The Online Photographer

Could an expert in our audience please recommend a good virus protection app for Macintoshes? My computer seems to be sending out spam emails without my knowledge or approval, as I'm getting a number of "out of office auto replies," to messages that are obviously spam, in my junk folder. (TOP world headquarters—a.k.a. my 10'x10' home office—uses a dual-intel 20" iMac that is now the next-to-latest model.)

I forgot to watch for the exact date (rats!), but T.O.P. recently passed 8 million visitors since we launched on November 29th, 2005. 5,000 people now subscribe through feeds, and the main blog page received  452,000 views last month (the record is 493,000). As I've said before, that makes us small compared to the big photo-sharing and camera review photography sites, but pretty large for a blog. (Though not the largest—blogs like Strobist get more traffic.) The old site, on Blogger, continues to draw about 1,500 page views a day, primarily through search engines.

As the actors who played Bartles and James used to say, "Thank you for your support."

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Mike

You can now pre-order a Sigma DP-1 on Amazon. It's promised for March 25th and priced at $800.

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Mike (Thanks to Steve)

For Further Reading: ...about the current iteration of the Foveon sensor, don't miss the excellent "Sigma SD14 Resolution: 14 MP? 4.6 MP? How does the SD14 stack up against high end cameras like the Canon EOD 5D?" by Mike Chaney, author of Qimage.  (Thanks to Carl Leonardi)

Featured Comment by Jim Kofron: "I get a kick out of photographers who will say 'I'd buy it in a second with ƒ/2.8, but I won't touch it with ƒ/4.' It's only one stop—hardly a killer.

"Why the ƒ/4? Size, and angle of incidence for this size sensor. This is a small camera, and the lens takes up a sizable part of the front already. Even with lens design and the ability to put in offset microlenses—you still need a larger lens for digital than you do for film. At least if you want quality—and that's what this camera is about.

"I shoot both a Sigma SD10 and SD14. The image files from those cameras are much easier to handle, uprez, and print (large) than those from conventional cameras—because of the purity of the pixels (say 3.4 and 4.7 MP respectively). No demosaicing, no AA filter. It's much more like a scanning back. At PMA, there were several A0 prints (that's 30 x 45") from the DP1 on display—that should give you an idea of the quality of the images coming out of this little camera.

"Where will this camera do really well? In good light (both quality and quantity). The Foveon chip doesn't particularly do well in low lit tungsten situations (blue channel noise)—although if you convert to B&W, it's extremely nice thanks to the 'pixel purity.' You do need to learn how to hold your camera still (I had to relearn that going from the SD10 to the SD14). The pixel pitch on the sensor means that the camera is sensitive to shake. It's not a camera for someone who wants to solely use it on indoor snapshots of family (without flash) or taking wedding photos in a dim church. But if you want a very compact, high quality camera, there's nothing else on the market.

"Hopefully shot-to-shot time will be sufficiently zippy. The viewfinder accessory is very nice, and they have a small dedicated flash to add to a built-in pop-up flash. And it can use my SD14's flashgun as well (although I'm not sure what'd I'd end up holding)—perhaps in an off camera mode as well (don't know that for a fact)."

As company exits film business, plants will close in Norwood, Waltham

By Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe

Polaroid Corp., the Massachusetts company that gave the world instant film photography, is shutting down its film manufacturing lines in the state and abandoning the technology that made the company famous.

"The Norwood plant is shutting down, and we will soon be winding down activities at the Waltham facility as well," said Kyle MacDonald, senior vice president of Polaroid's instant photography business segment. The closures, set for completion during this quarter, will eliminate about 150 jobs. In the late 1970s, Polaroid employed about 15,000 in Massachusetts.

The Norwood and Waltham plants make large-format films used by professional photographers and artists....

READ ON at boston.com

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Oren Grad

By Joe Cameron

Kudos for TOP's recent piece on tips from readers, especially with regard to "Dubya" as an art critic. Art is nothing if not personal. I'm no fan of the Pres, but it seems to me he has more imagination here than all of the critics combined.

This reminds me of a photography show I wandered into a few years back at a gallery on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC. The entire show was made up of larger-than-life mug shot style frontal portraits of men (mostly) against a neutral background. Preferring to see the pictures first, I read only enough of the wall text to learn that these subjects had been convicted of heinous crimes against other human beings and had been released after many years in prison.

I walked around the room spending a lot of time studying each face, on which every pore and hair was excruciatingly clear. I was, frankly, terrified. These were obviously the faces of evil, heartless, cruel, and possibly deranged beings.

But when I got near the end, reading the wall text more thoroughly revealed the purpose of this show. Every person shown, it turns out, had been found innocent of their purported crimes by virtue of DNA evidence. It was a profound lesson for me regarding the assumptions we make, the suggestive power of context, the biases we carry and the innate mystery and complexity of even the simplest of images.

A sad but interesting twist on this story is that most of the ex-cons in these images had been convicted, in part, because of eyewitness mis-identification of photographs of the accused. The photographer, Taryn Simon, who made the pictures in this exhibition (it was called "The Innocents: Headshots"; there is also a related book) speaks to this paradox:

"In these cases, photography offered the criminal justice system a tool that transformed innocent citizens into criminals, assisted officers in obtaining erroneous eyewitness identifications, and aided prosecutors in securing convictions. The criminal justice system had failed to recognize the limitations of relying on photographic images."

Seen in an entirely new and different context, the photographs that had originally frightened me now seem softer and more empathetic.

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Artist Joe Cameron is Professor Emeritus of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

Robb Kendrick's cowboy tintypes, on NPR. See the audio slide show, too.

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Mike  (Thanks to Jose Luis Gonzalez)

Featured Comment by Glenn Brown: "Bought his book for myself this Christmas and look at the images and read the words often; everything about this book tells me how special our craft is. I keep in in my studio and when I need inspiration I pick it up. I was surprised how little it cost."

Featured Comment by Christopher Lane: "Robb Kendrick's tintype cowboy portraits also appreared in an article entitled '21st-Century Cowboys: Why the Spirit Endures' published in the December 2007 National Geographic."

By Gordon Lewis

If you’re looking for a compact DSLR with built-in image stabilization, that’s also available with a fast but equally compact, lightweight, wide-to-telephoto zoom, there’s really only one choice: the Olympus E-510 with Zuiko 14–54mm ƒ/2.8–3.5. Because of Olympus’ four-thirds format, the 14–54mm has the same effective focal length range as a 17–55mm for APS format or a 28–105mm for 35mm format. For most photographers this is the ideal range for a multi-purpose “walkaround” lens. It certainly is for me.

I’m well aware that Canon and Nikon offer smaller, lighter bodies, but they all lack built-in image stabilization. I’m also aware that Canon and Nikon offer smaller, lighter, image-stabilized kit lenses, but both choices have an ƒ/5.6 maximum aperture at the long end. The 14–54mm Zuiko lets in 1.5-stops more light, which allows for faster shutter speeds and lower ISOs in low-light conditions. It also has low linear distortion, low chromatic aberations, minimal vignetting at maximum aperture, and weather-sealing. Regardless, I’m not trying to justify my decision; I’m simply explaining the thought behind it.

Why the high emphasis on reduced size and weight? In my case it was because I was planning a five-day trip to London. I dreaded the thought of lugging my Canon EOS 30D and 17–55mm ƒ/2.8 IS zoom on my shoulder for hours at a time. Although this combo has many wonderful qualities, compact size and light weight are not among them. Together, the body and lens total roughly three pounds (1.4 kg). That may not sound like much until you compare it to the combined weight of the E-510 and 14–54mm: two pounds, which is 33% less. If you’re 6 foot 5 inches tall and burly, this weight difference might be negligible. When you’re 5 foot 6 inches tall and wirey, trust me, you notice. I sold the Canon 17–55mm zoom on eBay and used the proceeds to buy the Olympus E-510 and 14–54mm combo.

That’s why I bought the E-510. Other noteworthy features include the live-view feature (which I seldom use), dual card slots (Compact Flash and xD), and relatively low price (less than $500 U.S., body only). In part two, I’ll explore the pros and cons of using the Olympus E-510 for casual travel, candid, and street photography. I’ll also provide some insights into how to overcome its most significant shortcoming: limited dynamic range.

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Gordon

(I asked my friend Gordon Lewis if he'd share some of his experiences with his new E-510, which he'll do over the coming days and weeks. —M.J.)

I get a lot of tips, for which I'm grateful. Maybe a quarter to a third of the posts you read here are the result of tips. I don't use most of them, but I don't want to stop receiving them, and I thank those who send them.

That said, one phenomenon that's part of my daily online life is that occasionally I'll get a blizzard of emails—sometimes dozens—with the same tip all at once.

Perhaps surprisingly, these are often things I just don't have much to say about. Here are a few recent examples, along with my comments:

1. The fact that the Sigma DP-1 appeared in prototype at the recent PMA show. A large number of tipsters thought I should know about this, I must admit for perfectly sensible reasons. I've been calling for a digicam with an APS-C sensor for years now, and I've written several times about the allegedly forthcoming Sigma DP-1, which seems to be the only example of this obvious but missing-in-action breed of camera that's even on the horizon. It's been delayed repeatedly, revised probably several times in prototype—and we've covered all that here.

So here's the big PMA news: "It's still coming. No—really."

That "No—really" part is the upshot of the news from Vegas. Yeah, there is a new teaser at the website and there were some samples posted. But it's still not here. How many times can I write about vaporware while it's still vaporware? I also still think we'll need several entries into this category before we'll know if it's viable as a category. I'm still interested, still concerned, but let's face it—nothing's really changed. When it's finally a real product, I'll let you know.

2. The fact that Leica is offering an upgrade package for the M8. Yes, I know. It strikes me that there are two possible  interpretations here, to wit: a) Leica is making a bold, admirable, and sincere attempt to adapt its historical commitment to non-obsolescence to the digital age; b) Leica is "harvesting money" from its fanatical (and rich) customer base by offering them a set of semi-meaningless upgrades for the price of a Nikon D300. Which is it? Well, if I knew, or even had a good guess, I might write about it. But I don't.

One question I have about it is that pretty soon, we will know the price point of the 24MP Sony "flagship" camera and the Canon 5D replacement (neither are here yet). Whatever that price point is, it will be significantly less than the cost of an M8. Will Leica be able to perform a sensor-swap (the only meaningful form of non-obsolescence in the long run) in the M8 for anything close to that number, with a new sensor anywhere near as good? Just asking.

W.H.D. Koerner's 1916 Saturday Evening Post illustration in the Oval Office

3. Lots of people thought I'd be tickled by this article, which supposedly points out George W. Bush's  deficiencies as an art critic by revealing that his favorite painting, which he thinks depicts a Christian missionary charging up a hill, actually shows a horse thief attempting to elude his pursuers. But I'm afraid I don't see anything wrong with the President (or anybody else) imposing their own personal meaning on works of art. That's sort of how art works—it's not semantic communication, it's an interaction between the artifact and the viewer. Even the Saturday Evening Post, which commissioned the illustration, used it to illustrate two different stories, of which the horse thief story was merely the first. Bush in effect uses it to illustrate a third story—one which, you must admit, is now indelibly a part of the picture's meaning and provenance.

Besides, we all know why our President really likes that painting: he thinks the cowboy looks like him!

4. This video. In the multiple-tip sweepstakes, this one wins. But why this particular "tip" amongst the tens of thousands of photographic tips 'n' tricks happened to surface recently is due to...well, this video. A well-organized presentation and some judicious enthusiasm…nothing wrong with that. But this tip has been around for decades. I first tried it in the '80s, and I'm sure it had been around for decades by that time. It sort of kind of works. And sort of kind of doesn't. Either way, what used to be a poor man's monopod substitute is now a poor man's IS substitute, and in either case my humble opinion is that you'd be better off going for the real thing or else forgetting about it. Of course, there's nothing wrong with trying it for yourself. Maybe you'll like it.

5. This lens. This makes me slightly grumpy. If people really cared about long telephotos, they'd be much more enthusiastic than they are about the photographic possibilities of the APS-C crop factor. But, as I've opined before, what people are really interested in is who can buy the biggest, baddest, most expensive status symbol in the form of massive glass. Plus, the narrowed field of view of the smaller sensor has now come into direct conflict with the preferred status symbol in sensors, so-called "full-frame" (i.e., 35mm size). We're back to the best of both worlds in terms of one-upsmanship: the people with the biggest sensors also need the biggest lenses. Perfect. My problem is that I don't care a lick about status symbols, as such. I just care about pictures.

My friend John Gossage declared in the 1990s that there wasn't a single significant body of art photography that has ever been done with a super telephoto. He attempted to be the first with a book of pictures taken with a 1200mm lens. All the pictures are of Mexico, taken from California. The book was called There & Gone, and I'm afraid my critical judgment would have to be that, well, there is still no significant body of art photography that's ever been done with a super telephoto. (With all due respect to John, it's not my favorite of his books.) 

Besides, why settle for a paltry 1200mm when you could have a real long lens for your Canon?

But keep those tips and links coming.

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Mike  (Thanks to Phil Aynsley and many others.)

Featured Comment by Mark Hollings: "Mike, You've made the Gossage telephoto comment before, but it comes via Robert Adams. Gossage's quote, in an interview: 'Robert Adams made a comment in his book Beauty in Photography that always stuck with me. [He wrote] that no photographer of major ambition had ever sustained important work taken with long telephoto lenses.' Full interview here.

"But my vote for the best telephoto images ever taken: those from the Hubble Space Telescope. Also happens to be the longest telephoto ever made."

By Richard Pyle, Associated Press

[Note: Richard Pyle is no relation to Ernie Pyle]

NEW YORK—The figure in the photograph is clad in Army fatigues, boots and helmet, lying on his back in peaceful repose, folded hands holding a military cap. Except for a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, he could be asleep.

But he is not asleep; he is dead. And this is not just another fallen GI; it is Ernie Pyle, the most celebrated [American] war corres- pondent of World War II.

As far as can be determined, the photograph has never been published. Sixty-three years after Pyle was killed by the Japanese, it has surfaced—surprising historians, reminding a forgetful world of a humble correspondent who artfully and ardently told the story of a war from the foxholes....

READ ON at comcast.net

This photo provided by Richard Strasser, perhaps never before published, shows famed World War II war correspondent Ernie Pyle shortly after he was killed by a Japanese machine gun bullet on the island of Ie Shima on April 18, 1945. Pyle, 44, had just arrived in the Pacific after four years of writing his popular column from European battlefronts. The Army photographer who crawled forward under fire to make this picture later said it was withheld by military officials. An AP survey of history museums and archives found only a few copies in existence, and no trace of the original negative. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Richard Strasser)

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Mike (Thanks to many tipsters)

One of my all-time favorite football players was elected to the Hall of Fame yesterday. Number 81, James Arthur "Art" Monk, wide receiver for the Washington Redskins during that team's glory years. I pretty much followed his every catch in 1984, when he was the best receiver in the National Football League. In the late '80s he was one-third of the "Posse," Washington's peerless corps of receivers, with Ricky Sanders (remembered for his breakout performance in Super Bowl XXII) and scrappy, tough Gary Clark. But Monk, second cousin to Thelonious, was the artist. He had the soft hands. I swear I could watch that guy just run routes—he was incredibly graceful, his routes impossibly precise, and you could never tell by the way he went out whether he thought the play was coming to him or not. I would venture to say that James Arthur Monk ran every last route of his life like he was the quarterback's first look.

Monk was one of those players who was better than his numbers, even though his numbers were stellar. He owned a number of NFL records at one time or another, many now eclipsed, and still holds many Redskins team marks. Off the field he radiated dignity—he seldom spoke, almost never gave interviews, yet he could quiet a room with his presence. In Washington, to this day, there is almost no football player who is as deeply admired.

Today, of course, is a bittersweet day for football fans. The culmination of the season, but also the end of the season. (In a cartoon in this week's New Yorker, a couple are sitting in front of a TV watching football. The woman says, "Have you given any thought to what you're going to do with your life after the Super Bowl?") One thing I remember about Monk's career was a bittersweet ending—Jerry Rice surpassed Monk's NFL record for career receptions on the very last weekend Monk wore a uniform.

Art Monk is a natural for the Hall of Fame, in my opinion. It took him a while to reach it, though, which might even be fitting, in a way, because "fame," with its connotations of flashy brilliance, striving, self-promotion and ego, was never what he was all about. He was the consummate athlete, doing his job surpassingly well week in and week out, season after season, with integrity and discipline. Strength and grace, and an intense mental focus that seldom wavered. He was the first player in the League to catch a touchdown pass in 15 consecutive seasons, and went 183 consecutive games with at least one catch, another onetime record. His play was never about records and numbers, though. It was about doing a job well for the sake of doing it well. It was about consistent excellence.

It's nice that he's in the Hall, but of course he's already been in my personal Hall of Fame for years now. He brought an undeniable element of joy to watching the game for me. It was an honor to watch the guy play.

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Mike

LetsGoDigital is showing the real camera to drool over at PMA.

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Mike  (Thanks to David A. Goldfarb)

Featured Comment by Amin: "Fuji really deserves some credit for willingness to go against the crowd. In the DSLR space, they created a camera with class-leading DR. In the compact digital space, they held off on the MP race to offer the only compact cameras ever to offer decent ISO 1600 snapshot capabilities. In the compact film realm, they are alone again in bringing out the excellent if anachronistic Klasse W and S cameras. Now they introduce this compact 6x7 camera and the only new bridge camera around, the S100 FS. Go Fuji!"

Possibly the biggest actual surprise of PMA so far is the Sony A300 and A350 pair, which, so far as we know, nobody saw coming. (If you're not aware of it, PMA started yesterday, and will run till Sunday, when it will break early this year so participants can watch the Super Bowl.) The lack of "live view" on the semi-pro A700 was widely noted, and now we know why: The A300-series cameras are the ones that offer the feature. Apparently, Sony thinks that the market for live view is not the semi-pro and advanced amateur market targeted by the A700. You can have the feature if you want it; you just need to buy a different camera to get it, is all.

The A300 and A350, which are price-competitive with entry-level DSLRs, are the same camera except that they give you your choice of sensor: you get to choose between 10 megapixels (the A300) or 14 megapixels (A350). The choice will certainly test the principles of those who claim to believe that more pixels aren't necessarily better! 

The implementation of live view on the A300 and A350 is promising. First of all, the camera offers a simple flip-up LCD viewing screen, which I personally think is even better than the articulated digicam-style screen on the Olympus E-3. It allows for a passable imitation of the waist-level viewing so beloved of Hasselblad and Rolleiflex shooters from days of yore (minus the reversed image, which is no loss). Moreover, other cameras use an inherently slow focusing system whereby the mirror has to flip down, focus, and flip up again. The A300 cameras use a new focusing scheme that allows for regular autofocusing in live view.

The 'Flagship'
The big-dog Sony DSLR, still unnamed—Sony is continuing to call it the "flagship"—is now due before the end of 2008, possibly at photokina. The big surprise news of this PMA (the flagship was also shown in mock-up last PMA) is that it will have a full-frame sensor (the 24-megapixel one announced the other day) and Super SteadyShot sensor-based image stabilization. So much for the endless armchair forum truthiness pronouncing that sensor IS is only compatible with APS-C and smaller sensors. Interestingly, Sony is saying that the flagship is not necessarily a "pro" camera, and it's not going to be bigger than a watermelon. Rather, it will compete with the class of camera currently defined by the Canon 5D.

Sony has also announced two new lenses—a Sony 70–300mm G-series lens, and a Carl Zeiss constant-aperture  ƒ/2.8 24–70mm. The latter, shown below, is doubtless intended to be the normal zoom for the coming flagship camera. It weighs in at a whopping two pounds plus (33.3 oz.), which must be a record for a normal zoom. (At least, we hope it is.)

Six other new lenses were shown in prototype. For a full listing of PMA '08 press releases, check Imaging-Resource's PMA 2008 Live Show Coverage. I-R also have an extensive video page.

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Mike