The Online Photographer

Erwin Puts Says Farewell to Leica (?)

Is this real? It appears to be legitimate, although there's little talk about it on the Web so far. Makes me nervous when there isn't corroboration. We need to approach the Internet with a high degree of everyday skepticism...anyway, here goes.

Erwin Puts, who for several decades has been the world's leading independent expert on Leica products present and past, has announced his farewell to what he calls Leica World. Declaring that "the soul of Leica products has been eradicated," he says the company is going down a path he is no longer willing to follow.

It appears from his short announcement, however, that his interest in legacy Leica and Leitz products will continue.

Erwin is the author of the well-respected privately-printed books Leica Compendium, Leica Lens Compendium, Leica Lens Saga, and Leica Chronicle. He has been writing at length and in detail about Leica cameras and lenses, and the company, for well over 30 years.

Great recantations
If this is true, it reminds of when Peter Henry Emerson declared the "Death of Naturalistic Photography":

Emerson soon became convinced that photography was a medium of artistic expression superior to all other black-and-white graphic media because it reproduces the light, tones, and textures of nature with unrivaled fidelity. He was repelled by the contemporary fashion for composite photographs, which imitated sentimental genre paintings. In his handbook Naturalistic Photography (1889), he outlined a system of aesthetics. He decreed that a photograph should be direct and simple and show real people in their own environment, not costumed models posed before fake backdrops or other such predetermined formulas. Emerson’s book was very persuasive, but in 1891 he published a black-bordered pamphlet 'The Death of Naturalistic Photography,' in which he recanted his opinion that the accurate reproduction of nature was synonymous with art. Despite his change of mind, his initial views remained influential and formed the rationale of much 20th-century photography. (Encyclopaedia Britannica online).

I'm amazed that I can't seem to find a JPEG of the "black-bordered pamphlet" online! I can see it in my mind's eye.

Emerson was one of the first and still one of the best—well, most thorough—thinkers and writers to grapple with the nature of the medium, although there is a schoolteacherish cast to his polemics that doesn't wear particularly well. His work looks Pictorialist to us today, but Encyclopaedia Britannica is right that his thinking matched very closely what came to be valued across much of 20th century photography.

Naturalistic Photography is available as a Kindle book for 99¢. I haven't examined the file.

I've sometimes felt that "found photography" almost better illustrates Emerson's principles than his own work...

A circa 1920s documentary photograph from the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums, Historic Houses Trust of NSW. From the archives of the New South Wales Police Dept. Alec Soth wrote about this archive 12 years ago: "Searching on the topic of 'new south wales police dept,' I once again wonder why I bother with photography. It seems unfair that an anonymous police photographer can be as good as Avedon and Arbus...."

Sorry if this segue constitutes too great a step away from the subject, but, under the rubric of remarkable recantations, they seem related to me.

Anyway, if you enjoy Erwin's longtime impassioned thrall to Leica, as a great many do, I encourage you to carry on enjoying his existing writings.

Mike
(Thanks to Jeff S.)

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Andrew Molitor: "I remember seeing a show, um, somewhere (Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia?) of photographs from the relevant era, and some wag on the curatorial staff had hung an Emerson and a Robinson one above the other, and I'll be damned if they didn't look pretty much the same. (For those of you not obsessed with the minutiae of Victorian era photography, Emerson and Robinson spent a few merry years thundering angrily away at one another in the photographic press.)"

Mike replies: ...With the essential difference that the Robinson might have been a pastiche of something that never existed in nature and the Emerson was probably faithful to reality as translated by the lens. (You know this, Andrew, but others might not.) In many ways the present-day tension between photojournalistic ethics and flagrant Photoshoppery is the inheritor of that disputation.

Could the show you saw have been Alison Nordström's TruthBeauty? I can't find a list online of where that show traveled, but a glimmer in the back of my brain-pan says one venue might have been Norfolk. I hope readers listened to me when I recommended (several times) buying that book. Probably the high point of Dr. Nordström's career and fine and valuable summation of Pictorialism and the issues it raises. And a lovely book to look at and enjoy.

Review: Topaz Labs JPEG to RAW AI

Written and illustrated by Ctein

The last of my Topaz Labs reviews concerns a nifty little program with the intriguing title of "JPEG to RAW AI." It is, as they say, a one trick pony, and the trick is in the title. Hand it a JPEG of your choice and it will generate a RAW file (or 16-bit TIFF, if that is your preference).

If you have no interest whatsoever in working with JPEGs, you can skip out on this column and go do something more productive with your time. No worries, it won't be on the final exam. I'll wait...

dum ta dum ta dum hummm...

Okay, the class is a lot smaller; you can all move in closer so I don't have to shout.

So...why would Ctein, the Guy Who Does Everything in RAW, even care about a program like this? One reason is that sometimes it's not my call. Remember that two of the pillars that make CteinCo the multinational powerhouse that it is are custom printing and photo restoration. Sometimes the best file that a client can provide is a JPEG. Sometimes it's a really crappy JPEG and what they want to know is whether I can turn it into a semi-decent photograph.

Another reason is that, umm, "stuff" happens. As in, my camera had a bad hiccup (or I did something dumb—take your pick), reset itself to all its defaults, and I didn't realize I was photographing in JPEG instead of RAW mode.

Also, I know that some of you prefer to photograph in JPEG mode (I don't judge). That's just fine, until you want to manipulate some photo in a way that pushes it outside of its comfort zone. Like, say, punching up a dusky and hazy blue sky and all of a sudden the contouring that wasn't visible in the original high quality JPEG becomes unacceptable banding. Because, eight bits! The dreaded picket-fence histogram. Simply switching the image mode from 8-bit to 16-bit doesn't get you out of that one, because the contouring is baked into the image.

It is true that you can't get something for nothing, but a JPEG isn't nothing, it's just a badly mangled something. Like the aforementioned hazy sky. You know it's not supposed to be contoured, it's supposed to be smooth. That's just common sense. Enter Artificial Common Sense—train a deep-learning network to recognize what the mangling looked like and undo as much of it as possible. Build the rules it invents into a standalone program, and you have JPEG to RAW AI.

It cannot work big miracles. It cannot take a truly crappy JPEG and turn it into a fabulous photograph. But it can work many small miracles and that can be the difference between intolerable and tolerable image quality. Consider this:

(Click to enlarge)

I created this JPEG for illustration purposes from one of my original photographs. I compressed it at Photoshop's lowest quality JPEG setting so that the artifacts would be really obvious even after TOP's TypePad interface gets done with it (fingers firmly crossed).

I handed that JPEG off to JPEG to RAW AI and let it massage it at its automatic settings (there are sliders to manually change the degree of artifact removal and sharpening). In a couple of seconds I had this:

'Nuff said?

Understand that this is an extreme case. I wanted something that would come through clearly when published here. Most of the time the results will be a lot less dramatic. But—most of the time—they'll be visibly better than the original JPEG you ran through JPEG to RAW AI.

Unlike the previously reviewed GigaPixel AI and Sharpen AI, JPEG to RAW AI is not a monstrous resource hog. You should pay attention to the system requirements Topaz Labs puts forth, but I think it will run acceptably on most any system, as you can set processing preferences. You can have it run as a background task, control the amount of graphic memory consumption and even turn off GPU utilization entirely. It won't be fast, but it should do the job.

As is usual for Topaz Labs, JPEG to RAW AI has a 30-day fully-functional free trial. You don't have to spend $99.99 to find out if this particular pony is worth it to you.

Next? As a prelude to the big Black Friday Dye Transfer Sale, I'll be writing several columns talking about dye transfer—how it worked, what it meant to me and other photographers and printers, and our perpetual jousting with Eastman Kodak. Indeed, there was jousting, almost from Day One (my Day One, that is). On yeah, dirt will be dished. Stay tuned.

Ctein

Ctein, pronounced "kuh-TINE," rhymes with fine, is one of the most experienced and accomplished photo-writers alive. He was TOP's Technical Editor before leaving for a new career as a science fiction novelist. He has written two books of photo-tech, Digital Restoration from Start to Finish and Post-Exposure. This is his 345th column for TOP; older columns can be found under the "Ctein" Category in the right-hand sidebar.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Ctein. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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parkylondon: "Many thanks for this series Ctein. They've been very useful and have helped me fine tune my Topaz AI collection. I remember, fondly, our afternoon in The Photographers Gallery in London and look forward to meeting you again one day. Thanks."

Quote o' the Day: Roger Cicala

"Assumptions are the dark matter of the internet; we can’t see them, but we know they account for most of the mass."

—Roger Cicala, from "More Ultra High-Resolution MTF Experiments"

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(posted by) Mike
(Thanks to MM)

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Sunday Support Group: Myths About Alcohol (OT)

["Sunday Support Group" is a weekly article in support of projects, aspirations, resolutions, self-help and self-reform. Although not always germane to photography, SSG was inspired by the insight that photographers tend to be happier if they have a project and/or a purpose.]

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We all have those touchstone books—the ones that were important experiences for us and became part of the story of our lives. Today I'd like I to recommend a book that was important to me, and that I just found out is "still good" you might say.

I'm an alcoholic—sober 29 years, one month, and ten days, plus part of today. The book I want to recommend, Under the Influence by James Milam and Katherine Ketchum, was part of the "welcome package" inpatients received on arriving to the rehab center where I first got sober.

I wouldn't normally recommend a nonfiction book on a scientific topic that was published way back in 1981. But I spoke on the phone the other day to Beth Kane-Davidson (right). Although neither of us remembers the other, she was working at Suburban Hospital's Addiction Treatment Center when I was there ("so our paths crossed," she said). She is now its Director. And she endorsed Under the Influence. I asked whether things haven't changed since 1990, and she said, "the cellular science hasn't changed." We had a nice conversation—she was happy to speak to a successful "alum." The book helped change my life at the time, so I was happy to learn that it's still well regarded by an expert in the field. Now I'm reading it again...for the third time, but the first in more than a quarter-century.

There's a fascinating short section about myths and realities at the beginning of the book that I wish I could quote in its entirety. (To do so would be a copyright violation.) Here are a few as a sampling:

MYTH: Alcohol is predominantly a sedative or depressant drug.

REALITY: Alcohol’s pharmacological effects change with the amount drunk. In small quantities, alcohol is a stimulant. In large quantities, alcohol acts as a sedative. In all amounts, however, alcohol provides a rich and potent source of calories and energy.

MYTH: Alcohol is an addictive drug, and anyone who drinks long and hard enough will become addicted.

REALITY: Alcohol is a selectively addictive drug; it is addictive for only a minority of its users, namely, alcoholics. Most people can drink occasionally, daily, even heavily, without becoming addicted to alcohol. Others (alcoholics) will become addicted no matter how much they drink.

MYTH: All sorts of social problems—marriage problems, a death in the family, job stress—may cause alcoholism.

REALITY: As with psychological and emotional problems, alcoholics experience all the social pressures everyone else does, but their ability to cope is undermined by the disease and the problems get worse.

MYTH: If people would only drink responsibly, they would not become alcoholics.

REALITY: Many responsible drinkers become alcoholics. Then, because it is the nature of the disease (not the person), they begin to drink irresponsibly.

MYTH: An alcoholic has to want help to be helped.

REALITY: Most drinking alcoholics do not want to be helped. They are sick, unable to think rationally, and incapable of giving up alcohol by themselves. Most recovered alcoholics were forced into treatment against their will. Self-motivation usually occurs during treatment, not before.

MYTH: Some alcoholics can learn to drink normally and can continue to drink with no ill effects as long as they limit the amount.

REALITY: Alcoholics can never safely return to drinking because drinking in any amount will sooner or later reactivate their addiction.

MYTH: When the alcoholic is drinking, he reveals his true personality.

REALITY: Alcohol’s effect on the brain causes severe psychological and emotional distortions of the normal personality. Sobriety reveals the alcoholic’s true personality.

That's skirting the upper limits of what's allowable to quote without permission, but there are more.

The book is chock-full of insights and information that are absolutely fascinating. Did you know, for example...

• That alcohol is the only drug that is also a food...but that all alcoholics are malnourished no matter what they eat? (Because active alcoholism interferes with the body's ability to absorb nutrients.)
• That alcohol is one of very few substances which can penetrate the brain's primary defense in the body, the blood-brain barrier?
• That alcohol's very first victim is the organism that creates it? (Yeast, a microscopic fungus, which voraciously converts sugar to alcohol in the fermentation process, is itself killed off when the alcohol concentration reaches about 14%, which is why that's the upper limit for the alcoholic content of naturally fermented, i.e. non-distilled, beverages such as wine.)
• That alcohol's most surprisingly quality is its ability to relieve the very distress it creates? (It's the cure for a hangover and it offers relief from the harrowing symptoms of withdrawal.)
  
• That alcohol is a very poor painkiller, because palliative effects are only evident when the dosage is dangerously close to being lethal? (So much for all those movies where a wild west desperado is given whiskey before having a bullet dug out of his side or a Civil War soldier is having his leg sawn off—if the movie is realistic, the patient will still cry out in pain. The whiskey wasn't helping.)

It's a very readable book despite a few stretches that will be tough for the less scientifically literate. Those don't go on too long, and you can still get the gist, even if you don't come to it knowing things like what MEOS stands for (the microsomal ethanol oxidizing system, if you're curious). The whole book doesn't go on too long either—256 pages, short and sweet and to the point.

One of the book's priorities is to clearly distinguish alcoholism from problem drinking. So if you happen to be curious about that—either in your own case or on behalf of someone else—then it could be what you need to answer that question.

Alcoholism is a subject worth learning about. It's a very dangerous disease. It's especially dangerous for alcoholics, but for many others too. First of all, the majority of alcoholics either die of the disease or die drinking, an average of 11 years earlier than they would have died otherwise—statistically speaking. But you don't have to be an alcoholic to die of drinking. Many problem drinkers and recreational drinkers who are not alcoholic die of acute alcohol poisoning—like the two perfectly healthy young friends who bet each other one night in a bar to see who could down a fifth of vodka the fastest. Both chugged their bottles. Both passed out—but unconsciousness didn't stop the alcohol from continuing to pass from their stomachs and intestines into their bloodstreams, and their blood alcohol levels continued to rise. Both were dead within hours.

It's pretty amazing that in our booze- and wine- and beer-soaked culture, most young people don't even know that it's possible to die pretty much on the spot from merely drinking too much too fast. (Tell your kids.) That's undoubtedly one of the reasons why six people die of acute alcohol poisoning every day in the U.S., according to current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One hundred percent of those deaths are needless and pointless and a waste.

It should be obvious to most intelligent people that many non-alcoholic people get drunk and die from accidents of all sorts, too. Automobile accidents are only the main and best-known of these. The leading cause of deaths at college fraternity houses is falling out of windows or falling off roofs, for example. How often do you think a stone cold sober 20-year-old falls out of a window?

It's a disease that kills non-drinkers, even, because alcoholics impaired by drunkenness sometimes kill other people—most often with a motorized vehicle of some sort weaponized by an alcohol-addled operator. Even sometimes when they're in "blackouts," periods of time they'll have no memory of later.

Were so many of these deaths not masked by the descriptions of their more immediate causes—from liver failure to suicide to falling out of windows to car wrecks—alcoholism and long- and short-term alcohol consumption would rank much higher than it does among all causes of death in the U.S. It might even be first.

If alcohol affects you, your family, or someone you know—or if you're just interested in coming up to speed on the subject—read Under the Influence. It's the kind of book I like: a clear discussion of a cloudy topic.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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c.d.embrey: "Very interesting. I'm not addictive. If I want to quit, I just quit—worked with cigarettes and beer. Never did drugs or had GAS. My son is NFL linebacker big. If it wasn't for friends he'd have died from acute alcohol poisoning. He thought that with his body mass he'd be OK chugging...wrong! Thanks for posting this!"'

Lynn: "Alcohol is also a major contributor to drowning deaths. It's a significant problem in Australia where waterways and backyard pools are the ideal place to hold a party in the warmer months. Drinking alcohol and going for a swim in the ocean to celebrate or sober up often has tragic consequences. Alcohol and water don't mix! It impairs judgement about when and where it's safe to swim or when to get out of the water. It can accelerate hypothermia. Young people are particularly vulnerable—the Royal Life Saving Society of Australia says alcohol contributes to at least 41 percent of drownings in the 15–29 years age group, compared to 20 percent of all adult drowning deaths.

"I've always liked wine with meals, but after a family member almost died from alcohol poisoning I gave up in support. That was at the beginning of 2018. I've never regretted it, or felt better."

KeithB: "Re 'Most drinking alcoholics do not want to be helped. They are sick, unable to think rationally, and incapable of giving up alcohol by themselves.' When a person close to me was acutely mentally ill, I was amazed at how the illness worked to prevent the sufferer from recognizing the fact that they were ill."

adamct: "While I cannot claim that the European model is perfect, I do think that there is something deeply flawed about how many young people encounter alcohol in this country. Many (though certainly not all, given that not everyone goes to college and many students begin drinking in high school) young people first encounter significant quantities of alcohol in college, specifically as freshmen. Think about what kind of an environment that is:

• Far away from family and trusted friends
• Absence of responsible supervision
• Peer pressure to fit in and be accepted
• Illegal to drink at that age

"The last point has significant consequences, in terms of (i) legal jeopardy (fake IDs, etc.), (ii) how and where people drink (in hiding), (iii) reluctance to call authorities or for help when someone drinks too much (see the case of the fraternity that waited too long to call an ambulance after a pledge had clearly consumed a life-threatening amount of alcohol), and (iv) in terms of what students wind up drinking. What is the cheapest form of alcohol, and also the easiest to conceal? Hard alcohol. Per unit of alcohol, beer and wine are both more expensive, and harder to hide (try walking back to your dorm with a case of beer without people noticing). And unfortunately, students (and many adults, for that matter) are ill-prepared for how quickly hard alcohol can become dangerous, especially given that your blood alcohol level can continue to rise after you have stopped 'drinking.' (Which shouldn't be read to imply that drinking beer and wine are safe. They're not.)

"I believe all of this means that we introduce young people to alcohol under the absolute most dangerous circumstances possible. I hesitate to recommend introducing students to alcohol earlier, while they are still at home, although it is at least worth considering. Another option would be to permit drinking at official college 'bars,' where students could be monitored and consumption could be limited (or at least the forms of alcohol offered could be restricted). None of that would prevent alcoholism or abuse, but it might help at least some students."

Dave Sailer: "Left out: Alcohol is also a type 1 (or group 1) carcinogen. I.e., it has been proven to cause cancer in humans."

New Olympus E-M5 Mark III Will Ship in Late November

At first glance, it looks like the latest iteration of the very capable mid-line Olympus Micro 4/3 camera, the E-M5 Mark III, will be significantly different from its predecessor. From browsing various "pre-reviews" and announcements on other websites, it appears that Olympus is doing two things with the new camera: 1.) positioning it to be a backup to the E-M1 II with many of the more expensive camera's features and capabilities, even rearranging the controls to bring them more in line with the E-M1 II's controls; and 2.) emphasizing small size and light weight, probably to better differentiate it from full-frame mirrorless (FFM) cameras. (This doesn't take a genius to figure out: the new tagline is "Empowering You to Break Free of Heavy Gear.")

As far as the "smallening and lightening" is concerned, Olympus is known for class-leading IBIS (in-body image stabilization), and the press release reserves a whole section for the new (smaller and lighter) mechanism in the E-M5 III.

It's commendable that Olympus looks like it is making no move to intentionally cripple the new camera to protect higher-end models. It appears to be giving the E-M5 III all the capability it can.

The new camera is expensive, though, considering the competition.

It will be available in silver and black.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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Eolake Stobblehouse: "I have watched several preview videos about it today, and I’m quite impressed. This camera is right up my alley. It can do everything I want and more, it is lightweight, and the image stabilisation is astounding. And of course I already love the Micro 4/3 system."

Nigel: "After handling a Nikon Z7, I am starting to have some doubts about the viability of the Micro 4/3 system. One by one the reasons for using this system are falling away. Only the size advantage when you use long lenses remains as a clear reason to use Micro 4/3.

"The 20-MP sensor is starting to be a little long in the tooth in a camera which must compete with cameras with much the same characteristics but with larger sensors which also cost less. At my local dealers an E-M1 Mark II is bundled with a 'free' 60mm Macro. Removing the cost of the Macro with what I could sell it for on eBay, the E-M5 III costs more than the flagship. Something is very wrong with Olympus’s pricing.

"This camera I feel suffers from the D300/D500 syndrome. When the long-awaited upgrade to the best selling D300 arrived, it was too late. I, like many others, had gone elsewhere. I jumped over to Micro 4/3 and the then-evolutionary E-M5 Mark I. Technically it produced better pictures than my old D300. Now the Micro 4/3 sensor is lagging behind the latest APS sensors.

"Once the Z system has some more lenses and the equipment becomes available more readily secondhand, I am convinced I will be returning to Nikon. The Z system gear is quite lightweight enough for me to hike in the mountains with; the very reason I fell in love with the Micro 4/3 system, but with all the advantages of the 24x36 sensor."

New Film? And the Rising Sun

The word on the street is that there's a new film coming from Ilford, to be announced next Thursday. Watch this space.

What I want in my secret heart of hearts is a new film camera. I've long envisioned Pentax (now owned by Ricoh) launching an updated version of the classic Spotmatic, with a few features updated to modern spec. Such as, a 100% viewfinder, K-mount, TTL metering, an aperture-priority setting on the shutter-speed dial, and one new feature...a spot-metering button! Which the original was supposed to have (hence the name) but never did. The camera should not have anything on it that any modern or digital camera could do better. Just what is essential for exposing one frame of 35mm film beautifully and enjoyably. No motor drive, no flash. I guess a self-timer is okay, as long as it was mechanical. (Would it be possible to design a camera to use only B&W film? I guess that's not possible....) 

Great attention would have to be paid to two things: the visual "snap" of the viewing screen for easiest manual focusing, and superlative smoothness for the film wind lever. It should be very quiet*, and have built-in diopter correction, because add-on diopter lenses can be lost and wouldn't be available in the future.

In my mind the new camera would be called the "Rising Sun" and would have a small Japanese flag enameled where the marque name usually goes on the front of the pentaprism. It would be deliberately an homage to the classic metal, mechanical, manual (MMM) cameras of Japan's glorious past. I once defined the "Age of the MMM SLR" as being from 1959, when the Nikon F was launched, to 1978, when the electronified Canon A-1 came along. Although the A-1 seems pretty simple and straightforward by today's standards. Maybe 1985, then, as an endpoint?

Asahi, the original parent company of Pentax, launched the first Japanese SLR in 1952, although no Asahi camera was called "Pentax" (originally a model name, not a corporate name) until 1957.

Would a new film SLR for the early 2020s sell?

Well, of course it wouldn't. But it's lovely to imagine it would.

To the honor of Japan!

Mike

P.S. This post sets a record. The first line is the only news, but I just can't put up a post with two sentences in it, a mere 22 words. All that unfulfilled promise activates my loquacity gene. The rest of the post is filler, making this the most unbalanced ratio of content to filler of any TOP post ever. (I know what some of you are thinking. But be nice, now.)

*By the way, the loud shutter on the Pentax LX—its big failing in my book—was a feature, not a bug. In those days pro SLRs were supposed to be loud because models had learned to key to the sound to change poses. You'd get into a rhythm with the model, shoot-pose-shoot-pose. I think it was when the Nikon F4 came out that professionals were complaining the shutter was too quiet...models couldn't hear it.

Original contents copyright 2019 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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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Eolake Stobblehouse: "I'd love to see a new Spotmatic. In fact it was the gift of a Spotmatic which started me collecting old film cameras."

David Dyer-Bennet: "Well, if you built in an orange or red filter you could at least vastly reduce the camera's utility with color film :-) ! "

Mike replies: That would do it! K2 filter though. To think, I used to rate PX at 64 and put a K2 filter over it. It's a wonder I ever got a sharp photography in anything but full sun.

GKFroehlich: "From my perspective, you've nicely described the Nikon F3! It even has a mechanical shutter speed (1/60, I believe) in case the battery dies. However, it is missing the Japanese flag. By the way, each time I upgraded, I kept a single example of the older MMM (or MM) film camera, so I still own 1 each of the Nikon F2, F3, F4s, and F5. Never bought an F6, and never kept any older digital camera when I upgraded to a newer model."

Rodolfo Canet: "This post truly rings home: I've started digitizing my film photography these days, and all of it was shot with a...Spotmatic F! An example of just a couple hours ago. Nevertheless, my dream is different than yours. I wouldn't go back to 35mm film but the only way to get the 'look' of real medium format (6x6 to 6x9) without robbing a bank would be shooting film, but there's no new cameras to be bought nowadays. I dream of a nice, humanly-priced 6x7 film camera. Yes, I know that something called 'second hand' exists...."

Photographing Maphiyata Echiyatan Hin Win

The words are Lakota (the tribe known in old movies as the Sioux. "Sioux" means "little snakes" in Ojibwe, the "big snakes" being the Iroquois). The name means "Woman Who Comes From the Heavens." AKA the teenaged Swedish activist Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg, who has recently been the talk of...not "the town," but the world.

If I was naming her I'd figure out how to say "Woman Who Says Emperor Is Buck Nekked" in Lakota. Or something like hey, we have to live here after you're gone, so stop not talking about this.

Photo by Chad Nodland

Anyway, moving on to the point, there's a wonderful article on Emulsive called "Greta Thunberg: capturing the voice of the 21st century using 150-year-old wet plate photography." Pretty self-explanatory, actually.

What the title doesn't explain, the first three sentences do:

"The call came in on the afternoon of Monday 7th October. Shane Balkowitsch would have [a] little under 24 hours to plan a 15-minute wet plate photo shoot with Greta Thunberg at Standing Rock. Naturally, the first thing he did after getting off the phone was to start packing his studio up into the back of his truck—including his portable darkroom.

"It was going to be an intense 24 hours."

Standing Rock is a huge Indian reservation straddling North and South Dakota.

Inspired by John Coffer, Shane Balkowitsch only shoots wet plate—nothing else. Two days ago he wrote, "This past 24 hours has completely gone off the rails. My wet plates of Greta Thunberg have gone viral online. On Facebook alone there has been thousands of shares and tens of thousands of likes."

The article is more in pictures than in words. Most of the pictures (including the one here) are by Chad Nodland.

Fascinating being able to look over everyone's shoulder on this shoot. Have a look.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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John (partial comment): "I’m a liberal and support environmentalists, but this hype around Greta Thunberg drives me nuts."

Arg: "The message is so important that the response had better not be to shoot the messenger."

EM: "Mike, thank you for linking to my little article. I must say it was a surprise to see it mentioned on these hallowed pages. Thank you so much for what you do, I'll slip away now and continue to admire from afar!"

 

Open Mike: Eat a Peach

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. wanders in fields not his own. It's supposed to appear on Wednesdays.]

-

Dave Standish picking "Standish Selects"

They say you learn something new every day. And boy is that true. Here I am, 62 years old, and, until recently, I never even knew what peaches taste like.

True, I have long been glancingly familiar with those dissected corpses of long-dead peaches embalmed in syrup, entombed in cans on the shelves of supermarkets. All along, in fact, I thought that's what a peach was. And that produce-section peaches were what peaches tasted like.

Is that ever wrong.

A few weeks ago I got a bag of small yellow just-picked peaches in a paper bag from a neighbor, and I confess I did not appreciate the significance of the gift at first. They turned out to be entirely unlike anything I was previously familiar with: loaded with juice, melt-in-your-mouth, with a heavenly texture and a chorus of light, complex, delicate flavors. Heavenly. I ate one after another after another. I've never cared for peaches much, but that's because I never had peaches like those.

Then I read about white peaches. In her essential book Eating on the Wild Side (a must-have for those who eat), Jo Robinson says, "choose peaches and nectarines by their background color, not their blush. When white-fleshed peaches and nectarines are ripe, they have a creamy white background with little or no trace of green.

"There are also ways to choose some of the most nutritious peaches and nectarines in the store, even when the varietal names are not mentioned. Simply choose white-fleshed varieties rather than yellow-fleshed varieties—another exception to the shop-by-color rule[*]. Lab studies show that you would have to eat six yellow-fleshed Flavorcrest peaches to get the same antioxidant benefits as in one white-fleshed Snow King. The same is true for nectarines. The white-fleshed nectarine Bright Pearl has six times more antioxidants than the yellow May Glo. The white varieties are sweeter as well. (The added sugar in the sweeter peaches is not enough to cause a significant rise in blood sugar.) If you do nothing more than choose white peaches and nectarines over the yellow varieties, you will gain a nutritional edge" [page 280].

Honey too
I've told you before about my friend Dave up the hill. My many-times great-grandfather, William Bradford, and Dave's many-times great-grandfather, Myles Standish, came across the ocean together, from England, in a leaky old merchant ship called the Mayflower. Now he and I are neighbors and friends, and frankly I think I get the better end of that deal.

This past weekend was a mournful time of year...the end of green-bean season. I love green beans. Sad-face emoji. The broccoli and Brussels sprouts are still going strong, so there is consolation.

I've learned that the end of green bean season is generally the end of peach season too, so I stopped by Dave's yesterday to see if he had any more peaches, and I asked him if he knew about white peaches.

Know about them? He grows them. There's a fruit-tree orchard out in the fields behind his house. Years ago he gifted a friend in New Jersey a bundle of white peach saplings, and later the same friend came to visit him here in New York and repaid him with a gift of twenty saplings of the same varietal, descendants of the earlier gift. It's an old heirloom white peach called Iron Mountain. Dave grows them completely organically. Not only have these peaches not been sprayed this year, but the trees have never been sprayed in their lifetimes. "I've been incredibly lucky," Dave said. I gather that means that he would spray if he had to to save the trees, but he has never had to.

To fight off deer, Dave takes the bag from the household vacuum cleaner and scatters the contents in the field around his orchard. The deer catch the scent of Chester, Dave's enormous and now ancient chocolate Labrador, and will not come across the line. He also has old Compact Disks on strings here and there—deer don't like fluttery, flashing things. He says they also don't like the color blue.

Jo Robinson says of heirloom peaches, "At the turn of the nineteenth century, Americans could choose from hundreds of varieties of peaches. Most of them are now extinct; all that is left is their glowing descriptions...." Farmers like Dave, committed to diversity, help keep rare varieties viable.

Anyway, when I asked Dave if he had any peaches left, he didn't go into the house—we went right out to the orchard, and Dave got up on a stepladder and started picking peaches. When he found a particularly nice one, he set it aside for me, joking that those ones were "Standish Selects." The rest went into a basket. He picked me a combination of ripe and not-quite ripe ones so I could feast on peaches for days. Which I have been happily doing. Several will go into my morning smoothie as soon as I finish writing this, too. (I have a bagful of peaches.)

The same goes for honey. Dave is also a beekeeper (among some of his friends, he is known by the nickname "Honeybee Dave"), and on another recent visit he greeted me by saying "want some honey?" as he thrust a jar of honey into my outstretched hand. Big deal, right?

But oh boy. When I finally got around to trying it, I was amazed. Again, I thought I knew what "honey" is and what it tastes like—it comes in little plastic containers shaped like a bear, it's clear, and it's bland. Dave's honey is another thing altogether. It has a distinctive, complex flavor that is absolutely wonderful. (I already used the word "heavenly.") Of course—typically—Dave makes sure the adjacent fields have plenty of the wild plants the bees (and he) favor, in this case a local trefoil, a kind of clover. As I was leaving with my peaches, he disappeared into the house and emerged with another jar of honey, saying, "this will taste different. Fall honey has different nectar sources, aster and goldenrod."

Dave's beehives

So anyway, my opinion is that people should beware of being fooled by canned peaches in the supermarket. Nothing wrong with those—eating them is much better than eating bready things laden with sugary goo that come in boxes—but they do not fairly display the manifold felicities of the fruit known as the peach. I think everyone should start eating organically-grown heirloom white peaches, picked ripe right off the tree by their neighbor up the road; I'm telling you, the popularity of peaches would soar.

Could be I'm just lucky.

Mike
(Thanks to Dave)

*Generally, darker-colored and stronger-colored fruits and vegetables are better for you.

Original contents copyright 2019 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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John Krumm: "Good fresh fruit like that is a little like a religious experience. Everyone just kind of nods and files you away as a zealot as you try to explain how delicious it was. I spent the first ten years of my childhood in a rented farmhouse in California's central valley. We had an amazing peach tree that produced more than we could eat. Our neighbors had pomegranate trees. Never found pomegranate fruit in stores that tasted as good. In late summer my dad would head out with a friend to 'glean' the leftover ripe cantaloupe in the fields (those were truly amazing). So I share your enthusiasm, and you are indeed lucky."

Eamon Hickey: "I demand a picture of Chester."

Mike replies:

Chester has been in a bad way for most of the past year, but somehow he keeps bouncing back. He's very old for such a large dog—I think he's 15? I think Dave said he weighed 110 lbs. when he was young. (I'll have to check these numbers.) Dave said he was the ideal farm dog, patrolling the territory, chasing the deer, keeping watch, protecting the chickens. The last time I saw him he didn't lift his head when I greeted him, but he recognized me. This is a recent pic.

Keith: "As a child visiting my grandparents, we got milk, cream, and butter essentially straight from the cow. Honey from bees visiting clover. Home baked bread. Fresh veggies from the garden in season. Apples and pears from the orchard. I didn't know how good we had it.

"Honey can be anything from a pale off white, to dark amber, with the liquid consistency varying from thin and runny to thick, and then we get into the best of it, when it's mostly crystallized but still has a bit of liquid in it. The different flavours are amazing."

Jan Steinman: "Thank you for this topic! I am a small non-certified organic grower. We specialize in the 'weird and wonderful,' and have some 37 different varieties of tomatoes, two dozen varieties of peppers, about 40 varieties of apples, five varieties of pears…you get the idea. We mix tiny bags of uniquely coloured heritage cherry tomatoes for our local market, and many people say, 'I never tasted anything like this before!' It is so sad that food has become a commodity, developed mainly for the ability to withstand long-distance shipping, when it should be a local delightful treat. Keep seeking out local farmers who grow open-pollinated 'heritage' varieties!"

More Artificial Common Sense: Topaz Labs GigaPixel AI

Written and illustrated by Ctein

I am, for the most part, not a fan of "sharpening for output" nor of upsampling programs. Sharpening for output has, for me, translated into harsh, unrealistic edges and a degradation of what I would (imprecisely) call photographic quality. It also seems to be fundamentally misapplied—the times when I do need sharpening output are when I'm printing very small, not very large, as the printer rendering algorithms tend to suppress very fine, low-contrast detail.

As for upsampling, I gave that a thorough inspection about a dozen years back in these very pages:

It's Bigger, But Is It Better?

It's Bigger, But Is It Better? Part II

It's Bigger, But Is It Better? Part III

The takeaway, if all that is seriously longissimus, non legi [too long, didn't read —Ed.] is that the improvements were modest, nothing was superior under all circumstances, and Photoshop's built-in resizing algorithms worked, on average, as well as anything else. For the heck of it, I checked out the notion that upsampling to a printer's native resolution (360 or 720 PPI in the case of Epson; other manufacturers may be different) produced a higher quality print then letting the printer's driver handle this (which it does behind the scenes when you hand it something of a different PPI). It didn't.

In the years since then third-party programs have improved, but so has Photoshop. I haven't been induced to change my practices.

Except—a few years back, I watched a conversation between Jeff Schewe and Michael Reichmann. Jeff, printing from Lightroom to an Epson 3880 printer, found that files upsampled from their native resolution to 360 or 720 PPI in Lightroom printed out distinctly more sharply than those upsampled by the Epson print driver.

Jeff noted that that didn't mean that another program (or printer) would yield the same results. I use Photoshop, not Lightroom. They are two different products with two different development teams, so they may or may not share the same upsampling code.

But…Jeff is another one of those Great Printing Experts, and 95% of the time we're in agreement (especially around the recommended settings for the Epson 3880 printer to produce the very best quality). I'm not going to ignore his four-year-old results in favor of my twelve, nuh uh. I needed to test out his assertion on my P800 printer, with Photoshop.

Big surprise (not), Jeff turned out to be right. A dozen years ago, I was probably right, but a dozen years is forever in the digital technology world. It pays to occasionally recheck one's beliefs.

Photographs upsampled in Photoshop to my printer's native resolution look distinctly better than those left to the printer's ministrations. Better and cleaner fine detail, more nicely delineated edges.

Not all photographs benefit from this. In particular, for those where some degree of grain/noise is an integral part of the image (sometimes true in my color work, more often true in my black and white infrared), improving the acuteness of a print didn't make it better, as it also enhanced that grain structure, which had been tuned to just where I wanted it. Most of the time, though, I followed Jeff's advice and was much pleased with the improved quality. And I still avoided third-party upsampling programs.

Then Topaz Labs came out with GigaPixel AI, the second of their machine-learning-trained tools. The first had been AI Clear, which had mightily impressed me with its ability to sort out detail from garbage, so I wanted to see what this pony's tricks were like. The samples on their website looked unbelievably good, even taking into account that they were cherry-picked, because advertising.

I downloaded the program and handed it a modest task, taking what was already a very detailed and sharp photograph and upsampling it to my printer's native resolution for a 17x22-inch print (about a 1.5X enlargement) with GigaPixel AI.

GigaPixel AI was effin' amazin'. I'm talking markedly better rendering of fine detail, both at strong edges and in subtle fine gradations, along with finer grain/noise (and less of it). All of this without artifacts or suppression of delicate tonalities! The results looked entirely natural and much better than Photoshop's upsampling. Below are sections from the Photoshop (figure 1) and GigaPixel (figure 2) renderings, at 100% if you click through to the standalone images. [Bear in mind that TOP's TypePad interface softens illustrations somewhat. —Ed.]

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

I looked at 17x22" prints from the non-upsampled, Photoshop-upsampled and GigaPixel AI-upsampled files, and there was a clear improvement with each step. In fact, the difference between Photoshop and GigaPixel was substantially greater than between no upsampling and Photoshop.

GigaPixel doesn't improve the prints from every single one of my photographs. Only about 75% of them. Sometimes the improvement is nothing more than finer grain/noise, where GigaPixel has subdivided blobby grains into smaller discrete ones.

At other times the improvements do look unbelievable. Take a look at figures 3 (Photoshop) and 4 (GigaPixel AI). Look at the improvement in both fine detail and noise, compared to the original file, which you're not even seeing because I can't figure out how to portray it at the same scale without upsampling. It's about what I'd expect going from a 20-megapixel camera to a 30–35 megapixel one.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

GigaPixel AI is a standalone program. It will accept a variety of input formats and will output JPEG, TIFF, or PNG. For fine printing you're going to want the 16-bit TIFF output, of course. I use GigaPixel AI last in my printing workflow, after I've done all my local corrections and pixel fiddling. I duplicate the Photoshop file, save it as a TIFF, and run that through GigaPixel AI. That way I preserve my options for resizing to my printer's native resolution, no matter what size I decide I'm going to print at.

GigaPixel AI occasionally blows up, sometimes globally, sometimes just in one small part of the picture. Not often, but it happens. Machine-learning systems can get very weird notions in their silicon noggins. When it's just some small bit of the photograph that's gone off the rails I resize the Photoshop file to the same dimensions as the GigaPixel TIFF, and paste that TIFF in a new image layer on the file. That makes it easy to do a comparison between the renderings, just switching that layer on and off. Sometimes I throw away the GigaPixel AI rendering or mask it so I can hide the parts where GigaPixel AI went wonky. This is not a frequent occurrence. Most of the time, GigaPixel AI wins with no fiddling.

What's the downside? You may not be able to run GigaPixel AI on your current system. GigaPixel AI demands substantial system requirements. GigaPixel AI performs an insane number of calculations while it does its image analysis. It can commandeer your GPU, if you choose that option, and it'll still take minutes to render an image. I think we're talking millions of calculations per pixel, tens of teraflops total, to upsample a single photograph.

As is typical for Topaz Labs, Gigapixel has a 30-day fully-functional free trial, so you don't have to spend $99.99 to decide if it's worth it to you.

Topaz Labs sends me the stuff for free, but there's no question that I'd pay whatever they charge for this program. It's a four-star wonder.

Ctein

UPDATE Wednesday afternoon: Ctein wrote a reply to several commenters. Because not all the comments he responded to are among the "Featured" ones, I published his reply with the rest of the comments in the Comments section. To get to the full Comments section of this or any post, click on "Comments ([number])" at the bottom of the footer of every post. —Ed.

Ctein, pronounced "kuh-TINE," rhymes with fine, is one of the most experienced and accomplished photo-writers alive. He was TOP's Technical Editor before leaving for a new career as a science fiction novelist. He has written two books of photo-tech, Digital Restoration from Start to Finish and Post-Exposure. This is his 344th column for TOP; older columns can be found under the "Ctein" Category in the right-hand sidebar.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Ctein. 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:

Michael Elenko: "I was sold on GigaPixel AI somewhat out of desperation earlier this spring. I was curating a group exhibition and during the hanging, one print just didn't meet my standards for sharpness. I learned that the print originated from an iPhone 8, and that a friend of the artist attempted to upscale it to meet our print size requirements by using a Photoshop algorithm. I then got involved, tried other Photoshop algorithms as well as Lightroom's approach (which I usually favor), and was not satisfied. I then remembered reading about GigaPixel AI, downloaded a trial, and used it on the image file. The result was revelatory, and just in time for the exhibition opening. I've since purchased the product and am revisiting old-but-good work from 15 years ago."

I Just Sent...

...Today's "Sunday Support Group" post to the Patreon subscribers by group email (I'd been meaning to experiment with that functionality), to thank everyone for putting me over the initial goal of 750 supporters. As I explained, I only picked the 750 number in the first place because I thought it was out of reach. How nice that it wasn't.

Ironically, the newest supporters, the very ones who put the number over the top, might not have gotten the message. (You'll have to tell me—I'm not absolutely sure who did and didn't get the group email). In the Patreon system I think I'm only allowed to message people I have "financial relationships" with—that is, who have actually sent money. Don't blame me, I don't make the rules! So new signer-uppers who haven't yet made their first payment might have gotten left out. Not your fault.

So, to them—you, if you're one of them—a big thanks, the same thanks I sent to everyone else just now. You're very kind.

Warm thanks too to those existing subscribers who increased the amount of their existing contributions! And don't think I've forgotten about you, Eric P. Still mulling that over.

And wow, I should email my supporters more often—the messages I'm getting back are so warm and generous and friendly it's making me verklempt. Thanks, truly.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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:

Kjell: "I just got the message through Patreon telling me how you just now reached your goal of 750 patrons. I myself have made a small donation of $3 each month for a while now. I think it is about half of what your content is worth, but being cheap, I always love it when I get a discount. I would highly encourage everyone to donate a small sum. Think of it this way. If don't, you're kind of stealing it, but if you donate $1 a month you get a huge discount on the best photo content on the web. Also keep in mind that this blog is the only photo-related site on the Internet that never, ever writes anything about pool (or other related sports). And that is really worth something."

Mike replies: Yes, you're absolutely right, and people really need to keep the value of that in mind. For example, I never post anything like this amazing break by Jeffrey DeLuna of the Philippines at the 2019 WPA Players Championships in Las Vegas. Because, duh, it has nothing to do with photography. Most people will probably never see a break like that because I don't link to it, but that's...wait for it...the breaks.  :-)

Kjell replies: "I'm so glad I never had to see, or even know anything about that break. I can only imagine it would have blown my socks off, and I really enjoy wearing socks in the winter."

Keith replies to Kjell: "Not to nitpick, but I would like to point out that there are actually two photo-related sites that routinely write about pool. You might check out Kirk Tuck's blog, where he frequently posts...oh wait, that's a different kind of pool."

'The Era of Imaging Resource is Coming to an End'

Shades of Rob Galbraith and DPI.

Dave Etchells, the founder, publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Imaging Resource—for the last two decades one of the largest and most conscientious of the traditional written-word photographic equipment testing and news websites—said yesterday in a long Facebook post that "the era of Imaging Resource is coming to an end."

The short summary of the reasons:

"The current market just can’t support the kind of deep testing IR has always done, nor anything close to the staff of employees and freelancers that we’ve carried";

"After 21+ years of 6.5 day workweeks, I have to step back and stop pedaling the bicycle."

...And what will become of the people?

"The IR writers and editors are available on the market. I’ve talked with DPR about taking on some of them as freelancers; I hope it works out."

"I’m seeing this as a chance to pursue intellectual property consulting (expert witness work for patent litigation). I’ve done a little bit of that in the past, and absolutely love it." (He adds that it pays well too.)

Is this decision final?

"There’s a slight chance that the brand itself could continue into the future, with just the two HQ guys William and Dave [I presume he means William Brawley and Dave Pardue —Ed.] doing all the review work themselves." But he adds, "I don’t know what probability to assign to that option."

Dave also mentions that he really wants to have a reason to continue traveling to Japan, and that he will probably continue his work on weather-resistance testing of cameras—which he says no one else is doing. He thinks it could end up making a nice retirement job.

Guerrilla marketing
A background reason for this is that traditional media, a category IR falls into, just isn't as important as it used to be for advertisers to sell stuff. The old model of conscientious experts conducting objective independent tests, whether in print or online, isn't considered as necessary as it once was assumed to be. Companies are supporting more of the short-lived, opinion-based, or tribal-affinity-based content that people like to consume these days. They've shifted more of their marketing budgets to social media influencers such as "brand ambassadors," who tend to be openly partisan, and who sometimes shade heavily into the sort of boosterism that used to be the province of hired PR corporations.

I certainly understand Dave not wanting to work "6.5 day workweeks." I didn't stop pedaling the bicycle, but I started coasting it a lot more about five years ago, after realizing that I had been putting in 70+ hour weeks for a number of years. I'd start working in my bathrobe at 6:00 a.m., and not get dressed until just before the UPS guy came at 3:00 or 4:00 so he wouldn't think I was some kind of bum! Often I'd find myself up and working at 11:00 p.m. or even 2:00 a.m. (If you work at home, it's true that you're always at home, but it's also true that you're always at work. Insomnia? Might as well work.) Saturday and Sunday had become just two more working days; I think one year I took a grand total of something like 17 days off—and on those days, mostly just worried about what might be happening to my traffic. It gets old after a while. I work no harder than most people now. I try to take Saturdays completely off, and that sort of works (not today). As you might have noticed, I ended up taking two weekdays off in each of the past two weeks, and it got a little too quiet around here. That never would have happened in 2013.

Ironically, though, TOP, which started in 2005, might survive because it's so small. I'd be gone by now but for the 746 lovely people who are keeping me afloat. (Bless you!) That wouldn't be nearly enough to support an enterprise as involved as Imaging Resource, but, along with the shrinking income from other sources, it's been enough of a leg up for one dude and two cool dogs in a little house in rural Upstate New York.

Thank goodness for small blessings...like being small.

Best wishes to Dave and Marti and the entire staff of IR. We will miss you.

I'll keep you posted.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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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