The Online Photographer

Open Mike: David and Goliath

"Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. wanders hither and thither as if in a dream. It normally appears on Wednesdays but sometimes not.

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Speaking of camera dreams...whoa. Last night I dreamt I was taking all sorts of lovely pictures using my iPhone, then set my phone down (at a bar, which is bad—dreams including alcohol are thought to be a signal of stress for those of us in recovery!), neglected to pick it up, and returned for it to find it vanished. Television-inspired sequences involving police and suspected thieves followed. I was so distressed by the loss of all my pictures that eventually I managed to realize, within the dream, that it was only a dream and that my phone had never left the house and was downstairs, safe. An uncomfortably vivid dream, though, with lots of fantastical twists and turns—eventful, emotional, strikingly visual.

Also within the dream, though, I believed I would be forced to get a new iPhone, and wondered (do you dream of yourself thinking?) if I could afford "the good one," and was musing that it would be nice, at least, to have Apple's latest camera. When I woke up it struck my brain, for some reason, how interesting it would be to take the same picture on all the different digital formats and make prints from them. Do normal people think about such things first thing in the morning?!

Back to reality
Such a test would flawed, though, because the test picture would only be one subject taken under one set of conditions. Part of the advantage of larger formats and more sophisticated cameras is that they (presumably) cope better with being stressed in various ways. It's no longer straightforward to determine which is "best," though, because of what can be done to files either manually in Photoshop or automatically in software—we're no longer looking at just the capabilities of the sensor in a single split-second exposure. Things like the "Night Mode" on newer smartphones is radically better than the inherent capability of the small sensor alone, for instance. And of course software bokeh has been available in "Portrait Mode" for several generations of smartphones now. So when you make the prints, do you take the files "out of camera" or do you optimize each one as best you can? I think the latter, because that's what we do in real life. So then is that a test of the camera, or of your Photoshop skills?

One of six winners in Apple's "Night Mode Photo Challenge," this was taken by Konstantin Chalabov of Moscow, Russia, using an iPhone 11 Pro

Any "test" would be only a snapshot, so to speak, of specific implementations in specific circumstances using particular equipment and processing. Comparisons would have to be multivalent, considered over a range of various trials. And then, of course, the usual problem: after all that work, all you'd have would be a snapshot in time of this particular moment, of today's existing equipment. A few years go by, and some new introductions come along, and the work of comparing would need to be started all over again. I did a lot of work comparing some cameras a few years ago—pitting the Canon 5D Mark II vs. the Nikon D700/D3 vs. the Sony A900. That post got more views than any other post I ever wrote on TOP, something like 100,000. But who cares about those cameras now?

And I wonder what effect economic realities are having on our perception of technology. For instance, great emphasis is being placed on computational photography in smartphones, because that's where all the resources are concentrated. Meanwhile, Micro 4/3 is apparently withering even within enthusiast precincts. What would we think, however, if all the advantages of smartphone imaging—and all those resources—were being applied to Micro 4/3 or 1" sensor cameras? I'd rather have "Night Mode" and "Portrait" computational bokeh available in a 1"-sensor camera or an Olympus than in a phone, personally. I think it would be more interesting, and possibly more freeing. Almost surely it would be even more impressive. But that's not the direction the technology happens to be evolving, for business reasons primarily.

Monsterish
After the lost-pictures dream woke me up, at 3:30 in the morning, I impulsively did something I don't often do—took a "selfie," using the iPad I keep on the nightstand. In the dark! (Was I trying to reassure myself that I was not really in that dreamworld, which seemed uncomfortably real?) Groggy with sleepiness, I turned the camera around, turned the flash on, and let the device do its thing. The picture was well-exposed and competent, and preserved a sense of the surrounding darkness. What would once have seemed like magic is now commonplace.

I hope I'm not especially vain, but I'm not going to show you the picture, because it struck me that it's the exact opposite of what portrait photographers try to do—it's the most un-flattering picture of me ever! (That could be a challenge to give a student—take a very flattering picture and a very unflattering picture of the same subject. But maybe the families and friends of shutterbugs are long-suffering enough as it is.) I looked worn, exhausted, almost monstrous. Taking a self-portrait casually in pitch dark is something that I couldn't have done even twenty years ago, much less 40 years ago when I first got into photography. (This is right around the 40th anniversary of when I got into photography in a serious way, incidentally—August 1980.)

But I digress. As I was saying, meaningful comparisons of today's options are sort of, well, a phantasm. Still and all, I'd love to pit something like a Sony RX1R II against an iPhone 11 Pro and let the chips fly. David against Goliath? It wouldn't prove much; but it would be interesting. It's the kind of thing I can consider fun. And after all, I like "snapshots."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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psu: "Re 'I was so distressed by the loss of all my pictures that eventually I managed to realize, within the dream, that it was only a dream and that my phone had never left the house and was downstairs, safe.' If your dream self set up the iCloud backup for the phone then your dream self would not have lost any pictures. He would just have to download them again when he set up the replacement phone.  :-)  "

Bahi: "You're going to get lots of links to this concept called Alice, based on Micro 4/3. Like you, I wish that camera companies would develop the processors and imaging engines of their cameras to compete with today's run-of-the-mill smartphones, but would be very surprised if it happened.

"People complain about software from Apple, Microsoft and some of the Android phone makers, but the stuff that camera manufacturers have churned out or supplied with their cameras has been monumentally bad. Excellent on-camera software and some really well designed and integrated hardware is needed to make a dedicated camera that offers something better than the Night Mode shots that come out of a Google Pixel or an Apple iPhone.

"It should have been the other way around: the digital camera is huge compared with a smartphone, sensors are relatively large, cameras were big enough to support powerful CPUs and long-lasting batteries, and many of the camera companies were part of conglomerates with wide-ranging software and hardware expertise.

"I wish it had happened. With the camera market shrinking, it's less likely now but never say never."

psu: "After reading the rest of the piece, I have one further thought.

"It should certainly be possible in principle for 'real' cameras to have some of these fancy computational features that have been shipping in the phones for the last few years. But as you say there are various structural (not just economic) reasons why it never happens.

"IMHO the main one is that camera companies are hardware companies that:

1. Only understand one particular mode of hardware (box, lens, capture device)
2. Do not understand software or software usability at all.

"Part of what makes the Night Mode/Portrait/HDR and even 'straight' capture on the phones so much more useful than attempts at similar features on 'real' cameras is that they are transparently integrated into all the ways you are using the device anyway. You just hit the button and they happen.

"For example, in the iPhone 11 the multi-frame/HDR capture mechanism is no longer an extra knob in the camera app. You hit the button, the camera takes multiple frames and then does the contrast processing if it needs to, but even if it does not do that, it's using the multiple frames for noise reduction and/or sharpening, if the subject stood still and that is possible.

"What's important is that you don't have to think about it. The out of camera frames just look better.

"Of course there are ways (usually in third part apps) to bypass this and control it yourself if you want to...but it turns out to be hard to do better than what the camera is doing.

"Long time photo enthusiasts, of course, are conditioned to be suspicious of this sort of thing. We shoot 'raw' (they aren't really raw) files so we'll have more headroom for custom dynamic range, or white balance, or whatever, and so some canned set of decisions are not baked forever into a JPEG that we are then stuck with.

"The phones challenge the assumption that this is the way to work. But I digress.

"The camera company cameras will never work this way because the camera companies are not competent at building features like this.

"I think Night Mode in my Olympus E-M1 would indeed be a great thing...until I remember that to use it I'll need to navigate through 16 levels of on-camera menus...and then to see the result I'll probably have to put the storage card in my computer and run a special Olympus-only tool with a UI that would have been primitive in 1995 to do the post-processing.

"Meanwhile on my phone I hit two buttons, the phone does a thing, and I have the picture in 10 seconds.

"That's the real power of it. It's just there.

"Another example: compare taking panoramas with a 'real' camera to just just sweeping your phone over the scene and having the stitching happen automatically."

Shootout! Of the eBay Specials

eBay specials, clockwise from front right: Pentax Spotmatic SL with dented prism and Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 50mm ƒ/1.4 M42 screwmount lens; Minolta XG-M with 45mm ƒ/2 lens; Olympus OM-2N with Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2 (the lens was the gift of a kind reader); Contax RTS II with Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar 60mm C (the camera was the gift of a kind reader); late-model Pentax LX with Pentax-K 50mm ƒ/1.4 and wooden grip; and Nikon FE with AI-S Nikkor 85mm ƒ/2.

Over the coming Winter I plan to write a bit from time to time about these "eBay specials," for absolutely no good reason except for fun. I'll compare various "haptic"* or ergonomic aspects of holding, handling, and using them. All of these cameras or various close cousins of theirs are available on eBay or other used camera sites if you go looking for them.

Mike

*Haptic: "relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception**."

**Proprioception: "perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body."

(That's the first time in a while I've looked up a word and then had to go look up another word from the definition of the first one.)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Luke: "Is there a word for following a trail of words through the dictionary?"

Mike replies: How about "Rathole, n., Pointless waste of money, time, or resources"....

I've been doing that all my life. In fact I used to read the Encylopedia Britannica that way (14th edition, to 1973—I was one of those who was not a fan of Mortimer Adler's split 15th edition). I'd go from one article to another letting each one suggest the next thing to look into. I could read for hours that way.

Crabby Umbo: "The Nikon, screwmount Pentax, and Contax are cameras I've known, owned and loved! Still have a screwmount Pentax (fixed up by Eric Hendrickson, thanks Eric!) that I use today. Something about those Pentax Spotmatics that fit in the hand so perfectly, and the lenses are just something. Loved the Carl Zeiss lenses, the Nikon robustness, but something about the Pentax Spotty....

"Might I suggest a Canon FTb or TLb as well? Had a few FTb rebuilt one time back in the '90s—sorry I sold them—and for some reason, love the breech-mount lenses better than the later, more plasticy FD (non-breech-mount) series. Fair warning, though, the breech-lock lenses seem to get their fit and feel from grease on the focus threads; if they're old and dried out, they spin pretty loosely."

Mike replies: That was known as "packing" and it was an integral part of the helical design. One of the kindest things you can have done to an old manual-focus lens is to have it re-packed by an expert repairman. Not terribly expensive, and it gives them new life. I used to like finding lenses in otherwise excellent condition that were dried out, talk the seller down because of the loose, dry focus action, then pay ~$65 to have the lens repacked, resulting in a fine, smoothly-working lens that focused like butter. Old Nikkor AI and AI-S lenses were prone to the problem and responded beautifully to the treatment.

I agree with you about Spotmatics. If I could suggest one manual-focus film camera that should be revived today in deluxe, modernized form, it would be a Pentax based on a Spotmatic. Cf. the Nikon S3 2000, a gorgeous modern copy of the 1958 S3. My Spottie would be a "resto-mod," though, as they're called in the car world, with a 100% finder and centerweighted AE metering. Alas, it would cost three or four thousand dollars and I would never be able to bring myself to buy one.

Juan Buhler: "Just a week or so ago I bought a black Pentax ME Super on eBay for $25. It was a bit of a gamble because the condition was unknown, but the camera works fine and looks great! The ME Super was my first 35mm camera back in 1992 or so, so this was mostly a sentimental purchase. I did shoot a roll of Fuji color film with it though. It’s hard to remember to wind the camera after each shot.... I also still have my two black MXs, and every now and then I run an old roll of black-and-white expired film and develop it in caffenol, just because it’s fun. I look forward to those posts!"

Dan Khong: "Mike, Thanks for letting me choose a present for this Christmas. I want the Olympus. It's the smallest camera made during the days when others were huge, clunky and qualify to be more like paper weights. And the 40mm focal length—neither too long like the 50–55mm nor too wide like the 35mm—is just right for my style of street photography. Please bubble wrap and courier by either DHL or FedEx. Merci beaucoup!"

Books About Camera Collecting

Three thousand cameras
I got more tips and pointers to this recent article on the BBC than almost anything else in recent memory, about a man named Neville "Jim" Matthew who loved to travel and who picked up cameras wherever he went—lots of regular readers thought I'd be interested in it and should feature it. When Jim died recently he left his collection of 3,000 cameras behind, in the former Salvation Army Hall he bought to house them.

Jim Matthew

Those readers were right; I enjoyed that. Had to smile at this bit:

"'He really enjoyed talking to people about it when they came into the hall,' says his widow Dorothy. 'I had to come down and rescue them sometimes because he did not know when to stop. He was a very good speaker. He didn't have a small talk but if it was something he was interested in he could talk for a long time.'"

Not quite coincidentally, do you know the difference between a collector and a hoarder? The collector is organized. If you have a lot of stuff and it's junked all over everywhere (why is my collar suddenly hot?), you're a hoarder; if it's all neat and organized, you're a collector. There's more to it than that, but that's the baseline of the distinction.

Three books
Apropos of Jim Matthew and his 3,000 cameras, here are three books about camera collecting that are highly enjoyable even if (or perhaps particularly if)  you have no aspirations to be a collector yourself:

Collecting and Using Classic Cameras by Ivor Matanle. This might as well be considered one of those delightful travel books with the writer as genial tourguide; Ivor's friendly character comes out on every page, and his delight in old cameras and the people and places he photographs with them is very evident. The cameras are interesting too. I consider this kin to one of my favorite books from childhood, Ralph Stein's The Great Cars, which is half grand tour and half memoir and similarly charming.

Jason Schneider on Camera Collecting: A Fully Illustrated Handbook of Articles Originally Published in Modern Photography. Jason Schneider is the Dean of American camera collecting, and he's a fine writer too, which makes his passion come alive. He understands these old devices like few others, and has the knowledge to put them in a holistic perspective. If you like this book, you might have to "collect" volumes two and three as well.

Our friend Todd Gustavson's Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital. Todd, as longtime readers of TOP already know from our 2016 article "A Visit to the Treasure Vaults," is curator of the George Eastman Museum's vast camera collection. Not only is this book far more comprehensive and thorough than most books about cameras, but Todd's "portraits" of the cameras are excellent (in 2016 and perhaps still, he was using a Nikon Dƒ and a manual-focus Micro-Nikkor 55mm to document the collection).

Leicas line the walls
I had an early encounter with camera collecting. When I was young, there was an elderly gentleman who had a camera store on a major thoroughfare in Washington, D.C. I coveted a Leica at the time, and he sold them, so I went to investigate. I found a shop that was stuffed to the gills with endless rows of old Leicas of every sort; perfect. When I presented myself, he sized me up and said slowly, "You would like to purchase a Leica camera." As much a statement as a question, it somehow managed to convey skepticism without being at all impolite. I took him to a bank of cameras near the front of the store and pointed to the M3 I wanted, which sat among rows of other M3's. "How much is that one?"

He looked at me about as if I had offered to cut off his pinkie finger with a dull knife.

"That is not for sale," he said curtly. "These Leicas you see around you are for display only."

Since then I've encountered several other proprietors who preside over what are purported to be "shops" but are actually collections. You can't talk them out of much. There might be a few things for sale—the then-current Leica catalog, in that gentleman's case I regret that his name, which I retained for years, has sifted out of the memory bank. But they are really collectors, and would no more sell a piece of their collection than they would sell you a tooth!

[UPDATE: It was Heller's Camera in Bethesda, Maryland. Andrew Heller, who was Hungarian, died in 2004, and you really should read his obituary—pretty sensational. I had no idea. He was a photographer of important world events too.]

Have you ever seen the A+E show "American Pickers"? They occasionally come across a junkyard owner who won't actually sell them anything. I've also known at least two people—one a book guy, one a camera guy—who owned shops because it facilitated their collecting—they would cherry-pick the best of the items that flowed through their shops for their own collections. (I never got to see either collection, more's the pity, although there's still time.)

I did eventually own an M3 for a while, though. Jason Schneider can tell you all about the M3, and do a much better job than I can.

Mike
(Thanks to a number of tipsters)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support TOP

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Featured Comments from:

Paul Judice: "I worked for a Leica collector/dealer in the early eighties. He sold new Leicas to doctors (we were near the Houston Medical Center) and displayed rarities for admirers to view. The downside to this was that the 'museum patrons' ate up so much time with questions about items we weren't even selling."

John Shriver: "Heller's Camera in Bethesda, Maryland had a wonderful collection of Japanese Leica clones in the 1970s. They were in the Air Rights Building on Wisconsin Avenue. Never bought a Leica there, but bought film, and dropped off film for processing by Colorfax. Run by a fine European gentleman."

Mike replies: That was it! Thanks. Found out more about Andrew Heller now that you mentioned the name, and added it to the post.

Funny, as I was writing this post, my brain suggested "Andrew Heller" but I thought, no, that can't be it, because I had a high school classmate named Andy Heller. I assumed I was remembering the wrong name.

Jim Simmons: "Michael's Camera in Melbourne, Australia has the best camera collection I've ever seen. Every age, every format, almost every variation of Leica made."

Albert Smith: "I own the Ivor Matanle book. I was really into classic cameras and after thumbing through this book in a bookstore (remember those?), I bought it within two minutes. I own several of the cameras within, but what really got me was his narrative descriptions of the quality of the older optics. This was often simply accepting the flaws of pre-computer designed lenses and embracing '...pleasing roundness and slight softness of the image' or 'the curious characteristic of defined yet slightly unsharp detail.' I enjoyed this book decades ago and your post here made me pull it off of the shelf again."

Tom Burke: "Ivor Matanle! I used to have that very book. I think I donated it somewhere when I realised that I was never going to actually collect, let alone use, any of the cameras he mentioned in it. He also used to write an occasional guest column in Amateur Photographer, especially during Garry Coward-Williams' editorship. I kept a couple of issues celebrating 'Leica: 50 years of Leica M' (2004) and '80 Years of Leica' (2005), and Ivor had a lengthy article in each. (And from ferreting around about AP I have just learned that Roger Hicks died last year. Today is not a good day....)"

David Brown: "I was told (years ago) that I had crossed over from photographer to 'collector' when I bought a six-foot-high cabinet to keeps the cameras in. Alas, it's no longer large enough."

Jeff (partial comment): "Mr. Heller sold me my first Leica in the '80s. He also convinced me to buy Summicrons, particularly a 35mm to start. I asked him about a Summilux, and he interrupted with his thick Hungarian accent, forcefully saying 'Summicron.' I started to say that I read about this or that, and he again cut me off, 'Summicron.' This continued for another 10 minutes or so. I bought an M6 and a 35mm Summicron.

"I visited many times over the years, and when he and his wife were too old to keep up the shop, I was one of the people he approached to determine if I had any interest in buying. That likely would have been a disaster for anyone, given what was to quickly change in the industry.

"I still often think of him as I handle my M10, M Monochrom, and SL2 (with some old and new Summicrons!). I wonder what he’d make of all this digital Leica stuff. Probably not much; he was an old school guy, happy to share his well earned wisdom. And he loved Rollei, too."

Bob Curtis: "His book is available at Amazon, under his more Hungarian name, Andor Heller."

Heat? (OT)

It's been quite a day and a half! No sooner had I written about Lulu's health than she had an apparent crisis—she was staggering and falling and seemed unable to control her body. She could hardly locate her food to eat. And although she's normally a tough old broad who brushes off life's vagaries, she was looking at me with imploring eyes as if she didn't know what was happening to her and needed reassurance. I thought she had suffered a stroke or a seizure, and of course due of her age I was immediately concerned that her death might be rushing up to greet her. I've never been through end-of-life with a dog before, as primary owner and decision-maker. I've been trying to prepare (not least by trying to forgive myself in advance for making an imperfect decision, which I probably will do. I can do no better than the best I can).

It turns out not to have been so dire. It was something called "canine idiopathic vestibular syndrome," a transitory episode that often passes and often doesn't return. She "healed herself" overnight and after some time (and the usual wad of cash) at the vet's today she is back to her normal, aged, crotchety, slow-moving self, but a bit more attached than usual—she's resting at my feet under my desk right now (note her paw resting on my shoe).

Heat
I had to smack my forehead when I saw I got several informed comments about my plan to heat my pool shed, from people far more knowledgeable than I am. How could it not occur to me to ask TOP readers for advice about something I know so little about? The brain trust (TOP's audience) is collectively savvy about anything.

So, heating a one-room shack: If anyone has any more thoughts about the most efficient, effective, and elegant way to heat and cool an approximately 3,000 cubic feet (86 cubic meter), 320 square feet (30 square meter) insulated shed building, I'd love to hear. I did get some good suggestions already.

Start with a strong foundation
As far as the foundation goes, here's the story: as I understand it, the base of the shed is five 4x6-inch "skids," or girders, made of larch, which resists rotting. Notches are cut into the top of this and 2x6s are laid in perpendicularly as floor joists. Plywood is nailed on top of the joists and Bob's your uncle. People sometimes use such sheds as garages, so they handle the weight of cars.

The joists are usually 16 inches on center, but I'm having them laid 12" on center in the middle eight feet of the floor to better support the pool table. Plus, I'm having top quality 3/4ths-inch plywood substituted for the rougher sort of 5/8ths-inch the builder usually uses.

If you have expertise or knowledge to lend about the heating problem I'm all ears, and thanks.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

You can help via Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Chip McDaniel: "You will know when it is time for Lulu. She will tell you with her eyes. Your vet will confirm. Don't hang on too tight and make her linger past when it's time. It's the heartbreaking downside of pets, but they give us so much during their lives that we owe it to them to do right by them at the end."

Joe Holmes: "All I can tell you is that investing a considerable sum in a split ductless system was the best money we've spent on our house in years. Almost silent, almost maintenance free (clean the filters every few weeks). We've used it almost exclusively for cooling in the summer, but I wish we'd had it a couple years earlier when our heating system died on Christmas night."

Brian Small: "If you want a ultra-reliable, self contained, heating system then direct-vent kerosene units work very well."

Sunday Support Group: Long Winter (OT)

Are you at all worried about the coming Winter? "If I'm honest," as the British say (I like that expression), I am. A bit scared of it, even.

Don't get me wrong: I live in what is for me one of the nicest places in the world. For five months out of the year, and maybe part of a sixth, the Finger Lakes region is my kind of paradise: relatively unpeopled, low-key and civilized, beautiful, with beautiful skies and clear air, and waterfalls, even. Mennonite and Amish farms blanket the countryside, and vineyards cover the hills. I imagine I might also like other places in the world—I remember Bimini being nice, and I liked Ireland—but among the much smaller subset of places I can afford, this is my personal idea of a fine place to live.

Except in the Winter.

In the Winter, the people leave and the clouds come. The deli down Route 54 shutters till Spring, and so does the Windy Acres produce market. Whole towns around here all but close down (I'm looking at you, Hammondsport). Once the leaves are mulched, the whole world turns gray and brown from its crown in the heavens down to the cold ground—wet, sunless, barren, lonely.

Normally I do okay with this. I go to up to eight(!) AA meetings a week and have several regular dates playing pool with friends. Last year, we made 13 out of a scheduled 20 APA (American Poolplayers Association) League nights before the pandemic got in the way. This year, however, what with COVID-19, I won't be going to in-person AA meetings, and the Brock's Bowl owned by Kurt and Kiley Brockman where we often played pool last year is closed, and there will be no League nights.

More than that might go wrong. My mother is in year nine of Alzheimer's and is no longer certain who I am when we talk. A dear old friend is dreadfully sick. My dog Lulu is superannuated and in her dotage (she's 14) and might up and die on me before Spring; the country of my birth could continue its pell-mell race to authoritarianism. (Remember, the opposite of liberal is not conservative; progressive is the opposite of conservative. The opposite of liberal is authoritarian.)

I had my yearly physical last week. At least that went well. My MD is a guy named Robert Anderson. He's a smart guy and a good diagnostician, and if I could type as fast as he can I'd be rich, and I'm not kidding—the guy types faster than most people think. He's worried about this Winter too. "I'm afraid some people are primed to make some bad decisions," he said.

Rash and drastic
So maybe I've done a rash and drastic thing. A few weeks ago I took out a small bank loan to buy a shed. When it gets built I mean to stick a pool table in it. I've really been sorry that I haven't had a pool table here at the house since COVID started; I swear I'd have been practicing two hours a day. Maybe three or four. I find it relaxing and distracting, in much the same way many people mindlessly play video games or vegg out in front of the TV (I haven't had a TV since 2013 or so).

It might seem like an indulgence. Maybe it is. But only mostly. It has a practical aspect. Nine years ago, my doctor back in Wisconsin asked me how long I sit at the computer in one session. The answer was two or three hours, at least, sometimes as long as six—I have no reason to get out of my chair other than to go to the bathroom or take the dogs out or wander to the kitchen to get something to eat.

"You just can't do that," he said. "Find a reason to get up and go do something. Every half hour if you can, but every two hours at a minimum. Something to get you up and moving." 

"How about a pool table?" I asked.

"That is not what I had in mind!" he shot back.

"Wait a minute, Doc. Think about it. I'd have to get up and go walk down the basement stairs. Throw the balls out on the table, knock them all in. I'd be on my feet, moving around, bending over, twisting into various positions...repeat that a few times, then back to work. Ten minutes out of every hour. Why does that not sound good?"

"You know, now that you put it that way, that just might work!"

So I asked him if he would write me a prescription for a pool table.

He laughed, grabbed his prescription pad, and started writing. He showed it to me, then drew it back. "This could potentially be used for insurance fraud, so I can't actually give it to you," he said. He tore it up.

I was only going to frame it and put it on the wall next to the pool table.

Fresh air
Anyway, a pool table is no panacea. It's not going to make COVID-19 go away, and it won't keep my dog from dying on me or the Trumpocalypse from continuing. It won't help with isolation. But what it will do is get me up and away from the computer, out of the house and into the fresh air (the shed will be a short walk from the house), and on my feet and moving around for ten minutes every hour. Before I took out this loan I had no debts other than my mortgage, so that's a step backwards. But I'm looking at this as an investment in my mental health. I only hope it will work out that way!

And I'm one of the lucky ones, I know. I'm not facing dire consequences. I'm not sick, I'm not unemployed, and my life isn't imploding; bad things are happening to a lot of people. (A little hint: gratefulness is the antidote to self-pity. Whenever you catch yourself indulging in self-pity, try to think of all the reasons you have to be grateful. It's like antiseptic. Kills self-pity dead.) But just because other people have it harder than I do doesn't mean the coming Winter won't have its challenges for me too. Just because it could be worse doesn't mean it will be a breeze.

And maybe I'll finally learn to draw the ball....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "I live for winter. I am in Florida, and from Memorial day until ads for pumpkin-spice-flavored (fill in the blank) start running, I'm in my air conditioned house staring out at the heat radiating off of the road. I do 90% of my photography from October to May. Take a camera out of your house in July, and every glass surface fogs as the 90% humidity condenses. I can bypass that problem if I use a blow drier on the lens for several minutes before exiting, but then I have to contend with drenching sweat and heat stress that makes even fun activities hard to tolerate. Today it was only in the 90s... I can feel the autumn in the air. I live for winter."

Mike replies: I sometimes call May–September here "the temperate months." Sounds to me that's what we both like, the temperate months, but which months those are are different.

Robert: "I would be grateful if you let us know what table you buy and why when the time comes. I'm still going back and forth about a table in my basement and would appreciate your thoughts."

Mike replies: It's dangerous to encourage me! I've been threatening to write an article called "How to Buy a Pool Table." I'm a pretty quick study when I get the wild hair and I've been learning about pool tables since 2012.

Dagman: "Re 'Gratefulness is the antidote to self-pity.' I think I'll get this printed, framed and hung on the wall so it will be the first thing I see when I wake up each morning. Thanks for this much-needed pep talk. May this Winter be one for you to remember as the best of times."

MikeR: "Heat??"

Mike replies: The shed is getting spray-foam insulation, underneath the floor and on all six upper surfaces (four walls and both halves of the gable roof) from the inside. Spray foam insulation has a higher R-value, limits air incursion as well as insects and rodents, and contributes to the structural integrity of the structure. Heat will be supplied by a 9,000-BTU Pioneer "mini-split," which is a one-room indoor-outdoor heat pump. It is very silent and supplies both air conditioning and heat.

James Bullard: "I have a 'happy light' that helps with mood (Amazon has lots of choices) and your doctor is right about getting up at least every half hour to hour to stretch and/or do some small exercise as long as it isn't to go get a snack (my weakness). You should start using the light around now and keep it up until the days are getting noticeably long (Feb.). My light is small and sits by my computer. I use it for 10–20 minutes once or twice a day. It sounds silly but it does help."

David Kennedy: "I don’t comment often if ever. But, for me, Winter is a special time for photography. Real deep winter here in central Ontario hides all the imperfections of the landscape, presenting opportunities for a minimalist perspective. Snow drifts are not much different than sand drifts in the desert. I also find snowshoes give you easy access into the forest and are great exercise too. I may be lucky that my county has a number of public forests and accessible trails. I’m not a fan of November and March which are in-between months. January and February can be magic."

J.D. Ramsey: "Couldn't agree more. Pool is more fascinating, at least for me, than playing a video game. Though I must admit that not being of the video game generation—I thought Pong was cool when it first showed up with green balls and paddles on a black screen. But pool involves not only physical skill but gets your mind in play with geometric calculations of how the ball will rebound off the cushion when struck. Truly good pool players, which I'm not, are amazing in their skills. Only hours upon hours of practice could possibly get to that level, assuming one had some physical skill. But even for the rank amateur, it can successfully divert my mind for quite a while."

Mike replies: Bro!

Thoughts on 4x5 and Full-Frame

It was kind of Joe Kashi, from Alaska, to share his Nagaoka with us. For those in the balcony, Nagaokas were always relatively rare; Tachiharas and Wistas were far more common as sort of the "standard" Japanese 4x5s of the view camera revival period. I hope Oren will correct me if I'm wrong. There were others—Horseman made one, I seem to recall—but those two, the Tachihara and Wista, were the Toyota and Honda.

Meaning, they were the affordable ones for "Everyman." (Or woman.) There were many others, of course—American versions such as those made by Ron Wisner (the Zone VI camera, which many people are familiar with because of the success of their catalog, was, successively, a Wista, then a Wisner, then one they made themselves). Bespoke Gandolfis were made in England, and Ebony was the high-end Japanese offering. Of course there were many metal field view cameras, and many other view cameras that weren't of the flatbed folding field type. But they're not what we're talking about here.

The wooden-and-metal 4x5 field view camera to buy today would be the Shen-Hao (Amazon files it under "Electronics," which is funny) or the Chamonix. Both are made in China. They've chased the Japanese out of the business, Nagaoka-san notwithstanding.

'There's no substitute for square inches'
Joe sent nine pictures of his Nagaoka. Normally I would have picked perhaps three for the post. But I opted to use all nine, thinking that there would be those in the audience who aren't familiar with view cameras. Joe's pictures are worth 9,000 words of description as to how folding view cameras work.

MJ, Gas Station. I take iPhone pictures wherever I am. What got my attention here was the Milk Bone on the concrete, and the light, the evening of a particularly clear day.

View cameras were common when I came up. Art photographers in the 1970s began using cast-off Deardorff 8x10s that were easily available secondhand. Nobody wanted them; my studio partner bought a nice one for $300. It created a Revival for the field view camera that has never entirely died. By the '80s, when I was in photography school, the school owned several monorails that students could sign out. Which I did, just to try it. That was the beginning of my own "large-format period," at the end of which I bought the Wista of sainted memory. Much as I adore large-format photography, though, I wasn't very good at it, and I quickly learned it wasn't my thing. Honestly, an iPhone suits the way I like to photograph better than a view camera. It's like a field notebook on which I can jot quick notes.

Bathing beauties in 1921, from Shorpy. My grandmother would have been 20 that year. Don't you like the dude in the upper left? He's into the whole thing.

If you're unfamiliar with large-format photography and curious as to what all those square inches bought you, you can get a real feel for it at Shorpy—some of the old pictures they reproduce are from sheet-film and glass-plate negatives that would have been shot with cameras broadly similar to Joe's Nagaoka and the others of its ilk. Velvety smoothness, gobs of detail that didn't call attention to itself, and, usually, a long, gentle tonal scale: all those felicities of big negs are visible in many of the JPEGs at Shorpy (although sometimes from medium format, too).

Big digi
I should preface this next bit with a caveat and a confession. The caveat is that I have nothing against fans of full-frame. Don't accuse me otherwise, because it's a false ack! I want photographers to have the gear they want, and that's an end on it. If full-frame's for you, power to you, period.

The confession is that I might be being iconoclastic here...a tendency I have. I've a bit of a contrarian streak. If the world goes to SUVs, I'll champion little British-style roadsters. If the world moves to streaming audio, I'll talk up vinyl. If the world is inundated by a tsunami of video games, I'll play pool, a physical game that requires an expensive half-ton to one-ton game-board that's a headache and a half to move, store, set up, knock down, and buy or sell. The fad for "open concept" house plans (pushed relentlessly for decades because they leave more money in builders' pockets, I'm convinced) made me appreciate walls. Hey, I'm a photographer...we need walls! The more walls the better.

Anyway...my main reaction to the Sony a7C is that it's the wrong format. I know the format is the point. But to me, one of the great advantages of digital is small sensors. Thirty-five millimeter was the practical minimum for film, but digital lets us go a good deal smaller. It's one of the good things about digital! Why give it up?

If I were going to go big...well, let me put it this way. A friend of mine, a distinguished photographer and educator, recently privately made the case in an email for medium-format digital. He was reacting to seeing and working on many files of different kinds from students. Quoth he, "When the files are from a medium format sensor...the resolution and clarity and dynamic range just jump out at you. My impression, reinforced several times with different medium format digital files, is that 4/3s and FF are closely paired, with FF in front but not by all that much, while the MF files leap out in front of the FF. That doesn’t jibe with the arithmetic. Four-thirds to FF is a bigger jump in sensor area, but FF to MF shows a strikingly bigger improvement."

Anyway, if I were going to go big—turning my back on what I consider one of digital's main advantages—I'd want to go all the way and dive into "medium" format. (Remember, it's digital's large format—the word "medium" being merely legacy terminology). Honestly—and I know this is a minority opinion—I like small sensors better. You get more depth-of-field with wider apertures, which is a good thing, and everything's smaller and handier. APS-C is the largest I'd go, everything considered; I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to try a SotA 1"-sensor camera, and I do like that I can carry a camera in my pocket for visual note-taking.

So that's the downside of the a7C for me—wrong sensor size.

But like I say, that could be my iconoclastic side stubbornly surfacing. "Popular taste is always wrong."

Bless you an' yourn
TOP is off tomorrow. Have a wonderful weekend—be grateful to be alive, relish any good weather you might get to enjoy, and taste your food. And as always, good light to thee.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Help TOP keep on keepin' on via Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rob de Loe: "A wonderful mentor named Bob McNair introduced me to large format when I was a student. He ran the photo lab and let me use it for questionably 'academic' purposes. Maintaining my sanity struck me as a legitimate academic purpose. He got me into 4x5. Meanwhile, he was getting into 11x14 using a camera he built himself. I went from a Kardan Super Color, which I carried into the field in a homemade case, to a Wisner Technical Field. Eventually I sold it all, including my darkroom.

"I had a revival in 2018-19 and re-bought both a monorail and a field 4x5 camera with all the trimmings. Alas, it didn't last. The transaction costs of shooting film were simply too high. Too much time, too much money, too slow. Then I found a digital view camera (thanks Jeffrey) and it was game over for film. It seems what I wanted was movements. I now have all the movements I had on my 4x5 monorail, but with a digital medium format camera. It's wonderful."

Khürt Louis Williams: I’ve seen images from a Fujifilm GFX 50 and I’m convinced I want to go bigger."

Dennis Ng: "There is a UK-based large format camera I am targeted on to replace my old Tachiharas 4x5 and Deardorff 8x10."

James: "I actually own a Panasonic GX8, Fuji X-Pro3, Fuji X100V, Nikon D810, and Fuji GFX 50R. Your friend is correct. There is absolutely no comparison between the 50R and the D810 in terms of rendering and dynamic range. I am 60 years old and it's easily the same as the difference between a photo on my F5 vs. a photo on my Rolleiflex. It just looks different. The 63mm ƒ/2.8 lens is staggeringly good. I would say the difference is extremely marginal between the Nikon and the Pro3 or X100V. You would never see it in a print at 20 x 30 at ISO 1600. The only big difference between the Micro 4/3 and the Nikon is the dynamic range, but it's really not that significant. Yes, you can recover some highlights with the Nikon that the Panasonic wouldn't be able to, but now it's at a point where it looks artificial and maybe the better option is just letting them go as opposed to creating a phony-looking photo. I am selling the Nikon gear. No way I would ever part with the Fuji cameras. As for the GX8, it's just a great little camera. I often wonder why it didn't sell better."

Michael J. Perini: "I really agree with you about the latest Sony camera. Full frame sensors require large lenses if you want fast primes and zooms. Sony's A7 series are already quite compact, and full featured. They have had to reduce ergonomics and features in order to make the a7C more compact, making the mismatch between camera size and available lens size even more apparent. The real issue I think is that Sony, Canon, and Nikon have given up on high quality APS-C lenses, which could be more compact. They have helped Fujifilm along in that regard. One of the things I notice about Fujifilm cameras is that they all seem 'well proportioned,' neither body-heavy nor lens-heavy. I think that is part of good design. They are all capable cameras so it becomes more a matter of taste."

jean pierre (pete) guaron: "I had great-great-uncles on both my father's and my mother's side of my family, who amused themselves in the 19th century moving around the state, taking gigantic collodion wet plate glass plate shots, with wood framed field cameras, poised on monstrous wooden tripods. They made the plates themselves, in the field—and processed them in the field. Returning home to make contact prints. When the state Archives saw the collection of one of them, they all but fainted, on the spot—they'd never imagined such an incredible record of the state's history existed. And no digi beats a 10x12 or 12x16 contact print! You could practically use the bottom of a bottle as a lens, and still get a sharp image!"

Joe Kashi's Wedding Present from his Wife (a Nagaoka)

Words and pictures by Joe Kashi

Joe Kashi's wedding present from his wife

Joe Kashi: Here's the back story about my Nagaoka 4x5. It was my first large format camera, a 1976 wedding present. I still own and use it.

While at MIT in the early 1970s, I had some photography coursework with Minor White and first became acquainted with large format photography in the process. But, I could only afford a screw-mount Pentax Spotmatic and a few lenses, which I also retain.

After MIT, I moved to DC in 1973 to attend law school. While in DC, I married a woman who was an accomplished artist, a painter in oils. (By the bye, she studied at the Corcoran through high school.) We often backpacked in West Virginia's Spruce Knob/Dolly Sods wilderness, and getting a super-light and compact large format camera seemed a natural.

Just before we married in 1976, we saw an ad for a new Nagaoka, then being imported by Graphic Imports of Honolulu. We surmised that any craftsman still building wooden cameras in 1976 was elderly and likely not long for this world—that was 44 years ago! So, we promptly ordered one as my wedding present from her. My camera is engraved as serial number 517. I recall that it cost about $600 new, a non-trivial sum for a law student in 1976. [Inflation Calculator: $2,741 today —Ed.]

The only lens that I could afford back then was an older 120mm Goerz Dagor, which turned out to be a sharp, handy lens that worked well with 4x5 color film, even though it was not coated.

Some of my nicest early images were made with that 120mm Dagor, so of course I sold the lens, the only time I've ever sold any photography gear. I regret doing so to this day and could never find another Dagor in that focal length. Currently, the camera sports a 145mm Zeiss Double Protar VIIa triple convertible lens.

Fast forward to 2020, when I have been living in semi-rural Alaska for decades. Now, my preferred non-digital format is 5x7 B&W. When I saw the article about Mr. Nagaoka not only alive but still at work, I hazarded an inquiry about whether he might be willing to construct a 5x7 field camera comparable to my 4x5. Apparently, he's ill at the moment but I'm willing to wait.

If Mr. Nagaoka is able and willing to make a 5x7 comparable to his compact 4x5, I promise to put it to good use. I've looked for a 5x7 Nagaoka on eBay for years without success although some were reputedly made in years past.

Although I have other 5x7 cameras now, I have zero doubt that a new Nagaoka 5x7 would be the epitome of a super-light-weight but practical 5x7 field camera. (Outdoor photographers can be a bit weird about an extra pound or two. It's probably no surprise that my digital preference is Micro 4/3.)

I've weighed the Nagaoka against other ultra-light-weight 4x5 cameras like my Toho FC-45X and Calumet-Gowland. The Nagaoka is noticeably lighter than even these, and easier to use.

By the way, it folds intuitively and easily. I've never had a problem with the bellows.

Out of curiosity Friday evening, I looked for other Nagaoka cameras on eBay and found several. One 4x5 claimed a serial number identical to mine, 517. After a double-take, I double-checked. Mine's definitely #517.

That eBay camera is advertised as "mint" but looks as though it's been used to pound large nails. It seems such a shame to do that to a camera that was jewel-like when left Mr. Nagaoka's small shop!

Joe Kashi

UPDATE Monday Sept. 21 from Joe Kashi: "Hi, all: A few replies consolidated as one comment:

1. Between 2006 and 2018, I went fully digital, mostly Micro 4/3 but also with a full-frame kit that's heavier than the 4x5 outfit. I began adding large format film back into the operational mix two years ago because I felt that I was becoming stale using a digital-only approach. The slower, more thought-out large format film approach is, for me, a good complement to digital-only. I occasionally take my Olympus Pen-F along to meter and use its B&W mode to help frame and visualize large format images faster. Melding classic and modern tools makes sense.
2. Unfortunately, I don't have a large format photo gallery online. While I've had a fair number of solo exhibits and juried show acceptances, there's no online gallery. I'm still a firm member of the mounted large print school.
3. The closest optics that I've found to that classic 120mm Dagor are a late-model Schneider 120mm Angulon, itself a more recent 'reverse Dagor' design, and a multicoated 125mm ƒ/5.6 Fujinon NWS. They’re both sharper, almost as light, and less expensive used than classic Dagor lenses. Redesigned late model US-made and Swiss-made Dagors using modern optical glass and still-repairable shutters are superlative but very expensive on the used market. Typical of most classic field cameras, the Nagaoka handles lenses from 75mm (21mm-e on full-frame) to 300mm (85mm-e) without fuss or hassle. Large format is largely extreme-wide-angle through short-telephoto photography."

Original contents copyright 2020 by Joe Kashi. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Fred Haynes: "This is a pretty camera! Jewel-like is right. The metal fittings are shiny and new looking. Are these fittings and controls off the shelf? Or does Mr. Nagaoka custom manufacture those as well? As beautiful as it is, it’s not something I’d be interested in unless I was younger, lived in a more picturesque part of the country, and had a good working darkroom, and a few bucks in my pocket. The last is the most important! Oh, I like the pictures you took that support the writing. Very nice!"

William Schneider: "In 1984, Petersen's Photographic magazine published a 'buyer's guide' comparing features and cost of various studio 4x5 cameras and folding field cameras. In a fit of nostalgia from reading recent posts, I scanned the summary chart and placed it online. This list, while chock full of view camera choices, omits some field cameras like Tachihara and Ikeda. It was indeed the golden age for view camera photography."

Philip Ramsden: "My introduction to 4x5 was while working for Leica in the 1980s. We had the Linhof agency. So my wife found a Linhof 'press type' camera, no movements and a 127mm lens. It served me well until I started teaching Scientific Photography at one of our colleges. We taught students to use movements on our 4x5 studio cameras. My next move was to an Ebony because Linhofs are heavy. Ha ha! Ebony is one of the heaviest timbers around and my camera is probably as heavy as the Linhof. But the results are superb. I only shoot B&W and process at home. If the shots are good enough I have a 4x5 enlarger so can make an 8x10. Bliss. I still shoot 35mm B&W and digital with Fuji cameras but that is for colour. Thanks for all the photos of the Nagaoka."

Luke: "I took my 4x5 Crown Graphic to the baseball stadium back when the Braves were big losers and the place was only one-third full. I set it up across the field from the spectators to shoot back at the action. A security guy soon showed up, saying 'No video!' After he got a closer look, he said: 'Oh! That's the kind of camera they used to take your picture sitting on a pony when you were a kid!' My antique 'pony' camera captured a view of about half the stadium. With a loupe on the original chrome, I can easily see my wife and her dad in the crowd, and see his wristwatch."

Snubnose Sony a7C

Darn, I wish I had said this when I was thinking of it a few weeks ago—y'all would think I was prescient. Or in the loop such that I knew this was coming, which I'm not, and didn't. What I was thinking was that a camera manufacturer should give us a lens that replicates the two lenses (well, the two lenses I have, anyway) on the iPhone: roughly, 28mm-e and 56mm-e.

We were treated a couple of days ago with a camera introduction of a type that's getting increasingly rare: a new camera that's not an iteration. An actual "Mark I."

Sony introduced the A7C, "C" presumably standing for "compact," an all-new camera with an up-to-the-minute full-frame sensor in a form-factor that's very close to the small, handy A6000-series bodies. Nice.

And along with it? A 28–60mm ƒ/4–5.6 compact lens that comes close to replicating iPhone viewing angles, which presumably iPhoneographers are getting ever more comfortable with. The lens is $300 when bundled with the camera, or $500 alone (note that it won't be shipping till February).

Detective tales
I'm old but not that old, and I seem to vaguely recall reading, when I was a kid, in comic books and detective stories, about something called a "snub-nose revolver," a revolver with a short barrel. (I'm not a gun guy, as you can probably tell.)

Photo by Hmaag (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Smith & Wesson Model 36 snub-nose revolver

Usually presented as the weapon of choice for tough guys and dangerous characters. You had to be careful of guys who packed a snubnose. Anyway that's what the A7C reminded me of when I first saw it.

Snubnose Sony

Naturally it's a camcorder, as all the kids want video these days. (Kids who can pay the $1,800 ticket, that is. )

If they'd given it an articulated viewfinder like the one on the Panasonic GX8 and a flip-up viewing screen instead of the type favored by the video set, my GAS would've been triggered. (You?) And we're never going to get one camera that leaves video off altogether, are we? Sigh. But then, we all know my tastes are nonstandard.

Here are all the details. Available for pre-order. Tough guys and dangerous characters can score one from Jake the Trenchcoat who hangs out under the streetlight at the corner of West 34th and Ninth Avenue. Da rest o' yous,watch out for mugs packing a7C's. They're small but they pack a wallop.

"Lefty"

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JG: "I want to like this camera and lens combo, I really do. But I'm not sure how useful 28mm ƒ/4 and 60mm ƒ/5.6 combinations will be for my purposes, even if they do make the camera smaller and lighter than it would be otherwise.

"As for snub-nose revolvers, your comparison is probably more apt than you realize, because they generally compromise performance for the sake of being a lot easier to carry and conceal (i.e., the best pistol is the one you have with you...lol!) Suffice it to say, though, if one is truly serious about self-defense, there are better choices one can make about the gun they carry. Likewise, if one is truly serious about their photography, there are better choices one can make about the camera they carry, too.

"Knowing a little about Mike's personal feelings about guns, I wouldn't have mentioned any of the above in my comment except he opened the door."

Random Excellence: Paul De Zan

Paul De Zan's photographs of San Francisco's dark orange sky:

It's very hard to believe that it's been eleven years since we first featured Paul De Zan's aerial photographs of San Francisco. [Here's a link to those 2009 aerial photos. —Ed.] This is a sampling of his photographs of the strange phenomenon known as the "dark orange sky," caused by a combination of wildfire smoke higher in the atmosphere and fog. "The orange hue is caused by the same process that causes the vivid colors at sunsets," says the National Weather Service. "Shorter wavelengths of light (blue) are scattered quickly, leaving only the yellow-orange-red end of the spectrum."

The unusual phenomenon didn't last:

September 10th, 2020

Same view a day later from somewhere near the same spot

Many thanks to Paul for these.

For more of the dark orange sky from above, my friend Scott Paterson of Saabnet posted a drone video on YouTube.

Mike
(Thanks to Paul and Scott)

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JoeB: "It is hard for me to believe these photos were not helped along with a 'custom' white balance to enhance the orange. A bit of underexposure and it surely is an enhanced and questionably accurate representation of reality."

Stan B. replies to JoeB: "I don't blame you for being...skeptical; but as someone who saw it, was surrounded by it, and also has their own evidence of just how apocalyptically orange those skies were—I can assure you, no manipulation was necessary! I have RAW files where the the orange hue is considerably deeper than what is displayed here...."

Nicholas Dade: "The photos aren't enhanced. I am 50 miles south of there. The orange day was dark and orange. I took photos out my window and matched the exposure to what I saw outside. My photos at 4 p.m. that day look like they were taken at dusk."

Paul De Zan: "Here's the original camera file from my favorite of the five above. I did light it up a bit, as reality wasn't quite as dark. No other changes. It was a truly extraordinary day. I'd never seen anything like it before."

Kristine Hinrichs: "I read that the Halide camera app has experienced a huge increase in downloads because it could capture this orange as it appeared—other apps auto-corrected the WB."

Marc: "I’m from the Snowy Mountains in regional Australia and feel that colour down deep. I suspect millions of Australians can after last summer. I’ve a photo from January 4th, the sky filtered into this dark, burnt shade, nighttime two hours before sunset, on the long day and all-nighter we spent waiting to defend from a predicted possible ember attack which we were fortunate to not have arrive (goggles and N95 facemask adding to the hot discomfort, getting up out of the camp chair all night to check falling black leaves for warmth, punctuated by the absurdity of turning over struggling, upended Christmas Beetles confused by the fluorescent lights shining out of the garage doors). It’s such an ugly colour to me now, and I watch your fires burning, feel deep for you while knowing I’ve got to plan and prep for it to come again, savouring briefly the blue-green-yellow of a normal spring."

Items (Blog Notes)

A few procedural notes before I get going today. I've got busy days today and tomorrow (body as well as blog maintenance to address) so things might be a little quiet around here.

Item: First, I did enlist several longtime readers to assist in Comment moderation. Both, I suspect, are more knowledgeable and quite probably much smarter than Yr. Hmbl. Ed. Hopefully once we iron out how we're going to work together, comments you post will appear much more quickly than they have been lately. (Working alone, I had been letting this get more and more out of control, sometimes to a degree that made me feel mildly agitated.) Thanks, too, to those others who volunteered—I accepted the first two people who offered, both of whom are names long familiar to me through their own thoughtful comments on the site.

Item: A few years back I wrote an obituary of the protean working musician Leon Russell called "Blue, Teddy Jack, Tina Rose, Sugaree, Honey, and Coco," which are the names of his children. Well, the other day I got a lovely note from Blue Bridges-Fox, Leon's daughter (Leon's real name was Claude Russell Bridges) thanking me for the article. She didn't say how she had stumbled across it. It's always nice when these reverberations happen.

Item: I should really (really!) personally thank everyone who contributes to TOP, but unfortunately it's like phone calls, which I do not make...a 15-minute phone call seems like nothing, but 32 of them would fill up a whole eight-hour work day. Everything wicks minutes out of the day. Plus, I'm so disorganized. I can't keep track of things. It distorts my whole life, my lack of organizational ability (if you have that ability, count your blessings).

But I digress. Reader Jim A. sent a $50 bill* as a contribution to keep TOP's motor running and the wheels greased, and it came in handy. That very day, Honeybee Dave was coming by in his bee suit to remove a small paper hornets nest under the eaves. He discovered that the bald-faced hornets who built the place had been kicked out and replaced by opportunistic ground wasps—which explains why it was only as big as a cantaloupe melon: hornets build their paper nests as large as watermelons.

His charge? $50. How nice to owe a tradesman and find the payment for him waiting in the mailbox. The nest was uncomfortably close to the back door, and hornets, which is what I thought they were, can be nasty and aggressive. Thank you Jim. And thanks to Alan Z. and John C., who sent checks, and to every other friend o' TOP who has contributed recently. I apologize for not contacting you personally. But at the same time I'm very grateful.

By the way, the wasps were not killed, but relocated; as Honeybee Dave said in his taciturn manner, with a shrug, "wasps are citizens too."

Item: Speaking of nasty and aggressive hornets: Should you happen to be thinking about a new mattress, I have a warning for you. Never, ever open a single YouTube video of a mattress review, the production of which seems to be a minor cottage industry. For if you do, you will for aeons afterward be pelted and pestered by mattress ads of every description and from every direction, any time you innocently log on to the tubes of the Internets. How I wish someone had given me this advice before it was tragically too late!

Item: It's Print Sale season, and I have four possibilities in the way of plans, but have done nothing yet to bring them about. Hopefully I will get as many as two accomplished before Christmas. Several ideas are for multiple-artist sales, which might be touchy to organize. I'm not great at organizing these things, but I'm moving this from the back burner to the front one, metaphorically speaking.

Item: Last but certainly not least, I wanted to offer a word of tremendous sympathy and concern for any TOP reader (and, really, everyone) who has been affected by the heat and fires in the Western United States. This is a disastrous fire season...and in the US, normal fire seasons are pretty appalling. The stories coming out of the affected regions are dreadful. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Back to regular programming,

Mike the Ed.

*In the Learn-Something-New-Every-Day Dept.: I meant to illustrate this item with a picture of the $50 dollar bill Jim sent, with my fingers holding it and Butters in the bokeh in the background, but when I tried to open the iPhone snap of the bill, Photoshop refused to open it! Up popped a window that said "This application does not support the editing of images of currency...", etc. Or words to that effect. I never knew before that that would happen.

I wish the enlargers in the school darkrooms where I taught had had a similar function: "You are trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, having attempted to print this negative entirely too many times now. It's never going to work; no amount of labor and hope is going to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Stop working on this and go make another negative, properly exposed this time." It might have saved everybody some time and anguish.

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Phil: " That last paragraph of your footnote had me laughing out loud! In every night-school darkroom class I took, the instructor would at some point politely and exasperatedly say to me 'maybe you should find an easier negative to work on.' If the enlarger would have just refused to print my badly-exposed negative (or in some cases badly-developed negative), I probably would have got further ahead in life.  ;-)  "

Taos Water Girls

Edward S. Curtis, Taos Water Girls, 1905

Whenever I get an email about some auction or other, I usually find something being advertised that charms me.

I know Edward S. Curtis's work and I seldom see one of his that I've never seen before. Correction, a good one of his, because every photographer has second- and third-rate pictures that haven't been widely published or seen.

Edward Sheriff Curtis, of course, was the protean but problematic documentarian of Native Americans at the end of the frontier period. Few photographers ever worked harder, but his pictorialist style and ethnographic assumptions don't fit well with modern ideas or tastes. My favorite book of his is Native Nations, the Calloway title with stunningly great reproductions. To my surprise, this book is still easily available for very reasonable prices—it's a beautifully produced book and I highly recommend it, to photographers, fans of fine printing, photobook lovers, Curtis fans, people interested in the Wild West or American Indians, or any combination of the above. There's a copy on Amazon for $24.91, and that's a steal for a book of this quality—new, it cost $60, and that was in 1993 dollars ($107 today).

...And there it is: "Taos Water Girls" is on page 65. Thought so. But it's one of the pictures the book's reproduction—dark and rich—doesn't suit. (There are so many that it does suit.) I was more charmed by this higher-keyed JPEG at the auction site. The writeup says that only about one in 500 of Curtis's prints are platinum prints. I'd love to see this someday as he printed it. Visualizing this JPEG in my mind as a platinum print makes me suspect it might be something special.

Unconscious style permeates eras
Curious, isn't it, how the style of 1905 comes through so strongly? "Taos Water Girls" puts me in mind of things like Gertrude Käsebier or something by one of the Brandywine School illustrators, maybe Howard Pyle's "Two Lovers in the Garden" (I couldn't find a date for the illustration—although you can buy it framed from Wal-Mart! What a fate—but Pyle died in 1911).

Gertrude Käsebier, Blessed Art Thou Among Women (1899)

Howard Pyle, Two Lovers in a Garden

Here's the writeup for "Taos Water Girls" at the auction site:

About This Lot
Taos is the northernmost of all the Native American Pueblos. It is located in present day New Mexico and was first visited by outsiders in 1540. The Pueblo had already been occupied for centuries at that time. The young women in the photograph are carrying water back to their pueblo in beautiful traditional jars. The trees on either side of them are cottonwoods, which are often found near mountain streams in the southwest. The sky is contrasted with the deep, rich foreground makes this image unusually compelling and three-dimensional. It is estimated that as few as 1 in 500 Curtis prints are platinum, making this vintage platinum print all the more desirable and rare. This print was created by hand in Curtis’ [sic] Seattle studio.

Bids start at $5,000 for the print.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Geoff Wittig: "When Curtis was active, platinum printing was popular among fine art photographers and pre-coated platinum papers were commercially available. But his images were mostly experienced as photogravure reproductions, both in his magnum opus The North American Indian and as separate prints. Photogravures are pretty sympathetic to the tonality and 'feel' of platinum prints. I got to see the large collection of Curtis prints on display at the Crazy Horse monument in South Dakota some years back. They're amazing. It was worth the trip just to see them. Which made me pull out my copy of the late Richard Benson's wonderful The Printed Image (2008), a compendium of all then available methods of photo reproduction. Benson's explanation of how a photogravure works is a model of clarity. And unfortunately the book is now a collectible going for >$250."

Mike replies: Hopefully everyone who was reading TOP in 2008 bought Richard Benson's book, as it was our "Book of the Year" that year. And Native Nations was printed under Richard Benson's direction (and that of Nicholas Calloway) using a near-continuous-tone process Richard developed especially for printing these images.

LanceSaintPaul: "I did buy the Benson book back then as a direct result of your featuring it. Thanks again."

Kenneth Tanaka: "That's an interesting auction of Curtis’s work. I don’t recall seeing one of his platinum prints. The Art Institute of Chicago here has a small collection of Curtis’s prints, all photogravures, acquired from a collector in 1975. Given that the provenance of the Artnet pieces was specified as coming from a private collection in Minnesota I suspect (but don’t know) they’re from one of the most prominent collectors of Curtis works in America, Christopher Cardozo. I wish him luck with this sale. Like so many things these days, Curtis’s work has become culturally radioactive among top collectors and especially among major institutions. I admire the relentless dedication and sheer sweat that this work represents. But it was always a bit sentimental and schmaltzy for my taste. But for an excellent read try Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan. It’s available on Amazon in book or Kindle form.

Mike replies: Christopher Cardozo also had a hand in the making of the Native Nations book. The publisher was Bulfinch, by the way.

David Myers: "You might be interested in the 'Curtis' prints made by Jon Cone and his team using photogravure. Reasonable prices, I believe, around $800."