A short time ago I mentioned (in this post) the problem I had with Wi-Fi in the back room. Readers Vince and John Abee (and others whose names I can't find) recommended a mesh system.
So here's what happened.
I got a nice New Years present from B&H Photo, a gift certificate to thank me for being an Affiliate. I used it to buy a two-piece TP-Link mesh system, the Deco XE75. The two units are identical. One is used as a router while the other is a satellite. I needed to replace the Apple Airport Time Capsule ($600, replaced once by Apple) which Apple stopped making in 2016.
I could not be happier right now, just after installation. Using one Deco on the landing of my basement stairs where my modem is and one on the windowsill in my "problem" back room (a converted one-car garage with concrete walls under the new paneling), not only do I suddenly get coverage all over the house—a first—but it even reaches to the outdoor balcony, the covered porch in back, and the pool table shed in the back yard, where there was zero signal before.
SpeedTest of my Wi-Fi on the porch—
the highest numbers I've seen out here
Also, the speeds are suddenly much faster. The worst speeds with the TP-Link are better than the best speeds with the Time Capsule. I didn't even do any experimenting with the placement of the second unit—I just stuck it on the windowsill where it was handiest, and it works fine.
The Deco looks nice, too. Hence the name I guess.
My experience did deviate from that of some reviewers, in that setup was not so straightforward for me. I live in a rural area in a complicated 1880s house. I had to spend a lot of time on the phone with Chris from Spectrum, who was patient and cheerful. We did get the Deco running. I'm still not quite sure how. Lots of fiddling, basically. All is well now.
I haven't even had these set up for one day so far, so I can't speak to reliability. For performance, I'm more than happy.
Big kudos and thanks to the B&H Customer Service rep, identified as Michael M on the chat, who I talked to prior to buying these. Michael did a thorough job running down my options, and recommended these along with two other options at different price points. He told me I was going to see big gains in performance.
And he was right.
Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page
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 Abee: "Exactly the unit I use and couldn't be happier, but...for those on a tighter budget or those unsure about the mesh approach, Amazon currently has a crazy-good deal on the 3-puck Google mesh wifi system (~$125). This is not the latest version but is a solid performer. It was my house system until I bought the TP-Link Deco system, and is still serving us well at our place n North Carolina. Google manages the network through their Google Home app which is simple, powerful and bulletproof. Highly recommended if you just want to see if mesh is for you."
Ross A: "I’ve been running a mesh system for about seven years. First a Netgear Orbi system, then just about eight months ago I upgraded to a newer Asus. We had a technician install the first one, and he was laughing when we checked the before and after speeds—ten times faster than before. You’ll love it, Mike."
Greg Boiarsky: "I have had a love/hate (OK, mostly hate) relationship with Wi-Fi for what seems like centuries. First, I just suffered through bad range and rebuilt my digital life around the spots in the house that had signal. Then, I got a powerline Ethernet setup that would crash weekly. Finally, I got the Deco system. Like you said, it's a game changer. Highly recommended.
"Your upload speeds should be much faster. ISPs routinely throttle them, but they don't have to. If you aren't locked into your current ISP, I recommend finding one that could run fiber to the house. Given your location, this is highly unlikely. So, the next best thing is to get on the horn with Spectrum and renegotiate your current service to get higher upload speeds. I'm almost certain you could both improve your throughput and save money. As a general rule, you should renegotiate every two years or so."
The coolest hard drive I have is an earlier version of the Samsung T7 SSD, the T5. I use it for a second backup.
What is there to say about an SSD drive? Very small (only 3.3 in. / 8.4 cm long, 0.3" / .8 cm thick, and 2.12 oz. / 60 g); cool (i.e., doesn't get hot); and fast, with no moving parts. Compatible with Windows 7 and higher, Mac OS X 10.10 and higher, or Android 5.1 (Lollipop) and higher. It comes in 500 GB, 1TB or 2TB sizes, and in festive Christmas red, blue, or titan gray.
The red 1TB drive pictured costs only $105, which might not be the cheapest terabyte of storage you can buy, but it's not that much, either. A svelte, stylish, and yet highly practical little stocking-stuffer.
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:
Michael Fewster: "Agreed. I have the 2TB version along with my Mac Airbook M1 512. It has revolutionized my travel photography."
Kodachromeguy: "These are great. With an older Mac, load the operating system on the SSD, and the computer will boot up much quicker."
Apple Studio computer
This kicks off a list of a dozen beautiful, useful gifty-ish things in the spirit of the season. Starting with the Apple Studio which I want one of. That's not a grammatical sentence but.
It's a computer made especially for us: graphic arts and photo and video people, in the grand old Apple tradition, same as it used to be. I've talked enough about this before, but the Studio is the long-missing "model in the middle" for people who prefer to choose their own monitor or don't want to re-purchase another monitor every time they upgrade, which you have to do if you buy iMacs. For a long time we had the choice of the mini or the trashcan Pro—low end and compromised versus high-end overkill and with a Hefty-bag price to match. The studio splits the difference. It's got everything: small footprint, M1 chip(s), big fans, UHS-II SD card slot and a couple of ports on the front (be still, my beating heart), gobs of RAM, SSD drives, and I won't go on—you can read spec lists.
The Mac Studio, as I have also mentioned before, is one of the few examples in history of a manufacturer actually coming out with exactly what I thought it ought to. I'd be churlish not to be grateful. It will be my next computer, I hope. Bravo, Apple. Beautiful, functional, and elegant.
Mike
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:
darlene: "The Apple Studio is lovely. I work with my 27" iMac and will continue until the sad day appears when I must buy a new computer, and then it will be an Apple Studio or whatever they are producing that is similar. I do love my iMac."
Wes Pittman: "I recently upgraded from an iMac Pro to a Mac Studio and could not be more pleased. It's everything I hoped it would be. The best part: not getting another Apple keyboard."
SteveW: "I just got a Mac Studio about a week ago to replace my Mac Mini 2018. It's awesome and has solved every issue I had with the Mini, especially processing Fuji RAW files in DxO PhotoLab with Deep Prime noise reduction. A single file would take 90 seconds or more on the Mini; it takes 5–9 seconds on the Studio. Best computer I've ever owned. It is pricey but I'm feeling sure it will last me a long time. I usually get five years out of a computer. I will hope to go longer this time."
["Open Mike"—the name was suggested by Matthew Loveridge—is the Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. oft detours into topics arcane and bewildering.]
Lieutenant Commander James Davidson of the United States Navy landing on the deck of the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt during the trials of the Phantom jet in July, 1946. He was able to make multiple takeoffs without using the catapult. The first of which must have been a little hairy. (Photo from the Naval Aviation News, September 1946.)
I had one of "those days" yesterday—you know them I'm sure. It was more like two days actually. I went about that long without having my computer backed up. Which was a little scary. The Apple "Time Capsule" that serves as my router and backup disk had last backed me up back on June 2nd, and needed to be erased and rebooted. If those are the correct terms; I don't speak computerese. I'm now safely backed up on a spare SSD drive, which took 18 hours despite the promise of a 5GB/s transfer rate, and the system is now continuing to rebuild the main backup on the Time Capsule, starting last night, late. It's 34.7% done as I write this and continuing to work away at its task, bless its silicon heart.
Meanwhile, all of my digital images are not backed up at all. I don't have room anywhere. I suspect I really need to revamp my storage and backup systems, but I can't afford to do so at the moment, so that's that. What I need is a 4TB hard drive on my computer (mine is 500GB and I keep having to move stuff off it to make room—it has only 10% free right now and Apple recommends 15%), and to restore all my images (almost 2TB) to the main drive, and then two 4+ terabyte local backup drives and one in the cloud.
One thing you can't count on Apple for is to hang in there with stuff you buy from them. The company is all about creative destruction, and that means they move on regularly and frequently, never looking back. If they leave you stranded, well—what Apple customer has never been left stranded? Never mind Aperture; I still miss WriteNow. Anyway, Apple discontinued the Time Capsule in 2018, although the team that developed it was disbanded two years before that*.
I spoke to a total of five Support Advisors yesterday and Friday. The fourth of the five was having problems with her Mac(!!). I blurted out, "that's not good!" A Support Advisor having her own computer problems reminds me of Mitch Hedburg's emergency brake joke—it doesn't say a lot for the emergency brake. She put me only hold to reboot her own machine and never came back. I picture her somewhere in the world, South Carolina or New Mexico or Maine, calling another AppleCare Support Advisor to help her.
I finally got a real ninja named Andrew who lives either in Indiana, or Illinois where he came from (right on the Indiana border), Wisconsin where he has relatives, or California. I never did get his location in the world sorted out. He seemed not quite sure himself. We chatted whilst we waited for the computer to do something mysterious that I didn't understand. Andrew, number five, spoke computerese impressively at me, much of which went whistling through the atmosphere far above my head like phantom jets (or Phantom jets) hidden in the clouds.
Anyway, Andrew, after performing tests none of the others had suggested, solved the problem, explaining away at my uncomprehending ears as he went, and I was able to erase the backup hard drive in the Time Capsule while at the same time being protected by a backup on the SSD drive that I used to keep my music on. All of this took many hours I'll never see again. Apple takes a rap from some people who scorn it, but in my experience AppleCare is worth its weight in bitcoin. I seldom need them, but, when I do, they never give me a hard time about my privileges—my iPhone is my only covered device at the moment, technically—and they all act like they have nothing better to do in the world than hang on the line with me endlessly until all my problems are solved. Their lives are spent doing good, but also wasting a frightening amount of hours.
1984
I'm an Apple Mac OG. My first Mac was the first Mac: the Macintosh 128k (as they were called once the next model came out) of 1984. I cut my teeth on those in a computer class at the Corcoran, when they were still officially called "The Apple Macintosh," and then received the second model, the "Fat Mac," as a graduation present from art school. It had 512k of RAM, woo hoo. I've had a dozen or so Macs since then, half a dozen more if you count employers' computers at work. I've been through a lot of the iconic ones: I had an original "Blueberry" iMac after Steve Jobs played the cavalry and came over the hill at the last minute to save Apple, and an early PowerBook, and a sleek Quadra, even a shoddy desktop with self-esteem issues during the Scully interlude. The Macintosh 128k used a 3.5" floppy (which was not floppy—they were in stiff plastic cases—an early introduction to mystifying computerese) on which you could type ten pages of text before it filled up. When you ran out of space you had to swap floppies several times to transfer the writing program, MacWrite, called a "killer app" in 1984, to the next floppy. Things have changed since then.
So I guess I've always had problems with computer storage—it periodically presents growing pains. Computers are a wee bit faster and more capable now than they were when the Macintosh 128k was the hot seller. But, relatively speaking, I'm still having the same old issues, from time to time.
Mike
P.S. Is this post off-topic or not? I'm not really sure.
*I wonder if my dated Time Capsule, which was no overachiever as a router even when it was new, could be partly to blame for the fact that I can't get Wi-Fi in the family room.
Chris Nicholls: "Not off-topic at all. A good backup plan is essential to any photographer in the digital age. I've recently swapped to Mac after years of PCs. I'm using a 4-bay RAID NAS (Network Attached Storage) with 4 x 4TB hard drives for my main store of documents, photos and music files. That is inherently fairly secure from failure, but I have a separate monthly backup for that too. For the MacBook itself I run Time Machine backups to a 5TB WD Passport drive, one of the less expensive versions as it doesn't need to be fast. Once again I have a separate 4TB Passport drive for Time Machine backs that I hook up once a month. Yes, I am paranoid."
RubyT: "I have used both Macs and PCs—Macs in the early days because I worked for a newspaper and that's what my ex-husband had at home at the time. I remember getting him a 20MB external drive for Christmas. Now I have a PC because my younger son uses them and he literally built mine in my basement in 2015. Then he updated it with new huge storage drives about 18 months ago. I cannot beat the price of having a personal technician, so PC it is. I still back up to an external drive once a month, and I have Backblaze. It's possible I'm a touch OCD about back-ups. As I say that I realize I also can't tell if this post is OT or not."
John Shriver: "The Time Capsule was a time bomb. The case has no ventilation holes, at Steve Jobs' insistence. But it runs hot. There's a fan in there, but all it does is move the hot air around. The electrolytic capacitors in the power supply are only rated for 65°C ambient temperature, and it gets hotter in there than that. (They should have used 85°C parts.) As the power supply slowly suffers, it doesn't work quite right and causes data corruption on the hard disk. Scrambing your Time Machine backup. Mine tanked under warranty, and Apple replaced it. But when I filled it up, I switched to using directly connected 4TB USB disk drives for Time Machine. I still have the Time Capsule stored in the attic, and have dragged it down once to restore an old file.
"The Time Capsule was a decent WiFi device, but doesn't hold a candle to the last AirPort Extreme, which is superb (great radio and antenna design), but is getting dated (new WiFi standards). My AirPort Extreme covers all but one room, and there I have an AirPort Express connected (via wire) to cover that room. All of the Apple WiFi hardware is discontinued. The products were excellent, super reliable and secure software (NetBSD), but just not a high enough profit margin for Apple."
Mike replies: My first one also failed and was replaced under warranty. My current one is now five years old.
hugh crawford: "Re 'I wonder if my dated Time Capsule, which was no overachiever as a router even when it was new, could be partly to blame for the fact that I can't get Wi-Fi in the family room.' Just now you mention this? Well, yes."
Speed: "It is not off-topic. Anyone who takes photography seriously should also take the hardware, software and personal knowledge of his/her digital storage systems seriously. Very seriously.
"When I worked in research our chief would periodically ask, 'What will we do if the Brush breaks?' The Brush was a piece of equipment required to acquire the data that was the basis of our research. I had a backup plan—a spare system stored quietly in a closet that could be pressed into service in about an hour. We never needed it, but it allowed me—and my boss—to sleep at night.
"My photographs are stored...
1. One TB on my computer's 'hard drive' automatically backed up to the cloud using Microsoft One Drive. This is my working drive.
2. 16 TB (two copies of 8TB of data) on four external hard drives—one or two of the drives could fail without loss of data. To my computer this looks like a single 8TB drive which lets me easily view and edit the files.
3. The data on the external drives is automatically backed up nightly to an off-site location. I pay for this storage quarterly based on the amount used.
4. I sleep well. And my heirs will know where to find the pics—several generations of pics—when I'm gone.
"Coda: We've spent almost two years scanning, identifying, cataloging and enjoying almost 100 years of family photographs. Stored loosely in boxes and envelopes and suitcases, it's been a challenge that the next generation won't have. That's the plan anyway."
[There were several bad typos in this. Hopefully all corrected now, thanks to Jeff Schewe and Carl Weese and others. If you find something, please let me know. —Mike the Ed.]
-
Life used to be simple. You had sRGB and AdobeRGB, and you tailored your workflow to one or the other depending on the final destination of your pictures. Now there's P3 and other interlopers out there.
But we'll get to that.
First, if you are unfamiliar with color space, take a gander at this diagram. I shall then 'splain.
Common color gamuts (courtesy Myndex
Research, CC by-SA 4.0)
CIE 1931 is the big color blob in the background*. It basically graphs all the colors the human eye can see. The triangles superimposed on it represent a number of standard color spaces or gamuts. The CIE, or International Commission on Illumination, founded 1913, is the international authority on light, illumination, color, and color spaces.
Now then—in most still camera menus, if you navigate to "Color" or "Color Space," you'll see you have a choice of sRGB or Adobe RGB. The simplest form of color management, and one which works surprisingly well these days, is to set your camera on sRGB, shoot JPEGs at the best JPEG setting, view your images on a computer monitor that covers 100% of the sRGB color space (so you'll be seeing all of what your camera captured as you edit your pictures), edit in sRGB, and then export your pictures for viewing to the Internet. sRGB is the cookin' color space of the Internet. If you occasionally get a print made by one of the big commercial services, such as Shutterfly, Amazon Photos (I'm an Amazon Affiliate), Mpix, Snapfish, Printique, etc., you're still doing what you should, because all or almost all of those services calibrate to sRGB whether they tell you so or not.
If you don't shoot in sRGB and save your images as JPEGs, then you probably shoot raw. Raw is good. The advantages of raw are greater headroom, for corrections in post (post-processing, that is, in the image editing program), and better dynamic range. So why do we set our cameras to Adobe RGB if we're shooting raw, given that the raw file isn't tagged with a color space? Simply because it affects some of the camera settings, such as the histogram. The histogram and certain other affected settings will more closely represent the raw file if the camera is set to Adobe RGB.
But if we're printing at home, then we take the corrected raw file and convert it into Adobe RGB (or ProPhotoRGB). Or the editing programs we use do so. And here's why that is:
Courtesy ViewSonic
CMYK, as you probably know, stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key. "Key" means black, black being the key plate in a printing press, the plate to which the others are registered. CMYK are the basic colors used for the dots in printing presses as well as the basic colors of ink used in inkjet printers. Printer gamuts vary, but the graphs above makes it clear why we use Adobe RGB in preparation for printing. On the left we see typical printer CMYK colors overlaid on the sRGB color space, with the out-of-gamut colors filled in in black; and on the right, the same thing, but laid over the Adobe RGB color space. As this illustration makes clear, Adobe RGB can include many more of the colors available to the printer.
And that's why, if you're printing at home on a good pigment-ink printer like an Epson P900 or Canon Pro-1000, you want a monitor that's capable of showing 100% (or almost 100%) of the Adobe RGB color space. If you're only shooting for the Internet and perhaps Shutterfly et al., then sRGB is where you want to be, and that's when you can get by with a cheaper IPS monitor as long as it covers sRGB.
Color management made simple
Photography is a chain, and it's best to think of it that way. The standard term is workflow, or "the sequence of steps involved in moving from the beginning to the end of a working process" (Merriam-Webster), and I'm sure there are several words that would do as well—the "chain" means "the whole process from which camera you use to the final presentation of your image." The big advantage of specifying your own chain is that if you know where you want to end up, then you know where you have to begin, and what you need along the way.
If you conceive of a chain as a number of essential links, with each link having from two to hundreds of options, then there are many thousands of possible combinations. But let's take a look at two "chains" that reasonably typify two types of photography enthusiast, whom I'll label "hobbyist" and "maven." (Those aren't standard terms. You could make up your own names, such as amateur vs. advanced amateur.)
Hobbyist
Camera with APS-C or smaller sensor : kit zoom lens or in some cases a fixed** zoom lens : camera set to sRGB color space : shoot JPEGs set on "High" or "Fine" or whatever the top setting on your camera is : 24", 25", or 27" IPS monitor that covers 100% of the sRGB color space : basic free, low cost, or bundled Photo Editing program such as Corel AfterShot, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Photos for Windows 10, or Apple Photos : presentation through private device-to-device sharing or posting on the Web, augmented by occasionally having smallish prints made by one of the various printing services such as Shutterfly, Amazon Photos, Mpix, Snapfish, Printique, Costco (which still does prints online for members), etc., virtually all of which are standardized to work with sRGB files.
Maven
Camera with FF or larger sensor : selection of good-quality interchangable lenses : camera set to AdobeRGB color space : shoot raw : 27" or 32" IPS monitor that covers all or almost all of the AdobeRGB color space : at-home monitor calibration using a colorimeter such as the DataColor SpyderX : sophisticated purchased or subscription photo editing software that incorporates a raw converter, such as Adobe Lightroom, Phase One Capture One, DxO PhotoLab (which as of v.5 supports Fuji X-Trans files), or Corel PaintShop Pro, working in 16 bits : pigment-ink Canon or Epson home printer, commonly the Epson P900 or Canon Pro-1000 or higher : largish prints on fine papers such as Canson Platine or Epson Exhibition Fiber : stored in an archival clamshell box or museum solander case.
A simple way to control color is to settle on sRGB as your color space and JPEGs as your file type. Those are both camera settings: you choose them in the camera menu. It used to be that these choices sort of horrified the maven, who considered them inadequate. And they were, once upon a time. But that's dated information now. The fact is that JPEGs are very good with today's high-resolution cameras, and offer a reasonable amount of correction and recovery, and yield nice prints. If you need more, you'll know soon enough.
So what the heck is P3?
If you're shopping for monitors, one thing you'll come across is that some monitors don't specify the percentage of Adobe RGB they cover. Instead, they'll give the percentage of coverage for P3. What is P3?
Go back to the illustration at the top of the page. If you look at the P3 triangle, you'll see that it's roughly the size of the Adobe RGB triangle, but offset somewhat. P3 has its origins in DCI-P3, a color standard devised by Digital Cinema Initiatives, yet another group of experts like the CIE or the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created all the various JPEG standards), this one working for all the major movie studios. DCI-P3 is a standard for digital movies intended to be shown in darkened theaters.
So then shouldn't P3 be called DCI-P3? Not so fast; it isn't, exactly. Back in the top illustration again, see those little dots labeled "~6300 white point" and "D65 white point"? The DCI-P3 color space specifies a non-standard, slightly greenish white point. Why? To take into account the characteristics of typical xenon-arc digital movie projectors!
Starting with the iPhone 7, Apple allowed for P3 tagging in images and videos, because, you know, video has been infiltrating and effing-up our previously cozy little still-photography universe for some time now. (Ahem. Editorializing, Mike?) But it didn't want a greenish white point. So it created "Display P3," which is DCI-P3 but with a standard 6500K (K in this instance standing for "Kelvin," not "Key") white point. "P3" is short for Display P3. In 2017, Instagram followed Apple's lead and now makes accommodation for P3 workflows.
So a monitor that specifies P3 coverage and not Adobe RGB is just a manufacturer acknowledging that the monitor is more likely to be used for video than for still photography. If you want to know how much of Adobe RGB it covers, it might be easy to find out, or it might not be.
End of P3 digression!
In summary
So if you are a phone shooter who wants to get more into photography, or a color photographer who has a good camera but is stumbling around in the dark when it comes to color management (that's been all of us at one point or another, let's not lie), the trick is to start from the final disposition you intend for your pictures and then work backwards from there. If you mainly look at your pictures on a monitor, send them in emails or texts to friends, and only occasionally have a print made by an outside service bureau (as they used to be called and might still be for all I know), then sRGB is for you. Set your camera on sRGB and shoot JPEGs, choose an IPS computer monitor that covers 100% of sRGB, and save your edited pictures in sRGB, and you are the master of all you survey. I would still recommend calibrating your monitor regularly (meaning, every two to six months), using something like the SpyderX. You might think this is excessive and extravagant for your modest mid-range camera and a modest workflow, but it isn't—it's what separates the adults from the juveniles***. The whole Internet is standardized to sRGB, and it's not only how they see you that is affected. How you see them is affected as well! Wouldn't you rather see pictures as professional content providers intend them to be seen? I should think that if you like photographs, you would. A decent-to-excellent monitor without regular calibration is like Bugs Bunny without a carrot. That's why the best monitors come with calibration hardware, in some cases built in.
If you want to print your own pictures at home, on the other hand, then set your camera to Adobe RGB, shoot raw, and have fun with your super-powerful editing program, your beautiful if high-maintenance home pigment printer, and especially, all those awesomely gorgeous papers we can buy now! (But if you can do all that, this particular article has been too basic for you.)
And if you really want color management made VERY simple, as the title of this post promises? Why, then, do what I do—shoot with a monochrome sensor and work exclusively in black-and-white!****
Mike
*Well, the x-y coordinates of it, anyway—CIE 1931 is actually a three-dimensional plot, the Z dimension being luminance. For every point on Z, there is a different and unique x-y.
**A fixed lens is one that is permanently attached to the camera, whether it is a zoom (variable focal length / angle of view), such as the excellent Panasonic LX-100 II, or prime (single focal length / angle of view), such as the excellent Ricoh GRIIIx.
***Formerly "the men from the boys," but no longer gender-biased.
****You laugh, but that may be the only way color management can really be made truly simple. As I said last week, "Color management is a strange subject—you can get by with almost any amount of sloppiness if you're a slacker, but if you want real precision, you can get very far into the weeds with it."
Featured Comments from:
ADDENDUM: As I tried to reaffirm at the end of this piece, color management is actually not simple. But I disagree in substance with commenter Patrick Dodds, who writes, "Somewhere in all of this, the fun starts to dissipate." My experience in photography over many years is that you just do what you have to do in order to do the work you want to do. Cartier-Bresson said that it took him three days to master the Leica. When digital matured, Peter Turnley bought two DSLRs and hired an expert to help him master them; they put in three long days of intense work until Peter knew enough, and then he resumed his photography, picking up where he left off with film. Mark Klett managed to master Polaroid Type 55 Positive/Negative film, a touchy and cantankerous material that offered limited control, making beautiful and distinctive work with it (actually, come to think, he was the only one I know of who did). Richard Misrach felt he had no choice but to tame Cibachrome by mastering masking technique. It really doesn't matter where the difficulty arises; you just have to master your materials and methods to the degree you feel you need to. The corollary is that you don't have to master what you don't need: learning a great potpourri of techniques you'll never use is just a distraction, a different pursuit than the pursuit of pictures.
Again and again in my life, meeting great and good photographers, I found that most were deep masters of the specifics of their chosen techniques and surprisingly ignorant of others. That extended even to pros—I've written several times (because it amused me) about a studio pro I worked for who had $150,000 worth of pack-and-head strobes and other sophisticated lighting equipment in his studio and didn't know bupkus about on-camera thyristor flash units that mount to the hot shoe—the items most people call "a flash." He didn't use them. He knew nothing about them. He knew what he needed to know.
Almost no matter what "chain" you use, you will encounter specific questions and specific difficulties. You just need to keep gnawing at them until you either understand, or have to give up, or find a workaround. Technique is part of photography. We persist: we keep after it until we get it. Mastery is mandatory. Simple or involved, up-to-the-minute or antiquarian, narrow or broad, prestigious or "low-fi," highly technical or anti-technique—it doesn't really matter. All that matters is the work. Figure out where you want to end up, and then keep learning until you know how to get there. Just my suggestion.
Featured Comments:
Ernest Zarate: "Re '…the trick is start from the final disposition you intend (for your pictures) and work backwards.' In my 67 years, I have found that this approach works in many situations. Have used it for decades, and found very satisfying results. I stumbled upon it when I noticed a lot of people worked the other way: they’d get something and then try like hell to figure how to get it to do what they wanted. A very frustrating experience. Good article, Michael, with a terrific way of making a lot of this accessible."
Phil: "Thanks for this, Mike. It fills in several gaps in my knowledge about colour spaces, etc. And now I'm convinced, I really should get a calibrator for my monitor."
Mike replies: You really should. There's a reason many of the best monitors come with calibration hardware, or, in the case of the upper-range EIZOs, have it built in. The trouble is that there's not a lot of positive reward; it merely prevents a negative penalty. So there's not a lot of reinforcement for what feels to most like an excessive expense.
Monitors really run the gamut, no pun intended. Bad ones are remarkably horrible (well, for photography anyway), and good ones can be impressively wonderful. I'm working to write an article about how to buy an inexpensive monitor, but, after composing a list of minimum requirements, I've struggled to find a specific model that encompasses them all. Each one seems to have one little area where they skimp to an unacceptable degree on something—color space, bit depth, resolution, something. Different models skimp in different ways, but none of them quite come all the way up to my chosen minimum standards. Then I'll find one—only to discover that it isn't exactly cheap! I've been calling manufacturers and reading spec sheets till I'm bleary-eyed. It's really hard.
Niels: "Thanks! Now I don't feel as bad shooting JPEG only. I always get shamed if I mention that on an online forum. I didn't see the benefit of shooting RAW, only storage cost and wasted time in front of the monitor, so I stopped a few years ago."
Mike replies: I believe Ken Rockwell shoots JPEG-only as well. I've shot raw since Bruce Fraser's book came out many years ago, and still do, but I think JPEG in most camera is a much better option now than it was then.
David Haynes: "Many comments on this post mention ProPhotoRGB, which is the largest color space available in Photoshop and most other photo editing programs. I fit best in the 'Maven' category and shoot raw, use DxO PhotoLab to develop the raw files (exporting to ProPhotoRGB 16 bit), use ProPhotoRGB while editing, then convert to AdobeRGB for printing or sRGB for online uses. Photoshop is my primary editing tool, but my workflow includes quite a few other programs or third-party filters (Escape Motions, Topaz Labs, and so forth). I have found that using ProPhotoRGB while editing allows the tools to output the widest range of color, even though some may be 'out of gamut' for both the screen and printer. Converting to AdobeRGB for printing, or sRGB for the web, takes care of that. Perhaps I am going overboard and not really gaining anything by using ProPhotoRGB. However, the workflow works for me, and that is the bottom line."
Moose (partial comment): "Color management is fairly easy, if you don't care about absolute accuracy. Were I a catalog photographer, this would be crucial knowledge and skill. My employers would not want returns; 'Not the color in the catalog.' An argument may be made for photographing art for reproduction. But, do I want to have the reproduction in a book to look like the original in the quite dim, oddly balanced lighting in many museums these days? Or perhaps in the lighting in which, for which it was originally painted? In the bright lighting museums used to use, to make the art pop. Same problem with color portraiture. Hold up print next to subject; but our skin colors vary, with age, time of day, health, and so on, and is it in the light in which the photo was taken? Who can know exactly what color that dahlia, that house, that goldfinch, those fall leaves, that water, actually was? The answer is no one. Then (sigh), if you follow recent developments in human vision, it becomes clear that we see color in a very different way than do cameras. It is far from the neat, three color model we tend to imagine.
"It seems valid to me to adjust the photo, including color balance, saturation, etc. to reproduce what I saw in my mind's eye, even as I knew the camera would not capture than, but would capture the raw material for creating something close to it. So, sure, a reasonably well calibrated monitor, and decent printer profiles, etc. are useful, but not worth obsessing about."
Mike replies: That's very true. But if your "chain" of equipment, materials, and methods are giving you fits, and actively frustrating you, such that you're not able to "adjust the photo, including color balance, saturation, etc. to reproduce what you saw in your mind's eye," then rudimentary color management might be the thing that makes things easier. All a matter of balance, though, I agree.
Just two little extra notes to the foregoing about monitors...I feel rather like a dope, but I'm going to mention it, just in case anyone out there doesn't know it already. The downward-facing ports on the back of my NEC monitor were really hard to see and even harder to get at with the monitor set up in its usual position. Which bothered me. Until I realized, while watching a video tonight, that the monitor turns to a portrait orientation. Once turned, the ports are all on the side, and become easy to see and easy to access.
Ahem. Now you know, in case you didn't.
And secondly, if you are interested in the Datacolor SpyderX Pro Colorimeter so you too can experience the joys of a calibrated monitor, it's on sale at Amazon for $40 off. At B&H too. I assume by "Holiday Savings," they mean Thanksgiving, Homer said sternly!
Homer Mike
I'm very late catching up to this development—I hadn't been paying attention. But it looks very much like NEC has fled the field, in that it is no longer making wide-gamut color-corrected monitors for photography.
Mine is an NEC PA272W-SV. That model is now discontinued, and when I tried to recommend its replacement a couple of days ago after I mentioned it, I found that...there isn't one. There is no proper large-gamut replacement in the NEC lineup. The rep I spoke to when I called the company sounded resigned and fatalistic when I asked him about monitors for photography. He tried gamely to find a current NEC monitor that matched the specs of mine "most closely," but the one he found wasn't very close—it covers only 73% of AdobeRGB. Mine covers 99%. (See below.)
Alas. Even the formidable NEC PA311D that PetaPixel reviewed so favorably just last year is already gone.
Withdrawn
NEC—Nippon Electric Company before 1983—used to be the largest maker of PCs in Japan. "Once Japan's major electronics company," Wikipedia says, "NEC has largely withdrawn from manufacturing since the beginning of the 21st century." The division that makes monitors is now owned by Sharp. As recently as when I bought my PA272 back in this month six years ago, NEC seemed to be a clear go-to for wide-gamut monitors. No longer.
The "SV" in the model name of my monitor stands for "SpectraView," meaning that a hardware calibrator (called a colorimeter) and native software for it comes with the monitor. It's easy as pie to use—just turn the lights down low, drop it through the top hatch (really, there's a hatch in the hood for it), position it, and tell the app to go. It does everything itself. Takes less than 10 minutes and Bob's your uncle—completely calibrated.
Colorimeter doing its thang on Tuesday night
I admit I like having the colorimeter built in, but it's a luxury—all you really need is this $129 accessory, a DataColor SpyderX. Datacolor makes a full range of color management tools, all the way up to screen-to-print profiling with custom color patches (which include a fade indicator!). Color management is a strange subject—you can get by with almost any amount of sloppiness if you're a slacker, but if you want real precision, you can get very far into the weeds with it.
If you want to see something very nifty, check out this extremely short video showing the way the built-in calibrating sensor on the EIZO monitors works. Don't blink or you'll miss it!
Here's part of the report of Tuesday's calibration—the colored area is what the monitor will show; the faint orange triangle shows AdobeRGB, the color space I use to edit color photographs. (I convert to sRGB for posting on the Web.) There's a wee slice of colors down at the lower left hand corner—you can barely resolve it here—that is out of gamut in Adobe RGB on this monitor.
So what is the real replacement for my NEC? As you've gathered by now, it's not an NEC. Keith B., in the comments to the "Worst Lighting" post, said that based on specs it's the 27-inch EIZO ColorEdge CS2731. (Here it is on Amazon.) Two others that get mentioned often are some of the new upscale photography-centric models from longtime downmarket monitor providers; these include the Dell UP2720Q (B&H Photo) and the BenQ SW321C (B&H Photo). Of course the Leica of monitors is the Apple 32-inch Pro Display XDR, but you don't need that.
At the other end of the price scale—well, not all the way to the end, but as far as you want to go—something like the 25-inch Dell U2520DR would work well. Those get recommendations from respectable sources around the Web.
What are you doing?
The real trick in choosing a monitor is deciding what level of precision you actually need. It's up to you to decide what that is. To me, if you're a color photographer, you need a monitor that supports the color space you typically work in. If all you ever work in is sRGB, then buying a monitor is easy. And you need a way to calibrate the monitor, so what you create stands a chance of looking the way you want it to look to other devices. Glare resistance and consistency at different viewing angles were issues that were important to me. And you have to keep in mind what you want to do with it—you do not want a gaming monitor for photography, for instance. Those are TN monitors with poor color accuracy.
A good IPS/LED monitor stands an excellent chance of lasting for ten years, so maybe the best way to look at price is to take what it costs and divide it by ten to get a yearly cost. Then decide if it's worth it to you to sit in front of something worse every day of your life. I guess I'll keep my "old" NEC for as long as I can. So far so good. I'm sorry the go-to is gone, but we'll adapt.
Mike
Featured Comments:
Brian Stewart (partial comment): "Earlier this year I also discovered the exit of NEC from the serious monitor field, when my 12+ year old EIZO CG222 died. I struggled justifying another EIZO, and the pain was prolonged when there were supply issues with the models I was considering. I eventually bit the bullet and bought another EIZO that, if I was really honest with myself, I couldn't justify given my current usage. But it's comforting to have a monitor that self-calibrates and that I can trust."
Jeff: "For me, the ‘Leica of monitors’ is one of the EIZOs (with built-in calibration). Each prioritizes optimal viewing for photographers, albeit at a premium cost. My 2009 NEC, with SV, is due for an upgrade, and it’s EIZO I’ll soon be buying."
Ronny A Nilsen: "I have the EIZO CS2740 that I love. Having a display with more resolution (4K) is important for me (in addition to calibrated colors and light intensity) when editing photos and getting a feel for the sharpness of the image. The added resolution is also very good when surfing the net and reading as well, higher resolution renders the fonts more accurate and makes reading more pleasant."
Mike replies: I would also get a higher resolution model if I had it to do over again. The higher-res model of the EIZO Keith recommended is the CS2740. Text at that resolution is kinda tiny, but you can scale it to a lower resolution in the "Displays" pane of the System Prefs for larger text, and at least you can see images in high res when you want to.
Ger Lawlor: "My NEC Spectraview Reference 2690 has been retired. The illumination got quite uneven across the screen. I calibrated it with a Colormunki using the spectraview software, which, following an update, wouldn’t see the Munki, so I had to use an old version. I’ve been losing confidence in them for a while. Couldn’t find another NEC monitor for replacement. I’ve upgraded to an EIZO CS 2740 27" and Calibrite Display Plus. Holy smoke! The results are phenomenal. 4k means no zooming in on most jobs and the acutance means no oversharpening. (I’m on Windows 10. Upscaling text apps to 150%). Customers have commented already on an improvement in images. Better ‘pop’ and easier to fine tune skin tones, highlights and deep shadows. My second monitor is a Dell U2713hm. No comparison."
TT: "Oh yeah, I remember when I got my PA272 years ago. Was blown away how gray...? the grays were. Never seen a monitor so neutral and accurate before. Now times have progressed and I've settled on a BenQ and a SpyderX. But you still remember your first kiss/quality monitor most fondly."
I did a few quickie tests with that Apple 20W power adapter and USB-C-to-Lightning cable that I talked about the other day. Charging my third-generation iPad Air, the new 20W charger took it from 52% charge to 57% in just seven minutes, whereas the old 13W charger and USB-A cable was able to get it from 66% to 68% in the same timed seven minutes. So 5% vs. 2%.
On the newer iPhone 13 Pro, the 20W charger and USB-C cable took the charge percentage from 31% all the way to 48% in exactly 10 minutes, whereas with the old 13W charger and USB-A cable it went from 48% to 52% in the same timed 10 minutes. So that's 17% of charge vs. only 4% in 10 minutes.
You don't have to pay "the Apple tax." Amazon sells a pair of generic 20W power adapters that are very inexpensive. But don't forget to get the right cable. Be sure to look for that MFi certification.
The new charger/cable combo really is a lot better if you're scrambling and need to add a little juice in a hurry.
Mike
'Golden Oldie' Books o' the Week
I was going to link to The Life of a Photograph by National Geographic ace Sam Abell, the book version of Sam's video talk we've been discussing, but guess what? Sold out since we mentioned it the other day. You can still score one of the few remaining copies of the 4-volume Sam Abell Library from 2013, but buy it directly from the publisher—they still have it at the $75 publication price (I called them in Santa Fe to check), and Amazon is already charging four times more. We need a reprint of Sam's classic Stay This Moment!
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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:
Larry Gebhardt: "Your tests should be from the same starting point. As batteries get more full they charge slower. It's possible some of the slow down from the lower power charger is actually due to the battery not being able to accept even that lower rate of charge."
Mike replies: Okay: starting at 68%, I charged for a timed 10 minutes using the 13W power adapter and USB-A cable, and reached 70%.
Then I ran the phone back down to 68% by playing Dave Chappelle videos, and charged for 10 minutes using the 20W adapter and USB-C cable, and reached 76%.
Same outlet, same temperature, about 14 minutes between the two tests, and it was the same phone.
I'm still working on the Baker's Dozen, I haven't forgotten. Very wrapped up in this piece I'm trying to put together for that other outlet. I might submit it tomorrow, so that'll be that one done.
Ctein wrote to say that all the infrared prints from the sale have shipped. If you haven't gotten either your print(s) or a notification from USPS that it's on the way, please contact Ctein at [email protected].
I invited him to write a column giving us his thoughts about the new Mac Studio, and below is what he replied—written as a casual email, mind you. I have his permission to share.
Ctein: "I wouldn't mind writing something about the Mac Studio, but at this point I have nothing coherent nor useful to say. My thoughts are too muddled. I need to straighten them out before I'll have anything worth adding to the chatter.
"The two things that are most messing with my head (there are others) is that, first, I have little interest in the M[x] chips. The switchover, in fact, will cause me problems when I'm forced into it. Which is, hopefully, not going to happen any time soon.
"The second is that I am unreasonably fond of the 27" 5K iMac. And I do think it's unreasonable. My last-year's 16" MacBook Pro runs rings around my now-ancient (2014) iMac, along with providing me with a dual monitor setup (I have the LG 5K 27" monitor), which has better color and a larger gamut. Plus having twice as much RAM as my maxed-out iMac. There is no sensible reason why I should prefer working on the iMac. Well, I'm allowed to have my idiosyncrasies, but I don't understand this one and it makes it hard to write usefully about the New Apple Order.
"The likely reality is that if my iMac were to give up the ghost tomorrow, I'd go out and buy the final-generation 27" iMac, either refurbished from Apple or used from one of the reputable dealers, in the minimum RAM configuration, populate it with RAM from Other World Computing, and I'd be spending half as much as a Mac Studio would cost me. And that would likely carry me for another 6–8 years... or until Apple decides to stop supporting the Intel chips entirely."
Note that Ctein does professional printing and restoration, so he falls into the pro user category. I believe he paid top dollar for his 5K 27" iMac when it was the very latest thing, so it's nice to hear that he got his money's worth out of it, both in terms of years of use and his positive feelings for it.
By the way, I'm far from an expert on computers—actually more the opposite—but I read enough of Daring Fireball yesterday to find out that it's pretty well accepted that the 27" iMac is now dead. I had two of them, the second being a 2011 that's still sitting here looking for a home. The only reason I went to a separate CPU and monitor was that I work on a porch, surrounded on three sides by windows, and I needed a monitor that could cope with glare better. I still can't do critical work on photos in the daytime. But my NEC MultiSync PA272W solved the glare problem—it has a non-glare surface and a hood.
And in local news...
It's like mid-Winter here today—five or six inches of fresh snow and 17°F (–8°C). The difference is that we're due for a warm-up tomorrow. The anti-icing wires on the pool table shed are working nicely, so no ice dams! Personally, I count today as the first day of Spring, despite the weather. With Daylight Savings Time newly returned, it should be light till 7:00 or even a little later, and don't think I'm not grateful. Those dark Winter evenings can feel awfully lonely. The seven Temperate Months (capitalized out of reverence), roughly April through October, are the reason to live in the Finger Lakes. Bring it on!
27-inch 5K iMac new at B&H Photo: i5, 8 GB RAM, 256GB SSD, $1,799; i9, 32 GB RAM, 2TB SSD, $3,699 (that's the low end and high end; there are other configurations in the middle).
Mike
(Thanks to Ctein)
Book of Interest this Week
Gregory Crewdson: Alone Street. "Filmic" seems the best single adjective to describe Gregory Crewdson's work; his directed and carefully managed tableau are the still photography version of scenes in movies. As such they are hyper-real; more beautiful than life and more poetic, and more concerted. They're also very easy to enjoy and a pleasure to look at.
This book link is a portal to Amazon.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Thom Hogan: "I'm with Ctein for the most part. A recent 27" iMac 5K Retina configured properly is an excellent tool that should be long-lived (though Apple's yearly macOS updates have many of us living behind the times intentionally).
"Thing is, the 24" M1 iMac fills the need for those who want a lithe all-in-one, and as Mike has noted with his need for a separate monitor to get glare/positioning benefits, a Mac mini or lower Mac Studio model with the proper 4K/5K monitor is probably a perfect replacement for the 27" iMac.
"Those of us with iMac 5K's almost certainly have a small farm of peripherals hanging out on the desk (mine are about 3x the area of a Mac Studio), so the notion of a separate box really isn't an issue. Macsales.com has some very nice boxes that would stack under a Mac Studio and actually take up less space than my current drive boxes when all is said and done.
"As far as I'm concerned, Apple has done a good job of rationalizing the M1 Macs. Portables in 13, 14, 16" sizes, mini, Studio, iMac 24", and later this year a Pro. This is the best set of choices we've had in a long time. I'm not sure that a 27" iMac M1 adds much to the lineup. Indeed, if Apple were to provide one, I'm pretty sure that it would have to be Max/Ultra and the 24" would have to remain plain M1, which is what the mini/Studio distinction is right now."
John Krumm: "My Sierra Juniper just arrived and it looks fantastic. Off to the frame shop."
Bill Beebe: "I certainly understand a strong attachment to any technology or tool, especially if that tool has served you well and allowed you to make a living in your chosen profession. I have experienced the same, but from a pure engineering viewpoint. (I use a camera, and my output can be charitably described as hobbyist).
"What Ctein might be reacting to is the cost of the new M1 variant Mac minis. Let me speak to cost from my perspective.
"I'm fortunate enough that I have a 2019 16" MBP fully equipped with an i9, max memory, and 4TB SSD. That cost $6K. It's a workhorse given to me in 2020 to help complete a contract, and believe me I put it to very good use. Later, I was able to pick up a 2020 13" MPB with the basic M1 (i.e. just 8 cores), on sale for $1.5K. That became my field computer because the idea of carrying $6K of computer out of the house became untenable.
"I can say, without exaggeration, that the 13" will keep up with the 16" with 1/4 the memory, even if the 13" has to hit swap. There are use cases for which the 16" has to be used due to its 64GB memory. But for a lot of other basic use cases, I can't tell the difference in performance.
"But I can certainly tell the difference in battery life. What makes the 13" such a keeper is the speed combined with its very long battery life while out testing in the field. I can run at least eight hours of solid work before I even have to think of hitting the charger. The 16" by comparison sucks down a battery like it's going out of style.
"I understand and appreciate why Ctein uses what he uses, but I hope in the future he'll see that the Apple Silicon based Macs will benefit him even more than Intel based Macs, especially when mobile."
The all-new Apple Mac Studio computer
I can hardly believe my senses, but Apple yesterday appears to have introduced an all-new computer designed and aimed exactly at us—PHOTOGRAPHERS. Excuse the shouting.
The all-new Apple Mac Studio looks like a bulked-up and pumped-up musclebound Mini with two supercharged versions of the high-performance M1 chip—M1 Max ($2,000) for still photographers, M1 Ultra ($4,000) for videographers. With industrial-size fans. The M1 Ultra chip being basically two M1 Max chips joined at the hip, thus requiring less power than two separate M1 Max chips.
Its shape is kinda reminiscent of the Power Mac G4 Cube that appealed to me so much back in 2000. Neat, clean, contained, smallish and easy to site on a desk. John Gruber wrote of the Cube in July 2020: "The Cube was a worthy failure, deserving of our utmost praise in hindsight. Powerful computers needed to get smaller, quieter, and more attractive. The Cube pushed the state of the art forward." Apple could have called the Studio the Cube II—except that the Cube, which was before its time, was a commercial failure.
There's a matching monitor, the 27-inch 5K voice-and-video-ready Studio Display that has its own A13 Bionic chip onboard. It has a nanotexture glass option to cut glare and an adjustable-height stand as an option. Suitable for graphic arts professionals who use their monitors all day.
The Mac Studio's memory is "unified," (i.e., not user upgradeable), but you can choose 32GB or 64GB for the M1 Max version and those options plus 128GB on the M1 Ultra version. 512GB SSD storage is standard with options available from 1 to 8 terabytes. According to Apple, the new Mac Studios are significantly faster than the 27" iMac and the existing Mac Pro, from 50% to 3.8X.
Both the Mac Studio and Studio Display will start shipping March 18th.
Yay, I say. Although I can't afford one myself.
Pet peeve no more
And—OMG, be still, my beating heart—not only is there a built-in SD card slot on the Mac Studio, but it's on the front.
I couldn't believe my eyes—sat there blinking stupidly—but then I remembered, oh yeah, Jony retired. Apple has always wanted everything to be designy and clean even at the expense of usability, so it insisted the ports be on the back, out of sight. Bugged me for years, but then, the world is the world. The card slot on the front won't mean much to most people, but to me it's a flag that proclaims changed intentions for this product and renewed respect for the needs of photographers. Oh, okay, "creatives." (Man I hate that word.)
Because not only is an Mac Studio an all-new computer, for today's Apple it's an all-new computer category. For years you have been dutifully enduring my griping:
Happy day, Apple has just shut me up entirely. By addressing all those criticisms. In one fell swoop.
A win for photographers and we might as well shout it
The Studio is ours. It's for us. Finally, that midrange workhorse utilitarian monitor-less high-connectivity accessible affordable PHOTO-CENTRIC computer I always thought Apple should make for photographers. And for videographers. (It's for musicians, too.)
I'm getting carried away, so I'll just say thank you, Santa Apple, and go calm down.
But oh, happy day. This one's for us.
Mike
P.S. I have no connection to Apple except as a customer, and was privy to no prior notification or information about any of the products introduced yesterday.
UPDATE: Thom Hogan has weighed in on the Mac Studio. One thing he points out that I should pass along is that the previous photographers' workhorse, the Intel 27" iMac with Retina 5K display, has been discontinued by Apple and is a bargain from resellers who still have stock (I believe it's what Ctein uses). Check out Thom's article. (Thanks to Richard Nugent for pointing this out—I hadn't caught up with it before he did.)
Book of Interest this Week
Gregory Crewdson: Alone Street. "Filmic" seems the best single adjective to describe Gregory Crewdson's work; his directed and carefully managed tableau are the still photography version of scenes in movies. As such they are hyper-real; more beautiful than life and more poetic, and more concerted. They're also very easy to enjoy and a pleasure to look at.
This book link is a portal to Amazon.
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:
Richard Parkin: "I solve the problem of the connections at the back by simply having the back at the front so all the ports are accessible."
Mike replies: Ha! I did the same thing with my subwoofer for my desk system...it's downward-firing, so I simply turned the front to the wall so I could access all the controls and connections.
Yuan: "Although it's drool-worthy, I'd rather call the Mac Studio video-centric. For the majority of still photographers, even the $2k version is over-kill. Nowadays you simply don't need to spend $2k to get a perfectly fine still photo computer."
James: "It's $2,000 before a screen. Five of those and you can have a pool shed."
Mike replies: True, but the Pro is $6k and up, and a Fuji X-Pro3, Panasonic S5, or Sony A7III are all the same price, and you could also spend the same on a Sony FE 50mm ƒ/1.2 GM or a Fuji XF 8–16mm ƒ/2.8. And some people already have monitors. But sure, it's not for everyone.
Michael Fewster: "SD card slot at the front! Loud cheers. Let's hope that the cheers are heard by laptop makers. In recent years SD card readers have almost completely disappeared from the laptops we photographers like to take when we travel. A MicroSD card reader doesn't do it."
Steve W: "This is good news. I have a 2018 Mac Mini, and I'm getting close to wanting to upgrade. The current Mac Mini has even fewer ports: it's been reduced from four Thunderbolt/USB-C ports to only two. That's not going to cut it. The Mac Studio is configured almost perfectly, and the SD card slot is frosting on the cake. The price seems about right given that a 14" MacBook Pro costs $1,999 as well."
Rob de Loe: "I used to teach in a lab full of Macs. Someone who wanted a nearly endless bounty of free SD cards could be happy in that room. There they were in the back of the monitor, forgotten by the previous user, waiting to be collected. There probably was someone coming around harvesting them each day, like the people you'd see running from pay phone to pay phone checking for uncollected change."
Mark replies to Rob: "What's a pay phone?"
Danielsroka: "I am just as excited as you are. My beloved 'trashcan' Mac Pro has been a workhorse, and served me well. But it is now eight years old now, and I've been waiting for a solid professional desktop Mac to come along to replace it. It feels like this machine was designed with the professional photographer in mind. Fast, efficient, and bang-on with the price. I calculated that $3–4,000 will get me a fast (but not outrageous) setup, which is the same price range I've paid for my high-end Macs in the past. And these new M1 Max chips are proving to be groundbreaking in speed and energy efficiency, a significant upgrade from the old Intel framework. Can't wait!"
Larry Angier: "Faster, cheaper, better continues! In 1984 my original Mac 128 with external floppy and ImageWriter printer cost (then) about $2,500 and it had a nine-inch monitor, 128 KB ram and 400 KB floppies.... Things keep getting better and better for us!"
Apple Point-Counterpoint
John Camp: "I'm typing this on a 2015 MacBook Pro, which will be my last Apple product, other than cellphones, and I'm taking a hard look at those. Most (maybe all) of what Studio will do can be replicated much more cheaply on Windows machines, although the Mac OS still seems easier and more intuitive that even the latest Windows 11. My problem is, if you interface (cliché) with the business world, the business world uses Windows, and even identically-branded software is not the same between the two worlds. I could no longer put up with the problems created by using Word for Mac when sending a manuscript to a publisher who is totally on Windows. Microsoft frequently updates Word, but not so frequently Word for Mac, which means there are always incompatibilities, and some of them can drive you crazy. So I'm forced to change.
"The Studio, it seems to me, is for professional videographers and perhaps professional still photographers, because Apple systems are widely used by 'creatives' (another cliché.) For artists and enthusiasts, who may only be dealing with couple of dozen photos a week, an expensive computer makes little sense. For somebody like Kirk Tuck, who may take several hundred photos at a single public event, with an ad agency demanding instant returns, the Studio may be something to seriously consider. IMHO.
"I will concede that changing operating systems is a pain in the ass, and I'm currently experiencing that. There is certainly a solid value in staying within a familiar, comfortable system, which is why I still shoot Nikons along with my Micro 4/3 stuff. But for me, from here on, it's Windows."
Alex Mercado: "I'm a staff photographer and certainly welcome the Mac Studio.
"My department is currently making use of a small fleet of Mac Minis from 2018 and, while the Mini I use exhibits no significant performance issues—as I have the luxury of only running Capture One—my colleagues in production have been feeling the limitations of theirs for some time. The suite of applications they need to run simultaneously on any given day visibly taxes the hardware of their 6-core Mac mini. And we even ponied up for them to have the maximum of 64BG of RAM from the start.
"If it were possible to cram even more RAM into the Mac Mini to help things run more efficiently, the dated CPU would still have trouble juggling the multiple threads of all the updated, and increasingly processor-intensive, applications. If the CPU could be upgraded, then every other part of the motherboard would likely become a bottleneck. The notion of long-term upgradability for an affordable computer is not terribly realistic; there will always be a component, either hardware or software, that will fail to deliver to the peak performance of the computer as a whole.
"This lack of upgradability for most of Apple’s current computers is a non-issue in our 'corporate' setting by the simple virtue of having to work within the recommendations of the IT department. Ours require us to update the OS and software regularly to keep up with security updates and network compatibility; meaning we eventually need to replace the computer to keep up with the times. Today’s Adobe Creative Cloud applications running on Monterey isn’t nearly as speedy on our Mac mini as the 2018 suite was on Mojave.
"Our replacement options before the Mac Studio were: The 2020 Mac mini. For $1,300, it has two additional CPU cores, but the RAM tops out at 16GB. It will logically struggle to keep up with demands rather quickly.
"We use Eizo displays so considering any iMac is basically pointless.
"Lastly, the 'base mode' 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro with 48GB of RAM will cost $6,500 (the next step up is 96GB for $7,200!) and is just overkill in more ways than one. Also, how long is Apple really going to keep supporting x86?
"Now, $2,600 for a Mac Studio with its 10-core M1 Max and standard 64BG of RAM is the Goldilocks Mac we’ve been waiting for. And I suspect it will remain usable for more than the four years we've managed to squeeze out of the Mac Mini."
Ed Hawco replies to John: "Another counterpoint to John Camp's point that 'if you interface (cliché) with the business world, the business world uses Windows, and even identically-branded software is not the same between the two worlds.'
"John says he wrote that on a 2015 Macbook Pro, and I think his thesis is also from 2015, if not earlier. I work in the business world, and have done so happily for over a decade on Macs. At my employer we're pretty much evenly split between Macs and Windows machines, and it is exceptionally rare to find any issues crossing platforms. My macOS MS Office interfaces flawlessly with MS Office files from Windows users. Ditto other applications we use.
"The only exception I'm aware of is the screenshot application called Snagit from Techsoft; the native image format on macOS is '.snagproj' and on Windows it's '.snag,' and they are not compatible. This is a very weird thing in 2022. Six or seven years ago I asked one of their product managers why they don't make the formats compatible across OSs, and the reply (which I don't remember verbatim) left me a bit stunned, as it implied the person did not understand what the 'use case' was for having cross-OS compatible files. Whaaaaaaa?"
Thom Hogan replies to John: "Message to John Camp: stop using Word on the Mac. The best, most compatible word processor on the Mac is Nisuswriter Pro. Has been for years as Microsoft slowly let their Mac software slide. But that should tell you something about reliance on Microsoft software in the first place. Office is a lowest common denominator product now, and as such is going to have problems long-term even for an all-Windows user."
Eric Brody (partial comment): "Like Larry Angier, my first Mac was purchased for US$2,500. I got it on April 18, 1984! 400K single-sided disks, no externals. My first external drive was a 20 megabyte, not terabyte, drive that cost hundreds! It always seemed to me that one spent the same $2,500 every few years, but got a lot more computer power."
Mike replies: My first computer was the 512K Macintosh, 1984–86, which I got for a graduation present from art school in May of '85. It was called the "Fat Mac" because it had, woo-hoo, 0.000512 GB of memory, which was a lot. Like you guys, my Macintosh and an Imagewriter daisy-wheel printer cost about $2,600. For the same dollars you can get a Mac Studio with a 2TB SSD, which can do even more than my old Fat Mac could. (I kid, don't yell at me.)
[Comments have been added.]
Roald Dahl earned half a billion dollars in 2021,
despite being fairly severely incapacitated (he's deceased).
You've probably heard by now that Elon Musk has taken the title of richest rich guy, showing up those washed-up poor-ass no-money-having former holders of the championship belt such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. Losers!
Ahem. Excuse me. Mustn't get carried away. I don't really have an opinion on Elon Musk. I'm not really entirely sure who he is. Something about space?
More recent news is that Apple, the little startup founded in a garage (or a basement, I'm not really up on the origin story), recently poked its nose past the landmark of three trillion dollars in market capitalization. Market cap, as you might know, means the dollar value of all of its shares. It's not a made-up number, but it's sort of a theoretical one. Nobody actually has the three trillion dollars. Anyway, it's doing well.
Meanwhile, back down here in the land of guys who never balanced their checkbooks, it seems to me that what I'm hearing and reading is that the Apple M1 iMacs work nicely for photography.
On the button
For photographers, it makes little actual sense to pursue ultimates and extremes. With enough money it's possible to buy the best, of course, but even if you do, "the best" is a very time-bound concept; soon enough it will be yesterday's news. Bragging rights have an expiration date. Does anyone really care, now, if you're using a computer that was the best money could buy in 2016, 2010, or 2004?
So it might be optimal (I almost slipped and wrote best) to use stuff that's merely very good but still practical. Sort of the upper-middle-tier class of product. The M1 iMacs seem to hit that goal on the button. We photographers don't really need cutting-edge capabilities in our computers, but it's nice not to have to sit around and wait for processor-intensive tasks to run.
As for the screen size—currently there are only 24-inch M1 iMacs—I have both a 27-inch monitor and a 24-inch one. I like to believe that I could be happy with just a 24-inch screen, but I also admit that it would probably feel like a step back to give up the larger one. You'll have to decide for yourself on that question. It's why I switched to a Mac Mini and an NEC monitor a while back...the idea is to keep the monitor through several lifecycles of computer. (The kind of plan I usually don't have the discipline to carry out.)
All things considered, though, the M1 iMac feels like it might be the ideal middle-of-the-pack sensible solution for Apple-using photographers, a fully matured embodiment of the graphics workstation. At least for people who are happy with compact APS-C or Micro 4/3 cameras, which are positioned similarly in the great scheme of things—"very good but still practical."
Doing well but not here
And by the way, one other thing Apple's three trillion market cap means is that actually, Steve Jobs is the world's richest person. Well, except for two inconvenient little details. First, he sold all his Apple stock (except for one share, which allowed him to access Apple investor reports) in 1985 when he got ousted as head honcho. And, he passed away. So he's no longer, you know, a flesh-and-blood person. Details, details.
It has hardly impacted his success or fame; Bing Crosby, Arnold Palmer, and Elvis Presley go on racking up profits and adding to their wealth year after year, and they are also—there's no polite way to put it—dead. Roald Dahl (Roald Dahl?!), the author of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, whose stock seems to keep rising and rising in the world, earned $510 million in 2021 (Netflix splurged on the rights to all his work). Michael Jackson had the best earnings year of any celebrity in all of history in 2016, which was fantastic for him except that...oh yeah, right. He was pushing daisies, then and still. Bereft of life. Bought the farm. Bucket kicked. My point is that in a world where dead people go right on making money and being admired for it, it seems a smaller leap to pretend that Steve had kept his Apple stock and to admire him for how rich he would have been if he had.
He managed to get by anyway—I'm not saying he wasn't rich. Did you know Forbes publishes an annual list of the most successful dead people? Bizarre but true. I can't quite wrap my head around the concept. But then, I don't understand Bitcoin either.
So how does Mr. Jobs feel about all his recent theoretical success? The amazing on-paper value of all the shares he wouldn't own any more if he wasn't dead? I for one would love to know. However, he can't be reached for comment.
Mike
Book o' the Week
American Geography by Matt Black, a great name for a photographer but a terrible internet name, impossible to search. Stan Banos calls American Geography a "handsome, well thought out and put together book." Matt's work is outstanding.
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hugh crawford: "Well, compare to Ronald Wayne who sold his 10% of Apple for $2,300. If that wasn’t enough, to quote Wikipedia, 'In the early 1990s, Wayne sold the original Apple partnership contract paper, signed in 1976 by Jobs, Wozniak, and himself, for US$500. In 2011, the contract was sold at auction for $1.6 million. Wayne has stated that he regrets that sale. Wayne retired to a mobile home park in Pahrump, Nevada, where he sells stamps and rare coins, and plays penny slots at a casino. Wayne never owned an Apple product until 2011, when he was given an iPad 2 at the Update Conference in Brighton, England. He holds a dozen patents.' Also, Jobs’ real fortune was from being the largest shareholder of Disney stock which he got for Pixar. He sold all but one share of Apple when he got fired and never again had that big a stake in the company."
Mike replies: Ronald Wayne, Pete Best, and the '62 Mets are among history's biggest losers. Fortunately the Cubs are finally off the list.
Ilkka replies: "If I buy shares at $10 a piece and sell them at $30, I made $20 per share. So I won (?). If that share price then goes on up to $200, what did I lose? I still made a $20 profit. How is that losing? If I take part in a marathon run and do not win, does it mean that I lost? I don’t think so. Football game and boxing match has two sides, one wins and the other one loses, unless it’s a draw. In most other things in life there are no losers even when you don’t 'win.'"
Mike replies: Ronald Wayne sold an asset for $2,300 that is now worth ~$300,000,000. And is living in a mobile home park in Parhump. How would you feel? I really doubt he looks back on that and thinks "no loss."
Ken Brayton replies: "An engineer I used to work with quit and got a job at a new startup. Not much of a pay raise, but very nice stock options. He loved flying planes, so when the company went public and he became quite rich he bought his own plane. Flew down to Vegas and ended up landing nose first into the desert. His startup was Apple. I would much rather he was retired in a mobile home in Parhump."
Paul White: The Jobs Trust controlled 38.5 million shares of Apple after his death. It also owns 12.5% of Disney. Jobs was granted shares after he came back to run Apple in 1997.
Mike replies: I haven't been able to determine what percentage of Apple those shares represented, but most sources seem to agree that it was nothing close to 11%, the stake Jobs sold off in 1985.
Phil Stiles: "The classic comment on Elvis' demise was that 'it was a good career move.'"
Mike replies: Yes, and although I appreciate it as a joke, I still kind of can't quite get my mind around the concept. It implies that the important thing about such celebrities is the enduring persona rather than the personhood of the actual person. It sounds like the basis of a Monty Python skit. And probably was. Didn't the family in The World According to Garp have a stuffed dog, Sorrow? And I recall that the original "Saturday Night Live," long ago, had a recurring joke on the "Weekend Update" fake news segment, repeatedly announcing that Generalissimo Francisco Franco was still dead.
Robert Pillow replies: "Sorrow was the family pet in The Hotel New Hampshire whose remains were stuffed following his euthanasia, which I believe was implemented because of his blindness and constant flatulence. Of course, it's been a while since I read the book."
Richard Tugwell: "I have an M1 Mini, which I use exclusively for photo processing, paired with a nice, mid-price monitor. Very, very pleased with performance. So I guess the M1 iMacs will be similarly suitable."
Mike replies: Finally, a comment about the M1 Macs! My purpose in this post was to elicit opinions about them, but apparently I so thoroughly buried the lede that that purpose was lost. Maybe I should try again....
Stephen Cowdery: "I got an M1 iMac as soon as it was released. It is wonderful, especially for image processing. Use your old monitor for displaying files and folders and the Photoshop windows."
Bill Tyler: "I'm reminded of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Hotblack Desiato, an incredibly rich musician, spent a year dead for tax purposes."
Phil Stiles: "A year ago, I upgraded my Mac Mini to an M1 model. The difference is profound, especially in how fast Photoshop and Lightroom load and perform. I use solid state drives for storage. My monitor is an aging 30" Cinema Display, but it still works for me. The Mini is the most cost effective way to upgrade. I also recommend an additional OWC Thunderbolt Dock for a plethora of ports."
Steve Rosenblum: "I sold my maxed-out Intel i7 Mac Mini and my 2018 Macbook Pro and bought an M1 Max Macbook Pro to use as my only computer. When photo editing I connect it to my existing NEC 27-inch MultiSync monitor. It's a major leap forward for photo editing compared to my previous computers which were pretty good."
Richard Tugwell: "I have an M1 Mac Mini, which I use exclusively for photo processing, paired with a nice, mid-price monitor. Very, very pleased with performance. So I guess the M1 iMacs will be similarly suitable."
Will: "For one, Roald Dahl’s children’s books are essential read-tos for a certain type of kid. My son was captivated by many of those books, and I expect my daughter to be as well.
"For two, your surprise at his work being well-regarded suggests you’re unfamiliar with his adult work. His short stories are brilliant. And if you’re familiar with any individual episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," it is extremely likely they were Dahl adaptations. Many rely on a sort of characteristic 'dark twist,' like the probably best-known 'A Lamb to the Slaughter,' which sees a housewife murder her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then serve the evidence to the investigating officers. Many follow this pattern, but the 'dark twist' in 'Genesis and Catastrophe' is more subversive.
"Regardless, it is worth grabbing a Roald Dahl adult short story collection. Loads of good stuff."
Mike asks: Like this one?
Well, this is pretty funny. It turns out I actually waited too long to get rid of my phone. Far from being sensible, I missed the boat.
I dropped into the local Verizon store yesterday and here's the upshot: They'll give me a trade-in on my old phone—the guy said six to eight hundred dollars. Great. Then I asked about the iPhone 11 and 12. They no longer have 11's, and the 12 Pro Max is exactly the same price as the 13 Pro Max. But, they don't give any trade-in allowance on the 12; only on the 13.
So that makes the 13 the no-brainer choice...which I'm sure is how Apple and/or Verizon wants it.
Then he looked up my trade-in, and...uh-oh. Guess what? The 7 Plus is too old now. Apple no longer sells them as refurbs, so the trade-in value takes a nosedive. I could have gotten $600 to $800 credit if I had traded it in on a 12 or an 11 when those were new, but I waited too long. Now it's only worth $200 in trade.
You know what they say: Oh well.
So the iPhone 13 Pro Max would cost me $910 in cash or on payments. That's actually less than Apple sells a loaded 11 Pro Max for as a refurb ($1,019).
So I missed my window. Kept the 7 Plus too long, such that now I pretty much have to pay full boat to get a new phone. It's no tragedy; I could buy one if I wanted to. But I'm leaning toward just getting a new battery for the old 7 Plus. It's kinda like a car after it's paid for: you get this golden sunset "no payments" period when the thing is paid off but still working smoothly. Besides, I'm waiting for the A6600 to go on sale again and I'd rather blow the $$ on that.
I'm sure another year or two with the old phone won't hurt me. And who knows what the 2H22 rumors will yield? I'll try to be ready for that, if and when it happens.
The moral of the story: If you want keep current with developments in phone cameras, don't hang on to your phone too long.
Mike
Product o' the Week:
The brand new 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi, 64GB) in Space Gray. My iPad is my least necessary but most-loved Apple device. I could get by with my phone and a desktop computer, but I use this constantly and I like it best. Check out that price.
The above is a link to Amazon from TOP—anything you buy while you're there benefits TOP. B&H Photo is closed for the rest of September for Succos.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Niela: "Sorry Mike. I have no idea what you are talking about. I just buy my iPhone directly from Apple and sell my old one to whoever wants to pay the most. Picking and changing my carrier whenever services or pricing is convenient just makes so much more sense."
Dan: "I shall upgrade my iPhone SE when it can no longer do what I use it for…reading The Online Photographer and Jalopnik. Should be quite a while."
Dave Pawson: "Excellent (sensible) decision. I look forward to the A6600 review!"
Asking the experts: So do I need an iPhone 13?
My iPhone 7 Plus, released five years ago this very month, is getting out of date, but it still works perfectly. I have no complaints with it other than that the battery is getting a little weak. I have to remember to charge it every day, and I do run short of power every now and then because I get caught out. I take a lot of pictures with it, though. I'm guessing the newer ones are better at that.
What would you do if you were me?*
Mike
*You can say you'd switch to Android but not me. Apple loyalist since 1984, for better and worse, through thick and thin.
Product o' the Week:
The brand new 2021 Apple 10.2-inch iPad (Wi-Fi, 64GB) in Space Gray. My iPad is my least necessary but most-loved Apple device. I could get by with my phone and a desktop computer, but I use this constantly and I like it best. Check out that price.
The above is a link to Amazon from TOP—anything you buy while you're there benefits TOP. B&H Photo is closed for the rest of September for Succos.
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Jean: "I would imagine that you would be very pleased with the new iPhone. I use the regular iPhone 7 and the 12 Pro. The old one is the perfect size and weight in my pocket. The new one is a superior photographic tool. It doesn’t replace my Fujifilm X-Pro2 and X-T2, but the low light is performance is unreal with a fast lens, image stabilizer and up to 30 seconds exposure time. Apple’s special ProRAW is also a favorite for me. You can have 30 MB files with multiple images combined (tone mapping), data available for adjusting your white balance to your preference, and lower noise than JPEGs. You can lock the exposure of your sky to protect the highlights and bring up the shadows before you trip the shutter. If you still want to edit, the data is in the files. Great for landscapes. Shoot your house in the middle of the night and get the stars as well. The super-wide-angle lens is the so-useful and often used 13mm-e. On the iPhone 13 Pro, a new faster super-wide-angle lens and improved autofocus makes it even more useful. The portrait mode lets you adjust the depth of field after the fact.
"Every feature I have described here is available in the standard camera app. The convenience is great and video is quite stable and useful. Battery capacity is improved and great."
Clyde: "I went from an 8 to a 12 Pro last year and the image quality improvement was stunning! So yeah, it's worth upgrading."
Richard T: "My suggestions:
"1.) If you want or need to minimize costs in the short run, Apple can replace the battery for you (which I think costs $49 in the US). You can do this in an official Apple store or authorized service centre, or can mail out your phone if you can live without it for a few days. The iPhone 7 generation is still supported by the upcoming newest iOS (version 15 launching soon). It is unclear though if the 7 generation will still be supported by September '22, though likely that iOS version would still get security updates, so if you go for a battery replacement you'd have at least one year, probably two, and potentially more years of use out of this. By the way, in the settings menu you can find the current battery health.
"2.) You are very right that an upgrade would also get you a better camera—though perhaps slightly less so than you may think. The 7+ was the very first model with two cameras (~26mm/52mm equivalent), and if you get the iPhone 13 (non-pro version) you will still only have two cameras (except 13mm/26mm, so lacking the 52mm). Based on your love of 35–40mm equivalent lenses, that would be a significant omission. So in your case I'd go for an iPhone that also includes that 52mm lens (which Apple calls 'tele'). But note that in the iPhone 13 Pro generation they went to 3X, which equates to 78mm equivalent, i.e. a little tighter than I think you'd prefer (Apple uses 26mm as 1x, which it calls wide, and 0.5x for the 13mm, which it calls ultra-wide). The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a 2.5x tele lens, so it's 64mm equivalent. This 2.5x is only for the 'Max' version, i.e. the bigger one which is roughly the size of your Plus model. The iPhone 12 Pro (non-max) has the same 2X (52mm equivalent) lens.
"3). Possibly a nice compromise for you might be the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which has the 0.5/1x/2x lenses and gets you a similar sized phone as the 7+. You might be able to get a refurbished directly from Apple—and you can use https://refurb-tracker.com/ to keep track of stock. There's also eBay of course, though battery quality varies—I'd ask sellers to check battery health if you take the eBay route. When I upgrade I usually go for the t–1 model [i.e., last generation —Ed.] since there is about a 50% depreciation after the first year (not unlike a new car!)."
David Place: "I once had an iPhone 6 and kept it through the XR (10) but shouldn't brag...since then I've fallen for the camera upgrade every year. I pass on my current model to my other half and trade in the two-year-old iPhone. So the 11 is traded in / the 12 is passed on / the blue 1TB 13 Pro Max will be here Friday (I also tend to get the new color each year). The iPhone is now my main camera (that's my only excuse). Suggestion? Move on to the 13."
Kirk: "I would rush to pre-order the iPhone 13 Pro. You can go to the Apple website and see everything they've improved on. It's now an amazing camera in addition to being a phone...and a computer...and a health resource...and an entertainment center.... I'll be buying one for the video capability alone but I'll end up using it for everything I photograph that couldn't be better photographed with a full frame, higher resolution camera (and attendant lenses...).
"The perfect moment for a tech straggler to leapfrog into the cutting edge."
Soeren Engelbrecht (partial comment): "The new phones are a bit like buying into a new camera system without the ability to choose your own set of lenses. :-) ."
Aakin Patel (partial comment): "I think it's worth upgrading. [...] The iPhones usually get security/software updates for five years. Yours is hitting that limit, and in today's world where phones are big targets for cybersecurity attacks, it's pretty worthwhile to stay on top of that. Having a new phone that gets the updates is pretty important, and worth upgrading if you can swing it."
Øyvind: "I would go with the 13 Pro. The camera system is just more complete, and is given the biggest camera bump ever this year. The wide/ultrawide combination of the standard model just never appealed to me as someone who uses normal to short tele quite a bit. If you're coming from an iPhone 7 the new models should be a massive leap (as Apple likes to say for every model increment). That goes for battery life, operational smoothness and convenience, display quality and sheer computing power. And the cameras are just way better.
"Still I respect you holding on to your phone for its useful life."
Robin: "No-one needs an iPhone. Some people might want one. Big difference. It's clear to see that Apple is the most hyper-capitalist, resource-extracting company in the world. Even on my doorstep here in Ireland, I see the damage...as they avoid paying any tax while keeping desperate employees in dead-end jobs. I would never support this company. No matter what pretty things they dangle. The world is on fire. We are in the Sixth Great Extinction. Time to take a more moral stance. Even in an array of bad choices, some are better than others."
Fred Haynes: "I’m the last person to give advice, since I don’t own a cellphone! I am a dinosaur! But considering the ‘business’ you're in, I think it would be a good idea to have the best, assuming this latest model is the best. Regarding your thoughts about the iPad, I’m one hundred percent with you on that! I could not be without mine, I’d go nuts!"
els: "Absolutely buy the iPhone13 Pro. If you already take a lot of pictures with your iPhone 7, you will be so happy with the iPhone 13. Let's face it, it is the only camera we all use every day. So why not have the best one available?"
I descended the stairs this morning to find poop all over my office, which is part of caring for the older doggie. Poop happens. In my spiritual program we learn acceptance along with patience and tolerance. Crucial to happiness and contentment. I work on acceptance every day. And I need to, apparently.
The poop is all cleaned up now. All has been sanitized and sanity is restored. Welcome, bright new day.
On firing up ye wheezy computer I was presented with a come-on to pay $5 a month for something called Mozilla VPN. It has something to do with my browser as Mozilla is the entity that makes Firefox, which I've used for years...without having any idea whether that is a good idea. I can't remember why I started using Firefox. Just one of those things that I do. (After a while, trudging the road of happy destiny, lots of things silently and inevitably morph into just something one does.)
These days, you have to be careful. Some people are trying to offer you something useful and helpful; others are trying to work their grimy fingers into your wallet, not to mention sometimes your soul.
So I'm hoping some expert out there on computery things (internetty subset) will share and school: what be a VPN? Do I need such? Is Mozilla's the one I should get? Is it worth yet another poxy $60 leak per annum? (My bank account is now riddled with such tiny leaks. Drip drip.)
Don't ask
And by the way, this has been a pretty consistent issue in blogging over the years. When you have access to a crowd, especially a crowd of such exceptionally wise heads, it's always a temptation to ask about anything that is outside of one's own sphere. Legal questions, medical questions, questions put to pilots or investors or spelunkers or gardeners or what-have-you, or just things I'm curious about. Because when you open that magic window, you never know what is going to happen. For example, long ago I mentioned an obscure Australian photographer, and, months later, a rare volume of his work arrived in the mail from an Australian reader who was moved to seek it for himself and happened to find two copies instead of one. Or, once I mentioned A&E's show "Deadliest Catch" about crab fisherman in the Bering Sea, and what did we get but a comment from a reader who is a crab fisherman in the Bering Sea who loves TOP but can only catch up with his reading when his ship is within internet range of Dutch Harbor. Or the time we were talking about Irving Penn's platinum/palladium prints and we got a comment from Irving Penn's former platinum/palladium printmaking assistant.
Gold. You just never know what wonders await. Ask and ye shall receive.
Anyway I have a guideline for myself...try not to ask readers-plural for help with stuff that doesn't have to do with photography. That filters out about 80% of these impulses. Some off-topic "asks" sneak through however. I allow computer questions to wiggle their way in as being sorta-kinda related, although that's questionable.
Anyway, if anyone could help educate me in re VPNs off the top of their heads it would save me some time, time that could be better spent writing, which is the thing I do.
Mike
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Upcoming: Apple iMac Pro 32" with M2 chip, with an adequate number of ports and an Apple logo on the business side. Available in silver and space gray only.
(Photographers who do heavy Photoshop lifting might be better off waiting for that one.)
I've always had this ability to see the future. It's a curse as well as a blessing....
Mike
Books o' the Week
Nikon fan are ya? Nikon: A Celebration by British automotive writer and Nikon collector Brian Long covers the history of the company from its beginnings to the end of the film era. A U.S. parallel with more concentration on opinions about the equipment is B. Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook. The 6th Edition covered film equipment up to 2000. <—These are portals to Amazon.com thru TOP; you can also search for Nikon books from The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.
Original contents copyright 2021 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.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
MarkB: "Har har. Today's iMac announcement is, for serious digital photographers, the equivalent of 'nothing to see here.' I'm rather relieved, as they retained the 27" Intel models for a little longer...whew!"
Margaret: "Completely underwhelmed by new M1 iMac. 24", no SD slot, only 'up to' 16Gb memory and 2TB storage. I'm currently on 27", SD slot, 32GB and 3TB, so why on Earth would I downgrade to this? And with everything one one chip, no possibility of upgrading anything. But wait!! It comes in 'seven vibrant new colours'!! Oh well. Obviously I'll be buying one then (massive eye roll). Another triumph of style over substance."
Mike replies: Exactly. That why I think this is the rollout of just the "lower tier," the computer for people to put in their family rooms so they can keep a watchful eye on the kids at school and doing homework, the computer for people who don't use the computer much, and for people who care about things like color-matching computer and peripherals (the new 24" iMac comes with color-matching mouses, did you see?) in Easterish pastels. Not the things that are enticing for the likes of us.
The colors simply radiate unseriousness. Surely Apple means to telegraph that this is not the computer for power users.
I'm probably three years away from a new computer, unfortunately (I'm out of sync with Apple), and I hope my new computer will have 32GB RAM and a 4TB hard drive and enough ports that it doesn't automatically require a dock that automatically clutters up the desktop—the real top of my desk, I mean. I absolutely would have to use a dock/cardreader with this just-introduced model. Just as I do with my Mini.
Although I have to say, 24" strikes me as perfect. I currently have a 21.5" iMac and a 27" NEC monitor on my Mini, and while the latter is fine there's something nice about my little iMac. But I don't do photo editing on it, and for that it's just a bit small. About the only thing I don't need is a screen larger than my NEC...it will just be harder to wrangle and ship, and I personally don't need the screen real estate. And who really does? If you want room for your image and your palettes, don't you just get two screens? I know people who use three screens.
It mystifies me that Apple insists on sleek, uncluttered design, as if your office is a showplace, and then at the same time limits the number of ports it affords you and removes features like the SD card slot and DVD drive. Doesn't Apple understand that having more ports and built-in features would mean less clutter?
But then, I value practicality over style. And I notice that my whole (real) desktop has migrated slowly away from Apple for everything save the computer itself—my display, keyboard(s), mouse, speakers, dock/cardreader, and outboard drives are all non-Apple items now.
robert quiet photographer: "Am I the only Apple user who would like a desktop in between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro? I'm still on my Mac Pro (2013) trash bin...with too many cables around it...."
Mike replies: I wrote a rant to that effect once. It doesn't appear to have changed Apple's mind.... :-)
Is this OT or not? I guess it depends on you.
It's possible the Apple M1 iMacs could be announced tomorrow. The event is at 10 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. here in the East.
The iMac has been Apple's mainstream desktop computer product since it stopped seeing its major prestige market as being graphic designers and video and photo editors. Current iMacs range from a little over $1k to a little over $5k, which is a broad segment. If we do get new iMacs, it'll be interesting to see where in that range it targets Apple Silicon. The first iMac cost $1,299 in 1998, which would be $2,111 now.
Watchers expect a redesign, too. Other options: the iMac could be redesigned for the first time in years but retain Intel chips; or they could get Apple Silicon but no redesign.
One of the touted benefits of the M1 chip is battery life, which obviously won't be relevant in an iMac. So the focus will have to shift to other performance parameters. What those are going to be, and how much they might matter, is the question.
Could be an interesting day; or not.
I've been using all-in-one Macs, including the first Macintosh and the first iMac, since 1984. I'll be watching. Or, more accurately, waiting for the relevant news to filter through from someone who can 'splain it to me. But maybe actually watching too.
Meanwhile, provoked by a bug in Word for Mac, a friend switched from Apple to PC and was impressed by the feature-richness of the mid-level PC he bought.
Spring
I've got my windows open and I'm starting Spring Cleaning out here on the porch where I work. (One of my ambitions for this year is to move my office to the back of the house.) I gave the lawn its first haircut yesterday, strategically shoehorning the task in between rain showers. The daffodils are up and the robins are mating—two robin couples were actually making such a racket in a bush this morning that Butters charged the bush barking! Rude interruption, that.
Go Spring.
Mike
Books o' the Week
Nikon fan are ya? Nikon: A Celebration by British automotive writer and Nikon collector Brian Long covers the history of the company from its beginnings to the end of the film era. A U.S. parallel with more concentration on opinions about the equipment is B. Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook. The 6th Edition covered film equipment up to 2000. <—These are portals to Amazon.com thru TOP; you can also search for Nikon books from The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.
Original contents copyright 2021 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.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Joseph Vavak: "I bought a MacBook Air with the M1 earlier this year and have been very impressed with just how quick and responsive it is to use. I expected some slowness and hiccups with applications that hadn't been optimized for the M1, but it's hardly noticeable, if at all. The Air feels faster in day-to-day usage than the Lenovo Ryzen 5 powered-desktop I bought at the start of the pandemic for work purposes and upgraded to 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVME drive. I expected the battery life and the lack of heat generated, but I am honestly surprised how well it works for a 1st generation product that doesn't even have a fan."
Richard T: "Re whether this is OT, computing is another main interest of mine so from my side, the more you write/opine/reflect on Apple or related issues the better. :-) "
John Camp: "I'm Mike's friend who is experimenting with a PC. (Lenovo A940 with the i9 processor.) In addition to the new Lenovo, my wife and I between us have five active Apple machines, three 27-inch iMacs and two laptops for travel. (We're professional writers. [Here's John's latest —Ed.]) Our problem is, Microsoft Word is the publishing standard, and Word for Mac and MS Word have become increasingly incompatible—not in any large way, but in small ways that drive you absolutely crazy. For example, if you create in Word for Mac (or worse, in the supposedly compatible Pages) and the manuscript is opened in MS Word (the standard), one bug may separate a possessive apostrophe from its intended place, and attach it to the following word. (As in: The Smiths 'car.) Try finding all of those in a 110,000-word manuscript. There are also bugs that mess with spacing. I finally couldn't deal with it anymore, and I'm trying a PC with MS Word. (I'm a Word subscriber for both machines.)
"I don't know why the bugs appeared, but I suspect that Microsoft isn't interested in writing new Word software every time Apple updates its OS, which is now annually. And honestly, some of the incompatibilities are really hard to see until they get you by the throat.
"What I'm finding so far: the Lenovo, also an all-in-one, has far surpassed the iMac in function, although it is clunkier. The screen is the same size (27") and UHD, but it is a touch screen. I won't get into all the specs, they're easily researched on the 'net, but I'll mention a few things: the underside of the screen has a row of dimmable LED lights (that may also be turned off) that shine down on a manuscript that you may be editing. To the right side of the screen is a small platform that is a wireless iPhone charger. The machine comes with an electronic 'pencil' for writing on the touch screen which is great for apps like Photoshop. The 940 is faster than the iMac and has more RAM and storage. It has excellent Dolby Atmos speakers built into the base. It cost $2,449.99.
"The downside is Windows 10, which is not as good as the Mac OS (I'm using Big Sur.) Still too complicated, but much better than it used to be. After a few days use, I'm getting into it, and though I'm getting into it, it's not as slick as the Mac. Though, really, it is fairly slick.
"Going forward, I suspect the Lenovo will become my main machine, and my Apples, as they become increasingly obsolete, will go away. But I'm not sure of that. I've been using Apples since the '90s. I do think that Apple's tendency toward fashion and sleekness at the price of less function will eventually bite it in the ass."
Thomas Mc Cann: "A post on TOP some years back coupled with a recommendation from Ctein led me to buy the latest Mac with the latest screen and an Epson SureColor P600. All touted as the ne plus ultra. A longtime PC user, I struggled with the Mac. Eventually I gave up in frustration and switched back to a Dell and Windows 10. I was probably too steeped in the Windows environment. Only good thing was I got a good price for the Mac when I sold it."
