The Online Photographer

iPhone 13?

Asking the experts: So do I need an iPhone 13?

My iPhone 7 Plus, released five years ago this very month, is getting out of date, but it still works perfectly. I have no complaints with it other than that the battery is getting a little weak. I have to remember to charge it every day, and I do run short of power every now and then because I get caught out. I take a lot of pictures with it, though. I'm guessing the newer ones are better at that.

What would you do if you were me?*

Mike

*You can say you'd switch to Android but not me. Apple loyalist since 1984, for better and worse, through thick and thin.

Product o' the Week:

The brand new 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi, 64GB) in Space Gray. My iPad is my least necessary but most-loved Apple device. I could get by with my phone and a desktop computer, but I use this constantly and I like it best. Check out that price.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP—anything you buy while you're there benefits TOP. B&H Photo is closed for the rest of September for Succos.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Jean: "I would imagine that you would be very pleased with the new iPhone. I use the regular iPhone 7 and the 12 Pro. The old one is the perfect size and weight in my pocket. The new one is a superior photographic tool. It doesn’t replace my Fujifilm X-Pro2 and X-T2, but the low light is performance is unreal with a fast lens, image stabilizer and up to 30 seconds exposure time. Apple’s special ProRAW is also a favorite for me. You can have 30 MB files with multiple images combined (tone mapping), data available for adjusting your white balance to your preference, and lower noise than JPEGs. You can lock the exposure of your sky to protect the highlights and bring up the shadows before you trip the shutter. If you still want to edit, the data is in the files. Great for landscapes. Shoot your house in the middle of the night and get the stars as well. The super-wide-angle lens is the so-useful and often used 13mm-e. On the iPhone 13 Pro, a new faster super-wide-angle lens and improved autofocus makes it even more useful. The portrait mode lets you adjust the depth of field after the fact.

"Every feature I have described here is available in the standard camera app. The convenience is great and video is quite stable and useful. Battery capacity is improved and great."

Clyde: "I went from an 8 to a 12 Pro last year and the image quality improvement was stunning! So yeah, it's worth upgrading."

Richard T: "My suggestions:

"1.) If you want or need to minimize costs in the short run, Apple can replace the battery for you (which I think costs $49 in the US). You can do this in an official Apple store or authorized service centre, or can mail out your phone if you can live without it for a few days. The iPhone 7 generation is still supported by the upcoming newest iOS (version 15 launching soon). It is unclear though if the 7 generation will still be supported by September '22, though likely that iOS version would still get security updates, so if you go for a battery replacement you'd have at least one year, probably two, and potentially more years of use out of this. By the way, in the settings menu you can find the current battery health.

"2.) You are very right that an upgrade would also get you a better camera—though perhaps slightly less so than you may think. The 7+ was the very first model with two cameras (~26mm/52mm equivalent), and if you get the iPhone 13 (non-pro version) you will still only have two cameras (except 13mm/26mm, so lacking the 52mm). Based on your love of 35–40mm equivalent lenses, that would be a significant omission. So in your case I'd go for an iPhone that also includes that 52mm lens (which Apple calls 'tele'). But note that in the iPhone 13 Pro generation they went to 3X, which equates to 78mm equivalent, i.e. a little tighter than I think you'd prefer (Apple uses 26mm as 1x, which it calls wide, and 0.5x for the 13mm, which it calls ultra-wide). The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a 2.5x tele lens, so it's 64mm equivalent. This 2.5x is only for the 'Max' version, i.e. the bigger one which is roughly the size of your Plus model. The iPhone 12 Pro (non-max) has the same 2X (52mm equivalent) lens.

"3). Possibly a nice compromise for you might be the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which has the 0.5/1x/2x lenses and gets you a similar sized phone as the 7+. You might be able to get a refurbished directly from Apple—and you can use https://refurb-tracker.com/ to keep track of stock. There's also eBay of course, though battery quality varies—I'd ask sellers to check battery health if you take the eBay route. When I upgrade I usually go for the t–1 model [i.e., last generation —Ed.] since there is about a 50% depreciation after the first year (not unlike a new car!)."

David Place: "I once had an iPhone 6 and kept it through the XR (10) but shouldn't brag...since then I've fallen for the camera upgrade every year. I pass on my current model to my other half and trade in the two-year-old iPhone. So the 11 is traded in / the 12 is passed on / the blue 1TB 13 Pro Max will be here Friday (I also tend to get the new color each year). The iPhone is now my main camera (that's my only excuse). Suggestion? Move on to the 13."

Kirk: "I would rush to pre-order the iPhone 13 Pro. You can go to the Apple website and see everything they've improved on. It's now an amazing camera in addition to being a phone...and a computer...and a health resource...and an entertainment center.... I'll be buying one for the video capability alone but I'll end up using it for everything I photograph that couldn't be better photographed with a full frame, higher resolution camera (and attendant lenses...).

"The perfect moment for a tech straggler to leapfrog into the cutting edge."

Soeren Engelbrecht (partial comment): "The new phones are a bit like buying into a new camera system without the ability to choose your own set of lenses.  :-)  ."

Aakin Patel (partial comment): "I think it's worth upgrading. [...] The iPhones usually get security/software updates for five years. Yours is hitting that limit, and in today's world where phones are big targets for cybersecurity attacks, it's pretty worthwhile to stay on top of that. Having a new phone that gets the updates is pretty important, and worth upgrading if you can swing it."

Øyvind: "I would go with the 13 Pro. The camera system is just more complete, and is given the biggest camera bump ever this year. The wide/ultrawide combination of the standard model just never appealed to me as someone who uses normal to short tele quite a bit. If you're coming from an iPhone 7 the new models should be a massive leap (as Apple likes to say for every model increment). That goes for battery life, operational smoothness and convenience, display quality and sheer computing power. And the cameras are just way better.

"Still I respect you holding on to your phone for its useful life."

Robin: "No-one needs an iPhone. Some people might want one. Big difference. It's clear to see that Apple is the most hyper-capitalist, resource-extracting company in the world. Even on my doorstep here in Ireland, I see the damage...as they avoid paying any tax while keeping desperate employees in dead-end jobs. I would never support this company. No matter what pretty things they dangle. The world is on fire. We are in the Sixth Great Extinction. Time to take a more moral stance. Even in an array of bad choices, some are better than others."

Fred Haynes: "I’m the last person to give advice, since I don’t own a cellphone! I am a dinosaur! But considering the ‘business’ you're in, I think it would be a good idea to have the best, assuming this latest model is the best. Regarding your thoughts about the iPad, I’m one hundred percent with you on that! I could not be without mine, I’d go nuts!"

els: "Absolutely buy the iPhone13 Pro. If you already take a lot of pictures with your iPhone 7, you will be so happy with the iPhone 13. Let's face it, it is the only camera we all use every day. So why not have the best one available?"

Bumping Along (Progress of the Project)

A report:

The book I'm trying to write is going well enough. It's full of digressions and stories—I can't seem to help heaping on the stories!

I'm going to dish a bit of dirt, too, because now's the time—it's past mattering in many cases, and if I don't tell some of my stories it's likely I'll carry them unintentionally to the grave, at which point they'll be done for. And what's the good of a juicy story but to tell it?

The working title is The Education of a Blogger, and it would be insolence to offer apologies to Henry Adams. It's loosely (very loosely) the story of TOP. It'll contain lots about photography and a fair bit not.

The biggest problem is working out how to juggle TOP and the book. I have a definite appetite for writing—if I don't get to do enough of it, the appetite builds up until I'm hungering to do it. But on the other hand I also have only a finite amount of energy for it. I think of my capacity for it as "writing energy," and it's a mysterious thing. If I write too much too many days in a row, I can empty the tank to the point that even answering emails becomes torture. The writing gets bad, too; with the reservoir depleted, the words don't flow out. Five hours seems about the ideal workday for me as far as writing is concerned, and a couple of thousand words the upper limit. One thousand or fifteen hundred is more comfortable. Looking back, I notice that most of what I consider to be "full length" posts are right around that range. For example, "Sands of Time," the post about my trip to see my brother Scott, has 1,605 words of text.

All writers are different this way. Hemingway worked six hours a day but produced on average only 600 words, or so I recall reading; Stephen King says in his book On Writing that any self-respecting writer ought to be able to produce 2,000 words per 24 hour period—and he kept right on doing so even after he supposedly "retired"; Larry McMurtry wrote five new pages every day and revised the previous ten, meaning, if you work it out, that he went over everything three times before moving on. I don't know what a "page" was for Larry so I don't know what his word count was, but the typical double-spaced typed page, back in the days of those quaint mechanisms known as typewriters, was maybe 250 words. He told me back when I knew him that he worked 364 days per year, every day except Christmas, and that he missed it on Christmas. All that adds up.

Anyway, when I work on the book, I keep meaning to write for only an hour or two and then get to TOP, but what I find is that I can't stop. By the time I come up for air, my writing energy has dissipated and I don't have any mojo left to give to TOP. But on the other hand, if I write a full-length post for TOP, like "Sports Has a Bad Scriptwriter" or "Honesty...Isn't It Refreshing?", I have nothing left that for the book. The upshot is that I seem to be doing a less-than-adequate job on both.

I'm sure I'll be able to work out something. I just have to work it out.

I should note that in general I don't have a lot of energy. I know guys like Thom Hogan or John Camp AKA Sandford or Kirk Tuck have far more energy than I do, and I'm sure they work much harder than I do as an ordinary thing, and they must look askance at slackers like me when we whimper our woes. However, all of us humans have to work with what we're given. You know what they say, or used to say: if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and if a frog could fly he wouldn't bump his ass so much. It's no good wanting to be what we're not—if you're a frog you're a frog. Five hours and 1,500 words in a day is all I'm good for, and it does no good to pretend I'm Anthony Trollope or Kathleen Mary Lindsay. Trollope, of whom you might've heard, strictly wrote 250 words every 15 minutes for three hours every day whether he felt like it or not, beginning at 5:30 every morning; and Kathleen Mary Lindsay, who you've probably never heard of unless you enjoy The Guinness Book of World Records, wrote 904 books under 11 pseudonyms. At my peak as a reader I read 60 books a year, meaning it would take me 15 years just to read all of Ms. Lindsay's books. I had never heard of her before now, so I don't know if I would want to. But then, our score so far is 904 to not yet one, so I shouldn't go casting shade.

Well now I'm coming up on 850 words, so I had better conserve my energy.

Mike

Product o' the Week:

The brand new 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi, 64GB) in Space Gray. My iPad is my least necessary but most-loved Apple device. I could get by with my phone and a desktop computer, but I use this constantly and I like it best. Check out that price.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP—anything you buy while you're there benefits TOP. B&H Photo is closed for the rest of September for Succos.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Thom Hogan: "1.) Figure out when you write best. 2.) Write during that time, block all other activity. 3.) Outside that time, jot ideas (notes, idea statement, etc.), but don't get deep into them. 4.) Prioritize jot ideas into writing time.

"That's basically how I do it. I'm usually writing by 8 a.m. and until at least 11 a.m. Outside of those hours I'm less efficient and it becomes 'work' (as opposed to natural).

"Having 'other things' to occupy your non-writing time is actually more useful than people think. I don't mean chores, like cooking, cleaning, etc. I mean something that engages you in a different way. For you, that's probably pool. I've learned the brain is really good at subconscious processing, as long as it's distracted with something else interesting.

"But, as prolific as I am, I have four unfinished books I need to find time to tend to. They're just not getting prioritized at the moment, so they stay simmering in the background. One is virtually done, but requires a full-on word-by-word edit, along with getting all illustrations in place. I'd tend to agree with King's statement, though, again, I'd say that those 2,000 words are going to come in one attentive session, not scattered through a 24-hour period. I tend to average more like 5,000 words/day, but I have days where I just can't get started."

Mrs. Proudie: "Thank you for mentioning Trollope, my favorite Victorian novelist! I've read just about everything he wrote, and I love his characters so much that I'm changing my screen name from Bandbox to Mrs. Proudie. Trollopians will know who I'm talking about. If Mrs. Proudie were here today as a contemporary photographer, she'd be taking you to task for worrying about the latest iPhone and your word-count instead of being out in the field using your perfectly serviceable Wista 4x5."

Mike replies: Trollope is the guilty pleasure of many famous writers, intellectuals, and discerning readers. Even if people don't read him, it's worthwhile to read about him.

Fred: "It all depends on your point of view. From where I am looking you seem to be very prolific.

"Since you mentioned them peripherally, I do love manual typewriters. I believe that in some (let me emphasize some) circumstances typewriters or writing by hand can be a better choice than a computer and word processing software. Having said that I think that word processing software and especially good spell checkers are way way more significant than the invention of sliced bread.

"Whew! That is the most I have written in the last three days."

Christopher Feola: "I made my money as a photojournalist for a couple of decades, and I always felt something similar: I have a certain amount of words per day, and when I'm out for the day I'm done. I could pound out articles for the paper daily, or I could work on a book...but not both."

Bill's Wonderful Portraits

I'm reluctant to talk about a book until I've finished it, and I haven't finished reading this one.

It's not long, but it's dense. And rewards thought.

However, this is definitely my "Book of the Year" for 2020–21. It's never going to be a mainstream book, because there are only 250 copies in existence. Although there could possibly be a reprint someday.

By way of a disclaimer I'll remind you that I used to be a portrait photographer and have always liked portraits. And I mean always—I got in trouble at age six for clipping portraits of the Presidents out of my parents' back issues of National Geographic to make a "collection."

The premise is very simple: a doctor collected old portraits to hang in his office. As a labor of love, he has self-published a book in which he presents 111 of them. On the page facing each, he tells you everything he could find out about each portrait. Some of what he found out is remarkable. The essays are sometimes no more than a description of the photograph, because nothing is known about it. But Bill is an excellent writer, and his words draw you not just into the photograph, but into the life of the person depicted. Many of the subjects are anonymous (some are not). Same for the photographers. But all are informed by the same collector's eye and each one is lovely and fascinating (to various proportions) in its way.

"With a whimsical look at lives known, cultural and historical circumstances, and the ever-changing aesthetics of portraiture, the lives and characters of the sitters and photographers are imagined, and the question of the revelation of their characters explored."

The book is Eleventyone Portraits 1841 to 1950, by William Cowan, who I'm pleased to say appears to be a TOP reader.

A labor of love...but what labor! Everything about the book is beautiful. It's been professionally edited and professionally designed, so it fooled me at first into thinking it was the product of an established publishing house. It's not; but it doesn't have any of the awkward telltales typical of many self-published books.

Now I've finally decided it's not actually a book to "read." It's a book for delectation. I'm going to continue to engage with it as I have over this past year: taking it to hand, leafing through a handful of portraits at a time, reading or re-reading an essay or two, and putting it aside again. The copy Bill sent me last year is so much the worse for wear (I've dropped it, and crushed a corner, and marred the cover) that I had to ask him for a second one! But now I want to send the second one to a museum curator I know while it's still pristine, so I'm going to need a third.

Bill and I will be working together on an interview to publish here. And I guess sooner or later I might have the temerity to attempt a review. I thought you might like a heads up, in case you want to have your own copy in hand. Check the website; if it looks like you might enjoy it, I think you will.

Mike

[UPDATE: As of mid-day Monday, Bill had sold about 70 books, approximately a third of all he had. —MJ]

Book o' the Week:

Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987. "Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, [Andy Warhol] amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself...this book features hundreds of these instant photos." Any book with Grace Jones on the cover has to be cool.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987 at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Maris Rusis: "I have Bill Cowan's book and it is glorious in style and scholarship. And yes, it is both dense and moving. A few pages at a time is all I can traverse. All those beautiful and interesting people are now gone. I find this poignancy and sense of loss passes into sadness very quickly. Bill quoted me on page 21 and sent me his book by way of compliment. Much thanks to Bill Cowan."

Do You Still Care About 'Sample Galleries'?

Many things have changed in the digital imaging universe over the past 20 years, and it's been a wild and fascinating ride. One thing I noticed the other day: I seldom look at "sample galleries" in equipment reviews any more.

Not only am I surfeited with the kind of pictures that appear—and I'm just as guilty of perpetrating them as anyone else, so my own "sample" pictures are just as soulless to me as anyone else's—but I just don't get much useful information from them any more. About the only thing I can really deduce from them is that I can get a rough idea (just a rough idea) of the bokeh of lenses, assuming the sample shots show that. Sometimes (not always) I can get a sense of what my maximum ISO would be if I were shooting with the camera.

I no longer look at falloff—that can be changed to taste in post. I no longer look at noise—offhand, the last time I can remember that being a real impediment for me was with the GF1 (2009). I certainly never look at "sharpness"—we've long since passed the point where all cameras and most lenses are sharp enough.

...Well, my iPhone 7 is not sharp enough! But that's not even fair to the iPhone, much less all other cameras. Now that the iPhone 13 is here.

I have a sense that I'm forgetting something, that there is indeed something I look for sometimes that I'm just overlooking. Maybe it will come to me.

One issue: post-processing skill has surpassed the raw material produced by the equipment as the biggest determinant of the quality of the final image. The best fine printer whose work I'm familiar with is Ctein, and he has never bothered to shoot with anything more than Micro 4/3! It gives him the raw material he needs to make perfectly beautiful prints on 13x19" and 17x22" paper. Of course he's a virtuoso, but the point holds.

So the kind of "sample" shots I would most like to see would be...prints. That would be interesting. But of course no online provider can present prints for me to look at. (TOP readers who have purchased prints in our print sales will be well aware of how different a fine original print is from seeing the same image as an online JPEG. And what the heck is wrong with that TOP guy, anyway? Why haven't there been any print sales lately?)

But the telltale in the end is that when I read camera reviews now, I find I seldom bother to look at the samples very carefully. I might click through them dutifully, but I seldom come away thinking I've detected much of anything useful—other than about the shooter's skills in seeing. This is a big difference from 15 and 20 years ago, when I used to pore over sample shots with great attention and study them to see what I could glean from them of a camera's or a lens's performance.

It's not that there aren't differences in lenses and sensors any more—there are. They're there. It's just that I have a hard time getting a handle on them from online samples.

I guess I still do want to see what the bokeh might look like in lens reviews—but galleries that only show bokeh wide open are of limited value too. I've never shot for bokeh as a primary value—it's never the point of pictures for me—so the subtler bokeh of stopped-down apertures are useful to know about for me too. Those can be a little harder to find. (I've always found that to get a sense of a lens's bokeh, you need to look at lots of samples. It's easy to be misled from just a few.)

For the most part, it might be all right with me if reviewers dispensed with sample shots altogether, and just told me in words what they are seeing from the equipment in their own work. But I would need to trust that they actually investigated in their shooting what they are telling me about! Not everyone is reliable about that.

Oh—flare, that's what I was forgetting. That's something I look for in sample shots in lens reviews. But reviewers don't always test for it or show samples.

What about you? Do you still find sample shots informative? Do you still look at them and study them? See if you can remember how you used to look at them and how you look at them now. Any change in that over the years?

Mike

Book o' the Week:

Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987. "Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, [Andy Warhol] amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself...this book features hundreds of these instant photos." Any book with Grace Jones on the cover has to be cool.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987 at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Mark Rouleau: "I do look at sample galleries, but usually for color more than anything else. I find I am very sensitive to the default color palettes that the various camera manufacturers have. Sony colors often seem a little off to me (YMMV). And I know people wax eloquent about the Canon and the Olympus, but I think the new winner might be the Sigma fp models. Odd camera with a ton of usability issues, but the sample images I've seen almost make me want one."

DavidB: "A few of my current lenses are used for astrophotography. It is important to know how well these lenses obtain pin-point star images—especially in the corners. So before buying I often will look at astro photographs posted by others. For all other purposes, no."

John Krumm: "I do look at them, but often find them lacking. They seldom take enough stopped down shots for my taste, and I make most of my shots with lenses stopped down. Despite claims otherwise, not all lenses look the same stopped down. If I had my druthers, there would be a few wide open shots, but many more at different apertures. These days they tend to just take a pile of wide open shots like that's all that matters. It's annoying."

Mike replies: It is. Especially since you have to be careful to know what you're looking at. At times I've been fooled into thinking a lens is worse than it is because most of the samples I saw were shot wide open.

Peter Jeffrey Croft: "I used to really enjoy the sample galleries on DPReview while they were in London. I loved the shots around their offices, with all the details and the candid people shots. But when they moved to Seattle, I lost interest. I just don't find their new location interesting. The samples are dull and boring. Some of their UK based reviews and sample galleries were so good that I've kept a lot of the shots. I remember their review of the Sigma DP series and the SD14 especially, and I still look at the shots for enjoyment. I bought the Fuji S100FS in 2008 much on the basis of their review and samples, and I still have the camera and the images I took on a trip to Europe in that year. I'm still marveling at the images I got. So apart from finding Seattle boring, I think I'd say I do like sample galleries."

Mike replies: Come to think, I actually wrote a post to this effect in the early days of DPReview, when the founder Phil Askey owned it. It might not have been here; could have been at another venue. I did enjoy the cumulative virtual tour of London. Paris gets all the love, but London is even more historic and almost as photogenic. But of course we weren't looking at those pictures as technical trials, but for their content. 

xf mj: "I guess I don’t look at them as a scientist and don’t know if I want them to be scientific evidence. Probably because I don’t know what I’d look for. Instead, once I’m convinced that the camera or lens is probably technically good enough and that I’ll like it, I just want to see that people did good or beautiful work with it. So I try and find personal blog posts showing nice work they’ve produced with the product and see if I approve and like the look. This has gotta be less than objective, maybe useless, but it gets me excited for my purchase, and makes me feel part of the community that uses the product well. The community I’d like to join. And it’s just nice to see others’ good photography. I suppose this is why I’ve gravitated to some brands and products over other equally good brands and products. Oh well.

"Most larger/popular/pseudo-scientific camera sites' sample photos are just dumb and uninspiring. The pictures are so uninteresting, it makes me want to find a different hobby and never lay cash down for a camera ever again. (Same also with their attempt at objective writing.) It’s more fun to feel inspired when I spend my money. Most on-line sites seem instead to want to tell their readers that they’re not making a mistake with a purchase. And then make me feel a year or two later that it actually was a mistake. Must’ve been, because the latest and greatest has gotta be bought to correct that 1- or 2-year old technology that has become a shame to own, right?"

Mike replies: I have felt what you describe! I've gotten enthusiastic about a product only to have the sample images actually dampen my enthusiasm...because, after all they're just more digital images, nothing special, undistinguished and indistinguishable.

Nikon's Nice Move (the New 40mm f/2)

Nikon has, as per its earlier promise, released a highly sensible everyday normal lens for full-frame Z-mount that happens to have my personal favorite spec: 40mm ƒ/2.

Forty millimeters splits the difference nicely between 35mm and 50mm. When I shot with a Leica M6 and owned both the 35mm Summicron and the 50mm Summicron, I was forever torn over which lens to put on the camera. And ƒ/2 is perfect because then the lens is fast enough but not too big.

Background
I'm probably as much an expert on 40mm ƒ/2 lenses as anyone, only because I've been obsessed with them for such a long time. I've owned and used a large number of them over many years, whether the specification was exact or merely close, or whether it was a digital equivalent. These ranged from the Leica 40mm Summicron-C for the CL rangefinder and the 40mm ƒ/2 OM Zuiko to the Pentax 43mm Limited, on into the digital era with lenses like the Panasonic 20mm for Micro 4/3 and the Zeiss 24mm for Sony...among many others. I've owned many older examples such as the 40mm ƒ/1.7 on the Canon G-III 17 fixed-lens rangefinder of 1972 and the 42mm ƒ/1.7 on the earlier Olympus 35 SP.

Of course I've also used a great many 35mm, 45mm, and 50mm lenses too. It's the range in which I'm most at home, and I've been writing about equipment—lenses especially—since 1988. As to which one is best of all, I do have a clear all-time favorite, but I'm not going to say what it is. I don't want to do anything to encourage its prices to spike. Read on for more about that!

My portrait of Sally at the time of our visit.
Shot with a Nikon N8008 and 85mm ƒ/1.8.

A casual word
What got me started? In the 1980s I visited the American photographer Sally Mann at her cabin on the Maury River in Virginia. One of my photo students, Lely Constantinople, had gotten a case of hero-worship, so I simply wrote to Sally and asked if we could come visit. Sally generously invited us to come for a few days. I slept in the woods in a tent! There was no room for a non-family male indoors. Lely ended up working for Sally for a while.

Sally's artwork was eventually done with a large-format 8x10, of course, but she started out her career doing photographic odd jobs around her home town of Lexington with a 35mm. She shot Olympus, and her favorite lens was the 40mm ƒ/2 OM Zuiko, which she said was "about right"—it had no trace of the wide-angley feeling that 35mm's sometimes have, but not quite as restricted an angle of view as a 50mm. I've owned no fewer than six of them over the years. One of my best scores was that after the price had risen to the $500 range I found one marked $55 in an out-of-the-way camera store in Chicagoland.

Curiously, the OM Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2 was not popular when it was new. Apparently no one quite knew what to make of the in-between focal length, or the "pancake" form-factor, with the odd aperture ring at the very end of the lens mount (you screwed the lens hood directly into the aperture ring, and could change the aperture by turning the lens hood! I've never seen that on any other lens). I later learned that the production run was 3,000 units, 1,000 of which were for North America. I recall seeing the lens selling on closeout for $69, a steep discount, in the small-print discount ads in the back of Modern Photography and Popular Photography magazines. They went begging for what seemed like forever, being listed month after month and, if memory serves, year after year.

Lately, the very same lens has been all the range among DP's (directors of photography, i.e., cinematographers) tired of "perfect" rendition and searching for lenses with a "look," and the old 40mm ƒ/2, has been all the rage, with used ones selling recently for at least $2,900. I believe several sold for north of $3,400, but those have scrolled off eBay's records now. And today, of course, a 40mm ƒ/2 is the new "nifty fifty." It just doesn't rhyme, is all.

The new Nikkor-Z
Sadly, to me anyway, Nikon has not yet to my knowledge published the block diagram of the new lens (six elements in four groups), nor has it published MTF charts. [CORRECTION: published here—thanks to Andre Y. for this.] From what we do know, however, the new Nikkor-Z 40mm ƒ/2 ticks all of my personal boxes:

• It's small, slightly less than two inches long (45.5mm).
• It's light, only six ounces (170g).
• It's affordable at $300.
• It focuses close, to less than one foot (.29m).
• It has internal focusing and is dust and droplet resistant (although not fully waterproof—that's OK).
• Its AF is quiet.
• It takes the traditional 52mm standard Nikon filters.

In addition, the "focusing ring" can be assigned to manual focus, or programmed to adjust aperture, ISO, or exposure compensation. I don't know if that's usual for Nikkor-Z lenses, but it sounds like a nice touch.

B&H is closed for the religious holiday, but Amazon is guaranteeing its pre-order price.

All things considered
Finally I'll just note that the sample pictures provided by Nikon for this lens are solid tier better than the usual, and two tiers above the general run of the lamentable "test shot" genre (which I am guilty of perpetrating too, of course). I particularly like the shot of with the two figures way back in the bokeh. To whomever is responsible, good job.

Of course I haven't seen or shot with the new 40mm, and image quality would overshadow everything else. But I'll approve and applaud on principle. Nice move, Nikon.

Mike

P.S. Sally Mann also paid me one of my favorite compliments I've even gotten about my writing. "Your writing is so...tasty," she said. It's remained my goal ever since.  :-)

Book o' the Week:

Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987. "Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, [Andy Warhol] amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself...this book features hundreds of these instant photos." Any book with Grace Jones on the cover has to be cool.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987 at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

James: "Mike said, 'And today, of course, a 40mm ƒ/2 is the new "nifty fifty." It just doesn't rhyme is all.' I'm sticking with my usual 'Sporty Forty.'  :-)  "

Mike replies: That works! Where were you when I was titling this post?  ;-)

Richard Parkin: "Or ‘Shorty Forty’ for the pancakey ones?"

Aaron: "As much as I love 40mm lenses—the Panasonic 20mm (Micro 4/3) continues to be one of my favorite lenses of all time—Nikon's stellar Z 35mm ƒ/1.8 S will be a tough act to follow. Field of view and aperture differences are small, though we don't really know the full extent of image quality and performance of the 40mm yet. If the 40mm was a true pancake, I would have already pre-ordered; as it stands, I'll wait on some user reviews of the 40mm before I consider adding to or replacing my 35mm S."

Earl Dunbar: "As if the asking price for the Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2 couldn’t go much higher—there you go!  😂  "

Mike replies: That's pretty nuts. I wonder if these outlier asking prices actually have a psycho-marketing underpinning...as in, maybe a much higher price signals to some buyers that the sample really is superior to all the others—in this case, all the others currently listed in the low $2,000's. You'd have to have a buyer who is rich enough to be immune to any sort of price sensitivity to a bauble in this price range.

But what I really like is the pop-up next to the "Make Offer" box:

Given that the cheapest one of these lenses I ever bought cost $55, do you think he'd take $55?

Andrew Kochanowski: "Mike, I saw an earlier post of yours about the Oly 40mm ƒ/2 selling for insane prices on eBay, so I rummaged around for mine in the back of the drawer. I bought it for maybe $350 some years ago more out of nostalgia than anything else. I shot with another sample in the late 1990s on an OM-4Ti and liked the way it felt more than any concrete reason.

"I posted a simple eBay ad with a Buy It Now price of $2,ooo and waited for the order. And waited, and waited. I did get over a dozen 'offers' of about $1,500 to $1,700 from dealers or tire kickers, and long emails how I am being unrealistic and so forth. eBay had turned into Craigslist so fast I didn't even notice!

"So don't feel bad. There may have been a few sales in crazy numbers but only to crazy collectors. I may just dust off my old OM-4ti and shoot a few rolls with the lens just for the heck of it."

Sports Has a Bad Scriptwriter (OT)

The trouble with sports is that the writing is bad. So many times you get a story arc that's perfect and then it takes an abruptly awkward turn, or fizzles. Or something really wrong and "lifey" happens that offends our sense of the way things should be. If it were a movie or a Broadway show or a novel, the audience would be going, WTF? The producers in charge of pre-release focus-group testing would demand changes to the ending.

If the same writer that scripts sporting events were writing famous fictional endings:

• Ahab would eat contaminated lobster and die of food poisoning just before the crew of the Pequod kills Moby Dick in a routine hunt and renders him down into oil like all the other whales. Back in port, nobody believes the crew members when they claim one of the whales they killed was white.

Speaking of Reviewing Cameras...

...I'm still intending to try out the Fuji GFX 100S. Unlike most cameras, I don't want to try that one. Why? Because I could never afford one (viz. the recent "Stained Glass Windows" post) and I'm afraid I'll like it. Trying one is risky. The things I do for ya!  :-)

[UPDATE: Dan said it best in the Featured Comments: "It would either disappoint me deeply or ruin me for anything else."]

By the way, if you haven't seen DPReview's "Shelburne Hotel with Corey Arnold and the Fujifilm GFX 100S" video yet, highly recommended—head and shoulders above most camera marketing videos. I was glad to "meet" photographer Corey Arnold and I definitely want to see more of those crab-fishing photos. The film is at the Amazon link for the GFX 100S, in with the product pictures. (Amazon owns DPReview.)

Mike

Book o' the Week:

Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987. "Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, [Andy Warhol] amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself...this book features hundreds of these instant photos." Any book with Grace Jones on the cover has to be cool.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987 at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Phil: "Thanks, Mike, for that link about Corey Arnold. I first saw his work in Portland, Oregon about seven years ago. It was one of those nice serendipitous moments as a tourist where you are just aimlessly browsing though galleries and come upon something that is arresting and memorable. They were his big colour prints of fishing in Alaska, complete with eagles and bears and hauling in the catch on the deck of a fishing boat. How he kept his gear dry (enough) I'll never know!"

Eolake Stobblehouse: "The Warhol book has very high reviews. But I don't think I'll get it. There is something about Warhol, both his personality and his work, which I find...creepy. He seemed so intensely, uhm, disconnected. Completely without feeling. And in his work he seemed to revel in that, celebrate it and emphasise it."

Dan: "That’s the same reason I have never driven a Porche 911. It would either disappoint me deeply or ruin me for anything else."

Shootout: Sony vs. Ricoh?!

I think I'm getting over my initial "IWT!" (I want that) reaction to the upcoming Ricoh GR IIIx.

For one thing, I remembered my Summer-long longing for a Sony A6600 and Sigma 30mm (45mm-e).

That lens seems to be different in a way from many other recent lenses I've tried—it tilts just a little more toward high contrast rather than high resolution. From what little I've seen so far, I'm guessing the GR IIIx's 26.1mm (40mm-e) lens does too. It's tough to know without trying them for myself, and sometimes, these days, it's tough to untangle true lens characteristics from lens+sensor characteristics. (It was easy as pie with film because you could change the lens but not the film.)

By the way, if you don't know what I'm talking about, the best explanation I've seen was in the old Canon EF Lens Work III (which Canon seems to have stopped updating some time ago). The appendix about the optical characteristics of lenses in that book is the best basic text about the optics of camera lenses I know of. Regarding this topic it has some illustrations that are worth a thousand words.

I once tried to suggest to Canon that they should publish the sections on optics as a separate publication, without the quickly outdated lens catalog. But my importunings fell on deaf ears. Or, more probably, no ears. It would have been a nice thing to have. When Canon stopped updating Lens Work the baby went out with the bath water.

But back to the subject—it does seem like a shootout is called for here, doesn't it? The Sony A6600 and the Sigma 30mm ƒ/1.4 DC DN Contemporary vs. the upcoming Ricoh GR IIIx which should be along before the end of October. Two very different cameras, but equally appealing to me, each in its own way. I've already tried the Sony for a week and very much want to use it some more. But I think I should also "demystify" the Ricoh, too—I've never used a GR, and the series has been around for a very long time. It's past time I tried one for myself.

And while the cameras are different, their results are potentially very close. Both lenses have similar angles of view and both sensors are 24-MP APS-C. The biggest difference is the lens speed, ƒ/1.4 vs. ƒ/2.8. I think it would make it a good comparison. The very different layout and design of the two cameras could make for interesting discussion. I'll put it in the queue.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987. "Carrying a Polaroid camera from the late 1950s until his death in 1987, [Andy Warhol] amassed a huge collection of instant pictures of friends, lovers, patrons, the famous, the obscure, the scenic, the fashionable, and himself...this book features hundreds of these instant photos."

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's Andy Warhol: Polaroids 1958–1987 at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Jeff1000: "Hey Mike, Nikon's coming to market very soon with a compact pancake 40mm Z lens. It's sure to be a stunner. Pair it with a Z5 or Z6 and you've got a pretty svelte package there."

brian: "For what it's worth, if you're willing to stray as far from your favored 40mm focal length as a 30mm lens on an APS-C camera would take you, you might be interested in the little Sigma 45mm DG DN ƒ/2.8 lens—on a 'full frame' body. The little Sigma 45mm seems like it might appeal to you since the designers opted to emphasize bokeh but still achieved good resolution with the lens stopped down a bit. A Sigma engineer [actually it was Yasuhiro Ohsone, Sigma's Head of Product Planning —Ed.] reported receiving 'a surprising proposal from our optical engineers in charge: to develop the lens with the highest priority given to its expression of bokeh.' The Sigma 45mm lens seems to puzzle people who prioritize wide-open sharpness, but it's been well received by some who look for a good balance of rendering and sharpness. As for me, I'd be interested in your take the GR IIIx. I use manual-focus Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses on my Sony A7R III, and the tiny Ricoh seems like it might be better than a phone as an autofocus complement to my kit."

Mike replies: Yes, the Sigma 45mm ƒ/2.8 DG DN Contemporary is a true lens connoisseur's lens, and a rarity on today's market. If I shot full frame it would be my main lens, and anyone who shoots L-mount or E-mount and has multiple lenses really should own one.

Albert Smith: "I love that Canon EF Lens Work book. I bought mine in the mid '80s while never having a Canon camera from that era. I also had the Eyes Of Nikon book, but the Canon book put it to shame in the amount of great info it contained. Besides the contrast/sharpness skewing in the designs that you mentioned, it also had one of the best sections on picking out a selection of focal lengths to cover your specific interests and subject matter. Terrific book that I still pull off the shelf today.

"It was simpler to test one lens against another it those days, even different brands. Just load the same film in each camera and test away. Today, how much is the sensor more responsible for the end item image than the lens? Direct comparisons of lens A to lens B might have little to do with the lenses."

Bill Allen: "The feel of the GR is very difficult to convey. The rubberized grip was the first thing that hit me when I took it out of the box. It just makes you want to go out and shoot. The heritage of the GR line really shines through. I have the GR II, and I was skeptical after the X100s didn't do it for me. But that skepticism went right out the window when I received it. You just have to try it. It's quite a nice landscape camera in its own right too. Even QT Luong used a film GR when mountain climbing, if I recall. Even if the GR IIIx is a bit on the pricy end, try getting your hands on an older model to get a feel for the GR ethos. I also recommend this article from Chris Leskovsek."

Leylah and Emma (OT)

[UPDATE: Emma Raducanu of Great Britain won the United States Open Tennis Championship Women's Singles, 6-4, 6-3. If you are ten years old and live to be 110, you will never see this again—a qualifier ranked 150th in the world winning a major championship without dropping a set. It's the very first time and highly likely to be the last time it will ever happen.

Wonder what it's like in Old Blighty tonight?]

Malcolm Myers answers: "We have all gone Emma crazy in Blighty. It's been decades since we've had a female tennis player who was even in contention, so for Emma to storm through the way she has—breaking every record on the way—is quite astounding. We all got to watch it free-to-air and it was a really competitive match. I think Leylah Fernandez played extremely well. As one commenter here said, shame that only one of them could win. However, Fernandez will no doubt have her day, probably may times, over the next decade. Brilliant stuff."

I've been following the U.S. Open closely, or as closely as I can given that I don't own a TV. It's been a fascinating and wonderful tournament so far, really fun to follow.

The big news, apart from the fact that Novak Djokovic of Serbia is still in contention for the first true Grand Slam in men's tennis since 1969, is that two previously little-known, unseeded teenagers (one a qualifier, no less) are in the final of the Women's draw for the first time in more than two decades—since a young Serena Williams of the USA, age 17, defeated Martina Hingis of Switzerland, who was 18 at the time, in the 1999 final.

The two are Leylah Fernandez of Canada and Emma Raducanu of the UK. Emma is 18 and Leylah just turned 19 a few days ago, in the midst of the tournament. Leylah is ranked 73rd in the world, and Emma, ranked 150th, is the one who had to come through the qualifying tournament. Since rankings were initiated in 1975, only five women outside the top 50 have ever reached the U.S. Open final. Both young women will make meteoric rises in the world rankings following the tournament, Raducanu especially. Both will probably emerge as the No. 1 ranked female players in their respective countries.

Photo courtesy of Sirobi Tennis Photos

Leylah Fernandez of Canada at this year's French Open

Leylah has been a true giant-killer, beating a succession of formidable opponents to make it to the final. These include defending champion Naomi Osaka of Japan, the first Asian woman ever to hold the World No. 1 ranking; three-time major champion and former World No. 1 Angelique Kerber of Germany; No. 5 seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine; and World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, a seasoned and particularly powerful player. Fernandez is the youngest woman since Serena Williams in 1999 to beat three Top 5 players on her way to the final, and only the fourth Canadian, male or female, ever to appear in the final of a major.

Photo courtesy of Sirobi Tennis Photos

Emma Raducanu of the United Kingdom in 2018

Emma, meanwhile, playing dazzling tennis, has steamrolled her way through the draw without dropping a single set—and that includes her three qualifying matches. She is the first qualifier ever to reach the U.S. Open finals, and the first British woman to reach the finals of any major since Virginia Wade—who is in attendance at this year's tournament—in 1977.

Leylah's mother, Irene, was born in Canada of Filipino parents, and although her father Jorge's family moved to Canada from Ecuador when Jorge was four, he later played professional football (soccer) for Ecuador. He is his daughter Leylah's coach, and, more's the pity, he's not at this tournament (think about it. They never know how far she'll advance. How was he to know this would happen? Nobody else in the world did). Emma's mother Renee is Chinese and her father Ian is Romanian—both are financial executives. Although she lives in London and plays as a UK citizen, Emma too was born in Canada.

It probably doesn't hurt their exploding global popularity that both of the teenage finalists are beautiful, charming, and well spoken, with dazzling smiles. In interviews they come off as typical giggling teenage girls, bright and happy. These off-court outward attitudes contrast sharply with the unyielding killer instinct and no-nonsense confidence each of them shows during matches, when they have seemed as composed and mature as players in the primes of their careers.

Spectacular and rare
It's such a pity to me that my brother Scott isn't here to see this. He would have been loving it. He was a fan of women's tennis no less than the men's—he thought the women's game was a subtly more relatable form of the art of tennis because brute force and strength don't play quite so much a part. This year's finals could possibly be the sensational first flowering of a new rivalry in women's tennis, but, even if it isn't, it's a rare and spectacular occurrence all on its own. Too bad I can't watch it! I hope I'll get to see the whole match someday. My prediction: Raducanu in three, and I'll say one set will go to a tiebreaker. As they say in tennis, sometimes it's a pity there has to be a loser.

If my prediction comes true, it would be the first major tennis tournament ever won by a qualifier. If you're able to, you might want to try to catch it even if you're not normally a fan. It's only the eighth time two teenagers have contended in the finals of a major. As Emma Raducanu herself said, "we’re both playing good tennis so it will be a good match." The women's finals commence at 4:20 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time tomorrow, Saturday, September 11th.

If you do get to watch, enjoy it for me!

Mike

[CORRECTION: I deal with dozens of names every day, and try hard not to make mistakes, but the original version of this post spelled Leylah Fernandez's name wrong. All eight times it appears. That is a bad one. Sorry for the error. —Ed.]

Book o' the Week:

The second edition of old friend Bruce Barnbaum's The Essence of Photography is just out. Bruce wrote for Photo Techniques when I was Editor. I always enjoy his insights into the art and craft, even if his technique isn't the same as mine. I still learn. Mastery is fun to read about.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of The Essence of Photography at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

robert e: "I agree with Scott. I find that nuances seem to both matter more and are easier to discern in the women's game. There are dimensions of tennis that don't really come across on TV, while other aspects are easier to see, and this may have something to do with the difference as well. Relatedly, there's more stylistic variety in women's tennis at the moment, which makes for more intriguing matchups.

"It's been an Open full of surprises and an extraordinarily high level of tennis. Notably, the fans packing the main stadium seem more than ready to make their presence and preferences known, and they've found in these two teens willing and charismatic partners. That's yet another precocious quality these teens share—they seem very much at ease engaging with large and enthusiastic crowds, especially at critical moments. They're also surprising everyone with their tactical smarts.

"At least in my area, the free trial of YouTubeTV includes ESPN, which carries the U.S. Open. Possibly goes for other online TV services as well.

"But for some a service isn't even necessary, as increasingly in the US many without TV are able to watch at least some TV thanks to their internet or cell phone provider's relationship to one or another media giant. Might be worth checking USopen.org or ESPN.com and seeing what you can see. I understand that in the UK Amazon Prime is carrying matches."

Lisa S. Gorrell: "Maybe you could hang out at Best Buy or Sears to watch the game."

Mike replies: Actually I got a trial to YouTubeTV like robert e suggested and it works (this time). But your comment reminds me that when I was young I used to stand in the photo section of the bookstore in Georgetown and read whole books of photo criticism! The clerks knew I was a poor photo student and they let me do it. I read all of A.D. Coleman's Light Readings and most of Robert Adams's Beauty in Photography that way, among others.

AndrewH: "Happily Belgium is showing all of the US Open. I am backing Emma and Novak for wins in the finals (sic), one for the huge achievement (Novak) and the other for the sheer charm (Emma). It is so nice to see a happy professional sport player."