The Online Photographer

Followup About Faked Photography

As a followup to the previous post, two items: first, Oren reminded me that the Met Fifth Avenue had an excellent show in 2012–13 called "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop." A pretty extensive selection is still online, with writeups, but unfortunately many of the illustrations are reduced to thumbnails. (Museums can be very fastidious about the rights to their holdings, as you might know if you've attended museum photography shows with "No Photography" signs scattered about. Which always struck me as funny, but then I tend to see the world with humor and an eye for ironies.) The book is still available, although it's pricey. I wish I had it, but I am flat out of room for books. Didn't Richard III, as the last of the Wars of the Roses raged around him, cry out, "Shelving! Shelving! My kingdom for more shelving!"?*

[UPDATE: A reader who wishes to remain anonymous wrote to point out that this show and book were "made possible" (i.e., underwritten) by Adobe! In his words:

Once one knows that, all of the summary copy for the exhibit reads like it was written by Adobe’s PR department: See? Photoshop is nothing new or scary. People have ALWAYS manipulated photographs...

 

...Ignoring the reality that (as the images in the Met/Adobe book/exhibit immediately make clear) the scope, quality, and nature of photo manipulation is worlds different in the Photoshop era than it ever had been before.

 

In other words, the exhibit and book set out to score points in Adobe’s favor, but they ended up proving the opposite (i.e., that the crudeness of the historical images’ manipulations inadvertently made the point you made in your post).]

The other thing is that I should mention that my own closest allegiance in photography is to the traditions of photojournalism and documentary photography, mainly through the practices of photojournalists working like artists or artists working photojournalists, for example many of the Magnum photographers. Even in art photography I tend to like people whose work tells it like it is, from Jacques Lartigue when he was a boy to Lee Friedlander** to Vanessa Winship. I already mentioned that I like old snapshots, which tend to be unmanipulated only because they don't reach for that level of sophistication. I also think there is a lot to be parsed between photography which is honest within its limitations, vs. photography intended to deceive, which a lot of people confuse. There is absolutely nothing at all dishonest about black-and-white photographs per se.

But I'm on the way to the funeral of one of my best friends here, feeling rushed as always when I have to get out of the house on a timetable (schedules and writing do not go well together and that is just that) and I don't have time to elaborate. As ever, more anon.

Mike

*He did not. To avoid spreading more misinformation on the web, which already has enough of it, he actually said, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!", or at least he did in Shakespeare's play, Act 5, scene 4, line 13. Unhorsed and at the mercy of the enemy, he died that day. Do you get this stuff on other photography websites? You do not.

**For all the massive number of Friedlander books—with which his house is stuffed, by the way—there's been no good one-volume introduction to his work since Like a One-Eyed Cat, a book I love.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

John Taylor: "I saw 'Faking It' in DC; wonderful exhibition, and I regretted not getting the catalogue then. Years later, in a Santa Fe used bookstore that consists of stacks upon stacks of seemingly unsorted books everywhere, quite literally I found a copy by chance. I did not hesitate a second time."

Moose: "Hmm, just got back from the Peabody-Essex museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The exhibit 'Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums' is full of faked photos."

Lothar Adler: "The more I think about the modern possibilities of manipulating photos and, moreover, in combination with AI, the more I realize that this is not just a photographic / documentary problem, but with far greater significance a problem in the political and social sphere! If the boundaries between documentary image (in the sense of evidence) and reality can be unrecognizably blurred, then those who possess the knowledge of the elite and the associated technologies have the power over what we experience as reality. We humans form our construct of reality on the basis of the information we receive and can also be directly manipulated politically at this point without us being aware of it. I recently saw a TED talk by the head of AI development at Microsoft. She was pleased to report that almost all Microsoft software products would soon contain AI functions, even if the user would not notice them. In recent years, the degree of perfection of possible manipulation and artificial generation in the field of photography and language (including voice) has developed to such an extent that recently AI has even been able to generate videos that are indistinguishable from traditionally generated videos. Simply by writing a prompt (i.e. writing a small description).

"Again: from this level of perfection, a problem with much more significance arises in the social and political field than in the area of fine arts."

Niels: "I am surprised you haven't linked to this post of yours from 2016. I think this controversy was the final straw that completely killed my interest in enjoying photography on its own merits when it's of digital origin. I now can't really get immediate enjoyment of a photograph unless I already know that it originates from the photo-chemical process, like a Friedlander photograph for example."

richardl: "i luv [sic] conspiracy theory...."

David Comdico: "There was a huge shift from darkroom manipulation to digital and Photoshop, and now AI. No sophistry will change that. And the proof is the negative. It’s as simple as that."

Hank: "I think that the recent Framed book might be the closest thing to an 'overview' of Lee Friedlander as there is."

Terry Letton: " I just want to respond to this thread to point out that there is photography that is not journalism. Sure we don’t want to see a health guru’s face cloned onto a corpulent politician’s body touting the health benefits ofGMO filled cupcakes. (Hyperbolic example.) Photography can also illustrate mood and emotion, which often is more effective using some or all of the techniques you decry. I just received my latest issue of Black and White Photography magazine [which I used to write for —MJ] and the opening Editor's column addresses this very issue. Much of my own photography is in this mode. Truthfully I have no qualms about using Photoshop in any possible way that helps make my photo look the way I want it to and hopefully convey the meaning I hope to share."

Free Money (OT)

This is a followup to the OT Ford Mach-E EV post, and I beg your pardon. I really shouldn't write about this this morning. But I can't help myself...I need to vent.

Here's the short version. As you've probably heard, the government, at both the State and Federal level, wants to sweeten the deal for people buying EVs. So they offer consumer incentives in the form of rebates and tax credits. (As of this year, the Federal tax credit can be applied to the price of an EV immediately at the point of sale, by the dealer, so it's easy now.) In my State the incentives max out at $7,500 Federal and $2,000 State. There are a few conditions, mainly to benefit American car companies and lessen our dependency on China.

So the government wants to give me $9,500 to help me buy a Ford EV. Nice of them, huh? And guess how much the Mach-E qualifies for?

...In most cases, $500. I didn't skip a zero there—five hundred dollars. The other nine grand? Ford doesn't mind if you and I miss out on that.

G O O D   L O R D. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! Ford pours resources and engineering into building an all-new, from-the-ground-up EV, and then they don't even ensure that their customers can avail themselves of the free money the government is giving away. What?!? Really? That has got to be one of the most self-defeating business blunders ever. If you were designing a car from scratch, and the government had designed a program specifically to help you succeed, wouldn't it be "Job One" to absolutely ensure that your car qualifies for the monetary incentives your customers will be eligible for?

Of course, it's a little more complicated than that. The government did change the rules midstream in January '23—the Mach-E qualified for half the Federal incentive before that—and the lowest model configuration of the car does qualify for the whole two grand from the State. It's all the higher models that only qualify for $500. Furthermore, a used EV that costs less than $25k qualifies for $4,000 in Federal tax credits, regardless of where it was made and what kind of batteries it has. (But there are no State rebates for used EVs.) A few of the early cars have already dipped into that range, and more will follow as time passes. And, Ford was planning to build its own LFP battery plant in Michigan, which would have solved the problem—but apparently it has put those plans on the shelf because of short-term consumer hesitancy.

Ah, what a clusterf--k.

Anyway, in 2022, when the Mach-E qualified for half the Federal sweetener and was still newish, it outsold the gasoline Mustang—in fact, in April '22, Ford suspended orders, citing excessive demand. In 2023, U.S. sales (now with zero Federal rebate) only rose slightly, from roughly 39,000 to around 41,000. But how are you going to apportion the blame for that? Some of it has to be due to the denial of the subsidies. Why would you buy Car B if it meant leaving $9,500 on the table, vs. Car A which allows you to have that money? There was also a very costly recall of early cars that might have dampened Ford management's enthusiasm for the whole project. That's partly what you get for starting at the top end, rather than the low. Maybe Ford should have built a cheap EV at the same time. (Reminds me of Kyocera's star-crossed attempt to build a deluxe 6-MP Contax DSLR, the full-frame N Digital,  before the timing was right. It wasn't "the" camera that killed Contax—there were several factors—but it was the biggest.) Still, the Mach-E is currently either No. 3 or No. 4 on the list of the best-selling EVs. The first two places are held by Teslas, which qualify for all of the available government incentives.

No such thing as range anxiety
Meanwhile, two little morsels I stumbled across in my research (you know me—it's been all EVs all the time for the past several days). They give opposite perspectives on the the issue of range anxiety. The first from a guy who's making a road trip from L.A. to Phoenix and the second from a guy who charges a daily driver, a Tesla, at home.

1: A wonderful rant by Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire about "infrastructure anxiety." Start watching at about 12:00 and go to about 14:30. This is worth hearing. (Note that the sound is not properly sync'd.)

2: From a comment by a Tesla owner who goes by the name @MH-Tesla:

"Oh, and it's full every day I wake up, like having a gas pump at your home. So the one and only thing a gas car is superior at is long road trips.

"I thought the charging was going to be the thing I disliked the most. Turns out it's the best part of an electric car. Unless you do that road trip, you don't even think about range. It doesn't enter your thinking. You just use your car without a thought to 'do I have enough gas / range.' You always have enough every day so you quickly get used to not thinking about it. It's awesome."

"Like having a gas pump at home." We don't hear enough about that. In my area, you can get free electricity in the middle of the night if you are using it to charge an EV, and you can sign up to get all your electricity from local solar fields whether you have an EV or not.

Anyway, the Mach-E gets shunted to the long list of expensive cars I like but can't afford, and to say I am disappointed is an understatement. (I've really caught the jones for that car.) Well, those grapes were probably sour anyway. But supposedly the Chevy Bolt is being redesigned and re-engineered for a 2025 or 2026 return, and will reportedly be at the cheaper end of the price range for EVs. We'll have to wait and see if that will be true—and whether the GM managers have enough sense and direction to give their customers a crack at that free money.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Stephen S.: "I used to live in a condo near downtown Toronto, Canada, and they announced a plan for electric car charging in the underground parking: residents would have to pay up to $30,000 to get a charger at their parking spot, and the building could only support half of the parking spots having chargers, so everyone was encouraged to secure their spot for the future, or risk losing out forever. It sure made it look like the future was that EV ownership only for those who owned a house, and that half of the condo residents would have to give up driving entirely if internal-combustion vehicles were ever outlawed. This was not at all encouraging."

Tom Stermitz: "Yes, pay attention to the rebates, whether Federal, State, dealer or manufacturer. The Hyundai/Kia group doesn't qualify for the Federal rebate because the batteries are not U.S.-made, but the manufacturer matches the $7,500. Thanks to the supply-demand-inventory distortion of the moment, I got $17,500 off my Kia EV6.

"Secondly, pay attention to lease vs. purchase cost over the life of the deal. Leased EVs get the Federal rebate regardless of battery origin—assuming the dealer passes that on to you. This is such a good deal, that over half of the EVs sold right now are leased.

"Thirdly, pay attention to your local off-peak electric costs. My 7.5 cents means that I pay $2 per 100 miles. My electric bill went up $20/month, but my fuel cost went down $200/month.... I commute about 1,200–1,500 miles per month....

"Fourth, don't forget the little things like purchase sales tax, yearly registration and monthly insurance. These cars are tech-heavy, and a broken rear-view mirror or bumper probably includes broken cameras or sensors."

John Camp: "One of the odder and yet more intriguing speculations about why 'we're alone' in the Universe—that is, we've never found a sign of life outside the solar system—is that advanced civilizations hit a 'great filter' that destroys them, and maybe their worlds. That always seemed unlikely to me, as surely some advanced civilizations would avoid the filter. But perhaps there are several filters to avoid, and we're approaching one. One of the more ignored thoughts about global warming is that there is an enormous (truly enormous) store of methane in the northern tundra of Canada and Russia. When that begins to melt, the amount of warming gases entering the atmosphere will increase exponentially. We can probably handle 130 degrees in Scottsdale and Austin with air conditioning. Can we handle 200 degrees in Minneapolis?

"Also, to the people who argue that energy generation is energy generation, and that going to EV cars is simply moving pollution from one place to another...no it isn't. The difference is, power plants are single-point sources. There is available (if expensive) tech that will sequester CO2. But how do you do that from millions of tiny point-sources, like cars. And the answer is, you can't. If we really want to control CO2 emissions, we need EV cars and nuclear, wind and solar."

Mike replies: Wind is already 10% of utility-scale electricity generation in the U.S., and the total of renewable sources is 21%, which exceeds the percentage for nuclear (source). Worldwide, the situation is better, with more than a quarter of power generation being from renewables according to the United Nations (source). One nice thing about renewables is that you can scale those down to point-sources (as you call them)—I have a number of friends who run their homes on solar, and one who runs his house on solar and has enough power left over to fuel his Nissan Leaf.

Cars are also an excellent solution to the problem of how to store solar energy! Millions of little mobile batteries can do what large-scale storage ideas can't.

More Selected Comments on 'New Work'

I've had a fun photographic week, posting some previously unseen older work and doing some new shooting. The standout was probably "Paint Spill," which was chosen for Flickr's "Explore" feature and is nearing 10,000 views (by Flickr's count) as I write this. Read the write-up, too; it was an interesting situation with an evergreen lesson for all of us.

In response to the "New Work" post this past week, we got a lot of great comments. Many of them were outstanding. As a sampling, here's a selection of responses I didn't post fast enough when they were offered:

Michael W Plant: "Hi Mike, I have just spent some time looking though your Flickr account and I have to say you are slowly getting there a body of work that reflects the place and time you live in. Can I suggest you spend more time out with your camera, so you can progress with your image making more quickly. I know what it means to sit on work for way to long and not make enough of it, then time goes and you still have not made enough images. Time is not your friend in this regard so please get to making more images."

Mike replies: It's tough. I have too much to do already and too frequently feel very weary and lacking in energy. And there are times recently when I've gone out shooting and have come back with...nothing. And it costs a lot, mainly in gasoline (petrol) as well as time. But I do enjoy photographing, and I wish I could do more of it.

Sean: "It’s hard to explain the feelings some of your pictures of your life in the Finger Lakes evoke in me. The closest I can come to is the feeling I get when faced with some indifferent beauty that tells me I came before you, continues out of your gaze, and will long outlast you. ‘Still points’ might be a good description. I don't mean to liken you to Robert Adams, but I recall him having to seek company when faced with certain scenes. Have you ever felt that way?

"Re colour management, I remember researching light booths and 18% grey wall paint for my monitor/print room. Half the time, my nose was stuck in Andrew Rodney’s book Color Management for Photographers and the other half was spent chatting in forums about colour spaces. 'Best viewed on a colour-calibrated monitor' was often said more in hope than expectation. And when somebody criticised the dynamic range of a shot, the standard response was: 'It was edited on a calibrated [x] using an [x] calibrator, you tyro.' Those silly back-and-forths seem quaint by today's internet standards."

Moose: "Re 'Prints are susceptible to looking different under different lighting, as well as different types of lighting. Museum lighting was traditionally strong and bright, and now is often the opposite.' Oh yes! A recent-ish show of St Ansel's prints in San Francisco was so dimly lit that his (archival) prints, printed for the then-usual lighting, were deeply murky. People were going in close and squinting. A woman standing next to me commented to her companion how the person on the side just didn't fit. I pulled out my pocket flashlight and lit the print. "Oh, that looks right now!" Awful. A wildly different set of prints would be needed.

"Re 'So take a look at that one when you get home.' That one looks fine, but some of the others are too dark for me. Then again, we know our tastes differ."

Mike replies: Another neat trick besides the flashlight demo is, when faced with a dark print, look at an area of it through the cardboard tube from a roll of paper toweling. You'll be amazed. It has the same effect as the flashlight, more or less.

Dan Khong: "I like your composition of the herd of cattle resting under the shade of the trees."

Jeff: "A viewing booth really helps when printing, provided it corresponds to display lighting conditions. I also like using ImagePrint software, as it provides custom profiles not just for virtually all papers, but for different lighting conditions. It also operates in full time soft proof mode. Another underrated viewing variable, besides lighting, is the type of glass used to frame a print. Without top quality glass (I bought Museum glass in bulk from a commercial supplier to drastically reduce cost), subtle tones can be lost, much like dry-down effects when wet printing. I, too, love Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective. But nothing compares to seeing the actual prints, which I had the pleasure to view at MoMA in 1996. Shame that so many people don’t experience well executed B&W fine prints, let alone do their own printing. I think I would give up photographing if screen viewing were the sole output."

Jack Luke: "I was a photography department technician at an art school for a very happy nine-month post-graduate placement. Among my other jobs, I managed nesting [do you mean testing? I don't get "nesting" —Ed.] and charging for prints on our big Epson printers. I fondly remember working on a series of prints with a young lad who carried around a portable darkroom in a briefcase (!) and wore sunglasses at all times—he really fancied himself as a bit of a Wes Anderson film character. Anyway, I had to tactfully explain that his prints were perhaps a bit blown out because he wore sunglasses while editing them.... I also had to tell the same lad to wear shoes in the darkroom because he kept frightening everyone who couldn't hear him walking. What fun!"

We'll close the comments to this post to avoid confusing me further.  :-) 

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Mailbag

Comments are all up to date at Midnight between Monday and Tuesday.

Sorry about the recent radio silence. I've been immersed in the political events here in the no longer United States, from the assassination attempt, to the Republican National Convention in my old hometown, to "JD Vance" popping to the surface again like a cork (I have a whole lot to say about that), to President Biden stepping aside, to the rising candidacy of Vice President Harris...all of it has happened in less than ten days, which blows my mind. Normally when I get "obsessed" (as we are wont to say, inaccurately) with something, I write about it here, but I can't (or shouldn't) when it's politics.

As if that weren't enough, Bryan got me going with Frank Deford, so I've been doing a deep dive on Frank and had to start reading several of his books.

And my current pair of robins are being highly entertaining—they built a nest under the pavilion outside my back door, and I've been feeding them dried mealworms (protein-rich, good for eggs and babies), so they're half in a state of gratitude and half in a state of high alarm that I'm coming too close to their babies when I go out the back door and round the corner toward the barn. They both will dive-bomb around and chirp at me, and they'll sit right next to each other on a pine bough and scold me. This is my fourth nesting pair this year, and I've had many in other years, and I've never had a couple this proactive. I can tell the male and the female apart even when they're not together.

And here on Keuka Lake we've been living in a postcard for the past five or six days. Heat up to 80°F (26.7°C) during the day, cool in the shade and hot in direct sun; nights down into the 50s or 60s; boats crisscrossing out on the lake; families in swimwear adorning the docks; vivid blue skies past heaps of high white clouds. So I've spent a fair amount of time out photographing—and I've had two interesting and instructive failures, one of which is going to eat at me for a while. I'll tell you about those later, not now.

For now, a few comments on recent comments (which are up to date again, fortunately for me—else I daren't show my face):

About soccer, Bryan Geyer wrote: "It was Frank Deford, the notable PBS sports commentator (now deceased) who once said, 'Soccer is America’s fastest growing sport—and always will be.'"

Mike replies: That's funny, and somehow accurate. Maybe it's like the way I was named "Most Improved Player" in ice hockey in both seventh and eighth grades, which still makes me laugh. How far behind was I when I started and how far did I still have to go before I caught up? Could I have won the award in ninth grade too?

Frank Deford was also an outstanding writer, who wrote for Sports Illustrated among other outlets. He authored a wide array of books, more than a dozen, many on sports, a few being compilations of his sports writings, but which included a novel about Pearl Harbor (Love and Infamy), a thriller based on the painting "Venus and Adonis" by Peter Paul Rubens, a memoir that might have been titled "A History of Sportswriting in America," and a touching, tragic, yet somehow still joyful account of the life of his daughter Alex, who was born with cystic fibrosis and died in 1980 at the age of eight.

With all that is available, we probably don't have the book we really need, which would be a collection exclusively of his best articles for SI.

Also concerning soccer, Daniel wrote: "For the inevitable 'it’s called football' people: No, in the U.S., where Mike lives, it’s called soccer. In different countries, things have different names. I’ve never understood the condescending anger on this subject from Brits. In Italy it’s called calcio (the kick), in China, zúqiú. It’s called football in some places, and others have a different name for it. Imagine that!

Mike replies: You know, you're right, and I'm going to make a style-sheet change. A style sheet is the list of the ways a publication deals with various issues of formatting, spelling, punctuation, typesetting, etc.—basically it sets the policy for the way presentation issues are handled. To name two notorious ones, The New Yorker puts book and magazine titles in quotation marks (they should be italicized), and The New York Times refers to subjects by honorifics, which, just recently, led to a snarl of confusion in an article in which they were referencing the father of Thomas Crooks but along the way were also referring to the late Thomas as "Mr. Crooks." All by the style sheet, and believe me, Managing Editors can be very schoolmarmish about style sheets. The general habit of referring to already-introduced subjects by only their last names when there are other people in the article with the same last name tends to drive me batty. If you're discussing Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, it's confusing to refer to both of them as "Clinton." But the style sheet says thou shalt introduce a subject by their first and last names and thereafter by their last name only, and the style sheet must be obeyed. Personally, I go for clarity first, effect second, and let rigid rules go limping along behind.

Anyway, I'm going to dispense with the term "world football" and just call it soccer. I'm a U.S. American and that's what it's PROPERLY called here*. I doubt any English speaker won't be clear about what I mean.

About the newest Canons, BG wrote: "$6,300 and $4,300? Wow. Are there customers for these new cameras?"

Yes, I'm sure there will be.

The way I look at it, there are three types of people who would be customers for those new cameras:

First are people who are rich enough that those amounts of money aren't very significant. They can buy a new camera as easily as a kid buys a candy bar. And how great is that? Power to 'em.

The second type of customer is someone who really, really wants one. After deep focus and study, it has become the object of their affection/fixation, and they will save and sell stuff and rationalize until they can get what they want oh so badly. (Been there, done that a time or two. ::shamefaced emoji:: )

The third type of customer for such cameras is someone who makes money with cameras and feel that ownership of one of these models will aid their enterprise.

Beyond that, I have pondered and struggled, but I can't think of any other general type of customers for those cameras. If you can come up with a fourth type, don't be shy.

Mike

*The TOP style sheet does not allow words in all caps.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Yonatan Katznelson: "Re: Soccer vs. Football: the English have only themselves to blame."

Larry Wilkins: "I started reading Sports Illustrated around 1967 and had a subscription for more than 50 years. Yes, Frank Deford was a gifted writer, but when I think of him, I think of The National, the short-lived national sports daily for which he was editor-in-chief. I used to get to my office early so that I could read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal before starting work. After The National launched, I had to get to work at least 20 minutes earlier than that so that I could read that too. I loved The National—to my mind, the perfect mix of scores, stats and shorter and longer reporting.

"Fifteen or 20 years later, I saw Frank in a parking garage in Manhattan, where we were both waiting for our cars. To this day, I regret not going up to him to tell him how much I enjoyed The National."

jh: "Speaking of pricey cameras, I have seen two people carrying new Leicas recently. One was an older well-dressed guy hiking, casually carrying the camera on a strap over his shoulder. The other was a young guy at the Farmers' Market, tightly hugging the camera to his chest with both hands. That's two out of three of your types."

Benjamin Marks: "'*The TOP style sheet does not allow words in all caps.' This alone was worth the price of admission."

Sean: "The Football/Soccer debate is a consequence of TOP's international reach, which we’re all happy about. And let's not forget that the US and UK are two nations separated by the same vegetable, so let's not start throwing aubergines and eggplants at each other."

Ronny A. Nilsen: "I guess I'm sort of a forth type: people that need or can use the new capabilities of the cameras to get more or better images? For me the other three types is a bit ... odd? Why would I buy something that would not give me more or better images? But it has to be seen in context of what kind of photography one do. For my landscape photography I only need a reasonably high resolution camera, and I dop everything in manual mode. But for wildlife and my daughters horse show jumping I need low light and autofocus to get more keeper images. My current Canon R5 kan do all the kinds of photography I do, so I only need one camera."

Mike replies: I need to reply to this but I'm out of time this morning. Hopefully I'll get to it sometime today (Wednesday.)

Geoffrey Wittig: "A few observations come to mind. Yes, $4,300 is a lot of money for a camera. But in constant dollars the Canon 5Dsr cost more when it was released in 2015. This is in line for what high end prosumer DSLR and mirrorless bodies have gone for in recent years. And it's absurdly capable.

"But it's also clear to me that we're in the sad twilight of the era of photography as a serious hobby. It's rapidly heading for the same category as ham radio or model railroading: a quirky, shrinking tiny niche, regarded (if at all) with a flicker of tolerant amusement by the masses. I derived immense satisfaction and not a little joy from several decades spent honing my technical skills, learning how to use finicky gear, and teasing the best possible result from large format inkjets, all in service to a goal. That goal was creating the best possible photographic print. I still love a beautiful print, but it has become a niche skill. To the broader culture photography now means billions of technically competent snapshots captured by increasingly sophisticated smart-phone cameras flooding the Internet every single day, each with the impact and lifespan of a just-hatched Mayfly or cicada. Briefly seen then promptly forgotten.

"I recall reading Brooks Jensen's prescient comment about this perhaps 20 years ago, when he predicted precisely this situation: a minute-by-minute firehose of images where each was rendered invisible by the colossal volume. And yet, I can't help myself. I still derive some genuine joy from a perfect print of a quietly beautiful morning on the river, made with my own hands."

Half-Frame (and Other Half-Baked Thoughts About New Film Cameras)

I think it's great that my readers schooled me about half-frame after I put it down the other day, citing people who used it and books made with it, and even W. Eugene Smith appearing in ads for it.

Y'all rock.

You have to remember I used to be a custom darkroom printer. One of the constant battles custom printers had to wage was educating clients as to how large their prints could be. Imagine someone coming in wanting a tiny little section of a 35mm negative made into a 20x24-inch print, and you can see the nightmare. I don't believe I was ever hired to print large prints from half-frame negatives, but I know I wouldn't have liked it.

Furthermore, I don't agree that liking APS-C or Micro 4/3 ought to translate to liking half-frame. Consider that prior to 2000, six megapixels was considered the magic number at which digital sensors would draw even with 35mm film. (The parity was approximate, but will do for comparison purposes). Compare that with modern APS-C cameras with 24 megapixels or current Micro 4/3 cameras with 20 MP. Both have much more information than half of a 35mm negative, especially if you're using fast film, which you probably would be.

I'm sure some people will do good work with them.

I do agree that Pentax is approaching the problem of new film cameras in an enlightened way. I only hope the products don't fall victim to the "novelty" syndrome that sports cars seem to: that is, lots of pre-release enthusiasm, a surge of sales when they're new and just released, diminishing into lack of interest within a pretty predictable, and pretty short, span of time. I hope that won't be the case. Long live film! Long live photography!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Simon: "I can understand the appeal of half-frame for young people. My daughter is now 20 and she and some of her friends are enamoured with lo-fi film photography and the novelty of instant and film-based images and prints. Lens sharpness and big prints are not what she and her contemporaries care for; they like the imperfections, the fuzzy corners and skewed 'retro'-style colour palette. I'm sure Harman's new Phoenix film is aimed squarely at people looking for those qualities. I told her it would be a lot cheaper and far easier to use an Instagram filter to get the same kind of result. But I'm also a little pleased that their generation are helping to keep 35mm film sales alive."

Stephen S.: "When film was all their was, medium format was desirable because it was less grainy than 35mm. Now, if you want an image without grain, digital does that perfectly. One of the reasons people enjoy shooting film these days is because of the grain, and the imperfection. For many, 35mm is more desirable than medium format, because medium format looks too perfect—too digital. Therefore, half-frame will actually give them more of what they want from film, in comparison to digital!"

Mike replies: A similar thing happened in furniture-making, as explained by Prof. David Pye in The Nature and Art of Workmanship, one of my favorite books. Prior to machining, a high degree of perfection in finish was prized. But as soon as machines could create a high degree of regularity and perfection of finish, roughness (such as tool marks), the imperfections of the materials, and the telltales of manufacture by hand started to be valued increasingly highly.

Kye Wood: "I have no dog in this fight, so having used half-frame Olympus Pen or Trip or whatever it was for a number of years...half-frame is crap. And trust me, I'm being kind. Yes yes yes. Someone over there did this or that with it and blah blah. Just like you can make a billboard print from an iPhone. But...given a choice, why would you? As soon as I found out about the half-frame decision, I lost all interest. Unless Pentax can change the laws of physics, it's going to be a dog.

"I'm hoping that as Pentax is not a person who posts here, and that my lack of grace and circumspection will not preclude my post from being considered acceptable.  :-) "

The Two Requests

Just thought I'd point out that both of these comments came in yesterday when I asked for topic suggestions—not one right next to the other, but close. I've left Jozef's capitalizations alone:

James Sinks (partial comment): "Probably a polarizing answer, but more pool and snooker, please. I have zero personal interest in either, but I enjoy your enthusiasm about them a great deal."

Jozef: "Write about Photography, or related...NOTHING OT anymore!"

Make me chuckle. With apologies to Abraham Lincoln, you can please all of the people some of time, and you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time*.

Thanks for all the answers yesterday and today. I'm going to use that post's comments as a resource going forward.

Another category I recognized is things that would be nice to read that I can't possibly provide. The exemplar of these is a request I got once asking if I would please compare all of the available photo editing programs. Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, GIMP, Luminar Neo, ON1, Capture One, ACDSee, Apple Photos, Paintshop Pro, DxO Photolab, Affinity Photo, and so on. That made me shake my head—I've been working with Photoshop for 30 years and I barely understand that. The time I'd need to thoroughly understand every photo editing program exceeds the amount of time we have before the sun expands into a red giant. So, nice idea, but....

Mike

*The actual quote: "You can fool all of the people some of time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." Attributed to Abraham Lincoln in The New York Times, August 27, 1887, according to Freakonomics.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Open Mike: I Go To Wander and Hope (OT)

When I was recovering from my heart procedure, which was supposed to take six weeks, I had to put my shirts and coats on backwards, because I wasn't allowed to raise my left arm during that time. I had not thought about how I put on a shirt or coat since I was, I don't know, five or six? When do kids learn to put on their coats? If I was five, that means John F. Kennedy was President the last time I consciously thought about how to don a coat. It wasn't a real problem, just an annoyance. But I had a ludicrous amount of trouble with it. I swear it took me the whole six weeks to re-learn how to do it. I didn't get the knack of doing the motion backwards till the last day. Honestly, it was that hard.

That's part of the reason I got all agitated when I learned my old keyboard had been discontinued. The replacement (which I called the No Natural because it had the same name minus the word "Natural") was different enough that I couldn't type on it at first. I was convinced it would take me forever to get used to it. Because, you know, the putting-on-the-coat thing, not to mention lots of other things like that.

But when I finally actually tried to learn the new one, I adapted to it in...about eight minutes. I exaggerate. But it's fine.

Do I still need to learn to touch-type? Not really. I took a typing test using the No Natural at Monkeytype, typing my old way with three fingers and one thumb, and within three tries my score was 50 WPM with 98% accuracy. Which (again) is fine.

So all this keyboard business was just me being Chicken Little. I was honestly panicked when I found out my keyboard had been discontinued. I mean, I had been been using it for 30 years (a new one every three or four years). Meanwhile, readers were all like, dude, just learn to type. As I was freaking the F out.

Lost souls
Speaking of odd nicknames for weird things, like No Natural, I went to Wal-Mart yesterday. I decided that store should be called "Wander and Hope," because that is what you have to do there. I get an attack of existential pessimism whenever I go into a Wander and Hope. It makes me question the culture of now, the meaning of life, and whether I belong on this planet. I never feel lonelier or more defeated. Manfully, however, I found three blue-vested employees in a little klatch talking with each other animatedly about their men, their kids, and their lives. I interrupted them and asked them for what I needed, and one of them turned away from the others and sucked it up and put on her concerned/motherly/helpful employee-face. She waved and pointed and said, "It's down there, way down there, just look for a section called 'More Meaningless Crap.' You'll see it. You'll find it. You'll be all right," and I repeated, "More Meaningless Crap?" to help me remember it, and she said 'More Meaningless Crap." Then she went back to her discussion with her friends. Within 40 steps I had forgotten what section she told me to look for (it wasn't actually the More Meaningless Crap section), but I was too far into it to go back and ask again. I thought perhaps I would find another employee in the interior of the store to ask, but encountering a Wander and Hope employee in the interior is as common as someone offering you a Prosciutto e Melone sample on a tray in the middle of the Australian outback. I had about a football field to walk. In my meandering I encountered several more old men wandering aimlessly, doddering into view for a little while and then disappearing. At any given time in any Wander and Hope there must be at least eight old men shuffling around lost, having forgotten or given up on their mission of finding whatever it was they came for. They wander around for part of the afternoon and then eventually manage to trickle out the front doors. They probably lose their cars in the parking lot, like I did, but here's a hint: if you just keep walking around purposefully out there like you know where you're going, nobody can tell you're lost. If you ask any of those old men later that evening what they did that day, they will look at you with a bewildered expression, which is not all that different from their usual expression, and say, "I went to Walmart."

I eventually found a round plastic can of wipes for car interiors, and I was pretty amazed that I found it. It occupied about 12 inches of linear shelf-frontage in a vast wall of other stuff, on an aisle adjacent to twelve other very similar aisles, and the employee had pointed to it from a football field away, and I found it anyway. I was a little proud of myself. Next, you wander until you detect daylight, and head toward that. Sometimes you merely sense it. Eventually you will get to a long stretch of cash registers, all of which say "CLOSED" except two, which both have long lines. At that point you are within an automated self-checkout payment of freedom, so keep going.

Ignore that orange warning light
My car came home yesterday, by the way. It was at the dealership because no one could figure out a persistent problem with the TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system).

This popped up about two years ago. At that time I took it to the Honda dealer in Canandaigua and asked if they could have a go at it, to save me the drive all the way to Rochester to the Acura dealer. (My car is an Acura, but Acura is a division of Honda, and my car is based on the Honda Civic.) I waited patiently, and presently the Service manager came out to talk to me. He kind of hemmed and hawed, saying that he didn't know if Acura used the same machine as his, and that Acura might have different codes than their machine used, and that I would probably be better off just taking it to Acura. I thanked him and left. In the interim I had several other places try to fix it, a couple of tire stores and a couple of independent mechanics. The light kept coming back on. It didn't really bother me much. It was merely an annoyance, no big deal. I learned to check the tires the old-fashioned way, and ignore the big orange warning panel that says "CHECK TPMS."

My car had to go to the Acura dealer for a different issue, so I asked them to take a look at the TPMS problem while they were at it. I, er, expressed my skepticism that it could be fixed. The Service manager said, "Oh, we'll fix it." When I picked the car up a week ago he told me the TPMS was fixed. I said, I dunno, that's been a pretty persistent issue. The light came back on before I even got home, same as usual.

But Acura is super-serious about standing behind their work. When I called and told them the light had come back on, that's when they sent a driver in a loaner car to pick up my car, so I wouldn't have to make the drive to Rochester again. They delivered an expensive, gleaming, brand new SUV, an RDX, for me to drive. They kept my car a whole week. No extra charge for any of this.

That's service.

Having not seen my own car for a week, it came to me in a flash of obviousness that it was dirty, hence the stop at the Wander and Hope. I had softened a good deal toward that Acura RDX that I ended up driving for one solid week. When they picked it up yesterday I still didn't know how to turn the radio on and off, but I had learned what a lot of the other features did and had started to relax into its weird mid-2020s vibe. I learned many things about it. If you can believe this, that damn car will drive itself on a more or less straight road, for miles, no hands on the wheel. It weaves gently from the fogline to the centerline and back again...until it reaches a curve, when it will go right across the centerline and into oncoming traffic. That seems a.) amazing, yet also b.) not a desirable functionality in any way, shape, form or fashion. We didn't hit anything.

So the reason they kept my car for so long was because the dealership was hosting a visiting Acura engineer for a day, for a completely separate matter, and they wanted him to take a look at my car while he was there. Well, guess what? The engineer discovered that the piece of testing equipment the dealership was using had gone bad.

He tested this hypothesis by driving my car to a nearby Honda dealership and getting them to fix the problem!

So everyone's happy. The Acura dealership discovered their equipment was faulty—they've ordered a new one, of whatever it is—the Acura engineer solved my issue, and my issue got solved, which is what I wanted.

I just think it's a little ironic, is all. If the first Honda dealer had just taken a shot at fixing the problem, it probably wouldn't have been a problem for the last two years. You know what they say: Oh well.

I can't complain. That's life. Life on life's terms.

This post typed the old-fashioned way

Meanwhile, I'm using the chip-away method on my dirty car. Whenever I have a big task to do, I tackle it by doing just a little at a time. To "detail" the interior of my beloved 2014 Acura ILX 2.4 with manual transmission (that's it in the top illustration, taken in the dark with the iPhone), I get a container of those car interior wipes, keep it in the car, and just clean a little bit every day. The inside of a door one day, the body sill the next; the center console the next day; the top of the dash the day after that; and so on. Before you know it the whole inside of my car will gleam like new. 

Now I'm off to chip away a little bit more on my taxes.

Happy Easter to those of you celebrating!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David L.: "I work in a big box retail store. One of the most common searches is 'I’m looking for my wife/husband.'"

Steve Rosenblum: "As you know, Mike, here in Michigan we have these gigantic Meijer superstores (formerly called 'Meijer Thrifty Acres' before they decided to jettison the reference to their West Michigan Dutch Reformed roots). I believe they were pioneers of the 'superstore' concept because they had the combination grocery store/huge discount store thing going before I started college in 1970, long before Walmart and Target got on that bandwagon. I was amused by your post because even in my college days, long before I became an old man, I found myself in a kind of mild dissociative state after wandering around in there for quite a while trying to find the item I came there to buy without a helpful employee in sight. There didn't seem to be any logic to where things were located, or at least I was unable to perceive it. These days they are somewhat better organized; plus, many of the big box store apps will actually indicate on which section and shelf the item can be found."

Ken James: "Mike, that was the funniest thing I have read in like forever. It was made even more special for me because just on this past Thursday I went to Walmart for the first time ever! I was one of those old men shuffling about aimlessly in total amazement. I went there because they apparently carry a dog food I am feeding my rapidly declining old dog, and yep! I finally found the dog food department and, like you, after wandering that quarter-mile-long aisle for 10 minutes I spotted it on the vast wall in front of me on the very highest shelf, one case left occupying the same 12 inches of shelf space. The whole experience was truly surreal. I could also identify with wandering until I spotted daylight. What an experience. My wife had a similar experience with the tire pressure thing on her car too."

Speed: "Both Home Depot and Lowe's will tell your phone exactly where a product is if you tell them which of their stores you're standing in and exactly what product you are looking for. Their computer knows where their stuff is, why shouldn't you? Some Walmart stores do as well—maybe all but I've not yet shopped in all of their stores. And all three of the above will 'pick' all the products on your list, package them up, charge your credit card and have them waiting for you near the door. Target too."

Update: Miracle

UPDATE: It's a miracle! Randy the repairman arrived today all cheerful, then got progressively more fatalistic as the washing machine came apart. Diagnosis: the circuit board was shot. Repair estimate: with labor, well over the price of a new machine. For a machine bought new in 2012, in a world where new washing machines are designed to last 10 to 12 years. Of course I refused the repair estimate. Which meant I had to pay for the service call. As I was filling in the form with my credit card number and thinking ahead to how I was going to go about getting a new one, he was putting my broke-down old one back together.

Then I heard a familiar little electronic blibbety-blip-blip! and Randy says, "well, would you look at that!"

Incredibly, the machine was working again. I said, "how did you do it?" He said, "I have no idea." He thought maybe it only needed a reboot. I came to a more logical conclusion: he's a magician. He charged me just for the service call, and I've done two loads of laundry since then. Not only the best possible, but also the least probable outcome.

We got a nice covering snow this morning, and tonight the air is bell-clear and the moon is nearly full and casting shadows. Clearly, leprechauns and sprites are out dancing in the snowy woods. The chipmunks are consorting with field mice, and fisher-cats are smoking cheroots. And I stand a chance of getting through tax season without having to buy a new washing machine. I'm ecstatic about it. Truly, a miracle.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Peter Jeffrey Croft: "As an electronics tech, it's no miracle that it came good. Connectors are the weak point of electronics PCBs, and simply removing then re-plugging will often make something come good. The other point is that electronic components are cheap. To be asked to replace a complete board for the sake of a 50¢ capacitor or a $2 semiconductor is a manufacturer ripoff. On the other hand, the chargeable hours needed to diagnose and fault-find at component level probably makes it cheaper to replace the whole board these days. It's a tough call. What you hope for is a tech who's familiar with the component(s) that fail and can replace/rebuild in quick time. But good techs like that are rare and unrewarded."

Dave: Re 'And I stand a chance of getting through tax season without having to buy a new washing machine.' Well, I hope so. But as easily as it started working again, it could stop. Plan to save some money each week to pay for the inevitable replacement machine. I don't know if any washing machine is available without electronic circuits for all functions, but it would be nice to have an all-mechanical method to time the wash cycle, rather than trusting electronics in a somewhat moist environment. Good luck!"

Daniel: "Start looking for a new Washing machine. Once you have circuit board problems you are asking for a flooded room or failure without notice. Might as well get ahead of it before disaster strikes."

Any Color You Like so Long as it's Bland

[Oooof! I goofed. I scrambled to get this done this morning, got it all done, then forgot to post it before I went out the door. Here it is, late.
—Mike the scrambled egghead Ed.]

I'm driving a loaner car today—a 1.5-liter 200-HP Acura Integra that shifts its own gears. My Acura is in Rochester getting ready to kick my wallet in the butt. I gotta sell some cameras and lenses.

This Integra is a lineal descendant of Phred, my mother's 1978 Honda Accord, her first foreign car. The Accord famously went on to become the best-selling Japanese car for 17 years in a row and, in 1989, the first Japanese car to become the No. 1 best-selling vehicle in the U.S. She had Accords for something like 15 years before switching to Saab. And I think I drove most of them more than she did. At least the earlier ones. The Integra is based on the current Civic, which is now larger than Phred was; the Integra is the successor to my 2014 Acura ILX 2.4. The loaner is red (I guess you can see that) and has an automatic transmission (I guess it's a CVT actually) which, for me, takes a little getting used to.

I also got to test drive an Integra Type S yesterday while loafing around the dealership awaiting the verdict on my car. One reason I bought my ILX was that the model with the larger, better engine only came with a manual transmission, and buying that model was the only way you could get a stick. In those days, most cars that offered a stick only paired them with the worst engine—very frustrating to my way of thinking—so the configuration of ILX models came as a relief. The Type S has a larger two-liter, 320-HP engine and, true to tradition, only comes with a stick. Which makes me want to buy one just to support whoever made that decision. Unfortunately it's also a $50,000-plus car, so no soup for me. I'm probably three to five years away from a new car, something like that. I've had seven cars in my lifetime. Is that a lot or a little? I wish it had been more.

Acura Integra Type S camouflaged by reflections

But man, did I ever like it. The Type-S (it was black) has gobs of power and just the niftiest snick-snick short-throw shifter. Awesome/brilliant. The test drive with the Type S did exactly what it's designed to do: sold me. Which would have been great for the dealership had I been a potential customer. I love these cars. They hit the sweet spot for me. Of course, it's easy to love what you're used to.

But it's got me looking at reviews of the Civic Si, which has the 200-HP 1.5 engine, only comes with a manual, and has basically the same interior as the Integra. All in the family.

Black or gray or gray-black or silvery gray
As an aside, here's my theory as to why car colors are mostly so bland these days, my red loaner notwithstanding. When I was a teenager, most people in America owned their cars. So you saw more self-expression—clusters of whimsical bumper stickers, bright colors, decorations and customizations, etc. Now when you go to the car dealer, cars come in very predictable colors. Black, white, grays, and silvers are the default. Murky brownish/olive beiges of some indeterminate sort might be in the mix, with the occasional muted token red or blue thrown in so people don't lose the will to live. This is another of my many unpedigreed theories, but I think the reason is that most of us these days drive cars owned by banks. Banks like bland, so that their property can more easily be resold later. Rather than hard-to-remove bumper stickers, people now put fiddly little decorations on the windows, where they can be scraped off without a trace. The other day I saw a car with one decoration on it. On the rear passenger side window, about six inches high, was a white stencil of...a grenade. Wonder what that person's trying to say. Better yet, don't tell me. I probably don't want to know.

In case you're wondering why I willingly subjected myself to the dealer's service department—the one I'm convinced has an unofficial $600 minimum—it's because mechanics in my area don't have any openings. The local shop in town that I use told me the earliest they could look at my car would be next week. I can't limp along with no brake fluid for a week. The good mechanic up in the next town—the independent former racecar mechanic who specializes in Toyota and Honda (whose shop is begging to be photographed, by the way—it's got character out the wazoo, including pinup girls plastered all over the bathroom walls that must have been there since the '70s)—he has a six-week waiting list. Then again, that guy just inspected my car a month ago, and then this.

This culture is just sucking money out of people like me these days. As if to add insult to injury, the propane guy was just here, like I needed to spend more money this day in particular. My bills for propane refills used to start with a "1." Now they start with a "3." Got to get back to work on that book.

Call just came
Welp, the call just came in—my car's all done. Time to make the hike to Rochester again, gaze longingly at the Type S out front, give the red car back, and retrieve the old buggy. Later.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Speed: "The Splash Screen image of the new electric Porsche Taycan Turbo GT Weissach Package (from $230,000) is...purple. But what a purple. It's a Porsche thing."

[Note: Link added by Ed. —Ed.]

Sean: "If, like me, you know very little about cars, the asymmetric relationship with a car mechanic is built on hope, not trust."

Cecelia: "I choose a color for three reasons: I do not want to stand out in often contentious city driving; it doesn’t show the dirt; and it isn’t too hot in the sun. This always leads to silver or white for my urban California life."

Mike replies: I try to buy silver cars for similar reasons. My brother prefers black, saying black cars look the best when they're clean and the worst when they're dirty, but my observation was that his black cars were far more often dirty. As for not wanting to stand out, great point. I have a friend here in town who has a bright iridescent yellow-green Kia, and she says her friends are always telling her when and where they saw her car around town.

Robert Roaldi: "I like car colour names. My current Jetta is Pyrite Metallic Silver. I owned an Escort that was Cayman Green. My favourite was a friend's Legacy Turbo in Cranberry Mousse."

AI, Get Back

Sorry this is so long, but I didn't have time to make it short. Today is a Red-Letter day here at TOP Rural World Headquarters! Today marks six weeks since my heart procedure, and starting today I don't have to restrict the use of my left arm any more. So the ceremonial unlocking of the pool shed happened this a.m., and I am very much looking forward to finding out how much rust has set in.

Anyway, just one little point about the 10 Best Enthusiast Cameras list we're working on: it'll be an article. A piece of written entertainment and possibly instruction. It has to work on that level, as an article, and that's its purpose.

What manner of camera be this? Look closely.

It's getting so a lot of "best this-or-that" lists repopulating the internet were built by the Borg. In video form they have robot voices that sound human until they make some odd mispronunciation that only an alien (one from another planet, not another country) would make, and generic illustrations that look like they came from all kinds of disparate sources, because they did. A few of the illos have that weird kinda twisted shiny look that AI-generated images have. (You think the "person" above is actually holding the viewfinder over his eye, or not quite?) The lists make no sense—there's no internal consistency—and some of the choices make sense but others do not. But of course there are plenty of links. They'll be happy to harvest a spiff off you. (So am I, but I want to earn it.) The verbiage that goes with each of the choices is mindless boilerplate. Some of it draws you in and almost fools you, some sounds borderline demented.

Jumping-off points
On an actual authored list, the selections of the cameras are just jumping-off points. I pick things because they allow me to discuss considerations that will enlighten the nonspecialist reader about the broader picture. So if I pick the K3 III Mono, naturally the first place I'd go would be to say that the first dilemma facing the buyer who likes B&W will be whether to get the monochrome version or the color version. Although I can talk about Pentax's long history of making sturdy, no-nonsense workhorse cameras in either case (which in turn might give me an opportunity to mention the K-1 Mark II in the article), I can also use the opportunity to imply a bit of the argument about the advantages of a dedicated tool (the Monochrome) versus a versatile tool (the regular K-3 III). So while the choice is the Monochrome, it's really an entry for both K3 III's. Same thing with the choice of the Canon 6D II; it will give me a chance to visit the differences between optical finders versus EVF finders for those who don't know about that, and mention the great FF Mirrorless shift of 2018 when all the major makers followed Sony into FF-M. Along with a sentence or two about Canon's long dominance in SLRs. Along the way I'd contrast it with whatever mirrorless R model we think parallels the 6D II. Even the fact that the 6D II might be on the way to discontinuation, as Ken said, is a nice detail, as it mirrors (er, sorry) the fact that flipping-mirror cameras are gradually on the way out.

What you're trying to do with a thoughtful, well-considered list is not just to exalt one choice over another possible choice; it isn't actually a contest. There are no cash prizes. And no reader will consider themselves blocked in by the choices, prevented from getting the camera they really want because it didn't "win." No one will say, "Well, I wanted an R5, but this list I read on the internet said the 6D II was better, so I had to get that." At best, the person with her heart set on the R5 might consider the 6D II. And might well reject the argument for it. As the list-maker you try to pick great cameras, of course, but you're really trying to do the reader a service by covering the bases and giving him or her a meaningful overview.

And at best, you introduce the reader to something he didn't even know about before, and he goes in that new direction and ends up happy.

But don't worry too much if you think I chose the wrong camera. If I pick the Q3 as the fixed-lens choice, it doesn't mean I can't mention the viral enthusiasm for the X100[x] among young people sparked by Instagram. With either, I can write a few sentences about the advantages and disadvantages of fixed-lens cameras. I might mention that the X100VI is chronically hard to get, and perhaps even say that otherwise it might have won the palm. A place on the list doesn't slam the gavel down and sentence non-winners to oblivion. And it doesn't mean other cameras can't be mentioned and included that way. It's all of a piece; it goes together like a jigsaw puzzle. The point is to make the list a good read, and informative overall. To put a broad variety of options into perspective. Mindfully, not mindlessly—it's not just the links that matter.

Yr. (all too) human Ed.
I can't compete with AI for productivity. But I'm an old prospector who's panned a lot of dirt in them thar hills, and it ain't caught up to me yet. I'm clever. And wily, like a coyote. I've been writing best camera lists since AI was still named Hal. I'll show AI that I'm better at building a list than it is! It can take its mindless clickbait internet pollution and slink back into the slimy cave it came out of. None o' that for Yr. Not-So Hmbl., proudly human Ed....nor for his proudly human readers.  ;-)

And now, at 1:35 (!), breakfast. Then, to the shed!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Steve W: "Lists are fun! And I look forward to the article, and I like how you have included readers feedback too, very nice. This isn't (necessarily) for the list, but I have to confess the more I use my iPhone 15 Pro, the less I use my Fuji X-T4 (a camera I love). AI is upon us! (For better and for worse I think)."

UPDATE No. 2 (Best Cameras List)

The OM System Olympus Tough TG-7 has now made the list for its special macro (it made this! albeit with photo stacking which is pretty sophisticated) and underwater capabilities, added on to it starting out as a compact, portable, non-fragile mom and dad camera suitable for hikes and picnics and other outdoor activities, and for the beach and the swimming pool, etc.; and because phones cannot go where it can go. The Canon 6D Mark II has made the list, as a representative classic optical see-the-world-directly DSLR finders in an era of EVFs, an homage to Canon's era of dominance in SLRs, film to digital, starting with the clean-sheet EOS system in 1991, and for its rich, smooth, beautiful color. Smartphones have entered the list as "your smartphone," following Matthew's sensible suggestion. He notes that "specific models are ephemeral and contentious, even more than camera-cameras are, but their core feature for photography is that you already have one with you. Elevating one specific model seems fundamentally different from choosing either the Leica Q [series] versus the Fujifilm X100 [series]."

The Nikon Z8 (above right) has entered consideration; I need to check with Thom. The Fujifilm GFX 100S has entered consideration. The Canon R7 has been removed from consideration.

Current provisional state of the list in alphabetical order as of Monday March 4th:

Canon 6DII
Fuji X-T5
OM System TG-7
Pentax K-3 III Mono

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Jayanand Govindaraj: "The best camera for the street (or for anything, really) that I have ever used is the Nikon Z8, as it is so versatile—light, fast, accurate, focus system to die for, full frame (important when shooting street in places like India to blur chaotic backgrounds to nothingness with fast lenses). It even benefits to the extent of having two lenses in one by using the DX mode—which still gives you 20-MP files. The lenses available for the Z system are sublime, and some of them rank with, or surpass, the best I have ever used (Leica/Zeiss included). No contest. I am surprised, though, that Fuji XT-5 has made it to the list ahead of the Fuji X100 series...."

Keith: "I've been using a Canon 6D Mark II since mid 2017 or so and love it. I told the people at the local camera store that I'd buy the last new one off the shelf when they discontinue it. It does what I want, doesn't do things I don't want, which is huge in my books. Are there 'better' cameras out there? Of course. But buying one of them won't make me a better photographer, so I'm good."

Thom Hogan: "Re 'Checking with Thom': As some others have indicated, I'm not sure what this list is useful for. Partly because you have terms that do not have an accepted definition (e.g. 'enthusiast'). I tend to do this differently. What's the most well-rounded camera you can buy? That indeed would prompt one to put a Nikon Z8 somewhere in the top three, maybe at the top. I'd have to think about that, as I haven't made that pronouncement for awhile (last full article on that, the Nikon D850 was the one to beat)."

Mike replies: Hopefully I clarified the purpose of the list in the latest post ("AI, Get Back"). The article was originally going to be for a different outlet—and thus for a more general audience—but it turns out they don't want it. You know what they say: Oh well.

Andrea: "Glad to see the Canon 6D Mk II in the list! I have been using a (second-hand) one for a little longer than a year now, and it's a consistently great camera. A pity that the Canon range of lenses are only meh, if you're into small primes...."

Eliphalet's Legacy: QWERTY (OT)

[Ed. note: I decided to publish this anyway, because I worked hard on it. Please just ignore it if the topic bugs you! I'll understand.  —Mike]

You probably already know there are alternative keyboard layouts. The standard one is the only one that never had a name; it's called merely by its beginning letter sequence, starting from the top left: QWERTY. On the Mac it's called "U.S.," which isn't a name but merely a label.

Old Photos Answers

To answer the questions from the previous post:

One: Yep, the man in the lower right is "Stick Man" from the cover of Led Zeppelin IV, the 1971 record album that now has sold 37 million copies worldwide and includes "Black Dog" and "Stairway to Heaven." The photo album was discovered by a researcher named Brian Edwards. The picture in the photo album is titled "A Wiltshire Thatcher" and is believed to be of a man called Lot Long. The photographer has been identified as one Ernest Howard Farmer. Edwards, the discoverer, called the local Wiltshire Museum about the find, and the Museum ended up buying the photo album for £420.

It's not the exact print from which the record album cover was made. That one was a hand-colored copy that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant found at an antiques shop in a town called Pangbourne. Over the years, whoever had the original that was used on the record cover lost track of it, so it no longer exists as far as anyone knows. Wonder how much that would have been worth on the collectibles market today? A lot of associated "rock history interest" there.

Personally, I was always bemused by that odd choice for a cover picture and never could figure out what it was supposed to mean.

Two: This is probably one of the more unusual author photos I've seen, although of course it probably wasn't taken as such. The woman is P.L. (Pamela) Travers, who wrote the Mary Poppins books. She was a mysterious and interesting character, with many semi-aliases. Born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia, and called Lyndon, she then became Pamela Lyndon Travers in England where she lived most of her life, and where she was Pamela to her friends...and yet she considered herself Irish. A friend said, "she always wanted to back into the limelight, but she wanted to be there." The picture shows her in 1924 as Titania in a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. She lived to be 96, long enough to negotiate with the director of the musical, and she evidently had a lot of Mary Poppins in her own nature. Like Beatrix Potter and A.A. Milne, she was a children's author who was a sensitive writer with a real feel for words.

Another odd thing I learned browsing around about this: Emily Blunt's children were much more drawn to Julie Andrews' depiction of Mary than to their own mother playing the part! She said so herself on a talk show.

Three: I'm afraid I thought this was much more obscure than it is. I haven't had a TV since 2014, and wasn't a big "television culture" person before that, so it had escaped my mind that Willard Scott was famous from NBC's Today Show, which I seldom if ever watched. I remembered Willard as a local news weatherman in D.C. from the time I lived there. I think I knew even then that he had been one of several performers who played Bozo the Clown, and that he was the creator of Ronald McDonald, the fast-food restaurant's ambassador in their marketing to kids.

Willard actually did me a small favor. My brother Scott and I encountered him one day at Wagshal's Delicatessen in Spring Valley shopping center on Massachusetts Avenue. Scott said something, and Willard kind of blew us off on the way out the door. Scott, who was witty and quick, might have said a quiet word about the unexpected treatment. When we got outside ourselves, Willard was waiting there, and he apologized to us. He explained that it was difficult being a local television personality because everyone in town knew who he was and wanted a few minutes with him, and "sometimes you just want to eat lunch." He said that sometimes he wished he could walk around anonymously like everyone else. He actually spent more time with us than he had to, almost as if in atonement for not being friendlier earlier. He said enough to let me imagine what it must be like to have every stranger know your face and name. Being introverted by nature (I enjoy socializing but have a limited tolerance for it), I decided right there and then that being famous was not for me. I like being able to walk about in the world anonymously.

A little lesson courtesy of a well-known personality whom everyone knew wherever he went.

That must have been before 1980, when Willard left the local affiliate for the Today Show. He replaced Bob Ryan, who replaced him! They switched places. In the mid-1980s, I introduced Bob at a lecture, so I met him too. I think Bob was more interested in meteorology and its challenges than he was in celebrity, so maybe the exchange of jobs was a good thing for both of them.

Guess I need to meet Al Roker next!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Aptitude (Old-Dog-New-Trick Update)

Briefly: I've been practicing touch-typing for the past two days. I am rediscovering that I am amazingly clumsy. I actually was tested for aptitudes when I was 16, and one of the things I scored lowest in was "manual dexterity." I had been a model-builder before that (1920s and '30s cars were my favorite, but tanks and airplanes too—my best friend Mark and I used to build models together in his basement, complaining about the music his little sister was playing in the next room over), and that made the light go on—ah, so that's why I have so much trouble with so many things when I was modeling. I promptly gave up model making. Why do something for which you have little aptitude? It makes more sense to do things you're good at.

It probably explains why the model N-gauge train layout I was making had one little tiny area that was beautifully finished with scenery and buildings, and the rest was plain plywood for the next four years, till we moved.

Plus, I have a weird brain. I learn visually. When I just have touch to go on, I'm pretty lost. In a way that feels disconcertingly permanent. Two days of typing seven letters and I apparently still don't know where the confounded "R" is. It's very stressful. If I just look down, my speed all but doubles. It actually might make more sense to me to look while learning and then gradually allow myself to stop looking. That goes against that standard advice. But it's what I did with my current method, and I barely look at all.

Anyway, I'll update you in a few months. But wish me luck; I need it. You'll know when I switch over to touch-typing all the time because the posts will get super-short for a while.

(By the way, the three-day program of aptitude tests, which cost a lot of money at the time, ended with three recommendations for me as far as a future career was concerned: writer, photographer, or forester. Two out of three ain't bad, eh?)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Nick: "I have never taken such an in-depth aptitude test, but I'm sure that my manual dexterity score would cause the person scoring the test to look on the back of the rubric sheet to see if it included negative numbers. Every single career test I ever took, though, pointed me toward 'scientist' or 'mathematician,' though they would occasionally drop in the odd 'auto mechanic' and the like (indicating the absence of the manual dexterity test...). As little credit as I give such tests, I've been a professional scientist for a quarter of a century and I have a degree in math as well. Of course, I knew I wanted to be a scientist since I was three years old (scientist parent + 'space and dinosaurs are cool!' —> adult chemist who still kinda wishes he had studied paleontology or astronomy), so I definitely cannot promise that my thumb wasn't on the scale when I was taking them."

Mike replies: I always wondered about that "thumb on the scale." I was very into the outdoors as a kid, camping, hiking, Boy Scouts, horseback riding, pack trips, wilderness Summer camp, etc., and I wonder if I skewed the results of the test to allow them to come up with "forester." Curiously, I chose Dartmouth partially because of all the outdoors activities, went on a fantastic week-long initiation trip as a freshman, loved it, then never went camping again. I never have been able to explain that, to myself or anyone else.

By the way I took Paleontology in eighth grade and also loved that. One of the best courses I ever took at any level, from one of the best teachers, Elizabeth (Beth) Sieckman. (I hope I spelled that right.) Mrs. Sieckman also taught me how to write, by assigning a paper every single day, grading them on a 1–10 scale, and being famously resistant to giving out 10s.

The Secret Darkroom of Walter Mitty

I really want to thank reader Bob Johnston, no relation. His suggestion in a comment the other day was a EUREKA! moment for me. He said of his moribund darkroom, "But I do want to show it to my grandchildren one day."

Bright lightbulb went off above my pumpkin head.

That is what I would do if I were to set up a darkroom in the future! Not just print old pictures—hold demonstrations for school classes and any other groups that cared to schedule a visit. Don't just do darkroom; show darkroom. That makes the most sense for the future. I would love it, and I'll bet it would be popular. I've been happily creating imaginary plans in my head the past two days. I bet I could make it a highly entertaining hour.

The two best days
The two most exciting and popular days when I taught photography to high school kids were 1.) the day I brought my view camera to school and let the kids get under the dark cloth and look at each other through it, and 2.) the first day in the darkroom when they made their first print and got to watch it come up in the developer. My view camera had a fresnel lens on the ground glass, so the view was bright and beautiful. On view camera day, there were always a lot of ooohs and aaahs, lots of "that's so cool!" and "me next! Me next!" and "why is it upside down?" The students loved it. And it let me explain a lot of things while their interest was piqued and the experience was new and fresh.

When it came to getting into the darkroom, most teachers tended to start with, well, drudgery. Of which there was a lot. Exposing film, then developing it, then drying and cutting and sleeving, then contact sheets, and finally, at long last, after everything else, printing. Even then, test strips first. And how can they judge a test strip if they don't even know what to look for yet?

I turned it around. I figured I would get the kids interested before anything else happened to get in the way—you know, first impressions and all that. So I made a bunch of "perfect" negatives. An attractive landscape scene, full range, well exposed for a Grade 2 contrast, with one negative in the middle of an otherwise clear eight-inch strip. The very first day of class, first we looked at the negative on the light box. Then we went right into the darkroom. I had them load those negatives in the carrier, adjust the enlarger for size, put the paper in the easel, expose for a predetermined time, and then run the paper through the chemicals on their own (ooohs and aaahs again, and "that's so cool!"). I figured we could get to all the little details (developing the film, test strips, contrast adjustment, etc., etc.) later. The first thing I wanted to hit them with was the magic of bringing up the latent image in the developer, and seeing a little negative turn into a big positive! "Big positive" figuratively as well as literally.  :-)  The print itself made a great little souvenir of the day for them.

Many of them lost interest in darkroom work later in the semester, because for a lot of people it's as exciting as doing laundry or cleaning out the hall closet. But there were always a couple of kids who caught fire and advanced from there.

I also had a later didactic purpose in mind—to demonstrate how easy it is to make a great-looking print when you have a well-exposed and properly developed negative. This came from my observation, teaching Summer and adult education classes, that certain people get very obsessive about making "the perfect print" when they don't have anything within a hundred miles of a perfect negative. I remember one guy in particular. The obvious advice for those people was to just learn to make better negatives; but a few of them wouldn't accept that. They had read too many accounts of "hero" photographers like W. Eugene Smith laboring exhaustively over prints, making print after print after print and trying all sorts of techniques until a masterpiece was born. They thought that's what good printing was.

However, as my father used to say, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh*t.

The guy who made the light go on for me, and who I'm thankful to have encountered, was the worst printer I ever had in any class ever. An adult man in a continuing ed class. No instinct for craft whatsoever. He had an absolutely miserable negative which for some unfathomable reason he was attached to like a mother bear loves her cubs. It was a terrible picture, technically an abject failure, and he worked on that damn thing day after day. The print evolved from bad to worse as he lost all objectivity. But he thought he was imitating Gene Smith. I soon gave up on giving him advice—it was like trying to penetrate a sheet of quarter-inch steel with a BB gun. Presently I all but ordered him to move on, but that he would not do. A veritable photo-101 Bartleby. Days after I had abandoned him for lost, he came to me with a little problem—how do you apply bleach to the print? He'd gotten hold of some kind of bleach intended for lightening areas of a print, but it came in granular form, and he had neglected to dissolve it into a solution before he began. Using a damp paintbrush, he was attempting to apply the grains of bleach to his print, and was making even more of a mess than the print had been previously, if such a thing were possible.

He was a gift, that guy! He was the father of my nice idea of having the high school kids make prints from prepared "perfect" negatives on the first trip into the darkroom. I owe him a debt of gratitude.

What's old is new to the young
So that's what I'd do with a darkroom in the future if I ever set one up again. How many Millennials, let alone younger generations, have ever looked through a view camera or watched an image magically emerge in the developer tray? I would bet anybody who has never seen it would probably be interested in how it used to work, even if they never set foot in a darkroom again in their lives. Nine-tenths of the things we do for the experience are things we'll never do again. I mean, I hooked a sailfish in the Tongue of the Ocean once.

This is no doubt just a fantasy, but hey, fantasies are important to me. Some of my greatest achievements were accomplished in fantasy! I've been the best tennis player in the world, and you should hear me play air guitar. Don't knock it. (Everyone should just read "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." It's only a few paragraphs long, and unfortunately the basic concept has been distorted up by stage adaptations and a succession of films. Just read the original.)

So that's going to be my darkroom fantasy from now on. Thank you, Bob!

Mike

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Picture of the Leitz Focomat IIc

I looked in vain the other day for a good photograph of the Leitz Focomat IIc that I could use. Reader Guenther Roth found a great one—it's at the top of Austrian photographer Thomas Eisl's review. I didn't find that in my own search. Here's the link, if you want to see what the big beast really looked like all polished and shiny. It's a nice and informative article, too.

Many thanks, Guenther!

Since I said that the Focomat IIc was not the best enlarger I ever used, several people have asked what was. That's up next, just for fun, but I doubt we will be staying on the topic of enlargers much longer. I was going to say they have gone the way of the buggy whip. But then I realized that I live in an area where horse-drawn buggies are actually very common! They're out in force on a sunny Sunday. The day of rest is apparently also a day for churchgoing, weddings, and visiting friends; I notice more buggies on the roads on Sundays than any other day of the week. But I digress.

Today is also my son Xander's 31st birthday! Happy Birthday Xander.

Mike

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My First Darkroom

This is a rather odd fact. Despite having worked in some nice professional, studio, and school darkrooms, and having had many darkrooms myself over the years, I never had a single nice darkroom of my own in my whole life. They were all makeshift, many small and a few tiny, some literally dank and shared with the spiders. I made do in all of 'em except one...the one in my one-room Georgetown walk-up apartment, which was just too hair-shirt to work in at all. I used to say I could do good work anywhere, but not quite. Almost.

The picture is a recent real estate photograph of the very spot where I first learned to print my own photographs. That open door directly under the stairs leads to a small bathroom with a shower stall. I spent hours and hours in there experimenting! We moved there in '75. Of course, when we lived there, the basement was unfinished—the walls were cinder-block, the ceiling open to the joists and ducts and pipes, the floor concrete, and the lally columns bare. The only thing you would have seen out in the open, where the chairs and coffee table are now, was my late brother Scott's ping-pong table, as we called it (the proper name is table tennis), where he used to regularly trounce me. He was better at pool than I was, too, but we had to leave our pool table behind when we left Milwaukee and never got another one.

How strange that you can now instantly find pictures of the inside of houses you lived in decades ago.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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David Drake: "I still dream of having a 'real' darkroom. With my last one, I shared the small space with a washing machine and dryer. To get from the enlarger to the sink I had to crawl between racks of drying clothes. The tiny bathroom was used as a film changing room. I have to say that my ex-wife was patient with the circumstances, but it wasn't ideal for anyone that's for sure. Some day, I still want a nice little darkroom for doing B&W printing and alternative processes. For the time being, I'm learning Affinity Photo."

Mark Sampson: "Many fine photographs have been made in makeshift darkrooms; Paul Strand went without one, for example. Not to mention the legendary 'Paris hotel room darkroom' of photojournalists' lore. But a darkroom (I've built two of my own) is an extremely valuable tool for the photographer who works with B&W film; not least for the convenience of operation that it offers. In my own small darkroom, I can work any time I choose, a distinct advantage. And I have a consistent setup that allows for easy production of prints. Access to other lab spaces (institutional, commercial, or borrowed) is a distant second-best option. I've done that too, when my living situation made it necessary."

Update the Day After

All went well during my big adventure. We were gone for 11 1/2 hours overall on Tuesday (grateful thanks to my neighbor and friend Ilene Wexler, my most excellent support person for the day) but nothing about the day was very difficult, even the waiting. Generally it was easier and smoother than I expected. Even the uncooperative weather was not as bad as forecast. We stopped at Chipotle for dinner on the way home.

The staff at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester are first-rate, top-drawer, second to none. (Ilene worked there for 15 years.) Strong keeps three operating rooms going implanting cardiac devices. The Cath Lab there seems to consist entirely of cheerful, friendly, optimistic people. Special mention to Emily the nurse, a speed racer with the transport bed—I'm not saying it was as thrilling as a lap at Watkins Glen, but we dang sure didn't loiter in the hallways, I'll say that. I got to meet and talk with all the doctors including Dr. David Tsu-Chau Huang (pronounced "wong") who was the lead physician for my procedure—I was quite pleased to have the Director of the whole shebang taking care of me. He was generous with his time, answering all of my questions and then some. Dr. Huang told me he's had an intermittent interest in photography throughout his life but generally hasn't had time for it. I was told that he would have a Fellow acting as his wingman—Strong is a teaching hospital—but that turned out to be a Dr. White who is in his ninth year of training past medical school; so hardly a student. Dr. Huang explained that there are some things about the procedure where it's easier to have four hands available. I'm glad I happened to mention to Dr. White that I'm a pool player, because he immediately responded that they would be sure to give me a little extra slack in the pacemaker wires to accommodate the pool stance.

I mean, first things first, right?

After essentially three months of being in a form of heart failure, I'm really looking forward to seeing how my symptoms change as my body restores itself with adequate oxygen again. For starters, my alarmingly high rates of sleep apnea events dropped to nearly nothing last night. (According to the Holter monitor, my heart was stopping in the middle of the night for up to five seconds at a time. The CPAP can't help with that.)

I was uncommonly (for me) anxious about this procedure during the long run-up to yesterday (I suppose because I've been sick and discouraged), but I needn't have been. The wound is very small and I'm told it will heal quickly. If anyone out there ever needs a pacemaker, I would say not to worry too much. I won't jinx my recovery by making any broad, breezy claim about it (and of course every patient has different circumstances and needs) but, assuming my experience is an indication, there is little to fear. I should mention that this procedure is small potatoes compared to the seriousness of things many others are forced to bear, or must watch their loved ones endure, and such people are always in our thoughts.

The doggie will be gone till Friday, and I can't drive till then, so I think I'll wait till then to resume life as normal. Although I guess I just wrote a post of sorts for today, didn't I? I'm rather bursting with energy, and popped out of bed at 5:30 this morning. We'll see.

And thank you very much for your patience with all this nonsense! It's not what you come here for. But life is life, and sometimes gets in the way.

Mike

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

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Bill Bresler: "Glad you're on the mend! I know a small crowd of people who have had this procedure. Every one reports that it improved their lives. Most say that they felt better and had more energy than they'd had in years. Hope that's your experience. Carry on."

Jim (partial comment): "I’ve had my pacemaker since 2012. The battery ran out of power last August and a newer model pacemaker was plugged in. Since the batteries last ten years, I hope to make this one run out of power as well, when I’ll be 93! We should be thankful we live in a time when this technology is available."

Mike replies: Oh boy, truer words. I'm deeply grateful for that. See you around when you're 93.

Harry B Houchins: "This is, of course, some great news. My Father had one implanted, them re-implanted as technology improved. It added 20 years to a life that nearly ended in his sixties. Keep on keepin' on, my friend."

richard.l: "I've had printing sessions that were longer...."

The Best Battery Jumper: Update to the Update, and I Promise This is the Last of This

Final update:

After doing my usual ferocious cyclone of superfast ninja research, this is the one I settled on: the Hompow 4000A. Pretty sure the "hom" is pronounced "home": home power, geddit? I like that this shows its own charge clearly on the unit (the "100%" in the picture above) and has a little light on the plug for the cables that confirms that you have it properly hooked up.

This rates highly on Project Farm (there's one video guy I don't need to speed up to 1.5X to watch!), seems simple to operate, looks nice (design aesthetics matter to me, might not to you), and comes with a case, so it can knock around in my trunk/boot. It does three basic things: 1.) jumps your battery, 2.) serves as an emergency charger for your phone or other devices, and 3.) it's a flashlight.

Re No. 2, I do recall being lost in Michigan when Xander had snitched my charging cable, being dependent on the phone directions as the charge drained from 4% to 2%, then 1%, then going blank. I ended up stopping at three gas stations before finding one that could sell me a paper map.

This one doesn't have a tire inflating function; if you want that, the Vtoman X7 is the choice. I want a separate tire inflator, because I can just see myself getting a dead battery somewhere and discovering that the jumper box is back at my garage because I had been using it on the tires.

Finally, Mike P. found the clever thing pictured above: it's the "Locisne Car Door Assistance Handle, 5 in 1 Vehicle Support Handles Multifunctional Portable Safety Hammer Seatbelt Cutter Car Handle Assist with Lighting Function for Elderly and Handicapped" (really, Amazon? Editors needed everywhere), an emergency escape hammer and seatbelt-cutter that has a nifty extra function: you can use is as a temporary handle to help you or others get in and out of the vehicle! Like so:

Mike says it helps when getting an elderly relative in and out of the car. Wish we'd had that for Loyle. I half think I need it myself, to ratchet my ponderous self out of my little, low sedan.

By the way, pretty sure an escape hammer follows the umbrella rule: if you have it, it will mean you never need it. Because that's how that works.

That's it for this subject, you have my word.

Mike

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

Featured Comments from:

Joel Becker: "Mike, it's not that you're getting old, it's that the Pandemic has messed with all of our senses of time. Something that 'just happened last year' might just be four years in the past, etc. I have that experience with remembering visits with friends, home repairs, and everything else.

"We got a bruiser of a jumpstart battery during lockdown, because our van battery did not like being idle for months at a time. The NOCO Boost Pro GB150. It goes bloody forever, and I'm never going to have a car without one again."

Mike replies: That one comes in first in all the tests but is approximately three times more expensive than the alternatives. A great choice if the cost is not a worry.

Jim F: "Didn’t we have this discussion before. Just carry a good pair of jumper cables. They never need maintenance and never wear out. You probably never drive where you would need to self-rescue or die. The directions on how to use them is likely in your car’s user manual."

Mike replies: We did have the conversation before (good on you for remembering!), but the technology has changed radically since then. The jumper packs then were capacitor banks, which worked by slowly building up a charge from the depleted car battery (3–15 minutes), then delivering it back into the system in a big lump to give the car enough juice to start. For one thing, those didn't work on completely drained batteries.

This year's roundup by Project Farm on YouTube contains only one capacitor type; battery technology has improved so radically that now they all contain actual lithium batteries, and work right away.

MARILYN NANCE: "Consider a bag with a small blanket, spare mittens/gloves (they don't have to match), sweat pants and a sweatshirt that might fit anyone in your car (don't have to be pretty). And a knit hat and scarf. AAA is definitely worth it. Don't leave home without it. Your flashlight should be one that has a winder since batteries are always dead when you need them."

Mike adds: Good advice, and easy to implement. Also, don't leave the car on in a snowstorm unless you get out regularly and clear the exhaust pipe. Remember poor Anndel Taylor, only 22, who died in Rochester when she went to sleep in the car during a blizzard with her motor running.

Here's one more thing that occurred to me about AAA: the more easily you're able to afford it, the more likely you are to have a late model car that works. And the worse or older a car you have, meaning you need AAA more, the less likely you are to be able to afford AAA. But that's life!

UPDATE: Auto Emergency Preparedness! Or, O Happy Day

Great news—it was the battery, after all. I'm very relieved. When you live in the country, alone, and have only one car, it's pretty important that that car be reliable. Not to mention present on the premises.

I blathered on to one and all when it happened that it couldn't be the battery, because the battery was new—or new-ish—being purchased only a year and a half ago. But not exactly, it turns out. I bought the battery three years ago, and it was manufactured in January 2019.

Does that ever happen to any of you older folks? Things that seem recent actually aren't? I've learned to double my estimates of when something in the past happened. If I think something happened three months ago, it was probably six months. I guess that's a natural corollary of the "time flies" principle. (Time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like a banana. Bah-dum-pah. I'm a Granddad now, which means I can go 2X on the Dad humor—them's the rules.) My brother, Dr. Charlie, says life is like a roll of toilet paper—runs out faster the closer you get to the end.

Anyway, I'm overjoyed that the car is fixed and that I won't be paying a huge bill that would wound me in the wallet. Although the towing fee still stings.

I'm going to ask Steve Wheeler the Mystical Honda Whisperer if one of those jumper boxes that Dori recommended yesterday Thursday would have gotten me home on Wednesday night. [UPDATE: yes.] Maybe I should get one of those (I researched it last time the battery went kaput, but then cheaped out without buying one. Oh well.) But then you need to be able to remember to keep it charged, so maybe that's not for me. The one she recommended seems to be well reviewed. [UPDATE: See the post above this.]

So here's what I learned: Triple-A is probably worth it; a Premium Membership allows free tows up to 200 miles up to four times a year. You can also add roadside assistance and towing to your auto insurance, which I did yesterday. I didn't know about that. That seems less helpful, though, once I research it, because you're still on your own finding a towing service. The insurance just reimburses you for the bill after the fact. Also, I'm not sure about the towing distance allowed by the insurance. Could be that it's a lot shorter than 200 miles. The insurance upgrade only cost me $21 from now to June, though, so I'm not out all that much if I switch to Triple-A. I also learned that a Triple-A membership follows the person, not the car; my friend Chris B., who was with me on Wednesday, could have put the tow on her membership Thursday morning and it would have been perfectly kosher.

So anyway: roadside assistance plus towing, a jumper box for the car—anything else? What else do you need to be prepared for automotive emergencies? My cousin carries an escape hammer in her glovebox—she lives near a canal and drives alongside it often, and I guess she can envision her car plunging into it. Then there are tire inflators—one of those could be helpful even if you left it in your garage and used it there. My Acura has had battery problems all its life, but the second worst thing about it is the TPMS, or tire pressure monitoring system. It's always unhappy, and multiple fixes have not worked. I end up with the warning light constantly on and having to check the air in the tires the old-fashioned way. I lost a snow tire two four years back because I drove on it for a while when the pressure was too low (back when I was still counting on the TPMS).

Sleep well or sleep with the fishes
Also as a followup but on the good side of the ledger today, my apneas were back to normal levels last night. You don't need to hear every detail of my health issues, just like I don't need to hear every detail of yours (we all got 'em), but do be aware, if you aren't, that sleep apnea is serious and could be deadly. When I was diagnosed with heart disease, the formal diagnosis blamed sleep apnea as the cause. Reggie White, the great defensive end for the Volunteers, Eagles, and Packers, and a guy with an outsized personality who deserved to enjoy his golden years, died of it at 43. Or at least it contributed to his death. His widow founded the Reggie White Sleep Disorders Research and Education Foundation in his honor. If you snore, or are overweight, or don't feel like you get a good night's sleep that leaves you feeling rested in the morning, get tested. I'll never get used to the CPAP, but it's better than the alternatives.

This post should have been two short paragraphs. I'll shut up now. But Oh, Happy Day. I'm so relieved.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Jeff: "My dad enrolled me in AAA when I was 15. Have continued that membership every year, now at age 73; my longest continuous business relationship of any kind. Came in handy, I learned, even when I had motorcycle issues traveling through the Rockies and Sierras. And, yes, my coverage has occasionally benefited others over the years."

MikeR: "Two things: AAA Membership. Lead acid storage batteries don't last forever. Three to five years. It's part of the inherent chemistry of the things. Hot weather speeds up the self destruction. A BatteryMINDer is a good thing to have, if you don't drive long enough to keep the battery charged. I pull out my riding mower battery around this time of each year, and set it in the garage with the battery minder [trickle charger —Ed.] attached until Spring. If I don't, it's shot."