The Online Photographer

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Photo by Vijay Ramakrishnan

I probably don't need to tell you this, because everyone who cares already knows, and everyone who doesn't know doesn't care—but yesterday was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day.

And if you're not 100% clear on what pinhole photography is, you're in luck—Larry Bullis, Tom Lindsay, Guillermo Peñate, Howard Wells, George L. Smyth, Brigitte Harper, Gordon J. Holtslander, and Gregg Kemp prepared a succinct but informative Pinhole FAQ page in 2003 (remember when FAQ pages were all the rage on the Web?) at the pinholeday.org website.

The illustration is Yr. Hmbl. Ed. cheating on the PDBlur entries again—as you know, whenever we have a Baker's Dozen I find a way to show you a few more pictures than the basic 13. This one is by Vijay Ramakrishnan, of Pleasanton, California, USA, who writes: "I have a deep-rooted connection with trees that I can’t quite put into words. They are my favorite subjects, especially oaks. This pinhole photograph is very much an exception to my typical treatment of trees, which tends to have the clarity and sharpness of traditional landscapes. The blur from the long exposure and the fuzziness of pinhole photos give them a dreamy quality that I love. This is one of my favorite tree photos, perhaps because it’s more reflective of the hazy but strong attraction I feel toward them. It was a two-minute exposure on 4x5 film, taken with a Santa Barbara pinhole camera at Filoli Gardens, about 30 miles south of San Francisco."

I like it too. And I like it for the Blur contest because the blur is caused both by the pinhole aperture and by flare, which works well in combination. (Vijay's picture will of course still be considered for the Baker's Dozen; it has obviously already made the first cut.)

Lensless 4x5" Pinhole Camera

Vijay's Santa Barbara camera, which as far as I can tell is no longer available, was made by the Lensless Camera Mfg. Co. in Fernley, Nevada, USA. Its 4x5-inch cameras are great if you don't want to make your own—you can customize film size, effective focal length, and wood type.

Naturally, they're not expensive.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Ned's Pentax K-3 III Mono Samples

I know I said we weren't going to get back to this until the camera ships, but...

Ned Bunnell writes: "Mike, Ricoh Pentax US kindly loaned me a Pentax K-3 III Monochrome. I’ve only had it for a few days, but I’m quite pleased with what I’m seeing so far. I’m primarily using my SMC FA 31mm (and FA 43mm Limited). The DNG files which I’m processing with ACR look great. Wonderful tones and detail. And what amazes me is I really can’t tell the difference between ISO 400 and 6400. I’ll probably have to start adding a little 'grain.' Because Tri-X never looked this clean.  :-)  I’ve started a Flickr album and will be adding more photos over the next few weeks. I thought a few folks here might enjoy seeing them.

"And I should add, at this point I’m not doing any heavy editing. I’m just trying to understand how the raw files render images."

Cheers, Ned

[Ed. note: Ned is a former President of Pentax USA.]

I get where he's coming from—I'm actually still learning how to process mono files too!

Enjoy the samples.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Gaspar Heurtley: "There are two things Pentax got right (borderline perfect) from the very beginning: grip shape and ISO noise. I love the way their high ISO files have a film-ish look. I couldn’t find that in any of the other brands I’ve used over the years. And don’t get me started about ergonomics. Pentax is the only brand that fits all their cameras with a comfortable grip. Other camera makers seem to think that small budget equals small hands, so their grips get bigger and more comfortable as you go up in the lineup."

Ya Hafta Laff

Okay, I'm going to move on...after this post. I'm guessing the Pentax K-3 III Monochrome is of interest only to a subset of readers, and I don't want to turn the site into "All Pentax Monochrome All the Time." The situation for now is confusing, and my efforts to untangle the bramble have come to naught—Ricoh Imaging Americas Corp. guards its telephone number more zealously than the U.S. protects state secrets. But the camera was announced to ship on April 28th, so we'll try to pick up the thread again in 11 days and see if things are more clear by then. We'll assume everything will get sorted out in due course.

Timeline
But now, backing up a little, a rough timeline:

• I first wrote about wishing for a B&W-only digital camera in the pages (appropriately) of Black & White Photography magazine when I wrote a monthly column there. That was in the early 2000s, meaning I've been hoping for such a camera for at least 20 years. It's actually been longer than that.
• At one point I rashly promised that I would buy the first B&W-only digital camera that came out no matter who made it. Shortly thereafter, the Trickster Universe caused it to come to pass that Leica would be that company, the original Monochrom being that camera, so I had to eat those words.
• It seemed obvious to me then that other camera companies would of course copy Leica, and at least one maker of ordinary cameras, and most likely several, would soon follow suit with monochrome models of their own. Nope. This did not come to pass.
• Meanwhile, I made various unsatisfying experiments with other ways to shoot B&W, including converting from a Foveon sensor, and making several attempts to go back to film. Most of which became proofs of Thomas Wolfe's "you can't go home again."
• Last summer, I started thinking I would have my old Sony NEX-6 converted by one of the outfits that modify sensors (there are several). As that evolved, Jason M. sent me his MIS-modified Sigma fp to try.
• I liked Jason's camera, so, after literally decades of waiting patiently for a dedicated B&W digital camera, and I mean "literally" literally, I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy my own Sigma fp and have it converted. It was returned to me in late October of 2022.
• Right after that—naturally!—Pentax began teasing a monochrome DSLR. And now, six months after I bought my Sigma fp and had it converted, here comes the K-3 III Monochrome—the first "normal" dedicated B&W-only camera from any non-luxury maker.

All of which is so incredibly typical I can't believe it. Except for one big thing. Usually what happens to me is that I get impatient and I jump the gun. I can't wait for what I'm waiting for and buy something else...and then the thing I was waiting for promptly appears.

Well, you can't say I did that this time! I waited for a monochrome-sensor camera for more than 20 years!!

But of course the result is exactly the same: as soon as I move on, whatever I was waiting for, happens. It's actually been pretty much the story of my life with camera equipment since I bought my first camera in 1981.

You know what they say: Oh well.  :-)

Mike

P.S. I still really like my modified Sigma. I think of it as a portable view camera, and it's a great pleasure to shoot with. Curiously, one of my B&W pictures has been viewed 74,356 times on flickr.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Michael: "Based on your own admission, Mike, it's obvious the reason we have not had an affordable monochrome camera is largely due to the fact that you took so long about committing to an alternative to what you craved. Had you bought something earlier, then some manufacturer would have produced what you really wanted and the camera world would have benefited enormously. Have a good day Mike."

Mike replies: You're absolutely right, and I feel terrible. I should have provoked fate much earlier.

Jeff: "Since you’ve repeated this, I’ll repeat my comment as well. You could have bought a mint used original Leica Monochrom, with new sensor and Leica warranty, 5+ years ago, for roughly $1k more than the ‘mainstream’ Pentax of today. After five years of enjoyment, and all the money saved in the interim by not switching gear, that used Monochrom would be worth $500 more than when you bought it. I know, because that’s just what I did, and commented about it here. (And a relatively inexpensive CV 35mm lens would have made a fine companion.) Just sayin’…again."

Stuart T: "I suspect this is the kind of camera people are either interested in or they're not. It's black and white."

Mike replies: Stuart wins best comment!  :-)

John C.: " I beg to differ. I think Stuart's comment shows a very binary view and doesn't allow at all for any shades of grey."

CRM: "Mike, many of us have long suspected that you control the universe, just not in a way that is useful."

Kirk W.: "On August 15th of last year, in response to one of your posts as you were waffling over your path to monochrome, I wrote: 'C’mon Mike, just hurry up and do it. Then within a few months, I’ll be able to order one of those trick new Fuji X100Ms!' I really did have high hopes that your commitment to sensor re-assignment would be the deciding factor for Fujifilm corporate to move forward soon after with a line of monochrome products. What I didn't realize is that as a dual-system Pentax and Fujifilm shooter with strong (and unjustified) preference for that dream monochrome body to be Fujifilm, the first product to come to market would be from Pentax. I did not see that coming!"

Orders for Pentax Monochrome Matte Black 'Greatly Exceeds Expectations'

Ricoh has issued a press release saying "We are pleased to announce that the number of pre-orders for the PENTAX K-3 Mark III Monochrome Matte Black Edition, a monochrome digital SLR camera that is scheduled to be released on April 28, 2023, has greatly exceeded our initial expectations. As a result, production is unable to keep up with demand. Therefore, we will temporarily suspend accepting new orders until we have a certain outlook for product supply."

However, I'm not sure if the "Matte Black Edition" is a special model of the Monochrome camera, or if that's just the full name of the Monochrome camera. Does anyone know?

I personally hope like h*ll that the camera is backordered constantly, that Pentax sells all it can make, and that it rakes in money. It would serve all the other companies right. (I don't know, am I bitter?  :-D )

Mike
(Thanks to Andy F)

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Keith: "While I don't plan to purchase the Pentax monochrome, I applaud their efforts and guts to do something different, and hope they reap the rewards. My concern is that someone like Fuji (and others) makes the $650 version as you suggested and steals the thunder from Pentax. That would be a win for B&W photographers for sure, but, like you, I feel that Pentax priced a little high. And as someone mentioned in the comments somewhere (not sure if it was here) don't let the B&W hype overshadow that the K-3 III is a very well designed body to begin with. Bitter? I don't know, but I hope Pentax gets a bit of resurgence from this, and the other companies 'eat a little dust.'"

Richard Alan Fox: "I don't understand why a DSLR or a rangefinder is preferred as a monochrome camera. I understand the need to pre-visualize while shooting film, but digital makes no sense. Mike's Sigma conversion of a mirrorless camera is the way to go; even better a mirrorless that is monochrome out of the box."

B&W Day! (More about the Monochrom[e]s)

Thursday, April 13th, was "Black-and-White Day," with the new Pentax K3 Mark III Monochrome officially announced (it will ship at the end of this month, according to reports) and the new Leica M11 Monochrom finally moseying along after the M11 (which has been out for a year and three months).

The new Pentax Monochrome

Monochrome sensors don't deserve all the fierce disputation and hand-wringing they inspire. The most popular video review of the new Pentax seems to be Samuel Lintaro's, on his Samuel Streetlife vlog. He points out the real reason for a dedicated B&W camera at about the 20:40 mark: "Also, [I] never questioned why I was shooting black and white. I never missed color. Whenever I shoot black and white on my color sensor cameras, because I can quickly change my image preview to color, I sometimes want to see it in color. But here, I can't do that, so I don't think about it. So I guess the main selling point of a monochrome sensor is that whole experience."

That's it. The experience is really the main thing about it. And it's not very complicated...it's simply that it enables you to ignore color, see tonally, and not have to constantly decide whether a particular shot should be color or not. Which for some people helps them concentrate. Personally, as I've written, I'm unable to concentrate exclusively on B&W when I'm shooting with a color sensor. I see how the camera sees, meaning, both ways, color and B&W simultaneously, so I continually have to make decisions about what kind of shots I'm looking for. It drives me nuts. YMMV.

Of course, a lot of "color shooters" out there in the multiverse aren't sensitive to colors as they shoot color, and they wouldn't pay any attention to tones either, so they're convinced they do equally well at both. Actually they do, except you'd have to say they do "equally poorly" at both. Everyone within the sound of my voice excepted from this judgment, of course!

Experience
As I pointed out yesterday, you have to consider that unless they shot a lot of B&W film in pre-digital days, most photographers have actually not experienced what it's like to shoot with a dedicated monochrome camera. The only options have been very expensive, and until fairly recently they were rangefinders—already a niche, an acquired taste. What the world needs is a good $650 Fuji ILC monochrome, so people could easily afford one as a secondary body and find out for themselves what it's like. Most people, when they discuss this, are only imagining, in their heads, what they think it must be like to shoot with a dedicated monochrome camera (and many of them aren't dedicated monochrome shooters), and they derive their conclusions from that. It's a poor way to experience things, generally...in fantasy only. It's better to have actual experience. A cheap-yet-adequate B&W-only camera would give more people the opportunity to try it and make up their minds based on experience.

"Special"? Bah.
And as an oh-by-the-way, all the seductive verbiage you might read about "specially designed sensors" is highly likely a load of BS. These are just normal sensors with the CFA (color filter array) and anti-aliasing filters removed. They're not special in any way. And they're not "designed" for B&W. They differ in a few ways from color sensors: they are more sensitive to light by up to a stop, unless you put an optical filter on your lens; they're sharper, not that today's color sensors lack for sharpness by any sane standard; and there's no chroma noise. In practice, there is not much highlight headroom, meaning you have to expose for the highlights in camera (Samuel Lintaro addresses this nicely), which works because shadow recovery is awesome; and they're not as sensitive to ISO as color cameras are. If you see comparisons of a converted color file and a dedicated monochrome file, and they look pretty much the same, ask to see a comparison at, say, ISO 12,800. You'll see more difference there.

A sensor actually designed for B&W would be legitimately exciting. Without knowing what I'm talking about (because I'm not a sensor designer or expert), I would guess that it would feature spectral correction, calibrated lifting of the mid-tones probably in software, and ND filtration on up to half the pixels for highlight rendering/recovery. Fuji, which long ago designed a special dual-photosite sensor with areas of different sensitivity (someone will have to remind me what that was called) would have the technical know-how to actually design a sensor for B&W. [UPDATE: Fuji SuperCCD SR II, found in cameras such as the Fujifilm S5 Pro—thanks to Peter Cameron for this. —Ed.]. But the economics probably aren't there.

Last point: the Pentax is for the Japanese homeland market, full stop. That's how Ricoh made the decision and that's where it cares about the response. So those out there who want to whimper on about how the K3-III Mono does or does not appeal to them should keep in mind that unless they're Japanese and living in Japan, it's not actually really for them. Be grateful they're even offering it in other countries. (All of this paragraph is my opinion only.)

In sum
Does anybody need a dedicated B&W camera? There's a lot of strident I-know-what's-best-for-everybody bullcrap out there on the wilds of the World Wide Web. If they don't want one, fine; if they already have what they need, bravo; but I'm standing up in the audience and applauding Pentax. I question the wisdom of testing the concept with a premium-price product—I've always wanted to see a cheap option that would make sense as a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) body, for proof of concept (I certainly felt the same way about the Leicas). But a group of intrepid photographers will find their creativity served by the new camera, and I look forward to seeing the work they will do with it.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Chris H: "I believe the mono Pentax is a HUGE advent for the market, whether the sales will reflect it or no. Something that does the Leica Monochrom thing, at roughly a quarter of the price of a new Leica Monochrom. I hope this is wildly successful, as that can only be a good thing for the industry and hobby, and maybe convince others to become fish in a growing pond. That would really be great."

Benjamin Marks (partial comment): "...Let's face it: for me (and most of us), this is play. Not a calorie of food on my table nor scrap of leather on my children's feet depends on my making an image. So all I ask myself is: 'does it look like fun?' The answer to that is,'yes'—Photo World looks more fun with a dedicated B&W camera in it."

Roger Bradbury: "I don't want one, but as a Pentax man I'm most pleased to see it and I think they'll sell every one they can make. That's great for me, as the more cameras Pentax sells the more lenses they'll sell too, and the chances of more new lens models increases.

"By the way, the price of the Monochrome was just what I expected it to be; a bit over a third more than the standard K3 III."

Andy F: "For the last four years I have taken thousands of photographs with my Huawei P20 Pro phone, in the B/W pro mode, which uses the phone's 20-MP Sony monochrome sensor, in combination with a 27mm equivalent lens to produce a B&W JPEG. I wish it did raw, like the main colour camera. My phone is really a cheap man’s Leica Q2M; the cameras & lenses were developed in partnership with Leica. I am more than pleased by the phone’s B&W jpegs, which are amazingly sharp and noise-free and have a lovely tonality—as long as you make sure you do not clip the highlights. There is zero recovery for blown highlights, so you expose for the highlights and recover the shadows.

"My experience with the Huawei has whetted my appetite for a monochrome camera from one of the camera manufacturers. There are several versions of the Leica Monochrom, but IMHO the Leica is poor value for money and I am not a great lover of rangefinder cameras. Now we have the Pentax K-3 Mono, which is a technical tour de force when compared to the Leicas. It has AF, IBIS, focus stacking, and I think even pixel shift, but in a limited form. Yes it’s a DSLR, and not mirrorless, but for me I see this as an advantage, when you are more than likely going to have the exposure compensation set to –1 stop or below, to curb the highlights.

"I have signed up with Pentax EU for notification, as to when it will be available here in the UK. I already have more than enough cameras and lenses, but the K-3 Mono has given me GAS."

almostinfamous: "It is very cruel of Pentax to do this to me just a couple of months after I got into Nikon mirrorless and have no budget left over. I have always been curious about shooting a purely monochrome camera and this would have fit quite well in the pocketbook. I suppose this is their way of paying me back for my choice to get a Nikon D200 over a K100D super in 2007."

PDLanum: "Back in the day, I used to buy 100-foot rolls of Pan-X and load my own cassettes. I developed those rolls of film and printed them in the darkroom my father and I built in the basement. It got to the point where it seemed that I 'saw' in B&W. On the rare occasion that I shot color, mostly transparencies, i.e., slides, I noticed a shift in how I 'saw' and how I approached shooting. I was used to seeing color though the viewfinder and being able to understand how the resulting image would appear in B&W. It would be interesting to re-visit those days with a camera that only produced B&W files and see if I still 'have the knack.' I also wonder how long it will take for Adobe, C1, and other post-processing companies to come out with body-specific workflows. Having B&W native files sort of removes the necessity for 'vibrance' and 'saturation' sliders."

Jeff: "@PDLanum…even using a color-based digital camera, one doesn’t need saturation (or hue) sliders in PP with B&W conversions. Color hue and saturation have no effect on black and white tonalities, regardless the camera. 'Seeing' in black and white is about luminance/brightness. HSL sliders? Ignore the first two. For me, the main benefit of a monochrome-based camera is that it allows me to shoot without looking for, or being distracted by, potential color pics. It becomes a mindset."

Jeff1000: "The Nikon Z7 has no AA filter, is full frame, and 45.7 megapixels. The drawback is that it is capable of shooting color?"

Mike replies: I assume you prefer a camera that natively shoots color? And don't you have a number of options on the market to choose from? So your needs are met. And yet for people who want a camera that natively shoots mono, you object to them having ONE reasonably priced option? Why? Why would you begrudge letting other people have what they happen to want? Does it somehow mean you can't have the Z7 that is your choice?

My attitude has always been that I want photographers to have whatever they want or need to do their work, regardless of whether I can see the need for it myself or not, and regardless of whether I have any interest in it or not.

John Krumm: "Our friend Ned has been happily shooting samples in Florida, using a variety of lenses...."

Paul: "I have a tendency to convert everything to black and white (particularly family or people) with my old cameras. While I would love to try a dedicated monochrome camera, my abilities do not justify the cost. At the rate I shoot, I can use quite a lot of black and white film over a number of years before using up $2,200 plus a lens or two."

Andrew Kochanowski: "Lost in the excitement may be the appreciation of how very fine the K-3 III is as a camera, monochrome or not. For someone who likes an ergonomic, tactile experience, for a just right shutter sound, and for a optical viewfinder that is almost as good as the ye olde 35mm versions of good SLRs (in some ways better, as you can customize what you see in the blacked-out areas around the image, and superimpose focus points and horizon lines, etc.), the K-3 III is a pleasure to use. Now, I know it doesn't get any respect from the 99% who haven't tried it, but maybe the monochrome version will be tempting."

Matthew: "I've put in my order for one, despite having a full Fuji system (nine lenses with three cameras, including an IR-converted X-T2), Nikon F6 with a few lenses, and Zeiss Ikon ZM with a few lenses. I like cameras, of many different styles and formats. I like B&W, and use it almost exclusively. I like TTL optics, and miss having a DSLR in this age of mirrorlessness. So why not? I'll use it and I'll enjoy it. Maybe I'll even do something interesting—to me, at least—with it.

"This K-3 III Mono isn't some new chapter in an epic historical struggle between colour versus black and white. It's just a camera, and while cameras do matter, they aren't what's important. What's actually important are the results that the camera makes possible, and the way it engages with the photographer's creativity. Different cameras will do different things for and with different people. I rejoice in that. And now I also finally have a chance to buy the DA 35mm ƒ/2.8 Macro Limited, which might be reason enough—for me—all on its own."

Mike replies: That's a beautiful lens. My full review of it (with Carl Weese) is no longer online, or, at least, I can't find it. However my "first impressions" post is still available. If this were 2014 I would buy the camera and that lens! Alas, they moved my cheese. Enjoy it for both of us, please.

The Pentax K3 III Monochrome Announcement

PentaxRumors is fulfilling its mission by confirming the rumor one day in advance that a Pentax K3-III Monochrome DSLR will be announced tomorrow—meaning that it took Japanese cameramakers just 10 years and 11 months to answer Leica's original Monochrom with a mainstream model dedicated to B&W. Despite the rather extended wait, I applaud Pentax for having the vision and the commitment to provide this new product for those photographers who will benefit from it or who simply want it. I hope the market supports the camera and the company.

I won't say the biggest, but one of the biggest changes in photography over the course of the digital transition has been the pervasive switch from B&W to color, something that seldom even gets discussed. When I was young, virtually all serious photography was B&W, with only a few "exceptions that proved the rule" such as Eliot Porter and Marie Cosindas gaining any traction within accepted art circles. Virtually all "serious" photographers worked in B&W. Color was denigrated as "decorative" or "literal" and was thought to be the province of commercial photography on the one hand and demotic snapshooters on the other. Now, the opposite is the case: color is overwhelmingly mainstream, and B&W is marginalized. Most B&W today isn't even competent, and a sort of reflexive hostility toward it among post-film photographers isn't uncommon. I guess I always knew that would happen, but it's "interesting," let's say, that there is so little support for B&W remaining. If it weren't for Leica, there wouldn't even be any dedicated cameras for B&W, apart from conversions and a few specialty products here and there. To be fair, though, at one point several decades ago we seriously doubted that B&W film would still survive until 2023, and it has.

I look forward to reading the announcements tomorrow. Photography now lacks a central site for rounding up major announcements, but we'll find out more, I'm sure, from various sources.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

John: "On the one hand, I want one. On the other, I remember that I used to be frustrated in the film days if my camera had B&W film in it and I saw a scene that would work better in color."

Mike replies: That's funny because I was the opposite! Every time I had to load a roll of color film (I always bought 24-exposure rolls to limit the pain), it took forever to shoot it all and I was unhappy until it was gone because I wanted to return to shooting B&W. I referred to it as "color film clogging up my camera." I shot many professional jobs in color and I was always careful to use up all the shots because I didn't want extra color exposures left in the camera.

Steve Rosenblum: "I think it’s great that Pentax has done this and I hope they sell well for them. I will not be buying it. Why? I am unwilling to buy yet another set of lenses for a new mount. I own a nice set of Fuji X Mount lenses as well as a set of M Mount lenses and some Nikon F lenses. If Fuji brings out a Monochrome camera I will certainly buy one and I predict that it would far out sell both Leica and Pentax Monochrome options. The whole Fuji approach just fits BW photography the best. A monochrome X100V or XT5 would sell like hotcakes I think. But I’m not willing to buy more lenses just to use the Pentax. And I’m not going to dedicate the cost of a decent used car to a Leica Monochrome."

TC: "I often wonder how monochrome photography would be viewed today had color photography been available and easily accessible from the beginning."

Mike replies: And I wonder how monochrome digital photography would be regarded if there had been monochrome digital options available right from the beginning, starting, say, in 1995 or 2000. But then, I also wonder what would have happened if the Foveon sensor had been open-source to all manufacturers from the start.

Niels: "The interest seems to be high in Japan. The Japanese site DC watch reports that pre-ordering of the special 'Matte black' edition was suspended shortly after it opened at 10 AM April 13 due to unexpectedly many orders (@JPY 333,000 ~USD 2,500 incl. VAT). For reference: The Japanese street price of the regular color version of K3 Mark III is JPY 180,000 ~USD 1,350 incl. VAT. Pentax also warns that deliveries of the monochrome versions will be slow, both due to procurement of parts, but also because it is a slower process to build these cameras. Although the monochrome camera is not intended as a limited edition per se, it will be a camera produced in limited quantities out of necessity."

Alan: "I started my photography in the early 1970s and have never shot colour film. Many modern mono shots I see are just too dark for me. One site I look at reguarly often features mono shots that to me look completely unnatural and way too dark to the point that detail which should be visible in what are clearly daylight shots clearly isn't visible. I don't know if this trend to overly dark B&W is a modern trend or not but I just don't like it."

Mike replies: Also the mid-tones are depressed, from moderately to extremely. And microcontrast is often exaggerated. And highlights are often blown out. People are getting better at it now, though; that look might have been a sort of fad or passing fashion, as you mention. Then again, my own B&W doesn't look quite like I want it to in every picture.

Mark Roberts: "I'm going to be bringing this up in my Digital Photography I class tomorrow. In my experience over the past few years, my students have always loved shooting black and white. I expect they'll be really excited about this camera...until they see the $2k+ price."

Mike replies: Yes, it's a real shame. It's not a plot or a conspiracy, but circumstances have worked out so such that it's been very difficult for more than a few people to experience shooting with a B&W camera. That's a shame, as the experience is really the main thing about it. And it's not very complicated...it's simply that it enables you to ignore color, see tonally, and not think about whether a particular shot should be color or not. Which for some people helps them concentrate. The way this has all worked out over the past 25 years is that most people simply imagine shooting with a B&W camera and imagine how it would feel, and then make their minds up based on that, without experiencing it. Of course B&W film shooters know (or remember) how it is. 

It's no big deal. Color is the mode of photography today, as B&W once was.

Pierre Charbonneau: "These Pentax and Leica monochrome cameras sure do elicit an emotional response among your readers here. As you know, I own two Leica M10's; the regular one and the Monochrom. I often use the regular one with an Super Elmar 18mm for photographing in color interiors of shopping malls for clients. The results are excellent. I traveled last year trough 19 American states bringing the two cameras. I mostly used the Monochrom, with a 35mm/50mm Summicron combo. Since my return, I have printed 49 images from this trip. They look beautiful on Hahnemühle Baryta FB. I cannot present here any technical reasons, but I believe the print is the showcase for the Monochrom. The files from the Monochrom are very malleable. Capture One can tune them to a formidable degree. The smoothness of tones, the soft gradation of greys are more delicate, and that is very visible on paper. All these qualities are not obvious on a JPEGs on the screen, but paper shows them."

JH: "One should remember Marie Cosindas was basically Dr. Land's house photographer at Polaroid and was instrumental in promoting color film at Polaroid. That said, she was a master of the Polaroid, especially the large-scale cameras, and her painterly still lifes and classic portraits of people like Tom Wolfe and Andy Warhol helped convince people that photography was an art and Polaroids were photography. MOMA showed her work in 1966. MoMA's collection of her works is certainly interesting! I had the pleasure of meeting her in her home in Boston through friends about 15 years ago, and in her 80s she was still a very lively conversationalist."

Pavlov's Audiophile

I clicked on the ad for this because I casually assumed it was a piece of audio gear: it was not!

First guy: I compulsively buy everything I see that has to do with the Beatles.

Second guy: Sounds like you need help.

First guy: No, I already have three copies of that.

So I'm a little worried about myself...I used to be "camera obsessive." Poring over gear and daydreaming about it set my endorphins to firing (as they say; I don't actually know what that means). Lately, however, not so much. Photo gear doesn't really do it for me any more. 

Is there something wrong with me, or am I just...recovering?

Mike

P.S. I have to add that I do love to operate my own camera, and pictures are "doing it for me" more than ever.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Six Pentaxes

Following on from yesterday, Pentax Rumors has also claimed that "there will be a total of six different versions of the Pentax K-3 Mark III DSLR camera (jet black finish, a version with a modified shutter release button, a monochrome model, a gunmetal version, and an Astro model)."

Speaking of The Improvement Law, as I was the other day, this is actually one of the directions I think it would be profitable for camera manufacturers to go: making variant models for different purposes or for different customers. The downside, of course, is that the bean-counters will simply see which variant sells best and then put the kibosh on any others, forgetting that even small markets deserve serving because they cultivate brand loyalty. Maybe only a small percentage of buyers will buy the jet-black model; but maybe a lot of K-3 Mark III purchasers will appreciate that the jet-black model is available as an offering for them.

Well, I guess there's one more downside, which is that people will clamor for combinations of the variants, i.e., "I want the Astro model in gunmetal! If Pentax doesn't give me that then I'll never buy another Pentax!" :eyeroll:

As I've advocated several times now, another avenue that cameramakers could explore would be radically simplified versions of high-quality cameras. So far, only Leica has experimented with radical simplicity. All the other camera makers are addicted to burdening their products under the "kitchen sink" principle—put everything in as a means of trying to please everybody all the time. Never mind that people might not want to do everything, or that technology has now improved to the point that simplicity is now a possibility for those who want that. Or that there are people who would really like it if their cameras were less confusing.

I mentioned my neighbor Ilene yesterday—the one with the Flintmobile who is looking at Toyotas. She mentioned to me that she has a camera, but she still has to get out the manual every time she wants to use it.

That reminds me of a story: way back in the 1980s, I attended a presentation by a rep from a D.C.-area camera store that specialized in lighting equipment. The rep gave an hour-long presentation of all the capabilities of the then-latest-and-greatest Minolta light meter, the name of which I have finally forgotten. Later, talking to her individually, I mentioned that I didn't think most photographers could afford the time investment she had made to become an expert in the use of that light meter. Her response? She told that although she gave that presentation about every three weeks or so, she had to brush up on all the information in the manual before she gave each talk. She couldn't remember everything across a three-week pause.

Life is too short to have to use tools like that. And yet, most cameras are now similar to that. I have a highly adept professional friend whose company has just bought him a Nikon Z9. He is deep in the weeds working through the manual. Among other things, he says that "it has a feature to reduce flicker from LCD and fluorescent light sources and that feature allows you to set shutter speeds to ridiculously precise values to one decimal point, like a 105.3 of a second." Consider that old "MMM" (metal, manual, mechanical) film cameras were once assumed to have settings that were only accurate to maybe a third of a stop. That is, if you set 1/500th shutter speed, the real speed might actually be 1/400th or 1/650th and that was considered acceptable. It's been a long time since then.

At some point in the past dozen years, I went from advocating that the photographer has a responsibility to master his or her camera, to thinking that the cameras are just too complex to master. That hasn't been a happy change. My Sigma is set up to be very simple and fast for me to use, which is almost viscerally satisfying to me. Of course it does other things, but it's easy to eliminate those options from getting in the way.

I'm sure people who are more adept at mastering complex technology have a different perspective, and might even enjoy the complexity. I don't think most people do enjoy it. But I could be wrong. I know at this point in my life, I agree with something Ilene said yesterday: "I don't want to buy any more things that I have to learn."

As Richard Nugent points out here, though, whatever new car she chooses might be something that takes a long time to learn.

Mike

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Pentax B&W Camera About to Be Announced? (Or, 'The Universe Tends Toward Maximum Perversity.')

Reader Andy F implied yesterday that it is believed that Pentax will announce a B&W-only camera on April 13th. I will truly believe it only when I see it, having waited for a rationally-priced B&W camera from a mainstream maker for a good solid 20 years now. Actually a little bit more.

If it happens, I deserve credit for it...based on the Umbrella Rule, which states that it only rains when you forget your umbrella and won't rain if you remember to take it. Since I've just recently invested heavily in a customized workaround, clearly that is the reason why a much cheaper option would come along immediately thereafter.

The universe is a trickster! I hate irony. Or as David Aiken put it, "The universe tends to maximum perversity."

If it does happen, I might have to lay low for a while. I will be sulking.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Timing! The Fuji X-T5 and Other Roads Not Taken

Of course there are many things camera "timing" could refer to. I'm talking here about the way your life syncs up with the availability of certain products—a new camera comes along just when you need that very thing, say.

...Or the opposite, which is more often what happens with me.

I remember deciding to "devote" myself (scare quotes definitely needed there, as I am nothing if not fickle where gear is concerned) to the original (2009) Panasonic 20mm pancake lens; the one I had was sweet. More to the point, I liked it, and Mikie hates everything. But I waited and waited for the E-M1 to come out—we knew a "flagship" Olympus was coming, we just didn't know when—and finally I couldn't wait any longer, and skipped to Sony. Shortly thereafter, the E-M1 arrived. Too late. Oh well.

First love
Many years before that, when I was adding to my Contax kit (my first-ever system camera; I went through art school with a Contax), I really wanted a Zeiss 35mm PC shift lens. (Some very professional-looking tabletop pictures here.) I saved up for it, and when I finally decided to buy the thing, the supply suddenly dried up. I looked into it—I was writing for photography magazines by that time—and learned that Yashica ordered batches of lenses from Zeiss, which then made runs of them to order as it suited their schedule. And their whim, apparently. Yashica eventually got so weary of Zeiss being sluggish filling its orders that it started to build the lenses in Japan, reassuring customers that this was done under German "supervision." As if the Germans had to teach the Japanese about quality control! Not. Fanboys of course were very snobby and strident about their preference for "real" German lenses, scorning the "Made in Japan"-labeled ones, but the truth was the opposite—the Japanese facility and all the equipment in it were all-new, so the Japanese-built versions were actually a little better and more consistent than the German-built ones. (This was told to me by a C/Y tech-rep after he had moved to a different company.)

But I digress. Anyway, I was assured that pretty soon the Japanese would order another run of the 35mm PC Shift lens from Zeiss and it would be available again. I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally I joined a professional studio where all the other photographers used Nikons, and if I wanted to be able to share my equipment and borrow theirs, I had to shoot Nikon too, so I said goodbye to my beloved Contax. Honestly, to this day, I have never had quite the same feeling for any other camera marque that I had for Contax. I recall it as fondly as I recall lost youth.

That was right about the time that the new batch of 35mm PC Distagons hit the small-print ads in the back of Modern Photography, which I'm sure all of you of a certain age will remember. Of course the new ones took a huge jump upward in price—the pricing for the old run having been worked out many years earlier. That allowed me to adopt the frustrated fox's sour-grapes attitude.

And did I ever buy the Nikkor 35mm shift lens? I did not. It's not that I ever stopped wanting one, just that there was always something ahead of it on the want-list.

The unrequited Fuji
I could give more examples, but you get the point, and I'm sure many of you have experienced the same thing or something similar. It's that sometimes the stars don't align, and a different fork in the road is taken.

Well, that's what has happened to me with Fuji. I was turned off by the specs of the then-new X-T4, for purely arbitrary reasons. I just don't care for flippy screens. There's nothing wrong with them; some people prefer them, and some people are agnostic and can go either way. I just happen to have a preference for the aligned kind of screen, that's all. No biggie, and there's nothing sacrosanct about my opinion. Purely personal taste. At the same time, a kind reader gave me his X-H1 when he switched to Leica, and I didn't bond with it for whatever reason.

You know what I would have wanted, instead of the X-T4? Exactly? A slimmed-down X-T[x], closer to the size of the original X-T1; with a brand new, higher-res sensor; a reversion to Fuji's earlier, and perfect (by my lights) viewing screen design; more "photography focused," to snitch the words of DPReview's Richard Butler; and IBIS, which is another feature I've appreciated since I first experienced it in the now-ancient Konica-Minolta 7D.

Which is exactly what the X-T5 is. It's like Fuji was working straight off my personal wish-list.

Silver is the same price as black, which I think is a first

Of course, by then, I had moved along to the Sony A6600 (mine is for sale now, by the way, nearly new, in the box, separate from or along with the wonderfully contrasty Sigma Contemporary 30mm, if you would like that. Email me). And then to the Sigma fp-M. Just went down a different path is all. I never could have imagined that the X-T4 was not a firm and permanent change of direction, or that the X-T5 would pick up where the X-T3 left off. Well, I could have imagined it, actually, it's just that I never would have thought it would happen for real.

It's really only an accident that you haven't been reading all sorts of happy blithering about an X-T5 in these pages since it came out last November. I still love Fuji; still love the lens line; and still think Fuji in general, and specifically the X-T5, is the number one all-'round recommendation for general-purpose enthusiasts, despite its increasingly niche status. A perfectly balanced package of Goldilocks compromises.

It is probably the only time, ever, that a camera company actually did just exactly what I would have wanted it to. Yet I don't own one, and won't. Strange how things work out, that's all I can say.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Bob Johnston: "I just traded in my X-T3 for the T5. I had to sell some lenses too but boy am I happy with the camera. Fuji seem to have fixed all the annoying little quitks. For example, if you enabled the self timer and switched the camera off, you had to enable it again when you switched back on. That's fixed. The bigger battery is a huge plus point. I could go on."

Miguel Tejada-Flores: "Uhhh...Mike, you left out one of the key reasons why I caved, sold my X-T3, and sprang for an X-T5: the brilliant Fuji colour engineers who came up with the new internal JPEG film simulation, which bears the heavy-handed name 'Nostalgic Negative.' That sim, plus the Classic Neg sim introduced in the previous generation of X-Trans sensors, is probably worth the price of admission. Fuji marketing claims that it was inspired by something they are calling The American New Color look of the 1970s, inspired by the work of luminaries like Stephen Shore among others.

"And...guess what? In this case, it's not mere marketing hype but a rather marvelous piece of color engineering by the (mostly nameless) color-obsessed Fuji geniuses who spend years toiling away and come up with (for my money) masterpieces like the aforementioned new JPEG film sims. IBIS is nice too, but compared to the other seismic improvements, I think it's merely icing on the metaphorical photographic cake. Based on my (limited) understanding of—and appreciation of—your photographic tastes and personal work—I think you would love it. Or should I say, you will love it. (Minor note: for those shooting strictly JPEGs, the file size is much smaller than 40 MP, actually much closer to the smaller files of the X-T3 and the X-Pro3.)"

Ben: "When I graduated college in 2000 I was thinking about a Contax SLR system. But I found a nice Leica M3 and a couple of lenses. Got hooked on rangefinders, and even though I've wandered into Nikon and Micro 4/3, I keep coming back to Leica, and despite the exorbitant cost I love every minute of it… "

Ricardo: "Hi Mike. The X-T5 is indeed fantastic. Had one for about three weeks but passed on for an X-E4. I simply must have a smaller. But it’s indeed great. "

Curt Gerston: "I had the X-T3 and, like you didn’t like the direction the X-T4 went (too big, blah to the flippy screen…) so I was happy enough to shoot the X-T3 until it died. Unlike you, though, when the X-T5 came out I was beholden to no other new camera and was able to go get one. It’s perfection. I love it. I don’t shoot video, I don’t need what the X-H2 offers…it’s great. Bravo Fuji."

Richard Tugwell: "I was an early XT-1 user, and upgraded to an XT-3 when the XT-4 came out and seemed unnecessarily bulky. I was quite happy with the XT-1 but wanted to match sensor sizes with my X-Pro2. That was a couple of years ago now and I can't honestly say I'm interested in anything new. I'm more interested these days in spending time with my photo archive. (Most of which emanated from gear whose specs people would laugh about these days.)"

Sroyon: "Re 'It's like Fuji was working straight off my personal wish-list,' as you put it, was the feeling I got about the Fuji X-E4 when it was released in early 2021. And yet I resisted the temptation, because I have a serviceable Nikon D5200 (ten years old, but still works). Then in September 2022, some Japanese stores marked the X-E4 as discontinued. It was also out of stock in all the physical and online stores here in Singapore. I had a sinking feeling that I had left it too late. Luckily, I was able to purchase one of the few remaining bodies from an online store in Hong Kong—and at the normal price. I'm so glad I did, because the camera is even better (for me) than what I had imagined. And this week, FujiRumors reported that it's also marked discontinued at B&H Photo and various other stores. As someone who is resistant (perhaps irrationally so) to buying gear, the lesson for me is that perfect cameras—perfect for me, that is—materialize very rarely. When they do, budget permitting, it's best not to dilly-dally."

Gary Nylander: "Mike, I hope you find the camera or lens that you want. I kinda stumbled upon one of my favorite lenses that I like to use, the Nikkor 35mm PC. A few years ago I was not aware of either of these 35mm PC shift lenses. Coincidentally, the article you linked on Casual Photophile by Yuan Oliver Jin was the very article that inspired me to buy the Nikkor 35mm PC about three years ago after reading about it. Then I bought a second lens from a famous photography blogger so I could have a backup. I didn't buy the lens for its architectural characteristics but so I could compose differently in my mind and then take two separate (or sometimes 3) pictures and stitch them together to create unique compositions. I really enjoy using the lens, it's very clever in design. I only wish that there was a 50mm and an 85mm lens like this."

mynameiseli: "The reason I never had a Canon T70 and FD lenses is because by the time I had saved up the dough (private in the Army at the time), the Base Post Exchange had dropped them. For the new-fangled EOS 650. With the EF 50mm and EF 35–70mm. I was not an avid photographer; I didn't have the resources to be. I still have it, and the lenses. So, when Canon introduced the new-fangled R series, and they ran a good sale on the R near Christmas 2019, I bought it. And I went ahead and bit on the R so that I could say that I have the 'first' EOS and the 'first' EOS R. My photographs look so much better now.  :-) "

Canon Evolves Its Lineup

It looks to me like Canon is revamping its lineup. I'm just not sure how, exactly.

I'm not an expert on all things Canon. I shot Canon only once, in prehistoric days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and heroes were mighty and did great deeds, etc. The camera was called an EOS RT, and it was one of the slickest picturetaking devices ever created at that time, although mine had a propensity to stop working at inconvenient times. (The workaround was to take the battery out and re-insert it.) It had a pellicle mirror, which "the market" hates but which I loved. (The market repeatedly and decisively rejects pellicle-mirror cameras, despite various cameramakers' infatuation with them. I could tell you stories.) The pellicle mirror (a.k.a. beam splitter) permitted an extremely short shutter lag time, better than a rangefinder M Leica, which had been the king in that department at that time.

Anyway, not a Canon expert. And there are no easy go-to Canon experts out there, like Rob Galbraith used to be and like Thom Hogan is to Nikon now. So take this post with a pinch of sodium chloride.

You're aware that Canon recently introduced two new budget cameras, the R8 and R50. The R8 (right) is thought to be a replacement for the original budget R camera, the RP, although Canon says the RP will continue in the lineup, presumably because of the large price-point difference. The other one is the R50 (top), which has an APS-C sensor and takes all RF lenses but is made to match RF-S (crop sensor) lenses specifically. It is being discussed like the whole issue is whether it replaces the M50—as the name would seem to suggest.

If, like me, you're catching up here, the M Canons were Canon's grudging nod to mirrorless when it was kinda hoping mirrorless would go away. The M's were mainly paltry little amateur cameras, walled off in a little ghetto by virtue of having a separate lensmount, called EF-M, although they also accepted EF and EF-S lenses with an adapter, the latter denoting lenses dedicated to the cropped sensor. (Confused? Don't worry; everyone was.) The M line began in 2012. But then Canon eventually made the more purposeful and fuller-featured M50 (2018) and M50II (2020), which people liked and which sold inconveniently well.

Too many lensmounts do not a prosperous camera company make, so it makes sense to transition the EF-M mirrorless cameras to the newer RF (full frame) and RF-S (cropped sensor) R lensmount. That's what Internet thinks the R50 is: an updated M50 II in RF-S mount. The big question being asked out on the wilds of the Web is whether the R50 replaces the M50 II. My opinion about that: duh.

My question, one which Internet is not asking, is whether the R50 is actually the advance guard for the eventual replacement of the Rebels.

"Rebel" is one of Canon's most well-known names. It's been around since Andre Agassi had hair, no diss. And Canon didn't slap it on the R50. The EF-S Rebels—I count three of them as current products on the Canon USA page, the Rebel 8Ti (2020, $750), the even smaller and lighter Rebel SL3 (also $750), and the older Rebel 7 (early 2018, currently a price leader at $429 with kit lens)—probably still pull well for Canon, which can't afford to give away sure sales in a down market. And it doesn't matter that much if the Rebels are SLRs and still use the EF-S mount, because the casual and beginner photographers the Rebels are aimed at generally use just one, or at most two, kit lenses. And Canon can't afford to telegraph that the EF mount is losing support, because it still sells numerous FF DSLRs and has a large number of entrenched users.

Still and all, it makes sense that Canon should transition as much as possible to the RF mount eventually, and it makes sense that it would start with the lower-end models where the stakes are not so high. Anyway, my partially educated guess is that the R50 is not just the M50 II replacement; it's actually the Fort Sumter cannon of the new Rebels*.

Well, this is all just my take. As I say, not an expert. And I don't have any insider contacts at Canon since old friend Chuck Westfall died. (If you don't know the name, Chuck was the camera company tech rep par excellence, a paragon of the type, and famous far and wide in the hobby, to the point of being lampooned by a gadfly known as "Fake Chuck Westfall." Chuck was not amused at the spoof, by the way.)

So I'm not exactly sure how Canon is revamping its lineup. But then, maybe Canon isn't entirely sure yet either.

Mike

*You see what I did there.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Is the Fanboy Era Ending?

Expressing enthusiasm for photography by way of brand fanaticism seems to be something that's receding in the rearview mirror now. I wasn't really aware of it existing—well, except among Leica fans—much before the 1990s. There were certainly aficionados of brands, mainly I think because you had to accumulate equipment and mostly people did it within one brand, or at least one brand per format—but most people weren't partisans. I blamed the onset of "fanboyism" (I always disliked the term, because it was a putdown) in part on the decision by CompuServe to divide its photoforums by brand—initially they weren't organized that way. (I wish I knew when that happened. Sometime in the mid-1990s maybe?) DPReview continued the same structure, and for a while it got kinda ridiculous—one way of attracting attention became the "switching announcement." Some guy would announce with great portent and much bloviation that X brand had finally disappointed him too grievously and he was decamping for brand Y, and everyone would happily fret and natter over it for a while, at their keyboards.

I never cared what other people shot with. A very early post on this blog read something like, "Should you shoot with Nikon or Canon?" And the answer was "Yes." That is, buy one or the other and go shoot. I still don't care what people shoot with. Make yourself happy; there are good and bad shooters within every brand, and for most cameras there are people who love it and people who don't. However, over the years I noticed that this blog would attract more people who were partisans of whatever brand I was shooting with at the time, especially if I stuck with it for a while and wrote about it frequently. I'd hop from Sony to Konica-Minolta to Panasonic to Sony to Micro 4/3 to Fuji, and people would somehow think that that mattered. It didn't, of course. I was just one guy with my gearhead hat on happily wasting money as we are all wont to do, with all the cool and pretty toys.

J'accuse!
It went further than that: I started writing about photography in 1988, and wrote about all sorts of brands over the years. And at some point I detected that if I wasn't identifiably partisan about any given brand, people would spread the rumor that I had some sort of animosity toward it. So, if I wasn't an out-and-out Leicaphile, then I had to be a Leica hater. And so on. Over the years I came across random accusations that I supposedly "hated" almost every brand there was. At one point, I even got accused by multiple personages of loving and hating the same brand at the same time.

Is all that "fanboy" nonsense actually dying down now? It could be. It might also be that I'm personally just stepping away from it more and more, meaning I'm not as keyed into it as I used to be. But I learned a long, long time ago to keep my ear to the ground, the better to hear far-off hoofbeats, and that's long been second nature. And I sense recently that brand partisanship seems to be settling down quite a bit. It could also be that the all the disputation has simply shifted to some other venue that I don't keep up with. I have to confess I haven't watched a YouTube camera review in months now, and I couldn't even name the big channels. It's possible I'm just losing touch, is what I'm saying.

Another possibility is that nowadays we just want all the cameramakers to survive. To do well and thrive. I feel that myself.

Survivors and thrivers
I went down the list of DPReview's "Cameras" tab and tallied the names that still seem to be around. There are 26 company names listed, and I disqualify Holga, a toy plastic film camera which for some mystifying reason DPReview includes. So there are 25 names. First, here are the names that haven't listed a new product since 2018 or earlier, along with the date of the last listed product:

• Agfa (2009)
• Casio (2016)
• Contax (2002)
• DxO Labs (2016)
• Kodak (2016)
• Lytro (2014)
• Minolta (1998)
• Rylo (2017)
• Samsung (2015)
• SeaLife (2016)
• Xiaomi (2017)
• YI (2017)
• Zeiss (2018)

There are several missing from that list, for instance Konica-Minolta and Epson, and a number of small former digicam makers such as BenQ, Sanyo, and HP Photosmart. But anyway, that's 13, which gets us down to 12. Of the ones that remain, "Olympus / OM System" is certainly much diminished, although it's disputed as to how it should be considered now. Ricoh and Pentax, listed separately by DPR because they used to be separate, are the same company now. GoPro (last introduction 2020) is looking a bit like it might be a fad that's fading. DJI makes drones and the Ronin Cinema camera. So for the purposes of the list let's give OM System the benefit of the doubt, merge Ricoh and Pentax into one, and set the others aside. That leaves ten eleven remaining active companies on DPR's list:

• Canon
• Fujifilm
• Hasselblad
• Leica
• Nikon
• OM System
• Panasonic
• [UPDATE] Phase One
• Ricoh (Pentax)
• Sigma
• Sony

That's just going from DPReview's "Cameras" tab. Are you aware of any that deserve to be listed as major going concerns that aren't included among those ten? I wouldn't be surprised if there's a obvious omission staring me right in the face. [UPDATE: Many readers suggested that Phase One is missing, so I've included them now. Although for some unknown reason DPReview doesn't seem to cover them.]

In the peak years (ILC and dedicated camera sales peaked in 2012), it might have been fun to pretend all the brands were fighting and that we had to help. Now, though, rather than fighting, it seems more like circle-the-wagons time. I don't want to see any of these ten eleven disappear. Do I want Olympus shooters to lose support? I do not. Do I want Ricoh to lose interest in making cameras? I sure don't; that would be a big loss. Do I want Fuji or Hasselblad to destroy the other as competition in medium format? Absolutely not. May they both prosper and live long.

Actually, rather than single brand partisanship, maybe now is the time for shooting more than one brand!

If so, maybe instead of "fanboy," we can call it being a "panboy." Pan being the prefix from the Greek πᾶν, pan, meaning "all." Okay, I've already admitted than my coinages are dopey and seldom catch on, bokeh being the only exception, so don't throw food at me, please!

That's all for today. Maybe it's already a little too much.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Mike Ferron: "I appreciate all brands and never liked the infighting that prevailed, especially between the Nikon/Canon sides. Then there was the format wars. So ridiculous really. If you are a pro, use what you need to use. If not, use whatever makes you feel good. Humans will divide over the silliest of things."

Albert Smith: "I'll admit to being a brand snob back in the day. I had little money, but I only bought top brands based on the technical data that use to be captioned under images in photography magazines and books in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

"I was a fan of certain photographers and bought gear based on what they used. For me, it was Nikon and Leica, and only lenses from those brands. I wouldn't be caught dead with a Vivitar or Tokina lens on my Nikon, and Leica M cameras had no third party lenses until Cosina under the Voigtländer moniker started in the early '00s, but not for me.

"It took a big leap for me to start shooting with Fujifilm cameras and to go to APS-C after only accepting full frame. My brand loyalty was challenged, and I now have dozens of Nikons and Leicas sitting unused with an arsenal of expensive lenses, collecting dust.

"You are right about the fanboy thing being less relevant based on the various sites I visit. Many people buy a four-figure body and are happy to put a sub-hundred-dollar Chinese lens on it. The lens was always the thing I'd never compromise on, but today no one seems bothered as long as you can appreciate the 'character' that the cheap lenses render.

"Today I ordered a TT Artisans 25mm ƒ/2 manual focus lens for my Fuji, $64. I guess I'm out of the fanboy club."

Michael Fewster: "You missed Phase One. This high end medium format company is very much alive. Arguably the best medium format cameras available. If you can afford them that is."

Aaron: "Clearly, you’re an OM System hater.  :-)  "

Juan Buhler: "Yeah, but you never really liked Pentax that much, huh Mike?"

Mike replies: Sigh.  :-)

s.wolters: "Amazon is the owner of DPReview. You cannot buy PhaseOne via Amazon but all the brands on DPReview you can."

Tex Andrews: "Oh, and one more thing: 'fanboy' is a banned word at DPR!"

Mike replies: I didn't know that. I'm pleased to hear it.

JH: "Blame advertising and marketing. They are dedicated to creating demand for new or existing products and loyal buyers. The beginning of modern advertising is probably David Ogilvy in the '60s—the 'Mad Men' era, which focused on image, e.g. the happy housewife with her new space-age gadgets or 'the man who reads Playboy.' A major shift occurred in the early '70s when Al Ries and Jack Trout published Positioning, the original guide to building brands. In a later book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Law 4 says 'reality is nothing, perception is everything.' Advertising and positioning created a 'us vs. them' atmosphere: Nikon vs. Canon, MAC vs. PC, Ford vs. Chevy, McDonalds vs. Burger King, Coke vs. Pepsi, etc., etc., etc. Positioning created the idea of brands and the conflict between brands created the 'fanboys.' As long as we have advertising (especially with the 'influencers' on the Internet) and choices, I bet we will have fanboys."

Rob de Loe: "The whole concept of being fanatically loyal to the products of large corporations of any type is ludicrous to me. I have no loyalty to brands at all.

"They're tools. Make a good tool that does what I need well and I'm your customer."

Michael Fewster: "Wearing brands is another aspect of this. If you want me to advertise your brand with a large logo on my T-shirt or anything else, then pay me. Same goes for camera straps with huge Canon, Nikon, or Sony written all over them. I will never wear such things. If my memory serves me correctly, it was Camel that started this. Somewhere in the late '50s/early '60s they came out with a T-shirt with a large logo on it. Camel and the rest of the commercial world were staggered when it became a fashion thing. People bought them in huge numbers. The advertising world was incredulous. The public would actually pay to wear advertising. The rush was on."

Middle Class Cameras

Re "standard mainstream" in regard to enthusiast cameras, here's how Canon Japan classifies its own cameras, translated from Japanese per its domestic market website:

'Professional': EOS-1DX Mark III
'High Amateur': EOS R3, EOS R5, EOS R6 Mark II, EOS R6, EOS R, EOS 5D Mark IV
'Middle Class': EOS R7, EOS R10, EOS RP, EOS 6D Mark II, EOS 90D
'Entry': EOS Kiss M2 (M50 Mark II), EOS M200, EOS Kiss X10i (Rebel T8i), EOS Kiss X10 (Rebel SL3), EOS Kiss X90 (Rebel T7)

Mike
(Hat tip to Oren Grad)

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Stéphane Bosman: "Isn't that simply too many models? Five entry-level cameras! Twelve models for people who are between consumer and pro! Really?"

Pentax to Build New Film Camera?

I haven't caught up with this yet—there are various teasers and a press release, and I haven't seen or read everything carefully yet—but it appears that Ricoh is exploring the idea of building and marketing an all-new Pentax film camera.

I've been waiting for years for this to happen; it was inevitable that it eventually would. The huge market in unwanted used film cameras destroyed the market for new 35mm cameras (although Leica still makes several legacy models for its usual very high prices). As the used market stiffens—vintage cameras have been going up in price over the past few years—and the old cameras themselves continue to age, it became obvious that someone would eventually decide the time was right to build a new one. Helping the situation is the fact that film photography, in a manner very similar to the market for vinyl records, has rebounded modestly in popularity. (Vinyl records declined to less than half a percent of the market at one point and appeared to be about to disappear altogether, before rebounding to as much as 6% market share. Revenues from vinyl, although not unit sales, now exceed that from CDs.)

Anyway, I hope to catch up on the "Pentax Film Project" situation after Christmas. If the "first" post-crash new film camera turns out to be a Pentax, however, nothing would please me more. Pentax made some of the very best MMM (metal, manual, mechanical) cameras over many years, from the beautiful Spotmatic through the MX to the professional LX. I owned many of them over the years.

I have only one piece of advice for the makers of the prototype: I would urge them to make every function integral. As someone whose dominant eye deteriorated physically over the years (ending in a partial cornea replacement), I encountered a peculiar problem with old cameras: a lot of them required add-on diopters, made available for the cameras when new but not always easy to find for older, discontinued cameras. I'm probably wrong about this and a real camera collector will no doubt correct me, but I believe the first built-in diopter correction was found on the Olympus OM-4. The Pentax LX had it, although it was implemented as part of the replaceable finders on that camera, and exchangeable finders would not be needed on a new camera. Built-in diopter corrections means users in the future won't have to embark on frustrating hunts for elusive add-on lenses that by then will be very scarce. (This goes for non-standard strap connectors too, Pentax.)

Picture taken with 1960s Pentax Spotmatic and Super-Multi-Coated Takumar

Of course my hope would be that the makers of the prototype could dispense with all the annoying gee-whiz features that are no longer needed now that digital has taken over so many workaday functions. There's no longer any need for high-speed motor drives, very high shutter speeds, flash, or silly features like multiple-exposure buttons. Any pragmatic task that a digital camera does much better just isn't needed on a new film camera, which can accordingly be simplified to its essence.

But the camera will be made with Japanese connoisseurs in mind, among whom are to be found some of the world's most devoted camera mavens and experts. It will be very interesting to see, if indeed we get to see, what Pentax opts to make for such a target clientele.

More on this in the new year, I hope.

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

Original contents copyright 2022 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

ONE: The Twelve Links of Christmas 2022*: Leica Q2

Leica Q2 and Q2 Monochrome

As if to emphasize one of the comments I made about videos the other day, I've just spent half the morning trying to find a segment in a video I just watched recently and cannot find to show you. It's a spot in a woodworking video where the presenter talks about tools. The point he makes is that you shouldn't feel bad about dropping money for good tools if you want to, even if you're at an early stage of your involvement and feel like you haven't quite earned the right to own them yet. Good tools are helpful to beginners and make learning easier.

It echoes something I heard long ago about custom-fitted golf clubs. A salesman in a huge junk-filled pro shop in Chicagoland explained to me that even though they never buy them, beginning golfers are actually the people who could benefit the most from a high-quality set of fitted clubs. He said he was a scratch golfer—zero handicap—and had been playing golf all his life, and had played in semi-pro tournaments and tried Q-School. He had played with many club sets over the years and could easily adjust to anything within a few hours. Beginners who are learning their swing for the first time are the ones who would benefit from a set of clubs that they didn't have to adjust to. But he added with a sigh that no one ever took this advice, that beginners never buy good clubs. The idea that they aren't yet good enough for good clubs was too ingrained. He was quite an Eeyorish, melancholy fellow, with a fatalistic attitude. And he wasn't actually trying to sell me anything—he had already qualified me and satisfied himself that I had no money and wasn't going to buy anything.

I've heard the same thing about acoustic guitars—that good ones are much easier to play. Presumably Molly Tuttle or a virtuoso like Marcin can play on anything, but a beginner would be best advised to buy a good instrument from the start because it's better to learn on. I don't know personally if this is true.; it's just something I heard.

Stuck in the tarpit
I'm half convinced that the same is true of cameras. I've been working with students, amateurs and newcomers in many capacities for more decades now than I care to mention, and I've observed pretty consistently over many years that newcomers insist on buying cheap starter cameras because they're convinced that that's what's appropriate for their level. But then they immediately get distracted with cameras and shopping, which of course has nothing at all to do with learning how to photograph. This preoccupation with gear can last for a number of months only if they're lucky—most often they get mired in it for years, and, in fact, quite often the distraction proves terminal. They get into gearheadism and never get back out of it. Instead of getting into pictures, learning how pictures work and learning how to shoot, they devote themselves to learn about specs and tech and the industry and all the endless minutiae of techniques they don't even know they need and never quite get around to concentrating on actual photography.

The Leica Q2 is a perfect antidote to all that. It's got a fixed 28mm lens, same as the basic focal length on many smartphones so it will be familiar, and since you can't interchange the lenses you never have to worry about getting more lenses. And it's very simple and straightforward to use, unlike many good cameras. (Check out this T-shirt I ran across the other day.) And it's a Leica, which for better or worse is the only Veblen Good in the camera universe, and has the reputation of being the best of the best. One of the best reasons to own a Leica and a Leica lens is that you never have to wonder about and worry about whether a Leica would be better than what you've got.

If you were to get this for Christmas, you could then dive right away into learning how to arrange and organize pictures, learning how to translate the three-dimensional visual world into two dimensions, learning how to find and interact with subjects, learning which pictures people respond to, learning what your own visual concerns are, learning how to process and edit...in short, learning how to photograph. You won't need to worry about whether your equipment is good enough.

I'm not saying it's necessary to buy a great camera right from the start and be done with it. But it's a more valid and viable option than most people give it credit for.

And you might not even be able to afford another camera for a long time, which would probably be a good thing.  :-)

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

*A list of a dozen beautiful gifty things in the spirit of the season.

Original contents copyright 2022 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David Drake: "Your argument of beginners having good tools couldn’t be any more ‘sound’ when it comes to acoustic guitars (or any stringed instrument for that matter). I would like to add to previous comments, that the most important reason for this is that a cheap guitar will not stay in tune! I learned this for myself after buying a super cheap used guitar at a church sale to see if it might be something I would like to pursue. I didn’t know how to tune it properly so a guitarist friend helped. It stayed in tune for about five minutes. My friend told me to get rid of it immediately."

ASW (partial comment): "Regarding the purchase of quality tools, there is another option in the introductory/trial phase and that is renting. At the beginning of the pandemic, my wife decided to fulfill her long-term desire to learn to play the cello. She started by renting a decent cello for six or nine months to make sure that she actually enjoyed the lessons and practice involved, after which she found an independent luthier in our region from whom she bought a decent quality used cello. Let's call it a Nikon D700-level cello; pretty good, not the newest or flashiest, but better in some ways than the cello she had been renting. We found the process quite interesting as he was an older (70s?) fellow who seemed to enjoy talking about his work and the dozens of instruments under repair in his shop. We ended up spending over an hour with him and he asked lots of questions about her experience and goals with the cello and used that information to help her select from his stock. She recently returned for a tune-up, new strings, and a better quality bow."

Kristine Hinrichs: "The truth of the matter is that most photographers could have purchased at least one (likely two) Leicas for what we’ve spent over the years 'upgrading' from this camera/lens or that to the newest model."

John Krumm: "The 'buy quality' approach is definitely true with flutes, in my experience. I started playing the flute in summer school before fourth grade. My parents bought me what they could afford, a used middle-grade brand, not great. My instructor could make it sing. But I could never hit the lowest and highest notes. One day (later in middle school) I tried out my classmate's new, expensive German flute. All of a sudden, I had way more range. And that was part of how we were assigned our chair positions in the band; we had to play the chromatic scale, at speed, from the lowest to highest note. I never did get the nice flute, and I quit playing after ninth grade. That's one thing I appreciated about Olympus DSLRs when I started photography. They put many of their best features even in the lower models."

brian: "My wife, legally blind, is a fiber artist and quilter. She was 'to-and-fro-ing' about a new sewing machine, as she had trouble sewing straight lines: not important for the art, but quilt show judges do not make allowances. Anyway I got a great machine for her and she, excuse the pun, has never looked back. She is now winning quilt show awards."

Mike replies: That makes me want to root for your wife. Good for her! I see great quilts made by the Amish and Mennonites around here. I always stop to admire them.

Keith: "Similarly applies to the shooting sports, where it's widely recognized that a firearm that properly fits the shooter's proportions and has a smooth, crisp trigger will be much easier for a beginning shooter. An experienced one knows how to adapt and compensate. "Regarding camera choice, that factored into my decision to go with the Olympus E-M1 series and a trio of pro-grade lenses. I was content to make the best prints I could make up to 22" size, and knew I couldn't blame failure on said equipment. Several years later and no regrets on my choice, so I don't have to second guess my gear and can move on to the important things like composition, lighting, and camera straps.  :-)"

ELEVEN: The Twelve Links of Christmas 2022*: Nikon Z7II

Nikon Z7II

By 2020, the camera market had fallen to approximately 7.4% of what it was in 2011. That's a tremendous decline. Much of it is accounted for by the rise of decent cameras included in smartphones, which wiped out the market for high-volume digital point-and-shoots. In 2021, 93.8% or so of the remaining interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) market was divided between just five companies: in order, these are Canon, Sony, Nikon, Fuji and Panasonic—and the top three of those account for a whopping 83.7%. All the other brands, for example Ricoh, Hasselblad, OM System, Leica, Sigma, and many smaller and specialty brands, share only the remaining 6.2% of the market between them. In the top five, Canon, Sony, and Fuji have generally been increasing in market share in recent years, whereas Nikon and Panasonic's fortunes have been falling. It's worth pointing out that although Canon had more than twice the market share of its next-largest rival, Sony, Sony, with its formidable head start, was actually preeminent in 2021 in the all-important full-frame mirrorless subcategory.

Nikon, which was the premier professional brand from the 1960s to the 1990s, is no longer even one of "the Big Two." Although it retains outsized mindshare, especially among those of us of a certain age, it was overtaken by Sony in the late teens, and in 2021 fell sharply against its rival, to 13.7% versus Sony's 22.1%.

These numbers don't tell the whole story, though. Although very late to the field of full-frame mirrorless (FFM), Nikon got to start with a clean slate when it introduced the Z System in 2018—mostly full-frame with a few DX (APS-C) models, all mirrorless—with basic design specs that allowed its lens designers great freedom. As with Canon in 1991 when it introduced the EOS line, this initially caused some, er, adjustment among its existing clientele. Understandably—Nikon had stuck with the F-mount, with certain amendments, since the 1950s! However, the lineup has proliferated vigorously since then, and there doesn't appear to be a dog in the bunch. Nikons are much liked by our readership of experienced photographers and veteran amateurs. In particular, many feel that Nikon's engineers bested Sony in intangibles such as hand-feel, ergonomics, and control placements. And there's never been anything wrong with Nikkor lenses.

We tend to like and recommend "sweet spot" models as opposed to extremes (most portable, highest spec, etc.)**, and the sweet spot in the Z System you might say is shared by the 6 and 7 duo. The first half of the duo is the simpler and more basic but still very high-quality Z6 and Z6II. We recommend the former, which is on sale for $600 off this holiday season at B&H Photo with the standard very good zoom lens. It was cheaper to start with than the Z6II, which offers only a few incremental improvements that won't be reflected in the user experience for most. It's a relative bargain and is a very solid choice. Here's the link to a similar kit but with the more recent mark II version of the body. Meanwhile, the higher level Z7II is the latest version of the better-spec'd mid-line model with all the bells and whistles, for those with fatter wallets and/or more affection for special features and specific capabilities.

These cameras are below the Z9 in the Nikon line. However, note that both these cameras are far more capable, and capable of more beautiful results, than perhaps 99% of the digital cameras ever made. As appealing as it may be to chase "the best," it's worth it only if you have a specific need for something the highest model can do; just owning the extreme is a temporary feather in your cap in a constantly moving market, and nobody will be able to tell from your pictures that you parted with the premium. But by all means suit yourself: the Z9 is currently $5,496.95 at B&H.

Mike

*A list of a dozen beautiful gifty things in the spirit of the season.

**And pros, at whom the top models are targeted, seldom need advice from bloggers and YouTubers anyway.

Original contents copyright 2022 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Thomas Rink (partial comment): "To sum it up: The Z7II is a small but well-made and powerful camera. Ergonomics are great—it is almost impossible to change a setting by accident. Battery life is not a problem either, as I was able to shoot for three hours at about 0°C, and still had 50% charge remaining. In my opinion, this is definitely a fun camera!"

Warren Hinder: "I am fortunate to have both a Z7II and a Z9. Apart from the physical size differences, the ergonomics and functionality of the Z9 is near perfect. For landscape photography the Z7II is excellent, light, and well matched to the ƒ/4 Z lens range. For any action work, birding, etc., there is no comparison between the Z9 and Z7II. I never thought I would go back to a camera of this weight and size, but the Z9 is such a joy to photograph with. It reminds me every day why I have been a Nikon user for nearly 50 years."

Sony A7R V: Taking Bets

The newest high-resolution Sony is here. It's the A7R Mark V, and is STBI™ ("said to be improved"). I'm sure it's a very good camera for $3,898. The last one was, and that one got a price increase too. The cynical might wonder—do they jack up the price to cover the improvements, or do they contrive the improvements to justify jacking up the price? Maybe a little of each.

V is the roman numeral for five, of course, and I find myself wondering how high the iteration number will eventually go. Things like this usually settle into patterns, sooner or later. The average automotive model cycle, for instance, lasts four to six years, with a "mid-cycle refresh"—meaning, they change a few things that are obvious to the eye, to expose earlier ones as out of style; fix any glaring problems from the original if they haven't already; and add a little dosh to the pricetag.

With cameras, repetitive iteration seems to be the norm. It happened before the "mark [x]" trend, too. I remember reading long ago that when a camera company hits on a model that's particularly successful, that model tends to sprout variants and updates. The camera being talked about at that time was the Canon EOS 620 (1987), so that goes back a ways. I owned one of its variants, the EOS RT.

I'm simply not enough of a gearhead to know this off the top of my head, but my intuitive impression is that most successful camera "lineages" tend to last for five to seven iterations. At least, a few of the ones I remember do. For example, the Nikon F lasted for six...there was never an F7. How about the Sony F-505? I can't track them one by one, but DPReview called the F-717 the "fourth generation" and later noted that the F-828, the last of the line, was "clearly" descended from the F-717. Then it went kaput. So, five. How about the Olympus OM-1 film cameras? I count the OM-1, OM-1N, OM-2, OM-2N, OM-3 (the mechanical model that worked without a battery, once highly prized and very highly priced on the used market, but now affordable again), and finally the OM-4 and OM-2S. That's seven, although it includes the "N" updates—questionable—and leaves out a few variants that had top and bottom plates made of titanium.

How many iterations were there of the original Canon 10D? I'm not sure. How about the Olympus XA pocket point-and-shoot, which evolved into the Stylus? Can anyone help us out here and count out the lineage of any particular model lineages that they're personally familiar with? I tended to pay attention only to the makes-'n'-models I was personally interested in or owned.

Leica headache
Count on the Germans to throw a wrench into the generalization. Try counting the lineage of, say, the Porsche 911. It's like the old Philosophy 101 problem of the Ship of Theseus—the newest one has almost nothing in common with the first one except the name and, very vaguely, the shape. The Leica M lineage might have a few more than seven, but it depends on how you count. I wouldn't count the one-off models, and I wouldn't count the M5, because it wasn't really the same camera as the rest of them. And how would you count the new M6 and old M6? One model or two? Here's how I'd count them, in order: M3, M2, M4, M6 early and late, M7, MP/M-A. So, six. But that might be too convenient, counted in such a way that it fits into my predetermined scheme. If you count all the variants and include the M5 and M1, then the M is an outlier. Either way I certainly would not group the digital M models with the film lineup—those are stylistically replicants, but fundamentally different. That lineage started with the M8 and extends, so far, to the M11.

How about the Olympus C-2000Z lineage? How many cameras were included in that before it fizzled? Or the Nikon Coolpix 900/950 lineage with the famous swivel body? My brother had one of those, and that was really a fun camera to use.

Is there any digital camera that has reached Mark VIII—eight? The indefatigable Sony RX100 has reached Mark VII status, despite the blitz of the iPhone/Android locust swarm. The celebrated Fuji X100 is up to Mark V and still going strong. How would you count the Ricoh GR models, film and then digital?

So then, how many iterations do you guess will the venerable A7R eventually rack up, before Sony finally overhauls its position in the lineup and makes an all-new model? It can't go on forever.

I have no crystal ball. But then, I've never been a betting man.

Mike

Featured Comments:

Kenneth Tanaka: "The apparent invisible boundary on model sequences is based solely on marketing psychology rather than technological incrementalization. (Sony’s A7R V offers the same resolution with a new processor and AI-based AF enhancements.) But, yes, I’d bet that an 'A8' or similar marketing reboot will come next, if the line continues."

Joseph T: "Olympus E-PL1 through 10, skipping 4."

SteveW: "iPhone 14."

Robert Roaldi: "There was no Canon G8, I don't believe, and they skipped G13 and G14 to go straight to G15 and then G16. (The G7 did not support RAW, an anomaly.) So, not counting the G7 because of the RAW omission, there were 12 iterations."

Dan Montgomery: "The 'Grand Tour' guys (formerly the 'Top Gear' guys) report that Subaru has sold 212 versions of the Impreza, grouped into five 'generations.' Impressive—and impressive cars, though I don't think I'd like to actually meet anyone who can talk about all 212 variants."

Søren Engelbrecht: "Time for my old Leica joke, it seems:

Q: 'How do the locals count to ten in the city of Wetzlar?'
A: "3, 2, 1, 4, 5, 4.2, 6, 7, 8, 8.2, 9, 240, 10.'"

Mike replies: Made me laugh anyway!

Michael McCulloch: "Ship of Theseus? I prefer Trigger's Broom:

Mike replies: Love it. Nice skit. That's like Howard Mansfield's book about restoring things, The Same Ax, Twice.

2022 Leica M6 Price

Rob Campbell writes: "Film only makes sense if it returns to pre-digital price levels."

Actually, in the case of the 2022 M6, it did.

The new Leica M6 costs $5,295. That's virtually the same as it was in 1992, which was pre-digital for almost all of us.

I found this at Photo.net, posted by "JDMvW." He reports that it's from Popular Photography in July of 1992:

And I ran that through the U.S. Inflation Calculator maintained by CoinNews, and got this:

Q.E.D.

I'm not trying to help you rationalize a purchase, mind you. Film still costs a lot, in money, time, and effort, and it's a PITA, and there are tons of other options for those who want to shoot "miniature format," as it was sometimes called way back in the 1930s and '40s. I mean 135, a.k.a. 35mm. (What's in a name? We now call it "full frame.") And make no mistake, the Leica M6 was extravagantly expensive in 1992. That was the year I bought mine. I paid $2,000 for a used one, saving ~$500, along with another $1k for a 35mm Summicron, which was roughly 3–4X what you'd pay for the equivalent Canon or Nikon lens then. But you can't deny that the 2022 M6 costs the same as it did in 1992, adjusted for inflation. I love to complain about Leica prices, and don't worry, I'll continue to be all sour-grapey. But ya gotta give credit where credit is due.

A fortune hanging from a strap
I had a couple of problems with my M6 that were related to price. First, I felt exposed carrying around $3k on a strap on my shoulder. It was too much for me to lose, and I was often conscious of it. It felt a little like holding someone else's infant. Second, I couldn't justify keeping the M6 after I switched to Olympus and bought an OM-4T, a camera that suited me much better and that I did better work with. It was too much money to keep tied up in a camera I wasn't using, at that time. I was "forced" to sell it. I subsequently owned two other M6's, including actor Jack Lemmon's. I sold Jack's M6 to Art Elkon, who passed away a few years ago. Don't know what happened to the camera.

But I did shoot with the M6 for a solid year, in '91–92, and did a lot of shooting, carrying it with me every day ("I put my camera on in the morning and take it off in the evening, like my shirt" —David Vestal) and it's an experience I'm very glad I have under my belt. Remember "The Leica as Teacher"? One of my more popular essays here.

Now if someone would just create an updated and upgraded new version of the OM-2N—and sell it for the same price as one cost in 1984, adjusted for inflation—then you'd really have something!*

That is all,

Mike

*If you ask me, one bargain 35mm film camera to check out these days if you want to shoot FFF (full frame film, guffaw) is the little-known and even less appreciated Olympus OM-2S. It had the simplicity of the OM-2 and OM-2N, but with weather sealing, and much of the guts, including the same shutter, of the fancier OM-4T, the flagship at the time. (Using the flash drained the battery, which explains some of the market's aversion—so then, just don't use it with the flash.) The OM-4T is also a great camera, but its fancy metering features, though deeply beloved of gearheads (including Yr. Hmbl. Ed.) when it was current, were actually of pretty limited usefulness practically speaking. Today, OM-4T prices are higher, as they are for all "apex" models, no matter how old. It still costs more to buy a Leica IIIg than a Leica IIIf! People want the latest model even when the latest model is 65 years old. Makes no sense to me. It's that MMB complex I mentioned the other day.

So get an OM-2S and then spring for a thorough CLA (clean lube adjust) by a reputable repair-person—John Hermanson might be at the top of that heap for old OM film cameras. It will give you a lot of what you can get from a brand-spanking new 2022 M6, minus the status of the latter among the limited coterie of the cognoscenti of course.

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, Second Edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. UPDATE: When I posted this "Book of the Week" two days ago, Amazon said it had ten copies left at a reasonable price. Well, look at the price now! Guess I'd better go find a new book of the week. Timing is everything.  :-)

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Lothar Adler: "I am always surprised that the Zeiss Ikon ZI rangefinder camera is almost never mentioned, although it is a really very good camera and has everything you need. Including a very good viewfinder with a much larger measuring base for better focusing than with a Leica—I had tested both in parallel with the same lenses and finally bought the ZI, with which I am very satisfied. Unfortunately not digital, which I am almost embarrassed to confess."

Mike replies: I certainly mentioned it!

Peter Tutt: "I am with you Mike with the OM2S. I bought one new back whenever for the spot metering. Great for the street too, hold it upside down, 28mm lens, and nobody knows. I put a heap of T-Max 100 through it and it's still going strong. Gem of a camera!"

The Ultimate Icon: Leica Re-Introduces the M6

Even the box is an homage

"Iconic" is a buzzword that is heavily overused now—everything mildly familiar, no matter how trivial, is called "iconic"—but, today, Leica re-introduced the, yes, iconic M6 film camera.

The new version is highly respectful of the 1984–2002 original, down to having "Leitz" on the red dot. Which might have taken some doing—the founding Leitz family sold Leica in 1986 and originally forbade the new owners from using the cherished family name. However, the new one's not an out-and-out replica. There are a number of technical updates and luxurious touches.

• All optical surfaces will be coated. At one point, under earlier owners, Leica tried to cut corners with coatings in the rangefinder optics. Users for a spell complained of spurious reflections in the finder, a problem Leica hastily fixed without admitting there was a problem.
• The top plate will be made of brass with a tough black lacquer. (Black paint is—all right—iconic.)
• The original M6 (basically the Canadian M4-P with an uncoupled light meter cleverly added) just had two little arrows that told you which way to turn the aperture ring to get proper exposure. Later models added a red dot in between the two arrows as confirmation of correct exposure; the new M6 has the red confirmation dot.
• The shutter speed dial is the right size and turns the right way! A victory for the way things are supposed to be.
• A low battery warning has been added. All right, but it took more than a year to run down the battery in an original M6. The quaint but pleasing custom was to replace the battery every year on your birthday, whether it needed replacing or not. You apparently need a newfangled nagging nanny warning. Okay, we're good with that. Me, I hate the tire pressure warning system in my Honda. The old tire pressure warning system was me with a pressure gauge, and it worked much better. Am I digressing again?

There is also a new and (gasp!) tiny (another win for the way things are supposed to be) 35mm Summilux V1 Steel Rim, which Jono Slack has been using for months now.

Cue gushy happy YouTubby comparos between vintage Leitz-labeled '80s M6's and the gleaming new one in 3, 2....

Mike

P.S. If you're buying one, a plea to wait until B&H has 'em for preorder so you can use my links...okay, you're probably not that patient. I understand. Go ahead, I'll eat cat food.  :-]

Book o' the Week

Leica M: Advanced Photo School by Günter Osterloh, second edition. My favorite of all the Leica gear books. And they are legion. You will actually learn practical stuff from this one. Used, but this is the latest edition from 2011.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Rob L: "Cool! My M6 is again a current model!  :-)  It's really the best M, so glad they brought her back."

John Krill: "I guess if I have to ask the price I can't afford it."

Mike replies: $5,295 body only. Bear in mind there are lots of choices for lenses that don't have to cost an arm and a leg and an arm. Especially from Voigtlaender and Zeiss.

Albert Smith: "Maybe this old-school lens might be a good compliment to the new M6. Leica is reissuing the first generation pre-aspheric 35mm ƒ/1.4 Summilux, same optics in modern body. You could drop 10 grand for the camera and lens. So glad the I bought my M6 when it only cost $2,000 in the late '80s."

Mike replies: Not that it matters, but I myself coined the term "king of bokeh," way back in '97. But not about the original of that lens.

Ned Bunnell: "Mike, regarding your B&H link, I was told the M6 will only be sold through Leica stores and Leica direct here in the U.S. And in very small quantities. So it’ll be interesting to see if B&H gets them."

Mike replies: Figures. So it's just another special edition after all, for collectors.

Ned: "Mike, this is not a special edition just for collectors. By 'small quantities,' I simply meant they’re being made by hand in Germany so production yields will obviously be much smaller than a company who builds a large production run at the start of a new model release. Depending on the response Leica gets, it could be awhile before you get your camera. I also am guessing that Leica knows what used M6’s are going for these days, so they decided they could capture a good percent of this money by offering a new model. I actually think this is a smart move on their part. Since they still have all the tooling for the M6, development costs are much less than designing and building a brand new model."

Rob Campbell (partial comment): "Film only makes sense if it returns to pre-digital price levels. Other than that, it’s just a silly conceit."

Luke: "Wait...you have to buy a whole new sensor after every few shots? How 'iconic.'"

Ernest Zarate: "Shortly after I got the settlement for the motorcycle accident in which I nearly lost my lower left leg, I bought myself a new M6. Looked just like this, presentation box and all. I got the Leica 35mm ƒ/2 lens, too. Terrific camera. So precise and extremely well engineered. Very…German. But it got sold a few years later so I could get the Mamiya 6.

"Now, that camera was a masterpiece. But I do think of my M6 now and then. I don’t regret selling it. And I’m not laying down the thousands of dollars for this brand new re-intro version (though if I had the do re mi…hmmm…). But I do think of it now and then. That Leica *snick* shutter mechanism was and is intoxicating. In the end, it wasn’t the right camera for me. We never really clicked, it and me. I never did any memorable or really meaningful work with it. Maybe in a sense it was too much camera, or, rather, it was too freighted with the Leica Legacy for me. It was too much a hurdle to get over. A camera (for me) has to be a tool, form following function, that gets me results. That just never happened with this camera. Anyway, it’s a very nice memory I have and I’m happy to see the M6 back."

Alan King: "It’s interesting that they re-issued the original 35mm Summilux. I owned one of the originals, made in Germany, from the second-to-last batch. For myself the lens was unusable wide open, though it was fine stopped down. It was my primary lens for 12 years or so because it was so small and light. When its value hit $3,000 it finally became too expensive to keep. I ended up buying three brand new Voigtländer lenses, and a certain peace of mind, with the money."

Coming Fuji X-T5 to Have 3-Way Tilt Screen

Fujirumors is predicting that the tilting viewing screen will be restored to the upcoming Fuji X-T5, due to be announced and shipped in November. It claims that the likelihood of this happening is "100%."

The new camera is also rumored to have 40 MP, and no vertical grip is planned. I've owned a vertical grip for my X-T1 for years and have yet to use it a second time, so I guess this doesn't alarm me personally.

Given that I still own an X-T1 and haven't really "taken" to the X-H1 for whatever reason, I ought to begin saving up for an X-T5. I have a lot of Fujinon X lenses.

More holistically, I hope that the existence of the X-H2[s] will mean that Fuji feels okay about not stuffing the X-T5 to the gills with gee-whiz features. Fujis were always fun to use, and that was arguably their best "feature."

Mike

Book o' the Week

Annie Leibovitz. At long last, the unlimited trade edition of the humongous, limited Sumo edition by Taschen. Mind you, this is still a huge book—15.4 inches high, 556 pages, and almost 13 pounds. And the price! (But that's nothing—the Sumo weighed 57 pounds and cost $7,500.) This is the closest ordinary folks (with ordinary shelves) will get to the ultimate Annie.

The book link above is a portal to any purchase at Amazon. You're very kind use our links, as they help support the site.

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:

Nico.: "According to the Fuji lens roadmap there’s also a 30mm (45mm eq.) macro lens due this year. With Fujicron form factor(?) Wasn’t ~40–45mm your favourite focal length, Mike?"

Mike replies: Yes, and both my current Sigma lenses are 45mm or the equivalent angle of view. There's nothing special about 45mm, it's just that many of us (not all!) have focal lengths with which we feel at home.