The Online Photographer

Don't Forget the Preakness! (OT)

2013-05-18T12:14:19-05:00

Gah! I actually almost forgot. The Preakness is today.

...Continuing OT week at TOP.

Here's the TV schedule:

Preakness Stakes Saturday, Pimlico, 2:30–4:30pm, NBC Sports Network
Preakness Stakes, 4:30–6:30pm, NBC
Preakness Stakes Post-Race Show, Pimlico, 6:30–7:00pm, NBC Sports Network

Times given are Eastern.

I still don't have cable TV. One year I will break down.

Here's a basic background article.

Enjoy!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 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:

ben ng: "My money's on Flying Toasters...."

Mike replies: You laugh but...Flying Toaster, filly, by Mehmet out of Renewable, born 1993. Great-granddaughter of the great Swaps, who won the '55 Derby under Willie Shoemaker. Descendant of Man O'War and War Admiral....

Flying Toasters (OT)

2013-05-17T10:33:21-05:00

I really intended yesterday's post to be about shopping, not about toasters. Toasters were intended to be just an example of an ordinary consumer household item.

But I spent yesterday getting educated about the, er, well, online toaster community.

Among much else, there are toaster collectors, who have their own association; many toaster websites; a Toaster Museum Foundation; people who sell restored vintage toasters; and on and on it goes.

Should have known, I guess.

And there are elite deluxe luxury upper-crusty (!) toasters. Our friend John Camp (he's the novelist John Sandford) recommended the Dualit. That initially shocked me—John thinks he paid $250 for his. Two hundred and fifty dollars for a toaster?! But then I went to an inflation calculator site. The classic postwar American Toastmaster that Mathew Hargreaves recommended cost $23.50 in 1951, near as I can figure out, and that would be $204.93 today. (No wonder they were popular wedding gifts.)

I now know that the toasters seen in the famous "flying toasters" screensaver most closely resemble a General Mills "Betty Crocker" Automatic Toaster introduced in 1949 or thereabouts.

One thing I can truly say is that in all eight years of putting TOP together, I truly learn something new every day.

It's just that not all of it I need to know. :-)

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Jack: "The General Mills Betty Crocker toaster was what motivated my family to move to Minneapolis in 1947. The food company started a small-appliance division to extend the Betty Crocker brand from food in the kitchen to appliances in the kitchen. My dad was hired to be in sales. I wish I had access to a Betty Crocker toaster today. The extension of the Betty Crocker name into small-appliances wasn't successful enough to extend the name outside the kitchen. Otherwise we might have seen a Betty Crocker camera. My dad however moved on to be involved with the marketing of Argus cameras, specifically the C3, which naturally was my first camera."

David Boyce: "Have a secondhand Dualit bought from a restaurant closing down about 20 years ago. Must be at least 30 years old now. Still going strong. Just worked out it has cost me about one cent a day in ownership costs."

lith: "Toasting indeed a heady mix of art and science which appears to be hard to get right. I like my toast crispy and golden brown on the outside, but still white and fluffy on the inside. Lordy, it's harder than you think.

"Most toasters, as Mike has pointed, take too long. I've noticed this, too, as I've grown up. Toast takes longer than it did in the Sunbeam my parents had as a kid growing up.

"The increased Toasting Time (TT) is a result of the decreased Available Toasting Heat (ATH), and thus ensures that the entire cross-section of the bread is dried thoroughly before the the surface even gets remotely browned. So you end with a mouth-desiccating shard of dried bread, with the consistency of that foam florists use to make flower arrangements.

"Even uber-expensive, Italian-designed, chrome-and-porcelain models with more knobs than a mixing desk have failed to produce adequate toast for me!

"The decreased ATH (and thus increase in TT) is possibly due to several factors (these are all based on my own musings):

Cheaper elements, which radiate less heat, in order to cut down on perceive power usage. Probably, as mentioned, emanating from the same mythical monolithic Glorious Revolutionary Toaster Element Factory Number 12 in Shenzhen.
Reduced heat in order to pander to our ridiculous OH&S notions of having 'cool touch' sides, so those of very little brain don't burn their poor widdle fingers on something that is designed to get hot.
Wider slots, placing the elements further away from the bread. Heat, like camera flashes, is indeed subject to the inverse square law. This is due to the madness of designing toasters to accommodate all manner of silly bakery products like inch-thick 'Texas' toast, muffins, hunks of brioche, and slabs of Organic Macrobiotic Hydrodynamic Slow-Food Barn-Raised Bulgur, Spelt, and Wattleseed Turkish Sourdough.

"The best toaster I used was at boarding school, one of those big, stainless-steel mesh conveyor belt SOBs made by Hobart or Birko or something. Fierce heat, minimal TT. The only downside was that some idiot kid would adjust the speed while your toast was halfway through, and you'd end up with a slice looking like a Cokin graduate amber filter.

"Also, and I feel I can say this without hyperbole, this is most serious and important subject TOP has ever covered."

Mike replies: Really?! Even more important than which roadster is best-looking?!?

Expectations of Privacy

2013-05-17T09:41:40-05:00

I guess this was inevitable. A New York City gallery, Julie Saul, in Chelsea, is showing pictures taken through the windows of peoples' apartments.

The photographer, Arne Svenson, recently inherited a telephoto lens from a deceased birdwatcher friend. He took pictures from his second story apartment across the street from the six-story Zinc Building located at 475 Greenwich Street in TriBeCa.

The residents of the Zinc Building are considering legal action.

Much as I make every attempt to sympathize, and side with, photographers, I think the photographer would lose that case...and I think he should. As I've always understood the law, this is the #1 no-no of shooting in public. If people don't have a reasonable "expectation of privacy" in their own homes, then they really don't have it anywhere.

This might be an interesting situation to follow.

More at The Washington Post.

Mike
(Thanks to Ed Kirkpatrick)

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Featured Comments from:

Robert Hudyma: "In my hometown, photographs of strippers taking a break on the rooftop of a local tavern were published without the knowledge or consent of the individuals who were photographed. It caused quite a stir and a privacy debate at the time they were published and most of the publishers removed the images from their blogs when complaints were received. You can read about it here."

Mike replies: Some might think it's ironic that strippers of all people would complain of privacy infringements, but consider that some of the strippers in question might have been keeping their money-earning activities inside the club secret from their friends, family, co-workers at other jobs, and/or fellow students, and you can more clearly understand the violation.

robert: "I did a story recently for the New York Times called 'The Stratospherians' about living in ultra hi-rise buildings in NYC—the views were incredible. In one picture I made the family's son had a pair of binoculars and I commented on it, and the parent mentioned that almost every single apartment in the nearest tower, every one, had a telescope. 'Reasonable expectation of privacy' depends on what you consider reasonable I guess...."

Photo by Robert Wright for the New York Times

Jock Elliott: "From attorney Bert P. Krages website:

The general rule in the United States is that anyone may take photographs of whatever they want when they are in a public place or places where they have permission to take photographs. Absent a specific legal prohibition such as a statute or ordinance, you are legally entitled to take photographs. Examples of places that are traditionally considered public are streets, sidewalks, and public parks. Property owners may legally prohibit photography on their premises but have no right to prohibit others from photographing their property from other locations.

Mike replies: I presume you've quoted this in defense of the view that the photographer has the right to do what he did. However, you have missed or left out some very important exceptions, which appear in the same document just beyond the section you've quoted:

There are some exceptions to the general rule. [...] Members of the public have a very limited scope of privacy rights when they are in public places. Basically, anyone can be photographed without their consent except when they have secluded themselves in places where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy such as dressing rooms, restrooms, medical facilities, and inside their homes.

The document you linked, Bert P. Krages II's "The Photographer's Right," is something everyone who photographs in public should download, read, and keep in their camera bags.

Ctein: "I don't have feelings one way or another about this, because I don't know enough about the specifics, but I can provide some factual legal information.

"First, in the United States, the right to privacy you enjoy in your home has little or nothing to do with whether you are identifiable. It covers persons and activities and objects in your home equally well. Identifiability only enters into the issue when circumstances might otherwise not afford you that right of privacy.

"As an aside, under the law, 'identifiable' doesn't mean that everybody can identify you, it's about whether anyone can identify you from the photograph, in any way. This has been tested with case law. People's guesses here about who is and isn't identifiable don't have much bearing.

"Back to the privacy issue. The section of the California Penal Code quoted in the Comments Section is basically a Peeping Tom law, and they exist in most jurisdictions. It goes back to that reasonable expectation of privacy. The key word is 'reasonable.' It's well established under the law that you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy around anything that can be observed from a public space without using extraordinary means. What is 'extraordinary' changes with time. Nowadays, moderate telephoto lenses and compact video recorders are quite ordinary, cause they're built into most smart phones. Nobody in a public space can expect such activities might not be recorded. Similarly, anything you're doing in front of the picture window of your house that would be observable from someone walking down the street with said phone is not something you can expect to have privacy around.

"Extraordinary means are prohibited, even by law enforcement. There's a recent Supreme Court ruling around that, relating to the use of thermal imaging to try to determine what is going on in someone's home (note: no identifiability issue involved—it was about activity and contents). They firmly established that was an extraordinary measure that people would not have a reasonable expectation of encountering, and therefore it was an invasion of privacy.

"But maybe not in the future.

"So, what's reasonable in this case? I have no idea. First thing I'd want to know was how long the telephoto lens was; I bet there's some case law around that factor. There's also the interesting question raised here of whether what you do from your lawful private space is the same as what you can do from a public space. I don't know if there's case law around that. Then there's the question of what the expectations were of people living in the apartments. Someone here pointed out lots of high-rise apartment dwellers have telescopes permanently set up by their big windows. If I were an attorney, I'd be wanting to do some discovery around that. If you know that half of your neighbors own such instruments and regularly use them to peer at other people's apartments, even if you don't do that yourself your reasonable expectation of privacy would be diminished."

Mani: "I love these photographs; for some reason they make me think of Vermeer. I also like the 'problematic' nature of the subject—the induced discomfort, the suggestion of illicit voyeurism. And the artist's (possibly fictional) allusion to a deceased bird-watching photographer, and how that puts yet another layer of meaning over the act of watching other animals (through their windows). Genius."

The Jaws of Death

2013-05-16T14:03:05-05:00

The Jaws of Death, 2013, Camden, Maine. Photo by Jim Hughes.

By Jim Hughes

As usual, I come late to the party ("The Toughest Question of All"). A couple of months back, I heard that a wonderful old example of Maine vernacular architecture was about to be demolished, and in its place something akin to a McMansion erected. The home was known locally as The Frye House, situated at the intersection of Chestnut and Frye Streets in Camden (the street was named for the original owner). Much more than a century ago, it had been a blacksmith shop, and was unquestionably part of the Village Historic District. Problem was, when the Select Board (our version of a governing body) a couple of years earlier considered the issue of housing preservation, regulating such matters for the historic business district was voted up while regulating the equally historic residential district was voted down. Yankee independence, perhaps—another New England tradition. In other words, "don't tell me what to do with my own property."

The Frye House and its small but ideally located plot of land, complete with harbor view, was sold for something like $650,000, I was told. The realtor who sold it told me that he had no clue that the new owners planned to knock down a house that most agreed was still beautiful, and that had recently been respectfully restored. If the sellers had learned of their home's sad fate, he believed they would never have sold to these particular people. Anyway, the deal went through, applications were made, and a demolition permit granted. By the time I got there with a camera, the house had been flattened. All that remained was a brick hearth and few architectural treasures rescued by a woman who lived in another historic Maine house across the street (her companion is, in fact, a Frye descendent). She draped her door with a black mourning ribbon. The day was overcast, the light was fading fast, but I photographed the funeral anyway. To my everlasting regret, I never photographed the Frye House while it was still standing in all its humble glory.

Memento Mori, 2013, Camden, Maine. Photo by Jim Hughes.

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

Marty: "As a native of historic New York towns like Saratoga and Amsterdam, and now a New Englander in rural New Hampshire...a few words of advice: If you find it beautiful, photograph it. It's happened to me before and I always say it won't happen again. Recently, an older ('40s-ish) filling station/garage that I always thought would make a beautiful backdrop for 'something' was demolished for new construction. I passed that damned gas station hundreds of times and always said something like 'wait til there's nice evening light' or just plain 'next time.' Whoops, no more next time.

"...And that old architecture like the Frye home ain't comin' back, FYI."

Kent Phelan: "Oh my Jim, that's just awful. I just Googled the address and was surprised to see that is is literally 20 yards down the street from Francine Bistro, in my opinion the best restaurant in Maine. Camden is one of my favorite destinations in Maine, and we try to get there a couple of times a summer (from Boothbay Harbor). A great loss, and from my outsider's view of Camden government, a shocker. That town looks buttoned down and locked down, in terms of development. Hard to imagine they would let this happen.

"On another note, I seriously enjoyed your columns in Camera 35. They were something I looked forward to every month and had an effect on me as a photo student. Belated thanks."

False Shopping

2013-05-16T10:47:39-05:00

A few years ago I bought a "nice" toaster. It was an attempt to replace the super-cheap $11 Venture special I'd been using and genially hating for a decade. The new toaster had everything—it was well built, it was stylish, it had several nifty features including a "bagel mode" that only toasted one side of whatever it was toasting. You could even pick it up when it was in operation without scorching your hands.

...And I hate it even more than the old one. The reason: it does everything well except toast. It leaves stripes on bread, toasts the top of the bread more than the bottom, and only three of its ten settings are useful—the rest might as well be called "don't toast at all" and "turn the outer layers to carbon and start the bread on fire."

My toaster illustrates part of the utility of Amazon. Even though I didn't buy it from Amazon, I wrote not one but two scathing indictments (several months apart) of my awful new toaster, to warn future innocents about to be duped by its perfidious enticements. It was satisfying to express the depth of my disdain.

But I live with it. Know why? Because it's a toaster. And toast isn't that important to me. I consider myself stuck with it. The $42 is gone, the bad choice is made, and I'm not throwing any more cabbage at that problem.

I wish I had a better toaster, but I'll have to wait until this toaster breaks before I get to try again.

I stand corrected
I said a couple of days ago that the image quality of the OM-D is extra-nice. I didn't expect this to be a disputable statement. I thought anybody—in fact, the way I unfortunately chose to phrase it, "anybody with a brain"—would agree.

Not so. I heard from one TOP reader who decidedly does not like the image quality of the OM-D. He considers it poor. We explored the issue at adequate length, and it seems he's done due diligence—he uses it on the right settings, uses it with good lenses, and has compared his camera to other OM-D's to make sure he doesn't have a faulty sample. And he has a brain. He just thinks the image quality is lousy.

I told him he should sell his OM-D and move on.

Here's my take on that. When something is important to you, it's worthwhile getting it right. And getting it right sometimes involves missteps and mistakes. With these important things, that's part of shopping.

I'm sure a lot of civilians out there in the world have the same relationship to cameras as I have to toasters. They do a little research, buy the one that turns their head, and then they're stuck with it for a while. Like it? Don't like it? Whatever. It's just a camera. They've spent the money. The deed is done. Deal with it until it breaks.

With things that are important to us, though (for me, that includes music-reproducing equipment, cameras, and cars, although that doesn't matter...whatever is most important to you is what I'm talking about, whether it be your riding mower or the color of your living room walls or your fly-fishing rod), sometimes you have to do two things: 1) try a few different options to get a feel for what's out there; and 2) make a false start or two.

It's not wasted money. If you buy the wrong thing, you've learned something. It's just part of your journey to the right thing.

It doesn't register as a true loss to me if I buy the wrong amplifier for my new speakers and have to sell it again...even if I have to lose a little money. That's still money well spent. I learned all about that amplifier firsthand. That it falls short was something I needed to know. And now I know. What's important to me is that I end up with an amp that pleases me. I want to get to the end of that particular road. Whatever helps get me there is good.

I find it somehow amusing but wholly appropriate and completely understandable that my neighbor is the same way with the decor of her house. She keeps trying new things, keeps tweaking even little things. That's because she's an interior decorator. She's really good at it, too. Her house is like her laboratory. It would have been fine for me about four iterations ago. Somehow she keeps making it look better and better. It's hardly recognizable as the house my former neighbors lived in, the old couple she bought the house from. And she's still not done. The money she spent doing something she later replaced has absolutely not been wasted, I would argue. Yes, it's expensive to keep changing the decor around. But it's her thing. It's what's important to her.

I don't pretend to understand why that one reader doesn't like the IQ of the OM-D. But that doesn't matter. The important thing is, he doesn't. And in that case, my advice is: bail out, and try again. Bottom line, he should have a camera that pleases him. It's not important what I think of its image quality, and it's not important whether the whole rest of the world agrees with me: it's important what he thinks.

Cameras might be like toasters to some people. Not if it's your thing.

The magic of reacquaintance
There's a corollary to this that I would be remiss not to mention, too: if something works for you—if you get along with it and it pleases you—stick with it. Don't be fickle. Don't keep shopping after the shopping is finished, after the quest has been successful. There's no reason to shop just to shop.

Granted, I don't take my own advice here, but I'm a special case...I make my living writing about cameras, so I don't have the option of sticking with one thing for a long time. (I wish I did, sometimes.) I have to try new things as part of my job. So unless you're a camera reviewer too, don't use me as a role model here.

And if you think you're largely happy with your existing camera, but you're getting your head turned by new products? If little nagging doubts are creeping in?

That's simple: reacquaint. Do some concerted shooting with your old baby. Go through the IB again and see if there are any settings you don't quite understand.

The reasoning here is something Mark Power taught me long ago. When his students complained, he realized, it was just because their work was in the doldrums. When they were engaged with their work and enthusiastic about their pictures, the complaints disappeared. It really does work that way: if you find yourself feeling petulant about your previously much-loved camera, the cure is not to start reading reviews and thinking about replacing it; the cure is to get out and use it.

That's how we really get to love our cameras.

But don't think the false steps and false starts are something you have to live with. That's only true if you don't really care. Life's too short: as soon as you become convinced you really don't like something, it doesn't matter whether you "should" like it: it's time to move on.

Mike
(Thanks to ZZ)

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

John Krill: "About toasters: I recently saw an 'America's Test Kitchen' show that reviewed several toasters and not one was worth anything. Like your experience they just didn't toast very well. Turns out the best of the worst was a toaster that had an insulator on the outside of the toaster that protected you from the extreme temps that can be achieved on the exterior of the toasters. Turns out toasters are good at burning you, not the toast."

Mike replies: That's funny. Maybe toasters really are the engineering equivalent of what the common cold is to medicine: the unsolvable problem. We almost have the opposite problem with cameras: so many, many of which are so good.

Ken James: "Ha! Toasters seem to be emblematic of the, let's say situation, in our country. Toasters do matter to me; I like toast. Several years ago my old toaster died, so I went to buy another. I thought I got a bad one so I bought another.

"I ended up buying six, each more expensive than the last. None of them worked. Finally I bought one for over $100. I still have it because it kinda works, but just kinda. As long as one is not choosy about toast, it is okay.

"My mother had the same toaster for 40 years and it worked, and probably still does, perfectly. Oh well. Hey wait! I thought you were on a wheat-free diet!"

Mike replies: Nope. But I am happy to report that after three years of concerted and extensive self-experimentation, I have completely solved the diet problem. However, I need to wait until I've lost 50 or 60 lbs. before I write about it—I'm afraid I might lack credibility otherwise. Stay tuned.

Joe B (partial comment): "Now—for the don't live with something that does not work to your standards? Easy to say if your budget can support your experimentation."

Mike replies: Very true. It's one reason why I've always assumed that this attitude makes more sense with just those few things which are most important to you. I accepted 25 years ago that photography was just something that was going to soak up a certain amount of my money—$5,000 annually was my old number, in the days of film and photo paper expenses.

I suppose that the "depth" to which you can afford to be picky reflects both your attitudes and your means. I do have a relative who appears to treat every decision as though it were of infinite importance...she's an extraordinarily careful shopper who does lots and lots of research. It seems to me I also know people to whom nothing is important—they make purchases very casually and impulsively, even ones you would think should be important.

And where you fall is definitely tied to your means, it's true. I do understand that. I guess what I'm saying is that means are also tied to priorities....

Rob L: "This condenses my buying habits with cameras—sometimes I've bought something that I'm pretty sure isn't the right answer, just to figure out what the question is. It took going to Disney with just a Canon G12 to realize that tiny sensors and low light are not going to make me happy, and several Micro 4/3 cameras (three? four?) lead me to my beloved Fuji X100.

"But cameras are easier to do this with—if you buy used to begin with, you can generally not pay too high a learning fee as you rotate stock. But whatever it is—there is nothing more expensive than something that makes you hate what you love."

Mike replies: Your last statement is inscrutable to me. What do you mean by that?

Rob L responds: "I should have said—a $5 camera that makes you hate photography is a very expensive camera. A $2,500 camera that makes photography more enjoyable is cheap."

Zalman Stern: "The Toaster Rant is a favorite improvisational bit among myself and friends. ('When Generalissimo Francisco Franco was in power, the toasters worked.') There's also this now almost venerable piece of Computer Science humor.

"It does not seem that toasters are that difficult a technical problem or that the issue is gratuitous complexity. (Though I do support a lifetime ban from product design for the person who decided that what a toaster really needs is a series of shrill electronic beeps immediately after the loud "sproing" that pops up the toast.)

"I joke that my next project will be to build the Nest Thermostat of toasters. Might not be as silly an idea as it seems...."

Remi: "There's apparently one giant factory in China that makes toasters for most everybody under the sun. The outside changes, but the guts don't, hence they're all equally bad...."

Mathew Hargreaves: "I know the history of toasters in the USA, expecially the popup types. Got a lot of the them to prove it. The reason the modern toasters do lousy toast is the slots are designed for bagels or thicker Texas Toast. So when normal bread is inserted and centered it is too far away from the elements. I found it takes two passes of toasting for this type of toaster to do its job. They may be energy efficient and cool-walled but doing toast with regular bread is not efficient. For regular toast, get a Toastmaster 1B-14 from the 1947–63 period. they are common and generally in good working order. Analyze a toaster just like a camera and the problem is revealed."

Toastmaster 1B-14 photo from an eBay auction.

(OT) Building A Starship-Building Organization, Part II

2013-05-15T11:42:29-05:00

One Historical Perspective

This week's column by Ctein

Picking up where I left off from the column of two weeks ago....

The 100 Year Starship (100YSS) conference had some process goals that were apparent to me (and probably several more I wasn't aware of). One, discussed previously, was an intellectual big tent, and we'll just have to see how well that works out. It's a toughie.

A second goal was much more immediately successful, because it's more easily and directly engineered. My previous comment about most of the people being like me? Well, no. One major goal was to make sure that the group was one where people like me weren't the norm, that the discourse didn't become dominated by stereotypical white male techies. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with us WMTs; it's just that any monoculture very likely cannot build a successful starship. The obstacles to building a starship are not merely technological but highly multidisciplinary, and cultural monocultures rarely, if ever, come up with good solutions for novel and complex problem sets. Go read the original column for a longer discourse on this point.

It was done smartly and adroitly and without a fuss. Every panel, and every presentation had people on it who were without any doubt worth listening to, a fascinating and brilliant bunch, one and all. It just happened that white men were not in the majority. Go take another gander at the first illustration in the previous column. Uh huh. No fuss, no attention called to it, the norm had simply been shifted to, well...that's the point; there no longer was the norm. Meet the new status quo, not the same as the old status quo.

How will this hold up in the long term? I don't know. Groups tend to drift towards homogeneity; it's a well-known human tendency. It's just that it's one that leads to suboptimal decision-making.

As I also mentioned last time, this conference reminded me very much of a project I was involved in over four decades ago at Caltech. The parallels are striking and possibly meaningful. In the late 1960s, Caltech had a singular undergrad by the name of Joe Rhodes. Superficially he was unusual because he was the only African-American in his class; the undergraduate student body of the time was overwhelmingly white and universally male. What made Joe especially uncommon, though, was that he was socio-politically brilliant, a visionary, and possessed of some measure of charisma. The student body (ASCIT) changed its long-standing rules to allow student body presidents to be elected one grade level earlier, simply so that Joe could run for and win that office.

Joe conceived of something called the ASCIT Research Project, a.k.a. ARP. ARP was a unique and pioneering effort. It was, so far as I know, the first fully interdisciplinary study of a pollution problem, namely air pollution in the L.A. Basin. Ultimately, it became the model for Caltech's Environmental Quality Laboratory.

Folks today may find this hard to believe, but at that time virtually all work on pollution problems was done by isolated specialists. Nobody even thought about the fact that studying something like air pollution axiomatically involved chemistry, biology, mechanical engineering, mathematical modeling, sociology, politics, economics, and meteorology...just to name a few relevant fields. Specialists got interested in some particular problem and studied it from the perspective of their specialty.

As an example, Dr. Clair Patterson was a geochemist who made the first accurate determination of the age of the earth by making extraordinarily sensitive measurements of lead isotopes in minerals. He was perpetually running into contamination problems in the lab, so he decided to track down the sources, which proved to be primarily leaded gasoline. He became the major figure in the fight to eliminate lead pollution.

Joe realized that multidisciplinary and diverse problems required a multidisciplinary and diverse intellectual culture to tackle them, in an era when "multidisciplinary" and "diverse" were barely notions. ARP reached out beyond the monolithic student body of Caltech to students from campuses around the country, who were invited to apply to work at ARP. Overwhelmingly, the ones ARP accepted were not white, male hard-science majors; Caltech had more than sufficient numbers of those.

ARP established social and institutional structures to encourage everybody to work together in a single large community. A few like-minded individuals might go off and research one particular specialized area, but they were always part of larger groups that they were constantly in contact with, both academically and socially. Despite the overarching agenda, there was a broad acceptance that different people work differently and tolerance for the few loners who just liked to hole up in their labs. Which they did during the work hours, but during the social times they were happy to be part of the larger community.

Joe spearheaded a novel managerial and economic structure to deal with this novel set of conditions. ARP was autonomous. It was not faculty-sponsored research. It was an entirely student-run research program. Students within the organization wrote grant proposals and applied for (and received!) national research grants. That had never been done before.

What happened to ARP? Well, after a handful of years it faded from the scene, but before then it produced a few enduring results. Most important was Caltech's Environmental Quality Laboratory. Now, just about every major research institution has one of those, but Caltech was the pioneer. ARP also did some important early work in computer modeling of atmospheric pollution reactions and they produced the first laboratory experiments that proved that sublethal levels of lead in the body could cause learning disabilities, an important discovery in the fight to get lead removed from gasoline and paint.

The second 100YSS conference appears to recapitulate many of the innovations I saw at ARP. As a certain pointy-eared Vulcan might opine, "Fascinating." Is the 100YSS Foundation on the right track? At this point I have no way of saying, but I've got one historical data point that says that they aren't necessarily on the wrong one.

Ctein aims for a rate of one off-topic column per every four of his regular weekly columns, which appear on TOP on Wednesdays.

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(OT) Soundtrack for the Starship

2013-05-15T09:58:01-05:00

Something to listen to as you read Ctein's column later this morning.

Keith Fullerton Whitman's "Greatest Hits" (2003-)

On the eve of my 30th birthday, I began rendering "automatic" "enhancements" of only the most salient points of the pop music of my youth; a line, bar, or fragment of a particular song (after being heard out in "the wild" in the present; akin to running into an old friend on the street) was chosen based on how much my nostalgic recollection of it differed from its contemporary reality. Each was played back at exactly half-speed, then run through a series of time- and gain-based processes that slowly and meticulously chewed through the audio, revealing hidden layers of content, context, and temporal/spectral production details…shining a flashlight into the dark corners of each selection, revealing the ghosts lurking within.

Interesting, although I confess I am unlikely to listen to the whole nearly 12 hours of it.

At least the hooks don't get stuck in your head.

Mike
(via Bob Burnett)

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Ahem: "There is a rather amazing 'Symphonies of the Planets' 5-CD package, done by NASA. Truly unique sounds recorded and generated from various space-y sources, resulting in truly beautiful and haunting ambient soundscapes. Not sure if it's still available, though."

And Now, Hebrew!

2013-05-15T09:18:17-05:00

You might remember (well, if you've been around here a while) my post "Great Photographers on the Internet," the first post that went viral and helped establish TOP. It's been translated into a number of different languages over the years, mostly with my permission.

Now, Ronen Frieman has published it (again with my permission) in Hebrew!

Mike
(Thanks to Ronen)

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Dennis: "That post is all the more brilliant because of the comments made in reply to it. The people who don't get it just reinforce the humor. I love the next-to-last (as of right now) comment that ends: 'You have made yourself look like a fool, in my opinion, with just one post.' How perfect!"

Judith Wallerius: "Not only do I remember, but that was also the post that initially brought me to this lovely place. Has it been seven years already? Time flies when you're having fun :-) "

Impressions of the Canon 6D

2013-05-14T10:01:54-05:00

Our friend Gordon Lewis, who used to write for this site but now writes for his own, has posted a set of impressions of a 5-day rental experience with the Canon 6D.

I must say that the more I find out about the 6D, the more I like it. When I was writing about the NEX-6, I wrote a short blat about why I tend to like plainer, more utilitarian options rather than fancy, luxurious ones. I'd repeat that bit here, now, but...well, I can't find it. (TypePad's internal search engine is particularly inept. For instance, when I ask it to search recent published posts for the term "nex-6," it responds with one post...and that one is not one of the NEX-6 posts. What?)

Anyway, Gordon's post of his impressions of the 6D is interesting, especially in light of the post just prior to it.

I could make a prediction, but it's too easy.

Mike

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JFG: "I do not know TypePad's search engine, but I would guess that searching for nex-6 is interpreted as searching for nex and not 6, which would exclude all the posts that contain 'nex-6.'"

CMS: "The 'post just prior to it' nails it."

The Olympus E-P5...

2013-05-13T15:57:37-05:00

...An OM-D within a different form-factor?

Let me just throw a very scant 2¢ out into the ring, one small comment, regarding the just-announced Olympus E-P5 that everyone's talking about, latest in that long and successful line: the best reason to get it, apart from the fact that it has the OM-D's IBIS and possibly a somewhat more sensible interface, is the best reason of all: image quality. I didn't keep the OM-D, for reasons of personal chemistry between me and it, but one thing I will say for it unreservedly is that the image quality is lovely. Don't care a fig for the tech tests and the pickin' of the festerin' nits; and the answer to how much resolution it has is "enough." What I do know is that the IQ of the OM-D is just special, really quite beautiful in a way that the eyes of anyone with a brain can see. The E-P5 will almost certainly match that, and that's a good thing, a very good thing.

Mike

UPDATE: Check out what my former OM-D has been doing lately...

Ed Grossman, who bought it from me, used the camera to take this four-frame panoramic photo of Half Dome at Yosemite. Ed says, "I'm so impressed that I'm going to use it exclusively for an upcoming project I'm about to shoot."

So that was the big problem with the OM-D. It just needed to get out of the house!

(Ed's website is here.)

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Kalli: "There was something vaguely bothering me about the product photo of the E-P5 and now I realize what it is: the camera is off and the sensor is 'resting.' It's a nice party trick to show how the sensor lifts off to its magnetic hover, but Olympus should maybe do the body-only product shots with the camera turned on."

Mike replies: I wondered what was wrong about that. Something seemed off. Thanks.

roy: "I'm baffled. This camera, as with so many others these days, lacks an integral VF. Why anyone buying a capable camera would be prepared to forgo a viewfinder eludes me completely. Of course you can add one, whereupon it becomes roughly the same size as an OM-D, which in most respects—notably the dread 'IQ'—it replicates.

"Personally I'm a happy OM-D user. It has effectively replaced my Nikon FX system. I'd agree that the ergonomics and interface design leave a lot to be desired; however, it isn't that difficult to adapt to them."

scott kirkpatrick: "Aw, c'mon. This thing looks to be several steps ahead of the OM-D—they are claiming faster AF, the controls look finally reasonable, and the viewfinder is huge. There's a deal that's of interest. Pre-order or purchase (depending on when they start to arrive) an E-P5 with the VF4 viewfinder (body or kit doesn't seem to matter) by June 22 and receive a $100 mail-in rebate. This brings the viewfinder cost down to where the older viewfinder was. Purchases through Amazon or B&H should be covered but I got my info from my 'local' Thousand Oaks, CA dealer."

(OT) All You Need for Great Sound

2013-05-13T15:45:18-05:00

Following on to the vintage audio post: it's disappointing, but here is really all you need for quite good reproduced sound in a small to medium-sized room, assuming you a) are willing to forego nostalgia, b) are not a nut about stuff, and c) find yourself as yet unafflicted by audiophilia nervosa:

Your usual i-device of choice as a source (iPod, iPhone, or iPad);
A NuForce iDo or some other good iPod dock with a DAC in it (ye don't want to be stuck with the wee dackish thing in the iPod, Pilgrim, heed me);

and

A pair of my fave baby speaks, the self-powered (i.e., amps on board) AudioEngine A5+. (They really do sound good, and I am picky.)

That's it.

That will get some really good music out into the air. It will be better than 97% of anything you could find that's as small or as cheap or as handy. It really doesn't even leave a whole lot of space left over for angst 'n' agonizing. Music—no fuss, no muss, 21st-century style.

Note that the i-word doesn't mean you need to listen to MP3's necessarily. You can put AAC, Apple Lossless, WAV, or AIFF files on your iPhone or iPod too. Only up to CD res, but you'll be all right with that.

The speakers have their own volume control.

All you have to do is make sure you get a dock with the same connector as your phone or iPod. The NuForce iDo comes with a pigtail to connect to most earlier i-devices, and your latest iPhone 5 or whatever comes with a device-to-USB cable that you can use. The speakers come with all the wires you need.

And the NuForce is a great headphone amp too. Doth your cup runneth over?

Rejoice: you can spend much more money, much more time, and a great deal more effort and energy putting together a vintage or an audiophile stereo system, and I wouldn't want to discourage you from having so much fun. It's just that you don't have to.

Mike

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John King: "Good recommendation Mike. I can vouch for the fine audio quality from both those companies. I have the 50% less expensive models from three years ago (uDAC + Audioengine2) handling music files from my computer. They are musical, they don't fatigue the ears and they don't make me wish I was in the other room where the high end gear lives."

Bryan Willman: "For those who don't want to deal with an 'iSomething' you can get a similar excellent effect with: a) your windows machine of choice; b) a DAC1 pre with USB [the current product is the DAC1-HDR —Ed.]; and c) a pair of powered monitor speakers (mine happen to be KRKs). Good DAC, external volume that can't be hacked or stalled, speakers that are fine for where I actually listen."

Avi Joshi: "I purchased the A5+ based on your glowing review from a while back and have to say I'm absolutely thrilled. For non-audiophiles like me, hooking its two inputs to the TV/AppleTV and an airport express has meant blissful wireless convenience in my tiny apartment. One other thing I did was program a universal remote to control the TV/Cablebox/A5. I kept losing that little remote that came with the speakers."

Leica News

2013-05-13T10:12:13-05:00

Looks like TOP is going to be reviewing a Leica S this year after all. Knew you'd want to know.

Mike

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Dennis: "The most interesting camera system I'll never own. I can't even convince myself that a full frame camera would be worthwhile (shoot Micro 4/3 right now)!"

Rowan: "I'm actually genuinely scared for you Mike, if the NEX-6 and Dragoon precedent is to be followed!"

Mike replies: I can 100% guarantee it won't be. Unless I give up paying the mortgage and insurance.

Film Ordering Season Begins

2013-05-13T09:59:15-05:00

Between today and June 28th, ultra large format (ULF) aficionados are special-ordering their year's supply of black-and-white film from Ilford Photo, for delivery by September.

Standard sizes of large format film are basically 4x5" and 8x10", with 5x7" sporadically available. But oddball sizes—4x10" and 7x17" panoramic, 8.5x6.5" whole plate, 11x14" and all the rest—are too rare to be stocked even by large mail-order dealers on a regular basis. So, once every year, Ilford makes its films in whatever size and quantity its customers want on a custom basis. (Some retailers do "order in" such sizes for sale throughout all or part of the coming year.)

A Shen-Hao 7x17" view camera (available new)

If you're not familiar with large format (LF), 4x5 was traditionally far and away the most popular size because 4x5 enlargers were (also by far) the most affordable, conveniently sized, and common. Now, with very few commercial uses of film left standing, contact printing is emerging as artistically just as important, even though many users still like to enlarge and 4x5 use is still widespread. Also, importantly, many alternative processes such as platinum-palladium are contact-print-only media.

(If I were starting out in LF today, I'd definitely plan to contact print.)

Worth noting is that many odd-sized large format cameras aren't standardized, so you must use the film holders specifically designed or designated for your particular camera. Don't buy an old view camera assuming you can get standard holders just anywhere (4x5, 5x7, and 8x10—at least—are all standardized).

You can read more about Ilford's program here. (Possibly a useless link, since everyone likely to order ULF film already knows all about this!)

There are several sites where the LF community is centered, mainly at the Large Format Photography Forum section of Q.T. Luong's largeformatphotography.info site. The Forum is very much worth visiting, even if only as a tourist, just to look at what people are up to. That's not to forget other sites such as the relevant sections of the Analog Photography Users Group (APUG).

Mike
(Thanks to Tom Kwas)

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Paul Bass (partial comment): "Completely agree regarding contact printing. I got started with 4x5 in the mid '90s, and without means for, or access to, an enlarger, I made contact prints on Azo, when you could still get it. (Still have a couple of boxes of that around...) Eventually, after learning platinum/palladium printing, and wanting a larger negative, I found a 5x7 'expansion' back that fit that Osaka/Tachihara family of LF cameras. Odd looking thing, and limited what focal lengths one could use, but I was poor, relatively, and used that setup for years with only a 210mm Rodenstock Geronar and a 120mm Angulon (in Linhof shutter!). Man, that was fun. Develop film at night in trays in the bathtub, and print the next day in the sunshine! Here's some of that work, and some of these."

Mike replies: That's very nice work Paul. I especially like numbers 3–8 in the first set. Simple yet fresh. Brightened my morning. Thanks.

Open Mike: Is Vintage Audio Any Good?

2013-05-12T11:19:04-05:00

My Audio Adventures Part I
My Audio Adventures Part II
This is Part III

Nice, but seriously?

Well, "Open Mike" is back. Last week I tried to write about climate change. That's why there was no "Open Mike" last week. Abort! Abort! Danger, Will Robinson.

This week, a mild and friendly question: Is vintage audio any good?

I've discovered a splendid (if expensive) vintage audio store near me, Audio Ventures, run by Bill Waara and his nephew Andy (they just have a basic website and don't do much online). They specialize in rebuilding old JBL speakers, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg: first of all, Bill is a bonafide speaker designer if you ask me. Many of his "rebuilt" speakers are essentially all-new designs, with carefully selected modern drivers and completely rebuilt crossovers. And he's a very good speaker designer, too. Occasionally, Bill builds one-of-a-kind custom speakers from the ground up. In my second post about him (link above), I published a portrait of him standing next to his grandest Waaras yet. I got to hear those again the other day, always a treat.

The store also traffics in vintage audio: selected rebuilt vintage components from the 1960s to the 1980s. The Golden Age, mainly, the 1970s. Lots of McIntosh stuff, old silverface receivers. Bill and Andy go through everything, test it, and replace all the parts that need replacing. In fact, with many of the fancier components (a truly stunning Harmon-Kardon Citation tube amp for example) there is a little baggie sitting on the shelf next to the component that contains all the old parts they replaced! In fact the only problem with that store is that its following tends to suck the best pieces out of it at a rapid rate, and I don't get to go back and reacquaint with them. (Sniff. You mean it's not actually a museum?)

Basic problemos
The best book about vintage photography is this one, which is a delightful read even if you're never going to buy an older camera. I note, sadly, that dear old Ivor has gone out of print, but used copies are still cheap. A nice title for any cameraphile's library.

I was never a true nut about it, but I liked dabbling in vintage. I'd never shoot exclusively with a Zeiss Contessa or a Leica IIIf, but I sure enjoyed getting to know them. Vintage photography has suffered a mighty axe-blow recently. So many of us have migrated to digital that "vintage" isn't really much of an option any more, because all vintage equipment is film equipment. If you don't do film any more, then you don't do vintage, either. I miss that.

Not so with audio. There's a good-sized subculture of people who love old '70s equipment, some of whom collect it. And there seems to be a healthy number of both professional and amateur restorers, "techs" like Bill who specialize in breathing new life into old electronics.

As with many old cameras, there seems to be one basic problem with vintage electronics. Namely, they're old, and old things need to be revived—and the reviving, if you're not competent to do it yourself and don't want to learn, is expensive. And then, the rebuilt piece doesn't necessarily hold its value. There's no guarantee to a future buyer that the restoration was done competently or extensively. Lots of pieces on Ebay say "completely restored!" when what they mean is that somebody opened the top, blasted the dust off, and spritzed the controls with DeoxIT. The really good techs tend to be either very expensive or very busy—one famous Marantz restorer in Montana closed his waiting list when it exceeded four years! And of course the restored piece is competing on price with unrestored pieces, which can run the gamut in terms of condition, from fine to trashed and inoperable.

Sansui AU-717, 1977. Photo by Lloyd Naftolin.

So let's say you buy a pre-amp for $100. You then pay $300 to have it rehabilitated by an expert professional electronics technician who specializes in that brand. You then have a piece that's worth...$100, more or less. Maybe $200, to someone you can convince of the worthiness of the servicing.

Same thing with most old cameras. It really only makes economic sense to restore things when the restoration cost is a relatively minor component of the entire cost.

So why do it? Well, there's one other reason for restoration: so that you then have a restored vintage component that you can enjoy.

The big Q
And here we come to my question. How good is that old stuff really?

What I've found is that there are an awful lot of empty claims online, but very little in the way of definitive comparisons. Lots of enthusiasts say the stuff is good "for the money"; some think everything old is better than anything new; some assume that everything new is better and that the old stuff is junk.

Here again, you run into the condition issue. If you find a Sansui receiver at a yard sale, hook it up, listen to it, then conclude that it sounds bad, you really haven't learned anything. It can be working without working well; capacitors just don't last thirty years. To know how a vintage component really sounds, you have to evaluate a restored one. One that is known to be operating in optimal condition.

And there's such a market for this stuff that the more famous pieces are actually getting quite pricey. I saw an old direct-drive Sansui turntable offered on eBay yesterday for nearly a cool $1,000! The kind of thing people used to brag about finding for $80 at a thrift store. And then, of course, you're getting close to competing with new alternatives. You can buy a pretty good new turntable for a grand.

So you can buy the integrated amp that my brother and I both owned in the '80s, a Sansui AU-717, which turns out to be a pretty well-regarded piece, almost a high point for Sansui. But then after factoring in the cost for professional restoration, why not just buy a new NAD, for instance, or the nifty new PM6004 from the revived Marantz, which seems to have everything I want in an amp and modern binding posts and an IEC power cord socket to boot?

If all this sounds ominous to you, it does to me too. My friend Oren Grad introduced me to the concept of "demystification," which is like the ultimate Pandora's box for rationalization. His idea is that to really get a handle on something, you just have to experiment with it yourself and try out all the various alternatives—and that that's all part of the education and the fun. That's why Oren has 29 old view cameras...and why I might just need to try out a few pieces of vintage audio gear, just to see what I can find out for myself.

Stay tuned for Part IV of my audio adventures, at some unspecified point in the future.

Oh, and if you happen to want a vintage McIntosh piece, or a glorious Citation V, or a Pioneer receiver the size of a coffe table that has more lights and silvery metal bits than a Starship, call Bill at 262/896-9000. Tell him I sent ya.

Mike

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic posts by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that appears only, but not always, on Sundays.

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Dave: "While I am no audiophile, I do note a difference in the tonality of sound from vintage equipment. To me, it has a deeper, richer sound, particularly in the bass, than modern digital sound technology. Is it so much better that I am wiling to invest in vintage gear? Speaking personally, no, but I can see why someone would.

"Besides, with all these vintage cameras piled up on my shelves, where would I put audio equipment?"

Nigel: "Love this sh*t. It's certainly not about the money—I've spent a couple of hundred on fettling an old Pentax LX which is probably worth now what I paid for it before getting it sorted. But now it works. So what? If I buy a new camera tomorrow, it's not going to be worth more than a percentage of the purchase price within twelve months. Why would something a few decades old be any different?"

erik: "Affordable, pretty good turntables start at even lower prices. It's not in the RP3 league, but not that far off. So, it starts at around $400."

Mike replies: I agree...I got a lot of enjoyment out of a Music Hall MMF-2. Quite obvious flaws, but the sound was alive and deeply enjoyable. Those have risen steadily in price but they aren't much more than $400 either now. Of course inexpensive turntables mostly make sense if you already have a bunch of records....

Martsharm: "I own a decent example of that Sansui turntable. It sounds pretty good, but I wouldn't pay $1,000 for one. Mine cost £150. It is, however, something of a technical tour-de-force. The quartz-locked electromagnetic drive unit uses a micro-slotted disc with an optical feedback loop to give a torquey, solid timing lock, the main advantage of the sadly almost-defunct direct-drive design philosophy. The disadvantage to such a design is the drive electronics being directly underneath the middle of the platter—use of unshielded cartridges means an unpleasant hum intrudes the closer the tonearm gets to the centre of the record! The other disadvantage to the turntable is the non-removable tonearm and audio cable: although these were touted as being high-quality items at the time, they seem like so much so-so '70s design in hindsight. The turntable is susceptible to external vibration so benefits from an isolation platter...failing that a couple of tennis balls cut in half would do! It's a solid thing which engenders a warm sense of ownership—it was a flagship product at the time and weighs a fair bit—but there's always the niggling doubt that one day it will simply refuse to switch on due to a dry joint or similar, and I'll have a very large paperweight on my hands. But I'd much rather live with that frisson of excitement than spend much more on something modern, reliable, yet with far less soul."

Random Excellence: Dimitris Makrygiannakis

2013-05-10T16:51:01-05:00

Photo by Dimitris Makrygiannakis

Dimitris Makrygiannakis is "ngravity" on flickr—check out his Photostream, which features lots of good things to look at. His profile says he's a medical doctor from Heraklion, Crete, Greece, now living in Stockholm, Sweden. You might not be seeing quite everything in this, at least not right away—see a larger version here.

TOP is off tomorrow, as usual (ahem), but I'll be back with an "Open Mike" on Sunday. Enjoy your weekend in good health!

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Caddy)

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The Leica S System

2013-05-10T11:53:56-05:00

Ian Fairchild added an interesting thought to yesterday's "lensmakers" post. He said, "Agree with list with one exception. I would put Leica S lenses at the very top. They are as close to perfection as it gets. Prefer Zeiss to Leica M though."

Although I was talking more about "character" and what you might call a "house look" when I concocted that little list, I might agree—if I had more experience with Leica S lenses. I've seen one, held one, made a snap or two with one, but haven't gotten to know any of them. (I have considered asking my friend Jack if he'd like to do a "Leica S Example Print Offer" some day, though. I always like enabling people to see for themselves, with their own eyes. It's a good corrective to Internet blather lest the latter get too disconnected.)

As you might remember, I approve heartily of the S system.

By coincidence, Jack sent me a link to an interesting interview in Forbes magazine with Stephan Schulz, the Head of Professional Photo at Leica Camera AG. It's difficult for me to test how links work for others, but I think Forbes is behind a subscriber wall and I think you can get to the article anyway if you Google the article title, which is "How Leica Camera Is Reinventing The Medium-Format Market On Its Own Terms." Try that and see if it works for you.

As Jack says, a "very candid" interview. Herr Schultz reveals S sales figures, for one thing.

Mike
(Thanks to Jack MacDonough)

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David Dyer-Bennet: "Getting to the article via Google worked for me, anyway, and I know I don't have a subscription or even an account at Forbes. Kind of interesting how he compresses the time between the original invention of Leica and the S system. Leica did indeed get started by upsetting the applecart with a smaller format and lenses that performed on it—but that was a while ago."

Dennis: "That was a great interview. While I'd never buy a Leica because of the value proposition as it pertains to me, I can definitely respect the company with that kind of sensibility at the top."

Mike Gets Mail

2013-05-09T11:28:57-05:00

Hi Mike,
I greatly enjoy reading TOP. I hope you will pardon me for asking a question that may drive you to despair.

I was at Hikone castle last weekend and snapped the two pictures below, maybe a minute apart.

The picture with the boat was taken using my Pentax K-7 and 21mm lens.
The other picture was taken using my iPhone 5.

Both are JPEGs using the default settings. (No choice with the iPhone. "Bright" colors for the K-7.) The lens on both cameras have a similar field of view, and the shutter speeds for both pictures happen to be close.

What did I do wrong? I'd like the Pentax picture to look better than the iPhone. But even excluding the differences in colors and framing, details on the Pentax are not much better.

Should I have picked a wider aperture? Used a tripod? (It's really more of a weekend snapshot, so I would not use a tripod there. But I'd take that advice and maybe make the investment for other occasions.) Is the focus off? Would a better / newer camera address some of these issues? (K-5 IIs for the supposedly better autofocus, or a mirrorless to avoid the calibration problems?)

If there's no major issue with the photographer or the camera, maybe I will simply forget about a larger camera and use the iPhone full time. No point carrying anything else around if it can't help me making better pictures.

Thanks again for your website—and I will understand if you can't find time to reply.

Regards,
François M.

Hi Francois,
Not a mystery really.

Most cameras will do well when the conditions are ideal, and for "lowest common denominator" uses (like small onscreen JPEGs, which are a great equalizer).

The better the camera, the better it will cope with conditions further and further from ideal, and the better more demanding applications (like large fine prints) will look.

In my own mind I think of this as the "center" of camera performance vs. the "edges." The "edges" are where the imaging system as a whole is stressed in any way—working at or near the limits of any of its various capabilities. I wrote quite a long article about this once, although that discussion is limited to lenses.

It just depends on your uses and your needs. If you will only ever take pictures outdoors in full daylight of medium-distant, moderate contrast subjects, destined for onscreen JPEGs, then (presuming you're happy with the results, as you seem to be here) the lesser camera should serve you fine.

Usually, it's frustration that indicates the need for upgrading—butting up against limitations. If you use your iPhone camera a lot and never feel the need for anything more, then you're fine. If you use it a lot and frequently find yourself frustrated or limited by it for one reason or another, then it's probably time for a better camera (or in your case, to get the Pentax out).

Hope this helps—

Mike

Hello Mike,
I would be very interested to hear your take (and Ctein's) on Adobe's new cloud-only licensing. I presume lots of others have sent this in, but wanted to make sure. One interesting place to read is Scott Kelby's site, which has just exploded with angry comments.

Cheers,
C.

Hi Mike,
They're burning up the keyboards over at DPReview, talking about Adobe's new monthly pricing model for their Creative Suite products [...].

Hi Mike,
Why aren't you covering the Adobe furor?

M.L.

Mike replies: Because it is a furor (aptly chosen word, good work) and I've been unwilling to open the floodgates of the furor into the placid precincts of TOP. I have other things I'd rather be thinking about.

Everybody hates taxes, and yet they have to be paid. We're all aware of "the Photoshop tax," which many of us have been paying uncomplainingly for years. On the surface of things, it looks like Adobe has just cruelly slapped loyal Photoshop users with a drastic and Draconian tax hike.

On the other hand, I have a good friend who was very bitter about the announcement of OSX—he thought it would break all his legacy software, be difficult and painful to implement, and so forth. He went around saying for some while that he was going to leave Apple because Apple had abandoned him.

Then he switched to OSX—and said "oh." He found it was easy to implement, didn't cause him any inconvenience, and that it worked much better than System 9. Oil was cast upon the roiling waters, and he's been using it ever since. So I think it's probably a good idea to fully understand what Adobe is envisioning here before damning them to the heavens.

Fu•ror, n., 1. a public outburst, esp of protest; uproar. Late 15c., from M.Fr. fureur, from L. furor, related to furia: "rage, passion, fury."*

Mike

Hi Mike,
You’ve written at some length about the pros and cons (mostly cons) of editioning photographic prints (and I agree with what you say ). My main problem, and I’m sure that many other photographers have the same problem) is on pricing my prints. I am of the opinion that non-editioned prints are infinitely reproducible and therefore should be priced accordingly. I currently charge £75 (US$115) for an A2 sized inkjet print—is that reasonable? Am I shooting myself in the foot with this relatively low price—will people not take my work seriously because it is not 'seriously' priced? This really frustrates me! Sometimes I think that I should lower my prices as artwork should be accessible to everyone and other times I think that my prices are too low and people are put off by cheap artwork.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated!! Cheers,

—Simon Robinson

Hi Simon,
Couple of issues:

1. You are not going to sell very many prints. No insult to you; the only reason I say that is that almost nobody sells very many prints. Therefore, why not make a little money on the rare occasions when you do sell one?

2. Marketing sells prints, not the picture, and not price. So spend your time marketing. And if you spend time marketing, again, why not earn a little money on those occasions when it actually works?

3. You've already said it yourself—people equate high price with high quality and low price with low quality; and, with "Veblen goods," high price with high value and low price with low value. Many people who are rich enough to have a nice photograph to frame and hang on their walls not only don't mind paying the price for a good print, they are actually put off by low prices. When I was an art student in the 1980s, there was a pretty firmly established custom: $250–$350 (£160–£225) was the accepted price range for "student prints," while self-respecting independent working artists charged $600 (£387) and up.

Let me ask you this. A friend in England a while back sent me a link to her "dream home," a former lighthouse keeper's cottage on the coast near Brighton. It was on a cliff overlooking the sea. She was groaning because despite being a modest cottage it cost something like £850,000—very far out of her reach. Then, when the property sold, she sent me a good-naturedly bitter note to the effect that it sold to Londoners who will only use it as a weekend getaway. My question is: How many people who can afford an £850,000 weekend getaway will find a £75 print to be a delightful bargain, much better than a £500 or £5,000 print? You would lose that sale JUST ON PRICE, never mind the picture or print.

Two suggestions on editions:

1. Consider an edition year. When you have a nice new picture, work hard to make your best print of it and run off nine copies or whatever. Label them "Image created 2013, First Printing 2013 in a recto signed edition of seven prints and two artist's proofs." Then you are perfectly free to run off nine more three years from now and label them "Image created 2013, Second Printing 2016, in an edition of seven verso signed prints and two artist's proofs." ("recto" is print-speak for "on the front" and "verso" is "on the back.") You'll never run out of prints to sell, yet the original "vintage" prints are severely limited. And Simon Robinson aficionados can happily disputate over which edition is really "best," which we humans always like to do.

2. Consider doing "real" prints and "repro" prints. The "real" prints must be large and very fine, hopefully superbly crafted in some special technique; sign and mat those and slap a price of £2,500 on them. Then, make a series of much smaller "repro" prints that are unsigned or signed on the back and sell those as "studio prints" to your friends and Aunt Hortense for £75. Make sure everybody who buys a repro print understands full well that they are not buying the "real" print, which is something very different and oh so much finer.

The first option requires you to be organized and consistent, but lets all your prints be uniform, in case that aspect of the second option doesn't appeal to your sensibilities. The second option allows you to tailor your prices to the economic strata of your potential buyers: a high-prestige print for people who don't mind that price and in fact want the assurance that they're getting really good, carefully-done workmanship, and a high value print for those who must stretch their dollars (er, pound notes). Same picture either way, but not the same print.

Hope this helps your thinking…at least a little. :-)

Mike
(Thanks to our many far-flung correspondents)

*Definition from Collins English Dictionary, etymology from Online Etymology Dictionary, both via dictionary.com.

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Featured Comments from:

Justin Watt: "François, clearly the Pentax takes a superior photo. The iPhone missed the boat! ;-) "

Jonathan: "The main difference between the iPhone and a DSLR is that it's easier to whip out your iPhone on a busy street and photograph people without having anyone turn away or make a fuss."

The World's Great Lens Makers

2013-05-09T10:20:21-05:00

These are the world's top camera lens makers, albeit in the opinion of only one aficionado: moi. I'm going to make a guess—a wild leap of a guess—and predict that probably not everybody in every forum everywhere will agree with me 100%.

Zeiss
Olympus
Leica
Pentax
Rodenstock
all the rest

That isn't to slag your favorite lensmaker, though, no matter who you choose or what what you use, because:

Virtually every lensmaker markets successful and not-so-successful designs;
"Every lens gives its gifts"—that is, a great picture can be made with any lens*, including plastic lenses and toy lenses—all that's required is that the look of the lens be appropriate to the picture;
There's sample variation and sensor/film matching to consider; and
It's a matter of taste. In the end (assuming clients can't tell the difference), the only person your lenses have to please is you.

...And note that the bulleted points are a lot more important than the numbered ones.

Mike

*And the corollary, you can take a perfectly crappy picture with the best lens ever made

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

Rowan Lamb: "Crikey, you're asking for trouble ;-) . I've only ever really used Canon and Sigma lenses, so therefore I am foaming at the mouth with fury."

Richard Tugwell: "Chicken! You omitted Canon and Nikon so you didn't have to specify a preference! (Even if it was 6th/7th)."

Mike replies: I'd pick Nikon. No, Canon. No...BAWWWK bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk

Keith B [not specifically in answer to Richard —Ed.]: "Way back in the 1970s at Popular Photography, Norm Goldberg wrote a test report on one of the then-current Nikon cameras, the Nikkormat FT2. His concluding line was, as I remember it, an absolute classic of Golbergian understatement: 'A solidly made film-exposing box for one of the world's more important lens systems.' He didn't write 'best' or 'greatest' or 'highest quality' lens system. Nikon, and also now Canon, are still important because their product ranges are large, not because they're 'the best.'"

Sareesh Sudhakaran:

Arri-Zeiss Master Primes
Cooke S5i
Angenieux
Schneider
Nikon
Hasselblad
Mamiya.

Crabby Umbo: "I've shot virtually everything in my career, and I mean everything, and I have to say, aside from being a Zeiss guy, which I love (but, which isn't always the sharpest), I'm always amazed at the quality of the Pentax stuff in the olden days...not unusual to be thrust into a situation where I'd go from shooting Nikon or Canon stuff, and have to shoot multi-coated, screwmount Pentax stuff, and it was just much better...it was so good, I've even thought of buying an old Pentax screw mount body and getting the last generation multicoated screw mounted lenses, just to have a film 35mm hanging around....

"Olympus? Hmmm...OK.

"Leica? Meh (don't even get me started, there's more 'religion' and 'Kool-aid' drinking in that bunch than lens quality). Proof positive that if it costs enough, it's great!

"Rodenstock? You've got to be kidding me! As a guy who made most of his money in sheet film, I have to say I don't get it. Either something happened to that stuff in the '90s to improve it, or no one knows what they're talking about! In the '70s and '80s, I never tested a Rodenstock view camera lens that didn't have horrendous color fringing, and questionable sharpness (possibly decentering). Never knew a studio rat in Chicago (or Milwaukee) that wanted to shoot with one, either! Fully willing to believe that they got better in the '90s (didn't they merge with Schneider? [no —Ed.]), but in most of my shooting era, they were dogs! Even Schneiders were hitting one good one out of three tested. We all thought Rodenstock's darkroom stuff was for crap too, compared to Schneider and Nikon....

"I'm amazed every day...."

Mike replies: You should try an Apo-Sironar-S. Best darkroom lens I ever used was a Rodenstock, too, and I've used a whole lot of those. I don't think Ctein thinks too highly of them, though.

Variations

2013-05-08T12:22:13-05:00

This week's column by Ctein

One (of many) things I find interesting about printing is that some photographs demand to be printed a certain way and others seem to accommodate a substantial range of different "looks." I have no doubt that this is a function of my artistic mood as much as the photograph. But, still, there are some photographs that I see the need to print in exactly the same way, day after day, if they're going to look right to me. Others, my opinion changes about.

This used to bother me. Eventually I realized that there is no objective arbiter of rightness; it's whatever I think looks good. If a particular photograph looks best to me printed five different ways on five different days, then probably all of those are right for some legitimate value of "right."

Two of the photographs in my recent dye transfer sale illustrate that phenomenon. The "Roses against Black Stone Wall" photograph only looks right if I print it with precisely the right brightnesses; much lighter or darker than that and it's wrong. (Who judges right and wrong? I do; I'm the artist and I'm the only one with standing.) But the hue of that wall can go all over the place. Some days I like it closer to neutral (figure 1); some days I like it very cold (figure 2).

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

(Note: the illustrations are just that, illustrations of differences. There's no point in telling me you like figure 1 better than figure 2; you're looking at lousy JPEGs rendered with lousy publishing software. They don't look anything like the prints, and it's the prints I'm talking about. But I gotta give you something to look at, don't I?)

"Niagara Falls" is a different case. I'm pretty particular about the color balance in this one. Oh, a few CC one way or another from the particular blue-cyan I want looks good, but it can't go very far or the clouds end up appearing to be too cyan-green or too pinkish-white. But, brightness? Yeah, it's a high-key photograph, but which particular high-key I think looks best is all over the map. I'd say there's a good half-stop variation in print density in the way I've printed that photograph over time, and there's a pretty significant difference just from day-to-day. Some days I go in to print it and I think it should be really, really light (figure 3). Other days I think it should be distinctly darker (figure 4). And that's under constant bright incandescent lighting; start messing with that and I suppose anything is possible.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

I used to try to print exactly the same way every day, matching the previous day's prints. Now I just print it however it looks best to me. Yeah, this is lessening of consistency, but who says I was right the previous day...or even more right than I am today? I can't!

It's just one more reason why fine printing is an art and a craft and not a science.

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Featured Comments from:

John Camp: "Years ago, when I first started collecting photography, I decided to buy a print of Ansel Adams' 'Moonrise.' Adams printed several hundred of these, which was good for me, because it kept the prices relatively low for what was already seen as a classic photograph. I then got involved in a protracted discussion with a couple of different gallery people about getting a 'good' version of the print, and wound up buying one that was supplied through the Weston Gallery of Carmel. A 'good' print had to do with the treatment of some very subtle cloud layers against the dark sky, and it seems that even as good a printer as Adams was, some of the cloud results were favored by collectors over others. I've look at a lot of different versions of the images now, besides the one I own, and I can see differences, but they're very, very subtle. Whether he had a particular vision on one day or the next, or if he just had a range of acceptable prints, I don't know...but I do know that some collectors look at these things, and what they think may be different than what Adams thought, and all of that can affect the price of the prints...."

Mike Haspert: "You said,'Yeah, this is lessening of consistency, but who says I was right the previous day...or even more right than I am today? I can't!' Now there's a thought that fills some big shoes. Walt Whitman said, 'Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.' I believe I speak for many when I say. 'Thanks for the free lesson.'"