The Online Photographer

Two 'New' Introductions No. 2: iPhone 16

Later this morning (or possibly early afternoon) I'll be heading into town to the Verizon Store to pre-order the new iPhone 16 Pro Max. ("New" in scare quotes because the 16 is similar to the 15, which was similar to the 14, and it's turtles all the way down.)

I have lots of cameras—mainly due to fetishism, nostalgia, and the fact that shopping is fun. But there are really only 2 1/2 in current rotation. The two main ones are my monochrome converted Sigma FP (unofficially called an FP-m) and my iPhone, which I shoot with every day, not too seriously. The half-camera is my old Fuji X-T1 from 2014, which I do bring out from time to time, mainly because I have a pretty full set of Fuji lenses.

An iPhone 13 picture—one of my neighbor's three new goats. One of his customers said he had some goats to give away, and he said sure. I asked him what one does with goats, and he said, "look at 'em?" They love to climb things. Note the tonal merger on the horn on the right, which is a photographic mistake.

My iPhone 13 Pro still works fine, and I love it. Completely satisfied. Last time, however, I waited too long to update. My iPhone 7 went kaput and I was forced to buy a 13 right before the 14 came out. And it was too late to get any trade-in for the 7 even if it had been working. I decided then to update every three cycles. That's now. The old one will pay for a third of the cost of the new one. Maybe a quarter.

Phones—portable hand computers with built-in cameras, customizable with the use of third-party apps—are astonishing devices that almost literally could not have been imagined as recently as 40 years ago (1984, once shorthand for the distant future). In combination with the internet, they're the single most significant technological advance of my lifetime...and I was alive for the moon landing. It's interesting to compare the Apple Watch to Dick Tracy's futuristic "wrist-radio." The Apple Watch is far, far more amazing and futuristic than the cartoonist could even imagine in 1946 (well before my own time, for you young-uns out there*).

There needs to be a camera upgrade for me to update, too. Another reason to pre-order today is that the new iPhone has a "Camera Control" button, meaning, they've actually put some thought into improving the UI for photography. I'm interested to see what they've come up with and whether it improves the traditionally slow and awkward iPhone camera interface.

But I'll leave a description of the new feature to a future post, when I have the new iPhone in hand.

Mike

*It's kinda hilarious to me that I can talk about the '50s, '40s, '30s, or even the '20s in, say, YouTube comments, and some youngsters will make the assumption that I'm talking about my own youth. Hey, it's all ancient history, isn't it? Well, yeah, I suppose, but I'm not quite old enough to recall the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, or WWII firsthand. My teen years began at the beginning of the '70s; I'm a member of "Generation Jones." As representative Jones-ers, Wikipedia uses Bill Gates (b. 1955), Madonna, Michael Jackson, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Barack Obama, Princess Diana, Diego Maradona, and Tom Cruise (b. 1962). They're my age cohort.

UPDATE Friday evening: The one employee at Verizon didn't realize it was the first day for iPhone 16 pre-orders. We looked it up on the computer; he apologized. Then, at considerable length, I got bombarded with a blizzard of baffling bullshit which included an avalanche of apparently contradictory information and paper charts. Paper. Good news! I could trade in my old iPhone for $1,000 in credit. All I had to do was lock into a plan which would cost me $1,080 over and above what my current plan costs over the next three years. Meaning, I would lose more than I gained and effectively net nothing for my old iPhone and still have to pay another $200 for the phone itself and $200 on top of that for AppleCare.

In effect I had two choices. In one, they would win and I would lose. The other alternative was that I would lose and they would win. But, I had a choice of which! Yay; choice is power. However, while I could choose whatever I wanted, the employee's advice was that it was not to my benefit to try to win, but to let them win.

Failure and retreat. No decisions made, nothing done. Next move: pilgrimage to Apple Store. They might have a plan whereby they win more than Verizon wins, such that I might lose a little less.

A fox is screaming in the darkness outside. If you have never heard the mating call of a fox, it is spooky—it sounds like a human being hurt.

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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The Perils of Shopping 'On Paper'

Comments are all moderated on the last two posts as of 12:38 Eastern Time Wednesday

Some while ago I decided an exercise machine at home would be best for me, and I researched the alternatives. I always like to look for creative alternatives—following the herd is not my natural impulse—and I came around to the belief that a rowing machine might suit me. I researched the alternatives and settled on what I thought was the best choice. Came very close to buying it one night, but didn't click the fateful buy button, because I'm cheap.

A few days later, I discovered that the health club had a side room I was only vaguely aware of previously, and in the room was...the exact machine I had settled on buying. Same model, same features. Pleased by my luck, I asked the manager if she would give me a brief lesson on how to use the machine properly, which she did.

I then used it for seven minutes. I've had a bad back all my life, and it became obvious (I should say painfully obvious) after no more than 45 seconds that a rowing machine—any rowing machine—could not help but aggravate my back, short term, long term, morning, noon, and nigh-on neverendingly. The other six minutes and 15 seconds were really just to save face. The "painful" part lay slumbering in my spine, giving me an occasional zing, for the rest of the day, and I feel thankful it didn't last three weeks, because it could have. Sometimes it does. You might be tempted to say that I just needed to get used to it, but no, I don't think so; I've been living with my back my whole life, and I was in no doubt whatsoever about the obviousness of the obvious conclusion; but yes, you'll have to take my word for that.

Luke said the other day, "One particular thing about the [Canon] R3: it feels better in my hand than any other camera I've ever held." I used to emphasize all the time that it's important to actually try cameras. You have to use them, or at least hold them, look through them, and click the shutter. You can find out a lot about them that way that you just can't learn from video reviews, written reviews, spec sheets, etc. I don't mention this much any more, because the hordes of shoppers that used to descend on photography websites are all gone now, presumably off happy-snapping with their cellphones. But it's still important: You can't do all your shopping on paper.

The man in the Edwardian suit
Supposedly, somebody in my family three or four generations back used to have a saying about romantic love interests. The story that originated the saying was that a female forebear was wooed by a gentleman who seemed perfect in every particular all Winter long, down at home in Indiana, and this idealized impression lasted until he was invited to visit the Summer cottage up in the north of Michigan. Evidently he prepared for swimming by donning a one-piece Edwardian bathing suit with sleeves, like the one worn by the fellow in the middle in this old photograph, even though it was decidedly out of fashion by that time. (Please ignore the parasol; this isn't a family picture and there's nothing in our story about a parasol.)

He also put on a woman's bathing cap as though there were nothing remarkable about it, and wore it in the lake. This seemed, to my female ancestor, strikingly odd. It was a much more conformist era. With that, the rose-colored glasses of her Winter-long infatuation began to fall away from her eyes, and oddities aplenty began to magically appear, one after another, although what those might have been are lost to history. Maybe he used a knife as a fork, I don't know. She ended up throwing him over at the end of the Summer, and that was the end of his chances of diving into our gene pool.

The saying in the family became, "You've got to Winter 'em, and you've got to Summer 'em."

When I was writing camera reviews for magazines, I had a personal standard that I tried my best to follow: I had to use a camera for three months, for my real work, before I would write about it. That lasted for several years, until I realized that using so many different cameras was fracturing the unity of my output. But it was a good impulse, I think. You need to use a camera (or drive a car, or own a watch, or cut grass with your new lawnmower, or whatever) until the infatuation rubs off. Until then, you won't really know what you think of it.

However I can't always take my own advice. A while back, I owned the original (Mark I?) Panasonic G9 for a remarkably short period of time. On paper, it seemed like the perfect camera for me. So I ordered one, sight unseen. To be honest, it still seems like the perfect camera for me...on paper. And I know lots of people love that camera, so no diss. But once I opened the package and got the camera working, I knew within no more than five minutes that it wasn't for me. Why, I can't even say. But I knew it. The exact opposite happened with the Panasonic GX8! I remember looking it in a glass case at a camera show when it was still a prototype and thinking, "I'll have no interest in that." But I reviewed it, used it, and loved it, and it's still one of my favorite cameras. But for my mental FUD about the shutter-shock issue I would probably still be using it, and if there had ever been a GX8 Mark II I would have been on board for sure. Even as I write this, I want that*.

So it goes. Never do all your shopping on paper. You've got to Winter 'em, and you've got to Summer 'em. And if you can't, at least make sure you hold it, look through it, and click the shutter.

Mike

*The cameras I think are sure to be forthcoming never are. The cameras I don't need to be updated are updated again and again until they reach Mark VII status or more, and still they soldier on. The Universe is a trickster and loves to taunt me.

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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What I Ended Up Doing

Despite the hand-wringing of the past few days, I ended up buying SanDisk cards anyway.

Dan Ariely, in Predictably Irrational, a book about consumer choice, says that consumers like to follow other consumers. If a lot of people buy Canons, then a lot of people will buy Canons. But we also "follow ourselves," in effect, because we have a pretty strong tendency to do what we've done before. If you've owned several Nikons in succession, then you're likely to think of yourself as a Nikon person and "get in line behind yourself" to buy another Nikon.

In that sense I guess I'm still a SanDisk guy, even if the new SanDisk isn't quite the old SanDisk.

The card I bought is called the SanDisk 64GB Extreme PRO UHS-II SDXC. The V60 version. It seemed to push all the right buttons for me, plus it's the same old brand I usually buy. I settled on V60 as the "overkill" level for write speed for a stills photographer who doesn't shoot bursts (it should also do bursts pretty well, although you might want to go with V90 if you do a lot of that for action or sports—buffer clearing in particular should be better). V60 usually has a maximum write speed of 90–130 MB/s, more than enough for me with my particular camera. As an aside, however, check the maximum write speeds of V30 cards against those of V60 cards. The maximum write speeds could be quite close to each other; V30 and V60 refer to the mimimums. If you're not a "power user," the V30 cards could be plenty, and within any particular brand and type they're usually significantly cheaper.

Point two: it has great reviews on B&H Photo: 34 reviews with an average score of 4.91—about the highest I encountered in my shopping—with zero one-star reviews. Thirty four is just barely a large enough sample, but it's adequate.

Third, I have faith that B&H won't sell me a counterfeit, even though we've heard secondhand from a SanDisk engineer that up to 25%(!) of all SanDisk cards out there could be counterfeits.

Fourth, the price is right, which suits my cheap gene—at only $27 a pop, it gives good bang for the buck. I could probably do better if I waited for a sale, but I'd like to stop thinking about cards now.

SanDisk might be getting ripped here and there on the internet for poor customer service since Western Digital bought them out, but there's that bathtub curve to think about—most failures happen either right out of the box or at end-of-life. The period in the middle is usually pretty stable. I'm very likely to take each new card to the backyard and fill it up and download it to check that everything's working properly, because that's what I do with all new gear. That should serve as proof of non-failure at the outset (and give me an idea of actual capacity, and I'll check the number of frames till the buffer fills). Beyond that, I'll trust in the general reliability of cards, because they're mostly very reliable despite the few exceptions prominently highlighted in online reviews.

I also got one of these to replace my old off-brand card reader:

It's a Wise Advanced CFexpress Type B / UHS-II SDXC USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 card reader. Why choose that one? No reason, really. Aside from the fact that it looks clean and it appealed. And I figured any card reader I buy is going to be made in Asia anyway, no matter what name it's sold under, so why not get one from an Asian name brand? And, I tend to have good luck with stuff made in Taiwan. And I like pool players from Taiwan, such as Chou Chieh-Yu and Ko Ping-Chung. But I'm not supposed to write about pool so forget I said that.

Ingesting 175 image files of ~26 MB size, the new Wise reader needed 18 seconds. My old card reader took 2 min. 6 sec. [UPDATE: Whoops—miscalculation. I'm now one USB-C port short. I'm going to have to plug and unplug to use the new card reader. Oh well.]

They came today! The spoons are for scale.

One other nice little thing: I still had that $200 B&H gift certificate floating around, and the bill for four cards and the Wise card reader came to $200.42. Shame about that 42¢.  :-)

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:

Mike Chisholm: "Heh.... Three long and informative posts out of buying a new SD card. Good going, Mike: what is the sound of one hand wringing?  ;-)

"But, wow, you really don't believe in tempting fate, do you? You'd better touch some apotropaic wood right away!"

Mike replies: I was actually kind of retroactively embarrassed by my first post ("Where Do All the Cards and Pens Go?"). It was lazy and outdated because it was written off the top of my head. I figured my readers deserve a better effort than that.

Peter: "Thank you, Mike. A most helpful and entertaining post. These are the cards I settled on—buying a set of four for each of my cameras (Canon and Lumix). The 64 GB size is right—I've never filled a 64 GB in a day of shooting. I selected the V60, as in the Goldilocks 'buy the one in the middle' rationale. Can you answer one more question? Do I need to have a separate set for each camera? Is there a reason to use SD cards only in the camera in which they were formatted? Or could I format the SD card in one camera and use it in the others?"

Stephen S. replies to Peter: "Every camera I know of follows the Design rule for Camera File system specification from the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, so they all use the same, compatible file system, making them perfectly safe to interchange. Anyone claiming cards shouldn't be interchanged between cameras seems to say so based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt [FUD], with no proper technical reasoning behind it.

"For testing memory cards, I used H2testw from Heise.de to write to every single block of the card, and then read it back to ensure it wasn't corrupted. That will also detect fake cards mis-reporting their size! It's only for Windows, however."

Stephen Cowdery: "Great series of posts. Almost every purchase of photo gear is a balance of features/cost and you really gave me some insight into something I otherwise wouldn't think about."

Niels: "I work in the back office of a camera store which sells SanDisk among many other card brands. The front office personnel often talks about what products used to be better, are of poor quality, and give them bad customer interactions and headaches, but I don't recall SanDisk cards ever being mentioned as one of those products. When we do recovery services on SanDisk cards, it has always been due to formatting or overwrites. I have never experienced card failure with SanDisk. I sometimes wonder if the often repeated reputation of declining quality is an effect of the many counterfeits in circulation?

"Glad to see you got a good card-reader. Few people realise how much it matters to pay the premium a until you have tried it. I use and can highly recommend the ProGrade equivalent of what you have (also made in Taiwan)."

dogman (partial comment): "I've shot digital since 2007. Not a long time, admittedly. Over this time I've used SanDisk, Lexar, Delkin, Transcend and Kingston cards in various cameras. I've only had one card go haywire--a SanDisk SDHC. Later, after reading about counterfeit SanDisk cards, I checked that old dead card and, yep, it fit the description of a fake. I didn't even know SanDisk was owned by WD until reading this article."

John Krill: "My complaint with all these SD cards is the write protect switch. I’m always having to put it in its proper position. Write anything you want and erase it all thank you. I’m thinking of gluing that damn switch somehow."

Mike replies: The Delkin Black and Sony TOUGH cards do not have write protect switches. The Sony cards inspire many complaints that they are too large and do not physically fit in the card bays of cameras, so Delkin Black is your best bet.

Ken Bennett: "Despite the fact that my most recently bought camera is a Canon (R6), I still think of myself as a Nikon shooter—and I feel the siren call with every new Nikon or third-party lens for Z mount that is in the news. It is hard for the brain to give up on something that is not only useful but tactile. Not for nothing the satin finish, the curves, the 'fits like a glove,' etc."

robert e: "As others will surely have noted, several ducks have to be in a row for a card to deliver close to its spec speeds. So, a little overkill in each component is good, but too much in any one is a waste. Excess capability is not much of an investment when that capability will cost you half as much to buy by the time you actually need it. There's also something to be said for going with the most popular reputable cards, both in terms of massive user base and knowledge, and the likelihood that these are the cards that device manufacturers use for testing and optimizing their products."

Price Comparison for Top SD-Type Cards

The following is a simple price comparison between brands of SD-type cards in early May 2024. Two stars for mid-price, one star for low price, three stars for high price. These prices are for top-spec V90 cards with a lower-end capacity, all UHS-II. I tried to find cards of the closest comparable specification, but not all the specs are identical. Bear in mind that V90 is for video, and is overkill for stills-only shooters unless you do a lot of shooting on high-speed continuous settings. The prices are from B&H Photo, TOP's recommended source for authentic cards. The hope is that these prices are a typical representation of each brand, but bear in mind they might not be. Prices fluctuate as well.

The information about reviews gives some sense of the relative popularity of each brand, at least at B&H. Because the number of one-star reviews is meaningless alone, I also give them as a percentage of all the overall number. Be mindful that one-star reviews are sometimes given for delivery, packaging, or customer service issues irrelevant to the actual product, and that any negative review might be the result of operator error.

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★★ SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W (write speed in MB/s) 260, R (read speed) 300:$59.99

Max write speed notated on label: No

611 reviews, 4.86 avg. score, 13 1-star reviews (2.1%)

★ Kingston Canvas React 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 260, R 300: $49.99

Max write speed notated on label: No

74 reviews, 4.61 avg. score, 3 1-star reviews (4%)

★★★ Sony SF-G TOUGH 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 299, R 300: $93.00

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

317 reviews, 4.64 avg. score, 8 1-star reviews (2.5%)

★★ Lexar Professional 2000x 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 260, R 300: $59.99

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

230 reviews, 4.24 avg. score, 29 1-star reviews (12.1%)

★★★ Delkin Devices Black 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 250, R 300: $69.99

Max write speed notated on label: No (but a unique serial number is)

13 reviews, 4.92 avg. score, 0 1-star reviews (0%)

★ Delkin Devices POWER 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 250, R 300: $44.99

Max write speed notated on label: No

28 reviews, 4.68 avg. score, 1 1-star reviews (3.6%)

★★★ ProGrade 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 250, R 300: $69.99

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

365 reviews, 4.71 avg. score, 14 1-star reviews (3.8%)

★★★ OWC Atlas Ultra 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 250, R 300: $74.99

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

1 review, 5 stars (0% 1-star)

★★ Nextorage 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 299, R 300: $59.99

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

3 reviews, all 5 star (0% 1-star)

★★★ Angelbird 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 280, R 300:$89.00

Max write speed notated on label: No

67 reviews, 4.64 avg. score, 3 1-star reviews (4.8%)

★★★ Panasonic 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 250, R 280: $198.82 (special order)

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

4 reviews, 4.25 avg. score, 0 1-star reviews (0%)

★ PNY Elite-X PRO90 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 280, R 300: $49.95

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

14 reviews, 4.2 avg. score, 1 1-star review (7.1%)

★★★ Exascend Essential 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 260, R 300: $85.00

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

0 reviews

★★★ Exascend Catalyst 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 280, R 300: $89.00

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

0 reviews

★ Sabrent Rocket 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 250, R 280: $39.99

Max write speed notated on label: Yes

4 reviews, 5 avg. score, 0 1-star reviews (0%)

★ Transcend 700S 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 180, R 285: $41.99

Max write speed notated on label: No

32 reviews, 4.41 avg. score, 2 1-star reviews (6.3%)

★ Patriot EP 64 GB, V90, UHS-II, W 260, R 300: $37.99

Max write speed notated on label: No

2 reviews, 5 avg. score, 0 1-star reviews (0%)

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Highest number of reviews: SanDisk, 611
Lowest: Exascend, 0

Highest average review among cards with more than 10 reviews: Delkin Black, 4.92
Lowest: PNY, 4.2

Lowest percentage of 1-star reviews among cards with more than 10 reviews: SanDisk
Highest (by far): Lexar, 12.1

Lowest price: Patriot EP; runner-up: Sabrent Rocket
Highest price: Panasonic; runner-up: Sony TOUGH

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Next up: what I bought.

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:

Daniele: "So if V60 are more than enough for photography, why are all these V90? Are you moving to video?  :-)  "

Mike replies: Good question. It's because I wanted to give an apples-to-apples comparison between brands, and some of these brands, such as Delkin Devices, don't offer V60 cards.

Greg: Do people give good reviews for expensive items to justify the purchase to themselves—I have no idea, but I think it's been seen in other realms. I haven't read the reviews, but unless a card fails early what's to rate on unless on does extensive tests? Four to one price spread. Maybe you mentioned it, but what's your need for a V90 card? Don't you shoot stills? And aren't most of your readers still shooter. V60 or V30 would suffice? Is it good or bad that the max write speed is noted on the label? Honest question since I don't know how relevant it is?

Mike replies: Write speed is important because it gives an idea of how quickly the card is able to record continuous sequences without hitting its buffer and slowing way down, and it affects how fast the buffer will be cleared. It all depends on the camera's capabilities of course, but many of today's cameras are capable of faster operation than U1/V10 or U3/V30 cards can keep up with.

If you shoot like I do—at a slower, more contemplative pace (I focus manually and have the drive mode set on single frame), then V60 is certainly overkill and V30 will do. Some sources recommend using cards that match the camera's bus speed, so I opted to get V60 cards because they're UHS-II. I'm pretty sure I would have coped just fine with V30 UHS-I cards. Some of the old cards I actually use aren't even that good.

Patrick Perez: "So which is the one clear winner? ;-)  ."

Mike replies: After having looked into it, I think I'll defer to Kirk and call the Delkin Black the best card money can buy. They're probably tougher than the Sony TOUGH, seem to have a very low failure rate, are immune to shock and moisture, and Delkin only sells them though a select number of qualified dealers—and marks each card with a unique serial number—so they're well protected from counterfeiting. Their physical durability is going to prevent a significant number of failures all by itself. For the excellent specs and features offered, the prices are not excessive, and Delkin makes both V30 UHS-I and V90 UHS-II versions.

For the best bargain without sacrificing quality, my pick would be the SanDisk 32GB Extreme PRO UHS-I V30 SDHC for $11.68 per card. I have lots of experience with earlier versions of that card with almost the same spec. A real workhorse, and if you need a cheaper memory card than that you're probably in the wrong hobby.  :-)

ProGrade and Angelbird

If you want to shoot video, you already know that CFexpress Type B is the way to go. The spiritual heir of the old CF cards, CFexpress Type B has been making its way into cameras too in the last handful of years. From a performance standpoint, they obliterate the best SDXC cards. Despite this, many if not most of our cameras still use the much smaller and generally cheaper and handier "SD cards" as they're generically called. SD cards are far and away the most popular cards for cameras.

I've been delving more deeply into SD cards since two days ago, and it's a bit like digging in ground that has a lot of buried rocks. (Ever had to do that? It's difficult). Despite which, a few points:

—> Running down corporate history is like tracking genealogy in a small village, and I won't get into the weeds. Suffice to say that SanDisk was indeed acquired by Western Digital in early 2016 and might not be the safe, solid-gold go-to choice it once was for photographers, although it is still one of the main makers of SD-type cards for multi-use purposes.

—> Speaking of which, a little disambiguation:

SD = Secure Digital: up to 2 GB;
SDHC = Secure Digital High Capacity: 2–32 GB;
SDXC = Secure Digital eXtended Capacity: 32+ GB up to 2TB;
There's also SDUC, Secure Digital Ultra Capacity, for storage up to 128GB, but B&H doesn't list one and I'm not sure this standard is relevant.

"SD cards" should really be called "SD-type cards," because "SD" alone has a very specific defined performance parameter, as you can see in this table. I won't change the world, but that's what I'll try to call them herein.

Definition: an SD-type card is any card with a Secure Digital form-factor, including SD, SDHC, SDXC, and the tiny MicroSDXC cards in SD adapters.

As an aside, here's one of those little oddities of history: the SD logo was first developed for an altogether different product, namely, Toshiba's Super Density Disc, an unsuccessful DVD competitor, and that's why the "D" in all the SD logos looks like a disc!

Most "SD" cards you'd buy now are SDXC

The card type names above basically trace the format's evolution. SD, 1999 (introduced by a consortium comprised of SanDisk, Panasonic [Matsushita] and Toshiba); SDHC, 2006; SDXC, 2009. MicroSD (now MicroSDXC) first came out in 2004. Virtually all SD cards you'd buy now are SDXC. Occasionally SDHC, although those seem to be on the way out, for photography at least, although I still have one in my card wallet! Sheesh.

SDXC compared to MicroSDXC. Image courtesy of Kingston.

MicroSDXC cards can be used in adapters that look like SDXC cards, and used as you would use an SDXC card. I have literally no idea whether this is a thing that is done by photographers, whether it works, or whether it's desirable or not. (Oops, shovel hit a boulder there. Anyone out there use a MicroSDXC card with an adapter?) [UPDATE: Robert K. at B&H Photo says (source), "It is not recommended using a memory card adapter in a camera. It can slow the speed of the memory card. And that can produce glitches, especially while shooting video." Despite this, some of our readers say this is what they do.]

They also make it convenient for counterfeiters. Crack a counterfeit big-name card and you might find a MicroSDXC card inside.

I need to write a whole article on counterfeit cards and fake reviews. For now I'll just repeat what I said the other day, which is that it's best to buy your cards from a reliable and reputable vendor. I would not buy cards from a third-party seller on Amazon and I would certainly not buy a card from eBay. No telling what you'd be getting.

—> Keep in mind that the card works in conjunction with the camera. Card types are backwards- and forwards-compatible, limited by whichever one is less capable. Having a card with a newer standard is useless if your camera doesn't support it; similarly, if your camera supports a newer card type and you're using an older card type, you won't be getting the performance your camera is capable of. When in doubt, you can just buy the best card, and it will support the best your camera can do. Knowing what your camera needs, however, is important to maximizing performance while also not spending extra money for no reason. Or, rather, almost no reason: keep in mind that buying a better card than your current camera needs might future-proof your cards for when you eventually get a new camera.

It's also important to realize that if you have a camera with two card slots, and you have a card in each slot, the camera will probably limit performance to the capability of the lesser of the two cards. ByThom says: "Cameras tend to be as slow as the slowest card in them. That applies both to buffer and image review performance. That's why you don't want to put a UHS-II card in one slot and an old, pre-UHS card in the second slot of a two-slot SD camera. Even if you aren't writing to both cards simultaneously, image review performance often will be triggered to the slowest card. Note that some cameras have one 'fast' card slot and one 'slower' card slot. If you use two cards in those cameras, the camera operations are only as fast as the slower slot. ... So: if you want fastest performance use only one fast card in the faster slot."

A similar thing can happen with card readers, too. In a card reader with two SD slots, downloading one card at a time often takes not half the time it takes to download two cards simultaneously, but less than half.

—> Lexar seems to be in a good stretch. Its history is more convoluted than SanDisk's. Originally American, founded 1996, it was at first a division of Cirrus Logic, an IC manufacturer. Lexar was an early leader in USB flash drives. In 2006 it was sold to Micron Technology, and merged with Crucial, another maker of flash memory, and renamed Lexar Media. Eleven years later, in June 2017, Micron (which is a huge company; Lexar was probably on the level of a rounding error) threw in the towel. It announced that Lexar would no longer manufacture portable flash media such as SD cards, and put its Lexar subsidiary up for sale.

Although that seemed like a big deal at the time, it turned out to be a temporary interruption. Lexar was acquired by Longsys, a Chinese company based in Shenzhen, which announced in 2018 that Lexar would re-enter the flash memory market. So Lexar was back. Since then, Longsys has flexed its technological might in several ways, including introducing the first 1 TB card. (Here's a current version. This series, V60 with both write and read speeds on the label, appears to be a strong option for photographers.) Lexar's reputation, quality, and offerings, perhaps reflecting the vagaries of its history, appear to have gone up and down over the past 20 years. Right now things seem to be going well—but I discerned that with a divining rod and my ear to the ground, so don't put overmuch stock in it.

—>Speaking of "V60," I found this nice table sorting out speed ratings:

This is from the website of ProGrade, a newer card brand which I'll talk more about in a minute.

All these speed ratings refer to minimum write speeds. As with the letter designations, speed classes mirror the history and development of the cards. Each type basically supersedes the previous one. "Class 10," the 10 inside the round "C" or broken circle, is not really relevant if the card gives a "U" or UHS speed class (which is different from the I and II, which refer to the bus type); and "V" or video speed class ratings supersede that. So if the card you're buying has a V number on it, you can pretty much disregard any other indication of minimum speed.

As you no doubt already know, the speed rating given on the label of most cards in MB/s (megabytes per second) is the maximum (not minimum) read (not write) speed. As you know I'm forever tilting at the windmills of terminology, but that particular terminology is so asinine it almost makes me angry; as you probably know, MB/s (uppercase B) means megabytes per second and Mb/s (lowercase b) mean megabits per second. (Whoever came up with that bit (or maybe byte) of asininity should be docked 5,000 life points.) The write speed specified for a card means the maximum possible write speed, not a guarantee of what the actual write speed will be.

Some of the more advanced and enlightened card makers are now giving both write (W) and read (R) speeds on the labels of cards. Curiously, ProGrade labels its V90 cards this way but not its V60 ones.

With this card, for example, you're effectively given the range of write speeds right on the label: a guaranteed minimum of 90 MB/s (that V90), and a potential maximum of 250 MB/s. Nice.

—> Another especial area of confusion comes with the UHS speed class versus the UHS bus type. They're not the same. The U with either a 1 or a 3 inside it (see it just to the right of the "v90" on the card above) is a speed-class rating (10 and 30 MB/s respectively) for a camera that uses a UHS bus. The Roman numerals "I" (one) and "II" (two) refer to the bus type, UHS-I or UHS-II, and this is something you should not ignore, because your camera will either be compatible with UHS-II or it won't be and you probably want to get the card that suits (B&H recommends doing so strictly). As you probably know, UHS-I cards have one row of metal pins on the back, and cards with the UHS-II bus have two rows of pins.

UHS stands for "ultra high speed," by the way. And, as is the case with the SDUC card designation noted above, UHS-III has apparently been announced but appears not to exist yet, unless I'm missing something.

—> As I noted on Wednesday, The basic problem of SD cards is that most of them work and most of them serve. And yet there's no one make and model that never has failures and has 100% good reviews. Regarding that, and just in passing, I'll mention that a meme that works for fake reviews is "...and there's one clear winner!" or words to that effect. So every time you see some variant of that sentiment in the title or first paragraph of a purported "review," be suspicious. Human nature makes us want one clear winner. If some antisocial miscreant out there is constructing a clickbait "Best SD Cards" site, that would be one of the tricks he might use.

The sad fact is that there's not one clear winner. And now that the WD acquisition has cast some shade on my old go-to, SanDisk, well, even after all the reading and researching (and desultory websurfing) I've done over the past three days, I still don't know what to buy. And yet, whatever I do buy will probably work and will probably be good enough. Unless of course I just get unlucky.

But now on to the new kids on the block.

—> ProGrade Digital is a private company started in California in 2018 by engineers, marketers and businessmen who used to work for the old Lexar*; some have career experience at SanDisk as well. I've actually written about them before and yet somehow forgot all about them until I started researching cards again on Thursday morning. ProGrade traffics only in higher-level cards, and sells matching card readers. It has an excellent website from which the table above comes. ProGrade also sells recovery, clean formatting, and ingestion software, and has charts on its website for specific camera-to-card recommendations (unfortunately, my camera isn't included... ::sad face emoji::). ProGrade also marks its cards with a symbol meaning the card is compatible with its Refresh Pro software—you can see that in the card image above in the lower right—and some of the cards are marked with both W and R speeds, as I mentioned above. I believe ProGrade cards are manufactured in Taiwan. It's tempting to go with ProGrade just because of the software it offers, among all the other reasons.

Another small, newer bespoke company is Angelbird, from Austria. Its website is also interesting and fun to explore, but unfortunately the "About" page is marketing gobbledegook ("we want to spread our wings and defy the standard industry experience," "we live for adventure," etc.) with little substantive information. But I believe it was founded somewhere within a few years of 2010 and makes its own products in-house, in Austria. There's a factory tour video here that reveals a lot. Angelbird also makes its own card readers too, and although it does not sell software, it does offer a recovery service. And it has a page that matches specific cameras to recommended cards as well. I almost pulled the trigger on a couple of these Angelbird cards last night, but the matching card reader is out of stock.

There's a sharp distinction between anonymous fly-by-night commodity card sellers who are just trying to scrounge a buck, and small bespoke companies who are trying to do everything right and are making solid good-faith efforts to serve discerning buyers. When I first encountered the name "Angelbird" I immediately thought of the former. But they're the latter. 

It's worth mentioning out loud that these committed little companies are tending to sell only higher-level, higher-capacity SD-type cards. You can't blame them; they need to make a profit, and they can't beat the enormous multinationals at quick and dirty. ProGrade's lowest-level card is a 128 GB V60 UHS-II card with a maximum write speed of 130 MB/s, for $45 each if you buy a 2-pack; Angelbird's lowest-level card is a 64 GB V30 UHS-I card in its only UHS-I series, maximum write speed 100 MB/s, and that costs $12.99 (and is probably all I myself need, if I'm honest). But apart from that series, all its other cards are UHS-II.

—> Another lesser-known seller, Wise Advanced Co. Ltd. of Taiwan, also has a compatibility chart, and also sells a cool high-performance card reader, which seem to be two indications of a good company to do business with. My Google-fu fails me when it comes to Wise; I have been able to find out almost nothing about them. [UPDATE: They seem to have a pretty strong presence on Instagram.] After I post this tonight I'll probably go read whatever reviews I can find for them at B&H and Amazon. Well, after I check the Derby results. [UPDATE: There were no Wise reviews at B&H or Amazon, and the Derby was thrilling, with a three-way photo finish.]

Here are the charts:

ProGrade Camera Compatibility Chart

Angelbird Technologies Camera Compatibility Chart

Wise Advanced Co. Camera Compatibility Chart

Compatibility advice might also come from your camera's manufacturer. Here, for instance, is the compatibility page for Fuji cameras. Sigma (I shoot with a Sigma fp, converted to monochrome by Daniel Morrison of Monochromeimaging.com) has a page of recommendations of various media, which I perused for commonalities; basically it recommends only V90 cards with the UHS-II bus. But of course there's a wrinkle there, because the Sigma fp is made as a video-centric camera and I use it exclusively for stills. So does that mean I'll see any performance increase if I use a V90 card for stills? I admit ignorance.

I must say I like this emerging custom, however. I mean the compatibility charts and the focus on...well, us. In the past three days I've found that SD-type card choice is pretty simple on the surface, but more and more opaque and mystifying the deeper you try to delve into it. Will the camera compatibility chart become the signal that a company is worth our attention? Could happen. I particularly like the way ProGrade splits its charts into Camera (i.e., stills), action-cam, and video sections. That makes a lot of sense. I also appreciate that Angelbird differentiates between media that is merely compatible and media that it recommends for any given camera (they are constantly making actual in-camera tests, according to the video linked above). I like that. I want my media recommended, please!  :-)

The ideal SD-type card compatibility chart would specify the usage, at minimum stills versus video; would differentiate between "compatible" (i.e., works) and "recommended"; and would be backed by actual in-house, in-camera tests like Angelbird performs. 

It's nice that smaller companies such as ProGrade and Angelbird are cropping up that appear to be specifically catering to photographers and videographers who use higher-end digital DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I don't know how good that will be for them, but it's good for us.

ProGrade, Angelbird and Wise are all available from B&H Photo, which I trust as a vendor. I've linked to vaguely middle-of-the-range options, and you can explore from there.

Mike

A big thanks to all my Patreon supporters, new and old, who help keep the lights on.

*In Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Nextorage was similarly founded by a number of ex-Sony engineers and staff with long-term experience in flash memory products. Like Wise Advanced, Nextorage appears to serve the Asian market and is little-known here.

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:

Ken Bennett: "I've been using ProGrade since they came out, both SD and CF Express, and they've performed very well. The card readers are excellent. Not cheap, but nothing is in this business.  :-) "

Kye Wood: "Timely question you asked there. Yes. As of last month, I've been using a Samsung EVO MicroSD card (512 GB) in the SD adapter that they come packaged with. It's inside an OM System TG-7. It's brutally fast and I can't fault it. Given how much cheaper the MicroSD cards are than the same sized SD card, it seems like an idea I'll employ in more cameras."

robert e: "Have you looked into Kingston Technology? I used to think that they were a value-added assembler, but turns out they're a privately held US-based chip maker founded in 1987. Impressive Wikipedia history. Anyway, they're never the cheapest choice, but never the priciest either. Ubiquitous, with an excellent reputation (as far as I can tell). My choice when I can spend a few bucks more for peace of mind, especially since SanDisk started slipping."

Peter Williams: "I've been using the Samsung EVO series microSD cards in adapters for years in my Fuji X-E3 and Kingston card reader. Never had any issues and they are better value and more readily available than regular SD cards."

Greg: "I recently got an OM-1. Based on discussions on DPReview and elsewhere I determined that for stills, V60 was all that is useful. Since V90 cost a lot more, it was worth knowing. And the only limitation on a V30 is probably the speed and number of burst shots. At at guess, that doesn't matter to you. For my camera, V90 will provide benefits for video. I haven't bought a card yet—still using existing V30, so your post will be helpful. I second the comment on MicroSD being too small."

Stephen S.: "Robert K. at B&H Photo is incorrect. You can easily find dozens of photos online of MicroSD to SD-type adapters that have been cracked open, and they very clearly just match the pins from one format up to the other. There is no circuitry or intelligence of any kind, so there is no way the adapter could slow the MicroSD card down compared to using it on its own. Sure, some MicroSD-type cards may simply be slower than some SD-type cards, but an adapter won't slow them down."

"'I would not buy cards from a third-party seller on Amazon' is good advice, but better is to not buy from Amazon at all. Even cards 'shipped and sold by Amazon' can be counterfeit cards mixed into their own inventory by nefarious third parties, thanks to the joys of 'co-mingled inventory.' If you're not familiar with that practice, it's worth Googling."

Bob G.: "Thanks for the research and reviews, Mike. Always worth the effort to try to clarify, even if it’s a work in progress. Every time I try to do a deep dive into these memory issues, it becomes too much to ingest, and I just go with the manufacturer’s recommendations, which get dated fast. Overall, I’ve shied away from the micro SD's in still cameras, and just use them for the GoPros or car cams, etc. Their small size seems to beg issues to create more problems, handling, heat, dirt, etc."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Don't look now, but this whole topic might be becoming quaint. Right now I have two cameras that have large, lightning-fast internal SSDs for storage. My Leica M11P has a 256 GB internal SSD and my Hasselblad X2D 100c has a 1 TB SSD. The general consensus seems to be that many other upper- and mid-range cameras will soon follow suit. It's likely that most cameras will continue to offer removable storage options for some years. But with most top cameras now emphasizing connectivity and rapid communications for image files, and with many brands beginning to offer phone app utilities (i.e. marketing-driven apps), I don't see removable media on an incline for digital photography."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "This may have been mentioned somewhere in the comments but I did not see it in my quick pass. I am a bit of an intensive user of these SD cards. For example, my image count from April (last month) was 27,842. I've used various brands—typically Sandisk and Lexar. For SD cards, this started back with maybe 16 GB cards and I now have four 128 GB in my main rotation with a couple of older 128 GB sitting in the bag for backup.

"But the weak-point of SD cards is the very fragile plastic 'guides' that run along the bottom of the card between the gold/copper contacts. If you damage these flimsy little pieces, the card becomes unmountable, which is a huge issue. For that reason I have moved to only using Sony Tough cards as they do not have these pieces of plastic. The Tough cards feel different and sound different—feel solid and sound more ceramic? They seem more expensive, but they do not have this weakness. Has anyone else considered this factor?"

Ed. note: If you want to hear what John means by "feel different and sound different—feel solid and sound more ceramic," check out the beginning of this short promo video by Delkin for the Delkin Black cards. Although it might be computer generated, it perhaps represents what John means.

KeithB: "As an 'Illuminary' on the Canon Community board, our standard advice has been that adapted micro cards can cause issues with Canon cameras. Based on anecdotes, there have been a lot of folks who have card trouble with micro cards, switch them for full size cards, and no longer have trouble. So for Canons, at least, stick with full size."

Where Do All the Cards and Pens Go?

[Ed. note: This article was rather slovenly, as I wrote it more or less off the top of my head. It contains some outdated information, and doesn't reflect the current state of affairs very well. I'll leave it up as background, and so as not to orphan your comments, but the newer post "ProGrade and Angelbird" is a better attempt.]

Do you know the English young adult novels about the Borrowers? It's a charming series of books for tweens and young teens about a race of miniature people who live in the unseen spaces in houses and account for all the little things that mysteriously go missing. Written by Mary Norton, who was my grandmother's contemporary, the original title has been around for longer than I've been alive.

Well, around here the only things the Borrowers seem to snitch are pens and memory cards. I continually load pens into the house and the house absorbs them. It gradually becomes more and more frustrating trying to find one, until I give in and buy another box. It really is a mystery how they all evaporate.

Same for SD cards. In my recent office relocation I was only able to lay my hands on six of them, which is remarkable considering how many there should be. The six I rescued are a motley of different types and sizes, although most of them are by SanDisk because that's the brand I usually buy. I recognize some of them as remnants of past "buys." Some of them are quite old. You can find lots of "repeated opinion" out there about the lifespan of cards—most places say they'll last ten years, which sounds to me like a number that came out of a monkey's butt. I'm not aware of any hard real data except for data on write-read cycles, which are unlikely to ever be exceeded, by me anyway. And I'm not sure how useful hard data on longevity would be in any case, because in my experience digital storage can either last a long time and be very dependable or it can conk out after a short time and take valuable data out with it. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. The two hard drives that failed the soonest for me were supposedly the most dependable drives from the most reliable vendor. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever had a memory card fail, and that goes back to Smart Media cards and Sony Memory Sticks.

Of course, it could be that the Borrowers get them before they have a chance to wear out on me. (The Borrowers must have a reseller business on eBay or something.)

By the way, I buy SanDisk cards because Eli Harari, Sanjay Mehrotra, and Jack Yuan revolutionized flash memory in 1988 when the company was called SunDisk. Just before the company went public in '95, they changed the name to SanDisk to avoid confusion with (and probably a bitter legal tussle with) Sun Microsystems. SanDisk is the OG. [UPDATE: But see Stephen S.'s Featured Comment, below. —Ed.]

At least I still use SD cards exclusively, so I don't have to learn all about the XQD/CFExpress tangle, although I'd do so if I needed to of course. XQD has been around for a dozen years now, can you believe that? Time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like bananas. Speaking of Dad jokes, here's a nice one:

What has four letters, sometimes has nine, and never has five

See if you can figure that one out. Took me a while, I have to admit. Anyway, I hope to get a new computer this year (mine is six years old, which I guess is my current refresh cycle—although I'm going to wait for the Apple M3 Mac Minis to either appear or not appear this coming Summer, When I do I'll probably get a Satechi hub for it too. There are some things I just want, and a front-facing SD card slot is just one of those things. You know those things that shouldn't matter and yet do?

My use-case makes optimizing card selection complicated, but also probably means that my choice is non-critical. I'm a light shooter and download my files promptly, so I don't need a lot of capacity on any given card. I don't need it to work well with video since I don't shoot video. And although my camera supports UHS-II it's supposedly not any faster with it except when ingesting to the computer (I think that's right anyway)—and I almost can't imagine a case where I might need the card to upload  faster than a UHS-I card already does. So my buying-decision progression goes pretty smoothly: SanDisk because of "following myself," which is what Dan Ariely calls consumer loyalty (that is, I buy a Honda rather than a Toyota because I've bought Hondas in the past—I follow my own lead); U3 because that's enough write speed; UHS I instead of II because they're $11.70 per card instead of $40 per card and I'm cheap; and four of them because the little card holder that I carry in my fp bag has three compartments (one card in the camera, three spares). Then I just need to use a permanent marker to write the year on the cards so future me can identify when I bought them.

The six cards I have are limping along pretty good, but just looking at them together makes me realize I should sweep away the old and bring in the new. One is a UHS-II card I got when they first came out c. 2014; one is from a c. 2009 buy and one of the contacts keeps bending, which means I'm kinda playing with fire by continuing to use it; one is an off brand; one is a physically worn 128GB card that showed up through some unknown avenue or other—I didn't buy it; it probably came in a camera I rented or was loaned—meaning I have no idea how old it is or how many write-read cycles are on it; and so forth. One more little thing to remember is that a TOP reader was told by a SanDisk engineer that a third of all the SanDisk cards out there are counterfeits. B&H Photo sells nothing but authentic manufacturer-manufactured cards. I buy my cards from B&H and that's that. So my choice is the 32 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro U3 UHS-I from B&H Photo. YMMLWV! ("Your mileage likely will vary.")

I've said this before, but I should point out that a 32GB card for $11.69 is 36 and a half cents per gigabyte, and the first 1-GB CF card I bought cost $150.00 used. $150 to 36¢ is the arc I wish more things I have to buy would follow!

Well, actually I guess I'll buy five. They come in packs of five. That's three or four for me, and one or two for the Borrowers.  :-)

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:

AN: "I think the Borrowers have been depositing your lost memory cards on my desk at work. For the last few weeks, old memory cards that do not belong to me have appeared at irregular intervals, for unknown reasons. My co-workers claim no knowledge of the source. A few interesting ones have popped up: a 4GB Seagate microdrive, a 2MB Casio CompactFlash card, and one of those 'Shoot & Store' series cards (from when SanDisk was trying to market SD cards as a single-use thing that you would save forever like a negative). No sign of your pens, though."

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Along with my very low serial number Nikon D1 [introduced 1999 —Ed.], I purchased two 64MB cards for $349 each. A year or two later, after a failure of the incredibly fragile 1GB IBM Microdrive, I sucked it up and bought a 1GB CFII solid state for the whopping price of $1,199. That's a 1GB card! Probably 2002–2003. And in terms of speed, maybe 2x—for whatever that is worth."

Ed. note: These next two comments came in one right after the other:

MikeR: "Ya know how paper clips seem to disappear? They migrate to your closet, the paper clip larvae taking on the adult form of coat hangers."

hugh crawford: "You may want to read 'Or All The Seas With Oysters.'"

Stephen S.: "If your newest card is from 2014, that means you've never owned a SanDisk card made after they were bought by Western Digital. Things have gone downhill, everything from memory cards thicker than the standard that won't fit in some devices, to portable SSDs that lose all of their data and Western Digital spending months lying about the existence of the fault while clearing out existing stock at steep discounts, before finally admitting there was indeed a known problem. It has been sad to see the brand's reputation plummet under new ownership."

David Dyer-Bennet: "UHS II allows less compression when shooting 4k video in my camera (or you can just get uncompressed video with no overlay out the HDMI port and use an external recorder and real hard drives; you'd have to do that if you were doing anything serious). So yeah, important largely for video."

Luke: "At Imaging-Resource, we had a lot of cards from a lot of sources that were reformatted and used in hundreds of cameras. I think I threw out one bad one in seven years.

"And, I agree with Mr. Wood: get A good pen you like."

Graeme Scott: "I still use the Canon 20D I bought in 2005 as a camera for quick reference shots (8 MP is plenty for this ). The two Jessops-branded Compact Flash cards I got with it are still working fine.

"I don't lose pens, I just use them so infrequently that I find they've dried out when I try to write a greetings card. Pencils are definitely the way to go."

Mike replies: CF cards were the best. Robust, not too small, really held up. I wish they were still the standard.

And, have you ever read The Pencil by Henry Petroski? Amazing book.

Roger Bradbury: "It's socks and pens I lose in the house, but out in the shed it's the special bolts I lose; the ones I can't just replace with an ordinary one. They drop to the floor while I'm working on something and I search for them immediately. I've cleared out every corner of the shed, but none have reappeared. I've bought replacements, the piece of magic that usually guarantees the old one suddenly materialises in clear view on the workbench. Nothing works. My conclusion? It's the scrap metal mice."

Tom Burke: "Pens: since I started storing my Bic pens in just one place, I have actually had the experience of exhausting a ball-point pen! Never happened to me before in my life. And when it happened, I knew where I had a replacement.

"SD cards: Some years ago I read that cards that were continually removed from the camera, inserted into a reader, and then replaced into the camera were more likely to fail than those that just stayed in the camera. So I stopped using SD card slots/readers and instead connect the camera to the computer (via a USB-C cable in my latest camera) and use Canon's EOS Utility to read the files and transfer them to the computer. I'll generally wait until the card is more than half-full before formatting it, too—the EOS Utility remembers which files it has already transferred to the computer and on a future occasion gives me the option to transfer 'new files.' I never delete files on the card in-camera (easier to do it later on the computer) and I always format the card in the camera. No card failures since adopting these practices! —But I have no evidence that they have any actual effect on card longevity/resilience. They make me happy, however."

Bill Tyler: "When I first started using computers, memory cost about $1 per byte. At that rate, your 32 GB card would be...."

Open Mike II: It Only Makes Sense

["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP,
in which Yr. Hmbl Ed. betimes pouts, oft
proclaims, and ever opines.]

Richard Skoonberg commented, on the "Nikon-RED" post: "I have always had a passion for photography, however, I spent approximately 10 years working as a professional video producer. I made television commercials, promotional videos, and a TV pilot. Unlike photography, video production is more closely related to filmmaking and involves different skills. It is a form of visual storytelling that requires more than just a camera. To produce an engaging video, you must have a well-written script, talented actors, proper lighting and audio equipment, a crew, and access to editing software. You also need money. Using a DSLR as a substitute for a professional video camera is kind of silly. All the extras you need [are] already built into video cameras, so it never made sense to me."

Making sense? There are lots of things we would do if we were sensible. We'd put an age limit on being president (make it so that any candidate has to be in their 40s or 50s on election day; that would do the trick). There would be no McDonalds. There would never have been "infotainment" screens in motor vehicles—I don't know about you, but I've found that I drive better when I pay attention to the road and the actions of other drivers. We'd outlaw tackle football, at least for children. Protect birds. We'd get rid of QWERTY and the legacy horizontal stagger on keyboards. (Mike! Do not go there! Some subjects are just too touchy!)

And we wouldn't put video cameras in all still cameras. Maybe only half of them. Okay, okay, 70%. Doesn't still photography deserve 30% of the market for loyalty after 185 years of faithful service? Stop making all of our tools double as some other tool. 

(I should start an militant movement in favor of still cameras. Placard on stick: HYBRID CAMERAS ARE SPORKS)

There are lots of things we would do if we were sensible.  :-)

Mike, admittedly out of step with the culture...

Ed. note: This post was re-edited late Sunday night. Too late Sunday night.

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:

Ken Sky: "Primes are usually better than zooms (for IQ). And certainly single use photography equipment tends to outperform multiple use equipment except for convenience. However, there seems to be a renaissance for vintage style cameras. Old-timers like me never use the video functions in modern cameras. But, we represent a small segment of the market. And no, I will not return to vinyl but you will take my CDs out of my cold dead hands."

Rick in CO: "The simplicity of a Leica M10. Backed up by an iPhone."

Mike replies: Now there's a really elegant little outfit! Retro in the best way, and yet no one could accuse you of not being up to the moment.

Kye Wood: "Knowing the things you removed from the original post, now...I honestly find it quite unsettling that you felt you needed to remove them. I figure this comment won't make the cut. Just wanted you to know that editing yourself is part of how we got to 'here' in the world."

Mike replies: Yes, it's a dilemma, one I have pondered many times. I'm aware that when I self-edit that I'm being "a good German." (Wikipedia says, "Good Germans is an ironic term...referring to German citizens during and after World War II who claimed not to have supported the Nazi regime, but remained silent and did not resist in a meaningful way.") I know I'm not contributing to any solutions. But it's a photography and general interest blog. I wrote a political blog before I started this one, and it achieved 20,000 page views in a year. This blog averaged 20,000 page views a day in its peak years of 2011–18.

I probably do my readership a disservice by proactively editing out progressive ideas just because someone might object. Even if they're far to the right of me, the great majority of TOP readers are plenty intelligent and secure enough to read divergent viewpoints without feeling threatened or responding negatively. I'm that way too—when Trump became the nominee ahead of the 2016 election, my response was to read a biography of him. But there's always that odd-man-out. One guy threatened to leave if I ever mentioned global warming or climate change again. (Guess he just left.) I also had a TOP reader threaten to withdraw his Patreon support and it turned out he wasn't even a Patreon supporter! That takes a bit of cheek.

But in the end, I don't want to make people uncomfortable, and discussions of hot-button topics often do that.

ASW: "I read the original post last night and didn't have any problems or disagreements with the points you have now edited into oblivion. But, I also recognize that you have to walk a tightrope to not make this or that group of folks upset. Knowing that you have a child and now a grandchild, I am glad that you think about these sorts of big-picture issues. Much better than the many folks who can't see past the end of their own nose when it comes to the future they're creating and supporting for their descendants."

Mr Andrew Johnston: "Sorry Mike, you're wrong on this one. The problem with many hybrid tools (spork is a prime example) is that they do neither or no thing well. That's not the case here. Cameras in this class do at least one of the two things well, in many cases both. Something like the Panasonic G9II or S5II is a professionally capable stills camera, on which you can either use the video or largely ignore it (as I do), or use the video and ignore the stills capability (as I have seen done). However when you need the other capability, it's there, just where you need it. And just to annoy everyone, I drive a convertible and use the air-conditioning!"

Mike replies: But as with some of my other enthusiasms, I'm not advocating that there be no hybrid stills-video cameras, just that some cameras not be. Same thing with B&W-only cameras—a small selection (which we now have) is enough; I don't insist that color be banished altogether. Same thing with simple, or rather just-complex-enough cameras (which we do not have, unless you count Leica). Same thing with a TLR-style digital (viewing screen on top with a fold-out hood) which we do not have. Same thing with cameras designed to make files exclusively for use on screens. We also do not have those, at least not in the way I envision them.

And I sometimes drove the Miata in borderline Winter weather with the top down and the heat on!

Jim Arthur: "Infotainment Screens: According to my 2023 CR car issue, the In-Car electronics are the least reliable part of a new car. On page 85 they summarize reliability across 17 categories (trouble spots) based on 300,000 survey responses, and the entertainment/navigation/communication systems have at least twice the problems of other categories. While those infotainment screens can be handy (tempting) for their mapping/communication abilities, they are also data harvesting gold mines for automakers. Mozilla recently published a report named Privacy Not Included that begins…'It's Official: Cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy.' Because your phone can be connected to the car, all sorts of information (texts, call logs, health app info, genetic info, etc.) can be collected for resale and you can’t manage (opt out) this data. Soon all cars will come equipped with video cameras that watch the driver at all times as part of the active driver assistance system. Lord knows how they will monetize this new video data. Apparently they already monitor the driver, passengers and nearby pedestrians in one way or another. The report mentions that the Nissan and Kia privacy policies state they can collect data on your sexual activity and sex life…whatever that means. Note that there was also a recent Washington State class action suit against the automakers for data collection."

Honesty. Isn't It Refreshing?

Forum review of [X] camera:

Title: MY ENDGAME CAMERA!! By George*

Review begins: "This is it!! This is the camera I have always wanted and it will be the last camera I will ever buy!!"

Review might have continued, but doesn't: ...Because I just got it after weeks/months of focused and intense gear longing/pining/desire and I just unboxed it and it's brand new and I'm still enthusiastic about it. I've been working hard for days/ weeks now talking myself into it in order to justify the mostly unnecessary expense!! I.e., still on the pink cloud of NTS (new toy syndrome). I've got the latest shiniest bauble and few other people have it and everyone envies me. Besides, my wife is frustrated and borderline annoyed with me for slinging so much ready dosh into the crapper and I kinda need to broadcast my happiness so she'll think "at least he's happy" and back down.

Actual but unspoken conclusion: In three years I'll be tired of it and bored anew, and at that time there will be new shiny new toys enticing me across the far-flung domains of internet camerababble. Ardent influencers will be joyously proclaiming some new product's virtues just as they are my new toy's virtues today, slighting if not overlooking altogether its inevitable weaknesses because they got blessed by the manufacturer with a pre-release sample and they know which side of their bread the butter's on. So suddenly I'll start being hyperaware of the weaknesses of my by-then-old last-gen camera that I will claim only emerged after months or years of use when, actually, said weaknesses were listed right there in early non-ambassador reviews. And I shall duly begin talking myself into needing that as-yet unspecified newer camera at that time, as the cycle repeats.

Isn't honesty refreshing?

Mission
Spoilsport Ed.'s fingerwagging admonition: Work is what cures GAS. Nota bene. Print this page and clip this out and tape it to your monitor (Bruce Bordner cautions: but not on your monitor at work, or people will walk past very fast!):

 

Work cures GAS

 

I got this from the late Mark L. Power, one of my teachers and a wise man. It was late one night and we were working in the darkroom at the old Corcoran School of Art, since dismantled and dispersed; I might have been helping him set the colorpack for some of his pictures while he was printing in the school's color darkroom (he was red-green colorblind, and mostly worked in B&W but occasionally printed color). There had to be some reason he was working at school; his B&W darkroom was back at his Virginia farm. I mentioned that certain students seemed to be complaining a lot. He told me he had noticed over the years that when students get restless and bored and start to complain, it's because they're not working. They don't have a project. He said that as soon as they get a project and it takes off and they're energized by it and excited by pictures, the complaints come to a screeching halt. They only focus their attention on the shortcomings of their tools when they're not using them enough.

So if someone you know is ever feeling bored with his or her camera, you know what their real mission should be. The solution is work, not new gear.

Mike

*George, as you might remember, is a made-up person. I try never to ridicule real persons. The internet has a long memory, and nobody needs negative energy.

P.S. Johnston's Corollary: You should only take people seriously when they declare a camera to be their "endgame" camera and the last one they'll ever buy if two conditions pertain: 1.) it's already been superseded by a newer iteration, and 2.) they've already had it for long enough for all the NTS to wear off.

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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J. Paul Thomas: "Many years ago I worked for a subsidiary of a major sewing machine company. This enabled me to purchase a new machine at a pretty good discount. My wife loved to sew, so this sounded like a good deal. An executive of the parent company advised me to always buy the top-of-the-line model of the previous generation. His reasoning was that all of the bugs had been worked out, and it would still probably do everything my wife needed. He was 100% correct. Over the years I have applied this advice many times to many purchases and have never come up wanting."

What Would You Do With $200?

A rather strange and odd fact. I have a $200 gift certificate that I have no idea what to do with.

Embarrassing to admit. But I have this longtime policy that I got from the photo-writer David Vestal (1924–2013), an early influence and mentor, later enlisted as a columnist  for the magazine I edited. His column was called "Vestal at Large." David said once that he didn't sign non-disclosure agreements because "I'm in the disclosure business." The policy I developed after I started writing about photography in 1988 was, well, to disclose—"man up," spill the beans—that is, be honest, even when it hurts, because then readers have a sound basis for judgment and can decide for themselves.

Quite a number of early complaints went something like this:

They: "You only downgraded the X camera because you had a dispute with X."
Me: Yeah, but how do you know I had a dispute with X? Because I told you.

They: "You weren't even much good as a professional photographer so your opinion is worthless."
Me: Yeah, but how do you know I wasn't much good as a professional photographer? Because I told you.

They: "You just got that information from X."
Me: Yeah, but how do you know I got that information from X? Because I told you.

Etc.

I'm sure I've fallen down in the practice of this principle over the years. Making ourselves look good is human nature, and I can't be immune. But that was the principle from the start of my reviewing: try to be honest, and then people will know where you're coming from, and they can take that into account when they draw their own conclusions. Do your best not to fool anybody, in other words. Admit the awkward or embarrassing facts along with the ones that make you look good.

Calendars
Actually two awkward little factoids have come up recently that I don't want to admit. One is that for the first time in more than a dozen years, nobody sent me a calendar this year! In the heyday (oh, the heyday) I used to get a pile of calendars every New Year. For the past two years I've ticked off my daily eyedrops using calendars gifted by Gordon Haddow, whose work was nice to visit every day. (Thanks Gordon.) Charlie Cramer's calendars were always a pleasure. This year I had to go out and buy my own calendar at the office supply store. I'm reluctant to admit this because I suppose it is a sign of TOP's shrinking readership, the decline of the blog form, the curdling of the camera market, the decay of the World, aging, entropy, and the brooding spectre of perdition! I exaggerate. But...oh well. Disclose.

The other fact is more weird. I got a $200 B&H Photo Gift Certificate over the holidays, which I usually use right away because otherwise I forget about it, and...I cannot think of a single thing to apply it to.

I started pining for camera gear in 1980 when I caught the photography bug, and once I decided to buy a Contax it took me months to save up for it. I bought the lens first and kept it by my bedside (a virtual cult object, and the time I discovered that you can use a 50mm lens as a loupe) while I saved up for the 159Q. I obsessed mightily over that Planar lens and mid-level body. And then it became my constant companion in photography school, which is still the most concentrated episode of every-day shooting I've ever enjoyed, even though I was spinning my wheels madly and staring hard at my own navel and didn't really know what I was about. Over the ensuing decades there was always something to want. Darkroom gear, lenses, cameras. And in the background there was always paper, film, and chemicals to soak up spare money. Now, I have too much camera gear; in fact, I have to sell a bunch of it. I have enough cards. Don't need a strap, don't need a bag, don't need another lens. My tripod will see me out, doubtless. I'm set. The only thing I want right now is a used Apple Watch for its built-in heart-rate monitor, and B&H doesn't sell many Apple Watches; the few they have cost a lot more than $200. I don't know which one to buy anyway.

I literally can't think of a thing to do with that gift certificate. I've looked at SSDs, a new set of cards, software, filters, monolights, instructional books (Gordon's book is still evergreen, but I already have it). Nope, nope, nope. After 35 years of always wanting something photo-related, it's come to this? Feels weird.

Anyway: what would you do if you had $200 to spend at B&H?

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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Doug Anderson: "$200 is kind of an awkward amount isn't it? Not enough for a major piece of equipment, but too much to fritter away on just little bits and bobs. I'd probably change my mind tomorrow but if I had to spend it today I would order a 100' roll of Tri-X ($160) to put in the freezer (it's not going to get any cheaper) and put the remainder toward the annual replacement of the batteries in all of my emergency lights."

calvin amari: "Speaking of your policy to always exeleutherostomize, suggesting that one of your principal sponsors doesn't sell anything you want is unlikely to be recommended in the small business handbook (though I trust that, if they sent you a $2K gift card, you'd not be so stymied.) Check out the wonders of B&H's Photographer T-Shirts, Hats and Collectibles section. You can get a Lego model of the B&H store, full sized crystal or wood models of cameras, and a whole wardrobe of t-shirts."

Mike replies: You sent me straight to the Dictionary! Thank goodness I have a good one.  ;-)

David Dyer-Bennet: "Partly—this is the progression of inflation—$200 just isn't significant in photography any more. My 35mm Summicron lens cost me $240 new in a camera store—but that was in 1975 I believe."

Gizmo Hucksters

...The term "gizmo huckster" comes compliments of "Cocobolo Cowboy," a participant on pool forums who is not otherwise known to me. Credit where credit is due.

A Gizmo Huckster is somebody who sells a product that really isn't better than the average or the standard, by imbuing it with some sort of specialness, or magical thinking, and heaping upon it fancy verbiage, or all three of those, coupled with stylish appearances and—most importantly—brazenly high price. The purpose of that effort is to create FUD in the mind of poor Mr. or Ms. Consumer.... Oops! Should I be using something better? Is my product good enough? Am I being held back by my suddenly "inferior" gizmo with which I was previously well satisfied in every way?

"Veblen goods" are goods that sell better when they're higher priced rather than lower—the opposite of high value. Once you're in the land of Veblen goods, status and prestige become very powerful agents of FUD ("fear, uncertainty, and doubt"). FUD is what plants the seed of anxiety in your mind that your good is not good enough, or says something about you that is better left unsaid. Consider, for example, recent news articles that tell us how the world's billionaires have recently been shamed for only having 100- and 150- foot yachts, such that they are all exchanging these sore-thumb signifiers of poverty for 200- and 300-foot yachts of the type that any self-respecting rich fellow really ought to have*. (Take a look at the yacht Steven Spielberg sold so he could buy a bigger one. Because you really need something more commodious than that meager thing.) The way those poor misguided fronting pretenders go around acting like 100-foot yachts are sufficient is just too much! And they think they are something! We laugh at them, and blow snot in their general direction**.

This post is not about pool, because I never write about pool, as regular readers know. But in pool—this is just an example—there is a thing called a cue tip. It's the little disc of shaped leather that gets glued to the business end of a cue. You then apply chalk this tip so it will grab some traction on the ball, because where you strike the cue ball with the tip (high, low, left, right) is how you impart spin and thereby control the subsequent action of the cue ball. For eons, the most you could spend on a cue tip was a few bucks. Then a company called Kamui came along and started selling cue tips for many multiples of what cue tips had always cost. This created mighty FUD! Since Kamuis cost $25 rather than $3, didn't they have to be better!? Doubtless somebody made much money. But then, there was so much extra money that Kamui began helping to sponsor tournaments, so where's the harm really. (I am wending my way to my point; strive to stay patient.) Not to be outdone, makers of chalk (chalk!) took the hint and strove to create FUD about the cheap chalk that had been working perfectly for generations for misguided souls who didn't know any better, such as Ronnie O'Sullivan and Efren Reyes, the greatest masters of snooker and pool respectively. This situation, too, was ripe for Gizmo Huckstering! And so sure enough. You can now spend $29 (twenty-nine dollars) on one piece of billiards chalk, and I wish I were kidding. At least it is aptly named after its creators.

I have not come to my point with any dispatch here because you already know what it is. Photography has been beset by Gizmo Huckstering probably right from 1839 until at least now. How many attempts have been made to finally, once and for all, create the perfect camera?*** I counted how many, and the number is 28,137****. And it still hasn't been done, because, obviously, I could spec a better camera than has ever been made. Off the top of my head.

Special steel and cellulose-based film-hanging Acme Grip Clip, made of material chosen to securely grip wet 35mm film. Pack of twelve (enough for three large developing tanks of film!) less than $2 each!!! Only $23.99 

It was in darkroom products that Gizmo Huckstering reached its apex. Every man-Jack***** who ever worked in a darkroom bloomed with ideas for gizmos; you didn't have enough else to think about as you performed the drudgery. I didn't pay enough attention at the time, and so, sadly, cannot give you chapter and verse now, but there were whole catalogs, some on newsprint, even, chock-full of gizmos, gadgets, widgets and contraptions meant to improve every aspect of the photographic enterprise no matter how negligible or trifling. And of course, another aspect of gadgets and widgets intended for photography is that they were always priced higher because they were specially for photography! And how could anyone get by with something humdrum and lesser, when something specially designated as special could be had for only a few dollars more? Perfectly ordinary things were transformed into things of more value when they were designated as being for photography, even if they were the same dang thing people used for something else.

Protect yourself
My favorite example of this was when I once saw advertised some special filmstrip-hanging clips, used for hanging 5-foot strips of developed 35mm film to dry, which appeared from the illustration to be identical in every way to something called wooden clothespins. Which in that simple time were available very cheaply at any grocery store.****** And might still be. I must admit, though, that a wooden clothespin is absolutely the ideal thing to use to hang films to dry. You can even thread the line through the center of the little spring. It's perfect, really.

Here's the way to proof yourself against the practice of Gizmo Huckstering: learn to recognize feelings of FUD in yourself. When you feel it, you might be being conned. Especially, when something common and adequate is being promoted as needing replacement by something much more expensive, allow your anti-BS antennae to begin humming. More globally, you might consider whether you have an overarching preference for Veblen goods or high value. I know where I stand, but your mileage may vary*******, as they say. Heck, if I were a billionaire, I would probably be just the type to continue to be satisfied with a mere 100-foot yacht, even in the face of the withering scorn and blistering condescension of my peers. I hope I'm not boasting. It's just the kind of guy I am.

Mike

*This sentence unmasks me as a dolorous peasant, because those in the know know that the lengths of yachts are properly given in meters. (I may be dolorous but at least I am not malodorous.)

**Very old movie reference, proving I am old.

***That's what the engineers and marketers—no, sorry, make that marketers and engineers, because marketing comes first—at Pentax are attempting to do right now with their upcoming new 35mm film camera, which I am, in equal parts, a.) eagerly awaiting and b.) certain they will get wrong.

****I'm lying, I didn't count. But it must be some number that is very high.

*****Meaning "everyone without exception." A delightful antiquarian phrase derived from the now-extinct custom of addressing someone whose name one didn't know as "Jack," a common nickname for John. Earliest citation 1809, used by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge in 1841.

******The Mennonites around here still hang their clothes out to dry on clotheslines, in warm weather, and loaded lines are sometimes very picturesque, in a bucolic, nostalgic, country-Americana sort of way. I have never had the temerity to photograph them. That would be intrusive, to photograph someone's garments, including what used to be called unmentionables, wouldn't it? Creepy, even. And I place a high priority on not being creepy. Even asking for consent would be weird as heck, I think. So it's one of those things that can't be photographed, then. At least not by the scrupulous and the virtuous. 

*******English for this overused phrase might be "your experience might be different." I think I'm going to stop using "your mileage may vary." I'm getting tired of it.********

********This post has more footnotes than any other post ever posted on TOP. Added value for you! At no extra cost.

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:

Chuck Albertson: "Nice clothespin. But is it archival?"

Mike replies: Yes!! Because you cut off the end of the filmstrip where it was touching. No contamination on the strips of negatives. :-)

Harry B Houchins: "Beginning my photo journey in the NYC fashion industry in 1966, I can relate to everything you say here. My experience is that everything has a creeping increase. You gotta have it! It's so cool, necessary, new! At 79 I haven't bought any new gear for five years. What have I missed?"

Mike replies: I think it's actually more satisfying to wait a longer time before updating. That way the changes are more pronounced. Like waiting till your car is really dirty before washing it.

Dave Levingston: "Made me think back a decade or so to my days as a motorcyclist. Everything for a motorcycle costs more because it's for a motorcycle. I used hiking rain suits because they cost about a quarter of motorcycle rain suits. And simple rubber rainboots worked just fine. I would tell my wife, 'Sure motorcycle tires cost much more than car tires, but on the other hand, they don't last nearly as long.'"

Nigel Voak: "Reading though this, I thought the piece would arrive at a point where the forthcoming Sony Alpha 9 Mark III would be named. At least my thoughts turned to this upcoming marvel whilst reading this post. Who on Earth needs a shutter speed of 1/80,000th of a second or 120 frames per second? How did I ever successfully do dance photography and even some sports stuff with a Nikon F801, with manual focus lenses? I am making digital copies right now of my old archive, and the shots were in focus, and I caught peak moment."

Mike replies: Even at my Fuji X-T1's highest speed of 8.31 frames per second, I found I still could get a moment before or after what I wanted! I learned to try my best to capture the exact moment even when in Continuous High mode. I had a higher success rate that way, plus some extra frames.

JH: "Brings back memories of the Porter's Camera Catalog. They had a thick newsprint catalog full of photo gadgets. I think I was buying stuff from them throughout the '70s and '80s—maybe '90s—when I still did my own darkroom work. Alas, they closed in 2019."

Roger Bartlett: "Over the weekend I watched a YouTube video by Adam Savage about Apple USB C cords and why they cost $130 as opposed to the same cord from Amazon costing $12. I expected to hear a similar conclusion to yours but was pleasantly surprised to hear that the $130 might actually be justifiable. It is worth watching this just to see some amazing technologies at work."

Jeff replies to Roger: "But it’s not 'the same cord.' The Apple version is Thunderbolt; the Amazon one, standard USB-C. Not exactly Apples to apples."

John C: "Re 'marketers and engineers': Sorry to pick nits Mike, but you spelled that wrong. It's 'marketeers'—you know, like 'mouseketeers.' However, I will vouch for your ordering, having been a software engineer myself."

Dave: "There isn't much that unites the whole of Europe when it comes to behaviour which doesn't then also line up with the behaviours of those in North America. But one thing I've noticed over the years is that a willingness/fear to hang washing outside seems to be one of those things. From what I know of the US (a lot of my family live there), hanging laundry to dry outside is regularly frowned upon and even, in some areas with particularly militaristic residents' associations, actually banned. Some radical types (like my sister) apparently insist on doing it and taking a stand, but they'll get regularly berated for it.

"I live in one of the soggiest, least sunny countries in the world (Scotland) and it's still completely normal to do so, here. If you want to come photograph it, feel free! Strolling through Edinburgh you'll see loads, and some of it even stretches across publicly accessible courtyards and greens."

The Camera Dork

There are all types of dorks, dweebs, nerds, weenies, geeks, and et cetera. There's little point in untangling all the definitions, even if only humorously.

But what I meant by "I'd feel like a dork" yesterday was one particular situation that personally makes me feel dorky. I would define that as being "ostentatiously over-equipped."

Bunny hill
When I was a kid, my family went on a ski vacation. I think the resort was Waterville Valley in New Hampshire, but I'm not positive now. In the locker room, getting our gear on—I had only gone skiing a couple of times before—there was a family that seemed to be "in the know." The father was talking loudly about the fine points of all the expensive equipment they had. (We were renting skis and boots, and were wearing our regular winter coats, which were not ski jackets.) They had all the latest everything. The man talked at length about all the virtues of his choice of skis (either K2 or Rossignol—one of those two he liked, the other one he didn't.) I have a picture in my head of the man in his mostly white ski suit. I thought, wow, these people are real skiers. They really know what it's all about.

At the time—and I hope I'm remembering the right resort—the first step to the ski lifts to all the runs was the bunny hill lift. Everyone went up that before either getting off there or continuing to the higher parts of the mountain. Well, I happened to find myself behind that dazzlingly well-outfitted family on the first lift, and assumed they would leave me behind when I got off at the first stop. But no. They all started down again from the top of the bunny hill! None of them could ski. Even the braggart father of the group didn't know what he was doing at all.

Later in the week, I encountered my friend Jeff K. at the lift, and we rode up together. I had met Jeff on the Freshman Week Outing Club trip at Dartmouth. He told me he'd been skiing since he was little; he was a member of the ski team and had won races all over New England. I said "must be nice to be that good at something," and he told me in a jaded tone of voice that learning been the fun part for him and he kinda wished he had it all to do over again. He said he envied me for having it all in front of me. (I didn't, of course. I've skied fewer than a dozen times in my life.) Anyway, Jeff was dressed in jeans and a poncho and had beat-up old skis and old-fashioned boots. I told him about the well-equipped Dad from the locker room and Jeff shook his head and said something like, "I'd rather surprise people than pretend I'm better than I am."

Anyway, that was my lesson.

Bulging bags full
Another memory along those lines: many years ago—it must have been the early '90s—my friend Kent P. invited me to the Michigan 400. He had pit passes. I took my trusty Leica M6 and 35mm Summicron, which I carried slung from my shoulder as always. It didn't get a single look—might as well have been invisible. (That was one of the things I liked about the M6.) Wandering around in the pit lanes before the race, it appeared that about every third male was equipped with camera gear. De rigeur was a large block-shaped camera bag carefully stuffed with bodies and many lenses, plus a tripod strapped on top. That seemed to be the fad, "fad" meaning that people look around at what everyone else is doing and mimic it. I shot a lot that day and got a lot of great shots, including portraits of A.J. Foyt and Niki Lauda (although the day was mainly notable for the shot that got away. I've told that story before). No one paid me the least little bit of attention. But as far as I could tell, none of the guys carrying the big bags took many pictures. As I watched him, one guy stopped, set his bag down, fished the camera out of the bag, looked for a lens, mounted it, then set up the tripod—in the middle of a sunny day!—appeared to take one picture, then reversed the whole process and put everything away again. It took ten minutes, or seemed like it. I took a picture of him doing it.

Then again, you schlepp what you need. Remember what Ansel Adams always said when people asked him what camera he used: "the biggest one I can carry!"

There's nothing wrong with a Z9 (I mean, look at that thing), and I'd use one if I wanted to or thought I needed it. No criticism of anyone else implied here. But given who I really am, carrying one around would probably feel like a form of posing for me, and I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it.

On the other hand
Oddly, the situation can be reversed if you're a professional. You want your equipment to say "I can do anything" and "I'm well equipped." At least if you deal with the public. I can tell you from experience that it's awkward to show up at a shoot with a camera that's not as good as the one your client owns!

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:

Moose: "I like the circularity of this post. You start with a story about how 'pro' equipment may be in the hands of a tyro, then end with '...it's awkward to show up at a shoot with a camera that's not as good as the one your client owns!'

"I knew that guy! The one with old jeans and tired wooden skis—who flew down any mountain like an angel, occasionally spinning in a a circle, one ski up at a 45° angle, spraying snow in all directions. One day, he hit a hole or something, and broke one ski into matchsticks. Undeterred, he went into the shop and bought a pair of the best metal skis. This mediocre skier, having difficulty with the switch from not worn-out wooden to metal, suggested he start carefully. No point; he was immediately still the most beautiful, graceful skier on the hills. I asked him what he thought of the new skis. 'They're nice,' he said, laconically."

Mark Rouleau: "Your camera gearhead story reminds me of two similar events, both of which happenend in Canada.

The first is when I took the family to Dufferin Islands. This is a series of man-made islands in the Niagara River. Very pretty area. I was playing with the Sigma DP1. Really the forefather of the large-sensor, small form factor cameras that we have now.

As we were parking, I watched a man exit his car with his SO, and, in the parking lot, started posing her, firing off shot after shot with his DSLR. His background was the cement brick building that housed the washroom (you call them restrooms) to the park. I told my wife, I may not be a great photographer, but at least when I take your picture there's not a bathroom behind you.

Another time, at Niagara-on-the-Lake, I got up extra early to catch the sunrise. I got a lot of great pictures out of that one. The light was amazing, so I got not only a sunrise over Fort George, but some lovely shots at the beach of driftwood and rocks. As I was dancing around taking as many shots as I could while the light was still amazing, I noticed an older gentleman, standing stock still, with an expensive DSLR with a white Canon lens attached, so, probably some bucks. In the 30–40 minutes I was flitting from place to place, he stood in the exact same spot, never bending over or looking up, keeping the camera at eye level, occasionally rotating it from side to side, no more than 45 degrees horizontally at most, but always on the same plane, shooting across the water. I did stop to look to see what was so interesting over there, but even with my telephoto, I couldn't see anything of interest. He was still there when I left. I hope he got good pictures of whatever it was he was after."

Soeren Engelbrecht: "This summer, our family went to the Faroe Islands (Situated in the North Atlantic)—in part to experience the amazing birds (like this one, which I was fortunate to catch myself). We went on a boat trip to the island of Mykines along with other tourists, many of whom were carrying large cameras and lenses. I particularly noted one lady with a Canon DSLR and a huge zoom (200–600mm or similar) due to two things: a). The bucket-size lens hood remained reverse-mounted for the whole trip b.) She probably had the camera on 'green mode,' because every time she tried to photograph birds on a dark cliff from the boat, the built-in flash popped up and fired."

Thomas Basista: "Wow! Talking about the very thing I saw Saturday. The local watershed association dedicated a new kayak/canoe access to the river. Basically a low-key, local event. No more than 30 people there. I was using my Panasonic FZ80 This guy shows up wearing a leather shoulder harness in 90-degree weather. There was a Nikon hanging from the harness on each hip, like a pair of pistols on a movie gunfighter. While most people were taking snaps with their phones, the camera slinger seemed to just be walking around. I did not see him take a single shot. I guess he just wanted to play photographer."

Mike Peters: "Re 'Oddly, the situation can be reversed if you're a professional. You want your equipment to say "I can do anything" and "I'm well equipped." At least if you deal with the public. I can tell you from experience that it's awkward to show up at a shoot with a camera that's not as good as the one your client owns!' The reality is, most of my clients own phones to take photographs. I've been shooting pro work with lowly Micro 4/3 gear for over 10 years now and nobody seems to notice or care. If your photographs don't make the case for you, then maybe you're in the wrong profession. My motto is use the gear that sets you free and is a joy to use. It's not the camera that makes the photo, it's the meat sack behind it."

adam: "I do user research consulting in very technical fields, and a big part of my job is to boil the findings from all the interviews I do down into some key points the client can act on. A few years ago I came across a piece of wisdom I try to keep in mind: 'The beginner makes things complex in order to demonstrate their expertise. The expert makes things simple in order to demonstrate their expertise.'"

Petrol vs. EV

I burned some gas yesterday. (Petrol, in English.) And the day before. Meaning, I got out photographing for several hours each day, roaming around the territory looking at the weather, scouting for pictures. I had a lot of fun, and got some nice shots.

Photographing used to be expensive—in the fifteen years from 1985 to 2000 I had it worked out to the penny how much it cost. I was both lazy and cheap, which made me very efficient. I rolled my own film cassettes from 100-foot rolls using a Watson bulk loader. I mixed my own chemicals of course—I made stop bath using a gallon jug of lab-grade glacial acetic acid, a dangerous chemical that required careful handling. Why? Because it worked out to something like 1/100th of the cost of those little bottles of yellow indicator stop bath that Kodak used to sell. I bought 250-sheet boxes of 8.x11-inch RC paper for both proofing and workprinting, and for the most part my negatives were consistent enough and my contact sheets so carefully made that I could set the time and contrast of the work print merely by looking at the tiny image on the proof sheet. (Pam Noyes, who was in the class ahead of mine, could set the color pack of a color enlarger just by eyeballing the contact sheet, when she worked in the lab at National Geographic.)

Despite all this, after school I budgeted between $2,000 and $5,000 a year for photography expenses. Depending on how flush I was or how tight money was in any given year. I had it all worked out how much each frame of film cost me. I wish I could remember the number.

Digital rocks
In comparison, of course, these are good days indeed. However, I still pity "film virgins," those who grew up with nothing but digital—they didn't get to experience a lot of things we did, like the print coming up in the developer tray, which was a high point of the first day in the darkroom for my photography students. Another thing digital-only people never got to experience was the incredible freedom of suddenly being unshackled from the cost of film, and being able to shoot with no immediate per-shot expense! That was a great feeling. Like stopping banging your head against the wall.

The worst thing about those days was probably the appalling cost in time. I probably spent 10,000 hours in darkrooms from the time I started until I made my last optical/chemical print. I don't know what my overall rate of shooting—and hence my rate of developing, proofing, and workprinting—might have been, so I can't quantify that, but one tank of film the way I did it held three rolls of 35 exposures per roll [sic] and took about an hour and forty-five minutes from setup to carefully clipping the filmstrips to load them into the PrintFile sheets. Now I can shoot many times those 105 exposures, without pause, for very close to 0¢ per exposure—I suppose it costs a minuscule amount for the electricity in the battery and the wear on the camera—and it takes all of about four minutes to transfer them to the computer.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch
But for me, up here in the Finger Lakes, one expense still associated with photographing is: gas. There's always something interesting around the next bend. You're always trying to get somewhere that might have a clear view of things you've caught a glimpse of. Especially when the weather is putting on a show, there's promise everywhere.

Plus, if I get lost, I can always have the GPS take me home.

But I probably used half a tank of gas over those two days. That's five gallons. At current prices, $18. It's not a lot, but it's not nothing. Plus, there's a tiny nagging cost in guilt. Why drive around when you don't have to, converting gasoline to greehouse gasses? I'm not the problem, nor am I the solution. But still....

The perfect photographer's car
I used to think that a perfect photographing vehicle would be a Sprinter van with a platform on top, a modern version of what Ansel Adams had. Now, I think maybe an EV with a bank of solar panels on the garage roof would be ideal. That way I could meander all over the countryside, photographing to my heart's content, neither siphoning money from my wallet nor polluting.

An EV would be perfect for up here. We have to drive everywhere—everything is far away from everything else—but the farthest I ever drive in a day is to Rochester and back, and that's only 125 miles round trip. I drive to town all the time (15 miles round trip), to Watkins Glen (40 miles round trip), to Branchport (30 miles round trip), to the Spiritual Center of the Universe (26 miles round trip), to Canadaigua (60 miles round trip), and occasionally to Corning (86 miles round trip). So an EV with 200 miles of range would get me everywhere I could possibly want to go in a day, with plenty of margin for comfort. Wouldn't that be great? Imagine, no film or developing cost, and no cost for puttering around the countryside until it's almost dark. That'll be the day.

I don't have to think about it today. The marvelous weather of the past several days has given way to more smoke pollution from the forest fires in Canada again. It's a gray, grim, smoky day here. I won't be wasting any gas today.

I'll show you some new pictures when I get them up, in a few days.

Mike

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Big Camera, Small Camera

A good reason to prefer a camera of a certain size is how ordinary people respond to it. If you want to be surreptitious and blend in, a small, modest camera that doesn't look like much is best. If you want to look impressive and imposing, like you're official, or allowed to be where you are, like you know what you're doing and don't care who else knows it, a big, expensive, late model camera is best.

The reason I like small cameras is that I'm shy and people don't react well to me when I'm taking candid pictures in public. I assume something of my anxiousness transmits to their spidey-senses and puts them off. I've been with shooters who are the opposite. It's a gift that some photographers don't even know is a gift. I'm on the big side, and male, and I must almost radiate my sense of discomfort when I'm trying to sneak a stranger's picture. Notice that word "sneak"? Bad attitude!

Goes for noise, too. My quiet Leica M6 (1984) was better than my loud Nikon N8008 (1988). The Pentax LX (1980) was a near perfect camera, except for the loud metallic SNAP! of the shutter. That's not so much an issue now, with digital cameras that have electronic shutters. They're either dead silent or very close to it.

When point-and-shoots came along in the 1980s, I photographed with one once and was amazed that people simply ignored me. Same with toy cameras. It was freeing. With big, imposing cameras it's been the opposite—I've had some almost preternaturally weird experiences with big cameras drawing attention, sometimes in situations where they just shouldn't have.

Here are a few of those instances:

—>I was trying out a Fujifilm "Texas Leica" 6x9cm once and I wanted to make a few test shots, so I went to the balcony of my fourth floor loft and pointed it into the cityscape. A hundred feet away and two stories lower down, a construction worker immediately stopped what he was doing and stared right at me. What?

—>Working with a big Mamiya once, not even that close to a big road with not much traffic, the occupants of three cars passing only a few minutes apart honked and yelled at me just to hassle me. Really? Mind yer own business!

—>While driving once, at about 40 MPH or thereabouts, I held the camera at the bottom of the driver's side window and made a few blind snaps of some motorcycles a couple of lanes over. When I looked at the files, one of the riders was staring right at the camera. Dude, you need to keep your eye on the road even more than I do.

—>When the shift changed and they got off work, the bike messengers who worked days in D.C.—lots of them—used to congregate at DuPont Circle to laze around and socialize. I figured I'd do some shooting with whatever big medium-format camera I was writing about at the time. Wrong! As soon as I walked over, a rider, a female, got up from where she was laying on the ground and came striding over to me, spewing invective in a loud voice. She got right in my face, shouting the whole time. I backed down, of course, because I'm me. Apparently it was far from the first time she had done something similar—as I was retreating, one of the other messengers said to me, sympathetically, "We're all aggressive. We have to be. But she's the most aggressive of us all!"  

Big being bad was even true when I had full cooperation from my subjects. When I taught at a girls' high school, I did a few dozen student portraits, and I noticed that a great big lens with a huge outer element intimidated some of the kids and made them feel uncomfortable, whereas a small lens with a modest outer element didn't. One girl said she felt "stared at" when I used the big lens. She looked at it with a subtly different expression.

That brings up the observer effect. "In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. This is often the result of utilizing instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner." The camera being the instrument and the reaction of the subject being the "disturbance of the observed system."

A story about Cartier-Bresson—I forget where this came from, now—was that he had a skillful way of carrying his camera covered with a handkerchief. He would set the controls by feel, and bring the camera to his eye and shoot so swiftly and smoothly that people often didn't notice it, quickly returning it to its hidden resting position. He would not have been served well by a larger, more imposing camera. Daido Moriyama of course famously uses little point-and-shoots. Helen Levitt had a right-angle lens attachment so she could photograph street scenes surreptitiously. In his subway photographs (a series that I admit never seemed like much to me), Walker Evans rigged up a way to hide his camera under his coat and trigger the shutter without moving. The famous Leica photograph of Leon Trotsky was taken by Robert Capa (on his very first assignment) with a tiny Barnack camera he smuggled into the lecture hall, against the rules, under his coat.

Generally it's sort of inherently traumatizing to me to go up to strangers and take their pictures without permission, and I think this is always in the back of my mind when I'm thinking about buying any particular camera. I've historically had a preference for cameras that don't look serious, that blend in, that don't call attention to themselves. Of course, my problem is probably as much my attitude as it is anything about the equipment. Some people radiate friendliness or confidence and can go right up to anyone. Others, more brazen, don't care if they make people uncomfortable. (I don't like those types as well.) But still.

Big is bold
The reason to have a big, expensive camera is when when you want the camera to be part of your bonafides. If you're doing pictures for hire for the public, such as family portraits for instance, it's embarrassing to arrive with a camera that's worse than the one your amateur client owns. A big, imposing camera says things about you—for one, that you're a serious photographer who's worth whatever you're being paid. And if it's more expensive than an ordinary amateur would buy, so much the better. It makes what you're doing—and, by extension, you—seem like you know your stuff and are well equipped for it. It might even impart confidence.

The camera I have now breaks this small/big paradigm. It's the smallest FF camera extant, but not the way I have it configured. Set up the way I have it set up, it has the gestalt of an old medium-format film camera. Although perfectly silent (it only has electronic shutter), it's not small. Oddly, though, I find people don't pay much attention to it. I suspect it's so oddly shaped that they don't quite know what it is. Plus, it's got such a giant viewfinder that I can quickly invite strangers to look at one of my pictures! They're impressed. Another advantage is that I'm older now, and old people are more readily assumed to be harmless.

We're still in a honeymoon period with smartphones, because a lot of people still don't take them seriously as cameras, a legacy from the time not long ago when...well, when they weren't very good cameras. That will probably change, eventually. I read an account once of the era around 1880 or 1890. The photographer had a hand-held camera, and was delighted to discover that people ignored it, because people at that time were conditioned to think of cameras as things that were always used on tripods. Eventually they got used to the fact that cameras are handheld.

After a lot of time passed the opposite might have become true: my mentor Steve Szabo was out photographing with his view camera on a tripod in broad daylight once. When he came out from under the dark cloth, he found a man standing behind him waiting patiently for him to appear. Steve said, "I bet you want to know what I'm doing," and the man said, "I already know. You were surveying, that's what you were doing."

By the way, the Texas Leica story reminds me of another tip: if you want to make yourself invisible in a public place with a lot of people around, just pick a spot and stand there for a while. Hold your camera about chest level. People will check you out at first, but after a few minutes they'll see nothing's happening and they'll start to ignore you. Even passersby seem inclined to ignore you if other people in the area aren't checking you out. Then you can raise the camera and take a picture from time to time and most people won't seem to notice. Try it.

Albert Smith reminded me of all this with something he said two days ago, so, thanks, Albert.

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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Lynn: "This resonates with my experience. I found street photography easier with digital point-and-shoots like the Nikon 1 and Panasonic LX-3 (and before that the Fuji F10); and the wonderful Olympus XA, XA4 and Rollei 35S with film, zone focused. The almost-silent and small Barnack Leicas (mine's a IIIc) is almost as good, maybe because it doesn't look like most people's expectation of what a camera looks like.

"Using a Canon 5D and 24–105mm was an entirely difference experience, and very difficult to manage discreetly with that large front element. I found the least intrusive solution was to hold the camera somewhere between waist and chest height and frame by guesswork—not that difficult with a bit of practice. But it still drew attention (and often a wary look), which changes the photograph.

"I've tried street photography with a TLR (Yashica Mat 124G) and classic folders (Bessa II 6x9 and Voiglander Perkeo II 6x6) and found these draw curious looks but none of the wariness that accompanies the 5D. Sometimes people stop to ask about the old cameras, and are surprised to learn you can still buy film. I've had some nice conversations when using these vintage cameras.

"You've mentioned age but don't forget gender: in my observation women of any age taking pictures of people in public places are universally deemed harmless and quickly ignored. I've seen a woman on a crowded beach walking up close to take pictures of other people's children with a DSLR and a large zoom lens and no-one bats an eyelid. Try that if you're male and be prepared for an entirely different reaction.

"Come to think of it I'm surprised there aren't more well known women street photographers. How many more Vivian Maiers are out there waiting to be discovered?"

Derek: "I've noticed that when I have some of my Fuji bodies (X100 especially, X-Pro 2 even with the 56mm ƒ/1.2 mounted on) it feels like people around me tend to express hints they're open to me photographing them."

Bob G.: "I understand the ability to photograph easily with confidence can be difficult. As an art director/designer most of my life, I’ve had to hire and organize photo shoots of various types. These were tightly controlled and scheduled events, as the meter was running for not only the photographer(s), but their assistants, makeup and grip personnel, etc. Everything had to fall into place and wrap with the conceived idea hopefully achieved. I would avoid manually handling anything with the cameras, only directing what I needed.

"In general, I was also respectfully intimidated when shooting others by myself, but later remedied this by imagining that the scenes with people were photo shoots and all hired to do their part for me. That built confidence, sometimes even enabling me to 'direct' people walking by. The trick is to compliment them. Another technique is to shoot reflections of them in windows. 'Standing with the camera' is also good—anything to lessen the perceived tension that leads to 'fight or flight.' The mindset should not be 'taking their picture,' but you’re 'making your photograph.' This obviously pertains to permissibly legal situations.

"As to camera size, yes, with a smaller camera, one is more of a 'tourist' amateur. But in general, people are more negatively sensitive now, at least with phone cameras, with all the photos being able to be broadcast on the web easily."

Ernest Zarate: "As you brought up a couple good tips for photographing strangers (I have long used both a low-key, unobtrusive approach, and staying in one place long enough to blend into the background), I’ll toss in another one I have found valuable.

"When I was photographing people out and about, when I lowered my camera, I never looked at the people I’d just photographed. Rather, I looked past them, as if I was photographing something beyond them. I would even have a slightly annoyed look on my face, as if they were in the way of what I was photographing. I might even move around slightly, take a step to the right and/or left, looking past the people, as if I was trying to find the 'just right' spot. This would allow me to grab a couple more shots without incurring any wrath. I could, and often did, add some other elements of play acting into it as well.

"I knew I had done a good job of selling my act if the people I’d photographed turned around to look behind them to see what I was looking at. That happened nearly every time. It wasn’t necessary to convince them; I just had to create enough doubt that they were not sure what was going on."

David Raboin: "A few thoughts on people noticing cameras from a shy street photographer.

"When I shoot with my Ricoh GR III, people mostly don't notice me, but if they do, they don't take me seriously, they pity me for shooting with what they think is an ancient point-and-shoot. With my Ricoh, I could shoot a person in the middle of Fifth Avenue and no one would care.

"I also do street photography with my Canon R6 and large zooms. I've found that the general public hasn't figured out mirrorless cameras yet. Most people think you need to look through the viewfinder to take a picture. I use the LCD and back button focus set to face detect. As long as the camera isn't up in my face, people don't realize that I'm snapping pictures.

"One more thought on street photography: some cities are easier for street photos than others. I travel the US endlessly, and I've found that street photography is easiest in Manhattan NYC. The streets there are so busy thay nobody has time to care about a guy with a camera. The same goes for busy tourist areas like Santa Monica Pier or Pike Market. A photographer can hide in a crowd, especially if the crowd is mostly confused tourists. The most difficult places for street photography are quieter medium sized cities. Put me in a place like Kansas City or Fort Worth and I have a hard time taking street photos with a lens shorter than 85mm."

Mike replies: One of my major shooting revelations was when I shot for six or eight months on the streets of DC with an Exakta 66, a medium-format camera with a waist-level finder. As you say about mirrorless, I suspect people mostly assumed that I was "in between" shots and adjusting the camera when I had the camera down low and was looking down into it. It didn't trigger that "I'm being looked at" feeling for them; they ignored it. I've always thought there should be a digital camera with a true waist-level finder, one that could have a proper light-blocking hood. Flip-up screens work pretty well as a substitute, and the image not being reversed is a big bonus.

Mark Sampson: "The early 'street' photographers, Kertesz, Cartier-Bresson, et al., had a great advantage. In their world, their subjects were not used to candid photographs being made 'off the cuff.' Photographs were rare, formal events like weddings and family portraits. Even Brownie snapshots were carefully composed and a bit of an event. So people didn't consider that photographs would, or could,be taken candidly, or in low light, or casually; thus freeing up the photographers to capture the 'decisive moment.' This advantage has been steadily evaporating since more or less World War II, and is now almost completely gone. Thus making the work of 'street' photographers today that much more difficult."

Mike replies: Not only that, but Helen Levitt has a lot to say (where, I can't recall) about the difference a few decades made in life on the street. I wish I knew the reference so I could share it; she talked about how life used to take place on the streets in the '30s and '40s, and there was always lots going on, whereas by the '60s and '70s the streets were comparatively dead and all the people had gone elsewhere. I'm paraphrasing, obviously.

Charlie Dunton: "Lots of stuff I agree with. I too am an introvert, though not shy. I just like to think things through before speaking. I've always used a large camera since going digital, always with a battery grip and usually a 24–105mm L lens. I'm currently shooting that way with a Canon R5.

"As you mentioned, I like large, expensive cameras because they help with the 'I'm a pro and paid to be here' attitude. I'm never pushy, but don't shy away or try to hide what I'm doing. I find honesty helps. I did notice something interesting on a recent trip to Disney World. We usually see at least one parade in Magic Kingdom, and I usually shoot it with my iPhone, typically just pictures for me. This last time I used the big R5. I found that anything bigger than a cell phone was instantly recognized by the people on the floats. So I got a nice smile and a wave from Anna and Elsa, also from Cinderella and Prince Charming, a nice smile from Tiana, but Tinker Belle turned and looked directly at me with a pout that would make a three-year-old proud. You have to be careful photographing anyone holding a wand!

"But the ones to watch out for are those walking behind. I had one woman walk briskly toward me with a big pucker on her lips. She approached so quickly that the action-following autofocus on the R5, as good as it is, couldn't keep up. I ended up with six badly unfocused images. The last one may have actually been inside the minimum focus distance for the lens. On the other hand, I recently spent 15 minutes talking to a beautiful woman at a Blackbeard Pirate Festival. Just as we were finishing our conversation, I asked her if I could take her picture, and she said certainly. I later found out she was a professional model which explains the strikingly gorgeous pose she gave me.

"Be honest, be polite, and show an interest in people, and it will go a long way."

Bill Tyler: "One of my favorite photos made on the street was the result of having a 4x5 Crown Graphic set up on a tripod. A little girl, accompanied by her parents, was fascinated, and asked if I would take their picture. It's posed, not candid, but the people and their happiness radiate from the image. I won't share it because I have no idea who they are, and don't want to invade their privacy even now, decades later. But it was having the big, complicated-looking camera that was the stimulus for the image."

Mike replies: I don't get not showing it, but okay.

John Camp: "This is a comment about your (Mike's) comment about Helen Levitt and the changes over a few decades. The change didn't actually happen in a few decades, it happened in a few years—the arrival of television. I'm old enough to remember it. After World War II, on my street in a veterans neighborhood—my father had been in the Army in Europe—there was always a lot going on. Neighborhood parties, weekly new movie premieres, many, many people belonged to fraternal organizations (Elks, Moose, Masons, Eagles, Lions, VFW, American Legion, Knights of Columbus, Odd Fellows and Rebeccas, etc.) There were all kinds of in-person clubs, too, for model airplanes, stamp collectors, photography, ballroom dancing and so on. Church-going was big. Sometime in the early fifties, TV arrived in mass numbers, and the street life literally disappeared overnight. No more neighborhood parties. No more clubs. I lived through that transition and it was stark. And, in my opinion, a shame. We exchanged a social world for bullshit."

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Photo by Vijay Ramakrishnan

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

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

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

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

Lensless 4x5" Pinhole Camera

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

Naturally, they're not expensive.

Mike

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

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Camera Chooser

Assume all your camera gear is stolen, and insurance will cover receipts up to $3,000. You know you want a new ILC (interchangeable lens camera) and will eventually have three to five lenses, which means you might be out of pocket for some of the cost but you have a nice cushion to reduce possible financial pain. (I think you can copy and paste this list into your comment.)

What would you choose in today's market?

—>Mirrorless? Or optical or hybrid viewfinder?

—>SLR or SLR-style, or rangefinder or rangefinder-style body shape?

—>Knobs-and-buttons controls, or mainly electronic?

—>Top of the line, or mid-line?

—>Full frame (24x36mm), larger-than, or smaller-than?

—>High-res (more than 26 megapixels), or 26-MP or less?

—>New or used?

—>Same brand as your stolen (i.e., current) gear, or will you switch brands?

—>Do you already know which exact model you would choose?

—>Where would you expect to buy it?

—>Will you also be regularly taking pictures with your smartphone, or do you avoid photographing with your phone except for functional tasks?

—>Is resale value important to you, or do you tend to keep your cameras a long time and "use them up"?

Just curious. Thanks!

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:

Edward Fritzen: "Interesting survey at an appropriate time for me. I'm currently in the market for a new camera to replace my Nikon D90, which recently died. Here are my answers:

1. Mirrorless
2. SLR Style
3. Knobs-and-buttons controls
4. Mid-line?
5. Full frame
6. 26-MP or less
7. New
8. More than likely the same brand (Nikon)
9. Not really, but I'm considering the Nikon Z6II, or Z5
10. I would like to purchase from a local camera store. I found a good one in Charlotte, N.C.
11. I would also use my iPhone 14, but prefer the SLR. I don't really enjoy using an iPhone, even though the pictures are great. I don't like composing using the screen and I have a hard time holding the iPhone steady.
12. Resale is not important. I tend to hold on to things for a long time. I really want something smaller and lighter than what I had, that will be a good travel camera.

"I hope this helps. I'm a long time reader, but don't comment too much."

BRIAN: "Sorry I am not gonna fully immerse myself and play camera chooser as it may re-ignite my GAS. I've been in recovery for over a year now. I am very happy with what I have and will probably replace it should the worse happen. Go sit on someone else's shoulder and whisper in their ear!  ;-)  "

Mike replies:   :-)

William Schneider: "Easy question—I'd replace my existing 45-MP mirrorless Nikon Z9 with another one. A new one is preferred, but I'd consider a clean used sample. I'd get it from my 'local' dealer about 75 miles away. They know me and provide good service. I've kept most of my cameras since the '70s, so resale value is not very important. I don't (or won't) use the iPhone much in the interim. It doesn't work as well for the kind of photos I've been making lately."

Marc Gibeault: "I would go the easy way: Chris Nichols, from DPReview and now PetaPixel, has reviewed pretty extensively nearly every recent camera on the market. I like to think that his usage is close to mine; street, nature, travel and family. He recently said that his personal kit is an OM System OM-1 with a 12–45mm ƒ/4. I would go the same way and not think about it for a few years."

John Camp: "I don't have to think about it, because I just did it. I bought a Fuji X-T5 with a Sigma 18–50mm (27–75mm-e) zoom and a Sigma 56mm (84mm-e) in the X-mount for the APS-C sensor. Total cost was $2,946.24 with state tax. The camera is meant to replace my much-loved Panasonic GX8's (I have two of them) and is almost exactly the same size at the GX8. With the Sigma zoom, the total package is even smaller than the GX8 when I have my default Panny 12–60mm (24–120mm-e) lens on it."

Patrick Murphy: "Funny you should ask this now. My Sony A7R V camera, 16–35mm lens and flash, total value ~$5,000, were stolen one week ago from a convention hotel here in Orlando. I left the camera on a table at a private corporate event for over 1,000 security professionals, while I went to the restroom (I know, I was stupid). Hotel security camera footage showed that a person wearing an employee badge of the major U.S. company holding the event took the camera. It was never recovered. Sadly, the company never offered to pay even part of the $5,000 despite paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to hold the conference. Oh well, live and learn.

"Coming back to your question, I bought the same make/model of camera, a Sony A7R V. Yes, my batteries, lenses, etc. worked with the replacement A7R V. But I still would have bought that Sony nonetheless. It is perfect for the corporate event work I do. I'm trying to think what might get me to switch brands. But short of winning a prize on a photo game show, or winning the lottery, Sony has given me great value and great results since the A7 came out."

Mani: "I’d buy the same camera again: a Leica M10. It’s absolutely the optimal digital camera for me. I don’t remember and don’t care how many megapixels the sensor has, and I don’t want video, or any other ‘features.’ I would definitely buy it used, and maybe the only change I’d make would be opting for the M10-P, for the slightly quieter shutter and the more elegant front-plate, without the red dot. I actually don’t have any desire to change it—contrary to the previous 10 years, where I owned everything from a Leica M8, Epson RD1, Fuji X-100, and even a Hasselblad X1D (my biggest mistake, and the camera I sold at the biggest loss of any of my purchases)."

Is the Fanboy Era Ending?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike

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

Featured Comments from:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike replies: Sigh.  :-)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THREE: The Twelve Links of Christmas 2022*: Nostalgic Strap

Red Woven Vintage Camera Strap

A camera strap just like...

a.) Your old one
b.) Your mom or dad's
c.) Your grandmother or grandfather's

...from the '70s. Available in several color schemes and materials, including blue denim. No, it's not too late to order for Christmas.  :-)

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

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

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

Featured Comments from:

Jim Arthur: "Dude, ya got me jonesin' for the past, man. I still have my hippie strap somewhere and it’s attached to the Pentacon hard case of the Praktica LTL I bought in high school. These straps are far out, man! Can you dig it? Hey, don’t Bogart that joint, man! OK…catch ya on the flip-side.

"'Bogart' meant to hold on to a joint too long without passing it—the origin comes from the actor, Humphrey Bogart, who had an iconic style of performing an entire scene with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip for an extraordinarily long time with 'cool' effect."

James: "GROOVY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

SEVEN: The Twelve Links of Christmas 2022*: The Tripod Is a Solved Problem

Gitzo Mountaineer GT 2532 Series 2 carbon fiber tripod (Amazon)

Thom Hogan recently mentioned that "tripods were mostly mastered by Gitzo many years ago with the Mountaineer." I concluded a rather comical series of articles on tripods 11 years ago (comical because I made a lot of errors along the way that readers had to correct), at the end of which I purchased...a Mountaineer.

Carbon fiber was the killer app in 2011. Of all the things that that fashionable high-tech material is used for, tripods make the most sense; CF is rigid, very strong, and very light. Before that, I had a nice schtick I used to trot out about how there was no such thing as a good tripod. It allowed me to flex my satirical (snarky?) chops a bit and lampoon what I thought then was a pretty low category of device. Can't do that any more. My 11-year-old Gitzo Mountaineer still looks and works like new, and it's a pleasure to use every time I unlimber it. I never loved a tripod before this one. I never thought a tripod could be loved before this one.

I'm also glad I invested in it back then. It means I never have to muck around with tripods, buying and trying and doing it over again. I keep my tripods a long time. My first Gitzo, which I got from crusty old Mr. Baker at Baker's Camera Shop in Tenleytown D.C., was only retired after 27 years or so, and it's still out in the garage like an honored racehorse put out to pasture. This Mountaineer is looking very much like it will last 27 years too. Thom is right; the matter of a tripod is a solved problem. Get a Mountaineer with the tripod head of your choice (the Really Right Stuff BH-55 is widely regarded as ne plus ultra) and you'll never worry about tripods again.

Mike

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

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

Featured Comments from:

james wilson: "Check out the deal on the Sirui MT2204 travel tripod that B&H has on sale today."

Niels: "Ouch! $1,700 for a tripod+head. The Gitzo tripod is only 600g lighter than my 40-year-old Slik Master deluxe. The RRS head is heavier than my Slik Master head—the latter being the best head design I have ever encountered (others' mileage may vary). I just checked B&H. Slik is still in business it appears, and still made in Japan—how refreshing. Given the Slik Master series has survived 50 years, I guess I am not the only one who thinks it is a brilliant design. The current Slik Master Classic tripod and head is the same weight as your combo. Excellent quality and cost only $200. Your suggestion is likely more satisfying and more luxurious, but so it the price. Great with alternatives. (I'll let you make these affiliate links)."

Mike replies: Done, but, just a reminder for other readers, I'm not necessarily recommending these alternatives (I don't know them), James and Niels are.

Dennis Mook: "I believe I bought my carbon fiber Gitzo Mountaineer GT2540 around 1995. The price was high, more than I could afford at the time, but I took the advice of the phrase, ‘buy once, cry once,’ and that advice has paid off handsomely. The old Gitzo works as well today as when new. I’ve hauled those sticks around the country by car, train and airplane many, many times. They’ve never let me down and there is no reason to replace them. I agree, for me the tripod problem was solved many years ago."

[Ed. note: Dennis was a career Chief of Police in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, and after retiring from the Newport News force worked for NCIS. He's been an avid photography enthusiast for many years.]

Alex Buisse: "While I agree and absolutely love my Mountaineer (I used to hate tripods before it, thinking the limited extra support never worth the hassle of carrying one around), I must say that mine has required repairs twice in the seven years I have used it: once for the ballhead screw that had gotten bent and couldn’t be unscrewed anymore, and once for a leg twist that broke, which meant that I could take the leg segment straight out of the tripod. But then, I have taken it many places and often can’t afford to baby my gear...."

[Ed. note: Alex is a real mountaineer, so when he says he's taken his tripod "many places," it includes some places most people will never be. I highly recommend a visit to his website for some vivid visual examples.]

Photo by Alex Buisse

D'Oh! (Two Little Extra Notes)

Just two little extra notes to the foregoing about monitors...I feel rather like a dope, but I'm going to mention it, just in case anyone out there doesn't know it already. The downward-facing ports on the back of my NEC monitor were really hard to see and even harder to get at with the monitor set up in its usual position. Which bothered me. Until I realized, while watching a video tonight, that the monitor turns to a portrait orientation. Once turned, the ports are all on the side, and become easy to see and easy to access.

Ahem. Now you know, in case you didn't.

And secondly, if you are interested in the Datacolor SpyderX Pro Colorimeter so you too can experience the joys of a calibrated monitor, it's on sale at Amazon for $40 off. At B&H too. I assume by "Holiday Savings," they mean Thanksgiving, Homer said sternly!

Homer Mike

Sony A7R V: Taking Bets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike

Featured Comments:

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

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

SteveW: "iPhone 14."

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

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

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

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

Mike replies: Made me laugh anyway!

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

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