The Online Photographer

Singing vs. Chatting

Written by Ctein

I'd say that Mike's experience with the iPhone closely parallels my film experience. In the '80s I got one of the compact 35mm SLRs (and later, high quality point-and-shoots) so I'd be surer of having a camera with me. I did a fair amount of photography with it. And, as Mike said, every so often the stars aligned perfectly, and probably a half dozen of the prints in my dye transfer portfolio are from 35mm (Mike could probably figure out which ones, 'cause he's got the eye, but no one else would).

But...I hit his "but." Those were rare alignments. Most of the time the pictures were just fine. And just that, nothing more. Photos I made in medium format sang. The 35mm ones mostly just chatted. The technical level just wasn't there to make me truly happy. So 35mm became the convenient fallback and I stopped even trying to use it for anything I might consider serious, because 90% of the time I'd be disappointed. As I said, this really closely parallels what Mike said about his iPhone shots.

The secondary message in this is that there was nothing wrong with 35mm per se. Most professionals found it entirely satisfactory. It just wasn't, for me. It is good. I needed more.

That's what I've seen with phonephotos. They are good, technically. Better, frankly than my quality 35mm point-and-shoot could produce, in all size enlargements. But that still doesn't make them (yet!) the match of a dedicated camera...most of the time...and our sensibilities have gotten ratcheted way up by the digital disruption.

No one should feel defensive if they find phonephotos completely satisfactory, and nobody should be telling them otherwise. But no one should feel defensive for feeling the need to move to a higher level, either.

Ctein

Californian Ctein is TOP's Tech Editor and former weekly columnist.

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Eric Brody: "I share Ctein's frustration with 'everywhere' cameras. I've had many over the years, from film to digital. I have spent too much time agonizing over them. With each I have this hope that this will be the one with which I'll make that special image. When I look at the photos of which I am proud, it's uncommon for any to have been taken with the 'everywhere' camera. I should not blame the camera. My current one is a Fuji X100S, a capable tool to be sure. I just do not make many memorable images with it. I suspect it is a reflection of my photographic style, if I may glorify my photography such as to even hope I have a style."

Gato: "Interesting, as Ctein's experience is similar to my take on 35mm.

"Although I made my living with 35mm back in the day, most of my personal photography was done with 4x5. The quality of 35mm was fine for my pro work—mostly publicity and newspaper—but just not up to what I wanted for myself.

"I'm finding phone photos more satisfactory than I ever did 35mm, though I can't explain exactly why. I think it has to do with immediacy and less hassle with equipment combined with technical quality that is more than good enough for the kind of images I make with it. As for what others may choose, to me it comes back the old 'right tool for the job.' Find something that makes the kind of pictures you want and go with it."

David Boyce: "But chatting can be so much better than singing. So much more can be conveyed in a short chat than in a song. Metaphorically speaking."

Auntipode: "Most folks chat. Few sing well."

Caleb Courteau: "Chatting vs. singing. Wonderful analogy that really sums up the differences in format quality. Thanks Ctein for the thoughtful post."

Ctein's Remodel Report

[Note: Yes, I am having an Xmas Sale. Who isn't, these days? Skip to the end of this column for the full details. Some print availability is limited. —Ctein]

So...

What's been happening the last six-seven months? The downstairs remodel is finally finished. Only took three times as long and twice the money that was budgeted. Sigh. No complaints about our contractor, not a one. Tekhome is fabulous. They do real quality work. George Amarendos is wonderful to work with and handles every aspect of the remodel from permits and architectural plans through subcontractors through final inspections. He worked very hard to keep the costs under control and, so far as we are concerned, went above and beyond the call of duty to do so. It's just, sometimes, with remodeling, well,Š "things happen." Especially when you're talking about a 60-year-old house whose infrastructure was largely untouched since it was built.

I'm not going to take you through step-by-step. There are 600 photographs that do that. Here's a trio of very pertinent "before" photographs from last April.

The first one shows the (ex) darkroom, stripped of equipment and seeing the light of day for the first time since I moved in.

The second, the state of the unfinished garage after much cleaning and straightening up.

And the is third the location of the former unfinished storeroom (filled with empty bookcases, here).

What's it look like now? Here is the main corridor, where the unfinished garage was. Off to the side are doors leading to the new guestroom, library, Paula's den, utility closet, and the laundry room and bathroom. I'm showing you this because of the ceiling lights. They're 800 lumen 3000K 93CRI LED's that George found on his own. They are very, very fine, absolutely perfect for an artist like me.

These lights are available in both 800 and 1100 lm units. I can't find the datasheet for the 1100 lm unit (DMF's website is ridiculously hard for a techie to navigate) but here's a link to the one for the 800 lm lights.

Which gets me to my new 16x13-foot print studio, located where the old storeroom was. It's lit by five of the 1100 lm units. That's more enough to brightly and evenly illuminate the space. In fact, I have them on a dimmer, so I can reduce the light intensity in the room to more closely match real-world viewing conditions when I need to. (A classic darkroom mistake is having so much light over your print viewing area that you print too dark for normal lighting conditions).

You can get an idea of just how even the illumination is by looking at the 12-foot expanse of wall in the next illustration:

Keep in mind that photographs exaggerate broad brightness differences that are invisible to our eyes. Visually, that wall looks uniform from left to right. It'll be perfect for judging my large panoramas!

Not so by the way, my Epson 9800 printer survived being in storage for six months. I wasn't sure. I ruined a 2200 printer once that way—unfixable head clogs. Yeah, I used up about $50 worth of ink clearing the heads on the 9800, but that's nothing compared to the cost of a new printer.

All did not go entirely smoothly. Some of my negatives were damaged. I'm in the process of repairing them. That will be the subject of a forthcoming column.

•     •     •

So...as I said at the beginning, I'm having a sale, really great prices with shipping (anywhere in the world) and sales tax covered by me. U.S. orders placed by December 15 will be delivered before Christmas.

My most signature "Christmas in California" photograph is only $175, half its normal price.

I'm clearing out extra prints from one of my TOP sales of three years ago at $225, a savings of $125 over the normal print price...plus that no-shipping-cost-or-sales-tax thing. Availability on these is limited so you should order ASAP.

That's it. Over and out, until next time.

Ctein

Former columnist and master printer Ctein, who has been busy writing his first novel, is still friend-o'-TOP #1. He is heard from in these environs from time to time.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 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.

The love you take is equal to the love...oh, never mind

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

David Miller: "Re 'Only took three times as long and twice the money that was budgeted. Sigh': This is exactly the final formula for each of the home additions and renovations I've undertaken in the forty years we've lived in our house. In the long run I'm sure you'll find it is worth the time and money."

MikeR: "I'm psyched on those LED lights. I see what you mean about their website—but it did lead me to a local distributor, who I have contacted to find a local electrical installer. Ctein, I like your style, and your thinking."

Print Sale Update

Ctein reports that all 54 orders have been shipped for his "Bird Impression" photograph print sale. This sets a new land speed record for TOP Sale order fulfillment.

If you haven't gotten a confirmation e-mail from the Post Office for your order within 24 hours of this notice going up, please e-mail Ctein (ctein@pobox.com) and he will send you the particulars.

If you haven't gotten your print within 30 days, please contact Ctein.

As for our next Print Offer, in time for Christmas, I'll just drop a (broad) hint and remind you of this one. (We're doing another with Paul and John Paul.)

Many thanks for supporting TOP! And let us know what you think of the print.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Carson Harding: "I just walked in the door five minutes ago to find the print and this post waiting for me! The print is excellent. Thanks very much."

October Print: 'Bird Impression' by Ctein

Ctein came across this remarkable find in St. Paul, Minnesota, last year, and made of it a photograph like none you've ever seen before. And seldom have we gotten more requests for prints than for this picture.

Unlike photographs that "project," you might find yourself having to explain to viewers of the print just what it is—the ghostly impression of the impact of a bird into plate glass, rendered on the glass in remarkable detail. It hints of violence as well as beauty, mystery as well as pain, and yet still possesses an undeniable gesture of grace. A collision, literally, of the manmade and the natural world.

For those who wish a closer look at the photograph before purchasing, Ctein has a larger JPEG on his own website: http://ctein.com/TOP/Bird_Impression3.jpg . The detail below (click to see it at ~100%) shows the exquisite detail in the dusty impression.

The photograph is printed on Canson Baryta Photographique paper with Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks. We're offering the print in two sizes this time—11x14 inches (9x12" image area) for $95, and 17x22 inches (15x20" image area) for $175. The prints will be signed and titled in ink on the front, dated and signed in pencil on the back.

Shipping costs are $20 for the smaller 11x14" and $25 for the larger 17x22" print, anywhere in the world. California residents must pay sales tax. The PayPal order buttons below reflect the total price, including tax and shipping.

Ctein has generously offered to donate a larger than normal cut of the proceeds to the "Help TOP Move" campaign, so orders help Mike too.

As usual, we accept orders for four days only. Sales close at noon Central Time on Friday. Then the prints are made to fill the orders we've received. Prints cannot be ordered past the close date.

HERE'S HOW TO ORDER

[Sale has ended, 12 noon 10/31/2014. Here is Ctein's email and his address is:

Ctein
42 Skyline Drive
Daly City CA 94015

should you need to contact him about your order.

All prints will be delivered before Xmas. You will receive a shipping confirmation email with a tracking number from the U.S. Postal Service when your print ships. All prints ship USPS Priority Mail. Also, there will be a notice posted on TOP when they've all shipped. Please allow 45 days after your order before inquiring whether your order has shipped.

Many thanks to all the buyers of this print!]

Mike

UPDATE: If you'd like to help with the problem of stressors and dangers to bird populations, reader GKFroehlich recommends this informational page from the American Bird Conservancy. See his full comment in the Comments section. —Ed.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Robert Hudyma: "I saw this image when Ctein visited in Toronto, and the web image displayed does not capture the subtle nuances that the Epson printer can render. The link to the higher resolution image is better. The original image will evoke an emotional response when you see it."

Jim: "Have you seen this, which was coincidentally posted today."

Darr: "I had a window desk on the fifth floor of a big office building once. The view was spectacular until one beautiful Spring day birds began flying into the windows and falling to their death. It was a traumatic experience because I never knew how those types of buildings could bring tragedy to the innocence of nature. I purchased this print in part to bring remembrance to the tragedy, and to share it with others. When I first saw this photo it reminded me of the feelings I had decades ago when I first read James Dickey's poem, 'Falling.'"

James Liu: "Nabokov's Pale Fire contains a 999-line epic poem that begins,

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

John Seidel: "Ah. This hit a nerve with me as well. It is beautiful and terrible at the same moment. GKFroehlich covered the problem well. I have noted the vast decline in birds over the course of my life. I'm 63 and the lack of birds now as compared to my childhood is striking. I would have been very pleased to have taken this photo and at the same time I still find it heartbreaking."

Kevin Purcell: "John Myers wrote in the Comments: 'Looks like a rock dove (urban pigeon) but how could such avian impact leave an image on plate glass?'

"Feather dust. Feathers wear and abrade in use. The edges tend to be the most fragile. When the bird hits the window the impact breaks the edges of the feathers leaving the feather dust attached to the window. Hence the ghostly outline of the feather edges. I think I can see the alula extended on the leading edge (together with the forward sweep of the wing through the primaries); I suspect this pigeon was in the process of taking off rather than colliding with the window while in free flight."

GKFroehlich: "For John Meyers (et al.)—this is a quote from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: 'Found only in certain taxonomic groups such as pigeons and herons, powder down feathers are never molted. Instead, they grow continuously but disintegrate at the tips into something like a fine talcum powder. The powder permeates the other feathers, presumably to provide waterproofing, although the exact function is not well understood.' Most (all?) of my images of bird strikes on windows are of pigoens and doves, of various species. I'm guessing a heron would leave quite an impression."

Aaron Britton: "There is a glass, Ornilux by Arnold Glas, that can help with bird collisions. Ornilux is a glass that has patterned UV coatings which are visible to birds but not humans. What you end up with is a piece of glass that looks like any other glass to humans but to birds they see a net type pattern. Interesting stuff."

Ctein Paris Meetup UPDATE

Franck Dewannieux, Quai de Seine, 2005. Tri-X, Leica M6, 50mm Summicron.

The TOP meet-up with Ctein in Paris organized by Franck Dewannieux will take place tomorrow inside Café Crème around 7:30 p.m.

Café Crème is located at 4 Rue Dupetit-Thouars in the 3rd arrondissement (district) of Paris. The closest subway stations are Temple and République.

Anyone considering attending can also e-mail Franck at fjaddd@gmail.com; he will share any further update (and his phone number) via e-mail.

Big thanks to Franck for doing this!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Ctein Meetup in Paris France!

If Parisian (or visiting) TOP readers would like to meet Ctein at an informal (and Anglophone) get-together on the evening of Monday, August 11th, they can get in touch with Franck (fjaddd@gmail.com) and let him know they are coming (and how many they are). He will then confirm the exact location. The get-together will start around 7:30 p.m. or so and will most likely happen in the general area of Le Marais district.

Mike
(Thanks to Franck)

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Ctein in Paris

[Note: TOP's Technical Editor, Ctein, has not fallen off the face of the earth. He's just been very, very busy administering print sales for TOP, finishing up the novel he's jointly writing with John Camp, and dealing with the ongoing remodeling of the former darkroom and garage space. (He says the contractor's been telling him it'll be done in two weeks—for three weeks now!) Expect new columns from him in the fall. —Mike the Ed.]

Written by Ctein

In August, I'll be taking a well-deserved vacation with my frequent traveling companion Bayla Fine. The two of us will be in Paris on Monday, August 11. Yeah, one whole day in the City of Light. You take what you can get.

If some Parisian reader would like to organize a get-together with me for that evening, I'd be delighted to meet anyone who wants to come. I don't speak French, and can barely read it, so it will need to be an Anglophone gathering. (That shouldn't be a problem for anybody who can read this.) Any of you Parisians wish to volunteer to be the coordinator for this?

Now for the big question: if someone had one and only one full day in Paris, what would you suggest they do with it? Unfortunately I cannot magically exchange it for a week. It's one day or nothing. So, what should Bayla and I do with our day?

Ctein

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

ADDENDUM: P.S. It never occurred to me that the most popular suggestion would be to spend all day just walking Paris. It's a great suggestion; unfortunately, it will be impossible! Bayla gets around with a cane and cannot walk more than a few hours a day and needs to stop frequently to sit down and rest.

In that vein, the Batobus sounds simply brill. —Ctein

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Pak-Ming Wan: "Argh! What timing—I'll be on holidays away from Paris for two weeks and on that day! (Otherwise, I would have put my hand up to organise that meetup.)

"August is a good time to visit because most people are away on holidays, so Paris is relatively empty. My last day in Paris would probably be Notre-Dame, around the banks of the Ile de la Cite, and Latin Quarter, Le Marais, Montmatre, and the canals Saint-Martin. Photography wise, I'd pack light to keep yourself mobile during the day. If you've got one day and you're going to be walking a lot, carrying water is probably more useful than a tripod. Enjoy your day in Paris!"

Bron (partial comment): "Learn a few 'politenesses'; I was amazed how far courtesy would take me, and I have a terrible accent."

Steve Rosenblum: "As you don't have much time and walking long distances is problematic I would suggest going to two or three places at which you can linger and enjoy yourself that are in close geographic proximity: 1. Musee D'Orsay. This will take a couple of hours. Then cross the bridge in front of the museum and spend some time at 2. The Tuileries Garden and surrounding park. The park also includes a photography museum. Then take some form of transportation the few blocks to 3. Ile de la Cite and the Notre Dame Cathedral. This will easily fill one day. Be sure to have breakfast in a nice outdoor cafe, and try interesting looking places for lunch and dinner."

Ed. and Tech. Ed. Get Together

My friend and co-conspirator Ctein*

Ctein and I had our annual meet-up in Madison this afternoon, which was great fun as usual. We went to our now-traditional Italian restuarant lunch spot along with his S.O. Laura, and then, back at the hotel where his conference is taking place, looked at cameras and pictures in equal proportions. I took this shot with the Olympus E-M1 and the Panasonic 12–35mm, one of several fancy lenses Ctein brought along to show me—I gather he had this one on loan from John Camp.

So, can't teach an old reviewer new tricks? Can't teach an old reviewer old tricks, hardly. Seems I keep having to learn this over and over again: you don't really know a thing until you try it yourself. I've read many times on Ye Tubes of Ye Internets that the older Panasonic 20mm lens (my "normal" on this camera) is slow-ish to focus on the newer Olympii and that a number of alternatives are faster. Well, I had no idea how much faster. The Panasonic 12–35mm zoom is blazingly fast on the E-M1; really surprisingly fast. Almost I-didn't-know-how-fast-autofocus-could-focus fast.

The bar keeps being raised. I loved the way this lens handles on this camera.

Ctein showed me a number of 17x22" prints, all taken with the E-M5 Micro 4/3 camera and all utterly putting to the lie the idea that Micro 4/3 is not capable of superb results on paper. Some of the new aurora borealis shots from Yellowknife are wonderful, and I particularly liked a delicate and incredibly sharp landscape taken from the plane. Almost hard to believe.

He showed me some B&W work, too, but something was seriously wrong with them—the tones were just not right. Maybe he has some sort of explanation for their weird and "off" look. Some sort of mystery if you ask me.

[UPDATE: Okay, I'll come clean—they were all infrareds. Ctein cheerfully accused me of having an antipathy toward infrared, and I guess I have to concede that.]

I got to try the Olympus 75mm lens, too—another beauty, although it's a bit too long for the way I see.

I'd sure love to have that zoom, though. (And no, those words from my lips are not actually a sign of the Apocalypse.)

Mike

*In case you might not know, it's pronounced "kuh-TINE" and it's his full legal name.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Stephen Scharf: "I have that 12–35mm zoom, and it rocks. It's on my E-M1 90% of the time. Pricey but worth it."

Nicholas Condon: "We'll know it's the Apocalypse when you use said zoom to take a color photo of a cat with flowers."

David Wilson: "The Panasonic 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 X zoom has become my go-to lens for Micro 4/3. Works great on all the Panasonic and Olympus bodies I have. It's almost like having a bunch of high performance primes in one lens, which I guess is the point."

ShadZee: "I'm still waiting for his final review of those glasses  ;-)"

Mike replies: I don't think that's going to happen now, as the company that makes them went out of business. To Ctein's great chagrin.

Richard Alan Fox: "When using that lens on Olympus bodies do you use camera IS or lens IS?"

Mike replies: I had the body stabilization on and the lens stabilization off for the handful of shots I made with it. My understanding is that with Panasonic bodies that have IBIS (is it just the GX7, or are there more?), the lens IS always take precedence, but with Olympus bodies with IS, you can use either (or none). If that's not right I hope someone who is more intimately familiar with the issue will fill us in.

Matrix Sale Update

On the subject of Ctein's recent dye transfer matrix and workprint sale, he reports that he has finished matching up people's requests with the available sets. He is happy to report that there were only two unresolvable conflicts out of some 160 set requests. He emailed those two readers and let them choose whatever they wanted from the unsold sets. So, everyone is going to come out happy.

If you haven't received yours by then, or gotten an email from the US Postal Service notifying you that your shipment is on the way, please contact him on or after April 1. (Please, he requests no April Fool's joke emails.)

Incidentally, if you missed the sale or you want to order a particular workprint and set of matrices from the ones remaining, they are available for viewing at Ctein's website. The price, of course, is considerably higher than it was during the sale, but you get your pick.

Our next TOP print sale should begin within a few weeks. As promised, it will have some very inexpensive options (along with some very expensive ones. And some in the middle).

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Ch-Ch-Changes

By (in alphabetical order) Ctein and Mike

Starting next Wednesday, you will notice a change here at The Online Photographer (TOP). Ctein's weekly Wednesday column is coming to an end.

About 325(!) of them have been published so far! (...We think. A slight miscount is possible. But it's something very close to that.)

To forestall possible rumors right from the get-go: this is not due to any kind of falling out between the two of us, personally or professionally. That's why we've written this post jointly. Ctein still enjoys writing columns for TOP. Mike is still happy to publish them. We're still good friends and amicable colleagues, same as ever.

So why the ch-ch-changes?

From Mike's side, 2014 is planned to be a year of several changes at TOP, possibly including a change of venue and the publication of our first book.

From Ctein's perspective, his life been going through major changes (of the good sort) for the past couple of years, and he's reordering his priorities. Shutting down his darkroom, rebuilding the lower floor of his house, and switching over to an entirely digital photographic lifestyle are part of it. Making such profound alterations is an ongoing consumer of time and energy. On top of that, for the past year and a half he's been working on a novel with TOP regular John Camp (better known as bestselling author John Sandford). As you might imagine, that eats up a lot of time and "writing energy," the latter being something that is always in limited supply for mortals. Well, unless you're Thomas Wolfe, D. H. Lawrence, or Stephen Somebody-Stop-That-Man King.

Being continually just a bit overextended is the main driver here. Ctein has kept up his weekly columnist duties without fail, but not without effect. The reason you've been seeing few product tests and in-depth reviews from him lately is because they take weeks and sometimes months of advance homework. They're not hard to write once all the background research is done, but he's been running hard enough just keeping up that he hasn't been able to devote enough time to testing.

So—the changes:

Ctein is not disappearing from TOP. First, he will continue writing occasional columns—we're shooting for between two and ten annually. The thing is, they'll only happen when Ctein feels like it, not when the weekly calendar demands. This will mean more reviews; he's got stacks of books, software, and hardware waiting to be covered.

Second, Ctein is taking on a new official role: henceforth he is TOP's Technical Editor.

Third, you can expect him to continue to chime in with his two cents' worth (more like five cents) in the Comments.

Fourth, Ctein also will be administering the next TOP print sale, which is coming along soon. The sale will be of Mike's work, with the goal of raising some money to fund more office space for TOP, lack of same being Mike's biggest headache.

And, not so by the way, Ctein reports that he made it back safely from Yellowknife, with no frozen bits left behind. He made this photograph with his Olympus E-M5 with an exposure of one second at ƒ/2.8 at ISO 3200. The sole source of illumination is the setting half-moon. No, Vivian did not stay uncovered that way for very long: it was –35° Celsius!

We'll be interested to hear what you think, now and as we settle into Ctein's new role. Life is change!

Mike and Ctein

©2014 by Michael C. Johnston and Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Manuel: "I can't figure out right now whether this is good or bad news. While I hold Ctein's knowledge in very high regard and will miss his weekly columns, it's good to know he'll have a prominent role at TOP and will still be sharing his wisdom with us. As for the remaining changes at TOP, I believe I write on behalf of most readers when I say we'll be looking forward to them."

Jim Roelofs: "I've always looked upon Ctein's contributions here as super-reliable, factually accurate information, so I would like to note my indebtedness to him and wish him all the best for the future. Sincerest regards."

On Assignment with my iPad Air

This week's column by Ctein

Those of you who've been following my peripatetic photographic exploits know that my computer of choice has been a 15-inch MacBook Pro, now of advanced age in computer years. It's allowed me to do the same kind of extensive and serious photographic editing, adjustment, and manipulation that I would do at home. With the addition of a first-generation iPad, I could even work on a portable studio quality monitor, which was exceedingly difficult to come by just a few years back. (Today, a retina-screen-equipped MacBook will provide that quality of display.)

What I've discovered, though, is that while it's awfully cool to be able to do fullbore image work on the road, I hardly ever do. Simply put, I don't have enough time when I'm traveling. I barely find time to do a serious edit on the photographs I've made. At most, I'll set up some ACR conversion adjustments for when I get home and am ready to start the seriously-time-consuming work in Photoshop.

While I most definitely needed that studio quality display, 90% of the computing power (and storage and memory and weight, etc.) of my laptop proves to be wasted on my away-from-home photographic work. This has started me pondering how much of this I could accomplish on my iPad. It's one of the reasons I sprang for the 128 GB model this last time around and also bought the SD card reader (a.k.a. Camera Connection Kit).

My trip to Minneapolis in January overlapped one of the Chippawa Valley Roller Girls' matches, of which I have written previously. DDB and I went out to photograph the match. He's been doing this regularly, of course, and has gotten absurdly adept at putting together instant slideshows of the matches for the Girls to see at the after-match party.

Okay, not exactly instant, but it seems that way to me. He has lots of experience very quickly editing event photography on his laptop for posting to websites or creating presentations. He's got 100 times as much experience at this as I do and he's about 1,000 times faster. That's not hyperbole; his turnaround time is measured in minutes to hours; mine is usually months.

Last year I tried putting together a slideshow of my photographs on the MacBook Pro for an after-match party. It was pretty much a fail. My workflow and my machine just weren't up to the task. By the time my laptop could import 500–1000 photographs and bring them up for me to edit, an hour had passed (DDB's laptop is many times faster). I finally punted and just let Preview cycle through the JPEGs from the RAW files on the SD card, unedited and unsorted. The Girls were happy enough, but it wasn't professional and it sure didn't satisfy me.

Now, that's with my normal workflow. If I put some serious thought and effort into the problem, I likely could have worked out a new workflow that would demand substantially less from my computer and from me. But, for something I was doing only once or twice a year, it wasn't high on my list to get around to that.

Come last month, I still hadn't gotten around to that. Three days before the match, though, I started noodling around with the Connection Kit. I wanted to show my Olympus's cold-weather tests to Dave Polaschek, who I was having lunch with less than an hour later. What better way than to load them into the iPad?

  Fig. 1. Photos, an app that's part of iOS, reads the RAW files from my Olympus via the Camera Connection Kit and displays thumbnails for me to select from.

For this first attempt, I went the very dumbest (minimal learning curve) route and used Photos, the app bundled into iOS 7. It took only 0.8 sec per photograph to load the previews from the SD card (figure 1) and just twice that long to import the full RAW file. It was a matter of minutes to get everything from the camera into the iPad. And I started to think, maybe this was the answer to my roller derby slideshow problem.

Fig. 2. Once I've selected the photographs I want to import by tapping on the thumbnails, "Import Selected" pulls the RAW files into the iPad.

Not having the time nor inclination to climb a particularly steep learning curve nor throw money at the problem in the following three days, I continued on the simplest and dumbest path. That Saturday evening, post-match, found DDB and I sitting in the after-party bar, him with his laptop and me with my iPad. I had some 500 photographs to work through. As Photos was loading the thumbnails, I started going through them selecting the ones I wanted to import to the iPad (figure 2). Those one-inch thumbnails weren't clear enough to do a critical edit on, but they were good enough for weeding out the obvious failures. A third of the photographs went away that way.

Fig. 3. The "Photos" screen in the Photos app shows the photographs I've imported, sorted by date. Tapping on one of those photos brings up
the editing screen.

Fig. 4. The editing screen shows me a full-screen rendering that lets me make my final selections. Tapping the trashcan icon (barely visible here in light blue) in the lower right corner deletes the photograph.

When I was finished making my choices, I tapped "Import Selected" and returned to the "photos" screen (figure 3). Importing continued in the background as the selected photos appeared as thumbnails on this screen. I clicked the first thumbnail and a full-screen version popped up (figure 4). Now I could see what the photograph really looked like. If I liked what I saw I swiped sideways with my finger and brought up the next photo. If I didn't I tapped the trashcan icon in the corner and the photograph went away.

Fig. 5. The export screen is where I select which photos will go into the slideshow.

When I was done with that I had about 250 photographs left out of the original 500. I tapped the export icon in the lower left corner of the screen and that brought up figure 5. I tapped each of those 250 photographs to select it, a lot of repetitive tapping. There may very well have been a way to batch-select, but as I said, I didn't do any homework. It didn't really take all that long.

Fig. 6. Tapping the slideshow button on the export screen brings up the slideshow options and the button to start running the slideshow.

Now I had my slideshow. I tapped the slideshow button at lower screen left, kept the "Slideshow Options" at the defaults (figure 6), and tapped "Start Slideshow." There it was! I propped the iPad up on its smart-cover stand and let it run.

The whole job took me just about an hour from start to finish. I actually beat DDB by maybe 15 minutes (of course, when he was done, his edit was more polished and sophisticated than mine).

I'm not remotely suggesting this was the best possible way to create a slideshow on the iPad. In fact, since then I've downloaded iPhoto (now a free program). It's a lot more flexible than Photos with a lot more controls and editing capability, and it gives me more control over the slideshow, e.g., whether or not it runs continuously on a repeat cycle and how long each photograph is up for. There are likely even better tools out there—no doubt readers will suggest some. The important thing, though, is that it worked! Quickly, and with little effort on my part, I was able to learn how to accomplish a (self-imposed) assignment that previously I'd been trying to do much less well on my laptop.

Photos and iPhoto have an important limitation—although they understand RAW files, all they are displaying is the attached JPEG. That's entirely good enough for a slideshow like this and it's sufficient for a first, crude editing pass on my more serious work. It doesn't let me see the full quality or tonal range in the RAW photographs, let alone usefully manipulate it. Two apps that will work on RAW data are PiRAWnha and PhotoRaw. I plan to look into them but haven't tried either out, yet. I solicit comments from any readers who have used either of these as well as suggestions for other RAW-processing apps for the iPad.

There's still too much stuff I do while traveling, like writing and e-mail, that I haven't figured out how to do efficiently on an iPad. Yet. But, depending on how those RAW processing apps work out for me, I may pretty quickly find myself doing almost no photo processing on my laptop while traveling. It's likely I'll wind up buying one more laptop—a MacBook Pro Retina, natch. It won't surprise me if that turns out to be my last one.

Or...maybe it'll turn out that I give up the desktop machine and run solely with a laptop at home. That whole convergence business I wrote about a few columns back. What I do know, though, is that the iPad is continually encouraging me to reevaluate how I do things computerish.

Ctein

Columnist Ctein usually appears on TOP on Wednesdays.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Ben: "Simple and nice workflow...thanks!

"For writing and email on and iPad, I like the Incase Origami Workstation, which is basically a case for the Apple bluetooth keyboard, but it folds open to support the iPad above the keyboard. I don't mind the Apple keyboard and I much prefer having a case for the keyboard than an iPad keyboard case, as it offers me a lot more flexibility. I've found I can do a lot of email correspondence with this setup. It even works on an airplane by writing emails, saving them as drafts, then just sending when I have an Internet connection again.

"I did give up my desktop; I balked at the new Mac Pro, so I sold my Macbook Air and bought a 15" Macbook Pro with retina display, and I've been very happy with my new setup. I can do a lot on my iPad mini, and everything else on the retina Pro. Perfect!!!"

Huw Morgan: "Sounds pretty painful compared to getting the right tools for the job (e.g. Surface Pro and Lightroom). Kinda like using a hammer and nails to assemble Ikea furniture."

Chris Exum: "Your article has changed my workflow. I just successfully imported my X-Pro1 raw file into iPhoto, which did not work the last time I tried. I am now able to import a Fuji RAW file into the Photosmith app (I previously had to shoot RAW + JPEG for this to work) from the iPhoto album. I use Photosmith to tag and rate my photos. Photosmith then syncs my photos to Lightroom along with my tags, ratings, and IPTC info.

"The above workflow is my 'on the road' workflow. Then when I get home, I use LR/PS for editing, using my rating system to identify the photos that I actually want to edit. If I want to do any editing on the iPad, I have been using Snapseed. It's easy, fast, and does a respectable job. Not up to pro standards, but makes a decent image to upload to facebook or email to friends/family. Thanks for making me rethink my workflow!"

Alun J. Carr: "n addition to iPhoto, you really should install Snapseed. This was developed by Nik Software (the Viveza and Silver FX plugin, and Nikon's Capture NX people), who also made desktop (Mac and Windows) versions. Nik was swallowed by Google who killed the desktop versions, and made the iOS and Android versions free. Snapseed is an amazing piece of software, using Nik's U-Point technology for localised adjustments in an incredibly tactile fashion on the iPad; in fact, there are aspects of U-Point in Snapseed that are far superior to the implementation in the plugins for Aperture/Photoshop/Lightroom. Working with Snapseed on an iPad is such an immersive, tactile experience that it feels like an artist working in oil or acrylics (I have experience of acrylics, but not oils).

"Anyhow, it won't break the bank to try it."

My Cold-Weather Camera Test

This week's column by Ctein

[Temperatures given in Celsius —Ed.]

As you may recall, I'm going to be going to Yellowknife in two weeks to (hopefully) see and photograph aurora borealis. Pretty cool. 'Cept that the problem is it's likely to be more than just pretty cool. It could well be hell-freezing-over cold. Mean lows at that time of year are –25° Celsius, but 10° swings from that aren't uncommon.

Luckily, I was in Minneapolis in the latter part of January when it got hit by several (more) nasty cold snaps. A perfect opportunity to field-test my Olympus E-M5 and its lenses.

Wednesday night was predicted to hit –27° Celsius, not getting above –25° until 10 a.m. Thursday morning. Wednesday evening I had a date, so I stuck the camera kit on the floor of the car in a plastic bag and left it to soak in the cold. When I left my girlfriend's apartment around midnight the outside temperature was down to –20°. I figure the camera had probably equilibrated at –15° inside the car, so it was a good time to run a preliminary test.

The Olympus made several proper exposures with the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 lens, focusing and changing aperture as it was supposed to. The battery indicator for the cold-soaked battery was indeed in the red "I'm empty" zone, but the camera still worked. The OELD (organic electroluminescent display) [Note: Not OLED, which stands for organic light-emitting diode —Ed.) viewing screen and eye level viewfinder were fully responsive and didn't look different from normal use. A promising start. I popped the gear back into the plastic baggie, put it back on the floor of the car, and let it cold-soak overnight.

Fig. 1. At –25° Celsius, the Olympus E-M5 with 45mm lens performed just fine. ISO 200, ƒ/5.6 @ 1/160th sec.

The following morning, when the temperature was down around –25°, I tested all my gear in earnest. The cold-soaked battery was dead, but it revived in a few minutes in my pocket. My 45mm ƒ/1.8 lens also worked perfectly, as figure 1 shows. Exposure and focus did what they were supposed to. Figure 2 shows a 100% section of the part of the frame where the camera was auto-focusing. On the nose!

Fig. 2. A 100% section of figure 1, showing that the camera system was focusing accurately.

The 14–42mm kit lens was also unfazed by the chilly weather. So far so good. Only one lens gave me problems—that so-so 12mm ƒ/2 Olympus lens. It wouldn't focus reliably (figure 3). It was because of the triply-damned (literally, in my review) manual focus ring. That was a uselessly inept implementation to begin with. Now it was an actual handicap. The ring's lubricant became too stiff at –25°, hampering the movement of the focusing mechanism.

Fig. 3. The 12mm ƒ/2 Olympus lens had focusing problems in cold weather.

Understand that this lens always does electronically-controlled focusing: The focusing ring does not mechanically couple to the lens—it just sends a signal to the camera that then instructs the lens to change focus. Consequently, the poorly-operating focus system wasn't any more reliable in manual mode than autofocus mode. I discovered if I racked the focusing ring back and forth several times, the innards would loosen up enough that focusing became semi-functional. Most of the time, then, it worked (figure 4); occasionally it didn't.

Fig. 4. Running the manual focus ring back and forth several times made the 12mm's autofocus work most of the time (ƒ/5.6 @ 1/640th sec.).

I may still try to use the lens in Yellowknife. Its optical shortcomings wouldn't impact my aurora photography, and it would be nice to have a fast, wide lens. I just won't rely on it heavily.

I decided to try and catch some action photos of the crazy dogs romping in the snow. Man, those Bernese mountain dogs can really move when they want to, and they sure do love cold (Tara is happily eating snow in figure 1). I opened up the 45mm lens to get the shutter speed nice and short, around 1/2500 sec, and what do I get? Figure 5. Aw, hell—I was sure I'd broken something in the camera or the lens. I popped the lens off and made a couple of bare-body snaps. Similar results. It wasn't the lens; it had to be the camera.

Fig. 5. Really short exposures don't work at –25°! At 1/2500 sec, most of the frame is unexposed.

I fiddled around and managed to figure it out before total panic set in. The camera's shutter curtains weren't actuating quite as fast in the extreme cold. I was fine with exposures longer than a millisecond. The frame progressively darkened with shorter exposures. Whew! Nothing broken—all I needed to do was avoid exposures less than 1/1000 of a second.

I think I can do that.

The next night when it got down to "only" –20°, I ran some nighttime tests, to make sure that longer exposures and high ISO settings worked fine. No problems, as the ISO 800 photographs in figure 6 shows. Made, not so by the way, with that 12mm lens after racking the focus ring back and forth several times to shake things loose.

Fig. 6. Long, high-ISO nighttime exposures aren't a problem at low temperatures (ƒ/5.6, ISO 800 @ 1.3 sec.).

Interestingly, and disappointingly, the cold weather didn't make any difference in the noise characteristics of the camera so far as I could see. Initially, I had the impression that I was seeing about a 2/3 stop improvement in noise at –25° Celsius. But, when I did a really careful analysis, making sure to match regions of comparable exposure in the comparison photographs, I couldn't see any obvious difference. Not that I'm complaining about the noise characteristics of the E-M5, but I wouldn't have minded squeezing out a little more speed. Aurora is tough stuff.

What's important, though, is that my camera gear checks out. The camera and most of the lenses will perform just fine. The 12mm is questionable, but it might work. And, oh yeah, I'll have plenty of battery packs to swap, so that when one gets chilled a warmer one can take its place.

I've got my winter clothing. Fifteen days will see me in Yellowknife, and I'll find out if all this prep pays off.

Ctein

Ctein's column appears on Wednesdays on TOP.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Rob Smith: "I regularly shoot in cold weather, down to –30°C, and have never had an issues with any equipment. Using a D300 and various Nikon lenses. I also have used battery powered strobes in the field too, they were fine, my fingers were bloody freezing though. I generally ignore temp ratings in instruction manuals as I assume some level of Winter testing is done by manufacturers. The main thing is to keep any spare batteries near your body. And if possible, wear a thin pair of running gloves, and then mitts over the top. Then you don't have to expose your hands completely when you want to change settings."

Ctein replies: Yes, I spent about an hour at REI trying out different pairs of thin gloves with woolen flip-top overmittens to find the heaviest pair that would still let me manipulate the controls on my Olympus. The buttons aren't actually the limiting factor; turns out it's the catch on the battery. I expect this will do okay, but I'm taking along a set of hand warmers that I can slip inside the mittens, just in case. I'm kind of skinny, so my feet and hands get cold pretty easily. (Yes, toe warmers for the winter boots, too…just in case.)

Craig: "A friend took a external battery pack that he kept under his coat with the lead exposed [i.e., the cable attached —Ed.] to the camera; worked faultlessly and they were working further north at the temperature –40°F and C."

Ctein replies: I thought about that, but there was no chance to rig it up and try it out in cold conditions, and I'm not going with untried gear. I just bought two more third-party battery packs. All of 25 bucks, and now I've got four. That'll do.

Gordon Lewis adds: Craig, with all due respect to your friend's approach, I would avoid attaching any cables between the camera and yourself, especially if the camera is tripod-mounted. All it takes is one careless or accidental tug on the cable and your camera and lens will plunge towards the cold, cold ground.

Ctein adds: That worried me too.

Ctein's Matrix Set Sale

Written by Ctein

[Important: Please read the whole post before clicking the payment tab. A payment by itself does not constitute an order! —Ed.]

As Mike wrote last week, the best suggestion I got for what to do with my dye transfer matrices was, "Sell them!" At a reasonably low price, enough people seemed to be interested in having some printmaker Ctein work product, not to mention a piece of now-nearly-gone photographic history.

Ask and you shall receive! I have 280 matrix-and-work-print sets for sale, most of them one-of-a-kinds, although I have multiple sets for a few photographs. For the next five days (until midnight, Monday, Central Standard Time) or until I run out, you can buy these sets for a nominal price that won't be repeated.

Each set includes a work print (usually the first print pulled from the matrices), the three matrices (seen above) that were used to make the print in their protective paper folders, and a two-page letter from me that explains what the annotations on the work print mean. The work prints are exactly the same size as finished prints—90% of the sets are for prints in the 16x20" size range; most of the rest are 10x12" prints.

The price? $150 per set, plus a flat charge of $25 for shipping and handling, regardless of the number of sets you order (so long as they're all going to the same destination). International customers pay no more than domestic. I have to collect sales tax from California customers, so orders shipped to a California destination will cost $162 a set, tax included, plus the $25 for S&H (20% of all sales goes to Mike, so you're also supporting TOP when you buy a set).

The twist
There is a twist to this sale. Originally, my idea was simple—people would send me money, and I'd pull a work set from my files and send it to them. It would be entirely random. Then I decided to let you tell me which print you'd prefer to get and see how many of those requests I could satisfy. The odds are against being able to make everyone happy, but it will be a fun game for me to see how many requests I can match (I have an odd idea of "fun").

Here's the way it works. For each set you order, you can give me up to three picture titles of sets that you would prefer to get (you don't have to give me any choices if you're entirely happy with the luck of the draw). What I'll try to do is optimize all those preferences across all the orders to maximize the number of people who get one of their three choices.

Please don't try to game the system; it won't work. Making fewer than three choices won't improve your chances of getting the one you want. Meta-choices like "anything from Hawaii is fine" I will have to ignore, and will constitute no choice at all. You can't specify size.

This isn't first come first served. I'm going to assign prints to people based on what will maximize the number of happy people. Your odds of getting the picture(s) you want are just as good on the final day of the sale as the first (assuming I'm not sold out by then).

Beyond that, there are no hidden rules and no catches. You make three picks; I'll make you happy if I can. If people's choices were entirely randomly distributed (they won't be), 95% would get one of their choices. But....

There are no guarantees in this game, and, of necessity, no returns. I'll try to fill your request...but you have to be willing to take whatever I send you. You're not guaranteed to get one of your choices. It's still a grab-bag. If that doesn't sit right with you, then please don't buy.

The work print quality varies. A small percentage of them are so pristine and on the mark that you could hang them on the wall; a small percentage of them are so far off that it will amaze you how I could get from there to a finished print. Some are flawless, some badly cracked. Most are somewhere in between the extremes. Which will you get? No guarantees. Luck of the draw.

Ready to play? Then here's what you have to do. Please follow these steps in order! Don't jump ahead; it will just confuse things for me.

1. Make your choices. All the available photographs are shown on this page.

You can make up to three choices per order (e.g., if you're ordering two sets of matrices, you can make six choices, which would improve your chances of getting at least one of them).

2. Send me an email

It should contain the following information, in this order:

• How many sets you are ordering.

• The titles of your choices, if any.

• Whether you are paying by personal check or PayPal and the amount you are paying.

• Your postal mailing address, exactly as it should appear on the mailing label. I copy this into a database, so plain text, please. No HTML, no fancy formatting, written on three lines (foreign customers will have a fourth line for country, of course), thusly:

Ctein
42 Skyline Drive
Daly City CA 94015

This e-mail constitutes your order. This is what I use to record and track your purchase. If I do not get an e-mail with all this information, you don't have an order! If you choose to pay by PayPal, do NOT put this information in your PayPal order and expect me to see it. It needs to be put in an e-mail to me.

3. Pay me. You can pay by personal check drawn on a U.S. bank in U.S. funds, which will save me the PayPal fees, made out to "Ctein" and mailed to the above address. Or you can pay via PayPal with the buttons below. There's one for California buyers and one for everyone else.

[Ordering information removed—Sale ended midnight 2/17]

The PayPal price is the price for one set including S&H, because I think that is what the vast majority of people will be buying. If you want to order more than one set, you need to click through the order button once for each set. You'll get charged each time for the shipping and handling, but I'll catch that when I review the order and refund the difference to you, so you'll only pay the flat $25.

Orders will start shipping about two weeks after the sale ends. All orders will ship within 60 days. I will send you back a confirmation e-mail when I get your order, and another one when your order ships. If you do not get your confirmation e-mail within a couple of days of sending me your order e-mail, contact me. If you don't get a shipping e-mail within 60 days, contact me then.

Any questions? Please post'em and I'll reply!

Ctein

Ctein's column appears on Wednesday mornings on TOP.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 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:

ross: "When in the process should we submit payment? I don't want to mail off a check or send PayPal to later find you have sold out."

Ctein replies: I will be tracking the number of sets sold, and the order links will get killed if and when the sets sell out. You should submit your payment right after sending me your email. Don't wait for my response.

Ken Sky: "Are the prints signed?"

Mike replies: Ctein is out for the afternoon but I'll step in—the prints aren't signed, and they shouldn't be. When a photographer signs a print it in effect says "this is finished work and meets my approval." A signature proclaims that the work fully expresses the artist's intentions. A first work-, test-, or guide-print would by definition not meet this standard.

Kevin Purcell: "I sense a Zipf-like (or similar Pareto-like) distribution in demand going for 'space-related,' 'lit up stuff at night' and 'anything with strong blue sky.' Then 'geology.' Then the rest. I'd be interested to see Ctein summarize the demand after the sale."

Ctein replies: Well, with approximately half the sets sold,  you're right about a power distribution, although the exponent is somewhat less than one. The range of choices, though, is considerably more eclectic than I would've guessed. Some are no-brainers to me, but there are a few real surprises, including one photograph that gets no traction in my portfolio but has four requests already for the matrix set. What this says is that TOP readers have broad and eclectic tastes.

(Before anyone asks, no I'm not going to say what particular photographs are being chosen heavily and which aren't.)

That will come as no surprise.

In terms of my workload, a power distribution is good and what I was hoping for. So far something like 35% of the photographs people have chosen were picked by only one person. That makes those easy—it's a no-brainer that if someone requested a photograph that no one else did, then of course they get it! I don't know if a global optimization on this kind of problem is an NP-complete problem (one of the mathematicians here, like DD-B, could say), but the local optimization is definitely in the N-cubed range. So, if this 35% holds through the rest of the sale (no way of knowing) it'll reduce the difficulty of my optimization by more than two-thirds.

I had no idea what to really expect. The pathological extremes made it very unpredictable. For example, if everyone had chosen only prints that were offered in TOP sales, it would be really easy: A double handful of people would get their choices and then everyone else would get random pics. Conversely, if it was a perfect distribution, with each and every photograph getting three "votes," that's the worst of all possible worlds in terms of the work required of me.

Blog Note, and Blanket Thanks

Ctein's Matrix Sale will start tomorrow at 11 a.m. sharp, Wisconsin time (that's U.S. Central time). Just so you know if you're a-waiting.

To answer another question about the sale, yes, he'll be shipping internationally, and there won't be any extra charge for international shipping.

I've been remiss about several duties recently due to my recent illness. One is that I haven't thanked anyone for donations in the past month (that is, people who clicked the "Donate" button in the right-hand sidebar and sent me a few bucks)—but, if I can be forgiven for the utter laziness of a blanket statement, thank you for your kindness! It's very considerate, and really very much appreciated. Those donations taken together paid for my first two doctor's appointments, so it really was very nice. I apologize for not sending individual thanks (which I try to do and don't always). I'm still only at about 70% of full speed*.

Finally, since 94% of our audience is male, and some subset are probably as absentminded and clueless as I am: Valentine's Day is this Friday, February 14th. You have been alerted!

Mike

*Of course, full speed for me is 80% of full speed, so I'm doing okay.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Announcement: Matrix Dump!

What this is about: Regular readers have followed the saga of Ctein's evolution into digital, along with the closing of his darkroom and our dye transfer "Big Print" sale, in which Ctein used up the last of his dye transfer materials for 160 last large prints, priced at $595...which by the way sold out in five hours and six minutes.

So: You might remember that in a column from August 2012, Ctein wondered what in the heck he should do with all his matrices. A "matrix" in this case is one of the three separations from which a dye transfer print is made. Once crafted, these can be reused, so a dye printer will keep old matrices on file for future printings. But now that his dye transfer paper is gone and his darkroom is dismantled, obviously Ctein has no further need for the matrices. But the matrices are interesting, and (now) are historical artifacts, and even have a certain beauty and photographic interest.

He has some 280 "Matrix Sets." Each set includes a work print with printing notations, along with an article explaining what those notations mean.

A "matrix set" is three separations and a full-sized test or guide print (plus an article explaining what everything is)

Long and short: in response to his query, enough people said "I'd buy a set, if they aren't too expensive" that he decided his first step would be to offer the sets here, for a nominal price. So those who want a set can have one.

(I already commandeered a set from my favorite print, plus I'm going to ask the Photography Curator at our local Museum if she'd like a couple of sets for the museum's collection, in which case I will spring for a couple more sets and donate them.)

This isn't a regular "TOP print sale," although some similar limitations will apply: the sale will last for only five days or until sets run out. Ctein's got some interesting plans to try to accommodate peoples' individual requests. I'll let him tell you about that next week.

He'll commence the offer in the context of his regular column next Wednesday (February 12th). So if you're interested, be on the alert and check back here then. The column is usually posted late in the morning.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Convergence Makes Complexity

This week's column by Ctein

Back at the beginning of the month I discussed how devices, both computer-ish and camera-ish, are converging and how that makes life more complicated. Let's talk some more about those complications.

A couple of people brought up the rumored 13-inch iPad last time. I didn't mention it because it is just a rumor, but should it appear it would only make my point more forcefully. Its size, weight, and cost would place it squarely in the middle of the already crowded set of choices I previously described. If Apple's line is model-heavy now, as I think it is, this only makes things worse.

Microsoft has had its own problems with convergence. The attempt to give desktop Windows a mobile-ish interface was not met with acclaim. There are two reasons for that, and to me they're pretty obvious ones (Apple's hardly the only company that makes bonehead UI mistakes). The first is that if your computer doesn't happen to have a touchscreen, as most don't, interfaces that are designed to be poked at don't work half so well for the user as ones that are designed for a keyboard and mouse.

Then there's that information density thing. I complained about how badly iOS 7 scales to the iPad. Ergonomically, it's designed for much smaller screen, so there's a huge amount of wasted desktop space and an unnecessarily low information density, combined with excessively large and numerous movements required by the user to accomplish things. I reiterate: this is fundamentally stupid—the principles of scaling geometries for different sized devices are well understood, both as a matter of theory and of coding. When those principles aren't followed, as in iOS7 and the "new improved" Windows interface, it becomes ludicrous on larger screens.

On the other hand, Microsoft did something very smart with hardware—the Surface Pro 2. John Camp pointed me at this clever beast, and I'm not sure I understand why it hasn't gotten more traction. It strikes me as an excellent convergence—a very decent tablet and a more-than-capable computer. It might even be the ideal portable Photoshop machine (okay, it lacks a full 24-bit sRGB-space display, but you can't have everything). Is it because two pounds makes it too heavy to be usable as a tablet? Or is it just Microsoft's lackluster reputation in the hardware area? I admit I didn't give it even a glance when it came out for that reason. I'd be interested in hearing what readers think, most particularly why it doesn't appeal to you.

Do-everything devices usually don't do well in the marketplace—it's the trap of convergence. It's hard to make one device that's a jack of all trades, and that's true of cameras in particular. The "Frankencamera" approach, for example, has met with very limited success, and that's because, honestly, it doesn't work very well. You end up with a highly adaptable device that turns out not to be superbly capable at any one thing. It turns out that while people (collectively) would like the ability to do anything and everything with their cameras, if they (individually) can't do the thing they most care about superbly, they turn somewhere else.

Maybe that affects the Microsoft tablet/computer? If not in reality, in people's perception that it can't possibly be good at being both a tablet and a computer?

Okay, back to the complexity side. Let's assume we do see these kind of convergences. It really makes life difficult for the software and operating system designers. Suppose, hypothetically, Apple went the Microsoft route and there was only one single device in the 10–13 inch screen category? What should it run? Mac OS? iOS? As a heavy user of both, I can tell you that while either of them is capable of supporting any activity you can imagine doing on a computer or a tablet (or a camera), each makes some endeavors extremely easy and others almost impossibly difficult (try writing an incremental backup program for iOS). It's a lot like your favorite camera interface; I don't think anyone's ever found one that was perfect for them, although some come close. But there's definitely no particular camera interface which seems anywhere near ideal for everybody. I could give you my gripe list about Olympus's, but there's no point. You can come up with your own gripe list about your camera. Worse, for designers, get 10 of us in a room and we'll gripe about entirely different things in the same interface.

This does not make the designer's life easy. Much like the Frankencamera, the infinitely adaptable FrankenOS is far more a fantasy than a useful reality.

On the other hand, he says cynically, this is what keeps many camera companies in business. So many of the products are so similar—that unavoidable convergence I talked about last time—that if there weren't these distinctions that are difficult to engineer out, there'd be little reason for choosing one over the other.

And, then, there are those who actively exploit this. My complaints about trying to divine the differences between cell service plans? I hate to say it but I think that's calculated. The different companies really don't have a lot to offer that's different. So all they can do is gimmick things up with features designed to target specific market demographics (which any one of you probably don't fit). They have no incentive to make the consumer choice process clear and simple. The more obscure and difficult it is to discern the real differences between the plans, the more likely you are, at some point, to just throw up your hands as I did and pick one. Because sooner or later, ya gotta. (The same can be said for health insurance. The insurance companies don't really want you to understand their policies.)

Will that state of affairs last forever? I doubt it. It aggravates people. They just don't have an alternative. That doesn't mean they always won't.

Remember the old Apple iMac commercials, back when getting online could be pretty complicated? The one that explained how to get connected to the 'Net in three steps...and there were only two. Clever design and exceptionally clever marketing. Very successful marketing, too.

Maybe complexity will give way to simplicity. It's not an impossible dream.

Ctein

Columnist Ctein converges on Wednesdays on TOP.

©2014 by Ctein, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Colin Work: "Exactly why I don't like video in my still camera. Sure, I know, I don't have to use it, but now my camera is more complicated than it need be—more menus, buttons that get in the way and/or could be put to better use. Interestingly, I've had to start shooting video—so I tried using my Canon 5D. Yes, it can produce some superb video—but is so awkward to use for this purpose. So I bought I decent camcorder—and was immediately amazed by how relatively simple the whole process became. Yes, I do appreciate that in the hands of a skilled cameraman, the 5D can produce amazing video. But I suspect very few decent stills shooters also make very good filmmakers—the disciplines are just too different."

Nerdie McSweatervest: "Re: cell service plans. Years ago, Dilbert creator Scott Adams coined the term 'confusopoly' to describe this."

Jim: "While you cannot please everyone, you can accommodate various users to make life easier. Twenty years ago we designed and sold test instruments that were tethered to H-P 200 palmtop PCs that let you set up tests and take data with one button press. I was just at a techie trade show where I saw several instruments, including some neat microscopes, interfaced to both Android and iOS devices by Bluetooth or WiFi. These systems allow setting up tests, taking, analyzing and storing data easily.

"Why can't I do that with a camera? An app should allow access to the camera to graphically set up all the parameters now handled with menus that are reminders of the 'dark ages' of the PC (DOS!) and store the setups in the camera under a easily-remembered name (e.g. 'critter cam' for my E-P3 with the Pana 100–300mm) accessible on a top-level menu or a programmable button.

"But, alas, camera company engineers appear to be clueless like the car companies were a decade ago. When I wrote a article on computer networks in cars, I found the original BMW iDrive had over 750,000 possible settings, many with unintelligible names...does that sound familiar?"

Small Format Professionalism

This week's column by Ctein

Once again, it's time for me to play a notional whack-a-mole. An idea pops up. I smack it down. It pops up again, I smack it down. Repeat ad nauseam.

One of those subterranean burrowers popped up repeatedly in the discussions around Mike's post "Connectedness" and the preceding "Great Cameras" posts. It's that small format digital cameras are not suited to really serious professional photography, certainly not the kind that results in portfolio prints. Oh yes, maybe screenshots. But the hard stuff? You need a big sensor for that!

Nonsense. Balderdash. Hogwash. Bunkum.

Why can't we stamp this one out? Honestly and truly, real-world results just don't support it. They haven't for years. Not even by highly demanding aesthetic standards.

Dodging the red herring that pops up alongside this mole, I'm not saying bigger can't be better. 8x10-inch sheet film was better than 35mm. How many professionals found it necessary to go to that large? Damn few. You may be one of them. Fine. This isn't for you. It's talking about what, in general and on average, a discerning practitioner needs.

Two specifics drove me to engage the furry varmint again. The first was the notion that the Sony RX10 20-MP camera (right) with a 9x13mm sensor (that's 1:2.7 of 35mm size) wouldn't be capable of serious work, especially if one needed prints of "large" size.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by large. Unless you're talking bigger than 20x 24", I have real doubts that this camera won't satisfy. If you're talking a mere 17x22", I'm certain it'll perform. I've gone there with older, lesser cameras, and it hasn't even been all that hard.

Currently I'm working in the Micro 4/3 camp. Remember that $19.95 print that Mike and I offered a year back? That was made with an old model Olympus, the one with the original 12-megapixel sensor. It's 13x17mm (1:2 of 35mm size), not hugely bigger than the Sony RX10's. Definitely not enough to make a big difference in image quality, especially not with four years' worth of improved sensor technology backing it up. (And while I'm whacking moles, a reminder that most dimensions of image quality scale with linear dimension, not sensor area. Also addressed in previous columns. You can look it up.)

Okay, so some of you are going to say, "Well, yes but it does have a bigger sensor, and besides it has much fewer pixels so they're much bigger, hence they're much better." Which is not necessarily true. All pixels are not created equal; four years makes a big difference in the technology. Look at the image quality improvement between the old generation Olympus and the current OM-D series. A third more pixels in the same space, with massively better image quality all around. But, still, I get your objection. So let's wind back another generation, to a smaller format than the Sony RX10 has.

Before the Olympus Pen, I was using an all-in-one Fuji S100fs 11-MP camera, which had a 6.5x9 mm sensor (that's 1:4 of 35mm size). That is, only two thirds the size of the one in the Sony RX10, with just about the same pixel size. Now we're talking technology five years old, at least. I will certainly give Fuji credit for making really good hardware, but I'd be awfully surprised if Sony hasn't managed to equal it five years later.

Fig. 1. Photo by Ctein. From a Fuji S100fs, with teeny 1/4X-scale sensor. It prints just fine with a 15x20" image area.

Just how good was the Fuji? Good enough that a lot of the 17x22" prints I offer for sale on my website came from that camera (figure 1). In fact, before the Bay Bridge photo turned up, Mike and I had been discussing about offering one like this as an example for the small-camera/big-print sale.

Yes, you had to use the camera carefully to get that level of quality out of it, and it wouldn't provide it at high ISOs. How much care? Less than I needed to get the same quality out of 35mm film in large prints, that's for sure! And, oh yeah, that teeny-sensor, five-year-old camera had better noise vs. ISO characteristics than 35mm film, too.

I'm not saying my Olympus OM-D E-M5 ain't better. It's so massively better. But the Fuji was good enough, and there's no possible way that the Sony isn't a lot better than good enough.

Let's continue to climb down the ladder. How about them camera phones, folks? Two data points for your enjoyment. The first was a 20x24" print I made for Mike Johnston from a Nokia 40-megapixel cellphone camera. It looked fabulous! The only visible deficiency was just a bit of banding in the skies, a consequence of having only 8-bit JPEGs to work with and mapping from RGB into the printer's CMYK color space. In most photographs, you'd have never seen it. I could have massaged it away, but that wasn't the point the exercise. We just wanted a peek at the quality.

Fig. 2. Photo by Pete Su (a.k.a. psu). Made with an iPhone, processed entirely in camera, and uploaded to Flickr. It prints as an excellent 10x13-inch image. Might even be able to go larger, but I'm picky.

The second is the photograph that reader psu posted to Flickr from his iPhone and linked to in the comments to the Connectedness column (figure 2). Just to confirm my intuition, I downloaded the full-resolution version and printed it out, 10x13" image area—close to what Peter Turnley calls "European collector size." Just as I expected, it looked really, really good. I'd feel uncomfortable taking it bigger than that, but I am really fussy.

As a reality check, I showed it to Paula with no explanation and asked her what she thought of it.

She said, "It's a nice enough photograph. Doesn't knock my socks off but it's entirely okay." So I asked her what she thought of the technical quality, and she said, "Oh, that's fine. It's got nice detail, even in the background. And the tones look good."

Then I told her it was from a cellphone and her eyes got big, and she said, "Oh, REALLY!"

Okay, I'm done.

Until the damned mole pokes its head up again. I'm hanging on to the mallet.

Ctein

Ctein's column pops up on Wednesdays on TOP.

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Fashion and Fad in Fine Photography

This week's column by Ctein

Mike's thought-provoking column on "Connectedness" raised the question: whither goest photography...or prints, anyway?

Personally, I don't have a clue. But it may be instructive to take a quick, anecdotal look at history. It's true that prints have dominated, ever since the invention of the printable negative, by numbers, but the dominance has been sociologically complicated.

Artistically, printing became very important in photography because it allowed alteration. Software "art filters" are just the latest incarnation of a concept that goes back to the very earliest days of printmaking. Back then, considerable effort went into producing prints that emulated, in some fashion or another, painting or drawing. It was the aesthetic. That's what people thought a visual rendition ought to look like. Impressionism was a dominant form in photographic prints (an interesting turnabout, as it was photography's realism that, in significant part, drove the development of Impressionism).

That changed when the ƒ/64 folk and their ilk threw down the gauntlet and declared that fine photography should be inherently realistic. Although wrapped in the flag of artistic sensibility, it was at least as much a pragmatic decision. Making a photographic print look like a painting or drawing is really hard work! Making a straight photographic print is child's play by comparison. Elevating the straight print to the pinnacle of aesthetic sensibility had utilitarian virtues.

That's driven a lot of the sensibilities about photography. Up through the middle of the last century, it was almost all about prints for commerce as well as art. Kodachrome poked a hole in that, and the invention of easily-processed chromogenic slide films tipped the scale entirely. It was so much easier getting a sheet of film developed than having a tri-color carbro or dye transfer print made. Those of you who have been doing photography a long time no doubt heard the near-universal assertion that the only way you could get really good press reproduction was to start with a slide. That was why important and commercially successful photographers used slide film, as well as eliminating the vagaries of print production from the workflow.

But, if you've been doing photography a really, really long time, you know that that assertion was bogus. When chromogenic films started to encroach in a major way on the commercial photography business in the early '50s, printing houses and press operators swore that you couldn't get good reproduction from a slide; you had to work from a print.

It was only about what they knew how to do, but such prejudices have force. By the time I got into photography, in the late 1960s, most printing houses had forgotten how to deal with prints and slides had become the canon. Utilitarianism again. If you were serious about color photography, either artistically or commercially, you used slide film. Fine (darkroom) printing be damned.

Technically it was nonsense, but it was the accepted social norm. My impression is that it remained so until slide films became increasingly difficult to obtain and get processed, all while color negative films and processing became ever more ubiquitous. In other words, not very long ago.

On a parallel track, for a very long time there was a commonly held prejudice that it was black-and-white that made for serious photography; color was a frivolity. Serious photographers didn't work in color. A large fraction of the fine art photography galleries wouldn't even entertain color.

If you think that had nothing to do with the fact that most photographers who were printers could not come close to mastering color, I will be happy to sell you a bridge. The one of your choice; I can provide deeds of title to any of them.

Convenience drives lofty aesthetic sentiments and photography more than many wish to admit. What does that say about the future of photography? In the long-term, absolutely nothing. You can't predict those kind of trends, although we all have opinions. In the short term, so long as electronic conveyance, through various media and channels, becomes more the norm and more convenient, I'm pretty certain that you will see this elevated to the level of an aesthetic, because, in photography, convenience frequently is.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Or, for that matter, working just for screen images, viz. this column. Just keep in mind that the sensibilities and pronouncements are likely to continue to change with technology and convenience.

Ctein

Ctein's column, a day late this week, usually occurs on Wednesdays.

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About Printers

This week's column by Ctein

Once again I make promises on which I don't deliver. The follow-up to "Complexity and Convergence" that I promised is put off several weeks. Why? Because Mike raised much more interesting and fascinating topics for me to discuss with last weekend's column "Connectedness." I think I'll be dealing with them for several weeks.

I'm going to start with a comment that Patrick Dodds made. He complained that printers are "...expensive, difficult to use and unreliable," and "are in their own way as responsible for the decline of the print as the Internet."

Well, I kind of took umbrage at that. I mean, yes I am expensive (and I deserve it) and there's no question I can be difficult. But I'm entirely reliable. I couldn't have made a living as a custom printer if I weren't. Calumny, vile calumny I say.

Wait. You mean he's talking about the machines?

Oh, that's very different...never mind. (Thank you, Emily Litella.)

All right, jokes aside, I've an underlying point there. In many of my columns, I've made exactly the same complaints about inkjet printers and printing software. But I believe Patrick's conclusion from that is wrong, and that has to do with people.

In the total demographic space that contains all (human) printers, I think that Patrick and I occupy very thin slices. Yes, I could print much faster and more cheaply in the darkroom, but I'm not your average printer. Four decades of printing personally and professionally, plus being one of the best printers alive, made me incredibly efficient in the darkroom. Add to that the commercial angle, which meant I was buying supplies in bulk at dealer prices (30–50% of what the hoi polloi had to pay), and, yeah, digital printing has proven much more time-consuming and expensive for me.

Having looked at a lot of darkroom-made prints in my time, though, I know I'm the exception. Most darkroom printers were lousy printers; most of what they produced was mediocre at best. Furthermore, almost all of them were very inefficient, compared to me. They'd use several times as much paper and time to get a good print, and they were paying more for their supplies to begin with.

Consequently, my experience doesn't have much to do with the big picture. I think that for the vast majority of human would-be-printers, inkjet printers have made their lives a lot easier and their printing a lot less frustrating. So many things could and did go wrong in the darkroom. Mostly human rather than machine error, but it was costly and annoying nonetheless. I see a lot more well-made prints today than I ever did in the darkroom era.

Even for me, digital printing frequently makes my life a lot easier and printing more convenient. Factoring in the setup and tear-down times, if I just want to make one or two prints I'm saving time and money doing it on the computer compared to doing it in the darkroom.

Photograph by David Dyer-Bennet. This photograph was a lot of work to print well the first time, but really easy to reprint later, even with changes.
Thank you, digital.

A recent example: Mike wanted to see a proof print of the photograph above that I printed for TOP reader and dear friend David Dyer-Bennet some six years ago. It wasn't much work for me to find the file and run off a print. When I looked at the print, it seemed a little dull and dark to me. I don't know if that's a difference between printers and profiles then and now, or if it's just my taste. Whatever, I twiddled with the curves a bit in Photoshop and made the print a bit brighter and more contrasty. It took a few minutes. Then I kicked it a bit further with some Shadow/Highlight adjustment and a further curves tweak. Another few minutes. While the three prints were being printed, I worked on email (I always have email to deal with).

Actual time I spent? Maybe 45 minutes, max. For the occasional printer, which most people are, digital is such a big win.

Beyond that, I don't even know if prints are on the decline. Oh yes, as a percentage of total photographs they are, but the number of photographs made has been growing at an incredible rate. Most people, of course, don't make their own prints. They never have, and they never will. I've written about that; it's just fine.

In absolutely numbers, prints may still be on the increase. Unfortunately I don't have current numbers to confirm or refute that, but two years ago it was true that "photofinishing," which is almost entirely a hard-copy business, had been steadily increasing since the turn-of-the-century. Surprised the hell out of me, but them's the facts. Maybe it has started to decline since, but you'll have to show me the numbers.

Might I guess that printing is becoming of ever-diminishing relative importance in photography? Yeah, I would guess that. (Do I know that I'm right? Nope.) Is it diminishing in absolute sense? I definitely don't know that. Personally I doubt it, although Patrick might very well be right. I'm pretty sure, though, if it is it's not the fault of the (machine) printers.

Ctein

Custom printer Ctein opines here on TOP every Wednesday...reliably! (If exceptions occur, it's virtually always Yr. Hmbl. Ed.'s fault, not the columnist's.)

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Andrew Molitor: "Yes, it strikes me that printing isn't really shrinking, photography is biggening. And broadening. In 1970 we made and used pictures in, basically, one way. We exposed some film, and had a print made. Or a slide. Then we looked at that permanent physical object, from time to time. Nowadays we still do that, but add photobooks to the hardcopy universe. We also use digital picture frames, which occupy some middle ground. The largest use cases are purely digital and essentially ephemeral. To be sure, googbooklickr saves our pictures forever, nominally, but by presenting them most recent first they render our pictures ephemeral for more practical purposes. There are probably a dozen other ways we use pictures that I haven't thought of that are basically new."

bencr: "I consider myself an occasional printer. I print on my Epson 3800, usually 12x16 or 13x19, and I really enjoy the results and could wallpaper my house with my photos (I try to keep the ones on the wall to a manageable number, and rotate them). A print is a wonderful object in itself and I love to hold and look at them. However, as we get higher density displays, capable of wider colour gamut, that we can put in our pocket, carry in a bag, or put on our wall, I think that prints will eventually be relegated to a very small niche. I know many people today still get 4x6 prints of their vacations, or prints of their families for the wall (which I presume amounts for the bulk of photofinishing done today). But I also know a lot of people who don't bother anymore—keeping the photos on their cell phones, in the cloud, or in a slideshow in a digital frame. I believe there will come a time when the quality of digital displays will become 'good enough' and 'cheap enough' that the majority of photos that are printed today won't be printed anymore."

NancyP: "Well, B&W darkroom work was comprehensible enough, even if my technique was rather primitive (multicontrast paper, dodge/burn were about it for me). Color printing, at least in the early 1970s, was a fiasco for me, what with the loose acetate filters tripled in number, the difficulty in keeping on temperature, and so on. It turned out to be very expensive for an amateur to print in color. The beauty of digital is that the amateur printer can now make excellent color prints with fine control, and the only temperature one worries about is color temperature."

Complexity and Convergence

This week's column by Ctein

Okay, so I lied to you guys. My column on what I didn't like about the iPad produced enough interesting conversation about the complexity and convergence of designs that I decided I should follow up on that with a couple of more columns on that subject. So I promised (in my mind) that after the book review column of December 11th (which was already written) I'd devote two columns discussing design issues and then I'd give you your annual Christmas column.

Anyone here pick out the extraordinarily subtle flaw in my plan? Yeah.

I'm sure glad I didn't make that promise out loud. Now, no one will ever know.

Ahem.

On with the show.

Here's something you may not have thought about. As devices converge in function and capability, purchase, marketing, and design decisions become more complicated in interesting ways. That's true for cameras as well as computers. I'll toss out examples from both here, but mostly I'll talk about the computer side because I'll find it easier to make some of the points clear. Nonetheless, there are close analogues to all the issues for both classes of tools.

The convergence issue really came home to me looking at Apple's latest offerings, but it was reinforced by some of the comments to Mike's "Great Cameras of 2013 Part IV" post.

I'll start with Apple. Ever since some micro-positioned marketing missteps in the early days of Macs, Apple has tried to keep clean and simple product lines. Give people just a few choices, make them pretty clear-cut, try to hit certain price points. iMacs don't compete with Mac Pros, which don't compete with Mac Minis, which don't compete with MacBook Pros. They offer very different sets of trade-offs and features to the buyer. The feature set you most care about pretty well determines what you're going to buy.

Of late, this clean product distinction has been collapsing. Consequently, I'm expecting some serious collapsing of Apple's product lines in the next few years. Suppose you're looking for a lightweight portable computer in the 10–13-inch screen size range? Configuring machines for comparable capabilities, you can go for the highest end iPad Air plus a keyboard, which will run you about a grand, give you a 10" screen, and weigh less than two pounds (depending on which keyboard you like). Or there is the 11" MacBook Air, which in a comparable configuration runs the same price and weighs less than 2 1/2 pounds.

Okay, so the deciding issue looks like Retina vs. non-Retina display and external connectivity, do you want it or not? We're done, right?

No, not really. Because there is also a 13" MacBook Air for $100 (and half a pound) more. Decisions, decisions.

But wait, there's more! No, not Ginsu knives, but the MacBook Pros.

$100 more, again, steps you to your basic 13" MacBook Pro. Also another two pounds (boo), a lot more base power (yay), more expandability (yay), but also no Retina display (boo).

Ah, but $100 above that gets you a 13" MacBook Pro with the Retina display and cuts the weight by a pound at the same time, to under 3 1/2 pounds.

So, in a span of $300, we have four different machines with an odd mix and match of form factors, features, and sizes and no real clear way to decide exactly which one is best.

Does that sound like a stable marketing situation to you? Not to me.

The connection to cameras should be obvious. Except with cameras the problem isn't owned by a single company; it falls on all of the camera makers and how they play with and against each other. The digital revolution has caused a massive hardware convergence. It's as if all the film cameras from amateur 35mms through 8x10 view cameras suddenly acquired similar form factors. There are big differences in picture quality, but the baseline quality has been increasing so rapidly that it's not even obvious how important those differences in quality really are.

Unlike Apple, which can straighten out its confused market-share partitioning with a single swipe of corporate policy, the camera makers have to see how the marketplace shakes down, which of them it kills and which survive. Because, y'see, there's not much opportunity for differentiation. One of Mike's commenters pointed out that there was remarkably little difference in form factor between the notable Sony RX10 and the more compact full frame digital SLRs. Note, I'm not saying there is none, but it's like the low-end Apple portables—the differences are nowhere as big as you'd like them to be from a marketing point of view.

I think it kind of has to be this way. You can't make vastly smaller cameras; people can't comfortably handle them below a certain point. I mean, you could design a fabulous system around the Nokia 40-megapixel camera module, except you'd end up with gadgets the size of sugar cubes and lenses the size of small jellybeans, and you'd need tweezers to push the buttons and a magnifying loupe to see the viewfinder. Going the other way, how many people really want to be lugging around something larger than a Nikon D4 or a Leica S? Not a whole lot.

So, is it terribly surprising that we end up picking over minutia trying to decide what camera to buy? To paraphrase an old homily, the purchasing debates are so heated precisely because it is so hard to find any kind of clear distinction between the products.

And that can make your life very complex. Both as a consumer and as a designer. More on that next week.

Ctein

Columnist Ctein (it's his only name, and is pronounced "kuh-TINE") has been writing for TOP since 2006.

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Adam Isler: "Coming at this dilemma tangentially, I've found this TED talk by Barry Schwartz on the tyranny (he calls it the paradox) of choice to be highly applicable. I particularly like his concluding wish."

Paul Marriner: "I'm a fly-fishing writer and some years ago noted in print the convergence of fly-rod performance. Hardly any performance difference between a $70 big-box special and a $1K high-end brand. Certainly a difference in components (e.g., reel seats, guides, and cork handles) and finish, but they cast about the same. Only the 'brag' factor keeps sales of the high-end products up; of course these companies have low-end brands as well so they can stay in business."