The Online Photographer

Mini-Me

2013-05-24T12:06:46-05:00

I've always been ambivalent about "teaser" campaigns. I think it was the 100th Anniversary of Harley Davidson (105th maybe? Will some Harley fan set me straight?) when Harley did an extended "guess who" campaign regarding the big act at the celebration party. Milwaukee was inundated with Harleys from all over the country (as we regularly are whenever Harley holds a big event) and the rumor was raging that the entertainment was going to be the Rolling Stones. The rumor was so prevalent that to a great many people it became a foregone conclusion. The day came, the big reveal happened, and the big act turned out to be...Elton John. No offense to Elton or his fans (or gay people...or Liberace fans...or eyeglass wearers...), but a gay English version of Liberace in eyeglasses was not what the bikers had in mind. People booed strenously and streamed for the exit doors before the concert had even gotten under way. I guess humongous antediluvian V-twin engines and tiny dancers don't go together. At least not to H.O.G.s.

All that said, Leica is teasing a new camera. Our friend Amin Sabet has all the details (well, such as they are; the nature of a teaser campaign is that details are withheld) at LeicaPlace. The camera is being referred to as the "Mini-M," not to be confused with (well...) a certain 1/8th-sized evil villain.

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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Meet Photographer Andrew Borowiec

2013-05-23T10:29:03-05:00

I've just spent a bracing hour in the company of Andrew Borowiec, thanks to Stan Banos's Reciprocity Failure blog. Starting with this short introductory video:

...and moving on to this longer but even more rewarding slideshow. (There's been such relentless rosy-hued propaganda through TV advertising about how lovely and perfect the Gulf Coast is that I've been in need of a corrective.)

We're not quite there with the medium of the narrated online slideshow yet, but I think it's a particularly amenable way to look at photographs—a modern multimedia version of a book that pairs pictures with accompanying text, my favorite form.

Hope you can take the time. Andrew has four books under his belt, two of which are still in print: Along the Ohio (Creating the North American Landscape), Cleveland: The Flats, the Mill, and the Hills, Historic Architecture in Canton, 1805–1940, and Industrial Perspective: Photographs of the Gulf Coast. His website is here and his gallery is here.

Mike
(Thanks to Stan Banos)

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Doug Howk: "Great video. Interesting that he too finds the panorama image best format for his Gulf Coast series (I use a 7x17 for much of my Florida work). I have his Cleveland book which is an excellent survey of Cleveland's industrial area. As a teenager I vividly remember accompanying my father through that area as he went from one side of town to the other while conducting his TV repair business at people's homes (a profession in the past). There was even a whale processing plant in the flats that stunk to the high heavens but was a crucial part of the perfume industry."

Dave: "I lived in the Akron area when I was first getting into photography. At the time I was only into taking pictures of waterfalls and sunsets. Northern Ohio seemed like a photographic wasteland to me. Now that I'm into photos of old buildings, I kick myself for the missed opportunity. Because I was looking for ruins to take photos of, I didn't really notice that part of Ohio. The place seamed downright prosperous to me. Yes, there were abandoned factories and run down neighborhoods, but there were also many new subdivisions and budding high tech industries.

"Borowiec's photos look great; they are right up my alley—ruins porn disguised as Joel Sternfeld or Stephen Shore (I mean that as a compliment). However, if he wants to be a proper documentarian, I think he needs to point the camera at some of the progress that's springing up in the rust belt."

A Better, Brighter Flickr(?)

2013-05-23T09:00:17-05:00

The photo sharing site Flickr, sometimes written with a lower-case "f," which seems to be used by a disproportionate number of the more talented of the many photographers in the world, has changed its look and organization. As you might expect, its users have...er, some opinions about that.

Go ahead, see if you can read that whole comment thread. According to one estimate, more than 20,000 comments so far.

The way I see it, the problem with things like this is that artistic people take into account the interface when they're deciding how to organize and present their work. If you change it, it's not so much that the change is bad, it's that it doesn't appear like the person whose pictures you're looking at expected it to appear. (Shades of what I was talking about the other day regarding shuffled-up software user interfaces.) It's one advantage of paper publication...the "published" work is at least set into a semi-enduring form that can't be recast willy-nilly by others later. Clearly, however, books are no longer the primary way photographers share their work and look at the work of others.

Mike
(Thanks to Bob Blakley)

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Ben Syverson: "My issue with the Flickr redesign is that the photos have no room to breathe...it looks like a contact sheet, whereas the old design was closer to a gallery wall. The eye needs that 'white space' (not necessarily white) for visual relief, which is why we started putting room between words and paragraphs hundreds of years ago.

"I get why you would use this design for mobile devices, where you need to maximize screen utilization, but it's just overkill on the desktop. I have a feeling the idea came from an engineer rather than a designer, which would fit the historical pattern of horror vacui as an 'outsider art' impulse.

"One great quote from the Horror vacui Wikipedia article: 'There is an inverse relationship between horror vacui and value perception.' That pretty much sums it up. It's hard to appreciate an individual image when it's crammed into a mosaic of 20 other photos."

How Many Hours?

2013-05-22T12:57:19-05:00

This week's column by Ctein

While slaving away in the darkroom to finish the printing for the last, blow-out TOP dye transfer print sale (see the footnote* for a status report), I started musing on how many hours I've spent doing dye transfer, total. I can figure that out. By the time I started doing dye transfer printing in 1975, I was doing pretty good record-keeping. (Figuring out how much time I've spent on all photographic printing and film processing would be more difficult, because I put in a lot of time before I started keeping detailed records. A project for another day.)

First question for myself: how many photographs have I printed as dye transfers? My own portfolio totals 300. Here's the very first photograph I ever made a dye transfer print of:

Off the cuff, I don't have quite as precise a number for the printing I've done for others. I could figure it out by digging through a bunch of disconnected records, but that'd be work. I'm sure it's at least 200 photographs. I'd be awfully surprised if it was 300. So let's call it 250, which means I've printed a total of 550 photographs (+/– 10%).

The time it takes to print a photograph as a dye transfer varies a lot. Sometimes it's been as little as four hours of darkroom time until I'm ready to pull a finished print. Sometimes it's been a dozen. 6–7 hours sounds about right, for the average. Give or take, oh say, an hour. Multiplied by the number of photographs, I'm looking at 3,500 hours (+/– 20%) of darkroom time.

That's just until I'm ready to make finished prints. Rarely did I make only one print of a photograph, either for myself or for clients. Again, no precise numbers unless I want to dig through too many records. I settled into the habit of making four prints of my photographs (one for the portfolio and three for sale). Clients rarely ordered fewer than two prints.

In my early days, I made fewer than four prints; conversely, sometimes clients would want a lot more than two prints. Plus, there are the times when I'd sell all three of my photograph's prints and make more. I'll guess 3.5 finished prints, average, for each photograph I've printed. (That doesn't count the TOP sales; we'll get to those.) Multiplying up, let's call it 1,900 prints. So, once I've got to the point of making those finished prints, how much time do they take? Well, the darkroom time isn't too bad, typically half an hour per print, and that's pretty reliable. Rounded off, I'm up to 4,500 hours of darkroom time.

Ah, but, there's the spotting and finishing. As I said in the footnote, those take up a lot more time than printing. This really varies from photograph to photograph; some require essentially none of this and others take all day. On average, it's a solid hour and change, so there's maybe 2,200 hours of non-darkroom time.

Now, what about those TOP print sales? They're exceptional. I spend a lot more time getting to the point of being able to make a first print, because I want the printing to be as easy as possible and exactly right, and I also make multiple sets of matrices, for when I screw one set up in the course of printing the run. So, maybe 100 hours of darkroom time.

Smaller prints take a lot less time to spot and finish than big ones and Mike and I were careful to choose the prints in our previous sales to be ones that I knew would take very little spotting and finishing time. That's how I could afford to make the prices so low. I know I spent less than 40 minutes printing and finishing each of the 1,000 small dye transfer prints I sold through TOP. Let's call it 500 hours of darkroom time, 200 hours of finishing time. Total so far: 5,000 hours in the darkroom, 2,400 hours out.

I've omitted two things—the very end and the very beginning of my dye transfer career. The very end is, of course, the TOP sale I'm currently working on. Like the earlier sales, it's atypical, but in different ways. 150–200 hours of darkroom time (that includes the considerable pre-sale prep) and an equal amount (I hope!) of spotting and finishing time.

Now I'm up to 5,200 hours of darkroom time and 2,600 hrs. of non-darkroom time (unless I screwed up my addition) with a 20% margin of error.

It's difficult for me to estimate how much time I spent in the first few years. My routines weren't standardized and there was a steep learning curve I was climbing solo, filled with trial and error. I can't look to my volume of finished work for a good estimate, although my records say I printed about 10 photographs a year in the early years. Probably the best reference point I have is the 3-year interval from when I started (1975), and when I went back to Rochester to see Kodak's dye transfer experts, Frank McLaughlin and Bob Speck (1978). At that point, I could reasonably say I was proficient, since they declared that they had never seen better dye transfer prints than mine. (I know better printers than me, but who am I to turn down a compliment!) It's likely any printing I did after that would fall under the earlier analyses.

Now comes the wild-ass guessing. I was most definitely not doing dye transfer full-time. I'm sure I wasn't putting anywhere near 1,000 hours a year into it: I didn't have the time and I didn't have the money. It's an expensive process! It's hard to imagine I was spending less than 500 hours a year on it, but maybe. Still, I'll generously guess 1,000 hours of darkroom time and 500 hours of non-darkroom time, on top of what I previously figured in.

So, there you have it! Thirty-eight years of dye transfer printing roughly equals 6,200 hours** of darkroom time and 3,100 hours of non-darkroom time.

The import of all of this? Thinking about such things keeps me from getting too bored while rolling out prints in the darkroom.

*I know many of you are curious about my progress, so here's where that stands. I'm 90% done with the printing but less than halfway done with the spotting and finishing, which takes longer. And the shipping part? Not even begun. I may not be able to have everything shipped by June 17. If there's anyone out there who wouldn't mind getting their prints later (shipped by the end of July, I promise), I wouldn't mind hearing from you, via email: ctein@pobox.com.

[**A standard work-year (eight hours a day times five days a week times 52 weeks a year minus two weeks annually for vacation) is considered to be 2,000 hours. —Ed.]

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robert: "6200+3100 hrs = 9300 hours. Seven hundred hours short of mastery and you are giving up dye transfer?? but you are so close! :-) "

[In case you might be wondering, Robert is referring to the notion that it takes 10,000 hours of practice before true mastery is achieved, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success. —Ed.]

Blog Note

2013-05-22T12:24:06-05:00

AWOL: I didn't go fishin' yesterday, but I had to take the day off. Don't know why...other than that now and then you just need a day off.

Commentary: Monday didn't set a numerical record for comments on a TOP post, but it might have set a record for the number of substantive comments. Just about 170 as of this writing.

Clearly a topic of considerable interest to photographers. We will present Ctein's take on Photoshop CC two weeks from today.

Where this stuff comes from: Every writer, I suspect, has had the experience of something seeming to "pop" from his or her head, as if unbidden.

One of the hardware stores where I shop has a handicapped parking space right in front of the front door, sidewise, meaning the cars park parallel to the storefront and not perpendicular to it. As I was leaving the hardware store yesterday, a big pickup truck screeched into the handicapped parking space and a big, burly guy with hair in some of the wrong places hopped out of it and went striding purposefully into the store.

As he passed me, I said, "Funny, you don't look handicapped. Or are you just a moral cripple?"

That second sentence came from nowhere. Sent by God. Was not something I was thinking of saying. Just popped out.

Fortunately, there was a slight pause between my first and second sentences, and the guy had passed me by the time I said it, so I was no longer facing him. And I don't think he heard me. A good thing, because if it came to blows I don't think I would prove to be the faster runner.

Happens sometimes when I write, too. But in that case it's seldom dangerous.

Mike

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Michael Forte:

bill: "Thanks for speaking out for the handicapped of the world. I'm a spinal cord injury. But these rude ABs (our term for the Able Bodied) folks annoy the hell out of me/us when I can barely manage 50 feet or am 'wheelin' it' and can't find a space with them all blocked by a big, burly, hairy armed delivery guy and his truck taking five spaces AARRGGGGHHH. I wish I could recommend that everyone say something in these situations but it could be hazardous to your health.

"Glad you took a day, we all need one now and then. Hope it was a good 'un!

"And if you are one of the folks who are 'only here for a few minutes, so park HC' think about us who sigh and drive on 'cause we need the space."

Stan B.: "Amazingly—I had just finished reading this post, right before coming here...."

Mike replies: That falls into my regular category of Learn Something New Every Day at TOP, only sometimes it applies to things I'd rather not know and wish I didn't.

BrianW: "There's a historical precedent, both for the parking misuse and for Mike's quip."

Mike replies: That's funny, but shh, don't tell the anti-Apple crowd.

The funniest/most pathetic handicapped parking story I ever knew about firsthand was a guy I worked with who had spina bifida. He needed an electrified cart to get around the building with indoors. Like a very small golf cart. When the company moved in to a much larger, more luxurious building, the factory entrace had steps he couldn't negotiate, so he was presented with a corporate handicapped parking pass and his own specially-designated handicapped parking space right next to the front door, on ground level. But when he tried to park his electrified cart next to the front door at night, they decided it didn't look nice parked in the reception area...so they forbade that, and made him park the cart way in the back of the factory, in the shipping department where he worked. The upshot was that after he got the special handicapped parking space (which he had to use), he had to slowly and painfully walk more than the length of a football field every morning and evening to get to and from his cart.

He never ceased complaining about this, and management never did anything about it.

The End of the Photoshop Era

2013-05-20T11:32:42-05:00

I've used Photoshop for 20 years, more or less. I've upgraded every two or three versions. Each time I do, it's like going into my house after someone sneaked in and rearranged everything, sometimes subtly, sometimes not...taking a few familiar things away and leaving a few new things. It's mostly familiar, it's just that lots of things aren't quite where I left them, and I don't quite know where to go look. It always takes me a while to groove my practices with a new version. Sometimes it's a bit of an adventure. (Not the sort of adventure I enjoy—for the most part, I hate gratuitous change. But that's a rant for another day.)

I hesitate to admit this, and I would never do this now that I have a public "presence," but I must shamefacedly admit that I used a pirated copy of Photoshop for a while, too, when I was too poor to pay for it. (Hey, I'm a single parent. My current copy of CS6 was fully paid for, high retail, with cash money.) So I completely understand why Adobe is setting things up so that people will have to pay for the use of its software. It has the right. I'm walking proof of why it might be necessary, and I can't complain.

As I understand it—and I really haven't done nearly as much reading about this as I should have (software issues bore me)—Adobe will be making constant, ongoing updates to the CC program, something they're touting as one of the advantages of the new arrangement. (Is that correct?)

My issue is not so much that I'd have to pay a monthly fee, but that constant updates would mean I'd never get comfortable. That stranger sneaking into my house and rearranging everything would be doing less of it, but more often. I find it hard enough to do what I want to do in Photoshop, which I have never really come close to mastering. Add in constant, ongoing changes of the sort that have appeared in the past in new versions, and I'd never feel like I'm standing on firm ground.

Anyway, I doubt very much I'll be a "subscriber" under the new regime. I'm not a "power user." My Photoshop era may be coming to an end...or will as soon as CS6 gets too long in the tooth to remain fully practical.

Several readers have suggested that I do a survey of other software options. That's like asking me to write about higher mathematics. I have strengths and I have weaknesses, but, really, you don't want me writing about software, believe me. I don't learn software easily or well. (It was one of the reasons I got into photography in the first place, and I'm really not kidding—so I wouldn't have to get anywhere near computers! That's the truth. ) I can't write intelligently about the software I use, much less every other option too.

However, Dpreview to the rescue—they've just published a list of ten alternatives to Photoshop. Granted, two of the ten have "Photoshop" in the name, and are from Adobe, but aren't Photoshop.

Personally, I'm leaning toward DxO. Anyone have any comments about that?

And many photographers just use Lightroom now, and that won't change. So to a lot of people, I suppose, this whole Photoshop CC tempest is taking place in someone else's teapot anyway....

Mike

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Greg Roberts: "You said, 'I'm walking proof of why it might be necessary....' I think the complete opposite is true: you are walking proof that if people are able to use, learn, and appreciate, quality software then they will pay for it when they can. I did the same, when I could not afford Photoshop I used a pirated copy, and once I could afford it I bought it, and have continued to pay for it every two years. Whether it is monthly rental or annual purchase, if you can't currently afford it then you are not going to buy it. Adobe's efforts to stop piracy will not increase their income, as the majority of today's pirates aren't going to instantly subscribe tomorrow. A lot of people are going to migrate to other products and find those other products are pretty good for most of the work they want to do. Look back at your own piracy—did you actually cost Adobe money when you pirated the software? Failure to gain is not loss. If the pirate can't afford it the pirate will not buy it."

Tim Bradshaw: "I don't have a recommendation. But if you want to escape the endless stream of annoying changes you really have one choice: don't use software."

Mark Roberts: "Mike, as you probably know I've been teaching Photoshop in college now for... a long time. It's not surprising that old farts like you and I are fed up with getting our rooms rearranged, as you describe it. But the last time I told a class full of students that the release of a new version was imminent I received, rather than expressions of excitement or enthusiasm, an audible groan from the room. This from 19-year-olds on their first version of Photoshop."

FrankyB: "Adobe's plan reminds me of a humorous skit I saw on television. A poor widow is in the funeral home and the director is selling her a suit for her dead husband and is charging her by the week.

"I have used Photoshop for many years and paid full price for it and each upgrade through CS6. However, I will not be forced to purchase all future upgrades. I will continue with CS6, until I feel the need to move to something else. I will then purchase a program with a permanent license from a different company."

Charles Lanteigne: "I found DPReview's list farcically inadequate. Apart from Photoshop Elements and GIMP, which are novice versions of Photoshop, the rest are not even close to being alternatives to Photoshop. The only way they could be construed as such is if all along you've used so little of Photoshop that it's actually not what you needed. The list actually includes either alternatives to Camera Raw (to perform global ajustments, some dodging/burning and such) or alternatives to "Paint" (used to draw stuff). Image manipulation applications that can perform complex local adjustments, masking and compositing (which is what Photoshop is all about)? Sorry, there are no alternatives."

John K: "I stopped using Adobe products a couple of years ago. No PS, no Flash, no Acrobat. I'm doing just fine. I use Aperture 3 with the Nik suite of plugins for most editing and Pixelmator for anything Aperture can't do. There are lots of non-Adobe options."

Michael Matthews: "Since Lightroom's develop module is essentially the current version of ACR, plus some different approaches to achieving similar ends, it should continue to serve as an up-to-date entryway to your existing flavor of Photoshop. Nothing in your copy of CS6...or CS 5.5...or CS3 is going to stop working just because there's a new function in the subscription software. Do the ACR work in Lightroom and, then, if the image needs more (or if you prefer the Photoshop layers and tools approach) bump it over to Photoshop and continue. Updating Lightroom at $79 for a new release is a lot less expensive than updating Photoshop has been."

Robbie Corrigan (partial comment): "Been using the subscription version of PS6 for a good nine months now. Can't see what the hassle is in keeping it bang up to date with camera/lens profiles."

Greg (partial comment): "Please, let's not discuss PS Elements—in 2013, 8 bits per channel is crippleware."

Phil: "When it comes to computers, I'm what people refer to as a power user. I've used hundreds of programs of all kind, and I don't fret much when I need to use one I don't know—they're pretty much all the same to me. As far as I know, and I've seen a lot, the only area where PS (and Adobe products in general) truly outshines others is in color space management. If you need to go to print (and I do mean magazines and the like), then there is little latitude in tool choices. I don't say that Adobe do it better than others, they just do it in the way the industry understands and handles color spaces. If you are like the vast majority of users and don't need to go to print, then just about any tool set will get the job done quite well, usually with a softer learning curve and much less hassle and aggravation over time."

Don Bryant (partial comment): "I'm surprised no one has mentioned Capture One software. An excellent alternative probably the top contendor to replace Adobe PS and LR."

Yannick Martel (partial comment): "I strongly suggest RawTherapee, which I find very efficient once I get used to it."

Max Sang (partial comment): "I've used Bibble (now renamed AfterShot) for a few years now and it's really nice."

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "My bulk processing goes through Corel Aftershot Pro (formerly Bibble Pro). They've ruined it (dropped the Noise Ninja integration, so newer versions are useless to me). Adobe's attitude has made me not willing to use Lightroom except as an absolute last resort."

Bernie (partial comment): "I have decided to give Pixelmator a try."

Manuel (partial comment): "I can't praise DxO Optics Pro 8 highly enough."

Godfrey: "I have Photoshop CS5. And hardly use it. No need to upgrade. I debate whether to even keep it installed. Lightroom does well for me."

John (partial comment): "I have used Picture Window Pro for several years now. I like it and still use it for most of my detailed editing."

Jim Kofron (partial comment): "I left Photoshop years ago, tempted by a new program that was advertised here at TOP: Lightzone. For me, Lightzone was an ideal system once you figured out the gestalt (it was much different than Photoshop), and as long as you didn't have to push pixels around (no healing brush). The sad news is that Lightcrafts closed up shop a few years ago—but the good news is that Fabio recently agreed to open-source the code. http://lightzoneproject.org/ is where the action is, and there's Windows and Linux betas out now. Hopefully the Mac beta will be coming shortly."

adamct (partial comment): "I have to lob in another recommendation for Photoline."

Mike Weatherstone (partial comment): "I do as little post processing as possible, preferring to get it right' in camera' if I can. The reason is just that I get no pleasure at all in doing it. Frankly it bores me rigid."

Mike Plews "Maybe it's time to go back to doing all my image processing with Dektol."

John Camp: "I've been involved with a long torturous discussion of this on Luminous Landscape, and anyone who wants to read or participate in a long torturous discussion should go there—there's a lot of information. Here's what I believe (others may disagree):

"Adobe may have had several reasons for going to the subscription-only form. The main one is, it'll make them a lot of money. If you upgraded with every single new version of the stand-alone product, CC will still cost you more (other than the first loss-leader year.) If you did what many people did—upgraded every other version, it'll cost you more than twice as much. (This is compared to upgrade costs, not to first-time buyers.) I have a very serious, but infrequent use for Photoshop, which really leaves me in a quandary. Do I want to pay more than twice as much for what is already a very high-priced product, to use it six times a year? I think many other people are in the same boat. Other reasons that some people claim Adobe may require CC: to cut down on piracy, to smooth revenue flow, to reduce engineering complications in maintaining two versions, and because Photoshop was reaching the point in its development when new important features were becoming harder to provide, so people might more frequently opt out of new versions (and thus reduce Adobe revenue.)

"Adobe has suggested that there will be no CS7—that CS6 will be the last stand-alone Photoshop. They have promised to keep it updated for some time, but not forever. That means that within a relatively few years...probably three or four—you would no longer get and updated camera base for CS6, and if you use Mac computers, then the very next OS upgrade might no longer support CS6. So CS6, without support, will probably go obsolete relatively quickly, unless you mothball an 'archival' computer with an OS that sports CS6. The problem will be somewhat less with Windows machines.

"The objections to Adobe's decision generally follow these lines:

Too expensive, especially for independent artists, part-time pros, or independent pros. One well-regarded commenter on LuLa suggests that Adobe his basically going for corporate sales, and is willing to sacrifice non-corporate sales.

Locks up your work, as well as Adobe's. If you drop out of the subscription system, you will be allowed to continue using Photoshop (as I understand it) for 90 days, and then the program will stop working. (So here I make up a story.) Suppose you are a serious photographer, with several thousand images in Photoshop files. You lose your job, and can no longer afford to pay the monthly fees. You then must move all your files off Photoshop, into some other DAM program, or they will be locked up—after 90 days you will have no access to the files, including your personal work on the files. The program simply won't work anymore. It is possible to move the images, but if you have, say, several tens of thousands of them, you'd have to do an enormous amount of work to get them out before the program is locked. The objection here is that Adobe is not only locking their program—they're locking up your work.

Some people have claimed that if the move to CC is successful with Photoshop and the other Creative Suite programs, that Lightroom will be next. Adobe has more-or-less denied this, saying that Lightroom will remain stand-alone for the foreseeable future. If Lightroom also went CC, that would again require those who do not wish to subscribe, to do an enormous amount of additional work to save their own past work on the LR program. The question here is, what does 'foreseeable' mean? Definitions are thin on the ground.

Since you must be online to keep the program working, you could have problems if you go off-grid for more than three months (traveling to a third-world location, for example.) And because of the frequent updates projected by Adobe, people who live in rural areas with not much bandwidth avaIlable, upgrades could take a lot of time.

"Jeff Schewe, who has written well-regarded Lightroom/Photoshop books, has mounted a generally intelligent if somewhat cantankerous defense of Adobe on several threads at LuLa. I don't feel like defending them, so go there if you wish to see Jeff's defense.

"Bottom line, as I see it: Adobe is going to hurt a lot of people who supported them in the past, but for Adobe, the change makes sense in terms of revenue. There may be other consequences that would be less favorable, but those are all speculative."

UPDATE: I've been more impressed than ever by the variety and thoughtfulness of the comments to this post. The idea of the "Featured Comments" is to provide a briefer sampling of a variety of good or interesting (or amusing) comments for readers who might not have time to delve into the larger stack of unedited ones, so I've been reluctant to expand this section too far, but there are quite a number of valuable comments in the main Comments Section. Thanks to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts.

UPDATE #2: A friend at Adobe wrote to clarify that updates to Photoshop CC will be optional and adoptable on the user's timetable. They'll come through the Adobe Applications Manager. —Ed.

Bear.: "For my business, I much prefer software licensed monthly. No capital costs tied up. Outgoings match revenue. No tax issues. But for my personal affairs, I greatly dislike the monthly model. I don't use the software day to day. It is is a discretionary purchase. And I generally don't need the latest update. I will keep a copy for years. Hence, from my personal perspective, Adobe is pushing Photoshop to professionals, and away from amateurs. This will shrink its market. And I image either Adobe or someone else will fill the gap."

Ctein (partial comment): "Keeping a chronological perspective on it, it's a bit early for anyone to be worrying. If one is good with Photoshop CS6, nothing is going to change until the operating systems go through enough generations that it will no longer run. That's difficult to predict—a bit less so on the Mac side. And especially since I know your habits. In your case, assuming you go with your plan to get a new machine when your AppleCare warranty expires on this one, you're going to be good for at least four more years and quite possibly seven. Which is, like, forever in computer terms. Just saying, it's not an immediately pressing problem. Remember, Creative Cloud isn't going to negate anyone's existing CS6 license or operation."

Brian Ellis (partial comment): "I've spent hundreds of hours over the years reading, watching videos, attending workshops, buying books, etc. to get to my present knowledge of Photoshop. I'm not about to use some other program unless there's absolutely no choice."

Crabby Umbo (partial comment): "Photoshop is so ubiquitous, that I've lost management jobs during interviews by saying 'I've used Photoshop in the past, but use alternative software today, as do most photographers.' The HR stiff only knows that the department head told them the candidate must be proficient in Photoshop, even though it isn't their job to use it...."

James Moule (partial comment): "Adobe is creating an opening for Google (which has recently acquired Nik) to develop a full-featured replacement for Photoshop."

MM (partial comment): "One commenter recommended xara.com (Windows only). I had never heard of it, but from their website it looks very capable and the more expensive version ($300) claims to have full PSD support."

Alan Barnard: "I'm a graphics professional and photographer who uses Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Lightroom on a regular basis. For someone like myself who uses the full suite of Adobe tools, CC is a welcome alternative. That said, I'm pretty sure I'd be disappointed if I was strictly a Photoshop user."

John McDevitt: "I can't believe DPreview neglected to mention Picture Window Pro (PWP). I've been using PWP for years."

Open Mike: 'Made in America!'

2013-05-19T11:44:42-05:00

Since this is apparently appliance week at TOP and I have toasted my brains on toasters, I thought I'd show you a picture of one of my prized possessions:

And I'm not even kidding. It's a c. 1972 model Maytag made in Newton, Iowa, and I plan to keep it going as long as I can.

Maytag kept Newton, Iowa prosperous for a hundred years...and then it moved production out of the U.S. and the town withered. It's down to a scant 15,000 people or so. Can't remember how I found out about this; seems to me "60 Minutes" did a piece on it or something. Anyway it was used as an example in a TV show about the decline of American manufacturing. So now Newton Maytags seem symbolic to me, symbolic of an era whose passing I feel pretty ambivalent about.

[UPDATE: For some reason I just couldn't make the video work on CBS's site. It's on YouTube, but I feel uncomfortable linking to it because it don't know if CBS has granted permission for it to be there. But if you search "Elections: Anger in the Land" on YouTube, you'll find the piece, featuring Scott Pelley. —Ed.]

How important is it to you to buy American? (Or British or Australian or wherever you live?) In my middle age I've come 180° on this. Or maybe 160°. When I was young, the belligerent union "Buy American" campaigns seems jingoistic and reactionary, and anyway I was enamored of European sports cars and Japanese stereo equipment. Now I'm not so sure they didn't have a point.

Seems to me it goes more or less like this. An economy grows prosperous through people making things and buying and selling things to their neighbors. Over time, sensible regulations are put in place to counteract the natural imbalances: workers are granted certain powers and rights so the all-powerful owners can't exploit them ruthlessly; safety regulations are enacted, both for producers and consumers; reforms like the 8-hour day and child labor laws are put in place; and environmental concerns are addressed so people can't just wantonly destroy the common matrix for fleeting gain. And after a while everything works out pretty much in balance. An uneasy balance, sometimes, but still.

But all this is expensive, so we start buying things from places in the world where they're too primitive to have worker's rights or product safety safeguards or environmental protections. Then we start to get toxic heavy metals in children's toys and poisons in our foodstuffs, and we hear distant tales of egregiously oppressed and underpaid workers, unsafe working conditions, child labor sweatshops, garment factory fires with piles of dead seamstresses, horrendous environmental damage, and on and on. Exactly like it used to be in 19th-century America before all those quaint localized reforms were enacted. And our own neighbors go unemployed, the middle class declines, inequality imposes endless stressors on society, etc., etc.

Meanwhile, I can't find a decent toaster, or a rake that doesn't break when you look at it wrong. The crazy cheapening of ordinary products is really getting frustrating.

Of course, it does make some sense for production to be specialized. The Germans make the best cars...and, since I brought up the subject with the previous link, the best turntables; the British make (used to make?) the best loudspeakers; the Japanese make the best cameras. You can buy cars made in a whole lot of places, but in fact in many cases you can't "buy [blank]" even if you want to—the American textile industry is a faded ghost of its former glory (although, as I've noted before, I proudly buy American jeans), and the last plant in the U.S. that made flatware—eating utensils, I mean—closed down recently. And good luck buying an American-made camera—I think you'd be limited to a small selection of handmade view cameras.

Not long ago I had to buy a new easy chair (my old one literally* fell to pieces), and the one I bought is made in southern Indiana. We'll see how that one holds up—the construction quality seems a bit suspicious. But hey, I supported some Hoosiers, and I feel good about that. So far so good.

I'll leave you with a funny little exchange:

Me, at a pool table store: "I've never heard of this brand before—'American Heritage.' With a name like that, these have got to be made in China, right?"

Salesman: "Yep."

At least there are a few brands of American-made pool table left. Even Brunswick tables are not made here any more. And so it goes.

Mike

*And I mean "literally" literally. I think it's hilarious that many people online use the word "literally" to intensify a figure of speech, as in, "it was literally a million degrees out!"

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic essays by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that usually appear on Sundays."

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

Ken James: "Good off-topic article. These subjects are on my mind all the time, and are amazingly seldom spelled out simply as you have here. Thanks."

Andrew Hughes: "There is an interesting British couple who are trying to live for a year buying only British. They have now managed to set up a trade fair to support their cause."

Mike adds: See also Bill's comment in the Comments Section. The one that begins, "I actually spent a year (2009) buying only American-made stuff."

Craig Yuill: "If you or other readers are interested in buying an American-made washer, there is still Speed Queen. I believe they are made in Wisconsin, your home state. I own (and prefer) a washer made by a Swedish company called Asko. But when my Asko went on the fritz last summer I used coin-operated Speed Queen washers until my machine was fixed. The Speed Queens are old-fashioned, basic top loaders like your Maytag, but they are built very well, with stainless-steel tubs no less."

Chris Wentz: "Mike, When you decide to buy a yacht, my loft will make your sails. Right here in in our shop, with our hands, in Stamford, Connecticut. Sails made in the USA have become as rare as hen's teeth."

Chad Thompson: "Fourth-generation Newtonian here. Like most news stories, '60 Minutes' got most things right but missed a few of the more subtle things happening. At the time of the Whirlpool buyout Maytag had been struggling for quite a while with under-performing brands like Admiral, Amana, Magic Chef, and Jenn-Air. I hear Hoover was big in England though. Mismanagement, unions, healthcare, and Wal-mart were contributing factors to Maytag/Newton's demise as well.

"For the first 19–25 years of my life I benefited greatly from Maytag's generosity. My parents worked there, my grandparents worked there, most of our family friends worked there. Everything I ate, played with, sat on or watched was provided for by Maytag directly or otherwise. I swam at Maytag Pool, played on the swings and sandboxes at Maytag Park. I played festivals and walked for graduation at the Fred Maytag Bowl. I studied music and theater at the auditorium that Maytag built on to Newton Senior High. To this day Maytag (the family not the company) is still in my life in the form of blue cheese and Anchor Steam beer. So it's not lightly that now as an adult when faced with buying appliances of my own that I don't even consider new Maytags, Whirlpools, or any other brand that Whilrpool ownes. Mostly for what they did to my dad two years before his retirement—but that's a much longer story.

"So I buy American as much as I can, buy used when I can, and use the tricks I learned from dad's years as an Ole Lonely Repairman to fix the crap appliances that are sold nowadays.

"As an aside, things in Newton are getting better. There's a company employing a couple hundred people that make wind turbine blades—they're based out of China."

Helcio J. Tagliolatto: "My home is full of Made in America appliances, from garden to kitchen to superb tools, all working for more than 28 years. I'm glad I bought them when it was possible, in Brazil."

Steve Rosenblum: "It is increasingly difficult to buy any complicated product (such as a car) that is made in any one country, even if that is your intent. I needed to replace my car in 2011. I have lived my life in the industrial Midwest and decided to buy an 'American car' after years of owning 'foreign cars.' I drove a bunch of new cars, both domestic and foreign, and the car I chose was a Buick Regal Turbo (yes, a Buick Regal) which really was the best of the bunch. It has the road feel, fit and finish of a German sports sedan but costs less. Well, it turns out there is a good reason for that...it is a German sports sedan...it's a rebadged Opal insignia and the 2011 model was assembled in Germany by German workers. Since then I think they have moved the Regal assembly to Canada.

"Many of my Michigan friends and acquaintances congratulated me for having leased an 'American car' during the depths of a recession. I got lots of kudos for my choice. It may have some 'American' content and/or design, but it's a German car built by a German subsidiary of an 'American' company. Of course, I probably could have bought a car that was truly built in America, but more likely than not that car would be a Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, Mazda, or VW—all of which assemble the majority of their vehicles destined for sale in America, in America with American workers. If I had bought one of those cars my friends and neighbors may have hassled me about not buying 'American.' Things aren't so simple anymore."

Benjamin Marks: "Recently seen T-shirt: 'Misuse of the word 'literally' makes me figuratively insane.'"

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

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

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

©2013 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

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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(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)

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:

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.

©2013 by Ctein, all rights reserved

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

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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(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)

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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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)

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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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 :-) "