By Cecil Adams, World's Smartest Human

Dear Cecil:

I've often heard people say "the camera adds ten pounds" when they're photographed. Is that just an excuse or is there any truth to it?

Emma

Cecil replies: No question there's an element of denial here. Since you're not looking at yourself most of the time, it's easy to maintain a self-image reflecting the svelte physique you had ten years ago, as opposed to the corpulent wreck you've become. But that's not the whole story....

READ ON at straightdope.com

(Quote from the article: "I knew a photographer who swore by the rule 'Never use a lens whose focal length, in millimeters, is less than the weight of the woman.' Sexist thought? No doubt. Just saying it's a guideline you might want to keep in mind." Now there's a rule I've never heard before. I thought I'd heard 'em all.)

Mike
(Thanks to Keith B.)

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "I'm okay with the camera adding extra pounds. It's the hair that the camera somehow subtracts that bothers me."

Featured Comment by Pavel: "Do we mean to say that a woman must be disguised into skinny, to be at all attractive to herself and others?

"On another tangent, I used to always worry that airbrushing away, often with a heavy hand, signs of age, would offend a woman. After many years of experience I somewhat sad to say that I have yet to meet that person with the rigorous standard. They are all ecstatic—even if no person recognizes the praised results for a current photo instead of their own faded memories of self.

"I think we are tackling all of this from the wrong end...but hey...I don't want to be a more starving photographer that I already am."

Featured Comment by Sean: "Actually I think we need reminding that big can also be beautiful.

Jen Davis, Untitled No. 11. 2005, from "Self Portraits"

I'd say that’s some random excellence right there, Mike."

Since the first of the month just went past again, I'd like to say thanks to all of you who ordered something from Amazon or B&H Photo (our major affiliates) through our links.

It's a painless way to support the site because those companies then share a little bit of their profits with us. You don't have to pay anything more, but a small portion of your purchase price goes to us.

Here's our links page. It includes links to Amazon in Canada, Germany, and the U.K.

I get this question a lot, so I'll answer it in advance—anything you order from B&H or through Amazon (doesn't matter what it is, and third-party vendors count) gets credited to TOP as long as you go directly there from here when you actually make the purchase. You can save the Amazon link URLs but not the B&H one.

If you've ordered anything through our links, it's just really kind of you. Merci beaucoup!

Now back to work on Part II of the GF1 / E-P1 post....

—Mike, TOP CFO, Balayeur de plancher, and Generalissimo of Dunning

Illustration by Cheryl Jacobs Nicolai from this post

The BJoP (British Journal of Photography, the oldest continuous photo publication in the world) is reporting this morning that Olympus will ship the second iteration of its popular PEN cameras soon. Basically, they've made a new tiltable clip-on EVF for the hot shoe, and, because it cannot be used on the E-P1, they had to make a new version of the camera for it—so they made a black one. The E-P2 also does focus tracking and shoots faster at 3 fps.

The new EVF makes the camera, er...a different shape.

Available in late December or early January. Estimated street price in a kit with the new EVF and either the 17mm or 14-42mm zoom lens is $1100. The full press release is available on Akihabara News.

You can pre-order the kit with the EVF and the zoom from Amazon, or the kit with the EVF and the 17mm. (It's not yet listed on Amazon U.K.)

Mike
(Thanks to Abbazz)

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The two cameras sitting on the turntable

I've had both the Panasonic GF1 and Olympus E-P1 Micro 4/3rds cameras here for the past several weeks (the Panasonic for longer than the Olympus), so I thought I'd share a few of my reactions. Unfortunately, this post is likely to disappoint to some people because I haven't got much to say about image quality yet, for reasons I'll explain. If you're already deep into the task of learning to eke the best image quality out of one of these cameras, you're way ahead of me, and I won't be of any help to you. Sorry. I've been playin'.

However, on the good side, mine won't be our last word(s) on the subject (maybe not even from me). We've already published a field report of the GF1 written by Edward Taylor, and both Eamon Hickey and Ctein have been using E-P1's and are likely to weigh in on that camera in the near(ish) future (although that's not a promise; whether either of them wants to write about that camera, or any camera, is up to them). Still, I thought I might report a few of my own impressions, such as they are. I have not tested the cameras, merely used them. I'll proceed here by looking at a number of factors and picking which camera I think is better in each category. Then, tomorrow or Friday, I'll write a short summary of what the cameras are like to use and whether they meet my old "DMD" criteria, and talk a bit about my own personal choice between the two.

I used the single-focal length "pancake" lenses (Olympus's M. Zuiko 17mm ƒ/2.8 [$295] and Panasonic's Lumix G 20mm ƒ/1.7 ASPH. [$400]) exclusively.

Warning: bloviation alert. This post goes on for a while.

A note about supply: it seems apparent at this point that Panasonic's camera division has problems fulfilling demand. This has been an intermittent but ongoing issue with the LX3 (which is however now in stock at B&H), and it has so far been a serious issue with the GF1 body and kits, which have been hard to find and are currently being offered at a significant premium on Amazon. I don't want to see that become a trend. (I haven't linked to a GF1 sale page for that reason; do what you want to, but I recommend waiting rather than paying extra. I know new cameras are very exciting and all that, but it's not so great that you should pay an extra $700 for it.) B&H is presently not even listing the body/20mm kit, and the body/zoom kit is listed as "out of stock." It's impossible to predict whether supply is going to be a permanent hassle with the GF1 or indeed with all Panasonic camera products forever, but the outlook for Christmas is not good. Panasonic is giving itself something of a questionable reputation where this is concerned.

Part I: E-P1 vs. GF1

Build quality: To kick things off in dramatically ambivalent fashion, this is a win for Olympus without exactly being a loss for Panasonic. The E-P1 has a gleaming silvery stainless-steel all-metal body like the beloved metal-bodied cameras of years past. Just what photographers have been clamoring for. Of course, now that we have what we've been saying we want, it won't be enough; that's human nature.

There is nothing wrong with the build of the more pedestrian Panasonic, which also uses a lot of metal and falls on the good side of solid, modern camera build quality. Paying a premium price for the GF1 doesn't feel out of place. Smaller cameras tend to naturally feel solid and robust, and both of these do. I have no complaint with the build of either camera. 

Strap lugs: Trivial, I know, but I like real lugs rather than the near-ubiquitous slots, because a strap end on a ring through a lug will fall away from the camera more easily and get out of the way when you bring the camera up. Small potatoes, this, but the Olympus gets the nod.

Style: The more utilitarian boxiness of the GF1 is no match for the sleek, more overtly "designy" E-P1, with its historical cues, accent lines, gleaming finish, and elegantly tapered contours. And yet, I have to register a fondness for the pleasingly no-nonsense straightforwardness of the black-box Panasonic, too. Call this one a matter of personal preference. I'm personally not much of a fashionista, so I can do with either.

Autofocus: I used both cameras with a single central focus point, which I prefer. The GF1 focuses remarkably well, and is very satisfying in this regard. It focuses positively and quickly with a minimum of hunting, and it works great in remarkably low light. It does have a focus-assist light, but you'll be hard pressed to get it to come on—it has to be almost pitch dark before it kicks in. The GF1 focuses as fast as my DSLR in good light and faster in poor light.

As for the E-P1, it has been the victim of the internet's echo-chamber effect when it comes to focusing speed. You've read here, there, and everywhere that it's slow, slow, slow. It's simply not that bad. Rather than "slow," I'd say..."a tad slowish," that's all. It's a tick behind the GF1, which is a tick behind a pro DSLR, but what that does it put it into the realm of the noticeable, not into the realm of the irritating. It does "hunt" more than the GF1, although I'm not quite sure that's exactly the right term; rather, it seems to go through a quick, narrow-range in-and-out move as a regular protocol each and every time it focuses. It's quite rapid but does take more time than the GF1 does. But I would caution people interested in the E-P1 not to be put off by all the dire teeth-gnashing on the web. The E-P1 is still a good companion, just one with a somewhat more leisurely pace. I think few actual E-P1 owners are likely to be unable to do what they want with that camera in practice, and I doubt very many people would find the E-P1's operability any sort of ongoing annoyance, although the few who do will be featured online.

Still, a distinct win for the GF1.

Mechanical noise: The E-P1's shutter is quieter. The GF1's shutter sound is a bit on the emphatic side; it's a sharper, more distinct, somewhat cleaner noise. On the other hand, the E-P1 chirps a bit more with grindy AF noises here and there, and the GF1's crisp report contributes to its sense of greater responsiveness. I really can't decide which one I like better, so I'll call this a wash. Neither camera is digicam quiet, both are reasonably unobtrusive out in the wild.

Image noise: I haven't run any strict tests for noise; I'm happy to leave that to people who care about such things. But it bears mentioning that neither of these cameras is a high-ISO champ. Rather than being DSLR-quality, they seem to fall midway between DSLRs and modern up-to-the-minute small sensor digicams in this respect. It surprises me—why aren't they just as good as the sensors in DSLRs? I must say I don't quite buy the manufacturers' explanations as reported in Dan Havlik's article we linked to yesterday, but at the same time I'm at a loss to offer a plausible alternative explanation. Of course, I don't know exactly what the noise is like with, say, an Olympus E-620, or how the E-P1 compares, but I can think of no obvious reason why the E-P1 shouldn't be as good. I'm not a camera engineer, though.

Within the considerable caveats detailed under "Image quality" below, I would say that people should be prepared for adequate but not stellar high-ISO performance; my own tendency with both cameras, for what it's worth, has been to top out at ISO 800 as a regular thing and push it to 1250 or even 1600 when it's really necessary. The JPEGs don't look bad at that speed but they don't hold up all that well to 100% viewing on the monitor, either.

I might mention here a little feature that I've come to like about the GF1. When you push the ISO button, the speeds are arrayed in two rows, and you don't have to scroll through them all to skip from a low to a high setting; you can select vertically and jump from one row to the other. So what I do is switch between ISO 125 and ISO 800, for the most part, only departing from that when I have some special need to. So the same speed change that takes two button pushes on the GF1 takes nine button pushes on the E-P1. Another small thing, but I like it.

The GF1's ISO display. Once you're seeing this, ISO 800 is just one button-push away.

LCD screen: The Olympus's isn't bad, by "yesterday's" standards, but the Panasonic's is clearly better. Another unambiguous win for the GF1.

Much has been made on the internet of the lack of body-integral optical viewfinders on these cameras, to which I utter my mousey "meh." They are what they are. You deal or you don't. The live view viewing screens are worse than optical eyelevel finders in bright light, better in low light (except if you're trying to skulk around without disturbing the darkness, when the screen's radiant brightness might call attention to itself). I had trouble seeing the screen image when there was bright slanting afternoon sun behind me, but in most cases, from overcast days to bright indoor light, the viewing screens are fine and I've had no problems. I haven't tried any of the various shoe-mounted finders. I would counsel that if an eyelevel finder is so important to you, get a camera that's designed with one, rather than struggle to bodge and cobble up something usable on a camera intended to be used like a digicam. Up to you.

Responsiveness: Just as the E-P1's AF is just a tick behind the Panasonic's, so the E-P1's overall sense of responsiveness is noticeably not as good. The E-P1's shutter button has just the merest bit longer travel and just a twinge more lag, making it seem more languid. Not by much. I'm not convinced the GF1 is a lot faster, but it feels faster. I think this is more a matter of all of the GF1's various impressions adding up to an overall feeling of greater alacrity than it is indicative of any real weakness on the part of the E-P1. But the GF1 wins here too, no doubt about it. The GF1 might not be the fastest camera you've ever used, but it inspires confidence.

Lenses: Again, this surprises me, because Olympus is a very experienced lensmaker with some truly stellar zooms in its regular 4/3rds arsenal—in fact, the awesome 14–35mm ƒ/2 might well be the best normal camera lens you can buy from any maker, all things considered. So what accounts for the fact that Panasonic, of all companies, has come up with a better Micro 4/3rds pancake lens? I have no plausible explanation here, either.

The M. Zuiko's manual focus feel is nicer, with a more "oily" or "lubricated" damped feel as opposed to the drier, though still smooth feel of the Lumix's manual focus ring.

And yet there's little question in my mind. The 17mm is more petite, and more stylish—prettier. But the 17mm is a stop and a half slower than the Lumix G, and only a little wider. It isn't a bad lens.

The 20mm, on the other hand, fully meets my notion of an ideal lens for this format. It is the right focal length; it is the right speed (truly fast, rather than fast enough); it's the right size; it performs very well wide open, and the corners clean up with just a little stopping down—really, all is well by ƒ/2, and at ƒ/2.8 the lens clearly bests the Olympus offering at its widest setting. Furthermore, it has a nice, smooth tonality, pleasing sharpness, and, in my opinion, extremely good bokeh (out-of-d.o.f. blur), even when "stressed." The bokeh is excellent with the lens wide open and focused close. Nothing about this lens bugs me, and that's saying something. I'll make no bones about it, I love this lens.

One more for the GF1. But wait, I'll have more to say about this in Part II.

Ergonomics: I prefer the GF1, which feels "right" to me. This is somewhat curious, because the cameras aren't all that much different, and I rather like Olympus's captive mode wheel and elegant little thumb roller, which has a luxe feel. But somehow the E-P1's handling doesn't quite gel as well. I like the Panasonic's on-off slider better, its hand position is more obvious and a bit more comfortable, the control wheel doesn't move accidentally like it's possible to do with the E-P1's roller, and if you do video, you're going to love the handy, always-ready video button. I even like the GF1's battery/card compartment door operation a little better, if that's not taking this too far. The GF1 just coheres better, feels more natural and familiar. At least to me. I give it the nod here.

Built-in flash: The GF1, of course, has one, and the Olympus does not. I suppose I need to record this as a win for the Panasonic, even though I don't use flash and don't care either way. Suit yourself on this score.

IS: The Panasonic uses in-lens IS, and the Olympus uses body-integral IS. Panasonic presumably chose the in-lens route because it has a history of making OIS lenses for earlier products. It makes little sense with a Micro 4/3 camera, however. Canon, to name one prominent example, has several good reasons for sticking with in-lens IS: because its IS-equipped lenses can be used on film cameras (and indeed, were originally conceived for film cameras) and Canon needs to make professional superteles, which allegedly benefit from the in-lens strategy. But nobody is going to use a 600mm lens on a Micro 4/3 camera, at least not as a regular thing, and there are no film cameras that Micro 4/3 lenses fit. There's no single advantage I can think of to justify Panasonic's choice here.

Olympus's body-integral strategy is simply the better choice. It's hard enough finding the right lens to use without worrying whether it also has built-in IS. The 20mm ƒ/1.7, for instance, isn't an OIS lens; for OIS, with the GF1, you have to go to the zoom.

Solid win for Olympus, no question.

Software: The Panasonic comes with a app called SilkyPix, and the Olympus with one called Olympus Master 2. May I just stipulate here that I'm an idiot, and don't know what I'm talking about? I'm bad with computer software. I don't cotton to it, nor it to me. Consequently I don't try hard enough to master new programs when I'm supposed to. I especially don't make any effort when I know for absolute certain that an IRS agent with a whip couldn't force me to use the program in question on a regular basis going into the future. So I concede that these two applications just can't possibly be as lame and useless as they appear to be to me based on a cursory and bored first glance and a few petulant half-hearted trials. They can't be—right? Because if faced with a choice of working day in, day out in one of these environments or picking up trash by the side of the freeway with a pointy stick guarded by a fat man with a shotgun and a big wad of tobacco in his cheek, I would need time to decide. They both seem like they'd be torture, but least in a chain gang I'd be outdoors.

Now, as sure as it will rain, there must be legions of people out there who are fully versed in the nuances of each of these programs, and love them like I love my dog, and have used them with great personal, artistic, and commercial success for years, whom I have just wounded with my irresponsible superficial ignorant comments, and who will now write in to inform me how great these programs are and to tell me that I am an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about. Even though I already stipulated that. 

Which brings me to...

Image quality. I Don't Know.

What?

Right, I'm sorry, I haven't figured this out yet. This is the most important thing for a camera, but I've just been looking at JPEGs, because I haven't worked out a raw workflow that I'm happy with for either camera. I've been dabbling.

I've also reached a personal philosophical crossroads recently whereby I've realized I need to decide whether I am going to stick with ACR come what may and judge cameras based on how well they work with the Adobe product, or do the work of finding the best raw converter to use in the service of every specific individual camera I try. I've been immersed in investigating raw converters. This side-track does the present discussion no good. I have, however, taken a series of identical shots with both these cameras and carefully filed away the raw files, so I can do IQ comparisons someday.

I will just say that the Olympus E-P1 seems to yield files that are clearly more pleasing than what I'm getting from the Panasonic, with the exception of a distracting purple fringing on objects against bright light, which needs attention in post-processing—which is a bother.

As to whether this is probative I can't say, but I'm guessing not.

Coming soon(ish): Part II: In use, and my pick

Mike
(Thanks to Jeff G.)

-Source of the cameras: Panasonic, reader loan; Olympus, manufacturer loan

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I wonder if I've angered the gods lately? I seem to be suffering from a spate of technical problems, unrelated but arising in succession.

I was preparing my epic GF1 vs. E-P1 post for publication this morning when...certain keys on my keyboard stopped working. It made it hard to type certain special characters and cut and paste. After forty-five minutes of prying off the keys and cleaning out the schmutz that has somehow collected beneath them (when is somebody going to invent an un-dirtiable keyboard?), I gave up and ordered a new keyboard for express delivery. This has been an on-again, off-again problem for about the past four days. I'm really hoping it's the keyboard and not something in the e-brain of the blog compositor.

Last weekend our freshly serviced lawnmower failed to start. The service guy showed up in his pickup truck last night to cart it away again. He tells me that although I bought a lawnmower that has "Honda" emblazened on it, it's not a Honda lawnmower—it's a Sears Craftsman lawnmower, with an engine built by Honda to Sears' specs—meaning, of much lower quality than "real" Honda engines.

Oh.

Wish I'd known that before I overpaid for it.

I will probably sort out my ongoing bad lawnmower luck someday. Probably just as soon as my son moves away and I move back into an apartment.

There have been other incidents. Most notably: I came across a cache of brand new, still shrinkwrapped jazz records recently, at a local used bookstore. Bought 'em all. Thought I had made a real score. So guess what? About half of them are faulty. One is perfect but for a neatly scribed scratch that runs most of the way across one song. Another is intolerably noisy, with pops and ticks throughout the whole record. Mind you, these were unopened. They're all manufacturing defects. 

I suppose there had to be some reason why they were bargain priced and stuck in a bin in an out-of-the-way used book store.

Of course, with the 9,000 or so music files I have on the hard drive, I don't have that problem. I have a different problem. Every time iTunes updates, which is frequently, it can't find any music that wasn't purchased from iTunes. I have to go search manually for the files before I can play them.

It's always something. Maybe if I bought an iTunes how-to book to not read, it would help.

Zeus? Buddy? What have I ever done to you, man?

Regular programming will return when the new keyboard gets here. With any luck, that is: I ain't killing no goat.

Mike

UPDATE: I got the new keyboard on Thursday (a nice Microsoft Natural Ergo 4000) after learning that the problem was indeed in the TypePad interface and not in the old keyboard at all. But I put a lot of miles on my keyboard, and the old one was in pretty grubby condition. Fortunately, I really do learn something every week here on TOP, and this week I learned about washing dirty keyboards in the dishwasher (the amusing link is from a reader named charlie—thanks, charlie), so the old one is in the dishwasher right now.

Meanwhile, I'd forgotten how nice these keyboards feel when they're new—they're not mechanical, but the type with the plastic membranes under the keys—but they're still very nice.

Featured Comment by Riley: "I believe the proper sacrifice for a keyboard is a hamster."

Featured Comment by Stan B.: "To this day, don't know why keyboards don't come equipped with a crumb tray...."

Featured Comment by Hugh Look: "I think you've been a victim of a unique and very secret collaboration between Apple and Microsoft, the little-known Critical Task Detector (CDT), now built in to all small computers. CDT monitors the speed at which you strike the keys, the force with which you strike them, the number of times you use the backspace key and the sweat on your fingertips. Clever software then computes the probability of an impending deadline by adding these up, and when it gets a suitably large number it decides that indeed a deadline is looming and you need to be punished for leaving it so late, so that You Will Never Do It Again. You know what happens next.

"I'm taking Microsoft and Apple to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that CDT is discriminatory against a) freelance newsletter editors (as I used to be until CDT forced me out of the business) and b) people with ADD (as I still am)."

Featured Comment by Fred: "If you have a goat—put it to work on your lawn!"

Featured Comment by fmertz: "Pullleeeeze! The proper sacrifice for a keyboard is, wait for it...a mouse!"

When TOP posted the pictures of the Prius/Tesla/Toureg wreck the other day, I failed to give credit to the photographer (I found the pictures at a third-party website which also didn't attribute them). Turns out the photographer is John Nuttall, a.k.a. skagman, who has alternative views on his flickr page. He says the pictures have been extremely popular and that he's gotten more than 13,000 hits on his flicker photostream since putting them up. Thanks to John for setting us straight.

Mike

Featured Comment by Bill Mitchell: "OT: since I got my Prius, when I drive in the local State Park the wild animals seem to pay no attention to me. Last weekend I came on several flocks of wild turkey, and they let me drive right up in the midst of them as though I weren't there (they were on both sides of the main road, running back and forth between them). Turkeys are the most skitterish wild life, but deer act the same way towards the Prius. I haven't run across our resident Florida panther lately, so I don't know how it would react."

Mike replies: On the contrary, this might not be off topic at all! I imagine this might be something that certain wildlife photographers might very much want to know about....

If you're a beginner: I can recommend Peter Stepan's 50 Photographers You Should Know. (Here's the U.K. link.) It's part of a series of similarly-titled books put out by Prestel USA which includes titles like 50 Architects You Should Know and 50 Women Artists You Should Know. As such, it's in the nature of a primer, giving the reader basic background and a sample or two of each of the featured photographers' work. Please, don't send me emails three weeks from now complaining that the book is superficial and too basic for you because you've heard of all these photographers before. This is for people who haven't ever taken an introductory-level history of photography course or read one of the all-in-one texts such as Newhall (which I'm amazed and concerned to see is out of print—what, is civilization ending?) or Rosenblum. If you're in the proper target audience, however, the book provides the goods: it's nicely laid out, with good examples and capable write-ups, and, most importantly, these are 50 photographers you indeed should know. That I could readily name another hundred or more you should also know is neither here nor there. The book fulfills the promise of its title.

This would also make a useful gift for any young person you know who's just getting interested in photography.

If you're more advanced: If, on the other hand, you've been involved in photography for a while and already know a thing or three about it, and you feel you're pretty well up on a lot of the basics, then I recommend Lewis Blackwell's excellent new tome Photowisdom: Master Photographers and Their Art from Chronicle Books. (Here's the U.K. link.)

It's the same sort of thing as 50 Photographers You Should Know—a sampler—but it's on a whole 'nuther level.

The text bits have no real consistency (although many of them are interesting), because they were each written by the photographers themselves. The good side of that coin is that the photographs were chosen by the photographers too. There were a large number of pictures in this book that I've never seen before, which is pretty unusual for me these days, especially with this sort of book.

Two more things you should know about the book: first, the photographers chosen are a really good mix. (And if you think it's easy to come up with a good list like this, you should try it some time.) Too many books of this sort confine themselves to certain "ghettos" of photographic practice; Photowisdom makes a good effort to span some of the gaps, and it really does provide a wide variety of current practitioners (perhaps a little weak on landscapists, but that's understandable given that they're so well covered elsewhere). Books of gallery art photography especially tend to cluster around a group of "usual suspects" and snootily ignore working photographers, documentary photographers, and journalists. Any book of this type can't possibly include everybody, and it can't do justice to every kind of photography; but this book feels right, presenting a well-chosen matrix that feels free, wide-ranging, and inclusive. (The editor, Lewis Blackwell, is the former Group Creative Director of Getty Images.)

And the second thing: it's a beautifully made book, with a clean design and well-above-average reproduction quality that serves the content well. And that's important. Whereas you're likely to see many of the images in Peter Stepan's book elsewhere, the images in Photowisdom might be the only reproductions you'll see of the chosen pictures, so it's more important that they make a good account of themselves.

The combination of great picture editing and great reproduction quality make the book a visual feast. If the previous book is one you should give someone else, this one should be a gift for you—put it on your Christmas list. Or shoot the link to your S.O.!

Andrew Wyeth by Andrew Zuckerman

If you look for this one in the bookstore, be a little careful, because there's another current photobook of roughly the same size and shape with the word wisdom featured prominently in the title. Ironically, the photographer-author of that book, Andrew Zuckerman, is one of the photographers featured in Lewis Blackwell's book (represented by his amazing portrait of Andrew Wyeth, whose face late in life looked like it was made of melting wax. Incidentally, if you do get the book, compare the book reproduction of this picture with the web JPEG here—nolo contendere, and a good object lesson in the superiority of good printed reproduction over the admittedly very convenient computer screen).

Especially if you don't feel like you're quite up with the hot photographers o' the moment, this one might be good for your continuing education. It was for mine.

Mike

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Question from Miserere: "Mike, Any chance you could provide a list of the 50 photographers included in 50 Photographers You Should Know? If you have better things to do than type out 50 names for us (and who wouldn't!), I would at least like to know if there is a good mix of nationalities or if the list leans heavily towards U.S. photographers. While my knowledge of photographers is by no means large, it is sadly biased to those on this side of the pond (I'm writing from Boston)."

Mike replies: I believe Peter Stepan is German and the book was originally written in German; it was originally published by Prestel Verlag in Munich. So there wouldn't be any overt reason for it to be overly USA-centric. If you'll forgive a rough accounting—a few of these numbers might be one off either way—I counted 2 Hungarians, 10 French, 19 Americans, 8 Germans, 2 from the U.K., 1 Italian, 1 Russian, 1 Japanese, 2 Czechs, 1 Turk, and 2 photographers from Mali (formerly French Sudan). That doesn't quite add up, does it? Forgive me...I don't own the book and I counted a bit too hastily. So if anything it could be faulted for being light on Japanese and non-German European photographers—as well as being a bit preferential to Mali!—but otherwise I think the balance is okay. Tough to be fair to every country with just fifty picks overall.

Alfred Cheney Johnston [see the first Featured Comment below for details]

By Ava Land

Alfred Cheney Johnston was discovered by Flo Ziegfeld of the famed Ziegfeld Follies. Flo was a master of publicity and when he saw what "Cheney" was capable of creating with a large studio camera and glass plate negatives, Ziegfeld hired the young photographer on the spot. Cheney was shrewd beyond his years thanks to being mentored by family friend and famous illustrator Charles Dana Gibson who became famous for the Gibson Girl drawings. Gibson advised Cheney to make sure every photograph of his had the name, Alfred Cheney Johnston, clearly stamped on it. Thanks to that bit of advice Cheney would become world reknown [sic] for his amazingly beautiful photographs of the gorgeous stars of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway...

READ ON at articlesbase.com

[articlesbase.com bio] Ava Land is a freelance magazine and web writer. For more information on the stunning photographic images of Alfred Cheney Johnston go to: http://alfredcheneyjohnston.com.

Mike
(Thanks to Eolake)

Ed. Note: A wistful, semitragic story, I thought, of a photographer done in by another depression. Eolake and I aren't sure if the photograph here is by A.C.J. or not, although it sure looks like one of his to me. Does anybody have the book? Also, A.C.J. is no relation to me, at least as far as I know—although if you go back far enough, to the 1500s and earlier, we're doubtless both distant scions of the same eponymous Scottish border clan. Inset: Gibson Girl 32-cent postage stamp.  —MJ

Featured Comment by Eric: "Page 111 of Jazz Age Beauties: "Helen Henderson, ca. 1922–25. Henderson appeared in the Follies of 1923 and 1925 and played the part of 'Other Hostess' in Night Hostess in 1928."

Mike replies: Thanks Eric!

From Chicago Public Radio's "This American Life."

(In case you can't see this, the direct link is here.)

Mike
(I can't remember who sent me this, but thanks!)

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Featured Comment by Yunfat: "Funny. But James Nachtwey has told of an opposite effect as well: 

If there comes a time when I'm the only one who can make a difference, then I'll suspend being a journalist and help people. I have intervened in lynch mobs several times over the years and managed to save people. And there was a time I tried to save a man in Indonesia.

People from a mosque in Jakarta were offended that a Christian church had a bingo parlor next to the mosque. They saw bingo as a form of gambling, which was against their religious beliefs. So they attacked the bingo parlor and began to kill the Christian guards. As I asked people in the street what was going on, one of the guards came running up an alleyway, chased by a mob. I tried to stop the mob from killing the guy. Three times they actually stopped. Once, a man was about to cut the guard's throat. At that point, I got on my hands and knees and begged him not to do it. And he didn't do it. He actually put down his knife and stood the guard up. But then the mob turned on me and became very threatening. People were in my face, pushing me back. While they were pushing me back, they finished the guard off. I thought that if one of them struck me, they'd probably take me out as well. I resumed taking pictures of the guard, and that didn't seem to bother the mob. They allowed me to photograph it. But they wouldn't allow me to stop it.

—James Nachtwey

...although I have to say anyone else who did what he did would probably end up dead. I firmly believe that cameras can lend the appearance of being an impartial arbiter, but I certainly won't be putting myself in front of a murderous mob anytime soon."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "Okay, as one of those really small kids most likely to get picked on in elementary school, I say from experience that blaming this on the camera game is bullsh*t. Kids in elementary schools don't make it a habit to break up fights. They are not budding young Good Samaritans. They're less civilized and less socially conscious than your average adult in such a situation. Which is setting the bar awfully low. The camera game at most provided safe psychological rationalization for them not getting involved, but that's all."

Featured Comment by J Ho: "Being one who grew up during the first generation of 'extreme sports,' I witnessed hundreds of instances where human behavior radically changed once a camera was introduced into a situation—especially when the camera was being wielded by a 'professional' (something I happened to be at the time).

"Once the possibility of someone's heroic/insane/justplainstupid exploits being recorded (not to mention maybe being published in a magazine/video) for others to witness, individual (and group) behavior became far less 'risk-averse' and far more aggressive.

"It was as predictable as the sun rising: 'pro' shows up with some cool cameras and the injuries would commence. In fact, some photographers would refuse to even begin shooting until the skater/bmxer took a big enough chance to make it worth 'wasting' film (Velvia) or video (High-8).

"The term of art was 'dying for the camera.'

"A month or two later the photo/video would be published, and the stunt portrayed would come to be considered 'normal' or a 'baseline' for the next series of actions—ever more risky, ever more 'camera worthy.' Ultimately, we had people jumping out of helicopters hovering above ramps and vaulting 50-foot gaps between ten story buildings; at the time, we thought that kind of stuff was the ultimate, although it seems rather quaint in retrospect."

I've been experiencing some technical problems with the website lately. This may result in a higher than usual number of errors surviving in posts for longer than they should. Also, some readers have been having trouble leaving comments. We are working on the problems. I'm sorry for any inconvenience and I hope you will bear with us.

Mike

Featured Comment by Roger Bradbury: "There's a bear with you? I'd be very careful, then. Remember, when photographing bears it is not necessary to run faster than the bear, just faster than your assistant."