The Online Photographer

The Most Interesting Photographers Pt. 2

I want to thank everybody who came up with nominations for “most interesting photographer.” There was little concordance, though—and most of the names that were mentioned, I could relate to as being genuinely interesting in some way.

I'm not going to say I could ever do this, because I know I have a history of too much ambitiousness and too little follow through. But I’ve always thought it would be a great idea to write a book along the lines of “Lives of the great photographers.”

Compilations of short biographies have a long an honorable history. Suetonius with his The Twelve Caesars and Plutarch with what I have always known as The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, and what I learned just this morning is really called Parallel Lives. (The book pairs short bios of a Roman personage and an earlier Greek counterpart, heightening their similarities. Rome was once the new kid on the block, hoping to associate itself with the older civilization.) There’s Vasari and his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in the 1500s, and John Aubrey’s Brief Lives in the closing decades of the 1700s, which wasn’t really a book per se but rather a chaotic collection of notes and half finished pieces that had to be whipped into shape by later editors. In more modern times, I once read a collection of short bios of great composers, and Penguin commissioned a series of short biographies from a variety of writers that were published as separate little books. I owned and read many of them, and found the quality was highly variable. My favorite was the bio of Lincoln by Thomas Keneally, the Australian writer who wrote Schindler’s List.

I think the problem writing about photographers would be knowing where to stop. For days now I’ve been thinking of names, or thinking about names you suggested, and invariably I end up at “how could that one be left out?”

I guess photographers just lead interesting lives, that’s all.

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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A Modest Proposal

Political post. Please avoid it if you don’t wish to read it. The comments are hidden—I’ll see them, but no one else will. I may Feature a few, or I may not. I don’t want to dwell on this.

Charge!

I did get a bit of blowback on the topic of the Hahnel battery charger I wrote about. Some people feel it’s not a very good solution. Their reasons varied. Mine came, and I’m pleased with it, as I was pleased with the last one. But of course I’m not in charge of anyone else's choices. Everybody owns their own photography. For one thing, I don’t travel away from home every year—so it’s no wonder if I’m not the latest word on travel solutions. I haven’t been on an airplane in this decade. Transporting a one-pound battery charger in my aging Acura does not pose a weight problem.

I am curious as to the question of whether chargers with two contacts are actually inferior to OEM chargers that have four, because supposedly the extra two manage overheating. I put calls in to several manufacturers and even to Underwriter’s Laboratory, but so far, nuthin’. It’s unlikely I’d get through to anyone who really knows the answers anyway. Is it not possible that the base brick of the Hahnel manages overheating? I suppose I’ll never know. Most company contacts these days seem to be trained employees who are briefed on the most frequently asked questions but don’t have deep knowledge of the product. At least that’s better than Kodak in the old days. With them, if you were persistent, you could get through to the person who had the deep knowledge, but then they’d decline to speak to you on the theory that they might not have corporate permission to do so. (Friday afternoons were the best time to call. People were a little more relaxed with the weekend coming up. The most loose-lipped were employees who had just been fired! I kept my antennae tuned for those folks.) But I wish I could have back all the hours I’ve spent on the telephone in my life trying to wrangle information out of recalcitrant corporate employees. And so it goes.

While we’re still on the topic, let me just say that I have really liked and appreciated the newfangled more powerful batteries such as the Sony NP-FZ100 2280 mAh for the Sony Alpha a9 II, a9, a7R IV, a7R III, a7 III, a6600, and a6700, and the Fujifilm NP-W235 2200 mAh for the Fujifilm GFX100 II, GFX 100S, GFX 50S II, X-H2S, X-H2, X-T5, X-T4, and X-S20. The extra life per charge is luxurious.

Anyway, you do you. But if I could step back and offer a more basic and general recommendation, look into batteries and chargers when researching a purchase—it’s a pesky and involved process, but it might save you a little extra efficiency, capability, and even a little dab o’ cash along your journey. Mike drop!

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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Hahnel Cube Charger

I think Hahnel deserves a little attention from time to time. Camera makers, even for some pretty nice cameras, are skimping on chargers and cables as a way of saving money. A reader and friend just kindly donated a camera to the TOP (and Mike) stable, but without a charger. The last time that happened, I inherited a Hahnel ProCUBE2. It’s a third-party charger base that takes interchangeable plates for different kinds of batteries. I really liked it. When you travel you only have to remember to take the charger and power cord, nothing else; information is right there on a screen on the unit; and it charges one or two batteries at a time quickly and efficiently. I sent my first one to my son along with a camera for him to make videos with. So now I’m about to buy another one.

The Hahnel Cube came out in 2018 and got lots of awards and praise from reviewers at the time. But like all products eventually do these days, its marketing has gone stale and no longer gets attention. It still deserves attention in my opinion. I’m a fan.

But it’s a little confusing to buy. There are a variety of packages in different colors—one each for Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Fujifilm, and Olympus, all with bases of different colors. What’s not immediately obvious when you’re shopping is that all the bases are identical, except for the colors. The plates that snap into the top are what customize the base for different batteries, and if you look around a bit you’ll discover that you can buy the plates separately. There’s a little hole in the side of the Cube, and you use a SIM card tool (one is included in the box, but any will do, or a paper clip or even a pen or pencil), stick it in the hole, and the plate pops out. Fit and press and a different one clicks in place. The fact that the base kits are labeled “Canon” or “Nikon” and so forth just means that the base comes with those plates.

It also comes with plugs for UK, EU, and US outlets, an AA charging plate (with one limitation—you must charge four batteries of the same kind at a time), and a car charging cable.

Another limitation is that they don’t make plates for every camera or battery. But do a little research to see if your battery is used by different camera brands. For example, they don’t sell a Sigma package for my Sigma FP (or fp—Sigma styles it both ways). But the Sigma BP-51 is the same battery as the Panasonic BLC12, so I just bought the Hahnel plate for that Panasonic battery, and I’m good to go for my Sigma camera.

While I’m on that subject, that same battery is also used for the Leica CL and the original Leica Q. But the Sigma version costs $40, the Panasonic version costs $60, and the Leica version costs $99! They’re all the same, except for the magic Leica dust on the Leica one. I couldn’t prove it, but it’s likely the batteries are all made by Panasonic in China. So if you’re in the market for extra batteries and don’t care to buy generic ones, you can still save some money by doing a little research to see if your battery is sold under different brand names.

As a final complication, neither Amazon nor B&H Photo has complete stock of the Hahnel stuff. I had to buy the plate from Amazon (less than $11), but the charger from B&H.

I didn’t search around for the best price on a base, but maybe you can save some money there too. At least one manufacturer, Manfrotto, sells the Hahnel ProCUBE2 base under its own branding.

Mike

UPDATE: Two things I forgot to mention: the ProCUBE2 also has a USB-A port that you can use to charge a phone or a third battery in the camera. It starts as soon as the batteries loaded directly in the charger are finished.

Also, John Sparks points out that Watson makes a similar charger that uses individual plates, so you can charge two different kinds of batteries at once. Of course, then you have to buy and carry two plates to charge any two batteries at once, but that’s probably not a big deal for most people. That one is the Watson Duo LCD.

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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Three Cylinders

I'm up and running on Hugh's loaner compute—thanks again Hugh. 

Just so everyone is clear, TOP will be running on three cylinders until Sunday the 10th—or maybe Friday the 8th if all goes well and the new computer arrives early enough. I can get on TypePad and work on the web, but I don't know how to do much else, and of course I don't want to mess around with Hugh's computer too much. 

Interesting
Just as an idle question to while away this Saturday evening, who would you say are the most interesting photographers in history? Interesting meaning fascinating or thought provoking, in any aspect—personal lives, significance, ideas and attitudes, accomplishments, whatever. This occurred to me when I was reading the article about Lee Miller in The New Yorker—"The Roving Eye" by Judith Thurman (I can't link to it, because this computer doesn't know I'm a subscriber. See what I mean about three cylinders? I could sign in, yes, but that would require going off to find my password. Lord knows where that quest would end up). It struck me that she is about as opposite from me as a human can get—and also that, although she is not one of the indisputably great photographers, she is certainly amongst the most interesting.

The others that seem to fit the bill for me are Avedon, Lartigue, and Brad Washburn. I'm still mulling it over, though. 

I have another post almost done (although it's on a dull subject), but I have to figure out how I'm going to manage links. I'll have to get to that in the morning, though, as it's late and I am almost out of steam!

Mike

Apple’s Camera Control Button

You might already be up to speed on this, but after a long tradition of removing buttons and ports from the iPhone, usually controversially—the home button and the headphone jack come to mind—Apple has added a button to the iPhone 16, and I tried it. With the phone in landscape (horizontal) orientation and the lenses pointed outward, the Camera Control Button (CCB) is on the top right side of the body, and—it’s really nice. It makes holding the camera horizontally much more comfortable, and puts the lenses at operator’s top left where they won’t get in the way of your hand. I like it. It’s so natural it gave me a strong sensation of, “why didn’t they do this a long time ago?”

Even better, the first press of the CCB turns the camera on.

A short press takes a photo and a long press starts a video. The button is of course multipurpose—it’s also a touch slider and can be used to set and adjust settings. A light touch brings you back to the previous control. And the button can also be used for various functions within different apps.

I didn’t sort out all the functions at the store. But the basic haptics are a radical improvement to the experience and the iPhone’s usability.

By all means check it out for yourself if you’re in the ecosystem and get a chance to try it. It’s a nice, sensible improvement.

Mike

Film Fridays

Thanks to everyone for the avalanche of comments in response to the film question. Several people pointed out that I do not have a strong track record of following through on my “I’m gunnas,” so maybe this doesn’t even matter. (I mean, look at me right now—here I am posting on Saturday, and I’m supposed to take Saturdays off. But I didn’t post yesterday, so…).

But here’s what I’m gunna do: starting no sooner than two weeks from yesterday, I’ll post film content as “Film Fridays.” And I apologize for not naming who suggested that; but I’m typing on the iPad and my workflow is severely hampered. Here’s the rub, though: Just some Fridays, not every Friday.

And then, as always with a blog, we’ll see how it goes. I feel like I’ve tried a thousand things over the years. Only the spaghetti that sticks stays on the wall.

So that’s the idea.

Mike

Computerless!

I’m temporarily without a computer today. Friend o’TOP Hugh Crawford offered to send me a stopgap computer “from the pile of obsolete but usable computers,” and I skedaddled straightaway to the Apple Store near Rochester, where I returned the computer I just bought with two hours left in the return window. I ordered me up an M4 Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, and got $307 back to boot. It’s supposed to be here on the 8th. 

I’m typing this on the trusty iPad, my least needed but favorite device. Hugh’s computer should be here tomorrow, and if it isn’t I’ll post from here in the morning. Well, tomorrow anyway.

Please excuse the construction delays!

Mike

P.S. Who says I make things harder than they need to be?  🤣

Answers

Wow, is all I can say. The answers to my innocent little question about whether it's okay to write about film photography have got my head reeling. First of all, there are 154 comments so far, a record in recent times. Second, consider these two comments that came in within less than two hours of each other:

Tex Andrews: "Absolutely you should be writing about film photography! I can't believe that's even a question. This is where you have the most expertise, and it seems clear now that film photography is not going to vanish from the earth. Please go for it!"

Eric: "I won't be reading those posts."

Okay, that makes it clear for me.  :-)

But here's the main issue, which a number of people touched on (and several people included in an analysis):

Michael Wayne Plant: "...I for one would think a three or four month stint on film photography would enable you to make a significant contribution to the canon of film photography, especially for those who are new to it. I am constantly encountering younger photographers who are film curious but go on about how hard it is, so giving them an excellent resource would be a good achievement."

That would be my mission statement right there. It's connecting with up-and-comers that's the important part. Don't forget, the original mission statement of The Online Photographer, written many years ago, was "To help connect today's photo enthusiasts to photography's culture: its tradition, history, industries, best practices, accomplishments, literature, theory, legal issues, and current events."

I would try—strive, I almost typed—to be open-minded enough to learn as much from those younger photographers as they might learn from me.

As time has gone on, the opportunity to "help connect today's photo enthusiasts" to do anything has been largely taken from me, because younger hobbyists don't read me any more. Not entirely my fault; they don't read blogs as much as people of similar age did ten and twenty years ago. In the early 2000s when I started this, blogs were the cool, coming thing—the idea of something that updated every day was still new, and more dynamic than the internet had been years previously. I can only estimate, but I think it was in 2001 or 2002 that Oren Grad had to explain to me what a "weblog" (blog) even was. Oren is a natural speed reader, and was at that time keeping up with some 150 blogs. (I'll check those two sentences with him.) It would certainly be ironic if the way for me to connect to younger photographer turns out to be revisiting an outmoded if not obsolescent area of the medium*.

Connection
Just musing now, but the very first question might be, who are these younger photographers who are allegedly interested in film photography? They are rumored to exist, but are they more like the elusive snow leopard and giant squid, or more like Sasquatch and Nessie? If they're a real species, I'll have further questions. Where do they hang out? How involved are they? How many of them are really committed? Is it possible to make a connection with them? And what kinds of things do they want to know? Those questions might take a long time to answer with confidence.

Mike

*Then again, glass plates were essentially obsolescent by the 1890s but continued to be used by a dwindling subset of photographers into the 1920s. (And in certain specialty fields, much later.)

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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Bad Timing! (Computers) [UPDATED]

[UPDATE Wednesday Oct. 30th:] I need to walk back this post (the original post below) and admit that I actually AM sorry I bought the M2 Mac Mini Pro just before the M4 Mac Mini arrived. Actually, this computer purchase might be the worst example of bad timing in my entire life as a consumer! My timing was exquisitely bad—as bad as it could have been. Today is the last day I can return my new M2 Mac Mini Pro, but November 8th is the first day I could possibly get an M4 Mac Mini, which was announced yesterday. That would, obviously, leave me without a computer for nine days, which is not possible in my line of work. All the more galling in that I traded in not one but two old computers when I bought this one, either of which would have been a perfectly serviceable stopgap for those nine days.

O the pain! I could have had a newer, better computer, with ports on the front and twice as much storage, that would hold its value longer because it's more recent...for $300 less than I paid. And all I had to do was wait a measly two weeks longer. To add insult to injury, the computer I just bought also just depreciated a lot more because it's suddenly no longer current. [Insert inarticulate strangling noise.]

To pile on another missed opportunity, a reader yesterday offered me his older M1 Mac Studio, with lots of RAM and storage, for a good price. But I can't return the Mac Mini I bought for cash...only for credit. So to get cash back for the Mini I bought I'd have to reimburse Apple for the $290 I got in trade, without being able to get the trade-ins back (they've already been shipped off for recycling—I asked).

All this amounts to the exact opposite of optimizing. As a wannabee optimizer, it stings.

Only good response: grin and bear it. I made a bad decision, and burned myself as badly as I possibly could have under the admittedly fairly benign circumstances. But: it's a relatively small amount of money as such things go; my new computer works fine and will serve me for years; and I think the best thing to do is just admit that I screwed up, be happy with what I have, and forget about it and move on.

My friend and old studio partner Paul Kennedy had a number of expressions he used all the time, one of which was, "you know what they say: oh well." I hear him saying it every time I think about it.

So: "Oh well!" That is, after all, what they say.

Blows and blessings
It does bring up one spiritual issue, which is: what do we do about small everyday defeats? How do we handle them? Human nature is to be more sensitive to defeats than to victories. What I try to do when I suffer a minor loss like this is to try to remember some minor victories, and tell myself that the victories and the defeats actually balance each other out pretty well. And I think they do. There have been lots of times that I got great deals, windfalls, gifts—all examples of good luck. Heck, just the other day, a friend gave me a beautiful camera he doesn't want any more and knew he wouldn't have the time and patience to resell on eBay. As with every human, I have bad luck, but also good luck; things that worked out badly for me and things that worked out well; defeats, but also victories; blows to my ego and wallet, but also blessings. Our competitive brains urge us to focus more on the defeats. But we are thinking beings, and if we are in control of our own minds we can be equally mindful of our blessings. At least equally mindful; hopefully a little more so. Because after all, gratitude and self-pity are mutually incompatible. You cannot be in both states of mind at once.

So when self-pity is getting the better of you, turn your mind willfully to gratitude. It is a proper use of the will.

-

[Original post:] To forestall the inevitable questions: no, I'm not sorry I bought the M2 Mac Mini Pro before the M4 Mac Mini arrives. (The M4 Mac Mini is rumored to be radically smaller, more powerful, and to have only USB-C connector ports, including two on the front. And the base model will have 16GB of RAM.) Yes, the M4 Mac Mini appeals to me. But the M2 Mac Mini Pro is working fine (it's nice that it turns on so quickly), it's fast, and it runs quiet and very cool. I'm happy.

Also, I don't think I want to invest in the shipping version of any all-new product in this space. Let them have till the first refresh to work out the kinks, and let other people discover any kinks, problems, or weaknesses before I get there.

The fact that I use a USB mouse and keyboard doesn't really pertain. A simple Thunderbolt-to-USB-A hub would solve that in a second.

Finally, my dream computer isn't a Mini anyway. It's a base Mac Studio with 32GB unified memory and 1TB of SSD storage, with an SD card slot on the front, $2,199.

And one more inevitable question: am I just rationalizing here? Sour grapes? It's quite possible. But I've been thinking about this for three days, and I think I'm happy enough where I landed. A computer to me is an appliance, like a dishwasher. Still and all, I'll be watching the upcoming M4 Mac Mini launch with great interest.

I had a nice day yesterday. Got to see lots of work and lots of books. I'll tell you about it when I have a minute.

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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ChrisC: "Well, the new Mac Mini has landed and certainly looks like a nice little device. Whilst each new generation of M series chip seems to be a decent step up from the previous one, I think it will be a while before my current M1 series computer needs replacing. Even now, I’m not doing anything that will stress the system and I suspect the driver for me buying a new one may well actually be when I end up filling the hard disk! Now what I would really like is for you to go out and treat yourself to a nice little secondhand Fujifilm X-E3 or -E4 😉 . "

John Krill: "I too have a Mac Mini M2 Pro and will not move to the new M4 version. I mean where is the SD card reader slot? Even professional video people need the SD slot. Also I don’t need all that so-called speed of the M4. My M2 Pro doesn’t appear to any faster than my previous Mac Mini, a basic one with 16GB of memory. And I didn’t need all that memory because I rarely run more than Lightroom Classic. So still no SD slot. I don’t get it.

"P.S.: I’m 80 so I think I will die with the M2 Pro."

Mike replies: May you need two or three more computers, John. You've been one of the best commenters here for years, and that's saying a lot, as blessed with great commenters as this site has been.

Film Series (Blog Note)

A question.

I'm thinking of writing regularly about film photography this Winter, and I wonder what you think of that. Not entirely—maybe about a third or half the posts. And not forever—maybe for November, December, and January. Possibly into March if the subject has enough energy. Just wondering what you think of that, and whether you would welcome it, regardless of whether you shoot film or not*. Or, whether it would cause you to stop reading TOP, which I don't want!

You can let me know in a comment or privately. I'll publish all the comments on this post, unless you ask me not to, but I probably won't feature any of the comments on this one. (I'll read all of them, as I always do.)

And, thank you!

Mike

*My friend Jim Schley was Editor at Chelsea Green when they published The Straw Bale House, which became a surprise best seller, and I remember that the book sold a larger number of copies than the number of straw bale houses that existed in America at the time. Which means, obviously, that even if the owners of every single straw bale house bought the book, there still were people buying the book who didn't live in straw bale houses. I assume the same thing would be true of posts about film photography. But you tell me.

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.)

Leica Books

Tom Burke wrote: If the new "Leica M" book celebrates 70 years of M photography, that must mean that I've had my 50 Years of Leica M book for 20 years. Goodness me—where did they go?

Amen to that. One of the many strange things about our later years, if we are privileged to get to them, is that things that seem recent to us seem long past to "da yout."* My experience of time has changed greatly over the years of my life, which I find very interesting. I remember clearly walking down the hall of my elementary school right after my eighth birthday thinking that it was going to be a very, very long time before I turned nine. By now, I've gotten the knack of passing time—if that isn't too extreme an understatement! The months clip by like weeks used to, and the years like quarter-years. The only thing that went by noticeably too fast when I was a teenager was August.

I don't think I know 50 Years of Leica M (Amazon has one, but only one). As I recall, it was a companion book to another title from Heel Verlag that was more about the Leica M cameras, lenses, and accessories.

I had many Leica books over the years, including a set of the massive three-volume Leica: An Illustrated History by James L. (Jim) Lager. I've also owned a surprising number of Leicas, especially for someone who was once reputed to be "against" Leica (translation: I didn't worship them). My favorite cameras were the M4 and M6, and the R4s and R7. The R4s wasn't a true Leica, though: it was based on a Minolta, and mine kept having problems of one sort or another because it wasn't built very well. But it was pleasant to use and it allowed me access to the awesome R lenses, which I loved. I never liked the M lenses quite as much. My favorite of the ones I owned was the "pre-ASPH" 35mm Summicron, but I had to get rid of mine because of a technical flaw—the black coating on the aperture blades kept flaking off and getting deposited on the inner surfaces of the elements. I paid (through the nose!) to get it cleaned, once, and then it started happening again and I bailed. To be fair, I also had problems with the AF-Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2, early examples of which were notorious for leaking oil on the aperture blades. Even the mighty Leica Summicron-R 35mm, the Mandler-designed one that was truly gorgeous, had flaws, in that it had some rather odd and fugitive habits regarding flare at certain apertures and in certain situations. The one I used was loaned to me by Michael Hintlian. What, was I star-crossed with 35mm ƒ/2's? My favorite M-mount lens was the Minolta M-Rokkor 40mm ƒ/2, although those are getting long in the tooth and, in my limited experience, haven't aged very well. They get a bit rickety. If you find one, maybe you can also find a technician to re-pack the lubricant and tighten it up a bit.

As far as Leica books are concerned, I would say I have two favorites: Günter Osterloh's Leica M: Advanced Photo School, with text in German and English, which will strike those who are interested in the current cameras as being out of date. However it will still be of interest to Leica film-camera photographers, especially those who use older cameras. If I were buying today I'd probably try Leica M: Tradition—Innovation Since 1954 by the same author (who was a longtime employee of Leica and the unofficial "dean" of the Leica Academy, by the way, just so you know). I'm sorry I can't tell you whether the newer book is an updating of the older one, or new; anyone know?

My other favorite is (or was) 75 Jahre Leica Fotografie / 75 Years of Leica Photography / 75 ans de Photographie Lcica, from 1990, in German, English and French. That one was more of a visual tour of what a variety of photographers have done with their Leicas, a plan which suits my tastes better than collector-level minutiae about gear. Again, there's a more recent book that might suit contemporary buyers better: Eyes Wide Open! 100 Years of Leica Photography, from 2015, edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle. I haven't seen that one, but it gets positive reviews.

If one were to collect all the books and publications ever published about Leitz and Leica over the years, that would be a very involved project indeed. Someone's probably done it.

One Leica
As far as collecting Leicas is concerned, as you might know my longtime policy is that everyone owns their own photography, and can do any tomfool thing they want to with it as long as they aren't breaking any laws or hurting anybody. Still, I have my recommendations, and one is that I think every photography enthusiast should own at least one Leica of some type or other at some time or other. It's the most storied and celebrated of camera brands, and it's fun to participate, at least a little, in the lore, the guild, and the glory.

Here's my candidate if you're going to get one: the Leica M4 from 1967–72, and...

...The collapsible 50mm Summicron of 1953–60. These belonged to my friend Kent Phelan, who spent a long time looking for the best possible examples. The M4 I used belonged to Nick Hartmann, and it might have been the coolest camera I ever walked around with. I used Nick's for a solid year, with my own lenses. This pair, in the pictures, was too pretty to use, so be sure to buy one with a dent, a chip, or a cosmetic flaw of some sort! Nick's M4 had a cosmetic-only dent in the top plate which allowed him to purchase it for what was, at the time, half price. If memory serves, he paid $675.

I'm sure other Leicaphiles will have their own suggestions for the one Leica to own if you're going to own only one. But that's mine.

Mike

*The youth, the way the athletic director at my high school, Howie Boese (pronounced bay-zee), used to say it. He spoke a very heavy "sout Mwaukee" (south Milwaukee) accent, which retained a lot of features from German. I could do a wicked impression of Mr. Boese when I was a yout.

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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Emails, Lens Hoods, a Ceremonial Leica, and a New Fuji

Emails: You'd think I'd get nothing but photography-related emails. But no.

Just for curiosity, I tallied up the last 300 emails I received to see where they're coming from. Nothing had been deleted. The oldest one was almost exactly four days old, meaning I received an average of 75 emails a day. Only four of them were personal messages (three photo-related and one about music), meaning I got an average of one personal email per day.

Here's how they stack up:

• Political: 171
• Newspaper or magazine: 34
• Flickr: 27
• Photo-related: 9
• Misc. ads: 9
• Associations or organizations: 7
• From a museum or gallery but not photo-related: 6
• Music and audio: 6
• Facebook: 5 (I don't participate on Facebook)
• LinkedIn: 5 (don't participate there either)
• Amazon: 4
• Zillow: 4
• Shopping: 2
• Computer: 2
• Misc.: 2
• Gas Company, Medical, Bank, Zoom, Patreon, Tennis, and Keyboards: 1 each

Granted, I don't discourage the political emails (I do when they come in over the phone). But I'll be unsubscribing from a lot of them once the election's over.

Leica old: To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the M camera, Leica is selling a film M-A gussied up with platinum plating, a matching 50mm Summicron, and a matching Leicavit, all for $23k. The thing is, it's not that much more expensive than a regular ol' black M-A and 50mm Summicron. That's not including the Leicavit, which will be coming in the first half of 2025 as a new-old accessory in black-painted, glossy black-painted, and silver-chromed versions. To encourage customers to buy them, they will cost only $79*. A Leicavit, for those of you born in the past 40 years, is a manual rapid-winder you attach to the bottom of the camera where the baseplate goes. It has a little flip-out handle that you pull with your left hand to advance the film and cock the shutter. It's only a little faster than using the regular wind lever; if you practice you can get up to two frames a second. Always a minority preference, but a few people liked them. True Leicaphiles will remember Tom's, which some people liked better.

More interestingly, there's a 70th anniversary book called Leica M due out next month, with a cover that is mostly a funereal black. It's possible it will only be available at Leica Stores, although there will be both English and German editions; there doesn't seem to be a pre-order page on Amazon unless I missed it. It will include pictures taken with the cameras.

Dumbest thing ever: Old computing devices aren't generally collectible, but some are. The most collectible item of all, allegedly, is the original 2007 iPhone. The most collectible original 2007 iPhone is one in its original box that has never been opened. One of these sold recently for $63,000 and another for $55,000—proving, as if proof were needed, that some people have too much money. A third guy, a YouTube reviewer, found one for $40,000. (Apparently it was such a bargain [?!?] because it had a little slit in the shrink-wrap.) He bought it. It arrived in a stout wooden crate that could have held a kitchen sink, with "Glass" stickers on it. He opened the big box and, amid much bubble-wrap, found a little box made of Plexiglas or something similar. Inside that was more bubble-wrap, and another box—the original iPhone packaging, still shrink-wrapped. And he opened that in a video, presumably removing thousands of dollars of "value" from the collectible. That was the video: he opened the box. Oh, be still, my beating heart**.

This strikes me as the all-around dumbest thing I have ever seen. Every part of it is inane: people wanting old iPhones; old iPhones costing up to $63,000; a sane guy actually buying one; the same guy making a video of himself opening the box for people's entertainment; and, people being entertained. It's hard to say what part of that is the dumbest.

Oddly enough, though, the YouTuber himself might have been being smart. He presumably knows how much he will earn from the video (9.2 million views as of this writing), how much his sponsor(s) will pay him for the attention, and how much residual value is left in the old iPhone after it's been opened, because it's still an LN original iPhone and must be worth a lot to collectors even though it isn't in its box any more. I'm sure he calculates that he'll come out ahead. So there's a good chance he's being sensible, like that guy who bought a simple lens hood for an old Nikon lens for $5,500 and increased the value of his old lens by $10,000. It's all a game, right?

Clearly, though, I should have stopped writing blog posts and started making YouTube videos when everyone else did.

Fuji new: All things considered, the most interesting camera brand of the past decade—to me, anyway—has been Fuji. I love the compromise "crop sensor" size and the no-compromise "medium"-format cameras; the highly sensible and high-performing XF lens line; the retro-themed cameras in a variety of form-factors, all appealing, none particularly cynical; and the out-of-step, "think different" way that Fuji charts its own course rather than copying/echoing/shadowing its nearest rival.

Another thing I like is that Fuji is still introducing actual new cameras—meaning, something that isn't merely a refresh of an existing model. Somehow, I missed the advent of the X-T50, which is an interesting little camera indeed. It descends from the amateur-level X-T30, but adds image stabilization and the 40-MP sensor from the X-T5 and the X-H2. It has the same processor as the X-T5 as well. And still it's noticeably smaller in size. There are a few telltales of it being targeted to "amateurs": the film simulation modes now get their own dial on the left side of the camera, and there's a pop-up flash.

I don't get the film-simulation dial. They're there in other Fujis, and do they expect you to change film-simulation modes picture to picture? Maybe they're just trying to remind people that, hey, these exist. Re the flash, I've never been a flash user, and I haven't used a pop-up flash in years, but it seems to me that this handy little feature beloved of family-documenting shutterbugs might be especially useful now that high ISOs are prevalent. A built-in flash was always pretty woeful as a primary source of light (some wag once referred to them as "picture-ruiners," and that might or might not have been me), but ISO 3200 and a little puff of flash might be just the thing to fill shadows, for tough lighting situations, or to provide a catchlight on eyeballs.

The X-T50 comes in silver with black lettering, black with white lettering, and charcoal gray with white lettering (above), which I think is the handsomest.

Anyway, if I were looking for a carry-around APS-C camera, I'd be shopping this against the X-T5, the Sony A6700, the Nikon Z50, and any other competitors. It's a pleasure to be able to write about a new camera that's new and not just refresh-number-whatever of a camera we all already know***.

Mike

*I'm kidding.

**You might think that's Shakespeare, but no. "The earliest instance of the full 'be still, my beating heart' appears in William Mountfort's Zelmane, 1705: 'Ha! hold my brain; be still my beating Heart.'" (nosweatshakespeare.com)

***When I say that I'm not referring to the Leica M Edition 70, which is a commemorative and a collectible.

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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Ben: "Probably easy enough to shrink wrap the iPhone box again and come out ahead, no?"

Mike replies: I'm not up on it, but apparently several YouTubers have bought supposedly NIB original iPhones and opened them while being videoed, only to find that it's an obviously used phone in a shrink-wrapped box and that they've been scammed. But they still make enough money on the video to cover their loss.

Jeff: "From Leica Press Release: 'The "Leica M" book will be available globally in Leica Stores, the Leica Online Store, the LFI (Leica Fotografie International) Online Store, and select authorized dealers starting on November 5th, 2024. The retail price is $50.00.'"

Mike replies: Thanks Jeff. And by "select authorized dealers" I take it they mean not bookstores or online behemoths whose name starts with "Amaz," but select authorized Leica camera dealers?

Herman Krieger: "The Leica M3 that I purchased in 1964 for about $600."

Mike replies: Beats $23k any day! More personal history and connection.

ChrisC: "Pop-up flashes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s the slow sync speed that’s the problem. I had a Nikon D50, which had a 1/500 sync speed (as did the D70) and the little pop-up flash provided great fill on a bright sunny day, adding an extra little sparkle to the picture. Never managed to get quite the same results with later cameras that reverted to more conventional sync speeds."

Mike replies: And the X-T50's sync speed is a mere 1/180th. So it might be pretty limited. On the other hand, it isn't meant to be a pro camera and doesn't pretend to be. Of course, I'm pretty sure the X-H2 doesn't have a pop-flash at all...although I asked Google if it did, and the "A[rtificial un-] I[ntelligence] Overview" said, "Yes, the Fujifilm X-H2 camera has a pop-up flash." In any event the X-H2's sync speed is 1/250th.

To Demo Is to Desire: Strange Mac Fact (and, Headphones)

Before I leave the topic of Apple and computers (I'm leaving the topic of Apple and computers, so don't despair), here's a strange fact. Backdrop: the Mac Mini, introduced in 2005, was originally intended as a basic, affordable Mac that was competent but nothing more. The reason for its existence seemed to be that people in that era were dissatisfied with PCs because of an OS called Vista that wasn't ready for prime time. Apparently it was leading PC users to jump to Apple in noticeable numbers. The Mini was intended for PC users who were encouraged to "bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse"—things they didn't need to buy because they already owned them. Shortly after the Mac Mini was introduced came a series of clever "Mac vs. PC" television commercials with two actors, Justin Long and John Hodgman, playing the parts of the two computers. You might recall.

Fast forward to now. Apple's top-of-the-line desktop computer is the Mac Pro, a full-sized tower that's expandable and updatable. In fact, reader DavidB reports that he is still running a 2010 MacPro5,1. "Everything is upgradeable and/or removable and I've done plenty of that," he says. "Upgraded CPU, video card, and memory. Replaced small hard drives with large hard drives and then SSDs. Installed PCIe cards to support USB3. And it all still works and it is my daily work machine. Every time Apple releases a new Mac I check the specs but here I am still running the Mac Pro."

Well, here's a weird thing. Apparently my new M2 Mac Mini Pro is more powerful than the base Mac Pro...either the one that's available now or the one that was available when the Mac Mini Pro came out, I don't know. That's according to this Marques Brownlee video (he's good by the way—and so successful on YouTube that he was chosen to give the commencement address at his alma mater recently) and seems to be reinforced by other sources on the web.

That kind of changes my article calling for a "computer in the middle" that I wrote in 2010 and linked to the other day. The Mini has changed over the years. It's no longer just entry-level. Although it's still not expandable and upgradeable, so it's not for DavidB.

Demos
I had to go back to the Apple Store near Rochester yesterday (I spent the day in the dentist's chair and swung by the mall to turn in my old computer as a trade-in). After the transaction I had a little extra time so I wandered around the store to poke into some of products I'm unfamiliar with, such as the watches and Apple TV. You have to be careful, though, because sometimes to demo is to desire. I didn't try on the Apple Vision Pro virtual reality goggles, for instance, because I can't afford them and I don't want to know. A friend uses them for processing pictures in Lightroom and says it's like having a wall-sized computer display. The Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro is slick, although I can't imagine why I would need one or what I would use it for. The watch table was too busy. But I made a Discovery, capital D.

I didn't know this, but Apple sells a pair of Bluetooth headphones called AirPods Max. You can also get them from Amazon. Available in five different colors. Well, I demoed a pair of those and...the noise-cancelling feature is amazing. Instant love.

Mind you, I live in a quiet area. Especially in the Winter, sometimes there isn't even a car going by for long stretches of time. But it's also a rural area, and occasionally noisemakers of various sorts ruin my concentration. Chainsaws whining away for a whole morning. Neighbor Jim with his vintage 1940s Harley-Davidson golf-cart conveyance thingy which makes an ungodly racket (Jim's a nice guy though). Neighbors with leaf-blowers. Unknown rich guy with the giant cigarette-boat (also known as a go-fast boat or a Miami Vice boat) who fortunately doesn't use it very often but when he does, slams it up and down the lake for hours persecuting every human on every shore. None of this happens very often but it's intrusive when it does. There are times, friends, when I get so frazzled I get in the car and leave the area. I will admit that escaping neighborhood noise has occasionally inspired photographing jaunts, but that doesn't mean the noise is a good thing.

The noise-cancelling effect of the AirPods Max literally brought a smile to my face. The hubbub in the Apple Store is surprisingly loud, as you realize the instant it disappears. The music then appears to be filling the entire store. Zowee. Yes to those, is all I can say. I'm trying to cut down on mindless expenses, and doing pretty well—but sometimes tech is a blessing. A solution, not an indulgence. A pair of those things is now definitely in my future. To demo is to desire; you gotta be careful!

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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Matthew: "Mike, before I opened my computer to check this site, I put on my Apple headphones. (The name feels puerile, please don't make me use it.) They really are amazing, sound great, and 'spatial audio' is convincing enough that I worry that I accidentally had the volume up on my computer, TV, or iPad. I do also have home audio speakers, but rarely use them anymore. And that's the bonus thing: the headphones seamlessly switch from device to device, as long as you're logged into your Apple account on all of them. I'm listening to music on my phone right now, and could watch a video on my computer as easily as pressing pause and then play. If I have a podcast playing on my iPd but want to move around the house, I just put the headphones on—they sense that I'm wearing them and seamlessly switch. They don't even play their little startup chime. It's a world of difference from the other one-device Bluetooth NC headphones I've owned, and I'm happy to be rid of the cable that my monitor headphones use.

"I too live on the edge of a quiet summer town, but I have a dishwasher, a range hood fan, and a heat pump. Getting rid of those quiet background sounds is just as important to my auditory well-being as removing the jet skis and lawn mowers. I'm attuned to sound, picky about music, and work in a noisy factory where being aware of the sounds of the machines is part of my job. Control over what I hear matters a lot to me. I would replace my headphones instantly if something ever happened to them."

Gary Merken: "Re 'The Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro is slick, although I can't imagine why I would need one or what I would use it for': One common use is for marking up scores. Many instrumentalists and singers—I'm referring to classical musicians—use iPads instead of paper scores. When the choral director says, 'take a breath after the third measure in the second system,' the iPad-using chorister can insert the breath mark. And erase it if the director changes her mind later on. Same for an opera conductor ('we're going to cut the repeat in the third aria') or a symphony orchestra concertmaster putting in the preferred bowings for the string section."

Mike replies: Very interesting! Never occurred to me.

Mike Chisholm: "Following Gary Merken's point about musicians and iPads: last year we saw the extraordinary pianist Angela Hewitt perform Bach, and it slowly dawned on me that she was using an iPad (well, a tablet) as a score, operated by a foot pedal (this wasn't a fuzz-box or a wah-wah, I'm pretty sure). This was something I had never noticed before, but I'm told has pretty much become standard practice. It certainly saves having a page turner standing next to you."

Ulf Aagerup: "I have another reason to use the Apple pencil. I’m a professor, and frequently assess my students’ writing (reports, theses, etc). The iPad allows me to read a PDF of a document and scribble my thoughts on it as if it were a paper document. Then, I can send a copy to the student, but still keep mine. This way, the next time we meet, I have a record of what my feedback was last time, and the student also gets written feedback. I could of course do this with a keyboard on a computer, but I prefer to read and write on the iPad. It’s like a book or a journal."

Open Mike: My Favorite Macs of All Time

Ugh, I'm losin' it. The other day I said my new Mac Mini was my 13th Mac. Not so fast, silicon-breath. I left out not only two of the three laptops I've owned, but a short-lived eMac and the 21" iMac I have upstairs right this minute. So the total is 17, not 13. That's a lot of Macs, even over the 40 years of the Mac (1984–2024). It does however include three work and school computers I spent a lot of time on. Also, during the years I used Macs at work, I also had my own at home, so that sort of doubles them up you might say. Other times, like now, I owned two at once.

The first Mac I used was the Apple Macintosh (that was its whole entire name) that I first used at my beloved alma mater the Corcoran School of Art. The Apple Macintosh was later called the Apple 128k Macintosh—the name had not been shortened to "Mac" yet—to distinguish it from the 512k "Fat Mac" that followed it; but that was a back-formation. I'm fond of saying that "My first Macintosh was the first Macintosh," but jumping on board right from the get-go is not actually to my credit. It was because David Adamson, a local gallery owner and computer aficionado, bought six Apple Macintoshes for the computer art class he was scheduled to teach at the Corcoran School of Art, and I was in the class. There were only two(!) programs at first, MacWrite and MacPaint (the latter developed by Bill Atkinson, a photography enthusiast and friend of Ctein's), and it was assumed that all the art students would want to use MacPaint. But I applied for permission to use MacWrite in the class instead, and, after some discussion between David and school officials and faculty, permission was granted.  There was a commercial in those early days in which Steve Jobs was quoted as saying something to the effect that the Mac was a computer for people who don't know how to use computers, to allow them to unlock their creative potential. I was that guy. I contacted David Adamson years later to properly express my thanks. The first Mac I owned myself was the Fat Mac, the immediate successor to the original Macintosh. My Mom bought it for me as a graduation present in 1985 (thanks Mom). It cost $2,495 in 1984, equivalent to about $7,500 today.

To put you in context, in case you are younger and started buying computers later, the 128k Macintosh took 3.5" diskettes that held 1.44MB of data (about ten pages of written text, and less than one high-res photo of today) and required the MacWrite program to be on each disk. So each time you finished writing ten pages you had to swap a new floppy in and out, in and out, again and again, so the system could copy the program onto the new diskette. Most trivial things with any kind of chip in them today have more computing power.

In 1996, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, I bought his first new product, the so-called "Blueberry" iMac. iMac, by the way, stands for "internet Mac," a name suggested by ad agency director Ken Segall. Jobs had wanted the computer to be called the Mac-Man, apparently a play on Pac-Man, a famous early computer arcade game. He hated the name iMac at first, but he came to his senses. I stuck with iMacs through thick and thin, because they carried over the one-box concept of the original Macintosh. But when the screens got to be 27 inches in size it occurred to me that every time I wanted to upgrade I was buying a new display that I didn't actually need. And throwing away an old one that was still perfectly good.

If you allow for the periods of overlap—when I used one Mac at work or owned more than one at once—and subtract the Corcoran's 128k which I didn't own—my average time of ownership for each computer has been three years and three months.

But enough history. Long story short, unless it's too late for that, here are my three favorite Macs of all time, the ones I liked the best and was most pleased with, in chronological order.

The Powerbook 180 of 1992, a slick little "portable" computer that was of course a precursor to the modern laptop. (The picture is the visually identical 190.) I loved that little thing, and probably still have it somewhere around here. I used it basically as a desktop, but the idea of portability appealed to me. Of course, connecting to the internet was a bit of an adventure sometimes; if you were around in those days, you probably listened to something like this a million times. I kept the computer for years after moving on because I had Phil Davis's sensitometric Plotter/Matcher program for films, developers, and papers on it, with all of his own carefully collected data (which he didn't give out or sell; he wanted photographers to buy a densitometer and create their own data!). Newer Macs broke the Plotter/Matcher.

The Quadra 605 of 1993–6 that I started using in 1994 at work (Quadra was the family name of high-end Macintoshes of the first half of the '90s). I inherited it from David Alan Jay, a computer whiz and my predecessor as Editor of Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques magazine. It was the first big monitor I had (mine was B&W only, yeah); it ran WriteNow, which was and still is my all-time favorite word-processing program; and it just worked and worked, reliably. It never took any time away from working. The only thing that ever went wrong with the one we had was that the little battery on the motherboard that jump-started the monitor eventually gasped its last and had to be replaced. That was it. It was a bit of a revelation to me to have a computer that was problem-free.

(Illustration from this site)

3D rendering of Aluminum Unibody iMac showing
position of combo drive and SD card slots

The third was the 27-inch version of the so-called "Aluminum Unibody iMac," that came out in 2009. It had an SD card slot on the side, which was incredibly handy. I could change cards merely by feel, without shifting in my chair much less getting up. That iMac was very powerful compared to what I was used to, the huge screen was beautiful, and the machine seemed very fast. And it still had a CD/DVD slot, so I could play music and movies conveniently from CDs and DVDs that I physically owned. Ah, nostalgia.

After this glorious peak is where things turn dark and Mike starts muttering. The iMac that came after it did away with the flat side on the computer such that the front and the back came together along a sharp edge. This necessitated the shift of the SD card slot to the back, which was nutty. It was a pain in the ass (PITA), and irritated me every single time I used an SD card, which was very often, and it stayed a PITA for the whole time I owned that computer. Sometimes I could find the slot by feel; sometimes I had to swing the computer around to find the SD slot, disturbing the rat's nest of cabling, or, sometimes, get up and walk around to the other side of the desk. It never stopped annoying me*. To add insult to injury, I could never, and still can't, see any reason whatsoever for the change. Did the sharp-edge model look better, or was it more cool, or was it more stylish? No. Who gained? What did they gain? There was no reason it made sense, and I couldn't see how it could have mattered to anyone else either. So why did they do it? I really regretted what it said about the mindset of Apple's designers: it turned the architect Louis Sullivan's iconic phrase "Form follows function" on its ear. Function dawdling petulantly along after meaningless, empty form. Yes, I'm a little bitter.

Well, sorry to end on a rant. Suffice to say, I loved the 2009 27-inch Aluminum "Unibody" iMac, as I had loved the Quadra 605 and the Powerbook 190 before it. All my Macs have been good, except the shoddy '90s PowerPC from the time that Apple was circling the drain and in danger of going bankrupt. The Aluminum Unibody iMac was the peak of the Mac, as the iPhone 6 Plus was the peak of the iPhone. Current iMacs (and iPhones) are almost as good functionally, though, and are of course more up to date in terms of their innards and connectors and so forth.

And now I have to go wrestle with re-rationalizing storage and backup again. I wish this stuff were easier!

Mike

*In general, I hate it—I usually change "hate" to "dislike," but not this time—when companies solve a problem, then abandon the perfect solution just for the sake of change. Apple got it right; they had it; then they lost it.

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:

Earl Dunbar: "I’m not nearly as much Mac experienced or knowledgeable (and how I came to Apple is quite the story, at least in my opinion) but I disagree about the iPhone 6 Plus being the pinnacle of iPhone. I had the 6S (I always had a 'thing' for the 'S' models) and liked it except it had a really bad battery issue…for which Apple paid not only for replacement batteries but also refunds resulting from a class action suit. I enjoyed my XS with which I made really wonderful photos, including the shot of Peter Turnley’s bistro in Paris, which you have seen. My current 15 Pro is miles ahead of all previous iPhones if only for battery performance. Don’t bother fighting me on this!  😂  "

Mike replies: I shan't.

John Krumm: "While it definitely wasn't my best Mac, the Mac that gave me the most pleasure, perhaps in the same way that a first real camera does, was one of the original little Mac SE's, my first computer. By the early 'nineties you could find an affordable one used. I had used one at work before. It had two slots for floppy disks. I managed to get onto a very early version of the internet with it, and also dialed in to a BBS to argue politics with people all over the country (some things haven't changed)."

Scott: "My first Mac was the first Mac. At the time it was released, I was working in the IT department of one of Apple’s main investment banks and they gave us one as a commemorative gift. So it was a first-day ship of the first MacIntosh computer. The head of the IT department gave it to me to figure out how we could use it productively. It had a single 1.44MB drive as others have mentioned, but only 64KB of main memory. Hence the need to swap floppies in and out continuously as you worked on a project. Yet, it seemed amazingly advanced compared to the IBM PC and clones of the era, with its graphical user interface. I used that machine and its successors for many years at work, until the need for PC-compatible software overwhelmed me and I reluctantly switched.

"As for the knife-edge iMac, the design was intended to make the body of the iMac appear slim. It met that objective, in my humble opinion. However, I agree with you that moving the SD slot to the back was stupid. I quickly bought an external SD reader and glued it to the side of the printer on my desk, where it was easy to reach. And a DVD reader, which I kept in a drawer except on the rare occasions when I needed to use it. Apple’s obsession with slim and sleek designed required us all to buy dongles, external devices and deal with piles of wiring on and below our desks. And still does."

An Extra Port Magically Appears

James, in the comments, gave me the idea yesterday that my monitor might have more ports on it (I've already been using the one on the side). So I checked—with a flashlight, craning my neck in ways it was not designed to bend—and sure enough, way back in an indentation where they face the wrong way, it does. Has two, in fact. Plugged the mouse into one, and it works. So that allowed me to free up a Thunderbolt port, because I had one in use that was only serving as a small, cheap hub for the mouse, and as a card reader. Which in turn allowed me to plug in my fancy dedicated card reader, which is awesome.

The monitor requires two ports, one Thunderbolt and one USB. At least, I think it does. Honestly, it's an absolute wonder that I ever got this monitor hooked up and working in the first place. Take a look at the only place in the manual where it tells you how to do it:

For god's sake. I can't make hide nor tail o' that even when I concentrate. That's useful for telling someone how to do it only if they already know how to do it. Anyway, the monitor works with two separate cables going from it to the computer, and if one of them is extraneous to purposes, or if a different single cable could replace the two I'm using now, I'm sure I will never know.

Power-ful wisdom
I'm very happy with my all my photography-related gear and stuff right now, I'll tell you that. The late Mark L. Power, one of my teachers at the Corcoran School of Art, told me a secret once that I've never forgotten. I was acting lab manager, and hung around school a lot, and thus, heard a lot of student complaints. I figured out some possible responses the school might make to some of them, and presented them to Mark one night when he was waiting for some prints to wash. He listened patiently. Then he said something to the effect that over years of teaching—he was one of the founders of the program at the Corcoran—he had discovered that when students had something they were excited to be working on, they didn't complain. The complaints proliferated when a person was sitting around fallow, not excited, not working on anything—didn't have a project, wasn't excited visually, wasn't shooting, wasn't engaged. "Whenever someone complains about anything, I ask them what they're working on." Whatever the complaint, work is what cures it. Even if it doesn't seem to be related. So if I'm not happy with my photography, it's up to me to figure out how to get up, get out, and get going.

I'll tell you about my super-duper card reader when B&H reopens after Succos, because Amazon doesn't sell it. (I need to attract all the affiliate sales I possibly can, even though I hardly ever think of that.)

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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The Cardboard Paper Towel Roll Test

I looked at "Supermoon Rising" this morning and was modestly shocked.

(Black-and-white geek here.)

The picture is best viewed on a calibrated monitor under subdued room light. For me, that means at night. I work in a room with windows on all four sides, and today is sunny, so my room is bright with natural light right now. The darks in the picture look much darker than they did last night—at nighttime, I work with the room darkened and with one color-correct desk lamp off to the side of the monitor.

Dark tone detail, whether on a screen or in a print, changes a lot depending on ambient light. If you doubt it, try this test—in normal room light in the daytime, look at a large B&W print with lots of shadows (dark tones—light tones are called "highlights") but that has some detail in the shadows. Then, take a cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels, close one eye, and look at the dark areas in the print with the other eye through the tube. Surprised? I used to set up this test with students, and that was always a fun day. It demonstrates how much pictures are affected by ambient light.

This works with on-screen images too—try it. It works with a print if there is detail in the dark shadows of the print. It doesn't work if the blacks are just empty Dmax (maximum paper black). So how can you tell if there is detail in the shadows? Take a flashlight and shine it through the print from the back; the detail will suddenly be very apparent.

Why is that? It's because the reduced silver that forms the image in a traditional B&W print sits on top of the paper. That means it cuts down light in the shadow areas twice—once when the viewing light is going through the reduced silver on the way to the paper, and once after the light reflects from the paper base and is coming back out. By using the flashlight from behind, you cut out one of those "trips" the light is taking thought the image-forming silver. So it will look considerably lighter and whatever detail is there will show up clearly.

As with any technical area of photography, or actually any sort of craft, or most of them anyway, sloppy approximation tends to work fine for a sloppy approximate result, which is all most people require to get the gist.  However, if you want to really understand and control what's going on, you can get very deep into the weeds. (Think music reproduction. Earbuds or a cheap radio with a 25¢, 2" speaker are enough to get the gist, but audiophiles go to great lengths. Think bicycles. Knives. Golf clubs. Any such thing, really.)

As far as B&W tonality is concerned, one of the saddest developments in my lifetime is the current fashion among museum conservators to prioritize very slight reductions in the life expectancy of prints by showing work under dim, murky lighting—when the photographers who made the work were expecting what used to be called "gallery lighting"—strong, direct light. With the lights turned down low, museum-goers are just not seeing the works as they were intended to be seen. (I've had at least one museum insider tell me that the museums are merely trying to save money on the lighting bill, so that's a possibility too. Most museums are strapped for cash and don't want to look like they are.) Whatever the cause, it's a shame.

Maybe I should prepare another version of "Supermoon Rising" to be looked at under brighter ambient lighting! That way, there's a better chance of one of them looking the way I intended, for more viewers.

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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Supermoon Rising

Have a look at my latest. Took it at about 6:35 last night! I hit the balance point between ambient light and the moon's light, such that there's nice contrast but also detail on the surface of the moon and detail in the landscape (the corn stalks etc.).

It's of the so-called "super moon" (when the full moon is at perigree, closest to the Earth) rising above the hills outside of Penn Yan. I got lucky on this shot; I scouted locations the day before and got there at 6:22 when the moon, a ghostly pink, broke the horizon. But I misjudged the direction of the moonrise, so I had to extemporize, gunning the car around on the empty roads like a madman to find a good viewpoint in time. I have a lighter version with the moon closer to the horizon and I was going to post both, but as I mentioned in the writeup of "Composition in Black, White and Gray," I have a thing for dark pictures at the moment and I ended up liking this shot the best.

"Supermoon Rising"  would have made a lovely color picture as well; the moon was a pale, pure orange and there was still a fair amount of blue left in the sky. It was the end of an absolutely clear-sky day, without a trace of cloud anywhere. I recognized it was my chance to get the moon close to the horizon, and came prepared.

Taken at ƒ/16 to get sharpness from the corn stalks all the way to 226,000 miles away. The rendering of the dry corn stalks is very nice too, when enlarged.

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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Thomas Paris: "Every couple of weeks, I try to photograph the moon here. Both when it's full or almost full and when it's almost new, the last and first crescents. The point being that then there will be some light in the foreground when the moon is close to the horizon, giving me a chance to capture both in the same frame. But because the foreground is so busy, visually, here, I want a big moon, so I use a telephoto lens for that. Meaning I have to find a viewpoint with both a clear view on the moon and an interesting foreground. Not easy to find, in a big city. And the moon is seldom visible here anyway, because of the pollution and clouds. But when it does work, it's magic!

"Yours is very different from the ones I make because you're using a much shorter focal length than I usually do. And often in these, with a shorter FL, the moon feels lost to me. But it doesn't in yours, thanks to that peaceful foreground. And you beautifully balanced your composition. Lovely! And it sounds like you had fun making this, which sounds ever better to me."

Old Man in Hat Buys New Computer

Apple computers don't have enough ports for me. Apparently I'm the only guy in the world who has this problem. Well, the Mac Studio has enough ports, and the Mac Studio is the exact computer I wrote a whole article about nearly fifteen years ago saying we needed. But now that it exists, I don't want to pay for it.

I currently need five Thunderbolt-type connector ports and four USB. Partly, I admit, because I insist on a wired keyboard and mouse, and the USB hub takes up one of the Thunderbolt/USB-C type ports. That's because I had bad experiences with the Bluetooth mouses, culminating in the idiotic mouse that had its recharging port on the bottom of it, so you couldn't use it when it was charging. The base Mac Mini provides two Thunderbolt ports and two USB ports. For more than double the price of the base model, I can get a Mac Mini Pro, which still has two USB ports, but doubles the number of Thunderbolt ports to four. An improvement without quite being a solution. The Pro model is $1,300, vs. $800 for the "middle model*."

Everybody says, "just get a dock." (Or hub. I'm unsure of the distinction between a dock and a hub.) But hubs with extra Thunderbolt ports are rare, and expensive, and after you pay through the nose for one, the clock starts ticking, because they'll be Thunderbolt 2 (or whatever) and Apple is already on Thunderbolt 4 and eventually all things "break"—I fell for all that Firewire hype way back when! Breaking in computerese means that some perfectly good thing stops working because things move on. Or, just as often, let's admit, because someone wants to make more money or isn't making enough money.

The Apple people didn't have a solution either. I spoke to a manager, not identified as such but I could tell he was one, who adroitly passed me to a salesman who was being shadowed by a trainee in street attire. None of the three of them had an obvious solution to the port problem, which is evidently a problem belonging to me and not to Apple. They, like everyone else, said I needed a hub, which they don't sell.

I will admit I can get grumpy over Apple trying to streamline their products for style reasons while at the same time obligating me to pay for and clutter my desk with an ugly third-party hub with wires sprouting out of it.

I sucked it up and bought a basic Mac Mini Pro. The salesman even came out and said they don't sell many of them. I will now be the monkey in the monkey cage that all the rest of the monkeys are flinging feces at, because y'all are going to ridicule me for buying more computer than I need. (Is that metaphor a little too vivid?)

What can I say? I probably did. You're right.

Interesting thing I learned: trainees at the Apple Store shadow, and then are shadowed. The trainer first wears the identifying Apple shirt and the trainee lurks in street clothes observing, but then the trainee graduates to wearing the Apple shirt and dealing with the customers and the trainer lurks beside him in street clothes. Smart, huh? Shadowing and reverse-shadowing. Trainees get weeks of training. There's a lot to know.

Speaking of breaking, Photoshop broke. I had been sticking with Photoshop 2021—the one I could, you know, own, and keep on my own computer—even though I've been paying my $9.99 a month for the online version since 2021. At one point I knew that I'd be forced away from 2021 and compelled to use the online version, but I forgot about that. Well, now the whole thing's in Portuguese. I knew I was going to have to learn the online version sooner or later. It looks like that's my Winter project.

[UPDATE: My bad. Photoshop 2021 didn't break. It's just that I have a license for two computers, and the two listed were my old Mini and the Mini before that. And the new one made three. So I deleted the old ones and Photoshop works again.]

All's well
I'm being a little Mike-y here. Truthfully, my experience at the Apple Store was very good, and all the people there were nice, helpful, and very tolerant of me; my new computer is slick as snot; and the old one lasted six years, more or less, which is fine (this is my 12th Mac since 1984, best as I can count, counting two work and one school Mac). And, my earlier strategy of separating the monitor from the computer is still working. When my second 27" iMac was nearing its end, it occurred to me that I kept having to pay for a new large monitor every time I bought a new computer, and that didn't seem sensible, so I switched to the Mac Mini and bought an NEC MultiSync PA272W which is still going strong. Meanwhile, the 27" iMac is a thing of the past, and so is the monitor—the PA272W was discontinued and replaced by the PA271Q-BK which was discontinued and replaced by nothing.

Here's a big difference: last time, the new computer restored my data from a Time Machine backup in the Apple AirPort Extreme, over Wi-Fi, and it took something like 14 hours. Now, I keep a slick little Samsung T5 SSD for Time Machine backups (link is to the current model), and the new computer effortlessly restored itself from the backup in like an hour and 15 minutes.

Here are some related articles from the past:

"NEC, We Hardly Knew Ye" from 2022, reporting on the demise of NEC as a manufacturer of monitors for photography and recommendations for alternative options;

"The Goldilocks Box," my historical article begging Apple to give us the computer it eventually did give us in the Mac Studio (although the Mini in its higher variants is now a much more capable computer than when it was new in 2005 or when I wrote that in 2010);

"The Biggest News from Apple in Years," my joy over the introduction of the Mac Studio.

Mike

*The middle model being the one they want everyone to buy—people are similarly clever to each other in wanting something better than the stripper/barebones variant but not wanting to pay for the extravagant/luxurious variant. The classic marketing idea is to provide a choice of three and aim customers at the middle one.

P.S. Concerning the post title, my father, who had a horror of old age, used to scorn and disparage "old men in hats." I now cheerfully wear a Dorfman Pacific bucket hat to protect my bald spot.

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 Shriver: "Thunderbolt 4 ports use a lot of resources inside the computer chipset. They have four PCIe lanes, each running at 32 gigabits/second. Apple is not being cheap with connectors; there's a lot of expensive silicon implementing each Thunderbolt 4 port. The Mac mini Pro has four Thunderbolt 4 ports because it has two complete chipsets.

"True Thunderbolt 4 peripherals are really high-end. You can run an external PCIe chassis off one. Or an external Graphics Processor Unit.

"Thunderbolt 4 is needed for displays too large for HDMI (say '5K' and up), or for a pair of '4K' displays daisy-chained on one port.

"Really high performance disk systems use Thunderbolt 4. The sort that people doing serious video editing need.

"Most real-world (read: affordable) devices are not going to be bottlenecked by a hub reducing Thunderbolt 4 to Thunderbolt 3, USB-C (with USB 3.2 Gen 3 or 4), or legacy USB 3.2 Gen 1 or 2. Looking at external SSD drives at a local computer store, only three models use Thunderbolt 3; the rest are USB 3.2 Gen 1 or 2. External hard drives are mostly USB 3.2 Gen 1. Using a hub isn't going to bottleneck a typical still photo editor.

"Note also that hubs can be nested, and commonly are.

"The other important thing to note is that the programming interface for hubs is standardized as part of the standards. No device driver is needed. So Apple won't obsolete your hub. Heck, there are USB hubs inside most Apple computers.
(This is contrary to the fate of FireWire, which did require drivers that Apple has obsoleted.)"

Jeff: "Paid for more than you need? On the contrary, I sprung for the Mac Studio M2 Ultra. My old Mac Pro tower from 2009 lasted until last year, by upgrading innards along the way. With no ability to upgrade the new machines, my philosophy was to buy once without regret. At 74, I expect that this machine will see me through my remaining years, at least my photographically active ones. The same approach has applied to my camera/lens purchases in my ‘mature’ years; pay more now and minimize GAS or need to upgrade. This longer term perspective has surely saved me far more than any short term price differential."

ChrisC: "I guess what they didn’t tell you at the Apple Store is that a new Mac Mini is due to drop in the next few weeks, if the rumours are to be believed. M4 chip and a new body. Possibly new selection of ports too—sounds like USB-A is on the way out."

Mike replies: I heard those rumors last Spring for the Summer. If I did buy at the wrong time, though, it wouldn't be the first time. I have a history of jumping the gun with cameras, instead of being patient and waiting. All I really hope is that the computer I just bought doesn't suddenly go on sale for $500 less. That would leave a bad taste.

jthvedt: "I got my employer to replace an ancient Dell with a refurbished Mac Studio, and WOW is it a nice bit of gear. But even it has barely enough ports. Like Mike, I prefer wired keyboard and mouse; luckily my keyboard has a USB-A port for my mouse. But with a backup drive, a wired headset, a second display, often an iPad as a third display, the ports fill up fast. At home I have a woefully port-deficient MacBook, which really does require a dock. The expensive and now discontinued CalDigit T3 performs like a champ, but I sure wish I didn't need it." [Here's the current version —Ed.]

My Old Fuji

Okay, last post on real estate photography—y'all are used to how I sometimes chew a subject to death, right?

Here's my second project. Really nice people—the woman is a voice artist and audiobook narrator, and has a giant soundproof booth in her office, which also has black walls (we didn't picture that room). I tried to take the advice y'all gave me after the first project: correct the verticals in every case, show where the furniture meets the floor (mostly did that, with a lower camera position on the tripod), and give the shots a little more color and clarity for some "pizzazz" as John McMillan said.

A few reactions to all the comments last time: some suggestions were not possible. When you shoot a project like this you're always shooting around things that are in the way, trying to get a clear unobstructed view; for instance, in this week's house, the yellow VW was not a prop. It's not operational, so that's just where it lives. Also, you're always trying to show the good features of the house, in this case the full sunlight it gets from the south-facing front windows, which, helped by the fact that the house is on a hill, would make this house friendly in the winters when the sun is low in the sky. Also the elliptical and circular archways in the openings between rooms. I even managed to get the archway in the bathtub alcove, which was the only iPhone shot in this bunch—to get it, I put the iPhone on its widest setting and wedged myself into the corner and crouched as far down as I could, struggling to keep my knee out of the shot. Then there were Photoshop heroics I had to go through to make it look like it does. So someone might say, "you should have moved more to your left," but no, I couldn't, unless I could move the toilet. The bathtub picture looks okay, but it looks great considering the constraints of working in that space!

This is fun work. I enjoy it. I do the corrections one picture at a time, but I want that freedom, and I enjoy doing the work—I even enjoy the fact that it, like the photography, can be pretty fast and loose. I'm not a perfectionist with pictures. And don't even tend to like fastidiously perfected pictures. Not for nothing do I have a whole mini-collection of books of old snapshots.

I have to say it's almost a relief to be doing a job again. Being useful to others who appreciate it.

Fuji X-T1 next to an old Olympus OM-2n

'Tell a dream, lose a reader'
I actually had a dream about a camera last night. My brain constructed a detailed and tactile phantasm of a camera that never existed. Regarding a real camera, though, may I just say that I still love the Fuji X-T1's files—they look better to me than my X-H1 files ever did. Possibly because of lack of experience with the X-H1. And they look better now than they used to—I'm impressed with the improvements that I'm seeing in Photoshop since the last time I did a lot of work with Fuji files, pre-COVID. Or rather, not Photoshop, but ACR (Adobe Camera Raw), since I use ACR for 95% of my post-processing. They've made a lot of improvements in the way the software operates, and its effectiveness. You can now apply a lot of HDR before it starts looking "HDR-ish," for one thing. It would make sense to go back and rework raw files from six, eight, and ten years ago.

I really do very much like ACR. I believe it's integral in Adobe Lightroom too. (I've never used Lightroom, although I own it.)

Rather than look for a new camera, I think I might simply buy a used X-T1 as a backup. They're cheap, and I don't feel like I need anything more.

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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Stan B.: "If you continue to make this a permanent gig (realize that may not be entirely in your control) you might consider adding a 10–18mm Sigma to your kit. Strange I should be recommending a lens I'm returning, but I've made the decision to go for every bit of quality I can squeeze from my aging X-T[x]'s, Q, and GR. In most cases, you'd be hard pressed to distinguish results from the 14mm Fujinon and it gives you the ability to go even wider should you need to—all in one affordable, tiny beast that sits quite handsomely on any X-T[x]!"

Chris Kern: "I’ve owned all the Fujifilm X-T[x] cameras: when I acquire a new generational model, I keep the previous body as a back-up and sell the oldest one. If you decide to acquire a second Fuji as a back-up to your X-T1, I would recommend that you pop for an X-T2. The reputable used equipment outlets aren’t listing much of a price difference between the two models, and the X-T2 has a much more capable sensor and processor than its predecessor, as well as a more flexible LCD mount—you can tilt it sideways for vertical shots—as well as a second card slot.

"With respect to processing in ACR as opposed to Lightroom, the controls are essentially the same, but you might want to give Lightroom a try since you already have a license for it. In addition to providing a capable asset-management system for storing and retrieving your files, I think the user agent [? This is a computer term I don't understand even after reading definitions —Ed.] is both cleaner and simpler than working with ACR and then editing pixels within Photoshop. I find functions like perspective correction easier to perform quickly in Lightroom—and while Photoshop (i.e., Photoshop proper, not ACR) has more powerful facilities for making substantial image modifications, if you just need to remove an occasional distraction, Lightroom’s non-destructive AI tools do a remarkably capable job."

Adam Isler: "Re: 'Rather than look for a new camera, I think I might simply buy a used X-T1 as a backup. They're cheap, and I don't feel like I need anything more.' Funnily enough, I feel the same way about my X-T4. I dread the idea of moving to 40MB raw files (from 26) and filling my hard drives that much faster. And I love shooting with the screen hidden, so I spend less time chimping, not available on the X-T5. I know one of these days the old (4 1/2 years is old?) beauty’s going to 'obsolesce' so I started checking on the availability of new X-T4s in preference to the latest and best."

Roger Bradbury: "I used to take photos for Airbnb some years ago. Nearly all the shots were taken with a 12–24mm (18–24mm equivalent) zoom on my now elderly DSLR. I mostly shot from the room corners as it made wide angle distortion far less obvious. More than once I had to get in the bath or shower tray to get the shot. Before going to the house I'd look at it on Google Maps, to see when I could get a shot of the front with some sun on it. If I couldn't, I'd at least try for sun on an adjacent wall. I set the ambient exposure so that my highlight alert wasn't going off, and mostly I wouldn't need to adjust it unless the light outside changed dramatically. But my on-camera bounced-off-the-ceiling fill flash would need adjusting for every room.

"The only thing I'd do differently now would be to bring a second flashgun on a stand, in case there was an open arch to a room beyond where my flash couldn't reach."