is often higher than it is when I try to type fast.

Hopefully I will have all the comments to the previous post loaded before I leave for the Conference this morning. I'll plug away at it from now till then: because the more I try to go fast, the slower I go.

Back soon,
Mike

*"Pink" means "little finger" in Dutch, so properly it's just a "pinky" in American English, rather than a "pinky finger." This might be an excessively fastidious usage note, however.

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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Beatlemania from the Inside

Guest post by Tom Burke

Last August I visited the exhibition of Paul McCartney’s photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm. I’d like to give you my thoughts.

First, a bit of context about the exhibition. The images all date from the period October 1963 through to February 1964, during which time The Beatles transformed from major pop stars in the UK and parts of Europe to being a global phenomenon. The images were taken during British tours and TV shows in the autumn and winter of 1963; a short tour in Paris in January 1964; and the first visit to the US in February 1964. Most are black-and-white, but the later ones from the US segment are in colour—McCartney responded to a short stay in the sunshine of Florida by switching to colour film. For the mono images he had the films professionally developed and contact sheets produced at the time. He then reviewed the contacts and selected his favourites, but it seems that prints were not produced at the time (or if they were, they’ve been lost). I’m not sure what the procedure was with the colour material—it could have been the same, of course. Somehow, most of the negatives and contact sheets survived, and most of the images in the show are new photographic prints from the negatives. In some cases the negatives have vanished but the contact sheets were preserved, and in these cases the selected images on the contact sheets were scanned and prints produced via digital printing techniques. I don’t know how the new colour prints were produced. The exhibition (and the accompanying book) were of a selection of about 200 images from over 1,000 that he took, and for which either negatives or contact sheets still existed.

As for equipment, he was using a Pentax 35mm SLR, but there was no information on which model or anything about the lens. That said, the images looked like they were taken with a 50mm.

Informal moments
So, what about the images? Let’s talk about the style first. The early ones, taken in Britain during the last months of 1963, are mainly informal portraits. These are mostly of the other group members, in informal moments such as dressing room and backstage shots. Some are on-stage shots of their support acts, including Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers, taken from the side of the stage; and some are onstage shots of the Beatles, including McCartney, which were taken with his camera by a member of their team (probably Mal Evans). There are similar stage-side performance images from the Paris trip in January 1964.

Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London

There are quite a number of images of members of their entourage—Mal Evans features in quite a few, often with a group member; Brian Epstein is there; the Beatles’ fan club secretary is shown; and other members of "Team Beatles." Then there are also pictures of group members’ families! Some of the images were taken while preparing for their appearance on the UK TV show "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" (perhaps the biggest TV show in the UK at that time) and George’s mum and dad turned up and were photographed. (McCartney captured the look of parental pride.) Jane Asher is pictured several times, and these pictures make you realise just how young she was. Born in 1946, she would have been barely 17 when she and Paul became "boyfriend and girlfriend."

Then there are pictures of group members just goofing around. Some of this was obviously to relieve the boredom of the endless waiting around in dressing rooms, etc, but in Paris especially they wandered the streets, had fun, and McCartney recorded it.

The US images continue these styles, but add something new and very different. McCartney found a new style—he started taking pictures through car (and train) windows. There are some in New York, taken out of a car’s back window, when they were hurriedly being driven away from enthusiastic fans; and in Florida (through the front window) when they are approaching their hotel which was already overrun with enthusiastic fans. Then there are some when he simply saw something arresting through the window and grabbed the shot. One of these was a picture of a young (pre-teen?) girl on the sidewalk, framed by the car’s side window. Another was of the torso and hip of a police motor-cycle outrider who was keeping pace with their car for a while, very close to it; McCartney took a shot which clearly shows the officer’s weapon plus bullets for reloading it in his holster belt. Police officers in Britain at that time were unarmed, and the exhibition includes a comment from him expressing his shock at seeing armed police with weapons carried so visibly. The train shots came about because their flight from New York to Washington had been cancelled due to bad weather, and they went by train instead. Again, McCartney pointed his camera out of the window during the journey and captured some arresting images, of both railroad workers and railroad hardware.

The exhibition catalog

The Florida pictures, all in colour, mainly capture group members, relatives, and friends relaxing on a beach, on a fishing trip, and around the hotel pool. These are again very informal. There are also some images taken from a high point in the hotel, pointing directly downwards onto the beach, and these essentially show geometric patterns that must have attracted his eye. The genesis of these shots might have been messages to the group written in the sand by fans: both the fans and the beach were visible from the upper floors of the hotel.

The most famous people alive
Finally, the big question: how good are they? Well, in some regards this doesn’t matter. It’s a fact that a portrait of a significant person will possess a status that it wouldn’t have if the subject wasn’t significant. If the photographer is also a significant person, then an even higher status will apply. And these images are intimate pictures of very famous people, The Beatles, at an important moment in their trajectory, and taken by one of them. It’s difficult today to remember just what a big deal they were—by February 1964 they may have been the most famous living people in the world.

I think the images also have important documentary significance as well. This is how people were in the early '60s; for example, regardless of how informal the portraits were, in almost every shot all of the men are wearing shirts and ties, and often jackets as well (the Florida images are exceptions.) Then there are the non-portrait images. Some of these possess significant photographic quality. I really liked the "car window" images, for example—they are powerful and artistic.

But—if you took away the fame aspect, then truthfully most of the images are nothing remarkable. In my view, with the exception of the car/train window shots, and some of the "geometric pattern" images, they’re quite ordinary pictures. It’s the subjects’ identity that makes them significant. I’m glad that Paul McCartney decided to stick with the music!

There’s an interesting (to me) coda to this. There are three images by other photographers in the exhibition, two by Paul's brother Mike, who has worked as a photographer, and one by Astrid Kirchherr. All three are significantly better, technically, than almost all of Paul’s images. The Kirchherr image is a publicity shot of the group which was used in marketing material for the Paris tour. The two by Mike McCartney were taken at the McCartney home. One is a portrait of Paul, and it’s very good. The other is of Paul and (presumably) John, both sitting opposite Mike on a settee, heads slightly down, playing guitars—probably working on a Lennon-McCartney song. A view of the creative process in action; and (in my opinion, of course) the image of the exhibition.

And a final disclaimer—I was, and am, a Beatles fan. I grew up with them. Born in 1950, I was 13 when "She Loves You" was released, and I thought that was the best thing I’d ever heard. Subsequently I bought every Beatles single, on the day it was released, from then until "Get Back,"so I was always going to be a sucker for this exhibition. It didn’t disappoint; but at times I had to get out of my "Beatles fan" head and try to view the images more dispassionately.

Tom

Original contents copyright 2024 by Thomas Burke. 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:

David B.: "There was a great colour photo of John, with a blurry hotel balcony(?) background. Just a small snap, like an old Ilford Films sub-postcard-size 'Enprint' enlargement. John looks almost wistful, looking straight at the camera, with an almost blank face, as if wondering what Paul wants him to do. I bought a print of it...here it is.... But I don't know how to paste a link here...let's see if this works."

[Ed. note: Works for me.]

John Bennett: "Good review! I agree with your assessment that a photo of/by a well-known person is judged on different criteria. When looking at my own work, I often think, 'Well, if this person was famous...or it was being viewed a hundred years from now...the photograph would be much better.'"

louis mccullough: "There was a great Beatles photographic exhibition in Vienna last year. The website has photos. I thought it was excellent although not a big beatles fan. It included prints of all 5 images taken at Abbey Road and was about their first 5? years only. It also had Album covers for their LPs from around the world plus FAN magazine photos. Very comprehensive imagery. There were also photos taken by the Beatles themselves but I'm not sure if it included any of the images in the OP. Blog post on my website. "

Adam Isler: "As a photography MFA student in Britain at the time this exhibition opened, I had the good fortune to be invited to a session in a small auditorium at the National Portrait Gallery in which Sir Paul was interviewed by Stanley Tucci about the photographs. He told stories about the circumstances surrounding the taking of some of the pictures and surprised us by talking rather more (and more knowledgeably) about photography generally than I had hoped (of course, both his wife Linda was, and his daughter is, a photographer). Throughout, he displayed the customary wit and charm for which he’s well known. The event was very hush-hush. We were not allowed to tell anyone about it in advance; our phones were sealed in envelopes beforehand; questions, which we had submitted in advance, were dispensed with by Tucci and the the two of them disappeared behind a stage door with a laugh and a wave. I was only six or seven when the Beatles made it in America. I remember debating with my cousins whether it was really possible for men to grow their hair that long—hard to believe 60 years have elapsed since then…."

Dave: "Wow, Tom! I felt as if I had personally viewed the exhibition, thanks to your column. I was only about two years old when they made their first visit to the U.S. Most of my knowledge of them came from older cousins or just hearing their songs on the radio. I wouldn't have known about anyone outside the group, besides Brian Epstein or George Martin. Thank goodness contact prints were made to take the place of the missing negatives! Thanks for the terrific review!"

Shooting Wide Open

Interesting bunch of comments about shooting wide open on April 4th. The responses were far more varied than I expected, and the reasons given were more varied as well. That thread bears rereading in its entirety.

I suppose I'm a child of my times when it comes to shooting wide open. I like lenses, and testing lenses was a side-hobby related to photography for me (but only related; you don't have to know much at all about lenses to be a photographer). Naturally I wanted to get the most out of my lenses. Various pieces of advice were common at that time, for example, that every lens is at its best stopped down two stops from wide open. Thus, an ƒ/2 lens yielded its best performance at ƒ/4. While that was a decent rule of thumb that wouldn't lead anyone far wrong, it was far from a universal, hard-and-fast fact. For instance, some spherical ƒ/1.4 lenses reached their peak performance three, four or five stops down. It was also a rule of thumb that slower lenses were better wide open than faster ones, and that they were often better wide open than the faster lens was when stopped down to the same aperture. However, Lewis Baltz (d. 2014), who was identified with the New Topographics movement—and who was apparently part lens geek—made a series of photographs of the built and Man-altered landscape with a 35mm Leica mounted on a heavy tripod, trying to maximize sharpness, and he discovered (I hope I'm remembering this correctly) that an ƒ/1.4 Leica Summilux-M of his day, stopped down to its optimum aperture, was sharper than an ƒ/2 Summicron-M at any aperture, even though it was worse at the wider apertures. But as is the way of such things, that's a specific case, not a general rule. Personally, I noticed that most 35mm lenses (small format, in those days, even called "miniature" early on) were best at ƒ/8, to as close an approximation as could matter. I liked getting the best from my lenses, so I would research or test what the optimum aperture for my specific lenses were, and then "tend toward" using that. Lacking specific tests I tended to shoot at ƒ/8 and depart from it only as needed, which, to be fair, was fairly often. Respecting the overarching rule:

The best aperture to use is the one that suits the picture.

In other words, if you know that diffraction softens lens sharpness at ƒ/16 but a particular picture needs front-to-back sharpness and the only way to get it is to shoot at ƒ/16, then you use ƒ/16. And so on. Finicky little constraints that chase maximum quality are pointless if you're using an aperture that is wrong for the picture. Similarly, the fact that the picture would be sharper on a tripod wouldn't matter if using a tripod meant that you missed the picture.

There was a time when aperture was a useful "sharpness adjustment" tool. I recall a Pentax 85mm ƒ/1.4 that was absolutely marvelous in this respect—wide open the overall image softened very nicely. Then it sharpened up progressively all the way to ƒ/8 as you stopped down. Perfect for portraits, for example, which suited the focal length as well. Often you don't want portrait lenses to be hard-sharp, a fact which has been more or less lost on whole generations of hobbyists.

Countless times in my life I've seen forum messages to the effect of, "I want to do some portraits. What's the sharpest medium-telephoto lens?" Wrong question, though a common one.

Portraitists a hundred years ago weren't chasing sharpness. A
spread from Motion Picture Classic magazine*, February 1916.

There was a time when portrait photographers chased the lenses—most of them large-format lenses—that offered just the perfect degree of un-sharpness according to their tastes. Some had lenses custom-made; some would keep the identity of their lenses secret from their competitors, treating it as a trade secret. If you've ever explored those classic old-time Hollywood portraits, shot on things like tailboard cameras, you know what those lenses looked like. When I was young, that had mostly died out, but there were people still advertising in the classifieds in Shutterbug magazine who knew all about the arcana of those magical old portrait lenses, all of them unsharp to some degree and in some desired way.

When 35mm SLR cameras became a thing after 1959, large maximum apertures took on another use—they let in more light to help with focusing. Groundglass screens were dark in those days, which you might not realize when shooting in daylight. It became all too apparent when shooting in low light, however. An ƒ/2 Summicron was fast for a rangefinder lens, but maybe not fast enough when you were trying to focus on the groundglass of an early SLR. Lenses with a speed of ƒ/1.4 became a popular product that everybody had to have.

Of course it was impossible to suggest that people use the widest aperture only for focusing. And of course if a lens had an ƒ/1.4 maximum aperture, people would use it, mainly because films were so slow in those days. It was no accident that "fast" Kodachrome II (ASA 25) and Kodachrome X (ASA 64)come out in 1961, two years after the first viable SLR, the Nikon F, arrived. (Kodachrome II and Kodachrome X were replaced by Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 in 1974.) Candid photography and freedom from tripods was becoming ever more popular, and "speed," in both lenses and films, became ever more important. Pentax, the dominant camera manufacturer of the 1960s, would go on to produce over two million SLRs in the decade, and its loss-leader ƒ/1.4 Super-Takumars—there's a long lineage of them, under many names—were the company's flagship lenses. The biggest band of the decade, the Beatles—especially Ringo—were big Pentax fans. There are numerous photos showing them with Pentaxes, and even a picture of a stage setup with a giant "Beatax" camera in front of Ringo's drum set as decoration, although that was used for only one performance. Liveright recently released a book of photos by Paul McCartney from 1964, although it's probable that not all of them were taken with an SLR.

[To Be Continued...]

Mike

*I got rather lost in the articles in those old magazines while searching for old rights-free images. I particularly enjoyed one charming article called "How I Became a Photo Player." At least in Motion Picture Classic, motion picture actors and actresses were referred to as "photoplayers."

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

Ned Bunnell [Ed. note: Ned is a past President of Pentax USA]: "Not sure if you know the story behind the Beatles and their Pentax cameras. They arrived in Tokyo in June 1966 to play their first and only concerts in the country at the Nippon Budokan. The marketing manager of Pentax met them at their hotel and presented each of them with a Pentax Spotmatic SP. I was told it was meant as a gesture to welcome them to Japan. The Spotmatics would surely have been successful without this connection to the Beatles, but in hindsight, it was pure marketing genius. I can’t imagine what it would cost today for Pentax to have Taylor Swift carry around the new half-frame film compact, when that’s released later this year."

Tom Burke: "I went to the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London of the Paul McCartney photos. In the exhibition it was said that he used a Pentax 35mm SLR. No lens details, but to my eye the images looked like they were taken with a 50mm."

Mike Plews: "In 1987 Mark Meyer published Classics: U.S. Aircraft of World War II which is one of the best photo books of old warbirds ever. In my opinion it is just fantastic. In its notes Meyer wrote that he shot the book on Kodachrome, much of it at the magic hour. He said he could only do this because he had a 35mm ƒ/1.4 Summilux-R on his Leica. He needed the extra aperture to make Kodachrome work for him. In order to give him a proper platform they took the bubble off the tail gunner position on a B-25. Thirty years later and I am still jealous.

"You can find used copies of this masterpiece online for as little as $10. This isn't an airplane book with nice photography. It's a first-rate fine-art photography book with airplanes. He made these images wide open with slow film and no image stabilization; an awesome achievement. I spent much of my career shooting air-to-air from all manner of aircraft and Classics: U.S. Aircraft of World War II just messes me up. My two cents on shooting wide open."

Weird, and Weirdly Fascinating: the Work of Alastair Philip Wiper

A few days ago, PetaPixel featured an article about a very strange place. The article is called "Photographer Visits Creepy Cryogenic Chamber Where 200 Bodies Are Stored" and it features the work of Alastair Philip Wiper, who visited the Alcor Life Extension Foundation’s headquarters in Arizona. The Foundation might possibly be misnamed; according to Wikipedia, Alcor freezes legally dead bodies and heads "with hopes of resurrecting and restoring them to full health if the technology to do so becomes available in the future."

Talk about your big "ifs."

Photography from the beginning has been a way of showing people places they can't get to themselves. The Victorians flocked to exhibits showing photographs of exotic faraway places they had previously only heard about in writings and from reports, or had seen in paintings. Alcor's headquarters don't quite have the romance of the Silk Road or the palaces of the Orient, but it's fascinating to wander around inside the facility behind Alastair Philip Wiper's lens all the same.

The photographer, it turns out, who is British and is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been to a lot of unusual places and has a lot of interesting things to show us. What follows is a brief sampling of the projects from his website. I think I should put this behind a continuation, because even the mention of the first of these projects might be NSFW (not safe for work):

Ansel Stamps

You may have heard the Post Office is issuing a commemorative set of Ansel Adams stamps this coming May 15th, but you might not know that the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite National Park offers "Modern Replicas" of the stamp series pictures for reasonable prices. "Each digitally-mastered replica is made from an original photograph to capture the look, feel and luster that Ansel intended...Modern Replicas come in a variety of image sizes, up to 40x50 inches."

Just go to the Gallery website and navigate to Shop Ansel Adams Exclusives > Modern Replicas. There are three pages of results, with the stamp images highlighted in the captions. Here's a direct link.

Personally, I think I'll just get a sheet of the 16 stamps when they come out and have that framed!

Mike
(Hat tip to Carl)

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

Sal Santamaura: "My roll of 100 Forever flag stamps is getting close to running out, after more than five years. Not much physical mail gets sent from our house these days. Nonetheless, considering that the cost of a First Class stamp will go up again in July, and the Adams stamps are that 'Forever' type, I just pre-ordered eight sheets of them. What better way for a landscape photo enthusiast to pay postage in the next, who knows, decade?"

Robert Landrigan: "I deeply love that each of these stamps bears the legend of Ansel Adam, Forever USA. Ya, it's the postage value—but as one of the best known documentarians of American wilderness...it strikes me as fitting."

3D Printing?

Does anyone out there do 3D printing? I have two small pieces I need to have made, each maybe two-thirds the size of a mass-market paperback novel. Alternately, anybody know where I can get something like that done inexpensively?

[UPDATE: I got this problem sorted...with thanks to everyone who offered to help!]

Just as an aside, redoing my office was the best thing I've done for myself in a long time. It's had a surprisingly positive effect on my energy, sense of hopefulness, and mood. My old desk breaking really had me "down," but the new setup has got me back "up" again. You see what I did there. Oh boy. Anyway, feeling rejuvenated. Spring Cleanup continues, indoors and out.

More soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

gary bliss: "My son, a Navy powerplant machinist, has an entire bedroom in his house devoted to these 3D printers. What I learned from spending several days with him is that...3D printing is way more complex than printing in, ahem, 2D (even allowing for color). If I had a 3D printing task I would save myself the frustration and have someone else do it; there are likely hobbyists in your town that will do so."

Mike replies: I did find a local devotee who offered to do it for a nominal price, and I have several other offers of help lined up in case that doesn't work out. I agree with you that it's much better to get help with this! If you're curious, the project is at zsa.io > Accessories > Community Creations > Voyager Stand.

Editors Needed Everywhere (OT)

Ha! Just noticed a small but ludicrous mistake in yesterday's footnote:

*Although I have older friends here in rural Central New York who were born in the house they live in, and one, a guy of about 77,  whose parents were born in the house he lives in. Up here you hear stories like this.

See if you can detect the mistake. (Answer below.) I used to say "editors needed everywhere" a lot, and think it whenever I came across errors in the wild. If you edit in your daily life, mistakes present themselves all the time everywhere. (I'll make a mistake in this post, too, according to a corollary of the umbrella rule that states: every time you talk about grammar you will make a grammatical mistake.) Nowadays, I come across "howlers" (copyeditor talk for a glaring or eyerolling error) in videos, but it's no use to try to correct them because you won't be educating anyone. The scripts weren't even written by humans half the time. I believe I have an easier time than most spotting AI, because I'm very familiar with mistakes that are characteristics of humans, and often I'll come across an AI mistake that is not at all the kind of mistake that a human would make. By their mistakes ye shall know them.

Progress of the Combobulation (Blog Notes)

[UPDATE Wednesday 5 p.m.: Success! Up and running now (except for the external drives and printer), so the recent interruption is over. Thanks again for your patience!]

Me at my non-work computer upstairs

Just a brief update for you, and to break the silence. It's going pretty well. I did more physical work yesterday than I've done since last summer, and slept the sleep of the zonked last night. I'm typing this on my upstairs, non-work computer—and on my old keyboard, which actually feels quite strange now. I've already adapted to the new one, which I was so afraid I wouldn't.

New desk in the raised position. I ordered it in black, but oh well.

Man needs a desk (sung to the tune of Neil Young's "Man Needs a Maid")
The desk is fully assembled and operational. It was actually pretty easy. Just a few fastidious details to attend to such as leveling. In dismantling the old desk, it becomes apparent that the new ones have been streamlined to be much easier to put together. I like the old controls better—just two tactile buttons, up and down. (Pressing both together performs a reset, which you must remember to do every so often.) The old one also moved slower, making it easier to fine-tune. Presumably I'll adapt; hey, I adapted to the new keyboard, didn't I? However this one has presets, and an auto-lock.

The new desk locks its controls when they haven't been used in a few minutes. You have to remember how to unlock it. Coming to it cold, you would never figure out how. They claim this is a feature, to prevent children from playing with the desk. All right, but in my household, Butters is never tempted to mess with the desk. And when I was a kid, we weren't allowed in my father's office. Maybe there's a way for me to defeat the lock; we'll see. [UPDATE: fixed now. It wasn't in the instructions, but I found the info in a video on the Amazon page.]

People sometimes think I complain about aging, but I'm really just observing. I'm interested in it. It wasn't an issue until I was 45, when my very first sign of mental decline showed up—I began occasionally transposing letters when I typed. I find mental decline more interesting than physical decline, generally, although I got very interested in this history and function of my pacemaker. So, just as an observation, not a complaint: a new physical issue has cropped up, one I never noticed before. When I'm down on my knees and try to get up, an interim position is raising one knee to put one foot on the floor, so that I'm momentarily down on one knee, and, when I do that, the one knee that's still on the floor and supporting all my weight hurts too much. That's a new thing. I guess it's natural when you're closer to 70 than 60 that it's no longer comfortable to crawl all over the floor. The kneepads I use for gardening came in handy!

The state of the house right now is downright alarming. You've probably moved, so you know how it is*. You move a bunch of stuff out of one room and empty a few pieces of furniture, and next thing you know it looks like a hoarder lives here. Recombobulate! Recombobulate! Gaaah. This is going to give me bad dreams if I don't get the house cleaned up and back in order. Entropy is winning. Next I have to empty and clean the printer stand and try to get the printer going.

EMBRACE THE WIRES
There's nowhere to hide

Wi-Fi signal strength in the new location is only about two-thirds of what it was on the front porch, but 242 Mbps ought to be plenty.

Here's another weird thing. For a guy who is pretty, um, laid-back about housekeeping, I'm highly fastidious when I do get around to cleaning. I have to keep telling myself things like "the perfect is the enemy of the good the done," and "wire management can never be optimized to finality." A standing desk in open space is going to have to proudly celebrate the wire tangle rather than try to hide it. One more little thing I neglected to take into account when planning the move: in a room with windows on all four sides, there's going to be a window behind the screen...reflecting off it. One more thing: this new office would have room for a flat file. Yum, and oooh.

This is probably the neatest my desk will be for the next 1,825 days

Whistle and pin?
I should show you pictures, but that might have to wait. [UPDATE: Illustrations are added FWIW.] This computer doesn't have Photoshop on it. It just has something called "Photos." No idea how to use that.  :-)

Well, this too shall pass, and with any luck I will be back up and running at the main workstation by the end of the day. Hopefully with that whole room clean as a whistle and neat as a pin. But it won't happen if I don't get back to work. See you later.

Mike

*Although I have older friends here in rural Central New York who were born in the house they live in, and one, a guy of about 77,  whose parents were born in the house he lives in. Up here you hear stories like this.

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

ASW: "Re: wires on the lose (ha!) I've had good luck with Alex Tech braided cable sleeve. It's available on Amazon and comes in various lengths, diameters, and colors. It also cuts easily with scissors so you can buy a big role and cut the length(s) you need for multiple jobs. I used the 1/2-inch diameter to tidy up home theater speaker wires running along the wall to my side and rear speakers. The single black sleeve is much less noticeable (and offensive to the wife) than a mess of individual speaker wires."

Tom Burke (partial comment): "Good to hear the move has gone well. I tidied my computer desk yesterday afternoon, and that was stressful enough for me.... Photos: I think it's great—thanks to Apple's ecosystem, anything that gets into Photos is immediately available to me on the Macs, the iPad and the iPhone. So I export the best images that I've taken with the Canon (after processing them in Lightroom) as full-size, high-quality JPEG files, and import them into Photos. That way all of my images, from both the Canon and the iPhone, are available to me for casual looking, in one place. Saves having to sit at the computer and fire up LR. And the displays on recent-generation Macs, iPhones and iPad Pros are exceptional."

Ken Owen: "I bet that sword (a sabre?) you have in the corner has a story to tell. I'm guessing there was a cavalryman in your family."

Mike replies: British officer's dress sword from the Crimean War. No family connection, but there sure is a story behind it. This blog is not the place for it, though.

Recombobulation

I actually saw the original, handmade "Recombobulation Area" sign at the Milwaukee Airport when it was put up as a joke sixteen years ago. The signs (and the word) were the brainchild of Barry Bateman, the Director of Mitchell Airport. Harold Mester, Mitchell Airport's Public Relations Manager, said, "Whether it’s a word or not, I think we can all agree we all feel discombobulated after going through a security checkpoint and need a minute to recombobulate." According to an article in OnMilwaukee.com, not a single grammarian complained. The word was named the most creative word of the year by the American Dialect Society in 2009. It's a fun word because discombobulate is a fun word.

The movers are due in an hour to help me move TOP World Headquarters from the front to the rear of the house. Mainly, a couch needs to switch places to make room in "the Lightbox"—that's what Peter Turnley dubbed my back room, because it has windows on all four sides. But most of the work is going to be putting together the new desk and then a whole lot of recombobulating. It's a great opportunity to clean, reorganize, and re-situate everything, and maybe even rethink a thing or two.

I particularly want to thank all my Patreon subscribers and various others who make substantive contributions to this little enterprise. With tax day now weathered, you have successfully kept TOP going for another year. I'm very grateful. If anyone else would like to pitch in, it would be most appreciated. My brother used to refer to TOP as a "vertical magazine," and many people think of their Patreon donations as being like a magazine subscription. Note that the donations are monthly, not one-time.

Today is another glorious Spring day in the Finger Lakes! A cloudless sky and brilliant sunlight. 2024 marks my ninth year here. I have loved living here more than any other place I've ever lived (and there have been a lot).

I hope to be back working tomorrow. The desk might take longer than that—the new one needs to use the same top as the old one, which is going to take some doing. Pictures when I can manage. Thanks for your patience and forbearance today, and I shall keep you posted.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

IT'S SPRING Break Out the Cameras!

Spring has sprung, my brothers, my sisters.

On this side of the Equator. (Not forgetting you Bruces and Sheilas down under.)

Every Spring I dismantle and repack the camera bag, charge the battery and the spare battery, make sure there's an empty card in the camera and three extras in the card-carrier in the side pocket, and get out my cheat-sheet and run it down. Once upon a time I used a lot of cameras, so I would write down the basic setup and control parameters for each camera just to jog my memory. It forms a sort of checklist for how I use the camera. You wouldn't think I could forget, especially if it's a camera I use often. However, as I am now a grandfather my brain is of course bursting with wisdom and knowledge, and there is so much of it in there that it has gotten a bit shall we say disorganized. So it never hurts to review. Each item on the checklist appears obvious when I review, each one prompting an "oh yeah" or "of course." But it still helps to do it. I suppose I'm mostly trying to avoid the negative reinforcement: I know what I need to do when I'm out using the thing, and what I don't want is to be out there in the middle of shooting and need to do one of those things and find that the necessary input has somehow, um, slipped my mind temporarily. Anyway you know what a checklist is for.

Deadly photography
I seem to have devolved into the sort of person who watches flying videos, for no other reason than that I keep looking at them so YouTube keeps suggesting them and YouTube suggests them and therefore I keep looking at them. They're inherently dramatic. A surprising number of the ones I've seen seem to involve photography. One particularly sad example is of a newlywed couple who might well have died because they were trying to get a romantic photograph of themselves flying out of Telluride past Bridal Veil Falls, the highest free-falling waterfall in Colorado. For those who might not know, Telluride is in formidably rugged terrain and used to be considered relatively difficult to get to. That a social media picture documenting their honeymoon might have been the young couples' aim on that day is a surmise of the YT host, a former fighter pilot who goes by the handle of Hoover, but you can decide for yourself. Anyway, the point I'm heading toward: pilots run down checklists before each flight; so why not me prior to shooting? There's no such thing as being too big an expert, not that I've ever claimed such a thing. I recall a documentary about a National Geographic shooter that showed him using a packing checklist before setting out for a trip, and he went through it more than once. I don't know if you use checklists.

My checklist just runs down all the camera controls I use when out shooting. It's a small percentage of what the camera will do, but covers all of how I use the camera. Being prepared never hurts.

A convert to the converted
This year another resolution I have is to record the car mileage when I go out to shoot. Often when I go out with the camera, it's exclusively to shoot pictures. I can write off mileage for those trips if I track the mileage specifically and write it all down. I'm not, as I mentioned, the most organized guy on the continent, but I'm going to give that a try this year. Gas has become a significant photography expense since I got my Sigma with the converted sensor.

Speaking of write-offs, I had a weird thing come up this year: I can't write off my phone, but I can write off my cameras, and yet my phone is one of my cameras. I doubt even the IRS knows what to do about that. (I didn't attempt it.)

I also mean to put an ingestion, processing, and Flickr-posting checklist together too, because I don't see any harm in reviewing that as well.

Energy and optimism
I started a rhythm a long time ago during the film and darkroom era...during those years, the temperate months were for shooting, and the dark, cold Winter months were for darkroom work (although I usually did film processing as I went along, because how soon you develop B&W film after shooting it affects image quality). That's meaningless now, and yet one small carryover that has survived in my brain where photography is concerned is a feeling of energy and optimism when Spring comes around. Old habit suggests that it's the time of year you get down to work. Each of these days with lots of daylight is a blessing! Onward.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

darlene: "Checklists have played a vital role throughout my career, a practice I picked up from a pilot! Telluride is a place I want to revisit, but I doubt I ever will. It was a most unfortunate ending for the happy couple. We went to the airport there, but my then-commercial pilot ex said he did not like what he saw, and this came from a guy who had flown throughout South America's mountainous terrain for a decade. A dangerous area, and you need to be more experienced, is how I took his words.

"Soon, I'll embark on a journey to the Ocala National Forest and Paynes Prairie Preserve, accompanied by fellow campers. Paynes Prairie Preserve stands out as Florida's only sanctuary, where wild horses, bison, and gators roam freely. It boasts a diverse population of over 300 bird species. I always take two kits on my little excursions. This time, I will be shooting some of my digital lenses that have been idle for a year (Spring cleaning?). The other will be my old trusty Fotoman 6x17 film camera. I hope to photograph a pano of horses and bison out in the wild. Happy Spring to you, Mike, and to your readers as well. Now I must find my bottle of 'Eau de No-Gator' perfume."

Eric Brody: "I love checklists. Pilots use them, surgeons now use them and photographers should. I make them; I just have a hard time remembering to use them. I occasionally switch camera bags; I have three, one huge (2.2kg), pretty much only for the car and about 50 yards from the car. It holds a lot of lenses. The middle size one (1.7kg) is for most of what I do, namely reasonable photo-oriented hikes and travel. The smallest (1kg) I just got. and it's great for times when I'm willing to go with only three lenses, fewer clothes, and less food and drink. I just made a checklist on my phone for the switch from small bag to the medium one. Remembering the camera body and lenses is a no-brainer—it's the little doo-dahs like batteries, extra cards (rarely needed with 128GB cards), framing card, and all the filters and step-up rings. Now I just need to not be in such a hurry that I either forget the checklist entirely or just do a terrible job using it."

TOP Is Moving...

...Well, just my office. I decided to move it from the front porch to the back room. More space, and I get perfect internet signal back there ever since I bought my Deco 6E mesh system, which has given me trouble-free whole-house (and then some) connectivity for the first time in my internetty life. (Here it is on Amazon, since B&H is closed today). Plus, I'm hoping the dog will get agitated less often, since he won't have a front-row seat to the whole world passing by a few feet from the porch windows. When he does race to the front of the house barking like a maniac, at least I'll be farther away from it.

I'm going to have to take a few days, coming up, because this is going to take a minute.

The crazy quilt of wires on my desk reminds me of a story. In Woodstock, Illinois, where I used to live, there was a plumber who was still working in his mid or late nineties. Unfortunately his real or legal name is unknown to me, so I can't look him up, but he was known in town as "Leaky" Lee. Anyway, when I lived there in the '90s, Leaky had been installing plumbing in the town since the 1930s—I got that straight from the horse's mouth. The downtown area in Woodstock starred in a Hollywood movie once—it was where the movie Groundhog Day was filmed. In addition to the "hotel," really a beautiful 19th-century opera house where Orson Welles got his start in theater as a boy, and the pavilion in the middle of the square where "Phil" brought coffee to the crew every morning—you can see both in the picture below—the town square is lined with 19th-century brick buildings. Many of them had been serviced over the years by Leaky Lee. One large building in particular—it still had a large ballroom on the top floor—had been remodeled, repurposed, and reorganized any number of times. In my day, the ballroom was being used by an antiques dealer, and I'm still glad I didn't succumb to the urge to buy a massive collection of jazz-age 78s I found therefor 10¢ each. Leaky had been rebuilding, fixing, and re-routing the plumbing in that building in resourceful and inventive ways decade after decade. The trouble was that only he knew how it all worked. The system was so complicated, unintuitive, and creative that once he died, no one else could make head or tail of it. The owners of the building soon reached their wits' end, and had to tear out all the old plumbing and start all over from scratch.

Woodstock, Illinois (pronounced ill-i-NOY, for those of
you not from here). Photo from the town website.

I believe the building we're talking about is the big tan one behind the left half of the square, but I might be wrong.

I'm not saying my desk is that bad. But. Like I say, this is going to take a while. I'll probably post tomorrow, but I might be missing in action for a few days next week; the movers come on Tuesday to move furniture. They're also allegedly going to help me build the new standing desk, which arrived in what sounds like 8,000 pieces in a box that looks like it's been on an eternal journey since about the Clinton administration. It is to boxes what Dai Llewelyn is to faces. I'm not saying I'm girding (gurning?) for failure, but I'm feeling trepidatious about the project.

Quick, someone tell me what max aperture this FF lens would be on a.) an 8x10 film camera, and b.) a smartphone sensor. Warning: trick question.

Wide Open update
Still working on that piece about shooting wide open. And could be for a while yet—I'm procrastinating, a mode which is dangerous where I'm concerned. Meanwhile, take a look at this new ƒ/1.2 lens from Sigma. (B&H usually has more complete info.) What do you think? Do lenses like that appeal to you? It's said to weigh less than "competing" lenses. I thought the point of such lenses is to be bigger, heavier, and more expensive, not less of anything. No? What was that Zeiss lens that was as big as a melon? That was the killer app for a while as I recall. Oh yeah, the Otus 55mm. The Nikkor Z lens actually weighs more! Nikon wins. I can see wanting one of these, although I don't. (I'd get this instead of the Otus.) Those big lenses would be a lot of fun, though, for those for whom big and fast is fun.

Tennis update
Lastly: I jinxed poor Jannik Sinner. He lost to Tsitsipas today. @#%! Here's what Andy Roddick has to say about Sinner's year so far. Andy Roddick is a great commentator—he's thoughtful, analytical, articulate, and funny to boot. Roddick was the long-ago last gasp of United States dominance in men's tennis. We once led the world, with Connors and McEnroe in my era, then Sampras and Agassi in the next—but, as of right now, Andy was the last U.S. man to win a major, and that was more than 20 years ago now. France and Australia have suffered longer droughts. The UK was once like the Chicago Cubs of tennis (the Chicago Cubs endured a lack of championships that lasted 108 years, the longest drought in any North American sport), but then the great Scot Sir Andrew Barron Murray OBE came along—and "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"*. Britain can go another 40 years now without another men's major winner, just cruising on the glory of Murray. And who knows how long the US will have to go. It's curious that tennis dominance seems to locate distinctly in nations or regions and that these shift around.

I was really rooting for Sinner, but Tsitsipas cracked the code somehow. Any given day, and all that. It was Sinner's second loss of 2024. So funny that when you're a sports fan, you actually care enough that you can feel it. That's a mystery of the human psyche if there ever was one. I'm like a Greek foot soldier cheering Achilles. But why? My life doesn't depend on Sinner being a winner. Speaking of droughts, my friend Eddie, before his Red Sox broke their long drought (86 years), used to have to leave the room whenever the opposing team was at bat. He could only bear to watch when the Sox were up. When the Yankees were up and there was crowd noise, he would yell to his wife from the next room: "What happened? What happened?!"

When I teased him about it he would say, "you don't know the power of the curse," somber as a judge**.

Well, I guess I have to get back to work on the big move now...rats....

Mike

[CORRECTION: There was a glitch in the upload of both illustrations on Friday. Only part of each illustration was visible. Both should be fixed now. Sorry for the error.]

*That's from The Revelations of Divine Love by Mother Julian of Norwich, repurposed by T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets. One of those incantatory memes that pops to mind often for me, for whatever unknown reason.

**Baseball references for Darlene.

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

Albert Smith: "I had an experience with movie filming using local locations that would be lost on anyone but the people who lived there, and it became pretty meta. There was an '80s movie with Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase called Spies Like Us. In the middle was a scene involving a drive-in theater which was cover for a secret underground facility. I was living in the desert outside of Los Angeles and went to see this movie at the Lancaster Drive-In, without knowing that it was the filmed location for this scene. Even in a car in a full parking area, you could hear the audible gasps followed by car horns when the people realized they were in the very drive-in that they were seeing on the screen."

Mike replies: That's one of those serendipitous stories I've always liked...wonderful...."

David Drake: "Mike, the lens would have the same max aperture on both. Hah! All the best on your big move."

Mike replies: You are correct sir.

darlene: "Lovely story, Mike. Best wishes with everything, and I trust your desk will meet all your expectations and requirements.

"As for the Red Sox...I photographed Jason Varitek's first wedding. Varitek, the Red Sox captain from 2005 to 2011, played for the Seattle Mariners when I met him. He tied the knot with a gal from Atlanta."

[Ed. note: See Darlene's followup in the full Comments Section.]

Keith: "It might be too late for this advice. Whenever taking apart some wired system that is currently working, with the plan to move it elsewhere and set it up again, there is a sanity-saving trick. Before you unplug anything, get a roll of tape and a pen. Label each wire with a number on a piece of tape. Put that number on a piece of tape beside where the wire plugs in. If necessary draw a little map or take a photo of the place where the wires go. Do all the wires, even the ones that you think you will obviously remember, because you won't. Bonus points if you mention which end plugs in to what component, just so you don't get all panicky because the plug doesn't go."

Mike replies: Not only is it not too late, but you (I believe it was you—I haven't checked) gave me the same advice last time I moved my office, and I remember it from then.

Tennis Star (OT)

Most people like sports. At least a few sports.

A few of our readers don't care for any of them. I also understand that sports you don't care about can leave you cold; I have an American friend who's way into world football, and I have so little interest in it that it actually kind of mystifies me how it could be so popular. (Worldwide, cricket is second in popularity to world football. I know only slightly less about the Navajo language than I know about cricket.) On the other hand, I realize in my head that many people don't like cuesports, but in my heart I can't quite get there. How could anybody not like pool? (Please, no need to man the battlements. I know you're out there. Here's another view of that shot.)

Regardless of where they are played or where they're popular, you might say we each have our "home" sports, meaning the ones we like and follow, and "foreign" sports, the ones we don't know about or care for.

On the other hand (I think that's the third hand, if you're counting), lots of people can appreciate a sport that's "foreign" to them when something remarkable is happening. How many people who never follow athletics—also known as track and field—were on board for Usain Bolt's unforgettable Olympic feats? Similarly, a lot of people who couldn't care less about women's college basketball are aware of the dazzling college career of Caitlin Clarke which just ended. She's an outlier, a hero, and we like heroes. On to the WNBA.

The overpowering Italian
Anyway, tennis might be a foreign land for you, and I get it. But you still might want to be clued into the remarkable run of  Jannik Sinner. Only 22 years old, the Italian has a record so far in 2024 of 23–1 and has won three out of four tournaments, a run which includes his first major, the Australian Open in January. He's 44–3 since the last major of last year, the U.S. Open. And he's not just winning: he's overpowering opponents. The opening tournament of the clay season, Monte Carlo, is underway right now. It's usually considered a time when players are tentative and not up to speed yet on the less familiar surface, which culminates at Roland-Garros. Djokovic, for example, traditionally starts slow on clay. But Sinner, in the words of a commentator on the Tennis Channel, took "about three minutes" to adapt, steamrolling Seb Korda 6–1, 6–2 in the opening round. His laser-guided smoking winners off both wings, foot speed, consistency, incredible defense, impossible angles, and unlikely creativity have been otherworldly. Rankings lag behind current events, and the World No. 1 is still the aging Novak Djokovic, who had one of his greatest years in 2023. But Sinner is No. 2, and even Djokovic admits that Sinner is the best in the world at the moment.

Here's a random video of highlight shots. There's lots more out there.

The kid is really something. There's no telling if this is just a flash in the pan (it happens) or the birth of a new superstar, but it sure looks like the latter. Either way, it's a treat for tennis and its fans.

Nizhónígo Nee Ado’ááł*,

Mike

*"Have a good day" in the Navajo language.

P.S. I admit that this is a filler post. I'm working on a post about shooting wide open, and I wasn't going to get it done today, and something has to go up! That's how it is in the sport of blogging. 

Original contents copyright 2024 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:

Matt Kallio: "Ah, it's too bad you've spent so much time watching useless sports, instead of writing tons more blogs and taking pictures of skyscrapers and mannequins or something. Thanks for the tip about Sinner. Tennis is an incredible one-on-one battle of a sport, great fun to watch once in a while."

ST: "As a cricket fan and amateur photographer, some of my favourite sporting photographs come from cricket. It’s a sport that lends itself to great images. Magnum photographer Trent Parke is a particularly good cricket photographer."

Benjamin Marks: "I am one of those who doesn't pay too much attention to sports. That is, I am not emotionally invested in who wins and who loses. There is something, though, about a pinnacle of human achievement from which I cannot look away. Pele with a soccer ball, Michael Jordan, who seemed to be in motion while his competitors were standing still, Olympic sprinters, gymnasts, etc. There is a throat-catching beauty in it, a sense of struggle against whatever limits nature has imposed, that just gets me. Gets all of us, if TV ratings are to be believed. I had that sense when watching the video you linked to, Mike. Thanks."

Mike replies: Interesting! That's the way I am with basketball. I feel no allegiance to any team and it's possible I've never watched a single game all the way through. But I love watching highlights. The incredible athleticism and skill level is addicting. Sometimes I can watch things over and over and still can't imagine how they do it.

darlene: "I won't be tuning in if it doesn't involve baseball. I gave football a massive effort, though. I tried to grasp it to fit in with my football-loving friends. My ex attempted to decode the game for me, but it was a solid nope. I turned to my son, hoping for enlightenment, but all I got was a slightly fuzzier understanding.

"From what I see, football is a bunch of giants slamming each other over an odd-shaped ball. And then there's that laundry list of ailments: brain fog, bum knees, and early-onset forgetfulness for some. It's a real head-banger because I could never understand the game.

"I watched the random highlight video, which entertained me. This Sinner guy (memorable name) spans the entire court with his insane reach. I wouldn't be surprised if he sleeps in an extra-long bed to fit those limbs in comfortably. And his strategic ball placement is pure genius. He's like a chess master out there, outsmarting his opponents with every shot.

"I'm all in for about 95% of your non-photography posts. Your writing always hooks me, even if the subject matter differs from my usual familiar stuff. I'd much rather be sinking shots on the pool table than watching or reading about it, but you're a pool enthusiast and a wordsmith, so I have come to expect them from time to time. But no love for baseball hurts. Just sayin'.  ;-o) "

Mike replies: I'll never know enough about baseball to watch it on my own, but I love watching it with real fans who can explain it me as it goes along. They really bring it to life.

Andrew: "A fellow sport-loving colleague and I once tried to work out what the most boring sport to watch is. We eventually decided that it must ten pin bowling, and selected a random match on YouTube to try to confirm our theory. Long story short: ten pin bowling is really a fascinating thing to watch!"

Mike replies: I used to think the same thing of golf. I tested that theory, and, like you with the bowling, got rather fascinated with it for several years.

Sightline to the Sun

TOP World HQ was right at the edge of totality yesterday (some sort of joke is begging to be made there, but I don't know what it is). But as luck would have it, Sunday was sunny and clear, and today is sunny and clear, but yesterday was blanketed by overcast from stem to stern, dawn till dusk, start to finish—I didn't see a scrap of blue sky all day, never mind a clear sightline to the sun. I got a taciturn text from Ctein last night: "I saw it!" but without elaboration. It did get briefly dark here, like late twilight, and it confused the birds. But that was about it. Here's my lame record shot of our near-totality, taken with the iPhone's surprisingly good Night Mode:

Darkness at 3:22. The sky to the south-southwest, farther from the path, was brighter, which you can kind of see here.

For half an hour around 1:00 I had a nice conversation with my old friend Jack Mac, who has appeared in these pages a number of times over the years. He was stuck in traffic heading for the totality nearest his home in St. Louis, Missouri. Jack told me he had gone through some preparatory drills the day before with photographer friends, and was surprised how much there was to practice and how many things there were that could go wrong. For one thing, he intended to bracket, and the DR of good digital sensors is so good these days he seldom brackets. The practice paid off:

Eclipse 2024. Photos by Jack MacDonough. Larger sizes here.

Very nice. Jack sells large prints to corporate clients, and often makes presentations of two or more images together; it's easy to predict that some finished variant of this set will grace a few lobbies and boardrooms at some point in the future. (His bestseller is, or was, four photographs of the same view of the same tree in four different seasons, beautifully executed.)

So, didja get anything interesting? Or have you seen any notable ones online?

Here's our last word on the eclipse, by one of the young YouTubers I follow, Elle Cordova (if you were an English major or a humanities type, check out her rap about Emily Dickinson). Like many of her generation, she's very creative, using the new media of today.

Mike

Jac Mac adds: "The photographer friend who told me to take the eclipse missed it as he was caught in traffic. Turns out the most important equipment after a camera is a traffic app. You predicted correctly. I have orders for the series already. BTW, I should update my bio photo with 'Photo by Mike Johnston.'"

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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Kristine Hinrichs: "Here in Milwaukee we got about 90%, similar to 2017 I think. Like everyone else in town I went to the lakefront. My photos of the eclipse are pretty much like all the others I’ve seen. My best are of people watching it. I found the sense of a shared experience very comforting. I spent more than an hour sitting on a ledge next to the lake with three other (former) strangers—I got to know nice people who I’d never have met otherwise. I experienced the signature Smallwaukee moment when I found that I was connected to each of them in some way."

Donald MacDonald: "'Types of Eclipse Photo' from XKCD."

Patrick Murphy, the offline photographer: "You'll probably get a ton of eclipse photos. But since you asked, here are three iPhone pics:

Photo by Donna Colona

"I used a pizza pan's holes to image the partial (57%) eclipse we had here in Orlando. I like the repetitive pattern. I also used a foamcore board with a single 1/4" hole in aluminum foil, to cast an image of the sun onto another foamcore board. My wife Donna Colona made the leaf + eclipse photo. We hereby give you permission to reprint these photos at the greatest blog in the world, The Online Photographer, if you deem them worthy.

"In 2017, we traveled from Orlando to Wyoming to see that total eclipse. It was pretty cool. But for whatever reason, I didn't get the 'eclipse chasing' fever that some have so I skipped 2024. Instead, I am waiting for the 6-minute long August 12, 2045 eclipse that will go right over Orlando. BTW, that gives me an incentive to stay healthy; I am the same age as you!"

Brian Cormack: "We were in totality, and luckily enough it was clear enough to see the eclipse. Now I completely understand why people travel across the country to see it. We went to a park to watch the eclipse over downtown Little Rock. It was along the river, where a few boats from the police and sheriff's office were going by. My three year old is completely obsessed with fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. And when he saw that police boats actually existed, his young mind was blown. He wanted me to hold him during the entire length of totality, because all he wanted to see were the boats in the water (which were playing 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' on their speakers). So I tried my best to get a few pictures of the eclipse, all while holding a squirming toddler who was yelling 'police boat dada!!' in my ear the whole time. Here's my shot."

Open Mike: Those Wonderful Sit-Stand Desks

One problem with standing desks. They break.

However, they are truly a luxury if, like me, you spend a lot of time at your desk. Half because of the intended purpose, which is to allow you to stand up and keep working and then, after a little while, sit down again; that's nice. The other half because you can make small changes to the height of your desk—to vary your arm position while typing, make it easier to get to things underneath the desk, make it easier to get in and out if you have a regular chair, or just to get the desk at the exact right height for you in the first place. They're very nice.

And the good news is, adjustable standing (AKA stand-up, AKA sit-stand) desks have gotten cheap.

Rock of Gibraltar
The first one I ever saw was at an office furniture store in Wisconsin. The top of the line SPFE sit-stand desk on display was a thing of beauty. It had a gorgeous thick real wood top and was as solid and steady as the rock of Gibraltar. It moved up and down smoothly and quietly with the touch of a button. Standing desks had never entered my consciousness before that. I wanted one immediately.

It also cost something like $2,100 in fifteen-years-ago money ($3,037 today). I mulled it over for months or maybe a year or two and eventually bought the "budget" model from the same manufacturer for around $1,100. It had lighter legs and a thinner (1-inch, 2.54 cm) laminate top (depth and width 31x65 inches, 79x165 cm). Still plenty nice enough.

Mine has had it rough. It survived incompetent installers who mucked everything up and departed with the new desk still inoperable (the store had to find the guy who knew what he was doing and send him along later); several bits and pieces coming loose over the years; and Lulu chewing up one of the connector plugs! The plug still worked post-mastication, which was a blessing. The desk also survived the 740 mile trip to New York in a jam-packed moving van driven by bandits. Not to mention ten years of service. Worth $110/yr.? I'd say yes.

But it finally broke. This morning the right side of the desk is eight inches higher than the left. It's not moving, but it's still making me a little seasick. Web search turns up several people with the same problem pleading for a source of parts. But the company that made it is long since out of business.

Cheaper by China
These days, though, standing desks are much less expensive. (The Chinese got to them.) I don't need a new top, but you can buy the leg sets alone for reasonable prices. I bought this heavy-duty leg set from Amazon for $346 with free shipping:

Capacity 275 lbs., the highest I could find. Made by a company called Mount-It! [sic], which sounds both very Chinese as well as a little dirty. That's actually on the expensive side; you can get leg sets for almost half that now—this is Amazon's "Overall Pick"—and whole desks like this one for $240.

I think my new leg set (arriving on Wednesday) is an outgoing model; the new top-of-the-line desks from Mount-It! have a load capacity of 220 lbs., which is, obviously, still reasonable unless you're overweight and plan to lie down on it. I'm not necessarily recommending any particular brand. It looks like some of the leg sets and desks that Amazon sells are generic, without even a brand name tacked on for show. And some of the brand names that do come up aren't exactly venerated well-known names. Topsky? Fezibo? Radlove? Sweetcrispy?!? However, you'll also notice that most of them also get high ratings from customer reviewers, so it looks like problems aren't...well, a problem.

My outgoing one just has two buttons, up and down. The new control modules have presets, exact height readouts in inches or centimeters, several presets, and time reminders—all of which would be useful, in my opinion.

Heirloom desktop
I'll tell you what I'd do if I were starting over, though. I'd get a stout leg set, then find a Mennonite or Amish cabinetmaker to make me a stunning real-wood desktop out of some sort of pretty wood. I fancy American black walnut, though you might have a different preference. As a bonus, that would let me specify the exact size I wanted. If you're an amateur woodworker, you could make one yourself.

Then, if the lifting mechanism ever broke again, I'd just get another leg set. And end up bequeathing my beautiful custom top to my son or grandson.

My desk might have broken, and I'm going to be listing to the side for the next couple of  days, but it's all good. I'm a big fan of standing desks all the same. They're well worth the trouble in my book.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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Mike S: "I worked in a 911 center and we had dual-level powered sit-stand desks. The desk top was split into two parts. The rear section held the six monitors and the front section was for keyboards, pointing devices, coffee, oh so much coffee. Both levels could be raised in tandem, but the genius design allowed the monitor level to be lowered below the keyboard level. Alternating between standing and sitting is the best way to survive, but being able to also alternate between looking straight (or up) at monitors versus standing and looking at a downward angle is pure luxury during a 12-hour shift. Very high quality, used 24 hours a day, 356 days a year and probably cost as much as my non-existent Leica."

Steve L.: "Mine is from Standdesk. I bought it many years ago (like 10 maybe) after reading about the concept right here on your blog, I think. It's worked flawlessly, though for most of it's life I've used it mainly standing up. Now that I'm in my mid sixties I seem to be splitting my day more, half standing and half sitting. I just checked their website and they have a lifetime warranty, which might interest you if you ever need another one. Cheap, too. I paid way more when I got mine years ago."

Photography at 185 and Malcolm Daniel

Photography is 185 years, two months, and 29 days old as of today (Friday). Few technological advances have such clearly demarcated birthdays. A short, elegantly written account of the invention, from the mid-1820s to the fire at the diorama (you can read it in two minutes, if not two shakes of a lamb's tail) is "Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography" by Malcolm Daniel, at the Met site. The Met, on the off chance someone out there doesn't know, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, one of the world's great museums.

Malcolm Daniel, an expert in 19th century photography, has been Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, since he followed Director Gary Tinterow there from the Met in 2013. He succeeded Anne Wilkes Tucker (ret. 2015), which were pretty big shoes to fill; she founded and built Houston's collection, and in my opinion as well as that of many others she ranks as one of the great American photography curators. Her signature publication was the seminal The Woman's Eye, a modest-looking but highly influential book from 1973. It profiled ten female photographers—Gertrude Käsebier, Frances Benjamin Johnston (no relation), Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Barbara Morgan, Diane Arbus, Alisa Wells, Judy Dater and Bea Nettles—and led the way for women to be let back into the pantheon when photography was being rejiggered in the '70s as a proper subject for scholarship, education, collection, and attention from museums. Alisa Wells (AKA Alisa Andrews, Alice Wells-Witteman, and Alisa Attenberger, d. 1988) is perhaps the only name among those ten that might be unfamiliar to most today.

Forgive the digression. Malcolm Daniel authored a number of short essays at the Met's website. They're all listed and linked at the bottom of the link above. At least some (maybe all?) are part of the massive Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, a collection of more than 1,000 short essays about many different aspects of art history on the Met's website. Malcolm Daniel was a senior curator and a former head of the photography department at the Met before decamping for Houston. He's a good writer for a guy who apparently has not given us many books; the short essays are very good. Sort of the tip of an iceberg for me when it comes to photography commentary from the Met. He has continued the tradition somewhat at MFA Houston.

I confess I don't know how many people follow these good-for-you links when I put them up, but they are oh so much more nourishing than, say, watching YouTube videos of animals being cute, traffic stops, and people falling on icy steps.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

The invention of photography was one of the great sensations of the scientific 19th century. It's an interesting subject to learn about, and it's one of those subjects that you can learn at many different degrees of depth; maybe the capsule essay linked above will be the only thing you'll ever know about it, and of course you can go deeper than that, but then deeper than that, and then deeper still. Whole books have been written about it.

I don't know what the best books about it are now. I learned about it in school (with thanks and a nod to Tom Beck—pretty sure I was a PITA to him in our History of Photography class, but I learned a lot), and from general histories, and from Helmut Gernsheim's books and writings. The history I used to recommend for adolescents is The Story of Photography: An Illustrated History by the Italian photographer Giovanni Chiaramonte, with illustrations by Paola Borgonzoni and Giuliana Panzeri. You might think it is long in the tooth, but oh no, for it was written just before digital came in. Any later and it would have been a different subject. Of course it's out of print.

May I just say that The Woman's Eye would make a most excellent candidate for a reissue. Perhaps with an introduction for added value and historical context. Perhaps written by Malcolm Daniel! That would be fitting, as he reportedly worked alongside her when he got to Houston, and he certainly knows the collection she built. I would be first in line.

Does anyone have any recommendations as to what the best books about the invention of photography are these days?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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Wide Open?

Just out of curiosity, how often would you say you photograph with any of your lenses wide open?

1. Always
2. Often
3. When conditions indicate
4. I avoid it
5. Never

You don't have to limit yourself to those categories, just trying to be helpful.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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darlene: "Every once in a while for artistic reasons like here:"

s.wolters: "My current favorite set is the OM System 20mm ƒ/1.4, the Olympus 12–45mm ƒ/4, and the Olympus 75mm ƒ/1.8. All three have approximately the same size. For something faster at the midrange I might add the tiny Lumix 42.5mm ƒ/1.7. I prefer to stop them down a bit, depending on the situation.

"But the 12–45mm ƒ/4 is always used wide open, because that way it has its best performance. The other Olympus zooms that start at ƒ/4 are also at their best wide open. A clever way of reducing size and weight without giving in on quality."

Mike adds: That's an awesome trio of lenses. All affordable but of very high quality, none too large, and I imagine the set as a whole would be extremely flexible for general shooting. Nicely chosen.

Herman Krieger: "Only when I use the pinhole or box cameras."

Chris Hunt: "Almost never, due to the various downsides of wide open shooting."

Doug: "I do a lot of night photography and have a couple of ƒ/1.1 and ƒ/1.2 lenses that are rarely if ever stopped down. In fact, I wonder why they have apertures at all. Say 5% of my total photography output is wide open."

Christopher Perez: "I shoot wide open for two reasons: 1.) It's dark. 2.) To separate the subject from the background. This is around, oh, for me, 20 to 30 percent of the time. There are a lot of interesting places around Paris that are poorly illuminated."

Grant: "I don't know, nor do I care to know. Analytics is for pro sports, not for creative endeavours. I use whatever my aging brain or the camera suggests, and adjust if the results require adjustments. I will mention that whenever I put my Pentax K 55mm ƒ/1.8 lens on my Micro 4/3 camera, the aperture ring and I play around like kids in a candy store!"

Sal Santamaura: "Never. Irrespective of film/digital or camera format."

Caleb Courteau: "When conditions indicate. When I first got into photography I shot wide open constantly, until I realized I was using it as a crutch. I was insecure about my compositions, and would blast the background into oblivion to make my photo look 'special.' I also used it to make up for poor framing in which I’d allowed unwanted background objects into the frame. Now I almost always shoot at ƒ/5.6. It’s more forgiving of slight focus errors, and I find that I want more of the frame in focus. Most of my favorite photographs by other photographers have a deep depth of field."

Tony Ayling: "Only occasionally. For my photography, I’m usually looking for more depth of field, and stop down to ƒ/8–ƒ/11."

Mess of Eggs

Sorry for the lack of a post today (Wednesday). I worked on one for three hours this morning, but upon review and the return of objectivity, I realized it was...pretty bad. Then I had to consider reworking it entirely, and concluded it was hopeless, so I pulled the plug.

One of the few things my father could cook were French-style omelets, with a traditional steel omelet pan that was cleaned with salt and "never saw water." He practiced by flipping dry rice in it at room temperature. His motto was "Sometimes you get an omelet, sometimes you get a mess of eggs." And so it is.

Michel le chef

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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Tolerance and Patience Toward Each and Every

Speaking of DoF, a little story.

A long time ago—well over a decade ago—I met with a photographer who brought to the meeting not a portfolio of photographs for me to look at, but notebooks filled with figures. He gave me a very valuable gift as well: he changed my thinking.

Perfectly nice guy as far as I could tell: thoughtful, intelligent, friendly enough. We went for coffee. The figures were the calculated DoF ranges for his zoom lenses at every focal length and aperture. Page after page. Whole stack of notebooks, IIRC. He was a little sheepish about it—just a little. It became apparent quickly that it was a pretty big part of his hobby. It was how he enjoyed photography. And while I didn't see the need for it, it wasn't up to me. It was up to him. It was what he had decided to spend his time doing. And what he had chosen to bring to the coffee shop to show me. As though I would be, you know, interested.

I believe that was when I gave up came around and formulated my principle of tolerance and patience toward all and every. I decided that as far as I'm concerned anybody can enjoy photography however the heck they want to. (With one caveat—as long as it isn't hurting anybody. Remember the Two Commandments of the Hopi: "Try to understand things," and "Don't go around hurting people.") Other than that, who am I to tell anyone they can't collect Japanese Leica copies, or learn all the different ways of doing the same thing in Photoshop, or scrounge "found" metal for tintypes, or test lenses at a half mile distance for out-the-airplane-window aerial photography, or take pictures with pinhole cameras they made themselves, or collect old Kodachrome slides from estate sales and thrift shops, or optimize extreme resolution, or take a photo every day, or worship all things Leica, or own 5,500 photography books and move them from apartment to apartment, or devote themselves to LF, or visit all the National Parks, or use only JPEG, or make YouTube videos with a phone, or scan old glass plate negatives, or...

Or...

Or...?*

I don't judge. Their hobby, their rules. "You do you," as they say. We do us.

Sometimes, having people specialize in various arcane little sidelights of the hobby is valuable. I published an article back in the old times by an author who bought and tried nearly every early digital camera that came out; another who researched how Kodak went about researching image quality in the 1930s; and another who had tested every print developer known to Man. One guy, whose name I should remember, retired from a career as a chemist and scientist, and devoted his retirement to testing claims made in various places about photo processing, with an aim, I believe, toward reducing the amount of crud in that field built up from cant and nonsense. He wrote a book about his investigations and conclusions. It's nice to be able to benefit from the expertise of people like that.

Richard Henry. Just remembered.

The guy who showed me those notebooks with all the DoF tables went on to make and market high-end interconnects and speaker cables for stereo systems, if I recall correctly. I believe he was a success.

Mike

*All those examples are actual people I know, or once knew, or encountered online, or read about.

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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MikeR: "Re 'Two Commandments of the Hopi': Where is this from? I asked the oracle (Google) but found nothing even close."

Mike replies: From William Least Heat-Moon, the author of the book Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, a minor classic published in 1982 and still in print. As usual, my memory isn't as specific as I would like. By accident I attended a talk he gave at a bookstore on Dupont Circle in DC just after the book was published—I was in the store looking at records when a crowd gathered—and got to talk to him for a while afterwards. I bought the book at the signing, read the book, and I believe it's in the book, but I don't remember it there but rather from the talk.

Moose: "I have an ebook of Blue Highways, so a search was easy:

We watch what the Kachinas say and do. But the Spider Grandmother did give two rules. To all men, not just Hopis. If you look at them, they cover everything. She said, 'Don’t go around hurting each other,' and she said, 'Try to understand things.'

"Excellent book!"

Mike replies: It is! And thank you for that, Moose. Thanks for all your comments.

Thomas Rink: "I remember that when I was still a graduate at university, I used to share the bus ride to the university with another graduate. Since we met every morning, we soon started to have a chat to make time pass on our commute. It turned out that he was a physicist, a very bright and sympathetic guy. One morning he told me that he made up his mind to buy a camera, for 'all the nice features a camera has.' He admittedly didn't have any prior experience with photography. Maybe it was still too early in the morning, and I hadn't had enough coffee yet—I didn't get his point. I thought he wanted to take up photography, and suggested that he would be best served with a simple, mechanical camera with a prime lens—something like a Nikon FM2. Why would anybody purchase a camera in the first place? No, he insisted on his point—it was about the features of the camera. After a while of talking past each other, we changed to another subject.

"This was 30 years ago; the world wide web offered not much more than a live stream of a coffee machine. Nowadays, in a similar conversation, I'd be rather surprised if my conversation partner was actually interested in taking up photography, and not in cameras."

f/1.7 is ƒ/1.7 (Don't Be a Looser)

My apologies, but I've been sensitized. I was the editor of a technical photography magazine for six years. Depth-of-field (DoF) is a subject that is deeply beloved of wannabe photo-tech writers, and few things could create instantaneous dismay deep in my editor's heart like opening a submission and finding yet another beautifully prepared, extensive, arcane article on DoF. DoF is perhaps the ultimate hell of photo-tech—graspable enough so many people think they can understand it (or think they should!), complex enough so that very few really can. Whenever the subject really gets going, great reams of material are spewed forth "explaining" it, always—always—strewn with considerable content that happens not to be true. Assuming any given reader engages with said great mass of verbal matter, he comes out the other side usually no more enlightened, and possibly considerably more confused. Finally, add to those conditions the simple fact that a technical understanding of DoF is not required for the successful practice of photography, and you begin to appreciate the extent of my exasperation with the subject.

(By the way, the other day I finally figured out why "grammar police" types can seem to be so fussy and cross. It's because they keep correcting the World, and the World keeps making the same mistakes anyway. If you tell your child three times to hang up the wet towel in the bathroom and he doesn't, you're not that irritated. When you've told him 700 times and you still come into the bathroom and find the damp towel in a moldy pile on the counter, you might well be incensed. So do you see my point? No matter how many times I remind people that "loose" is the opposite of "tight" and "lose" is the opposite of "win," people are still going to misspell it—because it's different people all the time, and there are an inexhaustible supply of them. It's like having 40,000 children, each one of whom needs to be trained to hang up the towel. The first three people I correct, I'm perfectly calm. By the 700th, I'm about to "loose" my mind. Anyway, you see the problem: educate one photographer about DoF, or ten, or a hundred—at however great a cost of time and effort—and you still have numberless millions to go. It's Sisyphean.)

The above two paragraphs are from my article "Depth-of-Field Hell," from 2009. Ctein contacted me privately the other day and cracked, "It's DoF Hell Part III!" Ctein gave you his links the other day, but these are the links he listed in 2015:

What's a 'Fast Lens'?, by Mike

Depth-of-Field Hell, by Mike

Depth-of-Field Hell, the Sequel, by Ctein

The Practical Side of Depth of Field, by Ctein

It's useless, though. Trying to fight the falsehood of "equivalent aperture" (EA) is as hopeless as telling your kid for the 701st time to hang up the wet towel and expecting a different result from the first 700 times. I even had a photography instructor(!!) tell me once that he knew EA was wrong but he taught it anyway because his students found it easy to grasp. [*Smacks forehead*.] We ought to teach children that stars are much tinier than the moon. That would be a good thing to teach them because it's so easy for them to grasp.

Yes, it's true that people are describing real things when they talk about EA. But EA is not the reason for those things and it is not the correct explanation. The fact that it's the wrong theory to describe what people are trying to talk about should count for something.

This will probably annoy a few people, but I'm sorry, I think it's true, even if it's not true of you. I personally think the equivalent aperture fallacy mainly exists because it relates to status and prestige. It's usefulness for many (not all) of those who promulgate it is in asserting that one can achieve shallower DoF with a "full-frame" (FF) camera than others can using smaller-sensor cameras even if the latter have the same speed or slightly faster lenses. ("My FF ƒ/1.4 lens is better than your Micro 4/3 ƒ/1.2 lens.") At root it's a way of showing off a claimant's ownership of expensive equipment, and there's not really much more to it than that.

Three assertions in support of this contention: First, I've observed (over many years of observing) that EA is almost always asserted (not always, so don't take offense, please) as an argument against smaller-than-FF sensors, and of the superiority of FF sensors and fast lenses. Second, people seldom point out that you can get even shallower DoF with larger-than-FF formats. The reason for the latter is probably because shallow DoF isn't actually the point. Showing that one's camera is cooler and mo bettah and more he-man than gnarly liddle-sensor cameras and baby zooms is the point. Third are all those people who shoot wide open all the time even when they shouldn't, getting important areas of the image (like the dog's nose) out of focus even when more DoF would be better for the picture.

All of the EA adherents' assumptions also depend on the proposition that where depth-of-field is concerned, shallower is better. This is exactly contrary to how most photographers have felt over most of the history of photography. It's perfectly easy to turn that around and say something like: 4/3 sensors are more ideal because it's easier to get more DoF.

Of course there's no such thing as focal-length equivalency either; it's really angle-of-view equivalency we're talking about there. This might help EA proponents, though: consider that a maximum aperture value is a stable characteristic of a camera lens even when the lens is not attached to a camera. Even when it's not in front of any particular sensor. Even when pictures do not enter into it at all.

In every case, when someone asserts that a lens correctly calculated and correctly marked as an ƒ/1.7, for instance, is "really" an ƒ/2.8 lens or "really" an ƒ/4 lens or whatever, that is simply wrong. We shouldn't teach it and we shouldn't promote the idea. It's wrong; an ƒ/1.7 lens is ƒ/1.7 is ƒ/1.7. If you want to say that a photograph made with it on a particular sensor looks a lot like a picture made on a different sensor with a different lens, go ahead, but it's not because the lens magically acquired different properties it didn't acquire and doesn't have. Now then, for the 702nd time, please go hang up that wet towel.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 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.)

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JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Yes, to each their own. But to be completely honest, this '80% guy' commercial photographer has never been able to understand the objective obsession with depth of field. (I recognize that I am primarily a 35mm full-frame photographer and if I were shooting larger formats one might have to be more intentional.)

"Depth of field is a gradual moving target depending on the three factors of f-stop, focal length and distance from subject. When approaching every shot, one of the first questions is how much depth do I want? I can pick an f-stop and focal length that will be close to what I need and tweak from there. And now we are looking at the results immediately.

"I am a photographer who is interested in photographs. I am not really interested in using the photography as part of a math and science proof method."

Mike replies: That about sums up my approach as well. Of course more succinctly than I ever could do!  :-)

Tahir Hashmi: "Regarding equivalence, Ctein is right in highlighting that from a point of view of photometry the aperture of a lens doesn't change with sensor size. E.g. an ƒ/1.7 lens needing 1/50 exposure at ISO 100 on FX sensor would need exactly the same parameters of exposure for Micro 4/3 as it would on a larger 645 sensor (assuming all other lens characteristics are the same).

"However, while there is no equivalence in exposure parameters, there is absolutely undeniably an equivalence in visual parameters, i.e. framing and depth of field. It's trivially verifiable and has been demonstrated thousands of time online.

"And it is useful.

"Since Mike talked about DoF equivalence being used by FX [i.e., full-frame —Ed.] owners to show off, let's take an example from Weegee, who shot with a Kodak 127mm Ektar on a massive 127mm x 101mm (5x4-inch) film 'sensor.' His favourite shooting apertures...ƒ/11 (longer distance) through ƒ/22 (close-ups).

"It's impractical for me to acquire a 5x4 camera today, so I must make do with my puny little 35mm sensor. Applying the equivalence math, I ought to be using a 35mm lens set to ƒ/3 through ƒ/6 or thereabouts. Seems plausible; looking at his published photos, I reckon those settings would fit.

"If I were to ignore DoF and FoV equivalence and shoot with 127mm at ƒ/22, I don't think I'd be doing close-ups anymore.

"And, oh, getting Weegee's ƒ/22 DoF on my humble iPhone...impossible! But somehow the iPhone gets everything in focus even at its ƒ/1.8 aperture.

"There is such a thing as DoF equivalence, and it shouldn't be denied. What's needed is clarity around where to apply aperture invariance (exposure calculations) and where to apply aperture equivalence (visual approximation)."

Mike replies: Okay, but let's call it DoF equivalence then, as you do here. It's not aperture equivalence. As John G. notes above, DoF is a combination of three things anyway. As an aside (not as a refutation of your points, that is), I think one thing that annoys me about EA is that the observation of effects is just so sloppy. If not missing. EA adherents seem to assume that out-of-DoF blur (bokeh) is always the same, that is it's just one effect universally and it just has to be applied, like it's a standard property that is interchangeable in every situation. An analogy from my point of view might be to assert that all singers sound the same as long as they are singing the same note. As someone who observes the effects closely, I believe that it's not only not a standard property optically, but (even) that it varies with the subject being rendered.

A good comment, though, and I take your points and respect your point of view even if we do not entirely agree.

Sean: "As a poor speller, I’ve had my collar felt by the 'grammar police' in every neighbourhood of the internet. They get quite upset when I tell them that, technically, spelling isn't grammar. A furious ‘no true Scotsman’ response often follows. Let he who is without nits...."

Mike replies: I'd never heard of "no true Scotsman" before, and thanks for that. 

Here's a snippet from Wikipedia about the expression:

No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a-posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence that would disqualify the falsifying counterexample, the claim is modified into an a-priori claim in order to definitionally exclude the undesirable counterexample. The modification is signaled by the use of non-substantive rhetoric such as 'true,' 'pure,' 'genuine,' 'authentic,' 'real,' etc.

Philosophy professor Bradley Dowden explains the fallacy as an 'ad hoc rescue' of a refuted generalization attempt. The following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy:

Person A: 'No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.'
Person B: 'But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge.'
Person A: 'But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.'

Wonderful! "Signaled by the use of non-substantive rhetoric" made me laugh.

I like and enjoy reading and learning about fallacies even though I've found I can't memorize them and have little aptitude for applying them. (Same goes for formal logic, and for the identification of trees. Although I've always been a very good speller. It's always interesting sorting out what we are good at and what we are not, although it was more involving when I and my brain were young.)

Bear.: "DoF is really very simple and may be calculated by reference to the circle of confusion; namely, for any given field of view for any sensor (or film) size, it is a depth equal to the diameter of any given number of people confused by the concept at that time standing in a circle holding hands multiplied by the inverse of the chosen f-stop."