The Online Photographer

Fujifilm X100 VI Gets IBIS! Woo-Hoo!

2024-02-21T09:32:18-06:00

Surely one of the landmark cameras of the whole digital era is the Fujifilm X100 series, which started in 2010 and just now reached its sixth, count 'em, sixth, iteration. It was a surprise smash hit, and propelled Fuji into its current role as a multifaceted camera manufacturer. The Fujifilm X100VI (Mark VI, that is) was just announced, and is available for pre-order. It's the king of compacts, the apotheosis of the point-and-shoot, the modern-day Barnack camera.

I'll assume you're passingly familiar with the X100 series. What's so different about the VI?

It's a major update, for two reasons. Starting with the most important new feature, the VI get IBIS (in-body image stabilization) for the first time in the model's now 131/2-year history. Fuji was late to the party with image stabilization, but now that they have it they're obviously spreading it around their lineup generously. The new IBIS claims six stops of improvement at the cost of only 1.5 ounces of extra weight—the camera can actually stand that, and it might actually make an improvement in hand-feel—and nothing in terms of added size.

If you want to modify the opposite extreme and make the lens slower in bright light, there's a built-in 4-stop ND filter for shooting wide apertures for better bokeh in bright light. I don't know when that arrived. Word on the street is that you can use both IBIS and the ND filter together, which might be especially useful for video.

You remember the tagline of Bill Hader's "Stefon" character on SNL, who reviewed the latest, hottest clubs? "This club has everything"? Well, after five go-rounds of refining the original, the Mark VI has everything. Ghosts, banjos, Carl Paladino, a stuck-up kitten who won't sign autographs, furkels*. No, seriously: all the goodies of previous versions, including its Leica-inspired good looks, flip-up screen (the 3.0", 1.62m-dot LCD is a touchscreen), knob-and-dial controls including an aperture ring, a way to increase the weather resistance by adding two mysterious rings to the lens (I can't quite sort that out), and of course the famous and exclusive hybrid viewfinder that switches on demand from optical to electronic. Using the front switch that pays homage to the frameline lever on ancient Leicas. (Modern ones too, Jeff reminds us. But ancient ones too.)

X-Processor 5
The second big new thing is the sensor/processor. The Mark VI inherits Fuji's latest 40-megapixel sensor and processor from the X-H2. The plethora of pixels makes possible 1.4X and 2X digital crop settings at lower but still usable resolutions, resulting in equivalent focal lengths of ~50mm and 70mm. That's separate from the attachable optical converter lenses, available as accessories, that change the native 35mm-e lens to 50mm-e and 28mm-e.

AF is said to be "improved," and it probably is. In car magazines, every new model of virtually any sporty car claims to have a chassis that is "X% stiffer" than the last model. Some wag of a writer once factored in all the claimed improvements over time and noted that the latest car had to have a chassis that was something like 2,371% stiffer than the original—which might have been possible if the chassis originally had the stiffness of spaghetti or silly putty, or the new one was as stiff as a Formula One racecar. "Improved AF" is a bit like that. On the other hand, the original X100 did have pretty slow AF, and by the Mark V it had become significantly better and, moreover, no longer an annoyance, so it's good that they're continuing to improve it. The processor, like the 40-mp sensor, is Fuji's current best.

The X100VI also sports a new film simulation called Reala Ace. This kind of thing would normally not be of interest, mimicking, as it does, a gimmick, but the X100VI has twenty film simulations, and finding your favorites among them is actually a real part of the appeal of the little camera. Some the film simulations are very good, and, if my own experience is any guide, they can actually be surprisingly difficult to reproduce "manually" in Photoshop. No reason to scorn them. Fuji knows color.

The X100-series is a remarkable camera. It's been popular for going on 14 years, and with successive generations of humans, too—it's gotten an significant injection of popularity from attention on contemporary social media. Granted, it's not cheap at all at $1,600, but maybe it's actually creeping into Veblen-good territory, in which people prefer to pay more because of what the camera says about them and their values and their sense of style (and their wallets). It's a premium price; but it's a premium product.

Simplicity
It's not exactly the pathway I personally would have liked to see with the camera. I'd be in favor of lower price and not so much of everything. I mean, if I wanted a do-everything general-purpose camera with multiple focal lengths, I'd just get a Fuji X-T5 for pretty much the same price as this, along with a dessert-cart choice of Fujicrons starting with the 23mm. Granted, the conversion lenses for the X100VI are cheaper, but they're also not usable on any other camera.

The X100 series would be the perfect package in which to reach for a little Apple-like simplicity. (Although I sat in on a lecture at the Apple Store recently about how to use the iPhone 15 camera, and that has lost its Jobsian simplicity too. I can't even remember half the arcane things I learned how to do.) I've opined in the past that I'd like to see simplified, streamlined, easy-to-grok versions of existing full-featured cameras come on to the market, and if Fuji had a different vision for this camera it would be interesting to see what could be done with it. But that isn't the fashion, so, never mind. I guess Gen Z'ers need their video. But to add a note of gratitude to my tune here, videography functionality is probably why this little varmint got its IBIS, so, okay. Thanks for that.

Verdict
This looks to be easily the best and most capable iteration of this perennially popular little camera yet. If I were in the market, I'd get it just for the IBIS and let everything else fall where it may. If you have and love any of the five older versions, even the V, now would be the time to move up.

Mike

*That was the club called "Push," where club owner Gay Dunaway built a fantasy world that answers the question, "Nooow?"

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Stephan Cowdery: "It's hard to believe that there were camera lines without IBIS in 2024. Of all the improvements in cameras in the last 20 years, IBIS has to be, in terms of improving image quality (in non-tripod situations) the most significant."

Michael: "I have the X100V (Apparently I'm one of the lucky few), and it is such a joy to use. I love the tactile feedback of the controls, the wonderful film simulations, the OVF/EVF option, and the ability to accessorize it to your liking (I added a soft shutter release and thumb grip). The fixed focal length makes you think a lot more about composition and being a part of the process, which reignited my enjoyment of going out to take photos. You would be surprised how differently you look at the world and the hidden treasures you find to photograph when you are restricted to one focal length. When people talk about the camera you just always want to use, this is the camera they are talking about."

William Cook: "After reading your excellent post on the X100V in September [Wasn't it February? —Ed.] 2020, I wrote this comment: 'I have always throughly believed in this type camera and Fuji’s interpretation is near perfect...except for one thing (for me). And obviously, that ‘one thing,’ is only important to me and maybe a few others. Certainly not important to enough people for Fuji to entertain the idea of including it—image stabilization. Because of my older, less than steady hands, I need stabilization. My current larger camera doesn’t have it but my lenses do. As much as I would love to have the X100, I would need a tripod. Kinda defeats the carry everywhere ethos. But I still admire it.'

"I can’t believe they’ve included the one thing I’ve always wanted in this camera! I put my money where my mouth is and at five minutes after the embargo ended the other night, I had mine on order at B&H (through TOP’s link, of course!). Normally, whichever camera feature I truly desire, the universe conspires to ensure it’s NEVER offered. For once, providence has smiled upon me!"

Dogman: "Lovely camera, the X100. I'm still happy with my X100S. I'm sure the VI is 'better' in many ways but I love the 'S' too much to part with it. Or upgrade from it. But, yeah, the VI is a really lovely camera."

Arg: "If the X100 is, as you say, the king of compacts, then the Ricoh GR is the Lord Tyrion Lannister of compacts: no doubt flawed, but devilishly small, incomparably clever, and able to make one smile uncontrollably in its presence."

Charlie E: "The X100S pulled me into the Fuji X system back in 2014. It was a great camera aside from the very slow autofocus. £699 felt a lot at the time for a fixed lens camera, even if it did look pretty. I don't think I could justify £900 more on that sort of camera, even if it's pretty, has the great Fuji simulations, IBIS, etc. (inflation hasn't been 228% in the last 10 years, though it feels like it sometimes).

"The X100S did pull me into the X system though, and I traded up to an X-Pro2 which I still carry with me every day and I won't swap it until it breaks. Hopefully there will be a new version with IBIS at that point!"

House For Sale

2024-02-19T11:27:22-06:00

Augh. This is very sad.

It's a house for sale.

It's right in the center of East Hampton, a village way out near the Eastern tip of Long Island. As you might know, the farther out you go on Long Island, the more exclusive and the more expensive the real estate gets. It must be beautiful out there—I've never been—but it's still accessible from New York City. My brother, who lived in NYC when he was getting his Ph.D. at Columbia, said New York City was only really livable if you had a way to regularly get out of it.

Have you ever had an art-crush? Some artist/art combination you just kinda love without actually knowing knowing the artist or what kind of person he/she is? I think I kinda had an art-crush on Elliott Erwitt. I love the guy. To me he was both a master photographer and a great artist and a hero, but also a down-to-earth iconoclast who disliked BS and brooked no fools and took a dim view of puttin' on airs. He called photographs "snaps." He was a ninja as a snapper. Very talented eye. And fearless. He manifestly followed David Vestal's terse advice to photographers: "Do your work." I love paging through his books.

It's his house. An estate sale. Elliott died last November.

There was an open house at 1:00 p.m. yesterday. If you look through the real estate photos, you'll see the inside of his home studio, which is a treat...but sad. I guess I was affected by his death because I always wanted to meet him. Although I was kinda scared of that, too—it's a perilous business, meeting your heroes. You never know if they'll be jerks, or maybe just a jerk to you, and that can be hard if it's someone you admire. From what I hear, Elliott was gruff but personable, and funny, and relatable, but I don't know. Anyway, I always carried the idea around in my mind that I was going to meet him one day. Then it was too late for that. Now a stranger gets his house. It's the normal state of affairs; he was 95, and nobody can complain about that. And I have art-crushes on other people who are gone, like Guy de Maupassant and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Sorry. I'm maundering. The art is still there. Leaving a rich posterity is one advantage of success in the arts. Guess I'm sad about his passing because of that art-crush all those years. I'll go page through some of his snaps in my copy of Snaps. There is always something there to see with new eyes.

Mike
(Hat tip to Oren Grad)

Featured Comments from:

John: "He probably bought it way before the Hamptons were the place to network for NYC’s power brokers. It’s sad to read that the listing basically suggests to tear the house down and built something new, but that’s the way to go in those areas. Sickening really."

Jeff Hartge: "Long Island...I grew up on the east end of Long Island (1970s and '80s). I left in the early '90s. During most of the time I lived on Long Island, the expensive parts were the parts closest to the ocean (southern shore of LI). Long Island is split in two (North Fork and South Fork) out at the east end by the Great Peconic Bay. The South Fork was basically 'The Hamptons.' That is where everyone with money lived. I lived on the North Fork. It was actually relatively cheap. It was potato farms and 'Long Island Duckling' farms. At the end of the time I was there, the vineyards started taking over the land on the North Fork. Further, the exurban living concept started really taking flight in the late '90s and people started to move out there and commute to the more urbanized west end of the island (Long Island is 120 miles long—long commutes if they worked in NYC!).

"Today, I can barely afford to visit. There exists no possibility of living there. My parents sold their Long Island home for $240k in 1999 (they bought the home for about $60k in 1973). A few years later (mid-2000s), that same home was $750k. It has since been rebuilt (not much larger though) and is well over $1 million!"

Steve Rosenblum: "From his obituary in The New York Times: 'In the 1970s, Mr. Erwitt was among the first to benefit from the art market’s interest in contemporary photographs as an investment. Brokers bought prints in bulk for tax shelters. "That windfall bought my house in East Hampton," he said.'"

Kirk: "My photographer friend Will Van Overbeek and I played host to Elliott Erwitt when he came in to town to give a presentation to the Austin Photo Society about ten years ago. We picked him up at his downtown hotel, the historic Driskill Hotel, and drove him to the Humanities Research Center on the UT campus, where we all ran into photographer Arthur Meyerson. The curators at the HRC were negotiating with Mr. Erwitt to acquire his archive. They eventually did. Then, since no one had made other plans, Will and I took him to our favorite 'dive' Mexican Restaurant over on the east side of town, El Azteca. He enjoyed the atmosphere and bought a handful of the classic Mexican calendars featuring half-naked female Aztec princess warriors. He thought they were nicely campy. We stopped at Progress Coffee to chill and people watch for a while. Then we all decided to go to the LBJ museum, where Mr. Erwitt delighted in photographing an LBJ animatronic. He also made some wry remarks about the replica of the Oval Office...having been to the real one more than a few times on assignment.

"I helped him set up his Mac laptop for his speech at the Blanton Museum auditorium, and then Will and I sat back in the packed audience and enjoyed the evening. Mr. Erwitt was 84 at the time and still very spry and totally brilliant. Quiet but brilliant. For the entire time we were with him, right up until his lecture, he wore his personalized (by Leica) Leica M7 rangefinder equipped with a 50mm Summicron over his shoulder. His signature engraved on the top plate. A wonderful, old-world-style gentleman who seemed to enjoy every second of his trip to Austin. And I became a permanent Elliott Erwitt fanboy. It was such an unexpected privilege to spend a day with one of my all-time photographic heroes. I'd love to buy his house but I'd hate to live in New York. Too cold too often.

"At 84 he never stopped moving. He was a 'high energy' photographer. And he was completely attentive to everything around him; always looking for the next photo."

Open Mike: Demystification and the Six Stages of Acquisition

2024-02-18T10:07:37-06:00

In 2021 (probably as a COVID distraction) I decided to start wearing a watch again. But I needed a watch. Just one. I bought, um, eight.

Last year, I decided I could make myself happier if I learned to enjoy all the everyday things I dislike doing. High on the list was to learn how to enjoy shaving. (I had always disliked shaving.) I looked into all kinds of shaving methods and decided to try "wet" shaving, the term of art for shaving with single old-fashioned double- and single-edged razor blades. Once I settled on that, I needed a razor. Again, just one. Instead, I bought a drawer full of supplies and...well, seven razors, eventually.

Sensing a trend?

Well, now I've bought three new computer keyboards. Please don't throw popcorn at me. I feel bad enough.

But it's not a new hobby, and, although I am currently mimicking an obsessed person, I'm not obsessed. I've been obs...preoccupied with keyboards of late only because I have to be. Because—speaking of late—my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard also lately became late, as in late of this world. I've owned 12–15 of them over the past 30 years, meaning I've worn out 11–14. I'm on my last one. My old warhorse got discontinued in 2019, Amazon tells me I bought this one in 2021 for $59, and the replacement is much cheaper in every way except price. New old stock old ones go for $400 and will run out soon. I was never all that attached to the 4000, but I like the replacement less. So I decided to jump ship. A weighty decision when you consider that tapping on a keyboard all day is pretty much what I do.

Here are the stages I go through when I get on one of these jags:

Investigate
Choose
Challenge
Settle
Optimize...
...And then put it all in the rearview mirror!

Unfortunately, when you acquire something that's going to be part of your life going forward, you usually have to spend some money. The reason is that it costs money to demystify the topic. And the best way to demystify the topic is to try different things firsthand as you learn about the subject. You read stuff, research, you ask your friends for advice, diddle about at stores, and try things out, doing your best to get a handle on things. They begin to sort out in your mind. Along the way, mysterious preferences emerge that seem to make sense but are actually based on some mysterious combination of sunshine, endorphins, and how much sleep you got. (That's another way of saying, sometimes the brain just gloms on to things for no good reason except that something appeals to us. Or we think it's going to.)

To really decide, you need experience. Hands-on. Sometimes you need to own the dang thing a while.

Here's a rundown of those stages:

Investigate: I write, so I've gotten very good at quickly getting the gist of things. When I get interested in something, I don't just dive in, I dive in like an Ama pearl diver off the coast of Japan. Deep, and fast, and unburdened. I can get the general lay of the land in a new hobby or pursuit remarkably quickly. It was only a couple of weeks before I knew all I needed to about watches; a few weeks before I could write a detailed primer article about the wet shaving world (I wrote it, but I spared you, you're welcome); and I'm getting there with the mechanical keyboard hobby. I already know what POM, ABS, PBT, WoB, 40–60–75–80–100, red–green-brown–white, MX, layers, superkeys, VIA, Gateron, Kailh, Topre, Das Alpha Zulu, Gamakay, Filco, WASD, Colemak-DH, Workman, Carpalx, Capewell, buckling switch, KAM, XDA, DSA, group buy, shine-through, double-shot, and barebones all mean, among much else. (It's a complicated little hobby, I'll just say that. My own Wiki is on little scraps of paper and the backs of envelopes all over my desk.)

I once asked my friend O.G. the OG* why he has 45 view cameras in his house. He said he felt like he wanted to demystify view cameras; he wanted to know the whole territory for himself, see them, use them, know them. It's become an important concept for me. When we're choosing an implement/accessory of any sort (camera, DE razor, keyboard, bicycle, telescope, pool table, you name yours) it's no use being a virgin. You can't shop and choose just from reading reviews and hearing advice. You don't really know how you're going to feel about something until you try it.

Choose: You can get lost in the investigation stage. Some people never come back from it; they decide to become ongoing experts in their little corner of the Universe of Schtuff, and before you know it you know everything there is to know about Dwarf Fortress or vacuum tubes for amplifiers or carbon-fiber bicycle frames, or whatever. However, if your concentration is on the doing rather than the equipment, then the investigation stage needs to come to an end (or at least enter long pauses) and a choice must needs be made. For example, after trying five DE razors I alighted on a revamped 1940s razor called a Tech that Gillette used to sell to the working class for a few pennies, the better to sell blades. I didn't really "decide"; I just kept coming back to it over and over again. I liked it.

Challenge: Next, you decide if there is anything else out there that vies with your choice, something that is along the same lines but might be better, and you get one of those and compare it to your choice and see if it is better. So once I realized that I liked the Tech, I put it up against a few other mild nonadjustable razors, a modern Tech-type copy, and also investigated the history of the Tech and tried different vintages of them. I also had to put an expensive razor up against it to see if I was missing something by choosing something so inherently cheap. In some cases a challenger will replace the early choice, in other cases the choice will withstand the challenges. We're still being rational at this stage, by the way.

Settle: This step is important. Nothing's perfect. If you chase perfection in every parameter you'll get lost in La-La Land and put yourself in a perpetual state of wistful wanting. Like, in keyboards, people who leave QWERTY behind for an alternative layout (Colemak-DH appeals to me, see above about sunshine endorphins and sleep) but then can't quit futzing with further key position changes and modifiers, alert for every bigram that has a hint of awkwardness to it. (A downside of on-the-fly re-mappable keyboards.) I've used so many cameras over the years that there is always something that I can say "but I wish it had..." about. Remember a principle I talked about long ago: the closer two alternatives are to each other, the more fanatically humans will argue about which is best and the more minutely they will compare them, but the less it matters which choice you actually make. I once wrote the following on the now-ancient CompuServe Photography Forum:

OP: "Should I use a Nikon or a Canon?"
Me: "Yes."

There comes a point when you "let the tail go with the hide" as the old buffalo hunters used to say, and just deal with your choice as it exists.

Optimize: Once you've chosen and settled, optimize. Makes sure you got a good sample, that everything's set up as you want it, all the little accessories it needs are with it, that it's been customized and decorated or kitted out. In this phase you're putting the finishing touches on. Not too important, except it makes it feel like it's yours.

Put it in the rearview mirror: I once opined that the most important thing about choosing a camera is "stopping shopping." I had a long discussion with friends the other night about obsessions, and we decided that an "obsession" in the non-pathological sense is something self-destructive that you can't help doing. With photography, the situation is particularly dire, because I have witnessed many people over the years become permanently lost to the process of shopping; they never stop, and the shopping itself becomes their hobby. As long as you are also out using the equipment on a regular basis, I see nothing wrong with that, but shopping for cameras and lenses and related gear, if you never stop, is not photography—it's a parallel hobby related to photography. For years, I had a parallel hobby investigating lenses. It's only when it becomes excessively unbalanced that it segues into obsession: the audiophile with the $4,000 (or $40,000) turntable who only owns a few test records, the collector who has 40 (or 400) film Leicas but has never really gotten to grips with learning how to handle one.

I'm not obsessed with keyboards. I don't intended to get into it as a hobby. I just need one, is all. For the record, I bought eight watches, but I have two favorites and those are the only ones I wear. Or need. I doubt I'll ever buy any more watches. I like those two, and I alternate between them, and I'm good with that. And I bought seven DE razors and tried many of the various aspects of that hobby (because that's what it is), but I've settled on my razor, my blade, my way of lubricating my face—everything I personally need from beginning to end. It took me only a matter of two or three months to go through the six stages of acquisition, from (admittedly intense) investigation to putting behind me everything except what I personally needed. Heck, I had to buy four(!) pool tables before I got that business over and done with. I'm a Gold Crown I guy for life, now.

My new/used Dygma Raise, tented

And I'll do the same thing with keyboards. A keyboard called the Dygma Raise arrived yesterday, and oh, my God—it is the most comfortable keystroking device of any kind I have ever laid my hands on. Over the top ergonomic. In my mind I have already jumped to the Optimization stage, although I still have one more challenger, the Kinesis Edge RGB, to compare it to. The Keychron Q11, seductive as it was, is all packed up and ready to go back to Amazon.

I would love to write reviews of a few of these keyboards. Just the ergonomics, though. I forgot to mention that my six stages of acquisition are based on what a reviewer naturally does: you have to come up to speed quickly, learn enough so that you can write a report, and then resign yourself to moving on to the next thing. But I'll spare you the keyboard reviews, too.

There's a handicap that keeps me from expertise in this case: I can't type. A guy who can't ski can't review skis. Which brings up the other wrinkle in the keyboard journey: it involves a long training stage. What do they call it? Oh yeah, "long learning curve." Even people who are already fast touch-typists on standard keyboards can need at least a short acclimation period to split keyboards, new layouts, and keyboards with minimal keysets that work with layers and superkeys. (A layer is just what it sounds like: when you hold a regular key down, the functions of all the other keys automatically remap to different characters. A superkey is a key that types different characters according to the code you use when tapping the key: hold the hyphen key down and it types an m-dash, which is usually option+shift+hyphen. When you rapidly type two spaces on your phone when texting and a period appears, that's basically a superkey.) This, for instance, is a complete keyboard:

This Corne LP is a complete keyboard, on which you type any character available on a 101-key keyboard and more. But it takes a little getting used to.

For example, those nine keys at the right could remap to numbers for a numpad, with the right-most thumb key as the zero/zed.

So it could be that the journey is just beginning. I have some training to go through. If I fail, my fallback will be to simply go find another Microsoft-style "ergo" keyboard similar to my old 4000. Since the 4000 was the OG, there are lots and lots of clones out there, from the Mac-centric Macally (can you see the flaw in that one? I see it right away) to the Logitech K860. That won't get me any further along than I am now, but the transition period will be short.

I dig this Dygma, though. The Leica of keyboards.

Hope you enjoy this day, the first football-free Sunday of the Winter!

Mike

*"original gangster," if you don't know the term. Example of an OG: in the masterful TV series "The Wire" (which I have argued elsewhere is the Great American Novel come 'round at last), Melvin Williams, the guy who played the community activist "The Deacon," was himself a reformed drug dealer on whose earlier life the character of Avon Barksdale, the boss of the drug dealers early in the series, played by Wood Harris, was partly based. Literally the OG.

Featured Comments from:

Richard G.: "Mike, now that you've gone down the rabbit hole and settled on a shaving razor, have you settled on a blade? I looked at one website and there appear to be several dozen for sale. This could keep you occupied for the rest of your life. LOL"

Mike replies: You laugh, but...there are guys who review blades, and guys who compile charts on blades, and lists of where blades are manufactured, and guys who have stockpiled thousands of blades—easy to do since they're sold by the hundred.

I use Kai blades from Japan. The reason is that there was a fascinating study with an electron microscope at the Engineering School at MIT which showed that the way that blades "dull" is that little tiny pieces break off at the edges of striations caused by the grinding tool. If you imagine the cross-section, the edges of most blades are very pointed; the edge of a Kai blade has a more blunted profile. So they're not quite as sharp at first, but they last longer and are more consistent presumably because they don't chip. Also, the Kai blades are just a tiny bit wider than standard (give me time and I could get you the numbers), which makes them a little more aggressive in the Tech, which is a mild razor, and gives it a little more blade feel. A good match, to my taste. "YMMV," an initialism very widely used on the shaving fora.

Albert Smith: "Re '...and we decided that an obsession is something self-destructive that you can't help doing.' Yep. The COVID lockdown caused me to break my frugal way of life and click 'add to cart' repeatedly and redundantly in the world of watches, partially inspired by the thread on this forum that discussed why watches were still valid in this day and age. I just ordered a new field watch this morning after receiving two Fleiger pilot watches last week that I haven't worn for more than a hour. Life was simpler when I was broke."

Speed: "My rule for cameras is to always have one that is better than I—so that any defects in my photographs are the result of my ignorance and/or incompetence. As I approach competence and my favorite camera manufacturer releases a new model, I buy a new camera. Usually untouched and unseen. A little adventure is good. And cars...I can't remember ever driving a new model before buying one. Sometimes I'm surprised but so far, never disappointed."

John Krumm: "I have a mild case of what you have, the sniffles, perhaps, not the chills and cough and fever dreams. I settle quickly. My incentive to do so comes from really hating to sell stuff, and feeling guilty wasting family money on too many watches or razors to try out. So I have an expensive (for me) iWatch I only use for a bedside alarm now, the wonderful Casio Oceanus you wrote about (my wife reads your site for gift ideas and surprised me with it) and a less expensive solar Citizen that sits ignored now. I dislike the process of selling individual camera items so much that I happily lose about 50% of their value by boxing everything up I don't want and sending it to KEH."

Mike replies: I wish I could do that with my whole house. Actually that is the part of the whole process that I am by far the worst at. The extra six watches and six razors are of course still hanging around. I need to sell them but....

Melanie: "Your post is freakishly relatable, right down to shaving devices—at least, until the reality of cut legs quickly set me straight. (However, I'm happy to have never fallen down the rabbit hole to keyboard Wonderland.) The information collection Investigate stage is really the funnest part, and presumably replaces earlier hunter/gatherer functions for humans living in the 21st century.

"In any given week, if I don't have something to obsessively research, then I'm not as well armed with tools to hold off a mental health crisis. Hitting on a new obsession is (I expect) like winning at pokies. Sometimes I even walk away from it without losing any money!"

Mike replies: :-) Made me smile.

However sometimes I wonder whether having something to obsessively research is the mental health crisis in my case. I get like a dachshund chasing a badger. I have to keep telling myself, no, if it's something you need and you stop shopping once you settle, you're still okay, if tenuously so. So as soon as I start obsessively researching guitars (I can't play a lick) and climbing equipment (I'm scared of heights) and private jets (I'm lower middle class in a good year) then you can lock me up in Ward No.6. (Chekhov reference, in return for your Alice reference.)

The Intrepid Compact: Taking 1979 By Storm

2024-02-16T10:05:12-06:00

Speaking of enlargers, as we were when last we spoke, take a look at this fantastic little thing:

The Intrepid Compact enlarger head, control unit, and carriers

What is it? It's the Intrepid Compact LED 35mm and medium-format enlarger head and timer/controller, available in B&W multigrade and color (sorry, colour, that should be, as it's made in Great Britain (sorry, the UK)). It bolts to any standard copy stand (or any enlarger base and column that can be converted to a copy stand, I assume). You can even use a tripod if you have a good level*. You have to provide those bits, and your own M39 screwmount enlarger lens. For a little bonus, the timer actually has a B&W safelight built right into it.

Light emitting diodes
LEDs have proven to be a highly useful technology, replacing filament lamps in everything from vehicle headlights to keychain flashlights. But one thing for which they are absolutely perfect is enlarger heads. They're light as can be, consistent, adjustable in brightness and color (perfect!), feature instant-on and -off (perfecter!) and they hardly generate any heat at all and thus don't need to be ventilated (ideal).

I could go on and on and on about all the ways enlarger makers contrived to address the inherent problems and supply these qualities in their products over the span of many decades, from using cold-cathode sources to Durst's innovation of putting the light bulb away from the negative stage and using an angled mirror to shine light down on the negative. (Some very early enlargers used the sun as a light source, and I kid you not. And you thought it was frustrating waiting for the clouds when your camera's on the tripod, the scene composed and ready to go?) As already mentioned, for B&W as well as for color, the dichroic-style light-mixing box was the best solution that evolved.

Two of the team members in the Intrepid workshop

...But LEDs are even better. Over-the-top better. Solutions through history just coped with all the difficulties; LEDs remove all the difficulties. Blitz 'em. Blow 'em away.

In the 1950s and '60s, although it's not often thought of in these terms, having one's own basement darkroom was a status symbol among other things. Cameras were clever and beautiful little mechanisms in a world where such things were not so common as they are now, and—think about it—having space in one's abode for what Nick Hartmann called "the room-sized accessory" meant that you had a basement at your disposal, which meant that you owned your own home, which in those days not everyone did and yet everyone aspired to do. The darkroom was a pleasant diversion in an era when video games were still only found in arcades (Pong, a very primitive one, debuted in the arcades in 1972). The darkroom hobby gained steam throughout the post-WWII years and peaked in 1979, when, by very rough industry estimate, there were 500,000 darkrooms across America and, ever so briefly, the circulation of the most popular darkroom magazine in America, Paul Sheptoe's Darkroom Photography, of which I am an ex-Contributing Editor, crested above 100,000, the first and only time that ever happened.

Let me just tell ya somethin': if the Intrepid Compact had come out in 1979, it would have taken the photography hobby by storm. It would have been the Mazda Miata of enlargers. It would have been as futuristic as the 3D printers the team at Intrepid use to make parts.

But the end was nigh
Unfortunately for the hobby, the handwriting on the wall was already beginning to appear by 1979. Steve Sasson was already tinkering with the self-contained digital cameras he had invented four years earlier at Eastman Kodak. By the 'aughts and the early 2010s, most of those basement darkrooms had been dismantled or transformed little by little into storage rooms; most of the manufacturers had ceased production (Beseler and DeVere soldier on); and the darkroom magazines had all shuttered their operations. So in 1979 the hobby had only <30 years left. Despite a few holdouts!

Intrepid amongst 'em. You go, guys. Analog is a niche now, but it will always mean fun for a few. Reader Josh R. (thanks, Josh) told me about the Intrepid Compact, and even offered to send me his so I could review it. Alas, I had to tell him that I lack the rest of the room-sized accessory, which would of course be necessary for the test.

My time in the darkroom (1980–2000) is done, much as I loved it. I do own a house, but I'd have to share the fieldstone-walled basement with the mice, the spiders, the damp, the odor (odour), and all the little radons whizzing about. But if any film-camera aficionados amongst you Millennials and Gen Z'ers want to print your own B&W (there's no reason to develop and print your own color IMO, except of course if you want to), this might very well be the killer app for a neat and efficient little darkroom** c. 2024.

And it's not even expensive. Check it out...just for fun.

Mike

P.S. And this concludes "enlarger week." Fortnight?

*Although I'm going to suggest that unless you have a very good tripod, and access to a machinist's level, I think this might frustrate you. Darkroom setup has a frustration threshold—you can cope with a certain amount of difficulties and seat-o'-the-pants solutions to problems, but once you surpass the threshold, you'll just defeat yourself. No need to be overly careful about this. But the frustration threshold is a pretty distinct line, so, if things aren't going well, be alert to the fact that you might have crossed it.

**Be sure to pay attention to ventilation. Often an afterthought, but essential, not optional.

Featured Comments from:

Jack Mac: "I love this posting. My peak darkroom moment was 1993 when I bought a house just because it had a fantastic darkroom. Sadly, I only found time to use it a few times. But like a classic car or classic camera, I didn’t need to use it, it was just pleasurable that I finally had one. I endorse your comment that amateur darkrooms are for B&W not color. And I strongly advise not to drink and develop. After a few beers, I once tried to develop B&W 120 film accidentally using color development chemicals. As you know, the bleach used in color development eliminates the silver in B&W film, so it’s the equivalent of mistakenly formatting your SD card before you download the photos."

Kodachromeguy: "Re 'The darkroom was a pleasant diversion': That was also the era when the 'man of the house' built electronic kits, such as the excellent ones from Heathkit. Audio fans still covet the Dynaco tube amplifiers. This economic model depended on one member of the family being able to support the family with one paycheck. The lady did the June Cleaver thing with running the house and cooking. The guy came home from his job, had a martini, ate supper, and disappeared into his darkroom or electronics shop. Another time; another America."

Mike replies: True dat. June works too now. And I saw on the news the other night that Americans work 10% longer each day than they did in 1979...you know, back when they were talking about the 7-hour workday and the 4-day work week.

REMEDIAL TUESDAY: Comments I Missed!

2024-02-13T15:10:58-06:00

After a few months of being good—I was making a real effort—I got behind on Comments again in recent weeks. The problem with getting behind is that when I finally do get the Featured Comments up, people don't go back to revisit those posts, and so the comments get lost.

I'm not going to stop trying to stay current, but, to remedy this predicament, below are quite a few comments that I missed during this last SNAFU. My apologies to all the comment writers for depriving them of the opportunity to have their comment appear in a timely fashion.

Please note that these are just the comments I would have featured. There are also more new comments under the respective posts as of today. Especially under "What Is the Best Enlarger?"

I think all the past comments are now posted. Not saying the grooming of the blog is as good as it would have been if I had done it properly, as we went along, but it's good enough now that at least I can move on. It all but paralyzes me when I get too far behind; I can't work on the comments because I have to write a new post, and I can't write a new post because I have to work on the comments. I find it overwhelming.

And I really do apologize for getting behind and interrupting the conversations you all contributed. I will continue to try to do better.

# = # = #

On "Aptitude (Old-Dog-New-Trick)":

Sean: "Mike said, 'Why do something for which you have little aptitude?' For the sheer enjoyment of it? Dancing is a prime example; singing is another. I’ve only ever had fun playing tennis, but I'm rubbish, and I'm OK with that."

Joseph Reid: "Interesting aptitude test experience. In ninth grade (I'm only a few years younger than you), I faced something similar. No recollection of the results except—also 'forester.' Which made zero sense to me then and now. Typing is another matter—parental insistence on taking typing in ninth grade. The most useful class I took in high school."

Calvin Amari: "How about providing some insight on things you do miraculously well? I always wanted to ask you how come I’ve never seen a single typo on TOP. The question is not one about technical typing, of course, it’s about precision-tooled self-editing and actually seeing what is on the page (or, more difficult, on the screen) as opposed to what’s in your head about what you intended."

Alan Whiting: "Mike, I remember what must be the same set of aptitude tests. It seemed like almost everyone got the 'forester' recommendation. I lived in Washington State at the time, which might be relevant. I also recall tests of clerical ability, just copying things accurately. Even in today's cut-and-paste world, that skill has some use. I tutor kids for the standardized college entrance tests, and far more often than I would have expected, they do the problem right but mark the wrong answer."

Richard G: "I don’t necessarily believe in lack of manual dexterity. Certainly the owner of the hands shouldn’t. You can master typing, and of course you are right about looking, already an advance over dogmatic theory. Think of that M4 you mastered. And the pool table.

"And forget being too old. The brain retains remarkable plasticity to any age. Practise slowly, like the piano teachers insist: that allows the achievement of correct execution and the removal of the affective component of fear of a mistake, disappointment and finally disaffection. Slow deliberate execution will gradually imprint the feeling of the correct positions in your brain, with the efferent—motor—execution inevitably following. So no luck needed."

ASW: "When I was 13 or 14, my school got a computer program that purported to assess your skills and talents, plug that information into proprietary algorithms, and suggest careers you would might enjoy or be good at. Although I enjoyed school and rarely made trouble, I didn't understand how early teenage me could possibly know what I wanted to do (aside: several 13-year intervals later I still don't know), so I treated the entire process like a joke and picked answers that seemed funny to me. Other students were getting output like doctor, engineer, carpenter, farmer...my result was wastewater treatment plant operator. Somewhat embarrassed, I asked if I could try again, only this time I thought carefully and deeply about each response. My result was...wastewater treatment plant operator. I am not, nor do I want to be, a wastewater treatment plant operator. "

Mel: "Mike, Everyone I know with my kind of aptitude got the 'forester' as a result as well. I think it's a default answer for those of us who don't fit the accountant criteria..."

On "The Secret Darkroom of Walter Mitty":

Bob Johnston (no relation, and the person whose comment I was responding to): "Wow, I was surprised by that Mike. Your idea of printing from a good neg first is brilliant. So that is exactly what I will do for my grandchildren. I am going to clear out the darkroom ASAP."

Gary Nylander: "I have enjoyed reading your posts about darkrooms and this one in particular is very good. I think that's a great idea to show people how a darkroom works. I have always had a darkroom of sorts for decades, mostly to process film which I scan. But now I'm setting up my darkroom to make contact prints from my large format negatives. I don't need any enlarger, just a few 8x10 trays. So thank you, Mike!"

Luke: "Rereading Walter Mitty, it occured to me what the mandated low-speed noise my electric car makes should sound like: pocketa-pocketa-pocketa...."

Stefan Kassel: "First comment ever: I have been wondering for years why on earth you are so reluctant to do B&W darkroom printing again! You are among the most experienced and knowledgeable people in this field, don't dare argue against that. I got to know and cherish your column in Black and White Photography magazine before today's analog explorer kids were even born.

"Only recently I managed to gather a group of people from sixteen to sixty here in my town of Tübingen, Germany, and we found a place to gather and do all things darkroom together—it's become my cherished evening of the week. And I got to learn quite some new tricks as well! Analog darkroom used to be a lonely place for me and the people that shared this hobby were always older than me and just as self-indulged; this has changed in a most pleasant way!"

Jordi P: "I am one of those Millennials, and after a few years hanging out at the camera club darkroom have been given the keys and became the person of contact for onboarding. Once a month, there is a show the darkroom session open to the public. My time printing comes and goes as I feel, but it's a pivotal reason of why doing B&W film. The 'Film is slower and conscious' might be a cliché but I do shoot film for print, and thus a few 120 rolls are already a body of work, and I assigned the thought and planned shooting to film. Second, your word about having good negatives. Despite being a born in the '90s as a Millennial, I just have always shot film alongside digital. Never did sensitomentry, but I found good negs following the manufacturers' datasheets does wonders. Other people at the photo club want to do a lot of experimental processes; I stick to the basics. However, I see more of the young ones just scanning, and few stick to the darkroom...I should schedule a session."

On "Open Mike: My Dumb Young Self":

Keith Cartmell: "I tell people that the best class I took in high school was typing. (Actually best class period.) My mom made me do it, and what she told me was, 'It will be full of girls.' I've always been grateful to her for that, even if there was one other guy was in the class, and I ended up sitting next to him. Sigh. Not her fault. There was a time when companies sent people out for training on XL and Word. Those courses went on their resumes. What a waste. About then I was doing lots of software training. I would hand out papers that gave their user name and password, and watching my students type their names would tell me everything I needed to know about how my day would go. Sending them to typing school would have been a far better investment. People say that teaching 'reading, riting, and rithamtic' was good enough for them, and should be good enough for kids now. Bah! Typing (or keyboarding) should be taught in about grade 3 or 4, maybe sooner. Plus logical fallacy recognition."

Speed: "A million years ago my father told me that I should take typing in high school...which I did. I was the only boy (that's what we were called back then) in the class, which subjected me to ridicule from some members of the male gender. I can't remember the Krebs Citric Acid Cycle (and don't need to), but I type a lot. Every day. Thanks, Dad."

Nigli: "This is timely, as I just bought a new keyboard, and my old one is no longer made. I have an anecdote and a comment. Firstly, a former employer, who was an actual princess and was CEO of her and a family business, told me her father told her to learn to type, 'because sometimes you will need to write things you don't want your secretary to see.' Secondly, I feel your pain. Please feel mine: I write regularly in three languages, and every one has a different keyboard layout."

Rick Popham: "My senior year in high school I had space for a couple of elective courses. I thought 'Business Typing' might be fun. I’d been hunting and pecking on my father's old (even then) Royal portable that he got from some other Marine during the war. For the class we used IBM Selectrics, which I thought were amazing, and the teacher was first rate. It was one of the most useful courses from high school and it saved my ass in college. That Royal portable is still stashed around here somewhere, silently challenging me to hit the key hard enough to make an impression, but not too useful for emails these days."

Kye Wood: "WHY I LEARNED TO TOUCH TYPE: I was in Grade 9 (I was 14) and I learned to touch type for one reason—because I knew the typing class was full of girls. I was shy. But I was also smart :-) . THE LATER BENEFITS: As a software developer, all else being equal, the faster you type, the more $ you're worth. It's literally that direct a correlation. THE UNINTENDED BENEFITS: Flow. Touch typing removes the process of conversion from thought—to characters on a page. You just think it—and it magically appears in front of you. LEARN IT MIKE. Imagine having your fingers be like magical stenographers who can read your mind? You'll be showing a great kindness to future Mike. Who'll benefit from this until his last day."

Chris Kern: "When I was 14, my mother handed me a cardboard cutout with a life-size image of a typewriter keyboard, and told me that if I would use it to learn to touch-type she would buy me a new typewriter. Until that, I had been using two fingers to punch the keys on the rickety Underwood portable typewriter she had used in college during the 1930s, and prying the strikers apart when, inevitably and quite frequently, two of them jammed together. Practicing typing on a flat, unmoving surface seemed like a rather goofy idea to me at first, but after a while I realized it was an excellent technique for learning to rapidly find the position of each of the letters because, unlike on the Underwood, I could simply tap one and move on to the next. Short story short, it actually only took a few weeks for me to demonstrate to my parents that I could touch the keys with high accuracy without looking down at them. I selected what in the 1960s seemed like a sleek, modernistic typewriter—a considerable upgrade for my attic bedroom—and got many years (and thousands of pages) of use out of it before I ultimately moved on to a computer keyboard."

On "What Was the Best Enlarger?":

Tony Bennett: "Durst Laborator L138s."

Gary Mortensen: "Mike, I enjoyed your article about the 'Best Enlarger Ever Made' and am in general agreement with you. My LPL 4550 XL was a joy to use and still resides in its box in my garage, waiting (in vain) to be set up once again. My experience is a little different than yours, however. For me the 4x5 LPL was the finest 35mm enlarger I ever used (second place was a Focomat 1C). Initially, I wasn’t getting absolute film flatness with the regular sandwich type negative carrier, and tried the 4x5 glass carrier, expecting a dusty mess. To my surprise, dust really wasn’t a particular problem and the negative flatness was absolute. I could easily print out to the very edges of the negative (and beyond) and, once I laser aligned the planes of the negative, lens, and easel, film grain was rendered crisply out to the corners, always! My lens of choice for 35mm was the EL-Nikkor 63mm ƒ/2.8, an oddball focal length that I thought was superb for my purpose. I used it at ƒ/5.6 almost exclusively. Also, my enlarger was wall mounted: nothing wiggled. We differ on the preferred light source, also. I had the VCCE module for a while, but never really liked working with it; mainly because the exposure times were quite lengthy for 35mm. So, I went back to using the Dichroic Color Module for my VC papers, and found that process of using it to be simple and straightforward. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll do darkroom work again, but it’s pleasurable to reminisce about working with that beautiful machine!"

Mike replies: That was another reason to use the 670 model: it had a brighter light. The 4x5 models were perfect for 4x5 and pretty good for 6x6, but not enough light got to the little 35mm rectangle.

Jon Porter: "I agree with your assessment. The best of the three enlargers I had between 1971 and 2013 was the Saunders/LPL 670 VCCE. I traded in my Beseler 6x7 enlarger for it in 1998. Having built-in variable printing filters made printing easier and more consistent. I lost my darkroom when I moved, but the sale of the enlarger, easels and enlarging lenses helped to recoup a good percentage of the money I invested in my darkroom over the years."

Jim Wolf: "I still have one of the LPL 4x5 enlargers in my darkroom, this one equipped with a split grade head. I use it occasionally, but my regular enlarger for 35mm is a V35 Leitz, also with a split grade head. Just got back into a regular darkroom schedule, developing a backlog of HP5+. Once that's done, the enlargers will be fired up and the printing will begin."

Steve Renwick: "Mike, just so's you know.... Back in 2019, you bird-dogged a few LPL enlargers, complete with magic Rodenstock lens, at some overstock company in Brooklyn. There were nine available. I put down my credit card number immediately and one of them graces my darkroom. Delightful piece of machinery. Thank you."

Mike replies: That's what I have, one of those!

Mike Kukulski: "Spent four hours today in the darkroom on my Saunders 4500II working on prints from two 4x5 negatives. I got the enlarger after probably reading your stuff on it in the past. I bought it with the color module, and initially printed B&W with that, but have since obtained the VCCE module. We won’t discuss costs….

"It is a great enlarger, and is always teaching me more about this dying craft. My only concern is the long term availability of the bulbs for the thing, may have to eventually spend too much money for a LED cold head for it. I justify the expense, time, and effort as the pursuit of a hobby—I enjoy the process and its standing apart from the ubiquity of the digital photographic world. Cheers!"

Mike replies: The bulbs are just standard slide-projector bulbs, also used for many other purposes. I can't give you the exact details offhand, but if you look at the one you have and get a model or type number, you should be able to find some spares relatively easily. The weak point on your enlarger is actually the styrofoam in the light-mixing chamber. It has ideal qualities for its purpose, but I've been told it might yellow over time. If you notice you are starting to have to use more magenta filtration in prints you think should require less, that might be the cause.

Mark B: "As you said, I’m in a minority here, and I love this series on enlargers. My humble Omega B-22 does the job for me, but I can at least drool over the fancier enlargers here."

Rob de Loe: "I built a full blast darkroom in my basement in the late 1990s. On the wet side, I had a huge professional sink rescued from a university lab, and an archival print washer built from a pattern I found somewhere. On the dry side I had an Omega D5 XL that was so tall I had to leave a hole in the ceiling tiles for the column. [Be thankful that's all you had to do. I knew several people who cut holes in the floor of the next story up to accommodate the enlarger column! —MJ] I had an Ilford cold light head—both purchased from a camera store in Ottawa that got them in a junk sale from the National Film Board of Canada. I also had an enormous Seal drymount press, and all the trimmings. Hand processing 4x5 sheet film in a tray was almost Zen-like....

"I had a lot of fun and did a lot of work there, but then a daughter came along and disappearing into the basement for half a day was no longer a thing I could easily do. Eventually I stopped using it and started storing junk in it. And eventually that made me so sad that I ripped it out some time around 2008. At that point, I was almost unable to even give everything away. All the gear was heading for the landfill, when at the last minute a kid from the university said he'd take it. I hope it's still in use.

"I came back to film a couple times since then, but never with a full darkroom. It was changing bags and the laundry sink—plus scanning the film. Now I'm fully digital and will never go back, but I still remember the smell of the chemistry, and the rhythms of the work, with fondness."

On "Open Mike: Surprising Facts":

David Lee: "Nice fact about Buzz Aldrin’s mother. We had him in the cockpit with us in a short trip when I was flying 727’s. His wife came to the cockpit on the stopover and asked the captain if he would invite her husband to join us for the next sector. Captain said yes, and when Buzz showed up we almost peed our pants! We had bad weather and were hit by lightning during the approach. He just took a quick look at my approach chart and at the instruments and was totally cool. He signed my logbook and also gave us all a signed card with his photo. "

# = # = #

It took me eight solid hours of work today to untangle all the messed-up comment moderation from the past two weeks. The more behind I get, the more complicated that work is. I didn't do it perfectly, either. With all that hanging over my head, I just couldn't work on new posts. The way I have this blog set up, I really, truly need to keep current. The punishment for getting behind and letting things get messed up is severe.

As I said above, please note that there are also more new comments under the respective posts as of today. Especially the "What Is the Best Enlarger?" post, which probably now has close to 50 new comments under it, in addition to those above.

And I really do apologize for getting behind and interrupting the conversations you contributed. I will continue to do my best to do better.

Cheers on Remedial Tuesday,

Mike

Featured Comments from:

Luke: "Here's proof of my darkroom experience: I misread Mr. Bennett's comment about the Durst Laborator, and saw 'Dust Laboratory.' I thought, 'that must be what I had.'"

Mike's on Vacation (Blog Note)

2024-02-12T21:57:19-06:00

Pardon the interruption! Since I haven't been keeping up very well for several days, I'm just going to do like I've done eight or ten times before when one of these FONKU* kernel panics happens, and give in and take a vacation. I'm feeling fine, in fact never better, but all the same I need a little R&R. It's been a hard Fall, followed by big changes. I plan to do a little reading, cook some soup, get on the treadmill, continue practicing touch-typing, and take the TOP jalopy in to be repaired. On Thursday I get my first cardiac checkup since I started running on battery power. I can't wait. The news has all been good, except when it's been great.

TOP will return on Friday morning. That'll give me a nice break, and I'll come back rejuvenated and refreshed. Again, pardon the CLOSED sign! One thing I'm going to do is take the camera for a walk and scout some new pictures. Spring is right around the corner.

All is well, and I hope it is with you too.

Mike, Head Dogsbody of Creative, Editorial, and Secretarial Services

*Fear of not keeping up. The more behind I get, the more it interferes with work. That usually means it's time for a hard reset.

Featured Comments from:

Two Interesting Keyboard Videos (OT)

2024-02-11T17:02:51-06:00

No post today. (Well, except this one, and it doesn't count.) It's Super Bowl Sunday in the USA.

I am waist deep in keyboard shopping anyway. You think shopping for photo gear is hard? It's dead simple and straightforward compared to keyboard-land. Good Lard, as the Irish say. I think I have almost decided on the Kinesis Freestyle Pro, but not quite to the point of pulling that proverbial trigger.

I almost bought a Keychron Q10 or V10 Alice, because the layout is very close to my old Microsoft, but at the last second I realized I was only looking at it in two dimensions! The Microsoft has very slight tenting—only ~5°, but that little bit appears to be crucial. ("Tenting," as you might guess from the word, is raising the middle of the keyboard so your palms aren't flat, but angle a little bit towards vertical.) The Keychron is dead flat. Oops. Back to shopping.

Here are two of the most interesting videos I've found yet. The first one explains QWERTY and how it got that way:

The story of QWERTY is fascinating and a little horrifying! To think the whole world has been following that thoughtless plan for more than a century. I can't believe I've never heard of a Hill Climbing Algorithm before. Explains the U.S. Constitution, too!James's history of keyboards is a very satisfying.

Here's an interesting thing I learned in video about computer optimization of keys: you could make the QWERTY keyboard a whopping 13% more efficient just by exchanging the "J" and the "T." [UPDATE: actually he said J and E. —Ed.]

And the second one is brief tour of what are coming to be called "Next Gen keyboards":

If you haven't been keeping up, this one will seem futuristic. Change is certainly afoot.

That's enough of this. Something different mañana. Go Brock!

Mike

Featured Comments from:

Bryan William Jones: "A good friend of mine just published Shift Happens, a two-volume love letter to the history of keyboards. Here's the book's site."

Mike replies: Completely sold out, which is perfect for that topic. Seems like most things in the keyboard world are sold out as a usual condition, only occasionally and intermittently becoming available again.

Grant: "Hey Mike Tohnsjon. You are righj. I Jyped jhis commenj jhirjeen percenj fasjer!"

Mike replies: Showing how ridiculously fastidious I am, I actually corrected your comment. You misspelled "jhirjeen" as "jirjeen."

John Camp: "I think the extra efficiency you'd get with the Dvorak keyboard or any of the others is mostly illusory, and would most apply to people who are typists—that is, professional typers of words. I estimate that I type roughly 400,000 words a year. But the thing is, I'm not trying to type 80 or 60 or 40 words per minute, or any other number, because I frequently pause to think, and reconfigure what I'm about to type, or to rework something I already typed, and I don't know how that would fit into an efficiency calculation. I think I'm efficient enough, and wouldn't get any better with any of the other keyboard styles, but what I really need is something that would keep my fingers and wrists from being damaged by the work. For example, if a Dvorak board made my typing 27% more efficient (a dubious claim; read the Wikipedia article,) that doesn't mean that if I type 1,000 words averaging 5.5 letters each, I'd have to type fewer letters. I still have to type 5,500 letters on either keyboard. That's why I mess around with different keyboards—not to reduce the amount of word done, but to reduce the repetitive stress, which some of these other styles might do. I hope."

Mike replies: Fascinating points, and apropos. The task of writing ≠ the task of typing. I note that Next Gen (layered, minimal key count, ortholinear, etc.) keyboards are mostly reviewed by coders (and a few gamers), who have very different needs than writers do. Coders' income, as I understand it, is directly tied to how fast they can type; also, they type all day long, and they seem to be mental ninjas on keyboards, such that they can readily learn alternative layouts (Colemak, Workman, Dvorak) and moveable keystrokes and on and on. I think if I switched to a keyboard on which seldom-used characters were relegated to an invisible (non-legended) function layer, the rest of my life wouldn't be long enough for me to get comfortable with it. A ninja I am not.

I wonder the same thing about the pacing of the work. I used to say that I sound very articulate when I write but that's because no one sees me staring at the ceiling for ten seconds trying to think of the right word. Or going over what I already wrote obsessively to polish every little phrase, hunting for those elusive little ambiguities that scurry around like mice. (A book which might interest you: William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, a favorite of a mercurial English professor I had at Reed College.) I also remember something I read once, which is that H&P typing methods tend to be less susceptible to RSI than touch-typing. However, my brain is getting worse as I get older, and my coordination is suffering incrementally more as time goes by. I would say that what I'm looking for is the ability to type reliably and thoughtlessly. (At present it looks like it's going to be a long road.) Kye Wood put it best:

"THE UNINTENDED BENEFITS: Flow. Touch typing removes the process of conversion from thought—to characters on a page. You just think it—and it magically appears in front of you."

That's what I'd like.

As far as your goal of reducing repetitive stress, you might look into the Glove80, which is the current darling of the keyboard community and appears to be the Kinesis Advantage 2 that we both have, but done better. But personally I think the key for me, pardon the pun, will be a split keyboard that offers tenting. Moving the halves apart and angling them for optimum comfort, and then un-pronating the wrist at least a little, seems like it will do the trick for RSI. And it can be done without changing the standard layout or stagger. You do need to get your arms at the right angle, which might require adjusting chair or desk.

The keyboard I'm most interested in is the Dygma Raise. But unfortunately Dygma is currently in a nine-month desert in which they can't deliver product (the last-gen v. 1.2 is sold out and the v. 2 doesn't ship till October). Such an egregious business blunder doesn't portend well for the survival of the company in the long term, but the keyboard itself looks great. It's mostly a standard horizontally-staggered QWERTY with additional thumb keys added, built-in wrist rests that are cleanable and replaceable, and robust tenting (an add-on to the v. 1.2 and built in on the v. 2). It also has the other features I personally want for no good reason, like shine-through legends, hot-swappable switches, and PBT keycaps.

In the meantime I've ordered a Keychron Q11 (gets here tomorrow) and a set of the brand-new Gamakay Mercury switches (check out that bokeh! I helped create a monster). I'll experiment with that and see if I can figure out what a true split keyboard will do for me.

nivivar: "If you haven't purchased a keyboard yet, I highly recommend one of the Kinesis split keyboards. You can adjust the angles to your liking, making them as extreme or gentle as you would like. This would allow you to slowly adjust to using a split keyboard. There are the Freestyle2 for PC or Mac, Freestyle2 Pro, and Freestyle Edge RGB. I have the Edge RGB. I don't really use the RGB part or the customizable programming, but I do like to have a white backlight sometimes like a laptop keyboard. Lastly, you also get an option with the keyboards of selecting the key mechanisms, so if you like quieter keys or the clicky keys, you get to choose which."

Mike replies: The Edge RGB was a finalist for me, and I wonder if I might have made a mistake in not choosing it. Two turnoffs for me are that the switches are not swappable—I'm sensitive to noise and I'm usually listening to music as I work, so if I get stuck with noise I don't care for I need a way out—and I was turned off by the way Kinesis overcharges so blatantly for the tenting kits, which should really be included in the price. I mean, the Freestyle2 Pro already costs $169, and then they want an extra $53 for the few bits of plastic in the tenting kit. Feels...predatory.

As I say, though, these might not have been very good reasons for passing over the Edge RGB, which I probably would like.

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