The Online Photographer

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."

Art Photographers and the Camera Market

[Ed. note: TOP takes the day off on Saturdays, so I can pretend I'm doing housework and paying the bills. Oh boy.]

-

To conclude the discussions from earlier in the week, in the posts "I Don't Want to Farm" and "The Rest Is History"—if you're an art photographer or fine-art photographer, you really don't have to worry. (Before I go on, "art photographer" is a useful term and not just a snooty claim-staking one, and I don't mind it. If you do, you can substitute expressive photographer or some other unfamiliar phrase, although if you use uncommon terms you run the risk of people not understanding what you mean.)

I suppose professional photographers of various types have always had to concern themselves with an understanding of a broad range of current mainstream tools, and they're the most likely to be heavily invested in one or more solutions, so they have to care about the camera industry to a certain extent. But art photographers don't. We have always been on the fringes, and we have always gone our own way and done our own thing. Finding the right camera is part of the creativity of creative photography, and it can range from a fanatical and involved pursuit of specific needs, all the way to the other end of the scale, namely, not giving a damn. Plenty of art photographers down through the years have used cameras they built themselves, cast-off cameras from earlier eras, common mid-level commodity cameras, toys, the latest fashion, custom or luxury offerings, or whatever they started out with and got used to. They might switch between formats with abandon like Mary Ellen Mark or use the same camera for decades like Henry Wessel, use a cheap plastic Diana like Nancy Rexroth or oversized 8x20-inch "panoramic" view cameras like Michael A. Smith. Alfred Stieglitz used a shabby old view camera on which the bellows sagged so much he had to hold the middle of it up with a loop of string during the exposure. Joel Meyerowitz might still be using his 8x10 Deardorff that was manufactured the year he was born. On the other hand, Alfred Eisenstadt was ceremonially presented with a custom Leica by the company, and the glamour and pinup photographer Peter Gowland invented and built his own cameras. Then there's the woman whose name I don't recall, who sent me a marvelous portfolio at the magazine I worked for. When I asked her what kind of camera she used, she replied, "I don't really know. Do you want me to go look?"*

With the advent of Internet communication, a lot of people got interested in learning about the camera market, and a lot of today's enthusiasts are deeply into "what's coming next" and the fate of specific companies from a business standpoint. But art photographers have always been a minuscule percentage of the camera-owning population, and we've never been much at the mercy of the direction the mass market is going. When the market switched from rangefinders to SLRs in a big way, a lot of us followed—and some of us didn't. Burt Keppler of Modern Photography said SLRs felt to him like coming home, and he happily made the switch. Were all of us suddenly doomed when point-and-shoots took over the market in the 1980s? Not at all, but Daido Moriyama adopted point-and-shoots and made art with them. Was it a disaster when digital came along? Not at all. Most of us just kept shooting film until we felt like making the switch—a switch that even Charlie Cramer, an expert dye transfer printer, eventually made. But John Paul Caponigro dove into digital right from the very earliest days. And a huge number of people were enabled by digital who hadn't been photographers before. Yet you can still outfit and run a B&W darkroom today, even one based around sheet film and a view camera, if you're one of the few who choose to.

Michael A. Smith with his 8x20-inch view camera.
Photo by Hans Bol.

We go our own way and do our own thing. While occasionally there is a photographer who abandons the work because of some shift in the technical winds, like Frederick Evans did when commercial platinum/palladium paper went out of production because of WWI, and you can't say we're not affected by the camera market at all, we've never been particularly attached to it. And certainly never at its mercy. Nowadays we have all sorts of choices: old film cameras of all types, old digital cameras, a broad range of new digital cameras in a broad range of sensor sizes, phones and other "devices," drones, on and on. If you can't find something to use to get yourself to where you want to be, you'll create some other possibility. Creative people find what they need.

Wherever the industry goes, it won't affect us. It doesn't matter if one company disappears or another does something revolutionary. Right now there are great photographers nobody's heard of quietly building bodies of work made with smartphone cameras; others are doing the same with aging 35mm film cameras. If someone builds a new 35mm camera, a few people will do good work with that. But it won't have much if any effect on the market as a whole. Part of the reason all this doesn't matter is that there will always be choices for those who are alert to them, and there will always be creative people willing to explore what they can do with whatever tools happen to interest them. If they can't do one thing they'll think of another. Their choices will be quirky and idiosyncratic, inventive, adaptive, and innovative. Because they always have been.

So while change might not go our way, it never really has. Is it anything to mourn, or moan, or worry about? Nah.

Mike

*Sadly, I never got to publish that portfolio, and I don't recall now what the reason was.

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:

Bassman: "Artists use the technology that’s available to create the art they want. The manufacturers are often behind the curve on the possibilities offered by their offerings, sometimes way off the mark. An example from the guitar world: when electric guitars were first being used widely during the 1950s and 1960s, most manufacturers were trying to make the electric instruments sound like the acoustic guitars they were replacing. After all, the whole point of electrifying them was to allow them to be louder. That the electric guitars didn’t sound like acoustic instruments was seen as a flaw to overcome. Artists, on the other hand, embraced the electric sound and the distortion the amplifiers exhibited to create the sound of rock and roll. They didn’t care about sounding like the older technology; they saw infinite possibilities with the new technology."

JH: "Bravo to Bassman, driving what he enjoys. People like him were the typical Porsche drivers until the mid-1980s when the new President of Porsche—who came from a US tractor company—started treating it like a brand to be milked for the highest profits. After I retired from racing in 2002 and did a couple of years teaching at track days for car clubs, I refused to take Porsche drivers as students. BMW owners were almost as bad. You could not instruct many of them—they knew it all....

"In several years of instructing, I only had one Corvette owner. After five laps with me driving at California Speedway, he got out of the car looking as white as a ghost and refused to drive the track himself...he'd had enough already. I quit instructing after a couple of years when I decided the majority of my students were trying to kill me. I live in a town full of posers here in California. The new big thing for posers is the 'urban rednecks' driving tarted-up giant pickup trucks. You can always tell a poser: they have pricey wheels and a cover over the bed of the truck to make sure it says perfectly clean."

Pieter Krigee: "On the picture Michael is not using an 8x10inch camera. Probably it is an 11x14inch camera or maybe even a larger one, a 30x50cm!"

Mike replies: It's an 8x20, and sorry. That was a typo. My brain thinks 8x20 and my fingers type 8x10 because that's what they most often do. It's like having a built-in malapropist spellchecker. Fixed now.

Bill Tyler: "I absolutely loved the story about the woman who didn't even know what camera she had, but was producing excellent work. Clearly, she had her priorities straight."

The Rest Is History

If you haven't seen this stunning animation yet, you need to. Not a big investment, takes only a few tragic seconds to look at. It tells a tale of many things. From Visual Capitalist, via Dan Carnagey.

Sadness and despond!

But I have my Sigma contraption (I need to name the blunt beastie) armed and ready for the return of the good light in the springtime. Never say die, never give up!

Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page

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

Featured Comments from:

Dogman: "I'm even more of a dinosaur than I thought!"

Greg Adkins: "Interesting, although it's important to note the inherent bias in comparing sales of dedicated cameras to that of a device with many features in addition to a camera. People choose and buy smartphones for a variety of uses that are unrelated to making photos."

Joe: "As long as Nikon keeps repair parts in stock for my Nikon D850, I'm happy."

Nick: "A smartphone camera is still a (very good) camera, and do we really care what sort of cameras are being sold to the masses, as long as the sort we want (flexible, controllable etc) are easily available? The advanced cameras and lenses available today are better than they have ever been, and the total number of photos being taken every day are more than ever before. I don't see anything tragic unless the major specialty camera manufacturers start to go out of business."

R. Edelman: "When I consider some of the tricks that my iPhone 13 can do, for example very low light hand-held images, I wonder why these tricks can't be incorporated in digital cameras. I understand that digital cameras and their lenses have image stabilization, and there are some with pixel shifting, but the iPhone seems to have software that enables it to perform photo miracles, such as taking a photo in very, very low light levels, that, if applied to larger digital cameras, would really add value to those cameras, and perhaps boost their sales to people who would like to move up to the next level of acquiring images."

Keith Cartmell: "Yes, smartphones have dramatically outsold both film and digital cameras. They have also outsold alarm clocks, portable radios, and other devices too numerous to name. But it's a bit of an apples to grapefruit comparison. Many of those phones are forced purchases because the completely adequate in most ways old one cannot run the newest software or is crippled by it, or the network was removed. (It happened to my wife and she's still cranky about it.) Or there is some new gewgaw offered that attracts the attention. (Look, shiny!) For many of them I suspect the camera is just one aspect of the overall functionality, but they didn't buy the phone because of the camera functionality. Maybe I'm wrong. Seems like most of the actual photographers I know are busy switching out their old DSLR for a new mirrorless camera, complete with new lens, and software that can already talk to our new AI overlords. Me? I'm happy carrying around my MMM cameras, metal, manual, mechanical."

Thom Hogan (partial comment): "...The thing no one is talking about in that animation is at the very end: smartphone sales peaked and are in an erosion pattern now. That's the reason why Apple wants to try to sell you a hardware subscription to the iPhone these days (yearly 'free' updates). What goes up, must come down. It's just a matter of time."

Ed. note: The full text of "partial comments" can be read in the full Comments Section, accessible in the footer of the post.

Eamon Hickey: "Miniscule point that nobody but me will ever care about, but the figures in that animation for periods before about 1980 are completely unreliable. The author clearly relied on CIPA historical data, because it's the only such data available, as far as I know. But it counts only Japanese cameras. Millions of cameras from American, European and Eastern Bloc manufacturers are not included. The graph shows 75,000 as the total cameras sold in 1951. That's way, way, way too low. Kodak by themselves would have sold many times that total just in the U.S."

I Don't Want to Farm

I was a Reedie* for a miserable year in the long-lost '80s, and met a Reedie when I was there who had developed a human developmental theory based in Gilligan's Island. The concept was that every human being can be explained by a major and a minor inflection of one of the Gilligan's Island characters. Gender did not have to match. So in his view I was a major of The Professor with a minor of Mary Ann. In other words, mainly distracted and remote, unbalanced in the direction of excessive intellectualism—too "heady"—but with a partially compensating dose of niceness and wholesomeness on the side. I hated to admit it, but....

An alternate theory of aggregated human wisdom is: there's a Mitch Hedberg joke for everything. The one that concerns us today is "Can You Farm?"

The video/stills divide
That's how I'm starting to feel about photography these days. (Oh, you like photography? What do you think of AI?) If you read behind the lines in the recent short interview with Panasonic's Yosuke Yamane published at DPReview (he gives a similar interview pretty much every year around this time), you get the sense he's being careful not to insult still photographers, while at the same time saying that Panasonic cameras will be ever more concerned about video. "Mirrorless, which has a strong affinity with video, is used in a wide range of applications, from professional video production, such as cinema production, to individual video production, such as YouTube. We believe that the need for individual video production will increase in the future." DPReview went on to comment that while there remain people who only take stills, "[Yamane] didn't make it sound like Panasonic would be the company to address that need."

You work your ass off to become a good cook. And then everybody wants you to farm. As Mitch put it, "that's not fair."

Mike

*Here's a recent article by Colin Diver, a past President of Reed College, about the oppressive consequences of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings and Reed's decision to buck the system.

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:

David Elesh: "As a Reedie myself, one of the things I am quite proud of was Reed's decision not to supply data to U.S. News. It may have been the first to make that decision. Stanford followed. I don't know how many institutions refuse now. When I checked the U.S. News formula some years ago, it placed significant weight on the percentage of alumni who contributed. I found that appalling and still do. It has little to do with academic quality. Yes, it is a significant factor in the decisions of those applying to college (and their parents), but so is the success of their athletic teams. At the university for which I taught, I saw that our basketball teams reaching the final four raised applications and fall enrollments by substantial amounts. I don't recall the exact percentage of the increase in applications, but I think it was around 20%. But the increase wasn't evidence of the students' academic ability."

Arg: "I grew up using Polaroid cameras and took perfectly photographic photos with them...only to discover that everyone wants me to go into a dark room and play with noxious chemicals. Don't want to. That's not photography."

Dan: "I’m going to sound like an old man yelling at the sky, but what improvements in still cameras do we need? They are already so good that even old ones far exceed artistic demands. Perhaps making then more fun to look at, fondle and use would actually be more effective at selling more units. Video is the next horizon and improvements there would be visible and marketable."

Peter Cameron: "I have little interest in video and, to he honest, I don’t even know if the video function worked on most cameras I’ve owned. Over the last 20 years I’ve probably taken fewer than 20 videos and most of those were B roll for the video department of the company I worked for. I realize wanting a stills oriented camera is niche these days, but I do appreciate manufacturers that let you reassign video buttons to other functions (or at least let you disable them so you don’t accidentally end up shooting video)."

Stephen S.: "For anyone chasing views/engagement on Instagram, it has been true for a while that the best way to do that is to forget about posting photos, and instead post short videos. That's right—Instagram is not for photos anymore."

A Service to the Art

ChrisC wrote: "Now that you have ordered a [monochrome] conversion [for your Sigma fp], Fuji will announce a monochrome model within the next month.  :-)  "

Let me just admit...that I'm actually afraid of this! That shows how hypersensitive I have become after being a camera-maven most of my life. There have been various rumors that Pentax in particular will finally introduce an affordable monochrome model. You'd think that after waiting since at least 2006, I'd be pretty well convinced that such a thing will never happen. But Chris is right: the only thing that would be worse than it never happening would be that it will happen right after I order a sensor conversion! And karma being karma....

I'm kidding. Kind of.

Actually, not really. I still do hope Pentax or some other maker will come out with an affordable dedicated mono camera. Because it will be good for everyone, not just me. It will be a good thing to have available for those who want it. Even if they are few.

Because we must not lose sight of the essential incompatibility between the interests of the camera companies and our interests. In many ways we're aligned. But what they want is to make money. What I have always hoped for is for all photographers to have whatever they need to do their work. That's the important thing to me. Those two principles have a lot of overlap, but they diverge at the fundamental level.

I probably got conditioned to this by the Great Yellow Father—the old blue-chip Kodak of days gone by. There used to be a tradition in American business that profitable areas of a company's portfolio would be used to subsidize unprofitable services for customers. With Kodak, the mighty profit centers—color negative film and long rolls of paper for automated processors—subsidized a huge range of other products and services from which the company earned little, from B&W papers to the Kodak Process Thermometer Type 3 to a range of instructional books to the poison hotline. The overarching principle was that the company wanted to make plenty of money and it wanted photographers to have whatever they needed to do their work. But as American business schools turned ruthless, the latter goals increasingly got thrown out the window across the board. In the '70s and '80s it was an article of faith that the mass market in cameras subsidized the professional lines for the small minority of photographers who needed serious gear. No longer. The "mass market" these days is made up of cameras in smartphones provided by computer companies. And those companies could not care less whether serious photographers have what they need to do their work or not. They leave that entirely to the cameramaking companies, which are foundering*.

It's still what I care about. I still hope all photographers have what they need to do the work they want to do. Even if they are a small minority. Make no mistake: the first company that makes a good but affordable monochrome-sensor camera might not make money. But I will honor them for doing it. Because they will be doing a service to the community of dedicated photographers and to the art of photography. It will mean that another small subset of us will have what we need to be free to work, and that's always good.

Mike

*"The English language does not care if you are happy or sad. It is oblivious to your shrill entreaties for an orderly and sensible vocabulary. As proof of this supreme indifference we need look no further than the words founder and flounder, for no language that cares about its speakers would ever allow this kind of semantic cruelty to exist." (Merriam-Webster, "Can a Ship 'Flounder'? The difference between 'flounder' and 'founder.'")

Book o' the Week

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

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

B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Randall Teasley: "The thing I tell myself whenever a new camera appears is this: There's nothing about this new camera that makes my current camera any less capable of producing good work. That sentence has saved me thousands of dollars and a great deal of angst over the years."

Markus replies to Randall: "It took me a long time and many €uros to come to that conclusion...."

Did I Leave Fuji, or Did Fuji Leave Me?

Several readers have noted that I've kind of drifted away from Fuji in the past couple of years. I don't shoot with mine very much any more.

But did I leave Fuji, or did Fuji leave me? I sometimes think it's the latter. There have been plenty of signs recently that Fuji, like other manufacturers, is changing its products to go after videocentric shooters. The switch to a "flippy" screen with the X-T4, although perhaps not a deal-breaker for a sensible person, was at least a tell-tale. The change left me cold. I don't like that style of viewing screen. And it was especially disappointing because I always thought the viewing screen of the X-T2 and X-T3 is the best implementation of that feature anybody ever designed*. Anybody. Ever. And they threw that away. Recent X-H[x] cameras are larger and/or heavier than the original X-T1, more oriented toward extreme performance and either professional users or users whose deepest engagement with photography takes the form of comparison shopping for specs. Not impressed. Lastly, recent lenses have been tending toward larger, more expensive "statement" types rather than the small primes we originally liked.

Note that I'm not setting out a case against Fuji. I like Fuji. I still like Fuji. And since I still have two bodies and a more extensive set of lenses than I've ever owned for any digital camera, nobody can say I've left Fuji behind. But on the other hand, the things I liked Fuji for were:

• The handy, portable bodies for "AdAms" (advanced amateurs) and enthusiasts;
• The classic pseudo-retro dials 'n' buttons gestalt;
• The compact primes;
• The unapologetic emphasis on stills.

Now they seem to care about video shooters more, they're making lenses more like the newer 33mm ƒ/1.4 rather than the characterful, old-school 35mm ƒ/1.4 I love (360 vs. 187 grams, bah!), and the X series has joined the megapixel wars. And starting now they're apparently going to be in a dither about which of their X lenses are 40-MP ready. (:Eyeroll: along with the "bah humbug.") They seem overly anxious to compete with all the FF cameras that dominate mindshare now. Maybe they need to remember Mitch Hedberg's turkey joke.

I'm not saying Fuji shouldn't do what they're doing. And of course a lot of that original goodness is still in there. But it seems to be a subtly different company than they were eight and a half years ago when the X-T1 came out. On the one hand, Fuji went its own way by sticking to APS-C and medium format and skipping over 24x36 (a.k.a. "full frame"). But then, it also has seemed very insecure in that it's been trying to create APS-C cameras that can sorta-kinda compete with FF. The latest move, aping Nikon and Sony, of splitting "high speed" and "high resolution" versions of the same body, is in that spirit. I mean really, 40 MP? Why, when you already offer 100 MP in a larger-than-FF sensor?! Stop racing. You already won.

I never thought I'd say this, about this company in particular, but what Fuji needs is a clearer internal mission statement.

"Somebody needs to tell the turkeys, 'man, just be yourself. I already like you, little brother! You do not need to emulate the other animals. You got your own thing going.'" —Mitch Hedberg

Mike

*Herbert ("Burt") Keppler, the longtime editorial director of Modern Photography magazine whose monthly column was essential reading for photo dawgs and gear geeks in the pre-internet era, warned people like me about this, in an article I searched for in vain for many years and could never find again. He pointed out that the more cameras you review, the more times you will encounter cameras that got one particular feature perfectly right...and then you'll have to watch that perfect implementation vanish beneath the waves again, because everyone (well, except Leica—you can still buy an MP brand new, to this day) moves on no matter what. He's right, it's true. (And don't be a nit, don't buy an M-A.)

My memory is that the article featured a drawing of a "Frankencamera" that incorporated all of the features Burt had loved from many different cameras he had tried over the years. I think I'd have to hire a researcher to find the darn article again.

-

Book o' the Week

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

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

Affiliate Link to B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "I'm with you on some respects, Mike. Specifically, about putting the flippy screen on both X-H2's. My hope was one of these bodies would keep the three-way articulating screen of the X-T2/XT-3/X-H1. Anyone who has ever tried to use a flippy screen when shooting Architecture or real estate with the camera mounted on an L-bracket on a tripod knows that the L-bracket prevents the flippy screen from being able to 'flip outwards' in landscape orientation, or upwards when shooting in portrait orientation. My guess is Fuji caved to all the 'online reviewers' who kept slagging them for not having a flippy screen. The same applies for the orientation toward shooting video now rather than stills. That being said, I personally really like the somewhat larger, more robust camera bodies of the X-H series. It makes it easier handling the camera when shooting a large tele, e.g. the Fujinon 200mm ƒ/2, especially for motor racing, sports, etc. As I know, and several of your other TOP readers who are working pros and shoot with the X-H1 know, its a very good body for pro work. Rugged, robust, reliable and durable."

[Ed. note: for the full text of "partial" comments, see the full Comments Section by clicking on "Comments (#)" at the very bottom of every post. You can also click on the post title, which has the same effect of adding all the comments to the bottom of the post.]

Dogman: "Somebody once said, 'If it's good, really, really good...they'll stop making it.' What attracted me to Fuji was the Leica-like handling of the X-Pro and X100 models along with their relative simplicity. Gone. At least the X100V hasn't completely gone to hell, but the X-Pro3 is a travesty. I hope my X-Pro2 bodies last forever. I've given up hope that Fuji will ever again make anything for me."

Alberto Bengoa: "I disagree with this take that Fuji is leaving behind their original philosophy. In my opinion they are expanding it, though; with the new X-H2/s they have higher performance/megapixel cameras, and their latest set of lenses are truly great optics. But they have not stopped making the smaller double-digit X-T's, they still have the E line of cameras, they still have the Fujicrons, they very recently updated their excellent and tiny 27mm ƒ/2.8 . None of that has gone away.

"Yes, I lament the flippy screens, but apart from that there's no other brand (I'd wager that there has never been any other brand in the history of photography) that provides such a configurable system—you can use the same excellent optics in a very small package, a rangefinder-like optical-viewfindered body, an old-style SLR-like body, or a high performance modern DSLR-like body. Or a combination of those. It's unparalleled variety, quality and configurability.

"I went with Fuji a decade ago (a Canon expatriate) and I have never regretted my decision—I just got an X-H2s and it's an astounding camera, that works wonders with the same lenses I have been using since my first X-M1 (and that was a small camera, speaking of portability and variety)."

Stan B.: "Most car companies that introduce a nice compact will always spoil it by making each successive model progressively larger. Fuji should have concentrated on getting their autofocus down before adding size and features. They are now larger than many FF mirrorless bodies and making larger, more expensive lenses to very questionably compete with their larger sensor rivals."

Chris Kern (partial comment): "Seems to me Fuji is expanding its product line in an attempt to expand its market—i.e., in order to appeal to people who are trying to make a living from photography. I don’t envy the surviving pros, but from everything I’ve been reading many of them need high-speed autofocus and frame rate as well as video. As an amateur who was drawn to the “old Fuji” for precisely the reasons you mention, as well as for their compact zooms with excellent image stabilization, I don’t get the impression the company has abandoned me at all."

Jim Arthur: "I found a trove of Keppler articles at mikeeckman.com. If you can remember an exact phrase from the article it might help with your quest.

Bridgekeeper: What... is your quest?
Arthur: To seek the Holy Grail.
Bridgekeeper: What...is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Arthur: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Bridgekeeper: Huh? I—I don't know that. Auuuuuuuugh!

Mike replies: A great scene. Pity there are whole new generations who don't know Monty Python.

By the way, a small claim to fame: I took an English course called "Epic and Romance" at Reed college, and actually managed to convince the professor to take the whole class on a field trip to see "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." There are some accomplishments in life of which one remains lastingly proud.

Rand Adams: "You hit a nerve. Fujifilm’s pandering to the vlogger crowd with the implementation of the 'flippy screen' chaps my hide. I agree 100% that the original tilt screen implementation is brilliant. In fact, the X-T3 is the 'end of the line' for Fuji for me for exactly that reason. I bought the little X-10 and in many respects it is a wonderful little camera, but the screen implementation is so off putting that I have to 'get over myself' every time I pick it up."

Mike replies: That was about the way I felt. The flippy screen and also the demise of the EC dial on the X-H1. I was crestfallen (what is a crest and how does it fall, anyhow?) when the X-T4 came out. I knew it was the inflection point that marked the parting of the ways. Ah, Fuji,

How [did] I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43)

And yet,

Thou hast prevaricated with thy friend,
By underhand contrivances undone me:
And while my open nature trusted in thee,
Thou hast slept in between me and my hopes,
And ravish'd from me all my soul held dear.
Thou hast betray'd me. (Nicholas Rowe, Lady Jane Grey (1715), Act II, scene 1, line 235 ff.)

Some might think that hyperbolic. (Comedian on XM Radio the other day: "I got a massage and a pedicure. And I got to spend some time in the hyperbolic chamber—and it was A-MAZ-ING!!" The audience didn't laugh, but I did.)

Patrick Pope: "Now that Fuji has split the lineup into the X-T and X-H series it would be nice to see the X-T series return to its roots of a stills-oriented shooting experience while the X-H becomes the modern, hybrid option. Unfortunately rumors of the X-T5 don't seem to imply that will be the case. We should know in the next couple days."

Zave Shapiro: "You're so right. For me it was the exposure compensation dial. Shooting in the gloom of dusk? No Problem. Shooting high-key? No Problem. I now have X-H1's (old guy needs IBIS) and can set up a mediocre equivalent. But you know, Mike, the latest Miata has no glove box, no spare tire and it takes six entries to erase a radio station from memory. The feature explosion is infecting many products."

Mike replies: Yes, you are so right, the ND "MX-5" falls somewhat short of pure, alas. A sports car should have no radio. Anyone knows you're supposed to listen to the sound of the engine.  [:Laughing emoji with crying eyes:]

Kenneth Tanaka: "I hear ya, Mike. Over the past 10-ish years I’ve become broadly invested in Fujifilm’s terrific camera systems. My X100V remains among my favorite and most enjoyable to use fixed-lens cameras, beating even the Leica Q2 in my book. My little X-T30 is perhaps my favorite 'street' camera. Coupled with the little kit 18–55mm or the fast 23mm there’s little it can’t catch. My X-T3 is perhaps Fuji’s best APS-C still camera but the more video-centric X-T4 is a bit of a disappointment to me, even with its IBIS. (I’m also not a fan of the fully-articulating narcissism screens.) My GFX100s is a marvel, but it’s in a different conversation.

"Admittedly my own photographic interests and needs have meandered from Fuji's X system since the pandemic. I'm spending more time making fewer, but more deliberate, more complex, and larger images now. I've no interest in video although I can clearly see that video is where Fuji and others needed to go for any growth. The digital still photo market is mature and saturated. So I’ve no real interest in any new X-bodies or lenses. In fact, just last month I sold four Fuji X lenses that I just wasn’t using. Like you, I wish Fujifilm well. But I have all their products that I need or want for the foreseeable future."

Have Camera Manufacturers Fallen Victim to Audience Capture?

Sroyon wrote: I feel like Leica (for example) has to some extent fallen victim to audience capture. The basic M design was so revolutionary, and attracted such a loyal following, that they're condemned to repeating it forever and ever with only minor tweaks allowed.

In the post below this we were talking about "audience capture," which theportal.wiki defines as "a self-reinforcing feedback loop that involves telling one's audience what they want to hear and getting rewarded for it."

Berny Belvedere wrote about a term called "intellectual capture":

It is very important to me to be able to avoid intellectual capture.

By that I mean putting myself in a position where I have to professionally censor what I really believe due to investors disagreeing with it, or advertising people not approving of it, or an audience not appreciating it. It is of paramount importance to me to avoid ever being in a situation like this.

That’s not because I have particularly explosive beliefs. It’s because the lifeblood of a writer is being able to think and write freely.

That used to be called being "co-opted" in the 1960s, if I'm not mistaken. If you were co-opted, you sold out—joined the oppressors, abandoned your higher principles, self-censored, etc.

The business of business is business
As far as business is concerned, it seems obvious that "capture" of some sort is part of the very nature of enterprise. You give your audience what they want because they will buy it. And since the goal of business is not something amorphous like "doing good" or "having integrity" but simply making money, there's a pretty coarse test of concept right at hand: if something sells, you were right, and if it's a dud in the marketplace then it's a fail. You are pursuing customers who will pay, and you'll give them whatever they will want to pay for. So of course businesses are "captured" by their audiences—at least, that portion of the audience that actually buys their stuff. And they want to be captured.

There are a lot of ancillary issues around this that have intermittently interested me, and we can't parse them all here. As you know, though, an issue that preoccupies me these days is complexification—the continual addition of features in order to vie for customers. As soon as one manufacturer adds GPS or dual card slots or slow-motion video or built-in Bluetooth or whatever, then everyone has to do it, and they get slagged in reviews if they don't. And no matter how many features the makers lard into their infernally cunning little computerized cameras, the mavens always laser down on the ones that are missing, which might include things nobody knew they wanted two years prior. The overall result has been that most consumers now just sidestep cameras. Because instead of making life easier, the ever-increasing trend toward extreme capabilities just makes things too complicated for mere humans to master during the shortish lifetime of any given product. When was the last time you read and mastered a whole camera instruction book? I used to do it as a matter of course. Now it's too much like taking a semester-long college course.

I personally think that cameramakers have painted themselves into a corner in this regard. They've catered to the neverending nattering of the nabobs until even experts don't know all the capabilities of their own devices. "Audience capture" has led them into making products that are fundamentally unappealing except to an ever-shrinking pool of hardcore mavens. The public, meanwhile, given a viable alternative in smartphones, is drifting away. Most potential buyers of cameras don't even know what an ƒ-stop is, or that best focus in a fixed-lensmount camera is a plane parallel to the plane of the sensor. How are they going to master 28 pages in the IB on AF setup?

I do agree with Sroyon's point about the M, although I like the camera. But here's the funny thing: given my preoccupation with complexification—more accurately put, my yearning for radical simplification, for purity—I actually think Leica is the one company that has not been captured by its audience. It's the only company that has the cojones to go against the crowd and make fundamentally simple cameras.

I wish it weren't so, because Leica is also our industry's only maker of Veblen goods, the one company that frankly caters to the carriage trade. Nothing wrong with that, except for me, because I can't/won't participate. I've only bought cameras that cost close to $3k twice in my life, and both times it just drove me crazy to have that much cash hanging from a strap.

You know what they say: Oh well.

Mike

P.S. I once actually painted myself into a corner. In an outbuilding at my grandparents' summer cottage there was a chauffeur's room upstairs, because in the early days of the automobile it took three days to drive from Indianapolis to northern Michigan and my great-grandparents hired a driver to cope with the crappy roads and the incessant tire changes. (This would have been in the 1900s and 1910s.) Back then they stayed all summer and went home in the fall. And of course the driver had nothing to do once they got there but to hang out and wait for the drive back. So the little room above the workshop was for him to live in. I suppose it was only used for that purpose for a few years; roads and cars improved dramatically in a relatively short time. Anyway I and my friends used that room as a hangout, briefly, in my early teen years, and I found a can of green enamel down in the workshop that was still good, so, in the spirit of decorating the hangout, I happily painted the floor of the chauffeur's room green, ending up in a little aperture in the corner that led to the space under the eaves. After realizing what I had done and heartily experiencing the feeling of being an absolute dunce, I had to walk across the freshly painted enamel, repairing the footprints as I went, and then leave my now green-soled tennis shoes in the sun to dry so I wouldn't inadvertently leave a green footprint somewhere I oughtn't. So the expression "painted into a corner" has long been a vivid one for me. An older cousin later moved that old outbuilding down the shore to his own property. I don't know it for a fact, but I'd wager that little upstairs room still has a green floor.

And by the way, one of the things I once treasured that is now lost is a scrapbook my great-aunt Margie made when she was a girl that documented one of those three-day trips to the cottage. There were a lot of pictures of punctured tires being changed at different locations. The car was an open touring car with a tonneau cover of a type that was common then. A Pierce-Arrow similar to the one above. According to family lore, my great-grandmother was the first female in Indianapolis to learn to drive; she made her chauffeur give her lessons on the little winding roads of Crown Hill Cemetery.

Book o' the Week

Home Fires Volume II: The Present. There is of course a Volume I: The Past.  TOP reader Bruce Haley has produced documentary work relating to conflict, humanitarian crises and environmental/industrial/land use issues for 30 years. He received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the ethnic civil war in Burma.

These book links are a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Sroyon [OP]: "Ooh that's an interesting way to look at it! I like simple cameras too. I have the good fortune of owning an M3; I love it to bits.  :-) 

"I recently did a few photoshoots with dancers: DSLR, multiple speedlights, wireless trigger, the works. And the technology is marvelous, no two ways about it. But today I was taking available-light photos with a manual-focus Minolta SLR, just for myself. Sweet delight."

Dogman: "You know those camera reviews? The ones that list the 'Pros' and 'Cons' of the camera under review? Yeah, those. I always read the 'Cons' first. They always tell you what the camera doesn't have. That's what I'm interested in. I like not having all those things."

John Camp: "I agree with you that some of the over-elaboration of cameras can get silly, but I've never understood you obsession with 'simple' cameras. I have four complicated cameras (wait: when I think of it, I have five; no, six.) But they're all designed to be made simple. Yes, you have to thumb through a complicated instruction guide, but still: they can be made simple for whatever your particular definition of simple may be. Given the likelihood that no two photographers are exactly alike, the question becomes, which photographers would you leave out with your simple camera, because you don't value what they do? Astrophotographers, maybe? Or wildlife? Or bird? Or night shooters? Or those who prefer square aspect ratios, or 4/3? Or those who prefer legacy lenses because they like them or because it's all they can afford, and need to be able to shoot manually instead of with automation? How about sports shooters who value bracketing? What about people who do three or four different things, and value one-button assists to switch modes? I mean, really, who would you choose to leave out?"

Mike replies: I hear objections like this a lot, and in some ways of course they're valid. But they're also like saying, "when Leica made the Monochrom, they ignored the needs and wishes of the millions of people who love and crave colors!" Or, about the Miata, "aren't you forgetting about people who have large families? Which children would you suggest they leave at home?" You get the drift. Just because a few cameras are pared-down and purist doesn't mean others can't be "do-everything." And if some cameras were specialized tools in one way it doesn't mean others can't be specialized for other uses.

Put another way, I've never said all cameras should be simple.

Kenneth Tanaka: "There's a vast chasm between 'audience capture,' as it's been portrayed here, and customer responsiveness. The former is a symptom of a psychiatric / emotional disorder that compels attention seeking...with no direct reward other than the momentary attention of an 'audience.' The latter is a business tactic usually deployed in order to retain / attract customers who pay for your products or services. Each of the top camera manufacturers has proven to be responsive to their customers; that's why they're 'top' companies. And that especially applies to Leica, whose customers tend to be very involved with the response loop."

kevin willoughby (partial comment): "Re 'I actually think Leica is the one company that has not been captured by its audience,' I respectfully disagree. Leica did try to build a different / better rangefinder camera: the M5. The Leica M audience rejected the camera. Leica had to drop back and issue a more M3-ish design: the M6. The audience rejected the M5 and demanded the M6. Leica did what the audience demanded."

Nikon SLR 1959-2022

The Nikon Single-Lens Reflex may be dead at 63.

Nikkei Asia is reporting this morning (links below) that Nikon will withdraw from the DSLR market. However, it says "production and distribution" of existing DSLRs will continue. This would parallel the end of film SLRs, when the last F, the F6, was kept in production for many years as NOS (new old stock, i.e., a last production run stockpiled and continuing to be sold as new product), the last of its noble breed, while at the same time no new F models were forthcoming and no more production of the F6 was being contemplated. If this report is based on what will become an official statement, it will mean we have already seen the last Nikon DSLR, and that there will be no more new ones to come, ever.

This may well be non-news, however. Our friend Thom Hogan, who probably knows more about Nikon than anyone at Nikon does (I'll say I speak tongue halfway in cheek, to avoid offending either party) takes a dim view of the Nikkei article, noting (links below) its lack of attribution and the mishmash of recent and older information as well as of specific and general pronouncements. (It highlights how good it is to have Thom as a Nikon analyst, gadfly, and expert; would that Rob Galbraith were still doing the same with Canon. Ah, nostalgia.)

Nikon's true all-rounder, the affordable D7500

The current Nikon DSLRs, ranked in order of desirability, are:

The D850 (pro FX/full-frame, $2,800);

The D7500 (prosumer DX/APS-C, a bargain at $999);

The D500 (pro DX/APS-C, $1,600);

The D780 (prosumer FX/full-frame, $2,200);

The D5600 (amateur/consumer DX/APS-C, $800 with kit lens);

The D6 (specialist professional FX/full-frame, $6,500—don't buy unless it's a business expense and you can depreciate it); and

The D3500 (entry/cheapie DX/APS-C; with kit lens, $650 that probably won't be money well spent).

Get 'em while you can. An era may be slouching to an end.

Here's the article on Nikkei Asia; here's Thom's commentary. Read them in sequence, but read both. Despite being at odds, it's quite possible they're both broadly right.

Mike
(Thanks to Dean Johnston)

UPDATE: Nikon has posted an apparent denial of the Nikkei report without naming Nikkei. (thanks to Wolfgang Lonien for this). The denial reads, "There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards [sic]. Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR. Nikon appreciate your continuous support."

Consider, however, this Ward's Auto headline from 2008: "GM Denies Reports Saturn Faces Elimination in New Restructuring Round." The article begins, "A report that suggests General Motors Corp. may kill its Saturn brand is 'wild speculation,' the auto maker says." (GM killed its Saturn brand in October of 2009.)

Or this:

September 2015: "Withdrawing from the camera business is not true and there is no official plan to stop production of cameras and lenses." —Samsung official statement.

April 2017: Samsung withdraws from the camera business.

Or this:

Olympus Corporate Strategy statement, November 2019: "For Imaging, however, we currently have no plans to sell the business. The task is therefore to stabilize and strengthen its market position. To achieve that, we...have already established a clear and exciting product roadmap for the coming months and years ... Imaging is and will continue to be an important technology and innovation driver for our other businesses." (Olympus sold its imaging business in June 2020.) 

I'm just sayin', is all I'm sayin'. I'll stick by that last sentence in the post.  —MJ.

Book o' the Week

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Our link to B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Ken: "Being a current owner of D850 and D500 cameras and having previously owned a D7500 (and having used all of them extensively), my personal experience is that the D500 should be number two on that list after D850, and at the very least, it should in no way be rated below a D7500, price notwithstanding. In my opinion, the D500 is a better value than a D7500, even if it was at twice the price."

Alex Mercado: "'…Nikkei has learned.' I won’t claim to know Nikkei's guidelines for business trends articles, but this story is stating a de facto standard; they learned there is no further development of SLRs and posted an article about it. A cry for critical journalism feels like pedantry here. I doubt the global economy is contingent on this market sector, let alone this business trend article. I don’t think we really need a source at Nikon for this. Or a press release. The lack of DSLR representation on Nikon’s home page backs the story. This may be a hard pill to swallow for Nikonians holding out for the Dƒ Mark II, but alas, the SLR preformed exceptionally to a respectable age of retirement. Farewell dear single lens reflex."

darlene: "Today [Tuesday  —Ed.] is George Eastman's birthday. To announce it may be the end of the Nikon SLR era is interesting to read on this particular day. 

Bill Tyler: "'Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service...,' but notably, not R&D."

[Note that in the following Featured Comment, Thom responds to some comments found in the full Comments Section. As an aside, it's true that I don't usually allow commenters to respond to other commenters, but there's an exception—when they're being helpful. Thom is definitely being helpful here.  —Ed.]

Thom Hogan: "A lot to comment about.

"1. 'Nikkei has learned.'

"This isn't a gold standard. It's not even a defensible standard, as it can't be assessed. A reputable news organization's standard would require something along the lines of '[publication] has learned, based upon interviews with a top executive who provided the information only if they could remain anonymous.'

"The reason for this is simple: you're identifying where you got this information from in at least a general fashion. Nikon is a top-down managed company. The only place such a decision would have been made is at the top. Indeed, I've heard from several lower level Nikon managers, but I don't trust their statements because they weren't backed with anything that indicated that a decision came from higher up.

"2. The FTZ adapter was a half-hearted attempt.

"I'm a little surprised that Nikon didn't include AIS indexing, though I suspect that was because of the fear that someone would attempt to put a pre-AI lens on the adapter and break something. But I'm not surprised that we didn't get a screw-drive motor, as it has power implications and complicates the focus performance. Until we got the Z9, battery life has been a bit too shy to consider adding a constant power draw.

"3. DSLRs are [not desirable]

"Sure they are. To some people for some things. The D500, for instance, is still in the top three APS-C cameras you can buy today, and only recently eclipsed in any way (by the X-H2S for sure, and in some ways, arguably by the R7). And most people denigrating the D6 haven't actually used one. It's strange that Nikon didn't manage to tell anyone what the key difference in that camera was, but all of us using it can tell you: state-of-the-art focus, with superb user control. Those dedicated AF sensors are huge and fast (and yes, quite different than the D5 ones).

"4. Nikon denies the article

"As Mike implies, they didn't. Note the disconnection in Nikon's 'denial' between development and production. Nikon is still producing, selling, and supporting DSLRs, for sure, and I don't see that changing any time soon. But nothing was said about continued development.

"Bottom line is that DSLRs will be abandoned by Canon and Nikon at some point. The pertinent question to ask is whether there is any continued development going on. In Canon's case, I'm pretty sure that there is no new DSLR development going on (based upon off-the-record discussions with a couple of people who might actually know). In Nikon's case, I'm not so sure. I've heard rumblings about one project, though not in the last two months. That 'last two months' is critical, by the way. Nikon top management makes decisions just prior to their fiscal year end (March 31) and then begins pushing those down the chain during and after the financial and shareholder meetings that follow. So it's possible that Nikon has made a decision to stop DSLR development. However, I wouldn't think this would be conveyed to a 'Nikkei staff writer.' The old Nikkei would have reserved passing on such information under one of their top reporters' bylines, and alluded to where the information came from."

Rob L.: "If you have to end a line, having the D6, D850, D780, and D500 stand as the last examples of the breed is a fine tribute. I love my Zs, truly love the Z glass, but I’d still like to have a D500 to glue to my 200–500mm. It would have been nice if Nikon has been able to produce one final DLSR and recognize the breed formally; but the pandemic plus a shifting market won. Thankfully they weren’t too late to adapt—or at least, I hope they weren’t!"

What's the Most Amazing Development of Your Lifetime?

Allan Stam wrote: "The number of industries that the iPhone has destroyed is really quite extraordinary. Pocket cameras, calculators, stand-alone GPS, and literally dozens of others. One wonders how much of this Steve Jobs anticipated or if he would be just as surprised at the scale and scope of the smartphone's success and impact."

Mike's comment: Years ago, my brother Charlie and I had a game: what's the most amazing development of your lifetime? We were talking generally about "stuff," not big political changes, ecological considerations such as the population explosion, or deep scientific advances.

He's double-boarded in internal medicine and pediatrics (pretty close to a general practitioner), and at one point he chose antidepressants. One of my earlier choices was the reliability of cars: pre-1969 cars were very unreliable compared to today's, 1969 being the cutoff given to me by the crusty old guy at my local car mechanic shop who knows more about cars than he could ever impart. I remember when I was very young, younger than 10, our father would take the car to the gas station, which also doubled as a "garage" at that time, a.k.a. a mechanic's shop, to have it "checked" prior to a driving trip from Milwaukee to Indianapolis...a trip of only 273 miles (440 km). Cars then seldom lasted past 100,000 miles, and "tuneups" for cars with carburetors had to be regular starting at, what, 5,000 miles was it? Today, a humble Toyota Corolla, which I would argue is just as high an expression of human ingenuity as the fanciest Ferrari, sells for a very reasonable price and can last 20 years and go 300,000 miles with pretty minimal maintenance.

In the '90s Charlie and I had to make an exemption for the internet—the question became "what's the most amazing development of your lifetime apart from the internet?" At some point it was the personal computer. I think Charlie picked his iMac G4—the one set on the base that was half of a sphere—a little past the turn of the millennium.

But sometime around 2010, our answers converged: the iPhone. Charlie named it first; I was a late adopter. It's so obviously the answer now that we haven't played the game recently. (Another game we play is, "who would you like to be President if you could appoint anybody you wanted?" Elizabeth Warren!*)

(iPhone 13**)

As far as we picture-people are concerned, it's just plain lucky that "the camera" (I'd say camera system) in smartphones just happens to be one of the differentiators that matters to people when they are making their choice of what phone to buy. That's the only reason why so much development is concentrated on the built-in cameras and their functions. It could just as easily not be the case.

Of course, this—the whole fundamentally bizarre situation—is a haphazard development, in the way that most of culture is haphazard rather than rational, sensible, and planned. I mean, would anyone plan that enormous gas-guzzling pickup trucks and giant seven-passenger SUVs would become the de facto personal conveyances in non-urban America, in an era of rising gas prices and the threat of climate change? That's madness. Would we have planned that fast food, which is arguably the least healthy food ever regularly eaten by any cohort of human beings in the history of the planet, would become ubiquitous in the first era in which "what's good for you" even became a consideration in food choice? (The "health" of food didn't really start to be rationally framed as a concept, scientifically at least, until about the 1890s.)

Much of culture is actually the opposite of "rational, sensible, and planned." It comes about by chance, because of a hodgepodge of random factors that can't be predicted or managed. That certainly extends to cameras. Tell me: in 2012, at the peak of the digital camera boom, would you have agreed with the statement that the ultimate "lowest common denominator" we should all agree to be stuck with would be a tiny point-and-shoot or digicam built into another device, with fixed lenses, the advantages of which would work partly by falsifying the integrity of the lens image? I doubt it. But that's the way the various forces of culture, economics, and happenstance have dictated things would head. (No, we're not there yet. We're only heading that direction.)

Then again, I certainly wouldn't have said that cameras should be excessively expensive, hyper-complex, grossly overfeatured electronic devices built around sensors the size of a 135 negative, either! Or that most "good" lenses should be greatly oversized, greatly overpriced, and greatly overweight compared to, say, the OM Zuikos of the 1980s or the Leica M lenses of the 1960s.

But really, most "deep enthusiasts" of photography have always gone their own way, and have always existed on the fringes of the popular market. We adapt because we have to, but we force the existing choices to adapt to our needs, too. Because it's the work that's important. And if you can do your work better with an iPhone, then power to you, my brother, my sister. It's all good.

+  =  +  =  +  =  +  =  +

I've just posted all the Featured Comments to the past five posts, so go back and catch up with those if you want. And I'll try hard to keep up with comments better this weekend. The question before the Commentariat is: what's the most amazing development of your lifetime? You can relate it to photography if you would like to, but you don't have to. For extra credit, don't answer the question about who should be president. (Unless it's the correct answer, Elizabeth Warren.)

Have a nice weekend! I'll be posting on Sunday this week, and not on Saturday or Monday. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: I'm told my latest article for newyorker.com will be published next Thursday! Very exciting. It's a more major article than the last one. I'll post a link, if and when.

Mike

ADDENDUM: I meant to mention, seconding what Allan wrote, that after I got my first iPhone—first smartphone—the Apple iPhone 4s, which I think I bought in 2012 when the blog really took off—I had the idea of making a photograph of all the things that it replaced. I pictured a little heap of objects that would fit on the kitchen table—an old Ma Bell phone, a camera, a flashlight, a calculator, a Rolodex, a stack of LPs, a GPS navigation device, paper books, board games, a light meter, a calendar, maps, a clock, a timer, a stopwatch, a dictionary, a compass, a radio, a news magazine, etc. Of course, you know the problem...actually the heap would be so big you wouldn't even be able to see everything in it, and even then it wouldn't include everything the smartphone can reasonably be said to substitute for. I'm not an "app chaser," and I have relatively few of them on my phone, but one of them is an altimeter—I got it to measure the height of the hill I live beneath—and one I use all the time can scan plants and instantly identify them. Another can listen to music and identify the song and artist (although my friends Kim and Bob stymie it sometimes). The list goes on, as you know.

*That's my answer, not Charlie's. Well, it's very far from his answer. Come to think, I don't actually know what his answer would be today—it's a game we play prior to elections. I'll have to remember to ask him. Maybe I'll just pretend his answer is Elizabeth Warren—he doesn't read the blog regularly, so he'll never know. Heh heh. But I suppose if he comments I'll have to feature it. Although if he says Ted Cruz I'll have to delete it on the grounds that he's insane. Sorry, just amusing meself here.

**I cannot tell a lie, this was Potatochopped. I moved in the clump of grass at the bottom from another exposure. Dutiful disclosure.

Book o' the Week

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Our link to B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

mike r in colorado: "I see a few comments have already been posted. Skipping them to not be influenced. The whole computer hardware industry is my number one pick. And if that's too easy, the integrated circuit is probably specific enough. I work in computer software, so maybe I'm more jaded to the amazing-ness of software, but I consider it a much less 'under control' part of the industry. I can think of several other amazing things during my lifetime—global communication, medical imaging—but many of them circle right back to being based on computer hardware."

Dillan: "I'd agree that it has to be the iPhone, or more generally the smartphone. I'm not picking it for the camera in my pocket, though, for I don't use the camera for anything other than visual note taking. No, for me it's the internet in my pocket. I have access to the world's information anywhere. It is a dream come true for an inquisitive person like myself."

Nikhil Ramkarran: "Like most other people, for me, it would definitely be modern mobile phones. But a decade or so ago, after dark one evening, I opened the door to our darkened living room and saw my two-year-old daughter sitting on the couch with her mom's iPad lighting up her little face, and her four-year-old brother leaning from the side so he could see the screen also (yes, I got the picture). It struck me right then (and I've never forgotten) that this slim, portable screen, with all of its entertainment, information and power, was just a mundane, routine thing to these children. What would be their most amazing lifetime development?"

Malcolm Meyers: "I'll forego all the 'obvious' answers and throw a vote in for podcasting. It is a relatively simple technology yet it allows pretty much anyone to start broadcasting their thoughts and ideas to the whole world via their own, personalised 'radio station.' I have to say that I enjoy a lot of film photography podcasts and I've listened to people who, ten years ago, I would never have had a chance to listen to."

Phil: "My Dad, born in 1923, once told me that he had always thought the most amazing invention during his lifetime was inter-continental air travel. He first flew from Vancouver to England in 1972 and it took less than 12 hours, including a fuel stop. He couldn't get over that for a long time, but then when I and his various grandkids started showing him what we could do with our smartphones, he changed his mind. He was quite computer-savvy, so the internet itself was something he had already absorbed, but I remember him describing how a visiting grandkid declined a ride home because he knew exactly when the bus was coming. When he showed the transit app that had real-time tracking for the bus stop down the street, Dad was just amazed.

"As for me, I'm just a bit younger than you, and I distinctly remember during a trip to Paris in 2012. We decided to go for a quick walk in the evening to shake off jet lag, and, it being a 'quick walk,' I didn't bring my camera; but then I saw an entrancing scene along the river with great light so I pulled my Nexus S out of my pocket and took a decent souvenir shot and it just struck me what an amazing thing it was because, at the same time, I was also using maps I had downloaded to the 'phone' to navigate us to and from the hotel!

"I still walk around with an actual camera most of the time but I often feel sheepish that I'm just being 'old' and if I only spent a bit of time to learn how to get the best results from the camera in my phone (a Pixel 3), I would be better off. As long as I bring my reading glasses, that is!"

Rich Beaubien: "In the 1960s as a teenager I got interested in Amateur Radio (ham radio). For the most part the radios were made using vacuum tubes as a principle ingredient. The big thing though was to learn about and use FETs (Field Effect Transistors). I just remember being fascinated by FETs when they first appeared in QST (QST was the magazine for amateur radio users. QST in the lingo means 'calling all stations.')

"The idea of a field-effect transistor came in 1926 from an Austro-Hungarian physicist, Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. The first working FET was invented in 1947 by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

"The FET was first constructed of Germanium which is chemically similar to its Periodic Table neighbors silicon and tin, called a metalloid. Metalloids are a type of chemical element that has properties both of metals and nonmetals. When transistor R&D was opened into the public domain, business discovered that silicon had improved electronic properties, was cheaper, and worked just as as well. The first commercial product was the Sonotone hearing aids (1952). Followed by the first transistor radio (1954), and, in the early 1960s, portable TVs.

"Without the invention of the transistor none of today's electronics (those faxes, radios, CD players, phones, computers, digital cameras, etc.) would exist. It is the most important invention of the last 100 years."

Omer: "Passenger jet aircraft travel. Before COVID, more than two million people traveled by plane every day in the USA alone. It astonishes me that I can physically travel from Tucson, Arizona to Dhaka, Bangladesh in roughly 35 hours. Try that on the internet."

Philip Byford: "For me it is chemotherapy. So far I've enjoyed an extra 17 years of this wonderful life (I'm now 72) since a wonder drug destroyed my leukemia back in 2005. Cheers!"

Mike replies: Hard to argue with that!

Gaspar Heurtley: "My grandfather was born in 1901 and died in 1986. The Wright brothers' first flight was in 1903, so he was born in a world where planes didn’t exist yet, and in 1969, when he was about your age, he got to see the man walking on the Moon. How crazy is that? It always impressed me as a kid thinking how all that could happen in just one lifetime."

Mike replies: I've written before that, to me, the most amazing single thing in human history is that there were only 66 years between Kitty Hawk and the Moon landing. Even after long familiarity it still astonishes me. Of course, that happened in our grandfathers' lifetimes rather than ours.

Jon Erickson: "My sentimental favorite amazing development is the computer mouse, thanks to Douglas Englebart and the Stanford Research Institute, first commercialized by Apple in the Macintosh. The technology is foundational to how most of us interact with our various computing devices, including smartphones."

Paul: "Solar cells. These brilliant thingies are going to save us all, if we actually choose to employ them properly. Wind turbines are also high up in the list."

Ian Parr: "'Most amazing development of a lifetime' is apt to change at the drop of a hat with the pace of technology being what it is. For today, ignoring fundamental science as per Mike's rules (so ruling out the semiconductor transistor and DNA sequencing), I'd have to say the James Webb Telescope is probably the most amazing thing of my lifetime. It's due to start publishing images and science data in a couple of days, on July 12th. I suspect that even the wildest dreamers of the Apollo era would have struggled to foresee such a device being launched into space, let alone what it's going to study (imaging the origins of the universe, dark energy, exoplanets, etc.). Amazing by any criteria, and, for a bonus point, heavily linked to cameras and imaging."

Bryan Geyer: "The 'Most Amazing Development' in my lifetime initially sparked on December 23, 1947, when the first transistor was successfully demonstrated at Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, NJ. It was a crude point-contact germanium device, and its lengthy evolutionary course has now absorbed some seven-plus decades, but that event marked the birth of a technology that now allows us cram some 40,000+ equivalent transistor-type devices (as integrated silicon MOS-FET digital switches) into a modern smart ’phone. It's the 'Amazing Development' of this semiconductor brain that makes all of those iPhone applications feasible. P.S.: I personally entered the semiconductor trade in March of 1957, as a sales-engineer trainee. I was employed by the fledgling Semiconductor Division of Tung-Sol Electric Co., a company then notable as a producer of vacuum tubes."

Ernest Zarate: "After reading through the comments here and giving some thought to it, I’m hard pressed to come up with anything more amazing than the smartphones of today. Not only their capabilities but also the ubiquitousness of them in our society. Yes, the Internet preceded smartphones, and without the Internet, smartphones would be a lot less 'smart.' But, the smartphone took the Internet to entirely new levels it would not have reached without smartphones.

"As an aside, my two sons (ages 12 and 14) seem nonchalant towards their phones. They use them, but infrequently. The 12-year-old has to be reminded to charge his, and it is rarely on his person, typically languishing on its own on some shelf or other. The 14-year-old uses his a bit more, but even then, mostly as a phone (!!) to communicate with his friends. Their mom and I don’t say anything one way or the other (unless they’re heading out the door over to a friend's home or to the movies). I know it’s a small sample size, but I wonder if there is a trend by the youngest to not get hooked into constant attention to those small screens. Curious…."

Jim: "Fiber optics. Without fiber optics, you would not have the Internet, wireless phones (especially smartphones and 5G), CATV/streaming and just about every other technology that depends on communications. Fiber optics made communications incredibly cheaper and better enabling of all sorts of other technological advances. Every future advance that needs communications will depend on our worldwide network of fiber. When I first learned about fiber optics at Bell Labs in the late '70s, I realized it was going to be big. I became an entrepreneur in the field and let's just say it has made my life comfortable."

Mike replies: There's a great display and docent presentation about fiber optics at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. When I was there, the docent giving the talk and media presentation recounted how he looked up one day to see one of the three inventors of fiber optics sitting in his small audience. He got excited just telling the story. Apparently all three patent holders (Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz) still live in the hills surrounding the town of Corning—or did at that time anyway. That was maybe 2014 or '15.

More on Those $6,000 and $7,000 Cameras

ChrisC wrote, yesterday: "I’m not sure if this is something you have already posted about, but to add to your comments on economics: Boots Theory.

Cool.

Here's The Boots Theory, in case you don't want to follow that link: "The boots theory comes from a passage of the 1993 novel Men at Arms [by the late Sir Terry Pratchett], the second novel to focus on the City Watch, in which he muses about his experiences of poverty as compared to his fiancée Lady Sybil Ramkin's conception of poverty:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

I've never heard of "Boots Theory" per se (thanks for that) but I've written about that very thing, for instance in the first paragraphs of this post from 2015. Three points by way of commentary: I heard once that the MacArthur of the MacArthur "genius" grants made his fortune in insurance, but that he self-insured his own cars. It might be apocryphal that he said "insurance is a ripoff" by way of explaining why. Next point, consider that my father, when we moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1970s so he could work for NASA, paid $200k for our house in Maryland just across the D.C. border (Zillow "Zestimates" its current value at 11 times[!] that), and he paid cash. (He was Dave Ramsey before Dave Ramsey was Dave Ramsey.) Then consider that for most middle-class people, the no. 1 or no. 2 expense of their entire lives is the interest on their house. As I said in that 2015 post, "the reality of having no money is that it costs more. Not 'more' in any diffuse general sense, taking into account intangibles like limitations on life choices and personal satisfaction: it just costs more in plain ol' money." The third point: my grandfather, an investment banker whose lifestyle I like to semi-humorously describe as "Downton Abbey at one-quarter scale," used to say you should "buy the best." When I was a young teenager, I asked him why, and he said "if you buy the best you only have to buy it once." There's Boots Theory right there...

...And a bit of advice I probably should have followed when it came to cameras!

And believe me, I've often thought about what might have been. I actually wrote a manifesto-style little essay in the 1980s declaring that I wanted to be like Eugene Atget, and continue doggedly with one technique for my whole life, except in my case it would have been what I called my "Photo 101 technique": a 35mm camera, fast B&W film, and smallish prints reproducing the whole negative out to the blackline:

Photo-101-technique prints. Paper size is 11x14 inches.

At the time I couldn't even image how such an ordinary technique would be come obsolescent, although of course now it has. So what might my life have been like if I had stretched for that out-of-reach M6 at Industrial Photo off the beltway in Maryland back in 1984, and then kept using it and actually fulfilled my little manifesto? I might still have it today, and be using a newer one or an M7 or something. Would I still be at it?

If I had bought an M6 and three lenses back then and kept using it, I would have been way ahead of where I actually am. I can't estimate how much I've wasted spent on cameras since then, but $20,000 is way too low an estimate.

Of course, it's a moot point, because I turned out to be a writer—a magazine/Web writer—rather than (primarily) a photographer. I didn't know that's what was going to happen, at the time. (Funny, though, I still consider "Photo-101 style" B&W my "real" work. I've never been able to completely "own" digital inkjet prints in color as being wholly "me.")

My point here is smaller than you think
And an answer to Thom and everyone else who suggests used gear: it's been my observation that a certain subset of hobbyists prefers used gear, probably because it's a financial win: it's cheaper, still useful, and satisfies an urge for thrift that's important to them. But by "hobbyist" I certainly didn't mean "rank beginner." They're not hobbyists. Yet. A hobbyist would more likely be someone who already has a number of older cameras (the older they are, the older their old cameras). I would counter the "buy used" approach with another subset you're very familiar with: those who are so eager to own the latest thing that they'll discard superseded models that are still in great condition and still have a lot of life left in them. (Y'all know who you are. Haven't we all done it at least once or twice?) The ones who own an X-Pro2 and just have to have an X-Pro3 as soon as it appears. That's a big group too.

I won't ask Thom how many times in his career he himself has been satisfied to buy a 5-year-old camera for his professional and personal work. It's not a fair question, as I well know, because we have to write about the newest gear and we need to be familiar with it, he much more than I.

Several readers took me to task for creating a litany of "apex" cameras and not considering the reasonably-priced alternatives that are good enough. D B wrote: "Re: the question 'are hobbyists being priced out of the hobby,' I agree with Ken T.: you (we) are not. What the heck do you (we) need a Z9, A1, or GFX 100S for?"

But that's an interesting aspect of this: how can an enthusiast site survive if it doesn't consider the best gear in the field at least occasionally? But it's been getting sort of pointless. If I write about a $6,000 camera body, the portion of readers with a real interest in the product is just so small, for the simple reason that most of them would not spend that much on a camera even if they can. I know I wouldn't. Some of you would read it anyway and might even enjoy it, but, well, there's that "what has this got to do with me" reaction that I worry about, too. The equation has gotten more...fraught, let's say.

All I was really saying with the post is that the trend to five- and six-thousand dollar camera bodies might be putting a damper on enthusiast participation in the hobby, merely because those prices close off what is conventionally considered to be the most interesting and most desirable end of the market to a greater proportion of us—that is, the total set of "all hobbyists" or all enthusiasts. I do think that's true to some extent, notwithstanding a.) those who don't desire the apex cameras, b.) those who are satisfied to buy five-year old cameras, and c.) the existence of capable intermediate-priced models. (I'm also saying that those models wouldn't exist at all if we lived in a more egalitarian society, but that's just theoretical musing.)

As John Camp wrote, "Your complaints are reflected in virtually every hobby that equipment freaks have come to dominate—hi-fi, photography, music, horse competitions, computer gaming, sporty cars. But at the extremes, except perhaps for a very, very tiny professional minority, it's all Veblen."

Anyway, I don't mind if you disagree with me. It was actually a smaller point than many people took it to be. It's just a bit of a practical problem for me these days, that's all—since I ought to be making smart decisions about what to write about.

Mike

Book o' the Week

 All About Saul Leiter. The Amazon writeup for this book says "Photography lovers the world over are now embracing Saul Leiter"—and oh boy, is that ever true of me—"who has enjoyed a remarkable revival since fading into relative obscurity in the 1980s." One of my favorite photographers. Beautiful photopoems. Saul's Early Color (which you can still get for around $300) was one of our all-time bestselling book links. (I bought two, one to thumb and one to not touch!)

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Link to B&H

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Nick: "When I started reading about cameras and photography in earnest, ca. 2009, I coveted the near-top models: Not the huge, pro-grade cameras, but the higher-end enthusiast cameras, like the Nikon D70. I talked myself down a bit ('for the time being,' I said) and bought into Micro 4/3 for a fraction of the price. I figured I'd sell it and get a 'real' enthusiast camera in a couple of years.

"Now, 13 years later, my income is higher, but I've stopped reading gear sites almost entirely. I just made my first gear purchase since the pandemic started: A $320 used OM-D E-M10 Mark II to use as a second body. My last purchase before that? A $320 used OM-D E-M10 Mark II to replace a Mark I that died a week before a scheduled trip to Japan. I make a good bit more now (even inflation-adjusted) than I did then, but between the rapidly increasing prices of enthusiast gear and my contentment with what I had on hand, my covetousness dwindled to almost nothing and my priorities shifted. My (still limited) disposable income goes to getting to new places to take cool photos (see above about the trip to Japan), not on the gear with which to take them. From my point of view, the lack of focus around here on gear, especially stratospherically-priced gear, is definitely a feature, not a bug."

Mike replies: I'll tell you what else pertains: consistency. Once you've done 13 years of Micro 4/3, you might want your new pictures to continue to look like your old ones. I understand this isn't always the case; sometimes people are eager to make a break and create work that has a new look. But sometimes we don't want that.

Stephen S.: "I have owned thirty Micro 4/3 camera bodies, from the bottom of the range to the top, all purchased used. Regardless of how much they were used (going by shutter count and cosmetics,) the factor that most determined which ones would fail was how much they originally cost. The lower-end cameras were far more likely to have shutter failure, command dials that didn't respond, broken battery doors, and LCD screens that blanked out, sometimes at varying degrees of tilt. It seems to me some corners were cut in their design, in order to cut costs. When they were new, it may have had made sense to save several hundred dollars by buying a lower-end camera that could produce the same images, even if it was lacking a few features. However, if buying older gear used, it now only costs a little bit more for the higher-end models, and in my experience they are far more reliable. With warranties expired, and in some cases even paid repairs completely unavailable, this is an even more important factor."

MIKE: "Boots Theory? So true, but instead upgrade to Furniture Theory. Do we imagine that the rich have to go out every two or three years to replace their IKEA furniture? Or do we conjecture that the family probably hasn't bought a new table in centuries, not since great great great great (you get the idea) grandfather bought the Chippendale table that's still in the dining room. My Dad always said the Rich live cheap."

David Lobato: "Several years ago there was an article about tripods. Photographers often bought cheap ones to start. Then when its limitations arose they bought an incrementally better tripod, and so on. Turned out that it was much more cost effective to initially buy an expensive tripod."

Mike replies: It's about the only thing I've done right. I bought a very expensive Gitzo Studex in maybe 1982, used it for 30 years, then replaced it with a very expensive carbon fiber Gitzo Mountaineer which I'm sure is my last tripod.

A Short History of Unique Success

Did you know that..."The Biggest Camera Manufacturer in the World Is…Fujifilm"?

So says Mike Smith in an engaging short article published yesterday at PetaPixel.

To get to that title you have to agree not to call smartphones "cameras," but we can take their point. It's that Fuji has sold 50 million(!) Instax instant cameras, and not only does that make it the largest dedicated camera maker (there, let's call it that) in the world, but it means, "strangely," in author Smith's words, that "the success of [Fuji's] Imaging Division is largely because of film. In fact, Fuji’s digital cameras may actually be making a net loss[,] with film sales cross-subsidizing their development and production." In other words, Instax sales could be subsidizing the X and GFX lines all of us are so familiar with!

And here's an interesting little factoid the article points out that I had never thought of before in exactly these terms...Fuji never actually made its own completely in-house DSLR. It leapfrogged from modifying Nikon bodies directly into mirrorless.

The second X-100, an X100s (2013–14)

Instax flies under the radar for me. I pay it scant attention. I might have done one or two posts on it over all these years. Good thing Fuji is more attuned than I am.

The tale Mike Smith tells—of adroit business acumen leading into a unique path to success—squares with something I was told years ago by a leading independent commentator who had close ties to Canon. He said that a high-ranking contact at that company had told him confidentially that Canon was only afraid of one other company, and that it was neither Nikon nor Sony...it was Fuji. That comment predated the X100 in 2011 by quite a few years and might have coincided with the nadir of Instax in 2004, I don't recall exactly. It was somewhere around that time, anyway, early- to mid-2000s.

Prescient.

So, if you accept Mike Smith's analysis, not only did "the Kodak of Japan" succeed where the real Kodak could not, but it also has succeeded at Polaroid's game where the real Polaroid could not. Interesting. There's no other company like Fujifilm, that's for sure.

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: a Calvin and Hobbes Treasury by Bill Watterson. I just read a dire, apocalyptic article about mental health during the pandemic, so I decided on trying an "off topic" book rec that is slightly lighter than our usual fare. If you don't appreciate it, don't worry, it's a blog. Something else will be along soon.

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Featured Comments from:

Howard Sandler: "The problem with Instax for 'serious' photographers is that it is too successful. Fuji has done so well making millions of lo-fi inexpensive Instax cameras that it has no incentive to develop more full-featured models.

"I tried Instax after Fuji discontinued their wonderful versions of peel-apart films FP100c and FP3000b which fit the old Polaroid Land Automatic cameras. I've gone through the Instax Wide 300, Instax SQ6 (square) and Instax Mini 90 (full featured). The Instax film, though more contrasty than even slide film (maybe three stops dynamic range), has nice colour and doesn't fade. It scans nicely. (A gratuitous example of a selfie carefully set up with the Instax Mini 90 is below).

"Yet, the Fuji Instax cameras are plastic toys with only two or three zone focus, no built-in capability to add filters or off-camera flash, and little to no manual control. There are some third-party options for cameras, but I find them very expensive and of questionable reliability. There is also an even smaller niche of hacked frankenfuji cameras where the backs of Fuji Instax cameras are grafted onto cameras such as the Mamiya Press series."

Alex Mercado: "The Instax Mini Evo is the camera I recommend everyone take a gander at. It is truly a tiny marvel."

Dennis Ng: "It is quite fun, especially the larger version. The instant appeal with development and the one-of-a-kind feel. Tried it. There are occasions that it is the best."

Can't Win For Losing

This is hilarious: According to an article Gordon Lewis found, a study by an outfit called Electronics Hub analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of tweets collected in November of 2021, using machine learning to determine if the tweets had a 60% or greater chance of being a "complaint." They used this to create a series of lists of the ten most complained-about devices in the world. One of those types of devices was cameras.

And guess what—my Sony A6600 ranked as the sixth most complained-about camera! Sixth! Do I have taste in cameras, or what? Hey, at least I'm in good company.

Only a mother------ could love it

On the good side, the article (on PetaPixel) added that "According to the study, cameras actually have the lowest complaint rates for any device category." Suggesting that Electronic Hub's bots don't hang out on DPReview.

The two most complained about cameras were both GoPros. Heck, I've complained about those and I've never even seen one.

Here's the original article on Electronics Hub, which analyzes many classes of devices. You can see the rest of the list there.

Thanks to Gordon...I think.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

Ernst Haas: New York in Color 1952–1962. "When Haas moved from Vienna to New York City in 1951, he left behind a war-torn continent and a career producing black-and-white images. For Haas, the new medium of color photography was the only way to capture a city pulsing with energy and humanity. These images demonstrate Haas's tremendous virtuosity and confidence with Kodachrome film and the technical challenges of color printing."

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Today at B&H Photo

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

Don Spady: "Interesting article, but does not mean much if you don't know the number of 'whatevers' sold. If the A6600 was the number one camera sold in the world, and the sixth in complaints, that's not so bad. If it is number 50 sold, and sixth in complaints, not so good. You need rates, not absolute numbers.

"Me, I have the A6500 and a NEX-6 and am very happy with both."

Tom Burke: "Interesting. I have a Canon 90D, which is the 9th most complained-about camera on the list, and I have to say that I have seen a number of complaints about it on a camera-specific forum that I frequent. It might be of interest, because all is not what it seems!

"The issue that seems to be a problem is the much higher photosite density on the 90D's sensor (it's a 32-MP APS-C camera). That's much higher than on previous Canon higher-end APS-C cameras—e.g. the 7D mark II and 80D (both 24 MP) or the original 7D which was 18 MP. Many photographers who used those cameras, very successfully, for wildlife, birds in flight and action photography have moved to the 90D (in the absence of a 7D mark III) and have found difficulty achieving sharp focus on the critical part of the image. In many cases the first response is 'there must be something wrong with this camera.'

"The reason, it seems, is that the 90D requires changes in technique, accurate lens/body calibration, and in many cases the highest quality lenses in order for those photographers to achieve results of the same standard as they were used to. Once this is understood, they amend their technique (and possibly buy new glass!) and get the results they expected all along; better, probably, thanks to the higher resolution (which if nothing else allows for greater cropping) than on their previous cameras. But, oh, the endless complaints that pop up in the meantime!—which makes the 90D look like a 'much complained about' camera."

Keith B.: "I frequently work with professional broadcast camera people, and among that group no camera or brand of cameras are more hated than GoPros."

Arg: "'My camera is soooo sick.' Complaint?"

Mike replies: Very good point. I meant to mention this, but I also think it's problematic to take a snapshot of only one month. Interest in specific cameras ebbs and flows, as DPReview's "Most Popular Camera" sidebar makes clear.

'Stop Switching'

[Comments have been added.]

That's the advice of Thom Hogan of ByThom.com, who says your New Year's resolution should be to never switch camera systems again.

He makes the case for it. Charting some of the real switching dilemmas of the past, he concludes, "there's now no clear benefit. All you're doing is showing your angst and wasting money."

I also noted this sentence in passing:

"Oh, you switchers all tried lens adapters, because that seemed to be a solution that kept you from buying new lenses, but I've been amused as person after person attempting that trick quickly tires of it and succumbs to new mount lens buying."

He has further comments along that line, but let's not steal his thunder—you can read his article for yourself. I merely wanted to point out that this has been my observation over many years too. That's why I'm always advising people to make sure that all the lenses they want are available in the lensmount of the camera system they choose. Every time I say it, I hear from those few people who are happy using adapted lenses, bless 'em, but that doesn't change the fact that most people who count on using adapted lenses "quickly tire of it" once they actually have to take pictures that way.

Thom makes specific prescriptions for users of specific brands, too, in which the phrase "just get better at using it" keeps recurring. Sobering thought...that we should just get better at using what we already have. What a concept. The guy's no fun.

Another good recent Thom post: "2022 Is Going to See Changes."

Makes me want to...switch
So, when you read this post, was your reaction a.) to think of course I'm not going to switch, I already have what I want, or b.) to anxiously start thinking about switching again?

I'm in group "b," but then I'm a nut when it comes to cameras. Too old to change now*.  :-)

Mike

*Not really, but that's my handy excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Book o' the Week

American Geography by Matt Black, a great name for a photographer but a terrible internet name, impossible to search. Stan Banos calls American Geography a "handsome, well thought out and put together book." Matt's work is outstanding.

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

Ben Marks: "I had to laugh at Thom's idea, because it contains an unstated assumption that the relevant question is 'either this or that' and not 'why not this, but also that?'

"And let me just tip my hand here: I have Nikons and Leicas, a Fuji XPro-1 and an Olympus OM-D, a Pentax K1 and.... Well, you get the idea. And yeah, I am a bit of a photo gear hoarder. But the mortgage is paid and the kids aren't hungry, so....

"I do endorse the idea that no single piece of gear will be the one that makes you happy. But being able to take pictures in lots and lots of different situations, and with lots of different 'looks'? That has been shown, historically, to make me very, very happy. So when a piece of gear comes along that promises to add to those capabilities? Let's just say I have my eye on you, Nikon Z9."

Steve Biro: "If the purpose of one's involvement in photography is strictly to produce images, if one is a professional photographer or if one is attempting to do photography on a tighter budget, then what Thom writes is absolutely correct. But if photography is also an enthusiasm, if one is also a gear enthusiast or if one becomes bored periodically, one system isn't going to cut it. Over the years, my personal solution was to simultaneously run two systems that were different enough to make it interesting. I would gradually update bodies (usually as a camera maker would bring out the next generation) and add lenses to keep them reasonably current. For a while, when Micro 4/3 came out, I was running three systems. I could afford that at the time but not as I head for retirement. I'll probably go down to one main system (likely Fuji) with one full-frame body and two or three lenses to go with that.

"But if practicality is paramount, Thom Hogan has it right."

John Krumm: "I find that I yearn to switch every so often. The first switch was the hardest. It gets easier from there. I'm neck deep in keywording, re-organizing, and occasionally re-processing all my digital images since around 2008 when I bought an Olympus 420 and a 14–42mm kit lens. I get to revisit my history of switching, from the 4/3 cameras, then Micro 4/3, then Pentax K1, then Ricoh GRII, then various Fuji mirrorless cameras. Each had their charms. Got my eye on a Panasonic S5, which looks pretty sweet, but I'm resisting so far. "

John Krill: "I switched from Nikon DX cameras to Fujifilm X series cameras for one reason only. I wanted to use prime lenses. Wide to normal. And not the fastest (waste of money). I got them and I love them and the cameras. Especially my current everyday camera, the Fujifilm X-E4. I stopped using the X-Pro2 and it is now my backup. Hell of a backup, no? Anyway, I am very happy with Fujifilm cameras and primes lenses and have no desire to switch to anything else."

Joe Holmes: "I have reached the point where I can't see ever being disappointed shooting with my four-year-old Nikon D850, or my even-older collection of lenses. But to answer your question, yes, that does make me sad. I miss the thrill of new equipment."

Rick Popham: "Thom has an unusually clear-headed approach to gear advice in this age of Internet influencers. But I love switchers! Back in the day when my favorite camera store was still around, and Nikon and Canon kept leapfrogging each other, I got a lot of used Nikon gear in very nice shape. The source was a wealthy dentist who would trade in his gear and switch systems each time one frog would leap over the other. The guys at the store used to call me whenever 'Dr. D.' would start talking about the latest Canon releases (I shot Nikon).

"Nowadays I shoot mostly Micro 4/3, but would really like to trade in my Nikon F gear to try some of the new Nikon Z stuff. I guess that's a big enough change to call it a 'switch.'"

Kirk: "I didn't know that switching systems was a bad thing. I always thought it was fun and kept the process fresh and interesting. I guess I know better now. I wonder what other pursuit we can find to suck the fun out of next."

Mike adds: Kirk has been, um, known to switch from time to time. That's the problem of being a blogger...everybody knows your business!

Zack S: "I have a decent Fujifilm system; an X-T2 and six Fuji lenses which I acquired over a long period of time. Have two different pinholes for it and a zoneplate too, all in Fuji mount. The only adapted lens I have is a Holga lens in a Nikon mount and the adapter for it, but they do not work well together. Never really understood the whole adapted lens thing. When I got into the Fuji system I sold all of my Nikon things to avoid using adapted lenses. After all, what works better with a camera then lenses designed to be used with it?"

Hank: "I shoot a lot with old Leica rangefinders—I have II and a IIIa that I enjoy using very much, and the results, technically anyway, are really top notch. But I also keep my 'old' Nikon FM3a, partially because it really is a much 'better' camera than the Leicas (it does a lot more, more simply), but mostly because I seem to get more pleasing results out of it more often. With digital, I seem to be the opposite—the cameras which do more confound me a little, and they are less enjoyable to use. My little Ricoh GR III (and now GR IIIx) always seem to punch above their weight, and I end up with more interesting shots using them. Maybe it is because I expect less, or maybe because I am just more relaxed shooting them. Whatever the reason, I like 'em!

"All of which means that there is little out there now that appeals to me. I just sold my Panasonic S5. It was an excellent camera, and very good with my old Leica lenses, but never felt 'right.' I see no need to replace it with another camera of its ilk. I am beginning to learn, at nearly 60 years of age, that certain cameras do one thing very well, and once you figure out what it is, you’re golden. It’s a very personal thing, and no reviewer out there has the same needs that I do (apparently!)."

Huw Morgan: "I think the joy is slowly disappearing from the camera market just like it did for the PC market. When technology was advancing in leaps and bounds, switching cameras and computers was fun. Each switch brought a measurable jump in functionality, whether it was autofocus speed, compute speed or portability. Now that we've reached maturity in both areas of technology, a change brings little in the way of any wow factor. Right now, I think anyone would be very hard-pressed to pick a winner between a Nikon z6II, a Canon R6, and a Sony a7 IV. The pain of switching is huge compared to the tiny advantages one platform might enjoy over another.

"On the computer front, I recently upgraded from a 6 year-old desktop with a seventh generation Intel processor to a new desktop with a 12th generation Intel processor. The difference was marginal. Compared to the 'good old days' when Moore's law was in full swing, the upgrade was disappointing. The fun of technology has shifted to other areas like virtual reality and electric cars. Photography is no longer a technology race; it's back to being a profession and an art form where expertise matters more than tech."

Pak Ming Wan: "That comment about the lens adapter is so true. I bought a Pentax-K-to-Micro-4/3 adapter, with speed booster (i.e. it reduces slightly the focal length magnification) and used it for about a week or two. I finished by buying the lens I really wanted in Micro 4/3 (the Panasonic-Leica 15mm ƒ/1.7) and I haven't looked back. I haven't seen any advancements in camera technology that might make me switch. This is also supported by viewing Salgado's exhibition of 'Amazon' in London, where you can see his prints based on 2010s technology or earlier. They look perfectly fine to me."

The Fotomat

[Comments have been added.]

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(Does anyone have a picture I could publish of a Fotomat kiosk back when it was open for business? Something you own the rights to. Apparently that was something almost nobody took a picture of. UPDATE: See this post.)

Only I would start an article with a paragraph in parentheses.

You won't remember Fotomats if you aren't of a certain age. They were small drive-up kiosks in the middle of suburban parking lots where you could drop off exposed film, buy new film (or sometimes get a new roll for free), and pick up your 3R prints 24 hours later—without getting out of your car. Picture a toll booth and you won't be too far off.

The bad old days
It was a good business model, at first: the kiosks took up minimal real estate, required only one on-site employee (apparently called Foto-Mates, although I'm not sure if that was a corporate term or not), and offered a service for which there was consistent demand. Wikipedia tell us the company reached its high-water mark in 1980, when there were 4,000 Fotomats in the USA. Not all that many, considering there are currently 33,295 Starbucks locations.

Fotomat Corporation lasted until 2009, but "One-Hour Photo" minilabs basically killed them off before the 1990s arrived. There was a time, though, when getting your film back in just 24 hours was cutting-edge convenience that beat the competition.

The primary driver of technological progress in consumer photography is largely convenience. I say "largely," because sometimes status/prestige are what drive certain trends. But it's mainly convenience. Fotomat's 24-hour turnaround time was fast when it was new, appropriating business from local drugstores and camera stores where you might have had to wait four days to a week for your prints to be "done." It lasted for a while into the era of the minilab only because one-hour processing was expensive at first. The early minilab machines were extremely costly and owners needed to charge more to make their money back—many of them didn't get it, because the machines quickly became cheaper and competition for the business grew fierce. There was a window of time in there when people got upside-down on their investment in minilab machines and never got right-side-up again. But I digress.

Basically the Fotomat gave way to the one-hour minilab for the same reason that the glass-plate stand cameras of the 1880s ("stand" in that term meaning tripod, mostly) gave way to the box Brownie, and that a perfectly good Canon "digicam" (digital point-and-shoot) of, say, 2005 has lost out to a miniaturized mass-produced module in a smartphone. Convenience conquers.

Not for us
Despite being self-identified as a photographer, I always felt separate and apart from popular trends in consumer photography. I did take six full rolls of 36-exposure color film with me when I went to Europe for four weeks when I was 14, on an inter-school trip (and bought two more rolls while I was there—wow, 288 exposures in only four weeks! That was heavy shooting). I got 4x6 prints back when I came home. And when I was very young I owned a Kodak Instamatic and got back the ubiquitous square prints with the date printed in the border.

But in between the Instamatic and the trip to Europe, most of the work I had done was to get black-and-white prints made from black-and-white film at the Bay Point Pharmacy, where I also eventually worked as a clerk and delivery driver. As with color prints, if a picture didn't "come out" you could request a do-over, for free, and I asked for so many do-overs that eventually the Pharmacy instituted a special rule just for me: only one re-do for B&W. I later learned, to my astonishment, that the Pharmacy's B&W prints were made not in some industrial high-volume facility somewhere (as was the case with the Fotomats), which is what I always assumed, but by a local guy with a darkroom in his basement who was doing a little extra work on the side. I wish they had told me that; I would have just cut out the middleman and gone over to his house so I could tell him what to do in real time. I'm sure he would have loved taking directions from a 12-year-old. On the other hand, I might have learned darkroom work a lot earlier than I did.

Back in those days, my memory is that hobbyist photographers and up—artists, pros, etc.—anyone more involved than family snapshooters—thought of themselves as separate and apart from the normal ordinary consumers. We didn't practice photography like everybody else. I never once had a roll of film developed at a Fotomat. I just didn't think of things like that as being for me.

Wrong envelope
When I was poking around the Web looking for Fotomat pictures, I came across a number of stories. One woman who worked as a Foto-Mate said that whenever anyone asked her where the film was developed, she would tell them that there was an underground photo lab right under the kiosk, under the parking lot, and she claimed most people believed her. (Actually the film was processed and printed offsite.) One person had a startling tale that somehow I can't quite see as funny: apparently a woman dropped off a negative to have an enlargement made (a "big" print in those days would have been 8x10), and she left the order in her husband's name. Apparently, unbeknownst to each other, her husband also dropped off a negative for enlargement at the same Fotomat around the same time, and also used his own name. When the poor woman returned and opened her package fully intending to see a group picture of her happy family, she was confronted instead with a pornographic photo of her husband with another woman. Wrong envelope.

That must have been in the '70s. By the '80s, photo processors were cracking down on dirty pictures and people had to be careful what they turned in for processing.

Left over
Parking lot Fotomat kiosks were later repurposed for a wide range of uses. One I saw a picture of became the tiny storefront for a fortune teller; others sold cigarettes or coffee. I saw a picture of one that became a watch repair shop (sort of doubly anachronistic, right?). I also saw a picture of one painted pink and white with a sign that said "Condom Hut." Is that really a purchase you want to drive up and make right out in plain view? Not if you were the guy in the incriminating 8x10, I would guess.

Here's an old ad for the company on YouTube. Digital is really much—much—more convenient.

Mike

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP), or Leica SL2 (47 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

craig: "The store I used from to time was lifted up out the parking lot by a tornado."

Mike replies: Ah, but I want to know where it landed, and whether it killed a witch.

Lawrence Plummer: "My one (sad) memory of Fotomat was the day I eagerly picked up a roll of slides that I had wanted in a hurry. Each mounted slide consisted of half of one frame, followed by the half frame of the next shot!"

Nick Reith: "A really great post Mike. Nostalgia, humor and photo history all combined to put a smile on my face. As the British would say, 'Well played!'

"P.S. I wonder if the marriage survived?"

Mike replies: History does not record....

Roger Bradbury: "No Fotomats in England, but I used to get my films done at the local photographer's shop in Buckingham, where I worked. That business had been established in 1863 though it's gone now, and the building still has its North light skylight and window below it for the upstairs studio."

H Bernstein: "This post is The Online Photographer at its most online photographic. Congratulations, Mike, on TOP’s anniversary and for the distinctive blogging voice that you provide the online photographic community. I say community because this blog fosters that feeling of togetherness and conversation. It being too scarce nowadays makes your blog even more appreciated."

Andy Munro: "Wow. Nostalgia. That made me think of Truprint (postal prints UK based so not sure if they were a thing elsewhere). Ah, the anticipation of the prints arriving in the post was a really lovely memory. All gone now. Thanks for that diversion."

Centeredlens: "I grew up near the Fotomat/Condom Hut in Knightsville, Rhode Island. It's no longer there. I remember as a kid the parish priest making a thunderous condemnation of it from the pulpit, saying the Condom Hut was an abomination. (He was later defrocked for abusing his nephew.)"

Thomas Basista: "Back in the day I used Fotohut so much I was on a first name basis with the young woman clerk. She later modeled for me when I tried to do 'serious' portrait work. That kiosk is still there 50 years later, now selling coffee. Now that I think of it, I am surprised that the little building still is standing."

Bob Rosinsky: "There was a Fotomat a couple blocks away from my high school. A popular and pretty blond senior worked there on weekends and after school. As it turned out, she was selling bags of marijuana on the side. She eventually lost her job. I don't remember seeing her at school after that."

Dave: "What a 'blast from the past.' We usually just dropped our film at the drugstore because it was less expensive than Fotomat. Our parents grew up during the Depression, so the extra cost of Fotomat wasn't worth saving a few days."

Jim Palmer: "Today, after having read this yesterday, I noticed that the drive-up coffee shop in town was, in fact, a former Fotomat. I have driven by it for two years and it hadn't occurred to me it's origin. Thank you."

Sean: "A drive-up condom kiosk. Where the road meets the rubber."

Ed. adds: *Rimshot*

Jim Arthur: "I worked at a Fotomat in college but never heard the term Foto-Mate. It was a great gig because my booth was in an odd location in a fairly small town so I rarely saw a customer. I got paid to sit and study. I never had any film developed by Fotomat (which seems crazy now), and looking back I wish I had taken more photos during my college days. I’m sure they would be entertaining today. The haircuts alone would be hilarious. Back then, everyone’s hair made them look like a street punk from an episode of 'Starsky and Hutch.' Here’s Tommy Chong on That 70s Show referring to a picture of a Photo Hut as art. Tommy Chong’s performance here also reminds me of college.  :-) "

Mike replies: I really wish I had taken pictures in college.

Patrick Perez: "I used to work at a Fotomat in the 1900s and it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. In a five-hour shift, I'd interact with people for ~15 minutes. I brought in a stereo receiver and bookshelf speakers and listened to music all day while I read for pleasure. It was a time in my life where I frequently would find myself saying 'I read this really good book yesterday' meaning cover-to-cover."

An Ideal Format

[TOP publishes on Mon./Wed./Fri. Comments are posted the following day.]

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It's difficult to say when the "birth moment" of the 4/3 format happened. An Olympus engineer named Katsuhiro Takada chose the size and shape of the format in 1999; Kodak and Olympus announced their intention to cooperate in 2001; and the 4/3 website (it was more often written "Four Thirds" then) launched in 2003. That was the year of the first SLR designed from the ground up for digital, the Olympus E-1. As of PMA 2006, the Four Thirds Consortium consisted of Olympus, Panasonic, Leica, Kodak, Sigma, Sanyo, and Fujifilm(!)—although, notably, membership in the consortium did not constitute a commitment on the part of each of those companies to produce commercial products in the format. Fujifilm never did. Micro 4/3, the world's first system of interchangeable-lens cameras in what eventually became known as "mirrorless," launched in 2008.

The 4/3 format was almost identical in size to the 110 film format introduced by Kodak in 1972: an imaging area of 13 x 17.3mm compared to 13 x 17mm for 110.

Of course, in the early days there was a pitched battle between the 4/3 format and what became known as APS-C, a slightly larger format size chosen by both Nikon and Canon. (Canon's exact standard was slightly smaller than Nikon's.) APS-C, which stands for "Advanced Photo System—Classic," was one of the three sizes of the ill-fated APS film format. The Advanced Photo System had been launched as a consortium spearheaded by Kodak in 1996. Kind of interesting that the first major format battle in digital was between two contenders that were so close in size to two film format sizes, both developed by Eastman Kodak.

Same as it ever was
I was an early booster and supporter of the 4/3 format. It seemed about right to me. It offered the best balance of all factors—greater d.o.f. than 35mm film and the larger formats; more efficient usage of the image circle of lenses; greater effective telephoto "reach," which had been greatly prized by 35mm photographers*; and the possibility of convenient compactness in both cameras and lenses. All with enough area and "room for pixels" to ensure good image quality.

Of course, the vagaries of the format's journey through the world was up and down, and 4/3 encountered a number of obstacles along the way, some real, some perceived. I won't go into all of those issues here, as it would constitute a long history lesson, much of which is known to this site's core readership anyway. Mostly, of course, 4/3's big problem was that it was always opposing more powerful interests and market forces.

Surisingly, given all the water that has flowed under the bridge since then, I still consider 4/3—now Micro 4/3—as probably the ideal digital format when considered objectively and logically. Considered, that is, from a sort of "ivory tower" perspective, divorced from status-and-prestige and marketing issues and market perception—but not exactly as it is, only as it might have been. Imagine if a.) sensor development had been logical and b.) Micro 4/3 was the main focus of sensor development for still photography. (Right now there's a new Micro 4/3 sensor in development, but it's almost completely aimed at hybrid cameras and really won't have much effect on still photography at all, at least as far as I can tell.) If things had proceeded logically, no phone camera would have more than six or eight megapixels at the most and we'd mostly be using cameras with 4/3 Foveon sensors right now! Well, that's a future that never was. Being sensible and logical isn't the most important factor in sensor and camera design and development—it might rank fifth or sixth on the list.

But enough of my opinion. What's the ideal format to you?

Mike

P.S. Related reading: "The Remarkable Persistence of 24x36"

*I was fooled there, however—many 35mm film photographers prized long teles not so much because they needed them (which was what I always assumed) but because they were big and cool and expensive and hence, displayed status.

Book o' the Week

Our National Monuments: America's Hidden Gems by Q.T. Luong. Just out! Brand new. Publishing isn't easy. Our friend QT (Tuan) Luong tells me that his new book will have to sell 6,200 copies out of a print run of 7,500 just to break even! And that's not including the labor and time it took to make the photographs. Fortunately, the predecessor book, Treasured Lands, has done exceedingly well. It has won 12 international awards and is now in its 6th printing.

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One Serious Sentence

[Comments have been added.]

-

Man, I wish I had a dime for every minute I've spent trying to keep up with Olympus's perambulations, permutations, and perfidies over the years. I wish I were better at it, but the more I read, the more confusicated I get.

Boiled way down: big accounting scandal in 2011, when its own CEO became a whistleblower; smaller, but still big, bribery scandal in 2016; and then, after 84 years, Olympus Corp. exited the camera business in 2020 after losing boatloads of money for, like, a decade. Olympus Corporation prospers but no longer makes cameras. The camera and lens division, under new ownership, became OM Digital Solutions (OMDS)...but continued branding the cameras and lenses "Olympus." Now, if I read everything right (every document seems larded with branding blather—example below—which further confusicates me), the company is still called OM Digital Solutions but, because nobody can remember that name—I can't, anyway—it is branding its "lines of interchangeable lens cameras and lenses, compact digital cameras, audio products, binoculars, and other services" (what else does it do? Isn't that everything?) with the name "OM System."

Better. I can remember that. I think. "OM System" used to mean the lineup of compact film SLRs (OM-1, OM-2, OM-3, and OM-4, plus variants) and its matching manual-focus lenses (it was a beautiful, and beautifully complete, system, but autofocus, which it didn't have, doomed it prematurely). But I can adjust. I think I still have enough brain cells left.

Small problem: when I Googled the new brand name, I got an Argentinian company called OM Systems (note plural s), or Om Systems (it's not clear) that "provides broadcast equipment to the audiovisual industry." Hmm, isn't that frowned upon, to pick a name that's already taken? It seems close enough to the same business space. You can't re-use names for thoroughbred racehorses; I thought companies were more or less the same way. They must have thought of this, though.

In a way, we have Leica, or, more precisely, Leitz, to thank for the new brand name. What? Well, Olympus wanted to call its first compact SLR the "M-1" back in 1971, but Leitz, which made Leicas, or more precisely Leitz's lawyers, said, hold on there, hoss, our cameras are called M's. So Olympus added the "O" and the cameras and lenses became OM. (But then Leica GmbH did not object when Canon more recently used the name M6. I cannot pretend to understand.)

And here we are. From the OM System press release about the name OM System:

“Break Free”

Time does not stand still.

It does not take excuses or do repeats. The sun won’t ask for your permission to set, a smile comes and goes, and a Falcon [sic] won’t wait for your go-ahead to take flight. When a moment comes, one that makes you feel, you should be ready to capture it.

Since the bird is a falcon, Falcon-capital-F made me think of the Star Wars spaceship, although that's probably not what they meant. And how is it breaking free when you're doing your best to remind people that you are still who you, or rather someone else, used to be? In the video, "Olympus and "Maitani" come together to make the OM. Isn't Maitani...you know, dead?

Anyway I think part of their probation should be that they only tell us the plain facts in plain language and leave all the other stuff out, but I'm just being selfish.

Mike in the role of critic

Of course, the bottom line is, we still love the OM System (the OMDS brand that makes Olympus-branded cameras that aren't made by Olympus, not the old line of manual-focus film cameras...oh, never mind). Because a lot of us either use the cameras and lenses, or used to (I used to), and they have always made great stuff, and still do.

That last sentence is serious.

Mike

Book o' the Week

Photography, The Definitive Visual History by Tom Ang. This is a book, like several others I know of (I'm looking at you, Q.T. Luong) that can't exist—it's too much work to put it together. Which makes it all the more amazing that it does. A brightly-lit shop window for the attractions of photography, a whirlwind tour of people, cameras, and pictures. The author still has time to be an accomplished travel photographer.

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Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Dillan: "Thanks for making me feel better about my lens collection!"

Grizzlymarmot: "The capital F in falcon is directed towards bird enthusiasts. Capitalization of bird names is as much of a passion as optics for them. It was as subtle as the iridescence of the Common Grackle.

Mike replies: Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Thanks.

Alicia King: "Mike, my husband is an avid reader of yours. He recently called my attention to the discussion of bird names related to whether to capitalize falcon or not. I have worked in the field of bird education and conservation most of my career. The rule is that when addressing a family bird name, such as falcon, it is not capitalized. If you name the specific falcon as in Peregrine Falcon then yes it would be Falcon (if you include Peregrine). Another example—eagle. If you say Golden Eagle or Bald Eagle the e is capitalized. If you say eagle or eagles it is not capitalized. Re grackle: Common Grackle is correct, but grackle used alone is not capitalized. The American Ornithology Society and many birding organizations and others are clear on the capitalization of bird names and falcon is not capitalized until it is a specific type of falcon. So I agree with you that the Falcon is a specific name—but not of a specific bird, so maybe it is the Star Wars spaceship.  :-)  "

Mike replies: Thanks Alicia! Interesting that you're coming from a position of deep expertise and I'm coming from a position of near total ignorance, yet I managed to hit the answer that agrees with you. In pool we call that a "fluke," i.e., a great shot that was pure luck.  :-)

David Smith: "I'm appalled by how flimsy many lenses (and other gear, bodies included for that matter) of 'recent' manufacture are. Everthing's made of plastic (excuse me, 'polycarbonate'), irreparable, disposable. I can remember when you could give a lens a bit of a knock, and it would keep on ticking, albeit with dented filter thread, probably fixable. I gave up on 'modern' gear when my plastic fantastic Rebel Ti coughed up a metal screw that blew away the door latch."

Mike replies: I remember a Leica rep who was discussing why Leica lenses cost more. He took a 50mm Summicron off an M camera and flung it like a bowling ball across the floor, where it skittered along until it whacked into the baseboard. He walked over, calmly picked it up, clicked it back on to the camera, and said, "you go on taking pictures."

s.wolters: "OM System. It was only after a couple of days before the penny dropped. The name and logo were already used in this publication. It’s from 1984 (not 1985) and you can get it elsewhere for as little as ten euros. I used Canon FD at that time and later Nikon (D)SLRs but somehow this book, the photos and the whole ‘Olympus culture’ it was breathing always appealed to me. Open this book at random and any page will want you to go out with your camera. With the choice of the name OM System I hope the new company also wants to bring back a similar kind of exclusivity. Or at least they should if they want to survive.

"Leica is a good example. You can recognize them in every small detail in their branding communication. The smaller you are, the more coherent your presentation must be. Otherwise you’ll stay unnoticed. The clumsy video with Japanese managers speaking blah blah in bad English is not a good start. But the first OM System branded product seems as good as ever."

Bill Tyler: "If the gauzy rebranding video means that the product line will continue, that's all I care about. I love the system under any name."

Fujifilm GFX System: We Hear From Tokyo

A while ago I sent several questions about the GFX 100S to Fujifilm, and yesterday afternoon received answers from the company in Tokyo.

I should mention that I have to be a little careful with my wording here, so as not to imply that the company said anything it didn't...no playin' around here, Mikey! 'Kay.

If I refer to larger-than-FF with fly-by-night names, for instance, that's me, not Fujifilm. I'm just not liking the status quo on that, is all. The middle format already has its settled name, which is "full-frame." Then, the conventional term for larger-than-FF is medium format, which makes sense exclusively in legacy terms. It was in the middle between small, 35mm cassettes, and large—sheet film—hence medium. The term applied to digital makes sense no other way.

As George Lakoff eloquently and simply explained, how you frame an issue (frame in the sense of formulating the concept and defining the terms) is a large part of the debate. Full-frame currently wins the framing sweepstakes, hands down.

To my way of thinking, legacy terms are irrelevant now. The past is past. Medium format was a niche even back in the old days. Now, calling the smaller middle format "full" and the largest-sized formats "medium" is actively misleading. It makes no sense at all.

I'm digressing already here, but if it were me I'd call anything larger than full-frame some name like "maximum format." Max format? "Large-format digital" serves the purpose pretty well I guess. In any case, I'd be stomping out the brushfire of "medium-format digital" like a mad dervish. I think Fujifilm is trying.

But enough of that—on to GFX!

How it's going
First, the GFX system as a whole is doing great—selling much better than Fujifilm initially expected it would. The latest body in the system, the GFX 100S, is the best-selling body in the system, and it experienced much larger initial demand than Fujifilm anticipated. In fact, the GFX 100S is supercharging (my word, there) the sales of the entire system: for example, the average number of lens sales per body is still three, but lens sales are up across the board because of the high numbers of sales of the GFX 100S body.

Second, the success of the GFX system is not regional or driven by any particular market. It's selling well everywhere across the globe, including major markets such as China, the U.S., the Euro Zone, and the home market of Japan. (No ranking implied in that list.) This matters because sometimes cameras will do better in specific markets than in others. I've heard of many examples over the years—for example, rumors that a certain high-end product was particularly in demand in China or that a certain product was much more popular in Japan than elsewhere. Not the case with the GFX stuff, Fuji tells us.

Fujifilm thinks the GFX 100S ($6,000 at B&H) might be be getting part of its boost from its dramatically (my adjective) lower price-point than the GFX 100 ($10,000).

Big nugget
But the big nugget, so to speak, the key takeaway, seems to be this: sixty percent of GFX 100S buyers are either new to the GFX system or new to Fuji as a whole. That indicates that many photographers are shopping the GFX system against the proliferating full-frame alternatives and are taking the plunge into Max format in appreciable numbers.

(You see what I did there.)

In other words, the GFX 100S is making converts.

In a big way. (Ooh, did it again.)

Rational
This all pleases me, by the way, because I just love the thoroughgoing rationality of Fuji's choices. To me, being fully committed to a large and complete system in the practical size of APS-C yet balancing it with large-format digital is a sensible and thoughtful—and above all a practical—solution. It just makes no sense to me for any company to be in APS-C and yet not be committed to it and not offer complete systems. Smaller formats make so much sense for so many tasks—as pocketable walk-around or backpacking cameras, for macro, for supertelephoto. Yet when ultimate image quality and ultra-large print size are wanted, you want to be able to go after that too—and nothing currently beats 102 megapixels in a larger-than-FF sensor. I could go on at some length about the advantages—to us—of Fujifilm's balanced approach. But it's a post for another day.

Anyway, I put in a call to my friend Izzy at B&H Photo and requested a GFX 100S and GF 50mm ƒ/3.5 (40mm-e) lens for review. If they can't provide it, Fuji says they can send me one soon. (When new products are hot, smaller outlets have to wait in line for review units.) So hopefully one way or another I'll have a review before the end of the Summer. It won't be the first camera I've ever reviewed that I can't consider buying. I'm looking forward to the education—to acquainting with Maximum format. (Am I calling it that now? I dunno....) It's one of only a few photographic formats I have almost zero experience with so far.

My thanks to Fujifilm for its assistance with this post.

Mike

P.S. No new post tomorrow, I don't think (lots of posts in the past couple of days) but I'll be actively moderating comments.

Book of Interest this week:

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic (Fraenkel Gallery, 2017). An excellent introduction to Meatyard's quirky, spooky worlds. "Photography is a dream of awaking to a world still dewed in sleep." And Fraenkel Gallery's productions are always a cut above. The link is a doorway to Amazon.

Also sponsored by...

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Sharon: "If we lived closer, you could try one of ours. I absolutely love the 100S. It is a heavy system but I walk around town with the 110mm on a lot. It's a beast but I forget all about the weight when I'm shooting, and I have serious issues with my hands. The in-camera stabilization is amazing. We shot after sunset, handheld, and the files are sharp. What I love most is that any failure of the photograph will be an artistic one on my part, not because of any technical shortcoming of the camera."

Rob de Loe: "The data from Fuji on new adoptions make sense to me. My anecdotal evidence is the wave of new members to the DPReview Medium Format forum. People seem to like posting there that they are now in the club, and why. The why part is the GFX 100S, almost without exception."

Thom Hogan: "Not sure '60% new to GFX system or new to Fuji' is a meaningful statistic. GFX is a relatively new system to start with, so that number would be high no matter what.  ;~)  . And it's down from the 100% that would have happened with the first entry four years ago. To make sense of any such statistic, we'd need volume numbers, both past and current. Makes a big difference as to whether they've sold 50,000 units or 150,000 GFX units so far."

Peter: "Here's my vote that 'Maximum Format' will be your second addition to the worldwide photographic lexicon (#1 being Bokeh, of course)."

Jim Simmons: "Oh come on, Mike, you're a wordsmith, you know better. 'Large' format worked because the word is flexible. 'Maximum' implies it's the biggest, and that is impossible to know."

Christopher May: "Sometimes a point of reference remains the reference point long after it's been swept away into the dustbin of history. Witness railroaders saying they're 'highballing' when they receive clearance to move their trains. This stems from a type of signal with large balls raised and lowered by pulley. When the ball was raised, the train was clear to go. This type of signal was already mostly obsolete at the turn of the 20th century but 'highballing' is still an almost universal term in railroading today. I think the fate of 'medium format' may be similar. It originally made some sense when digital backs were attached to medium format film cameras like the Mamiya 645AFD and Contax 645. The Fuji cameras may have little to do with those cameras or their associated film format but the terminology remains."

John Dougan: "I'm an American living in Russia, and I just got rid of my Sony A7R IV to get this camera. I was so impressed, that even though I bought Sony's 135mm ƒ/1.8 just three weeks before the purchase of the GFX 100S, the image quality was enough to convince me to take the loss. And my God, is this an amazing camera. One thing that I learned though, for long exposures on a tripod, make sure you shut off the image stabilization or you'll be left scratching your head wondering what went wrong. Here's my first night of night photography with this camera."

Kirk Tuck: "Why words? Why not numbers? Start with 35mm (full frame) as 1X and then everything bigger is whatever the size difference might be. Such as a 1.25X, 1.50X, 2X etc. And, in the other direction an APS-C would be a .5 and smaller sensors a .25 etc. I'm sure camera makers will eventually make an array of image sensors bigger than the current Fuji ones and it's a quick and easy way for people to understand the difference in sizes."

darlene: "After 30+ years of shooting professionally, people ask me what I currently shoot with, so I started slowly working on a page that will show the gear. The categories go like this: Large Format (Sinar, Linhof, Cambo) Medium Format (ALPA, Hasselblad, Mamiya) Small Format (Fujifilm, Nikon, Minolta). Most pro shooters I know refer to camera sizes as Large, Medium and Small. The lenses covering the formats make us distinguish things even further when need be. Currently I have three digital backs in-house; (2) 44x33 sensors and (1) 49x37 sensor and they are for my Medium format and Large format cameras. If I had a Fujifilm 50R (want one), it would fit into the medium format category. Why? Because of its real estate. I like the KISS principle!"

richardp_london: "Full Frame goes up to Fuller Frame. Beyond that are Impressive Frame, then Excessive Frame. In the other direction Full Frame goes down to Sufficient Frame, Adequate Frame, Scant Frame, Inadequate Frame and finally Insufficient Frame."

Mike replies: That actually does about nail it! I've shot with Insufficient Frame, and an 8x10-inch sensor would clearly be Excessive Frame. I usually shoot with Sufficient Frame and Adequate Frame.

The Missing Featured Comments for the 'Menu Problem' Post

Ed. note: These are so late I figured I'd give them their own post. Sorry for the delay! The links and suggestions kept sending me down rabbit holes.

Here's the original post: How To REALLY Fix the Menu Problem, from this past Thursday.

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "I think that sounds great. It would also really familiarize the new owner with all of the capabilities of the camera. Most people, myself included, usually only scratch the surface of some of the tech innovations within the camera."

Bruce Bordner: "I've done things like this, and it starts out simple. The camera companies could easily do a setting-setting app or interactive website. However, I think what you really want/need is Thom Hogan in an app, with a few others to answer 'why would I need that?' Demos of effects would be great...now we're talking some real money with AI and gotta have blockchain, bro! It's still worth a start, but I think it has to start with the camera designers. They have to compete and cooperate with cell phones anyway. Why not add some image processing in your phone.... Now you got me going dang it!"

Malcolm Myers: "I've basically had similar thoughts for years: set your camera up on your computer. Want a faux-Leica? Turn everything off and shoot! Want your own menus? Great, set them up! Want different profiles for different situations? No problem! Two bodies? Make them the same! I'm amazed no-one's done it."

Speed: "There is a very large camera company which also manufactures printers. These printers are set up and controlled by users' personal computers. My experiences with printer setup has been...not good. The last thing I want in this world is having this or any other camera company writing more software to 'help' set up my camera or anything else. Their user manuals are bad enough. Eventually some camera manufacturer will do it. It will be painful and costly. In time it will become the norm but I'll wait for version three.

"As a software developer friend (I don't hold it against him) often reminds me, 'Software is hard.'"

Keith: "This is actually a well thought out concept, and could be carried over to many other items as well. How many off us still struggle with programming the VCR to record 'Sanford and Son'? Yes I'm being a bit sarcastic there, but I recall VCR's as being one of the first consumer items that was widely regarded as a bit of a user interface vs. user manual nightmare. Working in the field of industrial automation, I see this with many of the newer electronic components. From photo-eye sensors that have multiple pages of programming options, to basic control modules that require a full Ethernet setup for that device plus anything connected to it. I recently installed a small temperature controller (about the size of a four-pack of 120 roll film) that had nearly a 400-page manual. Companies that recognize this and implement a program to bridge the gap between their products and end users' understandings will have an edge on their competitors."

Robert: "A great idea Mike. Sign me up. There are examples of this in other technologies. For example, Logitech has a 'lead you through it' app for setting up their all-in-one remotes. You then download the setup to the device. It's not the world's best software, but it's better than the alternative."

Peter Wright: "This is such an obvious idea that I keep wondering why it has not been done. It would be I believe a major selling feature for a large part of the buying public. It could even have kept me using the Olympus EM-1 Mark II."

Kirk Tuck: "Or you could just buy into a system with a very well-designed menu system. The Leica SL2 is a joy to configure. It reinforces the idea that Olympus and Sony menus are first translated from Martian and then to Plutonian and only, finally to a human language. The one flaw with your idea is the need to have a computer just to be able to initially access your camera. We should be going the other direction and try to figure out more and more how not to go to the computer first. Leica; three buttons and a joy stick. That's it. Check it out if you are looking for simplicity in an interface. And a very logical menu."

JH: "I suggested this to several camera company reps in 2003 when I bought a Nikon D100 and again after buying an Olympus Micro 4/3 camera in 2010. The Oly U.S. rep I corresponded with told me they never passed suggestions along to the factory because they had been told that they did not want to get sued by somebody who claimed their idea was stolen. Actually I suspected the real reason was the NIH syndrome—not invented here."

Mike replies: Years ago I made some detailed suggestions to a hi-fi manufacturer. The VP (there were only a few principals at the company) entered into an involved discussion with me as to why they would never take my suggestions, with several rounds of long back-and-forth emails as I tried to persuade him that my ideas were good ones. He reported back to me about the reactions of others in the company, including engineers.

A year later, the company implemented all of my suggestions exactly as I had outlined them. When I contacted my 'friend' the VP to express my pleasure, to my astonishment he insisted he had never heard of me before, that our correspondence had never taken place, and that their actions were independent, were developed completely in-house, and could not possibly have had anything to do with me. I felt like I was being gaslighted! When I mentioned this odd development to friends in business, it was explained to me that they were probably afraid I would want to be paid if they acknowledged me. I had never asked for pay and I never had any expectation of payment, but it must be a problem for companies.

Anyway I don't do that any more.

David Dyer-Bennet: "I would never consider buying a camera that depended on an external website for configuration! The site might not last as long as the camera. Maybe, as a local app, taking advantage of the greater power and space on a computer compared to the camera; that could work. Also doesn't freeze out people working far away from Internet access."

Adam Lanigan: "I think there would also be a ton of value in your approach to the camera company as well, as this approach would really allow them to understand the features their customers actually use, how they set up their cameras, level of experience, how often they change that setup later on, etc., etc."

John Krumm: "Still sounds complicated! I would like my menus to look like Hasselblad's do now."

Alex Mercado: "'We are sorry, but the page you are looking for cannot be found. Click here to browse our latest selection of cameras.' I can't help but think one would vehemently regret such a solution, the very moment your camera's menus-on-a-website returns a 404 error."

Ed Hawco: "Mike, you might recall that I suggested essentially this on this very blog in a comment in October 2011. Specifically: 'Self-configurable menus. Not by jerking around with the buttons on the camera back, but by uploading a configuration file to your computer where a nice user-friendly GUI lets you drag & drop menu items around until you have menus that make sense to you. You can bury (or even remove) all the silly functions you don't care about and arrange the frequently used ones at the top where you can find them easily. Re-download to your camera and bingo, customized menus.'"

Mike replies: I wouldn't be surprised if that's where I got the idea! Could have happened. After moderating ~250,000 comments, I've learned a huge amount from others here. And by the way, many of your comments over the years have been great ones.

Scott Abbey: "This sort of user interface has been in use for many years in other fields. For instance, I use a multi-effects pedal board which allows me to have different guitar effects—reverb, equalization, compression, and many others. While the one I now use (a Line 6 Helix) has a pretty robust on-device UI, it also has a PC app which makes it even easier to configure, and it also lets you store sets of configurations which you can load as needed—your settings for a wedding gig, and another set for that thrash metal band you also play in. Why camera manufacturers have never done this is beyond me. It ain’t rocket science."

Mike replies: Speaking of which, the other day a reader called ghmcs recommended Gary Friedman's series of guides to Sony cameras—for instance this one about the A6100 and A6600 (search "Friedman Archives" on Amazon for others). Anyway, Gary Friedman literally used to be a rocket scientist!  :-)

Sroyon: "What a great idea. Could go even further (though I don't know if it's feasible in terms of computing power) and six months later, let you run an analysis of the metadata in your Lightroom gallery or whatever other archive, coming up with suggestions like 'You haven't used X in six months, do you still wish to keep it in your menu options?' or 'You appear to use Y frequently, do you want to assign it to a custom button?'"

Ed. note: The following two comments came in one right after the other, just as you see here, no foolin':

Joseph Reid: "Fantastic idea! You could store the settings on a card or just tether the camera for the setup routine. I wonder what Thom Hogan would say about how likely it is that camera makers would do this."

Thom Hogan: "I've been advocating something different for years (decades?). That something different is 'named settings files' that can be saved/loaded. You could supplement that with a computer/tablet/phone application that creates/manages such files, but it's not necessary. Why isn't it necessary? Because there's a huge ecosystem out there that would develop and distribute such files. I'm finishing up a book (!) on setting up a Sony A1. I could easily provide some named settings files if only Sony allowed it.  ;~)  "

Peter: "This is the best post / idea that you have had in the many years that I have been reading your blog. Well Done."

Harry B Houchins: "Brilliant idea, but sadly impractical...."

Thanks to you if you left any comment, 'Featured' or not! (I'm going to dispense with the end matter on this post, as it's not really a separate post. I'm sure there will be comments on this; should I then do Featured Comments on these Featured Comments? Talk about rabbit holes....)

—Mike the Ed.

Canon v. Canon

The other day in the "Competition from Used" post I said, "It's almost like we're in the exact opposite situation of the one we were in at the turn of the millennium." Which got me to thinking.

Back then, Canon had just introduced the D30 (not 30D, but D30) a "reasonably priced" digital SLR that had a three megapixel sensor. It was bigger news in the photography world then than anything at all is now. Photo writers across the globe breathlessly ventured the holy-grail claim—that the D30 it was almost as good as, or as good as, or a little bit better than, the results you could get with 35mm film! This was hotly and happily debated far and wide. I was Editor-in-Chief of Photo Techniques magazine at the time, and at the magazine we offered a selection of "Collector Prints" taken with the new D30 by a guy from Canada I had met a few years earlier by the name of Michael Reichmann. Michael's prints were meant to show off the new Canon and make the case for digital as something that might actually be viable for enthusiast non-pro photographers, an idea to which there was still a lot of resistance at the time.

Now cut to today and compare that situation to this: the Canon EOS M6 Mark II is in its second iteration already and it's hardly even made a blip on my personal radar screen...even though I prefer small cameras and tend to pay attention to them. Lens options are limited, but paired with its standout 32mm ƒ/1.4 normal prime lens, its capability compared to Y2K norms is just insanely good. It's a small carry-around camera no bigger, really, than an original Barnack Leica. (Strange that Leica would let another company call any camera M6, but maybe some kind of statute of limitations has run out.) The little lens, which is about two and a quarter inches long (56.5mm) and weighs just slightly more than eight and a quarter ounces (235g), is nevertheless a no-apologies fast normal with superlative performance—and very nice bokeh I might add. The little camera has a spectacular 32-megapixel sensor (more than ten times as many pixels as the D30, n.b.) and is reputed to be very fast. Any way you look at it, the little M6 Mark II runs rings around the hot news from October 2000.

Despite all this over-the-top goodness, though, the M6 II barely moves the needle in today's world as far as consumer excitement as concerned, at least that I can tell. Certainly nothing like the frenzy of interest in the D30 in 2000.

The lens and camera together cost $1,328, which might be somewhat of an impediment to interest, but then, it's neither a compromised camera nor meant to be a budget alternative. And consider that, adjusted for inflation, that $1,328 would have been only $866 in 2000, the year the Canon D30 came out at $3,000 and DPReview called it an "unbeatable" value for money. Put the other way around, the D30 would cost $4,600 today. That was cheap compared to the digital SLRs that newsrooms were paying $25,000 for only a few years earlier. And by the way, DPReview calls the M6 Mark II "a good bit cheaper" than the Sony it competes against (they must mean the A6600). Of course, you might also want the M6's removable $199 EVF-DC2 viewfinder, but that's up to you.

The M6's only problem? Odd, but it might be a little too old fashioned. Not enough bigger/better than its biggest existential threat and wannabe competitor, the smartphone.

Mike

Book of Interest this week:

How Photography Became Contemporary Art: Inside an Artistic Revolution from Pop to the Digital Age, by Andy Grundberg, Yale University Press, 296 pages. A longtime critic and observer attempts a synthesis. Good reading. Also available from The Book Depository with free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Ken Bennett: "Back in the fall of 2000, the university where I work hosted a presidential debate. I was going to cover it shooting all film, of course, but Canon Professional Services offered to loan me the as-yet unreleased D30 digital camera. So I got one and shot some test images, figuring they would be okay for maybe a website, and I was amazed at the overall quality of those photos. I ended up shooting most of the events surrounding the debate and some of the debate itself with that D30. Had a double-truck image in the alumni magazine from one frame, and it looked great. Nothing like today, of course, but easily comparable to or better than the Fujicolor 800 color neg we were shooting at the time.

"Then I had to send it back, which turned out to be a huge blessing. I had shot 1,500 frames and had no idea how to handle them; editing, viewing, captions—none of it. I was used to shooting film and scanning individual images for print reproduction (or making actual prints in a darkroom). So I spent the next couple of months figuring out how to manage all the digital files. Then we got our first D30 that winter, the second one a few months later, and a pair of the original 1D bodies the following year. (Four megapixels! Eight frames per second! Amazing autofocus! Seriously, they were da bomb, and the later 1D Mark II was my favorite Canon ever. Shot a lot of good photos with those.)

"Kudos to Canon for the D30. It changed my life and my career in so many amazing ways. I could go on at length.  :-)  "

Tom Burke: "I use Canon cameras and have for many years, so the M line ought to interest me. However, it doesn't—there aren't enough good lenses (and none from third party suppliers that I know of) and a lot of the cameras are missing viewfinders—I need a VF.

"I was however attracted to that sensor, so I bought the M6's cousin, the 90D, which has the same sensor in an APS-C DSLR body. Yes it's bigger and heavier than the M6 but it's lighter than the full frame camera I had previously. I'm delighted with it, and given the price of Canon's R series, I suspect I've bought my Final Camera. The 90D and my iPhone 12 Pro will do me for the foreseeable future.

"I never had a Canon D30, but I did have its successor, the D60, which I bought used. That was my first DSLR and was the game-changer for me—previously I'd had EOS 35mm SLRs."

R. Edelman: "The Canon D30 made me think of Bill Biggart, the photographer who was killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He had some film cameras and a D30. The only images that survived were from the D30. Even though the lens was ripped from the camera, the compact flash card survived. That's one tough camera."

Ed. note: Bill Biggart's website is still up, and contains a picture of his ruined D30 as well as a small selection of his recovered 9/11 images. 

The Worst Player in the NBA

Reader Luke S. sent me a link to an article I enjoyed a lot. Here it is: "The Worst NBA Player Is Way Better Than You." I liked what veteran NBA journeyman Brian Scalabrine told an amateur challenger: "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me."

It was interesting to read the comments of the WNBA professional player Devereaux Peters, too. I've heard the same thing about golfers—that a lot of guys with a USGA handicap of one or two or three think they're just a few strokes away from pro caliber—meaning they could get there if they just buckled down and worked for it—when in fact there's a huge yawning gulf between them and the average tour pro.

Reminds me of a similar photography-related story. A friend of mine used to shoot features for Air Force Magazine because the art director was a friend of his and they'd travel to locations together. This was back in the '80s when point-and-shoots were a relatively new thing. So the art director got a point-and-shoot and started shooting alongside my friend. The trouble was, my friend got paid by the picture and the art director was so proud of himself and his own work that he would often pick his own pictures over my friend's, even though my friend knew his pictures were better. So suddenly my friend's paycheck was cut in half because his friend the art director was choosing to run his own pictures half the time.

A while later I asked my friend about the Air Force situation, and he grinned. "Everything's back to normal again," he said. Turns out an Air Force general who happened to be a photography enthusiast had called the Air Force Association and went on a rant about how the quality of the photography in the magazine had suddenly taken an inexplicable nosedive. The general wanted to know what the hell had happened to the photographer—he named my friend, whose name was still bylined on the stories he shot—who "used to be good." He thought the guy ought to be fired.

Well, a photographer got "fired" all right...the chastened amateur-photographer art director who had been so impressed with his own snaps abruptly stopped running his own shots.

Luke S. thought the article about Brian Scalabrine called to mind my post about playing tennis with Chrissie Evert, in which I described ever-so-briefly being of the opinion that I could hang with a pro myself.

Tomorrow's housework day at TOP Rural World Headquarters, so see you back here on Sunday. Thanks so much for reading TOP. I really appreciate it.

Mike

Books o' the Week

Nikon fan are ya? Nikon: A Celebration by British automotive writer and Nikon collector Brian Long covers the history of the company from its beginnings to the end of the film era. A U.S. parallel with more concentration on opinions about the equipment is B. Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook. The 6th Edition covered film equipment up to 2000. <—These are portals to Amazon.com thru TOP; you can also search for Nikon books from The Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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

Enrique: "I manage a studio of Photoshop artists in Cupertino. Yes, exactly what you’re thinking. You would not believe the number of applicants who think they know Photoshop."

Steve C: "It's the same in cycling. I watched national-level, A-grade racers—the local elite—being blown out the back of a handful of professionals who were sitting up at the front, in the wind, having a casual chat. Unbelievable. And it goes against what you regularly hear about diminishing returns."

hugh crawford: "My Porsche mechanic raced at LeMans, and won the 24 hours of Daytona. My car always ran better when he drove it. On the other hand I never hit the top of a tree at 200 MPH so there is that."

Dave Fultz: "Ha! That was fun!

"It’s complicated, though, as things often are. One of the curiosities of our modern, hyper-available information world is that all of us, whether Internet-connected or not, have access to the best in the world that was undreamed-of a hundred years ago. Want to listen to Itzhak Perlman playing the piece your violin teacher just told you to practice? How many versions do you want? How about looking at the sketches of Degas when you’re thinking about drawing ballerinas? Surfing the Internet, did you discover that Don Knuth just tossed off an algorithm in a day that solves a problem you’ve been tussling with for months?

"This access is wonderful; there’s no doubt of that. But it has two surprising effects. The first is the intimidation of such world-class skill—how can I, a kid in Mongolia, play like that? I should stop (don’t). The second is the familiarity bred by screens in your living room. They’re your friends, right? After all, they’re in your living room! Heh! Michael! Nice dunk! I bet I could do that.... Well, yes! You could! That’s what keeps us all going! Every once in a while you do something extraordinary. But, extraordinary, professional athletes and artists and engineers and leaders and skilled persons in every domain do that level way more often than you. They are different and they are the products of a long process where they’ve been challenged for years on a basketball court, in a lab, competing for a gallery show, spending months taking pictures of birds in the arctic, or just simply sitting and thinking about things.

"It’s complicated."

Mike replies: Re your first "surprising effect," I like to tell the story of the guy my first cousin Liz married. His name is Dan. Growing up he was a very good baseball player, but he quit playing seriously in his teen years. The reason was that he had a same-age first cousin whose name was Don, and Don was always a little better than Dan was. No matter how hard Dan tried, he couldn't surpass his cousin, and that discouraged him. Dan reasoned, how can I expect to be a good baseball player out in the world when I'm not even the best baseball player in my own family?

The kicker is that the cousins' last name is Mattingly. Don Mattingly, for those who remember the '80s and '90s, had a stellar career as the first baseman for the New York Yankees and is now a Major League manager. Dan, who now owns a concrete business, says (I'm paraphrasing), "How was I supposed to know that I was measuring myself against the kid who would grow up to be Don Mattingly?"

Not sure if he thinks he should have kept trying, but maybe he should have.

Jim Natale: "No brief, fleeting, moment of glory here. Just the story of a conversation. I once worked with a fellow who had played minor league baseball. I asked him, 'Major League pitchers have batting averages like .080 and .090. What would a guy with average or good athletic ability hit versus big league pitching—.050 maybe?' His answer: 'Try zero zero zero.'"

Mike replies: I was never a baseball player, but I played tennis and I could smack a softball at the work picnic, and I have a good way of knowing that what that guy said is true. I went to a batting cage once. I felt pretty good hitting 30-MPH pitches. But with the machine ratcheted up to spitting 50 MPH pitches at me, never mind getting the bat to connect with the ball, I couldn't physically bring the bat around fast enough so that it was even aligned properly to hit the ball. I was always too late. My reflexes weren't fast enough. My few touches were behind the ball such that they angled off into the net in front of me. Then, I figured, just extrapolate from a 50-MPH pitch to a 90-MPH pitch like the Major League pitchers throw. It was very obvious I wouldn't stand a snowflake's chance in a fire!

Gave me new respect for hitters.

Albert Smith: "I remember when people use to make fun of John McCain for coming in near last in his class at the Naval Academy. The attrition rate to just get accepted, then the drop out rate for those that couldn't hack it during the four years were things that most couldn't imagine. Besides academics, every cadet had to participate in a sport on a team. Then there was the military training, with all the cosmetic ceremony that that entailed. Oh yeah, those academics are still expected to be done at a high level, no making excuses for the pomp and sports taking up too much time. I'd match last in class at a service academy to a lot of top ten percenters from most universities."

John Y: "There are studies of this kind of thing. I have been in the software industry for more than 20 years. We know that good programmers are 10x more productive than mediocre programmers. 'This degree of variation isn't unique to software. A study by Norm Augustine found that in a variety of professions—writing, football, invention, police work, and other occupations—the top 20 percent of the people produced about 50 percent of the output, whether the output is touchdowns, patents, solved cases, or software (Augustine 1979).'"

Mike replies: ...Or blogging? In the early days—it never happens any more of course—I even had people ask for information interviews to help them establish a successful blog. Back then, I saw a lot of people start a blog with high ambitions and a handful of magnificent, well-researched, well-written posts, only to find it too onerous. They would take a break, perhaps adding one or several more posts after a week or a month or two, only to have the "break" eventually became permanent. My readers are intelligent, educated, interesting people, the great majority of whom could write dozens of absolutely outstanding blog posts if they put their minds to it (the only possible exceptions are those for whom English is not their first language, and in those cases I'd bet money they could do it in their own native language). The question is, what kind of person would or could do it more or less every day for sixteen years?

Wait, don't answer that!!  :-)

Tom R. Halfhill: "I heard an old joke about people who yearn to be a country-western music star. Before driving all the way into Nashville, stop at a gas station just outside of town. If you can't play guitar better than the station attendant, go home!"

Bear.: "My moment was as a young man playing table tennis—I thought I was pretty good—at least I held my own—until I met a top 100 world ranked player. Although my muscular reflexes were quick enough, I could barely see the ball, let alone process the spin rate, and return it except by chance. I did not and could not win a point. Since it was obvious to me that I had reached my level of incompetence—all the training in the world could not improve my visual processing speed—that was my last game. After all, the sole purpose of a solo sport is to win, which was just not going to happen, at least at the level I wanted to play.

"To my own surprise, I was not really disappointed but instead was privately quite proud that had made it as far as I did.

"It's been nearly 40 years now and I still have my bats in their case, as well as the ball from that game as a memento, in the attic somewhere. But the real lesson for me was to pursue sports and hobbies for enjoyment and preferably those in respect of which no objective measurement of output determines a sole winner—I expect that’s why I enjoy photography so much—if I enjoy myself, that is sufficient, and it’s just a bonus if anyone else enjoys my work too."